"Honeysuckle is its own revelation"

I'm sitting here, after reading David Axelrod poetry ("Honeysuckle is its own revelation") and listening to Emile and some random girl talking about socialemotional and academia and so I pretend I'm doing work, but really I'm looking at images of Homer, Alaska. I look out the window and pretend to see the mountains, the lakes, the sense of sanity in a world in which I'm quickly losing faith.
But. I take deep breaths. I swim in the ocean at 2 a.m. and tangle hair with seaweed and finger Argentinian leaves in journals. And the faith, slowly, comes back. And I wish I could hold it, even if it crumbled, like the leaves.

i've spilled the wine

it's all pseudo tequila shots here, here in the dark damp torn corners of a sort-of island. we left for a week, and when we came back, the yellow leaves had all fallen and i can't stop listening to nina simone. what do you say when someone you don't love tells you they love you? something like : this is life, all feet out of windows and chewed up pens. and i'm sorry it can never be you and me.
writing about shitty health care systems, i momentarily like my job. then i lapse back into apathy and wonder when i'll get the energy to start seriously looking in brooklyn. i'm lackluster even about that. what is it about alaska that pulls me? it's the need for the unknown, for people with torn sweaters, for the lack of pretention and the dustdustdust. then you can say, who's that girl flinging kernels of mud into her hair? and i'll say, oh just me.
it's the need to wake up and say, today, today the world hasn't disappointed me. today i remember where i am, and i like it.

doing shots of journalismjobs.com

I find that age-old obsession washing over me yet again : Leaving with the big L.
When I was four and living in Virginia for the first time since we moved to Buenos Aires, it was all I could do from finger the cold windowpane in my Charlottesville room and dream of Argentinian zoos and my friend's house where I had traded my all-time favorite animal for some beany butt doll I eyed warily and grew to hate.
Once we moved to Pennsylvania, I was happy with the nearby park but often made up songs about China and Japan and told my parents they could not say good night to me because, alas, though they thought I was merely a lump under my comforter, I was actually thousands of miles away in Shanghai. (Somehow, at age five, I actually knew of Shanghai.)
I've dreamed of Maine, Morocco, Algiers, Russia, Ghana, India. And so the story goes.
Now it's Alaska. I routinely check journalismjobs.com and recently found a posting for a writer/editor position at the Anchorage Press, an alternative weekly. I've spent a good chunk of time today devouring their articles and can list what to do and what not to do during an Alaskan winter : take walks, spend time with friends, buy a sun lamp, don't camp out in front of the television. I nod, as though I have any idea of what they're talking about, feign a shiver and dig my seventh-grade flannel out from the depths of the closet. (Yes, it still fits, along with my converse - you know, those shoes that once upon a time weren't made in sweatshop basements.)
(Side note : My husband is watching "Buffy the vampire something or other Slayer" and I keep getting horrific flashbacks of friends forcing me to watch Dawson's Creek.)
Anyway, I'll keep dreaming. But I know if I really was in Alaska, I'd be moping in some bar, going home by myself and counting the days until I got to see the person I love more than anything in the world again. So, I'll just have to wait until we can be those annoying newcomers chomping at the bit to explore the last bit of the Final Frontier together. Until then, Google images and Journalismjobs will have to suffice.

it's all candles and gingham here, little light

i worry i may be too old-souled for blogging. am i supposed to write more coherent entries that address daily issues? because that's what i do for a living, and i don't want to do that in my spare time. so there you go, non-existent blog readers - you will be receiving no doses of reality from this girl.
well, maybe just a little:
i'm obsessing over alaska. i browse journalismjobs.com daily for jobs in alaska, then proceed to spend way too much time googling images of alaska. i am convinced i will end up there, complete with candles in my windows and grungy checkered table cloths.
will this be me, my entire life? chasing some combination of myself from the past and conceived notions of the future until i wilt somewhere in the middle?
on a lighter note, my ex and i have been exchanging e-mails and it's nice to know we can have a functional friendship after having an extremely fucked up relationship.
or was that all in my head? were we normal, swinging on tree branches and writing love notes in women's studies classes? when did those alleged battles happen?

my legacy in dust

today: hopefully Into the Wild, rum and coke with little to no backwash, New York Times, wishing there were SCHIP-veto protests here, sad bartenders and not enough calls back to write my articles.
this weekend: some sort of quasi-meat party, forcing myself to pound kitchen tables, dancingdancingdancing in the nude, ghost busters outfits/maybeevenpainting??, library movies, some sort of zygote of a novel, remember i breathe too so maybe i am normal?
the future: alaska in real life instead of the movies, becoming not a citizen, enfants and picnics combined, growing old and laughter.