I want to hear from my readers today.  Tell me anything.  Ask me anything.  Give me advice.  Ask for advice.  I’ll do my best to respond thoughtfully.  Later today, I’m going to post a mass music post and stuff, so get ready.

PS  If you get the memo late, like if you read this a week or a month or three years late, you can still tell me anything or ask me anything.  And I’ll still try to respond thoughtfully.

Mmk, I don’t want to push down the Intimacy Project post or anything, but I just had to tell you two stories.  One isn’t really a story.  The other is.

The first happened probably two nights ago.  I’d just gotten home from a fairly rough hangout and Virginia wasn’t home and I didn’t want to just sit around on my ass in front of the computer.  On the ride home, I’d seen this guy a few blocks away holding up a sign saying, “ANYTHING HELPS.”  I’d seen this guy before.  He was a part of the backpacking troubadours wandering through Richmond lately.  When I saw him, I immediately thought of the vegan pasta in my fridge and my birthday money.  I knew exactly where the majority of the backpackers were stationed, right by the ATM.  I packed up a good deal of pasta in a tupperware container, warmed it in the microwave, grabbed a fork, and set off for the ATM.

I got out twenty bucks and actually considered giving them fifty, but as I walked away from the ATM, some kid asked me for some money for fighting drug abuse by school-age children, and I guess if he’s talking about pot, then fuck that shit, but I can rarely say no, so I gave him five and then walked over to stand a couple of sidewalk squares away from the backpacking troubadours.

I was nervous as fuck.  I’m really intimidated by anyone new, but these were people I admired a good deal.  I mean, you can first identify them by their backpacks and all-over brownness.  They are grody in a way that I love.  They have dogs on worn-out leashes with bandanas around their necks.  And let me tell you, these dogs are not depressed to be backpackers.  They are overjoyed.  The backpacking troubadours care about them.  The backpackers take them on walks all the time and they love the dogs in a way that most suburbanites cannot understand.

I should also explain that the backpackers are troubadours because they all have some form of an instrument and they play on the streets to earn their money.  You see a few guitars, a musical handsaw that is bowed (yes, like amiina and yes, it sounds incredible and yes, Matthew the handsaw player does let other people try it out) and an alto saxophone and singers and a shaker.  And they are determined.

I stared at them from a couple of sidewalk squares away for a few minutes, too timid to approach them, but they definitely saw me staring, so I couldn’t chicken out.  I walked away and slipped a fifteen into their open saxophone case and they asked, “Would you like to hear a song?!”  I replied, “Yeah!”  They asked, “What kind of song do you want to hear?!”  And I said, “A good one!”  So they started playing.  I felt awkward standing in front of them for the serenade, so I sat down with them like a few other interested passers-by had.  Their sign said, “Dog In Hospital.  Anything Helps.”

I stayed for a few songs, which they played energetically.  I watched them try to woo passers-by, but it’s hard for them to even get college kids to stop because most are apathetic or maybe shy like me, and most don’t want to part with their money.  Sometimes they get frustrated with the people who ignore them, but mostly they just keep playing.

Between songs, they sometimes asked me questions.  What’s my name?  Where am I from?  Do I live here?  Do I go to school here?  I offered up the pasta, which Matthew, Adam the guitarist, and a few others happily ate with many compliments and shared a bit with one of their dogs.  What am I going to school for?  Am I vegan?  Adam was vegan for a long time.  Matthew scooted over to sit next to me and asked me more questions.  “You know, that sign is true.”  Turns out, one guy’s dog is in the hospital.  He contracted Hepatitis A from eating some fish so his eyes are all yellow and he’s in the hospital and they don’t know how much his treatment will cost until he’s actually done in there.  How old am I?  Have I ever been to Pittsburgh?  Philly is Matthew’s town because the black ladies love him.  One of the dogs who wasn’t in the hospital came up and gave my face a good licking.  Secret:  I don’t mind when dogs lick my face, but I never know what to do.

They played a song about a pretty girl who they wished had dirt on her face, hair on her legs, greasy hair, and a stench about her.  They sang about fighting the government.  They sang about being houseless but not homeless.  I couldn’t stop smiling.

Eventually, they began to stand up, I assumed to leave, so I shook some hands and left feeling mighty happy, but also a bit sad deep down.  It wasn’t because I pitied them, but it was more because I wished I could have helped them out more by giving them a place to sleep and giving them more food and giving them more money.  And I kind of envied their lifestyle.  Fighting the system.  They’re doing something.  I’m just sitting here so comfortably.  They have everything they need and nothing more, and they have all the friends they could ever want.  The only reason I’d have a hard time taking up their lifestyle is because I have a problem asking for help.  But I could learn to play the bells and join another pack of backpacking troubadours.  Someday.  I’ll start planning now.

The other thing I wanted to say is that I’m proud of my sister, Alexa.  I swear she must read this thing.

For most of my life, I have grappled with my body.  If I didn’t hate some aspect of my body, then I felt neutral about it.  I hated the way my stomach puffed out just before the drop to my nether-region.  I hated my absolute hairiness.  I hated the shortness of my arms and the roundness of my upper arms.  I hated the weird } { shape of my hips and the way I had pudge next to my hips but firmness next to my thighs.  I hated my childish hands.  But I was neutral about my legs, no matter what other people said about them.  I was also neutral about my eyebrows despite my careful landscaping.

Well, I don’t know if she suspected this or if she just wanted to show me something beautiful because we both love photographs and the honesty that emanates from them, but Kelsey introduced me to Completely Naked’s Intimacy project.  It was essentially love at first sight.  Naked human bodies in more than one form with all sorts of hair, all sorts of shapes and scars and sizes captured in the midst of all sorts of remarkably intimate actions.  I saved my favourites to my computer, and I plan to present some of them to you.

What did Completely Naked’s Intimacy project do for me?  It made me comfortable with my own body, with my pudgy stomach, my } { hips, my hairiness.  After spending a few days basking in the glory of other people’s naked bodies, I felt as though I walked around with the most fulfilling secret that nobody else knew.  My clothes may cover me a certain way, but nobody really knows my body as intimately as I do.  I think that in one aspect, it’s impossible for anyone else to know my body functions as well as I do–you can’t tell me when I’ll be nauseous or when I will sweat–but on another plane, I think it’s entirely possible for someone else to understand my body on an entirely different scale in relation to them, from the back, in the places that I can’t see.  That secret made me smile.

This is the first time in the history of my blog that I’ve seriously thought about doing a jump because it’s “not safe” for work/school, but I just decided that Fuck It I Am Not Going To Do A Jump.  I’m not going to do a jump because I don’t feel that the secrets of the human body should be hidden behind a jump.  Fuck your workplace’s/school’s standards.  This is the human body.  Everyone has one.  Don’t be ashamed of yours.  It’s beautiful.  Most of you are going to have sex someday and you’ll be faced with another naked body.  Another pair of eyes and/or hands (if you have sex with someone who is blind, which I think I should put on my list of things to do) will presumably analyze your body in a way that you couldn’t possibly understand.  I’m afraid that some people won’t read this if I put everything behind a jump, and that’s a shame because I find it crucial.

So here are a few of my favourites from Completely Naked’s Intimacy project.   I hope you get as much out of them as I did.

I’m nineteen, bitches!  I’ve been nineteen for about two days, actually.  And I love my readers.  You have brought me back to the blog.

This will be a filling-you-in post.

I don’t know why I stopped writing, exactly.  You could say that I went through a rough period in July, which surrounded my last post.  And then by the time I’d gotten over that, I’d made a new close friend and I was already moving back to Richmond–this time into an apartment on the edge of the Fan and not a dorm.  Virginia and I are roomies!  We can cuddle all the time!  I also have my own room now, so I’ve been a partial hermit.

Another reason it’s been difficult for me to write is that I also started keeping a journal.  I began this journal way back in March, but it’s grown into somewhat of an epic effort.  At first, this helped me to keep my most personal thoughts private and organized, but then it seemed that everything I wanted to write about was most personal.  Of course, this is no longer the case.  I could write about a whole mess of not-so-personal things.  I may still indulge from time to time.

I guess I’ve omitted a whole lot of things lately.  I got my nose pierced way back in June but I guess I forgot about it.  I forget about it most days.  I can’t really pinpoint why I got it pierced, except that we were in Rhode Island and it seemed like a superb idea at the time.  I figured that I would like the way it looked, and I do like the way it looks.  My mother is not fond of the fact that I wear a hoop.  Not fond at all.

My sister’s petite cat, Todd, had three babies.  I wanted to name one of them Lloyd after the Camera Obscura song, “Lloyd, I’m Ready To Be Heartbroken.”  I think I succeeded, but I haven’t even seen Lloyd.  I don’t know which one is Lloyd.  There is also a Fez (probably from That 70s Show) and a Noah or Nell.  Not really sure there.

I’m in three French classes, meaning that most of my weekly credits are in French, meaning that I will gain a bit of knowledge in my subject of interest each week.  I’m still madly in love with French, but I’m intimidated by my peers.  In French class, it’s not so much competition as it is self-betterment, I guess.  You can tell who’s studied abroad by their accents and speed of speech.  I’m not sure whether my peers gather that I am timid or just not very fluent.  It’s a pretty sudden reversal from high school, where I was pretty fucking rad at French.  What is fluency, anyway?  I am decently awesome at understanding spoken or written French, but I am also decently shitty at speaking French myself, partially because my language is choppy even if I’m speaking English.

Considering my study abroad options, I want to study abroad for an entire year instead of just one semester.  This will be emotionally difficult, I think, but it will be more worthwhile.  I’d like to go to a smaller town.  I do not want to study in Paris.

It’s good to be back, friends.

I owe an entire post to Synecdoche New York and a different one to Completely Naked, specifically Intimacy.  And yet another to photography of all sorts.  Sometime soon.  I’ve been gathering material for you.

Lexapro is helping, but right now, I’m so depressed.  I can see right now where depression can be anger turned inward, though most of the time for me, it is not.

To begin with, for most of my summer, I have been the less attractive sidekick.  It doesn’t matter whether this is true or not, because it’s true to me.  My looks are plain.  My personality is hidden under layers and layers of cautiousness.  Layers of wondering if it’s okay to reveal this or that, to say this or that.  Will they think I’m weird?  Will I be able to explain myself or cover it up?  Is this universal?  Everyone who encounters us has to go on looks alone first, personalities second.  In looks, I come in second.  In personality, I default in second because it seems like I have none.  So yes, I’m sick of being number two.  Paige 2, the second best-looking, the one you know second-best, the one you go to second, the one you settle for because you can’t get the one you really want.  Know why?  Because in my friends, I don’t settle for second-best.  And in my romantic relationships, I don’t settle for second-best.  I know what I want.

And you know, if you’ve settled for me, it doesn’t even matter if I turn out to be better than you expected, or if you grow to love me more than what you wanted.  The truth is that I was number two.  I was not what you wanted.  That will taint everything.

I wonder what I would have to do to be what even one person wanted the most, and I wonder if I’d even do that.

I think this is why I’ve started picking at my scalp again.  It bleeds.  It hurts.  I pick through the pain for no real reason, except that it’s a scab.  It’s there.

One of my biggest fears is that I’m not good enough.  I try hard.  Does anyone know how difficult it is to communicate?  Even to send an IM, let alone to approach someone in person to deliver a simple “hello” or a few words’ worth of an exchange.  So when I hear the superhero talking about how she doesn’t think she’s good enough, I just think, “Where does that leave me?”  I know it’s not her intention.  But her seeing her own flaws does not make me feel better about myself.  In fact, I feel bad when anyone sees his or her own flaws.  It doesn’t make me feel awesome.

I know we are friends now.  I don’t want to give you any reason to wallow in self-pity for what you did to me the other night.  There is no reason you should be able to wallow in self-pity for me being angry with you.  I don’t want to wallow in self-pity myself, either.  It’s an absolute waste of time.  I just have no idea what I did to you to give you the signal that it was okay to say those things to me, that it was okay to attempt to invalidate our relationship, that it was okay to attempt to even slightly invalidate our friendship.  Was it an attempt to hurt me?  Is our friendship really that valueless to you, like our relationship apparently was?  Was it an attempt to hurt yourself?  Anyway, it was a selfish move, and it hurt me directly and is in turn going to hurt you because of the effect it had on me.  I have no idea what you want with being friends with me now, or if I’m even “good enough” for that.  Why did you contact me in the first place?  Did you intend for me to be number two, a replacement, and did you really think I would never find out or just not give a shit?  I knew from near the beginning, and I did give a shit.  Are you mad at me for prom?  I don’t think that’s much of a huge deal.  Are you mad at me for parties?  I didn’t ignore you; I didn’t want to cockblock you.  Are you mad at me for not making much of an attempt to hang out with you this summer despite your near-complete lack of attempts?  It just frustrates me.  Why are you doing this?  Are you sick of me?  Trying to break ties because I’m not what you wanted romantically, so I can’t even be your friend?  I think that if you knew in advance the effect it would have on me, you probably would  have held your tongue.

Oh, and by the way, your number one is an amazing person.  I’d never be able to write her off as anything less than that.  I can at the very least see why you value her, but I don’t know why you’d try to compare time spent with me to past times spent with her.  I’m a different person.  It’s like you don’t even want to give me a chance as a friend anymore.

Transformers 2 is the shittiest film I’ve ever seen in my life.  It was a painfully disgusting 2.5 hours.

See:
Tasteless obscenity
Sexism all over the place
Racial stereotyping
Plot holes
Terrible acting
Terrible writing
Terrible cinematography
Megan Fox’s character = useless
Lack of foreshadowing/plot connectedness
Blatant glorification of the military
Blatant glorification of the US
Dissin’ France
Product placement galore
Unrealistic/stereotypical portrayal of college life
Subtle promotion of Christianity
Subtle dismissal of/lack of consideration for existentialism
A butcher shop complete with dead pigs hanging from their feet from ceilings

Yeah, if you don’t mind all of that, then you’ll probably like it.  And you’ll love that it all ends with a Linkin Park song.  That will be the icing on the cake.

What if I only wore mascara to accentuate my eyeballs?  I thought about it, but the problem is that then you wouldn’t be able to touch my eyelashes without getting your fingers black and waxy.  You wouldn’t be able to feel just how soft they are (and soft they are, they really are), and butterfly kisses would just be a mess.

Then I thought, What if my eyes were blue or green?  Because that is something I’ve always wanted.  I can’t see myself with light eyes, though.  If I had light eyes, then I would take other people’s light eyes for granted.  That would be a terrible thing.  I also probably wouldn’t appreciate the chocolatey depths of Divya’s eyes, or the brown swirls within Carol’s hazel eyes.

I like to tell my mom that I got the short end of the genetics-stick.

This week, I’m going to Rhode Island on a long road trip.  I’m so excited, but it doesn’t feel like we’re leaving tomorrow.

The strange part is that I’m most excited for the car ride itself.  I love car rides.  I may enjoy bike rides a little more because of the lift I get from them (especially ones at midnight when I’m positive that someone is going to jump out of the darkness on the side of the road and grab me).  But car rides provide time for thinking.  You can be close to other people, so physically close, but so mentally distant.  I replay best scenes to music, I look out the window and think of the best places to have picnics, I think of what will happen when I see this person and this person and this person, I think of what if we all died right now.  I think of that a lot.

I’ve provided a mix for my adventures (even though I think that I won’t really need it, except for at times when nostalgia hits really hard, because Nathan’s will be more than sufficient).

I will post it when I get back.  But for now, I must present you with this outstaaaanding track.

I can’t say anything about it.  You just have to listen.  It’s urgent.

Cosmic Love | Florence And The Machine
[mf] [buy]

I’ve got depression.

Who didn’t see this coming?

I didn’t.  I thought I just had a problem with anxiety, and that this is just how I am.  Or that it was an existential crisis.  Well, it is how I am and it’s a problem.  And it’s not just anxiety.  It’s depression.  The discovery was sudden and unexpected.  I had thought that my problems were just petty angst, and that I would grow out of it, and that no this is not depression; I’m just depressed for a spell.  When physical symptoms began to manifest themselves, I found that I was wrong.

It seems like I have many close friends who are bipolar.  So I can understand part of them, and they can understand me quite well.  I feel like this isn’t enough.  I feel inadequate.  They can support me, but it’s because my problem is petty and common and dull.  For me, it’s the same every day.  I’m depressed.  It’s unipolar.  I can’t support them, because their problem is complex.

There are so many books, memoirs, personal accounts of manic depressive disorder.  I want a memoir of someone who is coping with depression so I can feel maybe a little bit less alone.  I’m reading a memoir of a woman who has dealt for decades with manic depressive disorder.  It’s intriguing, but it’s not me.

I can see why I can’t find many (any?) memoirs about depression though, because it’s so common and because it would be one boring book.  When it’s really bad, I will am on the couch for hours and days at a time, not really wanting to eat anything, not really wanting to do anything.  I don’t want to move.  I find myself wondering when I will die and how I could die.  I am tired all day and I just want to sleep.  I don’t want to see anyone.  I just want to be by myself.  I am awake all night and I sleep all day.  Sometimes, I get the urge to run or bike hard and fast, but it’s always at an inconvenient hour.

I hope I never become pretentious.

I sat down and watched the Sigur Rós documentary, Heima.  It stands next to the novel, Everything Is Illuminated as one of my favourite works.  I find the two comparable somehow.

Yeah, that would be the best place to grow up.

I’m reading The Best American Nonrequired Reading 2003.  I wanted to share this passage from Michael Buckley’s piece entitled “The Meticulous Grove of Black and Green”.  It’s one of the saddest passages I’ve ever read.

Carrie comes and I can see her from far away walking over hills of grass, holding bags of food in her hands.  She’s watching her feet and places them very carefully on the grass.  The jacket she’s wearing is blown open by the wind and it plasters her clothes to her body as if they were wet.  She’s so much fatter than she used to be, I think.

Tomorrow, I will bike to the river and just chill out there all day.

I would dig it.

“Starbucks is a crock of shit. I’ll make us a pot of loose leaf Camel Meal blended with loose Black tea, White tea, and a tsp of honey. We’ll kick it and watch a Woody Allen film and just be artsy as shit. I don’t think I can stand this college town anymore.”

You can find the post here.

I am going home soon.  I have two finals tomorrow.  The next day, I’m back in Lewisburg.  It’s so sudden.  It feels like I don’t even get a chance to wrap up.

I think that Metric’s new album, Fantasies, is perfect.

I have nothing significant to report today.  I’ve been having strange and vivid dreams lately.  Three-part ones.

I smelled like it after this maneuver.

It was actually a grimace.

Belle Isle, though!