Stock

A late Saturday afternoon - a hot mug of tea on my left, a vinyl of Shubert filling the room (99 cents well spent). I have some stock simmering on the stove and laundry being done in the basement. While it seems like this part of my day should have come a few hours ago, I am contentedly writing on the couch facing the (non functional but still pleasing) fire place.

I get way too much into cooking for my own good, but to the right: quick pickles I made this morning. I had grated too many carrots (on a food processor) for borscht I made earlier this week, added in a tomato and the pickling brew. Now I wait.

Below: collected all the vegetable scrapes I had made this week for a vegetable stock. Forgotten scallion and beet stalks: it'll be different every time. I don't eat meat and don't like buying stock or flavoring cubes so this is satisfying.

Dream: I was a passenger on a small plane, ten rows forty passengers plus the pilot and one or two crew members. We were dropping in altitude and I suddenly realized we were landing in a snowy mountain, in an area that looked like a not well kept ski trail. There were a couple of cars trying to drive down too, one we simply and passed over and the next fell off of the trail. A van did a full flip off the side into the woods. The stewardess was announcing to the pilot each time the stair-like trail made a dramatic dip "and DESCEND". Then there was a small red flag and sharp 90 degree turn to the left to a trail that went up slightly. Which we made, butt was terrifying because if we had not we would be dead. I think in the end we landed safely.

Truth and Beauty

At the very end of my shift on the 31st, a code was called that resulted in three restraints. That was how I exited 2015.

They say your year will go the way you entered it. I entered it with warmth. I was surrounded by people I've known since I was ten. I called my family in Arizona. I messaged those who I wanted to carry with me from 2015 into 2016.

My first conversation of the year was
Eloosha, with a smug look: Huh, doesn't feel very different.
Me, insistent on magic: almost like New Years is an artificial time construct, you jerk.

traditions carried for generations: Oranges or clementines. Champagne. A table laden with food. Ирония судьбы (The Irony of Fate) playing in the background. Saying goodbye to the Old Year before saying hello to the New. Family. A New Years tree. Sparklers and fireworks. Snegurochka and Ded Moroz. Gifts. Love.

First Day of the Year, discussing bunnies as secret illigal pets during college
"I only ever saw two bunnies at Yale, one was named Truth and the other Beauty, and one of them almost certainly overdosed on cocaine" (which one though, is unknown)

I woke up the next morning and knit for a little bit before falling asleep and waking up with everyone else: all of us soon transitioned to one bed, a lump and warmth and promises to try to stay horizontal for as long as possible. Liza said "my new years resolution is to keep my heart over my head for as long as possible". Eloosha said "I think with my hands". I tucked those away.
Wasting time to the fullest with cuddling and music and late brunch. 
The next morning I woke not in my own bed yet again, and read Autobiography of a Corpse (Sigizmund Krzhizhanovsky translated by Joanne Turnbull, 1920's) while surrounded by sleeping beauties.

I made it back to my apartment eventually, only to go back to the same company for a conversation that lasted hours, a midnight visitation and trying to breathe and be brave.

not a ghost

Months passed I had a dream - A boy I liked from high school but had lost touch with was dancing with me. It was in a building that used to be a psychiatric hospital years ago, by a lake with tall stone walls and hallways that echoed. Ghosts would pop up and then disappear just as suddenly. I've since wondered: if ghosts are usually freed to the spiritual world by resolving the issue that was tying them to the earth past their due, what do you do with a ghost of a paranoid schizophrenic? Are they more likely to get stuck here forever, unable to be brought clarity?

A week ago a friend I had in college killed himself. From my last communications with him, it was clear he had become increasingly disorganized and paranoid, overburdened with false guilt, annoyed by the lack of freedom. When Kelsey called I knew from her voice what she was going to talk to me about, I just didn't expect it to happen so soon.

He had been so sensitive, he was so bright - I can’t imagine what it is like to see yourself losing that, especially for a person to whom intellectual acuity is paramount - emotional sensitivity key - and he certainly felt that the medications blunted him in so many ways. 

At one point he had been one of the people I hung out with a fair amount, he came to a couple of my movie nights and I took photos for This Bardian Life, and we went out dancing, and he came to my 21st birthday party and numerous lunches and dinners together, he called wine vino and had a particular way he nodded his head, large bony hands, hair that had to be constantly swept to the side, low voice and eyes that paid attention when you talked; conversations not to be had in passing. 

I wish I had more I could find of him, it's a strange drawback of having communications in person, in vivo; you can't look over them later. I read something for TBL, he was thinking maybe I should expand it, I was concerned -- 
You mean you think the re-work would weaken it? I think that's reasonable. If you're interested in a remaster, go for it, although, with my bit of experience with creative work I was thinking your past self might have more to say. But it's up to you, of course. Send me the new version if you're comfortable; i'm also open to talking more about your process if you'd like.
 

We lost touch, he had started to lose something, and I was busy and attributed it to other things until we had stopped trying to speak to each other once I had graduated over a year ago now and only recently did I hear from him again, but not him, some other person. I miss the he who I knew, who he was, but both are entirely gone now. I know I can’t feel like I could have done something, but I wasn’t there, one of my last messages to him an apology for us not having maintained contact, and somehow I want to apologize for him being dead, to apologize to him for the sorrowful mix of genetics and environment that led him to not be here anymore, age 22 forever, for the world for having played such a cruel trick on him, that I couldn't do anything to stop it.

I don’t believe in restless ghosts: I have my memories of you on this side. 

inflated

Why does the intellectual life sometimes feel at odds with the stupid risks of youth? Haven’t most great artists and thinkers lived great lives - really lived, thrived, felt, been hurt - held insight and ignorance simultaneously? Maybe, even, it’s impossible to write (authentically - a toxic word, steeping through the liver as we drink our way to inhibitions end) without first diving into some sort of simplicity (which is never truly simple, or everything is always simpler than --, or whatever it may be.) The cerebral is contained within the rest of the body, depends on and feeds off of the happily (death-driven?) pursuits of the body as we meander on the path of existence (but not just existence: life, awareness, and once again the idea of thriving). 

Hotline bling has been stuck in my head for the last few days, and it is my fault. 

For months I withheld extensive interactions with my co-workers. I went out drinking with them once and later felt like I should have left earlier. I went out again when someone was leaving and did leave earlier. The adrenaline-rushed and boredom filled existence of the halls, the repetition of “here’s a toothbrush” mixed with “I have his right arm” is filled with people who made me want to be careful. I said “working here is like an abusive relationship: you can only be with the people here because a) the weird hours mean that you cannot hang out with anyone else and b) the people here are the only ones that will understand what you are experiencing.” Someone said “It’s so hard listening to people complain about their work after a day here: oh, you had a bad phone call at work? I feel SO sorry for you, someone spit in my mouth today”.

To the point: in spite of my avoiding it at first, I have by now found myself ingrained in this group. I got invited to a birthday dinner of a smaller circle, and after I came Launtylaunt dug at me, telling me that I’m part of the clique, retaliation because I gave them shit about being cliquey for months. The next day I attended a bbq. I find them more and more ingrained in myself. I would not be friends with them if not for this job - but then, I chose to work here, and so did they. I kept thinking careful careful, until suddenly I found myself not so careful. In May I wrote to Kelsey “We bundle strangely”, which is still true. But this tide of people drew me into the fold. I wish I had been writing more as it came along, begrudgingly, uncertainly, cynically, untrustingly, judgmentally. I want to make this whole, here's the first attempt at patching up the hole. all I can find to add: May 4th: i think maybe we are friends, but not the kind of friend, at least not at this point, that will last beyond 'this point' -- this job.  July 4th:  (two of the supervisors are, for lack of a better word, grooming me for the position. It comes with a lot of flattery I don't know what to do with). One of my coworkers pushes my head in a way that a brother would do, and I'm hoping that's all he means by it. I glare at him every time I speak too softly and he tells me to talk in a 'big girl voice'.

Launtylaunt and World are both cocky. They know this, we tell them all the time. They think they are amazing but they also tell the people they like how amazing they are. When the drink flows so do the compliments. I sit there thinking that if I’m not careful, my ego will be so inflated that I could be thrown into the Charles with weights and still stay afloat. Our mouths fill with cigar smoke and they and tell me they want me to be a supervisor - have been telling me for months, Laungtylaunt called me a selfless bitch one time when I rejected a scheme that I thought was ineffective, but would have been to my advantage. They listed off four reasons I should be a supervisor, reasons crystallized with opportunity. Let me, through them, gloat. Even if all of this is false, it is true that they said this.

1. you are the smartest person in the hospital.
   “this is not true but I will not argue with you” and they repeat themselves. Matt alters it, he says “you have the kind of mind most people envy” thinking I can swallow this better and I think how little how little how little (how can I not smile softly to myself at that? how can I not fiddle with the glass of wine in my hands? no matter what it is both nice and horrible to hear)
2. you have a heart like no other
   a similar reaction internally, but I don’t bother fumbling with the words.
3. you know what’s going on
   nobody ever does
4. you are ready, and have been ready
   nobody ever is

I never finished my dinner, World and Launtylaunt ignored me when I said I was fine where I was by the bathroom door, having vomited, picking me up and lugging me to the black couch instead, where I slept for a little bit. We are all just prisoners here, of our own device.

perfume

My mother keeps telling me to be kinder to myself. I called her on the phone, after what I thought were tentative plans turned to vapor and left no trace, as if they had not even been tentative. I called her, telling her that it took me two hours to get up out of bed after work and move myself to change and shower, and that the entire time I felt gross because I hate staying in my work clothes, the stink of the hospital still on me, the smell of my least-favorite perfume (necessary to wear if I'm to survive a day filled with the smell of psychotic depression stagnation, or geriatric decrepitude, or withdrawal shakes - but still my least favorite because why would I ruin a nice perfume by wearing it there, putting that complicated misery on a smell I like? One patient kept telling me that I smell like the perfume his mother was buried in, he seemed angry that I kept wearing it and kept refusing zyprexa and anything else). T---, tell yourself that it's okay that you were in bed in those clothes for two hours. You are good. She didn't ask why I didn't love myself more, and she knew that when I said that perhaps I am good because I don't love myself, that it was pointless to carry on that conversation further. This is all to say that my mother is very smart and very loving and that I'm so happy I have her.

Paras moved out last weekend, while I was in NYC (more on that later.) Curtis moved in once I was back already, I was grateful that he had so few boxes (so, I'm sure, were both he and Adrian, as we carried what few things he had up four flights of stairs).

I'm thinking about the things that people take and leave behind. Paras has taken with him a lot: the coffee maker, the sound of him practicing sitar, himself. He has left a few things scattered around the apartment, including two voluptuous plants on the balcony (he knew I would like that), and Amy for a friend. I'm meeting up with her now.

below: I'm trying to draw again. Max and I meet up - in theory every Tuesday, in practice less frequently. We assign homework, we try to hold eachother accountable to keep drawing outside of college. It's hard, but we are trying.

The Idiot

I finished reading The Idiot earlier this week. I'd been so frustrated with it. My reading speed in Russian is slow, slow enough that I had already been reading it when I interviewed for the apartment in December. When you read that slowly, the fact that Aglaia was blushing for two pages and then it is stated explicitly that she, was, in fact, embarrassed - it feels like the author is condescending to my ability to comprehend the redness in her cheek. I got why she was red when you started, Dostoevsky, and three pages later I'm quite sure I don't need an explicit statement. I'm sure if the process had been less painstakingly slow it wouldn't be so glaringly annoying.

And I'm not as enamored with Knaz Mishkin as I ought to be. I do not like that he conflates pity with love. I do not like Dostoevsky's hysterical women, strange caricatures of some Russian ideal. But I love when, near the end, (here, I found a translated text) Knaz says he loves both and that he just needs to explain everything to Aglaya, and receives in response "No, prince, she will not. Aglaya loved like a woman, like a human being, not like an abstract spirit. Do you know what, my poor prince? The most probable explanation of the matter is that you never loved either the one or the other in reality."

And I did quite enjoy the way the writing changed nearing Mishkin's epileptic fit, flickering like something quite modern - Faulkner? - and the change the fit caused in Knaz. I think the rambling of Ippolit in his letter reading is quite great too, though I never figured out what Ippolit is, as a character, and ended disappointed in him.

And then, nearing the end of the book, I decided that Knaz Mishkin and Rogozhin are the same person. Rogozhin is like a shadow: eyes imagined in a crowd, a spirit met at first after many sleepless nights, a knife sneaking up right when a fit is about to occur. His being present in all these moments is not a mere coincidence, nor, I think, because Rogozhin as a person is fixated on Mishkin. Rather, it is Mishkin fixated on himself, but it is his dark side, one that her refuses to acknowledged as himself.

They are so similar, in some ways: both abandoned at the alter, both feverish in temperament, both preoccupied with Anastasia Filipovna, both feverishly passionate at times. Mishkin knows Rogozhin so well he states at the very beginning that he is likely to kill Anastasia Filipovna. At the end, on that fateful day in St. Petersburg, Rogozhin answers in synchrony: Here was a question Knaz had while trying to track down Rogozhin - and Here is the thought Rogozhin had, exactly relating to the thought Knaz had, almost as if they had a conversation throughout the day. After a day of the two of them being in the same place at the same time with almost the same thoughts, Knaz is not surprised to find Anastasia dead, remaining calm as Rogozhin tells him what happened, asking the wrong questions but overall acting as if he already knew, he just had to realize he already knew. Rogozhin insists on sleeping near Knaz - the two souls need to mingle in proximity, finally the two sides of the same coin together.

However, once Knaz, filled with goodness and naiveté, has killed Anastasia (as Rogozhin) he can no longer exist as the image of goodness. Knaz looses himself fully to his epileptic idiocy, unable to exist as a murderer. Rogozhin, loosing half of himself, (as Knaz ceases to exist) suffers an inflammation of the brain, but survives as himself, a dark murderous shadow still in synchrony with its own identity.

so in the end, I did manage to keep myself entertained, albeit with a rather modernest take on the novel.

Jetlag 7th Ed. 

no hurries

I told Adrian that the heat makes me feel horrid and groggy. He says he likes it, that he feels like the world is giving him a warm blanket-hug.
I thought that was very sweet, and that all I can do is envy him.

On the forth of July weekend I stayed in Cambridge, and saw the fireworks for the first time in a while. We live on the fourth floor in an area surrounded by three story buildings, so we have a clear view of Boston from the balcony, and the light show was lovely and so was this strange and delightful blimp with a whale on it and a name of a gin across on a banner, which kept circling around and around.  Elyse came over and a few of us ate nachos and eventually it devolved into hide-and-seek and watching scary music videos with masks. (Pitbull Terrier by Die Antwoord, Alles Neu, Ramstein's Du Hast)

In the morning I woke up and Elyse was still asleep on the couch, and together we decided we have no hurries.

Hurries are like worries mixed with harpies, suburban mothers clucking I have to pick up cake for Sally's birthday party, and make it to yoga class, and finish 50 Shades of Gray for book club this Wednesday, and Paul asked me to pick up the dry cleaning, and I should make sure Ronda did her English hw this time and...

So with no hurries we wandered over to her place in Quincy, stopping by a beach filled with dead jelly fish, reading in the sand, eating drippy ice-cream and meeting up with Sam for dinner. No hurries is great.

CC 2014

I wrote to Sorrel about camping this year, and she agreed that this is what it's like when you meet up with old friends: everything is exactly the same, yet different.

We did things, as usual - same people with a few variations, and the kids are growing. KVN, climbed in the trees of an adventure park, swam. We put on plays, played music, cooked, played games, attended classes, hugged, slept, stayed awake, drank, recited poetry. Part of the time I felt anxious like a crumpled piece of paper. Part of it I was as gleeful as a soon-to-expire spark of fire, singeing joyously against the cold summer night. Sometime I will be back again, but not to this place, not quite.

emerald leaves

The emerald leaves are like a latent desire. Autumn comes and the leaves fall shivering in the wind, until the trees stand naked, branches arched achingly against the sky. The trees' heart beats slow and they hold the weight of snow and break under the burden of ice and we want but know not what. And then spring comes, and first the flowers bloom, and then the leaves begin. Tentatively, limp translucent green and fuzzy curls. We say "I had forgotten that trees have leaves, but they do and Oh! Oh! that is what I wanted all along". 


partings are beginning. I swung with Amanda in a hammock one late evening before going down to the waterfall, sang at Baccalaureate yesterday, which was followed by senior dinner. Had a meeting with a clinical professor for an hour and half, hoping for words of wisdom, and attended a bonfire/bbq at the co-op. Psychology luncheon and surrealist circus.

campus is mostly empty and almost all the students left are seniors -- feels nothing like l&t. It's more or less the same group, at least by name, as the ones who entered freshman year three weeks before the rest of the school had arrived. Oh! Oh! We cannot and will not go back.

aquacities of thought and language

Senior photo exhibit I, Alex's senior opera recital, the senior dance show, Dani's senior music recital. Pill for reduction of lyme disease by 80% if taken within 72 hours of being bitten (the bite itself swollen and itching.) My shoulders have browned and freckled from the sun. The picking of a stem of apple blossoms and putting them into a glass milk bottle. Kelsey said “Brooklyn is the Bard afterlife”. Jono got a bird and it screams at the birds outside. Text from Yulka, 11:59pm 10/3/13: It's ok, understand. I took a picture of the magnolia tree behind my house, after asking Sorrel and Hannah to stand in front of it. Found out that (wood) Sorrel is what I know as заячья капуста (bunny cabbage). Text from Hannah, 5:07pm 3/25/14: Between ny and philly: bleakest train ride ever. Nj a hellscape. Valley of ashes. we were making a film but we could do more complicated things, such as overlay ourselves into previous renditions (so that there could be two of each person in a scene). And we decided that we could each interact with the previous version as we wished, without planning out everything before hand. But then a couple of us started killing us off. And I was upset: not only because we were being murdered (it only half felt like it was only in the movie we were making) but because a horror flick didn't fit my artistic version for the film. I screamed in fear and woke up silent. I need to install my AC again because it's getting hot and humid and my room is right under the roof. I can hear it when the rains, which I like. I tried smiling at someone from class but it he looked away mournfully. Emma is to come around noon and we will walk to the burrito stand. She switched majors from psychology to photography, I never did a senior project for studio art, taking a drawing III class in my final semester. Text from Sasha, 10:48pm 4/21/14: (I know but one soul this romantically damned.) I watched The Garden State (2004 USA) last night alone, and found it irritating. Some say say happiness is the absence of sadness. Farm fest was 4$ chili with bread and rice and we left the music when we came around in the evening. Mass Text from Kelsey, 10:49pm, drunk and standing right next to me 5/2/14: I love you ;) Went to the klezmer concert at Two Boots, eating mediocre pizza with Hannah and Will before going to Kelsey's room to watch ParaNorman (2012 USA). Sang the last full chamber singers concert for the masters choral conductors (Sicut cervus – Palestrina; Trois Chansons – Debussy; Spirit Seeking Light and Beauty – Stuart; Pater Noster – Stravinksy; Agnus Dei – Hassler; Rest – Vaughan Williams; There will be rest – Techeli; No. 8 Wenn so lind dein Auge mir, No.16 Ein dunkeler Schacht ist Liebe – Brahms; The last words of David – Thompson). “you can't make eye contact with half of campus” Emma said as we sat in the grass eating our burritos. This is the final truth. 

 

sum some

The last month was a whirlwind - trying to finish up senior project while attempting to pretend that I don't have that weight on my shoulders. I attended an ASO concert (Strauss - Emperor Waltz, Accelerations, The Blue Danube; Conus - Violin Concerto; Brahms - Symphony No. 2). That night I came home to Jono and Noah playing goat simulator for two hours.

All the tennis matches happened in April (I think we lost almost all of them). 4/20 at Blithewood. We celebrated birthdays - Kelsey turned 21 on the 21st. We were 21 together for a day and then I turned 22 on the 22nd. Golden birthdays. Went to the diner for Adrienne's birthday on the 28th. Eggs and potatoes and rye toast, everyone else got chocolate milkshakes.

We performed Verdi's Requiem with the ASO two nights in a row, very close to the senior project deadline. A 92 year old man had a heart attack because of the music the first night. That Saturday we sang at William Weaver's memorial service - he was the first to translate all of Umberto Eco's works and some other modern Italian literature, and seemed to have had some colorful characters in his life. 

This Wednesday I finished formatting my project and went with Adrienne & co to get it bound - three copies, one for each member of my board. We got food at the Golden Wok and then checked in around four, an hour before the deadline. Many birthing jokes ensued: 9 months for delivery. Bard t-shirts, alumni sign-up, bbq and snacks and then we went behind stone row for free beer. Ended up sipping margarita's at Santa Fe and then the Bard Orchestra concert and then saw Hannah and Jack and Will and his friend Steven. Thoroughly sleep deprived and incomprehensible, though I still fell asleep at one, unable to break the habit from the past month, waking up at 8:30 as usual and kept going. I joked that we drink not just to numb the bruises from senior project, but fill the void left behind by it.
As I was falling asleep the next day for a nap, I was swarmed by thoughts like bees buzzing bumbling bustling and realized the tunnel vision that comes with working on one thing so single mindedly, that you forget (can't afford to) think about all the other thoughts in your head, though they are still there.

And then this weekend was spring fling. Thursday night was a small gathering at the Root Cellar (incoherent singing and the cliqueness of the people who tend to go there: Sorrel Hannah and I left pretty soon after arriving). I joined Kalena the second night and danced with Kelsey (music: Deerhoof, Branchez, Giraffage, Speedy Oritz, Celestial Shore).

The third we had a pre-party with Amanda & co. and that's where most of the dancing that night happened - at the tent, it was too crowded and jumbled, the currents making it impossible to stay still and sway, one moved through the river, bumping up against rocks, coursing round in circles (music: Lil B, Slava, Silent Addy, Chi Ching Ching). We hung out in the beer garden and campus center instead, smiling broadly and talking to people we don't talk to and holding hands and hugging: Bardians are nice when drunk. I went to the waterfall where Will and Hannah and others set up a fire and that was lovely until I felt sleepy and took the 2:40 shuttle home.

and that's the last month, summarized.

look cool

Smog: I was dancing and then went outside before the next song started. Amanda and Kelsey came outside to make sure I was okay and then left again when I verified that I was fine standing under the overhang. “Do you want a cigarette to look cool while you do it?” Kelsey asked. The rain looked like snow lite by sharp light. Two guys came out too:

“I drank way too much last night. I don't angry or anything like that, but I drank too much”
“why did you drink?”
“because it feels good!”

“but not for any reason like, to avoid an emotion or anything like that?”
“no, just for relief, to let off some steam”

We danced the rest of the night, laughing and closing our eyes to the shifting rhythms.

The next night I should have stayed in. Vessels have a frequencies that make them resonate, and the music the freshman boys played that night resonated in my stomach. The Milkshack (aka EMS house) had dj sets but it was just a bit too cold outside. Some people were gone and danced like puppets jerked by children; everyone else huddled in a swarming mass around the campfire, in varied states of sobriety. Faces where invisible as soon as one shifted away from the fire light; perhaps the total anonymity was good for some but my mouth was dry and there was nowhere to dance for those like me who did not look like marionettes and I had to talk to people I haven't spoken to in a while to avoid standing aimlessly on the frigid fringe of the crowd.

A couple nights ago I had a dream Eloosha and I went swimming in a pond which still had ice floating in it, his father and others were there too. The purpose was to increase Eloosha's literary acuity, though the people standing on the bank wouldn't understand. When I woke up my feet were freezing.

Yesterday Hannah B. and I went to get Chineese fast-food. It was delicious.

warm home

 Sunday, March 16 filled to the brim with pseudoephedrine and cough medicine, I went to An Opera Double Bill: Payne Hollow by Shawn Jaeger (which was....eh) and The Turn of the Screw by Benjamin Britten (which was disturbing, and I haven't read the story). Since I have turned in a paper and traveled back home. Massachusetts, Massachusetts, my sweet sweet love. 

But having drunk coffee with my grandmother who's visiting from Israel, giving Yosef the requested buzz cut, driven Shimon to his swim lesson, helped Papa fix up the basement after the electrical wiring got redone and helped Mama pick out a skirt, I am now at the end of the part of my spring break that is me being at home - and leaving tomorrow at 7am.

The lakes are still frozen but the geese are back.

we are [small; one]

On the 26^th, a Bard professor was killed in a car crash on his way home. A day later we got an e-mail that a girl had collapsed in the parking lot but had been found and was now at the hospital post operation.
Last night I went to Manor for pub fair and to see Told Slant play. It was pretty intimate and mostly upper-classman, and on the way out S told me and K that the girl from the parking lot was now on life support and announced brain-dead. It’s been a day and we still haven’t received an e-mail. I think a lot of the freshmen know. Heart failure? K received an e-mail from one of her fysem tutees canceling the appointment. Everyone knows. H & E’s housemate was friends with her and she was supposed to play at the Root Cellar tonight so people are going in commemoration.

edit: her sister had been keeping updates from her facebook page a few days ago, first saying that she is not yet able to receive visitors and flowers, and then that she will not survive the cardiac arrest and that her organs will bring life to up to twelve people. May she rest in peace.

she sleeps

There was a dusting of snow today. I was singing Verdi’s Requiem at the time, and now the wind aches against the ears of those outside.

I had ten dreams in two consecutive nights last semester and I wrote them all down.

1) worms from eating seafood coming out of my throat; parasites. This one is clearly influenced by watching the Tin Drum.

2) grandmother dying.  

3) grandfather undead: playing poker with my father and a red-headed mean version of a friend who has played poker in real life.

Last night I was at Hannah’s house. We ate soup and then I decided to treasure hunt in her house. The place has seen many students come through, and many of them have left strange things, beyond the simple furnishings. I found a nice glass jar and three tea pots and a book titled “Is Sex Necessary?” from which we read aloud as we drank tea from a new found teapot, with chocolate and ginger. 

4) a rooster who was harassing me, following me around; literally a cock being a dick.

5) a man who had no reflection and then was a scare crow. When I spoke to him he told me he got into the MIT engineering school, but never had a chance to go because he died. I told him “but you’re aging”; I did not believe spirits could age, and so I knew either I was incorrect, or he was wrong about him being dead.

6) a boy at my college, but he was Georgian instead of Indian. I talked past him to someone else.

Kelsey is coming over in an hour and we will watch The Science of Sleep (2006 USA) upon Zoe’s recommendation. We went to a consignment store that went out of business a few days ago, and now I have two skirts, leggings, a velvet shirt, a a small bag, and a necklace.

7) terrifying physics defying roller coaster with no clear safety measures

8) the dead undertakers traveling through eternity: dead cats

9) a TV series with two female leads. The main character is an uncharismatic and awkward leader, for whom everyone is waiting to fail. And at some point you see her through the eyes of her right-hand woman: Marlin Monroe smoking a cigar.

My housemates have arrived back to our home. I was going to go to NYC again on Wednesday but I felt like I was coming down with something; sleeping for 21 hours over a 48 hour period seems to have successfully mitigated the threat.

10) The merchants. Someone asked “What was here before?” and the merchant said “I don’t know, maybe hot dog stands, we didn’t set anything up” and then I came by and said “before this, Native Americans lived here, but we murdered them”. And then someone tried to destroy my computer data.

review

The British pub Cock & Bull called upon us, and so we heeded its cry and imbibed. That was Monday. The beer and the cup of coffee were perfect. The area where I’m living current is a bit less strictly residential than where I was for my internship, so that there are shops and restaurants close by. It’s also not summer, my least favorite season, and I’m living in a room that doesn’t look out straight onto the exterior of another building, but onto the street, so there's proper light. I like Luisa and Sasha much more than the woman I found on craigslist. Overall, NYC is less overwhelming. I can pick out individuals and see humans rather than an impossible swarm.

Tuesday I went up against the chill of winter to meet Bianca and her friends in midtown for a good-bye Korean dinner before she leaves for Vienna. While wandering around Penn Station later (waiting for someone) a lady came up to me. She started unwinding a long story, but first “is your English fluent?” “yes” “oh, thank God”. I think she misinterpreted my little smile because she asked a couple questions and then again “are you really fluent?” trying to appeal to my xenophobia. She smelled homeless and she started telling me a story about her daughter being airlifted out of NYC to a hospital in another city “and the security guard told me to get to go to…Grand Central and take metro north” she said, pausing at the name of one of the most famous stations in the world as if she had forgotten, opening up a piece of paper with neatly written out instructions, the folds softened and browning with numerous unfolding and refolding.

Yesterday Hannah and I went to Bischoff’s concert at Saint Ann’s Warehouse in Brooklyn, primarily because contemporaneous was playing, so we knew some of the people on stage. Contemporaneous started as a group the year before I started college, and by now they are playing concerts in NYC, and this concert got a positive review in the Times.