living between arrivals and departures

magalenha @ 2003-11-28T15:22:00

2003-11-28T21:24:45Z

Dear everyone,

For various needing-a-fresh-start reasons, I can now be found at landslide. I know how annoying this gets. I'm sorry.

Also, I treated myself to a paid account, so perhaps I will update more. That's all. <3

magalenha @ 2003-06-08T22:38:00

2003-06-09T03:58:54Z

Favourite song + song lyrics?

You're such a Canadian. "Favourite" instead of "favorite." Right now I like Hot Hot Heat - Bandages, the Roots - The Seed (2.0), the Rolling Stones - You Can't Always Get What You Want, Spoon - Everything Hits at Once, and pretty much any version of Hallelujah. Favorite lyrics - definitely Hallelujah.

Favorite place in the world (& since I totally know you're going to say Costa Rica - & if you don't then you owe me an awesome explanation - also your favourite memory from that place)?

Playa Manuel Antonio, Costa Rica. Think, like, beach movie gorgeous. Secluded. I swam really far out into the ocean and floated in the waves. It was a happy morning.

Future career / temporary occupation (s)?

Foreign correspondent or maybe I'll go into law and be like an anti-death penalty advocate. In the meantime, I'll probably work as a medical interpreter, bartender, envelope stuffer, hostess, private tutor, who knows what else.

If you were a fruit what fruit would you be?

A raspberry.

Is there a train from somewhere in Canada (eg Montreal, Sherbrooke etc) to New York (City)? (this is not really an interview question, but really me exploting you for information) I am thinking of taking a brief trip next year during reading week if possible.

Yes. It's called the Amtrak Adirondack, and it's a ten hour train ride leaving at 9:45 AM. It is a very scenic trip. It costs $124 American round-trip. Come visit me. We'll go for dinner.

Favourite kind of apple? do they make your lips itch? the NZ one that I had a couple days ago didn't, & most do, so surprising!

I like MacIntosh. Red ones. And apples in pies. Yum. They never seem to make my lips itch.

Questions courtesy of chokers.

magalenha @ 2002-10-11T21:50:00

2002-10-12T02:50:32Z

Everything's locked from now on. Say something if you want in.

magalenha @ 2002-10-08T15:37:00

2002-10-08T20:41:17Z

I got a letter from USC today, and they're offering me $13,500 a year for four years if I go there. Basically. All I have to do is make Finalist. My jaw literally dropped when I read that. Um.

magalenha @ 2002-10-06T00:44:00

2002-10-06T05:46:09Z

We saw Sweet Home Alabama tonight, and now we're all mentally planning our weddings and cinematic complicated romantic episodes and how to tie it all up tidly before the closing credits roll.

Anyone wanna marry me?

magalenha @ 2002-10-04T23:56:00

2002-10-05T05:21:59Z

I am drinking water and wearing my sweatpants and listening to old-school Motown because it fits my mood.

Today was the same as every day: I wear jeans and heels, I'm a fashionista who tears apart her closet at 6:49 AM every morning. The boys I've known for five, six, seven years tell me about tests and hold doors open for me and raise their eyebrows when they walk past me, but they don't seem to be interested. And the ones I don't know stare at me and then ask me questions, striking up awkward conversations out of nowhere, like I haven't figured them out within thirty seconds. I blush and let down my façade for a minute, and then I push my hair out of my eyes and look away from them in between classes and sometimes I really just want to get inside everyone's head and know what they're thinking about me when I walk past them, sit next to them, walk away from them with an offhand glance over my shoulder (left).

magalenha @ 2002-10-01T22:23:00

2002-10-02T03:28:54Z

Some nights, you know, you just come to rational conclusions. You decide that maybe he wasn't attracted to you after all, you were really nothing more than "just friends," he's got something with that girl he was with. You convince yourself that everything you've been over-analyzing for a month and a half is the result of an overactive imagination, and you realize that he's never going to write you back, for one reason or another. The next thing you know, you're telling yourself that you're never going to see him again, and that's okay. You're telling yourself that if you fly out to California, you shouldn't try and see him. You conclude that it's been six weeks and you need to move on with your life, stop talking about him, stop looking at his picture, that all things happen for a reason, this one included.

And then you think about it a second time, and you remember that you just can't help yourself.

magalenha @ 2002-09-30T22:39:00

2002-10-01T03:40:33Z

Please tell me I am not a stalker for looking his name up online. Please?

magalenha @ 2002-09-29T21:31:00

2002-09-30T02:31:31Z

1. Your livejournal "user name" & what it means:
It's the name of a Brazilian song they used to play in the clubs.

2. On a scale of 1-10 (10 being the highest) how well does your livejournal represent who you actually are?
A four or a five. In person, I'm more blunt, I make people laugh often, and a lot less angsty.

3. How much about your life do you post to LJ?
I don't talk much about all the day-to-day academic topics that consume a lot of my time, and not that much petty gossip either. We spend a lot of time sitting around talking about that, in reality.

4. Is there anything you refuse to post about?
Certain things. I don't like to talk about my family that much.

5. On a scale of 1-10 how interesting do you think your own journal is to others?
Three? Four? It can't be that interesting. I don't really do anything.

6. From who/how did you find out about LJ?
During some diaryland.com exodus a lifetime ago.

7. Has anyone ever joined LJ because of you?
I think so, one or two.

8. What proportion of your posts are friends only?
I don't know. Maybe a third? Whenever I mention names, it's usually locked up just so that I can't be easily identified. I'm not interested in that.

9. What is your favorite interest on LJ?
Faire pour pouvoir défaire, I think it's very telling.

10. Has anything on LJ ever caused you to establish, rethink, or even change your belief or position on something?
It's likely, especially if it wasn't something I'd thought about before.

11. How often do you respond to/comment on other peoples' journals?
Not as often as I should, I'm fairly quiet.

12. Do you prefer to write in your journal, read other journals?
It depends on the day I'm having, and other people have had . ..

13. Have you ever had something mean said to you or been stalked, harassed, or got into an argument/flame war on lj (or did it to someone else)?
Not really.

14. Have you ever banned someone from your journal?
No.

15. Who are your favorite LJ friend(s) and why?
If it's true, you'll know. (I love myself just for saying that.)

16. How many of your LJ friends have you actually met?
One.

17. Of all of the people on LJ you know of, who is the most like you?
I'm a little bit of kkingdom, a little bit of subjectk, and kind of like a younger version of sozinha.

18. Why are you most likely to add someone to your friends list?
It's arbitrary? No, because I like reading their journal & I'm not lazy at the moment.

19. Do you automatically add friends to your journal if they add you first?
Not always, is that baaaaad?

20. What is the most likely reason you wouldn't add someone to your friends list?
A) I'm lazy. B) If I specifically didn't want them reading anything private. Option A is much more likely.

21. Is your "significant other" on LJ?
I don't have one. If I did, it would be the one who doesn't seem to check his email . ..

22. Have you ever wanted to meet someone on LJ?
I just can't afford airfare.

23. On a scale of 1-10, rate the lj for convenience, usefulness, and coolness factor:
Stealing my precious time: 9.

magalenha @ 2002-09-26T22:31:00

2002-09-27T03:31:57Z

I don't think I've ever had a worse night.

I'm laying off this for a while.

magalenha @ 2002-09-25T22:53:00

2002-09-26T03:53:46Z

Why did I take economics?

magalenha @ 2002-09-24T22:47:00

2002-09-25T04:20:06Z

Dear [insert initials here], why don't you write? I have spent so much time trying to convince myself that I never needed anybody, I don't worry about that honey but I've been lying to myself all along. I am hopelessly grappling with this and falling off a cliff in the process. My English teachers hate it when we write "this" and don't say what we're actually talking about, but right now I don't know. Today I read the sentence Je pleurais, je pleurais and I spent the rest of sixth period study hall staring at my desk, unable to stop remembering the last time I heard the French word for "cry."

My best friend says if she were you (and if you weren't X number of states away), she'd be fucking all over me. And I quote. I don't know if if you think the same way. I quote her because no one else says that sort of thing to me. I am something of a mess in that way, you see. Maybe I'm intimidating because I don't feel ambiguity towards people, it's either I like you or I don't. The boy next to me in study hall tries to ask me questions and probably likes it when I snicker at his jokes behind my hand. Either they laugh at my commentary, ask me for advice and the English homework, or they stare as their cars pass, heads turn, smile shyly, look me up and down, make it obvious why don't you? But not a word of conversation.

That's what you gave me that they don't, and what I want back.

magalenha @ 2002-09-19T23:42:00

2002-09-20T04:43:05Z

Another livable day, made difficult only by a heat wave sweeping the Midwest. When I was little, we called it an Indian summer, but I haven't heard that term in years. Now we just turn up the fans and hope for rain. It came down after school, pounding on the sidewalk as we sprinted to the parking lot. I was barefoot, my hems of my jeans soaked through, my hair dripping onto my neck and pin-curling inward. We collapsed into the car and fooled around with the radio station and steamed up the car on the way home.

At lunch we sat in a basement classroom and tossed around ideas for an alternative newspaper (equal parts the Nation and the Onion) and discussed how to get cheap train fares and why Amtrak is fucked. Suddenly I know so many people and drift from class to class and snicker at the quasi-impressive running commentary of the boy next to me in study hall and it seems like only at home for a few hours a day.

I keep hoping he'll write to me, that I'll find a few meaningless words in between "CUM SEE ME TOUCH MYSELF LIVE! 3428" and "We'll PreApprove you for a Home Loan!" This is the emotion of mine I resent the most, this inane perseverance with the encouragement of nothing, just a few snapshots and the shards of conversations in various tropical locales, a name scrawled on a sheet of paper once folded inside my purse, a city on a map halfway across the country. Could be halfway around the world for all distance does to you.

The most sleep I can get tonight is about five and a half hours. If it mattered, I'd get more, but why sleep when there's so much else you can be doing?

magalenha @ 2002-09-18T22:21:00

2002-09-19T03:21:26Z

How rapidly my moods change; one day I'm lying onthe floor of my bedroom crying melodramatically. And today I'm sitting in econ, and I'm the envy of everyone else because I'm not taking calculus, and we're all laughing and not getting our work done. At lunch we sit on the floor of the balcony and quietly mock the inanity of half the senior class, the ones who dress exactly alike and date each other's exes and pretend to like each other. We stand outside the door of the psych room and have a rambling conversation about our respective IM addictions and appropriate away messages and then laugh so hard we can't talk.

And then after school I go work with these hipster artsy people to make posters promoting the school literary magazine and everyone is tossing around these black-humored comments and we make one wildly inappropriate sign after another and get fingerpaint and glitter glue on ourselves and discuss taking field trips to watch art-house movies and go to museums and all sorts of intellectually snobbish stuff like that.

My best friend calls me, crying so hard it's like she's speaking a foreign language, and I try to console her but she's been going through conversations from a year ago, things that might have been, and it's driving her mad, so she breaks down and neither of us knows what to say. Then he calls, and she switches over to his line, and I know everything's gonna be alright.

I am forgetting what he looks like, actually, sitting across the table from me. Now I have flashes, of his jacket, of the way he looked sitting next to me, lingering fragments that I can't assemble no matter how hard I try. I heard Julian Casablancas speak last night and I thought I recognized that slow drawl from somewhere. I look at pictures and his handwriting and realize that he is fading, slipping through my fingers into the purgatory of might-have-beens, and if I listen to enough of the right songs, I might be able to get over that.

I keep inserting the word 'che' into random English conversations. I found a picture of how I'm going it get my hair cut on Monday and I think things are gonna be alright. Maybe it's just because I'm listening to Bob Marley, but I'm having one of those moments where I'm madly in love with life.

magalenha @ 2002-09-16T22:59:00

2002-09-17T04:00:01Z

I just want someone to say that things aren't always going to be like this.

magalenha @ 2002-09-15T20:08:00

2002-09-16T01:09:00Z

This is starting to make me cry for no reason. I give up on love, I give up, I give up.

magalenha @ 2002-09-15T14:52:00

2002-09-15T19:54:42Z

I was finishing my Notas de Viaje this afternoon, lying on my bed on my stomach and filling page after page in tiny handwriting, infinitely small details of my last week away. I kept putting the pen down to relive things, stopping every few minutes. It's not easy to look back at the best days of your life so far and realize they're over, growing further and further apart from you each day, carried along by the steady flow of time on the hands of the clock, each second working to take you away.

magalenha @ 2002-09-15T01:13:00

2002-09-15T06:13:25Z

I think I listen to the same songs over and over because it mirrors my life so perfectly, the repetition of the same themes, the same words, my innate narcissism. Then again, who's not a narcissist? I find it hard to believe that there are people out there who can give of themselves endlessly, although sometimes there are the ones who give with their presence alone, and I guess that doesn't stop. But benevolence of thought is not a virtue of mine; I have a tendency to think about myself, to analyze and overanalyze and study my reflection, and lately, to relive moments, grasping at threads, trying to reproduce reality in each spare minute.

Sometimes I think life has played a trick on me and I'm more of a naif than I take myself for. I feel cheated, cheated because I was sitting on the couch in my living room tonight and I realized that unlike almost every other teenager, I'm probably not going to kiss someone in front of a flickering television screen when someone's parents are gone. And yet, almost impossibly, I've managed to get a piece of my heart ripped off, one-sided as usual because I'm still lingering in the world of schoolgirl crushes. I feel like the American Dream, those perfect high school years, have eluded me and left me wondering what's wrong with myself.

People flirt and stare and laugh at the things I say when they aren't even that funny, and sometimes I feel like I've got It, whatever it is, that inexplicable magnetic charm. Maybe it's intimidating; maybe I just don't get it, wasn't meant for high school because I'm not the cheerleader type, because I demand more than is available, can't bring myself not to want more, even when I can't find it.

I don't know whether I want to be in love or out of it, or maybe it's just being seventeen, or maybe there's something that I've never been able to hold, not even in middle school when everyone had their first fumbling relationships and I only was asked to slow dance once, with a boy who didn't remember my name. I remember wearing a tight shirt that night. No one's ever wanted to steal a kiss from me, to tangle their fingers into my hair, to tell me I mean something to them.

I read into fragments, sometimes too deeply, constructing things that never were and never will be; I think other people do the same thing with me, building scenes out of offhand comments and the way I looked that one day when. I lie to myself, get used to nights alone, chant untrue mantras, and break every promise I make to myself. I examine my heart in every direction, study my face in the mirror, trace my body for clues and still I'm left here, writing in a journal, conducting another survey of what is love, what is love to me?

magalenha @ 2002-09-11T21:22:00

2002-09-12T02:22:07Z

I show only a fraction of the emotion I feel, but far be it from me to claim that my detached feelings are in any way comparable to those of the people touched personally by the events of one year ago. That diminishes their grief, and so I prefer to stay quiet and pensive in my own way.

Reading the news today and it sure looks bad
They won't give peace a chance,
That was just a dream some of us had
- J. Mitchell

magalenha @ 2002-09-10T22:56:00

2002-09-11T03:59:28Z

I don't like melodrama and I like being a part of it even less.

magalenha @ 2002-09-09T16:13:00

2002-09-09T21:29:28Z

It is nearly ninety degrees here, an early-autumn heat wave, and school is thus a miserable experience. There are a hundred and twenty-plus people in my sixth-period study hall, and there is no air conditioning, only one small fan for the entire class. I sat and fanned myself and tried to do psychology to no avail, it was literally too hot to think. This junior football player sits next to me, talking non-stop - inappropriately hilarious asides - directed to one of his friends who sits behind me. When his friend left, then he started trying to make conversation with me, making me think that that was the idea all along, same with the things that make me bite my lip to keep from laughing out loud.

The heat isn't any better in my house. I've got to get out of here if I want to get any work done tonight.

magalenha @ 2002-09-08T22:53:00

2002-09-09T04:08:13Z

I have so much in my head and nothing to say when I actually try and get it out, this incessant froth of uncertainty and potential.

I am disenchanted with my friends, scattered as they are across the country, unwavering in their declarations of love to someone else hundreds or thousands of miles away. It's one of those things in which I am obliged not to participate because "it's not the same" and naturally, although it's implied but not spoken aloud, because "I wouldn't understand." I know I'm a practiced cynic but I hate this annual exclusion because I'm not in a relationship, not in this chic circle of mutual understanding. They used to prohibit me from couples' outings, in the wintertime. I feel bitter and resentful, and I don't like acting this way.

I am equally irritated with myself for other things: my irrational disgust with my weight gain, juxtaposed with feeling prettier than I think I ever have before. It would be okay if I didn't analyze my flaws in the mirror daily, scouring myself for evidence of another few ounces, a blemish here, a scar there. And then I am frustrated for not being able to give up on his, not being capable of saying enough already, of studying photographs and memorizing features, backsliding into moments just to relive them on the movie screen in my head, no absent details, completely intact like that's reality and this is a dream, although who would have a dream like this?

magalenha @ 2002-09-08T22:19:00

2002-09-09T03:34:42Z

In October, I'm seeing the Sahara Hotnights one night and the Strokes the next.

magalenha @ 2002-09-07T20:29:00

2002-09-08T01:41:49Z

Today we drove downtown with the windows rolled down to relieve us of the heat and humidity. I left my car in a drugstore parking lot and we walked down the street, past coffeehouses spilling out into the street, past old men who leered at us, past colorful gingerbread buldings and old churches, all sewn together by telephone poles and wires. We stopped in a little corner bakery and bought pastries, then walked to the park at the end of the street, across the bridge to where we sat in the shade by a lagoon as I dissected clover and we discussed things past. We passed the new college students, in shirts sporting the name of their school in large letters, trying to figure out the city and socializing awkwardly; there was a rugby game in a nearby field, people crowded on the standlines, shouts erpting. A couple sprawled in the grass, kissing and cuddling. We gushed over how cute they were, and then each crossed the bridge wishing that we had someone to lie in the shade with.

magalenha @ 2002-09-07T00:16:00

2002-09-07T05:26:02Z

Je ne veux plus qu'oublier ce nuit de tristesse et d'amour perdu. Je ne veux plus penser de l'embrasser, d'être à la plage ensemble, de toutes ces choses parfaites qui sont passés, où celles qui n'ont jamais advenu. Je ne veux qu'une nouvelle pensée, quelque chose d'intéressant, un chanson qui ne fait pas me souvenir de cet été dernier, et tout ça. Je ne veux jamais être seule, ici, dans cette ville des gens sans vrai emotion, sans amour. Pour presque tout eux je ne suis qu'un nom, une fille qui reste toujours sans avoir être embrassé, en écoutant les mêmes chansons. Je suis perdue dans mes rêves d'autres fois, et je ne veux que ça reste de plus.