12:01 pm | 12 June 2003 | in which i talk about myself at length, again.

I find myself at yet another crossroads. Why am I composed of so many inharmonious--indeed, opposing--elements?

I'm a pretty typical Libra in most respects (aspects?), but I've never thought of myself as particularly indecisive (a key Libran trait). Generally I know, with whiplash-accuracy, what I do and do not like/want to do/aspire to be. The indecision, it would appear, is more insidious: I am merely the pivot point of a series of seesaws--that is to say, I am both extremes at once.

Case in point: diction. I am capable of both the stuffiest, most semicolon-fraught rhetorical acrobatics*, and of the ragingest, most violently lazy email-writing style.** AND I LIKE BOTH! I can't seem to find a happy medium.

I'm sad a lot, and then joyriddled sometimes too (oh wait, I am bipolar. Never mind). I am abstract and concrete: by which I mean, I love both the fertility of the dream-field, and the pathos-ridden little idiosyncracies of life (I saw a boy on my block carrying a goldfish in a plastic bag in the rain and it was the most beautiful thing). I like exquisite things, like a perfectly-and-slightly-grilled filet of buttery buttery tilapia with a red-pepper remoulade and some wilted arugula, but my favourite food is toast, or possibly salad: humble, pedestrian things, oh yes. Sometimes I don't use apostrophes. I like things that are easy and things that are hard. I like cutting things out of paper, and I like sewing things together. I like Rammstein and Mazzy Star. My first girl-crush was on Gwen Stefani but the most enduring one has been on Elizabeth Taylor. I love winter and the Pacific coast. I like spicy foods and sweets. I like pretty-boy mods like Brett Anderson, Jarvis Cocker, and Jaime Harding, but date guys with bald heads, with red beards, short guys, a coupla tall ones, sculptors, construction workers, postmen, poets***, a few wildly disparate ladies...all united, I suppose, under an umbrella of "generally unsuitable subjects," but c'est ma vie. I like black clothes and bright crazy spangly shit (my collection of vintage Indian and Greek dresses, someday-I'll-go-back-to-Vegas sequinned numbers, and Russian jackets is getting larger all the time). What the hell is my frickin' deal?

It keeps things interesting, I guess, and sometimes I can combine elements (like with food or clothes--have pad thai! Wear a salwar with those boring trousers!), but when it comes to the big stuff--where to live, what to do, how to love--I am totally lost. I guess that what it comes down to is that I like things that are extremely themselves--I am romanced by quiddity--I like things to be high-contrast, deeply saturated, and wholly present. So I'll go out with an industrial-goth type, as long as they're totally in that scene. And it will last, for a while, until I get bored with the strictness of their adherence. It becomes more obvious (at the same time as it becomes more difficult) that I really need someone just as fragmented as me--funny & sad. Cute & gloomy. Mutable. Loves the sea. O, where are you? clm.

*For example, an request for an MIB interview:

"I (Claudia, one half of the ding-dong dynamic duo behind My Imaginary Boyfriends, which is itself a Chicago 'zine powered by the arable fields of human fantasy), anyway, I, Claudia, would like to propose an interview for issue #3. It would be conducted via e-mail (our [and here i mean my, but i am using the royal 'we'] febrile feminine constitution could most likely not endure an hour spent in the company of your overall puissance, and anyway, we [both of us] are terribly shy, if not straight-up socially retarded). It will be brief and largely painless. Also, we are hot. How's about it?"

** Such as:

"no shit. mfer mfer mfer! i'm gonna go drink some wine or something"

***only for those of us with deathwishes.