and the truth is i've been dreaming of some tired tranquil place

where the weather won't get trapped inside my bones

and if all these years of searching find one sympathetic face

then it's there i'll plant these seeds and make my home

i need to get off my butt and do shit:

tonight, i shall

1) clean my room

2) apply for jobs

3) do some writing

AH I MISS YOU.

Does anyone remember Crispy M&Ms? WHAT I WOULD GIVE FOR ONE RIGHT NOW. oh, you sadly discontinued sweet things.

OHGOD.

1. curfews

2. enforced bedtimes

3. RAMPANT STRICT UNREASONABLE CATHOLICISM

4. a mother who cries when i say that i want to be a writer (even just on the side)

...get me outta here, geez.

Emma Watson and puppies

I guess I have to like this video of those aforementioned things are involved.

Emma Watson in a music video with her boyfriend, some British dude who sings. At least she's not dating that old guy anymore?

It is really hot today, which is strange, because I've just returned from my trip to SoCal. You would think that I would have gone from hot --> cool weather while traveling north, but that is not the case. I am currently sitting in my bedroom at my parents' house, sweating like a pig. The walls are a pale and yet inexplicably neon shade of pink. I FEEL TRAPPED.

Some thoughts:

1. I should start reading McSweeney's again online instead of following so many goddamn fashion blogs which just make me feel sad about the state of my daily unchic appearance,

2. Ice cream should be a daily indulgence,

3. I WISH POSTAGE STAMPS WERE FREE OR WOULD MAGICALLY APPEAR ON MY ENVELOPES, LAK;SFJKL;F,

4. I want a puppy, real bad,

5. The real world is already a scary place.

La la la la, I want to go back.

It's kind of embarrassing how much Bright Eyes I listen to.

At heart, I'm just a weedy, angsty 14 year old boy circa 2002.

"If you are prone to eczema, you will find that your flareups intensify with an increase in stress levels. Your skin feels more itchy and you are more liable to scratch yourself when you feel pressurized or unable to cope with the situation at hand. Over some time, you can find that what started out as a minor irritation of your skin has become a full blown case of eczema."

...UGH. I need to get a referral to a derm, pronto. This flare-up around my eyes/neck/scalp makes me feel so disgusting. Prescription creams, plz? And any sort of advice from fellow eczema sufferers out there?

that is all.

HELLO GUYS,

a few images from the last few days of my undergraduate academic career

I know I've only been away for a week, but it literally feels as though it has been FOREVER and I think it's only now starting to kick in that I will never be an undergraduate student again. Tis a very strange feeling. It's also strange to think that everyone has dispersed across the globe (quite literally) and we are all navigating the waters of post grad employment seeking/schooling/floundering/spiritual seeking/whatever.

I suppose the point is to say that I miss the life I had in college very very much and that even though I'm excited about this point in my life (hoorah! real world stuff! potential paychecks! moving forward!), I certainly don't want to leave everything behind. So keep in touch! Please! Everyone!

Who wants to be pen pals? I've bought all this stationary that needs to be used up... and I miss you all terribly.

hipster film news du jour:

Joseph Gordon-Levitt is set to star in a bike messenger thriller soon. It's called Premium Rush (which for some reason sounds like a terribly outdated name to me, sort of like a 90s action movie along the same vein as Speed or Con Air or something) and it's about a bike messenger (Levitt) who accidentally picks up an envelope at Columbia University and then is chased throughout the city by the baddies. Also, Jamie Chung is supposed to star in it as Levitt's love interest/fellow bike messenger. NEW YORK. BIKES. JOSEPH GORDON-LEVITT AND AN ASIAN CHICK. COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY.

This sounds like it'll be all kinds of absurd.

My family is so wonderful, I almost can't believe it sometimes. I am the luckiest girl in the world, I swear.

GIRL

Jade Raymond, producer of Assassin's Creed, is SO LOVELY. AND A VIDEO GAME EXECUTIVE AT UBISOFT.

SOCAL, HERE I COME

Lots of family times -- I can't wait! I miss my big, chaotic extended family terribly.

REAL LIFE IS SCARY

I know that's the biggest cliched statement to make (ever, essentially), but it's true. I've been so stressed out/bewildered/emotionally drained lately, I don't even know what to do!

I wish Google Search could answer all my life questions.

DEAR GOOGLE, WILL EVERYTHING BE OKAY?!

hello again, old room

I am back home at the parentals and clearly, things have not changed. Piles of clothes and a Seventeen Magazine were still waiting for me. Oh, joy.

congratulations to all

who graduated this weekend!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

now, onto the rest of our lives. how exciting/terrifying, eh?

play me a song to set me free

an old favorite favorite favorite... i have such boundless love and nostalgia for b&s. always reminds me of high school. so jangly and sad and always makes me a little bit (a lot) homesick.

Currently drinking a mug of green tea and choking down a Fiber One bar. I AM OLD.

I don't particularly want to graduate. or leave. or work anymore.

But these are all things that must be done. :(

I need to get back into shape, but my tummy doth protest.

Urghhh.

for nostalgia's sake:

I remember being completely floored by this short story the first time I read it, as a seventeen-year-old aspiring writer (oh, the lulz).

"Snow" by Ann Beattie

I remember the cold night you brought in a pile of logs and a chipmunk jumped off as you lowered your arms. “What do you think you’re doing in here?” you said, as it ran through the living room. It went through the library and stopped at the front door as though it knew the house well. This would be difficult for anyone to believe, except perhaps the subject of a poem. Our first week in the house was spent scraping, finding some of the house’s secrets, like wallpaper underneath wallpaper. In the kitchen, a pattern of white-gold trestles supported purple grapes as big and round as ping pong balls. When we painted the walls yellow, I thought of the bits of grape that remained underneath and imagined the vine popping through, the way some plants can tenaciously push through anything. The day of the big snow, when you had to shovel the walk and couldn’t find your cap and asked me to wind a towel so that it would stay on your head - you, in the white turban, like a crazy king of snow. People liked the idea of our being together, leaving the city for the country. So many people visited, and the fireplace made all of them want to tell amazing stories: the child who happened to be standing on the right corner when the door of a ice-cream truck came open and hundreds of Popsicles crashed out; the man standing on the beach, sand sparkling in the sun, one bit glittering more than the rest, stooping to find a diamond ring. Did they talk about amazing things because they thought we’d turn into one of them? Now I think they probably guessed it wouldn’t work. It was as hopeless as giving a child matched cup and saucer. Remember the night, out on the lawn, knee-deep in snow, chins pointed at the sky as the wind whirled down all that whiteness? It seemed that the world had been turned upside down, and we were looking into an enormous field of Queen Anne’s lace. Later, headlights off, our car was the first to ride through the newly fallen snow. The world outside our car looked solarized.

You remember it differently. You remember that the cold settled in stages, that a small curve of light was shaved from the moon night after night, until you were no longer surprised the sky was black, that the chipmunk ran to hide in the dark, not simply to a door that led to its escape. Our visitors told the same stories people always tell. One night, giving me a lesson in storytelling, you said, “Any life will seem dramatic if you omit mention of most of it.”

This, then, for drama: I drove back to that house not long ago. It was April, and Allen had died. In spite of all the visitors, Allen, next door, had been the good friend in bad times. I sat with his wide in their living room, looking out he glass doors to the backyard, and there was Allen’s pool, still covered with black plastic that had been stretched across it for winter. It had rained, and as the rain fell, the cover collected more and more water until it finally spilled onto the concrete. When I left that day, I drove past what had been our house. There or four crocuses were blooming in the front - just a few dots of white, no field of snow. I felt embarrassed for them. They couldn’t compete.

This is a story, told the way you say stories should be told: Somebody grey up, fell in love, and spent a winter with her lover in the country. This, of course, is the barest outline, and futile to discuss. It’s as pointless as throwing birdseed on the ground when snow still falls fast. Who expects small things to survive when even the largest get lost? People forget years and remember moments. Seconds and symbols are left to sum things up: the black shroud over the pool. Love, in its shortest form, becomes a word. What I remember most about all that time is one winter. The snow. Even now, saying “snow,” my lips move so that they kiss the air.

No mention has been made of the snowplow that seemed always to be there, scraping snow off our narrow road - an artery cleared, through neither of us could have said where the heart was.

dakota fanning in lingerie makes me a little uncomfortable

i know she's sixteen(?) or so now, but still...

Ritz bacon and cheese flavored crackers?

I can't tell if this is going to be disgusting or a new guilty pleasure.

DONE.

...now what?

My last final (possibly in life!) is in less than eight hours! (!!!!!!) yayayayayayay

I suppose I better keep studying, though.

The recent zombie trend in pop culture makes me wonder why cannabalism isn't as wildly popular. I remember in elementary school, the most traumatizing history lesson I ever received was on the Donner-Reed Party. I couldn't fathom how people would actually eat their close friends and relatives just to survive a particularly treacherous journey.

I personally think the idea of people in their right minds eating human flesh is far more terrifying than the mindless zombie.

...But yeah, I'm still pretty psyched that Pride and Prejudice and Zombies is going to be made into a movie.

caffeine count:

2 cups o' coffee
1 cup o' tea
1 can of soda

not too shabby...

i can't concentrate today. my body/mind connection is failing. i need a catnap.

to my phone

hey you --
large hunk of industrial gray plastic, leaking
wires and cords over the edge of my desk

i thought you would be obsolete by now.

please just let me dial out. what do you have against the new york times anyway?

i hate you.

a poem

"to the plants one cubicle over"

i see you, pressing your brittle palms
against the corkboard -- a thing
almost as natural (but not nearly as misplaced)
as you are.

there is no music here, so
no plant, you cannot dance.
cannot jitterbug to anything but the air
rushing from ac vents.

you shed leaves like you are trying
to compensate for something.
toughen up, you. stop shaking.

SUMMER GOALS:

1. Get back into extracurricular reading.

2. Reduce sugar + sodium intake (salt regulation, btw, is potentially going down with the FDA).

3. Suck it up and pay for gym membership.

4. Write letters.

5. Write stories.

6. Sleeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeep.

This is how I feel right now:

Sleepy sleepy sleepy, almost physically (and certainly mentally) incapacitated right now.

GOOD MORNING:

A six page paper and a set of media clips due by 10 a.m.,

then a portfolio due by 6.

Ohhh dear.

AAAAAAAAH

beautiful little tiny exquisite functional camera -- you fulfill all of my cute-things fetishes. a graduation gift from the best boyfriend a girl could ever ask for <3.

Reminder to self + all those walking in a week and a half(ish):

Cap and gown pick-up, this Saturday, from noon to five p.m. in King Lounge of the MU.

This week, this week, this week.

Lack of sleep makes me delirious, but I'm also happy (despite the fact that tonight is shaping up to be all sorts of sleepless horror). Laundry, papers, final portfolios, agreeing to work from home the very morning that aforementioned papers and portfolios are due?!

I better be employed in the future - it's only right, karma.

Sign me up for frolicking a few weeks from now, once I've fully slept/recovered from this final quarter.