I live in a basement. It's "finished" because it has carpet in my bedroom which is perfectly acceptable to me because I am hopelessly romantically in love with cheep little nanook 'n crannied hovels. I can fill in all the cracks with books and scarves and drape the oatmeal floor in my lovely rugs and paint the walls with my crafty fabrics and old time photos. That, madame, is how I make a home, hurrah. But when I was arranging the furniture (cinder blocks and 100 year old box springs) to my delight, I remember what basement stands for: SPIDERS. Oh no. Oh no. No, no no. I called my parents (yes, I'm twenty one, emphasis on ONE) who spent un demi heur on the phone convincing me the spiders wouldn't kill me and none of them had actually tried to run at me. I might have told you this story five times before. OK. I will be sensible, I breathe deeply and remind myself. I now just yell at spiders as I search for things with which to pound them down. WHAT ARE YOU DOING ON MY TOILET PAPER?!?!! UNACCEPTABLE!!! GET OUT OF MY BATHROOM!!! YOU ARE TOO CLOSE TO MY CLOTHES!! I FEEL DESECRATED!!! This is good, I have decided, it gets all my yellings out since there are too few people to yell at here.
But...ce soir, I stay up late late late to death's door to finish my sacrificial worksheets for France. I sit with knees a-folded up a jimbo-like with books piled in me lap and I résumé and synonym my eyes out until it looks like lint is crawling across my knee....THAT'S NOT LINT!!!! SPIDERS ARE NOT SUPPOSED TO CRAWL ON MEEEEEEEEE!!!
Aujourd'hui it looked as though someone (with better cutting skills than I) cut out the mountains and laid them against a bright blue sky backdrop. Was someone who had great connections (connexions for the UK inclined) filming a fine day? It was perfect, all the shadows were crisp, leaves turning colors were crisp and still, the sun lay out so nicely on the pavement and the air was warm warm warm but not too chaud. Summer was welcoming your fall nicely.
d'où je vien.
do any of you happen to have french audio books? It's my new plan for mastery. I'm lacking in the comprehension business.
It's Fall! FALL FALL FALL FALL FALL!!!! Look at this beautiful sight.
Que lindo, I LOVE seasons. SEASONS SEASONS SEASON SEASONS!!!
I read a Cat in the Hat book in Spanish today. I was fine until we got to all the gatito's and we had to go through the entire alphabet. It was a completely unpasteurized alphabet, a mix of spanish, english, and french. Ah, bé, cé, dé, é, F, G, ash, I, J, k....
REALLY France!!! Is this necessary?!?! Il ferme la porte de la ferme d'une main ferme.
Felicitations ma cousine et beau-cousin. Feliz Navidad.
Sometimes I feel as though I love what I'm studying, but what I'm asked to project-up for class is prodding me up a jungle-gym, baking cupcakes when cupcakes make me sick. Last week I was supposed to write up 12 story proposals. I have one down. Still, just one and no others are following. Read the newspaper, internet, take a walk, then write 12 story proposals. Oh no. Oh no no no no. Alors, I've been reading the internet, my favorite sites, and what I find is my online literary journal (McSweeneys) has dedicated itself for the present time to the memory of David Foster Wallace. I've never read a word by the man, but I'm reading about him now. I'm captivated by all of the ways he touched these people's lives, this author and professor, and yet he committed suicide at age 46. How often do we not see the little things we do to make a difference in others' lives. He, he he...which gives me an idea for another story. O inspiration what a fickle mistress you are.
I've been remembering how much the bathrooms in the homes here all have the same aura. A compeletely different aura than the midwest I grew up in. Maybe because these homes were made in the 40's rather than the 1880's? (Indoor plumbing, no way!) Or maybe tis the bathroom windows that are actually openable, meant to be opened, and frequently have no screens. Probably tis because they have not been homes swaddled to boot through a blizzard. I will try to phonetically spell this out in Russian for you: étta interry-ace-na.
C'est l'histoire d'un ver vert qui va boire un verre vers Anvers. OOOhhhhhh....
had me at hello. And then I was looking around today and I saw the boy who was the first...oh no, the second to ask for my phone number but I was so naive I believed in platonicy, I mean we were all there as a chummy little group and I thought, great wonderful I'm in a new place lets all have each others' phone numbers, and I asked for his friend's number. He's married now. And she, over there, is a widow. And we're all 21?
What markers do we rate ourselves by? The generalizations of age and grade and promotion. Class descriptions and money makers lenders borrowers takers. Well, I'm 21, sometimes aimless, frequently on the quiet side, happy to curl up in my hovel and imagine everyone's stories. My friend from high school who is a month younger than I am is married with a child who is almost two. I explained sex to her when we were 15. My junior prom date is married and has two kids, one named Bubba. That transfixes me. The Onion Cutter I used to work with, I think is 24. He would write love notes on paper towel to the Danish girl. And he dreamed of being a chef. T is 22 and she dies her hair black and feels like 21 is so very young. The Dreamer is 30 and he's my best friend. Sad, I think I've neglected him since I left the grille. Must rectify that. Ma soeur âgée told me she sometimes thinks I'm more mature than her. I think she likes to make jokes, sometimes. Some day I'll be 50 and I'll still feel like me. Not like one of those people who are 50. But like I'm me and 50 and all of my peers (all 50 of them) are just 50 like me. So to speak, when I came to university and they put me in a world full of my peers I realized it will be like this for the rest of my life. There will never again be that mystery of having mature people to run the world. Tomorrow they will expect me to run the world. It's utter mayhem out there. None of us are qualified and we're only skin filled with organs, blood, opinions, heart, inspiration and sometimes lice. I have no lice. Thank heavens. But somewhere a 21 year old has lice. If you think this post is confusing, heads up because I get to vote this year. Il mondo è bello perchè è vario. Vive la difference!
As a film student who is supposed to be figuring out how to put together a video and pitch an idea to people, I am fascinated by this. I mean, it looks like they got the handiest camera(s) they had, but...there were definitely concrete ideas put into work here. There are some really beautiful moments. I'm transfixed by it all.
And did they really make a giant working metronome? Maybe the moon told them how to do it.
video: The Music Tapes' "The Minister of Longitude"
I've said I hate to dream. But then my father read me some spare journal pieces:
Fall 1992 (the year when I was five) Marge and I drove over the prairie last night and we saw the quarter moon. She told me during the day the moon's mom moved his bed back to where he started and at night the moon moved his bed wherever he wanted to. The moon's mom's name is Andrew. He has lots of brothers and sisters and three silly boys, three silly girls, and three stray girls. The stray girls just seem to be part of the family. When I asked her how she knew all of this she said the moon had written her a letter.
Oh glory! That I was pen pals with the moon!
And although I begin to wonder at how our lives are so filled with things that can break--I'm getting tired of my own voice saying "Cuidado, you can't do that, you will break all your crayons; your plate is going to fall off the table and break; you're going to fall; fireman's hats sometimes just break," I have a tiny little voice in my head haunting me with "you'll shoot your eye out"--and although Black Orpheus was filled with all the feeling of inescapable dread my dreams fill me with, we can still in the end have loved and have been pen pals with the moon. Then make the sun rise with a song we've just made up.
The add/drop deadline for mi universitio being yesterday kind of makes me feel doomed. Doomed-io. Ooohhhh France, WHY?!?! Why have you drawn apart all of the grey squishy curls of my brain, drawn them all apart to different points on different maps. Your syntax is a confusing fog blown into, through, and clogging up my ears. I hear no evil, see no evil, and taste no french pastries. French leeches are sucking out my blood. My heart is faint.
Monstor Dos that I love little dearly every afternoon is trying to defy gravity. We have been conducting scientific experiments. If he climbs up on to another precarious perch while I'm not looking, will he fall this time? Yes, I say to you. He will. Again and again. I've never seen him fall so many times in one day. He screams, I pick him up, he pushes away from me to start climbing again. He is one determined person. And we must respect him, for defying gravity is a very noble aim. He is also trying to create space. If he shoves a thirteen inch wide kitchen chair into a two inch spot, it will fit, right? Where there's a will there's a way, isn't there? Monstro Dos carries around a heavy aura of frustration. There's some more doomed-io-ness.
I was reminded of why I'm studying le français, ce soir. Finally. J'ai vu The Diving bell and the Butterfly (Le Scaphandre et le papillon). It was in the opening credits that I remembered. They were beautiful scribbled script over shadowy x-ray sheets. It feels crass to describe them. But the film is centered in a mute and paralyzed man's brain, following his imagination of venus fly traps and Napoleon the third's wife. All words were accompanied by an appropriate image as is the way of film, but half of the images were poetic. Poetic in the way described by my Isaiah studies book which explicates poetry as a tool in which people can recognize symbols/images/phrases and relate to them with their own experiences therefore enriching their understanding. I'm sorry I just dragged text book definitions into wordy embraces, but if that's not enough I could also impose upon you the description given in the early learning literacy research I've been doing for this documentary: Poetry combines code and meaning based learning. In the film there are litle memories, here, tied to imaginings, horrible uncomfortable hospital feelings, dedication of peoples, small moments, and the kind of ideas you know would catch me. All kitestrings wound to some central idea. Maybe I love it more than anything we've got in anglais because France really does practice it all so much more beautifully. But I'm thinking I love it more because it is my metaphor of my mental process. The cinematic of kitestrings practiced in a language I study but struggle with. In other words, a cinema I love but I feel I will never be able to accomplish. As my sixth grade teacher proclaimed, "It's Greek to me!"
However, it is most important that I feel a bit more faith-filled to study that French stuff.
One January I went to the Sundance film festival with a bunch of chums. There were six of us in a little '98 mustang. We took turns having one of us lay across the others' laps in the back seat. In Park City we wandered up and down the streets, my best friend SVo and I crossing our fingers that we'd see Adrien Brody and Nicole Kidman. It was cold and none of us knew what we were doing so we wandered the afternoon away with pink noses and hands, hiding our fingertips from frosty air in pockets and gloves. I would stare at the creaky beautifully painted houses that sat all over the twisty roads and tried to ignore the snow seeping into my boots. We found a shop and the owner told us stories of how P Diddy shopped at her furniture store. We walked up a long road through wooded woods back to the car that night. The sky was clear (the air was clear!) and there were twinkly stars abroad. Our love-birded friends were up the road (slowly), their silhouettes being outlined by a passing car's headlights. We were about to drive to Salt Lake to see the film we had tickets for. It was my turn to lay across everyone's laps and I looked up at everyones' chins tinged with starlight. It was like living one of those cinema magic moments that are sung out by Nick Drake or Sigur Ros or something other ethereal.
We're young and alive. ba-dum-dum-dum.
I love religious art. If I were to get a tattoo it might be of the Virgin Mary.
My favorite conversation of the day started as I saw G teetering on his trike-bike. "Cuidado. You don't want to fall." "Why do you say that?" "Because then you could fall." (And I've seen you fall just like that five times) "Then what?" "Then you would be hurt?" "Then what?" "Then you would be unhappy." "Then what?" "Then the world would end." "Then would you tell my frie-would you tell all my friends?" "Yes, I'd tell all your friends that the world had ended."
I should have thought CUIDADO as I signed up for this writing writing writing frenchy class. I no longer have fear of the french lady who teaches me. She doesn't look at me as if I am a repulsive alien when I speak french as some frenchies will. I do have A-nnoyance because she insists I visit my arch-nemesis at the frenchy writing lab. France is being a difficult spouse that you think you might have to divorce. There is no comprendre going on anywhere. Germany has jumped on their back and offered them good German beer and I'm sitting in a pile of half-eaten granola bars from babies. Tomorrow I seek out a marriage counselor. And since France won't let me in, I'm preparing a french speech to ask France to come to Canada, you know, meet half way and add in spice.
Yesterday I found a dreamy little nursery rhyme I'd never heard before:
If all the world were paper, And all the sea were ink, If all the trees Were bread and cheese, What should we have to drink?
Enshroud. Tonight I will curl up on my newly purchased mattress pad and bed frame. What's a girl doing being so responsible as to study finances, buy her own bed and bedding, and turn down invites to hang-out at house shows with boys she's always loved so she can do homework and write a documentary proposal? It's the end of week three of the children and they finally have me convinced that I was the most normal child and not at all depressed or cynical as my sister sometimes jokes or alludes to. Today as I hammered my bed frame together I decided the hammering went a whole hammer of a lot better when I thought "angry hammer, angry hammer." So I thought of all of my pet peeves and frustrations that I know don't have any eternal merit and so I let myself carry on in my normal happy fashion brushing things off my shoulders. But the hammering went so very very well when I thought, "here's to your meaningless flattery!" "here's to rejected internships!" "here's to my fear of speaking in languages in front of people!" "here's to your poisonous spiders!" Maybe if I made one bed frame a day I'd have arm muscles and five minutes more courage to stand up and shout "IT DOESN'T MATTER BUT I DON'T AGREE!!! NO!!!"
Today was an awe, happy family day. Monstro Uno took us on a walk around the neighborhood. Twenty feet in front of me he waited on his bike. "You see that I waited? I remember what you said the other day." Monstro Dos is teething and wanted to be held all day long. I sat at the kitchen table reviewing my math for financial class when he crawled into my lap. I read my chapter of setting financial goals outloud to him while he gnawed on a jumbo strawberry. After a few minutes he tugged on my thumb and turned my hand palm face up. He needed someone to hold his slobbery strawberry while he played with my calculator. That's right, don't worry, Monstro Dos, I love holding your gummed-up food in the palm of my hand.
I've found others who concensus with me: campus is ugly and young this year. The flowers are beautiful the weather is great, but I feel like there is a marked lack of people who are creative and interested in their wearings. Sure it's marvelous that we don't all have the same priorities, but where's the art? People can make campus pretty, but people you're leaving it blah. Ima step up my game.
Well. Monstro Uno and I conducted some scientific research today. We have solid proof that lack of sleep somehow inhibits your hearing ability or maybe it's the synapses that bring the sound to your brain. Monstro Uno is still not satisfied with our findings that not listening means that something is taken away. "You're not going to listen? Ok, I'll just carry your bike in the air in one hand and push your brother's stroller with the other. That's fine." (Luckily that only lasted five steps before we all started listening again.) But you know, I have to say, I was at a loss as to what to do with a child who was upset with everything ("I can't eat [the pear] cut that way, what if it falls apart?!" "Don't put tape on it!...How are we going to keep it [paper boat] from falling apart?..Nooooo not tape!"). Do I make him take a nap? Not possible. So I sat down in the kitchen and started reading about a woman who had this constant feeling as though she were falling. Even after she hit the floor she felt like the floor would open up underneath her and that she was still falling. A couple of minutes later, my dear Monstro Uno asked for a popcicle. Yes. Yes, have a popcicle even though no toys have been put away. By you. Yes, please. I don't want to argue or fight with you. And that popcicle made all the difference.
My first assignment for my dear little documentary class is to write about five little things that normally no one notices. We must be ever watching! Always! Be aware! As my last documentary professor instilled in us the mantra, be wildly interested. Wild. At one point this evening I was walking my bike down this busy street. I'd noticed a man hesitate to see if a woman needed help with her fallen groceries, a shameful amount of litter and this boy's black socks. Then three boys (men? age generalizations are so difficult) sitting on a tailgait of a truck in the Burger King parking lot called out to me. I thought, odd, but why not. "Can I help you?" I asked. They wanted to know why I was walking not riding. And they wanted to know my name. And they wanted to know all about me. They told me they were "hicking." Ten points if I could guess what hicking was. "Well, I'm guessing hicking is tailgaiting in parking lots." I won the ten points. They inspected my groceries, told me I was cute, talked about Curious George, asked me to put them in a movie, offered me strawberry milk shakes and said I should hang out with them. Acutally I should clarify, they didn't really just say I was cute. One kid/man said, "I was feeling really talkative earlier but now I'm kind of not sure of what to say. I mean you see a cute girl walking past and so you start talking to her and then you realize that she's not just a cute girl but that she's maybe a little weird (thanks for your honesty) and impressive. There's something to her." (He was impressed I had peas and tomatos in my grocerey bag). Hmmm..... Wild? Interesting?
There's something to be said about nannying. People write books and make movies about six year olds pulling their pants down. They make some nice sum of money on their darndest moments. Maybe I should get in on this. The children, or los monstros as I think of them, are making me remember a lot. 1 The first time I tried vanilla extract even though I knew my mother wasn't lying to me that it didn't taste good. (Last week, "Crisco doesn't taste good." "Just let me taste it." Ok. you taste that Crisco.) 2 Mom's distaste for Shoots n Ladders. "Now I get two turns." "No you have to play fair otherwise no one wants to play with you." "Then I get three turns." "Then I get three turns, too." "Ok...or no you just get one turn." 3 Richard Scary books 4 Mom's Camelot record as she explained about the weather in Camelot.
I'm still amused that the older monstro cautions me to be careful so that I won't break a nail.
I ate a cheese burger today. I haven't eaten a burger in two years.
