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.