must have cardinology.

i will pick up a copy immediately. and none of this mp4, soul-sucking digitization bullshit. ryan adams is sex, he deserves to be heard and felt in hard form.

some things are happening tonight

it's perfect and windy and fall. a little rain, more perfect. i'm smoking cigarettes because i can and i don't fully comprehend the consequences. maybe i will in two weeks when i'm 25. the glowing peak of my cigarette reminds me of that little candle we light during the christmas eve service. you know, the one you light at the end when everyone gets absorbed and sings silent night.

via text:

me: i think we should go to a psychic.

me: partly for a blog piece. but mostly for the soul.

t: can we please, you know we both need it.

me: i think this is something you can use your parents' credit card for. say you're bleeding emotionally.

t: i mean, i don't know what i would do without your brilliance. we are committing to doing this tomorrow.

me: deal.

we will live forever and you know it's true

quick study break. not sure how much longer i can forcefully shove these words into my skull. all i want to do is call someone who cares and tell them about the semi-secret elephant six show in chicago and how jeff mangum (!) showed his face. apparently he waved his hands and conjured up this chorus within the audience and they all sang and sort of chanted, "we will live forever and you know it's true". !!!!!! he might be jesus, for real. i'm pretty sure some sort of cultic apotheosis occurred.

i'm so blown away that more people don't understand the genius that is jeff mangum and was neutral milk hotel (was, is, will be again...who knows...).

seriously, this is awesomely creepy. i wish i could've been there:



okay, now back to studying.

pellucidity

there was a guest psychiatrist from copenhagen at work today, he had an angular face with beady blue eyes. it seemed like he might turn into some hairy creature under the full moon. i picture him sprouting coarse hair on his back and defying gravitational laws, howling. he was interesting, i felt the urge to watch his mouth move when he spoke. he told us about self-awareness in schizophrenia. sometimes he changed the topic and his inflection completely and nobody noticed, it all flowed naturally like a dream. he made me think about what it would be like to wake up and suddenly feel that it was strange to have a body. maybe it is strange to have a body, to be contained.

there are days when i leave work feeling very inspired. today was one of them. i left thinking i'm going to turn into the best damn psychologist that ever came out of montana. it all made sense today, meant something. it made me think that learning the GRE hit parade might actually be worthwhile.

(hhhhhh. i'm sick of studying.)

(i'm also sick of not drinking coffee and not eating cheese. yes i know, it has only been three days...)

so now it's friday night and i'm sitting alone in my apartment with franklin (i'm sooo lame), twelve stacks of words to memorize because graduate students must have a very expansive vocabulary. there are some people i miss. there are some places i'd rather be than here:

1. aberdeen
2. seattle, drinking wine with darby
3. flathead lake, in a tent by a campfire
4. the best thai restaurant in new york, the name starts with an S and multiple people have told me about it but i still haven't been...it's in queens.

(i wish i had the power of teleportation.)

oh, and just in case you didn't know (i just learned this word):

pel·lu·cid: –adjective
1. allowing the maximum passage of light, as glass; translucent.
2. clear in meaning, expression, or style: a pellucid way of writing.

gluey feathers on a flume

when i was young my grandparents bought a few acres of land deep in the canyon that runs between montana and wyoming. they built a beautiful log cabin with their hands. they raised horses and grew boysenberries next to the stream that you could see and hear from every window in the cabin.

my family spent some thanksgivings and a christmas or two at the oasis. to get there we had to depart from the already desolate highway and position the tires of our pick-up truck onto two narrow, parallel divots that served as the permanently provisional road. we had to drive down it for an hour, at least, but it was always worth it. i remember when i was twelve and there was so much snow. the snow felt different way out there, not really cold but just clean. modest. i remember walking out into the canyon and seeing a rattlesnake gliding through the frozen thicket. i remember crawling in the caves and discovering tribal etchings on the rock walls. i remember never caring when the snow found its way into my boot, melting in the interstice between my foot and shoe, saturating my sock. i remember my grandmother and how everyone always said i looked like her.

bon iver feels like i felt back then.



with the show only two months away (dec. 14th!!!), you should have anticipated this post. i can't wait. i will go and shut my eyes and just listen. then i will languish all over justin vernon's face.

if i die clutching your photograph..

don't call me boring, it's just cause i like you.

so serious

me: well i do want to be serious. i'm a very serious girl.

c: you can be.

me: hhhhhhhh. i need to get my tea leaves read.

c: i once had my palm read. she said my best time would be in my forties. that seems sorta awesome.

me: totally.

it's a sin to live so well

4 shows in 8 days. jealous? i thought so.

#1: echo and the bunnymen/glasvegas @ radio city music hall

i never thought i'd get the opportunity to see echo and the bunnymen, especially at radio city, ESPECIALLY backed by an orchestra (!). plus, i have a soft spot for the opening band.

definitely a cinderella evening.

#2: tegan and sara/city in colour

i'd been wanting to see tegan and sara for years, so this one was pretty satisfying. they are so adorable! made me wish i was a canadian lesbian too...

#3: pinback

different than i expected. i lost interest after they played the three songs i recognized, so i left in favor of some quiet conversation. sometimes you can't force it, ya know?

#4: ben nichols of lucero with chuck ragan and jesse malin

a rowdy, whiskey drinking show. and i'm in love with ben nichols. clearly.

i know, rough life.

oh, earth.

k: it's midnight here in transylvania, not exactly gothic, the hotel is across from fucking mcdonalds!

me: it's like a virus.

k: indeed.

the future is rooted in the past

today i will:

close the blinds in my blue room that has no light fixtures and
curl in a fetal position
underneath the woven blanket my dad bought for me in mexico to
replace the one that was stolen,

it looks just like it,

and i will listen to bon iver - for emma, forever ago as many times as it takes to feel like
i'm not drowning.

my new obsession

laura marling - cross your fingers/crawled out of the sea

nights like these tear me apart

she had a weakness for writers

and i was never that good at the words anyways.

my kitten is cuter than yours

october 6th

we were there, sitting at my table in the dark, half-talking-half-whispering in soft and soothing voices, untying the knots from ourselves. we were both dirty, the shower had broken days ago. it was better that way i think. it made me feel more real and alive, like daphne, growing bark and leaves and gradually becoming part of the earth. i was comfortable but couldn’t look at you, so i fixed my gaze on the wine. it looked thick and black in the dark. i pretended to watch the tannins slide down the curvature of the glass but i couldn't really see them. there wasn't enough light. every sound was being recorded so we could remember, even the silence, which to us seemed to be the most important. our silent soundtrack, simultaneously recording and playing, over and over.

i sensed something. what was happening? i was calm but uneasy, something felt different. you could sense it too. i rummaged through my head and tried to remember what i had learned in school, something in neuroscience or endocrinology...or philosophy? physics? something about the non-linear, dynamical systems of emotion and human response, cause and effect...maybe i didn't learn this in school, maybe in a dream? energy…no, frequencies...yes, that was it! the soundtrack, the dark, your chemical emissions, the tiny hairs on my arms that stood on end and wavered with the draft, the distance between us, the rhythm and echoes of our voices, the shape and structure of the room and the walls. like an orchestra, it was all coming together and something strange was happening. a force was being synthesized, i could feel it gathering and salivating, readying itself. but for what? i started visualizing all the elements as numbers and symbols, aligning them, mathematizing them. there was an equation...oh, what was it? i learned it once in that dream...

suddenly my body seized as the muscle and skin turned stone. now i could almost remember what it was capable of, this force…i held the numbers in my mind and calculated faster, i had to know. then the noise came, snaps, the hardened flesh was breaking. as the pieces of myself shifted and detached, i stopped equating and began trying to mentally will myself whole. it wasn't working, i was distracted, tobacco kisses. i couldn’t stop it now. the bones fragmented and disunified leaving my botched skeleton held together loosely by only the sinews and veins. you held me up and smiled, my marionette body draped over your arm. drunk wine started to leak from my skin at the cracks. it looked a little like blood, but i wasn't bleeding which surprised me; i thought falling apart would be a bit messier. i thought it would hurt. it didn't.

uno mas

my girls...



only love.

we broke the shower

calamity! the spout in the tub broke free from its base and was launched across the bathroom by the geyser that erupted from the broken pipes. water everywhere!! broken shower.

:(

so this morning, i filled a large tupperware bowl with a mixture of the scalding and glacial waters from their respective faucets in the bathroom sink, then dipped my head into it and washed my hair like a peasant girl. ashley went a different route, making use of a small cup to repeatedly douse her hair over the tub. it had to be done. we were gettin grimy.

do you feel alone when i'm in my head?

radio city

you held me in front of god, he stared right through us. he wore skulls on his bandana and for a minute we weren't sure if it was him. then you remembered the time he walked coolly across the ice with his spurs while everyone else was slipping and collapsing. he didn't even know the the ice was there. it must have been him.

then he was the cab driver, a drummer, your dusky brother from another life, possessing the power to change the color of the lights from red to green using only his eyes. suddenly, mine could do it too, but only during those moments when you were watching them. when you looked away, it was gone.