pakalolo

why are all high school boys so fucking...highschool?

i demand explanations.

His blindness eventually came to engulf his personality. It ate it away slowly, leaving nothing more than a disabilities parking sticker plastered on his mind. It was all people saw when they looked at him – the cane, and his eyes, whatever they looked like now (he knew it must be horrible from their sharp intakes of breath). They were, one could say, blinded by it. It was all people heard when he spoke to them. “Nice weather we’re having,” he might say, and they’d hear “I can’t see the sunlight on the leaves.” “The Yankees played a good game last night,” he might offer, but they’d hear “I heard it on the radio.” He might scream as loud as he could “God fucking damn it! Stop treating me differently!” but all they’d hear was “Please. Please pity me.”
And then, as if that wasn’t enough, there were the questions. Endless repetitive questions, like flies droning in his ears, nibbling at his mind. “Do you remember what colors look like from before the accident?” , “How do you cross the street?”. “Hey old man, why do you still have mirrors in your house?” ,“Don't you wish you knew what your granddaughter looked like?”. "How do you dream?"
To which he’d reply: I dream in an ocean of sound and textures. I dream in a wave of shapes and colors. I dream in a dance of light and my dreams are more beautiful than yours.

"and besides you're probably holding hands
with some skinny pretty girl that likes to talk about bands
and all i want to do
is ride bikes with you,
and stay up late, and maybe spoon."


I have lots of stories in my head and no time in which to write them. Stay tuned, maybe i'll decide that homework is pointless and write one later tonight. In the mean time, umm keep commenting on the old ones. because those comments make me ridiculously happy. Especially anonymous constructive criticism. Thats way cool.

Also, someone must hold hands with me. For a really long extended period of time. Until i get this incessant urge out of my head. Please sign up below.

all-nighters suck.

in other news: anonymous comments are silly, children. Make up witty pseudonyms.

Her mother and her best friend had buried her lower body, had built her a mermaid tail out of sand. They’d decorated it with sea-shells and sea-weed, and though she could only barely lift her upper body off the ground to see it, she’d known it was beautiful. A crowd of people had stood over her, admiring it, then left, and she’d lain alone for what felt like hours. She’d lain alone, awash with pure and empty joy, a feeling so blissful it almost hurt. For hours it seemed, she lived deep sea mermaid adventures and listened to the waves. When she opened her eyes, her mother was standing over her, and she’d thought how beautiful she looked from this angle. Like a building, strange geometry, darkened crevices. Her mother said they were leaving and she’d said no, I’m not leaving, not ever. They’d taken pictures, they’d promised to build her a new tail the next day, but still, no, she wasn’t leaving, never. I'm a mermaid, she’d said, I can’t walk. Leave me here, she’d said, I’ll sleep in the sea. But they’d dragged her out of the sand, kicking and screaming, onto her dad’s shoulders and into the air. The sand had poured down her legs, a shell had cut her shin, and her cries had bounced into the ocean and back. I’m a mermaid, she’d screamed, I’ll die on the land.
Now, nine years later, she dug her toes deeper into the sand, trying to feel if this sand felt the same as that sand had. Was this the same beach, she wondered, until she decided that all beaches were the same. She sat for hours, until the waves crept up and unburied her feet.

Every day at 4 pm, a girl in a breezy summer dress rounds the corner of Church st. and the world freezes. Cars stop where they are, mid-honk, mid-turn. Leaves in the trees stop rustling. People walking stop mid-step, foot poised awkwardly in the air. If its raining that day, the raindrops hover in the air until the girl plucks them from their places, one by one. Every once in a while she puts one in her mouth, delicately. The girl dances, slowly whirling, slowly twirling, through the silent streets. She touches, feels, tastes everything she can find. She flits around each person as they stare blankly ahead. The world stays frozen, every day, in this way, until she disappears once more around the corner at Canal. As the last swirl of her dress disappears from view, the world springs back into motion. Slowly at first, sounds sluggish, movements exaggerated, then faster, then faster, till everything is as it once was. Every day, at 4 pm, the world freezes. No one ever notices.

This day was like any other. 3:58, 3:59, then 4:00, then her foot appears from around the corner and everything else stops moving. Flip-flops and fairy wings, she glides into view. She stops before a couple holding hands and reaches into the air between them to feel the texture of their relationship. It is acrylic. She circles them once, touches their hair, then whirls over to a little girl. She plucks from the air the lisped words that hover just outside the blond child’s mouth and tastes their innocence. It is salty-sweet.

Suddenly, something catches her attention and she jumps back, afraid. Something across the street is moving. A scrap of paper, blown by a wind that, by all means, shouldn’t be there, dances a dance of its own. She darts through the motionless cars. It takes her a minute to catch it, the paper leaping constantly, teasingly, out of her grasp. Un-crumpling it she finds a quickly drawn pencil sketch of herself, and beneath:

“TIME, LIKE ALL THINGS, IS A CIRCLE”

The second she looks up, the world abruptly begins move once more. She is caught in the angry traffic, the jarring bustle of the street. Her face freezes into an expression of frustrated bewilderment. Without smoke, without sound, she disappears forever. No one notices. Somewhere, in an apartment overlooking the street, an old man winks.

“Wait,” she said. “I have something for you.” He turned and watched as she reached up to the side of her face and slowly pulled off her ear. Underneath, the skin was soft and smooth. She placed it carefully in his hand. It was warm, and he smiled. “This is mine,” she said. “Give it back to me when it is yours.”
He took it home with him and placed it in a purple box. He did not see her again for a year. For a year, he lived with the purple box, never opening it, never leaving it. He taught it how to love when it wanted to, and not love when it needed to. He taught it how to hear the colors in music and the smells in springtime. He taught it how to peel off someone’s skin and see the redness of their thoughts through the words that they were saying. He taught it how to die while still living, and cry without sighing. He forgot about the girl to whom the ear belonged, he forgot about what the box contained. He had never loved anything more.
After a year, he decided it was time. Purple box in hand, he returned to visit her. She smiled when she saw him, and accepted the box silently. Her skin was still smooth where the ear had been. She opened it slowly. Inside was a hand. “This is mine,” he said, understanding. “Give it back to me when it is yours.”

good god...why did i get out of bed this morning? what a bad plan that was...

activism, art, and sushi, oh my.

to elaborate: my day consisted of
-meaning to wake up at eight but waking up at twelve instead
-various antsy, stressful, half-asleep college lectures from my mother
-creative procrastination followed by pouring all my secrets onto paper and calling it my short stories hw
-inappropriately giggling throughout activisty meetings and making more enemies than friends,
-going to a gallery opening (of some icelandic pop artist?) with my father and dakota and laughing at a film of various people making funny faces
-which led to cracked out documentary ideas for when we (dakota and I) will live in paris together and make a film of prostitutes making funny faces.
-buying sushi and discussing religion with dakota and dash while eating it
-wherein it was decided that Dash would go to school and tell his friends that his sister said "religion was created by some bored tripped out dudes in the fertile crecent who sat around drinking and smoking" at which point she would get stoned to death by outraged christians.
-wherein it was also decided that if someone went back in time and shushed Mary before she could spout nonsense about carrying god's baby, we wouldn't have all these silly problems in the world.
-wherein it was also decided that Nadja should never ever ever talk about religion in front of anyone who had the remotest chance of getting offended.

and now to actually do some hw...

Dear Sarah,
I'm sorry my blog looks so much like yours now.
but it is because you are simply too cool.
-nadja

p.s. if people leave me comments, i promise to be happy forever.

It's kind of amusing that people sit around wondering what i could possible mean by my cryptic one line entries. THe truth is, i don't mean much of anything. I'm just too intimidated by this whole blog thing to write anything. So, from now on, i intend to write an entirely, actively, unphilosophical, unpolitical, and unwitty blog-unless such things relate directly to my life. In fact, i intend to write solely about myself, and if you think this is boring, i entirely agree with you. But its much funner to write. If this is not the sort of thing you want to read, please go write your own political, philosophical, and witty blog, and send me the link-because i'd like to read it.
So anyway, here goes the first installement of Nadja's entirely un-intellectualized daily life:

The mountains in Utah dwarf the cities, and its easy to argue that their enormous presense would loom in people's minds, silently influencing their actions...

oops. this is sounding frighteningly pretentious. lets try again:

I'm sitting in a restaurant in Utah with my mom, my brother, and his friend. The place is called the Porcupine Pub and they have 21 beers on tap. I excuse myself to got eh bathroom, hoping that maybe the food will come faster if i leave. Two waitresses fall silent as i walk in, then whisper to each other and leave. As i'm washing my hands i notice the snazzy blue paper towel dispenser, complete with a motion sensor. I wave my hand in front of it a few times, delighting in how it whirrs and spits out individual peices of paper. Back at the table, i say "Guys, i really recommend you all go to the bathroom, they have this really awesome towel dispenser and..." before i can make it clear that I'm being entirely sarcastic, the boys jump up, excited, and race each other to the bathroom.
My mother laughs. "you've really got to be careful what you say to them," she admonishes, " you underestimate your power. Imagine if you'd said 'Hey guys, i really recommend you all go to hell, they've got this really cool devil with a pitchfork.'"
I laugh, then sit there slightly nervous, not looking forward to their inevitable dissapointed return. My Mother continues to giggle into her beer. THey return glowing, trailing a string of paper towel behind them.
"how was the....how was the paper towel dispenser?" my mom asks. "It was awesome!!!" they shout, almost in unison, and to their confusion my mom howls with laughter.
"this i've got to see!" my mother syas, as she grabs her bag and heads for the bathrooms.
"I wouldn't have missed it for the world," she says later, "in fact, it's the reason i came to Utah in the first place."


wow, i am so impossibly cool, what with the comments and what not. If you leave me comments i'll be your friend for ever. (and we can write things like BFF4ever on our hands in sharpie and it'll be quite the party, just you wait.)