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.

Stop Motion For The Summer

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

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

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

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

filming the parking lot scenes

(photos: Raina)

Not Editing

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

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

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

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

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

"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.

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

Regression

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

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

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

"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

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

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

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

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

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

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.

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

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

dream from last summer

i found this dream in a bent and mostly empty notebook that was at the bottom of a basket of clothes that i dont want.

Part I
i was at the subway station. i didnt know where to go but i didnt feel lost.
night was falling and i didnt know where to go that would be safe and i didnt know where to go to find something interesting to do.
i looked at the map on the wall, made a desision and ran for a train that happened to be the one and wanted and happened to be about to leave.
but i didnt get to it in time and then as the doors closed in my face i realized that i actually wasnt the train. and a moment later i realized that i didnt actually want to go where i had wanted to go a moment ago.
i stepped back to stand near the map and called my mom to ask her how to get home to 77th st. (where we stayed all summer)
i knew there was just one simple thing i had to do but i couldnt remember what. awake now i know that it was simple- get on the 1 train and it will take you right there...

i called mommy and as soon as the phone rang once i remembered that she was somwhere where she couldnt answer the phone.
there was a lady sitting on the platform with a lot of luggage.
she and i tried to help each other but niether one of us knew enough to really help but both of us knew enough to not feel completley lost which comforted us.

Part II
i am on the train with someone who i am in love with. we call someone who i used to be in love with and make plans to see her tommorow.
i think that the one im in love with might be in love with the one who i used to be in love with so i try to imagine a way for us all to be in love with eachother all at once.

and i am a vampire. we are all vampires. we are laughing and promising my ex love on the phone that we will meet her tommorrow at "first bight" like "first light."

Part III
suddenly im a boy.
im skinny and pale and look a bit like my brother but more like draco malfoy.
im shirtless, sitting beside another vampire, a hispanic boy with shiny black curly hair.
he is my friend but he is also a much better vampire than me, much older, more swagger, he's calling all the shots, telling me what to do.
he tells me that its almost light so we have to get home.
since we're on the subway on our way home i dont panic but i do panic in the back of my mind, i dont want to be cought in the sunlight.
there is a human man in the subway car with us and my friend says we have to confuse the man before we leave so that he doesnt know we're vampires.
we move then, very quickly so its as thought time is moving very slowly around us.
we move the man to the door and put him so his head is sticking out of the doors, theyre closed on his neck.
"this is our stop" says my friend
and somehow, maybe because we can move so fast, we are off the train in a moment and the train zooms away on its high trellice and the human man screams.
my friend says something and then drops from the trellice and dies.
a narrator in my head says something like "that was my first experience of death" but its specific to vampire death.
i jump off, after my friend but towards the building across the street. in the air i think about how i am a vampire so i am extra strong so i can make this kind of a jump. i also see the window in the building that im jumping towards i know that i could make it right through the window and land inside but i dont, i grab onto a molding near the window and then drop to the ground.
i run towards the door to the building. its like one of those motels where the hallway is outside, and the rooms each open to the outside not to a hallway.
the sun is rising and a few rays of it fall on the ground, i avoid stepping in it as i run to the first door i see, it has a number one it, three digits which is odd because this is the ground floor.
the door is open i go in. there is a man inside he doesnt see me.
i spin around very quickly so he wont see me, like the arms of a fan spinning so quickly that theyre just a blur, sometimes completly invisable.
i hang from the door frame and spin around very quickly, he sees the flickering of my skinny white chest.
stretched out, hanging with my arms over my head i feel very thin and white, small and beautiful.
the man throws a soda can at me to see if im there... to see if it hits something.
i dart quickly by him and hide in his closet.
he throws cans at me and says in a voice like a crazy man talking to his cats."cans dont shine like that." and i know he means that i am shining, that i am beautiful... i feel very powerful and very naked.
i run away from him and outside, avoiding the sunlight and upstairs to my room. i hide under my bed and he is running after me.
i lie under the bed and as i begin to wake from the dream im thinking about how powerful i am and how weak and pathetic he is but how he might get me anyway because i cant go in the sunlight which is shining into the room. and i feel powerless but really more frustrated and pissed off about how wrong it all is.

The End of the Vacation

what is there to do?
"i fucking hate being home!" she wines into the phone "There’s nothing to do!"
what is there to do?
the people are gone, the fun, gone.

what was the fun?
was there ever fun?
what have we been doing all these years?
Driving in circles and eating food and looking for ways to find ways to not notice that we are doing nothing.
Look for alcohol so that the nothing that we're feeling will feel like something... or the something that we're feeling will feel like nothing... or maybe looking for alcohol is something to do... always a full nights work, always a kind of constant task to focus on, to blur out the nothing...

where should we want to be if we don’t want to be here?
I want to be on film sets shooting scenes.
I want to be on those sets.
I want to be in cafes drinking espresso watching people in fashionable clothes walking past the windows.
I want to be in cafes drinking espresso typing or writing with a pen.
I want to be in cafes typing or writing stories to make into stories and screenplays to make into films.
I want to be at home doing nothing or cleaning or cooking alone. for myself in a home that is my home.
and at night?
what is there to do at night?
at night I want to sit in my home with my friends
but who are my friends?
we sit and we drink and we talk and we dance.
in my house there are enough rooms to hide and we hide.
and there is someone who I hide with but this is not his house.
it is my house and he is here.
and he stays.

we drink drinks and we drink coffee.
coffee that we make ourselves and that tastes the way it is supposed to taste
we eat pizza and we eat croque madam et monsieur

we watch movies projected on the wall
we make films
we watch films projected on the wall
we take photographs.
we take off our clothes and take photographs.
We lie on the floor and stare at the ceiling and we put our heads on eachothers backs and lean on eachother’s arms and sleep
Or we read books.
we read books to ourselves and we read aloud.
We tell stories that we want to make into movies and practice persuading.
Weve chosen careers in professional convincing… persuading… and we practice on eachother.

we sit on the counter in the kitchen and wash dishes and wash the floor and we blow bubbles through the holes in the straining spoon.

and then we go out and we wander the streets of the city where we live and we dance in the streets and its summer and we see movies and we see plays, we hear music and we dance.

and sometimes i do it all alone.
and i eat and i wash the dishes and i wash the floor and strip the sheets and i walk the streets alone.
and see the flims alone and i hear the music and i dance alone and i dance with strangers and i wear white and i wear flowers.
and in the morning i go to work where we eat and we dance and we draw and write, play and persuade.
and sometimes we write and draw with our pencils inside our office that doesn’t feel like an office, it feels like a stage and its full of light and sometimes we write and draw with our actors in the streets in the rain... real rain or rain we’ve paid for and set up ourselves.
and sometimes I am inspired on the street and I hand a stranger a card and wait for them to show up at casting the next month only to find that they cannot act but that we would all like to be friends and we invite the stranger out for tea and we write short sonnets together and then months later I write a story about that stranger and make it into a movie and cast someone who can act to play the one who couldn’t.

and there is nothing to do here. she says
there is nothing to do. but only when youre looking for something to do as though there is nothing.
Id rather do nothing, I say, than try all night to do something and then fail.

I look for nothing as though there is something. thats the plan.
look for quiet because everything is spinning all the time.
is it really?
yes!
spinning!!!
and then i step off the wheel and find stillness and back on and find spinning!
and its always spinning.
dont worry.

"i must get out of here. i must get free and in this mind is the key, my key."*
whos mind?
my mind? my mind.

*Agent Smith, The Matrix'

the notebook

i figured out why i always forget about the old people in the notebook.
i figured out why i fast forward their scenes when im watching alone and why i dont care about them at all.
(besides all the obvious reasons like the bad casting of old ally and the way there is no mole consistency on ally's face)

The Music!
the weepy swelling orchestral themes of the young ally and noah reality, never cross over into the old folks home. maybe a little but not enough.
thats all.
i figured it out.
music is so important.
that seems like such a silly mistake.



i hate it when movies make mistakes.
i also love it.
a lot.
it keeps me wanting to make them... i mean movies, not mistakes.

also
old ally never giggles.
and thats rachel mcadam's whole thing with this character. the way young ally giggles all the time over nothing.
also
the diologue is so candid in the young one's reality.
and so not candid in the old ones.
its like to different movies.
ok
i guess there are a lot of reasons
but the music is a big one
and a very easily remidied one.