November 7, 2011

Rat Chatter, Nice Nature

Oooooooeeee!!! How I love the end of Daylight Savings…idiot farmers. We get back an hour in the Fall and I love it. I take it back, farmers are not idiots. I have farmer ancestors. They’re good folk. I digress. It felt good to lie in bed and know I could sleep in longer. I could have laid there all day but I had to git up and make myself my week’s worth of meals. Yep, it’s come to this.
At first it’s not so bad. I make what I like. But after the second day, things get a little…I don’t know…predictable? Boring even. I try to make things exciting with sauces or variations or side salads. By Thursday I’m pretty much done for and cannot imagine ever eating this thing I’ve been eating like ever again. This week it’s chicken mole. I suppose it could be worse and I could be bitching about eating ramen and ingesting all that sodium. I even wrote a poem for class about ramen:
Dinner guest

Im tired and cranky and Im sitting and eating my lonely
pathetic
ramen
with egg
a mouse squeeeeeaks
Im alone no longer

This happened. I was confused because right when the mouse squeaked I moved in my chair so I thought it was me. And then I heard it again. So unappetizing!

It wasn’t as bad as the time my brother and I heard the rats in the movie theater. I think we were watching Lost in Translation. Before the movie started we heard them start their rat chatter and, for whatever reason, I am always in disbelief. Like that just cannot be what I think it is. There’s no way! But yes, rats exist and we apparently go to the same places. Well, you hear a rat…that’s one thing. Once the movie started we saw those jerks run back and forth behind the dang screen. They seemed larger than need be—a total visual effect I think.

Before summer started I woke up one night to a horrifying series of shrieks. It was ungodly. And puzzling. I leapt out of bed and ran to the window and tried to see something. My iPhone flashlight isn’t worth a damn. After about an hour of this screech, I went outside and looked up into the pine tree and saw three raccoons mating. Oh very nice. These bright animals mate in the trees. As such, the male raccoon has something of a barbed penis and this barb does not release the female until—I guess until he’s had his own release. We tried to hose the suckers down but they just climbed higher. We turned toward benign projectiles—it was getting desperate after all. They gave up and we did too. Ickiness abounds. I’m sure their sweet little babies are around terrorizing cats and eating garbage. Nature is just so neat.

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August 28, 2011

The Evil Eye and Wanderings

Yeah, yeah, yeah.  People always tell you how great it is for you to move outside your comfort zone.  They tell you something like “it will really make you grow” to do things that make you oh-so-uncomfy.  While I get it intellectually, I think it just plain sucks.  I think I heard we humans are always neglecting our true gut feelings—instincts—if you will.  Because we are idiotic.  Anyhow, I’m done with my complaining for the day.  Moving was a lot for me to take.  Yeah, I get it, it’s fully something I should have done many years ago, but that’s an irrelevant argument.  I’m me living now and dealing with my NOW-FEELINGS.  And my now-feelings are, for the most part, manageable.  Every now and then I do get a pang of homesickness.  I miss lying in bed with my boyfriend and my dog.  It’s such a simple joy to have a dog rest his little soft gullet on your ankle.

So, left to my own devices, I do one of two things:  wander around aimlessly or set up in my room and watch Netflix.  The Office is amazingly soothing…even though I’ve seen every episode at least twice.  Maybe…maybe even thrice.  But back to my wanderings.  They were, of course, waylaid by the HURRICANE (wtf…an earthquake and a hurricane in the same week?) but I have managed to get out and see stuff.  I stopped at the Magic Gardens—a public mosaic installation.  That’s how they describe it on the website anyhow.  It is one of those very rare trippy and magical places where you feel all tickled from the inside out.  I am not even being facetious—it makes you feel good.  There is an outdoor sort of labyrinth full of wacko doll heads, mirrors, tiles and mermaids.  There is also gallery space—and an outsider art show.  My favorite artist bio read as follows:

“Renee (pronounced Reenie) Leshner attended Fleisher Art Memorial as a young woman, but stopped when she began to have visions of an ‘evil eye’ following her and threatening her.  She continued to be plagued by visions of other-worldly beings throughout her many years working as a bookkeeper in Philadelphia.  Gradually, her interest in drawing became her refuge, as her artwork evolved into an important method of expression – even a kind of ‘defense mechanism’ – against her supernatural visions.”

Jeez.  I mean, after I got over my knee-jerk reaction—holy cow I love how bizarre this is (of course)—I began to feel a little freaked out.  Because sometimes these scary feelings just come over people and then they have to exorcise their demons.  I get that.  Art as defense.

I flew over from San Francisco sitting right next to the Bay Area sculptor who was responsible for fabricating a HUGE paintbrush (complete with paint glob) created by Claes Oldenburg.  HUGE sculptures of common everyday objects can be kind of fun, but…I don’t know.  Somehow it’s a bit overdone.  Know what’s cool?  Anything big.  Hmmmm, that’s what she said?

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August 20, 2011

It’s Always Sunny

Big changes afoot. I moved out of my comfy family home where I lived happily with my pop, brother, boyfriend, two dogs, and a perverted cat. It was surely not always a harmonious situation, but it did me fine–and I enjoyed a pretty mellow existence. But, now and then in some gals’ lives, there comes this feeling of discontent. Not with my choices, not with my relationships, but sort of with the path I was moving down. Skipping down. I could have continued on as a criminal law paralegal–and, in fact, this last job is one I loved–but that would not feel quite right. I began to feel like I owed it to myself to live a passionate life.

I’m attending an MFA program in book arts (paper making, printing, printmaking, binding, etc.). We are indeed kickin’ it old school. I think it’s slightly misunderstood–book arts. What’s more is my description might just describe book arts in the most traditional sense. I just might go crack crazy and make paper sculptures or installations. You just never know.

So…I’m in the City of Brotherly Love. That’s right, this die-hard San Franciscan has headed east. It’s the land of cheesesteaks, and Ben Franklin, and Rocky. I think that might just be what most (not-in-the-know) people associate with Philadelphia. I don’t know what to expect. So far, I’ve moved in to a very nice, big room in a very nice, large turn-of-the-century house in South Philly. My roommates/landlords are a very nice married couple who are my age. A ceramicist lives here as well. They were kind enough to pick me up from the airport (sans bags–a long story) and have done so much to make me feel comfy and welcome. I feel way too lucky!

The first thing that strikes me…it’s really freakin’ warm and humid. Like stewing in your juices kind of humidity. Then there are thunderstorms and I am at a loss as to what to wear. So, I wore flip flops to the store last night. Was a weird choice. But feet do dry.

It honestly feels like a smaller and less crazy-buzzy New York. Lotta brick. A guy actually said “fuhgettaboutit” to me at the sandwich shop. People are nice here. They might run you over dead in the street, but they are pretty nice. And the food might kill me. I’m already heavier than usual due to a few weeks of stress eating. Will need to walk it off. Next week is my last week to relax before the hard work begins! Oh vey…stay tuned as I document this trip.

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October 5, 2010

Letting Letters Lay Fallow

Well dang.  This certainly sucks.  I haven’t been to update this blog of mine.  I believe this has much to do with my belief (true or not) that I had nothing to say.  I guess I know on some level that isn’t really true.  I’ve become a sort of different person even.  I feel leaps and bounds and miles and far and wide away from the earlier blogs of mine but I wonder…did I lose my voice?  Because, shooooot, that would be kind of terrible.  It took some doing, but I did kind of develop some sort of voice.  Whiny though it may be.

At any rate.  Some things do not change.  Weird things still happen to me.  Uncomfortable situations still do find me everywhere.

I was in a stinky bar in New York not so long ago and I had (just HAD) to visit the even stinkier bathroom in the dark and unsafe basement.  I tried to imagine what I’d do if I got mugged.  I went to open a stall but walked in on a drunk blond girl sort of hanging off the seat in some inebriated contortion.  I didn’t see her face because I was confused by what she was doing, but I apologized and shut the door (which, she should have locked anyhow) and she said over and over again “I’m sorry I’m sorry I’m sorry I’m sorry…”  I do not know why she was apologizing to me.  I found my way to the other stall and hovered and held the door shut since the lock was broken.  Drunkie finished her wee and exited her stall only to come over to mine to try to pull the door open, managing to super-smash my fingers in the process.  “I’m sorry I’m sorry I’m sorry I’m sorry…”  I think the worst part of that story was that it made me scream the word “O-U-C-H!!”  I felt dumb about that.  Passive aggressive drunks are awful jerks.

Aggressive people in general are jerks I guess.  Hey yeah–I got cyber-bullied earlier this summer (well, sorta).  I was away at a two-week letterpress intensive workshop in the Smokey Mountains of North Carolina (rocking my ass on the porch drinking beer and watching fireflies) and I got a strange email from some lame lying cyber-bully.  It read:

Katherine
I just read your bio on friendster and I must say I am shocked!
I wonder if John, who happens to be a friend of mine, knows you consider his law office a “weak-ass law firm” and you are “really bored working in this horrible office”, quotes taken directly from your page.
I happen to be looking for a job and I am thinking of sending a copy of your friendster page to John in hopes that he may replace a seemingly ungrateful employee with someone who would really benefit him, his office, and his cause.
By the way, when will you generation X kids realize that you are not the only group capable of navigating the world wide web in search of dirt!
Hope you have a GREAT day.

This a-hole was clearly confused.  Rude, even.  Not to sound like a brat but who is even ON Friendster anymore?  That was a profile I hadn’t updated since…2004?  When my job DID kind of suck.  Oh yeah, I’m not really a Gen X “kid” either–I think I might be a Y-er, but that’s besides the point.  I had to write to my boss and clear the air and he told me he had no idea who this person could be.  So, some random person who has half a brain cell, a computer, and is need of a job.  I tried to Geek Tools the IP address to prove how truly capable I am of navigating the world wide web in search of dirt, but no freakin dice.  I actually wrote a super decent email back politely telling that person to piss up a rope.  And that ended the bullying.  Knock on wood.  I could go back to rocking in that rocking chair and killing country roaches.

North Carolina was very beautiful.  It’s actually very jungly which I was not expecting.  Lush.  Snakes.  Bunnies.  Bugs.  I felt good and clean even if I was always filthy and nothing was ever quite dry.  Back in San Francisco I had to adjust.  I realized how much I hate the neighborhood I work in.  Wading through jerky city folk and yelling derelicts and navigating ’round random people’s bodily fluids is no hobby of mine.  The earthy simplicity I experienced for two weeks totally ruined me in the right way.  I resensitized.  So, I found my “center” again and maybe the writing will pick up and maybe all the weirdo stories I sling might at least amuse.  We’ll see.

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