an age for an age for you to stop talking to me, addended again

I wore my helmet bicycle helmet today.

I realized as I was riding (helmet-less) to the grocery store that I have reached the point in my life where I care very little about how nerdy, odd, uncool, etc I look to other people. It's like I'm a fifty-year-old twenty-two-year-old. But face it, I am unescapably who I am, so I've decided to jump headlong into me. And my parents would really like it. And I'm really nervous about brain damage....
So instead of going: home, g-store, friend's hiz; I stopped home again and wore my helmet to friend's. But then a list of predicaments came up. Do I wear my helmet when I ride up to campus? Or when I go bike riding with friends? Is their safety in bike riding numbers? As a helmet wearer am I supposed to stand strong and wear my helmet at all biking times so that others will be less embarrassed to wear theirs? Am I really going to get into an accident? Should I get a pocket protecter?
If I start wearing a helmet can I really be choosy about when I wear it or not? It's not like me being a vegetarian which usually centers on me not wanting to eat meat but me needing to eat what people feed me to keep from getting a headache. Unless my helmet starts giving me a headache, which would be entirely possible with my head...
I don't know about this... I just keep repeating "brain damage, brain damage, brain damage, brain damage" in my head. Because it seems to be my biggest fear. Second only to chalk. So second biggest fear.

Or third.
I would hate to be trapped to someone for eternity who would turn to me at different junctures in our life and say, "You go into galleries that aren't hip?" or "I hate those pointy shoes and when girls wear scarves around their necks or have belts around their waists." Waste you. I feel like wearing a helmet will cut down on those people in my life.

In some other news, in case you're still reading, I got a letter from someone in Denmark yesterday who said he thinks about me sometimes when he sees the boats come into harbor or when he meets a Norweigan fisherman.

I guess it's always nice to be told that.

Blah, how did that all end up relating back to men?

ADDENDS:
Now I've been doing some reading. I'm stuck on the helmet fence. Apparently, when you do wear a helmet drivers give you less room as they pass you, increasing your risk of collision.

This is definitely true though, “When people try cycling, they nearly always say it changes the way they treat other road users when they get back in their cars.” That actually makes me frustrated and wish that everyone would do some bicycling time.

Any thoughts, anyone? anyone? Bueller?

bursting, addended

I'm facing escalating pressure from G.O., who is actually the O.G. of G.O.G., and from my Mom to write to you.

Plus it's sometimes very nice to be Marge Bjork. Like right now.

There is the constant threat of spider attack in my basement now. I found one on the wall by my head when I was laying in bed last night. I immediately screamed and jumped into my roommate's bed and made her kill it for me as I hyperventilated. I'm not sure which I am more afraid of: the encroaching spiders or the brain damage that could result if I continue to use roach spray to kill them. Brain damage would be a pretty horrible loss, I'm pretty pretentious about my brain. The other night I was remembering how, being the baby of the family I like to have my family's attention TOUT LE TEMPS, so on this particular family trip I was trying to charm my sister until she finally couldn't take it anymore and said, "Can you please be self contained!" So I started singing about being in a tupperware. But it just hit me, some five-six years later, of course in my family we wouldn't say something normal like "Quit it!" "Leave me alone" "Look what you did ya little jerk!" No. We say things like "please be self-contained." The more syllables the better, I say.

I can't help but be serious lately. So can you forgive me when I get gushy and say you're all pretty damn amazing. Don't doubt it, don't forget it. No one is cooler than you. My roommate, her sister, and I burned Twilight the other night*. The book. It's a great laugh for pretentious literary kids, you know, to burn it, but there was actually a real need deep down in my soul. E, my roommate, and I had been reading Twilight out loud to each other for a cheap laugh. But we got to the part where character B thinks that she's not good enough for character Vampire and I couldn't take it anymore. I've seen that too much. If you think you're not good enough for a Vampire, call me up and I'll set aside my battle against the dead horses and we'll kick it. Because me and God in Heaven have a hard time knowing that Vampire has got a hold on you. Then we'll kick the Vampire. No. Then you'll kick the Vampire.

Anyway, whenever I've been party to book burning, I've always been amazed at how beautiful the process is. It's a good thing I like reading books so much and I believe in rabble and rebellion and conformity and have a high ambiguity tolerance because otherwise I could join in with Chuchompfsky in Azbiristan and burn books for a living.

You start off by ripping the paperback covers off. Newer books have glossy resistant paper covers and need to be prodded and pleaded into burning. Then you rip the book into smaller stacks of paper. Start a few pages kindling at the edges. As the tops burn down and off and the flame dies down to embers you start digging through to find the untouched stacks of paper. Once you start to fan them out, blow on them and the flames will jump to life. The page will start turning darker and bubble up and shrivel into itself. I'd like to film the process sometime.

well...

fin. That's the french word for end.

love you,

Marge

* I respectfully do not like the Twilight series and do not presume nor wish to make fun of people who do. Please feel free to love every page of it. Amen to you.

****"Shake thyself from the dust; arise, sit down, O Jerusalem; loose thyself from the bands of thy neck, O captive daughter of Zion. For Thus saith the Lord: Ye have sold yourselves for naught, and ye shall be redeemed without money."
3 Nephi 20:37,38

I burned a candle for Balzac

My relationship with my bicycle started three years ago. I was home from university, feeling restless, and from some depthy place in my brain there was a spark that sizzed along the fuse until it led me to the creaky garage where my mother's old bronze Panasonic Tourist from her university days was waiting for me.

We cut loose. Bicycle riding came back easily and we meandered through town together, then took a left and hit the open road into the wide fields of the country. Nothing beats that. Golden growing grain achering out to each side, all brushed up with bushes and shelter belts around the corners. Nothing blocking my sun blue sky. All, achering out and out and out.

I couldn't quit my mother's bicycle. I went back to it day after day and when it came time to drive back to my state of university, we tacked it on to the back of our Dodge Stratus. We've been together ever since. For richer or poorer, in sickness and in health, for better or worse, I'd never leave Bicycle.

Also, did you know that Powerade is kosher?

stand on, stand off, stand on music stands

When I work (when I work), my favorite times are times that don't include the editing lab called the Cave. Yeah, I work in a cave. But I like when the neanderthal film self can shed some cromagman and climb up a couple of floors to humanity. I've found an empty classroom which suits me meticulously. There are rows and flows of ordered chairs, all hideously functional in a color that is not quite grey and is chipping off. The doors are black and chipping, the carpet is nondescript the walls nondescript with sound panneling on the top. The corners are packed with out of date TV's, overhead projectors, and music stands. Black and chipping. I sit by the wall of windows in a chipping desk with my feet propped up on a tabletop podium. Minus the tabletop.

Not that it matters to the universe where I work.

It's that predicament of cementing your history and the joy you find in the world around you and the versus side that tells you to stop being self-full.

I feel self-full. gross.

I actually can't stay away from the internet sometimes.

the sans internet diaries

Did you know the internet is boring? Plus I like having the excuse, "Oh I don't have the internet at my house," so I don't have to keep up on my email. You knew that was going to happen since I frequently go through periods where I leave my cell phone on vibrate and hide it. On purpose.

Of course, my literary silence could also have to do with the fact that I accidentally shut my brain off a couple of weeks ago and am still searching for the "on" button. I'm convinced I will find it through sleeping more.

I will just let you all know that I love you and you make me chuckle. Soon I'm going to have a plug-in to my ipod that will let me record all your voices so I can sit at home and chuckle and then cut audio documentaries together and make the world chuckle and love you too.

Merci and buss buss,
ever yours and ever glad she's not in high school anymore,
Marge Bjork

Fiction people talk too loudly and have bad breath. Make them go away.

just to keep up with the times

Dear You,

I'm stealing a moment to write to you, it will be our secret moment together. I can only stand to watch so many hours of kindergarten un-interrupted and the massively large film student headphones wrestle my ears to the ground (c'est à dire*: squish my ears). My hair is so thick you didn't realize my ears poke out, did you? When I was a bit younger (14 years younger), I contemplated taping my ears back at night, hoping they would grow into the more socially acceptable flat-against-your-head-ears, but I had it from a reliable source that it didn't work (merci, mon père).

I've just had fleet flit thoughts lately.

1. The New York Times is lovely and/or/but overwhelming.

2. Still the best year ever.

3. oh...I don't know. Maybe I haven't had that many fleets of thoughts, I've been filling my days with daytime documentary making in the cave and nighttime-not-enough-sleep socializing. I go in bouts from foggy brain to clear and excited to I'm sinking in a sea of inexperienced filmmaker. I'm sure that's fascinating for you all to know.

However,

4. If I could be anyone for a day I would be Kim Jong-il. I wonder what it would be like to drive your country to starvation and defy the world with repeated nuclear tests.

5. If I could go anywhere in the world I'd try the Bermuda triangle. Or Russia. Or somewhere south of the United States. Or home.

6. Wonder, my trusty bicicleta and the only inanimate object I've named, is in the shop and I miss him madly. I've been six days without him, one more day to go.

7. I know more Armenian than my average blog reader.

8. Lists are silly.

Love,
Marge

*pronounced as if you'd just set down to some camambert on baguette and were saying, "set a dear," and means "that is to say"