Colored Ink
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miss something? check the archives about me name: n/aaliases: kit (and various iterations thereof) age: 21 location: oakland, ca hobbies: anime, manga, comic books, reading, writing, doodling, video games likes: all of the above, being lazy, mushrooms, animals, food, laughing loudly in public, SUSHI dislikes: nuts, stinging/biting insects, religious fanatics, violence, olives contact: coloredink(at)gmail.com wishlist playstation 2car a good night's sleep money stress-free life trigun long colt keychain hardon-kardon speakers 19" flatscreen monitor world peace realistic wishlist transmetropolitan vol 5-6, 9-10long-term obsessions comicsslash writing reading music animals life and living current obsession(s) supernaturalhouse m.d. veronica mars temeraire currently reading the earthsea trilogy by ursula k. leguincurrently watching smallville (3.4)farscape (1.) stargate: atlantis (1.7) scrubs (2.1) hana yori dango (20) utena (23) witch hunter robin (18) rose of versailles (19) matantei loki ragnarok (15) scrapped princess (14) sailormoon live action (25) supernatural (hiatus) house md (hiatus) veronica mars (hiatus) |
Saturday, October 28, 2006 [link] 12:26 p.m. listening to: "A Bit Of Happiness" - Yuki Kajiura Every winter, when the persimmons came into season, a basket of persimmons would appear in the corner of the kitchen. Daily they would disappear, in twos or threes, with few of them attributed to me. I was not fond of fruit as a child, though I would eat it if it were sliced and put in front of me. So it was with the persimmons. I did not dislike them, but they did not seem to send me into raptures as they did my family, who bought them seemingly by the bushel. This is the first year that I've done much of my own grocery shopping, now that I'm free from the constraints of a meal plan. Apples are what I associate with fall and winter, but at a farmer's market last week I saw persimmons and suddenly remembered, vividly, the yellow light of my childhood kitchen and the basket of persimmons on the counter. I hadn't had a persimmon in years. I don't know much about the selection of persimmons, but all the persimmons in the box looked gorgeous. I purchased two and took them home, then let them sit on the counter for a few days before eating them. Persimmons don't go bad quickly; I remember that much, at least. And then, one day, I sliced one and ate it. The effect was as sensational as any of Proust's tea-soaked madeleine sense memories. My aunt used to peel away the waxy orange skin with a few smooth strokes of a sharp knife, then slice it and place it in front of me on a plate. Years later, when I was ill, it was my father's assistant who brought them to me. I ate it because it was fruit and it was good for me, not because I derived any sort of pleasure from it. I love persimmons now, and every time the delicate, fragrant taste blooms across my tongue, I remember Proust and his madeleines, and home. Saturday, October 28, 2006 [link] 01:21 a.m. listening to: nothing I must needs: - inform the Chronicle of my displeasure - study for law exam - acquire more quotes for back gate article - write packer test drive article Wrargh! Thursday, October 26, 2006 [link] 01:56 p.m. listening to: "You Won't Find Me" - Peter Bruntwell Some days you're just sad. Wednesday, October 25, 2006 [link] 01:03 a.m. listening to: nothing Things I need to do: - check for my newspaper - call the Chronicle if my newspaper isn't there - finish law reading - writing Girlyman promo article - finish workshopping others' essays - call whoever I'm notetaking for Friday, October 20, 2006 [link] 07:43 p.m. listening to: "Bone In My Ear" - Bruce Cockburn I think I've decided that writer's block is a myth. It's an unpopular opinion, and one that I don't voice in mixed company because someone is sure to jump down my throat. I just don't know. Some people have trouble. And hey, I'm a journalist. You can't have writer's block if you're a journalist. Besides, journalism isn't the same as creative writing. You have facts and things that you report. I say: Look. If you want to write, you write. There's no other way to improve. It's not as if you wake up one day at age 25, 35, 50, put pen to paper, and suddenly the words spill forth! The heavens open and the angels sing a chorus! You have penned The Great American Novel! Writing is a lot like cooking, in that sense. You have to learn to cook, and you do that by cooking. Sure, at first you're gonna totally suck at it. You burn everything and you have to call your friends, totally embarrassed, and ask them, "Er, how do sautée something?" and "What does sifting the flour mean?" But after a while you get the hang of it and learn which substitutions are okay to make and which ones aren't and after a while, you're whipping up delicious pasta sauces from scratch without using any measurements at all. You just have to get through that really crappy period when your fajitas turn out soggy and you completely ruin the chicken and have to order pizza for dinner. But you're not going to magically wake up one day and know how to make your mother's lasagna. Yeah, you have your good days and your bad days. Some days, you sit down and bam, everything comes out the way you want it to. Some days, you sit there and type the word 'The,' stare at it, then slowly backspace and replace it with the word 'When' or 'And.' But you can't let that defeat you. You just have to write. Some days you'll write two thousand words and they'll be glorious, some days you'll write eight hundred words and only two hundred of them won't be utter crap. But hey, at least you came away with two hundred usable words, and if you keep writing, that number will grow. You get into a kind of groove where you get used to sitting down and writing every day, and your brain just goes permanently into writing mode. You want to know what writer's block is? It's fear. Fear of rejection, fear of humiliation, fear of sucking. And the only way to overcome that fear is just to write by any means possible. Drink, get high, write in the blood of virgins if you have to. Write and don't show it to anybody. Write it and then tear it up. Not everything you write has to be good. Heck, nobody's expecting everything you write to be good. The important thing is to write, learn, and grow; then, one day, you're going to look back and laugh at yourself. Tuesday, October 17, 2006 [link] 01:00 p.m. listening to: "Opera Singer" - Cake Things I need to do: - - - - - - return books to library - - Blarg. Tuesday, October 10, 2006 [link] 12:29 a.m. listening to: "Out Here" - Peter Mulvey Whoa, it's been almost a week since I last blogged? Jesus, where does the time go. Nothing much to say. I spent most of last week sick. I slept what felt like twelve hours a sleep, but I was always tired. I didn't attend any classes, and I missed a day of work. I went to work on Friday and copyedited until it felt like my brain was leaking out my ears. I made chicken and dumplings: v. good. Speaking of food, I'm pretty sure I'm gaining back a lot of the weight I lost. I'm keeping off the inches, it feels like; at least, all my clothes still fit. But I've lost a lot of my muscle, which is pretty disappointing. I know it's because I don't work out anymore. I should really start exercising again. It's just that exercising is boring when you don't have a workout partner, plus the lack of morning classes--or morning anything, really--makes it difficult to motivate myself to get up in the morning and go to the gym. But I really need to start lifting weights again! I was so proud of how much I was benching last year. Blah blah blah. I'm all talk and no do. I'm going to go to bed now. And tomorrow, I'm going to get up and go to the gym. Or not. Probably not. Blarg. Friday, October 6, 2006 [link] 10:59 p.m. listening to: nothing Couldn't fall asleep last night. I woke up this morning with a bloody nose, which is never a very auspicious start to the day. Stopped the bleeding, drank my tea, had breakfast, went to work at 9am. Worked until 4pm, and then somehow took two hours to get home. It wasn't BART, no, that was fine. But the traffic was so bad that the Mills van showed up to Rockridge station about half an hour late. Good grief. I probably could have gotten home faster by BARTing to Coliseum and walking. Got home, cooked dinner (with plenty of help from Rachel), napped (sort of), watched Battlestar Galactica, watched more Battlestar Galactica, and now I am going to shower and go to bed. Good night. Tuesday, October 3, 2006 [link] 01:20 a.m. listening to: nothing I'm sick again, which brings me up to a grand total of three times this year that I've been ill: once coming back from Germany, once after China, and once now. This comes as a surprise, because I rarely get sick more than once a year. Healthy eating and plenty of sleep have done more for my constitution than anything else I've ever tried. The copy chief at my job called me yesterday and said that she'd forgotten that she was supposed to take one of the cats to the vet (she and her girlfriend, who is a butch, leather-wearing dyke who rides a motorcycle and works as a mechanic, have roughly 264575753 cats and a snake, proving that stereotypes exist because somewhere, they are true). Could I get to the city on my own, or did I want to wait and catch a ride with her in the afternoon? I needed the money, so I said I'd find my own way there. She gave me directions from the BART station, warning me that it was a bit of a rough walk. It was a bit of a rough walk, and at first I thought I was going the wrong direction, as the direction she sent me didn't look anything like I was heading toward office buildings. I checked my status using a bus station map, discovered that her directions were perfect, and continued walking. I could see why she didn't want me walking here at night. Meanwhile, my status was slowly deteriorating. I'd had the sniffles the night before, attributed them to allergies, and went to bed. I woke up twice during the night for no discernible reason. I took some off-brand Sudafed with my morning tea. It didn't work. This is usually a sign that I'm sick. I sniffled and wheezed my way through work, and by the time I got home, realized I had no appetite. I cooked dinner, ate, and went straight to bed. I rose for Studio 60 On the Sunset Strip and played some Katamari Damacy, then got back to my room to discover that my snake--whom I'd left soaking in a Tupperware to rid him of his unshed skin--had escaped. Fortunately, I'd had the foresight to at least close the door, so I knew that he had to be somewhere in the room. My housemate discovered him curled up on the radiator, behind the bookshelf. The whole ordeal was over in under ten minutes. Thank God. That was my day. And now I sleep. Saturday, September 30, 2006 [link] 02:28 p.m. listening to: "Patience" - Redbird Yesterday, I was so tired that I was miserable, and it didn't help that I didn't feed myself very well and was therefore low on calories and sleep most of the day. My head hit the pillow at midnight and I didn't open my eyes again until 10am the next morning. Gorgeous sleep. I sometimes don't sleep very well: I wake up if I'm too hot, too cold, need to pee, someone walks by my room, whatever. Sometimes I sleep deeply, sometimes I don't. Last night, though, was fantastic. Sometimes suffering is necessary, I guess. Wednesday, September 27, 2006 [link] 09:42 p.m. listening to: nothing It's been a long, long day. Whew. Saturday, September 23, 2006 [link] 12:47 a.m. listening to: nothing Thanks to a knowledgeable friend, the mystery of the adorable little birds has been solved! They are chickadees. Friday, September 22, 2006 [link] 03:39 a.m. listening to: "Out Here" - Peter Mulvey I've started writing stupid poetry. SOMEONE GET ME OUT OF HERE. I WANT TO GO TO BED. Thursday, September 21, 2006 [link] 06:51 p.m. listening to: nothing I HAVE A JOB! Tuesday, September 19, 2006 [link] 11:06 p.m. listening to: "Out Here" - Peter Mulvey Things I need to do: - - - - laundry - - - write stories for Creative Non-Fiction - read The Lover - - Aaarrrgh. Tuesday, September 19, 2006 [link] 02:12 p.m. listening to: "Out Here" - Peter Mulvey When you show up at counseling services, you let your therapist know that you're there by pushing a little button next to her name on a plate affixed to the wall. My second session, last year, her name wasn't there. I pressed the button anyway and waited with a sick sense of dread, certain that she wasn't there, that there was someone different, that the rug had been yanked out from under my feet and I didn't even know I was on my back, staring at the ceiling. My fears were unfounded; she was there, she simply hadn't putten her nametag out here. I told her of my childish fears, trying to laugh them off, but she took it seriously. She asked me if I expected people in my life to just disappear. Man, I thought. I'm kind of fucked up. (But yeah, people in my life do just kind of disappear. I've never been important enough for anyone to stay, and this makes me clingy, clumsy and desperate to prove myself worthy. It's like those exercises they have you do in couples therapy, where you close yourself and fall backward and trust the other person to catch you. I don't; I never have. I imagine my father would call me foolish for ever trusting anyone to catch me. I'm very heavy, after all.) I see my therapist in the early morning now; I'm probably her first appointment of the day. I see her skulking around when I get there, diving behind the counter and into the bathroom. Today, when I got to her office, her name wasn't there; I'd seen her go into the bathroom. I pressed the button, watched it light up green, and sat on the couch and read National Geographic until she came and got me. I'm getting better at this. I am. I will. Sunday, September 17, 2006 [link] 04:43 p.m. listening to: "Out Here" - Peter Mulvey Here, have a poem I wrote. --- You can't stand to leave the house with dirty dishes in the sink or warm clothes in the dryer. You put all the dishes away, each cup and dish in its place and then think that you really ought to take out the garbage too. And while you're at it, you should recycle those newspapers, and return those library books, and reply to all those emails you never got around to. When you've closed up your life, you sweep the floors and vacuum the rugs and leave post-it notes on the refrigerator and on every single cabinet and drawer, saying, this faucet leaks if you don't use pliers to twist the cold water knob all the way, and the top right burner on the stove doesn't light. You tape a new recording on the answering machine. And then, you stand in the doorway, with the morning light spilling in behind you, take a deep breath, and turn out the lights when you leave. Saturday, September 16, 2006 [link] 12:33 a.m. listening to: "Out Here" - Peter Mulvey There are days where every gesture feels like goodbye. Friday, September 15, 2006 [link] 12:03 a.m. listening to: "The Sad Song" - Fredo Viola There are these adorable birds that twitter and flutter on campus. I love birds (except jays, because they are mean, noisy fuckers). I think they're so fat and funny-looking. They're not actually fat, of course; that's just the breast muscle, making them appear round. These tiny birds that I refer to are tiny and plump, smaller than sparrows, even, black with grey backs and wings and white underbellies. I suspect they are a type of warbler, though I have no idea where that comes from. I know nothing about birds. Googling turns up nothing, oddly enough, save a bunch of websites about birding that are surprisingly uninformative. Ah, well. Bedtime for me, anyway. I have to get up early tomorrow--er, later today--to wear black robes and show myself off as a graduating senior. Tuesday, September 12, 2006 [link] 10:04 a.m. listening to: "Bone In Your Ear" - Bruce Cockburn Today, my therapist and I discussed Maslow's hierarchy of needs, which I'd actually learned back in high school (wow, Intro to High School was good for something?). She admitted to not having seen the pyramid for years, but that was all right because I barely remembered it myself. I remembered that the base was physical needs: food, warmth, shelter, etc. At the top was "self-actualization." The reason we were talking about this was because I'd been talking about the philosophy of "what I want vs. what I need" that I'd pretty much lived my life by, up until now. This applies mostly to material purchases, of course. I fail miserably at it--witness my slowly-growing comic book collection--but it was something fairly firmly rooted in my head. "You realize, of course, that love is a fairly basic need," my therapist observed. I blinked. "Dear God," I said. "I never thought of that." The ridiculous part, of course, is that if I'd read something like this in a novel or had someone tell me about this secondhand, I would have said, "Of course love is a need! Everyone needs to be loved!" And I would have felt sorry for that person, maybe. But I have an enormous blind spot when it comes to myself. Maybe I was raised by aliens. Tuesday, September 12, 2006 [link] 12:33 a.m. listening to: nothing Things I need to do soon (preferably tomorrow) - call College Publisher people - set up an interview time with Michael Lopez - talk to Greg Risby - read as much as humanly possible for Mass Comm Law - do laundry (wash sheets!) I also need to, at some point, get a haircut and sit down and work out some kind of monthly budget for myself. Aaarrrgh. Saturday, September 9, 2006 [link] 01:25 a.m. listening to: nothing There's always those first few weeks, when a close friend has a new boyfriend/girlfriend/fiancé(e) where you feel a little abandoned, because all their time is taken up with this new significant other. But you shrug and wait and get over it, because there's that saying about friendship and silver and gold, and eventually they come around and you're not longer a third wheel and you start getting included in conversations again. But for a while, you're lonely. "I don't know why it's like that," I said to a friend, some time ago. "I mean, there's something about having a significant other that's different, that makes it more than friendship." It's difficult to explain. It's not the sex, because that's different, and there are "friends with benefits" and all manners of sex toys and what have you. It's something about the quality of the love. It's stupid that we don't have different words for different kinds of love. "It's the idea that you're the most important thing to this person," said the friend. "If you died, that person would lose the most important thing in their life. It'd be like the sun went out in their world." "Oh," I said. And then, "I want to be someone's Most Important Thing." "Me too," she agreed, and we commiserated on the sad state of singledom. But I think, in this day and age, that we undervalue friendship. Apparently a new study has found that Americans have fewer friends than they did before, and some have no close friends at all. And what about siblings? There was an article in Time magazine that pointed out that siblings are often the most important people in our lives; parents relinquish after a while, and spouses arrive after the groundwork has been laid. But siblings are forever. Someone else approached me recently, worried that there was something wrong with her because she didn't desire any sort of long-term relationship. "Will I never be fulfilled?" she fretted. I pointed out that people find fulfillment in different things. Some people find it in other people. Some people find it in art, politics, police work, athletics--all sorts of things. This seemed to comfort her a little. You're not a freak just because you don't want to spend the rest of your life with another person. I don't know where I'm going with this. I think it's time that I go to bed. Wednesday, September 6, 2006 [link] 05:46 p.m. listening to: "Sad, Sad, Sad, Sad (And Far Away From Home)" - Peter Mulvey The weather's turning warm again, that last gasp of an Indian summer before the fog and clouds roll in for a chilly, rainy winter. Women sprawled out on the grass, half in the shade and half out, with laptops and books and bottles of water. I squinted up at the sky and admired the perfect, endless blue. Yesterday, I sat in my therapist's office and told her my feelings about moving. We'd been talking about my relationships with other people, and how a lot of it seems to depend on usefulness. I like being useful. If I'm not useful in a relationship, I feel as if I'm not giving enough of myself. "Do you feel as if you're not useful to the Bay Area?" she asked. I was startled by the question. "I--no," I said. "I think my urge to move has more to do with people." It's senior year, and I know that people are leaving. To grad school, back to their hometowns, to Mars for all I know. And I'm staying here, because I love it here. I love the water and the grocery stores and the weather and the co-ops and the restaurants and smiles and hemp skirts. But I feel like I need to leave too, otherwise I'll get left behind. Except I like it here. I'm an idiot. Why do I even think about these things? |
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