08.30.11


this blog began to exist ten years ago today. i lived on the top floor of a hundred-year-old triplex built on san francisco bedrock; joe and i could watch the fog roll across russian hill from our little living room, and we could hear the cable car rattle and ring down hyde street as we lay in bed at night. my hair was bright red, unless it was magenta or black; i had four more piercings, and a pale crater where i'd mashed out a cigarette on the back of my hand. i worked at the SPCA and would hide newborn kittens in the pharmacy with me; being tucked in a box with a surgical glove full of warm water was better than being put to sleep, at least for a little while. the coffee-colored fur around jude's amputation had just grown back. the world trade center would be attacked in less than two weeks, and my parents' divorce would be finalized at christmas.


the unspoken rules of blogging were pretty simple: be honest and humane. don't let anyone buy you. say things no one else can say. the internet communities of those days would be as shocked by their descendents as twenty-two-year-old lauren would be by your narrator, perhaps, but i remember those rules, and at my best i follow them all.


thank you for being here with me.

14 comments:

naurnie said...

i am so glad i found you. 

Celia said...

10 years ago, i had just gotten back together and moved in with my boyfriend. lou, my other cat, was still alive. papa loved her. she didn't love him back as much. i seemed to be under the assumption that blue eye shadow worked for my coloring. i might have owned a pair of capri pants. 

Amid Privilege said...

So sweet, you sounded then very much as you do now. Which more than anything convinces me of your authenticity. Who could sustain fakery for an entire decade?

leroy said...

http://www.flickr.com/photos/iiiii/250242411/

leroy said...

oh - more directly relevant, but also much darker: http://www.flickr.com/photos/iiiii/250236981

kidchamp said...

sitting in my darkened kitchen with you and paul, our faces lit up by the microwave as it rotated a bag of popcorn, and thinking i would always remember how peaceful we looked for those two and a half minutes.

anonymous said...

Well done my best gal, now as then.

gracie said...

happy 10 yr anniversary! you've kept it real.

xoxoxoxo

gracie said...

.......REAL SEXY!

Milkmaid's dumb friend said...

Yours is a total BILF (Blog I'd Like to Frequent); or, I just don't know how anybody could enjoy reading a blog more than I enjoy reading yours.  (p.s. We're both in The Self-Inflicted Hand Scar Club if you've some remnant of that aforementioned crater.)

furiousmuse said...

We've come a long way, baby! ;)

holli said...

BILF! you are fantastic.

Dania said...

wow thats wonderful!!

http://xoxo-carolinalove.blogspot.com

anonymous said...

I LOVE YOU, LAUREN.

-laramie