Behind the Curve
Friday, July 30, 2004
Breathe
Yesterday, a giant steel girder fell from the sky like an omen from the construction site across the street. I heard the impact. There were no casualties. Construction workers scurried off with the offending structure, like ants.
In South Africa, they are running out of grave space and are interring new bodies on top of old bones. The AIDS epidemic is advanced enough in some places that in a few years, there will be a noticeable absence of women.
Personal Trainer Man says that I tend to hold tension, and that I should breathe, release. I don't know about this. I would like more drugs. I'm going back on the Pill on Sunday; we'll see if that helps. Funny, the first time I went on birth control pills, I spent my nights listening for blood clots lodging in my limbs. It's rare but not unheard of for girls to have strokes... I wonder if Carmen ever recovered from hers? She was only a few months older than me, and then - bam - she comatose, or brain dead.
Oh, yeah, I was supposed to be breathing, right?
Wednesday, July 28, 2004
It wasn’t a scar. It was raised like a bruise. But it looked like a flower.
J & L visited from Australia, unborn child and all, for MN & E’s wedding. Emma looked happy, for the brief moment that I saw her. Keith visited from Ecuador for unrelated reasons. And Matt’s back too, possibly for good. It’s good to see all of these people, at least for me. Maybe this will help me develop some spirit, or failing that, at least some backbone.
Funny how half your friends are happy to see each other, and the other half immediately want to draw blood, or at least throw a damaging blow to the face. Please don’t make me choose sides. I can nod and smile forever, but I feel so two-faced and fractured already. Yes, I know I should suck it up and acknowledge my responsibility to disown half of you (which half?), but I’m so close always to just leaving. It gets easier and easier to imagine my life without any of you. I’m sorry, but it’s true.
John asked me about 4 times which school I was attending. From this, I guess I can gather that he doesn’t trust me at all, or else is very, very forgetful after a few beers. Even still, I cried on his shirt forever. Couldn't stop. All the martial arts angst I just can’t seem to shake lately. I’m so pathetic. Bemused as he must have been, he did what any decent man should have done and hugged me while I cried. He said that I shouldn’t give up, and that the one thing I definitely shouldn’t do is leave. I do trust his judgement more than most.
So I guess I’ll write another check...
Come to think of it, Paul was reminding me the other day of that time two years ago when everyone was breaking apart, and I got drunk and was violently ill and cried a lot because everyone was leaving us on such bad terms. Paul says it's one of his favorite memories for what it demonstrates. It is so embarrassing that anyone even remembers that.
I’m a fucking mess, aren't I?
Phat
Apparently, I can eat a lot more than my coworker Steve and his roommate Craig, as I was able to finish a whole cheeseburger at McHale’s after Peter’s going-away party, and they were only able to finish about a half apiece.
I shouldn’t be proud of this. Really, I should be quite ashamed. But I’m smirking inwardly.
Thursday, July 15, 2004
Progress!
All right, because I am incredibly LAME, I have been watching "I Love the 90’s" on VH1. Yes, it’s imperative to feel nostalgia for a decade that ended FOUR YEARS AGO,
In the 90s, Kurt Cobain killed himself a few weeks after one of my best friends had a miscarriage and tried to commit suicide. Now Cobain is still dead, Courtney Love is performing marriages when she’s not in jail, and my suicidal friend has become my Mary Kay rep. Go figure.
Wednesday, July 14, 2004
Adopt-a-Cactus
A-ha! We have named Kam's cactii! "Fluffy" is the fuzzy one. "Ichi the Killer" is the prickly one. I wanted to name them "Pamela Anderson" and "Tommy Lee," but nooo...
Monday, July 12, 2004
Kactus krazy!
My cube-mate Kam has brought in two fuzzy little cactii, which now reside on the radiator by our window. They are each smaller than my thumb. It's almost as if he were trying to make himself at home, or something. Perhaps we should name them, as pets.
Sunday, July 11, 2004
Blast from the past
Loaned my "Invader Zim" DVD to Taylor. In return, he loaned me the Czech surrealist movie "Little Otik." I am suitably disturbed. He would have loaned me "Meet the Feebles," but I've already seen it.
In the middle of telling him that, I suddenly remembered that the time I saw "Meet the Feebles," I was getting nailed by a guy named Randy. Maybe I didn't finish watching it. Certainly, I don't recall how it ended. When you think of it, what kind of guy watches that movie when he's having sex with a girl? Oh, wait. Most of the guys I know. But I actually had known about that movie before, because it was made back in the days when I used to read "Fangoria" and kept up with such things.
I used to go up/I used to go down...
I've been out of martial arts for 2 weeks now (ankle sprain), and memory is beginning to return to me. My former self is beginning to return to me. This is neither good nor bad.
To expain... TaeKwon-Do provides a go-to topic to think about, so even when I'm not in the do jang, I know I should be thinking about how to execute a better kick, a better punch, and how can one develop indomitable spirit, anyway? Is it possible to "be content with what I've got" when I'm so fundamentally not living up to what my martial arts master wants me to be?
Like the cosmetic psychopharmacology of Prozac, martial arts rewrites my surface personality, scours down the intricate folding of my cortex, because I just don't have time to think about anything else. I'm less moody and have more external support... but now that I'm gone, I worry a little about my lack of independence. While I'm there, things that used to disturb or worry me get glanced over and quickly forgotten. This may be healthy. Then again, it may be a sign that I'm relinquishing my sense of personal responsibility for my own thoughts and actions. And maybe the fact that I'm obsessing over it just means that I need to get my hands on some real SSRIs, STAT.
Whoops...Our bad...
Ah, so the government just admitted that the whole WOMD thing was just a ruse. Those wacky world leaders!
Who didn't see that one coming?
We are so going to get bombed out of existence. We so deserve it.
Got home at 6pm yesterday, fell asleep, woke up at 9pm and cooked a stew. Wanted a beer. Made do with some Kahlua and half and half substitute. Tasty with ice. Should go jogging after such a calorie splurge, but my abused ankle is making crunching noises now.
Must drink more to stop the pain! <-- sarcasm
Damn you, Helen Fielding, for writing Bridget Jones's Diary and rewiring me so I no longer start my sentences properly with the word "I." Must... fight... lazy... grammar... Must... stop... reading... chick... lit...
On the subject on non-chick lit, have you ever noticed that male writers can make such good use of the word "motherfucker," but female writers never seem to? Or maybe it's just the books that I've been reading. Can someone find me a good, female-written novel with an effective use of the word "motherfucker?" Surely there's one?
Thursday, July 08, 2004
snip
Me: You son of a bitch.
Smita: I know, I'm sorry.
Me: But Kam does not care; he has an ice cream sandwich!
Smita: That does look very tasty.
Tuesday, July 06, 2004
July 4th
You know you're at an Asian American's barbecue when 1) Grilled FISH BALLS are on the menu, and 2) Through a freak defrosting accident, the burgers are made of ground pork, not beef. There’s ten of us on a suburban patio, eating Kam’s assorted meat simulacra, and none of us can ever legally be president. The American dream. So far, I am the only one to have brought beer. The others, perversely, have brought two coolers full of Mountain Dew. Loads of sugar, loads of caffeine, and it glows radioactively like something out of a sci-fi movie. Asian Americans love sci-fi. We know enough to pronounce it "skiffy," just to piss off s-f writer Harlan Ellison. We are math geeks, and over-enthusiastic. We just don’t know how to be laid back.
Lies. All lies.
There is also a salad, which I blithely ignore.
Taylor is there. He procured my cell phone number two days before through the advanced interrogation technique of saying "Gimme your number, damnit!" I guess it was a long time coming.
We hung out in Central Park the day before, lying on towels on the Great Lawn. I read a book; he dozed. Upon waking, he said, "Good God, I’m a lazy fuck!" It was funny. I think I laughed. He is two months older than I am, but I feel like he’s younger.
I make a joke to Kam about eating his (fish) balls to prove I’m not a skirt, and he burps loudly in reply. Kam sits next to me at work, drinks a lot of Diet Pepsi, and is developing a Morse code that consists entirely of burping. He’s so soft-spoken that I’d never hear a word he said otherwise.
Sunday night, July 4th, on the 1 train back home. A bunch of kids (the lack of facial hair makes them look about 16) are whacking each other’s heads with rolled up newspapers. WHACK! SLAM! They’re really hitting hard. It’s all in good fun, and they are enjoying themselves, but I am afraid they will inflict papercuts on the tender flesh of their eyeballs, lacerate a cornea. I am old now, ancient, venerable. 27 and a half.
Their comic timing is quite good. Stooge-esque.
Feint. Parry. Fake. Double hit.
"Oh, shit!"
WHACK! -WHACK! -WHACK!
There are not enough seats for them to all sit next to each other, so one of them, the one with two rolled up newspapers in his hands like nunchaku, sits next to me and is momentarily safe.
"How long are you staying to?" he asks me.
"86th," I answer. This is the truth. It’s just two stops away.
"Oooh, shit!" say his cohorts, laughing in anticipation.
He mutters a curse, good-naturedly.
"Can’t you stay till at least 116?"
I smile, I think, wearily. Across the aisle, one of the boys has opened his paper and is eyeing the ads for call girls and strip clubs.
"The amazing Kiki," he reads aloud, "Shit, man, look at her tits."
His seat mate looks over his shoulder, gets smacked upside the head.
"That’s one of them Asian girls," he says.
I’m an Asian girl. Should I be offended? Do they mean for me to be? They are so young.
I want to say "When I was your age," and have it sound like a joke. An elderly woman sits across from me (straggly white hair, a housecoated thing), huddling in on herself. She looks horrified, but for all I know she’s smiling ruefully inside her head; she’s wishing the same damn thing.
I'm getting older, too
Ankle still sprained. I want to run, though I’m not sure if that is such a good idea. I’m not fat yet, but getting there.
Finished reading Pattern Recognition by William Gibson. Elegant, elegant writing and a good mystery. Grief for 9/11 well documented. Apparently, William Gibson and Douglas Coupland know each other and converse about Tokyo. Who didn’t see that one coming? Coupland’s books seem to get sadder and sadder in tone, though I suppose his characters still retain some feelings of hope. Well, like all of us, I guess Coupland and his characters are getting older, a little more melancholy. I actually read Generation X a few months ago, and while it was gimmicky (would that I could come up with a gimmick like that!), it was still fresh, and very humorous. Sort of smartass and off-the-cuff in a way Hey Nostradamus! and All Families Are Psychotic aren’t.
One of these days, I will read Polaroids from the Dead, which I hear is his take on being over 30. In 2 and a half years, when I’ll need the instruction.
Started You Shall Know Our Velocity by Dave Eggers. Watched the first 9 episodes of "Invader Zim." Jhonen Vasquez dialogue sort of resonating with the Eggers prose ("Please end my suffering now.") I think they have similar senses of humor, somehow.
Why is the idiot-robot Gir so much like me?
spurred flowers
Funny how when you think of the word "columbine" now, you think of violent death and not of flowers.
The word "columbine," according to Merriam-Webster, is derived from the Medieval Latin columbina, which means "like a dove." The dove, of course, being the international sign of peace.
Columbine is not a pretty name for a girl. I don’t see it catching on. Columbina, maybe. Like a dove.
I need to develop an alternate identity. Not a superhero identity. Just because there’s no one else to talk to, no one I trust, and there must be conversation happening, dialogue, because the logical conclusions lie outside of mental walls, and my thoughts, running away from me, always, cannot be followed through. This has always been my problem.
Friday, July 02, 2004
There are days
when you’re so tired, you sit down and the world goes sort of gray and muted. There’s a tingling in your head, your strung-out nervous system buzzing fitfully like Alka-Seltzer. A faint but straining nausea having to do with the piercing thinness of the light (it gets in everywhere) and the damp woolen heaviness of everything else.
Wow, this is hella bad prose. And by "hella bad," I mean awful.
