Grandma Vickie was also at the poetry reading. She was drinking beer that she bought and brewed herself. It was a 22oz bottle of Michigan berry-flavored beer in a brown bottle. She was climbing around on the tables.
Showed a poem I’d written to my mom. It was supposed to be in iambic pentameter. It was 20 lines long and none of the lines, she said, were iambic. She gave me encouragement and told me that I needed to keep reading many things and having outside influences and not getting internally distressed about meter, though I should learn it.
My mom was trying to talk to me over the noise of the faucet while I was in the bathroom. I was saying “I CAnot HEear What YOU-oo ARE say-ING be-CAUSE I’m IN the BATHroom.” I don’t think that was right either. I guess I don’t know it.
School-sanctioned ski trip. My dad is a chaperone. It’s also an SPE conference thing, but all the parents from Kazoo School days are there. People start yelling about something that’s funny but I get upset because I think they’re screaming so loud that they’ll hurt my Dad’s ears. I’m right next to him and it’s not hurting my ears and his are probably less sensitive. Anyway, he stayed really calm even though it was really annoying.
Driving. Turning the dome light on to look at map/directions. It was so faint I could barely see it. A semi-truck went by and shook my car. I got confused looking in all the mirrors because I couldn’t see the road. I pulled out on the road, decided to just “go for it” and not look. I did that thing that I often do in dreams where I lose control of the car and can’t see…I just give up and try and find the brakes.
Back in Kalamazoo I put some blue stuff in my coffee that’s supposed to make me have a psychedelic experience. I don’t think it was working. I called Sara Bijani on the phone, met up with her in some neighborhood, she was just explaining how things between her and her new beau weren’t working out. He looked to be all of 19, wearing a weird puffy white coat. Upset.
I was searching for this thing you can download for your computer, like an interactive clock that you can download, it’s like a wheel that spins with all this news/bullshit that’s going on…you can position these levers to go up and down to draw lines so you just have video/picture representations of little pieces and categories of news that spin as time goes on. “Pretty cool.” This coincides with a conversation I am having with a woman who works for a magazine. She says “we have a tendency to tell models/interns how pretty they are and then show them this clock. We often find them days later, bulgy-eyed and hungry for love, feeding copy to the scanner and printer…”
Went with mom to visit Kate. We drive to some restaurant and my sister tells some anecdote that we supposedly have heard many times before. It is called “The Chimichanga Story.” It involves her being an unruly girl in highschool…she gets drunk and insists on riding the waterslide (like how they have electric trains, except, you know, a waterslide…across the restaurant several times in one night.
A website of beautiful snapshot photos. Some of San Francisco, I think. Can’t remember what they looked like. They weren’t mine but they made me want to take more.
At home, visiting my parents, a holiday. My mom sends Nick, Dad, and I to the store. I go to get ready and end up wearing these strange three-legged pants. I thought maybe it was some fashion response to counteract all the camel toe problems cause by “jeggings” but then I put them on and they just looked no good. I put pants on over these pants and went out to the driveway. There was a big pot of pumpkin ravioli noodle soup that my mom made. We’re all just standing there in the driveway eating it. It’s really good. My dad realizes that we don’t even realize what we’re going to the store for since Stephanie is making the Turkey tomorrow. My brother kindly explains to me after my father goes in to ask her that he thinks it’s just in case I want to get something to eat that isn’t meat. We keep standing in the driveway eating the ravioli. It is very nice.
Ryan sent me something shiny in the mail.
My grandparents are getting married again. They want to get married again before my grandmother dies. My grandfather is (and has been for years now) beyond death, in dream-land. There’s really great brownies and stuff that Stephanie made. My mom laughs at me when I show her all the split-ends in my hair. She’s really on a tear for a while, making fun of them. It’s nice. “What did you do? You just pinned it back for a year and when you un-pinned it, it was long and there were only three strands?” And I say “yes…ha ha ha.” There’s a really good video we make from the wedding. In part of it I am fake-kickboxing with Bud.
Had a dream about re-recording a performance I did on Super 8 while it was projected in an auditorium during an art-walk thing. There were tons of people there. Sara Bijani was there playing something like a flute to get things started. There was someone serving popcorn balls which I didn’t eat because I’d eaten a million doughnuts at a birthday party. People really liked the performance even though it was very hard to understand. It was a recording that I was projecting. Justine and Eric Sabatino were in it with a bunch of other people. The music was very dramatic. I really don’t understand it. Sara said she liked it but she admitted it didn’t make sense. The opening scene was a spastic technology freak-out. It looked like there was a hand making tadpoles. Somebody from the radio station was helping with the sound. (whispering): i think i want to go back to art school.
So then there’s a critique afterwards. Andrea who was one of the wrestler girls is there and Ginger are there. Ginger says we should do some write-up for “Wrestler” magazine. Andrea says “I got really trashed last night so I don’t think we should do anything.” I said “oh…look…we happen to be sitting in a bookstore. I bet they have some copies that we could do impromptu readings from, it would be fun.” Everyone’s like “wah-wahhhh….Rose…we actually have to work?” And I’m like “I looove going to school for art…it’s so much fun, I miiiiissss it.” I wake up.
Had the keys to Tom’s van. Took it driving somewhere… but maybe I wasn’t driving. Was with Sara and Brittany back in the hometown. Spilled frosting from gas station snacks on the interior.
Looking for some celery oil I left in a painting room. Anna H. is practicing softball pitches outside. This is after I’ve embarrassed myself at a reading, asking academic questions about an apple to stop people from shouting and yelling. The frat boys are drunk, they are laughing at the visiting writer. I see Laura P. and she tells me that my old piano teacher says Hi. Also that I might want to perform at the recital this Friday? I say oh no, not this Friday, I forgot to practice and it’s Wednesday! It’s Wednesday! Ahhhhhh!
In the film processing room. Anna nearly cuts my vocal cords because we have them tied to this film reel thing. She cranked it too hard and thought it was really funny but I really didn’t like it. She tried to cut the thing off and we had to call in a congresswoman with rubber gloves to help.
I’m at the grocery store buying snacks. Wondering if people are looking at me.
I’m reading from my/some book. It’s me and some refugee-type. We are somewhere where you are allowed to get three autographs on Christmas, “That Day,” that’s what they call it there, “That Day,” is Christmas. So you’re allowed to do whatever you want on that day to get three autographs.
Another invincible Bud dream. We’re on a walk and he has a ring that lights up with a Christmas tree on it. He’s singing a song about how much he misses Shirley…this is way in the future and I’m explaining this to someone that I don’t know, maybe my kids or some cousin that this is Bud and he is so invincible. But he’s on the way to the mailbox and I get worried that he’s not gonna make it the whole way and he stoops down and gets some snow off the ground and presses it on his middle finger because that’s the ring for her, it numbs himself and the ring for her lights up. I don’t even know how suddenly he’s in the house and I’m across the street. I know he’s my grandpa but I’m watching him or watching people come out of the house across the street, describing them to the people I’m with. He comes out of the house and asks me what’s behind it. What’s behind my house? I think that his beer warehouse is supposed to be back there, but I don’t know if he owns it in this reality. I can’t see it so I just tell him “the highway” and nod or shake my head. I’m sad that there is just a highway there now. I think he can tell that I’m being weird about the warehouse/factory now. “How can I explain / I miss you more than words can say” is the chorus of the song he’s singing. (and then I actually sing this into the tape recorder)
We’re at Brad and Stephanie’s house. Stephanie is shorter than in real life, but adorable. She looks like a version of one of their dogs. It’s not in a bad way, it’s just that her hair’s a little bit longer and her ears are little bit bigger. And maybe she’s grown a tail? And Allison’s there and she’s like an even little version of this cute dog-person too! It’s not in a BAD way. (my uncle) Brad’s like normal though. Immediately before this I’m renting a snowboard somewhere, with Bradley and Christopher Darling, another girl…Brittany or Jen? Anyway, we accidentally had snowboarded to Stevensville?
This must be a real song? Does M. Ward sing it? “If I had the time / go back and make you mine / (humming tune)”
Out walking a dog. Or maybe just walking. I saw a fox and a squirrel-beaver thing. The fox and the other animal, it was scary because they weren’t scared of me so I just screamed until they went away.
Making cupcakes?
Was in Scottsdale when I saw those animals. Wanted to tell Dale about it.
Hung out with Tess in Denver.
Making an art project with Mom and Kate. We’re working on a perfume called “Vanilla Hangover.”
Grandma Vickie dies during some event but we don’t want to disturb anyone so we leave her sitting up against a wall. Luckily after all that we didn’t call an ambulance because she comes back to life during it.
“Let trust do the work / don’t be afraid they might be crying.” This is supposedly a line from an Eleni Sikelianos poem I am reading in the parking lot in my mother’s car as we are getting reading to go into the hospital for some surgery I am getting on my appetite/lungs. F keeps calling on the telephone but I can’t find the time to call him even though the surgery hasn’t quite started. I pick up a ceramic manatee from some charity workers in the hallway to give to my mother but I drop it on the way to see her. “It was ugly anyway,” she said. “Maybe one of my cousins would like it?
I became very angry inside of a Subway restaurant and threw half of a trash can at someone. Don’t remember why. I was in there for a long time, getting really mad. No one reprimanded me besides the people working, to them, I apologized.
My parents have like six cats in the attic of our house. It was ridiculous. It smelled bad. They were nice cats and my mother had really worked hard to make them better (they were adopted/humane society). My mom said that it was good practice because her and my dad wanted to adopt another kid? And I was like Whaaaaaat?! And she said “it was your father’s idea.” Crazy. I told them I was really happy and excited, but really I was just amazed.
At summer camp, got lice. There’s a giant television in the cabin that will play on one angle on the floor a screen with Austin, TX on it and on the other screen Portland is on. They keep playing sports broadcasts. Seems incredulous that we’re watching TV at camp! But besides. I was too busy trying to kill all bugs to pay attention, really.
Watching TV with my family, a movie that was all old video games, really well done with classical music and some video game music set to it. There were full-grown male wrestlers playing all the parts of the female beauty queen superheros…with wrestler-man bodies. There were some other really great looking cartoons. Funny and nice. We found this at a thrift store where I had also gotten many other great, forgotten items. After that we just were watching commercials and I kept saying “this is gonna fuck me up! I’m going to have dreams about them!” And now I am…there was a lot of beef, a lot of cheese, a music video with a woman whose… the music video seemed like a commercial too. I had moved back home and it made me a little claustrophobic.
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