anything will happen

Jerry Seinfeld

2012-02-27T14:09:00.003-08:00

I was looking at the entry "list of paradoxes" on Wikipedia, and found this one to be particularly humorous:

Abilene paradox: People can make decisions based not on what they actually want to do, but on what they think that other people want to do, with the result that everybody decides to do something that nobody really wants to do, but only what they thought that everybody else wanted to do.

Steve Gadd's Nads

2012-02-27T07:25:00.003-08:00

It's Monday.

This weekend was non-stop movement. I was exhausted by the time Sunday rolled around. I had to nap. I was feeling physically depressed. I couldn't figure out why I wasn't able to be present in the moments where Jim and I were doing things. I felt very clouded and couldn't move as quickly as I normally do. Jim mentioned I was less "peppy". When we finally got back home I sat on the bed, then I laid myself down, then I just closed my eyes and slept for an hour or two. I think I just needed rest. My body hasn't felt okay this past week, lots of physical work. It was nice waking up this morning and not feel any pain or tension in my body. I finally caught up on sleep.

This weekend was okay. I got new tools to play drums with. These "Steve Gadd" metal brushes to play my drums with. It definitely improves the sound of my drumming, and makes the music we're trying to make a lot more cohesive. It makes sense now and as Jim described it, "less jangly". It's true, our sound now is smoother and romanticky. Not jangly and jarring. You can't have a shitty snare drum drown out a liquified acoustic croon.

My singing is improving. I'm beginning to learn things about singing that I didn't know before, and I'm learning a lot about my vocal limitations and how to work with them so that they work for me. I'm learning so much. It's a nice change to learn music. I can't emphasize this enough. I'm also learning how to learn again. I've noticed I've become too arrogant toward learning new things. I've forgotten how to be humble. It's important to be humble when learning and trying new things, and not approach it with an inflated ego. My ego's been inflated from years of doing things my own way and getting good at doing things in a specific way. I've become inflexible as a result, but that's changing. Slowly, but surely. It's good.

What else, what else, we're getting our new house keys this Wednesday. We're very excited to be moving this month and finally living there in April. We're going to go this weekend and clean up the new place and bring our small things in. By April we'll move in to a clean, organized home, where we can just go to bed in, and wake up and eat in and do the rest of our living in, without the hassle of organizing everything in a short time with lots of stress. We're lucky, we get a whole month to do the moving without worrying about cramming it all into one short burst of a weekend.

This upcoming weekend we're also planning on going to see Tim and Eric's Billion $ Movie in DC. How great is that? Those two assholes have finally FINALLY done it! I'm pretty excited about this one.

I'm listening to Cat Power's "Wonderwall" cover. It amazes me that someone can turn such a (insert demeaning adjective) song into something so beautiful and meaningful. I can only hope to do that someday. Or make my own songs that are so beautiful and meaningful.

Oh yeah, and painting, I'm still interested in that. I've just taken a small break and have put working on it behind me for a while. I've had lots of ideas lately though. I keep seeing images of people in my head, in black and white, and they are sleeping, but it also looks as though they might be dead or in the quiet and slow process of dying. I can't tell. I would like to make a series of paintings where people look either dead or asleep. I had this image of people in a work place, a salon namely (my job), all asleep, softly frozen in their tasks. Maybe they are dead, or just napping, or dying from carbon monoxide poisoning. The other day at work I just stood there for a minute and I thought of what it might look like if all of my co-workers and our customers were dying from carbon monoxide poisoning, at the shampoo bowls, or stylist chairs, their hairs half-washed or half-cut, mostly frizzing by the time the paramedics arrive, with the stylists sprawled on the floor, scissors in their hands, the front desk girl hunched over the computer keyboard, the water running from the faucets, etc. It was quite nice to think about such a scene, albeit monstrous, it was soothing, in a way. I thought about painting all of that. What a gigantic task that would be. Maybe someday. My job makes me think about death sometimes. I mean, I think about it a lot these days, but sometimes my job just makes me think of that, and I guess it comes as no surprise.

So many things.

Another week. This is going to be good.

Also, two new babies were born last week. Jim's siblings are now parents to a new little girl named Charlotte, and a little boy named William. Their families are growing, and I guess mine is too. I feel happy for them. I am happy they are parents and are experiencing that, and have chosen to experience that, and are able and lucky enough to experience that because really that's one of the main reasons we're here, and it's important to remember to be parents, which is probably the most humbling task of all, because it takes a lot of courage and learning and not being stubborn or egoistic. I am sorry this doesn't go for everyone because sometimes that's just not what's supposed to happen, but I guess that's extremely special too, because sometimes being a parent isn't all that humbling either, sometimes being spared certain experiences that everyone else gets to have is even more humbling and requires more strength and learning, and is probably more enriching and beautiful than anything else.

Who knows. It's important sometimes to see that everything is special.

Which reminds me.

I miss my friends.

Making Lemonade

2012-02-21T11:42:00.000-08:00

It's been fun hosting my mom this weekend, but I will admit, it does get challenging trying to come up with activities everyone can enjoy, especially when the ages and tastes among the group are more vast in differences than they are similar.

In the morning and afternoons, I showed my mom around the city and we went for long walks. After the third day in a row of doing this it became a little tiresome. During the weekend we drove to DC and later to Owings Mills mall and I got a small food processor out of it as a wedding gift. DC was agitating because our timing for eating was pretty off and by the time we found a decent non-franchise place to eat at we were cranky, but overall things settled down eventually, no one got hurt or died or anything, not of hunger, okay no one we were with died, so it was all fine.

That day I learned it's important to bring snacks, even though French people scoff at the idea of snacking between meals.

On most nights we screened movies in our living room and simultaneously drank tea or hot chocolate made with real chunks of chocolate, and ate things like chocolate covered popcorn, or hot soups as we watched the movies. It was a nice refuge from all the winter that's been happening outside. On one night we went to a real movie theater instead and ate snacks that we had sneaked in.

Mostly we just sat around and talked.

And talked.

And talked.

But on one of the final nights when we had absolutely nothing else we wanted to see or do or eat or talk about, we decided to pile up different things from our recycle bin and play a game of sort of bowling in which we got our semi-deflated volleyball and rolled it across the room to the pile of boxes, in hopes of toppling them over.

Sometimes we toppled, sometimes we didn't.

It got interesting when we brought out the camera to take some action shots.

My mom had a really nice time, all of us did actually.

But I think she did mostly, because her life doesn't really have much room for activities like these, so this was new for her, and thus, fun.

It was much funner than talking.

Made me want to do more and talk less, in general.

This was an important trip for my mom and I, I think, I hope. I learned a lot of things I'd rather not write about, but instead just do differently. This experience has definitely given me a lot of thoughts to process, which is mostly good.

It's good to just do and not talk so much about things that you want to change or do or are doing or will do.

On another note, I am very grateful to Jim for using his imagination in ways that are entertaining and new and not boring, especially in a time when I needed help the most.

I think that there's not much I feel like complaining about, because I just don't want to complain anymore. There's no end to it once I start, and there's no reason to complain either, it really doesn't help, so I am just going to do different things instead of complain from now on, instead I will just keep going forward doing whatever it is that I do.

I hope/think this vacation was just another growth spurt for everybody.

And here we are, at the semi-finals.

Don't Look Back Or You Will Turn Into Salt

2012-02-21T07:23:00.000-08:00

I like this photo because of the ribbons tied to the fence.

I like this photo because Jim's in it.

I like this photo because Jim took it.

I like this photo because it's of a pile of bricks.

--

We watched Sex, Lies, and Videotape with my mom last night. She is leaving in a few hours.

Baltimore, The Biggest High School In the World

2012-02-16T06:15:00.000-08:00

It suddenly dawns on me that Baltimore feels like a very large high school. Not in any bad kind of way, but in a straightforward, not affecting sort of way - this realization does not bother me. I say that it feels like a high school because it seems like "everyone" knows each other here, or has heard of or knows of each other, and if not personally then by the third degree there is most likely connection to each other, and if you dig a little deeper, most likely than not sometimes some people seem to belong to a certain clique, whether it's their workplace clique, their college clique, their neighborhood clique, bar they frequent clique, random activity they partake in clique, and so on, and so forth. These thoughts came to me after we learned that our new landlord happens to be the old landlord for a person Jim has toured with a few times before, a "chum" if you may. And it just so happened to be that like most people in high school often do, our new landlord gave us some dirt (gossip) on said chum's private life, for no reason at all. We didn't ask. He just volunteered the information. And it was a little baffling. Like how he talked about it and all.

It's weird to come to a point where I feel like there's not too much protection from my personal life in a city like Baltimore (where it's small, and the chances of knowing or hearing of people are larger). It seems like if you've lived here more than 4 years you're also bound to your past in a way that is unforgiving, more so than in a city the size of oh, let's just say New York. Like for instance, here's an example, if you are in a band for a while and your identity becomes that person that is in this band, something interchangeable like that, and then the band stops working and splits, then somehow your identity in the future is still that person that was once in that band, to many people here, and probably never just that person, a stand alone person with a myriad of qualities that exempts you from being reduced to an association with your former self. A self you may probably even want to forget. It's inescapable, you will always be asked or talked about your current or past music endeavors, for a little while at least. Who knows. I don't know what I'm talking about. I guess I do know a little bit of what I am talking about, but I guess I don't really know if it's something that is worth generalizing the entire city of Baltimore as doing to each other. But there is some truth to all of this though! Totally worth paying attention to.

It's a fine city, and by fine I mean an okay city, like when a teenager responds "fine" to the never-failed-to-be-asked question of "how was school today?". It's a city like any other city, except a lot smaller, so it has a lot of shortcomings, especially social ones, but for the most part it works out nicely at the end of the day. It's a cheap place to live with lots of things to hold your interest, seriously, what could be better? A beach too? In the end no one in this city can ever really dictate how any given situation will affect you, but I will say however that there is one truth to Baltimore, and it is that it's not uncommon for people to have this exact conversation with each other about the their perceptions of the city/community. Strange? Definitely. Never have I ever lived in a place/or have been a part of a community where I have talked so much about it because of some desperate need to understand it.

--

On another note my mom comes today for a long weekend visit. I'm excited to spend some mother-daughter quality time with her. I really miss doing that with her. Sometimes I just need a person who is so far removed from my immediate life to shed some perspective and provide a sort of ballast for me, just to ground me a little bit more and remind me of who I am in some ways. My mom somehow just does that, without even trying. I feel less insane sometimes when she's around. I mean, I guess I feel way less insane lately in general, but now that she will be here it will feel more like home or something.

I'm excited to take her to see our new house! Some news on that is that we've paid our deposit and first month's rent, we'll get the keys in a few days or a week or so, and by March first we can start moving in. In the meantime I can just walk around Mt. Vernon with my mom and show her all the nice things in the area that are in proximity to the new place. She's going to be happy about it, I can already tell, it's a nice place. Jim and I are happy it's officially being rented out to us.

Hmm what else... we will just be busy all weekend long I guess. The following week I go back to work. Our work vacation will be over soon. I kind of miss working. I have been enjoying working lately so this vacation is kind of unnecessary; work gives me structure and helps me get away from my own thoughts sometimes, which I like a lot lately. This week has been a struggle to keep myself occupied. I haven't even painted. I haven't been to my studio all month. I haven't given up though! A break is good I guess.

I Dunno, I Guess

2012-02-13T14:12:00.000-08:00

We watched Suburbia for the first time this weekend. It was ridiculous, yet funny. Made me think of all the people I see sometimes at shows who are bleaching their hair and probably trying to live the fantasy punk life in a low rent house somewhere in the edges of Baltimore city. Made me laugh out loud. I guess there's nothing wrong with living a fantasy life sold to you by the movie industry. B-movie industry.

Good news, we found a new place to move to! The place we saw on Sunday ended up being the house of our current dreams! It's awesome! I had no hope left over from viewing some crummy places (all two of the other ones) and thought this third one was going to be another slum, but as soon as we walked in I practically choked. It was a beauty. We all agreed to meet tomorrow at 5pm to sign the lease and do business ($$$). I'm hoping this means we get keys to the new place so we may start moving things in or just get to go there and scheme from time to time before we actually move in there in April. We're not moving from our current place 'til April because that's when the lease for the new place will start because we have to tie up loose ends with our current landlord, but our future landlord is nice and said we may begin moving our belongings in much sooner. I hope he meant the day after tomorrow sooner because I'm antsy! Either way though, there's no hurry.

The best thing about the new place is that it feels like a real home, sturdy and big. The one we are currently living in is nice, but it feels like it might fall apart any second. It definitely needs some tlc, and our current landlord isn't really giving it much at the moment. It's a hopeless little house, and we've run our course with it. I do appreciate the little place though, it's definitely been nice living in a little alley way without any fussy neighbors to complain while we practice music, and it's been nice decorating it, living in it, and being able to spend time in the little back patio, but it's gotten too small for our current lives and we need more room, definitely a closet at least, so it's time to go. The new place is 1,500 square feet big, and this current one only 850. The new place is a three story row home in Mt. Vernon and it has two bedrooms, two bathrooms, a real kitchen area separate from the living room and dining room, an unfinished basement (if we need to we will practice music there, although I doubt it will be a problem if we do it in one of the bedrooms), a small enclosed "nook" (ugh, that word) in the back as a patio, washer/dryer for laundry, two gigantic walk-in closets, and so on and so forth. It's really close to the monument and the main library. We are so excited and feel very lucky to have found this. I was about to go insane if I had to think about living in our current place any longer, especially with the idea that Jim will be working from home very soon, we think. There would have been no possible way to create more room for a home office in this tiny house.

As a result, I am also deciding to end my not-real lease at my studio. Since we will be having so much room in our new house I have decided to work from home. I preferred it when I was doing that because of the convenience that working from home has on a person, but things got so cramped in this house and I felt so trapped in Hampden that I had to find somewhere new to work in, but now I will have to be commuting to Hampden for work from downtown anyway, meaning I will be leaving the house sometimes, so it just makes sense to work from home again on my days off. Before my whole life consisted of my house, and the depressingly close vicinity my job holds to it. Now when I leave my job, I also leave the neighborhood, our new home will be in the actual city. The studio really was just a way for me to feel like I'm living in a city, but now since I will actually be living in a more urban area, I won't need that. It all worked out! Now we can be those newlywed couples who find a real home and decorate it all nice and stuff. Maybe I can get carried over that threshold one time.

The house is divided into three floors. The first floor has the living/dining room, and the kitchen, which is elevated a little. It also has the exit to that nook area. The second floor has a bathroom, which the landlord kept in its original form because he liked the retro feel, it's very Art Deco and has pink and black tiles, and a pink tub. There's a bedroom as well, which we think we'll make it our bedroom, which has a gigantic walk-in closet. The third floor has a "loft style" room which is humongous, which also has a walk-in closet, except it's smaller. There's also another bathroom up there, and it happens to be in the Art Deco fashion as well. La-di-da. I feel very lucky to be moving there.

The landlord is nice and relaxed, but I can tell he is on top of his business and also has pretty good aesthetic taste. The place has a weird updated, modern yet also 1970's mixed with Art Deco vibe, and all the things that are supposed to be new are. He seemed to be very proud of his handiwork, and happy that we will be renting out his building. I hope everything works out nicely, and we won't have to move from that place for a very long while.

Tracey Flick

2012-02-09T06:45:00.001-08:00

Today I have a meeting with a landlord to check out a place in Mt. Vernon. I'm very eager to see what it looks like, I don't think I've ever really explored apartments in the area. Jim and I have decided it's time to move out of our small house and into a bigger place, either an apartment or a row home. We've reached a point where we're realizing our lives are expanding and we need more space from our living environment. Come May or June, Jim's probably going to work from home, and if we stay here much longer there won't be any room for that, or rather, it will be very claustrophobic in our little house. Have I ever mentioned how this house has no closets? Actually, it has 3, but two are for the heating tanks, and one is a tiny closet of stacked shelving. Our clothes hang on a clothes rack in our work room. Pretty annoying stuff. Our house feels very cluttered, so we reckoned it's time to move.

So far we've looked at a little row house in Seton Hill. I liked it a lot because it had a patio (albeit cinder blocked in like a small prison), a gigantic finished attic bedroom, a real bedroom, a fireplace, wood floors, carpeting, a separate kitchen, lots of closets, a basement (unfinished, but still, storage!), and a washer and dryer for laundry. Plus new appliances. Plus it was all under $1000.00 a month. We decided against it because the area surrounding it felt a little sketchy. We're kinda trying to avoid sketchy areas from now on because we know that sooner or later they catch up to you, especially in Baltimore, so increasing the risk would mean moving nearby the bad areas. But alas, nice row homes do exist and we're determined to find one in our price range. Today I meet to look at a large apartment above a storefront near Read St. I hope it's nice. This weekend we're going to look at a 1,500 sq ft row house on Cathedral St. We think it's gonna be scummy inside because it's in such a nice area and sounds too good to be true but we're still going to look at it anyway, just in case we're proved very wrong (hopefully!).

--

Last night we watched the movie Slacker. I had never seen it but Jim had. We had a very long conversation about it for 3 hours before bed. We stayed up til 1:30am just talking about our lives in relation to that movie, and how the movie is really just a fantasy world created by driven people who aren't slackers at all, and how much of an influence movies have on the psyche and how sad it is because in the end the influences media have on us are really just fantasy worlds that don't exist, and eventually you have a brutal awakening into adulthood where you realize that life really isn't that kind of way and never will be, but rather a continuum of maybe good and maybe bad feelings, but overall a neutral state where maybe things happen, if you let them or work for them. Or something like that. It went on for hours. Very busy chatter. We talked about the time our spirits broke and what that was like and why it happened. We talked about how we feel now as adults in our current lives. It was nice to do this. I think we both needed to let these things out and to listen to each other. It's important to know who you're sleeping with every single night. I am happy to be doing these things.

Yeah so no more fantasy land. I'm trying to get to a place where things just happen to me and I accept them and try not to get so caught up in the bad feelings of any situation. I'm just working on being at peace with myself and my shortcomings and whatever life brings to me. It's no use otherwise.

The hardest thing to discover was that no one ever really reaches a state of everlasting, permanent happiness, it was painful to realize this, but in turn has become a good thing, because now I'm discovering that that's probably why we're all alive.

Fool

2012-02-07T13:26:00.000-08:00

I've been listening to mostly Cat Power this afternoon while painting. It's making me feel pretty sad. I should probably stop listening to Cat Power this afternoon. I read her biography on Wikipedia and it was pretty depressing too. I can relate to some of her life stories, I've had a few similar experiences, but I won't mention which ones. No, I definitely did not date Bill Callahan, nor bought a house in South Beach (yet?), but the more traumatic stories are the ones I feel I can relate to. Unfortunately. So in turn knowing these bits about her bring back my own personal memories when I hear her songs. Darn. This makes it hard to want to listen to her music, even though I like her songs a lot. It also reminds me a lot a lot of a person I was once very close to that I do not speak to any longer. This makes it very hard for me to go through her music without feeling like I will fall into a pitiful bout of sadness and tears.

Reminds me a lot of the person I was in Kansas and Miami.

: (

Saint Mary's

2012-02-06T05:55:00.000-08:00

I have decided to quit worrying about my future all the time. I decided this sometime last week. I found I was telling myself I was feeling tired of thinking so much about things that I cannot control, like my future. In turn, I've decided not to apply for any graduate schools just yet and see what happens to my life and my interests this upcoming year. I don't think I am ready to do that kind of thing at the moment anyway, things like apply to schools, spend tons of money, and get/feel rejected (or accepted, and if so, that's a whole other can of worms I don't feel like thinking about at the moment either, because it's a really really big can of worms).

I've also decided to stop feeling so bad or weird about having to answer to people like my parents or other people's parents about what I'm going to do with my future, and about that "art thing" that I do. I've decided that instead of feeling bad or weird and conjuring up a future-so-bright fake answer that does not in any way encompass how I really feel about what I might do or want to do about or with my "art thing", I will just answer the real answer which is "I am not sure, I'm still trying to figure that out, but I'm not going to stress out over it. Anything can happen, I'm fine just making work whenever I feel like it (which is often), and in turn, am open to anything that comes along or that I find. Next. So, how's your career going?"

Except less bitchy. I have to work on that. I feel bitchy about answering those personal kinds of questions. It's so personal, and I get defensive about it, because it's so personal. I gotta work on being less defensive, or not defensive at all. I always wonder about people's curiosity in terms of my personal art thing, I wonder if it's a genuine thing they're asking when they ask about it, or if it's something they are asking to either size me up, fix or correct, or see if I know what I am doing about it, because you know, I must do something about it. Because making it is not enough.

So I'm just not going to worry about anything. I don't have it all figured out, I don't know what I am doing, I am not interested in anything right now, and most importantly I feel okay with this right now. I have decided to not buy into any pressures. I just realized I am most happy when I make work whenever I feel like making work, and that's pretty much it. I am not going to be bitter about anything.

It's good not be bitter, but to be happy.

I am also happy to be working on music almost every single day instead of worrying about things I cannot control. I've been having a lot of fun practicing and learning how music works. I've been enjoying playing drums, learning new songs, learning how to sing, learning how that works, learning to sing and play drums at once, expanding my mind in different ways, collaborating with someone, being creative in this particular way, etc. We are going to be covering Los Saicos' Ana, which I will be singing for. It's going to be a lot of work but also a lot of fun. Music is this thing that I am most interested in learning about and crafting lately. It's a world I never felt allowed to participate in (childhood traumas), but now it's completely different for me, I have a different attitude toward it, so I'm basking in the delight of it. I'm only getting older and it's really really great.

So no real pressures about anything lately. There's also this relaxed attitude I have toward Baltimore. I feel fine living here, except when it's too cold to go out, but that's beside the point. I don't feel frantic about the next step I want to take, or about moving to another city. I feel okay with things here, and about living in this city. I realized it was all just internal stuff rather than anything that particularly had to do with the city of Baltimore itself, which is great, because I can fix myself and then everything else is fixed/fine too. This is what happened to me here. I've learned a lot.

SUPER Bored

2012-02-03T14:01:00.001-08:00

Your Humbling Will Be Legendary

2012-02-03T08:24:00.000-08:00

Here is a poem I wrote for a short little booklet I'm working on which I will hopefully complete in time for a book show in Omaha.

I DON’T KNOW IF ELEPHANTS CRY, OR WHY

What are the trees in Florida like? In my dreams

they are big, they are small, they have leaves.

Leaves so big, so green, so waxy, and wide.

Sometimes I dream that you are there with me.

I have a checklist of sex acts I make in my head

of all the things we’ve ever done on a bed.

Except we didn’t do those things

they never happened

and when I wake up it’s all gone

and there’s a blankness in the room

where I stand awoken.

I am the blankness, an elephant. Sometimes

this seems to encompass the entire Universe

and I am that Universe, but

not yours.

What are the sex acts?

You ask? You do, you do.

The sex acts are

my mouth touching you

all of you

inch by inch

and we are in a closet, compressed

face to face, in confrontation

and I am pulling off your clothes in silence.

The acts go like that usually

meditatively and warm

like humming.

In my dream this is happening.

Next to the cluster of trees there is a deep lagoon

a lake-like hole filled with mysterious water

infinite and colorless.

An apparition, that’s all you are

it seems. When the dreams begin

they too soon loosen from my sleeping and

you disappear again

into a vacuum of shoddy memory.

Once more in bed, I am startled, awoken

by the alert and unforgiving morning.

Here you are, it says, born again,

get ready get dressed

you elephant,

wake up

you blankness.

Then I proceed to my day, because

it’s all mine they say.

Except it’s not.

My thoughts tether to you, the axis

you are responsible for my movements now

my day is yours.

I appoint you as master of my breaths.

This is true, tell them to stop and they will.

My heart too, it goes now because of you

and at your service.

This is embarrassing

why would I ever tell you this? It’s

so saccharine and aspartame, but

it’s no joke I say.

I want to tell you about the trees in Florida.

I once climbed one to its very top

and saw the whole world below it.

I could see every patch of grass around it

every house and every motive

of every

beating

heart.

You won’t believe me, but I will tell you these things anyway.

What does every heart want? You

will pretend to ask. I will respond

every heart wants

a list of sex acts to act on a bed with someone,

but the kind with more meaning

the kind with less act.

They want to build a house around that

a small place to hide in

and do uncontrollable things in

in private.

They want to build cities around the houses because

sometimes it takes that long to find a bed

it takes that much effort to get there.

Here is my city darling,

is how they want to show it, to say it

I’ve built it for you

you may have it.

I am an architect, a millionaire,

a polymath, philanthropist,

I give my city to you,

this heart too.

(That’s what I’ll say)

That’s what hearts want, I saw it.

Millions of buildings will be erected this spring

they will be taller than all the trees in Florida,

scraping against the sky, hovering over the city

that’s been made for you.

Your admiring heart,

it only wants

things.

That’s bananas. Such bananas. No one does all of that for a bed

or a list of acts of sex; pretendingly, you will say these things to me.

Well, maybe not bananas, but you will use some word

and your words will sound like a sheet of paper

crumpling itself in disbelief.

That’s okay, don’t believe me I will say

Besides I am just an elephant and blank,

what do I know

about the trees in Florida?

What do I know

about cities and motives?

What do I know

about sex?

What do I know

about hearts?

What do I know about

dreams?

I Can't Stop Watching This

2012-02-03T05:52:00.000-08:00

And recently my sister sent me a part 2! It's probably even funnier!

This probably sums up every reason why I decided to leave Miami, even though watching it makes me laugh every time and also feel nostalgic, happy, and proud to be from such a place that's like no other in all of America, full of funny people who can relate to these hilarious little outbursts of Latin-American culture. I am also loving the specificity of references to the physical city of Miami, it definitely makes me miss it a lot.

Someday I'll move back, bro.

Maybe.

Yikes

2012-02-02T08:21:00.001-08:00

Funhouse

2012-01-30T07:22:00.000-08:00

This weekend we went to Philadelphia. It was my second time ever going there, and the most sobering of the two. This time was different and more perspective ridden than the first time I went because I got to see many more parts of Philly that weren't exposed to me before. I got to see that the city was actually claustrophobic and not too charming, in spite of having some nice areas in the downtown and western parts, but overall the stores and shops weren't much more interesting than they are anywhere else (America seems to really only have like, six stores anyway), and there really are very ugly and depressing parts to that city than I once thought there were, in fact more so than here in Baltimore (but why compare?). Plus the traffic was more prevalent, more annoying, and longer lasting, even on weekends. The weather was less mild than in Baltimore too. But why make comparisons really (I guess I do it to learn to love my current city more)? As a stand alone city Philadelphia just isn't for me and I know this now, and I'm glad I didn't choose to move there. I never want to live there.

I'm always wondering if having moved to Baltimore was the right decision I have made for myself. In many ways it is, and in many ways it hasn't quite fully amounted to any definite answers for me, yet. At times I find myself feeling detached from this city because of these ideas I have of moving somewhere else, hoping that I will find that specific feeling of comfort and satisfaction elsewhere, and at times I find myself thinking that this is a really good place to have moved to, and that I have just about all that I need here. But the biggest thing of all is that it's hard for me to pick between either thought and stick to it, which makes it hard for me to ever feel fully attached or detached. There are lots of conflicting thoughts I have/feel toward this place.

I guess that can be said for just about everything in my life lately, which maybe has little to do with the city (even though the weather is crappy here)?

I feel conflicted about lots of things, like what the next step is going to be that I choose to take in my career path, because I'm interested in that thing lately. I mostly feel scared about graduate school. I fear that no school I want to go to will accept me into their program, and as a result I will have to figure out something else I could do with my life. I don't know what that would possibly be at the moment because I think I just about suck at everything else, marginally. This I'm pretty certain of. And worse, there's nothing else I want to do. I guess that's the most important thing above all other things, there's nothing else I want to do except keep learning and working on art at a school.

--

We've been looking at possibilities of moving to Austin, possibly for school and possibly just for moving, thinking maybe that would be a good next step. It has good weather, it's inexpensive to live there, and it's a very liberal city, not to mention, it's a decent-sized city, not too big, I'd like to avoid that (LA is too big). I've been to Austin before and it was nice to look at, it had nice vegetation, nice people, and I liked it in spite of it being in Texas. We dislike the idea of the music festivals, but decided that if we ever lived there, we'd flee to Mexico during that time of year, which is a fine idea, because Mexico rules.

Just another idea I guess.

I also think I'm sick of feeling cold during winter. Jim feels the same way. I also feel like moving somewhere with him and not knowing anyone. Challenging ourselves as a couple in that way would be nice. I've never done that before, and doing that with him will be a very interesting thing. It would be interesting to see what would happen to us. I feel a little stagnant here, socially. Nothing's changed here for us as a couple, socially, in 2.6 years. Maybe it won't elsewhere either, but who really knows. Maybe it will. I'd like to know. I think it would force us to try new things, new ways of interacting with people, new people to interact with. We might change a lot, and in very positive ways. Who knows what a new environment can do to someone.

It's also pretty flat in Austin, and it has nice weather year round, we could bike everywhere, and more often. It's the third greenest city in America too. We like that. We're into that.

We even said we could just move there without having a real reason to move there, because it's such a nice place. So who knows, if I don't go to school there, we could probably just move there anyway.

I don't know, then I feel exhausted about the whole thing.

I fear having to answer the question "So what brings you to Austin? Why'd y'all move here?".
Actually, I fear having to think about what that answer would be, if there's no discernible reason.

I'm going to have to think about this some more.

--

We've watched so many good movies lately, I can't begin to list them all but I will try, here are just a few that were pretty amazing:

The Last Picture Show
The Friends of Eddie Coyle
The King of Marvin Gardens
The Killing of a Chinese Bookie

So serious, so seventies...

MY Job

2012-01-26T05:50:00.000-08:00

Somebody at my job ordered Chinese food yesterday and got that in their fortune cookie. We all thought it was pretty funny. Also yesterday I shampooed a lady who came in and was completely wasted. It was mostly depressing to watch her fall and stumble around and mumble things and look messy in the context and time and atmosphere she was in - it was all wrong. She kept pulling the foils off her head and saying her boyfriend stabbed her in the face and leg even though she didn't have scars. I thought she was in a volatile state and that she would yell at me any second so I was feeling pretty stressed out about touching her, but she didn't yell, and she also didn't tip me at the end. It was very stressful dealing with her. She also reclined on the shampoo bowl in a way that made her body drape over the other seats. It was annoying and made everyone uncomfortable. Later we found out through her stylist/my co-worker she had downed six shots of vodka before coming in and the stuff took its effect through the process. When she was finished with her hair appointment she stumbled out of the salon in tears. Don't know if she made it home safely. That was the second time I've shampooed a person who came in very drunk. First time it was an old man, except he smelled like shit.

Bad Pennies

2012-01-25T05:33:00.001-08:00

I keep having these annoying dreams that center around a particular person I don't speak to anymore. She's running around violating my mom's front lawn by taking a cow pie sized shit on it, or breaking and entering into my current home and installing herself as a permanent roommate. At times she's just in the background. It's becoming a little tiresome, to say the least, to have to dream of her lately more often than I'd like to. Meanwhile I've also been having sexual dreams in which I am writing letters that humorously end in, "I think you are SO HOT. Wear a Sweater." or something like that. It's supposed to be the other way around, like wear a sweater if you're cold, but in the dream my sense of logic is twisted and becomes comical. I am not sure if this is influenced by my recent heavy exposure to Neil Hamburger's jokes. Sometimes I find I'm dreaming about the trees in Florida, the ones with the large, flat, round, waxy leaves, and then I'm at a barbecue, where many people wearing loose white clothing are gathered in a large patio area next to a farm house, anticipating something. My dreams offer me things that monotony sometimes does not.

Yesterday was so difficult getting through a full day of work. At one moment I had this insane silent meltdown after the coffee I drank had run its course through my body. I felt nauseous, confused, sweaty, and severely depressed, not to mention self-critical about everything, especially my shirt. It was weird. The guy at the coffee shop had accidentally given me two shots of espresso over a regular cup of coffee so I was pretty messed up later. The anxiety came from having worn the wrong outfit to work, in my opinion. It was a thought that over the course of the day kept getting bigger and heavier. Of course no one else cared about what I wore, but in my head I was fighting this really annoying battle all day long. It was harder to forget about it too when it dawned on me that for nine hours straight I work in front of eight full-length, gigantic mirrors and can't get away from my reflection. I was stuck zeroing in on why my shirt sucked so bad every time I had to shampoo a client. You'd think that after half a year working there I'd get used to the mirrors by now, but no, it's always a little jarring. I was having a bad hair day yesterday too, although every day feels like one lately, but yesterday it just threw me over the edge a little, my thoughts got to me. Ugh and that shirt! Poor shirt. In reality it does fit quite terribly, but I guess it's not that big of a deal. Had I been at home I would have just changed it and moved on. Luckily I accidentally spilled hair dye on it as I was doing a color pull-through on a woman. It was a lucky, unplanned accident because now I have an excuse to get rid of it. I swear it was unplanned. Then as I was going through my thoughts again I came to the conclusion that I should get rid of every garment I never wear or feel insecure about.

It's a curse working in the "beauty world". What a weird world. I can't decide if the "art world" is worse though.

Gregg T-Ton

2012-01-23T07:25:00.000-08:00

I've gotten into this habit of buying expensive cheese. I don't know if it's bad or good yet, but it's definitely questionable. Our fridge has been stocked these past couple of weeks with at least two different kinds of cheeses and at most four or five. I've tried Swiss Emmentaler, Brie, Jarlsberg, Morbier, two kinds of blue cheese, Monterrey Cheddar, and Gouda. I've been eating cheese with almost every meal except breakfast, which isn't that much actually. I know the effects of cheese on my physical system, especially excessive consumption of it, so I will be careful with how much I eat, but over all I'm not too worried about the fat content. I don't really eat oil and am not eating other forms of fat or hidden fat, so the fat in the cheese I've been eating is most likely trivial. It's interesting how my fat-consumption habits alternate. Sometimes I will eat nothing but nut butters, other times just avocados, now cheese, next who knows. I guess you can't do one thing for too long. I do love cheese though. I think cheese is the most interesting food on the planet. I think this is that point in my life where I have finally told myself "you can do whatever you feel like doing" and I am. With balance and moderation of course.

This weekend was odd now that I think about it. I worked on Saturday, went out at night for an hour, then came back home, practiced songs before and after each outing, even work, like even in the morning before work. Sunday we ate breakfast at a coffee/market bought groceries, then came back home and practiced music almost the entire day. Looking back it feels like the main activity was practicing songs and the rest of the events just things we did as breaks. I can really only vividly recall all the practicing. We've been working quite steadily. In just a week full of strong work ethic, we've worked on and completed learning three new songs. They're not difficult, but it definitely takes practice. Most importantly it's been really fun to do this, I don't think Jim and I have enjoyed this kind of work together before. Last year when we were playing shows and I was learning all the ready made songs it was just stressful and not fun at all. I also felt like I couldn't be creative, we weren't collaborating. This time it's obviously different, I feel like I'm part of it now. It's a very different feeling and it makes me feel like working harder on making them good, not that I didn't before, but this time it means more or something. Practicing has also made the time go by faster, especially when I stop to think about how crappy and cold and gray it is outside - I really just feel like forgetting that.

I am now 27 years old. I forgot to write about my birthday that happened this past Monday. It was funny. I ate another Baked Alaska with Jim, had 3/4ths of a cup of liquid cheese, and got some great music. I also got money and uhhhmm two really nice packages from my wonderful bffs. I'm glad my job didn't make a big deal like get me a card or anything. Whew. I made it.

Oh yeah, we finally bought one of these ^

I'm Lovin' I't

2012-01-20T05:51:00.000-08:00

The week isn't even over yet and I've finished one painting, began to draw for another, and also created drum parts for two new songs Jim and I plan to play live in the near future, along with maybe two others. So productive, but this is so much fun! It's like having art and music classes every day at school, which was always really fun, except now I do my own self-made assignments. You really can make your life however you want it, it's true.

I think we have decided to play live music again, possibly in March, but nothing's completely set at the moment. I am eager to keep learning new songs and playing my drums along to them. It's probably the nicest break from all the stress I'd been having. I find myself feeling happiest sometimes when I'm just infinitely productive. I don't like sitting still for too long, unless I'm working on something. In a way it's like combating waste of time. Sometimes relaxation is good, but I don't think I need to relax for two whole days, especially since I don't really even work more than three days. If I didn't make art or play music I'd probably feel like smashing things, taking drugs, drinking, or fantasizing about escaping, because I'd be so damn bored, and boredom is this really dreadful feeling.

I'm listening to The Modern Lovers for the first time ever. I can't believe I forgot to listen to them all that time in the past when I could have listened to them. I am not too into them right at this moment. It's true, it's really good, almost infectiously so, but it's a little shallow. There's something about their sound, maybe it's the singer's voice (is it Jonathan Richmond?) I dislike a little. I'm not sure. I just don't quite "love it". It reminds me of bad sex. So much for The Modern Lovers. Ok Ok, just joking. I dunno, I'll keep listening to it I guess. Maybe my opinions will change tomorrow. I guess it just didn't "do it" for me right from the start. That's usually how I know I will like a band.

Bwuooahhlll... that's what they sound like to me.

Less Lazy

2012-01-19T07:20:00.000-08:00

I just finished working on my website. It took me a bit of time. It's definitely an exhausting task, but I guess it's important for me to do it. I think the site is more organized now, which makes me feel like whoever sees it might understand my work a little better. Before the work parts were two categories, paintings and drawings, which isn't really all that accurate, because some of my works aren't really drawings at all, but prints. I also felt like only putting my work into two categories was too constricting because that's not all I do, and in the future I will be making work that is most likely not easily categorized into either paintings or drawings. It's weird, having a website that showcases my art work is like having a little extension of myself on the internet (not today's epiphany), so in turn for a little while I was feeling a bit of confusion about my work and the kind of work I make. The way the website was set up before was making me anxious, I was in many ways actually feeling restrained by it. I kept thinking at times "What if I want to make 3-d work? Where will it fit? How will it all fit?" and found myself unable to experiment and try new things. Putting my work into two categories on my site was making me feel like that's all I should do, and if I do something else it might not make sense with what "kind" of artist I am or something. It's silly to think about now. Glad I fixed the site and my brain. Now the work on the site is all compartmentalized by dates and series of works. Each year I probably worked on two series, give or take, and posted the series under the dates, that way anything I did, either paintings, prints, drawings, etc... can fit in. Same goes for works I will make in the future. Lately I've been thinking about making 3-d self-portraits, so now that can fit too. It's amazing what just happened! Sometimes not being lazy and working just a little bit harder and thinking a little bit more is the easier thing to do. When I first made the site I just wanted to be finished with it so I kind of rushed through it and didn't really think about it all the way through, then it began to affect me in weird ways that I didn't even realize was relative to the way I set it up. This time I just decided it would be better to take my time and really make my little (tiny) website what it needs to be. I dunno, sometimes I just make things really hard for myself I guess, and for no reason whatsoever. Probably to go watch Seinfeld or something.

Today

2012-01-18T15:48:00.000-08:00

My 4: Here is a fun and quick way to stay in touch. Let's see how many I get back.

Four, Four, Four, Four

1. Four places I've been: Hialeah, Red Light District NL, Calle 8, Church.
2. Four favorite smells: Dove Soap for real men, Glade plug in new car smell, indian in-scent, and green salad smell.
3. Four people I think will respond: Josh, Gherardo, Pedro, Alia.

4. Four things I watch: my cat choking on hairball, obese people eating at the mall food court, overpaid athletes running around a ball, sunsets.

What you're supposed to do now...
Hit "Forward", delete my answers, type in your answers, and send it to some people - including me.
It's only four questions.

:D)

--

Jim's mom sent me one of those forwarded message chain letter things so I decided to fill it out and send it to other people. I sent it to my brother and that's what he wrote back. DEFINITELY made my day. What a little jokey mcjokesterston.

"Dove soap for real men" ha ha ha !!

I'm Only A Doctor

2012-01-10T07:49:00.000-08:00

Oh! The Places You’ll Go!
by Dr. Seuss

Congratulations!
Today is your day.
You’re off to Great Places!
You’re off and away!

You have brains in your head.
You have feet in your shoes.
You can steer yourself any direction you choose.
You’re on your own. And you know what you know. And YOU are the guy who’ll decide where to go.

You’ll look up and down streets. Look’em over with care. About some you will say, “I don’t choose to go there.” With your head full of brains and your shoes full of feet, you’re too smart to go down a not-so-good street.

And you may not find any you’ll want to go down. In that case, of course, you’ll head straight out of town. It’s opener there in the wide open air.

Out there things can happen and frequently do to people as brainy and footsy as you.

And when things start to happen, don’t worry. Don’t stew. Just go right along. You’ll start happening too.

Oh! The Places You’ll Go!

You’ll be on your way up!
You’ll be seeing great sights!
You’ll join the high fliers who soar to high heights.

You won’t lag behind, because you’ll have the speed. You’ll pass the whole gang and you’ll soon take the lead. Wherever you fly, you’ll be best of the best. Wherever you go, you will top all the rest.

Except when you don’t.
Because, sometimes, you won’t.

I’m sorry to say so but, sadly, it’s true that Bang-ups and Hang-ups can happen to you.

You can get all hung up in a prickle-ly perch. And your gang will fly on. You’ll be left in a Lurch.

You’ll come down from the Lurch with an unpleasant bump. And the chances are, then, that you’ll be in a Slump.

And when you’re in a Slump, you’re not in for much fun. Un-slumping yourself is not easily done.

You will come to a place where the streets are not marked. Some windows are lighted. But mostly they’re darked. A place you could sprain both your elbow and chin! Do you dare to stay out? Do you dare to go in? How much can you lose? How much can you win?

And if you go in, should you turn left or right…or right-and-three-quarters? Or, maybe, not quite? Or go around back and sneak in from behind? Simple it’s not, I’m afraid you will find, for a mind-maker-upper to make up his mind.

You can get so confused that you’ll start in to race down long wiggled roads at a break-necking pace and grind on for miles across weirdish wild space, headed, I fear, toward a most useless place.

The Waiting Place…for people just waiting.

Waiting for a train to go or a bus to come, or a plane to go or the mail to come, or the rain to go or the phone to ring, or the snow to snow or waiting around for a Yes or No or waiting for their hair to grow. Everyone is just waiting.

Waiting for the fish to bite or waiting for wind to fly a kite or waiting around for Friday night or waiting, perhaps, for their Uncle Jake or a pot to boil, or a Better Break or a string of pearls, or a pair of pants or a wig with curls, or Another Chance. Everyone is just waiting.

No! That’s not for you!
Somehow you’ll escape all that waiting and staying. You’ll find the bright places where Boom Bands are playing. With banner flip-flapping, once more you’ll ride high! Ready for anything under the sky. Ready because you’re that kind of a guy!

Oh, the places you’ll go! There is fun to be done! There are points to be scored. There are games to be won. And the magical things you can do with that ball will make you the winning-est winner of all. Fame! You’ll be famous as famous can be, with the whole wide world watching you win on TV.

Except when they don’t. Because, sometimes, they won’t.

I’m afraid that some times you’ll play lonely games too. Games you can’t win ‘cause you’ll play against you.

All Alone!
Whether you like it or not, Alone will be something you’ll be quite a lot.

And when you’re alone, there’s a very good chance you’ll meet things that scare you right out of your pants. There are some, down the road between hither and yon, that can scare you so much you won’t want to go on.

But on you will go though the weather be foul. On you will go though your enemies prowl. On you will go though the Hakken-Kraks howl. Onward up many a frightening creek, though your arms may get sore and your sneakers may leak. On and on you will hike. And I know you’ll hike far and face up to your problems whatever they are.

You’ll get mixed up, of course, as you already know. You’ll get mixed up with many strange birds as you go. So be sure when you step. Step with care and great tact and remember that Life’s a Great Balancing Act. Just never forget to be dexterous and deft. And never mix up your right foot with your left.

And will you succeed?
Yes! You will, indeed!
(98 and ¾ percent guaranteed.)

Kid, you’ll move mountains!
So…be your name Buxbaum or Bixby or Bray or Mordecai Ale Van Allen O’Shea, you’re off to Great Places!
Today is your day!
Your mountain is waiting.
So…get on your way!

I never received this book after my high school or college graduation, but that's okay, because I can receive it now, when I really need it. I think this is probably the best cheer upper poem ever written about life. It's so appropriate that it was written right before his death, the last book he ever published. I think everyone could benefit from reading this from time to time, just as a reminder or something. Everyone needs a reminder. My favorite line is:

"You’ll be famous as famous can be, with the whole wide world watching you win on TV.

Except when they don’t. Because, sometimes, they won’t."

I have to remember to follow my own path and not look to others or at others for comparison.

Things They Forgot To Mention During Our Graduation Ceremony

2012-01-09T18:37:00.000-08:00

I just read a reassuring email from a friend. She says she's sometimes unhappy about how her life is, in spite of course of the things about it that she's grateful for. Makes me feel less lonely to read that - she wrote a very clear and articulate email on the subject. It definitely doesn't make me happy to hear those less than happy words coming from her, because I so badly want her to be happy and feel good things always, but it definitely makes me feel like I am less alone about my own feelings of dissatisfaction with my life when I hear a close friend say she's feeling the same things I do.

I don't know when or why everything about being alive all started to change or get so hard, but it did, and I've been having trouble lately (the past 4 years I guess) trying to figure out how to make things in and about my life improve. I've tried escaping, it didn't work, I tried therapy, it's really only sometimes working and only for specific problems, I've tried sleeping with strangers in the past, I've tried drugs, I've tried drinking, I've tried extreme highs but got extreme lows, I've tried traveling, moving to a completely different city, did I mention escaping? I've tried just letting it all go. I've even tried dealing with it all in a healthy and sane manner. But no. Still there. Bad thoughts and bad feelings still come up to challenge me, Every. Single. Day. Sometimes I even surprise myself with the things I can think of and convince myself of, both good and bad. Life is the hardest thing I know that exists, and the only thing I know I can do, not well, but just do, and let me tell you, boy do I know how to do it, because guess what bay-be!!!! ...I'm still here.

I guess it's important to remember it's not about the point you're getting to, but how you're getting there. Right? Everyone seems to want this finished masterpiece, this ideal pinnacle moment they can finally call their lives and show off to everyone and say how great it is, no rips or tears or smudges visible, like a perfect photograph that just finally encapsulates you and your greatness, some awesome proof that you did it well, shit, I know I do, but that's not the point about life, nor the reality I guess, not even when you die - funerals are ceremonies that only vaguely recognize your life and most importantly because it's orchestrated by people (who loved you, of course) with distorted perceptions and blurred memories of you and your life to really present it how it really happened to you or how you want it to be presented, or worse, they might even present it how it really happened which may be a bad thing or not what you had intended, so ultimately it's important to always, always remember that it's not where you're going or what/where you're getting to, because you sometimes might not even have control of that, but it's really only important how you're getting there. Every. Single. Day.

Don't worry and you'll be Happy.

Ohhhhhhhh Ohh Oh Oh, Come Over, MmHm Da Di Da Da

2012-01-06T06:32:00.000-08:00

The best part about this video is that it is off-center and strangely humorous. It's my favorite video of the collection (the second would be for the song Mad House, where we got footage of Olga Korbut doing a gymnastics routine, reversed it, and slowed it way down). I play drums on this song, this whole album actually. Yeah, I'm like, a polymath. Just kiddin. But if I was, I would be one.

Big Hearts Empty Promises

2012-01-03T12:22:00.000-08:00

This is the new year, this is 2012. This is Tuesday.

I just got home not too long ago. I had a nice morning, went out to breakfast with a friend, then to my studio, finished a painting, then walked to the art store and bought six wood panels, took them back to my studio, came home. It's very cold outside, for the first time since last year, it has to happen here.

I feel okay, still a little down since New Year's Eve. I was a little depressive on the first of January because I was hungover, well, that didn't help, but I guess I was more so a little depressed because of the overwhelming, overarching feeling of pressure the new year always tends to bring. This year it's a little different than other years because my goals are a little bigger than they've ever been and I'm also only getting older. I turn 27 in a couple of weeks, which is nice, but I am realizing now that time is unforgiving, or seems less forgiving than it used to. It's interesting to me how these past couple of years my concept of time has changed; time is now something that I truly value, the present time more than anything, so there's all this pressure, in a way, to make it good, to make it all count. That's a lot of pressure. When I was younger I would think that I could do things later, like at some point something would save me from my laziness, or from my ideas of invincibility or immortality (thoughts like being able to do it later or in the future, the way I see it, can come sometimes from an idea of being immortal), or rather, the idea that death was pretty far away. This has changed drastically for me, I do not see that my time here is unlimited any more, at times to the point of inducing depression in me, but I guess the more familiar I am becoming to these new shifts in my seeing time and my life, the better and easier it will get for me to deal with and make use of it. It's not hopeless at all. So many things have changed in myself and my life these past years and they all had to happen, the way I see it. It is difficult looking back now because some of those things were painful, but I guess it's important either way, that all of those things happened. It's important to revisit them from time to time too.

Today I got a beautiful hand-drawn calendar from my friend Sally. She drew and collaged a bunch of images and words of wisdom onto the calendar pages and one that particularly stuck out for me was:

Let some of it go
Let a lot of it go
Let all of it go
Let none of it go

I don't know if she came up with that herself or if she got it from somewhere else, but it's pretty cohesive to some of the thoughts and feelings I've been experiencing lately, namely the ones I just wrote about in the previous paragraph. I think the verse is a good perspective on maturity, and just being a person. While letting things go is important, it's also important to keep all of those things in a safe place that you can re-visit when you need a reminder. This is the first time I feel like an adult, in a good way.

Breakfast with my friend today was really nice. There was a moment in the conversation when I sort of lost track of my inhibitions and just opened up that dreadful can of worms about myself and talked to her until there was nothing left to say about my past. I remember some time ago I had promised myself I wouldn't do that anymore, but something about doing that today just seemed to feel right and not inappropriate at all. If I may say so I think I was in good company for that kind of opening up. It was a strange feeling to just let and at times watch myself get caught up in my own fog about those things, while eating, in front of someone. I felt like I was underwater, except the water was clear and not dark like in the ocean, and much thicker, like a gel. It contained me.

Last night I had a dream that Jim was a in a video game. In the game he was a soldier at war and I had suggested to him from the outside that he walk up with a grenade to an abandoned jeep where other soldiers where lurking and plant the grenade in the vehicle so they could all be blown up. He agreed to do it and afterward walked away quietly but quickly enough so they would not see him. After he reached about twenty feet away from the jeep and the soldiers the grenade blew up and killed everyone except Jim. I woke up startled and began to think about grenades. I thought about how vulnerable we as people are to each other. I thought about other people from the outside world, like angry, depraved, unloved people obtaining grenades and smashing one through our upstairs window in the middle of the night while we are asleep, and us waking up to the noise but only seconds before our explosive and surreal demise. I scared myself about this, but eventually went to sleep. I fell asleep being grateful that people are still humane and somehow, in spite of wars existing, and guns being legal for purchase, that we are not all killing each other for hobby, at least, not where I live. I thought about what that invisible line is called that separates war from everyday life and why it exists or doesn't exist and why we are sometimes compelled to cross it.

I don't know.

I don't know if elephants cry, or why.

Vice Pretty

2011-12-31T05:37:00.000-08:00

"Just another beautiful morning..."

Traces of ye olde muscle beach.

The incredible, edible... jellyfish.

I can't imagine anyone being goth here either.

This is what my brother wakes up to every morning, that spoiled little...

One of those is cow tongue.

Weirdest tasting thing ever, sorry mom.

Vegan chocolate cake that tasted and felt like a vegan chocolate cake.

Extremely delicious caramel pudding thing.

I guess we couldn't agree on the same focal point.

; )

I'm dying for an Elmo doll now!

Christmas pizza mmmmmmmmmm.

Arm scratches from Valentino the cat >: (

My pet mucocele.

Views from the 24th floor where our hotel room was located ; )

Best Cuban food in Miami, ever, 40 years and counting.

We didn't get em.

Naples beach sand is like wet flour.

Grove Rats, 2012.

My sister's reality tv style office, whut whut.

For good measure.

This gets better every time.

Like A Prayer

2011-12-20T06:27:00.000-08:00

Due to the contributions of linguist Noam Chomsky, language has been perceived for a long time to be something that is derived and created because of our perceptions and our perceptions of concepts, but in recent studies I've read that this may not necessarily be so, recent theories challenge this assumption and instead opt for the possibility that perhaps language is what shapes our perceptions and our perceptions of concepts. In the article I read the linguist who challenged this uses examples from her studies of different cultures, for instance, in Australia people do not use the words left or right, but instead use all the cardinal directions, which she discovered gave people of that region an extremely advanced concept of spatial relations, from people of ages as low as 5, more so than other cultures. She stated other examples, namely political ones but I cannot recall them any longer. I bring this up today on my blog (that no one reads) because I was thinking about something my therapist and I have talked about in the past that deals with feelings and language. For instance, in Spanish when you are hungry you say "Tengo hambre", which the direct translation to English means "I have hunger". When you look at it like that, she told me, you see these feelings and emotions as something that you "have", which in turn can also be something that you no longer have, something that really isn't a part of you always. In English however, when you are hungry, or lets say sad, in order to express this you say "I am sad". This creates a message in your mind that might conjure feelings of permanence, the "am" serving to (or tricking you to believe that it) encompasses your whole being, your personality perhaps. When you "am" something, you start to believe that indeed you are that way, probably always. She taught me to try to look at thoughts and feelings as things that you just have, and things that go away or things that will go away, and if things like language help to aid this, to try to use it. I think all of this is of much interest to me, especially psychology, language and linguistic theories. I love words, I cannot say I don't. I was asking Jim last night if he thinks it's too late for me to take on a completely different career path than the one I've chosen for myself, like if it's maybe too late to switch to psychology and he said no, and I believe him, because I think the same thing, but parts of me dreads the idea of having to start undergrad college all over again and take an entry-level anything. In the meantime I guess what I can do is keep making art and perhaps tying a psychological/linguistic bent to the work I make. I can't deny that I am skilled at drawing or painting, it would be silly of me to do that, but I can't deny that at times I feel like I wish I were doing more, perhaps contributing more to society (I guess hopefully someday with my art). Reading articles like the ones about new discoveries in linguistics always inspires me in positive ways, but also sometimes serve to make me feel like I could really be doing more. The baffling question of what however is what bogs me down.

--

I don't remember my dreams from last night all that much except the one about intruders coming into our home, and the one of my sister having two little toddler girls except they were very cute and very fat like little cherubs and they were half naked, only wearing a little care bears shirt and driving one of those battery operated Barbie jeeps out in the rain. They were the cutest little girls ever, ever. Their booties especially. So fat.

--

I told Jim last night that sometimes I don't want to go out at all because I get this insane anxiety about leaving our house and about being in uncomfortable social situations. We talked about how this is not good and how we should both really work on challenging ourselves by breaking out of our comfort zones. It reminded me of the time I was a kid and my mom would try to make me go out and make friends even though I preferred to stay in and hang out with her. It sucked. I hated every minute of it, but I guess now it kind of makes sense to challenge myself, or ourselves. I told him that when either of us dies loneliness would not be a very good legacy to leave behind. Gather ye rosebuds while ye may...

It really does get harder to make friends when you are older. I think this is one piece of wisdom I will definitely pass on to my children if I ever decide to have any.

Utility Vehicle

2011-12-15T06:26:00.000-08:00

Last night I woke up in the middle of sleep with a very painful headache. I couldn't fall back to sleep so I decided to take some ibuprofen and went back to bed. I think the headache happened because I was dehydrated, although at the time I couldn't see why I was in pain. Yesterday I barely had anything to drink, and I think it's because I was too busy working or out walking.

After I went back to sleep, I had two very vivid, intense dreams. In one dream I was in my house with Jim and it was night time, we were in bed and suddenly he pulls out two small ecstacy pills and says we should each take one, just for fun. In the dream I said okay, swallowed it and thought about how sleepy I was and how I will probably just fall asleep through the whole "experience". But instead in the dream I lay awake in bed with him until I decided I needed some water, so I told him I'd go to the kitchen to get some and I'd be right back. On my way back upstairs from the kitchen I began to sweat profusely, felt squeamish, and began to hallucinate. I saw a hologram of my sister in the living room, and called out for Jim in terror. Jim came running down and got a hold of me. He consoled me and said it was just the drug doing it's thing. Then the dream faded and I probably began dreaming something else. I think this dream happened because before bed we listened to this one Adam Sandler sketch/recording called "I'm so wasted", and of course, not to mention, I took some headache medicine probably minutes before the dream happened. The dream was probably telling my body it needed water.

The second dream was much stranger. I was on a pier on the edge of a restaurant building with a bunch of other people while a coffee/barista competition gala was going on. My mom and I were sitting at a table together in what seemed like the front row and in the back row there were people I could recognize from the Baltimore music community, all attentively watching the competition. I was annoyed by the fact that I had to be there, and also felt mildly embarrassed to be there with my mom (much like Angela Chase does any time she's with her mom in any given scene). A man in a black and white waiter's outfit came up to me and gave me a piece of uncooked lobster tail and said that I was now responsible for the safekeeping of the lobster tail until Jay arrives (Jay is my old boss in real life). I became extremely irritated and disgusted by the whole thing but I agreed to keep an eye on the flimsy piece of meat. Suddenly all the baristas were called to the center of the pier so they could prepare for the competition, and even though I wasn't participating, I still had to go because of the lobster tail. I walked to the center and suddenly a man standing next to me grabs the lobster tail and put it into a little cup of coffee, then placed it on the table where the first competitor was beginning to make his drink. I became confused and panicked a little and started to tell the man that the tail was for a man named Jay and that he should get it back to me so I wouldn't lose it. As he walked to do that, two very large airplanes appeared overhead and on their bellies the words "Whole Foods" were in large print. The crowd tried to run for cover and parts remained paralyzed in wonderment as they realized the planes were only large because they were extremely and dangerously close, as though they were falling toward us. As they came crashing down I stood in amazement and watched it crush everyone who hadn't moved out of its way. I realized I was crushed too and remember thinking "This is what it feels like to die". Then I woke up.

It was a very strange dream, almost like a work of fiction, sort of reminded me of Don DeLillo's work or even Alice Munro a bit, where life and all it's characters are just toyed with, and things are comical in a way and some disaster always interferes with their little universe, and it's always too strange for real life, or at least because of the way the moments are arranged or composed. I liked that dream a lot.

In other dreams I had last night I recall being in a nice hotel with members of Jim's family and members of my family. Everyone was cranky. Then I also dreamed I was on a school bus with lots of people and we were coming back from a field trip and were all on a very long bridge heading back toward the city. The bridge was above an ocean and the bus skidded off and we all sunk into the water, except we didn't drown and could walk on it, like Jesuses. It was calming in a way. Then I also remember dreaming of my nephew. He was older and taller but still possessed his baby head and face, except he could speak more eloquently because of his age. I had to bathe him and noticed his penis had grown like the rest of him, this was kind of an awkward one. I also dreamed I was in a very beautiful cabin, except it looked like a newly crafted cabin, like the ones in those Dwell magazines where they feature eco-friendly stark and modern architecture. The cabin was a home, a "venue", and a store. I walked to the store part and found a bunch of very tall shelves fully stocked with Japanese comics and Japanese fashion magazines, I was very happy about this. Outside of the cabin there was a tiny moat surrounding it and you "crossed" it via a cute little foot bridge.

This morning I woke up and realized I don't have a headache any more.

--

Yesterday in therapy I didn't really have all that much to say. I had to make things up and my therapist and I both knew it. Sessions are becoming more and more like a version of this. I think I am doing much better than I have ever been doing, and my progress is beginning to steady itself. I think most of the issues I was having before are just things of the past now, and namely because I've worked through them, but also because I've really worked through the biggest of all the issues I'd been having, which coincidentally made the rest of the issues easier to work through or just disappear (or like in the past, it made the smaller issues seem like gigantic insurmountable ones as well). I think in the coming month of January 2012, I plan to terminate my sessions and finally challenge myself to deal with my issues or new issues all on my own and without the help of "coping tools" like drugs or alcohol or other escapist means. It's definitely possible and there's no doubt in my mind that I can do it.

--

I told Jim yesterday that I think a lot of people I've met in Baltimore smoke week or still smoke weed, probably on a daily basis. I then told him I am glad we don't and that we aren't interested in doing that stuff. Then I told him I feel like any time I go out with people who do smoke weed and they offer and I say no, I begin to feel like an outcast, or a little conservative tight ass. But then I thought to myself that if I caved in and did smoke weed that I would just be succumbing to peer pressure, because in reality I don't enjoy smoking weed and I would end up feeling really slow for the entire day, because that's how I end up feeling after smoking weed, slow, or paranoid, and I don't really equate those with "good feelings" or even "good times", so ultimately, I just shouldn't do it or be afraid to not do it.

"Yeah I had such a good time, I was feeling so paranoid and stupid, it was awesome".

So fuck it, I just won't do it, no matter what. If I feel like an outcast I will make sure that people who are smoking around me don't mind if I don't. I've noticed that people who do smoke find out I don't beforehand and don't really ever want to hang out anyway, which is fine with me. I wonder if everyone in Baltimore smokes weed. I think I feel it is accurate to say that maybe everyone I've probably ever met here does smoke weed and maybe even on a regular basis. It kind of makes me a little depressed.

I wonder if my therapist smokes weed.

I dunno, weed really is just a coping tool, really, that's all that it is.

--

I have a new year's resolution. It is to remind myself once a day that I have a whole entire life in front of me that is awesome and/or will be awesome, and that I am awesome too. I am resolving to do this because no one does this for me and it's the least I can do for myself. In fact there are so many things in this world telling me otherwise, SO MANY THINGS, so I am just going to resolve to do something good for myself firstly, instead of waiting for someone else to do it for me - because it's never gonna happen.

And also, compliments from others will just be reminders of something I already know, but will still be grateful for them.

Weekdn

2011-12-12T05:59:00.000-08:00

This weekend was nice. I was able to relax and spend all of my time with Jim either going places on foot, eating nice home-cooked hot meals, watching movies or tv on dvd, and doing laundry. We did about fifteen pounds of laundry yesterday, what a chore. Sometimes all I want is to be very very wealthy so I can pay someone to do laundry for me. That would be a luxury I would spend money on, because out of all the chores in the entire world, I think laundry would have to be the worst. Fortunately that only took about 1.5 hours of our time and later in the day we went out and did better things. We also watched the movie "Sisters" by Brian de Palma which I thought was pretty awful. I couldn't believe in the movie at all, and I thought most of it was quite ridiculous, especially the parts where they tried to incorporate race and feminist aspects, because it just kinda fell flatly, almost jokingly, into the background. The movie was at least short, only 1.5 hours. I was also amazed to see that it made the Criterion collection. It's probably one of the worst movies I have seen this year.

I'm kind of saddened to say that we are almost finished watching all of the My So-Called Life dvd's. There are only so many discs to cover one season, we are already on disc 4, only 2 more to go. Jordan and Angela are now holding hands in the hallway, that's the episode we left off on. It's funny to me that Jared Leto put on 79 pounds one time in his life to make a movie about John Lennon's murderer, which totally flopped in the box offices, like, harder than his belly.

This week will be full of surprises. I was in a foul mood most of last week due to work for some reason. Today is Monday and I feel pretty good. I only work two days this week and then the following week three days and at the end we go to Miami. It's going to be great to get away from the cold for a little while to spend time at the beach with my family, even though they are actually crazy.

I wouldn't be surprised if people in my family were diagnosed with actual clinical insanity. It's funny, last year I got so paranoid about this I checked myself into a psych clinic just to make sure I wasn't insane. After countless exams and talk-therapy sessions, it turns out I'm not insane. Thank god. Now only four more members to go. I think dad should go first. Then mom. Or maybe the other way around.

Anyway, Christmas is actually coming this year. It's hard to believe, mainly because I've not gotten into the Christmas spirit yet. I am torn between writing x-mas or Christmas. I guess I can go back and forth. Last night I bought a giant makeup kit for myself from Sephora, which is my big Christmas present to myself, as well as two used books from Amazon. I don't know what to get my family this year, but I think I am going to go the route of mindless, thoughtless, thankless, loveless gift cards, and only because one: it would make traveling cheaper with lightweight gift cards, and two: many years of getting them things they toss in their utility closets have got me thinking maybe I don't know their tastes too well, or they are too hard to please, so I should just get them something they can pick out themselves and stop wasting my hard-earned money. As for Jim, we've decided to just not buy each other presents this year and instead spend our money on each other by taking each other out to eat really good food while we are in Miami. I told him I want a bottle of real Champagne. That is probably all I really want. Some Bub. We are spending some time in a hotel this year too so some bub in da tub will be perfect.

Yesterday we talked about how if people stopped shopping, the world's economy would suffer, and lots of people in foreign countries would lose their jobs, and they and their families wouldn't afford food anymore, and then they would all just probably die, from hunger, but they'd die. So whatever, it's okay if people shop. We concluded that even though it is wasteful to be that other way, the yucky wasteful way, there will also always be people like us in the world too, who don't shop, and use recycled everything, and think about things like these, to maintain a sort of balance. If there were more people like myself and Jim, the world's economy would suffer, a lot, and we'd be responsible for the deaths of millions too. I guess some of the animals would thrive though. So who knows who is doing the best thing, there's no reason to point fingers all the time and say who is better or worse than whom, because isn't that a sin anyway?

It would be interesting to see what would happen if everyone just stopped buying new things for a year and instead bought things secondhand. Jim said there would still be tons of clothes leftover at the thrift stores, because there are just so many already, they will never run out. There are indeed so many things in this world. Going to the mall and just looking at things makes me feel like I've stepped into something very wrong and eerie. The worst is wondering where it all goes when they haven't sold it all and the next season arrives. Very intense.

These are pre-school questions.

I never want to live in a home where every inch is filled with something. I like how my home is not that way, but it's weird, because I still feel like we have a lot of things. The worst is having pointless things. I feel like in spite of not having a lot of things, we have still managed to acquire/accumulate some pointless things. I guess that's from all the Christmases and things of the sort. Presents should be kept at a low decibel, one thing per person, nothing more.

Laundry Day

2011-12-11T06:50:00.000-08:00

Safe

2011-12-08T07:38:00.000-08:00

I couldn't do it yesterday, it was a tough day. I was feeling much worse at work than I showed, and that's because these days I'm trying to be unselfish with my space, especially the one I share with people. When I was younger I had a space I could go to when I felt bad, my own room, but now I have to be at work, or in many places around many people, most of the time, or even at home, which home isn't too bad but then I feel worse when Jim has to witness my feeling bad. Everyone wants to help or act responsible when someone around them feels bad. Sometimes this affects them too much and then they get resentful toward that person, when they can't fix them, saying things like "You are ALWAYS feeling bad" and warping the truth in ways like that. It's kind of a confusing message, when you are trying to show you care.

The other day I e-mailed an old friend back after she reached me asking me why it is that we lost touch, she was apologetic and also wanted to know how I was doing. I wrote back with all the honesty I could muster, letting her know exactly why we lost touch, from my perspective, not omitting anything that might be hard to take in, told her not to worry, feel guilty, responsible, or apologetic, because it wasn't her fault exactly, and she has since not written back. I just don't get it. Do people want to hear the truth, or live in a fantastical candy coated reality? I know I don't, so I guess I'm doing what I think is best for me to feel okay. Is this selfish? I always hear things like "being selfish is bad" but then I also hear things like "truth is beauty" or "be real" but when I tell the truth, I sometimes see that makes others uncomfortable when it doesn't make me uncomfortable, and then I feel a little selfish or bad about this because I ended up putting them in a shitty place even though it makes me feel good to tell the truth, the complete truth, and nothing but the truth so help me, gawd.

I just don't get it sometimes.

Last night I had a dream I went to a sushi buffet and one of my dumb co-workers was there sitting next to my mom and she said "oh no, I totally missed the buffet thing, I ended up buying rolls and now all I have is a few pieces". And I could hear her nagging voice so well. I don't want to dream about her.

I have been incredibly tired lately too. I don't know if it is the weather or the amount of physical exertion I've been undertaking these past weeks. I've been walking from my house in Hampden to North Avenue and back every other day when I go to my studio, and then I exercise at home later on. At work I'm as active as usual, and that's tiring me too, but not like now. I wonder if it is the weather, because I can't really tell. My arms especially, they are the most tired, and my neck, and I know it's from stress, and sure, I'm stressed, but that can't be all of it.

It is weird how x-mas is in less than 19 days already, didn't it already happen a year ago or something? Why is it still happening? I am going to Miami again this year to visit my parents and see the city again. I hope to see old friends, although that would be kind of weird, but nice, but also weird. I haven't seen most of those people in over two years. I don't know what they are like now, and they don't really know what I am like now either. I guess we'd all just have to drink a lot or something for it to make sense, or maybe not, maybe I'm looking at it incorrectly, maybe we will just hang out and have a nice dinner and catch up and it will be normal and nice. I can never really tell. I know with some people those kinds of activities are easier, and with others I would need lots of alcohol for it to make sense.

I don't know what else I want to complain about, but it's something!

I want these things today:
To go on a long drive.
To have a coffee in my hand right now.
To feel okay about everything.
To feel warmth on my skin.
To feel purposeful today.
To be in the car on the long drive with all of my favorite songs.
To be in the car on the long drive with my friend.
To laugh until my stomach hurts.
The destination to be a forest in Florida.

Taking Advantage

2011-12-06T11:09:00.000-08:00

My co-workers think I am a "hair diva". I guess I kind of am, whatever that means. I got it colored and cut today, it looks much nicer, less weight on the top, and I feel really good about the turnout. I think the co-worker who did my hair for the shoot is the one that's most hurt or bothered by the fact that I didn't keep that style, I think this because he's the one who called me a hair diva or says little snarky comments like that to me. Oh well. I can't help the fact that our tastes clash and I prefer it when my other co-worker styles my hair instead. She does such a good job. Now I just have to grow it out and keep enjoying what I DO have, which I totally aaaaam.

Now what am I going to do for the remainder of the day??? It's so rainy and mucky, maybe I will just cook all day. That could be fun.

I Don't Know What I Miss

2011-12-05T19:14:00.001-08:00

This was me about a year and a half ago. I look depressed but that's beside the point. Today, in the present, I feel much better, but really, that's beside the point, the point today is that I miss my long hair! I regret having got it cut so short, and I regret having participated in the hair magazine photo shoot. I wish I'd had enough foresight to have said no back then. Fortunately I am still young and healthy which means my short hair will grow faster than I can fathom, and come spring I will have long enough hair to feel okay. Right now it's at a heavy haired, weird bowl-cut/mullet length which I think looks quite icky, which has actually happened to me from my own choosing, but in due time this will change, I have to be patient, it kinda sucks in retrospect. Lately I've grown bored of waiting, so tomorrow I'm going to get my hair dyed a copper hue. I don't think I will get it cut because I am trying to grow it out, but in the meantime, since it's short and all, I will color it to beat the doldrums.

Hair is very important, whoever says they don't care about their hair is probably lying. Everyone cares about their hair quite a bit, and I'm not just talking about women, or because I work at a salon, but rather because everyone seems to care, at least just enough. It's kind of sad. I care too.

My hair cut goal is what I used to have, except a more cleaned up version. I remember why I had chosen to have it cut. I won't share it because it's so embarrassing and private, but I will say it was quite dumb of me to have done it for that reason. I was going through some shit I guess. Glad that's all over now, and my hair is still around. Next time I won't be so hasty.

Chinpanese

2011-12-04T14:19:00.000-08:00

Today I went to my studio to show Jim my latest painting, pick up an overdue library book so I could return it to the library, and to take pictures of old paintings that I'd been meaning to upload to my website. Here are other pictures I snapped.

My latest "work in progress"

Jim was irritated by all the sunlight. It does get very hot and bitingly bright in there.

The view from my window.

My desk.

My area.

My studio mate Jimmy's area.

My studio mate Rebecca's area.

--

On our way back I was very hungry and was craving tako sunomono which I had been wanting since Friday so I suggested we eat at this Asian restaurant near our house. I was starving by the time we walked up to our neighborhood and felt a little irritable. When we made it up to the hill and reached the avenue, we discovered, to our dismay and I guess also mild amusement, the annual mayor's Christmas parade was happening, which meant lots of traffic, blocked off streets, and waiting around. It's funny how real life sometimes really does resemble Seinfeld episodes; in our case today was our very own Puerto Rican day. Fortunately the restaurant was open and I got to eat all the octopus I could handle.

Roses Are Red, Violets Are Blues Hammer

2011-12-01T07:23:00.001-08:00

I think I AM too cold to exercise today.

Yesterday I drank a glass of wine at 1pm and then I felt like drinking a whole lot more but I didn't because I ended up buying clothes instead, or wait, I think I bought clothes instead after deciding against buying more wine to drink at home on my way home. Didn't want Jim to come home to a drunk wife.

"Hehe"

Let's Make A Comeback

2011-11-30T06:03:00.001-08:00

Whewy

2011-11-29T05:41:00.000-08:00

It's been an-action packed week, well, last week at least. I had my siblings and their families over for eight days in a row, a small wedding ceremony, a baby shower to attend, and Thanksgiving. It's enough to drive anyone into a convulsive fit. Okay, not that extreme, but I was a little overwhelmed at times with all the commotion and action. It was nice though, even when it got frustrating, because I kept thinking to myself "this rarely happens, this isn't the norm for me", so I just took it all in and made the best of it, even when my brother and sister behaved like angsty teenagers toward each other and the activities we undertook.

We spent a whole weekend in DC in a nice hotel and got to eat really good food and walk around and look at all the historical monuments. The funniest part about the whole trip was that my sister really wanted to see the reflecting pool, but when we got there it had been drained for repairs and all that was left was a very long pile of rocks and mud, which is kind of a metaphor considering who she is, but really, all meanness aside, it was just kinda funny. I also had a little bit of fun getting to watch television at night in our hotel room and making fun of everything on it because it's something I never get to do because I don't own one. We watched shitty Independence Day with Will Smith and I took photos of all the dumb faces each character made when I thought a particularly dumb or funny one came up. It was fun. Meanwhile there was also a high school mock conference meet happening at the hotel which meant the lobby was always full of bratty teenagers, which was great for me because I got to sit in the lounge area on our last day and just observe them like an anthropologist. My favorite parts of DC I must say was eating all the good food and drinking all of the delicious coffees and wine for practically free. I am so grateful to my brother and sister for planning such a fun trip, full of jokes, tantrums, and family warmth, or rather in mine, fire. "Hehe".

The days after DC were much calmer. My sister, her hubby and their adorable baby, my nephew Nico, stayed in my house here in Baltimore. I showed them around the city and we ate at the better restaurants that I could think of without breaking the bank. Unfortunately on the second day, which was last Tuesday, the weather got unbearably mucky, it rained all day long, non-stop, which made it kind of hard to do much walking around. We drove for like five hours straight which was kind of a pain, but that was the best we could collectively do as a group I guess. In spite of that day, it was mostly nice getting to show them around Baltimore and see the same places I always see but from a tour guide's point of view. Just kidding. From a visitor's point of view.

On Wednesday while my family was still here, Jim and I went to the courthouse and got married. his parents came as well and it became a cute little ceremony. After the ceremony, which was quick and painless, we went out for a small lunch and a coffee and later went to McLean, VA to spend the night at his parent's house so we could get up early the following morning for an action-packed day filled with baby shower fun and Thanksgiving wildness. Before I go on, that evening we arrived at his parent's house only to find they had set up a little wedding party and food spread for us to celebrate and congratulate our marital binding. His whole family was there! They brought out two small cakes for us to cut into, and later brought out lasagna and salad and bread for our dinner. It was the sweetest thing ever and they did not forget the white balloons and silver streamers. It felt good to have a new family. Still does.

Okay, Thanksgiving. Very full day. Jim's sister is expecting a baby, well, now we know it's a baby girl, so that morning his entire family, well just about, which totaled to twenty-three people, showed up to celebrate the shower at noon. We played games, ate cupcakes and various other treats, and made a giant family quilt for the baby; that was the most incredible thing I have ever participated in, that baby is going to be happy. After the quilting and gaming, two o'clock rolled around and the turkey made its appearance. The tables were set for all twenty-three of us and off we ate until we could no longer eat. The feast was excellent, and we capped the day off with a nice walk in the park, and a hot slice of apple pie. Very American.

On Friday I made it back to work and my sister, her hubby and my adorable little nephew flew back to Miami. I spent the weekend getting back into my own routine, as well as pondering and recollecting my thoughts on everything that had happened those previous days. I spent an entire day just biking and walking and eating good home cooked foods and spending all of my time with Jim. I came up with the conclusion too that I do need my family, in spite of how difficult it can be to be around them sometimes, in order to help me realize who it is that I am, and who it is that I am not, and who it is that I want to become.

It was all very necessary.

We Diddle IT

2011-11-26T05:35:00.000-08:00

Oh yeah. It was fun. There's going to be a "Real" wedding in the summer though, I think. We're considering it. I just don't want to do all that work, but it might be worth the while.

Thanksgiving, Wedding, Baby Shower, Birthday party. This was certainly the craziest week ever.

"I Have Always Wanted To Be A Tenenbaum." "Me Too."

2011-11-24T16:31:00.000-08:00

I am now a Mrs.
A Mrs. Triplett.

!

2011-11-21T17:08:00.000-08:00

i dont have a very creative family and i wish i did and i think im dying here.

D-Sea

2011-11-20T18:49:00.000-08:00

Master Song

2011-11-16T06:21:00.000-08:00

I am listening to Leonard Cohen. This whole album I'm listening to reminds me of when I used to live in Miami and Jim and I were pen pals. One time I wrote him "I'm listening to Leonard Cohen..." and it felt like he was sitting in the room with me. It was so bizarre, I had only met him one time in person, but I had a very clear memory of what he looked like. His eyes were so big and blue and he looked very happy while he we talked that night.

I'm happy to be marrying this person. I can't believe it is happening, but I am not surprised. I kind of knew it would happen when I met him, it's really bizarre, I kind of just knew. I am okay with things that have happened in our past. I think I can move on from all of those sad and disappointing things that happened to us in the beginning.

Even fairy tales have a wicked little witch. Hahahaha... do I sound crazy?

I don't think our relationship is a fairy tale, but for a time it felt surreal and wonderful and like nothing could go wrong, but things did happen that did end up hurting and transforming me in ways I never expected it would, but it was necessary, and those things changed me, and because of those things I now understand what is important and what it means to love someone. And not in the shallow valentine's candy day sort of way, but really love someone, it's complicated. I have to go to work and can't write anymore. No time.

Next Wednesday we are going to get married. Just like that.

There is no such thing as perfect, but there is real.

LOL

2011-11-14T06:33:00.000-08:00

L to R: Erik, me, Alex, Julia

Wow, old skool. Found this on a friend's Flickr today and it brought back so many feelings! This was taken sometime during my last semester in college. I remember Erik found that hideous football jacket on the ground on his walk back to my house that morning. He got wasted the night before and decided to go sleep somewhere else and early that morning he walked back to catch his ride back to Missouri with everyone else. Alex and Julia were on tour during this time and they played a show in my laundry room the night before. This picture was taken in my front yard the morning after, before we all parted. We don't look too alive and we probably weren't. Alex is the dude who went off to become a part of Zola Jesus' touring band. Hehe, this is what he was doing before that.

Adult Toys

2011-11-14T05:51:00.000-08:00

Flash is o.k. people, really, it's o.k. One time I was either working somewhere or just sitting down somewhere and some super hipster looking dude was getting his photo taken by his mom somewhere in public and he kept telling her "remove the flash, no flash, don't use the flash" and it just sounded silly to me. I think using the flash on a camera for a photograph sometimes looks really great. Most photographers actually use flash, even the ones who don't seem like they do. Flash adds lighting, which is really what photography is all about, light. It can be unflattering at times, but usually it's not harmful.

Last night we experimented some more with our new camera and those photos up there are what happened. It's fun playing with our adult toy.

Not That This Matters

2011-11-13T16:34:00.000-08:00

A guy I used to know in college from Wisconsin is part of Zola Jesus' touring band. I've heard of that woman's stage name a bunch of months ago but never thought much of it, and I still haven't heard her music, but I think it's pretty cool that she's all over the internet and magazines now and working hard and that an old college acquaintance is part of her whole "team". I like seeing creative people I have known in my life doing the things they like to do and getting positive attention from it. If it's not out to harm anyone, it's never that bad.

--

Today is Sunday. Just one more week of hell at work, three full 9 hour work days, and then a long long break which includes family, Thanksgiving, and lots of sightseeing. I'm happy I have these things to look forward to.

Aw, what am I grateful for this year? Um, oh! Gettin' hitched! And it's Jim! Not anyone else in the entire universe, but Jim! Jim rules. Speaking of which we are doing that next week at the court house. I don't know what I'm going to wear. I wonder if Jim is going to wear his pale blue Adidas knock-off leisure track pants with navy blue stripes to the court house. That wouldn't faze me actually.

--

I found two coats for winter at a Goodwill in Timonium, they are great.

--

In my opinion, I think what happened at Penn State is inexcusable and horrible, and I'm not just talking about all of the coaches and culprit involved, I'm also talking about the idiot students who would much rather cheer on a football game this weekend and also protest the loss of a coach while meanwhile kidding themselves into overlooking the inhumane behavior of their so-called superiors. Get a fucking grip you meat headed fanatics, children were raped! Every Sunday football event that occurred in their homes from that moment onward probably triggered extreme depression and conjured up psychological issues in them for the rest of their lives whenever they had to sit through a game with their family, especially if they had never come out and told anyone about the incident after it happened to them, which in most cases it's more probable than not since statistically it's been proven that children hardly ever speak out about having been raped. I can't imagine how difficult this must have been for the victims. I can't imagine how awful the fathers of these young boys must have felt after finding out, if they ever did, or if they are finding out now too, how terrible and guilty they themselves must feel now, and confused. I'm glad everyone involved was caught and everything finally came to light and people are doing things about it. It's also not that surprising to me that dumb jocks would overlook the incident and protest the dissolution of their coach's term; I never liked the jock types while in high school, and here's just another valid reason why.

I'm grateful for another bit of truth surfacing again, too bad it's the painful kind though.

--

I am finally comfortable, I think, about what my life looks likes to me here these days. Here's what it looks like to me: I work, I come home, I go to my studio and paint on my days off, I take a bus or the light rail a lot, I have a yoga mat, I walk a lot, I rarely stay out past 10pm (Baltimore has run out of things for me to get excited about, this of course does not imply that there aren't exciting things happening, but rather,there's just nothing I'm all that excited about, I guess I'm just kind of an elitist snob lately), and I spend a lot of time with Jim and no one else basically. Sometimes I travel to far distances, usually with Jim. I don't feel like resisting any of this anymore, I think before when I was 24 I used to resist this kind of life, the kind where I sit at home a lot with nothing to look forward to that evening (like going out and staying up late) and not having many friends to call, but now I'm not resisting it anymore, I'm happy about it, I've finally come to accept it, I think it happened this weekend. I reject invitations, I feel okay about it, this is the way to go through life I guess, I dunno, who's to say really. I go to the grocery store now, I buy enough food, I read all the labels, I'm getting married, life is good.

Where Have All The Introverts Gone?

2011-11-10T06:44:00.001-08:00

I hope I get this little self-addressed card from the library soon. I want to be able to renew my library card because I'm desperate to look at new art books. I want so badly to buy all these amazing art books but they are so expensive! I look through amazon but the markdowns aren't low enough.

Yesterday and the day before I felt awful. I was upset about friends and loneliness again. I felt better after calling my brother and getting in touch with my friend Jenna, and also speaking to a co-worker about it, but overall it doesn't change much. It's weird, I don't think I have ever thought I could feel these ways about these kind of things. I opened up to a co-worker who's usually pretty quiet also that I feel disappointed with people lately and also a little jaded, and she said she does too, which was nice to hear because the other girls at my job are very much against feeling, or rather openly feeling/talking about these kinds of things. Most of the girls at my job scoff at the idea of jaded individuals. This being spoken out loud by others makes me feel even more alienated. I work with a lot of types that are inclined to big personalities, loud voices, opinionated conversations, interjecting every time they are supposed to be listening, being unaware that they are not listening, and gossiping. It's enough to drown me/my personality type out. I am normally not very much like they are at all, I mean, I can be around some people, but usually those are people I trust in some way, feel comfortable around, enjoy their company, or just magically gel with. At my job however, which fortunately doesn't occur in my life too often, I feel like a ghost, or rather very one dimensional, and it's seriously frustrating. I don't think my co-workers have experienced the full range of who I am because it's rather difficult for me to come out of myself around them. Sometimes when I work three days in a row, I begin to feel as though maybe I'm like that all the time, a ghost, bitter, or slowly vanishing, even though I am not, even though I am still a person with lots of interesting parts.

And oh god, that thing where you say something out loud and no one hears it and then someone quickly jumps in to say something else happens to me all the time at work! Or I say something out loud (well, not that loud I guess) and the person walks away without hearing also happens often. Then I realize this and I do that thing that's called slump, and I groan a little, a little sound comes out of me, I make a little sound.

It's weird being out in the real world, my whole life I rarely had to be in situations I didn't want to be in, such as in a room for nine hours with extroverted personality types; my friends were all introverts, which of course around each other we weren't, but anyway, I had a choice back then so life was different. I'm noticing it's just un-easy for me to function in a world where the majority has an extroverted personality type. I know this because it's true, the majority of the population possesses an extroverted personality, the internet says so, which leads me to believe I'm going to be or feel a little fucked in most occupations or places I end up in/at for the rest of my life.

Why can't all my friends and I just live in a giant house together out in Utopia?

I don't want to work at this, I don't want to change the fact that I am mostly an introvert, I like myself, but I sure don't feel too happy sometimes either, unless I'm alone or in good company (which doesn't occur as often as I'd like), or away from the lame extroverts. Do extroverts feel this way? Do we introverts drain them like they drain us? What's it like to be an extrovert? Why are they so annoying? How are they like that???? How are you like that you extrovert?? Why won't they just shut up already? Why do they always feel like they have to totally hang out?

This is a little off topic, but I told Jenna, "If I have to hear one more story about hiking I'm going to barf blood", to which of course she understood and laughed about. Everyone is obsessed with the Whole Foods lifestyle, which funny enough are the same people watching too much TV still, well, not "crappy tv", no sir, not me, I watch HBO, um, heard of MADMEN? They are forgetting to see that they are just adapting to a trend and that in 2012 something else will probably consume them. Ugh, damn, those people make the whole green movement look like a huge pile of laughable bull manure.

Yeah, it must be true then, I am jaded and boy do I HATE everything. Let's hang out.

True Or False

2011-11-08T06:01:00.000-08:00

Sometimes I wonder how long it will be until my body gives out and turns into the Michelin man or the Goodyear blimp. I have this fear that perhaps I am doing all the wrong things such as eating the wrong kinds of foods, eating too much of it, and not exercising enough or correctly. This fear keeps me up at night sometimes and I wake up a lot during sleep, usually to go to the bathroom to pee but when I return to bed I lay awake for as long as possible ruminating what I might have done wrong that day pertaining to this fear. Sometimes I will place my hand over my stomach and think about this, sometimes pinching it gently wondering what a BMI test will say about my body fat.

I fear that one day my body will just suddenly loosen itself into an uncontrollable mass, hovering over everything in its wake, taking up too much space, becoming too visible to bystanders.

When I was a kid I quickly learned what the word obesity meant and asked my mom about it. Then she wouldn't stop talking about it and still doesn't. At times she had mentioned some of her friends had become obese, and at other times she mentioned the story of this one woman who fell ill with this disease that caused her to swell up so large that she became immobilized.

I am pretty bothered by this, most of the time, about my body just doing something like this to itself, something I didn't do on my own, of my own choosing.

I fear this more than dying.

--

If I start a band I honestly wouldn't mind calling it "Hair Minister".

Wondered Whatever Became Of Me

2011-11-07T06:54:00.000-08:00

We painted the bathroom white yesterday. Now it looks bigger, cleaner, brighter. Then we ate homemade pizza with anchovies, jalapenos, blue cheese, walnuts, and everything else as we watched the first half of Barry Lyndon again. I like that movie a lot. It's one of those movies I can watch over and over again. I used to be able to watch movies over and over again when I was younger, but now I can't seem to any longer. This changed when I moved to Baltimore. I just can't watch movies twice anymore. Not on my own, I physically can't get the desire to. Only if someone suggests could I, otherwise no.

I took the personality test the other day with my psychologist. It took it out of me, it took two hours. By the end of it I felt exhausted, dizzy, and blank. Luckily she came in with a cup of water midway through, I was thirsty. There were two parts to the test. One was bubbling T or F for questions. The other was fill in the blanks. Some of the "questions" included were "In my youth I have teased animals" and "The job of a florist interests me". The fill in the blanks portion was more like this: I failed____________ and then I had to complete that sentence.

It is called MMPI-2.

I will get results the following week. I am expecting nothing new or shocking or confusing or too far-fetched or anything really.

--

I am happy my sister and her family and my brother too are coming to visit me in less than two weeks. I am happy it is colder too. I won't complain about the weather this winter, instead I will think about how lucky I am to be able to feel the cold, because not many people can, they are dead. Jk, I'm joking of course.

What else, what else.. I will play music again soon. I will give it my all. I will give everything I like my all again soon. I want to. I miss it.

2011-11-04T06:23:00.001-07:00

No, it can't be, not another day of work. But I feel so good here right now, on the floor, doing this, listening to Beck.

Jim + Nico Huggin And A Kissin

2011-11-03T06:56:00.000-07:00

AHHHHH!!! I can't wait to see this cute little person in three weeks!!! What a cute little kid my nephew is. He looks identical to my sister when she was a little girl. How interesting genetics is. He's two years old now and apparently a little monster but also very affectionate and is known to blow kisses at everyone. He also likes to hug a lot and say I love you. Apparently he also likes to pretend snore while taking a pretend nap, and his favorite food is popcorn. Adopt him today! Hehe, this sort of reads like a Cabbage Patch Kids adoption ad. He and my sister and his dad are coming to visit us in three weeks and spending Thanksgiving with us too. It's going to be so much fun, I can't wait to have them over. It's going to be such a breath of fresh air for me to have my family over, I think I really need to see them sooner than Christmas.

I'm so glad too Jim is going to be a part of my family, I mean, he already is in many ways, but soon it will be legal, it's going to rule! Poor Jim.

Hahaha Nico on HIS laptop. I didn't have my own laptop until like, two months ago!

Not Title

2011-10-31T05:14:00.000-07:00

Yesterday I was talking to Jim about feeling bad and guilty about sometimes feeling awful things toward people for the things that they do, or don't do when they say they will. He explained to me that sometimes he feels the same way, and as we got deeper into the conversation, I decided to start approaching those thoughts with other thoughts that question what those thoughts say about me instead of the person that I am feeling bad toward. For example, if someone says to me "I will give you a ride to the picnic next week" and then they don't mention it again and don't do it, I will most likely become upset and start to resent the person, probably forever, unless of course they either apologize or explain themselves. From now on I will ask myself "What does it say about me that I am resenting this person?" that way I can see it more sympathetically, more clearly, and also avoid getting to the self-hate part. I most likely will answer "To me it means that when I say something, or offer someone something, most likely I will follow up with it. This indicates that I am responsible and considerate about people's feelings, and aware of what I am saying to people, and would like others to do the same for me. As for the other person, they are probably much different from me and have different standards, so in the meantime, unless they treat me differently, I will not invest any more of my energy or feelings into my involvement with them, I will keep it as simple and lightly as possible between us, because my time here is limited, and I would much rather spend my time feeling good than bad." There's no reason to really ever become upset with people to the point that you prevent yourself from ever liking them again, or to the point of holding on to bad feelings and obsessing over them, which is something I've realized I do sometimes.

--

On another note, Albert Brooks is probably one of my favorite comedic actors. We've been watching some of his movies lately and I discovered how talented he is. He has such an interesting approach to comedy and comedy acting, I haven't seen anything like it that predates him. I can tell a lot of Seinfeld episodes were influenced by him. He makes neurosis funny. More so than Woody Allen.

Halloweendis

2011-10-30T14:51:00.000-07:00

This Friday Jim and I went to my friend Lindsay's wedding to watch her and her then-fiance Nick become lifelong marital partners. It was a pretty cool wedding in that there were more laughs and good food than boring moments of guilt-ridden religious banter. This one was a particularly different wedding than others we've been to because it was set in a vintage movie theater (which hosted both the ceremony and reception). Lindsay and her father walked down a movie theater aisle to the tune of was it the Indiana Jones theme song (?) while Nick waited for and watched her up from the stage platform - not really a common thing in weddings. Uniqueness aside, which indeed does score a lot of points, it still was truly a pretty bizarre wedding, but nonetheless, one of the better ones I've ever attended!

Best of all, even their vow exchanges were humorous and entertaining, and they still managed to maintain a high quality of genuineness and honesty with what was said between them. Lindsay is extremely witty in person, and I am assuming Nick is as well, so it's great that they incorporated their sense of humor into their vow exchanges. Everyone in the *audience* laughed uncontrollably.

And of course then it got a little more serious, sappy, and weepy...

to finally make way for the first kiss as a married couple! The reception followed up with a buffet style hors d'oeuvres spread, and finally a buffet style dinner of roasted pork, salmon, broccoli, mashed potatoes, salads, and bread rolls. I barely ate (I saved all my belly room for the open bar), but what I did eat was pretty exceptional for catered wedding food. I've had plenty of this kind of food in the past years and I must say it's all pretty awful, but their wedding food wasn't at all bad.

And last but not least, this guy was walking around. Yup.

Leave it to Nick and Lindsay, biggest Star Wars/Trek, Sci-fi, Anime, Comicon, nerdeverything fans of all time to have this dude in this mask casually come and hang out at their wedding party. It was pretty awesome actually.

Did I also mention that they were screening Metropolis in the theater as dinner was happening in case anyone wanted to see that instead before the dance party?

This wedding was definitely more memorable than any of the other weddings I've been to. It inspired some interesting wedding ideas in us too. We can do it any way we'd like. Glad I was born to live in the 21st century, where pretty much anything goes and everyone's okay about it.

--

I got a new hat from Jim this morning. He used to own this hat but gave it to me because he doesn't wear it anymore. I told him I really like it and wore it all day long.

This is what I ate for breakfast this morning. It was a salad and it has all sorts of things in it like blue cheese, walnuts, green olives, radicchio, lettuce, onions, etc. I drank rose and citrus tea too. I normally breakfast on other things though, but in an ideal world I would eat weird-ish things for breakfast every day.

He also gave me this awesome t-shirt with Orson Welles on it. I haven't seen the movie yet but we're going to rent it that way if anyone asks me about it I can tell them it's this movie about... I wore the shirt all day today. Today we went to Seoul Plaza and I spent $43.00 on Korean grocery items. Jim bought a cookie at the cookie shack in the mall. We came across an all you can eat sushi buffet but we didn't go inside.

Oh yeah, this picture is of me posing like those lame ass supermodels, you know, when they pose like that with their arms that way to make them look thinner, and they hunch over too to look like, well, I dunno what they are trying to look like but it sure looks dumb. I was posing in the previous photo too. I dislike it when normal non-model girls/women pose that way, it's so silly, we all know you're doing that so your arms look thinner. People are sick in da head. People are fucked. Just pose naturally, it looks better, you look smarter, and it will be easier to accept you as the person you are, plain and simple, if you're not trying to hide something about yourself. Agreed?

--

The Halloween party I went to on Friday after the wedding stunk a bunch of ass. Glad the whole thing is over, the whole Halloween thing. I mean, weird, it's over, but it hasn't even happened yet. Halloween is not until tomorrow. But it feels over. There's nothing left to say about it.

James' Greatest Hits

2011-10-28T11:25:00.000-07:00

WE LOVE YOU JAMES MARKHAM! (2011)

"I'm not dead you guys"

Amountdue

2011-10-28T06:55:00.000-07:00

I am so happy I am not at work right now, and won't be there again until next week on Tuesday. This means I have many days ahead of me to work on my favorite thing.

--

Yesterday I watched "The Gingerdead Man" with my co-workers and friends after work. Then we watched "Trick 'R Treat". Gary Busey was in Gingerdead Man. Watching Gary Busey makes me feel like I'm not so fucked after all. Anna Paquin was in Trick 'R Treat. She was like, the youngest person to ever win an Oscar or something, for like, best actress. Guess the laws of gravity apply to everyone, no one's saved.

--

This weekend is Halloween weekend, with all the parties and pressure and candy and sickness. And Fun. Don't forget Fun.

--

I get to go pay for my studio today and get keys for it. I'm happy about this. Did I mention I am getting a studio? I am getting a studio. I can work there now instead of my house which means I will be going out more into the city and seeing people and getting out of here. I feel so trapped here, at home. I need to look at more things daily.

--

Supposedly it's going to snow tomorrow, but I'm not sure if that's going to really happen, or be much of any snow at all. Wasn't it just fall a day ago? I guess that's just how things are. One day it's one way, and the next day it's not that way anymore. IT gets darker.

--

I am going to go get dressed now, and then to go pee, but I'm not naked.

Permanente

2011-10-25T08:30:00.000-07:00

I went to the dermatologist today. I watched her work, it was weird. She was very high energy, it was barely 9:15am but already she looked disheveled, she looked like what a person at work at 5pm would look like. She was warm but very distant, as most doctors are. She took some samples of my skin by scraping the affected areas with a tiny metal wand, looked them up under a microscope, and finally looked at my rashes and skin fungus and diagnosed me with Tinea Versicolor, and probable bed bugs. She filled out various prescriptions, about two for each problem, told me how and when to take them and quickly walked out of the room. That was all of it, not even ten minutes. Doctors are so odd. Since I was self-pay I got a discount and the whole process cost only $75.00, not $125.00 as I was told. She's making a lot an hour.

Now I have one of two choices, buy the medicine at Rite-Aid and kill the bacteria right away or see an herbalist who will provide some herbal tea or dietary something or other so the bacteria can be gently coaxed out of my system, if at all. Hm. Toughie. Not.

I should probably go to Rite-Aid and buy the pills and kill the fungus for good; I've had it for five years, we need to break up. As for the bed bugs thing, yikes. Scary. I was told that sometimes bed bugs affect one person and not another even if the bed is shared. It's all dependent on the person's system. I suppose these little fuckers find me more saporous than Jim.

Ay ay ay. It never ends does it?

The Trouble With No

2011-10-24T06:12:00.001-07:00

Tomorrow I have a morning appointment with a dermatologist. I am finally going to be taking care of the recent itchy rash and the skin fungus I've acquired five years ago sometime/where in college. I think the appointment is probably going to cost a lot of money, but I am willing to pay for it now because things are getting out of hand and I am beginning to worry. Not that I wasn't worrying before.

--

This week feels jam-packed even though nothing is really happening that I can think of. I have to finish a drawing for a friend, go to this dermatologist appointment, work on Wednesday and Thursday, and Friday probably meet to get my studio keys and then head out to a wedding and possibly a Halloween party afterward. If I think about it, all of those things will take up about a fourth of the hours total I have to spend this week.

Sometimes things I have to do shrink and expand in importance in my head and it makes time also shrink and expand, and it all only serves to make me a less happy, insane person. I have to work on improving this thing that I do to myself so that everything feels about the same size because it's just all a continuum with only the present to vouch for it, time is never actually expanding or shrinking.

--

I have trouble saying no to people. I need to work on that too.

--

I still don't have a costume idea. I think I will try to work on the this week that way I can have something more to do.

I am set on being a deer. I think it would be cute and easy. I will look at pictures of Bambi. If I am a fawn I wouldn't even need antlers. I think I will be a fawn then.

I just looked up pictures of Bambi and a woman in a "sexy" Bambi Halloween costume popped up.

I don't want to be a sexy anything ever.

So I Says To The Guy

2011-10-21T17:58:00.000-07:00

Months ago I spawned this blog in order to keep myself from going insane. I said to myself, "I will post pictures mostly and talk about art", but I knew I was lying to myself and that instead I would get lazy and the blog would eventually just end up getting quite personal with posts about my daily life. Slowly this blog, as have all of the other blogs I've ever kept on the internet, has in fact become something of a personal diary, and I think I am mostly okay with this now. I can't outdo myself, it always wins, so I will just let this thing exist as it does and see where it goes and decide not to worry about why I am so bad about not doing the things I initially intend to do when I say I will.

I should just be happy already. Be happy already.

The thought of my work day ever ending today while I was at work never crossed my mind until it did end, the work day ended, and then I felt better.

I always "Feel" like I wear the wrong things to work. I wore my Holland t-shirt today but the pants and shoes I wore with the shirt were wrong and so were the earrings, but when I wore the sweater over the shirt the outfit wasn't wrong, which is how I intended to wear the outfit anyway, covering the shirt. Unfortunately it was hot at work today so I had to remove the sweater and when I did the outfit's concept fell apart, I just looked like I didn't know what I was doing even though I tried hard to.

Whoever says clothing does not encompass their identity is fucked.

Anyway.

--

In therapy my therapist is wanting to administer new/other personality tests on me so it would facilitate working with me even more so. I have another personality test coming up. I was told it will be a true/false questionnaire and that it will take approximately two hours to administer.

I am so all over the place right now on this entry. I am tired mostly.

Today at work my co-worker felt sick from a migraine which caused her to vomit. I felt bad for her because the feeling you get before you vomit is pretty abysmal and lonely, and being at work, having to keep composure while feeling so ill is probably one of the top worst feelings to possibly feel.

Tomorrow is Saturday and I would like to bake an apple pie and eat it with vanilla ice cream, and have Jim eat it too and go "gee this is so good". This would be a royal treat since I like to bake and haven't done so in a while, and more so I get to eat things and hear compliments.

I haven't really disclosed anything about myself just now, if you think about it.

2011-10-21T05:52:00.000-07:00

Last night I had a nightmare again, sort of. It was also very comical, that's why I wrote sort of. I dreamed my sister was Regan from The Exorcist and everyone in my family had to "deal" with her. In some ways our real family life was a bit like that, except she never threw up on us or stabbed her pussy with a cross.

Self Service

2011-10-20T05:19:00.000-07:00

Two new things, I have a terrible itchy rash due to an allergic reaction to something, and I have a new haircut. Yes, already, but this time I designed it myself after being frustrated with the last two haircuts my co-worker/stylists gave me. I was bored at work and drew it out and during a lapse in time where work was dead, my co-worker agreed to cut it. It looks like a bowl cut in the front, and in the back it will grow out into something of a mullet, but more of a v-shape with waves of cascading hair. I never want to look like a professional anything.

No Use Crying

2011-10-18T05:32:00.000-07:00

This morning upon leaving bed I realized Halloween is in two weeks! I love Halloween, or I guess the idea of Halloween more so, because the actual day is usually a little scary for me due to my anxieties and fears of either getting killed, mugged, raped, made fun of (for my crummy costume), or being left behind in some dark place, but away from all that, the idea of the holiday (is it one?) is enough to make me happy for an entire month.

I love the aspect of dressing up, parading around in my costume, having an excuse to look absolutely magnificent, or weird, and getting to eat some good old fashioned sugar.

This year, like every year, I do not have a costume lined up yet. I know, I know, two weeks! I guess this weekend I am going to have to come up with something that way the following weekend I don't have to think about it. Last year I made an awful mask which prevented me from getting drunk and making out with Jim at the party we went to, not too fun, plus I barely danced out of fear that my precious home made mask would get clobbered. The year before it was the same thing, I made a mask as well, except that year I did end up having a beer and lots of fun dancing - that mask was just a large paper bag with Jennifer Aniston's face drawn onto it. I went as Jenni, what can I say. By the end of the night the mask was trampled in some corner and all I was left with was my jeans and a grimy sweater, not a very fun costume. This year I would like to go as a deer. Sounds easy enough, but I have to do it just right so that there's nothing obstructing my face too much. I guess I could wear some make-up, brown clothing, and some little deer antler headbands children wear around Christmas time for fun, which wouldn't be too stressful. It always amazes me when I see women, and I say women because it seems like they put in more time on decorating themselves than men do, this is not to say that men don't, but anyway, it always amazes me when I see women decked out in uber-detailed, fragile costume regalia from head to toe at a crowded dance party trying to "let loose" and have fun, in spite of the bulk and delicacy of the costume. How do they do it? I would go insane trying to keep my attire safe all night from spillage, wreckage, and unholy things.

I will keep coming up with costume ideas until I narrow it down to a top three list by this weekend. I'm going to start by making a list of things I definitely don't want to wear to a crowded party:

- Mask
- Wig
- Bulky dress
- Wool sweater
- High heels
- Too much make-up
- Sexually inviting attire
- Purse
- Leotard (cumbersome to work with while pee-ing)

It's important for me to remember that it's usually biting cold around Halloween.

I guess here's a list of things I could wear to a crowded party:

- Sunglasses
- Eye patch
- Clothing (sometimes people forget this on Halloween)
- Eyeglasses
- Light make-up
- Head gear (like headband, bandanna, hat, ribbons, etc. Light head gear I guess)
- Short wig

This should be easy. Maybe I will be an "Autumn Cat". Just kidding. But I will mention it is a very funny story I won't get into.

I can come up with concepts, I can have fun with that. I like the idea of being spilled milk.

Come Over

2011-10-17T12:44:00.000-07:00

Here I am wearing a vintage Missoni sweater. I luckily found this gem at an antique store one block away from my home.

Here I am wearing a "Chilly Chaser" jacket (that's the brand I guess). It is lined with fleece and wool. The tag inside the jacket also reads "It's silly to be chilly".

Yup, this winter is coming.

Grotesque Butt Shape

2011-10-16T13:56:00.000-07:00

Good news, the rat was found dead cold stuck in the trap!

It was taken out of the wall yesterday, and now it's gone forever.

Since then we've bought cleaning supplies, scoured our kitchen clean, cleaned up the rest of our home, and bought new things to continue decorating our house. It's been exhausting but nice. The best part about doing this is feeling productive and also united with Jim. It seems like sometimes we're either too busy in our heads, or our work, or just loafing around that it either feels like we don't spend enough time together, or we never "do anything", and doing home maintenance has helped to alleviate any of those unwanted, untrue feelings of not spending enough time together or not doing enough when we are together. Being productive and working on a similar goal with Jim feels great.

At the moment I am exhausted. This morning we biked to Belvedere Square for some bourgeoisie coffee and cookies and then biked back home. It was a very pleasing bike ride in spite of the hills and marginal traffic. I am happy we took advantage of the nice weather and got some exercise in. It's weird to me that more people don't do this, and even weirder to me that more young people don't do this kind of thing, like ride bikes or walk to places. Everyone seems to live like 45 year olds by the time they are 23, all in their little cars driving and driving and shopping and whining. What gives? Perhaps I'm not looking hard enough?

I feel pretty good today. I do have a headache and woke up with one but I'm feeling emotionally calm. I think this headache is due to the past couple of days of housework. Also, I'm just now getting over my cold.

One more thing, I don't think there are not enough cookie varieties in this world.

Phlegma

2011-10-15T05:53:00.000-07:00

We have a problem in our home. About a week ago I woke up at 4:30 am and heard a few clicking sounds downstairs in our kitchen. I awoke Jim and asked him to go check and see if the sounds were a mouse or a person. He kindly rose and walked downstairs to discover it was indeed a mouse, or rather, a rat hanging out on our counter top licking the little olive oil cap we forgot to screw back on to the bottle. Needless to say we threw out the cap and the entire bottle. The following day we cleaned the counter top and the stove top and searched for any holes in the wall or behind the stove that the rat could have possibly come in through. We found nothing, but instead Jim created a little makeshift barrier to keep the rat from climbing up to the counter top. Unfortunately the rat was too clever for the divider, climbed over, and later that night we heard him again. The following day we cleaned everything again, except this time we hid all of our food and condiments, bought a mouse trap, laid it out, but then removed it again. Jim was not confident the small mouse trap would end our problems ("I have to tell you something, the mouse is actually a rat") so we opted to just let the rat come up one more night and instead sent a message to our landlord for some help. The following afternoon our landlord came and inspected various places the rat could be coming in through to our home, looked inside our downstairs storage closets, went to the patio to search for burrow holes leading inside our walls to our kitchen, and went back to his car only to bring back the largest rat trap I have ever seen in my entire life. We placed a dollop of peanut butter, laid out newspapers, left our kitchen for good, ate dinner out somewhere, and later that night laid expectantly in bed for the rat to make its final cameo. To our dismay, it was definitely a cameo, but not its final. That night not only did we hear the rat, we heard the trap slam on the rat only to have it hiss and wail and cry its demonic cries but not to its death. Meanwhile Jim and I were upstairs cringing and wincing at the sounds happening downstairs on our now demoralized cooking station, not to mention the aftermath we were preparing ourselves to fathom. When no more cries were heard, Jim carefully made his way downstairs only to find that the rat trap had been dragged toward the opening where the rat had come in all the nights from behind the stove, but no rat! He survived, the little bastard! That night we speculated the rat had injured itself and is currently somewhere in the kitchen wall either nursing itself, preparing an escape, or slowly reaching its demise, which of course is the most unfortunate due to our now having to possibly deal with a rotting rat corpse, and its odor, and the possible bacterial/viral/fungal repercussions that will now possibly be lurking somewhere inside of our kitchen wall. To calm ourselves that night we decided he escaped but is preparing its return. The following morning we informed our landlord what had happened, and later that afternoon he arrived again with a newer, stronger, meaner trap and a refreshed sense of optimism. This time he unscrewed a filter on the wall where the water heater sits and laid the trap underneath, mentioning the rat is possibly still alive, hiding somewhere in this wall, and most likely will pass through one final time tonight. One thing I would like to mention about rats, they are extremely clever, and have an advanced sense of smell, so instead of using peanut butter this time, the trap was set with a pat of olive oil and a halve of walnut, for the sophisticated critter in him. Jim joked if this doesn't work tomorrow he'll feast on caviar, and soon he'll be eating better and higher quality food than we are. True. Now jokes aside, late last night as we were watching Albert Brooks' "Lost in America", we heard the rat and the trap in battle once again along with the familiar hisses and cries and wails, and maybe even a tiny moan this time, but unflinchingly continued to watch the movie. Afterward we laid in bed discussing today's plan of action. It is now hopefully the final day. At the moment we are busying ourselves with work and are expecting our landlord to arrive this afternoon so he can unscrew the filter cap, remove the trap and the rat from the wall, and absolve us from our problem. If this does not conclude in the simplistic way we imagine and hope it will, we have decided to either place another trap until we see clear evidence (his dead body splattered all over the trap) that he is no longer going to be a nuisance, or if the rat is presumed to be dead somewhere in the wall, rotting, slowly stinking up our home one micro-bacterial decomposition at a time, we have agreed to pack up our belongings and get the hell out of the alleyway for good!

Man vs. Rat

It would almost sadden me to think we might lose this one if I didn't already want to move out of this house as badly as I do.

WELP. Time for breakfast. Oh wait, never mind.

Updates soon!

2011-10-13T10:01:00.000-07:00

I'm taking a brief break from painting. It's coming along very nicely. This morning after breakfast I had the luxury of free time and lonesomeness to sit in my living room and listen to Bob Dylan's Highway 61 Revisited album and I concluded that my favorite song on the album is Queen Jane Approximately.

I found an interpretation of the song on Wikipedia:

Similar to other Dylan songs of this period, "Queen Jane Approximately" has the singer criticizing the subject of the song, warning her of an imminent fall from grace. Although the song covers similar ground to "Like a Rolling Stone", "Queen Jane Approximately" is gentler and shows the subject some compassion. The main point of criticism is that the subject lives in an inauthentic world filled with superficial attitudes and people and meaningless, ritualized proprieties. However, the singer also invites the subject to come and see him if and when she is willing to break away from her superficial diversions and engage in an honest, authentic experience, or when she needs someone to ultimately pick up the pieces. The song is structured in five verses, in which the first two deal with Queen Jane's relationship with her family, the second two deal with her relationship with her "courtiers" and the last deals with her relationship with bandits. This structure essentially maps out a path from those closest to her to a way out of her current situation, preparing for the last lines of the fifth verse where the narrator offers "And you want somebody you don't have to speak to / Won't you come see me Queen Jane?" The song incorporates several attitudes towards the subject, including condescension, self-righteousness, contempt, compassion as well as sneering.

I also read this on Wikipedia: "Who is Queen Jane?"

One of the persistent questions about the song is the identity of the Queen Jane to whom the title refers. Speculation about the subject has included Tudor queens Lady Jane Grey and Jane Seymour. Even more speculation has centered on Joan Baez, as the similarity of the names "Jane" and "Joan" allow the name 'Jane' to be a thinly veiled attempt to hide Baez's identity, Dylan's and Baez's reputations as the king and queen of folk music, and the souring of the relationship between Dylan and Baez around the time the song was written.However, in 1965 Dylan himself told journalist Nora Ephron that "Queen Jane is a man".

I also read it was listed on MOJO as the #70 all time Bob Dylan song. What that means exactly, I am not sure.

Here is the song:

--

Day three of my cold has left me coughing up phlegm and other yucky things. Did I mention there's a Baltimore rat lurking in my kitchen?

CAN WE PLEASE JUST FUCKING MOVE ALREADY??? Jk. sorta.

Day Two

2011-10-12T12:38:00.000-07:00

It's the second day of my cold. I feel worse today in that I have more symptoms, but on the plus side my sore throat has subsided a bit. Jim was kind enough last night and this morning to buy me supplies like sick people food and medicine. He bought me pretzels, seltzer water, and noodle soups. It was nice indeed. I do however wish I wasn't all alone in this house. Being alone and sick heightens isolation for sure. In order to feel less of those things I've distracted myself by napping, reading my new philosophy book, and painting.

Painting has been the funnest thing I've done today. Reading Plato was okay too but he reminded me too much of my dad. I think when my dad was in college and studied engineering and mathematics he had to read a lot of Plato and sometimes he begins to take on a philosophical tone when we talk on the phone that really kills me. DAD, you will never be Plato.

The book I'm reading deals with the philosophy of art and beauty and aesthetics. The book is exactly titled "The Philosophy of Art and Beauty: From Plato to Heidegger". I have put aside Voyage Into the Dark in order to read this one. I got tired of fiction. Jean Rhys is great, but she reminds me a bit of myself and reading too much of her work while sick makes everything in my world feel like it's spinning out of control.

My painting is beginning to take on a form of its own. It's not looking exactly as what I had in mind, but I'm satisfied with it regardless. It looks like something I did, so it's okay. My spirit took over and made it happen. I think some philosophers can vouch for that previous statement.

One day I will finish this painting and Voyage Into the Dark and the philosophy book and then I will start new things, but probably not all at once. And I will get well soon too.

No Show, Forever

2011-10-11T13:51:00.000-07:00

Last night was awful. I was an awful beast. I was angry about living in Baltimore again. Felt like moving to LA. Felt confused. Jim said if I just move to LA it will be me escaping again or something. One time I talked to a friend of mine about these things and she said "sometimes there's just no reason you dislike a place, that in itself could be reason to leave". In some ways I think she is right, especially the part that disliking something is in itself a reason to leave, and in other ways I think Jim is right also, what exactly is it that I could be escaping from? I have noticed I have never been more unhappy anywhere else than I am in Baltimore, at least not for this long. In Miami I was unhappy too, but I don't remember crying so much, and worse, things there were visibly fucked - I was in bad relationships with people and the cost of living there was way too high. In Baltimore however things are not visibly fucked, which is why I feel so confused and crazy about things. I have everything I could possibly want or need here, yet I'm still feeling these frustrating feelings.

Things that I have:
A home
A loving relationship
A well-paying job
Independence, I can walk or bike places
Cultural stimulation
Schools to attend or someday teach at

Why do I feel crappy? Is something missing? Do I have too much? Do I need friends? I think I have friends now, or am starting to make friends. I just don't know anymore. Is it something I am fearing? What am I afraid of? If it is escaping, what am I escaping from? Gossip? Myself? Will I be more resplendent in LA? More productive? More of a better me? Immortal? What else, ah yes, of course, invincible. I will feel no pain in LA.

--

This past Friday I drank just about an entire bottle of wine to myself when I went out. I think I said stupid things to people. I probably did. I know I did. I think I am okay with that. I probably won't do it again. I did feel embarrassed and sick the following day but today I am okay with having done what I did. I am glad I allowed myself those things. It is definitely a lot of alcohol to drink in the span of three hours.

--

This morning I left work early because I have come down with a cold. I napped all afternoon and ate a whole grapefruit beforehand. When I awoke from my nap I squeezed out about a cup of snot from my face.

During my nap I had nightmarish dreams about Jim and the girl he slept with sometime ago. I had a dream they had sex in our home, in our work room. I could see Jim's penis and his naked body and meanwhile all the familiarity and sweetness about ever having sex with him again was being taken away from us during the act of his sleeping with her, and my observing this. It was terrifying. Also, our work room had holes in the wall and an entire section of the floor had caved in, it was practically uninhabitable. While they were sleeping together I walked to the wall with the holes in it and saw a view of the abandoned and depressive West Baltimore nightmare. I dreamed too that my parents were living in my house with me. My acquaintance Janet came by for a visit and my dad heckled her into dancing in our dining room. She seemed happy about it and complied. I also dreamed our dining room had a giant Persian rug and Mary-Kate or Ashley Olsen was dancing there too, except she was toddler Michelle Tanner's age and was wearing a fuchsia pajama dress. She kept singing a song and when her lines "little tiny me" would be sung, Danny Tanner and Joey Gladstone and Uncle Jesse laughed.

In another dream I was walking through a parking lot in Baltimore. In my hand I was holding an empty bottle of Vodka. There were a few teenage boys walking nearby me and one of them approached me. I could feel his energy, it was that of an eager, destructive, angry, and whimsical teenager. In my nervousness I handed him the empty bottle of vodka and he threw it across the lot. It smashed into shards and dust and I could feel some glass dust land on my scalp. In the dream I thought "I am glad the dust did not land in my eye". I walked faster. He asked me where I was going and I said "to the convenience store up there". He noticed I had an Ipod and asked me what I was listening to. He was practically yelling at me. He kept following me. I hastily made it to the convenience store which happened to be on the side of a hotel. He followed me inside and tried to snatch my bag. I told him to leave me alone and that I would buy him whatever he wanted if he would just chill the fuck out and be a better person. His friends came in too. They were wiry and giggly, and had too much energy to fit in the tiny aisles of the convenience store. The smaller of the three also tried to snatch my Ipod but I grabbed it out of his hand before he could leave. Eventually all three of them gave up harassing me and they left the store. Witnessing this, the cashier asked me if I still had my cell phone. I told him I did after I looked through my purse. I walked around and found a shelf stocked full with seltzer waters from Mexico and Germany. In the dream I texted Jim that I was getting a watermelon seltzer water, from Germany. My other options were regular, cranberry, and tamarind juice. I had to stand in the very back of a long line in order to pay before I could drink it.

2011-10-10T12:26:00.000-07:00

I Have a Sore Throat

2011-10-10T12:19:00.000-07:00

The best thing about no Facebook today is that I am spending more time painting and sending my close friends emails. I also talked to my mom and my dad on the phone for a while. I am progressing nicely on my painting too. I walked out of the house for a bit and got a coffee, deposited money in my bank account, and then came back and tidied up my home. I made myself lunch. I looked in the refrigerator, and I assessed things we need to get from the grocery shop.

Soon I will take a break from painting (after I blog and paint some more) and then I will just relax and look at decorating blogs until I get bored of doing that. I like this. I like this a lot.

I don't miss anything.
I have everything I could possibly want today.

I love the band NEU! today, especially the song "Hero".

If I could be in any band, I would want to be either in the band Neu! or The Velvet Underground, but not Spacemen3.

2011-10-09T20:28:00.000-07:00

Deactivated my Facebook account tonight. Feeling good.

I missed my free time.

I remember re-activating it to "connect" with old friends, but that didn't really happen the way I imagined it would.

I remember also having re-activated it in order to connect with family, but they never posted pictures up that much or posted much of anything either.

Befriending acquaintances on Facebook was a poor choice for someone with as many social anxieties as myself.

Trying to go out less, spend less money, didn't want the temptations the invites brought on.

I am hoping to diminish discussing Facebook things with friends in person, deleting the account might help stop this.

Facebook: propels a warped concept of socializing and networking. In reality, it is a bunch of nothing-ness. Not even fun.

On the comments section of why I chose to deactivate my Facebook account I wrote: Existential crisis.

I am still alive. I have to stop trying to prove this to people.

Skills

2011-10-05T05:03:00.000-07:00

I haven't really had all that much to blog about lately. Well, I guess that's not necessarily true, I guess the truth is I've not really felt like writing too much lately because I've been busy just thinking and sorting things out in my head. And working on things. Ah, yes, of course, working on things. One thing I want to point out about Baltimore; never before have I heard the question "what are you working on lately?" until I set foot in Baltimore. People are obsessed with productivity here, it seems like. One time though, I heard a guy answer that question by saying "nothing. I am not working on anything. I refuse to work on things" which was kinda funny and I could also relate to the frustration rehearing the question a million times sometimes brings. Thought I should mention.

Anyway,

Two days ago I spoke to my mom on the phone and we got to the topic of hair. She pointed out she likes my hair a certain way. I thanked her for her opinion and said "thank you for your opinion". I am embarking on a journey of staying positive while receiving backhanded compliments from her, something she's ultra-skilled at giving me. Then she began to talk about her own hair, and I was once again dealing with her personal insecurities toward her appearance. It's difficult for me, because throughout all of my childhood her insecurities were prevalent in our home, thus shaping the way I was to also come to view my own appearance. These past two years, luckily, I've grown to learn different ways of looking at myself and thinking about who I am and what I look like, and all on my very own! Once she was finished talking about how disgusting, appalling, sad, and unmanageable her hair is, I began to dissect why it is that she thinks that. Not that this is new, I know why she thinks those things, but the new part of the conversation was helping to reveal to her why it is she thinks those things about herself, something which I believe she thinks is innate. It's not of course, someone somewhere sometime in her life taught her how to view her hair, and all other aspects of her appearance. Eventually in the conversation she began to see things a little differently but I am not sure it's going to stick. Fortunately now every time we talk on the phone and she brings up how "hideous" she looks or makes comparisons of herself to other people, I will be there to teach her otherwise. I can only hope to, I guess. It will get annoying too, I think. She does need some help though, even though she doesn't know she does. It was funny, one of the things she said was "well, I guess I don't really have bad hair, I mean, other women have worse hair than me" to which I responded "you know, I wouldn't make comparisons like that, just focus on your own hair, because then when you look at women with better hair than you, you will feel awful all over again."

I used to and still sometimes do the same things, about all aspects of my life, and it's hard for me not to, but I'm really really really trying to change that.

I really don't want to raise my children, if I decide to have any, to view themselves and the world in that way. I believe my mother didn't know otherwise, and did the best she could, but if she did know otherwise, she would have done the better.

The whole point is probably to learn more than what your parents knew and then teach them or something and have everyone involved be okay about the whole thing.

It's also definitely getting easier to be myself now that I am 26, not living at home, and doing my own thing.

--

This week is jam-packed with work stuff. Icky.

I'm working on...

The Middlecorns

2011-10-04T18:02:00.000-07:00

MacBooky Fun

2011-10-03T06:01:00.000-07:00

Jim's ear.

New's

2011-09-30T07:05:00.000-07:00

I got a new hand-me-down laptop yesterday. It's pretty awesome. It is a MacBook and works wonderfully. It belonged to my brother. He gave it to me because he wanted a newer, better one, not that this one is bad at all, he said. I am very happy with it, it has a lot of applications I need, it runs well, and it looks new - he took really good care of it. I'm going to take really good care of it as well.

--

Today I feel a little low. I was doing well yesterday up until night time. I've been physically drained the past two days from art-work related stress and it's been taking a toll on my sleep. I've gotten poor sleep the past two nights, and it caught up with my brain and body last night while I was out trying to enjoy a show. It didn't help that I was caught in a social environment without much energy to get through it.

Social things take it out of me, unless I am wretchedly drunk. I feel wiped out today and I'm not even hungover!

--

I am hoping the things I have done lately to improve my life and my state of mind will come back to me with positive results.

Perhaps it's like the movie The Razor's Edge, where ultimately all of the good things you do don't matter at all because life just doesn't work that way. Life will give you whatever it wants to give you, no matter what. You cannot help the cards that you are dealt, just how you deal with them. This is depressing. I thought I was special and that life was mostly easy. HA HA.

--

It's so pretty outside.

Back To The Future

2011-09-28T04:57:00.001-07:00

--

I'm back to my normal hair color. My co-worker Julie did such a great job mixing the color that I was not shocked at all to see the dark hair once it was back, in spite of what she cautioned me about. I love being a brunette and I don't think I will be dyeing my hair any other color from this moment onward. The stint of red and bleach was an act of volunteerism for my job. I had fun with it while it was around, and got many positive comments and compliments for the cool factor it provided on my person, but ultimately, I felt as though the color and style of the cut was just not "me". I must say though, my co-worker Cliff who created my fun girl look did an amazing job as well, and as for my job I am really grateful I was able to try something new (without charge) because it had been a while since I had any fun with my look (corny as it sounds, the "fun" hairdo really did help to remind me I am still very young and able to play with my look as I please and not look like a total clown, although looking like a clown isn't that bad, especially as a 60 year old). But, it's all gone now. Back to the brown. I'm happy with the color and the cut, it hasn't been this short in a while either. This hairdo and color is less maintenance than if it were long and dyed, and less maintenance is what I always want. This new 'do also draws less attention from strangers, which in some cases this for me is a very good thing.

No, no, I'm not going to post new pictures of a completely different look next week.

Fart Fair

2011-09-26T12:53:00.000-07:00

Real, smelly spaghetti installation. Ick.

Mechanical food objects that you could ride. Jim and I rode the little t-bone steak slab.

This one made us laugh a lot.

A performance that we watched through the second story window of the hotel.

At times we felt like we had accidentally stepped into a guest's room. Every room was different but every so often we'd see a room that looked like this and it made us wonder if we had gone the wrong way. In one room we saw a gallery owner on her laptop at her room's desk and I felt like she was a performance artist, but she wasn't she was just doing work while people walked in and out and looked at the art on display.

Me, wearing things.

Jim's cool ass sunglasses makin' even me look cool.

Jim's denim pants close-up shot.

--

We went to the (e)merge art fair in DC this weekend. It was pretty neat in that it was in a hotel room and about two floors of the hotel offered up its rooms so that mini galleries could be set up in them. It was nice floating through the rooms and looking at amazing, humorous, unsettling, touching, and poignant art works. I got to meet some nice people and eat 3/4ths of an Oreo cookie for free. I really liked a lot of the work I saw and it helped keep my spirits elevated about the whole art world thing. Sometimes I think the "art world" is scarier than it actually is, but going to functions like these help bring me back down to reality. It isn't really scary at all, and it's for everyone. There are no ruleZ in this game.

We also ate lots of delicious food in DC, as usual, including but not limited to Chilean empanadas, Salvadorean pupusas, fries, beans, cabbage salad, etc. Jim ate a giant chocolate chip cookie but I forgot to get pictures of that.

Campings Minis

2011-09-26T06:39:00.000-07:00

Kinda dated by now, but they're finally here! There were so many to sort through. The Susquehanna area is gorgeous. Can't wait for another camping trip. Hopefully more mountains and someday skiing.

No More Monday Mornings

2011-09-23T05:57:00.001-07:00

I've realized lately the reason why I have felt a little "blue" about aspects of my life. It's due to the reason that outside of my relationship with Jim, I have no one in Baltimore that I feel I can trust and talk to about my personal problems. I do have a therapist, but that's not enough, I kind of need a friend, someone I don't have to pay.

It doesn't help that I work in a place where people are constantly gossiping and talking with each other about their personal problems with little to no discretion. It makes me uncomfortable, and at times I find myself also falling into the trap of feeding my own personal problems or stories into the mix. It happens to quickly sometimes that before I know it I feel the remorse and guilt. I know this can be stopped, especially now that I am aware of what is happening, and because I have control over what I confide in people, there's no reason I should feel that this habit/behavior impossible to put a halt on. I just have to, from now on, figure out a way or thing to do in order to keep the temptation of sharing personal issues with my co-workers from overcoming my willpower.

Things I can do if I feel tempted to talk about my problems with people I distrust:

1. Walk away
2. Ask myself who this will get back to if it could
3. Who will this hurt besides me
4. Keep my mouth shut and continue working
5. Consider making a phone call to Jenna
6. Consider talking to Jim about it

I have a very good friend and confidant in both Jenna and Jim, so if it is a relationship problem I can talk to them about it, definitely to Jim. If it is something relative to only me and I feel okay about the topic being traced back to me, I could opt to share it people without much thought. I need to definitely differentiate the two and keep my mouth shut when the subject gets away from just me.

I also want/need to keep my mouth shut about disliking other people. There is no reason to talk about this with anyone I cannot fully trust. Again, I have two very trustworthy people in my life, also in the case of disliking others I can talk to my family about, which are sources I can turn to when things between myself and others go awry, in order to "get it out of my system" or think it through.

I need a friend to talk to, it's something that I find to be very important at this point in my life, and I really want to be able to trust others and share my feelings/thoughts with a friend, as well as have fun and go shopping together or something, but I am realizing, now at least, that these kind of things take lots of time, and in the past two years I've learned how painful it is to feel very lonely, so in the future, when I end up meeting a person I can trust and connect with, I will remember how hard it was for me, and how I should really take care of it and not let it go so easily (unless of course it needs to happen for some reason).

Arts And Crafts

2011-09-21T05:46:00.000-07:00

I think I am a bad communicator, or so I have been told. I think most people are bad listeners, or so I think. Therefore, this morning I have done a brief research for websites that explain/teach how to become a better communicator/listener. I did a Google search for "how to become a better communicator" and this is the best website, the first one, that I found that is relative to the subject. It is simple, concise, and helpful. It also has nothing to do with business communication unlike most of the websites the search engine returned to me. I hope I can soon learn all of the tactics to becoming a better communicator/listener. This site mostly poses general ideas to begin working on this problem of mine, but I suppose it's a good start. :

http://www.dumblittleman.com/2010/08/10-keys-to-be-becoming-better.html

Everyone needs a little dose of this lesson, or reminder, from time to time.

2011-09-19T16:00:00.000-07:00

I walked 4.5 miles today, I jogged 2 miles. Then I walked down a very large hill, and then I walked down north avenue, and then I walked back through north avenue and then I walked back up a very large hill and that was about all the exercise I got today.

I could have used a ride, but I suppose that's too much of an inconvenience when you're driving.
I wouldn't understand the driving thing anyway, I have never done it.

But I guess in other news my day wasn't so bad in spite of the elevated levels of tiredness I am experiencing, I do have a headache now though. I went to a potluck put on by my co-workers because one of my co-workers is moving away and there was a unanimous decision to have one in her honor. If I would have listened to myself I would have stayed home and painted, and probably gotten really far into the painting, but instead I listened to the scared voice that said "what will they think if you don't show up?" and put my home work aside to appease the little voice of self-doubt. To my dismay some of my co-workers didn't show up, which meant to me that I didn't really need to show up either. It's hard sometimes for me to differentiate my wants and needs, what those things mean, and how that affects others and ultimately myself. If I would not have gone, I truly believe that no one would have really noticed or said anything even if they did. If I would not have gone, I think I would have been okay, at some point, with my decision. I ate a lot of food so I guess it was good I went, in some aspects. I liked the homemade kimchi a co-worker made, and I liked the kale salad and the broccoli salad and the corn muffins. I ate alright. My co-workers are good cooks. But overall I like being alone most. I find it hard for me to focus on inane conversation without becoming too preoccupied with what the meaning of what is being said is, and when this happens I ask people investigative questions that seem to make them uncomfortable, because after all is said and done, the conclusion is that they don't really seem to know what they are talking about at all, and this makes people nervous. It's kind of disappointing for me, and a little embarrassing, quite probably for them. I say this because I was listening to someone talk today and it dawned on me that the statement "they don't know what they are talking about" is applicable to their conversation.

It sometimes feels to me like I am still a kid asking the "why" and everyone else is the adult hitting the wall and changing the topic.

--

I had a dream I was kissing the most passionate kiss.

--

I have a headache still.

--

Bought a green coat. As I was trying it on at the store a woman came up to me and said "that looks amazing on you, you should get it even though it seems to break all the rules about size. You really wear it well, it's baggy but your long legs make it look interesting". I was sold. If a random woman says it's okay, then I guess it's okay. In my head I secretly liked it too and hoped to hear something like that anyway. It cost me $3.00, cheaper than the train fare it took to get me there.

--

I want more of the kimchi and kale salad.

--

I want to give a kiss to Jim in a stranger's bathroom at six in the morning when dawn is arising. I want us to have trespassed into this place, have it be illegal that we've arrived there. I want to do these things because we're not supposed to. Like in my dream. I miss the excitement I get when I cross the invisible line that divides the okay from the not okay, the life part and the death part.

Like kissing a stranger when I am not supposed to, like when I would cheat on a boyfriend, because these things happened, I did these things sometime ago, it was like going from living as one person, and then crossing that line, killing that one person, and becoming another person from that moment onward. It is like going from being alive to dying, and living again as a new person, all in the span of one second and experiencing all the ecstatic feelings that come from the process.

--

"This too shall pass is" my favorite quotation because it works in two ways: to make the sad man happy and the happy man sad.

--

When I first get a car I am going to go for a very long drive alone and I will listen to my favorite music and end up on a very high place with an overlook that will make everything beneath it very very small.

--

I want to be excited all of the time but that would just mean I would have to die a lot, or at the very least much quicker.

--

I don't know what I am talking about.

--

"Tell me how that feels to you."

--

"What do you mean by that?"

--

"Very interesting."

2011-09-18T15:35:00.001-07:00

I'm tired. Hungover. I went shopping, I bought a jacket. It is getting cool in Baltimore. I ate a tuna sandwich today. I also ate an omelet. I also ate an entire chipotle pepper. I also ate a rice cake, and then later I ate a black and white cookie, the white part was better but I am not racist.

2011-09-15T06:54:00.000-07:00

Was once that girl my boyfriend's friends disliked. Could that be true now too? Wondering if this kind of stuff even matters to me anymore.

Silicone Heartache

2011-09-14T12:04:00.000-07:00

I feel a little tired today, but I got a lot of work done recently and now I need a break or something. Kinda feel like going shopping for clothes. Don't have many for fall anymore, the things I own feel dated and bulky, in an outdated and too large sort of way.

All morning and afternoon I worked on a giant drawing on a canvas, which I will eventually paint. The drawing is of my cousin Jacqueline. Her Facebook pictures really inspired me to make a painting about her and people like her. Here's her bio:

She lives in Asuncion, Paraguay. Her father, my dad's brother, who is my uncle, is very wealthy. He is the CEO of his own cable company; in America he would be the owner of say, Comcast or some other cable company as such. They are wealthy, very wealthy for Asuncion, and I believe this main asset, her wealth, is what has shaped my cousin to be the woman she is today. To me it is no secret that they are well-known over there, but in the infamous sort of way. They are showy, and garish, and all in her nuclear family (she has two younger sisters) basically look like "guidettes". I don't really know them very well because I never got the chance to know them considering that my parents and I did not live in Paraguay for most of my youth. I hear she is a savvy woman, but not very "wise". She spends copious amounts of her time primping, posing, and also posting pictures of herself on the internet (I guess I do too, I guess it runs in the family), except her photos are display cases to her fake boobs, butt implants, and wealth. To date, I am positive she has had plenty of surgical procedures to "enhance" her appearance. They range from chin, to lips, to nose, to butt, to tits. I am not sure what else, but undoubtedly there's probably some botox in there as well. All my life I've heard she is bad news and pretty shallow, and is not a very loving person toward my mother. I cannot say this for myself because I do not know her very well or at all, but it is the only information about her that I am aware of to date. To me however, her physical self and costuming (because it is costuming) is the perfect blend of laugh riot, fright, and wonderment all in one. I am fascinated by who this person is, superficially speaking of course. It is hard sometimes for me to think about how closely she and I are related, and how vastly different from each other we are on the surface (and most probably interior too). After viewing many of her posts on Facebook these past months, and closely inspecting her and her life (or what she posts for us to see), I've decided to make a painting about her. I am interested in starting a conversation with the world about her and other women like her who do similar things (like get fake everything put into their bodies, and show off their wealth, like you know, the Kardashians, etc.. this thing is far too common in our world, why not talk about it? I've decided to talk or say something about it in the best way I know how). So far I'm happy with the beginnings of my painting and cannot wait to work through it and complete it. I think the painting about her will also include text, and I'm thinking of writing this on the painting somewhere:

IF I CANNOT BE MYSELF, AT LEAST I CAN HOPE TO BE MY FAKE TITS.

I'm still not set on that quote though, it's a little too jokey and crass, maybe ironic too and not something I'm entirely going for with this painting, although I understand that humor definitely makes difficult or biting remarks more palatable. I will continue thinking about what to write as the quote in the coming days. I do know that I want to add a quote that will make this painting more universal, directed toward the women who hide behind such hideous and sad alterations to their bodies, and rely on such things to feel as though it justifies their being. If all this doesn't resonate in other people, I think I will be satisfied with the process and completion anyhow, and the possibility of discovering something new about myself and who I am, perhaps my cousin and I are very similar, perhaps everyone in the world is in some ways very similar to my cousin also.

Roy Orbison

2011-09-14T07:18:00.000-07:00

I had this dream my drum set was gone, and when I went downstairs I realized most of our furniture was gone or dismantled, as if we were moving out, but then when I looked at the front door it was unlocked and ajar just a little, and immediately thought that people had robbed us. In the dream we were indeed robbed of all of our possessions, and it occurred while I was sleeping. I had to tell Jim about it and I felt awful.

Happily Divorced

2011-09-13T13:48:00.000-07:00

Went a little snap-happy with my hair. "Had fun".

Thieves, Thieves

2011-09-13T10:21:00.000-07:00

In last night's dream I was laying in bed in a trailer home with Jim, we were wrapped in a Rainbow Brite blanket and we were talking about our childhood. I was explaining to Jim about how it is that I got admitted into the gifted program in my middle school. It was such a boring, exhausting dream because the explanation went on and on and on, kinda like how in real life my explanations about "who I am" seem to go when I describe that to Jim. I think I did that last night before falling asleep and the whole act seeped into my dream state. What a drag.

Last night I was trying to explain to Jim about how I feel when I am in a social setting. Typically I feel exhilarated but crippled. And then kind of depressive and self-conscious and ultimately too self-critical to keep talking to people, especially if I do not know them too well. Then I tend to find something to occupy me until it's time to go home or get back to work, or do something else. When it's a small group I feel less anxious, but it's never all that fun. I think the reason why it was so fun in college was because I was drinking a lot after classes, whenever there was something to be social about.

I also had this other dream last night that Jim was setting up to perform his music at a music show and asked me to join him on keyboards for a song, and I said I forgot how the song goes, but he told me to play the song anyway, but when it was time to perform in front of the audience I messed up and Jim got upset with me. I felt so terrible, and embarrassed. I was wearing a green jacket I wore at one of the shows we played at in real life. I don't have that jacket anymore. It looked like a straitjacket sort of and it kind of creeped me out when I realized it so I gave it away. I wonder where it is now. I hope some MICA student has it now, sort of.

The night before I also had this other dream in which I made a promise to name my first born girl "Emmelina". I think I woke up mouthing the name.

Yesterday was the photo shoot at my job. It went well, we got some good shots of my hair. The stylist dyed a portion of my hair a neon red and the rest a brownish red, and it looks okay. At first I was kind of disappointed and commented "It's not me, I'm not really into anime", but then I felt bad and said something redemptive like, "Never mind, I think I like that I look 90's, forget I said anything, thank you" or something to that extent. Once I washed off all the makeup that the makeup artist put on me I felt much better about the way I looked in my new 'do. I feel so much better about it today too, I am styling it as a wish and I am wearing my normal clothes, so everything is okay again and back to normal. The makeup artist was very sweet, but her makeup styling was very very excessive. She made all of us look like prostitutes, or as Jim put it "startling". She tried, and she's a professional, but it's weird, it's weird to me that most stylists, whether make up or hair or clothing stylists always make the person look like a weird fabrication of what a real person actually looks like. I hardly ever see anyone with so much makeup on, at least, not like how we all had it. Sadly, overall I'm not too thrilled with the photos. I guess it was a one time thing and most importantly just a work related thing, something that I did to "be nice" and volunteer and give my time to, and I feel good about that part of it, but in the end I think the whole thing was way off in depicting anything close to who I am (I suppose that wasn't the point anyhow), and I think in my own opinion, I ended up looking like a model in a Rockband promo ad. Not what I had in mind at all. I guess that's just the salon thing.

I hope my photos don't make the cut and they just end up using everyone else's photos instead.

I do like my hair though, it's taking some getting used to because it is so bright, but I do like it.

Yesterday during the dye job process my co-worker was talking to me about drugs and Roni Size and my boss chimes in asking "what drug are you talking about?" And we respond "ecstacy" and he goes "I've always wanted to try that, but definitely not make a habit of it. Have either of you tried it?" I go "yeah, and habitually", to which he responds "I read this study that says people who have done that drug often have less of an ability to reach natural highs afterward". It made me think that's probably true considering how I'm pretty neutral or have symptoms of dysthymia, which then made me think about whether or not that's my natural state anyway, even as a teen, considering that back then I somehow justified taking so many drugs to get high anyway, to feel okay. Ah, what's the use of trying to figure this whole thing out? I'm happy, world. I'm happy whenever I'm not unhappy okay? My orgasms are great.

--

Jim and I are also back from camping. It was a wonderful getaway and we had a really good time. We hiked about 8 miles total this weekend and got to see a bunch of deer, trees, historical sites, and eat a lot of s'mores and grilled vegetables. We also made our own crossword puzzles (it was my idea) when we were too tired to leave the cabin bed and each solved each others'. It was such a brain tease but it was really fun and funny. One question of mine was "Mr. Shakur if he was into fashion?" The answer was: Tufop. I liked spending the entire weekend with Jim and not worrying about anything or being reminded of people or events because we were in a brand new place. Sometimes our home just reminds me too much of events and people I don't really care to be reminded of or think about, so it's good to get away from the triggers. Sometimes I just want to move out of this house, but I guess that's just too easy, or crazy.

I am going to post pictures of our trip soon.

Muddin

2011-09-09T09:17:00.000-07:00

Ah what the hey, I think I like my haircut. I think it's going to be fine, I think I have embraced it. I feel pretty good about it. As my friend Jenna said "it's hair, it will grow".

Today Jim and I are going camping. I'm really really really excited about this. It's going to be fun, and wet, and hot maybe, and we're going to make s'mores no matter what and look at trees and get lost hiking, and drink plenty of waters (yes waters), and hug and kiss, and not use the internet.

I am doing much better in my head today than I was yesterday. My cold has cleared up completely, and today is less stressful than yesterday. I feel okay about things.

I've been stressed out these past two weeks because I have let myself become stressed out by the whole graduate school thing. I've been progressing nicely though, but I really ought to employ more de-stressing techniques while working on my application process. All the stress is not going to add to or enhance my portfolio, essay, or performance. I must remember this, and continue working hard.

What will camping be like? No bathroom nearby, no kitchen, no technology. Sounds good so far.

Jim has a facebook account now. This is definitely news today.

My Fucking Hair

2011-09-08T11:32:00.001-07:00

I don't feel "cute" and I'm not that thrilled either. I keep getting compliments but inside I think and feel to myself as though I look like a trendy divorcee lesbian mom.

One, I'm not a lesbian mom, and two, I'm not even divorced yet. I don't know about the trendy thing, it's up for debate.

I feel gross. I'm going to buy a strap on and sit on it. I'm joking of course.

2011-09-08T05:25:00.000-07:00

Blah blah blah, I'm sick. I don't really feel like doing much today, but I'm happy I'm not at work right now. I worked 18 hours total the past two days, 9 hour days can be killer when you're under the weather.

Speaking about the weather, it's been kinda crummy lately. Rainy and humid, and hella hot.

Today my lungs feel as though they're filled with liquid, and steam.

Weird things have been happening this week at my job, near my job, and to people from my job. I have a list:

1. A very drunk man came in for a hair cut and I had to shampoo and massage his scalp. He was so drunk he was tipsy and had a lot of trouble getting up, sitting down, and fishing his wallet out of his pockets in order to tip me. It's not common we get drunks in for a haircut at 2pm. Glad I forgot to offer him the complimentary glass of wine after the shampoo.

2. A man got severely beat up in front of my job. For drugs or something.

3. A woman severely beat her five year old up in front of my job. She pulled the little boy's pants down and beat him with an umbrella in the middle of the street. Made me cry. Kid is fucked.

4. I shampooed a little second grader girl who correctly, but not charmingly, used the word "necessarily" in a sentence. It wasn't charming at all. In fact I was kind of annoyed with the whole thing. When did second graders become so lame and adult-like?

5. Our co-worker's home was affected by a fire. I heard it was pretty severe and they had to move out. I hope they are doing well and getting along okay with this misfortune. I'm glad they are okay and nothing happened to their beautiful baby boy.

6. I shampooed four people I met/know from my old job at the Johns Hopkins coffee shop, in the span of two days. I guess they are back in town for school. Where do they get all this money?!

7. The Royal Farms convenience store has posted a "No Loitering by Order of Police" sign out in front of their establishment yesterday. Um, finally. Thanks!

8. Oh yeah, something else happened near my job which caused a section of the street corner to be taped off with the "police line do not cross" tape. Don't know, don't care. I hope innocent people are okay.

9. A police car was parked out in front of the Bank of America across the street from my job. I heard a man say to another man "another bank robbery??", and I assumed maybe it's possible?

10. I don't know, I didn't go to work today to get more things to complete a list that makes it to number ten.

I'm getting scared. I told Jim last night, "our home grosses me out, and this neighborhood is freaking me out."

I'm grossed out by my house because our landlord needs to fix our kitchen sink, it's been backing up again and it's hard to do the dishes and keep the kitchen tidy as a result. I dislike messy, dirty kitchens. A messy, dirty kitchen to me is a lot like putting a pile of shit in your mouth every time you make something in there and eat it.

We're going camping tomorrow near the Susquehanna "area" of Maryland/PA. It should be fun even though it might be rainy and muddy. I think I will enjoy it a lot either way. I hope my cold clears up that way the hikes wouldn't be cut short. Most importantly, I hope we can build a fire to make s'mores.

I want to go fall/winter shopping. I think I might start doing that today.

Oh yeah, and I got a haircut again! This time it's for a photo shoot. The haircut is very messy and low maintenance, and short. It has longer hairs too. I'm not sure I'm liking it. The next step is coloring, which will happen on Monday, the day of the photo shoot. I'm going to be in a hair magazine or something. This is not what I ever expected to happen to me. I suppose that's why it's happening, huh?