Bright Lights; Bigger City

Takin apart my first bike in two years, it's as much of a question mark as it was with that dusty rusty Schwinn cruiser....but this time there's no co-op, no wall of wrenches! Which I miss! It's just me in a parking lot behind my apartment, squeezed between a rice paddy and Surprise Land. K-pop in my headphones makes this place as bumpin' as a gay bar, though, and I look pretty dykey so I guess it all fits.

Been seriously debating the role of the city in my identity. Like, what am I when people can't sneer that I'm a city girl.....just a dummy in a tank top with a weird haircut. Been trying to embrace that dummy this week. And having a surprisingly hard time. Doesn't help that I got wasted with students at a BBQ and karaoke and had to struggle with a terrible hangover my only other day off this week.

So I guess I'll have to wait and see
But I'm just gonna let something brand new happen to me

So this week it's been "deny the city, deny that girl, she's in Chicago, she's in Dakar. She's far as sin, so forget about her for a year and live this new life."
And of course LOVE this new life, too.

I been livin for the weekend
But no not anymore

And for a moment finally, I felt relieved....I can sit on my ass covered in dirt in a parking lot next to a rice farmer sowin' his rice paddy, and realize I don't have the right size wrench to pull apart a bike I got for free out of a student's garage.

But I thought about something really fucking awesome. That I want to want the city too, and that it's okay that I'm excited to be there this weekend.

And it may just be more of the same
But sometimes you wanna go where everyone knows your name

So shout out to my little sister, who's way wiser to me, and who brought me around to these thoughts with a bit of SICK pop music, thank you cee lo.


And it's alright
It's alright
Bright lights and the big city


Now Friday's cool
But there's somethin about Saturday night
You can't say what you won't do
Cuz you know that you just might
I'm alive this evening
It was love at first sight
This Saturday
And every Saturday for the rest of my life



And everyone's standin in line
Yeah lookin good and lookin for a real good time
So I'll never have to wonder if
I'll have someone to share all of this with




Yes I need it
Everybody does
Cocktails and conversation
Music and making love

Suwa-neazy me-eazy: A confession.

Torn between two lifestyles again—

ONE: there’s the first grader that wants to only live in books, with dynasties, and misguided evil-doers and charismatic, wise old tutors and lifelong kinship with horses, etc and TWO: that every-second-is-lent-to-you-by-luck to enable your personal efforts to slow the snowballing of pandemic poverty, so act accordingly, efficaciously and in good taste.

Suwa-shi is the most selfish place I’ve ever lived, THAT’S for sure. I have health insurance, I throw away leftovers, and I live alone, journal alone, read alone and catch up on the social media I missed as a kid…alone. I’m fascinated, entertained.
What do I remember from my youth?
The day I stopped shopping in the sci-fi, fantasy section. What a painful, terrible memory—like the moment you’re sent to military boarding school and your future is decided forever until the day you sit down in the middle of war and think “what am I doing, and who is it that brought me here?”.

I have a confession to make: I’m a nerdy-ass, super not-cool, sci-fi idiot….the kind that weeps!
Out of desperation that I’m not descended from gods, that I wasn’t orphaned as a kid only to discover later my latent destiny to revive the magic of mankind. I have been in mourning since the day I first put my butt down on the carpet in the Young Adult section of the public library.






I, Olivia, prefer my books today; and movies that take place on planets with beautiful people and righteous royalty…… what makes my books a stranger fiction than what people think about Burma or Tibet or the Arizona border, or child-sex-tourism...all of it is unreal to somebody--most of it is stuff we only read about anyway. Today, let's not feed anybody, let's fall asleep in a heavy fog and wake up with a certainty that this story ends delightfully.

I’ve been in unrequited love with so many facets of a turning page for too long, it's embarassing. I’ve just finally stopped being overwhelmed at the sight of the next blank page, the end of a book, like a genocide; the end of a thousand breathing lives! The melodrama delights me!

This was supposed to be a blog about my love of magic—my little sister’s AP tests are over, and her summer is about to start. She got a job as a lifeguard at a little pool in BG. I want her to run through a meadow and get sunburned and get tan lines and poison ivy and build a tree house and fish in a pond and jump in, and chew stalks of grass and feel the breeze and find a cause (and I hope it’s rooted in magic) but that’s too ambitious. a woman’s shelter, or the kid’s cancer unit….those things, I hear are magical.
I’m just afraid for my baby sister, who is living in a big house in a big suburb, and she doesn’t read sci-fi. How will she ever know that there’s magic all around if she doesn’t hear it whispering in her ear late at night with a flash light and a book just a little too close to her face.