10/12/10:: Happy Birthday Señor Kitteh!

Today my cat, Ollie, turns 3!

Huzzah!

10/8/10:: Everything that is interesting is new

Alert and healthy natures remember that the sun rose clear.

It is never too late to give up our prejudices.

I try to eradicate hate-- I don't want to hate anyone.

I try yoga, crochet, jewelry-making, wine-making, running, and baking-- What is my thing?

I strive for simplicity, but if I am trying so hard am I not just complicating things?

I have so many letters to write.

9/11/10:: Detroit Lives

I know I'm a bit late jumping on this bandwagon, but you have to forgive me. I've been a bit out-of-touch with Detroit lately, as I've moved back home to Pittsburgh to live with my family while I search for jobs. I think, however, that the Detroit Lives project has been saying something that a lot of young Detroiters have been trying to say for a long time now.

Most people ask me what it was like to live there, and they ask me with a tone that suggests "I'm surprised you survived." In some ways, it's just easier for me to tell that story. To say, "Yes, it's a wreck." "Yes, there is so much crime." "Yes, it feels dangerous to be alone after dark." That's what everyone wants to hear anyway.

"Is it true that they killed motown?"

What does that even mean? Motown was born in Detroit, and Detroit is still there. And who are "they"?

Although I don't always have the energy, I do try most of the time to express the other side of things. Because there IS another side! Detroit is perhaps the largest blank canvas... maybe the ONLY true metropolitan blank canvas in the country. A place where young people have a hand in HUGE changes, even with very little effort. You can take your art to Manhattan and feel lost, feel helpless, and struggle to have anyone notice you... or you can be in Detroit and with the flick of the wrist, change an entire city. You can be a part of re-growth, re-birth, and a strong youthful artistic community. It's an extremely powerful position, and there are tons of young people in Detroit doing it-- you just need to open your eyes to see them. Particularly having gone to College for Creative Studies, an amazing private art institution-- perhaps one of the best in the entire country-- I saw a lot of good energy and good actions.

It's a constant thing to hear people talk about their frustration with not being able to make a difference. "The real revolutions are all over." In Detroit, that's not true.

It's the heart that I can't describe to people-- the thing about Detroit that I struggle with articulating. And the misunderstanding starts close to home-- it's not just on tv and in magazines, but it's in the suburbs of Detroit itself! The very people who have front row seats to some of this amazing stuff are those that are the most fearful and lazy as well. Both the media and the suburbanites tend to miss the point. The bad stuff is there, yes, but there is bad stuff all over this country! What the rest of the country DOESN'T have, however, is some of the great creative community that is unique to the dirty D.

The video series entitled Detroit Lives by VICE media does a great job of pointing out some of that, particularly in the 3rd video-- it talks a lot about the artistic community's strength and contributions.

I highly suggest taking 30 minutes to watch the video series and perhaps form a new position on the city. Educating yourself with truth is better than being a part of the ignorant mass, yes?

Also, Detroit Lives is actually a much larger movement that is taking place in Detroit. It has a website that includes some promotional artwork/merchandise designed by some of my awesome friends from College for Creative Studies. Check out the site here: DetroitLives.org

8/8/10:: Doing Nothing

My current meditation:

Don’t let your imagination be crushed by life as a whole.

Don’t try to picture everything bad that could possibly happen.

Stick with the situation at hand, and ask,

“Why is this so unbearable? Why can’t I endure it?”

You’ll be embarrassed to answer–it all can be endured.

Then remind yourself that past and future have no power over you.

Only the present – and even that can be minimized.

Just mark off its limits.

And if your mind tries to claim that it can’t hold out against that ...

well, then, heap shame upon it.

-Marcus Aurelius

9/6/10:: Suburban Trash Re-run

If I were Johnny Cash, I would roll up the bottom of my jeans, slide on my boots, step outside onto my front porch, and light up a cigarette. I'd recline back in my chair and I would inhale and exhale and watch kids play in the street. I'd call all of my problems "the blues." I'd teach the weeping willows how to cry-- I'd teach the clouds how to cover up a clear blue sky.

I'm not Mr. Cash, of course, so-- I'll do what I can. I'll pace circles in my carpet. I'll lie on my back and watch my ceiling fan, reruns, ceiling fan, reruns. I'll check my email six times a day, maybe more. And I'll make false statements to myself about my general outlook.

I'll make lists. I'll refuse to make any more lists. I'll think about taking down old lists, and instead I'll make a declaration of "I'll do that tomorrow." Sometimes they fall down themselves, which is cool because then I don't have to think about them anymore.

It's not surprising that another summer has somehow passed. It's not surprising that we are on the brink of another winter that is bound to test the limits of my sanity.

If I was Johnny Cash, boredom would be taken with a stride.

I wouldn't have to try so hard to remind myself that doing nothing is still doing something.

I've got a lot of stuff. Between material things-- (things that I'm always tripping over because, frankly, I don't even have enough space for all the shit I own), and emotional things-- (things that I also manage to trip over from time to time), I am completely on overload. SO... I'm having a garage sale.

John Lennon illustrated portrait (matted)- $2
X-small Patrick Wolf teeshirt- $3
Veggietale's Larry the talking Cucumber toy- $1
The bags under my eyes- $1
The overflowing laundry basket- $2
Moodswings- $1.50 (each)

If I could stop myself from being repetitious, I would I would I would I would.

8/20/10:: On my own again soon.

When I finally get back to having my own apartment again (whether it be in Pittsburgh or NYC), the first thing I am going to do is go get my cat from Detroit.

The second thing I'm going to do is buy a bottle of wine.

The third thing I am going to do is hook up my stereo system while I drink said-wine.

And the fourth thing I am going to do is... MAKE SOMETHING!

Make art, make noise, make a mess, make love.

I cannot wait.

8/16/10:: You're Telling Me a Fairy Tale

Here is the math.

If I wake at 6am to have enough time to shower and drive to work before 8am, and if after a long stint of traffic I arrive home from work at 6pm, I have spent 12 hours of my 24-hour day consumed with work. Of this remaining 12 hours, according to tradition, I will sleep 8 hours away. On a given work day then... I have only 4 hours to live my life.

You can only imagine then how pressing it is to use these few precious hours in a way that is both relaxing and fulfilling--and these two things rarely come packaged together in the same activity. I read a lot now. I watch a lot of films. I relish little trips to town to buy myself small pleasures like gummy bears or a new novel. And you can bet I'm wearing dirty clothes because I almost never have the heart to waste these hours doing laundry.

Well anyway, a lot of this time is fittingly spent wondering what I should be doing rather than doing it, whatever it is. And as a true American through-and-through (despite however much I wish to deny it) I want myself to do things that are both self-bettering (productive) and pleasurable. An American might easily interchange the word "pleasurable" in that sentence with the word selfish-- I don't think an American ever really does anything pleasurable without feeling guilty about it. Pleasure usually means naughty, naughty means guilty, guilty usually means selfish, and if we are selfish, we probably aren't bettering ourselves, are we? As much as I've tried to beat this mindset out of myself, I can't. It's who I am because I am a product of my country. I was raised this way.

At any rate, when I try to think about this imaginary, magical, elusive activity that will make my day seem like it was well-spent, my mind always drifts back to Scotland as I tend to view that as the manifestation of both the most educational and pleasurable experiences of my life. I also tend to think of reflection on the past as an important activity for self-improvement. Conveniently, daydreaming about Scotland is also one of my most reliable private pleasures.

It's funny though that when I consult my records (my writing on Scotland--in this blog specifically, though not exclusively), I mostly wrote very surface and action-based reports. "Today I went here, and I drank this much, and I met this person, and it was good. End."

But of course, this is rarely where my mind goes when I think back to Scotland. I find the most pleasure in thinking of the little things... stretching my mind, if you will... by challenging myself to remember the tiny details of what I like to consider my secret second life there.

I'd like to perform this activity now, but this time through writing. I will write a different but very true story about Edinburgh.

------

It's a Tuesday morning in March, and it's around 10:30am. Sunlight and street voices are simultaneously pouring in through my only window which is next to my bed where a night stand should be. It's enough to wake me because I don't use an alarm clock anymore, and I've had my window open since I arrived in January. I squirm in bed, wriggling out of my red satin sheets like a snake losing its skin. I can hear bagpipes playing, and they are coming to me all the way from Princes Street. I try to imagine all of the people pushing past one another in front of the shops there, and it makes me hesitant to get up.

When I finally sit up in the small patch of sunlight hitting my bed, before my feet even hit the green shaggy 70s carpet, I light a cigarette in my underwear. My hair is sticking up, and I stare out at Edinburgh castle through my window-nightstand-portal. I smoke, and I think about what my classmates are probably doing at the studio. Should I bother going in today? Is there a point? I text the girls to meet me for a coffee down the street instead. I stand up and water my petunia before I turn my laptop on for music. This time of year I was probably listening to The Smiths on repeat.

My clothes are all scattered on the floor, and it doesn't take me long to match up an outfit... almost everything I own now is black. I pull my tights on while I'm still puffing my cigarette. I feel like a French girl in an old burlesque show dressing room. I'd never considered myself a grown woman until my time in Edinburgh, and now there is no confusion. Men here think I am an exotic creature for some reason, and I have a new liberated and dominating attitude toward sexuality because of it. In ten more minutes, I am out the door. The air seems misty like it always does in Scotland, and the pavement is covered in pink and white blossom petals. I breathe deeper here because I am irrationally convinced the air is healthier. Girls in scarves are scurrying around the college, and a boy in skinny jeans is riding bumpily over the cobblestones on a bike. The double-decker bus blows by on the corner, and a stray cat walks beside me up the sidewalk.

Lindsey is already on the corner, and she is harboring a devilish grin. We start laughing before I even make it to her. We have lots to gab about on the way to the coffee shop, and I experience the joy of uninhibited, giggly girl talk the entire way down Lauriston Place.

I start almost every day this way in Scotland for six months straight. It's so simple that you think this could happen anywhere, but it doesn't. It's the Edinburgh Daily Special on Keir Street.