markers and non-cons

i got to work today and yesterday! yay. i think you can't help but love a job where you can crawl around and play with trains, have snack time, and oh yeah make it snow with popcorn. i get to hang out with adorable and unique little people! today i was with the 2-3 year olds, which is fun but tiring! i get tackled like no ones business, but all i had to do to slow em down today was show them the rocket ship watch my parents got me for my birthday (yes, my birthday this year) and how it glows when you press the side button. there was a significant amount of awe. i was the coolest kid on the playground.

tonight i'm going to a basketball game with my dad! we're going to go see the marist girls play - they're incredible. i haven't been to one of their games since middle school, when i played basketball. the tickets were my gift to my dad this christmas, tucked inside a handmade card. good stuff, can't wait! i'm leaving in about 15 minutes. within that 15 minutes though i have to finish this blog up and pack! eep. tomorrow morning is the big show.

should be fine, not too worried, not even going to get into it. :)

so tacked on to my "new experiences" resolution is a creation resolution. i vow to draw or create something each day! very much in the spirit of my friend alissandra, who would do daily mini illustrations which she entitled, appropriately, "dailies."

oh my 15 minutes flew. i get so distracted. bye for now...

pout

josh radin is playing in rochester on the 21st at the water street music hall. i wish so hard to be there. sad panda :(

heartbeats and shoelaces

the way you looked at me
terrified me

you make me nervous
in the best possible way...

i'm so scared of this feeling. i haven't felt anything like this in so long.

is this ok?

the way you looked at me
made me quake

chilled me
made my heart beat in rapid motion

but i would never look away...

i think you could be what i've been missing, and i'm so scared of it.

"i've been looking for you"

we met, and right after hello
you told me, i was the one you wanted to marry.

after a night of conversation and starry eyes
i couldn't shake the thought

"will you still love me tomorrow"

and you did.

oh, you did.

love starved, i had been trying so hard
to find my forever.

and oh

i think i did.

and it has me frozen into contemplation.

[happy new year...]

resolutions and silly string

happy new years eve everyone!

new years is a time of reawakening and celebration. celebrating new beginnings with old friends. or new friends, i suppose as well.

this year, i'll be celebrating new years in rochester with one of my closest friends, anastasiya, and her friends. her family doesn't celebrate christmas, but they treat new years pretty much exactly like christmas, with gifts and food and celebration. so it's fun for me because i get to do the holiday thing twice! hehe.

we're also going to a masquerade ball tonight - ana was working on her mask today.

we have a list of places we want to go, but the masquerade is a definite.

it's important to me to have new years with the people you love. i feel like the new years you have sets the precedent for the year to come. how your new years is rung in says a lot about it. i've always felt that way - who you ring in the new year with and how you do it should be and are important. the mood, the atmosphere, your new years kiss. it all says a lot about where you are in life and what you're looking towards.

tonight, i'll be kissing ana! haha. this year ahead for me will be about strengthening the bonds i have with people, and have with myself. it's about embracing my new life and just diving in. my main new years resolution is to collect new experiences. i feel like i really haven't done too many things, and in my 22 years of life i'd like to have some more stories to tell and experiences to take from. so good, bad, minor or major i'm looking to embrace opportunity, take chances, risks, and collect some experiences.

also, i want to grow further with my new perception of love and relationships. but that, i'm going to save for another blog, because i'm about to leave to celebrate a proper russian new year.

take care, be well, be safe, and have a fantastic new year!

Happy 2009!

fish head and chai taj-que

so i'm in ra-cha-cha, spending it with my darling ana!

i got here on sunday around 5pm, and i'm loving every second. it's the first time i've seen her that we haven't had to spend it dealing with angry ex-landlords, horrible subletters, fleas, mice, and other just unpleasant things. we can actually enjoy each other, yay!


today we did several things - she took me to lake ontario, and we walked around a bit. i brought my holga camera and took some shots - the majority of them, strangely enough, of dead fish that had washed up. some of them were so huge! kind of nasty i suppose. but otherwise, it was beautiful. we picked up some lovely driftwood to bring home - i'm going to do some carvings from them. very, very excited.





the sun was glorious.


we also picked up some hair dye on sunday, but had some mixed results (as you can see from the carrot top version of ana above there) - sooo we picked up MORE today after lake ontario, and crossed our fingers. while i redyed her hair a shade of purpley-red, and she dyed my bangs that and the rest black, we made some homemade split-pea soup and cooked up some cheese and spinach raviollis, which we then pan fried with some onions. we ate, and then washed the dye out. we had the process down.

ana's hair looks incredible! love the new color. it wasn't what she had been hoping for, but i really like it. as for mine, i hadn't originally intended for my whole head to be black - i had just wanted her to do some streaks of it. but once she got the gloves on and the hair dye in hand, she said "i'm going to do the whole thing, k?" and proceeded to do so.





it actually turned out very cool. i was nervous it was going to look a little too punky, which, let's face it, i'm not all too much. but yeah i'm kind of really loving it! it'll be fantastic for new years.

which, speaking of, seems like it will be the best new years i've had in years. maybe actually in the history of all my 21 past new years. one of the places ana and i plan to go (with her whole gang of friends) is to a masquerade ball! how incredible is that?! we're going to make the masks tomorrow, which i will for sure posts pictures of. it will be full of dancing, drinking, merriment and love. i'm just all kinds of thrilled.

after the hair dyeing experience, ana took me to meet up with her friend Illona, who is from Finland. we went to this great coffee shop called java's, which was funky and fabulous. we stayed oonly for a half hour or so and made our way to another cafe called spot which was sooo good, and very cheap. and huge! we stayed there for well over an hour, chatting away. we planned to go back to Illona's after spot to watch a very long engagement, and while we did in fact go there after spot closed, we ended up watching parts of this ridiculous movie called teeth. just google vagina dentata myth. hilarious.

enough of that - goodnight!

strings and faulty internet connections

i've been chatting recently with numerous people. it's nice... i enjoy making random connections and sharing parts of our lives together, even if they are carefully selected parts.

one person, in particular, messaged me through myspace. he's been sharing poetry he's written, asking my opinion and in general sharing his thoughts and views on life. unfortunately this boy, patrick, contacted me at a very hectic time of year. i was not only the end of finals, but also the beginning of christmas. anyway, i haven't been able to talk to him as much nor as in depth as i would like. my plan was to write him when i got to my parents house, when things were more settled and i get dive deep into conversation. but, what have i found? for whatever reason, while the internet works, it seems to be blocking both facebook and myspace from working properly. i have no other way of communicating with this boy, patrick, since i only just started talking to him through myspace messages. i was already horrible at being timely as it was, and he already had doubts that i thought him absurb and a nuisance, which i tried to assuade him of, but now i'm sure he thinks the worst. he's an intense, passionate boy and i do enjoy reading his words, be it poetry, prose, or general chatter, and patrick, i apologize so much for not writing. i've been trying, i swear.

so really, this is to tell you patrick that you're in my thoughts, and i will write to you as soon as i am able.

is it silly to create a bond with someone you've never met? well too bad. he's an interesting sort.

buttons, and the wind

it's something else, when everything and all emotion can run through you at one time. i feel my thoughts stringing and dancing together...

crumbled leaves, breathtaking, circling through a particular path on the wind.

papers and chai

i've been feeling so good i don't know why i needed to do that. i guess i though that i was so strong and so good and happy that it wouldn't be there like i'm super woman and that i made everything better and perfect and that everything would be completely fine and i'd never have anything wrong in my life or have to worry about anything more than getting a research paper done. i'm kicking myself for checking. i'm more shocked at how quickly i crumbled. i couldn't have called my mom fast enough. now i'm so nervou s- i had plans to do my own thing and live in albany for a while over break and work on my t-shirt line and designs for it and paint and not have any care. now i'm so terrified. my problem was that i was running scenarios like i always do, and asking questions and pushing into my mind, which i guess is a good thing. "what makes you want to do this photo shoot?" because it's something i've always wanted to do but never felt like i could - not because of inability but because i was with someone who i felt i needed permission from, and who wouldn't grant it, and now i feel like a new woman with complete freedom of life and choices, but the bigger overriding one was how i felt about my body after the biopsy. i was so terrified of the pain i associated with my bare chest and how it felt to touch it even a month after. after the biopsy my body felt traumatized and invaded and i could hardly even internalize it and i can't even imagine what it's like for women to go through breast cancer. i can't believe i felt for it again. the last time it was so comforting, with the doctor, and her telling me it was there but she could hardly feel it. i could barely feel it. i'm pretty sure i lied to her saying i could find it when i really couldn't. i was so relieved that for one they had removed a good bit of it and two that it had shrunk. that was a few months ago and i had forgotten to even check again. that had been the first time since the biopsy. i had been so afraid because of how much the procedure hurt afterward and i was so nervous about making it angry. i guess that's why i checked tonight, because i've been feeling so fearless and so untouchable. i've been running on water and floating on clouds and this was kind of a hard hammer down. i've never felt it as big as this before... as soon as i felt it i broke into tears. why is it that girls immediately default to waving their hands in front of their face when they start to cry? i generally think of it as trying to wave away the tears, to dry them before they come, but for me i think it's because i need something to do with my hands, so i flap. i guess i didn't have them so much towards my face as i did just shaking them out away from my body. i always need to be doing something with my hands. my mom is calling the doctor for me. she's relieved that i want to get it removed. she's wanted it gone since she first heard i had any sort of lump and i was refusing, more for fear of surgery. the doctor said there was really no need to remove it unless it bothered me or got much bigger, because it was benign, and also because of where it's positioned. it's in a really technical spot and would be best to be left alone unless any of the things mentioned previously came up. but i need it out of my body it needs to be gone. so over christmas break i guess i'll be getting it removed. i'm so nervous. surgeries scare me so much. i hate knives and needles. immediately i thought about the people i want there with me, but unfortunately two of them can't because they're hear in albany and i'll be home for it. it should be same day anyway, probably within a couple hours. but still. there's something about having those you care about around you, no matter how strong you think you are or how strong you feel. ok, i feel better now. a little anyway. needed a good free write

playlists and leaves

oh my, it's been just over a year since my previous blog. what's ironic is that post, although only lyrics to a song, was about the relationship i was in and the emotions i was feeling, which i thought the song expressed well.

today, however, is the opposite end of the spectrum. no worries, it's not emo-tastic, i promise; just stay tuned.

for a week and a half after it happened, i was inconsolable. or rather, i didn't want to be consoled. i wanted to sink into my sadness. i even went as far as the ever-so masochistic route of creating a "< / 3" playlist for my ipod, in true "me generation" fashion. everytime time i played it i was pretty much a blubbering mess for about two hours (apologies to the madre, who received two phone calls from, what i'm sure she could only assume to be, whales trying to connect with her).

i reread the email (yes, the email) over again, and the equally lengthy and unfulfilling one i replied with. i thought about the short phone conversation that had transpired a few days after the emails, and the points he and i both made. i realized that most of the points he made, as much as i hated to admit it, were right. i was giving up too much of myself, and receiving nothing in return.

i started to realize what i deserved, and what i wanted, and that really, i had been trying to keep an incomplete relationship going thinking i was getting what i needed. or that i could hold out until he was in a place where he could actually want to give me what i needed emotionally.
the truth is, he's just not that sort of person. and i don't resent him for it; it's just who he is. maybe he could be, but not right now and not with me. am i emotionally needy? i never thought so, but i suppose compared to some. but honestly i think i crave and want what anyone else does, and that in any healthy relationship those emotional deficiencies really would not be there.

suddenly, something clicked.

"i should have let him break up with me the last time he tried to... or even the first time..."

whoa. back up.

i should have... let him. break up with me the last time. the first time.

um. what?

no one should ever, in the entirety of a relationship, feel like they're forcing or convincing someone to stay with them. to which i'm sure whomever is reading this is thinking "ummm duh?" and to think of it in terms of letting him break up with me? having the super power of crystal clear hindsight, i know i should have had the strength to let go of something that was so toxic to my soul.

well, if i couldn't do it then, i was going to do it now.

through the beginning of the break-up, despite the rather pathetic ipod listening, i tried to keep in mind some simple advice a family friend/therapist had given me during a session. Keep Busy. and that's what i did. i refused to let anything get in the way of living my life, especially in a new school and new city, living in a new apartment on my own. i went out, i met people. i did things. i got shit done. i became so socially and physically productive, it was insane.

during a dish-washing epiphany, i also realized what i really wanted to do with my life, career and school wise, and the next day i went to registrar and took care of things.

i'm pretty much the happiest i've been in 5 years, and i'm pleased to say that's not an exaggeration.

i no longer wanted to listen my < / 3 playlist.

the beginning of this week, i was taking a shower, blasting my ipod. it was on shuffle, and i was having a fabulously random sing-a-long, when i suddenly froze. my song came on. it was the song he had written and recorded for me. not only for me, but about me.

my initial thought process was "i should turn it off" but i didn't. i ignored that, and became incredibly pragmatic, which is a little unusual for me. i asked myself what i really felt and thought about the song now. and honestly, when i stopped and thought... i smiled. i didn't feel anything about it. well, that's not true. it didn't make me sad at all to hear it. in fact, i felt excited and pretty happy. not at all in an amorous way, but more in an... i'm awesome, sort of way.

seriously. i thought, "man, someone at one point thought enough of me to write this. i had a big enough effect on someone that he wrote this song... about me. how cool is that!?"

so that's really where i am right now, and where i have been for the past few weeks. i'm getting things done, i'm busy, i'm making some incredible friends, and i'm so amazingly happy.

and i owe it all to a break-up. funny how things work, huh?

i think that possibly maybe i'm falling for you
yes there's a chance that i've fallen quite hard over you
i've seen the paths that your eyes wander down
i wanna come too
i think that possibly maybe i'm falling for you

no one understands me quite like you do
through all of the shadowy corners of me
i never knew just what it was
about this old coffee shop i love so much
all of the while i never knew

i never knew just what it was
about this old coffee shop i love so much
all of the while i never knew


i think that possibly maybe i'm falling for you
yes there's a chance that i've fallen quite hard over you
i've seen the waters that make your eyes shine
now i'm shining too
because oh because
i've fallen quite hard over you

if i didn't know you
i'd rather not know
if i couldn't have you
i'd rather be alone

i never knew just what it was
about this old coffee shop
i love so much
all of the while i never knew

i never knew just what it was
about this old coffee shop
i love so much
all of the while i never knew

all of the while

all of the while it was you

-landon pigg

falling in love at a coffee shop