Washington Mutual

My credit card company's website has a very long list of possible security questions to choose from, the most exciting of which is probably: What is your favorite element on the periodic table?
I am somewhat ashamed to tell you that I have never given the periodic table much thought, much less chosen a preferred element, although I very much like that this question seems to presume that maybe I have. Do such people exist? Who are they, and what are their favorite elements? I would certainly like to know.

Patience Is A Virtue, Apparently

And finally I twist my heart round again, so that the bad is on the outside and the good is on the inside, and keep on trying to find a way of becoming what I would so like to be, and could be, if there weren’t any other people living in the world.
Said daily, under my breath, as if attempting to memorize lines for a part in a school play or reciting a secret prayer of the Church of Disaffected Teenage Girls. Have you ever been able to feel certain lines or phrases living inside you? Ages ago I said something like this to Richard about my favorite Tennessee Williams play, but he didn’t seem to quite know what I meant.

Lately I’ve been trying not to think about the past or the future of it, and for the most part I do okay.

It’s kind of tricky though, you know? It’s hard to stay in the present, to exist in the moment when the moment is only a split second long. It’s hard to give the present meaning or direction when you’re trying not to focus on what came before and what will come after it.

I’m the sort of girl who starts novels by reading the last sentence first and makes plans for the summer in February, so I don’t suppose it will come as any surprise that the concept of just sitting around and waiting to see what happens takes so much more than just sitting or waiting.

In other news:

Somehow, either late last night or early this morning, a coke can cracked and burst from inside the refridgerator, sent the cola spilling onto any and everything inside each nook and cranny.
To add hilarity to the situation, Adam had accidentaly turned the machine off, which caused the frost in the freezer to melt. So everything was wet from melted ice, and sticky from the exploding coke can.

This morning, was a lot of laughs.

I Prefer Not To

It’s such a small thing, but sometimes hearing someone say your name when you weren’t expecting to is really kind of wonderful.

As Seen On T.V.

Lately I'm having these moments that are hard to imagine other real life people also experiencing, although somehow it’s very easy to envision them happening to fictional characters.

Also, (perhaps related:) recently I’ve been having daydreams about growing out my hair specifically to get a haircut and handing the stylist a picture of Emily Bronte for inspiration.


I hope atleast somebody finds that as amusing as I do.

The New Yorker

So today I decided I would send away for a subscription to The New Yorker. I’ve clearly decided this somewhat against my better judgement since, as far as I can tell, it’s kind of like paying to have someone come to your house on a weekly basis and torture you with descriptions of exciting events and museums and restaurants that you can’t possibly go to, tell you unfunny and slightly pretentious jokes, and make you feel generally inept for not knowing about/appreciating certain artists and authors and books.

But at least I wouldnt be paying very much, as the price will be at a discounted “professional student rate.” Did you know that I’m a professional student? It’s news to me, too.

Typical

– Sometimes I wonder if people who think TV is utterly ridiculous, idiotic trash that turns viewers into lobotomized zombies are aware that they’re making the same sort of argument that was being made about novel reading 150 years ago. What do you think?
– Do you remember that TV show about the girl who could stop time by pressing the tips of her index fingers together? There was one episode where she started to take advantage of her power and kept freezing time in order to get done with her homework before all the other kids. I think this would be a really great superpower to have, although using it to do homework seems pretty lame, if you ask me.

– There are many reasons to have a crush on Jason Bateman’s character in Arrested Development, but the most obvious is his unwavering loyalty to his bicycle. That show needs to slip into a new time slot so that I may view it once again.

Ah... Tonight, tonight is a very different kind of usual night. Tonight feels strange to me. Somewhat novel to my system. I feel as though maybe I had just moved to Berkeley. Or that I am still only visiting. When will I come to call this home?


When I was younger I used to try to imagine myself all grown up but I never could, the face and body and future were always blurry and would come in and out of focus, like a photograph trying to decide if it wanted to be developed.
Eventually I became a bit worried that this psychic failure might mean something, that it was a bad omen, that I was going to be the victim of a gruesome and improbable accident like an Edward Gorey character and then never make it to grownuphood. When you’re a kid the number of ways to die seems infinite, and I imagined the airplanes we always heard overhead crashing into the house or the ceiling fan in my bedroom coming unhinged, taking flight and chopping me to bits during the night.

I suppose it is somewhat reassuring to now know that my inability to picture some other, older version of myself wasn’t because I wouldn’t exist so much as it was a mysterious case of a simultaneous lack of and overactive imagination.

Feeling anxious or guilty or mismatched because you are not sad or upset or regretful about something you had expected to feel those things about is maybe one of the silliest things in the whole world.

But oh. I wouldn’t put it past me.