at least there’s water in california
the water is still shut off in my house. they apparently turned it back on, but then the pipes exploded. they can't continue work on it today, because of the snow. and my landlords are now in mexico.
oh well. Chanelle sent us groceries, so that was pretty wonderful. and i got to see an old friend in california, one of those people who makes me light up with old ways, longer days when i did not know so much. angelica gave me a scarf and told me that growing up means that you know who you are and what you need, and you make decisions based on that. i thought that didn't sound so scary. but then i'm sitting in the red leather semi-circular booth of a bar in burbank, with my beautiful friend in her work wardrobe, and i am about eight inches taller than her and i have my hair in pigtails and i feel remarkably like a very tall child. i have just unfolded myself out of the passenger side of her mini-cooper. i am remembering the year that i played grown-up, and how poor i was at it. i am hoping that she's right; i want desperately to believe that being an adult is something simpler than what i've made of it... that it has less to do with having nails that aren't ragged and making your bed every day, cooking and keeping house and getting haircuts on a regular basis, owning things, staying places, following politics... than it has to do with knowing yourself, and being about what you're supposed to be about, and taking responsibility for yourself. i think that sounds a lot more reasonable. if growing up does not mean taking a flying leap into this other personality, this new self... then it might actually be something i can do.
one of these days, anyway.
****
a paper journal california entry, since my computer is not well:
so this is california.
right before i got on the plane, i realised: i am going to look like such a fucking hippie. my coat. my need-a-haircut hair. my general lack of polish. (should i give up on bangs again? sometimes i wonder. i just don't know if i can stand to see that much of my face, all day, every day.)
a man from alaska complimented me on said coat and said hair, while i was sitting outside LAX, waiting for my mom & my brother to pick me up.
"hey," he said, coming up to me. he was pale and smiling. there was something wrong with his smile. there was something wrong with his hat. "i saw the cool coat and the cool hair and i just wanted to come over and say i like it."
"thanks."
"i'm from alaska." oh, shit, he's taking his hand out of his pocket and holding it out for me to shake. "where are you from?"
"colorado," i say, feeling my armour slip a little. i suddenly long for the days when i could shoot back "boston" with a challenge in my eyes or say "DC" and stick my chin out a little. colorado? that could mean anything. i could live on the top of a mountan. this could've been my first time on a plane.
i wish i had a reason to stand up, so he would at least know how tall i am. but he's still holding out his hand and i'm staring, so i reach out and loosely clasp his fingers, shaking once and then letting go. i silently resign myself to the fact that i am not the city girl i used to be. i am talking a stranger, and i just touched him.
he's pulling out a book with his other hand as i let go. "check it out," he says.
where did that even come from? it is a cheaply-made hardcover with a garish purple face, featuring a drawing of what i suspect is some eastern god. It is an exceptionally ugly book.
"it's on meditation and yoga," he says. i notice that his smile has no variations, and that i can't really see the whites of his eyes. "check it out," he says again, holding out the book to me like it's mine and he's just returning it.
"No thank you," i say, pullng my eyes back to my own book, which does not have a garish purple cover and bad vibes.
"it's on meditation and yoga," he repeats. because yoga is cool, and i am wearing an orange vintage coat, after all. Obviously, I do yoga.
"Nope," i say, my eyes still fastened on Chapter 6 of Atonement.
"okay, have a good evening," he says, turning and walking away.
"yeah, you too," i tell his hat. out of the corner of my eye, i see him practically run across the crosswalk, pulling a small suitcase. i wonder if the suitcase is ful of those books.
i feel like i accomplished something, preserved some part of myself, by not taking that book from him.
The next evening, in Old Pasadena, a man will try to hand me a rose. He will say, "Here," and hold it out, and I will say, "No," and put my hands up, palms out. Then his girlfriend will say, "No, just take it, we have like a million of them," and I'll take it because my brother is with me. But I will be nervous the whole walk to the movie theater, because I once wrote a short story where a little girl gave a flower to woman in the street, only the flower was poisioned and I think the woman died. I will finally relax when we get into the theater and I decide the cupholder can also function as a roseholder.
the next morning, i will wake my brother up because i want a waffle and i want it now.
25 Dec 2007
falalalala, lala, la. la.
now broadcasting live from burbank, california, less than one mile from the Hollywood sign, in a one-bedroom apartment rented by jessy's parents... i bring you, Christmas 2007.
rae's outside on the balcony talking to someone on her cell phone. "gah," jordan says. "rae's taking up the whole outside!"
yesterday in the middle of the day, i heard a pack of coyotes howling from across the parking lot. they didn't care that it was broad daylight, or that it was Christmas eve.
the cord to my laptop just started smoking, so i may not be able to finish this entry.
Christmas has been good. i got a new my little pony colouring book, so i'm happy. also, Jesus was born. good stuff.
remind me to tell you sometime about the man on the street who gave me a rose, or the man at the airport who tried to give me a copy of a book on "meditation." remind me to tell you about how much time i spent in the car with my siblings, driving with the windows down and JT playing loudly enough to be... not really that cool. remind me to tell you about why the anaheim vineyard made me feel like i was five, or why my brother kept telling me that i weighed 800 pounds. (although i don't know if i'll be able to remember where that originated.) remind me to tell you about how my family is funny, and awkward, and fragile. and how i love them with a momentum that is impossible to stop. how my love for them, i'm realising, will never ever slow down, no matter what kind of day it is.
we spent Christmas two years ago making a snowman in the rocky mountains. we spent today on a beach in malibu.
God help the world if my family ever decides to embark on a life of crime. these people are always one step ahead.
Currently reading :
Atonement: A Novel
By Ian McEwan
Release date: 25 February, 2003
21 Dec 2007
peace
i'm on my way to california.
everyone have a happy Christmas.
be loved.
19 Dec 2007
storytime, human presents, and JAX
i gotta say, my friends are both good readers and good sports. also, they have good taste in wine. but i am a little offended that, even though we read my play for over an hour, all of the funniest things said last nite were unscripted. gems such as:
"What does BFF stand for? 'Big Fucking Fruit'?"
"Quiet, you!"
"Has anybody seen my wife?!"
and
"Oh shit."
it's all in the delivery. ... trust me. i write plays.
but i do feel genuinely grateful that my friends are willing to give up their evenings to sit around in my still-kind-of-dirty house, and read me something that i wrote. i think it was the most fun i've ever had listening to a reading of my own work. and oh, i have had some good times in the past. (mostly involving cigars and red stripe and stevick's "boathouse," which was entirely too small to ever house a boat.) it's times like these when i remember that being in colorado, and getting to spend time with these remarkable people, is such a huge gift that it really does overshadow flooded basements and icy roads and empty pockets.
however, there are a couple things that i will probably never understand about this state. like JAX, for instance. i've had to go to JAX twice in the past week, and i've never been there before, and their parking lot is always, always totally full, even during the middle of the working day. and i know it's near Christmas, but honestly - why are all of you people at JAX? i do not enjoy being in JAX. i don't know what 95% of the things they sell are even supposed to accomplish. i guess i need to accept that i may never understand the hunting/fishing/camping/skiing/climbing mentality. and that's okay... i'm sure the feeling is mutual. i'm sure i will get hatemail from JAX Inc. at some point in my life.
Dear Jessy:
We hate you. When you come in the store, we feel disoriented. We don't understand why you don't wear socks, or have any tread on your shoes. Also, where the fuck is your coat? Don't tell me you left it in the car again. You make me crazy.
Please don't ever come back.
Love, HATE,
JAX
P.S. I think you're fat.
18 Dec 2007
we wish you an awkward Christmas
my henna disease has almost completely disappeared. i guess the one-month timeline was a bit of an overestimation. although i do wash my hands a lot, you'll be happy to know.
i've started reading "Atonement" because the film's about to be out (or maybe already is out?), and i felt like it would be kind of dumb if i had had the book sitting on my shelf since february and didn't read it before i saw the movie.... i like that phrase, how movies come "out," like they're coming out of closet or finally - after months in a dark shuttered home - throwing open the front door, overcoming their agoraphobia, and stepping outside.
yesterday, i went out to lunch with three of my co-workers. everyone was in a good mood, because we're getting extra time off for the holidays. plus, there was lots of exciting news to share:
one said, "We're closing on the house today! And I think my boyfriend is buying a ring soon!"
another one topped her: "I'm 15 weeks pregnant!"
but i topped them all: "My basement is flooded... Again."
you know those debbie downer sketches on SNL? yeah. it was kind of like that.
but y'know what? let's not talk about my basement. my basement is lame. my basement makes me kick chunks of ice by the dumpster outside of Wok 'n' Roll. and i think that's really the best way to express how i feel about my house right now - through inarticulate kicking.
i'm listening to sigur ros today. it's calming me down.
we got one of those photo Christmas cards from the family of one of our clients. it reads, "We Hope Your Holidays are Peaceful... Ours Will Be." the photo is of all four of their kids, standing in front of the Christmas tree, with blue duct tape x-ed over their mouths.
it's kind of the best thing i've seen all week.
every year at Christmas, i joke around with my parents about how we should write an annual Christmas letter. and that it should be either, a) painfully and intentionally boring, b) full of Christmas Lies, or c) the awkward truth.
Dear Everyone:
We love you, but not enough to take the time to pick up the phone or send you an e-mail telling you what's going on in our lives. Anyway, if we did that, you might think we wanted to hear about what was going on in your life this year, which would take like three times as long. Instead, it would be good if you could also send us a Christmas Form Letter - which, p.s., we are so not going to read. But we'll look at the pictures.
This year was a pretty good year for the Smiths. In January, Rae was still here because of the Terrifying Car Accident that sent us spiraling even further into debt, which you may remember from last year's Christmas letter. She left towards the beginning of the month, moving back to Pensacola even though she had been living in Atlanta when she came up here in December. In February, Mark's dad died, after a long illness. We were all pretty traumatized by that. In March, Mark lost his job. Mark, Stacy, and Jessy had to move out of the house they were renting because they couldn't afford to pay rent anymore! :) They moved into their friends' basement. That was awkward, and we're only kind of friends with those people now. Hahaha. Also, we now hate cockatiels.
While we were living in the unemployed basement, Mark started to experience severe panic attacks! Again. Stacy and Jessy rushed him to the hospital in the middle of the nite, because they thought he was having a heart attack. Boy, was that an adventure! That was when we all stopped sleeping, or answering other people when they asked how we were. Jessy flipped out a little, but Chet & Millie took her in, so that was good. Then after that, she lived on the couches of people she didn't know very well for awhile. Then she rented a house. Mark and Stacy moved to California. Rae came to Colorado to start school. Courtney moved here, and her story is actually more interesting than ours, but she's not related to us so we're not going to tell you. She can write her own damn Christmas letter.
Meanwhile, Jordan was unemployed for like 6 months. He lives in Chicago, with a guy who goes to seminary and has very few traditional social skills.
Jordan enjoys eating Hot Pockets.
Rae survived her first semester at CSU, even though her dogs tried to eat not only her homework, but also the tree that produced the paper on which the homework was originally printed. Jordan got a job and a car and a girlfriend. Mark finished his novel, and stopped having panic attacks. Stacy started to slowly adjust to California, although she still misses Colorado. Jessy made theatre and obtained some friends who were actually in her peer group. Also, someone gave her a truck, and a coat, and a lot of furniture.
2007 was kind of a tough year. But most years are like that. Maybe everyone else is really having years where all that happens is that Tim gets engaged and Sandy wins an Outstanding Achievement Award and Jim & Barb go on a long-awaited trip to the Bahamas because the kids are finally out of the house!(!!) But I mean - really? I know that some of you are just trying to keep your marriage from falling apart and that when your dog died it affected you more than you thought it should. I know that even if you try to play it safe, shit happens. You lose your job or you lose your best friend or you start to think that maybe your dreams are just not practical. Maybe it's me being negative, but I think those are the things that shape us - that define our years, and how we've changed, and the people that we're always becoming.
Back in 2005, I graduated with honors. I did a senior thesis that was incredibly well-received. I moved to DC. But what I remember most about 2005 is that my best friend didn't want to have anything to do with me, and that I didn't think I believed in God anymore.
The thing about 2007 and the Smiths, is that it was difficult, but some really good things happened, and nobody got lost. The thing about us is that there is this thing planted deep down, which reminds me that I am blessed and that God is always being good even when believing that makes absolutely no sense. That God is kind-hearted even though the world He made is sometimes shitty, sometimes impossible to navigate gracefully.
Being alive is just a tough choice to make. Everyone who does that is a little bit brave.
To everyone who survived or is in the process of surviving 2007, we salute you.
Awkwardly,
The Smiths
We love you, but not enough to take the time to pick up the phone or send you an e-mail telling you what's going on in our lives. Anyway, if we did that, you might think we wanted to hear about what was going on in your life this year, which would take like three times as long. Instead, it would be good if you could also send us a Christmas Form Letter - which, p.s., we are so not going to read. But we'll look at the pictures.
This year was a pretty good year for the Smiths. In January, Rae was still here because of the Terrifying Car Accident that sent us spiraling even further into debt, which you may remember from last year's Christmas letter. She left towards the beginning of the month, moving back to Pensacola even though she had been living in Atlanta when she came up here in December. In February, Mark's dad died, after a long illness. We were all pretty traumatized by that. In March, Mark lost his job. Mark, Stacy, and Jessy had to move out of the house they were renting because they couldn't afford to pay rent anymore! :) They moved into their friends' basement. That was awkward, and we're only kind of friends with those people now. Hahaha. Also, we now hate cockatiels.
While we were living in the unemployed basement, Mark started to experience severe panic attacks! Again. Stacy and Jessy rushed him to the hospital in the middle of the nite, because they thought he was having a heart attack. Boy, was that an adventure! That was when we all stopped sleeping, or answering other people when they asked how we were. Jessy flipped out a little, but Chet & Millie took her in, so that was good. Then after that, she lived on the couches of people she didn't know very well for awhile. Then she rented a house. Mark and Stacy moved to California. Rae came to Colorado to start school. Courtney moved here, and her story is actually more interesting than ours, but she's not related to us so we're not going to tell you. She can write her own damn Christmas letter.
Meanwhile, Jordan was unemployed for like 6 months. He lives in Chicago, with a guy who goes to seminary and has very few traditional social skills.
Jordan enjoys eating Hot Pockets.
Rae survived her first semester at CSU, even though her dogs tried to eat not only her homework, but also the tree that produced the paper on which the homework was originally printed. Jordan got a job and a car and a girlfriend. Mark finished his novel, and stopped having panic attacks. Stacy started to slowly adjust to California, although she still misses Colorado. Jessy made theatre and obtained some friends who were actually in her peer group. Also, someone gave her a truck, and a coat, and a lot of furniture.
2007 was kind of a tough year. But most years are like that. Maybe everyone else is really having years where all that happens is that Tim gets engaged and Sandy wins an Outstanding Achievement Award and Jim & Barb go on a long-awaited trip to the Bahamas because the kids are finally out of the house!(!!) But I mean - really? I know that some of you are just trying to keep your marriage from falling apart and that when your dog died it affected you more than you thought it should. I know that even if you try to play it safe, shit happens. You lose your job or you lose your best friend or you start to think that maybe your dreams are just not practical. Maybe it's me being negative, but I think those are the things that shape us - that define our years, and how we've changed, and the people that we're always becoming.
Back in 2005, I graduated with honors. I did a senior thesis that was incredibly well-received. I moved to DC. But what I remember most about 2005 is that my best friend didn't want to have anything to do with me, and that I didn't think I believed in God anymore.
The thing about 2007 and the Smiths, is that it was difficult, but some really good things happened, and nobody got lost. The thing about us is that there is this thing planted deep down, which reminds me that I am blessed and that God is always being good even when believing that makes absolutely no sense. That God is kind-hearted even though the world He made is sometimes shitty, sometimes impossible to navigate gracefully.
Being alive is just a tough choice to make. Everyone who does that is a little bit brave.
To everyone who survived or is in the process of surviving 2007, we salute you.
Awkwardly,
The Smiths
11 Dec 2007
also,
if anyone wants to watch the claymation version of "Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer" at my dirty house tonite, that's what i'll be doing. there will not be any food, because i don't have any. there will not be any liquor, because i drank it all.
there might be some green tea, though. i think i have that. and milk.
11 Dec 2007
sister winter
today would be a good day for inside. i am inside right now, but i had to go outside to get here. but i woke up inside, not outside. just a different inside. so already, not so bad a day.
i am catching a cold, i do believe. i'm trying to do a "catch-and-release" number on it. we'll see if that works on viruses, or just lucky fish.
my hand looks like i have some biblical skin disease. or the chicken pox. but it's really just what happens when good henna goes bad. if you're interested in seeing my fake skin disease, it will be available on my right hand for the next month or so. although i may keep it in a glove, and start charging admission.
tiffany told me on saturday that germs aren't something real - that they're something that were made up in the 1950's to explain more ambiguous concepts, like viruses and bacteria, to the general viewing public. i must have known that already, right? no. no, i did not know that already. i was taken aback by that information.
my house is real dirty, and the basement is still soggy. i should do something about those things.
it would definitely be a good idea if there were a town called "Fort Fort" and the buildings were actually giant sofas and refrigerator boxes and blankets. we would all have to move there immediately... although it might be kind of drafty?
i can live with that.
today is a good day for oatmeal with honey and hot cups of tea. it's a good day for reading and keeping house and listening to records. it's a long-distance-phone-call kind of day. it's the kind of day that should happen while everyone else is out of town, trapped in some sunny location, while you make your daybed for the first time in forever, curl up under an extra quilt and just be. the kind of day that sneaks stories into your head that you'll feel there when you wake up tomorrow.
it's a day for dealing with your shit. for sitting quiet inside, still until you can thoroughly see yourself and then step outside of just-you. the sort of day where, at the end of it, my skin might fit a little better... i might try a little less. things might seem possible that were not possible before, and other things might have stumbled over the side and disappeared entirely.
it's a good day to be alone.
...or you could manage the office of a small non-profit with soggy booted children in the lobby all day. that's cool too.
07 Dec 2007
where do you go
also, this is maybe why i lose my keys and phone all the time:
this morning, i stumbled out of bed, grabbing jeans, clean underwear, arm warmers (why this combination of items? i have no idea), and then knocking on rae's door to ask her if she wanted to drive me to work so she could use the truck to get to school later. then i moved into the kitchen, put the kettle on so i could make coffee in my french press. then i went back to my room to look for a shirt and sweater that i could wear today. i found a shirt and a sweater, and threw them down on the bathroom counter, where i thought i had left my jeans etc.
jeans etc. are not there. i start looking around the house for them... not in my room anywhere... not on the sofa in the living room... not on the kitchen table... hmm.
oh, wait - there they are.
obviously, i had stuffed them in the top of the half-open kitchen utensil drawer next to the sink. arm warmers and jeans and underwear sprouting out on top of the measuring spoons and cheese graters. obviously, this is where i put them. where else?
tell me if anyone sees my keys. i would recommend checking your wall sconces and chimneys first. also, i may have set them down inside your television, or underneath your right shoe. please check there too. thanks.
no horticulture here
two weeks till california. i miss the ocean.
today is a slow day in my brain, but not in reality. in real life, today is booked from beginning to end. perhaps the slush outside has seeped into my brain? maybe not a bad thing. except that sounds horribly cold. "this is your brain on snow. brr."
i think that if people had a grasp on how often i have absolutely no idea what i'm doing or what's going to happen next, they wouldn't follow me anywhere, ever.
i miss the black cardigan that i left in a rental car in kansas city. it was my favourite. and there are no h&m's in colorado, so i can't replace it. on the upside, it was from h&m, so it probably only had a couple more weeks of wear in it before the seams started to unravel.
Christmas doesn't seem real. i'm excited about parties, because i like those. unless they're lame. i'm pretty pleased that i have to be running auditions during my office Christmas party, to be totally honest. i can't understand why i would want to hang out with my co-workers at someplace that is not a bar.
again with me not having any emotional foresight. it's hard for me to put effort into things like decorating when Christmas is really only one day and it seems so far away. i can maybe start looking forward to it on Christmas Eve, but by then it seems kind of late to set up decorations, etc. ...although wait. that may be kind of what we did last year. didn't Josh Daniel take Rae to get a Christmas tree on Christmas eve, or possibly the day before that? hah. all i remember is that they supposedly offered them a free poinsettia plant, and Joshua asked if they could have 2.
i also remember how, on Christmas day, everything was weird, but mom & i got to go to the nursing home, which was good, and then we crammed our family, plus josh and kemo, into our four-door-sedan, so that we could go to a dumb movie. it was very clown car; it's a good thing that smiths can fold themselves. i also remember that kemo was staying in a house that had a wooden cut-out of a teenage mutant turtle in the front lawn. he was the one with the red bandanna. so he was red and green, and maybe therefore a Christmas decoration? man. i hope so.
katie and i were talking about how it's really difficult to find a place that sells mistletoe anymore - maybe it's out of vogue? sorry, folks - Christmas Kissing is not cool anymore. sad day. but that conversation reminded me of the fact that, growing up, we always hung what i THOUGHT was mistletoe in our hallway, but it was really a horrendously plastic sprig of holly. (also, i'm pretty sure we had a holly bush in our front yard for years - so if you're going to pretend holly is mistletoe, why not use real holly?)
so i didn't know what mistletoe actually looked like for... a really long time. i thought it looked like holly. i mean, we used it as mistletoe, so maybe it didn't actually make a difference. we altered the fake holly with our minds.
come to think of it, i've always really liked holly. hm.
06 Dec 2007
segues (and idioms) are for the birds
this morning was kind of lame. but I'm recovering. because that's what I do.
I spilled both coffee and a breakfast burrito on my shirt this morning. but that wasn't lame; that was normal. and - by some mysterious divine intervention - all of my clothes appear to be stain-resistant. go figure.
I'm flying to LA on the afternoon of friday, december 21st! I asked my dad if we were going to disneyland for Christmas. he avoided the question. I assume that means it's supposed to be a surprise.
group was really good last nite. it's scary to lead when it means owning up to your own weakness, but I can't really pull off the SuperWiseLeader for more than five minutes, because that's about how long it takes for me to say something really inappropriate. So I might as well go with truth-telling and being awkward, because that is the way my skill set lies.
I got an Urgent voicemail from eric the other day. It was him singing "Surfin' Safari." Y'know: "let's go surfin' now, everybody's learnin' how…" I'm sorry I just got that stuck in your head. Anyway - it reminded me of that time I called my office and left a sneeze, marked urgent.
oh, how we laughed.
today has a 50/50 chance of not sucking - what we call the Tesco ratio, where I come from. ask Courtney.
05 Dec 2007
the best thing since frozen vegetables
why do i always drink so much red wine when i'm trying to learn to knit? that does not seem like a good plan of attack. but never mind - i'll get there. and oh, i will get there with joy.
i like things (like red wine, katie d, ryan adams, and a 1979 Woman's Day magazine) that are good no matter what. i like the perfect cup of tea and the sense of warmth that i get clear down to my soul when i wrap my long cold fingers around it. i like... vitamins. and practicing the presence of God with other people who also are not one-hundred-percent sure what they're doing. i like talking to my brother. i like having friends within walking distance. i like days where the weather is weird and feels like a tornado is coming, but at least we get a break from the bitter cold. i like free puerto rican coffee, and people who share their food. i like being productive at the office. i like how Natalie's and my spiritual schedules have synched up. (so we're not alone on bad days. so we're not alone on good days.) i like the lyric. i like that i can enjoy things that i'm not very good at (like knitting, and leading, and dancing, and almost anything musical). i like going out to breakfast.
i like colorado.
i promise i'm not staying. but i like colorado.
03 Dec 2007
51-100
51. I love the sound of church bells. Unless they're playing something annoying. Sometimes I would hear the "Call to Worship" bells from a few blocks away when I was going to eucharist, and I would think, 'I'm coming! I'm coming!'
52. I have trouble noticing large things. I thought this was just large buildings, but I didn't notice the upright bass in Rick K's office one day, so apparently the disorder extends at least to musical instruments.
53. I can be abrupt.
54. I have lived in two countries, six states (plus one district), eleven (or twelve?) towns.
55. I think that we can get some place where we weren't born, where we don't have family or any real human connections, and yet our skin can suddenly seem to fit better once we're there.
56. My goal is to move back to England when I'm done with Colorado, and stay there for as long as I should. I think it will probably happen.
57. I have a very flexible nose. I can flatten the sides of my nose without touching it.
58. I cannot play the harmonica.
59. I like to climb trees, even though I haven't climbed one in a long while. I had a "study tree" in college that I used to sit up in and read, even though I usually got sap on my hands. They cut it down to build another dorm.
60. My hair was long up until the second semester of my sophomore year of college. The fall of my sophomore year, I dyed it dark purple. My dad called me "grape head" and I got hit on by skater kids in Boston.
61. I think I looked kind of like a spider when I was young. I was all spindly.
62. I have a longstanding habit of forgetting about cups of tea that I've made. I tend to really want a cup of tea, but after I put the tea bag in the cup of hot water, I walk away and forget about it for oh, three hours or so.
63. I prefer sharing a pot of tea. With rich tea biscuits. Which kind of taste like animal crackers, now that I think of it.
64. When I was living in Florida, I found a dead bird on the side of the road. Only I was convinced that maybe it wasn't really dead, because its eyes weren't closed or anything. So I picked it up and carried it home, talking to it. My mom told me it was dead, honey - its neck is broken. So I cried and buried it by the side of the house. Except I kept praying for it and then I would unbury it to see if it had come back to life. This happened about four times before I finally left it alone. I named it Sophia.
65. When I was really little, my mom had this mink coat that she had inherited from my grandmother. It made me sad. Once, my mom caught me in her closet, singing to the coat. I have serious doubts that this was the only time it happened.
65. In Oxford and in DC, I was one of those people who would run for the bus. I've fallen while doing this approximately one billion times.
66. I had a manicurist in DC. I thought she was my manicurist even though I only went to see her two or three times. But her name was Ethiopia and she went by E.T. and I loved her.
67. I get really weird on my birthday. This always takes me by surprise. I think I do better if I can spend the day focused on something outside of myself.
68. I like meeting new people. I think I've never gotten used to the fact that there are so many people I could possibly know, because when I was younger, there were only like 5 possible friends. The ability to know all these different people from all these different places still seems like a luxury - like the voice of the government is going to come on the radio at any moment, demanding that I conserve friendships to assist with wartime efforts.
69. I was born in Orange County.
70. I am a huge fan of oatmeal. We ate it with applesauce growing up, and I didn't realise until like a year ago that that's not normal.
71. When we picked up the mail from the mailbox in our house, the way we asked if we could sort the mail was saying, "Can I say 'Is Your Name?'"
72. When my mother (and now, me) has forgotten why she's looking for something or why she came into the room, she stands there and scans the room with her eyes, saying, "I'm thinking of something and it is called..."
73. My first job was at a paint-your-own-pottery shop in the town where they filmed "The Truman Show."
74. One of the things I'm proudest of is the work I did as a dramaturg for a production of "Much Ado About Nothing" at our college during my senior year. We were doing an extrinsic interpretation and setting it in the Old West, which I know is kind of ridiculous but we made it work. And I edited Shakespeare for performance and did research and wrote a fancy-sounding program wrote and explained what they were saying to the actors who needed help, and in the end, it was actually kind of awesome. I also think I figured out some of the trickier things that Shakespeare is doing in that play, which I never really understood before I took an axe to it. Ask me about Don Pedro sometime, when you have like an hour and a half to spare.
75. That first play that I wrote for Audrey, I wrote mostly in my friend Danelle's attic in Maine, on notebook paper, over Thanksgiving break. It was kind of a shit time, to be honest. But not because of Maine, or the attic, or Danelle, or anything that has been mentioned in point 75.
76. When I was trying to finish the play, back at Gordon, so that we could start rehearsing, I remember that everytime I tried to start a new scene, all I could think was, "A happy couple enters the bar - dangerously close to one another..."
77. Claymation is an objective good.
78. I once stood outside the Vatican and asked a Swiss Guard, "Is this the Vatican?" He smirked at me, and said, "Yes. This is the Vatican." But at least I wasn't the one wearing pajamas and a funny hat.
79. I don't really like candy. Sometimes I want it, but it's kind of an unusual craving for me to have. My mom puts dried unsweetened pineapple in my Christmas stocking.
80. The first time I went underwater, I was six weeks old. My dad was on a swimming scholarship at one of his colleges, and I think he wanted me to be a swimmer too. I was, for a long time. I was on a swim team for years and years. I haven't gone swimming for a long time now, but I guess my form would still be okay.
81. I'm still kind of surprised that you can't smoke inside anywhere anymore, even though I don't really smoke.
82. Most of the things I wear were gifted, bought second-hand, handed-me-down, or were originally bought when I was 19.
83. The things on my bedroom walls make it look like a kindergartener lives there. Or maybe it's all the colouring books and crayons lying around.
84. I have always wanted to be really good at chess, and maybe go up to a crazy old man in the park and play chess with him. I think that would be fun.
85. Laura and I made a homeschool teen newsletter thing... I guess it was really a zine but I don't think we knew what those were yet... when we were in high school. I wrote a mystery story for it, a "To Be Continued..." type thing about this boy who was looking for his sister who had disappeared. I wonder whatever happened to those kids.
86. I lived about a half-mile from the beach in high school. That was nice. One time, in the middle of December, my whole family walked into the ocean with all our clothes on. It was real cold.
87. The ocean and the things that live there don't scare me. Lakes make me kind of nervous.
88. I grew up knowing a lot of words that I had read but couldn't pronounce properly. This was often embarassing.
89. I started reading Neil Gaiman's books because I met him, and I liked him so much that I wanted to read everything he had ever written. He drew a wolf with angel wings in my journal.
90. The first poem I ever wrote was something about the sunset. It had the word "mantle" in it. I think it's good for everyone that I decided to focus on plays.
91. I lived in Texas for eight years when I was younger. But I think Texas is kind of lame, so I try not to volunteer that information. No offense, Texans... I just think the kind of person I was becoming there is not the person I was supposed to be.
92. I have used my height to intimidate rich old men.
93. I think I have too many opinions, and I'm not sure where I got them all. Someday I would like to have a clearance sale and get rid of a bunch of unnecessary opinions.
94. When I was 7, I got in HUGE trouble for kissing in the back of church.
95. Someday I would really like to write a musical, even though I can't write music. But I could write the book for it. Or maybe someday I'll learn to play guitar - that would be funny.
96. I do actually wish that I could play piano. I can read music really, really, REALLY slowly. But I wish I could play a few pretty songs on the piano, instead of just making up nonsense. Although nonsense is good sometimes too.
97. I love children's literature.
98. I went through a phase where I wanted all of my friends to call me "Lady Jessy." For the life of me, I can't remember why. But in retrospect, it seems just a bit presumptuous.
99. I really like Mary Kate & Ashley films. I know that's kind of creepy. But it's true. They're mesmerizing.
100. A big purple-red lizard with a blue streak down its back lived in my room in high school. I was scared the first time I saw him, but after that, I got used to him. His name was Lenny. He never gave me any trouble.
because apparently i can’t deny amber anything...
1-50
1. I am the shortest member of my immediate family. Except for my mom. She's still pretty tall for a Mom though.
2. I wish I were an amazing puppeteer.
3. I do not have very good natural instincts for dressing myself. The only reason I ever look good is because people like Laura, Rae, and Audrey have taken pains over the years to help me be less awkward.
4. I sing a lot when I'm alone in the house, or in the car. Really, really, REALLY loudly.
5. I only shower a couple times a week. About the time when I start to think, "When was the last time I showered?", that's when I shower.
6. I have this weird obsession with art that has been performed in prison or by prisoners.
7. Since my family was all into health food when I was a kid, I shopped at Whole Foods when it was still just a big co-op. Everyone who worked there smelled of hemp, and wore tie-dyed clothing. They did not sell Starbucks ice cream.
8. I have a spare earring hole in my left ear lobe. I got it during a scavenger hunt in college.
9. I have almost zero talent in the visual arts, but I do love having paint on my hands and face.
10. I have a vivid imagination, but I don't have a lot of emotional foresight. I have trouble getting genuinely excited about things that aren't happening right now.
11. I almost double-majored in Philosophy in college. I did double-major in Communications for awhile there. Both majors were eventually discontinued in favour of a minor in theatre.
12. I lived in Oxford for a year during college. That was probably the best year I've ever had.
13. During that year, I went to see a set of sort Harold Pinter plays at the Oxford Playhouse, with my friend Amberle who was visiting from Berlin. Thom Yorke was there too, with some friends. He was sitting just a few rows behind us during the play. We left him alone.
14. Edward Albee was also sitting a few rows behind me and my friends when we went to see a revival of "Who's Afraid of Virgnia Woolf?" in Boston. But maybe that's not as cool. It was pretty cool for me.
15. One of the best plays I've ever seen was a production of "Betrayal" at the Boston Playwright's Theatre. It's Harold Pinter's most (and in some senses, only) personal work, and it works backwards in time from the end of an affair. It is absolutely heartbreaking, if performed well. I went by myself. I later met almost everyone involved in that production through my work with Gloucester Stage Company.
16. I spill things on myself almost every time I eat or drink anything. Does that even count for this list? I think everyone must already know that about me. I might as well pretend that "I have curly hair" is an interesting fact about me.
16a. Littletruck is the closest I have ever come to having my own car.
17. I think I had much better spiritual discernment when I was younger. I used to be able to walk into a building and know that something wasn't right, that something was going on that I couldn't see. I don't always pick up on that now.
18. The first concert I went to was Carman.
19. I've broken both of my arms. I broke my right one by falling off a fence and landing on the bricks below me, when I was a kid. A few years later, I fractured my left wrist while walking the dog.
20. We had a dog growing up. She was a German German Shepherd, and her name was Rea. She was the best dog ever. I still cry when I think about her too closely.
21. When I was living in England, it was sometimes difficult for me to get tickets to shows in London, because they tend to sell out pretty fast. I couldn't get tickets to see The Strokes in London, so I decided (I don't exactly remember why) that the next best thing to do would be to go see them in Rome. I spent three days trying to find the "Buy Tickets!" button on an Italian purchasing site. After I finally bought a ticket, I thought, Oh - I guess I have to go to Italy now.
22. I also couldn't see Belle & Sebastian in London, so I went to Berlin. I always forget I did that.
23. I did not see the Berlin wall on my trip. But I did see a lot of bars.
24. I once kept a relationship secret from everyone I knew for at least two months. (Dumb.)
25. I had a ginormous crush on Kevin Max from DC Talk when I was a preteen. Somewhere in my belongings, I still have an extremely fuzzy photo that I took of him at a concert. Audrey & I found it during our senior year of college, and hung it on our bedroom wall.
26. My first television crush was on Zorro.
27. We had some scorpion and snake problems in our house in Florida - since I was in an efficiency apartment on the ground floor, I think the scorpions only ever got into my room. I killed one with my shoe, one time.
28. I always thought that wasn't a huge deal, other than being kind of badass-sounding, because the scorpions weren't very big. But a few days ago, someone told me that the smaller the scorpion, the more poisionous they are.
Is that true? If that's true, then I probably shouldn't have hit them with my shoe.
29. I broke my toe the summer after I graduated, by dropping the iron base of a portable handicap parking sign on it. I was trying to get some patrons parked and seated before the lights went down, so I was moving our handicap parking sign, but I didn't know the base wasn't welded on. I managed to seat that couple and another one without anyone noticing that blood was gushing from my open-toed sequined heels. I think that was when I realised I was a theatre professional.
30. I was homeschooled. Like, the whole way through. Until I started going to community college as a dual-enrolled student when I was 16. In the Spring Break Capital of the World.
31. My legs fall asleep all the time. Chiropractors tell me it's because my spine is jacked up, but I think it might just be that my pants are too tight.
32. I didn't learn to read till I was 7. Jordan learned to read when he was 3, so I used to make him read to me.
33. I started writing when I was 5. I was always running around in circles, "thinking," and my parents just accepted it as a weird thing that I did. But then my grandma came to visit, and she made me sit down with her at the typewriter, and tell her what I was thinking.
34. The resulting book of short stories involves a lot of bunnies and places called "Springfield of Meadows." And I think there's one about getting shipwrecked on a golf course. And one that had something to do with a clown, and donuts... or maybe a giant... Man. I need to find that book.
35. I have experienced significant physical healing at least twice in my life as a result of prayer. One time it was chronic severe stomach problems, over Lent during senior year. The other time was a pinched nerve in my back, at the Vineyard in Oxford.
36. I really don't like speaking or performing in front of a medium or large group of people. I always think I'm going to like it, but then I don't like it at all.
37. When we lived in England, I started cutting (and later, dying) my own hair. I think I was trying to save money so I could buy more CD's. The first time I cut it, I had long thick curly bangs and looked remarkably like a very tall hobbit.
38. I loved the flat part of our roof in Oxford. It was accessible from our computer-room window, and I used to go out there to hide - to hang my legs over the edge and look at our overgrown backyard and smoke cigarillos and drink hot chocolate. It was cold and peaceful, and I will always love it from that time best, even though it was probably more comfortable in the summer.
39. I get confused when men try to pick me up. And sometimes, I move to another state.
40. When I was little and Rae was a toddler, she bit me, and my mom didn't believe me. But she totally did.
41. I have seen a subway platform full of New Yorkers singing the same song.
42. I had my eyelashes tinted once. It was one of those things that I just felt so awed that it existed, I had to try it.
43. I love fringe festivals. They are one of those things in life that make me genuinely happy. I want to go to more of them. If I ever had my work performed at a fringe festival, I would consider that a huge accomplishment.
44. I love the word "fringe."
45. One of my prize possessions is an Underwood typewriter that my grandfather gave me before he died.
46. I started writing plays in college because, sophomore year, my friend Audrey and I were in this Christian Perspectives on Communication class, and the material was so boring that even our professor got bored. So he stopped having class, and told us to go work on individual projects in each of our fields, to do something we'd never done before. And Audrey, who was an actress, had never directed. And I was a writer, and I'd never written a play. So I wrote a pretty bad one. But I had good actors. And we did it anyway. And we made people laugh.
47. One of the only nice things I've ever bought myself is a tiny bottle of Marc Jacobs perfume. When I wear it, I'm transported back to my senior year of college, when I thought I might be becoming a grown-up.
48. One of my greatest joys in life is animal crackers.
49. Although DC was not one of my favourite cities, it does contain some of my favourite things: the 9:30 club, the black box at the Hirshhorn, Tryst, and Chanelle.
50. In DC, there were several months where I went to midday eucharist at an old Episcopalian church around the corner from my office, 2 or 3 times a week. I still remember some of the prayers, and I remember that I was always rubbing lip gloss off my lips in line, so I wouldn't get it on the cup.
welcome to the working week (it’s f***ing cold)
the heater in our office is not working. yeah - you heard me. i think my nose is about to start running. it is cold. i would go next door and hide out, if the vineyard were open on mondays.
"where's jessy?"
"i don't know. she said she was going to a meeting about the website, about five hours ago."
IT IS SO COLD IN THIS OFFICE RIGHT NOW.
but good thoughts of this weekend are working to keep me warm. also, this cup of coffee, and the space heater at my feet - they're all putting their best foot forward in defensive frostbite manuevers. but considering the weekend in particular...
*the hummingbird hovering over the silvers's Christmas tree
*seeing the silvers
*"summerteeth" on repeat
*hookah
*promises of cute hats
*ethiopian food (eating with your hands!)
*elbow-slap greetings
*accidentally winning at darts
*uncovering the goodness that is my Advanced Creative Writing binder from college
*a shocking lack of waffles
there are a lot of other human beings that ought to be on that list. it's just that i haven't seen the silvers in ever-so-long. i also liked how all of my friends showed up for the talk-back on sunday nite after the "crescent" message. well aren't we outward focused.
i tried to work on the faery play this weekend, but i hit a snag, or five. if anyone wants to volunteer to come over and read the first act aloud to me sometime soon, i need a few people to do that, so i can time it and hear it and get some reactions. sometimes when i run smack into a wall when i'm trying to move forward in something, it means i need to workshop what i've already done. then sometimes i can understand - or remember - what's already been happening under my nose. or i can find the part in the first scene that's been throwing off everything i've written after that. i can't count the number of times that carly or chanelle found something in my writing that i had done subconsiously, that i didn't even know was there... that the characters had essentially done without my consent, but which turned out to be the key to the whole thing. (always a different "key" than the one i was shooting for at the outset.) you have to stop arm wrestling with the things that you make. when they start to reach for their full potential, everything jumps right out of your hands.
it's good.
Currently listening :
Summerteeth
By Wilco
Release date: 09 March, 1999
29 Nov 2007
lighter things
oh, dear. apparently, i'm on a roll.
here are some things i've lately wanted to learn/explore:
-knitting
-classical music
-seattle
-jack kerouac's writing
-the italian language
-yoga
i'm trying to pick things that are at least a little bit within my reach. for once.
also, i really want to go listen to jazz someplace that is not very bad. and preferably dirty. i miss dark dirty jazz clubs. it's been too long. although i don't miss the drunk men who gradually move their chairs closer to you if you're sitting by yourself and just trying to L.I.S.T.E.N... i don't miss them so much at all.
also, i just realised that i'm (most likely) going to california for christmas. which means i'll be back in california. which is where i was born, but i haven't been there since i was about 4. so i'm pretty interested in that. i've always suspected that there are things that i have in me that are tied to those first few years on the west coast, but i don't really understand that part of me because i don't really remember that time of my life. i'll admit i'm curious.
and probably inclined to blow the whole thing out of proportion. really, i'm just excited to see my parents, and to get out of town for a little bit. i think that by the time Christmas rolls around, i'll probably need it.
i haven't left town since september!
being still, and other things that make me neurotic
my life feels, for the moment, like it's calming down. i'm trying not to let that make me nervous. a few things just suddenly got cleared off my weekend calendar, and suddenly i'm looking forward to a few days where my only committments are to preschoolers and ethiopian cuisine. how strange and wonderful.
of course, that really means that i should be cleaning my room, doing laundry, mopping the kitchen, screwing the elevator back together, doing something about the front lawn, making more edits on "The Treehouse" and "Last Longer," working on the faery play, wrapping up some short stories, submitting, Christmas shopping... Do you see how i stress myself out? why do i DO that? i probably just made three people's throats close up when they read that list, because it reminded them of their own shoved-into-the-back-corners, so-long-it-will-never-truly-be-accomplished list. we all have them, if we go looking... and i almost always go looking.
which is ridiculous and neurotic. just take a break, jess! just slow down. i think i have some bad habits, from being alive. i have a hard time walking; my default is a breakneck speed.
the habits aren't all bad. they're a significant part of why i was able to haul myself out of the south to go to college on the north shore. they had a hand in why i went to oxford, visited italy and berlin, created a student production company, worked at a theatre company after college, moved to DC... it's the reason why i took on leading the small group, and doing theatre again - it's the thing that drives me into community, drives me to try new things and to bring other people with me. it's a part of every bit of volunteer work i've ever done, every piece of myself that i've cut out on the spot and just given. it drives me to write, to submit, to keep making things regardless of the results.
built to run far. built to run fast.
but sometimes, you have to be able to lay it down... let the land rest. be still. and that is so much more difficult for me than just perpetuating the forward motion... so much more difficult than just continuing to color in the margins. pulling yourself to a sudden hault can give you emotional whiplash, and i feel the physical resistance every time.
but just because it's difficult, doesn't mean it's impossible. just because it's difficult, doesn't mean i don't have to try.
28 Nov 2007
but i don’t liiiiike stripes!
yesterday was audrey claire's birthday. she was 25. still is, i guess.
eric informed me today that he's apparently writing a song which will answer the age-old question: "How many angels can dance on the head of a pin?" i'm pretty psyched for the results. my guess is twelve.
why does nail polish seem to want to come off so badly, but when you try to remove it, it leaves a dark pink stain? make up your mind, nail polish.
i think i waited too long to eat anything substantial this afternoon. my head is killing me.... i mean, not literally. i try to discourage body mutiny. but there is a little girl whining in the waiting room. i think she's trying to express that she doesn't "like stripes." i have no idea what she's talking about, but i'm about to walk out there and bitchslap her.
just kidding. well, kind of. i am enough kidding that i should not be fired.
we're trying to pick plays for the next onslaught. auditions are in like a week and a half, so we have to solidify a program by this weekend. what does this mean for me? free portobello sandwiches. and rick & rich making fun of me like it's their collective job.
i'm tired and my head hurts and i am not prepared for the evening. but i like this week. i've decided.
26 Nov 2007
the girl’s distracted and it ain’t no use
i think i've already told like five people this, but the other day i got in courtney's car to pull it out of the driveway, and i was delayed for a second or two because i kept hitting my left foot against the floor, looking for the clutch. which obviously wasn't there because courtney's car - which i have driven about a million times - is an automatic. when i realised what i was doing, our trip was further delayed because i had to stop and crow, "i'm a stickshift driver! i'm a stickshift driver!" several times.
it was a party. i don't know if anyone truly understands the sense of delight (even when it's mixed with terror) that i get from being able to finally, finally drive a stickshift. what's next - knitting? the piano? the flying trapeze?
Gail, our part-time accountant, who i love (she buys me fresh-squeezed juice when i'm sick) just walked in with her eight-year-old daughter. they went into the back, and then Gail came out to borrow a pencil. "When you grow up and get married, you have to have a daughter," she says to me. "They're so much fun." i thought that was kind of a wonderful perspective on motherhood. i also appreciated that she doesn't think i'm a grown-up yet.
i also appreciated that when we needed change for a $20 for petty cash, i didn't have change for a twenty, Gail didn't have change for a twenty, but Gail's eight-year-old daughter did. way to go, lady. you count those pennies.
i told my preschoolers on sunday morning that hanging out with them is my favourite thing that i do all day. and i meant it.
i worked on the gas station story this weekend, and some plot things for act 2 of the faery play, and on merging the two versions of a ten-minute play that i wrote this summer. i'm done editing (in theory) my dad's novel, so i've started working on edits for some short stories/poems/lyrics/novellas that my friends have written, which i've been putting off to do the larger edits for my dad (who was actually paying me for my services). i'm surprised sometimes by how productive i can be in small bursts - that i have genuinely learned, over the past couple of years, how to jam writing into my free minutes, into conversational lulls and bus rides and fake lunch breaks and the moments when you absolutely cannot continue doing the mind-numbing work you are doing without some sort of relief. i have finally trained myself to remember that i'm a writer, that it's what i'm about, no matter what i'm doing... to not need long stretches of time to sit down and be a writer, but to just be that, regardless of what's happening around me. that shift has finally happened inside of me, and it seems to be for good.
that's even better than learning to drive stickshift. score.
23 Nov 2007
ta very much
i was reading something the other day that suggested that we are really thankful for all the ways in which our lives are better than other people's. that contrast makes us thankful. ("God, I thank you that I am not like other people: thieves, rogues, adulterers, or even like this tax collector.") i've been thinking a good bit about whether that's true or not... i think maybe it is one of those dangerous partial truths. because surely i am thankful that i'm not hungry, that i have a place to live, that i am allowed to develop my artistic gifts in some capacity, that i have an education and that i didn't experience any traumatic childhood abuses.... but does that mean that i am in some sense grateful for those who provide a contrast to my privileged lifestyle? glad that there are people out there who are poor, starving, living in the streets, abandoned and abused? i don't feel glad about that in the least. it's heartbreaking. but then, you don't see me rushing out there to switch places with them either.
thinking about this (in circles, obviously - see above) has made me a little cautious about putting together the traditional thankfulness list that is due this time of year. but how can you not be thankful? there are so many things in my life that are far too good for me.
so, back to the beginning. set questions aside for a prayer of thanks:
Thank You for not leaving me to my own devices. Thank You for coming back to get me every time i've tried to genuinely fuck up my life. thank You for how you've repaired relationships that i couldn't repair, redeemed things that i couldn't redeem, forgiven things that i couldn't forgive on my own. thank You for rebuilding what was destroyed and replanting what was laid desolate.
for this year, difficult things don't seem to stick to me like they once did; that seems like something to be thankful for. i'm thankful to finally be living with my sister. i'm thankful that writing once again seems as natural and as necessary as breathing. i'm thankful for collaborators, and potential collaborators, and artistically supportive friends and family. i'm thankful that eric is still alive. i'm thankful for new friends. i'm thankful that i get to keep the old ones. i'm, frankly, extremely thankful that i actually have friends my age in fort collins right now, because there was a time earlier this year when i was really pretty lonely. i'm thankful for my preschoolers. i'm thankful for my job. i'm thankful to have stayed in the same place for more than one calendar year, to give my soul a rest. i'm thankful for the sky in colorado. i'm thankful for my family - that they're people who i actually like, and who (i'm pretty sure) actually like me. i'm thankful for my house. i'm thankful for the elevator in my living room. i'm thankful to be back in touch with angelica, who promotes personal and creative honesty in me. i'm thankful for parties with red wine, for shows in denver and kansas city, for nice smells, for secondhand clothes and furniture and vehicles, for having my own room. i'm thankful that i know how to drive a stickshift now, finally, even if i am not yet amazing at it. i'm thankful for Popeye, and some days i'm thankful for the other dogs too. i'm thankful for people to pray with me, and for people like Courtney who have known me for a long time but for some reason still want to be around me. i'm thankful for the strangers who shoveled dean & nancy's walk so i didn't have to.
i feel, often, that the life i have led and am going to lead, is extraordinary - with a particular brand of extraordinariness that really ought to be out of my reach.
for some reason, it doesn't seem to be. i'm thankful.
21 Nov 2007
terms of endearment
yesterday, i was talking to myself inside my head, and i said: "well, that was a half-hearted effort, gumshoe." and i don't think i've ever called anyone "gumshoe" before, but i was so excited. now i want to say that all the time.
20 Nov 2007
scrape the rust from my heart / blow the dust from my heart
current activities:
-murdering the rose plant in my office
-spilling food on myself
-watching lots and lots of disney films
-sleeping on bathroom floors
-driving to denver, and then turning around and coming back
and as exciting as all of those items would be to narrate in detail, i've been reading my old (paper) journals lately. i know that sounds like a level of narcissism only previously achieved by the likes of oscar wilde - and yes, you're right, it is. but i also write everything down so that i can mine it for writing goods later on, and that's what i have, ostensibly, been hunting.
i really like the parts of life that are difficult to track. the parts that just shine out by themselves as delightful and absurd and somehow warm. everytime i write something, i want at least one of those moments in it. i know i don't always get there, but that is the goal.
Currently listening :
Woman King
By Iron & Wine
Release date: 22 February, 2005
16 Nov 2007
appendix A
i like three-dollar films, and free coffee from the Vineyard that you have to reheat, and accomplishing life goals, and having life goals, and learning how to do things that i didn't know how to do before, and dancing behind my desk when no one's in the office, and smoothies, and plants, and paint, and mercy, and ryan adams, and my sister, and writing (writing, writing), and live theatre, and going to shows in denver, and the sense i get sometimes that it's not really me against the world - that that's not how things work. that maybe isolation is a choice you can make, but it's not really what the economy of existence is built upon.
i like that. that might be worth a little hope.
then i trip ’cause i know i can
lately i've gotten a lot of free things. i have been really happy about this. i feel like i have met a lot of generous people in my life... people who don't cling to the surplus. i appreciate that.
among free things, i am now watching a 1984 nissan truck for the next... well, given the timeline, probably as long as i'll be in colorado (which will be longer than i've stayed anywhere else for a very long time). today, i drove it to work, and that was a big deal, because my stick shift skills are not quite (nearly) amazing enough to make driving this little truck an easy task. however, i have always (always, always) wanted to be really good at driving manual, so this will be an excellent opportunity for me to achieve this. i tried to think about that when i was driving to work this morning. especially during that part when i wasn't sure what gear i was in.
there's an elevator in my living room now. you should come over and see it. il mio proprio ascensore. it brightens up the room quite a bit, i think. there's nothing like a hunk of spray-painted plywood to make your living room more cuddly.
i want to start studying italian again. i'm kind of okay with it maybe being a hopeless enterprise. sometimes you just have to give yourself to those things anyway.
i lost my keys again. so if you see some keys that you don't recognize: they're mine. but i found my ATM card!
with people, i'm constantly reminded of how much growing up i still have to do. i do not react well. ... i know i'm supposed to follow that up with something specific, like "i do not react well to cranky businesspeople," or "i do not react well to scented hand creme," but really, i think i just do not react super well in general. i think i act pretty well - if i (as sometimes happens) actually stop to think out what i'm doing, pause, and then go forward... then i can do okay. but mostly i'm not doing that; mostly, i'm just reacting.
i think this is why i usually feel not-so-great about the job i do of leading adults. i don't feel like an adult, the vast majority of the time... i feel like an adult, a little, when i'm washing the dishes or sweeping the floor. the rest of the time, i feel like a kid.... which doesn't mean that i can't do things, or that i have no authority. it just means that it is constantly a pleasant surprise to me, that i can do things, that i am an authority in some areas of my life.
but really, i just like playing with the four-year-olds. they get me. and i probably learn more from being with them than i do from any of my peers (which is saying something, because some of my peers are genuinely remarkable human beings, kind & wise beyond their/our years). if you are with four-year-olds, failing is not so bad, if you do it enthusiastically, if you give it all you've got. there's hope that you will fail better next time - or at least at something different - but it is okay if you don't because at least if you do it right, you can make them laugh and that is delightful. with preschoolers, the line between play and learning is fuzzy in some places and completely broken in others, and so if you are willing to play, you get all kinds of grace... i would like to break that line in more and more places in my own life. i would like to break it in the lives of others.
it seems like a worthwhile thing to do with my time.
Currently listening :
Gold
By Ryan Adams
Release date: 25 September, 2001
07 Nov 2007
it doesn’t take very much
Things that make me happy:
* Clips of the 1966 Batman movie
* Smells of baking things in my house
* The new Jens Lekman album
* "Lars and the real girl"
* Getting totally covered with flour
*And then putting on an apron
* Walking home in the clear cold
* Time with my sister and my roommate
* Half a bottle of shiraz
* That Monday nite there were only four things on our kitchen table: a pumpkin, napkins with pumpkins on them, pumpkin bread, and pumpkin muffins
* When there are only four things on our kitchen table
* Themes
* Pressing "Pause" on everything else to take down a story
* Costume props
* Collaboration
* The starry lights in the trees in Old Town
* Feeling valuable/competent as an employee
* The impossible number of leaves in front of our house
* Praying with other people
* Colorado friends
The future doesn't make me afraid. I'm not sure about it, but maybe that's why. I pick up my feet and flex them like the race is about to begin.
02 Nov 2007
the kitchen: not just for salsa anymore
i have so much to do at work today, and i'm pounding through it. but i'm afraid i have to interrupt this regularly scheduled program with a very important bulletin:
I cooked dinner last nite.
no, really! i totally did. and it was not even an awful experience, even though i was not able to secure the new jens lekman CD, which i had been counting on to support my efforts. it's okay. it's not like i can afford a CD right now - not even a beautiful one that will probably change my life and make me a better human being.
it's alright. i didn't need that Nobel Peace Prize anyway. it would probably just go to my head.
what was i talking about? right, cooking. i did it. and considering the fact that i am a 24-year-old woman who has been out of the house for six years, i am experiencing what is probably a disproportionate amount of personal pride.
chanelle and i used to cook together, sort of. i liked the bread machine. and i've helped the rest of the howard street women cook in one capacity or another (although, granted, it was largely the same help a five-year-old could have provided: sifting and squishing and... salsa dancing.) so now i'm thinking that if i could just separate cooking from the domestic trappings that it has in my mind, and focus on the artistic part of it, i might even learn to enjoy it. sort of.
and if i don't learn to enjoy it, at least i might learn to save money by doing it. and then maybe i could afford the new jens lekman.
Currently listening :
Night Falls Over Kortedala
By Jens Lekman
Release date: 09 October, 2007
01 Nov 2007
I can live with all the stupid things you do
I have been an accomplice to too much heartache in my day; in more recent years, I like to think I've gotten better at avoiding that. But maybe I'm just becoming more of a coward in general.
Hard to say.
I am always a little stunned by my own insecurity, when it rises to the surface and shows itself for the monster of a thing that it really is. I know I feel disapproved of when my mind starts to race - for ways in which the other person is obviously incorrect, for a change that I can make swiftly enough to make it all seem right again.
There are times, of course, when it is all so irrational and obviously really their problem that the icky feeling is fleeting, and "fuck you!" is my main internal response. But that's usually with strangers, or the almost-strange... Men, mostly, who feel the need to preface their criticism with information on how powerful and well-educated they are - but occassionally women in very high heels as well.
So insecurity = always suprising in its breadth and depth. But almost (almost) more unnerving is the feeling of being overestimated - the sense that someone, who really should know better, isn't aware of your flaws. i feel like a liar - no matter how loudly i wear my lesser qualities, i am an active participant in a relationship built on sand; i am tensing all my muscles in anticipation of the moment when it all comes crumbling down.
i guess what we really want, is for someone to know how awful we are, and love us anyway - inclusively. i think that's the attractive thing about the idea of Jesus - if Jesus is real, then there is at least one person (and supposedly, a person who is actually perfect, but not annoying) who knows us through and through (even through the lies I tell myself about myself) and still does not find us totally repulsive... still actually feels a preference for us, doesn't get tired of us, insists on picking us for their team regardless of what the other kids say.
kind of ridiculous. but i think that's what we want: to not have to pretend, or shut down sections of who we are, in order to be loved. not that anyone outright asks us to pretend; we do that to people with our actions, mostly, and our definitions of who they are. (isn't everything easier when people stay within the parameters we've outlined for their character?)
honestly, i'd rather someone just acknowledged the fact that i can be kind of a hypocrite, and continued to think i was good. but i know i am guilty, too, of trying to place limits on the sprawling humanity of others.
24 Oct 2007
west nile virus
so i may have been running a fever for the past four days? justinn says that's bad, but that it's okay if i'm not having hallucinations. i didn't realise that hallucinations are a sign that you're burning brain cells. i should be more hip with drug culture - then i might understand these things.
edit: there are things that i know will make me better. i mean, drinking orange juice and trying to sleep - sure. BUT, more importantly: today at work i read "How Do Dinosaurs Get Well Soon?" i could feel the health seeping out of the illustrations and into my skin. also, natalie is praying. eric is hoping. and somewhere, little children are clapping their hands. so i'm pretty sure i'll be alright.
(i do believe in faeries.)
22 Oct 2007
parenthetical statements
Current mood: wa
i think i'm failing at life.
am i allowed to say that? i mean, i'm not about to go jump in front of a train over it. but some weeks, you just feel like that. (or remember it.) i feel like i got beat up this week. (not literally, obviously... neither courtney nor rae are abusive.) maybe it's partly being sick and tired and insisting on going forward with life in the meantime. (why do i always do that? i'm still kind of shocked that i didn't actually expire during the fall of our year in oxford (when i think i had untreated bronchitis), or at the very end of senior year, when i started to look like a character from Corpse Bride.) but i think it's also getting spiritually mauled, and the emotional whiplash that i still get every, every time that i'm reminded of how much i still have to learn, how much i still don't know how to do properly. (supposedly it only gets worse, the awareness of this as you grow up (if you have enough brave and stupid in you to keep on growing up). awesome.) it's not really so much a surprise at this point (i'm tough and i try to look out for people, but interpersonally i wear my "Trainwreck" badge like it's a medal.), but it is still exhausting.
i guess i wish i were better at putting other people's best interest before my own. that is not something i feel like i am getting any better at.
also, i should probably not write journal entries when i'm running a fever. this will definitely seem like a bad idea tomorrow.
also, in addition to failing at life, i also learned this weekend that i fail at Guitar Hero. in retrospect, i'm concerned that maybe this whole realisation was predicated on my performance at a video game. is that bad?
maybe the goal is to get so worn down that your only option is to receive grace.
it snowed on sunday. i wrote a play really fast, which - contrary to how it may seem - is not something i really enjoy. we had nine kids in my four-year-old class, and it felt like 29. it's weird to be a parent for an hour and a half. i know i'm technically old enough now that i could have a kid, but that still seems like a one-hundred-percent ridiculous idea. i love kids, but i'm not good at changing my behaviour to be with them. (which maybe is the problem i have with humans in general.) i was building a lego tower with a little girl, and i kept using the phrase "structurally unsound" to describe my building. eventually i caught myself and just settled for teaching her what "sturdy" meant.
another little boy kept having fits - and i mean, fits - over not getting his way in small things. little meghan gave him a hug. the other kids asked what had hurt him, why he was sad. i told them he wasn't hurt, he was cranky because he wasn't getting his way. and then i had to explain what cranky meant. i don't know if the little boy appreciated my total disregard for the validity of his cause. but if he's ever really hurt, he'll have my attention in a heartbeat. in between emergencies, the only thing i'm kind of good at is calling a spade a spade.
17 Oct 2007
shy plant / death-defiant plant
i like this plant, but i feel bad for it. eric told me about "the sensitive plant" about a week ago, after he saw one at his dad's work. today, mental_floss reminded me of it, and shared this video:
cool, huh? and sort of awful. i feel a sense of solidarity with that plant. i like the resurrection plant too, but the video for that one is way long and i think designed to help people learn to speak english.
i found my gas station story! as usual, it was not as good as i remembered it being. but it has potential. and i'm glad i don't have to rewrite the first bit. i really am going to have a collection of short fantasy stories at some point, if i keep churning these out. of course, i have no idea what i'd do with them. maybe keep them in the inside pocket of my jacket and use them to barter for lemons and yarn at market.
"Eight and a half lemons'll be one a story about an efficient ten-year-old whose cat turns into a tubby human due to a history paper gone awry."
"Done!"
in other news, i think someone at church stole my jacket. if anyone sees someone from church wearing the windbreaker i have on in my profile photo, would you please beat them up for me? i mean... unless they look cold.
the elevator plays are going to be awesome this weekend. am i jinxing myself? i think i might be jinxing myself right now. oh well. i think it's the best script i've written for them so far, and my actors are settling into their roles very nicely, and - perhaps most importantly - there are NO SOUND CUES. my goal is to continue to write no sound cues in the last two parts. although i don't know if i'm going to be able to pull that off or not. i like sounds.
next time i write a play, though, i'm just going to let the actors make all the sound effects with their mouths. that will be more fun for all involved, i think, and it's totally reasonable. but you have to present that conceit at the beginning - you can't just suddenly be like, "and in part four, they all turn into HUMAN SYNTHESIZERS! Yeeaaaah!"
well, i mean... i guess you could, actually. but this is maybe not the audience for that.
16 Oct 2007
dinosaurs, moms, and false conceptions of candy
me: i'm sorry i didn't call you!
Laura: that's cool -I had some scheme cooked up involving dinosaurs and fried eggs, but I guess it will never happen now...
(from "reasons why laura and i are BFF," section G, paragraph 9.)
my mom is in town! as anyone who has met my mom will already know, my mom is cool. she is fashionable and tan and good-natured. she lives in california. she will be on the phone with my dad pretty much the entire time she is here.
we cleaned the house yesterday, because she was coming to visit, and also because our house was really, really dirty. (we have 2 1/2 dogs and no one is at the house very much, so what do you expect? we are crushing traditional gender roles through messiness. Go Us.) while we were in the midst of cleaning (/watching "the life aquatic" in ten-minute increments), our puppy visitor decided to poop in as many different rooms as possible. that definitely added to the evening's excitement.
mom says the plants i'm watching for her look good, which is not actually true but i appreciate that love is blind. (it causes heartache but it means survival of the species.) i also appreciate that she brought me boxes of raisins, because when she sent me a text last week asking what my favourite dessert was, that is what i named. for most of my childhood, i lived in a health-food household, so i was told - and believed - that raisins were candy, and i often had them for a dessert when i was very small. there is still something in my brain that thinks "candy!" when i eat raisins. i wonder if this is why i am not a huge fan of literal candy. real candy doesn't taste like raisins, it tastes like... something for which i still lack a point-of-taste-reference.
the plays went well this weekend. i have high-apple-pie-in-the-sky hopes for next weekend. our audience is starting to warm up to the story. my actors are starting to warm up to acting. the possibilities are without limit. (within the confines of a broken elevator, of course.)
i like working with kids because preschoolers are really the most amazing humans i will ever know. maybe the most important thing i do all week is protect the imagination of four-year-olds - because when they're an adult, and they go looking for it again, i want it to be in a safe place, stretched and ready to go.
also, because i work with children 6 days a week, it makes it slightly less weird that i am 24 and still wear earrings that look remarkably like carrots and cupcakes.
11 Oct 2007
he gave me directions, but he didn’t have any teeth.
my real job, in my brain, is writing plays. and next weekend, i'll get to see one of my little plays performed in the morning, in one city, and see another one in a different city that same nite. and on the second one, i don't even have to do anything to make it happen - it's totally been handed off. which is ultimately what i want to do, i think. that's why i write for theatre. so that i can write something, and then relinquish it - hand it off to a set of humans and say, "here it is. it's yours now, to make better or to screw up." at least what they do will always be wider than what i could do on my own.
now, if people would just start PAYING me to do this, that would rule. oh, someday.
my sister started waiting tables at denny's last nite. the cook asked her if she wanted to make some money. rae, because she knows what's up, asked "doing what?" instead of answering the question. apparently his girlfriend won't give him his stuff back, and he wants to pay rae to "knock all that bitch's teeth out." rae respectfully declined.
later, she was sitting in the back seat of courtney's car, telling us this story. at the end, she said, "i mean, who would look at me and think i could mess somebody up?" courtney and i both raised our hands.
since rae took this job, all i have wanted to do is watch "Waitress" again.
but tonite? what i really want to do is CLEAN MY HOUSE. it makes me feel old that i even want that, but there it is.
on the other hand, my mother recently sent me five text messages about donuts, so i have some hope that i will never actually grow old. it's not in my genes.
10 Oct 2007
oh! oh! now i know!
i figured it out. after re-reading my last blog, i now know why my preschoolers were bored - because they were listening to me talk.
in life, i think i need a sound cue to tell me when to stop talking. like an unpromising buzzing BAMP! sound, or something. do you know the kind of sound i mean?
i have been drinking gas station coffee for the past week. it's pretty bad. but i like being able to stop somewhere on my way into work, and a gas station is the only thing that's really on the way. it didn't really occur to me for a long time that i could stop in there and they might have anything i sort of wanted. gas stations are reserved in my mind for road trip snacks and Christmas eve outings with my father and my siblings, in search of stocking stuffers for my mom. but now. now i'm a regular at the corner gas station. i like when they ask me if i bought any gas and it's always too early for me to answer that question appropriately (like with "yes" or "no"), so i blink a few times and say, "no. i don't have a car." and i pick up my bad coffee and put on my double-as-earmuffs headphones, and i keep along on my walk to work. i don't think they're curious about me.
i had an idea for a story the other day, when i was walking to the gas station for a midday cup o' joe (what a weird phrase), about a gas station that had a side operation where you could also buy glimpses into the future. i wanted to start it with, "I'm going to the gas station for a cup of coffee and the ability to see into the future." i thought that was pretty good. but my computer crashed at work, because i should have been filing, not writing stories, so i may have lost it. oh well. you win some, you lose some.
the word for today is "slake."
05 Oct 2007
and my favourite song’s entitled
have i ever been bored? i guess so. but it happens like, once a year. and i usually don't call it that. it's never been the first term to come to mind.
pretty much the only time i feel like yelling at the kids in my church class is if one of them says that they're bored. (this doesn't happen very often, but.) i tend to just stare at them, and say, "you're BORED?" and then in my head, i add, "you are FOUR. i am TWENTY-FOUR and i have NEVER been bored. how have you possibly been bored already?"
i don't remember feeling bored as a child. i guess i must have been at some point, but i remember being really good at entertaining myself. we constructed these elaborate imaginary worlds - families of cats that eventually evolved into people, rivalries in the realm of matchbox vehicles, thousands of horses in all different colours. i thought the frogs in my backyard were the same frogs every year. i named them, based on size, and made them play with me. (in retrospect, this was definitely not what the frogs had planned to do with their day.) i thought they were related. i made mud footprints in my backyard and tried to convince my brother that big foot was on the move. (because there's a value in magic, if not in lies.) i went exploring. i thought the woods by our house were enchanted, because i decided they were. (i chose enchantments at every turn.) (and besides, there were iridescent purpleblue dragonflies. a sure sign of something otherworldy at hand.)
i don't know when i would have found the time to be bored. maybe after the internet existed. or when i began to have friends i expected to see. or when they let me have a TV in my room. maybe then i was bored. that's possible.
are options the problem? do we just have too many options now? does that make you sure that, whatever you're doing, there must be something better, more exciting, more fulfilling that you could be doing?
i guess i feel that way sometimes. maybe that's what being bored is like.
but honestly, most of the time, i'm doing essentially what i want to do. i'm not always doing something fun or something life-changing, but i do not usually feel coerced in life. it's not really what you make it, but there are a few choices that i think i have: one of them is whether i live in what's happening now, or spend this time on second guesses.
i don't always make the right choice. that is true.
03 Oct 2007
oh, rich schulte - i have no doubts.
Current mood: impressed
somebody just came into the office and left 123...4.5...6 parrot feathers. from their pet parrot. his name is Max. and these are his feathers. and they are on my desk.
i knew there was a reason why i stopped working for the government. the coolest thing anyone ever left on my desk there was a donut.
also, here is another reason why i am at this job. because, sometimes, i am lucky enough to get letters like this (emphasis NOT added):
"LOOK! It's a bird, it's a plane... no, it's Children's Speech & Readi exceeding sales expectations!"
Dear Jessica Smith,
I placed your name in the cartoon above to dramatize a point in a humorous way, but make no mistake... There is nothing funny about a business losing market share. I want you to be successful and exceed every sales goal you have ever dreamed of.
That's why I sent you a sample of the brand new Squiggle Pen! Check out the way your name shines with this revolutionary new design. Successful businesses know the value of handing out pens to promote business and to foster goodwill. Hand out the new Squiggle Pen today; its polished chrome trim, squiggle shaped clip that everyone's crazy about and dynamic graphics attract more attention to Children's Speech & Readi.
I won't tell you there's only one pen as comfortable as the one you are holding. Pilot makes a pen called Dr. Grip that is almost as comfortable and seels for $4.95. And Sanford also makes a similar pen that retails for $5.95. Both are "great pens." Oh, but wait...did I tell you that neither of them are printed with the dramatic graphics we have created using our patented micro fusion color process? I also haven't told you my special first-time buyer price to you is only 39¢ each. And there's more!
You may think that's great value, but I didn't stop there. Every pen will be customized exactly to your specifications. That means you can order just...
100 Pens @ $1.49 39¢ each. Save more than $1.00 ea. off the regular customer price!
Okay, enough about this terrific value. Let me share an experience I had recently at an auction. It was a dreary day and as I walked the halls of this failed business, I realized how very sad it is when a business dies. And it can happen very easily because the business world is a jungle and what's the first law of the jungle? That's right, it's survival of the fittest. There is no help out there when things get tough.
So my suggestion to you is this. Even if business is good, don't get too comfortable. Buy some "customer loyalty insurance" and invest in an order of the Squiggle pens. Trust me, you can't do enough nice things to let your customers know you treasure them. Act now and get:
SPECIAL FIRST-TIME BUYER PRICES!
All come with tremendous graphics, full personalization, and a finger massage grip. Order today--for fastest service, order online at www.pens.com/shop. Your web page password is ********.
Best regards,
Rich Schulte, CEO
PS: If you have any doubt, here's the clincher. It's my guarantee to you and my conviction of your satisfaction. We are so confident of our quality and fulfillment services, that we don't expect a deposite or prepayment of any kind, you are pre-approve to order up to $250 on open account. Why do things this way? I believe in our product and I trust you!
30 Sep 2007
things that are not so much a bitch
as promised:
*arm warmer season
*the white balcony (it has hats)
*98cent hotpink nail polish (classy)
*the name "cecilia" (which i forgot exists)
*the sense of accomplishment that comes with submitting something
*being productive at the office
*enchiladas
*watching old home movies, backwards, with music playing in the background (but not our home movies. or the home movies of anyone we actually know, or to whom we are related)
*appreciating killer mix CD, circa 2005
*the Most Realistic Fishing Game Ever (that is not actually fishing)
that's all. that is the sum of things that are not a bitch.
Currently listening :
In A Nutshell
By Pelle Carlberg
Release date: 03 July, 2007
27 Sep 2007
they’re going to take my bloggin license away
today, my boss questioned my eating habits, when she saw me take a piece of wheat french bread, pour salad dressing on it, fold it, and eat it.
but if there's one thing i learned from my time of living with chanelle, it's that Bread + Anything = Sandwich.
thinking about the future. like, the next couple years : location and profession and my soul. feel like i'm remembering what i wanted in the first place. feel like i'm being reminded of the things i hoped for when i didn't know so much about the mechanics of existing.
i'm pretty much broke most of the time. also, the second i get money, i buy kettles. i think those two things might be related, but i'm not sure how.
whenever i feel like i'm gaining weight, i want to bake cookies. thanks, Brain.
i often enjoy writing postcards to myself, inside my head. here's one i wrote when i was trying to find the kansas city airport after leaving the hospital:
Dear Jessy:
You are so lost.
Love,
Everybody
i like to keep it short and to the point. oh, and i also like this one, because it's multi-purpose:
Dear Brain:
WHAT WERE YOU THINKING?!?
Love,
Jessy
y'know. that sort of thing. i think i'm going to keep a supply of stamped postcards in my bag, so i can actually send these to myself. then i could make my own day. yesssss.
24 Sep 2007
let it rain
i don't know what it's all about, my sudden insistence on constantly updating. i should probably check in with my subconsious and find out what the deal is. i've been writing a lot, in general, but i don't know if that really has anything to do with it. i mean, i'm supposed to write a lot, in general. it's what i do.
it was raining on my way to work today. i was going to go in early, but of course i didn't wake up in time, and rae also overslept, so we made coffee and headed out - both of us late - at almost the same time. i left first, pulling a hotpink hooded windbreaker on under my jacket because i like to pretend it's a raincoat. rae just hopped on her bike and pulled her hoodie up over her hair. and although the day has just started, i think i can say with a degree of surety that the best part of my day has already happened:
walking down the wetwet street across from my house, my sister catches up to me on the bike. i know this because somebody yells, "I LOVE YOU!" from the other side of the street.
"I LOVE YOU TOO!" i yell back, around my hoodie.
"THIS SUCKS!" she adds, as she passes me.
"I KNOW!"
we are both looking forward to winter. i can tell.
it's funny because my memories of winter in colorado, although incredibly inconvenient, are mostly very peaceful. most of them are not winter, really... i don't know what i did with those memories. mostly the ones i have are from the late fall, when i still had not been here very long. it was before Christmas, and jordan's visit, and the snowstorms, and walking home in the ice, and rae's accident, and my first trip to kansas city. these memories are from a place that is dry and cold and impossibly still. when i was living at my parents' house on the south side of town, and the sky here was still the biggest thing i had ever seen, and my lungs were just adjusting to the fresh air, and everything felt so quiet and so clean. i bought a vest and stayed home a lot. i remember walking, often - sometimes with my dad, in the afternoons, but usually by myself - not because i had a destination. it was because it was nite and the moon was full and i wanted to smoke a cigarillo because i was getting along with my parents so well that forms of rebellion were increasingly hard to come by. it was cold outside and i was in colorado so i didn't want to be insulated from the cold anymore - i wanted to go outside and exist in it and plant my feet in it. i wanted to walk dogs and eat apples and let my hair grow and stop wearing makeup. i wanted to cut my fingernails and forget about them. i wanted to watch The History Channel and switch back to tea. i wanted to grow things.
so when i feel winter coming, a shot of excitement, of possibility, runs through me. even though i know my memories aren't from any real winter. and even though maybe mixed into those memories of false colorado seasons, there is the feel of cold rain on my skin as i run for the bus in oxford, or the snap of cold in the spring air there when i started running through the park almost every day. there is also those few days in boston, right at the end of fall and just before it gets too cold to really do anything, when i always seemed to spend some time in the city, although now i can't remember what i was doing - i can only feel the air, see the dimming colors of fall leaves on their last legs.
in these end-of-autumn memories, i am always walking, and alone, and content. those memories are happy, despite what may have happened in the days preceding or following them. and i felt powerful, unstoppable - even though i know that's sort of a lie.
you should come to my house sometime when it's raining like this. i'll make a pot of tea, and tell you the most beautiful stories. later, you'll remember the sound of my voice, and the feel of cool, dirty hardwood under your bare feet, and the taste of the clover honey that spilled on the side of your teacup. and - if i'm lucky - maybe you'll even remember something i said.
but that's really not the point.
23 Sep 2007
VEAL AMARETTO
Current mood: triumphant
...is a MEAT DESSERT and it fucking EXISTS:
http://www.professionalrecipes.com/recipes/meats/veal_amaretto.html
so all of you skeptics can just bite me.
but not literally, because - ow.
21 Sep 2007
flashback episode
this is embarassing, but i just found this old livejournal (yes, i know) entry that i wrote when i had just moved to DC in 2005 (and didn't even have a job yet), and i a) am guessing that it is more interesting than anything original i might write today, and b) really want chanelle to see this, because she was there but not, y'know, in my head. also, i sometimes like to look back and remember the places i've been and how i was different there and how i was the same. and i know that about myself, which i think is why i write things down in the first place. you have to put up landmarks, right? otherwise you'll end up covering the same ground all over again.
i promise this blog will not become a Jessy Lauren Smith Retrospective. unless i can find any other entries from my past where i also curse out sarah jessica parker for imaginary offenses.
ahem:
this morning, chanelle and i had brioche and chai for breakfast - brioche that we made IN OUR BREAD MACHINE. actually, chanelle's bread machine that carly and i bought her for graduation. but hey, wasn't that smart of me? its name is Arthur.
whole foods is trendy. like the music that i listen to, which i can now hear on the overhead at The Gap, and the clothes i used to wear, which are now on sale in different forms, also at the gap. THANKS A LOT, sarah jessica parker.
i wear busted-up converse to make myself feel better. i call (")people(") frantically for recommendations on music that i haven't heard before. i walk, a lot, and i read even more, because i still believe in the possibilities of unhipness in literature. i'm currently in the middle of four different books; i think i'm paranoid that my brain will atrophy during my year out. it happens, y'know.
i'm going out tonite, with chanelle and other people that i don't know, obviously, because they're not chanelle. as i was leaving the house, i considered all the benefits of not going, and the possible ramifications of "staying up late." fortunately, there are NO ramifications because i've suddenly become one of those people who doesn't have Anywhere They Have To Be. at least not tomorrow. i invent places i have to be, like a cd store across town (to buy the new franz cd) or the grocery store (to figure out what "gluten" is).
i have zero plans at the moment to drop off the planet, but i may be experiencing Post-Graduate Assimilation - so if anyone would like to help ward off those symptoms, please feel free. if anyone speaks my language and would like to give me something new(?) to believe in, i'm all about it.
20 Sep 2007
sometimes i amaze even people who are not me
there are some promises that you just can't make to another human being: "i won't hurt you." "i will always love you." "i will never leave you or forsake you" - which, okay, i guess you can promise if you're technically God, but still. nine times out of ten, when i try to predict the future, i end up being a liar.
but i keep making promises. why? do we deal in the currency of absolutes so as not to expose any weak spots - give entrance to any potential for future failure or something simply spiraling out of my control?
i think i'm having trouble with my re-entry to the atmosphere. maybe i need to stop existing in so many different places. i sometimes have this daymare where i'm given a glimpse into the spiritual realm and see my soul cut into chunks and strewn across the planet, thin-stretched bits of soul tethering it to my body and always on the verge of snapping like a rubber band.
too dramatic? i know, it really is. vivid imaginations can be a bitch.
things that are also a bitch:
1) the feel of new money
2) female dogs
3) not having a pen or a pencil
4) misdirected ire/loneliness
5) fevers
6) unforgiveness
7) sad phone calls
8) being hit by a car
9) vegetarians
my next list will be entitled "things that are not so much a bitch." i hope. life is, after all... defiant of generalizations.
Currently listening :
Open Field
By Taken by Trees
Release date: 11 September, 2007
19 Sep 2007
....
i feel like i just got back from a foreign country. but i can't put my finger on why exactly i feel that way.
it was a really good weekend, all things considered. surely the best weekend i've ever spent in a hospital. it's always weird and fun to be in kansas city. i instantly gain this set of surrogate friends who are interesting and cool and not really that unlike my regular set of friends, except they're a tad more urban. i think eric and i are attracted to essentially the same type of person, so that doesn't really surprise me. but it is a little odd, when i think of it... i borrow people.
i was glad to be there. it seemed like the right time and the right place, which is generally where i want to be. and i got to read short stories, and play with modeling clay, and get beat in every possible game in existence. and listen to a lot of good music. and drink coffee more often than i ate food. so, in many ways, it was not unlike every other visit i've had with eric.
it was different in some ways too.
11 Sep 2007
baby, take my arms, baby, take my legs
i like when friends visit. it's good. (although apparently, i am one of the worst fort collins tour guides EVER. i guess "let's wander around and see what my friends are doing" is not an appropriate strategy for showing someone around town?) laura and whit still seemed to like fort collins. and laura got to go to a fort collins dance party... so, totally worth it. and you know what's nice? when you actually like the person your friend marries. that makes life just so much less... annoying. it's like you get bonus friends. (SO much better than bonus enemies. man, i hate those.)
i am kind of mad that my basement keeps flooding for different reasons. it's kind of like that part of the house does not even exist, except for the purposes of doing laundry. and i'm not even sure that's a good idea. but a girl's got to have clean clothes. (she says, as if she believes it.)
if i can get this theatre stuff taken care of before i leave, i can take a deep breath on my way to kansas city. and if not, well... the air is germ-infested on planes anyway, so that's fine.
in the meantime, i need to see if i can scrounge up some non-toxic finger paints and a book of short stories by Gogol. and possibly a puppet.
Currently listening :
Royal We
By Royal We
Release date: 05 November, 2007
05 Sep 2007
today is a day is a day is a day is a
Current mood: happy
the next couple weekends, i get to broaden my life outside the confines of colorado. (confines? with all that wide open space? i need a better word.) i don't generally mind the confines of colorado, but it's nice to remember that i have a history that exists somewhere - that there was a beginning part to the narrative of my life. (although when you're telling a good story, you always start at the last possible second - which is why i'm a good story.) i don't find that so much in places (although they exist - places i've known, places where i can find my feet), but in other humans who were neighbours, bystanders or acting participants in something that happened, something i was.
okay, i'm getting a little... contemporary lit., but the point is... today is a really good day, because i bought a plane ticket to go to kansas city the weekend after next, and i'm going to finally get to see someone who needs to be seen, and my mind is already resting a little in that. and i TALKED to him, and he didn't forget about me, which i have to confess was one of my biggest irrational fears.
also, as i've probably mentioned, my BFF from home (another weird word) is coming to visit, along with her husband, this weekend. and i'm getting pretty darn excited for that.
life, overall, is a totally worthwhile enterprise.
04 Sep 2007
no deaths for jessy
okay, now i feel like i should talk about something real, like what i did this weekend... but i just, y'know... don't really feel like it.
i should just end the entry there. laura would send a sniper to my house.
i took care of some life goals this weekend. some of them, like... playing a harmonic duet with an unseen stranger... i mean, i didn't even know i HAD that goal. i wasn't even aware. but i smoked a hookah, which is less of a goal and more like something i feel like i should have already done in my life, like... changing a tire, or... cooking something.
i have to go buy a light for my bike today, because now that a kind person (matt) made my bike usable again, i'm riding it more, and it's getting dark earlier, so most of the time when it's like 11 and i'm riding home my internal monologue goes something like this:
"AAAH! AAAH! I'M GOING TO DIE! AAAAAH! DEATH! AAAHHHHHhhhhaaaahhh..."
and then i sort of forget to be scared and it trails off a bit, but those first few minutes are really stressful. i just want bike riding to be more, i don't know... relaxing.
so, lights. and maybe a helmet? i know that's not cute, but neither is that rubbery feeling that your skin gets after it's been embalmed.
what else is important? it's flea's birthday today! that's important. and laura is coming to visit this weekend! she's moving to california, because that is apparently the only place anybody moves to anymore. but that's cool.
oh, yeah, and: KATIE D, I LIKE YOUR FRIENDS.
i can say that. and some of them are actually my friends now, too, i suppose, but "katie's friends" is sort of a broader demographic to pool from, so... i like to be inclusive.
i think that's all.
soul shades
you know what i often think of when i'm applying eyeshadow? i think about this advertisement that i saw... i don't know, years ago. i think when i was still in high school. anyway, this advertisement was for light glittery eyeshadow or something. and it read, "if your eyes are the window to your soul - do you want your soul to be dark and foreboding?"
okay, A) now i'm thinking, that must be a paraphrase, because i've never seen any makeup ads that use the word "foreboding." but that's what i came away with.
and B) i love this. because it suggests that i can actually change the HUE of my soul by picking a lighter eyeshadow colour. and i gotta tell you, that girl in the ad? i don't remember what she looked like, but she definitely looked like she had a very light soul. so, assuming that my soul is still residing... wherever souls reside, but definitely farther back in my body than my eyeballs... and eyes are the window to my soul... which is a phrase that has always creeped me out for some reason, but that's... yeah, SO. eyeshadow is what... the stained glass? the draperies? i get more confused the farther i get into this metaphor.
but you know what? i think about that ad EVERY TIME i apply eyeshadow. and i generally respond to it, in my head. i think, "no, i do not want my soul to be dark and foreboding!" and i go for the lighter shade. or i think, "yeah, no, actually, i do want my soul to be dark and foreboding today, thanks," and go for the burgundy. and then i think about what a GREAT ad campaign that would have been, if i had any idea what it was for. that's a small failure. this ad is probably responsible for every purchases i have made of lightly-hued eyecolour from the beginning of time till now, but there's like a 1 in 56 chance that i bought it from the company that paid for the ad.
oh, well. you win some, you lose some.
29 Aug 2007
there’s no people like show people
in a choice between theatre and human beings, i usually say, "TOUGH CALL," and leave it at that.
in a choice between human beings and owls? Owls. hands down. i mean, c'mon - they can turn their fucking heads all the way around.
i have been walking everywhere that Courtney doesn't drive me, because apparently the feminist movement did not actually take place and i can't use a bike pump. or i can on the front tire, but not on the back tire. oh well... so i lace up my sneakers. i should probably get a raincoat.
i've been scouting elevators. if you see a good one, let me know.
i went into the grocery store today on my lunch break to buy dum-dums and q-tips. the cashier made a joke about how i was going to put them in a piñata, which i didn't totally understand, but still enjoyed. and so during the whole walk back to work, i was thinking about what if i did actually fill a piñata full of suckers and q-tips, and whether anyone but me would think that was funny. of course, everytime i buy a piñata, i end up keeping it as a pet instead of breaking it open, so it's really a moot point.
i like living near old town, because i like running into people i know. have i said that before? well, i meant it. i've always liked wandering around by myself, but i like the possibility of coming across someone who might change my plans (even if it's just that my plans suddenly include a slice of pizza that wasn't there before), because that's something like adventure. the possibility of adventure should exponentially increase when you meet up with another person, otherwise why are you talking to them? (i just made that up right now, but you never know: it might be true.)
also, i think i have a very loose definition of "adventure." but i think that is okay.
Currently listening :
Critics Pass Away
By Baby Dayliner
Release date: 02 May, 2006
26 Aug 2007
untitled
i miss my big headphones.
Currently listening :
Substance
By Joy Division
Release date: 25 October, 1990
24 Aug 2007
happy thoughts, etc.
courtney walked into the bathroom last nite and walked right back out. "i love our house," she said. i went in to see what she meant, and found a can of PBR on the bathroom counter. because we are classy.
i bought a crocheted squid on www.etsy.com today.
nobody gets food poisoning from my parties.
i drank a stout float yesterday. it tasted okay, but there was a straw in it.
i found out my parents stopped in Vegas on their way to california, and stayed at Caesar's Palace. i found this out when i checked the PO Box and found an envelope with a shiny gold "Caesar's Palace" emblem on it. my parents told me that they accidentally got married to other people while they were there, but they had to get rid of mom's because "turns out he was a better stripper than a husband." they told me that the envelope contained annullment papers for the both of them. i told them that what happens in vegas stays in vegas. and that i loved them. a lot.
someone used "pancake" as a term of endearment for me the other day.
these are the kinds of things that make everything a little bit better. y'know? small things that do not break.
21 Aug 2007
lemon juice and papercuts
long weeks, and i'm being called into new things with fuzzy edges. i don't know how i feel about most things, but i'm looking forward to... you know what, that's a lie. i'm not looking forward. i try sometimes, in the same way that i taste-test the past, but these days i keep stumbling straight back to the present like there's electric barbed wire keeping this moment safe from all the others. i point my eyes straight ahead, but i don't see a thing.
there was a time, i think towards the end of my college career, when i would only let myself think of two things that i had to do at any given time. that was the limit. if i wanted to think of something else i had to do, i would have to complete one of the two tasks that were already on the list first. these tasks could range anywhere from "finish my senior thesis" to "make my bed"... okay, scratch that - making the bed was NEVER on the list. maybe "eat lunch" or "take a shower" would be better examples. anyway. you get the point? i just didn't have the capacity. i had to take large things, an endless stream of multi-step processes, and fit them in the palm of my hand. and that is how i did it.
today, i have to work on the elevator plays. and find a way to check the PO box. that is what i have to do today. i do not have to make decisions about my future, or disentangle myself from hasty committments, or edit my father's book, or figure out when and how i'm going to get to kansas city. i have to work on the elevator plays. i have to check the PO box. and then, after that, i have to do the next thing.
i don't know what that is yet. which is good. because this is the moment when i find out that eric opened his eyes this weekend, or wrote something on a piece of paper last nite. this is the moment when my dad has a job, when my sister starts classes, when my brother is grocery shopping and when a song hits me just so. and i can't afford to miss any of that because i have other plans. the now is too costly to keep on trading away.
Currently reading :
A Wild Sheep Chase: A Novel
By Haruki Murakami
Release date: 09 April, 2002
16 Aug 2007
with your delicate heart
Current mood: cold
it's been a difficult week.
some things have gotten pushed to the wayside. i don't work late, this week - i do my work during the day. i set aside the elevator plays, i didn't finish cleaning out the basement. i didn't bleach my teeth or deposit my checks or call certain people that i really need to call before saturday... and other certain people that i really just need to call. you'd think i would have learned my lesson.
it's been a long week.
there's a lot going on. there's always a lot going on. but it's not really stressing me out now... it's just one more thing in a long line of things.... bits and pieces that stick to you as you walk past. things that will get done, or not get done... they'll probably get done. they usually do, eventually. i am often late, but i almost always do what i say i will do.
so. i didn't answer the phone on saturday nite when one of my best friends called. six minutes later, he got hit by a hit-and-run driver. and he's alive. and i don't know when i'm going to be able to talk to him again. and that is making this week infinitely more complicated than i expected. i always expect it to be complicated, in the sense of me overplanning and overcomitting - in the sense that i will be juggling writing projects and church committments and the people i love, and that sometimes i will mess up and the whole thing will come crashing down and i'll have to gather it up and start over. i'm used to that. and most of the time that seems hard, but right now it seems kind of... peripherial. i'm doing what i can do.
really all i want to do is get on a bus to kansas city and go down there and be useless. but i can't do that, so i go through with the minor things. and i call and bother kind people that i barely know, to get information that doesn't make things better but maybe makes things more real, which in a way makes them more managable. and i dispense the things i know and beg prayers from strangers, because that seems almost helpful. i take lunches that should be naps.
anyway. it's only thursday. and this week can only get better - not because it can't get any worse, but because i'm not leaving room for any other options. this week, this... it is going to get better. there is no other way.
01 Aug 2007
monday nite's alright for fightin'
dear diary:
on monday nite, my sister made us dinner! it was delicious, and she was very cute in her cowboy boots and Christmas apron. then i locked courtney in her room! i thought that was funny. courtney apparently did not find it as funny, because later on she jinxed me and forced me to buy her a coke when the the three of us went to target in our party dresses. now there is a target cash rep who thinks i'm a deaf-mute who doesn't know the target dress code.
so that was monday.
the end!
love,
jessy
27 Jul 2007
well then
i just have to say a few things:
1) a minute ago, i was making a cup of coffee in the office kitchen. at the same time, i was pouring a cup of milk and cereal. i somehow managed to pour the cereal into my cup of coffee. yum.
2) my sister arrived last nite! and her friend, and her firend's douchetastic boyfriend. and rae's two dogs. awkwardly, the dog that i thought had one eye apparently has both eyes? oops. still not sure where i picked up that idea, unless it was derived from the name "popeye." it's possible. when i saw him, i leapt to the conclusion that one of his eyes was glass, rather than - perchance - he might have two working eyes.
3) i drove a stickshift to work today! i only stalled out once. i am feeling VERY overconfident at the moment, lemme tell you.
4) whenever i go to old chicago's, no matter how long it's been between visits, i go there two nites in a row. why is that?
5) i wish mary beth yttrup lived nearby, so she could come to all of those parties i'm not having yet.
6) i was thinking that the theme for my housewarming party should be "gypsies" or "the jungle," but that led me to "people who live in trees" for some reason, and now all i really want to do is set up big bendy toy people in the trees in our yard. the original theme was going to be "couches," though, so i feel like my friends will just be relieved that we're getting away from that... except for tiffany, who will probably be disappointed. she had a killer "i'm a couch!" outfit planned out.
7) i found out today (and i'm kind of embarassed that i didn't think to ask about this when i first set them up) that my utility company will let me pay a little extra each month to have all of my energy from wind-powered sources. they're sending me an application in the mail, and i am pretty excited. i like to occassionally practice what i preach - it is not, in all honesty, my strong suit.
in points-without-bullets news, i'm really excited that both rae and courtney are here, and to start putting the house together as a team (Together! Everyone! Accomplishes! More!). i'm excited about the funfetti cupcakes that i made last nite and neglected to put in... cupcake sleeves, or whatever they're called. i'm excited to get my room cleaned, and margaret's couch in the basement, and to make katie d take me shopping for curtains (because i just don't SEE these things, sometimes). i'm excited to design a room and a house that is a little bit my own... it has started with the comic lamp that kirsten made me, and the daybed i got for $15 from a yard sale, and an old suitcase and all of my books. i am excited about finally, finally, being sure of a spot in-town, where i run into people i know at starbucks, at surfside, walking home from work. something about it reminds me of oxford... a little city/college town, an hour from the big city, getting around on foot and on bicycles more than you would expect... FINDING a way.
and maybe it's not even that, so much as living in a house again - an old house, with history and a little too much room, and dirt in unexpected places... and a small space to call my own.
again, i am grateful.
23 Jul 2007
aimlessless
i sometimes look around and notice that i am in colorado, and i think, "how did this HAPPEN?" i mean... not in a bad way. not in the same breath with a panic attack, like i would have if i woke up one day and realised i was back in florida or texas, or that i was in LA or des moines or somewhere in alabama... but just a mild surprise at the unpredictable path that my life has taken. i was in DC and i was supposed to go to england, but i didn't because i don't take care with my money and maybe i wasn't ready for that part of my life to be completed, checked off. my parents moved suddenly from florida to colorado because they thought, what the hell, mountains, and bristow's wedding was nice, so, sure. my sister was planning to come, but she didn't. and i came from the east coast and i did the math and i stayed. and then courtney and rae decided to come and i decided another year would be fine and my parents decided to move to california (which is what they're doing today). so now i'm going to be here, in fort collins, with my sister and one of my best friends, and actually my dad's best friend is still here and i still have this church that they gave me when i first got here. but isn't fort collins really a completely random place to congregate, out of all the places that there are? i mean, i like it, and i'm happy here, and ultimately it seems less weird to be here than it seemed to be in DC. but colorado? the mountains? honestly? we're a sea level people, drawn to coasts and foreign countries. (this makes us sound like forest faeries, which is not actually the case.) but i like the mountains, because they're nothing like anywhere i've lived before, and even the most absurd exoticism is at a premium.
when it comes to not being tripped out, however, here's what lately has been like:
drinking black coffee because, eh, why buy milk?
walking home from parties with a four-bike escort.
taking on the possibility of doing ridiculous things, like leading.
collecting yellow things in anticipation of my sister's arrival.
having neighbours.
staying up late to clean, as if that's the cool thing to do.
my hair getting long.
gin & tonics with slices of watermelon.
not being a slacker.
obtaining friends.
practicing stickshift.
avoiding buying anything for the house that makes me feel like a grown-up.
16 Jul 2007
i live someplace now.
!!!!!
I HAVE A HOUSE!
I HAVE A HOUSE!
I HAVE A HOUSE!
HEY HEY HEY!
that's my "house" cheer. i just made it up right now. i don't know, these things just... come to me, sometimes.
yeah, i'm excited/relieved. i slept in my own room last nite, in my own house, in my own bed, with the utilities in my name (well, you can't win 'em all). i feel... grateful. the house is dirty because the landlord got sick and couldn't come finish, and there's a hole in the kitchen window and the lid of the toilet tank is broken in half. and i am so, so happy about this house. it is big and it will be hard to mess up. and i am going to live there a year, which is a very long time. i feel like maybe it's okay to settle in a little. to squish around and find a spot that's comfortable.
i will have two dynamic roommates, and i have a bed, which is an exciting and unexpected gift that comes from my mother taking a sudden turn into a garage sale in search of a $5 desk. (i have silverware and dishes courtesy of the same sharp right turn as well.) i have neighbours... some i already knew, some who have come by to say hello. i could have a milk man, if i wanted. (that sounds trashy. i didn't mean for that to be trashy.) i'm feeling very, um... human, i guess. i feel human.
i know, of course, that we are not human because we have a house to live in or a garden to garden. i know that my humanity is not dependent on storage space or a physical mailing address or a bed or hardwood floors. but it does help. y'know?
29 Jun 2007
oh, and P.S.:
next year? i'm fucking going to go to grad school. because it's not practical, and there are fourteen hundred and one reasons why it shouldn't work out and doesn't make sense - but i don't think i'm ever going to get over this. do you understand what i'm saying? i don't think i'm ever going to feel satisfied, or settled, or able to move forward, until i do this. i don't think that in five years i'm going to find something that is just as good but less expensive... throw myself down in my recently reupholstered armchair and exclaim, "wow, was that a close call. so glad i didn't waste my time and money on that unnecessary masters!"
and y'know what? if i do, fuck it - i'm going anyway. i'm through with options.
covering a multitude
today is really alright. i'm clean and i look cute and i slept on an air mattress last nite and stayed up too late talking. i am slowly creeping towards the goal of getting enough sleep one nite. it's beginning to look possible again.... maybe a lot of things are.
i have known so many generous, willing, helpful people in my life so far, and the people of fort collins are far from being an exception. it's an awkard situation, but maybe i'm learning to bend a little, to accept help from other people with at least a lighter feeling of failure. i know i need to learn. it seems like every few years, i learn the lessons all over again - so maybe it's like algebra, and i never really learned.
i'm glad at least to be in town for awhile. to focus on my job, on my writing, but mostly on trying to exist, to be a whole person who has most of her belongings in the car and the rest in various people's basements... and one airplane hanger.
today on lunch i went to sunflower market and bought fresh mozzerella and lots of salady things and gingko and peanut butter (for dipping celery, obv). i walked out of there with my whole foods bag all stuffed with goodies, feeling pretty cool despite the fact that i knew my next stop was starbucks. i hopped in the car to put my groceries down, grab my credit card and some change for a tip. car on, door open, wilco playing entirely too loudly for a supermarket parking lot. i turned the car off, with an apology in mind. a woman walking a few yards from my car stopped suddenly.
"i liked that music!" she said.
"oh... thank you."
"what is it?"
"wilco."
"just wilco?"
"yeah, like.... roger wilco. wilco. they used to be a country band, but now they just do... they're really good. you should check them out."
"thanks! i liked that a lot. sorry to, y'know..."
"no! no, no problem. thanks!"
and i meant that, y'know? the fact that somebody's mom stopped to ask me who was playing on my stereo, while i was still in my car, just absolutely made my day. and it reminded me that - really good music? if you take it out of context, cut someone off from their prejudices about genre or generation... it will work for anyone. it will hit you where it's supposed to hit.
so today is not bad. this salad is fantastic. (although when did salad dressing become an "unnecessary frill" in my life? what sort of person cuts out salad dressing and housing before they cut out CD's and caffeine?) i do have to work a second job tonite, like i did last nite, like i'm going to do tomorrow morning. but i know where i'm staying for the week, and how i'm going to get places, and i know i'm going to the crown pub next thursday nite, and i know i'm going to ride a roller coaster instead of going to work next wednesday, and i know my mom is coming home on sunday. and then at least one of the only people in this world that i will let help me out of their own poverty will be in town for a little while.
and maybe in the meantime, this time and these people will keep teaching me about love, and how it's as much about receiving as giving, and how there is no shame in being without. how there is no indebtedness in true friendship because real love doesn't take notes. doesn't run out on you when the scales tip too far in one direction. how there is no fear in love.
and maybe this time, i'll learn.
13 Jun 2007
questions give you cancer
I AM GETTING SO MUCH DONE TODAY.
i just had to take a few moments off to blog about it.
i really hate the word "blog." it has the ring of a joke gone sour that somehow made its way into the dictionary. it's like if there were no other appropriate word for laughing other than saying "LOL" all the time... it's just not cool.
other things i don't really like: elementary school kids. i thought it was just junior high kids that bothered me, but apparently elementary school kids are now too cool to talk to me as well. this is not good for my self-esteem. i want to go back to the preschoolers.
okay, it is REALLY noisy in here right now. which is fine. but i'm going to go tuck myself away someplace. cheers.
the places you'll know
i live in a guest bedroom and use a bicycle - that isn't technically mine - as my primary form of transportation. i've been known to jet-set, but i'm taking a hiatus because it's bad for the environment and i don't know if i can take anymore excitement. i fill up my schedule because - i don't know why, actually - but really all i want to do is sit at home alone and write and make up songs on the piano and eat hummus.
i am better dressed and less cool every single day.
DC was good, because of the people, because of the stuff there, although i don't miss the city. that city. we never really got each other.
delaware was good, and difficult, and i was really glad to be there the whole time, even though sometimes maybe that feeling didn't make much sense. it was good to be with people who know my soul from a different angle - i am a different person to these people than i am to the people in colorado, the people in DC, my family, my friends in florida... but mostly, it's all true. and if i'm not a whole person to any one set of humans, i am at least practicing those different parts of me so that i become more of a whole person inside. i will be myself all the way through, even if no one ever sees.
it is good... it is good. i'm happy in colorado, but i miss the east coast. i miss the proximity to the places and the people that i already know. i think maybe i'm done after this, for a little while, with far distances from familiar spaces. i want england or new england again. i want to not be starting from scratch.
03 Jun 2007
Wow.
is it neurotic if i start straightening my hair because i think my boss wants me to? pretty sure it is.
wow is, "wow, i feel weird." something seems not-right with my body. but i refuse to get sick. there's no time. i'm flying to philly on the wednesday-nite red-eye. and then i have to be in a wedding. and then i have to party. and then i have to go to DC for a concert, and for a celebration of courtneycakes's day of birth. and then i have to go home and start working again. i am hein. annnnd i'm pretty sure i'm running a fever.
last nite i went out after church, against my better(?) judgment - but it's good to feel like you have friends. i enjoy that. also, i got some important info. and i got a lecture about STD's from a total stranger. so, that was fun and educational.
however, if anyone reading this wants to go out tonite, I AM NOT GOING. i am going to bed at like, 9, if at all possible. mmmmm. sleep.
i went whitewater rafting this weekend. probably one of the more awesome things i've done in my life. it was really, really, really, really fun. i cannot emphasize that enough. maybe it would have been less fun if we had flipped or someone had gone swimming, but thanks to some death-defying ninja(/yoga?) moves on the part of at least one girl in our raft, and our guide, we all stayed in the raft. yaaaay.
i was housesitting for the parents of some friends, but now i think i'm pretty much considered a stowaway. i just had to get out, y'know? had to.
wow, i feel... not good. so i'm just gonna...
30 May 2007
i made friends with the cat last nite
the place where we are currently living, has a few too many animals for my taste. but freedom ain't free, y'know, so i deal. i like the dogs, and the parakeets are alright - although the sight of things in cages always makes me feel like i'm choking. the cockateel isn't there very often anymore (thank THE LORD), and then... there's the cat. Luca. luca hissed at me and bared his teeth several times when i first got here. this did not make me feel welcome, and i quickly started treating him with the same indifference with which cats have always treated me. thus we established a tenuous peace. he always runs into the basement when we first get home, and i always apply disdainful remarks in his direction. eventually, he leaves.
last nite, things were playing out much like they usually do. luca scooted ahead of me down the stairs and into my abode. i followed him:
"no, no, no! you stupid cat. i hate you."
when i caught up to him, i felt a little bad. so i tried to make peace:
"okay, i don't actually hate you, Luca. i'm sorry i said that. i just don't like you very much. and maybe that isn't even fair; i just don't feel like we communicate well, you know? i don't feel like we have a functional relationship."
luca's response:
Stare. Stare.
in the face of such eloquence, i decide to asage my guilt by running a little bit of water from the tap in the sink, because Luca likes fresh water, because he is not a real cat. he went to have a drinky drink, and i went about my nightly business: packing an overnight bag, checking my e-mail, finding a book for my dad. my mother, meanwhile, started throwing little balls of paper for luca (who had lost interest in his ecologically unsustainable drinking habits) to chase. luca enjoyed this with great dignity, as per usual. when my mother lost interest, i unshunned luca once again and took up the game. and what joy! i was even better at this game than my mother was! luca was exceedingly pleased with the skils of his human tenants. and i was exceeding pleased when i realised that luca could fetch. yes, fetch. not that he always chose to fetch, but he was capable of it. that was almost as good as a dog! hurrah!
28 May 2007
after one long nite.
well, then.
our lives are very dramatic; but, for my part at least, in frustratingly real ways. the drama of hospitals and unemployment and paying rent and plans for the future. the drama of trying to believe in the goodness of God, of trying to connect with other human beings, of trying to keep telemarketers away from your boss. trying to do laundry, is dramatic. trying to find silver ballet flats for a wedding, is dramatic. trying to find a place to eat in denver when your blood sugar is dropping like a paperweight, is dramatic. these are the things that slay me on a daily basis.
i don't know - would i rather the dramatic things in my life be about romance and great Art and spontaneity in foreign countries? adventures. gorgeous things, small bright moments that lack the cost of daily terror, that put a chocolate coating on the fight to exist, the battle to continue. i have been there too. it's not the same. (there were two sides to gatsby's world, and the part that moved mountains was not swift or shiny.)
Art? art is the sane part of my life. i build things that are more stable than i am. i work in coffee shops with mismatched furniture, and i am a human being who visits often the edge of collapse - but i am a good carpenter. the things that i make will not be swallowed by the fire.
if we do not make it through, we will have done our best with the things that were required of us. we will have walked, surprisingly, without fainting - always drawn back from the very edge by the things that we made, by the hands that have made us... somewhere there is an anchor that keeps us from falling all the way away.
if we do not make it through, there will be no rainy exit. it will just be the frailty of our souls softly absorbing the thickness of our skins, until there is nothing left on the outside.... nothing left in the slightest.
24 May 2007
pretty things
i would like to use all of my birthday presents at once, i think. if i had my own place, that might be my plan for this evening (in this fantasy, i also don't have rehearsal tonite). i would boil chocolate fondue (maybe you're not supposed to boil it, though) in my new fondue pot, and let water soak up fresh-cut fruit in my new indigo pitcher. i will play my new harmonica, to soothe my nerves, and when the sound of melancholy gets to be too much, i'll put on carly's mix CD and colour my little ponies. i will wear my pretty silver jewelry and sprinkle love pox on the counters. because it is my place, and i can.
also, the kitchen floor will be hardwood.
11 May 2007
etcetera
today i ate an entire bag of sugar snap peas.
i still can't figure out a way to respect the play i just wrote, without the last two words being "Fuck You!" we just may not be able to do it at church.
orange-flavoured cranberries? something that definitely does not need to exist.
that's friday, for ya.
Currently listening :
The Bird of Music
By Au Revoir Simone
Release date: 08 March, 2007
09 May 2007
it only sometimes hurts to plan ahead
i hold loosely my plans for the future. call it a way of life, call it a defense mechanism... it's the way it goes. in a world full of possibilities and X-factors, i am always taking steps towards something, but the something is broad - maybe large enough to encompass my whole life. my steps always have a little to do with getting into a certain program, a certain country, a certain type of job... but they have mostly to do with becoming.
in the midst of becoming, i am trying to let myself plan on small things, without counting on them. a sprinkling of structure, if i know that a sudden change will not destroy me. these are somethings that i think might happen:
-i think i might be in the same state on my birthday, two years in a row.
-i think i might go whitewater rafting.
-i think i might see my work at a festival, before i go to grad school.
-i think i might have the same job, for more than a year.
-i think i might teach other people to write plays.
-i think i might teach small children to write plays.
-i think i might get to live with my sister and one of my best friends, in the fall. and my niece.
-i think i might write a television pilot.
-i think i might write a radio play.
-i think i might actually finish my full-length play.
-i think i will get a bicycle.
-i think i will try yoga.
-i think i will buy a dress.
these, folks, are my plans. such as they are. they probably don't look hard. maybe the hard part, for me, is writing down: "i think i might..." "...i think i will."
28 Apr 2007
anytime she goes away
other human beings, are absolutely entrancing.
i cannot even explain to you the things that i find delightful, in strangers, in people i know. i'm sometimes afraid that i'm turning into someone that i used to know, who would get caught up in the moment, in the wonderful strangeness of the person next to him on the subway, and just stare down at them, with a big smile on his face that would have been creepy if it wasn't so perfectly innocent.
why do i think that i'm turning into this person. because i spend too much time in coffee shops, being a stranger. and i see things... subtle drama... unrequited love... sudden stillness of features... laughs a little too loud... and i catch myself staring, on the other side of the room, with wide eyes and a childish smile, like this quiet interaction is the most charming thing that has ever happened... i like people's faces, i think. the way they can't control them. i like the eloquent look that they give to averted eyes, to a just-turned back. i like the way their face falls pensive when they feel unseen.
i mean, well... i don't like it. i just... love it. live for it. the small changes. the tells. soul-painted profiles.
they never know.
i like the song "ain't no sunshine when she's gone," though. i do like that. good song.
Currently reading :
Humana Festival 2004: The Complete Plays (Humana Festival)
By Tanya Palmer
Release date: 30 April, 2005
20 Apr 2007
baby, when we get older / we don't have to get colder
my shoulders are tense, it's not really shoulders, exactly... well, i mean, my shoulders are actually there. my shoulders firmly exist. but it's really my trapezoids with the tension. not really my shoulders at all.
i admire people who read and perform their own work. i've done it a couple times, granted. my last three years of college, i ended up with something in the literary journal every year - i'm not bragging, because i'm not convinced, in retrospect, that i deserved to be in the literary journal every year - and every year there was a release party in Gillies, the coffee shop, and i would show up there; i never intended to read, but something would happen, something inside of me or pressure from an editor with not enough actually-published people to read, and i would end up there, in front of the microphone, with my face hot and my voice unsteady and the sudden swift conviction that my work is crap. i don't like the sense of my writing being bound up in the feeling of fear and self-consciousness that i get when i'm on stage. i can look back now and realise that maybe my work was good, maybe it was bad, but that it doesn't connect at all to the sense memory that i have of it. but i'd rather not start that up again. if the memory of my work triggers a feeling of mild nausea, i'd like it to be obvious that it's the fault of the work.
they're reading their zines at matter right now. that's why i'm thinking about this. these people are braver than i am, i think.
in other news, my FATHER got his OWN CELL PHONE today. oh snap. he can now prove that he is an actual human being. cheers, dad! although i will miss those long-distance phone calls with you shouting into mom's phone while she tried to talk to me. of course, we all live together in a basement at the moment like a bunch of hippies (exotic birds, bamboo sheets, granola), so the long-distance phone calls may have to wait.
oh well.
Currently listening :
Every Night
By Saturday Looks Good to Me
Release date: 14 September, 2004
16 Apr 2007
ink.
today i went for a four mile walk on my lunch break. by the end of it, i felt like a human being again.
i love walking. i love putting on headphones and setting the music to shuffle and taking off for a vague destination. i think well when i walk. my mind moves. it all picks up.
also, i have ink on my hands and am sitting at yet ANOTHER good cafe, working on my play while my dad works on his novel and rufus wainwright sings to us about the kind of love that makes you mourn. i think i'm happy with my life. my dad just started laughing at something he had written awhile ago and forgotten about - laughing because it was funny, not because it was bad - and now i know where i get that from.
i want parties with lots of paint. open walls and open faces and just a big mess of paint and sound. i want the stories of old people. and i want to tell bedtime stories to very small children, because i just realised that i'm capable of that - that i've always focused on the importance of reading to children, but i could have been telling them stories that exist for no one else... that only inhabit the space of a green armchair.
i want to buy a bike helmet.
mainly, though, i just want to write. i have so many pieces shifting around in my brain, and i want to pin them down on paper.... which, now that i think of it, sounds a lot like that thing people do to butterflies, which has always creeped me out. maybe i should reconsider my approach to words.
at any rate, it's existing, it's spinning slowly into form... one project after another, one paragraph, one clause. i will, i hope, write to the grave.
well. maybe not at the mortuary.
11 Apr 2007
edna st. vincent millay
I watched your love a little while,
and brought my plants into the house.
10 Apr 2007
too sleepy for irony, and other facts of Lent
lent was good. i liked it. i wrote a lot... a lot a lot. i spent most of my free time writing, at home or the bean cycle/matter bookstore or at the alley cat. and sometimes i went to shows. and sometimes i went to shows in other states. and sometimes i went to a polyphonic spree show in boulder and left less than an hour later because they've gotten ironic and i was too sleepy for that.
i've started to submit my plays around, because if i'm going to be a playwright, that's what i'm going to need to do. i've gradually, gradually begun to change my lifestyle to make it more environmentally friendly, because most people here seem to think i'm an environmentalist and i'm going to look pretty stupid if i don't start acting more like it. i've been writing silly promo spots for environmental stewardship classes, and we're going to be doing a ten-minute play called "Reservations" at the end of the month, because i finally found a director that understands the movement of it better than i do. of course, i'm going to have to have a glossary for the inside jokes, because it's not being performed to its originally intended audience. so THAT'S going to make me look like a jerk.
i have a full-time job at a non-profit now, and my father is a starving artist. we're moving into somebody's basement with their three birds. a four-year-old cried in my lap for twenty minutes on easter morning, while i went on with the lesson. the other kids made me proud with genuine concern for another human being. the other teachers thought maybe we should send her to her parents, but i figured she had a right to her emotions. i don't want to teach little kids that people will desert you if you become inconvenient. they'll learn that soon enough.
i participate in make-believe constantly, wholeheartedly. i wish grown-ups would do that more often. at some point, we stop giving other people a safe place to play.
LAME.
Currently listening :
Substance
By New Order
Release date: 25 October, 1990
12 Feb 2007
this weekend deserves an A++
i don't remember the rest of the week very well - i never do unless i write it down. though i'm pretty certain it involved more construction paper, conversations with chanelle, a very traumatic episode of The Office, an unusual amount of french dialogue, and a lot of time at Curves, making money. oh, and i discovered iTunes. that was bad.
i worked saturday morning till noonish, and then i got some coffee, dyed my hair, and went to denver to meet Carolyn. that was a lot easier than i expected. you're really on one highway the entire trip from fort collins to denver, and when i got to downtown i thought i must be in the wrong place because the roads are so much wider than any other city with which i'm familiar. sidewalks, too. even the storefronts themselves are farther apart than i'm used to.
but i was in downtown after all, so i scooted over to The Tattered Cover - an amazing, huge independent bookstore on the 16th Street Mall - and met Carolyn there. we scooted post-haste over to Watercourse, an international vegetarian restaurant in the other part of town, which completely blew my mind (as promised). all the hipsters made me want to go shopping, so we went to american apparel because you can never have too many pairs of leggings, right? i came very close to buying a long, long hoodie and a pair of leggings, which i think would've made me into a slacker version of Mary Tyler Moore.
what else? long talks about carolyn's novel and the nature of art. a staggering amount of laughter. and then back to The Tattered Cover, where we discussed literature and bought nothing important. i feel very priviledged to be with someone insightful and critically-minded and well-read. and who also automatically combines the words "Grow Rudolph" into the noun "Growdolph." we both get tired early, so i'm home by ten, and i've spent too much money. a very good day.
sunday is sunday. which means (now) that i'm at church by 9 and usually don't leave till at least 12:30 or 1. we go to the first service, and then i go work with the four-year-olds, and then while i'm waiting for my parents i generally address some church "business"... find jon f. and ask him if the green team is meeting on thursday nite, update him on my presentation progress... find debbie w., ask her if she needs any helping writing for kid's church... wait until rick k. gets done with his pastoral duties and finds me, so we can schedule a meeting with Rich and the three of us can go over what plays and when to hold auditions, and i can think about easter.
by then, my parents are probably done praying, and so we set out with Greg and Stacy for a mexican restaurant that is new to me. i eat vegetarian fajitas that are fantastic, although maybe not quite as exciting as the tempeh & fried potato chorizo i'd experienced the nite before. i like hanging out with my parents' friends, because i think sometimes they understand where i'm coming from better than some of my peers, and maybe that's because they ask. what do you want, are you happy, what are you working on, what do you see ahead of you in the distance, how do you feel.
talking with angelica is good, as always. we stay on the phone for two hours - maybe three. it's very rich, but we giggle alot. it's like we're at some fancy restaurant and we've eaten some fabulous dessert - maybe something flambé - but the sugar high and the absurdity of the elegance is getting to us. we talk about philosophy and try to find out the hard truths because we think they're important - but we're really just girls, with degrees in English.
i haven't put a kid in time-out yet. i realised yesterday that i don't really know how to do that. i wasn't put in time-out once, not in my entire life. so far.
alright. things to do, loves... these DVD's won't watch themselves.
06 Feb 2007
do something pretty while you can
can i just say that i LOVE that every comment on my last blog was addressed to a different "FACT"? i feel so well-rounded in my friendships.
people might find this to be a little odd, but i am really excited about Valentines Day. I Love Valentines Day. seriously. i have loved it since my sophmore year of college, when audrey claire peters showed me how fabulous it could be. i probably wore all black on valentines day the year before, just to be a jerk, but audrey just thought it was so great that A) it was a day where it was considered unconditionally acceptable to wear pink and red at the same time, and B) it was a day set aside to tell the people you love how much you love them. so i tried to stop muttering phrases like "worldwide hallmark-originated scam" and "ridiculous social construct" under my breath, sucked it up, and tried wearing pink and red - because it's kind of silly, sure... but Love, after all is a good thing... maybe the best thing... and just because sometimes we get it wrong and make it look ridiculous, does not mean that it does not deserve to be celebrated at every opportunity.
anyway. i also like making valentines. i like construction paper and kids safety scissors and glue sticks and magazines and glitter. sue me. i've been given some people to love, and apparently one of my love languages is Paper.
we started Old Testament II class tonite, and my absolute enthusiasm for that is another thing that is making me nerdy. a new teacher, a new set of material for me to try to keep up with... and i love it. i may love it even more than i love bracelet tape dispensers. i think the old testament is just so gorey and beautiful and i love the way it folds back in on itself as we go along. i think i'm learning that maybe they tell these stories over and over again for a reason.... that maybe God's in them, being alive.
it was warm today - in the fifties, i think. when i drove home, late, from class, i turned on the heat a little and rolled down the windows for the first time in a long while, and turned up the new shins. i went to blockbuster and rented "the science of sleep". i came home with intent. fresh air does amazing things to your brain, and i'm thankful for it.
oh, and i'm writing again. because angelica is really making me, and i love her for it. i need someone to cut through my excuses and tell me that i absolutely have to - which is weird because at the same time i KNOW that i'll start to shrivel up emotionally if i don't do it... but i also know that if i drink coffee regularly my teeth will yellow and my stomach will start to hurt, and we all know how far that knowledge has gotten me historically. anyway. so, i'm writing. somedays a lot, somedays a little. and actually not plays at the moment, which is odd. but it's what's happening.
i liked today. i need to go convince myself towards sleep, so i don't miss out on tomorrow.
<3 style="font-weight: bold;">22 Jan 2007
it is occasionally good to tell the truth
FACT:
i spend a lot of time talking about tempeh and organic food and vegetarianism and how much i like being healthy. this is all true. however, at this moment, all i really want is a pot of chocolate fondue, and a soft pretzel from coopersmith's. but not at the same time... although that idea does have potential.
FACT:
i have been taking increasingly less (can that be right? or should it be "decreasingly less"?) care with my personal appearance. i don't know if i'm saving it for a special occasion or what, but it's just a facet of my life that i don't really care to channel energy into right now. i probably need a haircut. but "need" is a relative term nowadays, ain't it?
FACT:
i do not know how my family is going to deal with it if my siblings or myself ever end up in a serious relationship. honestly. what would we do with that? it's totally outside of our experience. what if someone brings someone home for Christmas in like, 2015? Wow.
FACT:
i am honestly really, really happy as a single person. like, disturbingly happy. like, this-is-probably-unhealthy happy. but i don't know. it makes me feel young, i guess. and i don't like to be around the same person for an extended period of time, so that works out well. i have only very rarely, in my life, felt lonely or bored. and i don't feel that way now, although i have a strong suspicion that people who don't know me very well think that i do feel that way... or worse that i should.
sub-FACT:
i do not want to date your brother, or your nephew, or any of your husband's single friends. and i don't want to date you.
FACT:
this is getting slightly more Gloria Steinem than i had intended. so let's get back to safer disclosures: i do actually know how to cook a couple of things, i only WISH i could speak a little italian, and if i talk about how i'm reading kierkegaard one more time, i may actually puke on my own shoes.
oh, and i like TV now too. i mean, i'm picky, but i won't deny that i watch it. even if it's mostly on DVD.
FACT:
i will probably, at some point in the future, deny that i watch it.
(I think that's enough truth for a tuesday.)
20 Jan 2007
roadkill and my continued existence
trying to go back to what passes for "normal" these days. dad and i are watching oklahoma cream baylor in basketball. somehow it serves as a fine background to working through Fear and Trembling. i just ate a kashi frozen dinner, and i think it was (")too much food("). i've never really enjoyed the feeling of being very full.
fascinating, right? i think i might start working with the 4/5 year olds at church on sunday mornings. and i might start doing yoga on wednesday nites before church. i'm official at Curves now, and i did my first sign-up last nite, and the woman i was signing up started to talk about yoga, and somehow i ended up being invited to a private yoga class that her family does for an hour each week. i love my job.
i haven't found a second job yet. edit: i haven't been looking. i've been reading the old testament for class and reading kierkegaard for angelica and writing for myself, and i've been trying to get used to New Job Number 1. i will need to start looking soon. i'm secretly hoping that Great Harvest Bread Company will hire me, but given then absurd number of college students in this area, that seems unlikely.
apparently i'm going to be a housesitter, though, and i'm really excited about that. i have just been WAITING to be a single girl in my twenties so that grown-ups will finally think it's a good idea to leave me in charge of their houses. my parents have a small group with three other married couples, and two of them asked if i could housesit for them - one in march, i think, and the other at the end of july. and they have dogs, and nice houses, and i'm really excited. i have been wanting to walk dogs since i got here. i don't even know why. it's something inexplicable, like my sudden attraction to apples.
one of the houses is in old town, too, which means i'll be able to walk to all the good coffee shops and stores and restaurants in town. weeeee!
or maybe i just like a change of scenery. we all know i'm a big fan of that.
my hair's getting longer, because it seems like the thing to do. i have been sleeping till noon for the past few days, and although i should probably just be excited that i have that option, i find it frustrating - maybe because getting up early seems like another "thing to do" in these parts. of course, you can't go along with all of that. for instance, i was at Bear Rock Cafe last nite, munching on a Nuevo-something salad after work, and reading The Coloradoan (our local paper). there was an article about wildlife on the roadways, and the insert read as follows:
If you hit wildlife
* Report the accident to Colorado State Patrol, 224-3027 or free cell phone call by dialing *CSP
*You can claim the meat of an animal hit by obtaining a free road kill permit from the Colorado Division of Wildlife within 48 hours of the accident. It is recommended you have a chronic wasting disease test done at a cost of $15. Contact the Fort Collins office at 472-4300 or stop by the office at 317 W. Prospect Road during regular business hours.
*Only comprehensive insurance pays for damages. Collision insurance does not cover such a claim.
.... i kid you not.
i don't normally feel like i live in hicksville, everyone seems really earthy and kind and mostly quite sharp... but there are moments like these, when i wonder.
06 Jan 2007
i'd rather just say this once
i've been saying that it's been a long couple of weeks, but i think the past 24 hours has trumped that whole time period, so i'm just going to say that it's been a long day.
i can't remember if i wrote in here about the hard time my sister had getting out her for Christmas, her car dying and everything... i think i mentioned it. anyway, my parents and rae spent the past two weeks trying to find a car, trying to get ahold of the money for the car when they found it... and yesterday everything fell into place. the money got here on thursday, and on friday one of our pastors called us, because he had been thinking about selling his volvo. it was a great deal, he didn't even know he was going to sell it that day but he rolled with it, and he even cancelled an appointment so that he could go get the title transferred that same day. in the course of a few hours, everything was suddenly taken care of. rae and her friend kemo packed up, and they wanted to get a few hours under their belt tonite, so they came by Curves (where i was working my first shift) and said goodbye.
my parents picked me up after my shift and we went to Carrabba's because we were hungry and relieved. at the end of our meal, rae called me. she told me not to freak out. she told me they'd been in a really bad car accident. that she seemed to be fine, that kemo's face was bleeding, that the car was gone.
they were a few hours away, but still in colorado. dad talked to her and found out they were going to the hospital. they took me home so they'd have room for kemo and rae, and they took off. a couple hours later they called me to look up directions to the hospital. by the time they got to rae, it was already the next day. they had to run a bunch of tests and CAT scans at the hospital to make sure she was really okay. apparently the roads were really icy and the car hit a patch of ice and flipped over three times. kemo wasn't wearing a seatbelt. the car was almost upside down when it finished rolling, and all of the windshields were shattered, and kemo's feet were hanging out the windshield when he came to. the door on his side flew off, and it wasn't because there was anything wrong with the door.
honestly, if i didn't believe in a God who intervenes, i wouldn't be able to explain the fact that they're alive. kemo was sleeping, not wearing a seatbelt, and he says rae said, "kemo! wake up!" but all rae remembers is screaming, "Jesus Christ, save us!" when she lost control of the car. afterwards, kemo seemed kind of stunned and like i said, he was bleeding, so rae went and flagged down a car on the highway. a couple stopped and let them sit in their car to warm up (it was about 7 degrees last nite) and use their cell phone because rae wasn't getting reception and i think kemo lost his in the accident. (they both also lost their shoes. kemo recovered one shoe for each of them.) they talked to the police. (oh, and the officer gave her a ticket for not having proof of insurance, BECAUSE THEY COULDN'T GET TO THE GLOVE BOX. yeah.) they went to the hospital to get kemo cleaned up and to get checked out. and that's where my parents found them.
i slept on the sofa for a couple of hours, making me by far the most well-rested member of my household. the roads were too bad for them to head back right away, so mom, dad, rae, and kemo went to a denny's in the next town over (they had the accident outside of Hugo, a town of 500), where they stayed for awhile and rae & mom napped and kemo scored five cigarettes from the patrons. they headed back about seven in the morning, when they could at least SEE the ice, which is about an hour after i woke up again. i had to be at work at my second shift at Curves at 6:45, so i walked in, which was cold but not as bad as i thought it might be. i had a strong sense of God being with me... which you can call a survival mechanism or whatever, but i think it's how any of us made it through the day. i did have to play chicken with a bus because there wasn't any space for pedestrians on the cleared road, but the bus driver was really nice about it and i did not die, which i'm remembering is a really big deal.
my second shift at Curves was fine, although i was probably not on my A game. i wasn't exactly onehundredpercent focused. family dropped kemo off at the airport because his dad bought him a flight home, and then mom came and got me as my shift was ending and helped me tie up some loose ends. we ran some errands, and when we came home rae was conked out downstairs and dad was napping in one of the reclining sections of the sofa. i quickly followed suit. actually, i slept for a solid three hours today, in a recliner. if college taught me nothing else...
so. it's been a long day. and i'm still not sure what we're going to do. but if the only reason we were supposed to buy that volvo was so that rae & kemo would survive that accident, i am just so, so grateful for that. i just... cannot string together the words that make this...
it's been a long day. but my sister is here, and she's safe, and even if it's not where she was trying to go.... i'm glad she's here.
it'll be okay. i don't get it, but it'll be okay. He gives and takes away, y'know?
blessed.
02 Jan 2007
little by little
alright.
i just got "habitat for humanity" confused with "the humane society." and when somebody told me that the habitat for humanity was selling used cars, i said, "why do they have cars? ...don't they know that animals can't DRIVE?"
i just had to admit that. i feel much better now.
in other news, i appear to be revisiting a reading problem that i first noticed back at the beginning of my time in DC... as i got busier there, it seemed to diminish, but now that it's back with a vengenance. i'm pretty sure it's a very specific and somewhat rare mutation of ADHD, that only relates to books.
let me try to explain... no, let me give you an example. here are the books that i am reading right now:
*A Short History of Myth
*Saving God's Green Earth
*Don Quixote
*Time Flies (a collection of short plays by David Ives)
*Bird by Bird (when I need it)
*Genesis
*A Playwright's Process (when I need it)
*Fear and Trembling
... there actually might be more. do you see what i mean? this is serious. i mean, i knew i was a little bit commitment-phobic, but this ridiculous. you see, if i knew the technical name of the disability, i might be able to seek help, but without knowing... Maybe you guys have some suggestions about what it might be called? thanks.
i should probably just read the kind of books that you can't NOT keep reading... you know, Fun Books. but i feel like if i'm going to watch as many DVD's as i do when my siblings are home, i should balance it out somehow. you know? also, my brain... i always feel the threat of it shutting down entirely. which would suck.
also, i just noticed that i've been writing in four different notebooks. that might be a related problem... not sure.
writing is a challenge. my friend Angelica is a kind and sharp motivator who makes me write for an hour a day and read things like "fear and trembling". i call chanelle in a panic because i realise that i don't understand my main character, that i've hidden all the information that makes her a real person (well - you know what i mean) underneath plot and theme and stuff that normally doesn't even catch my eye, doesn't even compete. i put my headphones on and ignore my family while i reformat old plays so that they're fit to submit, ignore them while i finally break the spine on a notebook that was a gift in 2005, because i need a clean slate for thoughts that belong to someone else. i have one big project that takes over most of the time, but when i'm falling asleep my mind darts to rewrites on old one-acts, to the question of how to make a certain piece sexier without making it more violent, to how british farce could influence a satyr play, to the sounds of different voices in radio plays and animtation features, and the patterns of speech that fit into a television, not on the stage.
technically i'm complaining, but i guess i kind of love it. i feel like i'm starting to fire on all cylinders again, and it makes me feel young and unstoppable, like this is something that i'm going to do, all the time, at some point in my life.... like letting up and being practical is not a virtue.
you know, i believe that. i believe that.
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