She's so Wonderful

I kind of feel like I've been hitting a wall lately, or a lot of walls, and a lot of mud on those walls.

I've got to thinking about my little flirtation with Creative Writing and the classes that UMass offers and realized my enchantment may be over. After a poetry reading tonight I began ruminating and I don't think I'm cut out for that world. I love words and I love writing for myself, but I don't think I'm near brave or talented enough to ever take on a public writing agenda seriously. I can't even decide whether I'm made out for fiction or poetry. Last semester I was in a poetry class and this semester I switched to fiction, and I feel like I hated both. I'm feeling like all this talk of diagloue, narrative grip, plot outlines, and exposition make me want to tear my hair out and write a poem. Writing poems makes me want to drown myself in syrup, begging for some kind of structure outside of airy word fluff. So there we have it. A part of me says, "Just finish your certificate, you only have one class left". Another says, "It doesn't really matter at all." An even greater part says, "You're no good and you're not even good enough to be caught up in other people's good, Drop it and move on to classes with more structure and less creative demand." I don't like writing stories or poems; I just like huge hunks of text that convey...something. I am going to drink up some MFA students work tomorrow and try to give some serious thought to all of this stuff. I don't think my thesis will be taking as daring a route as I once thought. There it is I guess. Then we came to the end.

That Sleepy Feeling

I'm back from New York City. I'm playing it very low-key and hopefully getting some reading and other things done. Carly and I wrote out a list of accomplishments we wish to make. So far we have only done two on the list, or maybe three. These are:
-Go to Lone Wolf
-Learn the Charleston (We filmed ourselves doing it on our porch)
-Sing Animal Collective

We have yet to:
-Go to the Moan and Dove (we looked it up and it's beer-only so we might not)
-Film a video about my body for Carly's class (we can't do this until the weekend)
-Complete all homework
-I've forgotten the rest

I'm 21 and have purchased alcohol three times and have not been carded. Thoroughly anticlimactic.
Here are some photos from my trip.



We went to Moutarde, the lovely French place Terri Lee works at. I went pee and she left this Katie-specific bouquet at my table.



I did this with my hair. It looked fancy and then it fell down after brunch.



This is me at 21, taken by Carly, in Sarah's room.



Terri Lee, Sarah, Carly, and I went out to a Cafe in Brooklyn called Blackbird Cafe. Paul Mccartney was watching over me. I took a picture of this, officially my birthday on the subway.



This is Strawberry Fields. A lot of John Lennon loving hippies around. It's not that impressive.



I really like this picture. This was somewhere in our three hour walk in Central Park.



We walked across the Brooklyn Bridge.





Sarah and I found a tub on the street. She reinacted tubgirl.



Fin.

Jellytoes

I finished my school work for the week and besides one morning class, break is calling me. I hope the next days are relaxing.

Carly gave me a drawing today. One looks exactly like me reading waiting for hot cocoa:


I looked at another boy in the drawing and said to myself "Hey that looks like a kid from my writing class!" I was delighted when I found a picture of him online.





Ian finally rocked my world and I'm getting my t-shirt by the end of the month.

Things are okay here. I've been doing a lot of dancing. A lot a lot. Too much going on up there in that peanut brain.

Rain Shock

I typed "Katie likes to" into google and am copying down the top 10 results. This is a chain epidemic going around. I thought I'd join in.
1. Katie likes to be in pictures
Accuracy: I guess I do, I guess I just like pictures in general more though.
2. Katie likes to keep Paul on his toes.
Accuracy: Yes, I do keep my father always wondering.
3. Katie likes to run around. In cotton panties and a crown. She driving all the boy's insane. Suckin on a candy cane.
Accuracy: Well, that's true.
4. Katie likes to say that she teaches "domesticity for dummies"
Accuracy: I don't think this can be taught. No.
5. Katie likes to dance.
Accuracy: Very.
6. Katie likes to hit things.
Accuracy: I'm a fairly nonviolent being
7.Katie likes to hopscotch.
Accuracy: Not currently hopscotching.
8. Katie likes to help in the kitchen
Accuracy: My favorite household chore is doing the dishes. I think it's the warmth.
9. Katie likes to drive go-carts and collects stamps. Her favorite food is spaghetti with meatballs AND vegetables.
Accuracy: False except the AND vegetables.
10. Katie likes to be silly too!
Accuracy: High.

I am experiencing a two week period of constant homework and paper writing. It's intense. I'm in the middle of reading Don Delillo's White Noise. I'm only 80 pages in but it's really pretty funny. It is structurally/narratively very different from any other book I've read. Apparently Delillo is way up there as far as postmodern novelists go. Go him.

I received some really bad news tonight concerning a family member. Not death-bad. But bad-bad. I don't wish to display it publicly, but all I can say is that the world is cruel. Although I like to think of my family as a funny anecdotal petri dish, there is a point when dysfunctionality peaks into a nonhumorous zone. I only wish I could give them some large encompassing hug of protection. But that doesn't ever work out. My footsteps keep getting closer towards the big sign that says futility, and I'm kind of ready to take the dropping out of school and sleeping constantly train.


Chugachugawoowoo.

That ice is slowly melting

This week has unfolded in a most serendipitous manner. Work was canceled on Wednesday, today my first two classes were canceled, work has been canceled for tomorrow, and Monday is a Holiday. I have so much work though, so this ease comes at a good moment. I'm also going through a rough cold. I've been playing that obnoxious sneezing girl in class who blows her dripping nose every twenty seconds. The other day in my Shakespeare Film class we were watching West Side Story and an intended to be tender moment came on. My nose started running and I had to blow hard into my tissue. I probably looked like a sentimental sap crying over Maria and Tony's ill destined love, but no, not me.

I have to write a paper on the movie Crash this weekend and how it relates to ethnicity and stereotypes. It's one of those papers that seems so easy that it's almost difficult to do. Overall, I really didn't care for the movie. It was completely full of racism. Yeah, I get that's the point. It's supposed to put the harsh, real stuff out there to make people aware. But the ending was not redeeming and if anything it just repeated bad stereotypes over and over. The film almost seemed self aware that it was supposed to be this great revolutionary movie the whole time. Not to mention anything with Sandra Bullock and Brendan Frasier I refuse to take seriously.

Right outside my apartment I slipped on ice and fell down today. I bruised my knee pretty badly and got some cuts on my hand. I've decided nothing can make you feel less in control or more of an idiot than falling on ice. There is an awkward buffoonery to it that has no rival.

I've decided to include pictures of me that are on my computer that probably nobody has seen much of. For critical entertainment purposes.

The Blue Frog in Bad Decline

Currently at the library riffling through my fellow creative writers work. I have to write them all a one page response to their stories. With one page written, I look on to two more. The one I'm working on was thoroughly a bad story. I hate writing about someone's work I can't take seriously in any way. Though, it might be preferable to someone who I think writes amazingly. Yeah, who knows. My short story is due Tuesday and my writing thoughts are still barren. Any ideas? Sarah J., I'm calling to you for your word inspired madnessgeniusgene.

Fifty degrees out feels wonderful.

I wish my hair were in utero.



Amir,
Kate

Look to love

I wrote until 3 am last night. All very personal and not anything that can be shaped into a story. And never did my class reading. Funny how productivity can be somehow unproductive.
I have to run to work in 15 minutes, but I just wanted to make a comment that I want forever cemented in my mind.

While watching Franco Zefferelli's Romeo and Juliet in my Shakespeare on film class (which is taught by a professor and includes writing assignments unlike any other semester before where there was no work) I couldn't help but stare in awe at the beautiful woman that played Juliet. Or rather, girl. She was only fifteen when filming and yet she possesses a glorious beauty, and also shared her breasts. I couldn't help but think, wow, I want to look like her. But then I probably wouldn't stop looking at the mirror.

Olivia Hussey, gorgeous.