beforetheroad

p.s. thank you, this is your revolution

Mon, 18 Jun 2007 02:24:46 GMT

i have always chosen exactly what i've believed i've wanted : cold nights driving with the windows down and the heat cranked; that extra shot of tequila that left me nuzzling the trash can, writing love letters to it in red chunks; brownie batter and not brownies; never-hung-up yellow coats; college in the midwest, Morocco, Wyoming, love. i've rarely gotten what i believed it would be, and situations, for the most part, turn out better than expected. but i've been struggling for the past two years, trying to find that middle ground between the idea of the lawlessness and heaps of sky i became accustomed to and the pocketfuls of clouds and paved over ideals i've often found lying in the gutters in this part of the world. so i take more deep breaths, i spend more time scraping the gutters and digging a path to the sky, and i brush away tears until i'm too busy to remember the pit of my stomach has fallen out and is wriggling its way to utah, to that feminist art gallery filled with black and white photographs and women who drink tea and reference nelson mandela quotes all day. and i think, maybe these are the years i can actually write that book, send those letters written and never sent over the past decade, learn Arabic and Russian and Italian and Spanish and Swahili. caving is a choice i intend never to make.

Sat, 19 May 2007 05:35:56 GMT

i came here small, thinking i was big. i came from atop a mountain to a place that hid its landscapes underneath the rugs, and cherished those who realized it. this state secretly cradles those who take shots of tequila from the side of a lake we never want to admit is here. does it always take leaving to realize the cliches behind your eyelids?
i came here with memories i thought i could never top, with a state i thought could never be beat, only to realize, as i have so many times before, that it's not the place but the people. i've fallen in love with the factory-laden horizon at sun-down, though i'd wish no such love upon anyone else. i breathe quietly and tell everyone to look left, to the lit lighthouse that sits upon 80-acres of land i never actually saw but imagined a thousand times.
i'll miss this, you post-apocalyptic heart.

dream truck

Wed, 16 May 2007 04:44:27 GMT

http://www.oldchevytruck.com/trucks3/zy.htm

i could drink a case of you and still be on my feet

Mon, 14 May 2007 06:01:27 GMT

i can't write much right now, and i'm not even really sure why i write in this at all. suffice to say, there are moments in life when i feel completely overwhelmed and undeserving of such amazing friends, family and now, a husband.

reading when i should be working

Tue, 27 Mar 2007 13:59:03 GMT

(ever so far, in the hush, you can a tiny SQUEE of something, the nameless asthmas of the throat of Time) -Jack Kerouac, Visions of Cody

Mon, 26 Mar 2007 03:38:29 GMT

everything is huge for me. i walk into a store where all the tags say made in vietnam and i see rows of women with deferred dreams chained to sewing machines and i feel like crying but instead i just run out of the store. i feel overwhelmed when talking to someone i really like because i feel the present sifting through my fingers and i try to grasp onto everything before it becomes a distant memory, a slight remember when, until finally it disappears as though it never existed in the first place.
i let chocolate linger in my mouth despite the fact that i believe i have a cavity because almost every day i think what if i died because i got hit by a garbage truck/random tire that flies off a 16-wheeler and i think i would rather suck on the chocolate with my boringcavity than notlive.
there is a happy medium, i know because i think i visit from time to time. but it's rare and i have to be issued a visa and it's getting harder these days and i often have to sit in the interrogation room with one lightbulb dangling. and when the lightbulb goes out, well they have pity on you and bring you rioja wine. and you sing old sea shanties (as no light/candlelight makes you so apt to do) until the light goes on again and then you have to remain silent. and be interrogated.

Fri, 16 Mar 2007 14:20:21 GMT

i will be leaving connecticut this summer or before! i can't wait! i like new haven, but it'll be nice to live near a beach that doesn't look post-apocalyptic. hopefully at least.

that bang whimper dichotomy

Thu, 15 Mar 2007 03:42:45 GMT

i sit at my work desk like i would where the people are a little weathered and a lot happy and leave the g's off the ends of words. i miss the easy speak and the longlongcoffees. i can't wait to see everyone again and sometimes i really can't believe it's been almost two years since i've seen my friends from wyoming. i can't wait to move to alaska.

wanderlust

Tue, 27 Feb 2007 03:21:13 GMT

as always, i want to leave here and go (and go and go and go):

(india)

and here :

(buenos aires - where, when i was three, ate hot peanuts on train station steps)

and:

(montana - wyoming, montana, alaska and maine are my top four states to live in. i've already lived in wyoming, so time to move on to the next three! although i think i'd move back to wyoming in a heartbeat.)

more montana:

this is alaska:

(after emile goes to grad school, this is where i want to live! well, not necessarily hyder since i don't even know where that is, but somewhere in alaska)

laos! :

Tibet:

crossing Canada by train:

well i could include 298347389 more photos, so i'll stop before i do something crazy like quit my job and call Emile from New Delhi.
dear world, i have a crush on you. love, anna

if i wrote you, you would know me and you would not write me again

Tue, 13 Feb 2007 04:14:53 GMT

this place is littered with old letters and never-sent alcatraz postcards from the seventh grade, full of huge dots for the i's and a's with too many loops.i've tucked myself away, saving it for a hurricane, when there will be a kitchen table i can run into at night. feeling trapped by this country again, is it melodramatic to say suffocation comes from a neverelectedatleastnotthefirsttime administration? i can't watch the world from the sidelines as i stare at some man i'm still not convinced is human on the front page of the papers.
something more concrete. sometimes i see everyone's hopes wrapped in one instant and my heart breaks, over and over. and sometimes i feel like i cater to those deferred dreams of the ones i love and it's a futile attempt.

Wed, 24 Jan 2007 20:41:43 GMT

my head is (notreally)splitting but this overload of medicine (ER trip, nothing serious but lots of medicine) is stompingNOTskipping in my head. i'm trying to get up the energy to go to the pharmacy and maybe even get some groceries! emile is doing this "eat to live" diet shabang and i wanted to surprise him by making a mean fruits n' veggies 'n maybe homemade hummus dinner. we'll see if i can part from my blanket-couch-anna menage a trois. i have been feeling notveryambitious today and keep thinking i should quit my job for the more lucrative fruit stand by the side of the road/fort building business. wouldn't people be happier if they had exciting forts to come home to at night! i think people would hand over the big bucks for this. i would even throw in a handmade pillow for free! or maybe they could pay me in Helene Cixous books/socks.

and when we ask the same questions

Mon, 18 Dec 2006 05:21:48 GMT

there were the haphazard bushes, nostagically placed just right so i could listen to joni mitchell and think where do i go tomorrow, what bus do i take into the mountains? watching a boring movie, it said one right thing : we're all wandering, looking for some secret that we hope we never find. the windows i've looked out from, they've held brick walls and aforementioned bushes. in the distance, there's now a highway and once there were crickets. i guess it all changes, all the time, for not much more of a reason than to prove our resiliency.

what am i supposed to do now that the space race is over?

Thu, 16 Nov 2006 04:40:37 GMT

i'm wearing green pants when i realize all over again life changes so quickly and my friend from wyoming is getting married. and when i tried to remember all the moments that had happened in the year and a half since i'd seen her, it was muddied and it's somewhere along the lines of waking to love and sticking feet out of car windows with the heat blasting and closing my eyes when typing to fake myself out and think i'm typing in a typewriter with a gray hat and a cigar - i guess it's something along the lines of life. it's sitting in corners of bars, scribbling insanities and wondering how we all wake up, day after day and fall in love with the world all over again.
i got a vision of myself, at age 90, in all purple on a porch, sipping spiked lemonade and all my remember-whens were tangled in utah diners, trans-siberian railways and crunchy leaves.

Sun, 24 Sep 2006 05:34:53 GMT

my soda is signed anonymous and autumn makes me want to dance under streetlamps and follow lonely leaves. i grow nostalgic, as with any coming/passing of the seasons and neon white letters from long-ago friends make me want to keep driving westward. connecticut is too crowded and my heart flutters a bit thinking of snow-topped lakes and the crying-laughter that once adorned me. my brain writes neon green post-it notes to my heart with many post-scripts. this entry is boring and vague.
today it was officially fall and to celebrate i wore leaves in my hair and even the politicans noticed. i assume my fine line of sanity is red and fluffy and i sometimes jump over it long enough to contemplate dropping my social security number and out of society. plopping into a gingham dress, my wooden cottage awaits me, this girl who thinks she'll end up somewhere in africa. passing the smell of cumin from a local moroccan restaurant, i wonder if others break (in secret) as easily.
and my heart, it breaks a thousand times a day : when allen ginsberg was on the radio, when i found my crushed creek-walk flower, when i remembered how i used to sign my papers "love anna, can't anyone call me pippi?" sometimes i think i could breathe easier if we only lived by candlelight and while the internet might be fun i'm still not sure i don't belong in a different era. or does everyone think that? i'm trying hard to still believe in humanity but it's hard when people begin sentences with "i went to the mall..."

Tue, 19 Sep 2006 03:44:44 GMT

images often pop into my head, without reason and leave just the same. today i walked into my house and i imagined rows and rows of men in tophats writing on typewriters. the other day i pictured myself swinging wildly from a chandelier, laughing maniacally. it's been a while since i've posted anything here, so here's my update since ... july 23? : new-to-me victorian house that's made the jump into home despite mounds of catfluff i'm allergic to; jamaican beer that's sweet when you drink it too fast but good when drank over half an hour. oh! i have a new job that i sometimes love sometimes wish didn't take up so much time but then again there's the moon driving home and i think it sings to me.
anyway, that's pretty much all except if you want to send me letters/correspond not via the blinding internet, you should write to me at Joplin3382@yahoo.com and we can exchange addresses and then maybe letters. maybe even letters in a bottle and i can throw them into the Long Island sound (which is right next to our house) and see how long it takes to get to you. i make myself laugh and sometimes i talk to myself in the car and then i feel crazy when the person driving next to me catches me but i wave anyway and wonder what scenarios are going on in their head. lately, i've been thinking about conversations i would have at a bar in iowa/nepal.

we must rip out all the epilogues of all the books we have read

Sun, 23 Jul 2006 20:20:32 GMT

i have painted my toenails blue for some unknown reason and now they look like the victims of a vicious blueberry fruitfight. i want to tell you something : i am tired of worrying about money. if i want to buy a lollipop or a WHOLE bag of cotton candy damnit i should be able to do it without saying oh but what about collegeloans/savingforgradschool/whataboutthefuture/rentgroceriesgas. not too long ago my friend sarah came to visit and we were talking about writing to famous people asking them to pay off our student loans because don't they have too much money? i think someone will most definitely want to become my anonymous benefactor because i can write them secret admirer notes although really they will be the mysterious presence in my life but they will know more about me. because, well, they have paid off my loans but they will know it's a FABULOUS investment because i am in the process of saving the world. that is all for today becuase i have to eat these cherries and nectarines before they go bad.

Fri, 23 Jun 2006 02:49:47 GMT

the hallway smells like old hardbacks and i'm scared if i get used to this state it will be the same as endorsing sweatshops. i like a singer named devon sproule and lately i've avoided calling my friends in wyoming because i physically ache to go back there and see the mountains instead of the highway at sunset. here, people do shots of the wall street journal and inject espresso into their veins and i miss the general store and the slow orange juice. hypocrisy runs rampant anywhere i suppose but i feel like here people preach social consciousness through the windows of their SUV. my old roommate tells me about sadie and old abandoned VW buses and beer on the back porch and i nearly cry.
still, it's summer and smells like honeysuckle outside and i sleep next to my favorite person and there is the sometimes-beach at night when i finally can't see the city lights and it's nice knowing society ends somewhere.
i can't help but feel overwhelmed by it all though - the cars and the concrete and the lack of dancing. when did we learn to walk in straight lines?

Tue, 06 Jun 2006 04:11:51 GMT

there are wishes (seeds) flying everywhere these days. it's magical and i hope everyone here is making nonstop wishes. i have never gotten such a chance in my life and so i think lots of very good things will start happening. like : i will be able to make a PERFECT ravioli with spinach. many people will desire my journalistic skills and will not only pay me for said skills but will ALSO insist on paying off my student loans. it is almost perfect outside and i can smell summer and i'm a bit sad i work so much that i forget that soon it's skinny dipping season. as much as i like my job i sometimes think about quitting and holing up inside a huge typewriter and living out my days jumping from key to key. i suppose i will be able to continue being employed until a GIANT typewriter comes my way. (another wish i have made!) sometimes i think maybe i should not be a journalist and work towards one concrete thing and that would help the world more instead of trying to change 2930847239847323 things.

when i was a boy

Tue, 30 May 2006 03:03:10 GMT

i just wrote a very negative entry and thought better of it.
sometimes i wish we all stopped talking. everyone could pretend to be pirates (the non homicidal types) out on the streets of omaha/hartford/austin/milwaukee and in places like los angeles i think they'd all stop getting plastic surgery. our dialogue would be smashed cantaloupes and pantamime ending in giggle eruptions.
wading into a stream, the light is fragile and i believe for a minute that everyone has stopped pretending. maybe i was right and people started trading dandelions for chocolate covered grasshoppers (yuck?) or stopped saying things like hihowareyoujibberjabberdiditellyouwhatgladystoldme and started looking at people's eyes and remembering what color they are.
my faith in humanity was restored the other day because i met a girl from croatia who used to live in canada but lives in new york city now and she's very funny and i asked her if she still likes to climb trees and she said yes.
i've been listening to dar williams' "when i was a boy" on repeat and it makes me cry every time.

pandora's box

Wed, 10 May 2006 23:50:54 GMT

go to : www.pandora.com
it's my new obsession grace a Emile.
i have a new userpic! this is so exciting because i like (want to court) dandelions.
i have been acting (super) strange lately and i think that is because i will wish too (lots of worldly toos) much for me clad in a gingham dress in a one-room cottage somewhere where the horizon eats people like me for two in the morning snacks. what i mean by that is i think i am (not too) different from other people because my happiness and sadness are lovebirds and, sometimes unfortunately for me, won't live without each other. it's a bit like poignantly being in love with the world and writing it nonstop i-have-a-crush-on-you notes and waiting on tip-toes for its response. recently i purchased a box of cinnamon toast crunch and milk and it was very wise of me. because now i eat breakfast in lieu of my regular old-cold-fries meal!
dear diary, i have recently gotten a new job and i like it very much. today i was told i am photographic, for the first time in my life and my ego waltzed a little bit. okay Emile just got home so I'm going to make like an atom and SPLIT.

Sun, 23 Apr 2006 15:19:58 GMT

i applied for this nicholas kristof (op-ed columnist for the NY Times) contest, and if i win i get to travel and report with him for several months. you were supposed to be a college student or a grad student to be eligible, but i think i sufficiently argued that i should never be bound by rules! nicholas kristof and i will be best friends! and then the NY Times will hire me! and i will soon be living in and reporting from Africa! i can see it all so clearly now ...
emile and i are thinking of moving to kalamazoo, or chicago, or elsewhere. elsewhere is a large category and it includes places like nepal, canada and ghana.
i am VERY excited for the summertime because i am thinking of buying a typewriter and writing on the beach and drinking rootbeer floats and become the guinness book of world record champion for the most gummy worms sucked on on a connecticut beach in july. it is a very sought after category, let me tell you. (sometimes i cannot help but think YES one year until connecticut is GONE. sucka. well, or rather that i am gone from connecticut. i have no connecticut-obliteration ambitions. honest!)
the yale architecture students build apartments and then let you live in them for cheap because they might fall down on you. BUT this is cool and i want them to build me an apartment with a trap door (they have already built one of those in another apartment) and a round room and a fireplace and maybe a secret tunnel if they are feeling generous.
i am liking livejournal more than myspace. myspace seems so cheesy these days.
time to go to a diner where i think i will get chocolate chip banana pancakes. i think the best home might just be a diner or a gas station.
p.s. i saw the Weepies last night and they were very cute and they travel around the country together and it seems like they would be fun to bake cupcakes with and talk about anti-war goodness

opportunity cost

Sun, 16 Apr 2006 06:16:38 GMT

so i hear livejournal is supposed to be an actual record of things that happened to your during the day. alright, i'll cave.
i don't picture people in their underwears when i want to laugh, but rather everyone carrying red umbrellas speaking with british accents and eating pickles - all very slow motion like and choreographed. perhaps messy rain too. today somebody stole the skirt i was going to buy that was green and looked like a tapestry and it was one of a kind. and now someone is clad in imposterdom. so if you see this person - tell them you want to go have tea with them but do it in a nonstalker way so they say yes and then secretly rip it off them and give it to me. i will give you spicy hot chocolate for life and maybe one trip to the ukraine. i am jonesing for the Everything is Illuminated soundtrack but no one has it and i wish they did because they sing about purple madness.talked to a friend from a longlong time ago when my basement was a realm and love was hard.i heard there was a rumor i was in new delhi - cool but where does that stem from? maybe it is a rumor of my future! when i eat too much cuban food my farts stink like rotten eggs. the world is pretty huge and i think about that almost every day and i don't mean huge space wise although it is that, but rather people and communication webs and how many people skip on sidewalks or look out the window and wonder who is cooking who is dying who is sewing buttons. oh right, back to daily events. painted salt and pepper shakers, was told i'm terrible at keeping touch, wondered how much my fingers would shrink if i lived in alaska. caught a reflection of myself in a store window and wondered how i'm concrete and not just a color blob.

Sun, 09 Apr 2006 04:51:09 GMT

it's the little details that make me feel insane.
a dead racoon, trash in the car's backseat, green lint.
i will stare at the bag and all of a sudden i feel completely overwhelmed, as though it would take too much of my energy too remove it from my car. as though why should it be there in the first place, why am i driving my car so much, why is Alaska not closer to us, why do i have to go to a graveyard to get away from people.
where is it not strange to peel an avocado at 3:30 p.m. and avoid eye contact with the toocaredformercedes?
not here.

Fri, 07 Apr 2006 20:40:31 GMT

ieatchocolatebythespoonfuls and ZOOM there goes somebody else frantic to get to mount olympus, i'm pretty sure. the man next to me on the highway is giving birth out of his head. (his ego is painted red; a little plastic jesus screams from the dashboard.) the babies can swim and they take off for the closest river, becoming the alligators(ish) that terrorize this county where the ratio of strawberry farms to plastic bags that say i heart new york is too small - it's me, in front of the dashboard at age five. (lamenting how i wished to be back on my desert island, free to banish those who don't stop for the night sky.)
hi. how are you? fine thank you.
(translation: let's sip on our coup d'etat. sprinkle a bit of nutmeg, no arsenic please, on there, would you? thank you.)

Fri, 07 Apr 2006 18:19:49 GMT

who are you, litle i

(five or six years old)
peering from some high

window; at the gold

of november sunset

(and feeling: that if day
has to become night

this is a beautiful way)

-e.e. cummings