Ode To A Mug

This is a poem about a cup that a dear friend of ours gave to me after we talked about Emma, Downton Abbey, and North and South.

"O Masterpiece Theatre cup 

with your shining, oblique white porcelain interior 

many a beverage have your spacious walls encircled 

Steaming, fragrant tea 

hot chocolate towering with whipped cream 

they all last through a sonata

ten book pages

twelve knitted rounds on a sweater's arm 

they do not go cold in my absence

you are like an old friend

we take care of each other

you and I

and you sit dutifully on the table 

the chair arm

the porch floor

Just waiting 

a small warmth  

for a cold day." 

Maps

I've been in love with the National Park Service maps (like the one here) ever since I gathered my first couple from a Californian trip. Someday it'd be really neat to just have ALL of them.

You Know That

Your writing's bad when...you glance at it and can't for the life of you figure out if the paper's upside down.

Quote #23

"A lovely thing about Christmas is that it's compulsory, like a thunderstorm, and we all go through it together." 
~Garrison Keillor 

Little Bugs

Lanterns
at the death of light
Dart here and there
a dizzying sight

Angsty Blogger

I've been feeling incredibly frustrated lately. Not because of anything in my personal life, oh no, but because of something in my online life (which seems to be ever-increasingly dominating the former). This blog. This blog, which, although not THE main focus of my creative day-to-day thoughts, still seems to receive a fair amount of my opinions on the world. It's not that I want to stand in my town triangle with a loudspeaker and force my thoughts on poor passersby, but I do feel like I'm pouring opinions into a black hole. Everything goes into it, but no discussions get started and no one reads what I write. Let's straighten this out. It's my fault. I don't send e-mail announcements for blog posts because (a It's maddening when people do that, and (b I am terrified of what people might think of me once they're done wading through the inner recesses of my mind. There's a small but uproarious and bad-ass part of my brain that's just saying, "Too bad! You think what you think! Put it out there! If people disagree that's fine too! Just do it! If they mind, they'll tell you!"
Since I don't really keep in active contact with any family members or friends via email, I don't feel justified in sending them things. It's sure to bother them, right? Anyway. I don't know.

Esra'a Al-Shafei and MideastYouth

I recently stumbled across an old post which contained a recommendation, long forgotten, that I look into a woman named Esra'a Al-Shafei. This link, and the following three, have some great info about this brave woman and her efforts to forge new chains of communication in struggling parts of the world. I don't have a twitter, but I encourage people to follow her on there.
http://www.mideastyouth.com/about-us/
http://fellows.ted.com/profiles/esra-a-al-shafei
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FYOA6mjqeKo
I'm in love with the entire concept of the MideastYouth project. This is what the internet is for. It's supposed to be one giant conversation between the peoples of the earth, and with all these relatively new channels of communication (blogs, YouTube, the ability to webcam and live stream important events as they are happening), projects like MideastYouth are so important and affect numerous aspects of our cultural (r)evolution.

thoughts

Kind of got stuck walking around my little town last night. It was windy and cold, but I got a little snippet out of it.

The sound of heels echoes off the buildings. I feel as though I am in a noir film. I have a trench coat, but it's been left at home. Gravel crunches and far-off automobile tires scrape wet pavement. Everything is melting from the day before. There was a snowstorm but its claim seeped away. Gulls squawk. What are they doing up? It is dark and shadowy.

Things I Dislike About Heels

They're impractical for walking softly on any surface. You can't change direction easily. If worn 70% of the time, they shorten your calf muscles. No running or remotely practical movements can be accomplished in them. On a plus note, they make you feel like you're miles tall, they force you to stand up straight, and they make an important-sounding clicking noise.

Art classes

Just got signed up for an art class focusing on charcoal, pencil, and pen and ink drawings, which is very very exciting! I'll miss the last class because of Spain, but it'll be 8 weeks long, one day a week. I've had this in mind for a while, but never saw options for classes.

Teenage Dream (because I'm totally awesome like that <.<)

I’ve been thinking a lot lately about wishes and dreams and that whole situation. A few images and song snatches keep circling in my head:

“The only difference between ‘try’ and ‘triumph’ is a little ‘umph’!” ~Fischer, Bones

This quote is so maddening. I can’t stand inspirational quips like it. However, given the person speaking it, it's all fine.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=291ET6Py6H8 Woah, so that was weird. That’s not Bloody Mary. 

Also this song: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YVFw9_xgicI

I have lots of dreams, some of them more preposterous than others. I mean--I’d like to be the world’s (female) Billy Gibbons.

I’d like to write fantastic, beautiful songs that stick around forever and ever.

I’d like to be a great writer and essayist.

I’d like to be a traveler, across seas and over land.

I’d like to be a Tolkien scholar: get lost in the words and epics of his world, be consumed by a fascination for history.

I don’t know how many of these things will come to fruition, but I think it’s good to try for them. After all, it’s life, and unless you believe in re-incarnation (which I’m convinced has some true aspects), you only get 75 or so years to really live it, if you’re lucky, and if you don’t count the “establishment” era of the toddler/adolescent years. These are just some random thoughts. Though I think, being a teenager, they’re very relevant. At times like these, we teenagers are faced with SO MANY THINGS TO BE, and we just want to be everything, but since that’s not really possible, we’re forced to make choices and narrow down our images of happiness. We’ll all get a slice of happiness no matter what, but so many things depend on strings of choices that you make throughout your life. Left or right turns, yes’s or no’s, building bridges and burning them. And I’,m at this point where I’m so overwhelmed with what to do with this thing that is all mine, it’s ALL mine, that I just sit and stare into space and wonder what I truly want. I know-from bloggers and youtubers who are on the cusp of big career paths or graduation-that everyone goes through this at some point. I just wonder how I’ll emerge from it. 
Just today, I came across this lovely video. Basically it's everything I've said in this post, in 3 minutes. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BysBU673hTI

How Ribbon Candy Is Made

It appears most of these will be about candy. Fine by me. On searching youtube, I found a great channel that goes right along with the blog theme! http://www.youtube.com/user/HowItsMadeEpisodes?feature=watch
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C9jAd6NRMW0
One Christmas when I was around 8 or 9, we got a huge box of this stuff from our neighbors. It was so beautiful and shiny and really, really fun to eat. I haven't ever seen it since then, but I always have an eye out for it.

How Candy Canes Are Made

This will be a new "feature," one that links to videos or posts detailing how ordinary or mundane things  in everyday life are created.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1OMx7xhxu70

Links of the Month

http://jacac.deviantart.com/gallery/?offset=96#/d57ksc6

Crown Me Q of P

There are so many things I want to learn. And it always seems that there isn't enough time in which to learn them. So, to cope with this feeling of impending self-apocalypse (because by George, I'm nearly a quarter done with my life right now, and I'd like to make it count for something on the pages of history, or at least in other people's minds), my solution is-PROCRASTINATION. That's right folks, it's how I cope.
I've realised this needs to change.
Which is why I'm making a December resolution list!
Be Nice.
Be Laid-back.
Be Positive.
Be Better.
Finish the darn song already.
Practice the guitar often enough that finger calluses are omnipresent.
Read up on music history more.
Read in my lovely new and shiny Psych., Bio., and World History textbooks each day.
Stop procrastinating. It sucks the blooming life out of you and leaves a crumpled little shell of despair.

So there it is!
Bye for now.

Things that piss me off about the modern age

• using words like 'perhaps', additionally', and 'merely' in every day convo makes you sound like a stuck-up dick
• people throwing out their "old" gadgets for shiny new ones with two changes/modifications/additions See this mindblowing consumer-culture ad 
• smile etiquette. How creepy can a person be before it is no longer acceptable to smile at them in passing? Why don't people smile at each other in cities? Is a smile a mugging invitation? Do peoples' faces in cities possess the ability to bend upwards?
• Everyone whipping out their phones all over the place
• The Industrial Revolution. People are still starving all over the world, and when gas runs out we chubby Americans are screwed. 
• Supercilious college girls with their preppy handbags and oh-so-conforming ponytails and makeup. It's just kind of boring. 
• Really stupid movies. How do you justify spending so much money on something that's immature, low, and dull? 
• individually wrapped snack packets and water bottles. So much plastic, why! http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=asCNsI-q_KQ
• The anonymity of the internet. Because there are no repercussions, people can shout things out into cyberspace and never get confronted about what they say. YouTube comments are the worst. They're an outlet for shrieking fangirls, awful trolls, and just....really unintelligent people, to put it  frankly. Basically, everything that I say on here, in this personal space that I've decided is mine...these are my real thoughts. I would say these out loud to almost anyone, and if someone confronted me about them, I would gladly have a conversation regarding why I think that, and maybe change my standings based on new information. Everything is subject to change, in some way or another. Everything. This blog isn't necessarily public: I'm not plastering my opinion onto something someone else has put on the internet, forcing other people to read it-people can either look at my blog or not, and they don't have to agree with what I'm saying, ever. And that's fine.  

Edit: preppy college girls are very nice, I'm sure. It's just that you feel like they're looking down on you all the time. I'm sorry for my strong opinions. I'm more relaxed and a tad less cynical if you meet me. Things come across much stronger in my writing, and brief sentiments or passing opinions become a bit set in stone. Maybe the need to apologise after every blog post I write is a signal that I should try to make them nicer?

Subway Podabble

We stand.
Here.
Underground.
in a tunnel-world
full of rushing sounds
and downcast looks
sweltering heat
though a cold wind
cools the flipside streets
metal
above and below
Are there really centipedes and worms
outside these walls?
The doors slide apart
when the train arrives
pushing and parting the air
with its flat nose
None follow subway etiquette here
There is colliding and scuffling
there are backpacks that kiss briefcases
embarrassed stray limbs
and stubbed toes
Sweaty hands grip silver poles
and cracked plastic ceiling loops
breath swirls and settles
is held in suspension
anticipating the rolling gait
that carries us on to the next stop
this stop, that stop
there is a lingo
a rhythm
a language
in this odd human-filled space
there are patterns and sequences, but none
pause to divine them
Bodies sway side by side
in sleepy
uncomfortable
bored singular silences
A smile here...
murmur there
otherwise nothing
as neon lights skim past
The universe is so large
certainly this is a part of it
speeding through time and space
to the tune of a hundred flurried heartbeats
The doors schifff open again
and the expanding camaraderie vaccummes back into itself
Where do we go from here?

Podabble

I've been thinking about this word, poetry. To me, it brings to mind those lush and labrynthine 18th/19th century poems, those with unmatchable, fully immersive imagery. Those that go on for pages and then loop back around full circle; those like sagas, where the metre and rhythm is so perfectly and beautifully balanced, where the rhymes aren't obvious. Holding this opinion, I no longer feel justified in naming these things I post poems. I dabble in poetry. So they'll be called Podabbles.

Suburbs

Suburbs
Early morning
coffee and damp pavement
the smell of rotting leaves
We are not removed from nature;
a river slips silently nearby-
but the air is stiff and songless
It feels odd to fly along misty highways
headed out of town
on a path sliced through a mountain
its striped ribs split in two and towering up either side
They've named this avenue brick lane
and there are bricks,
built into the walls of grand tobacco plantation houses
sometimes there are windows
that have been layered over with the mortar and baked red clay
What lies behind the walls of the world?
There were days back in the1800s
I muse
when families sat round those fireplaces
singing carols and inhaling clove-spiced air
the room warm
the portraits looking on
Christmas in an odd time of year now
Let's bring back
the old ways

Quote #22

“People, more than things, have to be restored, renewed, revived, reclaimed, redeemed. Never thrown out anymore.” ~ A. Hepburn

Street Illusion Art

street illusion art
Not in any specific place. But Scotland's are particularly nice:  street illusion art scotland edgar mueller

lightstepping on pavement

I walked home under a brimming sky,

one of those skies plucked from a 19th century painting.

The birds from either side, above

on telephone wires, 

in trees,

click their beaks, 

whirring and chirping. 

These are warmer days than December usually begets. 

Black and White Rages On

I love black and white photography. It's bold and dramatic and undeniably timeless.
Some related links:
http://buri65.deviantart.com
http://hookedonhouses.net/2010/04/11/rebecca-going-back-to-manderley-again/
http://canadianry.deviantart.com
Hooked on Houses just became one of my top ten favourite sites to browse...wow...
This is fascinating: http://hookedonhouses.net/2009/09/06/gone-with-the-wind-the-inspiration-for-twelve-oaks/
In my opinion, Twelve Oaks was just about the best thing in Gone With the Wind. I know I'm probably being harsh regarding that movie, but after all the hype I wasn't terribly impressed. I haven't read the book though, so I can't pass too much judgement plot- and character-wise.

Old Dodge in the Distillary District, Toronto, Canada

old dodge distillery district toronto

Musings on a Cat/Cat Muse

However a cat lies, all its body parts just fit together snugly like puzzle pieces. It's truly a wonder.