I will sing so that you know where I am.

2011-12-21T19:46:00.003-05:00

Recently I read a movie review which stated that the movie was "fearless"
that's the key... We should not be afraid.
Chuck calls it mpca(motion picture creation anxiety)

Dream 9/12

2011-09-12T14:16:00.002-04:00

In the dream there is a thin old man with a white beard. He walks ahead of me up a trail to a meadow at the top. There is a younger, mean looking man in the meadow standing near a white horse.
I know that the horse used to belong to the old man. I watch as the old man climbs up a onto a rock and then, from above, jumps onto the horses back and rides away.
The younger man is angry but doesn't follow him.
I follow the horse and the old man down the mountain.

Now I am the old man's daughter. He tells me to bring the horse home. He ties the horse by its bridal to the back of my car and then he leaves.
I drive and i assume the horse is following me but I don't look behind me to check.

Now I am following my mother. She is driving her car and i am following her home because i don't know the way.
We get lost, we make illegal U turns. We stop in the parking lot of a Starbucks and get out of our cars to discuss directions.
We don't look at the horse but we know its there.
We go inside and get coffee. when i come out the horse has come untied from the car. I am afraid that it will run away. I approach it slowly with my hands outstretched and it shies away from me.
I am afraid of it.
Then suddenly the horse becomes a man. He isn't wearing a shirt and his side is scraped up and bleeding, so is one side of his face.
'I will not follow you.' he says. 'you don't know where you're going and you didn't notice when i tripped and fell and you dragged me.'
I apologize and try to hug him. i want to cry so that he can see how sorry i am but i don't cry. He lets me hug him but doesn't seem to accept the apology.
He tells me that he will come home but he isn't going to go with me. He is going to wait for his fiance, she knows the way and will not drag him behind her. He says that if we tell her to come here he will be tied to the back of her car and follow her home.
I am jealous of how much he trusts her.
I agree to let him wait for her.

In the end, we realize that if he stays a man and doesn't transform back into a horse, there is no reason why he cannot ride in the backseat of my car.

September and Philip Glass

2011-09-12T12:20:00.001-04:00

Dreams and Films

2011-09-06T22:00:00.004-04:00

In my dream last night there was a draw bridge which sunk down under the water instead of lifting up. The bridge didnt move in the dream but i knew that it could and that if it did it would sink down.
I was sitting under the bridge, on the slippery cement, afraid of falling in to the choppy, wild, gray-black water.
Later in the dream I did fall it. I was incredibly afraid of how deep the water was and of being thrown against the thick stone supports of the bridge which lead in dramatic perspective away across the whole width of the river.

In real life when i stand under bridges i feel stomach fluttering awe. I learned this summer that I don't feel awe when i stand on top of a mountain. something about the bridge being man-made is more impressive to me.

In the movie I am writing I think I will make my protagonist dream of bridges so that i can film under them and capture the way they make me feel... like i am very small but also like i am floating.

Rain, Sunlight, Shadows and My Children

2011-07-18T15:42:00.002-04:00

Re-posting

2011-07-17T21:04:00.005-04:00

If You Really Loved Me You'd Blog About Me

2011-07-11T23:05:00.005-04:00

Favorite past time = painting things white

2011-07-05T20:49:00.007-04:00

needs another coat..

but..

i think i will paint around the prints.

.

The old camera is bad and lazy but I use it because it is light and I can wear it round my neck like a necklace

2011-07-05T09:43:00.003-04:00

A Dream

2011-07-02T09:59:00.009-04:00

In the dream, Jake Katrina and I wander the streets of New York City. We are in a large group of other friends. It is nighttime and it is cold and we really just want to to be inside some place but there are no open restaurants.
We walk in circles. Twice we pass a house that does not look as though it belongs in the city. It belongs in a Pensylvania suburb and there is a plastic skeleton halloween decoration swaying in the cold breeze outside the open screen door.
"There he is." Jake says, pointing at the skeleton the second we pass by it. What jake means is 'We're going in circles.'

Finally we find an open cafe and go in. The menu on the door is pink and half in hebrew. Despite the late hour and the empty streets, the cafe is mobbed. The only available seating is upstairs and outside on a terrece that overlooks the street. It is very cold. We drink coffee.

A orthodox jewish family sits at the next table. The mother sits almost next to me on the bench that our tables share.The father begins to tell his son a story about a father who turns his son out into the cold because the son refuses to live by proper traditional jewish values.
I say loudly "I think this is the story that made me hate hebrew school." Katrina shushes me. Glances worridly at the next table where conversation has stopped.
The mother glances at me. I had said it wanting them to hear me, but also not expecting that they would. "what story?" she asks me. Our group turns to face their group as though we had been one group all along. They have a son and daughter both with huge eyes like hobbit children in the shire. The little girl wears a Fiddler-on-the-roof kercheif round her head.

I sum up the story that I thought he was telling. Halfway through it i realize that this is not the story that I thought it was. I continue to tell it anyway. The story I thought he was telling fills my head while I tell the other one out loud.
The one I thought he was telling is this: a man sees a child freezing on the street. the man says to the child 'if you say the Shamah i will save you and you will not be freezing any more.' the child refuses to say the shamah so the man leaves the child there and the child freezes.'
I finish telling the other story and then I try to apologize to the mother. She looks suddenly very beautiful, more and more beautiful as I realize that she hates me.

We leave the cafe and wander back down the same roads. the Pensylvania house is there with the plastic skeleton.
"There he is." says jake. What Jake means this time is 'He's naked, he must be so freezing.'

We find ourselves descending carpeted stairs into a basement game room. There are disheveled people, all roughly our own age, they are playing games for money. It is warm in the basement and the floor is completely carpeted.

I notice two boys playing pool, one is barefoot and the other has has floppy brown hair and a safety pin through his ear.
The barefoot one looks worse off then the other, more homeless and more alone but suddenly, in the omniscient knowledge of the dreamer, i know that the one with the safetey pin in his ear is actually worse off, more homeless and more alone. Somehow this is important that I understand. I watch them. The barefoot one begins counting some bills, they are folded in his hand and he turns them over quickly, like one adept at counting money this way. The other boy watches him, holding his pool stick with his thumb over the end of it.

Jake and the others wander across the room where they begin to play a game. They throw small colored darts at a mat on the floor. the mat has a drawing of a dinasaur on it and the dinaseaur's legs and head and other parts are all numbered. if you get your dart in that number thats how much money you win.
They stand on the other side of the room and throw the darts at the mat which is near me. Jake begins to throw his darts. he misses, overshoots the mat. his darts land in the carpet.
"would you like me to move it back?" i ask. thinking that if that mat had just been a few inches farther away he would have hit it. Jake laughs and shakes his head. Continues trying.

I turn back to the boy with no shoes he s still counting the money. I notice that there are only one dolllar bills and one hundred dollar bills.
I look up to see that the boy with the safety pin in his ear is watching me. He is beautiful, I had not noticed it before.

I wake up.

"Well, This is an Optics Class"

2011-07-01T08:41:00.007-04:00

I think i might make a documentory, Bill Brown style, with a voice over.
This summer i am the videographer for a day camp and a waldorf teacher training college.
When I make my clients their one minute videos for their websites, i do a lot of cropping out my own voice.
I ask a camper "what are you doing?" and she answers, looking up at me from under some green leaves that are filtering tiny liquid freckles of sunlight onto her face, "I'm building a fairy house"
"Are you going to put that worm in the fairy house?" i ask and my finger comes into frame, pointing to the worm in the little girls palm.
"I dont know." she says.
"well, a worm is a kind of fairy. sort of. is it?" i say.
"is it?!" she asks.
"i think so." i say.

What i will use in the one minute video is probably: Little girl looks at camera from under some green leaves in sunlight. Little girl says "I'm building a fairy house" some shots of the fairy house. end scene.
Its a lot of fun. i love editing this way. its very simple and the point is often simply: make child look awesome for when their parents watch the video on the website.

But, maybe I will use the extra footage- not the shots of the girl, probably just our voices, and shots that move to quickly to distinguish anything but 'outside, forest, color'- in my documentary which will be titled "putting myself back in" or something.

The best parts will be when i film the teacher training classes. and notice, via voice over, how they are being trained to teach me. I, a waldorf graduate, watch the teachers learning to do what they then will go on to teach... me...

optics class... they hold glass fishbowls and look at the upside down reflections. they wander outisde and look at the sun reflected and the grass and eachother and their hands which cradle the bottom of the bowl and then "o, can i see the camera?" she moves the bowl and i pull focus and there i am... ill put that in.

"They should call waldorf schools 'filmmaker training schools.' i say out loud. "or cinephile school."
"Well, this is optics class." says one waldorf teacher trainee. and i am shocked... as i often am, by this attitude of 'squash the wonderment' from a community that's slogan is 'education towards freedom' and in my opinion might as well be 'education towards wonderment.'
I look down at the woman. She sits at a desk before a pile of colored pencils, a compass, ruler, and a drawing of triangles delicately shaded to illustrate something... optical.
I realize that she is probably here to cure herself of some 'fascination squashing' element of her own education.
Why do waldorf teachers become waldorf teachers? mostly they are not waldorf school alumni. I think it must have to do with fixing they way they were taught. perhaps thats why so many of them seem at constant odds with what they preach. they're unlearning what they never should have had to learn- to be unfascinated and wonder squashed.
o... i should not rant this here. i will put it, bill brown voice over style, into my movie.
and i will never show a subject's face. only their hands, holding worms that are fairies and fishbowls that look like crystal balls and shots that move to quickly to distinguish anything but 'outside, forest, color'
maybe i will call the movie: "Well, This Is an Optics Class."

After finishing Atlas Shrugged

2011-06-26T10:25:00.007-04:00

Yesterday, Ayn and I began building a twig awning around the back door. While we worked, we thought about weak twigs and strong twigs. We noted how what we were really doing was creating a tangle- using the weakest, most brittle twigs but twisting and tucking them around each other so they would not fall.
When we began, our structure was based on nothing but chance. We knew that the slightest movement of a tiny twig, disturbed by the wind or the vibration of the door slamming shut, could dislodge the next twig and the next and the whole thing would slip and tilt and fall.
By the end of the task we were experts. we knew to use the Y of a stick upside down, hanging the Y like th^s from a support above. This way we could hang long thicker sticks and then weave others through them, creating a thick basket that held itself together. We wove the sticks around each other, carefully testing the suppleness of a particular branch to see how many times it could weave- over under- creating the perfect amount of tension to hold up the twig wall.
We worked like this for many hours. Small scratches with tiny drops of blood crisscrossed our arms and fingers but we didnt notice. I imagine that the planes of our angular features showed our concentration and immense pleasure at our own ability to achieve our goal.

This morning Ayn and I ate our breakfast and then slipped outside in our barefeet to complete the task.
There were strangers in the driveway. They drove expensive cars and stood in a group discussing something about widening roads and over priced supermarkets. Ayn asked me who I thought they were. I ventured a guess."They must have something to do with the building of the barn." I pointed to the farm behind my house that shares our driveway.
Ayn and I didn't look at the group often as we continued to work. We listened to pieces of their conversation, keeping our faces uninterested and blank, while we put the finishing touches on the awning.
We felt their eyes on us whenever we broke a twig and sent a loud snap across the yard.

Though we remained unclear about exactly what they were discussing or who they were, we began to feel that our incredible ingenuity of thought, as we wove our twigs just so, was beginning to make them uncomfortable.
We are the doers, I said to Ayn with a look. She smiled in understanding. Somehow we became quite certain that, though they had jobs that involved the widening of roads, these people could never hope to be able to create something as simple and functional as our twig arch.

What I Will Write

2011-05-28T17:33:00.005-04:00

...it will take place on a island in the winter
...there will be animation with paper water- a birds eye view of the island showing the bay on one side and the ocean on the other. The characters will sometimes be shown as dots moving around the map like The Marauder's Map, accompanied by the sound of sandy footsteps and wind or maybe a bicycle.
....so that the animation will match the rest of the movie, the rest of the movie will be shot with a paper-like color scheme, desaturated and sandy and windy and cold.
...it will open with extreme close ups of the lines in the palm of a hand and a narrator speaking disinterestedly about what each line means. the narrator and the focus will draw your attention to the eerily short life line. For these shots i will use my own hand and my own life line.
...i will incorporate that subway station in brooklyn where you exit below the elevated track and at night the lighted windows of the train curl above you against the black black sky. and when you walk to the left and towards the warehouses, you pass under the highway and over the water. and to your right you see water and factories whose smoke is white against the black black sky and speeding cars on elevated highways that are going around a curve like the train was going around... and all of it is so beautiful because, oddly, there are not nearly enough streetlights so the distant lights are what matters. whoever it is who will walk through this setting will be in silhouette.

but i cannot write it until i clean up.
i am folding clothes and sweeping
and painting my bed and then making my bed.
i am hanging curtains
and hanging lights behind the curtains so that they glow like windows at sunset- but all the time.
i am coughing, because of the dust.
i am sweating because of the summer.
and when all this is over the house will be clean
and i will sit on the floor and write the screenplay and build the map.

Possible Titles

2011-03-28T01:10:00.005-04:00

"Looking Into Bars"

"A Love Letter and Molly's Face"

"San Francisco: A Love Letter and also Molly's Face"

"Most Of These Rocks Have faces"

"Earthquakes"

"More People Die From Freezing"

"The Things I didn't Film"

"The Things I didn't Film Because I was too Afraid"

"The Things I didnt Film Because i was too Afraid to Stand Where I Needed to Stand, with the Camera where it needed to be in order to film what i should have and wanted to film"

Beth says: "and maybe that will never change. Maybe you will always be afraid to film and maybe you will do it anyway. maybe you don't have to change the way you feel about it in order to change it."

Song

2011-03-19T19:41:00.020-04:00

"Ill Try Anything Once" by The Strokes has caused me to begin stargazing. Twice I've sat in a corner of the parking lot behind my dorm, wasting gas on the radio and the heat, listening to The Strokes saying "you like music we can dance to. Sit me down, shut me up."
I put my chin on the steering wheel and wait for shooting stars, composing inside my head, countless variations of a scene, scored by that song, in which a character, sits in their car and sings along to that song, staring at stars.
Sometimes I decide that the character, usually a twenty year old boy, begins to cry.
Often there is somewhere that he really needs to be but he is hiding, in a corner of a parking lot or pulled over on the side of a desolate forest-lined road.
He turns around to the backseat where there is an assortment of clothing and books and a toothbrush. He stuffs these things into a backpack and, turning off the car, cutting off the song mid-verse he leaves. He shoulders his pack and walks off into the trees, following no visible path, slowly loosing focus, snapping twigs.

2011-03-19T12:13:00.007-04:00

Look, my socks match.

There was a blackout on campus and there were creepy flood lights all over. the one in this picture shone right in my dorm room window. It was pretty far away but still gave our room the feeling that the moon was right outside.

flashlights and forties

John's hat. John's gun. In a photo that John took.

Another photo that John took.

stills

2011-02-28T00:17:00.002-05:00

Second Star to the left and straight on till morning.

2011-02-24T00:36:00.006-05:00

i wont grow up he says
so she tucks him into bed
and tells him stories.
she discovers that he is not crazy,
only very very young.

when he asks, she gives him back his shadow.
He begins to teach her to fly.

"think happy thoughts and they lift you up in the air!" he says
"think happy thoughts or you'll fall a hundred feet to the ground." is what she hears.
she tries and tries but falling is not a happy thought.

because no one is going to teach pirates to fly,
the pirates throw parties on the ground.
and play their music loud and shout
"join the party!" towards the boys and girls in the sky,

so Pete and Wendy begin to dance
and pete and Wendy begin to forget
because Neverland makes boys forget
only the boys.

and dont forget that birds can fly too.
and they eat all the crumbs, even the ones you leave on clouds.
and now its a different fairytale
one about two children and a candy house.

youre leaving no footprints so makes sure to remember
which star to turn at,
and which way to fly straight-on
till morning.

...What we were talking about.

2011-02-23T12:20:00.005-05:00

"The candy-seller had a smile on his face: he was happy, aware of what his life was about, and ready to begin a day's work. His smile reminded the boy of the old man- the mysterious old king he had met. "The candy-merchant isnt making candy so that later he can travel or marry a shopkeepers daughter. He's doing it because its what he wants to do," thought the boy.
He realized that he could do the same thing the old man had done- sense whether a person was near or far from his Personal Legend. Just by looking at them. Its easy, and yet I've never done it before, he thought."
-The Alchemist

something that i like is when a gesture is without a face.

2011-02-20T23:54:00.004-05:00

"are you making a video from your bed?"

2011-02-18T01:48:00.003-05:00

Danger Dreams

2011-02-09T14:10:00.004-05:00

I've been having lots of dreams lately that take place on the wooden playground of my elementary/middle school.
There are always children in danger, I'm not one of them, I'm the authority.

here's one dream:

Large, metal allegator-like sculptures have been placed all around the playground. They remind me of the animal shaped fountains in the parks of my childhood; elephants shooting water out of the their trunks, hippos spitting fountains out of thier wide flat pink mouths.
But the allegators in the dream are not fountains. They are mostly just the allegator's backs and eyes, the tips of their tails, they are flat on the ground, as though the artist who made them wants to give the illusion that the rest of the allegator's body is under water.

Some of the allegators dont move, others slide back and forth, on tracks that must be under the ground. Their heads, snouts, are sharp. and the children get too close to them, as they slide back and forth too quickly.

I am sort of myself but i am also sort of a teacher. I am watching the children play on the bigger allegators and dare eachother to get too close to the sliding allegators. i have a bad feeling about it.

My friend comes to stand near me.
"theyre from that film set." she says. "the filmmaker donated them after the shoot was over. theyre for killing."
and then i remember. i saw that movie. it was a horror movie, an art film in which people are killed by allegators. the movie was low budget so the allegators were not made to look real, they looked like sculptures which make it more terrifying. they were these sculptures.

i go to the principle and try to convince him to remove the allegators but before i can explain to him why and how they are dangerous, i have to run back to rescue the children who, again are too close to the sliding sharp-snouted sculptures.

mostly my notes are just quotes

2011-02-04T00:42:00.011-05:00

"There are about twenty-five things that are five-hundred dollars that it wouldnt be bad to have. but i can always find a better use for five-hundred dollars." -Cinematography Professor, on camera accessories

"its actually very difficult to determine weather something is exploding or contracting." -Sculpture Professor.

"its hard to tell the value of something in a vacuum." -Writing Professor, on Context.

"pale people in dark rooms, all standing around looking dead."
-film student, on a Carravaggio painting

"candle-lit paintings."

Me: does anything happen?
Prof: things happen, but, you know, its an art movie.

"they're doing the moment of 'oh my god, you're jesus!'"
-Cinematography professor, on a Caravaggio painting.

2011-01-29T22:57:00.003-05:00

probably nothing

2011-01-28T15:13:00.012-05:00

in my dreams you climb the walls
slip through the window and kiss my neck
which leaves a mark
so i throw you out

you might be Puck
you know all the lines.
you cannot fly
you've learned to climb.

they whisper
clicks and squeaks that fill the room
and you can build whispers,
i decide,
out of clicks and squeaks

i am the sound man
80% of what you hear never happened
i built it for you
so you will understand.

and they whisper because of me
if i wasnt here they would speak
im trying to dream im trying to dream im trying to sleep.

New Poet Love- Bob Hicok

2011-01-20T14:16:00.002-05:00

PERHAPS AN ENTRY SOMEWHERE IN A BOOK
by Bob Hicok

There is a night under every one
of these stones. It could be a hundred
years old, a thousand. I used to toss them
into the future, making refugees
of shapes while thinking of words
as river crossings. I am crossing
the Seine—gate. I am crossing the Arno—
throwback. I am crossing the Roanoke—
heartwild. This has been a picture of me
wearing the memory of a house.
The impossible camera takes pictures
of both the looked at thing and the thing
doing the looking, like a dream
in which sleep is dreamed by a woman
who is awake and tearing tickets
at the movies. She gives you the half
of entry and keeps the half of tribute,
while the tearing itself dies
and with it, the music of its proof.
I am crossing perception—tightrope.
I am crossing snow—documentation.
I am crossing the threshold—welcome
to so long. I am lifting my shirt
where loss re: the conservation
of energy and loss re: the conversation
of empathy make me wonder if I
am a fishbowl with one or a fishbowl
with two orange flashings I am called
essentially to feed. The answer:
pending. Meanwhile, the skeleton
is a device for killing time.
You see this in bridges. Not falling
as prelude to falling down.

2011-01-10T01:24:00.003-05:00

Photo by Molly Pelavin

One Liners

2011-01-09T12:16:00.004-05:00

Movie trailers are like little perfect movies.
The first line of a good movie trailer is my favorite thing to listen to.
This doesnt include narration.
Just, the first line of dialogue, puzzle pieced out of context onto the beginning of a new tiny movie.
its like finding one word that completely explains something huge and complex and beautiful.

i was brainstorming ideas for my junior film when i got frustrated and instead began a list of the first lines of the movie trailers of movies that i love.
I think its a good writer's block exercise- made me pay attention to why the lines were perfect for the films- what is the line saying that the film is saying?- and then i could think of my own work that way. and find my one lines that mean what my film wants to mean and then, backwawrds i know, and i then, find what my film means... and then maybe i could write something.

but in the meantime, enjoy these:

"I don't really know where I am." -MirrorMask

"I didn't wanna wake you up, but I really wanna show you something." -Where the Wild Things Are

"Your aunt is a very lucky woman Angelica because she has two lives. she has the life she is living, and also the book she's writing." -The Hours

"This is a hoax right?" "I assure you, no." "Is there any risk of brain damage?" "...nothing you'll miss." "Ahhhhhh!!!!" -Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind

"Excuse me sir, you're standing on my sleeve." "I might point out that you're lying under my bench." -Finding Neverland

"I wanna know what it feels like to care about something passionately." -Adaptation

"There's no story!" "make one up." -Adaptation

"Where you going?" "To sea. I'll send you a postcard." "Send me a postcard from everywhere." -The Curious Case of Benjamin Button

Sun

2011-01-05T17:19:00.001-05:00

Remember When We Made This?

2010-12-23T16:45:00.002-05:00

Remember When We Made This? from katie oscar on Vimeo.

A while ago, Soli, Hanako and I were in my room with my webcam and some stars.
I found the footage today and edited it.
The Lullaby in the background is By Jacob Sachs-Mishalanie. He wrote it for "Pretty Swift" but I didnt end up using it for that so I used it for this instead.

Final Scene of the Semester

2010-12-15T21:00:00.000-05:00

Pretty Swift from katie oscar on Vimeo.

Based on Aimee Bender's short story:
"The Girl in the Flammable Skirt"

The nameless protagonist has a father in a wheel chair and a boy locked in her attic.

One night she finds her dad attempting to lift a backpack full of stones.
she takes it from him and he tells her than now she cannot put it down.
"this backpack has to be worn. thats the law."

One day, while she is feeding the boy in closet as usual, he grabs her hand, pulls her into the closet and kisses her.

Shot on miniDV on a consumery handycam

dear family

2010-12-15T12:56:00.001-05:00

i might want to unplug twitter for christmas.
maybe for christmas we can write the tweets down on construction paper stars and wrap them up and give them to eachother in boxes.
id like that.
we can do it all day.
also im going to paint everyones faces.
also im going to take pictures.

My Mother's Computer

2010-11-27T10:12:00.005-05:00

The 'e' and the 'a' and the 's' keys are not only blank, they are indented
As well as the spot where my pinky touches the SHIFT key.

There is a rectangular sticky label near where my wrist sits,
it says, in purple pen, with no spaces: "wizardofozmonster"

there is usually a active skype window, that shows
an empty room with a black poster on a white wall...
or, more often, Max's face, in london.
he likes imitating the different accents.

"in-it" Max says "is what they say instead of 'like.'"

My high school english teacher,
at the school where we werent allowed to watch tv,
had a theory about 'like.'
He said we say things are "like real." not "real"
because often we are referring to something on television or in a movie,
something that didint "actually happen. " it "like, happened."

Dear Bicycle Thief,

2010-11-01T00:29:00.004-04:00

I feel that it is only fair to inform you
that the front wheel is not screwed on completely.
I had to remove the wheel to fit the bike into my car
and when I took the bike out of the car yesterday,
I tightened the screws only tight enough to wheel it up the hill.
I suppose this was poor planning,
as was my choice to leave the bike unlocked on Halloween weekend.

One more thing you should know
is that the bike has only one functioning break;
this and the good amount of tape
visibly holding the seat together gave me the idea that no one,
not even you, drunk and giddy in your goblin mask,
would want to steal it. Obviously I was mistaken.

But I have to ask, didn't you notice
the wires of the gears and the back break?
Their metal insides frayed and loose?

Well, please be careful. I'd be upset if you got hurt.
Sincerely, The Bike's Previous Owner.

Hallows Eve Eve

2010-10-31T16:42:00.000-04:00

Halloween 2010 from katie oscar on Vimeo.

Let The Right One In (Adaptation)

2010-10-21T11:59:00.001-04:00

Let The Right One In (Adaptation) from katie oscar on Vimeo.

Adapted Scene for Director's Scene Workshop

Assignment: first adapt a scene in one take (that was a couple weeks ago. maybe ill post it but its a bit wonky.)
Then adapt the same scene with many cuts. (thats this one)

shot by the amazing Molly Mack on the amazing Molly Mack's SLR 7D. yum.

Trespassing

2010-10-11T23:03:00.003-04:00

Trespassing from katie oscar on Vimeo.

'Place Film' for my documentary class.
assignment: only diegetic sound. three minutes long.

i was inspired by Bill Brown 's Roswell and by the 'i dont belong here anymore' feelings that i had while snooping around to get the shots.

Pieces of a poem that Joel Brouwer made out of Pieces of Reports of the Investigative Committees

2010-10-09T21:58:00.002-04:00

Beneath three thousand feet, the sea is wholly dark.

Recommendation: Declare selected points on earth invisible.

Imagination can create a sense of peril where no real peril exists.

Recommendation: live at inaccessible elevations. Recommendation: Close your eyes. Recommendation: Prevent access to the invisible.

Phenomena not meant to be accessed or imagined are found in Appendix E.

-From the Poem, Lines from the Reports of the Investigative Commitees, By Joel Brouwer

psychology

2010-10-04T18:44:00.003-04:00

"After a while the rats stopped pressing it because it kept electrocuting them. But the humans kept pressing it. cuz humans are stupid."
-Jordan

old entries

2010-09-26T22:57:00.007-04:00

Starbucks with my cousin Robyn

We should always write things that other people will like and understand...
"Is that true?"
She shakes he head and puts her chin in her hand. Her cheek is dangerously close to her pen which is in the same hand.
She laughs while i read this out loud to her as i write it down. Im writing as quickly as i can, without looking up, i imagine she is making faces at me.
She reads the text messege when my phone vibrates on the table between us.
"Tell everyone that i just served Colin Powel, theyll find that interesting." says the text messege. Max is a waiter in the hamptons.

"...1990 right?"
"what?"
"when you were born."
"yeah. when were you born?"
"1998. ...that makes you almost 20."
"Robyn is very good at math." i say and write. "i wont tell her, except to write it down in front of her-"
"you're saying it out loud too."
"...but the fact that robyn is so good at math makes me a little anxious because she is twelve and i am bad at math."

Starbucks, as usual is playing jazzy pianoey music and i play air piano to amuse no one but myself... ...and possibly robyn, and possibly to six year old boy who is standing across the room.
In a Pull focus moment, with the six year old boy in focus, and his father out of focus behind him, the focus shifts and his father comes into focus and his father is laughing at me and i am playing air piano and rocking back and forth in my purple easy chair and i suddenly remember how old i am.

"Robyn leans back in her chair in exasperation, crosses her leg over her other leg and stares at me while i write and read. she twirls her hair around her finger and pouts. But with i write/say 'pouts' she laughs. When i write/say 'she laughs' she smiles. when i write/say 'smiles' she grabs her cheeks and pulls them so her eye sockets stretch. She crosses her arms and says 'crossed.' she blinks, sniffs, giggles, sticks out her tongue.
She crosses her eyes. when i pause to jazzy dance in my chair.

What we need
In the short story, 'Archangel' by John Updike, the archangel explains to someone, you, all the gifts that he brings.
He begins with 'Francansense and Myrr'
moves quickly to 'food shelter and love
and then, there among the nessesities: "the light glinting off the wet ink of your own words" as beautiful to john updike as ' the white arms of a woman dancing' and something about fixing wooden houses with pegs of opposing grain."

Sweet
There are two men in the bus station who, one at a time, begin to speak to me and then in their own time- one after writing me a short song in spanish, the other after feeding me a dried fig (from a sealed container that i saw him open... i mean... i guess it could have been poisened... but i mean... come on.) ask me for my phone number.

at which point i explain to them that they are ruining the story of 'friendly interaction between strangers meeting in the bus station" if they continued to ask questions like that.
But they continue to ask. I tell one that i have a boyfriend. I tell the next one that i have sixteen boyfriends.

"i hate them all!" I yell at Adam later than night. we are standing in the rain while he smokes a cigarette even though I've been proud of him all summer because he quit.
"give us a chance." he says
we go back inside and watch the end of the matrix. And when Neo dies and Trinity brings him back to life with her stilted love spell, i put my fingers over my ears and hum.
Adam throws a pillow at me which knocks over my tea. "i think its sweet." he says.
It is sweet. But while squid machines burn through the roof, showering down red sparks, while profecies and mesiahs are proven and people are dying inside their minds, sweet is not the point.

images from last night's dream

2010-09-23T10:41:00.005-04:00

my mom and i were trying to find parking in a small town. but we weren't in a car... we were walking, looking for a place to park a car, i dont know where the car was.
we walked to the end of a dock. there was a boat like a roadside hamburger stand, there was a window towards the dock and people bought food through through the window. we asked the man on the boat if we could park our car on his boat.

someone is threatening to hit me, i never see his face only his hands.
i ask him something along the lines of 'are you going to hit me?" and in way of explanation he shows me that he has a glow in the dark star sticker on each knuckle. and by showing me that he means that he will not hit me.

Creative writing class today- stream of consciousness "Story with dialogue."

2010-09-20T18:41:00.003-04:00

Button Spider (Fiction)

"my imagination is being killed by like philosophies."
That's all i have to say and after it I'm fine with walking in silence but we've only gone a few more steps when she yells:
"What?!"
"What?"
"Your imagination is being killed by philosophy and...!!"
I start to laugh. "That was it."
"what do you mean?!"
"just that. I don't know." we turn onto our street. "if i say more i'll stop meaning what Im saying."
we walk up the porch steps and she sort of stomps her feet as she says "I don't get it!"
We both reach into out bags at the same time and fall into that silent race of: who will get their keys out their bag and open the door first.
she wins this one- her bag is smaller, less pockets.
She's turning the key and then she screams, and runs off the porch.
"what?"
"the spiders back."
i see it now, pressed flat on the white wood like a button. i have a weird urge to press on its body like a doorbell. Including its legs its about the size of a quarter.
She's stepping in small circles on the path, flapping her hands and saying "ugh ugh ugh ehhhhhh heeeee..."
I reach bravely towards the dangling keys, the spider twitches but stays put. I open the door and the spider suddenly comes to life and with eight legs but in one movement, slips around the door. Its inside.
I pull the door closed again, i might have crushed the thing but i cant be sure if its dead between the frame and the door or skitting around the dark kitchen. So we leave the house and head back to the bar where we stay until one o'clock.
On our way home we pee between the parked cars.
On the porch she makes me open the door. Inside we turn on all the lights. In bed with the lights on we shiver because we're lying on top of the blankets to keep our feet visible so we know there are no spiders on our ankles.
I stare at the corners that the ceiling makes with the walls, afraid to blink and when a piece of her hair brushes my shoulder, I jump out of bed.
When we wake up all the lights are still on and i remember my dream-
"we were afraid to unlock the door," i tell her, "we knew there were baby spiders inside the lock and if we turned it we would crush them."
"So crush them." She opens the cabinet and looks apprehensively inside before taking down two tea cups.
"It was a dream." i take the tea that she hands me, "it was like, we didn't want to have spider guts on our keys. It wasn't that we didn't want to crush them, just that we thought it would be gross."
Three days later, when she's at work, i see the button spider playing dead on the floor. I stamp on it and then step out of my boot leaving it standing like a grave stone in the center of the kitchen.
We walk carefully around the boot for days. I wear flats to work. Finally we get her brother to come over and we lock ourselves in the bedroom while he cleans up the crime scene. When he's done both my boots are by the door and there isn't even a stain on the tile.

The Problem

2010-09-14T23:50:00.007-04:00

If youre reading this right now then you dont mind the way i talk.
You read my blog, so you're used to deciphering sense out of pieces of sense... like that- what do i mean by that?
i dont know. but it sort of makes sense in the context of the rest of the post... and maybe you've learned that if you keep reading maybe you'll arrive somewhere where i will explain it to you...
so keep reading.
That point is: I don't really make sense.
It's fun.
I don't usually mind it. I like to say what I want to say, whenever I want to say it, without pausing to even decide exactly what it is that I want to say...
But
Today, in Sci Fi, I had a comment about the Alien Messiah- "its kind of like what you were saying last class," i said when Soyoung (possibly the smartest person i have ever met) called on me, "...about how DNA has taken the place of a soul in modern thinking. The soul, or religion, used to 'tell us who we are' and now its DNA or science, that tells us... and the 'Alien Messiah' is like- we're too educated, too modern to believe in god or in god having a son and sending him to us to save us, so now we project the same exact idea onto the 'more scientific' idea of a an alien. A superhuman being coming from somewhere more tangible than heaven- another planet- sent to us by superhuman beings who have lessons to give us."
anyway... i made sense!
and Soyoung understood what i was trying to say. Instead of nodding slowly and saying "i think i know what you're saying" she just knew what i was saying. and elaborated on it and...

my point is:
what i am trying to say is:
quite concisely put:
without confusing you too much before i get to point:

I plan on making more sense from now on.

My Homework Turned Into a Blogpost

2010-09-12T21:23:00.002-04:00

Maybe its because I’ve grown up with a writer and then grown into a writer
So my mom and I do not have lives.
We have the stories that we are making out of our lives.
So nothing is original because everything is part of the story
Nothing is genuine because everything is being written down as material.
The truth is that if I were to write a story about my life and accurately describe my character it would sound a lot like:

“This happened to me and I thought this about it and decided it was meaningful and that this should happen next if it was gonna say an interesting story… but since its life not a story I cant write it as it happens so what happens ends up being even better writing because there is the added element of the fact that I was pretty sure something else would need to happen for it to be interesting but something else happened and it was still interesting.
The motivating factor in a lot of my character (my) choices seems to be make the story interesting…youve been on one note for too long, next scene, new character... blablabla...
what i mean is: I am awake.

I hear the rest of the people typing in the library around me while I type. I hear the girl across the cubical talking on the phone.
“Hello” she says into the silent library-clicking-keyboard room, just as I type about obsessively watching everything I do for information- hello- she greets me.
“You called me.” She says next… somehow that’s part of the story as well, but I’m not writing a story right now. I’m not writing the story of
‘katie writes an outline for the report she has to give on Dave Eggers tomorrow.” I am not writing a story about me doing my homework. I AM DOING MY HOMEWORK!
Anyway…
This is what Dave Eggers taught me- not how to do it- but he taught me that it is allowed.”

When I read a book I watch the movie of it in my head.
so I tend to like writers who sound like they are talking to you because that is not just like watching a movie.
I like to ‘listen to this person talk’ to me for a while which is something that, without a lot of voice over, you cannot translate accurately into a film.

Dave eggers tells you what he is thinking
He tells you what he thought about what he thought.
He tells you that while he was thinking it he was also thinking about writing it down and using it in this book that he’s currently writing that you are currently reading.

Maybe this is why I tend to like autobiographies of writers-because they get to tell me that they are writers and I find writers more interesting as narrators than ‘civilians’ who don’t notice every layer of the experience the way a storyteller does.

Dave eggers taught me to write it exactly as I thought it.
This might just be because we think alike so when I write down what my brain sounds like it comes out in a similar rythym to what his brain sounds like.

He taught me to tell the whole truth because its more interesting- even the pieces of the truth that don’t make sense because the truth doesn’t usually make sense because the inside of you brain- un altered by the sense you have to put it into when you speak it into words- doesn’t usually completely make sense.

So my favorite books tend to be books that I could never imagine making into a movie because the story is not the point. The choice of words is the point and the little rants that have nothing to do with anything are the point.

That said I think its very interesting that Dave eggers now writes screenplays.

He wrote Away We Go and it kind of didn’t work because his scenerios/ diologue/ characters are so beautifully described to make you completely get it and read into it- that when put onto a screen it seems like overkill. Every character comes out a bit like a characature.

Then he wrote Where the Wild things are.
The point of the way they adapted that movie was the make every event, every character and every image into a symbol.
People found that movie childish, or ridiculous or boring.
But I say- read the movie like a dream, read the images like words.
Everything that is said, everything that happens every image, is symbolic of Max.
People get that and find it over the top, ridiculous…
But Dave Eggers is doing something that feels a lot like writing words with images. Every one of his images is a word. It tells its own story. Every line is layered with meaning almost to the point of indulgence… no TO THE POINT OF INDULGENCE. He is digging into every symbol and laying it out for you and your saying. ‘well duh.’ And hes saying ‘well look at what you’ve come to regard as obvious.’

Adapting Let the Right One In

2010-09-09T16:57:00.011-04:00

The first assignment of sophomore year: 'Make a one scene adaptation- shoot it in one shot.'
The minute he said that i, from somewhere in the pile of images inside my brain, conjured up this image of someone with big eyes climbing up towards the camera from below. i dont know why thats what i saw but the minute it appeared i had to have it.

Just like last year, while i sat in that first meeting with my class and they asked us 'whats your favorite movie? whos your favorite director?" and everyone was naming films and directors that i had never heard of so i felt really small and like an imposter and like i didnt desreve to be in this program-so, i challenged myself 'think of something really cool. right now" so that i would feel filmy enough to stay- and what i thought of was:
a boy is crouched in a a derelect destoryed house. The shot is from below, from the floor and the boy is balanced on his feet, knees bent, bending towards the camera and hes not wearing a shirt and he looks like hes in pain and there is a broken skylight window above him where rain in dripping in and suddenly- huge angel wings spread out from his back. The angle of the shot lets his chest obscure how the wings will work...
and it worked out well because i spent pretty much all of freshmen year working with some version of that idea- boys with wings...
So, this year, i thought of this image of a person climbing up towards the camera and then i had to find something to adapt that i could put that image into.
Let the Right One In is about a little boy who develops a little boy crush on a little girl who, for some reason, doesnt seem to have parents, get cold in wintery snowy weather wearing only a tshirt, or eat food.
The little girl turns out to be a vampire and the little boy decides to have a crush on her anyway.
...anyway...
im adapting it- because of these scenes in it where the girl stands on a jungle gym way above the boy and the boy looks up at her...
and it seemed to fit my 'climbing up at camera idea' rather well...
Heres what im gonna do:
theres this really huge rock by my house. We call it Indian rock.

Im gonna stand on the rock with the camera and little human boy is gonna walk through the trees (Which if they cooperate will be bright shades of yellow and red in two weeks) the boy climbs up onto the rock.
The vampire girl is revealed standing below the rock, she circles round the rock, trailing her hand along it, looking up at him, being strange and vampiric. Then she climbs up to sit near him- MOMENT ACHEIVED!!!!- and they talk. and then he leaves.
end scene.
Im very excited.
ill post it when its done.

Roommate Agreement

2010-09-06T00:06:00.004-04:00

Painting on the floor

Roommate Agreement

Molly's New Blog that ive been begging her for for a million years.

ice-sky

2010-09-04T19:32:00.005-04:00

Molly was colder than we were so we let her wrap herself up in the blanket that we had all been sitting on. the blanket didnt cover her feet so i put her feet in her bag like a sock.
and jordan put his notebook on her face and wrote in it.
I was lying on my back in this perfect dent in the grass that felt a lot like a temperpedic mattress- the way it makes a dent that fits your back just so-
and i was looking at the sky
and i was thinking about how the clouds in the sky looked like ice with cracks in it
and i thought that if i could find a piece of ice-sky that was completely outlined and completely not connected to any other bits of sky then it would fall down and drape over whatever it landed on like a really thin filmy sheet that would-for instance- cover the top of a tree and then stretch all the way down to the ground and stay that way unless someone punctured it- then it would rip and tear and the perfect cellophane-ish sheet would just start sticking to iteslf and basically be impossible to deal with it.

then it got even colder so we went inside.

Sophomore Year Begins

2010-09-03T11:31:00.003-04:00

We call our room "The Tower' because from our window we can see all of our kingdom and all of our subjects.

Hibernation (...Fiction)

2010-08-19T15:13:00.002-04:00

There is a moth trapped between the screen and the glass.
I am lying in my bed in a state of guilty indesion, wondering if I’m obligated to free the moth.
This is the problem with having no religion. Nothing tells me what is right or wrong except me. A Christian or a buddist- are they the ones who try not to step on ants?- would know immediately what to do about the moth. They would get out of bed, open the screen, coax the moth in the right direction without touching it so that the oil on their fingers didn’t take the dust off it’s wings because it needs the dust to fly, the moth would fly off and live the rest of its one week life- or are moths the insects that can live for years and hibernate in the winter like bears in caves with stomachs full of blueberries?

The window is behind my head but the streetlight outside shines past the moth and there are fluttering moth wing shadows on my wall. The moth’s shadow is looking tired.

When I was eight my mother explained to me about hibernation and since then it’s been a fantasy of mine. I wish humans were allowed to partake. I wish our bodies could store food for months so we didn’t need to ever leave to make money to buy food to eat.
For the winter months the world would just stop living and no one would collect the rent or call you for any reason because everyone was asleep under their floorboards like pot bellied vampires. Also we’d probably grow more body hair.

When I was eight my mother had a rule about jungle gyms. Once I asked her to pick me up so that I could reach the monkey bars and she said: if you’re not capable of doing it yourself than you’re not ready to do it. I always thought it was a height thing, like taller people had a shorter distance to fall.

The moth has stopped moving. It looked tired already this morning before I left for work and when I came home it was still fluttering.
Since I assume that it doesn’t really know I’m here, I don’t think it stopped fluttering all day and then began again when I returned, I cant help assuming that it was fluttering all day. It must be tired.

If it can’t get out on its own than its not ready to get out. I decide.
I wonder why this makes sense… is there something out there in the city that I am protecting the moth from by keeping it here? I wish I could remember if moths are the ones who live for weeks or years- then I could decide with more authority weather to let it go off and live dangerously for its last days, or if it should take time to pause, make plans.
Better play it safe.

money

2010-08-16T18:19:00.002-04:00

i have so much money.
well... not so much but more than ive ever had which isnt that much because ive never had any.

i want so many things but i cant buy them.
i still want to steal them for no money even though theres nothing other than them that i want
and i have money and if i spent it on these things that i want i would have them
and there arnt other things that i want more so why not spend all my money
and not have any money left but have the things i want...
????

its so hard to spend money.
i wish i had more money.
i wish i have all the money.

i wish when i tried on clothing i could just buy it if it looked good and wear it if i wanted to and give it away if i didnt want to wear it but just have more and more money so clothing would just flow through my life like... tissues... use once and use again only if... it was phenominal the last time... well... maybe not a tissue..

but i wish i could have everything i thought i needed even if i wasnt sure i really needed it.
and then i would have it and use it and not worry that maybe i would never use it...
i want a projector.
if i bought it i would have it and use it.
if i bought it and didnt use it i would worry that i had wasted my money and then i would return it.
if i had enormous amounts of incoming money i would just let the projector be used or unused.

i want an iphone.
i want a house.
i want to cut open the walls of my room and put shelves in the studs and have shelves and put lots of collections on the shelves.
i want to paint my dresser white.
i want to strip the paint on my iron bed.
i want to paint the floors white with deck paint.

BUG

2010-08-09T18:07:00.002-04:00

there
is
a
ant
in
my
bed

on my wall

near my head

near my pillow

hiding behind a paper that is tacked to my wall.

now its gone...

but forever in my memory

haunting my dreams

crawling across my toes

with its brothers.

watching my hair grow...

2010-08-08T09:53:00.004-04:00

September

October

November

Decmber

June

July

August 8th

All alone

2010-08-07T12:31:00.004-04:00

Home alone and I get dressed eight times and then put on eye liner.
then i throw my clothes on the floor and eat pieces of cheese in the bath
and write strange things on wet paper using the bathtub edge as a desk.

The sound of running water drowns out "Paul Simon" who I turned up all the way and listened to while I destroyed an avocado
while trying to slice it and spread it onto toast.
I heated up some water and poured sugar into a tea cup and then poured the sugar back into its jar and ignored the hot water and drank a juice box instead.

Boy

2010-08-04T23:05:00.005-04:00

An eighteen year old who will very soon be one of The Shins, The Beatles, The New Pornographers, Passion Pit even... Animal Collective, Neutral Milk Hotel... the boy comes into poetry class late,
he avoids the teacher's eye as he slides into the desk/chair in the corner in the front near the door.
He holds a folded piece of printer paper and a hes wearing only a sweatshirt even though its raining outside
his shoulders are wet and his hair is wet.
He turns to stare intentently at the girl whos rhyming love poem was interrupted when the boy banged through the heavy door
and squeaked across the floor on his wet sneakers.
The girl looses her place, looks quickly at the teacher who nods calmly
looks quickly at the boy who stares...
she reads the rest of her poem.
the teacher tells her something about a poem being like a story board
'you should be able to draw an illustration in a box next to each line.'

Of course the teacher calls on the boy next, to put him on the spot, because he was late.
The boy unfolds his paper and reads out the lyrics of one of his songs, without a chorus, without repeats... it sounds just like a poem and none of us have ever heard it before.
The images are like fresh photographs taken with a camera youve never heard of that creates a kind of triangle shaped image youve never seen before... there is a new color in the spectrum.
'I jumped across three or four beds into your arms." says the boy "what a beautiful face i have found in this place that is circling all round the sun."

...what i mean is: i like to imagine them and how their minds match the minds of the boys at the community colleges who take 8am poetry classes and have lots to say
but arrive late.

Katie Didn't

2010-07-26T22:54:00.008-04:00

I was sitting on the steps, near the mailbox,
watching late night cars catch up
with thier headlights and then pass by

and i was wondering if i loved the moon
enough to walk a mile underneath it
and then swim underneath it
all alone.

while i wondered the moon rolled
slowly through the sky
out from behind a tree
and, after an hour, it had found a piece of open sky
and was staring right at me,

and while i waited for a sign
the invisible bugs predicted in the past tense,
a history that hadnt happened yet,
of 'katie did' 'katie didnt'
which wasnt helpful
so i didnt go.

Dead Dream

2010-07-25T09:41:00.021-04:00

I am pretending to be dead. I am lying on my back on the floor of a courtroom, my feet toward the judge who is looking down on me from his podium.

Someone, who is sort of my brother, is trying to prove to the judge that I was married before I died.

The brotherish person lifts my hand and shows the judge that I have rings on my finger. I know that the rings are fake and I am worried that the judge wont beleive that I am really married... (There are large pieces of plot missing from the dream, as though i began watching the movie halfway through: whether or not i am married, I dont remember.)

The judge inspects the rings on my hand and I'm not sure if I should make my hand tense or let it be limp. I don't know how dead hands are sposed to be and I am sure that the judge is going to notice that I'm not really dead; I also really want him to notice so that I can stop pretending. So I open my eyes... but no one notices.

The judge pronounces me married and dead and then they put me in a car where my Zaydie (my dad's dad) looks down on my face and says that he's sad that I am dead but in a 'everyone dies' kind of way.

Then my grandma (my mom's mom) is there and she sits with my 'body' and watches over me while we drive somewhere and I lie very still with my eyes closed. I somehow know what is happening as though I can see. The imagery of the dream is vague as though I am imagining it based on what I can hear.

Grandma talks to me, but sort of like praying, not directly to me, but to herself, talking about me... remembering me. And I wish she would stop because I assume that if she's talking to me then she is also looking at me and I am uncomfortable and I want to be able to move around.

I move. I want her to notice and then I will be able to get up!
But she must thnk that its normal for dead bodies to shift a little bit, because she doesnt say anything.

Next I am lying on a low rock wall near a field where the rest of my family is having a picnic. My grandma is still sitting near me and I am still moving.

...In my bed, in real life, as I near the end of the dream, I keep flipping around and moving my arms trying to get comfortable, and that is slipping through into the dream where I begin flipping and moving my arms on the wall beside my grandma who says, in this really bewildered, sad, mourning and not understanding way, "Katie, why do you keep moving?"

And then I wake up. I look at the clock, hoping that it is morning so I can get out of bed and not have to sleep anymore. It is exactly 3:00.

Looking at a clock exactly on the hour always makes me think of the scene where the clock tower chimes and someone looks up from something bad that they are doing and says to an empty room 'I'm afraid its the witching hour" and suddenly the room is full of ghosts and the tower continues to chime or the red digital numbers to blink and...

I can't go back to sleep for an hour.

Every time I start to drift back to sleep, I wake myself up, as the feeling that I'm not allowed to move creeps back over me. I have to keep telling myself 'you're not pretending to be dead anymore, because you never were dead, because that was all a dream" but my body feels heavy, as though my arms and legs will be stuck where i place them and my blankets are heavy and I'm too hot but the open ocean of black space outside the blanket is not safe.

And the feeling I am left with when I finally calm down is: "I really really don't want to be dead right now."

And it was all sort of inspired by this card, where dead people stand in their coffins and look up at the angel and wait eagerly for judgement... or maybe the dead people stand in their coffins and look up and eagerly judge the angel.

I'm Trying to Keep Secrets

2010-07-22T20:07:00.000-04:00

A Weekend in Parks with Molly(s)

2010-07-20T16:55:00.022-04:00

At 9:40 I get on the train.
On the train I listen to my ipod and decide that if i ever make a movie about my life, Belle&Sebastian will have to score it.
When I arrive at GC, I stand under the ceiling and call Molly P.
'Hello.... did I wake you up?... sorry, go back to sleep.'
I call Molly M. She doesnt answer so i text her: Heading to Molly p's area in approx three mins. If you call me before that i might come to where u are. Hi!!!!"
I wait for three minutes and she doesn't call so I take the shuttle to the 1 and then wait for the 1, standing on the platform, in the wet air, avoiding the eye of the middle aged father wearing a cow boy hat. He is standing with his two fleshy children and his fleshy wife and he has a lion king flyer sticking out of his cow boy jeans. I can hear the accent in his expression.

A group of acapella singers come down into the station and sing to us. I dance, ever so slightly, stepping from foot to foot, trying not to smile as widely as I want to.
I take my hair down and put it up again. I bake in the wet heat.

I arrive at molly p's a half hour later. I look up in the direction of her window.
"hi. I'm here. are u still sleeping?'
She is so I say i'll walk around, maybe go to the diner and wait for her.
I walk. I dont go to diner. I get blisters on the bottoms of my feet. I get lots of odd looks, i assume, because of my dress- dark blue with pink and yellow and light blue galaxyish patturn... I end up near spring street.
Molly wakes up and says she'll meet me at a park. when i get there she i already there, standing in a fountain.
We go to mollys house. I trade my blister shoes for a pair of Molly's flip flops.

We go to the bank and both deposite our paychecks. My first paycheck ever. I dont know what I'm doing, i dont know where to sign or how to prove that i am me. but the teller cant tell.
We both get 100 dollars worth of our checks put in our accounts right away, that brings my balance to $110
We go to a bakery and share a tiny square cup of yellow lemon custard and an iced tea. Molly says that this bakery is the competition for the bakery where she works.
the boy who serves us the lemon custard says it was only his second day working. It's only molly's second week working at her bakery, she doesnt say anything to him about this cooincidence. I would have. because the boy is beautiful.
we go to a playground, sit underneath the jungle gym and eat the ice thats all thats left of the iced tea. we talk about being little and how when we were little if our parents wanted to buy us ice cream we got ice cream, and if they didnt want to we didnt get it... and how helpless being little is.

I walk molly to work. I buy a sandwhich from her bakery. She rings me up.

I get on the A C E (?) to union square to meet molly m.
I meet her in DSW, where i try to buy a pair of sneakers that will save my weekend- molly's flipflops are blistering between my toes.

Molly M suggests we go uptown to a real comfortable shoe store and buy me comfortable shoes. First we go to a starbucks where i stand online for the bathroom for ten minutes and talk with a beautiful black man about bathrooms and how if the starbuckses of NYC ever decide to put up those snide "restrooms for custumers only" signs, then the city will start to smell twice as bad.
what we meant is that starbucks is the only place left to pee.

Molly and i sit on a curb on the edge of union square and we eat ice and talk about loving ourselves.

We go uptown and buy me a pair of expenisve 'comfortable' shoes that, after two blocks, give me blisters on my heels and the bottom of my ankels.
so, back downtown, i buy a six dollar pair of shoes at goodwill so i can stop wearing the expenisve ones so that ill be able to return them. the goodwill shoes give me blisters too so we buy band aids.

we stop at molly's apt where i wash my feet in the bathtub. and bandage my heels, my arches and my toes.

Then out for indian food where we sit in a window and then take a lot of food to go because we always order more than we can eat.
We talked loudly about how 'if i like someone, the idea of them liking me back makes them unnatractive even if i really like them, i dont want to ever catch them flirting with me" and a man follows (i mean i think he follows) us for too many blocks, walking too close to us, listening to our angst.

Back at union square we sit on the fountain and listen to a boy with, what molly decided was 'an attractive back' playing his guitar, standing on the other side of the fountain, with his back to us.
A homeless man asks the boy 'what do you know how to play?"
And the boy answers "bob dylan, paul simon."
And i call out, from behind him, admitting to eavsdropping "paul simon! paul simon!"
and he turns around and sees me and sings "april come she will..." in his own altered rythym that lends itself nicely to the song.
and the homeless man sings "setpember I'll reeeemmmeeemmbberrr." because that seems to be the only part he knows.
And i take off my shoes and put my feet, bandaged in green and purple and blue band aids, on the fountain wall in front of me.
I sing along and drum on my legs.
Then the boy plays some other songs and the homeless man dances for two homeless women who molly decides are his two wives.
Then molly walks around the fountain and, dropping some change into the boy's guitar case, tells him 'we're gonna have to hear some more paul simon."
and the boy turns around and sings to us "...i dont know why i spend my time- writing songs i cant believe- in words that tear and strain to rhyme." and I almost cry because of the song, and the wind that blows strongly through my hair and the chattering voices of the homeless on the bench and the sound of cars passing and the faces that go by and the man who splashes his children's faces with water from the fountain- that's filthy- but in that moment was fit for a baptism.

And then molly P and Alice arrive a present us with out 12am tkts to 'Inception'
The boy is packing up his guitar when i walk, barefoot, around the fountain and tell him 'i just wanted to tell you, before you leave, that you made my night."

he is kneeling next to his guitar case, he looks up at me. "wow. thank you." he says
"paul simon is my favorite and that was my favorite paul simon song." i smile
"im chris" he shakes my hand
"katie."
"ill be back later, ive got to hang out till i make train fare."
I think about the three sacajawea coins that i gave him ten minutes ago.
"well we're gonna be around," i tell him, watching him buckle up his case. "we're waiting here until 12 when our movie is."

But we left, we went to wolfgang's and sat on his roof.
then went to the movie.
at three we were walking back to molly p's, where i was spending the night.
we passed a tall black woman, man,,, or woman...threatening a small white man.

'the streets seem scarier than usual" says molly.

in the morning we walk a million miles from molly's to st. marks where we eat brie melted over avacado on baguette and wolfgang tells me that 'cliche' is a french word. which i guess i knew. but. "i thought it was ours too."
he says cliche also means 'like, a picture" in french.
i pay for half a cab fare for molly p so she can stay an extra fifteen minutes at the cafe before going to work.
Molly M, wolfgang and i go to see "kisses' at the Angelika.
for a moment Wolfgang thinks he cannot afford to go. Then he finds forty dollars in a different pocket of his wallet.
"it was a tip." he says.
Wolfgang is a french tutor.
Molly and i accuse him of doing more than tutor french. We think that a forty dollar tip for a fifty dollar lesson is pretty impressive.
"I know. Right?" he says. "...and he always buys me brunch at expensive restaurants."

we see "Kisses."

In the bathroom i run into Nora Zehetner, the actress from "Brick".
She's wearing a bandana on her head and she looks up as she passes me on her way to the sink.
I grin at her but dont say anything.
...I dont get starstruck...

when I come out of the stall she is putting on lipstick standing at one sink, i go to the other sink and wash my hands, i cant bring myself to look at her without anything to say to her. and i dont have anything to say.
I hold the door for her as I leave the bathroom, she takes the door from me and I wonder if my wet hand left water on the door that she can feel.
Molly, wolfgang and I leave through the bottom exit and then I see Nora leave through the top exit. She walks down the steps and meets her friend, and I look at her friend because I am curious about an actress having a friend and the friend is an actress who i recognize but cant place. I watch them walk away. Noticing that they arent wearing anything particularly great... jean skirts and tank tops.

Five minutes a couple of blocks later I realize that the friend was Clémence Poésy who plays Fleaur Delacour in "Harry Potter" and the girl friend in "In Bruges."

Molly buys a soft serve chocolate and vanilla twist ice cream cone from a man with a thick accent who tells me that i have beautiful eyes... at least thats what we think he said. Wolfgang laughs at my vanity, at me because i assume that that was what the man said...

Wolfgang says that not being able to understand people with thick accents is one thing that makes him very uncomfortable.
Molly can't control the dripping ice cream in the ninety degree heat, so i take it from her and control it myself. Im licking it and returning it to a manageable state when Wolfgang says that that means I can give good head. It makes me uncomfortable to eat it after that so I give the cone back to molly and let it drip on her hand.

I get on the R and get off at times square and walk through the hot, wet-aired tunnel to port authority, feeling greatful, as i always do, for those signs that could lead you anywhere, but are always honest and always lead you where they say they will.

and I get on a bus and it takes me home through NJ and through, to my great confusion, the campus of 'rockland pyschiatric hospital" where there are at least twenty brick buildings overgrown with vines and with boarded up windows.
"cinematic heaven" my dad says when i tell him about it.
the new building, a tall ocher colored skyscraper, towers over the abandoned buildings.
there are crazy people seated in the bus stop, but none of them get on and no one got off.

Home.

Entry From My Journal (written in early June)

2010-07-20T13:47:00.007-04:00

"I'm trying to keep secrets" i think.
I'm trying to keep secrets, I think I'll tell someone.
"Don't tell anyone." I think.
Why not blog: "I'm trying to keep more secrets." that will be the title of the blog and the post will be empty.
Good idea!
But I'm not allowed.
The fact that I am now keeping secrets is the first secret. No one needs to know.
I am trying not to imagine you reading this.
While I write this I am imagining that you do not exist.
You do not exist, no one will ever read this.
I am unselfconsciously scrawling across the page, ignoring all images of you and how you feel while you read this page which is all about the fact that you will never read it.
...and yet here you are reading it.

I'm hopeless.
Hello.

'Kisses'

2010-07-19T18:04:00.004-04:00

most beautiful movie ive seen in a while...
beautiful as in cinematic. as in photographic. as in gorgeous and detailed and thoughtful and simple and crisp
and occasionally in black and white
and occasionally in color
and always in christmas
and mostly on wheely shoes.

The Way She Moves

2010-07-15T22:50:00.004-04:00

How many artists/ bands have written songs called 'Superman" ? ...a few.

and how many artists/ bands have written songs about 'the way she moves."

"something in the way she moves, or looks my way or calls my name." -James Taylor
"ba dadada daaa daaa something in the way she moves, attracts me like no other lover." -the Beatles
(sort of)"She's got a way about her. mmmm." -Billy Joel
"i like the way you move... badada" -outcast

James Taylor and The Beatles... those two are just so similar to me.
Not in story, but in the 'room' that they take place in in my mind...

When i visualize songs they are very rarely characters acting our the 'story' of the song. They're almost always presented as, sort of, sets that i wander around and look at while I'm inside the song.
once i had a dream that took place inside Eleanor Rigbey and when i woke up i knew immediately that that was where i had been.

'The Long and Winding Road' is on Fire Island, even though all the roads there are actually unusually straight.

"Country Road" by james taylor takes place somewhere near the Bear Mountain Bridge, so does "Carolina" even though both of those dont belong there, thats where i remember hearing them for the first time... in the car on our way to or from green meadow, in the car, tired, early in the morning or tired in the afternoon listening to "Hourglass" Mommy's favorite cassette.

'Something' by the beatles and 'something in the way she moves" by James Taylor take place in the same place.
but 'Something' takes place inside the house and "something in the way she moves" wanders around the yard a bit.

Int. My Mind- Lately

2010-07-14T20:52:00.007-04:00

I always stare at him and he's starting to notice.
Notice the staring, not the compliment behind it.

"I can't help it," I tell him, when he confronts me about it in my daydreams, "I have very little control over my eyes."
In my daydreams he asks "Why me?" because in the fantasy I am sort of a prize, and he doesn't think he deserves me.

the fourth of july

2010-07-05T15:09:00.005-04:00

Three nineteen year old girls, wearing stars and stripes bikinis, sit in a fountain, in a tiny park in soho in 90 plus degree sunshine. A triangle of traffic surounds them.

Seated on the roof of their 'Quebequois' tour bus with it's icon of the goddess blowing wind out of her mouth, some canadian tourists crane their necks around and stare at the patriotism in the water.

A man with a pony tail, is minding his own buisness, reading a paperback book with his bicycle beside him in the grass, leaning his back against the fountain. He looks up and notices the girls who are balancing like balance beam walkers on the narrow wall of the fountain.

They walk up, up the steps that water tumbles down.

At the top of the fountain there is a curtain of water and the man with the pony tail suggests, quite platonically, that the girls take pictures of eachother through the curtain of water... which they do.

the photos, taken with a waterproof camera, warped by the wall of water, come out distorted, give the girls double smiles and double heads... wobbly outlines...

Later, a young man, walking through the park, past the fountain, carrying a floppy bag of potting soil, approaches one of the girls.
'are you allowed to be in there?" He asks her.
She's seated on the bottom of the fountain, up to her upper ribs in water, she shrugs.
"some cops walked by and they didnt make us leave." she tells him.
"thats because your three girls in bikinis. i cant imagine they'd let me stay if i went in there."
"maybe if you wore a bikini."
"maybe. are you from around here?"
"...around here..." she doesnt feel like admitting to suburbia... not at this exact moment.
"so should i go get my bathing suit?"
"only if you have a bikini."
"i have the bottom of a bikini..."
she thinks this has gone to far so she laughs and slides away, across the slimey bottom of the fountain, trailing her fingers over the surface of the water.
the young man and his friend walk away with their soil.

one girl makes white wing designs in sunscreen on the other girl's back.

later they collect all the pennies and arrange them by year on the fountain wall.
then they make new wishes, one decade at a time and toss the pennies back in.
a few of the pennies skip across the top of the water but only by accident, when they try to make the coins skip the coins just fall heavily to the bottom.

much later there are fire works.

Poetry Hobby

2010-06-30T18:26:00.007-04:00

today at camp i ran the poetry hobby.
my group and i walked behind the other hobby groups who were on their way to see the chickens or walking in the stream, looking for bugs.
i told my group 'hide in the trees, eavesdrop and write down interesting things that people say."

here are some things i wrote... im not sure if theyre poems. maybe just thoughts pretending (by way of line breaks) to be poems.

Free Swim
Today while we were swimming,
I noticed the way the water moved around the children.
And the way it moved around me was different.

The water and the day adjusted their color and texture or temperature
as they moved between us they knew
how to be the children's present, and all at once,
my past.

We stood on the bridge and they walked below us, their crocks in the stream, looking at bugs, we leaned on the railings and listened to them
I hear a crinkling water bottle that someone is crushing in their hands
it matches exactly the sound of wet sticks breaking under thier feet.
"who are you?"
"we're poetry"
...walking in the stream like they are doing is called 'mucking'
"are you going to write about us?" he asks looking right at me, i smile.
They muck away, their voices and splashes fade.

The little girl wearing the yellow crocheed top
does not belong to the camp.
she's all alone
no one is ever alone here
we take a buddy and councilor to move an inch away from the group
The little girl is hanging from the higher railing and swinging her legs
back and forth, dangerously teetering on the edge of the bridge.
I see my fellow councilor swallow her warning, 'this girl does not belong to us.'
and then the little outsider darts away, following the call of a mother who i didnt hear and cannot see but who
im sure, is just out of site, at the top of the stairs on the bank... hiding up a tree...

overheard:
(i love taking things out of context)
"hey, over here. i have a perfect one for it."
"if you have a net please hand it off now to someone who does not have a net."
"i have a dead one and a live one eating a dead one!"
"look. i got bug bites. no. thats pen i drew on my bug bites."
"they look like nature people"
"fake plastic rubber bands"
"here come the chicken people"

The Sneetches, by Dr. Seuss

2010-06-24T21:32:00.004-04:00

Now, the Star-Bell Sneetches had bellies with stars.
The Plain-Belly Sneetches had none upon thars.
Those stars weren’t so big. They were really so small.
You might think such a thing wouldn’t matter at all.

But, because they had stars, all the Star-Belly Sneetches
Would brag, “We’re the best kind of Sneetch on the beaches.”
With their snoots in the air, they would sniff and they’d snort
“We’ll have nothing to do with the Plain-Belly sort!”
And, whenever they met some, when they were out walking,
They’d hike right on past them without even talking.

When the Star-Belly children went out to play ball,
Could a Plain Belly get in the game? Not at all.
You only could play if your bellies had stars
And the Plain-Belly children had none upon thars.

When the Star Belly Sneetches had frankfurter roasts
Or picnics or parties or marshmallow toasts,
They never invited the Plain-Belly Sneetches
They left them out cold, in the dark of the beaches.
They kept them away. Never let them come near.
And that’s how they treated them year after year.

Then ONE day, it seems while the Plain-Belly Sneetches
Were moping and doping alone on the beaches,
Just sitting there wishing their bellies had stars,
A stranger zipped up in the strangest of cars!

“My friends”, he announced in a voice clear and keen,
“My name is Sylvester McMonkey McBean.
And I’ve heard of Your troubles. I’ve heard you’re unhappy.
But I can fix that, I’m the Fix-It-Up Chappie.

I’ve come here to help you.
I have what you need.
And my prices are low. And I work with great speed.
And my work is one hundred per cent guaranteed!”

Then, quickly, Sylvester McMonkey McBean
Put together a very peculiar machine.
And he said, “You want stars like a Star-Belly Sneetch?
My friends, you can have them for three dollars each!”

“Just pay me your money and hop right aboard!”
So they clambered inside. Then the big machine roared.
And it klonked. And it bonked. And it jerked. And it berked.
And it bopped them about. But the thing really worked!
When the Plain-Belly Sneetches popped out, they had stars!
They actually did. They had stars upon thars!

Then they yelled at the ones who had stars at the start,
"We're exactly like you! You cant tell us apart.
we're all just the same now you snooty old smarties!
and now we can come to your frankfurter parties."

"Good Greif!" groaned the ones who had stars at the first
“We’re still the best Sneetches and they are the worst.
But now, how in the world will we know”, they all frowned,
“If which kind is what, or the other way round?”

Then up came McBean with a very sly wink.
And he said, “Things are not quite as bad as you think.
So you don’t know who’s who. That is perfectly true.
But come with me, friends. Do you know what I’ll do?
I’ll make you, again, the best Sneetches on the beaches.
And all it will cost you is ten dollars eaches.”

“Belly stars are no longer in style”, said McBean.
“What you need is a trip through my Star-Off Machine.
This wondrous contraption will take OFF your stars
so you won’t look like Sneetches that have them on thars.”
And that handy machine
working very precisely
Removed all the stars from their tummies quite nicely.

Then, with snoots in the air, they paraded about.
And they opened their beaks and they let out a shout,
“We know who is who! Now there Isn’t a doubt.
The best kind of Sneetches are Sneetches without!”

Then, of course, those with stars got all frightfully mad.
To be wearing a star was frightfully bad.
Then, of course, old Sylvester McMonkey McBean
invited THEM into his Star-Off Machine.

Then, of course from THEN on, as you probably guess,
Things really got into a horrible mess.

All the rest of that day, on those wild screaming beaches,
The Fix-It-Up Chappie kept fixing up Sneetches.
Off again! On again!
In again! Out again!
Through the machines they raced round and about again,

Changing their stars every minute or two. They kept paying money.
They kept running through until the Plain nor the Star-Bellies knew
Whether this one was that one or that one was this one. Or which one
Was what one or what one was who.

Then, when every last cent of their money was spent,
The Fix-It-Up Chappie packed up. And he went.
And he laughed as he drove In his car up the beach,
“They never will learn. No. You can’t Teach a Sneetch!”

But McBean was quite wrong. I’m quite happy to say.
That the Sneetches got really quite smart on that day.
The day they decided that Sneetches are Sneetches.
And no kind of Sneetch is the best on the beaches.
That day, all the Sneetches forgot about stars and whether
They had one, or not, upon thars.

God

2010-06-22T10:43:00.017-04:00

My little universe of rainbow rocks,
that I collected all day
and arranged in a pleasing gradient,
washed away
with the tide.
And I felt like God
watching civilization dissolve.

but really-
Because it was sunny
and I was kind of light headed
and having trippy thoughts like:
'This is what God does,
watches and waits
for things to disappear;
but not in a bad way
because they came
from the ocean anyway..."
But there was garbage-
a balloon, cigarette butt,
bit of a bottle- in my rock collage
and I thought:
"I'm going to let this pollution go out to sea...
because I'm not allowed to interfere
with the integrity of my creation...
just because its being washed away
doesnt mean I have to dismantle it in any way..."
and that was God too. And then I felt bad
because my philosophical meditation
probably killed a fish...
and that was God too...

(Photo of me: Molly Pelavin)

I just sit here and am sort of content. And I boil inside but I never boil over.

2010-06-20T16:31:00.017-04:00

This is the opening monologue.
so the only way that it will matter that I wrote this is if I tell you my story so that this pointlessness will matter to you.
So that I will matter to you.
So the movie/play that follows will be all about me and then somehow the fact that that opening monologue is so ‘me like’ will become genius writing.

Who are you? Who, katie, who are you talking to????!!!!

If
A
Tree
Falls
In the woods
And no one is there to here it
Does
It
Make
a
sound???!!!!

If a tree falls in the woods and no one is there to hear it and it hears a bird while its falling…. Does that bird make a sound?... that is the question.

I am the falling tree and I am about to hit the ground without making a sound…. Actually, in fact, I think that I don’t even have to fall, physics don’t have to apply to me now… im just, fallen. The next person who arrives and sees me will see a fallen tree not a standing one but I never fell. I just… what?.
Nothing.
The next person who sees me will name me ‘fallen’
And the last person who saw me had named me ‘standing’

No
No
That’s not it either….

I am not standing tree or fallen tree. I am not anything…
The passing person will see ‘standing’
The next passing person will see ‘fallen.’
I am not anything at all if I cannot hear myself and solipsize myself into existence by being the tree that heard the tree fall in the forest…

I am now listening to, and bringing into existence, the sound of the air conditioner. The sound of my keys typing. I love the sound of keys typing.
I also hate it. It reminds me of being ignored.

The sound of birds outside the window, the sound of… I pause to listen…. I hear the air conditioner and birds outside the window.

I’m editing the timing of your listening, your reading. Do you get it? I’m using ellipses. Don’t ignore them…

that’s right….

Pause… yes.

There, I mean they’re, important.

This should be a movie.
A movie? What is happening on the screen right now?
Is the screen just the shot of the text, curser ticking, letters appearing…

Is the image of me, my face, my eyes ticking over the words as they tick across the page?

Intercut between the two?

Or is the image just the curser ticking and the letters appearing and the main subject of the scene (besides the meaning that you are assigning to these symbols as you read, besides what you take from the text), the thing that you are watching, the character that is being developed in front of you is not me, not the me that is the one you are learning about through your careful interpreting of letters.
No
The subject of this scene is the letters W R I T E
Being backspaces sloppily and replaced with the letters R I G H T about a paragraph ago, where I wrote, what is happening on the screen write… w-r-i-t w- r- I w-r w r r-i r-i-g r-i-g-h r-i-g-h-t now.

Gosh that took me way to long to figure out how to format so that you would get it.
Because its not a movie.
I’ve already decided that this will be a blog.
I’ve already decided to leave my desk and go back to my bedroom, where my internet wire is, and hook myself up to internet and put this on my blog.
I guess I've figured out who ‘you’ are.
I guess you are some combination of Mollly, John and my mother… and hopefully the rest of you, who look like that shot I described earlier- eyes ticking across a screen interpreting symbols and gaining meaning… you look like little lights that tick on in the dark when I post this….
For some reason the way i imagine you is: sitting at desks in sunlight…

Ill just let you know that I've deleted the particularly narcissistic beginning of this so that none of you will know how ridiculous I feel. I’ve also deleted most of the curses… except the completely necessary ones…

Dear mommy,
I’m sorry I didn’t call you back this morning
I was busy watching ‘the pursuit of happyness’ because I got it from swaptree(great site. Get one!) but I have to send it back because I gave the book that I was supposed to swap it for to goodwill.
If I had a car I would go to goodwill and buy the book for three dollars and swap it because I really want to keep that movie now… because of the special features mostly… it was directed by an Italian man who Will Smith sought out and hired to direct the film because Will Smith saw some of this man’s movies and wanted the ‘emotional tone’ that this Italian director incorporated… and so Will hired him…
And I like that…
Dear john…
Ha! That’s the title of that chick flick movie that was out for like one second because no one went to see it… even though it had Amanda seyfried in it and she looks like a baby and I have this theory that we think people are beautiful the more childlike they look and she looks like a baby… like actually…
Anyway…
John, lets go to six flags… molly has to go before the weekend….
Dear mollly,
In our dorm room we will have starry ceilings and we will have all sorts of odd light fixtures that we will become pros at dismantling in time for each room inspection… and we will tell each other our dreams and we will have a toaster in the closet.
There’s a black plastic bag nodding its head in the air conditioner breeze… it looks like a duck, that’s why it has a head. the duck bag is sitting right next to…
Dear john
…the sword you gave me for my birthday…

this is a rock that i found on the beach in Peconic.
i think it looks like a bloody anatomical heart... as opposed to a valentine.

Aimee Bender's short story 'Fugue"

2010-06-15T08:25:00.005-04:00

I close Aimee's book with my finger inside it and put my chin on the top of the book and look over and ask
"Want to hear the best two sentences ever?" i sort of stutter it because halfway through i wonder if its actually two sentences and i realize that 'two sentences' doesnt sound like such a short thing. i want her to think its a short thing so shell let me tell it to her.
she looks up so i tell her.
"i think, maybe he hasn't even noticed that I'm gone. But I have."
(It is two sentences!)
She likes it. She smiles.
"She wrote a story called 'fugue'"
"bugs?"
"fugue." i think this is the best title ever... or most poignant one.
"okay," she says "go back in." she means 'into the book' she means 'stop making me pretend to be listening to you.'
this doesnt really bother me... i promise.
so i open my notebook and write this. and about ten minutes later, I'm now typing it up. Its been about thirteen minutes now in which i haven't had to talk...

its strange that june is the sixth month.
six months seems like a longer amount of time than i feel like I've spent in 2010.
dash- oh still flows out of my pen before i remember that its now dash- one- oh. In theory, it seems like six months should be long enough to cure me of that...

New Book

2010-06-14T23:54:00.001-04:00

i discovered Aimee Bender this afternoon.
Hello. i said to Aimee.
Aimee, blue and papery and between two floppy covers, did not answer directly, instead she looked at me out of the corner of her yellow-font eye and confessed to having a boy named paul locked in her closet

2010-06-09T00:40:00.002-04:00

"the Play" from katie oscar on Vimeo.

quite well... crazy actually

2010-06-07T16:37:00.006-04:00

Im sewing a Duvet cover. Ive spread the quilt-like patturn out on the floor.
its made of two sheets. one sheet is white and has some white embroidery and some white lace...
one sheet is white with small blue flowers... the sheet with blue flowers is flannel and old... so soft because its flannel and so soft because its old.

i cut them up, into squares and rectangles and stripes and arranged them like a queen size comforter sized collage on the floor.
and this will be the second day that im spending sitting in the collage with a seam of it turned backwards and upside down across my lap.

The needle that im sewing with is blackened on the tip; no doubt because my mom used it at one point to remove a splinter from my brothers or my finger...

At some point in my training as a human being i picked up the piece of subtlety that tells me that this should be symbolic... this blackened, sterilized, poisen, or pain removing tool

that im using now to build a blanket.
that im using now to build a thing.
to entertain myself
to put something into my days
to put a splinter back into my finger
because thats where the interest is...

Dont worry im not pricking my fingers with it on purpose...

im entertaining myself with the idea of fourteen year old brides to be, sewing wedding sheets and wedding shoes and wedding gifts, for their doweries, out of silk, for their husbands, for their children, for their beds.

the truth is that these thoughts float by me while i sew.
i see the thoughts, i put them in neat words, i think about maybe blogging about them
but as soon as i do
they become lies
isnt that odd.
maybe that will change one day.
but for now,
that fact that i think in words, and sometimes in diologue
that fact that i think in themes
and sometimes in rhyms
or rythym
or alliteration
...though never in spelling or punctuation
these facts make everything quite... well crazy actually.

who am i thinking for?

and thats why i sew.

and paint the walls.

painting the walls is the best...

i painted the walls while i waited to hear from purchase, to hear weather or not i had gottan in.

and when i got waitlisted i kept painting

and when i got accepted i stopped.

and the the kitchen was white.

and now people visit and say 'you know, your house feels like a beach house.'

and now theyll visit my bedroom and say 'i like your quilt.' and ill say 'thank you, i made it.' and they'll say 'no way!'

or maybe ill wait for them to sit on my bed.

theyll lie down and their toe or maybe a clip in their hair will get snagged on my loose stitching

and then theyll say "omgod did you make this?!" and ill smile with my lips together in that way that makes me feel like a little girl, and ill nod and get into the bed with them.

...and as long as we're being comoletely truthful, after that i will probably bring my laptop under the covers with us and read them this blog post... and depending on how truthful im feeling that day, i will either omit this last bit, or leave in it.

At Gloaming

2010-06-04T10:23:00.018-04:00

INT. CAR- 5:00.
KATRINA:we're going to have like one hour of lake.
KATIE: but we'll be there at sunset.
KATRINA:Gloaming
KATIE: magic hour. its the best time to film, there's skylight not sunlight... wait. is gloaming a real word?
KATRINA:yes.
KATIE: use it in a sentence.
KATRINA:...
KATIE: is it like 'at the gloaming?' or 'at the gloaming of the day?' or... like 'in the morning.' is it 'in the gloaming?'
KATRINA:..at gloaming.
KATIE: at the gloaming?
KATRINA: at gloaming.
(first of all... dont have characters named katrina and katie in the same screenplay.)

EXT. LAKE- AT GLOAMING
She floats on her back and looks at the sky. All she can see is sky.
(never say that in a screenplay... it doesnt mean anything... 'all she can see..' how do we know that thats all she can see? how are you going to show it in an image? All-she-can-see is not a thing... i suppose saying:
POINT OF VIEW SHOT: up at the sky, only the sky, nothing but sky... that might be acceptable.)
she has positioned herself directly in this spot, with much arm paddling and eye focusing (i suppose this could be narration...)
NARRATOR: she has positioned herself intentionally in this spot, in the center of this bit of lake, a good distance away from the shore, and a equal distance from the little rock island.
HIGH ANGLE- shes floating on her back, squinting at the pink and blue and white sky.
HER, V.O. Floating in a reflection of the sky is almost as good as floating in the sky. i like it when i think about water and realize that its strange. i like realizing that things are strange.

KATIE: put your face really close to the surface

they swam towards the shore,

KATIE:see how it looks?...

It looks like glass... but that’s not new.
It looks like hot moving liquid glass, but you know that... but think about it.
How completely impossible is water?
There's so much of it... and it moves and you can fall through it...

and then back on the shore, on the sheet, eating pasta with our fingers, quickly before the others get back from the tiny rock island. eating with our fingers
KATRINA: before civilization returns.

and we ate cheese and ginger snaps and someone defined the term: Metafiction
'...more than fiction. beyond fiction' she said

EXT. THE END OF A PIER- DAY
They sit as far forward on the edge of the platform as they dare.
they have not removed their shoes.
they rest thier shoes on the top of the water and let the water float the rubber souls , and their feet go up and down. the water feels like plastic, like a fabric parachute or a trampoline
and she imagines how much more room there would be in the world if we could walk on water.

2010-06-04T09:46:00.000-04:00

Artificial Intelligence

2010-05-27T12:29:00.010-04:00

She stands at the top of the hill. Below her there are bulldozers digging the foundation for a new holiday inn. The same lot used to house a roller rink; the kind of charming 90’s attraction that was a perfect place for birthday parties, where charming 90’s children wearing floral leggings with stretched out baggy knees, raced around in circles, staring at the flapping stretched out sleeves of the of the 90’s boys who always remained the same distance ahead.
There were girls who realized that they could turn around, catch their targets by skating in the opposite direction. Those girls were the first to be kissed... suddenly, like crashing, as the boys came around the turn.

They Circled around the skinny little girls with the muscular arms and legs, the ones who were flat chested even at fourteen. They wore tight clothes and were probably figure skaters, here to show off their spins and arabesques, protected from the others by orange traffic cones. They should have looked clumsy in their chunky roller blades but instead they looked balanced out, their strong arms matched their heavy feet.
There was a concession stand and a dark arcade. There were signs that recommended that you take off your skates before entering the arcade and if a staff member cought you skating on the rug you’d have to sit down where you were, take off your skates, and walk around in your white socks which glowed like your teeth in the black light.
She remembers how the wheels of her skates felt different against the bottoms of her feet when she skated on the carpet. Like walking on the grass feels different after jumping on a trampoline for hours.
She liked to imagine that the arcade had a wood floor and the rink had a rug, or, better yet: there should be many different rinks all with different textured floors. And the skaters would be blindfolded and have to guess what they were skating over.
She watches the construction and decides that she blames video games. Video games are why everyone stopped going to the roller rink, that’s why it was closed and abandoned.
There was a sign on the fence that marked it as a condemned building. There was a hole in the fence that was easy to climb through and a broken window leading into an office where the door was off its hinges and then you were inside. Inside a huge black space, empty except for the disconnected black wires poking out of the floor and walls where all the machines had been removed, and once you’d gone there were beer bottles, broken glass and graffiti.

The bulldozer down below pauses, mid way through lifting its loud of dusty dirt. The machines head, on its long jointed neck, looks up at the girl.
This is the moment, she realizes, when it has developed artificial intelligence. Inside its brain of pure logic and reason, it now knows that, for the safety of the planet, all humans must be eliminated.
The girl does not have time to escape. Behind the eyes of the dragon-like killing machine, a computer screen that sees everything in a scale of dark reds and light reds, zooms in, onto the image of the girl. Little numbers and arrows appear all around her, indicating her heart rate, temperature, eye movement, turning her to a diagram.
The girl begins to run. She’s not in very good shape and right away she knows she wont get far.
The machine untangles itself, calmly, all joints, all elbows and shoulders. It bounds forward towards the bottom of the hill, weaving between the piles of dirt that turned to hills when grass sprouted all over them, when construction was halted last summer.
The machine weaves or rolls around, towards the girl, up the hill. Machines never hurry. They calculate how fast they have to go to gain on you and they maintain that speed until they catch you.
And maybe this is the way its supposed to be, she thinks, as her sandels, not at all made for running, slap against the sidewalk and then slap against her heels, maybe we're supposed to be caught.

Stop Motion For The Summer

2010-05-15T10:03:00.002-04:00

int. Bedroom- night

A thin man lies on his back on the floor. the floor is sand. the man's whole body glows. He is looking at the ceiling where faces and hands protrude from the plaster like there are people trapped inside it. Wherever his eyes look there is a spotlight. When he blinks everything goes dark.

he sits up and looks at the wall and the light reveals a door. He stands and goes to the door, opens it and walks away into a void.

ext. void

He walks. his feet are in sand. a BLACK THING comes and walks beside him. It's eyes are shiny.

BLACK THING: excuse me.

the glowing man looks at him.

BLACK THING: sorry. but would you mind looking up?...

the glowing man looks up and sees stars.

BLACK THING: thank you.

the glowing man looks back at him.

BLACK THING: no no. please. just a few moments more.

the glowing man looks up again and the black thing turns to look up at the stars.

BLACK THING: I knew they were there. Will you look at them, for me, forever?

the glowing man looks back at the black thing, surprised and scared. he shakes his head. then he runs away. the black thing calls after him. and runs after him.

BLACK THING: no! stop!

the black thing grabs the glowing man around the neck and holds his face pointing his eyes up.

the glowing man breaks away and runs away. the black thing falls to his knees and cries as the light dissapears he dissapears.

INT. BEDROOM- NIGHT

the glowing man opens the door and runs in. closes the door behind him. and leans against it. he slides down to the ground and pulls his eyes shut with his hands.

ext. house

the house is glowing from the inside the light blinks. flickers.

INT. BEDROOM- NIGHT

the glowing man is digging into the sand. he digs a hole and goes into it. his light fades as he gets deeper and deeper.

EXT. HOUSE

the light fades.

INT. BEDROOM- NIGHT

THe hole in the floor is glowing but the light is fading and then finally it is gone.
The trapped faces and bodies in the walls and ceiling stare, unseeing.

fin.

The Day After

2010-05-12T10:28:00.009-04:00

Theyre all slumped in easy chairs or standing on the rediculously long line line, waiting for coffee, swaying from side to side, leaning their heads on their shoulders and rolling their red eyes at the panicking baristas.
Theyre blinking in the f22 sunlight, groaning and slowly remembering where each of their bruises came from.
So many of them were on drugs last night... I hear little pieces of their conversations- little tale-tale phrases.

"my first, first time? or my first time getting high?"

"I really like intellectual girls." says the smelly looking boy with the stained sweatshirt. He's slouched in his chair holding his coffee on his lap. "I like girls who control me... It must have been really obvious cuz I had a huge grin on my face, but I wish she didnt live in New Hampshire..."

The actress-girl sitting at the high table next to the toaster is wearing fake glasses... I think. I've never seen her wear glasses before.

A tall boy enters, makes his way over to the couple thats seated at the table behind me. I can't see his face as he begins to recount his last night's adventures. "...dropped my keys down the fucking elevator shaft. I didn't even know that that was possible."

"how do you spell pretentious?" Molly asks me across the table. I tell her that i don't know. just wing it.

"Boys, girls anything... he would hook up with anything!"

"He was so funny. We were on our way to ihop and he kept turning around and asking me 'how many kids do you want to have?'"

"Down the fucking elevator shaft!" "I've never heard of that..."

"he has to form a conversation, he can't just say something."
"i dont care anymore."
"honestly?"
"...its his swag! He just stands there and doesnt say anything!"
"last night was the first time i heard him say more than three things."

"I wasnt faking it. I just felt it."

Everytime two people enter, walking close together, I cant help but assume that they just woke up in the same bed.
They might not actually know each other. Maybe one just held the door for the other and then as they walked in they seemed to be arriving as a pair... I have no idea, but I imagine them lying on the same pillow ten minutes ago, an inch away from the other's face. Girls and boys, boys and boys, girls and girls... They all might have spent the night with the person walking beside them now.

"Right back there and make a right." A girl just got directions to the bathroom. Now I know she doesn't go to school here.

Done

2010-05-05T23:56:00.002-04:00

Im done and my room is almost empty.
my mom came yesterday and i sent three bins of clothes and suitcase of books home with her.
im moving out sunday and ill have a lot less stuff cuz one trip has been made already.

my closet is empty.
a lot of things that should be hanging in it are in drawers because i sent all my hangers home.

im done with all my work.
my one final is done. i analyzed Won Kar Wei (sp?)'s In The Mood For Love and said that the cigarette he was smoking was like the truth he was speaking and said that as the smoke blew from his lips and filled the air, the filmmaker focused on it and showed us shots of it because it was a metephore for 'the truth.' i wrote four and half pages in my blue book.

I forgot the title of Igmar Bergmen's 'Persona' i wrote "perception' oops.

im done.

i have to transfer my film to digital.

its strange that if i dont transfer it and i take it home on film it will be stuck there until next year.

i mean... its there but i dont have a projector at home so i have no way to let it out so it might as well not exist.

i have to transfer it.

'your class has cinematography down." said the sophmore after watching mine and molly's films.

thank you sophmore. i appreciate that.

'your film would be the best one in the class if you reedited it." said a different sophmore. she said shed help me.

"it doesnt make sense but i like the tone. i like it i just dont know what happened" said another upperclassmen.

i love that. i like that my work can stand on its own without even something as nessisary as sense... its still a thing.

"if that was a filmfestival you would win." Said my friend, not a film student but i appreciate it anyway... heh.

gah.

sophmore year... video...

video!!! im scared.

im asleep.

goodnite.

film scars

2010-04-28T15:48:00.004-04:00

once upon a time
i did that thing that theyve been telling us from the very begining not to do
and i tried to stop the split reel with my hand and i sliced my finger in two places.
but i like it
cuz ill have a scar to show next years freshmen. "look," ill say "dont try to stop a rewind with your hand. youll loose a finger."
and i also like it cuz i get to wear a blue band aid on it.
but it hurt.

The First Draft Of the First Bit of my Freshmen Film

2010-04-25T10:38:00.002-04:00

filming the parking lot scenes

2010-04-11T15:02:00.002-04:00

(photos: Raina)

Not Editing

2010-04-09T19:52:00.005-04:00

Behind a sign on the door that says "im editing in here. go away" i am actually not editing. i am sitting on the editing room floor, writing this poem.

Small Teeth

There's this place in a city somewhere
The part of the city where
The buildings are tight together
And the washing hangs on lines like street fair banners
From your window to my window on a pulley that if pulled the right way
Brings my clothes to me
And the wrong way sends my clothes to you.

It's spring in this part of the city and
Cherry trees that only wish they were cherry trees
They're not really
They're really just pink
which cherries aren't
The cherry trees drop petals but it's fine
They always have more... always.

And the the petals get everywhere
But mostly they gather
In piles in the corners
That the trash cans make with the walls.

After you buzz up and I buzz you inside.
I grin so widely that
I have to cover my mouth even though
There's no one to see
I'm afraid you'll notice how small my teeth are.

And the minute you open the door you can smell
The sweet and stale smell of emulsion on reversal film
Which i know I've told you before
Reminds me of 'The Day After'
Spent in a basement room, looking at the projection screen
Or at the back of the boy's head.
Wondering if he knew that that had been my first kiss
And wondering what I was supposed to do.

And you hand me my whites
Which had ended up through your window
"Thats really just my excuse
For coming to see you." you say
And I smile and show you all my small teeth

Jumpsuit

2010-04-08T14:51:00.002-04:00

In this highly hypothetical situation a hypothetical person bought a blue and white striped romper/jumper/ one-piece piece of clothing at the salvation army.
she, the hypothetical person, is wearing it right now.
she likes it.
it looks like summer and a sailboat in the 50's.
when she sits down on the floor and leans over to type on her laptop which is also on the floor in front of her, the jumpsuit, being one piece, does not reveal any part of her but crack.
all in all is quite a wonderful article of clothing apart from the two tiny suspiciously brown stains on hem of the left leg.
but.
the reason i am telling her story, the hypothetical girl's story, is because she is afraid to wear the jumpsuit.
shes afraid of wearing a lot of things.
even things that look good.

its not that she is afraid of looking bad. its quite the opposite actually.

for some reason, that she has begun recently to blame on certain converstations and experiences with women in her childhood- this hypothetical girl is afraid of looking good.
isnt that odd?
i think so.

the sound of the thoughts that accompany this fear are mostly about people noticing that she is trying to look good.
or trying in any way to be anything really.

whats wrong with trying? i asked her quite recently and she said that she didnt think that there was anything wrong with trying. that in fact she loves people who try. it makes them seem alive when they try, try to look good, try to climb a mountain, try to dive off a high dive...
anything that they cannot do that they are trying to do is beautiful to the girl. but somehow in herself... even though shes gottan over most of the problems with looking like shes trying... for instance: she cannot climb a mountain but would not be embarressed for you to see her try to climb a mountain or paint with oil paint of load a bolex camera...

for some reason clothing is still hard...
but
just like 'fat ankels" being her least favorite thing about herself
she supposes that
being afraid to wear a jumpsuit is not the worst thing to be afraid of.

for instance... shed rather feel this fear than a fear of spiders..
or a fear of feet.
she knows people who are afraid of feet and she knows people who are afraid of spiders..

she wonders if effects thier sunny days just as overpoweringly as fear of trying to look good and actually... she doubts that it does.

Making the Monster

2010-03-27T18:31:00.002-04:00

im typing on my white mac keys with black fingers... ive been making a monster.
a huge black monster with hands where its eyes should be.
and angel wings... white feathers hot glued to chicken wire attached on hinges to a harness that looks like a gun holster.
im making a movie...
the movie is about a play.
my main character is the costume designer/ creature designer for the play.
the character/ the filmmaker (heh me) makes these creatures and brings them to the theater and the actors try on their wings and devil horns and yeah....

i ran out of hot glue so i have to wait to get a ride to AC more the get more.
i really need to learn to drive.
i used to say i didnt need a license because i got along so well with my parents that i could always ride int eh car with them... that was a stupid thing to say.
because now im nineteen and i dont have a license and i need more hot glue.

"and i do believe its true that there are roads left in both of our shoes and if the silence takes you then i hope it takes me too."
im listening to last years playlists on my computer. because i havent been on this computer in like a year because ive had my lap top at school with me...

"i want to float higher above waves of electric wire and stare down onto the street. i see you drunk with cute glazed eyes. telling me about the girl i should meet someday."

fog

2010-03-22T08:27:00.003-04:00

This morning i woke up and my window- which is bigger than the average dorm room window- because this room used to a be lounge- so the window is the whole wall- the window was all white.
Copmletely white with fog. i couldnt see the other square brick dorm across teh quad. i couldnt see anything but the branches of the tree that is right outside the glass.
and then i sat a up a little more and i could just barely make out the outline of the building across the quad and the tress across the quad and now i can look down and see the grass...
and i wish it were all white again.
i like being nowhere.

i wrote a story a million years ago (like three or four years ago) it was about a girl named Danya who lived in The Mist. The Mist seperated two halves of an island and the people on one half, the warm half, dont know that the people on the other half, the cold half, exist. and vice versa.

Danya is the only one who goes back and forth because she is the only one who knows that there is another side of the island and she is the only one who knows how to get through the mist. as far as the people are concerned the mist is one end of the world and the sea is the other half.

This is the story, or the introduction to the story. I never wrote more than an introduction. i didnt care what happened my worlds i just created them and set down the realities and characters and rules... Then lost interest.
I Wrote this when i was fifteen. i know that because the girl in the story is fifteen.... enjoy.

To the south the River Folk are stirring and stepping out onto the beach, the children are bathing in the warm ocean laughing and splashing each other in the pink rays of the sunrise.
To the north the people of ice and snow, the Grenyens, are reawakening the last nights fires and shivering in the never ending cold. The sun does not shine on them, it is hidden behind the grey clouds which promises more snow before the day is out.
A thin barrier of mist is all the separates the to different countries, the are in fact part of the same island that, if traversed in a very straight line, would take no more then three weeks to cross on foot. But the people know nothing of each other.
Within the mists there is nothing, nothing but swirling whiteness, and in the precise middle of the fog, a sleeping fifteen year old girl.
She is the only one, as far as she knows, to move between the countries. She sleeps on the ground with no shelter and no blanket but the mist, the ground feels like snow and water, and ice and sand, not warm or cold. She sleeps with her head on her arms and her legs curled close to her body.
Her hair is black and curling like that of the river folk, her hair is the only thing that seems solid about her.
Her skin is the bright white of the mist and like that of the Grenyens, and her shift is of the lightest white silk similar to those worm by the River folk but they wear their’s decorated and in the most beautiful colors.
There is no shift in light or any animal call to mark to coming of the morning, but Danya knows and she is awake.
She stands and looks around. Hanging around her neck is a tiny silver compass, though she never looses her bearings the compass is a nessasary precaution in a world where nothing looks the same from day to day.
Kneeling next to the spot where she was sleeping she places a hand on the ground and finds a thin rope of what looks like solid gass or liquid metal, she pulls it up and a trap door opens at her feet. She slips inside and closes the door quickly after her, so that the mist cannot fill the cave.
Inside hanging on the walls are clothes from every island she has visted. She steps out of the white shift and hangs it on an empty hook.
She stands naked before the many garments thinking which she should wear and where she should visit today.
She decides on the river folk and slips into their small shirt a flowing skirt of blue cotton. She also takes the furs of the north and places them in a bag for later.
She leaves the cave and secures the trap door. Standing upon it she checks the compass unnessasarily, out of habit, and sets off. She’ll spend the morning in the warm water under palm trees and the afternoon hunting in the snow.

Spring

2010-03-16T20:02:00.006-04:00

One of the first times that i fell in love i was fifteen.
He was the keyboard player in the celtic canadian group that sang at the music festival at Green Meadow.
It rained on the festival that year and i was wearing a dark blue dress with a yellow and lighter blue patturn, a tight elastic threaded top and a ruffle around the skirt.
i wasnt wearing a bra, i remember that, because the tight elastic threaded top of the dress was tight and worked like a bra and i was dancing, barefoot in the muddy grass in the rain.
and the bands wernt playing because they were afraid of being electricuted because of the rain.
and the kid, the keyboard playing canadian danced in the mud with me.
at first he didnt want to. I said "dance with me!" and he said that he couldnt get wet because then when he went onstage it would look like he was sweating. And i laughed at that. He was standing under the tent, staying dry
and then
after a little while, of him watching me dance
he danced with me.
and held my hands and spun around.
i remember he was eighteen.
i remember i thought that was way to old to think anything about me, i felt so little.
i remember i thought that he liked me.
i remember when it dawned one me that eighteen year olds were allowed to like fifteen year olds and allowed to dance with them.
and i remember my legs were covered in mud.
and when he went onstage he did look like he was sweating and i felt bad.

and they played the song that i asked them to play. they had done it earlier and i really liked it and asked him if they would do it again. and they did.

and then he left, at the end of the day
and even though i was pretty sure that i would marry him
im not sure about that anymore.
i dont remember his name.
i spose i could google it.
the band is moderately legit now.

Sunny Day On The High Line

2010-03-16T19:32:00.005-04:00

"look molly, its simba."

Kid: bla bla..something something.. reshoot... bla bla character.
me: are they talking about film?
john: yeah ive been listening to them for ten minutes
me: are they flim kids?
molly: yeah. NYU. i heard them say NYU
me: (sitting up and looking over) omgod! they all have filmmaker glasses. all of them. all the same glasses!
(they did. one girl and four boys, all the same rectangular thick framed glasses)

me:am i grinding your hip bones into the ground?
molly: i dont really know where my hip bones are right now.

...sunlight is blue.

2010-03-15T11:08:00.007-04:00

Today its raining in a misty way and i have no classes and i have to write a screenplay and my garbage smells like rotten rice.

Yesterday Plum, the beta fish that molly bought for her film, died. We came into the soundstage and plum was swimming upside down and then plum stopped swimming and we were sure he was dead and then he started twitching his fins and then we flushed him town the toilet.
And i thought. We could have left Plum anywhere... in the water fountain, on the floor in the hallway...
i thought: fish can only be in water. and about how odd that is and about how id never want to touch a fish in the air but how its okay to carry one in a bowl and about how thin a bowl is and how if i was swimming i wouldnt mind touching a fish.

Tomorrow i will eat the second half of my avocado for breakfast.

Today i ate the first half and i ate pieces of rosemary bread.

Tonight i will have finished my screenplay and sent it to my class so they can read it.

Tonight i will wear pants to sleep so that I'm not cold again.

Last night i was cold.

The screenplay is about a boy who lives in a college town but doesnt go to college.
He's friends with a girl who goes to the college.
He's kind of in love with her but maybe not.
The asignment for the screenplay was "a flaw."
i think my character's flaw is that he doesnt know what he wants to do.
The second half of the asignment, which i am pretending to have forgottan about, is "the worst thing that could happen to a person with this flaw." so put a person into the worst case scenerio for someone who has the flaw that you've given your person...
Worst case scenerio...
actually, it might work.
if my guy's flaw is that he doesnt know what he wants than maybe the worst thing that could happen to him would be that he falls in love with someone who knows what she wants.
i mean, the bigger picuture is that its not the worst thing, that she will actually solve his flaw for him, maybe, help him want things...
but as far as he's converned, from the inside of his flaw, he's pretty content to be where he is and he doesnt want someone pointing out to him that he shouldnt want to be where he is.

Today i will waste 80 feet of 16mm because on saturday i shot only a tiny bit of a roll because im silly. and i have to give the camera back and so i obviously have to take my film out so i have to finish the roll.
im going to film the rain.

Angel Wings and Sea Gods

2010-03-08T10:10:00.003-05:00

Regression

2010-02-26T16:14:00.006-05:00

when it snows here we all forget how old we are.
actually the truth is that we remember how old we are and we scream in terror at the thought of being so old and we run outside and race away from our twenties and back to our toddler years and we build snow men and snow forts.
we put on our mittens before our jackets so that our sleeves are on the outside of our mittens and no snow or cold gets it.
we ask our friends to zip our zippers so we dont have to take off our mittens.
we pull our socks out of our boots, over our jeans. we let our hair fall into our eyes. we let our cheeks turn red.

everyone is cuter in the snow... i think.
red cheeks, frizzy hair, big smiles, sniffling noses, bright colored hats.

im watching them from my window.

on the last snow day i built a chair. molly, jordan, molly and i built a chair.
in the back of my mind i was eight years old and grinning. in the front of my mind i was trying to build the best most chair like chair out snow.
it became an assignment.
a few yards away some kids were building a snow fort. molding snow bricks inside a plastic bin. we are civilized, we have taken an architecture corse, we know about the indiginus peoples of the south pole, we know they built igloos with snow bricks.
look at our technology. this is how we have fun in the snow.

and it is fun.
but... in a differnt sort of way.

A Tiny FIlm

2010-02-23T18:20:00.002-05:00

this is the film i blogged about a few months ago.
i video taped the screen of the steenbeck. hence the ridiculously bad quality.

The Wolf With The Red Roses

2010-02-18T09:03:00.010-05:00

Last night, in john's car, while we were lost somewhere in westchester, trying, half heartedly, to get back to campus (half heartedly because we both enjoy being lost and had admitted that, as long as we didnt have to pee and as long as the car had a tank of gsa, we didnt need to be found just yet) he played me a meatloaf song that started with this silly little exchange that he told me is supposed to be marriage vows.

man: On a hot summer night, would you offer your throat to the wolf with the red roses?
woman:Will he offer me his mouth?
man: Yes!
woman: Will he offer me his teeth?
man: Yes!
woman: Will he offer me his jaws?
man: Yes!
woman: Will he offer me his hunger?
man: Yes!
woman: Again, will he offer me his hunger?
man:Yes!
woman: And will he starve without me?
man: Yes!
woman: And does he love me?
man: Yes!
woman: yes!
man: On a hot summer night would you offer your throat to the wolf with the red roses?
woman: Yes!
man: i bet you say that to all the boys.

And what i think about it is this:
Will she starve with being eaten? Will he offer her his throat? Does she love him?

And if this question had been posed to me, i would have answered: Well, Sir, it would depend entirely on the amount of swagger of the wolf in question.
If the wolf has enough swagger for my taste, than sure, sure, have my throat.
And by the way, what im measuring when i measure swagger is this: The probability that the wolf will be able to swallow and stomach me and the probability that he will choke.

Starbucks

2010-02-16T17:02:00.005-05:00

"what should i write about?"
"whats it for?" he asks
"for thinking about something other than my film."
"im telling you, blog about me." she says from the next chair. we're all sitting in easy chairs in starbucks, all behind our matching apple logos. we're sharing one charger cord. we're both at 19% battery.
"why?" i ask her. "why should i blog about you?"
"im ferociously inspiring. do it..." i read that line, '"im ferociously inspiring. do it...' out loud, back to her, as i i type it here.
"tell me you typed that and didnt just recount it from memory."
"no" I say and type at the same time "the only things i can recount from memory are Gandalf monologues."
"do one."
"are you serious?"
"yeah."
i cant bring myself to say it out loud so ill type it here: "so do all who live to see such times but that is not for them to decide. all you have to decide is what to do with the time that is given to you...
"what did you do to your hand?" i ask him, out loud.
"i cut my hand with a hatchet, while chopping wood. isnt that the most manly injury ever?"
"getting shot is the most manly... no. they're like on the same level." that was the boy on the next couch. hes trying to write a poem for an application. "im not a poet." hes staring into space, i wander if hes thinking in witty rhyming cuplets. hes the only Dell around our short flat table. "how do you spell damaged?" he asks the girl in the blue rain boots whos reading a hardcover book without a jacket and playing with a piece of her blonde ponytail.
"op. katie i want that car." shes looking out the window, "look behind you, the yellow jeep. a yellow jeep with all the jeep accessories. thats my dream car."

theres a girl on the starbucks line wearing a short orange jacket and skinny jeans. she has long dirty blond hair thats kind of wavy and thrown over her shoulder and coght in her orange hood.
shes standing with all her weight on one foot and holding her wallet in the hand thats hanging by her side.
im watching her and pretending she is sophia.
all that, all that description, that all looks like sophia...
sophia moved to san francisco this year.
she defferred all her college admissions and moved to San Francisco.
"what are you going to do?" we asked her.
"work. make money. build up my portfolio."
...be a real perosn.

i throw that phrase around.
"a real person."
basically what ive decided constitutes reality has a lot to do with independence and fast moving decision making. spontinaity.

"how do you spell spontinaity?"
"i dont know."
"its okay. i never spell things right on my blog. my readers dont expect it from me." i smile in a pretentious way
"i could never blog."
"what?"
"i could never blog. i dont have that thirst to connect with other people."
"by the way im typing everything you say" i say and type.
"o i figured that out. thats why im not going to tell you the saddest story of my life... cuz youll write it down... what if i stop talking?"
"i dont know."
shes stopped talking.

"uhhh. im so hunry." she begins again. "theoretically if a person eats a chip they shouldnt be hungry anymore."

there are two acting students rehearsing a scene behind me.
as they memorize more and more of the diologue its gets more and more bizzare to listen to them. right now the girl is putting on her jacket, theyre getting ready to leave but shes still rattling off some argumentitive outburst, completely contrasting to the way shes nonchalantly zipping up her zipper.

driving

2010-02-12T10:31:00.003-05:00

in my dream i was driving on the highway between home and the mall. i was going to see a movie. i was excited.
but the sun was shining in my eyes and i suddenly i couldnt see.
i was driving but the sun was so bright in my eyes (i realized later as i woke up that, in real life, the sun was shining on my face through the window) i coudnt open my eyes, even to stare into the sun, it was as thought my unconcious brain functions had taken over, for my eye's preservation. "you will not look into the sun, it will hurt you." was what i imagined my brain was thinking and it continued to squint and shut my eyes while i tried to watch the road.
-ive had dreams like this before. dreams where the fact that i am asleep, the feeling that my real body is feeling of my eyes being closed, begins to infiltrate the dream and in the dream some circumstance arrises where i cannot open my eyes.
anyway, i was driving and i couldnt open my eyes and i kept thinking, i should really pull over but i cant pull over because i cant see how to pull over, maybe i should stop but im on the highway and if i stop the people behind me will crash into me.
so

as i began to wake up i began, right away, to analyze the dream.
i dont like analyzing dreams by 'meanings' that someone else has assigned to them. usually i like to analyze my dreams by the way they make me feel. i mean, they are inside my brain so they are created by me so the analyzations should be created by me as well.
now, that said, there are some symbols that i like. and that make sense to me and that my brain, uses (i suppose) to communicate with itself because the brain that creates the dreams is the same one that is going to analyze them later... so anyway- my brain likes driving as a symbol.
driving is supposed to symbolize life. which is pretty straight forward.
if you are driving you are driving you life.
if you are in the passenger seat take note of who it is who is driving you life.
if you are about to go over a cliff and you are driving... thats interesting. if you are about to go over a cliff and someone else is driving... thats interesting.
anyway
i am driving down a highway very very fast, blinded by sunlight, unable to see, but still feeling, under the fear and confusion, intense frustration that this really extreme emergency of a situation is preventing me from getting to the mall where the movie that i want to see is happening.
that was the feeling of the dream...
this huge life altering possibly deathly situation and im so incredibly frustrated that it seems i will have to take myself off the road and not make it to my movie, or die and not make it to my movie.

and even though dying is something that im scared of, the bigger fear was that i would die and not make it to the movie.
anyway
i think that i made that point like eight times.

i woke up and wondered if the dream was about the stress of planning and making my freshmen final film.
but i think its more about even though im pretty clueless about what im doing, im still blindly hurtling towards it really really fast pretending that i know how to drive, pretending that i know how to drive blind and pretending that im worried about dying. but really i have no idea what im doing, or how to do it and im definatly not afraid of anything... which is kinda strange.

Tattoo

2010-02-07T10:17:00.003-05:00

i dreamed i had a tattoo on my chest of an egyptian looking couple, facing eachother, like egyiptian drawings do, in profile.
a man and a woman, inside a ancient style border. they were both very narrow and they almost fit on the center of my chest.
my chest was disproportionate and too wide.
i was lying on the hill in front of the kindergarden building at green meadow.
i think the fall fair was going on.
i was lying on my back and leaning forward with just my neck, to look at the tattoo.
and i couldnt remember if it was real so i picked at it like one might scratch at a temporary tattoo.
instead of peeling or not peeling the lines of the tattoo started to lift out of my, leaving indentations where they peeled away.
as though they were metel strips that had been welded into these crevices in my skin, like i had been carved and then the lines of the carving had been filled with molten medal that then hardened but was still moldable, like wax.

i peeled the metel out and off and it left a crevice in my chest and i thought "what will my breasts be fastened to?"
because there was empty space under them, a dent, a reverse relief, in the shape of that couple facing eachother.

and then a boy ran down the hill and i quickly covered my chest with my shirt.
and the boy lay down on top of me
and told me that he was in love with me
and that he hoped that was okay with me
and did i want to try him out.

i dont remember what words he used but it was something like that like "please just give me a try, see if you like me."

and he asked if he could pull the rest of the metel out of me with his teeth, like that would turn him on. like he thought it was turn me on.
so i let him
and he bit at the metel strips and pulled them off me which didnt hurt but felt odd.

and i lay on the hill in front of the green meadow kindergarden bulding, while the fall fair was going on, while he was pulling metal out of me and i thought about how i would try very hard to love him, but i didnt now. not yet.

clean

2010-02-04T22:39:00.004-05:00

id like to be cleaner.
id like to not feel like my clothes are contaminating.
i don't know why me feet have started to smell and i dont know why there are red lines like scratches on my back.

in target i put on a leprican hat and it left green sparkles on my forehead, the tops of my cheeks, n the hood of my jacket and in my eyebrows.

tonight, while watching avatar for the second time, i left the theater to pee and ran down the hall so i wouldnt miss much of the film and while i was running on the black carpet between the red rope lights i realized that i was running because avatar makes me want to run. it makes me want to run to get somewhere to do somthing that i love.

the silly thing is that movies are what i love so i was running to get back to my seat to get back to the world in the screen. and the blue people in the movie are running to run because they love to climb in their trees and their running to teach jake sully how to run or shes running to leap and fall and shes falling to get to the ground to kill a animal to hunt.

id like to be more windswept.

i drank a sip of water from a water bottle on my dresser adn i realized that that water had been there for about two months and was probably dusty

dusty water

id like to be less dusty.

my hair grows in the winter. its grown at least an inch in three months.

i bought a silver ring with a moonstone in it.
i hope it doesnt turn my finger green.
im going to take a shower.
and pretend im a blue person in a water fall.
i hope i get cleaner.
i hope the red lines on my back go away.

crying

2010-02-02T11:33:00.003-05:00

we watched Adam yesterday.
It's about Adam who has aperbergers and Beth who doesnt. and how she takes care of him and how she loves him and how he, in every way possible, doesnt know what to do.
i cried.
the last time i cried in a movie
was the last time i saw Adam.
i dont cry in movies.
i dont cry a happiness and i dont cry at sadness.

what makes me cry in adam is when he is standing at his door, and Beth who invited him to go out, is calling to him from the hall, and he CANT he just CANT go.
he sits on the floor and opens his hands wide and stretches his fingers. and presses his palms against his face and he just cant go!

what makes me cry is the fear of everything!
but its not normal fear its literally fear of fear.
he has no idea what to do. he doesnt have an idea of an idea of what to do.

he literally paralyzed by nothing. but the lack of understanding.
all he does is misunderstand and be misunderstood. but as far as being misunderstood he doesnt even understand hes been misunderstood.

its the most heart wrenchingly solution-less situation.
but hes trying!
really really trying but
but
how do you try?
and how do you explain that youre trying and how do you try?

and this is how i used to feel when i didnt do my homework.
btw, mommy, this is how i used to feel.

i could tell you why i should do it.
i wanted to do it.
but, first of all. i didnt know how, i didnt understand, i was so fucking frustrated with the "you poeople" of the education system because they didnt follow common sense, and everything else that iw as feeling while i understood, because im smart because "albert einstien, thomas jefferson, motzart, they all had lots of imagination." i am smart and i know its rediculous to feel this way of this. just do the fucking homework, just open the door.
but i CANT!
so i sit on the floor and press my strechted out palms over my eyes and cry.

but that was then.

now the only time i feel like that is when i watch this movie.
so i hide under the blanket and whisper "i love this movie. i love this movie" until one of the mollys kicks me.

The Story

2010-01-30T11:00:00.008-05:00

who was it who said
"write what you know"

its good advice
and i do it.
but sometimes i get confused and write what i am
and think that that is what im supposed to do.

and then during critique
my teachers say

"its all one note"
"not much happens"
"your characters sound confused"
"this character doesn't know what she wants."

and i say

"yes it is"
" isnt that the truth"
" she is confused"
" and no she doesn't."

Weed

2010-01-29T21:43:00.009-05:00

so
i can tell now, i can tell when youre high.
i could never tell before.
i would always accuse you of being high when you were sober and then youd get mad and id feel bad.
and when you were high i would talk to too fast or move to fast, because i didnt know, and then you told me and i felt... cheated? made fun of? jealous?
but now
i can tell.
i look at you and say
"nice eyes."
and you say "im high as fuck"
and i say "yep. thats what i meant."
and then i hug you.

2010-01-28T20:29:00.001-05:00

abby asked me to remember green meadow for her.
i tried,

...walks through the fellowship. up that windy path by mary daily. with the roots like steps. visiting the sheep when there were sheep.
we got maple syrup that was still clear like sap and we brought it back to the classroom and drank it from those little white tea cups that we usually had water in...
we made soup every morning and then ate it after nap
they sang "the sunrise. the sunrise. wipe the sleep from your eyes." or something like that.
and after we ate we had inside playtime and we played with playstands and snails! and silks and then we had to clean up and we sand "many hands make light work"
and then outside playtime. and we were on one side of the frence and the first graders were on the other side and they were all like taunty like "our play ground is bigger than yours and we play kickball and -could you bring us our ball it went over the fence."
and we raced from the tree to the stump.
and we chewed on those sticks that tasted like lemon. and the ones that tasted like rootbeer.
and we played in those weird wooden things up by the fence by the road and we pretended they were boats.
and there was that tinnnyyy hill that we sledded down in the corner. and it would turn brown and muddy
and no matter the weather- once it was winter we had to wear snowpants and mittens.
and we made boats. out of sticks that we found. and we sanded them and filed them
and we made swords.
the half day kids went home.
and we went to full day.
and the pasta was reallly bad and i cant remember what was good...
and then naptime?...
and we napped and she, ms manir, (its so weird to spell her name cuz i said it all the time before i thought abut words. so in my mind her name is MANIR and its made of like pasta not letters) she played the harp
and we were all so far away from eachother and foot to foot so we really slept.
but mostly we didnt sleep and if we did sleep we were always proud of it... and we would talk about it while we put our mats away in the matt room.
and we had to keep out nap things in a bag on our hook.
and we had signs instead of names.
i was the dove the first year and eliza was the shooting star and the next year i made sure to get there early so i could be the shooting star.
and they put our sign somewhere at the table and that was how we knew where to sit.

1st grade
rose ceramony
she told us the story after we crossed the stage and we looked up at her. and then later in the classroom she told us the rest of the story and the chalkboard drawing was of that story and i dont remember what it was.
and we learned the alphabet. we drew the letter on one page and a thing, an animal or a thing that matched on the other page.
"V" valley. and it looked like a valley.
and "s" swan" "Q" queen and she never goes anywhere without her "u" umbrella.
and king +, queen-, the jesterX

Written On The Body

2010-01-23T11:49:00.001-05:00

my roommates alarm clock sounds like the fire alarm and so i dreamed that i was ignoring the alarm and that... hey nothing happened... no one cares. no one is coming to get me...
and then
and then
the dream ended and i had to roll over step over twice, comprehend the odd little buttons one of which turned on the news which said... something... before i found the off switch and switched off.

im reading a book that is supposed to be narrated by a genderless narrator
but i was sure it was a man
but my aunt was sure it was a woman

and now i feel even more strongly what ive been saying to max... if he was listening... he was busy, so might not have been
and to raina, when we were leaning on the wall looking at the sky where the moon usually is
but in fact the moon wasnt because actually
its only there when... its there...
leaning on the wall looking at the lack of the moon
over the sailboats over the lights on the opposite side of the hudson...
i told raina about what im thinking about which is that there really is no differnce between men and women.
only the differences that we allow ourselves because we think that they are allowed.
and she disagreed and i only argued halfheartedly, its true, because i wasnt really sure if it was true.
but i thought it was.
and now i really think so.
because what happened was
in this book
the narrator doesnt talk much. he she always listens while the women talk... and she he says things... in little moments... in little bursts of admiting what he she has been admiting in the narration for pages and pages without a single quotation mark.
and
what i realized about myself is that i thought that she he sounded male because he she kept everything inside.
thats bullshit.

but the book is very very good.
and i hope the fact that ive decided to let the narration swing from gender to gender on each page will not make it less wonderful
because i was enjoying it as a man.
she he is a beautiful man in my mind.
and the image of he she being a beautiful woman is forming.
but
he she is a very quiet woman...
and even after all that
i still think that he she is a man.

fuck
thats really successful writing.

how would you (never ever attempt) to make that into a movie?
impossible!
wow.
yum.

btw the book is called
"written on the body" by jeanette winterson