try to think about me

polly maby was my best friend growing up. we were pretty much inseperable along with her older sister madeleine. polly was always more of a free spirit and i think had a definite influence on me. we had this game where we would stand on her dresser, jump and flip in the air, and land on her bed. then we would usually roll off and hit the other dresser, bruising ourselves. it was pretty much the best. we would mix up milk, chocolate powder, and seltzer as afternoon snacks. we had ice tea and brownie stands. we rode bikes, we swam in pools, we ran threw sprinklers. we were in the circus at our camp one summer. she and her family moved away right when we started 6th grade and i was so sad. i went to north carolina to visit a few times and that was when i watched dazed and confused for the first time. my mom still has the mug with our pictures on it from a mall stand and it makes me nostalgic. i think we're both missing teeth. now we both live in the pacific northwest, free spirits on the opposite coast where we promised to be best friends forever. i hope i make it to portland this summer so we can have an ice tea and brownie stand again.

someone knows better than me

after a few hours of surfing for museums, i find this. amazing.

kunsthaus graz

(live webcam)

my home is nowhere without you

home is where the heart is.

home is nowhere without you.

home is exactly the place i am in right now.

home is an incredible view.

i walk around this city, around other cities. i see places i would like to spend some time, make a life, settle down. a potential home. or is it just a place that i might be in and out of? my house right now is mine for another year and that is giving me a relaxed feeling. my last apartment with aliza and grace really felt like home. the walls were painted and the furniture was a weird matching mish mash. but it worked. and it always felt good to be there. i miss that place. i miss our kitchen table that was always covered with coffee rings and computers. i miss aliza's entrances into the kitchen every morning, so tired so tired. i miss the ghost girl who haunted my room and our backporch our backyard our stoop. i miss grace's yoga stretches and her bright blue room and her comfy bed.

home is a place with good ambiance.

home is a place where there is always coffee brewing.

home is a place that has fluffy slippers for each inhabitant.

home is a large brick house that contains more memories than anyone could imagine.

i mentioned to a few people that i was going home in a few weeks. they looked confused, for they surely think my home is san francisco. not yet, i say, not yet. its getting there. its happening, but not yet. home is chicago, where friends run through the streets and dancing happens and jimmy johns exists in all its glory. home is the whirlaway lounge and its jukebox, home is lloyd dobler and pool tables. home is where i eat hot dogs and more hot dogs. home is laughter and tears. chicago is laughter and tears.

home is laughter and tears.

home is where heartbreaks are mended.

home is a saturday brunch and a movie and a target adventure.

my home is nowhere without you. and you. and you. and you.

if i had a heart

no pause

i really want to see this. such a provocative image.

left to our own devices

• brunch 3 days in a row
• witnessed a man have a seizure
• reunited with seamus
  
• an impromptu dinner party
  
• rational and irrational fears
  
• carnies and hipsters and dogs and gods in the park
• cut offs all the time
• jeff buckley tom waits bruce springsteen bob dylan
• sleepovers
• giant squids with alien intelligence
  
• karen choi
  
• oreo and thin mint ice cream after an hour wait
• zeitgeist parties
• large soft pretzels as appetizers
• the dovre club
• radio lab
• architecture slideshows
  
• 8o degree days
  

a sleep that won't ever come

sometimes i forget how amazing jeff buckley is. nyla made a film about him which i saw today. and listened to him the whole way home. lover you should have come over is definitely my favorite song of his. its perfect in every way.

dream worlds

it took this long, but even the nytimes styles section is all about bikes.

a shadow of the wind

my next project

you are a fighter

maybe sitting at molly's desk will make me a better writer. she has this way with words that most people just wish they could think like that. see? i cannot even write a coherrant sentence. obviously, it has yet to rub off. maybe because i am not sitting the right way or drinking coffee like she does for hours until its cold. she has a dictionary of american slang and a book entitled hand job and a jar full of prismacolor markers. there's the bamboo plant i got for her when someone mean and nasty stole her computer. there's also a red striped monkey and an old pair of brass scissors. they do not cut too well.

things are hard to explain and i envy those who can think things up and explain them so well. or those people who can see something and take a snapshot that looks like life always was simple and clean and soft. words and images are forever flooding my eyes and i am supposed to swallow them and decipher them and spit them out in my own words. but i'm really not up to the task right now. i just want to nuzzle and cuddle and sleep in beds with big white duvets. there should be no darkness unless its the night and there should be no cold unless there is someone to wrap yourself up with. that's when it should be cold. only then.

molly's desk has paintbrushes and a young picture of her and maddy looking cute and soon it will have paper clips shaped like cows that she got for her birthday. then her desk will be even cuter than right now. i like walking downstairs and seeing her standing over her desk, painting something and sipping her lukewarm coffee. it just feels right. a lot of things are feeling right lately. its a good feeling.

we were never modern

all i have ever wanted.

trapped in the closet

someone made this for our lloyd dobler art hunt a few summers ago. placed outside r kelly's favorite chicago restuarant pajé that was shut down. i just remembered how much i loved it...

the sleep of reason

my daddy asked me if i wanted to go to florida to visit my big sister who i thought was the coolest person in the world. she was beautiful and funny and loved me so much. she always told me i was beautiful and when i grew up, i wanted to be just like her.

she lived at her college and my daddy told me we were going to fly in a plane. my first time (that i remembered) and we were going to stay in a hotel with waterfalls and a parrot in the lobby that talked to you. we flew on the twa airline that doesn't exist anymore and there was another little girl near us. she was going to disneyworld. my sister had told me on the phone that we were going to disneyworld too, so we talked about that. the stewardess got us cookies and apple juice and we chit chatted and colored pictures from the book i brought. i never saw her again, but we held hands when our ears popped during the landing.

my daddy and i went to the pool when we got to the hotel and i swam all afternoon and went down the slide and watched older kids playing and swam under the waterfalls. my daddy lay in a chair and drank some drinks and kept an eye on me, but he knew i was a really good swimmer. my daddy liked to call me his brown bunny when i was little because i got so dark in the summer. my mom called me talulah. my daddy also told me that i might as well be a fish because i loved the water so much.

we went to meet my sister and her mom and stepdad and her other grandparents. i wore a dress which itched, and she introduced me to all her friends who were not as pretty as her. i drank shirley temples. she drank white wine. she was tan because she got to lay in the sun even though it was february. the next day she showed me around her campus and i told her about our hotel and the parrot and the waterfalls and the snow leapord stuffed animal daddy bought me in the gift shop. i named him luca.

i remember that weekend so well because of all these things and because it was the first trip my daddy ever took me on just me and him. he always tells people i'm the best traveler. its true. i am a good traveler. nothing wrong with that.

if all my days go by

obsessed

thanks nyla

i'm going into the vault for you

from my archives. too bad i'm horrible about keeping track of who made these.

high and square

All artists are alike. They dream of doing something that's more social, more collaborative, and more real than art. —Dan Graham

i've been thinking about being more lately. should i be more than myself? shouldn't i be doing more all the time, instead of watching tv on the internet in my bed and taking mini vacations? of course, most people will tell me i work so hard, i work all the time, but that is definitely not true. haven't done one thing yet today besides get ready to work. i might start drowning very soon. i read an essay last night, of a good length and interesting content, and i just kept thinking, why cannot i not write like this? it was fluid and i didn't have to continue to go back and re-read sentences.

[side note: there are way more boys working at philz today.]

but back to the notion of easy reading, of fluidity, of doing more. i might be having a crisis soon. but i think it will be a good crisis, which focuses me and makes me feel like i am doing just slightly more than i should be, which is how it should be. so, i suppose just writing this helped a little. and so did the bike ride down to philz. and the ether coffee sitting next to me. and bill callahan singing to me.

and i think its good that i left the city the other night and ate food and watched movies and slept well. [major plaid alert in philz] getting yourself away is indeed refreshing, although it also makes you want to stay away. i am writing in circles, thinking in circles, going in circles. oh well, the gateway is open. and i'm here now.