something i need to pick up again

i need to play catch up with this series from freshman year. i bought all the materials and just need to take down my easel...the one i bought and never used. i find chess pieces enchanting.

james

this is what my summer is going to be.

perhaps the proliferation of sleep–related subjects in my work 

has something to do with how much i want to engage in the act

all the time?

Nod

i love these:

http://rodland.net/viproom.html

color

colette is going to say they're too blue...isn't it obvious i was going for virgin mary– blue?

opening the doors to slumber

i fell asleep in the darkroom today. 

magic 8

i bought a kodak junior six-16 series II today from hampden for $40. i don't know what i was thinking. making a film adapter for this camera is going to be so much work. i never shoot panoramic anything. i asked the magic 8 ball in the shop whether or not to get it. it told me, "most definitely." it's not an impulse-buy if i consulted the 8-ball. duh.

last one.

I promise not to include anymore macbook photos. I know two in a row might seem like I'm starting a pattern, but I assure you it is not the case. I loathe macbook photos. I have just been feeling particularly crummy on account of all the work and funeral stuff going on in my life. I had a little retail therapy and bought myself something I have always secretly wanted: a cape.

I feel like a fucking flying squirrel...or sherlock holmes. With all this espresso running through me I should be able to fly.

clint

i adore the art of jordan crane. i want to read all of his stories and poems and trace my fingers over his screenprints. 

when i lend things to people they seem to have a difficult time finding their way back to me. i have one criterion dvd, a sophie calle book, and theo ellisworth's capacity floating around somewhere. i hold those books/dvd so dearly! bah. i just want to read something short and sweet and well-illustrated.

this is a little doodle book i made as a gift for jared  a little over a month ago. i wonder what that boy has been up to. i'll probably catch up with him sometime this summer.

working with this for color

beach house +1

alex!

this chick from the uk sings like a freak, 

but she's gorgeous and i want to look like her

when my hair gets to be that long.

tmi

of all the people i know, i have always been the one to get the worst nosebleeds. i almost became anemic in elementary school because i would literally lose cups of blood....then i got a match stuck up my nose and it was taken care of. 

ever since that night i got decked in the face i've been getting nosebleeds like a coke head. the other morning i woke up looking like a freddy kreuger victim. yeah...it was a mess.

i've been bleeding for over a half hour now. i feel pretty ok, it's just messy and ok maybe i do feel a bit light-headed...but i think that's just a result of all the coffee and running around.

Card of The Day

my locket

has always been empty.

burrow.

i want to fall asleep

beneath the earth

hugged by the roots

of trees touched by 

toadstools.

these are not the portraits i shot today.

Nuevo

Picked these up after the funeral.

Work in Progress: Wind and Weathervane

A victorian weathervane

denies Wind's advances

revealing her copper cheek

she deflects his kiss.

He thrusts and whispers,

fingers failing to furl 

around her base.

And she,

pinnacle of perpetual pivot

cannot be beleaguered by Wind.

He evacuates from her presence

like a vapor.

And with a final pirouette, 

Weathervane releases a sigh.

The three particles of air

displaced by her breath

hum their way into Wind's ear.

Taunted by her song,

Reminded of his defeat,

He calls his sister, Rain.

Rain's glaucous cords lasso around

the sanguine dancer.

Usurped by rust,

Unable to catch the sun,

Quiescence quiets her pivots

and Wind may at last have his kiss.

White Dress

I didn't expect to wake up quite like this. Somehow I still think it was a good party, and am glad I went. I'm tremendously grateful to have the uncommonly attentive friends I do. Thank you all for keeping me safe.

 line of the night:

:very tall girl speaking to the host (whose bed i was semi-conscious in) :

"You're not going to try and take advantage of that girl if I leave her alone up here, are you?"

to which he responds,

"No way! I have a girlfriend."

Toss

I might try to consolidate my blogs just a tad. Frontispiece will be strictly writing, but every now and then some might leak into here...

a shallow trough

collects the rain

of your thoughts.

your brow is placid

without an echo

of a ripple.

what you cannot see

is that i am here

behind you,

moist fingertips

tracing the edges

of a single copper penny.

counting sheep.

i can't sleep. i downloaded a few of the late night tales compilations. i'm enjoying them. i have a great poem in my head that i need to write. it's about a chaste weathervane who wants nothing to do with the wind's advances. but the wind is spiteful...stay tuned. i'm brushing my teeth and typing at the same time. 

this toothpaste is burning my mouth.

whatever. it's still better than making cyanotypes.

Bleh.

I was trying to get my arm through my sleeve and punched myself in the cheek. It's actually tender. I then thought to myself, "does this mean that if i actually tried to punch someone, that it might inflict pain?" Oh of course, I would hurt my knuckle.

In other news, I am on the prowl for a single bedroom apartment...where are they?!

Windows

And While I'm Behind the Desk...

I picked these up in Hampden a week ago. I had one when I was a little kid named Fred. I flushed him down the toilet, thinking that somehow he would miraculously reappear. (I had a strange fascination with things like the tube that sucked up checks at the bank and sending bath toys down the toilet at age 5. I now wonder if my obsession was in any way related to Freud's stages of psycho-sexual development...I find that there are quite a few instances when I wonder if I really do have a Freudian complex of some sort. I'm pretty sure that I'm sane, thank goodness.) When my mother explained to me that Fred was not going to come back, naturally, I sobbed. Of course when I saw these little finger puppets in Atomic, I had no choice but to buy them. They are now on my windowsill beside my favorite brass angel from Sturgis Antiques. 

First Color Prints/Cyanotype

I can't wait for my new Yashica t4 Super to arrive in the mail. I have a really good feeling about this semester. Raf came up to me today while I was behind the desk to tell me I was in his dream. Apparently I had tried to smuggle large quantities of booze upstairs in the recycling carts. RA anxiety dream much? Anyway, he made me laugh–and laughing is always good. 

Well now I feel Like a Cool Kid

I have Gagging Order: Acoustic on a loop. I'm trying to write this poetry paper for class tomorrow. Instead of writing I'm thinking about how amazing Thom Yorke is. I wiki-ed him for kicks. 

We both wore eye patches as kids.

Oh

shit.

Out of Coffee

I'm sitting in an uncomfortably warm City Cafe. I have to keep wiping my hands on the jeans I've been wearing for the past 3 days to keep my hands from slipping off the keys of my laptop. 

I've missed the cafe. 

I'm reviewing poetry and scribbling my critiques on my classmates' work for a paper I'll be rushing to finish later this evening. This hazelnut coffee and ambient jazz makes the task easier.

In between inky underlines and sips of java my thoughts float back to the yashica eBay is taunting me with. I need to win this one. Winning that over-sized coat rack of a bike can't possibly count for my one win for the year. 

I still have to write that poem defining what makes a man. How many men do I really know? 

There has been a lot of past-life connecting during these 2 weeks. It's awkward, but unmistakable. I feel like I'm very sensitive to that sort of thing, and that it happens to me quite frequently. I don't usually tell people, because they would probably think that I'm just trying to force some sort of superficial intimacy by claiming to be a past lover...or something like that. For now I'll keep my findings nestled in my poetry. 

If you're reading my thoughts and think you know what feeling I'm talking about, don't be shy about it. Then again, I think I'm the only one who reads this thing...which isn't bad, because then I don't feel quite as bashful about writing so much. I feel like the blogs on here all have declared purposes. Frontispiece (my other lonely blog) is for my poetry and creative things. Penumbra is where all the other crap goes. It's not the recycling, but it's not quite the trash either. If you want to make my day, follow me...or buy me another cup of coffee.

Back to poetry and sweaty pens.

River Phoenix

A friend of mine came to play at the CSAS. I told him I'd go and see him play. 

Now that I think of it, I'm not even sure we're close enough to be considered friends. He's sort of an asshole.

Whatever we are, or are not, I decided to check him out because it's been a while since I've seen him. (He screwed me over a few years ago, and I only just saw him and his girlfriend again very briefly over winter break at a party.)

Anyway, I get there and I'm pretty sure he's tripping or still really hung over, and he's telling me how long it's been since he's showered...and tries to get me to smell his dirty hair. He tells me something about how he's going to boil his piss and shower in it. Yeah. I didn't make that one up. He then leaves for a cig and I'm there, waiting...there are literally ten people there. No one is going to be at this show except for a few creepers from the bar next door. As I am waiting for T to come back, I ponder. I wonder why I am even there. I want to leave but I'd feel badly for being rude and running out. I remember all the disgusting things he has said to me, and I don't care if it is painfully obvious that I ditched the show--I just walked out before the bands started. Of course as I slipped out, T was making his way back in. It actually felt really good. 

I called my friend and told her how disappointing my venture had been. Being the optimist I am, I tried to extract a positive lesson from a seemingly huge waste of time (and 6 bucks). If I survived the walk, and the awkwardness of waiting amongst such a sparse and sordid crowd, I definitely could have handled the temporary awkwardness of going to the Ottobar solo. I really should have just gone. 

I'm just going to be flying on these adventures solo. I love my friends, I really do. I wish they wanted to go out to a show every now and then. Sitting around with the same 7 kids doing the same things every weekend just gets old. Canned air. When we look back on the most exciting weekends from last semester, they have been the ones when spontaneity has intervened. I'm not leaving my friends behind; I'm just going to go out and if they want to come along, that's cool, if not, I'm still going out.

Blah. It'll be exciting to see who I meet along the way. 

I hope luck is on my side and that I win this auction on eBay. I'm sort of in a downer mood. I inherited this mood through osmosis. kajdkadjfk

Swan

I fell asleep listening to Radiohead. I had dream I had walked out of a forest into a field of snow. The snow wasn't really snow. I had walked out into a field of white swans. I remember watching them throw back their necks. Everything glowed.

When we used to play the, what-animal-do-i-look-like game, my sister was always a raccoon. I was a swan.

Swans are bitches.

I woke up this morning with crazy hair...like perfect ringlet curls. I've always wanted beautiful curls...like the ones in old paintings.

I woke up thinking about my neck and wondering by what luck did I manage to don these ringlets...and so I broke out the camera. 

Little Updates and Musings

I'm not sure what I'll be up to tonight. One of my new Tarot books came in, so maybe I'll give the cards a go and report back later. I still can't believe that I managed to wake up at 6 for work this morning without an alarm. 

UGH. I'm feeling lusty for a new camera. 

I think I'm going to be doing some freelance writing/photographing for this new site called Too Shy To Stop. I wouldn't be getting paid, but I want to do more of both those things, so why not. I could build a portfolio, or just learn about art & culture. No matter what I do with my work, if it makes me think it's a win-win.

My room smells like vanilla cigar smoke and I don't know why.

I have a secret plan. If I can get my chinaman hands on a sweet p&s, I can use it as a tool to get me out and shoot people. YEAH. 

But I'm Too Cold.

I want to go somewhere haunted and camp out.
I have an itch to buy a new camera.

there are things i need to do...eating brie before bed is not one of them. this, while it is not my most intelligent post, will be the single most important reminder ever to be imprinted on cyberspace.

THERE ARE MONSTERS!

I think I might try selling copies of my monster book in Atomic. I had fun with that one. As I was in class I filled the pages in my notebook with ideas for future projects. 

I have this feeling that this semester will be the most successful one yet. 

I've been having very vivd dreams this week...something big is on its way. 

I went with C. to let the realtor in. As we sat in her grandmother's living room, something caught my eye. In the fireplace I saw a white, flickering light. I brought my curious observation to C's attention, thinking that perhaps there was one of those fake logs that had gone crazy. She saw nothing. Later when I was approaching the living room from the hallway I half-wondered if I would catch another glimpse of the flickering things. As soon as that thought cropped up I was surprised to find another flickering light humming around the fireplace and up the chimney. 

To Do List (Layer 1):

Finish Gift for A.

Click "Place Order" on Amazon

Read Everything that Comes in the Mail

Revisit T.B.C. 1&2

Simultaneous To Do List (Layer 2):

Draft Ideas for Object Stories

Find Misc. Lost Items

Draft Ideas for C. and An. and S.

To Do List (Layer 3):

Remain Caffeinated 

Do Not Die

I went to the pastry shop today hoping to enjoy a croissant and work through my block. Instead I imbibed an absurd amount of caffeine (shame on the pastry people for changing their policy to free refills).  I ran into some acquaintances of mine and tried to dodge them (only because I left my home for a very specific mission), but was unsuccessful.  B & C saw right through my scarf and hat and called me over (which I think is rather impressive, seeing as I haven't seen either in three years). I sat with the two for nearly four hours. The cafe was far too small for me to simply sit across the room and hide behind my laptop. Despite the fact that I haven't touched my accumulating T.B.C.'s, I am going to give the cafe another go tomorrow morning. Perhaps I'll don a pair of lunettes...