So I spent the week in Boone, in Kill Devil Hills, interstates, in between. I collected starfish and scrabble losses, found a charm bracelet at an antique store, found a washed up weather buoy (above) that stood at about 15-20 feet tall, found fear at the crest of a hill on some detour with a wall of cloud in front of us, tornado funnels peeking like fingers from its belly. We sang songs, Z. and I, kept each other entertained the whole 6 hours back and forth. We spent the last night in a hotel in Winston-Salem for fear of going towards eastern Tennessee where the tornadoes were apparently spawned. I ate alligator on the shore. I saw a wedding from a kayak on the Sound, heard the classical guitars wafting over the waves, watched in my bathing suit. I scraped my foot on a duck blind, the scar will be wicked. I got sunburn. I made promises, made sure.

I’m in a friend’s dorm room now, too tired to take the last 5 hrs today. I miss Z., who can blame me? Don’t know exactly when I’ll see him again (June, sometime). This is the last hurdle before we become short distance, become a solid item, become the unit that faces the future (apartments, baltimore, everything.)

He got me through a tornado with my head in my knees and my shoulders all shaking. He tells me things are alright, that they will be alright, don’t panic. He tells me I am beautiful. I pulled a spirit card (El. showed me her deck, I was quick to try it) that told me the tornado was a learning experience, learning how to open up and trust others, to not be so guarded.

I didn’t mean to go off on this tangent, or maybe I did. I’m more private than I let on, I think, guarded yes, but open. Mirah says it best:

you know all of my secret ideas
the ones i’m giving up on and the ones i’ll keep
and everybody sees a funny look in our eyes
cos we know that we already won the sweepstakes prize

i ask you if you ever think that maybe
it’s what’s inside of us that drives us crazy
fingers feeling underneath your skin
there’s blood and bones and some rivers to fall in

i’m so lucky cos i asked you once, ‘hey what are you doing?
do you wanna come up for a cup of tea?
come visit with me
we’ll play guitars and I’ll give you my number

i’d tell you why but i don’t know
it’s simple and so complicated
i could walk all day on the railroad tracks
but there’s much more to it than that

mirah – sweepstakes prize

What a weekend indeed. I have neglected you recently, poor wordpress, and for that I apologize. This weekend I took El. to Boone with me to meet some new people.

Friday: We arrived in mid-afternoon, at which I promptly took somewhat of a nap as Z. checked my oil and transmission fluid (the car was acting weird on the drive). Both seemed somewhat in order though the former was a gross color and perhaps needed to be changed. Then we set out for Cookout, where I got gross food and then took an antibiotic too fast. I spent the next twenty minutes attempting to sleep while Z. took us on a tour of the Blue Ridge Parkway, then up to Howard’s Knob (the mountain that overlooks Boone.) My stomach finally settled and we headed down to hang out on campus, before possibly seeing D. in an ensemble.

It was very spring-like to see a mallard duck at the duck pond had ducklings. I’m such a city girl, Z. says, as I have never seen ducklings before. Not in the wild at least. I chased after them with my cellphone aloft, trying to take decent pictures (cursing about leaving the camera in the car.) We never did make it back there for actual pictures of the little fuzzballs. We headed over to cut back to the car, and ran into D.’s parents by the statue of Yosef. After that I took a migraine induced nap while Z. and El. chatted, then we went to D.’s for the evening to watch (and in my case, sleep through) No Country for Old Men.

Saturday: The day started at noon when we woke up. We went to Our Daily Bread for lunch with Ma., one of Z.’s friends, and had delicious (SERIOUSLY DELICIOUS) sandwiches. Um… then we passed time, I can’t exactly remember how. I think we left El. at the App Library for a while to spend time alone, then got ready for Z.’s first solo show that night. The show was located in the tiny second floor of the coffee shop beansTalk in downtown Boone. Poor Z. was so nervous, but I think he did a fabulous job. The second act, eh. Then Mika/ElfOwl played and… wow. One thing in the world I wish I had, a unique and talented singing voice.

After that, we purchased some drinks and went back to D.’s where, after the guys had an extended jam session, we teamed up to play drunken clue, and drunken charades (though we had sobered up impressively by the latter, and yet still played.) El. wound up staying at D.’s and the privacy was well appreciated.

These three hours get more painful each time I travel them.

Sunday: The day started again around noon, Z. and I had hot pockets for lunch and then the four of us headed out on what I shall now refer to as the Surprise!Epic Hike. I was under the impression we were going to take a drive on the Parkway, instead we parked at Cone Manor and took what wikipedia describes as a “leisurely hike.” I beg to differ. Since I had only thought that we were taking a drive, I foolishly wore flip flops.

Four and a half miles of leisurely hiking.

In flip flops.

In the mild to moderate but consistent downpour.

This was the first picture I took.
See that glimmer of lake down there?
Yeah. That’s where we hiked to. And back.

It probably wasn’t that impressive of a hike to most, but as Z. and I have proclaimed often, we are indoors kids. We don’t hike really. D. and El. got way ahead of us, made it back to the car a half hour before we did. I swear when Z. and I made it to the top of the mountain again we looked like we had survived the apocalypse. We drove back, warmed up, and had a nice dinner at mountain house before dropping the boys off at a show and heading on our own three hour drive back home.

One of the best weekends ever, but I miss Z. the most that I’ve ever missed anything now.

Oh life.

Finals week is going to be fun, and by fun I mean a new kind of hell. I won’t list for you what I have to do, suffice it to say it won’t be fun.

Hopefully the boys will come visit this weekend for the Mayfest.

I spent the last hours of my vacation-weekend driving home in complete terror of what might not await me in my P.O. Box. The poor boyfriend had to endure hours of me telling myself it’d really be ok if I wasn’t offered a thesis, I mean, I got that B- once which could have killed my departmental 3.5 but really I could be an ok individual if it wasn’t offered to me but I would maybe have to hang myself.

So I got offered the thesis! Yay! More about that later when I actually have figured out what I want to do. This past weekend was a lovely blur of a road trip and I should tell you about that instead since I can’t sleep.

Thursday: I left school early (ish) after doing a bunch of paperwork to try to secure my summer job making a lovely government salary. I was able to make it into the NC mountains during one of the most beautiful sunsets I’ve ever seen. I stopped near the Wilkesboro Drag-race to take some pictures of the setting sun behind the cemetery of Mount Pleasant Baptist Church.

I need to figure out how to work with the white balance on this camera though, as you can see the unfortunate result of the “auto” setting is that it blew everything out. I still like most of the pictures though, and wandering around the quiet cemetery with the sun dragging twilight over the mountains, the sound of drag racing below me, the smell of Carolina barbeque and burning rubber, it was a really lovely moment.

I got to Boone rather exhausted, and we called it a night pretty early on.

Friday: D. (Z.’s bassist/ one of his best friends) picked us up around 2 o clock and we were on our way to Norfolk, VA to see the amazing post-rock band Explosions in the Sky. The drive was about 6 hours across the state and up into Virginia; it was warm and sunny, just the right amount of music and chatter and spring breeze. I sat in the back while the boys up front talked about bands and chord progressions and the structure of sound. I dozed off a few times, wrote some poetry in my school books, and planned my third paper for a class. Once in Norfolk, we wandered around the streets bathed in bluish twilight; the city itself was like a tiny Baltimore or DC, different than Roanoke in its attempt to be metropolitan, northern, something. Our spot in the venue was one of the furthest back I’ve been in a while; I’ve certainly been spoiled by the front row (Iron & Wine, Avett Brothers, PopFest). The show was different than any other I’ve been to — the band introduced themselves first, played 8 consecutive songs, said goodbye without an encore, and still took an hour and a half. Their songs are epic instrumentals that really bank on the crescendo; I always get the feeling I’m floating through space when I hear them. Z. and I danced to our song, slow and steady, and I realized just how much of a lucky girl I am.

After Norfolk, at around 1AM, we headed to VA Beach to get some pizza and survey the surroundings, D. and I never having spent time there. Z. played tour guide to the mess of clubs and sea-side resorts, late night neon pizzerias,  the lamp posts with the “NO CURSING” signs. Apparently it’s a fine-able offense.

I fell asleep soon after that, and woke up once in a gas station with a particularly creepy Radiohead song blasting, and then later as we pulled into Z.’s mom’s driveway in Kill Devil Hills, NC at about 4am. We fell into bed immediately.

Saturday: We woke up at noon and had lunch with Z’s mom, who is one of my absolute favorite people on this earth. Z. and D. debated indie ethics, whether they’d sell hypothetical songs to Hummer or Walmart-esque corporations. After lunch we went to the beach on Pea Island and sloshed through the surf in our jeans and bare feet. The wind was ridiculously strong and created torrents of sand. I collected a few shells (including a mostly-formed conch!) and chased seagulls. After that we packed up to leave. I love that I now have a connection the the outer banks; in a few weeks we’ll go back to see Z’s friends get married and I’ll be excited to spend an extended trip there, swim and take in the landscape.

We left by way of Manteo, a scenic route to Raleigh. We arrived at D’s parents’ house at around 9 or 10, and headed out to survey the scene at around midnight. We hung out with a bunch of D’s friends, heading from apartment to apartment. It was kind of like a Hold Steady song, only marginally less “fucked-up.” There was a jam session, two guitars and a cello. I fell asleep at around 2AM on Z’s lap right after he played me a few Iron & Wine and NMH songs on his new (old) guitar. I woke up to a particularly good episode of the Office. Then we headed back home to sleep.

Sunday: Z. and I awoke around noon, talked for awhile in bed, then headed downstairs for breakfast. D’s evil satan cat (and I usually LOVE cats) lurked like a shark and attempted to kill us on a few occasions. We ate the baked goods Z’s mom baked for us (omg BEST FOOD EVER) and waited for D to wake up. When he finally did, we all had a sort of upgraded version of breakfast, then wound up leaving Raleigh at about 3. We toured the nearby industrial city Durham, then took the long way back home to Boone. I slept alot in the car, waking up for sunsets and the oil fields near Winston-Salem; the Wachovia building nick-named the Phallus Palace. I got sick along 421, sick of days and days of fast food.

Once back to Boone I packed my bags quickly and departed, ending the weekend with the usual tears and melodramatic goodbyes. Only this many more days until he moves to Roanoke. Only this many more days until I visit again. It’s all this big countdown.

But the weekend was beautiful, a collection of warm drives and bad jokes, new music, old stories. I finally feel at home these days, everywhere else but this tiny little campus.

But hey, I’ll have a thesis next year

Another semi-eventful weekend has passed by. There are four or so weeks left in the semester. Every day I feel a little more like a completely different person than the person last fall, all giddy to be moving into my big old room in far east.

I left dinner tonight with a mild smirk on my face, with a biting, “I’m a beast!”

We (Z. and I) wandered around the Shenandoah rd. factories, took pictures of old cars and rusty metal. It’s weird doing old things with new people. I grew up taking long drives with my dad into farm country where people would leave their 1950s chrome-edged restoration projects by the side of the road, and we’d take pictures with his behemoth 1st generation digital camera.

I stood up for myself in a new way this evening, I feel as though I say something like this every night, but it’s fun to recount what small victories I make these days. I spent last night mutually bitching with an acquaintance over the injustices of the world, how Hollins is often like a middle-school and people need to grow up sometimes.

I wish that I could say it all to them, though it now remains as unfinished letters in this journal. I’d like to say that “you didn’t win,” and “I know all about how you operate (because I have more friends than you think),” — mostly I wish that I could say that “I am happy where I am, and people can discern between that and people with bitter vendettas.”

I took the photo of Z. in the fading light at Mill Mountain; I’ve spent a few nights there now recounting what used to be a nightly ritual. Again, it comes down to old traditions with new people, and how it feels like upgrading from the beta to the new version.

Every time I visit home it becomes harder to leave.

There are new places to visit, new sights, new plans made (the visionary arts museum, the antique stores in Ellicott City, the museum of industry, education classes at ccbc.)

And all these different lives I could have lived.

We ventured to St. John’s in the Baltimore twilight, past the mural of alligators and the rows and rows of red brick townhouses.

I have a semi-complicated past with religion; c. age eleven, my Sunday afternoons were wrenched from me in order to go to my then best-friend’s family’s church, a one time endeavor turned weekly. And that’s what I associated church with, the loss of sunny Sunday afternoons. I hated church like most children do in the sense that I heard the same stories over and over, the sermon’s were painfully long, and I didn’t like the pastor at the time. We started attending right around the time a famously amazing pastor was leaving the congregation; he took with him 80% of the regular attendees. The next pastor I can only define as a person who believed that you didn’t have to tip servers at buffet restaurants, and would take communion before, not with, the rest of the congregation. When he was finally transferred to another congregation, the parsonage was left a ratty mess of water damage and peeling wallpaper, as well as the fact that a few of our churches’ computers mysteriously left with him.

After that we had an amazing, amazing pastor who almost made me glad to go every Sunday. His wife was like a mentor to me at that point, and he had a very good attitude towards including the children (or at that point, mostly teenagers) in church activities. Then, he left too. He was only a part-time pastor at that church, and felt pulled towards other directions. I was devastated to have such influential characters in my life be taken away from me; they were what made my church going at least bearable.

After that was Ann Gordon, now Drew Phoenix, which is how my family started going to St. John’s. I stopped going to church at this point, citing my need to consider other religious paths.

Enough religion background, all I mean to say is that I feel conflicted in going to St. John’s because, well, even though they (accurately) define themselves by the saying, “This ain’t your daddy’s church,” it’s United Methodist and I’m not. I mean, somewhere it’s recorded that at age 13 I was confirmed a United Methodist; I stood infront of a congregation of family and friends and declared Jesus Christ as my savior. It’s not necessarily what I believe anymore. Is there a confirmation procedure for, “I changed my mind?” Life is too short, I think, to declare any one answer right and stop searching for a more definite conclusion. That’s my way of seeing things.

Religion is one of those topics that you should stay away from if you’re not looking for a fight, so I disclaimer all of this by saying I don’t want to say my beliefs are right (that is to say “right” being both in terms of a universal truth, or right for any one person.) My beliefs work for me, and that’s all really matters.

So this is all a round-about way of getting back to my main point, that I love attending St. John’s when I’m home, even though I don’t sing the hymns or say the prayers.

Last night’s service was interesting though, a meditation based on the ancient Ukrainian art of Pysanka .

I can assure you, our attempts were not nearly as delicate as the samples the woman who taught us brought in. She had been doing this for years.

The process is meditative in that you take a tiny tool, a kystka, or a tiny copper funnel wrapped around pencil-like wood, and heat it up over a flame. Once it’s heated, you dip it into a wedge of beeswax, and draw the wax on the hollowed egg shell. The dyeing process was what confused me a little bit in that it is layers of colors, and I can’t think that far ahead. Each part you block off with wax is what stays the last color you dyed it. Thus, the first wax design you draw onto it will be white, then you dye it the lightest color that you are going to use. You then block off what is going to stay that light color, and dye it the next darkest color. This goes on until you are done with the design. To reveal the design you’ve created, you hold your shell over the flame and let the wax melt off each layer.

This is the one I made. A noble first attempt, I think. (Spoilers to whom this is being given to, I guess )

This is me holding mom’s up to the candle, and heavily abusing the macro feature (my new love.)

All in all, squinting in the fading twilight over wax, shells, copper and candle-light, it was spiritual. I regret not attending St. John’s more, not appreciating the times I have visited more.

And I regret even more my lack of pull in my spiritual life. I am contented to believe that everyone is right in their own way, but not feel a certain way myself.

Oh well.

Tonight I went out with mom, bought a new magazine: Bust, because it featured some of the cutest crafty ads, a feature on Flight of the Conchords, New Zealand’s Fourth Most Popular Folk Parody (if you haven’t seen any of their stuff, I recommend If You’re Into It as a perfect introduction — the part with the maraca never fails to make me giggle,) and a brand of friendly, amicable feminism that I can get into. It’s the first magazine I’ve seen in a while that I’ve honestly thought about subscribing to. We went to a delicious sushi restaurant and had mom-daughter bonding. It’s been a nice day; unfortunately this was one of the last days of my break, and the first of my family’s. I didn’t get to spend much time with them.

And that’s been spring break so far. (Somewhat) more to come, I guess. We’re having a dinner party tomorrow night to celebrate our family (and friends of family’s) propensity to take artistic photos, complete with a multimedia slideshow. Then, Sunday, after I get pictures of my thyroid taken (fun fun) we’re having a sort of Bon Voyage lunch at my grandmother’s house before I take the long drive back to Roanoke.

Here’s a picture of my cat Chloe, and my car, for good measure.

I picked up E. and (his girlfriend) J. at the Dunkin Donuts. They came bearing gifts of left-over donuts and a half eaten pizza from Chef Paolino’s (one of the best pizza places in the universe.)

We parked at the base of a large hill and walked up the steep slope to the remains of hell house first. I thought this would be nice for a few shots in the ‘perfect-light’ (that turned quickly into a blown-out overcast light) because E. was the tour guide for the boyfriend and I on both of our first times seeing the ruins.

Hell House is a Catonsville landmark, though I found in visiting the high-school Friday to read poetry, this new generation knows little about it. It was torn down while I was still in high-school due to vandalism, a hasty job that the county didn’t bother cleaning up. Hell House now is a pile of bricks, St. Mary’s Seminary in Ellicott City, MD.

There are tunnels beneath the mound of bricks that no one dares go in.

The story I always heard was that a priest went nuts and hanged a bunch of students in a pentagram, then burned the place down. The story’s been proven fake, but the eerie quality of the whole place still remains.

E. is a native to these hills; he points out steep cliffs and train-tunnels that he has conquered on mid-summer afternoons with daring friends and that sense of teenage immortality.

We moved on to a small spot I liked, the courtyard of the Ellicott City courthouse where I took pictures of E. last January. He’s just recently warmed up to the ideas of being photographed, though you’ll note in most he barely faces the camera; he’ll go to great lengths to hide his face.

The sun was starting to go down.

E. and J. gossip about friends, about break ups, about teachers.

Grandma is repairing his favorite hoodie right now, one he bought from the little hippie store on Frederick Rd. He tore the seam of it while jumping the fence at the Patapsco Female Institute (another ‘haunted’ Catonsville landmark.) J. reminds him that she never approved of that idea to begin with.

The sun was almost gone now. E. wanted to show us his collection of ‘cell phone pictures of eyes with the flash turned on.’

This was the last picture I took of him. We dropped J. off and came home to dinner.

Again I played with the camera on my drive home yesterday; a five hour drive with snow storms and impatient eighteen-wheelers tailing me. Snow snow snow, so of course there was no school in Baltimore today which meant conspicuous amounts of Wii and sleep. We played a rousing game of scrabble (mom, brother, and I) where I came in second with a formidable score in the early 200’s. I spent the rest of the day moving from soft surface to soft surface, reading livejournals and contemplating writing of constructive merit. The latter somehow got eternally pushed down the priority scale until I wound up here at 10:45 wondering whether I should maybe get up to speed on this documenting thing. I have this whole idea for a ‘day in my life’ picture post tomorrow, granted this will only work if the weather agrees with me. Today everything was frozen under thick layers of ice.

Did you know The Format broke up? If you didn’t know the band, I suggest you find yourself a copy of their album Dog Problems, if not only to listen to the song Oceans, a perfect example of flawless pop. Other bands I would suggest at the moment for lack of anything better to do would be: Six Parts Seven (the subject line of this post is a song of theirs I love), and Alaska in Winter (think Beirut, only with a little less old-world theatrics). Those are two I’ve been listening to on and off recently; I recommend highly the song “Afternoon Bed” of the former band. That’s the kind of music that makes me want to write poetry.

I feel like I’m short-shrift-ing the journal today if I don’t bring the word count up a little bit more, but to be honest the day was just this stark and boring. Yesterday was tiring, classes and then a five hour drive. Today, sleep and lazing. Tomorrow? More of the same.

I love being in Baltimore.

Uncharacteristically, I am out of things to say at the moment (a possible side effect of feeling obligated to write something.) I think I’ll focus on my new fascination with my digital camera. I never knew what the little ‘flower’ setting on my camera was (I subscribe to the “manuals are for losers” school of thought) until I ran across a mini explanation of the function on lifehacker. Macro setting! I never knew my little fuji digital camera, one I thought to be on the lower end of the spectrum, could produce such cool effects.

My faithful subject displays a particularly ‘un-phased’ expression at our Panera breakfast. I also took many pictures of the styrofoam cup and the receipt, but no one really needs to know how much I paid for my chai latte.

I don’t know much about developing photos the old school way with chemicals and dark rooms, that’s why I always hesitate to say I’m anything but average with photography. It’s something I love to do, something if I had loads of money and free time I’d invest in some better equipment and the introductory knowledge. I am my father’s daughter when it comes to photography; we both love the line structure and geometry of photographs, can appreciate color in image just as much black and white (I scoffed at a former roommate who insisted that black and white developing makes everything so much more dramatic.) To be honest, I think that it takes a lot more talent to make a color-image dramatic.

The first j-term class I took at Hollins was mostly a mistake on my part; while I got to sit in a stuffy room for two hours and listen to students wax poetic about what they thought about the history of photography, my then best friend got to go take pictures in her class with an old Holga camera. The one thing I did get out of my class though was an appreciation for the photographer Nan Goldin.

She was famous for her candid photography, taking photos of friends and family doing mundane things. I think the beauty in her photography lies in its lack of show; the fact that it isn’t a set up of elaborate lighting and ridiculous posed characters. Not to say that there isn’t merit in posed photography, I’m just not a huge fan. There is so much to the moment of a candid photograph.