30 July

I just watched Fiddler On The Roof and I am SO excited that I don't know what to do with myself!! I think I'm going to try out for Tzeidel. At the moment. We'll see if that changes with time.

It could either be wonderful, or suck, mainly depending on who the tailor is. I got lucky last year, marrying Michael, he's remarkably easy to be married to. Some people though? Not so much.

hahaha.... facebook stalkers are the bomb

Jay
i love you
!
19:29
Alyssa
whyyyyyy is everyone saying that to me lately!!!!!!

27 July

I realized today that I am a lot like my mother. Her life exists in an aura of vague, extreme, slightly impudent decisions; a kind of dream punctuated by important moments which usually come about completely by accident, often in take-that! type of measures which successfully alter her destiny.

Kind of like how when my father wouldn't let her have a puppy, she thought to herself, Fine! Instead I'll have a baby.

top five best discovered books of 2009

I'm a book junkie. So these are the best of the best that I've read this summer:

1. Everything Is Illuminated by Jonathan Safran Foer. This book was the beginner of a whole new sector of my literary existance.... I had/ have never read anything even remotely similar to this genius. I love the charming mix-ups of his Ukranian character's idioms, the cultural significance, the Holocaust themes, the Jewishness, the universal themes, the brashness, the language, the philosophy.... Good book. Read it.

2. The Unbearable Lightness of Being by Milan Kundera. After Jonathan Safran Foer's first entry into the literary world conditioned me in the philosophical eroticism of modern literature, I was a little less shocked at the explicitness of Kundera's work. Quite frankly, this is one of those books that I remember almost nothing about, partially from a heavy shock at the novelty of it, yet I left it feeling pleasantly hazy. Other good works of Kundera's that I discovered this summer are: Laughable Loves, Life Is Elsewhere, The Book of Laughter and Forgetting, and Farewell Waltz. I'm not quite sure why I keep reading these books, because they are either completely beneath me or completely over my head, but I always leave in that pleasant dream-haze caused by partically incomprehensible literature.

3. The Beautiful And Damned by F. Scott Fitzgerald. I read This Side of Paradise last summer and finished enchanted by the beautiful world that Fitzgerald presented, but also slightly muddled as to what happened within the book itself. This book afforded no such confusion. It's beautiful, charming and tragic--this one goes on to the list of my favorite books of all time.

4. Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close by Jonathan Safran Foer. Although this one could be umbrella'd under the other work by it's ostentatious author, it is briliant enough to have a category of its own. Following a similar style exhibited in his first book, Foer (quite successfully, I think) explores the mind of a child who has lost one of his idols. This is a book of childhood, of tragedy, and of forgiving. And it is my favorite novel of all time.

5. Fallen Skies by Phillippa Greggory. Greggory is a long-time favorite author, a queen of historical fiction. This is my first diversion in her books from the English courts into the (fabulous!) world of 1920's American aristocracy. Quite in line with my obsession with Henry VIII-style history, however, I received today in the mail my very own copy of The Other Queen, Greggory's newest novel, an exposee on Mary, Queen of Scots. Other notable books by Greggory include The Queen's Fool, The Virgin's Lover, The Other Boleyn Girl, The Boleyn Inheritance, and The Constant Princess.

Well, there you go. Now go sail through these marvelous seas on your own. :)

War is

nothing more than
self-severed symbiosis. one small boy
parades about as a nobleman saddled
with stones, leading virgins
through hay fields to stomp
useless their voice boxes.
war, the great silencer of whiteness.

in the alleys desirable women fall to pieces
like an overbaked tilapia. slices of silt slick bone
emerging from the spilt white fat of a thigh.
if there is truth, indeed there is not love;

for if there is a truth, it lies in death.

Sh/Sh

Shyness and shame are invariably twins: shyness the more beautiful, but also the weaker; for shame can exist without shyness, but shyness lives always in shame.

26 July

But I
Have tamed
Myself
I have stomped
On the throat
Of my own song
-Vladimir Mayakovsky

I am going to crucify the romanticism of my frivolity. I am going to make some damn decisions. This is the means by which I am going to sanctify myself; in which I will profit the world. In my one last act of poetic inanity I shall sacrifice myself for the benefit of humanity. (For it is only in these hazy dream-states of exhaustion that I can make definite decisions, and I have made my own decision. I have tamed myself. I have stomped on the throat of my own song.)

New Obsession 2

ELIZABETH & THE CATAPULT

Remember Sally, the super-hip high school sophomore that accidentally introduced me to Marina & The Diamonds? Well, she was so enthused with the mix-tapes I've been burning her big sister that she decided impress my sophistic musical tastes by burning me a mix-tape of her own.

I completely encourange mixtapes as a way of sucking up to your elders. By way of this trick I re-discovered some old-school Ingrid Michaelson and She & Him, but also I was introduced to the musical carnival known as Elizabeth & The Catapult. When my mother first heard "Perfectly Perfect" pop up on the iPod adapter in my car, she said, "Good Lord, Alyssa, this song is your embodiment." E&C's debut album Taller Children is filled with bubbly piano trills and guitar riffs, schmoozing from the poppy cultural criticism of the title track to the folksy lamentation of Complimentary Me.

Elizabeth Ziman, the Catapult's front(wo)man, is a crooner reminiscent of Jenny Lewis & early Ingrid Michaelson (isn't everyone?), but manages to infuse her style with an effervescent sort of smoothness that travels quickly from jazzily apathetic to heavily lamentive to effervescent pop and back again. But don't take my word for it! Pick a couple from Lizzie's peach tree yourself:

Perfectly Perfect (Elizabeth & The Catapult):
https://files.getdropbox.com/u/949103/13%20Perfectly%20Perfect.mp3

Race You (Elizabeth & The Catapult):
https://files.getdropbox.com/u/949103/05-race-you.mp3

Momma's Boy (Elizabeth & The Catapult):
https://files.getdropbox.com/u/949103/Mommas%20Boy.mp3

Taller Children (Elizabeth & The Catapult):
https://files.getdropbox.com/u/949103/Elizabeth%20%26%20The%20Catapult%20-%20Taller%20Children.mp3

Complimentary Me (Elizabeth & The Catapult):
https://files.getdropbox.com/u/949103/10-complimentary-me.mp3

New Obsession 1

MARINA & THE DIAMONDS

So, the other day Sally, my friend's super-hip little sister, pulled up this quirky little woman at left on Youtube to show me how "bizzare, and weirdly entertaining" one of her music videos was. That video happened to be a song off her upcoming EP called I Am Not A Robot. I soon discovered that Sally, America, World, that song is very good.

Marina & The Diamonds is comprised of Marina Diamantes. (No, there are no Supremes-style "Diamonds" kicking up their legs in the backgrounds. Marina refers to her fans as "diamonds", legitimate companions in her music-making experience.) Marina's voice is a strange and occasionally ephemeral mixture of Ingrid Michaelson-like texture and the yodel-esque sliding usually attributed to Joanna Newsom and Tiny Tim.

So, don't write her off as another indie eccentric. In fact, test drive a few of her songs for yourself:

I Am Not A Robot (Marina & The Diamonds)

http://www.zshare.net/audio/622714898b7af18b/

Numb (Marina & The Diamonds)

http://www.tashed.com/MP3/07.09/Marina%20%26%20The%20Diamonds-Numb.mp3

20 july

just me & mum in the house for a couple of days. divine!

heart attack scare with my grandmother today-- spent all day in the ER reading The Beautiful & Damned and playing wurdle on my iPod. better now.

i think that sums me up today. "better now". me and mee mee. better now.

humans always help to reattach me to humanity.
(humans, and applebee's boneless buffalo wings)

side note:

to add insult to injury i'm now just another emotional alone philosophically developing teenager. all the cliche's seem so cheap when others say it, but they're real, or else they wouldn't be prevelant enough to be cliche's; they seem so provoking when they actually happen to you.

15 july

Is it weird how the joyful things evaporate into meaninglessness when your advocates desert you? Yesterday I got my AP english exam score in the mail, that college course I challenged back in February, and I got a 5 (that's a perfect score! what the heck!); I did an ecstatic dance around the garage and called everyone I knew and.... my father was happy! I made him happy because I saved him the money of three to six semesters of college English. And he loved me! He loved me until I forgot to turn off the fax machine and then my AP scores went up in smoke. I tipped the balance of Justification a little off the floor for a few hours, but then it came crashing back down on the side of my injustifiability. Why does it matter to me so much? Why do I care?

Because he's my father. And even though I will never be able to please him for more than a few hours, every single bloody bit of my body wants to please him because he is my father, and he is supposed to be my advocate. But he will never be my advocate. He will always be the one destroying me. I cannot forever self-advocate. What will I do? Everyone wants to be the hero, to be the advocate for the fatherless. But who would care to be my advocate?

I'm tired of re-educating myself. I feel like communist Russia. But what is the other option-- dismantle myself and give in to a constant bitter hatred toward the world? What use is that to anyone? And even if I'm continuing on my re-education mantra of "love over usefulness", what good does that do anyone? I love the world; I love everything in it and the constant irascible joy of uncovering bits of it. I'm naturally bubbling over with joy-- ergo, when I feel like a ragged empty metal can, like a rotting felled tree, some Great Depleting Force is at fault. I need to seperate myself from this man. That is the only way I can ever recompose myself, not constantly fighting and fighting and always losing ground. Two weeks in Europe with buoyant teenagers did the trick, I ran at, what, 70% joy rather than 30%? What will a lifetime away from my joy-leech do? But I'm tired of looking forward to that. If one is constantly looking forward the present disappears into a blur, and isn't life made up of constant single Presents?

Here it is, and this is all there is: I'm tired. I need an advocate. I'm running out of buoyancy.

14 july

justify yourself; that is the heartbeat of this house. this house, for no matter what any plaques say this is not my home, that I haven't found yet, or maybe that's just because it's inside of me, behind my eyes. justify yourself justify yourself justify yourself
justify
just ify
just die!,
dearie
dear? is that love? if this is love then love is hell, and i want zero part of love or hell.

i build and build and reconstruct myself for weeks and I AM FINE and it takes one fist for me to be shit again to pulp from Another New Development! into shit again. and shit is the worst, because it is not even nothing; how infinately preferable it would be to be nothing, for nothing need not be justified, nothing does not crave from a deficiency, does not collapse into nothing for nothing has nothing to lose, it is nothing; how infinately preferable is Nothing to something unjustifiable?

13 July

I'm remembering things all the time now, realizing and remembering. It's like I'm in this semi-comatose state and everything around me, every physical bit and every memory, is kind of hidden behind this haze. I am remembering: things that I have forgiven but I cannot forget. All those little unvindicated wrongs that alone could be dismissed as an out-of-character transgression, but together form one great unforgivable glob of Sin like a pallet of meat that won't pass. I had forgotten. But I can not have forgiven.

I forgot about Bella, the cat we found under Meemee's house when I was ten, the first animal that I really came to love. I would sit outside with the kittens until they became more and more desensitized to my presence, and eventually would come and knead up against my knees, and I would giggle as their mother Maiowed in alarm. There was Boots, Bella, Zoe and Tiger. Boots and Zoe disappeared one day into the woods after falling from the utility room roof; Tiger bolted when at the sale of my grandmother's house we attempted to cage her and give her to Mum's cousin Melanie. But Bella was my cat, in love with me and with nobody else. No one else could touch her. Quite truthfully I was more fond of that cat than I am of my father. And in some ironical show of his apathetic selfishness, I cried and pleaded for her not to be given away, and he laughed at me. He isn't fond of cats.

And of course he promised that we could go visit her (in Dunlap?) as often as I liked but of course that isn't fair to either me or the new parents, like open adoption. So he smiled his selfish set grimace and I haven't since then seen my Bella. (How obsessed was I with that cat? Ask anyone who was my friend at the time! And he knew! After every animal he has never had to bother with and I have taken care of, he had to tanker her away!) Of course we haven't ever "visited" her; that's an inconvenience he would never bother with once the deal is done and he thinks I've been appeased. She stuck her paw out at me as the rear bumper of Melanie's truck backed away, and she knew and I knew that we would never see each other again; the only animal I loved and the only thing she knew, and I cried till my face was sopping and my father set his face into an inconvenienced grimace. Yes, father, sadness is inconvenient; grief is inconvenient; children are inconventient. Haven't you learned that? How have you not learned that sacrifice is love?

That was the final bang, the crucifixion of all my illusions about my father. I was twelve years old. That was the first time he had ever seen me cry, and I swear to God it will be the last.

1 July

I have realized that I have lived my life like one big "Excuse Me!". Excuse Me-- Pardon my existance! I was never meant to be alive and so will continue that trend by apologizing for every square of air that I breathe. Life is an unpardonable sin, a grief that no "excuse me!" can remedy. So if this be sin, let sin be served! I refuse to be an apology. I am tired of being an appendage. Life needs no justification, it simply is. And I am. There is no possible fault in existance, even in the absence of love. If one must live as an exclamation-- for I think it rather more exciting to exist as an exclamation than as a mere statement-- what is my exclamation? I refuse to be Excuse-Me! any longer. I know many people who are Damn!'s, or Oh!-- is Oh! really so bad? Perhaps it is preferable to most; it attempts to betray a sort of constant surprise (which could be equally pleasant or terrifying) and a vaguely Victorian sort of effimininity-- Alas! seems rather despondant, does it not?, and both Yes! and No! are equally unsatisfactory. Perhaps-- perhaps I shall attempt to be a Hallelujah!.



It is an extremely liberating thing to realize that one does not have to be cute or sexy or even remotely attractive. One can be exactly whatever one likes (of course this is a stale concept, and as equally bonding as slavery). I've only just realized the opposite of "you can be anything!"-- and that is, you can also be nothing. Of course in the long run I do not want to be nothing, I want to be parts of both Everything and Nothing. One does not have to be cute or sexy or even remotely attractive. Equal parts Nothing and Everything, solids supported by spaces-- is this not humanity? Is this not Life?