Good Mood

Song of the Day: Simple Things, Zero7

There have been two videos and one website I keep returning to this week that leave me much happier than before I went to them. I hope they brighten your day as much as they did mine. It's crazy how much a difference little things can do to your mood.

The Mesopotamians (by They Might Be Giants)

Mahna Mahna (by The Muppets)

Little Things (tumblr)

Words From the 5 Year Old

song of the day: AC/DC, the jack

I was walking down the street with my friend recently. We passed by, as you so often do in the city, a construction site. We got into a discussion about the jackhammers (is it weird that I really like their smell?) and why they're so loud. My friend, wizardress, explained that the reason they were so loud was not, as I conjectured, because of their fuel or somesuch, but because (in a much more reasonable observation) it was breaking up the street, a very hard material.

That was when genius struck. "They should just make the world out of soft things, then!" I exclaimed. "Yes, yes," I said, getting excited. "I'll send them a letter and tell them to make the world out of soft things! Then all the jackhammers will smell pleasant but won't be ear-breakingly loud!" I turned eagerly to my partner, but she replied "Lola, they would never write back to you." Ah, though; here's the secret: "If I write it and sign it 'love, lola *age 5*' they'll surely write back something like: 'what a great idea! We'll get right on it!'" This was how our bet was formed. She'll pay me if I get a letter back, I'll do the same if I don't get one.

So I set to work. A blank piece of paper, and a box of crayons were set out. I wrote in a wobbly left hand with backwards letters and misspelled words. My friend Becca drew some stick figure drawings. It was so much fun. I felt little again. Then we wrote a note in pen on the back from 'mother', that explained her darling five-year-old's note. It reads "'Dear Construction Company, I have an idea to make your jackhammers not loud. You can make the world out of soft things.
Love,
(name blanked here for privacy)'
---------------------------------------------------------------
This is what my 5 year old daughter wrote on the other side. As we were walking past a construction site, she came up with an idea to diminish your sound output.
It would make her year if you wrote back.
Thanks!
Becca (last name blanked for reasons previously stated)"

I found con-edison's address and an old stamp with lilacs on it which I duly affixed to an envelope. Then, trembling with glee, I sent it into
the mailbox. Who thinks I'll get a letter back?

when you just need to throw some words out into the abyss and pretend that someone's listening.

song of the day: Beloved, Anoushka Shankar

My darling, I miss you I miss you I miss you. Three times. Or, maybe, I miss who you were. or probably, even more aptly, I miss who you were going to be. No. I just miss you. See me again? So I can feel your fingers? Your hair? I wish you were close by me always, so your path would not have deviated. if you had gone to where you belonged instead of there. But I can't dwell in how it would have been different. Then again, I was just telling a friend, I can't pull the whole thing myself. Don't lie. Don't say you have things to do. Come here.

Tattoo, musings

Song of the day: Nausea, Beck

Just thought I would show a picture or two of this doodle I did today on my palm. It's a woman holding onto a heart balloon, and the string follows the curve (line?) of my palm. Might be a pretty tattoo to have. I don't know if I've written about tattoos I'd like to have. I'm not the sort of person to just get one to have it, but I'm not opposed to having them at all. They would just need to be meaningful to me; have a reason behind them, one I know I wouldn't regret much alter in life. I think tattooing a plain black heart on the sole of my foot (at the heel) would be as awesome as it gets. Because then no one but you would know you had it, but you could also see it whenever you wished. But I think the soles of the feet are un-tattoo-able, because the skin is so thick down there. But it would be so awesome. It would also be nice to have something small in the groove between your thumb and forefinger. I would imagine it hurt a lot more, because the skin is so thin there, but I like the space a bunch. I go for roads less traveled, eh?

I haven't been writing here a lot, not just because I've been busy (which I certainly have been),  but also because I've started a journal/diary, and that gets out a lot of what I might be tempted to write here. But it's a lot harder to get media into paper than the fibers of the web. I'll always be here. Even after death, which could totally bring me into a tangent if my legs hadn't fallen asleep because of the awkward position I'm in and because I'm running out of time. But think about it. These words can be deleted only by me, really. And I can't delete them if I'm dead. Morbid. I could swoop out of this if I had the time. Possibly to be continued...?

Street Photography

Song of the day: Muriel Nella Citta Francese, Rhapodija Trio

Ok, so newest mini-obsession is with this woman, Vivian Maier. She was a nanny who on her off days took photographs of people on the streets of Chicago and New York from the 50's to the 90's. She wasn't known at all until after her death, when a man named John Maloof bought a box of her negatives at an auction and scanned her work and put it up. It's just so beautiful. Some photography annoys me--like, this doesn't need talent--anyone could take that photo. But this stuff is really, really great. The composition, the people, the bravery it must have taken to go straight up and just snap the photos. And the fact that it's in black and white because that's all she had back then doesn't help, either. Her work is slowly being put up by John Maloof on a blog I urge you follow. Here's the address: http://www.vivianmaier.blogspot.com/

and here are some of my favorites:

...and the rest won't seem to load. :( You should really look at the site. It's such good photography. It's hard to imagine being on those streets but kind of easy, too. Some are from over 60 years ago, but we cans till relate. Yet, we can't. It's kind of scary. We leave 2011, do you know how futuristic it sounds? It scares me sometimes.

I can hear the cries of the city, no time for pity for a growing tree.

I don't like sweating over a boy.
I don't like my heart beat being manipulated by his words or lack of them.
Or do I?
Maybe I'm not as disillusioned about love as I like to think.

song of the day: world of pain, cream

Words, simply put.

song of the day: Casimir Pulaski Day, Sufjan Stevens

I really, really, really like this video. You can watch it so many times, and each time something new comes to view. I'll leave it at that.

It's by Daniel Mercadante, who calls himself everynone.
You should also check out his video "moments" on the website.
Sorry no more talky talky for today. Maybe tomorrow? Maybe I love you? Maybe pictures soon?

~Lola

Busy

song of the day: Corduroy, Jaymay

When people ask me nowadays how life is, I almost invariable answer: busy. I'm filled to the brim with work. Homework (surprisingly not so much as I would have expected), thoughts, ideas, schoolwork, traveling to and fro, keeping it all under control. But I guess you could say I sleep well when my head finally does hit the pillow.

I've been having odd and vivid dreams though. I always have been a dreamer of either grotesque or fantastic but definitely realistic dreams. I've got to start writing them down in here. Not today, though.

I have the best of people in my school. I love each one, and even the inevitable jerks still each have something I grudgingly admire in them. 

I know I picked the right friends when they knew who Eddie Izzard was, and had seen Amelie and Star Wars + Star Trek and listened to the Doors and David Bowie and all of them spewed with sarcasm. I sit with them at lunch and eat my customary large carrot before digging into whatever I packed for mealtime. The days are clear and biting. The air turns my nose cold in a second, yet the sun still shines bright whitened yellow and our colorfully adorned bodies still shriek and scream as we play our lunchtime away. It will be too cold soon. But then I can pack hot tea in a thermos and drink it during first period math class. Mmmm. . .

I'm officially on the Ultimate Frisbee team, so y'all best watch out. It's basically me and twelve guys age 15-17 running like maniacs around whatever field we can get in to practice, twice a week 2.5 hours a practice. I love it. I've grown up in a household surrounded by guys, so I have this slight out of the ordinary tendency to associate with them. I'm comfortable with these guys in a way I don't think many teenage girls are. I feel almost no sexual tension, and I feel at equals with them, at least off the playing field. On it is a different matter. They're all ten times better than me, easily. But I'll work my hardest and I'll get better, I know. Anyway, we can't afford to turn anyone away, since we're so tiny. Right now we seem a bit pathetic, but I know we will be the best, once season starts and we stop fooling around. We don't have a field to practice on. After school, we meet and go down to the park, and usually there's a locked field that we hop a fence into, but recently this parks department guy keeps coming in and threatening to give us a summons. So we're kind of homeless. Sucks. Soon soccer season will be over, though, and the fields will be empty. 

Classes are good, too. I'm learning bunches and bunches. The classes are very informal, but I think we're able to control ourselves enough to learn while we joking and calling out and eating and teasing. In advisory, we voted wether to play circle games, or talk politics. We chose politics, hands down. My physics teacher met his wife on World of Warcraft. We all find it too cute. 

In short, we're nerds of a feather, and I am very happy. I want to write about non-school things soon, but I needed to fill you in on this info first. I hope to be writing again ASAP. 

Love.

Shellshocked

song of the day: wallet, regina spektor

This place is amazing, but crazy. You know, I've spent the last couple years of my life reading (fiction) books about teens. All the stories are set in high school, this place of big kids, this milestone that seems so far away, just untouchable. But then, here I am! Among seventeen and eighteen year olds, guys with beards, kids who drive to school, I mean this is actually it, and that's shocking! I was still in denial over the summer, though I had thought it hit me. I'm one of the big kids on the bus who everyone hates, I'm someone with a personality and individuality and I'm old enough for people to notice that and me. It's nice, it's so nice. PLus I'm among my kind, my ilk. Its okay to read your book during lunch, it's okay to use very large words in normal conversations, it's okay to want to read your work out loud. In fact, it's just great to do such things! I love these people (well, some of them). Also, I've been learning and thinking hard about things and finding people on my level of work, which makes me realize how much I was missing at my old school--please don't think I'm being an egotist, I can put it no other way--and I've been making actual friends! I'm really into Ultimate Frisbee, so I bring a disc with me to school, and I've been playing every day at lunch and attracting a group as I go. It's started to get really competitive! So, yeah. Lola's happy yet a little shook up, as expected of a freshman in her first week. Report back more, later!

A Blackberry Crown, a New Beginning

Song of the day: All Along the Watchtower, Jimi Hendrix (cover) 

Mmmmmk.
It's a day before school starts. Before high school starts. Cliched or not, the first day of high school is going to change my life. It may not mean everything, but it sure means a lot. I'm going to change, my mind is going to change, my attitude, my looks, my social standing. Maybe I care, maybe I don't. All the same, I'm going to record it on this blog. I've had it sitting around for a while, just waiting for the right time to write my first post on it. Now seems right, especially since Flower just released her own new blog.
So here's to new beginnings. This one is called Blackberry Crowns. My childhood is filled with blackberry bushes, with cars pulled off to the sides of roads to grab ourselves handfuls of berries and stain our shirts with abandon. Blackberries are childhood to me. Funny, when I was younger, I couldn't stand the sweet ones. I would always pick the underripe ones, so I could be sure they were sour as I liked. We have a blackberry bush in our country house, which I still pluck berries from, gingerly. Gingerly because like so many other good things, blackberries have wicked thorns. So I've got blackberries for the memories of childhood, and the ongoing enactment of such pleasures, and crowns for the beauty, responsibility, and handled weight and pain.
A crown is something regal, a symbol that tells you that the wearer is worthy of--something. This gives the wearer responsibility. The crown can weigh on the wearer's head, if worn right, and my crown is made of blackberries. That's why my hair is so dark. It is stained with the juice of the blackberries twined together on my crown. The crown is sometimes very sharp, and sticks me with its thorns, but like I said before, with good things there are often tradeoffs. My blackberry crown will bind me and free me. It will keep me sane yet allow me to let myself go insane for a little while. It will help remind me to do what I must do and think what I must think. Without it I would not be Lola, and I think everybody has a blackberry crown, but not too many of them are made out of blackberries, like mine. What's your crown made from?
Maybe you don't know yet, maybe you'll find out now that you start looking. Tomorrow fills me with anticipation, not all of it good, not all of it bad. Hey, I may be acting dramatically, but this is my blog, so deal. See you next time a post comes round.

cheers,
Lola.