Who's Fault

In the middle California there’s a crack in the earth.
It runs deep down into the crust, striking through rocks and great boulders and layers of primordial clay until finally it reaches the steamy center of magma pools eventually down to the burning core.
Spitting and boiling there is the force and pressure that opposes the universe expanding. One day it will spill over but until then a delicate bargain has been struck between order and chaos and somehow the grass still grows above.
All of us carbon-based life forms, we exist atop invisible valconoes, in our towers of glass and our illusions of wealth. The earth is kind and self-effacing, and most of the time it tolerates us. It even cradles us, feeds us, like a beautiful majestic mother bear.
But she is unpredictable. And one day the cracks in her lovely countenance will crumble open and swallow us up, and only then will we face the charred and scalded face of our mortality. Only then will we taste the fleeting flavor of our triumphs, when it is too late to return and reap anything more from the poor crop we’ve sewn. The land is ravaged and the minerals too few in a once nurturing soil. If we break land, we’ll only find more cracks and be swallowed up all over again.

________ makes the world go 'round

any guesses?

so I find myself after this year exactly where I was two years ago. Which is ironic because I feel like so much has happened - but the only real concrete change its fashioned is the big fat 0 in my bank account SO here I am.

I got a job. Which is alright. It pays about 13 dollars an hour, more if I make above average comission. That being said, I have to get up at 5am. You win, you lose.

I'll tell you one thing I've really been enjoying: my bed. My giant queen-sized bed, all to myself. Which I'm sure will make me sad by the end of the summer, I mean the fact that I'm all alone in such a big bed, but right now I'm quite enjoying it. I stretch out sideways and I throw my arms splayed out like a snow angel. Its lovely.

I still don't know what I'm going to do in August. Don't ask me that.

My mom and I had a long conversation about my new view on life the other night after we saw The Skin of Our Teeth. I was deeply shaken by Mrs. Antrobus' announcement that "life is never how you hoped it would be, but somehow you go on". I was almost scared to, but I asked my mom if that was true. How horrible if that is true. I do hope I might get SOME of the things I hope for. I'm not asking for fame or fortune, I would just like to curl up at night with a man who loves me and feel good. I don't see why that wouldn't be possible, its not a lot to ask. And to do something that means something to me. That's all I really want. I want it to MEAN SOMETHING and feel good about it. There are people who get that sort of thing. Aren't there?

Anyhow it all feeds into my new realization: that you cannot live your life for the end result. It is the journey of life that makes life worth anything. Because you should never quite get there maybe - maybe death should interrupt it all, and then you should say, "Oh I was almost there, but look how far I came!" I don't know.

I saw 'Away From Her' with Julie Christie, who I imagine is the most beautiful woman who ever lived. She has the most profound and untarnishable beauty and grace. I would like to be a woman like that. Her beauty is pervasive, it spreads around her and splashes and spills away from each footstep she makes. Loveliness is a halo around her head and she makes everything lovely by shining upon it.
I would love to be a woman like that.
Its ok if I'm not, but I aspire to that. I suppose you are born with it or you aren't. She was probably that beautiful from birth, and I have never been that beautiful. I am normally beautiful I suppose, but no more than normal. I am not extraordinary.
I would like to be, but if my exterior is never extraordinary that would be fine.

I am feeling very mournful today. Somehow I feel like as each day passes, time slips away from me and is wasted.

I'm not doing anything that means anything.

I'm just making money, and sleeping at night in a big bed. What the fuck is that accomplishment?


August. I must [not] think about august, I must not not think about August. I must not. August. Fuck it.

Dinner. Fucking A. I'm having a glass of wine. Only alcohol could make this tolerable.

Suck It

A, A-, A-, B+ bitches.

Best semester ever and how much did I smoke? A lot.

The Arrangement

Two of my best friends got engaged the day of graduation. Sammy has a big fat rock on her finger and everything. Its crazy. I just can't fathom that we're now of the age where people trust us with decisions like that. I feel like someone should shake us and say, "what are you thinking?!" It makes perfect sense for them, though, of course. But it baffles my mind, thinking of being at their wedding.

Meanwhile I'm crawling back into the cradle, crashing with my parents this summer because I'm broke. Working full time, helping my mom around the house, trying to take care of myself as well. I still haven't decided if I'll be going to France in august. I can't think about these things.

I was walking home from Sammy and Eric's tonight, through the quiet streets of New York (it is monday night afterall) and I was looking around at all the things I really will miss. But most of all its not New York itself that I miss but the feeling, the sentiment of my life here. The freedom. The endless hopefullness. The expanse.

Its both easier and harder to feel caged in. Its a bizarre dichotemy.

My plane leaves at around 4pm, so I'm having breakfast with Meg & Sammy. I realize this could be the last time the three of us hang out until Sammy gets married next year. That's crazy! I'm used to seeing them every day!

I just feel very dazed and dizzy and filled, as usual when I'm headed home, with a great sense of dread for the drama that I know will be going down this summer.

Sigh. Here we go.

Endgame

it ends.

next year is the last and yet it feels like i've got many mountains to climb before then. i think about the next three months and i see an incoherent blizzard of confusion and familiar torment. i no longer look forward to the things i thought that i could count on. to put it in colloquial terms: it sucks. i've had a strange eerie uncomfortable feeling all day, a gentle inclination of the horrified.

i don't know. i'm putting off communicating and asking the important questions, maybe because i'm afraid i already know the answers.

meg is leaving, my best friend and my angel. not having her around is going to be hard, she was one of the only people i felt really at ease with, unfrustrated, uncomplicated. And sammy too, my little sunshine.

it feels unfair that i'm nostalgic.

but i suppose life is unfair blah blah blah.

i just don't want to make any decisions. i don't want to move. i want to stay imobile and rot if i have to, instead of splattering on the bottom of a cliff.

enjoy the image.

i'm getting some much needed SLEEP. what fucked up dreams will this night bring?

The Last First Time

The first time I said I love you it was while your back was turned away from me and I said it without sound so you wouldn't hear me and I wouldn't hear myself.

The first time you said it you said it in english so it didn't mean anything and yet you could hear yourself say it.

The first time I thought you meant it, you didn't say it at all, but thought about saying it and I felt you but you didn't know.

We communicate in codes of organised silence and signals that only you know the meaning of, you hold all the keys but you keep the doors locked between us.

There is the you that you speak.
And the you in your touch.
And the you in your eyes.
And the you in your myspace blog.

I just don't know who you are and I'm tired of waiting for the silence to mean something when all it is is silence.

I'm shut out. I'm in this all alone. And that's too much to risk.

I'm not an angel. I'm not all goodness. I'm so sick and tired of being that to you, as if my goodness will somehow be there to save you some day. As if my martyrdom is some testament to your worth. I am boiling and burning inside and I keep it there hidden, not because I want to, but because you want me to. And I want to do anything to make you happy.

But in the end this silence gets stale and it ferments into a rejection so stinging and palpable that it disgusts even me when I look at what I have become in your eyes.

You cannot be my mirror, because when I look at myself in you, I see something that is worth nothing to you.

I do not blame you. I should have let go long ago. I was foolish, so foolish to not accept the place that was available for me. To not realize I could not shrink myself down to the available space in your heart and your life. I thought somehow I could make it grow, but that is such a typical mistake.

I love you, truly, deeply. But someone must love me too. Someone must.

Untitled (for now)

My papa used to sell used cars and when we were kids we would walk down to his lot on summer days and buy ice-pops at the store next dear. We’d troll the lots looking for what Papa called “stealers” - which cars were bogus. Which ones Papa had filled with sawdust and which ones had their meters turned back.
I learned real quick to see the bullshit behind the battle. That’s what Papa called it. “Don’t fall for what’s in front of you. Go find the bullshit behind the battle. That’s what you’re really fighting against.”
I was always real good at pickin’ out the phonies as a kid and my Papa was real proud of me. “That one’s got a good eye,” he’d say, and he’d wink at me.
When I was 11 my Papa started letting me come down to the lot to watch him work. He didn’t approve of having women in the family business, I couldn’t work in the chop shop like my brothers did when they were older, but I didn’t mind sitting in the showroom with Papa so much. It was air-conditioned. Plus I got to watch him with the customers.
Boy was he a killer. My Papa could sell glasses to a blind man. The first trick is to get real humble, just telling ‘em that you ain’t got nothing good enough for ‘em. Not special enough for someone like them. Then as the two of you walk to the lot, you make sure the first car they see is a real doozy. You know, show ‘em something that’s way out of their range. Papa used to keep this souped up Chevrolet he had just for this very purpose. No one in our kind of town could afford anything like that, plus I’m not even sure the damn thing still had a motor in it, it just looked real nice. Shiny chrome fenders and caps, glossy black paint-job, original leather interior – every small town boy’s wet dream.
You’d just sit there and watch ‘em blush as they walked by, all them boys with their first few month’s paychecks in their pocket. They’d look at that beauty in front of them, and they’d know they wanted a car just like that.
That’s the first step: you plant the dream.
Now they’re not thinking so much about getting something simple. Just to get to work. They’re thinking about cruisin’ the strip on a Saturday night, they’re thinking about some pretty gal in the backseat, they’re thinking about being a real hot shot.
Then you explain, “Oh you like that Billy/Johnny/Timmy/Joe? Yeah she’s a beauty, she is. Maybe someday, eh?” And you chuckle in a very wise way as if you knew everything there ever was to know about their dreams.
Then you show ‘em all the crappers. Cars you wouldn’t sell to your worst enemy for about a million bucks. You dumb ‘em down. You show them the ideal, and then you show them the bottom of the ol' barrel. This will pour a whole lot of cold water on those visions of pretty gals and they’ll start getting antsy, getting scared.
Now here’s the clincher: now you take ‘em by the car you want them to buy. You got to have a car ready for any guy who comes on the lot. Some piece of wreck that you fixed up real nice on the outside but who’s got a few screws loose maybe. It ain’t too hard and don’t take too much time to throw on new tires and rims. Cleaning up on the inside is a whole heck of a lot harder. And it ain’t no job for men like my father, that’s for sure.
So they see this car, lookin’ pretty hot. And their mouths start to water. They can hardly believe it. And you see them droolin’ over this car so you say, casually, “oh yeah, this one here. She looks real good, almost brand new, owned by an older woman who ain’t driven her much. But she’s got some rust damage on the inside, you’ll have to tinker around in there some. Nothin’ too hard, if you don’t mind that sort of thing. But I don’t know if you’re that type of guy” and you say this like it’s the biggest compliment you ever told anyone.
Now it’s a matter of machismo. Now he’s lookin’ at this car like it’s the damn holy grail of man. You let him poke around the interior. He’s thinking, it’ll be my creation. My resurrection. My triumph. And damn ain’t she pretty?
You’re sold. He’s ready to buy. He’s so distracted with joy that he don’t see the contract that he’s signin’. And you get as much of the money up front as you can cause God only knows how long that wreck will drive before the motor falls right out the bottom onto the road.
Needless to say we moved a lot when I was a kid.
Spending my summer’s down at the lot wasn’t so bad and after a while I kind of enjoyed it. It was like watching a movie clip over and over. Sometimes I felt a little bad, especially as I got older and those boys started lookin’ kind of nice to me. But they are all the same suckers. All wanting the same thing. Some idea of a dream that don’t got no insides. And that don’t do anybody no good.
Not me. Not my Papa. Not none of them boys. Because a dream that’s nothing but a shell will always cave in on you someday. You just end up sittin’ around, waiting for the bottom to drop out.

End Of The World Party

to sum up last night, tequila = death.

but since I spent so much time in bed this morning, post-tequila damage relief, I had a good while to think about things.

in the end it doesnt really matter how I feel. And I mean that in the sense that I will feel how I feel regardless of how others react to it/think about it. I can either try to rearrange myself every 3 minutes and just give myself more problems, or I can stop trying to suit myself to other people and be happier for it. I have no reason to be ashamed that I have a deep emotional connection to what happens around me, in fact I consider it my greatest strength. And if you can't deal with it, than why would I care what you think anyway? If you don't respect me than I don't give a damn what you think, basically.

Amen.

And this includes him too, I guess. I can't keep stressing about my feelings for him because they are what they are. If he lets them slowly wear away because he's afraid to love me than he turned away from true happiness. And I move on. There is more love in this world than what we offer each other and somewhere out there there is someone who can love me as much as I can love them.

I am not alone on this planet with a heart beating harder than anyone else.



I also gave a lot of thought to what I want to do after school next spring. Most of my friends are graduating this year (as I would have if I didn't have 3 majors and a heap of hang-ups) and watching them move on to the post-undergraduate abyss that is the world inspires me to think about my options. Everyone in Senior Showcase this year got a call from agents, casting directors. That would be LOVELY if that happened to my group but I'm already understanding that maybe it won't. And that's ok.

I'm just not a young girl on the inside and until my inside matches my outside (read: probably another 5 or 10 years) I don't know if I just want to sit in New York City working some dead-end 9-5, auditioning my ass off and never getting anything except face-time with casting directors. I realize that is somewhat valuable, but not enough to sustain me emotionally for that much time! I mean I would go completely bezerk!
So here's my plan if I don't get an agent out of showcase:

1. Graduate.
2. Get a job (any job will do. That pays at least 12 an hour. Hah.)
3. Save up 1000 bucks.
4. Get my TEFL certification (teaching english as a foreign language)
5. Get some teaching experience under my belt in new york.
6. Get a job in France!
7. Move to France.
8. Be wildly happy.

I figure I'd stay for maybe a year or two. Just be a person in the world. I would love to do some sort of theatre there, that would be amazing, but maybe I need some sort of de-tox. Anyhow, then I would eventually move back to the states and go to grad school. So what if I'm 27 when I go to grad school. Who cares. Whats the fucking rush anyway?

Life is what you make it, not what someone tells you it is. If this is what's right for me than its right. End. Of. Story.


Oh and everyone should listen to Feist. She's an amazing canadian songstress (and I have never used the word songstress before in my life and will never use it again).

Do you realize?

He’s got this uncanny ability to strip me down to my bones
And then keep throwing stones...

The Return

I passed her in today
gave her over the counter medicines
but none of them worked
so I passed her in
I asked for a refund

They put her back on the shelf
And people looked but never
Bought
And slowly the dust settled
And every time I needed
A new razor or some gum
I’d pass her on the shelf
And see it gathering on her eyelashes
Like little feathers

Once I tried to blow it off
But my guilty conscience
Just made her sneeze

On Sunday in the paper
There was a flier with her picture
“half off” it said
And I figured I’d go down there
And explain

But when I got to the store
And I stood before the door
I still hadn’t decided what to say
So I just got in my car and drove away

I can still see her on the shelf
In my mind
Under the fluorescent lights
The rouge on her cheeks
Looking feverish
But her eyes I never see,
Sitting there with her feet dangling,
because
She never once looked up

(I have to) Obamarama

I just read the New York Times article about Barak Obama's 'faith'

Its so bizarre. The relationship between this culture and what lies behind that buzzword: 'faith'

In America we don't worship religion. We worship religiosity.


We love to muddle. Its our coping mechanism to the universe.

Twisted

Oh my god, if you want to be really horribly depressed and sickened, go check out how many anti-feminist groups there are on facebook.

My god. People have NO IDEA what feminism is.

"This is no simple reform. It really is a revolution. Sex and race because they are easy and visible differences have been the primary ways of organizing human beings into superior and inferior groups and into the cheap labour in which this system still depends. We are talking about a society in which there will be no roles other than those chosen or those earned. We are really talking about humanism."
-Gloria Steinem

Nostalgia

This time last year I was living in Paris.
During the strikes, so no classes.
Cozying up to frenchmen (frenchman).
Vacationing with my mom in Spain.
Thinking about my summer plans.

Which would change my life forever.




This is a crazy life.

Self-Esteem?

So I'm gonna share a little story with you.

So last tuesday I went out with some friends for a girlfriend's birthday.
We went to the Hudson and drank. A lot.
So I'm sitting there chatting with Minda after dancing a little bit and this guy comes over and starts chatting with us. He's decent looking, business-type, un-creepy normal guy. So inadvertently I start flirting with him, just for once. Well one thing leads to another and I guess we ended up kissing. He is staying at the hotel (he's from LA) and he invites me up to his room and I OF COURSE say no. I mean please. I'm not that kind of girl.

SO the next day he calls me and leaves a nice normal message asking me to meet him for drinks, and I can't go (and don't really want to) because I went to dinner and the Opera with the honors program and didn't get home until like 11:30 anyway. Plus I had class in the morning etc. So I asked if I could take a rain check.

So he suggests we "do something fun together" on thursday since he has a light day, apparently. And I sort of hesitate, and decide I will just agree to meet him for a drink late that night, after I see Pericles.
So I go to meet him.

He's with a couple of buddies at the bar. We talk and I'm trying to get into it, when he starts kissing me. Now I realize I kissed him before but it was all very abrupt and it took a little warming up to. And by warming up, I mean a couple more drinks. Well, eventually I told him I needed to leave and he invites me up to his room again. I say no. He asks me why. I tell him I don't intend to sleep with him. He asks why not. I say, lamely, because I'm not that kind of girl. He says I should come upstairs "just to see the room". I laugh. He presses it. He kisses me. I agree after he promises he'll let me leave in 10 minutes. I figure maybe we'll kiss a bit and I'll leave. That's it.

Well as soon as we get in the room he's all over me of course (as I guess I expected) and he starts trying to take my clothes off and I won't let him. So he stops and we kiss some more and I'm thinking about how nice it feels (and wondering if maybe I DO want him to take my clothes off) but how weird this all seems to me, especially since I can't stop thinking about someone else (and I'm really not that kind of girl!!), and so finally I decide to leave and after 15 more minutes of him pleading with me to stay (including hilarious ploys like, "I promise we won't have sex" and "I'll go right to sleep" AND EVEN "I won't have time to have sex in the morning either, I'll just get up and go") I finally get out the door and go home.

Because although I am pretty much ready to explode from sexual frustration and he was a little sexy (emphasis on little) I didn't really want to sleep with HIM. And I don't want to be that girl who sleeps with someone she met two days ago, in his hotel room.

Yesterday night, after I had decided to ignore him and not see him again, he text messages me: "Nice Dinner tomorrow night? Stop ignoring me :) "

So I wondered some more. Yes or No?

And part of me did want to sleep with him because I love sex and I would love to be having some and he did seem like he would be good at it (although not as good as _______ ).

But just because I like to have sex, doesn't mean I want to have it with everyone I can. In fact, I want to have it with very few people. I don't know what that number is, but its not very many.

I really wrestled over this. I guess I'm still navigating my own sexual landscape.

Anyway, so I didn't ever respond. Best to let it end I think. So yeah.




plus he introduced me to his friends as 'Megan'
My name is not Megan.
I mean come on. That pretty much sealed the deal really.

To Whom It May Concern:

Please stop this disgusting weather.

I can't go out, not even to the grocery store. Plus it is very depressing.

And my umbrella is broken.


sincerely,
Debra Morris

wasted weekend

I've spent most of the weekend in bed, trying to feel better. I have noooo energy and today it has been pouring rain all day long. I couldn't even make it out to the store, I have no food.

its also been three days since I talked to Hervé, I'm starting to worry. Its not like him to dissappear like this without saying anything. Or maybe it is, actually. Maybe I'm willfully forgetting all the other times he's done similar things. I don't understand. I'm tired of being afraid that its all gonna fall out from under me.

Well I have nothing at all interesting to say, my whole body aches and my mind is too troubled to think.

That one week or so when things were going well...that was a good week.

This is insane.

hard saturday

interesting article about crisis in paris suburbs and presidential race: http://www.nytimes.com/2007/04/15/magazine/15elections.t.html?_r=1&hp&oref=slogin

I'm somehow very sick, not sure how it happened. I also have a very frightened feeling that something is wrong. Not with me, I'm fine. Besides you know, the sinuses.

Also, new Maroon 5 album in May!! Fun.

The Other Life

I saw The Lives of Others tonight. Oh my god, what an AMAZING film. So beautiful and engaging and compelling and sad. And hopeful. And scary!
Go Germans! I may not prefer you to the French (sorry, I do have my loyalties) but you make a damn fine film. And its the filmakers FIRST major film! Gross! I hate brilliant people! You make me feel so...well not brilliant I guess. Ugh - well said Deb, very eloquent. Your thesis is due in like a WEEK and that's the best you can come up with?! You are doomed.

And talked to yourself.

Anyway, I couldn't help thinking during the film though, "no way a playwright and his actress girlfriend would have that nice of an apartment, I don't care HOW in bed with the government they were."

At least not my government anyway.

Oh wait, I forgot. My government has stripped the whole country of any artistic consciousness, thereby neutralizing any danger it might have posed to them.

Man, they're good.

In other news, my thesis really is due on the 16th. And I do have an exam on the 12th. And my portfolio is due...well pretty much tomorrow. And my acting class gets our new teacher on tuesday, to whom I would like to make a good impression but, I'm not crossing my fingers. Since my partner is AWFUL and never wants to rehearse. And I don't know when I'm going to be able to do a play again. I think I'm gonna have to wait for fall.

It looks like I'm headed to Seattle, to my parents house for the summer. Brace yourselves. Hopefully I won't completely lose my mind. And if I do, hopefully Hervé can help me put it back together again before classes start in the fall.
Hopefully I'll lose 25 pounds and get a tan.

Hahaha.

Ok hopefully I can get a job.



Why is the server down on a certain website, preventing me from reading my messages? Hmmmm? Just to torture me? Very clever.

Easter Weekend

In Ashland with my mom. We just had the most AMAZING meal. I'm so stealing the appetizer and making it my own. Prepare yourselves.

No internet access in the room, so I'm sitting on this very posh banquet level in my pajamas...inappropriate you say? Well I say the fact that I don't get wireless in my room is inappropriate. So there.

Slowly facing the fact that I'm gonna be home in Seattle all summer. It'll be fine. I'll make lots of money and it will be fine. Maybe I'll go camping or something. Anything to keep from jumping into uncoming traffic.


p.s. WHAT WAS LAST NIGHT?!?! I nearly missed my plane! There was some weird kids from the DR! And strange drugs. And booze. What? I dunno.

p.p.s. je veux lui parler, même si ce n'est pas raisonnable. voila, je ne suis pas une femme raisonnable. quelle suprise.

Hooray!

callback for Dark of the Moon tonight!