wish you were here

I’m just going to borrow this to save a link: The Vulgar Picture

I actually can’t wait to go home. To much warmer weather.

I’m gonna miss the rain, though. It’s been helping me fall asleep the past couple of nights.

This is what happens when I come to Pittsburgh.

Books I’ve finished/started/read:
Only Forward, Michael Marshall Smith
To Reign in Hell, Steven Brust
Lord of Light, Roger Zelazny
The Red Tent, Anita Diamant
The Wooden Sea, Jonathan Carroll

Movies watched:
A.I.
Rat Race
Memento
Spy Game
Stand and Deliver
(and various parts of Behind Enemy Lines and Black Knight)

CDs bought:
Space Ghost, Surf & Turf
Hum, Heavenward is Downward
Jack Johnson, Brushfire Fairytales
Patty Griffin, 1000 Kisses
The Hives, Vini Vidi Viscious

Add to that 2 reviews finished, one poem, and a couple of pages for the novel, and that was my vacation. Tomorrow is my last day, then on a plane, and back to the grindstone.

Did I mention there are a lot of cute boys out here? Did I also mention they’re Orthodox Jewish?

Curses, foiled again.

I’m working on a theory about why we go back to exes.

I did it once. I really hope it won’t happen again in the future. See, the thing with my aunt and uncle here is that they were high school sweethearts. I can’t even keep anybody around for more than 2 weeks.

The thing is, I’m a tempramental, moody, stubborn girl who will not put up with shit. That’s a hard thing to get used to, especially since I give off a very cold vibe on first meeting.

When I went back to my ex it was because I felt as if things weren’t finished. LIttle did I know I was slowly becoming a rebound. And maybe I was trying to rebound… from, um, him. I talked a lot of shit after the first breakup, only because I started to see how the boy was acting and it was pretty dumb. But for someone like me who isn’t used to male attention, having gotten it for awhile was something I wanted to have again. I have a journal that’s mostly me speculating on whether he was thinking of me, or wanted me back, what the hell happened, what would happen in the future. I knew something felt like it was up in the air about the whole thing, though I couldn’t put a finger on what it was.

And then we got back together and I thought, I’ve won. I did it. Now what? I started to wonder why exactly I was getting back together with this person. I knew there were other boys who wanted to persue me; but I didn’t want them. I didn’t want to be mean to them so I avoided them; I probably broke their hearts. I don’t really know. (Boys in my world don’t tend to tell me things like “I like you” until it’s too late, i.e., when I’m with someone else.)

I felt comfortable being with him. I was used to our little times alone, together, when it felt like the rest of the world could just go away while we lay in bed together. When we went out, I didn’t have to really try and get him involved with things because he’d jump right in. We were into a lot of the same things even though we weren’t into a lot of the same things. There was a balance there. I felt safe. That was why I went back.

I knew I shouldn’t have gotten back with him. I knew from the moment we’d kissed that first time back together that it wasn’t going to last long. Strangely enough, it lasted longer than the first time. But I knew it was bound to fail. I was so young, trying to figure out where my rhythms in relationships were, and I didn’t know how to handle half the things that were going on. Add to that my paranoia factor, the fact that I always have this feeling that my relationships are so fragile, no matter how much he tries to convince me otherwise, and it makes for a sad brew. And I’m not one at the end of breakups to have backup plans. I don’t have the Fuck Friends or the random one-nighters. I’m shocked that guys will even come up to me at bars and try and make conversation.

I guess all in all I was just trying to raise my experience quotient, like some D & D character. Early on I’d developed this idea that being in any relationship would make me happy as long as he wasn’t an asshole. Well, from what I’ve seen, I’ve never dated an asshole but somehow that moniker gets subscribed to every guy, no matter how nice or good a friend he’s been to me. I’ve never been treated like shit in a relationship, ever, and maybe that just adds to my bitch meter ’cause I just won’t put up with it. A guy was nice to me, that was a sign to just jump into things. Bad idea. Real bad idea. But jumping back into things, just because you don’t seem to want anything else? What the fuck was I thinking?

I knew better, yet I did it anyway. In the end, I don’t really regret per se what I did. I obsess, that’s a normal thing; totally different from stalking someone. I do it all in my head.

And the thing that gets me, every time, is how I can be told that I’m such a great person and yet get into these terrible situations where things could work out so well and yet it just gets fucked anyway. That part I really don’t understand.

I mean, I went back, hoping things were different, and they really weren’t. Time had changed a lot of things, but not the dynamics between us. And maybe that was just the closure I needed. Maybe I just didn’t want things to work out as badly as I thought I did.

It’s so funny how you can go one minute to seeing yourself absolutely with someone for a very long time and yet the next moment you wonder why, after all those nice compliments that sounded like they were meaningful, you can just forget about them and wish them a nice life in your head.

There just has to be more out there. Right?

Novel work was done. Yay. Reading was done. Yay! More books were bought. Yay!

Rinse and repeat.

I had a very strange dream this morning. The thing was, it wasn’t strange in content, it was strange in context. I was sitting there, having a conversation with someone who hates me in real life as if we’d been friends forever. I don’t know. Maybe you’d call that a nightmare.

I did this last night. Doesn’t have a title yet.

what seems like forever and a day away,
and I barely think of you.
if I was home right now,
would you even know I was there?
do miles carry us farther
than time, than memory?
something tells me
I’m laughing inside,
and even if I miss you
leftover from months ago,
does that mean
it’s okay to forget now?
when I shold be sleeping,
I’m waiting for a message from the dead,
the dreamscapes
taking unfamiliar shapes again.
and does it even matter
that you probably don’t care?
do you even remember
turning off the lights?
not when it’s a different body,
a different voice
speaking the same soliloquies
just because they were rehearsed.
when you were on my mind
a long time ago,
I thought a lot of things,
but now I barely think at all.

Ah. My uncle cured my mocha fix this evening, along with some good conversation.

Wrote a little bit on the novel. I actually should go upstairs and work on it right now. I feel stuck, but I know I can write my way out of it. It’s frustrating.

And I have a review that I should do tomorrow, too. It’ll get done.

You know, some people go away and little tiffs break out. I go away and people get into car crashes.

I think about moving away for awhile, but then stuff like this goes down and I think it’s a sign that maybe I shouldn’t leave ever again. Yeesh.

Apparently I’ve been mentioned all over the news here lately.

No, I’m not that special. My uncle’s been arguing with the city council over radars for the cops so they can catch speeders. He was explaining it to me on the first day I was here and I couldn’t believe it, so he’s using me as an example of, “If they abide the law in Vegas, why not here?” So I’ve been mentioned on public access, I think on a local news station, and yesterday he was on the phone with a newspaper dude.

What can I say, I’m blowing up all over the place. I merely think of it as advance marketing for the novel. Which means that I can’t be writing two words a night and think it’s going to get done by the end of the summer, which is kind of the plan at this point. Oops.

I have no poems. I have lines in my head for poems, but I haven’t really had any real time to write them down or get something solid on paper. Yet. I don’t know if I really will this week or not. I’d like to.

And I’ve been having this plan in my head to come here to go to grad school at Carnegie Mellon. They have a creative writing department, but not a master’s in it. I conceivably get my master’s in english, if I really wanted to go that far. I don’t know. Just more musing. More tangents to take in case things go kablooey.

So I think I’ve officially seen just about everybody I’m supposed to be seeing. At least, I hope so.

My cousin The Priest has a day off today, so I’ve been hanging out most of the morning after sleeping way too much last night. It’s strange having a priest as a close relative: you’re unsure whether or not it’s cool to cuss anymore. I watch my mouth now. I mean, he’s still the same, laid back dude that he used to be; his day job is a little different than most everyone else’s. He hasn’t been getting any slack for the scandals lately, but he’s sick of hearing about it, and I don’t blame him.

Everyone’s been asking me how things are going and all I can say is good, because there really isn’t anything exciting going on at home. I mean, besides the usual dramas blown up to crazy proportions. Right, kids?

It has been nice to be somewhere else other than home right now though, I have to admit. But for some reason I’d rather go to California. Maybe it’s something about the whole idea of having an easy access to the beach that makes it more appealing. Not that being in a real city isn’t a bad thing, either.

I realized on the plane that I got nervous not because I was on a plane for the first time since last year, not because of the heavier security, but because of simple turbulence. That shit still makes my knuckles white.

Other than that, things have been lovely. Got no sleep on the plane, but some when I got here, and now I’m ready to go back to bed again. Being fed lots. I don’t really plan on doing much else other than reading and maybe get some writing in.

I go die now.