oye. what a week it has been. friends and family and lovers. staying and leaving. snow and life. frozen. awake. and all the while i'm just trying to wrap christmas gifts and cigarettes.

back to normal?
back to sanity might be a better question.

festivus

It's nearly upon us: a festivus for the rest of us....I am suddenly in a festive holiday mood. Do you know why? It's because when I went to make coffee this morning (although I sleepily spilled half of a new can of coffee grounds all over the counter and kitchen floor...grumblingly wiped it ALL up...) As I sat at the kitchen counter, munching on an orange and gazing sleepily into space, I saw this:




How christmas-ey are WE???? How do I love thee, jennifer? Let me count the ways...


The whole incident left me with a giddy kind of feeling that also carried a note of melancholy. I've been thinking about you for the past couple of days. I had a crazy, amnesiac-feeling that when I was sick last weekend, I forgot about paul and am dying to know what happened...also, I know the seventeenth is nearly here. And then, there you were, winking at me from my mother's christmas card rack. Miss you.

random stuff that does not seem quite important enough to tell you on our very limited phone conversations but that i still want to say

1. my co-worker kate has a friend who often comes to the store at the end of the day to pick her up. he works for the government, something to do with passport creation/distribution (not sure of his official title). obviously this is a high security sort of job so he goes through a lot of training and such--point of the story is that one of the random things they teach you when you work for the passport agency is differences in handwriting (when writing in english) based on country of origin. after looking at my handwriting sample he said that my writing looks very european. oh yeah, i can write in european. within the next five years i want to live in france.

2. we have been playing chrismas music in the store for a couple weeks now. today i noticed that there is a version of dean martin singing "these are a few of my favorite things" . . . think about it for a moment . . . jazzy, rat packy, slick new york voice crooning about schnitzel with noodle and wild geese . . . it just struck me as funny

3. there was definitely a three . . . what was it . . . damn.
damn.
incomplete feeling . . . i will remember--oh oh i remember. ok, we have all these clear bohemian crystal ornaments (from the 1970's) that we are selling in the store. they are rather pretty. in the front of the store there is this giant cast iron pot rack hanging from the ceiling. we decided to hang all of the ornaments from the pot rack in order to display them and since everyone else is afraid of the ladder i got the job of climbing nine feet into the air while holding crystal ornaments. not an awful job but a little nerve wracking and time consuming. the display turned out very well. all these lovely, delicate bulbs and balls and ice cycles . . . anyway, today this woman came into the store and she loved the display. really she loved it--she kept telling me she did. she made her friend look at it from every possible angle. she sang the praises of the display and asked me if i had an art degree . . . i take that as a compliment . . . no i have a psyc degree so i will trick you into thinking you like my display. wha ha ha (evil laugh). who needs a real art degree when you can work in a little artsy store and have random customers compliment your aesthetic sensibilities. there, i just saved myself another 50 thousand dollars!

fin.

--j

perhaps post-modernists are full of themselves . . . nothing is new or edgy anymore--lets go back to everything that was . . . don't listen to any music made before 1875 . . .

if there is no avant garde can there be "counter culture"? if post modernism posits a world (culture) without boundaries i would reason that one could never be outside/interesting/creative . . . you just always "are" . . .

procrastinating

I can't decide if the postmodernists are more realistic or more cynical. Hmmm...I have much to chew on in my ever-loving-most-boring-planning-meeting in the world!!!!

happy monday. it's late . . . well not that late but i'm tired. i want write something to you but there is too much (or nothing, i can't tell) so instead i am sending you random photos (i can't think of words for myself so i might as well post someone else's ideas)

Avant-garde (pronounced /ɑvɑ̃ gɑʁd/) in means "front guard", "advance guard", or "vanguard". The term is commonly used in French, English, and German to refer to people or works that are experimental or innovative, particularly with respect to art, culture, and politics.

Avant-garde represents a pushing of the boundaries of what is accepted as the norm or the status quo, primarily in the cultural realm. The notion of the existence of the avant-garde is considered by some to be a hallmark of modernism, as distinct from postmodernism. Postmodernism posits that the age of the constant pushing of boundaries is no longer with us. Postmodernism posits that avant-garde has little to no applicability in the age of Postmodern art.

vignettes

The other night I was walking into the mall, and I heard a Salvation Army "bell ringer" in front of JC Penny. Except, instead of ringing a large bell, she was belting out caroles in a beatiful, velvety voice....just enough sweetness to balance the depth. For some reason, though I could not see her, I knew exactly what she looked like.

Well, I was in the mall for over an hour and a half. As I headed out to my car, I realized, in succession that a) the sky was pitch black, b) it had just started to snow, and c) the caroler was *still* singing. Not just 'singing', but singing at concert-hall volume and still as rich and lovely as ever. It was quite a realization; it awed me a little. I walked down the straight and narrow aisle to my car, pausing once to glance up at the snow drifting lazily to earth in the light yellow field of the parking lot light above me, listening to my friend sing out with a frankness that touched my bones, "O Come Let Us Adore Him."

today i registered for next semester. i have been putting it off, at first because i hoped that i might pull myself together and finish but that idea was dismissed a while ago. i realized that sometimes i wait until the last moment to register for class as some sort of twisted way to spite someone . . .not really sure who it would hurt but in the back of my mind it think--ha! now you have to add me to all these classes!! i know it doesn't make sense.

well today the invisible people who i tormented with my lateness had their own laugh. after selecting my thesis class from the drop down menu the computer yelled "you have repeated this course previously" in giant red letters (not very aesthetically pleasing for an art college--oh unless they are pointing out the dissonance, the mockery!!). i know very well that i am taking my time to complete my thesis--damn artificial intelligence mocking me.

love of appropriateness

Yesterday was rainy, rainy, rainy. It started out slushy-snow, and unraveled from there. In my strange purgatory of christmas shopping to kill time before the movie that got cancelled, I was grateful for my appropriate shoe choice: golashes. I had tugged them on in a thumb-my-nose-at-the-slush gesture, and here they were, being the perfect rain boots that I felt so smart in...

I am sitting in the writing center, waiting for another meeting to start. I have to make sure I duck out early so I can make photocopies for class...After class, though, I am a free bird. DYING to hear about the concert last night~will call you later, friend.

happy yucky weather monday!!!