november 4 11 06 2008

after i voted i almost cried. i was so tired and happy and felt a little bit like whatever was wrong in my life, it would be okay, i just did such a good and important and historical thing. i kept thinking about right after i moved to galesburg and seeing for the first time obama bumper stickers and signs and knowing several people who worked on his senate campaign and thinking, oh my god, this guy! he is important. and almost a year after he talked about galesburg in his speech at the democratic national convention of 2004, he said these things at knox:

Here in Galesburg, the main depot for the Underground Railroad in Illinois, escaped slaves could roam freely on the streets and take shelter in people’s homes. And when their masters or the police would come for them, the people of this town would help them escape north, some literally carrying them in their arms to freedom.

Think about the risks that involved. If they were caught abetting a fugitive, you could’ve been jailed or lynched. It would have been simple for these townspeople to turn the other way; to go live their lives in a private peace.

And yet, they didn’t do that. Why?

Because they knew that we were all Americans; that we were all brothers and sisters; the same reason that a century later, young men and women your age would take Freedom Rides down south, to work for the Civil Rights movement. The same reason that black women would walk instead of ride a bus after a long day of doing somebody else’s laundry and cleaning somebody else’s kitchen. Because they were marching for freedom.

Today, on this day of possibility, we stand in the shadow of a lanky, raw-boned man with little formal education who once took this stage at Old Main and told the nation that if anyone did not believe the American principles of freedom and equality, that those principles were timeless and all-inclusive, they should go rip that page out of the Declaration of Independence.

My hope for all of you is that as you leave here today, you decide to keep these principles alive in your own life and in the life of this country. You will be tested. You won’t always succeed. But know that you have it within your power to try. That generations who have come before you faced these same fears and uncertainties in their own time. And that through our collective labor, and through God’s providence, and our willingness to shoulder each other’s burdens, America will continue on its precious journey towards that distant horizon, and a better day.

and maybe it’s stupid or hokey, but i think that a better day, if it hasn’t been today, is coming sooner than we might know. even just to wake up and think that maybe this one day will not for once be worse than the last. i just feel with all of my heart that he knows. he knows the things that i know about the world and the weight of history and then so much more because i don’t know very much yet. he has seen the exact things that i have seen that have changed and re-changed my mind over and over again and made me feel like i’m not powerless to change anymore. i don’t think the country has changed overnight, and i am not willing to be completely happy over the fact that for the time being we have defeated racism and a lot of weird abortion politics in spite of elevating hatred, inequality and a fear of privacy, sexuality and love that is so cowardly and gross. and i don’t think he is perfect but i know he is good and that is enough for me and the entire world right now.

pieces of you 09 09 2008

i’ve gone on and on about my intense and varied feelings about sarah palin in various forums and at different volumes recently, but here’s what it comes down to. two nights ago i had a dream that i was the only person who discovered that palin and jewel were in alaskan cahoots to bring american culture and politics down with extreme anti-choice sentiment and pop-folk music. in the dream, it all worked out in the end: the american people were able to see past the nice boobs (both sets) and on through to the snaggletoothed underbelly of a gross conservative agenda.

the real world right now is such a surreal, strange place that i hope that dream logic will end up ruling the election — yes, i still hope and hope and hope.

only too much is enough 08 019 2008

since we last spoke, grownup blog, some small happenings have happened. first, i cut bangs into my hair for the first time in years, i guess. i have thought of myself as having bangs since 2004, when i got an important haircut (it is pictured here grown out a little bit), but i have realized that having the shortest part of my hair falling longer than my chin is not really bangs. it is fake bangs. fangs. i was fooling myself. so, in spite of some justified apprehensions, and spurred in part by PANTS MOVIE: 2 — a film whose cinematic fortitude is greatly overshadowed by the lustrous beauty of each of the hairs on the ensemble cast’s head — i cut like five inches off my fangs and now am a legit part of the banged multitudes yet again.

additionally, i got a dog.

her name is josie pancakes and she sleeps most of the time and waking or sleeping she is a main source of joy in my life. what a beautiful baby!

on a different but probably more typical note, i fell asleep watching laguna beach last night and feeling a whole lot of feelings. i’m STRUGGLIN. i don’t know what it is but lately i’ve been feeling everything ultra-deeply, tiny things to big things, just getting really emotional about everything. i don’t know how to explain it. i don’t think it’s The Depression because man what a bummer that was and this is different, or at least some kind of milder and more comprehensive iteration of it. frankly i like not being medicated because the whole thing, however long it lasted (not that long) ended up weirding me out, but i don’t know if that’s the best decision, i guess. who can say. all i know is that i cried a little bit when my brothers left for college yesterday when i definitely didn’t cry when i moved out and went to college, i was overwhelmed with emotions about laguna beach — god damn — and when i accidentally saw a recent picture of someone who used to be real important to me (i guess that’s as vague as it gets!) i felt like i’d been punched in the stomach and really couldn’t breathe correctly for a little while. it’s not just bummer things, either, because i think that whenever i go outside i get so filled with contentment and relief about where i am and how beautiful and wonderful missouri is to me that it literally brings tears to my eyes. i think i’ve always been this way, but the amplification, however slight, is just a weird new thing and probably has a lot to do with me being at an Important Crossroads, et cetera — it just is like i have been given all these new things and i don’t have room for them yet but i think maybe i will soon. i also have had a lot of time on my hands recently and really miss my job, which thankfully starts back up again tomorrow.

anyway, my parents are out of town taking my brothers to school and so it’s just me and my sister until tomorrow night. i feel very grown up and housewifey and weird, getting up at 6am in order to take my sister to school, brewing coffee and sitting around watching morning tv, making sure the dogs are fed, making lists, eating shredded wheat (not even frosted shredded wheat — this is important) waiting for it to be 9am so i can run errands. i also took out the trash and realized the possibility that i have solved my pitbull’s tiny housetraining problem — she basically POOPS ON COMMAND now. outside! she is perfect.

modern guilt 08 012 2008

life is still bananas.

i feel like everyone is bummed out at me and like i’m making a lot of wrong choices. lately i’ve gotten a new job, given up the new job because it wasn’t what i wanted, went to chicago, planned interviews, ate a lot (a lot) of frozen custard and am now on a post-summer pre-semester break from my other job so i’ve got time to focus on things i didn’t think i would want to care about, ever. like lame artsy shit and making quilts. i didn’t realize it before, but quilts are like crazy puzzles that have to be organized in a beautiful way, and also you don’t have to make them boring or old ladyish at all. it’s kind of right up my alley and i didn’t even know it.

anyway — that shit is dumb. in other news, i feel like i’m being split in two and don’t know what to do about it. ha! a year ago i moved to north carolina and a year ago i never dreamed that a year from then i’d be where i am now. i still believe with everything in my still-beating heart that i am doing the right thing, but it’s hard to keep going on that kind of momentum when i still feel so secretly ashamed and bummed out about quitting & coming home. having panic attacks about what a lazy piece of shit i was for months and months at a time has not really trained me to make the best decisions for myself, and i am even now taking baby steps, all these hesitant stumbles in only sometimes-right directions because i am absolutely fucking terrified of being too selfish, too wrong, of giving up. it’s a weirdly bitter thing to realize, especially for me because i try so hard every day to be self-reliant and stand up to assholes who are making the world a worse place by being in it. case in point: giving up and quitting a job that i didn’t like, didn’t feel comfortable with, didn’t think matched at all with any of my professional ambitions, thinking my newboss was kind of a sexist weirdo, but feeling like total shit for it because what kind of idiot would quit a job after a week? me, that’s who. i can be a strong-minded, decisive woman who makes her choices absolutely in her best interest, but it doesn’t mean i’m responsible or happy all the time, and it’s hard. it’s a really fucking hard thing to balance.

tomorrow i am gonna: take my sister to the doctor, mail a package to galesburg, go to the fabric store (i know, right, seriously) and the boner store, apply for jobs with discretion, paint some shoes, look at how beautiful it is outside everywhere and not worry so goddamned much.

4 hours 50 minutes 07 016 2008

my brain is overloaded with many thoughts after the all-star game, but i just need to put this out there: ryan ludwick is beautiful and great, dan uggla is my mortal enemy and yankees fans are the very, very worst in baseball and i could not ever adequately tell anyone how much it always shocks and angers me just how acutely they represent the grossest, most unsportsmanlike side of the game. the team is pretty awful too. worse than cubs hate, worse than duke hate. and i am done.

fingers crossed 07 014 2008

my whole life lately is about libraries, dogs, and doctor who. i really think that my love of the latter is pretty underrepresented here.

honestly i’ve been a tiny bit preoccupied with finishing series three of this show and trying to get over my irrational yet intense celebrity boner for david tennant. so preoccupied that i forgot to apply for a bunch of jobs i’ve wanted for a while, and ended up having a pretty frustrating time downtown this afternoon trying to turn in an application an hour before the closing date was officially over. i did it, though, i think. we’ll see what happens; fingers crossed.

in other news, tomorrow is angela’s 23rd birthday and my dad’s 44th. happy bday everyone.

stay positive 07 010 2008

regularly updating this is my new grownup goal in life.

this is a thing that is very important to me that i’ve been thinking about for a lot of my free time recently: you know how people leave coupons they’re not going to use in stores? frankly, i don’t know if this is a thing that “people” do or just a thing that i was taught/grew up doing, but anyway. while at target last week looking for some deodorant that would at least make a valiant effort to curb my summer sweating problem, i picked up a coupon for a fancy razor that someone left. because my personality does not allow me to a) not spend money when i can, and b) not spend money on a good deal, i promptly bought a new fancy razor for $1.00 instead of $6.00, the kind with 100 womanly blades and weird lotion strips and glitter handle. i was pumped about this value even though i always forget that when i buy GOOD DEALS i don’t need i am spending more money that i would have had i not succumbed to the lure of cheap. yeah, i know, welcome to adulthood in america, i guess.

basically, i haven’t shaved my legs in almost a year and really forget that it is a thing that people do. however, when i was buying the razor, i was buying it to satisfy some kind of curiosity more than anything else, just because i forgot what it was like to shave my legs and thought that maybe it was a thing i would like to try again? i also realized, kind of painfully, that i’d had a new job for a month, hadn’t once worn anything but a skirt or dress, and weighed the possibility that it was not that professional to be the hairy-legged new girl. i then considered how i’d slowly started exposing my tattoos while on the job and decided that if i had enough courage to show off my totally inked bod while getting paid, i could probably display my equally offensive body hair.

all of this leads up to a key decision: i’m going to shave my legs today before work because i am curious as to what it would be like.

when my newly-shorn self gets to work this evening, i hope the internet is working. last night it crapped out all over campus pretty much as soon as i walked in the door, which was a minor blow to my now intensely embarrassing obsession with google reader but mostly to all the patrons in the library. working evening summer hours at an academic library, i’ve encountered a fair number of students, but also just a lot of community members coming in to use the internet. it was such a bummer to have them come to the desk all forlorn and by the end of the night i was incredibly frustrated at how powerless i was to help them. i am glad i was not the one leaving voicemails for the helpdesk, as i am sure that the barely-controlled rage in my voice would’ve not endeared me to them. a bright spot, though: there were several people who either walked into or called the library because they were having problems connecting from their dorms, etc, and the fact that the library is so central to campus operation that we’re one of the first places students contact with a problem made me feel so good about my job.

that combined with how perfect the weather was when i left work (meaning not incredibly hot, meaning not raining) and how i got to drive the whole way home with the windows down and smelling the river when i hit the county line, i felt pretty okay about life by nighttime.

hello, internet. 07 09 2008

it’s been a while, internet. of course a lot of things have happened since i last updated this biz, and i think i mostly just didn’t know what to say for a long time. i probably still don’t, and still have a lot of feelings that have come and gone and some that remain unresolved, but here’s the main scoop:

1) dropping out of library school was a pretty good plan. i felt like i was giving up my dream for a while, then i went through this thing where i felt really stupid and impatient, but i was tired of waiting for the real thing to start. i felt really stifled by the idea of getting a library degree, having to do that before i could do anything else, and probably most of all i was just tired of being a student. a lot of things were weighing on me when i made the decision to take a break, things that influenced me to do it more than i would have otherwise, but overall it was a good thing to do.

2) i moved back to st louis and promptly got a job at a beautiful library, the kind of job that i was really longing for when i was in north carolina. i feel good about what i’m doing and already am fiercely loyal to where i work. i also have a new love in ILL and have learned how to make really bomb photocopies, which i realize is a stupid thing, but i always felt secretly bad about myself because i always made such awful copies, so there. i also really, really, really love MOBIUS and am unapologetic about this.

3) while i miss a lot of things about north carolina, i feel very good about being back in the midwest. i don’t know what it is, but i think that my heart is here no matter what i do and where i go. i am kind of obsessed with my own life, and am so grateful for all of the friends i have everywhere, but it’s been pretty nice to kind of take a breather from hanging out, from drinking and parties and focus on things like my family and my job. and, well, st louis is a beautiful place and i’m glad i get the chance to re-realize that every day.

4) i still have a lot of free time (which is kind of a bummer) and so i’ve taken the opportunity to keep abreast of things going on in the world. LIKE: lindsay lohan and samantha ronson, fox news vs. the rest of the media, the NL central and the anheuser busch takeover. and i am really very excited about mamma mia.

4) unrelated to pretty much anything else, i really think that i am slowly becoming a dog person. i. love. dogs. my brother has this beautiful pit bull that i am completely in love with. she is the funniest, sweetest thing in the whole world and constantly makes me want to bust out my long list of reasons why dogs are better than babies (or most humans, for that matter).

amy knox brown from bookslut 05 015 2008

And though I feel like something of an outsider in Winston-Salem, I have to say that North Carolina has been good to us. [...] The housing prices are quite reasonable; we have a nice place to live, with a big yard. Because of our limited social life, we get a lot of writing done.

You asked if my writing would be different if I lived in Nebraska. You know, I think it might — I wonder if a feeling of longing for a place is necessary to imagine it completely.

real emotional trash 04 024 2008

things are changing a lot.