not ancient - just 2002-03. which feels a teeny bit ancient right now:
"an older lady in a long fuzzy robe, nightgown, and house sandals hurrying into 7-11 laughing and saying sheepishly to anyone who looked at her, "¡es que lo mandé a buscar la leche pero no...es que se acabó la leche!"
a guy outside talking on the payphone, next to the dumpster, stamping on an old sheet of newspaper on the ground that caught fire when he tossed his cigarette on it.
catching a glimpse, through half-open jalousie windows, of an older man in the shower, from the shoulders up, turning off the water."
i am so so sleepy, but am in one of those "i'm not going to bed" moods. nights. i made my lunch for tomorrow, or at least part of it: tabouli/tabouleh?, plain yogurt with blackberries and flaxseed, and mary's gone crackers crackers (duh) with peanut butter. i'm planning to make spinach and tofu in the morning to take as well. if i need it.
i am exhausted. i didn't do what i said i was going to do with my oa assignment. i just realized. maybe that's what this is all about, the compulsive surfing and reading and distraction. and tiredness. i wish this was like livejournal, where i could turn it off on some posts. or i mean, hide myself.
sitting on the couch waiting room at the gym, feeling self-conscious, reading miami ink, peeking out of the corners of my eyes. and trying to pretend i'm not doing it. i was wearing a gold ribbed tank top that was actually too big for me. and my brown skirt was actually too big, too. and the jacket. damn it, the whole outfit was basically too big for me. igual, i feel ugly and uncomfortable whether my clothes are too big or too small. i need new clothes.
the bus took almost exactly an hour, maybe a bit more, to get me to work today. actually more. i sat at the bus stop for about half an hour. then the bus took about 45 minutes-1 hour. it was really crowded. i could not read or write or draw in peace. so instead, i planned.
i have to write this down. i spaced out again because i was thinking about stuff that made me sad. and i was trying not to think about those things, if only subconsciously. so i spaced out by wishing and surfing and blogging. and not doing my work. experiential avoidance, dammit! i was thinking about depression again, or felt it hovering. it's okay for that to happen, but i guess what i want is to be conscious of that and how it affects me. i am thinking a lot about this baby thing and that freaks me out. that, and being in therapy again. i hope no one i know is still reading this. i should start a new secret one.
i want sooooo badly to...to make art and projects and not be paralyzed (mentally). i have been really distracted all day. i love miranda july. i basically want her career. no, i want one like it, or i can relate to it, i guess. suddenly i'm scared to post here. i could be really cryptic, i suppose. i'm afraid to be back in therapy. i am afraid to think of stuff again, and that brings me down. a bit.
my blog sucks! or at least is pretty damn sucky-looking. i have to seriously do some template tweaking. i just took a look, and i really don't know why it looks like this. all i did was add a flickrstream. geez.
this is probably old news, but this seminal zine of zines is supposed to be relaunching again this year, possibly around march or april 2006. i'm stumbling around the web in a zine nostalgia-induced stupor. i miss the 90's Epic Era of Zines, and the fact that my blogging experiences have never made me feel quite as connected or a part of something as making a plain old xerox zine did.
http://www.factsheet5.org/
(dammit)
- don't do so much complicated grocery shopping and cooking. i have to admit i just don't have a shopping-every-week-cooki ng-every-night kind of life. even if i sort of want one. so i just won't do it anymore. we go out to eat at least 2x a week anyway, mostly because we have to in order to get to meetings on time. i will make about four big batches of dishes once a month (like a couple of different types of beans, a soup or stew, a pasta dish), divide them into portions, and freeze them. everything else can be fruit, salad, snacky stuff. i love obsessively poring over new recipes every week, but at this point in my life i don't have time! and i'd rather spend more time on art and spiritual stuff and my family and so many other things. so ¡YA! se acabo.
- maybe i should just buy a bus pass once and for all, instead of this expensive and time-consuming waffling between transit and driving. i feel so much more relaxed when i take the bus, mostly, so maybe i should just break down, bite the bus bullet, and buy a bus bass. (i just wanted the last word to alliterate, too.) (even if it doesn't make sense.)
- take our laundry to get done once a week. this feels a little (ok, very) self-indulgent but we are obviously not good at keeping up with our laundry. this would cost about $15-20/week, which tampoco is cheap, in fact not at all, but it might be a sacrifice i am willing to make for less house stuff to do and more peace of mind!
- ask for help more! tell people when i am having trouble thinking of what to ask for help for!
that's it for now.
well, tblog went and did something right but it messed me up.
now my header looks all funky. at least on mac os x in firefox. it'll be awhile till i can fix it. in the meantime, pardon my dust.
in the meantime, i've been pretty good. the usual ups and downs. but better. and i was possessed by some kind of crazy cleaning demon this morning, so that's what i've been doing all day.
it's not really sulky. i have kind of a sore throat and my eyes and head hurt. i did my CC followup call this week with ela and in general it was positive. she suggested i find someone to partner up with to help each other with time, organization, and career issues. i kind of mentally almost discarded this because i couldn't think of who to ask to do this, but then the answer arrived in the form of a telephone call from l. we share a lot of the same issues. i brought up the idea and she was cool with it. then i got neurotic afterwards, wondering if she would start thinking this was another instance of not being able to say no that we're always talking about. i guess that is a good example of me second-guessing myself again.
just a reminder or note to anyone who may still be reading this, even when i don't update i often furl new links. you know, just look to the side, under "furl-a-rino."
At your darkest moments, you feel guilty. At work and school, you do best when you're researching. When you love someone, you tend to agree with them often.
In friendship, you are considerate and compromising. Your ideal careers are: business, research, counseling, promotion, and speaking. You will leave your mark on the world with discoveries, new information, and teaching people to dream.
or did i write that last time? hopeful, tired voices braided on a staticky three-way line. we are sticky, hurricane-weary with defeat but also look-forwardness, like we will make it work somehow. i am anxious to dig up a body story, a story about
walking down a costa rican street on thick legs, trudging back from the gym, a man leaning out a window to holler across the highway: "¡hola GORDIIIIIS!" -
tentatively rocking big hips, a coke in my hand, about to cross the street, a man cocking his head out the passenger window as his friend cruises up to the light: "mi amor, quiero coca. ¿me regala la coca, mi amor?...está bien. ¿no me lo quieres regalar? está bien."
happily crossing the plaza near the teatro nacional, trying not to jiggle, munching on a pastry, a man calls out from a nearby bench, "comparte ese dulce conmigo, tu no lo necesitas..."
(more than 100, that's ok!)
this is basically what three hundred words looks like, while we're at it.
So, Keila is this dirt rocker girl who works with me at the ice cream store. She goes to another high school, a different one than the one I went to, on the other side of town. But she hangs out with a lot of Mexican dirt rocker kids. She even speaks a little bit of Spanish. We both have in common that we believe in wearing lots of eyeliner, except she wears hers the Bradington blonde-girl dirt rocker way - on the inside of her lower eyelid, so that a thin, inky, wet black line seeps out from behind her lower eyelashes - and I wear mine in a thick, charcoal black line on my eyelids, across my upper lashes only, like the lewd ladies on the covers of the Herp Alpert and the Tijauana Brass albums. I actually hate the way that inside-the-lower-eyelid eyeliner looks, but I keep it to myself because I can respect and understand the desire to wear really noticeable eyeliner. We are also both united by our scorn and bemusement over Cano. Our boss. The owner of the Bradington square mall ice cream shop franchise.
Cano has a wife, and he also has a girlfriend. Or mistress, I don't know what cheating married men actually call their hoochies, their women. All we know is that both his wife and his girlfriend call themselves Ruth when they call the store. Keila and I have decided that this is a tactic Cano has figured out to avoid confusion and drama--for example, so that neither of us will ever be able to casually leak out anything about, say, a woman named Sally calling him at work all the time. It is obvious they are not the same person--we can tell the difference by their voices.
it's black outside the window. it's getting more cozy in here. the walls are a delicate pale green. there is a layer of dog hair on everything. the air conditioning is a little too cold to be comfortable. the papier mache cake we made in the afterschool program sits on a stool that needs to be thrown away. every time i look at it i feel nervous, like i've failed somehow. this is going to suck until i get less self-conscious about it. i have a little headache shooting down the left side of my forehead. radio: "pots of gumbo."
after the c.c. workshop one of the goals i set for myself was to do some kind of small daily creative practice. this blog has languished, but i think i can bring it back to life for this purpose. one sort of inspiring/encouraging thing i've seen recently was a website where you can sign up to write 100 words a day. this is less daunting than anne lamott's 300 words a day, at least for now, so let's try it. i am armed with a dorky, freshly-downloaded word count extension for firefox. i'm up to 92 words now. 100! ok?
in happier news, feeling really creative lately. driving around in my car and having ideas and thinking about my projects is making me happy. like, high, almost. praying a lot more lately too. this is also making me happy.
i'm so tired.
oh, by the way, i didn't get invited to submit a CC grant. but it's OK. i'm not surprised. i'll just focus on other stuff. and it's not like i don't have enough to get done as it is.
the notification of whether applicants have been selected to submit a full application for a creative capital grant is supposed to be in june. i don't think i made it to the second round. i found this yesterday, and i didn't get a little email notification this week. so.
i've been dying to know for sure, so i emailed creative capital's generic info address. the reply i got just now said "Letters went out yesterday so you will hear very soon!" so i imagine this will be an "i'm sorry, there were so many fantastic applications but we didn't choose YOURS!" letter.
in any case, putting that little preliminary inquiry proposal to CC together has helped me draft other proposals, including one that got me a nice little handful of $$ to help with developing my project over the summer, and possibly a commissioning opp. so, it's all good.
hurricane season. it's peeing all over south florida right now. it's just a tropical depression, or something, drifting from cuba up to the gulf of mexico, but all this rain is dumping out into our parking lot right now. it just reminds me of last summer, all the sitting around inside watching bad weather out the window. it's OK though, hopefully i'll get some hardcore cleaning and organizing done today. or maybe not. scratch that last sentence.
neri torres was named woman of the year by glamour magazine??? i'm listening to south florida arts beat right now. hmmmm.
i have cramps.
i feel like drinking more coffee. i won't today, because i drank too much of it yesterday and got all wonky and anxious by the end of the day.
my favorite new nerdy web organizing tool of the day is backpack.
i like salad, but i am not big on making them myself. i'm more of a stew and chicken-and-rice kinda girl, in terms of things i like to make in the kitchen. but i decided to increase my salad intake again recently and made this and it's really yummy:
mixed baby greens (pre-washed, yadda yadda yadda) cucumber sliced into half-moons (i hate dealing with huge slabs of cucumber in a salad) cherry tomatoes (i also hate huge slabs of tomato in a salad) jicama (sliced thin, first time i have ever made anything with this ingredient) garlic croutons feta cheese
it's good with italian/vinaigrette/greek dressing, but today i had some with bleu cheese (which i realize is sort of overkill with the feta cheese), and it was good too.
i finally saw raising victor vargas. P kept saying, "this is totally citrus." as in, the kids (particularly the little sister) in this film are totally reminiscent of the kids at the school where he teaches (and i teach art afterschool). one of the things i liked best about the film was the closeness and honesty of the cinematography. none of the actors seemed to be wearing makeup, and you could see all the little bumps and imperfections on peoples' skin. for me, this is a huge thing in this era of digitally perfected onscreen humanoids. nearly every female in this movie had a moustache. as a latina of jewish heritage, i myself have always been a chick with a 'stache and it was very refreshing to see other latin women and girls rockin' the facial hair onscreen for once. you know?
for those not in the know, a wacom tablet allows you to draw graphics, lines, drawings, etc. directly onto a tablet or drawing surface that connects directly to the computer. whatever you draw shows up directly on the screen of your image/graphics program, just like typing or moving a mouse.
anyway, today P said some of my drawings look amateurish. i said that that's just a style i'm using on purpose. he suggested i take some drawing classes. i may be a little rusty from not drawing every day as i once did back in art school, but as if!
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