Today is National Dance Day. Why don't we learn the Charleston?

(Photo: Library of Congress)

(Photo: Unknown!)

 (Photo: WWU Swing Kids)

Little Dorrit

 

Pictures: Masterpiece Theatre, Jane Austen Today

Choose the best of the following answers:

1. I finished watching Masterpiece Theatre's rendition of Dickens' Little Dorrit today, which has resulted in one or more of the following:

A. I want to write a slightly dark, comical short story, Dickens-style.

B. I have a crush on Matthew McFayden which hasn't surfaced since he played Darcy.

C. I am making a purple dress, half-inspired by Amy Dorrit's wearing purple throughout the film.

D. I sort of want to get bangs again.

E. All of the above.

7. Learn to crack an egg with one hand.

An update on my summer bucket list:

I am done with House of Leaves and will write properly about it later.

My family and I went to the Pageant of the Masters last weekend, which was amazing. And I will write about it later.

Last night, I decided to try cracking an egg with one hand, remembering it was on this list. (I got this idea from Sabrina, when Audrey Hepburn goes to cooking school and cracks eggs one-handed.) As it turns out, I succeeded on my first try.

Check.

(Photo: Reefbuilders)

"Also today I experienced something which I hope to understand in a few days."
-Jørgen Leth's The Perfect Human

The other day I walked down to the dock near my grandparents' beach house and noticed some small, blue, glowing things in the water. They were about the size of a staple and moved in small circles, leaving bright blue trails and then disappearing. I had no idea what they were until I got home and discovered that they are phytoplankton, and more specifically "bioluminescent dinoflagellates."

Aren't they amazing? I just love the fact that these things exist and live right here on the same planet, and not only that, but they were here first. And thousands, or more likely, millions of years later, I get to be amazed by them as if they were brand new. It's like the world just told me a secret.

"There is another world, but it is in this one."
-William Butler Yeats

Your Secret

Your secret from Jean-Sebastien Monzani on Vimeo.

Ignant is a German blog and one of my favorites (and soon, I'll do a real post about them). Today, they showed me this beautiful peice by Jean-Sebastien Monzani. I am severely tempted to watch this movie, every day, for the rest of my life.

Isn't It Romantic?

I am in Newport Beach this week, and last night I was sitting on the dock of the development where my grandparents live, looking out into the bay. Across the water, you can see Balboa Island and on it, an old building, all lit up.

My grandma used to tell me stories about how that building was once a dance hall and how all the lovely Newport ladies would dress up for the dances there. I would love to have been there, slow dancing to this:

I am keeping this scar because it reminds me of you.
I am keeping this paper I wrote all over at the end of last June
And I am saving my ticket and yours from a play we saw last August
And I am still wearing the shoes I wore when I walked next to you
I am still writing with the same fingers I wrote with when our orbits moved closer
I am still walking with the same feet and moving with the same bones
And I am also saving the feeling I had and the words that I wrote about it
And I am keeping the chalk and paint on my hands and the eyes I saw your eyes with

(To be continued?)

Wreck this Journal.

Yesterday I decided to officially begin my destruction of Keri Smith's Wreck this Journal, as part of my summer bucket list. I am growing more and more bored as the days get hotter, so this became my next resort.

For the first day, I flipped open the book and found these words at the top of the page:

"DO A REALLY UGLY DRAWING
(use ugly subject matter: gum, poo, dead things, a badly drawn bird, mold, barf, crud.)"

I promptly drew an ugly set of toes, a warty witch arm, a moldy sandwich in a bag, a pile of trash in a corner, and cluster of bugs. (I'll add pictures later, since I don't have time to take them now.)

(Also- the bugs, sadly, turned out cuter than I'd intended.)

For the second day, I numbered all the pages in the book. There were ninety, which I liked, because I like the number eight and I got to go through all the eighties before the end.

Also today I painted a postcard, worked on the score for Troilus and Cressida, read House of Leaves for a good hour or so, and helped my dad move stuff from his old office to a new one.

P.S. I miss everyone. A lot.

That's what I get for telling people things.

Cosas y otras cosas.

I'm home/in the desert.

It's hot and I'd rather be back in Provo.

But the nights are clear and starry, and my family is funny, and I wrote a new song today.

Should be a decent few months. :)

Young at Heart? Promise, Frank?

Today I was feeling low, when this song came up on Pandora.



Frank Sinatra, you are my new best friend.

Bucket List:

21. Visit Sinatra's grave in Palm Springs.

So Long, Sam.

Hi. This is Sam.

I met Sam in my freshman English class (Honors 150: Writing and Rhetoric) this year. We realized very soon that we had a creepy amount in common and became really good friends.

I think the time we first hung out was after a football game. We saw a weird movie at International Cinema, played penny golf, rolled down the library hill, and then got a guitar and a ukulele and played music on some stairs by the RB.

Good times.


Some of the vaguely strange things we have in common are:

• We own the same shirt, from American Apparel (in the respective Mens' and Womens' versions). On top of this, that shirt happens to be my absolute favorite color and therefore one of my favorite things to wear.
• We enjoy all the same books: Steinbeck, Fitzgerald, etc. We are both borderline obsessed with The Great Gatsby. Oh, and Harry Potter.
• And my personal favorite: We were sitting next to each other at the 2009 Anaheim Choir Festival, and had no idea that less than a year later, we would become very close friends. 

This is one of many times we went to Salt Lake City. Sam's grandparents live up there, so we'd go visit them and finish his grandma's puzzles for her. We'd also walk around Salt Lake looking around in different stores. On this night, we just explored, along with our friend Dan.

We reference Harry Potter constantly, which is kind of part of our generation. This picture is Sam/"Harry" looking into a Pensieve.

Other Harry Potter references:

• Once we got wheat grass shots at Jamba Juice and called it Polyjuice potion.
• People: Sam- Harry. Dan- Ron. Emily- Hermione. Asian Girl in our class- Cho Chang. President Gordon B. Hinckley- Dumbledore. Karl G. Maeser- Godric Gryffindor.
• Places: Velour- The Leaky Cauldron. Wilkinson Center Terrace -The Great Hall. JDawgs -The Three Broomsticks. Etc, etc.

Anyway, the point of all this is that Sam is leaving on his mission today, and I am going to miss him exceedingly. He's one of my closest friends and I'm so pleased that I met him this year. I'm going to see him  and talk one more time today and then he's off to the MTC and later, Portland!

In conclusion:

Sam, you can be sure I'll be writing, fool. Even though you're not going to read this.

The End. :)

Summer Bucket List (continued)

11. Make pretty new skirts.
12. Plant and grow strawberries.
13. Learn to make a lemon meringue pie. Well. Famously.
14. Hike Fossil Creek when we visit Pine, Arizona.
15. Do something like Richard Schilling's "Land Art":

16. Visit a zoo.
17. Meet five new people and keep in touch with them.
18. Write a message in a bottle, sail out to some buoy with my dad, and leave it in the ocean.
19. Take my brothers and sisters to the Festival of the Arts.
20. Write a new song on the guitar.

Yesterday I took Ginsberg (my guitar), a notebook, and some pens, and walked to that park at University and Center Street to brainstorm. It was kind of like this (not that I took these yesterday):

Two hours, seven blocks, and a nap later, I finished a new song. :)

For fun, I make charcoal out of harmless cookies.

Maybe I should start listing “burning baked goods” as a hobby.

Summer Bucket List

I leave in 12 days for my hometown- Rancho Mirage, California. Since I have come to terms with the realization that I will be languishing in boredom and 115 degree weather, I've also decided I need to make a list of things I want to do this summer.

So to start with, here are the first ten things on my summer bucket list:

1. Take my sisters to the beach for a week (again) this August.
2. Do one page of Wreck this Journal every day.
3. Practice tennis with my dad. Cultivate a decent serve.
4. Read House of Leaves.
5. Write a poem every day of the summer. Share some of them. Maybe.
6. Draw a sidewalk chalk mural on my driveway.
7. Learn to crack an egg with one hand.
8. Memorize "Fern Hill" again, and "Soneto de La Noche."
9. Write three This I Believe essays.
10. Read the Book of Mormon in Spanish.

Notice

(Photo: David Shrigley)

A weird limerick.

I wish I lived inside your heart
I'd pay the rent, appease your brain
At night I'd stroll
Through each ventricle
And keep you living, stall the pain

Let it Snow?

I meant to post about this earlier, but my camera wouldn't jive. It snowed last Monday, on May 24th, in what was hopefully the last snow/weather tantrum of the season. I took some pictures:

That killed me. It really did.

(A collection of my favorite Catcher in the Rye quotes)


I think if you don't really like a girl, you shouldn't horse around with her at all, and if you do like her, then you're supposed to like her face, and if you like her face, you ought to be careful about doing crumby stuff to it, like squirting water all over it. It's really too bad that so much crumby stuff is a lot of fun sometimes. 


Then she left. The Navy guy and I told each other we were glad to've met each other. Which always kills me. I am always saying "Glad to've met you" to somebody I'm not at all glad I met. If you want to stay alive, you have to say that stuff, though. 


About all I know is, I sorta miss everybody I told about. Even Stradlater and Ackley, for instance. I think I even miss that g----m Maurice. Don't ever tell anybody anything. If you do, you start missing everybody. 


It's funny.  All you have to do is say something nobody understands and they'll do practically anything you want them to.


I have a feeling that you're riding for some kind of a terrible, terrible fall.  But I don't honestly know what kind.... It may be the kind where, at the age of thirty, you sit in some bar hating everybody who comes in looking as if he might have played football in college.  Then again, you may pick up just enough education to hate people who say, 'It's a secret between he and I.'  Or you may end up in some business office, throwing paper clips at the nearest stenographer.  I just don't know.


Among other things, you'll find that you're not the first person who was ever confused and frightened and even sickened by human behavior.  You're by no means alone on that score, you'll be excited and stimulated to know.  Many, many men have been just as troubled morally and spiritually as you are right now.  Happily, some of them kept records of their troubles.  You'll learn from them - if you want to.  Just as someday, if you have something to offer, someone will learn something from you.  It's a beautiful reciprocal arrangement.  And it isn't education.  It's history.  It's poetry.

Windmills

This year I moved to Provo, Utah from the Southern Californian desert. Driving away from my hometown, as on any road trip, I passed these and several hundred other windmills on the way out:

(Photo: Jeff Turner)

Imagine my pleasant surprise when, from the top of Maeser hill, I spied these windmills on the edge of Utah Valley:

Last night, I had a conversation with a friend about what makes the place you live home. My parents moved to a new house while I was away at school, and so when I visit the desert, there are places more familiar to me than the house my family lives in. I was looking at a PostSecret book, and someone had sent in a card reading, "I want to go home. But I am home." It reminded me that (no offense, family; I'm excited to see you) I will probably wish I was back in Provo when I go back to the desert in about two weeks.

I think that this year, Provo has become more home to me than the desert. It amazes me how quickly it has become the setting for great memories, the milieu for my friends, and the backdrop for my life.

This I Believe essay in the works?

Cumpleaños.

On Thursday, I finished my nineteenth year of life. 6,940 days/9,986,400 minutes/599,582,288 seconds since my birth.

And right now, as I type this post, I am  19 years, 3 days, 4 hours, 53 minutes, and 55 seconds of age.

The internet knows what's up.

Just so you know...

This is what I look like when I'm bored, slightly frustrated, and stuck in my office for three more hours.

And fooling with poladroid on my break.

I think I'm going to open the windows.

Hey, Make Up Your Mind.

I want to post something, but I don't feel like writing anything. So- this:

There are a few things I've forgotten to tell you...

Remember a while back when I was talking about how I wanted to get to 200 posts? That post about my basil happened to be 200. This is 202.

I bought a guitar for $30 at a yard sale last weekend. Or maybe the weekend before. I can't remember. Anyway, I've been practicing the guitar more lately and I started writing a song the other day. Hello, Open-Mic. Now I'll actually have two whole songs to play on the guitar.

P.S. I named it Ginsberg.

I've started a project involving way too many picture frames, gold and silver paint, and chalkboards. It'll be up in my living room once I'm finished, but for now, that explains any gold or silver on my hands when I see you (and getting on my clothes- argh). (And yes, I referenced this in my last poem.)

I've actually started/conceptualized a lot of crazy design projects. Most of them are only in my head, but you will see them once they are finished (via pictures if not in person).

It's vaguely late and my room is an awful mess.

Looking up. (II)

Gold and silver on my hands I peered through the lenses of my eyes

Low on the grass,

Book in the foreground and

A stretch of green blades, all glowing in clarity, just behind

In the periphery (above my lids) the sun breathed gold on my hair
There and then we were,
Lying on the ground, our heads
Touching, our words circling up again, and only while the stars stayed.

My basil sprouted. The whole world is a miracle.

10/6/09

Then when there were sunflowers in the garden
Green beans running up poles and a red plum tree in front of the house
When my hair was dark in the shade
And gleaming in the sun
When I had a swing in a blooming tree 

And when I had a brother, close, to push me on it

My own face used to smile at strangers and
My voice used to sing in supermarkets
But she folded in on herself and sank to the bottoms of my feet
Buried, like seeds, she is starting to grow
Up
To the sun of knowledge

I portend eloquence
I have hurriedly constructed the facade of confidence

But walking down a crowded alley

She turns

my lips

up

And runs a bow over my vocal cords

As I walk by the plums and green beans.

THINGS I HAVE LEARNED THIS YEAR:

(I found this in an old notebook I took to school with me.)
6/15/07
1. Playing the triangle is not for timid people.
2. You actually do need to study chemistry to get good grades.
3. Failing is not at all a joke.
4. Sometimes good people turn rotten; you have to leave them.
5. Sometimes bad people are really good; you just have to let them in.
6. Singing requires breathing.
7. Everyone eats mangoes differently.
8. It REALLY doesn't matter what other people think.
9. Having fun is easy. You just have to keep a smile pasted on all the time.
10. Boyfriends can be toxic.
11. Clinginess can get you somewhere.
12. People say things on the internet that they would never ever say in real life.
13. You don't have to love someone back.
14. True love is reciprocated.
15. Older brothers graduate. It's what they do.
16. The sunshine is good. Clouds are nice, but in the same way that it's nice to be depressed. Being happy is more splendiferousful.

(Some of the grammar sucks, and I'm a bit immature, but at least I had that much down when I was 16.)

Life, I love you.

All is groovy.

Tree Lamps

I am addicted to Moleskines, and yesterday I bought this little red book:

--with the intention of learning to draw, and to draw something new every day in it. I love doodling, and I've always been interested in art, but I'm not a particularly good artist. So, since I'm terribly bored most days this Spring, I decided to pick this up.

At Open-Mic, I drew a tree on the list while I waited for my turn. Later, sitting in the back, I opened my little red book and started drawing a lamp, which turned into this:

I like drawing trees. Also flowers. I like drawing inanimate, manufactured things like lamps and boxes and lightbulbs. The tree lamp was bound to happen. And it turned out cooler than I thought it would. Anyway, this is tree lamp the second:

Cody drew one, too:

And so did Scott:

Note the moths around the tree lamp. And the little bulbs. :)

P.S. We concluded yesterday that Scott is incapable of writing a bad song, and would therefore own us all were we to hold an improv open-mic night.

I love that nearly all the practice rooms are empty during Spring. At any time of day, you can walk down those stairs in the HFAC and find a Steinway grand waiting to be played.

(photo credit: The Piano, directed by Jane Campion)

Things Greta and I like

Soup in bread bowls

Pretty music

Fresh strawberries

Night walks

Cool air

Big trees
Twisty trees
Blooming trees
Uneven sidewalks
Musicals
People who quote books

Libraries

Dandilions

Slow Spring days

Bright nail polish

Irish movies

Looking up.

Today is the first of May.

It's been raining for days now and I

(hoping you will find something on your tongue to tell me)

am hearing you here, in my heart.

On the first night I spent in this room,

I opened the window wide

And looked out for a bright moon

The moon, luminescent and pure

(And I, disoriented and spent from the drive)

Squinted through the black silhouettes of leaves at me

The rain falls still, filling the potholes and seeping beneath the cement.