must stumble less, or stumble differently

I had this meeting on Monday morning to discuss this short documentary I've been commissioned to make and during the meeting and reflecting on it afterwards I felt for the ten thousandth time that I really must do better at clearly expressing myself. Language you are so fun yet such a stumbling block for me.


Since this blog is––in all honesty––my way to practice being a real person, my dear Mrs. Pitcher, you shall have your wish. I will tell you about my life and my thoughts and strive desperately to make sense.


Having an office job is kind of like high school. I must be in a specific room for a large chunk of my day and lunch is at a set time. At least as a secretary I get paid and I can snack all day long. But two things have returned with this high school-like schedule: regular headaches/migraines and my thirst for science fiction/fantasy literature. I was starting to reread The Lord of the Rings (it's been 13 years) but my parents gave me The Hunger Games for my birthday so I've postponed LOTR as I assume Hunger will be a much quicker read.


Another thing has happened: I don't want this kind of steady fulltime work forever. I can't take it. I want haphazard, being my own boss. In other words, I renege, I'll try to make my living as a documentary filmmaker/otherwise strange artsy whatsit. I still plan on grad school in the near future––does it make sense to get an MLIS and then a PhD in film history? Whatever, if I get to doctorate level nothing will make sense and I'll dream wistfully of the carefree days like today when I was presented with five boxes of paper to shred. (But I'm finally getting into 3D drawing in AutoCAD!)


I never expected to run into anything that would make me want to go back to commissioned documentary film work. But there's another strange thing that happened. I filmed a short fiction piece for the theatre program here and while doing so I relaxed. Even during editing, I relaxed, no more of this making myself sick and incurably anxious, frazzled to my last nerve. I let go. I didn't know I could do that at anytime during the filmmaking process. Now, I'm heading back into doc territory with a manageable load of stress.


Oh, and at some point I will let you watch that short fiction piece and you shall see the doc. yes yes, you can see it all, just give me a moment or a month.






How did I do? Did I make sense?

warby parker try-on

I don't know, A or B? 

brass monkey

I was thinking the other night, instead of an engagement ring, wouldn't it be awesome if you got brass knuckles? Maybe for each hand and they spell out "ENGAGED" in rhinestones.

1. Debra Baxter crystal brass knuckles Can you imagine punching someone with this?! Yikes.
2. Apparently you can't wear them on a plane
3. Alexander McQueen knuckle clutch
4. Another Alexander McQueen knuckle clutch––it's really such a clever idea
5. S.W.S. of London

well, I'll just ramble it out quickly

Some amazing things about Seattle are that there aren't just any street musicians, there are a large amount of street musicians playing the banjo. I love the banjo. All that stringy strumminess just makes me so happy.


Also, there's this guy who whistles classical music incredibly well. Every note is distinct and he whistles with feeling and dynamics. And all he does is tap a little tuning fork to his knee to get a pitch and before you know it you're in the middle of a Bach flute concerto. He's someone Jbottom knows so she got him to give us a private mini concert. I was bursting from amazement.


And there's a statue of Lenin in Freemont. Don't worry about it, it's really just there for art's sake.


And there was so much good food. An award winning French bakery where I went totally gourmand, Mexican food, I made mozerella with Rich and ate it on a pizza he and Cousin L made. And they made me clams and pasta––mmmmmm. And there were farmers markets and an old man street musician who played What's Up by the 4 Non Blonds, and parks with statues showing the development from tadpole to frog, and long walks, and large H&M's, and Pikes Place bien sûr, and evenings of being thoroughly confused by BBC's Bleakhouse (2005), and tea parties that are fantastically decorated and I wear a turban, and bon fires on the beach, and a  blessed THREE HOUR NAP (I'll never forget it, seriously. I treasure the memory of really good sleeps, like that time I slept deeply and completely dreamlessly for 12 hours––pure bliss), and quiet times with Jbottoms, and a baby, and Japanese dollar stores where I buy a fake tattoo of a skull and cross bones that says "plunder, trade, egalitarianism." Yeah, that's my new motto.


And I have no pictures for you.


Well, I took some, but I haven't uploaded them yet. They  may mostly be of seagulls because I thought my dad would like to look at them.

show me the child when (s)he is seven and...

Also I love this song I just heard right now. Apparently I haven't changed very much from the little girl who wanted to sing like Celine Dion.

always violence, always

Today I got asked to make a short documentary, still bitty pay but that adds to the last film (fiction!!!?!), house sitting, and now full-time job I have––this has to add up to enough for me to move to Seattle in January, right? Yeah, I'm saying it on my blog now. I knew I couldn't stay here forever, I just didn't know what to do next. But I took that trip to seattlecattle on the train and I think that will be the next step. We've got to take steps. To somewhere. And all I can do is keep thinking of the Provo River Bike Trail that takes me up the canyon or to lake and that's something I miss so dearly and can't ever get a skype fix of. It's all I want for my birthday, ok? Just give me the PRBT.


I knew and never wanted this North Dakota stay to be forever, so I want to move to Seattle. Like my friends and family there have always been asking me to. In fact, I could have moved there right after college graduation. Did I ever tell you that? I had a place rent free to move there and I wouldn't. And I didn't stay in Provo though I was encouraged to apply to a full time media position there. I wouldn't. Well, maybe I've told you all those things before, I find I repeat myself a lot.


I moved here.


It's such a funny place. I always thought there was something wrong with it growing up. I bemoaned the plains and all their great flatness. The lack of trees anywhere outside of the amazing parallel lines of shelter belts. The large populations of people who'd never been outside of a hundred mile radius and who's favorite food was pizza. You know, Pizza Hut-esque pizza.


Gosh, I'm such a snob. There's nothing wrong with here and there never has been and I always want to punch people when they ask the question, "So what's even in North Dakota?" (I severely wish I knew how to punch, why haven't I ever learned?), and anyway, the Pizza Hut went out of business here. I love this place no matter how much I hate my lack of yogurt choices at the local grocery stores.


This interesting thing has been happening this past week. At this new job, I'm part secretary part draftsperson. I've been set to the task of learning AutoCAD, an architectural/technical drafting software, in order to plot out the campus floor plans and remodels. I've got 2d down pretty well but 3d is proving to be a rather different beast.


It's strange because I've never worked in an office, never kept office hours––I haven't had scheduled hours in years. Deadlines, yes. Lots of deadlines. Ugh. And I'm learning something I never thought of before but I think will prove useful throughout my life. Particularly if I can figure out 3D. No, not if, when.


So there's the plan: move to Seattle in January and learn how to punch people. This has to be the most explicit I've been with my life story on this blog ever, right?

I can see for miles and miles* and it's kind of over the top like a romcom where I just can't look away

I was in Seattle these past couple of weeks and I will begin slowly unloading stories but first can we address something my cousin showed me while I was there?


boniverotica


Yes. Bon Iver Erotica––which you probably already know about just like every hipster everywhere ate, slept, and breathed Bon Iver when he first came out and so did I but I was unaware of everyone else ODing too. (How was I supposed to resist an album entitled "For Emma, forever ago"?) 


Don't freak out mom and dad, it's not actual erotica. Bon Iver is essentially hipster relaxation music. Can I call it that? I only listen for relaxation because sometimes I find his voice too sweet, too nice. But guys, this tumblr is totally my ryan-gosling-hey-girl thing. After my evening bike ride I was going to write this:

I know what house we would live in here. It's tiny, dilapidated, and hiding in a cave of trees and bushes. Have I ever told you I kind of love dilapidated looking houses? Ones that used to be white but are now so worn they look like mournful, ghostly summer cottages.I want a house hidden by trees and rambling bushes but I worry whether enough sunlight will get in. I want to be able to lay on the floor looking out large windows at the tree tops imagining I'm in a mountain cabin. I've always wanted to live in a mountain cabin.

1. I acknowledge that's hecka boring for you and have decided that's the fodder of journals and not blogs. So I wasn't going to post it.
2. But then I remembered B.I. and felt you needed a boniverotica example so you can have a good chuckle with me at how cheesy I am:

via boniverotica

*bon iver holocene lyric

tonight I've been hatching a plan to turn KE$HA songs into soft little lullabies

Sometimes I wonder if reading is bad for me.


You see, life is ridiculously ambiguous and sometimes serendipitous but more frequently has odd loose endings yet I sometimes find myself functioning as if my life were a novel I'm reading. It's all very well when I'm in media res, when I'm in the thick of things and there's drama and people. But things just don't always happen, there's a lot of not-happening-to-you times and that's when you have to stop waiting for a bedtime story of your life fix and instead focus your attention to other things.


My whole world view is based upon our lives as stories, as collections of stories and the benefit of telling our stories, of studying them, documenting them. But life is more haphazard than a story. It's kind of like we're all actors on a stage and our scripts are more layered, connected, and convoluted than a Charles Dickens' novel but things just don't get tied so neatly, sometimes I'm on stage reciting my dialogue with a fellow actor and they just walk off with no warning. Their exit wasn't on my script, it was probably on their script because of a confluence of factors in their story arch that I have no knowledge of. An audience watching would hold their breath with understanding but I've never been allowed to see their scripts so I am left confounded––Actually, I don't think we have scripts at all. It's more like the director met with us separately to tell us our goals and motivation and now we're all improv-ing and running amuck.


I am hardly making sense right now but I am developing a greater affection for French New Wave and Italian neorealism. Also, The goalie's anxiety at the pentalty kick.


But tonight I was sitting here and I realized what I really wanted was to be able to read more chapters of a story that hadn't been resolved yet. But it was no story at all, rather, real things that happened in my life. 


Life makes more sense when it happens to fictional people.

growing pains

Buzzing my hair got something out of my system that's been needing to go for a long time. Because while I generally have been under the impression that these past years of short hair have not been a rebellion of any kind, maybe, just a little bit, I was still suspicious of appearances. Or rather, the sometimes terrible fact of life that we treat others differently based on appearances. I perhaps have been nursing a wee chip on my shoulder. Although I never cut my hair in a defiant gesture against society, I clung to it from time to time.


I can't really think of good illustrative examples of this, but listen to a few twee songs and you'll get this. Especially if you can get ahold of Marine Girls' eponymous song or maybe even something Sleater Kinney or Shop Assistants.


But I feel less worried now, more relaxed, for a few reasons:


1. I did something I've always wanted to which happens to be something that, in the words of an old doc professor, "pushes the envelope," or in the words of my dear dad, is "excessive but will do for now."


2. For the past few weeks and probably for a few weeks to come I look in the mirror––I've told all of you this before, but I look in the mirror and think "HEDGEHOG! but what an adorable hedgehog you are."


3. I have decided I like my face. Which is something that makes me very happy.


I even think I may pay someone to cut my hair once it's a cut-able length.

sass.

I'm in movie edit crazy town so I have no words for you. Only this amazing song that made me really want to dance dance dance all over those gravel parking lots. I may have tapped and nodded around a little bit and did a bit of jazzy handsies but....





I'M GONNA PAINT MY FACE LIKE THE GUGGENHEIM!!!!!!!!!!!!

bon iver, how did you know this needed to happen?!?!