happy new year kids. tomorrow will hail in my 10 year high school anniversary year. crazy crazy. where will you be ten years from now? i probably thought married with kids doing some service style work somewhere in a third world country. ha. well, I tell you what. I'm going to be drinking a little plum brandy tonight with my luver and some kind-of friends. Ok, fine, friends I'm disappointed in/angry at (they hurt my pride, come on...). Don't know if I'll get drunk or not. Don't care. Am not really expecting nothing.
Review of 2007: January started off with an attack of disgusting facial skin disease...at home in bed with my Boj to welcome in the year. February my face skin only got worse and I put myself through a difficult physical regimen (which included intense strict diet, enemas, salt baths and sauna, veggy juice and water fasts, daily exertion, and liver and colon flushes) to try to rid my body of this mthfckg disease. March I gave up on the diet after my first liver flush nearly pushed me off the deepend and my face started to calm down. April my Boj and I moved into our own apartment (we'd been sharing with another married couple for almost 2 years) and I began looking more seriously for employment as my face was no longer so shameful (even started receiving comments from my grocer and tobacco seller that my face had improved and random strangers stopped suggesting that I try pro-active). May started editing. Weee. Thought I might go freelance. And I think that's when I started blogging with my blog friends too... June took a job, a real job after 7 months unemployed and forgot sometimes that I had a face problem and also vowed to quit smoking on my birthday. July, Boj's mother and my brother visited. August, quit smoking. September my sister visited and Bojan and I attended our first horse races in San Diego (Del Mar). October nothing happened. November Boj's friends visited and we went home to ATL for thanksgiving. I also stopped in Chicago and saw wyd for a few beautiful days. December is now; spent most of the month alone and it was good and now I'm back with my Boj (and I don't feel so much fear about cockroaches in my house anymore) and that's it.
Hm.
So anyway. Happy tonight and tomorrow. Enjoy.
Monday, December 31, 2007
Tuesday, December 25, 2007
Waikiki Wanderings, Christmas Season 2007
12/22/07 Saturday
Back to work tomorrow. At my fave Starbucks these days. The one I try not to frequent too frequently so I don’t outstay my welcome, which, seems to me, has happened at nearly every other coffee shop I’ve frequented.
* * *
That’s the second time now, I’ve been sitting at this window and a petite little old white-haired lady walked by with her fluffer nugget feathery white pup on a leash. Each time she passes, she studies the flower beds along the base of the window like a mad scientist studies his bubbling beakers. The first time by, a few days ago, she took a dead leaf from below one of the flowers. This time she just glared at the beds with the glare of pride of ownership.
* * *
There’s a crazy woman sitting at the table next to mine. I’ve got St. Germain pounding in my ears so I can’t hear what it is she comments on but periodically she lifts her head and shouts things to the baristas. The girl sitting on the other side of her never flinches; can it be that she doesn't notice? The crazy woman is taking pills out of her bag now. She’s got one of those mini sample cups in front of her with stains of neon pink lipstick on its rim which also happens to be smeared at the edges of her lipless mouth where only two very large teeth protrude and retract with a will of their own on the left side of her lower jaw like puppets. She’s got short blond, greasy hair, boy cut, obviously combed frequently. Grey-blond. She hasn’t stopped shuffling through her three bags since I’ve been watching her. She has no clue that I’m staring at her even though we're facing each other. Her raisin-like skin hangs off the corners of her body in mini folds even though she’s tiny. Her face is creased and crossed by hundreds of thin deep wrinkles. She was beautiful once, I think, or at least cute. She just pulled a small neon green noise-maker out of her bag. She’s now focused on it, shaking it intently back and forth. Clap clap clap clap…
She just took out her comb—Ah hah!—and combed one strand of hair on the back of her head and then put it away again. I wonder if she has a shadow self, like Jennifer Egan talks about in Look at Me. If she did, would her shadow be sane? I can hear her now through my music. Beatles' Yellow Submarine is playing over Starbucks’ radio, she’s singing along loudly only she’s singing a completely different Beatles' song.
She doesn’t have any nasty facial expressions. Her face is in constant motion as she talks silently to herself, I imagine, but the only expressions that surface are confusion, oblivion, worry—narcissism, that’s it! Oblivious and un-malicious and aware of the existence of absolutely no one else.
* * *
You know, if I didn’t have the buffer a boyfriend provides—you know on the general public scene—I’d probably be classified as weird: shy always—almost, sitting up very very straight at all times, alone often, always walking fast usually with my eyes cast downward and often conscious of my shaking cheeks (something I've always been embarrassed about) which then causes me to try to suck in my cheeks, dressed up more than the occasion usually, and that, these days, matching.
I don’t feel like I need people for the most part—apart from the ones I already “have”. But then also I feel I have a long way to go before I understand myself well enough to make a sweeping comment like that one which carries so much consequence.
* * *
The longer I keep my gaze fixed behind me, over my left shoulder, the more I understand about my post-high school post-Abidjan decisions. At some point during the first year or two of college, I took a knife and sliced right through the vein that attached all conscious memories before college to my brain. I then promptly forgot that I’d done this. So as the wound scabbed over and then developed a bulbous scar, I cried for my loss and wondered who I might blame for my lost childhood and why they would do such a horrible thing to me.
To fit in in a new country and new subcultures, to move on, to grow up, to find myself (the irony); I disjoined my past from my present and my future. Traded in my memories for a new outfit and a little make-up…a mail order brand-shiny-new Anna. I was ashamed, I think, at so many levels of who I was, what I’d done, and what I had represented that it was easier to throw it all out than to face it and own it
12/23/2007 Sunday
Bojan is in Atlanta now. It feels good. To have him closer. Two more days.
Full moon: 99% full. First of two nights of full moon. Just took a 3-mile walk, along Ala Wai Canal out to Ala Moana Boulevard, along the ocean to Kalakaua and all the way down it to Kapahulu, through hoards of people, then up toward the canal again and back down Kuhio Avenue till I reached my Towers Starbucks where I got a small double-shot latte. There’s been a moonbow around the moon for the last two hours.
“Peel all your layers off I want to each your artichoke heart. No more leaky holes in your brain and no more false starts.”
I have a belly ache from popcorn. If I sit up really straight, the gas in my belly depressurizes.
HEY! There’s that crazy lady from the other Starbucks. Across the street. There’s a bar, Tsunamis’, where they’re having some Sexy Santa’s Elves party with half a dozen half-naked girls and lotsa guys. There’s a crowd milling out front, smoking, staring, yelling, and there she is standing right in the middle of them, galloping in circles to the Bouncy Banjo music wafting out from inside. I mean all out as though she were fifteen and full of energy—wow—ope and there she’s off again. I guess that was that.
* * *
Japanese women, it seems, are skinnier after their second baby than most pre-pubescent white American girls. Sometimes I’ll pass a couple who, from far away, seem totally average (albeit Asian which should be a sign) and then, when I get up close, neither of them—the tops of their heads—reach over my shoulders. It isn’t rare, either, for some of the women to be shorter than my breastes (which don’t hang much because of their size). In Honolulu I have been a giant.
* * *
There’s a girl standing two doors down from Tsunami’s in front of XXXDVD store. She’s got lovely, long, luscious, and bared legs. She’s wearing 6-inch plastic clear heels, a black bra that can barely contain her enormous jugs (bulging out on all sides) and barely visible pink panties hiked up her A-hole. Oh, and a bodyguard in jeans in a black button-up long-sleeved shirt, buttoned all the way up. I wonder if she and he are porn stars. I think yes.
At my other video store, Diamond Head Video that is a 24-hour half normal (with an excellent selection of indy and foreign films), half-porn/sex-toys shop, they had a “Meet the Porn Star, Jennifer Juicy Lips, Night.”
She does have a good body, but she keeps shifty from foot to foot; makes her look, from here, like a toddler who has to pee. I think she’s just nervous.
Oh. That bodyguard man is wearing white slip-on loafers. He must be a porn star. Nailed him. Ha.
***
That's all. Merry Christmas everyone and a happy new year.
Back to work tomorrow. At my fave Starbucks these days. The one I try not to frequent too frequently so I don’t outstay my welcome, which, seems to me, has happened at nearly every other coffee shop I’ve frequented.
* * *
That’s the second time now, I’ve been sitting at this window and a petite little old white-haired lady walked by with her fluffer nugget feathery white pup on a leash. Each time she passes, she studies the flower beds along the base of the window like a mad scientist studies his bubbling beakers. The first time by, a few days ago, she took a dead leaf from below one of the flowers. This time she just glared at the beds with the glare of pride of ownership.
* * *
There’s a crazy woman sitting at the table next to mine. I’ve got St. Germain pounding in my ears so I can’t hear what it is she comments on but periodically she lifts her head and shouts things to the baristas. The girl sitting on the other side of her never flinches; can it be that she doesn't notice? The crazy woman is taking pills out of her bag now. She’s got one of those mini sample cups in front of her with stains of neon pink lipstick on its rim which also happens to be smeared at the edges of her lipless mouth where only two very large teeth protrude and retract with a will of their own on the left side of her lower jaw like puppets. She’s got short blond, greasy hair, boy cut, obviously combed frequently. Grey-blond. She hasn’t stopped shuffling through her three bags since I’ve been watching her. She has no clue that I’m staring at her even though we're facing each other. Her raisin-like skin hangs off the corners of her body in mini folds even though she’s tiny. Her face is creased and crossed by hundreds of thin deep wrinkles. She was beautiful once, I think, or at least cute. She just pulled a small neon green noise-maker out of her bag. She’s now focused on it, shaking it intently back and forth. Clap clap clap clap…
She just took out her comb—Ah hah!—and combed one strand of hair on the back of her head and then put it away again. I wonder if she has a shadow self, like Jennifer Egan talks about in Look at Me. If she did, would her shadow be sane? I can hear her now through my music. Beatles' Yellow Submarine is playing over Starbucks’ radio, she’s singing along loudly only she’s singing a completely different Beatles' song.
She doesn’t have any nasty facial expressions. Her face is in constant motion as she talks silently to herself, I imagine, but the only expressions that surface are confusion, oblivion, worry—narcissism, that’s it! Oblivious and un-malicious and aware of the existence of absolutely no one else.
* * *
You know, if I didn’t have the buffer a boyfriend provides—you know on the general public scene—I’d probably be classified as weird: shy always—almost, sitting up very very straight at all times, alone often, always walking fast usually with my eyes cast downward and often conscious of my shaking cheeks (something I've always been embarrassed about) which then causes me to try to suck in my cheeks, dressed up more than the occasion usually, and that, these days, matching.
I don’t feel like I need people for the most part—apart from the ones I already “have”. But then also I feel I have a long way to go before I understand myself well enough to make a sweeping comment like that one which carries so much consequence.
* * *
The longer I keep my gaze fixed behind me, over my left shoulder, the more I understand about my post-high school post-Abidjan decisions. At some point during the first year or two of college, I took a knife and sliced right through the vein that attached all conscious memories before college to my brain. I then promptly forgot that I’d done this. So as the wound scabbed over and then developed a bulbous scar, I cried for my loss and wondered who I might blame for my lost childhood and why they would do such a horrible thing to me.
To fit in in a new country and new subcultures, to move on, to grow up, to find myself (the irony); I disjoined my past from my present and my future. Traded in my memories for a new outfit and a little make-up…a mail order brand-shiny-new Anna. I was ashamed, I think, at so many levels of who I was, what I’d done, and what I had represented that it was easier to throw it all out than to face it and own it
12/23/2007 Sunday
Bojan is in Atlanta now. It feels good. To have him closer. Two more days.
Full moon: 99% full. First of two nights of full moon. Just took a 3-mile walk, along Ala Wai Canal out to Ala Moana Boulevard, along the ocean to Kalakaua and all the way down it to Kapahulu, through hoards of people, then up toward the canal again and back down Kuhio Avenue till I reached my Towers Starbucks where I got a small double-shot latte. There’s been a moonbow around the moon for the last two hours.
“Peel all your layers off I want to each your artichoke heart. No more leaky holes in your brain and no more false starts.”
I have a belly ache from popcorn. If I sit up really straight, the gas in my belly depressurizes.
HEY! There’s that crazy lady from the other Starbucks. Across the street. There’s a bar, Tsunamis’, where they’re having some Sexy Santa’s Elves party with half a dozen half-naked girls and lotsa guys. There’s a crowd milling out front, smoking, staring, yelling, and there she is standing right in the middle of them, galloping in circles to the Bouncy Banjo music wafting out from inside. I mean all out as though she were fifteen and full of energy—wow—ope and there she’s off again. I guess that was that.
* * *
Japanese women, it seems, are skinnier after their second baby than most pre-pubescent white American girls. Sometimes I’ll pass a couple who, from far away, seem totally average (albeit Asian which should be a sign) and then, when I get up close, neither of them—the tops of their heads—reach over my shoulders. It isn’t rare, either, for some of the women to be shorter than my breastes (which don’t hang much because of their size). In Honolulu I have been a giant.
* * *
There’s a girl standing two doors down from Tsunami’s in front of XXXDVD store. She’s got lovely, long, luscious, and bared legs. She’s wearing 6-inch plastic clear heels, a black bra that can barely contain her enormous jugs (bulging out on all sides) and barely visible pink panties hiked up her A-hole. Oh, and a bodyguard in jeans in a black button-up long-sleeved shirt, buttoned all the way up. I wonder if she and he are porn stars. I think yes.
At my other video store, Diamond Head Video that is a 24-hour half normal (with an excellent selection of indy and foreign films), half-porn/sex-toys shop, they had a “Meet the Porn Star, Jennifer Juicy Lips, Night.”
She does have a good body, but she keeps shifty from foot to foot; makes her look, from here, like a toddler who has to pee. I think she’s just nervous.
Oh. That bodyguard man is wearing white slip-on loafers. He must be a porn star. Nailed him. Ha.
***
That's all. Merry Christmas everyone and a happy new year.
Sunday, December 16, 2007
Mickey Mouse
How can you stay down for long in weather like this--a battle between the sun, brisk winds, highly flying rain clouds that spit on you a chill mist every other block, and everywhere else, poking his infinite nose into the pedestrian-filled sidewalks, the infinite blue expanse of sky. And on my table as I write, sun dancing shadows of leaves high above thrown across my notebook, scooting and jiving to St Germain pounding nervously in my ears. Everyone outside my window, windblown and sun-dappled.
A man just walked by me. I was looking past the world at nothing, enjoying the sensations and stimuli, thoughtless when slowly, in the way your mind processes almost slow-motino when you're not exactly in control, his image impressed itself onto me. He was an older Asian man, probably Japanese, maybe in his sixties with paranoid eyes and a down-cast upper body, like he was sneaking, trying to be inconspicuous. He had on eighties-style white-washed jeans. That's what caught my eye first, because right above the knee on each thigh were loud black and red Mickey Mouse heads, two on each leg. Sleepy-eyed and still not that interested, I half-watched him cross the street towards me. When he was about halfway across I realized that he had a t-shirt on with a HUGE Mickey face on it. I began to feel an interest popping...what else, man? Just as he was about to pass out of my sight, I saw that his overshirt, a button-up, was a black and white camouflage of Mickey faces. My last look of him as he passed my window and out of sight: he looked so serious, so intent on getting to where he was going without a misstep.
A man just walked by me. I was looking past the world at nothing, enjoying the sensations and stimuli, thoughtless when slowly, in the way your mind processes almost slow-motino when you're not exactly in control, his image impressed itself onto me. He was an older Asian man, probably Japanese, maybe in his sixties with paranoid eyes and a down-cast upper body, like he was sneaking, trying to be inconspicuous. He had on eighties-style white-washed jeans. That's what caught my eye first, because right above the knee on each thigh were loud black and red Mickey Mouse heads, two on each leg. Sleepy-eyed and still not that interested, I half-watched him cross the street towards me. When he was about halfway across I realized that he had a t-shirt on with a HUGE Mickey face on it. I began to feel an interest popping...what else, man? Just as he was about to pass out of my sight, I saw that his overshirt, a button-up, was a black and white camouflage of Mickey faces. My last look of him as he passed my window and out of sight: he looked so serious, so intent on getting to where he was going without a misstep.
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