This Week

This week and I have been at odds with each other.
It's nothing important it's just one of those weeks that resembles an old piece of crumbly white chalk. It works, it's just bland.
I broke the news of moving to my grandma yesterday and the look on her face made me want to stay here longer (a feeling I thought I'd never have). She's sad because my mom is also moving away with my older sister, her kids, and her husband. If you can imagine an 87-year-old's reaction to being somewhat left behind, then you know what I mean. Even typing it out makes my stomach twist. It makes me fear getting old more than I feared it before and it makes me want to stay. She's happy for me, she never expressed her sadness, but she did express anger when she realized that it'll be me and my little ol' roommate in the big city with little means of scraping by. Ugh, it's a lot on my little glass plate.
On the other hand, I'm beyond excited to move. BEYOND. Work seems more tedious in every sense of the word "work". School work, waitressing work, every day work stuff, it all seems like it's stuck in a flood of molasses. At the same time it feels like I have everything to do and not enough time to get it done in. I feel like there's a lot of good coming- like I'll be able to start over 100% and that there will be people there who will be willing to start with me too.
I had a dream last night that I made out with a girl from work. Two guys with guns had stormed into the restaurant and they were into us. They wanted us to "hook up" so in order to protect both of our lives, I began to make out with her .I felt everything so I guess I got my kiss.
Work has been nuts. Customers have been mean. And the money is always nice. I've been eating grilled cheese with tomato for the last two days for dinner and it's excellent. I've also been obsessing over body-image and the fact that my soon-to-be-roomy is a size 0 and I'm a size 7. I'm sure when we're poor in the city, the lack of food in the fridge will fix that right up. ;)
You should go listen to "Safe and Sound" by Taylor Swift.
Adieu.
P.S. I made a pillow

Organ Donor

I had a dream last night that Freddy Krueger was in my room. I was standing next to  him as he sliced open an unidentifiable girl who was sleeping in my bed. He was teaching a boy who was also there and they didn't seem to notice me-and I wasn't scared. They cut her open from the top of her chest all the way down to her gut before extracting all of her organs and laying them on the floor. Her stomach, her lungs, her heart, her intestines- one by one.
She never woke up, like she was never in pain.
I was next.
Suddenly, I was laying there, fully awake, but in no pain as they extracted all of my organs and sewed me up again. I sat up bleeding and walked about the night with Krueger and his apprentice waiting to die. Knowing, that I should die- why wasn't I dying yet? I was trickling blood in long streams, but there was no pain, and death never came. I woke up feeling nauseous, but it didn't feel like a nightmare, it felt like a numbed dream. It didn't feel like anything except for weird. 

Cravings

@cool hunter

I'm craving warm pasta drowned in marinara sauce.
I'm craving this headache to pass
I'm craving a nap
I'm craving a long night
I'm craving the silence filled with smoke
I'm craving an old movie
I'm craving a hot pack to sooth the ever-throbbing pain in my foot
I'm craving the perfect song to come on Pandora
I'm craving satisfaction (in no specific form)
I'm craving an opportunity to wear high heels
I'm craving "The Hunger Games" and the "Blue Valentine" albums
I'm craving more space
I'm craving a phone call
I'm craving more than traces
I'm craving to be a better person
I'm craving to stop obsessing and trying so hard
I'm craving the day when some feelings will POOF! disappear.
I'm craving my own key
I'm craving to be thin
I'm craving stimulation
I'm craving the summer time
I'm craving more money (to save)
I'm craving friendly faces
I'm craving a freshly baked apple pie
I'm craving smiles
I'm craving a new hairstyle
I'm craving something something something I can feel to be all mine.

Skinny Love

Between picking up a cup of tea and selling a $100 ad for the college magazine, I began to feel awake at 7:30 a.m.. My 6am class didn't quite do the trick.
Some people are nice, some people are really nice- I usually find them in the small places instead of in the big ones and usually when I'm least expecting it. My scenario played out with me begging the owner for an ad and her telling me to please leave the shop and not return with anymore solicitation pitches. In reality, I asked her with tea in hand and moments later, in that hand, I held a $100 check made out to the magazine. She was excited, I was/ am excited. Procrastination sometimes plays nice.
I'm not so worried now more than I am confused. I have confused feelings, ones that will take time to subside and ones that I will numb with recreational activities. I have much to work through and much to work for and I feel like for once I'm going to make something happen all by myself. I want this move, I want it more than I can say. Even though it cuts my sleep hours short and keeps me writing poems one after the other, I am so excited to open a new book- to watch my mom open a new one as well. (she's moving to Santa Barbara around the same time I'm moving I think.) I feel like everything is shifting and sinking at the same time (in a good way) and that I'm able to not have plans yet still have the goals I want to achieve. I feel like sometimes, someone walks into your life and for no apparent reason at all, they change your life without any prior intentions of doing so. I feel surrounded and alive. I feel rebellious and mature, open and wary, loved and loving. I feel protected.
The thing is, I'm not sure how quickly I can clear the table and I'm not sure how that is going to affect my future. Like I said, there are things I still need to work on and people I still need to figure out, but I'm open to it all because right now I feel like I have it all (all that I need) and I don't want to lose it. I don't want to wake up and wonder why I was so stupid and why I didn't listen to everybody. I want to know that I'm secure and sometimes that's a hard thing to maintain.
In other news:
A drunk man came into the restaurant on Thursday night and whistled/howled at me and then walked out on his bill. Last night, the same man returned and continued to harass me and the other female server nearby and after both of us telling him to knock it off, my friend (my SF buddy) got in his face and told him ferociously to leave us alone. The man stopped making comments, but before he left I'm sure I had been completely undressed by his eyes. We got his license plate number. Come back again soon! jackass.
In musical news:
I just finished making a cover of "Skinny Love" by Bon Iver that perhaps I will share sometime in the future.
Adieu

3:00 a.m.

There we were at the table painted in drunken memories

A decision to be made as my fork clinks and your smile gleams.

We wait for the music to return as you type back time in eager messages.

I eat.

Self-conscious crunches, I wait for the let-down

the get out!

I wait for your light to turn on and my bulb to flash out in a blue spark of insecurity

You're killing me. 

A huff and puff, I breath in and cough aloud

You plug the smoke and tell me how. 

I do the things I thought I wouldn't as I watch it flow out between your lips like a chimney

I become lighter and lighter and we float to the ceiling like Charlie and grandfather Joe. 

I sink in giggles and into your couch as we sit in darkness and find things to talk about. 

Everything is easy, but we both feel on edge

The lick of my lips and asking what she says

I find myself like Pisa, leaning towards you as we go

Asking how I'm feeling as if you don't already know

Lids heavy like metal coverings I feel the sleep eating away

Insecurity makes me ask, but you tell me just to stay. 

My throat burns

I begin to wonder if I've done something wrong

Like a flame lit wildly inside of me I try to keep it down.

Water is a friendly fiend that dulls the pain and leaves a stain

I am burning alive on the inside and you think it's a joke.

Book it, book it, don't forget to go

This is why we stay this way this is why I know-

This way, this way, I'm glad to be this way

Never let this go. 

Smoke. 

Indy

She Is...

I. I've been cleaning. I feel like my "clean" is actually most people's dirty, but my theory is that if I clean too much then it will be a bigger disappointment when I dirty the joint again. ( Mind you, it's just clothes, loose change, socks, and price tags.)

II. I watched "Blue Valentine" over the course of three days because most of the scenes would make me feel extremely awkward if anyone else was home. It's a solid film, I love Williams and Gosling together-especially when they were happy. 

III. I'm making a lot of plans: I'm moving. I'm pretty sure it's official and I'm meeting with my future roomy tomorrow for coffee. YIPPEE!

IV. I didn't sleep all night because there was too much anxiety eating away at my brain and muscles. Do I sell my car? Will my mom actually let me go? Do I bring the cat with me? Can I even afford this? What if I can't find a job? What about school? What if school and work are too difficult to configure with one another! What if I literally have no money and have to move back home? What if we get robbed? Where will I park my car? Will it cost money? Will my mom hate the location we pick? What if they move in together and I'm left without a roommate? 

This lasted until 4:30 in the morning when I finally took my headphones out and went downstairs to finish "Blue Valentine". 

V. I'm really worried about money right now- and Africa. I may have to delay the trip in order to move and I feel like I won't have enough money to do anything!! AHhhhh!

VI. I'm super super excited despite all my bitching. Everything feels like it has sped up and is moving with incredible force. 

VII. I packed up another bag of clothes to give away..I think that makes this the seventh bag in total. 

VIII. I got my haircut yesterday. I'm in the phase of not knowing how I feel about it, but then I remember it really doesn't matter. 

IX . School scares me. Bills scare me. Selling my car scares me. 

X. I can't decide which of my anxieties are normal and which are just plain crazy.

XI. Everything seems doable right now, but I have this paranoid feeling that it'll all be taken away by my mom. (WHY?)

XII. I can't wait to have a quiet apartment where birds aren't squawking 24/7

XIII. Everything is going to be fine. everythingisgoingtobefine everythingisgoingtobefine everythingisgoingtobefine. 

421. friends (new, current, and old friends)
422. Pedro's veggie burrito sans cheese and with guacamole
423. living a day of firsts
424. realizing what is what and admitting when I'm wrong.
425. finding the good place
426. "Blue Valentine"
427. Gin Rummy (and kickin' ass)
428. chai tea
429. just doing nothing and feeling completely unperturbed by the silence.
430. the way we let him have both and the way we silently agree to do so.
431. plans and hoping for them to actualize themselves

Morning News

This morning I read an article on Facebook posted by a "friend" whom I haven't spoken to since my Junior year in high school. He posted the picture of the IC founders standing with members of the African army holding guns. Best promotional picture? No, in fact it's probably a terrible promotion picture- a mistake. Here's why it infuriates me:
At this point, five days after the Kony 2012 video hit the Internet and went viral, people are looking for ways out of it. Looking for ways to make themselves not responsible for the woes and tragedies of other people. It makes me ill to think that we are looking for ways to relieve our own anxiety about the human race. Yes, those men should have thought twice before taking a photo associating themselves (jokingly) with violence or armed solutions. However, the picture was taken and it hit the Internet. Mind you, this picture was probably taken when things were nothing like they are today. These men had no idea what they would fall into, that part of the article I believe. I don't believe they knew what they were getting into, although their purpose, to shed light on Kony was probably well drawn out.
Mistakes are made- it happens everywhere with everyone, especially with the large mass media projects./people. Let me put it into shallow terms:
Snookie: She's disgusting, and I think even supporters of her know this. She parties, she's a glutton, she's greedy, boisterous, inappropriate, a bad role model, promiscuous, and now, sadly, pregnant. Hundreds of bad pictures have come out of her, yet a lot of the public still supports her show by watching, thus putting millions of dollars in her pocket. There are Snookie haters, yes, but there is also a youth that is more aware of her behaviors on last week's "Jersey Shore" than there are who know about Africa's ravaged, impoverished, and unjustly managed villages and people. Articles like the one read on Facebook fuel that kind of ignorance and seek a scapegoat from what is important: that we help others. It says that "Ic is too late" and that Joseph Kony has "been in hiding since 2006". Maybe he did go into hiding, but the world gave him twenty- six years to do so. That doesn't give back the lives he took, the women he abused, and the childhoods that were ripped from the chests of young African children, kidnapped from their beds.
We have to stop thinking so much about helping others and trying to discourage the mass from doing so. Kony 2012 displayed nothing, but the want to help and bring what is important to light. Why would they harvest our money to fuel their travel and personal expenses while putting themselves in the spotlight of a 36 million person audience? If they wanted a scam, why not do it in a subtle way that would allow them to collect money through phony phone calls, grocery store recruits, and Internet scams? Why would they go to the extremes of making Kony 2012 a mass/ viral phenomenon if all they wanted was the money?
Because, all they want is to help and that takes 0 research to prove. We have the right and the need to research the cause, the ways in which we can help, and the progress of such a project, but I think we lose respect and human compassion when we go on the hunt to find what is "hidden" or what can be used to defame a project such as Invisible Children. It's not too late, we're just finding out about it for the first time and starting to care about it because of what we've been shown. It's okay to admit that we were naive because that's usually how you get the world's attention.
What kind of world are we going to leave behind for future generations? One where worshiping drunk  Chileans with fake tans is the norm and helping those in need is a "if-you-wanna"? I say we stop feeding people bullshit and "truths" about a cause that is obviously so pure and philanthropically inspired.
Hold to your opinions, but stop shooting down a good cause. If you don't want to support/help- well, you have that right. However, if you are in favor of a better world and believe that we can do something bigger than ourselves, then please stay strong with the cause and move forward.
-Always moving forward.

Care

It was ignorance that made me huff and turn away. This train of thought that was shutting out the other half of the world. He said "should I feel obliged to help other people? Aren't there equally important problems in our own country?" I wanted to punch him in the face. This man at work who is usually a goofball anyway was putting his opinion on the table and had absolutely nothing to back it up with and ever bit of ignorance to highlight it with. I could have screamed, but it's not just him. Unfortunately, there are a lot of people who think like him, and though his opinion/ statement made my blood boil, he posed a significant question that needs to be pondered about in hard thought. "should I feel obliged to help other people?" especially if those people fall under the radar and are hundreds of thousands of miles away.
Of course it matters. What if it were you?  a friend? a brother? sister? What if you woke up surrounded by hundreds of starving, shaking, crying, confused children who had been kidnapped and there was not a sound to be made about it? Care. If you haven't seen the video, here it is. Yes, you have the right to an opinion, in fact, criticisms are already appearing in the comment section of youtube. You have the right to think like the host at my work. But, the video does make a good point: if this were happening in New York or Paris, it'd be all over the cover of every magazine in print today. Everywhere. You have the responsibility as a living, breathing, feeling human being to care for the suffering. You have the  duty to reach out in any small or large way that you are able. This cause is not asking you to feel guilty about your every day life, it's asking you to help, to care, to see, to know, to spread, and to make Joseph Kony famous. If too many people have the attitude of see, hear, speak no evil, then we are all screwed. How can we expect a better tomorrow for ourselves if we don't give a shit about their tomorrow? It's a big world, so we better buck up.

West of Africa

In the midst of the Kony 2012 campaign shedding light on the inconceivable war crimes committed by Joseph Kony, I found myself thinking about what else I could do to help.
For awhile I've wanted to go to Africa to experience life, real life uninhibited by fancy technology, superficial beings, and overly-lavish settings. I feel like despite the strife in the different areas of Africa (Uganda, Darfur, etc...) the people there know life because they are in constant battle for it. What are we doing here sitting on a comfy couch with a faux-fur blanket on our laps watching "13 Going on 30"? What am I doing?
In conversation with my mom, I confessed that  everything I do, sparked by the Kony 2012 video, seems very superficial and unimportant when things like the tragedy of war and hate are being spread across the world. I said I feel incapable of succeeding because I have no idea what it's like to have nothing, to see the disparity and the beauty of a poignant life. There's way too many opportunities for me to generalize here, so I don't want to say too much in case I accidentally offend someone, but in short, I want to help. I want to do more than buy a pair of canvas shoes and donate $30 for a "Kony Action Kit" (which I'm very much looking forward to receiving.) Thus, I am going to Africa.
I've found a great charity group here which will hopefully be contacting me back about a volunteering position. I have a lot more to research and more charity groups to look into before making a decision, but with mom on board, I'm looking forward to finding a great way to contribute hands-on.

1,000

More adventures make my heart go boom.

I am now nineteen years of age and eagerly awaiting another year. Nineteen is strange to me- not quite old enough to drink, but old enough to do pretty much everything else.
My friends are the greatest people I know and know how to throw a party that only we would understand and enjoy- and that's perfect. Everything was perfect and our birthday was spread out over the course of three days, lasagna, homemade pazookies, chai tea, tart frozen yogurt, and a book of poetry. I'm only at number 421 in the list of things I'm thankful/glad for, but if I could cheat, I'd say my friends can take up the spaces between 421-1,000.

Also, on another note:

I thought I was in love with an idea, that what I was thinking, feeling, and observing was all in my head, but it turns out that maybe it's more than an idea. Not an idea to be acted upon, but I think it's mutual. There's nothing you can do, say, avoid, or deny about it. But, I think it's something that I can also be very thankful for because this "idea" makes me want to be better and makes me question what I'd do without it. What will I do? Because, we laugh hard and sincerely and I find that to be a key link in knowing. Because, we finish sentences,poke fun at others, touch, argue, wait, delay, push, wave, dance, annoy, run, look, glance, crash, slip, step-on, and linger on one another. This is the greatest idea I'm currently thinking of, but it's one I won't act on, because it's already been copyrighted.

This week has been pretty spectacular and I'm excited to start a new year. 20! Here I come!!! I'm on my way to you now!!! So many plans, expectations, worries and wonders to be had.
As for you English 1B, I'll get to you tomorrow.

Adieu and thank you.