long time no speak.

I let myself realize today that if I don't get out of the city, I will never grow up. that is to say that I had a conversation with my dad tonight about transferring colleges and he keeps saying that I should stay in the city to have him & mom as a support system but I need to get out and do this myself. I need to be able to pull myself up from the shit and be an independent person. I don't think that's an unrealistic goal to have -- in fact, I think it's a very important goal to have. no?

blech.

idonothavetimetowriteanymore. imissmyoldlife. ihavesomanythingsicouldwriteaboutbuthavenotime.

BLECH.

post-jamaica tales.

so pictures are up, presents have been given and my suitcase (obviously) remains packed. maybe I'm tricking myself that I'll go on vacation sooner than expected. which is silly because I go to LA in february, only a matter of weeks. anyway, jamaica was wonderful and beautiful and so much fun. I look like a 6 year old with my hair braided which is no problem simply because I thoroughly enjoy looking like a 6 year old. no lie.

lots going on this week, considering I just got home yesterday night. I was supposed to help interview for macaulay, but...I was tired and couldn't access the google spreadsheat, therefore I canceled. spent today lounging, phone interview tomorrow then work, then try-out day with a fashion company in soho...yeesh.

speaking of fashion, I didn't post my favorites for spring/summer rtw 2011. obviously (really, obviously) there was bcbg max azria coming in at number one with their lovely color palette, and interesting shapes, flowy & billowing fabrics and minimalistic loveliness. vena cava was also (surprisingly) beautiful and much more tame than usual. their neutrals were a little darker than bcbg's but that's only normal of vena cava, which goes for an edgier, bolder look. and I found this designer I hadn't really looked at before, rachel comey who was WONDERFUL. like when I say fantastic I really mean fantastic. great shapes, great fabrics, great patterns, great colors, great line. such a good updated 50's look to everything she did I couldn't NOT love it more.

my bcbg max azria favorites:












and then my vena cava favorites:












okay and then last but certainly not least, rachel comey:












remember: crop tops are huge and long skirts are in -- short on top, long on bottom!

staycation...for now.

well, vacation is fun. what a boring sentence. knowing myself, vacation is never just sitting on my ass (I'm no good at that) so I've been working the two jobs and reading reading reading. I need more. confession time: after reading eat pray love, I've been wanting to take a yoga class so when my friend rachel suggested we go to one, I jumped at the opportunity. now, yoga is very good for you mind and body, I don't dispute that, but I swear I cannot get myself to stop laughing when I hear people making funny breathing noises. I get that that's what you're supposed to do, but it's just too funny. I'm sitting back there breathing normally and this woman in the front was busy orgasming. am I missing something about yoga? either that or I know how to continue breathing while contorting myself into really odd poses.

so I'm busy baking cookies and trying out yoga. some new things, some old things. that seems like a pretty happy new year to me.

home, sweet home.

ah, the end of the semester means my nice, warm (and did I mention extra-large by college standards?) bed, my family and my kitchen. even though I have a kitchen at college, there's something so comforting about baking at home, in my big, fancy kitchen -- a place where the oven temperature is accurate, I don't have to buy flour and granulated sugar and cookbooks abound. it's pretty much the promise land of all kitchens.

and so I'm sitting in my kitchen, baking peanut butter cookies and I realized something amazing. I love cocoa nibs. for anyone who has no idea what I'm talking about, nibs are these little, crunchy cocoa bits, usually unsweetened. I never really used to like them until dad got these delicious ones from scharffen berger and now, I have to tell you, they are blowing my mind. winter break is wonderful.

I'm reading eat, pray, love right now and it's giving me such perspective. I think I might have needed to be reminded of the importance of impermanence and ephemeral aspect of life and emotions that the buddhists place such an emphasis on. it's importance to put everything in perspective and I don't think I've been doing that often enough. not that I'm a yoga-doing-vegan-food-eating type of person (I'm much more of a gym-going-treadmill-running-meat-eating individual) but there's something so appealing in the dominant ideas of eastern religions, something that I really want to ingrain and inculcate into my head.

relating to such ideas, I went to the rubin museum of art today -- highly recommended. it's a beautiful museum of eastern art and it's such a place of zen. related perfectly to my choice of reading these days.

and now, time to munch on some cookies and drink wine with mom. did I mention that I love home?

...

dear life,

please strike me with some creativity. I feel deprived.

thanks,
sarah.

death, suffering & numbness.

so last night my cat died. my cat, who I always joked I hated, who really had nine lives, who used to like nothing better than to curl up on the mat in the kitchen, who we got because 14 years ago I used to feed him on the back porch of my country house, died from tumors last night. they attacked his stomach & colon and I watched him convulse and listened to him cry all of yesterday afternoon until dad got a call from mom around midnight that he was gone.

and this comes around the same time as dan and I are on the verge of breaking up. we didn't, but it was a definite possibility.

and so I feel numb. I don't know what to feel anymore. I'm not hungry, it was hard falling asleep and I woke up a hundred million times this morning and forced myself back to bed until, at 11:10 I deemed it time to wake up. at 2 I forced myself to eat something. I'm trying to focus on nietzsche but that doesn't look like it'll happen today until much later. maybe just a day of the OC with me, marissa, seth, ryan & summer? I wish I knew how to feel.

laughing with leelee, a retrospective.

so I realized today that I started this blog pretty much a year ago and I was at such a totally different place in my life -- it's crazy to think that you'll be able to predict the outcome of future events. really, you cannot. last year, my life looked a little like this: unsure where I would get in to college, unsure where I would go to college, unsure where I would even end up applying to college (!), confused/crazy/upset with dan, kind of involved with someone else, feeling miserable on a daily basis (not in a depressed way, just in a shitty way), challenging myself to find myself & be comfortable with myself and convinced that nothing would work out in the end.

well. hello macaulay. hello coming to terms with college acceptances/rejections/waitlistings. hello dan. hello prom. hello self. hello happiness. hello college friends. hello new life. hello typical sarah.

things just worked out. didn't I always say that they would? and I am so grateful they did. reading back I was so unhappy with so much of what was going on and now I'm just kind of floating, existing, being. and I'm happy. granted, I still regret not getting into columbia, but whatever. I'm at macaulay. I went grocery shopping today. I went out for dinner tonight. please. I am happy.

I'm glad I started this blog to challenge myself to think about the world, others and myself. it was a good project, a good endeavor. it gave me a lot of space to think out things and gave a lot of other people a good read. all in all, well done, self.

apocalyptica?

so I'm not usually the type of person to be swayed by politics. for the most part I'm pretty down to earth, maintaining an everything-will-be-fine attitude. well, with these crazy wikileaks, I'm suddenly feeling this burden of "oh no, what if everything is not fine?"

so while I'm thinking this and day after tomorrow, war of the worlds, armageddon, etc. images are playing through my head (cue impending-doom music as well), I realize that, well, there's a possibility of a nuclear war. and I don't even know what that really means, I just know that it means a lot of death, a lot of destruction, and a lot of world war III.

not that I have the first idea of how to go about fixing this situation (please, I'm no politician), but it's a relatively scary thought that this round-the-world arms race is happening. even with countries trying to establish peace, what is getting done? how will we solve this? I guess this is why every beauty pageant (okay maybe this is just a miss congeniality reference) contestant asks for world peace but it's pretty scary to think of the other possibility -- the opposite of world peace being world war (thanks hobbes?), which could happen now. uh-oh.

the infinite fight.

I'm really sick of feeling lonely. I don't know why, sometimes it just hits. especially now, when I know break is next week so there's isn't THAT much work but there's still stuff to do that I keep thinking I can put off and it's cold out so I don't want to go for a walk or go grocery shopping or anything. It's kind of like an I-just-want-to-nap-so-I-don't-have-to-think-about-anything kinda thing, which cannot be good for your health, just saying.

I just feel like I feel this way a lot. okay, I know I'm not the only college freshman to not be adjusted & comfortable yet (I mean, I feel like I'm adjusted & comfortable which is the weirder part) but it really sucks! I'm not whining, swearsies, I'm just meh. feeling meh. which, as psych100 tells us, is a mood-dependent cue. so, since I'm unhappyish I'm going to keep feeling this way. so, guess the only thing to do is take a nap & focus on something nice like friends being home for thanksgiving and going out tonight. it'll all be better in an hour or so, I can feel it.

why the internet sucks.

dirpy? shut down. pitchfork & npr won't let me download. soundcloud doesn't let most people download also. mojo? apparently no longer existent.

seriously -- what the fuck? I just want to listen to music. I get it -- artists want money -- but seriously, most of the money that they make off online downloads DOESN'T GO TO THEM. they get most of their profit from concerts which I would obviously go to IF I could listen to their music.

what bullshit.

(how ironic that I'm writing this online.)

rhymes with armistice.

...homesickness. or not even homesickness. lack-of-a-real-college-campus-and-parents-because-they're-in-madrid-need-a-break-from-school-ness. that's right. I miss my parents. I wish I had a campus. I need a break from school.

why on earth would I miss my parents (other teenagers are definitely feeling the blasphemy here)? I see my parents once a week. that's a perfect amount to help out a little bit in the office, get dinner & catch up, get a ride home and NOT get sick of them. so missing that one week is a lot for me. it's alright, they got home yesterday, I went with dad to get mom from the airport and we went out for dinner and today was tuesday which is our weekly dinner night so I got two nights back to back AND I got presents from madrid. I also love my parents. they're really cool and easy to talk to and just kind of awesome. I definitely lucked out in that category.

needing a campus? that was a recent thing. it just hit me that I have NO school community. I don't feel connected to hunter AT ALL. I love my friends here, in the dorm (yeah, the ONE dorm) but college feels more like high school than college and I don't really know what to do about that. there's no roll-out-of-bed-run-to-class-dining-hall-dinner kind of college experience here and, while I thought I would be okay with it, I'm really not. it's the only time in my life I'll ever have the option of having that experience and I feel like I'm going to look back in 20 years and feel like I cheated myself out of a great "college experience." I know that's the typical college experience and I'm not typical but once in a while I'd like the typical experience too. everyone else gets it and I know I'm able to handle this arrangement and be happy, but I think I would be happier somewhere else. as mom put it...I "would only be happy at columbia." tough nougies for me.

and needing a break from school? not that things are particularly difficult here (I didn't study for my psych test, I got a 97), it's just that I haven't had a real break since school started. we had off for holidays but I go to shul for holidays or have family dinners for holidays so they're not REAL holidays. I'm just ready for a break.

lonely so soon?

sucks to leave cornell and not have dan at my disposal. in general, it sucks going back to college where there's no boyfriend to hug. I'm so lucky that I have my girls -- don't know what I would do without them -- but I miss cuddling. maybe it's because I listen to depressing music? seriously, I have zero motivation to do work. not that I have anything due tomorrow that I haven't already done (zero percent chance I'm editing a rough draft of a paper. not happening. seriously. it's anthro) and I don't reeeeeeally want to work in advance (please, this is so not sarah's-life-at-heschel-part-II) but sadly there are no more minutes in my netflix watch instantly so I guess I won't be watching 30 rock.

in which case...what to do? read? I mean I guess I have eat pray love that I could crack open or I could read mill (because oddly enough I enjoy his stuff) and...oh shit. I thought we only had to read chapters 3 & 4. apparently it's 3, 4 & 5. fuck my life.

ever wondered why guys don't ever open up?

after a conversation last night with the boy, I realized I was one step from becoming the whiney, needy girlfriend! that is not who I want to be! at all! I realized right before taking the wrong step (luckily I stepped back to psychoanalyze myself and my behavior at the right moment) that I was about to ask the wrong questions and make the wrong assumptions that would, in effect, push the boy away.

see when guys open up (maybe this is just my guy), they talk about how it's hard being at parties when I'm not there. he said last night "I'm a guy" and I wanted to shout, "yeah, you have testosterone -- I get it!" but it's like to another girl (okay maybe I'm giving myself a little credit here) "wow, you don't want to be with me, you'd rather be hookin' up with randoms." now I know that the boy loves me a lot and does really want to be in a relationship with me, so I didn't say that, but see how freakin' easily the story could get spun way damn out of proportion?

exactly. so my theory is that boys (to save their own asses) don't open up very frequently because it's usually stuff that they know we won't be cool about. be honest, girls freak more than guys, it happens whatever but don't then go freaking probing about shit you don't wanna hear. it's like ma always says: don't ask questions you don't want answers for. smart ma.

new, old tune?

gayspantion.

so I was thinking about it on my way home as I listened to the this american life from last week (why I related homosexuality to a podcast about life in iraq after us is beyond me) and it kind of just came to me that homosexuality has become a huge issue over the past few years. look at the kids are allright and everything that has come out recently about prop. 8 in california, don't ask don't tell in the military, even in a psychology research credit I did today about images and the emotions they provoke and, maybe it's just me, but there seem to be a lot more gay couples who are comfortable with pda.

honestly, all the power to the homosexuality movement. I'm a big proponent. I'm not lesbian myself, but hey, who am I telling someone who they should love and want to spend the rest of their life with? if I can marry someone I love, why can't you?

on love and loss?

I realized last night that when you sign up to be married to someone, you're asking for them to be there for your entire life. and one of you has to die first. so how do you adjust to that?

I had a really nice conversation with my mom about love and all that fun stuff earlier as she drove me home from...home. well, back to my dorm from home. I was really upset by dan being away earlier and we just got to talking and it's so scary to think that you could set yourself up to spend the rest of your life with someone and they can be someone you totally didn't expect, you know?

on to kant. enough with love.

headachey.

there's something about picking courses for next semester that poses this big, daunting question mark over my head. I just can't decide what to do. do I want to take music history, art history, communications...so many options, I have no idea what to do.

I also have a headache right now and I should be studying psych but I'm taking my break because I finished reviewing the first part that I had blocked off on my study guide...ugh so much to do.

blech.

just going to put it out there that having dinner at midnight is so not all it's cracked up to be. especially when you have to come home to do more work. and, oh look, it's 12:41am and I wanted to read half of rousseau's book I and finish reading & taking notes on this 25-page anthropology reading (only because I did the other two 14-page readings last night, of course). oh and did I happen to mention that lovely meeting with my advisor that I have tomorrow morning at 11am? so hopefully I'll be in bed by 2am (only 4 pages of this anthro reading left!) to wake up at 10am. if not, it's another night of 7 hours of sleep. manageable, but not enough according to my psych professor.

so the other night while dan was home I met his ex (!). I know, shocker of all shocks! so not only does this girl cause some drama about me coming along (mind you, she wasn't even supposed to be there) she awkwardly doesn't give dan a hug at the end of the night, nor does she introduce herself to me or say goodbye. oh and this process happens again on sunday to something that she really wasn't even invited to and showed up late to...a little rude.

just funny because I've been buggin' about this girl for how long and she is so not a threat at all. I didn't even feel myself being extra show-offy to get in her face (okay maybe I showed off that me and dan were in a relationship a little, but ONLY a little I swear!). it's just so interesting that expectations & reality didn't collide at all -- I didn't feel threatened or nervous, I was comfortable and myself. I was glad to be in my shoes. granted, I also know that both people cannot be comfortable at the same time when there's an awkward situation, so the best way to intimidate anyone else is to just have fun, be cool and be yourself. if you're confident, they can't be.

eggshells.

I'm going to refer back to my yom kippur post. I talked mainly about making sacrifices for those we love and, yes, that post wasn't in vain, but (of course) there's some repercussion creepin' up on me. I was looking at the study abroad programs for december break (they're the only ones posted). I found a very cool one in argentina, studying language and literature, essentially a spanish immersion program (couldn't ask for anything more, right? love language. love food. love spanish culture. would love to go to argentina, especially in december when it's their summer -- awesome.).

so, I asked dan in passing what he thought and suddenly it became a very loaded question. respond yes, go, and suddenly I'm the devil girlfriend who misses his 20th birthday instead of planning him a dinner/party and (in his misguided opinion) would be off making out with someone. respond no, don't go, and he's now the selfish asshole who's deciding things for me. well fuck me, I just wanted some advice.

and now all these questions are flooding my head: was everyone right when they said to drop your boyfriend & emotional baggage when you start college? at what point are the sacrifices not worth it? dan gets to do study abroad and I don't so he's going to break up with me? (of course it didn't help when I read an nytimes article today that said EXPLICITLY "don't go into college with a boyfriend" but whatever.)

so now, where do I go? do I sit around feeling like an idiot, do I walk on eggshells to prevent the inevitable break up? if I know the break up is inevitable, why are we still together? I love you, dan, but at what point does my independence become priority #1? why have you become priority #1? should I drop everything and start from scratch to (essentially, and this is the worst possible wording connotation-wise) "break free?"

I don't fucking know.

stagnation.

so one of erickson's 8 stages of development is "generativity" vs. stagnation.
read: the ability, desire, will to create & be creative vs. being at a lack of creative, novel spirit.

that is how I'm feeling. I feel burnt out. not that this week was particularly hard (it actually feels like freshman year of high school again, there isn't so much work, you're being "eased" into the school) I just feel kind of tired. I'm enthusiastic, I'm confident, I'm independent, I'm still the girl you know, just not with an interesting blog.

funny because I don't know why I was spurning so much creativity when I was at my nice little private jewish day school with the same run-of-the-mill people. maybe it's because I was constantly being challenged to look at aspects of judaism or god or feminism or who knows what else and that sparked something. maybe it's just that the courses here feel a little bland, nothing to really think think about.

and now, off to do some more psych. honestly, if I wasn't taking psych I wouldn't have any work. such is the way of college.