LaurieWrites

Anniversary

I have been writing and posting pictures on this site for a year. I started it in April, 2005 - the 10th of the month to be exact. Since it'll be April for another hour, I thought perhaps I should commemorate this in some fashion, although I'm likely the only one who cares. And this is appropriate in this world of navel-gazing, I suppose.

In many ways, this site was the best possible gift I could have given myself last year, which just sucked for me, in a bottom line sort of way. It was just not good. There were little glimmers of happiness (mostly the Arizona trip, which was amazing, and Vegas too), but overall it was some tough terrain. Doors closed. I moved. I lost friends. Love ended. I worked really hard and felt like I wasn't getting anywhere I wanted to go. Projects tanked. Necessary transitions occurred, but I didn't want them and I clung to those closing doors like Dorothy in the Kansas tornado, because dammit, if there's anything I was in charge of, while everything around me was shape-shifting at a ridiculous clip, it was my own misery. And really, that was true. I'd been walking around in its rooms for so long that I knew it like the back of my hand (which I don't really know as well as I know other things. I love cliches. ; ) ) It was so comfortable - such familiar pain - and without it I found that I really didn't have much of a center. Even my concept of love had been rooted in a sense of loss and fear for so long that I thought that was normal, and I really, really didn't want it to stop, because that meant I would lose something essential and never get it back. Never mind that I hadn't thought for a while about whether or not it was something that really worked for me. That was kind of secondary.

Anyway, that didn't work so well. Duh. Stuff was ending and changing because it was time for it to, and it really didn't much matter how I felt about it. No one consulted me. It was just mine to swallow. That was my amateur-Zen conclusion. So I did what I could do. I cried a lot. I cried more than I thought it was possible for me to still cry after years of dealing with some of the same painful things that I'd cried about before. Old news, right? On one particularly hellish and empty day, I left work, got in my car, and felt this weird sense of being in a bottomless pit that I would never ever get out of. I honestly don't believe that I'm capable of suicide in an unaltered state, but I felt a feeling of despair that nearly equals what I imagine must be experienced by people who end their lives. The parking lot was empty, and so was my heart. The only person who I thought could possibly make me feel better was unavailable. I started crying so hard that by the time I got on the highway my eyes needed tiny little windshield wipers, and I almost wrecked my car. I couldn't stop. Those sobs came welling up from this evil, pathetic place, and just when I thought I'd felt as bad as a chubby little lady could feel, I'd feel worse. Usually if I look at myself in the mirror when I'm crying I see how stupid I look and it makes me stop. Sometimes it even makes me laugh, I look so stupid. This time it just made me cry more. It was for real.

And then one day, my eyes exploded and I had to pop them back in, so I stopped crying for a while. This was good - it got me through June. Then I started crying again in July when some other bad and unfortunate thing happened that wrecked me with a whole mess of other emotional pain, and there went the rest of the summer. Goddamn, I must have really needed to cry. And it should be noted, based on suggestions that were made and unsolicited, if well-meaning, advice given, that I really did try not to feel this bad. Many days, I adopted a simple little prayer when I woke up or went to sleep, that amounted to "Help. Make it stop. Please get me past this." If an individual could truly decide to "get over" something, that would have been me, because I got sick of myself after while, and sick of several other people and situations in the process. But some things just have to work themselves out, regardless of what you or someone else or some stupid Web site or self-help tome tells you. Suggestions or comments about how you shouldn't feel so bad, or how it wasn't such a big deal, or he's just not that into you, or how anti-depressants would help, or online dating, or hypnotherapy, or whatever, should be taken with my preferred grain of cinnamon, since salt causes massive water retention. None of it really matters, and generally doesn't help. Only time - which I've come once again to see is the best and most effective healer going (along with awesome friends, music, and red wine...in varying doses) - does that. Frustrating, but true.

That said, in September, always a pretty good time for me because I'm an eternal student and the first day of school is kind of like New Year's it's so rife with empty notebooks and awesome possibilities, I pulled my shit together a little bit. Moving home with my parents in August was horrible. No offense to them, but my independence matters a lot to me and this was a concession of a major degree. Most days we all barely tolerate it. My sister has my cute little dining room set, and my pictures are in boxes. I have no idea where half of my books are, and I rarely cook in this kitchen. My life just doesn't flow the same, but of course this is temporary, and I really don't think about it so much right now. It's just the current state of affairs.

Last September, though, it made me feel like I really had to do something, because I was tired of having my head and my heart so focused on what I wasn't doing, and the fabulous things that someone else was or might be or could have given the chance. I also needed to get out of the damned house. I was bored - bored of thinking obsessively about and whining about things I couldn't change. Bored of pondering a writing "career" that wasn't working, I think because I really didn't care at the time whether it did or not. Bored of refreshing my e-mail for magical messages that weren't coming. Boredboredbored to tears, on a cellular level. I wanted something so, so different. I wanted something that I didn't already assume I could do with my eyes closed. I wanted to have some fun - a novel concept.

I picked photography. I thought it'd be an interesting diversion, and I'd always been into pictures. Tuition was free (little did I know that all of my disposable income would go for "supplies". Hmm...) It was convenient. It was new. And I thought it would be fun.

The best thing was that it was mandatory that I stop crying in order to participate in this activity. It's hard to cry when you're composing a shot. It's even harder to cry when you have to suffer through group work work with people to get projects done, and you'd like it if they don't think you're completely nuts. I worked my ass off in my first class, and interestingly enough, I started to get good feedback from my teacher and my peers. I drove everywhere to take pictures, like LaJimmy Olson, cub reporter. I started noticing the light, how it changed and impacted shots depending on the time of day or the season. I scared my mother by wandering the streets of Baltimore alone, totally oblivious to everything but the way the lights hit the buildings and the water. I learned how to process film in the darkroom and the first time I put photo paper in the developer and an image popped out, I was floored. "It's like magic!" I said, and my professor said, "See, that's what I want to hear." And I really think that if I hadn't been done in at that point, that that would have clinched it. I liked the dim silence of the darkroom, and the fact that my friend Aya could work alongside me with her iPod on and we could develop a weird sort of sign language that told her when I needed her input on a print and when she needed to move her stuff from one step to the next.

It really helped me. I started to refocus, with the lens and without it. It got me through the holidays, and a milestone birthday that bummed me out more than I thought it would. It was a little bit like people who go to AA and because they can't drink, they smoke or drink coffee. I didn't have any of my old stuff - the space, the boy, the couch, even. I had my car, and a camera, and a computer - enough tools to be completely dangerous and keep plugging along. And as the year turned, my job did change, and that was excellent too. I won't write about it here, for fear of being dooced, but I wish I could. I wish I could write, most of all, about the people who make me smile there - colleagues and students. I'd also tell you about how even the things that jerk my chain are okay, because overall I'm blessed to be in the space I'm in, and I find myself quite often to be in some kind of flow here, where I lose track of time, and that's a good thing. Just, anyway...it's a good change.

NOT that everything is all sunshine and cherry shaved ice. Far from it. I still come with my built-in special feature of occasional emotional ups and downs. I still get disappointed and aggravated on occasion, and have to deal with stuff that I'd rather not. Last weekend, someone I trust hurt my feelings, very very badly. I have a ton of work to do and can barely keep up. I can't get my sonnet and my villanelle written. I still worry about the living space issue, and have been subject to several unsolicited comments lately about babies and motherhood that have left me in an occasional weird headspace about that.

In fact, I cried the other day. I listened to this Patty Griffin song called, no kidding, "Nobody's Crying," and it caught me off-guard. The whole 1,000 Kisses record, in fact, is a wonderful choice for days when you have that pressure in your head that means you need to cry, but don't realize it until something stupid and random trips the cord and the tears come. This song (and "Makin' Pies". Wow. What a song.) kind of summed up some stuff for me and for some other people who I care about. It sort of punched me in the head and by the time I got to the parking lot at work, my makeup was a disaster and my eyes were red. But it was good - I had a sense of release for the rest of the day, felt what I felt and moved on. Life is challenging. There are things about it that don't make sense, that resonate with fear, that leave me wondering what all the fuss is about, and whether things will start to make better sense in some of the categories of my life at some point. But overall, in spite of all of this stuff, I'm good. I'm lucky. I'm singing more, surrounding myself with music, trying new things, and enjoying every minute of hanging out with some very wonderful people. And I'm still taking pictures, and this semester my class has been really cool. I love the people I've met because of this, and we have a good time. I haven't done as much shooting outdoors as I did last year, but the spring is showing things to me in literally a different light than fall did. I'm headed to a few different destinations between now and the summer, and everywhere I go, I take my cameras, and record what I see differently than I did when I was just into tourist shots.

I hope to keep writing about it all, either here or in other places, because for me that seems to keep things a little bit straighter. It keeps me honest, it really makes me feel better, and sometimes it even makes me laugh at myself. In my first post, I said,

"I'm hoping to collect some thoughts and things I love here, and maybe someone will stumble upon them and be none the worse for wear after clicking away."

I know that the first part has been the case, and I hope the second part has been too. I am really grateful to have had a place to store the history of the past year. (If you're new, read June. : ) It was particularly fun to write.)

I'll sign off with the lyric of that song from the other day, because it is nice, although parts of it are sad. It kind of sums up where the past twelve months of writing and praying and taking pictures and putting one foot in front of the other each day have brought me, and where I hope the next twelve will bring you too.

"May you dream you are dreaming, in a warm soft bed
And may the voices inside you that fill you with dread
make the sound of thousands of angels instead,
tonight where you might be laying your head.

But darling, I wish you well
on your way to the wishing well,
swinging off of those gates of hell
but I can tell how hard you're trying.
Just have that secret hope -
sometimes all we do is cope
Somewhere on the steepest slope
there'll be an endless rope
and nobody crying."

Boston B&W

  I'm finding little time to make these prints, but the top one is going in my portfolio...I think. It looks so much better in person, seriously. My professor lived in Boston for a long time and was even the photo critic for the Boston Globe at one point. He was pleased with my shots so that made me feel like I had some kind of hometown cred. : ) Then it seemed like he'd forget where I took them (these guys look at a lot of pictures in a semester) and he'd look at mine again, and go, "Oh. Wait. That's Copley Square." And, because I like him and don't ever get in his face, I'd say, "Yes. I took them on my trip, remember?" And then he'd remember. Actually, here's a Trinity Church picture, which is in the Square. My film shots of it are generally lame, but this one is the most passable.

More News of the Non-Noteworthy

A shambles, indeed.

I am really sort of bemused by this one, folks. I shouldn't be, but I am. I have not, in recent memory, seen more news posted about someone who has done absolutely nothing, except for Paris Hilton, who at least has been on television with some regularity for a couple of years and has wealthy parents (which explains a lot in the U.S.). The constant updates on Pete Doherty's life of smack and misdemeanors just shows the power of the media, and the cult of personality, to make us think that someone or something is important, just by repeatedly showing his broken picture in the paper every single day.

I first saw a photo of Pete Doherty in People Magazine, maybe last year? He was alongside Kate Moss, who also has done little of any consequence since she broke up with Johnny Depp and started majoring in heroin. I had never heard of Babyshambles, this guy's band, and wasn't inspired to check them out. They could rock like crazy, for all I know. But what I do know is that all of a sudden Pete became big news. He gets arrested a lot. Allegedly he and teeny little Kate broke up a few months ago. And he's still making the front-page of washingtonpost.com. Thank God he's in the cheap seats at the bottom, and not up on a par with the Darfur rally, which gives me a glimmer of hope that priorities still exist. I'm just amazed that he's written about with regularity, showing that even C-list rocker guy arrest and drug addiction lights the pop culture fire for some PECULIAR reason. It's still disappointing though.

Random Friday

Random, because it's the weekend.

She tells the story of my life sometimes. It's freaky.

Someone keeps selling back his mint-condition Led Zeppelin cds at Joe's Record Paradise, and I'm happily purchasing them. So thanks. Rest assured that they are loved.

Prosody is a bitch. And in other poetry news, I went to a poetry slam workshop on campus today, taught by a "master slammer", Claudia Alick. She was very cool, but I had no idea we'd be called upon to do improv. We went around the circle and had to pick an imaginary object out of an imaginary "bag", and "hand" it to the person next of us, who had to then tell "a personal story" about the object. The dude next to me chose to hand me a FOOTBALL, and I kind of freaked because I just have very few personal sports stories. And the way my mind shut down, you'd have thought I'd never seen a football before. I blanked. I resisted every impulse in me to flee the room, so I'm kind of proud of that. I talked about my Aunt Dot who's a huge Redskins fan and that felt really lame, but what could I do? I gave the guy next to me an imaginary cd, which is what I wish someone had given me. Or a puppy. Or a cheeseburger. Those I have stories about, but I guess it's good to push those boundaries. I guess.  I was much happier with my "mind-mapping" exercise...I got to work with my "Ellipsis Island" idea. Driving back from the beach last weekend, I saw a sign for "Elliott Island", and for a second I read it as "Ellipsis Island" (tired I guess) and I decided I really liked the sound AND the concept of that. I don't know what will come of it really, but it was fun to play with the ideas. It didn't help me come up with the sonnet I need to write, but I guess that will happen somehow.

I love working with people who share cool music with me and who have senses of humor. This has been a very, very positive development. I'm so happy about this, I can't even express it adequately.

Today was a beautiful day. The air was so...soft. And it actually felt like spring, not the immediate "already hot" feeling that the season changing can bring to this area. It's really pretty outside. I'm also really grateful that I don't have allergies, so I can enjoy it without worrying about that.

The Fuji Apple Chicken Salad is back at Panera, and I'm unreasonably happy about this.

All of my Scrabble coffee bean film prints had a black bar across the bottom or the side, and I am very bitter about this sad development. I have no idea what I did wrong, and the dude in the photo place was not at all helpful.

Eating port wine cheese, onion crackers, and bacon for dinner is not a good way to cope with feeling bloated.

I get to see this amazing pianist at the New Orleans Jazz Festival next weekend, and I am really getting excited about that. Doug E. Fresh will be there, I think playing at the same time, which is most disappointing.

This man should be in jail.

I got an old roll of film developed tonight. So random. It was very weird to open up the bag and see these old shots of me and my family and some of my friends...and most heartbreakingly, but happily too, a few shots of my little dog who died in 2001 (Punkin is still hanging in there.) 

That's him trying to clean someone's plate. How funny.

I have to get up early again tomorrow. I really need to start running soon.

We worked on the still life assignment tonight. It was the worst shoot of the semester for me. I need to redo it. I set the white balance wrong on my digital camera, and I shudder to think what the film shots will turn out like. Our professor couldn't come in because he hurt his back, so our time was very limited in the studio. We ended up with only about an hour to set up and shoot all of our shots, so my setups were sloppy and metering wasn't done correctly, I know. Disappointing. I was trying to make this a practical assignment also, rather than just putting together some assemblage of random stuff and making it look pretty again. Since we were supposed to do a "product advertisement", I decided to make my writing work "the product" in some of my shots, and put together some logo ideas (hence the coffee cup setup and business name.) I don't think that worked so well in these shots (damn that white balance! I am so pissed that I forgot to change it! Damn being rushed!) but I do like the ideas. I'll just have to go back in and do another shoot, which I really don't want to do at this stage of the game, but I really like this idea and I want to do it correctly.

Now I have to buy a Playstation

Cause I wanna RAWK like Zakk Wylde. I'm not even kidding. I mean, I've resisted Dance Dance Revolution so far, although I think it'd be a swell way to work out without joining the other disaffected, pushy ("You mean YOU were waiting for the elliptical? OH. I thought you were just watching Storm Phillips! And no, I CAN'T hear anything because I have my iPod blasting. WHAT?") suburban masses at the gym. My sister cracked up when she realized that I downloaded the Cha Cha Slide . And a stupid little dance it may be, but hey, it works great for a workout when I'm traveling and trapped in a hotel room, or just feel chunky(-ier than usual) and want to bust a move without fear of anyone seeing me "turn it out" or "go to work" as the song instructs. Of course my dog finds it interesting, but he signed a very strict don't-ask-don't-tell agreement when I picked him up from his mom 11 years ago. DanceDance Revolution has even caught on in West Virginia, as an OFFICIAL program used in their public schools to fight childhood obesity. I actually think that's cool...if the kids want to (and can) get down, may as well use those powers for good, I say.

Karaoke Revolution is another jewel in this crown of non-revolutionary revolutionary games (I mean, these aren't exactly mind-blowing or out-of-the-ordinary activities that would require an uprising - dancing, karaoke and git-ar playing, hmm? Anyway...) I've seen that one in action too, memorable for causing a completely wrecked drunk friend to sit on a chair on his wedding day and sing along to Hoobastank's "The Reason" in what might be described as a yowl. I haven't touched that one since, but this guitar thing might push it over the edge. I resist purchasing one of these systems for the perhaps-obvious reason that I have no business having video games in my home, given the responsibilities from which they would suck away more time. More to the point, I cannot ever again have a means of playing this game.

True confession: I dated a major video game addict at one time, an action NEVER to be repeated, so help me LORD. I have my flaws and odd habits and idiosyncrasies as well, which my previous significant others could illuminate for days, but this was wrong for me on so many levels...just...wrong. Anyway, I therefore lived in a place with a Playstation for a year of which I rarely speak. For a period of months, Super Puzzle Fighter became the axis upon which my world revolved. He bought me the damned game. And then he regretted it, because I became obsessed. The little animated people who lived in my television would come at me with their stupid little pigtails and blue mohawks, bitching at me in robotic fake Asian accents with phrases that amounted to "F-You, silly challenger! Puzzle THIS! I WILL KILL YOU, STUPID APARTMENT DWELLER." This got me charged up into some competitive mode rarely seen except in live Scrabble and Scattergories matches, and I totally wished to kick their tiny little asses at all hours, regardless of what other pressing responsibilities existed in my life. And of course I NEVER wanted to play a two-person game, because when he played with me he'd be on his turn for an HOUR or something and I'd be stopped from my quest to defeat the little pigtailed girl, and I'd totally have to sublimate that energy by doing other destructive things, like eating HoHos or learning how to shop online (this was 1998? 99? AGES, I tell you. Ages.) ANYWAY, he sent the game off with me when I moved, and it became nothing more than a tragic tale of a video game cartridge (if that's what they still are? I'm forcibly out of that loop) with no...ummm...console? A metaphor is perhaps in there somewhere, but I don't really want to think about that right now. The bottom line is that if I purchased a means for rocking out with Zakk, I kind of have a vague idea where that old game is too, so let's just hope I don't find it, because that would be more trouble than I'd need at this point.

(edit: Dig how this guy plugs his friend's band at the end! Very smooth...More power to local music, but it alternately tickles me and gives me hives that no article has a distinct purpose anymore, really. Everything is a hybrid, marketing sort of thing (like this post? Maybe? Do you want to go and buy these games? No? Good!) Still, if you're local, don't discount the guy he's talking about. That's not my point.)

John and Paul

Sometimes the light's all shinin' on me...

Other times I can barely see....

So in the latest installment of my ever-so-glamourous life, I had to drop off "supplies" at my grandmother's assisted living facility tonight. This is not my favorite chore, because suffice to say they are found in the aisle at Tar-zhay that's labeled, like, "Adult Supplies", but they ain't condoms. (They are, however oddly, right across the aisle. And I'll just note that Target is at this moment like a freaking Pleasure Palace that just happens to carry adult diapers. Just sayin'.)

I don't mind hanging out at her assisted living. It's usually relatively entertaining. Tonight, as I followed an old lady down the hall who was toddling swiftly to her room with the aid of a walker, I spontaneously broke into "Truckin'...truckin'..." by the Grateful Dead. I can't help it - It was just what she was doing...truckin'....truckin'...down the hall. She didn't hear me, so I kept it up until I got on the elevator, laughing like an idiot at myself.

"Get tired of travelin’ and you want to settle down./I guess they can’t revoke your soul for tryin’..."

Upstairs, my grandmother sat, ready for bed at 7:15 although it was still light out, watching the lameass, like, worse than local access because it lacks the purposefully homegrown vibe, Channel 8 news.

"Oh, it's you!," she says, which really does pass for enthusiasm in our family. "You have my stuff."

"Yep," I say.

She is distracted - bothered even, bothered by the tv news.

"Children kill people now. CHILDREN are killin' people. YOUNGSTERS," she says, and then repeats "Children do...murders," because I must be looking at her with my past-quittin' time face that says, 'I hearest what thou sayest but knowest not what the FUCK thou meanest." Or something.

"Did a kid kill someone today?" I asked, knowing one probably did but she may or may not remember, depending on how long ago the report ran.

"I don't know. I don't think so. It's just terrible, though, when they do," she says, and picks at her nightgown. I refrain from swatting at her hand to have her stop.

"I know. It's a world gone mad," I say.

"Damned if it hasn't," she says, and scooches her wheelchair over just a little bit to emphasize the point. "I'll say."

"WHY are you watching Channel 8?" I say. "Channel 8 sucks, anyway. Wheel is on. And then Jeopardy. You can get smarter instead of more depressed."

"Wheel's on?" she says.

"Uh-huh," I say, and correct her assumption that the up arrow on her tv is broken, getting it somehow to Pat Sajak's shit-eating grin.

Forgetting the murderous youth of 2006, she turns her attention instead to me - washed out, work-weary, and wearing a sweater I should have retired in the last Value Village pickup. Like Billy Crystal on Fernando's Hideaway, she says, 

"Well. You. You look good. I don't know if you feel good, but you sure do look good."

"I feel like crap," I say.

"Well you don't look like it, that's the thing. Too much work," she says, and then going backwards, "You work too much. Why kill yourself over it?"

And thus I am taking June off. Because my grandma said.

So the top one is mine, unaltered. The bottom one is Photoshopped - thanks, Mead. : ) The altered version is awesome, but I'm still partial to the original, even though it's cloudy. I think it suits my memory of the shot, because it was a misty, interesting beach day. And although people have said that she looks like she's going to be swallowed up, what I loved was her utter joy at running in and out of the ocean, and that lack of fear that is so wonderful (and inspiring) in children, although she's standing in front of these huge (in comparison to her, anyway) waves.

Maybe black and white - or things that approximate the look - is just becoming my aesthetic default.  (these photos look a little weird as they appear on most monitors, it seems - almost horizontally framed...click on 'em to see them like I do. : ) )

Excuse of the semester

"I'm so sorry I was absent.

This morning, I got a stomach, so I couldn't go to school.

so sorry."