je ne veux qu'elle

My desk: Trader Joe's pad thai; papers claiming truths about oil, cancer, governments; excavation.
My desktop: Marc Lavoine for the sake of memory in lieu of taste, Guggenheims, Anne Lamott, revolution, YouTube's Moroccan accounts.
My thoughts: The library is open until nine, my throat hurts, minutiae kills me, are revolutions possible in the U.S.?, I can feel burnt out, I can't wait to live in Brooklyn, I'm excited to write an article about super tuesday, I'm going to check out No Logo by Naomi Klein at the library even though I have a million books I need to read at home, I fall in love too hard, too easily with the world and it breaks my heart every day.

judged not by the color of their skin but by the content of their character

I so savor my alone time, but when it comes to "alone, alone" time, I'm always at a bit of a loss as to what to do. Typically, during my "me" time, there will be someone else in the house, namely my husband. (Still so crazy to see that typed out. It makes me seem so much older and more mature than I think of myself, this person who's about to turn 26. 26?!) At any time, I can shout out a line from a Charles Bukowski poem just so I know someone else in the world can appreciate what I'm experiencing. Sometimes, I wonder if I have forgotten how to give myself feedback.
Now I have a couple days to myself. I'm wearing Superman underwear, wrapped up in a fleece blanket and watching The Jane Austen Book Club, which I have yet to be impressed with. I'm drinking pomegranate tea and wondering, as I always do around this time of the week, how exactly I'm going to write all my articles by deadline. I need to call lots of friends back, write letters and return e-mails to friends in Spain, but I've done none of that.
I heard clips of the "I Have a Dream" speech while eating in a Jamaican restaurant in Philly this weekend, and it was really jarring and made tears spring to my eyes and my throat clench. I so want to believe this country will, finally, challenge itself, accept its wrongdoings and move on to a place where when a black man or a woman runs for president, we will be able to focus on their platforms and not their race or gender.
Let us all continue to fight for justice.

and some things that i said to her (i'll tell you what i missed)

In Wyoming, when I would feel overwhelmed, I would walk outside and the infiniteness of everything — the sky, the mountains, the blades of grass, the conversations in little hondas with rust spots — would soothe those chafed life spots. Everything was so big, and I felt so happy being so free and so small. I imagined myself turning corners in London and Algiers and clinking wine glasses on cross-country train trips and screaming love notes to a world content to bang on the pots and pans.
When do we all stop walking to the edge? When do meet in fields and not on cliffs? When does the every-day become something not to surmount, not to defeat? When can we let our shoulders shake; when can we stop being strong and fall, just a little bit? Why must every breath be so obvious?

sometime in between friday night and saturday morning

It's the time of year everyone talks about new year's resolutions. "Oh hi so and so!" they say at the grocery stores, the banks, the concrete seas that swallow box stores whole and shit them out in tiny alleyways, where the third graders don't venture anymore. They stand with frozen chicken in hand, giggling nervously about the need to lose weight. They gush over cilantro. They ask about family and report back to the suburban soldiers who just don't give a shit anymore.
I've never made new year's resolutions. I turn over no new leaves; I make no new self. I am still me, drinking beer and reading Zadie Smith. I laugh too loudly, write too many letters without sending them, receive stares from passerbys witnessing my version of "Boots of Spanish Leather," complete with new haircut shakes and all.
What is it about the specific marking of a passing of time that makes us reevaluate ourselves? What is it about arbitrary country lines that makes us nationalists? What draws us to countdowns, to straight lines, to rigidity?
My resolution for society? Drink champagne at noon during a siesta, write a collective novel maybe with Antigone playing some sort of lead role, smash dirt in your flannel shirt/face. Stop narrating.