November 1st, 2009 at 8:12 pm
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(09:12:30 PM) Mark Chen: haha I got Lady Gaga’s “The Fame” album :’(
(09:13:25 PM) Brianna: hahahahhaha
(09:13:26 PM) Brianna: YOU LOVE HER
(09:13:31 PM) Brianna: ……can you send it to me
(10:49:37 PM) Mark Chen: what does impecunity mean
(10:55:03 PM) Brianna: a state of not being pecunious
(10:55:18 PM) Mark Chen: I don’t know what I’d do without you
(10:55:32 PM) Mark Chen: except go directly to a dictionary
(10:11:23 PM) Brianna: po po po poker face po po pokerface
(10:11:30 PM) Mark Chen: (mah-mah-mah-mah)
(10:11:35 PM) Brianna: we’re disgusting
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October 27th, 2009 at 7:29 pm
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“The degree to which a person can lose their mind is infinite.”
- Dr. Julie Holland
“If I have to eat nine servings of fruits and vegetables a day to live, I don’t want to live. I hate goddamn fruits and vegetables.”
- Woody Allen, Whatever Works
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September 9th, 2009 at 8:33 pm
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Most stars die normal, boring deaths. They burn out their fuel, and then most of them cool and then sit around, dead cold blocks in space with little radiation. Red giants are only about one in a thousand, and when those die, they die violently, and dazzlingly, expelling their material back out into the interstellar regions and radiating an incredible amount of energy. I like the idea that some people are this way in death, too. And when they die, it’s like a fist being tightened until it finally explodes, rendering them larger than they ever were in life, radiating light in the space all around them.
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August 28th, 2009 at 9:15 pm
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After a long heat wave it rained today, 65 degrees and misty outside, and I was surprised I had to actually wear a sweater. Normally I hate gloomy weather like that but it was such a sudden and rare shift that it made me really happy and nostalgic for San Francisco – in a good way, not in an “I wish I was there and not here” way, but just a little nudge of a reminder that there is no greater place than home. I know I was just there two weeks ago, but it was so hectic I didn’t have time to soak in the city fully before I was back on the plane. I miss taking the N Judah down Irving Street and Green Apple Books and driving down Portola to the Castro and eating food I can’t afford in North Beach and I miss our crappy, trash-filled beach by the Pacific Ocean.
I made an impromptu 70s KOIT playlist at work and listened to it on repeat, and then it really felt like home: an overcast sky outside and REO Speedwagon in my headphones. I wanted to take BART down to Powell and go to Boudin’s and read a book in Union Square until the wind made it too uncomfortable, and then watch an indie movie at the Landmark where Jo used to let me in for free.
This is a crappy picture John took of me with my camera’s black and white setting during one of our downtown adventures back in high school (or was it college?) that kind of sums up where I’d like to be.
And in case you’re curious, here’s the playlist I came up with:
REO Speedwagon – Keep On Loving You
Firefall – You Are the Woman That I’ve Always Dreamed Of
Hall & Oates – Your Kiss is On My List
Stealer’s Wheel – Stuck in the Middle With You
Dobie Gray – Drift Away
England Dan & John Ford Coley – I’d Really Love to See You Tonight
Peaches & Herb – Reunited
Hall & Oates – Every Time You Go Away
Loggins and Messina – Danny’s Song
REO Speedwagon – Can’t Fight This Feeling
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August 6th, 2009 at 4:17 pm
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Jordan’s comment last night made me wince first, and think second.
He was talking again about the group of friends we had had for almost a decade now, and tossing out that casual dream again of one day all of us working together.
“I’ll be the doctor,” he started. “Gus will be the legal counsel, John will be the social worker, Elisa and Lorraine will work in the lab, Maria will decorate it, Evelyn will be in charge of finances. And you can…answer the phones!”
I was offended for a couple of reasons, the more obvious ones being that he had implied (intentionally or not) that I was suited for little more than a receptionist role, and also, this was the second time in the last two years he had made this remark. (I remember the first time because it had offended me then, too — it was the same scenario, except he told me I would be a tutor.) And of course, mostly I was offended because out of all our high school friends, I was the only one who hadn’t decided on a career path straight out of college and taken careful step after step to achieve that One Career Goal. This had been the source of years of insecurity for me and pretty much was the main reason I didn’t enjoy college. I think it’s safe to say that I’m mostly over that insecurity now thanks to having a much better idea of where I want to go in life and being around so many more free-thinking people with wandering paths here in New York — but the comment felt like he had reached into the past, grabbed the insecurity, and jammed it down my throat again.
But it wasn’t the career thing that bothered me the most. And yes, I chewed him out for it – maybe I could have taken an underhanded comment like that without a response back in high school, but I don’t take that sort of crap anymore – but I started wondering why it had ticked me off so much. And I figured it out, I think.
I thought about what if I had made that comment to someone else. Sure, if they weren’t currently on a One Career Path and I didn’t know what kinds of things they wanted to do in life, I would just throw them in some random position at the hypothetical company. And if they were to be upset, I’d be a little taken aback – after all, it’s just a silly idea.
But I had always considered him a good friend of mine. Shouldn’t he know what I want to do in life? Shouldn’t he know what I’m in graduate school for and what my job is? Shouldn’t he know what my previous jobs have been? Couldn’t he have picked any of those things above “answering phones”?
And of course, he was probably just joking about it all and I was just letting the insecurity get the better of me. He did say that he was just being mean, anyhow. But I started thinking – I don’t know if any of my friends back home know what I do. I’ve always been asked, “What do you do again?” and “What’s your program all about again?” I have to remind people over and over again that I work a full time job and that’s why I’m not back in San Francisco for the summer.
I guess this is all to be expected, and these are small details. People grow older, they work in different fields, their everyday lives are peppered with different coworkers, different environments, different people. You can’t keep tabs on everyone every moment of the day. Not everyone cares or has the time to hear about my nutty lunchtime work conversations, my latest cooking conquests, my cockeyed theories on God and space/time relativity, my grad school paper topics, my squabbles with the website owner who doesn’t know anything about the laws of usability. What’s important, I guess, is that there’s still a sense of trust there, and a history, and the knowledge that they still have your back after all these years.
Right?
But these details, these facts that run like steady veins through the course of our daily routines, they amalgamate and shift our personalities, our worldviews, our goals in this crazy little life. Eventually, we’ll be completely different people than who we are now. And I still have to beat myself sometimes to step out of the assumption that some of my more casual friends from way back when are not at all the people I remember them to be anymore. People change, mature, get more complex, and the less we talk to each other, the more details we miss.
I love my home in San Francisco and I love the friends that I have back in California. But as I spend more and more years here in New York and there’s less convenience for us to talk, how will we start to see each other? Will we be boiled down to a series of descriptive phrases, to be pulled out like a computer program identifying its target and pulling appropriate responses? “Brianna Lee: artsy, silly, likes pie. Treat as joke punching bag.” Is this the inevitable evolution of friendships as we spread out, find spouses, form our own families? I hear so many stories about the loneliness that comes with starting a family of one’s own, kiddie playdates as the only superficial substitute for genuine connection with a friend. Yes, we’ll all keep in touch, but will we really know each other as people?
Maybe it’s a matter of effort. Gordon and I physically see each other maybe once a year if we’re lucky, and yet we have IM conversations every day about current events, technology, opinions on this and that. I guess there’s a finite number of people you can have that kind of a connection with, but as the years go by, that number just seems to shrink and shrink.
Maybe I need to start blogging more about the life I’m living here now, just to give a better idea of the shape this life is slowly becoming (to the 3 people who still read this, anyway). It’s a paltry substitute for actual interactive communication, but perhaps it’s something? And my writing could use the exercise…
But this is where we are now. We see each other once, maybe twice a year, and at those times we pick up right where we left off. We drink, we philosophize, we sing songs on car rides. And despite everything it’s nice, having decade-long friends who have seen the course of your life as it’s gone through its ups and downs and arounds – even if they don’t see the track marks that make up that road.
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July 8th, 2009 at 6:31 pm
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My feet are sore and I haven’t finished the seven readings I need to do by tomorrow, and my damn mosquito bites are still itching (who bites someone on the forehead? come on, mosquito) but I had the most amazing Venezuelan arepas with Lata today and I am way happy. I wish I could create a rule that says the more orange my food is, the healthier it is for me.
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July 2nd, 2009 at 9:10 pm
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I really wish I could just sing along to my MP3 player in my office without being a weirdo or a nuisance. In high school I used to crank up my CD player and sing along to showtunes while I did my algebra homework, which, weirdly, made math homework really relaxing to do.
Mark’s visit last week was fantastic – lots of great food, Aerosmith, Transformers, trips to the park, guitar playing and science talks. I’m excited for him to come back again in August (and, of course, to start living in Ithaca).
We had a drain problem in our apartment for the last two or three days and it’s been driving me fucking crazy until I caved and bought some Drano which fixed it magically. The bottle said it was safe for metal pipes but I’m still a little wary — I hope our pipes don’t explode. Having a broken drain made me really cranky earlier in the week and just purely irritated at people who waste obscene amounts of water, e.g. my current roommate, who so far is really cool and friendly but does she really need to take two showers a day? Speaking of which, today’s Leonard Lopate Show had a good conversation about the scarcity of water and makes me want to finally watch that water documentary I downloaded like two months ago. These Malthusian conversations about shrinking resources and overflowing populations are pretty depressing – but hey, all the more reason to explore and colonize space, no?
I started reading East of Eden which is surprisingly easy to read and a great book so far. I think when I was younger even though I was an avid reader I was always far too intimidated by the Great American Classic because if I found that I couldn’t get through one I was less intelligent than the other overachievers my age who did (but really, what 12 year old can get through one and really understand it without the life experience to make you appreciate it?). It’s kind of funny how three or four Bible verses with almost no detail or explanations about a sibling murder can foster such an intricate and epic imagining. I can almost picture Steinbeck rolling his mind around it, inquiring about love and jealousy, wondering forever why Cain’s offering wasn’t good enough for their Father.
Michael Jackson’s death last week made me really inexplicably sad. I know lots of people out there are scoffing at the drawn out media coverage and disgusted that a man put on trial for child molestation could be honored so much. I don’t think anyone not involved can really talk about the latter issue with much conviction, and the extent of the coverage has gotten pretty ridiculous (what Honduran coup?), but the part I can’t get over is just the sadness that blanketed his life – the parental abuse, the public scrutiny, the vitiligo and the surgeries, all coexisting with wild international fame and success. I wonder why it is that we, as a mass audience, take so much intrigue and pleasure in documenting the rise and fall of a celebrity that was pretty much caused, or at least exacerbated, by us in the first place.
I guess though, there were worse ways to go – Marvin Gaye was killed by his own father, David Ruffin of the Temptations died of a coke overdose, Sam Cooke was shot in a hotel at 33, Tammi Terrell died of a brain tumor at 24, Donny Hathaway jumped out of a building. It makes it almost haunting to listen to all the great music they made.
I started summer school on Tuesday and am pretty pleased with the class so far, even though it’s only been a week. It’s a huge relief from that Ethnic Conflicts class I took last semester which sucked a ton and made me completely stop reading or participating at all.
I have to wake up in about 5 and a half hours to spend my day off at the beach in Fire Island. I am really, really excited to sit on a beach and read and eat a hamburger.
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