Wednesday, August 31, 2011
All the Pretty Pictures
Ever have those evenings where you can't help but feel like you've become part of some surreal picture book? It's odd, but sometimes, you look at things and can't help but imagine them as illustrations or paintings. A walk along the creek feels more like you're flipping through a book of lonely little watercolor paintings; then, as you walk and flip through these little pictures, you start to imagine stories and text panels to go with them, until eventually you've painted over and written across your life to the point where it feels like you're living in a totally different reality than everyone else's. Or am I just fucking crazy? I feel like some of the pictures I come across are just so beautiful... maybe I should take up photography so I can look back on them. This evening is indeed one such evening in which I interpret everything through a hazy film of child-like doodles and rough sketches. 'Tis wonderful indeed. I was going to type more, but I'm rather sleepy, so I'll just continue tomorrow. Pleasant dreams.
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evenings like that move me to paint smudgy watercolor people with antlers, or to just sit in that totally different reality than everyone else's which you so eloquently describe and which i know so well. nothing is mundane in that state.
ReplyDeleteI usually draw little robots with television-set heads. I love that state; it feels like like I've removed myself from this world. I like thinking about how close my world is to Earth and vice versa, and how bits of one place tend to spill into the other. I hope it rains again soon, I've planned something that I think will be nice.
ReplyDeletewhat have you planned? i'm intrigued.
ReplyDeletei love rainy days, especially the smell of them. nothing makes me happier than the musty smell of wet asphalt. and nothing is better than walking around aimlessly in the rain. sometimes when i'm feeling disconnected from the world i shower fully clothed. it's so much easier to do the rainy version of this, because you can come home from wandering around completely soaked and not have to answer pointed questions about sanity. it's difficult to explain having sopping wet clothing on a perfectly sunny day when you've just stepped out of the shower, don't you think? and far better to be soaked on account of rain, instead of the comparative calculation of a shower.
rambling. my apologies.
p.s. i have renounced capitalization (life's too short)
i had no idea that you read my blog post, so i repeated myself about the renouncing of capitalization. i just need to inform all capitalizationizers (no, that isn't a word but i like it ANYWAY) that i am no longer a capitalizationizer (there i go again).
ReplyDeleteheehee.
Showering with your clothes on? You are a wonderful person. That's what I always do when I get tired of waiting for it to rain, or when I just feel like I need to put things in perspective. I usually try to start my day on an odd note, because I find that the first hour or two of your day greatly influences how the rest of your day will turn out. This habit lead me to try condicting an entire stereotypical morning ritual (make breakfast and drink coffee while reading the newspaper) in the shower. The breakfast got soggy, so I gave up on that, but I found that the soggy newspaper stuck to the sides of the shower quite nicely. Inevitably, this lead to me tearing out all of the pages and plastering the inside of the shower with them. Aside from the ink that bled everywhere, I was quite pleased.
ReplyDeleteAs far as my rainy day plans, I usually walk to the park and climb a tree, or I walk to the baseball field and sit on the bleachers. Recently however, I cut the fabric off of an umbrella, so I'm just left with the metal frame; I plan to take a long walk with the skeletal umbrella raised above my head as if it actually offered some protection. I also may leave messages in bottles in puddles all over town.
Huh, I guess I rambled a bit too...
i start out every day on a wonderful note by rolling out of bed and proclaiming melodramatically, "SHIT SANDWICHES: another awful day" and then i walk to school and smile at strangers and if they smile back i know i'll have a super day. (you should probably know that i'm awfully superstitious in that i make up lots of miniature rituals to determine the outcome of things).
ReplyDeleteand you are a kindred spirit. breakfast in the shower? that's genius. as is the wallpapering. to me, the best part about reading newspapers is how one's fingers get grey and smudgy with ink. oh and taking a pen and circling words at random to make newspaper poems.
i hope that one day i'll run into you with your skeletal umbrella in the rain, leaving bottle-messages. i rarely do anything so exciting... just wander. there's an old ruined reservoir near my house that i'd like to visit in the rain but i ran into an old man there once and he told me that if you enter it then you're taken to another dimension and can never get back. call me gullible, but he was pretty serious.
i used to pick rainy days for vandalism. i can't write too much about it on the internet because i'm afraid that i'll be arrested or something sinister like that (arrests seem sinister, don't they?) but if you've ever seen funny little blue robots stenciled in spray paint around town, then those are mine. most have been eradicated, i think. the stencil broke and so now i have new ideas: i have an extensive collection of old photographs and i photocopied one with a girl and her dog a few dozen times and i'm planning to cut all of the copies out, write interesting things on them with my typewriter, and glue them places.
so far one says:
"you are not alone"
and another few say :
"nostalgia kills"
and i was thinking of doing some that say:
"you are who you are when no one is looking"
i like to think of it as a way to find an anonymous connection with strangers.
DAMN YOU, RAMBLING MIND. i've done it again, sorry. please ramble to me, though.
Another dimension? You can stand on the threshhold of the resevoir, and look to see if you can spot any birds or bugs or anything milling about in there. If so, there's a good chance that it's safe to explore. If not, it's probably best to leave before you vanish in a fantastic explosion of blinding light. Either that, or you can tie a rope around your waist and explore while someone else hangs on to the other end and waits at the entrance. Then again, the words of wandering old men have a certain way of gripping the mind.
ReplyDeleteOoh, that's a splendid idea. I like leaving things like that for people to find, because in a way it's like writing letters to people you don't know. I think that's one of the reasons I enjoy typing on this blog; it's just like writing to people I don't know, with the exception that on this blog, there's a possibility that someone will write back.
Mayhaps I'll catch you mid-vandalism whilst out leaving bottle messages.
i like the rope idea a lot. i must try that soon.
ReplyDeletewriting letters to people you don't know is one of the most worthwhile pursuits out there. i feel like one day i'll get a response out of nowhere, like when you leave a note in a library book and then a while later you check out the book again and someone has responded. this has never happened to me when i've left notes in library books, but who knows? perhaps it will.
i was exploring the courthouse the other day whilst waiting to meet someone and i found a little note that someone had dropped on the staircase. it said "we shall meet at midnight, here" and i had an indescribable twinge of sadness because i would never meet this person and because i knew that this note wasn't meant for me, that it was dropped en route to somewhere else and that perhaps two people who planned to meet somewhere at midnight would never meet.
A secret midnight meeting? I love things like that. Hmm... what if the writer of the note was like us? What if they were leaving behind messages to whomever just so happened to discover them? What if they were just another ghost leaving behind drifting wisps of themselves? Even if that's not the case, at least someone read their note. Even if the note didn't reach its destination, at least it found its way to someone nice.
ReplyDeleteI think that there's an odd sort of romantic quality about letters to no one. They're not written to achieve any particular effect, they're written simply because a certain thought could not remain in someone's head any longer.
Although, certain letters written to no one in particular tend to be not quite so romantic. For instance, the ones in the bathroom stall that read, "For rough lumberjack lovin', be here at 11pm." You probably want to stay away from those.
Hmm, come to think of it, there are a few places I've been hesitant to explore as well; maybe I'll employ that method too.
i live for the possibility of a secret midnight meeting. perhaps not if it involves rough lumberjack lovin', though...
ReplyDeleteand i was thinking if i ever come across someone sad looking at the courthouse i'll ask if the note is theirs. it is almost entirely unrealistic to hope that i could find the person, but i believe this would be a worthwhile (if ultimately useless) endeavor nonetheless. the two midnight-meeters could be reunited!
i like the romantic quality surrounding letters to a future self. i write them whenever anything of note happens to me and then i hide them around my room. around my birthday this year i found one written by my twelve year old self... it read, "have you killed yourself? i hope not, you shitface"
eloquently put, younger lulu.
Too bad you can't really write back to your twelve year old self, otherwise you could congratulate yourself on being so epic. Although, I guess you could always work out some sort of inter-dimensional time paradox that would allow you to communicate with your past self; I mean, Donnie Darko managed to figure it out. Of course, his method involved a giant menacing man-rabbit and ended with him getting crushed by a plane, so maybe it's best not to meddle with the fabric of time and space.
ReplyDeletei think we can all take inspiration from donnie darko, despite his eventual demise. also, its a mad world.
ReplyDeleteAlright, just try to resist any impulses to crush yourself with airplanes. Cyberspace would be a sad and lonely place without a Lulu.
ReplyDeletei'm glad that i would be missed! cyberspace would be a sad and lonely place without an alex, too. so don't you go exploring without a rope! other dimensions are dangerous places.
ReplyDeletePshhht, don't worry about me; I always carry 50ft of rope and a road map of Montana with me at all times, just in case.
ReplyDeleteOH MY LORD i am cringing at my obnoxious self.
ReplyDeleteOH MY LORD i am cringing at my obnoxious self.
ReplyDeleteOH MY LORD i am cringing at my obnoxious self.
ReplyDelete