| Hello. You have reached the winter of our discontent. |
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| Que onda guero? |
[5:59 pm
on Thursday, March 6th] |
As of late:
- 2 celebrity sightings: Chris Robinson from The Black Crowes, and Glen Hansard from The Frames/the movie Once (who just won an Academy Award!) Both looking good, I might add.
- I really really want to learn Spanish. After my "Dangerous Women in Japanese Literature" class today I want to learn Japanese too.
- I've been more productive than usual, but its more out of necessity than anything else. I've been typing in coffee shops. My thesis is at 28 pages and counting. I wonder how many times in it I use the word "gender?"
- Me and Dan and Dan's (and now my) friend Wardeh are looking for apartments in Brooklyn and Queens.
- I'm ready to put on my spring dresses.
Huzzah.
Anna
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[12:45 am
on Wednesday, January 9th] |
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mood |
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 joyous |
] |
You know you've helped raise your 12-year-old cousin right when she puts an Oscar Wilde quote in her AIM profile.
Hells yeah, Charlotte. HELLS YEAH.
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| Do be do be do. |
[10:57 pm
on Sunday, December 2nd] |
| [ |
mood |
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quite delightful |
] |
I'm in a good mood tonight because...
1) My Ravelry invite came today! Ravelry is a VERY addictive knitting site where crafters can post patterns, keep track of their projects, look at other's people's work, etc. (EMILY- you should check this site out!) Its still in Beta and there's a HUGE waitlist to get an account but now I am registered! Yay! As if I needed another reason to procrastinate, though...
2) IT SNOWED TODAY!!! Snow is one of my all-time favorite things in the universe, and since I left for Ghana last winter before the first snowfall I haven't seen the white stuff in 21 months, so today was special. I have these big windows in my room and I just had this feeling last night that I should leave the blinds open for whatever reason, so the first thing I saw upon waking was big old white snowflakes hanging heavy in the sky. Possibly the best way to start a Sunday.
3) I think I have a roommate for next year. Which means I'm actually going to stay in New York next year. Which means I'm terrified and so fucking excited at the same time. Its a good feeling. Also, we're getting a dog, so what's really better than that?
4) I'm lucky to have friends who forgive me for my faults and help me to be more realistic when I start beating up on myself. I am lucky to have friends who make popcorn in the old-fashioned 80's style way that I grew up with. I am lucky to have friends who call me on Sundays. I am lucky to have friends to whom distance is no object.
5) Chai tea, pajamas, Christmas songs. Need I say more?
ALSO- everyone should check out the blog that MADRE (the AMAZING women's human rights NGO that I work for) is keeping from the UNFCCC Climate Change Conference in Bali this week. If you are concerned about the future of our environment (which we all should be, at this point), this will give you a unique perspective on how local communities all over the place are dealing with deforestation, production of biofuels, loss of biodiversity, and other challenges that climate change has posed to our world. Read it!- I promise it'll be interesting and informative.
Peace and love to alls y'alls.
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| You are what you love, and not what loves you back. |
[1:04 am
on Sunday, November 18th] |
"The phone is a fine invention-- it allows me to talk endlessly to you
About nothing, disguising my intentions, which I'm afraid, my friend, are wildly untrue."
I guess I'll just keep doing what I'm doing. Sigh. The complexity of relationships continues to baffle me.
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| November already? |
[1:47 am
on Wednesday, November 7th] |
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mood |
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 unsettled |
] |
I realized I always write in here when I'm feeling emotional.
Current truths:
-Talking to you the other night was absolutely the last thing on Earth I wanted to be doing at that moment. I think that's saying something.
-This has been a year of immense losses. It has also been a year of immense growth. I'm still figuring out out to deal with both.
-I need to get my academic act together before I fail out ((exaggeration!)) of school. Seriously, though, I need to do my homework.
-Changing one's plans is not bad or sad, it is natural and inevitable. Maybe I shouldn't hold on so hard to the details of my imagined future. Maybe I can have a job and a happy life here in New York. Maybe an apartment in the East Village or Brooklyn, a bull terrier, a few hours a week at the 4th Street Co-op and a career in NGOs is the right path for me at this point. I need to keep these options open. I'm actually excited about this.
-Coming back to Sharon last weekend was refreshing, but also uncomfortable and strange. The times they are a changin.'
-I need to buy a winter coat before the Manhattan chill begins to eat away at my crosswalk patience.
-David Wojnarowicz is a brilliant man.
-I'm in denial about you. But what a beautiful denial it is, baby.
Peace and love.
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[11:30 pm
on Tuesday, October 16th] |
Do I expect too much from people?
I just don't understand.
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| Update! |
[9:55 pm
on Wednesday, October 10th] |
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mood |
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all a-quiver |
] |
Okay. Okay okay okay.
Its like every time she smiles I melt and honestly I'm just glad to be alive because something that beautiful and so full of light means there must be a god and a purpose for all of the crap that goes on in this god forsaken place. She is perfect, so so perfect, and I just want to be around her more to learn and talk and smell and kiss and take in all that I can from that incredible smile. And its frustrating because she scares me, and I know she has a girlfriend, but I think maybe I just need to be brave and TALK TO HER, for god's sake, before its too late and this class is over and I never see her again.
I want to learn every image she has painted on her arms by heart. And where that huge scar comes from.
Having major feelings for someone is really quite distracting. I had almost forgotten! I'm glad I'm letting myself feel emotions this intensely because it means that my heart is healthy and that it can still do what its supposed to.
I have learned SO MUCH about myself in this past month. Things that were maybe obvious from the outside but I never really acknowledged them myself: I am very emotional. I feel things very deeply. I trust people easily. This quite often leads to disappointment and heartbreak. I'm not afraid to die but I'm afraid of others dying. I'm indulgent, sometimes overly. I'm often unreliable, which I am trying very hard to work on while not losing the charm of my perpetual lateness. I like to feel in power. I should strive to be a better friend. I LOVE LOVE LOVE being a woman. I am happy.
Tonight I had an overwhelming sense that my life is just beginning. Its a good feeling.
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| On love and lifeblood. |
[12:21 am
on Saturday, September 15th] |
There are days when living in this city comes close to being unbearable, when everything is smelly and hot and nauseatingly overwhelming and absolutely nothing, nothing, will go your way. There are days when it kicks your ass.
And then there are days when Manhattan will open up to you like a lover reawakening from a cold spell, when she will blossom in front of you like a million tiny lights sparkling in the most brilliant colors, and her sidewalks will be a cache of jewels spilled out beneath your feet to form these twinkling, dancing constellations, these patterns that your steps are meant to follow. There are days when the Brooklyn Bridge will just shimmer to high heaven and you could swear that she was a garland of diamonds laced around the neck of this long and crazy island, days when every man in Manhattan will be painting your watercolor portrait in the subway, days when renegades and revolutionaries will sport their wacky hats and take to parading across the avenues in their flamboyant technicolor ambivalence. Days when the street fairs and the noises and the steam and the light will come together just so, and you could swear that every single last soul in the godforsaken place was embroiled in some greater plan of which you, just for that moment, found yourself at the very center.
I am consistently and perpetually at awe of the endless dichotomies that this city possesses, how I can be so alone and yet so alive here all at once. And it has been so, so long since I have felt that infinite magic that makes me love Manhattan in the desperate way that I do.
Tonight was such a gift.
And you are so, so beautiful. And that is all that I am going to say about that.
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| <3 |
[8:37 pm
on Tuesday, September 11th] |
I miss cuddling.
Where are all the bearded red-heads when I need them??
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[6:39 pm
on Saturday, September 8th] |
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mood |
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at peace |
] |
A few notes on life so far this year:
- I actually cried in yoga class today. It was just that moving.
- "You want to fight for this love, but ,honey, you cannot wrestle a dove." Oh, The Shins, if only your incredible wisdom had reached me a few months earlier, I would have wasted so much less time!
-Ted Leo is my new hero. He's like someone's dad, but in really skinny pants and with an uncanny sense of rhythm and rock and roll.
- For the first time in a long time, I actually feel my age. I find that the spring of adulthood quite suits me.
-The vast, graceful portal to Brooklyn peeks through these two tall buildings to greet me through my window each morning. She has never looked lovelier than she does in the light of an approaching autumn. I am infinitely lucky.
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[10:37 pm
on Thursday, July 26th] |
| [ |
mood |
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 disappointed |
] |
Wow, don't be an asshole when someone who actually cares about you asks how you are. That's how you lose friends in the first place.
Seriously, dude, what goes around comes around.
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| Not to beat this to death, but... |
[8:13 pm
on Tuesday, July 17th] |
You are my sweetest downfall.
I loved you first.
Even moreso than being something angry, spiteful, or full of regret, the death of this love has just been devastatingly sad. Never in my life have I felt such sorrow as this, that of losing a best friend, a partner in crime, an entire relationship. It was more than the sum of both of us combined, it was something created and fine-tuned by both of us, something bigger than ourselves. The worst part is that there was nothing we could do to prevent its demise. I suppose you can't choose who you end up loving, even if they are following a different path from your own. And that is why it hurts so much, because no matter what I do I can never go back to those happy times, and after all I wouldn't want to, because I am where I'm supposed to be. Which is not with you. I have never liked change, because it wrenches my heart into a thousand pieces, because I end up loving every passing moment so damn much. There is just nothing to do about it, no one to blame, only time and distraction to fill the void of what has been lost.
In the end, this will all be worth it, because if love wasn't such an amazing, beautiful, and life-changing thing to begin with, it wouldn't hurt like a bitch like it does at this moment.
That being said, no love for me for a while. There is nobody in my life right now that I want to date, and I like the stresslessness of being single. I'm throwing myself into myself, and I'm going to rediscover the Anna of circa 1999. Let's see how it goes.
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| Its the times when Everlong comes on the radio at work and I feel the rigor mortis of what we were. |
[11:23 pm
on Tuesday, July 10th] |
Overall I think I'm dealing with this pretty well, I'm getting over it little by little, and its starting to hurt less. But every now I then I fall prey to my weaknesses. Every now and then I feel so lonely that I could die. And there are still a few things that I will never understand, mainly because you had no answers for me, because you didn't want to take the time or the effort to dwell on these things any longer than you already had.
How could you have replaced me so quickly?
Do you miss me ever, at all?
How could you have fooled your heart into thinking it loved me for so long?
Do you even care at all?
I swear, one day I'm going to just break down around you and then maybe you will understand the extent of the carnage this has caused to my spirit. And while you fail to "dwell," its actually all that I'm able to do, with a string of haunting images that appear in my mind in every familiar place that I go and that creep into my dreams without notice in spaces I ever expected them to be. I suppose I dwell enough for the both of us.
Its a strange tango that I'm dancing now, deciding whether or not to keep you in or out of my life. Until this moment I had almost forgotten that you already decided that for us, for ME. I have no ammunition anymore. I am at a loss.
I just miss you so goddamn much. How does that not mean anything to you?
I need a new boyfriend.
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| All these places and these faces. .. |
[8:32 pm
on Friday, July 6th] |
| [ |
mood |
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 stirred |
] |
I guess that life is going pretty well after all. Imagine that.
I always thought I was a New England girl, and I suppose I am at heart, but lately I've been utterly delighted at the prospects of all of the places in this big wide world that there are to live. I've been compiling a list:
Seattle, Washington or Portland, Oregon. Someplace cool and rainy and on the Northwest coast.
Montana or South Dakota or Wyoming. Someplace with big air and big sky.
Allston-- someplace coooooool.
Scandinavia! I'm thinking Denmark or Finland or Norway especially-- field school?
South America, maybe Peru. There is so much amazing archaeology there-- also field school?
Thailand, preferably for Peace Corps or other volunteering.
I'd also love to make it back to West Africa someday, this time perhaps to a French speaking country to teach.
Florida for graduate school-- haha, I know.
Good golly. I must say, the mind reels.
Lately I've also developed small obsessions with both Michael Caine (circa 1966? he was a foxy man) and Josh Homme from Queens of the Stone Age, who is pretty much my perfect man. He's even got red hair, so....I meannnnn...
I'm currently watching that movie adaptation of Roald Dahl's The Witches, which I never watched as a child because the commercials scared me so much. The recurring nightmare I had when I was little had the main, freaky, scary witch with the nasty bald head chasing me around this workshop trying to skin me, like Cruella Deville did with the dalmations. I still don't understand how this is a children's movie- its actually really disturbing.
I still miss you.
Next weekend is my triumphant return to my lady love Manhattan. Needless to say, I am giddy with all sorts of excitement, mainly because I get to see some of the greatest people in the world, including the beautiful Miss Angela Arbach who I haven't seen for one and a half (one and a half?!?!?) years, and Dan, who is always wonderful no matter how often I see him. You can't escape the thrill that is that city-- the lights, the sounds, the energy. I can't wait.
<3
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[12:07 am
on Sunday, June 17th] |
FUCK. YOU.
FUCK YOU FUCK YOU FUCK YOU.
I can't believe you took her there.
Annnd scene.
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| Clarity. |
[1:36 am
on Monday, June 11th] |
Sometimes, coming home at night, I like to walk along the street for a while, right down the center, my feet following that 6 or so inches in between the double yellow lines. It reminds me of this journey that I am on, that while I already have so much behind there's a big old road stretched out ahead as well. That these things, these places, the white arbor in front of my house laced with roses and the craning oak trees that line the street, have been here long before you and will exist for me, as a part of my life, until long after you're gone. Which you are, now, I suppose.
In the end, the people who will come to mean the most to me are those who have walked with me the entire way, across the years, sometimes straying from those yellow lines but always, always somewhere in the periphery. And it is only with this peace and this knowledge that I am able to move forward.
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| Say whaaat? |
[7:48 pm
on Wednesday, June 6th] |
| [ |
mood |
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alrighttt |
] |
I spent the better part of this afternoon getting pretty intimate with a dirt-covered leather shoe sole from the 1920's. And I wouldn't have had it any other way.
Which is probably why I'm able to become an archaeologist in the first place.
I'm totally in love with my job right now. I saw a few of the senior archaeologists interacting with the Salt Pond artifacts the other day and, man, it was thrilling. I'm not even being sarcastic. Its pretty incredible to see these people's minds at work- they look at a piece of rock for 10 seconds, and can tell you whether or not its been worked by human hands, and how and why. Its such a trivial, detail-oriented, observant science, and I can't wait to learn more of it. There's something strangely meditative about spending hours upon hours with only prehistoric pottery for company.
I also get to do all sorts of projects in SHARON and CHATHAM of all places, and learn how to use the float machine! Wooo!
In other news:
Its okay if you had to go away.
Just remember the telephone works both ways,
And even if I never hear it ring,
If nothing I'll think the bells inside have finally found you someone else, and that's okay,
Because I'll remember everything you sang.
Peace out, y'all.
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| The start of the warm season, 2007. |
[1:21 am
on Monday, June 4th] |
| [ |
mood |
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better |
] |
There has been far too much sadness in here lately. And despite the fact that this is a LiveJournal, and its made to bitch to and it thrives on exaggerated emo ramblings, its time for a happier (though admittedly no less emo!) post.
I think that no matter what happens, no matter how old I get or how much I change, I will always be able to find happiness in spending warm-ish summer nights driving around with my girlfriends with no destination in particular, the windows down, some good old Big D and the Kid's Table playing on the tapedeck, talking about life and love and everything in between, and just being there with eachother. These times are perhaps the simplest moments of joy I can find in an increasingly cluttered and confusing life. No matter what, these girls and these songs and these nights will always, in some way, be mine.
I. Love. My. Friends. More than anything. They are the realest people I know.
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[7:53 pm
on Wednesday, May 16th] |
| [ |
mood |
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depressed |
] |
This is all so much more difficult than I ever thought it was going to be.
I thought when it happened, that it would feel right, that part of me would be at peace. That it would hurt like hell but that I'd also look towards the future hopefully and with optimism. And maybe its not that I won't, I guess, but that I just haven't yet.
You are so different from what I remember. What happened to the person I used to laugh with, to love with? Did you transform overnight, or was I blind to a more gradual change in you? You call yourself an asshole. After re-reading so many of our exchanges, I can't disagree. But I don't remember you being an asshole. I honestly don't think I could have loved an asshole like I loved you. Like I still do. Which you also don't seem to care much about, at all. You have become so confusing to me, and I know I have for you too. I don't understand why you can't see my side of the story. I don't think you want to. I think you are scared to. You tell me you are hurting from this too, but how? Where? Are you repressing it? Pushing it under the rug? Because you offer me no evidence to prove that this is ever on your mind, despite the fact that you say it is. You say its over, its done, no use in thinking about it anymore. Move on. Move ahead. We must love in such drastically different ways, because those rules certainly do not govern my heart. Jesus. Thank you, thank you for what you did, because now I don't have to waste anymore of my time or energy loving an asshole. If you think you are one, then that is certainly what you will become.
And now he has a new girlfriend. For a month, -ish, he says. One month after the big explosion. I am envious of the fact that he found someone new so quickly, sad, not really angry at all but surprised at the fact that his heart could change so fast in comparison to mine because the thought of fucking anyone else besides him still makes me physically ill. I try and prevent myself from thinking too much about it because that kind of thing has always driven me crazy even when we were together, but its hard to kick him out of my mind. REALLY hard. So fucking hard. And I am honestly happy for him, because I only want him to be at peace and be happy and have what he wants. Just why not me? Why not us?
I think I have a right to be angry. I think I have a right to wonder how you could do this to me. I think I have a right to wonder what it is that went on in your head both while we were together and while you decided we shouldn't be anymore. I think I have a right to know how you evicted me from your heart and from your life. And I'm no longer saying it was QUICK, and I'm no longer saying it was EASY, but I have to wonder how you were even able to do it in the first place. How? Why? These are questions you do not want to answer, you do not know how to answer. Questions that you say you will never be able to answer. The carnage of which is my sanity. I don't think this is something that a good friend would do. And now I even have to reassess our friendship.
I am so emotionally weak right now and I'm almost ashamed for it. I have always prided myself on being a strong and determined person, but all of this has just rendered me immobile. I suppose I should expect this. This is going to be a hard week. I leave Ghana and all of these amazing people in 5 (5???) days, and on top of that I'm still thinking about him. I'm going to be a mess. It's not going to be pretty.
How do you force yourself to fall out of love? I need an expedited reconstruction of the pieces that my heart still has. Preferably before Memorial Day weekend, if you please. I'll pay any price. Just dope me up and make this goddamn pain go away.
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