here's some social entrepreneurship for you

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

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

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

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

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

otherwise entitled The Boy in the Hallway.

Today this funny thing happened.

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

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

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

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

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

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

pills are placeboes. might as well be oboes.

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

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

Peabody, you're disgusting*

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

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

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

I need people.

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



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

WALL

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

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

bog.

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

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

just clipping

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

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

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

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

And I meant it.