Two years.

Besides birthdays, the only dates I remember are:

November 26th,
May 4th,
October 1st,
February 8th,
and today, August 30th.

February 8th was a result of August 30th.

I'm

I'm in Washington D.C. Kinda a bust, 'cause all my friends who used to live here don't anymore.

First day of school:

RJ: How was Austin?
Me: It was lovely.
RJ: How's the BF?

I chuckled because I haven't had a boyfriend in exactly a year.

Getting back all (all!) of my old letters - there must be hundreds of them. Old love notes, and lots of tiny envelopes from John sent from the Ritz Carleton Hotel (on their stationary, as well).

Starting to get excited about making things again. I better be, 'cause I have a Senior Project proposal due in three hours (yet to begin).

I always talk to norms about how frustrating art school can be, and I know it's another language to them, just like I can't comprehend chemistry or math beyond long division. In class we had to give our definition of Art after this long process where you analyze every stage of you life and blah blah blah. It's a great exercise, and it was stressed that there were no wrong answers. I said:

[My] Art is: an obsessive documentation in an attempt to gain more self-awareness. (Among a million other things)

This was apparently a wrong answer.

Teacher said, "[My] Art is independent breath."

That's a right answer! Jeez. If it's straightforward, it's probably wrong.

With girls you just can't win. When someone says, 'you look tired,' it really means 'you look like shit.'

Dawn saw me for the first time in months and said, "You look well rested" and I translated that as "you look fat."

--

I was instantly reminded today of how terrifying this all is. Talking about Your Art, which is so intimate and at the same time means nothing, I found myself red faced, multiple times.

--

I've been living without a phone for about a week now. Minus the occasional inconveniences, it is freeing.






"There is no creation without pain." - Yves St. Laurent

Where do the days go?

Last first day of school, ever. Today at 10 am, drinking mimosas on the hill behind school (one giant champagne bottle, one giant orange juice - we had to carry the empty containers with us all day), joint celebrating Audrey's birthday and the begining of the end of our school career. Beautiful.

Screaming with Lisa in my living room - "She better thank her lucky stars God made her beautiful, 'cause she doesn't bring much to the table besides her fucking face." Ouch! I love that we bring out the nasty in each other - no one knows how mean I am as much as she does, I think.

Jen carried me across the threshold of our house today like a bride.

Sorry mom.

Tonight was weirdo.

I am happy that Jen can introduce me as her room mate now, and does so.

Last night, on the way to Spencer's, Jen and I stopped to eat pizza and drink Yuengling 40s on a park bench. Apparently Pittsburgh is like New Orleans 'cause you can walk around with liquor bottles in your hands and no one cares.

But you can not take those 40s out of the freezer in the corner store by yourself. I got yelled at: "This ain't no self-serve! Get out of there!" All the loitering homeless men laughed at me, one of them kissed my hand and then my shoulder. After that we ducked away to drink in peace in the park.

--

Catching up with Lisa in her bar - she looks so beautiful, and her hair! Her hair is the most princess of any princess hair. She has put me to shame. Anyway, I started with: "To end our never-ending boy conversation..." and she countered with "Oh, god, I need another cigarette."

Sitting on the floor in my new room in Pittsburgh.

Huh.





It feels like when my parents dropped me off at camp when I was six.

John's phone is broken - he can't hear you, but you can hear him. I always forget and call it anyway. It's such a funny way of communicating, like he's reading you a letter he wrote to you over the phone. You can never comment or input anything into the conversation, just listen to whatever he tells you and wait for him to finish and hang up on you.

"Hey bebe, my phone's broken, remember? I'm gonna have to call you from a pay phone later tonight if I can. I'm glad you called though. I'm walking to another meeting, I've been running around trying to get everything done for China and I haven't had a chance to call. Anyway I appreciate you calling, and I love you, and I'll talk to you soon. Bye."


I wonder how it must be for John, talking into an empty space, never knowing what reaction he's causing.

Do I ruin everything? Do I?

I think the answer may be yes.

Taking a spur of the moment shower, hastily, I slipped and my ribs landed directly on the side of the tub. I thought I might die and had to lay in the tub for a bit, unable to move, the shower water continuing to fall on me. After a few minutes of deep breaths and blurry vision I knew I'd make it through.

Anyway. So here I am. Damp hair and feeling like shit 'cause I don't know how to interact correctly with people.

Wah wah wah.

IF JOHN MAYER WERE HERE HE WOULD CALL THIS MY QUARTER LIFE CRISIS.





Oh, but the best part of the shower that I forgot until this morning was that it was so hasty I forgot a towel, and so I went down the hallway to my room stark naked, past a living room with sleeping boys on all the couches. HEYWASSUPI'MYOURNEWROOMIE!!!

When things aren't right in my life I have horrible dreams. I haven't slept well in days.

Leaving Austin tomorrow.

- Lis present
- eat at Rio
- sell clothes
- get mailbox key
- clean Alex's room
- see everyone (T, M, J, T, K)

-----

Watching the O.C. with Amanda, drinking beer during an overcast afternoon. Embarrassing confession: it makes me miss young high school love. Multiple Match.com/eHarmony commercials don't help. Can't believe I said that. But it's true.

When you are miz, listen to Moz.

I'm even wearing all black today, too.

--

Best thing I witnessed last night: Joel pouring a beer on a cat.

--

I want to sleep and sleep and sleep and sleep and avoid thinking about my life. I've been pretty successful so far today.

exits

When it's time to make your exit, make it. Don't stick around. I was out and mad the other night, and wanted to leave at the moment of transgression. Grabbed my keys and held them in my hand for fifteen minutes, trying to think of somewhere I could go. I didn't have one. So I was forced to stay and sulk.

Before that, I was at a pool in South Austin with Matt G. (all I know him as) and his coked out friend, K.B. K.B. doesn't want to pay me back for the beer. Make a scene with Matt in a country-club-esque pool house, in front of questioning children and the line for the bathroom.

"Umm... time to go." Sunglasses on, keys out.

So it's time for me to leave Austin, soon. Can't draw it out. Currently I'm homeless and staying in Alex's room while he is away - he lives with eight boys I have never met. Coming home at 3 am. last night to three of them in the living room was awkward.

As

As much as i said i wasn't. i am. done with texas.

For lack of something better to say today

Two different lyrics from two very different songs that I had forgotten about for a long time.


I'm tryin'
I'm tryin' to
drink away the part of the day that I can not sleep away

Okay. Been there. And:

I just want someone to belong to -
Everyday!
Of my life!
Always!
So come and take me away

I know it's rash, but I have to say this is maybe one of the best Mariah songs. It says so much, so simply, it gets the point across. Plus she's amazing.

I wish I could say something more interesting, but as it is, I'm laying in an empty room, waiting to go swimming (wait - just realized that's not happening), finishing the contents of my freezer (Mohawk, anyone?), watching America's Best Dance Crew. Summer has been beautiful - simple, skin, swimming. Snuggling in beds with my friends and their dogs. Watching them shoot BB guns from their porch. It's all been lovely.

--

Just found out I have 60$ in my bank account. How did that happen?
Shiiiit.

I'm not ready to leave. Everything was just getting started.

--

I've never owned two pillows at once, which is a pain when someone sleeps over. I acquired another one this summer - karmically questionable, but possession is 90% of the law - and was thrilled. I'm an adult, I thought. I have a bed with multiple pillows. When people sleep over we don't have to share - and we didn't.

When I went to the beach house I brought one of them, and ended up leaving it. I will never get that pillow back. It is punishment for keeping the collateral damage from a relationship that never got off the ground. Tracy understood why it was funny instantly.

Back to the one-pillow drawing board.

--

I really want to go to Hippie Hollow, the only nude swimming hole in Austin. Picking the correct company to go with is a challenge.

I have been having crippling stomach pains, and my living situation currently is this:

(that's my bed on the floor)

... I feel like I'm gonna die like a junkie, and go undiscovered for days.

John
Tanya
Melanie
Tracy
Connie
Bryan
Katie
Matt
Casey
Tom
Ryan
Chris
Alex
Kate
Christine
Max
Katherine
Monty
Nathan
Jennifer
Daniel
Haven
...and I still feel like I'm forgetting some.

Beautiful as always. Sleeping bodies everywhere, in the clothes we've been wearing all weekend. Covering all the couches, all the pallets, even outside on the patio and porch swing. We tried to watch The Mask at 3:30 in the morning - the VCR was wonky and I had to slap the top of it every minute or so to fix it. Ended up falling asleep on a bare mattress with Gabe, the VCR in between us. Christine's hand kept falling off the couch and slapping me in the face all night.

We all got "basted", which was John forcing Everclear/watermelon juice down our throats with a turkey baster. It was awful, and no one wanted to do it ('cept 'Tine, 'natch), but no one could escape. Towards the end of the night whenever he was spotted with it in his hand, everyone would run. Gabe hid in a bedroom. I fell all over myself (and multiple others!) running onto the deck, tripping over lawn chairs, trying to escape.

Typical. Debaucherous*. Miss it. Moving on.







* apparently not a word, should be.

Sleeping

Sleeping like puppies.

Taking

Taking showers with the hose outside. more funny things to say but i forgot them, 'natch.

Lots of things to say, and I don't know how to say them.

Reassuring smiles.

In other news, I am bringing back the tucked in shirt.

Going to the beach house soon, and I haven't been in years. No one has, and it's a kind of Mecca journey for the old crew -- in the lamest, "I wish high school never had to end" way.



I can't wait.






God save Sean Bronson.

Austin always feels like a city inhabited solely by people under the age of 25, and so it feels like everyone goes through everything at the same time. It's a perpetual 21st birthday.

The beginning and end of the summer is one giant mass exodus/move-in. The whole city is scrambling from one place to another, living without furniture, moving, crashing at a friend's house (which I will be doing soon). The streets smell like trash; every curbside trash can or dumpster is overflowing.

When you fall asleep in your clothes, you wake up and you're already ready already.

Laughing with Tracy last night, about all the things we know that no one knows we know. Wondering what other people know about us that we don't know they know.


Today is for jumbly sentences, apparently.





Fell asleep at Zach's new house. When Tracy tried to wake me I kept telling her, I want a radio in this town, I want a radio in this town.

"Appropriately awful".

I feel better about things than I have in a long time. I don't even know how to talk about it yet, except to say that I feel like crying a good, appreciative cry - the kind where you laughing most of the time.

Funny, 'cause I cried all night, with the only person I cry in front of. Enough that he knows all about it, enough to tell me, "You're eyelids are going to get all puffy. They've already started."

Read an old journal I hadn't seen in years, and was reminded yet again in the recent past of all the good things I had pushed out of my mind for so long.



"Someone (Jamie...) was telling a story about you when everyone was sitting drunk on Mabel's front steps.

I laughed to the side with Tracy,
and smiled into my cup and thought about how much I love you."

Family dinners at other families' houses. Lovely. Frances' send off? "Don't do anything stupid." The best old friends.

John was saying how it is the worst type of egomaniac, to think that everyone around you hates you.

My plan is always to do these things, in this order:
1. Get over yourself
2. Own it
3. Play it cool

All the best pieces of advice.




Driving from Austin to Houston I also saw John's asshole, for like two straight minutes. It didn't even seem weird to me, which I think is a testament to our long-lasting friendship (it wasn't even the first time I'd seen it!). We got to his house, and his parents came home at four in the afternoon to their (now) adult son and his (now) adult friends, drinking whiskey on ice, from the crystal decanter.


--

Oh, also, I don't want to forget the story of Scar and Johnny riding their bikes with a twelve pack of Shiner in the back. They hit a bump, the basket flew into the air, breaking three beers. Everyone at Sonic was yelling, John and Scar were yelling, the employees came out looking for blood. The beer was in a plastic bag, and the boys sat on the curb, drinking the beer from the bag, broken pieces of glass floating around. Text message sent to Tracy: "Emergency pick up needed. At the Sonic on Oltorf."

August, Already.

I noticed tonight: lots of hateful language and rude remarks. But maybe I'm not walking around Austin enough at 2 am to notice it.

In contrast, Jesse's favorite thing to do is to walk down the street and compliment everyone he sees. He means it every time, too, or else it would just be cruel. I think it's lovely.

Speaking of hateful language, I went out dancing with the beautiful gays and hipster fucks tonight. I was completely sweaty, exhausted, and happy. It was like going to a high school dance again. Soaked hair, tired feet.

--

"Ricky, I've been meaning to call you, I just haven't. I'm sorry."
"I know, me too, I got a new phone, though, so that's my excuse."
"Did you get a new number?"
"...No."