She Speaks in my Metaphors

Taken From the Czech Files--February 3 2003

"I sat down to write something meaningful today. Something to quench those age old desires and wrangle my restless pen. I want my introspection back. All I seem to be able to do is peer out the windows onto the square below, and watch the snow fall nearly horizontally from amarylis shaded eyes. The houses in the hills sit like snow globe entombed residences, too perfect and powder covered to actually exist. The double-viewed windows of the old town hall glimpse west, returning with the familiar sleepy heavy-lidded grey skies, the ones dogging me almost with out end since early October. I wonder if it's the honey I smell, or the ice.

I'm thinking about Communism and the passing of time. So much is unevident, everything with its shiny new coat of paint. But who's ever to say in the shapeshifting realms of cause and effect? Fifty years is no lifetime, the sun again rises. For those lost in the dark there was no return. For those casting aside the history , flames swallow that dubbed too true to remember. I'm thinking about time and history, this endless day morphing in the confines of my starved imagination. The people keep coming hurrying off to meet their history, while women in pointy black boots and skirts slit up to here push Woodrow Wilson baby carriages and night falls with the subtlety and grace of collecting dust. I've lost control of my pen, no longer honed after years of practice my mind spinning in space flirting with all directions and I can't hold on to anything long enough to transcribe. So much for meaningful. The lights are slowly coming on across the way, one after another spreading the mosaic conformism across the hillside.

How does it end?

I'm not the rebel fleeing from reality to the safety of unknown oblivion. I'm not the lowly heart searching the hovels of Africa for my long lost spiritual redemption. I'm not the wanderer searching for the family I never had, though maybe I should be. I sit and sip my tea, listening to the carousers jokes which make no sense and I wonder on reentry and its propensity to be the very same thing, only in a language I have a better handle on. Where do I run to? In a small town the size of Prague, where do I hide?"

Feliz-edad?

At home, in MD, being swallowed by the overwhelming Columbia-ness of the bubble. Just a small note to say that:

1. My mothers car sounds like a dying bovine, but driving is still most excellent.
2. The Mormon temple is Disney Land.
3. My family is tiring.
4. Boyfriend no. 2 is an AMAZING cook.
5. Coffee is suprisingly unnecesary when you sleep for 15 hours straight.
6. Phone is fixed, but I lost all my numbers, so text me yours.
7. Home is weird when theres just food around 24/7 and you eat constantly. I think I'm just way too good at being the poor college student
8. We have H&M, so life is grand.

Catch y'all on the flip side in...7 days.

That just about sums it up...

fulduh: ive killed my phone and my laptoop and yea
fulduh: kiss of death
FrenchLlamaDiet: hahhahaha
FrenchLlamaDiet: welll i could have told you that
FrenchLlamaDiet: you turn boys gay and electronics to crap
FrenchLlamaDiet: go you
FrenchLlamaDiet: hahha its almsot a superpower?
fulduh: i know!

One more final in 2.5 hours, which I can't summon the energy to care about. Napping in Templeton was my vital mistake.

Home in 36 hours...

The Living Dead

Procrastination at my best, I thought it'd be fitting to revive the dead list of yore. Then again, that might just be trying to finish my second paper in two days after actually, heaven forbid, relaxing for a couple hours tonight with pizza, beer, and tv. And Bailey's. But yea, for the record:

Its 12:45 am on Sunday morning, and I have

Dead:
-21 Page Global Inequality Paper on Transnational Organizing in the Indigenous Rights Movement
-20 minute presentation on representations of food politics in The Simpsons
-Final 6 page Spanish composition on How I Ran Away to Latvia
-9 Page Race and Ethnicity Paper about Russian Immigration to the Portland Area
-Bureacracy involved in registering for Russian at Portland State University next semester. They apparently haven't been informed of our supposedly well respected Foreign Language Exchange between the Portland Universities Consortia. Oops. Well leave it to me to enlighten...

Dying:
-2 Five Page Papers which together make up my Race and Ethnicity Final. Both well drafted, now I just have to prettify and cite
-Neccesary Studying for Spanish. Reread some cuentos, am still trying to revive the energy to care about Literary Criticism and Historical Movements in Spanish literature en espanol por supuesto

Alas, Still Writhing About in Gleeful Agony:
-Studying for what will surely be my most wicked final, Global Inequality. The review shit itself was like 7 pages long...
-Memorizing spanish literature terms
-Formalizing my internship for next semester at Catholic Charities (hush) Refugee Program
-Christmas Shopping, which sadly can't be laughed off this year on account of MY ENTIRE FAMILY SHOWING UP IN THE BUBBLE IN LESS THAN TEN DAYS
-Cleaning my house in Portland, which I haven't slept in in like, at least 10 days...Some WFR kids are crashing with me in January and our place is...well...disarray doesn't quite cut it

At least I'm mostly done with playing nice with heart doctors for the month. I'm, well, alternately petrified and quite intrigued at the process of going through airport security with a heart monitor. But I'm on lists to begin with, so why not spice things up a bit?! As my sister, who is currently radioactive due to cancer treatment, said, if we both make it back alive, then nothing a family holiday can throw at us can bring us down.

So hear me o gods of holiday doom, bring it.

All things considered, housing crap aside, I'm happy to report I think I'm surviving my first real finals week of real classes not to badly. I make no attempt at actually speaking English after writting semi-constantly for 10 days, but Russian does me better in the long term anyway. But I'm in love with my brain, kind of sickly proud of writting and writting and writting and creating and producing and deducing, and yea. Maybe academia isn't half bad after all.

Save travels to everyone, if you're back in the Columbubble for the holiday, be sure to come check out my sexy wires...If not, I'm back in Ptown as of January 3rd. Yep, thats a whole 12 hours prior to my golden birthday...

He he he.

?!

For the record, its December.

WHAT THE FUCK.

See below post.

In other news, I officially fail at being Russian president. Fail fail. But pass the word, we're having a christmas party next week. Which I should probably have notified, you know, people of.

D'oh.