And Maybe You Would Understand Me A Little Better If I Was To Write You A Letter

While I was battling a cold during the weekend, I realized the perfect weather we were having that day—I was freezing cold, due to my fever, but sitting outside made me feel incredibly lazy and warm and it made me feel like going up to my neighbors and telling them how much I love them and appreciate the fact that we live next to each other, regardless of all the times their children kick their soccer balls into our backyard.

Inspired by this, I took out my mom’s old typewriter and wrote a friend a letter.  I didn’t feel like writing nonsense, but I didn’t want to write a serious, emotional meltdown about how she was the light of my life or the reason I woke up each morning.

If you can tell, by reading what you can read, using a typewriter to write out things is not always that fun.  It is, most of the time, except when you 1) mess up, 2) press a key that mixes up the functions of the keys for you, or 3) accidentally move the space you were in and have to calculate precisely the line you were writing in (or else you end up with a mixed-up word, like the I in “In this envelope…”

The stationary was my mom’s in the 70’s—how sweet is that!  She never used it so she gave it to me.  That was my special account of the day.

A Modest List of Things

… One of the things that I’m forbidden from eating because of my braces is apples.  As a child, I used to think that, since every single one of my friends hated apples, it would be terribly quirky of me to eat whole apples, and—get this—not even slice them into eighths (seriously, people who slice their apples—what are you doing?).  After a while, I got into the habit, and I ate them all the time.  Once I got my braces, however, unless I wanted to die from severe aches or wasting my money, I could never bite into a whole apple again.  It’s all I miss.  It’s all I want.  I miss biting into an apple and having the juice dribble down my chin and the slurping sound I made when I obnoxiously wiped my mouth with the back of my hand.  I miss wiping my sticky hands on my tights.  I miss pretending to have to tie my shoelaces simply so I could run my hands through the dirt to clean my hands, in a strange sort of way.  I just miss biting into apples.  After I get my braces taken off, the first person to buy me an apple will be awarded with the Secret to Life whispered seductively into their ear by myself.

…Another thing that I wouldn’t mind being gifted is a pack of cigarettes.  Along with a speech.  Allow me to explain.  Recently, I finished reading The Fault in Our Stars and (trust me, this isn’t a spoiler) and in it, the other main character, Augustus, puts cigarettes in his mouth, but never smokes them.  He calls it a “metaphor”—he puts the killing thing between his teeth, but doesn’t give it the power to kill.  When I first read this, I almost threw myself out a window, for I had been thinking for such a long time—cigarettes seem so mysterious to me, so alluring, so sophisticated, so hypnotically sensual, but they’re such horrible things that kill so many people (every time I see a picture of George Harrison smoking, I want to smack it out of his hand).  I want to be given a pack of cigarettes by someone who loves me enough to teach me why they’re bad for me, and finally convince me that they’re not something I want to make a habit out of, and then trust me enough to let me figure it out for myself that I can acknowledge something bad for me and push it away.

…I would also like to be given the Gift of Confidence.  I wonder what it’s like to be comfortable being by yourself.  I was having a sarcastic conversation with my dad about the things he wants me to do in my immediate future while he created my five-year plan at the same, and in that conversation I discussed the fact that I’m unable to be on my own, left to my own thoughts.  I am like those superficial girls that need people around them, reassuring them that they are loved, unfortunately.  I have a difficulty walking by myself because, through my head, thoughts like “How should I fix my face?” and “I’m suddenly hyperaware of the way I am walking right now” and “Why am I walking so fast?” fight against each other in my brain, and I’m pretty sure it’s apparent on my face often.  If someone could teach me how to be alone and happy at the same time, I’d appreciate for the rest of my life.

…A Rock-Skipping Lesson would come in handy, for sure.  I know this for a fact.  I need someone to give up an entire day of their life to teach me how to skip a rock.  Those kids at the lake think that they are all that because they know how to throw a rock out into the lake and make it bounce, and I’m growing quite tired of their happy dances all of the time while my stones simply blend in with the rest of my failures at the bottom.  And then, if you don’t have to leave our good time for some more important things, I’d love if you could help me get a head start and help me find the good, flat stones.

…A bar of Chocolate.  A big bar of Chocolate that is cut into nice, handy squares so that I can break one off the bar every time you smile, and then I’ll keep it in my hand, even when it starts to get warm and I feel it melting in there, and I’ll wait until you laugh—that’s when I’ll allow myself to eat it.  Every time you smile, I break one off.  When you laugh, I eat it.  If for whatever reason I catch us looking at each other in the eye, I’ll eat two squares.  I, of course, don’t get to cheat or provoke you.  But I will reciprocate these kind gestures with total honesty.

…The last thing I would honest love from anyone ever is their favorite book.  Their favorite book, the one they have read seven times already, the one with the folded cover and the coffee spill on the thirtieth page and the tear stains on the last one.  That book with their annotations and scribbles on the margins.  The book with the highlighted paragraphs or underlined passages with hearts next to them.  I’d like for someone to give me that book, for me to read, for me to understand and read it just like they did.  They’d let me keep it, and I’d read it the same amount of times they did, and I’d treat it like it had never been opened before, and cry with that person where they cried, and write in the times I cried as well.  I’d most likely cry on the spot if anyone ever gave me this.

Weekend Links

• I keep flipping through this gorgeous Flickr full of beautiful portraits.
• This girl sneezed with her eyes open and her eyes did not pop out of their sockets.  Laws of nature, you’ve been defied.
• Oldie but a goodie (God, I can’t help rolling my eyes when someone uses this phrase, so I apologize)—how to live a beautiful life.
• Learn simple French phrases online because you know it’s the hardest language to learn, but you still want to.
• Look at this Lolita t-shirt.  Look at it.  Look at it.
• A girl interviews the first boy she ever kissed ten years after it happened.
• Seventy-one covers of ‘Rolling in the Deep’ put on YouTube were made into a mash-up that gave me chills the first, second, and third time around.
• Perfect post by Chelsea Jade in which she photographed people’s perfect style around Nottingham  All of the props.  All of them.  Ask me if I would ever be able to gather up the courage?  No, don’t ask me, I’ll tell you—I wouldn’t.

This has been such a happy week.  I’d have to say it’s primarily because I’ve finally gotten my crap together and started blogging again, definitely.  I missed it.  It’s definitely therapeutic, and I’m over-romanticizing the idea that it’s lovely to put yourself out there, and then look back into your lovely archive and see how you’ve changed.  This is my first will and testament—I need to blog for myself.

That felt good.

We Speak in a Store, I’m a Sensitive Bore

February 2016 edit:  This post used to contain details of a morbid nightmare I had some night on January 2012, but I've grown a little superstitious and perhaps too paranoid, so the original post has been replaced by this shrug of a message.

A Multitude of Hands in the Twilight

Inside a cave in a narrow canyon near Tassajara
The vault of rock is painted with hands,
A multitude of hands in the twilight, a cloud of men’s palms, no more,
No other picture. There’s no one to say
Whether the brown shy quiet people who are dead intended
Religion or magic, or made their tracings
In the idleness of art; but over the division of years these careful
Signs-manual are now like a sealed message  
Saying: “Look: we also were human; we had hands, not paws. All hail
You people with the cleverer hands, our supplanters
In the beautiful country; enjoy her a season, her beauty, and come down
And be supplanted; for you also are human.”

Robinson Jeffers, Hands

Hands are strange.    Hands are beautiful.  Hands are sad.  Have you ever seen a person with trembling hands?  Don’t you just want to hold them and tell them that you love them?  Or, have you ever seen a person that talks with their hands?  Don’t you even more want to hold them and tell them that you love them?  Holding hands is so magical.

I’m going to need to marry a man who will allow me to intertwine our fingers together all the time.  Also, he must have a beard.  And a giant parka.  And a wool hat.

Hands can be so irrelevant, but there are boutiques dedicated to making them look pretty.  Because they’re not irrelevant at all.  Soft hands, rough hands that need lotion, hands that caress, hands that strike.  Sweaty hands, firm hands, tender hands, funny hands.

Don’t you simply love having your hand?  Pat yourself on the back with your hand.

I am Grateful for Roaming… I Rest Tonight

Today was a terribly sunny day, yet another reminder that California is too pretentious for actual cold weather during the winter.

Because I don’t know how to make the right type of life choices, I thought it would be a great idea to look at scary movie trailers.  Last night’s compilation included watching When A Stranger Calls, Scream 1 – 2 – 3, and Prom Night.  I, unfortunately, didn’t sleep a wink—only when it was starting to get just a little bit light outside by five o’clock in the morning, did I finally doze off.  Perks of being afraid of every single thing in the universe?  You don’t have to pretend to be an insomniac, because everything keeps you awake!

Especially because the heater in our house turns on and off at night, and every time it turns on the air pushes through my door and it does this horrible creaking sound for five seconds that make it sound like someone is standing right outside my door, leaning in.

I drank a disgusting amount of coffee today.  Maybe this means I won’t sleep tonight, either.

Le Fabuleux Destin d’Amélie Poulain

The day the skies opened, the Hallelujah chorus sang, chocolate rained, the sun helped grow chocolate flowers—this all happened on the one fateful day that Hulu decided to allow people to watch Amélie for a few weeks.  Finally, no more having to hassle the lady at Blockbuster or having to settle for crappy links.

I had to prepare myself a few days in advance to watch this movie.  At first, I didn’t want to just click the link and watch it, how unprepared and not special was that?  No.  So, on the one day that I had the house to myself, I wore an old button-down I stole from my dad a while ago, I tied my hair up into a scarf, I poured myself some cranberry juice into a wine glass and had some Toast, which I marked as “French” with a neon green Post-it note on the insides.

It was the best evening I had spent in such a long time, and it left me with a yearning to learn even more how to be alone.  One day, I suppose, one day!

“You could never be a vegetable, because even artichokes have hearts!”

Epiphanies at the Strange Hours of the Night

There are so many strange things about a person’s mind.  Mine for example, works at extreme speeds for clearly the wrong reasons.  If I get bored, it depresses me.  If I get depressed, I assume that I’m not depressed, but I’m trying to tell myself I’m depressed to make the situation better.  Once I’ve thought of this, I realize that I’ve just had an extensive debate over myself on whether or not I’m depressed, and I come to the conclusion that I might be going slightly insane.  This, of course, frightens me to no end, because nobody likes to feel like their own mind is telling them that they are in a state of delusion.  (At least I’m aware of it?)  And then I end up thinking that I’m quite the idiot to think that I deserve to label myself with self-diagnosed mental deficiencies and I end up choosing a movie at random from our cabinet.  Today, it was Eddie Murphy’s Daddy Day Care, which, last time I saw it, I was eighth.

Anyway, as I was watching this movie, to try to really get my distracted, I remembered how much I missed the blogging community.  I also remembered that it has changed.  That things are terribly depressing (or, well, not as much, as we’ve all come to realize I throw this word out a lot.  Huh—I should add that to my ‘About Me’).  But then, during the scene where Eddie Murphy’s character is reading “Green Eggs & Ham” to the kids, I had an epiphany:

Why is it that I give so much attention and thought to what the outcome of my personal choices will be?  I shouldn’t.  I won’t.

I don’t know—but hey!  Look at all the oranges we bought!  I’ve eaten twelve already!  And that drawing on my window—that’s from last year, so I could always remember the horrid day I got braces.

Goshdarnit, it’s EXACTLY twelve a.m., and I wanted to post this before 11:59.