AS THOUGH IT WERE YOUR OWN TWILIGHT

oh dear

2009-07-16T15:45:57Z

So I have a houseguest, as of August 1, a certain Israeli is coming my way. He bought his tickets, and now all I have to do is stop writing poems about how stressed I feel.

I've never quite LIVED with someone I like (as in likelike, as in I feel giggly and handholding and slightly goofy-like-floating-on-a-cloud-goofy)... I can't imagine what we're gonna do for days and days and days (cause he's here for days and days and days - he's here as long as I ask him to stay).

I want to believe that it'll all be simple, he'll arrive and everyday we'll wake up and have adventures. But i'm not an adventurous girl! I'm kinda boring. I read a lot, go to work, come home, watch soyouthinkyoucandance... what'll he think of this american?

Plus, it's gonna get hot. Everyone knows things get different when it gets gross&humid in Boston.

trumpeta @ 2009-07-01T00:54:00

2009-07-01T05:10:24Z

So remember when budding relationships were over the internet? Remember feeling that pull through the IM screen, blushing and giggling and falling into intimacy with someone who is miles and miles and miles away from how you planned life, from how life planned you?

So remember when you could spend hours on the computer, you days slipping out from under mondaytuesdaywednesday and you're bursting inside like you are suddenly ripened. Remember now, how warm you felt, mid-night conversations, poor spelling, lazy slang. Emotions spread-eagle on the screen.

it was the only way, the internet, to try words like love and like and crush and frenching. a stack of pokemon cards beside the mouse, spelling sheets to do for Mrs. Marchese's lit class and a dail-up modem to hear click and dial and static. AIM and yahoo and myspace.

so i have skype. and a pokemon card (it's in Japanese, it's Rapidash) taped to my computer. and it's summer in boston, and i have nothing to do. and i walked in the rain a couple miles today. I'm learning about cross-sectional racial identity, of social identity theory and will be featured on an academic website soon but for now, we are slowly but surely falling into some kind of something serious. and i think its both the happiest and the most terrified i've been in a long time.

since feeling is first

since feeling is first
who pays any attention
to the syntax of things
will never wholly kiss you;

wholly to be a fool
while Spring is in the world

my blood approves,
and kisses are a better fate
than wisdom
lady i swear by all flowers. Don't cry
- the best gesture of my brain is less than
your eyelids' flutter which says

we are for each other; then
laugh, leaning back in my arms
for life's not a paragraph

And death i think is no parenthesis

Israel

2009-06-12T19:09:34Z

I took an 11-hour flight back to connecticut last night, and I've been in the USA for a little over 18 hours.

I can't stop wishing I was back in Israel. With the whole brithright group, with everyone, with all the love and compassion and fun and joy and sadness and all the glorious things we learned about each other and about the country.

And when I can talk about Amos, I will. Just for now: I miss him, I miss being in Israel with him

It is Shabbat, and while I am thankful to have another shabbat to spend with my friends and family, I wish i could spend another shabbat in Israel.

In conclusion: call me, ask me how I am doing, ask me about my new connection with who I am culturally and where I'd rather be, ask me how I am going to keep this feeling going.

Yerushalayim

2009-05-30T20:28:06Z

Off to Israel!

it's silly that my biggest worry is making friends. And outfits. What if I bring all the wrong clothes? What if I dress like a slob when everyone else looks pretty? What if I dress too nicely and look like a tool? What if I'm too hot/too cold/too strange? What if I run out of shampoo?

I feel both nervous and excited, so I'd like to sing a song called "nervous but excited." (If you get that reference, I love you that much more. If you don't: http://www.hulu.com/watch/67437/saturday-night-live-high-school-musical-4)

I get to ride a camel. Camel in spanish is camelo .

God, the Universe and Everything.

2009-05-23T04:48:25Z

I don't start these conversations with humans. I wish I had the courage, but, as is my way, I just kinda float along, hoping to be pulled aside by conscientious individuals. Sometimes it works, usually I'm afraid I come off a little cold & closed-off.

upbringing
I was raised with a Jewish identity. I liked being Jewish - when I was younger - because it made me feel special, and gave me something to teach my classmates (my mom's big on bringing the whole class latkes, talking about Hanukkah). I went to a pretty lame "Sunday School," where I learned the hebrew alphabet, the transliteration to some prayers (more on that later), and was a B'nai Mitzvah - basically the "you're thirteen and still jewish" test.

My family has never "belonged" to a temple, we never attend weekly shabbat services

in summary, my family, by all accounts, is not practicing. Nor are we culturally. My mom does not speak hebrew, and we do not have relatives in Israel.

prayers
I do not speak hebrew. When I say I "know" a prayer, this falls along a spectrum. It may mean that I know the meaning of the prayer, but I cannot chant it, because the tune/words are too difficult. It may mean that I know both the tune and words, but don't know the meaning. Usually, when I say I "know" a prayer, it means that I can chant the prayer correctly (with a casual glance at the transliteration) I recognize several of the words, as well as the overall meaning

this above pull-and-push is common to judaism. many rituals and references fly over my head, I can't count to ten in hebrew, I can't read it very well, I can't speak the language of "my heritage" (but honestly, who can? I mean, us aryans are like, german + random eastern european - who here actively seeks to learn the language of their ancestors?) But many jews go once a year to temple, and some go every week, and we all just try to figure it out, and leer jealously at those who know it already.

services
In college, I attend Friday night services. For me, I started doing this because many of my friends went. Then it became a tradition, a nice way to separate the week, a reason to get out of bed after my friday-afternoon nap.

In services, I sit next to Sam. I look at other people's outfits; I judge their hair - I watch the guitarist's fingers, to figure out chords, I harmonize, I listen for harmonies, I think about music theory - I think about my week, I try to think about those in my life who are sad or hurt, and how I can put them above me - I hope, I relax, I laugh, sometimes I think about crying. I said the traditional mourning prayers for my grandfather, until I stopped wanting to cry.

my services do not have God. which brings me to...

God!
I do not believe in God. Someone asked me if I believe in "science" - I do. I believe that everything has an explanation. I believe that angelic visions and divine inspiration are testament to the mysteries of the human mind. I believe in hallucinations - I believe in chemical imbalances - I believe in depression, hope, friendship, confidence and slow healing.

I believe that god is a useful tool, that people are afraid to gather together to praise something as nebulous as "human mental power." Some people would call this praise "uppity" or "snobbish" - what, you want to praise yourself? your organs? that's so prideful! - but I disagree, and I think that praising God (i.e. who "Designed" this) is just a vehicle for praising and being grateful for whatever it is that luck/fortune/probability has handed us. A nice car, a happy family, a killer liver. Whatever.

I am in the minority, as an atheist Jew. I respect the millions upon billions (i.e. at least 50% of the USA) who believe in a God, and use the comfort of "something out there" or "someone listening" to help when life sucks. Life sucks. Support is hard to find, difficult to accept. The power of organized religion to strengthen and unify is both useful and classy. The "feeling" of another "presence" - which I believe can be completely explained by mental phenomena - is comforting, and I don't deny others their kicks.

If I can get the same feeling from listening to a really rockin' symphony as bowing my head in prayer - aka thankful thought - there is no god, only good vibrations.
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frequently asked questions
1. Why say prayers that praise God, if you don't believe in it?
- I enjoy the tunes. chanting is fun. I enjoy the feel of hebrew on my lips. Some of the things are translated pretty god-less... some, which ask for peace, for shelter, for the universe to keep on spinning...

2. How dare you call yourself jewish!
- Sorry, Jewish is a culture, and I can say a bunch of prayers. Even if I don't believe them. Suck it, forceful conservatives. You're too sucked up in "being Jewish enough" that you forget to remain decent human beings, hence making you worse off than I. So suck it.

3. Can I come to services?
-Yes, do it! Stare at outfits with me! No seriously, if it makes you uncomfortable when I offer, I'm only feeling what a pleasure it is to be surrounded by smiling faces and songs I've sung since 1st grade. I'm not trying to convert you to my godless state, only offering in case you don't want to sit scanning Hulu for another re-run of "Glee" (a show which I really hope doesn't get canceled...)

In conclusion: I used to recognize the god in everything; now I choose to recognize the non-existence of god in anything. It's more beautiful and peaceful than it sounds.

trumpeta @ 2009-05-21T20:43:00

2009-05-22T00:45:55Z

I may actually be fucked.

In checking out the "get your student visa for spain" website of the New York Spanish Consulate... they don't have an appointment until July.

a Visa takes 7 weeks

I leave for Spain the 2nd of September

fuckfuckfuckfuckfuckfuckfuckfuckfuckfuckfuck... how the HELL am I going to get my visa on time? The earliest they can see me allows ONE DAY inbetween getting the VISA and getting on a fucking plane. To Seville. FUCKFUCKFUCKFUCKFUCKFUCKFUCKFUCKFUCK.

this is out of control.

trumpeta @ 2009-05-02T18:46:00

2009-05-02T22:47:17Z

It's almost 7 pm on a saturday and i'm in the library and i can't can't can't finish this section but i neeeeeeed to. Ugh. Econ. What a brain-drain.

trumpeta @ 2009-04-20T22:08:00

2009-04-21T02:09:42Z

It so happens I am sick of being a man.
And it happens that I walk into tailorshops and movie
houses
dried up, waterproof, like a swan made of felt
steering my way in a water of wombs and ashes.

The smell of barbershops makes me break into hoarse
sobs.
The only thing I want is to lie still like stones or wool.
The only thing I want is to see no more stores, no gardens,
no more goods, no spectacles, no elevators.

It so happens that I am sick of my feet and my nails
and my hair and my shadow.
It so happens I am sick of being a man.

Still it would be marvelous
to terrify a law clerk with a cut lily,
or kill a nun with a blow on the ear.
It would be great
to go through the streets with a green knife
letting out yells until I died of the cold.

I don't want to go on being a root in the dark,
insecure, stretched out, shivering with sleep,
going on down, into the moist guts of the earth,
taking in and thinking, eating every day.

I don't want so much misery.
I don't want to go on as a root and a tomb,
alone under the ground, a warehouse with corpses,
half frozen, dying of grief.

That's why Monday, when it sees me coming
with my convict face, blazes up like gasoline,
and it howls on its way like a wounded wheel,
and leaves tracks full of warm blood leading toward the
night.

And it pushes me into certain corners, into some moist
houses,
into hospitals where the bones fly out the window,
into shoeshops that smell like vinegar,
and certain streets hideous as cracks in the skin.

There are sulphur-colored birds, and hideous intestines
hanging over the doors of houses that I hate,
and there are false teeth forgotten in a coffeepot,
there are mirrors
that ought to have wept from shame and terror,
there are umbrellas everywhere, and venoms, and umbilical
cords.

I stroll along serenely, with my eyes, my shoes,
my rage, forgetting everything,
I walk by, going through office buildings and orthopedic
shops,
and courtyards with washing hanging from the line:
underwear, towels and shirts from which slow
dirty tears are falling.

- Pablo Neruda, translated by Robert Bly

what a poet(s)

trumpeta @ 2009-04-18T03:25:00

2009-04-18T07:26:42Z

2
As tonight in our bed by the window
you brush my hair to help me sleep, and clean

the brush as my mother did, offering
the nest to the updraft.

I'd like to think it will be lifted as far
as the river, and catch in some white sycamore,

or drift, too light to sink, into the shaded inlets,
the bank-moss, where small fish, frogs, and insects

lay their eggs.
Would this constitute an afterlife?

The story goes that sailors, moored for weeks
off islands they called paradise,

stood in the early sunlight
cutting their hair. And the rare

birds there, nameless, almost extinct,
came down around them

and cleaned the decks
and disappeared into the trees above the sea.

-deborah diggs, "Darwin's Finches"

RIP, but why, why?

trumpeta @ 2009-04-09T23:09:00

2009-04-10T03:12:43Z

I just had a very healthy visit with R. We're usually not this healthy. Usually I get overly nervous, and she's as impenetrable as can be.

but that was healthy. Sometimes we just have healthy talks.

I should go to sleep. I feel yucky.

trumpeta @ 2009-03-31T16:33:00

2009-03-31T20:34:28Z

It's official!
I'm going to Sevilla, Spain from August - December.

and I couldn't be happier.

el español

2009-03-10T00:52:51Z

so, I was just writing a sentence in my notebook, and I thought, as I was writing it, I was writing it in English... and then I realized I was writing it in Spanish.

:)

what a rush! it is soon to be MY language. Writing it feels more natural than ever. I have now applied to my summer plan - Spanish Language School at Middlebury, VT - to isolate myself from the English world for seven weeks - and then ship off to Sevilla, Spain for 5 months.

so excited.

saturday night

2009-02-23T06:30:33Z

I was witness to a minor, disturbing crime
enough to get someone in big trouble

i confronted him today

he denied it, all
big, innocent eyes.

I know what I saw
I know what I heard
I know it was him

now I've told a couple people
2 of them believe me
1 does not because she is
friends with him in the first place, which is
a bad idea as all he does
is hurt her.

I hate him for not owning up to it
but I KNOW WHAT I KNOW
I know it happened.

I don't think I realized until today how little I am able predict other's behavior
especially people I don't know
(i thought he'd apologize at my feet, beg forgiveness, try to make ammends...)
I am like a scientist watching humans
except my theories are all bullshit.

hate. hate. hate.

trumpeta @ 2009-02-13T01:01:00

2009-02-13T06:13:58Z

I hate having solo auditions. I hate failing at solo auditions. I hate not getting the solo.

But what I hate more is being just good enough to be a backup soloist. I've now done it 3 times. Now I get another. This will be my fourth.

Seems like mediocrity is just my lot in life. Second-best. I guess I had to contend with this sometime in my life. Is this called my mid-life crisis? It's a mid-college crisis. I AM APPARENTLY SO MUCH MORE WORSE THAN EVERYONE IN MY GROUP. And they're not that good. Isn't that just the worst? That I don't even respect the person who beat me for the solo. That I think she sucks at it. That I think that I should have it.

and now I'm angry in my common room and strangers are trying to make me feel better and it works but now they're uncomfortable. I am not sorry for my anger. It is justified. I am only sorry that something I put so much effort into (time, effort, emotion, tuesday, thursday, sunday nights).

help me

trumpeta @ 2009-02-09T22:10:00

2009-02-10T03:15:17Z

I can't concentrate with the internet in existence. If I were born 40 years ago, would I be this distracted? I think there's just too much electricity. I need silence and a candle, a table with a pencil. Even if I were born 40 years ago, I wouldn't use a pen. Or if I did, I would create some kind of solvent to be able erase something once I had written it.

Here's me bragging: I did that arrangement. AND I'M THE PERCUSSION.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H9IvJ9HPfAY

And here's me bragging again: I fucking love this song.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BSAT-JiOCfA

Ok, here's a promise.
I will check my email, my gmail, my facebook, my lj... on WEDNESDAY. NO INTERNET TOMORROW. none.

I'm signing on the dotted line.

...................................................

I have officially started my second decade.

2009-02-02T06:26:12Z

I am cinderella, it is the ball, it's been the ball for about an hour fifteen, I hope it's always the ball and while I'm not the prettiest or the richest or the most socially acceptable or entirely sure I was invited in the first place, I may be the goofiest and the doofiest and darn most ready to dance.

Dancedancedancedancedance

trumpeta @ 2009-01-28T20:08:00

2009-01-29T14:52:43Z

oh no
oh no
oh no I'm crushing again. And I'm feeling the he didn't text me back and the am I being too forward? we make such good friends and the I wish I didn't have a cold so I could call and hang out with him tonight and the maybe this will actually be something wonderful?

oyyyyy vey. I need something. neeed neeeeeed neeeeeeeed.

back to work.

trumpeta @ 2009-01-22T12:57:00

2009-01-22T19:27:36Z

i love thursdays.
i love how Lorca opens my mind and takes the color green and makes me hunger with it.

Verde que te quiero verde.
Verde viento. Verdes ramas.
El barco sobre la mar
y el caballo en la montaña.
Con la sombra en la cintura
ella sueña en su baranda,
verde carne, pelo verde,
con ojos de fría plata.
Verde que te quiero verde.
Bajo la luna gitana,
las cosas la están mirando
y ella no puede mirarlas...
- Federico Garcia Lorca

Green, how I want you green.
Green wind. Green branches.
The boat on the ocean
and the horse in the mountain.
With a shadow around her waist,
She dreams on her balcony,
green flesh, green hair
with eyes of cold silver.
Green, how I want you green.
Under the Gypsy moon,
All the things that are watching her
that she cannot see...

Plans:
Friday: Kira's party, Robin's party, Iggy's party..
Saturday: Izzie's sweet (as she likes to spell it).. and then the Winter Bash dance (blergh. I might not go. Dances are sweaty grossssnesss and someone yelled lesbian at me last time I was there (with no prompting. Asshole)...I'm negatively excited for this one. )

new years!

2009-01-01T07:28:26Z

yay for the new year! 2009. Strange, we're all almost twenty (or already there!), we're in college or slightly outside of it, we're jobs and work and money and lots of friendship (and other) love.

Huzzah for the death of 2008 and the start of 2009!

dreams

2008-12-18T03:00:02Z

I've had such a series of damning dreams lately. I need a vacation that's really just a whole lot of distraction. I will write a lot this one, I will write and paint and ice skate and listen to music in big headphones and (please, please) find that peace which is not stagnant. not stagnant. I will be uncompromisingly creative.

trumpeta @ 2008-12-16T14:16:00

2008-12-16T19:16:11Z

i can't study anymore.
i just can't
ughghghghg

trumpeta @ 2008-12-07T11:58:00

2008-12-07T17:11:26Z

it is snowing. last time, this year, he and i went and played in the snow and made a snowman and had a snowball fight and i realized that i was and might always be slightly, madly, irrevocably in love with him.

and it's fine. i have that day, and all days like that day, sitting with my face to the window, watching the sideways sweep of the snow. it's just beautiful enough to make me never regret, to make me happy in spite of my best attempts at being an adult.

finals make me work my hardest. I've been studying and studying and studying, and I will continue to study until I get hungry or have to go sing. My post-modernism english class makes me want to be an english major - my final paper [on "The Ghost Writer" by Philip Roth] is the first piece of work i've done all year where i'm inspired, i'm brilliant, i'm alive in my writing, i'm racy, i'm actually enjoying working on it. Oh, here's my loud, selfish secret: I wish I were an English major. But instead, I'm useful, instead I'm heading towards the job market, instead i'm studying for hours about nothing that I'll remember and I'm wondering exactly why I'm even in college at all .

but that's a story for a grey day. Today is all white.

Oh, and I got into the vagina monologues. I didn't get a funny or well-known (or very large) part, but I think I'll still enjoy being back in the lights. I'm part of the "Say It" monologue, which is based on the treatment of "comfort women" during WWII, the japanese girls aged 12-18 who were encouraged to leave their homes to "help the government's cause" - basically become terribly abused whores at giant whore camps where the soldiers would visit. Here's a link to the monologue if you're interested: http://74.125.45.132/search?q=cache:nu5om5qJ82IJ:vday.org/static/download/SayIt.pdf+comfort+women+say+it+say+sorry&hl=es&ct=clnk&cd=1&gl=us&lr=lang_en&client=safari

back to microbiology! onward ho, dear academic journey and intellectual development!

trumpeta @ 2008-12-02T16:58:00

2008-12-02T22:00:13Z

Question of the day:

Should I try out for this year's Vagina Monologues?

followup: for which part should I try out?

so many questions... ♥

trumpeta @ 2008-11-23T02:20:00

2008-11-23T07:45:08Z

there's all of it. read it if you like, i'll warn you, it's late and it's all i'm thinking. it's my journal.

I don't understand. He's nice and deeply homesick, he's interesting and cute, he's one of the coolest people I know, he throws himself at me when he's drunk and tries to seduce me when he's sober. I tell him no but I don't think I mean it. He makes my heart flutter just a little, but only when I'm listening to him tell me about all the crazy things he's done. Last night he had me close my eyes and told me just exactly what I'd see if I were sitting in his basement for the first part of Thanksgiving break, and it was a full ten-minutes of west-coast poetry. He's like nobody I've ever met.

It's been so long since I've felt anything like romance. I live my life, day to day, just, as he would say, kickin' it. I get nervous and sometimes I succeed and I just don't see myself actually feeling anything but friendship for anyone. I don't flirt, I don't throw myself at anyone, I just kick it and have a bunch of mixed drinks and dance with friends and don't want to end up in a bed with anyone, unless it's to cuddle and watch youtube videos of puppies. I'm not worried that one day all my friends will get their lovers and marry each other and that I'll still be staying in on a Saturday night to read. It's like I know that I'm alone, and that I'll probably be alone for a while, and I'm actually enjoying it a hell lot more than waking up sunday with a mistake. Or being expected to do things I don't want to do.

I've been wearing my pjs for three days straight and I pulled an allnighter on thursday night to watch does it blend? videos on youtube with my friends and then we all went and climbed a roof to watch the sunrise and I never shower and on Friday night I saw electric six and had an amazing moshpit/danceparty experience met these boys who go to Emerson who are friends with James Gaskell and own a summer home in Madison of all crazy things and everyday I'm walking through my homework and my insecurities and my winter cold and the little unhappiness and the big happinesses and suddenly he's here. And it's strange. And I don't really know what he wants. And I want him to be happy but I'm no longer okay with sacrificing any of my happiness. And in general hanging with him feels so good but I just can't exactly understand it.

I'm never sure if introspection is completely self-centered. Who can actually change their behavior to match what they think? It's like changing the tides by pushing from the shore. I'd need to shoot the moon to actually make anything flow a different way. I should shower tomorrow.

trumpeta @ 2008-11-12T13:14:00

2008-11-12T18:18:36Z

everyday i wake up and stumble to class and by the time i'm awake it's 1:13 pm and I'm reading books about people half-crazy in love and i myself cannot believe that this is in fact my life, that this carefully organized clutter (oh pencils and makeup and kleenex and bowties and photographs and sheetmusic and teabags and drawings and pillows) is me, is all there is of me, that this is it . Then I drink coffee and go to another class and apologize for late homework and bullshit my way through things that should define me. fight for nothing(s), run my mouth, use bobby pins and loose pants to keep me warm. this is it.