I don't know if I've mentioned this before here, but for a couple of years now, I've decided that I want my first-dance song at my wedding, should I ever choose to get married, to be "Fade Into You" by Mazzy Star. It's a really beautiful, dreamy, lush, gently orchestral song with a softly lilting rhythm that is just perfectly romantic without being saccharine. There is, of course, only one person I've ever actually fantasized about marrying (and only one person with whom I've ever actually seen any real point to marriage. I never understood why people even really bother until I met him.)

I try not to get overly sentimental. It's so easy to slip from being emotional into being maudlin.

But I'd rather be at the mercy of my emotions than be dead inside. My therapist that I saw while I was home wants me to get a tattoo and drink and have sex and wear leather pants and be a little bit reckless and young and feel strong. I would rather be a mess than feel nothing. And I've felt so little over the past few years, other than a quietly deadened loneliness. I so rarely get really sad or happy or angry. All I feel is my weak, sick, painful body.

That's not who I want to be, anymore.

I used to go to a lot of concerts. They're one of the real highlights, actually, of my middle school and high school life. Music was a big part of what kept me going. When I had super long thick hair I gave myself whiplash from thrashing around in my room. To Nirvana, usually. In early high school I was in love with someone who loved Nine Inch Nails, so I started listening to them, too. For weeks at a time I would wake up to "Head Like a Hole" playing from my CD player. (Pretty Hate Machine was my favorite NiN album. It still is. I find that there's a playful and irreverent spirit to it that was just lost later on.) I painted my fingernails black over crimson nail polish and wore combat boots. I didn't sleep much. I dreamed a lot. I was skinny and nervous and too pale. I cried a lot and sometimes forgot to eat. I hissed and sneered and sometimes walked arm-in-arm with the boy I loved down the hallways and felt so happy that it hurt, because I know how fleeting that intensity was. I loved him painfully, unimaginably, with an almost physical force. I wrote all the time.

And I was oh, so far from happy. But that girl is gone. I'm afraid that I'll never be that bold, that intense, that vital ever again.

Being back at school isn't so bad. It's hardest on the weekends. My classes are great and exciting and stimulating and they keep me going through the week. The weekends are the tough part. They always have been. I dig deep and find little more than emptiness.

Leather pants are a start. Tattoos maybe, body piercings. Modeling myself, slightly at least, in this regard, after the pure raging id that is Faith from Buffy, played by the ravishing Eliza Dushku.



Obviously, crossbows come later. But a little more id in my life is not a bad idea.

So! It's been quite a while, yes? Haven't had much to report. It's summer now, and I'm still home, and still jobless and mostly directionless. I have been seeing doctors and am in therapy, which was the most important part about this taking a semester off thing, anyway. I do sometimes regret it and wish I had stuck around, had that spring semester with Lisa - which I so wanted after she'd been away last fall - and had a last semester with my senior friends, but it was kind of the only choice. I was just too sick to continue. Full stop.

I have been officially readmitted, and hopefully will actually have a place to live in my house in the fall (not quite clear on that yet.) Hopefully I'll be able to graduate with both my majors, but if I have to drop one it's really not the end of the world. Finishing my English major won't be a problem at all, since I took so many of my required classes so early on. It would break my heart to have to drop American Studies as a major, but not as much as it would kill me to be taking two seminars each semester which could be what I would have to do. I don't know. My advisors will work some kind of magic, I bet.

As for why I'm writing so obscenely early in the morning, well, there's really only one reason I would be willingly awake and alert and having free time this early: namely, I never actually got to sleep last night. I'm not sure what happened there. I had some brief in-and-out sleep between about 4 and 5:30, but only for a few minutes at time and never deeply at all. I got up at about 5:30 because I was starving, came downstairs for some heavy bread and apple juice. (To the delight and confusion of Duncan and Mabel, who were quite excited for the company so early in the morning.) Went back upstairs and tried to sleep. Got up again at 7 to take some Advil for my headache, hoping that would help. Realized I was just not falling back asleep, said "fuck it" and took a shower and got up for good. My mom isn't even awake yet. She'll be pretty disoriented when she sees me. When left to my own devices I usually get up around 1.

I understand why I had trouble actually going to sleep - I had a chai latte too late yesterday while at Barnes & Noble, where I spent the bulk of my afternoon, reading foreign Vogues. (An extremely pleasant way to spend one's afternoon, all told.) I really shouldn't have caffeine of any quantity higher than green tea. It makes me jittery, lightheaded, and my heart race, and apparently robs me of sleep.

The Voguefest was delightful, though. I discovered that British Vogue has sections on fashionable deals that are ACTUALLY deals (as opposed to American Vogue, which lists, like, a $250 bathing suit as a total steal.) I also discovered that Lara Stone is fucking ubiquitous lately, as part of the fashion industry's attempt to foster a healthier body image and make a better name for themselves - look, this one size 4 model! We don't put incredibly unreasonable standards of thinness on our models and clients! Never! It's just so self-congratulatory.

I do like Lara, though. I especially love her Versace ads, as she's perfect for them. Bold, sexy and sometimes a little loud and trashy. A rail-thin model just can't really make those kinds of clothes sing. So good for her for coming along at the right moment and getting the opportunity to capitalize on it.




I dig her tooth gap, too. Another part of being unexpectedly just-right - it's unique and instantly recognizable a la Lauren Hutton, but also somehow actually makes her sexier. No mean feat.

Honestly, I'm not even sure what I'm talking about anymore, at this point. I am so bloody exhausted. (But not sleepy at all. Hence the problem.) Wish me luck, you guys.

I neglected to mention this before, but my mom got me a cat clock for Christmas:



It's fantastic, and hanging on my wall here at school. It makes this gentle clacking sound as the tail moves back and forth (and the eyes roll, of course), that is both soothing and kind of mesmerizing. It's kind of hard not to let it put me to sleep, hence why I have music on whenever I am trying to work the last couple of days.

(Yeah, back at school. I'm hoping it will get better, and I think it will, but it fucking sucks right now.)

You know who I really, unironically love a whole lot? Kate Moss.




I know she's a cokehead (although why people were ever shocked at that is beyond me, but whatever.) I know she ushered in the super-waif trend among high-fashion models that has plagued the fashion industry ever since. I know she's kinda trashy and something of a train wreck, and that her rough living is totally reflected in her appearance when not in photos. I get it. I love her, and not just because of her breathtaking modeling ability and seemingly effortless personal style that no one else has ever quite pulled off (not that they haven't tried!) Simply put, I love her because, whatever lifestyle she leads, be it shitty or glamorous or both, she doesn't feel the need to talk about it. She doesn't try to be a role model, or talk about her wonderful organic zen life or all of her world-helping charity work, or how she achieves her beauty simply by drinking water and eating vegetables.

Not that there's anything wrong with doing any of that that. I just love that she's out there, doing her thing, be it modeling for the best designers in the world or going on a coke binge with a minor rock star or launching a fashion line, letting people take from it what they will and not shoving anything down anybody's throat about it. It's kind of refreshing, actually. She's one of the most famous, recognizable supermodels of all time for both her public and private life and yet she's managed to remain a creature of mystery. She's a fucking model, and shouldn't be expected to be anything else. She's got a job to do and she does it better than anybody else, every time.



So you go on with your bad self, Kate.

Y'know when you have some caffeine to prepare yourself to work/give yourself more energy, and instead of making you more awake and focused, you just get sort of scatterbrained and sleepily jittery?

Yeah. That's what's happening with me right now. I had some chai to work on this paper (and ugh, I'm tired because the goddamned cats were in and out of my room all night, wanting to CUDDLE and PLAY!) and instead of it increasing my focus, it's just made me kind of jittery and nervous. Besides I'm freaking out a little about going back to school, mostly for various emotional reasons, and this is seriously not helping. At all.

I don't know. I mean, on a certain level I'm glad that I had work to do over this break since it kept my brain from atrophying in absence of school, and all (and obviously I'm grateful that I got the extensions, because there was no way in hell I would have been able to get it done with all the seizures I was having in the last few weeks of the semester), but ugh, it really does suck to have work to do when on winter break like this. I'm freaked, is what I'm saying. I never feel totally comfortable at school, and I'm so much lonelier and sicker there - like, always.

I do always do better spring semester than the fall one, though, because I'm going towards more light and warmth and longer days, as opposed to fall semester, when I'm going towards darker and darker and colder and colder and it's like some kind of hellish descent. Fall semester really fucking sucks. All the time.

Also? Grateful for these paper topics. It's been an American Studies-heavy semester (next semester is going to be an English-heavy one, and I anticipate it being way harder), so in the past couple of weeks I've written on Trainspotting, Citizen Kane, His Girl Friday, Twin Peaks, and now Mad Men. (The Twin Peaks research also got me a chance to correspond with Ms. Sherilyn Fenn, a.k.a. Twin Peaks' Audrey Horne - a fangirl's dream, if ever there was one. She was a peach.) Not that there aren't difficulties associated with this shit, because trust me, there are, but it's much easier when you're studying something you really find to be a lot of fun.

All this popular culture studies stuff has really given me a new appreciation for aesthetics. I've been following lots of variously aesthetic-focused blogs and I really do think it's just as valid as the study of anything else - I don't see why substance and style have to be pried apart and differentiated (they certainly aren't in film), or why styles and aesthetic can't be every bit as thought-provoking as a "higher" form of culture. And I don't think one has to be "trained" in this stuff to appreciate it - you just have to have a good eye for what you find beautiful and visually arresting, and cultivate and seek out what you like and find compelling. Sure, having studied art or film or fashion helps, but I don't think it's a requirement if you have a natural compulsion towards it.

I caught Vertigo on TV the other night after the Golden Globes (which were really good this year! Good show, good show), and it's still one of my favorites. Just hits all the right notes - dramatic and romantic and tragic and deeply creepy. Kim Novak gives the shivers - good AND bad ones! (Jimmy Stewart just gives me the bad ones.) She's exquisite. My favorite scenes are the early ones, seeing her dreamlike, haunted wanderings around San Francisco, her obsession with the portrait (that portrait still gives me major fucking creeps), her almost out-of-body hurling herself into the San Francisco bay. The sensuality, the paranoia, the obsession - it's all some of my favorite stuff.

And who could forget that fucking hair swirl?

More shivers. I read this terrifically creepy short story by Joyce Carol Oates called "Fat Man My Love" about Hitchcock from the perspective of one of his blondes. She's great when she's not completely grossing me out, which can definitely happen. I can kind of overdose on her stories a little bit and end up a bit woozy.

Enough morbidity! Let's see some aesthetic perfection! ANTM again, here. From the "short cycle," Ms. Rae Weisz:

Fucking perfect.

Also, my absolute all-time favorite photo from that show: Cycle 11's Lauren Brie:


I feel a little better now. And now, to the paper-writing!

Some awesomeness, academic and otherwise.

So, I should be writing (several!) papers right now, but I want to write about this and it might actually HELP stimulate ideas for this particular paper (we quite literally have no topic. I mean, seriously.) Trying to get the brain going. It's a bit more sluggish than usual these days. I blame the internet. And my unhealthy eating and sleeping habits. Oh, and my body, of course. It's always easy to pin the blame on one's body, especially one that is structurally unsound as mine. I think God was a little drunk that day.

(Defense mechanism back in full swing, what up.)

What I actually want to talk about right now is Chekhov. I have a serious thing for Russian writers, Tolstoy in particular (Anna Karenina is one of my favorite books, ever, for both the gorgeous language and the total trashiness that abounds through parts of it.) I've read two different translations of the book, the second of which is by my favorite! translating! team! ever!, Richard Pevear and Larissa Volokhonsky (whose names I know by heart because I am such a fucking nerd). My mom got me a copy of War and Peace for Christmas a couple of years ago, to which I geeked out and said, "Oh! Those are my favorite translators!" Those two also happen to be a married couple. Can you imagine the fucking awesome life they have? Cutest ever, for real.

Anyway, we're reading Chekhov in my 19th century story class - for which I am grateful, since I haven't liked much of anything we read in that class since Poe. (Oh, Poe!) Because Chekhov is great - not to mention that the book is translated by my favorite translating team. I love him for things like this, in "The Lady With the Little Dog," which I had read previously in a "love stories" anthology that I got in preparation for my own short story work, and which is way, way more depressing to read than it sounds:

"Anna Sergeevna came in. She sat in the third row, and when Gurov looked at her, his heart was wrung, and he realized clearly that there was no person closer, dearer, or more important for him in the whole world; this small woman, lost in the provincial crowd, not remarkable for anything, with a vulgar lorgnette in her hand, now filled his whole life, was his grief, his joy, the only happiness he now wished for himself; and to the sounds of the bad orchestra, with its trashy local violins, he thought of how beautiful she was. He thought and dreamed."

I mean, that shit is beautiful. There's something about the recognition of the utter ordinariness (which the story keeps getting you back to over and over again), seeing the flaws all around him and yet adoring her anyway, that I find so much more moving than a strictly idealistic or epic love. I don't know, all the people with whom I've ever fallen in love have had such obvious flaws of which I was always aware, and I think recognizing what is exceptional about a person as well as what is perfectly ordinary is just a really powerful thing. Whenever literature captures that I think that can be really beautiful. I also love that this story is never really resolved, and that things don't end really well or badly for these two - their lives just go on, and you know that they will with or without one another, but more rich for the time they've had together.

Similarly, I love this Shakespeare sonnet:

My mistress' eyes are nothing like the sun;
Coral is far more red than her lips' red;
If snow be white, why then her breasts are dun;
If hairs be wires, black wires grow on her head.
I have seen roses damasked, red and white,
But no such roses see I in her cheeks;
And in some perfumes is there more delight
Than in the breath that from my mistress reeks.
I love to hear her speak, yet well I know
That music hath a far more pleasing sound;
I grant I never saw a goddess go;
My mistress when she walks treads on the ground.
And yet, by heaven, I think my love as rare
As any she belied with false compare.

Beautiful. Kind of funny, also, and not exactly glowingly complimentary, but it's rather wonderful nevertheless. It was also used to delightfully sappy purpose in My So-Called Life:

Which is an awesome show, and also a perfect segue for me to talk about Claire Danes!

(Queen Eadie for the win!) I wish she'd go back to the red hair, though. Alas.

Truly, though, I love this girl. She manages to be Hollywood-level beautiful while maintaining a completely believable level of gawky awkwardness. I watched Shopgirl with Shannon last night (for a Film Studies paper, which ugh, I should be writing right now), and I was reminded once again of how wonderful she is. She has one of those faces that you can't take your eyes off of when she's on screen, and there's something about the way she acts that feels so effortless to me - like she perfectly inhabits the body of the character she's playing, and she says so much more with the way she moves and laughs and moves her eyes than she does with actual speech.

(I was utterly enamored with Scarlett Johansson for that same ability a few years ago, but she's decided to rest on simply being hot, which makes me sad. In any case, she was so much hotter back when she wasn't trying so hard!)

But now she's all Hollywood and bombshell and sanitized and perfect. Boo! Another before-and-after (and this is getting waaay tangential, but whatever), that also runs parallel to taking actual good roles and demonstrating lots of acting ability: Christina Ricci, before she got all skinny and "perfect":


(LOVE that movie, by the way.)

And now, for a contrast:


Not that she isn't still beautiful, but...come back to the light, Christina! Be sexy and curvy and weird again!

Well, that's way more than enough for now. Sayonara, for now.

More awesome.

I thought I'd do another post about things that are awesome, because I'm in an appreciative mood. Okay? Okay.

So I had a seizure on Monday (not the awesome part, obviously) which was the third in two and a half weeks. I went to the hospital afterwards, which I don't usually do, but both the frequency of them up until that point and the fact that I couldn't focus my eyes for, like, two hours combined seemed like it was a good idea. (My film studies professor came with me and stayed for an hour and a half until she had to pick up her kids, which WAS awesome. She kind of made me tear up a little bit. Really really moving and wonderful. Seriously.)

Another truly awesome thing was the fact that my ER nurse for real looked exactly like Project Runway's Leanne Marshall:


Seriously, they look like twins in that picture. I am pretty sure that the nurse was wearing that same exact shade of lipstick. She was totally indie-nerd-glam-hot. She seemed really witty and cool, too. Swoon. Call me, ER nurse. I clean up nice!

You know what else is awesome? Ally McBeal. Various seasons have just been released on Netflix, and my mom and I have been watching the fourth season. It is really and truly hilarious, and a bit surreal at times. Sure, Ally can seriously grate on my nerves, especially since she has the qualities that I deplore in myself (neurotic, self-absorbed, emotionally fragile, indecisive, overthinks everything, slightly unbalanced etc., etc.,) but these are minor complaints, since the show is generally fantastic. Also, the current season includes Robert Downey, Jr.:


Who is totally wonderful. Charming, smart, sexy, and troubled. And looks killer hot in glasses. When gorgeous men don glasses, I lose it. See Hugh Laurie:


I think Hugh Laurie is positively delectable all the time, but whenever he puts on glasses on House, I melt into my chair. I am such a fangirl and I don't give a crap. I love the guy.
Speaking of sexiness being enhanced by nerdy accessories:


I don't really like Olivia Wilde, and I hate her character on House, but I won't deny that she's scorching hot, especially when she puts on suspenders. Chicks in suspenders just do it for me, really:







Hot.

I also dig dudes and dudettes in vests. Not sweater vests (never sweater vests, unless it is Lisa Meyers or Robert Sean Leonard as James Wilson) but buttoned-up, tailored vests.





I don't even find either of them all that hot. Just in vests. A tailored vest is even hotter on a woman, in my opinion, but those are harder to find pictures of.

Hey, you know what else are hot? Saddle shoes!

I'd love a pair of those for Christmas, along with the numbat from yesterday.

Sherilyn Fenn wore a lot of them on Twin Peaks. David Lynch called her "five feet of heaven in a ponytail":




To that I can only say: signs point to yes.

More awesomeness to come, obviously.

Weird animals!

I'm in the mood for something extremely random. It's Thanksgiving and I'm home and happy and glad to be with my cats and my mom and so forth. So I'm going to post some pictures of strange animals. Because that's how I roll.

The narwhal!


The wombat!


The Tasmanian Devil! This is one of my favorite animals, ever. I think it is all kinds of awesome.


The platypus! The weirdest thing I ever done seen!


The numbat! Anyone want to get me one of these for Christmas?


The Tasmanian Tiger! It's extinct, but it's still awesome.


The echidna! (Boy, Australian animals certainly are weird.)


The komodo dragon!


Happy Thanksgiving, y'all. May your dreams be graced with bizarre animals. Hope for my good health and I will hope for yours, as well.

So, it's been like a million years since I wrote in this, right? (Or six weeks or so, but hey, close enough...)

I'm well into my semester now and overall it's going pretty well. Classes are pretty great for the most part, and my health is...well, it's been worse. There's definitely been some sick badness (nausea, stomach pains, headaches, body aches, chest pain, heart palpitations, a seizure the other day, and even some weird new shit), but hey, at least I haven't gotten the swine flu, right?

I have been really homesick this semester though, worse than it's been in awhile. I always missed my mom really badly, but never "home" so much, and it sounds silly, but honestly I think a lot of it has to do with my missing my cats. Seriously. I am having serious cat withdrawal and it's a problem.

Also, a piece of awesome awesomeness that I forgot to put into my last entry and clearly have not put in since, as I have not updated and all and blah blah blah: The day before moving all my stuff in, when my mom and my brother and I were hanging out on campus, we went for a long walk on the Smith trails. A little dog ran up to us, and as I was, you know, talking nonsense to the dogs and so forth, the dog's owner came over - who happened to be Thurston Moore, of Sonic Youth fame. I looked up (way, way, way up because the dude is TALL), and there he was. With his dogs. I mean, I knew he lived in the area, but seriously, that was about the last place I would expect to run into him. Go figure. I basically squealed my face off.

But enough of this. My mom sent me some pictures of the cats and I'm gonna post them now.

Mabel in the cabinets:


Cuddling cats:




More to come, as always.

Back from New York!

Well, I actually got back on Monday night, but...whatever.

New York was still awesome, as New York is, but not quite as fabulous as usual. We arrived Wednesday evening which was, y'know, just fine and all, and we had dinner somewhere that must have been unremarkable, since I remember nothing about it. Friday, however, was when the hijinks truly began - namely, hijinks surrounding electricity.

The power went out. The shower was failing to work very well and although we had hot water, we had no idea how long it would last. The power was working in the building, just not the apartment we were staying in - which led to long and confusing interactions with the owner of the building, the person who rents the apartment, the super, etc, etc. Seeing as it was about 85 degrees that day (and my body has been running really hot lately - I can't seem to get cool enough), we had to end up staying in a hotel and Thursday basically became a wasted day. Unfortunately, said hotel was over a subway and so we didn't end up getting much sleep anyway.

Friday was a Met day, which was amazing as ever - my mom and I did the Francis Bacon exhibition with headphones, which was seriously freaking awesome. It was one of those great things we just wandered into but ended up being so incredible. We also went to the Models as Muses exhibit (the actual reason I really wanted to go to the Met, if we're being perfectly honest here), which was also incredible, but crowded and loud. The sets around the clothes, the photographs, and the music was all stunningly chosen - the 60s mod era had "My Generation" playing, the late-80s-early-90s-supermodel era had George Michael's "Freedom" video playing, the grunge era had "Smells Like Teen Spirit," and so forth.

I think I need some pictures of models here now.

Miss Christy Turlington, who appears in the "Freedom" video, among others:


Ms. Lauren Hutton:


Miss Twiggy, of course. Sweet Jesus, look at those eyes.


Miss Kate Moss. I love her and don't care what anyone says.


Anyway.

My brother also came in Friday night and was there till Sunday (and he'll be here again tomorrow! yay!) Saturday I saw Allison and Lianna (yay again!) and that evening hung out in the Meatpacking District, one of the few Manhattan neighborhoods I haven't spent a lot of time in, and I LOVED it.

And Sunday was, of course, Pride. We went to Midtown to watch it and, well, holy shit. Just amazing. The combination of the 40 years after Stonewall floats and the Michael Jackson music playing out of them actually got me a little bit teary-eyed over both. And I saw Miss Jaslene Gonzalez again, this time on top of a float, proving that I am fated to run into her every time I'm in New York. Work it, ChaCha Diva.

Monday was our last day, so we didn't do a whole lot. Overall, it wasn't the greatest trip. My body was seriously uncooperative, which led to some frustrated crying jags because damn it, I was in New York and it was summer and I wanted to get the most out of it so bad, but I just couldn't get there. (Monday is my epilepsy clinic appointment, so maybe I'll at least START to get some answers.) And while the electricity mostly cooperated, it was in and out, which made the whole thing kind of stressful.

Still, it was New York Fucking City. Hard for it NOT to be awesome.