imagine a picture of perfect roommate bliss: two girls with the backs of their laptops facing each other across a kitchen table. indian lentil soup is resting in soup bowls. they are finishing a homework assignment and emptying glasses of wine. that moment, the girl with black hair swivels her mac in order to share the contents of the screen: her monitor bumps a wine glass, which swivels towards the unsuspecting IMB. the IBM owner catches the glass and the red wine. everyone laughes and the girl with the black hair continues turning her machine, which sends the contents of an entire bottle of water onto her roommate. they both look at the lenovo. somehow, the laptop had avoided the puddle. it seems all the water had gone to the left of its electric parts and landed mostly on the owner. again, its a riot — such unbelievable good luck. “darn! I was going to buy you a mac to replace that.” “I don’t want a mac!” then the screen of the IBM goes back.
it must be out of batteries. the power cord doesn’t help. none of the lights light up.

at least i get a good story out of this. what an amazingly compact series of highs and lows!

i feel in order to be a writer i just need to run every day, look at the rain or the sun in stanford, CA and stop reading the news.

a cat, when she feels at home, brings in mice maimed but still alive. i go out running and bring back branches from trees. california is still beautiful abandon in january. on the kitchen table we have clusters of small white berries, red berries in storied cascades, black wooly flowers and dried leaves whose shapes i liked.
when i grow up i want to own at least an orange tree, an apricot tree, and a tree that grows avocados. i want to live in a house built by frank lloyd wright. the house will be positioned on top of a hill where i can see mountains bubbling up out of the fog.

it’ll be the end of my day or any part in the middle. suddenly, one memory will chain out an entire story. one image will snag on an entire wool sweater of threads and knots. i didn’t try to but i end up with a full head of past.
the hard part is to keep who you were in mind and move forward at the same time. when a situation changes, when you move or someone moves to australia, there is nothing to steer you on the new course. when a force is removed, i default to someone much older (so much younger?) that has been present over many cycles of forgetting. has she been changed by those cycles? is the default self a collage, an onion (each skin obscuring the previous) or a freshly-shaken etch-a-sketch? for some reason, when i think carefully enough, she always feels like a clean slate.

the new york times ran an article about a couple living in a yurt in seldovia, alaska. they live cheaply, work remotely, and save money to go on long treks together. their son is named after a nearby volcano. i want to admit that this life appeals to me.  the yurt looks lemon-yellow-warm. the walls move when the wind blows in alaska. the wind always blows in alaska.

but isn’t picking an outhouse in a snow drift and frost inside in the morning just selecting artificial hardship? why am i tempted to make my life harder? its not real. why do i want to try and succeed with a handicap?

after i read the article i put on my silly orange sneakers and ran in paved circles around stanford campus. i realized that my life right now is the artificial hardship. i am living something unnatural, which i have to try and compensate for, to work around.

happy merry athiest communist christmas alternative

it bothers the audience when i say that grad school is easy. i’m either bragging or i don’t do work.

let everything be easy. eventually, you stop being a body doing something hard and you are watching a body doing something. i will let things be easy. i will understand that the important work is to make things easy. i don’t want resistance: not to create it, not to need it as proof of accomplishment.

i will not talk about what is hard. i will not list the economic downturn. i will not create problems with my voice. they will stay out of my throat and i won’t have them. i know i have a stubbornness that wants to push its horns against a steep uphill. but i will ease up and stop piling everything into a conflict.

i usually don’t make resolutions for the new year. this is something like what i usually don’t make.

there are still flowers on stanford campus. but the clouds have clouds and it must have rained last night. subtle seasonality is a slight of hand for the benefit of writers. i watched walking to lab this morning. my bike has been at the med school since i abandoned it there to be driven to the dentist. it feels like the closing of a circle to walk back and re-claim it. i am very happy to be done with this circle.

from waking up the act of having a body seems foreign. you move from oblivion to having responsibilities. just a second ago i was blank, beyond memory. and now i have to brush my teeth and take a shower.

i’m done being a lonely girl on vicodin. i am sick of that fever dream. as much as beer and hydrocone have been changing me, its time to stop.

i still can’t believe that a week ago i was sharing easy, perfect kisses with a beautiful face, a body as taunt by climbing as mine. a body passed in two down jackets but still catching my naked lips without a good excuse. at every excuse. why do good things change for the worse?

i have the “finals” schedule of a climbing bum. i finished the pale end of someone’s cigarette. i am driven to more distraction. outside in december it finally feels like more fall, more cinnamon leaves, more rain this evening. i’m done with the pain, i’m done with single connection. instead, i miss everyone. i can’t talk to anyone. i want even the high school boyfriend. i want the hole in my gum filled with chemical noise. i am tired of the act of waiting. i am ready to spend the day without apatite, with only cold sugar and sweet, soothing nothings to wine, chocolate, life as dessert.