"They don't love you like I love you."

It's hard to believe that it's been nearly a year since my last post here. Sometimes, I don't know why I ended up creating a blog, since I rarely come here. However, it's never occurred to me to get rid of it. With that said, I'm going to make a sincere effort to write here more often. I admire the ability of several of my friends to maintain a blog, to open themselves to this medium on a regular basis. It makes me want to keep doing it.

To recap on the last (almost) year, I am now in my second year of graduate school. I can honestly say that August 08 to August 09 was one of the most difficult years of my life. It was brutal at times, for personal and professional reasons as well as academic.

At this point, I don't know what I'm doing with my life, which is scary because, up until last year, I had every move carefully plotted out. Although, I am enjoying some new found spontaneity.

Two weeks ago, I got my first tattoo. It's beautiful and it simply says "My first felony-/I took up with poetry" It's taken from the foreward in Sandra Cisneros' My Wicked Wicked Ways. It's perfect for me. It's a public declaration as well as a private source of strength.

This Friday, I will be taking a spur of the moment trip to New York with one of greatest people ever to visit another one of the greatest people ever. I can't even contain myself. I am thrilled to finally be doing something that I always wanted to do, sharing it with Tash and visiting Yolaine in her new home state.

Well, I'm off. This education homework isn't going to do itself, although I wish it would.

"All the world I've seen before me passing by."

1:27 am
I can't believe that it's November already. I'll be 23 in a month and it seems that I've gotten older and wiser all at once in a chaotic rush. I'm working so much and so hard for something I know that I want very badly. It's strange to feel that despite this, my life is on hiatus, waiting for me to be done with the soul-sucking parts for the real parts to begin. I don't even know if that makes sense.

This post is more rambling than anything. It occurred to me at this precise moment that on Tuesday, things are going to change in a huge way. It's a little overwhelming to think of actually.

Flarf!

I am up to my neck in Flarf and up to my eyeballs in grad school. I didn't know it would be like this. More than half-way through it, though, which is good.

Haven't blogged in such a long time. I really should start keeping up with it better. It's unfair to read so many other blogs and not contribute to the body of blogs.

My most exciting news is that yesterday I had the privilege of reading at Woman Made Gallery with 5 other talented poets. It was awesome. See pictures of it here: switchbackbooks.blogspot.com

For now, I wish it would stop raining and I wish this theory paper would magically write itself, or at least impregnate my mind with a good idea, something other than "Flarf is interesting and disputed. Here's why!"

Getting back to work and daydreaming of sleeping. Sleeping=guilty pleasure.

Excitement!

Check out my brief entry for the PixelJunk in the Trunk contest on the Playstation Blog! Isaac and I are among the winners :)

John 3:16

"For God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish, but have eternal life."

I hadn't really thought about this since I was in high school, when I used to have to memorize verses from the Bible. This came up again today. I bought something from Forever XXI for the first time. I noticed that the bag had John 3:16 at the bottom. A close friend of mine who was with me also went to the same Catholic high school as me and together we both tried to remember the verse. Now that I looked up the verse, I'm kind of curious as to why this is on this particular bag. Who's idea was it to put it there? It seems to strange to me because I don't think I've ever seen this before.

Does anyone know?

Carne Asada

For the men in my family, nothing makes grilled meat tastier than misogyny and homophobia.

R.I.P. Right Tragus Piercing

It's been awhile since I've written and my first order of business is the brief mourning of my right tragus piercing. I'd had it for nearly two years and it was trouble since the beginning, almost immediately developing hypertrophic scarring. I tried to salvage it. In total over the last few years, I've had 6 piercings. Sadly, all but two had to be reluctantly retired.

However, there is good to all of this and it outweighs any negatives. After two years, I will finally get to lay on my right ear when I sleep if I choose to, I will be able to wear headphones properly and I won't have worry about people bumping my ear. I'm relieved.

In other news, I'm going back to work tomorrow, after a week of vacation. It was a much needed week of sleep, writing and relaxing. It was exactly what I needed. Aside from being a bit sick, I'm ready to go back to work and very excited to start getting my feet wet with Switchback duties.

Things making my happy right now: Legitimate Dangers, Iron Man, paletas, literature conversations