Wallflower

Guest Entry

Lentils are good and I am going to get on a plane. The plane will take me around the world where I will take pictures, send postcards, and eat good food. Then I will come home and be inspired and paint cards and re-organize my room. In high school you should be different because what is the point of being the same when we will graduate in a couple of years. Then where will you be, just getting old like everyone else in the world. Embrace age. Wrinkles-wise. Gray hair is beautiful. We love silver. I mean I shouldn't really talk because I am not old and I know bad knees and stuff must suck. It is really fun having my bestfriend as a buddy is funny because she falls all the time, yelps and falls in love all the time so we can have fun talking in code names and giggling. Embrace color, love and books. Learn and experience what you can. Anyways, I like sweaters that are colorful and soccer games that make me cry. Singing in the shower is what starts a good day. me gusta hablar cantar en espanol pero nadie en mi familia puede comprender. p.s. I love romantic comedies

That's Katy. Isn't she cute?

gimme!

if you absolutely MUST buy me something for Christmas, howzabout these cute slippers! Yay!

must ! shop!

please, baby jesus. make this my last christmas working in retail. EVAH!

Señorita

I showed Señorita Exraviada to my 205 class this week. It exhausted me. Earlier in the semester I asked the class, shouldn't we be furious that women are routinely told they aren't safe in our world? Shouldn't we all be furious that we have to be afraid?
I got the usual blank stares, shrugs. It's so woven into our culture that women are at risk. "You just have to be careful," they always say. "You can't take chances."
Wrong wrong wrong answer, my sweets. We should be furious. I am furious.
But what I wanted to say is that there is a scene in the film when a father of a murdered girl talks about how his daughter must have suffered before she died. "Quien sabe que le toco vivir. No quiero pensarlo."
I can't watch him say that without crying.
I remember reading a Neruda poem while in a human rights office in Buenos Aires. (Hi, audrey) It chilled me to the bone then. I thought about it in the context of these murders. For those parents, for those girls, I want justice. I want punishment. I want Juárez to be a safe place to be a woman. I want every place to be safe.

Ellos aquí trajeron los fusiles repletos
de pólvora, ellos mandaron el acerbo exterminio,
ellos aquí encontraron un pueblo que cantaba,
un pueblo por deber y por amor reunido,
y la delgada niña cayó con su bandera,
y el joven sonriente rodó a su lado herido,
y el estupor del pueblo vio caer a los muertos
con furia y con dolor.

Pablo Neruda.
Yeah. Pido castigo, too, Pablo.

last day of skool!

Been so tired. Been so anxious and shallow breathing. Tight across the chest. Must. Breathe. Sometimes, in my head, I talk about my body in the third person. As in, "she needs to be exercised". "She is all wound up." Forgetting, of course, that the mind and the body are all kinds of interlinked. Like a web. But sometimes she feels like an animal that I am attached to.

But I did yoga twice this week and had a massage last night (Jorge of the Magic Hands)and she's feeling much better.

Depressed Lady Artist Seeks Same

I watched Sylvia last night in an attempt to escape all that is stressing me out. I sat watching as she was portrayed disintegrating into jealous frenzies, as her hair was used as some kind of indicator of her mental health, as she pined over that naughty Ted Hughes and I thought:They never get it right. Not in Frida ( a movie that disappointed me terribly)Not in Camille Claudel (which I loved when I was in France because it was So! Dramatic! and I was so bloody dramatic in those days. At least on the inside.) Women artists never seem to get portrayed as real artists, but more as Wronged Ladies who occassionally have little bursts of creativity. But what she really wants is for that man to love her! And say she's beautiful. You never hear a man being told how handsome he is in a Man Artist movie.
Somehow Sylvia wrote a novel and a few books of poetry while raising two babies with the philandering husband not helping at all, thank you! She was a little stressed out.
I guess scenes of someone actually writing are very unsexy and un Hollywood (and to be fair there was one such scene in Sylvia. Maybe two.)
But what about the artistic process and what it has meant for artists. What about that feeling of creation? The incredible, drunken high of writing? Is there any way to show that on screen?

Would you do this?

I'm intrigued by the idea of a brain scan, but also a teeny bit scared.

Hi there
You have expressed interest in participating in our study that
investigates the effect of sleep on learning. Thanks for your interest.
Here is a bit of information. please call me on my work phone (below)
if
you are still interested in this study after reading this email. We
will
have to go through a phone screening to make sure you are safe to scan.

You will be asked to come in for one full day of testing and brain
scanning (from 8:30am - 6:30pm), as well as 3-hour testing session a
few
days prior to the full test day, which will include a 1.5 hour scan and
a 1 hour test.
you will be compensated for your time and effort at the end of all the
testing with $160 in cash.
the full testing day will involve coming to the Salk Institute in La
Jolla at 8:30am for a 1-hour test and then going to the functional
magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) center on UCSD campus for a brain
scan. Then you will have lunch and then some of you will take a nap at
a
Chronobiology sleep lab on the UCSD campus. During the nap you will be
hooked up to EEG electrodes, which will record your brain waves while
you sleep. When you wake up, you will be brought the Salk again for a
second test followed by your final scan of the day.

As you can see it is a very full day and timing is important, so i
would
need you to be prompt and alert and cooperative. We promise to make the
day as pleasant as possible, even though it is long and rigorous.

You will be required to refrain from caffeine throughout the full
testing day, as well as alcohol the night before both test days.
You will also be asked to keep a sleep log 7 nights prior to the full
testing day, in which you will record the hour you went to sleep and
the
hour you awoke.

Please email or call me if you are interested in participating.
thank you

My Spirit Animal. Or Stalker.

Owls are everywhere I turn recently. In the newspaper. On a website. Peeking out at me fom a book. What do the owls want from me? Or what do they want me to have? Seriously, it's getting kinda weird.

How very very.

This is what happens when you do a bit of tidying up around the old mansion. You find the secret staircase described in Jane Eyre!

Fun!

Check out this advent calendar! I especially like today's entry.

Tea and toast.

Is there anything better on a cold, wet day?

I thought he was gay! And I loved him anyway!

Someone asked me recently who my celebrity crush is and I couldn't remember. But Clive Owen has a new movie out and I now remember how much I loved him in Gosford Park. Oh, so hot. Intensely virile face, indeed. Savage and lovely. Come have tea at my house, Clive.

But, please. Don't be the new Bond.

Merde.

It's a cold and wet Saturday morning and I don't need to be in at Peet's until 4. Effing Horray!
I got some bad news last night. The cute little apartment that I thought I was going to move into is being rented to someone else. It looked like a Sure Thing. Oh, dear. And I already gave notice here. Oh, double dear.
But.
I am trying to view this as the universe aligning me to some Big New Adventure. I am being nudged, a little, in another direction.

I am going to get pushed off the ledge and my little newborn wings will unfold and somthing good will come of it.

I guess the possiblity also exists that I will fall on the pavement and be squashed.
Hmmm.