Hmmm

Nice...
Beauty of Speed.
Aw...Beauty of Speed in Utrecht!
I've been to Utrecht.
I could have even been there.
I walked into a place that looked like that.
But it was in 2001. Which was before a lot of things.

Dark dream

Sometime before I woke up I had a truly awful dream. I don't even know if it was a dream. It had something to do with the shriek of a mother as a boy drowned in the ocean and a large ship sailed away into the night, or the early morning.
It was cold and awful.

Peculiarities

Somehow over my NAGPRA paper I became a fan of The Real Housewives of New York City tonight. Hmmm. I just became aware that a teacher in Vancouver has been forced to stay home for the rest of the school year because she admitted that she had a child with her same sex partner. Hoooo...funny.

O?

Oh! Sadness of last class.
Oh! Old historic buildings with stories...of white men of black women of thrify people of widows of school masters of suffragists of WAVES of laundresses
Oh! when she sings
Yaldaboath
Saklas
I'm calling you
Samael
You are not alone
I say
You are not alone
In your darkness
You are not alone
Baby
You are not alone
Oh child with corn rows in her hair who turned back to the store and shouted "thank you for my toy!"
Oh dog that destroyed another razor
Oh book, White Mother To A Dark Race
Oh research.
Oh spark.
(Spark?)
Oh classes of fires.
Oh appropriate fire extinguishers for classes of fires.

Clothing swap

It was at my friend's friend's synagogue basement. A basement full of females. I put out my clothes and cut my chin in the bathroom. Uuuuunpretty. After long moments in the bathroom, I finally emerged. I talked to a girl who said she would have been just devastated if her first child wasn't a boy. Me in thought: I just have no clue what you are talking about. I left because I didn't want any clothes and I didn't feel good about my cut, among other things. A guy outside yelled at me something about the way I come walking out of the building with my hair bouncing off my shoulders means I'm going to look like some guy's dream. I just kept saying "Oh, really?" as I walked to my car. Then he said "Look at me, I'm living out of A BAG." He went on, "Now, I'm coming from a male perspective." Me: "Oh really?" Him: "I'm from California." "Oh, really?" "REALLY" he said, with a "You are stupid" inflection in his voice. Then: "You're Jewish right?" "No." "What? You have to be. You just came out of there. Isn't this a synagogue?" "Yeah but I'm not Jewish, I'm just visiting." "There's nothing wrong with being Jewish." "I know, but I'm not Jewish!" Then I got into my not-so-rattletrap seeming car, which next to some guy living out of a bag kind of felt like a limo or something, and drove away in a bad mood.

Other worlds

Worlds were on the island. The houses we didn't move into. A woodstove house. Old Victorian house with orchard around it. Island homes. How can someone live in the same small community his or her whole life? Houses with land around them. Woods and silence outside.

Reread

and (maybe for the first time?) cried (multiple times)
Sign of the Beaver
My old book has this cover.
In 5th grade, I think I got my Grandma to read it.

Why Duran Duran?

In Watervliet, at Eastview, where the water tower broke, which came up later in a therapy session, me seeing the the vulnerable figures of mom and sister and maybe little me on TV, spectators to the flood, water pouring in other peoples' windows, not ours, but also another day, the pool being dug and the layers of clay and the neighbors the older couple the lady had a heart attack, but that was later, earlier, her son (a big third grader, I was to be in grade one, the teacher would hate me for nice clothes or southern accent or something...) wanted me to go with him to see the layers, the clay, the pool, dug by construction workers, but I was forbidden to leave the steps, he wanted me to go with him, he pitied me, he didn't approve of my captor, and he brought the clay and made it into a heart. Later I met a third grade girl who came from a kind a background different from my own and she taught me many things about life and grown ups and deceit, pain....Looked up her name, and wondered if this would be her? Yeah. Huh. All Duran Duran and Michael Jackson. She had a big poster of the latter, in his yellow sweater, in her room.

Prescription

If this sort of thing is out of character for you, here's what I suggest: arrange to live in such a way that you talk to nothing but trees for a week. Do it!
If that sort of thing is old hat for you, then perhaps you should do something else.

My songs today!

Sort of.
Electric Barbarella.
Save A Prayer.
I found out in class that Top Chef was filmed at Mt. Vernon.

Excuse me

I would just like to point out that I was waiting here first (like 15-20 minutes ago) before that guy that JUST walked in to see the notary, way after you stuck me in the corner over here. EXCUSE ME.
Little things.
Rankle.
Not sorry I spoke up; maybe you won't do that next time.
It's too bad because I'm sure you didn't like me as much as him, but that's how it goes sometimes, sadly.
(I said much less, and what I did say was much more succinct and polite in real life though.)
Women as well as men can too often be unconciously sexist.

Sometimes on car drives

I have grandiose and sweeping thoughts.
But that's on car drives.
There's no keypad on a steering wheel.
Tonight, in class, I "winged it." It was no big deal. We just had to come up with plans for press releases for museums and not enough time, and I didn't even have a press release, just ideas. But the other student I was working with told me I was very impressive.
Well, that was cool.
Yes, I began to wonder, in the car, why I have not been "successful" yet.
I have no time to go into it all, but I did have many thoughts.
I also still find the idea that some people will follow around other people as a part of their creative process to be somewhat odd, but lo que sea.
I wasted or tortured or nothing that dramatic but something kind of saddish about looking through an old yearbook. Maybe it was a waste of time. Poking at something.
Um.
I have to go to a notary tomorrow.

Oh

Oh so many thoughts too many to express!
Isn't Horses a great song?

I thought about recently...

The Witch of Blackbird Pond.
Needing to work on the NAGPRA paper.
The dog destroyed my flash drive this morning.
Major Tom in German.
I know I saw the Major Tom English version video on MTV as a kid.
I have long, tangled hair.
I'm wearing a grey hooded West Point pullover.

Lost...maybe recovered.

I posted about some moments today, but lost it. That's what happens when I try to use my phone because I have no other source of internet in my room! Sigh.
Well, I very much enjoyed listening to Ira Glass's show about siblings and babysitting. Especially the last story about siblings who made up a family they'd babysit for to escape from their unhappy and controlling (and poor and widowed) mother, and then they'd go run away and sleep on the beach.
As I was listening to it, I was finishing knitting my first scarf out of a skein of purply-light blue yarn that grew paler and paler...I thought of the sea because I might have some left over and might try to combine it with a darker, more intense yarn which is somewhere between navy and turquoise, but somewhat greenish ("Lagoon" is the color.) I don't know what the paler yarn is called.

And after a day of sorting files, moving things up and down stairs, and throwing things away, I waited for my order in a NY style pizza joint (with an amusingly attitudinal employee who banged rolls of quarters for the register in what seemed an almost chastising fashion b/c I didn't contribute to the tip jar...oh yes, and I did know the whole time that he had better things to do in his life than wait on me!) and this song came on: "Whatever happened to the boy that I once knew, the boy who said he'd be true...oh no oh no oh no no no no no...Remember...walking in the sand..." (Would the daughter who ran away from her mother as a teenager have ever listened to it?)
~~~~
(Also I liked the ones about the sisters in the airport. I liked the whole episode, but at times the musical segments were a little less pleasing.
Also this evening I was compelled to look more into the history of Germany.
My last thought of this post is...my thoughts are more interesting than my writings, usually.)

"Sounds like some kind of supergirl that some feminist would approve of or something"

Title post comes from a character in a video my friend sent me: Cake: Short Skirt/Long Jacket.
Friend's dream #1: He was playing basketball with a tall, soft spoken girl. It was intentionally mixed gender and no jumping was allowed to make it fair. She was quite good and it was really hard.
Friend's dream #2: He was looking at the website of a "rockstar" engineer who was feminist (I.e. she was an engineer but kind of a famous celebrity, too.) Her website had three sections: Blush, Brush, and Bush. Blush was the section for beauty or make-up or something, Brush was the section about engineering stuff. And Bush was the title of the feminist issues section.

Random

Day's events: Evil beagle defaced my pretty woodburned gold paint Matrushka doll! However the hell you spell that. My super activist friend posted a picture of herself with the DC mayor. She's frowning and he's smiling with an arm around her. Ha ha. It is too funny. My friend who wrote She Played Elvis is figuring out how to sell her book in the states.
Hiccup
My bellisimo friend on another coast had "surprisingly feminist dreams" last night, which he told me about. We also dissected my dream, which signified some kind of job-related anxiety, which then reminded me of a seemingly small incident, in which I had tried and failed to obtain a certain opportunity. It was as if I'd simply bottled it up inside of me and after talking about it I began to let it go a bit more and after a long while I uncovered a little creature of hopefulness that had existed at one time, who had for various reasons felt totally crushed, and some of that old anxiety dissipated, and I could allow myself to feel hopeful again!
Oh and I played the Jackie's Strength remixes CD and got the Father Lucifer Sylkscreen Remix in my head. I was combing my hair at a stop light and looked over to see people at the busstop looking and (I think) listening!

Hard

Trying to write this paper on NAGPRA and joyously combing the Chicago Manual of Style. Ha. Thoughts.

"If you're a thought
You will want me to think you"
--Scarlet's Walk

Recently, I went to an Easter service with my friend and her parents. It was in English, Greek, and Arabic. It was lovely; we didn't kiss the bishop's ring though. Her parents had stories to tell, and a few days later I got a little shell-shocked from looking up stuff about the "Ukrainian Holocaust." (Cliche, but I walked out of a building and the air smelled, if not sweeter, more intriguing, and every person I passed seemed equally complex and precious.) And recently watched a documentary about the German military guys who resisted Hitler, the "Valkyries," (well maybe they didn't call themselves that, but in my head I started to) including old film footage of their trials after the failed plot. I wondered if I'm more mature now? A while back, I learned from her about the Ukrainian Amazons...

"miss we don't take cat litter"

Well okay grouchiest man in the world at Goodwill. (Actually I figured as much but I was hoping.) I REALLY hope someone appreciates the other stuff, including a full seat of dishes which I carefully wrapped in paper. Big plates, little plates, cups, glasses, bowls, cream and sugar dishes. ARRGH. Why don't you know how to make me feel better about my GIVINGNESS? Like the Salvation Army people did. I WANTED MY FEELING OF ELATION! Next time I'll go THERE. They practically MAKE you take a receipt. Unlike here, no receipt giving guys in sight. "Why don't you all get in a line." GROUCHINESS!!! Sign in the background intended to make donors feel good because we help disabled people get jobs. "Miss, we don't take cat litter!"
Life is sometimes kinda funny.

Historic house...

It's so different to see this version of the story of Anne Frank on PBS, since I've been to the Anne Frank house in Amsterdam. Mostly I don't remember it, but I do still remember a bit. Especially the pictures on her bedroom wall and when her father spoke in a film, saying he was very surprised when he read her diary, that he didn't know his daughter had such deep thoughts and feelings, because she didn't express that in their day to day life.
After I went, the girl I was with took me to a cart and, because I said I'd like to, we tried some kind of fish that was raw or pickled or something. I didn't care for it then. But I think I'd probably like it better now, for some reason.
The Netherlands and Peru. The only places I've been to, outside of North America, still.

watched last night!

Unmistaken Child.

Very sad, but people need to be aware

Test Case

memoirs are good for me.

Corked.
The Bread of Angels.
A Country Year.
Heaven Lake. (Okay, that's actually a memoirish novel.)
~~~~~
She Played Elvis.
Because they're all funny. ;-)
(I haven't' read the whole of the first and the last on this list yet.)

Tonight

A portion of it found me reading another memoir! Hoorah! I am a memoir kinda person.
The memoir was Corked. I read the first chapter or two or three before I bought a #77 Sage Woman and left. I had to. The word "Vashon" was in it. Yes I do buy things sometimes if I have money on me. And I liked the book, but I can't afford it now. While I was in the cafe, I got a text from a friend, cheerleading me for my crochet efforts. So far so good!
Listened to Scarlet's Walk on the way home.
Oh well, and I was ABOUT to post the songs I listened to. Boyfriend of mother walked into the kitchen in only his underwear. Thanks for the utter lack of decorum and ruining the nice little solo artistic moment I WAS having. CLUELESSNESS!!!!!!
ARRRRRR.
In spite of it, these are the songs:
Virginia
Gold Dust
Amber Waves
A Sorta Fairytale
Wednesday
Strange
Carbon
Maybe will do links later.
Later--well, Fuck Canada. "This video was blocked from your country for copyright reasons." I guess you're not superior to the U.S. in every way. I really thought it was funny when the Corked author met a woman in France who'd been a catering manager in D.C. and said she admired Americans' work ethic and thought living in the midst of vineyards in a French countryside was equivalent to a shithole. How come we can't trade places?

thunk up while flossing

in this life brown haired person learning to crochet coulda been a borderline bigamist in another