every holiday is a pagan day or is more complicated if you start analyzing the esoteric ideals put forth with zeal

I'm having a hard time keeping up on anything lately and it's not even that my life is hard, it's more that I'm just like every other twenty something college grad in the midst of being lost in thought all the time as you start actualizing your future outside of school for the first time in your life.

I would like to just call myself lost in thought.

Although I had the strangest tarot card reading from the below mentioned Jbottoms, that included a lot of upside down cards (bad bad bad) and that I've been deceiving myself in the past, someone is tricking me now, I view myself as a man, and everybody else views me as androgynous. But the universe supports me no matter what I do.

My nine knives card specifically referenced my health which I keep debating about how much I wish to share here. I've been internally debating over this blog for a few months now. It somehow seems more silly to publish my life and thoughts on the internet than it has in the past, particularly since I'm never sure of who reads this and if it ever makes any sense to anyone. Though it goes deeper still: I seem to have taken a couple of steps backwards this year (or a few steps deeper which seems backwards?) which I'm only beginning to realize and don't know how to work through. And these steps cause me to hold my tongue.

On the other hand, I'm now verging on excited to take these new plunges in career and location changes. Merry Christmas and a Happy Halloween.



P.S. You know that game where one person starts singing something and you have to try to match what they're singing even though they're spontaneously making it up, like in that SNL skit? Well, it's really fun to play with my baby nephew.

bottoms up

This lady is so great, like a yarn pet. Happy Birthday JG.

our hair in opposite land

manifesto: just have a real conversation

or (here's a family joke) being in love means never having to say you're sorry [I'm a little sick].

Tomorrow morning they will stick an I.V. in my arm, I will fall asleep, and they will send a camera down into my stomach to determine why the various pills we've been trying for the last year are not stopping my acid reflux, or GERD (herdy gerdy).*


My only fear: they still won't know what's going on.


This is why I was awake all Tuesday night. I left out the parts about vomit and my 1:00 a.m. trip to the grocery store for the hope of OTC acid relief. Yesterday I started a new diet of saltine crackers and water. Today I'm getting crazy with graham crackers and rice. No soy sauce. Maybe I bought some chocolate soy milk because I'm going C.R.A.Z.Y. from blandness and I should be off the dairy for the time being. I should also be off the chocolate but vanilla soy milk is still kind of bland. (And now that I'm thinking about it, if there were strawberry soy milk it would be rather puke-worthy.) The Surgical Solutions Nurse told me I have to fast from midnight on, I don't even get water. I thought, big deal, I'm not even sure my stomach likes water anymore.


I don't like when I can't solve things; can't find their cause and effect. Body, if I knew, if you'd just tell me, I'd change everything, you'd be the luckiest body and stomach in the world.


Just use your words, dangit.


They made me fill out this medical privacy form, listing people who I'd allow to call in to ask questions and check on things blah blah blah. I thought, there should be more lines so I could list more people (there were three lines). Case in point....Whatever, I just thought you should all know why I've been cancelling on you/not making any plans lately.


And you don't get to make any comments because if you baby me I'll punch you in the face. I'm letting my sister take care of me, it's a good thing to learn: to ask for help and let someone take care of you. But I am not in favor of your condolences. I should get a shirt: "No condolences." I mean, I like you, and I like that you care for me, but just have a real conversation. My acid boiled stomach is not the end of the world. At least, not until May 21st.



à bientôt.
*That's it! From now on you can refer to my herdy gerdy.......

I've been watching too many english folks on telly tonight.

It's six, the day dawn is breaking, and I'm awake as I have been for the whole night for a stupid reason but then again, when isn't insomnia, the total body rebellion, absolutely stupid. Maybe in a moment I will make myself a cup of tea and sit on the front porch listening to the birds chirp, the ones who have been chirping since halfway through An Education (2009), the movie that came after a few episodes of Angel (which from what I have seen is mostly boring except for the fifth season which is where Spike enters in, if you know any of the Buffy/Angel characters. Since when did I become like this?), and hours of wakefulness in bed.

Oh there we go again, running at the mouth.

There may be a point in all that I'm trying to say but I'm not sure what it is yet and it could entirely just be due to my lack of sleep.

Do you know I hate when people mess up their adjectives and adverbs? I'm always worried for the poor adverb, is it dying? Not that I'm the best at grammar.

I've got to stop. Tea and birds here I come.

i just watched the last episode of Buffy

Again, one more time and louder: I JUST WATCHED THE LAST EPISODE OF BUFFY!!!

All seven seasons, all watched. 

And I've loved it. 

Perhaps to a ridiculous extent because this winter there's been periods of me heavily consuming Buffy the Vampire Slayer episodes. What can I say, there's just really nothing like a show about a teenage girl who can beat evil creeps to a pulp.

Particularly when you're stuck with doubts you've never had before.

I've always been dreaming of my career, I never realized that some other girls really grew up thinking only of how they want to be moms–not to hate on that, I respect a lot of women who have had that as their guiding desire. I don't want to not be a mom, I just figured that's something that happens in its time after I fall in love. You live your life and it just happens. I've never been able to grasp how a career can't be impossible with a healthy, homey family life. Shouldn't my family be lucky that I can involve them in my passions and projects? I'm entirely certain I've been making the right decisions, so why have I never been like some other devout Mormon girls with eyes set on the stay-at-home-motherhood prize?

How did this weasel its way into being my self doubt this winter? I'm graduated and I'm not surprised or worried–I'm not even sad that I'm not married? And I'm looking forward to my career? Isn't that supposed to be a dirty six-letter word?

I never thought I would ask myself these questions, they were silly.

And this is how the violence of Buffy became even more inspiring to me and I began my career of stabbing vampires and striking fear into the heart of every demon of every dimension of hell. And they all lived happily ever after.

mountains beyond mountains

This is a group I'll hang onto for always.


Salt Lake Flatty from Irek Reyd on Vimeo.


Thanks for documenting Irek.

keepin' it real

For a while I thought it was significant that I was going to turn 24 (as I will do at the end of this month). It seems an age, it seems like a significant number–23 is the end of the set of early young person development, 24 is the beginning of adult numbers because after that comes 25, 26, 27....eventually you get to 30! People my age do things.

Then I remember I'm a baby. For example: Last night we were eating dinner at my house (these last couple of days have been extra lovely because we're all in town and reunionizing), and the others began wondering how it became so hard to find new friends (the last year has been a slow and great diaspora), we've done it once, can't we do it again? The general consensus was that it's harder as you get older. I'm a firm believer that we're not old so I peeked out of the pantry to say, "You guys! We're in our twenties you can't act that way!"

"Marge," says Alicia, "everyone here is in their late twenties except for you."

Oh.

Right.

I'm beginning to be convinced that I will almost always feel young.

eventually i need to make a list for today.

Things I plan on doing when I move back to North Dakota for a bit:

Raiding my dad's vinyl collection (as I do every time I go home) and most particularly playing this album a few times as loud as I please:

making a kokedama string garden

Getting my documentarian on/conquering the world.



Now for today's conquering.

every ke$ha song is a cry for help and so seems every blog post

For someone who has been spilling her guts on this internet here for nigh on four years, I am strangely and largely hesitant to stand at a pulpit and share my religious philosophies. The LDS Church is predominantly (like 99.99%) run by lay ministry and our sacrament meetings are filled with talks given by members of the congregation. Which is really wonderful in lots of ways except when it's me and it's no longer about getting so nervous I want to puke, or a fear of public speaking (I'll talk the world's ears off about film, no problem). No, it is my spirit that is deeply personal–an intimate part of myself and I rarely feel to be brazen about it. I struggle with the feeling that public affirmations of my testimony are insincere.

So today I'm standing at a pulpit in front of a bunch of people I barely know (because I do truly hate LARGE GROUPS OF PEOPLE) because for various reasons friends and family won't be there. Just Grace, who will stand as the lone representative of my entourage. Well, Grace is pretty great so...I just hope I can be sincere.

Maybe I sing a little The Byrds Turn, Turn, Turn to myself and feel a little the better.

 Update: I love Alicia. She's so great, made my day. And I love you kids that texted me.

sam cooke drives me up the wall

cloud day

swimvation continued

Because this is what I'm like:

Friday night some friends are over so I pull out the quilt I've been piecing together for months (you know, the one where if people ask me "Are you making a quilt?" I say, " Uhhhh.....yeah.....kind of...." because I feel embarrassed?). It's mostly pieced together and looking at this Alicia (I think it was you) says, "You've done a lot, are you proud of yourself when you see this?" And I, who had just been feeling overwhelmed thinking of all that's left to do and can't seem to narrow my focus to these last few stitches that are needed to perfect one section, I say, "Sometimes I can't feel that."

And we hear as film students all the time (mostly from people who are NOT in the filmmaking trade themselves) that obviously we're not all going to be that filmmaker we admire, there's a lot of us, we can't all be that filmmaker who gets screened in theatres, even limited-run art house cinema kinds of theatres. And as I'm an average human I think, Oh, I can't be, I shouldn't even try to make a feature length documentary. 

But at least for the moment at this point I can remember Werner Herzog's funny voice I heard on NPR this morning saying, "You have no excuse not to make a feature film. People can make a feature film these days for $10,000." Which is really, extraordinarily cheap if you weren't aware. (DON'T WORRY MOM, I'm not planning on anything like that.) And Werner sometimes eats his shoe if someone (Errol Morris) makes their first feature length.

Maybe you can see, though, why I'm doing this to myself if you understand that I LOVE FILM. I can't help myself, I don't want to watch movies all the time, but if you want to see me get excited, ask me a nerdy film question and if I don't know the answer I'll spend hours trying to figure it out. Poke my eyes out and make me blind: I still love film, I'll just listen to it. The beauty of the innovation and history and effect and humanity of it all makes me cry. Poke my eyes and cut out my ear drums and I'll learn braille to read about it and find some way to tell you about it.


This is what I uncontrollably want.

swim for all salvation*

AHEM: I'm-going-to-officially-no-holds-barred-take-the-plunge-into-following-my-intuition-passion-and-dreams-and-become-a-starving-artist.

Oh, how is that any different than what I'm already doing?

I'm going to consciously embrace it and not shy away anymore. No more shooting myself in the foot, this will be more like shooting myself in the head. No. No, bad attitude. That's what can't happen anymore. I've already told you (probably) that I'm going to move home and make a series of short documentaries about North Dakota. I've had this on my mind for months so I figured I should tentatively plan for this and hesitantly tell people, and look in the mirror and ask myself why the H I'm not a dynamic, wildly-employed, talented person, who do I think I am?

If anything ever falls under the category of a stupid question, those might be some of them. And if the questions aren't, whatever answers you come up with will make you feel stupid.

I can do this. (yes?) I'm jumping in, praying the sound equipment I don't need anymore will sell on Amazon, people will buy my postcards on Etsy (more on that later), and maybe this other web project I'm working on will get underway and I'll be able to face all the inner dragons I'll find on my sojourn on the Great Plains and I'll come out with a web site and documentary work that I can be pleased with and some festival audiences that like it too.

And maybe even some distribution please?

I long to dive back into that isolated prairie but I'm afraid of drowning.

Oh, world, please, just love me. Is that too much to ask?


*line from song I like giants by Kimya Dawson.