Dave Eggers, What is the What: The Autobiography of Valentino Achak Deng

Une partie de moi ne s’intéressent pas vraiment si les choses ne marchent pas. Il est plus facile de cette façon - d’aller sur la vie sans les attentes d’autres personnes.

Il est presque contraire à l’éthique à ce cynique.

La vraie question? Pourquoi dois-je encore des soins? Je n’ai jamais dépendu des autres. C’est difficile pour moi de faire confiance aux gens.

C’est facile de sauter sur le prochain vol pour un endroit lointain. C’est ce que je considère comme “facile”.

Mes mauvaises habitudes sont de retour.

(I’d like to think it’s the former, since being neurotic is kind of cool. Taking yourself seriously is like a giant faux pas that you should never readily admit to.)

I just want to know if you’re on the same rollar coaster that I’m on. We can have a beer and a bag of popcorn, while we watch the world from up top and down low. And I’ll hold your hair back when the ride gets too fast, if you promise to laugh at my jokes when the ride isn’t as fast as we hoped it would be. And if not …. sucks to be me.

And before anyone judges me and makes a remark about this post and it’s implications, please remember that I’m female and hormonal.

In other news, Monica broke up with me over text and changed our relationship status via Facebook, which created a huge controversy regarding my real relationship status. Sorry to disappoint? But I guess it was never real, since we were never ***Facebook official*** in the first place. Sucks to be us.

All of life seems to be just a progression toward, and then a recession from, attaining a particular level: moods, feelings, material things, money, social status. And it’s always “what can I do to get there?” over and over again. How many of glasses of wine will it take? How many hits? How many years will I have to waste away? How many paychecks?

… until I’m happy?

And then: what will you do when you get there? Is there another level?

P.S. Not to be sentimental, but this photo brings tears to my eyes. Mainly because it involved three bills and a brown sack (for Kerry, yeah), not because it bought me more time or anything of the sort. Talk about sabotage, whoops.

ii. Sarah almost got kidnapped a couple of day ago and I told her it was karma for what happened on 9/11.

iii. Just in case you didn’t know, Sarah is Persian. And I am politically incorrect.

iv. I might’ve written Stephen Layton the best. letter. ever. It’s literary genius. Pure genius. (I’d share, but that would be breaking letter protocol.) I should get going on all these letters, but I want to make each of ‘em awesome and full of fuzzy warm feelings. It’ll be worth the wait … Kerr, Michelle, Cady, Monica, Liz, Keels, Alexandria, and Hayley. Promise. (Clo got her card and I’m convinced that’s why she came up to Santa Clara … but everyone knows I like to fool myself into thinking things.)

v. Chris and I somehow ended up on the same trip to Alaska. Mum got really excited when I told her that “the one boy on my floor with the mustache that you thought was cool” would be on the same boat. Like really excited. I’m hoping for an open bar on this boat–it will make the time go by very, very quickly.

vi. Jered’s dad called and asked if we both had fake IDs. Yet. (He wanted to take us to Napa.) Jered replies: “No. Not yet.”

vii. One word: Tahiti.

viii. And then: How in the name of the holy [insert deity here] am I saying no?

ix. But I did. Not even lying. (Will VIP at Outside Lands ease the blow? Maybe.)

x. I need to do something creative … and by creative, I don’t mean drawing pictures on letters to my friends. Possibly buying a dress form to do … what, I don’t know.

xi.The lovely kids from LA took a break from North Hollywood to visit Northern California — around 7ish, Jeff, Sam, Greg, Anna, and Lena showed up at Jered’s apartment door and we all went out to dinner. I excitedly pushed for Good Karma (and our kind friends half-heartedly agreed), but in the battle of meat eaters versus veg heads (I’m the underdog, obvs), meat won again (obvs). So Jered got to eat a big fat burrito filled with grade-A guilt. Like if guilt were meat, it’d be the kind of steak that got to run around freely in the fields and was spoiled rotten … just to be eaten. Try to follow me here.

xii. Also: I tried really hard not to watch, but I got to jealously watch as the actual, represented by an actual, existing agency, that does actual runways, really tall and really skinny model Lena dig into food. I looked at my thighs and back at Lena enjoying her food and then back at Lena and then I made mental plans with the potty (just kidding, seriously … bulimia is bad, kids), but then I bit into my burrito and forgot all about willpower and diets and taking myself too seriously.

xiii. And also: I popped my tires driving back to the apartment to get Kerry’s birthday gift … Jeff calls it sabotage; I blame genetics.

P.S. I’m still in love with Mona. She’s my current model obsession. Because I’m so tacky like that.
P.P.S. I once made Stephen a fortune teller and one of the fortunes read “Armageddon”. Because he’d appreciate something like that.

There is a Death Cab song that I occasionally like to listen to, but I never readily admit that I do. It is not “cool” or, more importantly, “hip” to admit to such a notion. Death Cab is something awkward adolescents listen to as they experience the highs and lows of hormones (or as they doctor these feelings in attempt to be deeper, more thoughtful human beings), not something that anyone above the age of 15 should ever admit to listening. But I want to admit to liking Death Cab sometimes (as in, I only like them on occasion, not sometimes I lie about liking them), just like I will admit to liking Incubus and Elliot Smith. After all, every cliché song that they ever wrote about falling in and out of love, being overly emotional, or whatever has formed an integral part of who I’ve become. Death Cab taught me how to love like a complete sap, just like MGMT taught me that we will all one day wake up to cubicles and people that we will never love as passionately like when we were young. So live fast. Die young (as late as possible). Make music, make some money, find some models for wives.

I feel like this is a lot to admit to, because anyone that reads this is probably (and if not, should be) judging me right now. I really should be saying that I learned how to love from a much more profound source, like Jane Austen or the Jessica Simpson/Nick whatshisname fiasco at the time, but the truth is — it was seventh grade and Death Cab said something about being oceans apart from the someone you loved. I knew right then and there that true love meant that a guy sat down and wrote sappy songs about you. Okay, just kidding. But I thought that this is what love felt like, or should feel like. And I knew that it had the power to evoke powerful emotions for a hormonal seventh grader, because I cried with Incubus when his girl ran to Mexico (Incubus, “Mexico”, Morning View) and fell in love with the world that Elliot Smith saw through the eyes of a girl he loved (Elliot Smith, “Say Yes”, Good Will Hunting soundtrack) and wanted to be the girl that Belle & Sebastian wanted an affair with (Belle & Sebastian, “Step into my Office, Baby”, Dear Catastrophe Waitress). Kill me. I was 13.

And now I’m no longer 13, but this Death Cab song still articulates how I feel (on occasion) to a T. I have always felt like my experiences are unique to me and to me only, but this is evidence that everyone just … feels the same. We all experience the same things, but in different time frames and in different places. The experience in itself may be unique, but the feelings of love, loss, happiness, anxiety, butterflies, and sadness are all the same. I also say this because I just finished a novel (of the bad, chick lit kind) and excitedly thought to myself that the book described the very same situation I was in and how I felt. But …. wait. Shit, this book describes the very same situation I was in and how I felt about it. I would like to think that certain experiences — like the Portugal. the Man show at Coachella when John Gourley screamed “this song is for all the couples out there that just fell in love” and a certain someone held me a little tighter — are unique and make me feel unique, but I bet everyone at the show thought that the song only described their budding love and felt unique that night.

What does this all mean, anyhow? Does that make me any lesser of an individual? Does that invalidate my experiences altogether?

It’s July 6th, which means that the apartments on Lafayette have officially woken out of a nice June nap for about a day and a half. We’ve been moving things in and out of the apartment, but mostly Jered and I sit around a lot and watch Cash run around/climb things like a little monkey. It’s a real source of entertainment, since there is no cable or internet. Cash is ecstatic all the time; he assertively pushed Chase out of the bathroom and announced that he would be the first to christen the mighty toilet. Three words: Ryan Cashen would. And Jered’s mumsie even bought me a gift bag, complete with a bottle of chardonnay for our homecoming festivities. Kerr and Monica, you need to be here. It is out of control and it is not real life, but it’s our life. California life, the Clara life.

When you’re away, it’s easy to forget how abso-friggin’-lutely nice it is to get lost in the comforts of the Clara life. All you do is get yourself wrapped up in the nostalgia of a fantastic year and you let yourself get lost with summer work and play, thinking that it’ll be three weeks more, two weeks more until this life that we’ve made will all come back in one piece. I think we all forget why and how we got so attached to this life; we only remember the road trips and the kisses and the laughter and the sunset and airplanes and inebriated nights at Maples and “date and a fifth”s at Calphi and yucky Benson food and the Bronco on late nights. And then you come back and you get lost again–there is no bad economy, people are good and they share, you don’t have to work (unless you want to), time doesn’t move, you are young and you love everybody in the room, your family exists only when you need them to, Al Green is always a good choice, and you never, ever grow old.

Let’s be real. Even the reality that next year will be nothing like the last doesn’t exist.

The carpets smell like cancer, but it already feels like home.

Is it okay to get lost in this reality for just a little while? As long as we function in our other lives like normal, breathing human beings in San Jose, in Los Angeles, in New York, in Colorado, in Portola Valley, in Rehoboth Beach or DC or Maryland or all of that, is it healthy (for our lungs, most importantly) to construct such a world?

tell me the one about the friend you knew,
and the last good night that we toasted to

we drank wine in the matinee
and the spotlight showed what i chased away

stay for me

Until I can write a proper blog, I hope this will hold you up …

If you love me, you’ll full screen it.

And for shits and giggles, here’s a video of my company’s second to last lookbook shoot with Veronica

And another of me and Evelyn running around

I am so proud of how the company has grown. I couldn’t ask for a better boss. Thanks J.

Sometimes this all feels like a fairytale–driving down the highway at speeds reserved for Los Angeles after a dinner that clearly wasn’t food from Benson, walking through the darkness and finding this little treasure of a gazebo, the sound of our laughter cutting through silence, being eaten alive by mosquitos, making the u-turn up to Hollywood Hills, hiking to the spot, feeling the pollution permeate every layer of my skin, and wondering where The Tallest Man on Earth put his poor little bluebird as we made the drive back home to the Valley. And then I’m at the airport once again, printing my boarding pass back to reality. And then I’m gripping his hand as the plane takes off, back to the life that we’ve constructed here in home sweet Santa Clara. And then it’s … hello to work, to growing old, to responsibility.

This is a recording of us that night in the gazebo, in all of its glory.

There are nights where old, rickety fears that have been successfully tucked away in books and conversation and growing old that come out. There are foolish fears that never go away, no matter how young — fear knows no age, no color — or old: the monster under the bed, occasionally strangers, the haphazard effects of vain and youthful love, being alone, etc.

And then there is real, honest-to-God fear. It’s this gnawing fear that one night, these fears will become realizations. One night, it’ll be the realization that the life experienced was not the one wanted or the one strived for. Or one night, it’ll be the realization that the conviction needed to be the best person, the ideal person was … never there. Well, that sucks, doesn’t it?

What if I wake up one night and see a nice car, someone I love, and a comfortable bed (and presumably a comfortable home), and that’s all I have? What if I wake up one night and realize that I haven’t changed the world? That somewhere in this social justice speech that I recite over and over again about equality, I’ll settle for commercial happiness? What if I never find the conviction to fight for the rights of other people?

Uhm hello everyone, that’s really freakin’ scary! Someone needs to make a movie out of this, tout de suite! This is quality, indie film material. =O!!!

Anyways, Kerry expects a blog about my life, so I promise when I get everything in working order … I’ll try to articulate — I don’t know, what do you people call these things? My feelings? Okay, we’ll go with that — my feelings about this entire year, this quarter, Los Angeles, Hollywood, lonely hotel rooms, “the way your heart feels when the plane takes off/lands … it’s like when you first kissed the person you’ve always wanted to … y’know”, my friends (I don’t really know why they like me), Michelle, aquariums, desserted prisons, and whatevs soon. Little things that matter to me and no one else. Like fears of a dormant Boogyman hiding under my bed. Like natural disasters.

Like this …
*: I just hiked up to the Hollywood sign.
**: How’s the pollution?
*: Delicious. Taste of godliness.
**: Is that the secret to being as cool as you? Gotta get me some of that LA pollution in my system
*: Then and only then will you be cool
**: No wonder I felt so cool after we went up those hills. I just thought it was a preview of what a cardiac arrest would feel like …

(Just a preview of our “sexting”. According to Ker, we have what she considers “educated” texting. Yeah, lemme just litter my sexts with strange diseases — isn’t cardiac arrest pretty normal for us Americans? as normal as apple pie and guns and Jesus Christ? — caused by LA pollution … I can just feel it turnin’ you on.)

Yaddiyaddiya. Y’know, the whole enchilada.

All I want you to be is my sweet honey bee

“Okay.”