"Peculiar Travel Suggestions" or "Finding Niagara"

So I read Cat's Cradle in one night, and came upon a superb quote the night before I embarked on a completely spontaneous, totally unplanned, fantastically unpredictable adventure with one Lindsey Mullen:

"Peculiar travel suggestions are dance lessons from God."

So we had a mantra. Then we had plane tickets, then we had two seats on a plane to the Buffalo/Niagara airport, and then we had a destination. And then we had the adventure.

If you want a play-by-play, there's twitter. If you want the highlights, there were friends we met on the bus that were always helpful, there were tiny birds that ate out of our hands about 10 yards from one of the most marvelous natural occurrences on planet earth, and there was a seriously beautiful stroke of divine intervention that led us to a positively fantastic hotel. Dearest thanks to Hotwire.com, your friendly neighborhood Buffalo airport security guard who also might be a drug dealer, and public libraries.

Buffalo and subsequently Niagara were, respectively, ghost-towns, but as Lindsey and I traveled the streets and public transit, we learned to appreciate it. It was quiet, chilly, and plenty of room to breathe. The houses in Buffalo have some of the most delightful-looking architecture I've ever seen, and we stumbled into a used book store full of hippies and a whole section of home-made zines. Sometimes whole streets would smell like garlic, and we danced to music playing from an outdoors store, and survived on nothing but crackers and clif bars. Then a doe-eyed little cheerleader from the church of Scientology gave us a free DVD.

The whole trip cost less than $300, including plane fare, hotel, food, and transportation. We only ate one real meal while we were there, and I think that the best way to appreciate food is to live on vending machine fare for a few days, then eat anything warm and soft. It'll be so good you'll insist it's manna from God himself, given only to you out of love.

It was a fantastic trip, and I didn't panic when we didn't have a place to stay, or when our friend Germaine tried to get us to stay in a hotel/front for human trafficking operation/crack house, or when Niagara was a town of abandoned buildings and closed Mediterranean food trailers.

My head was completely clear. It wasn't that I was making an effort not to think of my ex-boyfriend new happy-and-drug-free relationship, the work I have to get done for Apwonjo and graduation, papers and midterms, college sophomores who have still stolen my heart, my messy room, or my still foggy job prospects, but the thoughts weren't even there. I thought of nothing but Niagara falls, warm coats, Lindsey's smile, meeting new people, seeing new things, and appreciating how lucky I really am.

We only took video, no photos, so we'll take still shots from that later, and make a little travelogue. But for now, verbal description will have to suffice.

"There Is No Home Like The One You've Got, Cause That Home Belongs To You"

I need to go outside more. It just makes me feel good.



So yeah, I pretty much failed a midterm in one of my favorite classes. And yes, I got what can only be described as "royally rejected" from the guy that I've been gettin' weak in the knees for since November. And I've been worried about what to do after graduation, having no plans and no income, and every try in the job market collapsing like a flan in a cupboard.

But I have GOT to start remembering what I do have. Thanks, Tegan&Sara, for pumping all the sad girl lyrics you could through my speakers and into my veins, but let's take a break. It's a beautiful day outside, and tonight I go home to see my family and my dogs, and tomorrow I get to see Rutsky. I should be happy that I am starting to mend a friendship that I had no business breaking in the first place. I should be happy that I've got great friends and a good family and a nice computer and cowboy boots and a great job- even if it doesn't pay that well.

It's time to make spring break plans with my dream girl, and make some art to hang on people's walls, and cook lasagna and watch good movies and read Kurt Vonnegut and just go outside more.

<3<3<3gen

"I Just Want Back In Your Head" or "I Feel You In My Heart And I Don't Even Know You"

There are these two girls. They wrote a song about me,
and then they sent it to me. Now they live in my head.



"You Wouldn't Like Me", by Tegan and Sara

There's a war inside of me
Do I cause new heartbreak to write
A new broken song?
Do I push it down?
Or let it run me right into the ground?

Oh I, I feel like
I wouldn't like me if I met me

Well I can't stop talking for fear
Of listening to unwelcome sound
And you haven't called me in weeks and
Honestly, it's bringing me down

Oh, I, I feel like I wouldn't like me if I met me
I, I feel like you wouldn't like me if you met me



And don't you worry, there's still time
Don’t you worry, there’s still time

There’s nothing to live for
When I'm sleeping alone
And I wash the windows outside in
Hopes that the glare will bring you around

I, I feel like I wouldn't like me if I met me
I, I feel like you wouldn't like me if you met me



So you don’t you worry there’s still time
Don’t you worry there’s still time
So you don’t you worry there’s still time
Don’t you worry there’s still time
So you don’t you worry there’s still time
Don’t you worry there’s still time



Sunshine is days away
I won't be saved, I know all the words
I can't say that I'll love you forever
Sunshine is days away
I won't be saved, I know all the words
I won't say that I'll love you forever

"Whatever The Mess You Are, You're Mine, Ok" or "It's Not Easy To Be Human"

I have so many things to update about, and yet all that's on my mind is that if my back upper back were also a man, I have clearly slept with his wife and killed his dog.

I carry a laptop in a horribly inefficient messenger bag absolutely everywhere I go, for fear of leaving the still unpaid for computer anywhere but by my side. I am sleeping on various people's couches 3 nights a week, which lack in both back support and sufficient pillows. I spend inordinate amounts of time on my laptop, needing it for school and work and play and to update my facebook 24567 times a day. I regularly hoist up 40-50 pound toddlers up onto my hips and sometimes shoulders, carrying them around and sometimes whirling them around behind my back. Not to mention the pair of very beautiful, but also very heavy 36DDD boobs that I've got to keep afloat with nothing but pretty ribbon and what is likely coat-hanger wire.

Seems I may have developed some back problems.

I am, by all accounts, a muddled-up mass of injury at this point.

I still have a little limp on my left leg and now what appears to be a FUCKING STAB WOUND from the blue party last week, so the left leg is out of commission. My right leg is essentially fine, but it's pickin' up lefty's slack and it ain't happy about it. My hips, try as they might to avoid it, are bumped by my messenger bag, car doors, and door frames on such regular intervals that I've got two, half-moon shaped bruises atop each one. My right shoulder is the one that seems to be enacting the wrath of a drunken cuckold, and my uterus is in the process of punishing me inordinately for not bearing child this month. That last one, however, should always be regarded as a blessing. This all on top of the typical behaviour of little sleep, high caffeine levels, and pathetic eating schedule.

Wah, wah, wah, so on and so forth, poor me, poor me.

Anyway, I'm sorry to not write about visiting Graceland, Too with my friends in Holly Springs, MS at 1AM where I encountered the single most insane experience of my life. Add I don't have time to write about how I solved my boy problems, and even though there were tears and I'm still feeling a little rejected and in the process of licking my wounds, it's over, and that sure is better than having a "boyfriend"- blech. And I would post about how I was getting more and more scared of graduating, but once again the illustrious Miss Mullen of all things Glorious and Glitterous stepped in and eased my nerves.

But for now, laying on my bed and typing like this?
I THINK THIS IS HOW IT ALL STARTED, YOU MORON.

<3gen

"The Not-So-Good Leonora" or "My Analyst Warned Me, But You Were So Beautiful I Got Another Analyst"

This is what I really wish this blog could be like.

But I'm afraid that my writing skills are not up to par, I am far too honest and far too personal, and it will always be apparent that this is yet another place I go for affirmation.

But you guys still like my way a little, right?

See, there it is. Right there.

<3gen

p.s. Preview for next post: Graceland Too in Holly Springs, MS, how I'd forgotten how truly glorious it is to be single, and how I am slowly becoming afraid to graduate school.

"But You Still Crumble At My Name" or "I'm Building Lonely Mixtapes All Night Long"

Never wish that your life were more interesting. EVER.


<3gen

"Like He Was The Hat And Those Songs Were The Rabbit" or "The Earth Is Warmer When You Laugh"

I am so tired of having to take care of this silly physical being. Why can't I just run around in cowboy boots without arch support, tense my shoulders over a computer for 6 hours a day, stress myself out,consume nothing but lattes and beer, and sleep two hours a night? Why is that so fucking bad for me? Come on, it's 2009, why haven't we figured this out?

Well, since it appears that the above scenario doesn't bode well for feeling very healthy, I certainly haven't. I've been hitting that stage where you meet people on the sidewalk and they say, "Oh hey, you look tired!" At which point you just want to say something like, "Well thanks," or punch them. I've begun craving the Victorian Era where it would be perfectly acceptable for me to walk into class, discover that my test in not in fact a week away but is today, and just faint onto a nearby couch. But nobody invests in fainting couches these days.

Inside all of this physical abuse my emotional center has turned into something resembling a poor little bruised peach. I just can't ever turn off these pesky little neurons that keep firing and re-firing, analyzing and over-analyzing, alternating between being convinced that my needy-little-self is what makes me so gosh-darned-lovable, and perpetual loathing of how that needy-little-self might be the thing standing between me and what I want. The other night I sat across from him while he talked about music, and wrote down every word he said. God, it's just as tiring to try and take care of this emotional peach as it is to take care of my vital organs.


More than an adequate fainting couch, I've been craving escape. I want to hide, disappear. Instead of work, school, friends, parties, I want to sit in my room and organize my music files, read all the books I've got but have never read, paint my desk, sew a dress. I just want to lock myself in my room for days and stay in bed under my big, white comforter and pretend I'm in the clouds.

My strange sleep schedule has lent itself to intense and frequent dreaming. Every time I wake up I'm so disappointed that there's this big, great, free adventure happening in my head, and I have to miss it so that I can do things like eat, work, and live.

<3gen