Summer, Round Two.

I think my liver has grown another sheet of armor--or at least I hope it is. This summer is proving to be almost as full of booze and partying as the last. The one thing is missing is my mighty partner in crime who decided she really needed to graduate by going to a small village in the mountains in Chiapas and count ants on coffee plants.

Leaving for Miami in two days. I need to call my mom and let her know that I'm alive--I think she's starting to worry. Can't decide if she really needs to know that I'll be leaving the state for a week or not.

Last night, we rented another proyector and screen then packed the house with twenty-five screaming, cursing students and their closest affiliates. After a heartbreaking night that will not be mentioned from this point forward, we headed out to Necto where we drank like the disillusioned youth we are not.

During the game, my phone started ringing. An area code that was, and wasn't, familiar all at once. As always, I'm never sure if I should answer--but did anyway. A voice I didn't recognize immediately on the other end, then it dawned on me that it was my very own Shirley Ma.

There's something so sad about not recognizing a voice first thing. I don't know if it was the air, the molecules rearranging through the waves.

I swear, the sadder I get from being here and missing everyone, makes me that much more ready to leave. I almost wish I didn't have to stay until the end of August and could leave tomorrow, but oh well.

Really, what makes it worth it is the other phone call I got yesterday--the one from Andrew after he finished the interview and got the job in Sydney. That's one more match for Michigan and a life-changing experience that's about to begin. Sweeet.

I suppose staying around for a few more months is worth it when people are heading off like that. But, damn. Time to gooooooo.

Bad Boys, 2005

I must say, I have to be one of the worst and most brilliant students of all time. Who else would be sitting down to finish their final about two and a half hours before it's due? This is then where the brilliant part comes in because you know I'm gonna tear this shit up even though I'd easily be able to sleep on the dirty carpet beneath this computer.

This is the last exam I ever have to take in undergrad. I turned in my portofolio on Monday--done with that. I must say, that creative writing class was very good, although I wish it'd been full of people who were Creative Writing majors. Either way, learned a lot. Good experience. Makes me know that I really do want to do that whole graduate school thing.

When I finish here, I'll start studying for the GRE (well, after next week) and read away until my brain is so saturated with intelligence and information that, well, they may as well give me my genius award right now. Monday, though, we leave for Miami. Spend about a week there, then come back to Michigan in order to be thoroughly bored out of my mind. I still need to go in and figure out what I can do about work--but I'll make it happen somehow.

Maybe I can actually come back with a tan. Now that would be nice, right?


The most important part that I almost forgot: Pistons 2005, bitches. That's what I thought. Game seven is gonna be a good one--we'll probably rent the projector again and play it on the side of the garage. Then we can play flippy cup and beer pong until we're champs. Well, in the mean time, there may be a lot of screaming and crying and cussing and drinking. But, overall, it will be a good night.

Hopefully, the night won't end with the birth of a plot to take Ginobili and Harding Tonya Harding style.

too much (!!!)

Yesterday, the little sister graduated from high school (it rained in the middle of the ceremony and everyone had to run inside--the poor graduates were soaked through and the old people were rude). It was weird to be back there at that place--I hadn't set foot in those halls for a good 2-3 years. Walking around and having everyone seem so small... just crazy. Although they all looked the same--smaller versions of younger siblings and cousins of the kids I graduated with.

I hear the first high school reunion is next year. Too bad I'll be a continent away. Damn.



I'm trying to rile myself up from the office chair so that I can go back to work. Four more hours of helping people and pretending to smile real big. Okay, so it was really easy to smile real big for the first few hours after Ergin dropped me off. We ate at Denny's this morning and talked about the future and what ... just the differences. Wanting different things.

It's really funny to sit across the table from someone who is in the same place that you are. And the places you plan on being for the next few years--different cities, different continents. Then wanting to return "home"--what the fuck is home? It's a country. But is it? Maybe he'll change his mind after two years in Miami, or a year in Berlin. Maybe I'll change my mind when I'm away from here--who knows when I'll return. Taking the GRE is almost a way to bribe myself into returning?

I still want that sheet of paper. I want to write and write and write and get the worst and best criticism ever. Scare myself into living the dream. Make money for writing words. Change perspectives by writing words. (Take over the world...)


I want to go lay in the green, green grass and stare at the overcast sky through the leaves. All the rain has made the grass lush and thick--it pokes you when you lay in it. And it smells so fresh--everything smells like rain.

I want to read books for the rest of the day and lose myself in the way they look on the page. Hold books and touch pages. Cuddle with my pillow and sleep with a comfy toaster.

The coolest thing about working in a bookstore is all the free stuff that you [read: I] get:
*Grandes Exitos--Alejandro Sanz 9704
*Motown Remixed
*Perfect Playlist--Trance
*A Night Out with the Boys
*Chill: Brasil 3
*Fijacion Oral Vol. 1--Shakira

Then, the whole checking books out thing is great:
*A People's History of the United States -- Howard Zinn
*My Horizontal Life -- Chelsea Handler

Apparently, the Pistons are also working and I have a CEED lined up in Sao Jose dos Campos. Fuck yes.



Sad thing #234908u234 about growing up: There are so few people to sit down and dish with when a particularly good/scandalous night happens. Boo that.

A People's History

These are the topic of the day:

*Began reading A People's History of the United States by Howard Zinn today on my lunch break.
*Cleaning up my room
*Reading emails
*Missing everyone
*"Growing up" sucks.

1. I've been reading snippets of books here and there. I've been jonesing to read A Peoples' History for a few weeks. We were out of it at the bookstore for a while, so there was no reading of that. Instead, I started reading A Death in Brazil by Peter Robb and A Concise History of Brasil by someone that I cannot recall.

I didn't finish either of those--too much going on. So while I should have been doing some peer editing while on my break, I began Zinn's book. The first chapter didn't have anything I hadn't known already--all about Columbus and his contribution to the end of a continent of people. In the middle of the chapter, he made a nice, clean break in order to address what it means to write history and what his intentions for the book were. A good break, if you ask me. Very concise and philosophic--straight to the point.

I simply cannot get enough of the history of the United States. Just read it for hours and hours and hours. The more I know, the better it all is. I hope beyond all hopes that there is a section on the internments that happened in the mid-1900s. Next, after this, I'll move on to all the Asian-American lit I should have read a million years ago. There's also some book called Living on the Hyphen that I need to locate and devour.



2. Finally. The room is being cleaned. Who would have thunk it, but there's little else to do to take my mind off everything. I'm finding scraps of paper with story ideas and random thoughts. Tonight, or tomorrow (or sometime soon in the finite future), I'll paste them into this little red journal I purchased that's supposed to be my writing journal. It's come in handy so far--I've glued in a few pictures I printed back in high school. This one I took in Royal Oak back sometime in high school, somewhere along the train tracks.



3. For whatever reason, cleaning my room has made me incredibly sad. That and my quick pause to read email. There was a short email from Shirley--a really cute email that someone had written for her as an endorsement that she hadn't known about.

I'm not sure if it's because I'm tired from working so much the past few days, or just having to be so damn nice to everyone and their mom who came into the store today, but ug. Just missing people is so fucking bogus. Becki left yesterday and.... I feel like I've gone back in time to when I was about fourteen years old and saying goodbye to my friends was the worst feeling in the book. If I wanted to say something stupid about looking at the good in this whole situation, I'd mention how at least now I know who are the most fantabulous people that I've met in the last four years, who means the most, etc. But--I'm not in that sort of mood.

The mood I'm in only allows for wanting to eat ice cream with my best friends, jump in some puddles, go to the bar and slam a few shots, then dance all night until the boys can't handle it anymore.

It feels silly to want to cry because you miss somebody so much.
As Billy Pilgrim would say, So it goes. Except... this situation is a bit different--but a bit too much the same.


4. Ann Arbor is calm. Things are changing around here just as much as they always do. It's funny. Soon, hardly anyone from the family will still live here. The grandparents just moved out to an area of Ypsitucky, which is actually very nice and perfect for them. They'll be happier there than in Ann Arbor. It's ridiculous what a name and an idea of a place can do to the real estate. If you could just see the houses around the city--you'd realize they're just about as shitty as those in the student slums.

A city built subsisting on an idea; a student bubble in the centre of it all.

The heat is disgusting right now. Even the rain doesn't cool anything off. It just seems to make it more humid and miserable. I imagine that Brasil will feel like something similar, but who cares? All I have to think is: the men dont' speak the same language, they dance until the early hours of the morning and I'm thousands of miles away from Michigan.

So it goes.

The summer is finally picking up--like it should have weeks ago. You should read this as to mean that there is much partying, bar hopping and foreign mens. Okay, maybe not that many foreign mens--nowhere near as many as there were last summer, but really.

Okay, so maybe that's not hte case either. I think everyone is finally feeling the summer time--the heat and the boredom that leads us to the drink. That heat is back--the one that just feels like pressure on your skin. Maybe that's the humidity, which hasn't been forgiving in the least, but rather increasingly malicious.

I've been spending the last few days talking to a Turkish boy that I met. There are few things like learning about a place you've never seen and know little about. The more different something is, the better. It just makes my mind spin in all these different areas and it's pretty wonderful. He had a few pictures of his home in his cell phone and showed those to me.

Talk about strengthening my resolve to live near the water.

Luisito turned the big 2-1 the other night, so we threw a party on Saturday night to celebrate. That, plus the exquisite triumph of the Pistons (hopefully this will be recreated tonight and Shaq and Wade will embrace and weep onto one another's jersey), was enough reason to trek through the house in hopes of something that be the perfect flippy cup table.

In the back of the basement, in that really scary room that looks more like a torture chamber than somewhere to store objects, we found a door that supposedly was attached to some room in this house before. It worked well as a master's level flippy cup table. Obviously, the carved dips in the door didn't work as well as a flat table would have, but that's fine. We're just that good around here.

The importance of mentioning this whole thing is that it became a fantabulously international game of flippy. We brought cultures together in a way that brings a tear to my eye. Mexico, Germany, Turkey and the States lined themselves along a disgustingly dirty and gross door balanced precariosly on two trash cans so that the race of the century could commence. I must say, we schooled their asses pretty well.

Tonight marks the first night that we ever went to Studio 4. I must say that it's quite stupid we never went before and I also must say that Becki and I tore that shit up. Who would have known that men from Istanbul would be so charming? Hopefully, they will stop by our party tomorrow and theworld will be fabulously new and... well, maybe we'll have as much fun then as we did tonight.

After we left the club, we decided to walk through the plaza. which lead to Vania and Lander being on top of The Cube. Then, somehow, it lead to the majority of us jumping into the fountain in Michigama Plaza and spraying each other.

What a good night.... and thats' where the commentary ends. Especially since waking up will happen in about five hours so that I can help the grandparents move into their new home. I must say, allof this helping them has definitely earned me the royal spot in heaven. No question about it.

me gustas tu

It's taking a while, but the realization that I must find something to do for the rest of my life is slowly sinking in. I admit, it's still somewhat of foreign territory, but at least I am hopeful about the notion of finding something that makes me smile in the mornings when I pick my head up off the pillow.

This morning, I opened my eyes ever so slowly and gazed at my alarm clock. It was still before eleven, so I put my head back on that pillow and curled up under my comfortable blue blanket. The list of everything I needed to do was still very fresh and one of those things is pinned beneath my arms on this desk.

I'm not sure how I managed to be stupid enough to have to take a class after graduation, but I did. So here I am needing to finish up this midterm--some cafe mocha on the other side of the computer tower, some good writing music and a stack of books on my right. All fabulous books (Angels in America by Tony Kusner, A Thousand Miles by Jane Smiley and Interpreter of Maladies by Jhumpa Lahiri), but nothing I really want to write about. I'd rather go outside and lie under a tree, studying the undersides of the leaves.

Sometimes, I walk around and try to figure out how the hell you would describe the colors that are popping up everywhere. The intensity of green illuminated by sunshine--you can't describe that in words. It's like trying to hold a molecule in your hands--possible in an abstract way, but not really. Right? I can say, THAT WAS THE MOST AMAZING GREEN I'VE EVER SEEN! but it doesn't translate. The way to translate it is to write three paragraphs about the sound of the leaves, the way they move and simply obsess about it--then you get inside the head of the character and that's the best way to translate. It's kind of how Benjy obsessed about how Caddy smells like trees in The Sound and the Fury, but not really.

Show, don't tell.

I spend 60% of my day thinking about writing. About sentences and words, and wishing that I were writing something instead. Physically writing--with the perfect pen and paper it would glide over so effortlessly. With just the right amount of pressure, you leave marks on the back of the page, but don't rip through it, or leave them too deeply. And the thinner the tip of the pen, the more beautiful the writing.

See, it gets weird. So I don't talk about it too much.
Reminds me of metafiction--the idea of writing about writing. Talking about talking, obsessing with singing the blues.

The things I love most are the silences between the notes--the glue that holds two pieces together. In other words, whatever connects something to another. It's like how a smile can make the world seem like enough, just right. A smile, a perfect sentence.

Yeah, I'm a nerd.

The real thing that I was trying to get at was that I read an article last night written by Pam Houston about hiking this one area of Colorado, and it was just such a good article. She is the reason I decided to be a creative writing major. Something about the title story of her first book (although it now has the worst cover in all of creation and makes me cringe like you wouldn't believe) made writing seem like the most natural, important thing to do in life. She just came out with a new book and went on tour, but unfortunately we don't sell enough of her books to ask her to come out.

[An aside: Kurt Vonnegut has a new book coming out and it makes me want to jump up and down with frustration like Rumplestilskin since no one knows anything about it and it appears to be overdue]

The real point is that college has ended [well, will really be over June 22 when I turn in my portfolio] and that now I suppose a job is in order. First, there will be a detour to Brasil that will last god knows how long. I have been speaking to some charming Brasilians whose emails induce random fits of laughter. I think I've found the LC that I want to run away to--who would have thought a crew of engineers could be so much fun? Then there will be grad school and getting an MFA. I still dream of Iowa. I don't care what people say. Corn fields and Kurt Vonnegut--what more do you really need to capture a girl's heart?

So much to do, so little time. All I really want to do is go dancing on the coast with someone who can make you turn beautifully with his fingertips. Instead, it's time to sit here and do some academic writing.