RAMBLINGS, OBSERVATIONS, AND MISTRANSLATIONS

~september 30, 1998~

was over at juxtapostition jason's house last night watching movies and shaving his head. one of my favorite things about him is, despite his hearty attempts to convey his punk rock code of honor, (i just love the very idea that there might just be a punk rock code of honor) his natural proclivity for being a dork (like me) always shines through.....transposing his menace into a goofy brand of soul. i like people who spend more time laughing at themselves than laughing at other people. "got my mojo working, it just don't work on you."

tonight was spent devouring an impeccable performance of carmina burana by the pacific northwest ballet. it was absolutely stunning. primarily delighting the audience with it's sensual/naive introduction of balanchine's serenade, the company opened carmina with such cataclysmic energy and style, i could nearly taste the movements in my mouth. pnb's artistic directors are praised visionaries; their seamless meld of ballet and modern dance gives this interpretation of orff's opus the necessary primal spice that perhaps even the composer himself saw in the fine tapestry of his work. such a deep fire burning, i could write about it for days.

i have recently been labeled as "dull" by two rather unfortunate souls. i, of course, consider the source (which is why i don't take it to heart) but it actually got me thinking about the subtle difference, to those uneducated, edgy types, between boredom and peace. i find my life anything but dull, i've never been bored in my life, because ultimately, i figure everything happens for a reason. so instead of standing around complaining and blaming other people for my lack of imagination, i spend my time seeking that reason. excitement to me is found everywhere, all atoms convey delicious gifts of knowledge and being at peace with the randomness of this world is where, i feel, true wisdom lies. you know, "god grant me the grace to accept the things i can't change, the strength to change the things i can, and the wisdom to know the difference." learning to listen is not about being dull, it's about getting older and realizing you understand so much more if you shut your own mouth. the wind has luscious secrets that are even juicier when sweeping through the trees.

all in all i have reached a level of self-understanding that has given me the peace to juggle all ten thousand projects that i'm dealing with at the moment.....without even an ounce of stress. i still have a long way to go before i'm who i'd like to marry, but i'm getting there, inch by inch. when i wake up, i'm ecstatic to begin another day.....busy and filled with mirth, i wouldn't trade where i'm at for anything. all the fun is on the climb up, when you get to the top, you know, it's just another vista.....and there's always a higher peak.

~september 26, 1998~

"really hurt me baby, how can you have a day without a night?"

an implied promise that i would never lie to you.....and i barely know you, my sweet nothings. the other night i watched a friend of mine work her manipulations all over her lover and it made me sick. the implied promise of honesty inherent in being human is far too precious to trade in for a few seconds of reckless abandon. everytime i turn around, it's being dropped, kicked, forgotten. something itches beneath the surface lately and i've got a feeling it's only going to get worse.

recently, i wrote to my sweet nothing e/mat what writing does for me. it's about rebirth, living that moment again and again......and so often i can't verbalize the visions i have in my head. i love it that he does that sometimes.....slips between my thoughts and gives me the gift of momentary explanation. ntozake shange, rita dove, gabriel garcia marquez, nancy rawles, junot diaz......all give me the split second of realization that makes alive so tasty. i've been experimenting with different styles, different blends, if you will, as of late, so please feel free to check 'em out. i love feedback so fill mah box, baby.

the sun keeps popping back in for repeat performances and it's so sweet to have him around. i love the rain, i really do, but sometimes i do get tired of it. with plans for a spring trip to rio in the hopper, oh lordy how i do hope, it looks like that may be my only reprieve this year. film school tuition is taking a nasty chunk out of my paycheck but that's cool, it's worth it.

i was chatting with a local sweet nothing last night and he was going on and on about algorithms and my penmanship. it led me to think about how much the mild idiosyncrasies of dress or music taste, for example, can be misinterpreted and translated into something entirely different than what we expect. i once wrote an essay in college on the subject of a writer's point of view. one point i brought up was the whole physical sense of being that contributes to the way a person understands an event or moment. colors can mean ten thousand different things to as many people, just taking into account the differences in sight, visual oddities, emotional and historical associations.....the saying, "seeing is believing" is just as open for question as, say......"believe you, me." when dealing with the rather shady class of people i see each day cursory to my job, this notion is as vivid as ever. everyone interprets with what they are given, and if the insane woman who spends her days meticulously digging perfect three foot holes in the piss-saturated sand of "crack" park's sandbox were to be given a new pair of lenses, perhaps with an entirely different history behind them, would she just get up one day and leave? would she find new clothes, get a job and start subscribing to the city's daily paper? reinvention.

last night i dreamt that i was in a large house with no doors and windows. it had staircase after staircase and endless puddles of water on the floor. i woke up feeling strangely spooked, as if someone had been watching me and they had left the split second before i awoke. i've been spackling and painting all day but i still have the feeling that i'm waiting for someone to come home. it's not the shading of loneliness, rather the warm and comforting feeling that, presently and ultimately, i am not alone.

~september 22, 1998~

la-la!

"you're not supposed to be here at all, it's all been a gorgeous mistake."

i am a rain connoisseur. i've lived only in notoriously rainy places my entire life. seattle. ireland. costa rica. the rainy season follows me wherever i go and i love that because what it does for me, that amazing high of first autumn rain.....smacks of voodoo, messy delicious nostalgia. i remember all things in connection to their location in a rain storm. roofs really stand out for me. the other day, seattle had it's inaugural autumn sprinkle and it cleaned the alleyways.....almost removing the scent of urine all together. fresh and wide awake, that's what indian summer rain is like.

the months have been rolling softly by and sometimes i wish so much for the freeze-frame quality of youth. everything but the summer dragged by when i was in second grade......but since that was only yesterday, i guess i'd better embrace the wonderful oxymoron that is time. i keep thinking about this street in dublin that i stood at the end of once......one side was covered in graffiti, the other side was a train track. there were chalk hopscotch sketches that had been burned away by the sun (dublin hadn't seen rain for weeks at this point) and everywhere was the scent of diesel and asphalt. the deadweight of my backpack haunted my shadow as i watched a starving tabby mewl indiscriminately. all of it so vivid, all of it so tasty in my mind's eye that i can even remember the sensation of oppressive heat, i can recall the texture of the gravel buried amid the train tracks. nostalgia is all about freeze-frame, but everything is in the stained hue of yesterday these days.

what i enjoy about these moments in my life are the gorgeous seconds that i remember to immerse myself in. when i'm breathing in the luscious scent of fresh fallen rain i know why i want to make films so badly. in my head i have these visual bombs that i often wonder about......everything so close, all of it so real. i am reminded that some people just snap......and the rest of us.....we just dream.

~september 13, 1998~

"love, i get so lost sometimes....."

so, i'm not dead. i've just been really busy......yes, my lickle tansies, too busy to ramble. of course, i'm always rambling in my head, and i'm just getting ready to become the recluse i inevitably embrace around the fall/winter months.....that's when i started this site, so it's been a year in the making......meow. i assure you i'll be here more often, slumming with the best of 'em.

at the end of october i begin film school and i am terribly excited. classes run from the end of october until the end of next june, then i begin advanced filmmaking classes the following fall. all in all, if the world doesn't end, i'll be good to go around the summer of 2000. nice timing, i think. we'll see.

the brazilian has officially been dispatched to sunnier locales.....back to his georgia peaches. it's been wonderful to have on molded pond back to myself again, and i've been busy cleaning and redecorating and buying even more and more plants. it's a joke that soon i'll have wildlife with all the plants i have around here. lilian's wild enough for me, it's like having a wildcat in the bed whenever she chooses her sleeping spot. you don't mess with that vixen, trust me, i've the scars to prove it. the last three days have been filled with spraypainting furniture because i had two unfinished tables that needed to be colorized and finished. they turned out looking quite nice, if i do say so myself. i think the clouds are rolling in, so perhaps that's the last project of this summer.

summer is something i wish could occur all year round.....i suppose i've got to move to more tropical locales to live in perrenial sun-n-fun. i do appreciate the definition of seasons, but i'm feeling like i need to move somewhere with a little less rain mixed into every season. i was listening to a lecture on npr yesterday in which the discussion of global warming was being knocked about. the speaker said that if we stopped the large emissions of carbon dioxide that occur now (coal burning factories, etc.) we would still have about a hundred years of crazy weather until the atmosphere would be able to neutralize the gases and return to it's original constitution. so basically, anything we do now, we'll never experience the benefits. but our babies will. sometimes i wish babies were considered a hot commodity, then we'd give a damn about tomorrow.

i had the immense pleasure of partaking in the delicious gumbo ntozake shange mixed up with her words last monday night at bumbershoot. talk about a beautiful meandering into the lost carmelized waterfalls of pre-r.e.m. dreaming. what an inspiration! i have never seen her perform her work and i am terribly fortunate to have had the opportunity. she performed with a trio that was slipping and sliding so easily through the nocturnal emissions of her words that i felt a headiness i haven't felt in a long time. how soft. anyway, i do highly recommend catching a performance of hers if you have the chance, it's well worth......anything.

i have been receiving poems and discussion on the topic of "not having a man" in my email recently. it got me to thinking about why i don't "have a man" and why i never really have. i've dated, i've had boyfriends, i've had girlfriends, but aside from a two month interval of heady new-love, i've never felt that trust of knowing someone's going to be around for the long haul. with my parents on the tattered ropes of imminent divorce, i am forced to tread lightly. the romantic in me would love to find someone and just go for it.....to move it into that higher level. it's not that i don't see the men and women around me, or that i don't acknowledge the advances i recieve, i just sometimes can feel the shallow vibrations, the disappointment, in the first five minutes. maybe i'm too judgemental, or maybe i just know what i can handle. i had an epiphany last night that we are attracted to who we would like to be. i wonder if it's possible to neutralize that lust, if we were able to attain who we would want to fall in love with, in ourselves, would we cease to feel the urgency of completion? hmmmm......but experimentation isn't free. (thanks max.)

i guess, in regard to becoming who you want to love, it wouldn't hurt to try. the worst thing to happen is that you won't achieve it, but hell......what else do you have to do, anyway?