recycled food for thought

Has anybody else out there ever read a book that they couldn't help but think was about them? Seriously, where it gets to the point where there are so many parallels between that story and your own life that you could start to get paranoid? I'd like to know I'm not the only one out there with this issue.

When I first saw Sarah Dessen's book, Just Listen at a store in Bridgewater it was brand new. They stacked fresh, hardcover copies of it in the very front of the young adult section and I remember looking at it and thinking that I liked the cover. The funny thing is that if I first saw it in stores now I would probably scoff and walk right past it instead. But I think I was about fourteen at the time and I guess girly covers attracted me then. I even remember reading the back cover and thinking about how much I liked the description(which I would also probably scoff at now)...

Annabel Greene is the girl who has everything. At least, that's what she portrays in her modeling shoots. But Annabel's life and her older sister's eating disorder is weighing down the entire family. Isolated and ostracized at school and at home, Annabel retreats into silent acceptance. Then she meets Owen-intense, music-obsessed, and determined to always tell the truth. And with his guidance, Annabel learns to just listen to herself and gains the courage to speak honestly. But will she be able to tell everyone what really happened the night she and Sophie stopped being friends?

For reasons unbeknownst to me, I decided not to buy it that day, instead going home with something probably by Scott Westerfield. A while later I was recommended one of Dessen's earlier pieces, The Truth About Forever, bought it, read it, and liked it. After that, I came across Just Listen again at my local Borders. It was older and now being sold in the much cheaper paperback form and I finally decided to buy it.



The funny thing is that when I first read the book I didn't connect it to myself at all. There are still many things in it that If you knew me and read the book would make you probably ask what the fuck I'm talking about. Unlike Annabel, I am not a model, I don't have three sisters, I don't hate techno, blahblahbleeblah. At the time of first reading Just Listen The truth is, most of the parallels developed overtime, many of them being small but the fact that there are now so many is almost insane to me. I was probably fifteen when I first read that book and had put it on my shelf and mostly forgotten about it since, so it's only recently that I made the connections.

After an (personal) event a couple months ago, I remembered the book and immediately grabbed it off my shelf and read it for the second time. I think I was probably half scared throughout the duration of my second reading while realizing how much my own life had become like it. I decided to read it for a third time during a five hour car ride to Ocean City last week and was once again freaked out. There is this one passage on page 270 that especially irked me. I know it's dumb and lame and cliche and all that cal but it felt like Dessen had stolen my brain from saaay June, cracked it open like an egg, and slapped the yolk of it right into her story...

Just Listen, I believe, was kind of a "look-into-the-future" book for me. I can't fathom now how spooky it would have been if I knew the first time I read it that I was, in a nutshell, reading pieces of my own horoscope. I think I've grown out of most ultra-girly, young adult novels but I'm pretty sure this one is going to stick with me, whether I like it or not. And I realize now that I've probably shared way to much on the interwebbzz with people I don't know and really hate (blehhatechyu) but oh well, I don't really care, this took me a while to write...

I should probably care more





-Hayley


p.s. I need a group of yuppies to acompany me when I don't feel like being around people.

I believe in a thing called believing...

So I went into the city the other day to see Explosions in the Sky play at Ramsey Playfield's summerstage.

and It was pretty damn swell. So here's a little tidbit of the show with EITS playing "Your Hand in Mine" which is probably my favorite song of theirs.









Good music, good location, good friends-We really don't need anything else.

-Hayley

Icebreaker for the Frozen Foods Section

Entertainment for the Braindead-Run!(xiqhhyiecryn remix)


ugh, so good.








-hayley


p.s. anybody wanna stay up and tell stories with me?

Extreme Alliteration

This is me, laughing at you.

Keep gaping and stacking up that cornucopia of snappy remarks you keep, for times like these. Letting it bubble in your brain jelly. You probably keep a whole slew of them tucked behind your ear for rainy days and lucky you it’s blasting fucking Niagara Falls outside.

No no ne no ne no no-I probably won’t stop.

I could laugh at the trees…

The trees outside the bus, despite it being May, are still as naked as dead baby birds. The few that have leaves hang low, sloppy, and mushy. Crack that nutshell: trees aren’t that funny. There’s an old, moss -covered road sign that says "CAUTION: Water on Road during Rain." I'd laugh at the road sign but too many expired vagabond girl scouts have done that lately, leaving it raped of much humor. Actually, the sign’s not covered in moss. It’s new, a bright, shiny, freshly-baked road sign for all the standard 3.14159+ yearly tourists here to sink their teeth into. Actually, there is no such sign. But if there was such a sign I still wouldn’t laugh at it.
I'd laugh at that fat fuck bus driver 89059847348 rows in front of me, but he's fat, and that's not funny.

I can't laugh at the road sign.

I can't laugh at the fat driver.

The only funny thing in this wheel-driven-piss-colored-road-muncher is you. I guess I find hilarity in that. God, I love the way you secrete that cabbage patch head under a dead beanie baby and some sweet Jackie O glasses. Got them rad blips and vizzies falling like cashmere out the sides of your earphones. You probably spent weeks trying to stumble upon such high quality lo-fi. I had a cabbage patch doll just like you, it spat up when you pressed its tummy.
You’ve got on the most cultured thrift-jizzed pair o’ pants I have ever had the pleasure of seeing. I thank you with the tip of my hat for the eyegasm. Pockets pockets everywhere. The right one you have a pocket full of posies. The left one you surely packed with the bossest buds on this side of the rainbow. Montel William’s pharmacist would be smitten to have some of that swept under the table.

Then again, the only talk shows people like you and I acknowledge are downloaded from Kazakhstan.

This bus is canoodling with a traffic light that’s been stuck on red for eleven minutes. Or am I just savagely colorblind and it’s now green and we passed it already? We left the intersection eleven minutes back and fat bus driver is licking his lips at the bakery out his window.

11:11-make a wish fishy fish and blow out the candles before little jimmy shoves his head into the cake and his overly-buoyant noggin is floating on flames.

And (insert personal creature of worship) don’t we all hate mirrors.

Right, that wasn’t a question.



-hayley



p.s. I like the way you dance to my harmonica.