Construction

On October the 19th, we were over at Em's. This was the night I had smoked a full cigar, exhaling it through my mouth and inhaling the smoke through my nose into my lungs until I felt too dizzy to sit. I lay down and listened to the sounds of the room, exclamations and roaring laughter gave way to chitter and chatter and quieter conversations, and by then the world had stop spinning so much around my body. Em and Launti had gone to bed. World Matt and I stayed up watching "That's My Boy", which World claims is the movie of his people (set in his hometown of Somerville). I said we should go for a walk, but a little past midnight World fell asleep in his chair, mid-sentence.

It was drizzling outside when we left the apartment. I used a gray blanket from the couch as a cloak and Matt pointed at a building not too far away and said it looked like Christmas lights so we went towards the twinkling, found the gates to the site unlocked, and climbed, ten stories up, with a view of the city spreading out below us on all sides. I wanted to return to take photos so on the 14th of December we did. It was unseasonably warm and rainy, and in two months glass had arrived to the first nine stories of the building, and wooden beams had appeared on the first couple floors. But the gate was still unlocked and the security guard was not doing his job, so we went up and up again. Here are a few of the photos from that hunt -

different building, still twinkled

 

 

 

2015

2015 was holding my breath. I lived so much this year.

Time passed with a moon dipped in venom, so many friends visiting - Adrienne, Hannah, Will, Sorrel, a Bernie rally attended. I smoked my first cigar and felt sick - stuck with the habit of holding the smoke in my lungs. I got hit by a car while biking, and had too much to think anything of it. I went to a lecture on John Weiners at Harvard at Kelsey's urging, hundreds of miles away in Columbus, Ohio. I got sick. I spent a few days in NH with my coworkers and three dogs. I got told that I was looking exceedingly bird-like. My flatmates and I threw a party and named it "Crunksgiving". I climbed Mt. Lincoln and Lafayette with my father.

each of those is a story, a vignette.  maybe I'll have time to tell them this year.

I read a few books - Cat's Cradle in a burst of "oh! reading in English, I've forgotten!". On Adrian's advice (and my parents as well)  How to Win Friends and Influence People. When I felt lonely with R, I would read his favorite book; 100 Years of Solitude - it went by quick, so did he, the irony not lost on me. House of Leaves, which I had gifted myself for my birthday. Matt then lent me City of Glass. A project started by Hannah and Sorrel led me to read chunks of A Short History of Wine, I Drink Therefore I am; A Philosopher's Guide to Wine, and A History of the World in Six Glasses.

I'm ready to breath out.

Christmas

My life as fiction:

There was a party on a boat for the hospital. A cruise called Spirit of Boston, meaning that twenty minutes in comes the realization that exchanging pleasantries isn't that pleasant, and that to escape into drinking is not an option with a morning shift looming, and that one has to smile and try to enjoy oneself.

By which I mean to say, maybe not-me learned some things about some people that she didn't need to know, and maybe some of that they learned later, but that's okay. There were no cheating wives. There was no man who slept with three women from his workplace. There was no higher-up who did worse than either. After the ship and the dancing there may have been pool (which I was brilliant at!) at a bar everyone was invited to by a heart-broken nurse, but there I wasn't complimented on my lipstick as he lamented all the girls scattering when he came around.

Similarly, Christmas Eve was not spent in West Bridgewater. I didn't walk barefoot through the misty neighborhood. Nobody said a single racist thing. Not a single person made a fool of themselves! Nobody got angry, everyone was happy with their gifts, and I definitely, undeniably got a full nights' rest, most likely in my own bed and not on a fold-out couch at Emily's. Incredible, right?

And Christmas day dinner was not four Jews and a Catholic-raised Atheist talking about mind-control for the good of the masses. That's ludicrous! Dinner couldn't have been served on the porch; after all, it's the end of December. There was no tilapia and certainly no pumpkin cupcakes with cream cheese frosting or warm hugs. 


cheers to the most Christmas I've ever had in my life.

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.

kaleidoscope

I keep having words but not putting them together here, like a moving kaleidoscope and I can't quite snatch up the shapes and colors before they disappear from before me.

green glass - I went to the Somerville porch fest with Adian and Margo. We shifted from venue to venue, and with the change in location came a change in population. Old married couples with grandchildren in one place, people in their late 30's at another, those in their 20's and early 30's at a third. It's kind-of perfect though, the idea of a porch fest. People come out and share their own music with the people living around them, using the cross of urban and suburban space: tightly packed houses stacked next to each other -- creating a town-wide bbq-party. Green bottles filled with beer in hand, music dances in the air.

teal strand - I dyed my hair. People keep asking way and I say "I just felt like it" except to Paras to whom I said "whenever I change my hair it's because of a boy" and didn't repeat myself when he didn't hear.


a feather, refracted - we went camping: the boy who used to live in the room I live in now, Therese, Paras, and Amy. I had never gone camping without the supervision of those a generation above me! I had never gone camping without Russians! We snuck around trying to scare each other throughout the day, like real adults. We had about 7 different types of 'dogs' to accommodated so many different dietary restrictions. We pitched a couple tents and didn't get wet when it rained. We toasted marshmallows for breakfast and swam in a lake with ducklings.

a mirror slate - at work, I now only have 32h schedueled per week, and only work day shift, which means I no longer feel like I'm chronically jetlagged. Unless I pick up a shift, I always work on 3South, on of the acute units, like I had asked. All of this makes me much happier, I didn't even realize how much weight had been placed on my chest until it lifted. Two days ago I had a few tears escape my eyes while at the nurses station, in front of people. One of the patients had screamed and called me a bitch, and I also found out that I was almost certainly mandated. Usually I am ashamed when people see me cry, but this time I apologized and it felt okay. "Relax" Cole told me, and gave me a one-armed hug. I didn't get mandated. She apologized to me the next day "you know you are one of my favorite staff! I was waiting for you to come in after yesterday so I could apologize!" I said, yes, thank you, but wouldn't it be great if you didn't have to apologize? Think about what you think will help you to control your temper, before it boils over. "You are right!" she said. We will see.


how many times have I turned the kaleidescope?

basement party

This is my first full time job. This is the first time I have signed a lease. This is the first time I bought lipstick. This is the first time I have made an on line dating profile, and gone on a blind date. This is the first time I have bought a gym membership. This is the first time I have bought pussy willow in the spring.  like my mother does. This is the first time I've had a budget spreadsheet. This is the first time I've attended a party that was attended by the police, twice.

The apartment-wide party really did end up happening on Saturday night. Adrian Paras Amy and I went down to the basement and there was a dj playing in the corner with his laptop and a movie projected behind him, another one waiting for his turn at the set, wearing lab goggles over his glasses. A couple lamps and some Christmas lights, someone turned on a couple bike lights and it looked like a strobe blinking in the corner. Like an edgy bar where they can charge you 12$ for drinks, except with a laundry room at the entrance. At 10:30 the cops showed up, right as we had shut off the music (there was a quick interlude for a fund-raising auction, which was actually pretty funny.) They said something about usually being reasonable before eleven but that we were so loud they could hear us a block away. I blame the building architecture for acting as an amp.

They left and soon after we continued, the number of people swelling and multiplying; people who didn't live in the building, people who were friends or dating, people who came after they heard it was actually a party, people who came before to create critical mass. I ended up stereotyping apartments: the demure and professional girls, and tall bro-y potheads, the nerdy MIT students. A few of the apartments opened up their doors and we went on an apartment tour, exploring the different layouts, the messes of one set of people, the meticulousness of another, the pile of shoes at the end of a hallway and the posters in the kitchen, sangria standing on the kitchen table. Paras's friend came with a horde of Germans, I talked to a couple who didn't live in the apartment, recently moved here - she's Columbian, he's Italian. One girl started apologizing to me that she wasn't more outgoing, as if a total stranger could have noticed her sadness amongst dozens of people. A girl asked her "why are you sad?" and she said "oh. nothing, oh someone just didn't come" and we nodded sympathetically. I said "if I knew you better, I would give you a hug" and she responded "I can use one, yes" surprising me more than the boy who decided to put his phone my dress pocket, a pocket between my shoulder blades that I cannot really reach myself, and a little less than the German boy whose female companion kept pointedly making out with him while he was talking to me and Paras, him going on about how not Jewish my nose is and that I don't have horns, not necessarily in a mean way but just rather unaware that I don't know anything about him. I walked up and down the stairs, weaving in and out of a few apartments, grabbing another bottle of beer, going back to the warm basement and up for gulps of fresh air on the deck, again with the Italian-Columbian couple. And at 1am the cops came again and Paras and I sat contentedly on the porch.

YP in GB

patient: how old are you?
patient: you're too young to be working here.

Monday morning I disassembled a bed, drove it to Central Sq, and assembled it in a small room on the fourth floor of a building where I now live. Young Professional in Greater Boston. I don't make enough to be a yuppie. After meeting up with Sorrel, I spent the night at my parent's place.
It snowed (again; it snowed when I interviewed for the room too)

patient (with history of assault, paranoid schizophrenia; thought I was lying about my name): I'm going to smash your head against a wall!
[a few minutes later, affect back to normal, apologized. and again, three days later when we met in the cafeteria] I'm sorry about the other day.

Tuesday I could not fall asleep terrified of taking the bus the next day. I noticed that the ceiling in the room is pretty high. I remember how the street sounds at night.

patient: how tall are you? model height?
[and] you are the nicest nurse here. What do you think I should do? Should I try to get out of here as fast as I can, or should I stay here for, like, ever?
[and, five days later] are you a model?

Friday night I read at 1am, woke up at 5:40 for work, and then, fully intending on a quite night in, found myself at Middlesex (club) with Paras (roommate) and his lady friend and not-lady friends.
I hadn't been out dancing in so long, never mind at a club, certainly a first in Cambridge. Danced with someone briefly who had a boner, saw someone basically jerking off at me, and got berated for not dancing with anyone [with him] by yet another gentleman. Ended by dancing with some tall, blond, boring looking guy, not for too long. And to top it off, two guys from my high-school were there as well - a past I do not care for. But I did dance, and I thank humanity for dancing.

patient: you are a good doctor-person. From my first day here I thought that.

Saturday I met up with Yulka at Harry's Bar & Grill. We've both moved out now, both have jobs, both assume things we shouldn't sometimes - but we drink different drinks.

patient: she has a soft angel smile and a hard glint in her eye. 


Sam's boat is in North Carolina but he came here from Germany. We got to convenience-store-land which is not in a convenient location to get to by subway. It was freezing. I was glad to see him.

patient after patient after patient: what ethnicity are you? Portuguese? Brazilian? Spanish?
best response to my reply (by one who claimed to be in love with me): I knew it was something unusual.

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.

accepted

I wrote this few weeks ago and waited in hopes of getting a very specific photo but alas – here it is anyway.

A few days ago the accepted students swarmed campus, as they do every April. Last year it was on the 20^th, this time a week earlier.

"Do you have a tattoo?" one asked another

"No" said a girl who looked and sounded like she cared and wanted to come off as if she didn't care "but I want to get one"

"I do" said a third, softer looking one "here"

"oh, that's cute, I wanna get..." and then they were out of my range of hearing. I walked on to change for tennis practice.

I remember coming and being so excited. I got a balloon that said "studio art" on it and the campus was (and still is) beautiful - though now I know that they trim the trees and plant fresh flowers and finally finish up renovations started months ago in time for the horde to look.

I gave a girl and her mother directions (or tried, I'm not sure which parking lot they were looking for and the one they described physically could not exist) and remembered asking for direction and someone telling me "past the chapel" and thinking but all three of those buildings look like chapels. The first one is a chapel, the second is Bard Hall, the oldest building on campus, and the third is a fancy grave I think, still not sure.

The food they gave us was the least impressive of the schools I looked at, and so my Papa's theory started: that Bard wants to push you out the physical realm by giving us shitty food, so that we focus on our intellectual and spiritual development, outside the body (he jests; we drink and smoke to compensate). I thought the girls dressed so pretty and daring. I wanted to read. Dance. Love. I wanted everything though technically I was still considering Umass Amherst and Clark.

Even as I remember these things, it's hard to know how it really was. What is it like to look at this campus with fresh eyes? How do we look to them? At this point I am: the trees, the winter-bleached grass, the cigarette butts, the bandannas tied around mason jars filled with tea or coffee. My face has changed so have my thoughts my dress my heart. I am: the buildings I lived in and the hours I spent, the broken glass by the waterfall, the faces which I have looked at but never spoken to. On Thursdays and Tuesdays, I get off the shuttle and go to the library to make myself tea and get my notebook for class. As I exit on my way to Olin LC, I pass a boy on the stairs with a wide angular pale face and dark hair and a beige backpack. As I walk on the path, I pass another boy who's tanner and with lighter hair, who looks at me intently. I come too early – before the previous class is out – and drink my tea on a couch outside the classroom. I saw one reading the newspaper the other day. I saw the other at the library. We do not know each other but we are a metronome keeping the beat for the orchestral campus.* All this I will carry with me when I leave. I hope my best years are still ahead of me, but I am grateful that I was accepted, I am grateful that I came.

*the saddest part is that I haven't seen either of these boys since I wrote this. devastated.

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.

dismantle

After heroically fighting cancer for eight years, a member of my community; wife, mother of two, sister, aunt, and friend – passed away.

---

I feel like there is a haze between my eyeballs and my skull; hopefully this cold will dissipate soon.

Wednesday on the way back from NYC I saw the collapsed buildings in Harlem as we pulled out of Grand Central Station. Nine hours after the explosion, the debris was still strewn across a couple blocks, the firemen swarmed around the buildings, and the smoke indifferently rose up to the sky.

Last Friday Hannah threw a small party. We read animal-related writing, drank mulled wine, ate coconut cake and painted our face wild colors.

• Intro to The Golden Compass - Philip Pullman
• The Eighth Eulogy - Rilke (translated)
• Black Cat - Rilke (original and translated)
• Traveling Through The Dark - William Stafford
• Autumn Begins in Martins Ferry, Ohio - James Arlington Wright
• The Cow - Robert Frost
• Nightwood: Watchman, What of the Night? (last line) - Djuna Barnes
• Cat - Tolkein
• Jabberwocky - Lewis Carroll
• Jubilate Agno, Fragment B
  Jubilate Agno, Fragment B - Christopher Smart
• Schoolboys in Winter - John Clare

I went to Olja’s birthday party the next day, finally legal in this country as well as her own. 

It was the anniversary of a Bard student’s death from last year. I’m not supposed to know how she died but do, and have seen the pain it brought to her mother and friends.

After getting off the train and onto a bus, I listened to two women talk. They were both young and with children: one had a two year old girl, the other a four year old boy. They were struggling with being single mothers, living in a shelter, walking in the rain for an hour to find a job, not having access to the internet to search anywhere but the library, where it was difficult to search because libraries aren’t set up for little children to run around while you try to find job leads.

When I talked to Shimon on the phone last time, he told me that he and one of his friends pretend to be Pokémon. The transform and have made up new ones and wait for Ash to collect them.
 

midterms

Friday was a time to finally breathe: my psychology senior project midway had been handed in, my presentation and exam for cognitive psychology done, and my print series presented. Amanda & co. threw a Hygge Party: sweets, friends and wine.

The next day Julia threw a taco night for the tennis team. We shifted to a suite in the village and three of us ended up at smog. Taking swigs from a flask and cigarettes, watching the underclassman try hard to dance.

Anastasia's Klezmer concert, a walk by Tivoli Bays with Kelsey,  I was at Adrienne's house when it snowed for the first time this season. Took photos at TBL and I'm going home tomorrow.

Halloween 4/4

Hannah and I have been going to the Red Hook farmers
market and having Saturday brunch.

We went to a party in Tivoli because we  
heard that live music was going to be playing. I dressed up as a fox with the sign “what do I say?”. We jumped up and down to the music and I kept going up the stairs, to the porch, down the stairs to the back steps and back around to keep things spinning and spinning. Up and two drags, down and shitty warm beer, the back entrance and a hello, and around back to the dance. A couple times someone came up to me and said “you say mew!” (no) and the band switched. The girl who had been a unicorn was now Frida Colo and eventually the police came to break it up and the swarms of us trickled away. I slept over at Amanda’s place and we went to Murry’s the next morning; the drummer from one of the bands did too.
The next weekend I only went to the ISO show for 20 minutes and did work the rest of the time. Ha.

21

 Перевод под автопортретом.

1. I turned 21. I can now buy myself a drink in the U.S.A. I can now write about drinking in the U.S.A. without any paranoia – though I could always drink if my parents gave it to me in Massachusetts and a few other states. In other states, i.e. Vermont, even that was illegal. These laws. Places where I still can’t drink: parts of India, Libya, Sudan, Afghanistan, Bangladesh, Kuwait and Saudi Arabia. In Brunei I can drink (because I’m not Muslim), but only in private. They don’t sell alcohol there but I can bring small quantities into the country once every 48 hours.
2. Friday I was in Anastasia’s senior concert “a trip around the world”. There were Greek songs and tangoes, and I sang in “mohnatij shmel'”, “ti g menya obmanula” (Ukranian), and “toj ne vecher” with three other girls from the U.S., a boy from Kazakhstan, and a boy from Ukraine. Outside there was rain and thunder. I went over to Hannah’s and we drank purple wine out of Chinese tea bowls and read poetry in German. I missed the shuttle back and walked barefoot to my dorm, worms coiled underneath the hot soles of my feet. 
3. Saturday morning Bianca and I went to some international/local event in Red Hook. After that I went to NYC, on the bus I met a boy planning on coming to Bard. I stayed the night at Kostya’s, we were up late singing and talking and the next morning I went to look at an apartment and briefly met up with Cat (she’s taking a ‘semester abroad’ at BGIA). While I was waiting for her a Hasidic Jew came up to me, said “Hello, how are you” and then walked off, which surprised me considerably more than the whispering about my legs I had gotten the rest of the day.
4. On the train back I hung out with Yasi and Dennis. On the topic of part 1 and how silly these laws are: Yasi showed us what she used to use as a fake i.d. when going to the Black Swan: a scan of her Iranian passport with “1992” changed to “1990”. No wonder that place got shut down.
5. Back at Bard we celebrated Kelsey’s birthday with hookah on the manor steps; moon above and party poppers occasionally exploding.
   
   
   
   
    

   

   not my best painting but it's of me and it's my birthday

   
   
   
   
   1. Мне исполнилось 21. Я теперь в США могу купить себе алкогольный напиток. И, соответственно, писать про это без паранойи – хотя я всегда могла легально пить если мои родители давали в Массачусетсе, и еще некоторых штатах. В других штатах н.п. в Вермонте, все ровно не легально было. Такие правила... Я все ровно не могу пить: в некоторых местах в Индии, Ливии, Судане, Афганистане, Бангладеше, Кувейте и Саудовской Аравии. В Брунее я могу выпить (потому что я не мусульманка), но только в частном помещении. Они не продают алкоголь, но там я могу завезти в страну небольших количествах, раз в 48 часов.
   2. В пятницу я участвовала в Настином концерте «Поездка вокруг Мира». Там были греческие песни и танго, а я пела «мохнатый шмель» «ти ж мене підманула» и «ой то не вечер» - пели еще три девочки из США, мальчик из Казахстана, и мальчик из Украины. На улицы шел дождь и гремел гром. Я пошла к Ханнe; мы пили фиолетовое вино из китайских пиал, читали стихи по немецки. Я пропустила автобус, и пошла босиком обратно в общагу; черви извивались под горячими моими пятками. 
   3. В субботу утром я пошла с Бианкой на что-то интернациональное и локальноеэ. После этого я поехала в Нью Йорк, на автобусе поговорила с мальчиком который собирается в Бард. Переночивала у Кости, мы допоздна пели песни и разговаривали. Утром я пошла смотреть квартиру и встретилась ненадолго с Кат (она сейчас на семестр уехала в город). Пока я ее ждала, ко мне подошел хасидский еврей, сказал здравствуйте, и ушел; это пожалуй меня больше удивило, чем то что мне остальное время мужчины шептали про ноги.
   4.  Поехала домой на поезд с Йоси и Денисом. А! На первую тему: Йоси сказала мне что она чтобы попасть в бар Черный Лебедь использовала скан своего Иранского паспорта, где поменяла цифру «1992» на «1990» - впрочем, не удивительно что Черный Лебедь закрыли.
   5. Когда приехала пошла отмечать день рождения Кельси. Курили на улицы кальян, смотрели на луну и взрывали хлопушки.