My new writing blog can be found here.
Don't know what it is yet but I will eventually!
And thanks for following, for commenting, for just reading-- it means a lot to me.
Monday, January 3, 2011
Friday, December 31, 2010
Day The Last.
2010, i'd live it again
it was weird it was good,
and i made a few friends
2011 be kind please
remind me
that i have sights to see
2011 be mine please
let me shake you up
coconuts and palm trees
JUST KIDDING THAT'S NOT REALLY MY LAST POST OF THE YEAR
Oh wait no it totally is because I have to go soon and I'm running on two hours of sleep!
2010 was ridiculously good to me. I'm thinking about it, about regrets and resolutions, and this year has been amazing.
I've never ended a year more excited for the next one.
Thank you to family and friends, and thanks for the times that blur the line between them.
Thank you for reading, and happy New Year's Eve!
it was weird it was good,
and i made a few friends
2011 be kind please
remind me
that i have sights to see
2011 be mine please
let me shake you up
coconuts and palm trees
JUST KIDDING THAT'S NOT REALLY MY LAST POST OF THE YEAR
Oh wait no it totally is because I have to go soon and I'm running on two hours of sleep!
2010 was ridiculously good to me. I'm thinking about it, about regrets and resolutions, and this year has been amazing.
I've never ended a year more excited for the next one.
Thank you to family and friends, and thanks for the times that blur the line between them.
Thank you for reading, and happy New Year's Eve!
Day 99.
We filed in, finding seats, heads swiveling to each person who walked in the room in semi-recognition. That first-day smell of new pencils and fresh paper and shampoo and all possible material representations of a New Start were there. And there was a sense of waiting, a quiet, rare agreement to withhold judgement until the teacher showed.
The man at the front of the classroom scribbled on the blackboard: "Mr. Smith, Math Slayer."
In every interesting class, there is a kid whose brain connects directly to their vocal chords. Jenna was that kid.
"Um, yeah, like, excuse me, but aren't you supposed to like math? Like, didn't you get a degree in it?"
He bared his teeth.
"Kids," he snarled, "it's always a good idea to know your enemy." He punctuated the last three words with his fist on the desk. "I am perfectly suited to be a math teacher, and here's why. I hate math. It's a godawful fucker of a subject. No, okay, who here has a problem with me cursing, by the way? God no, keep those hands down. I never want to see hands. The day you raise your hand to say something in real life is the day your self-worth dies. What was I saying. Oh. Yes. What happens when you love something? You let it past your guard!" He paused. "Who here loves math?"
Franklin twitched and shoved his hands in his pockets.
Mr. Smith surveyed the class. "Alright, fine, hide. Well if you're out there, I'm just trying to prepare you for the inevitable heart break of life."
Jenna's eyebrows furrowed. "What inevitable heart break?"
Mr. Smith turned around, appearing not to have heard her. He pulled out an ancient overhead and placed a sheet on the screen, then turned to check his roll sheet.
"Jonathan, do this problem. It's your monster, now here's your weapon: It is given that x=2. Go." He handed Jonathan a marker and sat at Jonathan's desk, commenting.
"That's right, that's right. Goddamn, add those, can't you see- okay, okay. Hey, you whip this problem or it whips you, got it?"
Finally Jonathan, turning red, capped the marker. "Alright, go sit down somewhere, I like your chair better. Jesus, that was a fucker. You took her down! Pat yourself on the back. That's it. You need a cigarette? I'm joking, I'm joking, sorry."
It was amazing: he talked like a combination radio advertiser and drill sergeant.
"Hey, who in here can do rings though? You know? Puff, puff. I'm a motherfucking magic dragon."
The man at the front of the classroom scribbled on the blackboard: "Mr. Smith, Math Slayer."
In every interesting class, there is a kid whose brain connects directly to their vocal chords. Jenna was that kid.
"Um, yeah, like, excuse me, but aren't you supposed to like math? Like, didn't you get a degree in it?"
He bared his teeth.
"Kids," he snarled, "it's always a good idea to know your enemy." He punctuated the last three words with his fist on the desk. "I am perfectly suited to be a math teacher, and here's why. I hate math. It's a godawful fucker of a subject. No, okay, who here has a problem with me cursing, by the way? God no, keep those hands down. I never want to see hands. The day you raise your hand to say something in real life is the day your self-worth dies. What was I saying. Oh. Yes. What happens when you love something? You let it past your guard!" He paused. "Who here loves math?"
Franklin twitched and shoved his hands in his pockets.
Mr. Smith surveyed the class. "Alright, fine, hide. Well if you're out there, I'm just trying to prepare you for the inevitable heart break of life."
Jenna's eyebrows furrowed. "What inevitable heart break?"
Mr. Smith turned around, appearing not to have heard her. He pulled out an ancient overhead and placed a sheet on the screen, then turned to check his roll sheet.
"Jonathan, do this problem. It's your monster, now here's your weapon: It is given that x=2. Go." He handed Jonathan a marker and sat at Jonathan's desk, commenting.
"That's right, that's right. Goddamn, add those, can't you see- okay, okay. Hey, you whip this problem or it whips you, got it?"
Finally Jonathan, turning red, capped the marker. "Alright, go sit down somewhere, I like your chair better. Jesus, that was a fucker. You took her down! Pat yourself on the back. That's it. You need a cigarette? I'm joking, I'm joking, sorry."
It was amazing: he talked like a combination radio advertiser and drill sergeant.
"Hey, who in here can do rings though? You know? Puff, puff. I'm a motherfucking magic dragon."
Day 98. NO MORE NONFICTION.
sort of song lyrics?
in cars at night you heard the thrum
soft-slurred songs, steady drums
reverberations in concrete
the words don't matter with your voice so sweet
the houses blur, but the stars are clear
your mind is far but you so near
your reflection pans across my window like the racing of the rain
there is no pain
you've smoothed my rough edges to your frame
in cars at night you heard the thrum
soft-slurred songs, steady drums
reverberations in concrete
the words don't matter with your voice so sweet
the houses blur, but the stars are clear
your mind is far but you so near
your reflection pans across my window like the racing of the rain
there is no pain
you've smoothed my rough edges to your frame
Day 97.
I miss my Conn8D....Why do I always forget it at school over breaks?
Also, college essays are weird because they make you write about every aspect of your life in positive realizations and lessons learned.
For a brief minute you become high off the sensation that yes, you do have everything figured out, yes, you are a fully realized person, yes, everything has turned out for the best and you are a god of everything!!!!! EVERYTHING!
.....And then you remember what you're writing and for what purpose and your head deflates and you feel insignificant again.
What a relief!
TIME FOR A DRAMATIC BAND ESSAYLETTE!
The stage lights are blinding at first, but they always are. It helps me forget I'm playing to people. I pick up my French horn, breathe, and release the opening bars of Zdechlik's Chorale and Shaker Dance. My section has a soli coming up. I cannot back away: the future is approaching like a hurtling glacier and there is no avoiding it, I can't even spare a moment to wonder if I'm being too dramatic because being in band involves a certain type of dramatic honor; a responsibility to the whole band, to your section, and finally to yourself to not fake it. So I play, and hope it comes out with all the feeling I put into it.
One of my music teachers once told me his theory that we pick the instruments we play because on some level we identify with their sound. I didn't pick French horn at first; I played flute for three years, but middle school bands typically overflow with flutes. When my old band director asked who wanted to switch to the less popular horn, I instinctively put my hand up. It has been exciting, because a French horn is a little like an explosive. All the parts can be in order, all protocols followed, but there's still a certain degree of unpredictability. The closeness of partials on the instrument mean that to play a note, you have to hear it in your head first; even then, injured moose sounds and ungainly squawks are not uncommon. That beautiful, aching undertone you heard in a symphony was a French horn, but so was the accidental atonal blare at your local high school concert. Despite the hazards of horn and the parts written for it (three pages of offbeats, eighty measures of rest and a single whole note) I wouldn't switch for anything. French horn is a Dickensian instrument, containing the best of sounds and the worst of sounds, and when I play it, the best and worst of me.
Also, college essays are weird because they make you write about every aspect of your life in positive realizations and lessons learned.
For a brief minute you become high off the sensation that yes, you do have everything figured out, yes, you are a fully realized person, yes, everything has turned out for the best and you are a god of everything!!!!! EVERYTHING!
.....And then you remember what you're writing and for what purpose and your head deflates and you feel insignificant again.
What a relief!
TIME FOR A DRAMATIC BAND ESSAYLETTE!
The stage lights are blinding at first, but they always are. It helps me forget I'm playing to people. I pick up my French horn, breathe, and release the opening bars of Zdechlik's Chorale and Shaker Dance. My section has a soli coming up. I cannot back away: the future is approaching like a hurtling glacier and there is no avoiding it, I can't even spare a moment to wonder if I'm being too dramatic because being in band involves a certain type of dramatic honor; a responsibility to the whole band, to your section, and finally to yourself to not fake it. So I play, and hope it comes out with all the feeling I put into it.
One of my music teachers once told me his theory that we pick the instruments we play because on some level we identify with their sound. I didn't pick French horn at first; I played flute for three years, but middle school bands typically overflow with flutes. When my old band director asked who wanted to switch to the less popular horn, I instinctively put my hand up. It has been exciting, because a French horn is a little like an explosive. All the parts can be in order, all protocols followed, but there's still a certain degree of unpredictability. The closeness of partials on the instrument mean that to play a note, you have to hear it in your head first; even then, injured moose sounds and ungainly squawks are not uncommon. That beautiful, aching undertone you heard in a symphony was a French horn, but so was the accidental atonal blare at your local high school concert. Despite the hazards of horn and the parts written for it (three pages of offbeats, eighty measures of rest and a single whole note) I wouldn't switch for anything. French horn is a Dickensian instrument, containing the best of sounds and the worst of sounds, and when I play it, the best and worst of me.
Day 96.
I never posted this-- but it was part of my CSSSA Application, the creative nonfiction assignment about telling a childhood memory in the voice of a child.
My family, we go to the zoo. There are orangutans, with swingy arms and deep-back eyes, and a baby they leave on the ground while they climb so high my head can't tilt anymore. And there are flamingoes, lots of them, pink and red like loud valentines. And there is a polar bear with tangled fur, a wrong sun-yellow. And he keeps going in the pool and getting out again and I yell, stop it polar bear, stay in or go out, but he doesn't listen. When I turn around Mommy is gone and Connie and Daddy are walking away and so I gallop to catch up and my purple jacket is slipping from its knot at my middle, so I try to hold it up and look sideways at everything i am running by, all the tanks and nets and bars. But tall leg trunks are everywhere, moving so I can't see clearly. But it's okay because I read Harriet the Spy and so I follow Connie and Daddy to the bathroom and we wait there a long long time and I try to touch every plant, ripping off leaves and tearing them into tiny pieces, dropping the pieces. Daddy says to stop. And finally mommy comes out and I hear daddy ask How much blood? And his glasses are pushed up by the wrinkles in his face. Mommy says, Too much. I ask for a churro because i can smell them so close and hear sugar crunchy rolling on my tongue already. But then Mommy asks for my purple jacket to tie around her middle and before she ties it on I see the spot on the back of her pants, like she's trying to steal a flamingo, and then we run run run to the car and I am laughing because when I run with mommy sometimes my feet forget to touch the ground. And then we're in the parking lot, magma asphalt I feel through my socks and my shoes, and the way Daddy closes the car door is different and the way he drives is different and there is a hunch in his back.
It is Adventure and it feels scary. I lie flat out on the car seat and look up at the changing sky and play with the pages of Red Fish Blue Fish. I want to turn more pages because everything is happening too slowly and I have too many questions.
My family, we go to the zoo. There are orangutans, with swingy arms and deep-back eyes, and a baby they leave on the ground while they climb so high my head can't tilt anymore. And there are flamingoes, lots of them, pink and red like loud valentines. And there is a polar bear with tangled fur, a wrong sun-yellow. And he keeps going in the pool and getting out again and I yell, stop it polar bear, stay in or go out, but he doesn't listen. When I turn around Mommy is gone and Connie and Daddy are walking away and so I gallop to catch up and my purple jacket is slipping from its knot at my middle, so I try to hold it up and look sideways at everything i am running by, all the tanks and nets and bars. But tall leg trunks are everywhere, moving so I can't see clearly. But it's okay because I read Harriet the Spy and so I follow Connie and Daddy to the bathroom and we wait there a long long time and I try to touch every plant, ripping off leaves and tearing them into tiny pieces, dropping the pieces. Daddy says to stop. And finally mommy comes out and I hear daddy ask How much blood? And his glasses are pushed up by the wrinkles in his face. Mommy says, Too much. I ask for a churro because i can smell them so close and hear sugar crunchy rolling on my tongue already. But then Mommy asks for my purple jacket to tie around her middle and before she ties it on I see the spot on the back of her pants, like she's trying to steal a flamingo, and then we run run run to the car and I am laughing because when I run with mommy sometimes my feet forget to touch the ground. And then we're in the parking lot, magma asphalt I feel through my socks and my shoes, and the way Daddy closes the car door is different and the way he drives is different and there is a hunch in his back.
It is Adventure and it feels scary. I lie flat out on the car seat and look up at the changing sky and play with the pages of Red Fish Blue Fish. I want to turn more pages because everything is happening too slowly and I have too many questions.
Day 95.
An intellectual experience. Another essaylette.
In tenth grade, I took Art History. The final project of the class had a reputation: twelve 4x4'' paintings, self portraits in the styles of twelve different artists. I had never painted seriously before, and I struggled. It would take me hours to get the style of the artist right, and then I would realize it looked nothing like me. For the last month of class, those self portraits followed me everywhere. I remember taking out my paints waiting in the doctor's office, trying to fix my Emily Carr portrait (I got an a first-name basis with these portraits, so she was Emily.)
When I finished Emily I started on Egon (Schiele)-- the tortured, repressed teenager shielding himself with his sharp angles, sallow skin. I never really got the parchment color of that skin right. The pain, almost paranoia, in his eyes was harder still to get on the small square of posterboard.
Roy (Lichtenstein) was nicer to me than Egon. I painted a cartoon girl, a bubble of thought proclaiming her blankness in a world gone nuclear.
And Francis (Bacon) went quietly--inside the black box, my face was swollen like his. Blurred almost, a face like discolored pewter, with a smear of white and pink, an abstracted pig nose, black slits for eyes.
Vincent, Salvador, Paul, Gustav, Amadeo-- my parents looked at me sprawled on the floor painting at 4 am, newspapers on the carpet, and told me the Modigliani looked fine.
"No no," I said, "the eyes are all wrong! They have to be distant, unknowable. And the nose isn't graceful yet."
They stared at me like I was crazy.
Painting those self-portraits made me a little crazy, but it also taught me so much more about the artists than I could have learned just from looking at their work. I think that's what I found engaging-- the process of becoming.
In tenth grade, I took Art History. The final project of the class had a reputation: twelve 4x4'' paintings, self portraits in the styles of twelve different artists. I had never painted seriously before, and I struggled. It would take me hours to get the style of the artist right, and then I would realize it looked nothing like me. For the last month of class, those self portraits followed me everywhere. I remember taking out my paints waiting in the doctor's office, trying to fix my Emily Carr portrait (I got an a first-name basis with these portraits, so she was Emily.)
When I finished Emily I started on Egon (Schiele)-- the tortured, repressed teenager shielding himself with his sharp angles, sallow skin. I never really got the parchment color of that skin right. The pain, almost paranoia, in his eyes was harder still to get on the small square of posterboard.
Roy (Lichtenstein) was nicer to me than Egon. I painted a cartoon girl, a bubble of thought proclaiming her blankness in a world gone nuclear.
And Francis (Bacon) went quietly--inside the black box, my face was swollen like his. Blurred almost, a face like discolored pewter, with a smear of white and pink, an abstracted pig nose, black slits for eyes.
Vincent, Salvador, Paul, Gustav, Amadeo-- my parents looked at me sprawled on the floor painting at 4 am, newspapers on the carpet, and told me the Modigliani looked fine.
"No no," I said, "the eyes are all wrong! They have to be distant, unknowable. And the nose isn't graceful yet."
They stared at me like I was crazy.
Painting those self-portraits made me a little crazy, but it also taught me so much more about the artists than I could have learned just from looking at their work. I think that's what I found engaging-- the process of becoming.
Day 94. five words that maybe sort of describe me
sparsile.
i am not in a constellation.
the pictures you could draw from me to other people are indistinct at best.
i draw my own pictures.
i will not be grouped or mythologized.
enthusiastic.
YES!
adventurous.
road trip state of mind.
humanist.
by which i mean, optimist and idealist
curious.
as in George, as in "spends too much time utilizing Wikipedia's random article feature"
i am not in a constellation.
the pictures you could draw from me to other people are indistinct at best.
i draw my own pictures.
i will not be grouped or mythologized.
enthusiastic.
YES!
adventurous.
road trip state of mind.
humanist.
by which i mean, optimist and idealist
curious.
as in George, as in "spends too much time utilizing Wikipedia's random article feature"
Day 93.
Is posting college essays on here selling my soul?
Oh well.....
Essay for Brown: What is the best piece of advice you have received and why?
I got a lot of good advice during CSSSA-- the California State Summer School for the Arts, where, for a month, I lived on the Cal Arts campus and studied creative writing.
On the first day the director of all the programs told us, "This month is what you make of it." I resolved to write as much as and as well as I possibly could. I wrote a scene sprawled on the cold tile of my dorm's bathroom floor because I was keeping my visual artist roommates up with the light; I wrote a poem while crunched into a cave-like space under the big desk in the writer's lounge because my teacher told us to write in different places.
His advice made me approach that month like a dare, but I still managed to bring some of my old fears: I was nervously reading one of my pieces to the whole writing department, swaying a little, when Eva Marie, the theater coach, told me, "Don't be cute. Cute ain't comfortable." She had me stand in what I call a power stance and what she called normal, and start over. Now, months later, when I talk in front of an audience I always look down to double check that my feet are firmly planted David Bowie style.
But the last and best piece of advice I got at CSSSA was from Zay, a short man in hipster glasses."Do something while you're here that scares you," he told us. I doubt he was the first to say it, and he didn't pretend he was, but the strange glint in his eye seemed to expect great things from us. Merely squishing spiders would not satisfy this glint. Jumping off buildings would not satisfy this glint.
Only confronting our own personal boggart would satisfy this glint.
So on the last night of CSSSA, I sang (with my friend Veronica on guitar) a song called "Blue or Gray" in front of maybe a hundred people, and they clapped and waved and called my name even though I was magnificently off-key and I had brought the lyrics up with me because I knew I'd forget them. And then we danced, way too many of us, in a tiny room sweating with joy, and people I'd never met came up and high-fived me and bear-hugged me-- just because that's how it was there.
And then, the next morning, I carried all my bags out to my family's car, and I went home. The whole car ride, while I heard mismatched pieces of what I'd missed, I flashed through the people I'd just left, the places I'd loved. My dorm room, with its hoarded food and the Bijou theater, where Holly and I read our spoken word poem. What made CSSSA special was besting our fear, and letting things surprise us: whether the cafeteria food's edibility or the reaction of an audience.
When faced with my daily routines, it was difficult at first to find room for fear (and the conquering of.) But soon I couldn't stop seeing opportunities: the tricky passage I always faked my way through in the piece I was playing in orchestra, the physics teacher who spoke in an intimidating drawl and punctuated all his sentences with a forcefully capped marker and the phrase "Simple as that." Looking for fears has become a game with myself, and though I don't always win (in fact sometimes I don't even play) it's given me a lot of something Zay could tell you all about: material.
Oh well.....
Essay for Brown: What is the best piece of advice you have received and why?
I got a lot of good advice during CSSSA-- the California State Summer School for the Arts, where, for a month, I lived on the Cal Arts campus and studied creative writing.
On the first day the director of all the programs told us, "This month is what you make of it." I resolved to write as much as and as well as I possibly could. I wrote a scene sprawled on the cold tile of my dorm's bathroom floor because I was keeping my visual artist roommates up with the light; I wrote a poem while crunched into a cave-like space under the big desk in the writer's lounge because my teacher told us to write in different places.
His advice made me approach that month like a dare, but I still managed to bring some of my old fears: I was nervously reading one of my pieces to the whole writing department, swaying a little, when Eva Marie, the theater coach, told me, "Don't be cute. Cute ain't comfortable." She had me stand in what I call a power stance and what she called normal, and start over. Now, months later, when I talk in front of an audience I always look down to double check that my feet are firmly planted David Bowie style.
But the last and best piece of advice I got at CSSSA was from Zay, a short man in hipster glasses."Do something while you're here that scares you," he told us. I doubt he was the first to say it, and he didn't pretend he was, but the strange glint in his eye seemed to expect great things from us. Merely squishing spiders would not satisfy this glint. Jumping off buildings would not satisfy this glint.
Only confronting our own personal boggart would satisfy this glint.
So on the last night of CSSSA, I sang (with my friend Veronica on guitar) a song called "Blue or Gray" in front of maybe a hundred people, and they clapped and waved and called my name even though I was magnificently off-key and I had brought the lyrics up with me because I knew I'd forget them. And then we danced, way too many of us, in a tiny room sweating with joy, and people I'd never met came up and high-fived me and bear-hugged me-- just because that's how it was there.
And then, the next morning, I carried all my bags out to my family's car, and I went home. The whole car ride, while I heard mismatched pieces of what I'd missed, I flashed through the people I'd just left, the places I'd loved. My dorm room, with its hoarded food and the Bijou theater, where Holly and I read our spoken word poem. What made CSSSA special was besting our fear, and letting things surprise us: whether the cafeteria food's edibility or the reaction of an audience.
When faced with my daily routines, it was difficult at first to find room for fear (and the conquering of.) But soon I couldn't stop seeing opportunities: the tricky passage I always faked my way through in the piece I was playing in orchestra, the physics teacher who spoke in an intimidating drawl and punctuated all his sentences with a forcefully capped marker and the phrase "Simple as that." Looking for fears has become a game with myself, and though I don't always win (in fact sometimes I don't even play) it's given me a lot of something Zay could tell you all about: material.
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