Brief rememberance

I started looking at apartments today. When I used to be bored I'd look at shoes, clothes, electronics, games, but never apartments. Shoes and clothes, I could play grown up Ms. Corporate (pink half-shaved bob and sexy black patent Dior pumps included). Electronics and games I could whisk off into a world and roll everything up into stars. Apartments though. That's the last frontier. Striking it out on my own, for real this time. I don't know when, but when the time is right it will happen.

The Wilshire Royale said hello to me. Instantly summer came rushing back, full of heat waves and iced coffee with shots of caramel sauce and hours sunning my bare unemployed ass and reading stories, beautiful stores about God and wholeness. I was learning to be whole after finding out my parents were divorcing, albeit amicably. I realize how blessed I am that my parents get along so well. They consider each other friends. The wholeness I saw in them inspired me to heal. To stop throwing knives at the wall. to stop drop-kicking lawn furniture clear across the yard.

Wilshire Royale. A gorgeous 1920s building in Los Angeles. I never met you but I saw your pictures online. I measured out your studio apartment against my room and tried to live in it. I pared down everything, anticipating the move. I had dates set aside to tour a few buildings I liked. I thought and thought and made plans. Inside I nurtured this idea of "my own place," my little studio apartment.

I interviewed with FIDM a few weeks after my imaginary nesting. The support I felt just from my first visit made me waver. Was I sure I wanted to put it off that long? So I changed to Fall (2010) Semester, Los Angeles campus instead of Winter (2011). In the meantime, I had lunch with a friend. Each step I took down Montgomery sealed my decision. This is what I have to do. I just have to feel it was right.
"Are you sure you want to move to LA?"
It'd been the first time I'd heard that from a non-family member.
"Yeah, it's a lot less expensive down there. I got a studio lined up, 750"
"But you don't have any family down there, do you?"
It hit me in perhaps the goofiest way possible.

In the video game Earthbound, homesickness is a real status condition. Alone, reachable by a phone call, but just not the same.

"I have some friends down there."
But I knew that their lives and mine wouldn't sync.

Why LA? A friend of mine moved down there. LA... a city I hadn't been to proper since I was 5 or so. LA. to start anew. To live an an old Hollywood building. Dinner parties with imaginary friends served Martinellis clustured around my bed/table/surface.

Come the second interview, I knew that San Francisco was the place. It wasn't indecisiveness. It was the right thing.

So why am I looking at this old sign now and feeling a twinge of sadness? Sometimes I just can't help but think what would have happened if I'd chosen to move there. I was enamoured with the idea of my little studio apartment. A little place to take care of, to own. The little prince and his flower.

What I've been doing

I got a job back in October. If I'm not working there, I'm working on projects. Life is busy, but good. Part of me misses hanging out every weekend but the other part of me enjoys having an income again. I'm definitely better off than I was a year ago or even three months ago. I'm sleeping a lot better, though I keep waking up briefly every morning at 5. Luckily I fall asleep again.

I need to cut back on the caffeine. I'm always up up up and trying to slow down, but sometimes I need a burst of energy. Too much too much. I didn't "get" adderall, amphetamines. I can't focus. I'm vibrating, I'm generating heat. I'm scrubbing a spot on a dish. Too much coca-cola. Lightheaded. Feeling "spicy," where all the blood rushes to my face. Too much caffeine and sugar tends to produce feelings that are almost like a panic attack. The worries and the spiral down into a path I thought I left behind. I need to hang with my friends because I'm sitting alone and when I'm alone I'm doing the same things over and over but sometimes it's okay and I need to get gummi worms for an art project and I need to do this and that and think about what to bring to LA and to finish my work in Illustrator and my InDesign newsletter and sleep better and talk to this person and fix this and...

I almost fell out of my chair. When was the last time I forgot to stop breathing?

Well, I can't complain too much about life. I'm busy, but it's the good busy. Unfortunately the 365 fell by the wayside. Between closing in SF, taking BART home, and then working on my own stuff I started to fall behind. I still love fine art photography and now that I'm in a place where I'm working on art every day, I don't feel so directionless.

Ready to Roll

Wednesday I go to campus to register. The 4th I finally get to pick up my bigass totebag (hello, shoulder strain) and get my new ID (I can finally stop feeling like a slimeball when I use my old student ID), and head back for a job fair on the 5th.

Where did time go? I can't wait to start. What an area to be attending classes in--right in Union Square!

Today I got some bento boxes and chopstick. All are a matching pink. I now have a fancy neoprene lunch sack, too. Spam musubi, here I come.

I'm excited to be doing what's relevant to my life. I will be doing stuff I want to do. Memories of senior year--working on my internship project (sewing a dress from a muslin, which then turned in to sewing another one from scratch because I finished so early), pushing myself to not miss school at the detriment of my own health, even subconsciously holding my breath as I embroidered Saul Bass' golden arm on the back of my dress (and subsequently falling out of the chair when my lungs couldn't take it any more).

Junior year of high school I was a horrible student. I skipped a lot of school. I was depressed in a way I hadn't been for years. The kind of mornings where it just hurt to move. Everything looked bleak, including college. I was on academic probation for the majority of the year, but somehow, I swung it. I passed all of my classes and got out of the funk. I was determined to make senior year great.

Around July something felt weird. Like a lump in my abdomen. It hurt. I paid it no mind. It slowly grew, but since it was on my lower left I didn't do anything. I overate. It's a muscle. People can think up some awfully interesting explanations for something serious. I stopped wearing jeans because they hurt to zip up and button. And four days after my 18th birthday, it ruptured. By the time I got to the ER there were no cysts showing up on the ultrasound but an abdomen full of fluid was an indication that one had indeed ruptured. After a few very unfun hours in the ER I went home, worrying about an english paper I hadn't finished.

I didn't even take a whole week off. By Thursday night I was so bored of sitting at home, drifting in and out of sleep watching Miami Vice and Spongebob that Friday morning I more or less snuck out of the house and went to school.

I enjoyed my little summer extension but now it's time for me to do work again.

Birthday!

Here's to decade of life number 2!

In which I remember why I stopped drinking black coffee.

So after a horribly mediocre pot of coffee I made earlier this week (It's been a while since I've used a drip coffeemaker) I perfected it. No longer is it coffee-flavored water but a tastebud burning pot of hellfire.

And no milk. Or sugar. I no longer have a taste for splenda. It's not that I don't like the taste of black coffee. But when you're drinking a few cups a day on an empty stomach, that's when you lose the taste for it. By cup 3 I'd be cursing the brilliant logic behind what posessed me to drink that much coffee. If I'm totally awake I'm able to pay more attention.

Yeah, that doesn't work so well, especially when you're trying to do work or if you're dealing with panic attacks. But boy it sure gets you awake. Now I like to leisurely sip my coffee and not shock myself into life in the morning.

Wow.

All I gotta say right now is wow, the weather is nice. It's been overcast but not cold. I'm sitting outside without being bundled up. It's very peaceful here. All I can hear is some cars now and then. I'll probably be shooting the pictures for Legoman tomorrow. It shouldn't be that hard to put together. My sunburn from Saturday in Santa Monica has healed. I'm kinda hoping the sun comes back, though.

The Vicissitude of Legoman, Take 2

My senior year I misinterpreted a photo assignment. We had to take a series of photos that somehow showed movement. At least 8. So our teacher told us to think of it as a stop-motion assignment.

Well, I took it a little too literally. Come Monday my classmates had around 8 pictures each. I don't even remember how many I had. I got to make mine into a movie. Towards the end of its completion I was tired of it. Tired of the sound effects (scrape scrape, head rolls in to drumroll, pop as he puts it on, tires peeling out, sound of my friend bashing a PC case to simulate a car crash, and the Super Mario death jingle to signify the end of the little plastic man's life), tired of the first 30 seconds or so of Depeche Mode's "Suffer Well," and just tired in general.

And I lost it. After I graduated the computers were formatted and the DVD disappeared. But this time around I know I can make it so much better.

The Vicissitude of Legoman is about the fragility of life, our material desires, and molded plastic. But mostly molded plastic.