So Paige, what do you do when you're sad?

Read Lydia Davis stories.* Drink vodka. Drink vodka.

*"People did not know what she knew, that she was not really a woman but a man, often a fat man, but more often, probably, an old man. The fact that she was an old man made it hard for her to be a young woman. It was hard for her to talk to a young man, for instance, though the young man was clearly interested in her. She had to ask herself, Why is this young man flirting with this old man?" Lydia Davis, "What She Knew"

Today's "Pitcher of Mexican Drank"

Happy Cinco de Mayo everyone, and specifically to my Pueblan audience.

Credit for this shit straight up goes to Caroline Bottger's Facebook. Caroline is a third year English Literature student at The University of Edinburgh. She lives in Switzerland, enjoys being taller than her boyfriend, and doesn't really care about your health care reform.

"In the age of Pamela Anderson's ascendance, Rivers Cuomo thought it was hot that you looked like Mary Tyler Moore."

"Empathy is hard—especially, sad to say, when you are fucking someone and it's not going quite so well as you'd planned. If you add in the whole gender thing, it gets even harder. Boys and girls in America have such a sad time together. They do. And then they call each other bitches and cunts and dumb motherfuckers, assholes and alcoholics and overprivileged Ivy League elitist shits, failed writers, failed people, people with daddy issues and mommy issues and control issues and abandonment issues, just Issues, horrible Issues, Issues that cannot be forgiven; they accuse each other of crimes against God and nature and political engagement; they accuse each other of being just like their mothers (never satisfied) and their fathers (2 bold). And some of them have recording careers, so they take it public. Is that so wrong?"

Sady Doyle waxes lyrical on every girl's failed hypothetical relationship with Rivers Cuomo, The Awl

"They know I want to fuck them so bad."

Last night may have been one of the top five all time nights in Edinburgh, next to slow-dancing with Jacob Bloomfield to the Backstreet Boys at the Big Cheese on Ridhima's eighteenth birthday (preposition beatdown). Seriously though. It was all kinds of the most hilarious shit ever. Beltane festival, up on Calton hill, which quite a few of my comrades seem to, in retrospect, have found fairly anticlimactic. But I thought it was a blast. Highlights include: drunkenly standing in a long line by myself for a while, trying to find my friends in a dark sea of people, getting home somehow (See also: making pancakes while listening to Scarface, spilling a lot of things). Alright that's really all there is. I realize I've done an extremely poor job of documenting anything remotely significant. Just Chill; here are some still-lifes by Goya:

Still-Life: A Butcher's Counter, 1810-12

Three Salmon Steaks, 1808-12

Celebrity Dream Date

[Page Six]

It's hard to think, when my mind goes blank

Ash, falafel, Godard in the bed. Habit ensues. Walter Benjamin. Charlemagne. Frantic flat-hunting. Quickly developing some sort of Plan B for the summer that basically involves hanging around here, but referring to it, more affectionately, as a genetically modified Plan A. Wardrobe has consisted primarily of running shorts and flip-flops, diet of double espressos (you can imagine the effect this has had on my bowels). Some heavy naps. Tobacco intake decreases by the day. Last night, I ate half of a cherry pie and this morning, I finished the rest for breakfast. It wasn't very good; the crust, like a good number of things in this country, had way too much butter in it.

I honestly don't know where the days go. I can't tell if things have gotten exceptionally surreal, or if this just the way life generally becomes at a certain point. All I know is that my ability to step to the majority of people has, for the moment, receded almost entirely into non-existence.

English Exams

..are made much better when they end, and Andy Taylor walks in.

Bob Frost

I'm always so satisfied with how this film develops.

Elinor Carucci

Grandma Covers her Face, 1994

Mother drives me in the rain, 2000

Masks, 1996

The Hug, 2001

The only notes I have next to her name in my Art History notes, regarding "Closer," the set from which the above photos were taken, are: "The only intimacy she really knows how to portray is her own with the people she loves." This is something I really struggle with when it comes to my writing. I think photography is much more accommodating to this kind of reflection on one's own life, which quickly transgresses into indulgence when applied to literature. I think her photos are beautiful.

[Elinor Carucci Photography]