thought

regardless of whether you believe in the reason they were constructed for, believe in God, hell, sin, whatever, there is something so beautiful and comforting and serene about hearing church bells while riding your bicycle through your new, beautiful neighborhood

to GPB

(( we were cowboys and that was all there was. we were cowboys and the land was ours, outside, it was ours. we were cowboys and everything outside was precious to us, every grass irreplaceable and every tree an entity of its own. we went down into the darker grass where there were sticks on the ground and the trees were moving. i saw trees reaching and yearning and i felt that pull on my heart and the trees, they were recreating every moment of human history. it was dark down by those trees and we searched in the tall grass for sticks that weren't hollow and that would catch on fire. together we gathered these sticks and we brought them up to the fire ring and that was our goal. we were cowboys and we had only one task in mind and that was to make that fire. we went to the horses, i don't know why we went to the horses, probably just because cowboys go to horses, and i held their cheeks as i fed them hay. their cheeks moved, all three horses in very different ways, and it was this horrible, ethereal still when they stopped chewing. they would stop chewing and it would be a deafening silence, their eyes looking at something beyond what any of us could comprehend. so we were cowboys with our horses, and we were cowboys congregating around something sacred. there were others, but they were inside, they were battling, they were squirming in heat and intensity, and they were the others, and we wanted no part. instead we trekked on the grass that made patterns in the wind - we scoured the land, we stood silent as the coyotes were yelling - they were yipping, squealing, crying - what were they doing - did they find something that we were looking for? this is the thing - and this is the very essence of it - we were cowboys and we were in another time and place and we had a mission - a mission that was the simplest and most beautiful and yet most deadly thing in the world - we were searching for control, for the ultimate symbol of dangerous and beautiful power - we were lookin' to fix a bonfire. )) - 12/2005

that fall might have been one of the best.

my new place is going to be feng-shui-tastic! i need to concentrate on something, right?

today i smoked with my 50-year-old auntie. she giggled and side split and everything you're supposed to do. i was in a bad mood all day so i just got paranoid, but i loved watching her laugh. she looked so lovely. like before she married that cold man. she's in years, so much older, but we have always been like two peas in a pod.

one of the feng-shui ideas is to get rid of all the crap you have that doesn't actively make you happy. i don't think i have too much of that, but i'm excited to purge. today mrak gave me his post-college advice: you're too young to accumulate crap.

other: you're too young to let shit weigh you down.

so toss mistakes you did last night in a drunken haze, forget the things lingering in your mind that you can do nothing about, burn away that boy in the back of your mind, don't listen to rilo kiley too much.

keep a moleskin by your bed and go to wet paint and find the beautiful black pen that makes you really really happy. keep it in your giant bag that now has pen ink all over it (it was supposed to be reversible but that option was lost within the first week of carrying crap in it) write down anything that inspires you. this year is for your creation. realizing that you are interested and you are interesting and don't PUSH, for gods sake, let things run their course and you will be fine.

tell me what brave men run from. leave it in the comments.

"i'm a modern girl, but i fold in half so easily"

1. do people in minnesota overuse their car headlights? it seems like they turn on their lights for every instance when it's not expressly sunny out - in grey weather, light grey weather, slightly foggy, slightly rainy weather, anything.

2. kitties are like children - you buy them lots of nice toys but all they want to play with are cardboard boxes.

3. how do i move so fast not doing anything?

I am reacquainting myself with my favorite book ever, "Self-Help" by Lorrie Moore.

I think for my birthday, along with everybody getting me a tiki mug from Psycho Suzi's, I want her entire collection of books. All I have is "Self-Help," which is great to read over and over again, but I want more.

Beware, for one of my most beloved people in the world was seduced by a cold man and is currently, painfully, realizing it:

"'Cold men destroy women,' my mother wrote me years later. 'They woo them with something personable that they bring out for show, something annexed to their souls like a fake greenhouse, lead you in, and you think you see life and vitality and sun and greenness, and then when you love them, they lead you out into their real soul, a drafty, cavernous, empty ballroom, inexorably arched and vaulted and mocking you with its echoes - you hear all you have sacrificed, all you have given, landing with a loud clunk.'"

How does Lorrie Moore know all of this? And how does she write it so well?

"A week, a month, a year: Tell him you've changed. You no longer like the same music, eat the same food. You dress differently. The two of you are incongruous together. When he tells you that he is changing too, that he loves your records, your teas, your falafel, your shoes, tell him: See, that's the problem. Endeavor to baffle.

Pace around in the kitchen and say that you are unhappy.

But I love you, he will say in his soft, bewildered way, stirring the spaghetti sauce but not you, staring into the pan as if waiting for something, a magic fish, to rise from it and say: That is always enough, why is that not always enough?"

And that's the best way I can explain it.

beable

i want to:

sleep forever with kittens on my body/head/face or near me. do something spontaneous. meet my match. give somebody a playlist i've made for them and watch their face while they listen to it. leave if they don't get it. stay forever if they do. get over it. have some compassion. be 5 out of 7 days a week like that one really good day that happens now only once a week. you know the one where you can do anything. you can make any phone call, no matter how hard. you can walk confidently and feel pretty but not feel leered at. you can be compassionate, confident, funny, and lovable all at the same time. be lovable. be that person you want to be like. the one who's got it but doesn't flaunt it. the person who just is.

but most of all: be able. be able. be able. be able.

DISNEYLAND

DISNEYLAND DISNEYLAND DISNEYLAND - i'm going this weekend.

god, i need a vacation. this is awesome.

i had to take down all my postcards because of dashiell

Today I cried about 5 times. Including during the American Idol finale. This is retarded.

I hate not having a job. Or rather, I just really want one. I mean, of course, I have internships at the Soap and the Walker, but it's just not enough, is it?

albums that when i forget about but then i listen to them and i am like whoa, that is GOOD

albums that when i forget about but then i listen to them and i am like whoa, that is GOOD:

neko case 'blacklisted'
monkey swallows the unvierse 'the bright carvings'
wilco 'yankee hotel foxtrot'
a.c. newman 'the slow wonder'

more when i am like whoa with another album
(i am going through inventory on my ipod)
(also sketching layouts for my website)

titles with 'love' in them

Titles I like with the word 'love' in them:
The History of Love, Nicole Krauss
Of Love and Other Demons, Gabriel Garcia Marquez
Enduring Love, Ian McEwan
On Love, Alain de Botton
What We Talk About When We Talk About Love, Raymond Carver
Love is a Dog From Hell, Poems 1974-1977, Charles Bukowski
I Love You Stinky Face, Lisa McCourt & Syd Moore


Titles I don't like with the word 'love' in them:
Love Walked In, Marisa de los Santos
Love & Lies, Kimberla Lawson Roby
Redeeming Love, Francine Rivers
He Loves Me, He Loves Me Hot, Stephanie Rowe
The Love Season, Elin Hilderbrand
Almost Like Being in Love, Steve Kluger
The People's Act of Love, James Meek
Loves Long Journey (Love Comes Softly), Janette Oke
Loves Enduring Promise (Love Comes Softly), Janette Oke
He Loves Lucy, Susan Donovan
Slaves to Love, Claire Thompson
My love, my love, or the Peasant Girl, Rosa Guy
All For Love, Dan Jacobson
Peony in Love, Lisa See

LOSER:
In the Merde For Love, Stephen Clarke

a r t

I've decided to stop going to my Chinese class. It breaks my heart, since going to Chinese last semester was the light of my life - but I'm too far behind and I can't keep half-assing it. I've barely learned anything this semester. I know about a fourth of the characters we should know by now. I don't do the homework. I stopped doing it three weeks in. I thought listening in class would help, but I often fall asleep.

So I'm focusing on my focus - I'm graduating in a month and art is going to be my life. I'm going to write the best art paper ever and try to curate a student show in my apartment or the White House's basement. It can be done - I just don't know anybody because I'm not at an art school. We'll see how brave I am. It'd be nice to make it public. It'd be a real thing that I did during college. It feels like up to this point everything I've done is just what I've had to do for class, while people around me have been venturing into real life, I've strayed far away from it. It's time to take a risk and see what I can do with what I've learned about art and curating in the last couple years.

So here's a call for art - if you're an artist, let me put you in a show. If you're good.

You think we'd be done pre-gaming and getting too drunk before an event to function at the event but we aren't. And then you'd think we learned to stop drinking after we're already drunk and unable to dial for a pizza but we haven't.

Really upset. Cannot find Hat With Flower, bought at Family Dollar in Sisseton, SD. Why do I always lose hats with flowers?

In the last few days, it has become apparent that my life is suddenly about to become real. I am reminded of responsibilities. Money to earn. Kitties to take care of. Suddenly, a car to look after. I guess it is unrealistic to graduate and disappear to a foreign country and live there for a few months and make some money and just get by when your parents who love you but want you to do well remind you that you need to do this for yourself now. And the truth is, I don't want a nomad life. But I do want the option. Little things are starting to pin me down. Responsibility. Responsibility. Responsibility.

i f

One small white 'IF' on a black expanse, seen only after the second time viewing the picture, to make the difference and to mean the world.

secret women's writing

I read a book that I would have never read unless I was about to finish a book and wanted an easy read for the upcoming winter break. I would have never picked it up from the Barnes&Noble '3 For 2' section because it was sandwiched inbetween 'The Devil Wears Prada Part Nine' and the newest Mitch Albom book. And it didn't have a very good cover. And its title was 'The History of Love,' which, being the fictional romantic nut that I am, would have touched the sentimental string but I would have never picked it up and read the back because I figured it was a scam. An Anne Tyler with a new cover designer. In fact, it was a really good book.

So the book I read before this was 'Snow Flower and the Secret Fan,' a prime example of stupid book titles. My aunt and Jackie both read it in their book club and Jackie told me to read it because then we could talk about the meaning of friendship and blah blah so I read it. I learned a lot about footbinding. I even looked up images of how the toes crunch up into the ball of the foot so the girl essentially ends up with a foot resembling a fist. But the writing was boring and she narrator of the story kept referring to 'sex' as 'bed business' and that got really annoying. I understand that these are 18th century Chinese women but you can't refer to it as 'bed business' in every single context of life. You're not going to call it 'bed business' when you're talking about your wedding night to your lao tong (old same!). I know now that the Chinese language is a whole lot simpler in terms of its vocabulary than English (none of that synonym stuff) so this author pretending that they might use another phrase in place of 'sex' is just a fanciful orientalist dream. I guess at one point the narrator said 'make love' but that's just another cop out.

But 'The History of Love' was good. Really good. I wish the author on the back didn't have such a glamour shot photo because I thought that she was a chick lit writer and she's clearly not, even though she looks like one.

Although I'm not sure how I'm going to deal with my author photo because it will be so hot that you'd think you were reading a Danielle Steel or Jackie Collins.

A Fit

I just spent about an hour updating the look of this blog because I wanted to write, but now that I've spent an hour playing with this thing I hardly have a desire to write. I keep changing locations for a journal on the internet because I think the new internet locale will have a better, more attractive view from its patio, like I thought maybe Diaryland would provide a place in the mountains, somewhere clean and clear and pristine where I would be inspired to write. Instead, it was too lonely and isolated. I came back here with a makeover, something new and pure and simple, but a place with a history of my presence - maybe a small and clean flat in London is where this blog is now. I tried the beach, the Riviera, the Los Angeles of Livejournal, but really, it's not the place. It could be, any place could be it at the beginning, but when it comes down to it, it's just me and my inspiration or non-inspiration to write.

This happens in the real world too. I have a locked desk drawer at home here in California with a stack f journals that have introspective entries on the first five pages (if they're lucky, usually it's about two pages) and then NOTHING. With each one, I vowed it would be my new tell-all, write-all place to outsource my feelings. I would sketch in it, cut out things that caught my fancy, and from time to time write things that rivaled [any famous/respected author that I like]. The problem is I have an ideal in my mind of what I want my journals and creative process to be that I have not yet been able to bend myself to. The books that I have ended up writing in have been ones that weren't pretty or nice or special. I just started writing. Blank pages are too frightening - blank books even worse. Each time I buy a book that's pretty (a Moleskin, for example), that first page always scares me although I want nothing more than to make a beautiful mark on it right away. When I delve in, I'm always unhappy with the result and ditch the book altogether. I stress out too much. I think too much. Each time I think, this is the journal they are going to find when I am dead. This is the stuff they'll posthumously publish.

Each time I am wrong.