the tension speaks, but we're singin it

Fri, 07 Jan 2005 10:24:50 GMT

711 coffee is my fave, aaf. we visited sarah at work & i found out that shirts at A.C. Moore are really cheap, so i can screen print moreeeeee :)! katie & i took ridiculous pictures in her car. joe had a really gross blister on his finger.

tonight, went out to dinner with.. kristina danielle bt christian anna vinny mikearmenti nikki & frank. we went to the long island grill & that place is expensive as hell. but hey, we wanted fancy haha.

afterwards, we went back to armenti's house & watched the Manchurian Candidate. Denzel Washington has a 13inch penis.. true story.

i got home at around 2:30ish.. sat around online til around 4.. then kayte called me & picked me up. benny & frank (a diff frank than from dinner) were in the car too. & we hit up 24hour bagels. i think they were all wasted lol. but it was fun.

god, all i've been doing lately is eating. this needs to stop. i have a cruise in february, which means bathing suits. kdsdfgfkjdgha!

pics tomorrow. for now it's sleepyyyyyybye time. <3.

Thu, 06 Jan 2005 00:49:36 GMT

sometimes i can't tell whether my options are endless or limited. there's a fine line between the two. & i'm having trouble finding it. i used to have everything planned out so well. but now, i really have no idea what i want to do with my life. fuck suffolk community college. fuck me & my tendency to do everything on impulse instead of sitting down & thinking things through.

on another note.. katieprice & i went to roosevelt field mall today. & i got some really cute clothes from h&m.

this morning frank told me to listen to this anberlin song, "Symphony of Blasse". & gosh, way to make me cry. it's like another "Your Name Here (East On Sunrise Highway)" .. it's just one of those songs that make you think of the past.

don't get me wrong, i'm content with my life right now. & i'm convinced that everything, even the shitty things, has worked out the way that it was supposed to. but there are still things i miss. & there are memories i wish i could relive. thankfully, i only feel that way while the song is playing.

..so why do i keep on replaying it?

Wed, 05 Jan 2005 08:28:31 GMT

i have decided that i am gonna get tattooed on me.

Tue, 04 Jan 2005 23:56:07 GMT

we are bffflz4evaaaflflflfffl & we enjoy starbucks.

sometimes starbucks poisons her & she chokes.

we appall (sp?) the highclass people at walt whitman mall with our starbucks habits.

we do this in front of other people in public bathrooms.

we get sad when we hit traffic.

moments we didn't capture on camera:
literally every car on the LIE giving us dirty looks & beeping at us.
we were going over 70! "is NIGGA written on the back of my car or something?"
the neverending search for size zero abercrombie jeans.
"scene" boys.. "so, uhh, ya like the escape engine?"
blingbling sparkles on our hands.
finding a lost cell phone & searching for the owner who's picture was on it.
"PUT THE CHANGE IN HERE!" ..no, that's for the strollers.
389427 wrong turns.
old taking back sunday in the car.
& coheed.. SHABOOTYYY.

k that is all. <3

Tue, 04 Jan 2005 06:12:40 GMT

first was strathmore with pat brian corinna kayte evan meghan mike & nick. there were funny conversations & damn good bagels & large iced teas.

(this is what my bagel looks like after i eat it)

oh & there was also a crossword puzzle that we all worked on so dilligently.

(masterpiece)

after, everyone went their separate ways. kayte evan & i went to best buy. & then to kayte's so she could get some stuff. we straightened evan's hair while we were there.

(he was pretty psyched)

then i was a goofball & took this picture.

(yeah)

then we picked up corinna & brian morris. & we went on the hilly road at high speeds & that was a lot of fun.. it was so much fun that we did it several times. then someone had the bright idea of a barbeque. so we called up some niggz & informed them of the bbq. & then went to waldbaums to pick up some essentials.

(brian & evan browse)

(brian puts a penis-like vegetable in kayte's ear)

then we went to evan's.

(twisty straw)

(BYOM. bring yo own meat)

(we speared some juicy weiners)

(hotdog hoez)

brian scott, megan, courtney, mike, meghan, nick & jim also came. but i didn't whip out my camera while we all just ate & chilled. except for when i took this picture.

(brian eats)

then we just hung out at evan's for the rest of the night.

(corinna tried to eat her boyfriend)

(jim & mike wrestled)

the end.

p.s. loud singalongs in the car are a definite favorite of mine.

Mon, 03 Jan 2005 17:06:03 GMT

i deleted every entry i had in here, cause hey, it's a new year & i kinda wanted to do this over fresh. & i'm starting it off with something i didn't even write.. but i'm posting it here because it's nothing short of amazing & nothing short of true.. evan didn't fail to capture every emotion that was shared by everyone at jim's new years eve party.

So I'm reading this book, It Happened in Boston? No, that's not a patchwork sentence. The words following the comma would be the title, not a question, and it's one of the best random books I've ever read. I told my mom I wanted anything by Jonathan Lethem or Gregory Corso for Chanukah. Well, she went looking for Lethem, and found Russell H. Greenan by accident. An honest mistake, Lethem does the intro. This book is fabulous. So I'll start off with Lethem, because that's where my mom started out. He says:

"It may seem like a fairly lame point, but follow me: a symphony can't extensively describe a brilliant--and nonexistent--work of architecture. Nor can a building, or a painting, or a play, or a song (or a mix tape or a video game or a designer dress) ever do very much in the way of persuading you of the existence of a fictional work of art in another form. It's only the novel--the baggiest, most elastic and inclusive of forms--that really has a chance. A novel can seem to envelop time and space, and with them the varieties of human experience, inside its borders. So, among its many unique opportunities (and booby traps) is the possibility of enclosing within its descriptions a fictional work of genius--an unheard symphony or an unseen painting."

It's a long quote. Without context, it doesn't make sense. I need you to bare with me, like Lethem asks you to bare with him, should you ever pick up this miraculous novel. This is my novel, in essay form, and I am trying to paint you not an imaginary picture, but of the mental image that's been impressed on my mind of what Long Island has become for me.

Everyone's doing the retrospective thing, right now, because January 2005 is the best time to review January to December 2004. Events, lost friends, gained friends, news, histories, displacement, relocation, return trips, movements, stationaries, statements, learnings, forgettings, the whole kit and caboodle. I've got a thousand pictures of a thousand words that can give you an encyclopedia for the past 366 days ('twas a leap year), 52 weeks, 12 months, 1 day. I could probably make a slide show of progression, or make a movie running sixty frames a second that shows Evan, January 1, 2004 and ending with Evan, January 1, 2005. The problem is, you'd see some growth, some change, a different place, some extra people, some lost people, maybe even some of 2004's story written on the wall. You'd still be goddamned frustrated, however, when you saw that things, vexingly, remained the same. A butterfly is still the same creature as when it was a caterpillar. I'll argue that myself and everyone else are the same way. And the everyones know who they are, don't you?

Mike White's pants' got tighter. Mike Varga's pants got even tighter. Ross's band got bigger. Jim's basement got finished. Corinna's hair got shorter. Kayte and I got closer. Peshkur got drunker. Brian got Diesel's. Pat got more tough love from me (and I do mean tough). Corinna, Maria, Morris, Pat, and Jim are either looking at different schools or transferring. Some of us went away, some of us stayed home, some of us weren't even out of fucking high school. And still, all of us, and by all of us I mean all of us that mattered that were there physically or in spirit, were in Jim's basement for possibly the most impressionable night of my life.

"I'll scream it, till you ears bleed, you'll always have a friend in me" was echoed over and over while Jason blared out the Ipod speakers, and never has On the Might of Princes sounded so good, because when you looked around at who was singing and screaming and hugging and jumping and smiling, you saw that that line was the purest thing that could be said then. Flashes going off around us from the girls' cameras, boys going up on other boys' backs for the sing a long, meatballs going into Peshkur's mouth, drinks hitting the pool table, the sounds and sights of a top five night in my life converged on every single one of my senses. Tattoos for Jim became artistic renditions of memories remembered, either consciously or not. We reviewed our own year in the fun we had with each other with what we said and what we did and what we're writing now, because this isn't something to let go.

New Year's 2005 was more than just a wild party in the basement of one of the Sirens boys, New Year's 2005 was an affirmation of all I hold dear, an affirmation that my heart was home and Long Island was it. And if home is where the heart is, we're the heirs to the greatest real estate fortune in the world, because I feel like I'm home with every single person there.

I'll end it with one last reference to It Happened in Boston? Alfred Omega, the narrator of the book, has this uncanny ability. He can "reverie" and become any single person in time and carry out their actions as if he truly were them. But if someone is to talk to his form in the present day, he is instantly transported back to the present, and is not surprised at all, but is totally conscious of all that has happened while he was in reverie, and is able to continue the conversation as if nothing had happened. He journeys, but he is home at all times. That's what I feel we are. We're vagabonds, we're journeymen (and women), we end up all over the place and do things that are orthogonal, even diametric, to what others know of us, but in the end, we end up home for one hell of a rager.

Those known as "we," I want you to know, first and foremost, from one Long Islander to another, lifted straight from a Long Island song, I'll scream it, till you ears bleed, you'll always have a friend in me. -- evan hanlon