story

It was the first day of summer. Never mind that the calendar had just recently declared it spring, the thermometer thought otherwise. There were only three people by the water. All of them must have noticed the new gate that stood between the parking lot and the pier. On this its first day of duty it stood wide open and seemed to be in denial of its true purpose: keeping people out... off the pier. In the summer months to come there would be no more arguing with the short angry woman whose job it had been to get every last skateboarder off the dock by eleven. Arguing with her never did much, but arguing with a tall iron gate was sure to do less.
The girl sitting on the shore end of the dock remembered a story she had been reading months before. “Imagine a world where cause and effect are erratic.” The book had suggested. It had been one story in a book of many that all began with a sentence like that one: “Imagine a world where…”
Today, the first day of summer when they put up the new gate, was a day in a world where cause and effect were erratic. Was the new gate a response or an effect of the gang fight the night before; Or was the fight caused by a community’s closing its doors and turning its back on a problem? Which was cause and which effect?
The girl was the only one on the dock now. The two others, two men, had left through the gate with their Frappuccinos.
On the shore there was a woman lying under a tree with a lunch box and a blue scarf. She had eaten, sun bathed and stood. The girl on the dock watched her and described her on a page. As the woman gathered her picnic and left in her car the girl realized that the whole thing would have been more beautiful and more true in present tense and first person.

3 word movie review #2

21

-college
-transformations
-jim sturges

3 word movie review #1

Amazing Grace

-poignant.
-political.
-perfect.

i made a tiny movie

this is just to say that i am sitting on my desk and typing with the keyboard here...
on my lap and i think thats pretty cool.

everything could be anylized and conversed into nothing.

for some reason we narrow down all our emotions to fit into
sad emotions and
happy ones.

i think instead we should narrow them down to fulfilled ones and emptiness ones.

that says more.

all sadness is emptiness.
all happiness is fulfillment.

this weekend was full of things that filled my life with fullness and happiness.

things like late night conversations with my favorite boys
and falling asleep ...
in a white room in one tiny bed with a huge window for the headboard,
a window that looked out on a river.
with lights on the other side.
...propped on our elbows and watching the four am yellow thumb nail of a moon sitting on top of the oposite shore's trees and buildings.

and feeling terrified and small in a world where everything could be anylized and conversed into nothing.

a feeling that would have been overpowering and lonley and empty if we had discovered it alone.

but one that made us feel like one complete person made of three individual ones... because we had discovered it together.

and in the morning.
the friend i left behind felt like an empty place.
and that place is sad and empty now.

i dont know what to do.

i want everyone to stop being sad.
and everyone to stop being vague.
and i want me and everyone i know and love to feel like one person made of everyone
in this huge scary world where discoveries are terrifying when you make them alone.
and perfect and ecstatic when you make them together.

applying myself to an envelope in a thin layer...

and sending my shallowed-out self away to be evaluated by an anonymous pair of artistic looking hands who will pick me up and read me and decide if they like me.

Ive been wondering on the subject of why I have begun to dread art class...

Ive tried desperatly to concieve of a original sounding metephoric statment to describe my feelings of tormented unoriginality

I feel like its all been done before.

My head has dropped back under the clouds;

My eyes were once in a black, starlit universe of uninfluenced, original thought.

Now all I can see is a foggy generic mist and the backs of the heads of the other millions of high schoolers* whose attempts come from the same polluted, plagiarized landscape as my own and whose college essays and portfolios will reveal as much.

*(An image I stole from so many others who have already drawn or described it…

It's an image of those floating nondescript individuals holding brief cases or over-sized pocket-watches under their arms…

They're all wearing the same common suit and all headed for the same disappointing day of work… or life.)

smudge

is it possible do you think..
to have an allergic reaction to charcoal?

my fingers are itchy and my arm is red and there is charcoal everywhere.

and i want to go to sleep.

but the original culprits...
the drawings...
are there...
on my bed.
and i dont want to get to near to them.

so i think ill sleep in my brothers bed.

because hes never home.

even though hes home for break.

i dont know where he is.

but if i sleep in his bed ill wake up smelling like boy.

so i think ill move the drawings.

but seriously.

i am scared to go to close to them.

because im allergic to charcoal.

and my fingers are itchy.

good nite.

art

so
art
and
i are
not
doing to well.

we thought in the begining
that
perhaps we were progressing
slowly towards
somthing
that resembled
originality
or talent
or
...
...
...
art.

then we
realized
that
we
just
suck.

and we also realized.
that we have paint in our hair.
i mean
my hair.

i realized
that there was
paint
in my hair.

art in my hair.

paint.

the
paint
on my paper
is no more
art.
then the
paint that is
underneath my nails
and in
my hair.

ouch.
i thought i was on fire.

cuz i lit a candle
but i wasnt
on fire
but i did light a candle

i thought it was inspiring
its just...
hazardous.

but o so pretty.

the only things that are happy in the
entire
world
right now...
are white christmas lights...
where the owning used to be
over the door.
before it got blown away by the wind.

there are lights on it now
twined arouned sticks...
that are there.
instead of
the
awning
that was
blown
away by the wind.

and beeswax candles are happy in the world too.

enless we are on fire.
i mean.
me
on fire

by way of flaming hair.

there is paint in my hair.

and on my paper.
that is
all it is.
just
PAINT
cuz it couldnt be art.
cuz art and i are having some difficulties...
in out relationship.
at
present.

laughing with the wind

today i sat outside
at school
instead of going to gym
cuz we had a sub
and i sat all alone near the football feild on the bleaches looking towards the river
and was all like
blown by the wind. and watched the birds
and felt meditative.
it was weird
like
there was no sound
almost none at all
like no cars
and no people
and nothing
just like...
wind
and leaves on pavement
it felt like i was in an alternate reality
like
a world without anything but me
and nature.
and the wind.
it was really calm and fluttery
then all of a sudden (twice)
it just whipped up and blew my hood right off and i laughed
even though no one could hear me.
and i realized that i dont laugh for my self as much as i laugh for other people.
like
when i laugh im usually stifling or exagerating it for someone elses sake.
i dont think about it
i dont resent it
but when its only for the wind...
its refreshing.

Thoughts the occurred to me on the snowy stretch of road between the bottom of pinebrook and here...

Something is poetic in the way different branches of different trees carry their snow.

Evergreen trees huddle in their snow like homeless men on the cold streets of cities…
they're wearing two or three bulky down coats but still each gentle icey breeze seems likely to blow them away.
and theyre calm. under the incredible weight we assume they are carrying.

the other, leafless, trees wear their white like jewels.
like rich woman in sparse black evening gowns... skinny and shivery in their fashion- wearing diamonds.


What is cinematic about a field covered in a untouched sheet of snow?

cinematic? or symbolic?

a field, unlike a road, has no direction.
well. in truth. it has infinite direction.
every direction.
and the snow makes it original direction.
it is cinematic in its image of infinite possibility discovered by no one but the perhaps one pair of footprints- you.
one track leading somewhere out of infinity.

Unoriginality is no longer original you know...
billy collins copy righted that adjective with his poem about copying other poems.
and im sure someone did it before him.
and someone did it before someone else who did it before someone who did it first.
and we can trace it all back to that first person who originated all things unoriginal.
Fascinating.

sleet.

we stood on a street corner at 2am and played strange musical instruments in the sleet.
underneath a giant umbrella.
wearing old fashioned hats.
and sunglasses in the dark.

and then we slipped and slid down the road.

this winter is the first one to be wonderful for wintery reasons since the ones where i wore snowpants and slid down hills on sleds.

adventures in winter-time

ive been having a rather adventure filled holiday.

and since i always seem to want to have an adventure...
but rarely find myself engaged in a activity that i think really qualitfys as one...

i decided to define adventure.

somthing... which is unexpected...
and exhilarating...
and somthing that you are doing without knowing the way it will turn out.

if you enjoyed it in the end it is an advanture.
if you didnt it is a tedius waste of time...

ex. a foggy mountain at night..
where untill you arrived you had no intention of being...



where... for some incredible reason... you have no trouble seeing where you are walking...
but the tops of the trees and the view of the river are lost in white.
and a distnat train and a nearby one call and respond through the mist. so you know the world is out there...
otherwise your entire universe could consist of the drip drip of left over raindrops onto leaves...
and the silouette of one lonely tree... reaching out over you like a canopy or a black bony claw... but holding you there...
where you totter on the edge of nothing... where somthing should have been.

and it is possible to really truly think and feel all these things... while you whisper quietly in the dark about badly constructed horror movies.

ex.#2
creeping through a eerily empty mansion...
where every room on the left has a magnificent cold sparling scene of distant light... across the river. and with the feeling the someone is going to jump out and laugh at you at any moment... but they never do. there is no one inside.
but for some reason the door is left open and unlocked.

and
the snow all around my house is covered in an icy layer that is reflecting the light of the windows
and the shadows of the tress
like still water...
im trying to convince myself that that is what it is.
and that i am surounded on all sides by a calm ocean...
and i could dive out my window at any time and swim away.

and
yesterday my friend and i drove around in her big white juno van looking for a playground all night.

it kept not being where we thought it was going to be.

and she didnt... technically speaking... have a liscence.

so we went back to her house.
and lay on our backs on the black ice in the drivway.

and talked about stalkers and things.

and looked at the moon.

interesting anonymousness

on facebook my honesty box question is: "what do you think of your own existance?"

someone answered:

???
I think it's weird we think in our own heads. We're just objects.


ME
i was thinking today...
about the whole "if a tree falls and no one is there to hear it does it make a noise" thing...

and...
if a person exists their whole life without ever encountering another person but still having thoughts in their own head...
and exsting in their own right.
but never making any kind of dent in the universe...
why does it matter that they exist...
and why do they?
and do they?
lol

the chicken or the egg or the indie movie.

i cant remember the way i looked at life before i saw "Garden State" for the first time.

now i look at that movie and...
its so honest and painfully realistic of the way things usually end up being...

but.

when things like that happen to me now all that i think about in the moment of the happening is: wow this is like somthing that would happen in garden state.

i donno if i like it.

sirens, houses, music, envy, ballet, bloody murder

Can you tell the difference between a desperate SIREN and just a siren?

i feel like when a ambulance streaks past me i can tell if it is a critical situation...
the sound is the same but theres a different feeling to it.
i hate it when i hear a siren begin... silence silence... waaaiiillliinnnggg!!!!
natalie portman said on inside that actors studio that she hated the sound of european sirens because she asociated them with the holocost.


the HOUSE we think that we are buying is near the hospital so i will be getting used to all that.
the house we think that we are buying has a big nose.
do you ever look at a car or a house and see it as a face?
the windows or headlights are the eyes and the door or the garden or the front steps or the front bumper is the expression?
well.
i dont know if you do that but i do.
and the house that we think we might be buying has a big nose and a rather american expression.
but when we buy it we will take down the flag.
and plant some out of control weepy climbing vines...
and let the grass die a bit so that it doesnt look so hautily (Sp?) insultingly green.

we fell asleep at jakes house. he and ari were playing the cello and the guitar... or the bass... like i said i was falling alseep.
jakes house is huge.
and no one was there but us.
lots of us.
falling asleep or talking or teasing nicky....
or playing instruments to the room at large.
i dont think there is any kind of a moment that i like better then that kind of a moment. (minus the teasing nicky, of course :) )

i wish i could play an instrument.
but i hate playing them.
i like listening.

people only ever wish for things like- to be able to play.
ive never heard someone who didnt apreciate music say- i wish i could listen to MUSIC.
i suppose if they didnt like it they had no way to know that it is somthing to apreciate... your own ability to apreciate...

i went back to sophia's house and dreamnt about dancing BALLET. (in the phantom of the opera...)
ballet is another thing i wish i could do... and dont apreciate my own apreciation for.

i rinced red hair dye out my hair.
i had had my eyes squeezed tight for thier presurvation for about two minutes. and when i opened them my vision was blurry and surreal.

and i apreciated the cinematic symbolism of the thick red/brown syrupy paste that was sliding over my shoulders and staining the white tiles where it pooled around my feet.

i guess it wasnt so much symbolic...
i dont plan on dying or BLEEDING in excess any time soon.

so maybe symbolism is the wrong literary device.

but, Sophia, the year we have been having?

should i ever make a movie about this year- the opening credits will fade in and out over a scene of a girl rincing red dye out of her hair and close on it spiraling down the drain.

fin.

the end of the world

sophia and i were at the peer last night.

the water was more swelly then usual.
more like a bay then a river.

we were taking photos of clouds and noticing that sophia's feet matched the dock and my eyes matched the bit of the dock that had turned green...
when all of a sudden.
it got dark and the night started coming in from the left.

at this point sophia wanted to get off the peer and so did the few middle schoolers and skate boarders who were there.

but we decided to sit a few exra seconds in the bizare apocalyptic wind and think about what kind of planet movment would allow for the darkness to come horizontally... like- you see evening over to the left and it moves tawords you like rain clouds... but on this particular kind of planet it would be that way every night.

anyway then we left.
and walked back up to town.
with blue scarf and crazy hair blowing in a perfect addition to the feeling of stepping into "the day after tomorow"

the leaves and dust were blowing everywhere in little tornados.

the clouds looked like clouds i had never seen before. they were white and silver... and sharp edged in their fluffiness..

anyway- we sat in the little alcove tht used to be coldstone... (we were hiding for a scary crazy man who likes to shake peoples hands in starbucks for twenty mintutes at a time..)

the endtimes ended after only a little disapointing bit of rain.
and when we emerged 20 minutes later there was the hugest rainbow that the lady holding her little girl's hand had ever seen.

i took a picture of sunlit raindrops on a windsheild.
but i took it through the backseat window of the car... pointing at the windsheild.
and if the sun hadnt glinted generically in the lense... it would have looked really fantastic and less like an advertisment for mini vans.

the future of suburbia

if i had an unlimited movie making budget...

id make a movie about sometime in the future when our world is going, or has gone, to hell...

and people arent living the way they are living now.
they are just surviving.
and suburbia is a dead concept and people are living four to six families in one McMansion and running bussinesses out of them as well...
and people are living behind the windows in shop fronts in strip malls.

and all the baby sapplings which are planted in the little gardens that devide up huge parking lots- will have grown huge and gnarled in perfect straight rows... and thier massive thick roots will be distorting the pavment all around them.
and vines are creeping up traffic light wires.

the malls are like indoor cities.. and people live in them... and set up carts and sell things.
and never leave.
and its a whole culture of children who were born inside and dont realize that there is an outside...

and so.
while suburbia is replacing urban areas as the dirty slummy undesirable overpopulated area of the world...

the cities are being reclaimed by nature and grass is growing through the blacktop... so there are perfectly straight avenues of green between tall buildings covered in thick flowering vines.... and theere are no cars...
because we have long since used up all the gasoine.
and the skelotons of cars are used for other things...
like gardens and little huts.
and fountains that were once in parks or in thier own contained little pools... have overflown with rain and have eroded little ponds into the concrete... and streams connecting one to another where a road used to be.
and the people who live here are all natural and living among the ancient decaying relics of us.

and the story?...
a wandering Troubadour kind of a troup.
who wander from civilization to civilazation telling the people myths and stories about us. and about eachother.
and everythiong is pretty much like a slightly solar powered version of the middle ages...

and there are all sorts of new kinda of prejudices that have yet to be discovered. and everyone falls in love, romeo and juliet style, with the wrong people...

and everyone has incredibly interesting, vintage inspired, futuristic clothing.

actual people

im going back to high school.

i dropped my brother off at college the oter day.

hes one step closer to being an actual human being.

high school is just a testing strip...
do well in high school so that you can get into a good college
do well in a good college so that you can get a good job
get a good job so that you can make alot of money...painlessly.
make alot of money painlessley so that you can have a good life.

and be an actual person..

i wonder why we cant just be actual people all the way through.
we are always actually breathing.

happy thursday

i was at barns and noble.
i was there right after midterms.
it was like 10am.
it was almost empty...except for this freaky stressed out man on a cell phone who was spazzing out cuz his chair was shaky.
he was talking to someone about lawyers...
and he burned his mouth on his coffee...

i was reading the really big, exspensive european fashion magazines from the back of the rack...that you have to stand on ur toes to reach...
i love them.
i bought one for 9 fucking dollars...
cuz i loved one spread in it...
lol.
and i cut it up and put it on my wall.
i also found this picture that i really wanted in a magazine that i really didnt want to buy...
the magazine was JANE and it had mandy moore on the cover.
and mandy moore makes me angry.
but i bought that magazine and the one for 9 fucking dollars.
the picture in JANE was of two girls smiling with thier arms around eachother wearing heart shaped sunglasses.
its on my wall now.
i also got "everything is illuminated."
i love that writer.
anyway..
yeah i was at barnes and noble today..