racing mind

Northern Constellations

What do you do when it's after one in the morning and you're mind's racing so much that you can't sleep?

Racing Racing Racing I have to edit pictures x 4 work out a budget take magazine over to featured artist assign photo series to photographers i know find photographers i know edit thesis email thesis chair back fix fritzing computer write on europe blog again oops finish laundry register car take in drycleaning submit some essays photograph the cover image ah ah ah and all the while, not writing enough, not reading enough, not photographing enough, and never ever flossing enough.

Arrrrrrgh.

[pause]

I think of London, of her cobblestone streets under my shoesoles and of the clipclop of the morning horse guards past my Queen's Gate window.

a london tea party

what with the warm weather and what with it being march (aka: when i started preparing for my summer abroad last year) i've been missing london quite a bit.  i've been meaning to make this video for months now, and finally, during a five hour layover in the denver airport, i had the chance.

one afternoon in london, four of us went to hyde park because we had nothing else pressing to do...wait, that's not true.  we had a play to read by seven o'clock that evening.  none of us had read it yet.  so we went to the park to read...  of course very little of that ended up happening.  hyde park is a place so beautiful it can swallow up whole afternoons.  we passed the hours under a big tree.  

i read maybe two lines of the play that afternoon.  i don't even remember which play it was, but i do still remember the color of the grass and the smell of the dirt when i laid my face down and the rustle of the wind and the birds in the trees.

this video isn't about that afternoon, but it is about kensington gardens.  that park is one of my favorite places in the world.

(a note to preston: sorry the video thumbnail is your face.  i'm not sure if this will bug you or what but it won't let me change it sooo.....deal with it?  as for you patrick, sorry the thumbnail of your face is blurry.  i'm sure if you had it your way, you'd be in all your full, focused glory.)

goodnight, sweet london. or, in other words, this is not the end.

somehow the last words always take so long to write.

so while i process this beautiful experience i've had

and learn what words i want to say,

here is our last night at big ben.

big ben with best friends.

awwww.

and this morning it rained and rained.  yes, she is sad we are leaving her too.

don't cry, pretty city.  i'll be back real soon.

right as soon as i've met the rest of europe.

another night, another reason to go to big ben

why is it that lately all i care about is how often i can get myself next to this clock?

want to see something cool i just noticed?  if you look careful amidst the two wraps of my scarf, you can see one little bird.  that is sweet.  sweet in the tender way, not the surfer way.

tonight we told secrets.
i will share mine
because they are mine
to share.

1.  until last summer i did not know how to cartwheel.
2.  i have never been able to rollerblade.  not actually sure if i've ever tried.
3.  aaaaand i've never been skiing.

round two:
4.  i have world-class stalking skillz.  not in the sense that i stalk people on the streets, but in the CIA sense.  give me two facts about a person and i can find them for you.  (welcome to the interconnected world we live in huh.)  but seriously.  once i found a boy on facebook knowing only that he served a mission in thailand.  not even his name.  found it though.  that was kind of awesome.

when ben struck 11
(this was before the secret-
telling)
i told
preston & amberly
(but mostly preston because he wouldn't stop
talking)
to shhhhh
so we could hear all 11
bangarangs of that big ben.

we stood close
because the wind off the river
was cold
(this was before the secret-
telling)
(but after the
bangaranging)

and then i imagined myself
thousands of miles away
at utah-home
remembering london
and coming back
coming back to this
perfect moment }
beneath big ben
above the whispering thames
holding the night in my imagination
printing and printing big ben's green lights and spikes
into my mind

and the way the stone is yellow against the navy night

the way it carries me away

so i can feel it then
thousands of miles away
when this clock
i love so much
has become only a wispy
memory.

to the irony of songs in your head

song [in the head] of the day:  "lost in my mind" by the head and the heart.  give it a listen.





today was rather productive.  "rather" because i'm in england and they use words like such as, and "productive" because i shopped myself ready for the adventure that is soon to ensue.


originally i planned to backpack without makeup, without a care to my hair (braid everyday), and with a few plain white v-neck tees.  if i'm going to do this thing with one school-sized backpack, i'm going to have to cut back.


and then i found CUP OF JO's pages on cute and low-maintenance hairstyles.


PAUSE: i was listening to noah and the whale, and then someone in the room put on different music louder and suddenly i can't concentrate.  huh.  maybe my writing-self knows what music it needs.......until then, i shall write like a windup monkey doll.


anyways, CUP OF JO has lovely hairstyles.  and thus i decided that my hair might as well be cute whilst backpacking.


and that's how it started.


"it" being the sudden succession of thoughts relating to the fact that i am going to be at the eiffel tower and at cafes in rome and watching bullfights, and for goodness sake, if a girl's going to do europe, she probably should...you know, wear skirts and red lipstick everyday.


so we have that to look forward to for the next few weeks.  (smile of ladylike satisfaction)


plus, skirts are way more comfy than shorts.


so, back to today being rather productive:  i found myself some red lipstick and wore it all day and count it the best purchase i've made here.  (i also bought a flash drive & bandaids & earplugs & walking shoes & socks & a bar of soap today.)


now the real story: riding the tube back from said productive-day, i was so busy singing "lost in my mind" in my head and thinking about all the ways i shall do my hair and wear my red lipstick while walking through the tuileries that i missed my tube stop.  completely and totally missed it, i was so lost in my mind singing "lost in my mind" in my mind.  yes.  moments like this happen to me.  i laughed a lot.  then walked away quickly because there was a strange man with an umbrella who i thought might be following me.  (he wasn't, but sometimes a little imagined danger is good for getting a mind drifting to things parisian to stick to the task at hand: namely, getting off the tube in the right places.)


in other news, tonight i went to "pygmalion" at garrick theatre with the program.  starring rupert everett.

the best part of the production were these words, which i feel are rather apropos to aforementioned red lipstick:  
I should never have known how ladies and gentlemen really behaved, if it hadn't been for Colonel Pickering. He always showed what he thought and felt about me as if I were something better than a common flower girl. You see, Mrs. Higgins, apart from the things one can pick up, the difference between a lady and a flower girl is not how she behaves, but how she is treated. I shall always be a common flower girl to Professor Higgins, because he always treats me like a common flower girl, and always will. But I know that I shall always be a lady to Colonel Pickering, because he always treats me like a lady, and always will.  (Eliza Doolittle) 

and while we're on the topic of words of the day, here are a few more:

paraphrase of the day:

"dating isn't as much fun and games as it used to be cause we are playing for keeps.  i used to be playing for fun and hoping it would turn into keeps.  now I play for keeps and hope it gets fun."  

(name withheld to protect the lives of the innocent)

song title of the day:

"every teardrop is a waterfall" 

(coldplay's new single!)

leave it to coldplay to write a title like that.

lord of the rings quote of the day:

Do you remember the Shire, Mr. Frodo? It'll be spring soon. And the orchards will be in blossom. And the birds will be nesting in the hazel thicket. And they'll be sowing the summer barley in the lower fields... and eating the first of the strawberries with cream. Do you remember the taste of strawberries? 

sam to frodo.  this is what home feels like to me.  lucky, i know.

and then tonight i went to westminster bridge again, to listen to the river.

birthday videotape

waking up to balloons and birthday banners from my room to the hall to the bathroom and a breakfast of omelets (current fav), strawberries, chocolate muffins and orange juice, all brought about by andrea.  

in a special breakfast nook.

there couldn't have been a more lovely way to start the day.

birthday suit

and then a trip to portobello 

where i met bella.

bella who sells buttons

--1930's buttons--

followed by tea at the orangery...

  

 

and feeding the swans at kensington gardens.

peonies from amber

dinner at nandos (mango lime chicken and grilled corn on the cob?  yes please.)

and an evening stroll through hyde park

followed by pizookie

today has been the most perfect day i've ever seen.

birthday wishes

tonight, on this the eve before my 25th, i wish for

rainbows.  obviously.

an orchard

a field of poppies

a carousel

a room of colorful birds

cuddling in blankets and watching lord of the rings and pillsbury cinnamon rolls

someone to let me drive their ice cream truck for a day or two

a bed & breakfast to run for a few years

marcus mumford to fall in love with me

a mustache mug

that wearing fake mustaches could be an acceptable accessory some days

and already, before it's even technically my birthday, three happy things have happened:

1) a package from home covered in stickers that say things like "way to go!" and "super kid!"  thanks for loving me, family.  (no, i haven't opened it yet.)

2) having someone tell me that they like my photo-graphees because "even the pictures without people in them feel like they have people in them."  (thank you, for making my night, sweet friend.)

3) chelsea, liz, camille, andrea, holly, amberly, and cami bursting into the kitchen upon whose counter i was sitting and prancing around the island singing disney's happy birthday to me...  for three minutes.  i haven't laughed that hard in months.

for mom and dad and all those nights we spent watching star trek when i was a child

this is me and patrick stewart, after his performance in "merchant of venice" in stratford-upon-avon tonight.

he had a hard time signing my playbill because i didn't have anything hard behind it.  he apologized that the signature "isn't very good."

i said thank you.  he said you're welcome.

and look at that classy hat he's wearing.  and oh, is that a smile under that hat?  i think it is.

thanks jean-luc.

of things green & wicked.

as it turns out, i'm obsessed with spinach and tomatoes and cucumbers and BRIEEEEE on a toasted bagel.

three of the things on that list are apparently killing people in other parts of europe.  the "killer cucumber" epidemic.  look it up.  wicked, i know.

oh, and speaking of wicked, you know what the best part of having accidentally not reserved tickets to the show you were supposed to go to tonight (flarepath, in case you were wondering) is?  it's running to the piccadilly circus tube stop, taking the piccadilly to green park, realizing that the victoria line is closed for the bank holiday that is today, running to the jubilee line, transferring to the district at westminster, finally running out of the tube station, dodging people with our primark bags of lovely and cheap clothing, and then getting FOURTH ROW TICKETS TO WICKED.  two minutes before the show starts.

in case you missed that through all the explanations of how we ran across LONDON to get to the show on time, i got FOURTH ROW TICKETS!

i completely and totally loved the show.  everyone says, "it's so amazing, you have to see it, the costumes are amazing and the story is so good and when she flies away it's breathtaking, blahblahblah."  and i'm thinking, "yeah right, it's probably just another musical with a cheesy story line and catchy tunes and i highly doubt i would be impressed."  

au contraire my friend.  this is what my face looked like for...well...pretty much the entire show:

yep.  i was wholly won over.  the costuming is amazing.  the story is so good.  and holy cow when she flies away?!  i was completely entranced.  

not only were the theatrics unbelievable (truly, though.), but there were some important lines in there too.  i like it when i get meat with my potatoes.  and that's what this show is.  one favorite line was this:

"there are precious few at ease with moral ambiguities so we act as though they don't exist." 

which reminds me of these:

"Perhaps all the dragons in our lives are princesses who are only waiting to see us act, just once, with beauty and courage. Perhaps everything that frightens us is, in its deepest essence, something helpless that wants our love."

(Rilke, poet)

"Our minds are tempted by simple dichotomies, yet our lives are rainbows.  The enemy is really a friend or can be turned into an ally, or is hungry and we can feed them."

(Kathleen Ragan, in her delightful book "Outfoxing Fear."  Really though, this book is a delight.)

so now i'm off to bed, to dream of unadulterated loathing, popularity, and all things green and wicked.

putting off actual blogging

ooookay, this is going on my birthday list.

via

on books and bicycles: {preview}

you and i were members of the best team in baseball

{title for this post from ozma's "baseball"}

here's the thing.

angels in the outfield.  can we talk about it for a minute?

remember the crazy publicity guy?

remember jp?

remember how everything good about the 90s is contained within this one film?

oh, and by the way, remember this part?

it's matthew mcconaughey.  in case you had forgotten he was in that / didn't realize when you were 10 years old who matthew mcconaughey was.

lately all i want to do is talk about this movie.  it comes up at least once a day.

and this has got to be the greatest picture of joseph gordon-levitt in existence.

i mean, we girls grew up on joseph gordon-levitt and matthew mcconaghey.  playing baseball no less!  come on.  we were doomed from the get-go.

dear grocers of london,

dear grocers of london,

why don't you refrigerate your eggs?

puzzled,
...
andslightlyworriedaboutgettingsalmonilla, ecoli, or another bad-egg disease,
carolyn

inundated with images | day in pictures

today has been an image-heavy day.  so it's only appropriate that the associated blog post would be the same.

we started at the national gallery of art, which houses such beauties as these:

 

{"night on the boulevard montmartre" by pissarro}

{van gogh's "a wheatfield with cypresses"}

{renoir's "gladioli in a vase".   renoir who said, "i just let my mind rest when i paint flowers."  

thank you pierre-auguste.}

 

{a personal style fav, "lake keitele" by gallen-kallela}

 

{and the day's winner: seurat.  i'm mesmerized by his colors.  in addition to learning how to make popup books this summer, i want to venture into pointilism too.}

after only finishing half of the national gallery, we had to give our over-stimulated brains a break, so we wandered through trafalgar square,

and grabbed lunch at pret-a-manger and ate it in st. james park.  that park is right out of this movie:

{okay, the park here is actually regent's, which i haven't made it to yet, but st. james felt the same}

per the show we saw last night ("silence"), i closed my eyes after lunch, on a park bench, and listened for a while.  i remembered how at the ranch once, we were out in the canyons, and mom asked us to sit in quiet and see what we could hear.  spencer loved that.  and then i thought why is it that sight is our primary sense?  we rely on it for all our information.  why can't hearing be that sense--the one through which we construct the world and perceive ourselves?  what if how beautiful someone was was based on the noises they made rather than the shape of their face?  beauty could be based on the texture of their voice, their footfall (i come from a long line of heel-walkers...so i'd fail this one), or on how they breathe.  we pay attention to the tiniest details of sight, down to the pores on someone's face, so why shouldn't how someone breathes be a factor in how we understand them?  hence i'm trying to relearn the world through hearing.  just in case i ever go blind.  (which reminds me of this day...apparently i am subconsciously concerned about going blind!)

after lunch we walked across the horse guards parade enroute to the tate modern:

and we found large green turf furniture by the national theatre:

walked past construction sites

and found ourselves some modern art!

here's the thing.  i love modern art.  loooooooove.  i'm like a little girl on christmas morning when i walk into modern art exhibits.

this was a favorite at the tate modern today: jenny holzer's blue purple tint.  aphorisms scrolled and scrolled up the message boards.  kind of felt like ticker tape, or like when you first start to read and by the time you've figure out what the fourth word in the sentence says, you've forgotten what the first word was and hence have no idea what the point was.  kind of like what i imagine losing your mind to old age would be like.

lines i loved:
giving free rein to your emotions is an honest way to live
go all out in romance and let the chips fall where they may
if you have many desires your life will be interesting

you may read all of them here

and then there was the guerrilla girls exhibit, all about how women artists need better representation.  this was too good not to post.

we also saw some oldenburg (who is a favorite)

and lichtenstein,

whose "house" in the sculpture garden in dc i spent a good hour puzzling over.

and lastly, the red fabric staircase from heaven.  the whole thing is made out of fabric.  at this point, my brain was pretty frazzled...which i think amounted to me enjoying this way more than i should have.

the last piece was saw in the tate modern was a video of a man kicking a metal bucket through the streets at night.  i couldn't stop giggling (again, frazzled brain)...but seriously?  a man kicking a bucket?

modern art, i love you.

and then home sweet home.

(home, but only after GELATO of course, which today was ferrero rocher and raspberry.  the raspberry was like i was eating real raspberries.  real raspberries!)