(Warning: Language)(Also, ridiculous)

Tonya lunged at Merril. She screeched, "I can't trust you," her voice cracking on the word "trust" and breaking "you" down into a wheeze. She tore the nail of her index finger with her teeth, first one half then the other, and jabbed the new sharp point into his inner ear. He convulsed, and stammered out "It was only a fucking stool," then ducked and rolled. "ANTIQUE BAMBOO!," she squealed, stomping and thrusting her arm in his direction. She caught the tip of his nose with her nail as he escaped and the stinging brought instant tears. Tonya spit on him and he wiped the phlegm from his brow with his collar. His soft brown hair was matted with fear-sweat. His eyes smoldered and he lunged back at her. "You goddamn impressionable cunt, you gaudy motherfucker, that thing was a piece of shit!" Merril rose to his full height, imposing over her hunched, trembling figure. She grabbed the chair from beside the fireplace and launched from it onto him, toppling down with him. She rose with her knees on his chest and caught a hillock of hair. She pulled him up beside her and thrust his head into her stomach, pushed his nose down past the folds and into dark wet hot territory. "You pretentious ass, if you're so virile, give me a fucking kid." Merril tensed, shifted his weight, and began singing with full force into her thighs: "Imagine me and you, and you and me..." She wriggled at the vibrations, but he continued: "No matter how they toss the dice, it has to be." He moved up into her stomach, singing into her navel, "The only one for ME is YOU, and YOU for ME." He leaped up, startling her, and screamed at the top of his lungs: So happy TOGETHER!"

She stood, jumped up and down, and joined him:

"Iiii can't see me lovin' NOBODY but YOU!
For ALL OF MY LIFE!
When you're with me, baby the skies'll BE BLUE!
For all OF MY LIFE!"

They stared at each other, unsure of the rest of the words.
"I'm sorry," Merril said.
"I'm sorry," Tonya said.
"It was for me."

"We'll go to an antiques mall," Merril said. "Get you something classy, 14th century Chinese vase?"
"Fuck you," said Tonya.

He pulled her sweet, dark head into his collarbone and whispered into her ginger-scented curls.

Cut & Paste Exercise.

---

He reached to a hand to knot one of Tonya’s dark curls around his index finger but thought better of it and retreated. She was so sweet, even now with her delicate shoulders hunched into sharp arches and her forehead in commune with the table.


She let out a frustrated hiss and pushed her cheeks down, then back up, resting her cheekbones on her fingers, pushing them in under the hollows of her face. He felt guilty. He did. But it was a stool, for Chrissakes, too short for any table in the house, rickety and permanently splotched with God knows what. No amount of age could give it value in his eyes. Goddamn Antiques Roadshow teaching wives to horde all the manner of shit. It wasn’t even Chinese, or ornamental, which he could maybe live with even if it didn’t match a thing in the house.


She made a backwards sweep at the apartment with her left arm and placed her hand in a fist on her chin. He’d taken pleasure in burning the stool, had left it to smolder in the fireplace for hours as he perused the New York Times in its entirety in a proper chair beside it.


He looked at her face. She had such earnest eyebrows, thick and dark, but shapely, devastating. Hepburn brows. Her eyes were glossy and her lashes were bunching from the wet. He rushed around the table to the seat beside her, took her head to his collarbone, and breathed in the ginger scent of her hair.

    “I’m sorry, Tonya,” he said. 

The gaudiest house in the world would be worth living in if she were its main fixture.


Something classy. She nodded into his breast, curving her legs up into his lap like a child.

It's that time of the year again, Autumn when the air gets crisp, the scarves get useful, the acorns turn brown and I go crazy. I've registered for classes and have resisted my usual urge to embark on superhuman feats of class-taking, settling on a respectable 15 hours, the majority of which are studio art classes (here's hoping I can handle them; why is it that the one thing you want to do the most is the hardest to actually do?). For those curious, here's the breakdown:

Three-Dimensional Foundations: MW 8:00a-12:00p
Two-Dimensional Foundations: MW 2:00p-6:00p
Modernism in American Design and Architecture: TTH 9:30a-11:00a
Main Currents of American Culture Since 1865: TTH 11:00a-12:30p
Drawing Foundations: TTH 2:00p-6:00p

3D Foundations is pretty self-explanatory: we do sculpture work. I'm most excited for this class. 2D is differentiated from Drawing in that Drawing is mostly black and white work in dry media focusing on technique: contour, shading, perspective, still lifes, life drawing. It is to be endured as a class that's for improving your skill. 2D is more open and has more variability on media, including, of course, paint!

Main Currents in American Culture is one of the required courses for my American Studies major, but it's also a fascinating course. It's not just history: it's actually following the currents of thought and developments of society in American culture, seeing how events, people, books, ideas, and etc. shaped the development of who we were and are. I love it, and I absolutely love the professor, with whom I took Main Currents until 1865 a couple semesters back. He's brusque, incredibly well-read, eloquent, short, old, and has an enormous white beard. Great.

Modernism in American Design and Architecture is the class I'm most excited about, of course. One of my dreams is to own American Studies museums in America but especially in foreign countries (beginning in Brazil because, well, I'm biased), because I feel that very few people, including ourselves, understand us and why we are the way we are. I hope that if we learn about ourselves, about the main currents in our culture (for example, the Jacksonian era and the populist movement that arose out of that, the conflict then echoes the conflict today between the democrats and the republicans), then maybe a lot of the hate and blind devotion to broken bastions in our culture could dissipate (idealistic, I know, but I believe education is the premier weapon against hatred, as it combats hatred's deepest root: ignorance). Plus, I'd love to begin with curating an exhibit on the development of Design in America.

Furthermore, I want to do graduate studies in a billion things (well, okay, in Design, Architecture, and American Studies). The likelihood of my accomplishing any of these things is low, but a girl has to dream.

My dream, in general terms, is to put myself in a position where I can be a Renaissance woman, pursuing and succeeding in all my interests. I want to be a sculptor, a painter, an illustrator, a (graphic, product, interior, fashion) designer, a (short-story, magazine feature) writer, a musician (this last wish is the only one I don't think I could actually do, and do well; however, I think I would do okay as the crazed frontwoman or the cute bassist in a band), and those are only off the top of my head. I feel like there are a great many things I could do well, and a good portion of those I would enjoy doing well, and if I don't find myself in one of the careers within that set I will be incredibly depressed.

At any rate, now—when everything is dying—is the time when I begin to think about beginnings. I look forward to the new semester, the new year.

I've decided to join the National Novel Writing Month—where members write 50,000+ words within the month of November—and attempt it for myself. I signed up last year but never even started, but this year I want to really try. I am terrified of large amounts of writing and far too attached to the few things I do write, two flaws I hope to eradicate with this exercise. I'm pretty sure my "novel" will consist of obfuscated autobiography, snippets of short stories, and unintelligible stream-of-consciousness sludge, but I'm hoping I will hit a stride, or at least learn something. At the very least, your brain is a muscle and skill is built through deep practice—the process of repeating and making mistakes with awareness in order to improve—so on some level, I will have grown my abilities as a writer. Besides, who ever heard of a writer who was terrified (and nearly incapable) of writing more than a 5-page double-spaced story?

Because of this, I will be attempting to also write daily in this blog, without the concerns of self-censorship and quality. Be ready for this. Knowing this place, they'll likely be far more popular than my regular posts (that have become fewer and farther between anyway as I've felt more and more self-conscious about my output). That or (the more likely occurrence) no one will care, so.

I'm going to attempt to wean myself off the internet as well, as I'm beginning to feel more and more strongly that I accomplish far less than I could be doing because I spend so much freaking time online. During the month of November, I will only get on for necessary things: email, the UT website, posting my daily blog here, etc. Facebook and Twitter are COMPLETELY OFF-LIMITS. I'll miss a lot, but seriously, how much will I miss from Twitter and Facebook? Oh, my poor Mafia Wars family! Psh. I am going to use my free time to do artwork, design work, submit to literary magazines and art contests (such as those on Threadless), and read. Even for necessary things, including designing and writing my time on the computer will be limited—the physical acts of writing and drawing on paper nearly always produce better results anyway.

I had more to say, but I'm exhausted and sleep is also a high priority which I would like to keep adhering to. Wish me luck.

(I had basically this conversation on my facebook status earlier in the week, so heads up to those of you who are friends with me on there.)

You may have heard, a couple days back, about Obama losing the bid for a Chicago-based 2016 Olympic Games to Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. If you know I'm a Brazilian-American with an enthusiastic love for my South-American country of origin, then you probably guessed that I would be elated by this news.

You guessed right. I'm (perhaps unduly) excited about Rio winning the bid for the Olympics! I'm aware of the heartache winning the Olympic bid has been to many countries prior, and I will admit I'm a touch worried for my beloved country, but for the most part I'm optimistic. A good example of this is Greece, who are still suffering horribly from debt and intense infrastructure dillemmas. I feel for them; it seemed as if, weighted under by their past glory, they went in way over their head.

It'll be a large cost to Brazil as well, but I believe they'll handle it more prudently (or so I hope), that ultimately it'll bring good things to Brazil, and that they're ready. The governmental infrastructure has been steadily stabilizing in past years, the economy is going well (surprisingly so, in these times), they've been running rapidly into the second world, and this will bring both worldwide recognition and important international business, not only during the event from the attendees but also from businesses worldwide looking to partner with them for advertising and publicity. I definitely think it'll be a great opportunity for Rio, where there's one of (if not the?) hugest favelas in the country, to begin a stronger clean-up initiative, and with that draw greater attention to the crime, the poor areas, and the class break. Lula's done a good job with socio-economic policy, including combating hunger, so I look forward to his being given open reigns to help revive the city, and hopefully greater numbers of strong non-profits and humanitarian organizations will also begin to step in and help. Plus, Brazil is strong in architecture and design, and the architects there have been on the forefront of the movement towards sustainable urban policy and redevelopment for years.
Not to mention that, though many of you know I am definitely not a sports person at all, I have always loved the Olympics. :) I've watched them every couple years (winter and summer!) as long as I can remember, and I hold a strong nostalgic fondness for them. They're grandiose, they're awe-inspiring, and they're a global competition you don't have to be terrified of (as opposed to say, war).


We'll see! But I've got my fingers crossed.

I do feel badly for Obama, however. I don't think making the plea in person was a very smart move for him, but the least-smart move has been from the political right. I don't understand why there are people who are downright gleeful that he's lost the bid; aren't they Americans? They basically, in their hatred for an "unpatriotic" president, rooted against their own country. It's absurd, and incredibly sad. I haven't lived very long, but I can't think of a time where the losing party has held so much disdain for the president once he's been elected. We used to be taught to respect the president in schools, to look up to him—"someday, you could be president!" was the expression of acheiving the ultimate position of respect. Now, parents are fighting tooth and nail to keep their children from even recieving a message telling them to study hard and stay in school from him. It blows my mind how partisan people can be; it's like a bunch of adults are acting more juvenile than children.

It's maddening.

Take a hint from Brazil, America, and look your (copious) problems in the eye and face them, not each other. That's the entire point of the societal construction of the idea of the "nation." We are not enemies!

So recognize that there are still people who are poor,  there are still people who are hungry, there are still people who are ill, there are still people who are oppressed, and there are still people who are hated. Why the heck do you care that there are still people who are democrats, or republicans? Go after hunger, illness, poverty, oppression, etc.


And then, party!


Several much better articles to read on this subject:
Why is Obama Going to Copenhagen
Why Brazil Won
The Agony of Obama's Defeat
Inside Obama's Olympic Stumble
Big Fat Story:The Agony of the Olympics) (Read this if you don't read anything else.)

This is a piece for class I feel the least confident about so far. It's called "The Hidden Element" Exercise, wherein I have to write a story embodying but not containing a certain element—so, I picked wind, and chose the Ellie character to be a personification of wind. Water is actually my favorite element, but it's almost too varied, too contradictory (though that's what I love about it, its simplicity as an element with its incredible properties and complex interactions with other elements such as wind)(I'm actually a huge dork about water). The problem, I think, is actually similar to trying to write about someone you love—you're sometimes too fond of them to make anything halfway worthwhile. Or I was too lazy to try. The only thing I could think of for earth was some weird creation-myth kind of thing where bodies were birthing out of the ground and that's just a quagmire, and fire is just a cliche. So that left wind. I like wind too; I like that we don't know where it comes from, exactly, and how ethereal a physical phenomenon it is. Life water, it can be conflicting, both a tornado and a summer's breeze. I don't think I quite captured that in Ellie, but I tried. Let me know what you think!

---

A twig scratched his outer windowpane and he opened it in a rush, hoping it was Ellie…but outside it was only flat grass, beech and dogwood. He couldn’t remember where she came from. It seemed she had always been around, rushing into his room unannounced, interrupting his studies to demand they jump in the lake or climb a tree; she would sweep into his parties when his parents were out of town and bring along whoever was in attendance to leap about the streets stirring up dust and trouble. He could even squint and conjure up a memory of Ellie bursting into his playpen during his studied attempts at crawling, knocking him over with peals of pure, delighted mischief. This probably never occurred, but he would be surprised to hear that it hadn’t. Ellie was tow-headed and classically featured: a strong, slightly broken nose, jutting chin, and lips that were voluptuous despite being thin. Everything about her was long—her thin, nearly white hair that seemed to ignore physics and the gravitational pull; her emphatic arms that she was always waving, motioning for her temporary acolytes to follow, even if they were only leaves or squirrels; her torso which she could bend, snake-like, around tree limbs—but the longest were her legs. They thrust her into the air as she moved, and she exaggerated their length with her energy, bounding down lengthy expanses: the road in front of his house, the shoreline of the lake, leaping over or onto road bumps and fences, her hair a silky floating sheet behind her.

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