He passed four months in resolving to lose no more time in idle resolves.*

I'm sitting on this awful, cheap couch

drinking the tea that I bought and forgot about until tonight.

I bought it for a change and to make myself feel better:

To feel wealthier,

like my bank account doesn't have a leak in it somewhere.

To feel prettier,

like I'm not wearing my old paint shirt again, or that my hair

hasn't been tied in a knot for the past week.

To feel classier,

like I'm not drinking it from a two dollar mug in a messy

apartment with dim lighting that makes me squint.

To feel healthier,

like I don't live on all the cliché college foods.

To feel smarter,

like I haven't seen any of my midterm grades yet.

I bought it to feel peace, because Indian tea could do that.

I'll try anything to get the line on my forehead to diminish so my friends will stop asking me what's wrong--to want to be with my friends in the first place instead of staying in to clean the kitchen on Friday night.

I shouldn't feel so indifferent about secluding myself, and maybe it won't happen tonight--maybe not even for a week or a month--but I will get better. Eventually.

Tea can't do more harm than good, can it?

-rae

*Samuel Johnson's Rasselas

waity

i missed my turn on the way home

and i kept driving

until i knew that i was getting too lost

i want to be deep and think of a

pretty way to say thats symbolic

of

exactly where my life is

heading now

but i cant

just like

i

can't

say

any thing

else.

-rae

It swallows me whole

I think that there's a certain beauty in handwriting--the way that everyone dots their i's and j's in their own order or has a unique way of constructing a k (by far the hardest one for me...) It's a most subtle movement that differentiates it into something that will always be your own creation, whether or not what's actually being written is original.

My handwriting looked like chicken scratch. Only a few months ago did I resolve to practice my penmanship whenever I had free time, mostly because I was determined to make it distinctly mine. Identifiable like my dad's all caps or enviable like my mom's elegant script. I ended up resurrecting cursive back from the third grade where the rest of the world left it. Who did I know that used it let alone could write a z with it?

So I took cursive and I wrote the living wits out of it. But I've realized that being able to look back on my notes in school was something of a necessity so, in no time at all, I've changed it again with a disturbingly low amount of difficulty.

It's unsettling because, among the many things you can learn about a person, I think there are three that say absolutely nothing and a whole lot of everything at the same time:

3. the shoes they are wearing

2. their favorite pizza toppings

and 1. their handwriting

I'm pretty confident about my boot collection, and I'm convinced that pepperoni, green peppers, and onions are the best pizza toppings in the known universe...but shoes and pizza have nothing on handwriting. I liken it unto a person's fingerprint; it is that telling and personal.

Because my handwriting is constantly changing, who's to say that I won't randomly develop a liking for Tom's or that I will no longer find pineapple and olives on pizza to be completely abhorrent?

Weeks ago, I loved the dark loops and density of my cursive, so why do I now prefer this wide and faint writing instead? From where have I pulled the patience that allows me to give each letter deliberate consideration?

I could be fooling myself because I'll always be cursive at heart... or maybe, even further back, I'm truly chicken scratch.

This handwriting might not even be me.

Maybe I don't have one particular style.

Maybe it's the change itself that says it all.

-rae

P.S.--Happy Valentine's Day! How lovely it'd be to see your handwriting on a love note.

Bonus points

I was thinking the other day: because beauty is so subjective, what if someone had absolutely no perception of what beauty was? What if this person had no cultural paradigms, no bad or good experiences, no friends or family influencing them. What, then, becomes beautiful to them? I'd like to think it would be simple things like feeling their body move or watching someone's facial expressions change, but I really can't know.

When I was little, I was as scared (if even, more) of everything as I am currently. (Did that sentence make sense?) I would have a dream, get scared, and run into my mom and dad's room. I'd stand by my mom's side until she'd wake up and ask me what happened. After I explained, she would tell me to go get a drink of water and go back to sleep.

See, I knew that she'd tell me this every time I went to her. So why did I keep going back? I know the answers and I know what I need to do, but for some reason, I just have to ask.

Haven't you ever wanted a coffee shop to know you by name? You walk in, greet a few employees and other regulars, then have your coffee ready for you within minutes without having to order. You'd talk about current events, new books, and how foggy it is outside, then leave a random bill on the counter before you walk out. There's no responsibility to see these people outside of shared coffee, and everyone is satisfied with that arrangement. You simply enjoy each others company.

Mad Men told me that conversation is an art, and even though small talk may just be doodles, it's still brings me joy to know that we don't have to have a deep relationship to relate to someone else;

we talk because we can.

-rae

Two Hundred

When I made this blog, I had a misconception about satire.

Save maybe a few negligible posts about elevator outlets and emergency feed knobs, this blog has never been what I now know to be satirical.

What I read in my literature class makes me feel small for wanting to write satire

witty like Twain and Bukowski,

or gracious like Pope and C.S. Lewis,

or bitter like Heller and Golding.

Palanhiuk, Bradbury, Orwell...

Ignorance truly is bliss

until we're blindsided by Swift.

I turn my eyes up to the mountains. I don't see them as I used to; I'm learning that they're probably the most insecure part of this area. I'm expecting the worst and am frustrated that everyone seems to be preparing for the best. My irrational fears occupy my thoughts, as they are wont to do.

Ignorance truly is bliss

until our city sinks into the ground.

Underneath the mountains is the other end of my building. My side is reflected in the glass so I can't actually see into the lobby, but I can imagine someone else doing the same thing as me. We're looking into each other eyes and don't even know it. Maybe that's why I feel unsettled.

Eye contact does that to me. The real, 'I am looking at you' eye contact.

It electrocutes me; it's oppressive and invasive, but I can't just let go. When I somehow finally manage to tear away, I'm tingling with the memory of it and all I want to do is look back to see if I exaggerated the sensation.

The moving sun makes the opposite room more visible.

Ignorance truly is bliss

until we realize that no one is looking.

I really should have called it 'coffee-flavoured thoughts' or 'coffee-flavoured musings.'

Where are those careless observations? That bliss from 200 posts ago?

I still don't write satire, and though I write far better than before, I can't help but consider the cost. I'd never actively seek out the influences, but I will confess to taking advantage of them when they do come.

I write in a room of mahogany, with bookshelves for walls and echoes for company, where I can see the dust in the air because the sun is blaring. The chair I sit in is so uncomfortable that it makes my back ache for days after, but that's the cost for using the room.

I imagine what I must look like from the doorway--a chair, a lamp for nighttime, a side table with clear liquid in a clear cup.

All are dark forms against the bright window behind me.

A silhouette

and a shadow.*

I endure sitting in the chair because when I get up to stretch and look back on my writing, it's illuminating.

I am aware.

-rae

*Plato's Allegory of the Cave

Thanks to Mad Men...

Mayakovsky

Now I am quietly waiting for

the catastrophe of my personality

to seem beautiful again,

and interesting, and modern.

The country is grey and

brown and white in trees,

snows and skies of laughter

always diminishing, less funny

not just darker, not just grey.

It may be the coldest day of

the year, what does he think of

that? I mean, what do I? And if I do,

perhaps I am myself again.

-Frank O'Hara

The wine of error

It's this taste that makes me lose my appetite.

It's this room that makes me dance in August.

It's this book that makes me guilty.

It's this color that takes me to the ocean.

It's this time of night that makes me disintegrate.

It's my mind that I can't take anymore.

But it's the cold that disquiets me.

-rae