After a long hiatus from this blog I have returned just to check up on things… and I noticed that Friendster has posted a bunch of advertisements here. Hm, really upsetting. I guess I will find a new home soon.
Ok, I’m almost finished with my thesis. I’m really not in a writing mood right now so……… ciao!
i’m so excited, i finally have some pictures of brutus to put on my blog!! here they are. i will also put them on my friendster site, for maximal viewing opportunity. the pictures are not that great, because they were taken by janet’s camera phone, but they document an important day in both of our lives: the day i brought him home in a cardboard box, and he tried to jump out several times. in the first picture he’s under my bed. he was there for, oh, ten minutes until his curiosity and desire for human interaction got the best of him. i’m holding him in the second picture but he kept trying to jump out of my arms. see how happy i am, and how freaked out he is? he’s like, who is this lady, and what am i doing here?? over this past week i’ve grown on him. i know it wasn’t love at first sight (for him!), but he’s gotten used to my quirky ways and my insistence that he is within view at all times. plus, i feed him wonderful fishy cat food that makes his breath stink and i clean up after him, and i don’t complain. he’s quite affectionate but sometimes chews on my blankets. that’s the only thing i get after him about. otherwise, he can do whatever he wants. he is king of my castle. aren’t you brutiiiiiieeeeee?
i’m really hungry so i’ll make this short.
i have a new man in my life. he is a little furry grey/black/orange/white alley cat who is tough but has a heart of gold. His name is Brutus, and he likes to sleep in my bed. He gets up when I get up, stretches with me, and stumbles into the kitchen for some breakfast. Only the best for Brutus. I feed him wet cat food in the morning, dry cat food in the evening. He likes to hang out under the bed, and gets creepy when he eats cat nip. He follows me to the shower, but then realizes that it’s wet. Petting through plastic isn’t sufficient, but he cuddles up to the shower curtain anyway.
Photos to come, I hope. ME = not own digital gadgetry to make this possible.
what the fuck, oh faithful readers?
this is what i must say to you right now; because over the course of a week - perhaps even a couple of days - all of my plans have drastically changed:
1. i will remain in chicago indefinately, this having to do with no.’s two through five below…
2. my thesis is taking shape. it has focus, it will be interesting and new, and i will finish it by may of 2006, rather than march. since much of my research is archival work, i must have access to the art institute’s archives once or twice per week. hence above.
3. a new career opportunity has given me a back door to exhibition studies in the future while i get to do all kinds of super research: dramaturgy… and eventually set design. for this, i have to credit my fabulous friend, leah morrow, who will probably never read this but is responsible for this potential career shift.
4. i have just found out about a summer program at northwestern at their merril school of alternative journalism. it pays, and i will learn how to write in a more casual manner - magazine style, but more sophisticated than ym. so i will learn how to write in a more relatable way and therefore be able to work as a critic and a writer… i don’t want to say too much about it here because i haven’t even applied and don’t want to jinx myself! but, wish me luck! there are only 10 spots.
5. two small opportunities that will pay some extra money.
all right, and all of this just hit me this week. i am excited, and thrilled and nervous and just plain happy about it. i am definately moving off of halsted, though. this street is busy and i don’t like cabs and drunk people, even a little bit. maybe i’ll get a place off broadway or in wicker park. if you can think of anything, my chicagoan readers out there, i’m open to suggestions about which neighborhoods are quiet, green and beautiful but still convenient and have good restaurants, pubs, and movie theaters. also i would like to move into a place where my neighbors will actually talk to me. no high rises, perhaps a 6 or 8 apt complex would be nice… ok, but that’s like at the end of June so i have plenty of time to shop around.
…also i’m going to see isabelle next weekend. i’m happy about that too. i *heart* you isabelle. and i love madison, wi! yeah! happy 25th birthday sweet heart!!!
later, guys.
bored blogs are the worst. i’m so bored, i got out of my jammies and came across two busy streets to a kinko’s computer to type this nonsense. well, i guess i updated a few photos… and sent some annoying aim messages to chuck. so it’s not a lost cause.
one of my favorite features of the chicago reader is the personal ads. i don’t think personals are funny, like the people writing in them are losers or anything. some people are too busy or shy or just plain too freaky (to ask for what they REALLY want out of a relationship). i especially enjoy the *just missed you and didn’t get your number* ads.
like this… me: boy, cute, shy. you: girl with the blonde pig tails and i-pod. where: red line. when: new year’s eve. i thought you were cute and wanted to talk, but i’m shy and besides you were rockin’ out to your i-pod.
or, me: girl, fit and brunette. you: girl, shaved head. where: lakeview super muscle center. we had a nice chat at the gym. your name was kathy, or was it suzan? i’m such a fool, but i would like to be friends with you, you seemed like a cool chick.
i always secretly hope i’m one of these people not because i want to hook up but because i think it would be cool to have a *just missed you* ad put in the paper for me. i always wonder if these people find each other. it’s like that movie, ‘you’ve got mail’ where meg ryan was way too cute and wanted to make me puke. but when i originally saw it i thought how beautiful that kind of serendipity would be (or maybe i’m thinking about the *just missed you* ads). wasn’t that another bad movie too? am i just now faux-pas-ing with my indie friends who now think it’s uncool to hate meg ryan (yet it’s also uncool to like her)? am i some kind of sap because i want to read the new emo book that just came out that i saw in the ‘reader’, that i secretly like to identify with those tortured suburban souls whose hearts are torn in two? do i want to have another try at being an emotionally degenerate teenage space cadet? sometimes i do, and sometimes i think i AM an emotionally degenerate 23 year old space cadet who likes personal ads and people watching. except for the emotionally degenerate part. and who says ’space cadet’ anymore? when i was a freshman in college someone once told me i was like a cross between a hippie and a glam/space rocker. i don’t know where he got it, and i think he was completely f-ed anyway. at the time i WAS dating a self-proclaimed emo-guy/computer nerd/actor/weirdo. which was nice while it lasted. THAT was an emotionally degenerate time, but i was still a teenager.
I still have an unhealthy obsession with angela chase, guys, and i’m not kidding. maybe i should write some fan fiction.
ps. related links: My So called Life, Chicago Reader Matches: I saw you, Andy Greenwald
pps. [1] angela pose, i find myself doing it sometimes. [2] angela in my favorite sweater. [3] one of the most beautiful photos of angela.
ppps. next, i dye my hair red. next weekend. really. actually, it’s called ‘crimson glow’.
happy 2005, everyone. this year was the hardest year ever, and the ending is bittersweet. at times my life feels insane, an entanglement of emotions and obligations. boredom sets in, and i wish for more than a studio apartment, a part time job, and a thesis to write. but my mom helps me keep my head on straight, as does my best friend (Isabelle). Thank god for them. They also know that unrequited love is hard (sometimes it feels so rotten), and I don’t care what Mama Cass said, it’s not a pleasure to be sad… although that is a good song ("Fools rush in, so here i am, awfully glad to be unhappy…*).
So although I’ve technically hit an all-time low, it really is an encouragement (in cognito) to take things one day at a time. It’s a healthy realization that things don’t always go the way you thought they would. But I’m starting to think they never do. That’s all right. A most desirable trait is flexibility, and the ability to see what’s right in front of you.
I’m thankful for the New Year, and this year I really understand its meaning. I always thought that its potential for ‘renewal’ was a hoax and a bit artificial; but having been through what I have this year, I know now that this is a chance to reflect on what has happened since one year ago, meditate on our mistakes and triumphs - often the former is exaggerated and the latter are disguised - and try to make conscious changes in our lives. ‘New Years Resolutions’ may seem pointless if you don’t feel that anything needs to be changed (or if you happen to try the same resolution as most people and as you have in years past - quit smoking, lose weight, exercise) but if you give yourself the chance to really reflect on even one major event that has happened in the last year (a death, a failure, any change - whatever size), then from these meditations you can really learn something about yourself and realize that it is within your purview to change your own situation or yourself - although I must admit, both take more than a year to do.
So the New Year is a celebration of everything we can possibly know, because it is a celebration of ourselves - constantly changing, learning, and experiencing what life brings our way. Bring it on!! Yippee! HAPPY NEW YEAR!
so i return - but perhaps not with good news. over the past weeks i have considered the following: (1) writing fiction. (2) moving to Texas - early. (3) going to library science school and becoming an archivist. (4) subsequently giving up my thesis. (5) adopting a cat, curbing lonliness. (6) becoming a journalist. … and so on. the list continues. my thesis is starting to feel like a burden once again, and i’m tempted to scrap this third topic and start again. but how many times can i start again? i’ve already done it once, or maybe two or three times, with no result other than that i embark on an exciting new subject that i can fully expect will begin to weigh on me when i realize that it is too massive for me to treat in a thirty page paper.
so my current inability to handle this project at times makes me feel like a mega-wimp. so many other people accomplished where i failed. yes, my thought train goes here sometimes… maybe too much… however, i realize that this fact opens new possibilities to me. my desire to become a being of constantly accumulating knowledge, more of a generalist, branching out from art and institutional studies, to literature and travel writing, history and modern languages. I have always had widely divergent interestes - as a child, i loved science, literature, and history… anyway, sometimes i imagine myself as an archivist or a book dealer, one that holes herself up in a small storefront overflowing with books, or protector of some realm of knowledge that would become my own world. sometimes i have a truley nineteenth-century disposition. and a romantic soul.
regarding my thesis, however, it’s not that i don’t enjoy the research. i really love to accumulate perspectives to a situation, in this case turn of the century Chicago, and to really feel that i know something. reading the history of Chicago has, as I had hoped, given me new reasons to brood over the contemporary public and cultural spaces here. i have made several trips down town, to different museums this month. i love watching people there. i love following groups of people around who seem to be talking about the architecture of the place or trying to learn or find meaning in one of our museums. i am very curious about the educational process that takes place (whether or not successfully) in museums, although i tire of the conversations currently taking place in museum studies: about info-tainment, ‘disnification’ of knowledge, aesthetic/ethnographic subjectification, private patronage, etc. etc. Most of what I read about museums is either dire - pessimistic, cynical - or (dare i say it) boring.
But still, my favorite place is the Field here in Chicago. it is truly a museum of museums. each exhibit is SO different, each telling of a different approach to the cultures they represent. one of the strangest juxtapositions i saw there was the exhibit on africa, which situates you in small communities in differing countries there - and it is a very interesting attempt to give a midwestern american such as myself an idea of a very different contemporary culture. you "meet" a family, and through likenesses and videos you learn about their familial structure, rituals, way of life, et cetera. another part of the exhibit shows how africans who live in the desert can stand the heat. anyway, so you spend about half an hour here, and suddenly you step onto a slave boat. it’s very dramatic, and a bit archaic, to go from contemporary africa to post colonial america. i still don’t know what to make of it - it’s not the ’slave trade’ exhibit i disagree with, but the manner in which it was transitioned directly and abruptly from a genuine attempt to exhibit african culture in a non-objectifying way. compare this to ‘exhibits of africans’ at worlds fairs in the 19th century if you know anything about that. but i wonder what an exhibit of the contemporary american would look like.
sorry, readers, i have forsaken you. rather, the ‘free’ internet connection in my apartment has forsaken you. i don’t know how to fix it, nor can i call my internet service provider because it is actually that of my neighbor who has so graciously left his wireless connection unblocked. i’m not really in the mood for blogging now, since i am in a public computer lab and my blog shares all of my inner most secrets. so, forgive me but i must now take my leave. updates to come.
how do you like my new friends? one is a painter and the other is a student.