December 2006

It’s always windy in Philadelphia. Even though the temperature’s been as high as sixty this month, the wind is still harsh enough to bite ears. Walking through these city streets, the discarded, naked Christmas trees lining the pavement make me realize how quickly time passes and how easy it is to just miss something, like a bus or a train, like a birthday or short visit from an old friend who lives far away now. Or maybe this is all just me.

When you grow up thinking you could have been the second coming of Christ, if only you weren’t a half hour too late, if Mary didn’t need the epidural, you notice yourself coming short of all sorts of things. Like finally finishing college after never having the time to witness your head spinning throughout the semester, only to realize at the end of it, when it’s too late, you’re one one-hundredth short of the only goal you set.

December. After the long, hard year, when the cold begins to make everyone weary, they migrate back to their homes. From so far from it, the memory of home is like a fireplace—the only thing that can warm the heart from the stinging breaths of cold air. After finishing finals, I felt no real sense of accomplishment, as one might think I would, I just felt cold. My nose was cold. My toes were cold. On that last stroll through the mostly empty campus, I noticed the leaves still strewn atop the brick pathways, immediately sepia-toned as a memory. A fireplace. Something to yearn for that you can never really have back. Homesick for a place that doesn’t exist. The people you hang out with won’t even be around two weeks. Fleeting.

So quickly it is that the world you call your own can change, flip and flop, upside-down and then right back to that old same shit. Different day. December.

I had to work on New Years Eve this year. No Times Square Dick Clark Countdown. No chaotic, drunken banging on pots. I don’t like resolutions—I don’t like the idea that things in my life need to be evaluated and inspected and resolved. I’m only 23. I just turned 23.

By Nicole

November 2006

We can lose our bearings inside the present.

My compass needle points to magnetic north, but as soon as I shift perspective the allegiances become transparent. Is it more desirable to know the absolute north- or only my attraction to you?

The fall from north happens by degrees. Risks and slight gestures alter our heading. If our current deflects the compass needle, can north remain the same?

Can we be held accountable for the shape made by our unmoored freedom?

Elonda wrote this.

October 2006

I have become completely consumed by cerebral speculation, which has left me slightly overwhelmed by work, worries of graduation (or lack there of), as well as left me stranded betwixt the hours of 2am and 6am struggling to complete things I may have overlooked during hours of daylight. Considering all of these things, my months of "seniorism" have yet to be dull, and October is no exception.

Candidly, I have lost the ability to separate myself from my regimented lifestyle. Not to say I lack spontaneity, but I have dedicated myself to a loose structural system that leaves me constantly exhausted and moderately inebriated. For better or worse. There are 168 hours in any given week and I squeeze approximately 200 hours worth of activity into it. "Oh Eavvon, you are clearly over exaggerating". Perhaps, but it feels like the attempt is being made.

October began much like other months, on the first, and then crescendoed into the 31^st with deliberate force. During that time I had the usual bouts with exams, papers, and radio stationing, while still dedicating my time to weekly Taco Tuesdays, and weekend debauchery. Nothing excessively decadent, but a release of some sort from the perils of student life.

While traipsing through my sweet October, I made an attempt to try not to let my work completely consume me, which has resulted in the feeling that November may be worse than October. Outside of my academic arena, social life is remaining constant, yet consciously separate from scholastic endeavors. These two realms then met on the last full week of my month.

On the second to last Monday of my last full week of my last collegiate October (hopefully), I abandoned my aforementioned responsibility, and literally threw caution to the wind as I prepared myself for an adventure to St. Louis, Missouri. The official purpose of this trip was to help build the media organizations of West Chester University and bolster the staffs' knowledge of the industry. My intentions laid elsewhere. Yes, learning is good, but to be in the home of the St. Lunatics, I felt obligated to act in kind, and proceeded to "make it do, what it do, in tha Lou". Unfortunately, a portion of my travel companions objected to jovial merrymaking, and instead insisted on expressing complaints to past time.

Although the constant pejorative slinging of my counterparts was a downer, I did find other like minded individuals with whom to pass the time. While walking the streets, I became increasingly more aware of how slow and empty the mid-west is. Devoid of any real nightlife, outside of the provided chaos of the World Series, St. Louis has the structure of a major city with a lack of the culture that I have become so spoiled with here on the east coast.

Needless to say, I was more than ready to return to my beloved right coast, and by the time we arrived at the airport, my yearning for home was becoming more and more apparent. My month’s worth of stress was not relieved at all, and mayhaps was amplified by the trip, and then compressed to fit the area of a small plane cabin. But then, once we were sailing somewhere between heaven, hell, and New Jersey, we flew aimlessly into a huge cluster of cirrus and nimbus clouds (Please refer to your middle school science books or http://www.almanac.com/outdoors/clouds.php). These clouds stretched far beyond the horizon, and resembled small fires that could have potentially been started on the floors of countless homes of delinquent children. These miniature conflagrations grew quickly, but then morphed into large snow forts with buttresses and intricate architectural structure unique to each mound. These forts continued to grow until they enveloped the plane itself.

Inside the plane, I experience a surreal calm, slightly offset by turbulence, that made my monthly stresses evaporate quicker that the water from within the actual cloud. And although I knew that the moment I touched down, reality would be brought back with all of gravity’s calculated force, but I was ok with that. I was temporarily suspended by irresponsibility and upward trust, and that made everything a little easier to deal with.

As I look back on my month, I hold no qualms with those things that pushed me toward the precipice of sanity. Nor do I conjoin my internalized angst with the other negative memories of the past thirty days. In fact, I will most likely remember very few events that transpired during those days. Shit happens. But, far above the world, I did learn to appreciate the fact that “plant earth is blue, and there’s nothing I can do.” I only hope I don’t have to take a flight to bumblefuck to every time I lose sight of that.

September 2006

"And it was this outfit that I won $250 in!" announces my new roommate to a group of people that he and I have just met while wearing a black mesh gown with plastic diamonds be-speckling the see through fabric. Apparently I have moved in with a drag queen, this was one of the things left out on the Craigslist ad and one of the things which simply didn't come up in conversation during the day long visit to the apartment to see if I would like it. Granted I know that Boston is a new city to me, but I didn't know that rent in the apartments here also included nightly burlesque shows.

Now it is possible that this conversation didn't happen at the listed time or even on the listed date, but having been unemployed and in relative solitude for nearly two months leaves you with few reasons to look at clocks or calendars. I have five more days of this until my job starts and I've been spending my time in Boston the same way I had spent my time in Catasauqua during my long stint of dereliction, by wandering around the town spending money during normal days only when I've finished whatever books were at my disposal and during times of the occasional windfall on a bottle of gin or whiskey. The two things which I have spent my money on were two of the things which I realized I had a lot more time for when I had no discernible schedule aside from "In a month you have to go to work at 10."

I have nothing against drag queens and I had my share of strange roommates, including roommates who were just down-right scary but this guy makes every person in my family, every roommate I've ever had, and all of my friends look Stepford normal, hell you can even combine any given two of them and only then would they have a serious chance in the Oddball Death Match that would ensue. While sitting in the living room one afternoon reading he told me, drink in hand, that he used to be an alcoholic that he went through recovery but now he's learned to control himself. I understand that there is a difference between true alcoholism and just drinking too god damn much and despite the joy, the responsible joy, that I take from the sauce I think I'm still on firm ground when I say that noon is too early and limiting yourself to only one drink during work does not constitute control.

So basically anytime I try and talk about this guy, and I find that I do this quite often because, you know what better than to fill your work day with stories about your outside life, but anyway, anytime I talk about this guy, I feel like I need to talk about him a lot because like the word of Christ the world must know about something this freaking fabulous, I have to introduce him as a drag queen, then every time after that (because I've dated way too many strong liberals) I feel like I have to state that "but no seriously, I don't have a problem with drag queens. Maybe it's just that with this guy I'm not the wild funny guy anymore I’m just the guy with the crazy stories about the weirdo roommate.

So aside from Tom this older guy, I'm the only guy at work; which is upsetting because I just got used to having guy friends and I kind of wanted that sort f thing to continue. the girls are all pretty cool though and I feel like this month is the start of something all new but hashed out of the old in my life. I'm writing a bit more, I'm lifting more, and I'm cycling more but fuck that Boston accent is tempting. It's all sorts of dirtiness mixed together in a pot that never fills up so there's always welcoming space for everybody else. This town is so multi-cultural, but it's unfiltered and new. Caribbeans in every shape and size are still Caribbean. All the Asians are still pretty much there regardless of which of the many theres they're. hahaha that was some word fun.

I'm working on getting published in different places since I read this book "Ground Works" about Canadian art writers, different stuff some funny, some weird, but all kind of good. I've submitter a few different places and I'm looking for something with a bit of extra pay thrown in. I’m learning poor more than I've ever known it, both from the school I'm at and from my growing budget concerns. This sort of thing led me to filching a pair of pants I saw left on a post.

I'm trying hard to adjust to this place; it's got this whole different feeling than everywhere else I've been. One thing is that in a city that just recently dismantled a thriving, enforced all-white community to find it erupt in murder and theft there's this urge to be over apologetic about racism or to ignore that it's uncouth even more. I hate euphemisms. The main reason I hate them has actually very little to do with them in general. I understand that they can be very generalizing and possibly even offensive which is what they set out to stop in the first place. One of my personal favorites is "special" especially when assigned to education, because it's been applied to both children with learning disabilities and to those who are very intelligent and for whom normal education would be boring. The main reason I hate them is because I have a friend who likes to come up with trite and sometimes completely stupid reasons to hate them or where they came from, and has to bring them up constantly.

He'll explain to you that African American is actually slightly offensive because white people when making reference to their race can point back to their specific country of origin and some can even point to where in that country, where as black people can't do so. Oh yes, their blood and complexion might be from Africa, but chances are they have no way of knowing which country that blood comes from aside from those whose families weren't in this country for longer than most whites and aside from that even if they can tell you what country their blood comes from that country was only set up by whites anyway. So you have to sit through this reason that you probably could've figured out anyway if you ever decided to put any real thought into it.

He's also got these really, terribly stupid reasons why you should hate euphemisms that don't even make any sense. My favorite was that gay people are referred to as "homosexuals" because homosexuality has its roots in Greece and homosexual is a Greek word. Which by the way doesn't even have a shred of truth to it. Granted the Greeks might have had a very active culture of homosexuality, I'm willing to grant that and I'd be fairly uniformed if I didn't but homosexuality wasn't invented in Greece, it doesn't have its roots in Greece, it's been around since the dawn of time there are homosexual animals and there's evidence that mankind has had homosexuality in some form or another since we've been walking upright. The best part about this is that it isn't a Greek word; Homo is it means same in Greek. Sexual is not, sex is a Latin root and has nothing to do with the Greeks.

This isn't the only reason euphemisms or rather my friends delight in them bothers me. He has this character trait or rather habit of expressing himself in this really pretentious sitcom way. He'll tell a portion of his story and than pose the root of his idea in the form of a question like this: "Melting pot used to be how we were supposed to describe race interaction in America until someone decided that it denied people the ability to hold onto their racial traditions, so now we call it a tossed salad, but do you know why I hate that?" and then he'll take a long sip of whatever he has in his hand at the time and make you wait for it.

Now this bothers the hell out of me, because I think I saw a character do this on Family Matters or some show like that once. Which by the way is something else that bothers me, in those shows these families always have some gigantic form of drama going on every single night, any real family that had this amount of trouble would be in constant and expensive therapy, but in sitcoms everything comes to a happy ending and the next night it's like nothing even happened. My favorite ones are the very special episodes for the whole family, which is almost always the terms they used.

Like when on Carlton Banks and Will on The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air were involved in some gang shooting or something it was a very special episode for the whole family. When Eric had a problem with drinking on Boy Meets World, actually I have no idea if the really happened but if it did it would've been a very special episode for the whole family. When Brad might've had cancer but really didn't on Home Improvement, that was a very special episode for the whole family.

The thing is when you do something pretentious like taking a sip from your drink rather than telling your story people loose interest and their minds wander and by the time you tell them "it's because you can take whatever you don't like about it out." they've already forgotten the question and forget what you were talking about

I'm still waiting to be asked for this back. I realize that I describe my life here about the same every time, and I'm wondering if that means that I need new stories or if I need to build steps from the rut I might be falling into.

There's been a general uproar among the recent grads at work...What do we do with self-made deadlines, self-made work hours, and a thorough lacking of homework and real structure? Most times I think: Hmm what do I have to do now that I'm home? Well, it should seem that there's nothing. Well, it also seems that I like gin...and that's basically the night. Not quite so, no homework has turned into reading a book every two days and writing productively every night. Self-made work hours have become running daily and lifting every two I'm also fairly sure that the lack of structure has become an explosion of creativity in the times of idleness. Also the statement of gin was a bit of an exaggeration.

This month is strange and new, the novelty of a thousand things is steady in my gaze and the openness of the times ahead of me is like a great glory. I'm all at once thinking of my challenges and my potential and now everything is shining back on me in a wonderful way...I merely hope the mirror it’s reflecting off is clean and not deluded by my hopes for grandeur. I like the effect a sporadic diary can have when combined with a life.

Matt wrote this.

July 2006

The month of July is somewhat of a mystery to me. I remember coming home late one night from a friends drunken pool party and when I checked my phone I thought to myself "Holy shit, how the hell is it July first already?". I am pretty sure the next time I checked the date it was August.

Athough time moved very quickly that month, July marked one very significant event for me. My move from West Chester back to my parents house in Reading. This was a really weird time for me because as soon as I left West Chester it was almost like I never lived there at all. When I did go back to visit during July it always made me feel really uncomfortable. Being there was a heavy reminder that the life I had made for myself over the past four years was now over and I wasn't in college anymore, which was something I had a really hard time dealing with.

During the first week I did get to go to Rehobeth with my family to visit my grandmother who lives down there. It was nice because not only was I at the beach, but I also got to spend a few days with just my family which isnt something that happens very often. Other than this trip, I really cant name too may specific things that I did during the month of July, and yet time flew by so fast. I think all I did everyday was go to work, come back to my parents house, and go to bed by 11:30 every night for lack of anything else to do. With all of my friends still in other places there wasnt a whole lot going on, which only added to my uneasiness of being at home.

They say time flies when you're having fun but I am pretty sure it can also move just as quickly when you're bored out of your mind. The month of July did have one huge plus. The return home of Joey Coombe. One night, in late July I got to spend the evening with Joey, Pamela and Shannon, which was something that hadn't happened in almost a year. We had a great dinner that included avocado milkshakes, followed by a show at the Khyber. Due to the fact that Joey and I are such hipsters we left early to walk in the pouring rain to Transit for the Diplo after party. This night was also very significant to the month of July because it was at the Diplo party that I first heard SexyBack, which then became my obsession for the rest of the summer. I think that night Joey and I also saw an MTV VJ but to this day I am still not 100% sure.

Overall, I would say July of 2006 was extremely boring for me and also a time of frustration and confusion because I had no plan of what to do next with my life. The fact that it went so fast helped to make everything a blur and looking back I am glad that it moved so quickly since it wasn't exactly the best month I ever had. July was a total transition period for me and change isn't something I handle very well, especially when it isn't exactly a change for the better, but somehow I made it to August. Mostly with the help of my friends and alcohol.

By Becky

May 2006

Lukewarm: Lacking conviction or enthusiasm; indifferent

May 2006: Lacking conviction or enthusiasm; indifferent

I spent a good hour creating a few different drafts on this. I mainly examined the relationship between Elvis Costello/Fiona Apple, who appeared together this month during a legends concert in comparision to my recent failed relationship that began in May last year. But that was depressing, and giving too much levity to something I'd rather forget about. I'm in a good relationship now. I'm in a good place careerwise. I'm in a good place with my family and friends.

So in other words, I wish I had something to say. I want to be interesting. It's these moments that send me packing mentally
prepping myself to change somehow, someway. It's these moments that send me kicking and scratching trying to free myself from being buried alive in a dolldrums of adulthood. It's these moments that make me want to do something drastic because in all honestly nothing really happened in May.

But then I take a take a breath. Considering I spent a good portion of my life having conviction and enthusiasm, being depressed and poetic, and always looking to be tortured and interesting, maybe May was a step to change and act instead of react, and walk instead of talk. Either way, a month off from all my headcase bullshit won't kill me.

April 2006

A month ago, nothing seemed to be achievable. Everything I thought about had a loose end, or rather, an end that seemed far-fetched. I worried where I would live, what I would put there, where I would work, what I would wear there, how I would get there, how I would pay to get there, how I would pay for everything else, who I would spend time with, if it’d be worth it to spend time with them, and so on. My typical, everyday thoughts, multiplied by 1000.

And magically, things just started working out on their own. I got a job from a publishing company that sought me out first. I got a car paid-in-full, and an apartment to move into just next week. I got a salary that was more than I expected, that feels like a lot for an entry-level employee, that feels like a lot to me, a person who doesn’t really spend money. Everything I’d been worrying about just became fixed, and now I don’t have much to worry about, but I do, anyway. I worry what would’ve happened if I didn’t worry, and what I should do now with all my free time I’m wasting, and that I have writer’s block, and if it’s a bad thing that I skip
class as often as I go to it because I’m not only unchallenged and bored and fast-approaching graduation, but I’m also pretty much set. It never ends.

So many people are stressed out now that the year is over, and I’m not stressed at all—no more than usual, at least. I guess I spent my entire college career being worried. Did paranoia pay off? I don’t want that question answered. In any case, while everyone else at school is cramming, writing, and staying up to the wee hours of the morning penning papers, I’m not doing too much academically. I ate a lot of pizza yesterday. I spent the weekend playing Mall Madness and hunting down the piece of cinematic trash known as Showgirls. I sent a home-made construction paper card with a happy butterfly on the front to a serial killer. I sleep in. I was working on my last zine of my college career the other day; I cut up Archie comics and Playmobil catalogs and basically whatever else that was in the vicinity. Yesterday I decided to invent Fun Birth, which is when I shall have my clitoral region stimulated while in the process of having a baby. The days blend together anymore. I’m trying to decide if this is what I earned after four years; I’m trying to decide if it is good to just breathe for once, and not do much else.

By Stef