Been a While

I suppose because I haven't been in school for the past month, I have not been on the computer so much. It's a good thing. It has been a quiet month, lots of coffee, lots of music, lots of sitting in comfy chairs, eating food with friends, so I really can't complain. A few intermittent days of bleary sun-- and then yesterday and today ! Which were really great and bright. This evening I did the very upsetting but inevitable thing of saying goodbye to a friend who is going back home to England. And tomorrow I will do the nerve-wracking thing of getting on an airplane by myself, flying three and a half hours, and landing in a city I've never been to, where someone I sort of know should be waiting for me at the airport. Weird days.

drunk/giddy

writing a paper

lib basement

loud buzzing

funny internet communication

icon, iconize, iconism, iconoclast

tuff girls

paper hat

paper tigers

R & A

!!!

I have been listening to this album while I get dressed in the morning.

School's well for now. Had a good day that began with the above, then chocolate and carrot sticks and a fun last English class, then to the dentist, then cake, now home in bed... somewhere along the way band practice, glue, drunk, pizza, smashed lenses, silly times, an unexpected comrade on the way home (with bonus funny conversation).

La carte postale en Chine

I found these images while working on a research paper on the ideology of the postcard in 19th-century China. This is some of the most beautiful penmanship I have ever seen; I am dying of envy. My own missives will never look so good!

from http://postcard.ish-lyon.cnrs.fr/

In other news, I'm wearing shorts today:

A small but meaningful moment

Emilie posted this in one of her facebook albums:
Ignore the sentiment; LOOK AT THE PICTURE! It killed me for just a second here. Sunny Sunday morning. Time to get dressed and go outside.

This is so awesome. I wish Thurston Moore would give me advice about my Boy Troubles. The answer to the last one is spot on, actually (a different question than I would be asking, however)--

Q: Every time something goes wrong and I'm around, I get blamed. Even people I don't know blame me for things.
--Blamed in Stratford, CT

T: Next time someone blames you for something, look 'em straight in the face I and ask, "How may I correct this situation?" This will startle and dumbfound them. Then go up and kiss them lightly on the cheek and whisper, "No matter what happens, I will always love you." As you back away, grab your head and scream bloody murder and run like the wind.

Yes, yes!

Lung Leg, following advice

Listening to the Replacements, Pleased to Meet Me. I almost bought this on vinyl the other day buuuuut I hadn't heard it all the way through and didn't want to take my chances. Silly, 'cause I like the Replacements doing anything. Pretty good tho.

Cordial! I've been doing a lot of hand-shaking lately.

Also, bought S. Kracauer's The Mass Ornament today, haha!

Il faut que je le finisse!

Oh irony, oh exorcism

For Point A, please refer to yesterday's entry; for Point B, see the following:

Sometimes I try so hard to resist,
You say you will and I say you won't.
Sometimes I think that you don't exist
And sometimes you don't.
Pinch me 'cause I don't believe it,
Kiss me 'cause it feels like a hit,
I turn around and you're not there.
Why must it always be the less I see of you, the more I care?
You're determined to make me as miserable as you can,
You're like Harry Houdini or the Invisible Man.
Count 10 and then down again:
9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
Doing everything they say shouldn't be done,
More fun than you can have with your clothes on.
Pinch me 'cause I don't believe it,
Kiss me 'cause it feels like a hit,
I turn around and you're not there.
Why must it always be the less I see of you, the more I care?
You're determined to make me as miserable as you can,
You're like Harry Houdini or the Invisible Man,
I turn around and you're not there.
Why must it always be the less I see of you, the more I care?
The less I see of you, the more I care,
The less I see of you, the more I care.



To discover this on the bonus disc while driving home today was the best thing that could have happened. And now on to: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=muFE3BgSPWU.

A lot of the time these days I feel like this:

And like this:


It's not all bad!

I lied! Yesterday was pretty good!

This is going to be a very bad day. Oatmeal exploded in microwave, and no day can get any better from this point.

I am I am I am I am I am

wolf attack!!

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wolf_attacks_on_humans

I found a four-leaf clover in my book!

In Vocabulaire de la Psychoanalyse, Jean Laplanche & J.-B. Pontalis

Also, a receipt from a Seattle grocery store.

Omniana!

My favorite way to procrastinate, especially while working on a paper as I am doing now, is to enjoy the omnifariousness of the Oxford English Dictionary online. Right now I am really into omni- words, clearly. Here are a few more words from tonight:
Omnivolent: Willing or wishing for everything; determining all things.
Ecomiac: Of or pertaining to eulogy; panegyrical.
Encoffin: Enclosed in a coffin.
Enchiridion: A handbook or manual; a concise treatise serving as a guide or for reference.
Turgescent: Becoming swollen; swelling, growing bigger.
Turgescible: Capable of swelling up.
Reckonmaster: A mathematician; an arithmetician; an accountant.
Encheer: trans. To cheer, render cheerful. Hence encheering.

This will be me someday. In library, with cat.
(from http://www.nickhaus.com/)

Today I used "placid" in conversation and the person with whom I was talking was kind of ruffled by this, because I had used it to describe people (e.g., "The generally placid townsfolk went crazy when the bag of money fell out of the armored truck." That was the context.) and not water and or things having to do with or containing water. But as it turns out the OED seems to be in agreement with me on that one; placid is for people. I think the word "turgid" also came up in this conversation (so it's been in my head since then, see above; I love any variation on "turgid"). The conversation was actually mostly about the weirdness of keeping and transporting money in bags.

Bag of money; very stylish.

Palm Springs (part II)

Trusty footwear. Appropriate for both airplanes (comfy) and the hot dry dusty desert ground.


These mountains are formidable.



Selections from the indubitably weird Moorten Botanical Gardens in Palm Desert.



My mother took most of these, though the ones obviously inferior in quality are mine, taken on my phone.

Mundane Irritations

1. leaving voicemail messages
2. tampons
3. expired milk
4. toothaches
5. toe blister
6. shower water is only tepid
7. traffic lights
8. acne
9. having to go to the bank
10. hole in socks



Also: food that does not taste as good as it looks or smells, dirty glasses lenses, wet grass (especially if i have already sat down on it), the feeling of needing to brush teeth, wanting, wanting expensive things, condescension.

These things are never pleasant! What's the deal?

Narrative Made Possible by Diazepam (part I)

Portland --> Palm Springs --> Cathedral City --> Palm Desert --> Indian Wells --> Rancho Mirage --> Indio --> Rancho Mirage --> Indian Wells --> Palm Desert --> Cathedral City --> Palm Springs --> San Francisco airport --> Portland


My mom and I went to this crazy place called southern California where there are trees like this.

They are olive trees.

The flowers are this pink;

I tried to disappear into them.

We went to north Palm Springs.


Tried to disappear in the desert, too. It only worked on my legs.

Not a salt lick.

We went to the art museum.

This thing was in the art musuem. 365 bulbs, one for every day of the year.

Art museum portrait with green triangles.

Thursday

I've been working on this paper for so long that it took me several hours to realize that I had written "oracular pathology" rather than "ocular pathology." This would have been a very different argument indeed if the former were correct.



In other news, spring break trip to Palm Desert cancelled.





So that was one of the reasons to finish my paper by tomorrow, as opposed to Saturday or Sunday, the actual due date. That, and never having to write the word "pathology" again. Oh, glum. Today was the first day this semester where I really honestly thought I might not be able to make it at this school. I've been in the library working on this paper for three hours and I'm still not done; I left myself with 1 (one) page to write b4 I went home last night. It is taking me forever to accomplish this. I finished my reading for my afternoon conference right before class. I still had twenty pages of reading for my English class to do when I went to conference, though I participated anyway (said something worthwhile, even).* I am not going to make it. Maybe I'm smart enough (though I doubt that, even), but I'm not efficient enough.




*And I didn't preface each comment in class with "Well, I feel...", "It struck me...", "For me...", "This touched me because..." Have confidence in your ideas, e'erybody! Don't sound so wishy-washy.





Sent texts; no reply; generally, the void

le mot juste

Did you know: the opposite of "consensus" is "dissensus."

The right word is something I have been thinking about a lot while writing this paper on Freud, and I think I have reached a point in my argument (on page eight of nine) wherein I need to begin using the word "symbolic" in an entirely different sense than that in which I have been for the previous seven pages. That is to say, I first adopted "symbolic" when quoting Freud's "symbolic geography of sex" (eloquent), but for the purposes of my argument actually going somewhere and being something I need it in the Lacanian sense. Which I guess is kind of related.

Ok this is boring.


From Steven Marcus' essay “Freud and Dora: Story, History, Case History.”

Also, Bouguereau made another appearance in lecture today (this time as related to cubism):

For some reason Bouguereau always seems to be put up as an exemplar of bad art, but I like Bouguereau. I mean, look at this picture, really look at it. There's a porpoise! Weird cherub angels descending from (ascending?) heaven! Weird centaurs in the ocean with conch shells. Awkwardly held hands. Additional porpoises. It's totally great, don't try to tell me it's not.