the real dog of the sea

On Sunday I bought the new El Perro del Mar album, Love Is Not Pop, and it's fan-tastic! I can't wait to see her when she comes to LA in a few weeks. I told Mateo I want to give her a hug. She seems so sad.

From the new one:

I hope she plays some oldies, too.

I'm a dog aunt!

My friends' new puppy children: Pepper and Hazel.


 I love them! Now when will I get my beagle puppy, Cowboy? Wah.

old things

I went to Santa Barbara with my brother and his wife a few weeks ago - my first time going back since I moved to and came back from Baltimore. I'd forgotten how beautiful it is and it made me want to live there again, this time in my own cute apartment downtown and a little less coffee table dancing.

Our cute hotel:

Water Dog, you are finished. For now.

Water Dog

Letter from a stranger –
“You’re a water dog,”
it says. Welcome to
your new home,
where the water is
dry and the air is not
there. Your tongue is mostly
sweet, but sometimes sharp,
and you are stubborn
and eccentric. And
though you have
no say in the matter,
it is a truth beyond
your grasp and larger
than your small body
that you will always
feel the black shadow
gliding
beneath the light
on the water.

Heather says, Are you sure it was a dream and not a flashback?

I was in Mount Vernon at a vintage store looking through old dresses, but they were all too big for me. Maybe it was the store I used to go to when I first moved to Maryland, the one on Charles Street that was below ground level that was later moved to Hampden. What was it called? Dreamland? I bought a yellow 60s shift dress there and now I'm too fat for it. Anyway, I left the store and met Heather near the monument. I asked her where she wanted to go for breakfast and she said Let's go to this bar where my friend is the owner. And we walked into a tiny, dirty bar with a low ceiling and no windows. Of course Heather was wound into a long conversation with her owner friend and I sat at the bar next to a man with a pinhead, just like the one in Popeye, and I said to myself Please don't talk to me, pinhead, oh please don't start talking to me. And then, of course, I woke up.

Heather and Jen are or will soon be back in Baltimore, and sometimes I daydream about all of us returning and what it would be like now, would things be the same? I miss Eunjeong taking care of me and showing me new stores, and I miss the leaves changing color in the fall. I like to think how I would do things differently, starting with one night at the Brass Elephant. It's useless, I know, but I do it anyway. I think I need a change. I want to live in the city again, but I feel like I will never be able to afford anything and I am just stuck here near the port.

Dear Borders and Barnes & Noble,

Stop sending me really good coupons in the email! I can't be buying books every week, ya know. I'm already in the middle of three (New and Selected Poems by Mary Oliver, An Episode in the Life of a Landscape Painter by Cesar Aira, and The Voice at 3:00 A.M. by Charles Simic), plus my Brazilian Portuguese study guide. I don't need another book to not finish. Also, I was inspired by Angela, or rather, I'm stealing her idea, to do "No Buying September" in which I don't buy things. This doesn't include food. And I'll also say that it doesn't include going to shows. BUT it does include clothes and shoes. I'm supposed to be on a clothes diet right now, but anyone who knows me knows that I can't just not buy clothes. I really mean it this time, though. No clothes in September! I will just have to remember the flowers...

AK

I used to think I was Kitty, sensitive and tragically snubbed, but now I think I might be Countess Lidia Ivanovna.

fml

It's getting very dark in here.

Morrissey, you know me so well.

Tira-me daqui, estou morrendo.

Everyone is having fancy times abroad except me. I'm in the south bay and the ocean is fluorescent yellow.

And Brazilian laptop consumers love me, apparently. Isso é bom.

Things I am looking forward to tonight:

Little Tokyo Sanrio store <3 Yogurtland <3 Lindsay

more

Indoor landscapes

Lately I've been looking at a lot of blogs showing peoples' living spaces. I love the shabby chic beach house bedrooms and the work space bookshelves filled with tiny boxes stacked on top of each other. I hope one day I can have a whole cute house of my own, but for now I'm making do with my tiny room.

I remember when I used to write poems.

In my dreams you still look the same, but you've finally started behaving in a more dreamlike manner. Now you make excellent suggestions about our plans for the future and we don't have arguments that end with you stomping off, saying, "Fine, I'll sleep on the murphy bed."

Last week I found catharsis in writing and sending a lengthy letter I'd been composing in my head for nearly two years, only for its response to be one line, an incomplete sentence even. I think, I hope, I can say now that I am finally disenchanted, but ask me in another year and I might be writing the same kind of entries. But if it is true, if it works, maybe I just need to write one more letter, and I will finally be free. I will not be disturbed by billboards and I will see a movie no matter who's in it, and why shouldn't I? Why does one insignificant person have so much affect on my life. They must not be that insignificant then, right? But aren't they? They are. Then why am I still dreaming of them.

Did I say maybe in one year I'll still be writing about the same thing? Maybe even two. A poem from two years ago:

Walking Home Alone at Midnight Barefoot

When once amusement was
failing to scale a fence
in a pencil skirt, it is now
realizing I was a footnote
in one of your chapters
while you were my whole book.

My life is turning into a Freddie Prinze Jr. movie. As soon as I wrote that, Sixpence None the Richer started playing in my head. 

My dad wrote a memorandum for me, which was very nice of him, but I won't be using it after all. Hopefully I will have something better!

I am on a strict clothes diet, and now it is also a perfume diet. If you see me trying to buy either of those, please stop me and remind me of the ones I have already, like this one (I love this commercial):

I don't want to be sad again.

I saw Camera Obscura this month and, yes, they were amazing. I hope Danit is having a good time at their show in New York right now.

Later, I will not talk about how June has become "Call your ex-girlfriend and tell her to come back to Baltimore and marry you" month.

ch-ch-changes

are coming soon, I think. 

Oh yeah, and non-apologies made in half conscious states of mind are not impressive.

oh, I just found this at work. Isn't it lovely?

the dirty pirate ship that sailed two years ago

I thought GA would tell me you still thought of me. I'm a Sherwood Anderson story.

what to do with unfinished scraps and reject B-sides?

A letter from home
you’re a water dog

it says welcome
to your new home

where the water is dry
and the air is not

there your watery tongue
is mostly sweet but

sometimes sharp and you are
stubborn and eccentric and

you may not be
aware of this but

you have chosen
lightness over darkness

and therefore are destined
to always feel the black

 shadow gliding beneath
the light on the water.

I'm in love!

Camera Obscura writes another perfect pop song. They can do no wrong, I think.

Today and most days.

Driving to work. Why was I more concerned with other drivers seeing me take pictures than I was with not crashing my car?

Work.


Working. (Reading my favorite book all day? I know, life sucks.)


Lunch.



And what I've been waiting for all day...

musings

I have never thought of this blog or even my poems as a way to share things with people, as strange as that may sound. I've always written for myself as a way to remember everything, and if other people want to look over my shoulder as I do, all the better. It's self indulgent I guess, and the very act of publishing, online or in print, is a bit pretentious to begin with - assuming that the world would be interested in what I have to say. I didn't come to this realization until I read a book by Ben Marcus called The Age of Wire and String. A decent book, experimental in language and form, but I finished it with the thought that Marcus only wrote it for himself, for fun. (p.s. I know that writing a book is not fun.) But, you know, I would much rather read something a little more challenging and experimental than something written with the audience in mind, something attempting to cater to me, ie. those "chick lit" books about shopping or nannying that get turned into blockbuster movies. I will watch the movies, YES, but the books I could care less for - does that make me a hypocrite? Anyway. Recently I've been thinking of starting a new blog, one that isn't so clouded and surreal, one that people would actually want to read. But ummmmm... I don't want to do that. So I changed my template instead. Ta-da, here it is.

please!

more and more!

You had written a note about me, a life story of sorts, and someone turned it into a play. The stage was decorated in tissue paper flowers and had multiple levels, and like a doll house, the audience could see into each different scene as they all happened at once. For the finale, I frolicked out onto the floor in a grey heather leotard with a frilly pink ostrich tail, but halfway through became self-conscious about people looking at me. What followed was a series of nightmares involving pigeon massacres, Elliot Smith's haunted apartment, and witches trying to burn me with their blue eyes.

Mom asks, "What are you eating at night??"

Would I ever smell the wooden floors again?

I am dreaming in foreign languages again, and standardized tests. I was convinced I was really Answer C when the mumbling  Spanish voice was telling me that the correct answer was a new job next to me, but it was just my pillow and I woke up disoriented from having gotten stuck in the Science of Sleep world again. The new star keeps showing up everywhere, while the old ones are still hanging about during the day, hoping for a comeback. It's almost too much. Stuart and Snoopy explain my sentiments below. 

A new dreamsicle.

An illustrator had turned my book of poems into a graphic novel. I was proudly parading it around at a writing summer camp of sorts in the mountains, but the illustrations were all inside my copy of The Big Book of Illustration Ideas 2. Jenn was there and she told me that Ursula LeGuin read it and wanted to meet me. In the dream I loved LeGuin and was really excited, but actually I've only read one of her stories, and that was years ago. 

Oh and finally, my dreams have found a new superstar. Does this mean I'll stop dreaming of ghosts now? What if I don't want a new star? 

In the news I see pictures of people in the midwest with their faces covered in icicles, but here the sun is shining and it feels just like spring '07.