Swift striking nostalgia.

If I had the kind of mother who kept things from my childhood, I might still have (along with the very basic and very much missed baby pictures and things):



* A videorecording of the time the police came to my kindergarden class and introduced us to their police dogs. The local news came and videotaped it. They used a clip of a giant German Shepard leaping up and licking my face. (This may be the root of my fear of large dogs.)

* The videorecording of my second band playing a Halloween party in San Jose. I was wearing some kick ass white pleather go-go boots and a peach sixties short dress that I wish I still had but probably couldn't fit into anymore. This was the night I sang over my guitarist's solo by accident and he hissed loudly, "What are you doooooing?" (This may be the root of my insecurity on stage.)



* The photograph of our trip to Universal Studios, when I got picked to ride the E.T. bike and, for a few minutes, it looked like I had been the child picked to play Elliott in the movie. I was flying across the sky with an alien in my bike basket and the moon as my background. (This might be the root of my tendency to name all of my characters Elliott.)



* The tape recording of my first time singing in public at an open mic with my first band, which included Eric on bass and Dave on guitar. My sister said (and you could hear proof in the tape) that when I started singing, everyone became very quiet. (This may be the root of my desire to sing in public, even though it terrifies me.)

* All of those tons of mixed tapes I made by inserting a blank tape into the radio and pressing pause on the "record" button until I heard a song I liked. I spent thousands of hours, I'm sure, reading by my radio (which I still have), waiting for good songs to come on.

* All of those mixed tapes made for me by my musical compilation genius friends in high school.



* The binder filled with all of my letters in middle school and high school, to and from, my best friend Christina and/or my ex-boyfriend Jon. (This may be the root of my need to write things down over and over and over.)



* My pound puppy, Nilla.

What a question.

This guy is a genuis.

Spindle Cells.

Even though I sometimes hate these guys, I do love this episode about empathy and animals.

Fish Outta/Under Water

I want to feel like this:



But today, I feel more like this:

There is a kind of order in the world.

I lost a last game of online Scrabble with Godzilla5555 because I ended up with the letters: I,I,I,E,E,O,O (consistently) for the last seven turns of the game. But now, every turn includes a letter of 5 or more and the double/triple word spots are opening up just for me. I know it's geeky, but it makes me feel certain of some sort of balance in the world. And I've been doubting that lately.

Thanks, online Scrabble, for giving me a glimmer of optimism.

(And yes, that Scrabble board is supposed to look like a portrait of Abe Lincoln. I just thought it was cool. I'm not relating Lincoln to balance in the universe. Not directly, anyhow.)

The things we do.

I was in the bathroom at work the other day and I thought to myself, "It is someone's job to calculate the number of necessary stalls in a public bathroom. I doubt that it's a full-time job. It's probably just part of a construction planning job. But. Someone does that. Someone plans the number of stalls. This means that someone else has estimated usage per stall to estimate need according to the number of people estimated to visit said location."

Then I went back to my desk.

Art and Magic

The Deep, deep, blue.

I'm working on a writing project this week for a class. I've been asked to write a personification poem from the perspective of an animal, object, or plant. I can either address this animal, object, or plant using the 2nd person point of view or I can use 1st person, as the animal, object, or plant. Phew. That was a lot of animal, object, and plants.

Anyways, I have been looking out at the world with this project in mind this week. It changes everything. When observing the world as a possible symbol for something innately human, everything becomes more human. A dandelion is not just a flower, it is bowing its head in shame. Two metal hangers are not just there to hold your clothes, they are swaying, tapping each other lightly on the shoulder. For me, this makes the world feel like a disney cartoon--and I mean that in the best possible way.

This morning, I was poking around on the interwebs looking for interesting things and I found The Deep Book. It's a photo collection of creatures from the deep, deep sea. I'm fascinated by the deep of the ocean. It's like outerspace, but inverted somehow. The creatures are terrifying and beautiful. Check 'em out: http://www.thedeepbook.org/

I wish that, for one week, I could wander quietly along the bottom of the sea, safely observing the life below my own life where everything looks like something I have never seen before. Last quarter, we talked about pre-19th century American writers and the concept of perception. There's a theory somewhere that we must get mid-way between ourselves and any other object to see it as it truly is. Right now, these deep sea creatures are right in front of my nose. It's like magic.

Goals for 2010

Yep, I like to make goals. I do this every year. Last year, I set a goal to quit smoking. I did it for like three months and (after many sobbing fits and tantrums) gave in to the addiction once more. But. I have been done with the smoking now (and not as a goal) for four months. (Yay!) This isn't the point.

The point is that I have new goals! They are (in no particular order):

1. Record an album.

This doesn't have to be fancy. I just want to get back to creating music. I'm going to get a few silly little faux guitar (thanks iPhone) melodies down and sing along.

2. Perform the shit out of one good karaoke song.

I love to sing more than most things, but I freak out so bad in front of a crowd. I'm going to try to let it go and enjoy the performance aspect of it all. (I hope I don't pee.)

3. Write a play.

Man, do I love drama. I love a good dialogue and I am one of those repeater types. You know, the kind of person who mimicks other people when they like something? You say, "Ohhh, that was ku-hool." I repeat it to mimick the sound. Why? Because I like the way people talk. I like the way that people omit information from their language or weigh a spoken sentence down with multiple meanings. I think writing a play will help me get outta my fiction funk too. Yeah.

4. Publish some poetry.

Cause really, I have like piles and piles of it just laying around the house. What good is it doing there? Shoot.

I know there should be five goals, for balance or something, but I am very distracted by the version of the hit song "Beauty & the Beast" by Peabo Bryson and Celine Dion playing on my pandora station right now.