grande decaf sugar free vanilla latte

"do you know that outside of new york city, every school has an elevator?" - a parent, to their physically disabled child, who has clearly never been to a school outside new york city.

this is the dawning of the age of aquarius

feels conditional...

time told on a book costs fifty dollars from the brooklyn flea.

"i'm in mourning for my life"

when she wasn't around, everyone at my elementary school referred to the art teacher as "adolf hilftler."  it was a pretty novel historical reappropriation for our time, so was probably thought of by a fifth grader.  i don't remember very much about her class, only that ms. hilft was "mean."  she yelled a lot.  she didn't let kids play their gameboys after class.  (even the girls couldn't play their gameboys).  one time, she "threw a desk at a student" and lots of people knew someone who saw it happen.  the only other teacher as mean as her was mr. lanton, and that's because he had a handlebar mustache.

we only had art class once a week, and it felt like ms. hilft spent the six days that she didn't see us plotting all the ways she would torture us on the one day she did.  looking back, i wonder if she even knew my name.

there was a "right" way to make art in ms. hilft's class, and that was ms. hilft's way.  if your pinch pot flattened out in the kiln, yours didn't match her example and it was wrong.  if you used too much water in your water color, yours didn't match her example and you would be lucky if she allowed it a space on the drying rack. one time in third grade, i drew a cat when we were asked to draw a picture of our best friend, and ms. hilft laughed at me. when i got the tip of my index finger cut off in a yarn-weaving accident in fifth grade, ms. hilft was lethargic in her responsiveness.

ms. hilft's number one rule was "no black." there were no black scented markers in ms. hilft's class.  there was no black playdough or glitter or pipe cleaners or felt; all the boxes of crayons were incomplete. if you absolutely needed to use black while you were painting, ms. hilft might let you mix together brown and blue.  but that would just come out a weird pukey-grey, and ms. hilft would display it as an example of how colors even close to black ruin paintings.

i think ms. hilft must have been sad.  it is always the most closeted person in the room who is spewing homophobia, or the bully that pushes you on the jungle gym who really wants to give you a kiss.  i've never met someone as militant about the exclusion of darkness as ms. hilft, which makes me believe those were the feelings with which she most identified.

still, i absorbed a great deal of negativity due to ms. hilft's repression, and my elementary shool art portfolio suffered because of it.

--

the olympics makes me so xenophobic.

solamente tu

"i'm just scared, that we may fall through-woo-woo-woo-woo-woo-woo-woo-woo-oow" - nelly furtado

no one uses pencils anymore.

only one person is home!

"stuck in the idea of what you were when you lived there"

today, i ordered a pizza.

i received a text message that it was supposed to arrive between eight o'clock and eight fifteen.

then i received a text message that it was supposed to arrive between eight twenty and eight thirty.

it arrived at eight forty seven.

today i had coffee with my ex boyfriend after not talking to him for eight months.

the pizza was eaten by nine ten,

and the earth kept revolving.

--

what happens to the love between two people once a relationship dissolves?  this is a relatively cliche thought.  but still, one that no one has offered much of a concrete answer to.  the law of conservation of mass says that matter is neither created nor destroyed.  this too doesn't offer much of a concrete answer. but it makes me think about high school chemistry class, which was a time before i ever endured a broken heart.  'we are all in paradise, only we don't know.' 

--

#yolo. #froyo.  #toto. #gonnatakealifetodragmeawayfromyou

  

a hole in my sock and a canvas bag full of spelt flour

"i remember when there was only one hummus a few years ago..." - a women at a grocery store in crown heights, commenting on the variety of hummus brands now available



"love is something so ugly that the human race would die out if lovers could see what they were doing." - leonardo da vinci

point-of-view (human)

point-of-view (caterpillar)

"do you see what i see?"



the last thing i said to my ex-partner before he broke up with me was, "if you want to break up with me after you get out of therapy, i'd rather you just call and do it over the phone than wait until you see me again."  this is the wrong thing to say to someone if you think they will want to break up with you after they get out of therapy, and you don't want to be broken up with.

today at the dry cleaner, the man in front of me was getting into an argument with the woman behind the counter.  she was refusing to accept his tracksuit because she claimed that there were spots that were stained beyond what a dry cleaning could reverse.  the man was protesting that these "stains" were just leftover lint from the last time he got his tracksuit dry cleaned.  at a certain point, the two stopped screaming and the man turned to me and asked, "what do you think? is this a stain or lint?"  i replied, "dude, i don't want to get involved," which is the right thing to say if you don't want to get involved something.

a few nights ago, i had a dream that i was having sex with my therapist.  i could tell in my dream that it was objectively the wrong thing to be doing, but it kind of just kept happening (what, with our having a scheduled time to be alone together for an hour every week).  this is the kind of thing that my therapist would call "low hanging fruit."

--




'lonliness is solitude with a problem.'

--





i think it's great that shakira is still making herself relevant.



--


eating too many oatmeal rasin cookies at one time is a hell from which you cannot quickly relase yourself.

days i have held, days i have lost

"you're name is lollipop." - a little girl, to me

a view of the inside of my sinuses

"no easy way out"

it must be tricky to be a giant panda.  all you can eat is bamboo.  but because bamboo is incredibly low in nutrients, you have to consume a constant supply of it.  this means that you must always be roaming through bamboo forrests becuase you exhaust one location of bamboo very quickly.  but becuase china (the only place in the world that you exist in nature) is urbanizing so rapidly, bamboo forrests are continually being segmented due to clear cutting for land development.  so you exist on these islands of bamboo amidst a sea of newly erected cities.  but you can't leave your bamboo island once you have exhausted it of all its bamboo (which you inevitably will do, and relatively quickly), because there would be no bamboo for yout to eat as you walked through these cities in order to get to the next bamboo island. (plus, you would definitley get a lot of shit for being a wild giant panda walking through a city--no matter how forward thinking the people in the city are). on top of all this, you are a biologically solitary creature.   so even if you wanted to speak up about your bamboo forrests being cut down (condeming you to starve on your bamboo island), it would be an uphill battle to make your voice heard. if there is one thing that we've learned from social justice movements of the past, it is that it is very difficult (if not impossible) to advocate for your rights as an individual--change happens through community efforts.  yet even if you were able to somehow override your instincts in order to decide to organize with other somehow-social giant pandas to demand that your bamboo forrests stop being cut down, you wouldn't be able to meet with them because you would have no way to get to their bamboo island without starving in one of the bamboo-free cities in between (which is the main issue in the first place).  because you are a giant panda, you do not have any technology in order to engage in community organization through social media and overcome physical separation (ala the arab spring). and even if you did, you don't have obbosible thumbs so you couldn't use it.  

--

cold season.  i'm sick of being sick.  but i know that a soon as i'm better i'll be healthy of being healthy.

soup or bowl?

"the partner who needs more is the more submissive partner." - my friend, paraphrasing a dominatrix he saw on a documentary

water is supposed to come out of that...right?

"what will future civilizations think?"

when they discover

that a groundhog's opinion of its shadow

is headline news,

when thy unearth our oceans of styrofoam

and rehydrate our monocultured fields,

when they calculate

that a ticket to the superbowl

is cost equivalent to a month's rent in manhattan

is cost equivalent two years of school fees in uganda,

maybe they'll wish they had hidden in their burrow

for six more weeks.  

--

"three ways being a server is like being a lab rat"

1) i run around a human-constructed maze all day searching for food.

2) there is an inexhaustable pool replacements indistinguishable from me.

3) i eat my own poop.

--

tax season is so fun.  getting your w2's in the mail from all the places you worked in the last year.  it's fun to see how little money you made, and reminisce about all the reasons that you don't work at those places anymore.  also, it's nice to know that those people are still thinking about you. 

--

a dream is a wish your heart makes, okay?

there's a snake in my boots

a condom on the street is not an uncommon sight, but how does it happen?

"going through the backdoor"


if you jump out of bed in the morning
quick enough to achieve a head rush
and you run to the bathroom
and you take a shit
before the rush wears off,
you will experience what it feels like to fly.


--


"wires above are sizzling"



today i woke up feeling lonely,
so i made myself scrambeled eggs
and ate them while i watched a documentary about tibet.
i was still feeling lonely,
so i made a blueberry pie
while i listened to a cover of "summertime sadness"
by miley cyrus.
i ate dehydrated green beans
while i gave myself a foot bath,
and leftover tortellini
while i tried to figure out
how to turn on the tv.
by bed time
i was still feeling lonely.
i washed my face
and flossed
i contemplated my relationship to food
and distraction.


--



how many friends do you have on facebook?  how many friends do you have in real life?  what is a friend?

--


happy black history month!

it is what it is

"i watched the music video for 'blue' by beyonce twice and i cried both times. i didn't watch it a third time--not because i was afraid that i would cry, but because i was afraid that i wouldn't." - my friend, on the experience of loss.

no one really wants to be in prett. everyone is killing time before going somewhere else. 

"nothing a good walk can't cure"

i'm always in a weird place

at work

on friday nights.

i come straight from therapy.

today i unearthed 

that i tend to displace 

my anxiety (from not having enough nurturing

as a child)

onto my relationships.

i have internalized 

quite a bit of shame,

which makes it difficult 

for me to escape the trap

of making decisions from a place of 

'people pleasing.'

i've repressed

a great deal

of sexual frustration.

my apologies,

if you came in hoping for a peaceful dinner.

--

i am unclear as to exactly what goes into my "down" winter jacket.  is it the actual feathers of actual birds? if so, what are the living conditions for those birds? are they harmed in the process of making my jacket? how many birds am does the typical article of winter clothes require? if not, why am i living under the assumption that my jacket is full of bird feathers? (also, what is a feather??)

--

if you rip your favorite shirt, you have to either fix it, or get a new favorite shirt.