1111orchidthief

When i see people on the train as young as i and dressed in what are obviously office clothes, I can't help but picture them as 45 years old, same outfit, same seat on the train, coming home from the same job that they've gone to for 5 out of every 7 days for the past 20 some odd years.

I don't want that to be my next 20 years.

There's a lot more to be done in life than sit at a desk for 40 hours a week without window. There's a lot of world to be seen, and a lot of work in that world that needs to be done.

To make a decision to drop out of this corporate path that i somehow found myself on means a couple things: it obviously means less money. Not just for now, though. By staying in this industry, i would be staying on a path towards promotions, benefits, titles, a *career* in marketing. The opportunity i have right now is not one that i will necessarily be able to find again, at least not in this industry.

My current boss is moving to Vogue. He offered me a position to follow him to Vogue. What i realized when i turned it down was: a) i don't want to stay in marketing. b) i don't think i even really want to stay in magazines.

Well hello, post grad identity crisis.

i've been in new york for what feels like a long time. just shy of 6 months, really. which is longer than a summer. longer than a semester. a semester and the seasons being what i have always calculated my time by. at this point i've been here for two seasons and more than one semester. i still often feel like i dont really know anybody and when i do get invitations to go out i don't really want to. it's just too much effort sometimes. simultaneously, of course, i have been with Eric and he is coming home with me for Christmas and i've been with him longer now than i've been with anyone else. not including the times i've been with people who were actually thousands of miles away. this is different. so now i find myself sitting next to him on a train or we are laying in bed or eating breakfast and i catch myself almost crying because i'm waiting for him to tell me he's met someone else or he just needs to do his own thing for a while or he's moving somewhere. that's what typically happens at this point and it's scaring me to step off this double-backed path into a spot i havent been before. can i actually stay with someone for longer than 4 months?

This is the beginning.
Almost anything can happen.
This is where you find
the creation of light, a fish wriggling onto land,
the first word of Paradise Lost on an empty page.
Think of an egg, the letter A,
a woman ironing on a bare stage as the heavy curtain rises.
This is the very beginning.
The first-person narrator introduces himself,
tells us about his lineage.
The mezzo-soprano stands in the wings.
Here the climbers are studying a map
or pulling on their long woolen socks.
This is early on, years before the Ark, dawn.
The profile of an animal is being smeared
on the wall of a cave,
and you have not yet learned to crawl.
This is the opening, the gambit,
a pawn moving forward an inch.
This is your first night with her, your first night without her.
This is the first part
where the wheels begin to turn,
where the elevator begins its ascent,
before the doors lurch apart.

This is the middle.
Things have had time to get complicated,
messy, really. Nothing is simple anymore.
Cities have sprouted up along the rivers
teeming with people at cross-purposes –
a million schemes, a million wild looks.
Disappointment unsolders his knapsack
here and pitches his ragged tent.
This is the sticky part where the plot congeals,
where the action suddenly reverses
or swerves off in an outrageous direction.
Here the narrator devotes a long paragraph
to why Miriam does not want Edward's child.
Someone hides a letter under a pillow.
Here the aria rises to a pitch,
a song of betrayal, salted with revenge.
And the climbing party is stuck on a ledge
halfway up the mountain.
This is the bridge, the painful modulation.
This is the thick of things.
So much is crowded into the middle –
the guitars of Spain, piles of ripe avocados,
Russian uniforms, noisy parties,
lakeside kisses, arguments heard through a wall
too much to name, too much to think about.


And this is the end,
the car running out of road,
the river losing its name in an ocean,
the long nose of the photographed horse
touching the white electronic line.
This is the colophon, the last elephant in the parade,
the empty wheelchair, and pigeons floating down in the evening.
Here the stage is littered with bodies,
the narrator leads the characters to their cells,
and the climbers are in their graves.
It is me hitting the period
and you closing the book.
It is Sylvia Plath in the kitchen
and St. Clement with an anchor around his neck.
This is the final bit
thinning away to nothing.
This is the end, according to Aristotle,
what we have all been waiting for,
what everything comes down to,
the destination we cannot help imagining,
a streak of light in the sky,
a hat on a peg, and outside the cabin, falling leaves.

-billy collins

www.lost.eu/40da2

check out pictures from my senior project!

6 weeks till graduation. then 1 week in northampton with CHANTYYYYYYYY. then 6 weeks in manhattan at the NYU summer publishing institute. This brings us to the end of July at which point nyc will be approximately 10 million degrees and i will be pounding pavement trying to look hireable and live-with-able.

the amount of change that is about to rapidly commence is staggering.

as for the immdiate, however, come see the play i'm directing!

Good Old Girls by Jennifer Whiteford

monologues and film.
love and loss.
staying and leaving.

Saturday(4/14) and Sunday (4/15)
2pm and 8pm both days.
dwight 101
70 minutes.
refreshments will be served at one performance. i'm not telling which one.

413-531-2727 for reservations.

if you are reading this i probably miss you.

and if your name is Leah i hope you are having fun in Italy.

Spring break.

graduating in about 70 days.





they say not to do countdowns.



just wanted to say hello to anyone who still checks this. i know its been a minute.
updates? i guess thats what this is for?
-graduating at the end of May.
-moving to brooklyn over the summer.
-should be back in seattle for a few days for Christmas.
-My Sr. Project hits the stage on April 14th and 15th 2pm, 8pm. call for reservations i guess?
-still havent heard from NYU about the summer program.
-been checking out other administrative assistant, etc. positions in nyc for alternative employment.
-i assume i will be waitressing/bartending for a while.
-i kind of like that idea, honestly.

i miss you always.

lessons learned.

1)it is retroactive to constantly place myself in the role of the victim/innocent.

2)just because i can only physically view the world from one perspective, it does not mean that the world only exists from that perspective. i.e. the world does not revolve around me.

3)mine are not the only real emotions.

two weeks left and a plane ticket stuck up on the fridge as i sleep in my own bed twice, maybe three times a week. gave my notice to my jobs, to my town, to my house and after i leave everything will change and people will move or, at the very least grow older as i come back for christmas and then leave leave leave. one of the best summers of my life and im exhausted and the laundry never ends and i could sit on tiana's porch for days smoking, drinking, lounging, reading, making eyes at the neighborhood that was mine for such a short time.

ok, so when i said party tiiiiime in my previous entry i was kidding.

however, when i left the house on monday evening for a bar-hopping birthday party, i embarked on a two day journey that left me sleeping, bussing, riding taxis and partying in the same outfit with not much in my bag beyond a toothbrush, a phone and a wallet.

when i returned to my house today i felt like i had been gone for weeks and the shower and clean clothes were like beacons from some life i had left behind.

it is this life that makes my work schedule bearable and worth it.

miss you all.

so whenever i make it to my weekend, i kind of feel like i am coming up for air after being submerged for far too long. here are some points of interest that occured while i was underwater...

-i waitressed a thirteen top with seven seperate checks and got all of the meals and checks to the right people! wooooo!
-i did a wine bottle presentation for the first time and opened the bottle elegantly in front of the table.
-i carried a lobster dinner complete with flaming butter dish out to a table for the first time.
-i spilled milk down my front in front of a table. boooooo.
-Roger, the old man who comes to my coffee house everyday with his walker and drinks black coffee and smokes his Dorals outside came out to me. as in, he's gay! i was so surprised and delighted.
-i got to listen to multiple jokes about black people, asian people and fags from my fellow servers at barnaby's. makes me wonder about their blatant disregard of their own status as white trash.

anyway... three days off = PARTY TIIIIIIIME!
probably more like SLEEPING AND EATING TIIIIIIME! but you know, whatever.

whew! so last night when i got off work it meant i had succesfully completed 5 doubles in a row at two different new jobs. i think i did pretty well, considering. i had my first waitress breakdown on saturday night and had a little crying session in the server station at barnaby's. i just need to not let the asshole patrons get to me. most of the customers are great, it's just hard to not take the assholes' comments personally. so now i have a couple days off to relax and get errands done and sleep till 1 in the afternoon like i did today. ha.

fiona apple live.



amazing.

I LOVE MY NEW JOB AT THE COFFEESHOP.

im going to be so sad to leave it at the end of the summer. all is well enough at home. miss you all.

so today i went to work AGAIN at the place that i QUIT working on tuesday and basically the manager was treating my like im retarded and i had to work with tammy who doesnt do shit, talks on the phone, tells me what to do, then tells me i did it wrong and is younger than me but still calls me sweetie. so i decided that im not going to do those two doubles they signed me up for on saturday and sunday. thats right. they had me scheduled for 4 shifts over the course of saturday and sunday and im. not. going. to. do. them. i feel pretty bad about the poor hosts and hostesses that are going to have to cover for my absence during this weekend that's going to be insane. but not that bad cuz im going to be tanning on my deck with a cold drink and some good reading.

fuck red robin.

red robin tried to make me wear the fucking bird suit last night. and they are making me finish out my schedule through sunday. and they called to see if i wanted to pick up shifts. I QUIT! why won't the let me just QUIT? in other news, i am going to try to get saturday night off so i can go out the gay bar with some moho homo alums. except i think i have like 10 dollars in my bank account. guess it's time to rob that bank again...

ok, so the expensive steak restaurant job where i would be bartending and waitressing is a GO! i just have to take my server's test and then i begin training!!! yesssssssssssssss.

Hey Hey friends, so i've been working at red robin the past week or so and i've been hating it soooo much. so today i didnt have to go in so i spent the day on craigslist and in the car begging people to hire me and... i think i have a couple of really strong leads!

I met with the guy from lottie's lounge which is a bar/coffee shop/cafe and he was super nice and was basically ready to hire me on the spot. he said he would call in the next week to let me know about my training schedule. yessss.

and i went to this other place by the mall called barnaby's which is a steak and seafood restaurant and bar so i would be serving and bartending and he said he would absolutely be happy to hire me despite the fact that i have no serving or bartending experience. i just have to make it through the follow up interview tomorrow morning! yessssss.

so... please cross your fingers/pray/do a good luck dance for me so i don't have to sell my soul to the corporate nazis i am currently working for at red robin where i make no tips, get paid min. wage, have to mop the bathroom floor and kiss tons of ass all day and night. please.

things are looking promising.

miss you all.

can anyone explain to me how i can change the little comments section on my journal? some people have funny little names for comments on their pages.

alright, so last night i went to this big big birthday party up in the U-District at my friend Nina's house. I knew there would be helllla people from high school so i was kind of trying to look nice, y'know? Little mini high school reunion kind of thing- don't want to look like a shmuck. So anyway, i definately did not eat enough yesterday and ended up getting waaaaaaay drunker than i intended. So i'm chillin on a lawnchair, getting some air, chain smoking, you know just trying to sober up a little bit. So all of a sudden these two guys i went to high school with (who i'm not even really that good of friends with, we just see eachother at these kinds of functions now) walk up to where im sitting and look all happy to see me and say Hello when suddenly i
PROJECTILE VOMIT ALL OVER THE GRASS TO MY LEFT.

yep. i'm *that* cool. so then i went to a frat house with my two friends and ate their granola and then went to work this morning at 9. oh life.