c'mon feel the illinoise!

sup fools.

Since we last talked, I was rejected from NYU (what I deserve for arrogantly stating I've never been denied admission to a university), making Northwestern my default choice for graduate school. It's still the city, it's still an amazing program, and it has the benefit of being chock full of familiar faces, and close to this stupid little college campus I've grown to love.

but it's not new york, and every year I don't move there feels more like a failure. The goal is 25 though, so let's just keep aiming for that. it's not going anywhere.

In other news, I am 100% confident that for the rest of my life, I will fall into deep, hopeless, irreconcilable lust with incredibly tall, extremely mysterious men. It's a blessing and a curse. Unfortunately, being in the throes of wild, lustful interest just leaves me with incredibly vivid dreams that I wish were true when I wake up. Because I am nothing if not a little girl about things like this (and the majority of other matters, to be honest.)

I just realized that I am moving around the country in the same order as Sufjan Stevens albums. Let's hope life doesn't take me to Minnesota after grad school. (unless I'm working for the Utne Reader, in which case, yes please.)

Tomorrow: a list of things i'm onto lately, then no more updates for the rest of the weekend, unless St. Patty's prove to be epically interesting in some way that doesn't involve me drinking to excess.

like, no big, or anything

Dear Sarah:

Congratulations! The Admissions Committee has approved your application to Medill’s Master of Science in Journalism program. Your program of studies will begin in the Summer 2008 quarter.Orienation is tentatively scheduled for Monday, June 23, 2008. We will be holding our Open House for Admitted Students on Thursday and Friday, April 10 and 11, and you should be receiving an invitation to this event via email and postal mail soon.

So, you know, there's that. Their sports teams suck, and their colors are stupid, but it's a definite upgrade. Also, I have yet to be rejected from an institution of higher learning to which I've applied.

I fucking rule.

my muse is a precocious little girl

I feel like I always jabber about being a writer, and writing, and blah blah blah so I should just stop being a pansy and post some writing. Don't worry — you'll never come here and find full drafts of short stories. Just some snippets I've written here and there.

So, in that spirit, today while writing with some friends, I was challenging myself to be brief. Here are two short-short stories, in less than 100 words.

Eloise sat in the basement room and began to unravel the rug again. She had woven and unraveled the same red, black and white fibers more times than there are spines on a cactus. If she had woven the same pattern twice, she didn't know. Diamonds, mandalas, chevrons, paisley swirls all emerged from the same beaten, fuzzy threads. The futility of her task may be cause for concern — but probably not.

I have never been any good at spelling. Inappropriate and unwelcome letters crop up in the middle of words where they are uninvited, like the static shock of a doorknob early in the morning. But I can spell onomatopoeia perfectly; strange vowel clusters snared by the siren song of the flypaper in my synapses. That pesky third "n" in begining, or the extravagent "e" in withe, however, manage to escape.

###

These are Dark, Evil Times

I woke up this morning with whiskey on my tongue, tired, confused, angry, restless. The way you always were. In the middle of the eternal shortest month, in the midst of my own body's mental and physical breakdown, you decided you'd had enough. Your brains were all over the typewriter, counselor. The snow was thick on the ground, and for you, the winter would never end. I got the call, I heard a recorded voice tell me you were gone. Three years later, I no longer speak to that person's recorded voice and you are still not with us.

No one could tell me if it was true or not. Some people said they didn't believe for days, thought you were pulling another fast one. Another decompression chamber. I knew from the first second that you'd finally given up the ghost. It was the only way. Your best prank. Six months later, you were shot into the sky, like the beautiful, weird, twisted mutant you were.

We need you now more than ever, but chances are a time will never come when that won't be true. I lust after the words you will never write, about Mike Huckabee's speed freak for Jesus bug-eyed, bass-playing antics, about the sheer ridiculousness of the slow crumble of the Bush administration. If we'd had a different president, would things have seemed less bleak, Raoul? If the Patriots we're the opposite of competition, pure sport and surprise, would you have felt more satisfied?

Football Season is Over, but who do I turn to now, for inspiration, for courage, for irreverence, for everything?

You, Doctor. Too weird to live, too rare to die.

Mahalo.

i need a lawyer

Listen, if I had my way, I would just go through this day pretending it's like every other Thursday where I go to work, waste some time, go to yoga, talk about postmodernism, then go get drunk.

Unfortunately, even the cartoons on Nickelodeon this morning won't let that happen. And I am in a particularly black and foul mood today, so you can all take your candy hearts, and shove them.

Or maybe this is all pure gibberish — a product of the demented imagination of a lazy drunken hillbilly with a heart full of hate who has found a way to live out where the real winds blow — to sleep late, have fun, get wild, drink whisky, and drive fast on empty streets with nothing in mind except falling in love and not getting arrested...
Res ipsa loquitur. Let the good times roll.

Not the sun

Everyone is a masochist.
I have to take control of something.
No more.

That doesn't matter, so here's a poem that's appropriate.

The Blackbirds are Rough Today
by Charles Bukowski

lonely as a dry and used orchard
spread over the earth
for use and surrender.

shot down like an ex-pug selling
dailies on the corner.

taken by tears like
an aging chorus girl
who has gotten her last check.

a hanky is in order your lord your
worship

the blackbirds are rough today
like
ingrown toenails
in an overnight
jail---
wine wine whine,
the blackbirds run around and
fly around
harping about
Spanish melodies and bones.

and everywhere is
nowhere---
the dream is as bad as
flapjacks and flat tires:

why do we go on
with our minds and
pockets full of
dust
like a bad boy just out of
school---
you tell
me,
you who were a hero in some
revolution

you who teach children
you who drink with calmness
you who own large homes
and walk in gardens
you who have killed a man and own a
beautiful wife
you tell me
why I am on fire like old dry
garbage.

we might surely have some interesting
correspondence.
it will keep the mailman busy.
and the butterflies and ants and bridges and
cemeteries
the rocket-makers and dogs and garage mechanics
will still go on a
while
until we run out of stamps
and/or
ideas.

don't be ashamed of
anything; I guess God meant it all
like
locks on
doors.