my room has been the most welcoming and comfortable and enriching sanctuary for me this week. i have downloaded new music. like amanda palmer's new cd. and i downloaded the mac version of soulseek. fall time weather has arrived in gainesville surprisingly early and everyone is pretty happy about that. makes me want to make plans and i've been making them.

i've been reading my 3rd james baldwin novel, go tell it on the mountain. phenomenal

what i've been looking at online today:

Song to the Siren introduced to me by one beautiful boy on a late night on mo's couch just after tons of booze, a few hits of green, and a couple slices of Five Star with mushrooms

Grad Schools... ...

www.miami-fever.com awesome

Miami Bike Scene funny story

Bigger Than Hip-Hop: A Q+A With Kevin Powell really good interview with a former real world contestant and former Vibe magazine writer who is running for some congressional house in brooklyn

Defiance, Ohio's website complete with top 3 reasons to go vote

i confuse dreams with reality more and more each night. last night i was mostly asleep and in my dream my mom was nagging at me over something, but i was awake enough to know it was in my head, but i was too asleep to really figure out that i didn't need to actually say something out loud to get her to shut the fuck up, so i caught myself shouting "OK NANCY!" out loud in real life. then there was a dream where my parents re-did my room back home so nice and i was pretty much starting to pack my shit to move back home. it had a walk-in shower with a black leather couch inside. and a sleek black futon but not with the clunky steel bars that mine has now. i woke up and it took me a bit to come to terms with the non-existence of that room. i wanted to draw a picture of it when i woke up.

so i woke up to a relatively cool house this morning. all our windows had been open all night and it felt so nice sleeping in that and waking up to that also felt delicious. i brewed a pot of coffee, ate half of a tasteless green apple, made a bowl of cinnamon and spice flavored oatmeal, then ate it, then found some left over kashi cereal in a box of fiber one, ate that with some soy milk, probably then took a poop, and got dressed for work.

work life is miserable half the time, kind of glamorous in a totally not glamorous way the other half. i realized that i was lacking in enthusiasm and excitement from the moment september started. i blame work. i blame not having hours upon hours of me time, free time. but i kind of feel that changed this weekend. i got invigorated by people that showed up out of no where on thursday night and spent the weekend at the house on 4th ave. zest for life is back. thursday nights have done it for me in different ways, last week's thursday being the most tangible, last night being through cristy c road's zine.

i realize that most of my journal writing (here, my old LJ, my notebook journal, my daily thought journal) talks about two things: how i feel, why i feel that way. that is basically it. i never expand beyond those two topics. i wonder why this is, is it a representation of my inner self, my cancerian/pisces sun/moon combination that is ruled by a world of feelings and curiosities. but i'm mainly just curious about my own inner feelings, a lot more so than anything outside. i know outside things inspire me and incite me but it's not like i appreciate a beautiful sunset just because it's a beautiful sunset and because clouds and colors are such amazing things and they do other amazing things blended together, but more so because i am there and feel somehow a part of that blending and i am experiencing it and even more so if the afternoon has been perfect and the weather feels so nice and makes me and whoever i may or may not be with also feel so nice and together we feel nice but the point is that it's always centered on me and my interpretation and my feelings. is this everyone? i don't think so. i think someone can appreciate the sun setting from an objective point of view, from the sun being beautiful in and of itself, or from a song being perfect not because it makes me feel so good or it sounds exactly like something i've felt, but because musically and lyrically or whatever it is perfect and it has nothing to do with me other than the fact that i can appreciate it.

but this journal and my writing, the sparse and half-assed writing i do, is somehow supposed to be representative of me...how i'm feeling inside...what inspires me and incites me and,sometimes, why. and there's so much that does this. so many people, so many songs, so many words jumbled together, and pictures and ideas and inebriated moments and shared moments and shit like that. i could go on. i remembered this stuff from a few interactions with the surprise visitors this weekend. somehow. their genuine willingness to connect in an honest way, and their willingness to share and shit like that. shit that i'm used to from many other people but sometimes forget when i'm in a barely-noticeable barely-actual slump where i lose a little bit of fire and where i get tired and blasé.

work life is only going to last so much longer i sure hope. september is almost over and october is coming and i have plans for october. sort of.

Defiance Ohio last week was incredible. They are this awesome folky punk band that play in Gainesville once a year and have blown me a way once a year for the past three. Me and Sophie got 32oz High Life bottles. Good idea, Soph. We had a Defiance OH singing party at my house after the show with Mo and Lucy, and Kenny said we need to be careful for being too loud cause our neighbors want to keep calling the cops on us for noise violations. what ever.

Last night was Paul's fashion show. SO MUCH FUN! Get this: pretty lame people all dressed up to the nines, looking pretty good, I must say, at this really fancy "exclusive" (eye roll) bar that is also actually pretty impressive aesthetically. Upstairs: fashion show, white run way, packed people, annoying girl saying to me "you are not about to stand there" yes i am girl, but then cute waitress girls walking around with huge monster trays filled with this DELICIOUS sushi (even though the girl i met at the show alicia said the best sushi in g-ville is in Tatu...didn't know that), and then smaller trays with pretty fancy glasses filled with martinis, also complimentary. It was me and Sophie and then Paul came out and it was so exciting, he did the best run way walk and i couldn't believe i knew the best model in that whole show but then again I don't think I really noticed too many of the other ones, just Paul. I looked great too, Sophie had picked my outfit out, and I kept getting compliments. Felt kind of nice but I wanted a boy to be lusting after me, not just kind compliments.

Also, I finally finished the whole Sandman series. The last book, The Wake, was pretty great but I was kind of disappointed and kind of confused with the last story about William Shakespeare. Didn't get it. But I loved the first story, the one where they are all at the wake, and Despair talks about the old Despair, and Delirium is dressed up with fairy wings. Despair is quickly becoming my second favorite of the family, especially because of the way her speech was laid out in the book I just finished and because of how intense she is.

clocking that game

month of august is coming to an abrupt end. a month of non stop movement and people and social action and continuous brain working, it has come to a stop And I feel sort of peaceful and kind of worn out, my brain kind of taking a break. I feel comfortable in my house and do not want to leave except to go to work, but then I just play a motivational song in my head about hustling and other bad-ass activities and I'm flying and work don't chip at my self worth or creative force like it's meant to do.

i got my ipod to function and i'm hoping it will go a few months without freezing on me and forcing me to delete all the songs and re-restore it to factory settings. i'm being very careful. so far my song list includes a playlist of 300+ songs that i can picture jamming out to while working at pita pit. and then i uploaded a bunch of madonna, two lisa germano albums, portishead, lots of mirah, midlake, mia, some pj harvey. my soundtrack. i grabbed my ipod this morning and played it on shuffle for my 15 minute walk to the library job, and got some good jams, a lovely lisa germano track and a spicy madonna song from bedtime stories ("i can be your sister, i can be your mother, i can be your friend, i'd even be your brother but i...i'd rather be your lover, that's right").

and two more things:

1) i bought plums on sale at publix. delicious. i don't think I had ever tried plums before. like i said, delicious.

2) i have been hungry non stop. maybe it's all the work hours or something. but non stop. i brought a boca chicken patty sandwich to work today and i ate it within my first hour of being here. i can't help myself, i always do that! if i know i have food with me i want to eat it immediately, specially if it's super tasty!

3) we got a dining room table! it has easily made the dining room nook my favorite spot of the house.

rent

I just (finally) finished reading this last night. While talking about the book with Janelle on the phone last night, I said my favorite chapter was the one where Michelle and her girlfriend Eleanor start selling coke. Janelle agreed and mentioned the hilarity of aMarilyn Manson story that Michelle insisted on telling and re-telling over and over while she was on coke. I haven't snorted coke in months. I'm not craving it right now but I can't wait for the right moment when it's there and it makes my night so unforgettable.