bird dream of the olympus mons

Things I like to write:
Lists
Concepts for scifi stories
Twitter posts
Infrequent text messages


Jelly bean preference chart of the remaining jelly beans in the bag:

a song for you

Celebrity deaths that felt like personal tragedies:

river phoenix
elliott smith
the crocodile hunter
heath ledger

Posters i like right now:

Misread

Thing 1: I have never needed a bookmark. The world is full of potential material with which I can keep my page. Scraps of paper, gum wrappers, unsolicited credit card offers, unused tissues, corners of pillowcases (which only work for bathroom breaks), free postcards, parking tickets, the front-flap of the jacket-- all of these suffice. I used to have a collection of actual bookmarks, but I ended up using whatever was on hand. My dad thinks you can never have too many and there is a bookstore in Boulder that gives them out with every purchase. I feel sentimental about the homemade kind that kids and kids-on-the-inside make.

Cats are terrible bookmarks.

Thing 2: I am reminded again of a book that I don't know the name of-- it is an illustrated children's book. A childless couple makes a deal with the owl-woman (or a witch or elder) to get a baby girl. They must keep a feather over her bed, which they do faithfully until baby girl starts growing her very own baby girl wings. They freak and toss the feather and bind her wings and everything kinda goes downhill for them. Other than that, I remember something being moss-green and there being pretty pictures. A character's name was Gwynn or Gwinn or Gwen. I think there is some curse-undoing as well in it. I found the title once but lost it.

hope there's someone

Wrote some nonsense after nearly finishing The Gum Thief by Doug Coupland in a night. Like nearly everything I write down with an actual pen, I felt compelled to commit the words to paper in the middle of the night in the dark. Scrawly writing all around, hanging onto a page right next to one with the beginning of a recollected dream from a month ago ("crazy lady in my dream describing her dream:'worms were set on thunderbolts!' in a race around the Washington Monument..."). Keeping a journal should be a privilege not easily earned. I'll continue to abuse it.
Excerpt of the very very end:

...What I like best is when books tell me secrets about myself. [I think] that is why I almost exclusively read fiction.

I'm really into Goodreads right now. I never feel completely satisfied with my reviews. Here is one I wrote yesterday that is all about me.

Old Man's War by John Scalzi

My review

rating: 4 of 5 stars
All of the praise heaped on Scalzi after he wrote this book is well deserved. Rather than echoing a bunch of lovely glowing reviews, I'll keep this short and personal: My aversion to intergalactic-space-war science fiction has been overcome. Despite a title containing three of the least appealing words that could ever appear together, Old Man's War was totally fun and engaging. Highly recommended if you like smart sci-fi.



plus! plus! plus! My life's ambition, as far as feeling like I've adequately lived in the future, is to experience photosynthesis. I try to mention it to all the scientists I meet who work in the appropriate fields of genetics, chemical engineering, biology, etc. When they just look at me funny, I add, "try to get on that," or something to that nature. Sci-fi has long been a herald of/inspiration for actual scientific advancements, which is why I am so psyched to finally have someone on my side. Chlorophyll-laced skin is one of the many changes made to the engineered humans in this book. Thank you, John Scalzi. Score one towards turning us into little green men.


View all my reviews.

Within the universe

Current Halloween Costume Project: (evil) Dr. Horrible from Dr. Horrible's Sing-a-long Blog.

I'm not saying

I found this story in a notebook today while I was trying to find a place to write a list:

There once was a little girl with hair the color of beech tree branches. She lived in a town where people spent a lot of time driving their cars, and when they weren't doing that, they were watching other people drive their cars. The little girl tried to do this, but she was too young to drive and when she looked in the windows of passing cars, no one ever looked back. She felt very alone. One day, as she sat beside the road, she met a strange creature. What are you? she asked as he slowly hopped along. I'm looking for water, he said and continued to hop. Are you a fish? No, he replied and hopped further. The little girl followed and each hop took both of them further away from the road. Are you sure you aren't a fish? she asked again, just to be sure. I know what I am, he said and stopped. Why are you following me?

I probably wrote it in the middle of the night a year or two ago. I changed one thing. The story I found ended with him asking "Who are you?" which was just lame. It doesn't end very well either way-- I should probably have left it in the notebook.

I wrote a List of Things on the next page:

- travel
- time outdoors
- people I care about
- documentation
- outlets
- fitness
- rest
- tattoos
- languages
- [and so it continues]

I have deemed it a List of Things That I Want More [of].

minstrel

On moving:

I've donated two carloads of stuff, started reading Unclutterer and Zen Habits, and significantly pared down my excess furniture, clothes, kitchenware and uncategorizable things that made me feel suffocated in my previous space. I'm not, by any means, done.

Getting rid of stuff is addictive. I don't miss anything. I should add "yet" to that statement, but I'm pretty sure that no circumstances will arise in which a set of unused martini glasses passed to me two years ago by a neighbor will become necessity. The glasses are gone- along with piles of other crap that I've already forgotten in the last few weeks.

I'm intrigued by those who horde minutiae because I think I share that tendency-- especially when an object is linked to my memories. I am sentimental. I'm probably not alone in this, but I confuse the object for the memory and try to archive the latter by holding on to the item-- whatever it is. I'm working on a solution which will satisfy both my desire for less stuff and my need to memorialize experiences.

Papers are the worst. I still have three boxes of paperwork that I'd like to shrink down to just one small hanging file crate. That still leaves boxes of notebooks and sketch pads containing scads of drawings and embarrassing musings. In my archiving crate, I found some poems that I wrote about people in my poetry workshop in the spring of 2002. I wrote them about almost everyone in the class, but I could only find a few. They were just notes on the margins of papers. I have typed them here, unedited:

(Katy)
is beautiful like a marble
with two sharp
syllables

I like when you get excited
about something
like a word
and you squint your eyes
until they are little eyelash
halfmoons
and you would say it like that
"moooons" while you smile
and gesture,
narrow arms with sleeve
pulled up above the elbow

I don't remember who the following one was about...

smile, reaching one side of your mouth before the other as though you couldn't fully
commit to it
one arm gripping the other while you squeeze your fingers closed around your pen
or air

nor this one..

To my afternoon contortionist,
I'm not sure what you are
or what you are becoming
but you would fit in my car
and we could sit together at movies
You, tucked half in your seat,
half in mine

-----------------*******------------------
While trying to minimize my toiletries, I disposed of all of my shampoo bottles. I traded them in for a Lush bar shampoo which I love as a concept (no packaging waste, low maintenance) but my skin hated (I have yet to prove the bar is the cause). My googling results for shampoo reviews were disappointing at best. So, instead of hunting for the perfect product, I bought a shampoo for the elegant packaging.

This is similar to my previous practice of buying the brand whose commercials had the most attractive models (to support good casting) or toothpaste with the shiniest box and over-the-top descriptions. That is how everyone makes decisions in the grocery store health and beauty aisle, right?

i own the city

My Embrace is Eternal Mix: