Somethings and Some Photos

I like poetry. I like it on pages of library books, written in the margins of your math test, I like poetry read out load and kept to yourself. I like the way that words bend together, meld with each other and scare people and make people laugh and sometimes cry.

I like photos. More than photos, I like people, the ones in front of the lens and the ones behind it, I like to see what someone else saw exactly how they saw it if even for just one second. 

I like ballet, there is something beautiful in those faded pink slippers, those soft thuds of people on wood (I’ve never heard it, but I can imagine as well as I can hear words form, lips part, words spill), there is something beautiful in this unattainable perfection they reach for as they jump off the ground and reach up to the ceiling. 

I like the book I am the Messenger by Markus Zusak  which might be the best book about an underage taxi cab driver that owns a coffee drinking dog in Australia that exists. I’ve written some songs for it.

I like written songs, scratching the words with blue ink into a blue notebook. Cross legged on my bedroom floor with my ukulele in my lap and feeling proud out of the music my fingers can make and works they smear on to college ruled paper.

 

I like you. 

Kadence and Words and a Game

Note: I HAVE A FACEBOOK PAGE FOR MY PHOTOGRAPHY NOW. LIKE IT. THIS IS THE LINK. CLICK THE LINK AND LIKE THE PAGE. 

This post is about words and my friend Kadence. 

Kadence and I have, for basically all the years we’ve known each other, been linked by words. The words we wrote down, made up, whispered into each other’s ears on picnic benches at recess. Words we shored on pages of books, stored in each other’s lockers, pushed into each other’s hands. Words we wrote in letters, words we said out loud, words we didn’t say at all, but both had common knowledge of. 

Lately we’ve been sharing words of others in youtube videos–spoken words poets, sharing their canvas spills of truth explosions (the kind of art work I can’t tack up on my wall). She has a lovely post about some of her favorites here. For those who haven’t ever found themselves listening to spoken word poetry, eyes glued to your computer screen, an occasional tear leaking from your eye, don’t try it for me. Try it for you. 

We’ve also developed a game of words and language and Google Translate recently, of which I am about to explain the rules for you. 

Step one: Find a simple phrase, preferably a quote from your favorite book, or a line from your favorite song. Example: “I bite my tongue and torch my dreams”

Step Two: Insert said phrase into Google translate.

Step Three: Translate it into French. 

Step Four: Copy and paste the french phrase and translate it from French to German. Then Chinese. Then Chinese simplified. Then Hebrew. Then Spanish. Then Finnish. Then Irish.

(Note: Make sure than when you do this step, you are translating from each language to the next. Don’t have the setting French to Whatever the whole time, or it won’t ever translate correctly. Example: French to German, the German to Chinese, NEVER French to German then copy and paste the German and have it say French to Chinese still. ALWAYS CHANGE THE SETTING OTHER WISE IT WON’T WORK!)

Step Five: When you’ve gone through, eh 10+ languages, translate it back to English.

Step Six: The result is a phrase of chance and magic. Use it to your own choosing. 

“I bite my tongue and torch my dreams.” turned into “I bite that tongue and flash him my dreams.” 

THAT MY FRIEND, IS FABULOUS AND MAGICAL AND MAKES ME WANT TO TELL A STORY. Which was the entire point. 

Photo of the Day: 

Setting Fire to Our Insides for Fun

I’m listening to the song Youth by Daughter and writing poems/ poem responses with the theme age in mind. If you haven’t heard the song do your self a favor and look it up. Close your eyes and let it sink in to your skin and crawl on your bones. 

We got to chose our themes for this project and I had a long list of themes in mind. I wanted to write about beauty, our perception of it and what people find beautiful. I wanted to write about wanderlust and the way it grows cold to a person of age and burns like fire to the youth all over. I wanted to write about sleep, catalog nightmares and day dreams. I ended up with age because it fascinates me and because we had to find five poems about age and write poem responses for them and the poems I found about age were beautiful and sad and perfect. 

I found a poem about growing older and loosing your grasp on everything. I found a poem about learning to say goodbye as a child in a shopping mall, about your body turning into a map of your life, and words you hear becoming tinted with your memories. 

I once wrote to you about permanence, but let me tell you. The lovely truths are in the fleeting–or maybe they are the fleeting. 

So pull your hair up when you feel serious. Dance in your bed room. Trace shapes into your jeans with pen, ink up your own skin with a marker. Tattoo yourself with the phone numbers you won’t remember, live peacefully in your own world if only for a little while. It’ll will end, and that is enough for it to be lovely and completely worth it. 

 

Picture of the day:

I am being indesicive

I’ve been avoiding theNaNoWriMo site. 

My NaNo is not going well. Basically, I had no planning, which is cool because I never have planning. And the first couple of days I wrote a lot and had a lot of fun. My mom wasn’t crazy about me participating but let’s be serious when do you ever get the reaction you want from your parents. But then I started to get stuck.

It wasn’t just in my story, although that was happening (or well, not happening)  too. I have no drive to write, and I’m unhappy with what I was writing. My characters felt too cynical or too dreamy. I have this terrible habit of writing all of my main characters as these beautiful enigmas that aren’t me and I can’t connect to. But more over that, writing about her made me feel tired, not excited. She seemed to hate her parents, everyone at school, the town she grew up in.

I don’t want to read that, let alone write it. I feel like I was just trapping myself in my words.

So. I really don’t know. I’m so stressed out. I might start over I might not. I’m like a million words away from where I need to be. I just don’t know that right now is the right time for me to do NaNo.

I’ve been given the suggestion to start over, but at this point I feel extremely discouraged. I want to write because it’s what I know, but I also feel like I don’t even know who I am, let alone what I need to say to a blank word document. Yep. Down and out then. Have a nice day.

Here’s a photo: 

NaNoWriMo 2012

The monster is coming. The stressed-out, coffee-drowned, sleep-less, word-logged monster commonly called NaNoWriMo. The monster that is my best friend and worst enemy. The monster that makes me into a ball of stress that can’t form coherent sentences out loud but also makes me explode with joy and energy.

The first time I participated in NaNo I was a 12 year-old 7th grader, with the writing style of a pidgin who had flown into an apple stores and began randomly picked the keys of an open macbook hoping that I had maybe written something that sort of worked. I wrote a 50,000 word novel about a bunch of people sitting in a car for a day. I’m not kidding. It didn’t make sense. It made less than no sense. It made negative amounts of sense.

Last year I was also a mess. November was a tough month. I made it out alive–as did my novel and my best friend who was having some health problems, but it was hard. It was hard to get through. My novel was a nothing of a thing, like a photograph that turns white when your film hits the light by accident. I’m sure there was a story somewhere, but over it–covering it maybe–was a million useless bits of emotion that clouded the screen of view until there was no story at all. I won NaNo but there wasn’t much to feel proud of.

Obviously, I would like this year to be better, and I think the fact that I haven’t been stressing out because of it months ahead of time may actually be in my favor. At this point I have *no* idea what I’m going to write about, though there are ideas swimming around my head like little fish in a pond–every once in a while jumping up to catch the air in it’s mouth and making a splash–but nothing is concrete. And I hope that nothing will be until I finally write out the words. I like the chance that I’m taking, I even recommend it.

So what are your NaNo Plans, lovely readers?

Photo of the day:

Photo’s From the Air (missing my lady)

Window seats are the only seats for me. What’s the point of being miles above the earth, above all other people, and not being able to see it?

Upside down Arizona mountains. We were down visiting my grandma.

Olivia and my dog Ellie from the window. I went in for a phone call.

Antique cameras and Olivia Anne will be my down fall.

Sideways road lights, Arizona Highway. I love being in a car, I love roads.

 Out the window, I love their shadows. The clouds I mean.

 Her toes compliment the rug, and her fingers-her jeans.

She and I. We are a simple sweater-weather loving sort of folk.

Travel photos from my trip to Arizona, and good bye photos from my last shoot with Liv. In between each other, on top of each other. New, new, new. Gone, gone, gone. I know my posts have been spotty, I think I’ve been spotty as well. New post all do something about the NaNoWriMo I’m freaking out about. Love you all! 

Photos from the Car

 

 

So. Officially …

So. Officially underway the second week of high school. I don’t recommend it.

I am being completely weighed down by homework, which is really more something to complain about than a real issue. I mean, I can handle homework. I’m not lost in any of my classes yet. I even like the French that I was getting so worried about. The bigger issue of homework is the fact that I think I have developed ADD and also a complete addiction to Tumblr that takes up my entire day life.

Speaking of which, I have an actual photography blog now, for all those (cough, cough, Kadence) people that were bothering me for one earlier this summer. It is called et-cetera-and-all.tumblr.com and will kind of double as my reference work when I start actually doing things with my life other than Algebra.

Speaking of which, I AM TAKING ALGEBRA AGAIN BECAUSE I CAN’T READ NUMBERS. 

I don’t have any friends yet, at least not ones that inspire me and challenge me and make me want to write them poems and sing them songs and take their pictures, but I hope that will happen eventually. And if it doesn’t, I will be sad. But I will probably live. 

No where I could have gone to school this year would have keep things the same. Olivia was going to leave, and Kadence as well. Faces I had become dependent on were going to become memories. It was inevitable. But it’s still heartbreaking. To find someone who makes you feel whole and having to go away. That’s hard. But it’s real and it’s life and it’s important. 

Even if it sucks. 

So. Just to break my heart a little more, I will post a poem I wrote last year for my best friend Liv, as well as my favorite picture of the two aforementioned girls. And then I’m gonna cry for a little bit. But eventually, I am going to overcome. 

In Which I fall into a Pit of Fear and Cliches

Hello all. I would apologize for the fact I haven’t written anything in a while, but Miriam Joy told me I don’t even have to! Yay.

This summer, I would love to say I have been MIA because I have been doing lots of fabulous and busy-making things, like having human interactions with people outside of the internet, but that my dear friend would be a lie. So I decided that I would do you all a favor and MAKE A LIST of all the things I have done this summer.

A LIST OF THINGS I HAVE DONE DURING THE PERIOD OF TIME CALLED SUMMER:

• Tumblr.
• Tumblr.
• Music Festival.
• Taking people’s senior portraits.
• Tumblr.
• Books to read.
• Feeding the hungry, playing with the homeless, and other general mission trip work.
• And for good measure: Tumblr.

It’s been productive guys. Just kidding, not really, at all, ever.

And now, the summer is over. I have homework to finish (read: start). I have human interactions outside the internet make. I have *give me a minute here.* school.

School. I don’t. It’s just that. I mean. Don’t even. I can’t.

This is the first year I won’t be going to a school that Kadence is attending. This is the first year I will ever go to a school that I don’t know anyone in. This is my first year of high school. Let’s be real guys: I am scared out of my mind.

I know there are people out there that have barley ever gone to a school for a whole year, let alone the good 9 years I had been going to my old school, and let me tell you, I don’t have any idea how the do it. Not knowing everyone in your class since kindergarten is freaking scary. Like. You don’t even know. And I’m going to a private school for the first time, with rich people that don’t know who my favorite bands are, or my favorite books, that don’t get my clothes, or even just *me*. Uhg.

I feel like such a terrible, terrible, cliche, and for all those grimacing at my not very original woes, I’m sorry. Really I am. I could die my hair black, listen to screamo music and stay in my room writing poetry all day and I would probably be the same amount of pathetic teenager I am right now.

So for those of you that didn’t wilt away as I promptly fell into a pit of sadness and unoriginal fears in this post comment and tell me it’s all gonna be okay. Or whatever.

Picture of the day: 

Weetzie Bat: Drawing

Hey guys. I’m leaving you guys for another week to go on a mission trip. Follow my on tumblr. What? I didn’t say that.

 

Anyway, here is a picture of Weetzie Bat, a fictional character of Francesca Lia Block’s books, and a quote from her book Cherokee Bat and the Goat Guys. If she looks like Natalie Portman it’s because I drew it off a picture of her. I didn’t have an eraser available so this is all unedited but I’m pretty happy with it.