some things never get old

well (paris)

Tumblr actually annoys the crap out of me, so that transition didn't work out so well. I have to get on this whole WordPress thing...

I wrote this over the summer, but never posted it. What better time than now?

~*~

"Tout d'un coup," as the French would say, fall has arrived in Paris. The skies are dredged in cloud, the sporadic showers forcing the street performers to nudge their electronic backup musicians under the cover of their case to protect wires and bundle up in nearby shelter until the rain comes to pass. If you thought the French looked grumpy before, you'd notice even more smiles have disappeared as the city resigns itself to another gray winter.

Though the whiff of piss is more than occasional in Paris (the rains replacing it with scents of drains), it still maintains all the illusions of elegance. Unlike Madrid--where the city's underbelly of dissatisfied youth is much more visible--the middle of Paris sees little roughness around its edges. Apart from the skateboarders in La Place de la Republique and the occasionally eccentrically dressed group of young people, you'd hardly notice anything at all. I had been hoping to catch a glimpse of parcour or at least a sign of the burgeoning French hip-hop culture, but apart from the occasional ACAB (all cops are bastards) scrawled here and there, it seems that all is well. The people on the street are getting money put in their cups. It would likely require a trip to the suburbs or a targeted journey to see more of the underside of things--perhaps partially attributable to Paris' enormous size and spread.

I wrote very little about this last trip to India--mostly because my companion, as a first-timer, wrote enough for the both of us. (I did write some travel advice which will be going in a new travel blog we're making, but that's for another time.) In stark contrast to the neat, buttoned-down dispositions of Paris and London, nothing is hidden from you in India--this is one reason I am fond of India, and another reason why so many people leave hating it. Seeing the Parisians' lips curl at the distasteful sight of the Roma family that lives on a mattress on my street corner makes me laugh a little inside and also makes me sad, in the same way that I get angry when I think about how the homeless are always shooed out of sight in the States. We are always so hurried to brush the evidence of our social problems under the rug...but if we can't see them, there will be little or no impetus to change them.

At any rate, it's for this reason that I'm not sure I could ever live at length in Paris or London. While both are beautiful cities, full of wonderful tastes and experiences, they lack a little of the chaos that I've come to need and love.

While I'm here, though, I'm going to eat all the financiers that I can fit in my stomach!

some thoughts

I have these moments sometimes--when I'm in the middle of doing something silly or menial--like doing the dishes, watching Samurai Jack, or systematically demolishing a pint of non-dairy ice cream--that I remember that I am alive, breathing, and could die at any moment.

Does that ever happen to you?

It's like a lot of the time I am lulled into a sort of complacency and am occasionally shaken back awake.

I've probably talked about this before (this blog is full of too much of my blathering to check and make sure right now, so I'll just pretend I haven't) but I thought about it again today.

It's amazing that anyone really gets through life at all--because when I have those moments, they sort of knock the wind out of me. You wonder how anyone makes plans for the future when there's those soul-crushing moments of realizing you exist, and this is it. This is your life.

And then I flip through something like this, and wonder how anyone manages to pick themselves up after something like this happens to them.

I guess what I'm trying to say is, though I often disparage the human race, we should get points just for getting through the day. It's easy to forget that everyone around you has a story, that everyone is fighting some kind of invisible war.

And that's just an individual thing. I mean, forget worrying about the earth potentially being destroyed or sea lions dying or women being oppressed or the heinous systemic racism that is rampant in our society. It's hard enough to just get up in the morning and go about the business of living your freaking life.

So give yourself a pat on the back for trying to wade through life's sea of obstacles.

Hooray!

this song...

and now what

What kind of friend am I? I mean first, I abandon you. And then I crawl back and apologize a full six months later? Apparently not a good one. You have terrible taste.



But seriously, I blinked and now I'm a month away from being 21. The age where you're supposed to get loaded and make mistakes and wake up with your underpants on your head on the Campus Loop shuttle going round, and round, and round. Except that I've done a rather unfortunate amount of things similar to that over the years, so I may end up chauffeuring some of my still-boozing friends around for them to drink. Such is the absurdity my life has become.





So what has happened to me as of late? Well first, I'm an anthropology major. What that really means is that I've switched to another thing that would typically have me living in a cardboard box to the same extent as my previous major, except for the fact that I actually like this one.

Also, except for the living in a cardboard box part.



Yup, this girl already has a fallback job lined up for when she graduates. In this bleak economic time, you should indeed be impressed. One that pays above the poverty line, and where I get to work in a shiny new building! It's all really quite exciting...except for the fact that I haven't said yes for sure yet.

This is for several reasons. One is that I have been given advice from numerous dependable people telling me not to sell myself short. Some think that my subconscious forethought to work my butt off through high school and college may actually be able to put me in a better job, with better pay.

The second reason is because well...what if I want to do something else? What if I want to work in a restaurant for a little while or study the contraband and errorist movements in Argentina or make tiny cute shit to sell on Etsy like "teeny the teacup"?

teeny comes in many other colors and is my new best friend.

The final reason is because of my boyfriend. There's that whole living together, it-depends-on-what-he's-doing thing.

Which is...well, scary.




Because even in those moments where you feel totally at ease, or absurd, or carefree (incidentally, right now he's sitting on the floor in his underwear eating tri-tip and making faces at me) you realize that being committed is scary.

Facing the possibility that you may in fact be in the room with the person you want to spend the rest of your life with.




I mean...am I ready? I ask myself this all the time. I don't have a job, I don't know what the hell I'm really going to do with my life. I fumble my way through every day and I have a ton of responsibility already...but somehow I don't feel ready for a lot of this stuff. I mean fuck, I'm twenty years old. At least for another 24 days, I'm not even old enough to buy my own freaking bottle of wine. Yet worrying about another entire person?! I don't even have my shit together yet.

But then sometimes, there are moments--like right now, when he's sitting on the floor, dirty and sweaty in his underwear, shoving down tri-tip and chugging my apple juice--when you just kind
of know. If it works, it works, right?





I may not be ready for a lot of things. But I think...I think I'm ready for this.

In four days, I will be here.

It's surreal, no?

100 things

I have challenged myself to whittle down my worldly possessions to a grand total of 100 things.

The first thing that most people ask is why. My answer has multiple parts.

If you’re anything like me, you haven’t thrown anything out since you were 16. This includes clothes; when I wear a grand total of about 25 things on a regular basis, it seems silly to have a whole closet full of clothes. Clothes that don’t fit, clothes with holes, clothes that have too many embarrassing memories of awkward years tied to them for me to ever wear again. But you still have them, and cling to them with a strange nostalgia that doesn’t make sense when you think about how awful high school was in the first place.

Also, if you’re anything like me, you have 10 old cellphones that you kept in case you lost your current one (which I do frequently). You also have a whole shelf full of random knick knacks, and find that people give you little cute glitzy boxes as gifts because, well…you need a place to put all that stuff. You have 25 scarves, 10 pairs of shoes with holes in the bottom, and sweatpants from water polo that are three sizes too big but that you still keep in case you ever manage to somehow catastrophically lose your other four pairs of sweatpants that actually fit.

And finally, if you’re anything like me, you haven’t stayed in one place for a period of longer than two years since you were seven years old. Most of the time, the accessory stuff just vanished, or got left behind. But then you got to college, and you finally had a semi-permanent home, and maybe you felt a little more settled. The problem is, your new home is about 1/4th the size of your fairly large room you had in your house in Los Angeles and you, once again, haven’t thrown anything out in eight years.

Too much stuff.

I know you’re out there, you people-like-me. We are many, and we hoard in a socially acceptable way. We cling to our stuff because we can’t or don’t want to cling to other things, or we like to think of our hoarding as a sort of virtue—why should I throw it away when I might someday in the far future need it? We cling because we have nothing else to cling to, or because in this time of huge transition and upheaval in our lives, our stuff is our last clinging to home, or to something we are slowly gravitating away from.

But no, my friends. Clinging is not the answer. Because while you might wear those sweatpants once a year, there are people who don’t necessarily have warm pants to wear at all. In this time of recession, people are clinging to their stuff even more—when your savings account is no longer growing we seem to gravitate towards other things to latch onto and obsess over as measures of our wealth, or what we “have”. When I started to slowly chip away and donate things a few weeks ago, the profuse thanks that I got for what I had given, because “hardly anyone has been donating lately,” made me realize how ridiculous my mentality had been. Not only are we constantly forgetting what we have, and how lucky we are for that—we are also constantly forgetting what other people need, and that sometimes their dire situations trump our need to clutch onto those fraying jeans.

Not enough room.

This is much more than a one-week endeavor. I have been working on donating a large donation of my things for the past three weeks. I have already donated more than half of my clothes. I have begun to list my possessions. Everything. From my skis to my French press, from my knife block to my fish food.

But what do you count? For my first stage, I don’t think it makes sense to count every single thing. Do I count my fish, or my cats? I’d like to think of them as friends rather than material possessions. When I count my fish tank, do I count my filter and heater and gravel and decorations, or do I count them as one thing? You can get pretty specific with this stuff if you want. Rather than end up with clothes and a fish tank, I decided to count them as one thing. I think I am also, rather than eliminating most of my clothes, attempt for reasonable numbers in each category. I might even need to count my chargers along with the things they charge. If I counted the individual photographs and posters I own I would already be out of luck. And keeping track of the things that I’ve left at either parent’s house is difficult.

I will do my best to document my parting with these worldly possessions that I have chosen to give up, in the hope that it will be freeing and insightful. Stay tuned.