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[17 Nov 2008|10:22pm] |
l'air du temps, nina ricci.
stole it from my mom, and it's an old bottle. I think she said she got it in venezuela, which was a vacation before I was born. EDT concentration, which is why I don't go for it often, it only stays an hour on my skin. it's a faintly spicy, mostly powdery floral, with a heart of carnation and a musky base. I think it hails from the 70's which makes sense. what I want in a floral (and I DO want a carnation-based floral) is a powerhouse, something to make a bridal bouquet obscene. this is really lovely, but I'm pressing my nose to my wrist and inhaling deep, but not really coming up high. I want a carnation bloom that smothers, that smolders, with too much powder, too much spice, too much shoulder-pad and hairspray. this is a bridesmaid's scent: in keeping with the white lace and the roses, and never upstaging the bride. it is so pretty, I wish it could be more.
I won a bottle of rochas femme on ebay, also only an EDT, but I hear it's as strong as the EDP, but with a more pronounced cumin note. BO, here I come. it's supposed to be a mix of over-ripe peach/plum with sharp spice, deeply personal like warm bedsheets or sun-sweated skin. jolie-laid, ugly-beautiful, intimate and over-exposed. counting the days till it arrives.
I LOVE perfume. I love it. It is like coloring the air around you, having a miniature band on your shoulder playing the theme-song of your day. I love the push to put smell into color, sound, texture, story. I love the intersection of sensuality. For my own entertainment, I may start posting these half-assed reviews. For my own sanity, I'm trying my best to trade food-money for perfume-money.
Powder, spice, carnations, bridesmaids gowns; damp skin, sweat, fermenting fruit, the female form. I love perfume.
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[13 Nov 2008|11:34pm] |
I'm sure I heard it once, from Scrubs, or Steinbeck, or maybe Yahoo News, that most people in this life feel lonely. Or maybe I made it up, to feel a part of some greater life-irony, some human-condition thing.
But then again, there are new pictures of distant planets (yahoo news) and new engagements and relationships (facebook).
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[29 Sep 2008|10:56pm] |
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every night before I can fall asleep I think about updating this journal. I think about the plans I made that morning: eating X, Y and Z for breakfast, lunch and dinner to avoid THIS. and I think about how I can't, I can't go back to the Institute of Living for a FOURTH time. I just can't, health insurance aside. and I make a new plan for tomorrow, and tomorrow, and tomorrow.
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[27 Jan 2006|02:24pm] |
This semester:
General Chemistry II
General Chemistry II Lab
Biological Psychology
Mycology (!!!)
I debated adding another class, but mycology sounds pretty intense, and four classes is perfectly valid, here. I talked to my mom about it, and she thought I should add more 'fun' classes, outside of my major, since I may get very little credit to transfer to UConn. She keeps bringing that up, like this is The Lost Year of Rachael. Please, Jesus had what, 17 of them? I'll be fine. I'll go to UConn and I'll walk on water.
One class I almost wanted to take was on the modern forms of Judaism. I chose not to because it was said to be a very interactive class, and I'd rather just listen to lectures and take notes. I'll take something like it at UConn. And since they'll make me take a language, I want to take Hebrew. I should have been Jewish, I love it. I just read The Source, by John Michener. Covers the history of Judaism in Makor,Israel, starting before agriculture, moving through the beginnings of monotheism, the Greeks, the Romans, up till an archaeological dig at that same site in 1968.
Now I'm reading Life of Pi, and it's just the same. So many beautiful religions in the world.
A friend of mine said she thinks she was a biologist in her last life. I think all biologists were religion majors in a past life, and vice-versa. They are so much the same.
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[21 Jan 2006|10:55pm] |
This month I've been working on an independent study project; this is the reason that our semesters are shorter, but our year is longer than most other schools. "The Origin of Eukaryotic Cells." That is my paper. I've exhausted all my notes and research in about twelve pages, eight short of my minimum, and it reminds me that highschool is really not so far behind me, after all. It's fine, I have a week, and I'll stretch it out somehow.
A fourth year thesis student was killed while riding his bike down the road. His name was John, and I didn't know him. I keep trying to pray for his family and friends, but wind up praying instead that Luke be kept safe until I can come back home for good. I think about that too much, if suddenly he was gone and the last time I saw him was in Bradley International Airport, weeks ago. I'm as bothered by the frequency of this thought as I am by the thought itself.
There is a screech owl that I've seen twice now in our courtyard. I watched him with my roommate, and he ignored us from a branch about four feet above our heads, then flew down to a bike lock wrapped around the trunk of the tree. He was less than two feet away, and stared at us for about 10 seconds, if anyone in that situation could possibly judge time. Then he flew away. No, I have no idea if the two owls I saw were the same, I just like to think so. It was the same tree, at any rate.
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[27 Nov 2005|06:41pm] |
http://www.myfootprint.org/
Coolest thing ever.
I'm at 11 acres (~2.5 earths). But this was answering the questions with a mix of Sarasota and Colchester influence. I'm sure Colchester-life is more similar to how I will live in the future, but it's certainly less efficient.
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[15 Sep 2005|10:57pm] |
I've taken to going to the Bible studies that happen here. Here, New College, ranked number nine for "Students Ignore God on a Regular Basis."
Tonight, there was a girl there, who was Jewish(?) I don't know, but she didn't agree with some things being said, namely that Christ is the only way for man to know God. She felt that God is in every person, inherently, whether they know Jesus, or any religious figure at all. And everyone else began explaining Christianity to her. Which, I guess, says we're all imperfect, and Christ was and is God's only plan, the only way to form a link between God's Perfection and our imperfection. When they talked, they said 'we', and the girl asked, "Is that what you all believe?" One person said yes.
And what does that mean for me? I don't know. Part of what we studied was saying how no matter how little you have, if you give your life to God, He gives you double of what you could ever need. When discussing the point of that, it was concluded that you recieve more happiness than you can contain, so that you might give it to others. One kid said he needs to love Jesus so that he can love every person in the world as much as he loves himself, and that's what Christianity is to him. That, is right for me. Using the Bible and many of the other practices of Christianity, is right for me. I haven't concluded whether Jesus Christ is my personal savior. But I know He is not right for everyone. I know that completely and fully, because no God that I can believe in would make only one path to Himself. I believe in every religion. Even atheism is just a special path that God uses to reach people who need that path to find Him, though they do not name what they find 'God.' That's what I believe.
It sounds more like what that girl was saying. She said she wakes up every morning and rejoices in God, and that she was born with God in her, as was every person. Christianity, I learned tonight, says God is only within you when you have accepted Christ. Should I have known this? Probably.
I don't know. I like these people, and I love reading and evaluating the Bible. We spent five minutes discussing the difference between "Priest" and "Minister." It was like being back in Mr. Williams' class. I leave wanting to be a better person, and having some vague idea how to do it. The feeling fades, but going to multiple meetings a week, they begin to bleed into each other, and I feel more hope and love coming into me from the world, and entering the world from me. I believe in God's Will and want to be more open to it, more responsive to it in my life and the choices I make. "Thy will be done," I believe that. I'm not going to stop going. That would be ridiculous. But it isn't exactly what I want. I don't want to be spoken for as part of a group. I've never believed that the religion of any two people should be identical. I am okay with the differences between my beliefs and theirs, though, because they all at least agreed that God wants us to be concerned with our own hearts, and not the hearts of others. One person said, in response to the girl's beliefs, that he "Knew her beliefs were not right for him, but loved her fully and completely despite it, and knew it was not his concern." That God wants it that way.
We talked about the intangibility of the Holy Spirit, and the uncertainty of such an abstract concept. From what I gathered, they do not feel the Holy Spirit resides in everyone. I've always felt the most drawn to the Holy Spirit, of any of the three points of Christianity. To me, it makes the most sense. But, to me, it's the inherent beauty and goodness that resides in all living things. All existence, really. Think, "Colors of the Wind." But anyways, I love that, and it's central and holy to my idea of God, that God resides as the Holy Spirit in all things. That sometimes, it gets clouded over, but until you reject it entirely, reject life, it is in you, and you are holy for it. And I guess that's also not what Christianity says.
But what can you do? It's a big, beautiful, world. No one denies that.
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[15 Sep 2005|11:21am] |
My iceberg lettuce is frozen, because I put it too close to the freezer of the mini-fridge. Ironically, that has made it really gross. I'm not sure the humor there makes much sense.
I went to a lecture last night on Muslim-Western relations. There were three speakers, two professors here--I think-- and and Egyptian-American guy who is somehow significant in this topic. I don't like Whatever-American titles, I just used it to say he looked Middle Eastern, but wasn't from there. One of the professors mentioned how 9-11 wasn't as big down here, not immediately. I'd never thought of it that way. It's similar then, to how Katrina wasn't as big to me as it was to native Floridians. It was still some vague "down there," to me, despite the fact that the weather forecast had been predicting, earlier in the week, that it would cross almost directly over me. Or maybe, despite my disinclination for the Bush Administration, I haven't sunk so low as to believe that rescue efforts were only half-hearted, because of the race of the victims. This is still funny, though:
http://www.livejournal.com/community/boondocks_comic/164822.html
But the Muslim guy--I think he was Muslim-- was trying to make the ageless point that the extremists are not the standard of Islam. And he brought up the Crusades, like people always do. This was about to irritate me, until he said, "I don't consider that Christianity," which pacified me. It's no better to attack the majority than to attack the minority, and really, come up with some new criticisms of religion.
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[06 Feb 2005|08:44pm] |
It was evening, and no longer summer.
Three small fish, I don't know what they were,
huddled in the highest ripples
as it came swimming in again, effortless, the whole body
one gesture, one black sleeve
that could fit easily around
the bodies of three small fish.
- from "Dogfish", Mary Oliver
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[04 Feb 2005|07:23pm] |
Had to delete the last entry because I refuse to make two lame entries on the same topic in one day.
Anyways. I talked to Dave today. Heather, his ex-girlfriend, is interested in him again. He doesn't seem to know what he's going to do, but my point is that, seriously, I'm like, ten times more interesting than her. Well, that was my initial reaction. I still think it's true, but I recognize that I went on to talk about mold for about twenty minutes, so, hey. Anyways, that's really mean, because she was nice to me, and I like her. So...that wasn't my point. My point is that he doesn't think we could be together for the rest of our lives, and I'm here feeling sorry for everyone who won't be able to hear my insight on fungus for the rest of eternity. It's cool stuff, I swear. I'm so into that kingdom right now.
( I mean, how beautiful are these? )
To make myself sound like less awful I want to say that everyone should consider themselves to be the most interesting person ever. If you don't, God, do something about it.
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[28 Jan 2005|07:03pm] |
Mr. Hage pulled a male and a female skate out of the holding tank at Project Oceanology, and their spines strained, curling them in the air. He put them each in a plastic tub, where they made wet slapping sounds against the bottom. The elevator up to the lab where I'd be working was about 80 degrees, and I was waiting for someone to realize they didn't have any water. They continued flapping as we walked down the second floor hall, as we entered the lab, as I poured out 100 ml of water and 100 ml of ethyl alcohol and mixed them together. These two skates were the most beautiful things I'd ever seen in my life, and I had stick a pipette into their spiracles and drop alcohol over their gills. I did it. The male lurched once and lay flat. Before I could do the same to the female, he began to quiver again. I poured more of the solution over his gills, but this only made him flail more violently. The female was only moving slightly now. Hage told me to try pure ethyl alcohol, which I did. When this didn't work, Hage told me to just move on to the female. She didn't move as I bathed her gills with the solution, but she was still opening and closing the flaps over her gills. I poured a little more alcohol over them, and waited a few minutes. When they were still alive five minutes later, I had to sever their spinal chords. I put the male onto a wooden cutting board, and pushed a knife straight down into his back. His entire body jerked hard, once, and continued to writhe as I worked to cut through his spine completely. Even when it was done, he twitched. Just a nervous reaction, Hage said. I set the male aside and cut through the female's spine as well, but she didn't move as much. Mr. Hage asked me if I was alright, and I looked at the male, still moving every so often, and asked if he was dead. Hage said he was, and told me not to worry if either of their eyes blinked when I dissected them. The dissecting board was coated lightly with a mix of their blood and the slime their skin produces. It reminded me of menstrual blood.
Riding to Project O that morning, I had told myself I could cry when I came home. I thought that we would kill them by putting them in a bin of water and pouring alcohol in. That was how I pictured it. I didn't know they would wait 10 minutes without oxygen for me to be ready. I didn't know it would take us ten more minutes to realize that alcohol wouldn't work. What I really didn't know was that they'd keep moving through all of it. I did know I'd be the one killing them, but at the same time I somehow didn't really believe it.
Facing all that, I wanted to cry over them before I went any further. Throughout the whole of their 20 minute deaths, I was crying to God to tell them I was sorry, but I wanted to show them myself, because I really mean it when I said they were the most beautiful things I'd ever seen. Fortunately, Hage's SUV was parked illegally and he had to go take care of that. When I was finally alone with them, I cried and cut the male skate's body away from the portion of him containing his brain. When that was done, it became too important to be careful, and calming down would show more sorrow than letting myself cry.
I ask God to tell the ticks we pull off the cats that I'm sorry for flushing them down the toilet, which is what my mother has told me to do for as long as I can remember. I don't know if that is the normal way to dispose of ticks, but that's what we do. I regret that my instinct is too quick and I usually end up killing mosquitoes on me rather than brushing them away. A snake was in the road once, his lower half ground into the pavement by a car, his upper half still flailing, and I couldn't kill him. I'm still ashamed of that, and it's the realest shame and regret I can think of.
I have the pictures of all the skates I dissected, thirteen in total. Their brains, at least. I want to post the picture of that male, even though I took better pictures later, as I got the hang of the camera. They're all on my computer, and I'd like you to be able to see him, but I can't figure out how to do it. This entire thing was written poorly, and I wish that was better, too. I wish I could better express how hard I had to push to get the knife through their spines, and I wish I could say how my head was screaming against my hands, without it sounding so cliche. I wish there had been blood everywhere so I could tell you how it was all over my hands, spattering my face, pooling under the body, because that's how I felt. Really, just a little welled up around the blade of the knife and leaked calmly onto the tray. Anyhow, that all happened in November.
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[25 Jan 2005|07:54am] |
I'm not sure what I think of giving or receiving flowers as a gift. Everything logical in me says it's useless, but then, they're awfully pretty.
I told Sadie once that I don't like orchids. She said that they're considered by some people to be a very suggestive flower, and she was surprised that I, of all people, don't like them. I have no idea what she's talking about.
I like poppies. Georgia O'Keeffe still floors me, and she's a big fan of them. She should be, because nobody does color like Georgia, and the color of poppies is remarkable. (...not orange, not gold, but if pure gold were a liquid that could raise a cream.-Steinbeck) Still, I don't want a vase full of them on my kitchen table, waiting to wilt, I want a field.
Maybe potted plants are the compromise here. I have a small cactus in a little ceramic pot in our kitchen. The rest of the plants in this house are my mother's. I've had it for forever; it started as a little drop of green bulging out of the sand. Now, it's been tipped over so many times that all of the sand is gone, and all that's left is just enough hardened dirt to cover its roots. The cactus is now maybe four inches tall. It curves towards the light, so I rotate it every few months. It's mine, and I like it.
This Valentine's Day (laugh) I would like another potted cactus.
The god of dirt
came up to me many times and said
so many wise and delectable things, I lay
on the grass listening
to his dog voice,
crow voice,
frog voice; now
he said, and now,
and never once mentioned forever
-Mary Oliver
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[19 Jan 2005|01:29pm] |
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Live, All Over You |
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Giving this a shot again. Maybe. He got all the things I wrote in my head, and now there's no where to put them.
I haven't written in here since around the same time we got together. Mid-June (we never determined the exact date) and he was still NoBlood to me, like he was to everyone else.
Missing him isn't like I thought missing a love would be. I don't have sadness so much as a buildup of this desperate happiness that I can't give to anyone but him.
And I guess now I'm free to go to Florida. I want to be a biologist to give something to the world, but I want even more to give myself to a person. This is second place, and nowhere near good enough, and I think I hate New College a little bit.
He softened everything that's sharp in me. I'm very self-absorbed, but he made me want to give everything I could for him. And I think that's more important than being perfect for each other. Anyhow, he's being very good to me still, even if the days he doesn't call me hurt.
I've asked about a million things of God in the past few days. The only one that I really mean, I guess, is that if we could be happy together, he could realize it, and if we couldn't, that I could get some help realizing it.
Well, maybe I'll call
or write you a letter.
Now, maybe we'll see on the Fourth of July.
But I'm not too sure, and I'm not too proud.
Well, I'm not too sure and I'm not too proud to say:
It was good living with you.
-Better Than Ezra
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[05 Jul 2004|08:15pm] |
Today at work, an old black man came in, bought a soda, and told me to smile, told me I looked so sad. And this is pretty common: there's a regular man who comes in and makes me smile for him almost every day, and I remember Erin Clark telling me I had such a serious face, and other people saying I look sad when in my head I'm really just waiting. So my waiting face looks sad. But the old black guy said I must have had a hard weekend, and I smiled, because at that point I had no idea what to say, and I couldn't have spoken anyways. And he trails off, and says, "But I know you went to church yesterday..." and I'd like to say I went running, and when I've been running I can stand myself at least a little, which God appreciates more than if I sat in church for an hour, but my throat is stuck and I'd never have said that anyhow, so I look down. And now I'm blinking hard because I haven't been running today and I couldn't stand the feel of myself, and blushing because I'm scared I will start crying. Sandy comes over, and he points out that I'm blushing, and Sandy tells him, oh, she's bashful, and he tells me not to be, and at this point I hate him and am yelling in my head to God to make him leave me alone. He's telling me to pray and trust in God, but I can't really hear, and Sandy is saying something about how I'm very sweet and polite, and she's sure I'm good to my parents, so I'm guessing he's just told me to honor thy mother and father, and I want to die. Sandy's saying again how shy I am, and now I'm really confused, because I couldn't figure out what was going on, and now everything was happening over again, don't be bashful, have faith in God and you'll make it through anything, and finally, he leaves. I don't remember how exactly. I shrugged at Sandy, and went into the bathroom and cried.
Tomorrow I'm not working, but I won't have the car. I'll be working every Tuesday for the rest of the summer though, so I wish my parents would just start up whatever arrangement they're going to do tomorrow, because I don't want to be alone. I didn't get to spend enough time with Jessica and the rest of them last night. I mean, I enjoyed the time as I spent it, but I feel guilty about being separate from the group all morning, then leaving sort of abruptly. My shins hurt and it's making me angry. I feel as though the lower half of my legs are rebelling out of pure spite to the upper half of my legs. My shins want my thighs to be like this, the bastards, and they're purposely sabotaging any efforts of improvement.
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[15 Jun 2004|07:47pm] |
Jessica, Ben and Vince disappeared into the pipe, and I sat with NoBlood. I'm nervous, because half the time, when I'm with someone, it doesn't occur to me that I should talk. I think sitting, just sitting, is a perfectly valid form of interaction. We'll see. I like the feeling of it, but afterwards I'm afraid the other person might not have seen it that way, and might have decided that I'm too shy, and not worth the effort.
Do you remember in elementary school, when getting your name written on the board was what detention is to us now? I only got my name written up there once, in 2nd grade, because Tyler Smith had taken an orange slice from his lunch, crammed it into his mouth, and was grinning at me, and I couldn't stop giggling. I was absolutely mortified. Since then, my only disciplinary punishment was one lunch detention with Mr. Fedak in 6th grade, for forgetting my notebook. The man was strict as hell, but considering he drove an hour and a half each way from Rhode Island to teach us, he had the right. Courtney and I had these little plastic frogs(this was before my fear of them reached its present extreme)that we gave to him to remember us by over the summer. We checked the next year, and he had thrown them out. We had expected it, but it came as a crushing blow. I've never recieved a detention. Last year Ms. Parkinson made me clean all the desks in her room because I had drawn all over mine, entirely unintentional, but she was talking about Mao Zedong, and I was bored, and had forgotton where I was. This year Ms. Bergulund tells me I'm too serious, and I glare at her as she tries to tell a joke about a russian blonde to make me laugh. Mr. Scott got irritated with the trombone section for putting in crescendos where there were none. So we did what he said in the rehersals, then, in the concert, played the crescendos more so than ever, locking eyes with him and trying not to choke on the combination of laughter and A flat.
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[15 Jun 2004|12:42pm] |
There are two real tragedies in life:
1. When someone takes your stretchy pants out of the washing machine and puts them into the dryer.
2. When you see a perfectly good hard candy on the ground, in its wrapper, but there's a crowd of people standing near it that would see you pick it up.
When I can't sleep at night, I pretend I'm a fossil of a raptor. I put my head at the edge of the bed, stretch my stomach/hips as far away as they'll go, then swing my legs back as close to the back of my head as I can. I started that when I was younger, because I saw people doing backbends, and wished that I could do it, too. Then one night I realized I was more like the fossil of the raptor infant with the post-mortem contractions in Jurassic Park. I decided I'd rather be a dinosaur than a gymnast any day.
I have days, where I want to walk down the hallways stretching every part of me: arms raised as high as they'll go, legs arcing out instead of stepping normal, spine stretched up and out, because I don't want any part of me to touch any other part. I have days, where 'folding over' is the most offensive phrase I can think of. And I think I can feel my intestines and liver and stomach, all crammed in there, pressing together, and it kills me.
Quite a few types of bacteria can survive engulfment by an amoeba, and multiply a few times before giving up and being digested.
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[06 Jun 2004|07:45pm] |
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I chose, a week or two ago, to do my thesis paper on Reagan, and how bad his Strategic Defense Initiative was for dealing with the Soviet Union. And I'm learning more and more, and thinking what an ass he was, and his administration, and how much I dislike him, and then, he dies. It's things like this that makes me seriously suspect that I am, in fact, the center of the universe.
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[24 May 2004|04:43pm] |
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Her name is Reem, she's 17, a junior, from Middletown, dark curly hair, greenish eyes, between Marie's and Denise's heights. When she says "back home," she means Saudi Arabia; she moved here for her junior year. She plays the flute, and loves music, and has been to a Catch 22 show. She paints, and likes drawing the human figure and face. She likes science, especially astronomy. We talked about black holes, time, space, and parallel universes. She loves the ocean, and scuba dives. She's very pretty, especially when she smiles. She reacted to me exactly as I've been reacting to the idea of her, but I'm too shy to talk about that in this setting. I like her. I've been a moron all day and Kyle thinks I like him because everytime he sees me I'm smiling. My mother said I've got to stay home next weekend, because this weekend was so busy, and because I'm working 21 hours over the course of the four days. I want an excuse to be out, because I want to see her.
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[18 May 2004|03:34pm] |
I can't believe that I am not the product of two entities working together, myself and God, because there's too much for it to just be me. I created God, and He created me, and it doesn't matter if there's no set line between us, because that's what makes us great.
I yelled at God, "Hey man, what the hell?!"
And he shrugged, "Hey man. What the hell?"
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