> tapioca world tour

I just got a roll of film developed from last month’s Halloween party during my last weekend in Manchester. I’m sober in this picture, since I’m always sober, but I can’t say the same for the other roomies in the photo. I miss them. I miss the collective insanity. I miss hearing phrases in 4 or 5 languages, including Gaelic; I miss Ben playing Arabic tunes on his 12-string in the room below me. I miss the dinner parties. The international parties. The drag parties. The homework parties. What fun times. What fun people. What a fun place to live. Too bad Manchester Uni was the pit of hell.
sigh…

contretemps \KAHN-truh-tahn\, noun;
plural contretemps \-tahnz\:
An inopportune or embarrassing situation or event; a hitch.

prink PRINGK, transitive verb:
1. To dress up; to deck for show.

intransitive verb:
To dress or arrange oneself for show; to primp.

cormorant KOR-mur-unt; -muh-rant, noun:
1. Any species of Phalacrocorax, a genus of sea birds having a sac under the beak; the shag. Cormorants devour fish voraciously, and have become the emblem of gluttony. They are generally black, and hence are called sea ravens, and coalgeese.
2. A gluttonous, greedy, or rapacious person.

pastiche pas-TEESH; pahs-, noun:
1. A work of art that imitates the style of some previous work.
2. A musical, literary, or artistic composition consisting of selections from various works.
3. A hodgepodge; an incongruous combination of different styles and ingredients.

tattoo ta-TOO, noun:
1. A rapid, rhythmic drumming or rapping.
2. A beat of a drum, or sound of a trumpet or bugle, giving notice to soldiers to go to their quarters at night.
3. A display of military exercises given as evening entertainment.

I have an account with skype. I have a working webcam and now (thanks to some free SndVol32.exe downloads), a working mic.

Hit me up for a free video conference! It’s so cool! You just download the app (free) at www.skype.com and add me: pazomuerte

Ok, people? People on the other side of oceans, can you hear me? Can you see me? No, you can’t, but you can if you download skype.

GOD BLESS THE INTERNET. For rizzo.

COASTING

We got the wrench
thrown in the wheels of our solo spinning plans; now I’m off-course and we’re

coasting on the sloping
thin city streets on the weekends,
past families at yard sales, scowling
drivers and bikers dressed like me;

(these are omens of consistency
or they’re omens of nothing more than
the season sinking around us from my weightless
pleasure of your company. What we’re left with

is a forward motion, a slow rolling back, glimpses of green grass in pretty patches and
broken glass in downward glances repeating and repeating on the long ride from your house to mine.
And what wind! In the evenings it swirls in patterns, whooshing like a great train, like a freight train
over these heavy days &

blowing
our futures
around) — no doubt

this is a turbulent time:

I know you know because sometimes at night your face becomes a twisted chain dropped
between the shadows and the light — why is dreaming such a struggle? You should be placid:
this is summer.

(I need congruity. I need a calm breeze.)

I need you to lean into me, these moments when you’re troubled.
For all the hours I am still here I need you to need me, just a little.

Since it’s my last night living officially at Ryan’s house, I went along with him to his show tonight at The Living Room in Providence, city you can never get out of no matter which direction you drive. The show was great, but the green room (blue room) was disgusting. There were badly-drawn penises all over the walls, and red spraypaint completely lacking any artistic integrity.

Needless to say, I thought this environment an excellent photo opp while Ry tuned up his guitars. Since I only had my phone camera, I had to make do…

I will miss this.
I will miss him when I go.

i never been fake & i never been phoney
i got more flavor than a packet of macaroni

I just rediscovered Laure-Anne Bosselaar. Although not the author of the remixed rap track quoted above, she is Belgian and excellent, like large waffles.

You should check her out.

Spiced pumpkin pecan cheesecake is awesome. Did you know it takes 64 ounces of cream cheese to make four of those pies? Unbelievable.

So I had a lovely ThanxG with the family friends. There were lots of babies and baked things. Afterwards I went to Cohasset with Adam, their son whom I’ve known since preschool, to see his new place. It’s right on the ocean, a famous sea-street called “Jerusalem Road”. His ridiculously nice studio space reminds me of what a modest salary can buy when one does not live in the city…

It also reminds me that things happen really fast: one day we’re 2, the next we’re 8, 14, then 21, suddenly we’re pushing 30…my God, you know? It’s just a bit terrifying. Adam and I sat around discussing pressure and the future and careers and travel and how we’re so old we’re nearly in our graves. Or not. I’m forcing him to go to Guatemala with me this summer for a month to do this intensive language program. I really hope the trip happens. I need things like this to look forward to, else I’ll feel squished by my small American city.

Meanwhile, Adam owns the double discs for The K&D Sessions. Why have I not owned this for four years? Track two on disc one was the soundtrack to my final video project at Smith. It was a crappy little project, but one I worked damn hard on, and I hadn’t heard that music for years til last night. So I went out and bought the compilation just now. Those Germans, that techno, I mean c’mon…when they do something, they really do it right, you know? We Americans are only known for our shoddy production of oversized cars, boiled hotdogs and embarassingly awful reality tv series.

Que peor.

In other news, Marcus is now in Laos with his friend Nat, filming and photographing displaced peoples along the Ho Chi Minh Trail for the next six months. It’s things like this that remind me life is so exciting, even if it’s not my own life.

I know some really interesting people. And the holidays always highlight their, how to say, specialness…

I am not going “home” to Philly for turkey day, for microwaved instant stuffing and cranberry slices from a can and frozen green beans defrosted in Campbell’s Cream of Mushroom, then topped with dehydrated onion rings, all of which comprise the staple Thanksgiving meal at the Dougherty household since the death of my grandmother, Anna McKeown Dougherty, the first and last great cook of my sad little family.

No, despite my mother’s pleadings, I haven’t the time or funds for a big trip like that right now; I love my ma but right now I’m more focused on moving into the new place. I’ll bake a pumpkin cheesecake for one of my pseudo-families, with whom I’ll spend the holiday, and call home while I’m eating it.

My pals, however, all do very interesting things when these commercialized occasions roll around. Does anyone really “give thanks” on one particular Thursday? I hope so, but that should be a perpetual, personal and solumn event, not a farm-animal-inspired Macy’s One-Day Sale. That said, here a few of my good friends explain their festive plans:

SHIVA
Im doing that Berlin conference thing for thanksgiving
which i dnt really want to do but its good for the resume -
and life must naturally revolve around a peice of fucking
paper so im gonna do it.

REEN
should be a great week since it’s thanksgiving and
all, but i (stupidly) volunteered to go to f’ing arizona and
observe young stars, instead of eat cranberry sauce and
mashed potatoes at home. argh. anyway. another week.
another paycheck. teaching science in the ghetto.

JOE R.
I’ll be staying in NYC this t’giving. I have to work
Wednesday and I don’t feel like traveling, and I’m not
feeling altogether festive either, to tell the truth.

They’re brilliant, these people. Honest to God, I sit up nights wondering how it is I’ve come to know all these brilliant people. Sure, they’re overworked and stressed out, but they’re inspiring, and one day, dammit, one day something great will happen to all of us….

bayley says:
“these are dark days, dougherty. dark days.”

i tend to agree with her.
it tends to pile up all at once, doesn’t it?

“I think we should stand around your camera with candles and chant something”

ha haaaaa

Everyone I know is so, so cool. I am feeling so relieved that these silly video dreams of mine might finally come to fruition…that I’ve got a team of awesome people willing to help out…that we’ve got some ideas…that the ideas are good…that we can start really soon and I can move into my new place next week and life will continue to become insanely busy but oddly, quite fulfilling…

Tonight I went to my friend Ben’s 27th birthday party. I knew him in the late 80s, and we’ve reconnected this past year — in fact, in a week, he’ll be my Central Square neighbor. Ben is probably the only person my age I know who would invite both his parents to his own birthday party…and his parents are probably the only people I know who would blend in wonderfully and kick it with their son’s friends all night. In addition to Ben and his parents, there were a lot of Quakers and chocolate cakes at this party. Not to be confused with Quaker Chocolate Cakes.

Sometimes human events and/or relationships seem bad, but when I really think about it, life is very good. I feel like a big dirty hippie for saying this, but I love everyone I know. I really do.

My pal Hiromi has, on my request, sent me these amazing recipes for cookie bars and dark chocolate cake. She was a regular in the Dougherty/Bayley household last year, cooking like crazy as a stress relief for being extremely pregnant. We ate a lot of dessert during those 9 months, thanks to this little buddha -

Really, write these down and make them. They are both absolutely amazing, even if they do make your arteries hurt a little. Oh and eat the choco cake with ice cream, please.

Magic Cookie Bars

1 stick butter
1 1/2 cups graham cracker crumbs
1 (14 oz) can sweetened condensed milk
1 (12 oz) package semisweet chocolate chips
1 1/3 cups flaked coconut
1 cup chopped pecans

Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Add butter to pan, place
pan in warm oven until butter is melted.

Add graham cracker crumbs to melted butter. Press
evenly into bottom of pan to form crust.

Pour sweetened condensed milk evenly over crust.
Sprinkle chocolate chips, coconut, then pecans and
press into crust.

Bake 25 minutes or until lightly browned. Cool and cut
into bars.
- See link -

Chocolate Fudge Cake

1 box Betty Crocker Fudge Cake Mix
1 cup sour cream
4 large eggs
1/2 cup oil
1 (4 oz) package instant chocolate pudding
1/2 cup warm water
1/4 cup coffee-flavored liqueur
1 (12 oz) package semisweet chocolate chips

Combine chocolate cake mix, sour cream, eggs, oil,
chocolate pudding, warm water, and coffee-flavored
liqueur. Stir to blend, then beat 3 minutes at medium
speed. Stir in chocolate chips.

Turn into greased and floured 10-inch bundt pan. Bake
at 350 degrees for 45 to 55 minutes or until tests
done. (If using a 9-inch pan, bake 1 hour 20 minutes.
If making cupcakes, bake 25 minutes.)
- See link -

I do.

While “sitting on babies” this afternoon, as Mats likes to title my childcare endeavors, I came across a pile of photocopied poems — about 50 copies of the same poetry packet. But let me back up a bit –

Planting the initial seeds of liberal resistance, I told the kids we should make a collage out of New York Times & Boston Globe clippings from the past 2 weeks. We made about four collages, 40% concerning the election, 15% concerning Palestine and international politics, 35% about the Red Sox, and 10% based on colored photos of international cuisine from the Food section.

During my search through the paper recycling pile, I came across these poems.

Now, the father is a stay-at-home writer, so initially I thought hey, maybe these are his. Then I read the first few lines of the first poem and it sounded familiar. But why were there so many copies of the same packet of different pubished poems? I grabbed one packet to satiate my own curiosity and now, over my 6th pint of Ben & Jerry’s “Half Baked” in the past week, I’m reading them. I think many are by Strand, others by Brits and Irishmen. The last is my favorite, though the author’s initials do not appear:

THE WINTER PALACE

Most people know more as they get older:
I give all that the cold shoulder.

I spent my second quarter-century
Losing what I had learnt at university

And refusing to take in what had happened since.
Now I know none of the names in the public prints,

And am starting to give offence by forgetting faces
And swearing I’ve never been in certain places.

It will be worth it, if in the end I manage
To blank out whatever it is that is doing the damage.

Then there will be nothing I know.
My mind will fold into itself, like fields, like snow.

- 1 November 1978 -

I take care of kids several nights a week now, and I’ve begun letting the 5-yr-old play with my phone camera. This picture is of a board game with a battery-operated dragon in the center. It represents the perfect metaphor for what my life has become… (Colorful? Dominated by intimidating but unreal antagonizing forces? Plastic? Played out according to strategy and/or luck? This is lame).

I have a song in my head. It’s by Steve Tannen, and the refrain keeps repeating:
> Monkey see, monkey do, I’m just tryin to get on back to you…

(That’s right, I said flat, and I don’t care what you think. I know this isn’t Europe but for the love of God, a girl can pretend, can’t she?!)

But seriously, the new flat is sick, or, as the British would say, the new flat is to-ally brilliant. Dropped a check off tonight; the cool chic whose room I’m taking let me buy her (new) mattress off her, so now it will stay on the loft in the room, along with a shelf and mirror and shoerack and other extemporaneous but useful items. WORD. The place is still really small for five people, but for five cool people, that’s perfectly ok with me. Countdown to Thanksgiving, eh?

Now I’ll need to make a brief trip to Philly for my large rug and tv and clothing. Anyone want to come? Or at least get a lift from New York? Free turkey included! Cmon people, you know you want to…

Ryan’s upstairs neighbor has been lucky in love lately. He got a new girlfriend, it seems, and now the floorboards above Ry’s room, where I sleep, nearly cave in on a regular basis: right now I can hear the bed squeaking against the wall in glorious testament to their great relationship (how luvly for them), while cheap techno plays on repeat to mask the thumping. Useless.

So the Harvard Bookstore sale was anticlimactic, seeing as they had no decent multimedia tutorials on sale. So I went to Borders downtown and invested in my future: thick instructional manuals for Adobe Encore DVD, AfterEffects 6.5, Dreamweaver MX, Flash MX and Photoshop CS. This collection will have to be expanded eventually to include Fireworks and Macromedia Director and Adobe InDesign and Illustrator and GoLive and Audition, but for now, I think I’ve got my plate full. Oh and I also picked up the latest copy of the Economist with Bush on the cover to add to that scrapbook in my mind, that imaginary collection of political publications and news relics from our current administration which I’ll one day show the kids when they ask, “Mama, who was Hitler?”

Meanwhile, the search for a mattress continues. Some Italians in Fenway offered me their full mattress de gratis, but I’d have to move it out of their place by the weekend. Bugger. And I went to the heart of icky Brighton today to see some Spanish girl’s stuff — lamps, vcr, whatever. She looked like a model and was really nice. Her friends were, too. We talked about Europe and the economy and PAL versus NTSC until it was time for me to leave. I decided not to buy anything. What an exciting Sunday.

I want to…I want to go…I want to go back to….ugh…Europe. AND do that intensive Spanish program in Guatemala this summer…I want I want I want…I am never comfortable sitting still; that’s why I’ll always be alone, and/or broke.

But as wise Sarah says: I think it’s time to get serious about saving money…that’s why I’m looking for a job at Peet’s. I’m going to travel the world on barista tips. Why the hell not.

Why the hell not?

so I could put it up on this here site and feel like a decent daughter.

We just had hamburgers though, and her favorite iceburg lettuce side salad with too much ranch dressing. Mom came to Beantown from Philly for a whopping 24 hours this weekend to hear a lecture. She cordially agreed to bring me my stored clothing, though after unpacking I realized what she put in the boxes are my SUMMER clothes — all winter clothing is in OTHER boxes somewhere in her attic. Arrgh…

Meanwhile Georgio Armani Mandl and I have at last caught up a bit, so to speak, benevolently, and now that we’ve consumed all his free-range eggs and fancy cheese and chicken sausages he’s gone off on a plane to western shores, where the sun shines and the sea roars and the plastic surgeons all do lunch at Taco Bell. He’ll have a good time, and hopefully will do nothing at all except relax in gorgeous weather for a week and stop thinking so much about work. You hear that, Mandl? Tranquilo!

Tomorrow is oh-so-exciting:
Harvard Bookstore is having a 20% off sale for all cardholding members, which means I can finally pick up those copies of ‘Teach Yourself Adobe Creative Suite’, ‘The Macromedia Suite MX Bible’, ‘International Organizational Management’, Clinton’s Biography, and ‘Breaking out of Beginners Spanish’ that I’ve always wanted. Here’s to self-education!!!

Then I get to go to some chic’s house and check out all the furniture she’s selling.

Then I get to kick it in Ryan’s house for another 3 weeks, since I can’t move into the new room til Thanksgiving. C’est la vie, non?

Hammer time. (Daaaaa-da-da-da)

Instead of the $3000 Peter has demanded in exchange for giving me a wedding ring and a German passport, I can put up a profile on www.marryanamerican.ca and find a foreigner husband for free.

Everyone, sign up now! The site is awesome…

What do I tell my pals overseas? “Yeah, it happened again. That dang electoral college, whatever it is. Those dang Americans. What are we gonna do with them?”

I think this is all a natural outcome of our pathetic national education system, which, being blatantly anti-intellectual, is therefore anti-democrat[ic].

Florencia called me tonight, the lowest I’ve heard her sound in years. “What do I do now, Bon?” she asked. Flo has lived in Buenos Aires, London, Munich, Boston, and now San Francisco. And she’s traveled to far more continents than that.

“There is no reason to stay in this country now,” she said. “It’s really time to leave. I have nothing going for me here; no relationship holding me here, no good job. What’s the point of staying?”

“How do you think I feel?” I said. “I just came back from Europe — I had my chance to get out and stay out [though I’m still psyched I came back, if only to see the Sox sweep the series], but I didn’t, I came home. How stupid do I feel? Quite stupid. I missed my chance to run away, even if I did come back for practical and justifiable reasons. I’m stuck here now.”

We sighed. Together on the phone, Flo in another time zone with the hot sun shining outside and me in the Andrews’ kitchen, voicing my lamentations in a whisper so the brilliant kids I take care of wouldn’t wake up.

Then I washed some dishes with cheesy rice stuck to the bottom and tried to ignore the searing pain in my head that seems to result from holding the mobile phone to my ear for longer than spans of 7 seconds. Um. The kids’ dad came home and we discussed our mutual eye ticking problem — how his ended after election day, and mine ended the day I returned from England. Que interesante…

So. What now? At least the dollar is better than the pound, in terms of what it can buy. Ice cream per pint. Avocados. Pasta. I’m no longer destined to a year-long consumption of McVittie’s chocolate digestives. I actually had two spinach salads today. And I have a new cubicle at work. Oh and I finally got an apartment, or rather a room in an apartment right down the street from the office. So thank God for all that.

I’m bored and cold in Ryan’s room while he’s off touring those dumb swing states that cost us the presidency. Up til now I’ve just been cold. I like staying here, though — which is great, cause I’ll have to stay another month before the new room is available for move-in. Maybe if I withdraw into the city of Cambridge, which I’ve never before been very much a fan of, maybe I can block out everything else — particularly unfulfilling relationships of all sorts (political, romantic, professional) — and continue to eat amazing vegetarian lunch specials at the Buddhist Cultural Center on Tuesdays, like nothin ever happened….

PS - I met Kerry yesterday. Right after he voted for himself, though that obviously did no good. This is the section where I’d normally go off on how exciting it was to shake his hand and scream his name in his face, but I’m tired and we’ve nothing really to celebrate. We just have to pray a lot now.