Movin On

I doubt that anyone actually looks at this blog anymore, but if you do, I've moved on. This is the new blog. It's really no different, but I find the need to change settings every now and again.

I went to the salon on Friday (appropriately named "Vain") and cut off all my hair and dyed it really dark brown. I hate it. I'm freaking out. I'm becoming totally (appropriatley) Vain and thinking that i look less feminine and it will never grow out and it's too dark and I look goth and not pretty. Everything is an existential crisis. Jubal told me it looks "fake, to be honest." Well, thanks for your honesty, Jubal. It's refreshing.


NOT.

(Tom) Riddle of the Week

This little stumper was given to me during my Google interview this morning. I can't seem to figure it out:

I give you a coin.
There are three doors.
You have to devise a way to choose a door, such that the likelihood of choosing any one door is exactly the same for each of the doors.

You can, but do not have to use the coin.


Needless to say, I didn't get it, but my interviewer didn't expect me to. He just wanted to hear "my process".

Sleep on that.


In other news, I finished Harry Potter 7 today. I must say, that even though it's a book like any other book, it does symbolize many many years of my life either reading or in anticipation of reading. Finishing it was bittersweet, but not as melancholy as I expected, and (shyly) hoped.

Challah gets delivered on Tuesdays

BIG crisis at work. Kevin (the owner) has decided that things aren't working. The servers aren't self-sufficient enough. We need more order. We need more camraderie. His solution: Diana. Well, Di, which is her self-proclaimed nickname. She used to woork at Doc's Marina Grill on the water a quick walk downhill from Nola's, where the food's so bad we won't refer walk-ins there when we're no longer seating. They don't empty the trash in their bathrooms at night. The owner (of Doc's, mind you) was caught fucking one of his teenage waitresses on one of the front tables after hours by his middle-aged downtowner wife. Point being, the entire place is covered in salty harbor swank, and by extension, so is Di. She has her nickname tattooed on her hand, and some indistinguishable swatch tatooed on her left fake breast, just slightly below any lycra neckline. So Di is trying to bring order to our little halfway house, where every respectable Bainbridge girl makes a short summer pitstop between here and there. Except for Jade. And, boy is Jade freaking out. Jade has working there pretty much longer than anyone. She's only 222, but she works five doubles in a row per week, she's engaged to a rehaber, she has Chinese symbols tattooed on her foot (if I had a dollar for every one of my co-workers' tattoos...) she used to be a cheerleader. Jade is the type of girl girls like me hate. She's 5'2", blond, big boobs, big eyelashes, diamonds and a tiny dog. She stepped out of Nicole Ritchie's handbag. But, for some reason I really really like Jade and I feel bad for all the shit Kevin (the owner) gives her to do without paying her extra for it. I feel bad that he brings in a "manager" who Jade basically trains without getting the title of manager. Jade works hard. Despite big boobs big eyelashes, tiny feet and face, people come to the restaurant to sit at Jade's tables. Nobody comes to sit at my tables, that's for damn sure.

I have another interview at Google on Monday. They're flying me down to San Fran, which will be nice, b/c I'll get to see Christine and all them fools. Nice to get a change of food serving pace.

I get to see GirlTalk again tomorrow in Seattle. I'm stoked.

Hockey Mask

I'm embarrassed to admit, that, in my job search, it's very important to me what I'm going to say to people about what I'm doing.

So, what are you doing now?

I'm an administrative assistant for a boring company.

Oh.

------

So, what are you doing now?

I'm an editorial assistant for a design magazine.

OH! Which one?!

Dwell.

OH! MY!

--------

So, what are you doing now?

I'm a law clerk in San Francisco.

Do you want to go to law school?

Thinking about it.

Do law clerks work a lot?

No free time. Never.

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It's scary how much stake I'm putting into those 3-6 lines of interaction.

Sicko

I hate our healthcare system. And I hate that a movie can wrap up all the imperfections and fucked up parts of it and then make me feel incredibly helpless when I leave. I know I'm getting breast cancer at some point in my life. I hope I have health insurance to pay for it. I hope I don't have to move to France to do it. I hope I live to be old. I think I'd make a good old person.

Waiting on Someone (s)

I love my new job. I know you should never judge anything by the first day, be it good or bad, but my first day as an actual waitress was really fun. They started me out on the booths, the small two-person tables in the restaurant. I got tripped up a couple times here and there, but, as my boss says, those are growing pains, and we soon grow out of them, or soon they're not longer as painful.
I love the people I work with. I forgot, being at Stanford, an environment where everyone is pretty much at the same station of life you are, or at least in a similar mindset, or of a similar ethos. At Nola, everyone is different. Some people have wokred there for five years, some for two weeks. There are two guys I went to high school with who work in the kitchen. I never talked to them in high school. Literally not once. One of them used to do dip in sixth grade and spit it into his sweatshirt sleeve. Now, when I see them at work, I'm so happy. Like I could make up for "lost time" by talking to them over the bar where they set the food when it's ready.
I love being on my feet all day. Not really, cause my feet hurt like a riot right now, but there's something to be said for working REAL HARD for the money you make. It was my frist day and I made $130 in tips, but about $90 when I tip everyone else (the buser, hostess, bartender, kitchen). Not bad!
One of my coworkers told me I looked Caribbean today. No one can ever pin point what my nationality is. It was kinda awesome.
It poured today. I love the way pavement smells after new rain. Like wet dust.

With

I think 'with' is my favorite word. It's the least lonely word on earth. Like I take my coffee with milk and sugar. Like she is coming with. Like I am with you; we are with each other. You cannot reduce or take me from you or drink my coffee burnt and black unless we're with-out. Out is the swinging door with. Out takes swigs, makes tire tracks behind, hauls memories with. We are all without on every bike we ride.

I joined the gym today; did a step class and a yoga class. It was my first yoga class ever. I'm becoming a sixty year old woman, slowly but surely (aren't we all?). I got to the place in my book--we all know this place--where it's no longer something you read before bed, or something you pick up when you're bored, but something you HAVE to read or you'll go mad. Something that haunts you and you feel unsettled with something in your life and you try to remember what it is, and it's just the damn book with its chaos and wanting. It's when 200 pages isn't enough to resolve it all. It's when you love the characters more than they love each other. And my characters' world right now is so small I swear I could crawl inside it. My world feels just as small. Being home is a blessing. I only make small dents in the world.

I have a sign by my computer I made that says "Write Everyday." I wonder if this counts as that kind of creative writing that I meant, or if this is just a trifle, a drop in the proverbial pond (or pool?) of obsolete inanities of life. But, it's my life and I guess that's exactly it. What I make it; what it is. Me with me.

Bainbridge, Je T'aime

I spend a lot of time getting organized so I can do things. I rearrange my desk and make sure items make right angles, then I can start my work. Chaos breeds creativity and I strive for the anti-chaos. My computer is so slow that the words on the screen come out after I type them, like a ghost writer.

I am living on Bainbridge with my friend Will's parents. Correction: I am living on Bainbridge with my ex-boyfriend Will's parents. We dated the summer between our junior and senior years of high school. I spent almost every day that summer in this house. Only I wasn't writing in blogs then, if you know what I mean. I never know when to make the transition from calling them my "ex boyfriend" to my friend. I suppose there isn't a hard fast rule, but I'm sure someone somewhere holds themself to one. Maybe I should only refer to my most recent ex-boyfriend as my ex-boyfriend. But, in that case, is it Dave or RoJo? Are Dave and I broken up? Am I visiting him in New York? RoJo is also in New York. It's all very confusing. Or not. I love all the boys that were my ex-boyfriends, still, to this day, which doesn't necessarily mean anything except for maybe my penchant for holding on. For trying to isolate the way someone used to feel about me. And this title "ex-boyfriend" doesn't include all those in between. Those I don't know what to do with. Those who exist like the pictures you take on digital cameras, turn the camera around, decide you're making a funny face, and delete. Like it never existed. No feeling at all.

I'm coming to terms with the transition. It's starting to make sense. All of a sudden dorm rooms seem ridiculous. Parties? More so. I found my post-college dream job today: working as a Editorial assistant for Dwell, an architectural and design magazine in San Francisco. I would die to have that job.

I love having nothing to do on a Friday night. This is an utterly bizarre feeling. When I'm not surrounded by would-be party-ers, I feel no remorse for "missing out". No tug. These days it's a slow roll back to normal.

I saw Paris Je T'aime tonight at the historic movie theater on the island. It's 18 short films by different famous directors (The Coen Bros., Cuaron, Gus Van Sant, etc.) about Paris, why they love Paris, love in Paris. It was cute and quaint, like a series of dainty short stories. And, yes, it made me want to go to Paris. But, I'm sure that if any of the times I've been in or out of love were chopped into bits and made into a seven minute short, it'd make you want to come to Bainbridge, or Stanford, or Berlin. It's the city, sure, but it's the love, yes. If you knew about me, you'd ask why everything has to come back to this. I have no idea. But it all revolves for a reason, right? I'm definitely going to the gym tomorrow.

perenially relevant

human beings are not born once and for all
on the day their mothers give birth to them,
but that life obliges them over and over again
to give birth to themselves.

-gabriel garcia marquez

at night i'm thinking of the white roses in a vase on my desk and how i can't tell if blooming roses mean they're full of life or really close to wilting and death. From this part of my bed I have a really good view of the corner of my room where I took my calendar down today. It's the only thing I've taken off my walls and that corner looks so bare.
I wish I could equate anything to this.

There's this word that means something like "the physical manifestation of emotion in the body," but I can't seem to think of it. I'm not even sure it exists. It should exist. It's a very important feeling. Why does your heart hurt when someone you love doesn't love you back? It has nothing to do with your heart, but still the area behind your ribcage HURTS so bad you think you might have to excavate and replace it. Why, when things end, does my abdomen feel so empty? Not my stomach, but the area above my stomach, below my ribcage where my diaphragm resides? Why do I have to ask, to know?

Today I realized that, being a senior girl, which would usually afford me all sorts of mystery and charm and desirability, I am far too easy a target. I temporarily attach myself to people and settings and situations such that I must seem desperate for friends or SOMETHING, because I give so much time to new people. It's a product of me being fickle and unable to commit strongly to any one thing, but I'm not the type of girl who has one group of friends until death do us part. I become engrossed with new people. And then, I'm afraid, I get bored of them. Of course, there are the ones that stick with me and I'm always happy to see, but otherwise I become temporarily enamored and then done. But, while I'm enamored, it's that painful, obsessive, over-the-top type of enamored. The I-need-so-much-attention-from-you-right-now type of enamored. The bad kind. The neurotic girl kind. I'm afraid that's what I've become. That and vain.

This probably couldn't be a more accurate description of this juncture in my life: "I never have relationships with [boys]--only relations. It depresses me to think that I've never had sex with anyone who really loved me. Sometimes I wonder if having sex with a [boy] who doesn't love me is like felling a tree, alone, in a forest: no one hears about it; it didn't happen." -Jonathan Safran Foer "A Primer for the Punctuation of Heart Disease."

The nights are so quiet these days. Everyone studying. Everyone slowly imploding. It's so unfortunate that the last days we all have together as four classes on this campus are spent with hunched backs and blurry eyes and only late night, minor manifestations of how we ever felt about each other. I would love to be over this place. But I'm not. And it pulses like a great subterranean beast and wakes me up at night.

After A Life

My Grandpa died yesterday. My last living grandparent and I feel a whole lotta nothing about it. I feel like I'm rooting around in my purse trying to find something that I KNOW is in there, it's just hidden under all the other junk. I will be sad about it, I just don't know when. He died two years and day after my father's stroke and exactly three years after I went on my first date with one of my boyfriends, I know this because I asked him and I have a thing for anniversaries even when they're so egregiously irrelevant.
School is wearing me down. I hate having to write papers about things I don't care about. I hate discussing things that are intangible. I hate that I don't thirst for knowing the way I used to, that everything seems mildly boring when it's not towards a goal. My graduation is so inevitable that I am resentful I have to work for it. The droning complaints of a 21-year-old girl. Sometimes I look at the wide-eyed freshman, still blinking from the womb, and wonder how long it takes before they become as jaded as me.

I read a sign this weekend that said "In order to buy cigarettes, you have to have been born on this day in 1989, or earlier." 1989? Shit. I am so old.

What It Feels Like

So we won the National Ultimate Frisbee Championship. I am split as to how to feel about this: at once like it's no big deal, because this is our third year in a row and we worked really hard and a national championship is just a national championship and a lot of people think frisbee is "cute". However, at the same time, it's one of the biggest accomplishments of my life. I feel overcome with pride for myself and my team. Not only because people thought we weren't going to be able to pull it off this year, but also because we wanted it that bad. But, now, coming back to school and reality after a whirlwind weekend in Ohio in a world where Ultimate is all that matters, I feel quite empty. Quite tired and apathetic. Two weeks and college is over. I have no tangible grip on anything right now and I"m tired of being preemptively nostalgic, but it is what it is when it is it. I'm trying to hold onto too many things. I think that if I relax my grip a little, I'll let their little hearts beat and I'll come to a certain peace about my amount of control in the world. I could afford less control and more flexibility, then maybe I wouldn't find the need to say goodbye with such pomp and finality. Regardless, I'm a national champion for life, and that's something.

How Embarrassing

I was crying in my car in a parking lot on campus and a guy taking out his trash saw me because I was sitting under one of those bright, tall lamps that casts an orange glow and probably lit up my face like a jack-o-lantern with tiny rivers and even more probably scared the hell out of him. How embarrassing. For the both of us. Me in a moment of weakness, he in the middle of a routine task, accidentally stumbling into someone else's private moment. Crying in your car could be the lowest form of isolation. But, then again, I also think crying is one of the best forms of release, a lot like guffaw laughs and sweating. If you get enough out, everything resets.

I leave for Nationals in, like, 8 hours. If you had asked me, I never would have guessed I'd be doing this.

No Pause

Most people do (and I have) started a blog at the beginning of a journey: new job, grad school, going abroad, or some sudden turnstile in their lives that necessitates public relief. I am starting this at the end of a series of journeys, one being college, another being school in general, a third being childhood because I feel the need to be dramatic and look nostalgically at my childhood not yet gone and maybe I'll just let all those children in the rye tumble headlong over that cliff. I saw Pan's Labyrinth last night, which is certainly about the end of innocence and is probably the darkest movie I've ever seen. When I said that, all my friend's said, "Well, have you seen Schindler's List? Have you seen The Pianist?" Yes, I've seen those movies, and although the Holocaust is definitely, and dare I say obviously, dark, there's something about uncharterd territory that makes the impression deeper. Not to say that I've become inerred to the Holocaust. But maybe I have. But I'm not interested in the subject anyway right now. Watching the movie (which is in Spanish, Spain's Spanish) made me come home and pick up Love in the Time of Cholera in Spanish and try to read it for the five minutes before I fell deeply asleep and I was surprised to realize how much I remember. German does not enter my brain in that way at all. Subtle resistance.

I've started listening to Joanna Newsom a lot again and I'm reminded of one of the first times I remember coming across her on my iPod and gratefully pressing repeat over and over. I was in Riga, Latvia on a weekend trip from Berlin with the European Union class and I got up early to finish looking at the occupation museum and the market in the east part of the city that fit into five airplane hangars, one for dairy, one for meat, one for baked goods, one for produce and one for sundries. Five whole airplane hangars. And then I walked along the river and I was somewhere between incredibly happy and incredibly sad--like my whole body was just my eyes, looking on. "Some mornings the sky looks like a rose." That night I saw the prettiest sunset I've ever seen behind an iron bridge on the river, I still swear the whole thing was purple, and I thought they got prettier closer to the equator.

One of the biggest bummers of college is you can't take baths. My friend lives in her own room in a professor's house now and I think that would be the best use of an hour one of these days.