17:21 - Friday, Jan. 14, 2005 i require fried zucchini
I require fried zucchini. I require a good massage that lasts hours. I require -
- a psychedelic drug that does not make me paranoid, jittery, nauseous, or other feelings of the unhappy persuasion
- a fairly empty basketball court at 4:00PM on Thursdays so I can practice dribbling without bouncing the ball directly into my crotch/onto my shoe/off of my disastrously knobby knees.
- a temperature conducive to flowy summer dresses, along with the summer sun, summer schedule, and pristine white summer beaches.
- a plethora of hot men and women at my beck and call (partially in combination with massage, above)
- mental stimulation, outside of the school environment
what do you require?
15:22 - Thursday, Jan. 13, 2005 all clumsy
From above, buses look ridiculous, stiffly maneuvering corners, like worms without the bendability. Like hundreds of tiny yanked staples lit up by streetlights, spinning on a center axis all clumsy.
13:07 - Thursday, Jan. 13, 2005 don't stop calling
Do you remember when we would follow Moon Unit around going, "Are you a strepsirhine, Moon Unit? Are you a strepsirhine? Yes, you are! Yes... you are!'
Well, it turns out she is.
How about the time I became insane and flew into a rage at the first sign of broken promises, no matter how small or insignificant, like forgetting I said I'd be home for dinner or going out to play in the snow without me? Or forgetting we made vague plans to play basketball today at 4? Like when I would leave you angry notes on the top of the toilet seat, planning to linger on campus so you would be inconvenienced when I wasn't home for dinner?
Well, it turns out you did remember. To play basketball, that is. One of your most endearing traits is that you forget things like angry notes and deliberate avoidances very, very quickly.
What did I do before him? Did I really have so many extracurriculars that I didn't sit in front of the computer all day, downloading music and absentmindedly surfing webcomics and journals? Did I have all these friends that I could spread out beneath my feet week after week, evenly, so I couldn't get tired of any one of them, or burned out on marijuana, burned out on fishing-for-chairs, on makeovers, on hikes, on venturing downtown, each time, like it was new?
It is exceedingly obvious what my quick-fix is. It is astonishing that, though I always do have a quick fix, and I always know it, that I spend so much time idling, waiting for things to change on their own. It is astonishing how often I think I'm so much worse off than other people when, often, they have no quick fix, and if they did, they'd be fucking quick-fixing it.
Don't stop calling, Lara. Don't stop calling, Camille. Robyn. Andrew. Molly. Brendan. No matter how wonderful and perfect one's soul mate is, being stuck on a desert island mountain house with them, combusting tiny things, bulging the walls with repetition, it's lonely, homogenic. Ultimately, it's destructive. I miss everyone.
18:26 - Tuesday, Jan. 11, 2005 letters
Sometimes, I don't know if this is a tradition or not, because I always do it in my head but can't remember whether I've written it down. Nevertheless, each time it feels like it holds a gravity, a presence, that is more than appropriate for what it is: letters to people who will never read them (though whenever possible I list full names so that when and if, like I do sporadically, they Google themselves, they will come across my page and read them without my actually having to put my tongue to an envelope and my body to a mailbox, my inertia to a challenge [though in these cases that is not even possible]) and maybe voyeuristic thrills for people who are not the intended recipients (but, by all means, if any readers left feel that voyeurism isn't enough and they would desire a letter too, even if I don't know them beyond a note in a guestbook or a quick AIM conversation, please let me know, and I do mean that, because I am in dire need of any excuse to write about any subject apart from wallowing-in-the-mire depressionanxiety or subjects that pretend not to be that, but are, in disguise.).
Dear Will Barkan, Boulder would-be class of 2006, if you hadn't suddenly disappeared sometime in the middle of freshman year,
You would not have believed me if I had tried to tell you then, and I know this, because I did try, but my intention in befriending you was not to lead you on, nor play with your emotions, nor lift money from you for dinner at the Cheesecake Factory (and I think I paid for my own, anyway), and my intention in not kissing you when you tried to kiss me, after an extremely hilarious night of mocking my roommate and trying out different foreign accents, was not an intention at all because the simple reason for it was that I was caught completely off guard. Your manner was much like my nearly asexual first boyfriend's, a manner of goofy friendship and nothing more. What you don't know is this, the day afterwards, and even the hour afterwards, I wish that I had kissed you back, and I still wish that today, despite being - currently rocky but still generally - happy with a boy.
I think the reason I still think about you is not only because I regret not kissing you, but because after that night you seemed genuinely hurt, avoidant, and eager to divert me away from you, and after a couple of weeks it worked, and a couple of months after that, when I tried to look up your number to call you up, it appeared you had withdrawn from the university. I would like to know where you are. I would like to know, if you are near, whether you would like to hang out again.
Dear Taylor,
Your name has come up in this journal many times, so I will keep this short. If you are alive and able, I would like only to know this, and like more to talk with you again. I am sorely lacking the kind of dialogue we used to carry, and I am unsure if anyone else would be able to fill that void - I am also unsure that I would want anyone else to. I am unsure also as to why I am using the word unsure and being so formal. The mention of your name in my head still causes what feels like a misfiring of neurons. I am not used to having people I am so dangerously close to disappearing so suddenly, and so completely.
Dear Bethany Grosser,
In reading this, I hope you would not freak out to have your name so unexpectedly mentioned in the journal of a girl you knew on the fringes for maybe two weeks. As you can see, I have gotten a lot less effective in communicating through the written word since then. I got the feeling, in reading your story, but especially in talking to you and observing your manner, that you were one of the very few 'real' people I have met so far in the college setting, and I was sad when class ended, and the year ended, and I wouldn't get to talk with you anymore. In a world so unashamedly American, especially right now, I was jolted into Argentina unexpectedly and beautifully by your words.
Dear Michael,
I do actually know your last name, but I can never tell if people want their full names mentioned on other people's diaries (the other two in this entry will likely never see this to complain). I'm sorry I didn't call you at Plaza del Lago. I was actually in Boulder at the time, but that's no excuse. I'm sorry I never get drunk enough to drunk-dial you in the middle of the night. I too can never make a letter perfect. I don't even come close to the hairsbreadth away you come from doing it. I kept the eucalyptus you sent me for at least a year, and searched Boulder in vain for something akin, but Boulder-like, and could only think of red stones, which are boring. I'm sorry I don't know where you are anymore, though I should, because you've told me, and I'm sorry I have become so bad at writing that even when I don't write you, you can't really see my life through my journal anymore. It is really funny to think I've only physically met you three times or something. I would like to increase that. Sometime.
