Of Two Minds

Hey All! Wednesday morning I take off for South Africa. I'll be using this blog for the updates, so stay tuned! Also, I totally got a deal on skype so I can call cell phones and LAN lines all Summer. AWESOME. If you want, Skype is totally free and does not require a webcam, but that's kind of what makes it awesome. Go to skype.com Near the top, skype is written in blue and white. To the right of that is a menu bar. Scroll over "get skype" then, under Computer, select the type of computer you have. Download free skype. The rest should be straight forward but send me an email if you have any difficulties. Once you have skype, go to Contacts > Add Contacts You can search for me either using my full name, Alexandria Eisenbarth, or my skype name, alexandria.e I think Arizona and Washington are in the same time zone right now. I'll be 9 hours ahead of you folks. East coasters, I'll be 6 hours ahead of you. So if you live West, when its 8 am there, it...

As a teenager, I got in the habit of posting deeply personal prose and diary-like entries to my blog. I often disabled comments because I wasn't interested in who actually saw it or getting any kind of feedback. I'm still not entirely sure why I saw it as so important but it still offers me comfort. At the time, I considered my posts angsty when, in fact, I was dealing with some pretty intense shit. As teenagers we're fed this word, "angst," to explain away why we react so strongly to life. When I was a child, I would get very very upset. Then, older people would tell me jokes and try to get me to laugh. This made me more upset, especially if it worked. As an adult, I still struggle with discerning between problems that are hard and problems that are trivial. I also struggle with knowing when it's appropriate to laugh and take ourselves with a grain of salt and when it's appropriate to react strongly. I am tempted to write "As a young adult,...

She cringed at the thought of another cigarette. Her body was punishing her for a night of indulgence. She felt the thick smoke rising slowly from every pore, her organs tired from all the work. A memory. "I keep you working just like Cinderella!" her mother would apologize when she was too ill to get up. "Just like Cinderella!" she told her organs, who groaned in response. A classmate held out to her a half-empty pack of Marlboros in offering. "No thanks," she responded. "I'm letting go of my mom." -- He had been knocking at her heart for months now. She hadn't noticed before and smiled at the thought. "Hey!" he knocked, "Let me in!" She felt sorry for not noticing, but forgave herself. She'd been so preoccupied with the hurt, how could she have noticed such a polite, gentle rapping? Furthermore, she thought she already had let him in. "I'm sorry; I didn't mean to leave you out th...