And I watched from my window
always felt I was outside
looking in on you

I went across the street to The Coffee Bean and Tea Leaf on Sunset, but everyone there was holding a bottle of Herbal essences and debating Woodrow Wilson and Teddy Roosevelt and which was better, The Last Samurai or Mel Gibson. And I said, How is that even possible, I mean, the two are quite incomparable, how weird. Also, the ceiling of Coffee Society was like. Disneyworld. Plus, the whole place smelled like a frickin fortune cookie.

And then Jessica Simpson walked in and announced that she’s getting married to that senior guy I was talking to earlier. Everyone was outraged, because of course she was so recently divorced. She told us that she is hosting Iron Chef on TV, and the theme ingredient was water. The Challenger was this French guy from Canada and the Iron Chef person looked like the Purple Care Bear.

The food looked so unbelievably good on screen, and all the judges were like Al Sharpton and the Trix Bunny. George Bush really liked the Stir-Fry Water Soup, he said it held the essence of the ingredient very well. He kind of sounded like a Japanese actress, and was wearing a kimono.

It made such sense in my dream.

It’s probably one thing I’ve never fully achieved. I came to the conclusion a short while soon after I was born that I’m not the Happy Medium kind; I’m either madly in love or sharpening my pitchforks for the parade. I didn’t tell this to anyone, of course; no one would believe me. But my mom probably figured it out when I decided to, for once and for all, expel the onion plant from my life now and forever. At age 2.

Lately (because I’ve been taking a human health class at UCLA) I got to thinking about balance again. Probably it stemmed from some ill-borne discussion on homeostasis. If our physical bodies are constantly readjusting themselves to optimal balance (with every motion making sure what goes in comes out and what doesn’t come out gets tinsel-wrapped in fat), then aren’t our emotional selves in the same way adjusting our outlooks on life to the actual life we’re living? Is the balance of our psychology keeping us in check from going haywire, doing crazy things?

Well I still went crazy sometimes. I am oversimplifying this a lot but maybe it’s sort of like when the body is so unhealthy that “homeostasis” isn’t even effective. I actually was depressed for over half a year some time ago and I couldn’t even function normally. I wonder if my brain, its subconscious, was somehow struggling to pull me back up? One’s muscular organs would certainly try to stay alive to the last, even in a person nearing death. But did the mind know that the horrors it underwent were “horrors”? Or was the depression formed as a seed in the mind itself, so that the mind heralded its onslaught on the rest of me?

I don’t even know what I’m rambling about anymore. I went jogging again this morning, but because I’d pulled an all-nighter just today I cramped pretty soon. But I did catch dawn, and for once my eyes weren’t too sleepy to open up and see them. I saw an old man doing tai chi, turned away from the track and facing the soccer field covered in sprinklers. I also saw: the school’s repairmen, people who wear weight belts to unload the beverages into the vending machines, athletes much fitter than me looking at me strangely because I wasn’t an athlete, and finally an older woman jogger who was passing me. Because I figured we were at least sharing the same activity I gave her a good morning smile but I think she had a muscular twitch in her jaw because her mouth didn’t really move in reply. I’m sure she also intended to say hello, but unfortunately this facial disfigurement impaired her abilities to speak.

By the way, the graphic at the beginning of the post is from squirrelldesigns. I don’t know them or anything, but it was a prominent result from the Google Image search for “balance.”  And now I’m going to catch some shut-eye.  Ahh, I’m tired.  While the rest of the world awakes.

Here’s my route: I leave my apartment around 5 or 6 in the morning, and somehow via the hills at UCLA manage to run/walk for a little over or under an hour. I don’t even know where the time goes. Today (this morning) was only my second time and I am not even that tired. I don’t know why I run yet. I didn’t get struck in a rainstorm and come to an epiphany to be healthier.

The first time I did it I was almost hungover on too much food and I couldn’t sleep at night, thanks to the billion calories of fat which were practically ju-jit-su-ing in my body, probably. Somehow in my crazy state at five I laced up a pair of sneakers (the ones I bought because they were on sale) and went out. Good thing I was clothed. The sky was this violent cloudy thing that felt like smog turned gorgeous: something you’d never know if you wake up after even 7 or 8. I was on the track during this one period and I saw the stadium lights before they were lit up against the fog. It felt like this giant still machine which didn’t move and never would. As though it would hover forever, like a giant (totally metal and electrically-powered) tree: I don’t know, but I fell in love with it, or something.

Today I went around the school and then did a mile around the track. I was never a fast runner when I was a kid. I was one of those slow kids whose “good” time would be around 9-10 minutes and “okay” time was around 11-12 minutes. Anyone who runs like it’s their business knows that those times SUCK. Which as a word deserves to be capitalized. I think I’ve gotten faster, but only marginally. Maybe I will chip away at it if I run more. I’m not fat: but I’m not tiny either. I’m one of those girls who probably wouldn’t put on weight THAT easily if she didn’t like to eat so much. Somehow at the gym I always end up feeling rather obese; I know this isn’t even remotely true. But running in the dark I somehow didn’t even think that. Maybe because I couldn’t even see anyone else to compare with; maybe because I couldn’t even see my own damn soles.

But UCLA really is damn beautiful. The photo doesn’t do it justice at all. I remember when I was applying for colleges; this was my back-up. All my other ones were Ivy’s or liberals on the east coast (read: UChicago) and I almost did go there, UChi that is — LOVE the Windy City. But due to reasons like finance (private v. public) and distance (I lived in the Bay Area, so SoCal was closer than the middle of the midlands) I ended up in Los Angeles. Of course I groomed myself to hate it. I almost did hate my first year: I put on weight, I failed some classes, I seeminly discovered a previously undetected proportion of people whose character could only be described mildly as “stupid”, etc. But I really couldn’t hate the campus. I think the college sometimes gets a bad rep among students for being Abercrombie and Fitch-like, but I think you’ll get that everywhere, especially because everwhere is the location of that naked A&F. Underneath, at six in the morning, it really is stunning. You forget you’re some number who’s struggling to stay awake in a lecture of 400. You’ll remember that you actually own part of this world.

(Metaphorically speaking. I mean.. you actually own nothing.)

I think I’ll go again sometime. Next time I hope it rains. That way I can expand my metaphor. Into what I guess I’ve got time to find out.

I miss this show.

I haven’t seen it on TV regularly in about half a year probably :(

It’s get-the-nachos-ready-I’m-on-the-couch-if-you-need-me time :)

I lived in Columbus for about four years from around first grade to sixth.  I had a mushroom bowl cut like every ugly Chinese kid.  I wasn’t ugly though I remember thinking my thighs were distinctly large.  Looking back at photo albums, it would appear as though I enjoyed photography and posing immensely during this period, but the real truth is that my parents then enjoyed photo-taking, and now they don’t: the result is that for about five years to date I haven’t really had a decent set of photos.  It’s okay; I don’t mind: I just hope that when I’m eighty and don’t remember a thing I won’t think I went straight from being a prepubescent ugling to a forty-something mommie with uglings of her own (forty is when I’ve arbitraily decided I’m going to start being in photos again).

I lived in the central-but-not-predominantly downtown part of Columbus.  My parents opened a restaurant named Little Dragons; they had some company paint “Authentic Chinese Food” on the window even though they knew perfectly well that the food wasn’t authentic (their freshly-imported brothers — my two uncles — were the chefs) and it was barely even Chinese (Kung-pow chicken, chow-mein: these were the staples of badly-translated American attempts at Oriental cuisine.)  They poured their heart into this business: we invested probably what was 80, 90% of our savings which were not much to begin with.  We were undeniably poor: my dad was a student at OSU (see Buckeyes, above) on a tuition waiver and my mom, pre-restaurant, worked at a dry-cleaners.  No matter what the weather was like, no delivery went undelivered: my dad drove in frost, rain, sleet, and varying states of frustration to go send food to the customers.  Sometimes, because the checks they paid in bounced, we actually lost money: nights my parents would count down to the dollar bills alone on the empty counter.

It is no surprise that the restaurant was a huge failure for them.  Yet even though I knew they went through a lot of stress during this period, Ohio for me was amazingly wonderful.  I had a number of friends: one girl who looked like a chipmunk was very nice, as was another young girl whose feet were twice as large as mine.  See, elementary school kids are a fun bunch, especially before girls learn to be horrible to each other and before boys are vaccinated of cooties.  I was even popular with the teacher, a Mrs. Roscoe who smelled like coffee and Werther’s caramel candy: when I left for California, she gave me two nice, reversible journals which had quotes by Emily Dickinson written on the inside binding.  It is amazing I remember all of this, especially since (see my first post, below) I have routinely abandoned every diary I start.

I’ve never been back to Ohio, though I think about it every so often.  Ohio has come to my attention recently more than usual, firstly because of Angela Keslar, whom, despite our shared state I prayed to any diety who would listen to PLEASE get rid of; and secondly because of, well..

See top photo of this post :)

I got to LA about five weeks ago. Somehow it feels like I’ve been here forever and I can’t wait to get out again. My bed is a two-bunker because the room, a studio, was made for two and when I first came in I didn’t think I would get so lonely. But now I do and I wish sometimes that there was another person here. It was nice the first two weeks or so. I went crazy decorating the place, shopping thrift stores everyday virtually to craft someone out of four bucks. It does look nice now. I’ll have to take it down in a week though. I’m moving back to the dorms.

Yesterday it looked like it might rain. I was walking back up from Westwood and I felt one drop. It probably made me too hopeful — I was hoping I’d come back fully drenched — but no. Today it is back to being sunny. I’m really craving a downpour. Unfortunately, as fate would have it I’m sure the first thunderstorm will come the one day I’m late for an important class and I won’t make it and I’ll fail. I like to forecast disasters like that. Weather-predicting appeals to me in a strange way, like one of those quaint jobs which don’t exactly seem to belong in the world I live in. I’ve never checked up on weather enough for me to change my life; it’s there no matter what I do so I guess I’ll never bother with it. At the same time it’s all wrapped up with the issues of climatology and global warming,.. and I know that’s important (“important”) enough. But rain? I wish I knew the sky.

I realized that there are so many things I want to do so badly. I’m not really doing any of them. Money as always is an issue and I want to blame money but I know it’s really my own problem. For instance I want to have a camera so I can take pictures of those things around me. But last year I actually bought one and I haven’t even developed film from it. Or how I’d like to write a novel but I can’t even finish a few sentences into a paragraph no matter how many I start. I wonder what’s wrong with me. I wonder what’s wrong.

Some mornings I wake up — more and more often — and I don’t even want to get up. I went though a period which was pretty fantastic: I’d get up around seven or eight, or nine latest, exercise daily, eat well, and do work; now I’m entirely apathetic and I overeat too often to call it excusable. I want to change but wanting is never enough. What happened to that inertia which makes us change? What happened to inspirational movies that hurt your body enough to make you cry? Why don’t I feel the things I want to feel anymore? I wish I could find a missing piece someplace. But these things you don’t pick up on the pavement.

Yesterday going to Whole Foods there was a woman waving at the cars going in and out of the parking lot. I thought she was going to bother me, because a lot of people bother me, but she didn’t. I was nearly in the store entirely — I was around the melons that they keep outside; and she was still flapping her arms toward the customers leaving. I don’t know why but I actually went up to her and asked her what was wrong. I don’t know why but I did that and when I went up to see, I saw that her face looked real toad-like: her mouth sagged enormously, dragging her flat round nose down and her eyes down on the outside edges.

She was immense, but not vulgarly so; she didn’t look big because of a puffy quality–she looked big like a worn tire deflated. She said help me buy some groceries my kids and me we need food to eat I gotta feed them. I thought about how fat she was and the mean part of me thought she could do with a diet. But I knew she wasn’t lying even if she was lying about the kids: she was hungry and having that kind of nothing could make anyone lie, or worse. I said I don’t have enough money to buy you everything because that was the truth. But I do have enough to buy you something. Let me buy you something.

Then she said, well I can’t take anything from you, you’re just a college kid wearin a beat up old Packer’s sweatshirt. And for the first time she laughed as though she might have actually meant it. I felt so bad I really did want to get anything for her. I have a lot of pride. I have too much pride to give any away: and she had given hers all away, so that here she was asking for money from person to person for groceries. She wasn’t asking for money for drugs or alcohol: she was asking for a head of lettuce and some chicken and some milk so that her kids could grow. I think when I knew that I wanted her to be okay and I wanted her kids if they were real to be okay.

It’s devastatingly sunny outside now. I think the air conditioner gives me a migraine. I will try to write every day.