impossible

its funny to me now the things that used to seem impossible to me. I never thought i'd run around naked on a rocky beach in texas. I never thought i'd get a liscence. I honestly remember having the thought that i could never talk to the three most beautiful girls in the seventh grade without vomiting or passing out. Now, i can talk circles around those girls. I never thought i could run a mile, i can run several, and then some. I never thought i'd leave you. I never thought i'd love you. I very specifically remember thinking that i would never make it to the fifth grade, i thought they looked huge! and scary! look at em now. Everything in ahead of me that i cant seem to wrap my head around, i can never do this i wil never do that. Its only that i havent yet, and nothing else. But i can, and i will. I am such a differnt girl from the goofy adolescent version of myself, but in some ways i have never changed. I am so immensly differnt from this last year! these last five minute even! never getting comfortable, and yet so comfortable in that. The things i find to rest on are good friends, even the ones that get on my nerves, even the ones so incredibly differnt from me. I dont think most people realize how incredibly much they mean to me. Im so filled with love for people that drive me nuts all the time, and i feel really really good about that. It makes me feel like ive done somethign right.

my mom wants a senior portrait of me. I took my own, and its cheesy, and its ALOT harder than you think. but mostly the outtakes were what intersted me. I'll keep it here, in the hope that i can look back on it and remember how incredible life was, and hopefully realize how incredibly differnt i am from now.

recent portraits

im really excited about these

movin' out movin' in, moving on? meh, maybe.

It's counterintuitive that there i so much build up to moving away. what if's and planning and replanning, goodbyes and loose ends, slipping out the back door, or parading out the front in some cases. A tight grip that is slowly removed, digit by digit until you can finally release. Like tweety bird in that episode where the cat is hanging on the flagpole eh? From the moment you forsee the move untl you take one last, hard, surreal look at your empty apartment and drive down your rue for the last time towards the interstate, the interlife really. Past the dancing bear, common grounds, the ghetto heb, 8th street, your old apartment, my old apartment, our first kiss, our first date, your last cigarette, kind of.
Letting every memory you have built there fall away until it is no longer real anymore because it becomes less and less relavent with time... up through the top of your head then out the ears and either side of the unrolled jeep windows, flailing through the 1oo degree air streaming behind your plate like a parade, in your honor, the "look what i did in the last four years" parade. meh. I did alot, a did little in other ways. Im settled and unsettled. I met some of my best friends at the last minute, which is better than never for sure. I wasted alot of time being sick, and lazy. But i made up for it. I found what i loved. Ive found strength in myself that i always had but never beleived in. I say what i want.
But its funny, everytime i leave a place whether voluntary or not, somehow it always seems like its time. Life has its ways of working things out liek taht, on its own, like a scab healing, or splinter that is left alone.
curious, as deeply rooted as one can become in a place, its always strange that no matter how hard it is to let go of a place, how easily it lets go of you, and how quickly. Its as if a good friend is unphased by your sudden and prolonged absence. it makes you feel very unimportant with a sudden need for validation. And you quickly realize how much your life in that place was not about the place at all. Even though that is how you label it, how you quantify it, how you even identify yourself. New yorkers, Southerners, Texans, Bontonians..err bostonites?..you are not your place, you place is you. Even though my bank notes are here at 12 and a half and my friends know my door and i napped on the sidewalk and there's paint from my project in teh door jamb, and the ghosting of your hand on the plaster. The walls are filled with my voice and my laughter, my tears, they've seen me naked, heard me do things id not readily admit to most people, and know me ill and well. Even though my skin cells line the base boards and my toothpaste splatter coats the sink, and my pheremones permeate the drapery and hand towels: this place, these things, area skeleton, a shell of my existence, and not solely proof of it.
A home is what it is because i am in it, and the people i love and have loved are too. I am a flighty hermit crab, willing to settle where i need to, but not willing to settle.
j

now, i love art, i have always loved art. But i have always had to make the art happen, and i have always strayed from it. I love it, but im not sure it loves me back, wait, that sounds stupid, i think i will always resent it for what it brings me though.

So now i think the time has come to do new things. the world is my oyster? yeah. i think so. timid, but optimisitc, willing, well equipped. so upon expressing my fear of failure after anything stationary is handed to me, i realized how lucky i am to have friends who help to motivate me, and who occasionally knock my head back when it not on perfectly straight, friends who put things in perspective.

I once read on the wall of the painting room that "someone who searches for subject matter is like someone who cant rightly get out of bed in the morning without first having determined the meaning of life."

it went something liek this:

ya know jess, the type of person you dont want to be, that type of person is avoidable. Most people figure out what they want in life and then they just stop at the want and they just hope it happens. That is a mistake. People who get what they want are people who work really hard and try to get it. Ive been filling out all these grad school applications and they as me basically what inspires me and what i want from life and how this school is going to help me to obtain it. It really makes you think, what does inspire me? and how am i going to get it? I mean, what are you doing for the next five days? nothing? right. Well get your fuckin' nose in a book and make it happen okay?
thank god for friends.

let it be known that if you're a man, and you're trying to sell something to a woman you've just met, you probably shouldnt call her sweetheart, or alude to her grooming habits, unless you're adrian brody, and even then, i have my suspicions.

ta da.

j.

man, im so over pretentious people. ill elaborate on that later. in other news..

im going RUNNING! for the first time in a month!! holy cannoli! hope my hip doesn't give out, also i have revived my ipod, now if i can only not faint in this heat, ill be sure to post again so you guys know i'm alive :)
j

alright so i went running. And my hip DOESNT HURT!! i cant tell you how exciting this is. it is however, about a zillion degrees outside and i think i just cooked my insides, also my ipod did die. i feel fantastic though.
in other news, yeah, pretentious people, i hate that some people feel that they are entitled to and even enlightened to know of some band/book/artist etc.. its nauseating when people are condescending, done and done. We all puttin' on our pants one leg a time there partner, cool your jets.
la di da,

j

somethin new.

road trippin' soon.
to get:

flowy skirt
film
weapon

film stills in an effort to be more vulnerable

something i love about texas. you can almost always count on it being sunny.

new better fiction, with a title, soon to be revised, and maybe relocated

a short story

I Killed Clara

I had been traveling longer and further than I ever had. I felt poor, somewhat regal. Adrienne sighed. "Do you think I can get to via Verdi and back in time?" "Oui" just, oui. I loved him, I had always loved him. But not in a sexual way, not a baubly, desiring way. No doubt I did desire him, but I desired him the way I desired distance, the way I desired heartache, the way I wanted coffee on Monday mornings, tea at two. I loved him the best way you can love someone: shallow, short.
He is an average height but it’s not apparent. He is slightly bitchy, and it is. I put up with it. I could not bear to extinguish him. A strange mix of extreme, brazen confidence and genuine moments of humility. Hypocrisy in its rarest and best form. I remember wondering which was the dominant side in him the night we killed Clara. Its one of those things you go over and over again in your mind. Did it really happen? It didn’t seem permitted.
I had often wondered in those days how anyone could take a life. Now, it seemed so simple, so docile, so easy to admit. I killed her. I killed her. I killed her. I repeated it as not to forget. The days had in fact become so conducive to forgetfulness. And really, I believe if I didn’t repeat this to myself on occasion, I would just as soon settle in Italy amongst the art and Chianti and regenerate with what pieces I had left of life. Could be worse. I’d become stationary again. Why, I believe I would just assume I had been born Italian, and never question it. The red hair may throw me from time to time, but I suppose I’d rationalize it with a quick anecdote about my father, the Tuscan, and his ill-fated fleet-footed Irish hussy who occasionally came around after I was born. I hear she’s in Sri Lanka somewhere.
I turned the corner. “I think we should stop, Adrienne.” Its funny I had been building up the courage to say that to him for weeks, only now, hearing it out loud, letting it materialize, it seems like such a small, docile thing.

“No.”
Wow, and now hearing the response. Gosh, I had hardly thought that one out enough. How very anticlimactic, I thought, how very predictable and straightforward as well, alright then. Why did that not occur to me?
It’s just as well. I’ve always been flighty. My memories have always carried on a somewhat shallow relationship with my consciousness. My moments maintain a constant flirtation with my mind, leading it on incessantly. I’m very easily and suddenly forgetful. Even the most vivid and earnest parts of life, I lose on a regular basis. Of course I always remember and recall them the immediate that they are recapped to me. I remember everything that I don’t need. I forget everything that I do. Probably another reason for reminding myself of Clara so often. If that’s my only responsibility in exchange for having the great talent of losing memory, then go ahead with it I suppose.

“Are you hungry yet doll? Should I cook again tonight?”
“No, I haven’t been hungry for sometime. You really should stop offering me food in place of love Simone, it’s unbecoming.”

Get groceries.
Apply for visa.
I killed Clara.

im a big girl, i can handle it.

new fiction

I had been traveling longer and further than i ever had. I felt somewhat poor, somewhat royal. Adrienne sighed. "Do you think i can get to Castillo and back in time?" "Oui" just, oui. I loved him, I had always loved him. But not in a sexual way, not a baubly, desiring way. No doubt i did desire him, but i desire him the way i desired distance, the way i desired heartache, the way i wanted coffee on monday mornings, tea at two. I loved him the best way you can love someone: shallow, short.
He is an average height but its not apparent. He is slightly bitchy, and it is. I put up with it. I could not bear to extinguish him. A strange mix of extreme, brazen confidence and genuine moments of humility. Hypocrisy in its rarest and best form. I remember wondering which was the dominant side in him the night we killed clara. Its one of those things you go over and over again in your mind. Did it really happen? Was i really there? It didnt seem permitted...