moving day, rumbling day

Everyday the Snow Movers come. It takes a while for a small town to wake up from a snow storm that dumps one and a half to two feet of snow (who can tell with all of the drifting and wind-ing). And so every day the Snow Movers come. I hear them rumbling outside, like earth movers moving our white earth from the mountains that have piled up. The streets have been cleared and walls of white line them. Their shoulders are full of lumpy ruts and each parking lot has their respective hill. In drives the Black Cat followed by the dump truck. Shovel, dump, shovel, dump, shovel, dump.
Everybody keeps wondering if the spring will bring more national news flooding because the snow isn't going anywhere, not really, even the snow they drive away will still be in the sound of our voices. It may rearrange itself into new shapely drifts, but it will hang around.

everything all comes out in the winter time

I've forgotten that when everything is white and cold--w & c like it only gets here because you know it goes on for miles, hundreds of miles--you fill up the space with dreams. You can't stop dreaming, how anyone lives without an imagination I've never figured out. Last night as I was laying in bed I thought of the perfect kind of future of filmmaking. It involves lots of things one of which is making blogotheque-take-away-shows-esque videos like this one:

First Aid Kit - A Take Away Show from La Blogotheque on Vimeo.

notice how quietly they cut and follow around. oh, I'll do it, I'll do it, I will.

What I dreamed in sleep was a stream of walking home from school, people being chased by wild animals, me being chased by wild animals, running through the old recital hall where senior citizens were pouring out of their seminar. I hoped they didn't get eaten up by the wild animals. My dreams have been a mash together of the university town I live in and the university town I grew up in. And it's all been winter.

I walked downtown this morning, because my family walks everywhere and because I couldn't face the new parallel parking only zones that they've put in place since the last time I've come back here for a visit. I thought about driving to assimilate with the locals but when have I ever done that one well?
It blizzarded here over Christmas and the town just barely started emerging yesterday. Most of the sidewalks have been snowblowed and are lined with walls of three or four feet of snow. Sometimes when the sidewalk hasn't been cleared you have to climb over a bank of the snow to walk out on the street. You can walk on top of the snow, really, because it packs into dense dense sleeping beasts. Sparkling on top. Sheets of sparkling white. I listened to my iPod as I walked and for once listened to somethings current. I wanted to listen to indie pop to remind myself that the last five years had happened. I love home and am glad to be here but a lot of the things you love have deep deep deep deeply laden cares.

platypus

Last night I dreamed a hundred and one million more stars appeared in the sky. The truth was the stars had been there all along, but we hadn't been able to see them until last night. Constellations looked like real things, I saw a platypus made of stars. It was beautiful. Dark blue night with more sparkles, more depth.
Remember that feeling of calm you have when you lay on the hood of your car as you look up into the night sky?

teenage wasteland

We sit in conference in my room. Me on my bed and a whole bunch of furniture and artwork that used to either be scattered throughout other rooms in the house or I had shoved into my closet as I was growing up.
There's the side table inherited from Aunt Milly that's actually made for a record player but I have long since stuffed full with books, notebooks, chunks of collected wood, and tchotchkes. There's the cupid lamp, the arm chair my mom would always tell me I was going to ruin everytime she caught me draping my legs across one of the arms. There's the tall bureau, the small bureau, the large vintage bureau, and the plastic lawn chair. There's the print of Whistler's The White Girl (which used to freak me out but now I feel drawn to her creepiness), the child's drawing (we're unsure of the artist as of yet. I feel like the tinfoil buttons taped on might be representative of something I might do but the nose connotes my sister's work), and the painting of the mad scientist I did in high school.
We're here, convening in my childhood bedroom wondering what to do with ourselves. It's not that we're at a loss as to how to spend the next two weeks. No, there's no worries there. I figured out that my dad doesn't like when I sing Sam Cooke's "Cupid" so I might enjoy pulling that out every once in a while. But the Upper MidWest is a place that will either wash you out or make you wonder about things. So I normally choose to wonder about things.

pad tie

You're lucky, I almost broke my stream of gibberish by writing a philosophical post because I'm chillin in the cave with my editor who's fixing our lower-thirds and listening to music that I listened to in jr. high. Like Lifehouse. I've got so many memories running through my head. Mostly about the pothead I sat next to in study hall who I was absolutely in love with and we'd listen to Mudvayne together.

Oh I'm chuckling at this memory lane. layne.

I 'on se cass'd, I think I passed, I want to listen to Nirvana and The Clash and The Pixies and and break things. I'm so excited for Christmas break when I'm going to tweak this film I made for a class last year. I'ma make it DA bomb. bombshell. a blond one. fake blond. blondie. D.

da dee da dee de dee dee dee.

I want to write marshmellows and trip cars and flip bars and steal mars. And make it steel. Still and distill again. I would de-steal but real things don't D.

Remember when we used to listen to walkmans and portable CD players and when people carried boom boxes on their shoulder the first time around? Because I'm drowning in those memories right now. Gah. Editors.

aunt acid's harry rag

There was an upswing in ookiness and that up jumped the boogy. The boogy man'd the station with the hips' invaduation. Aiyaiyai, it will all be over tonight, right? And then I'll on se casse myself from this campus. That, if you haven't noticed, is my favorite thing I've ever learned to say.

on se casse
on se casse
on se casse

Voila la la la la.

Vous voyez, le problème is that who wants to listen to guillaume du fay's stinking polyphonic masses when you could be listening to the davies sing their Kinks-y hits? I know, since when did I turn up my nose at ancient music history? I'm usually the champion of studying the obscure and outdated. I'm rolling over in my grave. Butsa whateva, whateva, whateva eva.

Also, can we make note here that to the untrained observer there is no difference in the phoneme of the "oi" of french words like voila and the "oy" in voyez, BUT there is a HUGE difference and even though I'll never have success with my ridiculous obsession over tiny details comme ça I can rest self-satisfied.

I know Mom, I'm getting pompous. Apparently lack of sleep makes me spout gibberish, become pompous, and french.

la la la la la

c'est tout !

love,
M

P.S. I guess you hate all this dribble laying before your eyes but I was just getting so tired of waxing profound. I'ma go James Joyce on ya'll. HA!


ok, here's the translations:
on se casse: LET'S GET OUT OF HERE!!!!!
vous voyez: you see
comme ça: like that
c'est tout: th-th-th-that's all folks

i always have ulcers at finals

and it's not because I care so much about them.
It's because by December I've lost patience with my migraines. So tonight it was two mt. dews, four pills from a bottle that said headache, and crackers for dinner. And maybe I shouldn't still be up at 1:07 a.m. to be experiencing this, but I'm getting the shakes, there's an uncomfortable hole being dug in my stomach, and the headache is coming back. I promise I normally take better care of myself.

I'm going to do nothing but do yoga and listen to vinyl all Christmas break. La la la, here I come The Byrds.

I.
If I could make this finals week last forever, I would. On Saturday my best friend, JG moves home and I'm trying not to think about it. And in April, E graduates and moves away, too. My biggest motivation to graduate is that in five months these, my closest dears, will all be gone and I'm going to want to bust this town. The thought of this impending depression spurs me to set goals. Goals like a December 2010 graduation (and I will not be walking. gross.) and internships. I just emailed Radiolab about internship possibilities with them. I'm also looking into the This American Life int. even though I think the staff and I would kill each other because of how FORMULAIC they are. Clever and lovely, but formulaic. You see, if I worked at TAL I could get a job anywhere I wanted. It would only mean loss of soul but growth of character and curriculum vitae for 60 hours/week for 6 months.

II.
I have a claymation set in my living room that I try to cover with a blanket when guests come over because I get embarrassed when people ask about it. Their reaction of awe makes me feel so awkward. And the plasticine kindergarten children are out of their crayon-colored cardboard chairs and are all in the fetal position on the plywood kindergarten floor. They look like casualties of nuclear fall-out.


III.
How, at 22 years old, do you make sure that your loved ones know they're loved? How do you have Christmas heart at the "selfish" time of life? I'm loss of words'd when it comes time to say you made my life, my soul is like claymation clay and you've become a permanent, vibrant strip in its plasticine pattern, you've got super8 mm style nostalgia written all over you, we're bound by yarn rope, you warm my heart more than a yarn pet or than the hallmark commercial from the 90s where the little boy is digging for a toy under his bed.
I learned from accidentally leaving my horrible and emotional teenage angst creative writing papers lying around the house that it was OK to say things in a fairly butchered way as long as you said them. So I probably won't be able to say these thing to you in person but I'm writing you all secret love notes (in a teenage angst way?).

I have almost used as many adjectives in this post as a certain S. Meyers uses.

Love you.
M

I know that trick.

This is the week where a boyfriend with a car and a good income and good taste in food would come in handy. Because I need to spend hours editing/transcribing/studying/writing papers and so it would be perfect for him to bring me lovely healthy meals and pick me up from campus at two a.m. Other than that he would probably get in the way this week, lets be honesto.

Also, to Travis: Nobody has ever made me feel OK about spiders before but now as I imagine them singing karaoke I think I'll be able to handle it. Maybe even smile.

And to Eliza: I hope someday to not be talking to anyone at all at two in the morning. I hope to be sleeping. Always.

just to let you know I'm alive and awake

I've been tempting fate by spending the last week staying up until two in the morning editing and doing homework and I will be doing the same ce soir. Mais après ce soir je peux me dormir*.

The results of this fate tempting are as follows (because I know you care):

The other day (I think it might have been yesterday) I said, "I'm tired of complaining" and then realized what I'd just said and mumbled about meta-ideas and self-reflexivity knowing that neither of which actually applied but nothing seems to apply lately.

Last night while making graham cracker houses with my roommates I frosted a graham cracker mustache to my face. I thought it was a good idea. Then I tried to blow my nose on JG. I thought that was a good idea, too.

Last night, again, I met a boy who started polling me about how much I might believe in a revivalist club he was starting about thinking. I mean thinking about starting. Oh dear. It wasn't a religious revival. Anyway, I think (none of us can be positive) I think I understood his club, but I could not process words. There were lots of words going on and I'm not sure I heard them all and I think I just stared.

And lastly of last night, I, of course, would be the one who was awake at 2am to go to the bathroom and find the largest blackest spider I have ever seen and I made the weirdest sound I have ever made. That sound could only be a product of lack of sleep. I tried to imitate it for my sister this morning when she called to laugh at me.

Anyway, here's to another good long night of not sleeping. It will all be over in a matter of twenty hours.

*That's my poor french way of saying I'm going to go to sleep early tomorrow night.

in the end we have the same idea

I'm going to fill your triptophan brain with my Thanksgiving stuffing.

You see, I'm thankful my parents moved 1100 miles away from their families to the remote upper midwest and I want you all to know it. Our Thanksgivings were always the oddest of holidays growing up. We invited all of the family-less people over for the day. There were Australians who'd bring scones and vegemite, people from church we'd drive 45 miles (one-way) to pick up, and professors from my dad's university. One of these colleagues was Milton. Milton would always bring his flute or Native American recorders to play for us. It just doesn't seem like Thanksgiving without Milton.

I miss the stalwart, make-do, band-together spirit of my UMW more everyday.

Thanks, Mom and Dad. I think we have had the best life ever.

And I don't like vegemite. Not thankful for that.



And I have recently (as of today) become thankful for Buffy the Vampire Slayer.





Annnnnnnd end scene.

Shin dealer's Liszt

"I was part of the Sixties," my professor says, "That was my generation, my youth. My parents and I argued about flower children and about our radical ideas but we thought we were going to change the world. I was young, I believed humanity could change, we really thought we were going to change the world. But I'm older now and a little more wise and so blah blah blah--" he continued on. I lost track of where he was going because I wanted to shout out, "STOP! STOP! We're YOUNG! Let us be young! Let us believe we can change the world, we all know that radical youth won't change things like you wanted it to, but let us hold on."

[sigh]

When I was in elementary school I was taught that (1) America was a melting pot and (2) that by the year two thousand we would have flying cars we could program to take us to our destination. I was (1) disturbed by autonomous cars and therefore glad when that hadn't been realized by 2000 and (2) I was disturbed to find out that the melting pot wasn't melted the way I thought it would be. It was this creeping realization I had as I progressed through my grade school years. As a wee child I learned about WWII and thought that was the end of war. Then I learned about Vietnam but that was OK, that was twenty years ago and there were thirty years in between that and WWII.
But then there was the Cold War and the Bay of Pigs and Korea and McCarthy's hunt for communists and the First Gulf War. "Wait, this can't be right, when do we stop fighting?" I wondered. But it was OK, there was still Martin Luther King, Woodrow Wilson, Edward Murrow, Susan B. Anthony, Dorothea Dix, women voting, Gandhi and Mother Theresa, and the Fall of the Berlin Wall.
Then Clinton had his scandals, Bush declared war on Afghanistan, people were hating on Mexican immigrants (regardless of legality), football games lasted four hours and fans were gross and mean.

That was it.

The world would never change. There were too many sweet bro's and crooked politicians.

The cynicism that my sister claims resided in my heart from birth hit a peak. Quick, tell me what's more true: we should send millions of more troops to Afghanistan or we should not and see what happens then.
Next question: Should we spend billions in bailouts and go into debt or let everybody close up shop, declare bankruptcy, and lay-off billions?
Next question: should we create six more planets just like earth so that everyone can eat the way people in North America eat or should we send our left overs to Africa?
Next question: Should Google go to China and submit to Chinese government censorship or should Google stand firm for personal freedoms and stay out?
Next question: When your best friend has finally confessed to you the severity of the abuse that went on in that relationship for three years should you do what you can to see that boy brought to justice?

JEOPARDY says, "What is World Peace?"

[ha...ohh...sigh]

STOP! STOP! STOP! STOP the train I'm YOUNG, can't follow Holden Caulfield to the backwoods where we live in a cabin hermitting ourselves from the world of Crash and Schindler's List. Can't do it. Can't be jaded already.

Last year, when I nannied, we loaded every nannykin of us into the red Radio Flyer wagon. We marched to the dinosaur museum and haphazardly ran to and fro between dinosaurs and waterfountains and fossils and then we went across the street and rolled down the big hill of grass. Well, the two year old kind of crawled down head first.
There's something in that rolling down hills and telling jokes that don't make sense and building forts. There's something about not looking for mutual interests just for time spent together.

So what I'm saying is that in lieu of any amazing solution to the world's problems, can we just spend time together?

Because I think that changes things.


In this movie I saw the other night* someone says of their lofty goals, "We're too young to know we can't do it."
Awe gee, it's great to be twentytwo and young.


*Amazing Grace

here's some social entrepreneurship for you

Some days you wake up and even though you do yoga and eat a small dish of homemade pumpkin custard for breakfast with a best friend and a favorite documentary professor finds you in a group of people to take you aside and say, "I think you should look into this doc opportunity because I think it's right up your alley," and from that you can gather that you have manifested to those who are more experienced that you have some kind of potential you still end the day thinking, "I'm short and I can't relax and I go to school with models."

On those days you probably should have dug your hot pants (à la James Brown and James Dean) out of the dirty clothes and scrubbed the homemade pudding splashes out of them (the pudding that you whipped up when you and K realized that the clove measurement written in the recipe was wrong and something needed to be added to neutralize it) and you probably shouldn't have worn your sweater dress for a top because even though it makes your head and shoulders look so classy (especially with your newly re-bobbed hair) it makes your legs look so short and your legs are your favorite part of your body. You learned long ago that if you can start out the day with a comfortable outfit (among other things) everything else falls into place.

But then, we all know these days happen. There will always be days when you think--well, when you doubt all of your lumpish fibers and merits. Why you still have these days...I have no explanation. But I think it was a good idea that you changed out of the unflattering sweater and dug out the hot pants and are planning on going out. Out to parties, out to life. You don't find any answers or comfort in not living.

So I'll see you at that party tonight, OK?

It's just this little small thing that happened and not even earth shattering

otherwise entitled The Boy in the Hallway.

Today this funny thing happened.

I was walking to a class. Bland colored sand hallways with a nice edging of people sitting along the wall, heads deeply hunched in their homework. It is a terrrrrribleeeeee bland hallway because they knew they could save on decoration by just handing students homework. "Hand them the homework, they'll sit in the hall," was their slogan. That's free. In fact, it's a way to keep the decor fresh, new faces rotating in always, and get PAID all the same time. No need to worry about matching fabrics, textures, it's more authentic if there's a little clashing, and there's plenty that's homogeneous enough in the look on their face. Concentration. Consternation.

So I was walking to class.
And he was walking the opposite direction.
There was a little bit of brown hair. Round glasses. Which is perfect because I've been thinking of Harold Lloyd lately. Cute face. An outift that would befit the Sartorialist.com. MY kind of sartorialist. I remember puffy coat and rolled up pants.
I was glad I was wearing my London Fog trench coat and a red dress. Because I tried to not stare, but I did anyway. And he stared back.
So we crossed paths keeping eye contact all of those long seconds.

I couldn't help but think, "Is he looking because I'm looking or is he looking for the same reason I'm looking?"

I knew the moment would be over quickly and that I should check his hand for a wedding ring and smile my most quixotic smile. But I just wanted to enjoy that simple moment of a few seconds in a hallway with someone who was a little kindred. I couldn't break that holy silence.

This is only the......third time(?) for this to happen in the last four years. But the best part was that it was so simple. Not earth shattering at all.

Yeah. That's the funny thing that happened on the way to the...not forum. I moved on to folklore class, received my glass of slushy punch, forgot all about Harold Lloyd and his puffy coat, lit my candle, made the wrong wish, and watched a presentation on dungeons and dragons.

pills are placeboes. might as well be oboes.

I'm chopping my hair off (all of the one inch) and wearing contacts until I get that new glasses prescription. I've drunk two mt. dewzz aujourd'hui and to no effect: I am headache. I am sick to meee stomacho. Can't do this multi times a week anymore. Anyone have any new homeopathic remedies for headaches? (Because pills stopped working when I was a child) And don't tell me most headaches are caused by dehydration (I'll knock your head off). I run, I do yoga, I eat well, I drink my liquids, I don't slouch, I breath deeply, I massage my neck, I rub my temples, I pinch my pressure points, I pull at my hair. Something new please.

Ax. Ax my head off. That's what we'll do. Ax! Someone bring me an ax!

Peabody, you're disgusting*

Tonight it's been like old times, I got home at 10:15pm just in time for a late dinner.

I've been less blogolific as of late. I think it's because I've started to say things out loud in conversations with people that normally would sit in my brain until they traveled down to my fingertips, through the clickety tekla of the computer keys and out into the universal abyss of billions of blogs. For example, yesterday, in conversation with JG I compared something to the fall of Jericho. She got this momentary look on her face which is what I imagine plays across your face when you read some of the faluted things I type up here.

This summer at one of those girlfriend-brunch kind of things I was a little surprised to hear everyone at the table agree that I would make a good wife of someone in the army because I (in their opinions) wouldn't be distraught by months of separation from the love of my life. "Hmm..." I thought, "interesting."
But...
There's been this odd thing happening in my life. Sure, I've been pretty independent, tight-lipped, stand alone, rejoice at my singleness type of kid at times in my life. But more and more, I want to lean on you. More and more, I want to see my family and share dinner conversations with them. To hug them, share life discoveries, discuss children's literature and dictionary terms. To help my dad memorize scriptures and be a sounding board for my mother's stake Relief Society plans. I want to dust the living room. I want to crochet with my sister and chat about mixed media self-portraits and sing along to Carole King. I'll even watch the Disney channel with Dude and Eye.
I have a growing need to fall off my chair in attempts to tell cousins that I love them, I want to eat chips with my bestfriends while we watch quoatable movies like Star Trek and The Count of Monte Cristo.
I've stopped being afraid of people and now I can't stop reaching out. I need to hear their opinions on crisp fall days, on the ratio of people sitting on the left side of the room vs the right side. I want to hear about the memoirs you're going to write about teenage drama or about all of the knowledge you've collected but has yet to serve you in any professional manner. I must hear people tell me about the millions of majors they've pondered choosing and how they've been transcribing and keeping a log of all of their texts as a sort of social and personal history.

I need people.

So my plan that as I got older I would become more independent has never been realized. The net result of my life (in no economic or literal definition of the term "net", it was just something to say) is that I am continually growing more dependent on the people in my life. So, in other words, if I were Jericho, I'd need you to be the scafolding bracing up my walls. Or you're my suspenders. Or you're my Bonnie and I'm Clyde. You're peanut butter and I'm jelly. And the bread would symbolize my favorite food: bread. Hmm...metaphors....



*The Golddiggers of 1933. A funny movie. And yet...Proof that even in 1933 media was scandalous it was just less popular to be as graphic and visceral as "media is today". Just a friendly reminder that when you want to complain (to me) about "the media today" you should can it. Because I love media. It will be my profession.

WALL

http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2009/11/09/world/europe/20091109-berlinwallthennow.html

I found this really rad NY Times interactive thing. Do it.

bog.

Would someone tell me how to be creative again, please?
Would someone get me out of this funk that's been creeping in and over for a long time. Because now I need to be creative.
There's million thoughts in my head. M told me to write them all down. Make lists and lists and lists and then when the right idea comes along you'll be ready for it and you won't let it pass you by. Unaware.
Good thoughts, too. There are quite a few good thoughts in my head. But I don't want to see them through.
Maybe there are too many unfinished projects bogging me down. Bog. Bogged. I'm bogged.

Hooo ooh bog.
Help me out! I'm in quicksand!

just clipping

This morning I stuffed my roommate's speakers into my backpack and rode my B.C.clayta up to campus. I was dying for somebody to stop me to ask what I had in my bag so I could tell them about my odd cargo.
No one stopped me.
The speakers were for an interview via Skype for our (D, C, and me) documentary project (the one on women who have struggled with postpartum mood disorders/depression). There were two highlights of the interview. One, she went to school with a couple of our professors here, back when the three of them made up the entire body of students studying documentary film. We got her to tell us stories about them and you know they were good because she kept checking with us, "You're not recording this part are you?" Secondly, she was candid. And she told us a story about how she became entirely not herself and her husband of only three years never balked. She was suddenly, six days after giving birth, not the woman he married. But he just loved her. You can imagine a flitter-flat thinker like me was inspired to waxed sappy over lunch today.

This afternoon I sat on stools in a bookstore with my sister looking at books about mixed media art projects while my brother-in-law updated us periodically on the time and the rain.

And then it hailed. I had forgotten there was such a thing as hail.

And then I was at a halloween party this evening--my costume was amazing, I felt like I could make headlines--and I looked around at the kid dressed as a Japanese tourist fiddling with the Ratatat-like playlist, the Mexican Panda Bear playing the moraccas, the mermade dancing solo in the middle of the room and I thought, "Gee, this is grand."

And I meant it.

you're in my little red book

Dear you,

All I want is Otis Redding and you.


love,
Marge

p.s. And Sam Cooke and my bicycle.

p.p.s. and James Brown.

yoga tells me to breathe but I quit that

Quit yoga or breathing?

Quickly, fast, get ready for it! Before I go to bed tonight I have to figure out what I'm doing and write a treatment (pitch) for MY documentary and send it off to the FACULTY REVIEWERS (You know the documentary that I need to figure out and plan the next year of my life around and then convince people next week that they should give me $1500 and I'm only kind of sure of what I'm doing right at this moment), plan everyone's wardrobe for Friday and Saturday for that fiction film, wrangle up camera and sound equipment to do an interview tomorrow, cram for the test of the class that I'm terribly bad at and magically become a genius again, set up an interview for Saturday for the one of four documentaries I'm currently working on, go running and do yoga. So now you see which one I quit doing. I quit breathing. Who has time for it?

Does anyone else feel really exhilarated right now?

addendum:
My professor's advice to me today (which will actually mean something if you've ever had to take documentary history) was "Helluva good time; no whales." So I keep repeating to myself as I sit here, "Helluva good time; no whales. Helluva good time; no whales. Helluva good time..."
Another professor saw me this afternoon and asked me what I was doing then asked, "Is it crazy and different?" I thought about it for a minute, "Yes, yes it is..." and he replied, "Because we like that kind of stuff."

Helluva good time.
No whales.


Yeah.

could you tell me what the bottom of the Red Sea looks like?

There's been a million things to write and I've written them but when it comes to pressing the garish orange "publish post" button at the bottom of the screen I stop. I crumple my tongue and merely hit the hi-line blue "save now." All this holding in of ideas after I commit to SAYING IT.

[sigh]

This is harder than I thought.

Oh wait! Tonight I did fall off my chair in an attempt to tell my cousins I loved them. Progress.

The other night I was sitting up with dead horses. We were playing some dead card games and the D.H. I call Ione made a particularly magnificent dry witted comment about the Grim Reaper (you see they're not so bad once you get to know them) when I looked up at her and realized, with a severe start (the kind that E1's car hasn't been capable of in a few years), that Ione and the others looked alive. In fact, I reached over to Q who was directly to my right and felt the pulse on his foreleg. He had a pulse.
"Pinch me," I said to Cliff.
"Are you trying to make a joke? I've got hooves not apposable thumbs."
"Oh...yeah, no...sorry..." I felt so confused. Have I been wrong this whole time? "Hey guys, did you know you're alive?"
They stared at me.
"We're alive?" Bea threw her cards on the table. "Why have you been lying to us?!"
"I didn't mean to lie! No, I wasn't lying, I didn't know!"
Arnison smiled, "So are you going to buy a ranch for us?"
"No, on this I will not budge. You are going away."


On another note, I am Egypt.

meet: eternity

I will never die.

You see, I know this because yesterday JG, E1, and I were discussing denim pursuits so I, of course, put on James Brown's "Hot Pants" and then I, of course, stood up on my chair and started dancing. Because that is a natural reaction to hearing James Brown.
"Gee, it's great to be 22 and dancing on chairs to James Brown," I thought. But then I realized I would do this at any age. Someday I will be old, frail, and wheelchaired and someone will put on JB's "Make it funky" and I will naturally stand up in my wheelchair and dance. But wheelchairs and my legs will be unsteady therefore leading to death. HOWEVER, by the time I'm 133 (which is the age I figure people will be dying at in those days) we should have gyroscopic wheelchairs. And hip implants. Ergo: my gyroscopic geriatric hips will really be even better at gyrating to James Brown.
Ergo: no dying.

speaking of gyroscopes...

I have a segue resolution to lead between 2009 and 2010. I've done very well with 2009 and it's led to this and we'll see where 2010 takes us, but the point of this paragraph is my INTERIM RESOLUTION. Il s'appelle*: SAY IT.
Tis an attempt to reduce the lag time between what I'm thinking and what you hear. Tis an attempt to reduce my seeming to lack emotion. Tis an attempt to make sure I never leave you thinking that you have lost my interest because I've remained quiet. Tis an attempt to reduce the distance between us. Tis the season to SAY IT.

*It's called

kenghis ghan, kangas gone

Tonight I watched a film about a holy prankster, sat for hours in an italian restaurant laughing with friends about kangaroos and stuff. After leaving from JG's awesome parking spot we saw a friend mopping at the end of her restaurant day and we stopped in to dance. Empty restaurants and dancing are good reasons to be 22.

I just thought you should all be jealous of me being 22.

butchers, les buchers, boosh, goosh, gosh

Have you ever noticed a lag between what is going on inside your head and the English language? Or whatever it is you're speaking these days. I'm fairly certain I have not had a stroke but I have been talking about strokes a lot to my speech pathologist nerd roommate and so maybe I'm having sympathy strokes? But really that's a lie because there's been a lag my entire lifeline long. In other words, there are things I've been trying to tell quite a few people but I'm not finding the way for expressions.

Words are boxes that tell you things and my thoughts aren't finding the right boxes. They don't seem to be divisible like that. They're indivisible. Like this nation. Ha.

I could try to paint a picture (water color or oils? OK, all I have are cheap-o acrylics) but that's hardly effective either. Pictures are even less communicative these days. It's the economy. They've gone down in wordworth. Dang economy.

What I'm trying to tell a whole bunch of people goes something like this: GHokmdflskj, fsjdifj lgiiiinb slidfuldk boji ahdnawe $^sdfij bni *&UHB sjidjf dkkf ergo I'm really glad I know you.

Hey, Speech Pathologist Nerd Roommate, do you think that first part is cantonese?

just a little somethin' I had up my sleeve

last of summer from Marge Bjork on Vimeo.

i made this for when it's cold.

an inner round that flouts Augustinian precepts

notes on what happens after you answer an unanswerable question with a spoonful of nutella.
1. You read the plot synopsis of The Body Snatchers on imdb and then add it to your Netflix queue.
2. You watch some bits of a movie noticing that two of the characters are also in that TV show Northern Exposure.
3. You browse music on the internet.
4. And you wonder why you lost the talent for writing horrible poetry. Life would be more fulfilling if we hadn't lost that knack over here at Bjork Enterprises (a subsidiary of Willard Wonder Inc).
5. Realize that you really are disturbed by the double "ue" in queue and imagine what it would be like to have a nightmare about long queues and excessive vowels.

There was once a little girl who sat down in the middle of a shallow river.
"Why did you ask me to walk to the other side of the river?" she called out to the cat who sat on that opposite bank.
The cat never answered, either he couldn't hear her or he wasn't a talking cat. It was probably that he couldn't hear her because she had a very feeble voice which likely wasn't projecting over the babble of agua. The girl was frustrated that there was a communication breakdown and it had nothing to do with how tight Robert Plants pants were.
"Hello!" she yelled with all her weakly lunged force.
Still nothing, the cat just sat. Just sat.
And she sat in the middle of the shallow river. Just sat. With her hair that curled just so, just a little bit. Remember the hair because in a year she will chop a large chunk of it off, at the left crown and then they will take her to the beauty parlor (which she will subsequently remember for the rest of her life) so the beautician can try to fix this drastic action into some kind of girlish pixie cut.

I lenting climbed over that hill three times

photo by mon père

I feel I'm good at keeping an open mind about all of the seasons. Twas not always this way, I grew up in a very chilly winter-ish place, I dare you to dream about how cold it an get. In this place, it pretty much had all four seasons, but mainly two: Summerish and Extra Long Winter. Summerish is frequently known by the name Construction Season because the Winter is so taxing on every building that it all wears out and must be fixed all the time.
In my growing up years, these Winters were very difficult to face (because they were Winters with a capital "W"). I could tell you stories of that one time I walked out in a blizzard. I stood with my face to the wind, the little flakes of blowing snow stung my cheeks and when I went back inside my hair was frozen straight back. You don't forget things like that. Or how about the number of socks it always seems necessary to wear. Or how about that one winter when the breaks on our family car kept freezing and it was first discovered by me as I was backing out of our driveway. Thank heavens there is not traffic there. How about how some mornings the radio tells you how long it will take until your fingers get frost bit and have to be sawed off. And every car drives around with some sand, candy, blankets, candles and other some suches. Winter Survival Kits. I learned from toddler age that if you get stranded in a car in a blizzard you must crack the windows (we were all smart toddlers, the driving age is very young there).

The point being of all of this: Winter was depressing. It was long and unbearable cold. But I've been living away from home for five years now. Very much separated from these netherworld Winters. I go home every other Christmas, and it was my second Christmas back, this was almost two years ago (I was actually in the middle of my year of existential crisis), and I realized, this WINTER is actually an amazing thing. I grew up with frozen hair and sandbags and wind chills and midwest and fiberous people. We layered to beat until we were lumpy old things and that's actually a fantastic thing. If things get tough you deal with it. Isn't that amazing? In our age of leisure, if things get tough you should get the letter H out and find something easier, n'est-ce pas ? Pas.

Anyway, despite the fact that I came home from that Christmas being more depressed than ever to be back here, I decided that all seasons were delightful. And I can revel in Greek mythologies of Persephone.

But this year, it's killing me. Fall has leapt upon us and this year I'm not relishing the colors and the crispiness. I'm suffocating with the closed-up windows and the darkening of the skies. Monday morning my roommate's and my alarm clocks went off at the same time.
"Roommate E, it can't be 7 a.m. can it? It's soo dark," I whined.

But it was seven.

{sigh}

When things get tough I guess I will l'arch de triomphe and sing songs for Persephone.


Stay tuned for tomorrow when I hope to have a little last day of summer treat.

ode angit

Well, Henry Blessing, it's your birthday. Or it was your birthday, it's now One A.M. as I write this and I don't know if you're of the school that draws the line at midnight or not.
Wait, what am I talking about, I know you, your birthday doesn't end, we just go to sleep.

You just turned 29 for the second year in a row, that's a pretty impressive feat. I'm glad that we're getting closer to the same age. And even though I'm more mature than you (ha) you've been beating me at everything my whole life (you were born first, you got to experience the grunge years firsthand, I could never scare you as well as you could scare me, you would nicely clean-up and bandaid my wounds then slap them, you won the cleanest room award that one time) but you're finally starting to slow down and now maybe someday we'll both be 29.

Hey, did you know you're pretty much the best companion for studying bookshelves and squating down in the aisles to taste test a few pages of books.

You're also talented at alliteration.

I don't want to get sappy or anything, but you're my favorite person to share a joke with, to tell stories to, to surmise about the feats of the completely nonfictional Sherlock Holmes, to listen to Miley Cyrus, watch weird movies with Michael Crawford late at night, to name-drop with, to judo chop my back, to sit quietly with, or even to scare me.

So vive la souer ! Many happy wishes to you.

Love,
Marge

P.S. Remember how our closets were connected and we could slip papers to each other through that crack and it wasn't necessary in the least to be sneaky but it was so irresistable? Well, for me it was.

the ward-drobe of the fascinating woman

I was going to start out by complaining about the someone (whose name starts with a B) who seems to feel like the vocations I'm considering (KJ-i or mischievous ghost) are subpar (although, I will point out, being a mischievous ghost would be pretty childish and sassy). And I was going to point out that this someone (B) should maybe shove-it because he's just on the rebound anyway....
But apparently he's not alone in his disparages. And one cannot ignore Laquina's remonstrance that she wouldn't be able to tackle me if I were a poltergeist. Because I love getting wrestled to the ground. But hey, remember how I got you so good when you visited a month ago? Maybe it was just once, but I'm treasuring it.
Point being:
I guess I'll have to stick with being a documentartian.
So good thing I realized today that I am irrevocably in love with documentary. It's a true love. It grows more and more each day, with each passing hour. Greg Kinnear once said, "I--can't help my self.*" I wish I could serve that to you with notations of his intonations, but let that suffice.
I can't help myself.
Sometimes as I'm sitting in [documentary production] class and we've just finished a discussion on post modernism vs. modernism vs. what that anthropologist said that has nothing to do with what we're actually supposed to be studying in class , and then we listen to a clip of someone's audio documentary and I get butterflies in my stomach and I can't stop smiling, I can't stop being in love. Somehow at some point, God made my soul out of documentary, I'm sure of it.

Also, I'm obsessed with saltine crackers lately and I think someone slipped me weed this evening because I have got the munchies.

And I want you to fully appreciate my phone's terrible vocabulary:
In the last week, text predictor has not recognized "ouch", "cougar(s)", "mascott", or "bastard." Just a note for my parents, that last one was most definitely in the appropriate bastard connotation of having unmarried parents and was not offensive whatsoever.

fridge pants.


*You've Got Mail

tonight I lived a moment and that's a cheesy thing to say

I've been making a list of pros and cons comparing my chosen professions. There's no clear winner yet (remember the debate is between poltergeist and Kim Jong-il). If you have any opinions on the matter feel free to comment.

(obviously not from the house show, but the closest we come to a photo of me dancing)
(And I think that's actually from three years ago but anyway...)

I might smell like alcohol right now. I went to a house show tonight and I ignored the part where there was a communal beer being passed around (well, really I thought, "hey, that's the kind I bought nervously at the store to take home to make bread" and "hey, herpes") and I'm also ignoring what I think I heard someone say, and if they said what I think they said they were most definitely a groupie. Point being, I went to a house show. It was the kind of show that's got the beat that gets you every time. You stand there thinking, "I'm really a wise, world weary person, so I'm not going to dance." But then the drum kicks start ticking off the years and all of the sudden you realize you're only 22 and that's a great age to be. Old age? That's never going to happen. You're there there there and you're young and it's one moment and you're suddenly aware that you're tapping your feet knocking your knees twist and shouting and it's just grand.

Sometimes I need to be reminded that it's not enough to be ageless, sometimes I should be my age.

what do you want to be when you grow up?

I would like to be a poltergeist. It might be more fun than being Kim Jong-il.

Yesterday I walked on salt. It was white, it was grey, it was pink (or more Milly mauve), it was shimmery, soft, and crystalled hard. My feet came away with a better than sugar shine.

An amazing thing has happened. With the advent of this house with clean roommates and lovely rooms, I have rediscovered my interest in cooking. I am repicking up the New York Times on Wednesdays so I can savor their dining section. I am redevouring all of my cook books and thinking of the fun twists to tie and tweaking this pretzel recipe to a practice bagel recipe and substituting this flour for that flour etceteras.
I've found a new waffle recipe I've been playing with, it's supposed to be a sour cream thing and while I'm sure that's delightful, I never actually buy sour cream. I cannot recall if I have ever bought it before in my life. So I made something up.
My friend also taught me a neat trick with a final dashing of cheese. One of the tragedies of moving from home is no longer having access to our fine, large, cast iron waffler. The surest way to have great waffles is to have a magically fantastic waffler. In university, we seem to only have mini-weaklings. Read on if you care about the life-saving trick.

My Yogurt Waffles
1 3/4 cup whole wheat flour
1 TBsp sugar (though next time I'm trying it without)
1 TBsp baking powder
1/2 tsp salt
1/2 cup canola oil (at most) (note here: I'm a very loose measurer)
1 cup milk
1/2 cup fat free plain yogurt
3 large eggs
a squeeze or so of a lemon

THE SECRET INGREDIENT (well the lemon is key as well): shredded cheese

CAVEAT: If you have a mini-weakster waffler, you MUST start heating your iron well before, at least 15 minutes, otherwise you're sunk in my book.

Mix dry ingredients in a small bowl. In a larger bowl mix the wet ingredients. Combine, and start pouring into the waffler. But WAIT! Before you shut the waffler, generously cover the top of batter with shredded cheese. The fine grate is better and I've been using Swiss. The cheese creates a great crispy outer shell and adds a little rich flavorish twang.

The syrup I've been making recently is a lemon simple syrup. It's especially delightful to balance the cheese flavor. Simple syrups are two cups sugar dissolved in once cup boiling water, then with a half teaspoon of whatever flavoring you want.

There, I have divulged some of my waffle magic for you.

that leitmotif just fell from that branch that was not even autumned!

I frequently feel that there are a lot of things out there that we could all be laughing at but somehow no one else has noticed the irony. But I suppose that is what irony is derived from. No one noticing it.

But then again, are we reveling so much in our dry wits that they've become kindle, caught a light, and burned this house down in an irreverent and despicable huddle?

Though sometimes I feel like Irony is the one spitting me with her/his pitchfork.

I'm supposed to be studying the Song of Roland right now, and instead of that, today, I have plugged up every spider hole in my wall (hopefully), tried to wrestle my bed frame into shape (failed and now mourning my too soon deconstruction of my nice bed frame), washed the venetian blinds in my bedroom (why those blinds? they're so cheap looking in our vintage windows! Gah, some people's total lack of aesthetics), had dinner, surfed TV, tried to fix the zipper on that great orange 1970's non-dress (second failure of the night), read blogs and found a new band to like for a minute. Point being, apparently I'm going to waste a lot of time before I meet my Roland.

Roland and I are not getting along. I'm too tired to figure out where he's coming from.

I can concentrate, I CAN concentrate. I can.

I walked a lung out

This is not happening.
I just had two sleepless weeks and now I'm sick, who knew I could be full of my weight in snot, and now I'm not sleeping tonight.
And, oh great, here come the dead horses stalking up the path to the door. They look as gaunt and grey as ever, and still self-satisfied.
"Well, Marge, what did you expect? You should open up a ranch, we come back so often..."
"No, maybe I should take up shooting. If I put you all out, then I can be at peace."
"You know it doesn't work like that."
"Well, you and I now know that you're not visiting for the reasons we originally thought."
"True."
"What do we do about that?"
"Open up a ranch."

I conducted a science experiment. Here are my findings:
There were once a set of electrons. Lets say there were six billion of them. Some electrons were shaped like the letter M, some were shaped like the letter F. Every year electrons M paired up with electrons F and found their own neutron to circle stable-ly together. Usually when M's and F's were single, they were happy, but they felt like there was a little something missing. They felt it would be more natural to find a counterpart. There was one little F, though, (her friends described her as emotionally healthy so that must count for something) who always felt more stable when she was just an F. She sometimes found an intriguing M, but that's when she started to feel wibbled and wobbled and stretched. However wibbled this little F felt, she maintained firmly that maybe it didn't need to feel stable at the get go. Maybe it was only part of the truth that coupling up was a stable thing.

At this, one dead horse leans back and crosses his fore legs over his chest putting his hooves up on my nightstand. "You're that little F aren't you?"
"That's rather rude, don't you think?"
"I'm dead, what do you think I care about politeness?"
"Well, I'm not F. I'm not that little letter F, electron F. Don't be-"
"-YOU really are going to have to build that ranch because nothing is going to stay stable."
At this, one of the other dead horses snorted, "Except for us, HA! Get it? We're going to stay stabled!"
There were some subsequent snorts, winnies, neighs, and demands for hay. Horse humor is rather tiring, just not tiring enough, apparently. Tomorrow I'm looking for a travel agency that will book trips for a few ghastly/ghostly horses.

I will not be burdened by serendipitous nicknacks

All I want out of life are work, creative outlets, people to love, my bicycle, and a shower on the south side of my house with a little window in it so I can take showers with the sunset shining in at the end of a long summer day.

I know I'm going to have a life like that.

Are you going to have the life you want?

naps in meetings

I miss my nannykins. Today M. One showed me the volcano, lava, and tornadoes he'd drawn on the sidewalk.

{sigh}

If anyone new asks, I'm not claiming creative direction of this documentary. It's been over a year and I feel nervous as the letter H. Especially since we show the College who's commissioned me the rough cut of our documentary on Friday.
I'm going to be very ill on Friday.

Very, very ill.

And I've lost every other good word of thought I had.

well, it was like hearing my mom say "meanwhile back at the ranch"

I did the best thing a kid could do on Sunday. I gave my five year old Monstruo Uno my razor scooter.

I bought it as a freshman at uni. Think back. It's way back (it's a flashback within a flashback within a flashback) because I'm a super senior now (maybe just barely but I feel cool like I'm super or have super powers or I'm savvy saying it). Remember how we'd all ride it around my dorm room floor and how the O.G. of G.O.G. would sometimes borrow it to get around this little city?
Then remember that Christmas break Sophomore year where I was stuck in said little city in that little crappy apartment and I was home alone all day and I got bored as the letter H so I put on some Ashley Simpson and rode around the kitchen table for an hour. Yeah, that happened. And even more yeah, I probably know all the lyrics to that A.S. album. But you know you enjoy my talent of being able to belt out a million ridiculous songs. And I sing them with feeling. Plus I came up with the greatest twist on lyrics the other day for Roommate E.
Junior year an old co-worker bought a razor scooter as well and we would ride around the streets. She would do sweet tricks like no hands scootering and I would fall over because I have no balance or talent. After she graduated and got a real job five states away, I haven't found an excuse to scooter, nor have I been able to properly run.
Senior year, Razor lay inactive.

The point is, this scooter was not meant for me.

I brought it Sunday to family dinner and Monstruo Uno has never been more delighted. Much more successful than the harmonica at Christmas. I guess he doesn't want to be Bob Dylan. He wouldn't stop scootering, we went over half the neighborhood playing his new invention "Scooter tag." It consists of him scootering and I run after trying to catch him. End result: I can't catch him.

But it's fun to try.




Coming Attractions: Rotatoes and my dear J.

could I make a podcast of your coughs?

Whenever anything calls for unsalted, I don't unsalt. Maybe this means I'll be your grandmother with hardened arteries (and maybe soul and neck and ear wax too) and then the heart disease that reigns in my family will spike me for a glorious end laughing at all of my fruits and vegetables and olive oil, but dear (or che or cher. Cher?), I will have eaten salt. And that is terribly important. Although, the other day I was sitting there trying to decide if I was tasting my food or if I was tasting salt.

Hmmm....

I would like to draw your attention to the large chair in your dining room. It's an odious seat, it feathers not the cap of your eating salon and you should dispose of it. Immediately. And irrevokably.

Do you remember how I've never made sense for you? Tonight I'll take a step aside in honor of Labor Day. This blog was born on labor day two years ago. I don't remember clicking through the set up portion of events, you know selecting the layout and colors etc., but I do remember the cream colored table I sat at as I started writing. It's impressed upon my memory because my roommates of the time did not appreciate the clean lines of that table and they threatened to place fake flowers around the living room. Ghastly. Well, you need not fear, Universe, I will not put fake flowers around your living room. Anyway, what I'm saying is, thanks Blog. You've been a gem. Together we were able to decide that it was not a question of being boring or not, it was a question of being us. And we were and are and ever will be us. In other words, we are happy.

Oh gee, this wasn't much of anything, but I'm tired tonight, and I need to take advantage of that.

The Pivotal Labor Day Post

There is polyester in your film.

I do my tae-bo to ambiance tunes. highly ineffective.

[middle of the woods]

[Knock, knock, knock]
[rickety wooden door opens. but silently]

"Yeesss?" The Sandyman peered out of crow's feet eyes.
"Mr. Sandman?" I said.
"Yeesss?"
"I'm tired," I said.
"Yeesss?"
"But I'm not falling asleep again. And I'm having horrendous dreams again."
"Hmmm..."

[He's got a puckered soft face of flappy old skin]

"How can I fall asleep?"

[He blinks]



[He shuts the door]

my back to school back pack is packed with an insomnia pack and it's on my back

Again, later than I should be up under the "I will wake up early and do yoga" goal. Especially with four-ish hours of sleep last night. But tonight, after a nice little WomenTalkWomen discussion night, I was thinking about how important it has been for me to write my love letters to the abyssful/wonder-packed universe and so I knew I'd have to revel in that self-conflict çe soir.

Also, I can't sleep again.

Maybe it's because I just spent four months in a bored malaise of trying to finish this never ending documentary. The only mental stimulation I've been able to muster is the occasional stumper of a Sherlock Holmes mystery. Well, Chekhov's The Black Monk was really good, too.
I don't normally fall into bored stupors. And now it's back to school, or l'école as some would say. It's a joy. Let me tell you:
















Dear Film History,

My heart flutters at thy call.

Love,
Marge

All this talk about what affects film and how film affects the world. La, la, la, lovely. All I could think about for the rest of the day was Val Lewton. Typically, or maybe I should say generically, a series of films are classed by who directed the films, there are only two obvious exceptions that come to my mind, though I'm not the expert. (In fact, you should probably have stopped reading a long time ago to avoid my erroneous information.) One you certainly know: Episodes 4-6 of Star Wars were produced by George Lucas (NOT directed by GL which changed with Episodes 1-3 and you can judge for yourself the result of that. I personally choose to ignore they exist. And at the same time I feel guilty so diatribing the films because more and more I feel connected to those people who worked so very hard...) (all six were written by George Lucas and some others). My personal favorites, though, are the films Val Lewton produced: Cat People, The Curse of the Cat People, The Seventh Victim, I walked with a Zombie and lots a bit more. I'll tell you all about dear Val the next time we're in conversation.
And if you like silent films, we watched a great one today, at least I found it fantastic, but maybe that's because I'm at an impressionable age (mine never ends). Il s'appelle : The Crowd (1928).

a sleepless assassination of character

It's rare now (as opposed to times in the past when it wasn't so rare) for me to have a plague of insomnia. Maybe 1:31 a.m. shouldn't be concidered abnormal for a 22 year old college child, but can I submit to the jury that I have had mono twice? I'd hate to revisit it a thrice. Bleh.

The purpose of our conglomerating this evening is to discuss a million and one things. Or two. I first would like to complain about my further brain decay. I am losing all spelling ability. It is not for any lack of writing, nor am I any longer studying french, nor do I anymore have to spray extremely strong spider killing sprays (as I have moved into a new and lovely home). But the fact of the mater remains that I started off by spelling first "furst" and am consistently forgetting the letter "i" when it follows a "t" in any word that I write. It might be bad karma from complaining so much about the vocabulary of my phone. It is a particularly handy phone, I should just be thankful.

Next I would like to apologize because I swore after my Music Civ class today that I would make my next blog post less pretentious. I got bored as the letter H after listening to high-fallutin' honors students analyzing three paintings of the Virgin Mary and subsequently some music samples. I can't leave off, though, because I seem to believe that words should be played with and utilized not dragged about to explicate soddy...stuff. Even though I will be highly trained in analyzations of every sort of literature, piece of art, work of film, play, etc etc by the time I graduate from this university, it still sometimes makes me gag and I steadily hold firm to what I just read in my documentary class reading tonight: "The late philosopher Hannah Arendt wrote that story telling reveals meaning without committing the error of defining it.*" Therefore we must conclude that my studies are erroneous.

Thirdly, you should all invest in purchasing me some sleeping pills so that you never have to read such dribble again.

Fourthly, I am rather excited that I am listening to a live recording of a Chopin Sonata on Pandora and I know this because I heard someone cough. They just coughed again. I think that person is one of my favorite people in the whole world. Because you know what their tickly throat does? It enlarges the mind, it paints a picture that leads to a world. Not just the world of the cougher, but the world of the stage and whoever is on the stage playing the piano and whoever it was that adjusted the piano before the preformer walked out and how many people must delight in the touch and feel of that piano and where they must be and and whether there's an ambiance and what happened to give that person a cold so that they keep coughing. Those are things I like thinking about. I also like dreaming about the Yamaha piano that was in our recital hall back at home. And that one blessed day of the every other yearly Chamber Music Festival where I played a dissonant saltarello with the violinist and the cellist and how those entire eleven years were worth it, if for nothing else but for that day, those three minutes.

My eleven years of piano lessons were great for more that just that, though. I remember sitting through recitals watching my dad tap his fingers on his knee to the melody of whatever song was playing. It was also great to be driven down to Saturday morning theory sessions and rehearsals in our 1980 something Plymouth Reliant to be instructed on correct stage presence. I still feel like the world is going to implode everytime someone holds down the damper pedal after they set their hands in their lap at the end of a song.

I should end sometime soon before I write the next great American novel in one blog post.

*Karen Everett, Squeezing Reality into Three Acts: What Documentary Storytellers can learn from screen writers. Release Print magazine March/April 2006

take one more left to get to the lost city

Watch out if you ever borrow a coat from James Dean because I've heard that mortal chaos ensues. Not the chaos I heard Brian Greene, the foremost string theorist, speak of a couple of years ago; his "chaos preceeds creation." It's the chaos of a kitchen shared with roommates. Chaos that kills creativity. But then again Don McLean did write that song about devil's friends, marching bands, and books of love*. So, I guess maybe you could borrow the coat from James Dean, but on your way out could you encourage all people everywhere to do their own dishes? Or maybe at least wipe down the counters every once in a while if not immediately after they spill a little of this or that.

Sometimes it's as if Medea and Zeus and Orpheus really lived. Sometimes I walk down the street and think, "There! If I squint my eyes just enough, I can see all the way to Greece and overhead I can see the giant cumulous cloud where Zeus and Hera lived. I know it's the right cloud because it looks strong enough to hold doric columns. There must have been a time when gods threw lightning bolts and shot people with love sticking arrows.

I also know that if I drove out to California I'd find the BuyMore where Chuck works and that Johnny Cash really did ride a Tennessee stud. And there most definitely was a Harold and a Maude. Think they'd be my friend?

Do you have certain levels of belief? I've got the topmost rung with God, Christ and my family. And my closest of closest lovely friends. Then there's the rung with...hmmm...ladders don't work. Anyway next comes all the people I have met, then somewhere after that conglomerately come the Saints (all kinds) (All Saints...ha, get it?) and pioneers and Hamm and Nagg from Becket and music being magic**. Anything I can imagine really. I'll believe it when I feel like it and let it slip out of my fingers when it doesn't serve a purpose. It's just gotta bear good fruit. I like fruit a lot. Kiwis are my new kick. When I was a kid sitting in the school cafeteria with the plastic lunch trays and thirty children to a table, we would eat the brown fuzzy skins.

I'm done with this today. Some day I wish I could draw a word picture for you of Zeus's cloud appearning over small town shop windows.

*American Pie by Don McLean
**Lovin' Spoonful's Do You Believe in Magic (my answer: yes)

a great day for soft worn jeans bleached by sun

[smile]
You know those times in your life when you feel particularly blessed if you have a jingle of a few changes in your pocket. You know, a quarter seems like ten bucks? Those Days? But you've got a lot going for you, you're convinced of that and things just seem like summer and sunshine and miraculously pulling-through-ish? Maybe I'll tell you more about these days some time. But for now, just know:
I am listening to the music samples for my documentary. This is going to be the greatest thing ever.
[smile]

powerade is refreshing, too

Some people are of the firm belief that Sherlock Holmes is still alive because the Times of London has never printed an obituary for him (As reported by the book we gave to my sister for her birthday which I immediately borrowed) (I have the best sister ever).

I've been going through the people that I know and wondering who's character I should profile. I've got lists of them and then I think of Charles Dickens and wonder how to appropriately go about my descriptions. I'm lost so I'll just list today.

LIST OF TWO AGREEABLE PEOPLE IN MY LIFE

My roommate who reminds us all to be flexible because we never know when ten people are going to show up to make dinner with her in our kitchen. Or when we decide to delay our plans so we don't leave her alone with a homeless person whom she's invited over for dinner.

The awkward boy at my church who is ever adding interesting moments to my life. I remember my first conversation with him I didn't want to talk to him. Then he stood up in Sunday School and asked if anyone had any little tea lights. I told him I had five dozen and I'd bring over some that afternoon. He wanted them for a science experiment. I made him explain it to me once but I didn't really get it. One Sunday after church he met me in the hall and said, "I wanted to talk to you but I don't have anything to talk about." So I asked him about his life.
I've noticed he's always very concerned about whether or not a girl is happy with her new haircut. He always asks to make sure they're happy with it and they haven't had any of the drastic haircut trauma he's heard about. He's taken an interesting interest in my H.C. In the beginning he met me in the hall after church and said, "I liked your hair better long." Yesterday after church I was talking to a friend and he came over to tell me I should really grow my hair out.
"Oh," I said.
"Well, I guess you'll do whatever you want, I just really liked your hair longer."
"Okay, well, we'll see what happens."
I enjoy people telling me absurdly socially inappropriate things like that. It's refreshing. But it must be authentic and sincere! So don't go starting up cheap imitations!

Yesterday my cousin's sons, mis monstruos, kept sticking their popsicles under my nose to show them to me. Monstruo Uno would like you all to know that if he sticks his rootbear popsicle on Dos's yellow popsicle it tastes like pineapple.

P.S. I enjoy you.

the moral influence of television

(or "Why I need the Media and Old Men")

I was watching an episode of Northern Exposure last night, minus the mild disturbance when I noticed a spider crawling on the ceiling above my bed and when I might have reacted by climbing onto my night stand and lecturing the spider about manners while my roommate thankfully saved us all by smooshing it, the point is, that I was reminded a little of the point of my writing. I've always dreamed of being not just a construction worker but also a chronicaller of persons like E. B. White and Bradbury in Dandelion Wine. I'm not them. But that's the point and it seems that my interest in life as I live it as opposed to my interest in the life in mystery books like the Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes directly correlates to how much I write.
Therefore, I commence writing more full-forcedly this time not to prove that I'm not boring, but to prove that I am not bored.
Which I've tended to be lately.
(Minus all that time spent with my family. and Friends.)

And so, I will tell you now of how I am working with a bear. My documentary boss is a bear and I fought him yesterday. Appropriately it was at our meeting in The Cave.

Bear: (as he reclines in the plastic spiderweb of an office chair) In this opening sequence I think it would be a good idea if we showed a little bit of D and then a little bit of, you know, Ted you can place this little animated car...

And he continued on full lordly.

Marge: I'd like to push back now.

Bear: (surprised) (Is our director who seems to have trouble directing and continues to grow more and more disinterested in this project really going to push for something?) Well, Okay.

Ted, tall and lanky with Dandelion fluff hair and patient face, turns from storyboarding at the white board and sits down on a corner of the table. Bea and Bear turn their spiderweb chairs to face me. I'm certain about this one, because you can't ask me to make a documentary and take away what I make documentaries for.

Me: I think we should just stay with D for that quiet moment, I want us to become connected to D and not the animation, we've got to attach to her. She's important.

Bear: Well, I'm not saying we shouldn't focus on her there, I'm just saying she needs all the help she can get.

Me: I disagree. She doesn't need help. She's the character in our documentary and I don't think she needs that much help that we can't spend 20 seconds with her.

The Film Professor, from whom I've taken five classes and continues to taunt me with thinking I will be hired by him to do something but is such a foggy person, came down to join us in the cave and watched the rest of our meeting. It was a hum drum rest of a regular Post of a Desperate Production meeting.

In the end Bear started saying we could go along with my theory and WHEN (because he's a curmudgeon and a bear) we decide that D needs help-- "You mean IF," says The Film Professor. He'd been fairly quiet up til then keeping his ironic comments to himself.

Bear paused and rolled his eyes, "Yeah, sure, IF it doesn't work we can put in Ted's animation that won't set us back anything."
I told you he's a curmudgeon. I know the secret, though, he wants someone to fight for what they want. So I'll fight.

Well, there's the first exercise in chronicalling. I think I should get better, so if you want to read something worthwhile in twenty years, stick around, please. I need you.

Love,
Marge

formality, my dear Watson

I'm still writing out animation scripts. I'm banned for saying five syllable types of things like "orchestrate instructional interactive conversations" and "developmentally appropriate" in fact my boss told me yesterday to go home and put on jeans, flip flops, and a t-shirt. I told him I don't wear flip flops. He told me my boots were to formal.

So my question is, how do I say, they bring literacy down to the level of a five year old, without sounding pejorative?


I've been reading Sherlock Holmes. The annotated version. We gave it to my sister for her birthday (two months in advance and wrapped in a plastic sack with a twist-tie bow). I immediately sequestered the fist volume.
I'm so wrapped up I'd name my first born Sherlock.
When my parents were first married my mother would read Sherlock Holmes before bed. One night when she said their connubial prayer, she prayed he would find the murderer.
I can understand that now. These annotations are trippy. I began to notice in the second or third story all of the annotations started with the belief that Holmes was a real person. I had to call my sister to reassure me that he was never a man of flesh and bones.

I'm certain I only sound this stuffy and five syllabled when I write. Please forgive me, I am most certainly pretentious, but I wouldn't like to be.

nine*

My life is a leitmotif.

LEITMOTIF: 1. In music or drama, a marked melodic phrase or short passage which always accompanies the reoccurance of a certain person, situation, abstract idea, or allusion in the course of a play; a sort of dominant label.

source: dictionary dot com.

stay tuned for original artwork.

probably drawings of dead horses.

slash emaciated horses.

and end scene.

Love,

Marge

*pronounced NIEN!

Funch

Interestingly enough*, Dear C and I were lunching today (because nobody spends their afternoons playing cops and robbers anymore. We all job and work and school in our afternoons. Lunch. We all do lunch. Fun lunch, aka: Funch) and we talked about how even we feminists (we're both strong and devotedly feminist and maninist) who are wildly amazing and independent and accomplished find ourselves quickly falling into being the adoring significant other. Not that adoring isn't bad, but it is when you slip out of being you and having your life and there's something precious that you compromise and you lose.

What is it that I lose? What's that word for what it is? I'm not talking about virginity or something physical like that. There's no wall of Jericho that comes tumbling down, there's no boundary that is crossed, no rules that are broken, it's an essence that slips through my fingers and leaves that gross feeling afterwards.

It is somehow related to the times when I'm interested in someone and my mind gets fogged up so that when he calls me and asks me to spend the evening with him I say yes and forget that I have friends and deadlines and to do lists and personal wishes.

I feel silly even trying to write about it because...I've found no words. Is there scientific proof that says we don't always think in words? Because I find always find myself struggling as I delve at cliffs of thoughts or maybe it's not like digging granite out of a quarry but more like clay. Sly smooth cool clay.

Oh dear, I'm still talking. Typing, I mean. And does the meaning come out? Hmmm...

Also, it turns out that I'm not the only one struggling from terrible dreams. I was watching my cousin's five year old, Dear Monstruo Uno, and the neighbor boy we were playing with noticed my earrings one day.

"Are those spiderwebs on your ears?"

"No, they're dream catchers."

"What are those?"

The conversation stuck with Monstruo Uno who asked my cousin for one to keep his nightmares away. She tried to explain...well, anyway, if you've been to a family dinner you can imagine how something so simple ended up involving P Diddy and God and cultural insensitivity and distinguishing the differences between Spanish cuisine and Mexican cuisine. So no dream catcher. And I don't have one either, really (a dream catcher).

I started thinking about the discussions I've had with people about my dreams. What I really wish could happen is that what Friend R--I sound communist, let's just call him Comrade R. Comrade R suggested imagining a beautiful mythical bird. Actually it was more simple when he was describing it and more beautiful. I should have written it down. But it was that tactic that people always suggest, put something into your dream, something good, to save you from the nightmarish parts. It's never worked form me in fact they turn out worse because then something good is ruined. But all the same, I'd like to explain this magical little trick to my dear Monstruo Uno because maybe it will work for him. And maybe if I imagine it will work for him it will work for me.

*I decided in trying to write a reply to a seven page letter from someone in Denmark that it is sometimes better to start as if you're in the middle of the conversation.

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 there 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" to remind me why I would wear a helmet. 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 seven page 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.

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.