once is all the time

the day of the found object. that's today.

i went to the MCA and the big exhibit on the main floor featured artists inspired by alexander calder (i feel just room-temperature about his work, which was half of the main floor exhibit) who use a lot of found objects to create their works.

in general, i turn to liquid love over found art. i collect found objects that fit into certain categories. today, i just smiled a lot. no liquid love, but certainly no feelings of h8.

after work i found this fortune (displayed in the spirit of duke and wally asian dinners):

yesterday, this was my fortune. times two.

i returned home to find that mom had sent me every single episode of doug on dvd. talk about a happy birthday!!!

and my precious little west coast pen pal sent me the most perfect mixtape anyone could have compiled for my ears inside this hunk-a-technojunk:

who's smilin'?

now that i think about it, all i wanted for my tenth birthday was a walkman. guess what i got? even better is the first cassette i got with it: belinda carlise - heaven is a place on earth.

that was fifteen years ago. ouroboros!!

most people are not okay

yesterday i told the doctor, when asked if i am feeling "well," that i felt like i am finally getting my sh!t together. i wasn't lying. for the last week and a half, i've felt really good and not too scattered.

then i woke up embarrassingly late today.

when i was walking home tonight the moon looked like it was full and i thought i had FINALLY gotten my lady cycle to align with the lunar cycle (assuming i am as in touch with my ovaries as i like to think i am). then i squinted and realized it still has another handful of days before it's full.

i had to squint because i lost my glasses about a week-ish ago.

my sh!t is all over the place. i don't know who i'm kidding.

but i'm more or less happy and i am fortunate to have people around me that put up with my inability to ever really get it together.

and i get to see these guys in my neighborhood with my dudez tomorrow night:

i lost my glasses

for the last, i dunno maybe 2 months, i've been corresponding with a friend almost solely by hand-written missives. there is a liberating commitment that comes with the absence of a backspace key.

after you've written three pages of thoughts and then you write a paragraph that you aren't so crazy about, you tend to just leave it there on the page. you don't draw a line through it, you don't scribble it out, you don't even own white-out anymore. you just leave it and carry on with a better idea on the next line. it's a little scary but it is also intimate and real.

this is made more immediate when that page is seen by eyes other than your own. when that page is not safely tucked in one of the countless notebooks on your shelf that may not be cracked open for another year. that page gets folded up and sent across the country and then you have no control over it anymore.

i just deleted the four paragraphs that led my mind to wander to the first in this post. they were irrelevant. would i have done that on wood-based paper? would i have torn it from the spiral binding, crumpled it and thrown it on the floor to later be transported to the recycling bin? maybe. would i have turned a page and started my story over fresh, from scratch? probably not. it would have been a different story completely.

we are so self-conscious, thus bent on self-editing, as our interactions move more and more into the digital sphere. we forget that we are the only ones paying such close attention to our selves. i see (and participate in) a lot of digital impulsivity, but that impulsivity is editable. physical impulsivity, in terms of communication, is a little tougher to edit.

i spent the winter corresponding with a different friend almost solely by e-mail. our conversations were mostly abstract and i find him to be much smarter than i and so my backspace key was a crucial player in the composition of my letters to him. indeed, i probably deleted more sentences than he ever read from me. i wonder if our conversation would have lasted if we had used pen and paper rather than keyboards and gmail. i probably would have given up early on.

i guess that's what makes digital communications great, right? we can better convey exactly the message we aim to express without 1.) wasting all that paper and 2.) revealing too much of ourselves through the thought-processes that lead us to our conclusions. but it seems something more than words/sentences/paragraphs is lost with the depression of the backspace key. we lose the traceable thought process. we lose the vulnerability of gestating ideas. we lose the communication of that which makes us unique.

i am constantly trying to find balance between the old and the new. i think we all are. we are in the midst of a communication revolution and it's hard to know if it's all for the better or if the marketers just want us to believe that.

i am far more excited and pleased when tearing open a pen-scrawled, adhesive-licked, transit-soiled envelope than when clicking on a bold, unread e-mail subject line. that's not to say i don't enjoy a good e-mail exchange or that i don't appreciate new media. i love new media, y'all. you know that.

but sometimes it's nice to revert to the simpler times and ponder whether we're really making the best use of these internets. what do you think?

alone in a crowd

a weekend in images:

felt inspired by neighborhood vandals

died on a busted red eye box

voted class couple

met daniel clowes!

drifter in the dark

i am so good at distracting myself. aren't we all? i've got about 800 words left to write for my final paper of the semester and all i can think to do is paint my nails red, drink a white russian, and read things i wrote months ago.

here's something (mostly fictional, but i'm sure it's based largely on whatever stupid crap was swimming 'round my brains at the time) i wrote a few months ago. i'm only sharing it because the last line made me chuckle.

clutching in the dark, i find the glass of water i knew i'd need at some point. raising vessel to lips and tilting head and arm backbackback, i find the glass is empty. i'm parched. can hardly breathe. i'm blinded by sleep and lack of light and i don't want to get out from under these warm covers.

so i cry. i drink my tears. the salt stings my cracked lips and i curse everyone that has ever inspired this in me.

still sitting up in bed, the dream from which i awoke returns to my mind and i am certain it was no dream, but a parallel reality. he drove me in his car and pushed me out of the door. we were on a highway and making good time. he commented on that. the good time. i couldn't hear him very clearly and i responded, "yes, i'm having a really good time." he said "that's not what i said" and no sooner was i tumbling from car seat to metal door frame to asphalt to gravel to dirty green grass and BAM into the guardrail. all went black. i was awake, thirsty, sweating. soul was bruised but body felt fine. who was he, anyway?

it's another day and i don't want to do a damn thing. night falls and i walk into a bar. alone, i set my body atop a stool and sip a gin on the rocks. my throat burns in the best way and i think about how tomorrow is a facsimile of today. i can't decide if that is a good thing or a bad thing. as i mull this over, a man sits next to me. he is dressed to my liking and smells. his smell is neither good nor bad, but it is intrusive. it distracts me from my debate and i have to look at him. i have to stare. i have to look at his earring. he does not seem the type to put a metal rod through the hard folded cartilige in his upper ear. i imagine him as a wayward teen, entering the tattoo parlor. he wants to get inked but instead chooses a piercing. his friend came with him and calls him a "pussy" for backing out of the tattoo. but he does not mind. this is how it happens. when it's time to get a tattoo, he will get a tattoo.

tonight he sits alone and drinks beer from a can. the bar is dark and the lighting is reddish. the music is loud and it is bad and he stares at the ring tab on the can. i pull my gaze from his left ear and attach it to the bottle of vodka directly in front of me. everyone else in the place has lips flapping, teeth shining, hair twirling. i have poor posture and a notebook in my bag. i look and he has no ring on his left finger. i think i want to ***k him, but i think i want to ***k most people until it really comes down to it.

when the rain comes we can be thankful

just sitting in an airport, looking at people and thinking of people and being a people. that's me right now.

i am on the tail end of a nice little vacation. got to see the whole fam: there was drinking, music- and merry-making and mom and dad (divorced since i was a wee lass of but 3 years) hung out jovially. i made new friends and stole a bunch of brother jeff's music, much of which i used to have and listening to it is sending me back in time in a beautiful way.

aaaaaaanyway. enough about me.

whilst on vacation i finally finished reading a book i've been reading for weeks upon weeks. i didn't like this book -- it made me angry. guess what i did after finishing it? i cracked it back open to page 1 and started all over again.

the concept of the book is this: this bloated, drunken, stoned, free-loading punk pushing 30 years old writes a three-panel comic strip for every single day of his life. the book i read was an anthology of 3 years of his life. it pretty much goes like this: "today i woke up and went to my job at the video store and i got stoned. then i came home and drank beer. then i went to (either) a party (or) a punk show."

boring, right? 1,095 instances of this can be a bit redundant. and annoying that he doesn't do anything! so what keeps me coming back?

well, he also talks about how crazy he gets over girls and other silly emotional stresses we all deal with. and somehow, this person that i'm sure (because i looked him up on myspace and i judge photos) tries to act so "cool" has the same insecurities and weaknesses i have. i identify with him. you identify with him.

that's why he makes comics. i read an interview and he said so.

reading his mundanities makes me feel better about blogging my own. i'm positive there are faithful readers out there who have similar feelings toward me as i have toward the author of this book. i guess i try to bring up more provocative issues than he does, but by and large this blog is a broadcasted diary. i'm mostly okay with this. may i regret it in a few years? sure. i totally regret some things blogged a few years ago.

also, my brother graduated from f-ing harvard this weekend. i'm ivy league by association. BRING IT.