i would like to wake up to the wind howling, so that my light on at five in morning will have more warmth than just the glow it emits.
i would like to wake up and write, but instead i have work to finish, and reading to do.
i would like to fall into a story tonight, and dream it through until it's end, without interruption.
i would like for my grandmother to visit me in my dreams and tell me that she's understood all along, and that she knew what i couldn't.
i would like for tomorrow to start with some rain and fog.

this tree was very, very high. the lowest branch was at least ten feet off the ground, and the damn tree was in the middle of a completely deserted field of wheat. weeping willow, field of wheat. is that usual? the tree had lots of little knicks and aggravations though, all the way up to the lowest branch, and that's how allen got up there. now he couldn't get back down because he was afraid to death of heights and absolutely unwilling to soil his pants on his way down. twenty-three years old and he still had irrational fears, like being up too high or dropping down too low. for the last two years he had to pick his living quarters so that he'd be smack dab in the middle of some kind of hill and at least visually assured that he was neither on its top nor its bottom. by a turn of fortune, that wasn't so difficult to achieve in san francisco, but getting about the city was a daily trial. then a few days ago his sister told him that she was selling their parents' Sacramento home and giving whatever was left behind to charity. typically such news wouldn't have swayed allen one way or another, except that just a few days prior to his sister's phone call, he had had an uncomfortable memory about his father and became entirely consumed with the thought of retrieving the tie his father had been wearing on the occasion. so he got on a train.

allen had no trouble with sacramento because it was a deliciously flat city. the region in which his parents lived was basically just a span of farmland from their house to the horizon. his mother used the land to grow vegetables and raise livestock; his father invested in wheat. when allen was about five years old, he discovered he was about as allergic to wheat stalks as his sister was to their house cat: one touch and his skin would be covered in hives. but his father was passionate about the plant and spent weeks seeding it. each year the field of wheat behind their house grew beyond its current acreage, and each year allen's father talked of expanding further. allen's mother stayed away from the project, knowing it was driven by a passion that had absolutely no root in necessity. she grew tomatoes and cucumbers, and she fed the goats. then she harvested the tomatoes and cucumbers, and she fed the family. the two of them functioned together like a pair of gears, each one pulling the other along as it turned. they tried to teach allen and his sister how to be gears, how to set the table and milk the goats and work until the sun went down. but allen's wheat allergies prevented him from being out in the fields for more than a few moments at a time, and his sister learned at a young age that her personality was best suited for a career in the navy rather than farmwork. She joined the armed services as soon as she turned eighteen and left allen alone with his parents. he was sixteen then, and immersed entirely in selfish whims and pubescent desires. he cut school and took trips to the city, where he would find as uneven a pavement as he could and walk along its fine lines until he couldn't. he explored much of sacramento this way, starting first in the residential pocket area where he felt self aware and conspicuous, and working his way downtown, where he didn't have to feel like anything at all. he thought the city was bleak and depressing for the most part, and actually preferred the way the sunset vibrated orange above his father's swaying wheat stalks.

when his parents discovered how regularly allen was cutting school, they took to driving him there themselves. this caused allen some trouble, as he wasn't particularly graceful at scaling fences. allen's father grew into the habit of keeping his eyes on allen until he disappeared behind the brick walls of his highschool. then he would pull into the denny's parking lot across the street from the entrance and wait ten minutes after the first bell finished ringing to make sure allen wasn't coming back out. this strategy was not as effective as allen's father hoped it would be, as the administrators locked the entrance gates as soon as the first bell rang, and as the gates were sleek vertical bars standing at a height of seven feet, every student in the school knew that it was pointless to even try to hop them. the fence encircling the track was far more climbable. so for nearly a month, allen would wait for the ring of the first bell, hide out in the boys' bathroom, and then hop the track fence when he was sure nobody would catch him. allen made no effort to excuse his absences, so it didn't take long for his parents to find out that their tactics weren't working. they got angry enough to threaten to send him away to the military, but they were far too peaceable to go through with it. skipping school was just a phase anyway, and after about a straight month or so, allen gave it up for lying in the middle of the street until he stopped traffic. sixteen was the year allen had no fears.

"allen, what the hell are you doing up a tree?" he had seen his sister clearing the wheat stalks a few miles away. she pulled the stalks in front of her aside, and they sprang upright as soon as she passed. from up high, it looked a lot like a finger running through a buzz cut.

"enjoying the view, sorta?" he did not want to reveal his terror yet, thinking that maybe it was a temporary spasm in his recent blistering run of emotions.

"don't be obnoxious. are you going to help me with mom and dad's stuff?"

erin was tough as a rod after seven years in the navy, streamlined and fit. she kept her blonde hair long enough to hit below her shoulders, but pinned it tightly into a bun at the base of her neck each morning. she was engaged and planning for children in six year's time. allen had met her fiance. he wasn't anywhere the noodle allen hoped he'd be.

i haven't been doing much analyzing recently, except in a bad way. i've been finding every flaw within myself, magnifying, and fixating. and it's been preventing me from getting on with my life.

since today is the first day of a new year, and because i fully believe that each new year wipes our life-slates clean and allows us to start fresh, i am going to do my best today to deal with my shortcomings and leave them in 2008.

there's a lot of room for improvement and change. i've been trying for several weeks to put together a list of resolutions, but i can't seem to commit to any crystalized version of them, so essentially they're just abstract planes knocking around in my head. i realize this is one of my bigger problems, keeping ideas too vague. it prevents me from ever executing or finishing anything, as i have no particular "project" that i can define beyond its conceptual mass. and it carries itself over to my writing. i don't define my audience, i don't define my genre, i can't commit to a plot line, and i can't commit to a vomited first draft. so naturally, nothing ever gets done...or started. so one resolution then, is to be more specific, and to define my lines so that i can stay within them and know when it's appropriate to color outside of them. another is to pay attention to more publications, to remember the names of authors and painters and anyone else i come across, so that the repertoire of inspiration and literary references becomes a ready ax i can wield.

start meditating again, and if at all financially possible, yoga.

participate in the causes i have found a passion for, because there's no excuse not to anymore.

learn the technical aspects of photography.

care about law school. this isn't really a resolution as much as a loaded statement. i do care about it in the sense that i have invested myself and my prideful ego into it, but i still fail to see what part of the grander law puzzle my beliefs and passions fall into. i must also try to remember that nothing is unsalvageable.

I keep staring at my computer screen and thinking, what's my motivation, what's my motivation? It's only an uphill climb from here. The swing down was some relief, but they're only going to pile the work on now. I'm going to be stressed from now until winter break. Why? Why am I doing this? What's my motivation?

This week has really left me lost. I don't remember why I'm here.

Before we even began orientation week, one of the 2L students told us to write our goals on a piece of paper before we began classes, and to stick that piece of paper on our wall. He told us it would save us. I thought he was being corny and cliche. Turns out he was being wise.

I have doubts about my intelligence sometimes - probably more than a lot of people have about themselves - and I will be the first to admit that I can improve in many areas of study, but I honestly did not believe that I could be this lost in an academic setting. I got placed into the day program last minute, so I can at least understand why the first day of classes was difficult for me, but I really can't believe the rest of the week was as heinous as it was. I read the cases, I think I"m getting the correct things out of them, I brief them, and then I get to class and the professor loses me after a couple of minutes. My property professor loses me even before then, but I don't seem to be the only one having a hard time following her.

I feel partially that this sudden mental chaos I seem to have fallen prey to is due to the lack of discipline that taking a year off from school generated. But even that's not an excuse, because undergrad was a walk in the park in comparison to how much more of your brain you have to use in law school.  I could get away with skimming and only reading half a book or even less in undergrad...I could more than get away with it, actually. Here, there is no other option but to do the whole assignment, because if you get called on and you can't answer the professor's question, it's like a mortal sin, and you look like a moron. Not that you won't look like a moron even if you answer the question correctly, because you're still just a pawn in the professor's sick Socratic scheme.

Ugh. Must keep sight of goals. I'm crossing every finger I have that next week and the weeks following it are going to get clearer.

Here’s a group of people taking themselves very seriously, at least that’s what it looks like so far. Dress code does not include shorts, I don’t know if this is a Norcal thing or a law school thing. I’m wearing shorts. Because it’s hotter here than it is most days in Southern California (where shorts are in abundance even in the winter), and it just makes sense to keep as much of my body exposed as is appropriate so as not to suffocate myself under the extra layer of skin this heat brings. Straight instead of curly hair seems to be the trend for the girls, short instead of long. Again, not sure if this is a Norcal thing or a law school thing. I will admit that short hair looks more professional, but I have spent way too long growing my hair past shoulder length to cut it off now. I’ll switch to straight I suppose, and brave the split ends and scrutiny. Obviously, I’m not taking myself quite as seriously yet.

I will be the first to admit that my new living arrangements, if everything works according to plan, cater more to the Orange County-ian in me than the budding adventurer.  In other words, my new apartment complex looks like it's been plucked right out of the Irvine Company's greedy hands, reseeded in the oasis that is Greenhaven, and allowed to bud and flourish into a mega luxury community replete with swimming pool, pool table, mini-gym, and laundry machines in every unit. I seem to have gotten lucky on the roommate front too.

The trip up did not suffer from any calamities, in fact we hit barely any traffic in both Los Angeles and Stockton, which is where Behnam and I got stuck last time. We did nearly lose my mom behind a few semis and a bad merger to the 5 N, but she was able to catch up on the second leg of the journey.

It was upon arriving in Sacramento and searching for the Public Storage that the day started to deteriorate, because there is no street sign for North 16th street as my Googled directions promised, only a nameless alley of a street off of a dead end on an already intimidating avenue that you just wouldn't find in Orange County. All I could see around me was The Color Purple.

On my second trek down this alley, a young black woman who had been one among a group of people camping out on the sidewalk in front of an adult video store jumped in front of my car to wave hello to me. And when I say camping out, I mean chillin' on a lawn chair with blankets in the middle of an industrial concrete jungle. I did not know this woman, and I don't know what compelled her to jump out and waved at me.  A couple of minutes later I pulled over to the side of the road on a more residential looking street and a black man shouted a thank you to me as he walked by on the other side of the street, "Thank you, peaceful mercenaries!" My mom was in tow in her own car. Frankly - and I don't really mean to be racist here (because I'm really not) - I was freaked out. Add 7 hours of driving to the frustration of not being able to find a destination that couldn't have been more three minutes away, and my Irvine bubble just simply popped. Even the Public Storage employee couldn't direct me to the property. I bought a GPS today.

Otherwise, and away from this particular part of town, this second trip up to Sacramento is revealing a side to the city that Behnam and I definitely didn't see on our first visit up.  I find a lot of the malls and apartment complexes to look exactly like the ones in Sherman Oaks did, so I feel pretty at home here. Yes, there are some pretty shady areas, but it seems that as long as I don't go walking around in abandoned parks after nightfall, I should be fine. Midtown seems pretty nice as a hangout spot too, I actually really liked the energy there, and McGeorge, of course, has a pretty campus that smells of fresh bread. Overall, a positive experience so far.

"The daughter is for the mother at once her double and another person, the mother is at once             overweeningly affectionate and hostile towards her daughter; she saddles her child with her own destiny: a way of proudly laying claim to her own femininity and also a way of revenging herself for it. Self-recognition, mixed feelings of guilt and of solidarity battle within a mother's heart with regard to her daughter. The complete symbiosis between mother and little daughter is therefore dense and dramatic; as the daughter grows older and needs more independence from her mother, the process of separation may become more or less difficult according to the character and the self-realization of the mother herself. Most women demand and detest at the same time their feminine condition: the more a mother is well-balanced and has a good relationship with herself, her husband, her past and society at large, the easier it will be to give daughters the best possible start in life."  (Giuliana Giobbi)

As Simone de Beauvoir beautifully sums up:

"The woman who enjoys the richest individual life will have the most to give her children and will demand the least from them: she who acquires in effort and struggle a sense of true human values will be best able to bring them up properly" (op. cit., p. 540)

Definition of "symbiotic" as outlined by dictionary.com

1.	Biology. a. the living together of two dissimilar organisms, as in mutualism, commensalism, amensalism, or parasitism. b. (formerly) mutualism (def. 1).

2.	Psychiatry. a relationship between two people in which each person is dependent upon and receives reinforcement, whether beneficial or detrimental, from the other.

3.	Psychoanalysis. the relationship between an infant and its mother in which the infant is dependent on the mother both physically and emotionally.

ick. ick ick ick ick.

What was I so afraid of? My heart was beating so hard that I could hear it with my eye sockets. I thought I'd pass out. I didn't know what she'd say, what she'd want to get into a fight about this time. I was afraid of her irrationality, probably, afraid that she'd pin more guilt on me that I'd have to find a new way to brush off. Her guilt sticks like rubber cement, near permanent. I could picture her having a breakdown in Starbucks and declaring to every person there that I was a careless daughter who didn't give more thought to her than even the tip of a left pinky toe. I was leaving her alone in this jungle of roads and fake people. What if she fell, what if someone broke in and stabbed her, what if she fell ill? Who would ever take care of her? EVER. The customers at the Starbucks would be staring by now, their eyes dancing to the melodrama in her voice while stomping away my dignity. "Why can't you give me some thought? Just think about me a little," she said yesterday. She has no idea.

"She was, as they say, Of Certain Age, and favored dresses just below the knee made of fabrics left over from the pin-wale corduroy reupholstering of her living room sofa.  Her scalp emitted a semicircular spoof of ivory hair - Bozo's grandma gone gray.  Her nostrils were on a mad dash to either side of her face and her spectacles, bottle-thick lenses and frames of gilt-edged plastic, were perpetually refereeing the outcome.  Behind them, her olive eyes shone brightly.  They rarely pointed in the same direction, but at least they sparkled." - Chip Kidd, The Cheese Monkeys.

Favorite part in orange.

    Without meaning to, she got involved. She usually warns me about these types too, these silly businessmen that try to fool you with their cruise offers or remote island destinations, but she saw the words "Free Trip" and was completely mesmerized by the idea.  He told her there wasn't a catch at all, that all she had to do was make more than $40,000 plus a year and she would be eligible. She'd have to come to Anaheim and listen to the "story" they would tell her about the hotel he worked for and she was good to skip town in any manner she pleased.  She wouldn't have to buy anything, she could choose to turn anything down, and she would get a free trip. Guaranteed.  I stood aloof behind her watching him perform, his eyes wide with the attention she was giving him and the potential of a sale. When he asked her how much money she made this year she became honest, flirtatious. When she told him she had been laid off recently his eyes narrowed. But he recovered.
    "You look like a woman with good earning potential. How much did you make last year?" She told him she made $40,000 and his eyes re-widened.  She was starting to lose interest in the product now, confused by his wild hand gestures and the idea that she'd be getting anything for free if he was asking her how much money she made. 
    "Why do you need to know how much money I make?"
    "Well, because we only offer this to those that make $40,000 or more, so you're in that zone."  He asked her to fill out an invitation to the information session they would be holding.  Below name and phone number was a section to check off income amount, several categories ranging from Below $40,000, $40,000-$50,000, etc. She paused and thought about it, decided to continue being honest since she still hadn't really wrapped her mind around what this salesguy wanted from her.  He kept insisting there'd be a complimentary trip and she kept wanting to believe him. God knows she needs a free trip.  She checked the $40,000-$50,000 box and then changed her mind, checking the Below $40,000 box instead.  The salesman's body tensed. He had been flirting with her too, all 6'2" of him, his gut bouncing on his pant line as he waved his hands and arms about.  As soon as she checked the box he stopped flirting, his hands dropped to his hips and he looked like a ridiculous version of Chevy Chase.  I noticed he had a mustache. "Is that before or after taxes?" He asked. "Before," my mom said, sensing she'd done something wrong. 
    The sleezeball paused and looked at me, his mouth twitching at the nonplussed look dulling the brown of my eyes.  You should have looked at me to begin with you jerk, can't you tell she has no idea what you want from her, that she's just being nice by giving you the time of day?  Can't you tell she's lonely and unused to this side of conversation, because she's spent the last couple of years being on your side of it while working with a group of crazy women that can't ever return her loyalty?  You're an asshole.
    "You don't really want to do this do you." He says.  It's not a question, and he wants her to leave. He's realized he's been wasting his time.  She doesn't understand the tone; he had been so friendly to her all this time, and she so warm toward him.
    "What?" she says, her voice without control.
    "Yeah, you don't really want to do this do you."  I touch her back softly, it's time to go.
    "Well, it's okay," she tells him as we walk away.  I can tell her mood is dampened, that she still doesn't understand that he was trying to make a sale and nothing else.  I tell her he's an asshole.

I prefer winter to summer because in the winter I can grow a few inches.  Every summer I shrink down to flats and sandals and remember that I am, in fact, no taller than 5'2" (maybe 5'2" 1/2). Taller is always better.

I also appreciate that, no matter how much money my mom has or doesn't have, she will always splurge on me in one way or another. T-shirt, shoes, pants. 

This is it:

Green parks give my mind the lucidity that any suburbia or urban space completely take away from me. Wind humming around my ears and brushing my skin, lifting up my hair; leaves shifting and sighing about overhead; open, undisturbed space.

"And strength of will in a character is the most important thing.  If the character has strength of will, you're on the train and they are the locomotive.  If your character doesn't know what they want, and they're sort of drifting around, then you're pulling the train yourself, which is a lot more work."

I'm pretty sure every character I've ever written had no sense of purpose or want, probably because I don't yet have a strong sense of purpose or want.  Maybe this is why i can never get my characters to act, to walk or talk.  I can only get them to think, because that's all I ever do.  I have to imagine them wills and purpose.



Edit: I just discovered the name for what I've been writing.  A Bathtub story is one in which a character finds himself in a bathtub or other enclosed space and ruminates and analyzes the past, present and future without ever getting out of the bathtub. :(

August will be the month where everyone leaves and everything changes.  I will be in Sacramento, Behnam will be in Pennsylvania, Dror will be in Israel, her brother will be in San Francisco, who knows where my mom will be.  Orange County will be left bare of the circle it's housed since 2003, slowly being undone since 2006.  College was only temporary, not meant to last as long as it did even, and it's truly over.  We will come back to Orange County and the valley, maybe, but it will not ever be a home as much as just the spur of nostalgia for a time that was good but couldn't last.  We will all move, all end up on another coast, another country. Me, I'm tired of America and the American life style.  I want to see more and I'm eager to leave this country for another.  I saw Dror's pictures of India, one in particular of a gnarled and knotted tree prevalent in my impressions.  It's not so hard to imagine fantastic things when you've seen that which can incite and inspire them.  I haven't seen anything, no wonder my imagination is bottled and hiding - I don't want to access it yet, it's so underdeveloped.

The ocean and I have an intimate relationship, whether it is seeping into the wrinkles of my mind as I sleep or tossing my body about with its waves when I'm awake.  I dream often about the ocean, more often than I swim in it.  It is much grander than I, sometimes stories and stories tall, sometimes miles and miles wide and long.  There is one dream in particular where I stand on the shore of Venice Beach and watch as the waves loom over me, made of cardboard.  Imagine mammoth, two-dimensional teepees, much like the ones you probably made of paper as a kid to line the inside of your shoebox diorama with. Those are my waves, cardboard and huge and gyrating back and forth like wanna-be water waves.  That's all that happens: I just stand there and marvel at their weirdness, aware that they are not real waves, but also instinctively knowing that they are innately and inseparably a part of the ocean.  

In another recurring dream, I find myself in the middle of the ocean with no land in sight and deep rolling waves for miles on end.  I am on a road that stretches ahead of me on the surface of the sea until it gets lost in the horizon.  I am on it, just my car and I, sometimes Behnam too. 

Still another involves a shore that shrinks the longer I swim with waves that get bigger and bigger the more brave I get; finally a wave of epic proportions hovers in front of me and I stand before it, the only one in the mass of swimming bodies to notice it, and I have to decide quickly, whether I should go under it and expect to come back out on top, or to say my goodbyes now and fear for the worst.  I always wake up just as it gets too big for me to keep thinking about it, so I never know which one I choose.

Optimism gives me hope for my future, and the knowledge that everything eventually turns out well.  Rodger said a long time ago that things don't necessarily work out well as much as human adapt to their happenstances and adjust to them in a manner that they can live happily with.  So is happiness the natural human condition before all of the pain and suffering and angst filters in?  It's nice to think it is. 

I am the world's future, and that is where my hope lies.  My generation is capable and idealistic, and I know we will turn the world a couple times over before we leave it.  I don't think too much about maintaining hope, it's really a constant.  I am learning about the world and the politics governing it, and I am learning about myself and the will governing me.  The two will meet soon enough, and that is when the world will change.

I don't....funny thing, this question.  I call wherever my computer is home. My residence has been temporary for the last three years.  I lived in a dorm, that wasn't really home. Then I moved back "home" with my mom, but that didn't really feel like home because I had no space but  my room and everything else had to be a certain way that wasn't my way.  My mom said the other day about her new apartment, "Don't be a stranger, this is your home!" But how can it be if there is no room for me there?  My third year in college I lived in Campus Village with Lindsay; that was a great year, but still not a home.  The fourth year again with Lindsay in Stanford Court: definitely temporary, definitely not a home.  Then I got my own apartment with Alicia, but again, temporary.  Now I live on a single twin mattress in Alicia's room in a new apartment with all of my clothing in two suitcases on the floor directly in front of my bed.  This isn't home.

What I've noticed as I've gotten older though, is that the need for a home grows innately within me.  As soon as I moved into this latest apartment, I had the urge to nest, to buy decorations, and to otherwise make it feel like my own.  It caused me some pain to realize that I couldn't do that at all, since this apartment was the least home to me than any of my prior residences.  The closest to home I've come is Dror's house in Playa Del Rey, though I'm probably equating that with "home" because they lived in a house and I always felt really comfortable there.  House = home? 

I'm still looking for it, truthfully.  I'm hoping I'll land one soon, because I'm super tired of moving around.