I still don't know dream summary etiquette. I know "I had the weirdest dream last night" is supposed to be a cue to stop listening. But the thing is, everyone wants to share that weird dream, that unshakeable twisted feeling while you found a secret garden or talked to your dog in English while having breakfast with George Clooney. But no one wants to hear it. Why? 1. They had to be there. 2. Dream recounts can often be an implicit boast of "check out my interesting brain, yo!"
And I think back to the times that I've listened to other people's dreams...ok so my eyes do glaze over when I hear about the fantastical stuff...tap dancing on a frog while jousting with your principal...save that for your drawings, I guess. But the realistic stuff, having a dream that you were still in that horrid AP US history class and 4 journals of homework uncompleted, that you made up with that estranged friend and woke up and realized you didn't...the dreams that are obviously tied to conscious preoccupations...those I don't mind hearing about as much.
This wasn't the most interesting, but I dunno today was the day I decided to actually write them down
I had this dream where I had six unannounced guests in my house, my parents' house, rather. I was practicing piano with someone I don't remember, feeling annoyed that one of the lines required me to reach my pinky octaves lower than the rest of the melody, and pop back up. An acquaintance appeared sitting on the white couch and made some inappropriate lewd comment regarding a princess illustration on one of sheets of music (evidently the sheet music transformed to nursery tunes) and I walked out of the room. Then my 6 guests arrived. I felt a flash of panic and wondered how my mom would take it though she was standing not 20 feet from me. I eyed the giant oriental rug on our family room floor imagining them side by side like pigs in a blanket thinking...well it's not so bad if they stayed there...not very obtrusive...I imagined them walking through the halls touching things they saw touching the things in my room and my stomach clenched...
all of a sudden I was waking up in the top bunk of a bunk bed, of two bunk beds in my room, I looked to the right and saw two recognizable curled bodies on the other bunk, confused for a moment because one of the boys was not there the evening before, and thinking, well of course he's here, he's always mooching off of other people...a couple people were already in the midst of leaving, going wherever they were going in the haze of the morning...
and then I was on the floor next to the bottom bunk of my bed and there's my friend, but with the body of a baby...with the chubby face and chubby hands and abbreviated chunky torso...and my other friend remarked matter-of-factly (with a tint of I-can't believe you didn't know this) everyone wakes up with the body of a baby...and then we grow throughout the day...and I thought, oh really, as I picked up my friend, holding her with my hands under her armpits dangling her in front of me...and when I looked up again all my other friends became mounds of sleeping babies...
We're on the floor of the foyer and there's two groups of kids getting ready to go upstairs for their science lessons. I'm usually with one group but wander to the other because a lot of them have been absent...I look in my hands and there are giant plaster models of ears and noses...evidently we were going to stick fake earwax and boogers into the respective crevices to learn about germs. This second group acts like I'm supposed to be there all along, and I see my group of kids walking up the stairs to the labs already...I feel like I'm getting left behind, being somewhere I'm not supposed to be...
I'm in the apartment of a fictional sister of my friend, I was staring at her under the pretense she was a stranger until she starts talking to me and recognition dawns instantly. She had just graduated from college and was holding a diploma and wearing her robes...it was an amazing feat because she was around 32, even though her face was still oily and pockmarked with acne, and had an 8 year old daughter. She thanked me for reading to her daughter while she was away and I said it was no problem I do it all the time and started giving some advice about hard work vs being smart how being smart is only half the battle blah blah blah (this was the most lucid part of my dream where my conscious brain was contributing) and then I woke up.
Wednesday, November 13, 2013
Sunday, November 10, 2013
Parenthood is my Guilty Pleasure
There are some people who angrily exclaim that there is no such thing as a guilty pleasure. If you like it, then there should be no reason to be ashamed, they cry. There is no such thing as high brow, low brow, it's an idea invented by ignorant snobs. I disagree. There are just some things that I enjoy that I just can't stand behind.
Parenthood is one of them.
It's melodramatic, the situations are contrived, they use the same old gimmicks of unexpected pregnancies, affairs, cancer. Besides basic personality traits, each season the characters respond differently from how you would expect them to the previous year, Jekyll and Hyde fashion. Assholes become angels, and vice versa.
The revolving door of serious love interests for the unmarried mother daughter duo-- it's not the number of boyfriends that is the issue, but the feeling that the writers have a Taylor Swift-ian addiction to falling in love---but they don't know where to go after that.
Whenever the four siblings get together to discuss their parents, the camraderie and teasing and cross-talking feels forced, a too-obvious display of look-how-dysfunctional-we-are-but-we're-awesome.
What saves the show, however, is how they react beautifully to their situations. once you get over the the soap opera-y circumstances, you appreciate that dialogue is mostly honest and realistic. The mother that would rather be working in the office than be present for every dance class and baseball practice. The marriage that seems to be on rocky ground after several decades. The father that doesn't love his new baby yet. The daughter that feels overshadowed by her autistic brother. Despite the sappy moments, it's the only dramedy that explores family life without veering into Afterschool special or Anti-Hero (A la Tony Soprano or Don Draper) territory.
I don't know anyone else who watches this show, and definitely not anyone my age. Unless they knit. or have 3 cats. Or listen to Contemporary Country Music. Watching it makes me feel like some stay-at-home mom. I don't watch it on TV and I never see it mentioned on websites, but somebody's gotta be watching it if it squeezed its way into a 4th season.
I think I'd miss it when it ends.
Parenthood is one of them.
It's melodramatic, the situations are contrived, they use the same old gimmicks of unexpected pregnancies, affairs, cancer. Besides basic personality traits, each season the characters respond differently from how you would expect them to the previous year, Jekyll and Hyde fashion. Assholes become angels, and vice versa.
The revolving door of serious love interests for the unmarried mother daughter duo-- it's not the number of boyfriends that is the issue, but the feeling that the writers have a Taylor Swift-ian addiction to falling in love---but they don't know where to go after that.
Whenever the four siblings get together to discuss their parents, the camraderie and teasing and cross-talking feels forced, a too-obvious display of look-how-dysfunctional-we-are-but-we're-awesome.
What saves the show, however, is how they react beautifully to their situations. once you get over the the soap opera-y circumstances, you appreciate that dialogue is mostly honest and realistic. The mother that would rather be working in the office than be present for every dance class and baseball practice. The marriage that seems to be on rocky ground after several decades. The father that doesn't love his new baby yet. The daughter that feels overshadowed by her autistic brother. Despite the sappy moments, it's the only dramedy that explores family life without veering into Afterschool special or Anti-Hero (A la Tony Soprano or Don Draper) territory.
I don't know anyone else who watches this show, and definitely not anyone my age. Unless they knit. or have 3 cats. Or listen to Contemporary Country Music. Watching it makes me feel like some stay-at-home mom. I don't watch it on TV and I never see it mentioned on websites, but somebody's gotta be watching it if it squeezed its way into a 4th season.
I think I'd miss it when it ends.
I love the Yeezus Album Cover
Yeezus Album cover, I love it. I have a soft spot for any usage of minimal red as a focal point. But it's so on point (pun wasn't intended, but now is), so in tune (pun wasn't intended, but now is) with what Kanye West wants to offer on the album musically . Bareness. Spareness. Yet Riveting. The simple piece of red tape applied not perfectly on the edge of the horizon line. That contrasts beautifully with the filmy silvery iridescence of the disc. He made us appreciate the beauty of the blank CD itself, a fascination usually reserved for babies and the Amish.
Instead of brainstorming the most complicated, unusual design to plaster on the cover, West walked in the opposite direction and presents something just as visually impacting, if not more so. He spoke softly, but carries a big stick.
Instead of brainstorming the most complicated, unusual design to plaster on the cover, West walked in the opposite direction and presents something just as visually impacting, if not more so. He spoke softly, but carries a big stick.
Thursday, November 7, 2013
The Type of People who Volunteer/Do Community Service
1. Do gooders that want to help others
2. Confused people who are trying to make sense of their own life
3. Overcompensators that want to show the world how they're gooder than everyone, the ones that ham it up for the foster kids and homeless and senior citizens but turn a stoic face to "the normals"
4. People being punished
I volunteered at the Bingo night at a nursing home yesterday. Being there reminded me of those times we visited during Girl Scouts projects and with the cobbled together kid's chorus group made up of our neighborhood's Taiwanese Christians. And me. There was this constant inner conundrum of wanting to be accommodating yet not condescending. The excruciating wait watching some of the Bingo players with their knitted hats and long triangular fingernails gingerly locate and cover the called number. Some of them wore homemade beaded bracelets, with the same kinds of chunky glass and base metal beads that were in my beading kit I got for Christmas in 5th grade. I wonder if some kid gave it to them or they made it in the Arts and Crafts room. A man wore a beaded necklace. It was stupid, but it made me happy that they still treasured pretty things, pretty and intrinsically worthless things, just like the rest of us. That if it was a kid that gave it to them, it wasn't just a polite exchange made more in an attempt to make the giver feel important, but it was special to both parties.
There was a male senior who shook my hand and spoke only German. Or Russian. I forget. And soon after he shook my hand they said they needed a male volunteer to stand next to him instead because apparently he liked to touch people in places that would still be covered by a bathing suit.
I wanted to yell at the middle-aged men that were excessively superficially hammy with the seniors, you're not better than them, you're just not There yet.
2. Confused people who are trying to make sense of their own life
3. Overcompensators that want to show the world how they're gooder than everyone, the ones that ham it up for the foster kids and homeless and senior citizens but turn a stoic face to "the normals"
4. People being punished
I volunteered at the Bingo night at a nursing home yesterday. Being there reminded me of those times we visited during Girl Scouts projects and with the cobbled together kid's chorus group made up of our neighborhood's Taiwanese Christians. And me. There was this constant inner conundrum of wanting to be accommodating yet not condescending. The excruciating wait watching some of the Bingo players with their knitted hats and long triangular fingernails gingerly locate and cover the called number. Some of them wore homemade beaded bracelets, with the same kinds of chunky glass and base metal beads that were in my beading kit I got for Christmas in 5th grade. I wonder if some kid gave it to them or they made it in the Arts and Crafts room. A man wore a beaded necklace. It was stupid, but it made me happy that they still treasured pretty things, pretty and intrinsically worthless things, just like the rest of us. That if it was a kid that gave it to them, it wasn't just a polite exchange made more in an attempt to make the giver feel important, but it was special to both parties.
There was a male senior who shook my hand and spoke only German. Or Russian. I forget. And soon after he shook my hand they said they needed a male volunteer to stand next to him instead because apparently he liked to touch people in places that would still be covered by a bathing suit.
I wanted to yell at the middle-aged men that were excessively superficially hammy with the seniors, you're not better than them, you're just not There yet.
Sunday, October 27, 2013
Thoughts/Tweets that will probably never make it Part 3
1. random sentence I wrote in summer 2010
the warming gel pack lay limp in the basin, like a dead fish waiting to be poached for supper
2. random sentence I wrote in january 2010
the warming gel pack lay limp in the basin, like a dead fish waiting to be poached for supper
2. random sentence I wrote in january 2010
All my professors were/are nice, but it doesn't stop me from observing them as if I were on a safari and they were in their natural habitats.
3. These random sentence compilations are in part an urge to clean out my drafts folder filled with barely attempted posts
4. random sentence from August 2010
I hate sleeping in new places. There's always the aching awareness that I am not at home. Home being where I have/am accustomed to laying my head for the past week.
5. I hate that I keep having the compulsion to post something vulnerable and truthful (to be real, man) and then have the urge to "revert post back to draft" when I reread it not a week later. Because sometimes when I see other people pour their hearts out in a face book status I admire/appreciate their abiilty to put themselves out there. But other times it's like, oh my god, cut the sap. The hope that someone out there you know is reading, the fear that they are.
6. I just came back from microwaving leftover pudding from my banana cream pie endeavor. Except now that I'm back I don't know what impelled me to walk over to the refrigerator at that moment. Hunger, obviously, but I had been lazy enough to ignore that all morning. What electrical current sped over my synapses so that I decided to stand up and walk away mid-thought?
7. Funny how I hated writing in 5th grade and on when we had to keep "lifebooks" and we did all those exercises like zoom in/zoom out and just writing writing writing raw raw raw anything and everything. And I realize, sometimes you just need to write every single thought and detail in your mind to exercise the path from thought to word. It would be lovely and ego-stroking if there was someone there to actually read each and every one of these asinine thoughts, but it's more about the flow flow flow and maybe someday when you go back and reread you will find some rocks that could be worthy of polishing.
8. I'm willing to suffer for my art, she said, as she slowly cut each finger off, knuckle by knuckle.
8. I'm willing to suffer for my art, she said, as she slowly cut each finger off, knuckle by knuckle.
I don't like painted pumpkins
If I were Larry David or Seinfeld, it would be funny that I'm griping about such asinine things. But I'm not, so it's not.
I hate painted pumpkins. They annoy me so much. Call me narrow-minded, but I feel that pumpkins are strictly to be carved if they are to be made into decorations. At least that way it utilizes and showcases the hollow nature of the gourd, especially when a glowing candle is placed inside. When you paint it, it just feels like such a waste, a superficial film of illustration while its insides of pulp and seeds lay rotting. When you could've made bland roasted pumpkin seeds. You might as well just paint a solid rock. Those were never alive.
side note: In elementary school they never let me eat pumpkin seeds because they were afraid I was allergic to them, nut allergy-afflicted child that I was.
I hate painted pumpkins. They annoy me so much. Call me narrow-minded, but I feel that pumpkins are strictly to be carved if they are to be made into decorations. At least that way it utilizes and showcases the hollow nature of the gourd, especially when a glowing candle is placed inside. When you paint it, it just feels like such a waste, a superficial film of illustration while its insides of pulp and seeds lay rotting. When you could've made bland roasted pumpkin seeds. You might as well just paint a solid rock. Those were never alive.
side note: In elementary school they never let me eat pumpkin seeds because they were afraid I was allergic to them, nut allergy-afflicted child that I was.
Wednesday, October 23, 2013
10:30 PM at Kinko's
Standing in Kinko's waiting for their "print and go" app to load at a tortuously slow pace, not even the free wifi is helping, already feeling violated having spent $4.32 on the pay .30/min rental computer only to print out a singe resume after debating whether or not to spend $18.60 on color printing 18 pages of single-sided line sheets and deciding no, there's got to be a better way...while employee #1 with the thick rectangular black frame glasses and energetic black hair vacuums and cheerfully chastises himself for "missing that corner again" spitting out sparse raucous laughter while muzak plays faintly in the background and the employee #2 with the blonde Brillo pad hair and wire-rimmed glasses responds in the high-pitched voice that yes, backstabbing in Call of Duty is indeed a clever strategic maneuver... or maybe he said never really played it...I don't remember...
Never have I felt more like Walter White or Joseph Gordon-Levitt in Looper or any other violent but artsy thriller/crime/drama at that point in the plot where it's the calm before the storm or the calm right after the storm where they're sitting in a empty diner swirling their barely-touched coffee or buying snacks at a dusty gas station when they are just about to kill some people and abandon their partners in crime and loved ones or right after they did.
The app finally did load but my document didn't so I left defeated with 5 minutes left until closing.
My heart still pains from spending 5 dollars to print a single sheet of paper.
Never have I felt more like Walter White or Joseph Gordon-Levitt in Looper or any other violent but artsy thriller/crime/drama at that point in the plot where it's the calm before the storm or the calm right after the storm where they're sitting in a empty diner swirling their barely-touched coffee or buying snacks at a dusty gas station when they are just about to kill some people and abandon their partners in crime and loved ones or right after they did.
The app finally did load but my document didn't so I left defeated with 5 minutes left until closing.
My heart still pains from spending 5 dollars to print a single sheet of paper.
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