My Baby, My Darlin'

"I was made for you"
Happy Birthday, Mike!

Late night flights in and out of consciousness

Pills enough to make me feel ill. Cash enough to make me well.

Whimsical Writings

This defines so many aspects of everything I've ever experienced:



Please, please do this (rules of healthy conduct for me to follow):
1. Please, do NOT go to sleep at 7AM (or not at all. I know you think you're getting shit done, but your body is screaming "EXHAUSTION! EXHAUSTION!")
2. Please, do NOT attempt to walk around barefoot in the city. It isn't a better alternative to shoes (though fuck, those ones you wore yesterday tore up your heels). Also, people will probably think you're a hippie or just homeless.
3. Please, know your drinking limits. Your liver's just gonna go along with what you're doing, even if it's slowly deteriorating. You need to show some restraint (though your 21st is fast approaching, making posting this rule rather useless).
4. Please, please...MORE CHRONOTRIGGERPLAYINGHAPPYFUNTIMES! YEAH! (that didn't make any sense. I apologize).

Confession Weather

We sit out on the porch, sipping our wine in silence. You've grown taller yet so have I. There's so much to talk about but neither of us say a thing. I think we both know it'd be a futile endeavor. Then, just like that, you make a comment about the humidity. Why couldn't we have drank inside? The flies are growing irksome. You follow that comment up with a poor transition into worldly affairs. What do you think about the oil spill? I shrug and make a drunken, incoherent reply. This reassures you that I'm paying attention so you keep talking. Did you hear about the Icelandic Prime Minister marrying her girlfriend? What about the mother of two in Iran who's to be stoned to death? And that 86-year old bedridden woman in Oklahoma who was tasered by police because she took an aggressive posture in her bed? So funny.

At this point, I'm barely registering what you're saying. I simply nod my head, my thoughts moving on to a song I can't remember the name of but whose lyrics are clear in my mind. You move on to your life. School is going great. Every night this semester you've blazed and gotten outrageously high. Your professors totally love you. The only downside right now is that your photography skills haven't shown any improvement.

I think you're pulling at straws here.

What of what you're saying am I going to care about? What will I affectionately respond to? Red or white? I think the answer's pretty clear to you but you keep going. Family's moving soon. Last summer's fling doesn't show any desire of wanting to return to where you two left off. Your voice has changed. Drastically low, soggy and sad. Lyrics aren't so clear anymore. What was the name of that song again?

Then you ask the question that sobriety prevented you from conjuring. The snake in the garden: "At what point did you know you were in love?". That one I registered. It was the way you asked, eager for the truth yet sub-consciously doubting your ability to handle it. I stroke the rim of my wine stained glass, run a hand through my hair. It'll be hard but someone's gotta do it. Finally, after a long enough pause, I reply: "I don't quite know. It's hard to say, really. I guess it happened after I wrote him a long letter in February when we decided it would be best if we were just friends. It was when I finished writing it that I realized this was the first time I had ever written a boy a letter about how I felt. What was that? No, the card I made for you on your eighteenth birthday doesn't count. This was different. Why? Well, I guess it was my naked desperation. I wanted him so badly to understand that no matter what, I didn't want to be without him. It didn't matter if we remained just friends. I've never met anyone like him before. After I realized that, there was no going back. I was in love."

You sit there quietly for a few minutes, fiddling with a stray hair. It's a sign of anxiety. I've struck a chord and I know you'll never admit that that was difficult to listen to. You already knew that he and I have been dating for a while now. You knew, yet the after-effect didn't become apparent until after the first "Yes, I do" to your "Do you love him?". It was like this night was premeditated, a live-action roleplay of what's been going on in your head for weeks. You then get up and sit right back down. You're pretending to seem unsure of how that really affected you but don't worry, I already know. I'm beginning to feel like an awful hostess so I offer you some more wine. You ignore the munificent peace-treaty and instead begin reciting new words you don't know the definition of that you encountered in a book composed of philosophical essays that I think you told me about a week ago. Magnanimity. Truculent. Cantankerous. Lugubrious. Your intoxication has certainly deepened but there's more to it. There's always more to it with you.

When you're finally finished, we're both silent for a long while. Then I begin humming the song whose name I can't remember. Soon the hum develops a voice and I'm quietly singing the lyrics. Slow, steady, fervently. Then, shortly after I begin singing, you begin to sing along with me:

Rain is millions of tiny speech bubbles unused
The collected breaths of mutes
And all our silent exhalations
Where we should've put words
Or words we had no one to tell
Emptied from clouds like clearing horns spit valves
Coming back to us now
To remind us what we meant to say
Or that we meant to say something

P.S

"While it is not true that sharks do not develop cancer, they do have a remarkable cancer shield."
http://www.elasmo-research.org/education/topics/p_bite_on_cancer.htm

Cancer shield: You must be level 75+ in order to equip

Sorry, guys.

Try, Try Again

I know you're a serious lady
Living off a teacup full of cherries
Nobody knows where you are living
Nobody knows where you are
-The National


Free People has a full staff (they'll hold onto my application in case someone leaves/gets fired). DeComp didn't think my work appealed to their magazine, which is fine. That was a shot in the dark, really. Sometimes it takes a shitload of misses before you make a strike.

In other news, I wrote a few more poems. Yeah! Awesome! Cool! Now I'm trying to find some good reads for the summer. Any suggestions?

Bile and Lemonade

She is softly cloaked in shyness

and secrets he could not extract

by simply touching her thighs

with his sauce-pan hands.

She is speaking in tongues.

Lipstick-smeared honesty, fingers

fluttering to her throat, gasping for air.

He stares at her tiny breasts.

She is leaving him, newsprint future

full of expensive jewelry and taller

buildings. She is scared of heights.

He wonders about the bill.

She is gone in a cloud of Chanel, a

gift that he did not give to her. Now

he sits with the bride of quietness.

No sawtooth grin. He is still hard.

Later on he’ll return home and

have too much beer and jack off to

the scent of Chanel she left on his skin.

Then he'll go to bed and try not to think.

Such are the great moments in mistranslation:

asked for dinner, got dessert.

A Lovely Description

Sometimes when I reflect back on all the beer I drink I feel ashamed. Then I look into the glass and think about the workers in the brewery and all of their hopes and dreams. If I didn't drink this beer, they might be out of work and their dreams would be shattered. Then I say to myself, it is better that I drink this beer and let their dreams come true than be selfish and worry about my liver. ~Jack Handey

Battling the Pink Robots

My mom and I were talking about North Carolina tonight. The house she's looking at leads out to the woods in the back. There is a creek. There is a kind of guest house. It has a lovely interior, seems worth the price. She might try and buy chickens since it's a large property. She seems to forget we have five cats that love the outdoors and killing things that live outdoors.

Speaking of our cats and things relating to them, there are two raccoons now living in the attic in our garage. I know this because the two raccoons I encountered a few nights ago (sans clothes) scattered to the garage and when I tapped the ceiling with a broom the day after that incident, noises of something moving about could be heard. One of our cats, Mr. Sniffles, sometimes sleeps in the attic. I think he has made friends with the two raccoons that live in the attic.

Recently, I've been editing a short story I wrote for my Intro to Fiction class this past semester. It is titled "Moratorium". I realized my main character, Maya, doesn't have much of a back-story. There's not much to relate to. No one really knows anything about her life and why she made the decisions she did. If I expand on that, it could be a good piece. It could be. I think (does any writer ever really think their work is good? Is J.K Rowling shaking her head, ashamed, every time Harry Potter comes on TV? Does Stephanie Meyers proofread?).

Listening to The National's "So Far Around the Bend" right now. It is a pretty song, strange lyrics. I miss Mike.

Oh yeah. Happy Father's Day to all you Dads out there!

The Old, The New

"There are only two people you can trust in this world: a friend and a lover. But since this girl is neither, then my answer to you would be no. However, you've gotta trust someone when there's no one left to trust in a world gone mad. If not, you'll just end up as a stray cat wandering the streets alone. And that...is a frightening way to live."-Seiko

Seiko was probably the best character I ever came up with. The sarcastic, ass-kicking ninja. I forget who I modeled him after. Looking back, some of the stories my friend Jen and I wrote together were rather awful. Reading them now, I can't help but laugh. There are definitely a lot of quoteable portions, however. Seiko's dialogues make up some of those portions. And lets not forget the infamous grammatical mistake: "KITSUNU IS PREGNANT AND YOU'RE TELLING ME TO GETS UP TETSUO?!"

Hey, Jen and I thought it was absolutely hilarious. If you don't, well, your face. That is all.

A Startling Evolution

Caress me golden senseless
Forging ahead, a wild fire
At least, that's how it began


I shouldn't be up this late. My body still hasn't reached a level of normalcy where being awake at 5am is okay. I should be resting. I should be. Instead, I'm writing. I'm unclear as to why I've chosen writing over sleeping, but it seems almost like an imperative. I find that if writers don't write about something, anything, their sanity begins to plummet. The same goes for any artist. If a musician does not play, if a painter does not paint, and so on and so fourth, they lose it. Well, how could they not? All art is a form of expression, a way for people to get their emotions across. If you can't do that, it eats away at you. If I couldn't write, being home would be messy. I say that because if I have nothing to occupy my time when I'm home, I have too much time to think. And that is a danger in and of itself.

I was diagnosed with bipolar disorder junior year of high school. My dramatic mood fluctuations needed a name, so they were given one by the best medical authorities. Now mood swings for me submerge because of the way I perceive things. What my mind likes to do is twist and tangle "situations" until I can only see the negatives. Thus, my mood plummets. I put 'situations' in quotes because most of the time, I'm not reacting to anything major. Typically, they're minor occurrences that carry no significance. I never used to label them as minor, however. No, everything had a hidden meaning, a secret truth. They were never pretty ones either. I would analyze and scrutinize and mope and sulk. That's how life used to be.

Today, I can say with a certainty that I've improved heaps. I'm not who I once was. I'm off medication, doing well in school, and am content with where I've ended up. There are times, however, when the monster in the pool still manages to surface. I've gotten to the point where this can be tolerated without having some sort of breakdown. I can say with a certainty that that is the case.

I wonder what I'm hoping to find this time though, what truth I'm looking to expose.

Forging Through Sickness

I awake in an ocean of pillows
He is still speaking of summer
Does the heat make you behave badly?
I breathe in his throaty yessss
And suddenly I feel parched
Drowning in the sweaty Sahara of cotton
And his overuse of drug-store cologne
Cheap. Dirty. No high expectations.
A kiss on my neck that tells of things to come
The evening of extravagant delight
Where is my lipstick? I feel much too young
Darkness is supposed to evoke pleasure
All it does for me is deepen my paranoia
He rubs my shoulder, index fingering my throat
I wait for the cued "I love you"
Instead, "I love what you do to me"
Please, don't romance novel your way inside
No more of this banana splitting my ego
Simply fix me. Fix me with your fingers
I slide my palms down his rolling Irish hills
While we're both thinking of someone else

Cramping, potential vomiting, fetal position. Grounded, am I still grounded? This will soon pass (it always does). At least, I hope so.

I'm Afraid

That my dreams are mimicking a reality that isn't too far off

Passions

I went to see a foreign film tonight called "The Secret in Their Eyes" (El Secreto De Sus Ojos). It's about a criminal-court investigator named Benjamin Esposito who, in 1974 in Buenos Aires, took up a case revolving around the rape and murder of a beautiful woman. He never forgets about it as he grows older, how he passionately pursued the killer, and what he learned about himself along the way. The first scene is of Esposito at his desk, gray-bearded, writing and assembling his recollections of this case that continues to fascinate him after twenty-five years. The film centralizes around the use of memory and how it can haunt us with missed opportunities. For Esposito, these missed opportunities regarding a love that never happened make up a meaningless, unhappy passage of time: the underside of obsession. This doesn't just go for him, though. Time stops for the beautiful woman's husband, Morales, who waited every day after work at the train station for a chance of spotting his wife's killer. Then there is Irene Menendez Hastings, Esposito's cautious superior who, after failing to get Esposito to confess his feelings for her, goes into a loveless marriage and continues on with a seemingly passionless existence, becoming a powerful judge in 2000. From scene to scene, the film has a vital swing to it. It is powerfully and richly imagined. It is a genre-buster that successfully combines romanticism with the utmost in realism. It's probably the most excellent film I've seen in a very long time. I highly recommend it. Two-thumbs up.

Momma deer kicks dog's ass, radioactive bananas, and other unrelated news

Below is a video I found on reddit of a mother deer beating the crap out of a woman's dog. I can't tell from the video if the dog was going after her young or if the mother deer attacked him for no good reason. Either way, a mother deer conquering a dog is quite unreal. I thought it was nifty.

In other news, Free People still hasn't called me back about whether or not I have a job. It's been about a week. I think Meghan and I are going to go in today and ask if we got the job. Not that it matters at this point in time since it hasn't been confirmed yet whether my family will be moving or not (if the engineer's report does not go well, my mother will be staying in Ridgewood for the summer unless another buyer shows interest).

Also, bananas are radioactive. Enjoy the video.

Soldier

The day was gray when I found you
Soil coated with soot and ash
Carrion birds and rotting corpses
A dumping ground for our soldiers
You were sitting by the well
Clutching your fallen father's hand
No comforting words would rise you
Sorrow's poison had your legs
How did it come to this?
No bell tolled, no sirens rang
The shots came from all directions
And in the morning the sun revealed
The blood on the leaves and grass
Oh, but I'll suck the marrow out
There is hope beyond these gates
She is praying at her bedside
For your safe return home

Sun Blisters

My sunburn is slowly going away. My mom has a potential buyer. Our house may get sold this summer after all. I am having tiny existential breakdowns at the thought of moving. I have lived in Ridgewood for twenty years and that has suited me just fine. I would have been okay with moving somewhere like NYC. At least I'd still be close to everything. North Carolina is where my mom wants to go. I'm not ready to leave just yet though. I do not want to go to North Carolina, but it seems it may be inevitable.

I did not think I would be nervous about moving. I am starting to feel nervous about moving.

I was afraid of being nervous. Now I am nervous. I am doing my best to maintain control.

I think what I will miss most is being sure of where I am and where I need to go.

Shhh....I'm Watching Keanu...

I am an avid visitor on Reddit.com, a site that revolves around what's new online/in the world. To add to this description, the people who post on Reddit are (for the most part) very intelligent and share many interesting opinions. Anyway, frequent posts these days encompass a rather morose looking photo of Keanu Reeves (the one that is being shown above). Now I have nothing against Keanu Reeves as a person. He's a very handsome man and seems quite nice. He also apparently knows kung-fu, which I think is pretty fantastic. As an actor, however, I'd have to say he's a bit lacking.
A few nights ago, I watched "Constantine". It's based on Vertigo Comic's Hellblazer. Set in Los Angeles, John Constantine (Keanu Reeves), a chain-smoking cynic, has the power to see half-angels' and half-demons' true forms. He seeks salvation from eternal damnation in Hell for a suicide attempt in his youth, by sending half-demons back to where they came from with the help of his trusty sidekick Shia LaBeouf (known as Chas in the film). However, full demons have begun crossing over, taking possession of human bodies in preparation for the arrival of the Devil's son, who will institute chaos in the world. Constantine saves the day by slitting his wrists and informing Lucifer of his son's plans to conquer Earth. Lucifer then sends his son back to Hell to stop him from conquering Earth before he does. In the end, Constantine is cured of his lung cancer, and in the final scene is shown switching from cigarettes to gum. Aside from the unintentionally hilarious theological mumbo-jumbo, it's basically "The Exorcist" meets "The Matrix", only with very dull dialogue and situations. All in all, it was a ponderous bore and as David Denby said in his article "Devilment", it "turns wonders into garbage". Reeves' acting doesn't help either. It was his largest departure in my opinion, his most epic failure as an actor (not that he hasn't failed before. Remember how he single handedly ruined Shakespeare in "Much Ado About Nothing?")

Despite all this, we continue to love him. His acting is dry and unbearable at times, yet we can't stop watching his movies. It must be a Jedi Mind Trick.

Why? Gemini (Birthday Song)

Why? is one of my favorite bands. I've been listening to Alopecia and Elephant Eyelash a lot more than usual lately. It makes me feel nostalgic. It makes me feel happy and sad and unsure of myself. "Gemini (Birthday Song)" is one I have on repeat these days. Yoni Wolf's lyrics are beautiful and heartfelt. It feels weird listening to this song now because it defined such a different part of my life, when I was a whole other person. What do you think?

Kitten-Rooster

Feeling Normal Again

Mrow.

Late Night Extravaganzas

Last night, a funny thing happened. I had gone to the beach at Spring Lakes with my friend Meghan earlier that day. It was beautiful out, no complaints there. We spent three hours laying under the hot sun, listening to Beck and Architecture in Helsinki. However, when I got back home from our little adventure, I noticed I had burnt to a crisp (screw you CVS branded spray on sunscreen. Thanks a bunch for bailing on me). My inner thighs were lobster red and my stomach was blotchy (they still are, to a much lesser degree).
So I spent all of last night rubbing on aloe and trying to figure out the quickest way to alleviate the pain. This involved shaving cream (the internet told me to), vinegar, and ice cold baths. The best solution I found was walking around ass naked, as my house is always Siberia-like this time of year (and every other time afterward actually). So, satisfied with this solution, I went downstairs to grab a late night snack. My Mom had asked me a few hours ago when I was still wearing clothes to go find Yahtzi, one of our five cats. She isn't hard to miss because of her enormous size and strange coloring. Apparently she had gotten outside and hadn't come back in yet and my Mom wanted me to go find her and bring her back inside before she got hit by a car (she isn't a very bright cat you see). Once I got my snack of graham crackers and cheese, I went in search for Yahtzi, all the while still without clothes. I didn't go outside to do this out of kindness for my neighbors, but instead proceeded to turn the outdoor light on to see if I could spot her that way and bribe her to come inside with a can of tuna or something. Well, when I turned on the outdoor light in my backyard, I didn't see Yahtzi. Instead, I saw two raccoons. I stared at them. They stared at me. I waved. Then they ran away. A naked, sunburnt, twenty-year old girl waving to them was probably the strangest thing they had ever seen.

In other news, I'm still waiting to hear back from decomP about whether or not they liked my poetry. Cross your fingers.

Heart of Clear Water

Hey there guys! Hope your summers are going well. Hope you're all taking advantage of the warm weather. Hope your weekends were great.

I've been trying to write things lately that sound appealing to others. This means a lot of editing, re-editing, crossing out, deleting, and tossing away. I have yet to find a "lit magazine" that will publish my poems. My poems do not appeal to a good number of these "lit magazines". This in turn causes me to wonder if my work is any good or if I just haven't been looking in the right places. I'm rooting for the latter.

I came down to the computer this evening to find someone had been browsing Yu-Gi-Oh Cards on eBay. I died a little inside when I saw this.

I hope I'll be able to write like I used to.

On the Other Side

Glittering blue ocean
The blush washing over
Frosty colored cheeks
Sailing against time
A coastal competition
Baby, it's hot out there
An old romance at sea
Our delicious headrest
It's a delicacy
But the menu changes every week

No, fuck you Damien Rice

Dazed and confused, I awaken
To find you left the door ajar
A not so subtle exit yet
Maybe that was your intent
Weavers of lackluster adventures
We passed through life in pinks and blues
You told me I was strange and unusual
I exclaimed you were arrogant and mislead
Though in the light your face shone with brilliance
I swore I fell in love with you right then
Your arms were my home away from home
Drive me to the desert now stranger
It is time we went our separate ways
My scarf I left in the back of your car
As a reminder I'd always be near

I unearthed this poem second semester when I was going through documents to delete on my mom's computer. I wrote it last summer before going to Goucher. It was a mark of a new beginning, a fresh start full of fresh faces. No longer would I pine over those who weren't worth my time and affection. There are several versions of this poem. The version I read at an open mic at a local coffee shop that the subject of the poem happened to be at was the angrier one. I don't think we spoke for the rest of the day. He and I are still friends though. We still talk about Final Fantasy and our love for Yoni Wolf (new topics of conversation that began this year now include drugs, drink recipes, and a mutual interest in an anti-war folk band called The Ascetic Junkies).

I'm now currently doing research on the history of Free People so I appeal more to my interviewer on Monday. Damien Rice's "Volcano" is playing. Being as good as he is should be a sin.

Jade and Alexander

It's 4:31AM. The birds will be up soon. I've noticed that the later I stay up, the deeper I think about certain things. The topic of thought on tonight's menu is chance encounters.

What I find interesting is the events that lead up to these chance encounters. Every decision, every action brings us to where we are in the present. I feel if one event from a person's life was missing, they wouldn't be who they are today and thus would not have met and befriended certain people. For example, I would not have the friends I do now and would not be with the man I'm with now if one thing had been different. If my parents had never divorced for instance, I would be a whole other person. My life would have gone in another direction and would be nothing like the life I have now. Perhaps I would have stuck to my dream of becoming a vet. Perhaps I would have followed in my sister Lauren's footsteps to become a star runner. Who knows?
This topic of thought, this sudden obsession with the magic behind chance encounters began because at 2AM (or maybe it was 1AM. I have no idea. My sense of time is so warped at the moment), I came across a quote by Chuck Klosterman that reads as follows:
"We all have the potential to fall in love a thousand times in our lifetime. It's easy. The first girl I ever loved was someone I knew in sixth grade. Her name was Missy; we talked about horses. The last girl I love will be someone I haven't even met yet, probably. They all count. But there are certain people you love who do something else; they define how you classify what love is supposed to feel like. These are the most important people in your life, and you'll meet maybe four or five of these people over the span of 80 years. But there's still one more tier to all of this; there is always one person you love who becomes that definition. It usually happens retrospectively, but it always happens eventually. This is the person who unknowingly sets the template for what you will always love about other people, even if some of those lovable qualities are self-destructive and unreasonable. You will remember conversations with this person that never actually happened. You will recall sexual trysts with this person that never technically occurred. This is because the individual who embodies your personal definition of love does not really exist. The person is real, and the feelings are real-- but you create the context. And context is everything. The person who defines your understanding of love is not inherently different than anyone else, and they're often just the person you happen to meet the first time you really, really want to love someone. But that person still wins. They win, and you lose. Because for the rest of your life, they will control how you feel about everyone else."

As a result of reading this, I began to think about how my current relationship came about. My boyfriend (his name is Mike) had transferred in second semester of this year. I was a freshman who should have been a sophomore. The only reason this wasn't so was because I took a gap-year which was spent proving to my parents I could handle a $45,000 education by going to a significantly cheaper institution. Anyway, back to the story. One snowy night in February when I wasn't so sober, my friend Ryan, an exuberant-all-American-metal head, introduced me to Mike. We shared a fondness for That Handsome Devil and "party hats". Now we're together. Our meeting does not truly adhere to the definition of a 'chance encounter' (we would have met eventually. He and I knew and were friends with the same people). It's because he chose Goucher out of all the colleges in Maryland to be closer to someone he loved. It's because I had chosen to take a gap-year instead of entering college the same year as all of my high school friends (well, in a sense I did. However, because most of my credits taken at Bergen Community College did not transfer over, it's sort of like the whole experience never happened at all). So in a way it was a chance encounter. At least, I think it was. Then, probably because of the late hour and the fact I was suffering from hunger pains and partial exhaustion, I began to think more deeply about chance encounters themselves and what makes them so fascinating to me. Now here I am. It's 5:27AM. I'm still suffering from hunger pains. I'm still partially exhausted. Yet I'm happy. I'm happy because there is French vanilla chai upstairs, "Home" by Edward Sharpe & The Magnetic Zeros is playing, and I'm in love.

Bliss. True Bliss.

Chocolate Raspberry (Vegan) Muffins

Laying naked in bed
A typical morning
You left for cigarettes
Milky-white anemic
Cheeks flushed with desire
A striking skeleton
Whose wild bones I love to kiss
You flourish best in light
Skin becomes transparent
A glow-in-the-sun form
The walking disco ball
Return to me now please
My arms are missing you
Whose person I love to love

I wrote this for my boyfriend. I write a lot of things for my boyfriend. He's got me under some kind of spell (bewitching, enchanting). While my English professor was discussing Melville's "Bartleby The Scrivener", I was constructing (and deconstructing) lines of poetry. I haven't written much since I've been home. Most of my time is filled with looking for work, spending time with old (and new) friends, and taking advantage of my open pool. Even though I've been home only two weeks, it feels like months. Time does not pass the same way in Jersey as it does when I'm at Goucher. My days did not blur together like they do now. The only thing that has remained the same is that I still go to sleep when the birds wake up.

On a different note, I beat a mosquito with a stapler tonight to Animal Collective's "Summertime Clothes". I found that rather fitting. I miss school. I miss consistency.

The Science of Beginnings

New beginnings leave a strange sensation. I say new because this is not the first time I've had a blog. Back in the days of yore (and by that I simply mean those pubescent-tortured-(life's so hard on me. The guy I like hasn't noticed me yet! What do I wear? Am I fat? Is that a PIMPLE?!)-gotta-catch-em'-all days of high school). If I remember correctly, it was a xanga. I feel xangas defined many past generations' high school experiences. Of course, myspace was included in that loop (we will always carry a torch for you, Tom). But before myspace accounts and classic myspace photo uploads (you know the ones), there was xanga. I revisited my xanga account recently. Rereading over some of those posts, I could hardly identify with the person who wrote them. There was such a strong desire to fit in, to please readers, that the writing just came off as awkward. I was a bit taken aback that this was who I used to be. That's nothing new of course. There are moments in life when we're forced to look back (the surprise discoveries, the time traveling capsule filled with secrets from the past). When we do, it's like we're meeting a stranger we know we've met before but whose name we can't remember. That's what it felt like reading some of my xanga posts. Now I'm beginning a new blog, one reflecting my interests in writing and the adventures I have along the way. Happy travels!