half of me is the gasoline, but the other half's the surf

When Vampire Weekend first came out, I thought they sounded like a bunch of pussywhipped bitches. I'm not even sure which song of theirs I listened to that gave me that impression, but for some reason, it stuck with me. That is of course, until I moved to California and I kept hearing this cute little song on the radio about drinking horchata. When I found out it was by Vampire Weekend I kind of felt like a huge d-bag for liking it so much, but I got over that pretty quickly, especially when they came out with a video starring not only my boyfriend Joe Jonas, but also my husband, Rza.

A few weeks ago they played a show here in Oakland at the Fox . Even though I've totally come to terms with just how much I like them, I was not expecting them to sound as mindblowingly good as they did. I read an interview with them once where they said their album Contra is about California, and holy fuck, they got it so, so right. The set they played sounded like everything beautiful about living here.




When they left the stage, they had the audience straight-up begging for an encore. Like, I felt like if they didn't come out and play another song, I might lose my shit temper-tantrum style.




Afterwards, we were super hyped, with no desire to go home at all, so we hit up the afterparty, for major debauchery, including a sick DJ set from the band (no lie, they played Don't You Want Me by Human Leauge - my favorite 80s jam ever!), and thus commenced the absolute drunkest Monday evening I think I've ever had.






By the end of the night, after dancing our asses off like rockstars, we were in total groupie mode, shamelessly begging the boys in the band to let us accompany them back to their hotel (I am all about the hot gay one), but alas, they drove off in their Honda Element, leaving us stone cold!




A few days later, I received word that some pictures of my friends and I had popped up on a local website.





Of course I am looking all bedraggled and busted like I'm about to fall flat on my face (fucking paparazzi!), but really, we're just having waaay too much fun!

sigh. such is the price to pay for a life of excitement and glamour.

love always
p.s. Thanks to the lovely and talented Ash for taking so many beautiful pictures!

i'm baaaack!

Expect massive amounts of posting to commence.....NOW!

love always

valentine

This year for Valentine's day, I am without a valentine for the first time in four years. Admittedly, it feels a little odd to not be enacting the Valentine's tradition I shared with my ex - dinner at forbidden city, accompanied by copious amounts of wine - but I'm not yet at the point in my singledom where I feel bitter or slighted.

So, I'd like to celebrate with what is undoubtedly my most favorite piece of romantic poetry ever. In a way, this is my Valentine to myself. If I were to receive a Valentine, I would want it to say exactly this, as I have always fantasized that in some strange, far-off, magical way, this poem in in fact, for me (I do have rather tiny hands you know..)
But this is also my Valentine to you, to the entire universe, with love....

somewhere i have never travelled,gladly beyond
by E. E. Cummings
somewhere i have never travelled,gladly beyond any experience,your eyes have their silence: in your most frail gesture are things which enclose me, or which i cannot touch because they are too near your slightest look easily will unclose me though i have closed myself as fingers, you open always petal by petal myself as Spring opens (touching skilfully,mysteriously)her first rose or if your wish be to close me, i and my life will shut very beautifully ,suddenly, as when the heart of this flower imagines the snow carefully everywhere descending; nothing which we are to perceive in this world equals the power of your intense fragility:whose texture compels me with the color of its countries, rendering death and forever with each breathing (i do not know what it is about you that closes and opens;only something in me understands the voice of your eyes is deeper than all roses) nobody,not even the rain,has such small hands

love always

golden age

"Bright moments always come back vivid..."

you know those times in your life that stay all lit up in your memory? Times when things felt effortless, easy and perfect? Times when all the people and places and things in your world just seemed to fit?
I have been lucky enough in my 25 years, to be able to say that I've got quite a few of those memories. In the past I've stumbled onto moments, periods, eras that feel so right they could only have been destined. It is in these times that I've found reasons to keep existing, to keep trying, to keep persisting.
Only, it's been a while. It's been raining here for like, two weeks straight (which feels like an eternity) I've been working and fighting and holding it down, and I'm tired, and I need, I mean really need to slip into that mode where the world just sort of starts happening around me and I can relax and know that everything is going to be not just alright, but perfect and blissful.
So I've created a plan. I've simply decided to be in that place, right now.
Beginning at this very moment, I am going to fall in love with the city I've moved to and it's going to love me back. I am going to be surrounded by beautiful and interesting and charming people, and when I have the misfortune to come across someone unpleasant, I am not going to take their behavior personally, but rather I will laugh and feel sorry for them. I am going to have adventures fall in my lap so often that I will have the freedom to pick and choose exactly which opportunities I will take advantage of. I am going to protected by a magical circle of love and starlight and sunsets and bubblegum.....and you know what the key to all of this is?
i don't have to worry about a fucking thing. I've made my decision and I'm pretty sure that for that reason alone, all of this is true.

love always

peace out 2009, it's been real

It's hard to believe this past year has actually come to an end. I remember this time one year ago, thinking on my future and wondering where I might be in a year. It was a strange time in my life. I had just come out of a long, hard relationship, suffered a scathing rejection from the first boy I had dated in 4 years, dragged my mother out of the depths of a dark depression and into a brand new condo, which I was living in with her at the time, oh, and I was working a job that I absolutely hated but wasn't quite ready to admit that to myself yet.

In the midst of all this bleakness, I found a ray of hope to latch onto. My horoscopes for the year, every single one, were unanimously predicting that 2009 would be the year that I would find true love. I know what you're thinking "don't all horoscopes say that all the time?" or "why would you put that much faith in astrology?" There are a few different explanations. One is that I am hopelessly obsessed with my horoscope, as you may or not know from past posts. But the other is far more personal, and I'd imagine, easier to relate to as well. I believed that this was true because I wanted it to be true.

I wanted to fall in love with a vengeance unlike any other I had ever experienced. My life was in shambles. There was no easy solution. The best circumstances I could imagine at the time involved a charming man on a white horse (or similarly symbolic mode of transportation) swooping in to pull me out of the dark depths to which my life had sank and into a safe, happy bubble of blissful romance.

But in 2009 I did not fall in love. I went on a few dates (but, to my surprise, promptly pulled away as soon as things started to get even a bit emotional). I spent an inordinate amount of time with my ex, who despite his multitude of wonderful qualities, is decidedly not the one for me. But nowhere, at no point, in no way did I, in 2009, fall in love.

Now to some, this may seem a bit depressing. It may reek of loneliness and desperation and cold nights spent at home with no one but my cat to keep me company. But the fact that I did not fall in love this year is, in retrospect, the best thing that's ever happened to me (and I swear I'm not just saying that to make myself feel better).

In January of 2009, I hopped on a plane, for the first time in five years, to visit my dad in California, at the time, a further distance than I had ever traveled. And this seemingly small, inconsequential action set off a chain reaction that consumed and ignited and took charge of my life for the entire rest of the year. This week-long vacation set in motion a chain of events which pulled and compelled me towards bigger and greater and more outrageous outcomes than I had previously ever dreamed myself capable of.

Shortly after this trip, I was asked to leave the job that I would not allow myself to admit that I hated. I then, spent the money from my settlement check on a vacation to puerto rico, supplementing my income with a job that was neither serious, nor enduring. I left that job just in time to take advantage of a new opportunity, which ultimately led me on a cross-country adventure to a new home in a new place that one year ago today, I had never even visited.

In the past year, I have more than made up for the five years in which I did not fly. I've been back and forth and all around this country so many times it makes me dizzy to think about it. I've seen things in person that I had previously only imagined. I've seen things in myself that I had previously only imagined; a newfound sense of independence, bravery, determination. I've created a home for myself in a brand new place, complete with friends and pets and a job, rather than letting my home and my friends and my job create me. And I like myself a million times better because of it.
No, this year was not ecstatic every single second. It was no easy ride down the side of a rainbow. It was hard. It was fucking terrifying. It was heartbreaking. But in the end, it was so worth it I cannot even explain.
So, I'm happy to report, now that it's all said and done, 2009 was NOT the year that I found true love. Instead, I found something better. I found myself. And as for my love life...there's always 2010.

love always

i live here now

so i think it pretty much goes without saying that since i made it to LA, i am now in my final destination: sf bay area. i feel like i ought to apologize for not updating in a while, but if you can possibly imagine moving 3000 miles away from the only place you've ever lived......
it's been complete madness.
i've been living here for about a month and a half now and it still does not feel like home. i'm not really sure if it ever will. i am homesick a large portion of the time. i miss my family, my friends, the corners and smells and flavors of the place i'm from. at the same time, i feel like i can't really go back, at least not yet. it's kinda like i'm trapped in some strange purgatorial no-man's-land and i'm not quite sure how to get out of it and into that place where i live somehwere again.

as much as i thought, upon making the decision to come out here, that the bay area was all rainbows and sunshine and crunchy, granola-y goodness, i've realized that like any other place, it has it's dark side too. I'm living in oakland, in an amazing beautiful house that was once featured in a magazine, on a tree lined street in what looks to be a charming little neighborhood, but just last week as my downstairs neighbor's friend was walking to her car, she had a gun pointed in her face and was forced to hand over her keys to some random stranger who couldn't even figure out how to start her car and ended up just running away, but still, that shit is pretty scary.

i have had two terrible nightmares since i got here and both of them sperately were some of the most unsettling i can ever remember having in the entirety of my life. sometimes the combined forces of working every single day at a job that seems like it will never be finished, plus getting lost all the time and not knowing where things are, and just the unfathomable weight of being totally and completely alone out here makes me think i might be lossing my shit for real this time.

but there are good days too. red velvet cake is pretty trendy out here. i've seen it in a few different incarnations, as cupcakes, sheetcakes, etc. it's all good with me and it makes it kinda hard to stay despondent for too long. the mocha's here are infinitely better than in ct. almost everyone eats their veggies. berkeley bowl trumps whole foods by like, a landslide. one day i managed to run all my errands without the assistance of my gps and i felt really proud and accomplished.

i live with two of the sweetest, most congenial people one could ever hope to meet and also the most adorably goofy yet well-trained boxer in the world. sometimes i get angsty and spend too much time in my room and forget to take advantage of them. i also have the privilege of working with the downest chick that ever lived and she has taken me on some fun adventures to haunted houses and fancy ice-cream shops. the other day we went to ikea and then ate hot dogs, which was really fun. she likes to make fun of twilight as much as i do, which when i really think about it makes all this moving shit almost worth it. her roommates are really rad too.

what i haven't been doing is taking pictures or documenting. i mean, i can barely remember how to breathe sometimes, but even though this is all kind of confusing and uncomfortable, i have a feeling that when it's all said and done, i'll still want to remember it.

love always

road trip, day five: LA

i know, i know, i'm supposed to be writing about LA. I've been working on it, believe me. I've started this entry i don't know how many times, only to abandon it after a few sentences. i guess i just feel like LA is a big deal. I mean, I spent a large chunk of my adolescence reading FLB and fantasizing about living there. I jut don't feel like anything i could say would really do it justice.

Actually, I really don't feel like the time I spent in LA did it justice even. It was towards the end of our trip, so I was tired and cranky. I was feeling all twisted up and conflicted and emotional about the fact that I finally made it to California. Half of me wanted to turn around and speed back the other way towards home. I was burdened with the terrible knowledge that my traveling companion and soulmate would be leaving me soon. I was weird. And confused. And slightly psychotic.

On top of that, LA was fucking intense. Our hotel was like a fucking hipster circus.The fact that our bathroom wall was glass made me really uncomfortable because like, what if I had to take a shit? I mean jon and I are close, but not that close.

Hollywood was even more intense.

At a certain point I think I just shut down and went all numb and apathetic about the whole thing. It was just too much for an angtsy, overtired girl to handle, you know?

The one thing I do remember about Los Angeles with perfect, crystal clarity is the fucking meal that we had there.Pedro took us out for bbq in koreatown, and it was seriously the best, most hauntingly satisfying meal I have ever had.
I have not stopped craving that shit since. (Although I hear there's some pretty good korean bbq in oakland as well).We also drank this weird korean booze that tasted like poison but worked like a charm on my hopelessly frazzled nerves.

Later that night we totally were gonna hit up the rooftop bar at our swanky hotel, but when we saw how busy it was and how under-dressed we were compared to the glammed-out barbies and kens that were swarming all over the place, we decided to just retire to our room and watch harry potter instead.

the next morning we had a really overpriced breakfast that consisted of amazing, fresh squeezed juice and the grossest, runniest eggs I have ever paid $20 for.our waiter looked unnervingly like jon circa 2005.

Oh, LA, I'm sorry we didn't really have a chance to bond. Maybe I'll visit again once I've recovered from this whole ordeal and we'll hit it off smashingly like I always imagined we would.

love always

p.s. on the way to LA we totally stopped at In-N-Out burger and that shit was bangin.sorry y'all, i just couldn't help myself.