The Olive Pea

So I don't write much anymore. I've debated getting rid of my account about a hundred times, especially because in the wisdom so emblematic of my 16th year of life I chose a name that I really hate, but I'd hate to lose those snippets of a certain few people that I would no doubt miss otherwise.

So let's see. I live in Brooklyn, now, finally living this certain way that I have wanted to for some time running. I am relearning to be my own companion. I've started reading for pleasure again, and really doing it, something I never did enough of after I started college. I have a basil and parsley plant. I eat fruit every day, I drink coffee. I guess the last things are sort of irrelevant.

I have a job, too. I work at The Overlook Press (overlookpress.com) in production, getting the books built. The company logo is an elephant with wings, and nearly everyone I work with is crazy. It is a good place for me.

How is it that every time I am feeling low or tired or defeated - you find me? Today was a stomach ache. I'm not anxious for Friday.

One Paycheck

One Notecard from my Pea

One 8-page letter written on the back of a bar menu from St. Louis, also with newspaper clippings and a matchbook

Last night I watched Blue Planet before I went to bed, and this is what happened:

I dreamt about a bunch of fish building a huge underwater fortress. The organizers of the fortress project got all sinister, and the whole operation was suddenly no longer under water, but up in the real word, and I was this lowly worker fish who comes to realize that the whole damned project is bad news. I think I sort of fall in love with the boss's girldfriend fish who he's holding hostage, and when I go to this giant snowy cliff to break up into the wind the sugar cube she gave me as a gift (I'm suddenly a human), I go back through this tunnel in the snow only to find out that it's a booby trap involving six or seven giant tubs of fruit punch which don't dump out on me but rather act as weights that pull this car through the tube and over the cliff (all of which is presumedly a punishment of the fish badguys) and in the back of the car is my cat! (I have a cat in this dream, as well as two dogs, even though I was formerly a fish). So I rescue the cat, and she figures out to be a little blond girl with pink snow boots who I try desperately to hide by taking her into a parmacy, which gives me this giant load of coins with bears on them as change (there were bears on Blue Planet, too, eating clams). And then somehow I get on a bus and myself and someone else watch Titi run her ass off to make the bus stop, and it was one of the funniest things I have ever seen in my life. She was going really fast and really serious, and there were swamps.

It's funny how a song can make you think of something so specific as skinny calves with the sun on them in a station wagon after ice cream, or of laying exhausted on the floor, not knowing how you ended up there, or of such an exact street corner, which you might really never see again. funnier how a song that used to make you think that things were exactly as you had imagined now tell you that maybe they weren't.

Cultural Significance

Diarrhea is the cornerstone of much of humor, and man's fascination with it rivals that of most other bodily secretions. Of all types of feces, diarrhea is most likely to rouse playful hilarity. Some find that "logs" or solid waste can be equally humorous, but when confronted with the word diarrhea the hilarity which is ensued eclipses that of any fecal manifestation in most people. People who have diarrhea may act in a stereotypical way (the frenzied and anxious dance like behavior one may partake in before relieving oneself) and this may lend to its association with humor.

See also

Feces
Drinking water
The Diarrhea Song
Steatorrhea

A super-calloused fragile mystic hexed with halitosis!

I adore you,
but
you are wrong
about
the aspic.

Comment by blackbird - April 3rd, 2007 at 8:08 pm

Oh my God I totally forgot that I put whole cardamom pods in this shit...

I feel an almost suffocating sense of waste ( is it that? when I am here. The drawers I am still allowed to keep in my parents' house are filled - yes, really filled - of these things I have collected over years and years that I can't bear to part with. Seashells from beaches six years ago, beautiful presents from people that I don't feel careful enough to use yet, scraps of cloth, postcards, scraps of paper with phone numbers of people I know I'll never see again, deer bones, gull bones, bones I'm not sure about, a black rubber duck signed by a musician (is he famous? I don't even know). I have a forked stick from the Saco that I must have picked up about 10 years ago. But what am I doing with this stuff? I imagine that when I am a grown up, I will have display case coffee tables filled and book cases and shelves filled with these things, and that I will be glad to have kept all of these things then. But what about before that? What do I do with these things until then?

Idiot move #1:

Yesterday at the store, I looked at a package of peanuts of peanuts that said, "Raw Peanuts," actually read these words, and then thought to myself, "Oh, good, Unsalted Dry Roasted Peanuts. Perfect."

Idiot move #2:

This morning I endeavor to roast the peanuts myself and, in accordance with the directions on the Virginia Peanut Association Website put them into a 350 degree oven for about 20 minutes. Feeling very on top of myself, I go downstairs to the kitchen to check on them a few minutes early and, sniffing the air, think to myself, "Who's the asshole who burned the popcorn?" I opened the oven to find two trays of blackened peanuts. I always have to be the asshole. I'm never trusting Virginia again.

Also:

Last night I dreamt that Bina had a sweet radio show at some supersecret place (obviously stemming from my insecurities about being the "lame" kid in the family, now amplified by her recent badassery) and as a direct result of this, I was bitten on the index finger of my right hand by a small hippo (not a pygmy hippo, mind you, but a small version of a standard sized hippo) who had escaped from the supersweet radio show headquarters.

And furthermore, Jenny:

As soon as you put that play in my hands, I had every intention of reading it almost immediately, which (obviously) means that I haven't read it yet. Can't you just get the actors to come up here and put the play on for me? I do sew lahv the theatah...

The other day got both questions on my oatmeal package right. One answer was Hawaii.

note XXIV
to her


for the defeat or law severe my
soul has learned to lose respect/i love you/
crosses my soul the water cold where
float those faces of the compañeros

like we wrapped of your skin the soft
or the lamp bright delicate
so that they sleep delicately
highly in you/flame that names

every shadow by your nest/happiness
or solitude or fire for love
where rest beautiful my little dead ones

that always loved faces like you
where your face advances like you
against the pain of having been/to be

o heart/o wall/bed
of flowers where your criatura
makes light my criatura as though
giving creatura to your criatura

so that in you would be criatura
my heart or wall where
your delicate scent raises
a creatura in your criatura

like criatura of myself in you
or like field of valor
to your criatura like bed
in whose undone sheets

my criatura rose up
like a piece of lit up
light of the world/like
your creatura/like flame

how am i supposed to listen to that girl with the harp, given where she comes from and how her music got to me?

leftover white rice, rachel's leftover spinach, pale celery, half a dried out onion, garlic, soy sauce, cock sauce, garam masala, and sesame oil. doesn't seem like it would be that good, does it? the celery is just too out of left field, and i had wanted plain old yellow curry powder instead of the fancy stuff. well against all odds, it is delicious! hooray for refrigerator roulette!

today is almost my last day on campus until winter break. i have three classes today, which are arranged (luckily enough) in increasing order of fun-ness: history lecture, presentations/juice party in spanish class, followed by yogurt (ga) class. I feel terribly satisfied.

I saw my first ice of the season yesterday. Dew water had eeked out of the forked crotch of a tree and froze froze froze. Other interesting sightings include: two hawk-on-squirrel attacks, one hawk eating a squirrel for lunch under a juniper bush.

I'm now that person who did to him what those who love him next will swear never to do. There is no defending myself, no matter what he says.

Although I only ever "work" about once or twice a month at my event assistant gig, it's the sweetest job ever. I started out the night having a friendly conversation with a smartly dressed grad student (I think he may have been hitting on me, but I can never tell) who gave me a cookie, then attended the slide show/lecture given by a tiny and beautiful lady who pronounced all of the French words in her pretty little accent, and then ended up leaving at the end of the night with a huge chunk of herbed goat cheese, a piece of brie, and two bottles of wine. Super sweet.

Fall is here! Zach and I drove back to NY from my house (after a gastronomically superb evening with T. Michael Callahan) and all of the grass was gold and yellow and all of the trees were red and orange and purple. Nice stuff, really.

This morning, the skies are very clear and deep blue, the air is quite autumnal, and I am having hummus accompanied by half a box of wheat thins. Life is nice this morning, but mostly hummus is.