(no subject)
It is snowing and beautiful and oh so quiet in my house. I lay in bed this morning with Ginsberg the cat holding me hostage, sitting on my chest, and I looked out of the window and thought about everything. Thinking mornings are one of my favorite times, and I don't know what I'd do if I never had the chance to just go over everything like that. I woke up at 8am but with that groggy, bleary-eyed feeling like I'd slept until noon, hung-over but not actually. I guess, really, even though I'm out of bed and working, I'm still having a thinking morning and that this is just a whole bunch of the bits of things in my head.
I've been reading novels again lately. Sometimes I stop reading novels as some kind of attempt to, I don't know, keep my self in line or something. I just love them so much and can spend hours and hours consumed by other people's stories. I just finished re-reading The Bell Jar by Sylvia Plath and now I'm 1/3 of the way into In Dubious Battle by John Steinbeck. It is funny, they are totally different books, written in different styles, set in different times, with different plots and characters, and yet, I keep thinking about them together, about how they both, in strangely complimentary yet distinct ways, are critiquing 20th century American society and all the alienation and disillusionment and struggle, and the turmoil inherent in the push for individualism and the persistent human need for connection and purpose. And I'm not saying this to write an English paper here, but just because it makes me think about my own life and world in interesting ways, and makes me watch myself as though from a corner in a room, noticing these same questions and drives all around me.
My dream since I was a kid is to write novels. One night about two weeks ago I lay wide eyed awake in bed until 4am with my mind turning over sentence after sentence, pulling together all kinds of characters and twists of plot. I hope that I do write a novel someday. Even a bad novel. Even if it never got published and was the kind of thing I just harassed my friends with, inviting them over for dinner and then bugging them to read it. For the same reasons that I want to be a teacher, I want to be a novelist--to blow people's minds and change the world. And I relish how romantic and idealistic that is of me.
And then there was yesterday, with me taking apart a defunct screen for sifting compost, unscrewing it all by hand, denailing, and then measuring, sawing, collecting old wood, drilling, nailing on screen with hooked nails, and then presto! The two best screens ever, that fit tight over a wheelbarrow, so that one person can shovel finished compost onto the screen and the other can sweep it across the screen, with all the fine, good compost falling through, and all the rocks, sticks and junk staying on top. To my delight, I was really competent at all that stuff, although I've had only a few chances to do things like that. You could tell I hadn't a lot of practice because I was slow at it, but at the same time really meticulous so it worked out. Next week we're going to sift this whole huge pile of finished compost. And then the week after that I'll be building three new six by six' compost bins. I love that work so much, and it makes me think about big, wild gardens and food and big barns and dirt: the whole other piece to my dream.
You know, one of the strangest documentary forms, I think, are to-do lists. I have a kind of love-hate relationship with them. I wrote a letter to a friend I hadn't spoken to in a long time last night and, in telling her about my life, it felt like I was just listing off all the things that I do. I don't want a life like that, all summarized and tidy with check marks beside each thing. That's not what it is like to live my life, but everyday I am in so many different roles that I don't always know how to explain things other ways.
You know what else I want to do? Make dresses. Well, to be truthful, more than making them I want to wear them. I have all these designs in my head, but a) I don't have a sewing machine, b) I have very limited sewing knowledge and c) I sometimes hate sewing and avoid it wildly. But still, I want to try. I want a jade green dress with buttons all down the back and a brown one with white lace cap sleeves and a blue one too, with pockets.
Which reminds me. I've been thinking about getting two tattoos for awhile, one on each shoulder, that are like cap sleeves, arching up over the lower part of my shoulder. I've had a bunch of ideas, but the other day I came across this panel by Alphonse Mucha called Summer 1896 and I thought that on one shoulder I could get poppies like that girl has on her head. I'm still thinking about what I would want on the other shoulder--something complimentary but different.
I've been reading novels again lately. Sometimes I stop reading novels as some kind of attempt to, I don't know, keep my self in line or something. I just love them so much and can spend hours and hours consumed by other people's stories. I just finished re-reading The Bell Jar by Sylvia Plath and now I'm 1/3 of the way into In Dubious Battle by John Steinbeck. It is funny, they are totally different books, written in different styles, set in different times, with different plots and characters, and yet, I keep thinking about them together, about how they both, in strangely complimentary yet distinct ways, are critiquing 20th century American society and all the alienation and disillusionment and struggle, and the turmoil inherent in the push for individualism and the persistent human need for connection and purpose. And I'm not saying this to write an English paper here, but just because it makes me think about my own life and world in interesting ways, and makes me watch myself as though from a corner in a room, noticing these same questions and drives all around me.
My dream since I was a kid is to write novels. One night about two weeks ago I lay wide eyed awake in bed until 4am with my mind turning over sentence after sentence, pulling together all kinds of characters and twists of plot. I hope that I do write a novel someday. Even a bad novel. Even if it never got published and was the kind of thing I just harassed my friends with, inviting them over for dinner and then bugging them to read it. For the same reasons that I want to be a teacher, I want to be a novelist--to blow people's minds and change the world. And I relish how romantic and idealistic that is of me.
And then there was yesterday, with me taking apart a defunct screen for sifting compost, unscrewing it all by hand, denailing, and then measuring, sawing, collecting old wood, drilling, nailing on screen with hooked nails, and then presto! The two best screens ever, that fit tight over a wheelbarrow, so that one person can shovel finished compost onto the screen and the other can sweep it across the screen, with all the fine, good compost falling through, and all the rocks, sticks and junk staying on top. To my delight, I was really competent at all that stuff, although I've had only a few chances to do things like that. You could tell I hadn't a lot of practice because I was slow at it, but at the same time really meticulous so it worked out. Next week we're going to sift this whole huge pile of finished compost. And then the week after that I'll be building three new six by six' compost bins. I love that work so much, and it makes me think about big, wild gardens and food and big barns and dirt: the whole other piece to my dream.
You know, one of the strangest documentary forms, I think, are to-do lists. I have a kind of love-hate relationship with them. I wrote a letter to a friend I hadn't spoken to in a long time last night and, in telling her about my life, it felt like I was just listing off all the things that I do. I don't want a life like that, all summarized and tidy with check marks beside each thing. That's not what it is like to live my life, but everyday I am in so many different roles that I don't always know how to explain things other ways.
You know what else I want to do? Make dresses. Well, to be truthful, more than making them I want to wear them. I have all these designs in my head, but a) I don't have a sewing machine, b) I have very limited sewing knowledge and c) I sometimes hate sewing and avoid it wildly. But still, I want to try. I want a jade green dress with buttons all down the back and a brown one with white lace cap sleeves and a blue one too, with pockets.
Which reminds me. I've been thinking about getting two tattoos for awhile, one on each shoulder, that are like cap sleeves, arching up over the lower part of my shoulder. I've had a bunch of ideas, but the other day I came across this panel by Alphonse Mucha called Summer 1896 and I thought that on one shoulder I could get poppies like that girl has on her head. I'm still thinking about what I would want on the other shoulder--something complimentary but different.