I plan to slander, vent, ramble and rove over topics, and i don't intend to pull punches. Opinions are entirely mine. Thus, for the purposes of journaling, this is a quasi friends only journal. The day-to-day bits? Public. The meat of the matter, the juice, second-and-third-guessed shit? Restricted to close company. You may comment, of course, if you'd like to be added. My druthers are that you ask, we talk, do the internet ASL scuttle-dance. Call me old fashioned. (DO IT.) As for the name, well, the phrase leapt to mind and really, at the bottom of the barrel? It's all I've got.

My brother built a DIY tattoo machine out of a CD player and a ball-point pen. Riveting.

Key Words, by Linh Dinh.

It is often said that grammar provides a sure index to human behavior. Who hasn’t noticed that people who write in run-on sentences are also prone to lying, to getting up late, and to alcohol? And those who do not punctuate at all tend to wear oversized clothes?
In an effort to inject more pep and resolve into its lethargic citizens, the government is mandating the use of an exclamation mark at the end of each sentence, spoken or written. “It looks like rain!” for example, or “I must sleep!”
It is now also unlawful to omit an exclamation mark from the end of key words. Key words are so numerous, however, that many citizens have found it safest to exclamate each sylable. “I! Am! A! Day! La! Bor! Er!” for example, or “Is! This! The! Ex! It?!”
Yesterday, an elderly gentleman who forgot to exclamate “frontal” in a private conversation with his wife (overheard by a vigilant neighbor) was sentenced to thirty five years of hard labor to set an edifying example for the next generation.

Sophomore year had me by the earlobe! A month or more of the shit and I’d have screamed uncle, but I got me a bitchin’ Christmas miracle. Three cheers for inner peace, or at least one halfass-huzzah for swinging out of my parlous mental state via jungle-vine. ‘But this feels so unnatural! Peter Gabriel, too.’

To be a monk! To hermit away the holiday. I abandoned all hope of heading home for Thanksgiving and instead choose to stay here, despite decided lack of food and friends. “The better to get my work done,” I assured father and mother. Little work has been done, but I have hope. If the crocodile spirit is strong with me this perilous eve, I’ll be able to knock out a Ulysses episode and have juju to spare. Plus, ladies and lords, cloakandswagger spent yesternight supping bad soup and good times, a veritable Christmas-in-July dealio. “Rock on!” Yes, quite.

In news that will only tickle dearilou’s tricolored fancy, there is a hedgehog in my room. “Why for, Professor Sophidopolis?” Oh, Peabody, it’s but a dream. A few goodtimers from Kennedy House heard of my sorry vacation state, and made the most of it as only availing acquaintances can. Hence, I’ve got a six-by-six wire cage front and center in my dormitory room, contending with the literal piles of library books that I had to haul out of the facility after hearing about it’s 86’d state for the Thanksgiving season. “Naturally, only books inclined towards your research, right?” Wrong, I’m afraid. Neruda’s 100 Love Sonnets as well as a nibble of comic books snuck out the demagnetized door with me, because, ladybug, I’ve just got to have the goods with me. Probability stands that I won’t crack the covers, but there’s a comfort to having them here, because options are what I’m all about. These days, at any rate.

Sophie secret? “Oh yes, do tell!” I’m terrified I’m not going to conquer my workload, and it’s a distinct possibility. “P’shaw. Get your rear in gear, mademoiselle!” If only things were so simple. We’re talking macro levels of self indulgence, holmes, and a dire lack of motivation. Feel free to roll your eyes; I remain thumb-twiddling ‘til fucking dawn. Sigh, and sigh again. Where did all my piss and vinegar go? My goddamn chutzpah? “Couldn’t tell you.” Thought as much.

THE MOOD OF MY MIND
1. New England - Billy Bragg
2. II. Largo from Keyboard Concerto in F Minor - J.S. Bach
3. Not Going Anywhere - Keren Ann
4. Lady Grinning Soul - David Bowie
5. Time Travel Is Lonely - John Vanderslice

Today we discussed the Modern Condition as it affects and manifests through Leopold Bloom of the beauteous Ulysses, and it struck a chord. Such a familiar feeling, Poldy. And as usual, since this was so oldhat for my class compatriots, I realized how little I know. (Not a fun feeling for a former trivia queen.) I remember, last year, arguing with Noah Lebien about how Socrates was wrong. The beginning is not how little you know, for surely I knew quite a lot. Less than six months later, and I'm already corrected. Up yours, ancient wisdom! “How nice.” But there's a kind of lovely thought in that, isn't there? The beginning implies an end, a middle, at least a Step Two. Methinks I'm ready. And, as for above playlist, those songs capture my mind even outside of introspective seconds, particularly that last. And, and, and. And Robyn told me that Andrew reported how much we'd been hanging out to her, and blushed deeply. And that gives me such satisfaction, and so many questions that I couldn't ask for fear of being a pryer. I'd rather be miss rolls-with-the-punches than lady plays-chess-with-your-life. “You're not making sense.” You're not making sense.

You know it as well as I do. It’s the logic snap-trap, the damned “but wait!” button in the back of your brain pressed only at apparent bliss. Too-good-to-be-true has an odor – blackberry sliced with linen scent, heady halved by crisp – and it’s right under my nose. Some several weeks ago I was, like, so despondent, in that particular point of all-time-low where your thoughts condense into clever introverted incisors, too ready to tooth apart every helping hand. And suddenly I stopped feeling so after a bout of bad stomach flu. The shiny-happy hasn’t broken yet by any means, but I almost wonder: why?

But let’s get nitty-gritty. Registered for spring classes today. “Thrill of all thrills.” Dude, let’s consider: Virginia Woolf, 19th Century British Literature, Existentialism, and Pragmatism. My schedule is tits, son. (And that’s ten smile points for me.) Miss Woolf has been atop my list of reads since a certain Ashten told me that she waxed intergalactic when pouring over A Room of One’s Own.

I meet with the creative writing professor, soon, to discuss options for would-be poets (like yours truly) in the summer season, or at least a decent reading list. This Erica Jong memoir of yore my dad passed me has supplied a towering one, but more direction couldn’t help but help. Speaking of pretentious: I read Carl Sandbug’s Honey and Salt while allegedly getting assignments done. “Worth it?” Totally. I googled around for a link to some online version of it, but alas and alack. No luck, my friends.

My feet? Broad Piscean peds, Achilles’ heels. I find them to be my great flaw: the three-meter Death Star exhaust pipe, roughly space-rat size, enough to crumble my colossal self with but one false move. It’s the curse of my zodiac-corner. Perhaps its because, of all starry sectors, we’re the least ground-bound and rooted; the basement wiring is faulty and frayed! “Would you have it another way?” Oh, never.

“TWIN HIGH MAINTENANCE MACHINES.”
That seems so beautiful, to me. Apologies for random art-spam, but it tips my head to the side, and that warrants a sharing.

I. Ellice gives me a ring and begs for rescue.
II. Sensing moral obligation, I comply and accompany her to Mummy III, salvaging her from the mortal social awkwardness of attending a film with two boys.
III. Boy One has brought along a blonde tidbit, rendering Ellice implied consort for Boy Two. Ellice, seizing my arm, admits earthshaking gratitude for my presence.
IV. We laugh, we cry, we learn to love again.
V. Cue twin temple-throbs when yetis emerge as plot-point.
VI. To Perkins! Breakfast-for-dinner.
VII. Table top conversation gets great and varied; there are moments of gasping laughter, and others of ice-clink silence. All in all? Good times.

“Your point, miss?” None at all, except an update: I’ve risen out of the dumps, complete with shoe-scuffing embarrassment at my previous entry. Haven’t called Katelyn to ream her for crushed feelings, but I don’t think I shall. A call from my room-mate cleared up forty quandaries, and counting. ‘This Year,’ by the Mountain Goats, has emerged as my theme for 2008. My eyes are on the prize; I am ready to be at school, to love up my best friends and hack it and fret and bleed my eyes on Joyce. Driving goes swimmingly – I’ve learned to accept I probably won’t be toting my caliente Diesal Jetta to Wooster for ooh’s and aah’s on the twenty-third, but hope goes on. Thank you, guys, for your lovins’, despite my fucking emo-shmemo moment(s). Really. Big smiley face!

A high-octane seventy-two hours? Yes ma’am. “Do tell.” So, I’ve been shuffling my feet for the most recent five or four years, because driving seemed to be epic stuff. My parents are manual transmission folk, the few, the brave, the multi-taskers. (Me too.) Plus, it seemed scary otherwise, this casual talent that sixteen-year-olds are privy to that got skipped in my Ms. Manners thirty-minute course or worse still, a genetic gap! No more, my friends. I toddled up to the DMV and got my learner’s permit, sans anticipated bladder-breakdown or equally social-stigma inspiring sign of psychotic breakdown, and have been hurtling down dirt-roads in fourth gear ever since. Not to imply unspeakable mastery; in fact, I’ve yet to end a driving lesson without crawling into my daddy’s arms and fighting sobs. Accident prone isn’t the problem. My heart’s snatched up in tungsten finger-tips; I feel like incompetence is going to grab my by the ponytails and swerve me into a telephone-pole. Every time an incident has occurred, some strange personality-glove has slipped on and steered me true – but is that innate capability or stalling until God gets me really good? Do I get to endzone vicory-dance at crises averted –

Pea-Ess, been seeing my four-star therapist. Two sessions down, sixty-three more until mental health meter gets out of the red-zone. We hates the red zone, we do.

– or should I start scrambling for lucky stars? It’s a stupid chest-beating thing to start on manual transmission, but I want to. I want to flip my hair and down-shift; I want automobile mastery. And it’s not like I’ve got other options. Papa is a Diesel Vee-Dubya Jetta man. Underscore this: I’m happy to be doing it. It’s a motion towards independence that I’ve always meant to do, it’s simply terrified me. Like, bowel-cripplingly. Daddy Dinky assures me everytime lessons are over about how hand-clap head-pat gold-star good I did, how shocked my competence makes him, and that’s a twice edged compliment. How idiotic do my parents imagine me to be? “Probably as moronic as you fancy them to be.” Um, voice of reason? I shoosh you, sir.

And it was at that age... poetry arrived
in search of me. I don't know, I don't know where
it came from, from winter or a river.
I don't know how or when,
no, they were not voices, they were not
words, not silence,
but from a street it called me,
from the branches of night,
abruptly from the others,
among raging fires
or returning alone,
there it was, without a face,
and it touched me.

I didn't know what to say, my mouth
had no way
with names,
my eyes were blind.
Something knocked in my soul,
fever or forgotten wings,
and I made my own way,
deciphering
that fire,
and I wrote the first, faint line,
faint, without substance, pure
nonsense,
pure wisdom
of someone who knows nothing;
and suddenly I saw
the heavens
unfastened
and open,
planets,
palpitating plantations,
the darkness perforated,
riddled
with arrows, fire, and flowers,
the overpowering night, the universe.

And I, tiny being,
drunk with the great starry
void,
likeness, image of mystery,
felt myself a pure part
of the abyss.
I wheeled with the stars.
My heart broke loose with the wind.
Poetry, by Pablo Neruda. Pages 31 and 33 of Isla Negra.

“The guy in the driver’s seat don’t care, with his weird cologne and his magic hair.” – Stray Dog and the Chocolate Shake, Grandaddy

A cursory classification: among bookshelf rabble, Victorian poetry collections serve as knit-brow James Dean’s. Truly? Poetry books are tough motherfuckers. Friday found me with an armful of future favorites: Carroll, Tennyson, Nash, a brightly bound Neruda. Not a cover among them, which my archivist heart adores. It’s not simply texture; my eyes like that naked-book look. Somehow dressing literature with pretty-pictures recalls Eden’s figleaves, which gets intuition’s nose wrinkled. Circling back: they simply seem sea-faring, grisled, with barren covers and wasp authors. Like the boy in fourth grade with the bad father and attention disorder.

I played partisan to my friend’s lie, so she could sneak around with a twenty-six year-old. Interest? Not an inkling – she simply snapped at the chance to accumulate dating experience, which I pressed for. A confession: she is not my best friend. Not too daring a testimony, until I reveal that she assures me every conversation how very well-suited we are for one another, how ying-yangly we were designed. It’s false. I play non-smitten Echo to her Narcissus, if possible. Case in point: she read a speech I wrote for another occasion at our graduation, as she was valedictorian. Good and well – until the principle tells her that was the best speech he’s ever heard at this school or any other, and she smiles, and she says, “Why, thank you, sir.” Cue jaw-drop and heart-hardening. Back to the future point! Her mother found out. “Gasp.” I hate being anything less than esteemed in parental eyes.

Also, pea-ess, my brother is a sulking bastard who mutters ‘bitch’ under his breath and gets away with it because he’s schizophrenic. Forgive the valley girl eye-rolling but that’s so very annoying. To make matters worse, he bulldozed over my minigolf scores. Lip quiver. "In other news?" I've restarted FFXII with good intentions and shall work diligently on doodling better. Also: reading old elljay entries inspires capital ell-oh-ell laughter, and flatline inspiration. Double plus also: Daniel Johnston rocks, but I couldn't complete his documentary due to over-empathy and mortal heart-rending. Bummer.

I have been working on a larger, somewhat (my diminutives are ulterior lies) egocentric entry: an introduction, of sorts, as I've added a peppering of fresh-faces to my f-list in in the throes of summer solitude. I nail-bite over it, which is beyond silly, it's stupid. Tomorrow! “BATE YOUR BREATH.” Hush, you. Besides ill-fated promises from your favorite lallygagging egomaniac? Gack! A second meme? Oh, the scandal. But I'd been meaning to throw this up here, at some point. Forgive? I believe inspiration may be borne in tidbits; I live manically from trope to trope. These are the particular wisdom-bytes that got me by the anklets. As nabbed from cywrain, hit up the random quotations page until the appropriate truth comes gamboling by.


( ALL THE GRAIN OF BABYLON. )


I love that David-and-Goliath sensation of resisting your own impulses. It’s perhaps the only thing that makes this diet possible – that and a palette soured by college-cafeteria fare and sent to seek greener pastures. Having eaten naught but grilled-cheesies and pasta-concoctions for nine months, it’s somewhat easier to knock down bowls of spinach without getting gaggy from the sheer nutrition. It’s too weird to be eating adult cereal! (Why does ‘adult cereal’ sound like the strangest semen reference you’ve ever heard?) I was always a Fruity Pebbles fanatic, but now I’m munching down Total with the best of them. Yet despite these moderate successes, I have Oscar Wilde moments. I’ve had six vinegar chips and two maple cookies in three days. “Gasp!” Dude, you haven’t the foggiest notion. Especially since I snapped my diet in half with a dinner at a greasy-spoon diner with father-dearest and rival sibling. Headdesk. Disappointing myself is only very slightly less troubling than disappointing my nearest slash dearest.

It’s been such a very long time! Oh, EllJay, how I’ve missed you. Not that spilling my heart over electronic pages should grant me such satisfaction, but in the end, it does. Hope everyone’s been psyched for the summer season; it’s always a bumpy ride, and I mean that in the best three-dee sense. Since my own misadventures have been totally taupe at best, here be past shenanigans revived in glorious Trebuchet MS for your perusal.

“The follies which a man regrets most, in his life, are those which he didn’t commit when he had the opportunity.” Too right, Ms. Rowland. Once, while grazing through Irish poets, somewhere between LOVE POEMS FOR THE MORALLY UNFED and Ezra Pound anthologies, I opened a book without a memorable title. (Such is Barnes and Noble.) What remains extraordinary, to myself alone perhaps, is the pamphlet that fell out. It described ‘powerful witchcraft’ that might be attempted in the home. This is a novel prompt. This is the point where the main character encounters a crossroads, demands Shakespeare’s most famous inquiry of herself, and stumbled along lesser-taken Robert Frost avenue into storybook adventures. This is the part where I diverge; I take no such risk. I return the pamphlet and flee, clutching a Nabokov or something like it.

What a moment! How different my life might have been but for denied impulse – not that I’m so very into do-it-yourself sorcery. I suppose I’m just wondering what happened to the pamphlet-taker who happened on it five days or a year after me. Should I plant similar life-altering turnstiles? A note alerting the finder that contacts not as cool as spectacles, a love-letter signed anonymously, a scribbled phone-number in a poetry collection for the finder to discover and debate calling? One wonders.

If I was going to be entirely ‘pea-sea’ (god forbid) I couldn’t name it expressly female pleasure, but let’s not dick about with passing for polite: I love the feeling of a summer dress. It’s not a single sensation. Sun-heat on my shoulders, a breeze between the knees, the small friction of the shorts that work as hush-hush Y2K petticoats – and thus, a summer dress, more than a thing of frill and straps.

I sunbathed with my friends. I fretted about Russian. Yesternight I managed a limelight episode; today, I expressed to a close friend my fears about being universally loathed throughout the campus, and was reminded of my personal shit content. (Hundred percent, baby.) Comforting? Not so much. Live and learn, I suppose.

I always talk think worry worry worry about that boy, so, forgive this single mention: he made my day yesterday. And that’s all that will be said, here, but those morbidly curious can crack my knees for information on AIM. (Never had paris, baby. Have you?)

I looked at a stranger today, and was no longer able to discern if his apparent familiarity was from this life – this lily-pad existence of cafés, Kant, and the pleasances of academia – or my previous one, in Everytown, USA. Strange! Not because my memory failed me, but because I’m no longer able to distinguish between my homes. I remember my first week on campus, and how every new face looked like a Picasso version of those at home.

Three out of four (now five!) paragraphs have begun with ‘I’. Me-me-me! Is this forgiveable, even in diaries, the ego-sanctums for the pensieve-lacking, the self’s final frontier? Yes. No. Maybe so.

Things to remember: my mother wants Amazing Grace on bagpipes and Dixie Chick’s Sin Wagon played at her funeral, a boy kissed me on the cheek and asked to be better friends, when my dad was in Jamaica he saw beautiful women who would rank as perfect tens selling themselves for single-digit dollar amounts. Things to do: stop staring over the edge of that non-affiliated chapel with distinctly abstract accents and deeply considering jumping (for curiosity's sweet sake and to cease stagnation.)

Today’s secret word? Godawful haircut. “That’s two words.” And twenty-dollars worth of homely. Correct me not. And when not distracted by the German translation of ‘flying car death match,’ I keep smoothing and fretting and patting and longing for four more inches, something below the ear. A too-swift turn of the head, and I distinctly look like a hockey coach. Or the main character from SunnyD commercials. My forty-minutes at the hair salon went something like –

Scissors: Snip!
Sophie: Lawlz.
Appearance: Sufferdeath.

Ugh, eugh, augh, iugh, ough, and sometimes yugh. My kingdom for a time machine and the courage to have told her, “No, I’d like it longer, please.” Well, this is my fifth hair-cut, ever. (Until tenth grade, I loved the mermaidness of hair hitting my mid-thigh.) I suppose I’d have to hit a hairstyle pothole eventually. “Hohum.” Absolutely. Beyond the superficial? I’m having superduperkamayamaya difficulty trying to fucking focus. My work? Undone. My FAFSA’s, my tax forms? Untouched. “What’s the matter with you?” I’m anxious. About a boy, about my appearance, about the terrible possibility I’ll be booted from the Magna Cum Laude society after a single semester, about moving to Toronto. And then there’s the ample distraction of my father’s girlfriend, who doesn’t exactly flounce about, but still manages to instill serious alpha-female body-paragraphs about her standing and my standing. Siigh.

“Pleasant notes?” None, really. Except how handsome my dog is, and how loving. And how gentle. I look forward to growing old with that little fuck growing grey right next to me, right by my side. But, reverting back to unpleasantness: just made a methinks-your-mother-is-subpar-in-bed joke to a friend whose mother has recently been hospitalized with cancer. Facepalm. My other kingdom for a time machine.

Selected some spectacles, today. (Have inhaler at hand!) I got everyone’s glasses: chunky, black, snarky intellectuality well-wrought in decided homeliness. I’m half kicking myself; I’m three-quarters entirely too pleased for the change in appearance. (An aside, here: hockey, in high definition, is retinal candy. The whites! The darks! The pixels punching into my eyes!) The optometrist is a controversial dinner-conversation character. My father, and most everyone I know, thinks him creepy. I will cede that he’s distinctly hunchback-meets-optometry-school, but he’s also got these concerned hands, and these large –

Secondary sidenote. My dog is asleep at my feet. This is the first time it has ever happened in my memory; I feel like I need a fireplace and a Sherlock pipe to complete the warmbelly feeling I’ve got. Loving little bugger.

– bitty-blue eyes that I’m so very certain haven’t changed since age nine. But, it should be noted, half my attractions are in spite. I turn up my nose at everyone’s pretty boy, cage my butterflies, and save my swoons for the bruiser with the gap tooth and one incredible proboscis. Underdogs have all my valentines.

Haircut, tomorrow. I hope it goes well. “Doesn’t that go without saying?” Mm, but usually I have this gung-ho appetite for risk when I walk into a salon. The best would be nice, but I also have this secret hankering for a follicle disaster that turns to trend, all because of some ill-aimed snips. “Other thoughts?” It should be short and pert, the kind of style that goes from your-sister’s-best-friend to dazzling in a matter of bobbypins. Like so. So. Crossing fingers for luck.

“Now for something completely different.” Word. My fish, Gilgamesh, died yesterday. Pet deaths, especially that of fish, embarrass me. There’s never any promenade; in the case of Gilgamesh, since his swift removal meant the survival of others, the funeral included a hasty dumping into a take-out box and nothing else. There’s more ceremony for dogs and cats, and my brother’s horse got a solid hour of tears, but it seems like the passing of animals is felt so little – or at least, they go with small observation, like the final decay of a favorite couch or a coffee-table’s demise. Though I’ll attest that chairs and lamps play chronicle to our cares and emotions, a pet is so much more than that. It borders, and exceeds, friendship; it is a thing shared between two intellect-possessing souls, and for one, is the labor of a lifetime.

So right now, on my couch, watching my hockey game? I feel so low for that fucking goldfish. (How could he die? Why now, when far away from the incidental negligence of college?) “Laame. It’s a fucking fish.” The tip-of-my-tongue response is, “But he was my fucking fish.” Yet it’s more than that. Or at least, for my morality’s sake, I hope it is. And sorry for mucking my journal with down-isms, guys. Beyond that mood-crater, things are good! My best friend, Shemp, has been calling lots – a flattery. Hence the self-importance gland secretions all over this entry. “Gross.” Totally!

“I’m gon’ brawl, so be there. One for all, but be there.” - On Call, by the Kings of Leon

Confession. I’ve been wearing my father’s village-idiot pants, these throwbacks from my family’s days as medieval faire rovers – en costume, of course, of course – for some cumulative forty eight hours, and I love it. Sophie secret: I feel comely at the moment, in scarf, and boots, and puffy Aladdin-esque pants, and fade-grey band t-shirt. (These are the sort of moments plus-size flannel wearers, such as myself, tend to relish.)

I’m going eyeglass shopping sometime this week, thrill of all thrills; the ones I’m currently sporting have survived since tenth grade, and look like a WWII relic, because I’m a wear-and-tear gal. Beyond that riveting tidbit, I’m also starting on my workload tomorrow, and knocking out my laundry. “WOWDREAMBIG.” Fuckin’ Juno. Other goals for spring break: wheedle my father into assisting me making my move to Toronto a serious happening, finish Love in the Time of Cholera, and learn to drive stick. I’m crossing my fingers, and my t’s. “Eve 6 references? How ninth-grade boy of you.” DO NOT DISRESPECT THE EVE 6. And, lord. I love the solitudes of the season. There is nothing more lonely, more introspection-inspiring, then dogwalking at winter midnight with snow setting down around you – especially when Kings of Leon starts sound tracking it.

Second confession. I’ve never been entirely certain of the meaning of the slang phrase-ette, “word.” I always assumed it was a stand-in for speechlessness, or tacit mockery. Not so! And, in true eager-beaver style, I’ve used it twice in the three minutes since discovery. “Word.” Three and counting. And now, a science joke that srsly makes me die laughing, every time; though when I told it to Andrew, I got something like a real-life ‘T_T.’ If it wasn’t for carbon, I’d never date. “Way to just slip that tidbit in there.” ...That’s what she said! (And cue swift exit.)