Life Takes A Turn For The Awesome(er)

So I had a month and a half off for Columbia's Winter Break, and toward the end of it, I was feeling miserable and unproductive and horrible and so not creative... it was a tearful, depressing few weeks.

BUT classes have started again-- my final semester of undergrad-dom-- and with them, life is looking better. Here's why:
1. My classes are amazing and so are my teachers. I have a Critical Reading and Writing: Ray Bradbury class with Sam Weller, who is Bradbury's authorized biographer, which is amazing. I mean, how many classes with a focus on one author do you get to take with the one guy (besides the author him or herself) who knows the most about the author? [Did that make sense? I can't tell] AND how many classes do you take where you TALK TO THE AUTHOR ON THE PHONE at the end of it? I mean, this thing is amazing. The only downside is there are not a few brown-nosers in the class, so I anticipate I'll be doing lots of mental eye-rolling and silent groaning. So that class rocks, but my other class rocks, too. It's an Advanced Fiction class (basically just writing and writing and writing) taught by Joe Meno, who is one of my favorite authors. I've been wanting to take a class with him since I came to Columbia and found out he taught here, and finally, in my last semester, I am! It's almost a little intimidating, and I hope I can actually be productive and not just write to impress JM.

2. My internships. I have two of them right now. One, I haven't started yet, so I can't say whether it rocks my socks or not. But one of them, I have indeed started, and I am in love with it. It's my dream internship. It's the internship I wanted from the second I started thinking about internships. I'm interning with the crew at featherproof books, which is an awesome indie press based in Chicago and run by some awesome sauce people. I'm just way, way too excited about everything, I think.


Anyway, I feel much, much better about life now and I had to write down why, because it feels more real when I write it down.

I Like To Take Pictures Of Things

Reading "Into the Wild" Again Is Changing My Life

"The very core of a man's living spirit is his passion for adventure. The joy of life comes from our encounters with new encounters, and hence there is no greater joy than to have an endlessly changing horizon, for each day to have a new and different sun." - Chris "Alexander Supertramp" McCandless

Priscilla and Malificent

So back when I had a crappy job but made a lot of money because I worked more than I did anything else, I bought this camera:



Canon Powershot SD 1000 Digital Elph, 7.1 Megapixels, pre Maria Sharapova ad campaign. I named this camera Malificent. Malificent and I went everywhere together. She completed me. Then, in April of 2008, my drunk cousin dropped Malificent while using her without my permission, breaking her and ending forever the relationship I thought would last at least a few more years. I was devastated. Went for months without a camera, always mourning the loss of Malificent, promising never to love again. After a while, I forgot what it was like to have a lover and constant companion as sweet as Malificent had been to me. I thought I was fine without her. But on December 25th, 2008, everything changed; Priscilla arrived.



She swept into my life, all shiny, new, browny-red and 8 whole megapixels. It was love at first sight. And in the few days I've been hanging out with her, I've realized this: I am happier when I have a camera. Even if it's just a nice point and shoot as opposed to a fancy pants beaut of a camera. I just love taking pictures of people and things and places. I can't believe I went from April to December without having a camera. Malficent, I will always love you, but Priscilla and I are for real.

The Glasses

My brother found these glasses at a dollar store last year, and I rediscovered them the other day in a drawer in a bathroom at my parents' house. We HAD to play with them. Seriously, how could we not?

Dream--

house with natalie portman's apartment through my bedroom closet (tight squeeze), devendra banhart lying on her couch, the dining room table and chairs outside on the lawn, rachel howard sitting on them, waterfall and forest in the back yard.

I can't help but wonder what dreams really mean. Is it our belief in a deeper meaning that gives them their ominous, all-knowing qualities, or are they just senseless connections our bored brain strings together while we're sleeping because it needs something to do? Are they brand new, possibly symbolic images, or just recycled from our daily lives, jumbled together and presented behind our eyes? Dreams are so personal-- it's a rare occasion when two or more people have the same dream, and even then, they are unique to the dreamer because of the experience. But the ultimate manifestation of their intimacy, I think, is the fact that they are so fleeting; often, the more you try to write the dream or tell someone about it, the more quickly it slips away. Even if you get the gist of the dream told, there are minute details and certain ways things looked in your mind that are completely incommunicable, and probably lost forever inside your head.

Flightless Bird, American Mouth

So I'm having problems. A couple few, to use my father's terminology.

1. I am still jobless. Being jobless means little to no cash flow. And the little cash flow that exists is all an outpouring, not an inpouring (which I don't think is a word, but I'll claim artistic license on this one). Luckily, I'm still in school, so I feel a tiny bit less guilty about spongeing off my parents for the time being. Still, not a lot of spongeing. Not spongeing like Paris Hilton spongeing. Spongeing like, "Here's fifty bucks, buy some groceries so you don't starve." I'm grateful for everything they give me and probably wholly undeserving of it all, but it only makes me feel like a child (but not enough that I refuse their help).

2. I just found a website where you can do crossword puzzles online. Since I am a fierce and vicious procrastinator, I will never get anything done ever again. This is the site that has rendered me useless.

3. I keep distracting myself from the work I'm supposed to be doing because it's my last week of classes. Like the online crosswords and the fact that I am watching my second movie of the day right now, or that I spent all night last night drinking with my neighbors instead of taking five seconds to email questions to Chris Heavener of Annalemma Magazine.

4. I am officially tired of being single. I've suspected this for a long time, that I'm sick of watching movies by myself and going to bed every night without an occasional extra, warm body, but I've recently confirmed it. Not that being single doesn't have its perks-- believe me, it does. And I've enjoyed it for a while. And now, please can I try the other one?

So, those are my big problems. And now for something completely unrelated:

The Family Stone. I've been trying to figure out what about this movie makes me love it so much. The cast is awesome-- Diane Keaton, Rachel McAdams, Luke Wilson, Claire Danes, Dermot Mulroney. Oh, and Sarah Jessica Parker, who I could live without, but she doesn't ruin the movie. So, awesome cast, yes, but not the reason I love the movie. Or, not the sole reason. I'm pretty sure it's the story, and even more than the story, it's the characters. I'm a sucker for characters, and this movie has awesome ones, a lot of them, too, and the way their relationships to each other are revealed is just awesome. Yes, I know this movie came out in 2005 and it's a Christmas movie, but it's great. Really. I am going to study it and apply it to my previously unmentioned big problem number

5. I'm working on this short story that keeps getting bigger and bigger and I'm worried might turn into a novel, but there's this part about a family and I'm having trouble with showing the reader that this girl, Elle, has this close relationship to this family (The Walsh Family) and she has to decide between maintaining a relationship with them while torturing herself because of the youngest kid who was once her boyfriend, or break up with him completely and cut ties with the family, too. Sounds stupid now that I write it down. But it isn't. I promise. But that's my problem with the story, and I think studying The Family Stone will help me figure out what to do.

Yes, I think that.

ALSO: I've been listening to "Flightless Bird, American Mouth" by Iron and Wine pretty much on repeat.


Not an actual music video. Just a weird picture on the screen while the song plays. But the song is playing, and that's the point, yeah?


Same song, but performed acousticly by Sam Beam. Awesome.