Hejira

this is the plan we create.

2006-12-06T18:49:00.000-08:00

i began the grad school application journey in earnest today, when i popped over to temple this afternoon to pick up the transcripts i ordered. after that, it was to the dollar store, where i obtained my battle tools: file folders and padded mailers. i am applying to six schools, which is a dizzying number when you considered just how many pieces of crap has to make its way into those padded mailers in the next few weeks. i labeled each folder thus:

Alfred University

UMass Dartmouth

Mills College

University of Washington

School of the Art Institute of Chicago

University of the Arts

my mother would be so proud. and i told her so, tonight, on the phone.

on a tangential note, i have been contemplating how to say this for a while, because it's been a feeling that's nagged me gently for a few months now. i am sick of being alone and (please cover your eyes, Dad) i am really sick of not having sex. it's pissing me off in a very serious way. being alone used to not be such a big deal for me, but now it's suddenly is. it's very odd.

i will continue this tomorrow in an entry titled "Fuck You, Nature".

happy hatesgiving.

2006-11-25T16:51:00.000-08:00

Robert Altman died this past Monday, but i didn't actually find out until tonight. i was driving on 95, listening to A Prairie Home Companion like the insufferable NPR nerd that i am. i actually let out this little "oh" into the silence of my car. it's not like i didn't see it coming (he was 81, after all), but still.

John got me into Altman. i think the first one i saw was Nashville, which is just such an dense, incredible film that i haven't even really begun to understand it. i remember watching Gosford Park with a friend of mine, and all i heard for two hours was "this is confusing" and "why is everyone talking over each other?" it's true, he's not for everyone, but when you do finally get it, it's incredibly rewarding.

so, Thanksgiving. i spent most of it in bed with a migraine. i get them about once a year (the last one i got was right before Thanksgiving last year), and this one was a doozy. even the vaguest moonlight coming in my bedroom windows was painful; the sound of my aunt's voice downstairs became physically manifested into bright white sparks of pain. what a way to spend my day off.

i did attend some of dinner, and manage to stuff myself sufficiently before succumbing to the pain. the entire dinner was spent discussing my sister's recently discovered allergy to wheat. witness this conversation earlier that morning:

Lauren: "I just want to say right now that I don't want you asking me questions you already know."

Dad: "What?"

Lauren: "Like, don't ask, 'So, Lauren, what do you do at your job?'. Don't bait. I don't feel like talking about my job."

Me: "You have to talk about youself. That's just part of deal with Thanksgiving."

it backfired quite nicely, although with zero help from my father. at every family gathering, there is a general scrutiny of my sister and her life. i attribute this to my suburban relatives having visions of Sex and the City dancing in their heads, and imagining Lauren's life as an endless round of leisurely lunches, martinis and running in impossibly high spike heels. in reality i think my sister's life mainly entails working lots of overtime at her new job at a fancypants cosmetics company, where everything seems to be continually disorganized and all her coworkers speak French.

i am content to sit back and let her fry under the microscope, though i am becoming slightly more disgruntled with every family gathering. these gatherings are like small class reunions: a chance to trot out your accomplishments. i'm a little miffed that no one asks how i am, how Philadelphia is, how i'm getting promoted at work in a few weeks, how i'm working on some amazing drawings, how i'm applying to graduate school in January. ah well.

on being alone.

2006-10-22T13:19:00.000-07:00

today i sat on the art museum steps for a few minutes before going into see Tesoros. from that location, looking down the Parkway, the perfect urban design that William Penn dreamt of comes into focus: in a perfect line, Eakins Oval, Logan Circle, Love Park and farthest away, City Hall. I listened to a little boy exclaim to his parents that you could see forever. and it's true, you can see forever. you can almost imagine, sitting at this point in the city of Philadelphia, that this is a beautiful, special, civilized place, not a place torn apart constantly by violence and dispair.

how many murders this year already? i'm sure it's past 400 by now. every day, a new story, a new gun, a new victim, until it all becomes meaningless and repetitive. i try to honor each loss i read about with some modicum of attention, but in truth it becomes tiring and painful.

i feel as though our culture is becoming more and more individualized, and though individual is, in America, a word full of possibility, there comes a point where the idea of an individual is taken too far, when it becomes destructive. people who are looking out exclusively for their own interests are scary. when you have no stake in anything or anyone around you, you can and will do anything.

the idea of "citizen" is something that has fallen by the wayside. there is no interest in what can i as an individual can do for the common good, we are too absorbed in ourselves and our own pain. i truly, truly, truly believe, like Anne Frank said, that people are good at heart. if this makes me naive and stupid, then so be it. all we have is each other, we are all part of the same organism and the same energy. we have to reach out to each other, because it's too terrible to be alone in a world this big and terrifying.

i have spent so much time alone. and most of the time i am okay with that, but lately, i have not been. i have been reaching out to my friends for something they can't really give, because what's missing is in my own head: the ability to be enough for myself. i curse my brain chemistry and the things that still aren't quite connecting to make this happen. i have argued back and forth, and what it all comes down to why can't anything be easy. why must i struggle to keep myself on an even keel. why can't for once i just float through life, maybe not in a series of perfect situations, but at least interesting ones. i am so alone in my own head, and will always be, just like everyone else.

the terrible hereafter.

2006-10-12T15:25:00.000-07:00

i've gotten to a very hard place in the last month. it feels like everything around me is changing, and that sounds like a cliche and a very bad song lyric, but it's true. it seems that events, people and places have coalesced together to make me question who the hell i am, which is a question i thought i wouldn't have to grapple with again.

i was depressed for a very, very long time. now i'm not, and i'm pretty sure i won't ever go back to that place. this is the thing they never tell you when you finally make it out; how to cope with the things you've missed, and how to live that new normal. i feel like there is a hole, a 5 year hole, where i was just not functioning on many levels. now i feel like i've fallen behind, and it's going to take me forever to catch up.

i curse the people in my life who are still there because they are dragging me down. i curse the people who have never been there because there is some part of me that they will never understand. i could write a novel on this disconnect i feel, this feeling of "passing" for normal. i suspect i will always feel this way.

"don't drink and drive. even on a bike."

2006-08-06T06:48:00.000-07:00

so my car died about three weeks ago. by died i mean dead. there i was, stranded at Ridge and Lehigh next to Laurel Hill Cemetary (read: not the best neighborhood). i was picked up by a female tow truck driver, "first and only in the city", she proclaimed, and taken to an auto shop at 11th and Spring Garden. three days later i found out there was about $900 worth of things wrong with dear Boris, and dear Boris, a 1990 Toyota Camry with 267,000 miles on him, more than deserves to go to the happy hunting grounds.

so i have been biking everywhere since then. my fat, sweaty ass has traversed this city for the past three weeks in this unbearable fucking heat, and not only is it quite okay, i FUCKING LOVE IT.

i had always admired city bikers from afar, but felt i could never coexist with cars and buses and pissed off cab drivers. my biking experience was limited to going to the corner store in Lebanon and occasionally biking down to the Stoever's Dam with my family. I, in fact, am now riding the bike that my father got for me when I was like 12. I think it's from Wal-Mart. Ugh. but when one has no other way to get anywhere (there are buses, but i really don't feel like spending 4 bucks a day to get anywhere), one must bike.

before my car even died, i had started "training" around the neighborhood. New Kensington and Fishtown are perfect for this: barely any traffic, small one way streets, and general respect for the biking folk. i noodled slowly around, relearning how to brake and pedal. first time out, going up towards Port Richmond, i detoured carefully around some construction vehicles only to smash directly into street sign pole.

first time i biked around town, i had to go down to Old City to get tips from a St*rbucks I had helped out at a couple of times. It's probably 2 or 3 miles at most, right down 2nd street, but i was a nervous wreck. I still hadn't figured out how to ride next to cars and to hit trolley tracks just right so i wouldn't go flying onto the pavement in the middle of Girard Avenue. I made it down in one piece, thank god, and made it back, just barely, a nasty sweaty mess.

on friday, i got out of work around 1:30 in the afternoon, and met a bunch of people at this bar on Fairmount. four hours later, i was pretty much smashed. i was supposed to go to First Friday with two of the guys i was drinking with, Nate and Eric, but i was so tipsy i figured it was time to head home and crash early. and then they suggested we just bike right down to the Old City. i was terrified. i mean, utterly terrified. biking through Center City in the middle of rush hour wasn't something i would do sober, and besides, Eric and Nate are really good, fast bikers, whereas i am not.

but there i was, following slightly behind them, the three of us forming a little pack down 19th street, around Logan Circle, crossing fucking traffic, and then all the way down to Chestnut street, dodging cars and buses and cabs. i could only follow their lead. i managed to clip someone's side view mirror only once, and i arrived in Old City intact and completely exhilarated.

there is something magical about deciding to do something you're almost sure you can't do, and then not only doing it, but doing really well. riding a bike in the city is amazing, because you are just so there. there is no metal box enclosing you from the sounds, the sights, the smell of the air. you move faster than walking, but not so fast that you don't notice everything. i have biked past places that i have driven by for YEARS and seen new things.

i biked home this morning from Malcolm's house at 7th and Pine. i left there around 8, i hadn't been able to sleep, and i had wanted to bike home through the city at that hour. it was so quiet, no people on the sidewalks, no traffic. i jumped from pavement to concrete to brick to cobblestone and back again. came up on the left of Independence Hall, no one out there except a couple chatty park rangers and a few tourists. the city was still sleeping from the crazy night before. it was so beautiful.

Does this make me look 17?

2006-07-08T13:47:00.000-07:00

for the past few weeks, i have been teaching art at a hoity-toity summer camp out in the suburbs, a job which i enjoy thoroughly and get paid an obscenely large amount of money for very little work. this hasn't happened to me many times in my life, so i'm going to take it.

i did a dumb thing on the 4th. i decided to stretch my ears to 4 gauge. they had been at 6 for about two or three months, and (numerical coincidence not withstanding) i decided that it was a good day to do it, since my barbecue plans never materialized and i ended up sititng at home painting furniture. i slid them in and they hurt like a motherfucker, but i didn't think much of it. they always hurt like a motherfucker for a couple hours. usually it's some ibuprofen and in about a week i'm as good as new and nearly healed.

i knew something was amiss when, on thursday, they were still hurting and i couldn't even lay on my ear to sleep. during class i happened to reach up and touched one and came away with a little blood. oh, yay. as gross as making large holes in your earlobes sounds to (most) people, it's done gradually enough that it doesn't hurt much and should never, ever bleed. i should've known. i went to bathroom, and found out i had indeed torn the holes. left ear worse than the right. so traipsed off to the nurse, quickly making up a story that my earring had gotten caught. somehow i didn't think the self-inflicted part og my injury would go over very well.

i got some band aids and neosporin, which was really all that i was after. the nurse asked me my name, and as she was writing it down, asked casually, so, what grade are you in?

my mind focused for a moment and i realized that she still thought i was in high school.

"oh, no...no, i'm graduated. out of college. i'm 25." i replied, noticing with embarassment the note of desperation the last word landed on.

she apologized. and i was left wondering what gave it away. i was kind of acting cute and hesitant when i walked in, much like i was through high school, but after all, it had been years since i'd been in a nurse's office. maybe i was regressing. was it the neon red hair? i would have never dyed my hair this color when i was 17, nor cut it this short.

i was hoping, then, that perhaps an aura of worldiness and experience had finally settled around me, but maybe i'm wrong. i don't get carded at bars or the state store anymore. if hard pressed i could probably find a wrinkle, somewhere. but man. high school.

writing my congressman.

2006-06-05T09:31:00.000-07:00

Dear Mr. Specter,

About a year and a half ago, I bought my first car. It was used, only $2500, a 1990 Jeep Cherokee, but it was all a girl with a fine arts degree six months out of college could afford. When I bought it, $3 gas was a dream. I love this car. I even named her Lucia. But I realized that I can't drive this car anymore.

I'm not writing you about high gas prices (that's a whole other letter). Last night I saw An Inconvenient Truth. At the end, I was crying. Through the last ten minutes, a thought nagged at the back of my brain: I need to get rid of this car. At first I dismissed it, thinking, I have no money right now to be selling and buying a new car, it's such a hassle, maybe I'll just suck it up. But as the film ended, it became more and more clear what I had to do. So I am selling my car, and I'm going to try to save up to get a hybrid or a smaller car. Until then, I am fortunate enough to live in a city where I can take the bus and bike 95% of the places I want to go.

The film said that each of us, in our own small way, can affect this issue, since this government seems to be largely ignoring the warnings that the rest of the world is heeding. So I am doing my part. I am going to be more vigilant about recycling. I am planning on taking a reusuable thermos with me wherever I go so if I want to get a drink, I don't have to waste another disposable cup. These are small, small things that I am doing.

I am 25 years old, massively in debt from school and working at St*rbucks, pursuing my dream of eventually becoming a self-supporting artist. I don't have much power to effect really anyone, outside of the people on my friends list on MySpace (emailed them all last night, thank you). You, on the other hand, do have the power to speak up, and have people listen. Please please put down the war on terror for a moment (just a moment) and speak to this crisis in the Senate, soon.

This is my first letter to a Congress member. Aren't you proud of me?

Sincerely,
Bethany

white trash philadelphia.

2006-05-13T22:49:00.000-07:00

i wrote an entry a few months ago describing my criteria for a dwelling in Philadelphia. they were:

1. hardwood floors.
2. heat included in the rent.
3. in Germantown, preferably within walking of Jeanine.
4. around $500 a month.

of these four, i only met two. well, really, one. the hardwood floors. nearly all my preconcieved notions of where and how i was going to live here in Philly were thrown out the window within the first two or three days. one, i realized that i would be earning appoximately half of jackshit. therefore, there was no possible way i could live alone. so the stress of finding a roommate, etc, etc. i thought my luck might've run out with Mark, since he was pretty damn awesome. but on my first day back in PA, i got an email from Kayti and we met, found each other mutually agreeable, and located a cheap but really nice little rowhouse in Fishtown. and here i am, sitting in said house, with internet AT HOME for the first time in seven months, quite happy and content, listening to the rap music, sirens and the screaming fights of my neighbors that have become the soundtrack of my life, for now.

the rowhome thing. i have never actually live in a true rowhome, always duplexes, with a blessed amount of space between you and the next dwelling. not so here. i hear every fight that my neighbors have, and they have them quite frequently. the house on our left has two teenage daughters, the house on our right has three boys under ten and a neglected dog. their parents fight and have sex at equal volumes.

the screaming fight thing is something i don't understand. i didn't grow up around that, so it's quite foreign and bizarre to me. sure, my parents had their tiffs, and yelled, but there was nary an f-bomb dropped until my sister and i had reached the age of majority. here, it's fuck this, fuck that, all within the earshot of children. now, i know this sounds weird coming from a person who curses like it's her job, but that just doesn't seem right. at least i learned how to curse like a proper suburban mall rat, from the bad kids on the playground.

Fishtown is nearly all white. which is also weird. it's also largely Catholic and Polish, which really makes me feel like i'm living in my grandparents' neighborhood in Wilkes-Barre. there is either a deli or a bar on every corner. last week Kayti and i did a tour of three of the neighborhood bars, and we probably walked a total of six blocks. the One-Stop Deli lies a mere 100 feet from my front door, staffed by a quiet cigarette-voiced woman named Arlene and another woman whose name i have yet to learn. she is notable for the fact that, when someone she knows comes into the deli, instead of a cordial hello, she bellows, "WHAT THE FUCK ARE YOU DOING?"

ah, Philly. i've missed you so much.

building stories.

2006-02-23T12:55:00.000-08:00

i can't believe it's been six months since the hurricanes. it's funny how my personal circumstances sometimes run into world events, like i just happened to be in Houston when a pair of enormous hurricanes laid waste to the Gulf Coast. when my Dad and i were driving down here, i wanted to stop in New Orleans and just see things, i wanted to eat a po boy and walk around the French Quarter. Dad said no, we must press on to Houston. and so we did, and i never got to see the New Orleans that no longer exists. i've never been there, but it remains like a phantom of a memory, something i can reconstruct from pictures. like the time John took me down to lower Manhattan to see the towers a few months before they disappeared.

Koba is New Orleans this week, he called me today, a bit shaken, and tried to describe what he saw. i can't even imagine.

there's some part of me that hasn't dealt with what happened when Rita hit. i guess this is what people in crisis situations do, their brain shuts down and they just act and don't think too much. that's what i did, and i don't think i've thought about what happened yet. the way the civility of society frayed and broke down, sitting and watching the TV after sitting in traffic for six hours and moving eight miles, and becoming more and more frightened by the lack of information coming from it and starting to realize that there may be no way out of this city. no options. no control. my brain shut down to keep me from freaking out, and i think it worked fantastically well.

this have been strange here in Houston since the hurricanes. i wish i could have something to compare it to, but the pre-hurricane Houston is something i was living in for only a month, and now all i know is a city with a collective trauma and an undercurrent of chaos ready to bubble to the surface. everything here is out of whack, and i wonder if it will ever be back to normal, or this is the new normal. it makes me want to leave, to get out of this hurt, and so i am.

Jeanine said shortly after Rita that she was curious to see how this experience would appear in my work. to be honest, i had been thinking about building houses out of porcelain from the moment i set foot in Houston, but seeing the images from the hurricane, just the sheer scale of destruction, twisted what i was planning to do into something else. now i look at the work that i've made, and it just seems sad and ephemeral, fragile and ready to fall apart.

the semester after the 11th, i also built a tall white skyscraper. it was enormous, and i built it almost without planning. it grew more reckless the higher it got and the proportions made no sense.

re-forming.

2006-02-20T12:22:00.000-08:00

one night last week, i awoke to Mark playing music. the door to my room is a pocket door, and at that point, it had not been fixed by Mark (that happened night before last), and so the door was slightly ajar, and i could hear him very well. i listened to him for about 20 minutes, in and out of sleep, before i finally came out of my room. Mark appeared at his door with a slightly sheepish look on his face. "i didn't realize you were home."

"your songs break my heart. you know that, right?" this words had been percolating somewhere in the back of my brain for a while, and they came out of my mouth suddenly and unexpectedly. i hadn't meant to say it. not like that. usually it was, "i don't mind, i'm a heavy sleeper, no bother."

he's been practicing a lot, since tomorrow night he has a gig. i've gotten used to the strange acoustics of the pink house, the way the sound filters through it, how i can hear him amazingly clearly when i'm on the front porch and in the downstairs bathroom next to the kitchen. as i sit in the dining room or living room, the sound pours down around me like liquid. the songs i've heard over and over again, in different permutations, blending into one another, with strange little riffs and ideas between them, connecting them loosely like the net stitch i've been toiling over. his singing voice is high, much higher than his speaking voice, with a sweet, reedy quality that gets pleasantly off key when it goes into the upper registers.

he just practiced introducing his band, which i think means he doesn't know i'm home.

"i think i might be moving into a place in Philly that has a recording studio." i said to him a few nights ago. "this might finally be my chance."

get a tape recorder, is what he advised, if you think of a little phrase or melody. record into it again and again until you get it right.

i'm convinced that once i get my studio practice ironed out, all will be well. based on how and what i've worked on near the end of college until the present, my "studio practice" tends to be fuck around until the last minute and then work like mad to produce a shitload of work that everyone around me praises but, deep in my gut, i know is probably crap. i think it is this practice, my particular practice of making, is what has kept me from ever writing songs like i have always wanted to. it's as if i expect them to spring fully formed from my head, like my visual art does. when i sit at the piano, i see something that is as alien to me as it is deeply familiar and comforting. it is a person, an entity i know, but we speak different languages and we can't communicate. so i bang around on it a bit but hear nothing in return.

this breaks my heart.

Mark is one of the most unusual people i've ever met. i've met a lot of unusual people in Houston, way more than i thought i would. i don't necessary believe things happen for a reason, because ridiculous and dumb and terrible things happen to people all the time that make no sense. so i don't believe in destiny. but i believe this: people come into your life for a reason.

i don't know what led me to answer that ad on craigslist last June, but i did. i don't know what made me instantly comfortable with him and with this house, but it was. he has a strange sort of reserve that i haven't seen too often in people. his reserve combined with my reserve has ended in me not knowing him directly, but almost indirectly, through his music, through the scribbled recipes on scraps of paper on the fridge, and the pictures he takes that are up on the wall in the dining room. they are all of people, friends and relatives he misses. i don't know who most of them are, he never talks about them, and i've never asked. so i've made up stories about most of them. it pains me in some sort of weird way that i will just be a blip on his radar, but that's really all he'll be to me. whenever i leave someone, i never think that i'll never see them again. i don't think life works that way. or maybe it just makes leaving less painful.

shut up, bethany.

2006-02-16T09:25:00.000-08:00

i got my work shot last week. that sentence sounds utterly pretentious, but it also sounds really cool. like i am one of those people who nonchalantly says "i met with the photographer today", as if i was being photographed for Vogue. but, at any rate, after handing over an arm and leg's worth of cash, i got my slides back and they just sing. they look wonderful. it's amazing how a photograph can change a piece of art for the better (or worse). my stuff looks good, so good that i almost regret not applying to graduate school this year. i put it off, like the chicken i am, for next year, because i still don't feel like i'm ready. i will likely never feel that i am ready. but keeping in mind my goal, which is to be in graduate school by the time i am 27, i should be fine. but i really want to go to Yale, which may be stupid and kind of scary, which i why i put it all of until next year.

ages, yes. i have ages. i have to be in graduate school by the time i'm 27. i have to buy a house by the time i'm 33 or 34. i have to have a full time job and/or be tenured by the time i'm 40. i don't have any dates for marriage or children, which is good, i think. ages. ages are good, i guess.

god. this is what my head has been sounding like for the past few days.

and i am trying to fight down the rising panic of no job and no place to live, and i wonder, was this moving back to Philly a bad idea? not in and of itself a bad idea, but the moving part. i hate moving, but i keep doing it. at the same time, i feel like i have absolutely nothing left to do here in Houston. i've exhausted this place, and i want out. talking to my friends and acquaintances here, Houston just seems like a place to get out of. a place to escape from, not to go to.

what the hell is wrong with me? when i am not sitting, staring at this screen, i have 101 witty ideas for entries, but now that i am here, all i can manage is a brain dump.

leaving.

2006-02-11T11:25:00.000-08:00

last week i moved out of my studio, and it ended up being a lot less upsetting than i thought it would be. my life is certainly less stressful having to deal with the presence of That Bitch on a daily basis. That Bitch tried to make nice with me several times in my last weeks at the Center, but i really didn't let her. i've had my fill of pyschotic people and i'm kind of done.

on THAT happy note, all i have been doing is working like mad at the Buck and trying to plot my life back in Philadelphia. i have a couple places in mind to live, including one in Frankford right next to the El. i have always wanted to live next to a train - ambient noise like that doesn't bother me at all, considering i've spent the last seven months sleeping with my head fifty feet away from Highway 59. i've also applied for about a million jobs and have only heard back from two (one no, and one "thanks for your app and we'll call you back after March 1st").

so. life continues on. desperately trying to cram all the Texas things i want to do into the next few weeks. i'm going to Galveston next week with Shawna, and Jeanine is flying down on the 2nd, and then i am out. i can sort of feel that awful trauma of leaving creeping up on me now, i'm so sick of it and i just want it to not happen again for a long time.

i. have. nothing.

2006-02-06T17:05:00.000-08:00

tired. so tired. st*rbucks. nothing but. here is what the kids call a meme, but only cause Cabell tagged me.

Four jobs I’ve had:
seasonal worker at an un-air conditioned computer warehouse during the summer (hell on earth)
book/music/cafe bitch at Borders (3 years of my life down the drain)
ceramics teacher to a bunch of goth 16 year olds (worst paying job i've ever had)
coffee whore (ongoing)

Four movies I can watch over and over:
Hedwig and the Angry Inch
Showgirls
Secretary
Ghost Dog

Four books I can read over and over:
Immediate Family, Sally Mann (not really read, but look at)
Woman, Natalie Angier
To Kill a Mockingbird, Harper Lee
Boundaries, Maya Lin

Four places I’ve lived:
Lebanon, PA
Glenside, PA
Philadelphia, PA
Houston, TX

Four TV shows I love:
The Sopranos
(um....don't really watch tv anymore)

Four places I’ve vacationed:
Florida (with the family)
Austin, TX (escape from Hurricane Rita)
London, England
Glasgow, Scotland

Four favorite places I’ve been in the world:
the North Sea, the eastern shore of Scotland
Isle of Skye, minus the midges
IKEA (shut up)
the highway

Four of my favorite foods:
sushi
hot wings and tons and tons of bleu cheese
blue bell blueberry cheesecake ice cream
any kind of spreadable cheese

Four sites I visit daily:
myspace
slate.com
nytimes.com
go fug yourself

Four places I would rather be right now:
eating Chick-Fil-A with Niner
riding NJ Transit to New York
fish and chips overlooking the Skye bridge
MY BED

Four bloggers I am tagging:
Alexis
Riley
the other Bethany
Violet

where is my flying car, dammit?

2006-01-25T17:10:00.000-08:00

well, it looks like once a week is the best you're going to get. i hate blogger so much i've quit posting. what i really, desperately want is for someone to design me a damn site and set up Wordpress so i don't have to think about it. dammit. i used to be good at these things. i remember when it was so simple...entries, archives, a bio. now i have to deal with things i don't understand. what is RSS and why should i care about it?

Mom's visit came and went, and there was much fun and rain to be had. after weeks and weeks of non-stop sunshine, the five days she was here it didn't even make an appearance. We did dumb tourist things and she did all the things she always does when she visits me - gives me money and buys me food and clothing. Hello age 25.

we had a semi-creepy experience at the Johnson Space Center. it hadn't processed in my brain that going to NASA on a Saturday during a time when no shuttles were in space would result in the "campus" (as they call it) being rather dead. campus was an appropriate name for it, because it had all the architectural charm of a midwestern state university built in the early 80s. there was almost no one there, i guess it was just bare bones crew that remained. we rode around on this strange little tram, and it freezing fucking cold, and there almost nothing to see. mission control was eeriely quiet, like a carefully dressed but as yet unused stage set.

i did end up take a good amount of pictures, because i have an incurable interest in quiet, deserted places. i prefer the things people leave behind to the people themselves: chairs left askew, papers spread across a desk, a half empty coffee cup. it was like the NASA time forgot.

all of these were taken looking down onto the astronaut simulation training area.

the touristy "Space Center Houston" part of the whole gig was mostly geared toward kids: large climbing jungle gyms, overpriced bad food and overpriced cheesy souvenirs. and of course the tear-jerking, lump-in-the-throat-inducing rah-rah documentary films about the space program that, despite my deeply ingrained cynicism, had me welling up at times.

i have this thing for space travel, see, not in any real, technological or scientific way, but more in the "slipped the surly bonds of earth" kind of way. it's something mysterious and highly romantic for me, something i can't really explain easily. i just get really weirdly emotional. when John Glenn went back into space during my senior year of high school, i watched it on TV in Advanced Biology class and had to do everything i could to not cry. and one summer, many moons ago (har har), my sister and i watched Apollo 13 every day. for weeks.

i think this probably all goes back to Star Trek, and my innate indignation at the fact that no one has invented warp drive yet and i still haven't met any Vulcans.

well, duh.

2006-01-17T18:04:00.000-08:00

there's been a burn ban in this part of Texas for the last few weeks, and if i had a guess, i'd say it's probably been lifted by now, because last night was the most insane, torrential rain that i've seen since i've been in Texas.

i was settled down last night in bed and kind of combing through an old New York Times (contemplating my love-hate relationship with the Sunday Styles section), but i heard a soft drip. actually, i should say saw a soft drip, because a stream of water landing on carpet doesn't make any sound. yes, a stream of water coming out of the edge of my ceiling. i positioned a wastebasket under it, only then to find about four more leaks, including one directly over my bed. oh joy.

i called Mark, who called the landlord, who came over, followed by his four year old son, to inspect the problem. so it will be fixed today, and last night i spent the night on the notoriously comfortable couch (as Mark calls it). Mark made spicy popcorn and fed me dark chocolate that tasted of cherries, and we watched CSI and kept a running commentary about how lame it was.

so me mum is coming down to Tehas on Thursday. i had been musing only a few weeks earlier how sad it would be that she would never get to see my digs in Texas, but she had a flight voucher (left over from when American Airlines nearly killed me and my father last summer), and so she is coming here, with plans to knock out at least a couple of things on my Texas to-do list. i think the Basquiat show is in the plans, as well as going to Austin for a day, and doing dumb tourist things at NASA. i want some space ice cream. because i like eating things that are like Astroturf.

i'm also having a little opening/reception for the work i did over the last six months. things are not near done and yet i find myself oddly unstressed about it. maybe i learned my lesson from my thesis show and my body decided that nervous breakdown was not the most favorable path. at any rate, things will get done tomorrow, and i think they'll be pretty okay.

i am sure of a couple things, though:

i think i am done with clay.

i know i am not stretching myself anywhere near enough in my work.

i feel somewhat disappointed by what i didn't do during this residency, but not disappointed in a bitter way. i guess i am excited by the possibilites, and the knowledge that i can and will make work after this residency is over, and it'll be good, probably better than the stuff i'm making now. i don't know exactly why i'm still torturing myself with porcelain, because buidling with it and babysitting it (as it must be) no longer has the slightest pleasure for me. maybe that's why i spent so much time fucking around on the internet in my studio: to avoid what i no longer like.

ah well. time to start over.

someday i'll tell you all the whole story.

2006-01-07T19:38:00.000-08:00

i hate decisions.

in the space of two weeks, i have went from:

staying in Houston, getting a roommate to

staying in Houston, living alone on the cheap and finding another job to

moving home to Lebanon, working at a St*rbucks in Harrisburg and paying off my car to

moving back to Phiadelphia on the prospect of a teaching job and finding an affordable apartment in Germantown near Jeanine so i can see her any damn time i want. even when i lived in East Oak Lane, 15 minutes was too far.

so goodbye, then, to Houston, to Texas, i hardly knew ye. i think i am leaving late February or early March, never to return again, or at least not a long, long time. i can't imagine what would bring me back to this strange glittering city of white freeways and dirty little ramshackle houses. all the more easy to leave, because the girl (the woman) who i thought was my friend turned out to be a fucking sociopath. all the more easy to leave, since the Boy i thought i just might be falling for left me alone in the strangest of circumstances, circumstances that, now that the hurt has passed, i can look on and say: what the fuck?

telling all your friends "it's his loss" and for the first time in your life actually meaning it: priceless.

listing.

2006-01-02T18:25:00.001-08:00

nine things to do before i leave Texas:

1. go to NASA and do dumb tourist things.
2. walk around the third ward and take pictures.
3. see another crazy hardcore show with Anna and Shawna (bring earplugs this time).
4. go to Austin for a weekend.
5. go to Mexico for a weekend.
6. see the Basquiat show at the MFAH.
7. hang out with Mark more.
8. stalk the Shrub in Crawford (are you listening, NSA?)
9. figure out how to fit all this shit in my car and drive back to Pennsylvania.

eight things i can't stand about my sister:

1. the way she can't stop saying things like, "I can't wait for Marc Jacobs' spring collection".
2. her nose constantly in Vogue.
3. her fake ass smile in our holiday pictures.
4. there is no world outside of Manhattan, and if there is, it's boring and a season behind.
5. smoking because Sarah Jessica Parker did in "Sex and the City".
6. reminding me that i am fat several times over Christmas break.
7. throwing occasional 14-year-old temper tantrums.
8. constant insinuations that i, in fact, do not know anything.

seven trains of thought running through my head in the past few weeks:

1. Philadelphia. Houston. Philadelphia. Houston. Philadelphia. Lebanon? Houston. Philadelphia. Philadelphia. Houston. Philadelphia.
2. should call Olive. should call John. should call Olive. should call John.
3. that fucking asshole.
4. apartments, one bedroom, two bedroom, studio, utilities, bungalow.
5. residencies, grants, fellowships, residencies, grants, studios, grants, residencies, CV, resume, slides, slides, slides!
6. that fucking bitch.
7. white houses, houses, white, white houses, shit, am i repeating myself?

six things that are worse:

1. the dirty dishes in the sink.
2. the dead cockroach in my bedroom wastecan.
3. my finances.
4. the floor of my studio (covered in clay).
5. my addiction to coca cola.
6. the coat i started to knit in November.

five things that are better:

1. the alignment of my neck.
2. my hair (cut and dyed).
3. the gas tank in my car (completely full).
4. Mexican coke (made with real sugar!).
5. porcelain.

four things i want in an apartment in Philadelphia:

1. hardwood floors.
2. heat included in the rent.
3. in Germantown, preferably within walking of Jeanine.
4. around $500 a month.

three daydreams i have recently had:

1. being not allergic to anything so i could live with Jeanine.
2. various situations where i inflict pain and violence on people i hate.
3. a one bedroom apartment in Inwood.

two possible places to move to after i leave Houston:

1. Lebanon.
2. Philadelphia.

one wish:

1. happy effing new year.

all i saw were sodium lights.

2005-12-24T10:58:00.000-08:00

there are two enormous wreaths hanging on the large sign in front of the toll lanes. the wreaths are hung so the sign now declares this to be the "HOLLAND TONNEL".

when i emerged from underground and found myself on Hudson Street, i heard a vague acccusatory whisper, the one i always hear when i arrive in new york: why aren't you here. i wanted to roll down the window and scream out into the cold dark night, BECAUSE I CAN'T, but i didn't.

i was utterly blank and quiet as i drove up the New Jersey Turnpike. somewhere after Willow Grove the stereo quit working; nothing i could do would turn it back on. that was okay, i was awake, wide awake, and i stared, stared, and cried, and remembered, and tried to get this bitter taste out of my mouth.

i watched my life is Houston pretty much fall apart over the last week. i am deciding now if i should stay or go back to Philadelphia. to what, though? i don't have a job. i don't have a studio or a place to live. but i don't particularly have those things in Houston, either, at least after January 31st. i don't know what to do. i wish someone would just make decisions for me.

after a nearly hour-long tour of the East Village, i finally found a parking space of dubious pedigree, found my sister's apartment, and collapsed upon her insanely comfortable bed. i stared out her window, and all i saw was a tangle of tenement buildings and fire escapes, with a sliver of blue sky and clouds.

kyphosis, how i love thee.

2005-12-09T20:21:00.000-08:00

so it all started the day after i got back from Philadelphia, on my birthday morn, when i was cutting a piece of board with an exacto. i had cut about two inches when i felt a peculiar...not quite pop, because pop insinuates all sorts of scary things out of whack, but something moved incorrectly in my right hand. almost like a charley horse, is what it felt like, and so i shook my hand out accordingly, trying to slip back whatever had gotten out of place. but it didn't go away.

the nagging pain continued, until finally on friday morning i came up to Jennifer with a whimpering plea to "fix it". she went over my hand a bit, and then gave me her chiropractor's number. i called and managed to get an appointment for two hours hence.

as an interesting aside, Jennifer has been going to this doctor for quite a while, and a couple months ago commissioned me to do a hot glue painting of a spine for his new exam room. i had met him briefly when he came by the Center, and he was sort of adorable in an aw-shucks chiropractor kind of way. so, she told me, i would get to see my piece hung up on the wall in his office when i went to see him.

Dr. G is located in the Memorial Hermann Wellness Center, a sort of doctor's suite cum spa next to one of Houston's large, confusingly named hospitals. when i walked in, i immediately thought this is where all the rich people go to get pampered and have plastic surgery. and of course i was right.

he went over me very thoroughly, for over an hour, poking and prodding and taking x-rays, and then cracking and rubbing and going over my back and neck with an enormous massager that resembled an orbital sander. he gave me the directions: PRICE, Protect, Rest, Ice, Compression, Elevate. no sleeping on my stomach anymore. his preliminary diagnosis was a slighty sprained/strained wrist (he dared mention the evil C-T word), tendonitis in my shoulder, and a neck that was, in his words, "bass ackwards".

so that was last friday. today i went in again and was treated to a look at my x-rays: the bones were all good in my shoulder, and my spine, when i am facing front, is straight and true. my neck, however, is FUBAR. i wish i had my x-rays to show you, constant reader, but all i can do is offer a picture that he drew. the blue is, obviously, how a normal spine should look. the red line is where my spine is. i saw the x-ray and quite frankly, it was fucking scary.

fig. 1 : fuck.

the good news (and there is some) is that we caught it early, and there is no damage to my disks, bones or nerves (forgive my extremely technical language). it can be corrected, but i will have to have about 10-12 more appointments in the next four weeks. all these are amazingly covered by my superawesome St*rbucks insurance, but there is a $35 copay for each appointment, an expense i can't afford. i suppose if i have to defer my loans, i have to defer my loans. dammit. but i really just don't want to mess around with this. when your hands are your livelihood, you don't have much choice.

(ps. my camera seems to no longer hate my computer, so picture entries once again!)

i realize that no one but me will find this amusing.

2005-11-28T12:45:00.000-08:00

Dear MTV,
i know that my obsession with you is, for a 24 year old with a college education and an NPR fetish, slightly unhealthy. it was for you that i ponied up sixty bucks a month for Comcast Cable whilst in Philadelphia, and now that i am poor and living in Houston with an enormous movie collection (courtesy of my roommate), there is, alas, no room for you in my life or my pocketbook. but that doesn't stop me from having an orgy while i'm at my parents' house.

longingly yours,
Bethany

Dear Kelly Clarkson,
i don't understand the whole hipster fascination with "Since U Been Gone" (and what i mean that is i understand the fascination, because it's a near perfect pop song, but i don't understand why hipsters love it), but i have to say that i for one never thought you would last this long. from blonde to red to brown to back to blonde again. plus you're pretty and you have a good voice. thanks for singing an anthem for all the children of divorce.

admiringly,
Bethany

Dear James Blunt,
you're singing in a snowstorm in your video. you're slowly stripping off your clothes and telling me i'm beautiful. i guess this is your niche since John Mayer up and left for a shot at some indie cred. next thing i know you'll be telling me my body is a wonderland. sigh.

wistfully,
Bethany

Dear Black Eyed Peas,
i never thought someone would dare to rhyme "lumps" with "humps" in a song. thank you for that.

peace,
Bethany

Dear Kanye,
so everyone was telling me about Golddigger. i do not listen to the radio (outside aforementioned NPR fetish), so i hadn't heard it until now. i am wondering about the pattern i see emerging in your singles: first a mildly socially conscious song, then a song about how all the women are out to get your newly acquired bling. do you not like women, Kanye? diamonds are forever for some of us, i suppose, but sheesh. oh, and ps. the song rocks. also, do we have a timeline on how long will Jamie Foxx be milking the Ray Charles thing?

wonderingly,
Bethany

Dear Mariah,
you writhe next to a fireplace. you writhe on a couch. you writhe in a limo. you writhe in a pool. you writhe with some bald guy that isn't the guy from Prison Break. all this time you are singing. sometimes you look like a horse when you sing. and please leave the whistle thing back in 1995, okay? thanks.

appreciatively,
Bethany

Dear Gwen,
okay, so in your new video, you know you do that thing where you paint your lips one color and then outline them with a darker color? it makes your mouth look like an asshole, and it's giving me nightmares. please stop.

thanks in advance,
Bethany

Dear Shakira,
i don't know why, but somehow the rest of the English speaking world has not been clued into the fact that you are possibly the sexiest woman alive. and if it wasn't enough to have you singing in Spanish with that dude while you had sex all over that cutting board full of onions, now you come back looking insanely beautiful, singing in English in that growlly awesome voice of yours, in a video that recalls Aerosmith's inane best, only now you're smashing cars. rawk.

lustfully,
Bethany

it's funny what you can get used to.

2005-11-22T14:50:00.000-08:00

so i am sitting here at a cafe on Germantown Avenue having an anti-Starbucks experience. the cafe is called InFusion. comfy chairs, drinks served in ceramic, non-corporate approved music playing, an enormous shelf of books behind my head, a few people quietly tapping away at laptops (Jeanine and I included). someday, i said to her, i am going to work at an indie coffeeshop. someday.

obivously, i am back in Philly for the holiday. despite the fact that i was totally convinced i was going to die, the plane ride was uneventful and i even walked into PHL a half hour early (go Southwest). the only kink was, somewhere between breakfasting at McDonalds, the Boy dropping me off at the airport and walking through security, i lost my cellphone. normally this wouldn't be such a big deal, but trying to find someone at an airport without a cellphone is a near impossible task. after i called the Boy and determined that my cellphone was nowhere to be found in his truck, i went to T-mobile, got a new phone and whored myself for another two years.

things are a bit strange and not quite what i expected here. i think in my four month absence i may have idealized Philadelphia a little bit. as i walked out of the airport i was greeted by dark skies and a cold rain, as Al and i creeped our way up the Schuylkill Expressway i marveled at how old and dirty and small things seemed. the highways here seemed miniaturized, three lanes each way seemed inadequate. the familiar spreads of clean white concrete were nowhere to be found. maybe that's the difference between cities in the Northeast and cities in the West: the accumulation of dirt.

my parents dropped off Boris The Old Camry for me to tool around town in. it was weird to be driving around in a car that low again. as i was locking and unlocking the car yesterday, i kept trying to use the keys for the Jeep. at one point i looked down at my keyring and realized the things they unlocked were 1500 miles away. my life in Houston (such a weird phrase, my life in Houston) seems far away and dreamlike, but the pieces of my life still left here in Philadelphia don't seem entirely real, either. the black leather jacket my parents brought down for me belonged to the Philadelphia Bethany. the Houston Bethany wore this sage green blazer and didn't really need anything else because it never gets cold enough. the Philadelphia Bethany made way more money than the Houston Bethany does. by the Houston Bethany is far happier in her studio. the Houston Bethany never has to warm up her car for ten minutes in the morning. and on and on and on through my head, until i stopped at the part where i mentally referred to Houston as "home".

pick your social ill.

2005-11-16T23:10:00.000-08:00

so on Sunday i spent the entire day with the Boy. we did various things, including going to various thrift stores. i don't have much luck at thrift stores for actual clothing (they never have my size), but i did acquire a number of books to help with my current state of reading deprivation. this included a beat-ass copy of The Da Vinci Code (i must be the only person left in the western hemisphere who hasn't read it), Bee Season (which is by Myla Goldberg, a person who, in my infinite igorance, i did not realize actually existed outside a song by The Decemberists), and Nickle and Dimed, by Barbara Ehrenrich, a book that depressed me the first time i read it, and depressed me again when i read it on Sunday night.

it reminded me that i live on the edge of abject poverty. the first time i read it, i was in college, so at least there was an excuse for such poverty, but this time, no such luck. i have entered this willingly.

i realize when i refer to myself as poor i'm mostly just blowing hot air. if compared to the people in the book, i have several key factors keeping me above water, namely a college education, no dependents, health insurance and no debt outside my student loans and my bleeping car payment. a couple years ago when i took the requisite dumb soc class to graduate (apologies to Cabell), it made me think a lot about class, and the fact that i, like many artists, have an education that doesn't, and probably never will, line up with my earning potential. maybe there should be a special economic class for us: the highly educated poor.

anyhow, i have this decided to dub this Highly Subversive Documentary Film Week, since i saw a fascinating documentary called The End of Suburbia at the MFA last night, and tomorrow i am seeing a documentary about the evils of Wal-Mart. fun times all around. The End of Suburbia scared the shit out of me. i try not to get sucked into the hysterics of things like this, but this time, i'm not sure i can help it. people love to predict the apocalypse. it's kind of fun and makes you sound smart. but the facts thrown around in this film were truly scary. peak oil may have already come and gone in this country, and it's all downhill from here. time to start thinking smaller, people. don't buy that McMansion. live three miles from work. i do, and it rocks. if my car suddenly could not be used any more, i could get a bike and probably be able to accomplish 99% of what i do now (and probably be a lot thinner, too). thinking smaller and just having less stuff is a habit i have cultivated and developed over the last four or five years, a consequence born out of moving every year or so. so i jettison crap every time i move, and it feels fucking wonderful to get rid of it. i am a big believer in having a small amount of very beautiful things, and to hell with the rest.

i hate rich people.

2005-11-10T12:43:00.000-08:00

can someone please clue me into the valet parking obsession in this town? i do not get it. it's everywhere. at every little sidewalk cafe, orange cones abound at all hours of the day (even lunch!), along with some douchebag behind a little podium, waiting to take my damn money to park my car. if you really think about it for a few minutes, you too will realize how patently ridiculous valet parking is. too lazy to walk across the parking lot, is what it really comes down to.

valet parking frequently makes regular parking impossible, like tonight when i was attempting to go to Borders, which happened to share the parking lot with some damn steakhouse called Fleming's. after i steered my dear Lucia past the horde of Lexus and Mercedes, i finally had to give up and park across the street at Whole Foods and cross Alabama at my own mortal peril. i noticed some spaces in the Whole Foods parking lot labeled compact cars only, and though they were closest to Borders, my car is not anywhere near compact, even though it is small for Texas. as i was walking towards the street, i watched a Land Rover park in one of those spots. i passed the guy as he was getting out his car, and i SO wanted to say something, something really awful and witty, but i couldn't think of anything. all i did was look directly at him with what i hoped was a disapproving stare. he looked right through me, of course.

i have a confession to make. i really hate rich people. coming to Texas has really cemented this in my mind; the rich people in Philadelphia (and Jenkintown in particular) were their own brand of obnoxious, but here, it's an unfamiliar obnoxiousness. at least at home i could say, yeah, those are my assholes, they were from my hood. i don't understand dropping $30K on a bar mitzvah, but at least it's familiar. here, we have the oil money, and with it comes with it a sense of entitlement and self-importance that just makes me want to vomit.

this is the thing: after you attain a certain amount of money, you are allowed to officially check out of the reality that i and most other people move through, the reality that it dictated by the limits of our earning power. this is because that certain amount of money allows you to have anything materially, and allows you to have it now. therefore if you are at St*rbucks and your latte gets messed up or takes too long, of course you must throw a tantrum because you are just not used to not having it now. after that, you send your maid to get the latte in the morning, because it's simply too stressful.

i was unfortunately friends with someone like this for a long, long time. it's strange to walk around with someone who doesn't move in the same reality as you, who, before we went across the street to get 20 cent wings and crab legs at a bar, dropped $150 on a cashmere throw at Pottery Barn. on a whim. who didn't understand when i couldn't afford to go out to eat, and who guilted me into going to restaurants i couldn't swing. who split every meal down to the last fucking penny. the same person who, when i mistakenly borrowed $30 from her for a couple days, didn't stop talking about it for a good six months.

i'm not saying that all rich people are like this. i just think most of them are, not because they are necessarily wanting to be bad people, but because, like most everyone, they are lazy. it's easy to get bitchy and impatient, it's far harder to put aside your own self-involvement and empathize with the person in front of you.

if i may talk football for just a moment.

2005-11-07T14:40:00.000-08:00

(look away, Josh)

motherfuck.

so it looks like TO is officially done with the Eagles. which is okay. i think we all knew this that this was coming, i just didn't expect it so soon. at least he's gone now, and the team can get on with their miserable ass season. i still can't bellieve this is the team that made it to the Superbowl last year. as i've watched them fall and fail and make dumb mistakes, i realize that it's more and more the work of a number of small flaws that were mostly likely present last season, but for some reason didn't manifest themselves as badly, or coalesce together in such a devastating way.

this is the one thing that pisses me off to *no end* about Terrell Owens. i will say this, and then hold my peace. he came back from a fucking BROKEN LEG to play in the Superbowl. had the Eagles won, that feat alone would have probably gone down in football history as one of the greatest comebacks ever. his drive, his sheer determination to heal and perform very well in the Superbowl (which he did, people forget) was all negated by his ego and his inability to keep his mouth shut. both before ("what the fuck do they mean they can get to the Superbowl without me?") and after ("i think Donovan was tired" to "they need to give me more respect / more money") the Superbowl, he dragged what legacy he might had as an amazing player into the dirt. between San Fran and Philadelphia, he has already built a solid reputation as a cocky asshole who's only out for himself and the bottom line,

i'm one of those few people who think that yes, professional atheletes should be REQUIRED to be role models. if you're going to get paid that much money to do something you ostensibly love and get satisfaction from, then you should shut your month, keep your dick in your pants, smile and sign many, many autographs. cause your life ain't that hard - trust me on this one.

take me up to the top of the city.

2005-10-30T20:07:00.000-08:00

through the haze of two martinis i walked with Amanda towards the Contemporary Art Museum this evening past. we were going to drive, originally, but i realized how completely ridiculous this was, considering how cool it was outside and the walk being only 10 minutes from the Craft Center. amazing, really, that i live and work within ten minutes of two world class museums.

there were two shows currently on view, one was Andrea Zittel's installation work, a show i couldn't have wrapped my head around in one viewing even if i was sober. it was just strange and crazy and kind of warped my sense of space. alternately antiseptic and warm and womb-like. i came in near the end of her lecture, and i was sore that i missed it.

the other show was Su-en Wong, a series of six paintings. i loved these, both in the precision of execution and the content. the subject of adolescent girls has always been one of morbid fascination for me; it interests me in a way that's both comforting and repulsive, as in: i was there, and i got out, and oh my god, how was i once like that.

all the girls in the paintings were weirdly sexualized, in both subtle and overt ways, but not in a way that made you think it was supposed to be for men to be titillated by. almost as if that sexual energy was directed towards each other, and not towards the viewer. very intriguing.

so, i happened to look at Wong's biography, noted the date of birth, and realized she was only seven years older than me. for all the marriage-house-babies shit i can kindly push away the looming timelines; for my art, i can't. the nagging whisper that was wondering why i hadn't conquered the world yet became a roar just then, as in: where is your solo show at the Contemporary Arts Museum. you spent the day playing on your wheel, making fucking pottery.

i have a kind of crazy, ruthless ambition. less the ruthless, but i'm working on that. i've actually reached the point of crazy that i'm going to apply to Yale for graduate school, just to say i tried for an ivy league. after that, world domination.

anyway...

i never, ever thought i would type these words, but...

Kate Bush has a new album coming out next week.

i first heard her in about 1998 or so. my Finnish penpal at the time, Tanya, made me a mixed tape of her songs, everything from The Kick Inside up to The Red Shoes (we sent each other a lot of mixed tapes...i wish i had kept more of them). it had most of the required listening on it, from Wuthering Heights to Breathing to Cloudbusting. a big Tori fan at the time, i was nervous and eager to hear she who was the grandmother of them all.

Kate Bush is just freaking insane. i listen to The Kick Inside and The Dreaming and i am amazed that a vision that mature and original came out of a 17 to 22 year old. some people just come out fully formed, i guess. and the music, it's from another place. that's the only way i can describe it. there is no way to source it. i can't sit down and say to someone who's never heard her music before, "Kate Bush's music is about ________." whereas someone like Tori, who i would consider nearly Kate's equal, you can say her music is about religion and the patriarchy and rape and being a woman. but Kate's music just seems to transcend all that, and i can't even describe how.

so you want to get into Kate Bush, do you? i would recommend The Hounds of Love from 1985. it's just this huge, sweeping soundscape. i really think it's head and shoulders above any of her other work.