Venice, June 23, 2010

A haunting moon over Venice. This was the night I got desperately lost for 2 hours around midnight, then went back to my hostel to sleep for 6 hours and get 35+ mosquito bites. Nevertheless, Venice was still my favorite city in Italy!

Restless Teeth Syndrome.

“My people were fair and had sky in their hair, now they’re content to wear stars on their brow.” – Marc Bolan prophetically titles a Tyrannosaurus Rex album. [From Hippie]

What is with love and stars lately?

Why are they so inexplicably mysterious, but universal?

I watched “Helvetica” tonight. If you’re not familiar with it, you can take pride in the fact that you are not an aesthetics nerd. I am, however, and I thoroughly enjoyed it. Yes, it is precisely what it sounds like– a straight-faced documentary about the Helvetica font. It’s used for everything–you wouldn’t believe how often you see it and don’t realize it. Anyway, I’d wanted to watch it for a long time, and then I found it on Netflix instant (I swear, that is a Godsend) and decided on a whim to watch it.

There have been so many cool things I’ve watched recently. One was a documentary about the gospel songs of Bob Dylan, which was enlightening and inspiring (also on Netflix instant), the movie “Death in Venice” (based on the short story of the same name by Thomas Mann), and “This Is It,” about Michael Jackson’s last concert series, which never took place. All were amazing movies, though I wouldn’t necessarily recommend “Death in Venice.” It’s like a Lolita story, though my professors maintain that it is NOT about pedophilia. … Yeah, sure, whatever.

I went to a leadership conference in Portland (PDX) last weekend, where I met a lot of really fantastic people and just bummed around Portland the whole time. It was so much better on foot than in a car, and I cannot wait to go back just for that!

It really reinforced my desire to travel, though. I want to go to France so bad that my teeth hurt all the time and my mouth is always tense. I have senioritis, but since I’m not a senior I don’t have any of the excuses that I could normally use!

I have headaches and stomachaches all the time, my French is awful, I never do my homework, I hate my [non-] job, I never get enough sleep, I have zero love life, my room is a mess, I’m broke, and my hair is weird…

BUT I LOVE LIFE.

I’m having an absurdly amazing time being miserable! And it’s not even because I love complaining (which I try not to do outside of blogging anyway). I don’t know why life is so fantastic, but something must be going right.

I feel more creative than I have in a very long time, and most of the time I feel like I actually act on that creativity.

I have SO much to look forward to, and planning my France trip is the most amazing, independent experience I’ve ever had.

I am making decisions that help me feel guilt-free and open to new possibilities.

I have few NO regrets.

I’m learning and exploring new things all the time, and I feel like I’m actually getting something out of it.

I feel like an empty USB stick.

In my family we talk a lot about the various geniuses who have influenced and inspired us, and the source of their genius. Most of them can be considered insane (take Camille Claudel, Bob Dylan, John Lennon, Van Gogh), but why?

Theory:

The truly creative geniuses of the world operate out of their unconscious, and so operate on a different plane– speaking to others on a “normal” level is beneath them, which is why they tend towards recluseness (reclusivity?).

It’s too bad, because they’re probably the ones who get to talk to the moon.

Kisses.

I plant kisses in the sky,

right between you and I,

but the clouds all take them.

They sparkle like stars,

a thousand shiny scars,

but you never find them.

They pale next to the moon,

try to find their own tune,

and the daylight drowns them.

They are fragile and frail,

but I know they could prevail

if you would only take them.

They’ll blaze a path to you,

you’ll be their rescue,

and together we’ll share them.

Trees and Post Offices

OK, so just to prove that I really *did* have something to say this whole time, I’m posting this, which I wrote between Colorado and New Mexico. Enjoy!

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It was as if vertical didn’t exist. The whole landscape consisted of horizontal levels of different elements: a straight, flat road, flat sagebrush land, and in the distance, a layer of blue or brown depending on the direction. These were mountains, but you couldn’t tell they were mountains because the clouds hung so low.

It was as if we were in an orb; the clouds seemed high enough above us, but on the horizon they sunk lower and lower, and land might not have even existed beyond them.

We had left the land of color, and it was becoming obvious that we might not see much color for a while, especially if the clouds didn’t lift

I’ve never seen the clouds so low. If I stood on top of the car, I might even be able to touch them. Full and dark and reducing to wisps the lower they got, but remaining ominous. Yellow daisies lined the road, and the sky seemed to be blue beyond the clouds, but it was quickly dimming as the sun went down.

A few children were crouching at the horizon, holding paper cutouts of clouds at different heights in the sky. As we moved, they became two dimensional and looked like individual pieces of gray instead of an indistinguishable colorless blue.

Every once in a while, things would become a little more green or blue or yellow, but most of the time they were steadily getting less colored. Mom would point and say, “treeee!” and I would point at a truck with straw flying off of it and say, “hay!” because that’s what she used to do with me. And whenever we saw a sign, mom would read it. Just in case I hadn’t seen it, even though writing would be hard to miss in this area.

The time of day would be best described as twilight, which is a little sad to admit. The moon was a little sliver to our left, against a background of, if you have your crayon set handy, a very light sky blue crossed with cerulean.

“Post office,” mom said as we passed that sign and rolled into a sad little town that was mostly boarded up and had one flashing yellow light, just like in Radiator Springs, from Cars.