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the art of a mistake

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[23 Dec 2001|01:30pm]
Moon Pix: why did I not bring this cd home with me?

Harold and Maude: so, so, so good.

The Lord of the Rings, numero uno: so, so, so ... incredibly long. Much sighing and fidgeting and illuminating watch faces. Also, what is up with seeing a fellow Finnish student at the eight o'clock viewing at the Kitsap Mall 8? Weird, I say.
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Sylvia Plath predicts C.M. will receive a phone call tomorrow [20 Dec 2001|11:01pm]
When this computer shuts off, it makes an electronic, bubbly noise and the sound of children's laughter. I don't really understand this.

My brother says Isn't Sylvia Plath the psychic on Northwest Afternoon? (my mother and I say She predicts she will put her head in the oven) and he is loud, there are afternoons when I scream at him because I don't know what else to do. We shoot bits of paper at each other with rubber band slingshots until I get tired, he keeps shooting, I scream, this is how it goes.

I feel depressed and am relieved that it is not this anxiousness anymore, and when do you get to the point when you are thinking about death too much? No, don't answer that.

Sometimes I can't tell if I have just been thinking or if I have been talking out loud to myself, and I don't know if my mother might have heard me, and so walking by the room she is in, I click my tongue, make noises to drown out any words I may have spoken.

We watched A Christmas Story last night, and I am not counting down to Christmas as much as I am counting down to David Copperfield on PBS on Christmas Eve. On Sunday my mother reminded me that I hadn't given her a Christmas list, and I told her I didn't really want anything. I understand my father who has said things like, "I want my credit card paid off." I understand only wanting things that people can't give you, I guess.

I want to preface everything I ever say with, "I know this isn't worth saying, I know it's not interesting or unique, I know everyone feels more or less the same way." I want to end everything with ", you know?" I always have to say, "I guess" or "perhaps" or "I think." I can't trust myself enough to say something is an absolute truth and feel that it is actually true.
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[19 Dec 2001|12:02am]
It has been many moons since I last uploaded anything to tripod from their website. Anyway, this is the zine I made last summer and never bothered to print, minus lousy biographical information and credits, etc. because I am lazy and they aren't very interesting, as I never really know what to write there anyway. It will probably take decades for the images to load, and it may or may not be worth waiting for them.
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[18 Dec 2001|02:05pm]
At home I always wind up wearing baggy, paint-smeared, unflattering men's Levis and even baggier sweaters, and I forget to pluck my eyebrows for days, but I suppose that's okay because I never leave the house, and when I do I probably fit in better with the locals this way. And I am cold, and I have a cold, simultaneously.

The bumper-to-bumper holiday traffic is in full effect here. Last night at Target, I turned down an aisle and when I looked back seconds later, my mother was gone, and I wandered around that department until I was near tears, and I didn't find her until my heart was pounding and I was on the verge of shouting, "Mom, where are you?" All I could do was walk up to her and say, "I couldn't find you" with faked nonchalance, and I am nineteen years old and I don't understand this behavior of mine.

On Sunday I didn't get dressed all day, and I sat in front of the tv watching movies, including Beetlejuice, and it struck me that it was probably a terrible thing that as a child I felt I really identified with Winona Ryder's character in some way.

Sometimes I try to remember where certain things about my personality came from or when they began, and the more I think about it and the farther back I go, the fuzzier everything gets and the more I start to think that maybe I have just always been this way. It is so hard to say whether I had a happy childhood or an unhappy one.

I have things I want to write about, I want to write poems again, I want to buy yarn and knit. I am staying away from the computer and everything is okay, mostly, but there is all the same old stuff, that I really don't like being at school and staying at home gets old fast, what do I about that, what do I do?
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[15 Dec 2001|10:37am]
Oh yes, my favorite way to start a vacation is by getting sick. My favorite way to wake up for an 8:30 exam is very confusedly at 8:15. And my favorite way to be awakened in the middle of the night when I feel like crap is by loud music at twelve-thirty, prompting me to cry, "Blast that rock and roll!" My favorite thing to do when I randomly wake up at five in the morning is to put a few more bottles of water in the refrigerator.

I bet 'confusedly' isn't really a word.
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[14 Dec 2001|12:12am]
Last night we spent ten minutes watching my father in the middle of the ocean very far away with a three-second delay. He didn't look any different and we didn't know what to tell him. And before we waited our turn with other wives and other, much younger, children, with all this cattiness, this bad eighties hair all permed and highlighted and too much make-up, girls my age who are not daughters but wives, and it was, I don't know .... it was something like: Look at how fortunate we are to have the family that we have.

Last night there was the same tv commercial over and over for some second- or third-rate airline saying, "You have enough money to buy a ticket to any of these midwestern cities..." And tonight driving from one ferry terminal to another because I misread the schedule, we listened to a BBC news report and I remembered that this time last year I was always looking for study abroad programs because all I wanted was to go to London, and whatever happened to that?

And I am glad I was home last night, because it meant hearing my mom conclude a discussion about female pop stars with, "I don't know, they're all just SKANKS."

And I have to go flunk my computer exam at eight-thirty tomorrow. So, yeah.
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[12 Dec 2001|02:13pm]
My French class is over and I am sad because today Monica said, "I have a video to show you that is much more important than finishing this review," and so there was much fussing with the television and finally we gave up and just listened to the audio, realizing as more and more people talked that it was not some stuffy instructional video, but a early-to-mid-90's Saturday Night Live sketch, and then the picture flickered on, Chris Farley making vague hand gestures for a moment, and then it disappeared and Monica hit the side of the tv in frustration, and the picture came back, and we laughed because Oh, technology! and it was great. Also, at our interview on Monday afternoon, Christina and I ended up talking to her for an hour, and Monica showed me the word for "case ending" in French when I was telling her about Finnish, which she seemed really interested in.

Ellie wants me to take 201 next quarter with her, and I am tempted, but it is just not meant to be, I think.

So, yeah, last day of classes, and it is raining and during my break, I sat and ate gross pasta salad and finished the second installment of Anaïs Nin's diary as an older man at the next table had lunch and read Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets.

And I am getting on the bus in an hour, so.
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[12 Dec 2001|12:12am]
So tomorrow afternoon I am going home for approximately twenty-four hours.

And I think I have studied sufficiently for my Finnish test tomorrow. And I think I'm going to flunk my computer exam on Friday. I am very much ready for this quarter to be over (when is that not true?) and I'm tired of thinking "There's no toilet paper" in French and speaking in some grotesque combination of French and Spanish ("Nous necessitons..."), and I just sort of wouldn't mind taking a break from Finnish, if only because my grades in that class have been creeping slowly downward since October.
I probably have more interesting things to say right now, but I am WICKED TIRED and there is that test in the morning, so it is time for bed. (When I lived in Japan, one of my friends who had lived in Maine told us how everyone in New England always said "wicked" and we thought it was so stupid, and JUST LOOK AT ME NOW.)
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[11 Dec 2001|02:49pm]
asljfdksal EEEP

The Desaparecidos - Monday, February 18th - Seattle, WA @ Paradox
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[09 Dec 2001|01:28pm]
Oh my god, I hate everything and everyone.


This message has been brought to you by a cold shower and the languages French and Finnish, and is inspired by a few select people.
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[08 Dec 2001|07:23pm]
LKHFK DCJEWQHFBIUVE OISJCFRKS:LJFDIOWEMF

grr.
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[08 Dec 2001|02:25am]
I am wearing the giant, hideous foam hat, inside there is a note saying it should not be worn as a safety helmet, I am singing along with Neutral Milk Hotel, "Jesus Christ, I love you, yes I do." Sounds of Silence stopped spinning on my record player so that the writing on the label is perfectly parallel with the front edge of the turntable. It is the sort of thing I would do, spin it around so it is facing this direction, except I didn't.

I left at ten-thirty tonight and came home three hours later. Watched Jules et Jim in Christina's room, she was frustrated with the characters and I was too, but not in a way that makes me dislike them or the movie. It was wonderful, really.

(And thirty minutes later, it is time for bed.)
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[07 Dec 2001|04:53pm]
I just went to the bookstore and spent thirty-two dollars on a foam hat shaped like the head of a dog. I was going to take a picture so everyone could see how totally stupid this thing is, but it looks so ridiculous on me that I just wouldn't be able to tolerate the existence of a photograph of it. Anyway, my mother told me that it's what my brother wants me to get him for Christmas, and I hope he likes it because that was the most embarrassing thing I have ever bought.

Also, the bookstore was crowded and there were policemen everywhere, and it made me dizzy and claustrophobic, and all these people had copies of the same book, so I figured it was some author doing a signing, and I come back here and look up who was supposed to be there, and it's ... Jimmy Carter.

And I need a stuffed Hedwig, stat. Erin informed me long ago that I am supposed to get her one for Christmas, and I have no idea where to find them. I know I should have gotten one a while ago, but I'm always with her when I'm shopping, and so. And although she doesn't know it, I haven't been thrilled with her lately as it is, so this just makes the situation even more annoying.

I bet rambling about Christmas shopping is probably really boring, so I will stop here. ...And I guess I don't have anything else to say.
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[06 Dec 2001|12:02am]
I am so gross: I won a bag of Reese's mini peanut butter cups in my computer class today, thanks to my mad Visual Basic skills (I first typed "skillz," but I really can't pull that off), and I have proceeded to eat them all already. And I really, desperately need to take out the trash. And I really, desperately need to wash my dishes. For days now I have been using plastic forks to eat pudding. I am running out of everything I require to make it from one day to the next--Kleenex, Tylenol, Band-Aids. 'Tylenol' should just be 'acetominophen' because I am all about generic medication. And it's about time that I admit: I totally like "I'm A Slave 4 U."

Please excuse this post; I am tired and crazy.
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[04 Dec 2001|05:25pm]
Took pictures this afternoon. My closet doors are lovely. I probably should have been doing homework instead, though. Yesterday afternoon I rented Jules et Jim, which is to be watched Friday night with Christina for French, and Xiu Xiu, which is to be watched whenever. At six I have to go meet Erin; she's auditioning for a play and wants some company. And I have run out of Kleenex. Such a tragedy. I'm not sick, but since sometime yesterday my chest has felt like it's caving in. Nervous about something, I guess. Recorded my song that is not really a song, just to see what it actually sounds like. I screwed up the ending and didn't go back to do it over again, and I don't know. I think I'm writing more friends-only entries from now on. There's no specific reason, it just seems like a good idea.
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[02 Dec 2001|06:59pm]
So I have my computer back. The background on my lj is teal green all of a sudden, and I think it used to be blue, and my userpic looks grainy now, and these things are very annoying, but I don't feel like trying to do anything about it at the moment ... Or maybe if I just change the settings for my monitor so I have more than two hundred fifty colors...

The picture still looks weird, though.

So I spent the last week knitting the front of a sweater, and watching too much trashy television, and reading the last two Harry Potter books again, and listening to Randy Newman and Cat Stevens records.

I'm sort of feeling indifferent about having the internet back, but I know I'm going to just sit here forever instead of studying Finnish, even though I have my oral exam tomorrow morning.

And I have been having an on-going battle with a poster of the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel that Erin gave me. She got it when she was in Italy over the summer, and it refuses to stay on my wall.

Some time in the middle of the week, I was sitting by myself during my break and reading and a girl came up to me and said hello as if she knew me, and sat with me, and it took me much too long to realize that she was in my Comparative Literature class last winter. And I have been holding a grudge against Erin since Monday, although she doesn't know it and it doesn't have anything to do with her uncooperative poster.

Tonight it took my mother and I forever to get down 45th street to the grocery store because there was a football game, and it was dark and raining. And I still don't like Seattle.

Um, that is all.
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[25 Nov 2001|02:20pm]
I'm going back to school today. My hair is, erm, black now. I kind of like it, but it is, sadly, very emo, and so thank goodness it will wash out eventually. And the effect of the Harry Potter books on my dreams is much appreciated. And and and. I got a 52-week free rental card from Blockbuster because of some crazy sweepstakes my grandmother entered me in. I'll probably just leave it here for my mom and my brother, though. There's going to be a documentary about my dad's ship on A&E; or the Discovery Channel or something soon, and they just had the premiere of that movie whose title I can't remember starring Gene Hackman and Owen Wilson on the ship, too. I totally forgot to do my millions of French workbook pages that are due Tuesday. I would like my computer back from the shop. I would just like a new computer, really. This is dumb and I am rambling.
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[22 Nov 2001|09:54pm]
So: Harry Potter twice now. Learning how to talk about Thanksgiving food in two languages. Rather irresponsible about registration: Finnish and Intro. to Phonetics and, um, Modern/Post-Modern Literature because I want to read A Portrait of the Artist As A Young Man again, and in a classroom this time, and I really need science credits but fuck it.

I have kind of been enjoying the lack of computer access, despite the gross inconvenience of it all. And yesterday out of boredom I was driven to go buy a Whiskeytown cd and a book of poems by Rainer Maria Rilke, and those are two very good things. I also gave myself a haircut last night that, incredibly, looks okay. I've been talking to myself a lot the past few days, though.

It was just my mother and my brother and me at dinner tonight. But we got an e-mail from my dad. My mom thought my grandmother might have been alone tonight, but it turns out her boyfriend(?) cooked a twenty-three pound turkey for her. In French on Tuesday, people in class were saying they were having dinner with aunts and uncles and grandparents and cousins and it's been so long since I've had anything like that, that I barely remember it. There's a picture of me standing next to my grandfather who died in 1987 in here, and I barely remember that man and it's so strange that there's actually a picture of me standing with my hand on his shoulder. My most vivid memory of him isn't even of him; it's my grandmother calling in the morning to tell us that he'd died (the anniversary of his death is yesterday or today, I think). We were sitting around the dining room table, and my dad was the only one who went to the funeral. I know that at the time I understood what happened, but I don't remember being sad about it at all, and I've always felt so terrible about that.

Anyway.

Dreams I have had recently: My mother and my brother and I drove to Omaha, except it wasn't really far away, and I knew where everything was as if I'd been there before. It was a lovely city. Later, in the same dream, my father and his brother were in one car, and my mother and I were in another, and we were driving to the mountains, except they weren't really mountains. They were the hills of southern California, which I thought were mountains when I was a child, and I was so happy to be going back there. Then, a night or two ago, I had a dream that I had a boyfriend who seemed nice, but after a while I realized he was really inappropriately old. He introduced me to his friends, and one looked like Billy Bob Thornton. They were all eating candy bars and smoking cigarettes. I was still in high school, I think, but friends with Callie, and after I started going out with this guy, she stopped talking to me. I couldn't tell if it was because she was mad that I had a boyfriend, or if it was that my boyfriend was creepy. So for the rest of the dream, she and our other friends wouldn't talk to me, and we had to sit down in a gymnasium and watch some sort of patriotic school assembly.

(For not missing the internet, this is sort of a long entry, I guess.)

I've decided that I'm altogether too morbid, and that it's probably unhealthy and maybe I should do something about it. Or it's just November. Or both. I don't know.

And I've been sitting here way too long and I don't want to spell-check or edit. And if I happen to owe you an e-mail, I promise I'll reply soon.
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[16 Nov 2001|03:42pm]
I am in the computer lab and having a really bad afternoon, and my hard drive has for the second time this year died, and I don't know when I'm going to have the internet back. Not in time to register on Tuesday, anyway, which I guess means I'll be stuck calling in. I'll have to take my CPU back to a Gateway store to get my ethernet card driver reinstalled. Their customer service number is now programmed into my cell phone. It's not really a big deal, about my computer, I guess, but I'm still being childish about it. The nurse at the clinic wouldn't give me a meningitis shot today, either, and I'm supposed to go back on Monday and try again, says my mother, who yelled at me over the phone. Also, Erin called and bitched to me about how all the drama classes she needs are closed. And I guess I was right when I said yesterday that today would be totally terrible if it weren't for Harry Potter. And. I don't know.
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lodged between the could-haves, could-haves [15 Nov 2001|06:44pm]
I've finished The Virgin Suicides in only two days, and I should be making flash cards right now.

"Don't you feel like dropping out of school?" Christina asks as we are eating Subway and doing French homework. Yes, we all do, and she says something about winter coming so fast this year, can you imagine how fast it will be next year? And just before this: "Do you really like Finnish?" she wants to know, and I say yes to this, too, I like the way it sounds and the way it works, its structure, I don't really know how to explain, but I am smiling so much about all this. She looks at me like she thinks I'm deranged, and when I tell her the classes I am thinking about taking next quarter she says, "I have to tell you, that all sounds horrible. Why don't you take Psychology?" It is not so important that she thinks I'm crazy, but I have not felt very happy about school this quarter, and just for a minute today, I really did. And she said, "What are you going to do with a degree like that?" and I just shrug and say, "Oh, there are things you can do," and I can't really give her any particulars, but I don't really mind that.

I am wearing a pair of very old navy blue knee socks, and they are threadbare across the heels and the balls of my feet, and my skin is showing through, and the blue and pink is very lovely.

So, do I take Phonetics and Morphology next quarter, or Phonetics and Weather? I don't know. ...Or Morphology and Language Development? Or Language Development and Weather? Bah, indecision. One of the Phonetics textbooks is titled Vowels & Consonants, and I like it, how simple that seems.



Oh, the Innocence Mission.
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