My Flaws: A Partial List

• Jealous
• Indecisive
• Anxious 
• Captious
• Supercilious
• Judgmental
• Diffident
• Ambivalent
• Fickle
• Highly susceptible to hours of internet-trawling when other Important Things must be done

I'm Okay, You're Okay

It's been happening more and more often: when I murmur a courtesy "Sorry" after nearly bumping into someone or awkwardly exiting a doorway that someone else is trying to come in through, the other person will respond with, "That's okay, you're fine."

You'd think "No problem" or a simple acknowledging grunt would suffice, but no—people follow it up with a comment on my state of being. Thank you for the affirmation, dear stranger, but I didn't ask for your opinion on the matter. Do I really seem so clumsy and self-conscious as to be subsequently wondering whether I have somehow made you think less of me during our polite dance of deference in an entrance-way? You are (inadvertently and with the best of intentions, I am sure) making me feel like a six-year-old.

About the Author

Here's my problem: for the past five years or so, I seem to have been (is that a split infinitive or merely the strange construction of the present perfect progressive?) making my higher education choices based on what I want my biographical blurb to look like in my first book. Obviously there are multiple things wrong with this way of thinking (not the least of which is "If you plan to deserve a biographical blurb, you had better start compiling the preceding pages"), but recently I have fretted less about the educational information ("She graduated from This College in This Year with a degree in This and This"*) and more about the place of habitation that will end the paragraph ("She lives in This Place with her Loving Husband, Two or Three Children, and a Cat Who Used to Be a Vivacious Kitten But Is Now a Yawning Lump").

What, exactly, will "This Place" be? The city is too crowded, the country is too sparse, so it will have to be suburbia, that meeting point of culture and landscape forever tinged (and rightly so) with the odor of materialism and artificiality. How specific? New England is too general, a town is too specific, so it will have to be a state, providing the hope of tracking me down but without enough clues to do so. Why? So my work is given a sliver of context, a peek into the composer's life? But shouldn't that be evident in the work itself?

Maybe I should simply ask the editor for permission to cut it, standing simply as "She lives."

*However, this still continues (is that redundant?) to be a pressing matter, which may suggest that I am plagued by enough neuroses to be a poet after all.

Some Less-Than-Profound Things

I watched "Memento" last night. MIND = BLOWN.

I realized that I spend about a day each week (usually Sunday—this very post is, in fact, procrastination) in a computer lab just writing essays. This is not a fruitful way to spend my life, especially when the essay topics don't whip me up into a frenzy of academic awe. And, because I hate starting papers, I dither around doing nothing even remotely productive until an idea comes to me... then I agonize over word choices. So what takes a less diligent but more alive person maybe three hours ends up taking me ten.

When I get lost on Wikipedia, I really get lost. Hyperlinking and trivia will be the death of me yet. There is so much interesting stuff to know about the world... but most of the time I just want to read about it rather than have to analyze it for a grade on my transcript.

I heard Mika's "We Are Golden" for the first time on Friday and it just made me sad that the fun parts of teenagerdom are all too fleeting and all too few.

Remember when I wanted to be Harriet the Spy? (Yes, I do.) Remember when I knew a guy like Sport? (No, I don't.)

In other words: I need to stop taking myself (and my schoolwork) so seriously. I'll never get back the weeks I've already lost to self-consciousness and over-achieving.

Self vs. Others vs. Self

Funny how all my classes this semester have me examining other people's identities, when the one I need to be focusing on at the moment is my own.

Psychology Doesn't Balance

You'd think that having simultaneous superiority and inferiority complexes would result in a well-adjusted and happy person.

This is, frustratingly, not the case.

Shut Up Shut Up Shut UP

You know when you're in a crowd and stop focusing on words and everything just becomes endless fucking noise, all these people spewing inconsequential chatter, blathering idiots and moronic mouths, and you press your fingertips to the holes in your ears and make them open and close like valves until you want to scream to high heaven that all this talking doesn't amount to fucking anything?

Well, that may very well be the opening scene of my adolescent angst movie.

If it ever gets made.
But let's not be bitter and pessimistic.

Be It Resolved

I don't think I want to lead a life of quiet desperation anymore.

It just doesn't produce stories worthy of telling to wide-eyed future grandchilden.

Geographical Identity Crisis

Out of the 3531 tracks currently in my iTunes library, nine of them have "California" in the title, but only two have "New York."

I'm not sure what to make of that.

Of Shoes—and Ships—and Sealing Wax*

I haven't worn actual snow boots since elementary school—I braved icy paths with naught but my treadless Converse sneakers all last year, so detestable was the idea of tucking my pant legs into any cushioned warmth—but I feel strangely powerful clomping around with these new ones. My jeans bunch out at the top and they're a little wide around my shins, but at least (and with luck) I won't be sliding on my ass anywhere thanks to their Land's End super grip technology.

Ugg boots are still Public Enemy No. 1, though.

*Last two do not apply.

Smells Like Teen Self-Doubt

I don't just have bad hair days.

I have "impossible hair, ghost complexion, pimpled face, please let me sleep, bulging stomach, dead eyes, feed me chocolate, runny nose, annoying hangnail, fuck off, achy limbs, ill-fitting bra, stubbly legs, seriously just fuck off, dry skin, spouting cynicism, I need a child so that I'll have some semblance of love even though she'll start to resent me as soon as I tell her she's adopted because no one ever thought I was attractive enough to have sex with me" days.

(They're rather unpleasant, and happen all too frequently.)

Wrapped Up in Books

In high school I once sat down in the aisle of our library's poetry section during a free period, opened a Sylvia Plath anthology, and read as my cheeks became steadily slick with tears.

I feel more at ease surrounded by pages than by people. The knowledge of so many who came before, the outpourings of men's souls, the covers sandwiching passion and pain and truth and lies, the words strung together like rain drops on a telephone wire. Just looking up at shelves upon shelves of sentences, of frustration and frenzy and last-minute edits and the phrase she refused to change because she felt in her bones it was the right one... it makes me so insignificant, and yet so in tune with the pulse of the world. So right.

As I was studying on my bed the other day I looked up to my bookshelf and Slaughterhouse-Five stared back at me, winking, and I couldn't resist pulling it down and flexing its paperback spine yet again. So it goes.

Cigarettes and Chocolate Milk

If I can trick myself into thinking you smoke, maybe I'll stop dreaming of being your girl.

Mr. Postman

Dear Footballers,
Please stop wiggling your hand around in your pants during class. It's gross. Jock itch won't go away if you keep scratching, and I'm pretty sure l'Hôpital's rule isn't the most tantalizing of centerfolds.
Sincerely,
The Girl Who Has to Sit Next to You in Calculus

Dear Small Selection of Teenage Girls,
Cut your goddamn fingernails. Claws aren't in the least bit attractive. And while we're on the subject—why the hell do you insist on coloring them black?
Sincerely,
The Girl Who Used to Bite Hers

Dear Rain Showers,
Thank you.
Sincerely,
The Girl Who Was Getting Sick of Sunshine

Dear Cappuccino Machine,
You might just be my new favorite thing.
Sincerely,
The Girl Who Is Tired of Hot Chocolate but Too Wimpy for Straight-Up Coffee

Dear Inverse Trigonometry,
You are decidedly not my favorite thing.
Sincerely,
The Girl Who Prefers Words to Numbers—Ad Infinitum

Dear Boy,
You're cute. I'm sorry I'm shy.
Sincerely,
Girl

Confession

People who smile incessantly unnerve me.

The Thing About High Standards

Is that once you set them, you feel duly obliged to keep them. (Hence my striving for A's all straight since '98.)

And so, Mr. President-Elect, we're counting on you. Make America prouder than it was last night, and I promise we won't be known as the generation who gave up.

Limerick for the Fourth

There once was a time called Tuesday
Which was quite often a blues day—
But we'll remember
'08 November
Because this is the big news day.

I am actually scared that Obama won't win. Or that he will shortly be assassinated. Or that he'll neglect his people's mandate and become the corporation-loving, planet-exploiting, war-bungling, crisis-ignoring, scandal-making politico we all believed he wasn't. Such is my paranoid mind.

Buck the trend, Barack. Please.

Sister Sneaker Sister Soul

My left shoe has a hole in the bottom.
I rather like it that way—until I get to the gravel.

What I Decided at One in the Morning

When I am pregnant I will sit outside in an Adirondack chair, showing my nascent earthly miracle the wonder of the night sky.

(What's cuter than a toddler dressed as a dragon for Halloween?
A toddler who happens to be Amish.)

Costume Change

After I had gotten over the obligatory witch, ghost, and fairy princess phase, I never again wanted to be something generic for Halloween. My costume needed to evoke praises of ingenuity, to solicit votes for "Most Creative" in middle school contests, to be put together rather than pulled from a bag. I couldn't settle for "pirate" or "vampire"--I had to be a calendar of October (and later repeat the sandwich board formula in my home-made Spongebob outfit), Pippi Longstocking, Elvis Presley, the angst-ridden and blue-haired beauty pageant contestant Miss Understood.

In my passive-aggressive high-school years I said to hell with it and threw on Deely Boppers.

As a junior I was far too cerebral in my ensemble and had to explain over and over again that no, my colorful tights and pigtailed hair did not make me a jester or an amateur clown—I was dressed as the antithesis of myself. Even the math teacher was befuddled.

This time around, I am stumped.

Halloween just ain't what it used to be, and I'm too modest to let it become what it could. I thought of buying the classiest pantsuit at Goodwill, fussing over my hair, and going door-to-door as Sarah Palin, but surely a better-looking upperclassman thought of that back in September. Maybe, four days before the most important election in recent memory, I'll return to the truly frightening—and be Apathy.

In the meantime, I await the Great Pumpkin.