PostSecret

Every Sunday for about two or three years now I've read postsecret, something I know a lot of people do especially a lot of my friends. I have never written to PostSecret but more often than not it makes me cry. I guess I am just really into humanity. I love the beauty and genuineness in all people, the possibility of having a real human connection instead of just walking past people without wondering. This is why I write, this is why I write about people in particular. I want to get it, I want to have this overwhelming connected feeling all the time and if I write about them and if I create them, then they are a part of me and my writing and my life. People who are happy, people who decide to be real instead of putting on their facade of "in-person" talk and personality, people who really care about the world, others and the things that they put into the world, make me want to be a better person.

I am really just a major sap who wants everyone to be happy and real and see the beauty in realness but I want that as part of my life too, I want to be real, I want to have that personality of truth and genuineness. I want to talk to that kid over there sitting on the couch by himself to let him know that I see him. Although, I could be a total pompous jerk who has every good intention but why does that kid need me to say that to him, or to even say hi? Sometimes I just get too far inside my own head. Too analytical of everything. I think that's how a lot of writers/artists are though. Instead of just experiencing things, there's a lens of distance to experience something and still analyze it and take it in a different way to later use it for a creation.

It's like that argument between Yeats and Whitman, I can't remember which said what but the argument is one thinks you can only be happy in life OR work not both and the other says you can have both. I'm somewhere in between right now. That's okay I think.

Twenties' Angst?

I am feeling really angsty right now - I'm just sick of things going wrong with the Bullsheet. I'm trying to handle it with the grace and poise I know I could if I was someone else, but I'd really like to just scream and kick and wonder who is out to get me!? Knowing no one is, and it really is just my stupid mistake for never fact-checking and relying on the good of people. One more reason that human beings are not to be trusted. Although tomorrow or maybe in the next couple hours, I will change that point of view and go back to who I am always, the person who thinks everyone is inherently good until proven otherwise, that naive child inside me who never relents her voice of joy and positivity. Sometimes I hate that child deep down inside me. It's a good jimminy cricket though, I guess, it could be worse.

What I've been Missing

I just realized that this is what I've been missing- just watching people interact with other people. I'm in the library doing my work for class and got distracted looking at this group of friends talk and interact, their hands flying animatedly. And in my head I thought up the scenario. As an introvert, I don't need interaction myself, necessarily, all the time, whatever, but I do need to watch other people interact I think. Just to know that I'm not the only one, I'm part of "this body, this breathing." This mantra helped me a lot this past weekend while I flew to see Jake and back. The plane went up and I envisioned myself, the plane, the airport, the city, the state, the country, the continent, the world, all bodies, all breathing, that I'm just part of. It helped me remember to connect my body to my breath to my spirituality and soul.

So here I am in the library, part of this body, THIS breathing, and I'm a little more calm, a little more centered, feeling less alone and less stressed about the stack of articles next to me. This body, This breathing, this is doable, today is okay, this body, this breathing

Recurring Thought

I just had this moment, staring at my computer. I felt completely and utterly overwhelmed by all of the things which I have to do and those that I want to do and how I am completely incapable of completing a book-sized project, at least a good one, anyone can write 160 pages of crap, but I want it to be wonderful. It's not going to be wonderful. I don't have a job for the summer/rest of my life, but I don't want one. I want to travel and I hope I don't prevent myself from doing so. I have this huge fear of holding myself back, and that fear of doing it itself, holds me back. I feel completely disenchanted and immobile in my writing and creativity and life right now because of busy work from other classes. I shouldn't have to fill my time with a certain amount of credits while trying to write a book that is required for me to graduate! How rude.

So in doing all this thinking and being immobilized by myself in my creative circle, I thought (actually I said it out loud because no one's here to think I'm crazy for talking to myself) "you don't have time to freak out" and it hit me - I had a dream about saying that about a character. Which, of course, led me to think that I am a character, this life is the story. Blah blah blah, but I am a character in one of my stories, kind of, but it's not really me, it's the me that I'm afraid to be I think, but she's a much scarier me anyway, not a lively happy me, but a dark and edgy me. I'm not even sure what I'm talking about anymore. The point is, I have this recurring thought of not being able to freak out because of a time limit, my characters not having enough time to freak out because I don't have enough pages. I don't have enough time to get things done because as a human being, I require sleep. All I do is read, stare at my computer, and go to work and class, I do not do anything for myself anymore. Yesterday I went running. I hate running. I despise running. But I did it for some reason unknown to me and I did feel good, I felt better, but it's not creative. Or is running creative? Could it be? I wrote in my journal once, after a professor told me he hated personification of inanimate objects: "Could a tree be seductive or curvy if I want it to be?" Why couldn't a tree be seductive, and is that personification? The tree isn't talking, it's just seducing.

I could drive myself crazy with my thoughts.

Just a minute ago when I said that out loud to myself, "you don't have time to freak out," I began to realize why writers, artists, tend to go crazy. There's so much to be done, your story is never told, or never told properly and how can one be satisfied if it is out just that it is out? It has to be the right way.

I think that's why I've really been into performing my work lately, there isn't much of a venue for this for short story writers though. Maybe I'll make one. Yes, that's right Laura, take one more thing on, you don't have enough on your plate as it is! Create a venue!

Ah to be five years old again and laying in my bed, tracing the outline of the brown and blue flowers on the wallpaper in my bedroom, day-dreaming about how one day I'll be great. When will that day come? Can I just have that wallpaper back, please?

Camera

I have a beautiful Canon Rebel XT 35 mm SLR, and I barely use it ever. I really want to start taking more photos. I want to do portraits and self portraits, I think I'm going to open a flickr account. I'd like to do the 365 day sp challenge, I think. Jake and I once went to the photo gallery in Buffalo (that I'm completely blanking on the name for at the moment) and saw this woman's self-portraits for a full year. It was awesome. She didn't just do one every day, I think she did three every day and they were almost all in the same place - her bed. It was bizarre but beautiful and reminded me a lot of John Lennon and Yoko Ono's bed protest "bed peace" "hair peace" I love that, I love the photos from that too. Yoko Ono did a lot of performance art, which I'm not sure if a lot of people know about, I only know because I took an art class at Denison and these two performance artists joined our class for a week to teach us and collaborate with us on a performance piece. The woman performance artist did this piece once where she laid completely naked on a table, covered with tiny little plastic babies, like the ones found in "kings cakes" for Mardi Gras? She said she had little plastic babies everywhere for a couple years and just had them in her purse because she had purchased so many. Well, back to Yoko, she did this performance where she sat on stage and invited people to come up to the stage and cut a piece off of her clothing. Apparently at first people were conservative and then started taking larger and larger pieces. I guess it was to see how far people would take it, and which gender would take it the farthest and what that would mean for women and sexuality and whatnot.

I have completely forgotten the purpose of this post.

Oh right, I want to start a Flicker.

I'm starting a lot of projects lately so I think a Flickr would be a good addition. I've moved on from painting to more textile art. I have two old pairs of Jake's jeans that he said I could draw/paint/sew on whatever I want. So I'm going to draw on a bunch of designs and then sew over them - I just need a sewing kit now and a bunch of cool colored threads and some buttons and beads. He said he'll wear them when I'm done, I hope so, that would be cool - like walking art. Other than that, I'm trying to create a book, like an artist's book, but I'm going to turn it into a cook book/story book. We'll see where that goes. Life just seems so much more apparently important than school work at the moment.

Sophomoric

I am so utterly confused by how people act sometimes. Earlier today I felt like that 10 year old person, with her soft belly and parted hair and bangs, walking onto the playground looking for someone who would want to hang out until recess was over and finding that everyone had paired up. I was blissfully unaware, or tried to keep myself that way. I think I always knew though. Regardless, that's how I felt this morning. Like everyone else had paired up and left my standing in the small-stone gravel looking from right to left and deciding on a swing, only to be told that that swing had been "called" by someone. It takes me a while to trust people. I have a hard time letting parts of myself go to other people and showing them who I am, but in the spirit of making new friends last semester, I allowed someone to be my close friend and see inside my deepest thoughts. We had, what I thought, was a mutual agreement about confidence and secrets. Today I found out that I was sorely mistaken. This is all about me, "I, I I," after looking at those three above lines I saw how self-centered this is, but that's what a blog is isn't it? Or can be? Whatever. I am upset and hurt because someone that I thought was a new best friend hurt me deeply, cut me to the core, by telling a secret of mine to one person and then to ten, and knowing that somehow of course it would get back to me - took a month, but it did. It's just immature to think that even if someone thought there was an issue between me and someone else, that that person wouldn't just come to be to begin with, instead they chose to spread rumors about me. How hurtful, how immature and how insensitive. Jake kept telling me this morning to just not tell these people anything about myself anymore and that these are only a small representative of humanity and that not all people deserve to be doubted. But that's how I feel, no one deserves my trust unless they've proven it and it was clearly my fault for allowing myself to trust this person with my secrets and self. It's stupid and cynical and doesn't feel good, but it feels self-preserving. Too many people have hurt me. All I can really trust is myself, I guess. And in reality, the only person that I will have forever, for sure, is myself, this body, this person. I guess that's the reality of humanity. I'm in a really low cynical mood right now and this is quite melodramatic, I realize, but it's how I feel and sometimes you just have to get to that bottom point to get to the top and it's just venting right now, which is the purpose of a blog.

I'm writing some new poetry and stories for my project, maybe I'll post them soon.

Two Dollar Radio

I have a tendency to find something I want to do and to ensure I actually do it, I don't tell anyone about it until after I apply or contact or do whatever necessary to get that thing. I did it with the Bullsheet, I didn't tell anyone I was applying and it was just my thing and I got it, and now I'm Managing Editor. I didn't tell anyone about Two Dollar Radio, I just applied and then I got it and tonight at some point I will receive my first assignment. I've got an internship with a publishing house. I tend to play these accomplishments down to myself, I'm not sure why, but I make it out to be not a big deal but it's pretty cool. Well, regardless, check out www.twodollardradio.blogspot.com pretty soon I'll be doing posts for them in addition to reading manuscripts!