a room with a view

"it all was a nothing, and a man was a nothing too"

I have had so much trouble reading this summer. I cant decide if it is because my body is still burnt out from school, or if it has something to do with my lack of health insurance and need for new glasses. at any rate, I have tried again and again to read the books that i have been waiting my entire college life to read, but have never had the time to read. i had big plans: read all of those books i have never been able to find the time for, like farewell to arms, catch22, the brothers karamazov, and many others. ive tried everything. i started some grimms fairytales, and couldnt get through more than one, i even tried to re-read some of my favorite jane austen books, and couldnt do it. when, in my life, have i not been able to read sense and sensability and enjoy it?

so what has happened is one of those strange instances in which i feel as though i have read more books than i actually have. i am a very well-read individial, having covered many of the philosophers, most of the victorian classics, as well as a great deal of the romantics, and even modern, post modern, and contemporaries. but now, after picking up one book, reading the first two pages, forgetting about it, and doing the same thing to a new book the following week, i now have the "did i already read this" syndrome.

there is something to be said about the first line, and subsequent first page of a story. it is the deciding factor, really, when choosing a book to read. if the first line does not grab the reader, the story will not be read (unless it is for school, and god knows how many bad first lines i have read just because it was in a book required by some horriffic professor for some painful class)

the first line is a "so what" of sorts, the reader gets the chance, right at the beginning, to demand of the writer: "why should i spend my time on this? is it even worth it?" and if the author does not provide a satisfactory answer, the reader has the choice to give up and use the book as a place holder on a dusty book shelf until it eventually makes it into the goodwill pile next month.

all of that is beside the point, though. my point right now is that, while i cannot remember ever reading A room with a view, I am having trouble believing myself. i recognize the opening scene. have i read it, or was it a one-page read that was abandoned for some valid reason? did i have to put it down to make time for required reading? did i just not feel up to it at the time? did i abhor it after those significant first lines?


or did i actually read it, and will i remember the whole plot half-way through and be frustrated, but still feel the need to finish it anyway?

and Jane Eyre, why can I never remember how it ends? i know i have read it multiple times, yet i do not remember the ending....i never do, not until i get to the last page, time and time again.

i need to start keeping notes. why did i stop writing in my novels?


oh, because i'm slightly obsessive compulsive when it comes to my books. thats right.

well, on this recent read, the first few lines were pleasing, and have left me with a bit of curiosity, so i am going to give the book another try. it better put out. or at least put me to sleep.

i feel like i am constantly catching up with my blog...

after years, literally like five years, of searching for my best friend that i lost contact with, I finally found her. thank the internet gods for myspace. i hate myspace, but i must admit that it has its uses every now and again. she called me tonight, and we spoke over the phone until my phone died and shut off!!! and it was just like old times! no strange awkwardness, no stuttering, no problems. awesome!

by the by, it is freezing cold in maryland today. and by freezing cold, i mean that in the middle of august i wore a hoodie at noon today and was still cold. fyi: maryland augusts are usually mid 90s to 100 degrees on average. it reached a high of 61 degrees near my house today. maybe al gore is right. the environment is angry at us. i would like to personally thank the environment for making the day so beautiful. a rare break in summer heat is always welcomed, though i must express my fear of the coming fall and winter...


in other news, I am planning a wedding reception. because my mother has religious views that are not quite my own, troy and I have decided in a not-yet-engaged way to start planning our wedding. we are going to fly to the dominican republic and have a private ceremony on the beach, and then have a reception at home. lots of money. more money than i care to think about. it is turning out to be expensive because, incase you were not aware of it, Maryland is the "richest" state in the country, and therefore our cost of living is outrageous. a wedding venue that would cost 3,000 in, say, tennessee, would cost 7,000 anywhere in maryland. sucks. and since i am having my dream wedding on a beach, i feel the need to cut corners on the reception. and its not like i am an extravagant person. (you, reader, obviously read my blog, you can probably tell how un-extravagant i am) i like simple and elegant, not expensive and over-done.

I have always wanted a huge wedding, ever since i was a little girl (what little girl doesnt?) but now that i am finally at that point in my life, i find that big parties are not my style. i want to make my own invitations from scratch, and have brilliant ideas about centerpieces and flower arrangements. i guess personalization is better than extravagance. stay tuned for the next few months for pictures of my wedding crafts.

in the mean time, i have a job interview next friday. im not gonna say where, but the job, if i get it, will involve just the right amount of money to make this whole wedding thing a bit easier. I am nervous. it is with one of those companies that one cant help but be nervous about. this is the shot, if i dont get this one, i feel like i'll never get a job. but that is negative thinking, so lets move onto something more positive.

i am having a creativity freeze lately. i think wedding research has taken all of my life over. makes me glad i dont have a good job at this point...at least i have lots of free time to do the leg work that i would otherwise have to fit into my day. with all of the time and research and stress and what not that i am putting into my wedding planning, i am getting nowhere with paint or writing. (thus the lack of blogging) so i am going to try to write something later. i did manage a poem a few weeks ago. it isnt the best, and it is only rough draft material right now, but here it is for your reading pleasure. i will leave you with the poem and an empty promise that i will blog again soon.



Sticky, crust-rimmed morning
7/6/08


Fog,
like the Specter of dwindling dreams,
is hovering

just beyond my window.
Every yawn prods it
further and farther
from my reach,
Unrolling fields and trees
and roads and buildings
and cities and oceans and
every mundane chore of the day.

hope

i was watching hopkins with troy tonight, and in light of recent events in my sphere of life, I was particularly struck by tonights episode.

first, a shameless plug for the show: "Hopkins" is not a reality tv show, it is actually a documentary about real patients and real doctors and about one of the best, most well-known hospitals in the world. all of the drama is real, it is real life and death, no producers stirring up trouble by putting a black gay guy and white supremacist in a hotel room together. it is one of the few things on television that i actually respect. (that is not to say that i dislike everything on television, we all know how i feel about scrubs..and south park.... but i actually respect hopkins as a representation of what is actually important in life, and not as a form of entertainment.)

thats out of the way....

on tonights episode, a young girl, 9 or so, fell into a pool at a party, and almost drowned. the poor thing lost the majority of her brain fuction, and dr. carson...yes THE dr. carson (who is a seventh day adventist, btw. how do we feel about that?) told the parents that she was not quite brain dead, but that she would never resume normal function or live off of life support.

the parents replied (understandably) that they could not take her off of life support because they dont want to murder their daughter. my problem is this: where have we come up with the idea that by taking someone off of life support, that we are killing them? what if there had been no life support? the first and most vital function of the brain is to keep the body working. if the brain cannot do that, then the body should die. that is nature, that is how our bodies are designed. now, i understand the parent's feelings, i really do. i know i would feel the same way, to a certain extent. especially with a child's life being at stake. but why do we feel that pulling that plug is playing god? is it any more playing god than taking a heart from a dead person and making another person live with it? is it any different than performing cpr?

the poor little girl eventually became completely brain dead, and was taken off of the support, and i feel that is probably the best for all parties involved. but will the parents feel inadequate for the rest of their lives because they "let" her die?

i guess it all comes down to control. we cannot control the weather, but we try to control everything else.



right now, i am worried about a friend of mine. we have no way of knowing yet how severe his brain damage will be. he just woke up from a 3-week coma. he is 21, and the strongest, most stubborn person i know. it has played with my mind lately, wondering what a person is made to live through horrible circumstances for. in hospitals, they have phrases like broccoli...meaning that a person is in a persistant vegitative state. not to say that my friend will end up like that, but for those millions of people on the planet who are in that state, why? in past eras, those people would have died a natural, death, not hung on through tons of money and painful surgery and life support. where is the line between person and body? is it right to keep a person alive if we know they could never survive without the respiratior, or without the constant care of a person?

how much of it is keeping our own conscience clean? how much is it the doctors who get a pay check from insurance companies and reposessed houses that used to belong to these people?

and the real questions:

how much would i want to be sustained through? would i want my loved ones to suffer a short time for losing me, or would i rather they spend all of their time and money in a hospital room with me even if i dont know they are there?

i dont believe that these questions have a right or wrong answer, but, like everything else, they tear my mind assunder when they actually break the surface and float among my other fears and worry.

on a more positive note, i am hopeful. i am also glad that there are so many things to be happy about that even the most tragic and terrible events only last long enough to make me think and therefore improve myself through introspection. is that selfish? no, i think its how life is supposed to be. of we were all supposed to feel every ounce of suffering and injustice all the time, we would know nothing but pain. and there is so much more to life than pain, or at least i like to think there is.


i have a new appreciation for those people i do not see enough of.

the answer, my friend...

I FINALLY have my degree. UB took entirely too long to get things sorted out, but i picked up the actual certificate yesterday, and it is much smaller than i expected. i'm pretty excited to have it, though, regardless of size.

some observations:

there really is no reason for the MVA to make so much money on tags and licenses and what not! 120$ is a little outrageous! i am sick of "the man" taking advantage of people where they have no choices. for example: movie prices can go up because people have the ability to choose whether or not to see a movie, same thing with things like furniture and high-end cars. but to raise the price on things like clothes and food is ridiculous. the basic things needed to sustain human life should be avaliable to all human beings. like health care. how can a doctor charge over $400 for a hospital visit in which they spent a total of 10 minutes in the patient's room? (can you tell that this is personal now?) health care should be free, but the problem is that the majority of people who have the ability to make a difference in the fight for universal health care do not care.

think about it. the people who have health care and have always had it are worried that by giving everyone else healthcare, they will have to wait for treatment, and will have to share their doctors and hospitals and oncology labs and mri machines with the population as a whole. why would they want that? why add lines and waiting lists when they already have it fine.

take away their health insurance, let them suffer for a while, and see what they think.

i used to not care. i was as ignorant of the whole problem and exactly how big it is until, as a full time student living with my parents, my insurance provider sent me a letter 5 months after my birthday telling me that my insurance had already been cancelled without my knowing it.

i wonder when i drive now, what if i get into a major accident? is it possible to be in a coma and refuse an air-lift? what if i have a terminal illness right now, but because i have no health care, i have no way of finding out.

i am not a paranoid person by nature, but while i search for a job, i have to worry. every little ache and pain and symptom suddenly blows out of proportion and into cancer, typhoid, tb, pancreitis, appendicitis, and staph. i felt nauseous a few days ago. sure, there is a virus going around that i cannot be diagnosed or treated for, but in my mind, it could be eboli.

we, the middle and upper class, look at the uninsured, lower class as lazy members of an infamously ignorant and uneducated whole: as a group of miscrients who could dig themselves out of their caste if they wanted to bad enough. but now i know that it is not true.

people are trapped by our systems. our education system, our healthcare system, our thought system. we have dug a hole that is just as big as the mass graves the nazis dug, and yet we blame the people that we have shoved into the hole.


how many times must a cannon ball fire?

lots going on in life

so I finally have job prospects. however, I cant say where. no, really, I cant. i'm not being mysterious.

anyway, it looks like it is going to be a long process, lots of interviews and phone calls, but totally worth it.

troy also seems to have some exciting job updates, things are finally looking up.

The Dark Knight came out today. I wanted to go to the midnight showing, but i got a little lazy and didnt get tickets early. but i'm seeing it tonight!!! I have been waiting for this for a year or two...maybe three? i dont remember what year the last one came out.

artscape tomorrow!!!! that means I need to get some film. I am determined to use up the last few shots on my holga and then retire it for a little while. 120 film is a little too expensive and annoying for my liking lately, so i am gonna stick with the lca.

we'll see.

some more lomo

So here they are. I have finally posted some more of my lomo pictures. these are all lc-a pics, i'll get some more holgas up later, but i must first confess that i have not been using my holga as much as i would like. 120 film is just to hard to work with without a dark room. not only is it more expensive than 35m, it is crazy expensive to process. i once spent 29$ on a roll that turned out completely black because they were night shots, and the lab person pushed them through and corrected them, and didnt let the machine process the tiny bits of light i had captured on purpose. not to mention all of the labs in my area are a pain in my ass.

so, like i said, holgaing shall wait.

in the mean time, these first pics are from gettysburg. living so close makes it a good place for some creepy pics. actually, i'll be heading to g-burg today!!! how exciting.









i honestly didnt expect this shot to turn out. its hard to get used to film after growing up in the age of didgital point and shoots. im not used to committing to a shot and waiting to process it before i know what works. so these are grave markers of the unknown bodies of soldiers.









how eerie? and yet beautiful. i love the white stones all around the perimeter of the grave yard. and i love, even more, how my lc-a picked up the green!!!!










here is troy :) the first night i got my lca. it was an accident. I had just put the film in, had no idea what was going on, and i captured a pretty ghastly pic of him playing with his camera.












a certain resivoir near home. believe it or not, the sun is the bright spot on the right. the one on the left is a rainbow and its reflection in the water!!! it looks like some result of the camera, but it is literally sun and rainbow. it was even more cool in person.





and a blurry xmas pic...it looks so 1980!











stay tuned. there are so many more. these are just a random few from the 8 rolls i already have scanned, out of the 15 or so that i have taken. i might reinstate flicker, just so i can use more space. google is stingy with its 1G of space across programs. I'm lately a lazy memeber of lomography.com, so maybe once i have my "lomohome" (who comes up with this stuff?) put together, I'll post a link. either way, i love showing my pics off, so i have to do something, right?

promises are like snowflakes-forgotten as soon as they melt.

i specifically remember telling this blog that i would not neglect it after graduation. (and, incase i didnt remember saying it, i can at least read it 3 posts ago) I feel bad for telling such a terrible lie to a blog that has been nothing but polite and receptive to me. i will not promise it again, that would be like promising to hold down the shift key when i type "i"; it wont happen, no matter how hard i try.

but i will try my best to keep up with it. i find that i am a better person when i blog, and that i get more done. lately, i have done nothing of substance...unless you count my attempt at chineese paper cutting. here is my cheap photobooth picture of it because i dont feel like scanning it right now, or getting out my camera. i'm pretty pleased with it, but only as a beginning.

which brings me to my fixative rant. So I bought a can of prismacolor fixative last year for a design class (fun with mounting posters and stationary on black board stuff!!!) and have only used half of the can. now, a year or so later, the fixative has no tacky-ness to it.why? infuriating. i may write to the company and demand an explanation. politely.

in the mean time, i had a chick with an umbrella that needed mounting. so, as an impatient person who could not wait until i made it to an art store to buy another can (of a better brand, obviously) i had to find an alternative...and any artsy person will tell you that, other than duct tape, the only other emergency option, and general fixer of crisises, is Modge-Podge. thats right, i used modge-podge. my thinking is that the poor paper-cut was only a trial, and not worthy of waiting, or of a special trip to the store. is it right to favor one piece of art over another? should they not be treate equally, regardless of time spent, and general happiness with outcome? is not all art a reflection of self, or feeling, or some such thing that should not be judged or ranked? is it like favoring the thumb of my right had to that of my left hand? all is part of me....

regardless, I was not going to make a special trip to the store for it. modge-podge it had to be.


in other news, i am still looking for a job. i feel that i will perpetually look for jobs. thank the internet gods for craigslist.


stay tuned for a post featuring more lomo pics. i have quite a few that i am quite fond of. i make no promises as to timing and speed, but i do promise that they will eventually make it here. what else have i to do anyway, jobless as i am?


it is safe to say, then, that, barring the acquisition of a good job, the pictures should be posted soon.

interview

I have a job interview tomorrow. I'm pretty excited. My first real interview. I don't quite know what to expect, though. The position is supposed to start on June 9, which makes me a little worried. I have never had to impress anyone with myself, only with my writing and skills. I know I'm not the most professional sort of person, I am a bit too casual for my own good some times, but I like to think that my casual-ness makes me easier to relate to.

I know I can make myself sound better than I am, but I also wonder, if I land a really good job, will I be able to stay afloat? Am I actually qualified, I am able to do what a job entails? Is it any different from school? I guess it all depends on the job.

The interview is for a medical non-profit. That worries me a little bit. I am not used to being in a medically professional environment. Will I work with medical-ish scienc-y people? or my own type? I work well with all types of people, but I am not a white-walls type of person.


Even more exciting news, I finally saw a pdf of the issue of the Baltimore Sun with Welter in it. It is in the Sunday edition, May 18, under Voices in the Idea's section. pretty awesome. and my cover is printed in full color. thats kinda amazing. It shows how much they must have loved the cover. I feel like my work was really worth the trouble and stress.


I also got my grades. all A's. Summa Cum Laude, officially.


I guess life isnt as bad as it seems sometimes. Even if I dont get this job tomorrow, at least it was a reply back. Someone actually read my resume and thought it was worth something. And if one company feels that way, then there are others that might too.


I would be a bit nervous about accepting the first job I interview for, but as I was thinking about it earlier, I realized that it is pretty damn impressive, as a job goes. They offereall of the things I need, and boast a "competetive salary" which is better than most job listings. If I was offered the job, I think I would take it. someone told me yesterday: it is easier to find a new job once you already have one. I agree. and if the job is as good as it sounds/looks on paper, then it would be stupid of me to turn it down. Perhaps I am getting ahead of myself. Perhaps I should be so sure of myself. but I guess I should at least consider the possibility that someone might be impressed with me.


I am going to brush up on my copy-editing skills. See if I really can remember the skills I havnt used in a year or so. :)


if you want to see more info on Welter, or read the article in the sun, here is the link:

http://welter.ubalt.edu/welter/welcome.html

real world begins....tomorrow

I guess I should blog about this momentous occasion. Tomorrow I begin to enter the "real world." I would argue that I have already entered it, but I guess it is official once i flip my tassel. I will graduate along with 450 other students. I guess it is an accomplishment. I do not feel any sense of accomplishment. I wish graduation was like completing a level of super mario, with the flag pole and the castle and the fireworks. At least, even if it was an easy level that you had to complete just to get to another level, at least it was exciting when you climbed to the top of the random steps because you still had to jump to the flag pole, and it was so awesome if you actually got to the top of the pole and came down with the flag.

to me, graduation is like being so cool that you actually managed, by some flaw in the game, to jump clear over the pole, and got no recognition for it, and then had to jump on the pole from the other side, and only got 200 points for something that was clearly worth a million.

maybe no one else had that experience as a kid. but thats what it feels like.

i guess it comes down to how i have waited so long for graduation, and have always seen it as just another thing to get to, that it isnt exciting. I am not sad to leave UB, i was not terribly attached to any aspect of college life. I dont feel like there is a whole world open to me now, i actually feel that all of my opportunities and possibilities are at a dead end. I am a very good student, but am i good at anything else? will anyone even give me the opportunity to see what I can do?

the best thing i can do is to go to sleep. if i have to walk across a stage in front of a thousand or so people, at least i should do it without looking like the bride of Frankenstein.

Update

Dear blog,

I am sorry that I have neglected you these few months. I promise, that I will be more steady in my affection, and will show you the love that I have hither-to withheld.

In the elapsed time since last we spoke, I published a magazine. Welter. I spent quite a bit of time on it, and now it is finished, and I hold a copy of it in my hand. A major accomplishment.

I am getting a new kitty cat today. and by kitty cat, I mean OS. Leopard. with its stacks and spaces and previews and time machine and grassy bg and new icons.

I turn 23 shortly. really shortly. like Tuesday shortly.

I graduate shortly. not as shortly, but like next Wednesday shortly.


and then i move onto that frightening "real world"

I will need all of the love from my blog that I can get. Therefore, the neglect stops here.

or at least stops after I finish all of my papers that I am procrastinating on.