Watching a lot of That 70's Show

My finals studying playlist is obscene.

Mostly this:


with the occasional Dolly:


This is my absolute favorite time of year. I love finals week at Columbia because I have nothing but time to sleep, exercise, eat carefully, and prove just how much my silly head can hold. The holiday lights are strung on Columbia's College Walk (116th St.) and everything looks beautiful and smells like the roasted nuts from the Nuts4Nuts cart parked off campus. All is perfect in the world in those moments before Christmas.

And Christmas is always a saga that I never want to get into. Please please December last forever.

I have never thought of myself as any kind of nationalist or serious patriot of any kind,

but I feel deep distress and turmoil when China behaves badly, which is often. It shouldn't really affect me, as I've lived in New York for 16 years now and am QUITE Americanized and I definitely embarrass my entire family with my poor grasp of my first language and my refusal to be more Chinese and right handed. I am good at America. I bake cookies. I have been to Vermont.

But when I think about why it kills me every time China glazes over child abductions and human rights abuses and lack of mental health care across the board, AND why I take tremendous pride in China taking the gold in Olympic events (and believe me, I do), it makes me feel like I've been keeping a big huge secret about myself that I'm barely comfortable thinking about, except when I need to rise up and defend a country that my whole family and I left, and where I only spent 5 years of my life. It's a real trip.

I never feel less Chinese than I've ever felt, or forget how closely my parents guarded my upbringing so that I would always take my shoes off when I got home, felt better with chopsticks in my hands than a fork, or measure how different an American person's house is than mine (you guys always have juice). But I never expected that I would feel so many things for a country that for me is more of an idea than a real place. Even when I think about religion, I am forgiving of the folksy nature of my mom's traditions and the altars she insists on keeping, while I outwardly object to religion in general. When I see a Buddhist temple I feel happy because they are peaceful and charming. When I walk past a church I feel nervous and my chest tightens up.

I don't know if I've ever shown you this, but I thought it might bring you some pleasure.

Sunday bun day

Baking with Apples!

I baked a cinnamon apple cake today, recipe via Nigella Lawson. It was DELICIOUS and apple-y and soft and spicy and warm and so autumnal and perfect for today.

Today's just that kind of day where all you want to do is sit on your bed and pluck out all of your hairs while eating vitamin C tablets.

Why do they make them so delicious if you're only supposed to eat ONE a day? She probably thinks she's reeeeal cute.

Some weekends I go to the Catskills and look at plants.



But most weekends I just go to Long Island and have raging staph infections whose treatment=
1. heavy antibiotics that tear apart my stomach and make me loopy and lethargic,
2. bathing in diluted bleach water 3x a week, and
3. washing every piece of fabric that touches my skin immediately after it touches my skin.
Add some triple-antibiotic ointment to the mix and you get an idea of where I am at.

I smell like a hospital, I hope I won't scar, my tummy is in a constant state of ache, and I have no quarters left (for laundry).

But I am really appreciating the smell of clean laundry. And I am really appreciating how delicious almond milk and nutritional yeast are in combination with other sweet and savory (resp.) foods. And I am really appreciating the fact that I don't have anyone in my life who takes up serious amounts of my time or attention, because I prefer to really focus all my love, energy, time, and affection on MYSELF.
I am young, it is alright.
RIGHT?

There are a lot of reasons why I love fall, but it's mostly because it's witch season.

This movie taught me what vaginal intercourse is.

My parents had given me "the talk" before but it was super convoluted and nervous and they did very little explaining of what typical vaginal intercourse actually entailed. They only really talked about the possible outcomes, of which there are two:
1. babies
2. crabs

So I walked away from that talk quite confused and believing that I just had completely misunderstood the mechanics part. I didn't believe that penises could bend like that and it just seemed a little too puzzle-piecey-perfect that those penises would magically fit into vaginas.
I just thought "wow, I COMPLETELY misunderstood that talk" (which I hadn't) and went on with my life, trying to make myself believe that one could get pregnant and crabs from intense making out.

Then, this movie.

Clarity.
And as I watched I had this sinking feeling of "jesus, I was right. What a messy process."

A day and a night before I moved back into the city, we spent the night at the beach. I was too drunk to take pictures that evening (perhaps you remember this?) but I did catch some while we were waking up.
Our sleeping spot and the sand-covered fire pit around which we danced, lugged around heavy logs, laughed, and spit gin.
The sunrise.

I am so glad you came out that weekend. I told you at the time but maybe you don't understand the real value of it:
You were the best date I had ever brought.

And there is no competition at all.

It is Sunday evening and I am sitting on my bed, watching Goodfellas, and trying not to eat more sauerkraut than I already have.

My first adult boyfriend looked exactly like a young Robert De Niro. Every time I see movies/pictures of Robert De Niro I get happy and excited, as it reminds me of this lovely ex and all of the fun times we had together.
After we broke up, whenever I would be feeling exceptionally miserable in the company of then-current and unsavory boyfriends, I would always bring up how attractive I thought Robert De Niro was. I would never say that the only reason I thought he was attractive was because he reminded me so much of this ex, but I would take immense secret pleasure in the fact that I was rubbing this comparison in their faces without their knowing it.

Add that to the list of why it's a treat to date me.

I'm in love.

I want to cook for him all day. He makes me want to dress up and put on eyeliner and heels, even though I know he prefers me without them. He said my name with his last name in a heavy Italian accent and looked so pleased with how it sounded that my heart melted into a puddle at my feet and I could have sung. He talks about the children we used to talk about having when we were a couple 3 years ago.
He puts no pressure on me to love him, or to not love him, or to change myself, or to change him, or to remain the same. He is currently the only person that is able to completely alleviate me of the stress I've been experiencing lately.
He loves me.
He plays songs for me which he wrote about me when we were together. We are good drinking buddies. He brings out the dirty, crudely hilarious Camille that is so often tamed by those around her. He appreciates the little things I do for him, the exact things I want him to appreciate, and he makes me a more caring and compassionate human being.
He makes me happy.
When we hold hands it is electric.

It is romance.

girl in the maxi dress. eyeliner wrong.

The reason we make such an amazing couple is that we never let the other forget how much we adore them. Our soul sister best friendship reminds me of how to behave in the real world and how to be the best version of myself for others and how relationships CAN function and why we shouldn't settle for less. This weekend we reunited for the first time in nearly a year and it was the same as it has always been, because we are the best most dating-est dream team ever. We ate lustful Greek food twice in two days, and ate mounds of mushroom and pineapple fried rice together, and we made GENEROUS gin and tonics, and we got questioned about our age because we are young and good looking in a way that makes old drunk guys nervous. Fuck that noise though.

Jason Isaacs.

Dream man since 2001

Today I saw the first adult boyfriend I've ever had. It had been over two and a half years since I saw him last.
I've never had any partner treat me better than he did and I honestly cannot say a bad thing about him- and I am usually venomous enough for all of us.

I went down to the four corners in our little seaside town, where a festival was being held. He was playing with his band and he got me all soakey with his guitar playing. I was not sure whether to flee in anxious dread or begin to cry, so I chose neither of those and just enjoyed his set, staring and smiling at him as he played and hundreds of hours of memories came rushing back.
I walked home as soon as he was done and have been thinking of him since. We sent each other a few texts this evening, very platonic and friendly.
But what I really want to text him is: I am done, I've gotten out of my system all that I needed to. I am ready for you again. Dump your lady and I promise I will be yours for life.

And I mean it.

I must have some sort of disease that causes me to be this impassioned and emotive all the time.



But for real, I am going to say that to him. Except I'll do it in person.
I hate every goddamn boyfriend I have now, they are all the worst in their own terrible and boring ways. Hate them.

HOW DID THEY KNOW

I just spent the past week of my life with a severe allergic reaction to my medication, and being heavily medicated in a an effort to subdue the painfully itchy hives and rash all the fuck over my body, and thinking what a terrible way this would be for me to die. And as I ate lunch in long sleeves and jeans in the sweltering heat of Central Park, I got melancholy and a little nostalgic about my childhood as I prepared for death which I was sure was coming for me, because even my scalp was itchy and after I ate my lips would get really red and it was NOT ATTRACTIVE.
But I also thought about my best friend from childhood, who is still one of the most important people in the world, not least because we both grew up without a whole lot of money around families that seemed to have too much money, and because when I needed an escape from my own morose self and the stress of my family, she was there to restore my sanity. Every time I talk to her, I feel warm and happy and I feel eight years old again, sitting at her dinner table, gleefully eating white people food (salad and grilled chicken and ice tea) by candlelight and then falling asleep on the couch to Ghostbusters. I treasure her because she traveled with me through time. We became, or are becoming, adults together, but more importantly she reminds me of how I grew into my own skin. She is one of the last people who knew my father, which feels weird to say and even weirder to think about. One time, my dad beat her in arm wrestling with one finger. When she ate dinner at my house, she didn't flinch at our weird soups, the fact that we had two forks in the entire house, or that everyone chewed with their mouths open. We were endlessly jealous of the way we were beloved by each others' parents and how they wished we would behave like the other. I took my shoes off by the door at her house and her mother swooned, she ate two bowls of rice in a sitting and my parents cried tears of joy. I like to think that when we're older and have kids of our own, we'll be able to casually drop by each others' homes for dinners, drink together and eat melty Reisen, and then cry together while we watch Mulan.

I wish they had Math Blaster for adults.
My thesis mentor handed me a fat paperback called "Introductory Statistics with R" and said "read it." and turned away. I am learning a programming language and now all I can think of is playing Hugo's House of Horrors. So I downloaded it and as soon as I get home from work... playing DOS games is sort of like programming, right?

This is probably my favorite Seinfeld clip ever.

OH HI, BLIND PANIC ABOUT GRADUATE SCHOOL AND MY FUTURE, I will quell you by looking at pictures of Hilary Duff's engagement ring. A dream is a wish my heart makes, and shit.



Karen

I have been thinking nonstop of one of my best friends from home.

She is a bad influence. She is a whore, she occasionally abuses substances, and she has a long history of disordered eating. She works very hard at her jobs, and then spends all of that money on clothing and driving fines. She is in control of herself, but her judgment and morality are often questionable.

The only reason I started viewing my last boyfriend as a sexual being was because she made out with him during a dance party. We were insanely drunk and believed that we were the only two fun people in the whole joint. Did my view of him change out of jealousy? The female version of cuckolding? Something else? All I know is that only she could have opened my eyes in that weird way. Ha!

I miss her more than I ever imagined I could. When we hang out, it is in a bingey style. We will get together for breakfast at 7am, spend all day together, go home to eat and shower, and meet up an hour later to get italian ices or drink too much whiskey by the bay. When we are together, I spend too much money. I either eat too much or eat nothing at all. We do naughty things. We go into stores and try on slutty outfits for hours and then buy nothing at all. We air all our dirty laundry loudly in public places, and we make others feel awkward.
We go to the beach nearly every day, whether it's raining or pouring, August or March. We always go in the water, even if the ocean is so cold that it makes us hyperventilate or feel paralyzed as the iciness hits our backs.
She brings out the strong woman in me and I miss her. She doesn't let me get sad, she doesn't let me mope, she doesn't let me not take care of myself because she instills in me this overwhelming awareness that I am something special.
Everyone needs a friend like her. Everyone deserves a friend like her. Because everyone, even for just a few minutes of their life, deserves to feel alive, depraved, free, and special.

What else to say? I love that bitch. Long Island knows how to breed them.

My roommate and I were having a chat last night with one of our friends who came over, who was baring a little bit of her soul to us. Not in a painful or embarrassing way, she was just sharing naturally what most people would keep , embarrassed, to themselves.
She was talking about pain and war and how she grew up in Germany hearing stories about the Holocaust but never quite understanding it. To give no justice to the poetry of her thoughts, in summary: she felt like she was living in this strange in-between emotional state. Because she had never experienced such horrible pain or trauma as her grandparents did in WWII (for example), she also believed that she had a much lessened range of emotional capacity- because she hadn't felt true pain, she would also never feel true ecstasy. She wishes that she could understand war, understand those feelings of wanting to live or die for something. Because at the moment, she feels purposeless.
I have had thoughts like this before. My roommate hasn't and made it very clear that she thought the friend was a fool for wanting to go through pain. She was preachy and pushy and shut us both up, not because she was right, but because there are times when shutting up is easier than talking to someone who has conditioned themselves not to listen.

It was simultaneously a beautiful evening that I will remember for a long time, and a pretty shit one that I feel uncomfortable thinking about. Judgy judgy.



This is my soul right now. Happy and cheery and though my words may be speckled with melancholy, the final sum of all of my components are something that ultimately is simply, childishly delighted to be existing in the world.


Although I know you don't want to hear about it: I have moved past my mopey stage of relationship mourning and into the phase where all the love and hurt you once felt is replaced by rationality and this bitter crust that wakes you up in the middle of the night, wishing you had something or someone to feel softer emotions for.
I wake up angry and frustrated that I allowed someone to treat me poorly and make me believe I was an absolute chore to be with.
I wake up wondering what my next relationship is going to look like.
And I wake up wish wish wishing that I had never lost my virginity or begun dating, because it's poisoned my mind and I don't know how to go back.

I remember when I first lost my virginity thinking "oh, finally, I can relate to the world! I understand men and I understand women and I understand that there is so little to understand!" And simple way of viewing the world has made me simple.

You think you're real cute, don't you?

There's an episode of Seinfeld where George's girlfriend is told she can't have sex for something like 6 weeks because she's got mono. George is at first really dismayed by this, but soon finds out that when his mind isn't spent obsessing about sex, he's able to channel it into more constructive outlets. He becomes this super-focused genius and is a bit loath to actually get back into sex once he's given the opportunity again. Elaine, on the other hand, becomes significantly less focused and less intelligent when she tries to stop having sex.
I tell you this in order to tell you that: I am like neither of these guys! I will be an idiot forever, I bet! The floodgates were opened all those years ago and now the waters just keep streaming and there's nothing anyone can do about it. I am sure it will get worse as the years go on and I become less of a tasty physical treat. LOOMING DESPAIR.
Listen to Annie Lennox again, quick!

WHEN we are rich trophy-but-also-legitimately-loving wives, we will have tiaras made just for shits and giggles. I sincerely do not understand why royals do not wear them 24/7, and I do understand it's not chic to flaunt one's wealth or whatever but COME ON. If I were Kate Middleton, I would never take them off. I'd have tiaras for all occasions, it would be EXTREMELY SATISFYING AND FULFILLING.
1. Shopping tiara
2. Driving around the countryside tiara
3. Lunch with the queen tiara
4. Sexy lingerie tiara
5. Walking my children to school tiara
6. Shopping at the grocery store like a regular person tiara
7. Getting my hair did at the salon tiara
8. Church tiara.

A guest is staying over tomorrow and I hope it goes swimmingly the end.

I know you don't support my love for Khloe Kardashian but I LOVE HER because she did everything we want to do CORRECTLY and by age 25. She is my homegirl forever.

ON POINT.
Do not accept any marriage proposals unless they are from a maharajah or the Aga Khan. Lots of Americans have been made into foreign princesses and I believe in you.

I'm an awful blogger THE END.

All I want to do is buy pretty underwear.
If I ever become a rich woman, you can bet the only things I'll spend real money on are
1. underwear
2. spices
3. sneakers (gah), and
4. rings (for fingers and ears)


That's all for now! Feeling depressed, wanting to gun my brains out, and am cleverly (not cleverly) avoiding a Nepali boy who has been proposing marriage to me since the beginning of May. I am only avoiding him so that in my desperate state I don't scream "YES! MAKE ME YOURS BECAUSE NO ONE ELSE WILL KEEP ME!"
I've been proposed to four times by men who were earnest about it. What the hell,
a. why am I still a miserable wretch
b. what were they on to make them think that more than a few months with me would not only be tolerable, but would actually make for a happier existence
c. it's strange that I haven't gotten married yet, then.

I need to buy apples and soymilk, and I am top 40 one of the best cooks in the world (by my own estimations). I made a massive amount of stir-fry type thing yesterday and I've been dreaming about it all day.
VOLATILE! Enjoy my negativity and bipolarity, friends.

Is it strange that it took reading a lot of Harry Potter themed erotica to realize that I have no reason to mourn over the ending of my last relationship?
Grinding against the floor, fantasizing about Sirius and Hermione (I am baring all here), and eating apples with peanut butter (the choice aphrodisiacs of runners and 5-year-olds everywhere) made me just realize "oh shit, you are a prize. Don't cry over someone who didn't treat you like one and who you truthfully were settling for the whole time."
That sounds mean but the entire relationship was just the two of us being so desperate to have some romantic committed relationship that, as long as the other was decently attractive and lived within driving distance, we didn't really care who it was with. I was feeling desperate after losing what I still hope was not the love of my life, and he was feeling desperate because he was getting older and had never had a serious relationship before. I do not think there are two more different people than me and him. Sometimes it was charming, like Oscar and Felix, but most of the time it was just unpleasant.
I won't air my dirty laundry here. I will just say: this breakup has been extremely hard. I feel like there were too many things left unsaid for us to be finally "over", but I know that if I want to make myself truly happy, I cannot keep defaulting to him.



I had my first adult "let's rent a summer cottage on the beach and drink white wine while talking about invasive plants and politics" party weekend in Kaikoura. Despite me still being jet-lagged and me falling asleep as soon as conversations would drift outside of my areas of expertise (e.g. garbanzo beans, uses for baking soda, Nepali jewelry), it was pretty fantastic.

Charlton about falling in love: "While my falling in love with Lydia almost instantly makes complete sense to me, I've never understood what drew her to me. Her generosity of spirit, is my guess, though Lydia has never been very forthcoming on the question. when I pressed her on this subject once, she wmiled and said, 'Words, Charlie ... words. I loved the way you talked about things -- paintings, horses, trees.'"
Source: Charlton Heston, In the Arena: An Autobiography, page 47.

Charlton about Lydia's birthday: "In the spring, we often stood beside a lilac bush near the Speech School embracing for ten minutes at a time. I still send her lilacs on her birthday every year."
Source: Charlton Heston, In the Arena: An Autobiography, page 49.

Strengthen me with raisins, refresh me with apples, for I am faint with love.

-Song of Solomon 2:5

not cute karen ew gross old lady whtever you guys
There was one year in middle or high school- I really cannot remember- when it was very near the end of the school year, perhaps when half days started signaling the imminent freedom, when I would come home, chill the fuck out in my backyard, drink soda, and read Harry Potter until I literally passed out in bed, and then wake up when my alarm went off in the morning. And I would still be in the clothes from the day before but it was almost summer so who cares? And I would change and grab my unopened backpack and go to school, come home 3 hours later and repeat. It was great, and that's what I feel like doing right now, which is why my lab report is a week late and still incomplete, and why I still watch the Office reruns at 11:30 when I have papers to write, which is all the time, and why I spend hours googling members of various European royal families and then independently trace their lineages back to the British monarchy with help from Wikipedia, until it is 3:12 am.

Birthday!

Birthday cheesecake!
birthday dress!
birthday tights!
birthday vanity!
birthday birthday birthday!

An Ant Pushing Some Water. - Imgur

WHAT ABOUT TURNIP

Which ones should I get?

I had to tilt my head really weird to get rid of the glare so just pretend I'm super fine in both. Which ones do you like better? HALP

From when I was 8 until I was 17 my mother was a professor at a fancy schmancy private art college in the city. I used to love to go into work with her on Fridays, which I would be allowed to do only three or four times a year. We would catch a 5am direct train to Penn Station, grab pineapple and muffins from a cafe nearby, and I would munch on breakfast while watching her ink up test plates and grease up the presses. I loved the black and white checkerboard of the printshop floor, and to be honest I loved the attention I got from everyone there even more. One time, when I was 13 or so, I was wearing my favorite black turtleneck and looking lusty (and busty. My favorite shirt for a reason). I had just come out of the bathroom and my mother was talking to one of her students saying "oh yes, and my daughter is here..." but he seemed busy and preoccupied and didn't really give two shits about her personal life.

Odilon Redon, who my mother would have named me after if I had been a boy.

I was walking from the other direction and our eyes met and it was my first instance of "oh. chemistry." Although I'd been menstruating for three years already, suddenly it was very clear that I had become a woman. It was my first case of being attracted to a man in that sense and it was the first time I'd ever recognized attraction as being mutual. Our jaws mutually dropped and he just smiled reeeeal suavely and held out his hand, to introduce himself. When he told me his name I wasn't listening. I got completely lost in the tight little gap between his front two teeth, his hair that was longer and slightly wavy and perfectly blond.
Karen, you know my type. He personifies it.
Madre ran up and said "this is my daughter!" and he said, completely surprised, "this is your daughter?!"
We had that thing where you walk away from a person and both of you look behind you at the same time. And for a year afterward I had daydreams of living in an apartment with him in St. Mark's Place, holding our little blond baby up to my chest while sitting on a navy and white striped armchair with him looking on adoringly.

Well, after years of not thinking of him once, I suddenly looked him up on facebook.

I found him and, once I get back to NY, I'm going to bang him. I cannot wait.

Beat the dick like a motherfucking drummer chick.


-Camille

In in my imagination I am a warrior princess in a cape riding on a horse with a rugged sack carrying provisions and Turnip is in my lap being protected by me and warning me of predators and we are both princesses who must save the kingdom by completing a vague series of daunting tasks which require us to ride off into the deep and dark forest and battle some shit but we are not scared because we are magic and sometimes I can fly or something and I know how to make a fire and my cloak can be invisible if I want but I'm also wearing a beautiful dress.

And in reality I'm in the kitchen reading my biology textbook and trying to start a paper about my cultural roots and I'm drinking what is supposed to be the most popular tea in English households and I've searched for and bought it because I am susceptible to marketing ploys and Turnip is in my lap protecting me from predators and we've just begun watching Kingdom and we are still princesses.




Karen.

I am watching the Fellowship of the Ring during one of the few times where the electricity is on during semi-waking hours. While trekking in Annapurna earlier this week we assigned everyone their LOTR equivalent with stunning accuracy. When it came time to choose mine there was a quick and unanimous decision that I must be Galadriel, because she knows about the forest, she is cool as a cucumber, and she goes very scarily insane at one point. When she appeared on screen one girl said "oooh yes, that's Camille. Very pretty, very creepy."
I secretly adore it.

Nepal is still fantastic, I cannot even begin to express it.
Trekking warrants rum and hot lemon tea at the end of every hard day.
I also finally mustered up the courage to break up, once and for all, with a man I care for deeply but will never manage to be passionately and madly in love with.

Passion and madness is needed. It is extremely hard, finally closing this chapter and erasing any possible future I could have had with him.
But I am growing happier and happier with my decision with each passing day.

-Camille