Manhattan witchiness

Like clockwork on the 4th I write again. Almost like I planned this...visit. I am living in a "haunted" apartment and I like it. At least this one comes openly smothered with history, murder, love, sex, kick ass vintage furniture - the works. I like it. Bring it on ghosts, I have a bit of spirit of my own. Anyway, the wonderfully loony landlady is dancing to classical music in the kitchen, I moved out of South Brooklyn three days ago and feel beautifully autonomous and happy with my new dwelling, and today I'm starting to feel settled, yay.

Listen to The Pierces if you haven't, I'm loving them, and we're cohabitants of the same witchy Manhattan soup now. That's their whole shtick: witchiness. Same with the women I'm living with now, but they're good "witches" and I'm glad they're on my side. ;)

I'm drinking a stout that was brewed with chocolate.

I'm going to jip you on this post and cut it off right here. I will come back again in February month of love or loneliness or apathy and write again, make it up to you.

Brooklyn mochas and reflections on cities

I'm sitting in a Brooklyn cafe called K-Dog and drinking one of the best mochas I've ever had...it must be the chocolate they use in this mocha, it tastes like they mixed high quality hot chocolate with espresso, mmm.

As I sip this I'm applying to more jobs, getting ready to check out apartments, etc. The internet connection at Totya Rita's (the family friend I'm staying with in Brooklyn,) is pretty on-and-off as I'm pilfering it from some neighbor, and I have begun my exploration of Brooklyn cafes with free wifi. There are none directly in Rita's neighborhood, as it's located in the bowels of Brooklyn, not far from Brighton Beach. What can you find there? Orthodox and Hassidic Jews, Russian food stores, random junk stores, and if you happen to be heading home at 5am (I don't really recommend it, I did that on New Year's,) there might be strange men cat or more like dog-calling at night. I say dog, because when I think of cat-calling I think of harmless Parisian stalkers who might pester and follow but never do a damn thing about it. The men in NYC have much more of a sense of desperation about them, so little girls beware, look local, and walk fast. After that night I started to look up pepper spray vendors, but really it's much better at most other hours, even at 1am it's less creepy.

A little black boy just came up to me and popped his head at my computer screen, he startled me and I pulled my computer to me and recoiled scaring him away too in the process. In the past two days I've noticed that these little clean bohemian cafes seem to be a safe haven for kids in Brooklyn. Earlier this little boy came in and used their phone to call his mom because he didn't know where she was, and yesterday a little girl came into a different cafe on the other side of Prospect Park and sat in a booth doing her homework - she must have been only 8 or 9 years old. Brooklyn is certainly a weird mix of religious, hipster, and dirt poor people from every continent. I never had a chance to take such a close look at it before and see the socioeconomic problems of America so vividly. Capitalism is at it's best and worst in this city. The struggling, the dreaming, the successful, the hopeful and the hopeless. Of course the faces on the trains are typically incredibly tired and sagging - but still people are moving here, always moving.

Ok, I have to be a little more productive now - and I'm seeing my first prospective apartment tonight - it's in the East Village, wish me luck.

On the brink and into Newness

Ok, so Annalise was right - I skipped a month of blogging my heart out, sorry. Been rather preoccupied with heaps of "serious" endeavors. Almost done with grad school apps and I took the psych GRE and aced it, or as much as that is possible with a standardized test - I scored higher than 95% of all the other test-takers. It's good to kick a murderous test's ass, yay.

Now I'm moving to New York. Officially starting tomorrow - well tomorrow morning I'm flying to Miami for a week to celebrate the holidays with my family and get a little sunshine. Go sunshine. And THEN I'm flying to NYC on the 30th, for a New York New Year, mhmm. I'm going to stay in Brooklyn at first with a friend of my grandma's, a little Jewish lady who remembers me as a little kid in Ukraine, she says she wants to be my New York Grandma and make me "soupiki," so yay for that. This way I'll be able to take a bit of time to find a decent place to live and a job.

I figured since I'm totally free for the next 8 months at least, (if I get into one of the grad programs I want, they won't start until September,) I might as well New Yorkify my life. As in culture, art, proximity to friends, something new as I've visited but never lived there before, and a hell of an exciting place to be - plus I love big cities - I was definitely happy living in Paris.

So here I come, my bags are (just about) packed, and I'm ready to dazzle. ;) What does Carrie Bradshaw have that I don't, anyway? A newspaper column? I've got this blog, not that I promise to turn every sexual and men-related morsel of my life into an advice column from now on, but I do promise to be just as, if not more fun.

Happy holidays and a toast: (yes I'm toasting in a blog, so pour yourself something delicious and at least 10% alcoholic,)

Be brave, throw yourself into situations in the middle of the ocean, in the middle of a new city, in the middle of the middle of anything that you don't know - it's exciting, terrifying, and unbelievably good for you.

Wikipedia's etymology of stir crazy:

Stir crazy is a phrase that dates to 1908 according to the Oxford English Dictionary^[1] and the online Etymology Dictionary. Used among inmates in prison, it referred to a prisoner who became mentally unbalanced because of prolonged incarceration. It is based upon the slang stir (1851) to mean prison.

It is now used to refer to anyone that becomes restless from being stuck in one place too long, with a similar meaning to cabin fever.

Riiight. Not that my prison is so bad. And it's voluntary. But still, 'tis true, I am going stir crazy, must escape CONfiNemEnt....

Marianna is blogging more often, a definite symptom of too little action in LIfe. Life, that funny thing where action is goooood. My excitement consists of helping my little sister with her school projects. Though yes, sister bonding = good. But still, in Colorado, me borededed.

Wish me luck cyber humans.

In The Middle-Of-No-Where With Newlyweds

There's something that reminds me of high school and college and absolute independence/solitude about having my own bedroom. Perhaps because that is exactly what it is. Independence and solitude. The independence bit has perks, after all, my creativity needs a good, painful kick in the rear sometimes. Not to mention the sudden overwhelming need to propel myself into greatness, happiness, something, if only to leave the place with too much space and time and this awkward futon where I have no one to nudge me with his elbow, no tangled arms and legs and odd awakenings, no kisses either, just me and my thoughts.

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Taking out the pseudo-funny blurb on my love life. It's too unfunny and caricaturish--I know I have a tendency to caricature my life, but here I'd like something very true to form instead: imagine an exotic porn star plastered in this space instead. Fill in the blanks, this could be like a choose your own adventure blog blob.
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New beginnings: find job, take psych GRE, finish research writing/analysis, apply to grad school. Show world hot, amazing Marianna self. Talk like cave woman.
Oh and yeah, my folks have newlyweds staying over tonight. The girl's fresh from Ukraine, here to start a brand new life. I think I'll take her out dancing.

Benefits of the middle-of-no-where

Maybe the beautiful thing about living/being in bum fuck Suburbia is the compulsion to grow beyond it that such a dreary locale inspires. For me at least: there is nothing to see, therefore maybe it's easier to get productive, to save yourself from hell. In urban places full of incredible museums, parks, cultural districts, and theater, there is too much wonderful stuff to do - this is really only an issue of course, if you are a traveler passing through but simultaneously have it at the back of your mind that you should be looking for a job, finishing the statistical analysis and article writing for your research study, picking up the pen again, and applying for grad school.... Ah yes, that shit. So that was me as I enjoyed visiting friends in Boston, Connecticut, and New York - it was fun, more play than work. Then I visited my grandparents in Iowa, and I would like to send a heartfelt thanks to the boring nature of West Des Moines which at last inspired me to be more productive. And then there's here - Fort Collins, Colorado, where my nuclear (explosive) family dwell. Being around them stirs up so many emotions, issues, reactions, that every time I visit I never fail to be reminded why I started to write in the first place...at age ten or so. The pen was my emotional refuge early on, so maybe in that way I could be grateful to my family for rubbing me the wrong way, as it compelled me to sublimate, to write. (And still does!)

Now here I am, still unresolved but getting there - I BELIEVE it.

Have I stopped moving yet? Not quite. I've now added another city name to be printed on a sticky white luggage tag - Minneapolis. I'm excited to go, to see Joe, to hopefully remind him that I'm not a total nagging bitch, but also this lovely girl he loves - maybe we'll get a bit of resolution as to what to do next about the "us" question - to see if we can be for the other person what we would need to be to make happiness happen. I'd like to. But let's be realistic, though of course optimistic, because who gives anything another chance without some optimism? And mostly, lets be the best versions of ourselves.

I am definitely not the best version of myself with my family, and though this selection of best self is also dependent on others, I was definitely disappointed with myself today: I hurt my little sister. She is incredibly good at rubbing me the wrong way herself, can have a maddening, rude, I-am-the-teenage-queen-of-the-world manner of speaking, but nevertheless, I should restrain myself from reacting negatively and I didn't. I think I never agreed with my parents' parenting style - I've always felt, and still feel, that they let her get away with too much. The dinner tonight was not dinner, it was The Elana Show. Welcome viewers. If you did not subscribe to this program, too damn bad. Eat your food and deal with it, The Elana Show is on, and there will be no commercial breaks or channel changing. Bon appetit.

I could go on but for now I'll simply end it with wise words: try to keep the negativity down and the flow happy, happy, joy, joy. If you're the princess that has pearls spilling out of her mouth instead of reptiles, it'll come back atcha in the end - pearl instead of frog. With that I kiss you frogs good night and will dream of a princely metamorphosis. The best hope for changing anyone and anything around you is through changing yourself. The end.

Finally, some time in my grasp

Hi. I left New Zealand, stopped traveling (no, not exactly, there will still be a bit in Mama Amerika,) I am on my own (Joe and I are visiting family and friends separately,) and I finally feel like yes, I'm here, I can write, I can step back and start to reflect. I was looking forward to this, to America, to my family and friends, to comfort, to a little less uncertainty. I spent most of today hanging out with my youngest sister, Tina, which was an absolute blast. I'm in Fort Collins, in suburbia, but the location is really of no importance whatsoever, the point is I'm back with people who love me, whom I love. I was pretty homesick during large lapses of the past year in New Zealand, and seeing Joe's family pretty often made the longing for my own worse at times.

Sometimes, being in a relationship can increase your alienation and loneliness - an odd thing that I found to be true. When you're on an island in the Pacific Ocean where you know no one and are quite isolated from anyone you do know, and your partner on the other hand has family as well as almost immediate friends (enter le hockey team,) and you don't get to see him nearly as much as you thought you would, well it kinda sucks. Most of his friends were men's men who were not only uninterested in the amazing moi, (yeah, bit of an ego killer,) but as a result I found most of them completely uninteresting (most of the time,) as well. I don't speak hockey and now have some pretty bad associations with this language that dominates the world of certain folks. True, there were a few nice guys that I would have good conversations with, but a good bit of the time I was overwhelmed by the obnoxious, loud, insulting ones - made it very difficult for me to not associate an isolated, sick feeling with the whole lot of them. If I think about it honestly, I've exaggerated the amount of them that were actually dicks, but you know what they say about rotten apples. I am particularly unhappy(yes I'm gonna bitch and get this out there,) about a certain guy (Psychology BA help me now!) who got under my skin in the most horrid way by completely questioning who I was, my right to live, the point of my existence besides being his friend's girlfriend, etc. Yes, these are the sort of things the drunk bastard said to me, before I (yes!) kicked him out of the house, but unfortunately, though I was really hoping to avoid this, I did encounter the jerk again and I lost it...again. Couldn't help myself, wanted to pick on him for being so inhuman, insensitive, outrageous.... I had worked myself up, it's true, but I wasn't going to tolerate him ever again. Oh, shitty people who get under your skin and stay there like some nasty splinter you should have gotten rid of long ago. But you can't, you can't because he's not your friend, he's your partner's friend, and suddenly you have much less control over your environment.

Ok, now that I've spilled out some of the poison in my system, yeah there's some bitterness there, I admit it - it might be easier to write about the good stuff. Good stuff coming soon. Doing a poor job of battling jet lag, ah well. Hello to Harry Potter 7 and catching up with Gilmore Girls = good stuff. Leave comments, leave comments, leave comments...! :)