"Jesus for President"

This is an interesting article about Shane Claiborne's new book, how he's been traveling around America in his veggie-oil powered van talking about politics, and how young evangelicals are the new swing vote.

oh, mr. rochester

Today, an honest-to-goodness chimney sweep came and cleaned our chimney, complete with a grisly, graying five o'clock shadow, and a top hat. (or as close as one could possibly find as far as top hats go.) His name was Larry and he was quite the conversationalist.

Tonight was night two in my continuing trend of hanging out with complete strangers. On Monday night I attended a classic rsvl. local show with my friend Liz. She knew everyone. I knew about one other person. There were some amazing acts. One guy did a "Genie in a Bottle" cover. Another guy went into one of those long, drawn-out stories where he claimed he sent in some songs to recording studios, didn't copyright them, then started hearing them on the radio a year or so later. This was shortly followed by a medley of all the songs the recording studios ripped off of him. If you're curious as to which songs they stole, some of them included "Ice Ice Baby" and TLC's "Scrubs." However, this guy wasn't too terrible. Other than that, it was about the most awkward thing I've done all year. Unless you count tonight, where i played that game (where you pass around the beeping thing and try to guess the words...i can't remember what it's called) for about 3 hours with people I had never met before.

In other news, I'm completely unable to resist my traditional summer reading habits. I started out with good intentions, just reading stuff on my list and not revisiting old favorites. But I finally gave in and started rereading Jane Eyre for about the 50th time. I can't help it. I mean, Slaughterhouse-Five was great, but sometimes I just need old friends. I'm holding off on Harry Potter, though. At least until I've finished something remotely ambitious.

old stuff

I just found these pictures from fall break, but they're slightly summerlike, so...

genius

Sometimes i get cravings to do lots of DIY projects....like making lamps and ridiculously cool stuffed animals, and reupholstering furniture. Anyone else?

"our neighborhood is the bermuda triangle"

My dad refers to our yard as the bermuda triangle now. Thanks to Arkansas's newfound love of extremely windy weather, with storms that make all of the pine trees in our yard lean over at 45 degree angles, we got another visit from our best friends Ed and Barbara, who take away all of our fallen trees and cut down the ones leaning on our power lines. My poor dad. Between our house and our neighbor's, I think we've lost over 30 trees since January. I am now an expert brush-hauler.

happy birthday, molly!

in honor of my dear roomie, whose birthday is today:
the one and only arlo guthrie.

also, i want a rabbit.

so...

I used one of those zero-turning-radius lawn mowers today.

I thought I was going to die.

some new favorites

Design Milk (this is a link to the eco-friendly stuff)
http://www.sfgirlbybay.com/
Design*Sponge

and

a petri dish of American spending

forgiveness

Last Sunday in our College class we talked about forgiveness. I’m pretty sure I’ve sat through countless Bible studies on forgiveness, but for some reason, this time I felt like it was something I needed to hear. I used to think I was a forgiving person. Probably because I was easy-going enough to let people walk all over me if it would be more convenient to avoid conflict. And if someone actually did do something to hurt me, I would just tell them it wasn’t that big of a deal. I would let people get away with things that would hurt me. Then at some point in my life, I stopped letting that happen as much, at least with people in my life that I truly cared about. Instead, I’d stew, tell my best friend(s) about whatever had happened that I felt so wronged about, and if the grudge ate its way through enough, I’d finally confront whatever the issue was until I felt resolved about the whole thing. But, this isn’t very healthy either. Because, let’s be honest, I’m not always really healthy, and definitely not always perfect. And usually the confrontations ended up being overly analyzed or overly emotional and were probably more detrimental to the friendships than anything else.

So I sat through the hour or so that we talked about forgiveness and evaluated what I’ve been doing to myself and others over the past few years. And I wasn’t too impressed. We talked about how to move past the abstract “love everyone just like Jesus would” answers to how to actually deal with real people and situations. For example, do you continue being friends with and interacting with someone who repeatedly hurts you? But you see, that’s where I get all confused. Because it’s still abstract, and it’s still situational. Are they hurting you on purpose, or unintentionally? Could what you perceive as an injury be something that may actually help you, or even heal you?

Because what I want out of my life is healing. Not just healing for some specific thing that happened to me, or some conflict that I want resolved, but habitual healing. I’m trying to discover what that looks like. Maybe that looks like keeping my mouth shut instead of telling every interested party what I’m upset about except for the one person I need to talk to. Maybe that means just lettings things slide and having lower expectations from time to time. Maybe it means letting some friendships go and trying harder at others. It’s time for a fresh start.

{ps: I applied for a graphic design position with NFIB last night. Small business political lobbying, here i come! ehh...kind of.}

nothing taqueria can't fix...

As a general rule, my blogging skills suck. Journaling? yeah, I tried that, too. Maybe I'll steal a phrase from my friend Joshua and begin a chronicle. Sadly, I think my life is a bit too boring for that to really work.

Senior Portfolio show was this past Friday. It went okay I guess. However, it is surreal that it's over and I don't have to worry about it anymore. ("it" refers to the actual show, not to my portfolio which still needs lots of work.)

So someone at lunch today asked me what my life plan was. I replied that I don't really have a 5-year plan or anything, but a 2-week plan? yep. I definitely have one of those. Let's just say that it involves 3 papers, an illustration project I still haven't finished, graduating, and trying not to be an emotional wreck in the meantime. I don't really have any intentions of going to grad school in the future, so it's really nice being able to count on one hand the amount of classes I have to go to...for the rest of my life. So, I might not have a plan for what I want to do post-graduation, but I think I've decided how I want to do things and who I want to be, and I think that's what matters anyhow.

And since my dear digital darkroom prof loves his photos highly (read overly) edited, I think this is what I'm turning in for my final. My concept was...eh..something about forbidden fruit? sure.

Weird Fishes/Arpeggi

some fish i scanned in today from watercolor last semester:
















thanks to chris for this article by andrew bird.

I'm trying to decide what to do for my digital darkroom final project. We're supposed to come up with a concept to set up, shoot, and edit. This could either just be retouching on an image, or else something more unique, going for a specific style, like montage or photo compiling.

such as: erik almas (i think this one is maybe 4 or 5 images originally)












I like Graham Seidman as well:

Spring Break '08

so far:

X blotchy tan/sunburn
X dancing
X thrift storing
X cutting edge, legends of the fall, the wedding date, atonement
X prison break, scrubs, dancing with the stars, the new british bachelor
X The Memory Keeper's Daughter. I feel medium about this book...
X Lake Jackson, Galveston, Quintana, Surfside, Kemah, TX

design work? nope.
apple-bottom jeans? too much.
really terrible tv? yep.

impossibly long, i know...

but really, who doesn't want to read something by this guy?

Duino Elegies
The First Elegy

Who, if I cried out, would hear me among the angels'
hierarchies? and even if one of them pressed me
suddenly against his heart: I would be consumed
in that overwhelming existence. For beauty is nothing
but the beginning of terror, which we still are just able to endure,
and we are so awed because it serenely disdains
to annihilate us. Every angel is terrifying.
And so I hold myself back and swallow the call-note
of my dark sobbing. Ah, whom can we ever turn to
in our need? Not angels, not humans,
and already the knowing animals are aware
that we are not really at home in
our interpreted world. Perhaps there remains for us
some tree on a hillside, which every day we can take
into our vision; there remains for us yesterday's street
and the loyalty of a habit so much at ease
when it stayed with us that it moved in and never left.
Oh and night: there is night, when a wind full of infinite space
gnaws at our faces. Whom would it not remain for--that longed-after,
mildly disillusioning presence, which the solitary heart
so painfully meets. Is it any less difficult for lovers?
But they keep on using each other to hide their own fate.
Don't you know yet? Fling the emptiness out of your arms
into the spaces we breathe; perhaps the birds
will feel the expanded air with more passionate flying.

Yes-the springtime needed you. Often a star
was waiting for you to notice it. A wave rolled toward you
out of the distant past, or as you walked
under an open window, a violin
yielded itself to your hearing. All this was mission.
But could you accomplish it? Weren't you always
distracted by expectation, as if every event
announced a beloved? (Where can you find a place
to keep her, with all the huge strange thoughts inside you
going and coming and often staying all night.)
But when you feel longing, sing of women in love;
for their famous passion is still not immortal. Sing
of women abandoned and desolate (you envy them, almost)
who could love so much more purely than those who were gratified.
Begin again and again the never-attainable praising;
remember: the hero lives on; even his downfall was
merely a pretext for achieving his final birth.
But Nature, spent and exhausted, takes lovers back
into herself, as if there were not enough strength
to create them a second time. Have you imagined
Gaspara Stampa intensely enough so that any girl
deserted by her beloved might be inspired
by that fierce example of soaring, objectless love
and might say to herself, "Perhaps I can be like her"?
Shouldn't this most ancient of sufferings finally grow
more fruitful for us? Isn't it time that we lovingly
freed ourselves from the beloved and, quivering, endured:
as the arrow endures the bowstring's tension, so that
gathered in the snap of release it can be more than
itself. For there is no place where we can remain.

Voices. Voices. Listen, my heart, as only
saints have listened: until the gigantic call lifted them
off the ground; yet they kept on, impossibly,
kneeling and didn't notice at all:
so complete was their listening. Not that you could endure
God's voice--far from it. But listen to the voice of the wind
and the ceaseless message that forms itself out of silence.
It is murmuring toward you now from those who died young.
Didn't their fate, whenever you stepped into a church
in Naples or Rome, quietly come to address you?
Or high up, some eulogy entrusted you with a mission,
as, last year, on the plaque in Santa Maria Formosa.
What they want of me is that I gently remove the appearance
of injustice about their death--which at times
slightly hinders their souls from proceeding onward.

Of course, it is strange to inhabit the earth no longer,
to give up customs one barely had time to learn
not to see roses and other promising Things
in terms of a human future; no longer to be
what one was in infinitely anxious hands' to leave
even one's own first name behind, forgetting it
as easily as a child abandons a broken toy.
Strange to no longer desire one's desires. Strange
to see meanings that clung together once, floating away
in every direction. And being dead is hard work
and full of retrieval before one can gradually feel
a trace of eternity. --Though the living are wrong to believe
in the too-sharp distinctions which they themselves have created.
Angels (they say) don't know whether it is the living
they are moving among, or the dead. The eternal torrent
whirls all ages along in it, through both realms
forever, and their voices are drowned our in its thunderous roar.

In the end, those who were carried off early no longer need us:
they are weaned from earth's sorrows and joys, as gently as children
outgrow the soft breasts of their mothers. But we, who do need
such great mysteries, we for whom grief is so often
the source of our spirit's growth--: could we exist without them?
Is the legend meaningless that tells how, in the lament for Linus,
the daring first notes of song pierced through the barren numbness;
and then in the startled space which a youth as lovely as a god
had suddenly left forever, the Void felt for the first time
that harmony which now enraptures and comforts and helps us?

-Rainer Maria Rilke

perks, cahiers, and ghostbusters

I have never read The Perks of Being a Wallflower, but I have always wanted to. I'm sure it'll make it on my list once I've graduated and have time to read for pleasure. While making yet another to-do list on my stickies, I ran across a quote I liked that I stole from someone that actually did read it:

"we accept the love we think we deserve."

I want to think about that a little more I think, but for some reason it resonates with me. Why is it that we are so much more willing to accept love from people when we know them or think they owe it to us, than from people who we haven't quite gotten comfortable with yet. Or even the people that we know. There's this level of trust that has to be there--mutual understanding and companionship.


On another note, I am trying to figure out what to do with my self-promos for portfolio class. They're due tomorrow, I'm blogging instead of working, and what I want to do I can't get done by tomorrow. I'm going to use Moleskine cahiers (nice fancy french word for notebook) in some form, I just keep getting new ideas and I can't decide whether to order black or the cardboard-brownish ones. I need to figure out if screen printing on black with a color would actually look good or not. Either that, or I might use cut-outs or stickers. I don't know....

I watched Be Kind, Rewind this weekend while I was up in KC for the AIGA Portfolio Review. I wasn't really sure I wanted to see it, but it was so funny. It's by the guy who directed The Science of Sleep and Eternal Sunshine, except it has Jack Black and is definitely more of a comedy than either of those. Any movie that references Ghostbusters is always a good idea.

Back from the dead...

After a two year hiatus, I finally got around to reactivating my old Hotmail account in order to change to my gmail name and reactivate my blogspot. What a mess. It's time to be professional, and dear xanga just doesn't quite cut it anymore. Don't get me wrong, xanga's been good to me. Four or five years of drama, pointless posts, and photo uploading before the days of facebook albums. Needless to say, all you xangans have a dear spot in my heart and I won't abandon you quite yet, it's just time to move on. Kind of like how Dashboard was great in high school, but now it's only good to sing loudly in cars and make fun of.