mandalay

something to brighten your day

hehehe 

a picture of my dad with a balloon longhorn on his head. it was just screaming to be on the w.w.w.

posted by amanda @ 5:51 PM 0 Comments

before sunset

the sunlight in your hair... 

so much has happened in the last few days, so let me try to catch up... wednesday i began to seriously consider moving to santa fe, and resurrected my plans to leave austin. i started thinking about staying in my aunt and uncle's vacation home until i found another job and trying to convince my parents' friend who is about to retire and commit all his time to his new photography business to take on another photographer. then on thursday i actually found an awesome-sounding job for a commercial photographer in santa fe.

that night, my dear friend elizabeth, a current houstonian, came to visit sophia and i. sophia and elizabeth have the same birthday (the 21st) and elizabeth had gone to nyc to celebrate with her boyfriend d.j. so we hung out and had ice cream cake and chatted and learned that d.j. had proposed to elizabeth on the poetry garden terrace at the library hotel. as three women poets, we were all particularly moved by his choice of setting and impressed with the dewey decimal room numbers. it made me very happy to learn of the engagement because it is so wonderful when i feel like my friends have ended up with the right people. friday morning, i received a wonderful friendster testimonial from friend and soon to be ex-co-worker dorothy. it made a long string of insomniac days and nights almost totally bearable. (an aside: it seems that austin is in transition - everyone is leaving or arriving, some doing both nearly at the same time, and so even my new friends are on their way to new places...)

yesterday i began learning guitar from my voice teacher so i now actually have some tabs written out for me and a new guitar stand and tuner to start on the path of knowledge with this lovely instrument gifted to me by my bro years ago, which until now has known only the joy of other's hands. hahaha. anyway, i'm excited about that. i spent the early afternoon hours after that scanning negatives and working on my website, which should be up very shortly. stay tuned.

finally, we come to the main event of the day, the before sunset premiere at the paramount theater. since before sunrise is one of my absolute favorite movies, i've been following the progress of the sequel for about the last year. so yesterday, sophia, my dear cousin, jordan, and i all trekked through the rain to go to the 4:30 screening of before sunrise which was to be followed by the 8:00 premiere of before sunset with ethan hawke, julie delpy, and richard linklater all in attendance.

an interesting thing happened as sophia and i were waiting for jordan in front of the theater. i saw a guy who looked like my old friend dave, who the last i had heard was going to japan to teach english. only a few weeks ago i had seen his name on a poster at emo's and wondered if he was back in town, with a new band. we shared the awkward glance, both trying to decide if we really knew each other, since it had been five years since we had hung out. he walked inside and i was left to ponder.

small digression:
there are a handful of people in my life who i've never become very good friends with, people who i've felt i could really connect with if only provided the right circumstances, but alas, these circumstances never came around. in high school, i began writing back and forth in pencil on my desktop with some mystery guy who sat at the same desk in my pre-cal classroom during another period. we wrote out music quotes and lines of poetry and responses and i finally learned that it was micah, a friend of a friend in the drumline. last i heard he was engaged and living in austin but no matter what i will always feel that we shared a kind of escape, gave each other something to think about even though we rarely spoke. someone else is friend tycen, who i met in the touring ministry choir i was involved with in high school and as a counselor afterward. tycen is an absolutely wonderful person, a true southern gentleman and talented graduate of SCAD. we had an instant rapport and we still talk via IM even though i haven't seen him in 4 years. another person is nikki, a girl who i met freshman year in new braunfels when i was with ex-boyfriend travis. she was one of his ex-girlfriend's best friends and we got on famously when we hung out but she went on to A&M and i never saw her after that.

so that brings me back to dave, friend of a friend, or in the here and now, friend of an old friend's ex-boyfriend. it turns out it was him. i saw him outside after the first movie and went up to talk to him and invited him to dinner with us and we all hurried through the rain to hickory street bar & grill to have cheeseburgers and giant margaritas. when the sequel was over (which was very well-done and i highly recommend to you linklater fans and people fond of honest, no need for melodrama movies) and the Q&A was finished, dave and i headed over to the cactus cafe to listen to mary lou lord and then hung out and talked music, movies, and life till 3:30 in the morning. this is all to say that you never know who is truly only a memory or passerby in your life and who will reappear. as they said in the movie last night, no memory is truly complete until you are dead.

posted by amanda @ 3:29 PM 0 Comments

i'm only happy when it rains

So last night was night #4 of my How long can 34 mosquito bites which I am slightly allergic to keep me from sleeping? experiment. I say experiment because it allows me to pretend that I am exerting full control over my itchy insomnia. I might go so far as to say it is intentional. On top of the itching, what sleep I did get last night made me think that maybe someone slipped the worm into my margarita last night because I had some pretty crazy dreams going on. I wont say that they rivaled anything in Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas but they were something. Of course I cant tell you what they were, just that they were crazy, CRAZY. Anyway, the second part of this little story is that when the alarm began shrieking at me at 6 a.m. I was very pleased to find that the sky had matched itself to my insomniac mood and thunder was growling as I got out of the shower. This actually made me happier. Somehow it is easier to begin a day without sleep when it is not bright and sunny outside; your mind and your body dont have to pretend to be anything they are not. Nothing can demand that your mood be elevated. So I drove through the rain, listening to Who needs sleep? by the Barenaked Ladies, and barely even minded when I dropped my keys in the water as I was getting out of the car or when the soda machine ate my dime and left me diet-pepsi-less. 8:31 a.m. and all is in equilibrium.

posted by amanda @ 8:31 AM 1 Comments

icy insights

i just have to share an example from the book i'm using to write a course on "reading people" at my job. in this book, the author likes to provide examples of different emotional states. most of them make sense, however when i got to depression i found this:

Visualize an ice statue in the noonday sun, slowly melting into a formless puddle.

can someone tell me how that's like depression? anyone? bueller?

bueller?

posted by amanda @ 2:44 PM 0 Comments

Morgan Spurlock: McSuperstar

face off 

today ross and i went to see supersize me. now if you're an indie film buff, chances are you've at least heard about this film, but maybe you're like me and just haven't managed to muster up enough desire to learn one more reason why america sucks. on some level, i think all of us need to maintain at least a bit of self-delusion. see, i can only do with so much reality in a given day, which leads me to not watch the tv news and its 30-second tragedies. honestly, i'd prefer 3 hours of tragedy, like the documentary domestic violence, the book minamata by w. eugene smith, projects by sebastio salgado and recycling every piece of plastic, glass, cardboard, paper and aluminum that i can. i have my healthy level of social awareness, encouraged partially by my vegan brother. i know how chicken nuggets are made, and veal, and i was even discouraged to buy a down comforter that i had wanted for years once i learned how they actually "harvested" the down. however, ross did become vegan too late to keep me from purchasing my shag rug. and i am sorry to say that only a few years ago, i was naive enough to think that these rugs were made from only the wool, not the skin of the sheep.

sigh.

but i digress. before i saw the movie, i decided to go to wendy's. what a silly thing to do you might think, but i had the same fear that kept me from doing a documentary on a meat-packing plant in maine: that i wouldn't be able to maintain my delusion after learning the truth. my friend sam actually worked at a slaughterhouse and i've heard a few of his somewhat untoward stories. i don't eat fast food very often, maybe once every few weeks (which of course is still too much), but every now and then i do get cravings for wendy's fries with honey mustard. so today i got said fries and a grilled chicken sandwich and diet coke and returned home for (possibly) The Last McSupper. yeah yeah i know it was from wendy's and no i'm not that clever anyway - i got it from the movie.

so the premise of the film is that filmmaker morgan spurlock, inspired partially by the lawsuits being launched against the fast food industry (and i would be willing to bet he also read fast food nation, whose author, eric schlosser, will have an interview on the supersize me dvd), decided to go on an all-McDonald's diet for one month to see what the effect really was of fast food on a completely healthy adult. before he began, one of his doctors actually said he was "in perfect health." i won't tell you what the actual medical results were, but i will say that morgan gained 25 pounds in 30 days. and he did a pretty good job of fact-checking and didn't really include any sensationalist stuff like michael moore would have.

the moral of this story is that you should see this film. and read national geographic and drive hybrid cars (accords will be out in the fall) and save the rainforest. but let's start small.

posted by amanda @ 4:26 PM 0 Comments

WI-SCI

silly string 

on friday night, i went with my bro to one of his prof's performance art things which she was calling WI-SCI. i thought i went in with a reasonably open mind, expecting the unexpected. i mean i saw the really horrible scene in "she's all that" where rachel leigh cook is dressed up in silver lame and freddie prinze jr does this horrible performance art piece with a hackey sack. so i thought ok this'll probably be weird and hopefully interesting.

when we arrived at the location (an east austin space which seemed to be the backyard of a warehouse recording studio), hardly anyone was there, ross' teacher was wearing a royal blue trucker's hat with WI-SCI printed on it and there were lots of white tables made out of peg board with multi-colored felt flags, scissors and crochet needles in the middle. we had a seat, she told us that there were no rules, would we like a drink? and asked what our favorite colors were, returning with water and different shades of blue yarn. ross and i sat. and sat. she came back as we sat in our pegboard stasis and told us that this was sort of like WI-FI, an exploration of string theory and we should choose our table and seek out networking possibilities. so not knowing what else to do, we picked up our plastic needles and yarn and proceeded to "sew" designs onto the table top. ross's tended to be a bit more loose and abstract whereas i went for symmetry and rather parabolic designs.

after about 25 minutes of this, we decided to explore our "networking" possibilities. after deliberating about who we should connect with, i got some bright yellow yarn and we began weaving a pseudo-web between our table and another. ross and i worked with great cooperation as one of us sewed between the tables and the other let out the slack to make sure we could get two or three lengths of yarn between each table. it seemed important that we keep it egocentric and connect things only from our table. then we went to another and then another, connecting with three other tables total, a tree, some chairs and even a barbeque pit. i don't know how much i really learned about "string theory" but i do have 34 mosquito bites to show for my efforts, as well as the knowledge that yes there are people out there weirder than me. the truth is, though, as we left, i had the feeling that maybe everyone else (the ones patterning their names, squares, loops and stars in red, orange, green, yellow, blue and multi-colored yarn while consuming free beer) was looking at me thinking that i was the nutjob. but i guess a person, like art, is mostly in the eye of the beholder.

posted by amanda @ 1:50 PM 0 Comments

joycean jests

so i have a new favorite website. check out this "postcard" from james joyce to brother stan... click on the blog title above for a whole slew of postcards...


March 10, 1922

Stan-

Met some fat American today. Wants to be a writer. Wants to take me hunting. Put his gun in my hands. At least, I think it was his gun.

J

P.S. Still blind.

posted by amanda @ 2:24 PM 0 Comments

there can be only one.

on my lunch excursion today, i went to Wan Fu with co-workers mike and allison. at the conclusion of our meal, we received our requisite fortune cookies. now, i am not a superstitious person, i will walk under ladders, step on cracks, allow a black cat to cross my path - i think moths are annoying but not harbingers of doom. however, i always eat all of my cookie before reading the fortune. why? someone once told me that was the only way the fortune will come true. for some reason, making wishes at 12:34 or 11:11 and closing your eyes to wish on a star go along with the consumption of said cookie. there is something sacred in these wishes, these fortunes, these things of chance. perhaps it has something to do with my attention to signs or synchronicity.

well, today the fortune cookie gods threw me for a loop. how many fortunes do you think fortune cookie companies make? sure we've all seen a couple of them more than once, half seem to do with friendship being golden, but what are the chances of someone getting a fortune twice in a row? well the last time i ate chinese, i got a fortune that said "Be patient. Good things come to those who wait." i of course applied this to my love situation at the time and thought if i was patient, a certain boy would come around. now, five weeks or so later, i get the same fortune. what am i to gather from this? have i not been patient enough? is my fortune to be found by staying in austin? are the lottery numbers on the back my key to 120 mil in the Texas Lottery tonight? is my real fortune the indiscernible one that got caught in the pressed plastic wrapping, now ridged and perforated?

i am not an impatient person, but i am impulsive and sometimes the one gets in the way of the other. mike, co-worker and philosophy graduate had this wisdom: maybe if i learn some patience, i'll be rewarded with a new fortune. i guess i'll have to wait and see...

posted by amanda @ 1:20 PM 0 Comments

this is bloomin' ridiculous

so today is bloomsday - if you have a few hours, you might like to brush up on Joyce's Ulysses - it's a quick read really. happy bloomin' birthday to dorothy who is enjoying nyc as i sit at my desk and contemplate the stage of disgruntlement that must lead to office measures like this (from an email i just received from the office manager):

"Attention all employees:

There will be some exciting and weird changes taking place over the next few days. You will want to watch for these changes and enjoy them. On your way to the bathroom today you will notice a hopscotch board. We encourage you to join in the fun or at least skip through it on the way back to your desk."


that's right, now we can play hopscotch on masking tape at the top of the stairs. this won't make my job feel elementary or trivial at all. in fact, it makes me feel like i am more valued here. who needs a monthly bonus? i say we put a tetherball in the break room next...

posted by amanda @ 11:47 AM 0 Comments

refresh

in case you're a bit unclear as to how thoroughly your rights as an american citizen are being shit on, i thought i would provide a bill of rights refresher:

Amendment I

Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the government for a redress of grievances.


Amendment IV

The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.


now, the second link that tarfia sent me this morning actually made me cry out at work. please see how art = bioterrorism.

hoorah.

posted by amanda @ 10:07 AM 0 Comments

political bog blog

before the speech... 

this weekend, i photographed the TIPRO annual conference in houston, which is a state-wide non-profit association of independent oil and gas producers and royalty owners. my father just finished his two-year term as president. there were lots of jolly texas oilmen and their well-dressed wives and lots of guffaws and hand-shaking. this is all well and good and has provided me the opportunity to learn that i can schmooze with the best of them. the weekend had one low point which occurred when Congressman Pete Sessions, a republican from dallas, gave a talk to the members. now i don't know if you've heard of this man. i hadn't and i don't think most of the TIPRO members had but i felt it was very important to share this man's wisdom with the masses. and almost all of these comments were part of his speech, not generated in response to any questions. most of what follows are direct quotes from his speech:

this one pertained, i believe, to what the democrats would have to do to defeat bush (it would make more sense if he were talking about the terrorists, which came up many times, but no i think it was about the democrats) this is about the time i started tuning into what he was saying...

3 options to defeat Bush:

#1 - defeat him at the polls
#2 - kill him
#3 - kill his father at the Olympics


by the way, yes he supports bush, and no he wasn't making a joke, just trying to put himself in the democrats shoes. ok moving on.

(regarding the 1000 remaining terrorists in the U.S.)

I believe we should send them to meet Allah tomorrow morning. I think we should kill all those bastards.

It is one of the most un-American things, I think, the way the Senate operates.

(I think this guy needs to go back to high school government)

and this may bother the more grammatically correct of you:

We will point directly at the culprits. The culprits are Tom Daschle.

I hate no government agency more than I hate the IRS, but the EPA comes pretty darn close.

This is what it boils down to: the gays and lesbians want to destroy the Boy Scouts of America.

after that, he appealed to the audience by asking how comfortable they would feel sending their 11-year-old child to camp out in the wilderness with a gay man, then answered his own question by saying you wouldn't.

The day this country allows gay marriages, we're in trouble.

and finally, after all those great comments about his fellow citizens, he brings up the fact that he has a child with down's syndrome and says:

He's just as precious to God as we all are.

hoo-rah.

posted by amanda @ 1:49 PM 0 Comments

playing house

so my mother in all her infinite wisdom gave me this response when i told her my plans of journeying elsewhere (while i defended myself with the fact that she had suggested as much only a year ago):

"we're still paying for your gas, your car insurance, and your phone bill. don't you think you should get all that under control before you spend the money to move and start over somewhere new?"

sigh.

yesterday, i had my first voice lesson with james mays, an awesome guy, very austin, who's sung opera in italy and also been in a rock band. i've decided that all my classical training isn't going to do me any good since i have no grandiose dreams of performing on broadway, so i'm gonna learn to sing the music i like. james accompanies with guitar not piano (cool) and we listened to some minus the bear and neutral milk hotel to try to decide what song i should learn first. the catch of course is that i had to commit to taking lessons for 3 months, which means that if i were to find another job, i'd pay a price. so maybe i will stay in austin. and i already have a ticket to ACL... besides if i want to be in a band, isn't this the place to do it?

on a different note, it looks like i will be journeying to Lake Charles in mid-July. Why you ask? Because my grandmother wants to spend her 80th birthday gambling. that's right, grandma gambles. she also cusses and plays a mean game of scrabble. she's the coolest grandma ever.

posted by amanda @ 10:23 AM 0 Comments

On really romantic nights of self, I go salsa dancing with my confusion.

i'm currently accepting proposals on what my life's work should be, so if you have ideas, opinions about whether i am a better photographer or poet, if i should devote my life to making potholders or join the circus, please send me your suggestions. i am also looking to make said potholders in a new location - so far, i'm thinking of georgia, louisiana, california, and new mexico. but really i'm open to anything. as much as i love the city of austin, a six year affair with any person or place runs the risk of burning out and i feel i should leave before this happens. this reminds me of something that speed levitch says in the documentary "the cruise" when he announces that he found himself at a point where new york city, which he refers to in the feminine, divorced him, gave him the cold shoulder. i must leave austin before i too find myself seeking alimony.

posted by amanda @ 8:25 PM 0 Comments

magnetic fields

For the second time in my life, I planned to buy a compass for a man I thought was lost. This one too slipped away before the deed was done, leaving me to think I am the one who is lost, or losing. That I dont have the authority to provide even a means to find direction. It reminds me of a poem, one that has been in my head the past few days:

Summons (or this wont hurt you a bit, and itll cheer me up) by Mary Karr

For an instant I looked away, and an ocean
blossomed between us, 3000 miles
of wild silk rippling. On the other side

your unreachable body. Listen,
the globes meridians bore me,
and I deplore time zones and the lone hearts

metronome without your broad chest
thumping close counterpoint. No breath I draw
will properly fill my lungs till your fine spirit

again issues into me. No eyes will level pierce
this hearts core till your gaze again
sends the deep arrows flying. Darling,

remember: our faces in proximity make
a pure small space--a vessel or goblet
that could hold the whole Atlantic. Always

I stare you-ward: come spill yourself in me.




and a second poem which came to mind when i said losing.



Coda by Jim Carroll

I have been becoming as I
Have been answering for fortune
Extended even as I have been
Losing lately, forming in perfunctory

Ways to go on giving, yet totalling
Up what I am
Owing, knowing how
Much is due

Doing now what is
Needed for what
I am becoming

posted by amanda @ 6:04 PM 0 Comments