When I drive.

I dance. And I sing.

I dance and I sing big time.

I drum along like madness on the steering wheel (don't worry, it's very safe. I'm an excellent multitasker).

Sometimes, I indulge in a little air guitar if the song I'm listening to has a favorite or seriously awesome riff.

Many people stare in judgment while others who witness while being one of my passengers tell me I do it for attention. To be perfectly honest with you, I am highly unaware of any other drivers on the road with the exception of the fact that they are driving cars that I should avoid hitting. To put it simply, I'm not the attention whore kind of gal. In fact, I get pretty uncomfortable when I notice the car in the next lane is keeping pace with me so the men in the car can smile (amongst other more disgusting things) and generally be all around McPervies.

Now of course if a guy was rockin' out, most would think...Wow, a bunch of guys havin' a good time and going crazy. But I will avoid a feminist tangent for now.

So, I ask, why is it so weird that I get so into my music? Why is it weird or assumed to be a lame attempt to get attention from male commuters?

I can't sing for shit. The closest I ever came to playing an instrument was being second chair on the flute in junior high (and I no longer remember a single thing. I used to read music with perfection! Such a shame).

TANGENT: I would absolutely love to play an instrument. I want to be able to play the piano, guitar, and ESPECIALLY drums. But for some damn reason, my mind does not process the idea of teaching myself and my wallet does not process the cost of an instructor. I've sat with my beautiful Fender acoustic that my best friend so generously got me for hours every day and it just didn't click. I'm thinking the position of teaching me how to play would ideally be filled by my future man. Romantic and free.

But despite all that, my extreme and unconditional love for music seems to surpass that of most everything in my life.

So the next time you see a young lady groovin' to her tunes, try not to think the worst. I say, join her in her joy. Look, smile and rock out together to make traffic or a red light that much more bearable.

I'm never annoyed when someone drives by with "bumpin'" music as most people are--even when it's music I don't necessarily care for. Some may be asking for attention but despite that, at the end of it all, they love music too.

So I say, more power to them. And to my uninhibited singing and dancing.

Call me crazy.

But Cal State Fullerton's MFA in Design looks BOMB.

Holy shit. CSUF actually looks appealing to me?

Wow.

So many things.

My mind is overwhelmed and oh so excited.

1. Photography submission

Just sketched up my idea for what I'm going to submit as part of my portfolio for a call for photographers for Surface magazine. Meeting with my model/one of my best friends today to discuss ideas and style design including outfits, hair and make-up, and set design. Even if I don't win this contest, this is going to be a great thing to have in my portfolio regardless. BUT I really hope they find interest in my submission.

2. The Panther re-design

Planning meetings with my editor to start working on the re-design of The Panther newspaper. I need to make a list of various ideas floating around in my head before I forget them all. Then, of course I have to create a style guide which will be long and tedious but really awesome all at the same time.

3. Going into ultimate money saving/money making mode

I need to start saving money for grad school (see #4), an iMac for my home because I can't stand spending more than 4 hours in the graphic design lab, and of course my tattoo. Those are listed from highest priority to least. No more shopping. No more fancy restaurants every other day. And sadly...significantly less concert going. :(

4. Grad school planning

So I know it's a bit early but these days, everyone is so ahead of the game that I feel that I really need to be looking a year or two in the future. It's possible I might take a year or two off after college to establish myself at a job, build a professional portfolio and make REAL money to put towards grad school.

So far, I'm REALLY liking the looks of SCAD's (Savannah College of Art and Design - Atlanta) graduate programs. I'm still a little indecisive on what I really want to focus in on.

The degrees that interest me at this point...

MFA in Fashion
MFA in Luxury and Fashion Management
MFA in Graphic Design
MFA in Commercial Photography

And maybe even...

MFA in Animation
MFA in Interior Design

Now the only problem is me moving out there. I love Georgia. I love the city. But my mother could also become a begrudging depressed recluse if her third and final daughter leaves her all alone in California. And she's too stubborn to move to a city that has two (this would be including me) of her daughters, one of her good friends, and her two grandchildren. Go fucking figure.

She has more family there than she does in California and she hates all her friends here anyway. My mother is crazy. I love her, but she's crazy.

In addition to all that, she would never let me live on my own. Which is understandable, but she doesn't get that my sister would probably be living down the street from me. I'd even probably live with her until I got to know decent people to room with.

But can I deny my number one graduate school choice at this point?

I'm not interested in the UCLA program. The Art Institute isn't that great. FIDM is a piece of crap for the most part. I don't want to go to Chapman for 6 years straight, and I want to try something NEW!

I haven't looked into Cal Arts yet or any of the Pomona colleges. I don't know....we'll see what happens.

My paranoid and morbid subconscious.

I always have apocalyptic dreams. And they scare the living bajeezus out of me.

It's this weird duality of knowing that it's a dream while I'm asleep, but it feeling so damn real. So I'm in this really deep sleep living out a terrifying Armageddon and experiencing unbelievable anxiety that I can't get out of but continually waver between believing it is real or realizing it is a dream.

And when I finally wake up, I take a huge breath and become extremely relieved that everything that just happened was not real and I don't have to deal with it anymore. I can get out of bed, pour myself some coffee and enjoy a peaceful, quiet morning.

Despite the terrible feelings I get from them, I must say my apocalyptic dreams are much more interesting than the cliched apocalypse concepts of the real world. If I turned my dreams into sci-fi novels or short stories, I'm pretty sure they would be pretty damn sweet. Maybe I will someday.

The one I had last night was about this terrible storm that was going to hit. The most important things that kept repeating themselves were the image of the sky as the storm clouds approached and how this was a "Level 12 storm" which I don't think really exists in meteorology but it was the science that was in my dream. The black clouds looked like slowly horizontally moving black hell fire with white spikes shooting out as lightning. The county or city I was in had prepared and everyone was to leave their homes and camp out in this massive pasture area.

All I kept thinking in my head was, "The last storm was a 10. This one is a 12." But I never could figure out if that was a bad thing or a good thing. I knew it was going to be severely worse. The effect of how the sky and land felt and looked seemed so...snow globe like. I could feel and see the roundness of the ground and sky.

Then I remember my family and I had to get to a family friend's house. She was an old lady that wasn't going to this rescue camp thing. She was gong to stick it out. On the way there, the street of an almost archaic and old village like residential area was completely barren and dark with the occasional glint of light from the windows of people who chose to stick it out. Occasionally on the street there would be stragglers--late night doctors who had to stay longer at the hospital quickly running to the pasture.

When we left that lady's house, the dream just blacked out and skipped to a much later point in time....as if the storm happened and I just blacked out through all of it. The dream started again in my kitchen. I asked my sister what happened and why did we come back to our house. She said that they said we could go home. The storm wasn't over and hadn't even really began, but that it was okay to go back. The air of this comment was unsure, as though it wasn't entirely and definitively okay.

The dream ended with that comment from my sister followed by, "Yeah it's not over yet but they won't refund the money."

Apparently this rescue pasture cost $35 a person. Nobody said that but I just knew it in my dream.

I'm pretty sure if I tried heavy hallucinogens I would go permanently mad from paranoia.

This is nice.

Wavy hair day.

Today, I am happy and content.

I've always hated the apathetic--people who don't give a shit.

But honestly, a little apathy does a person good. Caring so much about every little thing can drive a person, particular the little woman I call myself, absolutely mad.

I'm a stress case. A 24-hour over analyst that thinks too much about silly things and stresses about too many things I wish I could just relax about. Apathy is a fine balance of allowing yourself to let go of your control without chaos erupting everywhere. And I think what's brought me to this point is seeing three amazing friends that I hadn't seen in a really long time. Being with them was so good--carefree even. And it just reminded me, despite it all, life is good and I shouldn't worry too much. Things will take their course and I needn't stress over every moment of them doing so because sometimes, as much as we live this life, things aren't really in our control. Yes, we make decisions to do and not to do. But at the end of it all, things can't be forced.

Reaching this plateu is letting me breathe easier. I'm caring. I'm compassionate. Probably too much for my own good. That won't change, but letting myself find a little apathy towards different situations I simply have to admit I have no control over is probably much healthier and all around better.

I woke up really early this morning, earlier than I have in about a year. I felt saucy and fancy free so I wore my hair wavy to match. And after watching Up yesterday for the second time, and enjoying a late lunch at the park, AND enjoying a perfect summer afternoon nap with a lovely lady whom I enjoyed conversation and laughter with, I vowed to early morning Hiking Fridays, Disneyland atleast once a week, and unashamedly blasting Britney Spears on my drive home last night.

Invigoration makes me delve into every guilty pleasure I have.

Pay day.

The sun is finally out!

And I can't stop smiling. And I can't stop listening to Iron and Wine and Placebo.

Summer morning cruisin' here I come.

This is the part where Mr. Rogers starts singing his song...

Now I know what you mean.

A rather bright friend of mine only continues to enlighten me even as years pass between these old conversations that I still remember so well.

He once told me nostalgia is a waste of time--sad, negative, and even dangerous at times.

I remember this so clearly because I was so taken aback by it. I've always been a fan of digging out the old photo albums and barely recognizable memorabilia of younger years. I love spending a couple hours at least a few times a year looking back, thinking over my life, the people in it, how things have changed. It always made me laugh and get excited about so many things I had forgotten. A little nostalgia always did me well.

But as I am unsuccessfully adjusting to my 20s, being in this limbo between letting go of high school and everything that made it up, and trying, frantically, to grasp on to what comes next (which still remains a mystery which leaves me grabbing on to anything I see in front of me which is never good but is always better than having absolutely nothing to hold on to) has presented some presumptuous issues wherein nostalgia is an evil demonic thing eating away at every good thing I attempt to carry with me to this new stage in my life. But at the same time, I love that feeling.

Now this may sound a bit convoluted but stay with me here.

I'm currently reading The Unbearable Lightness of Being by Milan Kundera. And aside from all the other genius and amazing this magnificent piece of literature brings about, the concept after which the book is named stuck with me about this whole nostalgia bit.

I will use the following excerpts to explain.

"If every second of our lives recurs an infinite number of times, we are nailed to eternity. It is a terrifying prospect. In the world of eternal return the weight of unbearable responsibility lies heavy on every move we make. That is why Nietzche called the idea of eternal return the heaviest burdens.

If eternal return is the heaviest of burdens, then our lives can stand out against it in all the splendid lightness.

But is heaviness truly deplorable and lightness splendid?

The heaviest of burdens crushes us, we sink beneath it, it pins us to the ground. But in the love poetry of every age, the woman longs to be weighed down by the man’s body. The heaviest of burdens is therefore simultaneously an image of life’s most intense fulfillment. The heavier the burden, the closer our lives comes to the earth, the more real and the truthful they become.
Conversely, the absolute absence of a burden causes man to be lighter than air, to soar into the heights, take leave of the earthly being, and become half real, his movements as free as they are insignificant.

What then shall we choose? Weight or lightness?

...which one is positive, weight or lightness?...”

Now I'm going to set aside theories on time and philosophies on whether or not it is a sequential line or if it is more like Hermann Hesse's metaphor of the river (always there always moving, past present and future are ever continuous and ever right in front of you).

With that said, it's safe to say that moments, or at least the exact ones we experience in life, don't repeat themselves. Each moment happens once. Some are similar, maybe almost the same, but each one happens once and only once.

So this idea of recurring moments, the eternal return, came to me as how people treat moments that have happened: nostalgia-as means for those moments to recur.

The more we think about moments and relive them in our minds, the heavier they become, the larger of a burden they become. But the weight of it makes you think. The burden can be troublesome and enlightening all at the same time. It's like the cause of this entire blog post. I visited a place that has a distinct memory for me and I couldn't help but let that moment recur over and over. It became a burden, yes. But it also allowed me to see something new in a past moment that I had never seen before.

"What happens but once...might as well not have happened at all, /if we have only one life to live, we might as well not have lived at all."

I don't want to live a fleeting life where moments come and go without a second glance. And I don't go for all this "living in the moment" bullshit. It's a sorry excuse for doing the things you know you shouldn't. There should be a balance between weight and lightness, a balance of living in the past, present, and future because all are equally important. All should be given just as much thought as the others.

Wouldn't life just be a waste if I simply left things the second they happened? Where would I be if the things that make up my nostalgia simply disappeared? What kind of a person would I be if I didn't remind myself of the path I've taken? How would by relationships withstand? Nothing would be the way it is if the past if forgotten. Would it be better? Worse? I don't really think it can be judged that way. The same way lightness and weight can't be judged to be better or worse. But one thing I can be sure of is a loss of depth.

I think the brain is made in such a way that we need to forget some things. But not everything. There's a reason that we have the ability to recall random and minuscule moments that seemingly lack any merit to be remembered. Ignoring that just seems crazy.

I want to live a life that recurs in bits and pieces, where nostalgia and the moments I've already had sneak up into the present and future and shape things in a way that show me as a person who is living a LIFE not a moment.

Arrival.

They actually arrived about a week ago but I only now felt like uploading the pictures. These are the shorts I bought from TheEvesLikeUs. This was the outfit i chose to attend the most amazing concert of my life last Friday: Alkaline Trio and The Offspring ( <3 )

Flickering.

When a light bulb hits old age, turns sour--it flickers.

You flip the switch and you can't help but stare at it to see what happens.

Will it continue its back and forth motion between light and dark, making the room feel surreal as objects fall in and out of clarity, making your eyes twitch and your brain slightly dizzy?

Will it quickly turn on, full force and serve its function, allow you to go on with that minuscule portion of life?

Or will it go black.

Come to the end of its functional existence, demand to be replaced by something new that shines bright without time spent in the balance between two opposing ends.

Not giving up, but coming to an end when it can't be pushed any longer.

Flickering is tiring.
Lights out. Start anew.

Authors.

I just wanted to make a sort of check list for myself. The following authors are ones I want to explore. I've either read a few of their books and realize they have so many I've never even heard of, or they sound amazing and have a wonderful collection I want to delve into.

Carol Goodman
Kurt Vonnegut
Milan Kundera
Vladimir Nabokov
Neil Gaiman
Audrey Niffenegger

It's going to be a wonderful summer.