lazing

Crashing early on a Friday night, finishing up the whole cleaning the old apartment thing, taking an excursion with one of my homegirls to Oberlin on a sunny winter day, to drive through farm country listening to Soundgarden and Quicksand, walk around, catch up on life, gaze at sundry beautiful wares and artifacts at the art museum. Got all geeky over fragments of Turkish pottery and Durer prints. Oberlin might be a bit too hippie for my square self to dwell in, but it's a nice little place, and given that it was one of the first colleges to admit women and people of African descent, their activist cred is way better than my alma mater's.

Skipped out on watching the end of the football game, drank a lot of tea, slacked around last night with some kindred souls talking about everything, it wasn't like much happened this weekend, but what happened was good.

cruel suns

Drinking iced tea, chagrined at the thought of my favorite space to write and drink caffeine being up for lease, seeking refuge from the humidity, listening to people try to fall in love, not feeling like playing even slacker renditions of sports on days like this when the thought of lemonade on the front porch not yet covered with the shade of climbing vines, or a shady tree by lake rocks seems like an infinitely better option.

Ambition to create defeated by exhaustion, coming home from family gatherings to pass out on the couch, waking up to humid wind and sound of diesel engines, wanting to lay there indefinitely because I know I will not be able to lift this heaviness from my eyes as I wish it would rain.

this is getting old and so are you...

Teenage angst has paid off well, though I'm not so bored and not that old yet. Life's gotten more interesting, even as it's settled into some kind of conventional routine.

I remember hearing on the radio about Kurt Cobain but I was eleven and didn't pay much attention but when Layne Staley died, it wasn't unexpected but still heartbreaking and me and my fellow slackers mourned together on a rainy Tuesday in the basement of Tri-C.

Every time someone talks about "The Voice of a Generation" I'm wary because not every person born after 1970 is an angsty suburban cracker and we tend to project our likes on the rest of the world just like our boomer overlords. My younger cousins don't know who Kurt Cobain is, and because people on the Internet don't know how to read, the first search on Youtube comes up as "Smells Like Team Spirit" which sounds like a hilarious trainwreck of a customer service program.

I know that the cryptic lyrics and perfect squalls of guitar spoke to my lonely soul who'd just discovered the guitar and music at the same time, tuning my dad's instrument down to D and a half step to play like Jerry Cantrell.



Who needed boy bands and love songs when there was cathartic angst to wallow in?



I learned how to play that song from a guy who went to rehab, and did the painting below my first year as an art student, and it hung in every dorm room and apartment I lived in until I moved home in '06 and it sat in a portfolio stuffed with old projects and band posters I forgot I owned. I see more hipster kids with flannel shirts than usual and know that the inevitable revival will eventually happen.

1am

My extended family came in tonight to celebrate my mom's birthday and ended up discussing aspects of the Bro Culture with my younger college-aged cousins, a phenomenon which has been greatly codified since my ever-growing-more-distant days as an undergrad. Much laughter and amusement ensued as my cousin described the process of "bromancing," the tastes and general habits, proper Bro Flow hair care, and the differences between east coast and west coast bros. Sadly, there is no Tupac/Biggie type rivalry, because that would involve doing something.

In other words, it seems that the Bros are college kid slackers who are richer than us and prefer more mellow groovy sounds to accompany the consumption of cheap beer while watching Fight Club.

This time the late night has nothing to do with angsting or coughing and everything to do with having my ears blow out in a beautiful way. The last show I went to was Greg Dulli back in October, which sucked due to rock star antics and drunk groupie chicks and groping dudes, and not being able to leave because my friend I went with really had a good time.

I haven't gone out since then, finding that I don't want to deal with crowds alone. I've been so used to going out with other people in part due to them being the driver, but I'm finding more and more that I like flying solo and coming and going as it works for me. Usually I just don't end up going anywhere and end up holed up in my apartment with the paints and music, or slacking on someone's porch if I'm feeling social.

Having a free ticket and needing some catharsis and sonic therapy after a long week made me willing to venture to the other side of town where I got to blend into a crowd of introverted souls where I wasn't out of place with my longish hair and black hoodie, and found that the earplugs I picked up to try and be responsible with my hearing really shut out most of the sound, so I'm slightly more deaf but whatever. It was worth it.

golden

There's more people than I'm used to here at the usual coffeeshop hangout, as I finish up my take-home quiz, drink ginger peach green tea, attempt to restructure the purgatorial novel along the lines of 'Dubliners,' scrawl feeble attempts at verse, and relish the solitude among texting teens, undergrads studying calculus, and a crew of middle-aged regulars.

It's nice to be somewhere where nobody knows your name but it's not unfriendly. The only person who's tried to talk to me was a bum who said I looked like a writer and tried to sell me a four-color pen in exchange for bus fare.

I keep thinking it's warmer than it is, not looking forward to going back outside because a thermal and a hoodie doesn't cut it yet. I don't want to go back out into the cold when it's so warm and golden in here, with the Christmas lights and the buzz of caffeine, the hum of indistinguishable conversation and muted music.

liquids

I feel guilty taking sick time as I'm still not used to this whole idea of getting paid for a day of non-work but since I spent most of the weekend sleeping and coughing, and such perks are available to me, I took the day off to sleep, read, drink tea and make smoothies out of the leftover fruits and veggies in the fridge, dose on Dayquil, venture outside to pay off library fines and sundry miscellanea. I missed a midterm today, but it turns out it's a takehome one anyway. Hooray.

The sun and warmth was welcome today, but I find a strange comfort in the grey skies that are so familiar. It's been a good day to catch up with old friends on the phone even though I can barely speak and to listen to sweet sounds like this.

ennui

A day that started with the yuppie looking at the condo across the street asking me about the hood, let to assorted radio station-ing, hanging out at the West Side Market, coffeeshop and other kinds of slacking of the good kind. And now after all that I have a sore throat (apologies to those with whom I've shared the fruit of the market), I'm out of it and not much fun, with a serious case of the writer's block and a sinkful of dishes needing to be washed, but fatigue makes cowards of us all, so to sleep perchance to dream it is...

blood and coffee.

Having received a snow day call from the place of employment and the heat having been fixed, it was lovely to have a day at home to get things done and also do some superb slacking of the drink tea on the couch wrapped in blankets, listening to shoegaze, and reading.

I picked up 'The Tale of Genji' awhile back but didn't get through the first section, but this translation I got from the library last night is way better and I'm enjoying it so far, with its depth of detail, the inner life of the characters, and a culture and time period that I know little about make for good reading. It's over a thousand pages long so there's a lot to transpire.

Also started carving some wood blocks too, but I sliced my finger with the v-gouge and realized that I had no bandages in the house and that paper towels really don't do a good job. So after helping my downstairs neighbor shovel us out, I went up to the drugstore to get some.

I didn't realize I was still bleeding until I was standing line and all these tough guys behind me were like "Dang somebody got fucked up in here look at all that blood man" and then I look down and there's a trail of it around the store and big drops of it all around me. It's still pouring out and everyone is looking at me weird. "That's from YOU? You been playing with knives again or what?"

The lady there gave me another paper towel, and a customer card that I'm supposed to bring back but I am now That Girl with the Bleeding Finger All Over Rite Aid and I'll probably go to the Walgreens on Clark now instead. I bandaged it up in the car since one of the side benefits of being a former art student is that I'm damn good at DIY first aid after unfortunate incidents with etching acid and utility knives.

I've migrated to my favorite coffeeshop to do some writing before meeting up at the art center for creating and then dinner. The music is the Amelie soundtrack, the coffee is good (can I go a day without coffee? Yes, but not well), and I've done some revising and an extra page of writing so I'm not feeling too badly, and I'm snarking with the good Lady Pebbles Montoya (an old friend of the family from way back when and also a should-be-more-famous personage on the Internet) about what the Jane Austen Fight Club would involve.

I never thought I'd get snow days as a grown up but these are beautiful things.