new songs and philosophic souls

I had lunch with Vivian today, and then we walked aimlessly around georgetown in the drizzle. More accurately, we bounced between places where we could sit and camera-whore.

Lunch was fun. I told her about my life and she told me about hers and we got to talking about philosophic souls. I've been thinking a lot about that lately. I am inclined to believe that I have something of a contemplative disposition, but maybe all along I've been underestimating everyone else's contemplative disposition, and I'm pretty average.
After all, being contemplative is a thing one tends to do on one's own. I mean, just because I don't often see other people showering, that doesn't mean I think I'm the only one who does it.

I guess now that I'm in college, I do see other people showering. That argument just fell apart but you do know what I mean. I trust you.

My point is that I've been trying to sort out whether I'm crazy or conceited or both. Probably both, but I shouldn't let the haters get me down.

Also, I downloaded some new songs today.

Lost In My Mind - The Head and the Heart
Dirty Thing - Telekinesis
Raise Your Weapon - Deadmau5
Automatic - Yuck
Our Get - White Denim
Beam Me Up Scotty - Talking to Turtles
Car Crash - Telekinesis
Marathon - Tennis

Love always,
Clara

it's a rough life.

So, yesterday, I slipped out of this place I'm staying before anyone could see me and prepare me breakfast. I did this without thinking, because most of the things that any of us do, I'm pretty sure, are done without thinking, but anyway it caused a bit of a fuss, because my host's housekeeper Gina was meant to prepare me breakfast.

I wouldn't make that mistake today.

I came out of my room a bit after eleven to find Gina in the kitchen. On the table, there was a box of Raisin Bran (someone's got inside sources, because that's my absolute favorite), milk, a plate of cheese, several bread rolls, some jam, some butter, two slices of coffee cake, a plate of ham, and a glass of orange juice.
And one chair.

My appetite, it seems, has been overestimated.

I suppose there are worse problems in the world than being served an extravagant breakfast over spring break. This might actually be the least-genuinely-problematic problem I've ever had.

Love always,
Clara

i'm going to be an aunt!

This is not news, but exciting nonetheless.
I had dinner with my sister and brother-in-law tonight, and she looks like she's ready to pop. Actually, she looks like she's hiding a basketball under her shirt. A basketball that is ready to pop, which is a severely overinflated basketball.

I saw baby Ava's nursery, and it is absolutely adorable, and quite tasteful. There's plenty of pink, but most of the solid furniture is a dark-stained wood. Not so frilly, but very charming.

Apparently mom has been sending them clothes for five year olds. Too soon, mom, too soon.

Anyway, I'm in a baby mood, so here are some youtube videos that Steph and Trey insisted that I watch at dinner. Very worth it.





Word on the street has it that I used to laugh like that one when I was very small. Plausible.

Love always,
Clara

train station

I'm sitting in 30th street station.
It's occurred to me that I actually feel like I know this train station pretty well. I've been to Philadelphia enough times to know where the restrooms are and what the layout of the bookstore looks like. It's nice.

Getting familiar with a location is something that I find interesting.
When I was younger, I'd go on walks around my town when I was feeling angsty. By the time I was a junior (about to move and having nervous breakdowns on a somewhat regular basis), I would walk halfway to the metro station by the masonic temple before turning back.

I think part of my vague discontent in switzerland last year had to do with the fact that I never really acquainted myself with my surroundings until much later. I have a theory that if I'd taken off and walked in arbitrary directions more often when I first got there, I'd have been happier.
Bern is pretty small though. I got well familiar with marktgasse in about half a minute.

My point now, though, is that there are random bits of the world that I'm becoming acquainted with, like the Philadelphia train station, and I'm curious as to what it feels like to have this kind of familiarity with the world at large. I could get myself around the train station in Berlin without much trouble, after all, which I think is pretty cool.

I need to keep accumulating these experiences.

Love always,
Clara

absolutely not, you fool!

I'm in Philadelphia, absolutely loving it. I've missed Catherine so much.
Rather, I've missed hanging out with a friend who has known me longer than six months. I love all of my new college friends dearly (as I have told you all at length), but old friends are so nice.

Last night we had some delicious thai food downtown, and we sat at the restaurant for three hours or something, wreaking havoc and texting a boy named Rudy, quoting Arrested Development and pretending that we were tripping acid, just to mess with him.
That's always fun.

We came back after the evening and watched an episode of Skins.
Spring break is my favorite.

Love always,
Clara

lazer tag

That's what I'm doing tonight.

After that, I will wake up tomorrow morning and get on a train to Philadelphia. Spring break has broken, although it's still 41 degrees up here in sunny Providence.

I'm going to miss everyone over break. I keep having these terrible little moments of clarity when I realize, Freshman year is about 3/4 over, and college is finite.
I've always had issues with change.

Anyway, I've been putting it out of my head. Bring on the break!

Love always,
Clara

on getting older

I turn nineteen in seventeen days.
This somewhat blows my mind. Nineteen isn't one of the important birthdays, but it's the last teenage birthday I'll have, which is very weird. I'm not sure I want to grow out of teenage life.
Luckily, I've heard that the early twenties are pretty fun too, and that society is allowing us to act less and less mature at older ages as time goes on. Thanks, society!

Yesterday Cara and I were sitting in Starbucks writing, and I pulled up my old secret blog for inspiration (Raymond Carver said that autobiographical stuff can still be fiction if you play with it enough, I swear!).

It turns out, I was a total crazy person in ninth grade. Of course, this should surprise exactly no one, especially if you knew me in ninth grade, but I was taken aback by some of the things I was willing to say on the internet.

• "i've decided to develop multiple personality disorder. or maybe not DISORDER, but habit."
• "he's such a GUY thoughhhhhhh"
• "UGH WHO IS THIS GIRL? WHY DOES SHE EXIST? i naturally friended her after that."
• "i wish i were allowed to be a badass slacker in a cool way. but no."
• "and i ask X for his number and he gives me his number, email address, picture, and clever nickname. and possibly even social security number. lovely."
• "what i wore today- it's a metaphor i swear"
• "4 girls, 1 guy, 1 couch. It was quite a party."
• "I think I'm going to invent my own religion. It will be called... wisdom."

I'm pretty sure I was serious about all of these things. Also, I was so boy-crazy back in the day (these particular days being mostly from the second half of freshman year). They say you grow out of that too but I'm not so sure.

Love always,
Clara

the apostrophe is fixed

Thank goodness. Now I can, with a clear conscience, recommend to you Old Boys' Club original single, Growin' Pains

Growin' Pains (Feat. Rug Rat) - Old Boys' Club by Old Boys' Club

I have two midterms tomorrow morning. I've been studying all day. It's been great.

Me: What's the proposed function of the ventral prefrontal cortex in the left hemisphere?
Dan: Well that's where we get our drive for mushrooms! You see, it's left over from the days when we used to eat bones, and mushrooms contain a vital enzyme for the digestion of bones. That's why we eat mushrooms. It's residual.
Me: I'm going to blog about you, Dan.

Dan isn't in my class. He just has a wild imagination.

Love always,
Clara

standards

Standardized testing, in particular. Did you know that the most recent SAT essay was about reality TV? Is that not ridiculous?

I, for one, am insulted. I think the College Board and I both sighed with relief when I finally ended my entanglement with them (they get tired of nasty letters on scratch paper, I presume). I've always been of the opinion that the College Board is the primary force responsible for squishing those of my age group into the role little bubble filling lab rats (hit correct button, get pellet) that we're told will bring us life success (the greatest little pellet of all!).
The real fact of the matter, of course, is that the things that lead us to life success are the things that we are doing when we are not studying for the SAT.

I feel that this essay question debacle has provided some insight on the matter though. Perhaps the College Board does not even realize what they are doing wrong (although I have tried to explain it to them. Perhaps they do not read my letters). Maybe they think that we don't do fulfilling things for their own sake. Maybe they think we spend all of our time watching Jersey Shore and studying for their tests and doing school. The notable exception is sports; they seem to assume that we all play sports, and there seem to be sports-oriented questions on every test (I am bitter because I am not good at sports).

All of this would explain their choice of essay question. I can just picture them in their boardroom. "I hear the whippersnappers are watching this reality TV thing. Shall we bring this test to their level? I think we shall." It's out of touch and condescending.

So, College Board decision makers, if you read this (as you clearly did not read my letters), I hope you've learned something. You won't get tested on it, but I trust that you don't need that kind of threat to retain vital information in your peculiar little heads.

And for those of you who are still taking SATs, a slice of college life for you to look forward to. I just heard this conversation outside my door:

Girl: If I were a guy, I would get my butt waxed.
Girl 2: What, like on a weekly basis?

Love always,
Clara

songs

It had been too long since I'd done one of these.

Down in the Valley - The Head and the Heart
Strangeness and Charm - Florence + The Machine
Touch The Sky Upside Down - Old Boy's Club
Two Small Deaths - Wye Oak
Staring at the Sun - TV On the Radio
Cradle - The Joy Formidable
Wild Thing - Noah & The Whale
L.I.F.E.G.O.E.S.O.N. - Noah & The Whale
HipHop Animal - Old Boy's Club

Thanks Lisa for the Florence. I'm a big fan.
I stole the The Head and the Heart from my newsfeed, courtesy of Thomas. I just remembered that I have a ton of songs from him on my computer somewhere. I should bring a new batch into my iTunes one of these days.
You kids should all look up Old Boy's Club on facebook.
The placement of their apostrophe makes me think that they're the club of the guy in that awful Korean film (and by awful I mean critically acclaimed, but I also mean a man cuts out his own tongue and unknowingly fucks his daughter).

Love always,
Clara

strangeness

Andrew: Shit, I have a parade tomorrow.
Scott: Paraaade!
Me: Thanks, Scott
Scott: I consider myself a conversation enhancer.

Apparently, a couple nights ago after I left the dorm for the post- party, some strangers stole my boxed wine. I say "my" boxed wine because I'm the only one who drinks it, usually.
They were in for a surprise, of course, because I roofied the shit out of that Franzia (I've been trying to build up my immunity like the guy in The Princess Bride). That's why you don't take alcohol from strangers, kids.

Anyway, since this happened, I've been very suspicious of strangers. Last night some randomers came by, and I was certain that they would be after my gin-and-tonic-in-a-solo-cup (you can tell that I roll with a classy crowd). Luckily, I had a mask on hand that Josh had given me because it was Purim, the Jewish holiday of getting so drunk that you can't tell the name of an evil guy from the name of a good guy. It involves noisemakers and costumes and a whore.
So I put on my mask and stand in the doorway looking aloof. It seems to be the sort of thing that someone might do outside a RISD party so as to indicate that anyone who tried to come in would simply be confused by all of the art happening inside.
(There was definitely art happening last night.)

David: You look kind of strange with the mask on.
Me: I am kind of strange.
David: That's true.

More than being strange for its own sake, though, I was being strange to ward off the strangers. That's how strangeness works, right?

So many linguistically interesting things are happening in this post right now, or maybe spending three hours in the Rock has conditioned me into thinking everything is "linguistically interesting" and not just "blatantly not real English."

Love always,
Clara

a not-naked party

Last night was fun. There was a post- gathering, which was less of a party as a group of people hanging out with the lights on, eating kettle corn, drinking gin and tonics. I talked to Charles about Nietzche and tried to sound smart (I am not so sure how successful I might have been). It was a good time but I was feeling restless so I relocated and met up with the Keeney kids (there are so many people who fit that description, but I'll trust that you know who I'm talking about).

We went to phi psi. I saw some coolers and debated getting a drink.

Me: Hey, what's in these?
Brother: Apple juice.
Me: No, really.
Brother: Take some.
Me: Oh my god! It really is apple juice!

Apparently it was a dry party. No one knew this. But I did take the apple juice, because I really like apple juice.
After about five minutes it occurred to me that almost everyone I had come with was in a couple. David also saw this happening, so we decided to peace out.

There was word of a naked party on Charlesfield. The nudity aspect didn't exactly enthrall me; I've discovered that I'm still not all that comfortable with my body (see: St. Patrick's day 2008). I thought I was by now, I guess, but then I heard about all of the naked sauna parties that Zete has, and it occurred to me that I would rather die.

Luckily when we arrived at Charlesfield (and got through the line, and made some new friends, and met up with Billy and Scott), everyone was mostly clothed.

Dancing, loud music, everything one needs. My feet were hurting though, and when the party got broken up, I was hellbent on going back to Keeney. Mateo stopped me and reminded me to read a poem he'd been talking about earlier. I've been meaning to do that.

Love always,
Clara

gotta get down on friday

Sahil: I wish I didn't have arms! Wait... No I don't.

Arms are inconvenient for shadow puppets, but useful for a ton of other things, so let's all keep our arms.
That happened last night, in fiction class.
Speaking of fiction class, Chichi wrote a story about a paranoid schizophrenic.

Brigham: I felt like, at the beginning, I was like, "Oh, yeah, I feel like that." I mean... I don't really trust strangers either.

No one trusts strangers that much I guess, but few people suspect strangers of stalking them and poisoning their sugar cubes. I think that's the difference.

Now it's friday morning. My first class was at ten, so waking up at 9:56 was definitely the best course of action (I'm so good at decision making). Last night was fun, but I really should remind myself on occasion that I do have 10am classes on fridays.

Everybody's looking forward to the weekend.

Love always,
Clara

five st. patrick's days

I'm going to take a stab at blogging about my personal life, because all of the events I'm about to discuss happened so long ago that they're no longer relevant. That's a disclaimer.

2007.
I'm a freshman, living in America. It's second semester, and I feel like I've got high school more or less figured out. All I remember about that particular day (my memory aided of course by blog posts that you will never see) is that I talked to Katie in the dark room about my crush (oh to be fourteen again) during photography, and we bitched about our mothers.

2008.
I'm in Germany with chorus, and I'm dating a boy named Will. This day does not go as planned.
We spend the afternoon in Munich. I go shopping with Summer and some of her friends, and we have a long conversation comparing sexual activity to clothing chains in Europe (which, by the way, is a big place). Will is with the senior boys at an irish pub, drinking beer, which is legal for sixteen year olds in Germany (not to say that he was sixteen at all). I am not sure whether to be annoyed with him for drinking or for not inviting me.
Later we're at the hotel and he tries to take off my new sweater (pink, striped, from H&M, I hate that sweater and cannot wear it without thinking of this moment). I don't let him, and that put the nail in our coffin.

2009.
I'm in Italy with latin class. Those of us who are feeling rebellious at the particular moment (a figure guaranteed to be above 50% in a given group of high school students) are absolutely determined to get drunk. It's my first time hitting the town, as it were. If Will were here, he would make us find an Irish pub in Rome, but he's not, and none of us like beer anyway. Katie, Eleni and I wind up sitting in a cafe with a bottle of cheap red wine. Then Lindsay turns up, we finish the wine, and we tumble out into the streets of Rome. Lindsay finds a bar, and asks for something "hard and delicious." She takes the chaser shot of grapefruit juice first and it is abundantly clear that none of us have any idea what we are doing. I find a twisted pleasure in the fact that it has been one year since last St. Patrick's Day.

2010.
I have hit my stride in Switzerland. I have also found myself in a position of rebellion once again. I am generally dissatisfied with the administration at my high school, for reasons I can't remember (except that March tends to be the time for that kind of thing, don't you think?). Regardless, I'm feeling good about living there, even though no one at all seems to understand me. I wear green today, and ask others why they're not, and no one knows what I'm talking about. I guess St. Patrick's Day is a bigger deal in a country full of immigrants (some of whom are bound to be Irish) than a country decidedly opposed to immigrants.

2011.
I'm back in the states. It has only just occurred to me that this is the first St. Patrick's Day for which I've been in America since freshman year. It's a good day so far. I was only at post- until 2:30 last night, and I woke up at eleven feeling rested and excited. I'm wearing green.
Today is going to be good.

Love always,
Clara

a few things

• I did not go to my Health Care section today, because I hate the TA, and I'm feeling tired. Tired in my mind might as well mean sick, so that's what I said. It's perfectly possible -- I had an allergy-attack in Syntax yesterday and Stefan has mono (which is worrisome for all of us; think, for a moment, of the solo cups). Anyway, I had planned to take a nap and care for my health and whatever else but it looks like that hasn't happened.
• There's a girl at my old school who I think fancies herself a photographer or a model or something (I will not say which old school this is, so as to preserve ambiguity). She takes pictures of herself wearing eyeliner and lipstick and leopard print and such, and then photoshops the textures out of her skin, and posts them on facebook in albums called "meeeeee :)". Every time someone comments "OMG you are so beautifulll xoxox" she comments back, so her photos get tons of comments and wind up on my newsfeed, and that sends me into this whole thought-spiral of -- since when are fifteen year olds actually pretty? (The attention-whore element of this is noted, but unsurprising.)

me, at the age of fifteen.

• I want warm weather to happen soon. Luckily, the universe seems to more or less bend to my will. It's going to be 58 and sunny tomorrow.
• There are at least two parties on friday and both look worth-going-to. Once more, the universe is bending to my will.
• I still want a nap.

Love always,
Clara

belle.

I've been reading her nonstop. She makes me moodier I think, but she also makes me feel creative. I think I'll write about her in fiction class one of these days. A part of me hopes she isn't real, and hopes this is all an elaborate story that someone else is telling. Another part of me would be heartbroken if that were the case.

I will definitely write about the character that is her, perhaps next week.

"To feel beautiful is a way to escape panic. I don't think anyone can deny that although it may not be the whole truth."

Try to tell me she isn't brilliant.

Love always,
Clara

jo's run

If you needed to know anything more about that awful Friday song, here's an analysis that would have gotten an A in my MCM class last semester (except that it completely neglects Freud, and no analysis is complete without Freud.)

Last night I went to Jo's with Hannah and Andrew. They had tater tots at Jo's last night, which was new. There was also a new guy behind the counter. I don't know his name, but if he works at Jo's, he might as well be Jo (there is no real Jo except Josiah Carburry, who was once a professor of psychoceramics.)

Henceforth, I will call him Jo.

Jo: We have tater tots tonight! It's a middle school flashback!
Me: Nice!
Jo: There was always that one really mean lunch lady. Or! Oh! Every school had one of these! The lunch lady with a really big butt!
Me: I don't remember seeing any of our lunch ladies' butts.
Jo: Well, you could tell from the front.
Me: I don't think I even saw their hips. I think it was obstructed... by... the food? The barrier thing?

I have forgotten crucial details of the Potomac lunch room format. Can you see the servers' hips? I don't remember this. All I remember is that guy with the hat, and that we would always refer to all of it as "SAGE Dining Services". There was no nickname for SAGE Dining Services. The term was typically used with derision, as I recall. I don't know. I didn't often eat the food that was prepared daily. I spent a year eating apples, and another year eating fruit salad and m&m cookies, and none of those things involved much interaction with anyone involved in the process.

Hannah: I'm going to get tater tots, because they're new and exciting. I like new and exciting things.
Jo: You're gonna love me then!

Jo is most certainly new and exciting.

On the way out, we went to Little Jo's so that I might buy some Fig Newtons (Whole Foods is so far away. I have not gone in ages. I keep meaning to but what a time commitment, you know?). Hannah encountered a friend of hers to whom she has been trying to introduce me. The first time he stumbled by our lunch table, I was meticulously eating all of the blue M&Ms out of my cup so that only leaf colors would be left. Such an activity, as you may or may not know, can engross me completely, and of course it did in this circumstance.
This was our second meeting. I emerged from the little store as they were talking, and opened the bag I had bought of chocolate covered peanut+pretzel+raisin+awesome.

I did offer him one.

Love always,
Clara

follow-up to friday

Thanks for this, Kyle. By the way, spring break is coming up, and the whole wedding situation seems a little ambiguous. Don't break my heart. Party and party and yeah.



Love always,
Clara

phineas gage

We learned Phineas Gage's story once more in Brain Damage this morning. This story is one of my favorites.

I remember once, almost two years ago (wow), trying to explain the story of Phineas Gage to Klaus, in German. It seemed to me that a railroad stake and a ballpoint pen were essentially the same thing. This was back when I knew approximately seven words in german. Now, of course, I know at least nine.

I still do not know how to say railroad stake though. I might still call it a "Gross... Zug... kugelschreiber-dinge?" and I would still of course gesticulate wildly.

It's grey in Providence today and I took a longer nap than I had planned. Mondays are so blank for me, which can be fun (if I have a plan) or tremendously dull (if I don't).
I did manage to give away most of the cans of Brunswick stew though. Chris and Lucas have bonus points in my book for being open minded to Virginian culinary tradition. Andrew and David get zero points for stubbornness. Vegetarians get a free pass. That's why I'm giving them away in the first place.

A food bank would be ideal, of course, but finding one takes effort.

Love always,
Clara

texts in my phone right now, from lately

This will be a series of text-quotes without context. Do not be alarmed.

"Lol nothing to see except blacklight-color. No worries. Although I can't help it that my life is an Alfred hitchcock movie."

"jesus christ. do we need to talk?"

"Demand comments!!"

"Window visible bathroom blowjobs?!"

"What? No! It's a metaphor."

"It looks like a church. Top floor. This is a puzzle."

""All that is required for evil to prevail is that good men do nothing"... Thanks."

"disregard females, acquire currency?"

"You have disappeared. Is this permanent?"

"Swimming. I.e. It is going swimmingly. I'm in a mercedes going 70 mph toward poptarts. Wall is there. I am combustible. Danger ahead but we all know my brakes suck."

"I admire your commitment to tea and tobacco."

"And the bst part iz they're not ugly! Actually legit hot"

"Nah. The weirdos lay low during the week. Crafty bastards."

"They always say that."

That was fun. I'm not attributing any of those, but y'all know who you are. I picked the ones that felt well-worded.

Love always,
Clara

words are hard

Today I sat at Starbucks for a little while and wrote some fiction.

According to Pauly J (and the rest of the field of semantics, as I understand it), when one says a sentence, it is essentially a function whose domain is the set of possible worlds, and range is the set of truth values (generally 0 or 1). Input a world, apply it to that sentence, and you will find out whether the sentence is true or false within that world.

The reason I bring this up is that I feel like when I write fiction (by this I mean real fiction and not just bastardized versions of true stories), I'm writing about my life in an alternate universe. I used to be made very uncomfortable by this, but I'm realizing now that that's exactly what fiction is. The words and sentences in a story are just picking out a world other than the one that we're living in.

I feel better about things now, but I still have some trouble with words. Some things are really hard to describe, I'm finding, and it all feels like it's on the tip of my tongue.

For example: You are sitting outside at a coffee shop in mid May, watching the men with cigars because you are wearing sunglasses and no one can hold you accountable for where your line of sight happens to fall. Cigar smoke catches the sunlight. What do you call that?

Or: You find out that two friends have encountered tension lately, and it strikes you that they've probably been inviting you around more often because your presence eases that tension, and it's not that you're being taken advantage of, exactly, but you certainly have a function that is to be served, and you're okay with it. Does that have a name?

Maybe: You discover that a new friend, once upon a time, was desired by someone that you used to desire, and you feel needlessly betrayed by both of them, even though you were out of the picture entirely when the whole affair took place. Is there a way to make this sensation make sense?

Or perhaps: You have the feeling that no one can hear you when you talk, because people seem to just carry on, and you're a little frustrated but it makes you want to quiet down, except then you're even easier not to listen to (since you're not saying anything). Are there no words for this? Is that perhaps the point?

These are the things I am trying to describe in my story, kind of. I'm finding it difficult. The only conclusion that I can come to is that words are hard.

Love always,
Clara

i am actually so glad it isn't friday

Holy shit. You probably just shouldn't watch that.
I don't think I've ever heard a song that bad in my life.

0:23 - I like that we now know what she's gotta have in the morning (her bowl, cereal. I'm assuming these are related and the cereal is in the bowl, but she says them separately, which makes me think she might be waking and baking. That might explain things later on.)
0:32 - What do you do at a bus stop? I'm genuinely curious! Rebecca Black says that one catches a bus there. Thanks, Rebecca Black.
0:43 - She's gotta make her mind up, regarding which seat she can take. There's really no decision to make though. There's only one open seat. Also, whatever happened to that bus?
0:52 - I totally do that thing with my hand when I'm in the car and feeling groovy on a Friday or whatever. Not even joking.
1:08 - I do not want to party or have fun with these kids.
1:11 - They're cruising on the highway at 7:45. That's because her curfew is at 11.
1:23 - "My friend is by my right, and fuck this bitch on the left. I don't even know her. She's just chillin in that dress like she wants to be in my music video. This is what fame does to people, guys."
1:37 - Why is her placement in the car such a critical decision point for this girl?
1:49 - There's something about the way she pronounces the word "Friday" that makes me want to slam my head against concrete.
2:07 - Sometimes I wonder what day it is that comes before Friday. Now I know.
2:18 - "We we we so excited." No. Stop. Now.
2:27 - More details on how the days of the week work. This might be genuinely useful for people who don't understand how the days of the week work. i.e. no one.
2:35 - This is probably the most times that the "back seat" has been referred to in a song that has had absolutely no sexual subtext.
2:53 - Pause the video here and look at her face.
3:10 - Rebecca Black does not look like she is actually having any fun.
3:24 - Do we know who this guy in the car is?
3:38 - Somehow, Rebecca Black gives off the attitude of an overenthusiastic babysitter. "It's friday! Fun fun fun fun! But don't do anything you wouldn't want me to tell your parents about, guys!"
3:48 - I have now watched that whole thing twice. That was a mistake.

Courtesy of Camelback Music.

Love always,
Clara

P.S. I want to tag this "songs are great," except this song really isn't great. At all.

imperial battleship, halt the flow of time!

you might notice there are no flyers for upcoming parties on this board.

It's 50 degrees and sunny. It is time to officially congratulate myself for surviving my first New England winter. It was not nearly as bad as my father had led me to believe.

Although, Providence is much milder than Williamstown, as I understand it. He also spent one of his new england winters hiking around in the wilderness. I spent most of mine indoors as much as possible. There was the occasional instance of walking across the main green and wanting to cry because the wind was so sharp, but that really only happened a couple times, and snow is so lovely anyway.

That said, I'm done with snow, for a little while. Spring is here and no one can try to tell me otherwise.

Last night, we tried to go to a party hosted by the half-Asian club (I did not know this was a real thing). We walked halfway to Whole Foods trying to get to the damn house, and when we got there, they turned us around because they said it was too crowded. I think the real problem was that we turned up in a mob of like, 30 people whom we'd collected on the way. Some of those stuck around even after we were no longer useful to them (I was under the impression that I was the only one who knew where Angell street was and how house numbers worked. They probably could have found their own way, but in my mind I was fearless leader, both Lewis and Clark, and also Columbus, not quite landing in India). I'm not sure why that happened.

On the way, I stopped traffic.

Me: Imperial battleship, halt the flow of time!


I shouted this while extending my hand to the car. There was also a red light, but I'd like to think time stopped at my command.

In retrospect, I do actually believe that the party was pretty crowded. It seemed to be the only thing going on last night. I stand here, then, to make a request of my fellow undergraduates:
Please throw more parties, so that everyone doesn't end up in one place. That would be great.

That is all.

Love always,
Clara

fitzgerald

This is the thing I memorized for fiction class. I like it, so I'm sharing it up here. It's from The Crack-Up.

Mad cool.

Love always,
Clara

depressing day

I just came out of Bran Damage class, in which we're discussing Huntington's and Parkinson's. It's raining. I turn up to Health Care and find out that our topic for today is end of life care.
Today is hell bent on being depressing.

Prof: As you get older, you will have more and more experiences with hospice care and bereavement services.

In other words, when you get old, everyone you know and love slowly dies. Thanks a ton, Brown university. I think I've had enough existential crises for the month.

I have a couple things to hold onto though.

• I plan on working out today, and then getting a manicure. This seems like a good sequence of events.
• In 40 minutes, it will effectively be the weekend.
• This conversation just happened

Spencer: Clara, your sunglasses brighten my day!

Me: I'm glad!

So there's that.

Love always,
Clara

exquisite

The time between tuesday night and friday afternoon is always a blur of class and Post- (what up, 3am?) and sleep and syntax and fiction class and sleep and more class. Class and sleep and class and sleep and post- and class and sleep and class. I'm slowly coming to.

Yesterday in Fiction we tried to do an exquisite corpse out loud, based on some poems and excerpts that we were told to memorize.

K: I want you guys to memorize a poem for next week, the reason for which is as ambiguous as life itself.

The ambiguous reason was the exquisite corpse. We were meant to each say a line of the thing we memorized, or, if the spirit compelled us, something else completely. That's what I like about fiction class.

Alejandro: But the pen is mightier than the sword.
Sahil: Both, as it happens, phallic images.
Cara: Everything is a phallic image.
Ade: Freud would be proud.
K: That's what she said.

Exquisite indeed. I was just proud that the whole thing didn't turn to a discussion of menstruation. In my fiction class, that really is an accomplishment.

Love always,
Clara

this my town

I had a dream about Brown last night. All I really remember is going to get food somewhere, accidentally only buying a cup of maple syrup, thinking about just eating it, and then deciding that I needed to go to the Blue Room to get a muffin. But then they were out of muffins. Also, I was locked out of my room, although I specifically remembered picking up my keys and leaving the door unlocked.

I take this all to mean that I've fully assimilated to college life.

Last weekend, a penis appeared on the wall outside my hallway. I suspect the athletes down the hall are responsible, but I suspect them and their athletic cohort responsible for most bad things that happen on the hall. It's possible that an unrelated band of hooligans just saw the stretch of drywall and decided it needed some phallic imagery (they should have gone with an obelisk), but even then I would suspect that the perpetrators were athletes of some sort. Damn athletic hooligans.

Yesterday, in a fit of madness (I've been having those lately), I bought a sharpie and turned the penis into a fish. It still looks like a penis, but it has eyes and I turned the poorly-drawn testicles into a poorly-drawn fish tail. Now it's a dick-fish, which is better than just a penis on the wall.

Again, taking ownership of my surroundings and feeling assimilated. That's what's happening right now.
Speaking of surroundings, I managed to omit a real conversation from the Monopoly game the other night that I feel is worth sharing, because I laughed.

Mark: Who owns Virginia?
John: I own it. It's in my pants!
Me: Incidentally, I grew up in Virginia.
John: Well... then you grew up in my pants! ... I'm sorry. That was inappropriate.

So that happened.

Love always,
Clara

risky business

If you had come up to me a year ago and said, "In college, you will play more board games and board game variants than you ever thought possible," I would have thought you were 1) Crazy, 2) Full of shit, 3) Wrong, or 4) All of the above.

If that had happened, today I would have found you and apologized, because you would have been totally right.

Last night we went to Tea in Sahara again. There were a lot of us, so we brought along a game of Risk to supplement the usual Monopoly doings. I played Monopoly because I was in a Monopoly mood, and lost because I got screwed over by Park Place with three houses and lost my sources of revenue. It was all very shady, since there was some sort of joint-ownership situation with the monopoly at the end of the board (John and Mark, I am shaking my head) but that's capitalism for you.
We went to Jo's on the way back, and then returned to Keeney, where I decided I did want to learn how to play Risk. Risk is one of those games that I've always seen and thought "That looks like it takes a long time."
It does.

So Audrey, John, Andrew, and I sat on Andrew's floor and started up another game, while Hannah went to Zete for some kind of Zete-function (I'm glad I didn't go greek. It all seems to require a lot of bizarre obligations, between carrying lighters and bricks around, making girls kiss you, and drinking on tuesday nights.)
Teddy immediately took to hurling information at me, which was a waste of time because I had no idea what he was talking about. Apparently he's really good at Risk, but all of that was lost on me.

Hannah turned up about an hour later, back from Zete, entertaining as ever.

Hannah: Clara, you need to fuck Alaska's shit up.
Me: Oh, I plan to. That's on my to-do list. Thanks Hannah!

There's advice I can understand.

Love always,
Clara

springtime is happening

Today I am wearing a skirt, because it is springtime and lovely. I am also wearing tights, because it's still decidedly tights-weather.

Me: Hi Lucas!
Lucas: Hi Clara!
Me: How are you?
Lucas: Why aren't you wearing appropriate... bottom clothing?
Me: What do you mean?
Lucas: Aren't you cold?
Me: Of course not! It's a glorious day!

When I came inside, my computer told me it was 45 degrees. Maybe not so glorious. It feels great though.

Fun! Awesome! Great! Welcome! This is essentially my mood when springtime happens.

Love always,
Clara

summer

Not the season but the girl.
I've just now discovered that Summer the senior (from my high school in the states) is a blogger. She is phenomenal and you should all go read her blog right now. Here's a sample.

First, it was the first day of spring sports and I got a rush of emotions thinking of how I did track last spring. HAH IT’S COMICAL! I will never forget the first practice where I went up to Coach Bodine and said, “Hi, my name is Summer Delaney. I am a junior. I don’t really know what to do because I can’t sprint because I am really slow, and I can’t do distance because I have no stamina. I also run funny. Suggestions?” She told me to try to keep up and that the first practice was running around the track for 30 minutes alternating between 30 seconds jogging and 30 seconds sprinting every time the whistle blew. This quickly turned into 30 seconds walking and 30 seconds jogging. When the fast people were running, Bodine would yell “STOP BEING LAZY AND MOVE!” 

When I passed her, she said “It’s okay girl, just finish.”

Summer and I had some great times in US chorus back in the day (oh, and JV softball. I try to forget about JV softball). I very specifically remember rooming with her in Germany, staying up late, and literally falling asleep while talking (and eating Mozart balls, an Austrian treat that lends itself to innuendo -- the best kind of Austrian treat). Falling asleep while talking is a weird thing to do by the way, because I actually started having a dream while we were chatting, and didn't realize that it wasn't real.

Summer: Does that make sense?
Me: Wait, I need my purse!
Summer: ... what?

We also tried to hit on Landon boys at the private-school-choral-gatherings. Everyone knows that's what those kinds of events are for anyways. Pink-Tie and Orange-Tie had it going on, and I've got a thing for guys who can sing.

Love always,
Clara

instructions: plagarize

scenes from the summer

from the failed boston trip

amelia and the boys

scott and john

I think that's nicole and other john? hard to say.

I just spent a solid while doing a project I stole from A Lost Feather, who stole it from

Phillip Maisel.

It involves taking pictures of your computer screen while flipping through facebook pictures. Cool things happen sometimes.

In other news, I don't tend to have much work on mondays, and tend to spend my time doing somewhat useless things involving the internet. Whatever.

Love always,

Clara

bullets mostly about zombies

• I've been tired lately, and when I get tired I stop trying to process the real world, and I feel like I'm dreaming all the time. It sounds like I'm high or something. I am honestly just tired, but it feels sort of lovely.
• Why are these called "bullet points"? Too aggressive.
• I tried sitting closer to the front of the class this morning. It did not influence my attention-paying.
• Last night I spent probably an hour killing zombies. It's zombie time.
• Julien used to play Plants vs. Zombies in the student lounge all the time. I wish I'd asked him about it then, because that's almost a full year of zombie killing that I could have been doing.
• If zombies can't swim (and they can't), can you drown a zombie?
• I always find myself with free time on monday afternoons and it is just lovely.
• Real email I just got from my mother -

Subject: Let me get this straight----

You want cowboy boots>>>????

• It was grey earlier but now it is sunny. My computer tells me it is 35 degrees, but I am inclined to tell my computer that he is wrong. I have no evidence; I haven't been outside in a couple hours.
• Where did the hours go? Zombie killing.
• Mr. P was always warning us about the zombies. That's why we should carry knives and know how to fire a gun. You need to be prepared when the zombies come.
• I read some Science News last night. It reminded me that I need to check my mail, but I feel like if I go to the building with the mailroom, I will encounter all kinds of problems. I'm always a mess over there.
• It turns out, a lot of my friends have zombie plans. I drew mine up at lunch today. I'll steal a boat and a gun and lots of food, drive down to the eastern shore, and, if need be, hop around the Chesapeake. I'm assuming the zombies will stay concentrated in urban areas for the most part.

Love always,

Clara

fortune cookies

Last night a few of us went to Shanghai for dinner. Stefan is allowed to eat more than rabbit food again, so he wanted to take advantage of his resumed dietary freedom. I was just in the mood for pad thai and social activity.

I had a ton of fun with the chopsticks. Moments like this remind me that I'm secretly (or not so secretly) basically five years old. I grabbed John's straw with my chopsticks and giggled for probably five minutes straight. It was not appropriate behavior for the dinner table.

At the end of the night, they brought out fortune cookies with the receipt. Mine said, "It is a nice day" with two smiley faces.

That was probably the most awesome thing that happened all day yesterday. I was so excited. I'd already been in one of those dreamy nothing-is-real-but-everything-is-lovely moods (I had, that afternoon, declared with perhaps undue passion that I love oranges), and the fortune cookie just confirmed my feelings about the day.

Hannah got one that said "Accept the next proposition you receive." She gave it to Stefan so that he could use it to pick up chicks. I'm not sure that it worked. I'm actually fairly certain that either it didn't work, or he never tried. For the record, I would respect him more if he tried and failed than if he forgot about the whole thing. Doing that kind of thing in public is what makes the world an interesting place. If one girl came home last night and said to her roommate, "a guy tried to pick me up with a fortune cookie," the sun will shine just a little brighter tomorrow.

I'm all about absurdity.

John had left to go to an orchestra concert. I took the fortune cookie that was meant to be his. It said "Your charming smile is attracting everyone around you." I'm trying to decide whether I can claim that one. I did eat the cookie, and I'd like to think it suits me at least because I'd been spaced out and smiling all day, but it was intended for John, and far be it from me to assert that his smile isn't charming.

I'd just like to think I'm attracting people.

I think I'll keep it. Both fortunes are in my wallet at the moment, so there's that.

Does anyone know fortune cookie protocol?

Love always,

Clara

attention bloggers

I don't know how many of you readers are also writers. Hopefully it's a lot of you, because writing is one of the better habits I've picked up in the last three years (bad habits: playing flood-it, drinking sugar free Red Bull, getting belligerent-drunk and taking off in a random direction).

For those of you with blogs or thinking of starting one, I've stumbled upon a great resource for that sort of thing. Check out The Blog Guidebook.

It's a bit girly, I'll admit, but they have some pretty awesome networking-type options and tutorials. I'm about to learn how to make a blog button and a code box, which seems like something I might need at some point if I'm serious about throwing myself headlong into the universe of young blogging women. No young-blogging-woman is an island, you know.

Love always,

Clara

seriously, think about it. ew.

I really should be doing work right now, but I'm not. What else is new?

Last night I was talking to Andrew about my facial recognition woes.

Andrew: That girl did look like Tiffany from behind.

Me: Yeah! I mean, imagine having to recognize everyone from behind. That's basically what it's like.

Andrew: Well I see everyone from behind sooner or later.

I thought this was hilarious at the time. In retrospect, maybe it isn't. Maybe that was just crass. I'm never sure. Our definitions of crassness are looking increasingly arbitrary to me lately. A lot of things are looking increasingly arbitrary. Such as what we do or don't consider gross. I explored this at breakfast this morning.

Me: Well, a lot of things are gross when you think about it. I mean, think about sex. That's gross.

John: I don't want to think that hard about sex. Can't I just drink my orange juice in peace?

Andrew: No!

Now I think I'm going to clean my room, watch the frat boys get dressed up (I just enjoy seeing boys in suits. I blame going to private school), and then run off to Starbucks or something to get my public health essay started.

That seems like the right thing to do.

Love always,

Clara

burnhenn

Someone in my Brain Damage class is coughing, and it's making me feel brain damaged myself. I am beginning to think that OCD is in fact contagious.

Last night we went to Jo's. Lucas encountered a number of difficulties with his Spicy Without, difficulties that slowly increased in intensity, reaching a climax when some grease burned his lip.

He was terribly concerned about this. I regret to say that the rest of us were not terribly concerned, and we could have been more helpful than we were.

I volunteered some fun facts about mouth health though.

Me: Lucas, the mouth is one of the fastest healing parts of the body!

This probably did not help. It ended up with a conversation about how one's first instinct when they get a paper cut is generally to put one's finger in one's mouth, among other things.

Lucas eventually left, at which point we realized we hadn't taken his lip burn quite seriously enough, and it would be such a shame if he in fact did have a second degree burn, as he says he did.

Lucas, if you read this, I apologize very deeply.

David: Are you going to blog about this?

Me: Probably.

David: You should call him Lucas Burnhenn.

Me: I try to avoid last names. Some people get upset.

David: Burnhenn.

I want everyone to know that that is a pun. It's funny because it has the word "burn" in it.

Love always,

Clara

"okay, new question. hexagons or pentagons? no flying allowed."

I turned up to lunch in a mood. People fixed it, as people tend to do. A bad mood, I've found, can almost always be remedied by being around people.

David: So, guys, question. If you could harness one element for destructive power, which would you pick?

I said air, so that I could fly, which is always a priority. David said no flying was allowed, and that we could only use our elements for destructive ends. I then chose fire.

Nicole chose water. David was operating within a Pokemon paradigm in which water and ice are two different elements. The rest of us disagreed.

I, for one, was operating within an Avatar: The Last Airbender paradigm, simply because I have the most exposure to it. Considering the fact that I've never seen the movie, or a whole episode of the cartoon, this should be surprising, but as I explained to the table, in my house, when Grace likes something, there's no way to insulate yourself from the all-encompassing enthusiasm.

It then occurred to me that Grace liking something is better than Grace disliking something.

Me: It could be worse. When my sister was younger she decided she didn't like cats.

David: And that was a dark time in all of our lives.

Me: It was.

To be fair, she was eight or nine when that phase happened, and so biting kids on the playground was a tiny bit more acceptable than it would be, for example, right now.

Syntax class has been somewhat weird for the past few classes. I keep inferring innuendo that isn't actually there.

Pauly J: So this verb phrase, in its lexical entry, says "Yeah, put that inside me."

Me: *giggles*

Actually, on second thought, that innuendo was definitely there, although certainly not intentional. Most of the other people in the class seemed slightly horrified that my mind was so far into the gutter at three PM on a tuesday.

Today we talked about transitive verbs. Our example word was "kiss".

Pauly J: This is so much fun. Some years, I use "lick." You could do anything, really. We could say Zephyr likes Vertigo. It's just more fun with kissing.

Love always,

Clara

post- it

I'm at post- right now, experimenting with a little thing known as mobile blogging. We'll just see how it works out.

Love always,
Clara

Location:Arlington Ave,Providence,United States

a little more direction

This identity crisis that started this weekend (although one might say it's been going on for a while now, or maybe forever) is turning into a blog-saga.

Once again, I've been doing some thinking. I hope we all have learned by now that me doing some thinking is very dangerous all around. I begin to think and suddenly everything is thrown into disarray and why exactly does this happen? No one knows.

My thinking was about the nature of the blog again. It occurred to me that I do implicitly have a sort of central theme. "Love always, Clara" is a sign-off. It's the closing to a letter. These posts could be construed as a form of one-sided correspondance between myself and the world.

When I was younger, I considered myself an anthropologist of sorts. I was always trying to figure things out, figure people out. Now, the analogy would be a little more like this: I was a researcher, sent to an island to learn about their customs, and write about my experiences in this strange land. But I've "gone native" as they say, and fallen in love with all of it, and now I'm just keeping records out of habit and a relentless desire to explain things later, even if I can't fully articulate why they're so simply fantastic in the first place. These posts could easily be read as the letters from myself to the King of Spain or whomever, if that were to make any sense, except clearly it doesn't.

The whole twisted metaphor does give me a new paradigm though, which is a nice thing to have these days.

I'm posting this song because I like it, and because if this is the journal of my expedition into the wild unknown 21st century world, I can post whatever songs I want.

Love always,

Clara

identity crisis

The last few days have inspired within me an identity crisis, and I'm taking it out on the blog. I'm sorry. It's getting a little hectic over here and I acknowledge that.

I've been spending a lot of time reading other people's blogs, and wondering whether I should adopt any of their practices. Some of them have weekly features, but I'm too much of a flake for that kind of consistency. Others have some kind of project or mission at their center, but Love Always, Clara has been around for two and a half years now, so adding some kind of specific central focus this late in the game seems like a waste of time, and in any case, I haven't the slightest idea what that might be.

A surprising number are fashion blogs. Maybe I just don't get fashion, but this trend totally bewilders me. I am one hundred percent certain that no one cares what I wear every day. No one wakes up in the morning and thinks, "I wonder what Clara is wearing?" I don't think. That would actually be somewhat disconcerting.

So I have a lot of ideas about what this blog doesn't need to be, or doesn't need to do, but I'm at a loss as to what exactly I want to make of it (and, once again, the my feelings about the blog mirror my feelings about life. Things would be a lot nicer if I had any clue where I was going). I'm afraid to try to commit myself to anything at this point anyway, because it's more than likely that I'll lose my focus within a week and the whole affair will just be another drop in the bucket of disorganized mini-projects that has been the last few (read: 18) years.

Apparently that's an Aries trait, by the way. I like blaming my flaws on astrology.

What made me think of this was that I'm thinking of putting up a page with a list of goals. I already have a list of goals, but it could be fun if I made it public and chronicled my progress. If I make progress. Which I might not. Which is exactly the fear that's making me hesitate.

Clearly I could think myself in circles about this all day. I'm thinking I won't. I'm thinking I'll just type that up now, and see where it goes. If it goes nowhere, you're entitled to judge me I suppose, but I hope you won't.

Love always,

Clara

photographic mood

I basically liked this picture. Hannah looks dubious, like Andrew has just said something ridiculous, which is frankly quite likely.

I actually ate this at dinner. A raspberry bar with a blob of strawberry yogurt and smashed up Golden Grahms on top. I've been feeling very culinary lately. Today at lunch I put spinach, couscous, both kinds of pasta sauce, and parmesan in a bowl. It was so creative.

Mr. Salt and Mrs. Pepper are also feeling culinary.

Oh, I made this the other day. The despicable athletes who hang out with some people down the hall seem to have made a hobby of running down the hallway smashing lights and exit signs and, occasionally, door nametags. Mine died this way, so I made a new one. Hopefully they won't do horrible things to this one. I'm watching you, athletes.

If you're wondering, the caption on the New Yorker cartoon is "I can't just switch gears and be smart."

The hair! The highlight of my week so far, to be honest.

Yeah.

Love always,

Clara

prefrosh

Things are slowly coming together. I know where I'm living next year. Hurrah for the international house!

Last night, Lucas went into a chat room for potential Brown pre-frosh. He's already preying on the little freshmen, and they haven't even decided to come here yet. It's either epic planning ahead, or ethically questionable, or (most likely) both.

Lucas: My closing line is always "Fuck bitches, get money."
Andrew: Lucas, how exactly do you see yourself?
Lucas: Hm. A combination of... Rorschach and Barney.
David: Rorschach didn't fuck bitches or get money.

Lucas then amended that statement. Instead of "Barney" in the above dialogue, he would prefer that you read "Biggie Smalls" or "Weezy" or "Bubastis" (who I am told is a lynx).

At some point over this conversation, one of the baby prefrosh said that he was a cool guy.

Lucas: Ah! See! Fie on all of you!

It all reminds me of the time Robert got his Polish friends to troll a Brown-applicant chat room because none of them knew what a "liberal arts university" really meant. They were like "OH YOU DON'T EVEN HAVE AN ENGINEERING PROGRAM," and everyone else in the room was like "... don't we? Pretty sure we do."

We do. They have a weird fascination with cats.

Love always,
Clara