Bloomability

plasticroses — Sun, 27 Feb 2011 21:44:32 +0000

Stop me if you’ve heard this one. College student panics about her future. Half her life she spends wondering what she’s going to eat next, the other half about whether she got into grad school. And whether she wants to go to grad school. And how important human interaction is. And if it would be okay if she eloped and moved to Japan.

She knows she already said two halves. She’s not a math person.

plasticroses — Tue, 15 Feb 2011 06:33:22 +0000

This is what it sounds like when I think out loud. Everything happens for a reason, my mother says, which makes me want to shout THAT’S SO YOU DON’T HAVE TO FIX ANYTHING ON YOUR OWN or feel crappy about not getting that job or a hurricane destroying your house or your butt falling off

and she says, you know I’m right, and I say how could that be right, mother? Do you remember that shoe you had? The black flip flop, with the white stripe on the side, that you kept for a year, 12 straight months, hoping the other one would show up? Do you remember the day you threw it out? And how the other one showed up a week later? “What does it mean?” you kept asking. Nothing.

Maybe we should all keep the half lost item. I have a box full of earrings that have no partner. Some of them I can’t bear to part with, and the rest have a place to stay, so it seems cruel to kick them down the chute. Still purposeless. I’ll never find their match. Unless I threw them all out today. Then that other box that exists out there, with all their little friends, will show up on my doorstep.

We can’t keep everything though. We have to let go. If everything happened for a reason, wouldn’t it feel like we weren’t even in control of our lives? But then something brutally coincidental might happen that makes you think it might be true. And where do you go from there?

My father texted me today to say Happy Valentine’s Day. He loves me every day, he wrote, not just today. I read this exquisite quote, that I can’t remember exactly, but it was something like, “I never want human experience to feel alien.” Let’s immerse ourselves in this experience. Just because something happens that you don’t know how to deal with, doesn’t mean it’s abnormal. What we feel is everything. We’re all pitifully flawed humans. Isn’t that something? Maybe my dad isn’t perfect (for example, it’s been about four years since we’ve been in touch). But how can he be?

I wouldn’t want to live in a world where everything happened for a reason. I prefer this one, where we’re constantly plunged into situations that will one day be familiar, but will never fully make sense. Such randomness is life. Is there anything better than that?

plasticroses — Sat, 12 Feb 2011 20:37:12 +0000

A watched pot has to boil

plasticroses — Tue, 08 Feb 2011 04:53:19 +0000

A computer at work

The bottom left corner

Roll with what you’re given? Or get up and quit?

plasticroses — Fri, 21 Jan 2011 18:31:51 +0000

plasticroses — Thu, 06 Jan 2011 04:06:06 +0000

Growing up, my family never turned off the tv. It wasn’t until I moved out that I learned the bliss of silence. Do you know what it’s like to just exist in a room? What it’s like to eat while nothing else is happening? To focus on your food or on your own thoughts … I don’t remember anymore what that’s like. I turned to music pretty quickly, and don’t have silence anymore. I still hate television though. I can’t stand watching it with other people when we could be doing anything else. There are shows that I’ll watch on my laptop, but I always lose interest eventually. My roommate and I have a tv that sits in the middle of our living room, gathering dust. I don’t know what’s wrong with us.

Back at my mom’s house for winter break, the television is always on again. Last night, it wouldn’t turn on. We ate dinner in this really nice way, where we talked about our day and appreciated each other. Afterwards, my brother and I did a puzzle while my mother did whatever mothers do on the computer and my stepdad just went to bed. I had dared him to go a week without the television and he countered with me spending a week off my laptop, to which I agreed to do, but then he backed down. I probably couldn’t have done it anyway, and I would have cheated because he doesn’t know what my phone can do.

There’s all this talk about television and music and computers blocking us from having to interact with each other, creating artificial emotions or at least some kind of superficial filters. Maybe it’s right. Or maybe we need all of this to have something to do. I wonder what we would do, though, if we didn’t have it? There haven’t been any world wars since the internet was invented. Just saying.

I guess there haven’t exactly been any Gandhi’s either. I guess those are extreme irrelevant examples. I think we’re doing okay. Maybe I think that just because I’ll never be able to give up my laptop. What a weird world we live in.

plasticroses — Wed, 05 Jan 2011 00:50:04 +0000

My mom once threatened to buy sunglasses instead of groceries for the week. I was in high school, and I didn’t think it was particularly funny, but she thought it would make a good story. She didn’t buy the glasses, but I still remember it.

When I hear parts of songs but not the other part, it makes me feel a little anxious. I don’t mean like getting the end of the radio cut, I mean literally half, like the instruments without the lyrics. Listening to mashups is the worst. I can usually force myself to get over it pretty fast, but for a good second or two I feel like I’m waiting for the other shoe to drop.

I cleaned my car out. I’m pretty sure I hadn’t cleaned it since high school, and I finally got rid of my work apron and my walkman. I didn’t really get rid of them. They’re in my closet. I had a long drawn out fight about whether or not to throw them away. Lisa, why do you need this clutter in your life? Lisa, how can you throw away such cherished memories? I’m still mad at myself.

Another internship, another dollar, another round of classes. Cherry coke. Fireworks.

plasticroses — Mon, 27 Dec 2010 04:13:40 +0000

As of yesterday, I’ve decided to be unbearably nice to my brother. To be fair, he was at work all day so I haven’t had the opportunity to really put it into effect, but I did make him waffles this morning. He was appreciative?

We bought this for my brother for Christmas (when I say we, it was my mom and stepdad). It’s an RC car. They’re all the rage lately, my stepdad has a gas powered one and my grandfather got my grandma one for Christmas (word’s still out on her appreciation). It’s fun for sure. How could it not be? It’s loaded with realism! Now that we can package realism, we won’t need to do anything else really. Buy some experience, unwrap a little authenticity. See the Mona Lisa, climb Mount Everest, all in a little box.

He uses the truck to wear his dog out. Every picture I take of his dog looks like this:

His name is Dexter

The brother with the waffles and the brother with the dog is two different brothers.

plasticroses — Sat, 25 Dec 2010 23:36:00 +0000

Albert Einstein, a genius who cheated on his wife, had this to say when a group of children asked him for a Christmas message: “Learn to be happy through the good fortunes and joys of your friends and not through senseless quarrels. If you allow these natural feelings to blossom within you, your every burden will seem lighter or more bearable to you, you will find your own way through patience, and you will spread joy everywhere.”

My family opens presents on Christmas Eve. It’s nice. Today my brother had to work and my other brother spent the day with his wife’s family. I went with my mom and step dad to see the Little Fockers and afterwards we drove around trying to find an open grocery store so we could buy some waffle mix to make waffles with my new waffle iron. I want chocolate chips in my waffles. My stepdad doesn’t. My mom is pretty sure we can compromise somehow. We also needed cranberry juice to mix with vodka.

We found one. Afterwards while driving home we went by the casino. They suddenly wanted food, there’s a Fatburger inside. Of course it was open. I had never had Fatburger, and I hadn’t brought my wallet anyway (You can’t set foot in casinos here if you’re not 21, even if you’re just getting Fatburger). They went while I waited in the parking lot, and once they came back we ate it right there in the car with the windows rolled down.

Now we’re home watching some 80s movie. Merry Christmas!

plasticroses — Wed, 22 Dec 2010 23:52:51 +0000

Driving home alone at two in the morning, you start to feel like you’re the only person in the world. But you know you’re not. Because you keep following the rules of the road. Either you don’t want to get caught or you don’t want to suddenly find out you’re not alone in a terrible way.

I started to watch Up because you assholes said it was soo good, but I had to turn it off because I was getting tears all over my Christmas presents. Maybe I’ll finish it some other time.

For now I’ll finish wrapping these presents. I made some cookies, too, where I improvised some ingredients. I hope my family likes them. I feel like I can’t judge correctly if they’re good when I made them. I like everything I make. It was a mix, but I put in some alcohol (Carolans) and some cornstarch and a little flour, because I forgot to leave out the egg white.

I’m now watching a commercial where people need cash now so they’re singing an opera about it on the bus. Commercials are a little bewildering. I think I’ll just turn off the television.