Speaking of Comment Moderation...

I like you! It's eating me up! I don't even love you, I just like you! This is just to say, I wouldn't necessarily jump you or cry at you or ask to be your girlfriend were we stranded on a desert island, I would settle for a movie and dotdotdot and possibly open-ended. Not even, just the movie and the dotdotdot and some cordiality.

You've made things very complicated, feigning ignorance. Now I don't know what we're doing. Should I say something, maybe? Would that ruin our bizarre flirty friendship? Are you stupid? Do I need to launch myself at you in an elevator or something? More alarming and more likely all the time--is there something wrong with me. ?

I wish you'd just man up and say something. Other things are beginning to float around my headspace, but I really like you. It's eating me up! This is not friggin eighth grade, I'm a grown ass...woman. I have shit to DO. I guess I'll say something. I hope I'm not a freak, for saying all this, but I think I may just have to tell you. It's something to do with your stupid eyes.

IT'S SUCH A CLICHEEEEEEEEEEEEE

Maybe when I live
angry 90s songs
Maybe when I live in a brownstone
and split time between Paris and here
I won't want to eat off your face
or cry over Nutella
or think about stupid potatoes that grow green things in my closet because they wither and die
or letters with smudged writing
or...royalty
or absinthe
or bad kissing
or debacles in the front seats of jalopies
or a couple of scars, I guess
or your stupid question
or the lack
or hard-core free porn
I'll just eat ice cream out of no sense of obligation or need for categorization but rather because I like how it tastes
and I won't remember how to cry because laughing suddenly became the only important thing.
Hate.
Full.

The Second Half of Little Women; Dying

Stories that end badly. Rephrase: stories that end with people re-adjusting their definition of happiness to suit a generally more bleak world:
-Skins, seasons 1 and 2
-Degrassi (up to the school shooting episodes)
-Braveheart; come to think of it, most sweeping epic movies too long to fit on one DVD disc
-Titanic
-Lord of the Rings
-The Sound of Music
-Casablanca
-Aida; come to think of it, most things with an Act Two
-Little Women

"Little Women" was possibly my first real encounter with the horror of getting older.
The second part is boring.
There is less Christmas, less light, less family gatherings, less love, more tears, more wrinkles, more grey, more disease, the death of Beth, and a general feeling of forced contentment. Does she really love Gabriel Byrne (Or the Professor, if you read the book)? That sure happened fast. Seemed to me that Jo was really meant to be with Laurie. I guess this is okay, even though he is less attractive than Christian Bale and generally less fun. Beth is still dead.

My good friend Courtney and I were talking about this "denouement conundrum" in light of the British show SKINS this past weekend--keep in mind that Courtney was perhaps the only person in life to go through her premium girl adolescent years unaware that Beth in "Little Women" dies because of some woefully misinformed abridged children's version of the book. Like "Little Women", SKINS begins in a kind of blissed out family paradise--there are these fabulous characters, and very small bad things happen to them (drug runs gone awry=scorched skirts by the fire), but things are acceptably alright because within these certain constructed worlds, the worst things that CAN happen are scorched skirts and crazy dealer goose chases. Then suddenly, someone is hit by a bus (or gets scarlet fever. Keep up, now) and the whole WORLD is dramatically jolted. I will try not to be naive, but there's an important difference between stories like these and stories that are presupposed as tragedies or stories that are less well-written or stories that seem to live within the same world the whole way through a play, in that even crazy things are not outrageously unexpected. And I know that "good dramatic structure" calls for exactly that which I have just decided I hate in an epic--something shocking and terrible and irreversible in every way. But my problem is less with the jolt and more with life after--in a lot of media, it seems to me that people try to jam this concept of "bittersweetness" into an ending. But no one can convince me that life with the grungy German professor, however lovable, is better than life with Marmie in the Christmas of 1865. I will not buy that life fleeing the Nazi's in Austria is more fun for the VonTrapp family singers than playing with elaborate marionettes in matching curtain-costumes, even with a hit song at the end about climbing mountains. These people are all settling and fake smiling and trying to make me believe that through the haze of my tears, there is light. But is it actually a good story (or worse, is it just a horrible thing to know about life?) if I refuse to believe them? What am I missing?

I guess it might be worse if things ended in bald tragedy, maybe certain Shakespeare being an exception. If TITANIC ended with the shipwreck, I would probably be righteously pissed off. But does anyone really feel comforted by an 88 year old woman dropping a bajillion dollar necklace off the side of a boat? Does James Cameron really think he can get me to smile this way? Leo just died because some bitch would not roll over six inches on her piece of driftwood. I don't care if Grandma was "a dish", I don't care about Bill Pullman (is it Bill Pullman?) releasing his money-grubbing diamond dreams in favor of the magic of hearing a little old woman talk about her life for three hours. This is MOVIE-caring.

Maybe people--meaning both the makers and the watchers--are afraid of letting things end badly for beloved characters, because it is either too horribly depressing or too painfully much like real life or awful urban legends in kind. I know the movies are about escapism. But I wonder what creates the sort of sick compulsion to destroy me and then MEEKLY attempt to build me up again? That's like giving a hobo a sandwich, yanking the sandwich away, and then offering a piece of gum with the smiling dipshit gravitas of someone who actually believes that gum is BETTER than a sandwich, maybe because gum is somehow more morally fulfilling. But this isn't true. Sandwiches are always better. And maybe, maybe I rescind the tragedy bit--certain sad endings might be better, because then at least I don't feel either condescended or lied to. It will hurt, but I can probably take it. Just know that if you take the sandwich, there is no turning back--I don't want your gum. Reviewing my list, the possible exception to this metaphor might be the end of Casablanca and the beautiful friendship line--but THAT'S the cinematic gold of a lollipop, or something, which is so delightful and unexpected that you could almost forget about what you've already been offered and denied (sandwich). That might be the formula, the difference between good endings (re: movies I like) and jerk endings (re: movies I don't like).

"Little Women" is a Potbelly's Italian sub and a stick of Orbit.It is the specific crux of this essay because it is the most about me.

Becoming more lucid: it's that thing again about "settling"--I feel, in my heart, that the tragedy and horror of "Little Women Part Deux" is irredeemable by the ending because everyone acts like it is supposed to be a wonderful happy finish but it is not, and could never be, as happy as the beginning. This is growing up. This is dying. But if re-adjusting standards of joy to grown-up pursuits and ideas is the notion, then I will decide to hate this movie full-stop (well, probably not. It's delightful)! I won't allow "growing up"="having SERIOUS as opposed to frivolous problems"="fun vs. lame"!

I had a day--today--where I worried that this was happening to me in the real world. I remembered for a split second the way I spent time, on average, when I was drifting around between 9 and 12: my cousins and I playing make-believe games, and me writing stories all the time, and Christmas being more fun, and less people having cancer and less people being dead and more fun stories circulating in general. Why is life sadder, the older you get, is it just to do with longevity and probability? Really losing innocence, meaning that people stop lying to you? I don't want to be lied to. But I also don't want to go to the gym, or worry about money, or be one of those obnoxiously embittered single women on Valentine's Day in New York who feels compelled to mention booze or drugs in accordance with weekend plans, and I don't want to be lonely, and I don't want to do the dishes. I'm not saying there were less problems when I was 11, necessarily (because I did burn skirts. And later, I had a fair share of run-ins with drug dealers) or even that the problems then did not hurt as much as they do now, but rather that life is becoming "Part Two." And it IS less fun, sometimes--in some ways, obviously, not. But I am beginning to worry above all things that if my life for some reason were never to change but rather continue on the trudging, fumbly, uphill trajectory without a bus or a case of scarlet fever to deter or energize or alter it, I will not even be one of these aforementioned thrilling stories but rather the person who CAN truly be comforted by some cheap, stupid, piece-of-gum ending. That might be what it is to be lonely or lost in the first place, looking for silly solutions. But we're older now--that's the point. Too old to be silly.

This all sounds very dramatic, looking it over. I swear I am not trying to compare my life in any way to "Lord of the Rings". But I want truth, I do, I want it above all, I want always to know the difference between the feigned/pretended and the authentic (lalala ACTING SCHOOL). I can't phrase this correctly: I want to grow up. I do want a "Part Two". But does it really HAVE to be so much more BLEAK? And almost worse, does it have to end in a comforted, stupid lie because I'll undoubtedly be so lost and bleak that I need a lie? I only want the truth.
But I also do not want sad things...

Best ending of all: resucitation. "It's a Wonderful Life". George Bailey (sigggggh) on a bridge: "I wanna live again! I wanna live again!"

I wanna live again!

Returning

Whenever I leave New York for a long period of time, coming back is strange. People I had transient, fleeting friendships with at the end of the last block of time seem to have faded away. I have no rehearsals to whine about yet--not enough homework to wither up inside of. I do this thing where I like to PLAN: I'll hoarde up on applications for summer projects, volunteer for events, consider things that will only affect me months and months from now. I am ill at ease.

It scares me a little how unsafe and unstable former familiarity feels--how much harder it becomes to reach out and connect with people and events and even attitudes after so much time away from them has lapsed. And then there's the fact that my life changed a little a few weeks ago, in a small but important way, in Miami. I keep thinking about people I met there. I miss them.

Studio, and writing, and leaving my apartment, and boys (as ever, those boys) make me want to sneak back to Maryland when no one is watching. This is why I hate first dates and first days of anything--the only good beginnings happen in literature. I like feeling newness after two days' validation! I do not like feeling afraid; especially of things I was not afraid of three weeks ago. That word 'returning' even seems to suggest a kind of fatal repetition in the act of "coming back": it's not making anything new, it's not written as joy, it means to repeat a certain thing. Repeat turning...new...corners. Is a stretch.

Wrote in Florida

THIS woman wants to make love to THAT man, she wants to it here, clothes still on, sun still up, fast, loud like a symphony. She seems him across grass (her name is Jackie Rafferty. Say it three times fast if you can. Say it in Arameic, if you can). She wants to run at the pale, pink blob his body makes, wants them to collide together and neatly insert themselves (comme YIN comme YANG) with a frank but quite lovely thud, perhaps in midair. Definitely in midair.

It is frightening and brave but painless. A frantic thing, to stave off death. Ink! And sand. This woman wants. No yelps or squelches, simply just heat, the horrified hollers of elderly undead onlookers, paramedics who cannot reach them before the deed is done (sprinting sprinting sprinting cross the grass, cold shiny instruments dancing under sun) And there are no fingers strong enough to pry the magnets apart! (They’re fused! LIKE SIAMESE TWINS! OH, THE HUMANITY! [yesohthehumanity…]). Three and a half feet above the earth he will whisper sweet SOMETHINGS, breath smelling like nothing at all. Even stuck together the smack makes no stubble or spit, as I may or may not have suggested before--solicit techno music videos, deadbolt clicks, snowy owl hoots, whatever you imagine a bomb sounds like a hundred miles away behind big helicopter pilot headphones, I mean before television told you. Just…take pity on her. You see, Jackie Rafferty has never been in love and so this is what she thinks it is.

Wrote this in Florida. MISS Florida. It's hard to come back and make choices and as ever, be a slightly different person in the same body and space...

Am still in "pajamas" (pajamas meaning things I found on the floor). Today:
-watched Jackie Brown with my parents. Rose at 3pm. Worked on actor resume, read some of the Style section over tea, washed face, dicked around on internet. It's amazing how you really can just murder time--with the resounding whump of an explosion far away.

Obsessed a little bit, in direct opposition to New Years Resolution number one. I know I shouldn't stalk you--especially when I don't even have anything to say, really--but it's like Cheap Trick, I want you to want me. Attention is really the best thing anyone can ask for. It feels great.

I think Jackie Brown is about growing old. It's really bloody and very Quentin Tarantino, but that ending scene with Max Cherry and Jackie is really kind of eloquent. I can't figure out why he won't go with her, or why he won't take more money. I hope it's not something I'll learn to understand when I'm older. I wonder if anyone really, truly wants to be alone or if everyone is a lot more afraid than they seem...of dying. Is it dying? See the thing is, when I think about death it doesn't scare me as a thing by itself. I worry about pain or losing my mind or deteriorating slowly or seeing other people I love pass away, and being old...maybe it all has something to do with dignity. Jackie Brown doesn't actively lust after trips to Spain or a way out of her job, she wants dignity. More than she wants to be in love. I guess she already was in love.

It confuses me, sometimes (and trust me, I can imagine how naive this sounds) that not everyone wants the same things.

Technology and Sarcasm as a Paradox!

It was brought to my attention at a classy New Year's Party last night that our generation exists between two very disparate identities: we are the age of technology, and the age of irony and sarcasm. In our discussion, we noticed that sarcasm and irony more often than not fall completely flat when conveyed through technology (by which I mean text messaging or phones or what have you)--for instance, if you look at comments on the average YouTube video, there is literally no bottom to how idiotic a post might be yet people will still take it seriously. My friend Maddy references white supremacist posts or gibberish rants as key examples: while most sane people might recognize a lot of these scribbles as tongue-in-cheek, most people on YouTube seem...not to. A disconnect, yes?

Thinking in this vein while crafting my New Year's Resolutions, I made a list of things that feel true about technology and relationships:

WHEN A BOY...
…posts a song on your Facebook wall, what he’s really saying is written in the lyrics of the song, which is—let’s face it—probably a profession of love.
…drunk texts you telling you ‘you’re pretty’ or ‘_________, gorgeous’ he means he really likes you. In the daytime. He might love you, even.
…does not talk to you while you are both online, he already has a girlfriend or is gay.
…talks about other girls’ hotness—even if they are admittedly very foxy celebrities—he only thinks of you as a ‘friend’. Nothing more.
…invites you to a movie marathon or indicates or initiates any interest in ‘hanging out' over Facebook, this is the poor man’s version of ‘asking out’, and should be followed up if the person in question is at all interesting.
…has told you he likes you, suddenly everything he does online (statuses, notes) you can trace back to yourself in true violent vanity fashion.
…talks to you all day about nothing, really, and responds attentively to your messages (online or texting, of course), it’s assumed he likes you. You should act.
…texts you anything along the lines of ‘hey! Whatcha doin? Where you at? Or come over!’ any time after 12am, it is a booty call. You should act.

But even as I look over my list, most of the culprits I know have been guilty of completely opposing double-meanings. It's like that extranneous Drew Barrymore character in "He's Just Not That Into You" monologues: we have crafted a culture where rejection is not only indecipherable most of the time but also able to be repeated, like double jeopardy; our desire for clarity amidst sarcasm and mixed signals becomes rapidly masochistic while the romantically hopeful actively pursue the disinterested through multiple technologies. So...what now? If I sever all contact other than face-to-face I'll never have a conversation with my BFFS again, let alone get a boyfriend. I may move to the jungle.