what have i just done

i've completely lost all narrative ability i once posessed. i mean, just look at that last post: lame. there used to be a (brief period of) time when the things i wrote here were actually presented in a tolerable manner, and when the topics i wrote about were insightful, zany, and heck - even somewhat amusing. but now i've got my face too much in the intricate crap of things; i can't back away to comment upon my interactions with the overall crap of things. and intricacy is just too overwhelming for me to capture at this point. if you want to know about intricacy just go read the chapter of annie dillard's book "Pilgrim at Tinker Creek" entitled so. after that, you won't want to know about my version of intricacy, i promise.

anyway, i'm supposed to be writing my blake paper now. i guess i can look at this as a sort of warm-up, i've gotta get them verbal juices flowing and actively engage the language organ. oh, my poor, tired language organ - i work it "harder than my heart" and it's infinitely weaker.

(that brand new line is blow-me-away good. gosh.)

you're a fool

it was one of those mornings when you successfully manage to drag yourself out of bed and into the kitchen for breakfast, but instantly regret it and spend all of your oatmeal time wondering whether you should forget you ever opened your eyes and retreat into your still-warm bed. being a nerd, i decided that school would be too important to miss today, and so i made myself go.

i gulped down a tall mug of coffee and two extra-strength pain killers before quitting the apartment and trudging to the bus stop. now, on previous occaisions i have offered scathing judgements on whiny, victimized-looking people, who wander the world over forever looking as though they were on the brink of tears, as though each brisk breeze were their own personal oppressor. but today, i must have fit that description well enough. my head was detatched from my body and all i could hear was that bright eyes song, "the movement of a hand," looping through my bus ride. never being one to suppress my listening urges, i put the fevers and mirrors album on. now, as we all know, this album is not much of an upper; by the time i made it to the top of the arts steps "something vague" was coming to its frantic moment of crisis and all i wanted to do was turn back and cry.

but then i thought, what the fuck, kim, you're just pmsing; you have no reason to cry or feel the least bit upset about anything. get a grip, go to class. and so i did. but i kept my victimized expression of hopelessness obnoxious and unwavering for most of the day. it was the only revenge i could think to wreak upon myself for the pretensions i use everyday to remain so well behaved.

and, look, i've gone all melodramatic confessional-blog here. add "hypocrite" to my list of good qualities.

by the way, if you've got to suffer death by cab, wouldn't it be better to undergo death by crazy new york yellow cab than say, montreal mini-van cab? i thought so, too.

phone beneath dust

this is going to be profound

the following is a guest entry by miss molly mo:

llllllhuu33ing

i think that changed my life.

Lucky Nails

The air in the room stifles anyone instantly. Chemicals and polishes and fragranced lotions have stagnated there for years without ventilation of any kind; the plastic oscilating fan in the corner of the room does not count as ventilation. Eyes tracing the walls would not fail to notice the wrap-around mirrors and chipping pepto-bismol pink paint, the phoney beauty technician licenses, hanging crooked in their frames, and the enticingly huge posters of smooth white hands and feet, french-manicured and set off by bright flowers and dark backgrounds.

A chubby girl with large breasts pushed up to her chin and tacky blonde hair waited on the black leather couch, taking inventory of the month's hottest teen idols and snapping her gum loudly. She did not raise her eyes or think about the two Korean women with paper masks strapped to their faces who were bent over her sister's extremities, laquering on another coat of bad air. She felt annoyed that her sister was taking so long to finish up - those women hadn't even started on her own nails yet; she wanted to get to the mall already. Oh my God, is that Hillary Duff? Did she get cheek implants or something?

Yes, there are mirrors on the walls, three out of four of them; the fourth wall is all glass - that's the wall the door passes you through. The glass is checkered with neon green and yellow posters advertising the perennial specials: MONDAY - THURSDAY MANICURE & PEDICURE $14; WAX ARM AND LEG 24$. But there is no sign on the door, just a little bell on a long red string.

The bell rang and a frumpy young woman wearing grey sweats and a brown pea-coat stepped into the bad air. She made eye-contact with one of the masked Korean women (who reminded her of some Asian epidemic she'd seen on the news), and stated simply, "I need a fill."

The Korean woman nodded in the direction of the chubby girl on the leather couch. "Fifteen minutes."

an insignificant note on the content of this blog

i'm sure that this will come as a surprise to most of you, but did you know that this is not, in fact, my journal? you see, that's what i thought was so wrong with the old blog - it was pathetically self-absorbed and self-pitying. i wasn't using it to make my writing anymore accessible, but to purge my teenage angst and loneliness. so when i created this blog, one of the things that i promised myself was that i would never again make such an emotional outlet of a public webspace. for one thing, it made me seem whiny and melodramatic in a way that i scorn others for being, and, most importantly, i wasn't being as true as i could, despite my pretension that i had no qualms about being perfectly open and honest with everyone.

anyway, the point is this: i have another journal - the old fashioned marble notebook kind that i write in before i go to sleep at night - and in order to continue this blog in any sort of respectable fashion, i need to keep writing in that other journal as well. that is not to say that nothing journalistic comes across here in "your convenient love;" sure, the surface stucture (and, probably, if profusely analyzed, some shadowing of the deep structure) of my thoughts and feelings comes across in everything i write. but that other journal, massacred with its schizophrenic scrawlings, is where the real demons are worked out, where everything is stated in my most confessional of modes. and i do this all for you (well, mostly for me, but i keep you in mind too), to keep this place from needlessly dragging you through the shit we've all already been through.*

the question is: am i right in doing this? or is any censorship and concealment a sort of falsity in itself? sure, i'm coming through truer than ever in the other journal, but is there a point if it will never be read? i'm sure i could exercise the same self-therapy through a mental process that would leave no physical traces. is there a point in recording the truth if it is never intended to be known?

(i have my own answers to the above questions but sharing them with you would be no fun at all.)


*this is not to disparage confessional art forms of any kind - many artists have a knack for dragging us through the shit (as we do, often, thirst to be dragged), and they do it in such a way that makes the shit beautiful to behold and revitalizing to taste; but i, personally, do not feel that i could accomplish that feat quite so gracefully.