Provocative

I sent this letter to my closest friends in PCAP but then I thought I wanted to share it with others because PCAP is not alone in this struggle.

[Dear Friends],

i'm outta the ann arbor buzz.

i'll get that out now. i'm in pittsburgh where social justice rings
from every blue collared house and the faces of tired commuters
through angry music and lots of honking. the damn reality of where i
live is crude and leaves no room to be idealistic. sometimes that
makes me crawl into my apartment and stare at my idealistic wall
filled with inspirational postcards from adbusters and the fringe
festival and letters from long lost friends. Because we all need to
find happiness, even if its in a bubble.

with that disclaimer...

i'm not sure how people reacted to Motorcycle Diaries. (Law school
makes me late on watching films so please bear with me). But I read
an interesting follow-up article on Slate.com.
(http://slate.msn.com/id/2107100/). I'm not sure whose opinion I
trust more and have not yet made an opinion on my own...which is why I
am e-mailing you - people in PCAP that I trust the most. I'm inviting
you to read it and (if you have time) to respond.

the article reminded me of the struggles I've personally had with
PCAP. I won't articulate my own thoughts right now because there are
so many. Mostly, I wonder if I truly believe that I am not an
oppressor does that make me not oppress?

But I do hope you will join me in conversation. I desire nothing more
than my throat to be dry (metaphorically speaking since we are over
e-mail)

headache

i had a rant to share with you but now i just have a damn headache.

Distrust

When I was in 6th grade, I remember I got a chance to sing "There is a Castle on a Cloud" with my chorus class. I was so excited because at that time the Les Mis cd was on constant repeat in my Mom's car so I already knew all the words by heart. Not only that but I got to sing the middle part - "There is a lady all in white, holds me and sings a lullaby. She's nice to see and she's soft to touch. She says Cosette 'I love you very much'" - with only 3 other girls. It was my first quasi-solo.

I went to private school in 6th grade but my best friend went to public school. She lived in my suburbian neighborhood but I lived in the city when I met her at Arrowhead Day Camp, at "Dry Dock" specifically, on a day when we both weren't swimming. We'll call her K for anonymity.

K was the typical popular girl. Her outfits always matched and her keds were never dirty. She french rolled her jeans perfectly, she wore the black NKOB hats for the right amount of time and she was a sweetie to adults and her siblings. If only my mom's kids behaved so well. I hardly brushed my hair. I liked wearing a uniform so I didn't have to pick out clothes. And at three years old, my first reaction to the birth of my baby brother was "Why do we need him?". This sentiment never completely went away.

I came home and wanted to tell K right away about my quasi-solo. At this point, K and I were sorta drifting because she had just started middle school and made an in-school best friend, another K or K2 for anonymity. Unlike me, K2 also had perfectly white K-swiss. She owned the coolest agnelli jeans in every color possible. She could also pass notes in gym class and knew all the people K1 talked about because they were her in-school friends too. But these traits aside, I had this quasi-solo. K would be so proud. It would be just like old times when we traced our hands on Bluebook notebooks and started the "Hand club" and didn't let anyone else in the neighborhood in.

When I got home from school, K2 was hanging out with K. They both came over. I told K about my solo and she prompted me to sing for them. It made me nervous but I very badly wanted their approval. I sang for them in my basement as they sat on the rolled up old rugs my mom replaced some time ago. I made sure to use my best fake British accent like the one that I heard on the cd. K commented "Doesn't Melissa have a good voice?". I think K2 may have nodded. They both excused themselves politely and maturely; something about K2's mom on the way.

After they left, I'm not sure if I was happy or sad. I don't remember. But by the next school year, when I transferred to public school, I was no longer friends with K. Both K and K2 ignored me completely on my first day until my very last.

That story has stuck with me and continued to trouble me, growing into a grotesque manifestation of my insecurity. As the memory lives on, more and more do I hear those two girls giving polite feedback, excusing themselves and laughing terribly once they arrive to safety (you might understand better if you have heard my voice).

Today is one of those days when I thought of this story.

Things I like this week

1. Adbusters magazine: on top of my address label it says how many issues I have left in my subscription
2. Amazon.com: always and forever will I love to find cds I want for $6.00 new (+ $2.00 shipping)
3. Carnegie Library: because the comics have gotten too expensive and the children's section helped me to conquer my French for lawyers midterm - a 5 pg pamphlet (in French) on the history of American laywers
4. Picture phones: if only I knew people who had a picture phone other than Doug's mom, my brother and sister
5. On Demand: Sundance Festival Dailies have become like a soap opera to me
6. Rebates: this is a mixed blessing - b/c of rebates I got a wireless router for 9.99 and my picture phone...but why do they have to make them such a pain in the ass? price discrimination at its finest.
7. I Heart Huckabees: There were parts when I was embarrassed for the movie but overall I give it an 8.9 - just the confidence I needed to make my film (too bad that some of my themes were in this movie! G'damn that Waking Life theory - well, the one I heard in Waking Life - about knowledge being out there and how the same idea can come to a few people in a relatively small amount of time...i'm tired, i'm not explaining this well).
8. Seth and Summer back together: still not sure how I feel about the spiderman kiss - was it so cheesy it was cool or did it just go too far...

I'm too positive to include all the things I didn't like from this week but surely it would include not being able to go to Wine Tasting at the Warhol and Erik's party.