HOLD ON TIGHT

HE SAID, MARIE, MARIE, HOLD ON TIGHT And when we were children, staying at the archduke's, My cousin's, he took me out on a sled, And I was frightened. He said, Marie, Marie, hold on tight. And down we went. In the mountains, there you feel free. I read, much of the night, and go south in the winter. ~ The Waste Land, "The Burial of The Dead", Eliot Saturday, February 07, 2009 thinking about flight ive been weepy and discontented, and very nauseous, the past two weeks. i don't really know what it is, my body is acting up, i'm really hormonal, i swing between being vitriolic and happy, and my breasts have been very sore. i don't know what it is. perhaps it is the cold--it dipped to -10 deg c yesterday, and when i walked out, my face was frozen. unfortunately, i am also running low on money, and have been cooking to try to save money, and some of my food can get really unpalatable when i am not in the mood to cook. tonight i am going to fernando's house, he is cooking a big peruvian meal for his friends, in celebration of passing his q's. fernando makes the best butter beans and beans-and-rice, i should buy a bottle of wine, for the gesture. i have a lot of reading, i am also trying to read the extremely slow, depressing Widows of Eastwick, which i am writing for as an elegy to john updike, for the book review. justin agreed to get me an iphone for my birthday--i've been really hard on him lately, really moodswingy, really moody. - so i went for a run, and the nausea went away. i had a beautiful evening with fernando, and his crazy latin american friends. he had spent 4 hours just cooking--buttered lima beans with cream, pork and potato stew, lamb stew, feta cheese farfelle salad. a lot of wine, i brought a riesling in the end, but it would have been more appropriate if i'd brought a red. there were a bunch of new yorkers there, but i felt bad because it was very obviously a latin american party, a lot of cheek-pecking, the comfort of holding other strangers. i was the youngest, the only undergraduate. but i always feel at home with fernando's latin-amer friends though. there's no need to take on the role of anybody. there were jokes about people with "european colonial hangovers," and salsa line-dancing in korea, "like geriatric work outs," i said, things about afro-reggae, reggaeton, "you have salsa written on your face," irania, who is from boliva told me. spent most of the evening talking to a really handsome puerto rican ex-law and now a complit graduate student called ricardo, and we talked about the curse of living on an island. it probably got too personal too soon, and the sudden way we were talking inspired a lot of electricity. but electricity is one of those things that don't inspire wistfulness anymore, because i am simply happy in my life. i didn't join them for salsa dancing in the end, came home. but that conversation made me wonder how much growing up on an island shaped me. an island is a strange place to be, he said, it's too small, it's near the coast, it's always invariably with a history of colonialism, and can never be comfortable in itself. he said, "i left my law school, because i was, afraid that they would make me get a good job, marry a nice girl, and most importantly, " (he said this as a charming remark, meant to be cheeky), become catholic." for me, the island was the only reality, it nursed me and told me, it was the world, but when the world was not the world it had shown me, that was the moment i felt my life had been a lie, and that was when all my fantasies of flight began. posted by dawn # 1:04 PM Comments: Post a Comment << Home		[publishing] Publishers Weekly . Dystel & Goderich . New York Center for Independent Publishing . Association of American University Presses . Society of Children's Book Writers and Illustrators [people] clarisse . nurul . aunty zarina (ummi's bakery) . jeremy . pak . cyril . softblow . karen & kenny (booksactually) . eric . joel . [other loves] digitaljournalist . ballet dictionary . poetshouse . urbanwordnyc [me] dawn, singapore, new york city, ithaca. [yesterday] wishlist accents and attractions i got an on-campus job--production assistant at th... stories 94 dean drive, tenafly the wages of dying is love tarts pre-departure hello, america reeling from the snow [archives] January 2007 February 2007 March 2007 April 2007 May 2007 July 2007 August 2007 September 2007 October 2007 November 2007 December 2007 January 2008 February 2008 March 2008 April 2008 May 2008 June 2008 July 2008 August 2008 September 2008 October 2008 November 2008 December 2008 January 2009 February 2009

HE SAID, MARIE, MARIE, HOLD ON TIGHT

And when we were children, staying at the archduke's,
My cousin's, he took me out on a sled,
And I was frightened. He said, Marie,
Marie, hold on tight. And down we went.
In the mountains, there you feel free.
I read, much of the night, and go south in the winter.

~ The Waste Land, "The Burial of The Dead", Eliot

Saturday, February 07, 2009

thinking about flight

ive been weepy and discontented, and very nauseous, the past two weeks. i don't really know what it is, my body is acting up, i'm really hormonal, i swing between being vitriolic and happy, and my breasts have been very sore. i don't know what it is. perhaps it is the cold--it dipped to -10 deg c yesterday, and when i walked out, my face was frozen. unfortunately, i am also running low on money, and have been cooking to try to save money, and some of my food can get really unpalatable when i am not in the mood to cook. tonight i am going to fernando's house, he is cooking a big peruvian meal for his friends, in celebration of passing his q's. fernando makes the best butter beans and beans-and-rice, i should buy a bottle of wine, for the gesture. i have a lot of reading, i am also trying to read the extremely slow, depressing Widows of Eastwick, which i am writing for as an elegy to john updike, for the book review. justin agreed to get me an iphone for my birthday--i've been really hard on him lately, really moodswingy, really moody.

-

so i went for a run, and the nausea went away. i had a beautiful evening with fernando, and his crazy latin american friends. he had spent 4 hours just cooking--buttered lima beans with cream, pork and potato stew, lamb stew, feta cheese farfelle salad. a lot of wine, i brought a riesling in the end, but it would have been more appropriate if i'd brought a red. there were a bunch of new yorkers there, but i felt bad because it was very obviously a latin american party, a lot of cheek-pecking, the comfort of holding other strangers. i was the youngest, the only undergraduate. but i always feel at home with fernando's latin-amer friends though. there's no need to take on the role of anybody. there were jokes about people with "european colonial hangovers," and salsa line-dancing in korea, "like geriatric work outs," i said, things about afro-reggae, reggaeton, "you have salsa written on your face," irania, who is from boliva told me. spent most of the evening talking to a really handsome puerto rican ex-law and now a complit graduate student called ricardo, and we talked about the curse of living on an island. it probably got too personal too soon, and the sudden way we were talking inspired a lot of electricity. but electricity is one of those things that don't inspire wistfulness anymore, because i am simply happy in my life. i didn't join them for salsa dancing in the end, came home. but that conversation made me wonder how much growing up on an island shaped me. an island is a strange place to be, he said, it's too small, it's near the coast, it's always invariably with a history of colonialism, and can never be comfortable in itself. he said, "i left my law school, because i was, afraid that they would make me get a good job, marry a nice girl, and most importantly, " (he said this as a charming remark, meant to be cheeky), become catholic." for me, the island was the only reality, it nursed me and told me, it was the world, but when the world was not the world it had shown me, that was the moment i felt my life had been a lie, and that was when all my fantasies of flight began.

posted by dawn # 1:04 PM

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