My site has been getting flooded with hits from Vietnam, each of them coming in via a search for 'Elly.' When I saw the inundation I started googling around to figure out what was going on. I found out, and it is weird/fascinating and involves saucy photos, so I thought I'd share.

Turns out, last year there was a Vietnamese internet HOT GIRL scandal/sensation over a lil' minx named Thủy Top. One blog refers to her as "Vietnam's Paris Hilton." In the wake of her popularity, there has been a wave of Vietnamese "hot girls" who are being sexy on the internet and gaining fame in Vietnam just for being hot. This has caused a bit of scandal and media commentary. And apparently this "Elly"(I think her full name is Elly Tran Ha) is the new thing, stealing Thủy Top's thunder.

Judge for yourself, but I think Thủy Top is hotter. Also, hello Vietnam!!! I have so little to do with you! I'm only here to make your Google results that much more confusing.

Thủy Top:

Elly Tran Ha:

mercury retrograde == i don't write.

i haven't even been journaling privately because i decided that the level of detail i was going into was actually exascerbating anxiety and obsessiveness, so i decided to cut back as an experiment. it's been so good. it's fascinating how something that was once soothing and healing can become an obsessive detraction.

spent memorial day sitting in tamera's garden with tamera and maryann, talking about the woes of capitalism, among other things. got sunburnt shoulders.

have been moody the last few days but nothing like the depressions of previous months.

have been reading "the occult" by colin wilson. i like the typeface. and the jacket design. these are my only observations so far. i am writing down other books he references so that i can investigate them as well.

going to hear New San Francisco Poet Laureate Diane Di Prima discuss various ways a poem may be "received" and read poems
that have arrived as if dictated tonight.

tamera took this picture of my messy head while we were waiting to be let into La Note for brunch on memorial day.

two found photos of the weekend's full moon over new york city

bob arihood's astonishing photo of the moon over tompkins sq park, found at neithermorenorless.blogspot.com.


john taggart's photo of the moon over williamsburg, found at jtagg.tumblr.com.

which reminded me of my own attempts

full moon over bryant street, san francisco. april 2009.


full moon over greenpoint, brooklyn. september, 2008.

this morning, when i woke up in a jetlag haze, i discovered that my oft-beleaguered palm plant has grown two new fronds since i finally conquered its ongoing scale infestation and trimmed off the dead leaves last week. fuckin elated. actually spoke aloud to it: what is this? what? what does this mean? new growth? really? new fronds? really? that poor palm has been wilty and sad for so long, sort of like me. we're both sproutin' anew on this humid spring day.

some kind of faith was returned to me, largely during a nap in a sunbeam on the floor of the miami airport while clutching a copy of elmore leonard's gold coast like a teddy bear. during the nap i got the sense of total one-ness that only the uncontrolled transitional nature of travel can bring. it felt like a drug experience. i started having a sort of ... emotional hallucination there on the floor with the gold coast and my scarf over my arms and shoulders. i hallucinated the feeling of having a boyfriend, someone who was just off getting me something while i napped, a coffee, maybe. i realized, just now while i was thinking about how i would try to explain what happened during the nap, that the reason i felt like i had a boyfriend just off nap-camera (you know, the way you watch yourself out of body while you nap sometimes? or is that just me?) was because i felt safe and held, looked after, watched over.

but it was just travel that made me safe and held, the satisfaction of being alone and resourceful on a journey. and the equalizing effect of airports. when you travel, when you're in between without familiar signifiers, your identity is completely removed while at the same time becoming completely overblown. at least mine is, it feels that way: i'm just someone no one knows, transitional. but then all i have is where i've been, what i've done so far, what it's all added up to, and how i'd explain it if anyone ever asked, and i'm this character, what the fuck am i, god, has all of that really happened? to me? how good. how good so far. i've been at it, haven't i? so i walk around miami international smiling to myself like i've got a big secret and the big secret is my life up till now.

so some kind of wholeness came rushing back. i remembered a lot of stuff, some goals, community, some things i'd like to do, how there's no big hurry, how it's okay just to keep living life for the sheer fascination of it even if nothing concrete is ever accomplished, even if there is no ascension to some next level of success. i remembered that other people are fundamentally vulnerable and tender, especially when they are next to you on planes, and i stopped unfairly hating strangers simply for being human. i remembered something like trust. i remembered that it's all going to be okay!

blame airports, i don't know. vacation, too, i guess. seeing mom, seeing cats. having the drunk tourists of key west try to decipher the garbled mating call of my sutro tower tattoo. getting up and watching the sun rise from the white street pier and actually being so fucking spoiled by life that i felt like i could rate or compare the beauty of this sky to that of other skies i've seen.

hello, i am in key west. we went to the hemingway house today. i met some cats that live there.

it is a weirdly detached experience to go on a tour of a writer's home. on the tour, hemingway's various tumultuous marriages were reported blithely. the tour guide kept referring to "hemingway's death" in a nondescript manner, until an uninformed middle aged tour attendee finally asked, but, he was so young when he died, how did he die so young?? and the tour guide had to say "suicide." way to bring down my vacation, asshole! when can i get a margarita?

anyway. cats. some with mutant toes.