the future's flowing into me

Yet ANOTHER early AM flat tire begetting another weird bus ride/walk through my city, another blog post? Maybe I have a nonsensical new ritual.

Since I'm here, in transportation news, a couple days ago I screeched to a halt on my bike not 2 inches from the propped legs of a man in a wheelchair just starting to trundle across a crosswalk. To my credit he was completely concealed behind the bumper of a big bad black parallel-parked SUV until the moment we almost collided, but my pant leg brushed his pant leg! JESUS CHRIST. I was biking as fast as possible, too. If I'd been dreamily gazing up the turrets of a Victorian as I do, buckets o blood would have been shed.
My shouted " Oh I'm sorry!" and was immediately matched by his three CALM "I'm sorry"s and a hearty chuckle, though. I was so relieved that I managed to choke out a laugh too, but really, it's just unnatural that one could be that unflappable in such a situation no matter how comfortable one was trying to make a remorseful bike girl feel. I mean, he chortled in the face of death! So obviously I'm now wondering.... uh, was that dapper old black man GOD?

It's hard to wrap these gifts because I keep running my fingers through my hair. And then typing some. I found the BEST desk on the sidewalk yesterday, though. It feels just great to be lugging shit home again. Like coming home in a metaphorical sense. I went honest-to-God Christmas shopping today, and now these new foreign things I brought here are sitting on this old stranger's table in "my" room. But whose is really what? I'm outnumbered. "The economy" has helped make me feel this way.

So I think my Mom progressed from "a little eccentric" to something more last week, and I think I'm going a little crazy from lack of cuddle-with-a-boy. My innate spelling skill is suddenly fucked too. Maybe stream-of-consciousness blogging could sharpen my haystack brain back into a pile of needles and/or spun gold? Too bad my days are filled with art blogging elsewhere now? I'm almost certain my perpetual brain age is 18 and a half - when I first fired up a blog! Lolz.

Hi Blogosphere, you're alright. I have a lot going on, though, I guess. If my blog could talk it might tell you:

"Ask me no questions, I'll tell you no lies
The past is your present, the future is mine"

from 'Confusion' by New Order

Those are both its first AND last words of its own.

There are 1032 wildfires licking away at California right now, but none near me. Yesterday the sun was hot pink and the shadows glowed a warm color. Two mornings ago when there were only 700-800, Tessa swung open her door and orange poured out into the hall. It looked like a sunshine shop in there. Lightning is supposed to have started most of them.

It's diffuse and colorless in Oakland today, though; the kind of weather that's supposed to surprise-attack you with a sunburn when you least expect it, unless you are too tan for sunburns, like me.

I have Thursdays aka today off, and this morning I used up every drop of my crazy plethora of change buying coffee, feeding a tip jar, and buying a zine in that order. A HUGE weight has been LIFTED. This humble, feel-good extravaganza pretty much stands for the state of my entire life at this time. Although... I've been reading the newspaper, and grasping how the world's problems (ie: bees/food/gas/environmental destruction/storms/back to bees) are really becoming a) one multi-faceted problem, like a huge and terrible diamond, and b) my own. It's just better to avoid downers, though, so I may start checking in with the world a little less often, however bad that sounds. In this vein, I think I had my best birthday ever this year! It's also the year that both my Grandparents completely forgot all about it, both for the first time ever. It's like I'm zapping the previous generation or two's powers in order to generate my own extra-strength positive outlook. And meanwhile, of course, the Golden State burns to the ground.

A drunken man from Michigan who was accidentally standing on my big toe tried smooth-talkin me at a bar tonight. He told me he lived around the corner, except that he hadn't known that he did til tonight. He had called a cab, asked it to take him to El Rincon, and then climbed out in bewilderment when it cruised a block and a half ("If that!") and stopped under the glow of the El Rincon sign. I was looking at his right shoulder to avoid his face, and laughing. Then he asked if I liked his shirt. I said it looked like a striped shirt and a burnout floral-type shirt had collided on him. He asked how to get them apart, and I said "I dunno man, it's YOUR shirt, so it's YOUR problem." We inexplicably fist-pounded. He left.

Toe-standing could actually be a pretty effective creeper move if done correctly.

But the reason we were there was to see Ash's old blue guitar dazzle the crowd from in front of her new red dress, which it did. The dress cloaked her same old vocal chords gathering muster like a new cyclone kicking up new and old songs deep within. She sure can belt it now compared to those tender days. Off to the side I talked with her Mom some, who is without a doubt the coolest Mom I know. Later everyone ended up in party hats in a room with a huge iguana lying prone in a hammock in the corner. Now I'm home trying to decide both where and when to move, and which new bike to buy. At first I mistakenly typed "where and when to love," but that's already decided. Yep, it's pretty exciting.

The last night of my otherwise wonderful Portland/Victoria/Vancouver trip, Zannie and I suddenly found ourselves knocking at the ER's door. Then just 4 days later I was again lost in fever city (but this time in my own country) with a crazy pain in my right bean organ. As of yesterday I have more effective drugs that may (?) be working, but I was so poised to put my nose to the grindstone as soon as I returned. I have shit I really want to do. But instead I'm home eating popsicles and thinking and sleeping. Also fighting the feeling that my vacances never occurred (but not because it wasn't a beauty). Here are some thoughts I lived by during my two weeks in Whoville:

DO IT NOW
BUT OF COURSE THE ARK WILL EVENTUALLY LEAK
THE CAPACITY IS ALWAYS THERE
ASTRAL HUMOR IS REAL; USE IT

On the 2 days' drive back there was a lovely "times a changin" tropical breeze ruffling all the trees, and all the hair of the people at the gas stations.

A few days ago I was working in the library when an old guy, probably in his 70s, came in and asked to see the graduate portfolios from '67, specifically "Nuzu's." I fetched it from the back and he wandered with it to a table. Moments later he's standing in front of me again wanting to know where the Whistler book section is, as in James Abbott McNeill Whistler the painter. He wants to compare him with Nuzu. I politely ask "Well have you checked the catalog yet?" as I do with lazy kids. He hrmphs and looks at the ground and asks "How does one...uh...?" and I encouragingly rattle off "Oh you just head over to that computer and enter Whistler as your subject or keyword and a list of items with call numbers pops up. It's easy." He nods and shuffles to said computer. At that point I really should have known. A couple minutes later I glance up and see him still sitting at that dark screen with his hands beneath the desk, having not even touched the mouse. He turns stiffly to look over his shoulder searchingly in my direction and I grasp what I've done and hurry over to him. Before I even make it to his side he's loudly apologizing, saying in his barking old man voice "Sorry...I'm trying to learn computers....just don't quite have it yet..." and I start apologizing too, but just with "Sorry, sorry let me help you with that" although I'm thinking "Fuck! Of COURSE I should have immediately recognized you as someone who is and has every right to be completely computer illiterate, sir." An awkward little tutorial ensues because he's seated in front of the screen and has got the mouse, and I'm pointing at everything I need him to click on the screen, while writing down call numbers at the very edge of the table trying not to elbow him in the jaw. After he selects three I say "Three's probably good!" so we get up and he shuffles behind me as I lead him towards the books, thanking me over and over for "all my help" although we're only halfway done. When we're almost there he somehow spots another book with a giant WHISTLER printed down the spine, but in NB or something so probably about Whistler's life with no pictures of paintings, and triumphantly barks "There's one!" But I'm scanning a nearby shelf already and just say "Nooo..." (No?). Fortunately the next thing he knows I'm handing him the right books and he's thanking me some more and it's over.

Even now as I write this I'm still blown away by trying to imagine what it must be like to be him. Between the expressionless male gruffness I hear used to be in vogue and the whole technology assault he must be constantly under, not to mention the head-to-toe beige wardrobe, plus all that other geriatric madness like outliving your friends, it seems pretty rough. But who am I to judge. I mostly just wonder what part of what is no longer he yearns for most, and hope I didn't make him feel bad for imposing on some student girl with tattoos.

Yesterday I was scrubbing my duds at Launderland and sitting on a bench and wearing shorts and reading about Postmodern Culture when I looked down and noticed the foot of my crossed leg was swaying slightly. I tried to hold it still but couldn't. I looked closer and realized each "big" (practically invisible) sway was followed by a little sway in between. I felt my heart. And then I realized my leg was rocking around on my heartbeat. Some bloodflow beneath my kneecap that I had my leg balanced on was making waves on the OUTSIDE of my body too. It was like spotting your third grade teacher in the grocery store, but in a good way. I mean I can almost always see my heart moving beneath my skin, but so far away, and lifting the length of my leg? Amazing.

Here are some other amazing things I've seen and was posting on Myspace for no reason:

Wednesday, November 21, 2007
Today I heard a kid (actually an adult) on the bus say: "On Easter I begged my parents for a chocolate Batman."
Then later a kid in the hall said: "What if you could build a tank that shoots gumballs!"
I’m pretty happy I overheard these things.

Wednesday, January 30, 2008
Today I was locking my bike up, and the way my backpack reflected in a car window made it look like a piece of note paper lying on the seat inside the car was actually tucked in a pocket of my backpack.
I arrived home and looked out the window over the rooftops to see that the only tree to poke above the horizon was also outlined with a single puffy white cloud, just a little bigger than it but the same shape, and hovering directly behind.

Sunday, March 30, 2008
Today I turned the faucet on the instant my bagel popped out of the toaster. I thought my kitchen might have been visited/reno-ed overnight by Wallace and Gromit. No.
Today I also remembered the time I was watching the Science of Sleep on a tv beside a ficus tree well-known to be in the prime of health. Towards the end when Stephane crawls up into Stephanie’s loft bed and finds the boat forest, he brushes his hand against the little trees. That was when a single ficus leaf fluttered in front of the screen and to the ground.

The other day I was spending time in the big silver basin that is my roof when a man in a Cherry Picker bucket slowly levitated into view over the edge, way on the opposite side from me. He bumped to a mechanical stop in the air and swung open a glass street light cover like a trap door right above his head. (Sorry no light bulb joke for this scenario yet.) I noticed the light chamber is about the shape of what I'll just continue to call the roof basin, but in miniature and upside-down. I don't think this man noticed me then or ever, although I watched his every move, reeling as I was in the weird frame of mind imposed on me by being in the middle of a story in Italo Calvino's Cosmicomics about the (FICTIONAL) days of yore when the moon was so close to the Earth they nearly brushed. Back then you could take field trips to upside-down. If you rowed into the ocean at the right time of year and leapt into the air in such a way that the moon's gravity snagged you, you were there. As Mr. Calvino was explaining this to me, the aforementioned Cherry Picker bucket guy ("a moon man?!" for 1/200th of a second) arrived from below. Later I took a picture of the lamplighter's back as he descended because i could.

Today (a couple days ago now) I spent 7 hours painting Delight S. Trimble's face in a Venn Diagram (an actual lady; a realtor from the 50s or so who wrote a newspaper column). This in my opinion is one of the most fun things to do right now. This weekend I've got to get drunk. In those 7 hours a solid dusting of pollen and tree powder had coated my bike seat. My jaw dropped when I saw it. I could really get used to being allergic to nothing in the entire world.

Other things that have happened were watching music with Lana at Ayla's, being offered the ideal internship with no effort on my part, and hearing 5 CCA writing kids read their work to our intimate crowd in the college president's office tonight. I held onto my free cup of coffee and was stunned for an hour. The simultaneous wisdom and insight and keen humor and suggested depth of experience embodied by all but one of them! I just rode home humming and shivering in the strong moonlight, under a hole in a cloud that was shaped like a hand with its index finger pointing down at the earth.

The word 'bedrock' is like some kind of ridiculous one word pun.

In the last minute of the last day of class before Spring Break my teacher said "Oh and let's put out our thoughts towards R, who MIGHT be in a coma." We all gave her wide-eyed "WHAT?!" expressions and she offered "Something with a car... should we send her a card as a class?" (Ridiculous.) We all looked at the ground. When some of us made it back to eye level the knitted brows and questions gradually came but didn't last long because the only other thing this teacher could tell us was that R's dog had died in the incident. So this cool and kind girl who lived life with a chihuahua under one arm and had asked me to be in her performance piece may be asleep forever.

When I came home that day, I immediately googled her name in hopes that some donation site or something had already shot up. But the only trace I could find that was of this girl and her quasi-common name was a message she left to a dead friend towards the end of an obituary bulletin board last year. And the most recent person to also write there, at the very top, was Jess.

I hope she is okay. And I hope I'm not next.

Update: coma.

A few days ago I dialed a number and immediately had to sneeze SO BAD. I didn't even think I could say hello before it came, so instead I said "I am going to sneeze." But amazingly I got that whole sentence out and then had a long conversation. I sneezed the moment after I hung up.

Today I found a secret note in my room from the hand that matters most.

A week ago I ran into my long lost friend Charlie at a show, and between then and now one of that night's musicians served Rachel and I at Herbivore and we talked, and then I saw many more kids I sort of know at Apgar last night. No matter how much larger-than-life this place may be it is just a part of the world, and the world facilitates old and new connections with the crazy efficacy of a friend-finding website or something. These connections are confusing, though; they continually shrink the feel of the size of the land they happen over top of, although I know those tectonic plates just keep spreading. Also in disagreement are my Grandma's globe, which just keeps gradually swelling and cracking, and its identical twin globe, which Tessa accidentally brought home from the thrift store today, which just keeps sitting pretty.

I was burning time in a liquor store recently and discovered animal crackers are vegan! Ha, yeah, of course.

This is a big recap!
(visual reference)

Last week Caitlin and John traveled over 2 days to hang, mostly with me, for 7 days. It was such a good time despite my educational sleep dep and some heavy rainfall. Wandering, restaurant meals, free admission, coffees, strange parties, Soul music, colorful new socks and shoes, vegan potluck, the Musee Mechanique, etc. Amazing agreements were shaken on too. Fortunately words can't do fun or love justice, because if I think about how wonderful life is for too long, I'll die. Although, in a similar vein, I'm pretty sure that my current favorite spot in the world is mine and only mine. I thought there were too many people around now for that kind of thing to still happen. GUESS NOT.

A couple days ago I made a new friend at school who acted shocked to discover I'm 23, because, according to him, I look much younger. He's 21. He's gotta be wrong (Can people age noticeably in 2 years?), but that's besides the point. The interesting thing here is that not too long ago I would have not been happy at all to be considered younger. Without fail everyone that ever guessed my age during my 0-20 phase assumed I was much older than I ever was, and I might have become accustomed to, I don't know, undeserved respect? However, this new kind of wrong guess left me stoked! In one fell swoop the tables have turned, and revealed new ammunition behind the belief that one of the roads I am on is the road to remaining a kid forever. Everything is working. Mortality has never felt further away.

Which brings me to those "wrinkle eliminating product" banners. Have you noticed that they just get more and more crazy all the time? The last one I came across showed a face of which half clearly belonged to a 17 year old, and the other half to a 85 year old. All unity relied on their noses and lips still meeting in the middle. You could drag the dividing live around with your cursor and watch a whole fucking interchange of crow's feet blink out of existence and then spring back again like a major tectonic event.

On a final note, if anyone wants to talk about doing Portland, Anacortes, Victoria, and Vancouver in a pickup truck in May, or just getting dropped off or picked up at any point along the way, I'm available to talk adventures. All the art kids in California have rotated their jean shorts to the front of the closet this week. It's time.

1. Tessa and I stumbled into the first hour of the first day of a blockbuster print sale at The Depot last weekend. At first the grabbing hands and high tension concentrated in more shuffling middleaged art-lovers you've ever seen together at once didn't seem worth our while. But now I realize these image liquidation events by institutions are major historic events that, lucky for me, seem to be happening pretty much right now. The Oakland library went digital with their picture file 3 months ago, and consequently a lot of images of 1950's stoves and all sorts of trees are hanging out in back of the CCA library, waiting for me to transfer them into our own file which will probably be loved in its physical form forever.

So, I'm guessing that Saturday happened because UC Berkeley (?) scanned their entire famous art prints collection or whatever and then just dropped off the load at the thrift store down the street from my house. Thousands of semi-gloss black and white photographs of everything from old masters stuff to abstract expressionism to Da Vinci's notebook were mounted on a piece o one of two sizes of mat board, jammed everywhere in boxes and crates and filing cabinets, and going for one clamshell. I got some mysterious French 18th century architectural drawings of sphere buildings.

2. We finally got a freeze on a foster cat. This one is a charming little plump black lady named Bageera, which the SPCA misspelled, which means she is not actually called the Hindi word for panther I guess. She came with all hot pink accessories. She is cool.

3. Caitlin and John are definitely hopping a bus from Canada in two weeks, and there will be a total lunar eclipse while they're here. God or whoever is cool too.

4. Last night I dreamt that my left arm was swallowed up by a huge black botantical tattoo. After scanning my groceries the checker took out his tat gun from beneath the counter and did his work with my arm propped on the check-writing stand. It took only as long as it did for my food to be bagged. I had second thoughts as soon as I left the store. This belongs on this list because I was excited to find it didn't happen.

5. Last night I also dreamt that my childhood best friend's Dad heart-attacked on a night they had me over for dinner. I was told that, before the paramedics could take him away, as the tallest I had to stuff a gap above the door with paper so that his soul wouldn't escape from the house when he was carried out (souls can't use doors?). I was stricken with that slow motion running problem that shows up in dreams, and Rad (that's really his name) was swooped away before I finished. I never found out what happened. The feelings of crushing failure on both a physical and spiritual level were immense. I was so glad to find out that this didn't happen either.

6. It's not raining today.

7. The immediate future is on its way to me with burritos and a fun night.

I got really sick last week (due credit to Madeline), but now I'm getting better all the time again. Three days straight of sleeping can really affect a person, though. I'd sometimes wake up with all but one and half senses, and pass out again before the huge disappointment could even settle in. At some point during all this I dreamt that I watched Juno so many times that I became 16, and then pregnant, and then a professional ballerina in that order. That blew. However last night I dreamt of endless coolers of booze, taking a road trip to the bonafide BEST beach in the world (It's in England! Hahhaha), and owning a magic collapsible car that I could carry upstairs with me under one arm each night. I think the beginning of my recovery can be traced to the same afternoon I brought home the jalapeno tartar sauce. I'm still feeling around for my mental clarity but I WILL find it.

Brooke wrote: "2008 is going to shine like a million suns."

Now, let it be known I am in complete agreement with this one. We're 9 days in and it's going on. Furthermore, these "bonus" suns happen to hang out right by earth. Where are these million suns, you may ask? Well they are lined up, nearly touching, behind our original sun, like ducklings. Fortunately they are fairly small, and they also give off very little additional heat, because unlike us with our shitty compact flourescent bulbs, the million suns have solved the problem of unnecessary heat expenditure while remaining full-spectrum. But they still shine as hard as a million additional suns do, meaning our "Old Yeller" sun is a mere gel through which the new ones direct their magic spotlight. And the rays of these spanking new lava spheres symbolize happiness, of course, meaning veritable "goodness" has been trained thisaway. And lastly, on January 1 these new cosmic developments rendered all the space beyond our immediate earthly surroundings truly new and unpredictable, suddenly suggesting that, if a million suns can pop out of a trap door, "continuity" is a purely human responsibility, not a physical truth. Yeah..... I know. WHOA.

Or maybe Brooke was alluding to global warming or something.

Anyways, Einstein came up with E= MC squared in what came to be known as his Annus Mirabilis ("Wonderful Year"), and what was, for the rest of us, 1905. I propose that 2008 be dubbed the Annus Mirabilis of the everyman, cuz I think we should get one too.

Today I found that Oakland, California has THREE Canadian counterparts. This evening a girl in Ontario, a girl in New Brunswick, and a girl in Manitoba are also seated at their desks in their rooms in Oakland, penning this news, smiling in their own gritty realities on the last night of the year. And in my own Oakland, which features a Lake Merritt, which features mountains of birds, a study has been conducted which foretells a doubling of the US population of Canada geese by 2010. All this makes me think about crossovers (and crossover artists). Hey did you know the earth has more venn diagrams than species of insects?

If I was in charge of New Years Eve, I would probably try to find a really cool OLD year in good enough condition to use. But I'm still really excited, because life rules, and because a mass coordination of human effort in order to get ecstatic at the same time does too.

I'm having some kind of coffee breakthrough; I'm so motivated by how much work there is to be done. As in personal work, on my soul, through the making of things, to get closer to being "ready," although you can never be ready, as mostly inspired by my painting professor who I wish you all, no matter what you're into, could meet. He's one of those people who is a lake to be swum in. He is like God's own basting wand, if it's even possible to say that in a reverant way.

I wish I could build things from concrete, I wish I could major in more than one thing, and I wish there was so much as a single cooking pot in this new kitchen. Everything else is just great.

Today sitting in class I realized I have proven, reliable "people skills." A lot of people do, but many also don't, and I am someone with this strength. Unbelievable.

Biking home drunk from work at this particular speed through one of the craziest cities there is has finally given me the confidence to do this here again. Last night I dreamt an entire Mexican immigrant family was sharing my bed with me, I've teamed up with a wonder boy, and most everything else I feel roughly the same about. So...I think the world feels again as it did when pickup trucks sported beds the size of real beds. Everything remains as close as a camera viewfinder but as far away as my right hand, at least til I start drawing every day.

I've recently heard that the universe is currently believed to probably be finite because an infinite grove of birch trees would create the appearance of solid white in all directions, and this isn't the case with space (not at all), although it may still be EXPANDING to a state of unbroken light. I'm just fine being the white against a dark background rather than the other way around. I'm just fine modeling the universe on a chalkboard kind of set-up rather than a forest.

Today I found Lea's new fish a porcelain No Fishing sign in Bambino Thrift, which was a killer good omen, and also huge this week are juice, ankle tans, character foils of the every day, and the William T. Bagley freeway.

Dear Zannie,

All last night I dreamt I was waitressing at a construction site next door to a war zone. Disenfranchised folk were trying to use our restroom non-stop. I think this stems from an experience at the restaurant yesterday with a yoga teacher who felt very entitled to our toilet. But tonight! I'm going to sleep on those metaphorical cushions you spoke of.

As for the sky, the Cast has been Over a couple days now but I fully expect the sun to return. Ash is back from tour and havin her around at job #2 seriously lights up my life. The weather itself was blazing pretty good for a long time. I was sitting on the roots of an enormous tree in a windy field across from my house yesterday when Dylan rode up on his white bicycle as planned, and the sublime was hanging like a picture on an invisible wall nearby.

The crazy frame shop lady sounds like a heaping spoonful of the sweetness, and... it makes me wonder what my transition from serving the public all the time to residing in the school/self-focus microcosm will be like. I mean clearly I'm having nightmares about not being able to get away from people endlessly expecting meaningless things of me, but when I truly do for a few hours it's so quiet and precious. But the WHOLE WORLD will be reconverted into my thinking space soon.

Affectionately head-lock the 2 puff balls for me k?
Smoke rings with watermelons inside to you.

Jess