Yeah, so the la alternative press published my article, but has yet to update its website. So if you wanna read the spiel, you'll have to track down a print version--at least 'til they get their act together.

I had to come back to this entry and correct all my spelling.
I'm just a spaz like that.

commodifying dissent is lucrative

Shares of Hot Topic are through the roof, kids! Invest in your favorite target-marketed niche boutique right NOW, 'cuz when you grow up Social Security will have imploded upon itself from the glut of your parents and grandparents working their constipated way out the colon of America's job market.

Sigh.

I am competent

I am so proud of me.

Before you get all annoyed and grossed out by that statement, let me just say I am rarely if ever impressed by myself, and if I do anything of note I immediately tend to bury it in an avalance of "you could have done better" so...this is unusual.

I am totally exhausted and am working downtown at the Brewery every night until past midnight, helping others witht heir Burning Man projects and working on my own. Today I learned to saw metal. You know, like with sparks flying off in all directions and eyegoggles and earmuffs and the whole nine metal-shop yards. My shade structure is almost complete, and I've made the whole thing myself.

On an even bigger note of accomplishment, today I cashed a check for $100. That's not unusual. What was new is that it was payment for an article I wrote--my very first ever. Appearing this Thursday in the Arts and Ideas section of the LA Alternative Press (http://www.laalternativepress.com/). I met with the lead editor of the paper and she wants to collaborate with me on a feature, a huge article. I am so thrilled!!!

I may be exhausted and working nonstop, but good things are happening. My life feels so full of wonderful change. I can't wait to go to Burning Man!!!

red wine is fast
at the lip of your glass saying I'm gonna ruin
everything
everything--
so it's better my sweet,
that we hover like bees
'cos there's no
sure footing
No love I believe.
-neko case.








new prosety too.

thanky.

OH.MY.GOD.

I knew photos in women's glossies were retouched, but I had no idea it was this obvious:

http://homepage.mac.com/gapodaca/digital/bikini/index.html


Thanks for the link, Jake--women, click on it and feel a hell of a lot more normal; men, click on it and stop comparing real women to things that do not exist.

cross-posting prosety from my other site (accessible via the sidebar, too lazy to throw the link in here)...but I never put any poetry up on this blog, so why the hell not?

eh.

-michele.



the value of zero

if nothing is
the quietly growing vacancy of space
interstellar and complete, vast
and broad, whale-wide leagues for millennia,
stars expanding,
old worlds collapsing,
oceans and seas empty and cooling,
if nothing is
at barren altitudes flung so high to the canopy of the stars that the sun would come down,
where wind claws torqued stones to spiraled perfection and makes of plants
silver spikes erected heavenwards at dawn to catch acute-angled light;
if nothing is
the peace we sink to like dry leaves
when all things desert us and we are bereft of
old loves and meanings,
and are instead gravid with lives not yet followed to logical conclusions,
narrations not yet written;
if nothing is
the inestimable value of that Mesopotamian digit,
where our primeval rivers flood over and over to
drown walled gardens, submerge valleys of shadows
and leave behind
nothing
to grow rich and wide with time again and again,
unfurling new worlds like nilotic sails,

then I have nothing to give you, love.
Nothing at all.

I feel bad

I think I am a shitty roommate.

At a party tonight, a boy from out of town--Minnesota, I think--sat down with my friend Kelsey and myself on the balcony of her apartment. It was her going-away party--she's moving to Orange County to live with her boyfriend. I am happy because she is happy--although i cannot relate to wanting to live with a man. I'd be happy if I could just live by myself (sorry Tana, I love you so much, but you know how we both really wish we could have our own places!).

He sits down. His younger sister is with him; she looks to be maybe 20. He has a thick Armenian accent.

"You--are you a poet?" he asks, looking at me. I had been staring vacantly into space to the left of his head. "I think you are a poet."

"Me?"

"Yes. Do you...(he seemed to be struggling for the right words, as though English did not come easily to him) write the poetry?"

I denied that I did, but Kelsey told him that yes, I did write poetry.

I left absurdly gratified by the whole thing, and trying to hide it.

I'd also like to add that for the first time in my entire life, and after hundreds of aborted attempts, I succeeded last night in making hard-boiled eggs. Now I feel like an adult.

Jeez, I'm easy to please.

Argh.

I'd like to write the truth about how I'm feeling, but there's too many people out there who know only a small slice of my life and not the big picture I get from in here on the inside, and so if I did that people wouldn't really understand.

why oh why did I ever tell friends and acquaintances about this weblog?

What I'd like to say is that I feel really good today. In fact the last week or so has been, in general, good. Healthy. Honest.

In fact, for months now, despite all sorts of difficulties, I've been stumbling across huge moments of clarity, peace, and self-discovery. Maybe these are happening 'cos my life is having many upheavals. Or maybe it's just time, like plate-techtonics moving things from below, subterranean inevitable inner changes as I grow and age.

I think, however, that there's still proof that I'm neurotic hidden in the fact that I feel guilty about that.

Ok, I think I know what it is. It's that I feel guilty feeling "alright" about my life, about the place I'm at, when I know others who are very dear to me, who I love a lot, are not feeling alright. My good friends have to weather me bitching and moaning a lot about my life and the oh-so-difficult travails I encounter in it. How, now, to tell them that for the last few months, despite all the insaity, I've been spiraling down on the inside to a place where I feel peaceful? How do I say "I feel good," when they don't?

On the other hand, to remain silent about it, when so much of what I do here is all angsty posting, seems disingenuous and kind of a dishonoring of some hard-won work I've done on myself for the last six months or so.

Eh, maybe it's just the yoga.