A Bad Day
For any and all incapable of interpreting the subject line, this isn’t a happy post. This is me complaining. You’ve been warned! 
Some days just plain ol’ suck. This was a day where nothing went right, and I had to do things I didn’t want to do, and my trust was betrayed, and I cried. In fact, the high point was when I was relating everything to my sister, sobbing, and eating chocolate (we stopped by the gas station on the way home and I picked up four different kind of chocolate candy bars. And root beer. It was that bad.)
Now, I’m kind of known for getting worked up over nothing, and I know my moods can go way out of wack before they ever should, but that really isn’t it. Today sucked.
So I’m ending it, officially, now that Carol is fast asleep, on the couch, with chocolate (Kit Kats), a book I’ve already read and plan on rereading, and a comfortable sweatshirt. Then I’ll go to sleep, go home to my mum who will give me a nice big hug, and then I shall walk my adorable puppy.
See? See how adorable she is? She looks so eager to love and ready to please… Okay, but also it looks like the most emo, MySpace-appropriate self-portrait-y that a dog could ever possibly manage. Except that she just moves a lot when I snap pictures of her and this is one of the few non-blurry ones. 
The Process
My process, at least. How elitist can I sound, saying that?
Well, I lately started going to yoga a couple of days a week and it’s pretty nice. A few of the poses really resonate with me, and the form stays in my head long after yoga. This is one of them
This is just a scan from my journal, where I spent two pages outlining the form and then filling it in. This one girl in yoga wore shorts, which completly baffled me. I mean, granted, it was her first time, but…. I would never be comfortable wearing shorts to yoga. I bet she never does it again… 
I was a little sad that I didn’t lay out the body on the paper properly, so she doesn’t have a full left arm. I thought about ways to fix it, and they all led to me tracing her on a new piece of paper and finishing it out.
So now she has both arms, which I like. I was staring and thinking about this full, completed person, and decided she needed a background. I thought about drawing one in around her, but I was a little too inspired by the card-making gathering I had just been at. I decided to create a background for her, so I traced and then cut her out. You can *kinda* see the lines where I cut her out.
So I created a background. It took a good few hours to do it, and I’m sure I did it in the least-efficient way possible, but it was pretty fun. I traced out on a white piece of paper all the main lines (window frame, room outline, etc), and then used the pieces as guidelines. I held them over the five or so sheets of paper I picked for both the floor boards and the window scene, then cut through all of them. Mix-matched the pieces of paper and turned it into a big puzzle! Like I said, time consuming and paper-wasting, but actually a lot of fun.
I put together all the pieces, and then used these scrapbooking sticker-tape pieces that elevate the image to paste of on the girl, so she’s like an eighth of an inch higher than the rest of the scene, and printed out the title in a typewriter font, taped them on the same way, and voila!
Diving Right In
It was a gradual evolution of choices, but in the end, it looks like I’m diving right in to the world of outsider music.
A few months back a friend (Glenn) and I were walking through the bookstore and he pointed out a book by Oliver Sacks, Musicophilia. I read Sack’s The Man Who Mistook His Wife For A Hat when I was in grade school and loved it, and have since perused his book An Anthropologist On Mars. I also loved loved Awakenings, which was based off his work.
So hearing the recommendation for Musicophilia, I tucked the thought in the back of my head and continued on, planning on looking into it when I had some more time.
Some time goes by and I do find the space in my day to read it, so early January I pick it up from my favorite bookstore EVER, Elliot Bay Bookstore (yeah, no plug here…) and I start reading it.
Reading it makes me scared I’ll go into a seizure, though, and it’s turning me into a hypochondriac. I love the book, but I’m scared to read it while also listening to music. I mean… It’s just a little scary. In a dorky way. For me. The book is incredible, though, and I really love how accessible Oliver Sacks makes his field in his writing. I never feel like what he’s saying is going over my head.
Parallel to this, I’ve been going to the theater with my mom a lot, and I keep seeing this preview for this one movie, The Soloist. It looks amazing, but I know I won’t be able to make it ten minutes in the actual movie with a dry eye. It just won’t happen.
I decided, on a whim, to get the book first and read it. I figured it would better prepare me for the movie. Reading it hasn’t made me cry quite yet, but it’s so fantastically beautiful and sad, I know it’s only a matter of time. I love it, though, and I think it’s really well written.
As a side note, those who know me pretty well know that I avoid movie-sponsored books like the devil. I’ll go out of my way, pay a few dollars extra, whatever it takes to avoid the “Now A Major Motion Picture” sticker. But I bought this copy willingly, even though it’s cover is basically a movie cover. It’s beautiful. This book cover makes me want to become a book cover designer, just so I can make things look this pretty. Yeah, I’m a dork. So what.
So the last tie-in was watching the Inauguration stuff yesterday. As unusual as it is for me, I wasn’t really into it. I just didn’t care a whole lot about Obama’s speech (gasp, shock, I know, I know) or any of the political tidbits. I didn’t even like the poem much, but not because it isn’t high caliber or anything. It just didn’t resonate with me.
What did resonate with me, though, was Yo-Yo Ma’s performance of John William’s composition. It was composed especially for the Inauguration, and it just moved me. I thought it was beautiful. It also (and here’s the tie in) reminded me of the cello music in the trailer for The Soloist.
…So I hopped onto iTunes and the internet and eventually found this.
And, of course, I ended up buying on iTunes the entirety of Yo-Yo Ma playing Bach’s The Cello Suite. It’s beautiful, and the music accompanying me reading Musicophilia as well as a book about a man driven to the depths of his mind, all the while retaining his passion and ability to make music.
See? Diving right in, and tying it all together.
______________
PS-I still haven’t found a video/clip/mp3 of Yo-Yo Ma’s performance at the Inauguration, so if anyone finds a copy, can they leave a comment? I’d be much obliged.
Weird Dreams
They were bizarre and involved all my Bellingham-people.
One that I thought was funny, because it was just a case of my subconscious being not very subtle at all, was when a group of us were watching tv.
It was Glenn, Maia, Carissa, and some more people in the background. Their faces were faded.
But there was *also* my first boyfriend, this guy named Casey who I think is adorable and we’re on pretty good terms. We make a kind-of point of talking at least once a year and catching up. There was also Jeremy, and his new girlfriend (in my dream, at least). When I saw his girlfriend was there, I didn’t feel jealous or anything–I just felt tired, because she served as a reminder that he’s over me, and because of that fact, his vendetta against me is just so out of place and inappropriate.
I didn’t even try to talk to him or say hi, because even in my dream I knew he still held whatever grudge he’s holding. But I did try to talk to Casey, and when he ignored me as well, I was shocked. Casey and I had about two months of not talking after we broke up (in ninth grade), and we’ve been on great, hugging terms ever since.
But in my dream, he was ignoring me. I finally pushed a response out of him, and it was so funny. He told me that yes, he still liked me and appreciated the friendship we had, but he remembered how I enjoyed a commercial for Mac a few years ago and frankly, he just can’t associate with that kind of person so would I just e considerate of his feelings and leave him alone?
Everyone in the group was really silent, and trying to pretend to focus on whatever was on tv. I just hung my head and sighed, and then my dream switched into a little narrative.
“And she sat there, her head hung low, and for the first time the exhaustion showed on her face, and it was there for the whole world to see–she was tired, and her feelings were hurt”
I know. I know! Pity party in the subconscious much…. Well, at least my subconscious feels bad for me!
Distractions
I watched a scary movie.
Then I watched junk tv and got lost in the blogosphere.
I’m feeling a smidge lonely.
I developed a crush.
My world makes sense with a touch of Marci-logic sprinkled on top. I like distractions. It doesn’t even have to be big distractions, like a brand new crush, or a medium sized distraction, like junk tv to take my mind of the (very) scary movie. Just, distractions.
Although, in proof of a good metaphor, my tv/blog-distraction-as-an-example is thorough. Distractions are fleeting and cures (unlike my new-crush-distraction-as-an-example, I hope). I’m in bed and the goddamnscarymoviethatwassomuchscarierthanIthoughtitwouldbe is coming back to me and I’m scared now, thinking about it. I will sleep with the light on tonight, and I’m not so much a baby as I can’t take the heat from publicly announcing it.
When I Grow Up
I want to be this kind of grown up
I really don’t know what else I want to. I don’t have a clue what I want to be when I grow up anymore, but I know that I want it to somehow incorporate this concept.
Some would call this a good step.
Body Wash
I understand that makers of body wash market to the girls who starve themselves and deny themselves any type of food-related treat. That’s why all body washes smell like something you’d kill for to put in your mouth.
I’ll even admit that I indulge myself that way–I buy vanillas, usually, because it smells like cookies and cakes, my weaknesses.
What irks me, though, is when they do it so obviously, to the point where the original intent of the product becomes lost. For instance, my current body wash (which I didn’t pick out–it was a gift) is scented Frozen Lemon Custard.
Do you see the problem? If not, let me ask you a question–
What does “frozen” smell like?
My body wash smells lemony, and even a little creamy, but I don’t detect any air of frigidity when I wash. None. Because how do you make something smell cold?
Reading List: Fiction
These are the books that were important enough to me to move. At least, most. Of the fiction. This list doesn’t include any of the non fiction, and I think I’ve left some fiction in the car.
The Fountain
Flight 1
Flight 2
Ghost World
V For Vendetta
Watchmen
Fun Home
La Perdida
The Invention of Hugo Cabret
Snow Falling on Cedars
The Republic
Selected Poems (E.E Cummings)
Selected Poems and Letters of Emily Dickinson
Collected Poems (Edna St Vincent Millay)
Ten Cents a Dance
Loose Sugar
The Complete Novels (Jane Austen)
Collected Fictions (Jorge Luis Borges)
Eaters of the Dead
House of Leaves
The Inheritance of Loss
* The Brothers Karamazov
Crime and Punishment
The Mysterious Flame of Queen Loana
The Name of the Rose
Jane Eyre
* Lolita
Oliver Twist
Great Expectations
Collected Stories of F Scott Fitzgerald
Madame Bovary
Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close
Everything is Illuminated
Smoke and Mirrors
Interpreter of Maladies
The Namesake
Unaccustomed Earth
The Hour I First Believed
* I Know This Much Is True
A Madman Dreams of Turing Machines
Einstein’s Dreams
One Hundred Years of Solitutde
Collected Stores (Gabriel Garcia Marquez)
On Chesil Beach
* After Dark
Kafka on the Shore
A Wild Sheep Chase
* The Wind-Up Bird Chronicles
The Elephant Vanishes
Against the Day
Gravity’s Rainbow
Fathers and Sons
Fancies and Goodnights
The Twentieth Wife
White Noise
Anil’s Ghost
Divisadero
In The Skin of a Lion
My Name is Red
* Anna Karenina
War and Peace
Hearts in Atlantis
The Gunslinger
The War of the Worlds
The Time Machine
Dune
Ender’s Game
Speaker for the Dead
The Elegance of the Hedgehog
The Hunchback of Notre-Dame
Les Miserables
A Barrel of Laughs/A Vale of Tears
Wainscott Weasel
A Rat’s Tale
A Wrinkle in Time
A Wind in the Door
The Neverending Story
The Giver
Dragons of a Fallen Sun
Dragons of a Lost Star
Dragons of a Vanished Moon
Bold means it’s there because it was a recommendation/gift
Italics means it is really high on my priority list
Strike Through means I’ve already read it
* means I have every intention of rereading it in the near future.
This is going to sound silly
But I’m feeling rather self conscious, rather shy and I’m about to do something that takes me far from my comfort zone.
Tomorrow later today is a big day for me, and it’s taking me far from any comfort zone I could possibly imagine having fit myself into. I’m doing not one, but two things that are scandalously different for me, but I’m really only going to go into detail on one of them.
I bought a new dress, and tights, and boots. And tomorrow later today, I’m going to wear them all together. I know, scandalous, right? The “dress” is really something that Modest-Marci would wear with jeans. It’s technically long enough to wear as a dress, but technically translates to it wouldn’t be okay to wear when I was in high school, which in turn means I wouldn’t wear it.
But I want to. And with dark tights and cute boots, it’s actually not even inappropriate. Even my sister said it just looks like a cute, fun outfit that I would normally wear. There’s really nothing wrong about it except t’s just the shortest dress I’ve ever worn. And I’m feeling self conscious about it. Tomorrow is a day for change, apparently, and I’m kicking it all off with a new look.
In other, potentially more interesting, world news, I have a couple of (I think) neat posts about science fiction, of which I’ve been reading a lot more, as well as one on this book I’m finally getting around to finishing. It feels like I’ve been reading it forever. You’ll find out why tomorrow, when I sit down and type the whole thing out.
Amazing
I love the past hour and a half. It was the most refreshing, renewing, supportive hour and a half I’ve had in months, and it had proves that I know what’s best for me–it included ALL of my favorite things!
I met with a friend for coffee, and we both commiserated how frustrating life can be together. We’re both at our respective ropes’ ends, and we just talked for a little bit about how much it sucks–how it’s hard to watch people you love, or people you used to love, turn bitter and mean, and how frustrating it is when you’re forced to change your plans and when you have to live on someone else’s schedule. And we hugged, long and hard.
And then we went to the swing sets. We swung (I never know what the proper past tense form of the swing set verb should be), we talked about awesome children’s literature (Phantom Tollbooth–it’ll have it’s very own post soon, I promise), some really awesome sci fi/fantasy (Ender’s Game, Hitchhiker’s Guide, etc).
We made up little fantastical stories about men only a millimeter high, and what life would be like, and just really enjoyed ourselves. And he summed it up great at the end.
He sighed, and then laughed and said he likes those kinds of sighs.
“Those deep, full sighs that mean you know you’re going to be upset and sad and frustrated tomorrow, but you can enjoy this moment and know that you’re good and happy right now”
