Remember When We Made This?

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

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

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

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,

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

Halloween 2010 from katie oscar on Vimeo.

Let The Right One In (Adaptation)

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

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

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

"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

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

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."

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

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

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

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

Painting on the floor

Roommate Agreement

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

ice-sky

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

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

Hibernation (...Fiction)

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

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

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...

September

October

November

Decmber

June

July

August 8th

All alone

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

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

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

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

.

A Weekend in Parks with Molly(s)

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)

"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'

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

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

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

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

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

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

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.

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"

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

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

"the Play" from katie oscar on Vimeo.

quite well... crazy actually

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

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.

Artificial Intelligence

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.