And another thing about Sean...

Once, Sean tried to tell me that he liked M. Night Shyamalan despite the many faults of his movies. He said, “Anyway, I like M. Night Shmyamlan…Shymalama…crap. I like M. Night ShyamaLAMA-DING-DONG.” Well, now we both LOVE Shyamalamadingdong. Sean compared seeing "Lady in the Water" last night to watching "The Neverending Story" when we were 6. He was right. Go see it if you like things that are awesome.



















EQUALS



















EQUALS AWESOME.


Q.E.D.

He takes my heavy things from me.

Sean kissed my forehead and took my heavy clothes from me last night.

He did this after we stripped, giggling in the hallway leading to our apartment.

We stripped after we walked, with patient steps past questioning faces, without any free records, doused by a thunderstorm for blocks and blocks.

We walked after we helped a music store owner rescue his sidewalk records from a light rain.

We rescued after we decided we loved (too much to take cover!) the few, chilled raindrops that landed on us like tiny birds and then flew away by evaporating on our hot skin.

We loved the few, chilled raindrops after we sweltered on the sidewalks of South Philly, walking home from a movie theater.

We sweltered and walked home after we saw "Lady in the Water".

We saw "Lady in the Water" after we meandered to the movie theater.

We meandered to the movie theater after Sean met me on the street, kissed my forehead and took my heavy bag from me.

A list of 5 things of which I currently cannot get enough (2)

Spinach salad with mango spears

www.gofugyourself.com

The stories in "How We Are Hungry"

Old postcards

Old people

Asking to Pee or How to Pour a Cool Death on My Usually Burning Love.

The fight began before it began. We were at 30th Street Station waiting for a train to Atlantic City. At Au Bon Pain, Sean failed to estimate how much his sandwich would cost and so he failed to take the appropriate amount of money from his wallet. He waited for the cashier to display the amount then rifled through his wallet and pockets, like a normal person . I don’t want to date a normal person. I want to date Efficient. We sat to eat. Clocks ticked and our train’s number worked its way to the top of the Arrivals/ Destinations board. Sean failed to wrap up his sandwich and screw the cap on his sparkling soda before the board displayed our track number. The board displayed our track number. People rushed to track 4 and we both saw it. I got up, speaking with my actions. He stayed seated, wrapping up his trash. Finally, he stood and stepped towards me, but instead of walking towards track 4, he shot all of my remaining love dead by asking, “Mind if I go to the bathroom real quick?”

We got the last two seats together on the car. It took me 20 minutes to open my mouth about it. If I'd said anything sooner, it would have started with, “It’s over” and ended with, “because!! I!! hate!! how!! you!! do! everything!" I would have easily exceeded a rational person's exclamation point quota. The fight filled the car with fierce whispers and bursts of noise. Finally, Sean spackled my mouth shut and dropped my heart when he said, “You’re such a stress-case, Jess; you stress about things after they haven’t even happened. We’re sitting together, right? We got seats, right? You complain and you stress and you worry about EVERYTHING.”

So this is the background for the questions I lately mull over.

1. Where exactly is the line between efficient and stress-case?

2. Why is Sean so freaking relaxed (read: slow)?

3. How much is a crack-pipe?

California, the time is right.

Today my mom called from the road to tell me she was safe. She called yesterday to say she was safe in Missouri and the day before, she was safe in Indiana and the day before, Ohio, and the day before, PA, and the day before that, she and my father and my sister and my cat and 2 dogs spent the last night at our once-home in Mahopac, New York 10541.

Dad told me he narrowly avoided two car accidents in New Jersey on their first day of driving. Rather than lauding his excellent driving skills, I convinced myself that all statistics stand in favor of my family's certain death or loss of limbs. As I see it, they are tempting fate. They might as well climb a mountain with golf clubs raised in a lighting storm or cover themselves in honey and salmon for a hike in bear country. A pit stop at my grandparent's Arkansas home keeps them safe right now, leaving my worries hushed and my sleep restful. The only threat I can think of Arkansas bringing is a very real one- that a spankin' new Walmart might fall from the sky, crushing my family flat as that posessed smiley face that knocks the prices (as well as my mistaken belief that rampant sexism and monopolies were illegal) down to the ground.

"So, I'm half way, now. Half way between my old life and my new life. I feel weepy," my mom said on the phone.

Soon, the fam will settle into a small house overlooking the Pacific ocean in Rancho Palos Verdes, California. There, banana leaves shade people and Birds of Paradise adorn front lawns. My mom worried about and mourned the move for months. Of course she did. Time and energy drove her roots deep through Mahopac. Circumstances pulled and tugged until my family separated from New York soil and they're all sore and dying a little bit right now. Soon, though, soon soon Thursday soon, they'll be sinking into Califonia soil and their frayed ends will heal while seeking drink and food. They'll settle themselves in the ground again. Friends wait to be made. Boys wait to pass out from Lindsay's hotness. Yoga classes wait to be taken. Legs wait to be slimmed on beachy walks and skin waits to be dipped in the ocean.

What I read when the thought of leaving chills my skin.

From A Year in the World, by Frances Mayes:

Travel pushes my boundaries. When you travel, you become invisible, if you want. I do want. I like to be the observer. What makes people who they are? Could I feel at home here? No one expects you to have the stack of papers back by Tuesday, or to check messages, or to fertilize the geraniums. When traveling, you have the delectable possibility of not understanding a word of what is said to you. Language becomes simply a musical background for watching bicycles zoom alongside a canal, calling for nothing from you. Travel releases spontaneity. You become a godlike creature full of choice, free to visit the stately pleasure domes, make love in the morning, sketch a bell tower. You open, as in childhood, and-for a time- receive this world. There’s the visceral aspect, too- the huntress who is free. Free to go, free to return home bringing memories to lay on the hearth.

A girl can dream...

I received an email at work this morning. This is my dream response to it:

Dear Dr. Dalton,

Please find my responses in bold below.

Hello, hi, butthead,

I declined to review this manuscript after recieving IT’S I BEFORE E EXCEPT AFTER C, IDIOT an email voicing the opinion of being "very disappointed" in my inability to review this paper in a timely manner, and that I am "ignoring" professional reminders. BUT YOU WERE UNABLE AND YOU WERE IGNORING- YOU'VE HAD THE PAPER FOR A MONTH! DO YOU READ ONE WORD PER HOUR? Rather than prolong the editor's agony AGONY? UGH. I HATE HYPERBOLE MORE THAN DEATH and to continue to promote extreme EXTREME? AGAIN, I HATE IT WITH THE STRENGTH OF A THOUSAND BURNING SUNS disappointment, I felt it best to decline to review this manuscript.WHERE'S YOUR SENSE OF COMMITMENT, WIMP? I HATE YOUR GUTS.

William S. Dalton, Ph.D., M.D., LOSER

Worst regards possible,
Jessica

SEAN'S COMING TO IRELAND.

I opened the letter.
I read it over the phone.
He called his family.
He came home.
I did a jig in the bathtub.
He threw his head back, grinning face to the ceiling.
We danced to Fergie's.
We drank beer.
We planned adventures on bar napkins.
We gobbled food and laughed.
We’re going to Ireland together.

Passing on the crazy

When I walk home from work, I pass a crazy (maybe?) man who looks perpetually suprised, bemused and harmless, kind of like Crabman from "My Name is Earl."


I can't stop my face from imitating his because I want to see how it feels on and when I do, I become the crazy (maybe?) person for other people. I wonder if those people imitate me and then other people think they're crazy and so on and so on until a bunch of quickly-Crabmans roam the city inspiring others to be quickly Crabman around 4:45 PM Monday-Friday.

Letters to be written:

Ray Lamontagne-thank you; are you okay?

Guster- thank you; Brian, why do you play the drums without sticks?

Jonathan Safran Foer- belated congrats on baby; what is your wife like?; thank you; do you need a protégé ?

Tzipi Livni- have strength and heart; I think often of what's going on; have more strength and more heart.

Rite Aid- you've been horrible. Absolutely horrible! Please hold a customer service training seminar ASAP.

James Joyce- I know you're dead but I have so many things to ask you and yes I said yes I will yes.

John Krasinski- good job; do you have to be funny and charming to play funny and charming?; I adore Jim/(you?).

Andrea Lafferty and Rev. Louis P. Sheldon-- you are terrifying; stop now; you're hurting people; how can you?; please call so we can really talk this out for hours.

Fergie's pub- Pete's wings are delicious; Mo is an excellent waitress; thank you for: always pouring our beer in glasses with the name of our beer on them/ bringing bluegrass to me so often.

Philadelphia Trolly Tours- good job.

Ray and Guster

For Lindsay's birthday, I bought her a ticket to a Ray Lamontagne/Guster concert at Festival Pier. It was last Thursday. We laughed a lot. Lindsay dipped her pretzel in the left-over cheese from Pete's cheesesteak and they joked. My friend Stacie talked about some casual sex in front of her and I let her sip my beer when it got dark. I was proud that she was my sister, so I told her.

RAY

When Ray came on, my heart burst into a million pieces and then those pieces burst again like they were all little hearts themselves and it kept happening until he walked off stage. Until he walked off stage. He walked off stage. He walked. Off stage. I kept repeating it to people after he did so, because he really did just walk off stage. This is how it happened- he said he would play a couple more songs. Someone up front shouted sounds and he said, "Sure I could play that one, too" and I wished I knew what Someone said so I could expect it with him. Then Ray played "All the Wild Horses" with his eyes closed. When he finished, he tossed his guitar down. He walked off stage. I don't know why he was upset, but I'm going to write him a letter to ask him. I'll send along the postcard of a picture of a boy reading a book to an elephant, which I love, which I first saw on a billboard on my way home from work in NYC while Ray was on my IPod, which I listened to while on my way to Pier 54 to see Gregory Colbert's "Ashes and Snow" exhibit, which I saw again at Santa Monica Pier while visiting family and telling them about Ray. I feel like the elephant talks to the boy, telling him which parts of the story he likes or when the story is boring, and when he does, it sounds like a Ray Lamontagne song, and sometimes, the boy is the elephant's guitar for him. Here it is:

I'll let you know if I hear anything back.

GUSTER

As for Guster, they strummed joy out of their guitars and rose a huge, orange moon with their voices. Lindsay and I faced each other to sing the songs we knew into grinning faces. I will write them a letter, too, because I shouldn't just write letters to see if people are okay or to complain. Guster is different from Ray because when they said they'd play a few more songs and people booed a bit, they smiled into the crowd and commented on a man sitting atop his friend's shoulders while waving his shirt in the air. They said that if they could see at least 5 more sets of man-boobs, then they would play at least 5 more songs. So the crowd filled with man-boobs, shirts spiraling from hands and laughter. Guster laughed and the crowd laughed and we clapped so they would know we didn't want them to leave, but that was the end of their set so they had to say thank you and leave. We kept clapping and they came out again, shirtless, showing their own man-boobs and making life-long fans while we all screamed the classics to each other-band and audience-surrounded by man-boobs.

I need some cool stationery.

saving last year's sent emails from a closing account

Three important emails from 2005



I'm dying of:

mean people on the street. This morning a hobo looked up at me and said, "You're not that pretty. You need to lose weight." I wanted to say, "You're a hobo," but I couldn't bear to.

your emotionlessness. It's infuriating me. I need some passion or sadness or regret!! I feel utterly insane about you-worked up and tied in knots-coming out of my apathy like from the closet. I'm vigorous and hungry and feeling knawed at. You get off the phone so fast. You don't say, "I wish" anymore. Has your heart grown cold, dead, black and stone?? I'm going to beat you move far away if you don't start loving me like you're supposed to.

Sean.

this job. I have approx. one hour and 20 minutes of work to do in 8 hours. I forgot my wallet today, which means I have to be buzzed in, embarassingly, because I don't have my simplex card.

I can't remember the last time I wasn't tired.

my weight. As the woman said, I need to lose weight. I'm not that pretty.

As I see it, I can do something about the latter two. What sucks is I can't do anything about the job until I hear something from Penn Press. I really want to take classes there for free and my chance of getting a job there would be severly limited if I quit this job now for a million reasons. I feel so stuck, stuck, stuck stuckstuckstuckstuckstuckperiod.

STUCK is SUCK with a t.

you make me a drama queen, stoneheart.
______________________________
Lowtalker,

I really hope your throat is feeling better.

Guess what!??!!>!??!?!?!:MOIN@!!"?!?!?!
Guess.
Okay fine, I'll tell you.

IT'S ONLY 9 DAYS UNTIL WE ARE DRIVING DOWN TO WVA. That's it. 9. Nine. Neuf. Nueva. Oh baby, baby, baby.

So today is Alison's last day and I am sad. I also have a lot of work to do which makes me pretty sad. Plus, Sco threw up on the train this morning and I left my wallet at home in Mahopac, so I have to meet my dad in Yonkers again tomorrow. And I need to show picture ID to get into my interview today at 2:30. Hahaha.

You know what I say to all of that? Nine. I say nine days until cabins, love, hiking, good food and long showers and ipods filled with thought and taste and a nice readjustment and laughing hard and eating hard and sunrises and fires.

I'm going to get back to work. I hope your final went/ goes well. I'm sure it will. I'll let you know how the interview went.

Much love,
J

_________________________________
Of course I remember. I was laying stomach down on my bed in Taylor Hall and I was thinking I knew what was going to happen. I was trying to decide if it's what I wanted and then you said it and I went blank.

I remember how Ron IM'd me and how it was so easy to sit next to you and how I searched the whole night for your shoes on the stairs and followed you everywhere on the sly, and how we talked about reading and fishing and you made it seem so normal that Tony was making out next to us. I remember how I wrote out what I was going to say when I called you the first time and how I didn't think you were going to call me back, and how you called me back when I was at a makeup counter with my mom and Linds in the Allentown Mall and I hopped from side to side afterwards to make them laugh and to release the nervous energy in my belly.

I remember even more about sitting on the bridge in the park and telling you I liked you all the way to 17th street and you said you liked me out of allentown all together. I remember junior year and feeling very sad that you might think about failure when you saw me at Muhlenberg, and very afraid I would associate your breath with my panic. Doesn't that seem so ass silly now? And I remember at the end of senior year, feeling like the only thing tugging me together when I was falling apart on grad day (a.k.a. wake up call of my life day) was knowing I wasn't losing you, and that, if anything, we were going to get better and better. Let's try this again.

Love.

The nerve to give notice

It only took me an hour to walk into her office, but once I did, I laughed at myself for worrying.


Kelly Hadsell/AACR
07/18/2006 10:34 AM
To David Buff/AACR@aacr, Crystal Cheepudom/AACR@aacr, Kristin Murray/AACR@aacr, Naima Stone/AACR@aacr, Michael Williams/AACR
cc Jessica R. Farris/AACR@aacr
Subject No, no, no, no, no!!!!!!!!

Hello, all. I am sorry to report that Jess has tendered her resignation with the AACR. Her last day of work will be August 11. She has been afforded a once-in- a-lifetime opportunity to study in Dublin, Ireland for a year. I'm sure that you all join me in wishing her well and we need to get started planning a big send-off for her!

__________________________________
I'm leaving a good place.

"What's that on your bag?"

"Is that underwear?"

That's all anyone I passed had to ask.

***

Today's lunch hour started in Joyce Leslie. I was looking for a simple, black, jersey dress. What I found was a little leopard-print humiliation.

I wandered through Joyce Leslie for about 10 minutes, moving deeper into the complicated net of a poorly planned store layout. I zigzagged my way back to the wide walking space in the middle, dodging pointy jewelry racks and skimming the poles that hold the clothes.

I left JL and meandered to Hallmark to buy a "welcome to your new house!" card that will wait in a CA mailbox until my parents get there. Got a weird look from the lady behind me, but chalked it up to lunch hour grumpiness. I browsed through the cooking and literature sections at Borders and got a few more looks. I left The Gallery to buy a hotdog on the street and I walked around the block a couple times while I ate it. Was I being paranoid or were those girls giggling and talking about me? I went to the post office to buy a stamp for the Hallmark card and thought I heard someone behind me say "thong." Finally, I walked through the doors to my workplace, in front of a couple of women, noted a giggle after I flashed the guards my ID badge, and was followed into the elevator by Dave, a cool guy who works in production and ascended in obliviousness.

I used my magnetic card to open the door on our floor while Dave stood behind me. Then I checked in with my boss and walked by cubicle after cubicle saying hi to everyone before my beautiful Naima said "Hold up. Jessica, my love, why are you hanging a thong from your bag at work?"  

To be clear there was

A

Joyce

Leslie
Leopard-print

thong

on

a

hanger

dangling

from

the

side

pocket

of

my

bag.

Oh my God.




No, no, no.

The looks and giggles clicked into reality. It made for an interesting day! Maybe I should leave it on??

Trust Naima to say what needed to be said. Dave, you are totally forgiven because I never want to hear you say the word undies. 

Photos courtesy of Naima.

Reasons why I may someday weigh 900 pounds

Monday-Friday at 11:30 or 3:00 and sometimes at 11:30 and 3:00, I slip 75 cents in the vending machine and hit E8- the sweet combo of buttons that makes the Snickers fall. Then I whisper, “Hey beautiful,” while I undress it.

Because you don’t scare me, large bucket of hot wings. You make my vegetarian friends, who eat you when drunk, poop hot butt lava. Others, who may not know you so well, have picked their noses with your sauce still on their fingers. They are idiots. For some, your mere size intimidates. What will they do with the left-overs? THERE SHOULD BE NO LEFTOVERS, I say, mouth full, from atop my mountain of wings. It has been written and shall be so that he who so ordereth the wings of hotness shall eat them with swiftness and totality forever and ever until they are gone.

Not so long ago, my mother taught me how to make a delicious and healthy apple/berry crisp with a little bit of butter, brown sugar and rolled oats. What I took from the tutorial: one stick of butter, half a bag of brown sugar and a little bit of oats mixed together in a pan makes a fantastic dinner.

Sweet potato fries with Ketchup.

SWEET AS PAH (pie).

My friend Naima just returned from a week and a half in Alabama. When I asked her how things went, she said, "I got off the plane and it was so hot- so hot I just melted and thought, I'm home." Then she used words like Daddy, dandelion wine, magnolia and honeysuckle. She sounds like she’s singing a little when she talks, and when she’s at work with me, her music lolls me happily to quitting time.

More Naima praise:

She has a full soul that pours out and bathes me when she tells stories. And they are good stories. For instance, today I found out that Naima was a phone sex operator in college. When she wanted to quit, the same adult entertainment company trained her as a psychic. A couple of times she got nervous because she was off base with people, so she just hung up the phone- like the time a woman called and Naima said, "I don't see things going well or evolving with your boyfriend," and the woman said, "But...he just proposed to me."

Also, every time we talk, she makes me laugh.

She asks questions like she's inhaling the world and then breathing herself and her inquiries back into it- as such a breather, she looks in place and involved with wherever she is.

She compares paper cuts with me. When one of mine is bad, she makes me feel like I hiked up my pant leg to show her the shattered knee I got in 'Nam. It's so fulfilling to be validated like that.

She notices a billion things.
************************

I'm glad she's back.

Delicious Glaceau Fruit Water... Sean put it perfectly when he said, "It's like you thought rain would taste when you were a kid."

Not girl ones. REAL ones.

Tonight was my favorite "Rough 'N Tough" aerobics class. The instructor, Arik, likes to make the class grunt and we like to grunt. We all follow him up the aggression face of Work Out Mountain- punching, kicking, grunting, sweating to so much techno and then he turns on the slow version of "When Doves Cry" and we glide down the other face, Tibetan monk face. I feel like a lotus flower when we end. Sean likes my aerobics class too, because I physically abuse him mostly sometimes now instead of totally always.

This class is a part of my plan to be a better Jess. For the last year or so, I’ve been trying to look at my body and think kind things instead of berating myself for not sculpting thinner legs or growing better hair. In the beginning of this whole talking to myself thing, I had to scream a flat, stiff blanket of semi-genuine niceties over the rambling breaks in my self-confidence. Now, I really mean it.

Sometimes in bed, I'll lift my legs up so they're perpendicular to the bed and say, “Holy crap, you guys keep me going on the city sidewalks, weaving me between fast bicycles and slow girls in heels. You take me out of bed in the morning and sink me into baths at night. You run me places when I’m excited and absorb my springing joy at concerts. Awesome.”

To my arms, I say, “Yo arms, thanks for reaching books on tall shelves and wrapping yourselves around the people I like a lot.

To my mid, “Shout out to the tummy for anchoring my body and keeping my back strong. Thanks for the balance. Nice job with all the guys, boobs.”

It didn't used to be this way. Allow me to make an excuse for myself by sharing with you a snippet of my highschool graduation. The superintendent, Dr. Sabatella, read out the names of my graduating class,“Gina Danitella, Angelina Dennabella, Lisa Donatucci, Michelangela Fabiwasborninitalymonapoli, Jessica Farris, Daniella Ferrario…” Perhaps you’ve deduced that in this crowd, your hair could not be dark or shiny enough, your boobs not copious and your butt un-apple-like. My innocent reflection withstood years of unfair comparisons. I tugged my hair straight and I plumped and thinned my limbs through binges and diets.

For the last year or so, I’ve also been trying to see a cheeseburger as a delicious and simple mixing of beef, bread and cheese rather than a fat, juicy ticket to self-loathing. I know a cheeseburger is a cheeseburger but, to me, it feels a lot like an ugly hook-up I brought back from the bar. I lay in bed the morning after and still feel the stare of the cheeseburger’s squinty eyes; its toenails are unclipped, it has plaque, gingivitis and an unfortunate mushroom cut, and the filthy memory of our merging is with me long after it’s gotten up to put on its blue jeans and split. No matter how many times I tell myself before sleep that it was okay to eat it, okay to treat myself, okay to mess up a little, I still wake up and smell its breath. I’m haunted and unforgiving. I’m working on that.

In the meantime, my new favorite thing about being healthy is the power felt when completing 15 regular push-ups when 2 weeks ago I could only do 10.

lazy week

Because today was a day of work which came after a day of no work, it feels like tomorrow should be Tuesday. However, it will be Thursday- a most blessed day. I salute you, 4th of July, by laying back and playing some guitar the day after you came, for the weekend is almost here.

Like Li’l Kim, this will be my first free weekend in a very long while. I will entertain no visitors nor will I visit anyone. No appointments plague me, I'm no obligation's bitch, there will not even be any plans for fun. There may be cleaning, but I’m just sick enough to think that’s awesome.

My to-do list is as follows:

Go to the Salvation Army, if you feel like it.
If the mood strikes, finish Herzog.
Maybe rent a movie.
You may possibly crave a berry crisp. Make it. Or don’t.

I feel a little guilty about this idle weekend, but the forthcoming pleasure is surefire as a sober, southern man. I suspect it will be similar to, as Dave Attell once mused, eating a Bald Eagle egg…wrong, but filled with the sweet taste of freedom.

Do you know what time it is? Tenacious Sean time....

I ask you, HAVE YOU EVER HEARD AN ANGEL SING?










Becuase there's one in my apartment with an affinity for lime green shirts.