Sonntag, September 30
Samstag, September 29
Donnerstag, September 27
the strand on a thursday
Sometimes you might sit in a cafe trying really hard to read Milton for an hour or two and start to get sad because the people you are staring at outside the window are not staring back at you. You might abandon the reading attempt and write anxiously in your notebook while tapping your foot. Outside it could very well be cloudy and you'll zip up your jacket and try to look like you're in a hurry, judging your self worth by whether or not you can keep up with the late-twenties businessman on the sidewalk next to you. You might think about all of these things and about what it means that you are thinking them and wonder if a metalife is real life, and wonder what everyone else occupies their mind with while they are eating lunch alone on a cloudy day. Milton, maybe.
But soon enough you'll probably see someone you know at a crosswalk and stop to talk about weekend plans, and the sun will come out for a few minutes and you'll have to squint to see westminster while the wind blows your hair all in your face. You will put some radiohead on your iPod, pretending that it just makes so much morse sense in england, and realize that it may be just a baby life, but you do actually have a life here, and think to yourself that maybe that could possibly be OK.
But soon enough you'll probably see someone you know at a crosswalk and stop to talk about weekend plans, and the sun will come out for a few minutes and you'll have to squint to see westminster while the wind blows your hair all in your face. You will put some radiohead on your iPod, pretending that it just makes so much morse sense in england, and realize that it may be just a baby life, but you do actually have a life here, and think to yourself that maybe that could possibly be OK.
Sonntag, September 23
Homesick doesn't make any sense. I can't really figure out why a person shouldn't be just as happy in one place as another, especially if they are able to keep in close contact with their friends and family. But there's just something about that physical distance that bothers you, and I guess there's no convincing yourself it doesn't exist. It's not that you miss the place that is home, or even the people. You do miss the people, but that's not homesickness. Homesickness is something else that is simultaneously completely illogical and completely real.
I am so predictable. I know that if I spend the evening alone I will become lonely and sad, so I'm not surprised by it. But understanding your emotions doesn't really do anything to change the emotions themselves. If anything, it just adds this whole meta level to life which is really annoying, like a song stuck in your head.
Tomorrow I will start my classes and while I know that it will be really refreshing to have something to occupy my mind all the time, I am not feeling very self-confident about my intelligence and I am afriad that I will crash and burn this semester. So far I have not felt locked in to anything here. I have been putting off doing anything that feels permanent, such as buying pots and pans, opening a bank account, or doing my laundry. I don't know how to make myself commit to this experience. I have just been floating along in a haze and living in the moment. It's been a nice change from my usual self but it worries me, and I am afraid I will just keep on acting irresponsible and flighty and never really settle down. I need to CTFO really badly right now, but the idea of doing it makes me feel anything but chill.
I'm always in love.
I am so predictable. I know that if I spend the evening alone I will become lonely and sad, so I'm not surprised by it. But understanding your emotions doesn't really do anything to change the emotions themselves. If anything, it just adds this whole meta level to life which is really annoying, like a song stuck in your head.
Tomorrow I will start my classes and while I know that it will be really refreshing to have something to occupy my mind all the time, I am not feeling very self-confident about my intelligence and I am afriad that I will crash and burn this semester. So far I have not felt locked in to anything here. I have been putting off doing anything that feels permanent, such as buying pots and pans, opening a bank account, or doing my laundry. I don't know how to make myself commit to this experience. I have just been floating along in a haze and living in the moment. It's been a nice change from my usual self but it worries me, and I am afraid I will just keep on acting irresponsible and flighty and never really settle down. I need to CTFO really badly right now, but the idea of doing it makes me feel anything but chill.
I'm always in love.
Freitag, September 7
News
hey guys, I decided to have a seperate blog for traveling, so that I can tell more people about it and you know, keep it more impersonal. And about traveling. Anyway, the url is: http://pseudointellectualtravels.blogspot.com/
how funny am I? I also started a videoblog, the quality of which sucks at the moment, but will improve, and you can see it on the travel blog or on youtube, and my username on youtube is ohmandyyyy if you wanna be friends/stalk me.
over and out,
Mandy
how funny am I? I also started a videoblog, the quality of which sucks at the moment, but will improve, and you can see it on the travel blog or on youtube, and my username on youtube is ohmandyyyy if you wanna be friends/stalk me.
over and out,
Mandy
Mittwoch, September 5
Yesterday was a very dark, hot, day. Days that are both hot and dark are very rare, and thank goodness, because they really take it out of you. Every activity is torture. Your seatbelt burns you, your jeans stick to your legs, stores' air conditioners can't keep up with the constant flow of open doors and hot bodies, eating even the smallest meal makes you feel sick and bloated. The clouds and the possibility of rain make you want to curl up in bed with a book, but it's much too hot for covers and much to hot for concentration on anything. You are left alone with your hot, dark thoughts. You find out about a form you haven't filled out and your whole world comes crashing down around you. nothing can be done about this form. You will never find the stength inside you to fill it out. You will not make it past this day. You wallow in self pity, fear, and heartburn (I forgot to mention you visited a Mexican restaraunt earlier in the day). At least I did.
I have good days and bad days, when it comes to this whole moving thing. Yesterday, not so good. Today, better. Maybe it was the fact that the temperature dropped 10 degrees, the humidity seemed back to normal, at least relative to the last week, and the clouds were gone. It also could have been the trip to H&M, or the Peppers. I tried huevos rancheros for the first time because I realized I had never tried it. They serve it all day! It was great. Also, my new camera came in the mail! It's beautiful. I have yet to give it a real trial run, but the pictures I took in my dark room look pretty good. I think I am going to try and make a video blog about the next few days, so keep an eye out for that. I am still trying to figure out iMovie though, so it might not happen.
I have to keep telling myself that this is what I want to do. In times like these I find that it's better to ignore your emotions and follow your head. Hopefully this approach will not end in failure.
I have good days and bad days, when it comes to this whole moving thing. Yesterday, not so good. Today, better. Maybe it was the fact that the temperature dropped 10 degrees, the humidity seemed back to normal, at least relative to the last week, and the clouds were gone. It also could have been the trip to H&M, or the Peppers. I tried huevos rancheros for the first time because I realized I had never tried it. They serve it all day! It was great. Also, my new camera came in the mail! It's beautiful. I have yet to give it a real trial run, but the pictures I took in my dark room look pretty good. I think I am going to try and make a video blog about the next few days, so keep an eye out for that. I am still trying to figure out iMovie though, so it might not happen.
I have to keep telling myself that this is what I want to do. In times like these I find that it's better to ignore your emotions and follow your head. Hopefully this approach will not end in failure.
Montag, September 3
dear everyone,
You know how you can have multiple contributers to blogs on this thing? I think it would be really fun if we could all have this joint blog, where anyone could write in it who feels like it, or upload photos and videos and art, and anyone could change the layout or add to the links or change the title or whatever whenever they want. It would be like an exclusive wiki, I guess. Wouldn't that be cool? Does anyone else think that would be cool?
Samstag, September 1
Today was an incredibly unproductive day, as usual, but I did learn that what you do is way less important then who you do it with. I am perfectly content with sitting outside a closed starbucks with Josh and Santee for long periods of time without getting bored, because we never run out of things to talk about. With other people, we could go to five different places and be bored out of our minds at each of them. I don't really understand why conversation comes so easily between some people and not between others. It seems to me that certain combinations just click for some reason. Weird.
The other day my friend Thomas asked me if I had been writing much lately, and I realized that I hadn't at all. He, of course, had, so I felt pretty uncool about it, and since then I have been thinking about why I am so apathetic and unproductive in the summer months. I have come to the conclusion that I need school to kind of turn my brain on. When I am in school I am constantly thinking over new ideas and taking in new information, and I guess the more that goes in, the more comes out. When I have free time my mind just kind of sits there, and it's really hard to get it moving by pure force. I could write, but nothing interesting would come out. I don't know how I feel about this. What will become of me once I graduate? Yikes.
The other day my friend Thomas asked me if I had been writing much lately, and I realized that I hadn't at all. He, of course, had, so I felt pretty uncool about it, and since then I have been thinking about why I am so apathetic and unproductive in the summer months. I have come to the conclusion that I need school to kind of turn my brain on. When I am in school I am constantly thinking over new ideas and taking in new information, and I guess the more that goes in, the more comes out. When I have free time my mind just kind of sits there, and it's really hard to get it moving by pure force. I could write, but nothing interesting would come out. I don't know how I feel about this. What will become of me once I graduate? Yikes.
Freitag, August 31
Sometimes I get really scared about going away and I tell myself that it's not that big of a deal and that people do this kind of thing all the time, but I don't think that's actually true. Most people never actually go out on their own. A lot of people have never been somewhere where they don't know anybody. A lot of people have never lived by themselves, even for a few months. Thinking about this makes me feel really scared, obviously, because nobody likes to be alone. But I also feel incredibly lucky that I happen to have this (insert positive but not cliche noun here) that not many other people have. Mainly because, how can you ever become yourself if you're never truly alone? You need to be far away from people so that you have space to get bigger, I think. And everybody knows that growing is painful, so I am trying not to worry too much about it.
"Therefore, dear Sir, love your solitude and try to sing out with the pain it causes you. For those who are near you are far away, you write, and this shows that the space around you is beginning ot grow vast. And if what is near you is far away, then your vastness is already among the stars and is very great." -Rilke
"Therefore, dear Sir, love your solitude and try to sing out with the pain it causes you. For those who are near you are far away, you write, and this shows that the space around you is beginning ot grow vast. And if what is near you is far away, then your vastness is already among the stars and is very great." -Rilke
No wonder he hung out with poor people so much
Tonight Josh Santee and I were talking about some shirt on threadless that depicts Jesus on a hanglider and says "What wouldn't Jesus do?" Naturally we started trying to think of things that Jesus wouldn't want to do, and at first it seemed like the list wouldn't be very long. I brought up the example of if we were to ask Jesus if he'd like to go get some Taco Bell. "He would probably be down for that," I said. But then it occured to us that Taco Bell most likely exploits immigrants or uses meat from animals who are treated very badly. After that we realized that most of the things that we middle-class Americans do probably indirectly hurt someone, somehwere. Even just driving around hurts the environment and therefore all of mankind. Thus, in today's world, Jesus would be pretty hard pressed to think of something he could do that isn't somehow sinful, besides maybe sitting around in the mountains alone reading the bible, which I think is acually worse, with all this bad stuff in the world that needs fixing. In short, as Josh so eloquently put it, it's a pretty sad moment when you realize that Jesus pretty much wouldn't be down for anything you do on a day-to-day basis. Chew on that, friends.
Donnerstag, August 30
Love the sinner, hate the sin
Tonight while driving home from LA I realized that I love freeways. I really do. The idea of them makes me happy. You can just get on one and go and go, you don't have to think, you just follow the lines for as long as you like, and when you feel like stopping, you just get off, and when you feel like going again, it's there waiting for you.
And then there are the signs! Oh, the signs, constantly imforming you of all your different and exciting options. If, for example, you are following google maps directions and know what you're doing, you can choose between east or west. But if you are more free spirited, you can decide by which city you want to go in the general direction of. You might one day decide that you would like to go towards sacramento for a while and hop on the five north, but if you change your mind along the way and want to head out to santa monica, there's always the 10 west, or for pasadena you could take the 110 OR the 210! If the people at the greek theater make you go out the back way, through the hills, which spits you out in the middle of hollywood instead of onto the 5, it's ok, cause you can just hop right on the 101 and it takes you to exactly the same place! The possibilities are endless. Oh, the 10-15 interchange is closed, you say? Doesn't bother me! I can just get off on etiwanda! Oh no, I didn't merge over far enough and am about to exit on Wilshire! Wait just one minute kiddo, we have this handy just-keep-going-straight-and-get-right-back on-the-freeway thingy for people with just your problem.
Oh, freeways. So infinitely satisfying. The more comlicated, the better, I say. These Inland empire ones are a little on the boring side-- exits always on the right, and onramp for every offramp, logical interhcnaged, smooth pavement. Give me a sign that makes my mouth hang open in utter bewilderment, tell me to cross over four lanes in 30 seconds, make me try to hold my breath while going through a long tunnel in rush hour traffic. Now that's my idea of a good driving experience.
Don't misunderstand me; I still loathe traffice, pollution, car accidents, and things like that. But man do I love freeways.
And then there are the signs! Oh, the signs, constantly imforming you of all your different and exciting options. If, for example, you are following google maps directions and know what you're doing, you can choose between east or west. But if you are more free spirited, you can decide by which city you want to go in the general direction of. You might one day decide that you would like to go towards sacramento for a while and hop on the five north, but if you change your mind along the way and want to head out to santa monica, there's always the 10 west, or for pasadena you could take the 110 OR the 210! If the people at the greek theater make you go out the back way, through the hills, which spits you out in the middle of hollywood instead of onto the 5, it's ok, cause you can just hop right on the 101 and it takes you to exactly the same place! The possibilities are endless. Oh, the 10-15 interchange is closed, you say? Doesn't bother me! I can just get off on etiwanda! Oh no, I didn't merge over far enough and am about to exit on Wilshire! Wait just one minute kiddo, we have this handy just-keep-going-straight-and-get-right-back on-the-freeway thingy for people with just your problem.
Oh, freeways. So infinitely satisfying. The more comlicated, the better, I say. These Inland empire ones are a little on the boring side-- exits always on the right, and onramp for every offramp, logical interhcnaged, smooth pavement. Give me a sign that makes my mouth hang open in utter bewilderment, tell me to cross over four lanes in 30 seconds, make me try to hold my breath while going through a long tunnel in rush hour traffic. Now that's my idea of a good driving experience.
Don't misunderstand me; I still loathe traffice, pollution, car accidents, and things like that. But man do I love freeways.
Mittwoch, August 29
Dear world,
Do not order the medium at pinkberry. You really get pretty much the same amount of yogurt as the small.
Today I got a really cool and humongous backpack to use as a carry-on and also for weekend trips and such. It is brown and has a big wave on it and kind of looks army-surplus-ish.
I also got a haircut.
Tomorrow is Wilco. Woooo! Not looking forward to the LA traffic though, I've had quite enough of that recently. I am hoping ot dodge most of it by hanging out at USC with my sister for a while. Did you know that at USC you arent allowed to swipe your friends in the dining hall? SHOCKING. I plan to find a way around that, though, definitely.
edit: You actually are allowed to swipe your friends. My mom just doesn't know what's up.
Today I got a really cool and humongous backpack to use as a carry-on and also for weekend trips and such. It is brown and has a big wave on it and kind of looks army-surplus-ish.
I also got a haircut.
Tomorrow is Wilco. Woooo! Not looking forward to the LA traffic though, I've had quite enough of that recently. I am hoping ot dodge most of it by hanging out at USC with my sister for a while. Did you know that at USC you arent allowed to swipe your friends in the dining hall? SHOCKING. I plan to find a way around that, though, definitely.
edit: You actually are allowed to swipe your friends. My mom just doesn't know what's up.
Sonntag, August 26
OK, so this is what I have been wondering. Say you're in a cold climate and you go to a club or something. What do you wear? Do you just freeze your ass off in your tank top? Or do you wear a sweater inside the club? What do you do with your jacket? Do they have like a coat check or something? Do you stip off like 5 layers once you get inside? This is an infinitely perplexing matter to a person who neither lives in a cold climate nor goes clubbing.
Today we went to pinkberry. It was pretty delicious, in my opinion. Pretty freaking delicious. Afterwards there wasn't anything to do so we went to dennys, which was not nearly as delicious. Not for me, anyway. I just ordered coffee. In other news, my throat kind of hurts, and I am afraid I might be getting sick. Now I am going to continue to read Of Human Bondage, the slowest book ever written. I honestly don't know why, of all the books I've started to read this summer, this is the one I chose to actually finish. What the crap. Too late to turn back now. Still got 250 pages to go, though.
Today we went to pinkberry. It was pretty delicious, in my opinion. Pretty freaking delicious. Afterwards there wasn't anything to do so we went to dennys, which was not nearly as delicious. Not for me, anyway. I just ordered coffee. In other news, my throat kind of hurts, and I am afraid I might be getting sick. Now I am going to continue to read Of Human Bondage, the slowest book ever written. I honestly don't know why, of all the books I've started to read this summer, this is the one I chose to actually finish. What the crap. Too late to turn back now. Still got 250 pages to go, though.
Donnerstag, August 23
Dienstag, August 21
Holy crap.
It's in the 60s and raining in London right now. IT'S AUGUST! Holy crap.
edit: I also found out that my housing form thingy made it to london in time and I do in fact have a place to live. I said that like it was an update on something I had been talking about before, but it's not really, because I was having a private freak-out session in my head about it and I was so incredibly freaked out that I couldn't even voice my concern for fear of it coming true. But now I can tell you that I had to mail in this slip saying that I wanted to accept the housing they offered me, and I was deathly afraid that it hadn't reached them, but was too afraid to call and see if it had in case it hadn't. This is too complicated. I am not homeless in a foreign land. Everything is ok.
another edit: my little sister is moving in to college tomorrow! Crazy!
edit: I also found out that my housing form thingy made it to london in time and I do in fact have a place to live. I said that like it was an update on something I had been talking about before, but it's not really, because I was having a private freak-out session in my head about it and I was so incredibly freaked out that I couldn't even voice my concern for fear of it coming true. But now I can tell you that I had to mail in this slip saying that I wanted to accept the housing they offered me, and I was deathly afraid that it hadn't reached them, but was too afraid to call and see if it had in case it hadn't. This is too complicated. I am not homeless in a foreign land. Everything is ok.
another edit: my little sister is moving in to college tomorrow! Crazy!
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