mandalay

flirting with the grease monkeys

sometimes it's just good to be hit on. and what better time than a saturday morning after you've watched stigmata, decided to do laundry and be a productive member of society? i took my car to jiffy lube to get an oil change and was met with andre. a rather unassuming guy, barely taller than me, with very pretty greenish-brown eyes. now i will admit, i have nothing against grease monkeys, having been in a serious relationship with a guy who busted tires and did oil changes at firestone for years. well andre called me over to show me the problems with my car and after i told him what i did and didn't want to have done, he said to me "you have the most beautiful blue eyes." when it was time to pay, he held the door open for me. when he was updating my information on the computer, and i was writing my check, he looked at the birthdate and was trying to figure out what my sign was. ok we'll pause here for a good laugh. hahaha. wow. he figured out that i was a leo and then asked me how it felt to be a leo, and, trying to play along, i told him i actually felt more like a virgo, because i'm on the cusp. and then he told me how he was an aries (march 22) but he was on the cusp too and he felt the pull from the other side as well. he gave me my receipt and a hand-written authorization to take $20 off a transmission service whenever i wanted to get it done and then told me to have a great day and "come back and visit anytime." as i ventured outside to the bay, two more guys told me to have a great day and one of them mentioned that they had vacuumed the mats and that my windows were now sparkling clean (yes he actually said sparkling). there's not moral to this story really. every once in a while, it's just nice to be noticed by a boy with pretty eyes.

posted by amanda @ 11:14 AM 0 Comments

Live in silence and you live alone.

i just saw the actress from northern exposure on tv doing an ad for something called restacin or something which allows people who can't produce tears to cry. now (beyond the huh?! factor) i just have to say, it is SO SAD to see maggie smiling a toothpaste smile on a commercial on a friday night as if she was never the great seductress who gave the town dj and resident philosopher chris his voice back (it was really his chi) just through faith and a kiss.

janine turner, you're better than that. john corbett made it! you can too!

posted by amanda @ 7:44 PM 0 Comments

funneling

in poetry (or writing in general) there's a theory about the progression of writing. basically, you start with a blank slate, an idea, a title, a goal. you have a near-infinite number of possibilities. with the first word, then the first line, your possibilities narrow. by the time you're through 2 or 3 lines, there are only so many ways that the poem can go. and once it's written, in some semblence of its final form, what more can you really do with it? even if you scrap the whole thing, you can't erase the memory of what you created and get back that clean slate.

not to get philosophical, but yeah i'm going to: i sometimes feel that there is another life that exists parallel to this one. a life where i chose music as my college major or where i decided that even though my parents wouldn't pay for any school outside of texas, i'd go to reed in portland anyway. who would that person be that made those decisions? why was i so willing to give up singing, something which entirely defined me in high school? how did i let one crappy, unimpressive semester in the UT choir keep me from continuing with it? but this is not what i meant to say.

tomorrow i'm taking the gre. in a month and a half, the first of my applications are due. in six months, i have to decide if i want to get an mfa in creative writing, thereby putting myself on the track to professorship and possible publication. sure, everyone says that you can do other things in your spare time and you won't lose your other interests, but how many people really keep everything that's important to them? the last 9 months that i've been doing technical writing, i've effectively squelched my desire to write what i love through an excess of writing what i don't care about. my desire to photograph has become even stronger but i'm not photographing what i think is important. i don't think that pictures of music is important. music isn't visual.

the thing is, i'm not doing the things i love in the way i want to do them. the reason i didn't choose music is because i'd heard about the theory lessons, the diction, the piano, the language classes, the heaps of technical crap i would be required to do to get a degree in vocal performance. i knew people who went to school for music and got so burned out that they didn't want to sing anymore. so i chose journalism. later i added english, since i so desperately missed reading. and i don't regret that really, but i'm realizing now that the thing i feared would happen to me with music is now happening to me with my other passions: i'm not enjoying taking pictures to make money and for publication; i'm not enjoying writing real estate courses to pay my rent and food. i haven't finished a book of fiction since june.

when i was trying to write my personal statement for grad school applications, i read over the introduction i had written to my english honors thesis, hoping to find something that i could use. but i realized that what i said over a year ago was most important to me wasn't any longer. here are my exact words: "I write poetry because I love it. It's my addiction. Some people smoke or drink -- I inhale and exhale poetry. It is my thrill, my craving, but beyond that -- my sustenance." i tried to conjure something that i was that passionate about still. i thought about saying that nothing made me happier than writing poetry, but that isn't true. i don't like writing poetry. i love reading good poetry and i like to read something i've written and feel good about it, feel that i've hit on some kernel of truth, but the process doesn't move me. nor do i love taking pictures. i love finding out that pictures i've taken mean something to someone. i love showing an aspect of some person that not enough people see.

music is the only thing i enjoy while i'm doing it, but it's also fleeting in nature. i can't make it permanent, bind it, press it, the way i can poetry or photography. this is not to say that i regret the path i've taken. i found things i am good at, things that matter to me -- but i narrowed my options. when i see people flip through photographs without stopping to look at them, talk through a song they've never heard before, or read a poem without letting the words sink in, i wonder if there is any medium that will make people pay attention. i wonder if any medium is better than the others, if i ought to choose just one.

here's a prose piece that elizabeth reminded me of last week, written about the civil war in El Salvador. i warn you, it's somber:

THE COLONEL
by Carolyn Forche, May 1978

WHAT YOU HAVE HEARD IS TRUE. I was in his house. His wife carried a tray of coffee and sugar. His daughter filed her nails, his son went out for the night. There were daily papers, pet dogs, a pistol on the cushion beside him. The moon swung bare on its black cord over the house. On the television was a cop show. It was in English. Broken bottles were embedded in the walls around the house to scoop the kneecaps from a man's legs or cut his hands to lace. On the windows there were gratings like those in liquor stores. We had dinner, rack of lamb, good wine, a gold bell was on the table for calling the maid. The maid brought green mangoes, salt, a type of bread. I was asked how I enjoyed the country. There was a brief commercial in Spanish. His wife took everything away. There was some talk of how difficult it had become to govern. The parrot said hello on the terrace. The colonel told it to shut up, and pushed himself from the table. My friend said to me with his eyes: say nothing. The colonel returned with a sack used to bring groceries home. He spilled many human ears on the table. They were like dried peach halves. There is no other way to say this. He took one of them in his hands, shook it in our faces, dropped it into a water glass. It came alive there. I am tired of fooling around he said. As for the rights of anyone, tell your people they can go fuck themselves. He swept the ears to the floor with his arm and held the last of his wine in the air. Something for your poetry, no? he said. Some of the ears on the floor caught this scrap of his voice. Some of the ears on the floor were pressed to the ground.

posted by amanda @ 8:28 PM 0 Comments

huzzah

it seems i've been invited to the renaissance festival. now i know the cliche -- i auditioned for and then spent about 3 weeks in rehearsals for the UT madrigal dinner, before i decided to quit upon receiving a bright blue burned cd entitled "got wench?" most of the people performing were exactly what you'd expect - the goths, the guys who wore lord of the rings t-shirts and the girls who wore bustiers with jeans as their normal daily outfits. long hair, no makeup, black fingernail polish -- for the guys and girls. i didn't have much in common with any of them, i'd never been to renfest but that wasn't so bad. while i can handle a fair amount of smut, the vulgarity of the 20 songs i was required to learn got to me. i had done the madrigal dinner in high school with my choir. i sang real madrigals from a real renaissance songbook and drank wassail and loved it. seriously. i got to promenade, sit at the front table with friends who all looked lovely, the jester was the guy who'd taken me to prom, all the boys were wearing tights, and i got to write a fair amount of the script my senior year.

it seems that choir spoiled me. besides making it nearly impossible to be content in any other choirs, it has affected my participation in this event. i'm not saying that i'm not going to go. i think the people-watching alone is reason enough, but the most troubling question of all: what am i going to wear? in high school, i wore the most beautiful velvet and brocade gowns that were all hand-stitched and hand-beaded, no zippers or snaps, only buttons and laces. i have never felt so beautiful as i have in those dresses. but of course, if the people i go with dress up, i will have to dress up too. and i think the only place i'd be able to find a comparable dress would be a theater. so, undoubtedly, i shall have to suck it up, put away my renaissance snobbery and wear the nylon, the crushed velvet, the gaudy purples, bright greens and golds. or settle for the wench costume, cinch my breasts up to my chin and drown my sorrows in a glass of --- mead.

did i mention we're camping?

posted by amanda @ 9:54 PM 0 Comments

the perfect hangover food

oh how very badly i want a "don juan" from juan in a million. if it wasn't 9:15 in the morning, i would be calling all of you to see if anyone would join me. instead i'm doing laundry and letting my stomach yell at me. in other news, logan's birthday party last night was fun. some of us went to the playground across the street at around 12 or 1 and i must say, swinging when you're a bit tipsy isn't hard exactly, but i kind of feared for my life every time i got to the top and i was all spinny-headed. poor hengst got fired AND broke the swing in the last week. at least lone star was there to cushion his fall.

posted by amanda @ 9:16 AM 0 Comments

texas prisons

not to be a downer, but you ought to read this article.

posted by amanda @ 8:50 AM 0 Comments

interesting things i've seen or experienced in the last week:

had chris simpson (lead singer of awesome mid-90s austin emo band mineral) as my waiter at star seeds last thursday night. when i asked if he was chris simpson, he said "chris simpson the waiter?" and i said no and he answered "damn, i was hoping that i had made a name for myself with my waiting abilities."

went for a walk in hyde park alone on monday evening and while looking at a fancy swingset in someone's yard, i noticed a yellow lab sleeping beneath it. then i noticed that there was a plush rabbit of almost the exact same size and color spread out in the same position as the dog not five feet away.

saw my first lightning bug of the year.

had an indian man working behind the counter at the gas station tell me he wished he could walk like me, so commanding, because when i walked into the store, i scared all the mexicans.

walked into the girls' bathroom at work yesterday morning to be met with the sound of a cricket, which is apparently stuck in the drain there. we tried to find a way to rescue him yesterday, but he stopped making noise. this morning i was the first one here and when i got close to the door, i could still hear him chirping away.

jem. i know i was only 6, but how did i think the music was good? i mean, i listened to the jem & the holograms tape all the time.

saw my parents dance at the wedding to "baby got back."

posted by amanda @ 2:01 PM 0 Comments

the element of surprise

so i've realized lately that i really like to be wrong about people. this is not to say that it's not also gratifying to be right, but i love it when something calls into question my judgment abilities. kind of like perception anti-fog. let's take for instance my friend elizabeth who graciously lent me her apartment when she wasn't there last weekend so i didn't have to pay for a hotel. i first met elizabeth 2 1/2 years ago in a poetry workshop class. sophia and i were in the corner close to the door and elizabeth sat not too far from us, but we were kind of in our own world and more fascinated by the redhead guy who wrote a poem about his "little falafel" than anyone else in the class. i was really surprised when one day elizabeth came up to me a little while after class on the south mall and asked me about going to maine and told me about how she was traveling to nyc to intern and she was so bubbly and nice. then 8 months later, we ended up in the same class when i came back from maine for my last semester and became good friends. how does that happen?

and then there's my friend and co-worker jen who, i must admit, when she first started here i was worried she would be over-eager or abrasive. and i was wrong. she's awesome. my days would be considerably less fun if she weren't here for me to IM and discuss the hate mail business we're going to start and and take smoke breaks with (hey even non-smokers need a break).

there are many more people like this in my life, but my point is this: when you're right about people, there are no surprises. you met them, you formed an opinion and you were right. but befriending people who i really wouldn't have expected to have any common ground with is so much more gratifying. it's all about the surprise.

posted by amanda @ 9:19 AM 0 Comments

no news, no new regrets

yesterday morning i had one of those perfect driving experiences. i spent friday night up late doing girl talk in pajamas (sorry no pillow fights, boys) after the rehearsal dinner and bonding with a chihuahua named "allie." four of us bridesmaids and the bride stayed in a suite at the la quinta and after our hotel breakfast buffet, i headed to the other side of houston to my friend's apartment to finish making the guest book. it was perfect. the sky was cloudy, the air was cool, i rolled the windows down and weaved my way around the highways for 40 minutes while listening to the calexico album feast of wire.

one of the things i wonder sometimes (this is a little morbid i'm sorry) is what people in fatal car wrecks were listening to when they died. are the last words they hear "goodbye yellow brick road" or "i don't want to meet your daddy - i just want you in my caddy"? if it were me, i should hope that the last song i hear be something that means something to me. while i truly love bands like squirrel nut zippers, old 97s and phantom planet, their music doesn't really move me. ok, it may physically move me, make me tap my toes, make me smile, but there's other music that i feel like, if it didn't exist, i would truly be the worse for it. that kind of music that becomes part of your essence. while listening to "black heart" by calexico today, i had a moment where i thought: if someone opened me up, they would find this song. there would also be "lover, you should have come over" by jeff buckley, "missing the war" by ben folds five, "concertina" by mars volta, "the very old man" by hum, "reasons why" by nickel creek, "a day in the life" by the beatles, "two hands of a prayer" by ben harper, and a traditional african christmas carol called "betelehemu" that i once sang in choir.

these are the songs that i don't just listen to. they wash over me and it's almost like meditation in that i am often unable to think of anything but the music. it's not background music, but rather, ground music, because it's something i steady myself on, something that couldn't not exist. and sometimes, when i'm driving and listening to this music, i feel like it is the ground beneath my tires, creating that friction i need to move forward.

posted by amanda @ 10:04 PM 0 Comments

the photo quandary

migrant farm worker by alan pogue

so last week, tim wrote me to ask if i was planning on updating my photo site and to tell me again how impressed he was by my Penobscot work.
sigh.
the next day, i met sherre, my old photo professor, for lunch. sherre is one of those people that i could talk to for hours and never stop thinking and having new ideas and being interested in her perspective. she's been working on her doctorate at UT for the last few years and i was absolutely fascinated listening to her talk about what her dissertation is about (basically the paradigm shift in the teaching of photography and the conscience of the photojournalist). i couldn't stop thinking how much i want to be taking meaningful informative pictures again. and when tim wrote me, i had a moment where i thought, i have taken pictures that mean something. pictures that make people think and wonder at the people inside. god how i miss that.

then last night, i talked to ben and we were discussing how difficult it is to be creative and do projects like that when you don't have the money and are working a full-time job. at one point i said that i couldn't seem to find any graduate photo programs that were the intense kind of documentary experience that i wanted to do (like salt) and so i might as well just take out a loan for $10,000, do a project, and skip the school part altogether. ben said something really smart after that, namely that the structure of a college is useful when you are trying to come up with ideas and get feedback as you're working on something. we talked about how it would be really helpful to form a group that could provide that support and feedback that you didn't have to pay for or be affiliated with a school.

well this afternoon, i located the texas center for documentary photography online, which i'd looked at before and the only thing that i really knew about it was that they're not open to the public, therefore not useful to me. until today. when i emailed alan pogue. and he wrote me back. so basically, i wrote this awesome documentary photographer who lives here about my frustration of wanting so much to do documentary work, but not knowing where to start and how to do it with a full-time job and little money, and how i would like to either start a group comprised of interested photographers or locate some other related forum. i have to admit, i wasn't exactly expecting a response. he wrote me back with a pretty substantial email at the end of which he said he'd be willing to discuss this stuff sometime.

and now (like that bastard robert frost, who has forever weaseled his way into my concept of decision-making) i must make a choice. i interviewed last night for a job as a photo assistant (paid position) helping to teach a museum class for kids on saturdays. however, if i were to take this position (she offered it to me this afternoon), i wouldn't have time to start a documentary group. i would have money, but no time. i would have teaching experience and a connection with a gallery, but wouldn't be able to leave town pretty much ever. i would work 6 full days a week (and also nights developing film and printing). i know it's a bit cart-before-horse, but i don't want to commit myself to something and then pass up this other opportunity. an opportunity to maybe start a group that has the same passion and value for stories that i experienced in maine at the documentary school. it is a burden sometimes, this desire to create. and while it's cliche, i have to admit - i do want to make a difference.

blah.

posted by amanda @ 10:16 PM 0 Comments

rsvp

so i'm going to houston this weekend for my friend's wedding where she will pop my bridesmaid cherry (her words). a week and a half ago, i had to fill out the little card that proclaims the number of people in your party. this is a total cliche and i know it and there's always such a big deal made about wedding dates, but when you don't have one and are obligated to stay for the post-activities, it'd be nice to have someone to dance with for those times when you are dragged out onto the floor. well it's beginning to look like my brother won't even make it to justify my +1 entry. that's right - i'm going dateless. which is fine, i suppose, except for the fact that i am the only unmarried girl in the lot of eight bridesmaids (except for the groom's little sister who is only 17).

now i'm not saying that i want to be married, because i sure as hell don't at this time in my life --i don't even want to be engaged-- but my entire weekend will be comprised of married twenty-somethings talking about being wives, how much money they were able to spend on their latest shopping trip against hubby's wishes and ogling attractive singles (no really -this is what happened at the bachelorette party- plus the alcohol poisoning that is). now attending the wedding alone doesn't really bother me - it's the prospect of the 4-5 hours of recepting and drunk formal bowling surrounded by married couples who i don't really know (even though their goal is to hook me up with someone so i can join the ranks) that leaves a bitter taste in my mouth. really - the bride tried to set me up with this guy once upon a time based solely on the fact that he's a photographer (like me) and then she forgot that i didn't like him and tried to set me up again with him only weeks ago. and we won't even get into the 40-year-old who it was arranged for me to sit next to at the superbowl party. sigh. at least the beer's free.

posted by amanda @ 2:40 PM 1 Comments

i have never pulled a fire alarm

aren't there some things that you just really want to do but are too practical to do these things, the things that only crazy people do, or that only reckless teenagers do? here's the thing - i was never a reckless teenager. i was always the practical one. i never did the drugs, i never jumped fences, i never shoplifted (not since i was six and stole some rhinestones from a craft store and my mom found them in my room and took me back to the store and made me apologize to the shop owner with tears streaming down my face), i never jumped out of the swing at the summit of its path. there is only one thing that i usually do without fear of consequence and that's love (don't worry - we're not getting into that).

but here's the thing, do you think that at some point in your life, you'll get to the point where you just can't stand it anymore? where you're just so tired of following the rules that you crack? i think there should be some place where you can go and do all those things. a big warehouse somewhere, where you can be surrounded by willing participants in the madness. where you can pull that fire alarm, where you can jump off that balcony, scream in the middle of the sidewalk or steal from your favorite store. real things. not just going to the park when you should be at school or printing out applications on your employer's printer, but things that would make you feel like you'd finally done that thing that you weren't supposed to do. and you feel good about it.

posted by amanda @ 4:48 PM 0 Comments