I Haven't Died

I just got busy.  So, I'm pulling out of my post Camps funk.  Here's April in brief:

• Planted an awesome native garden (pictures later)
• Went to Museum of Contemporary Art
• Started dating an awesome guy, Rene (a lot more details on him coming shortly)
• Went to a Hold Steady concert this past Wednesday
• Decided to stay in LA for another year...this may or may not be directly related to bullet 3
• Started freelance writing again.
• Painted my second music-themed mural of the year
• Found out that City Year will not be at 112th Street Elementary where I serve next year.  I don't know why this makes me so sad but it does.

Anywho, look for more details...probably tomorrow afternoon if I can convince Rene that we don't have to be out moving every moment of every day.  Until then, all four of you loyal readers.

Work, Overheard Statement, Shoes

So, I go back to work tomorrow.  I technically had today off even though i was in Watts for two hours this morning.  However, now that I'm done with Camps, I have a much lighter work load that's going to let me get on with life and give me a lot more free time.  I've never really talked about it, but I try to keep my work thoughts out of my online life...things are just a tad too permanent and public.  Which is fine, but I'm trying to remain decorous.  As Theresa Foster so elegantly put it, "I don't care who you are or what you do so long as you're not trashy."

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One of my Latina friends catered a Passover Seder recently.  Every person at the event called her "Maria" the entire time.

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I need to say something real.  Something mean.  Attention all women going to the art museum:  I'm not saying that you're sensible low chunky heels aren't cute, I am saying though that an art museum (especially a contemporary art museum) is little more than a reverberating chamber of walls and hardwood floors.  Thus, the sound of viewing art is you're goose-stepping to the room with Mark Rothkos in it.  In short, wear flats.  There, I said it.

Reminder of the Themes

Back in the day, and by the day, I mean my sophomore year in college, spring 2007, I kept a different blog.  This blog might just become my longest running one if I keep at it and keep telling stories.  I kept a daily blog for my mother my freshman year in college over at Xanga.  Then, for a tiz, I kept a LiveJournal under the name of young-america.  Both of them are still up...I should probably just copy all of the information on them and take them down.  I'll get around to that some day.

Anyways, I was thinking about that because, in 2007, I made two resolutions for the year.  Well, they weren't so much resolutions as they were themes of the year.  A window through which I would place my outlook of the year.  They were:

1. Fuck the bitches.  (Translation: Anyone who is a vampire on your life, a Debbie Downer getting in the way of your creativity, a Negative Nancy raining on your parade...anyone getting in the way of you being the best you can be by trying to bring you down, screw them.  Remember that you're better than that, and move on.)
2. You have some serious problems you need to work on. (Translation:  You (read: everyone) has some serious stuff going down in your life.  There is no time like the present to work on these glaring character flaws, gaps in willpower, and other smudges on the mirror of otherwise spotless reflections.)

The longer I live and the more things that I do, I realize that these things aren't the themes of 2007; they're the theme of a balanced life.  At least a young balanced life.  At least my young balanced life.  So, as I endeavor to make it through, I just have to keep reminding myself of this.  And one day, I'll be the bright shining center that the universe spins around.  And so will you.

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I'm coming back to life, slowly but surely.  Today was a day that I just stayed in my room and watched movies pretty much the whole day.  I haven't had the time to watch a movie from start to finish in ages, so it was great to catch up on some stuff.  Everything I watched today was solid 3.5 stars stuff (I need Netflix to let me rate things on the half star like woah).  The docket included Julie & Julia, Paper Heart, and Yossi and Jagger, my first Israeli Hebrew-language film ever.  Now, I'm loading the LA Theatre Works production of Our Lady of 121st Street onto my iPod and going to the gym for the first time in forever.

Oh!  I almost forgot!  So, the only thing that I've wanted to experience (okay, not the only thing, but one of them) since I moved to LA was an earthquake.  There was one a few weeks ago, but I was so exhausted from Camps that I didn't even notice.  I didn't even wake up. 

Today, I was watching movies, and my building wobbled a little bit from side to side.  I thought that my neighbors were just being crazy and banging on stuff since I was leaning against the wall.  But, no!  It was my very first consciously lived through earthquake.  I'm so psyched!  I mean, I don't necessarily want to be around when the big one hits, but I'm glad I've been around during one, just so that I can say I was there.

Until later, everyone.  (And if you're looking for something to do, might I suggest watching/rewatching:

Back To Life (Shitty Poem)

The Hold Steady got me real interested
in how a resurrection would really feel,
so I decided that to be reborn, first
I was gonna have to die
so I did.  I volunteered for the funeral
pyre, besting the other virgins,
getting marked to lead the way through
this endless days finally ending in a blaze.

For four long months, I stayed
dead.  There's really no point to a
resurrection if you can't stay
dead long enough.  So, I stayed
dead just long enough, but today,
I decided it was time for resurrection.

The people's faces have
changed.  Their words have different
meanings.  Their smiles have different
warmth.  Their lives have different
paths.  Everything so different.

See, how a resurrection really feels is like
loneliness.  You limp hard on worn-out heels,
but you make it through, and that's its own reward.
Making it through is the reward for the pain of resurrection.

Such Strange Ways

"We save our lives in such strange ways." -Neil Gaiman

So, one of my newfound literary follows in LA is Neil Gaiman.  I just got done with Fragile Things tonight.  As I was riding home on the train today, though, I read a poem that was in this collection that told the story of Scherezade (sp?), the main character of the Arabian Nights, who had to tell a new story every night so that her husband wouldn't kill her.

As she walked through her days, according to this poem, she saw things that would later be regurgitated in different versions as the stories she created each night.

I feel like that's how I work.  A million projects, and each one of them saving a tiny part of my life and sanity.  Sitting down to write...to consolidate the world in words so that I can take the size of it and use it...I want to do this everyday.

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By the way, the Camp that I'm running in Watts is going amazingly.  Over 100 campers everyday, the staff and students loving every minute of it, and the whole thing running smooth as hell.  You really can't ask for much more than that.

Stories from the Past: Riding Home

Music has always been a huge part of transportation for me, and I'm not strictly speaking emotional distances.  I have always been a huge believer that what you are listening to while driving is the single most important part of driving.  If you're tired, then the choice of The Decemberists is probably ill-advised, because that will cause you to veer into oncoming traffic on your way home from a funeral (or maybe that's just me).  If you're driving 300 miles home starting at midnight because you had a full day of class, rehearsal, and an improv show, then might I suggest cranking classic Brittney Spears and Eminem.  There's nothing in there that is going to let you nod off.

But, as I was waking up this morning, getting ready for today, letting iTunes play whatever it wanted to in the background, Train's "Drops of Jupiter" came on.  For about two weeks in high school, I was really into this song.  And I still like this song, but mostly because it reminds me of one specific memory.

I was getting out of a long rehearsal.  This must have been tenth grade, because I was carrying a backpack that weighed about 85 pounds, threatening to tip me backward with every step.  At one point, it almost realigned my spine into skuliosis, but that's another story for another day.  Anyway, I got into my father's truck, and this song was playing.  My dad, who had been waiting on me, was singing along to it.  For some reason, I just found this absolutely bizarre. 

My father is someone who loves classic rock.  And some classic pop.  But he's the quintessential my-taste-in-music-froze-in-my-twenties person.  I imagine that that happens a lot.  However, there's not really a huge selection of stations in south GA that aren't Christian, country, or rap, so the one 80's through present day station was his general fixture.  And he ended up liking it. 

I told this story to K'Fain a few years ago and she said, "Of course your dad liked "Drops of Jupiter."  Everybody's dad likes Train.  Nobody you know actually likes Train except for your dad."  I laughed, and we probably kept watching Law and Order: SVU.

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Posts may be sporadic for the next two weeks because Camp City Year is ramping into its home stretch.  Keep safe 'til then, and look for posts from the dark side.

Quick Note(s)

People who have nothing to show for their lives ragging on people who are working their way up the ladder might be my new biggest pet peeve.

I'm not sleeping enough or well these days.

Listening to people talk about shoes makes me want to put my eyeball beneath an icicle that's about to fall.