Yes, to continue my list of people I want to be, even though it is unhealthy:
Tom Waits. For twisting his disability (autism) into an artistic masterpiece. (Details: when young, he would be distracted by the sounds of cars going by, electrical work, distant industrial activity, and as an adult, used this schizophrenic soundscape for the basis of many of his songs.)
Cameron Young. For being one of the finest professors I have had the pleasure to study under, and for making me wish that, should I ever be an instructor, I could pull it off half as well as he.
Tori Amos. For playing live shows with a martini on her piano.
Anais Nin. For looking at the world with wonderment, and wide-eyed cynicism.
Mr. Beefeater. For inventing a gin for the low-wage masses that tastes like a gin the richer gals can afford.
Jack Layton. For being a political ruffian.
Jean Chretien. Same reason.
I won't even mention Margaret Atwood, as it's far too obvious.
Kim Deal. For being a badass genius who - somehow - can pull off black sweatpants at the decade's most highly anticipated show.
That's all for now.
Disturbing memory: back when my family used to act like a family, and would do "activities" every night, we played this strange game called ... Shit, I can't remember the name ... It had to do with cards in a deck, and every card had a question written on it. Participants would draw cards, and answer the questions, and no one was allowed to interrupt. Anyway, one night I drew a card that asked, "If you could be anybody else in the whole world, who would you be?"
I said, "I wouldn't want to be anybody other than me."
"I think that's beautiful," said my mother. "A six-year-old child has said that she wouldn't trade her identity for anybody else's. She's six, and she's completely comfortable with who she is."
And I still wouldn't trade my identity, not really. But I can imagine it, and at six, I was incapable of such flights of fancy. Either I've evolved creatively, or I've succumbed to a life of dissatisfaction.
However, it must be noted that at age six, I was not familiar with Mr. Beefeater's work, and had I been, the answer may have been different ... :)
Yes, I know it's unhealthy to think that way, but here's a partial list:
Kids in the Hall: for their ability to be wittier than any other tv cast in the whole wide world.
Rage Against The Machine: for badass militant poetry.
Camilla Parker-Bowles: for her dignity and genuine delight in an act that no one understands, yet everyone, despite personal feelings, should respect.
Ani diFranco: For using the terms "cunt" and "tractor pull" in the same verse of the same song.
... To be continued ...
Just a quick note to inform my faithful readers of a special new link - Jess-Tron has joined the negativespace.net universe. Hurrah! Champagne for everyone!
No, it doesn't! I received a decent yet disappointing grade for a class I thought I'd mastered, and just before I burst into tears I realized that school doesn't matter for me any more - I've graduated! - and it didn't matter, or the grades didn't, when I was still a student. Particularly with the writing classes - I've never bothered to pander to the department, and I'm proud to be producing things they dislike or exhibit indifference to, because I never wrote for them and I never will, and I don't measure my success or my personal fullfilment by their standards. This, more than the technical elements, is what a writing degree has taught me most.
I'm eating curly fries and fish sticks for the third evening in a row.
An interview at a new bookstore is scheduled for next week, and there's a couple other prospects as well. Heard from an acquaintance that Poland is a good place to teach English. Am reminded of the greatest Calvin quote of them all: "Krakow. Krakow Krakow Krakow."
Scene: The Inner Harbour Causeway. Tourists milling, the sun bright, reflected off the light blue waves.
Character: Joy. She wears rolled-up jeans and a leather jacket. Around her are the butts of cigarettes she has smoked, a disguised bottle of sangria, a notebook, and a pen. She has been writing. Lately there have been intense highs and miserable lows in her life - this is one of the lows. She cries, but thinks no one notices. Tragically, she still considers herself subtle.
A middle-aged man wanders past, half-drunk, half-crazy, or perhaps just more in-tune. He passes her, catches a glimpse of her face, and halts.
MAN: Would you like some ice cream?
HER: No.
MAN: [holds out a gigantic chocolate sundae in a plastic cup] Are you sure? Have some ice cream. You need ice cream right now.
HER: No. No. I'm fine, but thank you.
MAN: [walking away] Okay. But you have no idea how amazing this ice cream is!
And she lit a cigarette, and wrote some more, and felt better.
Yes, changes are afoot, and I shall write about them in greater detail at a later date. Suffice to say my mood is sad, hopeful, and a little older.
I spent the morning handing out resumes, which was somewhat more pleasant than I expected. It was nice to be out in the sun with a smashing-cool skirt on, coupled with my tough black boots - professional yet sneakily punk. No real leads except a tourist shop downtown, which I consider below my qualifications but could be fun for a summer. I definitely want to work downtown - it's beautiful, especially near the ocean, and not all the tourists are Americans (no offence Brandon and Maggie - you guys are too cool to be tourists, anyway). Oh, there's another lead, that I must apply online for - a position as a technical writer! That would be either a roaring success or a dismal failure, and would make for a damn good story either way.
Spent a nice evening with Ben yesterday, sushi and then wandering around the Inner Harbour looking at waves and admiring the architecture of the city, then ruminating over how whenever we see beauty we feel the need to contain it, ie through film or exposition. ("That skyline would make a fantastic opening shot!") Stayed out until the sky turned dark blue, then went home. Matt and I watched some short films from a Believer dvd - a wicked one by Guy Madden, shit that man is insane, that involved a grieving widow having to defeat some kind of Spanish demon in a boxing ring in order to prevent her daughter's ritual suicide. Also an episode of The Ben Stiller Show, which is uneven at best, but a guilty pleasure.
Last night was fun ... The usual debaucheries took place, with slightly different details than usual - a patio full of carpentry students, for example, and an art gallery - and the World's Fattest Racehorse performed beautifully. I self-importantly took pictures of them. At home, very drunk and supremely satisfying sex, then a strange ordeal involving Matt and I in our pajamas in the backyard, the whole neighbourhood asleep, and Sambuca screaming in terror from her perch atop the neighbours' fence, yet coyly backing away whenever we tried to rescue her.
Off to MORGAN's house in a couple of hours, to drink beer on her front lawn and relive our ghetto days. MORGAN, who I haven't seen in close to a year due to geographical constraints (she lives in Gordon Head; I, Fernwood); MORGAN whose first reaction to my impending love affair with Matty-B over four years ago was to demand, "So you're in love with him? He's your boyfriend now? Does this mean he's no longer your best friend? Does this mean *I* am your best friend?" MORGAN who accompanied me to London Drugs so that I could return some glow-in-the-dark condoms (long story) and remarked to her dog, Umbro, "We're off on an errand with your dirty Aunt Joy."
I just destoryed our blender by submerging it in soapy dish water, thinking this would get the stains off. Matt told me I had killed it.
"But the water will dry," I insisted.
"You still killed it. The water will damage all the circuits."
"But it's just water."
"No! It's like, it's like putting a baby underwater, and thinking it will be okay for five minutes!"
!!! So my lack of maternal instinct extends even unto MACHINERY!
Odd.
After exactly one week and three hours of not smoking, I walked to the Confectionary and purchased a pack of Canadian Classic lights, then smoked two of them on the stone steps of Vic High while joggers and shot-put athletes milled about on the field in front of me.
Why?
I think maybe I'm scared to be a non-smoker. I think maybe having a clear head and high energy level is so foreign to me at this point that actually experiencing it creates a sense of doom, or fear, a distrust of the unknown.
It's been an odd week. No cigarettes, and only three bottles of beer and one bottle of Sangria. For the last seven nights I have gone to bed sober, and this also is sort of terrifying. Simple reason - when I'm sober and my head is clear from dawn till dusk, I have all that time to think about my procrastination, the things I should be doing, but haven't. Mainly, writing. It is a terrible thing to be a writer who doesn't write.
So there are three options:
1) Drown myself in the oblivion that is alcohol abuse in order to distract myself from the fact that I'm not living up to my potential.
2) Be sober and go crazy from the knowledge that I'm not living up to my potential.
3) Be sober and write.
Hmm.
So: I will finish my pack of cigarettes, and drink the six cans of microbrew that are chilling in the fridge, and then quit it all again tomorrow. Only, I will have to START writing, with discipline, at the same time I quit the other things. It's sort of like a mathematical equation, which is perhaps why I'm having such difficulty with it.
In the rest of the country in might be spring, but in Victoria, it's summer: I just bought the season's first bottle of Sangria, and one small taste yielded vast lazy memories of beaches and patios; of Matt, Ben, and I sneaking into the Bay Centre washrooms to transfer the purple liquid from the bottle to our styrophoam cups -- then we would wander around the mall sipping, and go to the junky park to smoke weed and cigarettes while the sun beat down.
Briefly went clothes shopping today, stunned that a style I like is actually "in fashion" - the peasant skirt - and looking forward to an unusually quick round of shopping. I didn't have a chance, though. After my second visit to the change room, when I was trying to sneak away because I feel guilty facing the sales girls if I'm not going to buy anything, one of them cornered me and whined through frosted pink lips, "You still didn't find anything?"
I thought fast.
"The skirts all poofed," I apologized. "You see, they were poofy skirts. Too much poof."
She looked at me icily. "They're supposed to poof," she said. "That's the style."
"Oh. Well, do you think any might be coming in that poof vertically?"
"What do you mean by vertically?"
"Well ... Like up-and-down instead of across --"
"Oh, no," she interrupted, and looked me sadly up and down. "That's just not the fashion."
You are 'juggling'. Jugglers, tumblers, and other
street performers were a very popular sort of
entertainment once, before movies and talkies
and online quizzes supplanted them.
You like to put on a show for people, and they like
to watch. You are friendly and well-liked,
particularly for your sense of humor, although
you sometimes play with people's heads. You
are frequently the center of attention, and you
like it that way. However, you have to realize
that the world does not revolve around you.
Furthermore, you have to learn that your
light-hearted antics are not appropriate to all
situations. Your problem is that juggling has
been obsolete for a long time.
What obsolete skill are you?
brought to you by Quizilla
A telemarketer just called and asked if he could speak to my mum or dad, please.
I paused.
Then I said, "Well, if you really want to. I could give you their number. They live in the Okanagan."
He laughed and tried to sell me some furniture.
I admitted I didn't have enough money. Felt like a child.
And now I have somehow gotten lime juice on my finger wound. The pain -
I have been invited out for an appetizer potluck tonight, followed by an hour of trashy reality TV. Will probably make a kebob sort of thing out of mango, shrimp, olives, and asparagus. What I really want to make is stuffed mushrooms, but all the recipes looked either too complicated or suspiciously simple, and I gave up during the planning stages.
Geneveive is in town! But her phone isn't working! It is imperative we hang out tonight, but she is increasingly intangible, an abstraction drifted over from Salt Spring Island to laugh at us foolish mortals with our out-of-date address books ... If anyone sees her - try Big Bad John's maybe? - tell her I got her email and that I'll break my (six-day!) drinking fast if she asks nice enough.
I sliced my finger open this afternoon, on a Weird Thing as usual. In the past my most severe finger wounds have come from boxes of tomatoes and the sides of fridges; now, it is the area of sink between tap and wall. Whine. Bled for twenty minutes or so - huge chunk of fingertip gone - must cut this short because I thought it was healed enough to type but now there is BLOOD all over Matt's keyboard - ahahaha, unintended pun - really -
Listening to: the Amps
Drinking: coffee (third cup)
Did a cursory ten minutes of studying at the university library yesterday, after my 9-hour shift at work; then gave up and decided to "wing" the exam this morning. I think it turned out well ... Except I wrote for pages about how the William Blake character in Dead Man achives redemption through an acceptance of his murderous nature, as evidenced in the scene where he says, "My name is William Blake. Have you heard my poetry?" before shooting a man in the face. Kept mis-spelling "redemption."
It is warm and sunny outside, with a million scents in the air: remnant cherry blossoms, daffodils (my favourite flower), spilled ice cream, a distant ocean-saltiness. I guess that's only four. Inside, it smells of coffee and cheese.
On the CD player - "I Am A Man of Constant Sorrow" by the Soggy Bottom Boys.
In my glass: Perrier mixed with pink grapefruit juice.
No cigarettes for over 33 hours now - the rush of oxygen to my brain and bloodstream has resulted in a strange, almost hostile high - there have been several crying jags and dizzy spells. The ends of my fingernails dig into chairs, the handrails of escalators, my palm ... The sunlight is brighter than it used to be, and it seems that coffee has more of an emotional impact.
Months I Have Been Alive: 284
Loads of Laundry Completed Yesterday: 4
Hours Without a Drink: 45
Shifts Left at Current Job: 10
Months I Have Lived in Victoria: 66
Approximate Dollars I Have Spent on Rent: 21,450
Cups of Coffee Consumed Today: 2
Hours Without a Ciggie: 25.5
Stupid thing of the day: I dipped my hand into boiling water. Logic was this: I have just put frozen corn into boiling water. Too much corn, perhaps? I should take some out. Am I allowed to do this with my fingers? Yes. The corn is frozen. It is cold; it won't hurt me.
Long day - up at 6:30 to put finishing touches on my fiction portfolio, which took half an hour, and then 45 minutes spent trying to make the files save onto disc. Really. Sushi for breakfast - it wasn't very good sushi, the rice was a bit stale - work, then the culture tests at the clinic, which turned out to have nothing to do with train rides in Peru, which I knew they wouldn't. Ben and Michael are coming over in a bit to watch obscure early Coen Brothers movies. I feel a need to dye my hair again. And walk to the Dallas Road beach.
Came home to a clean house just now, which was marvelous and unexpected, but the man was nowhere to be found, and there was porn on the Internet. Normally I would find this vaguely offensive - at least close the browser - but the porn was of a chick (I'm using porn vernacular here, as that's what was on the page) who could spurt her own cum twenty feet. Made me smile. :)
This question involves a debate a friend and I were having. We couldn't resolve the debate, so I agreed to interview straight men, and report back with my results.
So, the following question is for STRAIGHT MEN ONLY. Please be 100% honest, as the results won't work if you aren't. Answer in the comments section. Feel free to comment as an anonymous user if that will ensure the honesty of the reply.
Assume you are single, and have no obligations/ties to another person. A man offers to give you a blow-job, and even offers to pay you for it. Would you accept, because a blow job is a blow job, and although you are straight, it doesn't matter who gives it because it gets you off? Or would you refuse, because as a straight man, a blow job only satisfies you if it is given by a woman?
Have decided to become a travel writer! In middle-age, of course. Also to open an acupressure salon.
Three stories need to be re-written tonight, ladies and gentlemen. Three. Progress so far? Line edits on one. Gah.
Discussion betwixt a beer-and-wine store clerk and I:
HIM: You just get off work?
ME: Yeah. Yeah, no more "work" today.
HIM: Well, it's nice that's it's finally sunny out.
ME: It's too hot for me.
HIM Too HOT?
ME: Yeah. I hate the summer. Too hot.
HIM: So you're more of a, what, a fall person? Spring?
ME: Totally.
This is perhaps the most normal, wonderful conversation I have had all week. I did not discuss cops who may or may not have called me a "twat," did not define osteopenia, didn't bicker about European director styles, and didn't fling forth accusations regarding imagined events ten years in the future.
Last night Matt brought me home a croissant. I love those things. I had it this morning, dipped in yogurt while I drank my coffee and fretted over my impending rewrites. My God, this entry is a Loop. Looped, by the way, is the title of a story I wrote in third year, a thinly veiled account of the mushroom terror Colin and I experienced in Burnaby that summer I was 18. It got an A+ in class, but was rejected for a BC Arts Council grant.
This just in from Reader's Digest: "Millions of people now keep active blogs. But beware, joining them and putting your life online can become contagious - and bad for your health. New Scientist reported research showing that regular diarists were more likely to suffer headaches, digestive problems, sleeplessness and social awkwardness."
Indeed.
Reminds me of another scrap of stat I read, years ago, something about how one of the first signs of depression in a woman is her lack of interest in personal grooming. Because obviously, nothing makes a woman more fulfilled than slaving over her hair and make-up routine for hours every morning.
Why is asparagus so cheap these days? Steamed asparagus for dinner, with baked salmon and something else. The unusual hell that is Wellburns Grocery Mart actually has a respectable organic section, and I purchased organic yogurt today, which is fabulous and so un-synthetic tasting.
This update was basically just an excuse to use that fabulous quote for the title!
A rather jarring visit to the clinic today - those x-ray results finally got back and it seems I have OSTEOPENIA. Woot?
It's rather unusual for a woman my age to get this kind of diagnosis. Bad news. But not the worst, I suppose. A wild mix of lifestyle choices - smoking, heavy drinking, taking Depo, and being a lazy vegetarian - seem to have contributed to this.
I haven't finished doing all my research yet, but I understand that while this diagnosis can't be reversed, there are steps to be taken to prevent it from developing into osteoporosis. Such as: quitting smoking; limiting the drinks to wine and then only three glasses a day, tops; taking various calcium supplements; walking or jogging regularly, plus a balance exercise, such as yoga; and GETTING OFF THE DAMN DEPO. I tried to bully the doctor into giving me clearance for a tubal ligation, but got the usual lecture regarding my emotional immaturity and the many, many changes that will take place in my pretty little head over the next few years.
So the next couple of weeks will be spent doing various culture tests (what does that even mean? it sounds like taking a train vacation in Peru) and having an IUD inserted. A little nervous about that, but with any luck, the weird emotional side effects of Depo will subside.
Yes, if you could be a ...
Dictator
Fidel Castro, for his effortless sexiness, his prudence in land reform, his contempt of US foreign policy. Runner-up: Trotsky, for his quiet romanticism.
Country
Any country in which olive groves - or forests - grow, near un-polluted streams. And raspberries are handy. And the blokes at the pub talk Marquez.
Candy
Wine gums. Because underage children can buy them, and think they're getting drunk.
Beverage
Rye. It gets to the heart of us all.
"Celebrity"
Britney Spears. Because she's a super-fucking-talented dancer, and super-good at being like, I'll dress how I want. I'll marry who I want. Screw you. I'm just chillin.
Fish
Sturgeon. Because of one of Gordon Korman's earlier books.
You see that? You see that there title there? It's true, I actually said that on the patio like ten minutes ago. That's because my prof emailed me back and said I had more time. Not an extension, per se, but a little more room, so I don't have to continue this mad essay writing tonight. I get to do it tomorrow in the lab after work, which will be much more conducive to concentration.
I realize this is the most boring update in the history of Shots For Breakfast. I don't care, it's still the happiest night of my life.
Ugh. UGHGH UUGH. I have to write an essay tonight. A 10-page one. I can't seem to want to get started.
It has to be about how economic status in film affects our understanding of the past. Meh. I've chosen to compare and contrast O Brother Where Art Thou with The Aviator, and it will be somewhat pleasant to actually spend a significant amount of time trashing The Aviator, but I'm in the mood to, you know, do nothing. Or watch movies.
Three most common meals I ate, age 18:
1) Spaghetti with fried hamburger mixed into Ragu tomato sauce
2) Pre-cooked chicken patties with tater gems
3) A Big Xtra burger with large fries and a Coke
Gah! Tonight I'm making salmon tacos with a black bean and artichoke sauce. Atonement.
Margaret Atwood on love, via Bodily Harm: "Being in love was like running barefoot along a street covered with broken bottles. It was foolhardy, and if you got through it without damage it was only by sheer luck. It was like taking your clothes off at lunchtime in a bank. It let people think they knew something about you that you didn't know about them, it gave them power over you. It made you visible, soft, penetrable; it made you ludicrous."
Yay for semi-colon usage!
Grad party: a blur. The only thing I remember clearly is being CAUGHT BY THE COPS as I was peeing on some flowers. Good God. I tried to explain that there was only one washroom, that there were 12 girls in line, but the COPS weren't buying it. Must have been a slow night for them. I tried to walk out of the bushes, but I was drunk, and the bushes were prickly. I made them, in their uniforms, clear away some, what, some bracken, whatever that shrub stuff is called, so I could make a dignified exit. I'm still drunk.
I've spent the morning picking stray cigarettes butts off the floor of my patio and dropping them into a liquor store bag. Apparently that big monsoon the other day blew several of the butts onto the landlords' patio, below mine, and the landlords complained, said their children had been finding them. The children were confused. Flashback to the first cigarette butt I ever found, age four or so at Rattlesnake Point: I picked it off the dirt path and automatically put it to my lips. My brother L, a racist even then - he must have been only nine - said, "Don't put that in your mouth, Joy! A dirty East Indian could have been smoking it." Childhood.
Plan for the day: breakfast at Floyd's with my lover, followed by a trip to Value Village, where I have my heart set on finding a tacky 1980s-era prom dress to wear to the grad party tonight. Then writing at Second Story Cafe, and the grad party, when does that start? Will have to call some fellow BFA's for pre-drinking.
I am a BFA now! No longer human.
Roxy last night - Be Cool which can perhaps measure its success by the children in the audience who screamed with laughter at every joke, the silence of the adults - then Sideways, with the adults laughing their asses off and the children numbed into silence by the overweight-penis-against-the-car-window scene. I smoked cigarettes in a dank alley between shows. Smuggled in beer, lemonade, chips, and a banana.
Odd.
Six beers on a patio.
Film screening - soon? I think. An hour and half. Need nap. Will probably smoke cigarettes in some stairwell, finish reading Lady Oracle.
Do people like me? Perhaps I'm too strident. Yes, people like me, but do they understand me? I'm not talking about friends, I'm talking about other people. You know. Other people. I feel like it's the normal girls who feel the need to be thin and pretty, and it's the girls like me who want to be intellectually top-notch and darkly artistic. Confusing. Six beers? Why? And there's still an hour and a half - perhaps I need another - but I've forgotten my notebook, and while I feel fine writing in a bar while I drink by myself, it's quite another thing to drink by myself and read Margaret Atwood. See, am I trying to create an Image?
Matt, who writes Everyman, who observes vegan Chinese food and tesla coils with a sad wit, never sure if this is here, now -
And Ben with his feverish knowledge of the real estate value of the body, the mysterious nature of maternal pubic hair, missing body parts, houses that are alive -
The way Steph can tell of the doom that is whiskey-clit, the sham of modern filmmaking, the tragic nature of diaries -
Emily and her girls with unsuitable underwear, unsuitable lovers, steaming mugs of exotic tea on old tabletops while chefs hover at the edge of things -
How I'm not sure if Genevieve really is Nancy Drew or not, how her characters aren't sure either -
Colin's intellectual, gory, politically brazen adventure stories, their refusal to be adventures, or even stories sometimes -
UPDATE:
Dammit! I knew I was forgetting peeps, even as I wrote it. I'm like, No, you can't write this, because you're drunk and you're going to forget people you have no business forgetting. This always happens when you're a lush. Note: the following two additions were considered BEFORE their scandalous comments. :)
Caroline with her black-black eyeliner and tales of arrest, despair, and fantasies of the wifely Parisian life, delivered in booming mescal tones to a stunned Orange Hall audience -
And Maggie's sweating female track stars, running through sun and Maui and drenched in the exoticism of guava, teenage cologne; the saddened art students who faced insanity when they painted their walls the wrong colour -
Undergoing a feverish Ray Charles addiction - Matt and I just danced liked maniacs atop the living room carpet for the duration of "What'd I Say." Earlier Ben and I had been discussing how we wished we could be black, and I during the dancing I shouted at Sam, "You're so lucky!" Scandalized by the dancing, she bolted for the dark corners of the hallway. We've just played "Georgia on my Mind" twice in a row. Things feel nostaligic.
Many happenings:
Jess got back Friday, a wild slew of beers at Felicita's while crazy-loud bands destroyed any notion of conversation; mighty winds on the patio and Jess had brought me TEQUILA and CAMEL CIGARETTES back from Mexico -- back home, 4 o'clock, me mad and the landlords demanding their rent cheque, me screaming we still technically had eight hours before the cheque was late - Matt peace-making - a gang of peeps come over and the bottle of tequila is opened, plus their are 8-packs of Pilsner lying around - Chinese food - a man with bad manners happened to be drinking in my living room and I was stunned; I can't believe it when people have BAD MANNERS, there's just no need - I lent a William S. Burroughs book to Bridgette - tears when it came time to say goodbye to Jess, who finally left at 4 am to catch a plane to deepest, darkest Ontario.
Saturday - stupidly drank more of the tequila in the afternoon and got drunk while writing postcards; a nap, then off to Logan's to watch Semi-Louise rock out to a crowd of sad old men and over-excited university students, most of whom I knew. Home early due to feelings of alienation etc.
Friday - massive brunch at Floyd's, then discontented rounds to the bookshops - I found nothing - a pleasant afternoon of homework and housekeeping, and then a living room screening of Ray, which was less Hollywood-pappish then I'd feared, though utterly depressing. To be a genius, do you have to have at least one crippling addiction and fail to live out a life of love? It appears so. Quandry: all-out feed my addictions in order to attain genius, or focus on love and perhaps have children and be a stay-at-home mom? How about a happy medium: quit smoking but keep drinking, adopt 20 abused puppies, and become genius in that underground way where only a small segment of the population is aware of this genius, and they become snobby scarf-wearers to prove that they're better than everybody else. Yes!
An entry from my diary when I was nine years old:
I want to be a figure skater when I grow up because they don't walk. They glide, slide; who cares, it's just that their every move is so graceful, peaceful. ... When I graduate high school I will not get married, like most people. If I do not skate or play the fiddle, I will just stay at home with Mom and Dad and write stories. "Grown up life is a dream," says I. ... I long to be free. Free from homework. Free from nagging headaches. Earaches. Getting up in the morning. Sometimes I just don't feel ready for life.
Gah! Somebody get that little girl a drink.
(written on the back of a receipt for rye, yesterday afternoon)
Alienation - bamboo swaying in the breeze of a pub patio - identity as a writer.
B's young Texan with his brown eyes, only 20 that one - Kathryn in her sexy striped shirt and three bitches on the other end of the table I don't even know ... There's a reason for this. God they're loud. I'm pretentious, which is just as bad, but subtler.
Kyle with his Jesus-hair and Matt's come with a third pitcher of Pale Ale ... The pop-ska is deafening ... Jess is leaving tomorrow morning and I'll be crying my eyes out in three hours, tops ...