Wednesday, March 30, 2011
Monday, March 28, 2011
I know your headaches.
I apologize to everyone that I haven't been able to email or facebook/comment. Being without a computer has proven to be an exhausting trial. I am irritable on the subject.
So, big news from London. I am moving to North Dakota in two weeks! Yes! Two weeks from now exactly I should be hoppin' in the ole Ringo for a ride up north. For reasons I have previously discussed, my situation here is not optimal. I am paying enough to survive but not enough to pay for anything else, and I am falling behind. It is lonely. Everyone seems to have their own lives but me, and the writing has not been coming easily (also difficult to soldier on in that regard thanks to my computer's deadness and my inability to purchase a new one). Also, I have been needing a change of scenery. I adore Ventura with all of my heart, especially on cool and breezy days like today, but it is time for a change. I've been jonesing for Portland or Ashland, Oregon, and then of course NYC, but NYC requires a bit of savings to get going (at least for a few months) and Portland/Ashland don't seem to want to hire people from a remote location. The answer then seems to be to accumulate enough money to transfer to Oregon and stay afloat long enough to get a job of some sort. North Dakota is apparently the place to do this. SO. DO THIS WE SHALL.
Overall I have mixed feelings about the decision, but they lean towards the positive, especially when I really think about it. An adventure! I have never been up North and I have a real longing for it. Things to see, postcards to collect, people to write about. I will be living the minimalist's lifestyle, packing only my most-worn clothes, all of my movies, a tiny cabinet, and 50% of my books. And a few sentimental things to get by, I guess. I have a little shoebox filled with nice notes of encouragement I recieved last year for graduation and birthday and Christmas and general cheering-up emergencies. I will take them. I will get to drive through my precious Oregon and then to Washington and through Montana to see all of the ghost towns! North Dakota has its own desert beauty as well. And jobs. And a free living arrangement, which is the main draw. I also have a solid, good friend up there, who, despite our differences, I have really come to appreciate in the past two years. She tells me that work is basically falling from the sky there, and that even if you get a shit job you can get hours hours hours as many hours as you want. Therefore if I just work all of the time and pay nothing for living expenses (which is the gist of it), and just WRITE whenever I am not exhausted and read read read and perhaps go outside to learn how to shoot regularly (the whole cute little family apparently likes to go shooting together), I should be just fine. Better than! I should be fantastic, and I shall also be helping out this family a bit, they've not been able to go on a family vacation in years due to needing someone to help with "Grandma," this kindly old woman who has dementia and needs someone to hang out with her in her house (where I will be living. for free). That's where I come in. Plus, my friend tells me that the paper there is hiring. BINGO. I intend to propose myself as an entertainment writer for them. Which apparently they are sorely lacking, bahaha.
It will be good. Temporary, just until I can stabilize my finances, get a bit ahead, put a bit in savings. Once I get some savings, I will move to Oregon and immediately get housing and start looking for jobs there. Or maybe even just straight to NY, who knows?
The only thing that makes me sad is the robbery of all things familiar. Which had to happen sooner or later. I mean, I know Ventura. I know where everything is. I have surrogate families here. I have too many people I love in the state of California that, I've realized, there's just no replacing or imitating. Of course I rarely see any of these people anymore because we all have our own lives or something like that, but that doesn't matter. I know I could go find them if I needed to. I've done that. Actually, all week I've been doing that.
but that's a blogpost for another time.
"Dearest Mother- I am about to embark on a great adventure... My investigations in Fort Smith lead me to believe that Tom Chaney can be found and brought to justice, and I have made arrangements to that end. I will return to you once I have seen them properly carried through. But do not worry on my account. Though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I shall fear no evil. The author of all things watches over me. And I have a fine horse. Kiss little Frankie for me and pinch Violet’s cheek. I am off for the Choctaw Nation."
So, big news from London. I am moving to North Dakota in two weeks! Yes! Two weeks from now exactly I should be hoppin' in the ole Ringo for a ride up north. For reasons I have previously discussed, my situation here is not optimal. I am paying enough to survive but not enough to pay for anything else, and I am falling behind. It is lonely. Everyone seems to have their own lives but me, and the writing has not been coming easily (also difficult to soldier on in that regard thanks to my computer's deadness and my inability to purchase a new one). Also, I have been needing a change of scenery. I adore Ventura with all of my heart, especially on cool and breezy days like today, but it is time for a change. I've been jonesing for Portland or Ashland, Oregon, and then of course NYC, but NYC requires a bit of savings to get going (at least for a few months) and Portland/Ashland don't seem to want to hire people from a remote location. The answer then seems to be to accumulate enough money to transfer to Oregon and stay afloat long enough to get a job of some sort. North Dakota is apparently the place to do this. SO. DO THIS WE SHALL.
Overall I have mixed feelings about the decision, but they lean towards the positive, especially when I really think about it. An adventure! I have never been up North and I have a real longing for it. Things to see, postcards to collect, people to write about. I will be living the minimalist's lifestyle, packing only my most-worn clothes, all of my movies, a tiny cabinet, and 50% of my books. And a few sentimental things to get by, I guess. I have a little shoebox filled with nice notes of encouragement I recieved last year for graduation and birthday and Christmas and general cheering-up emergencies. I will take them. I will get to drive through my precious Oregon and then to Washington and through Montana to see all of the ghost towns! North Dakota has its own desert beauty as well. And jobs. And a free living arrangement, which is the main draw. I also have a solid, good friend up there, who, despite our differences, I have really come to appreciate in the past two years. She tells me that work is basically falling from the sky there, and that even if you get a shit job you can get hours hours hours as many hours as you want. Therefore if I just work all of the time and pay nothing for living expenses (which is the gist of it), and just WRITE whenever I am not exhausted and read read read and perhaps go outside to learn how to shoot regularly (the whole cute little family apparently likes to go shooting together), I should be just fine. Better than! I should be fantastic, and I shall also be helping out this family a bit, they've not been able to go on a family vacation in years due to needing someone to help with "Grandma," this kindly old woman who has dementia and needs someone to hang out with her in her house (where I will be living. for free). That's where I come in. Plus, my friend tells me that the paper there is hiring. BINGO. I intend to propose myself as an entertainment writer for them. Which apparently they are sorely lacking, bahaha.
It will be good. Temporary, just until I can stabilize my finances, get a bit ahead, put a bit in savings. Once I get some savings, I will move to Oregon and immediately get housing and start looking for jobs there. Or maybe even just straight to NY, who knows?
The only thing that makes me sad is the robbery of all things familiar. Which had to happen sooner or later. I mean, I know Ventura. I know where everything is. I have surrogate families here. I have too many people I love in the state of California that, I've realized, there's just no replacing or imitating. Of course I rarely see any of these people anymore because we all have our own lives or something like that, but that doesn't matter. I know I could go find them if I needed to. I've done that. Actually, all week I've been doing that.
but that's a blogpost for another time.
"Dearest Mother- I am about to embark on a great adventure... My investigations in Fort Smith lead me to believe that Tom Chaney can be found and brought to justice, and I have made arrangements to that end. I will return to you once I have seen them properly carried through. But do not worry on my account. Though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I shall fear no evil. The author of all things watches over me. And I have a fine horse. Kiss little Frankie for me and pinch Violet’s cheek. I am off for the Choctaw Nation."
Tuesday, March 22, 2011
Easy Rider
“They’ll talk to ya and talk to ya and talk to ya about individual freedom. But they see a free individual, it’s gonna scare ‘em.”
Monday, March 14, 2011
Regarding the Tsuamni:
My mom called me that morning at about 4:30AM to let me know that I should run for my life. Of course, California was hardly reached by it in the end and so on, but what is happening in Japan right now is positively apocolyptic and only makes me feel the fagility-- and what I feel at this moment to be the futility of life. Does anyone's life end when they are ready, when they are prepared to die? Utterly? In human terms? Perhaps a few. Doubtful. What's more, what really pains me about all of this is the fact that life goes on. I have never really been able to comprehend how people, us, how we can just continue to go to work and pay bills (or try...) and sleep and smile at our kids while on the other side of the globe our fellow man is dying, swept up in a large wave, or falling out of a huge, burning building. I feel like for every sentence written afterward there should be a footnote, footnotes upon footnotes for everything. "Lavendar lotion is nice.. -footnote: people died in Japan. footnote: people died in 9/11. footnote: people died in ww2. footnote: my cat died once. footnote: john lennon died, too. footnote: christ was crucified. footnote: texans died in the alamo." I hate it, because we are all disassociated, disengaged, and though that seems dreadful at first we have to recognize it as a good thing. We watch the news, we turn it off. We turn it off so we can survive. The end.
hidey die
Lately it seems as if Ventura is going out of its way to cheer me. Beautiful, beautiful book-reading weather is peering in at me from outside my window right now. Sometime last week I tried sticking with my resolution to go to the beach once a week in order to appreciate what I have here. I took about a mile walk from my house to the Ventura Pier, completely stunned the whole time that this-- walking on the freaking ocean, basically-- is something I am capable of doing. I watched the sunset, and a few of the odd people who found themselves watching it with me, turned around, and came home, freezing. Today I was driving home past the same pier and saw a homeless person, his little wagon of stuff next to him, sprawled out on this isolated turf in the sun, catching a nap. It looked like a nice idea.
My friend's birthday approacheth this weekend (St. Patty's, oh yes). Fellow friends and I have been scheming to get her on a picnic-y fun trip to the islands, but her oblivious self is not being compliant. I feel that surprises are so much more difficult to coordinate as one gets older. But I do love them. When they're happening to other people. Ha, I do not like being surprised. I am too vain and self concious for that.
This past couple of weeks I have been endlessly addicted to this TV drama "Damages." I was told the writing is top notch-- it's really not, at least dialogue wise, however the non-linear structure of a legal drama (sans courtroom! no law and order stuff here, mostly double crossing corruption) is impeccable. I am no good at structure, so I stand in awe of the masters.
Saturday night, with nothing better to do, I took up James Joyce again. Begrudgingly, I set myself 150 pages back to 250 and started reading again. I think I get it better the second time. It's hard to put down, strangely, though it be tedious, because you know the moment you do you'll have a devil of a time finding your place in Joyce's whacked narrative. I'm also coming to the conclusion (again) that James Joyce isn't really that fond of Ireland. He seems to sort of detest it and the "defeated" people in it. Quite a contrast with the outsider's view of the fighting, patriotic Irish. Still, there are parts in it, mostly Bloom's musings, that make me chuckle out loud. I'd post them if I had the book near, but of course I'm too lazy to fetch it. Later on today I'm going to make myself some tea and curl up with the rambling pages to see how far I can get. When I get tired I shall rest with Masters of Atlantis, which so far is scathingly good but without what I have come to appreciate in Portis books: heart. No heart. That is, not yet. Hmmyes hmmyes.
I am too fidgety in my brain to think of doing anything good. So often I wonder if I'm wasting my time. My 23 years. Bugger.
"I know there are alot of things I don't understand, but I want my life to have meaning."
-Temple Grandin
My friend's birthday approacheth this weekend (St. Patty's, oh yes). Fellow friends and I have been scheming to get her on a picnic-y fun trip to the islands, but her oblivious self is not being compliant. I feel that surprises are so much more difficult to coordinate as one gets older. But I do love them. When they're happening to other people. Ha, I do not like being surprised. I am too vain and self concious for that.
This past couple of weeks I have been endlessly addicted to this TV drama "Damages." I was told the writing is top notch-- it's really not, at least dialogue wise, however the non-linear structure of a legal drama (sans courtroom! no law and order stuff here, mostly double crossing corruption) is impeccable. I am no good at structure, so I stand in awe of the masters.
Saturday night, with nothing better to do, I took up James Joyce again. Begrudgingly, I set myself 150 pages back to 250 and started reading again. I think I get it better the second time. It's hard to put down, strangely, though it be tedious, because you know the moment you do you'll have a devil of a time finding your place in Joyce's whacked narrative. I'm also coming to the conclusion (again) that James Joyce isn't really that fond of Ireland. He seems to sort of detest it and the "defeated" people in it. Quite a contrast with the outsider's view of the fighting, patriotic Irish. Still, there are parts in it, mostly Bloom's musings, that make me chuckle out loud. I'd post them if I had the book near, but of course I'm too lazy to fetch it. Later on today I'm going to make myself some tea and curl up with the rambling pages to see how far I can get. When I get tired I shall rest with Masters of Atlantis, which so far is scathingly good but without what I have come to appreciate in Portis books: heart. No heart. That is, not yet. Hmmyes hmmyes.
I am too fidgety in my brain to think of doing anything good. So often I wonder if I'm wasting my time. My 23 years. Bugger.
"I know there are alot of things I don't understand, but I want my life to have meaning."
-Temple Grandin
Saturday, March 12, 2011
hell's kitchen
Tra la la.
Well. Yet another week passes and I am still here, pulling my hair out and pondering what on earth the next step is to be. I have misplaced a (thankfully small) paycheck and my bank account is actually lower than I last thought. So it goes.
What else, though? Surely there's something else to discuss. I am still thankful that I do have work-- two jobs, in fact, while other people have none. One job is even likable, while the other one provides me with a small amount of prestige. Even though it makes me permanently anxious (which is silly. clearly the worst that can happen is being fired, and that's not so bad. people are fired all of the time. not me, yet, but I don't think one person makes it through their young lives without such an event).
I have finished reading a good number of books, chief among them My Booky Wook, which has prompted me to write a letter to Russell Brand, one of the strangest people in the world (I don't even find his comedy all that funny. But I love this book), and Persuasion, my third Austen. I also read Candy Girl, about Diablo Cody's time spent as a stripper, so of course now any sexual innocence I had is fried right out of my brain.
Highlight of my week, text from my father:
Dad: "I just scrabbled [sic] eggs!"
Me: "Oh dad! I'm so proud!"
Dad: "Next stop, Hell's Kitchen!"
...hahahaa. My dad can be adorable.
My computer needs to come back. I find it impossible to strategize without it. Impossible. Damn! Damn! Damn!
Well. Yet another week passes and I am still here, pulling my hair out and pondering what on earth the next step is to be. I have misplaced a (thankfully small) paycheck and my bank account is actually lower than I last thought. So it goes.
What else, though? Surely there's something else to discuss. I am still thankful that I do have work-- two jobs, in fact, while other people have none. One job is even likable, while the other one provides me with a small amount of prestige. Even though it makes me permanently anxious (which is silly. clearly the worst that can happen is being fired, and that's not so bad. people are fired all of the time. not me, yet, but I don't think one person makes it through their young lives without such an event).
I have finished reading a good number of books, chief among them My Booky Wook, which has prompted me to write a letter to Russell Brand, one of the strangest people in the world (I don't even find his comedy all that funny. But I love this book), and Persuasion, my third Austen. I also read Candy Girl, about Diablo Cody's time spent as a stripper, so of course now any sexual innocence I had is fried right out of my brain.
Highlight of my week, text from my father:
Dad: "I just scrabbled [sic] eggs!"
Me: "Oh dad! I'm so proud!"
Dad: "Next stop, Hell's Kitchen!"
...hahahaa. My dad can be adorable.
My computer needs to come back. I find it impossible to strategize without it. Impossible. Damn! Damn! Damn!
Thursday, March 3, 2011
One of my favorite songs in the whole world is Stephanie Says by The Velvet Underground. I have been listening to that song for over a decade now and it still just gives me a certain feeling. I'm not quite sure what story it is that Lou Reed is trying to tell, however I still feel like Stephanie and I would get along.
I do not feel mentally capable of handling very much of anything right now. I have a sick feeling in my stomach and I want to cry intensely, but something is vaguely keeping me from it. I am very tired of this, every last bit.
I want to curl up and listen to Stephanie says over and over until I feel better. Or fall asleep.
I do not feel mentally capable of handling very much of anything right now. I have a sick feeling in my stomach and I want to cry intensely, but something is vaguely keeping me from it. I am very tired of this, every last bit.
I want to curl up and listen to Stephanie says over and over until I feel better. Or fall asleep.
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