various conversations and other things influencing me now >> running themes: entitlement, guilt

JT: several. One last night about intelligence being a tool and not an end, though I barely heard because I was mostly asleep.  I think he was going through again a stage we both had to reach through humiliating experiences, after going through elementary school with everyone telling us we were smart.  Or maybe another reference to how intelligence is use less without focus, meaning my ADD and first grade knowledge of basically every subject.

Shelby: reassuring me about bread ethics, bra sizes, boyfriends

Madre: A long conversation in the car about affairs and why people do bad things.  (Her: to reaffirm to themselves they are still bad.)  It gave much depth to my perspective of my mother because I imagined her at her worst although she has always seemed quite strong to me.  The conversation (a series, actually after):

A short text message interaction about Jens Lekman: Which left me feeling intensely guilty for imaginary reasons.  A similar example is the time I stayed up all night in the fifth grade because I was worried about my future self not having the capacity to refuse drugs.  Andrew stepbrother says the existential term is angst.

Rhonda bosslady: calls blackberries Bioaccumulators (or maybe I just made that up) and "any woman of childbearing age shouldn't pick and eat blackberries around town unless she wants the evidence on her ovaries."

Carl Sagan: the lost library of alexandria, a six hundred year old metropolis, a speck of dust on the cosmic horizon.  In juxtaposition with headlines I read today about riots in egypt about the military coup to oust the first democratically elected president - current death toll in a week is higher than six hundred

Basically everyone: I tell about Glinda Bridgforth, and how she preaches the attitude of financial abundance.  I examine my finances and see they have the potential for anything I want.  Could I swing a new macbook after a couple months of saving? Totally.  Later I go to work and resent it and remember what people go to work for, and find buying things to be connected with less free time, and I find I value free time above all.  Later I go to the outdoor store sidewalk sale and find that buy-one-get-one free jacket - one sale jacket - is totally out of my price range.  Forget this, I'll take my sense of abundance to the beach and read Cosmos.

another list:
Things I want to do on my last week of summer instead of going camping
1. see buddy reed and the rip it ups blues night at bear river casino
2. fix my bike
3. go to the river
4. have a good riddance summer no one gives a shit about you anyway potluck
5. write a song with things divined from my subconscious.  so, meditate

thinking about what constitutes success: for me I'll know what I am doing is working if I'm happy and free from being crazy.  In those terms my life is pretty much going great.  I'm feeling the happiest and most carefree I've felt in years or possibly ever.
My boyfriend is sweet, intelligent, adventurous, available, and doesn't try to change me. Also I love him with no effort at all.  My family is supportive and kind and they seem to be getting on okay with the things they love, and I'm happy I can and have always been able to call them whenever I want.  My body is fit in the right places and bulbous in the rights places; it is strong and gets me to and from the right places, and it doesn't get sick nearly ever.  I think I picked a silly major, and even though it makes me feel dumb all the time, I call it keeping me humble and feel grateful for so many things I don't have to try very hard to be good at.  I also feel pretty good about my odds of doing something for the rest of my life that suits me - intellectually and creatively stimulates me, helps others.  I have plenty of time to read, bike, go to yoga, learn.  I feel surrounded by friends of many different ages, who know me as I am and still like me and want to do things with me.  Isn't it interesting I thought I was so introverted?  I have the people/alone balance going the right way, finally.  My new house is clean and spacious, my new roommate is interesting and kind and inspires me to play music and read books.  I don't know if life can always be this good, but more than one person older than me says I'm on the right track.  Oh and I get to see my mom tomorrow <3 <3
So I have a lot of love to share right now.

scarlatti pontoon

I wrote this pontoon two years or so ago when going through an insomnia poetry phase, and just found it while unpacking my stuff.  It's rather clever with the alternating lines, I think:

Scarlatti Poem
The time I played it from start to finish:
it can't possibly be as good
as they said it was,
though I had spent days on single lines.

It can't possibly be as good
in the final concert of four
though I had spent days on single lines
and was poised and wore high heels.

In the final concert of four
there is relief it is not much worse.
Poise and wearing high heels
doesn't disguise very much.

The relief that it is not much worse
is of no use in this sleepless night.
It doesn't disguise much
and now is quite possibly a bigger deal.

Of no use in this sleepless night:
The time I played it from start to finish.
It is quite possibly a bigger deal
than they said it was.

Roommate Poem

On the seventh day of living together
it was apparent to us both that it was
neither of the perfects we'd anticipated.

First of all his degree had been twice undermined -
The diploma arrived in the mail and did not
have the word "performance" after "bachelor of music".
Then there was the performance major in the next room (me)
during a regular hacking away of her craft.

What came then is he wanted to put Amadeus
on the list of movies Jason and Nyssa must see
and I said no way, I have seen ten minutes and that too much.

If you are waiting for redemption for the good times,
all of this just happened this morning, so not yet.
Probably it will be retrospectively redeemed.

I was on an unexplained road trip with Jason, Alana, Carol, Drew Mohr, Joey the afro dude, and Joey's friend.  The faded out scene I barely remember was in a restaurant when we were splitting the bill and didn't have enough money, so we paid in different items.  I left a cash tip but paid my portion with my bicycle and the globe I got from the bakery.  Tony told me later the items weren't enough but we'd already left.  Later we're driving again and we're somewhere near Charlotte.  I'm like OMG we can stay at my parents' house! The garage, when we arrive late in the rainy night, is actually the thrift store from reseda and we all spend some time shopping, later separating girls and guys and then it is me, Joey, his friend, and Alana.  The room becomes a cheesed-out concert hall with a sticky red carpet like a movie theater.  I ride around on a floaty chair.  I've become separated and to get back I make the chair move fast across ground and fly up several flights of stairs because I've gained momentum swinging around a pole.  People watching are amazed and I let out a yelp! Alana says, when I return, "I hate when you leave me with these guys!"

Another part: I am with the author of Moral Disorder, my favorite book.  In real life the author is Margaret Atwood but in the dream it's Rhea from Arise Bakery.  I'm telling her how much I was moved by every story in the collection and she asked me if I wanted to star in the movie adaptation.  I am floored and say yes.

selfish and selfless. examples, no conclusions.

I'm thinking often about selfishness.  Have I stumbled through most of my life being mainly accountable to my wants? of course.  Carol and Jason were in my (our) kitchen last night preaching selfishness- Carol, through marriages and dependent children, Jason on behalf of his capitalistic ideals he's testing out as a fervent young adult.

I saw my brother andrew two weeks ago.  He has no friends these days despite being charismatic as ever, though a little more serious.  They take too much maintenance, he says.  I was staying at the one bedroom house he shares with my brother tony - like bert and ernie.  Before I fell asleep on the sectional couch they found on the road and tony and andrew argued about lights out, I told andrew that I noticed he seemed more serious.  He grew concerned and the next morning asked me if I thought he should put bologna in his shoe.

I told them all they'd regret their selfishness.  I am thinking often about selfishness.  JT said when we were talking about this that the luxury of being alone is you get to do whatever you want, but you have to be alone.
I am sometimes bratty about not getting to do whatever I want.  I wrote this at work, I was very angry:
"Like many, many women I know, I'm questioning very strongly how much of a man I need in my life.  I've been dating now for ten years and I find it impossible to ignore a slowly accumulating resentment.  That which makes me feminine and attractive is the same that keeps me from being taken seriously.  In my natural biological interest, I return again and again to deference of my body and mouth and time.  Allowing my partner's assertiveness, I find after a time I have no idea what I think or like, that my will and feelings are fanciful and idyllic.  Naturally the answer is to be more assertive, but I am not sure that I want my life to be a fight.  If I ever get married it will be the beginning of the biggest sacrifices I will ever make. "
This is quite strange to read this, since only two days removed I feel none of those things and it seems like someone else wrote it.  

A very nice friend told me that she almost always knows when she is being taken advantage of, and that it happens frequently.  I can't stop thinking about this, both because she has cultivated enough nice to be gratuitous, and because she enjoys being the secret witness to loud, busy, fumbling greed unfolding.

My response to Charles Bukowski's "Africa Paris Greece"

My response to Charles Bukowski's "Africa Paris Greece"

Prime of life,
always prime of
life women.

Not for you baby!
I'm here for all time.

I'd like
to believe it,
since you do.

I've dated even fallen in love
with ugly/older/intelligent
men. I am in
the prime of life,
it comes naturally.

There was one time
I could not even
be tempted.
He had such
an air of defeat!
Who handed him tenure?

I have the same air,
but it does not mean
we were meant for each other.

dream

Some sort of mysterious retreat - Grandpa Heine was there and I arrived late.  Unfortunately the memories are slipping.  I was building a very cool model house with my mom that was multi-level and did mechanical tricks like catapult things.  During breaks I was painting my toenails teal but I had six toenails on each toe.  Oh! A seventh that my finger was covering! I let a kitten out and it was chased around and it was supposed to be part of the diorama.  Jerome Gray came over and it was fun to see him.  He had forgotten stuff at my house which I gave to him in a green co-op bag with my fiona apple painting.  When he left there was a scene cut and I was wandering in a grocery store.  Indecisive, like reality.  I couldn't decide and I was looking through Rome apples like at the old gas station in Glen Raven where Jerome and I used to get apples and peach nehi in high school.  I looked at an apple and realized I had accidentally taken many bites and that I was hungry.  I searched through the pile and found one almost completely hollowed out, a shell of an apple.  Feeling guilty, I tried to hide it in the store.  I left and saw from a hill top that Uwe had brought out little wing hang-gliders and was getting a running start and gliding - so cool! Saw mom coming and joining.  She already had a bloody nose from a bad landing but seemed to be getting the hang of it.

Another, same night: I was silly dancing with Jenn Hales from Raleigh.  Woke up with 'Spain' stuck in my head.