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[17 Jan 2009|06:22pm] hello! I received your letter today. All week, or maybe even for the past 2 weeks, I check the mailbox at least twice a day, hoping for a tangible reminder of someone I love in Chicago. I don't know if the zip code even matters, seeing as how I've received mail with both sets of digits. It's a matter of luck, I decided. And I was lucky today. I will find a good enough place for it on my wall. Do you remember a black and white postcard you sent me about a year ago,actually, November 1, 2007, of a fire in a street in San Francisco? I taped it to the part of the wall next to my pillow in my room on the South Side, so I'd see it anytime I opened my eyes in that direction. I have it in the same spot now too, except the wall here is on the other side of me. here

i have never cross-posted but. [31 Aug 2008|03:15am] Finally I finished my first zine! Mostly it's about a girl I like, a few lists of things, thinking of Asian Americans, an excerpt of a story, cameo from my brother. I didn't have a printer, so I handwrote half of it. Then I got a typewriter and typed another half. It's also a mix of text and images, cut and paste style. Half-standard long, 28 pgs I tried to write a lot of this issue as if I were in a hurry, without looking back, or otherwise I would never have started or finished. Vainis, on the last day of the summer semester, told me about Guthrie and I think he felt that same nag at how we state all these ideas and let them linger and then they pass. Anyhow. Please e-mail if you're interested in a copy :) spindles@gmail.com P.S. Also I've mailed out a copy to everyone who has e-mailed me, just in case I forgot to send back any sort of confirmation. (and thanks again) P.P.S. i have two more left if you want one, if i see you in person. working on issue no. 2 6 here

werewolf [25 Mar 2008|01:08am] [ mood | werewolf ] [ music | werewolf ] arrest, disect, belt, slope, oblong, fuss, lift, straw basket, dipping, succumb, wagon, dobbin, gentle, phantom, shriveled, lobby, pole, abalone shell, flash, flap, swift, grizzly, billys, apoplectic, cocoon, brocade, reel, vacuum, marcel, dusk, lip, strike, bag Woke up with a finger circling 8,000 nerve fibers. Sometime late after The Vagina Monologues, I realized that D must be afraid of me bursting into a feminist rant or rage. Twice that day, he seemed hesitant with settling things like the bill and driving me home. I suppose it's also because I hold open the door for him sometimes. If there is one door and another door after that, and if he opens the first door for me, am I going to wait for him to open the second door as well? It interrupts the "flow." Oh feminism. Thinking about gender exhausts me. R's presence is so gentle that it gives my knees a shake. This is very similar to how I am around V--nervous--which, none of this is intended in a bad way at all. In their presence, I don't feel as gentle or genuine because intuitively, they come off as Good People who mean Good Things and simply want to do Good. I know this because I am the opposite. Four days ago, my GWS instructor touched me. By touch, I mean it as a realization. I saw her after class about my midterm and she is shorter than me and briefly touched my arm and said, "Oh it's only one point!" and smiled. It was such a warm gesture and all of a sudden, I felt like a new student, like I could achieve anything. She told me, "Don't worry about it; you did really well." Sometimes instructors say that but that's not true. In this case it's not true. But she added, "I'm a perfectionist, too." I don't consider myself one, but I suppose I seem like one. Because the class is based on discussions, including a lot of personal stories, my heart quickens every time I think I might share one, and then I calm myself down by not sharing it. Isn't this my twenty-first Spring? keep your hands still. hands to scalp,       the spine along Sheridan   splits a graveyard. - Marlon Unas Esguerra Eight-thirty or nine p.m. shadows: the dark frames my dream with a semi-circle and I am enthusiastic because S and M (hah) are coming over to work on a French project with me, except S got lost on a street that I don't know. Each time she repeats it on the phone, it statics. That is how it ends--with M and some older woman opening my mailbox with a key even though she doesn't live there. I say "there" because it's at the childhood home where all of my dreams take place. On Friday I saw J at the Blue Line--first time since last Spring when he told me he was taking a semester off. He asked me what's going on, and then he asked it again and realized he had already asked it. He explained, once, why he seems unable to speak easily with me. Anyhow, afterwards, I knew I came off so casual, it seemed like I wasn't happy to see him. I do this even more with an old classmate, A. To the point where I don't even take off my headphones. Why do I act like that? "I suppose I want to seem intangible like those who are so intangible to me, so that is my momentary explanation for the distances I create" (Lim 13). mewl, parochial, kicky, juju, emaciated, ectoplasm, tether, aspic, macabre, aphids, latticework, wont, convalescent, tendril, kvetching, dilapidated, shoehorned, stultify, pantomime, magnum opus, bristles, leer, banshee, windbag, awash, joist, circe, tinderbox What a nuisance! Rather, what fury! If I were as bold as her, I might say something Bad like: You have the hairiest arms I've ever seen. Hélas! Je ne peux pas le dire. There goes another mark on my chart of Franklin's virtues. List of interests that if someone were to mention in their list of interests, I would most likely immediately fall in love with this person, which is probably one reason why I like Ellen Page so much: "Honey or Tar" - CocoRosie Sputnik Sweetheart by Haruki Murakami, esp. the bottom of page 115 Sans Soleil (Chris Marker, 1983) to be continued, maybe here

[06 Mar 2008|07:50pm] beard For a while this semester I didn't have a grasp over academic things like in the Fall, and then I figured it must be that in the spring semesters, a lot of what I think about is Bette and Tina, you and her, me and whom. So I fell asleep in the clothes that I'm wearing now, this is the current state of things, I walked home to "Everything In Its Right Place," got a tuition waiver today, took midterms for French Lit. and GWS, watched A Very Old Man with Enormous Wings last Saturday with Vicki & Friends after the Race Conference at school, watched The Business of Being Born with Ricki Lake naked in her bathtub and the baby sliding out of several women's vaginas and now I'm recommending it in mid-conversations when it feels appropriate, planning to see Jhumpa Lahiri and Adrienne Rich reading here in April the saddest month, and such. 9 here

[30 Nov 2007|08:47pm] The other day, a woman called me about a focus research group; something about gum and candy and teeth. I was very busy with an essay, but I talked to her for over twenty minutes because she had a patient voice. At first, I thought I wanted to qualify to participate, so I lied a couple times and told her I bought Sour Patch Kids this week; yes I had some Skittles; yes I chewed some Eclipse. When she got to the part about rating myself from 1-5, I thought the questionnaire was getting too long. She read to me, "My friends would consider asking me for advice on the latest fashion" and I had the impulse to hang up on her. Instead, I said, "Ok, I don't think I'll be qualified. I'm like, totally out of,like--the whole fashion thing and TV shows." And I think she wanted me to qualify. She said, Oh you never know! and I wonder if she lied on a few for me also to increase my points. For the last question, she asked me, "If there's one person, dead or alive, that you could meet, who would it be and why?" I told her that was an unexpected question for a survey, and then I thought for a while and there was a bit of silence, but I finally said, "Sei Shonagon." 165. Once I Wrote down a Poem from The Pillow Book of Sei Shonagon Once I wrote down in my notebook a poem that had greatly appealed to me. Unfortunately one of the maids saw it and recited the lines clumsily. It really is awful when someone rattles off a poem without any proper feeling. 5 here

[01 Aug 2007|11:41pm] Here is the layout of my childhood home, which is very similar to the layout of my home right now, except now I am secluded in the basement. I'm glad my old room had five windows with all shades of sunlight, even though it was very small, because all of my dreams take place there regardless of whether it's a classroom, an office, or somebody else's room. august: \aw-GUST\ adj. marked by majestic dignity or grandeur "In that world, imagination was everything.  The better you were able to imagine what you wanted to imagine, the farther you could flee from reality." -Nutmeg on page 472 a glimpse of her armpit: shaved, a spot of white deodorant, a mole she's had since she was four organized every journal and notebook-shared-with-friends in chronological order! 4 here

[09 Jun 2007|08:55pm] without looking in my bag, things i've remembered & things i've forgotten: vicki (not me, i'm vicky with a why): Celebrating Kevin's 8th grade graduation, today I rode on the ferris wheel and all four of us had dim sum. This girl in the class keeps forgetting my name, but if she asks next time I could call myself Cordelia and pretend it's that for the whole summer. I finished Story of O, which I name the most intense book I've ever read, I could barely finish it. (note: deleted pictures) 10 here

[31 Mar 2007|11:46pm] ( , ) I am supposed to write a two-page paper about how UIC's history and location has impacted the university, but it should actually be how the university has threatened the community residents' homes and businesses, how a Florence Scala led protests and the most they compromised was to allow two of the Hull House buildings to remain as museums. What is left over: there is an untitled painting of Jane Addams hanging above the first fireplace. Jane Addams, burning all your letters from Mary Rozet Smith (whose painting hangs above the second fireplace, she leans forward at us), you and your upright posture, you and your dark backdrops, the hair above your forehead brushed back by a thumb of white, highlighting the brilliance of your mind, it almost looks like you want to smile. 10 here

[20 Feb 2007|08:10pm] [ mood | helena & catherine's poker tab ] The female cardinal is not a vivid color. She has been called a washed gray, a soft brown, a dull red. She wears a large crest over her head and flies with a ten-inch wingspan in between treetops, peeling dogwood petals, chewing on mulberries, brambles, sumac, sunflower seeds, and plucks fat caterpillars from their leaves. She prefers to roost in thickets near the streams and from the nest, she incubates three cornflower eggs and sings to her male who sings back in a whistle, using his sharp volume to offend other males from interrupting their territory. Sometimes he will even swoop at a glass reflection, jabbing at the intruder with a conical bill. But once, says George Miksch Sutton—once, a female cardinal rapped at a windowpane with a fervor that fascinated him. He watched her for some weeks and noticed a male cardinal bystanding, a casual witness. She would fly to a branch, then return to the window, lifting her crest and flicking her tail. And once, two female cardinals were found in a nest together. One was albinic and she flew someplace to gather food, but the both of them always flew away together whenever somebody came too close. The first time I saw a cardinal, I kept my eyes on its red plumage and watched it hop in diagonals from one twig to another. A woman later told me that it was a male cardinal because it was red, and if there is a male cardinal, the female is nearby. They always travel in pairs, she said. This happened outside of my house. The backyard tree behind my alley fence seemed thicker in the summer, an overwhelming foliage with white pentagons. But this female cardinal would have been a washed gray, a soft brown, a dull red, so I did not see her. I did not know to look for her, but I imagine her now: warming eggs, dropping caterpillars for a young son (he begs--zee-zee zee-zee), or I imagine her now with a sweet modesty, zipping stems and shaking large droplets, her brilliance saved for her nest. P.S. A Woman Is Talking to Death by Judy Grahn. 12 here

please return to: [03 Jan 2007|10:49pm] [ music | polly jean ] I mailed six letters this past week and also calculated that each journal lasts me fifty days on average. Lately I have been rewriting the same paragraphs in my journal in revised form, but they all end up tired. There are fifteen addresses in the back of my journal and I am looking for new friends to write to. 17 here

homework: [23 Sep 2006|12:51pm] [ music | moon pix ] ( , ) I have found my favorite spot on the terrace, but lately it has been a cold September and my fingers stiffen when I try to write. The view is nice though. I can see the cluster of tall buildings in different colors and if the clouds are white, the Sears Tower looks holographic. As for my classes, I have a French teacher who comes in with a new jacket everyday. She reads Vogue and likes Paris Hilton. My English teacher has a pair of glasses: the left lens is a sunglass and the right is a prescription lens. Two weeks ago, he accidentally broke off our door handle and did a cartwheel in the middle of our small classroom. My Psychology professor only lectures with Powerpoint slides and she chooses the most interesting background color for all of them, some kind of default navy blue with white verdana text. I have fallen asleep in every single one of her lectures and I have an exam next week. Woo. I need to buy a new journal tomorrow. 28 here

fitter happier [10 Sep 2006|12:46pm] [ mood | jena yuen, where are you? ] [ music | sufjan ] Two mornings ago, I had a wet dream about you. Please don't get mad. 17 here

feb/march snapshots. [28 Mar 2006|09:15pm] [ music | there is nothing i'd rather do than spend all day in the sack with you ] ( , ) Sociology assignment: a visit to a religious institution, so I went with Kim into a church for the first time. The pastor's name was Stu and he shook my hand afterwards. We were three minutes late and people inside started singing, so we had to wait outside until they finished their hymn. I am collecting fruit stickers on the back of my school I.D. Sunkist oranges and Washington apples. 24 here

when blocked: [27 Feb 2006|07:21pm] [ music | concretes ] 22 here

i will never be insecure again! [20 Aug 2005|03:18pm] you cannot tell from the pictures, but that plug in the outlet actually connects to my back. it is an essential part of my robotic self, which is why it is included in the pictures, not because it was in the way. 26 here

window peekerrr [12 May 2005|05:15pm] George is not holding the pages for me anymore. I changed the pictures taken to the scanned ones. 53 here

zine though not mass produced [26 Apr 2005|04:48pm] ( , ) 66 here

naturally the small fish is chosen [16 Apr 2005|10:25am] [ music | mirah - (exactly where we're from) ] ( , ) Therapeutic journals. 42 here

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