29

There's something cavalier about people who are open and honest about children.

For example, the former grade school teacher turned stand-up comedian. Little did she know that dealing with snotty-nosed runts would prove to be a treasure trove of comedy gold. Louis C.K. joking about a horrible child in his daughter's class and the sniveling mother that made him that way. The parents on Reddit.com who find humor in the lot they drew when reproducing. There seems to be this necessity to think that children are forever perfect. And that parents will always be proper caregivers. What a fantasy.

I recall one day in my tutorial the discussion went around the table about what people needed to do to be happy. My professor began by stating that one needed to find the child within as the key. What ensued was a circle-jerk about how children are innocent and inherently good and adorable and perfect and they are content with the simplest of things and we should all learn from them. Was it not Jesus who said, "I tell you the truth, unless you change and become like little children, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven" (Matt 18:3). Well, well, well. It was evident that all they were trying to do was repeat what he was saying so that he might bestow upon them some kind of praise. It seemed to me, however, that these people neither spent more than 10 minutes with a young child nor did they ever consider what a child is: a little person. I know I have not missed the point but let's just go with this. I was always, always made perfectly aware that I was a horror as a child. And so, if I were to look back and take a lesson for my child-self, what would I learn. The only way to get what you want is to cry and scream until people want to shut you up with buying you things that you don't need and will throw away in a matter of days. When I see things on television infomercials, I will simply assume that I absolutely need them and I thankfully am over the age of 18. Someone else will always clean you up when you defaecate all over yourself and others. You can never have enough pens and by consequence, your pencil case can never be too big. Hit people if they don't listen to you. Who ever needed nap time? Clearly someone whose guardian packs them an organic lunch void of high fructose corn syrup. Make someone else on the playground your bitch or you might get cut. When watching movies, only remember the curse words and shout them out at the most inappropriate times. When all of the kids in your grade mature much faster than you, you will never win until you grow boobs eventually. These nuggests of wisdom among many others my child-self would tell me how to achieve happiness or at least keep your head above water. I was not generally a happy kid, some reasons were entirely valid and some were not.

Sure, this argument is facetious. But it's nonsense to look at life this way.


And I'll save my rant for awful parenting when I'm in better humor.

28

It's 3-something in the morning.
Today I woke up in Stuyvesant, had too short of a goodbye, went to my apartment, cleaned all of the things, got picked up, bought spices, went to class, fixed another grad school hiccup (with some help), drove to NJ, talked politics, read all of Maus I and now I've finished occupying myself to keep my mind off of what's to come.

--

I wanted to write about my mounting anxiety,
I wrote a whole blog entry about it.
But I can't post it.

27

A Little Poem
Inspiration: Flaubert's Parrot - Julian Barnes

--

Cher Monsieur Braithwaite,

Cherchez-vous quelque chose?

Rawwwwk –

Forgive me –

Natural habit, you see.

The Truth?

O, you poor amateur sleuth,

I am he! I am he!

The bird with the i-rawwww-nic glare

On the desk of that bear,

Flaubert! Flaubert!

Oh, how he hated me so

“Tais-toi!”

“Tais-toi!”

“Tais-rawwwwk!”

But I had that je ne c’est quoi.

C’est moi!

C’est moi!

C’est moawwwk!

So, you’ve been looking for me?

Mais… je suis ici! Ici!

Quel i-rawwww-nie!

Alors, trouvez-vous quelque chose?

Bien alors, the case is closed.

Votre bon ami,

Le Parrot.

26

An Open Letter to Medievalist Princesses.

What on earth would Dyan Elliot think?
Do you have any idea who she is?

I was not even sure people like you existed until I was unfortunately confronted with one of your kind the other night. As a defecting medievalist, or a recovering medievalist, whichever you prefer, I have often contemplated why on earth someone gets into the medieval business at all. I say this because even medievalists realize the ridiculous nature of pursuing a time period that no one respects. And I say this because when I have informed all my medieval professors, they have all lunged across their desks, nearly grabbing my arms in a physical representation of the internal desire to keep the already miniscule community from shrinking any further. But it should seem strange to me that you should be accepted into this carefully screened community in which women seem to fall under two camps: militant feminists who fervently believe it is their duty to point out the egregiousness of medieval misogyny and hurtle insults at the entire millenia, as if this did any good at all, holding it accountable for our troubles to this very day. And then there are those women who sheepishly cough, rubbing and hugging their arms, trying to salvage the time period or even reclaim it by searching for those glimpses into a hidden reality in which women did have some place other than religious or royal servants. This reality, however, is purely argumentative. But the real point of this letter is you. Where on earth do you fit? How have you not been chewed out by some witch holding tenure? I have been chewed out by one such individual for repeating what another medievalist has said.... and you are free to frolic unscathed.

I can understand why some may allow you to continue this fantasy. This response feels similar to those wide-eyed reactions I recieve when I admit I am defecting. There is a need to preserve a dying community it seems and any motivation is good motivation in their eyes. To be honest, I did not even know people like you existed. Of course, I posited that some people read Arthurian legends or watched the Princess Bride a few too many times and decided to go find more. You watched Cinderella alongside the royal wedding, planning your wedding gown along with your assassination of Kate Middleton. It's all very perfect really, at the stroke of midnight, she slips and slices her throat on some broken glass slipper and you are there to nurse the handsome, young, balding prince through this difficult time. Really now, was this your preparation for a position at a prestigious institution? You live in a fantasy world. I cannot say you give medievalist women a bad name because I was only aware that you existed beyond my imagination nigh 48 hours ago but now that I am aware of your existence I have no choice but to reprimand you for giving medievalist women a bad name. You will go on to write romance novels in the guise of historical fiction and send it off as literature and the some girl in my former high school might be forced to read your rubbish and take it as truth. You will inherit the world Anya Seton has left for you in her legacy and run with it.

And why should I bemoan this? The Middle Ages hardly get a spotlight and women of the Middle Ages even less, lest you are of extorting some medieval celebrity like Elenore of Aquitaine or Hildegard von Bingen. Any press is good press, no? But perhaps this is what I mean. You will undoubtedly get more attention and pervade an image that so many medievalists had been fighting against. I imagine you are just a victim of the Disney affect and that you will have you dream wedding at the Polynesian Resort and Spa in Orlando, Florida or you will ask your father for a rhinestone encrusted pumpkin carriage to pull up to the parking lot of your local catering venue but that you demand to be taken seriously with your Bachelor of Arts in Medieval and Renaissance studies is what I cannot seem to abide.

Leave this to the women with PhD's in kicking some real medieval ass, please.

25

An Open Letter to the Bearded Fellow Who Fancies Himself a Poet

Let us be clear about one thing: I despise you.

Alright- now that is out of the way, we can really get down to brass tax.
First of all, I did not hear a word of your ridiculous poem... I was on my fourth or fifth glass of free wine, which was absolutely delicious, I might add. But I remember hearing you say a few "fuck"'s and "shit"'s and, to be completely honest with you, they were not there for poetic value but rather because you thought they would make your poem dark and risqué. Since it left no real impression on me expect for a general feeling of disgust, I can tell you that your poem was neither dark nor risque but entirely distasteful. But I know you never asked me for my opinion and judging by your appearance, you could not give a good god damn about my opinion. But also judging by your appearance, you do entirely.

Oh- let us not forget your appearance. This was not your first offense to be sure but this one really took the cake for me personally. Our mutual acquaintance, who I assume is your benefactor in all of these matters, specifically stated that these events require elegance and grace... the venue posting a strictly enforced dress code on their website. But you, you burgeoning artist, you believe you are exempt from these niceties and nuances. The depth of your intellect requires the hardiest of flannel and the scruffiest of beards while you hope these articles distract from the fact that you are, in truth, comfortably supported by your wealthy father and thus posses designer jeans. Who am I to argue that someone of comfortable means can be deep and pensive? Certainly not. However, you seem to be going for a ... an artistic lumberjack? Dare I say... hipster? Oh, sir, surely you would protest and yet your beard is unkempt and your are, in fact, wearing jeans to an elegant affair. What other conclusion can I draw? You simply think you are above us ignorant swine who trot around in our suits and cocktail dresses brandishing our free alcoholic beverages and speaking in forced allegory. But how can I forget the days when your hair was trimmed and your face was clean shaven but you still stared out at all of us with your beady eyes. It always appeared, and still does to this day, that the bags hang beneath your eyes from weary nights filled with attempting the deepest contemplation only to watch the sunrise after a night of hunting through the thesaurus to no avail. I remember that the length of your shoes always attempted to compensate what you lack in stature, in intellect and.. well... elsewhere. I remember your copy of Dante was an antique and your Italian was sparse, I assume you believed it was enough to get you laid. You contributed little more than the brushing away of hair from you eyes. Your final project was long and boring and I sincerely wish I had been drunk. I honestly cannot remember a word of it save for your tone, dark and moody, and your professor, avid and getting hard with every line he regurgitated at you.

But, the heart of the matter lies unspoken.
Why do I despise you?

Do I despise you like I despise Christians (all religious people, I should clarify)? Perhaps that's it. I despise you because you encompass all that I despise of an imagined collective. You are a delegate of a percieved "other", an other comprised of artists, poets, and individuals of the like who soaked in their education and believed they had the creative capacity to vomit it back up upon a page with some semblance of originality; who believed they knew more than anyone else because they read one more Sonnet by Shakespeare or had their testicles fondled by their professor, metaphorically speaking of course (or not, we cannot rule anything out. This is NYU after all).

But there is an added valence to the matter, an underlining nature that seems almost dire to this situation. In other words, a percieved threat. I have no real qualms with you aside from your lack of respect for... anything really. You are no scorned lover, no failed friendship, you are a nothing in my life. And still this animosity exists each time I see you. It usually occurs in my visceral response to you wearing jeans at an affair that demands your respect - especially because it is you who is being recognized. I, sitting on the periphery in my pearls, go unrecognized and unnoticed. My intellect bypassed by other, more superficial qualities that I am supposedly to feel gratitude for. Is this why I despise you? Perhaps. That I am invited to hear someone lesser than I placed upon a pedestal, extolled for their virtues that clearly do not exist and if they do, are nowhere near natural but rather are an entire facade, a sham, a character ... all this provokes in me ire from deep within that has nowhere to go but the endless abyss of the internet. You are fawned over, you are tolerated, your vapid ramblings are worshiped by superiors for being edgy and interesting, and you are paraded around as a symbol of something I would abhor to be but one I crave nevertheless. Your babble, your sputtering, your ridiculous ramblings.... are tolerated, celebrated, awarded, and lauded. Your jacked off incessantly and I cannot tell who I should blame: you or those who love you. And do I blame them for loving your or for not loving me. Is it all jealousy or is it something more? I am often jealous but I feel you represent something entirely more reprehensible.

I'm not sure how to end these things.
I'm sure they require something rather polite given the whole passive-aggressive nature of these open letters.
But I feel perfectly content with the fact that you probably heard me bad-mouth you and you caught me sending telepathic daggers at you from across the room.

Get a button-down for Christ's sake.

24

There are moments, just brief minutes out of your life, in which existence becomes unbearable for some inexplicable reason. The act of living not only becomes tiresome but impossible... almost laughable. Love, for me, becomes the greatest mystery. You are suddenly lost, even in the most familiar of places. It's as if you've lost your footing on a balance beam you've walked along hundreds of times and suddenly you lose confidence and the beam becomes mysteriously foreign to you. You arms wave around in circles, the exercise you were taught in grade school physical education to help reclaim balance, as the angle of the world is off-kilter from its usual 180 degrees. Each of your relationships feel suddenly distant- as if you are looking at your loved ones from a far off shore as you alone are gliding away on a boat into a fog. They are staring at you, all with the same puzzled and slightly sad look on their face while you stare back angrily, expecting at least someone to jump in to those frigged waters and pull your raft back to shore. What love you lavished upon them and they cannot even see how badly you want someone to rescue you from the fog. What sacrifices you made for them and they cannot brave hypothermia to cradle you in their arms. This ire is of course warranted but in these brief flashes, everything is nonsensical in a nightmarish way.

This is the feeling I almost always receive when working in the Library. Amongst a sea of heads craned downward, I join the ranks only to leave depressed, hopeless and feeling as though I had written the most prolific novel only to realize it was all incomprehensible gibberish. The air hangs pulsating with stale stress at the rhythm of a dying man's breath; it wheezes ever so slowly with a chill of a life desperately aching for death. On this particular evening, Chance would have me select a collection of the most morbid short stories I have ever come across. Not the elegant morbidity of The Virgin Suicides, one that is beautifully romantic like wilting flowers. No, it is rather one that wants to make you extraordinarily aware of just how sharp Death's sickle really is. Having stubbornly chose the smallest book from the collection and committing to it as I did to this hellishly taxing class for which this text is due, I pursued the text even despite the shivers that ensued. The building became all the more quiet while my feet felt as though they had been soaked in ice. Dusk turned into night and the florescent glow only made the large room emptier despite how crowded it was.

I was reading a short story entitled "The Black Shaman". Taking place in Kazakhstan, the interaction between life and death are treated as normally and nonchalantly as you would imagine they would be in the Old World. Great-Aunts seem to have this ability, speaking of the dead as if they were still living. It reminded my of a friend of mine who told me she was clairvoyant. She would tell me of conversations she had with spirits, explain to me their forms and their classifications. Everything I had ever gleaned from watching ghost-hunting reality shows was confirmed. She would tell me how she despised going to the Library, relating how she would be followed home or accosted by the Suicides, ruining her day their malignant attitudes, their lingering stress and their deep depression. I imagine they still worry about their books that are now long-since overdue, calculating the fees and multiplying them by eternity. What is the exponent for forever? I imagine when the elevators open to an empty floor that they are still hunting for books or better yet, making light of their ill-fate and are attempting to be playful in this dismal place. Any normal person would immediately assume a student had pressed the wrong button or had perhaps forgotten their notepad in between the space of the call numbers. They have until the end of time to work on their dissertation on a topic they had every intention of abandoning. And whether this is my unfortunate imagination influenced by this unfortunate text or whether the air hangs with the emotional impressions made by decades of students unable to recognize priorities, I cannot help but go where my mind wanders. The air conditioning numbs my mind. They say that just before you freeze to death, you feel the sudden urge to just snuggle up and fall asleep. They say that it is one of the most peaceful ways to die.

My eye lids begin to grow heavy and I know it's time to leave.

23

Smell is the strongest sense tied to memory

The dull scent of slowly rotting wood mixed with stale hops... as if it had seen centuries instead of decades. The floor boards creak from the worldly concerns of the Regurlars, from ages of men shuffling their feet from their bottomless glasses to the urinal and back. All the smiles are genuine but they're still misplaced- companions in the trenches recognizing a familiar face... but they are all still in Hell. You look into their enlarged pores and pupils only to see the same story... perhaps slightly altering names, dates, and a few telling details to protect all those involved. Beads of sweat roll down and salt their rims right underneath their noses while they see the world through orange tinted glasses. I never felt like I should have been there; it was foreign and it felt forbidden. You always opened the door and were surprised with how quickly it would swing open but the moment you crossed the threshold, every movement slowed so that everyone could get a good look at you before returning to their respective internal monologues. I still feel guilty, ashamed for something I still quite put my finger on. I feel as though one must always have downcast eyes, as if it were a church. A church for the godless, the abandoned, the fallen- I was meant to be paying my respects I guess. This was no time to eat, drink or be merry but I was so naive. I ran up to the altar and downed the whole jug of sacramental ambrosia with a thirst twenty one years in the making.

And perhaps I wised up pretty quick. Or perhaps I already knew. But now I've been launched onto this planet without a map and I know only one thing: that I'm lost. Gravity is low here and my feet feel as though they are further from the ground with each new step. I try to pick up the dirt, try to get used to it, to understand it but its just sand that keeps slipping through my fingers. I know that mixed in are pulverized pieces of precious stones and metals of insurmountable worth but try as I may to hold on, I'm afraid its in their nature to escape with the rest.

My eyes burn, anticipating the tears that have yet to come.

22

...And as I turned over, uncomfortable with every position I found and, consequently, unable to sleep, I stared at the ever so slightly fluttering eyelashes at my shoulder like two black humming birds; my eyes having thus become comfortable in the darkness. I thought of the numerous tears that had fallen from them and onto that still cheek now only moving with the ebb and flow of the entire body bobbing along the rhythm of a steady, sleep-laden breath. Rivers and oceans of tears, perhaps, had preceded this night: the calm after a life-long storm, I imagined. In that moment, it was as if I had crossed a threshold into the memory of another through a wormhole provided by my imagination alone. A theoretical life flashing before my eyes that was not my own and one that I was never meant to be privy to, as if I had read a novel in progress only to realize at the end that it was a private diary. Vividly dancing before me were family dinners, recording sessions, fights, break-ups, parties, nights made inseparable by their chaos and days that made inseparable by their banality. An entire life, start to finish, played before me in an accidental slide show. And with all this came a newly discovered futility. To watch someone suffer in their past is to watch a child drowning from afar. And as you run, the most you know you are capable of doing is to endure that heartbreak and hope instinct kicks in.

It was as though I was staring down into a cavernous well in which darkness nearly consumed the bottom but one that was just shallow enough to see the water disturbed by the rain. The nostalgia and the sadness of witnessing such a sight becomes overpowering. One man's sorrows would crack Atlas's vertebrae sooner than any tectonic shift. I found myself tumbling down...

...And when I blinked away a tear, I was staring at serenity being softly disturbed by dreams of another world. Again, I shifted position, my side hurting from some inexplicable weight. My view was no longer of the two humming birds but of a heaven whitewashed and devoid of constellations. Some lights flickered from the few cars braving the West Side Highway at such an ungodly hour of the night. My own eyelids slowly became heavier with nothing to focus on while my breathing became steadier and though I dreaded the onslaught of whatever my subconscious had prepared for its entertainment, I also welcomed that little death as I did any other night.

-- Auditory Inspiration: Capote Soundtrack - Mychael Danna --

21

A Mid-August Afternoon in Central Park

We will mosey over somewhere between four and five. I don't really care when nor what we had been doing before that probably made us late for doing nothing. You might trip on an uneven strip of side-walk but make it out alive. I might laugh a little. We'll arrive just as the sun starts to age casting a burnt hue on the beige buildings peaking out from atop the vibrant green crests of the trees and we'll set out a blanket and drown in the sound of the mellifluous air teasing the the leaves. I will take a novel out of my bag that I never really intended to read. It will only be there for me to look up from and steal glances of the perspiration rolling down onto the grass, causing your long hair to stick to your forehead while you read or write or nap. I don't really care which. Perhaps we will get bored and turn onto our stomachs, our shoulders touching as we compete to make the other laugh by making fun of the New Yorkers who came there just to entertain us. You will obviously win as I roll onto my back with laughter and get grass stuck in my hair. You might pick off some of the debris or you might leave it, thinking it's cute. Having succeeded, you might turn over lazily onto your back and stare at the cloudless sky while I take my long-awaited place on your chest, lulled into a hazy nap by the sound of your steady breathe, my head rhythmically bobbing up and down, keeping in time with the life-sustaining beat. The grass will tickle my hand and wake me up. Thinking it an insect, I will frantically swat at nothing and accidentally disturb you. Then we will try to become resting statues once again but the comfortable position will be more difficult to attain. Awkward moments will pass as I impatiently find my spot again but then I find it and melt back into your chest. And we will secretly tear up with gratitude for this moment hoping the other doesn't notice... only to confess it a short time later over beers and food.

This will become my recurring daydream and I will be blissfully haunted by a moment so ordinary it becomes poetic.

20

It's 3:30 in the morning and I am listening to the sound of a steady breath dreaming to the soundtrack of deep thunder in Indiana. I want to write something, anything, ideally something mildly profound or meaningful but I am at a loss... but I really could care less. Sometimes, you are entirely lost within a moment, a moment you wish you could capture forever. You are meant to focus on something but you just keep getting lost in the distance, probably smiling awkwardly through a haze of daydreams. Sometimes it is the entire picture that you want- the place, the smells, the angle from which you are taking it all in, the temperature, the dampness of the air on your skin. But all I want from this moment is the sound and the feelings it evokes. I keep getting caught in these moments that aren't necessarily mine but I still have them. This thunderstorm... is hundreds of miles away and yet I am experiencing it first hand... and it's magical. I cannot remember the last time I was able to hear rain fall in the middle of the night since moving to the nineteenth floor of a high rise in New York City. I have never been so privileged to hear it accompanied by the sound of something so peaceful as someone sleeping so soundly that they even start to snore a little bit, as if trying to rival the storm outside their window. And right now, I cannot really remember a time that I felt this depth of gratitude for living right here, right now.

Yesterday, while waiting in John F Kennedy airport, I overheard someone express their fears about Facebook... about Google... about the entire internet age. I keep hearing about people who proudly state that they live off the grid simply because they deactivated their facebook accounts and do not obsessively check their phones. But without it, I would not have this moment and I would not be able to savor it and I would not be able to relish in it and I would not be able to put words to it. Perhaps I am just enamored with the beauty of a moment, intoxicated with an orchestra of innocuous sounds and ambient noises that came together and startled me into paying attention. Perhaps I am simply just enamored. But for this one moment, I heard the rain fall in Indiana in New York. I am connected to a moment so trivial that it amounts for 30% of an entire lifetime... and yet it feels so meaningful and extraordinary and a little surreal. Thousand of cables stretching across hundreds of miles connecting two people in two very different places is nothing short of magical. I live for nostalgia ... but I must concede this moment to the future.

So judge me, reader. Pass by my stupid smile and my glazed eyes and sneer or smile, whatever reaction you choose, but I can guarantee you that I will not take notice. I cannot. We dream for moments like these... we close our eyes and pray for them all the time. With every eye-lash, falling star, birthday candle and all those cliché avenues for wishing... we shut our eyes and wish for them. We see them in movies and we scoff at them because we secretly want them - desperately want them. These moments that mean nothing and these moments we forget because they are so commonplace somehow expand into something worth holding onto forever and the fact that it is so fleeting makes it all the more sweet, albeit bittersweet it seems. It reminds me exactly of those amazing and perfect nights, driving alone at one in the morning with the windows down, the spicy, sweet and yet still cool breeze blowing, the soft moan of the music coming through the speakers and the constellation of fireflies dancing across the sky of black forests. This is living within a moment... this is what they have all be talking about... and what we have all been waiting for... and it is everything one would expect it to be... everything one would want it to be.

19

A few months ago, I was purchasing alcohol from the corner bodega/deli that sold to me despite the fact that I was underage simply because the guy who had the night shift really liked my best friend. Other funny stories revolve around this fellow but on this night he asked me about my "friend", whom I assumed was my best friend and I informed him of her status: that she was well but away in Massachusetts and away from me. He smiled and then inquired after my other "friend" and did a hand motion indicating a height difference. He meant my ex. Immediately my demeanor changed, I frowned and let out an uncomfortable guff and told the clerk that he was my friend no more. He feigned concern but still smiled and let out a hearty laugh, as he is accustomed to do and in his heavy Middle Eastern accent he said that summer was swiftly approaching and that I was sure to find a summer romance. Annoyed at the thought, I quickly collected my booze and my junk food and scoffed at his suggestion. He looked at me with amusement as I stormed out and yelling back at him to have a good night. I haven't gone back there since but I should introduce him... and then thank him.

Over a cup of coffee I angrily stared back at a pair of deeply hurt and confused eyes as I attempted to convey my idiotic amount of ire in the most polite way I knew how while still trying to deliver an emotional blow that would cause those eyelashes to dust those cheeks for months upon months. I sometimes wonder if I ever succeeded and then I become mad at the prospect that I didn't but slowly guilty for ever desiring success over such a matter. My cheeks were aflame, as I've described ad nauseum to my friends and family, as I hissed that I had no intention of being emotionally close to another male for an extraordinarily long time, maybe even never, hoping that he was perceptive enough to decipher the underlying invective of that comment. His eyes told me that he had a vague inclination towards where I had been going.

I always say, "never". I am a pessimist through and through and I can try to varnish that over by calling myself a realist but I am a little too paranoid for that to be entirely true. I would go to middle school dances, the height of my socially awkward phase of which I was brutally made fun of for, and convince myself that they were going to be absolutely terrible. All of those acne-ridden, New Jersey suburban WASP bros in the making would find me sexually repellent and none would grind with yours truly. After repeating this as a mantra in the car on the way there, my mom probably pondered why she was driving thirty minutes out of her way to something he daughter would not even enjoy. Sure enough, four hours later, I would climb back into the car, bathed in sweat and axe body spray with a huge smile in my face after having a mildly successful evening that seemed exponentially better given the fabrication of low expectations. It was fail-safe. To this day, my mother will bring it up once in a while with an air not of pride per sé but... certainly impressed. It seems horrifying when you extrapolate this innocuous trick to get through the debilitating awkwardness of the teen years to life in general. It seems like a dreadful way of looking on life: no one will like you, that you are bound for failure, etc., and truth be told, it does make one a little anxious and neurotic. But it certainly comes in handy... though it is another defense mechanism, another layer between you and someone else that has to come down eventually. I always say "never" and "never" never happens and you are always pleasantly surprised. I always say "never" and then I'm proven wrong.

And so, that excruciatingly long hiatus I was meant to have taken that was supposed to carry me through spinsterhood was remarkably short lived and I am pleasantly surprised. I laugh at the folly of it all. How can I not? All of the sudden I am devouring every single item of someone else's interests; appropriating them, analyzing them, dissecting them... inhaling a plethora of new things I would never have given a second glance or maneuvering my "to check out" lists so that their interest take priority or sitting through things I know I dislike simply because someone else likes them and that must mean something. Books, music, movies, comics, games, television, entertainers... everything. What is it exactly that I think I am doing and how am I justifying all of this to myself? Background material to understand them? Material upon which I can relate to them, discuss with them? Seem cooler? More genuine? Interested? All of the above? A professor once told me if there are multiple questions... the answer is usually all of the above. I answer D. I would like to think that I am making poetry, that I am intellectualizing everything and puzzling a human being together by listening to the lyrics of a certain song but I am pretty certain I am trying mighty hard to justify an overload of emotion I swore would never happen. When you are a pessimist running around pretending to be a realist, you also tend to be a closet hopeless romantic masked as a cynic. It is all a fantastic game that results in a great deal of self-loathing but its funny nevertheless because, as my new found activity of comic book reading would have me realize, we all wear masks. Anyways, the cynic looks at the romantic in euphoria over the whole situation, relishing in this influx of new information to process ... and crosses its arms and shakes its head. We see this stuff in movies and we always point to the screen and say, with half-eaten popcorn spilling out of our mouths, "That could never happen". And sometimes it does and all you can do is stare flabbergasted at the screen (see cereal guy).

18

I report from the front lines of the battle taking place in my upper chest cavity that the battle is over. Negotiations were under weigh late last night into the early hours of this morning and all sides have come to an agreement. Concessions were made on all sides and for the first time in history, there had been no casualties.

And so I slip easily into this mellifluously flowing stream of new-found feeling, floating lazily downstream without a care to my name. My fishing pole has retired to my side while I let the sun illuminate the capillaries in my eyelids - a network of tiny vessels bringing the pulsating warmth from my heart to farthest corners of my body. The days of cinnamon and burnt orange still so far off, I have reached the zenith of summer vacation - the very moment that defines the season, that lasts in our memory and within the heart and warms our frostbitten fingers when we shove our hands into our coats after surviving a blizzard. The wet air cut through by a warm breeze, the sticky smell of heat, the drops of sweat beading along the edges of the face, the laughter, the starry nights and the constellations of lightning bugs along the black backdrop of a forest at night. A photographic memory would romanticize these scenes with light vignetting, lens flair, film grain and color-crossed processing to provide a vintage haze in pink and yellow hues. The soundtrack would be something slow, something sweet that kept in time with the rocking of a hammock. These are the easy days that we keep in place of those days when the sun scorches the earth and the cul de sac is abandoned for air conditioning.
But this analogy has run on too long.

I can see things in poetry again, read the most innocuous detail for its beauty and allegory. And maybe this moment of relaxation, of acquiescence, of inhibition will be as brief as the explosion of paranoia, of fear and of anxiety had been... but what of it? And perhaps I am romanticizing, glazing over reality with the dreamy melodies provided by Zero 7 and Air that launch me back to a time that has never existed but I have been looking for this whole time; nostalgia my only true yet dearly beloved malady. You feel as though you are endlessly falling through pink clouds. And perhaps this sounds silly and naive, maybe it even is... but what of it? Need everything be so serious, so controlled, so logical? Need everything be grown-up and utilitarian; cold, factory-made and rational? And perhaps I'll feel differently later, sooner... whenever, if ever ... and perhaps I will look back at this as I did my diaries that I hid under my mattress: embarrassed at my vain attempts at eloquent expression in order to sound romantic, intelligent, and dare I say it, witty. But for a moment I was happy, a luxury few have and even fewer relish in when they recognize it. So I pray that I look back on this and giggle at my carelessness because for this one moment in time, I was happy and I lived my life not according to what anyone told me to do but how things simply worked out.

Life is remarkably simple sometimes. It does what it does and has this way of working out, even when it seems like it doesn't. Of course this sounds incredibly trite and cliché... because it is... but romantic comedies and romances do not warm our hearts for nothing. I realize that my cynicism is a clever ruse to distract both others as well as myself that, at heart, I am a romantic. But for this one moment I can truly appreciate that resistance is futile and ride the crest of this tidal wave.

17

Up until now I had been drunk on the promise of adventure.. l'aventure... of the unknown. But as I watch the dust settle, I cannot shake the feeling that the final flake to fall will cause an earthquake in my heart. A bitter war is occurring in the center of my torso now between reason, anxiety and foolish hope, three camps fighting the other to conquer both mind and matter. I know what it is that I ought to do. I ought to let go of inhibition, of paranoia, of the debilitating fear and live life as it comes. This fear is not synonymous with the mounting anticipatory adrenaline rush one gets on a roller coaster's first climb... this fear is deep and instinctive... a protective mechanism ... the shot of hesitation you receive as you stand on the threshold of a dark tunnel that has no end in sight.

I sit here consumed with anxiety and insecurity trying to psychoanalyze myself out of an emotional stupor. Can one really be blamed for wanting to medicate one's emotions into submission? To want to amputate one's heart so that all that remains are the phantom pains of emotion? Dostoevsky would tell me to relish in this fear. To suffer means I feel, it means I am human. But with each new wave, I remember the days in which I felt like a shade walking along the banks of the Styx... forever anticipating something but walking without purpose, without feeling and without any sense of outside awareness. There is a comfort in that quality of being numb... as is the state of knowing. Everything is so polarized at the moment. I feel as though I am either reading too much into things or not, accepting too little or too much, building things up or not at all, playing make believe or being hyper-cynical. I cannot find a balance and I don't know how. I want control simply because I foolishly believe it will prevent my heart from being broken; the notion that knowing the future... knowing if, when or how things will end ... might somehow protect me. But knowing if things will end seems too optimistic... knowing when is too pessimistic... and knowing how is masochistic.

This fear is like an ancient Fury that slipped into my soul with serpentine artifice to haunt me with nightmares of my past. She distorts the face of my current interest into the ones of my past - connecting and confusing their present character and qualities with those from ancient history long since repressed. "His eyes have the same look in them just like that one used to have but what can it mean?" They are all distorted visions, misappropriated and misinterpreted so that I can give up while I'm ahead and cut myself off from being human. We call it reason, to reason with ourselves. But is it truly reasoning that takes over the silliness of youthful romance when it becomes something more and when we suddenly become concerned what our best friends, our parents, our minor acquaintances will think? Is it reasoning when we give up simply because it cannot work out? But are these butterflies simply a case of indigestion caused by stress and anxiety?

I know what I ought to do: Throw caution to the wind; ignore what everyone might think; come what may; let go... all this cliché phraseology that sounds like bravery and courage and foolishness and stupidity all at once. But I cannot help but pause and ponder what is at stake. Do I have nothing or everything left to lose? Soon, all this will seem laughably ridiculous but I cannot shake this chill that has crept into my veins.

16

Three hundred and sixty five days ago- I was in Paris anxious about my future, watching with empty eyes my relationship evaporate, and feeling as though I was under fire by everyone who was meant to love me. Unhappy, confused, and completely unaware ... it was more of a nightmare than a vacation. My loved ones looked on terrified as I simply acquiesced to a zombie-like demeanor. Three hundred and sixty five days later, I can only look back on that day and see how far away I am.... how everything has changed.

I'm smiling. I'm laughing. I'm happy.
Nigh two weeks ago, I left the United States in a state of annoyance, loneliness, anxiety and a touch sad and landed in Rome hours before anyone else would arrive. I waited patiently at the meeting spot until an enormous group of Italian tourists congregated in front of me. Waiting impatiently and becoming claustrophobic, I escaped and decided to watch the spot from above. Two hours later, a familiar face appeared. We eyed each other inquisitively for a few seconds, trying to make sure it was the other before confirming the identities. It was "The Comedian" that my professor had been hyping up for since May but had been missing in action - I hadn't realized it was the same person I had taken two classes with already and was entirely surprised to see him. Reluctant but in desperate need of human interaction and company, I invited him for a bite in the airport café and we entertained small talk awkwardly while I tried to ascertain his sexuality and whether or not he really hated me as much as I thought he had and all the while keeping him pinned to my preconceived notions of him. I joined him outside to watch him smoke and a bird shit on my luggage. Mortified and disgusted, I took it to be a bad omen for the upcoming trip and while cleaning everything up and hoping to be simultaneously struck down by a random bolt of lightning, I imagined what else could possibly go wrong. Our group began to assemble and we finally were together and on our bus heading towards Siena. The week that ensued, however, was of course anything but what I could possibly have expected. A pessimist and a cynic, I was pleasantly proven wrong on so many counts... and perhaps unpleasantly on just a few. I tried to understand people, where each phrase could have stemmed from and what it said about them. When the Comedian did begin to speak due to the copious amounts of wine we were having, I saw that I had entirely misjudged him. What I took for haughty, pretentious, elitist egocentricity (albeit painfully cool and intimidating) was his collected cover for a music and video game nerd who was as much of a 13 year old boy as he was a 21 year old man and everything made sense. All of the sudden, I realized I should try to apply this to others in order to prevent from judging them but rather understanding them. Simultaneously, the fates drew us together until we hit "wham - like two cabs on Broadway" [rw]. After months, cynicism and bitterness were replaced by butterflies and stupid giggles that accelerated at the swiftest of rates so that eight days later, we were holding hands and crying over the cruelty of fate. Reason, anxiety and fear battled with hope and foolhardy ambition until a realization, a minor epiphany materialized. This affinity that developed out of nowhere was not aided nor repressed simply because I had gone with the flow. I let it run its course and it had brought me to impulsively switching my flight to spend an extra 24 hours with someone I had only just gotten to know... why dam up the floodgate when it had occurred naturally? After leaving our status as uncomfortably ambiguous, I threw my arms around him before his 12 hour flight for a last good-bye and only one phrase kept repeating itself in my head over and over ... which I had refused to say, something I do not regret in the least but it was a revelation. Mulling it over coffee and tears, it seemed evident to throw caution to the wind. And here I am in Paris, terrified and excited and accepting what the future has in store, good or bad.

Three hundred and sixty five days ago, I was absolutely terrified about the future - entertaining panic attacks as if they were commonplace. Occupation, graduate school, love, friendship, family... all these things seemed so uncertain and out of control. Three hundred and sixty five days later, life is all the more ambiguous and now all the more complicated but to simply reject everything - reject butterflies, anxiety, sadness, happiness, laughter... reject youth simply because the ending is unknown is to reject one's humanity and deny life. It would be a manifestation of Hippolito's clairvoyant protagonist who sees his terrible future and therefore elects to stay at home to do nothing... dying without having done anything.

And so... three hundred and sixty five days later, I choose not to subject my reason to desire nor do I elect to subject passion to anxiety but rather allow the fates to take me where they may. This does not mean I concede and no longer become an active agent in my life but simply just one who tries (key word, tries) not to control what cannot even be known.

Three hundred and sixty five days later- I feel as though I'm finally living and its absolutely terrifying.

15

Now... how to begin. Today I choose self-confidence as my subject. Though necessary for daily emotional function, it seldom actually chooses to stick around long enough to pursue anything of value. Lack of self-confidence so often results in a myriad of other emotional ailments and perhaps spinsterhood, known to us 21st century, meme-obsessed internet shut-ins as being Forever Alone, a condition I half-jokingly attribute to myself all too often on another blog. But it is precisely these blogging avenues that prevent a complete and utter collapse of self-confidence.

While no one, and I repeat absolutely no one, expressed any interest in being within a 15 mile radius of me this weekend (and I will go right on ahead and take most of their lack of interest to be a blaring statement of disinterest in me[refer to emotionally volatile bear to understand this internet-driven hysterical hyperbole]), the internet is here, enveloping me in its cool glow, warming me with the overheating of my computer, comforting me with its ability to take in all of my complaints and offer little to not criticism in return. True, if I were more popular on the internet I would probably suffer some anonymous abuse from internet trolls... but alas! I am forever alone and saved from this ugly fate. Regardless- I am given carte blanche to express my anger, sexual frustration, sadness, angst and all other emotions that lack an appropriate outlet, however pleases me. The greatest part is the actual posting on the internet. The effort one takes, however great or little, in creating a post dedicated to some facet of their emotional well-being immediately gives one the satisfaction of self-importance. This post will linger on forever on servers, encoded forever in a multitude of scripts. Immediately, you are worthy of being read because you have "some blog". Immediately, the building blocks of self-confidence are already there for you to work with and with each post, you are laying on another brick. Of course this all shatters when you emerge from your cavernous bunker you call home and join the real world. I need only a mildly successful interaction with a human being to send me home blogging incessantly about how awesome I am until I achieve the paper-maché mountain of confidence I need for the next human interaction, of course this being all the more significant in some form, only to be myself and hyperbolize all of my qualities until I am a caricature of what I consider to be cool and a week later I am indoors blogging about it without any messages on any social networking site or phone and realize the consequences all too late.

But everything is okay because I am blogging about it now and pretty soon I'll convince myself I really am that pretty, smart, important and worthy of breathing air and the cycle will continue once again.

14

Tonight I allow curiosity to conquer all politeness to explore the topic of religion... and since I am alone at this dinner table of a blog, I should have the freedom to do so I imagine.

I myself life without religion. While it is the central element of my intellectual pursuits, Christianity in particular, it is the far away from any personal or spiritual attachment to me. Not entirely an atheist and not necessarily an agnostic and certainly not a nihilist, religion is simply absent from my life. Given that the existence of a higher power concerns no one until our number is up, it seems that it should hardly concern us until that very moment, should it not? Listening to human arbiters is not the same as listening to a higher power and since men are entirely fallible, they hold no higher wisdom about the nature of things than I do - especially if we are equally learned in doctrine and simply differentiate upon faith alone. However, I distinctly remember having two boyfriends who were "extremely devout". One of which gave me a copy of the New Testament when I was fourteen years old. His later actions, as you can probably guess, were highly unChristian as it were. The second also gave me a few books on the subject of Christianity. One book in particular, Blue Like Jazz - a memoir of a Christian attending Reed College in Oregon (renowned for ... well ... everything but devotion to any organized religion), was highly lauded for presenting Christianity nicely to a group of godless twenty-somethings. I read it and thought it was okay. By okay, I mean that it was garbage. The beginning of our relationship was prefaced with "We try to not to force religion into your face" and perhaps given that I was indeed a heathen by definition, the family was extremely accepting of me and I repaid them their acceptance with acquiescing to sitting on a porch during the peak of my hormonally driven libidinous rage at the age of 17 and 18 as well as attending a huge number Church services. Religion was, of course, forced into my face and the idea that many believed that we would live happily ever after was laughable given that I was practically an atheist and he suffered greatly from Catholic guilt more than he was religious. But my point is.... is that while Religion was being stuffed down my throat, never once did I give him a book that logically explained that god or gods simply cannot exist and that this idea is not a novel one. Never once did I laugh at their misplaced piety and hypocrisy and yet I endured the endless berating of politicians and celebrities that were not of their creed. A cab driver once asked me if I was religious. I replied that I grew up with a Catholic background but I did not care an ounce for religion. He shook his head and told me that one day when I grew older that I would understand. Why so patronizing? The only thing that occurs when I get older will be the increasing anxiety over my limited years which would explain for any frantic outcries to seek assistance from beyond this realm to extend my stay on this earth to selfishly pursue all that I wish. Every person I have come into contact in the past six months have almost all posted on their Facebook that they are Roman Catholic and yet majority of them are almost always pursuing premarital sex more than anything else.

I do try to be accepting, understanding and above all things, polite. I have neither the right nor the place to criticize or mock someone for their beliefs for their journey is their own. But why they must constantly insist on criticizing my beliefs, and believe me - they seldom take the time to explore what those beliefs actually are? It is becoming more and more difficult to be accepting and open minded towards those who time and again prove to fall into this stereotype defined by hypocrisy.

I cannot help but feel as though I am now looked at as some corrupting hussy. I laugh about it but it troubles me that while I tried my darndest to put my claws away, I will be blamed for the momentary ruin of some young upstanding gentleman simply because I live without religion. I live a quiet and perhaps selfish life but I harm no one and I am happy. What greater felicity is there than to see another human being exist successfully for a moment - without the depression of mortality weighing upon them? Is it because they believe it is the wrong kind of happiness? That one should subscribe to guilt and shame and become so insecure about the truth that they lash out at anyone mildly observant who notices their guilt and shame? How can they live their sordid lives behind closed doors, walk out the door and zip their fly's and cover that perfume with more cologne so that they may look condescendingly at a pair of red pumps on a young girl's feet and then snore soundly at night? How can they talk to me in a bar, buying me drink after drink, saying that they are religious when they have only one thing in mind when the bartender gives them my alcohol-laden cocktail? Why not simply accept their "fallen" state rather than reject it, inevitably indulge in it, and then hate themselves for it? What sort of existence is that? There is no shame in being human.

13

For some time, plenty of thoughts and theories have been swelling in my mind but it resembles a beehive more closely than anything else. Burdened by illness, I have resulted to spending majority of my time on the internet and inevitably skulking around the dark spaces that should be off limits to anyone exiting a relationship - no matter how much time has passed. Facebook, that great evil that keeps people connected for the most improper reason, revealed to me and reminded me of an existence that I had ignored for so long now it seems. What occurred, or reoccurred, was that same seething anger I had felt five months ago. Almost exactly the same. I entertained violent thoughts and was filled with a deep sense of regret that I possessed and continue to possess some semblance of composure and etiquette. While the memories scamper off into the corners of my mind and my heart, when they are recalled to the surface, though less frequently now, they burn with the same intensity.

Now it hardly seems real anymore and therefore the anger feels much more irrational. But when I remember everything in summation and that no responsibility, no accountability, was taken... I realize whatever I feel is entirely warranted. Each emotion is its own beast in large doses but anger seems too great to cage and analyze while the sloth of sadness almost beckons to be studied as it languidly takes over your life. Anger, though entirely rational, causes one to mutate into something entirely unknown. I frown upon violence, my feelings about it are always made vocal. I think it imprudent and an immature way of resolving conflict. Not to mention, it is tiresome in the most useless fashion and rarely produces anything but more trouble. That being said - I have been plagued by waking dreams of allowing anger to completely envelope my limbs until I lose control of them and they make contact with the face of the intended. I imagine the deepest feeling of satisfaction arriving at the notion of a woman triumphing physically over such an individual. In reality, I am sure I would only feel shame and regret in addition to facing assault charges but I cannot help but imagine these moments. I regret controlling my anger that evening and ending the night on such a high note and sending such a positive message when one was never deserved. I regret that I was never cruel. I regret that I never took the opportunity to be the femme fatale I know I could be. I regret that ignorance and irresponsibility probably continues to rule. Heaven forbid that life should continue without me; and that it should be a happy existence not filled with self-loathing is only more maddening.

Perhaps this is part of a process. Once, I felt poetry but now I realize how pathetic that was. Nothing poetic could have ever been produced from that situation. Once, I had wished him on his merry way, hoping for the best. Now, I realize the improbability of the best actually occurring but that still does not hinder me from wishing the worst... just in case. My greatest regret is that I cannot supervise the worst while it occurs to make sure that it does. One day, I will regret this anger and these bitter sentiments. I will regret the cruelty that resides in my heart. One day I will harbor little to no ill will. One day, I will only feel pity for someone who probably deserves that more than anything else... but not today. Not with the memories and the stories that often result in others pitying me for my time served. I don't regret that time in the least, especially since it seldom feels like it actually happened anymore. Better now than never and better to know the nature of the beast before it was too late. This is all part of a process. It is all so surreal.

12

"Sometimes you eat the bar and sometimes the bar eats you" - The Big Lebowski

There are days that feel as though the universe was thrown off balance for a given period of time. Not entirely in the sense that planets were misaligned or that the cosmos conspired against you but rather that the psyche, the ego, the mind, is turned on an awkward axis. It is never anything so straightforward as 45, 90, 180 or 360 but something more along the lines of 43.67 - it is close enough to a state of mind, a feeling, but it is slightly off. Nothing and no one has thrown you off balance but the world is tilted regardless. Even when the universe conspires with you in a clandestine moment of delightful irony and a happy ending to the sequence of events, you still have trouble rejoicing in it because all is not aligned. Is it just one of those days? Is it something that intends on lasting longer than you had intended? One can only wait, I imagine.

Many of us are fond of hyper-analyzing ourselves into a state in which we eventually hyper-analyze our own hyper-analyzation ... but is there truly any true remedy to what are clearly not palpable issues or even real conflicts but something too abstract to even place your finger on. Or maybe they are. And then you perhaps sit on a couch and vomit up your most inane thoughts and base tendencies to someone who either loves you too much or is paid too much to be bothered by your narcissism and try to piece together through verbalization what exactly is that thorn in your side. You've already picked out the thorns from the teasing in middle school, your Elektra complex, this guy, that woman and so on. And yet, something still remains. No matter how often you gaze onto your fortunate life, breathe in the sweet smell of overindulgence, desires collide with guilt, combine at different proportions to tarnish your sense of appreciation.

How I often long to be endowed with that real depth of intuition women from the old country are plagued by. It is something more than seasoned wisdom and a keen sense of intuition. It is almost paranormal. They can manage to become tyrannical matriarchs and use their power for ill... if only I could possess that sense of security, then maybe, just maybe... And it will all be an illusion because one cannot predict the future let alone control it.

11

So much time has passed since that day in the coffee shop when my anger set my bitterness aflame. The past does not seem as distant as I would have liked it to be. I expected to feel the same surrealistic detachment I feel for other members relegated to the past: their existence only a shadow of a memory so vague that they enter the realm of fiction. Rather, five months seems as if it were yesterday - it would seem the Spring has one crevice yet to thaw out. While I had hoped to feel a greater sense of detachment and ambivalence simply, enough time has elapsed that I am only allowed speculation.

Over the past few months, a greater portion of conversation than I'd care to admit has been devoted to speculation. No longer of what could have been but rather... what things are and what will be. Perhaps it displays insecurity still as well as narcissism; my ego finding it intolerable that existence can continue without me. I'm not alone in this. Others before me as well as along with me saunter about old haunts in form-fitting outfits hoping for an accidental run-in in order to both hopefully witness misery and flaunt jubilance. These moments, however, rarely go to plan if they are granted to us.

We so often concern ourselves with the love lives of others. Whenever families gather or one meets up with old friends, one prepares one's self for the inevitable, though many of us are fortunately prepared by a plethora of romantic comedies to deal with this situation. They will ask of that guy you were so enamored with and find you no longer enamored. One generally gets a range of responses but the most thought provoking is that which begins like so: "You know... there was always something about him that..." followed by an opinion from one brief meeting that while vastly uninformed, contains some element of truth. It is within these moments that I find myself speculating the most, but the egoist in me cannot help but reverse the scenario. I am always told that it's inconsequential or useless to think of these things either because the answer is obvious or it is irrelevant to my life. But in moments such as this, I can only imagine how it would have fit if the circumstances had remained the same and generally the results are tellingly painful not because nostalgia creeps in but rather my developed hyper-awareness of the greater picture often points me to alarming details I had overlooked for so long. I imagine dancing and champagne over what should be regarded with solemnity. I imagine the imagining of my reaction and ridicule it would provoke. I imagine quiet suppers, suppers during which the only sound are the scraping of forks and the sound of inhalation in between mouthfuls. I imagine suppers that recall the many nuances that were meddlesome or ludicrous, that baffled and would have tested the patience and understanding of a friar. I imagine mutating from one symbol into another. I imagine invectives and inside jokes. I wonder, however, which classification my speculation becomes synonymous with the truth.

But the fact remains that while all that is left is a caricature of the truth, one that has been distorted by time and over-analytical contemplation. If I were to see the truth, I should probably find myself surprised. It could never have the potential to be pleasant, however. If it fell into either category, it would be reprehensible to rejoice in one while bruising my ego with the other. Truth, then, is truly irrelevant. It would provide me with no more information than ignorance. It is as they say - Ignorance is bliss.

10

Up until this point I have been using the ambiguous pronoun "he" to identify the subject of the vast majority of these posts. This perhaps indicates the irony of the break-up. But now I am about the entertain discussion of other individuals who would also fall under the pronoun heading of "he" but such ambiguity, though employed to conceal identity, would become too confusing. So, casual reader, bear with me while I attempt to create another system of naming. I will also cast aside the fact that the nature of this blog seems to revolve around the male sex, casting me in the part of self-absorbed romance blogger in manner of Carrie Bradshaw - something I cannot be proud of despite its veracity. But I digress. First I must name this new mysterious gentleman before I can commit him to these virtual pages for better or for worse.

In just a few months I have come to be aquatinted with a number of new young men to fill the void. There was "Never-Been-Kissed", "The Snapping Turtle", "The Brazilian", "The Freshman", "Michael Cera", among others. The one I will embark on discussion requires a name of his own but an appropriate one remains elusive. I was told by one of his friends that, with him, what you see is what you get. Perhaps this is true and yet I still find something enigmatic about him, one of his better qualities in my opinion. Technically, he would be called my classmate. I became infatuated with his forearms and the red piece of thread that clings delicately to his pale wrist. As the only male within a respectable age range coupled with his runway worthy good looks, it seemed like only a matter of time.

Who he is and what he does are not relevant for now. But right now, I am preoccupied with how he feels in two senses. The first is the classic sense of the term. I am interested in his thoughts and his emotions; both of which I am not given the privilege to know. The second, what he feels like to me. He feels like the cool senior in high school that noticed you after you grew breasts and took you to the backseat of his car for a test drive. And you, still too laden with pubescent lack of confidence to realize how you became worthy, find yourself staring at some innocuous detail in the car's interior thinking why you? Why now? How long will this last and how will this end? You know how the story usually ends and you begin to wait for the day to come when you climb out of the passenger seat with your hair all mussed, he gives you that last flash of a smile before you shut the door and watch the tail lights trail off into memory. If you know how the story ends then you think know how to write the plot when life inevitably creates its own and ruins everything but you cannot know that yet.

A new story has begun and our heroine is already in peril of infatuation.

9

People always seem to know what true love truly is. Whether it is because they have witnessed it or felt it, they all have an opinion. I, too, have my own opinion but it is because I recognize what I was lacking rather than what I actually possessed. I truly believed it was true love until it was gone and the speed at which it left me indicated that it was just a clever ruse my ego had designed. A philosopher, whose canon of unending wisdom I try to appropriate into my life, defined this as the common delusion the vast majority of us suffer: one falls in love with the image of a person our ego has projected onto them, blowing them up to an idea of who they are -- and idea they can never possibly attain simple because they exist in the realm of reality. Thus, when confronted with the fact that one has fallen in love with an idealized form, one is immediately disappointed and love dies swiftly. We are all Narcissus, falling for our own reflection in another only to be rudely awaked from this dream when we fall headlong into the frigid waters when we dive in for a kiss. Then we drown in reality and die alone.

People argue incessantly about love. Whether we are designed for it. Whether or not a one true love can exist. Whether abusing the word cheapens the meaning. What the depths of love are and whether there is a limit. And yet, language is so limiting that we can only devise synonyms for a single word that has prismatic meaning and feeling. All the patronizing couples will smile kindly and say that one will know love when they see it. I thought I had and I would have bet against my life upon it. I am only too thankful that I did not. We fell in love with what the other represented. I was the quintessential trophy- possessing me meant doing everything correctly in order to earn me. I meant success. He was a white picket fence and kitschy Christmas cards- being possessed by him equated to the happiness of smiling faces in aging photographs and advertisements. He meant comfort. We both fell in love with a symbol, a dream.

I define myself as a romantic and will forever be trapped in those teenage fantasies of obsession. I play make believe seeking something that burns hot for eternity, forgetting entirely of the laws of nature and the impossibility of such a phenomenon. But this obsession is purely ego that lies about reciprocity. I want to be the center of someone's universe and I want them to tell me so. I want to hear my name. I want to see my reflection in the glint of someone's eyes. I want to know what makes me so great. Only then can I reciprocate obsession for obsession. But this is not love. This is quintessential narcissism, elitism, sadism and inevitably masochism. This is destruction. Thus, I present my own ill-informed conjecture on the subject of true love: love is selflessness in the purest of forms. When one truly could willingly give up everything for the sake of another and not for the sake of saying so. It is not the selfish martyrdom so many seek in hopes of winning moral glory. It is no sacrifice for sacrifice denotes losing something while the gain remains limited to the ego whereas selflessness seeks no gain and loses nothing in the process. This, I imagine, is what true love must be like and thus it must exist in the farthest realm of possibility known to the human spectrum of emotion.

8

I feel as though I have lived a number of lifetimes already and the memories I have are from past lives that I am not meant to remember. These memories do not feel as though they belong to me. It is as if I read these stories in a book or saw them on a movie screen and incorporated them into my subconscious only the be replayed in my sleep. Each era of my life falls away into a deeper, darker and dustier corner of the library in my mind as it stretches to make room for new chapters within new volumes. I have evidence of these memories everywhere: on my skin, in my eyes, in my dreams, on my walls - everywhere... but they feel more like trinkets someone left behind when they moved away which I had accidentally discovered when I moved in. The people I knew once upon a time in a far away place - they still exist. They still breathe and eat and love and smile and cry . But, in truth, they are like characters in a novel I knew intimately for 250 pages or a for 120 minutes in a theater somewhere. And these flickering moments in which we were together pass by once in a while as a montage and I have to stop and determine if it really happened.

I asked myself when I shut his book and stored it on the shelf whether he would incur the same fate as the rest; whether or not the anger would grow stale after the love went rancid. I wondered how long before the pages would turn yellow and brittle. When would I open it back up to reference a moment in time and would I hear the binding crack from age? How often would I pass him by pretending to ignore it before I would ultimately forget him and he would be relegated to fiction. After spending years dedicating this work to him, I do not think I can recall the ring of his laugh or the tone of his voice. Slowly, I begin to forget why. After why goes how. After how goes, what and when depart together. Who, however, takes the longest to shake from memory. Even if the details are obscured by time, a blurred image will always be able to sustain itself in memory as emblematic of someone somewhere some time ago with which something happened. But the hot coal of wrath lingers long enough within, casting terrible shadows on a face I thought I knew so well. Eventually, it will be like ancient countries warring over a blood feud long since forgotten but the passion and the anger remains even if the reason is made irrelevant with the passage of time.

7

We are all patronizing to someone at sometime in our lives. The least we can do is admit to it and attempt at overcoming this reaction to our insecurities. What is bizarre and what inevitably becomes impossible to bear, however, is being a woman of the twenty-first century living in the United States, born in the Y generation, and having a male four months your junior patronize you.

He would often say, "Can you smile for me?" and I would find that intolerable. Perhaps the most intolerable and unforgivable request ever asked of me. And yet, I would smile anyway so that I might not have to hear that inquiry for a second time but it made me feel terrible, as if I were rapping the gates of Stepford each time I cracked a smile. These hints soon became beacons and they soon began to accumulate. The biggest beacon of red light manifested in the rejection I received when I became the whistle-blower on his behavior and it was the one I ignored the most. I think that only now I can understand. For some, maybe most, one is not beaten into submission but one is essentially coerced into it through a gradual process that degenerates one's self-assurance and self-confidence until nothing of the self is left. Opinions, once lauded for their depth of understanding and their wisdom, soon become scoffed at and later laughed at. Emotions, which were once accepted as part of the human condition, become regarded as something detestably effeminate, frivolous or even volatile. It is after this gradual process that one cannot even see when one's natural reaction to hurtful and misogynistic sentiments is looked at as if it were a used tampon. Thus, one despises one's self for reacting to anything for it will inevitably be met with rejection and/or disgust. From here, there are two routes: the first, one can degenerate into complete and total self-loathing or the second, one can become quiet and numb. Then, maybe, you disappear entirely. You can become a shadow, his shadow, forever eclipsed by him. You can become the moon and shine with his light but your identity is but a mere illusion.

If you are told you are crazy enough times by the one you love and trust, eventually you start to believe it. Maybe you are crazy for believing it in the first place. You see it and you hate that you have eyes. You hear it and you hate that you have ears. You feel it and you hate that you have a soul. Can you blame those women, then, when you yourself know it is not a lack of intelligence that makes them obedient or a voluntary loss of self-worth but rather an unconscious mechanism? What can you do when you cannot even know you are dead? And what do you do, can you do, when you finally wake up in the middle of that ocean of depression and realize that the one who held your head beneath the waves was the one you loved the most?

It was a summer afternoon while walking the dog I realized he did not understand. It was on the phone in September that I realized he earnestly believed he deserved a prize. It was in the back of a concert hall in March when I realized he could not care less about me. It was at the dinner table when I realized who he would grow up to be. It was in a Macy's when I realized I became a second mother. It was in a Bed Bath and Beyond in June that I realized he thought he was the Jesus Christ for emotionally damaged women. It was on a bike in August when I realized he was one of those guys who wore cargo shorts and had an opinion on just about everything not realizing women in the vicinity had those things too. It was on a couch around ten o'clock when I realized he was abusive. It was in the garden of a friary the following afternoon when I realized misogyny was alive and well. It was November when I realized nothing would change. It was not until January at a coffee shop when he realized those things too. Maybe.

Can it be truly a tragedy that these moments as well as the others will be remembered in greater and more vivid detail than all of the tender embraces, soft kisses and sweet nothings if I feel free from the yoke of tyrannical love?

My heart sometime skips a beat when I feel around for that little shackle around my finger and find it to be missing. When I look down, however, I see one out of ten fingers disfigured and emaciated by commitment. This is what I have to remember him by; his lasting impression on me.

6

Emotions are never quantifiable and yet one often will say "I love you so much" or "I hate you so much" and other phrases of the like. It is baffling to feel an abundant amount of one emotion at one time, feel it dwindle and get replaced by others until it goes away and yet there is no measure of these feelings, no exact figure and often no distinction between one and the other. I cannot know when hope began to leave me, when it returned and when it left again but I know why. I cannot know when love turned to hatred. I cannot know when I ever wished such suffering on another individual. I cannot know when forever ended and never began. We were so sure and we were so wrong. It is a difficult moment, then, when you feel pathetic and you become painfully aware of it: when you sit in that café that you know they go to constantly looking at the door when the bell rings hoping they are there, hoping to see you sitting there; when you intentionally refuse to erase their name so you can stare at it hoping they are staring at it too; when you lose yourself in someone else and pray that they are thinking about you too even if you met in passing; when you dream dreams and hate reality; when you yearn over what never existed; when you want to be someone's crowned goddess. Can I be so egocentric and so helplessly romantic? To be this jealous, this moved, this nostalgic and this hurt over the little innocuous events that truly have little or no meaning what so ever? This is what pathetic is and I keep finding new depths each day. All these things and more are the small wounds you refuse to allow to heal, making the scars that will eventually develop deeper and deeper. And in this torture we realize we have dimension. In this pain we realize we can feel. And all of your hopes and your desires, no matter how daft and silly, mean something in your heart; in your dreams. And when you look to literature, you find that you are not alone. Even if you bury your pain in booze or pills or food or movies, or books or work, it's waiting for you when you close your eyes at night.

It amazes me how life stopped when I thought I was in love. It was, perhaps, that kind of love that creates a faux-Eden; a magical sanctuary that makes one forget life and how it is meant to function. A cloudy paradise on Mount Olympus. We were so sure, with the angst of a fifteen year old, that we had it right and everyone telling us to come down now would one day be proven wrong. It would be us who would be proven wrong. But how can anyone be blamed? How can you tell teenagers that love will wither and die and life will move on? How can you tell teenagers this will be for forever and ask them to set the date? We were just kids. It amazes me still how life goes on. What folly! I had once made a promise that it was the end and I find myself somewhere unexpectedly where never once was and it is not never but it is real and it feels good. And I can only laugh. Life is happening one day at a time. The important things, the silly things, the depressing things, they are all happening one day at a time. I will stop sometimes in the middle of where never once was to take a look around and wonder what my other is doing. At three in the morning lost in the haze of an unexpectedly charming smile I stopped to think of his cold, queen-sized bed and the snoring across the way after a quite night playing with food with Fox News blaring in the background. It did not matter if I was correct or cruel but it was a reminder that life can stop even if it appears as though the years are advancing. That is when joy dies, when relationships die, when people die and we feel like shades passing along the wrong side of the banks waiting for Charon to pick us up so that we might finally go to the Underworld. But my life was going and it felt wonderful, light and airy and all I could do was laugh. How nice life sounds, even in the most gruesome or pathetic of moments, when backed by the soundtrack of laughter.

5

There is no activity that provides a greater sense of eternal calm than being on the road at night.

In summer, the windows are open and the cool air whips through you hair and in between your toes that rest carelessly on the dashboard. You could get high with that sweet breeze. In winter, you blankly stare at the barren wasteland on either side of you. It comforts you with the haunting novocaine of a loneliness you cannot experience anywhere else but there. You can always count on the lamps casting the world in an orange hue. They make the trees look like spidery sculptures. Each one illuminating the tiniest sliver of road until the next one arrives when all of the sudden they abandon you and all you are left with are the cold white headlamps of your own vehicle and an abyss on either side of you. Everything moves too slowly for you to realize you are barreling past small pockets of civilization where people are living lives you will never know about. Even each pair of headlights is its own microcosm. It is so easy to forget that each aluminum box on wheels contains a human being that has a final destination: their mistress, their mother, their kids, their friends, their dog, their bed. It is curious to contemplate all of the lives you are passing by at 70 miles per hour. And they will go on forever as an endless stream of synthetic light guiding us towards our destinations. In these sanctuaries, life is in transit, awaiting its final destination. Nothing and everything of significance happens in these small sanctuaries.

So much of my recent life has been spent en route to somewhere. Eight hours two times a month. Sixteen hours a month. Sixty four hours a semester. Over one hundred and twenty eight hours each school year. The hours in the summer from the city to the suburbs that drove everyone except me insane. It was always such a burden but we did it anyways. Perhaps we believed it is what the other wanted. No one was appeased by this arrangement but we went on deluding ourselves that it did.

Once I arrived at three in the morning after the most blissfully haunting bus ride it had ever been my pleasure to endure. I was not met at the station. There was no public transportation and a cab was impossible to procure. When I finally arrived, I was locked out of a building with no other person to contact to let me in. Therefore, I found it fitting to leave my current position as a lonely female in the center of an empty parking lot and sought sanctuary within a public safety office whose officers found the arrival of a young girl carrying luggage at three in the morning rather bizarre. A kindly officer with a heavy Boston accent found the entire situation hilarious and let me into the building I had been barred out of. Needless to say, the wide-eyed expression that greeted me and the police officer at three thirty in the morning was too priceless to ever forget. I spent the rest of the night nursing the sick. I never had the opportunity to take that wonderful night ride again.

4

Families are such curious entities. We can never pick our own and neither can we pick those that come attached to the ones we fall in love with. It would appear that mother-in-laws are more often than not the central figures of familial discord as well as some fantastic jokes. But regardless, all families have their foibles, some greater than others. Perhaps we gravitated towards each other because we recognized the feeling of manipulated familial love and found comfort in that mutual recognition. I was thus introduced to a new family and novelty worked its magic on us all. They three felt like the center of a freshly baked cookie and they pulled me in with the scent of sweet sincerity. They were small and adorable to me and a wonderful departure from where I had come from. I was happily adopted into what felt like a quaint little family photograph that I had always desperately wanted to be a part of, even if I was just part of the landscaping. Their struggles, fights, bleak existence and general monotony of household chores was suddenly interrupted by someone completely different from their friends, their neighbors and their congregation. Odd was suddenly made even and everything felt whole. It was as if all of our prayers had been answered for we were all overjoyed to have one another.

The gloss of novelty, however, wears off to reveal the original product. Though this is a perfectly natural phenomenon, one cannot help but feel cheated of something they thought was genuine and true when it is one's own failure to accept this reality of life. It does not help when one is blinded by the cheap trickery of false advertising. It is as my mother always said to me when imperfection in the model began to appear, "Time reveals everyone's true colors." I suddenly saw what had always been and I was paralyzed with shock. What once was welcoming now felt imprisoning and I was back to where I thought I had escaped from. I hid under the covers as if it were my own family members shouting at one another and cried as if I had regressed an entire decade. I learned their history through each fight over the most innocuous things like crepes. To be fair, however, they soon discovered I had hidden my glaring quirks in order to appear meek, non-threatening and desirable but now revealed them little by little.

Adoption was perhaps the least appropriate relationship that could have developed but it was what we needed. This also was probably compounded by the opposing forces of young love and regulation. At first it had been the need for surveillance of two hormonally charged teenagers and a hyper concern for premarital physicality, pregnancy and, of course, eternal punishment allowed for all abandonment of trust. Perhaps it was because I came from an exceptionally European family that these customs of constant observance seemed exceptionally bizarre to me and became quite meddlesome when I indeed desired and deserved premarital physical contact. My exceptionally European mother would often tease me by saying that I had a number of hotel rooms at my disposal but she was much happier knowing I was enjoying the comforts of home. She would mock their folly by leaving us conspicuously alone, a custom my guilt-ridden other found exceptionally bizarre and discomforting. The first time when we were left alone by his family was for an hour during an intense Guitar Hero session. I will never forget the incredibly suspicious look we were given after an hour of innocent video gaming; the sting of burning mistrust still lingers. Their grip of physical observance loosened but guilt and obligation were employed so successfully that he never left the nest. I could not leave him and so I stayed, playing by their rules and sleeping on their couch for three and a half years where I saw everything.

3

When one looks retrospectively on the fall of an age characterized by greatness, one cannot help but attempt to investigate when and where the threads began to unravel. When is the beginning of the gradual decay of greatness? Egyptians, Persians, Greeks, Romans, Christians all toppled beneath their own grandeur. So too did our love. And thus, I make the mistake that I as a novice enjoy making most. As obsession compelled me to weave this tapestry, obsession compels me to inspect these threads torn asunder seeking the origins of those pulls that made the ultimate unraveling inevitable.

We conquered each other's hearts and built an empire around ourselves. He was an island of novelty and charm in which I was free to become an explorer of another. I mapped out and memorized his topography, knowing the exact degree of elevation of each mountain and the depression of each valley. I splashed within the rivers and dove into the caves. Enamored with this world I could call my own, I made it my Eden. No fruit was sweeter nor more intoxicating than from those trees and I refused to seek the knowledge of any other. But time passed and the vegetation withered, refusing to produce anymore. It was either this or I had exhausted my resources after asking too much of that land that already gave all it had. I still know it by heart though I raised my anchor some time ago. It is always with me when my eyes are closed.

It is my own theory that his experience was instigated by a different motive. Discovery was accidental yet intriguing for what he found was a dilapidated shore, uninviting, perhaps even dangerous, and in need of some repair. Like many men who follow Christ, he measured his life through martyrdom; haunted by an impulse to sacrifice in order so that he might save. Driven by this suicidal need to rescue, salvage and renew, he disembarked onto my shores so that I might not be lost forever. He was the light of my life. He was my religion. However, for reasons still unknown to me, he left my planes unexplored and whittled away his time on my shores alone, neglecting the world he had once claimed as his own. I renounced my faith for my god had forsaken me. Now I am caught in a gale of loneliness, lost on the open sea.

2

There were only a few trips to the suburbs of New York City to visit his grandparents, though others were always planned but never actually realized. The drives were often pleasant yet they were the largest windows into the insight of his family that I generally ignored, much like everything else. In one instance, his mother lauded my intelligence and high level of education as a means to home-school my children one day and save them from the liberal indoctrination of the current school systems in place. The implication of "our children" was not as accidental as either he or I liked to believe. The dialogue on the way home was often concentrated on our relationship but always beat around the bush in hopes to avoid any more overt pressure.

There was always something comforting about visiting the home of immigrants. The minimal decor reminded me of Poland and the homes of old spinsters, widows and relatives that took care of my parents in their past lives. A number of photographs hung next to relics and there was a spot, they said, beckoning my smiling face. The food diverted my attention from the six pairs of eyes eagerly watching me devour lasagna. Polite table conversation began with asking the status of school or work. My answer was always dissatisfying to some measure; I was yet another youth without any direction. The three adults aired their grievances about the law profession and inevitably politics. It was not until the meal was over that I was always confronted with how awkward these visits were. The women got up to clean the table and the dishes and talk about things women talk about while the conversation among the men undoubtedly began with, "So how about them Yankees?" Neither a domestic nor a sports enthusiast, I merely wanted to melt into the carpet while my lack of contribution was made perfectly aware to me by stares and half-handed attempts to include me. I felt as if I was in a late-70's era film about a mismatched couple, a Polish-American and an Italian-American, trying to make it work after coming from similar yet widely different backgrounds. Perhaps it was and Francis Ford Coppola was behind a door somewhere.

Eventually the women reemerged from the kitchen and the the men plus me moved to the couch to watch either football or baseball, depending on the season. Heavy with the meal and exhausted from performing, I generally nodded off on his shoulder, triggering his grandmother to make blatant hand gestures and loud-enough whispers prophesying our inevitable marriage. It would seem grandmothers from the old country are always endowed with these supernatural powers. They always knew who would get married to whom and how their children would turn out. This one would marry that nice one from that nice family and produce a nice healthy litter and so on. Their success rate was remarkable when there always was an endless supply of rugs to sweep life under. We were told on the way back that she had predicted his parents marriage. It was an omen.