amy knox brown from bookslut

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

things are changing a lot.

springtime can kill you

lately i have felt that my heart is very full, pretty confused, locked too tight where it is. dumb? i don’t know. overwhelming, for sure. i just have so many feelings.

feelings that i must blog about.

whatever, well, bottom line, there was an earthquake in southern illinois this past week, the aftershocks of which were felt from indianapolis to st louis to chicago and everywhere in between, and i’m bummed i missed it, i am bummed i’m missing legitimate springtime that i’m used to, i’m bummed that i’m missing every stupid event like my sister’s cat having kittens, my brother’s new puppy, flunk day at knox, being around enthusiastic baseball fans, et cetera ad nauseum. i am a profoundly boring person and, most importantly, just endlessly childish. these are facts. the amounts and balance of boringness and selfishness in my brain are criminally underestimated and super fucked up, respectively.

REGARDLESS.
i do feel much too connected to here to just leave or even consider leaving without a second thought — i think the small fact that i never actually remember that i am in north carolina or trying to do something so different from anything i was doing nine months ago says a lot about how ultimately comfortable i am in my surroundings. i don’t want to leave, i don’t want to fail, i don’t want to be upset all the time. i’d rather have things fixed than abandoned, but the prospect of repairing my psyche and rocky relationship with library school at the same time seems like such a colossal undertaking at this point. i know i can do it, though, because sometimes i just honestly doubt if i could ever feel any more heartbroken than i am this spring.

north carolina smells really good in the springtime, though — i drove out to durham the back way yesterday night, avoiding 15-501 in the rain with my car window down, simultaneously admiring the wisteria and checking for wayward deer. i got very emotional on that drive, thinking about jolie holland and a lot of other things that would be pretty dumb of me to talk at length about in a public forum. but all i can say about that, i guess, is that because i have intense warm weather sense memories, i end up being totally leveled by crap i haven’t cared about for years, feeling like my well-being has been punched in the gut and face 100,000 times.

anyway, even though it was awfully nice to rewatch my favorite episodes of gilmore girls while succumbing to crippling waves of depression, it was also good to get out of my house. and i had a pretty rad dinner with pretty rad dudes on top of it. pitchers of sangria never hurt anything, either, and neither does finding out that you (me) are by far not the only one in town who had to take out such a killer amount of student loans for grad school. i actually almost fell out of my chair in relief when i heard about that. that probably makes me a bigger jerk than i really am. which is a pretty big jerk.

while i realize that having a blog thing on the internet is a crazy self-aggrandizing venture to begin with, i still feel really stupid talking about myself this much and keep swearing to not do it next time. well, it’s next time, and here i am! in full force. maybe next time.

change is hard

a good chunk of my evening was sucked out of my control when, inspired by angela, i looked through my ancient-ish photobucket account. i first got a digital camera for christmas of 2003, right in the middle of my first year of college. i’ve got some really great, somehow really small pictures to show for the first couple years of school: that time i got stranded at the impossibly tiny “train station” in quincy, illinois, the first time i dyed my hair red and the subsequent blonde-redhead cycle, the first and only time i ever drank gin, the whole “first cut is the deepest” completely bone crushing depression thing; trips to chicago, st louis, around and across western illinois. there are also so, so many pictures of cats.

i had to talk myself pretty seriously into not totally incorporating the photos from my removed past with those from my more immediate past — i can look at all the pictures i’ve put on the internet and get very nostalgic and weepy about them, but i just feel like i became a different, better, more reasonable and adult person after my sophomore year of college. the wonder of proper socialization, the wonder of heartbreak. the pictures from four years ago feel like pictures of someone else’s life, just a little bit. i guess it’s normal to feel that way? but, you know, i’m in no rush to disassociate myself from all that crazy shit, all the weird mistakes and songs and books and movies i took so genuinely to heart and recorded pieces of all diary-like on the internet in one way or another. i got nothing to regret yet, it’s true, but at this point my life and future feel just as up in the air as they did when i was eighteen dang years old.

anyway. my most recent past has been colored by this really rad thing i did on thursday night: i got a little bit drunk at the fancy wine bar on the west side of franklin street, tripped up the metal stairs to their roof, split my knee open in a way that covered a lot of bar napkins in blood and rendered me a little helpless and whiny for most of the weekend. after i managed to figure out a way to get out of my bed without bending one of my knees (try it, and first put your mattress directly on the floor like mine is in order to get at the full richness of my experience), and with a little help from my friends, i was able to get over to CVS for butterfly bandages, liquid bandages, extra large bandages, and neosporin. it only cost, like, $5,000 dollars. needless to say, i did it very wrong with the beers and the stairs to begin with. perhaps i should come to terms with how bruising and wounding myself is most likely my most marketable skill. or whatever.

i guess i should mention at some point that i’ve started using twitter and del.icio.us a lot more in my everyday internet life. both are things that, for some reason, i thought i would hate with white-hot passion, but i pretty much need them above all else in my life right now. i will say that it took me a pretty long time to use social bookmarks with any kind of regularity, given that i’ve never ever bookmarked things the normal way before (oh, right, and i guess not even with books) but it’s a pretty rad thing to do. i’m also just really into tag clouds, but really, who isn’t nowadays.

your girl is lovely, hubbell

i hope this doesn’t turn into a sports blog. kansas won tonight, which i’m glad for because even though it stung to lose to them, it sucks more to lose to the second-best team in the country than the best team in the country. rooting for the team that beats you on the way to the championship is a tenet of sportsmanship i’ve come to know and love after watching the NLCS closely for, like, 12 years: 2005, 2002, 2000, 1996 (okay, that was killer, maybe i didn’t back the braves).

this does not apply to deep-seated rivalries, though, of course: duke and the cubs always deserve to lose.

unrelatedly, i am very bummed. i fell asleep on the bus from durham today after not sleeping last night and had to stop and buy a coca-cola on franklin street just to be able to use a bathroom take my tights off, Hosiery Issues, too big/too small. but i was able to fall into a deep sad sleep this evening watching the way we were. i can’t talk to anybody out loud about this without risking bucketfuls of tears and weird blotchy face problems, so i’m gonna hold off. later, later is always better.

i am happy to report, though, that i relate less and less to katie morosky as time has gone on and on, which is probably a very good thing.

soft rock

you came in without your makeup wearing your new junk store dress
your face covered in curls and tears, your eyes lit up like fifteen beers
you said your head was finally clear, you told me that you’re leaving here
…
we’re gonna break you out of there, open up the window and let down your hair
lit up like a dance floor, driving down the turnpike, hope the ropes aren’t too tight

i am the emperor
that is what the crown is for, that is what the throne is for
that is what the robes are for, that is what the gloves are for
this feels like a holy war
all i’m really asking for is open up the bathroom door

people like that are the only people here

well, okay, i don’t really want to talk that much about basketball, except to say that of course the jayhawks earned their win. last night felt really bizarre to me, the whole thing, like i was in some drug-induced haze thing the entire time, watching carolina get so thoroughly and immediately trounced in the first half. not that carolina basketball isn’t susceptible to losing badly, of course every team is — i’d just never seen anything like that, much less in a final four game. anyway, they did rally hard, i cried a lot about it, retained some dignity in the end.

yesterday was a weird day in general, though, i suppose: i went about my normal businesses and some dude with a knife and my cigarettes in his hand mildly expressed he thought i was an officer of the law.

now i’ll talk about that picture. there’s a chicken that sometimes hangs out in our yard, just chilling out usually, when he/she/it is not making terrible noises directly outside my window very early in the morning. the situation does really remind me of this thing from my childhood, though no one seems to ever know what i’m talking about when i make reference to “that one thing from sesame street.” also, sometimes when i go out to my car, the chicken is just sitting there in that tree, staring at me like a creep. fowl stalker. it’s awesome.

JUST KIDDING.
(it is not awesome)
(it is a little bit majestic, though)

i just was hit hard with a wave of very intense yearning for summer. i’m not looking forward to almost fainting in the heat, but i am looking forward to so, so many other things about it, like: no school, working, hanging hard, getting real freckled again, reading beautiful books (i used to keep a list of things i wanted to read, but i seriously think i plowed my way through it last fall when i didn’t have a computer and had lots of time), going to the beach — which i have never done before, or, like, seen the ocean for real –my 23rd birthday on friday the 13th of june, drinking soco & sweet tea on as many porches as possible. going places! i get defeated sometimes, unbearably upset and nervous, but the reality is that i have a whole lot to look forward to yet. there is nothing in the world to be so sad about.

weeds in the wheat

final four day. i’m beginning to get anxious instead of just excited, but it’s good, it is all good. i’ve always been into basketball — university of illinois fighting illini basketball — so march is a special sacred time. and yes, okay, in 2005 i was heartbroken and cried a lot.

carolina basketball is really good, though, and it ought to be a good game tonight, which is what i’m looking forward to. tensions will be running high! i am going to weep into my beers! i always get hoarse from yelling, too, which is ridiculous considering i never yell in public, especially at vital televised sporting events.

the cardinals are off to a really solid start, too, and i’m not even going to mention that they would have the highest winning percentage in baseball right now if their first game at busch hadn’t been called for rain when they had, what, i think a 5-1 lead on the rockies? i mean, i’m not going to mention it much. almost better than the cardinals’ glory are the cubs’ stats so far, even at home on the north side. whatever! i am pumped and into it and it is awesome.

talking about sports has led me to ignore the most important news of the week, which is of course beyonce and jay-z finally getting married on 04-04-08, the prospect of which just makes me a little bit misty, weepy all over. TRU LUV: what we all aspire to

pretty geek crew

lindsay
2 April 2008 18:31

dang
i really really like the internet, you guys

erin   
2 April 2008 18:32

ME TOO
i want to marry the internet but i don’t understand polyamory

caitlin   
2 April 2008 18:32

SAMESIES

what the hell kind of time is it?

here’s the neverending story of my life: really, really dirty hair.

tonight was a beautiful night. i would give up a lot of vital life-things before i would ever give up drinking beers outside, especially after an evening class that was a little bit infuriating. yes, okay, it is a given that librarians are taken for granted and that a lot of people have no idea what they actually do (see: “you have to have a graduate degree to do that?” and just imagine my dreamy-dream response, which probably involves really cool things like “dumb jerk” and “ridiculous choad”) but i cannot fathom how clueless some people are and continue to be.

not really talking about one person, you know, but i suppose who i am referring to could best be generalized as: everybody. my frustrations are vague/valid/both.

and being in an english class reminds me of the totally crazy shit that would come up in pretty much every literature or writing class i took in college:

• intentional fallacy
• the male gaze
• “creepy”
• spooling/unspooling
• sign/signified
• liminality
• mirror theory
• the sublime
• PLACE

horseshit.
i really think the best thing i learned from all that was how to do research, and well, look where i am right now. writing a passionately vulgar blog entry about it.