I started a quotation page from Sylvia Plath’s journals that I’ll keep adding to as I continue reading. It’s mostly for myself and is bare-boned designed, but you’re welcome to peek, of course.
Posted by: Zosia | 06-27-2002 | 07:06 PM
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Unorganized thoughts:
I am the poor man’s Sylvia Plath. I read her journals and she says everything I think, but with articulation and style. It almost makes me believe that I don’t even need to write my own thoughts when she has siphoned my brain from the past and published it already. We are very much alike, but I don’t plan on sticking my head in an oven. Then again, she probably didn’t plan on that, either.
I had all these thoughts while reading and drinking a Mocha Blast at Coffee Creek. I rushed home to this dank basement so I wouldn’t forget them, and now I think I have.
I hate trinkets. I don’t hate anything. I severely dislike trinkets that don’t mean anything, glass figurines that are merely for show or given by someone who didn’t know what to give as a gift. I look at the glossy bejeweled journals with inspirational sayings in Hallmark and I vow never to buy them. The journals I like are old dimestore notebooks, battered, coffee-stained and scribbled on. Red binders with black Sharpie drawings on the front and looseleaf paper falling out the pockets. Beautiful words should come in well-loved and well-worn packages. How can you write beautifully inside a commercially glossed binding?
The trinkets I have on my desk are not trinkets. I bring them with me; surround myself with them wherever I go. They are my runes, I suppose, my magic that keeps me stable. A Sweet Corn packet. A box made by Abbey containing a stale gummy worm, a class ring with an Amber stone and a broken necklace. My candles. My jasmine lotion. The small stuffed animals that sit on top of my computer – a raccoon, a battered Dalmatian, a whale, a lemur fashioned from clay and a flamingo puppet. I can tell you a story about each of them and why I can’t give them up.
On blazing hot days like this, I can tell you what does and does not matter. What matters is that, despite the heat, I had an excellent cup of coffee and an excellent sandwich from an independently run coffee shop, the type where the employees are young girls with blonde spiky hair in green wife beaters who understand why I’m sitting by a window, shuffling furiously for a pen because I am reading Sylvia Plath and I need to remember her wisdom. What matters is that in between the drama and the loneliness and the ache for missing friends comes pockets of this, of caffeine and literature fed ecstasy. It reminds me that I am the only one contained inside my body, no matter how far I’ve let others in. That I am not choosing between letting go of myself but choosing who I allow in the furthest. And maybe I’m not even choosing between that.
Posted by: Zosia | 06-27-2002 | 03:06 PM
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All the creative souls around me are creating creative things. If evidenced by that sentence, the percentage of creativity in my blood is at a dangerously low lovel right now. Erik is constantly working on the business plan for a million dollar recording studio/night club he’s opening up after graduation. A href=”http:/www.zosiablue.com/chrisfphp”>Chris F. is actually writing songs to completion. Some engineer kid I met the other week is working at a top secret nuclear plant building top secret complex missile shit. I think I prided myself on being artsy and having passion until last night someone laughingly said to me, “Oh, you. Your only art form seems to be eating sour gummy worms and Border fries.”
Wonderful. My art form is digesting. Don’t quote me on this, but I don’t think there’s a market for that.
Obviously, I like to write. Obviously, motivation is a severe deficiency for me, and as much as I’ve looked, there are no vitamins for this. I’ve written a million scraps of things that have never been finished. I actually looked on Google today with the phrase “how to be motivated.” Hundreds of gleaming smiling sites popped up, promising to motivate me in 12 easy steps and also help me lose 12 inches off my waist and 279 inches off my thighs. This doesn’t help me.
It would not be a complete lie to say everything I write is romanticized blurry bullshit. Some of it’s pretty, but most of it’s leftover angst. I want to be witty and write like Sars.
I’ve been thinking about all this because since I’m currently unemployed and seemingly will be until someone is willing to hire a space cadet girl for a month who has the skills of a blazing fast typist and ingesting sugary candy in the shape of fish bait, I figure I should work on my “talents” and “passion.”
Ha. Ha, I say. And ha I mean. You would think with the craziness going on in my little life (which you don’t know about, but trust me it’s crazy and not illegal, just gushy relationship type stuff), I would have some fodder for some crafty elegant and witty prose. Ha, I repeat. Ha.
I’m bad with ending things, in all sorts of ways. I like to leave things open-ended –
Posted by: Zosia | 06-25-2002 | 04:06 PM
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A few toasts:
Here’s to Taco Bell Border fries, whiplash, Advil and week-old lukewarm bottled water. Here’s to freezing basements, bruised thighs, stuffed flamingos and clean teeth. Here’s to leaving the one who loves you the most and running to those who don’t believe in words like love, and here’s to being condemned for months now by someone who only cares about one person in his life (hint: it’s not you) and if you happen to come close to having a very fiery automobile accident, here’s to the nonchalance in the voice of the condemner because, you know, you’re not important and you’re a sinner.
Here’s to overdramatic bitterness and here’s to needing a hug and needing a lobotomy and needing a spine.
Here’s to dedication, to music, to humidity, to candles, to smells lingering on pillows, to dumb choices, to fuckin’ boys, to clean laundry, failed mascara and most of all, here’s to trying to shake it off and continuing on like nothing has ever happened.
Posted by: Zosia | 06-17-2002 | 07:06 PM
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So, driving back from Duluth today, I got in two car accidents, within one hour. All I got was an awful headache and a small scratch on my car, but I can’t imagine when the next time I’ll be driving is as my cute little Hyundai has suddenly turned into a monstrous death machine in my eyes.
Posted by: Zosia | 06-17-2002 | 04:06 PM
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I would really like to have a comedy gold write-up sometime soon. A million funny things happen to me every day and I have the worst talent for causing a funny story to turn completely the opposite of humorous in the re-telling. So everything becomes lists or abstracts.
Let’s see what happens if I recount this last day, minus frills:
My days have run together. I don’t remember where I slept last night, whether it was in my bed or at the hotel with my mother, who’s visiting from Virginia for a week. I woke up, regardless, ate lunch at the local neighborhood grill of Applebee’s and then drove through hell and brimstone (ha! I’ve never used that phrase before) to get to the movie theatre, where my mother, my aunt and I viewed a very disappointing Divine Secrets of Ya-Ya Sisterhood, which I’m not ashamed to admit is one of my favourite books to the end of time. The movie, however, could’ve worked if it wasn’t such a mess. I hate messes of movies with talented actors in them. A waste!
After the movie, my car finally sputtered to an oil-free stop, as I haven’t changed my oil in oh, a year or so. A large man with a gold chain pulled up in a tow truck and filled my parched car with oil.
I then dropped my mom and aunt at their hotel, and returned to my place, where I had 10 minutes to freshen up before leaving for the nerd Alex 23rd birthday party at the bar in Bennigan’s. I made friends with the bouncer, drank 7&7s and Scooby Snacks, got hit on by an attractive girl, argued about baseball, got new phone numbers, ate Border fries from the Taco Bell across the street and then left, well liquored up, to continue the party at Alex’s girlfriend’s apartment.
Once there, I stuffed myself into a tiny tiny bikini, an experience I will not repeat, then chilled in the apartment jacuzzi with the party, which included two girls and myself, and 5 strapping young men. I drank some vodka, shuffled cards underwater, splashed around, saved my breasts from falling to their doom outside of the chihuahua size bikini and then I piled into a car and I crashed into my bed at 4, only to awake at 8 AM this morning.
That wasn’t so bad, was it? Now I’m off to spend time with my mother, who leaves tomorrow from the humid city of Minneapolis to the humid city of Richmond.
Tomorrow I will catch up on e-mail and on bills and on finding a job and find a way to not spend money, but still have fun. Thank you and good night.
Posted by: Zosia | 06-13-2002 | 10:06 PM
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I’m so behind in e-mail. Please forgive me, those I haven’t written back. I’ve lost the ability to type coherently.
At the club last night, we were squished together at the round black table. I was shoving my straw into a 7&7 that I didn’t even want; the bartender had been a jerk to me, but I had been lingering around the bar, so I felt like I had to buy $4.75 worth of whiskey and soda. I was pouting. But then: the music came on, and suddenly that was all that mattered, not the mean ponytailed bartender or the girl behind me who got pissed when I accidentally flipped my hair in her face or even fuckin’ boys - they especially didn’t matter.
To the beat of the drums I kept a steady fuck you fuck you fuck you in my head, and it wasn’t necessarily angry, quite empowering actually. The lights flipped around me, made me dizzy or the whiskey made me dizzy or fuckin’ boys made me dizzy, but either way, the bass was drumming deep in my chest cavity and to the beat of the drums I kept a steady I’m okay I’m okay I’m okay.
Afterwards, we ran out into the thunderstorm, all giggly wiggly, yelling to the lightening, mocking the cinematic quality of our youth.
On the drive home, the lights splashed across their faces, reflecting the brown and blue of their eyes.
In my bed that night, I had to force myself to breathe slowly so my heart would slow down its beat of you’re doomed doomed doomed doomed.
I am very dramatic, cardiovascular style.
Posted by: Zosia | 06-12-2002 | 11:06 PM
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It’s always when I’m doing the most that I have the least to say. I’ve been drinking wine coolers in hot tubs while wearing borrowed swimsuits, giving theatre master classes, driving to fancy grocery stores at 3 AM and buying midnight snacks of Sushi and Red Roasted Pepper dip, allowing people to attempt (and fail) to remove my belly button ring with rusty pliers, driving home at dawn in the fog and pink sky, meeting a million different pets in a million different houses, eating grilled veggie burgers and two sips of disgusting beer, listening to the same songs over and over again, curling up in passenger seats, losing shoes and shirts, driving too fast, hugging new people, hearing new music, reaching various heights of consciousness and aching and laughing and sleeping a whole whole lot.
And now I’m off to Duluth for the night, to return tomorrow afternoon.
Posted by: Zosia | 06-06-2002 | 06:06 PM
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Lately, my question has been: at what price comes independence? And why does it feel like the more you try to become independent, the stronger the push to hold you back is?
I just got lectured by the woman I’m renting my room from, and I now feel sulky and teenager-ish, which is the exact opposite of what I was trying to accomplish this summer.
After the new people and the music and wine coolers; after movies and cars and late-night gas station runs; after the coffee and the 5 PM breakfasts and the fingertips, independence means coming home to a damp, empty room with just things in it and no traces of the other people that have passed through it. Independence means still not remembering where the bathroom light is, and waking up in the pitch black. Independence means not having money or a job or a sense of direction to find you both. It means choosing between equal goods, and ending up with equal guilt. It means missing the voices of people you know in the echoes of the hallways, and missing being able to identify footsteps. It means being starving because all you’ve eaten all day was a doughnut and half, but are now too afraid to go to the kitchen to make food because your landlady just - nicely, but firmly - embarrassed the hell out of you and made you feel like a tresspasser already.
. . .
I finally saw The Lord of the Rings today at second-run movie theatre. Wow. I take back anything positive I might have inferred about Star Wars, because next to Lord of the Rings, Star Wars is a cardboard movie made by a group of underachiever second-graders.
. . .
Now that I’ve wallowed, I’m going to read and drink my coffee made with disgusting city water and not enough sugar, and wait until I don’t hear footsteps in the kitchen anymore.
. . .
Perhaps I’m still wallowing.
Posted by: Zosia | 06-02-2002 | 09:06 PM
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