I haven't written in forever,

I'm sorry. I'm just at a stable place right now, and I don't know how to get out.

I want a Swarovski-crystal-studded rosary that I can hang around my neck and attend parties with.

La Jolla, CA. 2010. Canon XSi.

In case you're wondering, that's a jellyfish I met at an aquarium. He was a bit camera shy.

Tired of the Same Damn Thang

New York City. 2013. Disposable.

Rooftop parties are all the rage these days.

If I Were More Responsible and Looked Like Hollywood in Black & White, I Would Be My Litte Sister

La Jolla, CA. 2011. Disposable.

Nothing compares to having a sister, it's the best worst thing. My sister, Ujin, on the shores. She gives terrible advice but used to wire me money whenever my cards got cut off throughout college, so we're even. 

Sorry. I Can't Love As Fast Nor Heal As Quickly As You.

Brooklyn, NY. 2012. Disposable.

When Spring Break Ceases to Exist in Your Life, Life Sucks

Sicily, Italy. 2012. Canon XSi.

This is the first year that I'm not participating in Spring Break as the graduated, employed, boring old person I've grown up to be. To put it simply, I'm disappointed and confused... is this real life? I think having time off proves all the more necessary as one grows older but the way life is set up works against this logic. While college students are entitled to all sorts of breaks and Red Solo Cups, these luxuries are taken from you as you're handed a degree. Had I known this, I might have fended off my own graduation myself. It's a sinking feeling one gets while scrolling through multiple social media feeds, looking at parts of the world #filtered off a flat iPhone screen. What I would give to sit out on my parents' roof in the suburbs of California, thumb through comics, sip lemonade, and stay up gossiping on the phone with old childhood friends. Now March turns into this long, wretched stretch of waiting and working. Waiting for summer. Working because. Someone please lend me their Spring Break, I'll return it by the end of next week in perfect condition. Promise.

The Greatest Lesson My Mother Ever Taught Me

Mothers, though universally loved and appreciated as a concept, occupation, and virtue, I find are underestimated on a day-to-day basis. They nag, some have major mood swings, they slap your hand when you pick up candy and replace it with broccoli (I'm 23 and she still does this...), they're just not pleasant people most of the time. They're also almost always right, which can get pretty annoying. It wasn't until college, with distance, that I started to come around and truly appreciated the damned person who put me in this world without my permission. She and my father were like, "Here's life, Liz. Have a blast, enjoy." I was like, "Ok this kind of sucks but fine I'll do it."

My mother is human too, I get it, she fucks up. She's made her fair share of mistakes raising me. As a gifted storyteller and as a former teacher, she took it upon herself to open up my eyes, ears, and heart, but stretched them too wide and too fast in the process. I now have to live with the stretch marks. She nurtured me with fairy tales and folklore but also damaged me with tragedies and drama. She was too honest with me too early about how the world works. Most mothers would turn their daughters away from unpleasant things -- be it a homeless man on the street, the crippled family-friend, a dead baby bird below the window pane -- while my mother turned me onto them. She made me ask questions that she didn't have the answers to. She told sad stories about her own life that made me feel pain before I even learned how to cry properly, which in turn made me feel guilty before I even grasped the concept of apology and forgiveness. I found it unfair at that tender age. However, she told me because it was her strange way of protecting me from them. Awareness is knowledge, there's no bliss in choosing to be blind. She believes that if you have eyes, you use them to the best of your ability. Instead of providing me with rose colored glasses, she gave me a magnifying glass. I despised her for them when I was younger because I didn't understand, and didn't want to understand. But in the long run, I've benefitted.

One of the greatest lessons she has ever taught me, is this small, big thing we know as gratefulness. She said, rather simply, "Be grateful. The first thing I want you to do when you get up in the morning, before you think of yourself, breakfast, or me for that matter, is to say thank you. Then, before you go to sleep, do the same thing. Say thank you. Even if you don't mean it, even if your life is horrible and you hate everything and everyone in it, get in the habit of saying thanks on a daily basis. There's something about acknowledging it, even just the word, that changes you as a person. You might not realize that morning or that night, but it'll change you. Trust me. Even if you don't, say thanks. Every single day."

Word to my mother. I put up a miserable front most of the time (mostly for fun) but I am incredibly blessed. I know everyone says that but that's because a lot of people are. To have been born, to have made it this far, to be alive, to have organs, and legs, and arms, and fingernails, to have joints that bend, to have hair and the option of shaving it off if I want to, to have guts enough to feel and love and fight. I have free will and choices and consequences. No matter how hard I try to push away sentiment when handed them, I am always surrounded by those who actually love and care for me, and are brutally real with me, likewise, those whom I love, care, and am real for in return. It didn't occur to me until recently just how rare this is. So thank you, mother, father, family, friends, lovers, food, noise, bed, music, firefighters, and fruity cocktails. Thank you. Sometimes you all suck, but today, I'm obliged to love and thank you all.

Happy Thanksgiving. Get fat as fuck.

My "Girl Hiring P/T Boyfriend" (Craigslist Posting)

Finally got around to memorializing the Craigslist posting I wrote a little over a month ago, in search of a part-time boyfriend, that amounted to nothing. Admittedly, I was pretty bummed because I was convinced my future boyfriend was lurking somewhere on the Internet, on Craigstlist. I presume all the decent ones spend their free time looking for boyfriend gigs online anyway!
(Click below to enlarge and read. Enjoy.)

My Automated Response 

(for the record, Conor Ford is a dear friend and colleague of mine whom I would never imagine dating in a million years because he is overqualified. His application was a kind and friendly gesture, and I adore him all the more for it.):

We Walked Into a Speakeasy

On the way to the subway, we walk by two men grilling on a Charcoal. It's steak. We stop to flare our noses and inhale deeply. We must have looked desperate because they invite us inside, "the oldest speakeasy in Brooklyn, girls! Thursday nights are our best." We pause, pass, and walk three blocks. The smell of steak is still clinging to our ankles, so we turn around and follow it back to the speakeasy.

We walk in, it's Midnight In Paris, Woody Allen's film. Both of us marvel at how lucky we are; two paycheck-to-paycheck gals who can barely afford plane tickets out of the state, suddenly finding themselves in a different decade. Girls are wearing matted rouge and frilly garments, whispering out loud and laughing widely. We're embarrassed by our own dull appearance (to be fair, we didn't know we were going to time travel). There is a gray-haired man singing about love and heartbreak (what else) in a soulful baritone. A guy on the piano with shoulder-length hair who also has a bass strapped around him, another on the drums, another on the electric -- all indifferent to twirling girls and devoted to their music mistresses instead. I swoon at this lack of interest and grow warm watching them pluck their ladies down below. My friend goes to the bar and comes back with a bottled spanish Coca-Cola for me and a glass of whiskey for her. The men who initially invited us in, come over with a plate of diced steak! One can just feel the strain of the communal table as everyone eyes each other, then the steak, testing themselves, timing their own hand-to-steak-to-mouth as best as they can. Self-control: swallowing greed, their own saliva, skipping Mississippi's as they countdown to their next slab. All the while, I'm amused at how everyone grows shy in the presence of a magnificent, delicious beast. We stay there until 2 in the morning, we feel so childish and happy we want to cry. Drunk off nostalgia and Coca-Cola. Wanting so badly, the strength of a man's arms around my frame all of a sudden. Relieved that Thursdays loop, hoping the speakeasy might appear again.

The journey back home is still a blur, all I remember is how sad I felt when the music stopped.

How I Imagine My Wedding & Honeymoon Will Be Like

There will be lotsa lotsa champagne. A champagne fountain, ice sculptures made of frozen champagne then bottled champagne to take home later. It'll be required of all my guests to be schwasted throughout the whole ceremony, expected of them to clank their glasses and encourage intense make out sessions between me and my prince, to the point my parents blush and turn away while scolding my little brothers for staring. A female friend will D.J. I will be so juiced up that I'll slur my vows, but prince will know exactly what I mean anyway. "I'll do you. I mean, I do." Oops! He'll save me from further embarrassment by putting his lips to mine to shut me up then whisper in my ear, "I'd do you too." My earring will dangle.

I will wear a long, beige chiffon dress with a large, floppy hat. Heels to match. My boobies will be augmented with boob tape for the occasion. At the reception, I will change into a black slip that hint my nipples and put on a pinbox hat. Garder on my thigh. Barefoot. No one will be a wallflower that night, every body will dance for me, with me. Barefoot.

Most of our savings will have gone toward the honeymoon though. Prince would have obviously pitched in a bit more like a real gent. A trip around to only the most exotic places in the world, with big leaves, wildcats and a clear body of water, where we'll make brutal but sanctioned love with lotsa lotsa licks, biting and beating -- unapologetic -- under stars. I'll have sand everywhere. His hand will travel, station a little below my waist, and give way to meaningful squeezes from time to time. I'll swig a bottle of white wine and toast to "us," "the universe" and "how it works." He'll find my mess and fondness for great things kind of adorable, tousle my hair and pull me in closer, poke at my hickeys with his rung finger then peck them with his teeth. He will lean in and say "babe, you smell good," and I'll answer "perfume." He will be my husband and I will still be new.

That's how I imagine my wedding & honeymoon will be like but who knows!

xXx

Ex-Boyfriends Need To Be Shipped To Pluto

So the other day my friend and I are getting all decked and dolled for this really underground, really experimental, really hip party. I'm downplaying my excitement with a cropped t-shirt and black pants like I'm way too cool to try any harder. My hair is held to the side in a high and messy ponytail and I'm putting on lipstick while my iPhone's blasting Keke Palmer, when a text from our mutual friend comes through. Uh oh. Apparently, my friend's crazy-stalker-emotionally-unstable-compulsive-lying-weird-internet-persona-type-ex has invited himself to the said event according to Facebook. He might be there.

My friend and I exchange devastated looks. I roll my eyes and hers follow. I say, "this isn't even fair, he's not my crazy ex-boyfriend. Plus, he wasn't even hot to be worth any of this." She says nothing. I realize it's not her fault that he turned out to be evil and start to feel bad. "We can't live like this." But tissue to lipstick, hair back down, and pants off. I stick a toothbrush in my mouth and get ready for bed. By this time, it's nearly midnight. Too early to sleep but too late to reconsider. Ex-boyfriends need to be shipped to Pluto. Ugh.