Ah gentility you've made me fall but you can't make me laugh yet

After two weeks of living out of a laundry basket and eating bagels and donations and riding my bicicleta for miles and miles and miles (of ocean) (making my thrift store dresses fit me mucho betteroso) I'm about to settle down.
How crass and materialistic to have a house, he said.
How wonderful to build up my own little hermit shell, I rebounded.
Tomorrow is the Labor Free Day. Did you know, I started out this blog with a Labor Day? Because I'm rarely interested in life without manual labor I decided to celebrate by trying out a blog to see if I wasn't boring. I don't know if it made me less boring or more (don't tell me in the comment box, I'll cry), but I'm enjoying the typing typing typing.
Typing therapy, he said.
You don't exist, I said.
I think, he said.

What lessons do you learn in a year?
I learned to muddle slowly and listen to my gut.
I'm hearty (hearty appetite-ish).
I love my bicicleta (Il s'appelle "Wonder") and hate driving.
I love wind (that's "le vent" en français).
I learned to believe in astronauts.
I learned the Russian alphabet.
And boys are crazy, but aren't we all.

no more meetings for you, dear.

I'm dreaming again and maybe that's fun for some of us but it's not the fun for the one of us that is me. I only dream in distress or I should say, my dreams are distressful. Some kind of manifestation of inner turmoil and confusion etc etc etc.
Last week I had a dream that a friend of mine started smoking. I was stressed in my dream as I opened up her car door, took the cigarette she was smoking and started smoking like a pro myself. The rest of the dream was me smoking and I woke up at the point when my mouth became full of ashes. Not just smoking, but smoking UNFILTERED. Whoa-ho-ho. And everyone was impressed by the smoke-rings I could blow. What caterpillarism.
One night I had a dream that highlighted all of the darkish, sketchy areas on my bike route to this "hostel" I've been staying at.
Last night I had a dream that my friend started smoking Hookah. Except that this hookah looked like an extremely large roll of pot so even my dreams are demented. And I was in western North Dakota or probably Glendive, Montana (some such city full of creepers) searching for my purse that I had somehow misplaced. I was really happy when my roommate woke me up with her sinus/allergy hacking cough.

Does anyone know of any kind of magic trick, cloth, or 16 hour manual labor job I can use to knock all of the dreams out of me? Because once the mind starts muddling, it muddles up a storm. Maybe this storm will break when I can finally stop living out of a laundry basket and Mini suitcase.

i'm from a different country where they call you cosmonauts

I’m apt to get sentimentally attached to things. Everything comes along with a string attached to it (an unbleached cotton string, the kind that comes all wrapped around a cardboard roll and was always found in our kitchen drawer at home) to tie on memories. Like kite strings with all the little flags. A story parading through my brain as I ride around on my bicycle (which is what I mostly do these homeless days). Raisin toast always reminds me of sitting on the back stoop of my Grandpa’s when he’d take us out and point out the stars. Maybe he only did it once but it’s stuck in my brain and so as I’ve sat these last two days munching on raisin toast I think of constellations and warm nights and green carpet and white cinderblock walls. Maybe I’ll even remember my Dad’s stories of hiding beets so he wouldn’t have to eat them or maybe I’ll remember that one Easter when I left hints EVERYWHERE that all I wanted was a loaf of raisin bread. I was thinking about being sentimental because I was finishing up a movie* when I was eating the last little bites of raisin toast. It had this song**, the kind that plays through credits and makes you want the film to go on and on because it’s pulling at you and ties up a million kite strings and sets them afloat.

I learned how to gut a fish last night. It’s a good thing.

A poem that leans nigh unto tartuffe but I'm the hypocrite:

I'm from a different country where they call you cosmonauts
I'm from a different time o they don't let their garbage rot
I'm from a different kind of place where space and time do not exist
oh not as yours or mine or theirs but merely someone's its

It's not too far to walk to school or the little corner store
We sometimes pass the time by remembering there's no more
and what you do is not of yours oh not your chores and not your choice
but part of one well mechanically smoothly flowing voice

oh east germany
what you do to me
you know the best of bands
and maintain local brands
but you've tied up all my hands

at the stately parties i'm feeling super fly
because we've all got the same suit, shirt and tie
just one, because we're locally conceived
convictions of sharing and looking how we all believe

I was going to add in another line but I don't think i will.
The end.
DC al fine.


*Goodbye Lenin!
** Summer 78 by Yann Tiersen

ode to the consistency of dinosaurs

I have a feeling that if I were ever really homeless, the question of showering would never be a problem. I have come to this conclusion as I have been showered many many times by sprinklers this dusk as I rode my bike about town.
Before all this showering I had been sitting on a park bench watching the sprinklers for an hour or so. Here's the secret: yes, I am a film major. No, I do not enjoy watching movies that often. But I certainly am mesmerized by watching sprinklers. I definitely do enjoy watching sprinklers more than I enjoy sitting in meetings.
Which I accidentally found myself sitting in a meeting this evening. I think I've gotten roped into helping with the upcoming local arts festival. I'm going along with it too. And not for any good reason.
Morbid.

you can stop coming here if you want to. chronicles of the stoppage of the shadow job

Well.
The new occupation has commenced.
I am now a part time nanny for my cousin's kids.
"Everybody seems to be nanny-ing. That's a popular thing."
-someone I know, but can't remember who.
Hurrah.
Well, I still call them kids and have not yet felt like I was attacked by monsters. I'm expecting it to happen. Waiting. I'm sure it will. But so far, I still haven't felt too bothered by anything. Except that I feel like I'm not doing anything. I'm not feeling tortured every morning at 7:45 am when I wake up to go to an 8am shift. Because that doesn't happen anymore. And I'm wondering if it's a problem that it doesn't ruffle my calm one bit when I'm standing on a street corner with a 1.5 year old in a wagon and a four year old lying on the ground crying because he can't go to his friend's house. Should I try to sound upset? Maybe I'm just in a daze because I've just made a few drastic changes in my life and I woke up in someone else's bed (the someone else is in Greece) and then ate cereal sitting next to a headless film-stunt dummy as we, or really I watched people come and go in a parking lot. I feel all twiddle-thumbish because I'm not spending my mornings running a restaurant. I feel like I should go back to the grill and set up a play pen in the corner so that I can nanny and grill 150 chicken breasts for a football team dinner and learn more Russian.
It's good to change.
It just takes me a while to adjust.
A long while.

I enjoyed reading about Cowboy Slim today. He taught me some new lingo, "That's a dinger!"

strum, swing looooow sweet -strum- chariot-strum

I'm about to take my pulpit, but I'm sitting down on it so don't worry. It's kind of like an Iron Man thing or something....

here are some coool things I've found recently.

the Teacher Salary Project: activism is generally not for me. I will sit in my log cabin reading a book, thank you. Actually, currently I will sit in the upstairs of my apartment playing the AUTOHARP. I've had enough of peace protests, Cheney protests, Critical mass bike rides, hard-core vegetarians, analog lovers, and "modest is hottest"s, but the one thing I will take up a harpoon for is education. Public education.


Extended Play by Janek Schaefer: rad little music peace I read about this last winter in an art journal I read instead of doing homework and then I was reminded of it today. It's a little inspirational but better than a poster of a mountain silhouette in front of a sunset. Funnily, at the top left hand corner of the screen that girl with her eye being held open is from this film "Un Chien Andalou." Guess what happens to her eye.


Kim Jong Il's live journal: thank you Taradise. I haven't found something so snicker-ish in a long time.

I'ma grow me some turnips some day

The countdown is on: six more days at the grill.

I can't believe it.

It's not that I relish scrubbing out the big boiler and all surrounding equipment and drains after the mixed vegetables boil over and leave their mark over everything in the surrounding square mile area. It's just that two years ago I started pestering my boss about his scheduling habits and he told me I needed to be dedicated and despite my best efforts I did. I dedicated myself. to my job. at a campus grill. It's half ridiculous but I've ended up loving it terribly.
I hate the uniforms we have to wear, but I kind of love swallowing my pride letting myself be masked up in baseball cap and aprons. For two years there were 15-60 hours a week where no one would pay any attention to me for how I looked (plain as heck in the uniform) but only for what I can do for them. I don't want to throw on too much cheese but I'm going to miss that.
And every minute I can spend scrubbing the grimiest pot or for smiling at the crabbiest customer was another minute I could thumb my nose at stupid politicians, block buster movies, Juicy Couture, vegetarian clubs, activists, and "F-you"'s scribbled on walls. In the most unphilosophical job of the century, I felt a little better for escaping that "mad, mad world."

That being said, I will admit that this is the loveliness that is my job: Every morning I eat my granola bar as I ride my bike to work. I no sooner finish that granola bar and tie on my apron then I have to wrestle crates full of gallons of milk and 50lbs of cow to unearth raw pork and chicken that will inevitably baptize me with their blood as I prepare them for the smoker.

BUT: Today at work I heard a woman take her daughter to the bathroom. I hear her say, "I knew they'd have bathrooms in here because even football players have to poop."
The little girl says, "Football players go poo-ooh-p" over and over again.
Again the mother, "Everyone poops."

How disgusting. But I'm laughing. O profundity!

je ne te quitte pas

Sometimes I like to pretend I look like this. Almost. Or something.

i am spartacus

Once again a night when I wanted to yell what I was thinking so I could order the world up nice and right. Yet I correctly held my tongue and didn't scare anyone. Really, I would have scared us all with this one.
If anyone wants to send me back pats...

a most laconic post.

Have you noticed I put in orange titles to throw in some color?

I've run into some people lately and they ask me what I do with my time.
So...

Work has been fairly smooth this past week as I still have not lost my temper with any trainees, which isn't too much of a surprise I guess, but there is always the possibility.
I enjoyed the morning when I was serenaded by a coworker singing obscure 1970's rock songs, playing the air guitar as I mixed beef gravy. And I've learned some Portuguese.
However, it will never stop being disconcerting that I at anytime may turn the corner and find my nose two inches from a seven-foot tall mans bellybutton. A fully clothed belly button, but D is reeeaallly tall.
AND...I just put in my two weeks notice.
yes.
The thought of another football season is too much.

Mes parents kept kidnapping me this past week and I think Stockholm syndrome is not always a bad thing. Especially as they take me to fix my autoharp.

I have a friend that sends me poems he writes. I can't remember how it happened. Well, no, I can. He doesn't write the poems FOR me, it's just that one wintry month I discovered his writings and made a comment and now we share poems that we find or that he writes and I tell him what I think. And they're marvelous! This is why I love documentary! Because we're alive and I'm fascinated by how we live and think and travel and what we create. Sometimes it's idealist love, sometimes casual, sometimes in a Samuel Beckett way, but sometimes it's more real and charitable and substantial. Substantial because we've all had times of despair and yet we live on. He just recently sent me a poem and I thought, this is not right that I'm reading and seeing and hearing wonderful things from all of these people. YOU should be reading and hearing and seeing as well. I had just been looking at a website thrown together by a local that produces and sells local music and I thought, AH HA? Can I make up my own documentary production of these writings and showings and sayings and artings? One that's not mode-ish, one that crosses all divides and scribbles out "scenes"? That's why after reading his poem I went immediately to read up on how to form a non profit. I mean, I get ideas sometimes and for five minutes I'm on the moon or even the sun and then we land at the clouds, but maybe I'll finally put together some publication. I'll just start it. With whatever I can get my hands on.

The other quarter of my life is that I reeeeeeeeeed.
For instance,
It finally ended far from the madding crowd, although, I had high doubts it would ever happen. I mean, the book. I was reading Far From the Madding Crowd (that really is the madding crowd until the last chapter when you finally put some distance in there).

Now I'm reading My Antonia and the first few chapters have me dreaming of my prairie home. There's a magic in that landscape.

Lastly, I have one exclamation to make and if you've made it this far...I don't know how I actually feel about blogs. I just told you how I spend my time. I wrote it out for you I know and you I don't know. What is the meaning of this? Is it good? I don't know.
The end.