Miss Lin

more people are filing in while

2006-05-11T10:49:33Z

my hands are cold.

meaty nights, sultry days

2006-05-11T09:58:24Z

hello livejournal friends. hello. i haven't made a public entry in years (or months) and this feels a little weird. not least because i have a golf ball living inside the left side of my throat. it says hello to me each time i open my mouth, which is unfortunate, because i would just like it to shut the hell up, swollen lymph node disaster. if it were not for you, i would be eating now. eating and feeling up to par. i'm not sure what gave me the idea that writing here was a better idea than writing my final, but the CIT has a strange effect on you sometimes. for example, my ass. it feels a little weird. not in that pleasant warm way (you know who you are), but in that lack of circulation way. occasionally, i can feel my sides twitter like the birds that must have been going at it in the brightening day outside for hours now (they can start as early as 4, those mean bastards). i think that. i am. ready. to. surrender. but. i must. not. get up. or it will be. all. over. (your shirt) there's this blonde chick next to me who have been at it for about as long as i have (okay, minus two hours when i was emailing). there's an open can of red bull in front of her and a pack of dentyne ice. what will she think if i suddenly took them both from her? will she finish her paper then? okay. i must stop here. i'm not sure if public entries are a good idea. they're not as good of a substitute for a twix bar from the vending machine as i thought they would be. or rubbing your hands together, incessantly. or staring. or peeing. or or or

procrastination 1

2005-12-20T19:49:54Z

there is a chain of grocery stores here called picard that feels like the uncanny future. you can't see any real food but only images of cooked gourmet food that obviously do not exist then and there or in the immediate future when you will have heated up a smart package labeled poêlée à la landaise only to discover that it contains miles and miles of starch and no other nutrient in sight. i think that for christmas, there will be me and a reticent japanese acquaintance (masahiro) here and no one else familiar for miles and miles around. the nights and days here are blending together like dirty snow. there will be many more images of gourmet food in the next few days, i can tell. at least he's japanese.

enter_miss_lin @ 2005-11-20T22:21:00

2005-11-20T22:00:17Z

I have to shit in the dark sometimes, because you have to keep on hitting the light switch, you know, and it is just so far from the toilet. After getting up mid-shit a couple of times, I decided that it was just not worth it.

I took a shower in my neighbor the German girl Judith's room this afternoon instead of the evening, like I usually do. It was a first for me -- washing in the filtered sun. At first I wasn't sure how to go about asking for such a privilege, as we had originally agreed on 7 pm. But it was a Sunday. And I didn't want to wait. Not even for her to eat; no, not this time.
She usually reads a book quietly on her bed while I step into a plastic cubicle not five feet away from her and turn on the works. After the last flooding however, when I had lost track of time and watched in speechless horror at the water seeping inevitably out from my sealed cubicle to invade the hardwood floor private space beside her bed, I decided to employ a new strategy wherein I would turn the water off and let it drain at crucial intervals during which I'd apply shampoo, conditioner, think happy thoughts, etc. The silence in which I must lather up is still not something I'm too comfortable with.
Judith is currently doing an internship with a film company -- translating the script and other frivolous tasks like that. Her face uncannily resembles that of Rielle, my roommate at Watermyn last fall.

Incidentally, I also attended the Paris Photo 2005 expo today, which was, according to some nebulous sources, "the" international photography exhibit. It was in a labyrinthine gallery space underneath the plaza in front of the Louvre, so I suppose it was somewhat important.
There were just so many images, however. So many. All so perfectly framed, symmetric, or all so perfectly off-center, oblique, out of focus. It was excruciating. A bombardment. Too many perfectly tastefully dressed europeans and new yorkers with flawless hygiene. You can tell by carefully scrutinizing their skin and knowing that age cannot be better preserved with the array of current instruments at humanity's disposal. Well-preserved middle-aged women furtively fondled by older men in dark sweaters. A car was on display as well, for whatever reason, which a man in a grey suit would occasionally polish. Around it were the stalls of magazines gaining publicity like the photographers themselves with their coffeetable books and pamphlets. I eavesdropped on an art deal between two Americans for 5000 euros.
The nausea didn't fully hit me until I exited the projection room where they had been showing what Shepherd told me was a video made by Jerry Garcia about what I conjectured to be the future of europe in the style of an 80s music video. Or was it. We left half the exhibit unseen.

It's all about money, was the conclusion we drew, redundantly, while sitting in an overpriced sichuan restaurant half an hour later. We listlessly watched row after row of middle-aged Chinese men and women file in and both secretly craved the sunshine and developing nation prices of the good old PPR as it was this summer. We also both secretly concluded that Paris was dead.

But a devastatingly beautiful carcass.

enter_miss_lin @ 2004-12-15T08:25:00

2004-12-15T13:30:57Z

I don't even want to talk about it. I spent an hour at Ocean's this morning, between 7 and 8, and ate a toasted bagel with humus and tomato. OOOOh, look at me not talking about it! As Jojo once put it, "I KNOW,I'm totally losing control here..." keke &_&

Got woken up by students instead of nightwatchman. Good to have so much company for a change. hehe

omg, i just saw short asian girl who always chats with nightwatchman and claims him as a father figure clutching a teddy bear on her way out...

drama continues....

bodies that don't matter because nothing does

2004-12-15T05:15:39Z

You know what stands between me and 6 weeks of hibernation, no deadlines, chinese food binging, and sex? 4-6 pages, 12pt. double-spaced. It's not difficult, not monstrous at all, and yet I've been here since 5pm, and there's only a few empty coffee cups, some flecks of chewed dead skin, and no rough draft to show for it.

I always do this. 8, 10, 15 pgs. of quotes/outline/"ideas" for 5-6 pgs. of final copy. Somehow, the very motion of typing quickly keeps my mind sufficiently decieved about my productivity for it to avert self-abort missions, but only momentarily. I think I've copied about every paragraph of my reading unto my outline by now. And this is not even the final, codified outline; this is a brainstorming, note-organizing outline. 'Toni Morrison dissected.' 'Judith Butler dissected.' I'll dissect them. Let me unsheath my shiny pocket knife and signify on their respective inscriptional spaces, black blood dribbling on white skin, a receptacle full of forms. Take that phallogocentric economy. And that, insidious Africanism. Mime me out of this binary, because I certainly can't.

I'm not worried, though. Pop one pill every afternoon, around 3-5pm, sometimes with food. The routine is like that pleasant surprise feeling you get when you realize that you haven't eaten for more than 3 hours, and are therefore not wholly unjustified for taking another meal, and consequently meal break. Or in the morning, after you've just woken up -- you know you're at least due for breakfast because no one's against breakfast, even if you just had a rather unpremeditated breakfast last night.

I'd take geeky pleasure in the nerdiness of that second paragraph if only it all meant something. But it doesn't. None of my papers will contribute to any fraction of anyone's well-being in the future, and certainly not mine. I don't learn anything from them except how to obsessively organize this particular obscure text into that trite point that will be a surprise or benefit to nobody, least of all myself, but which will nonetheless have taken me days to figure out over dry mouth bitter coffee and 12-hour cramped sit-downs in public spaces. Am I in the wrong concentration?

Should I even be asking that question? Not really. There's really no point. There's no right concentration for anyone. Least of all, yours truly.
There's this girl with a pen in her mouth and earphones who's been sitting next to me since late afternoon with a few books open in her lap. Unlike the unfaithful suitors to my left, she's been at her station diligently (like me) the entire time. My shame just deepens, however, as I realize how much more she must be accomplishing (than me) and how much she underestimates my capacity to look up stories written by my roommate's potential literature classmate bryson newhart online.
Johnny Lin was outside a while ago scribbling something on an outline, seemly hat over seedy black mane. John Gruen was walking around as well, unseemly facial hair obscuring characteristic facial luminosity. Oh the famous. Oh the ambitious and their success. 'Oh' is something I learned to say from my roommate, who has taught me many other things, like underhanded sex tricks and underwater snorkeling.

more hateful missives from club IT (c.it)

2004-11-19T09:03:49Z

2:30am
I’m working hard to make myself perish. My chest is kind of constricted underneath the clasped bra straps that were bought when I was two years ago and 25 pounds less like the hulk. My inner thigh fat splays unabashedly upon the soft spinney chairs of the CIT, and my scoliosian torso leans frankly to the side, as if it’s saying (like all my limbs): fuck it, might as well be inert. Dust to dust, inanimate object to inanimate object. My eyes feel small again, either because I’ve long rubbed the eyeshadow off of them that I applied two days ago and didn’t get the willpower to reapply again, or because they really are small, and only now am I fully comprehending the true essences of my constituent parts. A slight soreness slides under the surface like a secret letter so that I don’t notice it much, putting off the day when I pierce the seal and realize it represents death and doom.

2:47am
A blank, poorly lit cream wall sits in front of me. A lighter one bends obligingly to my right. The clean right angle squats around my smelly little corner while the open space my left allow me to spy on other people. Strands of notebook hole paper lie crumpled and curled here and there like so many disembodied spines of paper beasts past. The beige plastic is the battlefield of the slain; my wrists rest right on them, anticipating eagerly their turn at carpel tunnel. Maybe then something will happen. The sticker by the monitor is peeling off slightly on its upper right corner. Maybe my feelings will stop. Everything’s the same, the rest of it – silver Dell center dial, a yellow notice reminding one to use one’s AUTHID instead of another forged identity, a poor picture of the building’s front printed loudly on the mouse pad, so that the mouse virtually bleeds into the reality of that façade. Maybe my emotions will go first, and then each and every last soreness like a fading traffic light, one after another, pulsing their last commands and then fading into the inchoate night.

3:25am
God, that guard’s voice is so jarring. I hate him. He scolds me about putting my coffee on the floor each time in a booming, accusatory voice that jumps the nerve as if I were his five-year old snotty child. I respond with the harshest weapons I can muster, defenseless except for my fragile shell of caffeine. I try to pretend that he doesn’t exist. “How many times did I have to tell you that. Do you want me to personally throw –“ But no, no, elephant man, you don’t exist, you don’t exist, look look, I’m looking right past you and moving my cup to the other side of the room as if the thought had just naturally occurred to me two seconds ago and I were doing this out of my own sweet unfettered will that is absolutely none of your business because in all actuality and all possible worlds, you don’t exist, you’re in the worst of all possible states, you don’t exist and I’m walking right past you as if you were a third blank wall, fat man.

There was this short squat Asian girl once with floor-length skirts, waist length hair, and glasses. She had an obtrusive though still melodic voice, and I used to think she was kind of cute since she didn’t fit into the usual rail pole let’s play the ass illusion game where I pretend to have shape when I really don’t because I have special Asian metabolism for pretty girls stereotype. (imagine dashes) But then, one night, while I was just starting to doze off on a couch at 3am, I heard her voice in conjunction with something foul that I would never want to hear anything remotely commingled with. She was sitting with her thighs apart underneath her skirt in the guard’s little cubicle.
“I just like to talk to random police guards a lot. They thought I was kind of strange at the station, but –“
I don’t know what Fat Man said, but it was probably self-righteous, ignorant, and a vocal cord felony. I wanted to shoot them both.
That’s the end of my story about the squat short Asian girl.

4:01am
I hate writing papers. I hate my English class. I just want to skip it tomorrow, but I skipped it already like three times to the point where she set aside grading my paper because she thought that I had dropped the class. But then again that paper was a week late. I blinked at her in mute shock and innocence when she casually mentioned it to me with those shrewd professor who hates you but can’t do anything physically violent to you eyes. My act was supposed to be that I didn’t know it was due last Monday – hehe, I thought it was due this past Monday. Wow, ohmygosh, how could I have mixed up – oh, jesus. Yeah, way to go last-minute procrastination strategies.
So of course she’s justified in wanting to treat me like an inanimate foot stool in class and discounting everything I tremulously venture to say in seven-kid seminars.

I make my very very best drawings in those two hours Friday afternoons. Everything I know about Wallace Stevens I learned while plotting revenge on nonexistent security personnel at 5 am. I slide halfway down my chair and splay my legs out fully in class out of boredom and desperation.

I am an anti-Brown kid. I must leave. Here I go! (I go.)

deja vu

2004-11-18T15:16:30Z

Days prostinated on paper: 5
Days overdue: 3 and counting...
Minutes until last CO121 section where i never talk and won't this time either: 19
Hours slept in CIT: 2 nights on different couches last week. 6 hours last night. planned to wake up in 2 hours after setting alarm on watch. woke up in middle of night to fellow crasher on couch opposite me, felt twisted sense of camaraderie, fell back asleep to shouts of eager, fat night guard. god i hate him.
PLME breakdowns: 123509870
Final decision: PLME is great. PLME is god. I will take time off next semester and come back to financial aid fraud but still end up a shrink.

visitors:1, props to jojo coming to visit me in my personal smelly corner!

enter_miss_lin @ 2004-07-13T12:15:00

2004-07-13T16:15:29Z





	
	
	
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How compatible with me are YOU?

doomsday project

2004-06-17T08:02:39Z

AAAAH, I just wrote so much on this journal and now it has been all erased. ALL ERASED. I was feeling quite calm and content before, I had trouble moving sentences across the space to express meaning in creative ways. But now I'm really angry, and I still have the same problem. AAAH. It had been so coherent, albeit stifling. I'll never write like I want to. I feel like a child who dreams of Michaelangelo and only has three markers at his disposal. I feel stupid for thinking I should be writing well, or even trying. These thoughts are self negating, erasing meaning like the eraser brush dog on Alice in Wonderland (Disney version). And now I'm just writing whatever comes into my mind first, like any gross common livejournaler with their studied emo lines and windows of song lyrics. If we wanted to read about what Tom Waits thought, we could rip the CD. Why don't they just go on articulately about their psychological landscapes already? ee cummings is not better. People should quote things like this instead:

"I have said that depression is both a birth and a death. The vine is what is born. The death is one's own decay. the cracking of the branches that support this misery. The first thing that goes is happiness. You cannot gain pleasure from anything. That's famously the cardinal symptom of major depression. But soon other emotions follow happiness into oblivion: sadness as you had known it, the sadness that seemed to have led you here; your sense of humor; your belief in and capacity for love. Your mind is leached until you seem dim-witted even to yourself. If your hair has always been thin, it seems thinner; if you have always had bad skin, it gets worse. You smell sour even to yourself. You lose the ability to trust anyone, to be touched, to grieve. Eventually, you are simply absent from yourself."

There's a post-it note taped on the bottom of my monitor that lists authors and titles, because I compulsively collect them in hopes of having powerful relationships with beautiful, cultured, witty and wise young men. Susan Sontag, (it says) Chang-rae Lee, Nabakov because of fiction writing and that oh_comely's obsessively reading him, Pushkin because the other ohcomely had him taped all over her walls. (or his) I do this also to seek truth. (and sex)

I hate literature. I just realized this today at the College Hill Bookstore when I had gotten up from my snug perch with Vogue and W, having gotten surprisingly sick of Gualtier and Boy George meets Punk photoshoots, to wander around looking for an actual book to bite down on. (not literally) 5 minutes, 5000 seconds, I was even picking up Faulkner to see if he had miraculously become unSouthern and comprehensible since the last time I checked. It was always the same -- a few lines here, a sci-fi porn chapter there. Oh yes, and then there were the empty shelves. 25% storewide sale including bookshelves. What the dickens was going on? "So are you guys getting a large shipment of new books, or something?" I asked a book shelving lady: tall, wiry, authorly face with spectacles and intense, bagged eyes. "No. The store's going out of business." She pronounced each phrase with a clarity that didn't seem to be sarcastic and vengeful at the time. "That's why there are large signs with 'Closing' on them up there." (but now it does) "Ooohhh," was about all I could manage with a mind fogged by Gwyneth Paltrow. Imbecile! Rude! Negligent idiot! Those were just some of the names I was calling myself in my head as I walked along, poofing my hair over my ears with studied nonchalance and idling near the religion aisle. I had always been obsessed with spirituality, but now all the books they had left were about God. (Gwyneth was the W cover)
My learning curve on how to live with perpetual twitchiness (it was a good issue this month) soared after Xiyun called me repeatedly called me twitchy. I'd walk into the room and do my usual stumbling through of salutatory stock phrases before picking up speed. "Oh my god," she'd say, waving her hands as if she were simultaneously cleaning two windows with vigor or demonstratively taking leave of siamese twins. "You're soo twitchy..." I'd verbalize my conversational pauses and let loose a loop of half-finished phrases while my real mind occupied itself with other matters because I trusted Xiyun like that. "Xiaojue. Stop it." Okay fine, I admit that this was partially in self indulgence, but my point of departure had been the fact that pertual self name-calling is a symptom of perpetual, uncontrollable twitchiness. Once it had a label (and an accurate one), my general anxiety ceased to really worry me. I recognized the name as one would "arm" if one had always wondered about those strange, long offshoots, and fretted about why they were there, why one could never quite control them from, say, poking one's left eye out. (or others') It might not even be far from the truth that I'm rather fond of my twitchiness. In stifling, coherent prose: it fleshes out my stock character and gives me something to dramatize comfortably.
I hated literature. I couldn't bear it.
The answer was, of course, to find one book that I could read as I had always read and loved reading before, and then buy it. As atonement. To the tall, wiry woman with the authorly face. I loved making myths for myself, because it was like something to have faith in again. If I could pick up a book, and read it, and feel the same about the written word as I had always, deliriously felt about it before, after third grade, during most of adolescence, then I could buy it for the exorbitant price bookstores charge for things you could get free everywhere, and it would be one of my first benificent monetary acts. Telling Stanley to donate his money for any charitable cause would be like asking him to carve out one of his kidneys now and serve it on a platter. But okay, it wouldn't actually be purely benificent (if that is actually the word and not benevolent) if I were actually getting a book in return for it. Myths are all flawed in some selfish way.

The above excerpt was it. I found it almost the moment I made the decision to make my first nonacademic literary purchase of the year -- a thick, juicy, red paperback that was smooth, and large, and comforting with its National Book Award medal, NY Times Bestseller, and Pulitzer Prize Finalist labels arranged neatly on the cover. My hipster instinct told me that it was evil to make choices based upon the decisions of major, sponsored, mainstream organizations like the NY Times Bestsellers List. Or was it my radical instinct? At any rate, the NY intellectual in me just yearning to be freed was liking the polyaccolades. I bought it for $12. Exorbitant! Extravagant! Reck --

It's called The Noonday Demon, by Andrew Solomon, and it had other gems like:

"'Welcome this pain,' Ovid once wrote, 'for you will learn from it.' It is possible (though for the time being unlikely) that, through chemical manipulation, we might locate, control, and eliminate the brain's circuitry of suffering. I hope we will never do it. To take it away would be to flatten out experience, to impinge on a complexity more valuable than any of its component parts are agonizing. If I could see the world in nine dimensions, I'd pay a high price to do it. I would live forever in the haze of sorrow rather than give up the capacity for pain. But pain is not acute depression; one is loves and is loved in great pain, and one is alive in teh experience of it. It is the walking-death quality of depression that I have tried to eliminate from my life."

"Depression is the flaw in love. To be creatures who love, we must be creatures who can despair at what we lose, and depression is the mechanism of that despair. When it comes, it degrades one's self and ultimately eclipses the capacity to give or receive affection. It is the aloneness within us made manifest, and it destroys not only connection to others but also the ability to be peacefully alone with oneself. Love, though it is no prophylactic against depression, is what cushions the mind and protects it from itself. Medications and psychotherapy can renew that protection, making it easier to love and be loved, and that is why they work."

I feel still. I look at my stomach and see its bulge like a pale alien growth, and I'm suddenly repulsed. Not repulsed in the same ways I've always been, with self-loathing and panic racing ahead neck to neck with it. I feel as thin as I'd always been before college. Only now I carry alien growths that I feel can be shed as surely as a cold sore from the mouth or influenza from the body. I eat slightly less everyday by accident.

Only now do I realize that no one can wade into these still waters with me. Nothing has changed, I'm just a lot more honest and unabashed about things with others. You reach a certain stage in which you realize that you're transforming into this hideous, deformed, ape-like creature, with a chest that's exposed to the ribs and moist beating heart, and it has catheters and wires attached everywhere. You can't help morphing into this degenerate being, and perhaps the only thing you wish more than for it to stop or reverse itself, is for others not to see you decay. Sometimes you reach interstices of change in which you have no longer have control over what others can see or not see of yourself. I open my state willingly for public viewing. I've grown more sick of trying to hide the tubes with garish gesticulations that prevent me from focusing on the problems. That doesn't mean that I want the public to see. I just don't care anymore. The last stages of recovery or change or whatever are done in solitude. Perhaps I'm only at the beginning, though I feel as if it's taken me forever to get here.

Trail of Pee

2004-04-19T06:04:09Z

Today was really great.
I got out of bed because I had to throw up. I'm really sick. I mean REALLY sick.

I feel sad, because Sarah and Britney are complete bitches. They told everyone I have an STD, just because I slept with both of their boyfriends on Saturday night.

I'm so hardcore. Me and Buzz went to the mall today, and I stole a whole heap of stuff. I got a Good Charlotte CD, a couple of DVDs and some new boots. Buzz got caught, but he fought his way out, and then we stole some lady's car and smashed it into a phone booth.

Last night I had to shave my entire body. Apparently, the lice that I caught from Amanda's friend are really hard to get rid of. I look quite strange with no hair and eyebrows. I'd post pictures, but my webcam is broken.

I want to tell the world to get fucked.

I am sharpening my knives before I go to work today, because I'm going to cut out Robert's heart and feed it to him for losing my mail.

Today, I got a digital camera! Yes! Here's ten thousand photographs of my cat.

I want to say thanks to Babybob556 for making the background and icons for my journal. Thanks hon, ur super special!

I went to the doctor yesterday, and he said I have a terrible skin disease which prevents me from coming into contact with other human beings. And bipolar disorder.

You should all do this quiz! It's amazingly accurate. You just put in your name and birthday, and it will tell you next week's lottery numbers.

Sometimes I dream of Kristy Yamaguchi. I pull up my hair over my left ear in a Claudia Kishi pony tail, look in the mirror, and think: grrrr. daaamn. what would kristy be up to right now? I hear I'm big in Japan.

That's enough for now. But I'll leave you with this poem I wrote. It's about my friend Robert, who has bipolar disorder. Just like me. And Heidi.

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Dessicated Lenses

2004-04-15T07:21:59Z

I only had a contact in my right eye for most of the night. My vision for the most part was clearer than usual, except for that occasional look-I'm-sliding-into-multiple-dimensions feel. Sometimes my left eye hurt a little.

It all started when I twisted open my can of lenses and became quite aghast to see what had used to be quite the protean left contact smeared onto the side of its empty container, a shriveled blue husk like a dead roach exoskeleton. I couldn't completely register the death of my first substitute eyeball, and my panicked flailing intensified accordingly. I began tearing open my spare packet of left eyes, only to discover five seconds later at the mirror that a new one had been impaled in the center. There was an aperture in the middle of my contact. I hastily tore out a second packet with trembling fingers as my twitching started its asthma. The second one was shredded before I could even dab it on my finger. I was begining to sound like a ferocious cow when, thankfully, before my eager fingernails could pierce the amniotic sac of my third virgin eyepiece, the phone rang.

I went to Machado after changing outfits five times, and then going back to the first two, and then finally donning one that I hadn't previously tried and which didn't actually look better than the others, but which for some reason, I thought would work better than all of them anyway. It probably didn't. That and my shredded eye fetuses could be the symbolic imagery of the entry for my night.

Thank god it was his surprise birthday party and there were lots of other people. Too bad I only made social contact with his friends. Too bad he's a premed. Thank god I didn't suddenly spring up in the middle of their conversation about Dylan and bang my fingers on my teeth as if I were playing dental bongo drums. Like I had wanted to. Oops.

"They look like they're in a 70s movie," pointed out his friend, referring to the shaggy haired lanky tall boy and his shaggy haired beautiful girlfriend (lithe, shapely, tight-fitting velcro tweed pants. I didn't even know those existed. Bitch.) She laughed in that casual, self aware but non-neurotic way that makes me think of the word "poser" but which I would later emulate in other conversations while imagining myself dangling a cigarette. He started talking about the way he tried to impress his ex-girlfriend. That was when I knew the horse was dead, and I should never beat it again by going back there, or calling. She lay down on the pool table and he leaned his shaggy head against her stomach. I watched him watching her, intently. It didn't look like anything special, but I was still subdued.

While wandering back in the rain like a catatonic cyclops, I decided to become a Dylan scholar.

just another little windsor adventure OR who knew canada had absinthe OR i wish i was on winter brk

2004-01-12T09:55:26Z

her back is cavernous and sensual, little arching shadows to teach you how much more weight can be shed and what that would look like. ridged chordata zipping up to shoulder blade wings, shifting in nuanced movement, hovering among three bottles of absinth before reaching over to choose one, the real deal from the Czech Republic and no synthetic wormwood oil in all its $11 a shot glory. i think you girls have had enough to drink. shit, but what about those slimming olive green Milk shirts you're wearing, are they for sale? it's a red laser that pulsates extremely fast every second so that your eye thinks it's one continuous strem. the red numbers say it's Jan. 10 already, and you don't fully register what that means, though you're ready for more. more days. stumble gigglingly into orange bathroom with large mirror framed in dark gilt reflecting inequitable distributions, but what else is new. the night is happy now, and nothing exists but present effervescence. we ricochet against walls. your little friend is passed out. we speak to ourselves of sudden concern; we feel to ourselves continued tranquility and happiness. i try to maintain outward composure, she stalks ahead skittishly; he raises his head from the table even before we get there and we're all back into the gaiety of things spoken before thought and movements at glance-turning volumes. flaming sugar cubes are demolished by the same godawful elixir that holds the key to so many spiritual subjectivities. there were bubbles on the walls and sunflowers in her garden. technicolor plasticity and the voluptuous newsprint mannequin all reminded you of the lactating decor of a clockwork orange, as clear as an unmuddied lake under an azure summer sky the association was, enough perhaps to even justify the turtle-neck flocks gathered there in little intense clumps of conversing. a bit intimidating and quieting at first, you'll admit, until you find one pair to be playing a plain game of chess and another horizontally striped chubby woman uttering no great sermon in polysyllabics to her focused male listener. the wormhole is open, the wormhole is open! he shouts, raising skinny white arms in v-formation (victory a la nixon? geese flying south?) he rushes to assist in the wormhole's closing each time, not being overly fond of cold air blasts. are you in the same world as i?

Environmental Activism

2004-01-05T05:08:13Z

I realized that I had not yet fully comprehended the nature of what was keeping me from being completely alive until my most recent powow in the land of best friendom with Kim and our associates. The answer, or one of the vital ones, rather, lay in the good ol' E & A -- esoteria and arcania (Not elephantine & asinine, like those people you saw that other day. Nor, would I say, is it Environmental Activism). Life wasn't quite all there (or was glaringly absent from the party) because there hadn't been enough things that were Esoteric and Arcane in circulation. We decided that "Chuck and Buck" and "Pink Flamingoes" were Esoteric and Arcane, as were Skinny Puppy, Oghr (Canadian products can be sometimes considered E&A by definition), Praga Kahn, Kidney Thieves. Certain people led E&A lifestyles, walking into jungles in Thailand with only a map and compass and reaching the village where the other only foreigners were two French lesbians, just in time to observe the palpable night sky; serving as a reporter in Israel for a small publication in the States; and most recently: transporting Christmas trees in Manhattan and becoming involved with a German Ethiopian girl. It might be considered even more esoteric and arcane, perhaps, if such a figure, an old friend with whom Kim and I had met up at a cafe, reproduced such globetrotting experiences just for our benefit and was secretly a pathological liar. Perhaps that knowlegde would have disappointed the entire encounter, had we not then sung a Chinese song a capella (a welcomed diversion from the acoustic guitars and alternative) in public and sealed the E&A value of the evening. Siamese twins who are both Asian and Caucasian are also quite E&A (see LJ's double_talk), but that's a little different from Asian and Caucasian female duos attached at the hip only figuratively.

more strangled cries from asphyxiated existence

2003-07-25T21:14:22Z

I really wish that my entries could be more pleasant. More succinct witty pieces around a distinct theme, like Joyce Wu's or something (http://eroswanker.diaryland.com). Less neurotic, repetitively adolescent and depressing. Oops! Guess I just have emotional down's syndrome or something. I'll be perpetually arrested in my gloom and doom phase.

In keeping with that tradition, let me open up with melodrama:
I broke down during work today. I just wrenched the door open and walked out quickly, leaving the loose monkey with nothing to chew on but inanimate objects, privy to the peers of eccentric colleague Buyong looking in curiously from the other door. By the time I had gotten around to his side of things, he bade me look at the video camera trapped inside the loose monkey chamber and declared, perhaps a bit reproachfully, "look, he's trying to get back in the cage. If you left the door open, he would be in the cage." It suddenly dawned on me that perhaps when Buyong had said "door" in his Korean accent when I was still inside panicking, he had meant for me to shut the monkey chamber door and instead of getting out the human door to avert danger myself. Oops #2! Lacking the agility and cleverness to retrieve monkey under highly hazardous conditions (even though I've consistently done so with success for two months in the past)? Sorry meester, I'm not the one who's stuck in this shit job for most of my adult life. If I don't want to sacrifice my health to monkeypox and SIV virus from infectious biting (and I've already sustained one bite for a summer souvenir), I suppose I'm too much the lily-livered dimwit to be regarded as a worthwhile human being in the dept. Oh well, when I PETA your ass, it'd be your loss, not mine.

"He might damage the video equipment," observed the keen stocky middle-aged man. Indeed -- I suppose I don't cost as much as a 10-year old clunky camcorder.

The Situation:
When people ask me what I'm doing this summer, I usually opt for the dramatic sound byte of "I inject monkeys with cocaine." They'll think that's superfically amusing and really interesting, and secretly harbor doubts as to the creature-friendly branch of my ethics. They'd be correct -- I don't just want to inject monkeys with cocaine, I want to kill them. Okay, I take that back, I don't actually want to kill my primates. After all, what else would an essentially feral, nimble animal do after being dragged on by a steel chain which courses snugly around their neck, forced to cling to a metal pole, subject their tail (that usually rapidly defurs and sickens in captivity) to being grabbed firmly and one of their legs violently pulled? Excuse me, multiply all the above by 4 in the space of 30 minutes and then ponder how you would feel were you in that situation. No, actually, I pity the animals. I can't stifle my yelp of surprise when I see such an aforementioned creature with notoriously sharp teeth leap and clutch at me with lightening speed, but I can use hindsight to qualify my spite at this entire institution and hone it down to a dull hatred for the insular humans who have devised it.

My job description full and uncut for all those who are still curious: I run three studies in the dept. of Behavioral Biology at the New England Primate Center, hidden deep within the pine forests of Marlboro, Mass. (One Pine Hill Rd. -- there are two Pine Hills, take the longer one, PETA enthusiasts!) to avoid smashing rocks or riots from animal activists. Now, before I get long-winded again, why the heck did I choose to work here in the first place if I knew that it was going to be a Primate research center? That's both a vital and logical inquiry. The truth is, I'm not quite sure why I wasn't clear-headed enough to consider the possibility that I would be working with monkeys, and possibly doing something I had never thought I'be a perpetrator of: animal testing. It was affiliated with Harvard Medical School, one of the few job offers I received, and I desperately needed its higher income to have maybe, oh i dunno, $5 or something left over after I pay financial aid for my summer. Actually, no one else who got accepted into the program worked with anything more multicellular than a brain tissue sample. They were all surprised and horrified when they saw slides and heard stories about deaths due to the Herpes B you could get from macaque bites, but not as shocked as I was when the nurse asked which dept. I'd be working in and reassured me with, "Oh, then you'll be in direct contact with the monkeys all the time."

(to be continued)

enter_miss_lin @ 2003-07-22T16:05:00

2003-07-22T20:28:18Z

You're an artistic intellectual.

What Sort of Intellectual Are You?
brought to you by Quizilla

You lean more to the dramatic side. You tend to
open up easier and trust people, but you have
good judgement. You're intellegent and think a
lot. You stand up for yourself and others and
you dont care what people think of you.You're
the best kind of person. Good job.

The Inner-Self Quiz
brought to you by Quizilla

enter_miss_lin @ 2003-07-20T16:42:00

2003-07-20T20:45:30Z

womp womp. chomp chomp. killer bunny takes the bill.

7/19/03 Evening Papers, Take Two

Okay, so I had already written my allotted morning papers this morning, as I was supposed to. My self analytical expostulatory talents were finally waning, and so I decided, in one last ditch effort to garner something precious and worthwhile out of every single sheaf of MP’s, to do a little bit of planning. Mulling over logistics always gets me going. A little bit of imagining things that would make me happy. Things I maybe, just perhaps, once thought were fun. I’d forgotten what fun had felt like and wanted to install it back. So I plotted out the interiors of miniature rooms, considering my previous approximate five-year love affair with miniature dollhouses (a fornication that would’ve spiraled deliciously onward were there no SATs or paternal enforcements), and decided that: why fix what ain’t broke? Lounging couches shaped a bit like conch shells only more lengthened, ones I could call sleep couches because only the afternoon-nap determined were worthy to sink into their cushy innards. It would be spiced with long cylindrical cushions. With tassels. Yeah, tassels. Hanging mobiles reminiscent of that aerial, equine contraption swinging atop the self-consciously white and spacious walls of the Met’s modernist rooms. The one that made a brief, but savored cameo appearance on U.S. postage stamps? Yeah, wire flourishes with thin red and black flakes like that one, hanging, swinging far above my wooden floors. Lenore. Wooden polished floors, perhaps constructed out of pilfered Starbucks coffee stirrers. Like the ones I pilfered from Starbucks today when I had nowhere else to go and didn’t want to call Ali (to turn up my vulnerable, clingy, annoying side for another well-intended indirect rejection. I find it funny that he would sound so distressed when he audibly racks his brain for me: “Okay, um…what could you do tonight….um…well, maybe you could go hang out with..”) and didn’t want to call Mikki Asada just yet (whom I met while thanking my lucky stars and angel guardians at the OMAC one fortuitous late afternoon) because I wanted to save that possibility/treat for a weekday evening when I’d inevitably be infinitely more miserable. I mean, I had just the one excuse of having just seen her again after a few months, verbalized the standard boisterous longings for her company in the ambiguous future, and consequently given her my number. She hasn’t called yet to my knowledge, but I still have her Vines CD (Highly Evolved, borrowed for one last hasty musical hoarding before I left Brown for Windsor), and that would be something trivial enough to sound sufficiently self-sufficient (and anti-desperate) but also urgent enough to warrant an almost assured definite meeting. I could just say, “Hey Mikki, how are you? Yeah, I just recently found your cell phone number in one of my drawers and decided to try it. Yeah, um, and I also think that I just found your CD in my computer this morning and I was like, ‘whoa, I can’t believe I’ve had it for this long and forgot to give it to her.’ Yeah, I’m really sorry, but if you want, I can bring it over to you or something.” Party innocently consents. Get-together scheduled. Hey, even were there no more social interactions to be milked out of that contact, I’ll have had one more to last me a few days at the very least, and who knows? If I play my cards right….Okay, so that’s what I had also thought of the Nick/Chelsea’s Providence friend whom I had just met for one night but had at the time thought indubitably charmed/Pirates of the Caribbean episode. He still hasn’t called me again, but that’s probably also because I may have been just a little bit, you know, awkward and more..quiet..than had been my previous garrulous, seductive self in the presence of old tried and true cronies. That doesn’t mean Mikki, who’s lived right across the hall from me for an entire year, and seen me transform from popular and skinny to bulgy and awkward (okay, maybe she hadn’t paid the faintest attention at all, but just supposing…), would fail me in the same crucial, gut-wrenching way. Provided it’s true that we had never really hung out with each other despite the proximity of our living quarters, but I had always known that she was there. I mean, I had never been averse to the possibilities, and neither, I would wager, had she.
Wait, but where was I? Oh yeah, at Starbucks, stealing bushels of wooden coffee stirrers for all I was worth. And a sly helping of Equal aspartame sugar packets to facilitate my attempted anorexic lifestyle (at least I prepare) to boot (or in this case, to fire-engine red schoolbag). And who should stride in but a lean, mean, sex machine Asian boy in wifebeater and incongruous cowboy hat, sending a million-watt wide grin straight at me? Just kidding. Actually, I did see the kid of the aforementioned description, and he did indeed throw a look in my direction. But twas no sunny beam, alas. More furtive, like. I waited in trepidation for his exit, but for the life of me couldn’t detect him anywhere after a few moments of deliberate surveillance avoidance (did cowboy bebop morph into girl and worked the counter? Got bit too mesmerized by bathroom chalkboard? Seriously, that’s the most motherfuckin pretentious bit of toiletry accessory I’ve ever seen.). Oops. Oh well. Another one bites the dust. (And then I stomp on him with my leather snakeskin stilettos).
Then I drank lotsa iced coffee. Then I had an adderall-like rush (only with more heart palpitations) and rushed up to my room to start typing out that long science paper I had somehow unwittingly but not uncharacteristically over-committed myself to this summer. Then I got too tired of it and decided to read over my previous morning papers that were typed. I think I’ll patch them up a bit and haul ‘em over to my rant-deprived livejournal and entitle them “Enticing Installments of a Thrilling Life.” Sound a bit too obtrusively sarcastic? Yeah, I thought so too. Damn. If only you could hear my voice inflection when I think of these things in my head – it’s perfectly pitched to a slightly ironic, bored, flat tone. And thus ends my tale.
………………………………………….
Thought you’d got off easy, didn’t you? But wait! You didn’t hear about how, whilst typing errantly away, night had fallen stark and black upon an outside world that was green and gold only moments before, and an almost imperceptible but ominous hush lay thickly upon the 30-year strong hippie stronghold, like a cloak. That could only mean one thing – all the 15 co-opers were gone this Saturday night, and I was all alone. And that, my French confidante, could only mean one other thing. Time to sneak down to the kitchen! (“Whose house?! I say Ron’s house! Martin!”) Let me divulge to you, my most indulgent of fine-feathered readers, one of my pettest concoctions at vegetarian Watermyn: light granola flecked with cornflakes and dusted with magenta cranberry clusters; spoonfuls of cloying, glistening raisins lying all so resignedly and limp in their gargantuan (to them) bucket of vine carnage; a steady stream of vanilla low fat soymilk (90 cal. total, 15 fat); topped with a globful of organic marmalade for garnish, never overused. Mmmm..the glucosic delights, the direct sugar sources for brain and pancreas (dare I say: islets of Langerhorns?), the simplistic masticative joys – this is the life, my friend, this is an honest meal. Okay, so I realize that all those concentrated violet bombshells of sugar make up none too sweetly for whatever low degree of fat the soymilk could have afforded my pudge, but let’s face the facts – I’m depressed and deserve to be gustatorily entranced. At least we’re not speaking of beef fat slabs. I don’t want to write about that one again.

Wallowing

2003-07-20T20:42:44Z

We're on a roll!

7/18/03; Morning Papers #11

I’m depressed. I’m reviewing music for Kim’s and Rohin’s promised future mixed CDs simultaneously. It’s Friday night and I’m all alone in my cavernous room with the door closed. Outside floats bouts of laughter, like spasmodic ebb and flows of the tide. The house is flushed empty with insalubrious dark corners and uninhabited spaces behind locked doors, except for my red room and the porch outside. Outside my window hangs low a tattered hammock on a fire escape narrow only enough for one lanky sleeper. Down the rusted iron steps, so flimsy that it’s like descending on air to the concrete below, one can venture like the house’s fearless black cat which walks brazenly and sits in the middle of the street, daring any metallic hulk challenger with a scowl and snarl. Earlier this evening I laid down on my pillow drawing stormy seas crashing against agate stalactites to Smashing Pumpkin’s Appels + Oranges all the while an eternal serpentine form snaked underneath the page and in between my lines. I had tried to fall asleep to the many times conjured image of mid-pare apples and mid-peel oranges falling sedately from a rainy sky where grey clouds roil, but everything rushed on so loudly, it was like the wrought iron floodgates of heaven opening to beckon me inside and suddenly, I couldn’t slip off so quietly into dreamland anymore. Now my words entwine their way with Portishead, and I feel my stomach fat for the millionth time this month only to discover that I’m in the foreign flesh stage again wherein post binging (depression and apricot pie spell danger) brings on a preliminary bulge that’s only an echo of more bulk to come. And I had been so good this week.

I had been so almost sane this summer. Apparently, I’m still in the melodramatic emotional rollercoaster stage of adolescence, a stage most of the co-opers here at Watermyn have long since passed blithely by, like they have with most things important and sacred to youth. I’m sorry, but I wasn’t already in the thick of things alternative and grunge by fifth grade. I was just tasting the fringes of my first crush on the predictable but then wholly novel and exciting paradigm of the Asian boy math and violin virtuoso. I hadn’t experimented with sex and long relationships, even semi-fake junior high ones that were nevertheless damn good practice for later truer relationships in high school and the early years of college. In junior high I was embalming myself unconsciously but steadily in liquid nitrogen to be frozen away from the world – boys, kisses, pop culture, and all – and in high school, I had only cracked the tip of the iceberg, so to speak. I’m like you but I don’t have your history, and what I’ve found out painfully but surely, is that sometimes, history and interests matter more in striking up friendships than do good intentions or kindred dispositions. You out-weird, out-intellectualize, out-allude-to-esoteric-cultural-sources, out-create, out-artist, out-literaturize and outwit me. I can only savor your sweet pie crusts in silence.

I called Ali this Friday evening I have since chosen to while away alone in my red room atop an empty dark house even though I had called and hung out with him all evening yesterday. I mean, don’t get me wrong, we had a jolly good time. It started out awkwardly enough, but after being ditched by Fran who was going to her own house/home/locale of likeable boyfriend, I had no choice but to converse doggedly on for at least a little while longer before I really give it up like the independent resourceful cute Asian woman I am, and rush off breathlessly unto myriads of other dazzling pursuits just awaiting me hungrily, even though in reality such things were nonexistent. But after a few false starts and left eye wanderings around paned and angled ceiling of List painting studios, Ali, following the allotted amount of Persian grunts, started something that didn’t seem that uninteresting in a tone that wasn’t that apathetic. Of course I caught the bone like a famished dog and wagged my tongue happily and perhaps even a bit unwisely (i.e. selfishly and bombastically) while we migrated from List unto the Moore statues on the Main Green and meandered our way unto our preferred corporate haunt Starbucks and later back to Watermyn. I was glad that things had gone well, and he seemed to have had a satisfactory enough of a time to continue looking forward to my friendship with relish and my chances of more get-togethers in the future were strengthened. Because when reduced to hop along the totem poles of basic spiritual survival one by one, without knowing where your next landing pad would be once your present one sinks under your weight into the quagmires below (and you can be damn straight there are fuckin fatal quicksands beneath me), you think about these things and what possibilities they project for the future.

In this one-lettered world of me, myself, and I – not by choice, mind you, but more a case of being sucked dry to the bone despite personal best efforts to cling to last remnants of life – the amount of things you can ruminate, say, and create art about eventually repeats itself and grows thin. You begin each sentence with “I” and in the rare chance when you can connect linguistically with another fellow soul-inhabited warm body besides yourself and your various sub-personalities; you find yourself running a bit too loose on one dominating subject – yourself. Being uningratiated breeds uningratiating behavior.

When you’re depressed, you start putting life at a standstill. I’ve been depressed on and off (but mostly on like a light bulb that won’t burn out) for about eight years. Sometimes I feel that my life has been at a standstill more or less (and it’s a bit more than less) for about eight years. Okay, maybe that’s verging on the hyperbolic; how about: my emotional and spiritual life seemed to have undergone cardiac arrest and slipped into vegetable comatose state indefinitely onwards? Wake up! I tell myself everyday (like Evanescence but only more hoarse), but that’s like Helen Keller exhorting herself to see Braille and hear her own voice shouting wah wah. One main order of spiritual guide a la carte, s’il vous plait. Preferably someone tangible, not furry, and cognizant of human speech habits. In short, I can no longer, and am frankly sick of, interpreting events for myself (no wonder they turn out so skewed and self-aggrandized), encouraging myself in my head, forcing myself to think certain things, feel certain ways. Going solo on Christianity was a terrible idea, but any substitute or further soul searching needs companionship as well. I had Kim, but, and I’m ashamed to say it of my weak-spirited sickly self, I need someone else still. I can’t do this alone. But alone I am doomed to remain forever.

God's fingers

2003-07-20T20:37:34Z

Recently, I've been critically involved in a series of mini-missions. Missions that designed with lofty goals, goals which I wasn't quite confident enough that I'd be capable of achieving, but I execute them anyway. Anyway, here's a sample:

7/7/03 Morning Papers #4

I can’t believe I’m here again and that this is continuing. Just like I can’t believe that I find myself in the OMAC everyday, even if it’s just for a 10 minute workout in my little pleated black dress because I had forgotten to bring my gym shorts but didn’t want to leave without pulling my usual stint since I had already gotten there anyway. No, I’m still in the thick of despair, sloth, and apathy. Yup, those three “enemies” as “The Artist’s Way” described them (my newest attempt: creativity self-help book courtesy of random find on Watermyn dining shelf); alleged banes of starving artist. I could definitely not halt my ingenuous astonishment when I beheld the very words descriptive of the worst periods of my life branded in black and white as the very demons who had made my existence a mild hell. Sloth: oooh, that really stings. That realization is partially the reason why I’m in front of this computer at all. So many failures could have been attributed to laziness, procrastination, inertia, etc. Apathy: Kim’s pet quote “hate is not the opposite of love – apathy is” has always rung with some hollow tones of truth in my mind without my knowing why. My mathematical cortex just decided to accept it as some unconditional formula of the universe, like how the square root of a negative number is quaintly designated as imaginary. [Gosh, Jess Stites’ laugh is just so annoying – its atrocity is beyond imitation.] Apathy is sometimes mistaken for some enigmatic peace whose appearance is too rare to be marred by probing its dubious origins. [I’m such a prick – why should Stites, the only girl with whom I feel some faint thread of kinship and who’s actually gone out of her way to be nice to me, seem annoying? And here I am going on calmly, storming up little philosophical quibbles with myself, undisturbed by these interruptions of malice that break out like a rash. Ewwwww – so selfish, maniacally egotistical, petty, twisted, and disturbed. Fuck becoming a therapist, I desperately need one of my own.] Despair – yeah, that just about sinks in every two minutes on my life here on earth. Maybe I should start trying to make an effort to fight it off or something. …Nah…

Somehow tonight’s not working for me, I don’t know why. Let’s just start listing down some descriptions I thought of in my head (where else?) while watching the fourth of July fireworks on the banks of Manhattan: golden inkblots splattered by God, giant blooming tentacled hands that grew and grew and stretched out for you, closing in on you and New York. Some were born gargantuan chrysanthemums while others sprung up in military formation, as if they’ve been rehearsing some air-force show in the pyrotechnic womb. Some were tiny rockets rising unseen that suddenly burst into a thousand chaotic red darts like multiplying molecules or whole crews of glow-in-the-dark cockroaches parachuting upon a kitchen floor. Some brightly tipped arrows would wriggle ambitiously up up into the deep vast darkness and then …peter off into anti-climactic sparkles that pandered to the lowest expectations. It’s astonishing to see something other than the familiar landmarks of moon and star or sun and cloud overhanging crowds and the rippling river and the ever-stoic city skyline. But tonight, the everlasting indigo was populated by glamour and flash, like Hollywood or a diva’s dangly earring or silver spangles. Slow-motion glitter rainfalls, blooming golden sprays; Seurat-dotted trees and aerial coral reefs were sprouting everywhere. Bloom, boom; bloom, boom. Always a silent blossoming first, the reach of God’s glorious many-fingered enlarging hand, a silenced terror rising in the throat, paralysis, then – Boom! Thunder claps follow illumination as the full weight of realization hits the observer – but we just as quickly move on to other, brighter lights. More bark than bite, these displays fade as soon as they appear, leaving behind smoky and mirror cloud ghost selves – tree wraiths and limp, elongated limbs. Darkness eventually swallows them quietly, and night looms as if the fourth had never passed.

peelin like a sunburnt onion

2003-07-11T18:08:34Z

As part of my grandiose plan to incrementally unveil my enigmatic (but oh so worthwhile) self to you, my super furry blog voyeurs, I feel necessity's call to produce this little piece of work. Oh yeah, and I saw it on both Rilington AND Xocotl's journals, so I have to imitate. Trend calls.

LAYER ONE:
-- Name: Xiaojue
-- Birth date: December 27 , 1984 (i never hesitate to welcome any remorse gifts -- like extra ones to make up for the double Xmas/bday giftsin the past?)
-- Birthplace: Shanghai, China
-- Current Location: Providence, RI (well, technically, at this very moment, if we're being particular, i'm at the primate center hidden skillfully from PETA in the depths of Marlborough, Mass.)
-- Eye Color: mocha chocolate brown
-- Hair Color: black (pre-reddish-violet streaks)
-- Height: 5' 4
-- Righty or Lefty: righteousness
-- Zodiac Sign: capricornelius(ness)

LAYER TWO:
-- Your heritage: I hail from the ancient tribes of Han
-- The shoes you wore today: sox + sneakers + baby blue shoe covers (max. insulation from monkey poo)
-- Your weakness: self-indulgence
-- Your fears: rejection, humiliation, mediocrity, being alone, etc.
-- Your perfect pizza: heapin vegetarian!
-- Goal you'd like to achieve:
~realistic: become acclaimed novelist and lose 20 lbs.
~slightly more fanciful: become acclaimed artist, writer, architect, and meet soulmate within next 2 months (during which I will have lost the 20 lbs.)
~fantastical: become acclaimed artist, Miyazaki animator, Pulitzer writer, IMPei/Taneo Ando architect, and win on a second installment of Top Model (before which I will have definitely lost more than 20 lbs.)

LAYER THREE:
-- Your most overused phrase on AIM: wowsers, indeed, mu ha ha ha
-- Your thoughts first waking up: where the fuck am i?
-- Your best physical feature: flaming lips (voluptuous)
-- Your bedtime: betw. 12 and 2 in summer; betw 2 and 9am schooldays
-- Your most missed memory: kimnxiao hangouts (Kam/JPaul stories, indie films, Paris/Mike repartees, lifelong phone convos), hangin out w/ my fave HS buds like Rohin, bettidmeister, sonia, jingyang, haipei, everyone! 5th grade in ann arbor. Thanksgiving at Brown/Boston/Michelle's room and Shoebox.

LAYER FIVE:
-- Smoke: rarely; cigarettes? Never!
-- Cuss: every fuckin five minutes
-- Sing: naked and clothed, conscious of listeners and when utterly oblivious
-- Take a shower everyday: not when you live in a co-op with bathrooms that worse than those in third world countries!
-- Have a crush: maybe really really superficial/suppressed ones yeah; really big one -- no.
-- Do you think you've been in love: no.
-- Want to go to college: very much so, thanks. already in one, actually.
-- Like(d) high school: i loved some of it. i really hated other memories of it.
-- Want to get married: i'm thinking a chinese xi jiu kinda dinner party with qi paos, a western typa white dress one with violins, a hippie kinda affair outside with flowers in my hair...um, yeah, weddings are cool; i'd like to have a family.
-- Believe in yourself: on Friday afternoons
-- Get motion sickness: never!
-- Think you're attractive: when the garb, cosmetics, weight, and self-confidence thing all sync together -- of course
-- Think you're a health freak: watch my feeble struggles
-- Get along with your parent(s): ming -- first 15 min.; stan -- a few days
-- Like thunderstorms: when i'm inside some cozy place or feeling joyous in some wild place
-- Play an instrument: vocal cords? did my 5 years in piano 5 years ago. Would like to: more piano, violin, maybe guitar, definitely drums

LAYER SIX:
In the past month...(as in July? cuz they all change if it's June)
-- Drank alcohol: no
-- Smoked: no
-- Done a drug: no
-- Made Out: can we not continue this chain of debasement?
-- Gone on a date: see above
-- Gone to the mall: w/ mary'n'mia -- no wait, that was in June. Shit!
-- Eaten an entire box of Oreos: Never!
-- Eaten sushi: in June, several times
-- Been on stage: i am not an indie rock star yet
-- Been dumped: nop
-- Gone skating: atop the roiling waters of the Providence canal?

LAYER SEVEN:
Ever...
-- Played a game that required removal of clothing: not yet
-- If so, was it mixed company: not applicable
-- Been trashed or extremely intoxicated: yessiree
-- Been caught "doing something": i've been caught doing a number of somethings
-- Been called a tease: um, like, we don't uuh, use these, like, words around here?
-- Gotten beaten up: no. wish i fought more. well, unless if you count that time in preschool where i got lotsa bloody scratches. but somehow i feel as if i had landed a few lasting swipes.
-- Changed who you were to fit in: like, constantly. i can't help myself -- it's too fun.

LAYER EIGHT:
-- Age you hope to be married: uuurrrmmm, hard to say. before 30? but only with soulmate material -- otherwise, i'd rather stay single or have an open marriage.
-- Numbers and Names of Children: Felix, Vesper, Evening, Grover, Veruca, jk -- maybe 2? maybe i'll let them choose their own?
-- Describe your Dream Wedding: i think we already went through this, but i'd like to add a whole string of bridesmaids, many many ppl. it'll be big, noisy, photographed, quirky, fun, lotsa good ethnic food (Asian, Indian, French), lotsa good music and dancing.
-- How do you want to die: in my sleep, quietly
-- Where do you want to go to college: i'm at brown. it might just about be the best school possible in this nation of warped, overachieving princeton review colleges. but it would be nice were it to have more classes, even better classes, more buildings, better facilities, and be located in tokyo or boston.
-- What do you want to be when you grow up: see goals list. otherwise: ballerina actress
-- What country would you most like to visit: japan, china, korea, england, australia, france

LAYER NINE:
In a boy
-- Best eye color? dark
-- Best hair color? dark
-- Short or long hair: shaggy, mussed, a bit spiky -- no curls
-- Height: taller than me by a little bit
-- Best weight: lean and hard, but slightly bigger than me
-- Best articles of clothing: mmmm..where to begin? i like the rock band grunge look, as well as the artsy black frames visage. vintage. collared shirts. layers. not too tight pants with lotsa pockets and occastional chain. black leather jacket. black and shiny, with straps and buckles. i like techno-goth but not too goth too.
-- Best first date location: somewhere unexpected in a city (nature is too intimidating on first dates, altho it's also an ideal date place)
-- Best first kiss location: somewhere secluded and intimate -- in a tree, on an empty playground, i'm not picky as long as it's interesting and he's skilled.

LAYER TEN:
-- # of drugs taken illegally: 3 (underage alcohol included)
-- # of people I could trust with my life: 3, excluding extended family in China
-- # of CDs that I own: it's too embarrassing for someone who loves music
-- # of piercings: i almost succeeded with two; must do again later
-- # of tattoos: none, but myriads of fakes in the works
-- # of scars on my body: hmmm...nothing lasting beyond a coupla years that i noticed; well, discounting that abduction scar down the length of my chest, but it gets regularly reopened, so...
-- # of things in my past that I regret: too many or zero

enter_miss_lin @ 2003-06-13T15:30:00

2003-06-13T21:16:26Z

I think that I've hit a new low in existence.
Current conceptions of self: pathetic, crushingly mediocre, dependent upon others for opinions, ideas, and moods; permanently socially inept (there have been freak accidents that last for a month or two to be sure, but they've all regressed to the same self. The hopes they implied were all lies, lies!); possibly in early stages of degenerative disease involving memory retardation and loss; becoming more like scatter-brained, out-there Ming and less like suave, smooth, funny Stanley.

Speculations on how Watermyn resident conceives of self: lackluster, irrepressibly quiet and dull, carries a bad sort of creepiness like a feckless odor; always inserts comments at the wrong points in the conversation which would've made everything awkward had her presence commanded that kind of power; invisible, eccentric badly, probably of unexceptional mental powers with equally spiritless personality.

Yesterday exemplified a typical Depressing Social Experience, which rears its ugly head daily:

I can already feel my stomach tightening and my fingers upping their ante in thumb-twiddling, nail-biting, and hand-rubbing (Kim was the first to route that out as a sign of subliminal anxiety rather than professed attempts to get hands warmer) as the landscape approached Providence. It's strange (and terribly pathetic) that the hour it takes Allyson to drive us from work back to our respective places of residence (I refuse to call Watermyn home) is the happiest of my day. Sometimes Allyson accidentally switches to a good station and something better than average (after her tasteless fumblings with hip hop, bad pop, and the disgusting phenomenon known as light rock, Coldplay's "Clocks," U2's "It's a Beautiful Day," and Cranberries' "Dreams" colored the world in golden utopian hues) comes on at the same time that the prolific side-of-the-freeway vegetation whizzes by. I feel extreme gratefulness that Allyson likes to speed (even her road rages seems refreshing) at that moment, as the clouds roll by at the same pace as the music. Dying might be okay if the last moments were like sailing through some dazzling landscape with waves of melody roiling over the fear,regrets, and other niggling emotions; high speeds are calming, tranquilizing. You're perpetually hurtling toward some other point than the ones you've left behind, forever moving progressing too quickly to doubt, worry, or be compulsively apprehensive about going home. In that happy interlude, I'm still not off the stimulation which always follows the completion of some long-term compulsory duty and not yet fully into the disappointment the events which follow 12 hours of work always seem to bring.

Before I know it, Allyson is pulling obligingly to the side of an old dark brown house, almost obscured from clear view by its surrounding lush vegetation. I get relunctantly out of the car (getting out of that snug red Chevy Cavalier is always a painful parting, since it either means starting work or going to Watermyn), and amble cautiously up the paved path to the porch. Squinting and angling my head around, I see if I can decipher human form tangled behind the hanging spider plants and floral secondhand couches. This time I spot two heads straight off (which is slightly reassuring, as I can deal with two heads, but not, say, a conversing crowd of five or seven) and become even more relieved when their stillness revealed that tis Kate and Laurel both chugging through the fat fourth Harry Potter.

I force my usual "hi," and it comes out several decibals lower and more passive, as usual. Kate turns her head minutely as if by reflex, not changing her stony expression of concentration as if she had attempted to be more friendly, but really didn't feel like it anymore. OOoh, slight sting. But the evening has just begun and now twas definitely not time yet to get all riled up and throw in the towel, so I advance with mock cheerfulness up the creaking wooden stairs which narrow (as if strangling more social life out of my room) as I get to the third floor. I pick my way, faintly annoyed as usual by the utter clutter and squalor of my environment, across the boxes and protuding modems in the hall and into the large space of my double.

It was only slightly ironic at the time, but now I spot it as an all-encompassing metaphor for my entire experience at Watermyn thus far: this was the room I had liked the least in the house, but through a coin toss between my favorite room in the house and this one, Anna (the roommate) and I ended up with the nauseating sea green walls, claustrophobic sloping ceilings, and isolation of the third floor. She didn't mind because this room supposedly had more light for her extensive houseplant collection; but having slept in it the first night I was at Watermyn,I harbored nothing but negative associations with the space. ("Yeah, that's a good room too," I had cheerfully conceded when Anna expressed her fancy of the revolting chamber as a possibility in our rooming negotiations) Robbed of my preferences and stuck with my worst fears, I embarked on my co-op career by painting one of the walls red and the shelves orange. Originally, I had favored the plan of painting the entire room red and the door jambs and base siding orange as well, but Anna had sensibly pointed out that we didn't have enough paint and felt that twas too big of a job to take on doing the whole room. But of course. On that first night I slept on the futon closer by the two windows, since it seemed like the lesser of two evils. In the ultimate draw, I ended up with the other futon (right up snug with the inclined ceiling, swooping down to plaster me) and the walk-in closet that lacked proper hanging rods but an obnoxiously large bureau instead. How lovely of you, quiet, innocent, kindly smiling artist Anna. I think your knack for arranging your plants, books on nature and African politics, and shaggy sheepskin rug so harmoniously a definite testament to your superior artistic talents too. What do I know about interior decoration, being just the Girl Who Is Working With Monkeys For the Summer (i.e. doing despicable animal testing like the uninformed, cookie-cutter asian premed I no doubt am)?

But anyway, I digress. The room is not important. No, I mean, I could've been situated conveniently next door to dashing Adam (one of the few stragglers still cheery when faced with me), on the social second floor where the resounding blows of the dinner horn could still be heard, instead of inside some attic dungeon with shut-in or totally absent neighbors. The room, as I reiterate, is of minimal significance in comparison with everything else that goes wrong with my initiation into co-op life.

As the tantalizing saga continues, I muck about my room aimlessly for a few moments. Unwilling to unwind and thus subject myself to diptheria and dysentery by just cutting loose and collapsing where I haven't sterilized, I resort to time-tested tactics and dig out High Fidelity by Nick Hornby, tramping purposefully down the creaky stairs. Kate had already left by the time I entered the scene, and rationalizing that she can always sit on the other end of the couch if push came to shove, I settled comfortably down into the urine yellow and burgundy plaid, assuming a self-conscious reading position. Before long, for some mysterious (probably not unmalicious -- asinine snob) reason, Laurel too, disappeared inside as well, leaving me to my precarious perch, reading stubbornly in the graying light.

Just as I became fully immersed in the even shabbier, socially dysfunctional existence of Rob Fleming and feeling immensely better about my own, footsteps crunched on the path toward the porch. I looked up to see Fittest Co-op Bloke Yet Discovered near territory raising a bike over his head. I had seen the dude several times before, and even exchanged a terse Q&A conversation (wherin mentally drained subject attempts involvement by consistently making apt enquiries) with him when both were slightly intoxicated. Based perhaps on the strength of my previous interest in what he was reading (something obscure called The Rachel Papers he had picked up for cheap) and/or the alleged cult currency of Rhode Island, he gave me a stiff nod just as I burst out involuntarily with another one of those indistinct "hi's." Blessed as usual by my indefatiguable social reflexes, I had mechanically stretched into a formulaic grin for his benefit, which I just as quickly dropped once I realized what I was doing. Restrained by shyness, reserve, or perhaps plumb inner hatred, the nameless biker intellectual barely cracked his stony mask of handsome seriousness before going inside.

There was no consorting with Championship Vinyl now, as the entire Monarch colony flew inside my stomach and I let out several mental yelps of (what? what significance did I think any of this carried in anyone's life?) joy, disquietude, trimuph, guilt, horror. To my utter terror and unfathomable glee, the bloke strode back outside unto the porch after parking his bike in the front hall. After a few hesitating seconds of indecisiveness (sitting beside me? keeping a comfortable distance?), he eased languidly into a chair opposite my couch which faced slightly toward the driveway to my left. There was no escaping neurotic speculation now, and twas all I could do to contain my outward demeanor from leaking out any uncouth behavior. What did he mean by sitting in front of me, as opposed to any other porch seat? Perhaps this was closest to the door, and perhaps he wanted a better outside view, but then why is he pulling out a book from his little boy blue backpack? Is he sending out covert signals of empathy by imitating my activity? After a few strategically timed glances towards him (dissembling them as the necessary occasional observations of environment to reassure oneself when reading that one has not actually left reality), I concluded that he was not reading just for the sake of reading pleasure. I mean, would I be taking prolonged breaks from the page to stare contemplatively into space? It's just a driveway shaded by some trees -- is he expecting someone? Does he relish watching cars drive by? External views weren't exactly the kind to baffle..He must be ruminating upon some inner question of importance. But then why pull out a book to pretend at all? Why not just lounge down on some cushions (the ones beside me were none too uncomfortable) and ponder there? Why the porch, why pretend to read when he wasn't really reading, and why no attempt to communicate since we were the only ones there?

Eventually more arrived upon this favored social nexus and settled down for some tempura vegetables and light chatter. I bided my time until enough people had gotten food for me to seem silly not to appropriate a plateful as well, but also not so overeager as to be a pig -- or just a few minutes after he got up to get dinner so that I would appear to be more self-controlled, less apt to simply succumb to carnal desires at a whiff of deep fried batter. But the bastard held out, and soon everyone else's fingers were shiny from their Japanese vegetarian meal except me and the ascetic comtemplator. Damn him. I got up as if for a stretch, and stepped into what I hoped was in a fashionably slouchy lunge toward the door and was inside. I feigned shy sweet girl as I stepped back outside with a modestly filled plate and commenced blending in, picking up pieces with feminine delicacy. Two minutes afterwards, he got up to do the same. Bastard.

I wonder when we'll have an insightful conversation.

enter_miss_lin @ 2003-04-02T02:57:00

2003-04-02T08:08:01Z

I've decided to rise above my woes to ride on a wave of laughter, mockery, and jolly spirits. It is the only refuge I can cling to as I prepare to let crucial foundations break away that were rotting inside long ago. Sarcasm had been last year's refuge, which earned me enough momentum to remain cynical all year and win the love and adoration of others for my biting brilliance. Bow down to me, you uniform, reptilian, insipid motherfuckers! Hehe, jk. But now I think I'm too broken for that kind of shit -- on the path to self-destruction, you gradually start to lose the tools you have to work with.

Update on AQR Boy: Today, as Hannah and I were having our usual powwow outside the sacred chambers of studious silence, unable to help ourselves from taking a gab break every hour or few minutes, who should advance but our very own stalking target of the semester? I kept on talking even as I noted an almost imperceptible change behind Hannah's photogenic smile, and was secretly quite shocked at her relatively overt betrayal of attention. My shock skyrocketed as I beheld her greeting the advancing olympian bookworm with a formulaic friendly wave and bright "hi," as if he were just another breezy-greeting acquaintaince. Glancing up stiffly, the absorption of monitoring his advancing feet unexpectedly broken, AQR Boy responded with a mechanical, low greeting, his preprogrammed social reflex for undeliberated situations like this. Hannah's outreach seemed so natural and AQR Boy's reply so invenomous that for a moment, I was duped into believing that my stalking partner had already advanced interactions behind my back.

"Omg Hannah, did you already talk to him?" I whispered, clutching her ample arm urgently after the Savant Shadow had passed.

Her mask of guileless congeniality slipped instanteously as we were alone again, and she crumpled her face into

quick copy/paste of online convo w/ matt 6/8/03

Killer Rabbit10: matt!
R L0keLust: XJ!
Killer Rabbit10: what did i tell you about our communication?
R L0keLust: What did I tell you about our communication?
Killer Rabbit10: why do you always have to violate the terms of our relationship like that?
Killer Rabbit10: you're not building a trustworthy image of yourself for me, matt
R L0keLust: I guess you can't marry me then

R L0keLust: But it was I who first set the terms
R L0keLust: and you are in violation
Killer Rabbit10: just because there's no cultural revolution going on in which i can participate
Killer Rabbit10: doesn't mean that i'm no less worthy of a human being, matt
Killer Rabbit10: i think you're valuing politics over people
Killer Rabbit10: but politics is created by people
Killer Rabbit10: what if i told you that my parents were red guards
R L0keLust: No, upon our last visit, I said it was your responsibility to initially start the flow of our correspondance
R L0keLust: that'd be hot
R L0keLust: how old's your mom?
Killer Rabbit10: but I distinctly recall insisting that you stop the nonsense of never initiating any talk between us online
Killer Rabbit10: ming's reversed her politics
Killer Rabbit10: cuz her brother died for the revolution
R L0keLust: I never see you online
R L0keLust: who's Ming?
Killer Rabbit10: and unlike you, ming values her rclose relationships over elusive political demagogues
Killer Rabbit10: well, i saw you online a few days ago
R L0keLust: who's Ming?
Killer Rabbit10: don't you know even the most basic details of my life?
R L0keLust: I guess not
Killer Rabbit10: i'm feeling extremely shortchanged in this relationship right now, matt
Killer Rabbit10: you may need to start compensating for it soon
R L0keLust: perhaps
R L0keLust: but first....
R L0keLust: you might tell me your livejournal address
Killer Rabbit10: but matt, my writing's worthless next to the vividly emotional verse of your diaryland entries
R L0keLust: but I don't have a diaryland
Killer Rabbit10: it's bland and grey next to your technicolor passions
Killer Rabbit10: um, who're you linking unto then?
Killer Rabbit10: actually, i've been to your livejournal too, and i suppose that's a step down in emotional fervor
Killer Rabbit10: but still....
R L0keLust: if we are to have such correspondance and perhaps even a marrage along the way, it is essential that we don't keep secrets from eachother
R L0keLust: like pertinent web addresses
Killer Rabbit10: but if my secrets are not even elaborated upon such interfaces
Killer Rabbit10: then what could possibly be the use of disclosing such useless data?
R L0keLust: the address itself is a secret
R L0keLust: that creates a thick wall of ice between us
Killer Rabbit10: i'll check it first, to see if there's anything worthwhile for you to peruse
R L0keLust: that can only melt when you disclose the address
R L0keLust: regardless, regardless
Killer Rabbit10: what about the slabs of stone walls you've erected before me with your stubborn silences?
Killer Rabbit10: what hammer will shatter those?
R L0keLust: the same hammer
R L0keLust: the hammer within the disclosure of that address
R L0keLust: http://livejournal.com/~...?
R L0keLust: simply the user name will suffice
Killer Rabbit10: why don't you make the first hit
Killer Rabbit10: while i try to remember my user name
Killer Rabbit10: give me some of your information
R L0keLust: what info do you seek?
Killer Rabbit10: enter_miss_lin
Killer Rabbit10: it might be ms
R L0keLust: thank you
Killer Rabbit10: but wait, let me go there first
R L0keLust: I'm naked right now...so I must depart to go get dressed and then do the dishes
Killer Rabbit10: fine, flee from me with your excuses of nudity and chores
Killer Rabbit10: ttyl
R L0keLust: but I will be back very soon. Before you know it, even.
Killer Rabbit10: whatever matt, i can no longer trust your empty promises
R L0keLust: and be sure to send me many ims upon my return in order to fufill your obligations under our agreement
R L0keLust: have a wonderful evening
R L0keLust signed off at 6:59:26 PM

social topographies

2003-04-01T07:31:34Z

Something significant happened last Friday night, and its memory was so potent that I would sporadically find myself distracted and giggly, caught up in its enchantment again, during the entire week I spent with Ming and Stan that was Spring Break. I don't know why it takes so little effort for me to leap off into heightened romantic fantasies that eventually have no realistic justifications. One minute it's alcohol-induced suggestive behavior that was probably one of those mistakes people realize fully only the next morning and then swear about profusely. But in a few easy bounds of my imagination, it becomes a premediated act; no, he had always been insecure and this was one strangled way to express suppressed emotions; it's a turning point in our relationship, and everything will become clear and fall into place afterwards; we'll have a grandiloquent relationship, and I'll have an excuse to travel west in the summer -- to see him, because this mere shadow, half real seed of an intimate bond will eventually flower and overshadow even the tallest of redwoods.

There had never been something reassuringly substantial between us -- everything rested tenuously on the cleverness of one joke, or social ambience of one lucky evening. Sometimes I could find nothing to say in his presence, and felt uncomfortable, nervous, desperate, and frustrated with myself for not being intelligent enough, sardonic and cutting enough, unique, attractive, and distinctive enough to merit his favor or attention. I had just begun to stop caring about my speculations of his judgements, and found it a bit easier to speak freely in his presence -- I had thought that our interactions had finally ceased its uncertain jumps from one status to another, and had settled into a platonic friendship plateau, like an ECG that's stopped scrawling madly across the page and quieted into the flattened lines of death.

But now the balance is upset, and a new, vicious awkwardness has set in between us like an irritating slab of ice. All that I had labored for last semester -- to reach some sort of comfort in our dealings (or at least in my perceptions of them) have come to nought. My frustration has mounted such high levels that I think I will simply stop caring about the new dimension to our relationship. Only now the stakes are more intense, and a conflict seems threatening to erupt. Something must be resolved since the issue has already been raised, like a dragon unable to be mollified by anything short of total slaughter once it's been lured out of its sleep. I will engender apathy in myself as always to serve as a counterforce for my hypersensitivity, and hope that it's enough to distill our true feelings, set them out frankly on a dissecting table between us, and go to work with the forceps.

The problem with being so excited about your new livejournal account and being a bit too public about disseminating its names is that you can no longer write within the assurance of its anonymity. My writing skills have left me sometime overnight last week, but my obsessive concern about them had simultaneously taken flight. All I care about now is teasing some of the knotted yarns dangling inside my mind's rafters out, and rolling them into sensible balls to be set on the shelf. I don't think about knitting spectacular sweaters anymore.

I ate two meals with my future roommate today, and on both occasions, I was beginning to ponder more and more seriously why in the world I ever thought that we would become really good friends. The integrity, openness, and common past of wrestling with absolute loneliness were all there -- but where was the easy-flowing conversation? I could have one with almost anyone, perhaps, and yet to undertake one totally restraint-free with her is like trying to shit when you're constipated. Nature's stopped, the piping's jammed, it's a no go and no show. You find yourself being distracted from the main task at hand by light magazine reading, or a friendly conversation with the next stall. How did we end up agreeing to become roommates? Well, okay, actually, I do know how it all came about, as I had a serious hand in the game. The situation could've been far worse, but it was definitely not what I had envisioned for my future live-in pal of choice. It had happened because she was the most comfortable person to be around when I was spiritually exhausted, when I just wanted tranquility and a certain level of imperceptible love. It was the easy way, and although I value her deeply as human being and friend, sometimes I just wish that either things had turned out differently, or she would simply be a more....animated and lively person.

No doubt she also deserves better too, as I really don't perceive her relishing our conversations any more than I do, perhaps even less. It was the odd situation in which we had both reached that level of emotional reassurance with each other that I didn't fear of venting any issue upon her, and she would probably do the same. I felt checked, restricted with her. Words eagerly bubbling to the surface would suddenly shrivel and pop in my constricted throat -- the journey to her ears was always a laborious one, and one's intuition is usually never far from hitting the mark. The truth was that although I could say what I wanted to in front of her, she was frankly just not interested in them. Not because she was malicious, or despised my presence -- I'm sure that she found my company amiable enough, perhaps even pleasant on those rare occasions she allows joy to filter into her life (oops, let's just dilute that last tinge of venom) -- our minds never truly intersected. It was more a case of bending both personalities to fit each other's than one of suddenly finding ourselves complementing each other almost perfectly, which is what a promising good-frienship is invariably founded upon. In the same vein, the comments that she made, which were obviously what she considered the most meaningful or interesting fruit of her mind at the moment, never fully arrested me in a powerful grip. To be candid, I really didn't find even her most excited observations or reflections that stimulating. We were only good at collaboration, cooperation, and tolerance -- but it was never mutually inspiring. We were never each other's muses, but we served as good sounding boards. The most intimate of bonds should sparkle and burst like a thousand fireworks, not glow gently and steadily onwards like some old woman's hearthside fire.

Maybe my relationship with him is inconstant as fire. Maybe it stings, delights, and fucks with me so intensely because it's the real thing.
Real things also need courage.

Why can't we just be socially crass?

2003-03-09T10:11:38Z

A mirror monitor flashes in my periphery vision, and I can sense myself sliding into mementary deep unconsciousness every so often. This is when you know that you've lived too much of your life in the night, and imbibed too many chemical stimulants to help you along the way.

And by chemical stimulants I mean caffeine, of course. Diet Coke all the way -- a blissful compromise of cancer-causing aspartame for a slimming zero in calories. These past two nights I have whiled away in the bowels of Keeney, intent upon reading the writing on the wall (and occasionally adding my own flourishes of faces and commentary) and digesting organic chemistry. It was oddly comforting in a way, to reap a sense of productivity after so many empty nights and meningitis mornings spent not drunk enough to cut my spirit loose but sufficiently tipsy to sustain pointless conversations, exhausted. Unfulfilled. At least my studyfellows and I garnished a fresh new wall in the study carols with a list of twigs and berries jokes.

Have you ever wanted to just let all inhibitions slide and give your number away to a stranger in the cheesiest, most taboo way possible? Perhaps it was the sheer agony of being alone with your articles and silence, or perhaps the human backside hides more sexually arousing characteristics than one would previously surmise. Whatever it was, at 1:00 am in the Absolute Quiet Room at the Rock, Hannah and I decided to forsake academia for studies of a different nature -- virile intellectuals of the opposite gender. A shock of brown curly hair, a yellow and navy blue striped collared shirt, and khakis just loose enough to conceal athletically thin legs, yet tight enough to reveal firm buttocks were all the glimpses I had had of Studious Potential Bedfellow -- but all the glances that I needed. Periodically, Subject A would get up and pace up and down his desk, book in face, alternating the activiy with stints with flashcards he had made himself.

What if I just breezed past him and slipped my number into his pages -- of his book, I mean -- I suggested in a whisper to Hannah. What if she just crept up from behind and tackled him with a friendly ruffle of his voluminous locks? What if I marched up to him and ensconced myself directly in front of his texts, demanded what he was reading, and subsequently insinuated that I was a far more fascinating and nuanced creature for his focused perusal? What if we both just --- but wait, never mind, that would simply convince him that we were nothing but a pair of juvenile, hormonally-overcharged, tactless freshmen girls instead of the same senseless dolts cleverly disguised under a sexy, nonchalant, sophisticated facade. Oops.

But wouldn't it be fun to simply strip Subject A of all his potential for future dating pursuit, and just run with moment? Go with the flow? Commit the faux pas and be socially uncouth?

As Hannah and I embroiled ourselves in this heated debate, who should pick up on the charged atmosphere and turn around but our very sexy bookworm himself. Hannah froze in the midst of smiling into the distance, halting her dismayed gaze a few inches to the left of Subject A's face. I reflexively assumed the act of picking up an astray pen, staring in concentration a few inches to his right. After a few calculated moments of denial, we both snapped back and heaved quiet puffs of relief at seeing that safe striped back turned again. But what splendor did those brief seconds reveal of our target's full glories --- eyes aslant and serious (possibly indicative of great suffering and trauma overcome in his past), brows slightly furrowed (probably habitually this way from thinking many intellectual, deep thoughts), a solemn mouth (brooding character; must have intriguing complexities to personality), and thin-rimmed glasses (spectacles that scream 'shag me'). Hannah and I were unequivocally flustered.

What do we do now? Should we simply be the passive slaves to social mores that people inevitably always became? Let him slip through our fingers so that we can save face? Somewhere in the middle of our indecision, the dude hastily gathered his academic weaponry and scooted quietly out through the swinging double glass doors, leaving Hannah and I back to our scholarly endeavors and celibate selves. Oh well, maybe it was for the best. After all, we weren't expecting to translate our speculations into full-fledged reality. It's not as if our wild fantasies would do anything but humiliate and blacklist us from the favor of Sexy Scholar and all his learned friends.

Instead, Hannah and I swiftly but distinctly outlined a plan for stalking him in the future. First familiarize yourself with the prey, and then zoom in for the kill.

Happy Deathday!
Your name:	enter_miss_lin
You will die on:	Friday, November 21, 2014
You will die of:	Ritual Sacrifice
Username:

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