fredrick is nine years old. he loves his mom, and reading, and when he plays basketball with his friends, he's more often than not the only one who makes a basket. he gets good grades in school, is well-liked by his peers, and is generally a good kid. he's also in love with his t.a., that lucky girl being me, and he likes to show it by taking her stuff and running away, and kissing her hand after pretending he's going to bite her. this basic description, infatuation aside, works for pretty much all my kids, give or take some love of reading or mad basketball skillz.
this week we've just started parent conferences, and i must admit that it's all got me quite worried. because i think ahead, and i can't help but fast forward to three and four years from now when my kids enter their preteens and middle school... and eventually high school, and all the madness that entails. and ok, so i'm not their parents or even their actual teacher, but i do spend several hours a day with them and am involved in the primary activity of their lives right now, that being going to school. and even then, it goes beyond them and what i worry about is all kids going to school now and all the kids i went to school with and just everything, because what can i say, i'm a virgo and worrying is what i do.
it struck me today, when i was tickling him in order to get my badge back, the way he was giggling, openly and like a child, and the way he talked to me after the tickling was done, like a playful but mature little person, which is what he is- it struck me that depending on circumstances entirely beyond his and my control, in a few years he could be a very different person with a very different attitude and on a very different track from the one he's on now. our school is a good school, fairly small and run with an orderliness and insularity that make it feel like the tiny village schools of old (or so i imagine, never having lived in a tiny village of old). when they leave our school, or even next year, when they go into fourth grade and are stuck in much larger classes, budget cuts being what they are, what effect is that going to have on these kids? i think f is lucky because his mother is very involved in his schooling, but at the same time he has another set of circumstances stacked against him, the worst one being that he doesn't live in the same district as the rest of the kids, he lives in what is colloquially known as "the jungle" or compton. and compton is bad. compton is like, gang central, where drive-bys and drug busts are as commonplace as farmer's markets and neighborhood watch in other cities.
so every year, his mom applies for a permit from compton school district so that he can keep going to ramona, because she works nearby and it's a better fit all around. and eventually, she's going to have trouble getting that permit, as compton becomes loathe to lose students from their (seriously overcrowded, seriously underfunded) public schools, the main problems being the middle and high school. and ok, stereotypes are not reality, but they do have a basis in some reality, but what i can't help imagine is this: he has to go to middle or high school in compton. he becomes aware that being a good student and loving your mom are not what make a 12 year old black boy "cool" at cms. he ceases to be a good student, or if he doesn't, he has a hard time socially. he wouldn't even necessarily have to go to school in compton to have problems: ramona is in the same district as one of the worst high schools in the south bay. do kids succeed at these schools, somehow? yeah, they can. but for the most part, and i can say this because i saw it happen to kids i went to elementary and middle school with, going to a bad school is usually bad news. ok, somehow this discussion with myself has become derailed.
our first conference of the week today was with the mother of one of our language students- she's part of a program for children who started school as non-english speakers. her mother, sweet woman, doesn't speak a damn word of english. but she's a good mom, and she does what she can within her limitations. because s is having trouble with reading comprehension, mom reads to her and with her in spanish every night, and works out questions with her on the stories they're reading. ok. so right now, s is in a small class, with kids she's known since kinder, and her class is lucky enough to have an aide, so that the ratio of teacher to student can be 2-1. she's also signed up for extra language help for next year, which she'll need just to keep up because her main class will be almost twice the size of the one she's got now. she has certain things stacked against her, and she's got other things to her favor- things mainly due to the quality of our school. when she goes to middle school, she certainly will not receive nearly as much individual attention and help, and if her mom doesn't pick up some english quick, well that won't help either. it's like a race, almost, to give her the skills she needs now, before we send her out into an indifferent and puzzling world. again, i know there's a point somewhere.
the point is: kids today have a lot of chips stacked against them. good kids, with loving parents, can still get lost in the ridiculous excess of factors influencing their survival, their success, in our school system. well, duh. but working these conferences makes it heartbreakingly apparent, and that's without my elaborate projections into the future. it makes me want to do an obama and get up in front of our class and remind them of their civic and moral imperative to succeed, as blacks and latinos and students in california, nay, LOS ANGELES, the world capital of bad schools. i see it at work with f sometimes, that peer pressure to act like a little jerk who doesn't care about the rules or civility, and it makes me crazy because he's such a smart little guy and he totally knows better, but who the hell can resist peer pressure from time to time? it's a pervasive evil, and it'll be worse when they get to a school where the teachers don't care to or can't correct that behavior. not that i'm the picture of rule-following and tractability, but my rebellions didn't get in the way of learning or even of my education, extra-curricular though the main of it might have been.
another thing that strikes me up and down every time i see it are parents who don't speak one damn word of english! and if we are to be holistic about it, i know why that happens of course: you are a recent immigrant, you and your partner, if you aren't a single parent, are working long hours at shitty jobs just to keep your family afloat. if your community offers esl classes, you either can't make them because you're working or because you're overworked and you've still got a home to order. also consider that english is a damn hard language if you're not a kid, even if you are but everyone knows it's harder for adults to learn a new language than a child, something about mental flexibility or whatnot. but still. that sucks! your kid is disadvantaged one, because she's going into school without speaking the primary language of her educators and her peers, and two, because she needs to in order to move up, get her basics down, and survive! not only will school be harder because she can't communicate as easily as she should, but she also can't really count on your help at home, with homework or language development or anything. it's absolutely, one hundred percent essential that you speak english, if you've got school-age kids- and even if you don't. period. i don't understand all the pseudo-political bullshit uproar about it, people talking about "preserving cultures" or whatever the fuck. you can take it up the ass and refuse, or you fucking do what you need to do to survive and help your kids to thrive in this new world you've found for them. s's mom wants to learn, she told me so herself today, but finds it hard and embarrassing because, well, it is hard and embarrassing. some of the other parents are perfectly content to speak spanish and watch their kids flounder in school, not understanding that the whole "a better life for my family" thing pretty much goes down the drain when the kids can't do well in school.
i worry that i'm not expressing my point as well as i could. but if that is so, it's because my worries, such as they are, are vague and undefined and all-encompassing. i want these kids to do well, and i want to work with people who want these kids to do well, and i want to live in a country where education is important, and schools get more money than prisons and bullshit, and i just want a whole lot of things that aren't going to happen in the forseeable future because it would take a massive, ridiculous paradigm shift to even set the momentous changes they would require to function, over a very long term, in motion. and now i have a headache.
Monday, March 23, 2009
Sunday, March 22, 2009
deseos de cosas imposibles
jake, my sweet, my darling, jake was nothing like "didi" and i am utterly bemused as to why i was recommended that strange book "about" grieving when it is not about grieving at all. but then, nothing really is, nothing's accurate when it comes to that.
when he died, i thought i would cry forever, until the dessicated tissues of my body just scattered with a strong wind and i wouldn't have to feel so sad because i couldn't feel anything at all anymore. before he died, before i the possibility of him dying ever occured to me- back when death was a remote thing that happened to other people- it was a movie-image that came to me when i thought of mourning someone's death: you sob in a dark room for weeks, and refuse food, and sit about prettily disheveled and just deeply, deeply sad until one day a ray of sunlight pierces the fog and you begin to move on again, slowly but surely. like everything else, it has been nothing like the movies.
some days are harder than others. there is constancy, of course, i think about him every single day and miss him whenever i think about him. but in other ways, it is always surprising: i'll be driving and an image of his smile flashes into my mind and the next thing i know, i'm sobbing into the steering wheel and cursing the universe and just totally fucked for the rest of the day at work, having to pretend to be cheerful and attentive with tears waiting just below the surface to be loosed. a few days ago, i was air-guitaring in the shower when the song changed, and the next song was a sweet old love song and i crumpled to the shower floor, completely overcome with the memory of meeting him for the first time and knowing from that moment on that i was screwed when it came to him, that i was going to be damn crazy about him, that probably i already was.
it sucks because it's always there, this misery of longing and of not understanding and of feeling, at every moment, that something very important is missing from me. it sucks that i can't talk to anyone about it, that if people knew i was here now, crying and writing about him, they'd worry for my mental health but the thing is, how else should it be, how else could it possibly be? he is the only one who could really comfort me, but the reason i need comfort is that he is dead. beyond my best friend, beyond my sisters or anyone else, he was the one i wanted whenever i was upset or angry or happy or anything- if happy, it wouldn't be complete unless he could share in it and validate it, if upset, only he could make it better, even if he didn't know what to say or what the hell i was talking about. everything was better just because i could hear his voice, or feel his arms around me, because i knew he was there and he loved me. for whatever reason, without knowing what i was doing, i chose him and now that he's gone i can't unchoose him; he is still the one i want, and he is the one thing i can't have, and what kind of bullshit is that?
the first time i got high, at his gentle but insistent pressure, i puked all over his bathroom. then i made him clean it up, and after he did that, he sat on the bathroom floor and looked at me wonderingly, trying to figure out what was going on in my mind. i couldn't talk, only sit there and trip out, wide-eyed, but we didn't need to talk to understand each other, and once i brushed my teeth- with his toothbrush?- we stumbled out to the couch where we sat under the electric blanket, holding each other, and not really talking at all but mumbling jibberish periodically and feeling very together. if i'm crazy normally, what am i when i'm drunk and high? but he was good at calming me down, about anything really, and he was good at finding just the right position to tuck my head under his chin and wrap his arms around me and make the world feel like a very peaceful place indeed.
on my way to shop for groceries today, my ipod shuffled to an old ryan adams song, "when the stars go blue," and i flashed back to the first time i played that song for him: early on a friday morning, we had gone to the big downtown theater to watch an animated movie about a monster house. i snuck up and scared him before we went in, and he jumped three feet in the air and kind of hit me accidentally-on-purpose, because while he looooved jumping out at me from behind things, he didn't like to have it done to him. we both got dizzy with the 3-d glasses and he offered to share his contraband pop-tarts with me. when the movie was done, we decided to grab a bite to eat and while burgers and fries would have done just as well, i decided we needed mediterranean food, and the only place i knew of was in ventura, about an hour away. long story short, we got there and the restaurant didn't open for another four hours and naturally, we were starved because what the hell kind of a breakfast is one pop-tart each. so we had sandwiches at this weird place where the decor was all frog-related, and then we browsed at a record store where i bought a huge poster of a flying, naked art nouveau girl with a bicycle, and then we headed home. the traffic back was wretched, and we were stuck for about two hours, moving at like, 5 mph. so i played some of my favorite songs for him, starting with "to be young (is to be sad, is to be high)," which he loved and reminded him of a "young bob dylan." when he got to pick, his first choice was naturally "political scientists", by which if i recall correctly he was unimpressed, as it is not actually a political song in the least. it was a warm day, and we were full and sleepy, and we worked our way all over r.a.'s catalog haphazardly and smoked cigarettes which we put out in a half-full bottle of sobe tea so that the situation in my car was pretty stinky and yet i recall it so clearly and so fondly. and just as we were getting into i.v., hours after we'd assumed we'd be back, i picked "when the stars go blue" and went into raptures about it, and he listened attentively, and it wasn't til we were talking later after he'd downloaded some ryan adams for himself that i learned he thought that song was dreadfully boring and unimpressive. we never did have much in common, i guess, but goddamn if that stopped us from getting along like a house on fire.
i remember a lot of things involving him with almost frightening clarity and detail. normally, this would make me feel paranoid and insane, but i know that he remembered stuff involving me in much the same way. our last night in i.v., being deliberately obtuse, i claimed not to remember a certain night he mentioned, one we spent kissing in his bedroom which was my way of comforting him over the beating his favorite team had taken in a playoff game earlier that day. he wouldn't stand for my professed amnesia, and reminded me of the details of that night until i suddenly "remembered" and only then was he satisfied. so i may be crazy, about him, but i think he was crazy about me too. and speaking of kissing, i came across one of his protest pictures yesterday where he had duct tape over his mouth, and one of his friends commented "ahaha this is ironic because nothing in the world could silence jake" but the thing is i could silence him quite easily, he was actually rather loathe to talk about anything, come george bush or high water, when he could be kissing me instead and goddamn but don't i miss those kisses.
i miss his kisses and his bird-lips and his blond stubble and his mole. i miss his arms and his neck and his chest and his legs, one of which he slung over mine whenever we watched a movie together, alone in the dark. i miss his eyes and all the different expressions they could project, and his eyebrows and the way one was always raised at me. i miss his hands and the way he would sigh whenever, at the end of a long night, he would sink down next to me and take my hand in his. i miss the way he smelled and the way he talked and the way he laughed and the way he smiled. i miss his crazy huge t-shirts with their silly slogans, and his black sweatshirt that smelled like pee when he bought it for like three dollars. i miss his goofy screen names and his random calls and the way he said my name, especially when i asked him to so he'd say it all slow and smiling. i miss the faces he made while he played his guitar and i miss watching him eat cereal and i miss the way he said "horchata." i miss being angry at him and waiting for his calls and raving about him to anyone who would listen. i miss eating in n out with him in my car at the beach and i miss smoking cigarettes with him and i miss the disgusting drink recipes he would come up with for me and i miss all his peculiar hand gestures. i miss being able to call him and ask stupid hypothetical questions, like when i was struck by the desperate need mankind has for flying cars and he smilingly suggested that i probably wouldn't get one in our lifetime unless i invented it myself. i miss taking him grocery shopping, and taking him to the doctors, and i miss going out with him for ice cream afterwards and i miss making him finish mine because ice cream is so boring to me.
i miss him. i miss him so fucking incredibly much i almost can't believe it myself. i miss him every moment of every day, and some moments i miss him so much i can't breathe because it hurts so much. i look around sometimes and am surprised that green things are still growing like they've always done, and the earth is still going around the sun, and no one else seems to feel what i feel, a sense of loss so huge that it should throw off the balance of nature and the orbit of all the planets and everything. i wonder if i'm ever going to love anyone like this again, whether anyone has loved anyone like this before, whether i'll ever love anyone at all, even a little because when i'm sixty i'll still be loving him with most of my heart. it's stupid and it's cliche and it's just the truth that sometimes, if i'm sitting still and missing him intensely, every heartbeat seems to say his name "jakejakejakejakejakejakejakejakejakejakejakejake" and all i want to do is turn to the nearest unfortunate person and let it all out, say "i miss him i love him i miss him." but i don't, instead i sit there silently and fight back tears and hate everything and everyone for how completely it and he is not jake. my jake. when i wrote, i seem to spend my life missing you!, i did not realize the kind of violence and misery i was in for. ah life.
when he died, i thought i would cry forever, until the dessicated tissues of my body just scattered with a strong wind and i wouldn't have to feel so sad because i couldn't feel anything at all anymore. before he died, before i the possibility of him dying ever occured to me- back when death was a remote thing that happened to other people- it was a movie-image that came to me when i thought of mourning someone's death: you sob in a dark room for weeks, and refuse food, and sit about prettily disheveled and just deeply, deeply sad until one day a ray of sunlight pierces the fog and you begin to move on again, slowly but surely. like everything else, it has been nothing like the movies.
some days are harder than others. there is constancy, of course, i think about him every single day and miss him whenever i think about him. but in other ways, it is always surprising: i'll be driving and an image of his smile flashes into my mind and the next thing i know, i'm sobbing into the steering wheel and cursing the universe and just totally fucked for the rest of the day at work, having to pretend to be cheerful and attentive with tears waiting just below the surface to be loosed. a few days ago, i was air-guitaring in the shower when the song changed, and the next song was a sweet old love song and i crumpled to the shower floor, completely overcome with the memory of meeting him for the first time and knowing from that moment on that i was screwed when it came to him, that i was going to be damn crazy about him, that probably i already was.
it sucks because it's always there, this misery of longing and of not understanding and of feeling, at every moment, that something very important is missing from me. it sucks that i can't talk to anyone about it, that if people knew i was here now, crying and writing about him, they'd worry for my mental health but the thing is, how else should it be, how else could it possibly be? he is the only one who could really comfort me, but the reason i need comfort is that he is dead. beyond my best friend, beyond my sisters or anyone else, he was the one i wanted whenever i was upset or angry or happy or anything- if happy, it wouldn't be complete unless he could share in it and validate it, if upset, only he could make it better, even if he didn't know what to say or what the hell i was talking about. everything was better just because i could hear his voice, or feel his arms around me, because i knew he was there and he loved me. for whatever reason, without knowing what i was doing, i chose him and now that he's gone i can't unchoose him; he is still the one i want, and he is the one thing i can't have, and what kind of bullshit is that?
the first time i got high, at his gentle but insistent pressure, i puked all over his bathroom. then i made him clean it up, and after he did that, he sat on the bathroom floor and looked at me wonderingly, trying to figure out what was going on in my mind. i couldn't talk, only sit there and trip out, wide-eyed, but we didn't need to talk to understand each other, and once i brushed my teeth- with his toothbrush?- we stumbled out to the couch where we sat under the electric blanket, holding each other, and not really talking at all but mumbling jibberish periodically and feeling very together. if i'm crazy normally, what am i when i'm drunk and high? but he was good at calming me down, about anything really, and he was good at finding just the right position to tuck my head under his chin and wrap his arms around me and make the world feel like a very peaceful place indeed.
on my way to shop for groceries today, my ipod shuffled to an old ryan adams song, "when the stars go blue," and i flashed back to the first time i played that song for him: early on a friday morning, we had gone to the big downtown theater to watch an animated movie about a monster house. i snuck up and scared him before we went in, and he jumped three feet in the air and kind of hit me accidentally-on-purpose, because while he looooved jumping out at me from behind things, he didn't like to have it done to him. we both got dizzy with the 3-d glasses and he offered to share his contraband pop-tarts with me. when the movie was done, we decided to grab a bite to eat and while burgers and fries would have done just as well, i decided we needed mediterranean food, and the only place i knew of was in ventura, about an hour away. long story short, we got there and the restaurant didn't open for another four hours and naturally, we were starved because what the hell kind of a breakfast is one pop-tart each. so we had sandwiches at this weird place where the decor was all frog-related, and then we browsed at a record store where i bought a huge poster of a flying, naked art nouveau girl with a bicycle, and then we headed home. the traffic back was wretched, and we were stuck for about two hours, moving at like, 5 mph. so i played some of my favorite songs for him, starting with "to be young (is to be sad, is to be high)," which he loved and reminded him of a "young bob dylan." when he got to pick, his first choice was naturally "political scientists", by which if i recall correctly he was unimpressed, as it is not actually a political song in the least. it was a warm day, and we were full and sleepy, and we worked our way all over r.a.'s catalog haphazardly and smoked cigarettes which we put out in a half-full bottle of sobe tea so that the situation in my car was pretty stinky and yet i recall it so clearly and so fondly. and just as we were getting into i.v., hours after we'd assumed we'd be back, i picked "when the stars go blue" and went into raptures about it, and he listened attentively, and it wasn't til we were talking later after he'd downloaded some ryan adams for himself that i learned he thought that song was dreadfully boring and unimpressive. we never did have much in common, i guess, but goddamn if that stopped us from getting along like a house on fire.
i remember a lot of things involving him with almost frightening clarity and detail. normally, this would make me feel paranoid and insane, but i know that he remembered stuff involving me in much the same way. our last night in i.v., being deliberately obtuse, i claimed not to remember a certain night he mentioned, one we spent kissing in his bedroom which was my way of comforting him over the beating his favorite team had taken in a playoff game earlier that day. he wouldn't stand for my professed amnesia, and reminded me of the details of that night until i suddenly "remembered" and only then was he satisfied. so i may be crazy, about him, but i think he was crazy about me too. and speaking of kissing, i came across one of his protest pictures yesterday where he had duct tape over his mouth, and one of his friends commented "ahaha this is ironic because nothing in the world could silence jake" but the thing is i could silence him quite easily, he was actually rather loathe to talk about anything, come george bush or high water, when he could be kissing me instead and goddamn but don't i miss those kisses.
i miss his kisses and his bird-lips and his blond stubble and his mole. i miss his arms and his neck and his chest and his legs, one of which he slung over mine whenever we watched a movie together, alone in the dark. i miss his eyes and all the different expressions they could project, and his eyebrows and the way one was always raised at me. i miss his hands and the way he would sigh whenever, at the end of a long night, he would sink down next to me and take my hand in his. i miss the way he smelled and the way he talked and the way he laughed and the way he smiled. i miss his crazy huge t-shirts with their silly slogans, and his black sweatshirt that smelled like pee when he bought it for like three dollars. i miss his goofy screen names and his random calls and the way he said my name, especially when i asked him to so he'd say it all slow and smiling. i miss the faces he made while he played his guitar and i miss watching him eat cereal and i miss the way he said "horchata." i miss being angry at him and waiting for his calls and raving about him to anyone who would listen. i miss eating in n out with him in my car at the beach and i miss smoking cigarettes with him and i miss the disgusting drink recipes he would come up with for me and i miss all his peculiar hand gestures. i miss being able to call him and ask stupid hypothetical questions, like when i was struck by the desperate need mankind has for flying cars and he smilingly suggested that i probably wouldn't get one in our lifetime unless i invented it myself. i miss taking him grocery shopping, and taking him to the doctors, and i miss going out with him for ice cream afterwards and i miss making him finish mine because ice cream is so boring to me.
i miss him. i miss him so fucking incredibly much i almost can't believe it myself. i miss him every moment of every day, and some moments i miss him so much i can't breathe because it hurts so much. i look around sometimes and am surprised that green things are still growing like they've always done, and the earth is still going around the sun, and no one else seems to feel what i feel, a sense of loss so huge that it should throw off the balance of nature and the orbit of all the planets and everything. i wonder if i'm ever going to love anyone like this again, whether anyone has loved anyone like this before, whether i'll ever love anyone at all, even a little because when i'm sixty i'll still be loving him with most of my heart. it's stupid and it's cliche and it's just the truth that sometimes, if i'm sitting still and missing him intensely, every heartbeat seems to say his name "jakejakejakejakejakejakejakejakejakejakejakejake" and all i want to do is turn to the nearest unfortunate person and let it all out, say "i miss him i love him i miss him." but i don't, instead i sit there silently and fight back tears and hate everything and everyone for how completely it and he is not jake. my jake. when i wrote, i seem to spend my life missing you!, i did not realize the kind of violence and misery i was in for. ah life.
Monday, March 16, 2009
my mind's such a sweet thing
i am not angry because
i refuse to be angry because
i don't have permission to be angry and
i refuse to ask for permission to be angry.
i am frustrated but
more with my self than anything else because
when will i learn to ask or assume
when will i allow myself to have certain rights- like
everyone has the right to be angry because anger doesn't have to be
logical, it doesn't need permission so i guess what i mean is
i am angry
but i'm not sure why and i will never
show it, this anger, because
you don't care.
it's all so fucking unfair and it's
bullshit and it isn't even an option
you aren't even an option and i do
know better, ultimately, but who the hell
listens to me.
and it's rather funny, in it's own way,
that i can't or won't and would never tell
you just like i never told him just like
he never knew and will never know
that despite all the things he knew and really
he knew a lot- well he didn't know
that.
so probably i'll never get it because
i'll never ask for it
from anyone, of anyone, because i do it without
being asked and that is the way
it should be.
i miss him and i love him and i can see what debbie saw as clear
as if i had been there and so in that sense i understand
something i didn't understand before but i still cry
in the shower where i do my remembering
and also when i am less sad i wonder if it's
weird to imagine or for lack of a better word
fantasize about someone you know is, well, dead- because
i do so hate the term "passed away"- and i do so hate that
there are many things we should have done that now
we can never do.
i refuse to be angry because
i don't have permission to be angry and
i refuse to ask for permission to be angry.
i am frustrated but
more with my self than anything else because
when will i learn to ask or assume
when will i allow myself to have certain rights- like
everyone has the right to be angry because anger doesn't have to be
logical, it doesn't need permission so i guess what i mean is
i am angry
but i'm not sure why and i will never
show it, this anger, because
you don't care.
it's all so fucking unfair and it's
bullshit and it isn't even an option
you aren't even an option and i do
know better, ultimately, but who the hell
listens to me.
and it's rather funny, in it's own way,
that i can't or won't and would never tell
you just like i never told him just like
he never knew and will never know
that despite all the things he knew and really
he knew a lot- well he didn't know
that.
so probably i'll never get it because
i'll never ask for it
from anyone, of anyone, because i do it without
being asked and that is the way
it should be.
i miss him and i love him and i can see what debbie saw as clear
as if i had been there and so in that sense i understand
something i didn't understand before but i still cry
in the shower where i do my remembering
and also when i am less sad i wonder if it's
weird to imagine or for lack of a better word
fantasize about someone you know is, well, dead- because
i do so hate the term "passed away"- and i do so hate that
there are many things we should have done that now
we can never do.
Tuesday, March 10, 2009
unequivocally
it's a pervasive evil in our society, i think, to be afraid to be miserable. we've got so many different cures and potions and pills and bullshit that it's like sometimes we forget that if things are shitty, it's only natural and right to be downright dog miserable. misery is great. misery writes great songs, it dictates heartbreakingly amazing novels full of truth, it bleeds poetry. misery helps you appreciate a good straight whiskey, and it makes you really sit down and think about what is important to you. if you've never been miserable, if you've never wanted to slit your goddamned throat just to be done with unhappiness, how do you know what it is to be happy, to be glad to be alive? misery an extreme of emotion, and emotion is how you know you're alive.
i am not currently miserable. far from it, actually. but i've been miserable before, and i'll be miserable again. a time will come when all the world could burn in hell and it wouldn't satisfy my misery, my deep-down blood-black depression, the void that opens up for whatever reason- circumstantial or chemical or whatever. life is like, binary, man, and if you're fucking afraid of risking shit because you could fail or because it'll hurt, you'll never really be happy, or succeed, or feel pleasure either. misery, as a wise man once said, is the river of the world. deal with it or get the fuck out, right? easier blogged to no one than advised to your nearest and dearest, stupid though she may be being.
i am not currently miserable. far from it, actually. but i've been miserable before, and i'll be miserable again. a time will come when all the world could burn in hell and it wouldn't satisfy my misery, my deep-down blood-black depression, the void that opens up for whatever reason- circumstantial or chemical or whatever. life is like, binary, man, and if you're fucking afraid of risking shit because you could fail or because it'll hurt, you'll never really be happy, or succeed, or feel pleasure either. misery, as a wise man once said, is the river of the world. deal with it or get the fuck out, right? easier blogged to no one than advised to your nearest and dearest, stupid though she may be being.
Wednesday, March 4, 2009
the earth, my butt
i hate:
i love:
- fingernails. and toenails. but especially fingernails and the way they get all long and girls are expected to have long pretty fingernails but i hate them and i grow them out because in certain situations they are terribly useful, but ultimately i gnaw on one until it bends if not breaks and then i compulsively chew the rest off and become increasingly more anxious until the moment i can properly cut them all off. fucking fingernails.
- closed doors. i'm peeing. why does the door have to be closed? because if it's closed, then i'm going to have to touch that doorknob with my just-washed hand, and really... who knows what the hell lives on that damned doorknob? what's that? i periodically wipe down every doorknob in the house with anti-bacterial wipes? AND?
- nose-pickers. nose-picking. boogers.
- BIG-ASS STADIUMS and auditoriums where music goes to die. leonard cohen, you brilliant, you magic, you lovely old man you WHY are you playing at the goddamned nokia theater? why in the name of all that is holy why? you're a fucking singer-songwriter not goddamned justin timberlake, i don't want to pay $150 to sit a mile and a half from where you are and watch you on a big screen because HELLO if i wanted to watch you sing on a screen i'd stay home and pop in "i'm your man." grrrrrr.
- writers who excessively and unironically use exclamation marks! like for everything! omg!
- linda, from my class, who granted is in third grade so cut the kid a break- my fucking ass. no i don't read twilight, no i don't want you to look at what i've just written because it's none of your goddamned eight-year old business, no i don't think it's cute that i'm your idol. i'm a terrible person, leave me alone.
- ariana! from my class, who embodies everything that is annoying about my grandmother while also displaying everything that is annoying about eight year old girls. don't be a fucking know-it-all, no i can't make the other kids play with you, ever think about not being a tattle-tale? because no, it's not cute and neither is the baby voice you use to speak to me and while we're at it, NO i don't want to be best friends with your damned mother because really she must be awfully annoying to be raising a kid like you.
- how i'm a terrible person! god.
- deeply unfriendly service people. because i'm really nice to you, cashier-person, because i've been where you are and so i always smile and say hi and wish you a nice day- but not in an excessive, annoying way- so can you pleeeease pull your head out of your ass and give me at least a wan smile? i'm not making your life suck.
- not knowing where my phone is/ when my phone malfunctions. it's the same kind of low-level but constant anxiety i get when i break and nail and don't have a file. why am i insane?
- my ridiculous dependency on my cell phone.
- my nocturnal tendencies.
- the way my eyelashes refuse to curl properly because i have my dad's eyelashes and they are like perfectly straight little eye-curtains or the eyelashes on snuffalupagus from sesame street. and yeah they're just eyelashes but dammit, i'm a girl and i want to be pretty.
- that this fucking weather can't pick a fucking theme and stick with it.
i love:
- haircuts! getting my hair cut instantly makes me feel attractive and lovable. the shorter my hair, the cuter i feel. it goes deeper than plain vanity, too, it's my secret little fuck-you to society.
- small, yappy, mutty dogs. little dog, are you ridiculously dinky? are your yipping little barks similar to the noises a broken child's toy might make? is your fur all matted and crazy and do your bottom teeth stick out a little weird and ugly? because i love you, and while i know enough to be ashamed that i love you, i would still bring you into my life in a heartbeat and love you more than any dog has ever been loved ever. i'd even let your stinky, dinky little self sleep in my bed with me. and i hate sharing a bed.
- emotional honesty. because if you're insane, i would like to know. i promise i won't get scared, i won't gossip behind your back. i'm the mayor of crazytown, dont'cha know? so let's be ourselves as much as possible.
- WHITE CHOCOLATE CRUNCH BARS. this is the love that dares not speak its name. because white chocolate? is gross. and crunch bars? unremarkable. but put them together and what you get is pure magic. i'm no longer allowed to eat this, by my own decree.
- wall-e. and mo. and burn-e. and wall-e. and the cockroach. it's almost unhealthy, how much i love this movie.
- speaking of unhealthy, there's babo. like, dude, i know he's a stuffed animal, ok? a stuffed imaginary creature, if we're perfectly frank, because he's not a real animal. but this changes not the fact that i can feel my heart beat a little funny when i squeeze him because he is SO DAMN CUTE and i wish he were real. he can steal my cookies any day.
- cookies? everyone loves cookies. and i don't actually eat that many cookies on like, a regular basis, but occasionally i'll have a cookie- and this happens a lot with oreos, which is why i avoid them like the plague unless i'm really happy or really sad- and then i just can't stop and i morph into the cookie monster (who is now the carrot monster or something? as if carrots are sooo delicious that people/puppets regularly become obsessed with them. pshaw.) and the moral of the story is not pretty but it is this: i love cookies because cookies are amazing.
- the one girl who works at the library and is there pretty much everytime i go? she's so cute, and she totally recognizes me now, and she's always complementing my taste in books, although i partly think she thinks i'm crazy because i'm always at the damned library. what can i say, i'm a quick read man.
- kissing. "french" kissing for hours, pecks on the cheek, kissing upside down, in the rain, in a house, near a goat, in a boat, after eating green eggs and ham (on second thought, ew, get some gum), with boys, girls, trannies, space aliens, etc. etc. what better way to get to know someone? ahhhh.
- bill watterson/calvin and hobbes. i think if i ever got psychoanalyzed, like really in-depth, it would turn out that deep deep down inside i am calvin.
- that i am a six year old boy. like, most of the time i think this is one of the best things about me? not when i'm in a bar with a bunch of people my age, of course, and all the girls are dressed like vegas whores and the guys look like fraternity brothers-come-yuppie scum and rihanna is blasting over the sound system... then i feel like a scruffy little boy in a bad way... but mostly, yeah, it's all good.
- going clubbing/barhopping/drinking at a big douchey party, etc. do i hate the music you're playing? yes. do i hate the types of people who go to bars? yes. do i hate fruity girly drinks where you can't taste the liquor for the sugar content? yes. do i hate being hit on by guys in bars? yes. do i hate not being hit on by guys in bars? yes. i hate bars. i get dragged out to these things by people who are ostensibly my friends, people who know for a fact that i hate the whole desperate-20-something-emptiness of bars and clubs, and it's just like they say, you know, the road to hell is paved with good intentions. i'm not going to sleep with some slick jerk i met in a bar. i'm not going to sleep with a nice guy i met in a bar, for fuck's sake. i'm not going to have a good conversation with anyone in a goddamned bar, unless it's practically empty, unless it's a hole in the wall, unless there's a jukebox playing tom waits and bob dylan in the corner, barely visible through the haze of cigarette smoke, basically unless it's a very very unusual sort of bar full of unusual sorts of folk. fuck, man.
Saturday, January 10, 2009
things which escape those who dream only by night
one time, a long time ago, at a party, i began to- or would have if i hadn't been restrained- slit my wrists. granted, i was very very drunk, but still. i failed then but succeeded later, not at slitting my wrists but rather at working out our steak knives on the inside of my arm, an ugly and surreal incident where watching blood ooze from my body was the only thing grounding me in reality. i lived to regret that, as a teenage co-worker mistook me for a fellow cutter and took to following me around rhapsodizing about the beauty of pain and control. another time i almost slit my wrists again but it was out of rage and in revenge, and not at a party but in the shower. none of these incidents were as melodramatically emo as they sound, and i'm not actually a goth. what happens is that sometimes i am overcome with a certain feeling, not counting that time in the shower because that was 100% rage, the kind where you are literally seeing red and hearing a strange buzzing in your head (the kind of rage that only a mother can rouse, obviously), and that feeling is the distinct sensation of being completely and totally alone in a vast and cold universe. not lonely but alone.
i was a fairly happy kid, and i had billions of friends, so when jeff pulled me aside for a talk at 13, while we were supposed to be watching the game going on in front of us, and somewhere in that conversation insinuated that being exceptional also meant being lonely- from which i was to extrapolate one, that i was exceptional, and two, that i was or would be, down the line, lonely- well, clearly, i didn't know what to think, though pretending to be the mature little person he expected me to be i nodded sagely and agreed that being surrounded by people was the loneliest experience there was. i would, much to my chagrin, realize the truth of my words a mere five months later, upon entering that nightmarish institution also known as "high school."
but lonely and alone are not the same, and the difference is, i think, this: lonely is knowing that someone out there understands you, but you have yet to find that person or those persons. lonely is needing a hug and a sympathetic ear. alone is knowing that wherever you go, however long you live, you will never find a person to understand you, because no such person exists. does that even make sense? mon dieu.
i'm a generally cheerful person. i love to laugh, and to make people laugh, and feel that i have a well-developed sense of humor and the absurd. i have many close friends, most of whom i love dearly and would not trade for the world and with all of whom i am honest and forthcoming and strange. and for all this, i can't think of one person i could point to and say: this person understands me, or this person is very much like me in a pleasing and reassuring way.
there are stories we tell about ourselves that depict us as the people we want to be. but if you, wishing to be known as courageous but knowing yourself to be a yella-bellied cowahd, pretend at courage when facing down whatever (a mugger, your boss, a dragon, etc.)- are you brave, or just a good actor? or are those one and the same, in the end? IN THE END. what big words.
i don't know about soulmates or any such bullshit, and i don't know about 'the one' and 'true love' and all that kinda old-fashioned jazz, but the concept that's always caught my imagination is the idea that there is someone in the world who is 'made for you.' as if life's this paper cut-out storybook where everything is manufactured for some predetermined purpose and all things and people fit together like in a puzzle? as if you can date as many chaps as you please, and even work on building strong relationships with some of them, but IN THE END it will all be for naught because one day, someday, you will be on your way to the post office or the grocery store, and while your attention is diverted from in front of you you crash into someone, let's say his name is hermann and he's from germany, which is like, so random, but anyway you and hermann crash and your papers go everywhere and as you bend down to pick them up your eyes instead fall upon the book he dropped, which is, let's say, a well-thumbed copy of the principia by isaac newton, and your heart skips a beat because, omg lightning and junebugs, that's your favorite book of all time. so then you and hermann say fuck the post office and you get coffee together, because luckily he speaks english, whereupon you find that though you have lived all your life in bumfuck, ca and he's from nowhere, germany, you guys are like, exactly the same person: you love opera, picking your nose, and anal sex and he just like, loves opera, girls who pick their noses, and anal sex. so then it's goodbye david or whatever poor chap you were dating at the time, and you and hermann move in together and live happily ever after because IN THE END, he was made specifically for you, like you ordered him from a catalogue and you just can't believe you ever lived without him. there was a point to this story, somewhere back in the beginning.
point: ummm this girl and hermann are like, total sickos, right? another point: that would be like, totally awesome and radical, if you were you and someone who exactly complemented and could understand you was developing, as in growing, as in existing, along some parallel line, possibly in the next city over or maybe even in germany or something. which is to say that i don't buy it, this 'made for me' thing, this convergence or congruence thing. i think, and i think i've had a small taste of it already, perhaps as much as i'm ever going to have, that for someone to be made for you, you've got to make him yourself. all of which is besides my original point anyway.
the original point is that i feel that i am strange in a novel way, which is not the same as being a dick and saying i'm 'special' or exceptional, except it is but without the overtones of superiority. like i'm different, but not above you, instead next to you, in some weird parallel zone that doesn't ever intersect but only appears to. like if stephen dedalus weren't a snotty prick but instead slightly insecure and more amiable. i'll be damned if this isn't all rambling bullshit. more tomorrow on How I Am Not Like My Age Group And Why It Makes Me Crazy But I Don't Relate To Old People Either Because Like, What The Fuck I Know Stuff, Bitches.
i was a fairly happy kid, and i had billions of friends, so when jeff pulled me aside for a talk at 13, while we were supposed to be watching the game going on in front of us, and somewhere in that conversation insinuated that being exceptional also meant being lonely- from which i was to extrapolate one, that i was exceptional, and two, that i was or would be, down the line, lonely- well, clearly, i didn't know what to think, though pretending to be the mature little person he expected me to be i nodded sagely and agreed that being surrounded by people was the loneliest experience there was. i would, much to my chagrin, realize the truth of my words a mere five months later, upon entering that nightmarish institution also known as "high school."
but lonely and alone are not the same, and the difference is, i think, this: lonely is knowing that someone out there understands you, but you have yet to find that person or those persons. lonely is needing a hug and a sympathetic ear. alone is knowing that wherever you go, however long you live, you will never find a person to understand you, because no such person exists. does that even make sense? mon dieu.
i'm a generally cheerful person. i love to laugh, and to make people laugh, and feel that i have a well-developed sense of humor and the absurd. i have many close friends, most of whom i love dearly and would not trade for the world and with all of whom i am honest and forthcoming and strange. and for all this, i can't think of one person i could point to and say: this person understands me, or this person is very much like me in a pleasing and reassuring way.
there are stories we tell about ourselves that depict us as the people we want to be. but if you, wishing to be known as courageous but knowing yourself to be a yella-bellied cowahd, pretend at courage when facing down whatever (a mugger, your boss, a dragon, etc.)- are you brave, or just a good actor? or are those one and the same, in the end? IN THE END. what big words.
i don't know about soulmates or any such bullshit, and i don't know about 'the one' and 'true love' and all that kinda old-fashioned jazz, but the concept that's always caught my imagination is the idea that there is someone in the world who is 'made for you.' as if life's this paper cut-out storybook where everything is manufactured for some predetermined purpose and all things and people fit together like in a puzzle? as if you can date as many chaps as you please, and even work on building strong relationships with some of them, but IN THE END it will all be for naught because one day, someday, you will be on your way to the post office or the grocery store, and while your attention is diverted from in front of you you crash into someone, let's say his name is hermann and he's from germany, which is like, so random, but anyway you and hermann crash and your papers go everywhere and as you bend down to pick them up your eyes instead fall upon the book he dropped, which is, let's say, a well-thumbed copy of the principia by isaac newton, and your heart skips a beat because, omg lightning and junebugs, that's your favorite book of all time. so then you and hermann say fuck the post office and you get coffee together, because luckily he speaks english, whereupon you find that though you have lived all your life in bumfuck, ca and he's from nowhere, germany, you guys are like, exactly the same person: you love opera, picking your nose, and anal sex and he just like, loves opera, girls who pick their noses, and anal sex. so then it's goodbye david or whatever poor chap you were dating at the time, and you and hermann move in together and live happily ever after because IN THE END, he was made specifically for you, like you ordered him from a catalogue and you just can't believe you ever lived without him. there was a point to this story, somewhere back in the beginning.
point: ummm this girl and hermann are like, total sickos, right? another point: that would be like, totally awesome and radical, if you were you and someone who exactly complemented and could understand you was developing, as in growing, as in existing, along some parallel line, possibly in the next city over or maybe even in germany or something. which is to say that i don't buy it, this 'made for me' thing, this convergence or congruence thing. i think, and i think i've had a small taste of it already, perhaps as much as i'm ever going to have, that for someone to be made for you, you've got to make him yourself. all of which is besides my original point anyway.
the original point is that i feel that i am strange in a novel way, which is not the same as being a dick and saying i'm 'special' or exceptional, except it is but without the overtones of superiority. like i'm different, but not above you, instead next to you, in some weird parallel zone that doesn't ever intersect but only appears to. like if stephen dedalus weren't a snotty prick but instead slightly insecure and more amiable. i'll be damned if this isn't all rambling bullshit. more tomorrow on How I Am Not Like My Age Group And Why It Makes Me Crazy But I Don't Relate To Old People Either Because Like, What The Fuck I Know Stuff, Bitches.
Monday, January 5, 2009
nobody say love
life is strange because: just when you think you have it in hand, it loop-de-loops around you with a pat on the ass and those are your own wide eyes staring back at you, bewildered but only superficially, really, because by now you know it's best to fail to make plans and what you want has but the slightest effect on what you will get, ain't it funny?
so this is the new year and i've learned; she hates me, and i am willing to do exactly nothing about that because ultimately, truly shockingly, i came to the realization that there is nothing wrong with me, nothing i am willing to change, not for her anyway. this is the new year and the one thing i want is left behind in the old year, never to return, never to be mine, and it's a real tragedy that i was born without a sense of time, or that time exists at all, or is reported to anyway because who but a nutcase would make a case for linear time, the time that i'm aware of is like silly putty or those 25 cent stretchy hands you get at the supermarket and it shoots forward quickly only to snap back and slap you in the nose before diving down to gather lint from your shirt and when you pluck at it to shoot it out again it just sags like runny like boogers like what the fuck you cost a whole quarter and i only got one use out of you you fucking thing and in frustration and grossed out because now it's just dirty and no longer translucent you fling it at the window and it sticks and doesn't slide. that's what time is.
and life is weird because this is the new year and so far not that different from the old year aside from the death of potential and the branching off of all sorts of new possibilities, none of which are as pregnant with promise as that deceased one but isn't that just the way it goes. you never know where it's going to take you, this thing, you and your child's sense of magic and your alexander-the-great eyes and your limitless capacity for sorrow and the very exacting-flexible standards you maintain for what will and can happen to you.
i'm like a child in so many ways that it astounds me, because i think i know how i feel about something up until that something comes to pass, and then i hope against hope and believe against the bald facts of things and what i mean is this: i look like a grown up, sometimes, and walk about and function like one as well, but when you get down to the nitty-gritty, to the bare bones of the matter what i do is walk around expecting a miracle, every moment of every day, and every moment that it fails to pass, i wallow in my disappointment and gather the pieces around me and regroup them and still keep on hoping and waiting, in spite of my rational mind, in spite of what i say and do, in spite of the ineffable, ineluctable progression of mundane life.
i wish i believed in something more concrete than possibility, that i had something as simple as your judeo-christian god and devil, something well-defined and drawn out to call upon and barter with. barter! i sing the body electric, etc., which is to say i'm glad i'm alive, that i exist and can touch and be touched and that there are aspects of me that you can't touch, that you don't know, even some that i don't know come to think of it, but anyway what i mean is that while i am consciously, while i decide every day to be, glad to be alive, there are some things, there is one thing for which i would risk that so-called fact- not a thing, really, a person, i suppose, six foot one inch of proteins and chemicals and shaking hands and soul and peculiar timbre, etc. etc.. god so what the fuck!
i woke up this morning from a beautiful jungle dream, very vivid and so on, to a question posed to me by some morbid little reptile part of my brain that hates for me to be content, and the question is this: if by some alchemy, if by some supernatural trade agreement you could have been sick instead of him, knowing very well that you could die just as easily as he did, would...? and the thing is that yeah, i woulda. and it's bullshit that in this magnificently large and mysterious universe, this cornucopaeia of possibilities and potentialities, you can't just call up the devil or some other shadowy force and strike a bargain, a tough bargain, a big deal, something really scary, but if you're willing to do it then you should have the goddamned option, am i right? and that's the crux of it really, that we're given this hideous ability to know that we're alive and that we can die and to contemplate the various implications thereof, but we get no options- not to cheat death, i wouldn't presume, but to rearrange it a little or to- well, the point is, when i say miracles, i really mean options: the option to sacrifice what you're willing to, to whatever end you wish.
none of which is to say that life can't be shocking in a good way, occassionaly. new year's eve was a delicious dark fumble and proof that you can change without fucking well having to think everything to death. this year looks the same but feels different, in more than just the obvious, sad way: if i could wipe the slate clean, i would, and goodbye mother country and friends, hat off in a jolly salute, but i can't or rather, wouldn't or rather- not yet. the next best thing, which you can't see or feel or smell or hear, but which i know the same way i know when my heart skips a beat, is that inasmuch inasmany ways as i can manage, i'm not going to stay where i am. because if it weren't pathetic and cliche, i'd inscribe on my skin this saying this mantra this should-be-obvious lame-o revelation but- there's nothing wrong with me.
so this is the new year and i've learned; she hates me, and i am willing to do exactly nothing about that because ultimately, truly shockingly, i came to the realization that there is nothing wrong with me, nothing i am willing to change, not for her anyway. this is the new year and the one thing i want is left behind in the old year, never to return, never to be mine, and it's a real tragedy that i was born without a sense of time, or that time exists at all, or is reported to anyway because who but a nutcase would make a case for linear time, the time that i'm aware of is like silly putty or those 25 cent stretchy hands you get at the supermarket and it shoots forward quickly only to snap back and slap you in the nose before diving down to gather lint from your shirt and when you pluck at it to shoot it out again it just sags like runny like boogers like what the fuck you cost a whole quarter and i only got one use out of you you fucking thing and in frustration and grossed out because now it's just dirty and no longer translucent you fling it at the window and it sticks and doesn't slide. that's what time is.
and life is weird because this is the new year and so far not that different from the old year aside from the death of potential and the branching off of all sorts of new possibilities, none of which are as pregnant with promise as that deceased one but isn't that just the way it goes. you never know where it's going to take you, this thing, you and your child's sense of magic and your alexander-the-great eyes and your limitless capacity for sorrow and the very exacting-flexible standards you maintain for what will and can happen to you.
i'm like a child in so many ways that it astounds me, because i think i know how i feel about something up until that something comes to pass, and then i hope against hope and believe against the bald facts of things and what i mean is this: i look like a grown up, sometimes, and walk about and function like one as well, but when you get down to the nitty-gritty, to the bare bones of the matter what i do is walk around expecting a miracle, every moment of every day, and every moment that it fails to pass, i wallow in my disappointment and gather the pieces around me and regroup them and still keep on hoping and waiting, in spite of my rational mind, in spite of what i say and do, in spite of the ineffable, ineluctable progression of mundane life.
i wish i believed in something more concrete than possibility, that i had something as simple as your judeo-christian god and devil, something well-defined and drawn out to call upon and barter with. barter! i sing the body electric, etc., which is to say i'm glad i'm alive, that i exist and can touch and be touched and that there are aspects of me that you can't touch, that you don't know, even some that i don't know come to think of it, but anyway what i mean is that while i am consciously, while i decide every day to be, glad to be alive, there are some things, there is one thing for which i would risk that so-called fact- not a thing, really, a person, i suppose, six foot one inch of proteins and chemicals and shaking hands and soul and peculiar timbre, etc. etc.. god so what the fuck!
i woke up this morning from a beautiful jungle dream, very vivid and so on, to a question posed to me by some morbid little reptile part of my brain that hates for me to be content, and the question is this: if by some alchemy, if by some supernatural trade agreement you could have been sick instead of him, knowing very well that you could die just as easily as he did, would...? and the thing is that yeah, i woulda. and it's bullshit that in this magnificently large and mysterious universe, this cornucopaeia of possibilities and potentialities, you can't just call up the devil or some other shadowy force and strike a bargain, a tough bargain, a big deal, something really scary, but if you're willing to do it then you should have the goddamned option, am i right? and that's the crux of it really, that we're given this hideous ability to know that we're alive and that we can die and to contemplate the various implications thereof, but we get no options- not to cheat death, i wouldn't presume, but to rearrange it a little or to- well, the point is, when i say miracles, i really mean options: the option to sacrifice what you're willing to, to whatever end you wish.
none of which is to say that life can't be shocking in a good way, occassionaly. new year's eve was a delicious dark fumble and proof that you can change without fucking well having to think everything to death. this year looks the same but feels different, in more than just the obvious, sad way: if i could wipe the slate clean, i would, and goodbye mother country and friends, hat off in a jolly salute, but i can't or rather, wouldn't or rather- not yet. the next best thing, which you can't see or feel or smell or hear, but which i know the same way i know when my heart skips a beat, is that inasmuch inasmany ways as i can manage, i'm not going to stay where i am. because if it weren't pathetic and cliche, i'd inscribe on my skin this saying this mantra this should-be-obvious lame-o revelation but- there's nothing wrong with me.
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