kerouac says

so, it has begun. i have bid (i have bidden? i am bididding?) on a wedding dress on ebay. i found two i liked while we were shopping, neither of which i could afford, one of which i found on ebay the next day for a totally do-able sum. no jinxing.

i had not anticipated that two of my great loves, party dresses and internet comparison shopping, would be so beautifully united in this enterprise. i am at my happiest, these days, while trying out combos of search terms most likely to put me in touch with the best and most efficient second hand and sample-selling bridal stores. i am checking classifieds in cities where i don't live. when i'm not checking the internet, i'm thinking about it. i am thinking, i can beat you, internet. your secrets are mine.

i should be a professional googler. i'm really good at this shit.



for the record, the early contenders are:






i know. that one lady is kind of tarty looking. i won't be making the marilyn face.

i figure if i can find either of them used at a decent price, i should buy them and choose from the assembled field. i can always sell the non-choices to some other crazy person online if they don't work out.

and, because i like stacking myself up against professional models, here is me in versions of both of these:










that brown one is a dark horse. those aren't good pictures of it; it was actually really pretty. it's the one sort of not clingy one i liked.

have at it, internet community. advise me, strangers. unless you're going to say something like, hey, i didn't picture you having that kind of nose, in which case: save it.

so, in la smith's class, we had to interview one of our classmates and then do the patented ADS performance of what they told them, as them, using their words and inflections and body language.

three guesses who i was partnered with.




it went really well.

i did not wear the nosestrip, since he didn't wear one to our interview and somehow it just seemed like mocking. it was hard enough to use the words and imitate the inflections of someone who's not a native speaker without feeling like i was going immediately to hell, but i am 87% sure it was not offensive.

i have the bad bad headcold. all of you out there who managed not to make out with me over the last weekend, you may have dodged a bullet.

i'm a puddle.

it was a great show last night, and it was so lovely to see the rockstar. and truly, only good things happened and i am just a mess this morning. was it the 4 a.m.? do i not get to do that anymore? is it the fucking crapwork for school? somehow over the weekend the pile seems to have got taller, and deeper, not smaller. i was reading bataille at the bar, for cry-eye. was it that last beer or the fluorescent lights on the PATH train?

cry-eye, indeed. i can't turn off my sniffles. why so sad, sugarplum?

taste of home, maybe.


maybe.




maybe i just want someone to throw a little gravel on my second-story window.

i didn't post a picture of my engagement ring here (at least i think i didn't; saving brain power for marcuse, lacan and kristeva this week makes me a little wobbly in the mentis) because i thought it was probably not the done thing. after all, i've had a certain ambivalence about the whole weird ring/fetter/chattel/diamond/blood in darkest africa thing from the very beginning.

i have to tell you, though, i'm glad i bowed (or listened, whichever) to the part of me that wanted this ring. i think we navigated it right; since i couldn't stand the idea of the financially-challenged monkey going into debt for a luxury that doesn't even go on his hand, i decided i would pay for it. the same great aunt who (lovingly, wonderfully) left me the down payment for the apartment had given me a gold coin (i know, right? like elves and ogres, or possibly pirates, are going to enter in a minute) for my twenty-first birthday, with a note saying, "maybe someday you'll want something." i kept it around, thinking, for reasons i can't really explain, that i would use it to buy a wedding dress or a digital camera someday. you know, one of the two. and then when it actually that time, i thought, this dumb dress only gets worn once, and this thing on my finger is like the tattoo i never got. i'll see it every day.



i sold the south african death coin on the internets, and it paid exactly for the ring, tax, the cab from 14th street, and a beer and a salad for each of us after we picked up the goods.

and here is the thing about seeing it every day. i didn't think we would find something so beautiful. i figured i'd like it, but this is so much more than "like it." as i mentioned on the public blog, this photo is rather dull. the thing itself is so freaking beautiful. it's tiny tiny tiny and the light bounces off it and it's just way more lovely than i thought any sort of ring would be. it's just a beautiful small thing. and i find myself looking at it all the time, and not in a barbie dream house, play-bride-with-a-pillowcase-on-my-head way, but because looking at how beautiful it is makes me feel like things will be okay. like i will get through this bizarre year (thirty, master's degree, constant inferiority concerns, potential change of profession, giant party, PhD applications) like a competent person and have something valuable at the end. this ring is comforting. and man, i know it's a luxurious priviliege to think this way, but is that ever worth a couple of hundred dollars.

sheepishly: i think i've rarely felt as uncomplicatedly good about anything as i do about this fingerthing. it is a brilliant reminder of what is going right.