March 29th, 2002 - 2:49 a.m.

artifice, beauty, insufferable, and first love

since when was artifice a method of measurement for beauty? she sports a bouffant plastic-textured multi-coloured multi-tiered fiasco i am sure she would like to call hair. extremely flammable pants. a perfume distilled from a thousand fake flowers, steeped in saccharine for a thousand days and nights. she will be sure to attract many flies tonight: best of luck to you, madam. the youth of today, the mirror of tomorrow, bah humbug.

i saw my frida again today. gorgeous as ever, and content to see me. apparently, she works at a starbuken. a beautiful man on the subway, though only externally, his life lacks poetry. a loose topknot. a piano player's hands. a distinguished nose. skin a lovely shade of reddish-brown earth.

when will i escape the ideals and constructs beaten into me over time? when i think, when i breathe, when i experience, when i dream, when i taste, when i decide; i have two filters: that ingrained by les parents and my own logic. i refuse the one forced upon me by les parents: it is not my voice, those are not my ideals. i have no desire to show my daughterly devotion through severing my arm to feed my starving father; no intent to show my dying mother my love by selling myself so that i may pay her medical bills. how one is supposed to survive childhood is beyond logic and the probable realm of my mental capacity. they almost broke me. but i resist; fight the power! now, how to surgically remove this last trace of their influence?

it has been decided (though not permanently) that one's first requited love is meant to be fatally optimistic. to those falling in love mutually for the first time: keep that optimism, it is a dear and precious thing. and unless you are very lucky that optimism is the only thing that will see you through. the best of luck. romantic love is an odd and fickle thing. and to all the nah sayers: if i had things my way, you would all be arrested and tried for treason.

i am in the best of all moods. (thank you to 75 mg a day.)

n.

�