celebrate

today is my half birthday. it marks the halfway point in the last year of my 20s. i thought i'd be more afraid to grow old but as i get closer and closer to the edge of the next decade i view it not as being at a peak about to be pulled inevitably downhill, but standing on the edge of a step in the side of a mountain, peering ahead at what the climb holds ahead.

one thing though, about youth coming to a supposed end, is that i'm aware my body and its capabilities might not remain the same. one way i've been made aware of this is in my yoga practice. for now i feel stronger than i've ever been, but i've accepted that might change, that my wrists might one day fail, that my knees may start to ache, that joints will harden. and with as much yoga as i've done in the last 5 years, i realized i've never ever seen myself except in pictures others take of me. this is fine, it's a spiritual and mindfulness thing for me more than anything, but in a lot of ways my practice is also a tribute to my self, my body, and coming to terms with the fact that this vessel, which i always reviled as a child, is capable of so much more than i ever realized. it is possible to transcend the physical, to be more than a body, and that comes first from accepting and loving yourself completely. yoga showed me that. so now the ultimate test: can i film/photograph myself doing my most cherished thing, and still love it, still love my body, not objectify or scrutinize my self as i see it in this mediated mirror?

so for the last 6 months of my 20s, i'm going to try a project: i'm going to document every day with a yoga self-portrait. yoga, more than anything else i've discovered for myself in my 20s, has taught me so much about who i am, the person i want to be, the strength i possess, and how to open my heart to the world around me. it seems appropriate then, to use yoga as a medium for capturing the gratitude i have for life, for my body, for my sense of self, and for the changes in store for me as time marches ever onward. in doing this, i hope to capture the strength i have now, reflect on how i've grown, and the journey i continue to take.

here's to living each day of this decade with as much beauty, grace, strength, passion, groundedness, and mindfulness as possible.

with love,
stef

emotional archaeology

i've been slowly curating a cheering up, emotionally cathartic, half dance/half trance playlist to help me thru the stormy confusion of feelings i'm in. and today i decided i'd share it, since good music is always in need of sharing. and i can't think of anything that would make me happier right now than having others listening to this with me and having little secret/not-so-secret angry happy dance parties across the globe together.

the title of this ever-growing playlist is "cruel summer." (because what is crueller than surviving the winter and making it to summer and then having your best friend/partner leave you on a whim... summer should be for life and exploring and adventure and he ripped a hole in my sail. spending the days depressed and crying inside when the sun is so bright and hopeful outside... that is cruel existence in its real-est).

the playlist was first named "this moment," but i realized that "this" moment was always changing and i shouldn't confine myself to living in "this" moment forever. this sadness will fade, this anger will pass, i will grow out of it and the music will change to fit new moods, and the playlist, like emotional artifacts, will chart my progress. emotional archaeology. i will come back to this one day and laugh at how far i've come.

already i see the way this playlist builds a story of the last few months. sadness in the beginning, a begging feeling of preservation, some moments of denial that seeped into anger, easing now into acceptance and filling the gaps with a certain strength that comes from knowing everything will be alright, you're better without him.

"falling swiftly thru layers of memory, drowning in and out of love"

time travel is for broken-hearted lovers

never have i ever wished harder for a time machine than the last few days.

technological advancement has enabled time preservation of the cruelest kind... i can pull up emails from a few months ago, years ago, and read them and transport myself back to a time that was so happy and filled with promise and yet so achingly out of reach. so real and in my grasp, summoned from memory as if it were yesterday, but still rigidly in the past. i can remember, but never resurrect.

how much i wish for second chances. if only those sweet words that used to be heartfelt could be re-learned and practiced. like sitting back down at the piano and playing that favorite song. climbing back on a bike after falling off and riding it over hills to the next town over, leaving this dreary place behind.

all my deepest desires to still time, to go backwards, to wallow in nostalgic longing, can be traced back to a painful understanding that nothing lasts, and somethings you can never get back, no matter how much you try to recreate and/or preserve them. we are all victims to time.

(if only i could) sleep all summer

i saw Neko Case perform at the Egg in Albany with some good friends last night: a college friend, a friend from my recent graduate program, and one of my best friends, my partner of 7 years (he turned 30 yesterday).

Neko came out to perform this song for her encore. just her and a guitarist. i was in tears by the end of it. something about sitting with all these people who i loved so much, people i've needed in different ways at different stages of my life, some who i've gotten much closer to over the years and others who i know time and distance will eventually pull us apart, not knowing the future of things, not understanding the past, and wanting so much to pull it all in tight and protect it from the erosion of time ever-marching onward. i've never been so afraid for a moment to end.

so i'm just gonna put this video here, and some lyrics that particularly spoke to me, like a little fragile time capsule for me to come back to another day and remember how i felt in this particular moment, tears streaming down my face in a dark spaceship-like concert venue, afraid for the lights to turn back on again.

"I would change for you but, babe, that doesn't mean I'm gonna be a better man

Give the ocean what I took from you so one day you could find it in the sand
And hold it in your hands again

Cold ways kill cool lovers
Strange ways we used each other
Why won't you fall back in love with me?"

alone in the wilderness

i'm tired of all the sturm und drang associated with valentine's day. suddenly it becomes especially important to be with someone and examine your life in the context of being successfully paired off. is it ok for some people to want to be alone? what if that is what makes them happy? i think that's ok, and it's not just because i'm feeling particularly alone today.

this is probably not the best place for these kinds of thoughts, since it's so public and all, but that's also why it's perfect. aren't we all just lonely strangers screaming out into the dark to be comforted by our own echoes?

i think my partner/fiance/best friend/confidant and i have ... separated? broken up? had a falling out? what is the right phrase to use? "separated" doesn't quite make sense, since we've been apart (living on two coasts) for so long. "broken up" sounds stupid and juvenile (and thus, i realize, perfect), and "a falling out" doesn't seem to recognize the gravity of the situation. it's more than just a silly quarrel, it seems, even though that's how it started (how did it start? i can't trace the beginning, maybe it was all the way in the beginning), and now i feel seismically jolted out of what feels like the imagined reality of the last 5 years.

5 years is not a long time, but also a very long time. 5 years is 20% of my life, long enough to preserve vestiges of college, to encompass my first two "real-life' jobs, to contextualize my last 3 moves, to transition me from feeling young and indomitable and awesome to feeling old, insecure, scared and bewildered. 5 years is long enough to change what you believed about life, love, your future, goals, and the meaning of life. it's long enough to cultivate a fragile trust in another person, to believe that you really found an extension of yourself in a stranger, to start to think of life in the context of a dependable togetherness.

here is how crazy love is: you meet someone, a complete and utter stranger, and you actually tell them all the deep, dark, most terrible secrets you'd never even had the courage to utter aloud to yourself. you dance like an idiot in your underwear. you talk about your grossest, most humiliating bodily (mal)functions. you can honestly talk for the first time about your childhood, your parents, your fears and desires. you learn to cook better, you travel, you stay up late and sleep in, you go grocery shopping, you throw dinner parties, you protest in the streets, you dance, you sing karaoke badly. you devour life. you do things you would never have imagined doing, and you do silly inane things and find yourself enjoying them with a new sense of thrill. you feel yourself growing in ways you never thought possible, and the whole time, in total naked view of another person, a stranger.

so how do you reconcile yourself with losing something like that? it doesn't make much sense, do you grieve? blame yourself? get angry and upset at the other person for wasting your best years and treating you so cruelly in the final moments? maybe? or maybe you feel nothing at all, and this is what surprises you most. everything becomes a sort of dullness. the sharp sting of sadness, the bite of sudden loneliness, the burn of anger and the urge to fight, these were things that made sense before but now you can't even seem to muster them. it's like your heart burned so brightly and is now just burnt out. and it may burn that way again, but always in a lesser way. Said the Gramophone said it best when they wrote:

Every time you stop loving someone, your heart loses some of its blush. It vanishes. It's cancelled. & you wonder which of your feelings you'll no longer have the capacity to feel again. How much less am I, today, than I was yesterday? [from here]

11/11/11 11:11:11

so, did you do it?

luckily here at work, my desk phone clock, my computer, and my cell phone were all set a minute apart, so i got three consecutive shots at 11:11. i closed my eyes and gave thought to every single member of my family, thinking about the last time i saw them and what i will make sure to do the next time i see them again (give them long, powerful hugs, make sure to hold their hand and tell them how much i love them). for some reason, a lot of my thoughts turned to food - the last time i went hiking with my Uncle Donald and how he and his wife packed sandwiches for us on the hike and how sweet a gesture that was, thought about the last time i went to my grandma's house and my aunt Su Yuan made soup for everyone, and how i had a migraine that day and couldn't enjoy it as much as i wish i could have because it would have made her so happy, and i thought about the last time i went home for the holidays and visited my dad at his office one day and he offered me a little grape juice box from his office fridge, the way he's always done since i was a little kid.

and i thought about the warmth of a hug, how good it feels to hold someone you love close to you, and how every one of my family members' hands feels in my hand - my mom's hand is fat and soft and warm and strong, and my dad's is rough and dry but also somehow gentle and comforting, and my dad's mom's hands are papery white and wrinkled in delicate folds like tissue paper from a gift, and my mom's mom's hands are so much like my mom's that they are virtually hand twins, that i just know mine will be like that too one day.

and then i thought about Cal, my brother, and how i hope he's happy and i wonder what he's doing right now, and how when we were kids i did so much for him - i used to get all the other kids on the playground to help me plan a birthday party at recess for him, because his birthday was always during the school year and he was always jealous that mine was right after Christmas and everyone was home for my birthday. now that we're adults it's hard to be a big sister to him sometimes, but i'm going to go home this year and do something nice for him.

and finally i thought about myself. i've been really sad and negative lately, so i tried to imagine myself the way i used to be, the way i want to be, which is smiling, laughing, happy, face lit up with so many great ideas and a joy for life. if i can think it, maybe i can be it.

so in this magical minute that stretched into three, i counted my blessings, thought about my family and friends who are so far away, thought about the good things i've done and the good things still left in me to do. i thought about this moment, this small moment in the entire geological timeline of the earth's existence. i thought about time and how it's a construct and really has no meaning. but this moment, alive and awake in it as i was, was a gift, a fleeting gift i will never get back, so how can i spend it in the best possible way? who are all the people i want to imagine in this moment with me, even though they aren't here?

a scientific inquiry into the varying experience of sunsets over time

Some data:
The sunset time for Fremont, CA (94538) for today, Wednesday Nov. 9, 2011, is 5:01 pm PST.
The sunset time for Los Angeles, CA (90034) is 4:53 pm PST.
The sunset time for Syracuse, NY (13203) is 4:46 pm EST.
The sun sets in Oxford, OH (45056) at 5:28 pm EST.
In Lexington, KY (40512), the sun sets at 5:31 pm EST.
And in Miami, FL (33101), it's 5:34 pm EST.

I'm sure there's a scientific explanation for the variance, like the earth's tilt on its axis and the rotation in relation to the sun, but I'm going to leave it to more scientifically-inclined minds than mine to furnish those reasons. (Did you see how I gave zip codes instead of latitudes and longitudes, which would have proved infinitely more useful in answering this question? Although I did try to arrange those cities in order from North to South.)


All I know is, it gets dark disgustingly early now, and I was correct in thinking that, when growing up in the Midwest, the falls were never so dark, nor the days so short (and unfulfilled) as they are on the west coast. It was not just nostalgia playing a dirty mind trick on me.

A Letter to The Occupy Movement

To my compatriots and comrades in the Occupy Movements Everywhere:

I am writing this out of urgency, and a desperate desire for the 99% to succeed in bringing about the changes our world needs. I've been following the growth of the movement with great interest and enthusiasm, although I must admit my frustration is growing with each passing day. I do not agree with the detractors who say The Movement needs a solid list of demands or a "clear" message, because the issues and problems which the Occupy Movement illuminates are too numerous and varied to pinpoint, and besides, I am glad the Occupy Movement has refused to be limited in its scope and wanting.

I am writing today, not to request any clarity or focus in message, but in action. I believe The Occupy Movement has the power and potential to transform our society, if we put our collective weight behind decisive action. And now is the crucial time.

The Occupation Movement is about to come up against two of the greatest momentum-killers: 1) institutional recess and 2) desensitization. Both of these are issues of time.
The first is a problem familiar to student organizers: you've worked so hard to build your movement and mount pressure on your target, only to find yourself with only a few days or weeks before Spring Break/Winter Break/Summer vacation. Often, in these cases, administrations just have to play a waiting game before the student organizers all go home and the rest of the student population forgets what happened. When the students return from vacation, they have to start all over, trying to build enough momentum to push through their demands before the next vacation hits. It's the same with congressional recesses and politics, too. There is always a built-in timeline, whether institutionally situated or not, that dictates the rhythm of actions. In the case of the Occupy Wall Street movement, we have about 2-3 weeks, at most, before the harsh New York winter hits. At that point, what happens to The Movement? Even if OWS decides to continue camping in Zuccotti Park, there is a question of purpose. Is the point of the Occupy Movement to camp together in public spaces indefinitely? What does it achieve in doing so?

That brings us to the next problem, which is desensitization. Right now, the Occupy Movement has newness and the spectacular as advantages. A social movement of this size and diversity has never been seen, possibly, since the beginning of modern society. The Movement has the media and people around the world in rapt attention because it's new, it's exciting, and it's all of us (we are the 99%). But how long will this last? My guess is: not very long. Unfortunately, we live in a society that is extremely short of attention span. And one that is easily bored and desensitized. Which is to say that the longer this goes on, the smaller our window of opportunity for change becomes. We cannot afford to let something of such importance be forgotten or dismissed as a fad. We must harness the power and potential of this movement, while public interest and opinion still remain strong are still growing, to make something daringly transformative happen.

Malcolm Gladwell touches on the importance of swift action in his article for the New Yorker, "How David Beats Goliath" (May 11, 2009):

“And it happened as the Philistine arose and was drawing near David that David hastened and ran out from the lines toward the Philistine,” the Bible says. “And he reached his hand into the pouch and took from there a stone and slung it and struck the Philistine in his forehead.” The second sentence—the slingshot part—is what made David famous. But the first sentence matters just as much. David broke the rhythm of the encounter. He speeded it up. “The sudden astonishment when David sprints forward must have frozen Goliath, making him a better target,” the poet and critic Robert Pinsky writes in “The Life of David.” Pinsky calls David a “point guard ready to flick the basketball here or there.” David pressed. That’s what Davids do when they want to beat Goliaths. [emphases mine]

If we want to win, if the Occupation Movement is going to amount to some everlasting change, we need to act quickly.

The greatest advantage The Occupy Movement has in its arsenal is the power of the people. The Movement has been exercising this power (as in the frequent use of The People's Mic), but rarely applying it. We are the 99%, are we not? What we lack in material and economic wealth we make up for in human capital. We can overwhelm and overpower the 1% if we remember to act in unison. The 1% needs the 99%, not the other way around. And that is the source of our power.

I propose that we start direct actions targeted at the 1%. For example, what if the Occupy Movements decided to unanimously boycott companies owned or affiliated with the 1%? The misconception has always been that the 1% determines the health and strength of our economy. The truth, however, as we all know, is that it's the individual consumer and taxpayer who actually contributes to society, that it's our money that goes towards bailouts, and it's our money that goes into the stock market. I propose that Occupy Wall Street make a large banner, "Boycott of the Week! This Week, the 99% Boycotts: _____________" and fly it in Zuccotti Park, and that other Occupy sites do the same, and then watch as the 99% proceed to withdraw their money from said bank, or stop buying said brand, or sell said stock. Imagine the dips the market will take, and the blows to the fat cats' pocket books! If the 1% was mostly ignoring us before, we will force them to listen to us now.

We must continue to push and build pressure on our targets and find a way to win our government and economy back.

We are too big to fail, and this is too important to be ignored.

Onward, the 99%!

-stephan!e

summah time

i can't believe it's already the last day of August! this summer has flown by! living in california is endless summer anyway, but something about the end of August always makes me pause in my doorway every night and linger in the setting sun just a little bit longer.

while i watch my friends head back to school to teach or study, my life has remained untouched by such seasonal excitement. i've mixed feelings on this: on one hand, i'm relieved not to be experiencing the anxiety and panic that comes before starting a new school year, but at the same time, i miss having something "new" to look forward to, miss starting new classes with new people, and miss feeling like my life is not the same repeated episode over and over again. the passing of time seems muted without the traditional celebrations - buying school supplies, picking first-day outfits, planning new schedules, end of summer pool parties and barbeques.

my summer has been wonderful, though, and i'm lucky that my partner and i had time to travel to many different places together. we kayaked with sea otters in Monterey, got engaged by the Pacific Ocean, hiked and swam in a secret nudist colony in Lake Tahoe, biked Napa Valley, saw two concerts in one weekend in San Francisco, and revisited with friends in LA. not bad for three months of summer vacation!

here we are enjoying a sunset on Highway 1 after a trip to Monterey.

we went hiking in Big Sur the day after we got engaged.

swimming in a hidden cove that turned out to be a (surprise!) nude beach. (if you click the photo and zoom in, you'll see that the guy on the rock behind us is totally naked!)

biking in Napa Valley! we were such champs and biked around 15 miles of the Silverado Trail while visiting wineries. this photo was snapped after we stopped at our first vineyard of the day and had the first of many picnics post-tasting.

here we are at the Stern Grove Festival in San Francisco waiting for Neko Case to take the stage (we were pro picnickers at this point, note the baguette in the foreground).

and now to look forward to the fall: i'm excited to return to central new york where me and ben used to live together before i moved for work. autumn in the east, it should go without saying, is strikingly beautiful. but nothing beats adventuring thru mountains of sunlit golden forest with your soulmate, nothing! and i'm excited to do that on top of seeing David Sedaris, eating apple fritters at an apple festival, dancing at an Andrew Bird concert, and visiting the public policy program i've had my eye on for almost a year now.

this life is so full of wonder sometimes that i'm dumbfounded just reflecting on it all.

-stephan!e

back to the future

have i mentioned, i love time travel!

i found this wonderful photography project by a woman in Brazil by the name of Irina Werning, who has been collecting old photos from her friends in Buenos Ares and having them "go back in time" to re-enact moments from their past.

at first i thought she had just found old photos and then procured models who could be dressed up and posed in a way resembling the photographs, but about halfway thru the gallery it occurred to me that these past and future people are actually the same people. once you realize the photos are actually juxtaposing real past with real present, with decades in between, you're humbled by the human ability to transcend change. or to put it another way, humans wear change very well. babies become adults, brunettes become blondes, sprinkles of chest hair grow, trees grow, crooked teeth straighten, beards are grown, laugh lines appear – there are acute superficial differences, but the characters beneath the surface (one can imagine) are still relatively the same, albeit with some insane tattoos accrued along the way.

it's been quieting to look at these photographs and feel reassured of the constancy with which time grips us all. lately i have been perceiving myself as a stranger, so different from who i was yesterday, the year before, and ten years ago. to think of an image of myself when i was eleven and contrast it to how i feel now feels alienating and weird, like wearing the wrong shoe on the wrong foot. but i am reminded that perhaps life moves more in ripples than seismic waves. most of the time, anyway.

a wish for the new millenium

it's 2010, the "future." where's my flying car? my space suit? why haven't we colonized Mars yet?

all i want for my futuristic present is for someone to invent a time machine so i can travel back to the 1970s/80s and watch a young Bruce Springsteen sing "I'm On Fire" in an intimate low-lit concert venue and not feel guilty or self-conscious about squealing like a teenage girl.

aw heck. i don't need a time machine to do that!

...at the end of the day, she realized that the time had passed quickly. and though she couldn’t claim to be efficient with the tasks she needed to accomplish in that day, or in the year, she had, nevertheless, managed to spend her time wisely. and so, she crossed one item off her virtual to-do list and began to get ready for bed...

hard to shake

22 years of prior experience are telling me it should be summer already: it's late May, the weather has been consistently warm and sunny for the last few weeks, kids are playing outside, couples are walking hand in hand down the streets, baby animals are everywhere. and me, i'm itching to wear my summer dresses, put sandals on my feet, eat popsicles, and read all day.

unfortunately, while i'm watching all my friends around the world begin to unwind and slip into that lazy sun-induced ennui known as summer vacation, here in Southern California, the kiddos still have 4 more weeks of school, so here i am, as their math and science teacher, planning the last units of my first year of teaching, taking 5 more weeks of graduate classes, and studying for a certification exam.

but that seems so amazing. 4 weeks! that's all i have left! in a year that has been full of disappointments, extreme frustration, anxiety, hopelessness and downtrodden unshakable depression, the fact that i can say "4 weeks left" seems like a miracle. goodness, i'm so close to being done!!!!

and then it's Istanbul, boyfriend, beaches, Paris, gelato, and lots of all those summer things i want.

bring it on home,
stef

[mp3] "Bring it on Home to Me" by Sam Cooke

time lost

if nostalgia is the experience of concentrated regret for lost time, as i wrote previously, then cosmic irony is the experience of feeling sore from being victimized or mocked by the world and circumstances.

as i was up late musing about time, i failed to realize that today was the beginning of daylight savings time, which meant i lost an hour. what turned out to be an already late morning turned into an early afternoon. curses! just as the mornings were beginning to look so beautiful.

i am doomed to be perpetually maladjusted.

i'm listening to Band of Horses' first album on repeat. the songs always make me think of sophomore year in college, springtime, and my room in Peabody, lying on my back on a carpeted floor with friends, and late nights that turn to early mornings. Oxford is really bewitching in the early hours just before sunrise. i'd like to go back there, but being back physically wouldn't be enough. it'd have to be a metaphysical transportation. a time machine would have to be involved. oh well. for now, listening to Band of Horses is enough.

this album also makes me think of the summer i spent in chicago. i listened to the songs "St. Augustine" and "Monsters" every night before going to sleep. i still sometimes do. i listened to it then for the same reason i do now, to quiet homesickness and have something familiar.

certain albums have a way of shaping and preserving our experiences. i think this phenomenon is unique to our digital media generation; we have had the luxury of constant play, constant access, and ease of repeat. we are self-sufficient in building our own soundtracks.

i think an important skill to have as an adult is the ability to create yr own atmospheres. when we are children, our parents do this for us. they wrap us up in nurseries and warmth for our protection, but when we get older and see the world in all its unsafe honesty, we have to design these atmospheres ourselves. candles, pillows, bottled water, heavily laden bookshelves of poetry and fiction, these are some of the devices that come most readily to my mind.

and familiar, comforting music, of course.



-stephan!e

some musings on the passage of time

i realize that in some form or another, this blog has largely been devoted to chronicling the passage of time: noticing the changes demarcating the stages of life, nostalgia, the seasons, the future, the past, memories.

but, if this blog is supposed to be a reflection of my most persistent thoughts, then that seems about right.

Time is an interesting phenomenon to behold, and thus my fascination. such an intangible thing, a deception, but relentless. 15 minutes goes unnoticed, but what about 5 years?

i can lament the sweet brevity of childhood, but feel tormented in the endlessness of a single day at work, fail to understand how short the days are while at the same time, counting down the days until the summer or my next vacation.

does it seem accurate to say a year is 365 days? somehow a year seems so long, but when i think about the days that comprise a year, it seems so swift. and how quickly a month passes! it's already march...

and yet, june can't come quickly enough...

some things you take for granted until you stop to think about them, and that's the trouble with Time. perhaps this is why nostalgia is such a poignant emotion; it is a form of concentrated regret for lost time. it is regret for our readiness for the future, our persistence in pressing onward and forward, regret we feel when we reflect on how far we've come and see the distance and extent of our own removal.

usually, we don't remember Time until we see its signs in the accumulation of little changes: the appearance of first wrinkles (laugh lines around the eyes), childhood clothing no longer being appropriately whimsical for the workplace, high school references no longer being recent enough to be relevant, "child" actors now in their 30s or 40s (sometimes it takes seeing someone else's aging to understand your own).

observations, february ed.

time passes slowly when you're paying attention to it and "a watched pot never boils." why is that? why are the laws of physics and time bendable only when they result in our disappointment?

to illustrate my point, some facts: there are 16 weeks left of school and 5 weeks before spring break. it is only february 2009, the second semester has just begun, but my students are already growing out of their 6th grade innocence, starting fights, using obscene language, defying authority, referencing (and imitating) sexual acts, and acting like obnoxious, entitled teenagers. each day i gratefully mark off another day from my calendar but i know very well that 16 weeks like this will feel infinitely punishing.

another fact: no matter how much ppl say that keeping busy helps to pass the time, it simply isn't true. i work 8 hours a day and go to night school, i exercise vigorously for 2 hours every other day, i write when i can and cook, and sometimes i even read, i eat, i shower, i brush my teeth, i watch tv, i talk to friends and go for lonely walks, i get stuck in traffic, i occasionally go shopping, i watch movies, i chew my carrots slowly, i go to sleep, but the only time that passes quickly is on the weekends.

---

other sad truths: now that i'm deprived of pleasant companionship, i'm eating more. when my boyfriend was home, i lost 7 pounds b/c i was eating normal portions again. the love and companionship was filling, so i could eat less and still feel full. now that he's gone and i'm alone again, i'm eating more, eating constantly. food is a convenient companion: an apple in my backpack, a box of crackers in my lunchbox, granola bars in the car's passenger seat. perhaps i'm eating to fill some void. maybe i'm eating to grow a thick layer of fat between me and my surroundings. i convinced myself once i was bulking up in an effort to intimidate my students (still not there yet). eating is a pass-time i use to fill in gaps between activities or stressful tasks. it is a practice engaged to fill up time between now and the summer. i expect to gain lots of weight before then.

i'm glad that this is not a leap year. that is one less day i have to worry about being in the classroom. i'm thankful for the little things.

EDIT: i just got back from the gym. i've already gained 2 pounds in the week he's been gone. 16x2... that's more than a third of myself i'm gaining before this is over...

-stef

strange powers

i think my sense of smell is my super power. hyperosmia it's not, but i think it bears mentioning.

perhaps this explains my over-sentimentality, my strong nostalgia and sensitivity to the passage of time. smell is linked, neurologically, to memory. it is also, as far as i am aware, the only sense that doesn't dull with the passage of time. my eyes will eventually deteriorate until i'm blind, and i will deafen in my old age from listening to too much loud music, and even my sense of touch and taste will deaden. but smell, well, i hope smell lasts forever. even if i can't see, i could still find my way around a life full of memories, just by following my nose. existential whiskers, that's all i need.

i hate L.A.

hm, so you know how just yesterday i said i might grow to love L.A.? yea, it's not happening.

that's b/c L.A. is a vindictive little bitch who just wants my money and my time and attention, but i can't get no respect!

this morning, i wake up. the raindrops that were so pleasant to fall asleep to had apparently continued throughout the night, flooding the carport where my car rests and where i had to wade through 5 inch-deep FREEZING water this morning. and, b/c my bitch landlord didn't install lights in my part of the garage, i couldn't see the standing water until i was, well, already standing in it. so, great morning. i have to run back up to my apartment, throw off my shoes and socks, and improvise: for lack of galoshes (oh how i miss my big funky rubber galoshes right now...) i had to put on a pair of flip flops, which felt miserably uncomfortable on my bitterly cold feet.

the entire 55-60 minutes in the car on the freeway to work (what usually takes 20-25 minutes) everyone was driving 35 mph to avoid fatal crashes – the radio informed us accidents were happening at the rate of one every 30 seconds (wtf!?), a police officer (i learn later) was RUN DOWN while trying to assist traffic – and i still had assholes trying to sideswipe me to squeeze into my lane.

i get to school half an hour late (and this is after i even wake up early to make myself a cup of tea to start the day right), frantically driving in circles trying to find parking (i eventually coax the principal into my car and he assists me in finding a spot to park my poor water-logged vehicle). my feet are cramping at this point, they are so cold and wet, and i'm shivering and completely stiff from the cold and from running in the rain. basically, i arrive at school looking like a mess, feeling like a kid, and not wanting to be here (at school, at work, in LA).

it was a long day. the only thing that prevented me from completely losing my mind and crying was that i didn't actually teach today, i was in training. and they provided food. one saving grace.

i come home after going to the gym for a quick workout, hoping that all the time i've been away has allowed the water around my car to drain away. NOPE! the pond still exists, there might even be homeless seagulls nesting, who the fuck knows. all i can say is that this meant me having to park my car 2 blocks away, on some dark alley where i couldn't even see the signs or the curb to see if i was in a tow-away zone. i just hope, pray, that someone doesn't run into my car, knock the side mirror off, or decide it'd be fun to tow it. so many things to keep me up at night, it was hardly worth the 2 minutes of pleasant rain while i was drifting off last night...

seriously. it reminds me of something i remember my boyfriend saying last winter when we were driving around one late oxford night on the edge of a snow storm. it was the time of night when everyone is supposed to be asleep, when the snow machines and salt trucks come out (i think if you grow up in the midwest like i did, you know there are 5 stages of night-time: twilight, dusk, 8-11pm, midnight, and salt truck time. this is the time other ppl in other parts of the world might also know as tooth fairy time, or santa claus time.) there was snow falling in large clumpy flakes, and we could see it in his headlights, in the street lamplight, like static filling up the screen of gray and black night. and Ben said that ppl in ohio overreact to snow, b/c in Illinois, where he grew up, this would be nothing, "Illinois ppl know how to drive in snow." and that made sense, and that's what i think of now when i think about LA and its rain:

LA denizens are so unaccustomed to rain that they don't know how to drive in it, or how to build an efficient drainage system for when the rain pours. don't they know, that when it rains, it pours? i bet you anything a stupid Angelino coined that phrase...

-stephan!e


p.s. an afterthot: this is why you don't set up house in a desert. if there's no water so you have to steal it from yr neighbors to survive, and when the water finally comes you don't know what to do with it. ladies and gentlemen, Los Angeles! (a big fecking mess!)