Thursday, July 7, 2011

Open ended questions and insecure ideals.

"I started inventing things, and then I couldn't stop, like beavers, which I know about. People think they cut down trees so they can build dams, but in reality it's because their teeth never stop growing, and if they didn't constantly file them down by cutting through all of those trees, their teeth would start to grow into their own faces, which would kill them. That's how my brain was."
— Jonathan Safran Foer (Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close)

I think I have discovered a new mental condition which sets in when one is approximately twenty five years old and leads its victim to take great joy in events and activities revered by the elderly (early bird specials, knitting, going to bed at 9 o'clock, grandma sweaters, scrapbooking, so and so forth). About a year into the onset of the condition, physical manifestations of being elderly start to develop. These symptoms include: forgetfulness, exhaustion and waking up at 2:30 AM to go pee.

Open ended questions and insecure ideals

I love paper: http://www.fastcompany.com/blog/cliff-kuang/design-innovation/paper-art



"May your coming year be filled with magic and dreams and good madness. I hope you read some fine books and kiss someone who thinks you're wonderful, and don't forget to make some art -- write or draw or build or sing or live as only you can. And I hope, somewhere in the next year, you surprise yourself."
— Neil Gaiman

I am truly turning into a dude. Yesterday, instead of attending class like a responsible adult, I walked around the mall for five hours. True story. Back to my point. There is an abundance of boobs in Scottsdale. I was walking out of one store, when a woman was entering, she was just tall enough (which really isn’t that tall) for her boobs to be in.my.face. as she entered. No joke, upon seeing these spilling specimens my mind responded “BOOBS”. Not in a way to frighten me into thinking that the “L Word” has influenced my sexual preference, but in the way a douchey simple minded man might be stunned by such jugs.


Also, I have something else to say about douchey dudes. It is not smooth to call a woman at a gas station “Lil Mama” and then proceed to invite her to a “Tattooing party”. But as bad as that is, it doesn’t stop there. You should neither suggest that she get your name tattooed on her arm, or suggest that it be inked in all caps. Do guys really think that shit works?

 I enjoy being a girl.

Except for when my uterus feels like it's trying to separate itself from my body.

‘"It is not always needful for truth to take a definite shape," wrote Johann Wolfgang von Goethe. "It is enough if it hovers about us like a spirit and produces harmony; if it is wafted through the air like the sound of a bell, grave and kindly." With this quote, I'm alerting you to the fact that a new truth is now floating into your world, Sagittarius. It'll be misty and sparkly, yet somehow also decisive and lucid. It will comfort you and yours, but also be a bit shocking. It will be sharply tonic, like good, strong medicine that has a pungent yet oddly delicious flavor you've never tasted before.”

I assure you, internet, when the stars align for me, and I figure out what to do with myself (in various capacities) it will be infinitely sweeter than if I had known right off the bat. I mean, I wouldn't want to peak too soon, anyway. That's boring.

“For your edification and amusement, we will add three corollaries to Andretti's wisdom: 1. If you're not pretty much always half-confused, most likely you're not thinking deeply enough. 2. If you're not feeling forever amazed, maybe you're not seeing wildly enough. 3. The truth is fluid, slippery, vagrant, scrambled, promiscuous, kaleidoscopic, and outrageously abundant.”

I need to do laundry, it just seems to be such an extensive process for me. My room closet contains piles of clothes that are dirty and clean. In the morning when I fight with my clothes, sometimes clean clothes get thrown amongst the masses, waiting to be re-hung once discovered. I know what you're thinking, "why don't you just put clean clothes back into your closet instead of misplacing them into the hamper?" I have thought about this too. I am trying to visualize myself doing this right now, and it just feels so unnatural. Like I would lose so much time in my everyday life just sorting and hanging up clothes. Sure, it might simplify the process on the day I run out clean underwear, but I would experience a small dose of the irritability I feel on laundry day on a daily basis. And I can't have every one of my precious days be affected in this way. I just can't.
~
So at school today I began thinking about how scared I was to get in trouble when I was younger. I remember spending the nights at Robin’s house and getting into all sorts of mischief that I would have otherwise never done. Like I posted in a previous note, this was the first time I peed standing up. This was also the first time and only time I jumped out of a window onto a mattress, saw how one grows weed, and egged a house. Robin and I decided to egg a house of a former friend who lived right across the street. We dressed up like ninjas, naturally, and proceeded to recon through the woods, rolling under fences, and laying in ditches. But when the time came to throw the first egg, we got scared. So instead of throwing the eggs, we walked up to the house and smashed it against the wood, because we needed to make sure the noise it would make would not be too loud. I think we smashed three eggs before we started to throw them. Good times.
~

"Roller Boogie is a relic from - when else? - the '70s. This is a tape I made for the eight-grade dance. The tape still plays, even if the cogs are a little creaky and the sound quality is dismal. It's a ninety-minute TDK Compact Cassette, and like everything else made in the '70s, it's beige. It takes me back to the fall of 1979, when I was a shy, spastic, corduroy-clad Catholic kid from the suburbs of Boston, grief-stricken over the '78 Red Sox. The words "douche" and "bag" have never coupled as passionately as they did in the person of my thirteen-year-old self. My body, my brain, my elbows that stuck out like switchblades, my feet that got tangled in my bike spokes, but most of all my soul - these formed the waterbed where douchitude and bagness made love sweet love with all the feral intensity of Burt Reynolds and Rachel Ward in Sharkey's Machine."
— Rob Sheffield (Love Is a Mix Tape)
~
I often wonder what it is you see in front of you most days--and what continually draws you back in.
~
I love surprises. I love watching people open gifts, read intense articles, find out secrets, or take risks. You learn a lot about a person when you watch them. It's interesting to listen, but sometimes it takes a silent moment to really understand.
~

“Somehow, through a flip of the coin, I ended up here. Feeling like somebody at the top of the heart-lung transplant recipient list. Damaged but invigorated and fucking lucky."
— Augusten Burroughs

No comments:

Post a Comment