Yesterday I cut my finger.

Tonight I drew a face and mustache over the split skin.

What will tomorrow bring?

I make soup one-handed

...thanks to our cheap can-opener.
Speaking of which, you get a tetnis shot every 7 years right? Hmm...

Today I was finishing up a paper on a campus study room that looks out on a courtyard. The door to the outside opened up letting cool wind in. I looked up, no one was there. It was an afternoon of all the doors opening and closing as the wind went in and out. On a normal day this would have just been interesting, lovely. Today it was something more. If you had seen the movie I had seen today you would have wondered just as much as I did. Wild, Australian, Botticelli angel disappearing in the wilderness leaving behind swans and suicidal, amnesia-ed people.

When I was younger I had a terrified fascination with mysterious disappearances. Staying up late one night doing research for my 9th grade english class I read about people who were presumed to have disappeared into different dimensions. A portal can open up anywhere at anytime. I lay in bed that night imagining that by rolling over I could be catapulted into a different world or maybe by NOT rolling over...

PS. sometimes silly prayers get answered.

if a haiku were a paragraph

Sometimes you pray for silly things.

In other news, there's very little that compares to toast with pb and agave nectar.

Good night.

march comes in like a hermit, out like a human

These long days of March are getting wearying. I keep trying to tote about healthy food since I wake up and go and don't come home til long past time for a bedtime snack. But that's not enough. I thoroughly enjoy the mental engagement of classes, but I keep dreaming of a life where I wake up and eat breakfast sitting down at home. Eat lunch, not snacks, sitting down somewhere. And eat dinner. I've forgotten what dinner is like. Maybe in a month when I've rediscovered this third meal of the day I can have a small dinner partay. 
I've got a taste in my mouth for spring and summer evenings enjoying our back patio.

I think you should listen to this and be captured by the beautiful voice of Bonnie Beecher. She's rumored to be Bob Dylan's girl from the north country. I wouldn't doubt it, she's almost as comforting as my mom singing lullabies. I'm also going through another Vashti Bunyan phase.

This week the final Hot Chocolate Club event of the season was held. Sometimes for some reason I forget what it's like to mingle among people. Conversations that fill you up. Talk about everything from the art history of crazy quilts to Jerusalem travels to styrofoam cups. And fascinating hypothetical situations: If you were an electrical engineer and you were being tortured by terrorists, would you understand what was going on more? Like when they electrocuted you? 
That's a thought to ponder anyway.

My March freeze is thawing.

there wasn't ever anything else in this world for me but this

Today as we sat on our back row in Film History class (the class where I get to draw evil bunnies on my tests) the lights dimmed and we watched Jaws. Imagine my joy at finally seeing this 1975 landmark film.

At one point a newscaster stands on the beach of Amity and says, "but a dark cloud has come over this island. A cloud in the shape of a killer shark." 


End this as a night where a classmate and I lay on the floor of an aisle in the uni. library reading about sci-fi movie scores.

Sometimes I bask in the light from the projection booth and think of how magical cinema is. Oh what great art we have! We work and it's uncomfortable and long and ambitious and tedious and it's magic. We've captured something, told a story. Images of life and imagination and dream. Soundscapes create worlds outside the camera frame. Cinema is alive, it's interactive.

The moving image!
Watching the world through a viewfinder!
Exploring everything for the rest of my life!
Reaching people through storytelling!
Giving voice to the voiceless!
Expressing the importance of our quotidian!


I am in love.

nights of the oblong table

Family.


Sometimes otherwise meaningful endeavors lose their importance when compared with the possibility of tucking into dinner with your family. Better table companions there never were.

someone broke the king

Today the hemaglobish machine ate my plasma. It would have been fine except The Fantastic Mr. Fox is such a short book. While it hurts to have a fat needle sucking the lifeblood out of your veins, the most painful part turned out to be when they put Aladdin on the TV. Robin Williams is a spaz and Jasmine is a horrifying damsel in distress. GAG! Unfortunately you are not allowed to sleep while donating plasma, it is hard to distinguish between sleep and passed out blood drained humans. I could not close my eyes to escape.

I doubt it matters how one were to decorate a plasma donation center. They're never going to stop being seedy and filled with an odd mixture of people.

So tonight I lay on my front lawn, cuddled in blankets. I dizzily stared at the cold blue sky bottomed with tree vein branches. What a good sight for that weak delirious feeling.

bless my beautiful hide

Well. Today, Mr. Leprechaun, I wanted to pull up roots, find a little idyllic spot on the outskirts of town near that sunny golden field over by the river and take up subsistence farming. I was missing all the loverly spring day because of donut glazed windows. Oh just curl me up and put me in the back of your wagon, please? We'll get out of Dodge and get splinters from our wooden plow and I'll break my back under the unromantic weight of trying to grow crops. Don't worry, we'd get by.

I suggested this idea to coworker J today and she said, "I like to eat meat, Marge."
"So go hunting. I'll clean the meat for you."
"Would you eat it?"
"Probably not, but I would clean it. I like dissecting and cleaning things... That's not disturbing."

There would be no more frosting. Ever.

shinji

I watched Barefoot Gen tonight at International Cinema.
So good. And I cried. And I cried. (Though the ending is hopeful.)

This subject gets me everytime.

The older I get the less I understand war. 
HOW IS WAR STILL WAGED?!?!?!
We're not stupid, we know there are people with families and lives and loves and joys and still we kill. I'm not talking about people who sign up for the army, I'm talking about leaders who send people off to war. What is ever accomplished?
WHY?



Barefoot Gen (1983)
Director: Mori Masaki
Writer: Keiji Nakazawa
Japanese title: Hadashi no Gen

citizen jane

KUER's Radio West had a good fact-checking show on the Health Care debate today. No matter how you feel, I'd recommend it. Here's the link. They had a guest from PolitiFact checking all our facts.

Speaking of government, I think I have graduated from the 1040EZ. This is all happening much too soon. I might have just spent five minutes concentrating on deep, steady breathing to allay panic.


Some things about growing up are unexpected.

socks and badgers*

Sometimes feminism is my knee-jerk reaction. Someone proclaims something as feminine, womanhood, womanly, girly, the role of women, female, gendered, masculine and I raise skeptic eyebrows and say, "Oh yeah?" But othertimes, one just can't help but want to poke one's eyes out over the subjugation of women during [and not exclusively to] the Middle Ages. Le Moyen Age, if you will. (I read Hroswitha for a class last semester and have been incensed ever since.)


Yesterday during the hours of muffin tin washings, plastered in glazed donut suds, staring at the blandly beige wall I contemplated the "place" of women in that bygone era and could not figure out why there wasn't mass rebellion. It wasn't just that I was treated as a person who had the wide world open to them regardless of gender/sex, I was born revolting against stereotypes. I refused to touch the color pink as a child. I mean really, really refused. If I had to wait ten minutes at craft time to use a pair of scissors that weren't pink, I would wait.


The thought train moved on to deciding I couldn't have been the only one born balking at social confines, especially gendered ones. --> We can't have been the only century to have balking babies born --> The "Dark" Ages must have had balks --> HOW DID THE STUPIDITY CONTINUE?!?


It took me a remarkably long time to remember that without education rebellion remains unorganized, rude, and accomplishes little but chips on shoulders attitudes.


Went home and listened to Aretha Franklin sing R-E-S-P-E-C-T. Have you ever listened closely enough to realize that it was originally written by Otis Redding but was made popular by Aretha in 1967 and that it was a LANDMARK kind of song for a woman to be singing? You go listen to it.


Felt much better after that.




P.S. Happy birthday Em-jon.
*Badger is a reference to what Rebecca Louise wrote today.

the powerful princess

The other day at the bakery Cindy Lauper's Time After Time played on the radio. It took me back to being nine years old, laying in bed late-night-wakefulness. My little white digital alarm clock/radio would play always. All night radio listenings, book readings. So much craddling in music from decades past. White ceiling with shadows that fade away as eyes become used to the dark, bare window full of night sky.

Today at the bakery I had one of those times when my paranoia over junk food turned to physiological feelings of I'm-going-to-throw-up. We all know I've made a great deal of progress in my life but sometimes I haven't gotten there. 
I ate a red pear I had brought from home and felt better.
It seems obvious but sometimes the quiet wisdom of intellect is squashed in squalling weather of weakness. In other words, maybe I should have known this already, but eating lovely healthy food quiets the storms.

Then I started contemplating feminism and the middle ages. That was another thing completely.

desert man.ifestation.

This is a pretty beautiful story.
*note: this is a rare manifestation of my romantic side*

New York Times: Modern Love: Sings, Wonders, and Fates Fulfilled

je vous remercie

You see, I'm going to Paraguay with my friend Jenica for two weeks to film a documentary.

We got a grant.

We'll be making a short piece about Sonidos de la Tierra a program started by Luis Szarán. You can watch a PBS Frontline piece about it here.

I am so grateful and so excited.

This is a really worthwhile project. What a pleasing prospect.

oooooooowell

Sometimes I want a treat and then think, "%^&! I bought healthy peanut butter."
Lately I've been better at embracing it though.
And lately I've been praying that I get good enough tips on Wednesday so I can buy some chocolate soy milk. I will be winking, complimenting, and smiling (coyly) in the hopes I can snag enough change for some sweet sweetness.
Lately I've felt pretty clever because I've remembered to save my soy milk cartons and regular milk gallons to use for mini gardens.
Lately I've had a mildly healthy bicycle back again. And felt a lot of joy over that.

And more of lately:
I am drawing a picture every night as part of my bedtime routine.
I am scrambling to bring together a documentary screening this Friday night.

And best of all:
I am stomping out stress.

across the wide and lonesome prairie*

This photo is stunning.

Led Zeppelin is playing on a pandora station. Sometimes I forget how they hit the spot.

I have a rather significant collection of "Dear America" books I amassed in elementary school. I loved reading every journal entry, even the banalities of "Monday, January 4. Today was wash day."
Journaling/documenting has been my one true love since birth. Journaling I'm not always good at but I'm certain it's one of the most amazing things to hit this planet. And it's a love that keeps growing. It's why I'm studying film, it's why I study, it's why I converse, it's why I breathe.
What an utmost expression of honor for life. For an individual life and for the world at large made up of all our lives.
When I read the pages of someone's recordings I feel woven into something deep, profound, and heart-reaching. There is sincerity, pure heart, pure ideas. Free. Freely. I feel added upon, I am lifted up, I am humbled.

Enough of my literary flowerings.

Today I shared lunch with chums M and E, enjoyed the sunshine while traveling my errands on bicycle (BICYCLE IS FIXED!!!!!), and dear-friendsy-catched-upped with roommate E. An afternoon well spent with friends and lots of sunshine streaming in through windows. What more could one ask for than:

good food
friends
sun
bicycle

I am content.


*title of a Dear America book and a line that makes me ache for home and childhood of reading in bed until 1 or 2 a.m.......

method actor sea shells

There might be a point in this video where you feel like you're about to be eaten by a giant, spongy, shell-faced alien.

Sea of Glass from Sean Vicary on Vimeo.

I feel like the shells are asking me to come dance with them.

because of the lighter that stuck to my purse

I wish we had piazzas instead of facebook.

Add them to the list of things which have held me in magical fascination since childhood.

List of childhood fascinations:
redwoods
dinosaurs
Fantasia
books
magnets
digging around in the dirt
fresh homemade bread
pesto
worms
Smith Family Robinson
Cinderella
drums
face painting
Aunts Ione and Milly
being oustide
geodes
barometers
dress-ups
piazzas

yoga at the bakery

for the millionth time.

Wednesdays are fresh bread day. I pull apart the loaves and run them through the slicer. I love. They look, smell, and feel like life rejuvenated. Bread, to me, is the purpose of a bakery. Maybe even the purpose of life.
I remember being seven. Best friend and I. Mom pulls fresh homemade, dense, whole wheat bread out of the oven. Feeling so happy, we eat our thick slices slathered in butter in the fall cool sitting on the back stoop.
Tonight, we had everything in the bakery done by four and I'd grown tired of reading about the properties of flour so I started doing yoga again. Can you imagine it? Look! There's me, amidst the perpetual flour dustings and smell of glazed donut, in tree pose.

My balance is improving.

enoch is clos ed

I flavor my oatmeal this morning (that I bought last night at 11pm when I realized I had nothing much left in the pantry besides my never ending supply of grapefruit and some spices) with agave syrup that Sister Mine bought me. Sister Mine is in a family kind of way and we're all bursting at the seams with excitement. This last weekend we took a trip together, just the two of us, and it was very good to be sisters, just the two of us, again. I'm realizing now that this is about to change forever like it did when she got married. Sometimes I react terribly to change but her first forever thing was a pretty good idea and I can't wait to have a little baby niece/nephew to cuddle up in my arms. So these are joyful changes. But I do hope we can have at least one more sister-just-the-two-of-us trip before the baby makes everyone three.