love's a bitch

** so i was having some formatting issues (spacings and fonts) so i went back and fixed)

So I’m watching “before sunset” which is such a FUCKING GOOD movie. Premise: years in the future you run into someone that you had a very deep love relationship with. But not the kind of relationship that lasts for years and years and was tainted by reality. No, I’m talking about the kind of relationship where you knew the person for a week, or a night or a few hours, but they left you wondering “what if” because they were never tainted by reality, and the fantasy of them can live on in you forever as the constant “what if” in your life, and even though you are with someone and love them you can still say that making out or kissing or holding hands or whatever with this other person for only one night was the hottest thing that has ever happened in your life, again, because it is not tainted by reality. Now make a movie from that feeling, that moment, etc and you’d have “before sunset.”

Who hasn’t had that fantasy where you run into someone you were with long ago, and you look fabulous, and in paris of all places. Damn you paris! I feel like I’ve always had this really intensely confused relationship with paris, being that I know I should love it but my time I spent there was a cold thanksgiving weekend where I stayed in my friend’s host sister’s bed and we both nearly got blown off the Eiffel tower because it was so crazy windy. David said that although he traveled through Europe on a vespa he never went to paris because he felt that paris had to be reserved for love and romance and therefore he would only go there with a woman. Perhaps that was my problem with my Paris experience, I was missing home and it was cold rainy and my boyfriend at the time was being a jackass. This all does not equate to love. My fondest memories of paris: smoking (ah Europe and my smoking days), eating really bad food, having a massive “I might die, just talk to me about nothing” panic attack on the underground, and most importantly my old college roommate, Miami, vomiting on that very same underground train a few days later. I guess in the end we were both even, her for the vomit and me for the panic attack.

Anyways in this movie these 2 people met when they were like 22 on a train going to, I believe, Vienna. So they have this torrid one night thing and when the guy gets back on his train the next morning they promise to meet in 6 months. The movie ends with you either believing they meet or believing they don’t depending if you are the romantic or the cynic. Well “Before Sunset” takes place years later when the guy has written a book about the whole experience. You find out that they never actually met up 6 months later because of some conflict but now he is on a book tour in paris and she shows up at the store where he is giving a book signing. Like HELLO THIS IS EVERY WOMAN’S FANTASY! Or maybe this is just my fantasy…Anyways what is amazing is that I have imagined moments like this in my life, but it’s more like I am at an open mic night in SF and some red haired tall quiet man goes on stage and says “I’m gonna sing a song that always reminds me of a girl. What we had was short but I always remember her when I sing this song” and then he starts to sing some awesome version of Mr. Big “to be with you” or cardigans “love fool.” And in this fantasy I look totally awesome and fantastically fit. I also have really good shoes and possibly glasses (even though I have perfect vision, damnit). The truth is that knowing myself and my luck I would run into an ex flame while looking shitty in my studying clothes after not having showered for 4 days. Yes, this is my luck. But I mean who knows, perhaps love and romanticism can prevail. Perhaps someday I will have my revenge and look fabulous. I mean who really knows.

There is this scene where they are catching up in a coffee shop and this convo goes down. The amazing part about it is that I feel like this could be any woman’s inner monologue, and I love that she just says it to him.

Celine: “how do I look? Do I look different now?”
Jesse: “you look…thinner. You look thinner.”
Celine: “so was I fat? Oh my god I was fat! I was a fatty! You wrote a book about a French fat girl!”
…
Celine: “I had this um, funny, well, horrible dream the other day. I was having this awful nightmare that I was 32, and then I woke up and I was 23…so relieved. And then I woke up for real, and I was 32. yeah”

I love her because she’s just a little bit crazy, just a bit. And most of the movie is her talking and the whole time kind of doubting myself like “am I saying to much” and him listening and looking at her with such affection thinking “fuck, I could spend the rest of my life on this park bench with this woman, but alas fate is cruel.”

And there is this part where she talks about how sometimes when you have those torrid kind of love affair things and they don’t work out, as they never do, you are traumatized and stunted forever because nothing can ever compare. So if that didn’t work out how will you ever find something that will. Like hello! Speak the words of my fucking soul! But like I said, this can really only happen with non relationships, the kind that are really short lived and leave you thinking, “wait so when I count the number of boyfriends I’ve had should I list that? I mean it doesn’t really count because it wasn’t a real relationship, but it was something…else.” Does anyone know what I am talking about? It's like really passionate, unnaturally so. I do'nt think that real love and real relationships should be that passionate, because if they were they would burn out quickly. Which is what makes the whole unforgettableness of it all even worse because you know it would have never worked out but you spend the rest of your life trying to get that feeling back because it just feels so fucking good. Has anyone has the fantasy come true of running into this person again and being fabulous, or are we too young still for these kinds of moments? I usually like to have parting thoughts, but really, I don’t know because I wrote this post last night but was too tired to tidy it up.

Cathy and I saw bridge to terabithia tonight which was seriously, about as traumatic as My Girl, only way more awesome. Weeping! We were literally weeping! So many eeeemotions

Stephen and Jerri: my flight from Detroit to Phoenix

oh man so I am BACK IN LA!!! i tell you i have never been so excited to come back to california. The winter has been too long! i packed the most ridiculous things like mini skirts and flip flops. I guess the thought of having to wait another 4 months to wear flip flops was too much for me. and i don't even like wearing flip flops!! i hate wearing flip flops to be exact! but i don't care! I have not seen my feet in 5 months. these things change you. Anyways I had teh stomach flu for the past 2 days which was nothing but good times. Nothing like being incapacitated when you have to write a 20 page paper. Well so now I am in LA writing said 20 page paper, hoping i can finish by noon so i can go to the mall with Cathy and Bobby. I haven't been to the mall in 2 months since the last time i came to LA. Oh no wait it's only been liek a 1 month and a half. ha! i tell you it feels like years.

So anyways we had 45 mph winds last night leaving detroit which made for a really interesting take off. But luckily i had this real oversharer sitting next to me so she talked me past my usual turbulance induced panic attack. She was this old white youth minister and she told me about how she used to get panic attacks but she started takin paxil and now everyday is the best day ever. I was like "wow ok, thanks" subtext "so you're crazy?? cool" no no jkjk i have sympathy for these types of things. hello i'm a psychologist! And normally i'd be really against anti depressants being of the whole Cognitive Behavioral Therapy school of thought but she made it seem so appealing. that was until 2 hours later when she was still talking my head off about working with "ghetto children" and "black peopel and latinos" and telling me all thse typical stereotypes about them and how "they just don't want to work hard because workinf hard is looked down on in their culture." Thank you Ogbu, but i believe your theory was debunked a few years back. boo ya! i wanted to be like "lady i have a paper to write, so can you please stop talking." Because seriously this woman could not read social cues. So then i started reading adn she started wtching "everybody hates raymond" on her dvd player which she did not know how to use. hate that show. So she didn't plug in her headaphones but she had them on so the sound was all loud and it's one of those moments where you can't be liek "hey Jerri, you forgot to plug in the spekaers like this." just awkward all around. At least she didnt' try to convert me.

So i read some articles but then got really tired. I figured it was all teh vomitting and the fact that all i had eaten over teh past 2 days were 4 saltine crackers. when i woke up the nice old man next to me started talking to me. Ulike jerry HE was super cool. His name was Stephen and he was 89. 89!! he had served in WWII and was telling me all about being stationed in australia on a secret mission with macarthur's troops for 44 months and how he feels bad for all the kids in Iraq cuz they have to carry all those heavy supplies through the desert for a war that is wrong, which i'm sure peeved Jerri since she seemed to be a staunch republican and very pro war. But imagine, this 89 year old man who was anti the war. I figured he'd learned alot in life and had concluded "war, what is it good for? absolutely nothing." so then I asked him why he was flying to phoenix because something told me i could learn from this old man how to live a happy life. he had worked in paper printing and his grand son was a nascar racer. He was on his way to phoenix because a woman he had known when he ws 18 and she was 14 had found him on the internet. yes, old people google! I was like "wait so how are you on the internet?" thinking to myself, wow if this man has a blog i would totes read it! But alas he doesn't, he's just in the yellow pages. So this woman about a year ago got in contact with him and was like "my friend and i were googling all the people we grew up with and you are one of the only one's left alive! come to phoenix to visit me!" to which stephen responded "um i haven't seen you in 75 years. you're not trying ot get a marriage out of me are you?" to which she responded "oh no no no i already buried 2 husbands. i dont' want to go through that again. i just want a friend. it's hard with all this modern technology and things are so different. I just want someone from my era who understands what it's liek to be me." amen! isnt' that deep! Anyways so she was this hella cool woman who had gotten married young. Her husband died of leukemia at 45 and she moved to alaska to get away from it all. She worked on the pipeline there (oil i assume) and then met her second husband 4 years later, some type of engineer. They married and moved to idaho or iowa, one of the "i" states. And then he died a few years back and she googled Stephen and since then he has been visiting her a few times a year. And what they do is she likes to take road trips and drive from her summer fall home in the "i" state to her winter home in Arizona so right now they were gonna drive back to her summer home. And i was like "dude is she ok to drive?" and he said "oh yes yes she's a very good driver. she has a lead foot!" Anyways i don't knwo what i was supposed to learn from this man but it seemed something like carpe diem esque. Like i need to enjoy my life because it will be long and someday i will have many stories to tell of the days before the internet. Anyways it was all a very moving experience and i realized that this was way more interesting than writing a paper.

So now i'm home and i'm gonna go do my work but i thought i'd share.

things i want to do

the past few days cathy's and I's conversations have been heading in the "what am i doing in my life!" direction. the main breakdown was about Wednesday when cathy realized that she had no assets. I had to calm her down by reminding her that my biggest asset is a $300 red corduroy couch i purchased at ikea. Of all the things to "own" why that? Anyways i had to remind her what i remind myself and David quite often which is that our lives are not going to be "normal." We are not going to do "normal" things like settle down by 25 and have window treatments and babies at 28 and take our kids to little league etc etc. We are most likely going to travel alot, live life to it's fullest, get married in our 30's to men who understand our needs, again not have normal marriages but good marriages, not have normal kidss but good kids and though things will be different that doesn't make them bad. But i guess it is hard to have the picture perfect life fantasy ruined and realize that by 30 you will be graduating and then you'll have to find a job and start working for tenure and busting your ass, and really when would you have children and even if youdid have children how woudl you spend time wiht them let alone your husband.

And then we started thinking of all the things hadn't done yet as far as the whoel "by 25 i thought i'd be doing this." when i was a teenager 25 seemed really old, like by then i'd have my life figured out and i'd be in that place where my life was officially starting. I'm 2 months away from 25 and i realize i have nothing figured out. And the life that is starting is not the life i imagined. But you know what, i've travelled to europe 3 times, i've gone all over mexico to my mother's hometown, i've done the carribbean, i've been to vegas, i've camped, i've read, i've seen, i've done a lot. Cathy has been travelled through asia on her own. We have done alot. So maybe we don't have retirement plans and 401k's and stocks and maybe my biggest asset is a tacky couch. but really people save up their retirements to live life the way that we do now. that old saying about "youth is wasted on the young." i don't want to fulfill that.

Anyways as C was buying rice a roni at the local market we started thinking about all the things we need to do before we get settled down and married, cuz married people can't go out and have fun with their friends the way that we do. it's a bit reckless and "adults" are not reckless. But i still want to be reckless. As cathy put it "i want to go somewhere i can piss and vomit and get drunk and have my friends hold my hair. I don't want to like, vomit, in front of my husband!" Truth, she speaks the truth

so here is the list, places that my friends have to travel before we get married and can't do such things anymore:

Argenteeeeeeeena and south america more generally speaking- take a tour of the pampas and maybe visit uraguay and a tribal visit perhaps to the amazon, eat lots of steaksssss maybe go to the galapagos or something

roadtrip through the south - incluing shooting guns, going to a country western bar or i guess it would just be called a bar over there. Perhaps going through the florida everglades, definitely hitting up hotlanta and maybe a civil war reinactment, murtyle beach.

Camping - anywhere, with an RV, eemagine

Ethhhhhpana - ok we are doing it this summer so we can check that one off the list

Ghana and other parts of africa - so i saw a special anthony bourdain did on ghana and it was so awesome! they eat lots of pork and fish and put spicy pepper sauces all over it and make wine out of the insides of palms and they arethe makers of kente (spelling) cloth and it just sounded HELLA cool! Anthony bourdain makes everything look hella cool though

Portugal - to fulfill my life long dream of doing what i call the "candide" tour. All the places candide went to in europe (before he made it to south america).

Russia or as cathy calls it "doing the transiberian rail road" - drinking lots of vodka, maybe clubbing with meka,

and last but not least

HHHHHapon - eating lots of noodles, trying ot find an underground car club/racer/drifting society, dressing like a harajuku for reals.

Basically we totaled it out if we did one of these eveyr year before we got married we woudl not get married until we were 31 or 32. Hmm, don't know if that is exactly going to work. so in the end we comprosied that we supposed we could still do all of these things and have annual "friend only" trips, no significant others, so we could still drink and get belig. but then i guess the new deal has to become no babies before we do this stuff.

I've Changed Part bagillion

It occured to me this morning as I took my 2 tablespoons of "secrets of the psillium" fiber suppliment, after taking my one teaspoon of flaxseed oil to prevent heart disease, after eating my one serving of Kashi "go lean" cereal that I'VE CHANGED!! seriously ugh i've become one of those health freaks! I excercise reguarly, I eat all whole wheat and fiber products and I don't eat butter or unnatural sugars. when did this happen? San Francisco really changed me. Next thing you know I'm gonna start shopping at Whole Foods. Ok I will nto do that because whole foods is one of the places that i do not support like wal mart and abercrombie and fitch. I always say that people can only have like 3 or 5 causes that they really support. Otherwise there is too much bad shit in the world to really support or not support it all. So yeah, those are my 3 that i don't support. Instead i shop at Trader Joe's, which clearly makes me a far superior person. uughh

hate
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