According to my computer it is 1 pm at home.  That makes sense, since it is 9 pm here (in London).  My body does not understand this distinction however; it doesn't understand much right now besides the desire for sleep.  Unfortunately, my dear host bought an air mattress "with a built in inflation device" only the inflation device turns out to be a pump, which you have to pump by foot, or hand, in a really careful and specific way, for at least a half an hour.  I have already been pumping, taking turns between various limbs, for about twenty minutes, and the mattress, while puffed up, feels like there is nothing inside if pressed on.

My host, Christian (a friend from San Francisco who is now attending the London School of Economics) went to a movie with his roommates, at my urging, because I thought it best to go to sleep early, and it would be quieter and easier to do so if he was out.  He appeared to be under the impression that the mattress would inflate itself.  I am approaching the end of some kind of very very short rope.  It's my birthday, but feeling bad for all the trouble I am already putting Christian to, I found no easy way to slip this into the conversation, and so I didn't tell him.  I will celebrate in Dubai with Rawaan and Annie, and have already celebrated in San Francisco with my friends there.  Still, I am tired enough that this feels fairly disastrous at the moment: sitting alone in a strange house on my birthday with aching arms and legs and a half-inflated mattress between myself and sleep.

But.  I am in London.  My flight went well.  I found Christian's house easily.  We had a nice dinner at a Singaporean restaurant that happened to have replaced a restaurant Lily and I went to once (the old one had a better name, something about the people's revolution, but this one was still delicious).  On the way home we walked across Westminster Bridge, which has the best view: Parliament and Big Ben lit up against one side of the sky, and St. Paul's against the other.  Tomorrow, assuming I someday get to sleep, I will be rested and happy again, and I will spend all day wandering around the streets, thinking about Victorians and discovering Edward Monkton cards, and drinking tea.

Okay, enough of a break.  Once more into the breach: I will inflate this mattress or fall asleep trying.

I think the reason that I don't post very much anymore is that it is hard to describe what is good about my life now. 

I can write that we revived Sunday Night Trivia this week, and all of the teams were named after themes that teams might be named after (for instance "Numbers" "Smart Women" "Themes") (so meta!) except for one team, which was named something obscene, and we laughed a lot as we madly answering questions, but it doesn't quite convey the atmosphere of the evening.  

I can describe the Lit Crawl on Saturday, which was San Francisco's answer to the pub crawl - themed readings all up and down Valencia St. in bars and bookstores.  I could tell about the skeezy guy in a beret who read some "creative non-fiction" mocking a Vietnamese prostitute, or the enormous gay man who read about his attempt to become a porn star, while practically straddling the microphone stand.  I might even be able to describe the atmosphere: the hipsters crammed in beside the aging lights of high San Francisco culture, the hushed poets and the tattooed middle-aged women who did way too many drugs in their youth, all cradling beers and spilling out onto the sidewalk. 

I can't describe though, the rest of the night, wherein we spent literally hours laughing at and about the people unlucky enough to sit on a couch we dubbed "The Awkward Couch" because everyone who sat on it ended up staring awkwardly off into space, not talking to the people beside them, or talking to say, one of the people, while the third sat awkwardly on the other side.  I realize that I just described the night I said I can't describe, but the point is, my descriptions don't do it justice.  It sounds boring, and kind of mean, to sit and make fun of a couch (and it's inhabitants) all night.  But somehow it was fun (and we did talk about other things as well).

Mostly, I can't describe a normal night at home, when Alex, Mel, and I sit around our kitchen table with mugs of tea and discuss the cat, San Francisco politics, our houseplants, our friends, our love lives or lack thereof, names of characters from romance novels, presidential politics, food, NPR, strange news stories, college, work, the death penalty, homelessness, law school applications, the cat some more, things that make us angry, and various and sundry other topics which may or may not actually interest us or anyone else.  It sounds mundane, to sit around our kitchen table and talk, but I spend most of the time laughing.  There are so many jokes I can't explain.  So many conversations I can't even remember the details of.  But all combined the experience is so good.  I am so happy being there, being part of ridiculous conversations, drinking tea, laughing, or discussing soberly, or mocking ourselves.  Most of my nights are like that now.  So I don't write, because there's nothing to say exactly.  I went to work, I came home; we had tea and talked about all the things we always talk about.  I went to bed. 

Maybe I'm floating, not moving anywhere, but times like these feel rarer than they should, feel precious.  I want to savor it; soon enough it'll be gone and I'll be forced forward again.

A few days ago, one of my roommates sent me this link.  It's a speech that a evolutionary psychologist gave recently entitled, "Is There Anything Good About Men?" (Short answer: yes.)  To give it fair due, I agreed with a lot of things in the speech.  For instance, that men and women (as a hugely generalized whole, and leaving aside the sticky questions of transgender, etc.) are different, but equal, and that many of these differences are attributable to genetic selection and the struggle to survive/reproduce over thousands of years.  The problem with the speech is that it is written in a spirit of intense rancor, and is aimed at disproving the arguments of the "feminist establishment" that have taken over the whole Western world (that women are better, and men have been getting together in little groups to try and keep them down.)  To me, this seems self-evidently ridiculous: no feminists that I know argue that patriarchy is a deliberate movement on the part of individual men, or that women are better.  Moreover, the examples backing up his argument are at many points ridiculous.  If I try to explain I will end up quoting them completely, so I won't try, but I will put a few behind the cut for anyone who is interested.



That is not the point of this entry however.  That is just the beginning to explain what is really bothering me.  So my roommate sent me this link.  I read it, trying to give it the benefit of a doubt, and quickly became appalled by the fact that this man was claiming scientific objectivity and that he wanted a fair, unbiased discussion of gender, when what he was really doing was attacking "feminists."  His examples (under the cut) also made me incredulously annoyed.  I emailed my roommate a few times with particularly choice quotes (and mentioned I wanted to punch the guy, though of course it was all in the spirit of rational criticism).  That evening, my roommate and I discussed the article, and I became incensed, as I am wont to do, and ranted about how stupid and mean it was.  My roommate laughed at my outrage, and egged me on, admitting that she sent me the link hoping that I would get angry and rant, because apparently I'm very amusing when I am outraged.  Last night we were sitting around with friends and the article came up again.  I began to explain how it was ridiculous, which quickly devolved into everyone teasing me about how worked up I got, and calling me "cute." 

They were teasing, but it stung anyway, because it a recurring moment in my life.  I can't count the number of times friends of mine have deliberately provoked me into a moral/political rant, and then sat around laughing at the strength of my reaction.  It occurred to me this morning that it goes back even further than I thought, pre-political outrage, when my brother would say something to me that would make me incredibly angry or upset (I can't even remember the kinds of things he would say - but I think they were generally personal attacks on me) and I would scream and bang things, and hit him, and he would just laugh at me.  Nothing I did ever touched him (or he never showed it if it did), but he could rile me with a sentence, anytime he wanted.  I was a game, a doll; he would wind me up and watch me go.  Now it's not personal, my friends don't attack me, but they say something or point me toward something I find really maddening or offensive, wind me up and watch me go.  I hate this.  Nothing I say in a moment like this matters, rational or irrational.  No one is listening.  The second I show a hint of emotion, I am just a little girl in over her head, boxing with shadows.  The hurtfulness of having friends sit and laugh at me is not as bad as the feeling of helplessness.

Maybe I take things too personally.  Maybe I am too sensitive.  (Both at a political level - caring what someone said in a speech - and the personal level - taking it badly when people tease me.)  But I also think I am justified at both levels.  One of the worst offenders in terms of this riling-me-up-and-laughing phenomenon was a friend of mine freshman year of college.  He would make misogynistic remarks and jokes to get a rise out of me.  I wanted to be cool, and not to make waves, to be one of the boys (and not to be teased) so most of the time I would let it pass.  I regret that now; he would push further and further looking for a reaction, until he got beyond the point of joking, and I would let him.  I wish that I had told him it wasn't okay, and let him laugh.  I wish that I had walked out.  He has since grown up  a lot, and we've had discussions about how much he regrets saying those things; maybe I could have helped him get there sooner if I hadn't kept my mouth shut.  Even if he couldn't have heard it then, I would feel better.  I don't know why I take gender issues so personally, but I do.  Yes, I get upset.  Maybe it's naive and idealistic.  Maybe there is nothing that can be done, maybe the speeches people give, and what they show on TV doesn't matter, doesn't affect anyone's real life.  But I don't believe that; I think it does affect people, women, men, in ways we might not see, and I believe shutting up about it just makes it worse.

On a personal level, I'm sure it goes back to my brother, and feelings of helplessness, and a friend I had in 9th grade who would make fun of me to my face and then tell me she was just teasing.  It's insecurity, I get that.  I know my friends like me, and don't mean any harm by it, probably don't see why it would hurt me, or that it does.  I still think I'm justified feeling hurt though.  The problem is, if I tell them to stop I am just perpetuating the image of myself as a little girl, who can't take a little ribbing, who has no self control.  Maybe that's what I am.  It's amazing how successive friends, who have never met one another, are able to find this same weak spot and return to it, again and again.  Maybe I have a string coming out of my back, and a sign saying, "Pull me and see what I do!" and I just never noticed.

EDIT: To lessen all the bitching in here a little, I came home hungry and tired and ended up telling one of my roommates how upset I was, and she said (while still validating my feelings) from her perspective no one was laughing at me, I make entirely rational arguments and don't react in any crazy or over the top way, and in fact she (she said "they" but I don't want to push it) admires me for my political passion.  So that was nice, and made me feel better about this particular incident, if still frustrated about the lifetime motif.

I am tired, and happy.  Work is busy busy.  I am taking the GREs in less than two weeks.  I am moving on July 1, into a new apartment, as yet hypothetical, with my friends Mel and Alex.  This as-yet-to-be-discovered apartment will be full of people, and food, and NPR, and giggling fits.  So many good things.  I have no idea what I am doing, about work, or how long I am going to stay, or any of that, but I am telling myself it will work out.  I want to be here, I want to live with my friends, and maybe when things calm down I can devote myself to a job search.  Or maybe I will just hold out where I am a couple extra months, and leave a little later to travel.

My mom thinks I should take up Rawaan's offer and move to Dubai, and get a job in journalism, where I can gather experience, and become a Middle East correspondent, and then spend the rest of my life traveling and writing.  Which sounds pretty good to me.  (Though she also wants me to move to Portland, so there's some kind of internal dissonance...or just what she wants for me, and what she wants for herself, which is understandable - and of course I want both too, to be here and gone.)

My weekends are full from now until late July.  With wonderful things, so wonderful (besides the GRE).  Concerts.  Dinners.  The Talent Show (oh oh oh baby).  Travel.  Rawaan.  Many other visitors.  Camping.  Moving.  This summer is going to go so quickly.  It feels almost over already.  If I take a deep breath, it will be September.

I looked up reification today, because it is one of those words that I ought to know what it means, and generally pretend to know what it means, and nod when it is used in a sentence, but could not actually define.  It turns out reification is a type of fallacy, as when you treat an abstraction like a reality - such as discussing the government as if it was a person who could want things, or hate you.

This makes me sort of sad, because if I had to guess what reification was, outside of any context, I would have guessed that it had something to do with ruler-worship, or lifting something up - to reify in my mind evokes the image of a throne.  (Obviously, somewhere in the back of my brain I equated reify with deify, except I substituted a king for a god.)  To find out that reification is actually a bad thing is rather disappointing.  (I am ignoring the fact that my false version of reification would probably also be a bad thing, implying the creation of hierarchy, etc.)

I applied for a job, a really exciting job that paid well and would have been doing exactly what I wanted to be doing, in the field I wanted to be doing it in.  Today I got an email saying I did not get it.  I didn't even get an interview.  I actually felt qualified for this job, unlike the vast majority of jobs I look at.  If I can't even get an interview for this one, why even bother applying to any others?  Which leaves me with the question: stay at my current job, so that I can stay in San Francisco, apply to (and presumably be rejected from at least a large percentage of) many other jobs, so that I can stay in San Francisco, or run away and be fancy free and lonely for a while?

I woke up today with a sore neck, for no reason I can figure out.  Not just a little sore, really sore.  So sore that I can only move it gingerly, if at all.  So sore that I have been fantasizing about Vicodin all day, and wincing and making faces and grabbing at it whenever I turn my head, or tilt my neck forward or back.  I have the 22 year old body of an old woman, new aches and pains every day.

This is entirely too morose an entry.  Last night I had dinner at Elizabeth and Priya's, with Erica and Mel and Alex and Priya and other wonderful people.  After dinner we sat around and the musicians among us passed around guitars and sang along, in harmony, their own songs, old songs everyone knows.  Erica sang a song she wrote (not about me) called Straight Girl, and lots of assumptions were made around the room, and I had to hide behind my scarf.  I sat there (over the course of the night, not at that particular moment) and thought, I am so lucky, to be here with good food and friends making music.

A strange in-between moment at work: I have lots of things looming, and therefore do not want to ask for more work, but at the moment I have nothing at all to do.  I am waiting for other people to accomplish their tasks before I can continue with mine.  Wasting time, in the meantime.

I have been hiding in my room all week, as promised (threatened?)  I want to call all my friends and ask about their weekends, and their weeks, and catch up on gossip, and reconnected, reaffirm our mutual admiration, etc.  But instead I have been hiding, and watching Anne of Green Gables.  It is not any person, in particular, just the general fact of people, so many people, out there.  I have been reestablishing my skin.

On Monday, when I was supposed to fly back from Seattle in the morning, a quick two hour flight and then to work, my flight was canceled.  I was stuck at the airport the whole day; it ended up taking 12.5 hours door to door.  I read all of Atonement, and tried not to cry, exhaustion and helplessness welling up periodically through the long day.  My cell phone battery was dying, and as much as I wanted to be in a private place, so I could collapse without the weight of strangers' eyes, I also wanted to be connected to someone, anyone.  I wanted to call and tell somebody how miserable I was.  (Robin pointed out that I could have used a pay phone for that purpose, which I knew, even thought of once or twice; was my failure to do so because I didn't really want to talk to anyone, or because I am a child of the 21st century and disdain the use of pay phones?)


My little sister Merlyn missed school on Friday, to drive up to Seattle.  She informed me that at recess, two little boys in her class were getting married, and she had missed it.  She was supposed to officiate, but she seemed to think they would find a replacement easily enough.  She admitted that a girl in her class had dared them to, and I imagine there was much teasing, and affectations of disgust all around; nevertheless, the thought makes me ridiculously happy.  Two boys getting married is a possibility to these children.  We move forward, baby steps.


And one final happy note, that overwhelms all else: Rawaan is coming! To San Francisco! In July!

On the drive home, the western sky was incandescent pink with dusky purple lows.  As I neared the city, the pink deepened without darkening, becoming one of those shades you don't expect to encounter in nature, which make you remember how flawed and confined your view of nature really is.  Waiting on the freeway off-ramp, the sky above San Francisco was jewel blue, so rich and lovely that I thought, "I want a wedding dress that color," before I remembered wedding dresses are supposed to be white.

On the Writer's Almanac (a short daily radio piece by Garrison Keillor) yesterday he talked about the longest running newspaper columnist of all time, Herb Caen, who wrote for the San Francisco Chronicle for 60 years.  I found this in one of his columns from 1940: "It's the indescribable conglomeration of beauty and ugliness that makes San Francisco a poem without meter, a symphony without harmony, a painting without reason -- a city without an equal."

Every time I try to sit down and write something distracts me.  On Sunday it was dim sum and the St. Stupid's Day Parade, which was a wonderful excuse for young and old alike to wear their Burning Man/Oregon Country Fair/Berkeley Day/mismatched/political/bizarre/naked costumes.  On Monday, our Seder: 12 people (4 wrong-half-Jews and 8 gentiles), a Haggadah aimed at young people (including songs by Lou Reed, Billie Holliday, and Bob Marley, along with the normal prayers), and lots of food.  It was stressful, and amazing to see it all come of, a real Seder, with the (mostly) full ritual and all the right courses, and a Seder plate, and a shank bone.

And now I must go, before finishing my description of our Seder, or anything else.  I am called away from the computer once again, for friends and more charoset, etc. etc.  And off to Seattle tomorrow, for Family (hurrah!), and more charoset (hurrah!) and more craziness. Crazy craziness.  Next week, when I come home, I am going to barricade myself in my room and write reams, about everything that is going on in my life and in my head.  Or just watch Anne of Green Gables.  One of those two things.

On Sunday we drove to Point Reyes, a national park about an hour north of the city, a large group of people: fourteen in all, I believe.  I elected to make base camp on the beach while everyone else went for a hike in the nearby hills and forests.  I spread out a blanket on the side of a dune so I could see the ocean (the bay actually), while I took a practice GRE.  The combination of algebra and sea breeze was a little incongruous, but pleasant.  I paused, occasionally, to watch children frolicking, or dogs passing, or the cloud shifts.  I feel very lucky to live in a place where water and sky are easy to access, and I could spend a few hours working, and a few hours playing, and not feel that I was missing anything.  In the dusk, we built a fire and made s'mores; someone passed around a bottle of whiskey, just about big enough that everyone could have a swallow.

Life has been busy.  On Friday I made butternut squash quesadillas and Elizabeth and I talked about religion and spirituality for over an hour (no conclusion was come to).  On Saturday I read, and libraried, and then we went to the Chinese New Year's parade.  I love parades, though more for the crowds than for the parade itself.  Little children sat at the curb and conducted negotiations with their standing mothers for fruit juice.  When people came by throwing out treats they held out their hands and shouted, unashamed of their greediness, while Elizabeth and I shyly waved our hands, and muttered under our breath.  In the next five days I have, in order: Spanish class, a date, Santa Cruz, a party, and book trivia.  I have a feeling the party may be subject to cancellation, but everything else is set, I believe.  (And having said that, how crushed will I be if everything falls through?  I have recently noticed my tendency to cling to expectations, even if what actually happens is just as satisfactory.  Life is not as good if it's not what I thought it would be.)

Speaking of what I think life will be.  My aunt asked me why I want to go to the school of Jurisprudence and Social Policy at Berkeley.  I've been puzzling over the question.  Part of it is certainly that the subject is so open and interdisciplinary that it requires less commitment - or a different kind - than another program, and while part of me is longing to go back to grad school, another part of me still doesn't know what for and this might satisfy both those pieces.  But there are better reasons too.  I am exceedingly interested in - passionate about - the wreck of our criminal justice system, and the havoc it plays with people's lives and families and communities.  A lot of the big problems in America - poverty, education (or the lack thereof), health care - all manifest within this system in egregious ways.  So that's one thing I want to study and think about and help fix.  There are other things this program would touch on or let me touch on - reproductive rights law, marriage law, international law, human rights law.  I envision this providing me the kind of access to knowledge and expertise about to influence these areas that law school could, but without having to actually suffer through law school, or end up a lawyer.  So I suppose those are my reasons.

(Thinking of those things, I also think of my reasons against - I don't know if this is really My Passion, or if it's just what I know, what I have seen and worked on and therefore is accessible.  I also care passionately about women's health in the developing world, and child poverty, and peace in the Middle East.  Maybe I really want to work on those things, I just don't know how yet.  Maybe I should wait and try different things, and see if I become more passionate about something else, before I commit myself to a six year program.  But then again - jurisprudence and social policy doesn't have to be about America.  It could be about the way law helps or oppresses people anywhere.  So maybe that is an argument for too.)

So the loveseat is, as far as I know, still in Nick's car.  Instead, my room now contains a loveseat futon, and a desk, both of which Elizabeth and I found on the street, and carried back to my apartment.  So much for the loveseat: I am going to tell Nick to leave it on the sidewalk, and maybe someone who will really love it will pick it up.

Besides the furniture-finding, I saw M. Ward perform, and watched Casino Royale, and checked books on Panama out of the library.  "It looks like you're writing a research paper," Elizabeth said as I described my Sackful O' Books, and I said, "I sort of am."  It turns out I had not yet told her of my Panama!Novel! plans.

M. Ward is from Portland, and wore a baseball cap over his curly hair.  He was preceded by a woman named Victoria Williams, a middle-aged woman who looked like someone's mother and sounded like a small child, and waved her arms about.  He sang all the songs I most wanted him to sing: what do you do with the pieces of broken heart/and how can a man like me remain in the light/and if life is really as short as it seems, then why is the night so long? and I'll Be Yr Bird.  I didn't feel well and watched most of the show alone, in a table at the back of the room.  We got there early, and were standing near the stage, and it was too hot and pressed in, and my stomach hurt, and I couldn't see, so I was happy enough to sit at a table and watch the small figure on the stage, and lean my chin on my hand, and stretch my legs out.  Somehow sitting alone at a concert that I attended with friends felt different than going alone; I was secure in the knowledge that out there in the crowd I had People.  Having People is important.

I've moved.  I am taking a short break from unpacking madness.  I have wonderful friends, who made it possible, and I ache all over, and I am exhausted, and happy, and have a new place to call home.  My room is large, with the added bonus of an enormous walk-in closet where I can store pretty much everything.  It has an arched ceiling, like a sunrise, and my new roommate left me two pretty bedside tables, a dresser, two large bookshelves.  This morning Elizabeth texted me and asked if I wanted to come for breakfast, and I could just roll out of bed, get dressed and go; their apartment is two blocks away from me.  There are two cats here: Cinder and Dove.  They drift in and out, and sniff things.  My new roommate, Kat, is an avid baker, and owns every kitchen appliance known to man.  Her boyfriend, who is living here for the moment (but is leaving to travel for a year, which is why they are renting out my room) helped me move in, set up my internet for me, and just offered me means to hang things on my wall: molding hooks and wire, heavy two sided tape.  They put up a new shelf in the kitchen to free up cabinet space for me.  Mel gave me a pineapple as a housewarming gift and my whole room smells of it.  I have extra room on my bookshelf, for expansion, and a whole wall which could hold a couch, or a desk, or both.  This is good.

Yesterday I remembered how unbelievably lucky I am, and tiptoed on the edge of happy hysteria, laughing uncontrollably at semi-random intervals.  I picked Mel up in the morning, wearing my enormous sunglasses and purple flowered dress, and we drove across the Bay Bridge, listening to the music that made me happy my sophomore year of college: "Hey Ya" and "Float On" and "Moondance."  A friend, Becca, was having her birthday celebration at the Thai Buddhist Temple in Berkeley, where you buy tokens and barter them for heaping plates of food, and then everyone sits on the lawn, eating and talking, and sun-sleeping.  Last week's cold went away and the sun stayed, so that I sat with only a thin sweater was warm, glowing, and people moved in and out of grass-circles, and Melissa stood atop a fire hydrant talking on the phone, and Erica planned a media strategy for me to combat the Brown Alumni Magazine article (key points of the strategy: me wearing stilettos, and saying something incredibly witty), and we talked about iTunes play counts, and awkward dates, and then played Set, there on the lawn.  

But this was only the beginning!  Followed by an afternoon in a coffee shop on the Berkeley campus, reading, talking, playing more games, and then another shift of locale, and Speed Scrabble, and then deep dish pizza, and trivia, a small group this week, and Mel and I being ridiculous, having "une boum" on the couch.  It was, we decided, like a family, where people came and went, there was no hurry, nowhere to go, we just drifted through the day.  Rather like last Sunday in fact (though it was considerably colder then).  I am the Crazy Grandmother of the family.  This is a life I could enjoy for a while.

Driving across the Bay Bridge, both ways, I was reminded of, astounded by, how beautiful it is here.  In the morning, in bright sun, the Berkeley hills rose from the water, and at night coming home, downtown shone crisp and elegant, framed by the spangled glow of San Francisco hills and the dark sweep of the water.  I am happy.


We were talking about blogging, the purpose of such.  I would like to say that, for me, it is a way to keep track.  Even if I am bad at writing here, I do so more consistently than I do/would write a private journal, if only because I know other people wonder if I don't write here for a long time, and the fact that I do it at all is valuable to me, because, for instance, I will remember yesterday better, given that I just wrote down a slice of it, than if I never recorded it at all.  In which case this is just a diary that other people can read, and which I have more impetus to update.  But that's not it, entirely.  That's a piece.  I use it to communicate, for instance, about my computer.  About where I am, with the moving situation (I think I have a place; knock on wood).  About where I am going.  But I only use it to communicate with certain people, and there's always more to say.  I use it as a forum, occasionally.  A space to draw out thoughts that otherwise knock around in my brain being difficult.  An ego booster.  A place to whine and receive sympathy.  It's very personal; I don't think of it as something anyone who didn't know me would have any interest in reading.  Part of me wishes it was, more of that, that it spoke to greater issues and had a following, or obviously, that my writing is just so excellent and fascinating that people would want to read it all the time.  But then it would be something else.  Not a tool for memory.  I would rather, I think, use it to remember the life that I am out living, than to have it be the life that I am living, inside.

1. I have really excellent friends.  Rawaan called me from very far away and an entirely different day.  And Cutter sent me a package!  And thank you, everyone, for the kind words and wishes.

2. I am trying to think of this like the new year, and beginning again.  At some point everything must be wiped clean.  We get trapped inside our own tangled pasts and bogged down and maybe this was necessary, Alexander cutting the Gordion knot, and now I will be able to write, I will be able to think, I will begin again.  Empty and clean.  (I am not sure I believe this, but I am telling myself anyway.  There are always echoes of things.  Half-remembered words and sentences and scenes, that float behind my eyes, mocking me because I cannot get at them and I cannot get away from them.  Or not.)

3. Despite #2, I am still trying to recover my data.  I found a company from the East Bay that does data recovery for significantly less than the big time expert data recovery people.  Still, several hundred dollars, but only if they actually find something.  I am now waiting for them to decide whether they can find something or not.

4. I don't know why I am making a list.

Home. My roommate is asleep on the couch, with a plastic surgery reality show blaring on the television, I am very tried, and we have ants in the kitchen. However, my comforter is still a lovely color, and warm and fluffy, and Sufjan's Christmas box set came in the mail, complete with stickers, a Rick Moody essay and Christmas stories by Sufjan himself ("Santa Magic Hands" and "Christmas Tube Socks").

( Thanksgiving, home, family, etc. )

( Portland, tea, paper, friends, etc. )

We had a picnic today. It was picnic weather, in late November: sunny, high 60s at least. I lounged in my T-shirt, and ate far too much, and we had a sing-a-long, and chattered about all kinds of things, and met a few dogs, and waved at a few people, it was one of those days where life could really not be better. A picnic on a hill in San Francisco, in November, in the sun, with a view of the "Full House" Victorians and downtown in the distance, and wonderful people I am getting to know, and wonderful people I just met, and goat cheese and homemade apple crisp and crepes filled with strawberries.

It was a really wonderful day and night, in a gentle, undemanding, entirely unexpected way. I drank tea, and bought pretty colored paper and envelopes, and found the floor of my room, and drank margaritas, and listened to a new friend sing, and talked and talked and talked. I am tired, and surprised at my good fortune, and entirely satisfied.

I have a desk chair now, which means I don't have to hunch over my computer, or carry it elsewhere.

I am tired, and sicksicksick.  (Actually, I don't deserve three sicks.  I am fine.  Just dry-throat-muffled-sinuses-tired.)

All week, I have been coming here and I have not been able to begin an entry.  Because too much has happened, and nothing has happened, and my brain or my spirit or something is on hold.

Last weekend a man followed me on the street, and touched me, and now my orange dress, that I love, is hanging in my room, mocking me, and I know I won't wear it, not even for Halloween.  And I was eating ice cream, and now I don't want to go to that ice cream place again; and, in short, I hate being a girl.

Last weekend I wore fairy wings and danced with Colin, and strangers: a college party, but not my college.  I was sore on Monday.

On Monday Alicia visited and we sat up talking, a group of people, and it was one of those good talks, those talks that feel solid, that make me miss people and places I have been, where I had those talks more often (or imagine that I did).

Besides that I have been sick.  And there have been envelopes.  And attempts, failures, to sleep.

I want the election to be now, so that nothing can happen between now and then.  Every day I am terrified that the news will deliver some coup, that Karl Rove will remember how to be an evil genius, and the change that I can feel solid in my hands will disappear as if it never was.  Which it wasn't, which is isn't, yet.  But it could come, it could come.  Eleven days.

I love Saturdays.  My hair is in pigtails, and I am wearing bright pink sweatpants, and have eaten only macaroni and cheese and not-fully-cooked brownies (Hae-In was here last night, and we got the sudden urge to bake, but she had to catch the Caltrain, so we had to take them out early... honestly, I like them better this way.)

Sufjan was almost all I could have hoped, and more.  He had an accompanying orchestra - 34 people according to Elizabeth, who counted.  They were all dressed as butterflies.  He also had the Pacific Mozart Choir for back-up.  And three random Illinoisemakers/band members/butterflies playing normal rock instruments - drums, guitar, bass, piano.  Sufjan himself mostly played piano, but also banjo, and guitar.  And he sang in a husky insistent lovely voice.  His voice quiet, with just the piano, and then the orchestra and choir would enter, suddenly, a swell of music filling the enormous concert hall.  What power and grace.  Sufjan wore hawk wings that moved with the air.  He sang a Christmas carol he wrote called "That Was the Worst Christmas Ever" and in the middle people appeared at the edges of the balcony throwing blow-up Santas into the audience.  Then, during "The Man of Metropolis Steals Our Hearts," he did the same thing with blow-up Supermans.  I really like that he did it twice.  He played "Casimir Pulaski Day," and I got teary, and he finished with "Chicago":

I was in love with the place
in my mind, in my mind
I made a lot of mistakes
in my mind, in my mind

Elizabeth and I exchanged nervous breakdown stories before and after the concert.  It's nice to know that I am not the only one having a hard time in a new place.  I am doing better now (she said that she had a hard first two months, and then it got better, which is reassuring).  But the above lyrics take on whole new meanings. 

I am doing interesting work now, writing a paper on food stamps.  But organization is a problem within the company hierarchy, and I have been given very little time; I should be working on it now, in fact, instead of doing this, but I need a day, at least, one whole day to be whoever I want to be, and write only things I want to write.  Tomorrow I will be a worker bee.

EDIT: Here is the song quoted above.  Listen to it, it's wonderful.  Chicago by Sufjan Stevens (if you like this, there are three other versions - Acoustic, Easy Listening and Multiple Personality Disorder.  But this is the best.)

I slept too much last night and now I am awake; tomorrow I will be tired again.  The cycle continues, round and round.

I forgot to call Vivien and say Happy Birthday.  I called last night, and said Happy Early Birthday, but it's not the same.  I am a bad older sister.

Annie is gone.  I left her house with her teapot (which I gave her, I am keeping it warm for her until she comes back from Senegal) and photos and a very sad feeling.  When she drove off down the street, she stopped halfway down the block, reversed, and got out for another hug, all teary eyed.  Two years.  Is not that long a time.  Friday night we watched Notting Hill and Much Ado About Nothing, and sat in her living room instant messaging each other lines from Much Ado, before or after they were said.  "The world must be peopled!" "Get you to heaven!"

I feel like making some sort of sound, as a signal I am not thinking about that anymore.  Hmm, or meh, or something along those lines.  It doesn't work as well in writing though.

I started knitting socks today.  I made the sole of one foot.  The yarn turned my fingertips blue, which is probably a bad sign for when I actually wear the socks.  The two mystery roommates have not moved in yet, and Kate, the one that I know, has not been here all day.  I am living alone in a four bedroom apartment.  I went grocery shopping, and made pasta with butternut squash and rosemary, and ate it too fast.  I am glad the internet is working again.  I should go to sleep.

Quick post from work - my stolen internet at home has stopped working, and we haven't yet got the real thing set up, so I am disconnected outside of the office.

I took a half day off this morning.  Annie and Jen and I went to Chez Panisse last night (the upstairs cafe), for a late dinner.  I have a cold, and could not taste anything properly, but it was still excellent.  I had a roasted red pepper, eggplant and ricotta salad, and a baked sonoma goat cheese with mixed greens.  Frisee!  And homemade bittersweet chocolate ice cream for dessert, with creme fraiche and pistachios.  Yum.  This morning we slept in and went to brunch at a vegan restaurant called Cafe Gratitude, where all the dishes are called things like "I am Energized" "I am Charismatic" "I am Bright Eyed" etc.  I had quinoa with fruit, and thought of home (home, in this context, being Eugene.)  Then we went to Samovar, a tea house, for dessert and tea.  I discovered a lovely yarn store kitty corner from Samovar, and I have vowed to return to that corner as often as possible, as it is obviously a blessed place.

I have my car, and spent more than expected performing maintenance on it; but now it should be all set for a while, I hope.  I received all my things in the mail (except one box I sent from DC, which has yet to arrive; I'm worried it's sitting in the post office somewhere, lost, and it has one of my favorite sweaters, and my tofu seasoning, and my small teapot) yesterday, 9 boxes which I had to carry up my stairs one by one.  They are now sitting around my room in various stages of un-packedness, so tonight I am going to make a concerted go at them.  Tomorrow night I am driving up to Calistoga, because I could not say goodbye to Annie today, it was impossible.

That is all.

You know how sometimes life is like a movie, and you can't believe it's really happening to you?

I left my phone at Ashley's last night (Ashley is a friend from London, and yesterday we sat in Dolores Park and watched the San Francisco Mime Troupe call for secular humanism, but in a funny way, and then she made dinner and we played Scrabble with her law school friends).  Anyway, the phone thing is set up one for my evening.  Set up two is that I was supposed to drive down to the San Jose area to look at two cars.  One car I could not arrange to look at, because the only number for the person I had was saved in my voice mail.  The other car, I couldn't look at, because the people never called me back (but I only confirmed this after staying at work 15 minutes late, though I got there 10 minutes early).  At that point, I had found another car about 15 minutes south (instead of half an hour) that was supposedly parked in a lot, and the owner wanted people to come look at it and confirm their seriousness before calling her.  I say "supposedly" because I drove there, and it wasn't there.  It wasn't anywhere.

So that left me at about 7:45, no dinner, no cell phone, no car viewings, in Foster City.  I got lost getting back on the freeway, thanks to Google, which sucks.  I hit traffic coming into San Francisco and sat on 101 for twenty minutes.  I missed my turn onto 17th and did a fifteen minute figure-8 around Market St. to get back to it.  By the time I was driving up 17th towards Ashley's (maybe 8:45), I was in a bad mood, starving, and I thought, "If I see a store, I'll stop and get Ben and Jerry's, and then I won't arrive empty handed asking for food at Ashley's door, and Ben and Jerry's is just the thing to cheer me up anyway."  Miraculously, a corner store appeared.  I pulled the car over, left my blinkers on as I was illegally parked, ran inside, bought some Half Baked, and turned to leave, reaching into my purse for my keys.  They weren't there.  They were in the car.

This is a really funny story, and someday I'm going to find it amusing.  I stopped to get ice cream to cheer myself up... and locked my keys in the car.  The rental car.  And I didn't have my cell phone.  And I don't know anyone's number, because I just moved here.

Luckily the man at the store was very nice, and let me use his phone, and sit in the store for an hour, and the rescue turned out to be free, because my rental car is still under warranty from Chevrolet, so it could have been a hell of a lot worse.  But I was not feeling too good at the time.  I am not good without food, at the best of times, which this was not.  I just... couldn't believe it.  The end result was me, sitting on the step of a corner store, shivering, crying uncontrollably and eating ice cream with a plastic spoon.

However, I am now home (I made it back at 11 pm), with my phone, and all limbs intact, and I think I parked legally for the night, and, okay, still no car viewings, but what's $35 a day anyway?

In other news, because I realize I only write in here to complain, and I'm sorry about that:

Work is do-able, and though I am now on a project which is not my area, and which I am stuck with because no one else wanted to do, and which is sort of high pressure... I'm kind of happy, because it requires me to think, and that is far superior to formatting data tables, or copying and pasting things

As mentioned, yesterday I went to Dolores Park and sat in the sun and watched political comedy, with songs, and costumes, and it was excellent, and it felt like home: a park full of curly-grey-haired women in comfy pants and brightly colored earrings, and men with beards, and dogs, and small children, and white boys with dreadlocks.  It was wonderful.  And I got sun-burned!  In San Francisco!  And then I got to meet very nice people, and I won at Scrabble, and overall it was an excellent Labor Day.

Earlier this weekend, Friday night to be exact, Jen and I drove to the Napa Valley, to see Annie (!)  I arrived hungry, because I've forgotten how to eat dinner apparently, and she fed me peaches and cottage cheese and toast, and then we talked late and slept, hands touching, and on Saturday Annie had a party, at a vineyard on a lake, and Jen and I blew up balloons and talked to strange conservative adults, and paddled on the pond.

And I am in my apartment now.  I am still stealing very sporadic internet, but it should be hooked up for real soon.  We have dishes, and I did laundry, and there's a skylight in the bathroom which makes it so light in the morning I keep turning off the lights even though they're not on.