saturday, july 7

hello.

I'm tired and not really sure where this is going to go, so if it seems unfocused, well, that's because it is. and that's already one excuse too many. the purpose is to 1) explain and 2) apologize. and since I'm not in school at the moment I see no reason to follow my outline; we'll start with the apology.

if you've been paying attention to my various and sundry daily appearances around the web, you might have noticed that I've been a little snippy and bitchy lately. I really am sorry about that. it's not who I am, and it's certainly not anyone I want to become. usually I'm reasonably good at mollifying my mean streak and making it be quiet, and there's no reason I couldn't have done that, except that I didn't feel like it.

the web has been making me angry. I am emotional to a fault, but still it takes a lot to make me truly upset at something instead of just about something. and the web has been making me want to tell it if this is the way you're going to be, I don't want to be a part of you anymore.

I do still want to be a part of the web. but I am one of those people who internalizes anger one hundred percent of the time, and another round of self-destruction is about the last thing I want to deal with right now. maybe not the exact last, but pretty close to the negative infinity end of my things-to-do list.

also. I am getting a new computer, for real this time. I was putting it off and off and off, but today after my computer's fourth near-meltdown in ten months, I decided there was no happy-ending-way out of this situation and so... new computer. I've already started unpacking my old one (which, it seems, will no longer connect to the net in any manner, although I suppose I should be grateful that it starts at all. it wasn't for a while) -- one gig zipped, another gig deleted, and thirty uninstalled programs so far. but this is the easy part.

the point: I will be rather scarce, I think. I'm going to read books, not websites. habit is a powerful form of inertia, but my habits are quickly degenerating into daily masochism.

I ran eight miles today, which is two miles more than I usually run on fridays and almost triple the distance I ran on monday, which is the only other time I've seriously exercised since the suv collision two weeks ago. it hurt. it also felt good. it felt great. I could have kept going. while I was moving, I liked who I was, I liked my head, and I liked what I was doing. I want to keep being that person. I want to get outside and move. I want to be in control of this thing I live in. while I was running, I thought I should leave the web alone for an entire weekend and although it's somehow a lot harder to think now that I'm sitting here, I think that just makes it more important that I actually listen to myself. I don't know if I'll really leave this completely alone, but I'll probably be a lot quieter. I'm going to write in my journal. did you know I haven't done that since I was at swarthmore? I've deleted several things that I decided didn't pass the public audience acceptability test, but I never turned around and recaptured them no matter how desperately they wanted me to.

(last night my dream had glistening naked tan people seen only from the back and a dead baby in my arms who cried when I handed him to his mother so she could throw him in a dumpster.)

when I was in seventh grade I was placed on the best youth soccer team in cambridge. I was the new kid in both senses: all the other girls had been playing together for a while, and most of them had five or six more years of experience than I did. it was hard. I couldn't quite keep up, even though I was fast and aggressive and smart. I couldn't do fancy footwork or a chest trap or a good leading pass. I could run forever, though. after practice I would run in endless circles on the field while I waited for my coach to pack everything up and finish talking to parents so he could drive me home. running was something I was good at. the next year the placement committee moved me from division one to division two; my old coach came and talked to me a long time about it. he said it was their hardest decision. I wasn't sure I believed him, but I said it was okay -- I just wanted to play.

I did play. I played a lot, and I played hard. I still couldn't dribble with any sort of grace, but I learned how to judge other peoples' movements and how to control my body in the air. and I never gave up. I was the scrappiest player out there, clashing horribly with the rest of my teammates, all of whom played beautiful brazilian soccer. I collided with people. I collided with the ground. I got up and kept running. I could run forever. the other parents would joke with me: what, only one hundred and nine percent today, rabi? and I would blush, because their children were all so much better than me and we all knew it.

the next year I was put back on the division one team. starting right fullback. I've been a starter on every single soccer team I've played for since then. I still lacked finesse, and I still stuck out like a sore thumb on my teams full of people who had been doing footwork drills since kindergarten, but it turned out not to matter. I could run forever, and as long as I could keep running I would keep trying.

today I felt like I could run forever again. and I still don't have finesse, in anything I do, but I know what kind of athlete I am and I want to be that kind of person, too. that means not giving up on myself even in the smallest sense, and not giving in to the relative ease of slackerness and temporary self-indulgence that in the long run turns into self-destruction. I'm not an angry person or a mean person and I refuse to let myself become one through inaction. I'd rather be running. it's not about escaping; it's about moving.

so I'm not really sure what I'm going to do tomorrow, but it will likely not involve reading a bunch of weblogs and message boards and news sites and zines. (I will be reading my email, because, well, it's email. I'm not unplugging anything.) it will certainly not involve writing petty things; hopefully I won't even have to think any petty things. maybe you'll see me and maybe you won't. mostly I want to say that this is not melodrama or scenery-chewing, just honesty, and if I'm quiet for a while it probably means I'm happy.
02:58 ++

friday, july 6

I passed a fleet of teal green tow trucks on my way to work this morning. they were being driven by a police car, meaning the police car was idling behind them while they worked, not that the police car was at the wheel of any of the trucks. driven like sheep by a shepherd.

as I rode by,the trucks were clustered around an illegally parked car. the cop, a young-looking black woman, was sitting quietly in her squadcar behind the little silver camry that was about to get towed. a muscular blond-haired man was crouched at the front of the camry, connecting the chains that would pull it up behind the tow truck. he was wearing a black t-shirt with SLAVE printed across the back in giant silver letters.

it's cheaper than facepaint, I guess.

the funny thing is that I didn't notice the respective races of the cop and the tow truck guy until just now, when I examined my visual memory of the scene. I haven't quite decided whether that's a good thing or a bad thing.

our car was towed on the first day we lived here. cambridge has some strict parking laws, and since its population density is actually higher than boston's, there are an abundance of cars and an equally abundant number of police officers who seem to spend most of their time looking for people who have broken the parking laws. it was late when we drove up for the first time, late enough that it had been dark for several hours (at the end of august), so most of what we did that night involved finding things to sleep on and not procuring a parking permit. in the morning there was a cop trying to take our car away. the neighbors talked about how ridiculous it was for a week. I don't remember exactly how the situation resolved itself, because I was busy being shocked for the second time in as many days at how empty an empty house really was. (when you grow up and people ask you about your childhood, you say you got used to moving and moving and moving, but it's a lie.) I think my dad convinced them not to take the car, but still had to deal with the ticket. welcome to massachusetts, everyone joked.

(I am certain, though, that we didn't have a SLAVE working on our car.)
12:41 ++

in the future, we said, humans will be huge and bulky with tiny heads that can barely turn from side to side. there will be two kinds of food: spaghetti in heaping portions, steaming, with meatballs and cheese and fresh tomato sauce made in a big silver pot on the stove; synthetic nutrient compound with the texture and color of oatmeal that yuppie go-getters drink through a straw in between meetings. everything will by hyper-colorful with a tinge of ultraviolet but if you look through a video camera it will all be green-pale, as if the sun were a giant flourescent lightbulb. in the history books people will see strange creatures with huge heads sharp teeth and all different skin colors, powerful bodies that can move and twist, wild. they won't recognize us.
01:11 ++

thursday, july 5

I am a little concerned that something described as possibly as large as pluto's moon is being referred to as a world when pluto itself keeps being threatened with having its planet status revoked.
14:59 ++

so I skipped out of work this morning because at around midnight yesterday I got a surprise visitor and he said he would be back today at noon. and really, who cares whether I work from nine to five or one to nine? whatever.

seeing old friends is always a bit of a shock because it reminds me that I've shared lives with people who are now corporate execs, parents, convicts, schizophrenics, marines, and, in some cases, corpses. and that we were on equal footing then, just kids in a classroom, and that I have experienced so little, so much less than I think I have.
11:50 ++

I realize it's in bad taste to reduce the meaning of a holiday to its material trappings, but setting that aside for a minute I think the fourth of july just might be the year's best holiday. fireworks are better than presents, food, parades, and maybe even chocolate.

if aliens were to come to boston on independence day, I'm sure they'd think were the strangest race in the galaxy. the sun is barely up before people start camping out on the esplanade, waiting for the eight pm pops concert. around nine o'clock at night, when the sky is lit by cityglow instead of sunshine, thousands of people emerge from their houses and start walking towards the bridges as if summoned by some sort of mind-controlling force. the four-lane highways are blocked off, and instead of cars they're full of humans, police motorcycles, and strollers, all decked out in purple-green-blue glowing plastic, as if the whole city had turned into a family-friendly rave. the rivers are clogged with boats of all sizes, from the big luxury yachts to the little skeletal kayaks, and the ducks rush ashore to escape the onslaught of cutting prows. and still the people come in droves, converging on the point where cannon booms echo and the smell of fried dough permeates the air, on a nighttime pilgrimage.

I learned a few years ago that you can get a better spot if you go to the fireworks by yourself, and so I did again, twisting sideways and wriggling my way through the crowds until I was on the edge of the bridge nearest the spot where the fireworks are set off from a barge on the river. I brought my walkman to listen to the pyromusical for the first time, because maybe this will be my last fourth in boston and I might as well experience the whole thing.

it's funny how a bunch of flashy lights will get me all sentimental. the songs, while surprisingly well synchronized with the fireworks themselves, seemed even more connected with moments from my own life, which came bursting back at me with at least as much flare as the exploding shells in the sky.

in grade school we used to sing "god bless the usa" (and I'll gladly stand -- up! -- next to you, and defend her still today...) and I, baby-voiced little music girl that I was, harmonized instinctively by singing higher than I was supposed to. eight-year-old chorus kids already sound like a bunch of mice, so you can imagine how we sounded when everyone in my immediate vicinity started singing along with me. somehow those lyrics sound a lot less ridiculous when they're accompanied by red-white-and-blue fireworks than when they're competing with shuffling feet and ill-timed breathing for attention.

I had the hardest time believing jerry lee lewis wasn't actually elvis presley when I first heard great balls of fire at the first rehearsal for our spring dance recital. would you believe that I used to dress up in sequined leotards with tulle bustles safety-pinned behind me, let my mother put makeup all over my face, and dance? I did. that year we danced to new york, new york, and my hat left little silver sparkly bits all over my hair. anyway, I watched the big girls do their semi-provocative great balls of fire routine, and I felt simultaneuosly excited and terrified by the idea that one day I, too, would wear fishnets and high-heeled jingle taps.

macy gray's "I try" was joined by butterfly fireworks in the sky. I love shape-fireworks, because of course some of them explode upside-down and then you have butterflies that look as if they're careening headfirst towards the river, preparing to spear some hapless drunk boater with glowing pink antennae. "I try" is a freshman-year college song; one of my hallmates was obsessed with it. there was one day towards the end of the spring semester when I was sitting at my computer writing a paper, with the radio on and my door open for once, and macy gray started singing at exactly the same moment that my obsessed hallmate walked by. she ended up walking into my room and we sang a rousing duet that ended with me lying across my desk with my arm draped dramatically over my eyes. of course, that didn't even begin to compare with the day I did a solo performance of be prepared, complete with snapping and purring. college can be so great.

there was just enough wind that the smoke from the fireworks was moving, but not enough to really get it out of the way. by the end of the finale, all that could really be seen were the sparks emanating from the edges of a gigantic flashing cloud. it was awesome and terrifying, and the shockwaves from the explosions overhead made my heart feel like it was going to be thrown right out of my chest.

the best fireworks were the ones that looked like jellyfish. there is no other way to describe them. they floated up, trailing gold, before gracefully folding in on themselves with a little ripple and drifting back down towards the water. the entire crowd gasped when the first one went up, and I couldn't help but gape in amazement. you should've seen it.

how cool would it be to have this job?
02:39 ++

wednesday, july 4

at dinner I was quietly eating my veggie burger and the person sitting across from me (whom I did not know at all; she's a friend of a friend of my parents) asked, "do you do that when you're at college?"

for a second I couldn't figure out what she meant. do I use a fork when I'm at college? do I stare at my plate when I'm at college?

"oh, am I a vegan at college?" I asked, getting it. she nodded and I gave my freeze-dried yes-and-even-though-it-occasionally-gets-repetitive-it's-really-not-hard speech. note the difference in syntax: vegan isn't a verb, it's an noun (or an adjective). and it isn't a hobby, it's a lifestyle. I don't get asked if I still brush my teeth when I'm at school. I'd be willing to bet that my roommate doesn't get asked if she's still catholic when she's at school.

the thing that surprised me about all this is that she herself is a vegetarian. why do people think veganism is so impossible? you all eat vegetables and grains, right? no one who looks at me would ever think I'm in any way deprived of food. I'm pretty solid.

another one of the guests asked if I still play cricket. sometimes socializing isn't really worth the effort. I'm sure they don't miss me at all.

a stealth fighter just roared overhead. it seems to have brought stormweather with it, or else someone turned down the gamma of my window by about thirty percent.
20:22 ++

so I like july fourth mostly because I'm a repressed pyromaniac, but although I am not an especially patriotic american (in spite of my current design) there are some things that I do like about this country.

first: the u.s. constitution. at the dinner table a few weeks ago we were talking about this, and my father said that the constitution might be proof that there is a god, after all; I wouldn't go that far, but he has a point. the constitution is amazing. (sadly, I never really figured out how to appreciate history, so I don't know a whole lot about the governing documents of other countries; most likely some of them are amazing too.) by the time I took ap united states history in eleventh grade, I was so sick of the subject that I almost didn't bother trying at all. (really, at all. by the end of the first quarter I had done exactly two homework assignments, and one of them was collaborative.) eventually I came to my senses and decided that probably wouldn't help me get into college, so I might as well try to learn something new.

our big pre-winter-break assignment was a massive take home test on the constitution. twenty-four questions, all of which required explanations and citations in addition to an actual answer. it was such a big deal that we had to hand in signed statements saying that we hadn't consulted each other or any other source besides the constitution itself. that test made the entire class worthwhile. I never actually got it back, because our teacher was the planet's slowest grader, but I think I learned more from that test than I did from any other single assigment I had in high school, and maybe in college too. the constitution is incredible: flexible, clear, and very thorough, all things considered. the ninth amendment is brilliant.

second: the flag. it's silly, but we do have a pretty nice-looking flag. it's certainly better than the other flags I can lay any claim to. plus it has symbolism that even a two-year-old can grasp. I will admit that I started mumbling the pledge of alleigance at a certain point in grade school, thanks mostly to the god and justice for all parts, but I still like the flag a lot.

third: the whole voting thing. I'm neither a capitalist nor a republican nor a democrat, so as you might imagine I have some pretty big issues with american politics, but the fact that I get to vote is still pretty cool.

and we get to set things on fire! happy independence day, america.
13:01 ++

tuesday, july 3

today I ate a strawberry popsicle for lunch because I thought $4.50 for a salad was a ridiculous, and then I spent ten dollars on various forms of chocolate and other sugar. I think I may have given up my right to claim the moral high ground in any conversation about drugs, money, or nutrition for the forseeable future.

damn good chocolate though.
20:57 ++

words, everywhere there are words! it's all words, words, words!

it's been four hours since my visit with the opthalmologist, and although the edges of things are still not quite right, my pupils have finally contracted enough that the letters everywhere have corners and curves and ascenders and descenders and beautiful meaning, and I'm thrilled once again by how many words there are in the world. I take them so for granted, and it's not until they disappear that I realize how saturated the world is with language, that even the instructions for use (1. void previously used block 2. identify agency of addressee 3. write clearly 4. send surplus envelopes to supply room for reissue) printed on the abandoned u.s. government messenger envelope lying in the corner are full of rhythm and consonance.

or perhaps I do realize it, subconsciously. I get like this sometimes, and I almost can't get to the substance of words because I am tripping over their surfaces. it feels like I'm trying to talk with marbles in my mouth but never mind the crowdedness I can't even make my tongue curl into sounds because it's too busy feeling the cool round perfection of little glass spheres rolling and over and over across it.

it's a feeling I forget at school because there is so much to do. but now vacation and I am grappling with the familiar conflicting halves that split from the same language-obsessed embryo; this one wants to write and that one wants to read, and they distract each other while they energize each other, and soon they are a collective whirling dervish spiked with distraction, reveling in everything and focusing on nothing (buddha says, if you are reading and writing at the same time, then you are doing neither. or something like that).

would I be betraying myself if I told you that sometimes all I care about are words? that sometimes I think I would be happy if the only thing I ever created were a perfect sentence, even in the face of astronomy and music unrealized, and that sometimes the alphabet is so luminous that I can't imagine ever playing with another toy? abcdefghijklmnopqrstuvwxyz, sings big bird, and while I pretended to be offended by the homework problem in chapter one of my seventh-grade pre-algebra course that told me to write out the alphabet in capitals and lowercase letters, I sang it too, delighting in the crisp rubber-band-snapping middle (happy like a baby laughing) and the end skidding to a buzz-halt (unsteady but exhilarating like a sled hitting the flat packed snow).

if the light-fixture reflection is to be trusted, my pupils are still enormous, swallowing light like black holes, and I think work would be good now because I spent two hours chair-spinning and lip-synching while I waited for the words to resolve from blurs into shapes, and I was not at all prepared for them to knock me into revelation.

(look: spectroscopy of astrophysical plasmas; not in time press *69; theoretical mechanics of particles and continua; galactic dynamics; partial eclipse of the moon; synonyms; sing, sing, sing. synonyms, printed in black on the worn-red back cover of a 1974 dictionary. look!)
13:43 ++

monday, july 2

sit down boys and girls, we're going to start show-and-tell. (all images open in a new window, but it should be the same new window, so you don't have to worry about closing it every time. unless of course you want to.)

perhaps you remember the night my cat ambushed the ice cream cones; here is evidence that I do not in fact make these things up.

if you give the sun a pair of eyeglasses, it will stare a hole right through the sidewalk.

graffiti is not a crime!

last spring, while I was still a freshman at swarthmore, a house in my cambridge neighborhood burned up. it was left blackened and boarded for a year,and even when I walked past it last winter it still reeked of smoldering something. now, finally, it's being stripped and its foundation replaced, perhaps in preparation for a massive restoration project or (more likely) an entirely new building. with half the house completely gone, its skeleton is completely exposed, and there is among the unfinished rafters and wallbeams a lonely staircase, leading off into the empty second-story air.

one of my favorite things about plants is the way they wear raindrops like jewelry. the asian lilies next to my house are beautiful, and they know it.

I actually don't remember much from show and tell in elementary school. I remember one day in kindergarten when april got up in front of the class, wearing a pastel-striped shirt and red plastic rainboots, and as she talked I thought very hard about girls named after months, wondering why it was that all the acceptable month-names came in a row (april, may, june) but stopped suddenly with july for no apparent reason. I have no idea what april was showing us.

one time I brought in a christmas tree ornament that my great-aunt esther had made. she used to make us ornaments every year, with our names on them, decorated in shiny rickrack and cotton lace and little embroidered flowers. every year my mother marveled over how intricate and beautiful they were, especially since aunt esther had horribly debilitating arthritis in all her joints and such fine work must be incredibly slow and painstaking. (she may not have gushed quite so much or to such extremes, but it seemed that way to me.) I brought in my little shepherd girl ornament, which was dressed in powderblue petticoats with lace all around and holding a little white crook; my name, still "audrey" then, was spelled out in white letters across the ornament's base. I remember my teacher seeming singularly unimpressed, so I launched into an impassioned soliloquy about how I was inspired by my great-aunt's artistry and perseverance, since I too had been diagnosed with arthritis once, blissfully ignorant of how relevant that would once again become. (my teacher was still unimpressed, but she seemed to be unimpressed by most things.)
13:09 ++

brown dwarfs are stellar embryos evicted by siblings.

damn siblings. they're such nasty landlords. (not that I never wanted to evict my own siblings, but I always had the vague impression that my parents probably wanted to evict me from time to time as well. I did get us into actual trouble with the landlord once, when he drove up and found me spraying hosewater into the air, marveling at the way the sunlight defined the edges of the stream at the same time it pierced straight through it, but we were not evicted.)
12:51 ++

sunday, july 1

it's funny how some things become eternally associated with a particular moment in time despite their ubiquitousness. even now the taste of creamy peanut butter and grape jelly on white bread takes me back a decade, to a day in july shortly before my tenth birthday when I stood in the oddly-dark shade that a patio umbrella makes on a half-cloudy afternoon, looking down past myself inside its bright yellow bathing suit dotted with disembodied fuschia blossoms, at the plate of half-eaten sandwiches and the bowl of paw-shaped cheetos sitting on the frosted glass table, and at my feet below surrounded by a little puddle of cool chlorinated water, feeling suddenly warm from the realization that I had been accepted for the person I was.

the umbrella and the table and the food and even the water belonged to our neighbors. I thought they were rich, due to their fancy living room that no one was allowed to play in and the built-in bar in their basement and their in-ground pool flanked by a strip of fake grass that served as a practice putting range. (my mother later told me in conspiratorial tones that they just liked to pretend they were rich; and why shouldn't they? after all, they were certainly better off than most of the neighborhood's other residents, and how were they to display their superior breeding and more sincere work ethic if not through a showy display of upper-middle-class wealth? they had three children who were as beautifully groomed as they were naturally beautiful, which is to say that the whole family seemed to have stepped out of a sears catalogue, and I was thoroughly convinced that those children must be better than me after the christmas when we got our usual stockings filled with socks, nuts, and toys, and they got gigantic motorized toy cars from santa.)

I had quite the love-hate relationship with them. I was put-off by their pretensions, by the orchestrated beauty of their lives, complete with stenciled designs around the edges of their walls that matched the patterns on the curtains and bedspreads; and at the same time I found myself drawn to their self-indulgent lifestyle, especially to their basement which contained a nintendo system and a piano in addition to the wetbar, and I hated myself for buying into any of it. they, in turn, seemed to have a similarly conflicted opinion about me, and while they were nice enough, I always felt as if their hospitality were just a front to hide their disapproval. my father had the discomfitting theory that they disliked me because I had displaced their oldest daughter as the star of our elementary school with my abrupt and unexpected arrival in the third grade; I think it had more to do with a conflict of personality than an unspoken academic competition.

my sister, however, was very much in love with them. she became best friends with their middle child, she wanted to be catholic like them, she wanted to live like them. and so, through my association with my little sister who validated their entire existence and an ensuing half-friendship with their oldest daughter, I became a semi-regular visitor to their pastel, eucalyptus-scented world. I marveled at their minivan even as I reassured myself that my family would never own one; I played super mario brothers over and over while I reminded myself that my own childhood had been filled with books and not video games; I acted catty and selfish to hide my perpetually-wounded feelings that bled slowly and persistently in their presence.

on that particular day, though, I had been having a fantastic time skimming back and forth along the vinyl-lined bottom of their pool, pretending I was a stingray, so much so that I stayed to swim even after my little sister became disgruntled about something or other and left to go home. and so the day stretched on and several hours later I found myself standing poolside eating a late lunch, with my mouth full of the things that symbolized the chasm between our respective worlds, the oldest and most awkward member of our group of four, feeling perfectly content with everything. it was a remarkable moment, really, because not only was it the first time I had played there at length without the company of my sister as an excuse, it was also the first time I felt that we had managed to forget our differences, usually so conspicuous in spite of their attempts at hiding in the land of the subconscious, and simply coexist. white bread never tasted so good, and even the orange stains left around the edges of my fingernails seemed friendly.

childhood is so much more complicated than we give it credit for once we leave it behind.
22:43 ++

this is something I've never really thought about, and a million dollars is so incomprehensible to me that I don't really know what it will buy but here anyway is my lottery list. if I had a million dollars, I would:

1. give half of it away, probably to the environmental defense fund and various childrens' charities.
2. put half of it in the bank.

am I boring or what? but really, what am I going to buy? I don't even have a permanent residence, and I won't for several more years. and I know I'm going to be spending money on my education and my medical treatments for a long time, if not indefinitely in the case of the latter, so I'd rather have a safety net than a bunch of stuff.

but yes, that is boring, so here is my fantasy world lottery list:

1. I'd still give half of it away.
2. then I'd buy a really good sound system, with really good speakers. (no links, because it will just get me all drooly.)
3. I'd travel, first to new zealand because I've always wanted to go there, and then to japan, egypt, and costa rica. or something like that.
4. I would buy not just a new computer (which I'm going to do soon anyway), but also a flat-screen monitor and a color laser printer.
5. nikon digicam. ooh ooh.
6. this is definitely fantastical, since I have nowhere to put such a thing, but I'd love to have a grand piano.
7. I could keep listing gadgets and things, but I think by this point it's pretty safe to say that the rest of the money would be spent on music. maybe I'd actually buy a concert ticket for once in my life; I'd love to see tori amos live.

now that I think about it, a million dollars probably wouldn't cover that, would it? ah well... at least the lottery is good for my imagination.
16:35 ++