this spring was luxurious in new orleans- we had perhaps two and a half months of absolutely perfect weather. warm and not too humid. cool breezes off of the gulf. in mid-april, during the midst of the great grad school panic of 2009, i remember distinctly having the thought, "how could i ever leave this place?"

well, it's 100 degrees. in my house. i'm working with no pants on. and it's fucking early june. and every damn article on nola.com includes the phrase "shot in the head". new orleans, new orleans, you are like a bad relationship that i can't quite shake but know i have to.

i've begun volunteering with a local youth photography project- my first day was this last week. i have never really worked with small (ages 5 - 10) children, and boy oh boy oh boy. the screaming! the climbing! the jumping! the hair-pulling! the fighting! the grabbyness! the glitter glue all over me! it was fun, even though i know it's going to take me a couple more weeks to be comfortable with these kids and telling them yes and no and giving them directions. they were so high engergy, and, according to one of the girls also working at the center, "a little starved for attention", hence them going so batshit nutso when presented with a group of adults there solely for their amusement. by far the best moment would be when i was trying to show one little girl how to use a camera and she snapped, "i know how to do this! some white person already showed me." hilarious. worst moment would be the realization that all of them had really bad teeth. as in, definitely rotting. poor babies.

it's so hot. it's so hot. it's so hot.

so last night, while attending a dinner party that was quicky detiorating into a drinking party, i recieved a text message from my brother that read, "i think mike wallace died."

naturally i thought he was referencing mike wallace from cbs' popular television journalism show, sixty minutes. so i laughed and showed everyone the text message as a sort of, haha, my brother is so strange! what an odd message to send.

of course, within a minute of laughing and sharing the weirdness with everyone in the room, i realized that he had to be talking about a mutual friend from high school. and, sure enough, he was. and this morning everyone from high school has facebook updates pertaining to the death and the funeral.

so the question is, how am i supposed to feel about this? i hadn't talked to ths kid in seven years, probably. (which it is another odd thought that i am getting to the point where i have "friends" with whom i haven't spoken to in almost a decade; ah, the strange land that is your mid/late twenties.) so yeah, hadn't talked to the kid in years, hadn't talked to most of the kids talking about it his funeral in years, but due to the strange pervasiveness that is facebook, i have this information and am supposed to maybe develop a thought or feeling about it. but really the only thought is about how fucking weird social networking sites are; how strange it is that i can find out the "intimate" details of "friends" who i am neither really friends nor intimate with.

not to mention that this is the second time in a year when this exact situation has happened.

not to mention that it's vaguely offensive for me to think that i have to feel anything about this occurance, considering that obviously i am so removed from the situation. but then again, does that make me a callous individual- that this person i was once very close to has passed, and my immediate concern is whether or not i have a right to think or feel about.

about a year ago this same thing happened- a good friend from high school killed himself and it was a mess and i didn't go to the funeral and people called me wanting to talk and cried on my voicemail and i didn't respond. and i felt like an asshole, sure, but at the same time i felt like distancing myself was necessary. im a very different person than who i was back then, and even back then, i was a very different person than most of my friends.

it's strange, looking back and thinking about everyone so young. and the traditional phrase is "so young and full of promise", but i think most of the people i was friends with were never really full of any promises except that yeah, they were going to get addicted to drugs, and yeah, they were going to have children way too young, and yeah, they were never going to leave our horrible hometown, and yeah, they were probably going to die way too early and from stupid accidents or from their own hands. and i'm going to be 600 miles away, spying on facebook memorial groups and trying to figure out how the fuck i escaped out of that quicksand.

been unsure of late about all these decisions im making. the future, you know, and what to do, whether to stay in this rotting, decaying, violent city, whether to leave and start over somewhere else again, whether to take on a lot of debt and go to a fancy school, whether i want to work in community development anymore, why i am always so unsure about where im supposed to be and what im supposed to be doing and what im allowed to say about what.

ive been quite productive over the past months- makin jam, knitting presents, reading books, being altogether in a good mood most of the time and happy where i am with my life. but there's always that question of what next? i can't do this forever.

so i woke up early saturday morning- mostly because i went to bed early, mostly because i was sick and spent friday evening baking cookies and knitting socks, which is mostly not very energy intensive- and laid in bed for a bit, lolling around and listening to weekend edition on the radio, where i heard one thing that i loved and one thing that i hated.

the thing that i loved was actually comprised of many things that i loved. it was a short piece highlighting "the annoying music show", which is something that i have always been curious about but never tried to listen to. and i instantly fell in love. chorus of the bells redone to have the lyrics chant "i love tacos, yummy yummy yummy tacos"?? annoying children squealing "you are the wind beneath my wings"??? WHEN A MAN LOVES A CHICKEN??? sign me up. i am going to up my capacity in performing the role of world's worst jukebox ten-fold now. my friends already hate me.

the thing that i hated was a commentary by a woman who apparently writes for the wall street journal. which i didn't catch at the beginning of the segment but when, at the end, they announced her place of employment it was a big OH moment. basically she bitched about how obama shouldn't be so negative and scary about the economy when he speaks because, come on, you guys, it is SO NOT BAD out there. and she specifically mentioned that people were not selling "apples in the streets" or "standing in foodlines" as being the metrics to use to gauge exactly how effed our economy is. which, sure, these two indicators might not be happening in her neighborhoods, but, as i drove across town to the boyfriends house, i was struck by the insane amount of people standing around on street corners hawking valentines day crap. tons and tons of them. mostly in the poorer neighborhoods. i do not remember that happening last year.

oh, and tons of people are standing in food lines all across america, lady. just cuz you ain't got to yet dont mean you can discount those who do.

last night was the first night i've slept alone in my room since someone broke in my house monday night. a bit creepy, laying in the dark, thinking about this person who was in my space with me, going through my things.

also, however, kind of funny, considering that they stole a jar of coins, my deodorant, and a pair of pants. although my keys were attached to said pants. and they stole my car and crashed it into a mcdonalds.

so i've been walking to work. which has been great. better than great. i used to be such a pedestrian- i went five years in athens with no car, and, since coming to new orleans, i have become a spoiled brat as far as transportation goes. i have always loved walking, and i'm actually kind of glad that this has forced me to really rediscover that.

tentatively planning a trip to peru in august.

finally figured out how to knit socks.

feeling better. always feeling better.

so of course im sitting outside talking to a friend about how fucking depressed you've made me and that "dreams" song by the cranberries starts playing from a house across the alley and reminds me that that was the first song on the first mix tape you made me.

i wish my brain would die.

drew for the first time in forever last night.

cooked dinner for the first time in forever last night.

listened to the rain.

didn't try to tell you anything.