the mirage-like reality of the last few days is starting to wear off, and the world is beginning to look the same as before. i can't believe it's only tuesday night--i feel like a week, if not a month, has passed since saturday night. i haven't been especially productive--which is to be expected, i suppose, seeing how i spent most of my time either half-consciously lying in bed and thinking i should get up, or sleeping and enjoying a series of especially bizarre dreams.
by which i mean, all those historical romance novels we sped-read last summer bubbled to the top of my subconscious and provided the fodder for most of my adventures--my favorite was the time i was locked in the top of a castle (the room looked identical to our last shared bedroom in massachusetts) and i was a combination of sabina from the unbearable lightness of being and anna karenina... except all other smarty pants literary references were replaced by smashingly handsome dukes fighting to save me, and evil matrons trying to prevent them from succeeding. at one point, i had a hot affair with an adam(from the summer before senior year)-look-alike. it was lovely.
i'm telling you all this in order to distract from my current real-life issues, including the stress of missing stats and russian on monday (although i did just return from astronomy, which i attended with the generous help of 12-hr fever reducers). i hate hate hate waking up in the middle of the week and realizing that i'm still running on last week's schedule. i feel so woozy. but really, this could have been so much worse--i don't know where the fever came from, but i think it's basically gone. good news, yeah? it could have hung around 'til easter, or developed into something i wouldn't be able to cure with otc magic.
so--thank you, universe. it's good to be back.
4.19.2011
4.18.2011
feverish
4.17.2011
oh. my. god.
an ego boost:
gonzaga wants me, and they'd like to give me twenty thousand dollars (in addition to financial aid) to go there. i'm slightly dazed.
gonzaga wants me, and they'd like to give me twenty thousand dollars (in addition to financial aid) to go there. i'm slightly dazed.
4.16.2011
a jolt to the inner self
before diving into the last of my homework today, i decided to check the email account to which i've been trying to switch over (unsuccessfully), and discovered that i have ten dollars worth of new fines due at the library, and that evergreen state college still wants me to apply.
or wanted me to, anyway, on march 14th. i clicked the apply online button just to check the form out, and it signed me in automatically--which made me think, how weird, i started applying here already? i didn't think any more of it until i closed out of the form, which took me to a homepage i didn't recognize. it was divided into two parts: submitted forms, and forms in progress. guess what was under the submitted forms? my art institute of portland application!! i thought, how the fuck did evergreen get that? but apparently aipd and evergreen use the same company to manage their online apps, and i wasn't on evergreen's website anymore, but rather on the commonapp-like website made for less prestigious institutions (i'm judging "prestige" prematurely, here... perhaps i'm wrong in my assumption).
that's only part of the story, one that has no real purpose except to explain how i got a hold of my personal statement, written when i was seventeen years old, on october 18th, 2007:
i did, actually. i did. perhaps i knew it was all a lie while i writing it, cleanly composing my sentences to fit what the art institute was looking for. but i don't think so--i think i really believed that i wanted to do this. and that scares me now, because i'm in the process of figuring out all my transfer stuff, and i probably don't really know what i want, or what i'm looking for. and that makes me think, i need to slow down and ask myself some really uncomfortable questions (and dig them out honestly) before i commit to another disaster.
or wanted me to, anyway, on march 14th. i clicked the apply online button just to check the form out, and it signed me in automatically--which made me think, how weird, i started applying here already? i didn't think any more of it until i closed out of the form, which took me to a homepage i didn't recognize. it was divided into two parts: submitted forms, and forms in progress. guess what was under the submitted forms? my art institute of portland application!! i thought, how the fuck did evergreen get that? but apparently aipd and evergreen use the same company to manage their online apps, and i wasn't on evergreen's website anymore, but rather on the commonapp-like website made for less prestigious institutions (i'm judging "prestige" prematurely, here... perhaps i'm wrong in my assumption).
that's only part of the story, one that has no real purpose except to explain how i got a hold of my personal statement, written when i was seventeen years old, on october 18th, 2007:
In a world of increasingly fierce competition, it is my goal to thrive. I don't want a nondescript office job where I will only read about the success of others; rather, I want to be living my dreams and working to leave my mark on this world. My goal to become a prominent graphic designer will be more likely achieved with an education at the Art Institute. The fact that this school is so career-driven will make it possible to focus the majority of my time and attention on mastering the skills I will need as a graphic designer, instead of scattering my energy to learn various subjects only faintly connected to my career.can i say shocking?! i don't recognize whoever wrote this garbage--she should be pleased to know that today, i care nothing about "increasingly fierce" corporate competition (except to lament its destruction of the environment and interference with social justice in its race for the highest financial returns). i am happily spending dozens of credit hours "scattering my energy to learn various subjects only faintly connected to my career" at a community college that costs a sixth of aipd's tuition and still boasts a relatively low teacher-student ratio. and the "lifetime of success" bullshit? come on! there is no success without failure, and besides--did i really think that graphic design wasn't largely composed of sitting in a "nondescript office," that my "success" wouldn't depend almost entirely on the proportion of hours spent on the computer versus hours spent on life?
Additionally, the low student-teacher ratio and the serious schedule found at AI will ensure that my time in college won't go to waste. Instead, I will be driven to fine-tune my abilities as a designer and leave school feeling ready to achieve my goals. I strongly believe that by entering the Art Institute of Portland, I will take an enormous step towards building a foundation for a lifetime of success.
i did, actually. i did. perhaps i knew it was all a lie while i writing it, cleanly composing my sentences to fit what the art institute was looking for. but i don't think so--i think i really believed that i wanted to do this. and that scares me now, because i'm in the process of figuring out all my transfer stuff, and i probably don't really know what i want, or what i'm looking for. and that makes me think, i need to slow down and ask myself some really uncomfortable questions (and dig them out honestly) before i commit to another disaster.
4.15.2011
this summer...
...i'm getting myself a honda rebel. i just have to, um, figure out how i'll pay for it.
image credit
4.12.2011
seven pages: a (quick) response
today i read your letter on my lunch break, and i was blown away. you're growing up so fast! a few things: when you go to australia before classes start next feb., maybe i can convince you to let me tag along? we can celebrate our birthdays together, yeah?
at any rate, we have time to decide. it might interfere with school (PSU, realistically speaking.. and i think they follow a schedule close to PCC's, so by the time you go, winter term would have already started) and maybe you'd rather go with a lover, anyway. we should, however, still plan on nyc this summer. no excuses, no matter what peter says--my soul has been craving manhattan and i think we should just do it, either before i start summer classes or right after (or during, if absolutely necessary).
i'm glad you're liking your short hair. i am, too. i think cutting it off provided a sort of catharsis from the crappiness of the end of winter term, with all the family stuff and school stuff and transfer apps. it served as a conclusion to it all, and i've felt lighter ever since. i think it suits me well, for where i'm in life right now... but i don't know if i'll keep trimming it. i think i'll just let it grow out again, because it grows slow anyway, and sometimes i miss the simplicity of messy buns when i'm running late (although that hasn't been happening very much anymore--crazy, yeah?) or when i'm having a lazy day. i was looking through photos from this summer, and i was a little jealous of my long curls. but only a little bit, far from the point of true regret.
okay, so astronomy starts soon and i have to go running and shower and finish some fin aid stuff before then, so. i'm out. i saw you wrote a blog today, but i won't read that until after class, k? i love you. xoxo, j.
at any rate, we have time to decide. it might interfere with school (PSU, realistically speaking.. and i think they follow a schedule close to PCC's, so by the time you go, winter term would have already started) and maybe you'd rather go with a lover, anyway. we should, however, still plan on nyc this summer. no excuses, no matter what peter says--my soul has been craving manhattan and i think we should just do it, either before i start summer classes or right after (or during, if absolutely necessary).
i'm glad you're liking your short hair. i am, too. i think cutting it off provided a sort of catharsis from the crappiness of the end of winter term, with all the family stuff and school stuff and transfer apps. it served as a conclusion to it all, and i've felt lighter ever since. i think it suits me well, for where i'm in life right now... but i don't know if i'll keep trimming it. i think i'll just let it grow out again, because it grows slow anyway, and sometimes i miss the simplicity of messy buns when i'm running late (although that hasn't been happening very much anymore--crazy, yeah?) or when i'm having a lazy day. i was looking through photos from this summer, and i was a little jealous of my long curls. but only a little bit, far from the point of true regret.
okay, so astronomy starts soon and i have to go running and shower and finish some fin aid stuff before then, so. i'm out. i saw you wrote a blog today, but i won't read that until after class, k? i love you. xoxo, j.
the joyful insomniac
stop me when my refrain becomes unbearably repetitive, but i've been so happy lately, i hardly know what to do with myself. for example:
i couldn't fall asleep earlier tonight because after we finished skyping, sue called and told me about her prom date(!) and by the time our conversation was over, i was too wired to sleep so i went for a midnight walk.
earlier today i heard something on the radio about the upcoming fiftieth anniversary of the moon landing, and i thought, holy shit! dad was alive for that! so of course i started thinking about how i can transform that into a short story or essay, but my ideas all fell flat because i don't have anything to work with. i can't imagine dad being twelve, or having simple, non-religious thoughts... can you? i realized that i should call him soon and try to weasel the story out before it's too late, but maybe i should stop pestering him. when do i just let his stories go? it seems like he would like that best, but it's not only his history, it's mine too, you know?
okay, i'm going to stop now because this gloominess is not an accurate reflection of what i was feeling earlier.
what i was feeling earlier--as i was walking down the main road, hands in pockets, and nose slightly numb (i briefly tricked my mind into thinking it was winter, but i dropped the thought immediately)--was an inexplicable eagerness to live. which is abstract and doesn't say much at all, but bear with me. i've been having a hard time pegging down my feelings lately--a good sign, maybe? one that says i'm maturing, experiencing emotions that push beyond the fickle spectrum of my youth?
oh lord, i'm over-analyzing again. all this just to say, i couldn't smell the cherry blossoms because my nostrils lost their function, and to absorb my setting i used my eyes instead--i looked straight up, and saw the big dipper and thought, it's in my zenith! it's in my zenith!
which is to say, astronomy has exceeded my highest expectations (and you know i set the bar high)--i've learned something new in every class so far, my lab group is perfect, and my instructor is a bad ass. anyway, you know how my thoughts are this time of night--i start making connections to everything, so i started thinking about this term in general, and realized it's probably my best so far. even stats, which started out dreadfully boring, has improved--i think the instructor has a hidden sense of humor, and the only way you can pick up on it is by reading into his eyebrow raises and offhanded comments about nothing in particular. i'm the only one who laughs, though, so i'm either really smart or really, really dumb. and judging by the general intelligence of the class, it's probably the latter.
okay, i'm starting to fall apart. i'm ready for bed now, and i'm sorry if i trailed off and never finished telling you what i meant to say. oh! your letter came--seven pages! you outdo yourself, woman. i love you, so so so much. thisss is probably one of those delete-tomorrow posts, so if you miss it, consider yourself lucky. good night.
i couldn't fall asleep earlier tonight because after we finished skyping, sue called and told me about her prom date(!) and by the time our conversation was over, i was too wired to sleep so i went for a midnight walk.
earlier today i heard something on the radio about the upcoming fiftieth anniversary of the moon landing, and i thought, holy shit! dad was alive for that! so of course i started thinking about how i can transform that into a short story or essay, but my ideas all fell flat because i don't have anything to work with. i can't imagine dad being twelve, or having simple, non-religious thoughts... can you? i realized that i should call him soon and try to weasel the story out before it's too late, but maybe i should stop pestering him. when do i just let his stories go? it seems like he would like that best, but it's not only his history, it's mine too, you know?
okay, i'm going to stop now because this gloominess is not an accurate reflection of what i was feeling earlier.
what i was feeling earlier--as i was walking down the main road, hands in pockets, and nose slightly numb (i briefly tricked my mind into thinking it was winter, but i dropped the thought immediately)--was an inexplicable eagerness to live. which is abstract and doesn't say much at all, but bear with me. i've been having a hard time pegging down my feelings lately--a good sign, maybe? one that says i'm maturing, experiencing emotions that push beyond the fickle spectrum of my youth?
oh lord, i'm over-analyzing again. all this just to say, i couldn't smell the cherry blossoms because my nostrils lost their function, and to absorb my setting i used my eyes instead--i looked straight up, and saw the big dipper and thought, it's in my zenith! it's in my zenith!
which is to say, astronomy has exceeded my highest expectations (and you know i set the bar high)--i've learned something new in every class so far, my lab group is perfect, and my instructor is a bad ass. anyway, you know how my thoughts are this time of night--i start making connections to everything, so i started thinking about this term in general, and realized it's probably my best so far. even stats, which started out dreadfully boring, has improved--i think the instructor has a hidden sense of humor, and the only way you can pick up on it is by reading into his eyebrow raises and offhanded comments about nothing in particular. i'm the only one who laughs, though, so i'm either really smart or really, really dumb. and judging by the general intelligence of the class, it's probably the latter.
okay, i'm starting to fall apart. i'm ready for bed now, and i'm sorry if i trailed off and never finished telling you what i meant to say. oh! your letter came--seven pages! you outdo yourself, woman. i love you, so so so much. thisss is probably one of those delete-tomorrow posts, so if you miss it, consider yourself lucky. good night.
4.10.2011
on dad, church, and nightmares
(warning: my apologies, but this is an unnecessarily long and boring story. perhaps you should just wait until we talk...)
i finally went to church today, my first time since december. p and i had talked about going for a while, but then i went to spokane, and then i worked, and then i broke up with v.--in short, things didn't quite work out until today. i can't decide what spurred me exactly, because i had plenty of excuses to justify an absence (perhaps, not to be obvious or anything, the fact that i still have not let go of atheism?). but today, dad officially became a deacon (one of fewer than ten) at Bethlehem, and perhaps i felt it would be fitting to attend church here since i couldn't make it home to see him.
maybe i'm lying. perhaps what really spurred me was waking up from a nightmare at dawn today, one that stained my thoughts and prevented me from doing anything useful until i gave in and drove to church. in my dream, oks., tam., you, and i were sitting in a pew at Bethlehem (although it seemed larger--longer, and much darker) and there were several men walking slowly down the aisle towards the back, in our direction. they wore traditional catholic robes (and they weren't russian--Bethlehem wasn't quite itself) and people kept rising from their pews and walking over to them, and having urgent conversations that we couldn't hear.
we soon realized that the robed men were calling the "unsaved" to action--the people rising from their pews were confessing their belief in god/jesus/etc, and then were baptized on the spot. the men, we noticed, were rolling salon-like chairs with headrests that tipped back into an attached basin of water, a sort of portable baptism device.
when the men approached our pew, oks. and then tam. got up and did it immediately (in the dream, they weren't baptized already) and my heart started racing because i haven't been baptized yet and i started thinking like those fire-insurance christians--maybe i don't really believe in this, but what's the harm in pretending, just in case? when the girls returned i walked over, and then saw that the man was one of our regulars at the cafe, a short mid-fifties catholic priest who always makes me squirmy--he has a full beard that's squared at the bottom, and his eyes are rat-like in their distaste for human contact, and he never smiles (and never tips).
so i started feeling uncomfortable, but since i was already there, i sat down. i noticed immediately that the chair was not like those you'd see in a salon--instead, it seemed pulled from a horror film, that chair to which the insane antagonist fastens his victims before he tortures them. there were metal cuffs for the wrists, and ankles, and neck, and i felt my spine prickle. until then, everything had seemed (relatively) normal--i didn't sense evil until it was my turn. i saw that the man was writing something in a notepad--a tally, i realized, of the people he had baptized so far. he finished, turned to me, and began his pitch about accepting jesus.
instantly, i understood that he was trying to reach a quota of some kind, and that the ceremony was a fraud. i started to get up (he hadn't snapped the cuffs around me), but he frowned and shoved me down, then started speaking more forcibly. at this point, everything becomes jumbled--the dream started fading, but the man still wrestled to get me to declare my faith, and started pushing my head into the basin. and like most men in my nightmares, he was stronger--much stronger--than i was, and i strained to nudge his forearms out of my way so that i could leave the chair and run. the rest of the church had disappeared, and he was gaining strength as i weakened. "just say that you believe and it will all be over!" he shrieked, and i woke up.
i don't subscribe to the assumption that dreams hold any meaning, but something like this (i've failed to describe my terror adequately, i'm sure, but the dream was unquestionably real as it unfolded) takes time to dissolve into non-memory. lately i've been writing with an unprecedented frequency, but today (i wanted to dedicate several straight hours to editing) i couldn't think clearly, and after spending most of an absent-minded afternoon starting and abandoning russian and statistics homework, i changed tactics, left home, and went to evening service.
i figured that experiencing a typical, nonthreatening version of church would distance me from the nightmare and reset my acquired neutrality towards religion. i'm not sure that it did either, but i gleaned some inspiration from the sermon and my tension (in response to it? in response to just attending church?) for a future poem or story, so i suppose not all was lost.
and, afterwards i went to powell's and picked up a copy of iowa's literary journal, which i've been meaning to do forever, and then i hung out with molly for a couple hours, and now i'm home and i have half-finished russian homework, and half-finished (honestly, only one-quarter-finished) stats homework, and it's past my bedtime... and really, i can't think of feeling any more normal than this.
i finally went to church today, my first time since december. p and i had talked about going for a while, but then i went to spokane, and then i worked, and then i broke up with v.--in short, things didn't quite work out until today. i can't decide what spurred me exactly, because i had plenty of excuses to justify an absence (perhaps, not to be obvious or anything, the fact that i still have not let go of atheism?). but today, dad officially became a deacon (one of fewer than ten) at Bethlehem, and perhaps i felt it would be fitting to attend church here since i couldn't make it home to see him.
maybe i'm lying. perhaps what really spurred me was waking up from a nightmare at dawn today, one that stained my thoughts and prevented me from doing anything useful until i gave in and drove to church. in my dream, oks., tam., you, and i were sitting in a pew at Bethlehem (although it seemed larger--longer, and much darker) and there were several men walking slowly down the aisle towards the back, in our direction. they wore traditional catholic robes (and they weren't russian--Bethlehem wasn't quite itself) and people kept rising from their pews and walking over to them, and having urgent conversations that we couldn't hear.
we soon realized that the robed men were calling the "unsaved" to action--the people rising from their pews were confessing their belief in god/jesus/etc, and then were baptized on the spot. the men, we noticed, were rolling salon-like chairs with headrests that tipped back into an attached basin of water, a sort of portable baptism device.
when the men approached our pew, oks. and then tam. got up and did it immediately (in the dream, they weren't baptized already) and my heart started racing because i haven't been baptized yet and i started thinking like those fire-insurance christians--maybe i don't really believe in this, but what's the harm in pretending, just in case? when the girls returned i walked over, and then saw that the man was one of our regulars at the cafe, a short mid-fifties catholic priest who always makes me squirmy--he has a full beard that's squared at the bottom, and his eyes are rat-like in their distaste for human contact, and he never smiles (and never tips).
so i started feeling uncomfortable, but since i was already there, i sat down. i noticed immediately that the chair was not like those you'd see in a salon--instead, it seemed pulled from a horror film, that chair to which the insane antagonist fastens his victims before he tortures them. there were metal cuffs for the wrists, and ankles, and neck, and i felt my spine prickle. until then, everything had seemed (relatively) normal--i didn't sense evil until it was my turn. i saw that the man was writing something in a notepad--a tally, i realized, of the people he had baptized so far. he finished, turned to me, and began his pitch about accepting jesus.
instantly, i understood that he was trying to reach a quota of some kind, and that the ceremony was a fraud. i started to get up (he hadn't snapped the cuffs around me), but he frowned and shoved me down, then started speaking more forcibly. at this point, everything becomes jumbled--the dream started fading, but the man still wrestled to get me to declare my faith, and started pushing my head into the basin. and like most men in my nightmares, he was stronger--much stronger--than i was, and i strained to nudge his forearms out of my way so that i could leave the chair and run. the rest of the church had disappeared, and he was gaining strength as i weakened. "just say that you believe and it will all be over!" he shrieked, and i woke up.
i don't subscribe to the assumption that dreams hold any meaning, but something like this (i've failed to describe my terror adequately, i'm sure, but the dream was unquestionably real as it unfolded) takes time to dissolve into non-memory. lately i've been writing with an unprecedented frequency, but today (i wanted to dedicate several straight hours to editing) i couldn't think clearly, and after spending most of an absent-minded afternoon starting and abandoning russian and statistics homework, i changed tactics, left home, and went to evening service.
i figured that experiencing a typical, nonthreatening version of church would distance me from the nightmare and reset my acquired neutrality towards religion. i'm not sure that it did either, but i gleaned some inspiration from the sermon and my tension (in response to it? in response to just attending church?) for a future poem or story, so i suppose not all was lost.
and, afterwards i went to powell's and picked up a copy of iowa's literary journal, which i've been meaning to do forever, and then i hung out with molly for a couple hours, and now i'm home and i have half-finished russian homework, and half-finished (honestly, only one-quarter-finished) stats homework, and it's past my bedtime... and really, i can't think of feeling any more normal than this.
4.07.2011
a spiritual sequence of events.
if i were to convey my current state of mind with a photograph, i would use this one from last summer--the first (and perhaps only?) time my vegan cookie dough bonded just right, and left the oven epitomizing perfection.
this week has been so bizarre, i don't even know where to begin. in the course of five days, my entire world has shifted, and i don't recognize myself or my thoughts or my (incredibly positive, incredibly driven) attitude. i'm so alive.
i was anticipating writing a list tonight, breaking down the individual dominos that fell to change the landscape of my outlook (oh lord, such an unoriginal image, but i'll leave it unedited for now so i can get back to the book i'm reading)--but. i can't do it. for one, i'm terrified that if i jump straight into my habitual "self-reflection"--oftentimes, just neurotic over-analyzation of my everyday experiences--then i will snap the magic. and second (or is it "for two"? does anyone ever say that, in the name of parallelism?), i don't know if i am even capable of gaining perspective on what just happened. i am simply flabbergasted.
let me put it this way: if i feel the way i'm feeling right now when i'm lying in my deathbed, then i will die with no regrets. in this moment, i own myself completely.
4.05.2011
what i miss.
1. mom's vegan cooking
2. spontaneous nighttime drives to the coast
3. you, ann. i miss your face, and i was breaking up with v. instead of skyping with you on sunday, although i would have much--much--preferred to do the latter. can we try again friday, before 4pm? say yesss.
4.01.2011
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