Those shores you found

For the first time in my life, I'm excited about the summer. A couple of weeks ago, before it even officially began, my friend ordered a gin and tonic at a bar and I yelled, "Yeah! It's fucking summer!" which has become my default declaration but also has emerged as an excuse par excellence. Listened to "Girl Don't Tell Me" by the Beach Boys on repeat for two hours? It's fine, it's fucking summer. Danced in the park with a boy at sundown? You'd be going to hell for all of that PDA during any other time but summer. Wandered through a grocery store at 3 am to buy candy, TV dinners, and raspberry lemonade to mix with the vodka you will be drinking until you finally go to bed at 10? Oh-my-god-I-have-work-in-four-hours but you know what? Who cares, it's fucking summer. I've spent so much of my life (or all of it, I guess) being young but not feeling it, being told by every coffee shop Tom, Dick, and Harry that I have an "old soul," thinking that the lack of youth-feeling was just some indelible part of myself, and now I feel like I'm being swept down a river while sitting in an inner tube. It's odd and bumpy and a little frightening but I'm enjoying the hell out of myself.

I've been hanging out on the Westside lately (from whence I came) and I'm starting to appreciate it again. I'd been avoiding it, keeping my exploits east of La Cienega, and buying into the same bullshit that I fought against for so long, but recently a funny thing happened: in the middle of declaring how much I hate West Los Angeles I realized that that isn't exactly true. It's complicated. The Westside is a shitty place, sure, with its yoga moms and bars full of uninteresting people in their early 30s wearing bad clothes (is the term "yuppie" still relevant?) and middle schoolers being loud and all up in the way when I'm just trying to get a fucking $7 smoothie and get out of here without getting a headache, okay, but in its shittiness, beyond the boredom that washes over me when I spend too much time there, there's a charm there that I can't find in the Valley or other parts of L.A. officially recognized as "lame." It could just be that I have a soft spot for the Westside because it's where I grew up, that there's no charm, no secrets, no beauty in boredom, or whatever, but I don't completely buy that, either.

Anyway I just read several pages of U.S. suicide statistics which means that I am officially ready for bed, deuces

The world narrowed to a point

Reading William Carlos Williams' poetry because I'm drunk and what else am I supposed to do? Actually now that I think of it, I should be doing other things.

"...be damned to you. I'm going elsewhere."

Oh quickly disappearing photograph in my more slowly disappearing hand

A good representation of me skipping over every Rilke poem about childhood

The drunken boat

This week has gotten off to a odd start - thinking Mondays are Thursdays and Tuesdays are Sundays, writing reviews for a garage rock 'zine, ocean night vistas, Fat Tire, half-eaten Taco Bell burritos, talks about not-so-secret desires, reading about pre-WWI Austria-Hungary, phone calls from lonely friends, eating at Coldstone's even though their ice cream makes me feel like I'm going to have a heart attack, getting taught a lesson by an angry arcade parking lot attendant, witnessing road head, drinking in the park, hanging out with people I haven't seen since middle school, all L.A. Noire everything, attempting to smoke a cigar, stumble bummin', cab rides across the city, buying hair spray and cigarettes in the lobby of the Beverly Hills Plaza, hotel robes, early morning Italian food, trying to convince Reid to walk to the 76 gas station at 4 in the morning, instant coffee, forever bemoaning the lack of hair product, schemin' cab drivers, cottage potatoes at Nick's, thinking "I need a fucking nap," a lot. I feel like I am in transition, but from what to what?

I'm smoking a Camel Light and thinking about wedge heels and The Cultural Studies Reader. The other day at a coffee shop a man asked me what I thought of it (I mean, isn't it basically a textbook?) and wrote down the title. A few minutes later, another man insisted that I show my handwriting to a table full of people, including the owner of the cafe. Being on display is such an awkward thing for me. When I was a child, I was always on display, reciting poetry, playing the violin for my parent's friends, showing someone a story I wrote, a comic I drew, a paper I spent hours on. In a way, it was fine. I was comfortable with it, but I didn't seek the attention and was happier without it. Now, when showing something I've done, I am bashful, confused, and slightly embarrassed. There's a fine line between being proud of what one produces and does and being a pompous ass about it, and I'm terrified of crossing into asshole territory.

Anyway, I'm offended:

Nina Simone covering "Rich Girl" by Hall & Oates

Frank O'Hara, "To The Harbormaster"

I wanted to be sure to reach you;
though my ship was on the way it got caught
in some moorings. I am always tying up
and then deciding to depart. In storms and
at sunset, with the metallic coils of the tide
around my fathomless arms, I am unable
to understand the forms of my vanity
or I am hard alee with my Polish rudder
in my hand and the sun sinking. To
you I offer my hull and the tattered cordage
of my will. The terrible channels where
the wind drives me against the brown lips
of the reeds are not all behind me. Yet
I trust the sanity of my vessel; and
if it sinks, it may well be in answer
to the reasoning of the eternal voices,
the waves which have kept me from reaching you.