Overdue Tree Lamps.

This one is my favorite:

Greta spent a really long time drawing a tree lamp. She then tore the page out, started over, and eventually handed my book back and told me not to look at her drawing until I got home. The next day, I remembered it and read this note:

He's back.

He can solve a Rubiks cube in a minute.

Other than that, he's basically the same.

The Texas-est cookies you've ever seen.

\

Tomorrow!

Can't talk. Having a Lord of the Rings marathon.

I am such a nerd. 

Soonnnn.

Three days until these kids are reunited.

My parents are flying from Ontario to Dallas today and touring around his mission with him, meeting everyone. They fly back with him on Friday. Sunday is his homecoming and some of us are speaking, including me. My little brother said he wanted to give a talk just so he could sit next to Collin on the stand. Our extended family will be there for the meeting and then lunch at our house. After that, there are two or three days before Collin and I drive to Provo.

And then I have my brother for the whole year. :)

(Photos: Public Domain, Wikimedia Commons) Then, dearest child, mournest thou only for Jupiter?
Considerest thou alone the burial of the stars?
Something there is,	25
(With my lips soothing thee, adding, I whisper,
I give thee the first suggestion, the problem and indirection,)
Something there is more immortal even than the stars,
(Many the burials, many the days and nights, passing away,)
Something that shall endure longer even than lustrous Jupiter,	30
Longer than sun, or any revolving satellite,
Or the radiant brothers, the Pleiades. -Walt Whitman's "On the Beach at Night"

It's fun to listen to my brother shout in amazement at how fast he can play the piano.

I like that kid.

I discovered myself and the world, and forgot them, and discovered them again.

March 1997

Mesa, Arizona

"Like any child, I slid into myself perfectly fitted, as a diver meets her reflection in a pool. Her fingertips enter the fingertips on the water, her wrists slide up her arms. The diver wraps herself in her reflection wholly, sealing it at the toes, and wears it as she climbs rising from the pool, and ever after."

-Annie Dillard's An American Childhood

(Best book ever.)

What if I did this?

Dear Stephen Foster,

Meet me halfway- let's say 1937. I want to talk to you.

Sincerely,

Emily Brown

My brother took these a few years ago in Arizona. Nine days.

My brother comes home in ten days.

I am excited.

That is all.

Something I learned this weekend:

(Image: kathysharpfrisbee.com)

Massasoit
|
(somewhere down this line, apparently)
Running Deer

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Mary Lewis

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Sally Hulet

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Mary Cox

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Edwin Marion Whiting

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Martha Whiting

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F. Ray Brown

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Nora Brown

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Richard Brown

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Emily Brown

  

Sometimes I forget that little kids never feel like little kids. I was talking to this one earlier this week (Melissa- she's eleven now) about that. She's the youngest in my family and sometimes I think I treat her more like a little kid than I should. All my life, I've felt like a full-blown person. Never once, when I was five or eight or thirteen did I feel like I knew less than the rest of people did, or that I was capable of less.

Also, I recently realized that I periodically write like J.D. Salinger when I'm feeling pensive. I re-read Catcher in the Rye this summer. Maybe it's part of my dialect right now.

Art in Boxes

An embarrassing amount of my summer has been devoted to going through boxes and boxes of things I left at home before I went to BYU. Most of it is writing, but some of it is art. I came across these the other day:

I'm not sure when I painted all of these, but I think they're mainly from around 5th or 6th grade. This last one is my favorite. :)

Big Sarah's Little Boots

When I was little, I loved this book:

It's about a girl named Sarah who loves her rain boots. When she grows out of them, she fills them with rocks, stretches them (with the aid of her dog), and even waters them, trying to get them to grow up with her.

(Photos: Kids Can Press)

But Sarah's efforts are to no avail. At the end of the story, she passes her adorable yellow boots on to her little brother in favor of new yellow boots, with a "fire-engine red" stripe around the top.

Eventually, Sarah's mom bought her larger and larger pairs of yellow boots, and eventually, some ended up at a Goodwill in Orange County. Because guess what Madelyn and I ran into in our thrift store perusal of Newport Beach?

Yes. Big Sarah's Little (ish) Boots.

The Stover Gentlemen's Club

This year, I made friends with an entire hall of boys living in Stover 3100 of Helaman Halls. How this happened is a long story (if you want, ask me sometime), but the point is, I became close with the talented and interesting group of gentlemen living there. Around Christmastime, 3100 collaborated on making a Christmas album, just for kicks. They called it "Christmas with the Stover Gentleman's Club," and it was hilarious in parts and brilliant in others. Needless to say, it was the soundtrack to my winter break.

Around Valentine's Day, they recorded another album all together called "Love n' Stuff," and it's part of the soundtrack to my summer, along with Leonard Cohen, Sam's playlists, and the Troilus and Cressida score.

I miss these guys.

Dear Leslie,

Thanks for being my original blog friend and one of my closest friends in the world. Happy twenty-first!

Love,

Emily

P.S. Collin is coming home on the 20th. Are you ready for a skittle/gummi bear war?

Andrew Myers

I know I said I was going to write something about the Festival of Arts (19 on my bucket list), but I'm not. Instead, I'm going to tell you a little about Andrew Myers, one of my favorite sculptors and hands-down my favorite thing about the Festival of Arts in Laguna Beach.

I first saw Myers' work at this festival three years ago. I was with Madelyn and my grandma Nora. My favorite piece of his that I saw there is impossible to find, but it was of a business man with a glass window in his chest. Behind the glass hung his red heart. He held a hammer, and beneath the window were the words, "Break glass in case of emergency."

"Life's Unexpected Moments," is my mom's favorite:

(photo: Andrew Myers Art)

The majority of his work is sort of philosophical and interesting. My favorites are the metaphorical ones, because they attempt to say something genuine and universal about life. Visit his website here.

(photos: Wayne Levin Images)

Whales have been my favorite animals since I was eight years old. Kudos to Mr. Levin for capturing their otherworldliness.

Muss es sein?

Here is the cover of House of Leaves. I finished it a few weeks ago during my stay in Newport Beach with my sister Lissie and our grandparents. It follows the life of a filmmaker, Will Navidson, who moves into a house in Virginia with his family and sometime thereafter discovers that it is vastly bigger on the inside than it is on the outside. A man called Zampanó writes the story as an analysis of The Navidson Record, the film Will eventually releases documenting their stay in the house. There is also an introduction by someone called Johnny Truant, who also writes a series of long-winded, often unrelated footnotes throughout the novel. On top of these are a few notes by "The Editors," whose identities are never revealed. 

These  combined, the reader sees the story through four lenses: Navidson's, Zampanó's, Truant's, and his or her own.  Truant's account is especially interesting, because it describes his experience reading House of Leaves, which influences the reader's experience and reactions throughout.

I am not a person who reacts easily to literature or music or movies, and when I do, it's because of connections I make with other ideas or events. For me, the lenses that frame the plot of House of Leaves are what makes it brilliant. The combined reactions of characters within the plot and characters independent of it incites the reader to react more than usual and to make note of his or her reactions.

But after all this analysis, all I can say is that this book really blew my mind. It's full of cryptography and crazy formatting, etcetera, etcetera. There's a reason why it's got a cult following. Read it.

(And if you do, let me know. I have a project I want to put together regarding it.)

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.