PERS ; THINK ABOUT ALL THOSE NIGHTS ON LUCKIE ST.

i find myself falling in love with streets. places where my favorite shops are lined up, streetwalks that thrill me while i walk down. melrose, with its funky boutiques. third street, with the nicest street performers i've ever seen & the tourists touting their nikon dslrs. college & shattuck, both enigmatic street names 'too far to venture to'.

of these, the most accessible, the common & mundane, the dirty, grimy streets are the ones i fall in love with the most.

ventura, home to dan's subs, my favorite buffalo exchange, & most offices in the sfv. no one likes ventura, what with its bad traffic & cops lined up to hand out illegal u-turn & speeding tickets. but the simplest of memories like eating late night in&out & screwing around at the dollar tree, walking from shalimar to yogurt delite back when things weren't complicated, paying 13 bucks too much for an overrated movie, smoking hookah too young..ventura is home. it's everything synonymous with the valley, it's my entire latter high school life. mediocre & mundane it may be, but it's a sign of familiarity any sfv resident would know. a beacon, beckoning you to come home, home.

i can't say telegraph is my favorite in berkeley (college avenue is too pretty & entrancing to lose to a street lined with hobos & sexual harassers, to violence at bus stops & smell of weed all over) but i find it akin to ventura. the single defining street of berkeley, grotesque at first sight but surprisingly houses so much history & beauty, be it the beat generation that frequented cafe med, the fried chicken sandwiches everyone lines up for at bakesale betty's, the korean restaurants & bars that we frequent every weekend...& the ride back home, half in stupor, opening groggy eyes to see the glowing lights of the campanile letting you know...

these streets lead to home.

playing | "luckie st." - cartel

photo | google searches 1, 2

PERS ; I PUT MY HANDS UP IN THE AIR SOMETIMES.

so i'm not the kind of girl that boys are easily attracted to. i don't smile all the time. i don't keep trying to make conversation. i don't laugh at all your jokes, & i have a fast mouth. i'll say what's on my mind when i feel like or i'll stay quiet to the point of frustration. i'm not good at making decisions; no, i don't know what i want. yes, i sigh, i yawn, & loudly at that, & i don't pretend that life is always fields of butterflies & sunshine. i fish for compliments knowing how irritating it is to do so, because no, i don't have the greatest confidence. i won't tell you what's wrong, nor will i tell you much, really. & yes, i get jealous, i overanalyze, & all those other girl cliches that boys want to avoid.

so so so what. it took me a long time, but finally i'm reaching that point where none of it matters. so you think i'm rude, so you take my cynicism & sarcasm seriously, so you think i'm unapproachable, so you think i'm too negative. & for every person, for every judgment formed about me there is something in me that knows there is a reason i've come to be this way. that i value honesty over forced positivity so yeah, i won't smile just to please you. that i quite appreciate my own blunt words & how refreshing it is over the tired lies that everyone else plays on repeat.

all the years that i've spent trying to change to fit someone you wanted, the attractive ideal, the positive, confident girl that everyone could like...& why? years obviously futile as i've grasped onto the sardonic quiet image that i've held for almost all my life, to my discontent. but change, as i've repeated to myself so many times, is something that comes when you really really want it to. & no, i didn't really want to be a fake happy-go-lucky girl full of smiles. i could never be that girl, & although it's taken me so long, i can finally come to terms with the fact that no...i never wanted to be that girl.

so what if i'm not the kind of girl that boys are easily attracted to? what if i'm not someone you'd want as your best friend? i'll believe that there's going to be people like me somewhere, who don't mind a loose slip of the tongue now & then, who believe in keeping some things secret, who don't care about following someone else's ideals. & if there's not a single person who likes my personality, each hidden layer slowly unwrapped & unveiled, then so be it. because i, i can finally say i like all of who i am, every. part. & that the end of this 10+ year struggle is over to me is all that matters.

playing | "dynamite" - taio cruz
photo | autumnfingers. ; flickr