burning the letters

That’s my favorite image from one of the most beautiful movies ever, Godard’s Alphaville. Today, I thought of a certain scene from it (the image above is taken from it), and was very happy to find it on Youtube. If you asked me what things have been like lately, what everything has felt like, I’d show you this scene to explain it all to you, and you’d know:

After I watched it a couple of times, and cried a little bit, I decided that I’d go watch the film again, but was disappointed to find out that I don’t own it. I really thought that I did. I have a lot of Godard’s films, but not that one, apparently. Ah, well. I think that I’ll buy the Criterion version with a gift card that I got for Christmas.

The snow melted a bit today. I was able to make it back here to my apartment the other day, but now my car is stuck here. I hope that I can get it out tomorrow, maybe. Thankfully, I’m on Christmas break, so I don’t have to go to work.

Christmas itself was good. My parents gave me some wonderful gifts, I had fun with my cousins, and I discovered that I’m pretty good at Wii Boxing, weirdly enough! Here’s me with straight hair, taken on Christmas eve:

I love having straight hair.

& Taken tonight, still straight, but now very messy:

Oh, how I love that blouse/that jumper/that hat!

I feel melancholy tonight, partially because I’m tired of being stuck here. I have definitely been enjoying myself, enjoying my alone time, and getting some things done, but I haven’t been sleeping well, and I haven’t been eating well (I don’t really know whether or not I’ve eaten anything of substance today) and I miss being around certain people.

But, at the same time, I feel strangely awakened lately, optimistic, less afraid of myself, maybe? I don’t want this feeling of being more alive and more awake to go away. It’s as if I’m struggling to keep my head above water that I really don’t want to drown in. I know that I belong above the surface, that I can get there if I try, but it’s always such a struggle. And I don’t want to have to be afraid of drowning all of the time. I want it to be easier. Just a little bit easier, please.

I need to figure things out, but I don’t even know where or how to start.

I’m dreadfully behind on everything. I will be sending out Christmas cards soon, and catching up with online things, etc.

Thanks for reading. xo

It’s still snowing! My goodness. I finally got to go shopping tonight (my mom and I went up to shopping center) and hopefully I finished my shopping. I do not want to go back out tomorrow. I really hate shopping. And I really don’t understand people who love shopping. It befuddles me.

I finished my grading today. YES! That feels good. I’ve been playing crossword games on the DS, writing in my journal, listening to the I-Pod, watching too much television, etc. Check out this picture. I pulled up the shade on one of my parents’ downstairs windows yesterday morning and saw this:

ACK! And It’s snowed more since then. STOP FUCKING SNOWING.

& Here’s me, last night, playing around with my grandma’s old necklace:

& In the guest bedroom, where I’m sleeping:

& Cute new slippers that I bought myself tonight:

Love them!

& Tonight: soy gingersnap latte & Leonard Cohen on the I-Pod:

& You all know how much I love me some Shatner, and since I’m here and have access to lots of channels, I’ve been able to watch his new show, Shatner’s Raw Nerve. It very therapy-like and I love how weirdly close he sits to his guests. I want Shatner to be my therapist. I’d probably just flirt with him, though. I’m definitely excited for the Nimoy episode!

& At Target, I also finally bought myself a copy of Life of Brian, one of my favorite movies ever. I shouldn’t have been buying myself things, but it was on sale and I couldn’t resist. Eric Idle is positively adorable in it and it’s brilliant.

I have little to no Christmas spirit. Ah, well.

More soon! xo

Not too much to report. I’m still at my parents’ house, still basically snowed in, still going slightly stir-crazy. And, OH JOY, more snow fell overnight. Ugh. I shoveled the deck this morning for almost an hour (they have a big deck) and I feel all tough and accomplished now. Heh. My muscles already hurt, though. And my glasses kept fogging up, which made it kind of difficult to shovel properly. Plus, I was wearing my stepdad’s skipants and jacket, which made me look like the biggest dork. Ah, well.

Here I am, yesterday afternoon, hiding out in the guest bedroom while loud sports was on television (along with loud family members yelling loudly at the t.v. I love them to death, but the yelling is tedious):

Cozy, at least!

& I found some old photos today and took pictures of a few. This one makes me giggle. I was three, and it’s the first time I had dressed myself. And, yep, that’s underwear on my head. Oh, yes. Ha! I actually really dig that outfit, though:

This is Christmas 1983. I love that insane hair! I’ve always had slightly insane hair:

My seventh birthday party. I remember loving that sash SO much! I felt so insanely SPECIAL in it:

I watched Woody Allen’s Sleeper yesterday. I’ve seen it a few times before, but I always love it. For some reason, his character’s line: “An old girlfriend from the village. A Trotskyite, who became a Jesus freak, and was arrested for selling pornographic connect-the-dot books” makes me laugh SO hard. I don’t know why, but it totally gets to me.

More soon! xo

Wow.

I don’t ever remember getting this much snow in such a short period. Anywhere from 26-36 inches (depending upon the area) fell in about a day and a half. SERIOUSLY. I tried to drive out to work on Wednesday, was creeping along on the freeway along with everyone else, hit an ice patch, and loss control of my car. Scary shit. Thankfully, I was able to right it pretty quickly, but it scared the shit out of me, so I got off at the next exit, cried a bit, sat until I stopped shaking, and returned home via the back roads.

I stayed in the apartment until this morning. It made me a little stir-crazy. When I finally went out this morning, there was so much snow on my porch that I couldn’t open the screen door at first. Whoa! Eventually, I made a path to the stairs, and then cleared the stairs (a pain in the ass to do, as I have nineteen stairs, but at least it’s a good workout) and then set out to sweep the snow off of my car.

I had jeans on, tucked into my polka-dot wellies, and I guess I figured that the snow wouldn’t come up too far beyond that. Wrong! I stepped off of the stairs, and sunk into the snow so deeply that it went up to the top of my thighs! And I’m 5’7″, so that’s pretty damn insane. I hiked through that out to the car but was only able to clear a portion of the snow off, because I couldn’t make it to the other side of the car (the street side) because there was just too much damn snow. Plus, cars were sliding all over, and I was afraid to go near them. I couldn’t have driven that car even if I had wanted to. It is stuck in on both sides. Tons of cars were stuck on the street, too. Insane!

Eventually, I decided to come up to my parents’ house. I have had to have the heat up to 80 degrees in my apartment over the last few days, yet I was still so cold, because I live in a non-insulated attic apartment. I was tired of being cold and afraid of my upcoming heating bill. So, my step-dad very kindly came up to the gas station a few blocks down to pick me up in their SUV. I hauled my bags down and was happy to see that some of the sidewalk was clear, but then discovered that most wasn’t, so I ended up being in snow up to my thighs yet again, and fell over no less than three times, onto my face, in the snow. Argh! Ah, well.

So, I’m at my parents’ house now. It’s nice and warm and my mom kindly bought me some vegetarian pizza on her way home. Yummy!

Time for a few photos!

I drew this last night while watching Annie Hall for the billionth time. I can’t draw, but it’s fun:

Also from last night. Kneesocks again!:

Again, from last night. Spock finds girls who lay about in kneesocks HIGHLY ILLOGICAL!:

Pretty trees outside my apartment, taken this morning:

Hey, Miranda’s little car, are you under there???:

This is a weird angle, but I took it this morning just to show how deep the snow is. Where did you go, dear wellies?:

& Lastly, my mom puts out all of my old Santa photos at Christmas, and this one made me giggle. It’s from 1985 and Santa looks like a drunk:

(I actually really wish that I had that sweater vest in a grown-up size! Cute!)

I’m going to take advantage of the big plasma t.v. with tons of channels and be lazy for a while. More soon! xo

I woke up today with the worst migraine I’ve had in years. Holy shit. It’s a bit better now, thankfully. I was supposed to go out to work today to do my grading, but I’m going to go tomorrow instead. It still hurts to look at brightness. Ugh.

Here’s my silly outfit of the day. Jumpers make me happy. As do stripey kneesocks:

But I REALLY need to trim my bangs soon. I am a Muppet.

& I’ve been working on some French crossword puzzles today, using my skully pencil!:

Crossword puzzles are very useful for me in keeping up with my French studies. Plus, they’re fun.

& I really need to clear out my yarn stash a bit, so I’m going to make a scrap-scarf of sorts using all of these related colors:

I hope it turns out well!

& I came across this passage today. It’s from Hemingway’s A Moveable Feast, which is one of my favorite books. I have been organizing my books and I keep getting distracted and start flipping through them. Ah, well. Anyway, this passage is Hemingway describing Fitzgerald

“His talent was as natural as the pattern that was made by the dust on a butterfly’s wings. At one time he understood it no more than the butterfly did and he did not know when it was brushed or marred. Later he became conscious of his damaged wings and of their construction and he learned to think and could not fly any more because the love of flight was gone and he could only remember when it had been effortless.”

Wow. That is intensely beautiful. I wish that I could say so much with so few words.

I need to do online class work and try to get rid of this fucking headache. More soon. xoxo

It’s still ridiculously cold outside. Painfully cold. But I did manage to be fairly productive today, thankfully. I organized the apartment a bit and it feels much less cluttered now, which is always a lovely feeling.

This is SO overdue, but I finally managed to take a photo of the lovely “M” pendant that my dear friend Laura sent me as a gift. It’s adorable & it has Shatner on the reverse! Oh, yes!:

I love it! & Go check out her shop. It’s full of good stuff.

& Also, my friend E.J. sent me this beautiful painting as a wonderful present:

(It’s from this Ebay shop.) So pretty!

& Here’s a lovely owl badge that I ordered from Missy’s shop:

She has amazing things for sale & is such a talented lady.

& I’m terribly excited for Words in Air: The Complete Correspondence Between Elizabeth Bishop and Robert Lowell:

928 pages of correspondence between Elizabeth Bishop and Robert Lowell? Yes, please! Their relationship is fascinating. I hope to get the book for Christmas.

One of my favorite lines of Lowell’s is from his poem, “History”:

“O there’s a terrifying innocence in my face
drenched with the silver salvage of the mornfrost.”

His work is so incisive, sad, beautiful, cutting. Just wonderful.

My toes are freezing. I’m sleeping at all the wrong hours, mostly just because the bed is the warmest place to be. The stairs up to my apartment are treacherously icy. My porch light is currently dead because the bulb froze and exploded. I need to get groceries, but I’ve been too lazy. I have yet to buy a Christmas present for anyone. I need to vacuum this place.

I feel rather behind on everything.

But hopefully everything will be okay.

More soon. xxoo

It’s still ridiculously cold outside. Painfully cold. But I did manage to be fairly productive today, thankfully. I organized the apartment a bit and it feels much less cluttered now, which is always a lovely feeling.

This is SO overdue, but I finally managed to take a photo of the lovely “M” pendant that my dear friend Laura sent me as a gift. It’s adorable & it has Shatner on the reverse! Oh, yes!:

I love it! & Go check out her shop. It’s full of good stuff.

& Also, my friend E.J. sent me this beautiful painting as a wonderful present:

(It’s from this Ebay shop.) So pretty!

& Here’s a lovely owl badge that I ordered from Missy’s shop:

She has amazing things for sale & is such a talented lady.

& I’m terribly excited for Words in Air: The Complete Correspondence Between Elizabeth Bishop and Robert Lowell:

928 pages of correspondence between Elizabeth Bishop and Robert Lowell? Yes, please! Their relationship is fascinating. I hope to get the book for Christmas.

One of my favorite lines of Lowell’s is from his poem, “History”:

“O there’s a terrifying innocence in my face
drenched with the silver salvage of the mornfrost.”

His work is so incisive, sad, beautiful, cutting. Just wonderful.

My toes are freezing. I’m sleeping at all the wrong hours, mostly just because the bed is the warmest place to be. The stairs up to my apartment are treacherously icy. My porch light is currently dead because the bulb froze and exploded. I need to get groceries, but I’ve been too lazy. I have yet to buy a Christmas present for anyone. I need to vacuum this place.

I feel rather behind on everything.

But hopefully everything will be okay.

More soon. xxoo

It’s too bloody cold out there. My goodness. The high temperature for a day shouldn’t be in the single digits. ACK. I cannot seem to get warm in this apartment, no matter what I do. I’m under three different big blankets at the moment, and the heat is cranked up, but I’m still cold. Goddamn attic apartment. The insanely cold murkiness is making me depressed and sleepy all of the time.

The snow is very pretty, though, at least:

And I got to see BFF Kate the other day! We had sushi together. I love me some Kate!:

And this was my Friday lunch. Yummy!:

Kingsley Amis’s Lucky Jim is one of my favorite books ever. I relate to it so much for some reason (I suppose just the academia stuff and the frustrated, stuck feeling and all that. Also, I make faces in secret, just like the title character. Silly!):

I read it in a grad school seminar, and I found this annotation I made during that seminar:

Yeah, it says “Christine’s presence gives him balls, theoretically.” Ha, yeah. What the hell?

But it’s a favorite and I read it again and again. Problem is, I have SO many books in my to-read pile that I should never be re-reading books, you know? But it’s comforting.

& Here’s me, last week. I love that hat and that shirt so much!:

Also? Hello Kitty gloves are BADASS. You know it:

:) There’s more to post, and I’ll do that soon. For now, xo.

Wednesday was a very difficult, bad day in a lot of ways. But cuddling up with the heart pillow that my late grandma made me always helps.

On the plus side, I did get to have a Jamba Juice, spend time in the college library, and cozily sleep the evening away on the couch with my feet curled up on Mike’s lap while he watched The X-Files.

(The subject line is from a favorite song, Billy Bragg’s “Must I Paint You a Picture?”)

There is lots more to post about & I’ll do that soon. At least Christmas break is coming up!

xo

I’ve been reading a lot of this:

(a lovely copy, from 1959)

especially while taking baths and drinking hot tea. It’s comforting. My favorite has always been and probably will always be “somewhere i have never traveled, gladly beyond,” which just slays me. It literally makes my heart hurt and my stomach all fluttery, especially the last stanza, which is achingly, painfully beautiful:

“(i do not know what it is about you that closes
and opens; only something in me understands
the voice of your eyes is deeper than all roses)
nobody, not even the rain, has such small hands”

Oh, my. Yes.

I graded SO many papers last week, and one night I was up at like 2 or 3 a.m., and took a break from grading to take this photo of myself:

Yes, I sometimes wear pearls wrapped around my wrist while grading papers in the middle of the night. I don’t know why. I’m a little bit Little Edie sometimes, I guess. And I was a little bit delirious.

& OMG, there was a Shatner category on Jeopardy a few nights ago. I had run off to use the bathroom before Double Jeopardy and then I hear Mike and Dan saying “Miranda! Shatner!” so I ran out and started squee-ing when I saw the Shatner category. Yay! Dan was teasing me because I took a photo of every clue. Ha! Here’s one:

What is DENNY CRANE???? Yay!

Relatedly, I seriously have dreams about being on Jeopardy. I really, really want to be on it. Alex creeps me out a bit, though. And I’d have to come up with some witty story to tell about myself. Hmm. But I’m terrified that I’d be one of those losers who ends up with negative 1,200 or something and thus can’t even play in Final Jeopardy. Ack!

& I was trying to work on my writing project last night, but didn’t get too much done, probably because I’m the queen of wasting time, which includes taking photos of myself in my pajamas, apparently:

& Here’s a song that I like a lot. It’s by That Dog, and it’s from an album I listened to a lot in high school, 1995′s Totally Crushed Out. It’s called “Lip Gloss” and it’s fun and super-cute and foxy. Download it here: sendspace.com/file/des3sf

I like this:

“Run your fingers through my locks.
In a corner back me in and kiss me.
‘Cause I keep getting all lip-glossed.
And you won’t kiss me.”

Oh, yes.

I’m finally feeling like knitting again. So I should do that.

More soon! xo