I have found that the people I most want to be honest with continually doubt my sincerity.

How can it be that when my heart is open I am the least convincing?

A plausible hypothesis:
I’ve convinced myself that I feel what I don’t actually feel, and everybody knows but me.

Here I am talking about myself again.

It’s what I’m best at anyway.

(Except during interviews.)

happens even in my dreams.

Yesterday Terry was telling me how he saves money buying lighters in five-packs.

Last night, Dream Character A was awfully disapproving of Dream Character B’s purchase of a five-pack of lighters. Shocked even. As far as I know they didn’t know each other, and I was surprised by DCA’s emotional investment in another Dream Character’s purchase. I don’t know how we wound up in that store. We probably needed Robitussin. Or pantyhose.

Let me get this job.

I will be a reformed woman. I won’t oversleep. I’ll remember to buy toilet paper. I’ll never toy with anyone’s emotions again.

I’ll ride my bike to work. I’ll be the best damn communications coordinator that organization has ever seen.

I swear.

Til next time,
Susie J.

Or if they don’t know, they ought to. What they ought to know is that olefactory sensory input goes straight to the limbic system, the part of the brain responsible for emotional processing and response.

This differs from any other sensory system, though they all eventually have projections to the limbic system. Any visual input, for instance, is first processed by a myriad of systems within the visual cortex before relevant parts are sent in for emotional processing.

This explains why I still get a little nostalgic whenever I notice a slight trace of Calvin Klein One. No matter how much of an asshole He had turned out to be.

This morning the world had this particular scent of freedom promised but never delivered. A haunting scent, I remember wanting to buck the system when first smelling it at fourteen years of age. Not only captivating, but also disorienting, I find myself transported to the desert, to the side of a highway. There’s a mail truck, and Siamese Dream is playing on the stereo. Maybe we decide to paint the truck a variety of different colors. Maybe we just lie around in the dust and watch the clouds float on. They’re moving really quickly now, and one looks like those giraffes painted on the columns at the intersection of Harrison and Santa Clara Avenue. Our picnic lunch of Coronas, mushroom chocolates and cucumber sandwhiches is chilling in the foreign mail bin. Now? No, let’s enjoy the clouds a little more.

In high school I would stare out the classroom window, day dreaming til the bell might ring and I could gallavant my way home through parks and malls and daisy chains.

College was the best: countless discussion sections abandoned. Now that was freedom. I didn’t need daisy chains. I had made countless friends from books and acquaintances. Life was good.

And today…well, luckily for me, today I’m trapped in an office where the smell can’t reach me. That’s how they keep us down. Seriously, yo.

that I would drive enough to have road rage.

But I drive a lot now, and my rage is consuming. But I rarely get angry at fellow drivers, nor at those poor pedestrians. No, I don’t mind stopping for Mom and Baby to cross, and I just fear for the safety of those people that drive really slow in the fast lane.

It’s the bikers that get my goat.

I support bikers–at least those ones that know how to ride. I wish I was a biker. They’re always so hot with their back packs and tight bums. I’ve had day dreams of rolling up my right pant leg and securing my helmet. The only time I actually tried biking since elementary school, I rolled up the wrong pant leg and wound up with a huge tear. And I didn’t have a helmet to wear. I was terrified the entire time. I looked like G on those rolling paths surrounding the Kroller-Muller museum. Her knuckles were so white, I thought she might break her fingers off. Training wheels might have set her mind at ease.

Even in elementary school I understood more about the rules of the road then the damn bikers around nowadays. I bet G does too.

What on earth possesses them to ride their bikes on the left side of the street?! Do they really want to witness the final seconds of Death’s approach?

What could they possibly be thinking that would lead them to slowly meander across a street with traffic coming at them in both directions?! They’re insane, and they’re a menace to city streets.

One should really have to pass a driving test to drive a bike on the road. It could be a really simple test:

1. A biker’s proper place should be riding:

A. Against traffic
B. With traffic

2. When crossing the street, one should:

A. Use the crosswalk
B. Cross with traffic
C. Just make it; it really doesn’t matter how you do it.

3. A bicyclist is technically:

A. A pedestrian
B. A vehicle

I think even taking the test would be educational, even if people failed and rode their bikes anyway.

This one time I was walking down Telegraph and this obnoxious bike cop was cycling next to me on the sidewalk. Yes, on the sidewalk! I stopped him, and said increduously, “Oh my! Sir, I thought it was illegal to ride one’s bike on the sidewalk? What changed?”

He didn’t think I was funny. I didn’t either; I was honestly confused.

my lesbian friends refer to their lovers as “breezies” which has prompted my obsession with the term. Apparently it’s slang for “fine thang” but “thang” here is necessarily female.

I want to use it universally. I want any lover to be a “breezy” regardless of their gender.

I’m so good at turning that pesky pyramid upside down, or whatever.

I do not want to move to the city. I find it a formidable cesspool.

I reserve the right to reconsider when and if:

a. g. moves from the East Bay
b. my cat needs a place to live
c. you threaten to leave me in Oaktown to grow mold on my eyelids
d. (insert exit clause here)

Thanks for listening.

Love,
Susie

p.s. Kat–got it. On it. Can’t wait!