Ivythoughts - Tumblr Posts

where I live

Whenever I think I've got nothing, I try to run away. 

I go outside and feel the cold night air hitting my cold face and my cold eyes and my soon-to-be-cold heart. 

Whenever I think I've got nothing, I realize that I still have the cold night air.

And I still have the trees.  The trees are still green, even when I've got nothing else.

And I still have my feet, and the black cowboy boots on them.

And when it's not night, I still have the bright blue sky, and the white, nearly-transluscent clouds on them.

And even though I don't personally own Krispy Kremes, they still exist, they're still out there, and they have nothing specifically against ivy's buying donuts.  Although, there aren't any in hyde park, just stupid lame Dunkin' Donuts. Story of my life.  Hyde Park having very little food that is decent is the story of my life. 

And when I'm not thinking about donuts, and I think I've got nothing, 

I go get on some swings. 

And when weird pre-adolescents aren't poking me with sticks, and I'm on those swings, and I think I've got nothing and no-one, I'm still on those swings.

And I play some bright eyes.  And he's got soft, simple, sad, beautiful, brilliant chords, and I can live there. 

And I can live in the cold wind and the bright blue sky and in pillows decorated in red brocade satin, or green brocade, or blue brocade.

But nothing's quite as good as the red brocade, with gold accents and a consistent, spicy, sweet smell.  

And that's what I've got, when I think I've got nothing, 

And that's where I live

I can live in his voice

I can live suspended in the middle of the sky

I can live in coffee, sweets, books, and serendipity

And that's where I live. 

oh, this again

I'm pretty upset that the quarter has gone by so quickly.  I realized with a shock yesterday that I'm actually going to have to buy a plane ticket soon, and that once I buy my ticket, I'm going to go home and then I'm going to be home and then the inertia that school has will have let off and I'll just be at home, completely still. 

I'm excited to be seeing carlos, pablo, and mindy again, and I hope I see a lot of them, although Mindy isn't going to be staying in El Paso very long because she's going to go back to Austin.

Things are complicated here, of course.  My future really does hang over my head, uncertain and demanding certainty.  Some days I feel ok with this uncertainty, other days I'm trying to keep a sort of panic from consuming me.

Academically, this has been one of the easiest quarters here, if it weren't for my BA work and my studying for the LSAT, and my job. 

I always hate Christmas-time.  The other day they were putting up the decorations in Hallowed (where I am now) and I had this weird feeling.  It was almost a good feeling, though.  I kind of wish I could experience a Christmas in a place that was more suitable to it than I think El Paso is.  Somewhere where there's green pine trees and white snow. 

Lovesick, Lovefool

A poignant thematic similarity between the two ballads is that they both feature a somewhat problematic relationship between love and physical objects, a relationship that both of the male figures attempt to subvert. It is a bit strange that within “Lord Randal,” the Lord’s mother immediately becomes concerned with the family’s inheritance, and goes so far as to ask what he will leave to his true-love. However, in the final stanza and the final turn of the poem, Lord Randal, instead of leaving her an object, or nothing, chooses to leave her “hell and fire,” taking his revenge into his own hands, even if only by expressing it vocally.  Similarly, within “Boots of Spanish Leather,” the male figure is constantly hounded by his lover about whether or not he “might want something fine / Made of silver or of golden,” (ll. 9-10), something tangible, from tangible places like “the mountains of Madrid / Or from the coast of Barcelona” (ll. 11-12).  Instead, he responds to her with intangible and perhaps ethereal desires, for her to carry herself back to him “unspoiled” (ll. 8), for her “sweet kiss,” (ll. 15), and, even more vaguely, “The same thing I want from you today, / I would want again tomorrow.” (ll. 23-24). In the final line and stanza of the poem, the figure finally acquiesces to her questions, but his desire for the eponymous “Spanish boots of Spanish leather” is not just a desire for boots, but a message that from that point on, a physical object is all that he will want from her.

I feel slightly raw about using the word "poignant," but what can ye do.  It's 5:30 and this was one of two papers due tomorrow.  Or today, rather. 

And my reward will be listening to that song, that song about those Spanish boots of Spanish leather. 

My novel

I'm going to write a novel.  It's going to be a retelling of "Twilight," but instead of someone from the south moving to the northwest, I'm going to have someone from the northwest moving to the south.  Because, y'know, I'm from the south. 

Instead of sparkling in the sun, though, my vampires are going to smoke. I don't mean literally smoke some Marlboro's, but that would probably be a good idea too because in order to be a bad boy you've got to actually do something bad. 

Another notable difference will also be that, whereas the characters in "Twilight" have all this sexual tension while nevertheless remaining pristinely abstinent, my characters are going to have all of this sexual tension while nevertheless remaining pristinely absent despite and perhaps even because of vivid imaginings of sexual encounters that will go on for pages at a time.

I'm going to have J edit it for "segmantic and pramatics," someone like Fletcher edit it for thematic consistency, and girls like Mindy & A edit it for sheer feminine appeal. 

I just realized that jokes like the one above are probably why J gets pissed off at my jokes sometimes; it probably seems like I'm undermining his endeavors.

I'm writing so much these days, creatively, that is, but unfortunately I'm not doing as much work on my BA as I should be.  Yesterday we went to the Pub for my BA Seminar but I was so annoyed, if I wanted to drink in my spare time, I certainly wouldn't drink with you. 

I might be crazy but I think that the beautiful girl in my Introduction to Poetry class was staring back at me today.  Maybe I've got a shot. I met a gay girl at E's party the other day; I know that she was gay because of her conversation.  But I wondered as soon as she was talking about some flighty ex-girlfriend of hers if perhaps that was the reason why her hand seemed to sort of quiver underneath mine when we shook, if perhaps she was trying to test something out. I probably failed. 

I have to write here that I'm pretty annoyed that my tumblr theme doesn't allow for italics or for small fonts.  How else will I talk about books and movies, damnit?!

that's what editors are for

A big thing that keeps me from writing is that I genuinely detest my prose. For a long time this caused me some angst because although I genuinely detest my prose I also genuinely feel that my personality and the way that I think is particularly suited for writing, for creating dramatic other worlds. I’ve written about this before, about the inability to tell whether it’s watching so many movies and reading so many books that makes me so dramatic, or whether it’s this need for drama and romance and passion that both makes me want to seek movies and books as a source of drama as well as escape the world that rejects my dramatic nature.

But in spite of all of this I’ve still started to write. I realized that the reasons I think my writing veers towards the “visual” and “cinematic” are also the reasons why I should keep writing prose. I think I’ve got a good grasp of compelling thematic elements, vivid characters (because I just mix & mash from my own life), interesting stories, and good dialogue (again, because I rewrite conversations I’ve had as well as the conversations I crazily imagine myself happening).

I HAVE to be a writer, I HAVE to, I HAVE to. Otherwise what the fuck is all that energy that I spend on my vivid fantasies for?

apartment robbed

So, my apartment was robbed last night. Only Anna's cousin's computer was taken. 

I'm going to make a tumblr solely devoted to one of the things I love seeing in movies and film: people typing on computers. 

Right off the bat, I've got:

Sex & The City The Social Network This One Sitcom on the WB a Few Years Ago Bored to Death The Good Wife

Notable snubs: Gossip Girl because ew "Bing" ew "Bing" Twilight because THIS IS NOT 1999.

GO TO BED IVY.  

In other news, XJ is having drinks with his ex-girlfriend and it's making me insane because even though she's prettier than me by about an enormous margin I have to be better than her, I have to. 

It's probably wise to stop being his friend, even though he is MY BEST FRIEND, but I'm just hurting all of the time and sometimes I can't even sleep at night because I'm so heart-sick about it.

But the truth of the matter is that I was already imagining a cool life being bff's, because we have so much in common and sort of a same world-view and he makes me crack up and he makes me feel like a really good version of myself. 

>.<  I could ask someone's advice about this, but I think that figuring this one out on my own might be a good part of growing up. 

In other news, hung out last night with German Urbanity without watching Bored to Death.  We watched Arrested Development & Community instead. He said he thinks he heard somebody while he was in my room, maybe, but I don't know if this is true and I think it's a moot point anyway. 

Ivy, stop blogging late at night and go the fuck to bed. 

Wrigleyville

When we move to the north side,  Urbane you and increasingly urbane me, Can we smoke inside?

In between the times when you get distracted By a book on your desk like you did last night, I don't want to have to go outside,

When you get distracted and read from it your foreign poetry, Words I don't understand telling me you'll give me $10 if I guess correctly What animal it's about And I start singing to you in Spanish from the song about longing and being stuck, Probablemente ya, probably by now you've forgotten about me, 

I'll just want you to shut up So I can write and smoke and breathe without distraction, all in one go. When we move to the north side, Can we smoke inside? I don't want to have to go outside, So I can write and smoke and breathe without distraction, all in one go.  

Never Say Never

Yesterday, while on lunch break from working at Crerar and while munching on a cheeseburger from Sammy’s, I was listening to last week's On the Media podcast. It surpasses other shows on NPR in terms of intelligence, media and cultural awareness, and, most importantly, depth, by a very wide margin. It’s far more refreshing than anything I’ve ever heard on “Fresh Air” or “All Things Considered.” The former, in fact, often gives me this feeling of sadness from its blatant display of generational and class gaps—gaps that On the Media, on the other hand, excels at traversing, largely because it does not try to hide them. Although it pays attention to what’s going on in the world currently, it focuses on a specific part of a world event, especially its “representation” in the media, as well as how the media works around it, with a level of skill and proficiency that, again, is unmatched on NPR or anywhere. I know this because working in Crerar is the kind of endeavor that has made me dependent on both the many programs of NPR as well as, of course, the cheeseburgers from Sammy’s.

I think part of the reason why it stands out is that, liberal, or yuppie, or high-brow, or not, NPR still has to pander to its audience. It presents a lot of information from around the world, but there’s still a lot of condensing and synthesizing for a mass audience that’s going on. In any case, I didn’t intend to write this in order to condemn NPR in any way, I’m just trying to show, I guess, how good ‘On the Media’ really is.

There are two tensions at work in today’s media—or maybe they were always tensions in media and news throughout their history—being both entertaining, as in something that you want to pay attention to because you’re getting something out of it and enjoying it on some level, and the slightly different thirst to be informed. On the radio especially, I think this plays out in the attempt to be intelligent and informative as well as avoiding dryness. On the Media mostly dodges that bullet, but it is so good at exploring a certain media phenomena or mechanisms that sometimes it gets a little bit too intricate. But I mean that only in the sense that sometimes its analyses are so complex that they turn sort of boring and fail to sustain my attention while I’m also checking my email.

In any case, part of last week’s episode of On the Media focused on the protests in Libya, in particular focusing on OTM producer and correspondent Sarah Abdurrahman and her part in the resistance from “laptops in Washington DC.” The piece and the accompanying interview were both very good, but the point that particularly struck me was one in which Sarah, explaining the struggles of the protestors, began to cry despite her fiercest struggles against it.

I had a very sudden, almost visceral reaction: I was amazed as well as ashamed; in awe of her ability to feel so much for the struggle and for other people who were distant from her in so many ways. It was then that I decided to give myself the unattainable, impossible, and incredibly idealistic goal of never crying for myself again until I cry for someone else. Suddenly I was disgusted by the idea of feeling sorry for yourself to such an extent that you indulgently weep, for hours, embracing the action of sadness and making it an artifact separate from whatever it was that made you sad in the first place.

I did say that it was unattainable and unrealistic, but so are many goals. The next mental jump that my mind made was to realize that, in some ways, she was crying for herself. She’s personally connected to many Libyan protestors, and in the interview you don’t get the sense that she’s in Washington, DC, but in every way one of the people on the street. So you can make a heavy-handed argument for the ways in which she’s not a “self-less”

That’s a modern claim of our society, right? That there’s no such thing as altruism, that we’re all “selfish” actors and that, moreover, the world is better that way? What this segment made me think is that this claim isn’t as nasty as one might think—that the two things I’ve been trying to separate, ie, Sarah’s deep emotional commitment to the needs of others versus her own deep emotional needs, are in fact inseparable. If, in fact, there is no altruism and we’re all selfless actors, and if every single act of human nature can in some way be brought back to a goal that includes just yourself, then isn’t it all the more impressive that taking part in any kind of activism because you want to look and seem like a good person can elicit such actually good results?

I want to be a force for good in the world, I want to be the good I want to see in the world. I’m sure a big part of that has to do with my wanting to be in some way superior, I’m sure you can even make an argument that it all goes back to sex, that being an impressive person would lead more impressive people to make impressive babies with me, but I’ll take that. Even if everything I do for others is selfish—at least it’s one less selfish thing that’s turned inward.

Or something. This is all jumbled. I left my wallet at the Maroon and I don’t know how I’m going to pay rent. Wait, that makes it seem as if I don't know how I'm going to pay rent because I left my wallet in the Maroon. But it's mostly because my dad hasn't given me the money for our cell phone bill. But mostly I need my ID to check out books! Sad undergraduate life. But hey, I’m not going to cry about it, rite?

Dear McSweeney's,

I just wanted you to know that that column you have, "Open Letters to People or Entities Who are Unlikely to Respond" was all my idea. 

I often think about writing to the many entities and objects that exist in my daily life, even if only through the screen of my laptop, and of the necessary hilarity which that would entail. 

The fact that your own column is often hilarious does not diminish the severity of this insult. Rather, it makes me both slightly ashamed that an idea which I obviously had before you and which you obviously somehow stole, perhaps with the aid some kind of Inception-like device, perhaps with the aid of Leonardo DiCaprio, or perhaps even by the aid of Leonardo Dicaprio's character in The Departed, is now flourishing at your hands. 

With that said, though, there are some small changes that I think could be made. Improvements, rather. 

First, I've been pretty disappointed with most of your open letters to food. The funniest, and, if I may say so myself, the most profound of my thoughts and musings have occurred in the form of addresses to food. Yours, on the other hand, leave me a bit underwhelmed. First off, a toddler liking disgusting food isn't that funny, whereas older people having extended love affairs with food are hilarious. Cf: SNL's "Brownie Husband" skit. Part of the problem here is also the choice of food. Smart Puffs? Really?

Also, the particular choice of public figures chosen by the current writer of your column makes me wonder about his/her age. Britney Spears? Hilary Duff? I didn't even read those columns, which is really saying something, because my appetite when it comes to reading long-form content online when I should really be doing something else is nothing short of voracious. Most of these center on the absurdity of the figure, the absurdity of liking the figure, and something or other about celebrity and fame. Well, let me tell you McSweeney's: there are far more hilariously absurd and undeservedly famous people out there. Have you heard of this "Heidi Spencer" person? No? What about the Kardashians? Or Chris Brown? Far more ridiculous, and far more interesting than two singers who are basically famous for being white pretty girls who can kinna sing and kinna act. There are people out there who are far more talented at being untalented and who have made much bigger wrecks of their lives. I'm not even going to MENTION Mr. Tiger Blood's name hurr.

Also, you should tell the librarian that wrote that column about being a librarian five years ago that the reason that "DS.A19" comes before "DS.2" is because in the Library of Congress system, any number after a "." is treated like a decimal. No, listen, I'm not being a douche, I know that it CAN be confusing to think of them as decimals because sometimes they're preceded by letters. But that's still the answer.

I was taught this during training by this ridiculously youth-oriented program. There was this warlock who promised to turn me into a unicorn or some shit if I correctly put "Q435.123" before "QA431.31." Although now that you mention it, i have no idea what to do when I get a "Q100.A144" and "Q100.A1440." If we're still following the decimal system, those two "numbers" should be identical, unless there's a number after that zero, and if there was, then it should be on the label itself! So I sort of understand your pain, guy who writes that librarian column. But mostly just treat them like decimals and it should be pretty self-explanatory.  

But anyway, McSweeney's. We both should probably get back to work. And by your "work" I mean, making "new" content every couple of days which I will then read instead of writing my BA, and by "my" work I mean totally binging on a column of yours...while I should instead be writing my BA. Either way it'll probably lead me to contemplate following David Foster Wallace's footsteps (whether writing a novel or killing myself, it varies by the day (was that off color? oh well whatevs). 

Love, 

Ivy. 

PS. I just realized that your "open letters" is actually open--people can send them in and then if they're funny enough you'll publish them or whatever. I probably won't send this in. It probably isn't funny enough. Now where the fuck's my copy of Infinite Jest.