So, I’m looking for summer work. I’ll most likely end up staying in Duluth, but I’m having the urge to be random and go somewhere I’ve never lived, and work a random job there for the summer. Do you, kind readers, have any recommendations of where I should go? or what I should do? Let me know. I’m open where that isn’t Minnesota (unless it’s a really incredible job in the Cities) or Chester, Virginia.
The Friday Five:
1. If you could eat dinner with and “get to know” one famous person (living or dead), who would you choose? You know, I’ve come across the question a lot in my day, and there’s too many to choose from. I think my answers range from Stephen King to Queen Elizabeth I to Ralph Fiennes to William Styron to your mom.
2. Has the death of a famous person ever had an effect on you? John F. Kennedy, JR. Maybe it was because I grew up with stories from my parents on where they were when JFK was shot, and that resonated. I was 18, freshly graduated from high school and on the verge of ending a relationship with my first love.
3. If you could BE a famous person for 24 hours, who would you choose? Myself, when I’m famous, of course.
4. Do people ever tell you that you look like someone famous? Who? When I was younger, everyone told me I looked like Macauley Culkin. Yes, I’m female. Laugh all you want, jerks. Just kidding. On an airplane a while back, a couple of teenage boys swore I was Heather Graham, and didn’t believe me when I told them I wasn’t. Ha. I wish.
5. Have you ever met anyone famous? I talked to Brandy in a sunglass shop in Greenwich Village once. Ernie Sabella hit on me after a show I saw him in once. I met Jay Mohr in a movie theatre in Richmond (the movie was Life is Beautiful). My brother dated Marcia Gay Harden’s sister, does that count? Jesse Ventura shouldn’t count, but I’ve met him.
In order to escape Sunny Wicked for a bit (I love them in concert; listening them to record and work on the same song over and over again gets a tiny bit headache-inducing), Beth and I went to Amazing Grace (coffee/bakery/live music hole in the wall place). There was an acoustic guitar player from Georgia there, so instead of getting homework done (our original intent), we listened to him. He was good – had a nice voice and a good humbling presence, and he was Southern, so I bought his CD.
It was more than that, though. I haven’t bought a CD in literally years because I don’t have a CD player, and I’m a MP3 type of gal, anyway. I get into these modes where I’m completely sensual and sentimental, and I guess it was the fact that he was from Atlanta (my mother’s hometown) and the fact that some of his songs were sweet and touching, and the fact that damn it, I fall for the musician everytime.
He was much better live. Sometimes my whims are just a little too, hmm, whimm-y.
Intelligence 7 days a week, 24 hours a day, right here, folks, come and get it.
Anyway, he inspired me to write a little and to want to go home and be in the South where I belong, anyway. Ya’ll knew that anyway, didn’t you? I’ve always been a stranger here, just biding my time until school is over. I’ve felt for a year now that my welcome is overstayed in Minnesota, but I’ve got to finish school.
Or at least that’s what I’ve been told.
PS: I finished American Gods. Not the ending I expected, but still an excellent excellent book, recommended to all.
Duluth is awakening to Spring finally, and so am I, I think.
It’s been a long time since I’ve been so taken by a book that I literally couldn’t put it down. I’ve been longing for that sort of book, and I’m glad Neil Gaiman’s American Gods came around. I’m just spellbound by it. I’m really fascinated by his maturity in writing, as well. I read Neverwhere a long while back, and while I liked it, it definitely wasn’t nearly as engaging or intricate as American Gods. I’ve stopped myself from reading it straight through so I can savor it.
I’m getting back into the swing of everything, slowly. I’m not quite there yet, but we are in the muddy transition time I talked about disliking in the Friday Five down there. All my shoes are caked in mud and my knees are scraped raw because I keep falling on what looks wet patches, and is actually deceptive evil ice.
I’ve caught up on my classes, but I’m worried about my acting class. I missed Monday, where my acting partner and I were supposed to work over our scene with our professor. He’s always good about writing or calling me back when I leave him messages, but this time I think he’s sick of my inconsistencies. And maybe her, as well, since she hasn’t called or written back either. We have to perform the scene (from Othello; I’m Emilia) on Monday. I’m wondering if I have an automatic F since I couldn’t go on Monday? We’ll see.
Back to the book and to make some more coffee.
Ah. The first Monday back from Spring Break, and I’m sick as a damn dog, for various reasons. I really hate that I missed the first day of school, as this has been my Study Like A Good Girl semester, and I don’t want to blow it over the wussiness of my immune system. I’ve been on and off sick the latter half of the week, randomly the off portion being between the hours of 2 PM and 8 PM. So I have six minutes to go before I crumble here.
I did, however, watch all four hours and 20 odd minutes of the Oscars. I enjoyed them, though someone on Metafilter called them the worst Oscars yet. I thought it was actually the best in a while, but I’ve slacked a few years here and there. Gwyneth Paltrow’s dress made us all cringe, however. Some one referred to her poor breasts as playdough shaped by a three year old.
Anyway, I’m babbling in a feverish haze.
Positive things:
Beth has made me laugh, sickness and all, more than any person has in a long while, and it’s all over dumb things only I would find funny (like, she came up with the concept of instead of wearing leather, wearing the actual live animal attached to you on a rope of some kind and – well, you had to be there).
I literally got piles of mail today. Woo! Of course, it was everything I ordered online during Spring Break, when I turned into that housebound woman surfing the Home Shopping Network who buys every fake emerald necklace and porcelain doll with “real human hair” she sees (minus everything past the words “surfing the”).
I spoke with my mother on the phone for the first time in months. I miss her.
Most of my teachers were surprisingly understanding about my absence in class today (the most important one was not understanding, but ah, that’s not a positive).
Alright, it’s past 8:00. I must curl into a ball with a book and my (still!) decaf coffee, and weather the annoying battle going on my my bloodstream.
Along with participating in Orange Cloud’s Participation Positives, I was also directed towards Smattering.org’s Friday Five. A list of five questions is posted every Friday, and then various kids on various sites post their answers to the questions. Since my writing well has been running on empty for days now, I’m happy for anything that fleshes out the content here. So, the Friday Five:
1. What is your favorite time of year? This depends on where I am. If I’m home in Virginia, it’s autumn because, hey, nothing beats a Virginian fall. Or is that New England? In Duluth, it’s early summer ’cause it’s perfect weather to be by the lake (or in it, whatever your preference).
2. What is it about your favorite season that, well, makes it your favorite season? Well, the air during autumn in Virginia just has a indescribable clarity to it. It’s warm enough to go without a jacket, but not without a sweater. And, durn, if the leaves gist aren’t purty. Summer in Duluth for reason stated above – lake and all.
3. What is your least favorite time of year? Why? I suppose the transition times, when the ground is muddy and slick, and the weather is moody and rather gross.
4. Do you do anything to celebrate or recognize the changing of seasons? Nothing officially. I start walking more places in the spring, and I think I cry more in the winter (as in, when my car does 360s into ditches and/or elderly men walking on the sidewalk).
5. What’s your favorite thing to do outside? I love to read outside in the sun. Delicious. I’ve been camping only a few times in my life, but I think that would be my favorite if I did it more often. Jet ski. All that good stuff.
Original content to resurface soon. It’s because I’m having to drink decaf coffee, I think (caffeine counteracts with my medicine as of late, damn poison) and it’s stunting my creativity. Right.
Requiem for a Dream has got to be one of the most disturbing movies I’ve ever seen. It was excellent – but I can’t even fathom seeing it again. It’s the first movie that’s ever been uncomfortable for me to watch. But you should see it. Really
The answer to the question posed below was no. I caved in and went to bed without creamy goodness. I think I’ll wait until tonight for the ice cream, anyway – Beth returns from Minneapolis tonight, and she can’t resist the saucy temptation of Starbuck’s ice cream.
I’m writing and writing and writing up a storm lately, and right now, it’s mostly on the reflective, serious side, as the excerpts I’ve been including here have shown. It’s so strange – I’m rarely serious in real life, and on here, I’m just as angtsy as can be, for the most part. There needs to be a word for Adult Angst, because you usually only hear that paired with Teenage. Is there a word for it? Mid-life crisis, breakdown, etc.? Or should I just smush the words together and start a snappy word trend: aduang. There you go.
Anyway, a little more aduang for you, courtesy my extra secret private journal (you know, the one with the slick pink plastic cover with Barbie on it and the gold lock, with the key taped to the back):
I’ve missed these contemplative mornings (eh, afternoon at the moment). Though I really do miss Erik, it’s nice to have my room to myself again in this way – to drink coffee, and stare out the window mindlessly without him thinking I’ve gone into some schizophrenic catatonic trance. To listen to the birds and watch them blacken the sky. Open the window, let the cold air rush in, de-numbing me, letting me know that all is not lost, you know, it’s right out there, in the melted snow and undulating trees and circling blackbirds.
The people in the house across the street will never know the intimate relationship I have with their house. The sun, setting, rising, skimming the sky, is always reflected in the house’s upper windows, and on their roof, I watch the crows nest and pick at each other.
The air hints of spring, but it’s the ultimate coquette, as we’re supposed to get more snow this weekend. But I smell it on the wind – everyone’s written about it a hundred times before, but I suppose it’s just that powerful: that lightness, the freshness, the sharpness of the world trying to revive itself, trying desperately to penetrate the winter. And it always prevails, doesn’t? Every damn time.
/end top secret journal
I’m hoping that once this reflectivness is purged from my writing, I’ll be able to move onto something a little less – well, reflective. I have been studying the Romantics as of late, however, so I’m sure that has something to do with it.
The question is: do I really need Starbuck’s ice cream from the 24 hour grocery store right this very moment? Is this craving massive enough for me to change out of my pajamas and suffer the cold for sweet creamy coffee goodness?
Way back in the day (meaning a few months ago), I used to write out what I called “karmic counteractances” – basically, a list of things, to counteract my bitching, I was grateful for or had made me happy. Behold! Someone (specifically, a fine woman I’ve never met named Jess at Orange Clouds) has made a web trend of sorts called Participation Positives. The premise is to post a “list of positives,” as she calls it, each Monday to start the week on, well, a positive note. The love-and-peace part of me likes that. And, guess what, it’s Monday, so here’s a sweet little list of positives for you to feel good and furry about:
1. I think I figured out a way to realistically graduate on time. This means, of course, busting my ass a bit, but, hey, I wouldn’t be lingering in Duluth any longer than I had to.
2. That had an undertone of negativity. Let’s try again. Erikwent to Minneapolis for Spring Break, and he usually takes his precious heaven-sent down comforter with him everywhere he goes (it’s his security blankie, cute boy), and I suffer tremendously. I came home from work today, however, to find that he left it here, so I would have it. Such sweetness.
3. I don’t have to be up at any certain time tomorrow. Woo!
4. On a general note, I adore my friends. I’ve gotten to know a few of them even better this past week, and I love that feeling of digging into a new person, learning each new quirk.
5. I made an excellent cup of coffee tonight for the first time in weeks – English Toffee flavor with a little French Vanilla creamer mixed in. An orgasm on my caffeine starved tongue.
Sleep now.
I just spent 10 hours working at a concession stand. 10 hours, with one 15 minute break. All together now –
I’m tiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiired.
Ahem. Did I mention I’m the oldest person at the Omnimax? And I mean oldest over even the supervisors, who are 17 and 18. At first, I thought this was a bit of a novelty, a bit of a ooo-look-at-me-I’m-an-experienced-college-woman type of thrill. But no. I figured out today that most college kids my age have real jobs, and that’s why high schoolers are doing grunt popcorn work.
High school is so far away for me. Only three years ago, but, my God, it feels like an eternity because I’m a completely different person in a completely different situation (and state) than I ever even imagined I would end up. So, I can’t identify with any of these kids at work anymore. I feel like such a snot saying I can’t remember what it’s like to be 16, but damn it, I really can’t. I have sense memories – as evidenced by entries below this – but the actual frame of mind is lost on me.
I really want to do something productive now, like drink coffee or read a book, but my body is screaming obscenities at me, and my eyes are falling fast.
I will mention that yesterday was a wonderful day. Nothing thrilling happened – but – it felt like a little taste of a few years ago, when Matt and Erik and Andrew and I were best buddies, and I hung out with the guys, listening to music and just experiencing that type of friendship. It was nice.
Almost everyone is gone for Spring Break. Sniff. It’s just me, Corina and Jason left to roll around in this big house.
“She says, forget what you have to do — pretend
there is nothing outside this room. And like an idea
she came to me, but he came too late
. . . or maybe too soon.
I said, please try not to love me. Close your eyes,
I’m turning on the light — you know I have no vacancy,
and it’s awfully cold outside tonight.
The rain stains the brick a darker red.
Slowly, I’m rolling out of her bed.
The rain stains the streets a darker black.
I dress my face in stone because I cannot go back.
I feel her eyes watching me from
behind the curtain of her hair.
And she says, I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to stare.
I say — I think I really have to go now . . .
but oh baby, maybe someday . . . maybe somehow.”
–Ani DiFranco
Another excerpt from my written journal:
The last bottle of Contradiction I had shattered on my desk at VCU nearly three years ago. Nick and I had been broken up just over two weeks. I didn’t mean for it to break. The room smelled like it for weeks, and I can’t quite remember the scent anymore. Intellectually, I see it, the not-quite-musky amber liquid and the silver phallic bottle smashing against the floor. But I can’t smell it. I’m this close to ordering another bottle online just to remember the scent, but it somehow seems sacrilege, since Nick was the one who bought each bottle for me, wrapped in red and white roses. I don’t even know if I want to smell it again – I have no idea what it will bring back: sweet memories, the Barksdale Valentine’s and rich elegant dinners; or the solitary confinement of that room, dark, I don’t even remember if I had a lamp and the liquid penetrating everything, my clothes, my hair, my sheets, clinging, to remind me: it’s not over yet. Not nearly.
I am now officially on Spring Break and my mind won’t shut off. It makes me think I still have papers to write and lines to memorize and dialects to learn, but no, I have a week full of nothing but the Omnimax and whatever else I choose.
So I choose to give a shout out to one of my dogs, Lady (generic, I know; but, get this: one of my other dogs is named Tramp) who just had a cyst removed from her eye. So, feel better soon, Lady, because obviously dogs read webpages, especially my dogs:
Interesting side effects of post-show madness: one night I want to smush Fruit Loops into Erik floor to get him to pay attention to me and the the next I want to sing him lullabies.
And totally unrelated to war (or is it? A chin rubber.), I’m re-reading Sophie’s Choice for the millionth time and I can’t say it enough: this is my absolute favorite book of all time (I know that sounds juvenile, but hey, it’s the bestest). Seriously. It’s one of those books where the if-it-was-a-person-I’d-worship-and-fornicate-with-it type deal is in place.
The thing is, I don’t talk a lot about my politics on here because I’m so minimally educated on them. I don’t have solid facts to back up most of what I feel, but the thing also is that if a conservative or war-driven individual spread the facts out before me, I will still feel the same.
I think war is immature, fruitless and absolutely barbaric. I don’t like weapons and I think killing anything living is atrocious, down to ants and spiders (I even feel a little guilt about having a vase of flowers on my desk). I can’t even attempt to think about the war most of the time because I will go absolutely mad and my heart, which is already raw and ripe on a butcher block, will burst. I don’t have a solution for terrorism or for hatred, but for freak’s sake, I want to shake our President when he says stupid stupid things like this, and ask him if he realizes that using nuclear power means destroying the world. Does he? Does anyone? Desensitization, I know. Hippie, tree-hugger, bleeding heart, pansy ass liberal, I am.
But I refuse to support the massacre of life. It will never be right for me, and no matter how educated on the matters of politics I become, I will still not believe in it.
Now I’m going to drink my organic orange juice and make daisy chains, damn it.
An excerpt from my written journal:
I just want the trains and the sunlight and the tanned freckled shoulders again, and I’m not talking nostalgia. I’m talking reference of mind – the orange cakes and Ella Fitzgerald and the black light and that pink tanktop that was too big for me, but I thought was sexy because it slid off my bony shoulders. Standing in Geoffrey’s kitchen under the dimmed orange light, his mother in her healing room, smoking, his father on the porch, so Scottish, watching the railroad take his life away, inch by inch, shaking the house, reflecting in the purple crow ball in the grass.
Cards on the deck. Laying under trees. Sitting on jungle gyms, trading inner secrets. Fourth of July, fireworks, swimming in his pool, thinking I’m Victorian just because I’m wishing on the moon, and then sleeping in his bed, and drinking Peach Schnapps and vodka, and breaking the shower curtain, and puking in the toilet, and cartoons in the morning. The red van, the blue van passing on the street. The awkward hug. The make-up on the basketball court, no moon that night, just the shadows from the summer trees.
But then. Blue dress and smeared mascara. We’re leaving, we’re leaving, I can’t find my shoes, someone’s kicked them under the bleachers. And then. Sitting in the car by the park, black smears on my hand, him saying I needed help, and let me look: girl now, in Duluth, in her blue plaid pajamas pants and high school sweatshirt . . . you didn’t need help, you needed a life beyond him, you needed to get away from him. You need help now, not then. Walking in the rain to Geoffrey’s house in high silver shoes, he took you and gave you Sunkist. But your heart was so bound, so full of the luxury of first love, the kind of bursting that feels like a sweet dying, before you were so afraid of death, when you embraced it.
And were there more sweet moments? I can’t remember. The only thing that sticks in my mind is that summer, that year. I always say 17 was my best year and it was, because I didn’t care, because I was so fucking reckless and wonderful and gorgeous in the sunlight. Because I was scared to drive, but not scared to love, not scared to approach the skinny blonde by the doorway, not scared to be my age and steal margaritas from her house, and juggle three boys at once and not even realize my beauty, that lanky redheaded beauty that I will never get back because I’ve forgotten how to be young. I’m so focused on my head and my health and getting through each war torn tower blown day that I forget about the sunlight. I look at it stream through my window and reflect on the house across the street, but I don’t run out into it, feel the delicious light strike me in the face, letting me know that the world is hot and alive, and so am I. I can be old when I’m old, but now I need to fall in the snow and feel the cold and let the branches of the dead lilac tree cut me until I see the real blood. But I can’t, and I know I won’t.
I have my tulips. Now I need to go to the rain forest and grow them.
I have a completely irrational hatred towards beer. I’m not sure why – I think I have all sorts of weird negative connotations attached to it, and therefore, I hate it with my life. I hate the taste, for one thing, but that’s not even half of it. I was so happy to find a boyfriend who didn’t drink beer (not that any other boyfriend I’ve ever had has been an extreme beer drinker, but that’s besides the point). But now. Now, my darling precious Erik has turned into a beer drinker and it makes me want to retch. It makes me pissed at him for no good reason.
That’s all for tonight. I have nothing against anyone else drinking beer. Just myself and my boyfriend.
And before anyone points out that I drank beer at a few restaurants in the last couple of months – hey, it was all they had, I just turned 21 and I wanted to feel cool.
I still hate beer and wish it to burn in hell.
Hey, Body Clock, what’s up? Listen, I’m kind of confused. Why is it that during the week you make me hyper and bright-eyed awake until about 4 AM, and then make me dead zombie tired when I have to wake at 9 AM, and then on a Friday night, when I obviously have the resources and the time allotted to stay up quite late and wake late into the next afternoon, you make me pass out from exhaustion at 1 AM, and then wake me with no chance of sleeping again at 6 AM? What the hell am I supposed to do at 6 AM on a Saturday? I mean, honestly.
Oh, and if you get a chance, could you talk to my mucous membranes? They seem to think I asked them to fill my throat with their grossness every morning. They are mistaken. Thank you for your time.
The show that has eaten my life for the past two months is finally over. Our last performance went well; our audience had a pulse, at least. I wasn’t required to stay after and strike the set, but it’s always good form to do so if you’re in the show – but I wanted to get the hell out of there, and I did. I loved the people, but I needed this to be over.
Tomorrow I start work at a new job. I’ll be an Omnimax girl, whatever that entails.
Duluth has been in the midst of a blizzard this week, piles and piles of snow. My Southern blood is shrieking and fanning itself.
I have this uneasy, incomplete feeling. I’m not sure why. Maybe it’s because I didn’t stay to strike the set. Maybe it’s because the worst isn’t over like I think it is (insert dramatic scary muted trumpet here).
New readers. Hi. I’ve noticed you sneaking into my hits. I thought I would let you in on the little secret that’s zosiablue right now. It’s kind of in a bit of purgatory – in the middle between a aesthetic redesign and also a content redesign. I’ve had my little space on the web since 1997, though only this particular dwelling since last year. I write about anything and everything, minute and scandalous. I have archives, if you’re interested in reading those, but you’ll have to e-mail me for the link (though I suppose they’re not difficult to find, if you want to snoop).
My other pages up there – about, cast, links – reflect my old design. So, zosiablue is in a mishmash limbo as of now.
But keep reading because sometimes I have exciting thrilling life changing things to say. Like setting my hair on fire.
/end random need for new introduction
I think one of the worst scents in the world has to be hair on fire. Why do I bring this up, you ask? You probably don’t even need to wonder. So I won’t tell you. Instead, I will let this picture do the talking:
The local paper review of the show. He can’t quite decide if the play was whiny or bizarre, and thinks I have a “face for pouting.
“Through the night my heart was aching,
just before the dawn was breaking,
I peeked in and on her bed,
in gay profusion lying there,
Lovely ribbons, scarlet ribbons,
scarlet ribbons for her hair.”