Below are the 20 most recent journal entries recorded in mel's LiveJournal:

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Monday, February 24th, 2003
9:33 pm	updates and recent fragments b slinks his way out of the picture, but interpol was great and even greater with a midori sour. first taxi, six blocks after trudging in the rain. rain (and a crucial et cetera) brought wednesday february 12th dear to my heart. a best friend days later brought it dearer. this morning still dearer. almost a problem, almost not there. but entirely everything. i throw it around but it wraps tightly around my entire body inside & out. hating my words, words everywhere, wanting to apply them, cut them, shut them up, lock up my heart-brain that uses them too fiercely. started writing again, beautiful book, surprisingly fluid renderings, acid-free paper. book of my life, plus. lisa will come visit me, i will visit seattle. ran into leila, sat in a stairwell and talked about fainting and catching up on lost bits of history. accumulating glass snapple bottles, snickers bars, and sandwiches out. "save me" and arab strap. lichen green paint and squares of leftover shades. masturbating guy at the computer next to me in this vile vile lab. the daily walk: work, castro, loth, castro, loth, castro, school, cafe, school, castro, loth, castro, loth. dan, marc, adrian, alee, leah, hava, krista, ari hope and god. spencer's midnight suns and blake's and not liking donnie darko's. cheryl's beds and lost keys and sexy lethargy and talk. my circular thoughts: couch swings, brown leaf print blankets, portable alarm clocks, heart clutches, rushes to work, cursed lack of time, tiny spots of skin, shifting jail i.d. bracelets, desire, fear, graffiti'd arm, overworn socks, safety pin bag, black zipper no wallet, balance?, never up before 1, community smoothies, moaning, notes, memories, why?, mental files, saving of days, unspoken need for information, spying, stolen mad-libs, crushing heart-brain deafening ears and silencing voice. (Comment on this)
Sunday, February 23rd, 2003
9:22 pm	explanations are fragmented enough and depend on the proper context enough that it is unfitting to speak candidly about more serious matters such as love or academia in a format such as this. it's just inappropriate. so the main things that have been filling my time lately are herein unspeakable. even the explanation of that borders on the unnecessary, borders on crude. (my apologies.) (Comment on this)
Thursday, February 13th, 2003
6:35 pm	spent a day wasting, i know exactly what i want, been there awhile, was there last night, everything is done forever, i hope. Current Music: arab strap. the red thread (Comment on this)
Friday, February 7th, 2003
5:22 pm	there is a problem. it needs to be settled soon or you'll give up entirely, so it seems. you have written for an hour and you are no closer. you are actually getting farther into the hole. you will go to sleep, you will forget your madness, you will forget the pain you write all over yourself to amplify the significance of your concern. you will rest through the rising tide. you will forget and move on because there is no other option. (Comment on this)
Wednesday, February 5th, 2003
8:41 pm	beds, i wondered where people go home to and if i could know where they laid their heads to rest each night of this week, would it be the same place every night? i explained to some new friend why i don't smoke. it makes me crazy. told of how i could see the flashbulb mental pictures that comprised the beginning of my language acquisition at some frighteningly early age .. just a year old? and that it was unacceptable to me to see these things, too overwhelming. not okay. as scary to me as that one jefferson airplane song. you know the one. shudders all around. fucking drugs. if only i could have so much time to myself. after reading the joke i have been overjoyed by the freedoms this country grants. can say anything. that's the life. i am a sucker, i fall for the same people each time. enough variation that it allows for me to think i'm learning something new. what is it that does that? bananas everywhere, they have become such a commodity. i will bring some to loth and everyone will rejoice. i am shit, i won't read the bible, i won't be a christian, i cringe when i say it but i don't change it. so many things i haven't introduced myself to, namely books, but so many of them! joyce sits next to me but i'm not at my desk. really interesting the things that make one an american. steve from england is more of an american than i am. but i am horrifically american because i hate so many of its ways. how perfectly i fit here. found my nagging niche. i am so communal; hah. if i were in a communist society i would curse life every moment. here i am free to despise the rampant individualism consumerism every ism but would hate life elsewhere without that polar anomaly to oppose. "can't just move to siberia and that's that." and josh agreed. hearing keys jingle (what else can they do?) makes me hella nervous. glad i wrote hella like i thought it. now am embarrassed. sounds like impatience. sounds like panic. sounds like time's up. long stretches of time, i recently noticed, are one of my most favored things in life. long uninterrupted stretches. i wrote "plans make me shrink" and he took me literally. that's cheating. (1 Comment |Comment on this)
8:04 pm	leaving out old items, old to me and old in all time; undermentioned by me.. current i've-been-away-for-a-month undermentioned twenty albums. interpol - turn on the bright lights doves - lost souls mary timony - mountains trail of dead - source tags and codes pulp - we love life postmarked stamps compilation on tree records elliott smith - xo elliott smith - figure 8 cap'n jazz - analphabetapolothology radiohead - amnesiac radiohead - the bends arab strap - the red thread belle and sebastian - tigermilk make up - sound verite modest mouse - building nothing from something modest mouse - the lonesome crowded west richard ashcroft - alone with everybody pavement - crooked rain, crooked rain sleater kinney - call the doctor cat power - moon pix (yes led zeppelin, yes talking heads, yes rush, yes new order, yes depeche mode, indeed) current brain-on-fire undermentioned twenty books. tropic of cancer - henry miller the castle - franz kafka kafka's diaries anais nin's diaries amber gayle anything critical theory ecology essays - editor: merchant philosophical investigations - ludwig wittgenstein symposium - plato the bell jar - plath rootprints - helene cixous (yes lolita nabokov, yes unbearable kundera, yes ishmael quinn, indeed) note the switch. (Comment on this)
Monday, January 27th, 2003
9:48 pm	disclaimer: i know how i sound, i get overwhelmed, i am overly aware of being wrong, sometimes i shout so i believe myself more, so i trust my own voice if i hear it above all others. time eases that, i must certainly improve. (Comment on this)
7:51 pm	differences? feel slightly more fluid, slightly more sure. but in an old environment it is easy to fall into old patterns. something i hate about the idea of patterns, makes me want to keep my social circle of old recurring friends to a minimum, makes me want to keep moving. and i have. i have it in my head that moving takes care of something i seem to want distance from. again, "where do you move when what you're moving from is yourself?" visited nan today, got into the eternal question i come back to every way possible: how to live, why i feel plagued by guilt and a desire for ascetic social responsibility, why i resent people for their lack of care about anything outside of their immediate lives (friends, entertainment, bah). i never was a person to be very "carefree" ...i have a sense of seriousness i can't shake. these terms can confuse, i should clarify a little. i have few cares in life, really, i don't much get hung up on details, i know i'll be fine, and if i'm not it will pass. by carefree i mean feeling "free" with no sense of responsibility about anything. i feel responsible for all kinds of things that aren't even related to me. the classic carrying the weight of the world, etc. i cringe at the cliche, but it's entirely the case. and seriousness. every pleasure i recoil from. i look it in the face and i really do look away in horror. alone i can perhaps forget a little, but the presence of another person really throws me off, makes me hide any form of happiness i may conjure. anything. i won't dance, i won't sing, i'm nearly frigid, i cut my laughs short, i leave the room, i stop talking, i become recalcitrant, non participatory. i enjoy my life immensely but with every second i recognize that, i feel a tinge of guilt; every pleasure is lined with this sadness. every one. i scrutinize this constantly. there is not one single instance where my happiness is not somehow tainted with the awareness that the world is not set right, what right do i have to live such a great life while others don't, how selfish and ridiculous i am to waste time on my happiness or fulfillment, how many horrible things are happening all over the world while i do nothing about it. so much suffering; and i have this beautiful life and nothing in me is ungrateful, but i agonize over what to do with my good fortune. there is not one instance where i recognize my happiness without recognizing how unfair it is for me to have it while others don't. and there is the question of what is me, is this what i do, should i try to get rid of the guilt so i can care only about myself? an emphatic "no" is my only answer, but what then? i should do some more research about it. i find myself having this conversation with people who do not agree with me in the slightest. maybe because the only way i can communicate with these people is to stand in opposition to their stance on self-and-world individual-and-collective. and i turn it into this thing where i try to find in them if and how they have guilt for not feeling like i do about these matters. usually they think something is wrong with me. "just stop worrying about it," "it's not your job to fix," "you should see a psychotherapist." really. "just stop" means nothing, if it's not my job then whose is it, and is it really maladjusted of me to not see myself as separate from the world, in part responsible toward it? we don't live in a vacuum, this is a social world, our decisions affect other people, the environment, etc. you are A PART of the world, you get something from it and you SHOULD give something, too. and i don't mean to just have good kids, that's not branching out, that's just perpetuating your own life. these things seem like inalienable truths to me. everywhere i go i either hear explicitly or implicitly that i am wrong. and not only wrong, but stupid. yeah, sounds like i do need a shrink, talking like "no one understands me, but i'm not crazy, they are." so easy to inadvertently adopt the rhetoric of a lunatic. it's not even that i particularly care about "other people" ..i don't even know what that would entail. but i do have concern over the boundaries that SHOULD be around my life. how much i want to allow myself. and i think i have more than enough money and material possessions. of course living in a consumer society, no one really GETS that sense of "this is enough, i stop here." but i stop. within the culture i live in what i am saying sounds weird, anomalous. but don't people within this culture at least see the FACT that our lifestyle is EXORBITANT and ANOMALOUS in the scope of history, of the rest of the world even today? time passes and i learn more, but i really don't see me doing a complete turnaround and all of a sudden "stop caring." i feel like it's just an extension of how i know to love. i think i am perhaps more capable of love than anyone i've ever met, though you wouldn't know it because i don't get attached to people, i don't hang on, i don't try to own what i appreciate. but my capacity for appreciation is immense. and i've examined it like no one else i know, it's critically developed and i know it. these things i think about my rightful fair place in the order of things feels like more than some guilt trip because i'm depressed or hate myself or some other petty thing. i just want to share -- it's that basic. i want other people to reach the mental heights i get to. i want other people to have great lives. and they can do that even in a fucked up society, etc., though for my own purposes (yes this is still about my self) i want the luxury of knowing that i am working to improve things, that i have an extended sphere of concern, that i am fair and just, ideally that i live in a world with other people who want these things. i haven't been depressed at all since i lived in lothlorien. for a simple reason, that it gives me some sense of hope. walking down the street has always had the tendency to make me sad, shopping bags and cell phones and people PRETENDING they have no responsibility to anyone but themselves, people FORGETTING pain and suffering and indulging themselves in entertainment and excess. i get overwhelmed by bitterness. the only way i am okay with it is when i forget. and i don't want to have to forget just to be happy, then i'm doing just the thing that started my being sad in the first place. i pick people's brains about it all the time. i need to do some more picking. some more experimenting. i could spend years stuck on this. it's a stress, a stress that comes from something that's about to break. Current Mood: everything Current Music: doves. the last broadcast. (Comment on this)
Thursday, January 16th, 2003
12:01 am	"i have desires but not expectations" (Comment on this)
Wednesday, January 15th, 2003
10:52 pm	done good things at home come in many varied forms. primarily i look forward to the company of a select select select few people/person, re-settling and taking care of my possible move to budapest for later in the year, easier living which means not searching for food and shelter for hours a day, consistency to a larger degree, time in a familiar place i adore, the simplicity of going to classes (within the week), and working, smoothies, up-all-nights, who i will meet in my new place, letters to steve now that i know him, letters all around because maybe i'll have something new to say after having a different type of information set to work with, a new journal (the best one, with the great story attached to it, that i'd invested all my "good" writing in got nicked in the blasted paris metro weeks ago), enlivened randomness, stories to myself. no more long days of time zones. after seeing live theatre and gorging on food (pretending the pound signs are dollars), no sleep for reasons worth reexamining, curiosity suspense and reserve, a perfect walk through nowhere-pastures, and a new-old friend in a bmw driving me to the tube, to my feet running to a plane, then in the air across bodies of water to another country, to a bus, a train, a metro, walking, sleeping in the paris shakespeare & co bookstore and an easyinternet cafe. i list them because they are so unusual still. using the words helps make these things seem more real, simple, tedious. renders them flat, own-able. but the things i come home to aren't varied, they have a unifying theme, quite simply that they are the constant identity that remained despite my leaving it in berkeley. i come back to it, reexamine it, work out a quirk or two, and resume, if only a little changed. and i get to live through so many things i have only been imagining myself doing -- before, i imagined being me here, away; while away i imagine myself being back at home. big switch though no different. i take home new stories and bits of information, a new (close?) friend, other distant ones, places and their corresponding cognitive maps, and a renewed desire for what greets me upon my return. these things can't be quantified; i can't say it is priceless or without price, i can't measure it like that, of course, nor should i, but it certainly comes with a larger weight than i'm used to, and i don't know the implications there. but i wanted to try. and i did. and for that i have succeeded, though what i have won is of course intangible and borders on a void of its own. Current Music: mr. dan (playing in my mind from last night) (Comment on this)
Sunday, December 29th, 2002
10:32 pm	and where am i now? skipping around, really. (and always looking for something more.) today i read in kundera "a thread stretched across no matter how tiny or fragile" or something to that effect. i underlined it with a thread of blue ink. or was it red? Current Music: unwound. leaves turn inside you (Comment on this)
Thursday, December 26th, 2002
9:14 pm	qnd zhile it looks like i q, zriting in code; i zill qdd thqt zhile this chester felloz thinks he ,qy be µonµ to ,e, little does he knoz thqt it is i; insteqd; thqt brought hi, zith ,e: certqinly it ,qy see, to ,e thqt it is q sign thqt he thinks like i do 9qbout one thing qt leqst0 enough to drop his nnq,e qround like he didù he; in his off ti,e; prozling qround online; trqcing ,e: hqh1 i hqve been trqcing hi, in ,y ,ind; zhile ,iles upon ,iles qzqy: he is trqcked: he speqks in code; i speqk in code; the entire thing is encoded; thqt is the only intelligible pqrt: of course it is perfect this zqy; of course i intend on spoiling it zhen i return ho,e: spoiling it in the best zqy possible; i hope; but spoiling it nonetheless: or not: perhqps it is not the necessity i hqd qlzqys thought it to ,e: ,qybe he zill prove ,e zrong: (Comment on this)
9:04 pm	pqris life back at home means it's eleven in the morning. am breaking some plans in order to make new ones. am being tracked and followed in the realm before me in this easyinternet cafe. if i don't take care to watch my normal typing processes, it zill look like i cqnùt zrite qt qll; these qrenùt typos; they qre the results of french keyboqrds: iù, sick of being cqreful zhen i type: i zonùt: pqris drqzs to q close; i q, sorry for thqt ,uch: i hqve no clue zhqt to do next qnd it zeighs ,ore heqvily on ,y heqrt thqn iùd like to qd,it: i see zhy ,qny people never trqvel; itùs tiring qnd stressful: but so rezqrding1 qh; but endurqnce is such q fqctor: it is good to be qzqy; it is qlso good to be ho,e: i hqve q zhile to go for thqt ,uch; though: (Comment on this)
Saturday, December 21st, 2002
7:16 am	old bio i removed because i dont like the clamor of it between the lines it said "please like me" i am less convinced now than ever. its okay but i just want some quiet. it may shrink life a little but being so noisy about myself seems overwhelming right now. "about you" living for moments and beauty. trying to be young, smart and lighthearted in perception; flexibility and integrity gaining importance; trying like hell to grow and learn in the best way possible, on the quest for improvement; seeking out new terms to define myself by; attempting to eradicate pretention and falsehoods while embracing intelligence and confidence (that's the tricky part); trying to find the highest values, and then apply them to my life; being amazed at the slightest of things, so much seems a miracle to me now, my eyes are nearly that new; changing; getting practice at "getting the balance right;" a sesquipedalian train-wreck. "what you like" all, appreciating, articulating, being alive, being amazed, being happenin', being okay, berkeley, books, braid, bread, bright eyes, britpop, burn collector, cat power, creativity, elliott smith, existence, genuinity, good, hand-made stuff, helium, indie, ishmael, learning, led zeppelin, letters, life, lisa simpson, living, modest mouse, music, nature, not working, passion, pavement, philosophy, photography, pulp, quality, radiohead, randomness, reading, records, redlands, rinne, rockin' out, rush, sun, sunny day real estate, tattered pages of words, the verve, thinking, weird stuff, words, writing Current Music: unwound. leaves turn inside you (Comment on this)
Monday, December 16th, 2002
6:57 pm	more chapstick, more nervous spying, more cold fingertips on the back of my neck more watching the clock fucking tick away my life "no food or drink" and im in my own self deprivation tank but i wont drag myself out of here why now do i notice a pattern (Comment on this)
6:54 pm	snippets, bits of something else comprise this space of a brain and its subsequent devouring in upon itself snippets, bits of something else thats what im working from a collage i have not any pieces of my own and do not know what it means to generate them (Comment on this)
6:43 pm	redress (notes for self): moving again, castro stephen phone, all comes back, thats not me anymore (see the difference?) "another year older and deeper in debt" another house affair, where is this going (never know what i want, still somehow get it) "calls calls calls, calls from the public" "no eat no drink no money have i not" walletless and irritated time, no time, stolen time, no time, hunger cramped, sick (such a great doctor) "too many women, too many pills" papers, so much wasted, ack fucking bell jar fucking everything in the kitchen are tom petty and johnny cash but im fine. (Comment on this)
Sunday, December 15th, 2002
12:37 pm	million things at once i dont care time will pass it goes away something else in its place of course of course is there even anything to say about this? no, and its not said well leaving no trace in the mind passes through like anything else thats what i do, actively doing it now just passing “where do you move when what you’re moving from is yourself?” (Comment on this)
Thursday, December 12th, 2002
11:03 am	no no no notice the difference cracking up [] or something like it, whats the difference never made sense anyway how it could be real, unreal and does it happen to me "or is it something i do to myself" this isnt me, isnt anything still everything still subsumes everything sounds like nonsense? not real not real/real and if i do go off the deep end-- (Comment on this)
Thursday, November 14th, 2002
12:34 am	followed home today by mr. x. talked about rhetorical incapacitation, verbal futility, abolishment of language, like rhetoric students are apt to do. sat on roof, been awhile since there was talk of horrible useless language vices. thoroughly random like so many abfab postcards. drank tea ate persimmons on porch with alee and guitar. was exactly what it was, nothing beyond referencing an equally brief bout of randomness a year ago. how acquaintences should be; fun and then gone. (Comment on this)