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

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

always violence, always

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


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


I moved here.


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


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


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


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


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

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

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


boniverotica


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


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

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

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

via boniverotica

*bon iver holocene lyric

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

Sometimes I wonder if reading is bad for me.


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


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


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


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


Life makes more sense when it happens to fictional people.

growing pains

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


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


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


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


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


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


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

sass.

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





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

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

at least I won't force you to watch "A Goalie's Anxiety at the Penalty Kick"

–––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––
Yes, you should all give Wings of Desire (1987) a second chance, I'll sit next to you. And then, at the end, I'll turn to you, look you square in the face and say,

"Look––my eyes. They are the image of necessity." 


And then we can try and decide what that means as hilariously, charmingly, or seriously as we want.

I move home and remember I want to be a better person

For some reason, anytime I hear concern that a book has themes that are too dark for youth I remember this boy I went to school with. He was slightly chubby, wore raggedy t-shirts and jeans, had mousy matted hair, and big glasses that hipsters now kill for. Have I told you this story? I'm not sure. There's never much call for me to bring it up.


We were in junior high...I can't remember now if we ever interacted, if we had any classes together besides band, if we ever had face to face conversations. I remember he had a crush on me and most of my grade new it. Which felt embarrassing and awkward.


Do you remember how we didn't have cell phones? So at some point in the summer after 8th grade, he looked up my number in the phone book and began calling to talk. I don't know anymore if I heard it from him first or from a friend. He'd been raped.


My parents noticed a boy was regularly calling me so they sat me down to tell me it was OK to talk to boys on the phone but I shouldn't encourage them. You see, being Mormon, I shouldn't have anything more than platonic friendships until I was 16 and thereafter all non-platonic relationships should be with Mormon boys.


I didn't say anything, I didn't know what to say. It felt strange that my parents were concerned about my budding and supremely awkward love-life when it wasn't the least romantic, it was a poor, struggling boy who just needed someone to talk to. And I wasn't very helpful. 


One afternoon he called and asked me go with him the next day when he'd be getting tested for AIDS. This was too much, now, I didn't want to deal with it. I had never wanted to deal with it, what was I supposed to do? Why was he calling me? I still have a hard time believing any of this happened, but I know it did because I distinctly remember my response. It's something to add to the list of tactless, inappropriate things I've said––the kind of thing I can't dream or make up––


"I can't," I said, "I have to pack."


During that next year I read The Caine Mutiny because I was into reading big books, in all honesty. I felt they had deeper characters. However silly my reasoning was, I'm glad I read it then. The protagonist is neither hero nor antihero and at the very end you're turned on your head, which is exactly what it's like to grow up.

let's not think about it, let's just look at clouds

what a bunch of creepers

for some The Beatles' studio session chatter click here. Yeah, there.

liebst du um liebe...

The first time you watch Wings of Desire (1987) (Der Himmel über Berlin) you should watch it in class, studying transcendence vs. immanence, and you just need to be patient. You will enjoy it, you will be tired, you will be a bit bored, you will be impressed. Just be patient.


The second time you watch Wings of Desire you should be alone, in your room, watching it in the dark before bed. And you should watch it a second time. You will always know you will watch it multiple times––every time thinking of your professor who would openly admit she falls asleep during this movie but she's just seen in so many times, she just immediately transcends! You don't have to be so patient the second time. You will be content and you'll savor it, charmed as ever by the angels, by Peter Falk.


Do you think it would be possible––for now, I don't know, I just want to finish putting together this zine and distributing it––but do you think it would be possible to create another collection, this time with the prompt, "is there a story you have to tell?" Does that make sense? This one is further down the line in collections I want to create. But it's a thing I've been thinking about.


Well? Is there a story you have to tell?  

note to self:

you must stop agreeing to do things
you don't enjoy/you must stop complaining
and enjoy the things you agree to do