trying to recapture something

I think I'm starting to get better. I feel a little more normal. I wish I could itch the inside of my throat. Unfortunately I have a huge gag reflex.

I painted a little sparrow today. She hit the front window yesterday... I spent two hours at least. It's an amazing feeling to challenge yourself. Keeping this watercolor sketch book is working myself in a way I never have. It's really gratifying. It kind of amazes me to look back on my past and see how afraid I was of color, so afraid I wouldn't touch it. I'm not afraid anymore, but I guess in part because I have tools and training now I didn't have then.

I had a dream about Ambika last night, I just remembered it. But just vaguely. She was resting on a chair in this vast building full of open rooms and corridors and I was standing over her talking to some other people. They were saying it was okay, that she was safe, she could wander everywhere in the building because the space belonged to her- but I was still afraid. My Ambika dreams are my gauge for how safe I feel with the most vulnerable parts of myself, the childlike parts. I'm hoping one day I have a dream where she can go anywhere and I'm not afraid. This is an improvement, but not all the way there...

Sigh, my original plan for christmas was to paint for people, watercolor from life... But christmas is a few days away and that never happened. I spent more money than I should have, but I feel okay about it...

I can't lie on my stomach and type, doesn't quite work, damn.

I'll try... I read a speech Bill Waterson gave to a graduating class today. It had a powerful effect on me. I wish I could memorize it and carry his words with me always, a reminder of what's important and to be me at all times. Something about it that would have shocked me in the past was a frankness about life, life after college, that made it rich and sad and real. Satisfying, his words were full, wonderful. It's good to be out of step with the world, very good. Some times I need a reminder because I so easily let the pace, perceptions, beliefs, and prejudices of the world legitimize or discredit my own choices and life. I forget so often and get caught up. Grrr at myself. Is that everything? Have I plumbed my expressable feelings? Something about it was so powerful for me, even just little things in it, like painting michelangelo's god and adam from the sistine chapel on his dorm ceiling, reminiscing on how he put more effort into that than any of his school work because it came from him, "I must obey the inexcruitable exhortations of my soul". That isn't right but I don't think I could easily look up the strip it came from. I was also really impacted by when he talked about being challenged to keep his strip fresh and learning by entering the mind of a six-year old boy everyday.

I was a little girl when Bill Waterson was writing and drawing Calvin and Hobbes. I loved the strip, for very different reasons from why I love and respect it now, as an adult. I didn't realize how much of the comic I didn't understand, I didn't care that it was full of words and concepts I couldn't comprehend, I didn't recognize the philosophic inquiries or the sadness that often permeated the lives of the characters and daily plots. I was a little kid who thought the comic was attractive and fun. Integrity is a powerful and rare thing. That was something else that he brought out in his speech. The recognition that if he commercialized Calvin and Hobbes that he would lose them, lose their identity and voice.

I'm going to bed.

Hear me

I have some quandaries on my mind. The big one is how valuable is an individual soul? (How many sins can be forgiven in the hope of transformation?...) Thoughts are always more erudite when they are new, I didn't have a chance to blog it when first reflecting... I guess I'm coming at it from two perspectives, reincarnation and salvation. Can a Hitler be saved, forgiven? or reincarnated even... Is that soul valuable enough to risk continued suffering inflicted on countless people in order to keep it? If not where is the boundary? Then there is the other side, the desire of those who suffered for justice. For their suffering to be paid for in a sense, atoned, satisfied. If a tyrant is forgiven are his victims betrayed? I guess I'm wondering about it because I've started thinking about this strange balance achieved in life through both evil and good and how they do seem to be connected, almost necessary to each other. I can't fully understand why or how, but I want to try.

So it's the holidays and every where we go we hear christmas music, both secular and religious. The lyrics of one song were expostulating their disbelief at the suffering inflicted on Jesus and it struck me that the attitude from the christian perspective is often how unbelievable and awful it was for man to torture and kill the son of god, but it seems just as maddening that we do it to anyone. I pictured the song being reconstructed to include expressions of disbelief as a list of innocent peoples names and the crimes against them were recited. I think part of the significance of what Jesus did is that he went through what we go through, the commiseration. I think it's a part of us trying to be in god's camp. Trying too hard? We watch the movies, relive the story all in part to manipulate ourselves to feel really bad. I'm tired of trying, I want to be real. I want what I feel to be real and to express it. Not to try to feel what I think I'm supposed to.

I'm sitting in my cherry spot, the magic zone where I get perfect pirated internet reception almost all the time with little to no interruption. It is a bit awkward, it works best beside me and not on my laptop.

I've had a cold for many days now, many days more than I can stand. The symptoms are often thoroughly miserable. Night is generally the worst part of the cold, the time when I'm supposed to be resting and recuperating. No, instead I'm waking up frequently to blow my nose or because I have a relentless sinus headache that is aggravated by everything (including lying down. Most nights the thought running through my head is a big fat FUCK) Every time I'm sick it's the same thing, don't sleep well or long. Oh, the other thing that is killing me is at night the air I breath through my nostrils becomes cold and biting against my throat and it stings and dries me out. The surface of my nostrils is red, dry and soar from blowing it (despite having the best tissues in the world- Puffs with lotion. Pure bliss.) One thing I think is a kick about being sick is the inevitable voice change, entering a deeper range that carries all this weight and power behind it! Sarah, god of thunder! Hear me!

I can't wait to be well. :(

I also can't wait for christmas to be over, just the day, not the season. The rush and madness that go with it- that part needs to be over. This turns out to be how I feel about all significant holidays now. I just wanted Thanksgiving to be over so I wouldn't feel over burdened and anxious anymore.

I bought a wacom intuos2 graphic tablet for myself (my christmas present to me) off ebay. Of all the big purchases I've made lately I actually fully owned that one. The whole process, hoowuh. That feels great! I decided I would use the money I get at christmas to offset the cost, and I decided to make the winning bid on it 2 minutes before it closed. I was plagued by massive doubt and guilt over both the computer and photoshop. Which, incidentally, I both love deeply. My life is fuller because of their presence. Those, my ipod, a couple very special pieces of costume jewelry, my 35mm manual Nikon camera, my electric miter saw, my pocket sized watercolor set and sketchbooks, and my cats all make my life fuller and put a special warm feeling in my center.

That's it, those are all my feelings for now.

plus one more, I have such a hankering to play super nintendo in the winter, that and knit.

A Consuming Sadness

Oh heavy sadness, that hangs over my heart, like a fog clinging to the deep pine hills. A coat of cold covering my being.

How do you evoke color and 'the feel of things' with words? It is a search for me, an internal search. Conducted mostly intuitively. I want to write my feelings the way an artist paints theirs. I don't like literal, it's one sided, misses the soul. The soul hides in metaphor, illustration, it brings you somewhere the way a path does. The path doesn't spell out what it's doing. Even now my words frustrate me because they sound kind of woo hoo, pseudo, lacking sincerity. I don't know, I don't know. It's my song...

I've been experiencing a new sadness. It's not a despairing sadness. There is this constant sense behind it that I feel okay, even happy. But it is still so powerful at times. I think maybe that is what life is. Deeply, even comsumingly, sad- but beautiful and okay. I can easily identify why life is sad. I think most people can. It's harder to capture why it's okay. I know it has something to do with what I keep seeing again and again. True joy, true beauty, good people, and moments that contain something... But it makes me wonder about god and what god feels and sees? Does god experience deep sadness? A continuosly broken heart? Not broken because of lost love, but to see the suffering of so many living beings, so many small and precious things... ( I want god to be like me.)

A long time ago I wanted to create a blog just for poetry. I think now that my readership is down so much, I kind of feel a freedom to be, well, unusual. That won't be what this becomes, ultimately. Just at times. Or in little places.

I had a dream about betrayal. But not in any obvious sense. It was about my cousin. Her family was staying with us and she was very sick. With something like a flu or stomach virus. What I see when I think of the dream is this view into the bathroom, in the darkness, of her sleeping on the tiolet because she was throwing up bile so frequently she couldn't leave. All I felt in the dream was a fear for myself. All I can think of now is that little girl confined to the bathroom, sleeping on a toilet... That was how I was for so long, afraid of getting sick. Unable to feel anything for those who were suffering, just looking out for me. What I hate is a large remnant of that fear is still there. It isn't what it was. But I have some pretty negative feelings towards myself because of it. I worry about myself. Will I be able to become a better person? Will I let my weaknesses and my fears always rule me?

The more I learn about Muslim faith and beliefs it reminds me of old testament Israel. Bloody, wrathful, unbending. How can so many people want to live like that? It's incredibly unstable, there is absolutely no security. It seems to bring with it everywhere destruction, poverty, and extreme suffering. I know I mostly speak of the fringe, which seems to grow, like a poisonous bacteria. I see the same mind in all fringes. In the christian church... A poison, a deep insatiable hate, a flame that never dies, but consumes everything in its radious. People almost foaming at the mouth with hate. Where does it come from? Why do people become so infected? Maybe that is what the zombie architype represents? The true living dead, who posses the power to turn others into what they are...

My small world

There's something alluring about writing late at night. I've been thinking about how many things that are common to us in our everyday life are actually the result of poor solutions. Telephone wires. Electricity is amazing and brilliant (I couldn't be doing this otherwise) but figuring out how to get it to everyone was poor, still is, wires strung up on poles across every road in our lives. Suspended wires. Most things on a commercial level involve poor solutions at some point. Stricnine in icecream so it's scoopable... (I can't use the spell check function on my mac because it doesn't seem to recognize the path. Don't understand that.) Food involves most of them, poor solutions. Telephone poles are ugly but not depressing like chemicals being injested through our fruit.

So I'm going to start paging again. I've been almost inordinately excited about this. I get to make the call on monday that will probably solidify when I start. I've been struggling to answer the question of how I can make a small amount of money to pay for my recent investments, something very part time and low stress, and when I remembered paging I couldn't believe I hadn't thought of it before. I was happy paging. I was happy with my small world, I left it for higher pay and to become more responsible and self-reliant. But that world was full of stress, anxiety and mild unhappyness which I supplemented by being a very active consumer and saving nothing.

I did a portfolio review with SCAD reps today, and saw a presentation. I was impressed, which I didn't expect. Not that SCAD isn't impressive, I just didn't think it would sway me at all back towards them and it did. Not enough to change my first choice, MCAD, but enough to put it back in the running. The rep who reviewed my work was great. He gave me a great recommendation which I will be using. My dad came with me, which was wonderful. We took the lightrail in. I really enjoy the lightrail ride and the view into Baltimore, it's very beautiful and gives me a special feeling. We had to get off at Lexington market which is a _very_ black area, white is rare, especially me and my dad kind of white. I've been told not to be in that neighborhood at night. We walked by this group of old men standing around a couple card tables covered in random things for sale and for some reason it reminded me of the side walk sellers that are all over the cities of Europe. New York is like that too. Tons of people with odd goods (usually knock-off names or gimmicky art) spread out on card tables. The oddest people were in France, in the Moulin Rouge area, they didn't have tables at all but ran around to all the obvious tourists and pushed bags of fake Lacoste polo shirts in their faces and spoke abbreviated sentences about cheap deals. John actually bought from them and in part because they were like an attack. He said he actually felt like he had just been raped.

I saw a play tonight at the navel academy that even if I had tried to remember the name I doubt I would have. It was about a colony of criminals started in Australia and this governers idea of trying to, well, rehabilitate them with culture. He had them be in a play. I think the acting was very nice, but much of what was said was incomprehensible due to pronunciation or because it was said quickly and passionately and all slurred together.

I like my little life, it's quiet and unanounced and mostly fulfilling. There are certain things I hope for in future. There is the dream of someone else. I like that line. I revel in the prospect of going about my business with out fuss or disturbance, with out notice even.

I realized something tonight. A big part of my infatuation with old things (treasures) is I have this deep yearning to assemble a material past for myself and it takes on a few different forms. One is the pleasure of collecting old machines, jewelry, clothing and furniture and the other is the vision of the old attic hiding wonders from the distant past, an old trunk with an ancient wedding dress, a packet of discolored letters bound in aging twine, old photos that connect to my history that I don't know at all, leather bound books with embossed gold titles... I long for a material past. Material past. A physical memory. I know it has something to do with our moving around and purging, our absense of cohesive objects that draw a line back. But to find that longing there, to know that it has been a small, strong, steady flame that has lived in me through the years, -that- I do not know why. Why do I long for a material past? Is moving around a lot and not having one enough, or is there a deeper need behind it? Fueling it?

It is strange that there are memories that have such clarity to us that the emotions we carry with them are just as fresh as that first moment we experienced them and that there are other parts of our lives, even as close as days away that are already lost... that for what ever reason did not, in any way, engrave themselves on our memories and were forgotten perhaps as soon as the moment passed. And then all the fuzzyness inbetween.

I should sleep...

Anxious

Hmmm, I had to totally rigg getting to my own blog. For some reason my computer doesn't think my blog is a safe webpage, urg. So I'm feeling very confused and wrong right now. The strange thing is I'm not doing bad, compromising or questionable things, I'm just having a hard time processing certain decisions right now and knowing how I want to respond. A guy at an art shop I go to scribbled a note about going to coffee on my receipt, I got a friend request on facebook from a total stranger and a note in my inbox from another. I've never felt so much internal pressure before about doing the right thing in any of these situations. On top of that this whole computer thing, my laptop and photoshop, having my illustrations scanned and buying a graphic tablet are sort of pushing me over the edge. I'm internally overwhelmed. (incidentally I totally love the band Islands, I've been checking then out on my ipod. Most excellent...)

So I finished my childrens book and am about to pay 260 dollars for high quality scans... But I still need a graphic tablet to be able to do anything with them in photoshop... Or just a bloody mouse. I don't know, I don't know... I feel lost on an endless ocean, suspended, not knowing which direction leads to land, if any. The thing, the one thing that is the true factor in this feeling of ill ease is that I have no income, I have a limited amount of money and my expenses so far have already exceeded what I have and these expenses aren't done. I thought psychologically I'd be okay with carrying a bit of debt for a little while- but so far I'm not! I'm really upset... I was also hoping investing in my kids book right now would be the right move, but I'm starting to have misgivings. Like I'm a fool, everything I do is foolish. And I feel irresponsible for sitting here blogging instead of cleaning my disaster of a room or picking up and paying for my very expensive scans which are ready. But I can't shut up the feeling, that irresponsible feeling. (creepy, the song on right now starts with a scratchy voice announcing that he is a murdered demon and that the world will end in 2007, something about a really cold endless winter.)

I volunteered last thursday at a MAP benefit and it was god awful. I was given misinformation about parking with their vallet and they refused to reimburse me for my parking fees, made it sound like the reason I didn't know what was going on was my fault and were totally disorganized, unhelpful and nasty. Then when she asked if she could count on me coming back I lied and said yes, because I was too chicken to confront her. There is an email in my inbox headed thank you from said person that I am avoiding because at some point I'm going to make myself have enough courage to tell her the truth.

I keep dreaming that I can do magic, lots of wands, some times it's in my hands- which is cooler. I killed Voldemort last night. But I also had a very darkly precious dream that involved living out a fantastical childrens book that a woman was telling and complaining that it was a dream that she had had one night and found it in a childrens book one day, she was flabbergasted that an artist had done this with out her knowledge, stolen her dream story. It starts with a little girl (a sort of middle class victorian one with a huge ribbon in her hair and a stylish but uncomfortable looking dress sitting at a desk with a chimney above it clasping too small tickets that become a portal when layered on each other correctly and held up in the chimney. The child is pulled up through the chimney to the sky and begins to fly like a bird. Soaring above the earth, which is like a vast savannah of grass land, large masses of water, and migratory bird patterns taking up the air creating the potential for many collisions. I was the little girl at the point that she ran into the birds and couldn't figure out how to stay up in the sky and pass the vast sea of birds with out pain. It was both wonderful and disconcerting. When the adventure ended I wanted to illustrate it myself, but I didn't want to upset the woman who originally had the dream, I wanted to figure out how to do it so she would be okay with it.

I feel like I always have clothes to hang up. It's one of those tedious never ending jobs (like feeding yourself and bathing). Some times I wish I didn't have any jobs that involve upkeep. I feel hugely inefficient as a machine. Washing clothes doesn't bother me because I keep the pile in a basket til it's big enough and then just toss it into the wash. Hanging involves dealing with each individual article, arg. Sometimes the basket just stays on the floor til all the clean clothes have been worn and I can just turn around and toss everything back in to be washed once more. I guess I just don't care at all about things like wrinkles. I'm a lot like my dad.

The other biggest problem I'm having right now is making my own decisions. That is eating me up because I have never trusted or believed in my own judgement and now I am using it and carrying all the responsibility for my decisions. It doesn't seem to be feeling any more natural, just painful because I am having to make some very big ones- because I made one core decision about what I want right now and these others are inherently flowing out of it. The run away urge is surfacing in me again. When things start to make me anxious I want to run to another state far away from them, somewhere where I am a stranger and no one expects anything from me where I can feel free and unimpeded. But it's only because I let these things here have dominance over me instead of taking charge of them and keeping healthy boundaries.

(I apparently can't spell check my blog on my laptop. God I wish I knew more about computers...)

Really Quickly

This is really going to be quite quick. (Since I'm using renegade wifi and I don't know when it will cut out.) So I bought a lovely macbook pro laptop. It is the nicest and most expensive thing I've ever bought myself. I also have photoshop now, but I need to buy some sort of a mouse to make using it feasible for art. Once I actually get wifi I'll blog more, a portable computer makes that more appealing.

The truly big news is I'm not moving to NY, I'll elaborate later. I am looking into internships (with very little luck so far) and I believe I will be going to grad school next fall, hopefully at MCAD. I just need to be accepted.

The last month has been intense, unfortunatley I will elaborate later...

A lot on my mind

I'm happy to be home. But feeling a bit bummed today. There was this amazing little outdoor table with two chairs at goodwill last week for 40 bucks. I wanted to get it today but it's gone. I'm not surprised, just disappointed. I've got a lot on my mind...

I'm not working anymore, it's weird to realize that's official. It didn't set in til sunday. Which also means blogging will be less predictable, I'm not sure... how much will I still blog? I had an urge right now. I really enjoyed myself yesterday, got a lot done, felt positively productive... But I kind of feel like I crashed today. Even waking up. Not fully sure why. I got mad at my dad last night. Maybe that has something to do with it?

Anyway, I think I figured something out. Something that plagued me when I was a kid. Fear was such a deciding factor in so many of my decisions, that's not the realization, what I did was not defend myself. I think for a long time defending myself meant fighting or yelling or very confrontational things but it's starting to shape out into a much bigger world to me now. I didn't look out for myself, I do now. Some of it I thought was still hiding, but it's not, it's actually wise. Being careful about what I say and when and knowing why. It's about protecting myself. There is this fact that has become very clear to me, there is an immense cost that follows and builds and hurts when we don't protect ourselves. That was what I didn't realize back then. I'm still working it all out, facing what I can, fixing what I can. It's slow, sometimes really sad and sometimes it really hurts a lot. I just feel a sense of loss today...

I had a dream about the statue of liberty. It was a bit troubling. I was looking out towards the shore and she was there at the tip of the water looking out over the ocean, her torch slumped in her high arm. Like she was not the vision of strength and confidence we had all seen in the past. There was an old woman against her back standing on a crate and arching to see... I can't remember what, arching to see past the statue? Like they were both watching something out there, something coming in? The sun was right about the statues head, the sky was overcast so it was a bright blurred white orb and I thought, what a fabulous coincidence. I took out my camera to photograph it and when I advanced the film I realized it didn't seem like the numbers were moving forward much. It stayed around 4ish. I knew I had already taken more pictures than that and a fear arose that I hadn't adequately loaded the film so it wasn't actually advancing. At first I tried to dismiss it, and kept shooting, but it stayed in the same spot and I realized all those pictures, never taken, didn't register. That was disappointing because I had taken some really nice shots, and now I realized they didn't exist. The worst of it was when I started to load the film properly somehow it ended up on the outside of the camera and it struck me all my pictures would turn out black. I felt like I was losing most of the roll with all this trouble. Reloading it was awkward and difficult.

I think I know part of why I'm sad. It's something that hasn't had words before. As much as I love being home, as wonderful as the freedom is I don't feel complete like this. I look around, register all my options- and nothing... It's time.

Going back to random

I was very sad before I came in to work today. But I feel better now, normal-ish. I forgot my purse, I think. I don't believe I've done that before when going to work... My little brother is in town til tomorrow. My aunt Kay is coming into town, well, tomorrow too and I have a dinner party that has been planned for a month that I just remembered today will be in conflict. Frick. But tomorrow is also my last day of work! Plus when they leave on monday I'll be going with them. Yey! Although that is a mixed yay... A part of me feels really deflated and defeated. I'm not wearing a badge.

I don't know if this is going to develop much. But I must say that despite feeling rather on the bored side of things the time keeps passing. I've done three hours so I like to think now I have a five hour shift... It works better when I don't articulate it.

How to speak?... I don't know, I don't know. John has an iphone and after seeing one up close I want one. They truly are amazing. But that's not going to happen. I don't think I'll ever be willing to drop $500 on a phone, even if I managed to save up enough. Plus I don't really need to do internet with a phone (but I can't deny it would be fun and useful at times.)

It's been a while since I haven't worked. A couple years. I think in my mind I always remember liking it better than I really did. I think I feel a bit lost with all that undefined time. When I work it's easy enough to identify what I'd rather be doing. But when I've got all the free time in the world I seem to have a hard time knowing where to start?

I'm thinking I'd like a couple little wings on my shoulder blades... I don't imagine that is an area of my body that will ever be layered in much fat. I'm getting all these emails from my coworkers wishing me well, asking to be updated and offering up names of people that they know in NY who are vaguely involved in the arts. It's nice, but a little overwhelming right now. I'm not so good at keeping people posted. I tend to let that sort of stuff slip entirely out of my mind. I kind of want to... I like keeping in touch with my friends. Even thought I like my coworkers a lot, I don't want to keep in mind updating them. I probably will anyway. I should write the branch addresses in my sketch book.

I flew through the first potter book. I like how she describes people as going pink when they're angry. As well as a myriad of other colors like green and purple. For the first time I'm rather frustrated I can't read at work, I just feel like plowing through them... (like knitting last winter, although I'm not as useless now, I can do other things.) Hmmm. John suggested temping, he knows a girl who makes $20 an hour temping. I couldn't complain although I imagine I'd hate the work right away... maybe not, since the jobs would always be changing. What a way to pay someone for seriously temporary work... I wonder if temp agencies serve in the capacity of filling in desperation. Maybe that's why they make so much? Because these places are paying highly for untrained people, weird.

I have a semi-research nature that I inherited from my mom. A desire to do things thoroughly. Like with this harry potter thing, I think I'll read a book and watch the corresponding movie plus all extra stuff. I might even listen to the books on disc too, Rich (an info guy at CRO) recommended it, said it adds a nice dimension to the experience. Plus the extra books that Rowling wrote.

Johns been playing the Amelie sound track in the car and every time I hear it right now I want to cry. Plus the stuff he plays on his ipod when he showers makes me want to cry, pretty and sad. I guess I have a little melancholy surfacing. (I need to make my bed. I'm such a lazy bastard.)

Welcome comrades

I had a dream about an evil magical younger sister who hid my baggage after traveling on a ship to a port to catch a flying bus. The bus turned out to be an old clunky red chevy van (the red neck kind) and the bus driver was a some what cranky old woman. I was not particularly confident in the vehicle. I was taking it to Florida, it was similar to the china town bus, at least that's what I thought it would be. Me and my evil sister had to push the bus down the port while the bus driver walked in front, the right side of the bus was off the ledge hanging over the water because the van was too big for the port. We had to push it out over the water where it hovered and we loaded up. That's when I realized I didn't have my bag. I was sitting in the back of the van feeling very nervous about a flying bus and I realized I hadn't brought my bag. It was a white and black striped cloth that was poofy and shaped like a duffel bag, but not quite as big. So I went back to the ship, but as I came close I saw that the ship wasn't docked but rather moving around in port and I was afraid they were leaving on their next journey, but as I observed the behavior on deck I realized they were just running drills. The young captain had his sword drawn and another sailor was manning a button that activated three rows of poles that swooped at him, so he was sword fighting poles that were on a lever with a bungee cord that swung them up and down. At this point I was flying and watching from above and waiting for a moment when the poles weren't swinging up and down so I could come and look for my bag. When the young captain realized I was there for my bag he was some what defensive, expostulating that they had not lost my bag. I reassured him that I didn't believe they had. He said he would look for me but I told him I would do it myself and I began to go through all these drawers on the side of the ship that were stuffed with attractive printed fabrics. Then he mentioned his evil magical sister who did things like steal bags. In frustration I realized she had, indeed, stolen by bag and as I left I said "yes, my little sister is never subtle" (or something along those lines) at which point I gasped and covered my mouth and broke into intense weeping because I had been bound by life long secrecy from speaking of my sisterhood, the captain didn't know that I was his sister. He rushed to me and clasped me around my waist in a hug and said something to the effect of "you are my sister!"

Not one of my more realistic dreams which I've been having lately. Anyway, I've started working on a childrens book that is pretty much about my dad and how he will eat almost anything. In the book he will, in fact, eat anything. It's been fun; it's still in the thumbnail stage where I'm roughing out ideas and figuring out different pictures. I've got seven or eight pictures so far (including the cover) but I feel more is needed to fill out the story... Maybe not, maybe just a couple more will do. I keep thinking about how the possum story I'm working on is really quite short, there are maybe ten or eleven pictures which amounts more to a JE book than a JP. I'll explain because that is library code that helps me distinguish different age group and style reading materials. JE is usually kindergarten to second grade reading in a much smaller format designed to help children learn to read (and usually has some obscure moral) and JP books really range from baby to, not sure... but they are primarily picture books with simple writing, more pictures to less words. JP lend themselves to the artist and JE to the writer. American childrens books, in general, tend to have some moral. Not that that's a problem, but it comes up like a burden of responsibility that every book made for children must, in some way, encourage them to be a better person and a responsible citizen. Eek, it's like subtle communism. Social training masked in a friendly voice (with adorable animal characters). Comrade Billy be nice to comrade sally and always eat your peas.

I had a brain damaged man in a wheel chair refer to me as a cute white bitch yesterday. That was a shocker. I was walking a female dog at the time. He lives in my neighborhood and "walks" around the circle all the time. My neighborhood is a big circle. I used to avoid him because his inappropriate comments unnerved me but yesterday, even though it freaked me out, he didn't really bother me. I guess the fact that he is utterly harmless in more than one way really set in and I didn't feel threatened by him. If I knew more about brain damage these experiences would probably be more illuminated. Obviously a part of the brain that recognizes and cares about what is appropriate is damaged. He doesn't recognize an inhibition from expressing his raunchy thoughts. Want to know what men really think with out the censorship? Spend time around one with brain damage, it's disturbing.

I'm going to start reading the harry potter books. Crazy thing is the first book dates back to when I was eighteen. I didn't know until around 2000 something that these books even existed. Kind of weird. I think it was Janet Witherspoon that made me fully aware of the Harry Potter books. I remember how much she loved them. I'm checking the first book out today, along with a book on the GRE. My free month sans work will be one of busting ass studying and, well, preparing for a life of dedicated independence. The problem is that it's not the sort of thing you can take time off from... Once I start, well, I'm kind of committed. (I know there's always a place for me at home...)

I want to eat. Hopefully my uncle ken and julia and jack will still be in town when I get off. I like having them around, even if it does mean sleeping on a bed that makes my neck ache. Yes, I do like sleeping in the living room under the large bay window, but that damn couch bed is uncomfortable. I slept on it backwards last night, which did help, but it meant my feet were elevated slightly above my head all night and I kept waking up periodically with a stuffed nose. Weird.

I've been taking care of a stressed out dog for close to a week now. The circumstances have been sporadic and I think she recognizes the tension and the unpredictable schedule is negatively impacting her. I feel bad, I've had family in town and I've been more concerned about my own mopey needs and desires that I really haven't been there for her much. I feed her and walk her so her physical needs are met, but not those demanding emotional ones...

I found the most comfortable hoody yesterday. So I'm wearing it with a blue dress and they are definitely clashing. I don't care, the comfort is totally worth it. I think I have an obsession with hoodies. As much so as with shoes even...

A Brief Sabbatical

It's been a while, I know. I've been tired and cynical. I wanted my blog to be a place that I speak honestly from my heart and I haven't felt anything but anger for a few weeks. It was a kind of giving up, when I give up I have no heart in a sense, just hate. But that has passed and I think the fear and uncertainty are back, my driving forces. My last day of work is August 31, a dawning certainty is setting in and I'm scared. Because this is where I express my fears I think it sometimes sounds like I'm quiting or backing away, but I don't mean to. It's by speaking them that I'm able to press through and jump in the wave. I feel free right now, tall, independent and free. I don't always.

There is this deep feeling in me I don't think I've ever expressed before that I don't think who I am now should really exist. A dream I had last night really brought this to the surface. There was a young man who had been in a terrible accident and he was unconscious. A woman next to me told me he shouldn't even be alive. That is how I feel about myself, not physically, but that I've been this dead person and I can't understand how I came to life and it doesn't make sense to me. Who I was seemed contrary to the possibility of becoming someone else.

Something I've been thinking about on the periphery is I seem to attract men that attach immediate inappropriate expectations on me. (Nothing nasty.) Usually it has to do with my time and attention. It's exhausting. I hate it. Like they think they own me or a right to me. Fucking bastards. Screw them! Nobody owns me. It's a liberating perspective.

When I woke up today my jaw was really sore, it was one of those clenching nights. Tense dreams. It's a horrible feeling. It still hurts. Hopefully tonight will be more peaceful.

I bought new running shoes, I have shorts and those smooshing bras. It's exciting. Still hard for me and I don't have great stamina yet, but I'm improving. It makes me sweat and my lungs sting because I'm breathing in so deeply, I like that. What I don't like is the occasional abdominal cramp that takes me out.

The descent of my blog...

I think my picking might be a metaphor for my internal condition. I can't leave all my little problems alone, I keep trying to forcibly remove them because I don't know what else to do... That just makes it worse, but I can't stop! I'm so confused... by my own feelings, this inner struggle that doesn't have one side pulling out ahead. I want to express it, discharge it from my soul... I'm trying to separate but part of me keeps holding on...holding on to what? Every unresolved moment in my past that I carry like a wound that won't heal. Fuck.

I think I just did something borderline insane. It's always bothered me when people paid for little books that have been out for a long time and brought them back in thinking they'd get reimbursed and they don't... So this lady just had to pay for a dinky kids book worth five bucks and I told her if she finds it to keep it. One of those decisions that made sense until after it came out of my mouth. Oh, my god, what did I just do? Tell someone to keep library materials. Fuck.

Couple concepts brought up by Milan Kundera- Beauty by mistake- and the descent of music into noise and pure ugliness... He gives us four primary characters all with very different feelings and perceptions and I have this feeling that one represents him more than the others... Mainly because he brings her out with almost no hint of criticism and the others are tainted by it, either through the narrating voice or the other characters. But not Sabina. She is the character those two concepts are introduced through, her feelings about music and beauty. It's strange because the idea is that accidental beauty has an unintentional superiority to it, but that music has become noise and ugliness. The accidental beauty is NYcity, the coming together of all it's peculiar buildings, individually ugly, but as a whole beautiful...a concept that I need some help understanding. What gets me is both come out of the same culture and time... Is there no accidental beauty in music? It's a different subject, I know... But to marvel at one and disdain the other... feels disparate. I don't think that's the right word for what I actually mean, but I can't think of the word that really captures it. At odds, in conflict. Ooh, according to the internet thesaurus that word does work. Yey me.

I think I want to get a haircut again. It's becoming rather consistant- being sick of my hair right now. Sick of the blonde too. Weird how I phase in and out, there must be an identifiable pattern happening... I want something trendy and medium short, layered bangs that flip out and just long enough in the back for pigtails, the tiny ones. I think those cuts are so cute. I want to feel cute and playful, girlish and light.

I just feel like mentioning that over the history of my blog there have been a few I never posted, and never will... maybe I should delete them.

Thinking about individual moments in my past I have no desire to relive most of it, some places, some times I would go back to, but not most. Before Georgia is good, before all the confusion set in. Just being a happy kid and feeling free all the time. In some ways I'd like to go back and try again. But there is something impossible about that- the fact is I'd just be the same person again, make the same choices again...

Another thought... there was a baby in here earlier largely exploring it's own voice, the shouting kind, loud, unpatterned spurts of baby-shouts. In my mind I understand, but I find it very disruptive to my own mental state. Conversely, a librarian just went out and asked a group of young men to have their boisterous conversation somewhere else and it wasn't bothering me at all. I think I was enjoying it, like white noise. The sound, a long with the sun being in the early stages of setting, reminds me of being at a hotel and hearing all the people at the pool, laughing and conversing incomprehensibly. So why is one pleasant and the other jarring? I guess the baby shouts were abrasive and their laughter and indistinguishable words weren't. Pool noise. Nostalgia even.

freedom and happiness outside the american dream

Okay, so I watched the Goblet of Fire and I can get the quote right this time. A time is coming when you will have to choose between what is right and what is easy. That's much better than my previous paraphrase. I guess sort of laying the ground work for the next story...

I was thinking about a quote that I've carried around in me for ever... Winston Churchill, one of many about success and failure. I don't feel like writing it word for word, and I know it by heart, but the gist is that success is not losing your enthusiasm when you fail. I was feeling doubts about it... Like maybe there is something missing, but what I think I intuitively took from it in the past was not giving up on myself. I think what seems to be missing is change. As good as it may be to stay enthusiastic despite continual failure something about it is beginning to seem irresponsible to me. Maybe I'm making it into a story? Apparently Churchill had an incredible history of failures, it seems that didn't change until be became prime minister. (Is that the right title?) In many ways success has developed a whole new meaning to me. I'm not sure I had a clear idea in the past of what I thought it was, but I think it was similar to the usual interpretation. I think success is being happy. Truly happy. Another concept I came across recently for success that I also find viable is freedom. Freedom from everything, I think that works with my happy concept. The most successful people know how to be happy without expectation- I don't. I want to be free, a big part of me is discontent because I don't see myself as free. I think it means the ability to be yourself without any constraint, physical, mental or emotional.

The Story of human tragedy

On my drive to work I was reflecting on my past, even my recent past and realized it's a tragedy. But also I suspect most peoples lives have been the same. Not tragic in the sense of catastrophe after catastrophe like losing people you love deeply or disabling illnesses or accidents. That is a different kind of tragedy, one that is easier to recognize and feel. I mean the kind like a wasted life, failing self... I guess like Kierkegaard says about how we can't help noticing the loss of a limb but no one recognizes the loss of self. Or looking back and realizing that I've made the choice not to live over and over again. Shrinking from my fears, never standing up for myself, hiding from life somewhere that feels safe... It reminds me of the tallies Harold was making to figure out if he was in a tragedy or a comedy... His first impression was that he had no control of it, here is this story being written about him that he has no choice but to live as it goes. In a sense he changes because of her voice. Her words open him to a world he had been blind to and answered the dissatisfaction he felt about his life. We all compose a tragedy for ourselves as we go along, not deeply realizing that each choice we make is in compliance with the belief that we should be living that way. Tragically.

And now I want to change my story and I'm shifting between a growing drive and it's opposing feelings- inertia and fear. Like the little girl in me so long ago, who surges up to direct me at my most fragile moments, I feel like I'm looking out over that deep pool -frozen, half paralyzed with intense self doubt and a borderline inability to believe in myself and asking why? why has my choice always been to back away from the pool and never take the chance and is it really impossible for me to jump? Can I change my steps, leave a path that I've tread down to bare dirt? and stay on a new one untouched the whole way? (This blog is like composing a book about my life...) I also worry that in my inclination to dip my foot in the pool and slowly enter at some point I'll say "this far and no further". That as the road becomes rough I'll shrink from it and stop. It seems to me it would almost be easier if it were a physical journey. Because there wouldn't be the added job of deciphering. As much as it scares me to feel physically exhausted and overwhelmed I'm more afraid of the psychological equivalent. I'm afraid I'm still composing a tragedy for myself. The fear hurts and I am sad and tired. Still so unsure. Will I ever know myself?

A lot of women read romance novels, my time at a bookstore as well as at a library has made this amply clear to me. It spans the ages, twenties to eighties, perhaps beyond in both directions? On days when I feel tired (not because I need to sleep) it's like a voice calling to me to give in and become like them. To get married, settle in to the standard life and take up the symbol of unchallenged dissatisfaction and fantasy. I think it is the familiar that appeals to me... Which is odd because I've never read a romance novel. I don't know why it seems like a strange drug that beckons. It's also odd because I have no desire to read the books, just to embrace the symbol they represent- letting go, not fighting the current, relaxing my muscles and floating... Becoming like them. I think it is similar to the feeling my mom would express of wanting to be like the stupid people. It used to seem insane to me, but I think I understand now. It's the voice of death wooing us with what is easy... It's hard to fight against a raging current that goes the opposite direction of our heart.

It's getting harder and harder for me to say the date that books are due, it seems like I'm trying to conjure the memory up from a great distance. Like a barrier stands between me and my recollection of this simple fact...

whimpering inertia

It started raining towards the last stretch of my drive to work. Because I don't have air conditioning I keep the windows open all the time, rain or not. I put my hand out to feel it and the rain was like little flecks of ice hitting my skin, so cold!

I want to feel free like I did as a child in Georgia. It was so easy to play. How is it so hard now? Such different priorities. I lived to be outside, on my bike, in the woods, at the pool... The court in front of my house flooded every time it rained, it was an impromptu pool, opaque and murky- but we didn't care, it became a part of our play ground. We tried to ride our bikes through it, sometimes that worked, when it wasn't too deep- when it was, the bike suddenly stopped and the rider got propelled into the pool.

So I stayed up too late last night and woke up too early... I decided to sleep on the deck, which meant waking up when the sun rises. I always forget about the bloody air conditioning kicking on and off. I'm trying to fend off a headache without pills... Doomed! It's Sarah B's birthday tonight and I might not last long... it's crossing my mind to cancel and go to bed. What a crazy day! Painting the shed, driving from baltimore to annapolis to bowie to get sarah to a doctors appt... All in a large heat oozing vehicle with no air conditioning. I am thoroughly spent. I want to whimper and cry. I kept getting all the people applying for new cards before my break- I think of it as karmic return. As I saw each face approaching me with that telltale piece of paper I literally hunched over and whimpered. Strange thing is people really don't notice, I'm actually grateful for it. I have so often narrowly avoided doing new card applications, of course that would come for pay back when I'm desperate to get off the floor and eat.

So my one thought today came from watching the second half of the goblet of fire. It was the line Dumbledor issued about "there comes a point when he have to choose between doing what is hard or merely easy." Shoot, that is a horrible paraphrase, but it still captures the gist if less than poetic. Also the scene when Harry is confronting Voldamort (just dawned on me that the second part of his name means death...) and his first inclination is to jump behind the gravestone then we see the transition on his face where he is literally deciding- no, I'm going to face this, face my fear... At first I felt the challenge in myself, doing what is hard instead of letting inertia win (a feeling my mom has been pondering lately, and a powerful force. Being an object at rest wanting more than anything to remain at rest. It takes so much friction to get a resting object back in to motion...). But then another thought came up, one that does from time to time. So many things in our world preach at us, it doesn't just happen in a church. Everyone likes to get up on a soap box and tell the world how to behave. That actually isn't the thought, but it is connected. We have movies, books, art, etc that have these grand stories and plots, characters struggling to be heroes, to choose the grand good over inertia, fear, what ever... And in the ones that aren't trying to be a reflection of life, that is usually accomplished. The irony for me is a world full of people telling and consuming the story of the hero while most of them are daily choosing the opposite. Inertia and fear rule their lives but we have this dichotomy where we want to go and watch the hero be bigger than us and then go on living small lives. How many people find the disparity jarring? Every now and then I have that moment of illumination and it all seems so surreal.

Mississippi summers

I don't think I have any deep or penetrating thoughts today... It was (still is) a beautiful day outside. Blue sky with large slow moving clouds. The big white puffy kind that make great pictures. They remind me of the opening to ground hog day, all white puffy clouds in a lush blue sky sound like oompa music. buuum, bum, bum, buuum, bum, bum buuum, tweedle-lee tweedle-lee, tweedle-lee... Open with a tuba, deep, comical, surreal, follow with flutes, with a shrill twill. Don't think I'll be posting this one. I wish I could play that music with this post so people would hear it as they read.

My neighbor Sharon read a book recently called a piece of cake by cupcake brown. It's rather an oxymoron, nothing like it sounds. She (Sharon) keeps reiterating that cupcake brown is raw, she writes everything. This involves all the details of being forced into prostitution as a child (eight?)... That word "raw" says a lot. Raw is brutal, unrefined- I mean in the sense of not being polished to smooth the edges, nothing is done to make it easier to hear or read or consume... There is an intrinsic appeal, knowing that this is bare honesty... But it isn't easy to hear or let in. It's abrasive, the raw truth.

My spirit longs to go back to Mississippi, to my grandies front yard, clutching a clear glass jar and watching the fire flies in the early dusk... I want to run down the railroad tracks and find old muscats... I want to see her beautiful vegetable garden again, have her chocolate pie... be there again. But I can't, she's been dead so long and those things probably don't exist anymore... It's the face of the purest part of my childhood and it's gone; all that's left is a memory... I don't even know the name of the city she lived in, I have no idea how to get back. I have all these dreams about being somewhere I don't know, far from home and struggling to find my way back and I usually can't. That's how it feels, nothing inside me knows how to get back to grandies house.

I have this idea about creating a photo album entirely of lost and found photos and oddities that fit. A family album of strangers. Something appeals to me so much about the fact that these pictures are all lost or forgotten. They find there way to me in books returned to the library-and never claimed, run over for days on a street corner...

I forgot to add: what the hell, why not?

Facing a plethora of fears

So I've been thinking about how important my peer group is to me... The twenty somethings (and thirty...) And it crossed my mind to wonder if when I'm forty will I look at twenty somethings and roll my eyes at their obsession with their own social drama like I do now when I look at middle schoolers and highschoolers? My world would live or die according to their petty actions or trite opinions, their beliefs ordered my steps and ruled my life. (This is sort of a paraphrase of something utterly beautiful and poignant that George Elliott said in Daniel Deronda.) Some feather headed lady or gentleman that we fail to take as legal tender for a human being may be making someone else's life no better than a promenade through a pantheon of ugly idols. Still that is a bit of a paraphrase, but quite close. Some how the trite opinions and petty actions fits in there too.

There is a woman I met once sailing, Paige, that I keep remembering when I look at other women that resemble her. It evokes a strange feeling in my gut and I've been wondering what is going on in me. It's both a sadness and an affinity... I've been speculating this morning if she represents to me "the woman who went too far". Her anger ended her friendship with Alex. Or rather he cut her off... I don't know the details. My impression of her is curious to me. She's in her thirties, I'm sure. She has a raspy smokers voice, dark tan leathery skin and a certain air, cool (in the sense of a breeze) low key... Maybe she was sad that day? I don't know.

I do think Alex is shaping into something else in my mind. Something negative and distant... A tall and silent wall, standing at a ninety degree angle. I've never stood up at 90 degrees... But I'm becoming very aware of the role of my own perception. That people evoke feelings and impressions in me based on my own filters. Much the way they are in my dreams, they are all a series of metaphors that I use to figure myself out... My god, what a weird realization, every single person I interact with is a tool to discovering and knowing myself... Milan Kundera talks about how dreams are an act of our imagination, that they not merely tell us about ourselves -communicate to us, but they are also beautiful and that is what makes them stay with us- that imaginative dreaming is an intense need in man. It's gratifying to read something that expresses a deep and unarticulated feeling. I think I used to feel wrong for seeing my dreams as almost an art and taking pleasure in their beauty, it strikes me as odd that I would feel that way thinking about it now.

I'm about to do something that scares the shit out of me and my insides are eating themselves... It's funny the effect reading some of the old things from Jonathan has had on me... In one of his sticky notes he implored me and Lillian to do something that scares us. At the time I don't think I did... I wasn't in a place where I was willing to attempt facing my fears. But every time I turn around now I'm doing something that scares the shit out of me. Because I don't want to be ruled by my fears anymore. I've spent my life running away from everything that frightens me... and that is indeed a half life. It's good advice- do something that scares you. It's hard to start when the baggage is so big.

The other thing I've been contemplating about fear is that some things are legitimately terrifying... Not that that means I shouldn't face them... What I'm working on is being courageous enough to face the things that have consequences... The things that ultimately bring up other peoples fears when they aren't ready to face them and they lash out... Light and weight. I think I've always felt like a heavy person (at least most of my memories show me that... there was a time before...) To be light is to float above life, above pain, I guess it is similar to the spiritual concept of transcendence that so many elevate to the highest state a person can achieve... Weight, to be heavy, is an emotional opposite, to feel pain -to be connected with other human beings in suffering... I've always despised the concept of transcendence in spirituality and art, it actually angers me- mainly because in art its utterly pretentious bullshit that makes them feel superior to everyone else, the spiritual stuff is just escapist woohoo. I think there is a healthy balance that can be achieved. It's part of the concept I've been exploring of learning how to enjoy life with out the dependence on other people; but staying connected, not cutting self off from others. To completely separate from other people is a fear based action, to become a wall. But the opposite, (the concept of opposite is interesting because opposites usually host equal intensity and in that respect are the same, it's the neutral point that truly differs...) is to be crushed by life. I guess that is a sort of fear too, it is less easy to identify. Why is it fear based? Because it is a sort of opting out, to be so weighed down you cease to move. Both stop living, but in different ways.

Something else on my mind is I've been feeling like a child a lot lately. Naive, clueless, confused and small. Small for me truly epitomizes that childlike feeling. It generally involves the people around me seeming big. Not all of them, but enough. It also means my sense is that I am feeling things that I think other people aren't- usually I am feeling vulnerable and the people around me don't seem vulnerable. I realize that is just my perception, but that is the heart of feeling small.

life is too temporal

I don't know... My emotions are a constant source of curiosity to me. I guess I really don't understand them a fair amount of the time. To be such a mystery to myself is perhaps a problem. I wish I could pull my thoughts together. I spent the weekend in Rochester... I probably mentioned that in an earlier blog, I do forget. For a wedding. It was an interesting experience for me because my emotions were running higher than I expected. I was happy, but I'd been thinking about a lot of things that have been on my heart for a long time. One for eleven years... It surprised me. Everything about it, it's being there, it's emotional importance to me, how I can go so long with something just under the surface and not realize how it effects me... This is my pattern. I carry these things just below the surface, I'm aware of them but it's my perception that is the problem... I underestimate or fail to recognize these feelings that I carry are important and are living in a cage until I express them.


There is something I've been trying to learn these last few days, how to appreciate good things no matter how brief they are. It's hard because I've always wanted good experiences to last forever, at least as long as I do. So much of what we experience is temporal, brief... It seems to be a core in our existence and I have not really come to terms with that (as I know most people don't, the death thing and all.) It's been hard for me to allow these brief things to be truly valuable, one of my prerequisites was to last... I guess I didn't believe brief moments were legitimate... Something that nags the back of my mind periodically is how pointless dessert is, in the sense of being so temporal. I'm enjoying it as long as I am eating it, but then it is over and the pleasure is done and I've put something unhealthy in my body. I used to wonder if there was a way to taste dessert without eating it. Why do we eat things like that when It's really about tasting it? Sort of weird. (It's totally retarded that our words desert and dessert are so close and mean something so different...) And I never remember which one is which... Is my attitude about temporal pleasure wrong? Is there something good about eating for taste alone? In my heart am I a bit of a puritan? Eek...

At the heart of man

So many different things have been on my mind lately... And I wonder if I should talk about some of them? Or if they are meant to be quiet personal revelations that aren't shared... Maybe a month ago or more a book passed through my hands, Cultural Amnesia, and the title captivated me, as well as the subtitle... Something like the necessary history of humanities and the arts. That's wrong but some of the words are right (necessary and art...) But I placed a hold on it and finally got it yesterday. Last night I read the authors intro and it really stimulated my thoughts. It coincides with the direction my mind has been going in lately. I was first attracted to it because I thought it would be a commentary on the condition of modern and post modern art- which is a subject I greatly enjoy. But looking at it last night I realized it's something much more than that. It is a facing of the dichotomy of beauty coming from the same source as evil. The conundrum of poets, painters, movie directors, musicians who produce incredibly beautiful art but also support, applaud, participate in and believe in evil systems. He is looking at it from the perspective of humanism and seeking a true definition of it, how to know it's real face and it's evil face, but also looking at it's history, at humanity as a whole- at humanism in a universal sense. When I asked myself the same question it was on a smaller scale, looking at individuals who create and who also do horrible things and wondering if it was possible? Is there something wrong with what they create because of their personal evil? Is it wrong to admire their work? My conclusion is no. I guess it was by returning to a larger scale that I found the correct perspective- recognizing that all men have the capacity to create beauty and to create evil, that to varying degrees we all do both. It's terrifying... but simultaneously freeing.

I hate doing registration forms for new library cards. I also hate trapping holds at the return counter... I've only got an hour left which is good, because I'm past my limit. Shortly after I get home I'll be leaving for the weekend. It feels a little crazy. I've worked so much this week and it seems like my free time has been tight.

What did I dream about last night? Art... I was in a sort of class studio, my teacher was actually a middle aged woman, they're so often men. But we were looking at all these unfinished pieces up on the wall and some of them were large frames with thick watercolor paper pulled over them and green landscapes on them. I was telling her that the next painting I did I wanted to be large watercolor paper pulled over a frame like the ones on the wall. She then began to demonstrate things that I could do with it on one of the canvases. She started painting in the upper torso of a large bald blobby man. I was really impressed and studied the colors she used for flesh tones, but began to feel like I couldn't use that one because it wasn't mine... I remember being so struck by the figure that began to emerge on the canvas, how effortlessly she created him.

I guess I really only had one sentence left on this post. I kind of forgot about it. There is always more to my dreams than I remember.

Icarus fell from the sky (and landed on my lawn)

I had a really nice fourth of july. My mom spotted a dead robin in our front yard which generally hijacks the direction of my day, I was about to head over to a friends house to help paint but I can't pass up an opportunity to draw and photograph a bird. The robin was on its back, tail up, wings close to its body but a little open, she looked like she fell out of the sky and landed there in our yard... Her neck was back, too, so her throat was visible, eyes half closed like she was in pain from falling. I was in a show (art show) in Savannah called Icarus. This is the third dead bird I've photographed and it's becoming a bit of an accidental theme. More so than the others the robin felt like Icarus to me, her posture and expression seemed to capture the drama of the myth... In Savannah me and Lillian found a little sparrow in the garden median in front of our apartment, that was the first dead bird I drew. Weird, I was originally going to talk about my fourth, which started (at least the interesting part) with the bird... But after the bird I did help Sarah paint her parents kitchen. What was nice was going out to eat at the Sly Fox Pub. The weather was wonderful, good conversation, good company. We ended up watching the fireworks from the Rowe blvd bridge, very nice.

There was a beautiful young couple just in with a little girl and a new baby (newish) and the baby had hiccups. I think that is one of the cutest things I've ever seen.

Dreaming Big...

So I'm diligently trying to put to practice infusing every moment with value... Starting today, starting on my way to work this evening. Just wanting to commit to it feels better, light.

Strange, and perhaps sad, things are accomplishments for me. Like fully articulating something to a stranger. I am proud of myself because I sent a man to info to see if he could get a temporary card, he is from Prince Georges county and we usually require people in MD to register for a card. What I did was make it clear to him that he could try, but they might make him sign up for a card. That is what I'm proud of. Once upon a time I would have created a state of unclarified confusion. Little tiny baby steps.

Welcome to your own moments, Sarah. Although still imperfectly I feel there. I still get disgruntled when people at work interrupt my own thought patterns or personal projects... Not fully sure what all is going on there. The cat is proverbially out of the bag. I got an email from Whitney today with the heading "Moving???" I had neglected to tell my boss that I am moving to Williamsburg Brooklyn. I haven't seen her in weeks. I was kind of keeping it to myself until I felt like it was time to say anything, still seemed a bit premature. But Ellen calling to offer me December dates was a bit of a clencher, I couldn't do it so I told her my plans.

I live with a great beast... I have since I was a child, anxiety... I wonder if I could make a children's book character out of that? I think I'll try. What does anxiety look like as a monster? Is he like my little beast? The heart.

There was a little outdoor concert here for families. I took my break out there to get a little taste of it. Kind of fun, definitely for children. They had a sound guy who was probably about my age. All out dreadlocks and a very long very scruffy goatee. I don't see that many people around here that look like that. Meaning Anne Arundel County... So white bread. I think hipsters have displaced grundgy hippies too.

I dropped a heavy block of linoleum mounted on wood on my foot. Every step I take it hurts. I thought it was going to be a huge blue bruise by now but it's still just hint of swollen blue. I bet it will be thoroughly gross tomorrow.

I'm trying to keep my thoughts in the moment. That has never been a strength of mine. I've spent my life thinking about tomorrow or next week or next month... I guess anything that can feed the anxiety. I'm not very good at being present for my own life. Especially if the present is quiet... I'm gone. It looks like I'll be spending my fourth painting my friends house... We'll see. I make that sound so sad, I don't mean it that way.

My mom sent me a very good article on the significance of dreams, but specifically of "Big" dreams which it defined as the ones that transform our lives, like dreams about loved ones that died. It was a very poignant article. Dealing with how dreams are trying to work out our waking emotions through symbol and reliving events... It was interesting to see the scientific connection, what the brain is doing, which parts of the brain are doing what, how different times of night effect the clarity of our dreams. I have noticed that I do have the most vivid dreams in early morning shortly before I wake up. The article explained that this happens because the brain is waking up. Yes, that is kind of obvious. But I don't really know if it was obvious to me with out reading it. I found it fascinating though. I get sad when I meet people who think nothing of their dreams, and I meet quite a few... I suppose most.

Yellow dandelions

That's it, no more June posts. Why is that making me sad? Maybe I'm not ready for June to be over... Not ready for life to keep moving on.

There was a beautiful moth clinging to the brick ledge where we sit outside for break. She blended in so well I didn't notice her at first. Her wings looked crinkled just on the edges like she was waiting for them to fully straighten and harden before flying. Her feelers were huge, unreal. What purpose does their size serve? They look like fans. She looked soft and petable. I wanted to keep her, but I can't. She's alive. It'd be nice if I had my camera and close-up filters, that would be a lovely photograph...

I'm anxious about this week. I wish there weren't a fourth of July. John's birthday is this week, don't know what to do about that. I'm going to upstate NY next weekend with Sarah. Road trip.

I had a cool dream about my moms large brown bear. It came to life and started hopping around on all fours, giddy. I wanted to go out to a green dandelion field and pick a pile of yellow flowers for him.

It's such a beautiful day out. Perfect weather. A soft cool breeze... it's isn't hot.

There's something I want to figure out, but I feel like I'm failing it today... I want to infuse every event, every moment with the potential to be fulfilling. I come to things with so many rules, only this combination or these things can fulfill me... Plus I have a tendency to look at the condition of the world, other people in it, my environment and experience despair at their condition or appearance. That really undercuts happiness. The appearance of any form of poverty, mainly in a persons expression, depresses my spirits. There's a lot more to it than I'm expressing... I guess I'm doing some combination of projecting and being codependant. What I see is other people in despair, leading unhappy lives and it makes me feel that way. I might not even be right. I also decided when I was very young that the greatest thing in this world was to be with a boy. That his company was superior to any other thing in this world. God I cursed myself with that one... I want to be done with it, I'm working on it, but the pull is so strong. It's funny, for someone with that mind set I haven't been with many boys. I have huge dry spells between relationships. I'm fine until someone shows up, then all that stuff comes to life.

Who am I? Who am I meant to be? What am I supposed to do with my life? Do I have a defined path or does it come into existence as I walk and make choices?

I keep forgetting to post my blogs before I leave...

Looks like I goofed thursday when I wanted to post my blog. Surprised me to come on today and not see my most recent one.

Cool, there was a mother and daughter in who wanted to keep the yellow bands from the books because the girl likes to play library on her own.

I'm not getting enough sleep...or food for that matter. I hate eating in the early morning, I find it positively repulsive. Kind of ironic, after the comment that I don't dream about having a boyfriend, I had a boyfriend dream. It was about uncertainty, not being able to read what was happening. My dreams last night were a mess. Frick. I don't even want to sift through them.

I'm thinking about the compatibility of men and women sexually. On the surface we seem incompatible, but I can't believe that is true. It's the stimulus thing, I keep hearing how visually dependant men are... And women, we are more mind... What are we? What am I? How do they work together to balance each other? I believe it should be like a puzzle and the pieces have to be different to fit together. But I see our interests as often being opposed.

I watched the Matrix last night with Eric. It's funny how every time I see a movie I see different things about it, not that I didn't see them before necessarily, but they strike me now. It was the relationship between Neo and Trinity, mainly how she was the person that introduced him to the world he was searching for and I think because of that he felt safe with her. I am annoyed by how dull Neo's character is, even Trinity. They say very little, they barely emote, Neo always talks in a low husky whisper...what is that? I have a funny reaction to Cypher, I find him to be the easiest person to relate to, which worries me about myself... Not when he kills everyone. More for his sentiments about pleasure, because the truth about their world is it's a terrible void and the one the computers created is luxurious in comparison. Sometimes I think I'm devoid of proper feelings, but I know I'm not alone. Most people are no different. I like Morpheus, but because of the way in which I relate to Cypher it's hard to swallow what Trinity says as a retort "He set us free"... It is the truth, but I guess it pulls on some of my issues... I wish there had been more development of Morpheus' relationship with his crew, more development of their personalities. We didn't get to know some of them probably for the simple purpose of disposing of them easily without much attachment.

The graphic novel V for Vendetta just came through my hands. I hadn't really thought much about the fact that it started as a comic book. I started reading it on my lunch break and a very interesting difference popped out. Evey is sixteen years old and the story begins with her trying to sell herself for sex for the first time. There is no tv show host date, just her attempting to prostitute herself to the wrong guy. In the movie we have a different base for her character than appears in the book. I wonder why they changed it, made her out to have a cleaner start?

I feel like my life has been permanently disrupted. Like I'm a little snow globe that has had it's snow settled and undisturbed for years and it's suddenly been shook up and won't settle again. Someone, just by the sheer act of being himself has set off this domino reaction in me. My whole little set up is collapsing around me and the noise and disturbance give me little rest. I feel upset today for different reasons than usual. I'm upset about something in me that is just a persistent quiet nag on the borders of my awareness... It won't fully surface. I feel slightly dirty, but not even, I feel it impending, that's it...impending. I surfaced some really old music for my piano yesterday. Pretty intense stuff that I used to play, it's been a while. Talk about tormented, it felt kind of weird playing it, but exhilarating. Have I talked about the strange relationship I have with the piano? I can't remember. I use it to gage my progress in life, I guess it helps me tell how confident and patient I am. There seem to be so many character factors that come out in how I play. I used to feel so incompetent, clumsy, and undisciplined. I'm not sure I'm any more disciplined, I'm not even sure what that is. But I'm a lot more confident, I feel in control when I play and I'm not under this strange belief that I am clumsy and will forever be that way. I play so much better now.

There's a beautiful scene in Stranger than Fiction that made me want to cry. It's so simple. Her voice is describing this monotonous action that he does everyday, load files into boxes- the slow sound of a wave moving up the shore and receding. That is just what it sounds like, but it's because there is a reverence to his own movements. He gives it that quality. She describes it as building a whole sea of waves (something poetic like that...)

Crazyness at the Library

Peace. It's been a bit of a mad rush. Somewhere close on the heels of twelve I started getting irritated with the fact that people just kept coming up to check out. I needed a break to restore my good humor.

I dreamt that I was married last night. I have a friend that dreams about having girlfriends, for me it's always lovers or husbands... Another example of my extremes I suppose. No in between. I was moving around a table that was covered in lumps of cream colored dough and I had this urge to clean it up. There was a plastic bag and I started gathering the clumps in it but the more I added the more the bag disappeared, like it was having a reaction with the presence of the dough. At that point I was kind of like fuck it and I put the bag back down. A group of people showed up at the head of the table and I was searching amongst them to see who my husband was. I didn't know his face, but I figured him out. His appearance surprised me. He had long curly black hair pulled back in a ponytail and very dark skin, he was Brazilian, although I had Spanish associations with him in the dream (Spain spanish I mean). He had an attractive face, but those aspects, the hair and the very dark skin are usually not attractive to me. But I loved him, and he was very sensual to me. One of those dreams with really nice kissing.

Some times it seems like people are fucking with me, their friendly sincerity is surreal. I had to stop myself from laughing. Very often people return cd and dvd cases missing the disc and we have to inform them. I just had a very politely jovial father in with just such a situation and when I informed him of the case returned sans disc he expostulated "It IS" very dramatically but still jovially and I really thought he was fucking with me. But then he proceeded to apologize and state that he was terribly embarrassed. Still smiling. The other interesting occurrence today was a slightly older than middle aged lady at the return counter with a book on cd. She said she had something to report. She said she was listening to the first disc and was mortified by it's vulgarity at which point she immediately removed it from her player and broke it in two... Actually, I remember how she started she showed me this disc broken in half and announced that she did it. It struck me that it would be easy to deal with charging her for it since she confessed in a sense. But I noticed the disc had none of our stuff on it, it didn't belong in the set. I think she wanted me to know how mortified she was by it.

"I can give you the ride of your life". I don't believe it. In Baltimore on Sunday me, John and Stevanne saw a very trashy hipster in a shirt announcing something like "I'm a man whore: cheap sex here".

I'm in love with someone who's as pretty as a flower, her life gives me power so I'm buyin' her a ring... I don't know if it's life or love? I like either. The songs been in my head all day. I've always liked it, but it's really infected me recently. It's a beautiful story of transformation and coming to life. Is he telling all this to his mom? I always thought so, but now I wonder. "Oh, mom, I never thought that I could love no one, but today I'm on my way, Oh, today I'm on my way..." I've discovered feelings in myself recently I've never had before. It's exciting, in the sense that my life feels more full, but I'm also afraid because I feel more vulnerable. To open myself up to experience feelings of love means I can be hurt...

We just had a fire drill, right in time to get rained on. Which is fine outside where it's warm, but it sucks in here where it's over air conditioned. Someone got left behind, a little old lady with a walker. That's not a good sign. Laurel asked if that means we failed, I think it very much does. The alarm is a male voice that comes on and announces that there has been an incident in the library and requests immediate evacuation. Fawna told me she thought that sounded like someone had been shooting a gun in the building. Yeah,incident is not the best word to use. Something smells like mothballs, the scary part is I have the sensation the odor is following me around which kind of incriminates me, but I don't know why I'd smell like that? All the things I'm wearing are new, for a change... Where the hell is that smell coming from? Is it actually the library? In the vents? Every movement awakens the smell, like it's on the air.

Some thoughts. In some ways I am a very private person, but in others I'm perhaps even unnaturally un-private. (Impersonal? What would be the right word?) For instance physically I'm very private, prudishly so in some ways. But I like to share some of my most personal thoughts, feelings, art with most anybody. That kind of sharing I almost thrive on. I used to think something was terribly wrong with me, like I lacked some natural prudence... or discretion. Maybe it's because I know I'm sharing myself and that's what I enjoy, being known, seen... I know it's pride too, atleast with my art, I'm showing off a bit when I share, because I'm proud of my cultivated talent and what my hands can do. Not that I'm that amazing, I see my flaws very clearly. But I do make beautiful things.

Can't do it anymore, drifting...

End of the Day

I'm really concerned about my bodies ability to regulate its own temperature right now. I get so cold. I'm in pants a long sleeve shirt, sox, shoes and a sweatshirt and I'm still chilled. I feel like there is some physical metaphor at function in me. At Assateague one night the wind was killing me, I was in the same getup as now plus a towl and a fire and I still felt cold, shiver cold.

From time to time I see tiny dogs that obviously have spinal peralysis in their back legs and they are hooked up to these little wheels. (I've only ever seen this with little dogs...) But they get around so well, it seems like they always have a ton of energy. What brought that to mind was a young boy I saw who must have a problem with the bones in his legs and he has a sort of walker with four wheels and that kind of energy. At first he looked like a kid goofing around with something he stumbled across. It's a fascinating thing to observe.

I had a flabbergasting experience with an older woman earlier today. I think the word they apply is dowdy? She had a collection of mardi gras beads around her neck and a pair of very bright blue earings that accentuated them. People drift in very often and deposit items in front of me with out a word to what they are or what they want. Return? Check out? Purchase? She was one of those. Guessing on my part often leads to minor mishaps. They don't comprehend the system so my questions are misunderstood. She seemed to feel casually overburdened by the errands she had to do before her trip to Hungary. People often perplex me by the fact that their words fail to match their actions. She wanted to return two travel books and she wanted some new ones. The concept that she had to go upstairs for this rolled off her like rain on a windshield. I think she had some vague expectation that I could simply produce a couple more for her. Using all my faculties of clarification I think I managed to state what she would need to do. At which point she handed me her card and asked if she should call when she got back. I sat in stunned silence. Informed her that her account was clean and there would be no need. She then left...

There's a song by the Decemberists that was playing on my way to work, Valencia. I listened to the words this time and they were remarkably sad. Atleast, I listened to half of the song, the part where the girl throws herself in front of him as her brother shoots. So it keeps going through my head. Va-len-cee-ah, ah, ah...We'll burn this whole city do-own. I was always drawn to the Decemeberists, but I didn't like his voice at first, I do now. I find my early impressions to be something of an incumberance.

I've been reading the House of Mirth. I reached a point where the book felt too long, it was a slow descention for the main character, the climax occured so early on it felt odd for the character to just drag on and on through the story. But she has bottomed out now and become self-relfective in a way she hid from before. I thought she was going to die. Her health was failing, she can't sleep at night and she was afraid of being alone with herself. (I want to go home. My head aches a little, my body hurts, I'm cramping... I hate 8 hour shifts on my period.) I've gotten to that point in the day where I want my time to myself so everytime a patron comes up "evil person" runs through my head. Man, my last 20 minutes and I'm going to have to create a pile of new accounts. Frick.

I Hate coming up with titles

Cool, my mom found her way onto my blog. Atleast posting, I mean. I've had a nice workday. It's always nice to work with Richard at PRO, he says such nice things about me. When I came in he said he was so excited we were working the whole evening together and he'd been excited for a month. We talk about writing books and going to art school and he bitches about the work politics at this branch. I laugh too loud and everyone in the library turns to look at me.

The airconditioning is apparently broken. I'm fine, it's a bit toasty. I always come with sweaters because the branches are usually chilly. Everyone else is pretty unhappy, but I kind of like it.

The sink here is designed in just such a way that it spluges water out when the faucet runs and I get doused. I never remember this. My bright pink shirt was covered in water spots and it actually changed tone for a little while, I was worried it was stained. It's kind of like a mood ring, I've discovered. It eventually goes back to a uniform color. It would be interesting to get rained on wearing this shirt.

I was doing more internship searches and decided I needed to find out what the frick Artbase is. I tapped out. I was more reflective this morning when I came in and my words would have been more thought provoking, but I decided not to write then. Hmmm. I have to make something for fathers day that is a surprise. Nothing comes to mind. Arg...

So I've been going back and forth in my mind between hating people and loving them. (I mean strangers that I serve at the desk.) The worst one, I probably shouldn't confess this, was an old man who was probably deaf came in and inarticulatly gestured and gurgled for a pad of paper, I thought he was going to write communications to me on that pad, and the horrible thought that ran through my head was "I hate people". But he just wanted to write the info from his book for himself. I did go on to check him out later and my feelings weren't nasty then, but congenial. I don't think he heard anything I said, like the meager 20 cent fine. I wasn't going to do anything about it.

I never named any of my stuffed animals when I was a child. I never named anything. For some reason that worries me. I did kiss everyone of my many stuffed animals goodnight, every night. No, I don't know where that came from. I keep thinking about finishing Middlemarch. I can't make up my mind, I stopped because I couldn't handle it anymore, I had picked it up again and came to the same conclusion again and finally put it on a shelf. That was a while ago. I have a feeling I can handle it now, but I doubt.

I love the automatic save feature for posts. Word documents should do that. So one of the jobs I'm interested in is managing an Artists papermaking mill. I have this vision in my mind of a huge, high ceiling, old white-washed brick factory with cement floors flecked with colorful paperpulp and large vats in organized patterns and just wandering around it like a happy little girl in a red collared shirt with black lines, sleeves rolled up to my elbows weather worn blue jeans, enjoying being so young in such a place.

I'm going to Disney Land...

It's Sunday, the desk is full. It will be all day. I'm at the short terminal, the least favored. I was willing to take a tall one away from Loni, but not Nina. In my own mind youth loses. I can't do as much from here. People don't see me to check out, it feels less official, and awkward having someone at the level of your knees checking out books. And I'm the furthest from the return counter, I generally can't beat any of the others to it.

My skirt is sitting at my waist. It feels weird to have any piece of clothing do that, I'm not used to it. I like things at my hips...

There was something I remembered today on the way to work. It's strange that I can forget this, and for so long sometimes. Art is a huge part of who I am. It is my soul. My life blood, and I don't mean simply doing it. Being a part of it in all it's forms. Other peoples art, talking about it, seeing it, studying it... I was so intrigued by Alex and his love for Annapolis and the sea that I forgot I had that same love in me, for something else. I forgot myself. I find that grievous in retrospect. I long to share that with people. I want them to see it the way I do, to love it a fraction of the way I do.

I'm sick of fucking around. I feel like I've spent a good deal of my life that way. In the sense of how I conduct myself in reference to what I do. I've been so afraid to take the chance to be an artist that I haven't tried. (Written contractions are stupid, we replace one letter with an apostrophe, it doesn't save us any time, but writing it out feels too formal. In Edith Wharton's "House of Mirth" it strikes me as interesting that they separate contractions so that it would be does n't or have n't. It gives a different feel. Like capturing a hint of an accent or an attribute of the times.) I've fucked around with retail for years, because it's safe, now I've fucked around with the library. I think I'm moving to NY regardless of an internship. I think I might just look for a full time job in Brooklyn, take advantage of my brothers incredibly generous hospitality and perhaps eventually get a place of my own? When things seem established enough to do so. I like the idea of living with him because it is a huge safety feature. I don't have to worry as much about being a tiny girl alone in a big city...

I should make a real effort to pay off my debt so I don't go up with a small burden that just builds. I know I'll bring on debt initially, I don't mind. I'm such a cautious person the prospect of being less so is appealing and nonthreatening. My internship searches have been distasteful and unsatisfying. I want to find things that more closely approximate my interests. A lot of administrative stuff, or graphic design, for which I am not qualified. Even something menial, I don't care, as long as it's connected to illustration, or art or photography... I'll do the grunt work, I'm happy to, to work up. There art jobs out there, are those positions all filled? I'd love to be involved in the creative process for a movie. I wish I knew how to be, or how to look it up.

Rich makes brownies for Sunday staff at CRO. They are borderline raw today. I like undercooked brownies, but these are a little too undercooked, they taste more like the ingredients in them than the final thing, a brownie. But I still like them enough to eat more than one...

Closing thought. People with mental disabilities don't bother me, in the sense of feeling bad for their condition, it's hard to feel bad for people who are happier than most of us. But what does get to me is someone who is fully conscious and physically disabled in some way, like a child with a muscle or bone disorder who is bent and contorted but in every other way she functions as highly as other children. I almost wish her mind where as disabled as her body, her life would more likely be easier for her, especially as she gets older.

Meditations

My hearts gone out of this a bit. It feels like a desolate landscape where I write to silent readers. It's cold in here. Cold outside. A melancholy has settled over me. Yesterday was so alive, constant movement. I think I'm more inclined to work at smaller branches. WCO takes that out of me a bit. It feels so big, empty and slow.

Wow, the most interesting twins just walked in. Two intense red heads, one short-haired and sporty, the other long crazy curls and scruffy dark clothes. Their manner seemed lackadaisical, high and unconcerned, their words slurred, barely an effort to fully pronounce them. They both keep their faces up, eyes squinted like they're staring into an intense sun.

We also had a man walk in on his cellphone with his pants unzipped. ???

So there is this large, rather scary family with one of those descriptive names like Cobb who have a proclivity for producing progeny that have just come through like a whirlwind of dirty, precocious children who aren't intimidated by anything.

Time for a philosophical run... Thinking about art and it's meaning to me and my intent got this going. I wonder every now and then how much I really mean or believe what I say I do. I guess everything in my life is beginning to feel like such a choice that I lack a sense of ownership over it... I should probably try to clarify my thinking. I'm not sure why, but it seems to me if something is just in there, like I didn't choose it, an inclination, a drive, it feels like it belongs to me; but if I choose it, it doesn't feel like it's truly me... It feels constructed, or adopted- like it belonged to someone else and I thought it was interesting. There aren't many beliefs I have that come from deep inside of me. Because of that they have always felt like they aren't mine, I'm just borrowing them for a while or waiting for them to get down deep inside. It's not a comfortable feeling. I want to feel like I own the things that shape and direct my life. I don't like the idea that I'm sort of assuming they are right and following to be safe. I think I've started sluffing off more and more of the stuff that doesn't penatrate. Giving them back to the people they belong to.

Scream!

The good kind. I'm buzzing on the inside (like a bee)! Oh, I'm so excited! Camping with my wonderful, crazy friends! Someone I thought was disappearing isn't! What to do, what to do... I do want to do an internship in Brooklyn... I can't imagine it would be possible before the fall. who knows? Live in New York City, bunking with my brother. We are positively insane! But I love him for being so generous. It's going to be so hot this weekend. I'm actually glad. Better than too cold, which it was last year. Overcast, windy, cold. I'll get some good sun! feel like a little girl again. I'm going out with Ryan tonight! I love Ryan. Atleast, I hope it works out, I think he was probably a little drunk when he told me to call him. His girlfriend seemed a bit apprehensive about me. No worries, just an old family friend.

My skirt keeps crawling up my waist. Annoying. Parul needed a jump today. I love our little battery jumper, but I realize I have very little idea how to use it. We kept activating the horn. Kinda freaky. I commandeered a passing man to show us how to properly jump a car. Hopefully I'll remember now. I hate being stereotypical in that sort of a way.

I feel like I have a caffeine high. Which, incidentally, I never have. I've had to make myself focus periodically today. Started disappearing when I had patrons. Eek. That never works out.

I picked up some Edith Wharton books. I really enjoy her writing. King Lear is interesting, some things about it annoy me. The Fool says nuncle way too much and Edgar doesn't shutup about the foul fiend. Oy. I guess I'm kind of waiting for things to develop. I wanted to read it because of what John Brenner said about when Cordelia dies and Lear howls three times. So intense. Shakespeare is so intense. The human drama and the poetry! I keep catching Twelfth Night on tv. Still haven't seen the very beginning, so I need to catch it again. As strange as this sounds I really enjoy the mixed up sexual identity stuff, the turmoil and the tension. The woman disguised as a male soldier, in love with her Captain, the night in the barn listening to the melancholy song of the beggar, on the verge of a kiss because they know they both love each other. In that time there was _no_ shame in openly loving someone of the same sex, not romantically, but still intensely. I think it's beautiful! Love! Also it seemed people had no problem expressing love even when it wasn't returned. I think we tend to be ashamed to love without reciprocation now.

Something else that I think is wonderful is the seen in Room with a View when the romantic boy (can't remember his name) is clinging to the branches of a tree hanging over a hill in the Italian country side screaming "Love! Beauty!" and other things like that. It is apparently a catholic thing, but I think it's great!