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if · you · don't, · then · this · book · is · all · lies
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someone recently said to me that "home is wherever you're not."
but indiana is home, and i'm here. i forget about it. santa fe is my home too, but when the stupid mini-van slices through the humidity, when i sit on the porch reading national geographic hoping nobody will catch my smoke rolling around the corner, when strangers greet me and chase on the turkey run trails, when i pad through the yard on thick, moist grass, i remember. it's summer in indiana and it's where i grew up. it's humid and sticky and sultry and lazy and wistful. my siblings are writhing under the same oppressive sky, waiting to wriggle out, but finding it beautiful, i hope. it's a nice place to grow up. it always feels a little sad and unreal, but i was born here. i like the way the air hums.
i think home is where you're born, but i am reborn upon reflection on rhythmic occurences. this sunset finds me older than the last. the moon is full on me tonight, but all my full moons flood back to me and are present while i smoke under the one tree in the warehouse's yard. the body and blood of christ consumes my flesh when i consume it, but i am consumed once again next week. at each point i could say "this is where my life really begins!"
so everywhere i go is home.
but this is midwestern melancholy, to which all other melancholies must be referred.
i feel: |
 thankful | |
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None of those sentences had very much to do with each other. Life overview? I don't know. Things change a lot, all the time. Since my last post (the one before last night): I've converted to Orthodoxy, had a two month relationship with the person with whom I was in love for a year, had a month-long excruciating freeze-out/break-up, wrote a kick-ass enabling essay, threw the best Reality seniors had ever seen, blah blah blah. Stuff happened. I grew up a lot. But I can always say that after looking back on myself over any period of time. I don't think it's helpful to have a running metacommentary on your life and fixate on your growth while it's happening, so I only post on here once in a long while. I don't feel like I can be all that honest on the internet. I would need incense, couscous and an amputation to tell my story anyway. I'm chugging along. Two years of St. John's College down, two years to go. Phenomenological Reductions and Incomprehensible Germans, here I come. Truth and Beauty, it was nice knowing you. Now my foolish summer is about to commence: Two pairs of exes, a dog, a cat, a rat, one warehouse. Today I ran out of underwear.
sounds around: |
bourbonese qualk- gag | |
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hey check it out it's mallory, i'm too cool for livejournal now that i'm older! but i'm not too cool for a youtube vlog that my friend martin and i are going to make. we made one where i told the story about my pony freezing to death! my class just threw reality. there was a pony stampede. i'm in my friend nat's suite and we're eating candy necklaces. (martin: "mallory look at this phenomenon, i don't eat the white ones cause i'm black") there's a "Sorry" piece stuck to the wall in a trail of barbeque sauce. that's how we do in suite D2 skateboard sushi, tubs fulla poo i'm going to stay here for the summer in a tiiiight warehouse. i'm going to ride a yellow bike. i'm going to roll up my pant legs.
here's a video i watched last nightit's by william s. burroughs and it's called bill and tony! i'm trying to find this cutup video of his called brion gysin. |
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i had to sleep on a bench in the denver airport and lug my suitcases all around because i couldn't check them. that was miserable, but i made it home. it's weird being home. well, not really weird, because it's not foreign. it's overwhelming how familiar everything is. this town hasn't changed, and i have, but one whiff of the melting asphalt and one sighting of bike man immediately immerse me in my sweltering adolescence. my family even got me jones soda. kali and i bought pretty dresses yesterday in lafayette. we've made a lot of resolutions for the summer, and we're going to chronicle them all in pictures. chase, please come home soon! we miss you and we have lots of plans!
location: |
la biblioteca |
i feel: |
chipper |
sounds around: |
okkervil river | |
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i'm sitting in the albuquerque airport. where i'm going to sit for the next 2 hours. until i go to denver, where i'm going to sit for fucking 8 hours. i missed my first flight and the only connecting flight to indianapolis is tomorrow morning at 6 or something. i don't even want to write about how terrible my week and day have been. i lost my wallet. it's probably in espanola, which is the worst town in the state to leave a wallet with $80 cash. i have $25 in my pocket, my computer, a backpack and purse full of books and clothes because i couldn't fit everything in my goddamn suitcase. i just want to go home. i don't want to sit in airports for like 10 hours. i want to be at home. excuse me while, in a lonely crappy airport and for the third time in two days, i cry my eyes out.
sounds around: |
suite no 1 | |
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my room is in shambles but not much has really been accomplished as far as packing and storage goes. i also have a bunch of financial aid stuff that was due today and i put it off too long, and now i don't know if i will be able to do it today because i lost a bunch of papers my mom sent me. and i have to ship my fucking cello. aaack! i hate moving business. get me out of this nut house!!!
i feel: |
 looney | |
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well, i remembered two things that i can tell you about reality:
PUDDING WRESTLING.
i took on delia, who is a fucking monster. she's smaller than me, but she's rock climber and she rides a motorcycle. between her strength and the slipperiness of the pudding, i didn't stand a chance. but it was fun, and pretty hot, probably... pictures on facebook.
SPARTAN MADBALL.
you try to get the ball in the goal. no rules. just fucking up bitches. game ends with three goals, three destroyed balls, three hospitalizations or one death. we played to ten anyway. i left after the first half because there were thousands of extremes (freshmen and seniors) and very few means (sophomores and juniors) and i was afraid of getting killed as everyone became more and more imbued with bloodlust. i have some pretty intense bruises anyway. there are also pictures of this on facebook. i look like a fiend in my face paint. it was a bad idea to play this game on sunday afternoon, since i hadn't slept at all since friday night, but it was exhilarating.
if you're terribly interested in my reality, james latimer's and joe spott's reality albums will chronicle it for you.
i don't have work to do this week, really. no lab (which means i don't EVER have to get up before lunch,) no math, two more seminars and two sham greek classes. i want to get out of this looney bin, but i'm starting to get sad about leaving my friends. jesse and james and joe... *sigh* |
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don rag went well. the major criticism was that i should be more insistent about my questions. but golluber said that the paper was "an impressive first encounter with aristotle." i don't know what to say about reality. what just happened? |
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i'll be back late late saturday night/early early sunday morning. the sophomores have a "curfew" on us right now because they're decorating for reality. i've been sneaking around from dorm to dorm, though, and the theme is definitely dante. lowers is hell. lots of red lights and shit. my oral went well, i think. my don rag is tomorrow. i hope that mr. golluber doesn't hold it against me that i skipped the seminar the night before my don rag... jesse and i just did not want to go. so we borrowed keely's car and drove to madrid, running over a rabbit on the way. except for the rabbit part, it was really good for me to just go drive around and look at the sunset and stuff. i spent a good half hour trying to ride james' unicycle tonight. i'm getting the hang of it. wooooh reality.
i feel: |
 awake | |
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last full week of classes. my oral is tonight at 6:00. don rag is friday. after that i'm DONE. concerning end of semester lab papers, the same thing happened to me this semester as last semester. i skipped classes and just pounded out a piece of shit that i thought was the most shallow essay i had ever written. i didn't even read it again before i turned it in. i dreaded opening the critique sheet from mr. schneider because i just KNEW that he would be really disappointed in me. rather, he said : "your atomic theory paper presents a very competent summary of william whewell's critique of the use of the atomic theory up to his time.... towards the end, you also raise some intriguing observations that imply blah de blah de blah.... as a piece of writing, your essay begins with a clear focus and proveds a systematic examination of that focus. your writing style has also improved with minor grammar concerns... on the whole, an excellent piece of work." bullshit, mr. schneider. that was a terrible paper. i expected him to be disappointed at how my writing style had DECLINED. usually, he says "on the whole, a very good effort." but this time, he said "an excellent piece of work." oh well. i guess i shouldn't be mad that he thinks i did a good job, but maybe i'm just disappointed that i can get a good review on something that i didn't put that much thought into. that's just the scum growing on the top of the pool that i skimmed off. i'm nervous about my oral. eeeeehhh. i guess i better go review the ethics.
i feel: |
 shakin' in my boots |
sounds around: |
christ for president-- billy bragg and wilco | |
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we were watching heat, which is just the most ridiculously long and harrowing movie ever, involving pacino, de niro, val kilmer, and just a shit ton of bad asses or huge people. but mostly pacino. jake sneezed.
me: bless you.
jake: (heatedly) you know what mallory, bless yourself.
me: ummmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm fuck yourself?
hah. i don't know if i can communicate the weirdness of that situation in print, because it was dependent on inflections and timing and the fact that jake had been absorbing pacino for like four hours. oh well. i thought it was really funny.
today was block party, which is when people just chill on couches in the apartments parking lot, and people play limbo and jump rope and beer pong and stuff, usually basking the glorious spring time sun. but today it fucking snowed. it's cinco de mayo. and it was like this weird, warm blizzard. we still had a good party though, and it was oddly picturesque.
and last night was the 70s party. not everybody dressed up and they didn't really play 70s music. in fact i think the whole party was created so that will hollingsworth could wear jessica perry's daisy dukes again. and gluck could try to outdo him by wearing tighter and shorter shorts.
gottaaaaa work tomorrooooooow.
i think i'm going to fly home on the 19th and get in very late. so i'll probably be around on the 20th.
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i have finished all of my final-ish assignments. rather early, too, barring the atomic theory paper. i thought i was going to be 4 days late on that one, but after my classmates got out of the lab class that i skipped to write said paper, they told me that since NOBODY turned in their papers on friday, mr. schneider extended the deadline to tuesday, that very day. so it was good that i skipped after all because otherwise i wouldn't have been able to turn it in on time. god bless you, mr. schneider, even if you did assign a paper to be due the day after senior prank. duh. so now i just have to bone up on my seminar paper because my oral is on monday. after that, it's smooth cruising with a bunch of dramas and poetics for the next two weeks. and parties. lots of parties. reality starts a half hour after my don rag next friday. woooooooo! |
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yesterday it was about 80 degrees. not a cloud in the sky. we were all going around shirtless, in tank tops, playing softball. just now it started SNOWING. and now it's melted. LOLA'S IS TONIGHT!!!!!!! i'm too terribly sunburned to look good in my fairtones dress, though! |
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oh lordy lordy, i feel really warm and fevered. it could be because i'm pretty sunburned. *sigh* i am so torn about what to do this summer. i really, really, really want to be home. i miss madeline and reed and my parents (well, and mackenzie and morgan.) i miss kali and chase and nikki. i miss my house. i miss grass and deciduous trees. i miss walking around crawfordsville, heat reflecting off of the goopy streets, drinking jones soda and making fun of townies. and i am sick of adobe. on the other hand, i don't miss having a shitty job. i don't want to work in a factory this summer. i don't want to have to turn off my brain and likely not use my body for 40 hours a week. i don't want to be frustrated with people who think they know how my life should be run, and i'm not even talking about my parents. i dunno. i think living in santa fe would be fun. but it makes me sad to think about not seeing my family or friends this summer. |
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hummadee hummadee hummadeee. minimum wage in santa fe is $9.50. i'm thinking about staying here so that i do not have to work at a factory. nina and i are going to try to work at chocolate maven. if nothing else, i'll work for buildings and grounds, get a tan, and get real tough. 
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i think i'm losing a bunch of weight. suddenly i'm not very fat and my pants are falling off. i'm at the gym so i'm going to go weigh myself.
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it would appear from the scales in the weight room that i've lost 16 pounds since spring break. why hello, hipbones, it's been a while. now that i think about it, i miss a goshdarn awful lot of meals, and i don't eat much when i do go to the dining hall because it's gross.
yesterday i took my paper to mr. perry, and while he was reading it i ran into mr. starr at the coffee shop. i had good conversations with both of them. i had a pretty good idea mid-conversation with mr. perry and he got really excited about it. i'm pretty excited about it too.
then james and i went to the aztec cafe to write with jesse and alice. the weather was the grumpiest that it has been in a long time. my macchiato kind of made me go crazy, as is the custom, and i spent more time running around the block and jumping over walls and squealing and ripping my hair and smoking cigarettes out on that miserable wet patio than i did writing. but thanks to my conversations with starr and perry and james and jesse and alice, i'm now almost finished, i think, after being trapped in the SAC all day. i'm almost done as far as length goes, but i've got a couple more pages in me.
it's hard for me to finish writing this because i have a conclusion. i want to say to myself "well, all you have to do is say that the friendship of virtue reconciles the two mutually exclusive paths to happiness of contemplation and justice, so you can do this any ol' time..." but when i actually sit down to write, i freeze! i think it's because when i write papers, i can't stand my own bullshit, so everything i say has to be necessary to my argument and backed by the text.
somebody is playing bagpipes in the gym. |
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 the lame table is being really loud outside and some of them are wearing sombreros. when we were on murphy's balcony tonight for the mid-star trek cigarette (not that we're a lame table or anything) we saw them climbing the mountain. wearing sombreros. i dunno... this school has some weird people. i suppose i shouldn't judge them. they seem to have a fun time being their strange selves. it's alright, they're pretty benign. so ari and i read through the lab reading together today. i don't know how we're going to ask an opening question because this is probably the EASIEST and most straightforward thing we've read all year. it's just math. easy math. noooo hints into petit's philosophy of science or anything. oh well. at least we won't look stupid for not understanding it. first seminar on physics tonight. it was weird. it's a really hard text and nobody knows how to talk about it. i felt really stupid the whole time and probably said a lot of stupid stuff. in fact i know i said one stupid thing. "i don't get this example at all! i think it's a really dumb example because it doesn't HAPPEN! children do not call all men their fathers or all women their mothers! this is dumb!" "well, miss hepburn, didn't you ever call one of your teachers 'mom' in elementary school?" "uh... miss burzynski... i was homeschooled." everybody laughed. i guess it was pretty funny. i felt pretty stupid for saying that it was a dumb example because after everyone explained it to me, it WAS pretty helpful. i apologized to mr. golluber afterward for being rash and calling aristotle dumb, but he seemed really surprised that i felt bad about it and said that he was glad that i had that problem because it helped us to talk about it some more. what a sweetheart. anyway i was pretty full of shame when it happened. iiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiii iiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiii love coffee. iiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiii iiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiii should also get my laundry out of the dryer but i'm too lazy to do laundry in any less than two or three days.
i feel: |
amused |
sounds around: |
mary ann-- regina spektor | |
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so a lot of us have been working on our papers that are due next monday. we have a writing period from thursday through monday, but many of us either have been assigned to turn in a draft to our language tutors or we recognize the wisdom of having a tutor read through our paper before we turn it in to our seminar tutors. so jesse and i and several others have been freaking about our papers this weekend and working really hard, but that doesn't help me in the rest of the classes this week. like i still have to read physics (which is really dense and important, so i want to give it a thorough reading) and find out the math homework from the class that i skipped (because i was stressed out about my paper), and on monday night or tuesday lunch i'll have to do a buttload of greek, which is also important right now because we're translating physics and it really helps me understand the reading, and ON TOP OF THAT, ari and i have to ask the opening question for lab on tuesday morning and it will be about really technical atomic theory shit that i am terrible at. do they WANT us to wig out this weekend and have nervous breakdowns and not finish our papers? cauuuuuuse that's what's going to happen. unless we all skip a bunch of classes or go to class unprepared. but this is what i did last semester, and it came back to bite me in the ass when i had to write papers about book V of euclid and the embryology section of lab, which i glossed over while i was writing my seminar paper. i've been reading ethics and having really good conversations about it, and i understand it really well, i think, but i'm having trouble actually getting a paper started. i have a page and a half. finally i just decided to try to transcribe the gist of all of the problems that have come out in conversations, and i think that will help. but still. this is kind of a big paper and i really need to prove myself to my seminar tutors. anyway. murphy woke me up this morning to invite me to easter brunch. [jamesandmurphyandmarkandtheoandjakeanda ileenandi] went to the pantry (motto: "it's pantry time!") where i got two huuuuuuge pancakes stuffed with blueberries and whipped cream. i like how breakfasts like that don't make any pretenses to being actual breakfast food. that is blatant cake, my friends. when we got back i bummed around for a while, and while i was on the phone with madeline, josiah came in and invited me to dinner with his parents. so i hung up with madeline (me: "madeline, i gotta go" madeline: "okay, ciao sweetheart!") and went to the pyramid cafe with josiah and his little cute peruvian mother and straightlaced white father, where i had SPANIKOPITA, BABY. it was nice to have a day where i ate really good food twice.... and aramark zero times. theeeennnn jesse and i went to the coffee shop to work on our papers, and micah and alice and mallory showed up, so we had a little plato and aristotle party and talked about love til i got all my problems articulated, and went to watch star trek with james and murphy. that does a body some good, watching stupid tv after being a philosopher for a while. james just watches tv, vulture-like, waiting for an inconsistency or dopey line so that he can come up with an entire theory of how dumb the show is. it's pretty hilarious. i actually find those guys' running commentary more interesting than the actual tv that we watch... every day.... these posts are obviously not written with an audience other than myself in mind, because i just like to go back and see what i was thinking about the things that happened to me rather than remembering the things that happened. this is evidenced by the way that i indulge myself in overly detailed narrative that will not be interesting to anybody. p.s. i'm so broke. it sucks.
i feel: |
 irritated |
sounds around: |
another traveling song--bright eyes | |
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hightops_mal's journal
