work sucks, i know

dear tour boys -
you're looking at a school that is 4 boyfriends, 6 gay guys, 1 rapist and 9 hipsters away from being an all-girls school. you appear normal, for being high school juniors, and you have academic interests. you seem like you have your shit together, and you mostly don't look like the skinny boys that are oh-so-common around here. get excited!! ask me questions! say SOMETHING, anything. don't just wander around behind me not speaking, not even to each other. yes, i'm female, and three or four years older than you, but come ON, you must have something to say. things i like, things i don't like, how males feel about the ratio. oy. maybe i just should've asked the other tour guide on duty to take you, as he's male. maybe you would've talked to him? or he could've given you a better feeling? i dunno, but man that was a crappy tour. thanks for telling me i was "thorough", but i would've rather had you talking. whatever, it was probably my first tour's fault, but you drove me to pringles anyway.
love, and imploring you to come here for the sake of future female students,
sarah

dear first tour,
dude, you suck. yes, you're rich, but you're VERY VERY conservative and there is no nice way to say this on tour but you CANNOT COME HERE. asking me how many "african american" (NOT minority, NOT students of color, because of course all non-whites are black) students we have? being concerned for my safety while i study abroad, and then telling me that your HOUSEKEEPER has a different view on the third world because she's from honduras? i don't even know where to start. no, we don't have a goddamn catholic group for students on campus. if you don't know what queer means, if i say "sexual minority students" and you NEED to clarify that i mean "homosexuals", this is not the place for you. likewise, if you feel the need to ask me if any of the men are heterosexual, this is not for you. your kid DOES NOT BELONG HERE. academically, she might fit in, and maybe some niggling doubts about her privilege will take hold, but personally we'll either rip her to shreds or she'll come out. either way, i was ingratiating, but we did NOT become friends on that tour. i don't like you, and it was this slimy lying feeling that i had because i could NOT make it clear to you that your student would NOT be comfortable here. please go away before you tell me more about how you had a house in atlanta that's since been turned into a country club. i might vomit all over your very expensive shoes. argh.

sarah


i quit.

here

yes, boys, i know the link doesn't work. here ya go.

http://www.blogthings.com/amenglishdialecttest/

weird

Your Linguistic Profile:

55% General American English

25% Yankee

15% Dixie

5% Upper Midwestern

0% Midwestern

What Kind of American English Do You Speak

and what will you do about it, spoiled girl?

i got in to a program in mexico for fall, now all's i gotta do is pay for it.

today jess told me she's bored, and i said, yes, but you're paid . . . and free.

and that scares me. will i never feel free? if not now, when? i know freedom exists in the mind, all those quotes by those very smart men told me, but does it really? and if so, why not now? i know i feel free in the summer, but summers are very boring. what am i seeking? adventure, probably.

i'm quitting my ASL class - i'm not retaining enough and i won't continue my study of it, c'est la vie. eventually.

if i had all the money and time in the world, i'd learn languages and get a degree in etymology. man, i hope you can do this kind of thing after you're dead, that would be awesome. maybe you're judged based on what you did while on earth and then the reward is whatever you wanted to do but put off, you can do post-mortem. you gotta prioritize. because really, i have a lot to do in my life. and there is just no way to do all of it. if i could, i'd want to live a sleepy little life as a used-bookstore owner, and part of me wants to be a broadway star, and a ball-busting business negotiator, the first female president, sex therapist/safer sex educator, novelist and an ob-gyn saving women's lives with doctors with borders.

then there are the for-real careers i'm still considering: lawyer, parent, NGO gopher/admin, poet, judge, journalist (i'd be amy goodman but i don't think i could be that impartial). . .

and the crazy idealist in me, the immaturity in me, believes i could do all of these things, and do them well, given enough time.

part of me really wants to be a revolutionary, to lead the troops into the mountains, all that romantic bullshit. i don't really want to believe revolution is as much potshots through the windows at night and the decisions you make every day and one abortion at a time. i want the romance, i want to train my body taut like g.i. jane and look like angelina jolie and save the world like indiana jones. (he was pretty smart, you know.)

i don't really want to be where i am, in a ballerina skirt, holding my droopy poems and pouting about my bedtime.

i don't know how to get there. but the part of me that won't let me lie to myself whispers, you don't follow the paths of others; you make your own. so not knowing the way is no excuse. you know this.

a very harsh post

ways to die before you're 21:

• ski. ski high. be a really good skiier. fuck, it doesn't matter.
• don't wear your seatbelt. even once.
• incorporate strangulation into your sexual practices.
• go to a concert at a venue that employs a sex offender. as an added bonus he'll rape you before he strangles you.
• there's always suicide. don't worry about being too young for this option.
• go sledding at the ski basin. at night.
• drive drunk, or if you're too chicken, let someone else do it.
• honorable mention: you *might* get killed for being gay, but you can *definitely* get the ever-loving shit kicked out of you.

i'm sure i'm missing some. i didn't know all of them personally, but it's all so shitty and unfair.

dear universe -

fuck you. i am scared to write to people because i'm terrified i'll end up using the writing as a eulogy. yup, that's right. i'm scared if i write someone a letter about why i love them i will end up reading it to a roomful of assembled mourners, just like what sarah had to do - though hers was written after the fact - the hardest thing i can imagine. please don't make me be this scared. please don't do this; just don't. please stop doing this. please? even though i didn't know this one, she was 14 fucking years old. and my sister hurts. and i HATE it when my sister hurts. that was the only fucking thing i asked of you - to keep her from this. i hate that she feels this, hate that she has to cry and witness. it is so hard to witness this, to see a family's grief. this is so unfair. but at least she's alive. i'd rather have her alive and in pain than anything else. i'm scared to even ask it, but please, you fucking two bit son of a bitch universe whom i hope i can't hate any harder, please do not hurt a hair on my sister's head. please. leave her alone. you can fuck with her, but you cannot kill her. i feel i can't ask anymore of you, you betraying bastard. but please this one thing. i love her so.

fucker, let's call a truce. i hate you.

sarah

happy birthday to me!

*SNL cheerleader music* who's that birthday girl i see? it's me! it's me! i said who's that birthday girl i see? it's me! it's me!

yes, kids, i'm leaving teenagerhood, as of 6:08 pm eastern standard time. huzzah!

my door's always open, come anytime you want

this was supposed to be a post about how crazy academia makes me. i think it's hilarious; i'm not complaining. it took an hour and a half for this academic to establish that interracial friendships can be the site of important learning experiences. um, yeah. i can sum up the talk in a sentence: when you're friends with someone whose experience differs from yours, you can learn valuable things from them; in the context of race, you can learn things about racism and their experience of it in contrast to your own. now, how long did that take? 8.2 seconds?

whatever, i'm most upset by the fact that she has to write a book to convince academia of this. this is the part that bugs me - that academics need a damn book to explain that which is blindingly obvious. but then, i was never one for subtlety, so maybe i'm missing something.

(more specifically social sciences: "the technology of the self" and "matrix" are just some of the academic words that bug me. likewise the discussion of not neutering academia of emotion and having to make the argument that emotion can indeed have real value in an academic setting. like, duh. yet i can totally understand why supreme court justices need to argue about the right to burn the flag for pages and pages. whatever.)

anyway. i'd also like to say my spanish teacher can't pronounce "doubt" - she says it "douth", as though it rhymes with mouth. i have no idea why; otherwise her english is practically flawless. it's strange and somewhat jarring.

but now i'm all upset again about something else: i may not see jeana and carre for an entire year. i KNEW this already but it just re-hit me in a very literal way because in ONE MONTH it will be bacchanalia and my SECOND YEAR OF COLLEGE will be over. and if i go abroad and they go abroad like we're all planning to, i won't see them for SOOOOO LONG!!!!! a whole year!! and jeana, i'm not as worried, because we have a more solid friendship, we'll still be able to talk to each other over distance, and we'll be back senior year. carre i am just starting to really feel solid with and we need to be in one another's physical presence but instead we will be half a world apart and he is threatening to stay there forever. and i can't afford the damn airfare. so who knows when we'll both be at SLC again, if ever? a very scary, sad thought. how am i supposed to keep you in my life for the next ten years if our first two in close proximity didn't establish a solid friendship and we never live in the same place again? goddamnit i don't wanna lose this one, and even a year apart might do us in.

i smell like smoke

ya know what's weird? that little second when i've just opened a minute maid orange juice and i inhale and it smells like Sunny D and i think, ew! why'd i buy this stuff? it's gross! but then i taste it and realize, no it's orangey goodness . . . it's just that one moment. . . damn that moment is weird.

(my title reminds me of the line in the andre breton poem - READ IT - "my wife with the hair of a wood fire . . .")

ya know what else is weird? the fact that i was thinking about jimmy dugan (that's right, the character from A League of Their Own) in the bathroom the other night, and then i got to thinking about the spelling of his name and how the sound is rather rare for english - where else does consonant U consonant make a sound like "oo"? for example, it's spelled like "bug" but pronounced like "true." uncommon, i tells ya. (more word trivia - what english words contain four consonants in a row? the only one i've come up with that's english is "northwest" and it's a compound. also, there are two english words that contain all the vowels [with the exception of Y] in alphabetical order, "facetious" and "bonus points to whoever figures out the other one; i don't remember.")

the rat babies on my hall now look like either inflamed penile tissue (catie's description, not mine) or dumplings. like, you know, sweet and sour chicken dumplings. yum.

um, oh yeah, someone threw me onto his/her bed and kissed my neck, but it isn't what you think. i now smell like her/him.

displaced midlife crisis time

pretension
i want to write
like the sea
salty, eternal
i want you to know
i will come for you.


see, wouldn't you all love me more if my every entry were that ridiculous? maybe i SHOULD just get a livejournal and dive in with all the other sarahlawrence fucks. it would have its benefits. many, many slc people write this way.

i'm am full-on in slc's clutches. i am full-on feeling my inadequacy.

whatshisname is spending the summer in south africa, shooting a documentary. taking two friends with (i am not one of the friends). yep, that's right. but i do have an invitation to go. to south africa. this summer. to visit. (opportunity of a lifetime, much?)

huh. and yet when it came the invite made me want to cry.

i am sick of people telling me to wait, that a calling takes time. i don't want to wait. i'm not a patient person. i want to know my purpose NOW. i want to have a goal, a passion, something i can point to and say, see? THAT'S where i'm headed! doesn't it look awesome over there?

needless to say, i will not being doing anything quite so awesome with my summer.

i want to make the world a better place. this figuring-out-who-you-are crap sucks.

and i know that, in the next two (or five) years, my life will be very strange. i know that, given the things i want to do, it is better and important that i remain single. hell, in the next couple years it will be hard enough for me and my friends to keep track of each other. i comprehend that i cannot have a Soulmate during this time. it would only complicate things. but it is still lame. and if i wait til i have time and space in my life for someone, well, that'll never happen. i just have to be burst in upon.

yes, i really am selfish enough to let someone else's good news do this to me.

you have the right to write, and not much else

in prison you don't know what it's like outside. in prison you don't get ice for your drink, or regular ball point pens. in prison you can be ticketed for getting a sunburn - it's destruction of state property because your ID no longer matches your skin tone. in prison you can do 17 days in lockdown for losing your ID. seventeen fucking days for a slip of plastic. in prison they can decide to lose your mail or your money order. in prison you can listen to how your daughter is acting out while she lives with her grandmother and you know that there's nothing you can do about it and the only reason she's acting out is because you're in prison and now you have to end the call because it's collect and your mother can't afford all those bills plus your kids. in prison you can get x-rays because you complain about your chest pains and find out you have three lumps and have to go in for surgery. in prison you miss holidays. in prison, rehab is a vacation. at least in rehab you can smoke cigarettes and have sex.

these are the things i know now. what do you want me to do with them?

the question "so what's it like outside?" is devastating, coming from the right person. Nikki can't be much older than me, and she misses her son who's six. Carol never wants to write or talk, because what good are we going to do her? Stephanie doesn't understand the reading. Darlene is breaking up with her wife. anything dealing with love makes her cry. Shanelle's husband drew a Smurfette on the letter he sent her - what does that mean? if he's the man, shouldn't he be the Smurf sending a letter to his Smurfette? Darlene is sick. she's been having a lot of court dates lately. so in the midst of trying to go home and breaking up with her long-time girlfriend, she finds three lumps and must go for surgery. she'll probably get "better" healthcare in jail than out. Nikki goes home this summer. so does Stephanie. Liz is only in for like 8 months. they wish they were all getting out the same day so they could go get pedicures together. Shanelle combs Darlene's hair before it's time to go to the hospital. Liz writes about how, in group, they talk about how to stay sober once they're out and she knows this is bullshit, doesn't know how she'll stay sober, so she'll blahblah and then if that doesn't work it's blahblahblah, she writes. it's actually a funny piece with smart sensibility.

i have yet to wash the jail stench, the stale feeling the reminds me of my great-grandmother's nursing home, off my hands. i never do it quickly enough once i get out. but at least i'm out. out for another week. i wish the hour i'm in could be the one they get out.

these are the things i know now. this is what i've learned.

and when we were analyzing a poem in class today, i was shocked that they were shocked you could get any kind of drug in prison. how can they not know the saying "there's more in than out"? how could they not know that, for a price, you can get anything, as long as you're willing to pay or fuck for it?

this is what i know now.

journal

i am preoccupied with the search for the perfect journal; it takes place semi-annually and the criteria always change. so rather than write about how i was propositioned on friday by the person i've had a crush on for a year, or how i initially turned it down and have since changed my mind but haven't had a chance to say so, or about last night and how i cried through a speaker who lost his brother in iraq, or my frustration with my poetry assignment and poetry itself, or how jeana and i had the same conversation last night mana and i have been having for 4 years now, or how i tried to be normal and succeeded with the help of a corgi, or even my imaginary conversation with my imaginary mexican host family, i'd like to set forth my criteria.

my journals are mostly spiral-bound or composition notebooks. i like to be able to fold them over and write on - concentrate on - only one page. i often write lying down or hunched over so the ability to make a journal compact is important. the binding must, then, be flexible enough to allow this but durable enough to last a long time - i've had my current journal since october of '04 and this is actually a quick turnaround for me. i beat my journals up and take them everywhere - they are part security blanket. i've had large ones and smallish ones. sometimes the large ones feel ridiculous but the small ones are too playful. they must be lined. i find so many beautiful books that have blank pages and i see no point in buying a journal i'll just have to line myself - there's no point. i hate the ones with traditional book-binding that don't lay flat or bend. i must love my journal, or at least not find it an eyesore - we'll be spending a lot of time together. not anything too flashy - i want the words to do the work themselves and i don't want to answer a lot of questions about the notebook on my bed/in my hands/poking out of my tote bag. my current, almost-spent one is oversize, spiral-bound and black and has a strange little window cut in the front cover that i don't love, that i dashed some verse in that was silly enough to throw off any would-be readers. my journal is inviolate. i consider it an extension of the square inches between my ears and treat invasions with accordant violence.

i hate it when people buy journals for me, and i hate hating that, because they are always so well-intentioned. the only journal bought for me i didn't loathe is my pink love journal, and even that i can't seem to use. i can't have "love" on my cover because too many times my writing is not about love, too many times would that word influence my writing or incite me to greater drama, melacholy, or anger. my covers tend to be blank, but in the past i've done collages on them, and two of my journals (two favorites, actually) had prints on the cover - one was a matchbox, la luna, the other a mermaid with la sirena on it. but just one word? how could i stand it? like the journals with the women on them: she had not yet decided whether to use her power for good or for evil. how could you write with that cheeky mocking slogan facing you? every day? ugh. no, i need a journal that has not too much personality. that's what fueled my comp book trend, for years. it's still my default. the composition notebook is deceptive. it reminds too many people of elementary school, or saved by the bell, or something. they would leave it alone and not ask. it wasn't intimidating. that's another thing, when a journal is too beautiful - too lovely to use. that's why one beautiful journal, i believe it was recycled cardboard, became my substitute yearbook - actually, i've used several beautiful notebooks this way, and now that i think about it i may do something similar with the love book - make it a scrap book of sorts, and contain there things i think represent love, and have my friends write testimonies to love, and for my love letters, and if there's any space left i could end the book with my wedding vows or eulogy, whichever comes first.

as i'm sure you see, i could go on. i love journals. i love books. i love words. i love the blank page. sometimes i'll just open to a fresh page and look at it, and get lost in thought, and move on to something else. there are times i've dated a page and not written anything. i love my journals. they are physical proof that i exist, that i've felt other things other times, that i've grown. how i love them.

two completely different things:
one, i've found my favorite simile for death. it's the end of a li-young lee poem called "eating together." he's talking about his father:
". . . Then he lay down
to sleep like a snow-covered road
winding through pines older than him
without any travelers, and lonely for no one."

two: i can never remember which comes first, K or L.

a day in the life

sarah lawrence is such a special place.

5:00pm-8:00pm, Heimbold Visual Arts Center
* nEO-jUDAICA: ART HAPPENING * VISUAL MANIFESTATIONS OF JEWISH IDENTITY AND SPIRITUALITY

7:00pm, Titsworth Lecture Hall
FOR ALL INTERESTED IN POLITICAL AND QUEER THEATER, lecture by Jennifer Miller, founder of Circus Amok, a New York City based queer, circus-theater company whose mission is to provide free public art addressing contemporary issues of social justice. The group has been together since 1989 bringing its funny, queer, caustic and sexy, political one-ring spectacles to diverse neighborhoods. Over the years the traditional circus techniques have been combined with dance, life-size puppetry, music old and new, and dramatic monologues creating new meanings for circus while continuing to entertain the crowds of all ages throughout the city streets, gardens, parks, and playgrounds.

9:00pm, Westlands South Lawn (by Pub)
ULTIMATE FRISBEE - NIGHT DISC. We play in front of the library when the world is soggy.

9:00 pm, Titsworth Lecture Hall
Come to a screening of "The Miami Model" tonight. In November, 2003, trade ministers from 34 countries met in Miami, Florida, to negotiate the Free Trade Area of the Americas (FTAA). The FTAA threatens to devastate workers, the environment, and public services like health care, education, and water, and to destroy indigenous rights and cultural diversity across North, Central, and South America.Thousands of union members, environmentalists, feminists, anarchists, students, farm workers, media activists, and human rights activists who gathered in Miami to struggle against the FTAA were brutally attacked with rubber bullets, pepper spray, electric guns and shock batons, embedded reporters and information warfare, all coordinated by the new United States Department of Homeland Security.Collectively, Indymedia activists and friends shot hundreds of hours of video footage documenting the FTAA protests in Miami. This footage has been edited by the FTAA Miami Video Working Group into a documentary that cuts through the mass media blackout to reveal the brutal repression and assault on civil liberties that took place, as well as the life-affirming and inspiring alternatives to capitalist globalization that were also in full effect in Miami.


e-mail: (subject line "yoga house 05-06")
Hey everyone,
I am interesting in starting a new "Yoga House" theme for one of the houses on Mead Way. I have a couple of people interested and I was wondering if any of you want to jump in as well. I am hoping to arrange group classes in the city with a van as well other events. If you are interested please e-mail me at TSullivan@slc.edu
Peace,
-Tim

new rule

new rule: if i have a sex dream about you, i should get to have sex with you. it's the law. i'm looking at you, carre. (nope, no new developments. sorry.)

to my second most popular lover of all time

(no, this post is not about bobby or phil or anyone dead. one more guess . . . )

i am summoning you. i am working my voodoo and i summon you, kid. show up. call me. find my number. call my sister and get it.

that won't happen. it's the same spell i've been casting for months now, calling out to him. be there when i get back. come outta the woodwork. please let me find you. i know you don't exactly want to be found, but i desperately want you found. all i need from you is one good night, i promise. one good conversation. i don't even need to play with you anymore. i miss the way you used to talk when you were on a really enjoyable roll. you knew how to torture me. i wish we'd been able to grow up together, wish i'd seen you develop. i am calling you back. return.

you affected me, and me only. none of my friends really know what you did to me. (simultaneously, they sense it.) visions of you visit me almost as often as the other ones that everyone knows so much about. i never let you break my heart, but i did love you a whole lot. and it's shitty the way i kicked you out of my life, i just didn't know what else to do at the time. i know your story even though you didn't tell it to me. i know she hit you, i know you miss your father and love him and hate him so very much. i know you're just a screwed up kid in a house full of women looking for a way out. i know how you hide, i know how you exploit the freaky parts of your upbringing so we don't ask what really happened. i'm sorry.

i always imagined you as someone else, in some tiny corner of my brain. in my picturings of you living a different life, they nurture your gifts. in my head we end up with a different story. anywhere but santa fe, you are a potential longterm boyfriend for me. you take copious black and whites of me. had you been raised anywhere else, anytown u.s.a., by slightly less freaky people, you'd be so average, gorgeous, and it would be perfect. you'd be normal and i would too. i picture you winning accolades in high school. working for the newspaper. i see your after school job. i know living in santa and having the freaky lives we all have is good for us, will make us better people in the long run. it's just hard sometimes. i know you're clawing your way out right now, but i wish the past were different for us.

please stop haunting me.