is there a sign on my head?

My life is turning into a continuous train of jokes.

One morning I had finished the usual batch of soup and the phone rang.
Hello, -- Grill. This is Marge, how can I help you?
Football player, I call him Paisley, always orders the same thing. After he tells me his order I habitually say, This is Paisley, isn't it, and write his name down on the ticket. Not that day. That day he says:
"You know who this is. I know you know who this is. I know you know."
Yes. Paisley knows that I know that he doesn't want gravy on his mashed potatoes. Last night he says to me, "I haven't seen you in a while, I thought you might've quite. I'd be so distraught!" Ha, ha, Paisley. Ha.

The other week on campus this kid who wears a cape and often sings to himself told me I was weird.

I went to a concert with a boy last month and he said,
"I'm not trying to make a move on you but this is the only way I can stretch out my arm."
So Shorty Petite puts his arm around my waist but not touching my waist. I can't help but think that wasn't comfortable for him. Who stretches like that?

And today....my crowning moment.
I kind of got stood up. I'm actually still a little confused.
This kid from my church, who I've never noticed before, called me Monday night and asked what my schedule was for Thursday and Friday. That was it. No other introduction. Well that's a 48 hour period. What do I say to that? So I said, I don't know. This all ended in this plan that today he would make us peanut butter and jelly sandwiches and we'd go feed ducks.
Yes it's been kind of rainy today. But I don't remember any clause in our conversation that said weather permitting.
It had been 20 minutes from when we were supposed to meet and I hadn't heard anything. So I called him. Again, what do I say in this situation?
"Umm...did you decide we shouldn't feed ducks in the rain?"
"Yeah, I figured it wouldn't be a good idea."

Sometimes these people leave me speechless.
I'm not even that weird. I'm laughing. But I'm not that weird.

ya, sure, you betcha

It's a real thing! I was perusing foodblogs again (quelle surprise) and imagine what I've found. Oh joy, oh joie de vivre, uffda!

Lefse.

It's my adopted heritage in chewable form.

Anyone have a potato ricer or know what that is?

Norwegians don't take good photos of their food apparently but here are the pictures I've found on googling lefse.

Panda black licorice. chocolate as a heating element.

May school come down and hit me on the head with a peck of pickled peppers.

Yes every student suffers the shock when they go to a private uni freshman year. Some of us got off the same boat: small town and a high school of simple means. There are three times as many people on this campus than in my small town of ye olde days. My general classes are three times the size of my graduating class. And now it's not a senior citizen telling ma mère at the public library how I'm such a good cashier at the local supermarché, it's some student calling me out "Hey grill girl!"
Please don't class me as the prosaic over-achiever. I think I frustrated every teacher I ever had because they felt I had potential but I would never apply myself.
My grades at high school and uni haven't been too different. And I've never cared about grades too much. What's a grade? I'll throw your alphabet in your face. The grades aren't the problem. The regard people have for me is not the problem. I always felt the praise I received in high school was a little undeserved.
Do you know those tiny holes in bricks? I feel like I've been shoving my brain through a brick wall. Ah-ha! I'm being challenged!....?
Sometimes.
But sometimes, I know exactly what I'm talking about. Sometimes I'm writing a paper for a film TA who doesn't care about my sentence structure or my prose (I could write a whole paper like Yoda "Good this movie is" and they wouldn't know the difference). A one page paper. A one page paper like I've written every week for the last year and a half analyzing a film. All this TA wants to know is that I got a theme out of the movie and I have points to support it. I've just got to prove I've thought. One simple process: THINKING.
I THINK therefore I AM. But I am not writing.
I'm not getting anywhere.

Ah the joy of school.

recommendations for swiss account transfers

I've been reading food blogs again and listening to Pink Floyd. I'm feeling a little trippy right now because the Lunatic is in the grass*. Or grahss, since it's a little English sounding. I feel like I've mastered a few things in cooking as I make my tri-monthly personal batch of soup (kind of mimicking the tri-weekly ritual of soupings at the grill). My cookings are these easy habits I've picked up and so my new goal is to cook something new each week. I'm searching for healthy little main dishes on the internet of blogs I peruse because ma soeur still has my Vegetarian cook book. Notice that word? I don't eat meat. And most of the blogs I read are very french-habited with french titles for their recipes. So as I sift through archives I keep having to look up words to see if I'm about to read instructions for a sausage or something.

It's chilling out here. I've been adopting layers into my outfit all day, right down to two pairs of socks. If I throw on another pair of socks I think I might be able to stay toasty all evening.

Hier (yesterday) (pronounced ee-yair with not much emphasis on the r), I stopped by a couple of chums' appartements. One was my old British chum, the other was the strange girl from my freshman ward. Mmmm...is a better word "interesting"? I'm fascinated to figure out how she continues to exist in a world separate from...everything. She is devoid of interest in clothes; current movies, music...I see her about uni campus and she's got her hair in a high ponytail with a scarf tied around it but there's nothing even bobbysocks about it. Anyway, I've rarely had anyone be so delighted to see me visit. She treated me with a cup of homemade cider she'd brought from a Thanksgiving back at her family's ranch, played that old bugle call for me on a wooden Native American flute. She showed me pictures of her family, warned me that history classes have a lot of reading but none of it is busy work (I was hoping to take a Scandinavian history class but that's not happening). She told me about this boy her roommates think is perfect for her but their similarities seem superficial to her because he's a city boy and she would never survive in a city. She's happy to be an old cat lady even though she doesn't care for cats. And apparently her père sometimes professionally jumped trampoline. You know, a side gig.

Ciao bellas and bellos.

*Brain Drain

sigh...Cinderella discussions on intuition and creepy men. oyster crackers.

I've got more Bowie. Can you understand how this makes me terribly happy? I am terribly terribly terribly happy. Did you know David Bowie has taken a turn at being a mime? Oh, oui, vraiment. I nod my head at you very affirmatively. Alors, this completely blends in with my new found obsessions of the time being. Amazing how this all happens. You pick up a piece here and there and the next thing you have a well-rounded, cross-referenced index of fascinations. Mimes, face paint, old rock stars, matte black walls.

Consequently, my application to France is almost in the bag. Yes, I'm determined to move there despite the Frenchie from the lab who tells me I have twisted logic. I try to arrête (it rhymes with stop) myself from devising lists of things to bring, not bring, give away, and purchase. After all it's not official, it's only a chance. A chance in a rag of many colors.
I'm having a harder time this year of not hoping. It's not like when I applied myself to the film programmo. I had a million plots all of them centering on rejection. I did not ever think of this future (the one I'm currently living out), the beautiful futurish dream of being admitted to this program. In fact they centered around being rejected a second time. Because that's all the chance I had at this uni: two. And neverthemore, the slots were shot last April, and as you might have figured or heard me screaming, Luck was a lady and came as an email and letter blessing me with my dream come true. I screamed, I cried, and jumped with hugs on anyone I saw. (Yes, ma cousine, Beef seems to be crying a lot lately, but only in the best of ways.)

(I hesitate with this last section because I'm not finding words to fit together.)
And so this exponentially led to moi qui sat in the Great's class this afternoon for discussions of religion brought into cinema and theatre. I have one thing I want to say. I'm increasingly drawn to people (What?! Oui! Despite all claims of hermitism). And I increasingly find I can't draw limits to their validities and spirit. What I mean to say is this: the more I live the more I'm finding God in all people. Because God to me is a heavenly person and also all that is good. Please don't stand off at the limitations of my linguistics. I want to tell you that I don't know how to dismiss the sins of others as sins, I don't know how to plug my ears at their swears anymore and I can't close my eyes at drawers full of unsent letters because I feel like there could be a valid cry sometimes.
Yes. I have a tendency for a bleeding heart.

It's my brandy alexander*.

*inspired by a Feist song, Brandy Alexander

short and defeated. but I'll keep chasing after tuft tuft tuft tuft tuft

12 and a half hours.

It's not as if I haven't worked longer than that (at the grill).
But I hate the grill.

I kept believing until the very last that I would actually get to leave mid-afternoon. At 4:30 when I was assisting Boss at the flat-top I asked him when I could leave (after he'd assured me five hours ago I could leave at four).
Have you seen the crowd of people that just came in?
Then I knew.
I knew that "8-until" meant until the end of time.
Until all rivers run dry.
Until everyone you once knew forgets your name.
This is why my summer ended on August 13th. Until means until you stop caring how you look. Until you stop caring about what you eat. Until you stop caring about sitting down. Until you stop dreaming up plans for your day and instead you work until your feet have swollen and you hobble home in the dark and all you can do is vegetate in front of the TV.
Until you stop painting.
Until you stop trying to contact friend or family.
Until you stop all capability of being able to concentrate on a movie.
Until you just function.

I hate until.
I hate until even though I'm exaggerating my day and feeling sorry for myself (I am not exaggerating August).

But I had an effing lame day.


It's this day that makes me think with a terrible circular feeling maybe I am selling myself short.

it doesn't seem like the days are getting shorter. Yesterday lasted a week.

My magazines came into use tonight.
The appartement has looked as if someone threw sterile wall paint to the walls to balance out cootied couches. What a universal theory.
IF WE PAINT THESE WALLS BLANDLY ENOUGH NO ONE WILL NOTICE THE SMALL ORGANISMS CRAWLING ALL OVER THESE PLAID COUCHES WE PUT IN HERE IN THE EARLY 90'S.

And so I prada-ed the walls. I editorialized the walls. I janis joplin-ed the walls.

Someone talks about how they quoted Bob Dylan at a Mariah Carey party on my wall. Does your wall do that?

My wall is a static name dropper.

I'm kind of a whispery person. So it's a bit odd to be supervisoring at the grill.
I'll share a classic tactic of mine with you.
I approach a couple of aimless workers.
"I'm going to need someone to cook more chips."
It's not even specific or direct (although slightly redundant). I don't even sound commanding. But they do it.
Oh the insanity.

I like jobs that pay me to live but don't pay enough to live it up.

you can bet, you can bet, but it's going to track track track

What happened? It all prosaicked out and soon I was speaking in a language of use and not of the mythical, lyrical internal speak I've been speeching. I've got to do it, I've got to rebel against it. Because when did we give these letters, symbols, numbers their meaning? Did we arrest them? Did we always think in these rules? You can blame opium but I find a lot in "A noir, E blanc, I rouge, U vert, O bleu*." I wasn't digging at carpet, there was never carpet, there was buried treasure vast with possibilities. Don't we want multiple paths of possibilities instead of sitting at a screen with half starts and logical blandness?

It doesn't fit through my sieve.

Sometimes I've got to yell it out.

Sometimes I've got to tear myself away from the une page of analyzation papers.

What a prolific evening.

*Arthur Rimbaud, Voyelles

KITCHEN DANCING! That's another communion.

(And look to the right. I added my Christmas list in case you get confused. Not that I'm pressuring anyone...But if you were curious.)

Movie Quoter doesn't work at the grill anymore.

some puffs shrink not from nine times

I miss the dance floor.
WHY HAS IT BEEN SO EFFING LONG?
Peut-être à cause de three amis scattered to the different states. Two are in different countries.
There's a drain on my soul from a lack of the matte black walls of my cathedral.
I mean no sacrilege, mais the lights. The Smiths. It's my communion. Not to replace, but just as a different kind.

No
body
moves like you.

I could be a heavenly person today*.

*Blue Monday by New Order

We need to be more outlandish, we're too safe

I think the Great said that. So outlandish? Party at my place?
Naw.
Too safe.
And stale.
I made these little tiny pita breads (how do you say that? because they weren't chips...) to take to a party tonight. It left me wondering, should I get large tortoise shell glasses and a cardigan with elbow patches and carry a book under my arm? Because I feel like looking like an absent minded professor might cover up or account for the fact that I kept finding flour dustings from the pita's on my sweater dress. I think I'm gonna go for it. Note to self: always go to a party with a book tucked under an arm. Ho! It could double as a little lap table!
Utter genius.
Until someone thinks I'm stealing their coffee table book at the end of the night.
That would be outlandish.
You know what is crazy? The title of this blog makes sense, it doesn't have some obscure meaning to just me, AND it directly correlates to this blog.
You're thinking joie de vivre.
I'm thinking torn curtain.
Where's my crypticosity and made up words?

Yes sir, run, run to your test sir
it will not wait for you
you may hurry until you are dead
but the test is always testing
until your spirit is flagged
and victory is void
forget the grade, dear sir
it will just spin you around
until, until, until, until
it was all better in my head
before I could join pen to paper
but testing doesn't care.

I had this phase last January of putting together words in different combinations because there were all of these potential possibilities that we were never using because they didn't make sense. Or they were redundant.
How did we decide that?

What two futures combine to become half?

It's happened again.
Two things really.
I woke up for my 8 am shift when my boss called me at 9:30am.
And I've gotten sucked into reading food blogs again.
I usually keep my kitchen life pretty basic. My soup (vegetable broth, potatoes, carrots, celery, maybe onion or garlic) or maybe a coarse pesto (basil or parsley, olive oil, parmesan, salt, pepper, some nuts), and bien sûr my pretty little sandwiches.
I'm in the west. An isolated west. A kind of isolated suburbanite college town west. I have limited resources. And looking at pictures and reading about other people's adventures in finding quince trees and then making quince caramels is kind of a beautiful experience for me. The little dashboard on my Firefox window keeps growing. Now it's not just an exalted spot for Chocolate & Zucchini, I've got Chez Pim and The Amateur Gourmet on my watch list.
This isn't the best thing I could be doing with my time. You see, I live in a small apartment leaving one room to be my bedroom, my office (...we university students have offices....maybe I should stop reading blogs of professional "amateur" chefs that have offices....), my vanity area, and also my set for Super 8mm films. The 8mm films tipped the balance. My room has been torn apart for the last week in an attempt to make a film about a mécanicien français, my little loner French mechanic that I've been writing about for a few years. He's really so far just a collection of post-it notes and napkins I've rubber-cemented into the little notebooks I always carry around with me.
And the movie making hasn't happened yet. Last week the camera wasn't working, this week I've been busy catching up on my 19th Century French history and Victor Hugo. And, oui, watching The Hills. I've written a haiku about this television show selection of mine:

Oh MTV
Reality
Shine Down on me

Which isn't even a proper haiku I believe.

I think I must partly stay at the grill because my Boss just laughs at me when I don't wake up for work. My Boss who's laughing won't fire me. I don't know why this happens. Well, really, maybe if I actually got enough sleep. Peut-être. But I've never gone a long enough period with enough sleep to know enough if I would always wake up with enough time to get to places. So that's really just an unfounded hypothesis that some people have.
And I'm not a science major, mes lecteurs, I'm not qualified to use the scientific method.

I'm dreaming that next week with the oncoming Thanksgiving vacation I will finally be able to make Pain Ordinaire and hummus.

you're joking, paisley. no more burgers, and no more workers?

Tonight was one of those nights where I would usually start thinking about finding a new job.
Instead, I finally like the girl at work who used to try to make everyone sing Little Mermaid songs at the tops of their lungs with her.

It helps that she doesn't sing the Little Mermaid anymore.

AND...

I finally have fall appropriate shoes!
They seem to say they're made in China USA. Do you think it's political statement?

that old house had lights on. panes of light.

It's been in the air a lot lately. An equation I've been avoiding.
guy+girl.
I think I was thrown off.....in kindergarten...??? But really yes. Because somehow I was built in with this factor, the x factor where I wanted to be intelligent or something or somehow I was hyper aware of the seeming lack of depth of massive amounts of girls giggling together and accompanying each other to the bathroom. It has something to do with that. Or maybe copying the drawings of ma soeur who seemed to me to be independent, strong, cool and wearing flannel, having parties, and reading books. Or how I was always called upon to fill the role of the mean step-sister or witch in childhood games. Or when I was left alone to my own devices and I remember often playing at being a construction worker. Not that I'm butch. Hardly.
I just know that in high school I decided to try and master girl+intellectual, smart, eccentric. I mastered eccentric. But other than that I kind of turned into a failed poet.
Recently I've been trying for girl+I don't know all of the answers and I'm going to be wrong but viva la revolución!

I like to subtract boy.

Because I'm afraid of other things that might be subtracted.
Boy might not equal my music tastes, my people tastes, my fashion tastes, my food tastes, my movie tastes, my religious tastes, my political tastes, my philosophical tastes. And there are ways I know I could compromise. But there are some things I can't. For instance:
He must like Macs better than PC. I can't live in a house that runs Windows. I just know it. I think it would kill me a little bit each time I thought about a PC being part of my lover's soul. Linux, fine great, just don't get too techie on me. But Microsoft is a death machine.
And I would kind of have a problem if he didn't understand or at least respect that Balenciaga is better than some store in the mall.
Those might seem like terrible reasons to you but...
je pense, donc je suis.
This smart kid, Descartes, said that once.

can a bit more come out of the vault?

I reeeallly like onion.
(that was half of my lunch)

I'm trying something new tonight besides adding peas to my basic soup recipe, which (bite...hoo boy too hot still) has turned out just fine. I'm making a scaled down batch of these tomates confites that I was staring at hier á 3h22 du matin. I love to pour over the pictures and the words of Chocolate and Zucchini which is where I found this recipe. I don't love it quite so much at 3:22 am but...

Here is something slow and not of much excitement, but it's never been said before by me.
I almost always eat three meals a day. Even if one meal is just a slice of bread. It's got to be three times at least. I taught myself to eat three meals a day the last half of my freshman year of high school and I'm still too wary. I have a vivid recollection of my permanent pass to go to Algebra 1 late. My stately walk down to the generalized cafeteria. A s'mores poptart. Classy. But habitual. I had to have habit. Habit, habit, habit, habit, habitual. Ritual. That's it. I couldn't lose a ritual. I don't even aime bien s'mores poptarts. A solitary walk to the empty peer room which was filled with old couches. A saggy wool and polyester couch where I sat on the edge of my seat as I broke off pieces of poptart and took small bites in some sort of pattern. My left was windowed, so sunny cold. The sunny winter cold; I'm glad that's what I remember because so often the winter was just white. White on top, white beneath. Right and behind was the health teacher's classroom connected by a door. Ajar. The door would be ajar and I would hear her teach junior high lessons. That was the snack time. Every day. Ritual.
Algebra 1 was kind enough to allow this. However English had fits about my once weekly absence. I loved/hated the gone-ness. It was ritual. But outside of that and into that office of muted purples and low lights. Calming? Ha! Hateful. Even the venetian blinds where dark muted purple. I could sometimes see through the slantings a nice sunny world outside. Why couldn't we take a walk instead? Why would I tell you why I stopped eating when I can see the foundation painted on your skin and your brows are always knitted up and overly concerned?
Now I'm a little sickish and the appetite is a little abate-ish. But I hold to three meals and I pour in peas for an extra vitamineralwater.
This was probably all the more an entertaining blog before I started outing a few things that had never been said before by me.

Onion-cutter hello'ed today by throwing me a bite size Twix. I didn't catch it but I said hello back. And Movie-quoter showed up today in the sportsy jersey work uniform with a long silver pirate-y necklace.
Is that your bling?
yeah.
Later I bumped into him in the too small grill and apologized asking him not to gang-bang me.
When I'd converted to city hit the street clothes I showed him my long silver necklace.
Check out my bling.
It looks like something Indian.
Oh si, j'ai dit (what convenience espagnol and french rhyme!)
Do you ever feel odd when you're half inside a dessert case cleaning it out? I felt a bit happy I knew what I was doing and a bit awkward in the old and hanging khakis I porte (that's some kind of french verb for wearing clothes. I probably conjugated it wrong. do you think I did that on purpose?)

My gosh I could even go on more!

Because the Great brought up existentialism. Finally. Je l'aime. I would love to say I'm existentialist but I'm a bit mixed up with essence. However I've been fixated, like my fixation with vulnerability, sin, and wrinkly old people. And it parallels! He says they search for something in The Fall of humanity. Their trouble with organized religion, institution, education lies in the essentials and generalizations. How could encompassing sentences be said they asked because how could you know. How could you know something you haven't existed?
I'm looking for the great and grace in your wrinkles, in your misspeaks, in my downs, struggles, in our hypocrisy. I can't find the lines to separate the ills into ills away from high-mindedness. Maybe I'm losing my way but I'm stuck on the lessons of adultresses, the reference to John 3:16 on the bottom of my Forever 21 bag a clothing store my friend described as being "full of cheap clubbing outfits," I'm stuck on the blue collar worker mon cousin who is genius but wants nothing of sophistication, or my boss who only likes to watch sports. I'm stuck on all of these things that have edges that sometimes fit like a puzzle but they keep melding and molding and not fitting and switching. I'm nothing but essentials. But I feel so un-wise because I can't know these ideas that fleet through my brain because I've never lived a day of them. I go in circles chased by my belief in existentialism and organizations and I won't end it. I'm choosing this.

oh boy, the only things that I understand

The blue rose which signifies hope for an unattainable love is often predominantly featured on lingerie.

The good which was recorded was the good of sad kings
sad kings
sad kings
sad kings
oh I echo it around and around
following it about
but put at the end of the day
half heartedly
and the guilt builds
emanating and escalating
oh no!
not toys! not failings!
endless rows of buildings
and I've opened every door
instead of walked down the street
out of view and into the sunset.

"the prosaic poetry of everyday speech*"

There were cirrus clouds today.
You know the lament that everyone's always looking at the ground, they never look up? I am not that lament. I can't stop looking up. I walked to work with the nearness of tripping over sidewalk cracks because the sky was striped. Veritably striped with lines of clouds in perfect measurement. What was this formation? How was the rest of the world not in neck-craned unison with me? Art! Art, children! There's art above us! [I'm being too pretentious, je m'ecuse]
When I entered the grill I rushed to the counter to ask anyone if they knew what kind of clouds they were. If I was to find the information out anywhere I'm sure I could find it out at the grill. I'm certain that with the wide range of people there I could find out anything.
Cirrus.
It's a layman's library. A conversational library.
My bit to throw into the pot from a short life of experience and periodic shy-dom:
keep saying hello.
Maybe the receiver is a bit slow to hello back.
Someday they might be ready to respond--what jokes you could find then sending laughs down into grandchildren's upturned eyes--but you've withdrawn. Oh frowns and busy streets of New York.
We're all intimidating dinosaurs.

I hear tell the Movie-quoter wore a hideous wig and make-up yesterday for Halloween. He went around tossing his synthetic strands telling everyone he was beautiful.

I've beat the french lab at their own game. I have a friend qui teaches some such of the français. He's all about the revolution baby.

*Worthen The Wadsworth Anthology of Drama