crinkly glass unicorn fingernails.

attempts to brighten the day's mood has me wearing floral bows around my neck, donning white fingertips, and hanging a burgundy tassel hanging from the hole of my collar-coat. trudging through the front lawn got me a ride from a med-student/friend that i only see on dance floors every once in a while; his fresh face and curl befallen on his exhausted forehead warmed the pyloric curve beneath my diaphragm. staring too much at screens gives me smarting lemon-juice eyes.

last night a dj saved my life.//

dancing harder than i have in a while. i was fortunately wandering aimlessly behind the hospital looking for nonexistent street signs to direct me to the party when a lovely faced soared upon me via bicycle. we trek up to bustling crowds and the smell of beer with my stomach twisting itself into knots; how intestines have been the inspiration for labyrinths. the continued lack of power to lloyd st meant that i could have late-night pizzas and take a bath in goats milk with good company and energetic dog-friends post-crazy party. i still feel the residue of dejection but the load has lightened, for sure.

it circles back again.

the list of losses:
1) the power at my house (and my nights spent alone under 3 layers with the smell of old matches floating in the air above me)
2) my 3 weeks of sworn celibacy that dissolved with the upswing of the proper hormones
3) $77.25 for the reconnection - an astronomical feat that is taking me a few days to scrape it all together in order for it to slip through my fingers again
4) the cellular device that's maintained a sticky web between me and the rest of the world and now leaves a sometimes-easily-forgotten black hole in the pit of my stomach
5) the energy that's kept me afloat until now and has been recently replaced with dejectedness and hopelessness
6) the internet - my back up sticky web that is out with the power
7) my laptop - the juice dripping out the battery while i was away on campus watching women have orgasms while popping babies out their uterus

the list of vices:
1) getting lost in the landscapes spun by magical-realists while elderly women beg me to take them home and simultaneously neglecting finals that will burrow themselves into my shoulders until mid-december
2) pumpkin, chocolate, cinnamon, soymilk, spaghetti (always), fried egg on toasted panini or arugula, at least every 2 hours during my 14 hour days
3) maybe avoiding a certain sweetheart for no particular reason at all
4) spending too much time with a sweetheart despite my skin being riddled with uncertainty
5) hanging out with b.r.o.b. despite needing to be in work in less than an hour
6) needing at least 3 cups of coffee a day and shamelessly trying to get my friends to hook me up with free goodies

the good things:
1) drinking a pumpkin shake while watching 'the golden compass' while @ work
2) a house show happening down the road from work
3) the possibility of walking 2 miles in the rain BUT i still have my ipod
4) my ipod! with newly acquired slavic soul party, from brussels with love, mutant disco, 70s disco from nigeria, and more!
5) breaking my 3 weeks of sworn celibacy
6) going to disney world for christmas
7) only having 2 weeks left of class then i am 'free' for a month!
8) still eating the remnants of the box of chocolate dipped pretzels dug from the pit of lowe's trash in rural north carolina
9) the people that love me though i don't see them too often

i am in his top 8!

they're still doing leech therapy. they advise it be done when there is 'vascular congestion' much like what he had on his bloated buttocks that force him to lay only on his stomach. his wife, equipped with black latex gloves, pocked at the writhing bodies on ice with scissors telling me to pick out the dead ones. 'sometimes, they get as big as your thumb,' she tells me. he maintains good humor despite the revolving door of alien bodies curious to see the hungry blackness feeding on his blood like he was a performance to be admired. he says that he should charge everyone $5 but what is it like to have a body that everyone wants to marvel in disgust at. who wants to fuck 'vascular congestion'?

the fall season.

i'm cumming all over my pants. en octubre, voy a estar un 'harlequin.' yo.

the re-ingratiation of self into the familiar academic rhythm

i feel good about this semester. i am not feeling that same oppressive weight on my heads and shoulders that i always do when i neglect reading about nursing bedside skills in order to read books about sexuality (though now my leisurely interest has now turned to linguistics and instinctual human communication networks.) i am craving hallucinogenic nights where i have my regular sightings of webs and systems and i feel fear and have meaningful conversations with inanimate objects. this should be in my near-future.

they're telling me that our numbers are falling. that they have been falling since seattle. there have been hopes that st. paul 2008 would be akin to seattle. fear and dehumanization are their real tools and it is working a little bit on me but i can't say i feel hopeless. i just know that i want to keep fighting.

and as i do this, i will continue perusing for ridiculous looking shoes to adorn my feet and ruffles on coats in preparation for the biting cold that will greet me in a month or two.

resocialization of self away from the computer screen.

broken laptop// smashed software and now all i have is a blue screen that talks to me about memory dumps and i just wonder about my photographs. trying to occupy my mind with things that do not have phallases and live six hours away and don't call me. things like public health and mothers having babies and the neuroimaging of human aesthetics and that freshmen year paper i scrambily wrote about the biological basis of human emotion - this was conducted back when i believed in the false gender dichotomy and wanted to validate my rollercoaster emotions by attributing it to something as elitist as 'science.' kompakt record label and my sick love for micro-house and wondering if i flowered a decade or so too late. it's hard for me to believe that one could not crave intimacy the way i do and it's equally as difficult for me to accept this because all i care about are my relationships with people, substances, my body, communities.

why i cannot deny this love of the interweb

i've always been horrid with being up-to-date in internetland. speaking of all things horrid, my pool of of english vocabulary words, cliches, and idioms that i regularly pull from has markedly decreased as my skill in the spanish language has increased. my perfect track record of spelling all words correctly is starting to show some blemishes. i'd like to think that my personal cerebral area that governs languages would have say ... infinite space, but it does not seem so.

my relationship with internetland is cautious at best. i have made some beautiful writings that i had posted back when livejournal was more alive than it is now that i am quite proud of. as i packed my bags this summer to oaxaca, i made the off-hand comment that maybe i could start blogging about my experience. i recieved a 'tsk' response. within my motley crew of anti capitalists, one can only authentically impart their wisdom through paper then send it circulating through the hands of friends to friends-of-friends. then the real badge of honor will come when the zine is displayed in some local infoshop.

as someone who has experienced the full extent of alienation and isolation (and am aware of the cop out 'i am only a product of my socialization waah waah waah and that what is important is to first, realize this, before setting about to resocialize myself) and someone who had JUST become comfortable walking into my own local infoshop, the internet was my free literature. now that my comfort threshold has reestablished itself, and i have been happily introduced to a whole host of literature and information that i can't wait to gobble up, i just want to give tribute to those who do put the time and effort to post writings on the internet. it may be seen as less authentic but it may reach other people who were like me in their young'un dayz.

spring break 2008

fly out saturday. march 8, 2008 @ noon
guatemala here i come! poot!

my heart just turned into a fuzzy lil bunny.

letter of intent to get some cash

another letter in need of some editing

Dear Kathy Moore,
I am writing this in hopes of extracting some funds in pursuit of a global health career in Nursing, specifically, for my summer 2008 externship abroad. I have come to you in the beginning of the fall 2007 semester and recieved $3,000 in emergency loans when my financial aid failed to come in on time to pay for my tuition and books so you may be already somewhat familiar with my financial state. During class time, I have to work at least 16 hours a week to pay for bills, rent, and food but I am serious about my nursing career and I am serious about my desire to give my nursing skills in the field of global health. I have been wanting to join the PeaceCorp since high school so global aid has always been on the agenda (is this sentence too overdone?)
In addition to being accepted to the Nursing School, I also recieved acceptance into the School of Radiology at UNC for a bachelor's in Radiologic Science. Pay for Radiologic Technicians tends to be higher than Registered Nurses and the curriculum at the School of Radiology is supposedly easier than the demands of Nursing School. However, it is the venue of global health in Nursing that appealed to me and pushed me to become a Nurse rather than a Radiologic Technician.
I am going to Guatemala over spring break with Chris Harlan. I paid for the trip out of pocket and the cost amounted to $1,260. However, my interest is in Southeast Asia so I thought that I should do my summer externship over in that region.
My mother grew up in the Philippines and I still have family over there. I would be staying with my grandfather so housing and food would not be a huge deal. My cousin works as a doctor over at the University of Santo Tomas hospital in Pasay City, Manila. I had just written a letter of intent to the Nursing Director there via my cousin in order to get a volunteer job over the summer. My mom spoke with an agent and got an estimate for a round trip plane ticket for $940. I can only stay in the country for a month since I would only be volunteering there and not making any money. I have held a job since the age of 15 and have barely kept my head above water so not having an income for a month would be a huge financial blow. However, the benefits of this experience would outweigh the risks and I would love to be able to do my externship abroad. Thank you for your time and I hope to hear from you soon.

Sincerely,
Leilani Trowell
711282632

my letter of intent to the philippines

this needs editing, need input, please. i am trying to get a job in the philippines so i had to write a letter of intent, help me get a job abroad!

To Whom It May Concern,
I am a second-year nursing student getting my bachelor's degree at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. In terms of the ranking of our school,we have been deemed #4 in annual research funding from the National Institutes of Health (2005) , our Graduate programs are in the top 10 according to U.S. News and World Report (2007) and we boast a 98% NCLEX overall pass rate for 2006. (The NCLEX is the national nursing exam each nursing graduate must pass in order to recieve his or her license to practice.) Within our school, there is a growing interest in Global Health and it is precisely this that pushed me into the nursing field. I have been wanting to join the PeaceCorp since I was in high school so global aid was always on my agenda. I am going to Guatemala for 10 days in March to work in some rural clinics located outside the colonial capital city of Antigua. A few of the nursing students in the past have travelled abroad to places like Malawi and Honduras but my interest lies primarily in Southeast Asia. No one from the faculty at our school has contacted the directors at Santo Tomas Hospital before because I am the first who has expressed a primary interest in working in the Philippines. My mother is an alumn of the University which was how we were able to have contacts in the hospital.
By May, I would have already had my clinical rotations in Medical-Surgical, Psychiatric, and Pediatric. I have had my nursing assistance license since May 2006. Initially, I had worked in home health, travelling to people's homes who require some assistance with tasks of daily living such as personal hygiene, house keeping, and assistance with reading medications. However, when I moved to Chapel Hill, I applied to the hospital and have been working there since January 2007. I work for the House Float Pool, which means that I go to all of the units whenever they require assistance, including in the emergency department, all of the critical care units, psychiatric, pediatric, women's hospital, and the regular floor units. My experience is vast but only within the context of an American hospital, since I am wanting to work in developing nations, it would be ideal for me to gain experience outside the country. Thank you for your time. I hope to hear from you soon.

Sincerely,
Leilani Trowell

bossy.

last night i was bossy and restless. today, i was sad for no reason at all. tonight, i will climb the roof of an incomplete building with some cheap red wine and a person i've been neglecting since october. i think february and ennui are one-and-the-same for me each year. the philippines is getting further away but guatemala is coming closer.