sad joy

Maybe it's because when we met it seemed like we were each other's only friends and protectors, and it stayed that way for awhile, but in the past few weeks in the whirl of bridal showers, bachelorette parties, and weddings, I've felt like a little girl who doesn't want to share her best friend with anyone else. I am so happy for Meg, and even had to keep from sobbing loudly during the wedding ceremony (embarrassing), but for some reason I was so sad when I came home from Austin. I keep thinking of her standing on her front porch with Will, crying and waving to me and her family as we drive away, and feeling the way I did when I left Baltimore - like I'd abandoned her. I did abandon our plan to move to Austin last year, for a good reason, but then mostly out of fear. I wish I could be more brave, like Meagan.

Now this song will always remind me of the two of us dancing at her wedding.

Is she stupid?

In Baltimore when I was really in the doldrums and if Meg wasn't around to listen to me cry or blast 80s music and do a dance for me, I'd drink champagne, eat chocolate cake, and watch Kat Williams clips on YouTube, and that would cheer me up. I don't know how I could eat the things I did back then and not gain weight, but I guess that's part of getting older and more seahagley. Now I watch clips of Mel from Flight of the Conchords.

I made very few friends at the writing workshop I went to last summer,

and have kept in touch with fewer, although I did try to keep in touch with one person, who never wrote back. I thought of that week in Portland just now when I finished watching a movie on TV, a film adapted from a popular nonfiction book about a woman who goes on a trip of self discovery, and saw the name of someone from my poetry group appear in the closing credits. I felt proud; not like at our thesis reading when Jenn read from her little orange book or when Panta read from her pomegranate book, but proud still. And it dawned on me that it must be coming very close to this year's Tin House workshop and I began fantasizing about what it would be like to go again, but this year stay at Reed instead of sharing Tali's attic with Age and riding the bus for an hour every morning, and try to make more friends. You know what's sad? Even if for some miraculous reason my very new job would let me go, I haven't written anything new since then that I could submit with my application. Maybe I'll have my own writing workshop that week, an evening workshop, where I'll force myself to work on the beetle book. Does anyone have a studio in a serene landscape that I can use?

riding on city buses for a hobby is fine

Yesterday I took the bus in LA for the very first time. It was, like, pretty cool.



It was the most fun I've ever had on a bus, with Michael, shopping, eating potato pancakes, and not getting sick.

At first,

I thought Lykke Li's voice sounded deeper on her new album because she didn't like her little voice anymore. In an interview in Filter she said something about wishing she sounded different so people would take her more seriously, and I understood but still didn't like her new voice. But then I listened to Wounded Rhymes in my car yesterday and I realized that it's still the same Lykke Li I love. The first time I listened to it was in my house on my dj station, and I didn't know that Boots had messed with the pitch and that's why she sounded different. That kid!

What's next? We all die?

I feel guilty for all the small stuff I worry about, for liking my new job, for sitting in my house with all my nice things while people in Japan have lost their homes and families, everything. I can't think about Egypt and Libya and Japan all at the same time, and what about the people in Haiti who are still living in tents? I don't believe in luck, but Providence, so I can't say I feel "lucky" to live in LA, where the worst natural disaster I've encountered was the Northridge earthquake in 1994 that made a picture frame on my wall go crooked, but I do feel bad, helpless, overwhelmed, and like more is coming.

Jealousy is more than a word, now I understand.

I'm feeling very Good Country People-esque today, plus or minus a few details. All I need is a prosthetic leg.