Wednesday, March 28, 2007
Random Shots
Locations: Granville and Newark, Ohio
Wednesday, March 21, 2007
i don't like spending money
I just bought a new camera......I'm excited...
.......and I think I'm going to vomit.
kthnx.
Monday, March 12, 2007
procrastination station
Photoshop is a great way to procrastinate finals...
I've always spent my time on the REALLY important things...
And now back to finals ;)
Thursday, March 8, 2007
Diversion...
...is the main reason behind this entry.My finals are officially in full swing and I'm waiting my last class of the quarter! Time flies when you're...reading constantly and living a hermit-esque existence. Anyway, yesterday was my final in American Lit 1918-Present, I just turned in my Poetry Portfolio for my workshop course, and now I'm (not) working on my take-home exam for American Lit -1865. I've barely considered my term paper for Postmodern, Generation X, and American Minimalism seminar course (nor it's exam) and Astronomy has too fallen by the wayside. On the upside...I have added a handful of books to my Amazon wishlist (priorities people, you have to have priorities!)
My realization for the day:
Writing is weird. Editing is worse.
I feel like I've almost always been writing...which is nearly true. I've been involved in some kind of creative or academic writing since I was 9 years old. It's just one of those things that came to me through my fascination with books and a wonderful, life-changing teacher--Ms. Woolard. It's hard to say whether I would have ever fallen in love with words if I had been placed in another class in elementary school. Oh course I, like anyone else I'm sure, would like to believe that my drive and passion is something that has come completely from my heart, but face it--I would have never spent hours crouching on a log in the woods deciding what color the breeze felt like on my face as a 9 year old (a task I remember vividly).
At the end of that year, she gave us final comments in our poetry notebooks (Which I have on my bookshelf in my apartment and has moved with me ever since). In a string of yellow post-its she told me she thought I had talent, and that she thought I had great potential as an author or poet. Maybe she wrote that in everyone's notebook. Maybe she has spent the year reading snip-its of verse of a young girl trying to find ground to stand on and not feel quite so lost in herself. I like to think she meant it. I like to think she remembers writing it.
And I think she does...
I was working in an ice cream parlor again the summer following my senior year and lo and behold, she came through the line on my shift. She recognized me. A woman who sees so many kids in her classes year after year...saw me after 9 years. After 9 years of students, when I told her I was going to college her instant response was: "For English, right?" I don't think I could describe the way her face dropped when I told her "No, science...wildlife and conservation biology". Her ice cream craving turned into a prophetic visit...she reminded me that writing has been a part of me for so long, and that there is still a bit of the 9 year old searching for the right color in the breeze.
It's my plan once I graduate to compile a grouping of my favorite poems/papers and send them to her. Thank her. And tell her I'm no good at science.
If
If freckles were lovely, and day was night,
And measles were nice and a lie wern’t a lie,
Life would be delight,—
But things couldn’t go right
For in such a sad plight
I wouldn’t be I.
If earth was heaven and now was hence,
And past was present, and false was true,
There might be some sense
But I’d be in suspense
For on such a pretense
You wouldn’t be you.
If fear was plucky, and globes were square,
And dirt was cleanly and tears were glee
Things would seem fair,—
Yet they’d all despair,
For if here was there
We wouldn’t be we.
-e.e cummings
"Sky through museum ceiling".
Personal Photograph by Natalie Rogers.Tuesday, March 6, 2007
Sanity? Where?
So, this quarter has been driving me nuts. No, not peanuts. Not the politely salted mixed nuts next to the ice bucket that no one touches during Christmas parties. No, no--I'm talking impossible walnuts in the shell, setting next to a decorative nutcracker. There is just no way--not without breaking said decoration.It's the trouble with studying something you really love. Studying something you love, making it work...you start to hate it. The last thing I want is for reading and writing to be things I don't do for myself because I've had to do them for other people. I don't want that passion taken away from me. It's frustrating because the more I learn about literature, the more I seem to understand it...the less important it starts to be. Literature is a game, a crafted fabrication by paid liars.
Upper division literature courses have had me picking through the essays of the great thinkers of other times....times in France where certain folks had the luxury of doing nothing but making decisions (confusing, complex, labyrinth-type concepts) while consuming copious amounts of opium and absinthe. Then you take those ideas and apply them to everything--every work, every thought, every word, every swoop and dot of punctuation. It even works if said word or swoop is absent...because of course if it's absent, that means something too.
In attempt to reclaim my love of reading, I ordered some books from amazon at the beginning of the quarter.
The Unabridged Journals of Sylvia Plath (a sunshiny, page-turner if ever there was one! har har)...which I have wanted for a while.
And...Safekeeping: Some True Stories From a Lifeby Abigail Thomas.
Thank you Abigail Thomas for my sanity. The book is made up of a series very short (and very short) stories from her life. Plain and simple. It's like sitting down with one of your parents really interesting friends and having one of those talks that makes you remember why it's nice to talk to people in the first place.
I want to share one of them with you (one which just reminded me there is life outside of finals and French philosophers).
An Elegant Theory
She and the kids were eating at the Moon Palace, the
Chinese restaurant on 112th and Broadway where physi-
cists from Columbia University used to have their feasts
and scratch their theories on the backs of napkins and
matchbooks. Her daughter looked up from her moo-shu
vegetables and with her chopsticks indicated a man whose
iron-colored hair stuck up five inches from his head like
a cloud of wires. "Too much science," she said, a theory
elegant in its simplicity.
Thomas, Abigail. Safekeeping: Some True Stories From a Life.
Anchor Books, New York: 2000. p.99
In the end they're all just stories.
"Breathe". Personal Photograph by Natalie Rogers.June 2004.
Saturday, March 3, 2007
late nights with photoshop....
Green Door (Trier, Germany)
Czech Contemplation (Prague)
Krimmler Falls (Salzburg)
John Lennon Wall (Prague)Friday, March 2, 2007
screaming winds...
...kept me awake last night.I'm a bit zapped at the moment...so I'll just share some mediaz for your entertainment!
The Super Furry Animals- The Man Don't Give Fuck
Photos
Gelati in Trieste
Crosswalk in Prague
Karl Marx's Manuscript (Trier, Germany)
View Hiking in Salzburg
[editor's note: Pigskin's Garden Burgers are to Natalie as
Salt-N-Pepa is to 'Yo MTV Raps]
Salt-N-Pepa is to 'Yo MTV Raps]
I'm out like the creepy chick on AI !
Thursday, March 1, 2007
sunshine on my shoulders
This past weekend I had a little cabin fever, put away my books and drove out to Lake Hope with my camera to squish around in the mud. Here's the pixel-proofCheers!
