"youll get it right sometime you will"

my dad started watching the sopranos no doubt because the new york times said it was great, and also because the people in his office were talking about it. one of the women who works for him taped all the episodes (oh the days of vhs, they seem so far away) and so my dad would borrow them at the end of the season. around teh third season i started watching with him. he loved them for the same reasons all of these mobster dramas like the godfather are so appealing, even gangsters, even mob bosses are just like us. they have families (and psychiatrists) and theyre seeking the american dream.
after i got into it, he borrowed the first season again because i hate watching tv shows out of order and also because the first season contained his favorite episode... episode 5: college. tony takes meadow on the same college visits my dad had taken my sisters on and was to take me on in a few years, and in maine he sees a former "colleague" shall we say? who turned and went into the witness protection program. he the proceedes to murder him while meadow is visiting colby. youve probably seen the episode.
today i watched the episode again.
today i also did that whole "applying for graduation" thing. it brought me back to that internal debate of whether to walk or not, whether to go through with the whole cap and gown bit or not. my dad said once he thought itd be nice if i did it, since i didnt do it in high school. part of me wants to do it so my sisters have to come to mine, since i went to theirs. itd also be kinda nice (though im sure id actually hate the whole thing and feel like everyone was just faking it and they didnt really care) to have a sort of... celebration for me, a reason for everyone to come celebrate with me. both my sisters got married recently, it seems theyre always being celebrated for one reason or another... of course its my youngest child syndrome to always feel neglected and not as well loved as my sisters, so by pre-empting my celebration, id be feeding that neglect, justifying my parents lack of love for me, the youngest who can only follow footsteps, can never blaze her own trail to be celebrated in her own right. thinking about that kind of celebration almost feels like pity. "look what i can do!" the retarded kid who dropped out of school 3 or 4 times finally finished!
but odds are pretty good my sisters wouldnt even be able to come because graduation is at the end of january and theyll undoubtedly have school and be unable to get away. besides which 3000 miles is a long way to go for abby. besides which, i dont want to do it just out of spite for having had to go to my sisters' graduations.
so why do it?
why not just invite everyone (including parents and even sisters) out to the same place at the same time? have it be any night just with a subtle subtext of graduation-celebration? would it work? would people come if it didnt have the pomp and circumstance of the college campus, the cap and gown? why not just take the pomp and circumstance and throw in a party afterwards?
it just seems so insignificant. i picture my dad crying at my sisters' weddings, what those occasions meant to him, and granted i may very well get married one day and have that all to myself, but i compare the completion of my 5 and half years of college and the celebration just feels like pity. and i feel pitiful for it having taken that long and then i dont want to celebrate it. i just want it to be over and done with and have my degree like everyone else and pretend like im not "special" or even special. like my accomplishments are yet to come so why praise this one?
and then it just feels like too much so i drink a beer and cuddle with the cat and watch the sopranos, episode 5: college.

i went to buy cigarettes and got asked if i was under-18...
sostrange

if you played for Brazil, what would your name be?

http://www.minimalsworld.net/BrazilName/brazilian.shtml

i'm rosenhaldo

I have eaten
the plums
that were in
the icebox

and which
you were probably
saving
for breakfast

Forgive me
they were delicious
so sweet
and so cold

i started out writing that as the subject line and knew it came from somewhere else, so i googled the words and that is the poem of that title by william carlos williams (from patterson, new jersey) and somehow it fit my mood perfectly.
what i was just going to say is thank you all for being my friends and putting up with me in all my socially awkward inabilities to have and maintain friendships. how we found eachother and how ive managed to keep you all this long is the eighth wonder of the world as far as im concerned. so this is just to say thank you for the plums of your friendship, you were probably saving them, but they are so delicious and sweet.

these are my flatmates... lauren, mary, (me), and kristina... theyre nice girls... though sometimes things come out of my mouth an dim just like wow, im such an asshole, they hate me... oh well, they dont need to love me.
anyway, so that was day 1... guinness 1. lauren and mary were not fans... so sad. me on the other hand mmmmmmm its like drinking chocolate milk! sotasty.

apparently spitalfield is a market and area in london... who knew!


this is my house in dublin.

today i went to teh british museum. its the museum that has all kinds of artifacts that imperialists stole from greece adn rome and egypt and africa and whatnot. and the first room was all egyptian stuff from like 3,000-4000 years ago... and these masses of school kids were just rubbing all up on it all shamelessly adn the adults too! it was so weird. its a very disturbing musuem, just because it reeks so blantantly of imperialims. i really liked the african art, soem of it was like my grandma's and it was cool. but weird, cause i cant tell her about it all when i get back.

http://www.flickr.com/photos/37295263@N00/sets/72157594163950905/

here are some pictures, i didnt upload all of them because at about this
point i realized tehy were all huge pictures and i needed to resize
them, but i didnt know how, but then i realize4d i should use iphoto but
then it unexpectedly quit, and then it did it again, so anyway, here are
some pictures.

i was thinking about it and i hate this whole idea that we should travel to be
less provincial and open our horizons and be better people, because ive
learned so much more from being in love with poor white trash (no
offense) about myself, about culture about everything, than i could in a
month in london or spain or wherever.

i went to see titus andronicus, at the reconstructed globe theatre of william shakespeare (read it with a british accent please) the staging was really cool because the globe is/was setup so that
there are all these levels of balconies but on the floor is standing
room audience space. so in the performance, they used the people
standing there like as extras and used that whole space. so when the
king was giving his speech they audience was all the romans and when
they went hunting, they were the forrest. it was cool.

that was really just cut and paste from an email to john so sorry if it sounds a little awkward... but there are probably only two of you reading this anyway, so think of it as a personal apology. <3<3<3

---

well, im in london. its all very british. and very expensive. and im all very socially awkward. im supposed to be having the time of my life, and im pretty sure im not. but then why in the world would going to europe be the time of anyone's life, when in the last two years things have happened like finding somewhere that feels like home and falling in love? thank god this isnt the time of my life. its like saying high school, or college are the best years of your life... i think most of us pray to god theyre not. maybe im just being jaded or cynical or defensive because im so incapable of being anything but standoffish and defensive in my solitude.
the tate modern was really great, it has this totally different design than a museum like the moma or the philly art museum. while those are basically chronological, the tate is more thematic, so you see pieces like monet and pollack, or roy lichtenstein and marcel duchamp juxtaposed against one another in a way that is less common in the art museums im used to. it also does this weird thing of having descriptions of every piece telling you what theyre supposed to mean, or what the artist once said it means. on the one hand, i like it because it kind of de-mystifies meaning that youre not all that likely to pick up on unless you know all about the history of art and the social, political, historical contexts of an artist and his/her piece. it doesnt ask you to know everything about everything or assume you do. but at the same time, it feels like its telling you what a piece means, when often i found myself thinking what the fuck, that is so far from what i got out of that and it almost feels like it invalidates the possibility for interpretation and teh value of the interpretation of the viewer.
the weather has been gorgeous, sunny and hot everyday (and i thought england was famous for being cold and rainy) so i spend lots of time drinking coffee and reading in parks and courtyards and along the river. not so much time in pubs, because apparently in england im chickenshit about drinking alone *shrug*

shamrocks and guinness for all, not only for st. patrick's day but because im going to ireland this summer (dublin) for a creative writing program through the university of iowa (which is really famous for its writer's workshop). im really excited. though nervous too. ive never been very good at making friends and meeting people, but hey even if i have no friends i can just drink guinness and jameson all day. mmmmmmmm.
in may we should all do something. go to asbury park. or seaside. or wherever. i miss living for those weekends.

"He tried to weigh his soul to see if it was a poet's soul. Melancholy was the dominant note of his temperament, he thought, but it was melancholy tempered by recurrences of faith and resignation and simple joy. If he could give expression to it in a book of poems perhaps men would listen."
-- Joyce, Dubliners, "A Little Cloud"

"VLADIMIR:
Let us not waste our time in idle discourse! (Pause. Vehemently.) Let us do something, while we have the chance! It is not every day that we are needed. Not indeed that we personally are needed. Others would meet the case equally well, if not better. To all mankind they were addressed, those cries for help still ringing in our ears! But at this place, at this moment of time, all mankind is us, whether we like it or not. Let us make the most of it, before it is too late! Let us represent worthily for once the foul brood to which a cruel fate consigned us! What do you say? (Estragon says nothing.) It is true that when with folded arms we weigh the pros and cons we are no less a credit to our species. The tiger bounds to the help of his congeners without the least reflection, or else he slinks away into the depths of the thickets. But that is not the question. What are we doing here, that is the question. And we are blessed in this, that we happen to know the answer. Yes, in this immense confusion one thing alone is clear. We are waiting for Godot to come—"
beckett, waiting for godot

last night john and i were talking about things (drunk things) that wed done that we were still really embarassed about. then he asked about best drunk memories. i offered the good charlotte show in hartford that we didnt go to see. i was thinking about that today and remembring how after we got back from that trip i was having dinner with my friend sarah and i was telling her about how when i was in that group of people, of friends, i really felt okay, even good, comfortable. and it wasnt just the alcohol. i felt like being there with those people made me feel okay with myself, made me more comfortable in my own skin than maybe id ever felt before. thinking back to all that made my mind flash back to summer camp when i was 13 (yes, naked camp). i really was happy then. i have this image in my mind still of sitting on the hill in the sun after lunch and before rest hour, leaning into someones lap, with people on every side of me. it was the first time in my life i had ever really felt like i had friends, had people who genuinely wanted to be around me. then i was just thinking about camp and how happy id been. and how when i left, i half-promised to be back as a counselor when i was old enough. now its pretty far from my mind and my plans, not to mention my body.
things fall apart?

( saltash mountain )

( and 'naked camp' explained? )