exacerbate87's Xanga

Wednesday, February 18, 2009

Wed, 18 Feb 2009 22:45:45 GMT

www.wondermark.com

Thursday, January 29, 2009

Thu, 29 Jan 2009 21:05:10 GMT

CVIII.

What's in the brain that ink may character
Which hath not figured to thee my true spirit?
What's new to speak, what new to register,
That may express my love or thy dear merit?
Nothing, sweet boy; but yet, like prayers divine,
I must, each day say o'er the very same,
Counting no old thing old, thou mine, I thine,
Even as when first I hallow'd thy fair name.
So that eternal love in love's fresh case
Weighs not the dust and injury of age,
Nor gives to necessary wrinkles place,
But makes antiquity for aye his page,
  Finding the first conceit of love there bred
  Where time and outward form would show it dead.

I wrote this for ENG 110

Tue, 18 Nov 2008 17:35:39 GMT

A bike messenger clattered across Canal Street as I headed down into the subway station. The platform was sparsely populated at 11:30 on a Monday night. The 6 was a light far down in the darkness of the tunnel, then a blur blowing my hair back as it rumbled by.

I got on. It was one of the newer trains, with the nifty blue benches. There was a bald man who looked thirtyish sitting across the car from me, reading something by Flannery O'Connor. He wore a rumpled suit without a tie, and his socks didn’t match. The seams of his weary messenger bag were stretched with books. The handle of a coffee mug poked out from a zipper pocket on the side. I wondered where he lived and how far he had to carry that bag every day.

At Bleecker Street, a girl in a green sweater got on and sat next to me. The man looked up. His eyes were saggy and chocolaty brown, like a spaniel's eyes. He stared at the young woman, who was digging around in her Dolce and Gabbana knockoff bag. She fished out her iPhone and began tapping impatiently at the screen. Her nail polish was chipped. I'd never seen anyone take out a phone in the subway. Having left my iPod in an airplane two weeks before, I was hungry for shiny technology. I slyly looked over her shoulder and saw that she was rearranging the icons on the startup menu.

The train pulled into the Astor Place station. The man across the car was still staring at the girl. She swayed and bumped me slightly as the train stopped.

“Sorry,” she said. I smiled awkwardly at her, but she was absorbed in the screen of her phone again. I looked back up at the bald man, who was taking his bag off the seat beside him and stowing it under the bench.

“Stand clear of the closing doors, please,” said the voice of Manhattan Transit. The girl in the green sweater powered down her phone and watched the walls of the subway tunnel rolling in the darkness outside the window. I wondered how she could miss the way the man across the car was staring at her. He was still holding the book. It was a paperback, and the binding was breaking between his fingers. She tucked her hair behind her ear and I saw his eyes follow her hand from the nape of her neck to the handrail beside her.

The train began to slow again. He pulled his bag out from under the seat and pushed the paperback into it, then looked back up at the young woman. She swung her bag over her shoulder and moved to stand at the door, right next to him.

“This is 14^th Street,” said the voice of Manhattan Transit. The girl left. The man turned his head to look at the place by the door where she had been. When I got off the train at 33^rd, he was still watching the empty air. My phone rang as I climbed out of the station. It was my mom.

“Hi sweetie,” she said. “What’s going on?”

“Nothing,” I said.

Thursday, November 13, 2008

Thu, 13 Nov 2008 03:26:55 GMT

I should be reading Brave New World, but I'm not.
I love that I'm still in the honeymoon phase with NYC. I'm a fool in love. I look out my window and turn into a slack-jawed loser, dumbstruck by a few cabs at a stoplight. I'm dippy dotty distracted MAD in love with this city, and with my school, and with the weather. I get weak in the knees when I walk by the Lyceum or see the moon sitting on top of my apartment building. The Empire State Building was lit up purple at the top last night just for me, I know it.
I love the button shop on 6th Avenue that's right past Bryant Park, and the mean ladies that scream at me in Trader Joe's, and how my cheeks get all rosy after walking 30 blocks in the cold, and the tourists from other countries that argue right in the middle of 34th Street, and the nice security guards at the ESB, and the smell of the nut vendors on a frosty afternoon, and Trinity churchyard, and the Conservatory Garden, and the Temple of Dendur room at the Met, and even the yucky subway. I've fallen hard--wildly, passionately...and I don't know if I'll ever recover.

Wednesday, November 12, 2008

Wed, 12 Nov 2008 06:13:03 GMT

Allrighty then. The semester is winding down, and I have come to a decision about what I will be reading over Christmas break.
I will be reading "The Iron Duke" and "The Satanic Verses."
I think it will be nice to have a balance between fiction and nonfiction for once, instead of having about five novels going, like I usually do during breaks.
I am feebly attempting not to let my sniffles get any worse. I say feebly because healthiness gets somewhat buried under all the papers and quizzes and such.
I think I'll pop a Vitamin C and go to bed.

Thursday, October 30, 2008

Thu, 30 Oct 2008 02:35:57 GMT

...So I guess the Phillies won the World Series. If I were home, I would have been eating nachos with my brothers and watching the game.
I feel like NYC is its own small-to-midsized planet sometimes. There are probably enough people here to populate at least the Death Star and possibly one of the moons of Endor. Actually, I think it would be great if there were a planet just the size of Manhattan, like in Super Mario Galaxy or something. The size of the Earth is intimidating.
Anyway, I have a paper to write as usual.

How do you like your coffee?

Tue, 28 Oct 2008 22:17:54 GMT

Two half&halfs. No sugar. Served between the hours of 10AM-2PM.

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Friday, October 24, 2008

Fri, 24 Oct 2008 04:12:54 GMT

I've been having this incredible sense of peace about my midterms. It's nice. And while in high school, I would have wanted to jump off a tall building if I got anything less than an A, I am now okay with the B on my Pol midterm. I really am. It's a good feeling.
I've been on a floating, euphoric high since I saw Don Giovanni at the Met last Tuesday. It was the closest thing to perfection I've ever seen. Actually, I think perfection isn't good enough. I wrote a review for the student newspaper and I've run out of words for how good it was.
Praise the Lord for weekends =)

In a society so obsessed with perfection, who are the women young girls should look up to?

Mon, 06 Oct 2008 03:06:09 GMT

Women from other times, back when the world was about what you thought.
Eleanor Roosevelt, Margaret Thatcher, Susan B. Anthony.

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What three things do you miss from your younger years?

Sat, 27 Sep 2008 17:49:59 GMT

I miss ballet lessons. I loved my tutus and slippers.
I miss climbing the Bradford Pear in our front yard with my brother.
I miss getting into all sorts of zany mischief with Jill.

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