We celebrated Mom's birthday. It was actually two days ago, but no one bought any presents so we postponed it. Joseph and I bought her a Swarovski flower set complete with a bear balancing a cake on its palm. Dad got all quiet and teary eyed, not because he was emotionally crippled by his love for his wife of twenty years, but because he was saddened by the fact that his children got him such crap birthday presents a mere twenty days ago. But, dad, it's the thought that counts.
Michael came over after the celebration. He ate my mom's birthday cake and downed the champagne. He's a classic example of underage drinking and turns red as a lobster after a few glasses. I don't know how I'm going to survive college without a bottle of champagne or wine a week. First of all, that's breaking all rules about being frugal, hands down. Unless I brew dirt-cheap wine or something... But then there's also that problem of underage drinking. Can I believe that the legal drinking age in the United States is twenty-one?!?! Maybe that's also why so many kids die of alcohol poisoning over there because the more rules that are set, the more that are broken.
After the family went to bed, Michael and I decided to just lay there on the bed with the champagne quite nearby (on the desk, actually). We talked about my gloomy future at Wellesley, his dad, and what I should send back from the States. Like, clothes and candy and such.
Oh, for you, Lobster Goose:
Nothing can go wrong tonight,
that one star so bright.
Side by side on the grass,
light is dim, your presence a
silhouette.
Stars sprinkled across that
dark blue sky strung with soft
clouds and a glowing moon.
Turning towards you,
I catch a smile in the net of
my heart.
Nothing can go wrong tonight,
that one star so bright.
Saturday, August 22, 2009
Friday, August 21, 2009
The Perfect Pen
I drove home despite having not eaten for 15 hours, having not slept the entire night before, and being on medication for my dizziness. I nearly swerved out of my lane and hit a truck because of a "dead, smashed rat with a big ass" in the middle of the road, well at least that's what my mom said. I swear to god it was a live pigeon, plump and kickin' and ultimately sadistic.
We had to stop by a stationary store to pick up supplies for Wellesley. I bought two hundred dollars worth of tree-killing crap, and about one third of that purchase was post-its of all sizes, shapes, and colors. I hardly use post-its, actually. My excuse was that I need to mark a lot of my books because "Remember? I'm majoring in English Literature so that I will have the skills to go on to law school and then graduate with great skills in bullshitting to become a successful art dealer when I retire at twenty five and marry a wealthier lawyer." Somehow, Michael will graduate high school with good enough grades to go into Marine Biology and then transform into a get rich quick! lawyer.
Anyway, so I had to pick up a couple of pens. Now in Taipei, when you choose a pen, you choose a pen. And I'm talking hundreds of varieties here; thin tipped and smooth ink, ballpoint and wide, shaky lines where the ink flows in a pattern of heavy-light-heavy-light, ink that bleeds into the paper like a terrible watercolor painting, ink that stands out on the paper like linear braille, ink that dries matte, ink that dries gloss. Damn it, it's basically like the cereal alley of American supermarkets except worse. It really just comes down to who you are and what type of job you have. For example, my freshmen art teacher really liked the ballpoint pens where you had to press down REALLY hard to get some ink flowing, the kind that would really fuck up a kidnapper's ransom note. As an artist, he was intrigued by media that could add aesthetic elements to the simplest of artistic exercises. To him, those paper digging ballpoint pens covered surfaces but also added texture (very obvious when you flipped the paper over and saw your handwriting in mirror view). My Spanish teacher liked the pens that glided ink on smoothly; the kind where you lightly place the tip of your pen on the paper and a big, dark, fuzzy spot immediately ensues. She wanted the job done (Yo quiero la tarea mañana, ocho páginas de mano y en doble espacio, no hay excusas!) and hell no to those ballpoint pens that left tracings of previous writing on the next page. That meant easy cheating, obviamente!
I bought black, blue, and green pens. Green because it is good for the eyes, obviamente! And I just grabbed the cheapest ones because I am practicing the art of being a broke and frugal college student. That's who I am and that's my job.
We had to stop by a stationary store to pick up supplies for Wellesley. I bought two hundred dollars worth of tree-killing crap, and about one third of that purchase was post-its of all sizes, shapes, and colors. I hardly use post-its, actually. My excuse was that I need to mark a lot of my books because "Remember? I'm majoring in English Literature so that I will have the skills to go on to law school and then graduate with great skills in bullshitting to become a successful art dealer when I retire at twenty five and marry a wealthier lawyer." Somehow, Michael will graduate high school with good enough grades to go into Marine Biology and then transform into a get rich quick! lawyer.
Anyway, so I had to pick up a couple of pens. Now in Taipei, when you choose a pen, you choose a pen. And I'm talking hundreds of varieties here; thin tipped and smooth ink, ballpoint and wide, shaky lines where the ink flows in a pattern of heavy-light-heavy-light, ink that bleeds into the paper like a terrible watercolor painting, ink that stands out on the paper like linear braille, ink that dries matte, ink that dries gloss. Damn it, it's basically like the cereal alley of American supermarkets except worse. It really just comes down to who you are and what type of job you have. For example, my freshmen art teacher really liked the ballpoint pens where you had to press down REALLY hard to get some ink flowing, the kind that would really fuck up a kidnapper's ransom note. As an artist, he was intrigued by media that could add aesthetic elements to the simplest of artistic exercises. To him, those paper digging ballpoint pens covered surfaces but also added texture (very obvious when you flipped the paper over and saw your handwriting in mirror view). My Spanish teacher liked the pens that glided ink on smoothly; the kind where you lightly place the tip of your pen on the paper and a big, dark, fuzzy spot immediately ensues. She wanted the job done (Yo quiero la tarea mañana, ocho páginas de mano y en doble espacio, no hay excusas!) and hell no to those ballpoint pens that left tracings of previous writing on the next page. That meant easy cheating, obviamente!
I bought black, blue, and green pens. Green because it is good for the eyes, obviamente! And I just grabbed the cheapest ones because I am practicing the art of being a broke and frugal college student. That's who I am and that's my job.
Thursday, August 20, 2009
I'll Think About This Tomorrow
Will it be stupid if I just type away my thoughts on a public blog? Stupid for many reasons, such as the fact that anyone can read what I write, that I am writing crap, and that the first couple of weeks will look sadly empty and unprofessional to legit bloggers.
But it doesn't really matter for the time being, considering that I've just had an emergency attack so I forced my boyfriend to fail his math test tomorrow and I am feeling extremely guilty and, thus, suffering from insomnia. For all I know, I could be dead tomorrow and my worst nightmare would be true: that my twelve year old brother has already published a poem and I haven't even shown anything creative to the public. Yet.
So I guess I'm being reasonable for joining blogger.com. I hope my blog doesn't become that pitiful collection of random ramblings and notes about how to be artistic from students who obviously haven't done their research that my IB Art class half-heartedly created. Was that a run-on sentence?
I'm trying to think about why I'm going to Wellesley and not NYU or Brown but it hurts too much.
And I should start cleaning up that painting I need to deliver to the buyer tomorrow at 9 am. Wait, I mean today at 9 am. And write a shopping list for Boston because next week I am !adios! from this tropical island.
But it doesn't really matter for the time being, considering that I've just had an emergency attack so I forced my boyfriend to fail his math test tomorrow and I am feeling extremely guilty and, thus, suffering from insomnia. For all I know, I could be dead tomorrow and my worst nightmare would be true: that my twelve year old brother has already published a poem and I haven't even shown anything creative to the public. Yet.
So I guess I'm being reasonable for joining blogger.com. I hope my blog doesn't become that pitiful collection of random ramblings and notes about how to be artistic from students who obviously haven't done their research that my IB Art class half-heartedly created. Was that a run-on sentence?
I'm trying to think about why I'm going to Wellesley and not NYU or Brown but it hurts too much.
And I should start cleaning up that painting I need to deliver to the buyer tomorrow at 9 am. Wait, I mean today at 9 am. And write a shopping list for Boston because next week I am !adios! from this tropical island.
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