8.30 The Senior Center

 

Per usual, kaleidoscopesnowflakes. 

Wall in studio.

Cause animals are terrible liars and beautiful creatures. 

One of our few rainstorms left us with a beautiful site on a trip to Home Depot. 

  

Here are people existing in their own realities and a shitty attempt to put 3 people in the same one. 

I built a lot of cat forts to instigate some friendly battles. 

This semester, I am interested in how everything exists within multiple realities and dreams as an expression of individual realities. I am interested in how the senses being activated or deprived through clothing and environment can affect our emotions, memories, and, vicariously, our actions. I believe that through these realities we can find truth in ourselves.

8.26

Oh Facebook,
I swear you are the downfall of our social structure. Your promotion of passive aggressive communication has killed any energy I had for action.
Today, I logged in to find a girl posting a complaint about someone being in love with her. That would be extremely embarrassing and count as bullying if viewed from the enamored human's stance.
and then I logged off.
because people are jerks.

8.23

Perfume
I usually put my perfume on in the morning after I apply lotion and dress in my underwear.
Then, while dressing, I check in with myself to make sure that I am wearing my perfume.
But always, I can't tell if I already put it on, or if it is just residue from my bedroom or myself, or if my brain can just smell it on command, or if I sprayed it on some article near by, or if I even have class today.

8.21

The thing about school is that it is a bunch of shit.
I am finally able to take the classes I am interested in, and learn the things I actually want to learn and understand, but I only have a year. I guess I have taken a few other classes in previous years that I enjoyed but, for the first time, I actually want to know what my classes can teach me. I get why we have requirements but damn! I know that going through that shit is the only way I have matured to be able to realize this. I guess that is the catch 22 of growing up. Only after you have grown can you realize what you should have done.
But I am a pretty hesitant person.
Largely invested in feeling and emotions.
You telling me "what you wanted to happen" means nothing to me, and I must come to the conclusion myself. Since when did we believe forcing people to have similar shitty experiences as us would generate the same person. That is physically impossible on a universal level.
And the bullying?
Still?
Geez, guys!
and why are people still taking things personally? I know everyone has bullied. I know everyone has been the person to make another feel awful. Even if it was unintentional, we have all hurt each other's feelings in some way or another.
I'm not arguing that peoples feelings are invalid or worthless, but everyone should have a grasp of life's tragedies by this age. Yet, I feel celebrities come forward with these "I was bullied" claims to humanize them. These claims fail to humanize them because the rest of us "humans" were bullied and don't use it as an excuse.
Yes, teasing can be awful and snowball into larger, more serious issues.
No, there is not an excuse for being disrespectful and mean to others.
I'm saying that this is a part of being human.


I can't tell if she is saying things like it on purpose so that I have to guess, but by this point she can't hide it anymore. Her car pulls up the driveway, and I watch her collect her things and lower herself out of her car. As she approaches the door, I continue to stare through the window. My fingers trace the green velvet of the chair as she opens the door. I look at her, then at the dye work on my jeans. My heart cowers in my chest. She greets me and smiles sweetly when I don't respond. I watch her put a bag in the kitchen, and I try to memorize her hair style so I don't have to look at any other part of her. She tells me some thing about how lunch went with her mother, but my subconscious fills in any gaps in her story with a few "oh yeah?"s and "well, thats good"s. She sticks her head around the corner and smiles again. "Mom was really happy", she whispered smugly as if saying it loudly would disprove it's truth.
I smiled and my shoulders became lead.

8.13

I like when you don't talk to me and the anxiety makes me warm. I like when I come home and your toenails are stuck to my feet. I like to look at how disgusting your skin looks, and how the smell of garbage always reminds me of you. I like when you call me, and you are out of breath, and you take those long gaps in the middle of long sentences between words that should not be separated. I like when I wake up in the middle of the morning and feel your hair on my face. I like to look at pictures of you and use them to raise myself esteem. 

She liked to have French movies playing constantly in the background. You could hear the stream of words from any side of her place all the time, no matter what activity or task was being performed. I was charmed after my first visit and was won over after my third. We talked longer on my fourth visit and I witnessed the changing of films. It was done with such familiarity that I was considerably impressed. A few other people came in and out during the film, speaking personally with her while I half listened, one eye always on the film. I was intrigued. Soon I was there twice a week and the french refused to dissolve in the background. Around this time I was getting familiar with a few of the films that I had caught two or three times. I began to notice she would only watch a few of the dozens she played. In the middle of a cigarette, a month after the first time, I asked her. 

"They sound like my mother."

I'm not satisfied, but this is nothing new.  

7.15

Tonight blog post is inspired by Lauren with her quote "idk... Relationships? Future? Present? Cats?". 
Thanks Lauren. I hope you are doing well.

So, relationships. 
Well, my first thought is that I hate relationships, but that isn't true at all. I know that is the impression most people have of me, and, I guess, I say it a lot, but I really don't hate them. I feel more apathetic towards romantic relationships. If one was to objectively look at the "relationships" I am presently in or have been in, one would find that I am extremely uncommitted to any human outside of myself. It's not that I actively avoid relationships, they always passively occur for me. I do well independently, attract someone, put up way too many boundaries, and it sits in a way that neither of us are committed, but it would be awkward if we started seeing anyone else. And the worst part is that I am totally okay with living like this. 
Things are about to get real. 
No one really had "the talk" with me. My mother gave me the appropriate version for my childhood innocence when I was 8 or 9, but you can not explain anything that a mother needs to teach to a daughter at that age. My dad did his best and would give me books, literal text books, on this shit. And it's not that I needed someone to sit down with me and show me, but when you aren't surrounded by those things and you aren't being told how to do them, you quickly separate yourself from it. I put it off, and it was never important in my life. I assumed someone would be with me in the future but never put any importance in to making it happen. 
I like being alone. 
I know how to be alone. 
Even though I might not have had a mother to usher me through life, I had a cat. 
Lc hated me at first. 
When Valerie handed her to me, Lc instantly clawed her way over my shoulder and out of my arms. I spent the next 3 days taking shifts sitting with her in the back-hall bathroom. She didn't really like to be petted, so I took my sketch book and colored pencils and drew her. I liked the lines coming from her eyes and how her face was asymmetrical like mine. Her tail looked wild, and I would spend the afternoons sketching each raccoon-like rings as they wagged lazily about. 
Rascal, our other cat at the time, was insanely friendly, like an open book, or 60 second mystery. but Lc was something else. I wanted to name her Spots (there were spots on her feet), or Amethyst (because I was obsessed with my birthstone and the color purple[surprise.]). My mother hated both of those names and approached me in the kitchen. She told me she had thought of a good name for the cat and it was LC and it would stand for Lynn's Cat. Now, I knew my mother hated the names I liked, and she really pushed it on me. I agreed because I was given a cat (fucking awesome) and didn't want to throw a fit about something so petty in comparison(I was very aware that my family thought I complained a lot[crabsterlynn]). 
For the next few years I barely saw Lc. 
She always napped with my mother, under the crook of her knees so I couldn't reach, or slept in the office, on the highest shelf of the bookcase so I couldn't reach. I would grab her by whatever available limb I could manage to blindly find, and drag her down. I took her back to my bed and would hold her in that sliver of space between my arm and waist. She was always furious and would radiate heat. But soon I became nicer and, although she wouldn't sit on my lap while I watched tv, she would sleep under the covers with me, in the crook of my arm, at night. By the time I graduated high school she slept in the crook of my arm every night. Now that I sleep in a bigger bed she stretches out next to me. Usually her tail is in my face though. 
Wow, this was uncharacteristically personal.

7.11 slurpie remix

Sometimes I imagine you sitting next to me.
After a while we start to get comfortable with each other, and I imagine my knee touching yours. You show me something in front of you, and my moving in for a better view causes our arms to touch. As I grow tired, I rest my temple on your shoulder.
At first you are rigid, and we are both very aware of each point of contact, but slowly we relax, and it feels strange when I do lift my head up and look at your face.
You know I am looking at you, but you can only focus before you. Your cheek shows me the impression of your tongue running over your molars.
"Are you okay?" Your lips flutter, but you still won't look at me.
I stare at you, waiting for you to turn your face to me, but you still refuse.
You repeat the question, eyes unmoving.
I answer "no", quietly, still looking at you.
Your mouth frowns. I know you are displeased. Now it feels obvious that you aren't looking at me. I know we both know you should be looking at me.
"Hey", you say softly, "What's wrong? We gotta be positive. We gotta, ya know, pep it up." Your hands are a blur at the bottom of my vision. I can see worry growing in your face.
"I can't. It's not enough anymore." I show you my teeth to say Things are cool, bro. No worries. My mind is screaming WHY WON'T YOU LOOK AT ME DAMMIT.
You exhale slowly.
I can see your eyes straining.
Your chin appears weak.
I know I've pushed you too far, and I give up. I go back to whatever I was doing. Your knee has gently settled against mine. Again, our arms occasionally brush. I try to focus my apologies through these connections and I know you receive them, because after 5 minutes things usually calm back down. We start to joke, and I ask if you need something from the kitchen.
You politely refuse, but I know you will grow envious when I return and have to make your own trip.
I go to the kitchen, trying to remember what I had tried to remember from earlier to tell you. The water is always too cold as I hold some in my mouth for my journey back.
but your spot is empty.
and I realize you weren't here.
and these moments didn't happen.