Hi unknown internet stalkers, Carmel, and anyone else that reads these things

I have had many random thoughts that I wanted to record in the past few weeks, but now I can't remember most of them. It is now officially Fall in Seattle, maybe even winter, regardless, its cold as fucking hell. I seem to remember donating all of my warm clothing before going to Wisconsin whether or not that really happened, I can't find any warm clothes. So today I might help the economy out by buying some with my go to the Philippines savings. I am going to the Philippines by the way. I am going on an 8 day familiarization tour sponsored by the Philippine government to promote U.S. dive tourism. Weird huh. (As I pull lavender pancake batter out of my hair, I managed to trash the kitchen during breakfast this late afternoon). Anyway I am excited obviously because I am going, and its is only costing me about $600. But it will be bizarre to say the least to be there as a "wealthy, American, tourist" and not the poor student/scholar/activist that i will be there as later. I will ponder this more in the coming days.
I go on the 19th of October

I volunteered at a fundraiser for Blue Earth the other day. Blue Earth does something in regards to environmental/social justice/awareness through mind-blowing photography. It is exactly the kind of frivolous, ineffective world change I want someone to pay me living wages for. While the auction was beautiful, both in the art for sale and in Seattle's elite artist crowd that attended, it was an absurd place for me to be. Everyone else volunteering there, was an established photographer/art student. I was mysterious and let them think I was something like that also. But free wine and food always makes it worth it. And I enjoyed looking glamorous and pretending like I fit in with that crowd.

I had a second job for a while. At World Spice Merchants in Pike Place Market. It was really fun. I would get up early, take the 71 downtown, listen to my music player and read academic discourse on the Philippine diaspora, and have a relaxing 30 minute commute. Show up downtown early, stop and get coffee on my walk down to the market. Get covered in exotic spices, meet famous Seattle chefs, learn about different flavor profiles, and not be tired or sick of working before closing time. Reminds me of how work used to be fun. But loyalty or obligation, I am not sure which is which anymore, means I am to open and clothes for two weeks straight at my dive shop while everyone else goes to a trade show in Florida. And the week before, I am in the Philippines. So Spice Market handed me a check for the hours I had worked and said for me to let them know when I am back from all that. I am slightly heartbroken.

I have naglakwatsa with Matthew several times since our return to Seattle, mostly moving related, sometimes alcohol related. We hung out with Jon and Meg and some history students one night, had some much fun together that we went out for breakfast the next morning, that seemed eerily reminiscent of Madison. Matthew has my perfect studio. I am fiercely jealous.

My friend Stefanie is back from Brazil. She really wants me to move in with her. I am not sure if I want roommates, but a change sounds good. We will see, I have not seen the place yet.

Anyway its 2 o clock. I need to clean up my lavender pancake mess (they were wonderful, you should try them sometime), take care of some university fines, deliver a large box of Waterford crystal to my parents house (something possessed them in Waterford Ireland, and they had it shipped to me in Seattle for safe keeping) and buy some warm clothes on the way back. Matthew wants me to help him move some more today and he will buy me dinner so that works out well. Especially since dinner with the boy that is driving me crazy (I suppose "a boy" not "the boy" since there are a few) is not happening. Damn I wanted to have a little chat with him today too. Oh well Matthew is a better listener and more honest anyway, and I know Matthew will pay for me. Have a good day, do what you can to stay warm.

[sigh]

I am really irritated. Except for the likelihood of another encounter with my sexy neighbor next door, I really want to move. But I can't find anything close to the practically nothing I am paying for rent. And I think my only stipulation is that I don't want roommates. I suppose I also need a parking spot, I am scared of ground floors (Thanks Wisconsin), and I need a reasonable bus route to campus. Plus I have furniture that I am rather attached to, so it can't just be a room in a house unless it is really large (two love seats, a giant console record player, book shelves, coffee table, side tables, desk, dresser, trunk, bed). yeah.

Sorry I don't feel like writing anymore...

Sheatyl

So I am home. yesterday i got back in the evening. saw a high school friend at the airport in Minneapolis. Had not seen her since high school because we were not really friends, but we talked for a while in the terminal before taking the same flight back into Seattle. weird. then i sat next to kind of an inconsiderate asshole on the plane. i was not irritated enough to say anything to him but i was getting close. first off, for the entire flight he rested his forearm on our shared armrest so that his elbow was touching me. to the point where it felt intentional. I would have complained, but by the time I noticed, i was really cold and his body heat helped a little. then he wore his headphones around his neck so we had to listen to whatever stupid movie or bad pop music he chose to listen to for the three hour ride. and then, just after beverages were served, when I had my tray down, a mostly full can of ginger ale, a glass of ice and soda, my mp3 player in my lap and my seat belt on, he decided that was the best time to get up and go to the bathroom.


then i played 12 games of solitaire a did not win once.

(fall asleep for 8 hours then resume writting)

I got back to seattle, had no key to my house because my sublettor has it.
Had dinner with Loida and Carmel
Finally got into my house.

The next day while waiting for my roommates to be ready to take me to fred meyer to make a copy of the house key, I decide it would be a good idea to run and jump for the string of a balloon that is hanging down from our vaulted ceilings. it wasn't. I come down from my leap on top of a pair of really sexy platforms and quite possibly twist my ankle. I writhe in pain on the floor for a bit then ice it, and then decide that nothing can keep me from getting this key made. So i suck it up and move on. Then I kind of limp all over ballard (cupcake royal-because we weren't sure where fred meyer was in relation to market st-and its cupcake royal, fred meyer of course when we find it, then I get a call from stefanie who is on her way to ballard, so i hop out of ginas car on market and wait for stef to arrive while browsing through records (since I now have my deluxe record player) at Sonic Boom. When stef arrives I climb into the back seat of the car her little brother is driving, and suddenly something wet and hairy is on my cheek. With a 'holy shit!' I turn around to see two large dogs in the back and they are very happy to see me. We take them to greenlake so her brother can run them around, and stef and I catch up for a bit. Then we take the dogs back to the house her brother is housesitting at, and I realize that my ankle wont make it up stairs with out a fight. Of course the house is a 4 story town house, and that is when the pain comes back. By the time we get back to the car, my ankle is visibly swollen. So they take me home, I take a couple of advil and ice it again, then go out to Capitol hill with my old friend Jennifer and her little sister and some of her friends from Bellingham.

Now, the next morning, my ankle feels a little better but I am still going to make an appointment at the ankle clinic down the street. Then I am taking Kelsey out to breakfast and she is taking me back to monroe to get my car.

The end. I kind of enjoy having a blog, regardless if anyone reads it or not. I was never good at keeping a diary/journal, but this is easier, and not required by some class. So even though I am no longer in an officially red state, I might keep it up.

Um...

at first I was really irritated that you complained that people are rarely entirely truthful in their everyday statements. I disagreed and said perhaps they just don't say everything on their mind, you said that's the same thing. I suppose, which is my answer to most things that bore me or irritate me, but I have concluded that it is a matter of common decency (KV) and most of the time they dont say it because they know you dont want to hear it. For example, I could say to you that I think it is ironic and unfortunate, but you and I have become the people that we judged eachother to be that first day. At least we have convinced ourselves that our judgements were correct. Me being that white girl, and you, ridiculously arrogant. There I said it. But when I am around you I am silent, because at least when I am sober, I know you don't want to hear that.


Here is my playlist today
Roughly titled SEASSI Mix, or I Still Like Irony More than I Like You

1. Appetite (For Lightin' Dynamit)-Citizen Cope
2.Hold You in My Arms-Ray LaMontagne
3.Wildcat-Ratatat
4.Can I Get Get Get-Junior Senior
5.Come Back Margaret-Camera Obscura
6.Science vs. Romance-Rilo Kiley
7.Save Room-John Legend
8.You Know I'm No Good-Amy Winehouse
9.Overdrive-Eraserheads (seassi joke)
10.Anywhere I Lay My Head-Tom Waits
11.It Ain't Me Babe-Bobby D
12.While My Guitar Gently Weeps-
13. Summertime-Janis Joplin

Ang Singkil ni 'Sayaw' sa Unibersidad ng Washington

Para sa piynal proyekto ko sa SEASSI, kailangan kong gawain ang photo essay sa isang na iba't ibang paksang kabihasang Pilipino. Kasi hindi ko pumunta sa Pilipinas at walang Pilipinong kabihasang o pamilya, ginagamit ko ang mga larawan mula sa ng dula ni Joseph kay Feast of the Black Nazarene. Gustong gusto ko gamitin ang awit ni Orlando pero hindi niya nagrespond sa message ko. Kaya, ginagamit ko ang awit sa iTunes “Sinulug Mode on the Kulintang”
by

Kulintang Player of the Basalang Gong Ensemble

of the album

Music of the Magindanao in the Philippines, Vol. 1&2

kasi naiisip ko na ginamit nila ang kulintang sa Nazarene. Sige nga. May maraming trabaho ako sa ngayon gabi. hindi ko alam kung matutulog ako ngayon. Gusto ko ring basahin ang Darangen let me know if you have it or have read it. I guess it has the whole story of the Singkil in it, or at least that is what I am going to say in my presentation tomorrow. Here are the pictures I am using, though I don't know if my cool photoshop edits will show up (got ride of my ugly sets in the background and did some neat smudging atbp...).

Lessons from Slapstick

My unconditional love for Kurt Vonnegut was reinforced this weekend when I found 'Slapstick' on my roommates bookshelf. Saturday morning I woke up in a strange position on the papasan chair in my living room. Then I made a pot of oatmeal and biked up State street in search of a good cup of coffee and a place to read my new book. Just as soon as it started to rain, I parked my bike and walked through the busy farmers market. Noticing the cute kids out running wildly all over the place, I fought back a maternal painge by thanking god for birth control, then made it to Cafe Solie. That place is impressively sustainable. Their paper cups are not coated with the same waxy substance other paper cups are coated with because that substance contains petroleum, instead theirs are coated with a corn derived substance. That kind of thing. I sat and read for one hundred pages or so, but in agreement with the San Fransisco Chronicle's review the prologue alone is some of the best Vonnegut I have ever read.

here is an example,
I have had some experiences with love, or think I have , anyway, although the ones I have liked best could easily be described as 'common decency.' I treated somebody well for a little while, or maybe even for a tremendously long time, and that person treated me well in turn. Love need not have had anything to do with it.

Also: I cannot distinguish the love I have for people and the love I have for dogs.
When a child, and not watching comedians on film or listening to comedians on the radio, I used to spend a lot of time rolling around on rugs with uncritically affectionate dogs we had.
And I still do a lot of that. The dogs become tired and confused and embarrassed long before I do. I could go on forever.
...
Love is where you find it. I think it is foolish to go looking for it, and I think it can be poisonous. I wish people who are conventionally supposed to love each other would say to each other, when they fight, "Please-a little less love, and a little more common decency."

Also my "O" key fell off again. thats me not KV though. You may have noticed my excessive use of commas, I have toned it down quite a bit following the instruction of Mrs. Abbott and others since, but I still love them and run-ons and fragments. And writing the way I speak. All lessons from Vonnegut.

I know you could just go out and borrow the book yourself, but the last fifty pages put me to sleep, only the prologue is really excellent, the rest of the story is not bad if you are madly in love with Vonnegut as I am but I don't know that any of you are. So I will include a few other things I was particularly pleased with.

His brother was an atmospheric scientist and had a lab that was in disastrous shape "where a clumsy stranger could die in a thousand different ways, depending on where he stumbled." Anyway a lab safety officer was inspecting one day and when his brother was confronted about the state of his lab he said tapping his forehead with his fingertips: "If you think this laboratory is bad, you should see what it's like in here"

Here is another direct quote that I feel like could be a dialog about my sister and I.
So my brother and I strapped ourselves into a jet-propelled airplane bound from New York to Indianapolis. I sat on the aisle. Bernard took the window seat, since he was an atmospheric scientist, since clouds had so much more to say to him than they did to me...
He asked me politely how my work was going. I think he respects but is baffled by my work...
After the plane took off, my brother showed me a piece of scientific apparatus which he had brought along. It was a photoelectric cell connected to a small tape recorder. He aimed the electric eye at clouds. It perceived lightening flashes which were invisible to us in the dazzle of daytime.
The secret flashes were recorded as clicks by the recorder. We could hear the clicks as they happened-on a tiny earphone.
"There's a hot one," my brother announced. He indicated a distant cumulus cloud, a seeming Pike's Peak of whipped cream.
He let me listen to the clicks. There were two quick ones, then some silence, then three quick ones, then silence again.
"How far away is that cloud?" I asked him.
"Oh-a hundred miles, maybe," he said.
I thought it was beautiful that my big brother could detect secrets so simply from so far away."

I remember as a kid it was a desire of mine to hold a mason jar out the window of an airplane and catch clouds as we zoomed by. I also remember the disappointment that followed my dad telling me why that wasn't possible. I still think about that whenever I fly, and for that reason I get jealous if I don't have the window seat.


I leave this place on Sunday. The more I have been longing for Seattle, the more I grow bored of it already. I came to that depressing conclusion this weekend. However I am still holding on to the hope that I will appreciate so much more about Seattle after being trapped in Madison. I can't wait to see all of you. This is a fairly lonely city when you get sick of the few friends you have, and cannot summon the energy required to invest enough in other people to make friends with them in the short period of time you have left here. But I think I will talk to more strangers once I get back to Seattle. And try to stay away from cigarettes.

I have learned a few important social skills here I believe. Talks with Eric have allowed me to open up a little more and dissect why I am so quiet in most sessions, my calculated responses to different comments and situations etc... But more importantly to say what is on my mind because that makes things way more interesting in the long run and will deepen friendships or separate the ones I am wasting time with. Don't worry, if you are reading this (or are at least one of the people I know who are reading this) you are already safe because you already know a good portion of what I think.

Time to go pick up my roommate from work. She didnt want to walk so she had me drop her off and take her car to the near by coffee shop so I could use the internet. The end. See you soon.

Let the Countdown Begin...

Nine days left. Today something about me hates Madison more than other days. I woke up in a great mood, in fact about an hour early. Managed to get in the shower before my roommate woke up, which means I would be on time for class. Used the new overpriced shampoo I bought yesterday at the mall. Well it is really good stuff even if it was more than I wanted to spend. It promised to make my hair curl the way I like it, even here in Madison with the heat/humidity. And it did until I got to class, then the curls fell out. Then I had a quiz in class that was difficult because I did a bad job of paying attention this week. I can write in Tagalog just fine, but if I dont remember the topic I need to be writing about, things fall apart. Then we learned MAKI- and MAKIPAG- verbs, Then watched Cavite. I dont know if that movie hit you guys like it hit me. But it kind of fucked up my mood. I dont talk about movies right after watching them. I takes me quite a while to digest them properly before I can respond. So none of that right now. But the movie made me feel sick, and irritated, and prompted me to avoid all my classmates and bike up to the coffee shop so I could be among strangers with my melancholy for a bit. I learned the other day that 'melancholy' was a hot word in the social science crowd about ten years ago and has kind of fallen out of vogue lately. While I am just a simple biological scientist, I really like this word and at least the way I define it, I think fits my thoughts and conscious pretty well. But Kris and Eric and the others give me a funny look when I use it, so maybe I am wrong. ANYWAY I am in the kind of mood now where I really want to drink an entire bottle of wine. Even though its not even 2pm yet. I dont want to go back to my place, because I hate it there. They sell wine by the bottle here at Barriques, but I dont really want to insight that kind of judgment from my fellow coffee shop patrons and Eric likes this place enough that he might be on his way here, and I am purposefully hiding in the back corner so he wont see me. As of about 45 minutes ago, I hit the point that he hit nearly three weeks ago at which you are so sick of this place that you go into survival mode. It becomes necessary to find new people to talk to, and some kind of substance to take your mind off boredom. I have no pot resources here other than Eric's roommate which is out of the question, and I am not about to go any harder than that right now, but I am glad I only have nine days left here. This place does something to you. I don't smoke cigarettes, in fact if you know me, you know I have a personal vendetta against them for killing off my extended family. But I have smoked more here than ever before (we are talking not more than 4 whole cigarettes, so dont get worried) and the other day when I was sick of waiting for someone, I went out looking for food or cigarettes whichever I found first. Luckily for my lungs, I met my friend before finding either. But I am still dangerously close. I will try to stick to wine.

So here is my list of what I hate about Madison followed by what I like in an attempt to better my mood.

Hate:
the weather
allergies
my house-for its distance from everything, no internet, no cable (=no shark week), one bitch roommate and one that I have no common ground with
no good bars
nothing to do other than go to mediocre bars
the food is only decent
coffee is only good at Barriques or Indie Coffee
getting sick of my classmates/having them get sick of me
grocery stores are all far away
being scared at night
the wisconsin accent
that people think I am from here because I look like every one else (i.e white)
my bike is too tall = daily bruises and worse because I cannot stop quickly or get on and off with out difficulty
that I didn't pack very well
I have a terrible sense of direction
the screen on my phone is black because I dropped it=no text messaging (the preferred way for classmates to get in touch)
white hippies with dreadlocks
The college student 'dress code' where everyone looks the same, and not like anyone I want to talk to (guys: tshirt, tan cargo shorts, backwards hat, flip flops. girls: denim cut-off skirt, long tank top, flip flops, fake tan, ironed flat hair)

Like:

My red bike, even if its too tall, I will miss it and the freedom to explore the city it has given me, to get home when buses end, exercise that i enjoy, a way to get home from class when it is too hot to walk etc...
they sell alcohol everywhere including coffee shops
the lakes are pretty from a distance
Capitol Square farmers market
Marigold cafe brunch (one of a few exceptions the the above food comment)
Tagalog-when I am not limited by my vocabulary
Not working
cheese
Fireflies!

(I will try to add more, but my nausea has subsided and now I want some lunch)

Animal farm/zoo of the town called Arena

this bird was shit crazy, or it really wanted to get out, you decide
this animal is half rabbit-half deer I think if that is biologically possible
Baby Goats!


this pigmy goat was really funny until it almost got me











this chicken or whatever was just sitting on its ass, I didn't know they did that


I am scared of alligators and crocodiles like nothing else

Um, what? I think this is supposed to be funny, I am not really sure.


I am skeptical that these people care about animal welfare...

Pictures from Taliesin

The small window paines on the left are called 'quarter note' windows