2008 February | So Very Dark

Archive for February, 2008

Feb

Snuck up

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Wow. Today is February 29th. Happy leap year everyone. I guess that means that tomorrow is March. This month sure slipped past on kitten paws.

Nova is sitting on my desk, purring for no good reason, as she does, her nose whistling occasionally (it’s stuffed up, and she sounds like Bob Kelso on the episode of Scrubs where he gets his nose broken and everyone can hear him comming.) Here is a picture Briggs took of her in her new favorite spot:

<–nova on my desk

Today, Briggs and I are going shopping. I need new pants. My favorite jeans are dying and on Wednesday at work my cargo pants got a hole in the knee. I went to the Goodwill across the street from my work, but I found NOTHING (well, nothing that was in my size and also passibly attractive…I could have gotten me some sweet high-waisted, stone-washed, tapered-ankle mom pants, but….) so today I plan to hit Marshalls and Old Navy. Old Navy almost always has pants that fit me well and look good on me. We are also getting Briggs’ car tuned up and some other things. And hopefully coffee.

Yesterday in class we spoke to the teacher and decided on our final projects. I also got my grade on my card project (remember?). Yeah. I got another frickin’ B. On our first project, the Cirque De Meurtre, I a solid ‘A’. We had a few late joiners to the class, and so our teacher said that project didn’t REALLY count, so that it wouldn’t screw them, since we are kind of constantly working on big projects and they wouldn’t really have had time to make it up. SO, if you did it, good on you. If not, it wouldn’t kill your grade. Then we did the ‘Signs’ project (mine was the biblical plagues) and I got an ‘A-’ because my lines between signs and states were a little wiggly. Then we did our comic project (Zombies Need Love Too) and there were some REALLY awesome projects and I got a ‘B+’. Which I think was fair. Some people really busted out on that. We also had a couple in-class projects –about 3 hours to come up with a concept and put it together on an 11×17 piece of paper and the teacher kept talking about varying line weights, and I was trying, but all I had for inking was a Micron

…which has a bit of a fine tip, and I was low on ink to boot, and low on time and he kept talking about making ‘Solid Black’ and I TRIED, but a quick job with a Micron isn’t ENTIRELY solid, much like matter isn’t, so…I got an ‘A-’ on the first one we did, so the next time I tried to really focus on making my blacks ’solid’, but apparently they still weren’t solid enough because on the second one I got a B+. This week I brought my Prismacolors

and filled in the blacks with a marker, which seemed to please him. But, I still got a ‘B+’ on my card project, which I thought had a very polished and together look, plus, one girl in class said that my parachute card was her favorite of all of the cards. And my envelopes were cool, too.

Grr.

Anyway, I was a bit peeved. And now I have to work on my ginormous final project. But not today ’cause I HAVE to get pants.

OH! AND I got my new schedule for next quarter…I got in kind of late, so a lot of stuff was already full, so I am going to actually have school 3 days a week, instead of 2, and one of them is Art History. SUCK! (I hear art history is a hell class. Just looking at a lot of art and memorizing who did what in what year and who their influences were, etc. Names and dates. Blech.)

Oh well. I’m getting a bloody bath pillow today, so at least, when I feel like my head is about to explode, I can take a bubble bath.

Feb

sunset

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As the sun hits the horizon, light glazing the clouds with the pastel colors of a Lisa Frank desk set and painting industrial structures in shadow and blaze.

As cars slide past down the freeway offramp, tail lights glowing out like lantern jet trails in the not-yet-evening.

As I walk down the empty sidewalk, sounds around me drowned out by the aching and sweet melodies oozing out of my headphones.

A moment, a feeling, that a camera can not capture, and my clumsy prose can not relate.

Everything drops away. My numb cheeks and nose loose importance as easily as they lost feeling, the cold biting through the legs of my blue jeans reminds me I’m alive. My angst and stress fade into a corner of my spine, removing me 2 steps from the girl who’s not yet sure how she ended up in her late 20’s. Not forgotten, but inconsequential are my unpaid bills, overdue dentist appointments, my waiting dishes, clothing that adorns the floor, far away friends, and the panic-inducing balancing act that I (foolishly, in my uncoordination) am attempting to preform between school and everything else.

A secret strength and purpose rushes through me, and I long for a motorbike, a backpack, long silky hair that will tangle in the wind, and a string of broken hearts behind me.

A lonely wanderer slips her arms through my coat sleeves and I hunger for a pair of samurai swords, a lean, tight body and a mission.

A willful and wild romantic heroine pours out of my pores, curves my lips and closes my eyes as a frigid breeze tugs at my hair, and whispers, as she always has when I catch myself walking alone at a roadside as twilight hovers on the edge of the horizon, “Get your things. Let’s go have adventures.” the same as she did when I was 13 years old.

In my youth I almost headed her siren’s call, barely resisted the urge to strike out with a pack of belongings as a sorbet sky hovered above me–an act that would have surely resulted in cold nights, regret, and a collect call to my worried parents, if nothing worse befell me.

The combination of my nature as a good girl and my knowledge that the fascinating adventures were less likely than trouble and danger for a young girl on her own convinced me to stay put. The logic in me has always grudgingly understood that the world does not conform to the fantastical image I have of it, and even at 13 I knew that the promise spoken in secret code to me by strangers’ tail lights would be broken once the last of the day’s light faded from the sky. That the magic that danced in the corners of my vision would always be just beyond my fingertips no matter how far I stretched, and my fantastical dreams would at best become pale echoes in verse or in line.

But my siren still awakens as the sun oozes towards it’s bed (or, well…the other side of the earth) and if she catches me out, my mind open and churning with lists and anxieties, an empty stomach and too much caffeine (which do not make very good gate guards) she tosses my hair in the evening breeze and opens my green eyes wide to the desolate beauty of the world around me, the endless highways to take me anywhere and exotic night-life of far-away places.

As I step onto my unsalted street I am forced to focus on my steps to safely traverse the icy path, and reality tumbles brutally back into place. The promise of early evening fades, and the exhilarating breeze becomes merely bitter and cold.

Feb