I’m Amanda. I’ve got wide eyes, a smart mouth, and a MetroCard. And I’m not afraid to use them.
The scaffolding from the facade of the church on my block has finally been removed. Reverent walls brightened my walk to Broadway this morning. The sidewalks pulsed with life, veins in concrete weaving at storefronts. Somewhere a jackhammer pureed a melting sheet of ice.
I frequently exasperate people when I refer to anything from the 1970s as “vintage.”
I’m sorry, but I was born in 1983 and reached consciousness in the 1990s. Until my dying day, the America I romanticize will remain an America led by Bill Clinton, fed on Pizza Hut and Betty Crocker while wearing bootcut jeans and listening to Third Eye Blind. Oh yeah, and with “amber waves of grain” or something.
I met a man last week who reminded me of another man I know.
It was the way this new man called a woman his “paramour,” an occasional gesture, the earnest gaze as he listened and responded to me, our conversation like an assembly line making meaning.
“Future” is probably the dirtiest f-word I can think of right now.
It’s no coincidence that you feel the loneliest when the temperature drops and there’s no food in the house. These are only two lines on a laundry lists of defeats, a list with such entries as “not enough phone calls,” “nothing good on TV,” and “people eating in a cafe, all seemingly happier than me.”
Me: Can you imagine if our bodies only worked in a different way, and the neurons and circuitry in our brains only allowed us to speak about something after doing it?
Passive-aggressiveness irritates me. It’s the faintest of stenches that you can’t put your finger on. Where does it come from? Has he who smelt it, dealt it? This is to say that I’m wondering if I’m being paranoid by suspecting passive-aggressiveness from someone else. Is the passive-aggressiveness only borne of me when I decide it’s there hanging between this person and I? We’re the beginning and end of one bridge, mired in fog. I feel it, so it is?
So much to say.
It’s a wonder it doesn’t suddenly bubble forth, like a burp I can’t hold back. Or stream out like the blood of a hemophiliac. (I’m not trying to rap).
The best feeling in the world is not love.
Sure, that’s one of the best feelings, but nothing feels as good as the first sense of your own repair/growth. Think of the first time you can think about a person who hurt you and you feel nothing. That person’s name becomes a mere name, instead of a symbol of all your regret, loss, and anger.
Q: Why haven’t you been blogging much lately?
A: I’ve been busy with work six days a week, as well as after-school meetings and such. My social life has also become more active. I’ve been Christmas shopping, etc. In addition, I received many books from my NYPL reading list that I’ve frantically tried to finish before their due dates.
