Look!

Look! I made a FRAME with my PHOTO in it! There are REFLECTIONS in the tv screen! I am so happy!

totally

Quiz results:

You LOVE ALL of pop's creatures... big and small. You are the Noah of Culture -- "C'mon two of everything, that's right... What? We're missing Unicorns? Well, they're beautiful and unique, but they're not in my immediate proximity, so fuck em." Mkay, maybe Noah didn't say that. What I mean is, you say you love everything but really you just love everything that's shoved infront of your face. You really don't hunt down anything outside your periphery. You're prone to moving to the suburbs sooner than other hipsters, and you probably own Santana's "Supernatural" and/or a Norah Jones CD. Socially, you're passive/aggressive... you'll defend to the death whatever opinion you're told to have.

unrelated recent events

I already tweeted everything here, but I decided I wanted it to stick around longer.

This weekend I had two gatherings that included homemade alcohol drinks and Bruce Willis. Which is, like, a 500% increase on both fronts from the previous year. I still think that Die Hard is a great Christmas movie, and I still don't quite understand the appeal of The Fifth Element. I don't dislike it or anything, it just seems kind of meh. Glogg is fantastic. So is homemade eggnog. Yay!

I introduced myself to a first year printmaking grad, and she said "oh, YOU'RE Angela." Apparently my name is mentioned often to her. Um.

At Home Ec., I was offered sexual favors in trade for my yarn/knitting. TWICE. Someone on OK Cupid offered to stick his cock in a sexy white chick like me. When I said "no thanks," he asked if it was because he was black. And Other Dan wrote to me again, asking if we can hang out. I actually considered it for a minute or two, just because it was flattering (I was such an asshole to him, and he still wants to try again?), but then I remembered that he has nothing to say and kisses like a dead fish. Less stinky, but just as appealing.

Still pining. Roommate Ben. Ignore me, I'll get over it some day.

I'm sharing a ride with Cassie's boyfriend to her parent's house in Illinois. And part of me, the embarrassing, clinging, desperate part, wants to be demonstrably awesome so I can impress her boyfriend, in case it somehow gets to Roommate Ben. Which is ridiculous. He didn't turn me down because his roommate thought I was uncool. And yet, in the farthest recesses of my head, where logic can't reach, this makes sense.

Tonight, I want to drink eggnog and listen to music and dance and pick up my room.
I want to work on my online dating analysis. I need a name for this.
I want to write more messages.
I want to knit my curtain.
I want to knit my new yarn I bought tonight (splurge!).
I want to watch The L Word (embarrassed shrug).
I want to watch Battlestar Galactica.

I think that not all of this will happen. I think I will start with the eggnog and go from there.


EDIT: Almost forgot, I also want to set up my new loom!

braces

I was okay with sad. Sad is getting my lip pierced: by the time I realize "oh shit this hurts," it's over. And it is over. What I wasn't prepared for was the pining. This isn't a piercing, this is braces. I'm stuck. I'm fucking stuck and I hate it.

recycling

I was going to blog about this, and then I was like, hey I already said it, I'll just quote myself instead.

I have no faith in people

The excitement is fading and I want to write it down before it goes away completely. Roommate Ben has a nice smile and a silly goatee and can sing and dance and is funny and used to make robots and barrel race (as in, horses!) and moved as far as I did to get away for college, except his college got messed up by a hurricane, and he wants me to make him a hat made out of cheese because he likes cheese quite a lot. He is delightful. I am convinced that he won't write me back.

that's all

I had a very sad and evocative blog post half-written in my head this afternoon. I was thinking about how much of a lie this story I'm writing about my mother is. I was going to tell the other story, or at least a few parts of it. The other story was just as carefully chosen as the first, but for different reasons. But when I got home, I just didn't want to do it.

getting somewhere

WANT and YAY and WOW

I am giggles and shrieks. I am throwing myself on the floor wailing in despair. I am MINE and WANT and YAY and WOW. My heart, it is a two year old, and it is LOUD. It is also drunk. Or I am. We, my heart and I, are drunk.

How to Fight With Your Mother (demo)

Work in progress. Not happy with the white noise in the back of the vocals. Might see if Josh will help me use the fancy intermedia recording lab to rerecord the narration.

all at once

It helps to have several lines out at once, so I don't fixate too much on any one person. Since the odds are slim that any specific person will actually reply.

girl

see attached

Well, that didn't take long.

Henry: (n) ex-boyfriend

Here's a handy cheat sheet for my life in the last, oh, weeks or months or something.

job: 1.) Working at Joann's fabric & glittery stuff store, with varying amounts of loud children and knick knacks that play songs. Generally prefaced with the word "old." As in "at my old job I could never plan things more than a week in advance because my schedule changed all the time." 2) Working at Prairie Lights, the sheeshy (I'm sure there's a fancy French spelling, but I don't know it, sorry) bookstore where I get to read or knit for hours at a time and get paid much more than at Joann's (and get half-price coffee drinks) but only on weekends. Generally just referred to as "job," causing confusion. 3) Working as a Laboratory Specialist, School of Art and Art History (henceforth referred to as SAAH), which involves billing and buying and fixing and organizing, and inventorying and training. Generally prefaced with the words "good" "new" "real" or "grown-up."

Henry: Boyfriend. But not unequivocally so. He might not be that into me. I might not be that into him. That second part might be because of the first, or it might not. He's smart and self-assured, and might be as selfish as I am. I like that about him. I like that, when I tell him about how I need an audience to exist, he says "it's like the opposite of solipsism." I like his looks but not his clothes. I wish he had a broader view of gender and sexuality. I wish I trusted him.

homework: (see "job") I got hired to do a job I'm not actually qualified to do. Or rather, they couldn't hire me for the job I wasn't qualified for, but since no one else was qualified either, they rewrote the job and hired me. So I stay after work for a few hours most days, watching videos on Lynda.com and following along, trying to learn a new department from scratch, so I can run their lab.

3DS Max: (see "homework") 3D modeling program, for product design or interior design or animation. What I do with my evenings. To be followed by Vizard virtual reality building software, followed by AutoCad, followed by InDesign, Dreamweaver, Illustrator, and Aftereffects.

Menards: Officially referred to as "Studio Arts," the hardware-store-turned-temporary-art-building.

Joanns countdown: 6 more days

You know how when you go to the beach you end up with sand in crevices you didn't even know you had, and you find sand everywhere in your life for days? I'm like that now, except with glitter. I think it's even in my lungs. I think if I took a breathalyzer I'd blow the legal limit for glitter. You say there's no legal limit for glitter? There should be.

Single man looking for a white girl for a long term relationship where he will be the head of the household and we won't believe in dinosaurs.

Can't believe I'm turning this one down. :)

His name is feralpurple!

31

skewed visions

Statement for a podcast series I'll be a part of in October:

I require constant proof of my existence. My own experience isn't enough; I must be part of someone else's experience. Yours. Proof requires witnesses. And so it is here, in this bodiless space online, where I am the most real. Google me. I am here twenty-four hours a day, for anyone, anywhere. Information, once disseminated, never completely disappears. I never completely disappear. I put up every photo I take, every thought I have, on Facebook, Twitter, Flickr, my website, my blog. When that isn’t enough, I write letters to strangers on the internet, and then I take screen shots of those letters and put them on the internet. I write down stories about my life. I tell them to you. This is me, watching me, watching me. This is me.

Last one was so...normal. This one might be better.

Henry has now messaged all of my friends

And my profile revamping and message writing has NOTHING to do with that. Really. NOTHING.

The sad thing is that, even though the crazed infatuated state is fading, and I'm not so perfectly sure that I want him to be my boyfriend, I still get terribly jealous at the idea that he is messaging anyone else after having been naked with me. I should be everything he wants, even if he isn't. Because, apparently, what I really like is the ego-trip that comes with a person's affection. I guess that's something I knew about myself, but it's unpleasant to be faced with it so directly.

socks

tango lessons

more

This posting is late:



This posting isn't:

the easy way

He isn’t my boyfriend, not really. He isn’t my anything, which is an arrangement I like because it means that I am not his, either. That’s important.

He says I deserve a real boyfriend. He says he wants to take me out to dinner. When he is putting his clothes on and I am rolling over and pulling the blanket tighter around myself, closing off the spaces he left behind, he says that he is going to be a good boy and call me soon. He starts work at six. I sleep until eight.

We have sex with the lights off. His hands and mouth stay within designated safe zones. He does not try to touch my stomach, where it begins to fall over itself, or the sad, inverted curve where my waist meets my hips. His hands move, always, upward from my knees, never the other, more perilous, way down.

And maybe he does this because I have made it the easier way. I wear skirts that slide up, that sometimes don’t even need to be moved out of the way, they suddenly just are up, or fallen down, as if they’ve been like that all along, just waiting for his hands to cover the gaps in the fabric.

Maybe he does this because he is as wary as I am of the other direction. Maybe he recoils, a little, as I do, from the body I try so hard to hide.

His hand moves up, and as it moves, it flicks off, one by one, the switches in my brain, like the last man leaving the office and turning off the lights for the night. First I lose words, then vision and hearing, then smell. Once smell goes, I lose memory. I no longer exist in a time and place, I am no longer part of a sequence of events and so I cannot tell you how long I last there, in limbo, until his hand moves to the last light, where his hand lingers, where his hand pushes and rocks and the light goes out and I am lost.

Addiction: Analysis

Number of messages sent, by month, from April 2009-July 2010

Addiction: Analysis

This morning I tallied every first message I've sent, including both OK Cupid and Craigslist. Over 14 months, I've sent 72 first messages, an average of more than one per week. I've compiled the messages into a word file, an excel file, and now I'm working on making graphs. I like graphs. I think I might start to organize messages by success, so I can put together all the ones that worked, versus all the ones that didn't, as well as organize by theme, commonly used phrases, or time of night written. It's kind of like my self portrait by volume, part 2.

You Should Message Me If:

I suppose eventually I will run out of boys

Title: Gardening and Whiskey Sundays

Not very optimistic tonight but. Well. You know.

"packing and cleaning"

last one

please don't be my student

There is a small, but scary, chance, that this guy is an ex-student.

It doesn't *really* look like him... but photos are untrustworthy and I'm starting to worry.

oh well.

Um, hi Nick!

... (part 2)

...

what else is there to do but keep writing?

oops

I'm an idiot. I was feeling mildly insecure about sending a message to someone I might know... which would be weird and awkward. So I didn't want to message him via my gmail account, because my email address is my full name. I used my yahoo account instead.

Except I forgot, because I haven't used this account for anything besides junk mail in more than 10 years, that my yahoo preferences are set to give my full name.

sigh

Oh well. It wasn't a security decision, just a saving-face one.

fat

.

Most of the time my blog title is just a title. Most of the time, I am not really talking to myself. But sometimes that really is all I want, a place to put things I might otherwise forget. And it's strange to put it here, but I don't have a super secret, special, blog-for-me, so here it goes anyway.

I want to grin madly. I want to share. I want someone to know how I feel, which is a profound sense of joy and gratitude. But it feels strangely boastful, and yet feels like not enough to boast about. Someone gave me a compliment. That's all.

Today, Lisa thanked me for my presence in sculpture workshop this semester. She said that I always said what needed to be said, that my part in discussion was thoughtful and insightful, so much that she made a point to thank me for it.

It means so much to me, to be admired by someone I admire, to be told that my participation improves a class where I often feel outclassed, ignorant, or just someone who talks too much.

Application sent

I'm not writing my essay, but at least I'm writing SOMETHING, right?

Two voice mail messages, one text, and now an OK Cupid message. If this doesn't work I'll have to admit defeat.

I really like him. Cross your fingers for me.

look what came up on google

From a 1996 Milwaukee Journal Sentinel

Look at me all pixelated and over-contrasty and sixteen.

The Big X

la la la

number nine

It was a pretty weird ad.

11:38 am

Apparently I either rocked the last five messages, or I picked better targets. I got four replies. One of them doesn't count since I accidentally messaged Isaac, but that's still more than twice my usual response rate.

I'm meeting someone tonight for coffee. And I don't know if we'll get along, and if we get along I don't know if we'll be interested in anything beyond hanging out sometimes for coffee. Maybe it will all end badly. But right now, it's only possibility. And that's exciting. His name is Nick.

because seven EIGHT nine

seven

six

which means this is #5

#4 I think

for realz

Unrelated Internet Items

A couple weeks ago I started writing a story about someone I used to know. I'm going to call him Harold, which is the fake name I gave him in the story. I haven't talked to him in about 7 years, and I haven't seen him in 13 years. It's not a comfortable story. I've been processing the information, emotionally and on paper, and writing this story. Last night I told it out loud at a storytelling show.

This morning, I get a Facebook friend request from Harold.

...

Last night I found out that I'm not in Satanist Dan's phone anymore.

Tonight I find his ad on Craigslist.

So, yeah.

...

That's it.

My head is useless for writing things down. The internet is much better.

I need a list again.

Bridge instructions: exposure, black & white (due: Tuesday)

Anne Arundel application (due: today)

SCAD applications? AI applications? I say I'll take any job... I should apply. (due: ASAP)

Format thesis work on final images (due: Friday)

Write for weeNP (due: Thursday)

Read for Radio (due: Friday)

edit Radio essay (due: ASAP)

Still sending, collection item #3

blah... they don't even interest me anymore.

from The Reading, Part II

I have notebooks full of this, full of half-formed sentences and carelessly scribbled notes. They are full of lists and memories, full of dreams and fragments of dreams, full of the beginnings and endings of a thousand ideas that could have been. They begin, or end, and I never read them again. Like the smoker who wears a nicotine patch but continues to smoke, I am only going through the motions. I never follow through.

In a book with a cover the color and dry texture of a robin’s egg and yellowed, unlined pages, I write down a comprehensive list of every scar, or set of scars, on my body, and their origins. There are twelve items on the list, beginning with a thin line, about ¼” long, on my left hand where the line of my thumb and the line of my index finger intersect, from a thorny bush I walked through on a choir trip in middle school, and ending with a slight indentation in the middle of my back, at exactly the point where I can’t reach it from either above or below, from the surgical removal of a sebaceous cyst one year ago.

I have been collecting these notebooks for almost as long as I have been collecting scars. As the scars fade over time, the distance between my earliest scar and my earliest notebook grows smaller. Some day I will have notebooks older than my scars. Some day I will take all these books and tear them apart; I will build something from the pieces. I will build a new body out of all of the thoughts I’ve abandoned, out of all the people I have never been.

The Locked Door and the Light

There are many technical advantages to photographing in the bathroom. Tile, porcelain, and stainless steel all reflect light, becoming light sources in their own right. What begins as a single light (a lamp or window) becomes dozens of lights in every direction. Photographic reflectors, mylar stretched over flexible frames, might cost as much as five hundred dollars to cover a small room. Beginning with an already reflective room is simply a practical decision. Similarly, the white-dominated color scheme popular in home bathrooms eliminates the worry that those reflected lights will need color-correcting during post-production.

I don’t think of this when I use the bathroom. I only think about the way the sunlight is softened through thick textured glass windows. I think about the way that light brushes against the folds of the shower curtain. When the shower curtain is clear plastic, it creates folds in the space behind it, and through them the shower walls recede from view as if seen through fog or great distance.

I think about how the stainless steel curves of the faucet look like the curves on a chrome fender on a 1969 Ford Galaxy that my high school boyfriend was very proud of. I think about how every surface is curved, smooth, cold to the touch.

I think about how there is a door I can lock, about how, growing up, it was the only door that locked, about how much that mattered to me. I think about feeling safe.

I think that there are few things as beautiful as a bathroom, and because it is beautiful I want to photograph it so I might show it to you. It would not be a photograph of tiles or curtains or bathtubs or toilets or even abstract curves of stainless steel. It would be a photograph of comfort, of safety, of light, from everywhere, light.

mint chip milkshake

I am consumed this morning with missing Satanist Dan. In my memory of him he is my comfort food, my favorite movie, my place to go. I miss, not just him, but mornings waking up next to him with nowhere to be anytime soon. My memories of him are memories of feeling confident, happy, stress-free. And, at the time, I was confident, happy, and stress-free, with or without Satanist Dan. But it's hard to miss a state of being, and it's so easy to miss him.

Filled

I eat, I eat. I think, how silly of me to describe what it feels like, eating, because you eat. You already know. But then I think, how could you know what this feels like without wanting more, always, always, how could anyone keep a hold of their life when there is so much food always around, always there, for just a bit or maybe a lot of money? How does the world carry on the way it does, as if it didn’t constantly ache? I salivate. It tastes salty, smoky—ham and bacon and mayonnaise. The bread doesn’t leave a taste behind but fits warmly into my stomach, holding me from the inside. I am filled, but I am not full. I am never full.

#2

Now the messages are beginning to quote the radio essay about sending messages. I am Super-Meta-Woman.

Longer Term Stuff To Do:

I've been good about keeping a day planner, and writing down assignments and when I'm going to do them. But it's harder for me to think of the things to do that don't exactly have due dates, or they have due dates but there are many steps and I can't just plan it out for the week before it's due.

-I need to write a thesis. I need to figure out what I want to say in my thesis.

-I need to write, record, mix, shoot, mix, a video piece. I hardly know where to start. It's all a mess in my head.

-I need to hang a show in March. This is pretty much done. I just need to mat & frame. Frames are on their way, shouldn't take more than a long day. But I also need to decide on a statement & image to send to the gallery. They are terrible at getting back to me with things like deadlines, but I'm guessing they need it soon.

-I need to keep working on applications. I need to write out my unsolicited submissions and apply to some more shows.

-I probably should start doing things like cleaning out my apartment of excess stuff in preparation for moving out at the end of May.

Starting over, collection piece #1

I dunno. I'm snowed out of class tonight. And wishing I had something to balance my being good against. I'm a bit out of practice. This one needs work.

Habits

I bet you thought you were off the hook. No more Satanist Dan, no more boys at all, at least for a little while.

But I still think about Satanist Dan. I still miss him. I don't mind it the way I used to, it doesn't occupy as big of an emotional space, but it's still there. Out of all the people I encountered in my short-lived experiment in sleeping around, he was the only one who was ever in my bed. It matters more than I realized at the time. I feel like someone quitting a habit, I need to stop putting myself in situations that remind me of what I've left behind. But I can't, because I let him in my apartment, and now I want him back in it again.

Editing

I am pretty sure I can fit, with a minimum of squishing, 10 images in the space. They are 16" images in 24" frames, arranged in two rows of 5. I think that 8 images would also easily fit the space without looking sparse. So the question is: does the series benefit from being pared down? I keep vacillating. Here are potential layouts:


8 images



10 images


The more I look at them, I'm not really fond of the two images (the tapir and the dik diks) that get cut in order to pare down to a set of eight. They start to feel like filler, and I don't need to bother with filler, the space is tiny as it is.

Inez (part II for the weeNP)

Inez is tall and voluptuous, dark-skinned, darker-eyed, darkest-haired, she is every cliché developed by white men about exotic women. She is the Top Ten Latina Actresses. In more specific terms, she is five-foot-seven, weighs one-hundred-and-fifty-four pounds during the summer and one-hundred-and-fifty-nine pounds during the winter. She prefers bright colors or no color at all: reds, teals, or black. She often doesn’t wear a bra. I picture her with hair as long as my arms, or I picture her with pin curls. Either way, I picture her with jewelry, more than I’ve ever felt comfortable wearing. She is everything that I’ve never felt comfortable wearing.

I want her. I want her hips, her parted mouth, her hot skin. I want her confidence, her brazen stare. I want to have her, and in the having I want to be her.

Keeping Organized

Due Mon:

Write syllabus for hypothetical digital imaging class
Put together application package for Ramapo
Write "reviews" for sculpture
Find a current NY or LA Times art review
Email "science is real" contact, arrange meeting
Figure out framing option/ order frames
Hem interview pants
Schedule hair cut/dye appointment

Due Tues:

Make slide show for photo workshop
Reading (semi-optional)

Due Thurs:

Write another 2 pages for weeNP

I love this blog.

Love it.

If A Softer World started using images from Dwell, this is what you'd get.

The Reading (for the weeNP)

Everything conspires against the spoken word.

In front of me, a man reads aloud. As he reads I can feel my pulse as it hits the insides of my teeth, like waves breaking against a seawall; I had a root canal this morning.

I can smell the stranger next to me. I want to describe it. I spend several minutes trying to think of some association I have to his smell, some trait I can identify so I might communicate this experience to others. But I fail. I can smell him; you can’t. I can’t even tell you what he smells like. His right elbow intrudes into the corner of my vision. I see a maroon sweater and the edge of the arm of the seat separating us. I want to turn my head, to see more, but I don’t want to be caught looking. So I keep my head turned towards the speaker, my eyes slyly drifting away.

Words on a page, at least, know they command my vision, even if they can’t control my aches or sweat or the feel of the seat underneath me. On the page, words command my actions, the gesture of my hands as they hold the book, the page, as they turn from one page to another. I can’t move or walk or speak. As I read, the words sneak into my ears, not through the usual channels of waves through the air, pressure on my eardrum; they come in through the back, through the employee door, through my eyes into the space where I understand that words have sound, and I can hear them. The voice is clear and familiar. It is my voice. The act of reading makes the words mine.

In front of me, a man reads aloud. His words filter through the air between us, through the sight I have of him, through the sight he has of me. He is tall, well-built, handsome. When he raises his arm to drink from his water bottle (plastic, disposable), his shirt lifts away from a studded leather belt. Hip, but not ostentatious. I am one of one hundred or so Iowans in a lecture hall; I am in the fourth row at the edge on his right hand side. We are students, faculty members, writers, hopeful writers, writers who have given up or come back, who still struggle, love, abandon, rediscover, break up, and get back together with words on pages, words spoken, words ignored or igniting, words looking hopelessly and self-referentially for an ending to a very long sentence. I am being self-indulgent. I am trying too hard to be clever. I will end this piece and begin another.

Not sure what to think

Do you think he knows it's a backdrop painting?