Solvable Predicaments

I’m running late again, and it’s humid and my back is drizzled with sweat that’s starting to seep through the ratty grey sweater I found at Target for six dollars last winter. “Well,” my mother would say in that tone of hers, “Who wears a sweater when it’s eighty degrees?” I suppose that’s fair, but you know how I hate any contest to my judgment.

All of my shoes are packed up for my hike back to Minneapolis so I’m wearing these: black Nunn Bush loafers with tasslels (you know the ones) from Kohl’s or somewhere. I can’t remember. They are shitty and cheap and rub against my Achilles and the heels are so loud, men turn to see a long-legged woman in something akin to Manolos, following their smug grins with a grimace of immediate disappointment. These shoes are hacked up. Salt lines from two years ago when I wore them to Turnabout. I still have the pants that ripped when they pulled my feet out from under me on the pavement outside of Lourdes. It’s hard to step confidently out the door when you’re treading on these.

I’ve spent the last three weeks hunched over the cryostat, hold up in a dark room staining slides, waiting and waiting in this fluorescent hole in the wall. I’m the only one who uses the stairwell in Stabile and I like it that way. It’s only six flights to my lab, but I’ve lost count and missed the 7th floor more than once. Out of breath, I’m trying to remind myself that “health” as I see it should really be more about cardiorespiratory fitness and muscle mass and BMI, and not whether-or-not-I-can-fit-into-those-jeans-that-have-always-been-a-bit-too-small. I spend so much time permeablizing membranes with 1% Triton and blocking with serum and what am I really doing? I’m stalling so my paycheck can grow and grow and maybe I can buy dolce jeans that actually fit (joking, why would I want jeans like that?) and those Gucci sandals on sale at Neiman’s.

When August leaves, so do I.

Hematoxylin and Eosin

Today, I gave blood as a small form of protest. I'm vying for equality here in the most generous way possible. This is my lunch sit-in. Rosa Parks would be so proud, but she couldn't "fight the power" by convincing the bus driver she was white. She didn't rest because she was tired, and I'm not giving blood because replacing a pint consumes about 650 calories.

The truth is that I'm not okay with passivity. I don't like waiting to be called. If you don't answer, I don't even want to talk anymore. I don't like being second. This game isn't fair anyway. The FDA can't tell me my blood isn't good enough. I don't receive directions or implications or expectations well. I'd rather slough them off or, better yet, trample them in my cowboy boots. Fuck you for telling me what I can't do. If you knew me at all, you'd know this part first.

I have this long list of wants. First and foremost, I want to always be creatively in charge and exert this odd form of chaotic control. Don't move my toothbrush.

I know I'm this messy, disastrous, unpredictable fixture in your life and I don't call you when I'm supposed to, but sometimes I'm sweet and bring you flowers and a Chai, or buy you the only thing you really wanted for your birthday. I just want to walk in and out of your life whenever the fuck I feel like it, but don't expect that freedom from me. You just don't get it yet, do you?

What else do I want? Everything. I want to fit into my jeans perfectly. Some are too big and others are too small and my waist oscillates between fitting comfortably into those teeny Dolce jeans I inherited and hardly squeezing into the Tavernitis I splurged on with Kara. I want more Elie Taharis, because these are perfect. I want thicker hair and lighter eyes and slimmer feet. I want to do gymnastics and speed-skate in the Olympics and learn French in two weeks and get a 39 on the MCAT. I want to be an MD PhD and backpack through South America and drive a convertible or a little red motorcycle.

This is all just a tantrum I'm throwing because summer is packing its bags and sauntering South, and this summer was perfect and excellent except for the disappearance my sisters and all that money I wasted on plane rides and Thai food. (I'm still getting over the fact that I paid for that twelve-dollar pina colada.) I had so much fun. I made soup and lasagna and cookies with Ghirardelli chocolate chips and drove to North Dakota for nothing but chocolate pudding cake and dancing in the street of something that can hardly be considered a city. I stumbled home after a game of Ring of Fire (or drove home the next morning). I almost stole a giant remote control. Friday, we'll find out if our soccer team got 1st in our league.

This is all beside the point. All I'm really trying to say is that I'm O negative. My blood is nice to have in an emergency. And so am I.

Alone/Alive

Amy puts it best, I guess, and sometimes I wish she wouldn't so I could sleep. Or so I could act naive and tell myself if I listen to country and drink the right amount of coffee that I can be happy, but I'm like the title to someone else's autobiography. Vertigo. Illusions of movement. Tilting. Spinning. I'm sitting on the rocks down by a Silver Lake that looks nothing like a necklace from Tiffany and Co and the river glides by me silently. I can't tell if the geese are swimming or being carried or maybe I'm not sitting and I'm running past them. An old man on a bicycle approaches, but he must have mistaken me for someone else.

On the phone with you and I can hear the click of a lighter in the background. You pause before you answer because you're dragging from a Newport and I don't ask if you're still there, because I can make out your heavy exhale. The background noise is thick where you are and I can hardly pull your voice from what seems like a torrent of rain falling around you. It sounds like your mouth is full or you're talking through a wall to me, and maybe you are. I'm still waiting for you to respond I think, but it's been a few weeks.

The air feels like rain could condense into my eyebrows and my sisters are eighteen and someone called me a man today while I was trying my best to act like I was looking for a girlfriend. And of course you're not here and I make twenty calls while I'm sitting by the river and no one answers and everyone calls back, but I don't feel like talking anymore. I watch my phone backlight slide back into darkness, embracing three missed calls and a text message I never meant to answer. Oh okay.

The clouds spider their fingers around the horizon and it feels like the sun is setting in a time lapse video because I've only been propped up here for an hour but it's already dark.

There is little I can say about the teenagers riding past me on three Magnas and a Huffy. Someone walks two dogs and I'm wearing green and my eyes feel bloodshot. And I'm the only one not holding something or someone and two women embrace and I think I caught myself smiling, but it was the sad sort of smile you give someone at a funeral or a memorial service because you recognize the flinching in their eyes but can't think of anything to say.

I feel a little like graffiti or a traffic accident or a deck of cards used to play Euchre like I did at Eagle Bluff. Staying silent for a long time always makes me feel a little unsettled and a little sick to my stomach like I walked into Harvard market to pick up a box of cigarettes and smoked through half of them on my way to class. It's impossible to say things using mixed metaphors and all I can do is sip on decaf alone in Perkins or stand by the white lilacs in the rain that have decided to bloom a month late this year.

It stopped raining for the party because I asked God to wait a while and he complied, and now he's compensating because another Thunderstorm will keep you awake tonight, but I'll sleep heavily and your call won't wake me when I'm tangled in no one's T-shirt but my own.

I'm Limping, but Nothing Hurts

Browsing through the New York Times, I ran across this article on two young gay men who have been married (dare I use this word without igniting an offensive political debate?) for over three years. Joshua dresses Ben to go out partying, and the latter settles the former into married life. The can finish each other’s sentences and share similar decorating interests. I would imagine choosing silverware and bedding were an ordeal, but they hire someone to mow the lawn. The scariest fact is that one is 24 and the other is barely 25. Now, I may not be a math major, but I've taken enough calculus to know that means they got married when they were hardly 21.

Kara and I were at Target yesterday when she started pseudo-joking. She hollered, "My biological clock is ticking!" down the aisle adorned with baby rattles and $70 infant car seats. Again with the complex math (times three, take the derivate, carry the one…) I replied, “Yeah, you’ve only got 20 years of fertility left.”

I stopped in my tracks. Here we are, on the brink of legal insobriety, and I can’t shake the feeling that I’m just sitting around in some overstuffed Coffman Union chair until my youth walks out on me. There are thousands of people engaged and marrying and “settling down” all around me, some are younger. I can’t decide if choosing a mate is a sign of maturity or an aching need to grow up. The manifestation of either is all too eerie to face.

What’s maybe worse is finding someone now, fearing commitment and hunkering down until I feel old enough to marry or settle down. It's too much like placing feelings in boxes until I’m old enough to understand or accept them. All I can think about lately is how much I just want to marry and adopt a sweet little girl so Kara and I can dress her in Burberry onesies and feed her from a Dior bottle and literally place sterling silver spoons in her mouth.

Wait, no, about face. I’m twenty and I’ve got something like ten years of singularity and self-searching and selfishness and education left to experience. I’ve forgotten what it’s like to wake up next to someone. I can’t sleep in the same bed, and it’s not been too long since it happened almost every night. Now, I get uncomfortable and hot and would rather just sleep alone with another cold pillow and wake up by myself to the sound of the rain on the rocks, my eyes a little dry and pink.

How can I want something I’m not nearly ready to incite? Forever is far too long of a time and not quite tangible for someone like me, who feels 16 and can’t remember further back than 6th grade. I need future blinders like a horse in the Kentucky Derby. I only want to see a week. I want this hour to be perfect. I only want to know this second, because dividing my life into some indefinite period when I have finally grown up is too significant and abstract. I’m selfish and think about Gucci and not tuition, Burberry and americanos and tequila and not rent. I can’t afford myself and I just can’t seem to give a damn, which is worse than the lack of self-control.

Stop, stop, stop. I’ve been reading this poem by ee cummings a lot lately. Once a day, it would seem. Though it’s not anything, it’s something.

==== ==== ==== ====

in time of daffodils(who know
the goal of living is to grow)
forgetting why,remember how

in time of lilacs who proclaim
the aim of waking is to dream,
remember so(forgetting seem)

in time of roses(who amaze
our now and here with paradise)
forgetting if,remember yes

in time of all sweet things beyond
whatever mind may comprehend,
remember seek(forgetting find)

and in a mystery to be
(when time from time shall set us free)
forgetting me,remember me

==== ==== ==== ====

I’m just trying to say that I’m not looking to make a home with anyone else, but I would like to feel there every now and then.

Gluing Feathers or Something

I'm just writing to write, because I can't write about Global Village or progressive book stores or homosexuality in modern Korea. I need to push something out to convince myself that there I can still form words by pressing on keys.

I have been thinking too much lately about things like this:

You can tell a lot about a person by his/her ___. Fill in the blank please, pour everything you've got into it: hair color, favorite wine, big toe, etc. You can tell a lot about a guy by the length of his dick/how he likes his steak/the color of his eyes. ETC. Et cetera. And so on. And so forth.

How can we classify people? I'm easy, I guess. I sleep on my stomach. My hair circles clockwise. My shoes oscillate somewhere between sizes 10 and 12. I love snow in December and hate it in March. I always wake up early. I listen to Ashlee Simpson and Elvis and Bon Iver and the Mavericks. I cannot listen to two trains of thought at once.

I can't hear what I'm not listening to.

Excuse me while I wax nostalgic.

Oh Great Sights

Thinking outrageously, I write in cursive.
I hide in my bed with the lights on the floor.
Wearing three layers of coats and leg warmers,
I see my own breath on the face of the door.

I think I've used that quote from Sufjan before, but I like to repeat my stories. Most days, I talk so loud, because I don't feel like anyone is listening (if you're listening, sing it back, etc).

It feels like someone has placed my time in an envelope and then in a tiny, wooden music box with the spinning ballerina inside that an elephant munched down like circus peanuts. I can hear the music (I think it's someone singing Azure Ray or Death Cab for Cutie), and I know I have some time here somewhere for progress or change or positivity, but I would much rather just watch re-runs of Will and Grace and listen to old Relient K and never change from exactly the person who I am right now. This is how I am when I feel like this:

For the past few days, I have woken up in the perfect atmosphere to lay with someone else. It's just a little too warm and the sheets are slanted with morning sunlight that wakes me gently. Jack Johnson plays somewhere in the background: Bubble Toes, probably. My legs are tangled in sheets and pillows, though, not other legs; it's not an arm making my neck ache. I move free from fear of waking someone from their even breathing.

It isn't a person I miss. I think that's the scariest part of all. I don't want anyone specific there (here, I mean), and I don't know if I ever really have. I just like the evenness of matched breaths and my stomach on anyone's back. That's a paradigm that I always feel safe discussing.

It's funny when I ask myself if I'm happy. I am nearly certain that I am happy, and that I have always been happy, and that I will always be happy. I'm not joyous or ecstatic; these things take tequila... or other things that leave me waking up with regret, like Mr. Last-nameless from almost forever ago. This is always the second I know that I have not been in that Bohemian l.o.v.e. that just makes the world around you fuzzy and mushy like butter that your roommate left out of the fridge for an entire weekend.

I'm still believing that when I find that sort of extended happiness, I won't experience this car-towing espresso karmic whiplash that tries to handcuff me to some cat or Taylor Swift song. I'm not coming back. Those people are rocks and hard places, baby, and I have some control over the voices in my head. "The opposite of love is not hate. It's indifference," and I just don't/can't care anymore.

Oh, I am not quite sleeping.
Oh, I am fast in bed...

Is it March 14th yet?

I Don't Feel Any Different

The clanking of crystal.

So, everybody, out your best suit or dress on.
Let's make believe we are wealthy for just this once.

=== === === ===

Manhattan.
Two thousand eight. It sounds so ominous.

Let's take a moment to reflect on my two thousand seven. Look back before you look forward (etc.) I can't even remember how I rang it in. The events were as follows:

franklin ave, the cities every weekend, hot tubbing in cedars 94, taste of minnesota, dg feed, dg formal, relationship-single-faux.dating-together-not.together-single, chicago, new york, alone for spring break, watching stars, middle river, a very sweet v-day, leaderquest, the mayo clinic & a.f then banana republic then maybe the daily, jose cuervo, barbie hoes, cheap vodka (karkov, silver wolf, etc), miller high life, uv blue, xmas sweater parties, cry, cry cry,

and laughter.

I Smoke Myself to Sleep.

This day is possibly the most perfect fall day weather that I have ever experienced: sixty-something with no clouds in the sky, and I was lucky enough to score an outside seat at Espresso Royale, where I sit in my raddest hipster-outfit... writing on my angsty blog. Sometimes I am just too much for myself! Artsy and such with lots of exposed calf-muscles.

Of course, the man to the left of me was just as lucky with his large pack of mentholated Newports that he insists on smoking incessantly. The woman next to me is smoking as well and "not well" as she (a landlord, I gather) is on the phone with her lawyer. The wind is changing directions and either way just results in ashes on my jeans. I have turned up Joshua Radin to irritate them away and, thus far, have failed in my attempts.

I don't have much to say, but sometimes I just enjoy letting my thoughts flow obnoxiously long (like the voicemails i leave on ridiculous answering machines).

Interesting tidbits in the life of John:

Xu (my accounting TA-guy) decided to announce when our first surprise quiz is occurring. However, he wouldn't tell us what it would cover... except that we should "pay attention to chapter 8 and make sure to look over pages 396-411 in our textbook." Oh Xu, you are so sneaky. How will I ever decipher your cryptic emails? I'm surely doomed to fail your course. However, your simple class is leaving me with an A- sitting at 95%. There is something illogical about those curve numbers.

Someone chose to "deface" the phone book attached to the pay phone in front of me, changing "Dex" to "Dextrose". If that isn't offensive, I don't know what is. Note to science-nerds (I'm not claiming immunity): when you choose to deface anything, try to throw in some sort of racist or sexist slur coupled with a signature marking your territory. It will convince people that you are actually hardcore... and spreading ignorance. Isn't that the point of graffiti? No, I think not.

On top of that, an Escalade driver is trying her very best to parallel park into a spot clearly only wide enough for a Prius.

I am now officially into changing into a completely new outfit at about 11:30 every day. I just can't stay out of my own closet!

I got the new Dashboard CD (and it's like they put a new one out every time I start a new relationship). That's a weird thought, actually, because it's actually about right the more I think of it. "Would it kill you breathe?" Maybe it would, Chris. Maybe it would.

"Don't pull that bullshit with me. Canadian twenty? This is America." I enjoy catching tidbits of cell phone conversations.

I want a daffodil. I want to always roll my pants up, because it makes people wonder if I actually bike or if I'm just a big douchebag. I would obviously regret to inform that it was a little bit of btoh. I want a Cabernet Sauvignon-fueled dance party. I want to be able to weave together a Halloween costume in the nick of time. I want people to wonder why I'm wearing a tie. I want to be notorious like James Dean and JFK and Elvis. I want to be so famous that I have to have my babies in Africa. I want denim and denim and denim and True Religion and Rock and Republic Seven for all Mankind and other brands that sound like social uprisings or post-hardcore bands. I want to not be asked on a date at work. I want to be so alive that it feels like my pores are splitting and giving life to everything around me. I want to reek of awe and wonder and Thanksgiving dinners. I want to be the colored-page of the newspaper, even if that means that I have to pose as the funny-page. I want a week off. I want to be credit-card debt free and decaffeinated and fueled by something other than grande lattes and franzia and anxiety.

"and I want life in every word to the extent that it's absurd."

I believe in clean breaks. Chris just made me think of that. I have recently said (and maybe always known) that I can never promise anyone I'll always be in their life as long as possible. I'm not like that. I'm a train who constantly switches tracks. I'm more of a helicopter: loud, roaming, all-seeing? Maybe not, but I'm trying to gain some perspective or something.

I believe in spirituality and karma and karma and religion that is more of a guideline than a hard-fast rule. I think everyone understands their own religion completely, especially those that just don't believe in religion at all. I believe that you can appreciate what you have without ever losing it. I believe that not everything happens for a reason. Somethings just happen. I believe in emo haircuts and self expression and leopard print and maybe even juicy couture sweatsuits and Uggs. I believe in forging your own style. Julie told me today that even though I don't match I was "starting my own trend." Maybe that's the key. Maybe, you always match and you always know what's going on... because at least you know that you don't know.

Scratch that helicopter thought. I'm more like a grasshopper. See how small my line of vision is? Every now and then I can jump to see so much more, but never everything... just everything I see.

Style is about being confident. If you think you're pulling it off, you're pulling it off. That's probably the only thing Banana Republic will teach me. If you think your shoulders look big in that blouse, they do. If you think combat boots match with caramel cashmere dresses, well they probably do.

I think that I'm done for now. Sometimes, I just need things like this to be stable and all-encompassing and karmically-inclined and open. Glasnost. Etc.

Close your eyes and I'll kiss you. Tomorrow I'll miss you. Remember I'll always be true, and, dear, while I'm away I'll write home everyday... and I'll send all my loving to you.

All my loving.

Wonderful Or Something

1 :: I will not frown just because I feel like frowning.

Lately, I haven't been able to breathe for more than a minute each day, and I'm not sure if this lack of spare time is really such an awful thing. I'm not happy unless I'm on the verge of something (whether it be a vacation or a mental break down). I always need something to look forward to.

I am looking forward to halloween and notre dame and losing to wisconsin and first paychecks all over again and christmas and rainy day mixes and my wife's notes and being home for the weekend and crying during movies and new york and my dad making me coffee again. These are the things I think of when my oxygen supply seems to be dwindling.

Otherwise, I just consume an obnoxious amount of caffeine and it seems to get me through.

2 :: I will do things that make me smile.

I am learning how to smile when I want to. I can sing michael buble at the top of my lungs while riding through the rain. So, maybe I will. And just maybe I will drink campagne and throw dance parties all by myself. Expect phone calls and listening to me using up my family's rollover minutes, because why would I want to call you only during nights and weekends?

I will stop buying things to feel better, maybe. I will pretend that I am Kara Nesvig and wear leopard print whenever I feel like it... even if it is just a pair of leopard print underwear. I will reveal too much to people that I don't know, because I like to feel exhibitionistic. I will stop fearing bright colors.

3 :: I will never stop checking my hair in semi-reflective surfaces... even if I go bald.

Constant As A Northern Star

I have been boiling with impatience this week (the emotion, not the simple flowers that remind me of my mother). I am not tolerant of ignorance or defense mechanisms or joy.

I am this turbulent hurricane of emotion, and right now I'm standing in the eye of the storm. There is an eerie calmness about the silence of my kitchen at this time in the morning. Of course, at some point, my roommates will stumble in loudly and break another of my cheap possessions. Regardless, I feel like I can absorb all things from all directions (empathetic as follows: the way I imagine sea turtles to be [arms outstretched and such]).

I do this to myself every now and then (but mostly now). I, exhausted, have stretched myself thin into the night (with a strand of several long days behind me, and longer ones ahead) to accomplish nothing but almost-perfect peanut butter cookies from scratch and darker black circles under my eyes. Nights like this wax and wane introspection with a slight emphasis on my ego. It is Saturday night (or Sunday morning, for the nit-picky) and I have opted to ride my bike to Lund's (more details later) to bake. Why? I wanted to bake. I wanted to be Giada De Laurentiis whipping up some gelato for the surprise dinner party I happen to be throwing tomorrow night.

On my bike... (on the way to Lund's of course, because I feel glamorous there), a number of odd things happened in the fifty-block-total ride through one of the worst neighborhoods in Minneapolis. 1) I was called Lance Armstrong; 2) I was offered a blowjob (from three drunk girls, undeniably freshman looking for a ride); 3) I was almost hit by a car; 4) I was told by pedestrians to get off the sidewalks; 5) and by cars to get off the road; 6) I got two bad feelings (one each way in the same spot, in between 12th and 13th on University).

I hate fucking up. Probably more than anything, because I'm a real Virgo: critic, narcissist, perfectionist, constantly unhappy. I hate A minuses and cookies that are crunchy in an unpleasant way and dirty kitchens and fumbling over my words and shoes that don't match and not opening up credit cards. In review, if it isn't perfect, I'm not really a fan. At least I can acknowledge my flaws (though, if I fail to attempt to change, is it acknowledgment at all?) I confess. Virgo, Libra rising.

I believe that everything happens in threes.

I was asked on three dates today. None of them very conventional.
- To learn chopstick fluency at a sushi bar.
- To try on cowboy boots at some store on Lake Street (seriously.)
- To an opera (the only one I considered, before I realized the nature of the excursion).

Right now I only want three things:

I want to wear a scarf and not look stupid.
I want a four-point-oh.
I want to feel like I don't need caffeine to transfer oxygen to my bloodstream.

"I could drink a case of you, darling, and still be on my feet."