Nick Bantock ruined my life

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Originally uploaded by Rachel Ariel.

A proposal:

There are dozens of interesting people I have encountered through the internet. Mostly I quietly observe their doings, their art, whatever form it takes. I know about them what I can gather from what they decide is important.

A thought.

All of these people create, in some way or another. They all put something into the world that was not there before, they create beauty, or ugliness, or a new way of looking at things, or a new way of thinking about things.

And they are all very busy doing it. Some work full time, some are students. I', constantly running into a problem... there are simply not enough hours.

And sometimes you get tired. Sometimes you feel like no one is paying attention, that no one would notice if you stopped doing what you're doing. If you just went to work to get the money to pay the rent, and came home and watched tv. And no one would notice if the small things that you used to send out into the world simply stopped coming.

I want to create a community of people who would notice. People you don't know other than through the abstract movings of the internet. I want to take the concepts that exist on the internet and create something tactile, something real in the world. Because when I hear the music you've created, it isnt really your music, it's a series of 000111000011101 that translate into your music. likewise your pictures arent your pictures, your art is not your art, it is all just a sequence of binary code which represent these things that we do.

And so I propose a community of art by mail. You input your address, and you chose an address. Don't chose a name you know, chose a name you don't know. Write a letter, make a mix, glue a whole bunch of stuff to a shoe, and send it out.

Reclaim the romance of getting something that isn't a bill in the mail.

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Originally uploaded by Rachel Ariel.

The time: Tuesday night
The place: some bar on Colfax
My state of inebriation: Not quite as drunk as I let myself feel.

So there I was, out with two people I barely know. Strangely, one of them I have known for over ten years, and yet... I barely know him. I think I may have scared him some, when I off handedly mentioned the clothes that he used to wear in middle school. I suppose that if someone I hadn't seen in five years turned to me and listed the clothes that I wore ten years ago I too might have been slightly... curious (if not downright alarmed).

It got me thinking about the ways we remember things. I remember his clothes, in a general sort of way (X Files tee shirt and a green trench coat, not anything more or less than that). I remember that that was the time my friend Rico wore a lot of tie-dyed Star Wars themed tee shirts. I remember that there was a stoner girl on my bus who had a pair of corduroy pants she always wore, to the point that the cords were actually worn down in the knee. I remember there was a kid I would always see on my way to wood shop who had a Marilyn Manson shirt he would always wear.

Strangely... I don't really remember what I was wearing at that point. I assume it was my fairly standard jeans and over-sized teeshirt. It was before I knew really anything about music, so i couldn't tell you what the tee shirts were (since they wouldn't have been concert/ band shirts yet). I remember that some kid who sat next to me in the gym line said something along the lines of "so you finally got *real* shoes" when I bought a pair of suede low top converse soccer style shoes. for all i know those may actually be in my closet at my moms.

i guess what i wonder is... why do we remember what we remember? why do certain people stick out in my mind more than others? This person I was at the bar with the other night... He and I were never really friends at all... I don't know if we're actually friends yet. He mentions people, and I know the names. I know we were more than acquaintances in high school. But I haven't given these people more than a passing thought in the last five years. Except for the ones I have. The ones I was never quite brave enough to try and talk to in high school. The ones I admired from afar... for whatever reason. Their art, their intelligence, their ability to captivate my friends, their courage, their beauty.

I don't know if I was ever quiet. But I'm curious... if anybody googles my name and wonders what I'm doing now.

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Originally uploaded by Rachel Ariel.

Listening to: Badly Drawn Boy "Easy Love"

To: The World
From: ariel
Re: This bites

Look, I just want you to know, it really sucks. I'm an awesome person, and I pretty much deserve to be around awesome people my age. I deserve to be wooed, and even seduced. I've earned the right to be around people who aren't depressed, who enjoy their lives, and who adore me as much as I adore them, and the world.

I just thought you should know. It's not like I'll stop putting up with it. It's not like I really have a choice. But come on, can't a girl catch a break? Just you know, every once in awhile?

and at the end, there was a hole through which we looked

Listening: Tarkio "Devil's Elbow"

My apartment is not clean, but it's not outrageously messy. I know I've been eating but I don't feel like I've been eating. I feel... disconnected. As though nothing really matters in this moment. What *does* matter to me right now is that I can't find the first disc from the Tarkio Omnibus, and my cat keeps eating the houseplants, and consequently he vomits. Damn cat. I look around and I'm not quite happy with the state of my apartment, but I'm not unhappy, I mean, it's not a shithole. I don't know why this is important to be writing about at the moment. There are at least seventeen other things I could write about.

Here's one of them, I saw Jonathan Safran Foer last night with a new friend from high school (I knew this person in high school, but we were not friends then. Actually, I met this person in middle school. There was going to be a cute anecdote there, but I couldn't figure out a good way to relate it). I have decided that I have a crush on Jonathan Safran Foer. I would be interested in marrying him if he were not already married with a nine week old baby. I mean, that would just be wrong. But Jonathan Safran Foer = my ideal man (he's even tall, skinny, wears glasses, and is Jewish. I'm not going to think about it any more).

Tonight is the Dresden Dolls. An instore and a concert at the Bluebird. w00t. I wish the Decemberists would do something like that.


"God I love you, but you trouble me"
In his blog last night Neil Gaiman said that his favorite possession is his ipod, or rather the idea of his ipod as opposed to the rather well worn device itself, but the idea of having access to all of his music at any moment. I relate to that sentiment in a very strong way. I remember back in high school thinking that if there were any way for me to hop on a train with all of my CDs and a change of clothes I would have done it in a heartbeat, but that travelling with all of my cd's was an absurd prospect. And then came ipods. About nine months after I graduated high school and made had it to a situation that I was not constantly fantasizing about escaping from. If Ipods had been invented when I was in 10th grade, well, things may have been quite different. Or maybe that was just my excuse. I tried, a couple of times, to leave home, and I never quite made it. I had an overactive sense of responsibility. From an early age, my attention to guilt was fine tuned. I haven't turned it off, I've just found better ways of rationalizing.

Yes.

just a series of blurs, like you never occurred

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Originally uploaded by Rachel Ariel.

Death Cab for Cutie in CSI tonight. Interesting, how popular culture has shifted from valuing the popular to valuing the unknown. Garden State launched the Shins from fairly successful but little known to much better known, and somewhat more succesful. The people who chose the music for Grey's Anatomy are obsessed with Tegan and Sara. Apparently the OC can launch indie bands (watch out Stars). Is this where I saw "I liked unknown music before it was popular?" Is that too complicated a concept? The fact is, when I went to England (remember, where the Beatles were popular for some years before crossing the pond) in 1999, I went in to music stores and said "Give me something awesome that I won't find in the US" or something to that effect. I came away with Stereophonics (they were popular here for about a second in 2000, they also recently showed up in some movie or tv show i saw recently), which was not quite what i was looking for, but close.

Anyway, it fascinates me.

On walking

Thinking back on my last post, I realize that not only have I not developed a habit of walking in the rain in any other place that I have lived, but I have not developed the habit of walking in any other place that I have lived.

Here, I walk for the sake of walking. I walk to clear my head, to remember my body, to remind myself that all I need to be elsewhere is the desire to move my body. I don't need a car, or a train or an airplane. Just some shoes that will protect the bottom of my feet from the hazards of walking around a place where people discard the fragmants of their lives onto the side of the road.

I walk when I'm angry. I just walk out the door and go until I have sorted out the inside of my head well enough to want to go back, and then I walk a little further just to be sure, and then I turn around and walk back, usually a different route. My dad once said, when I was very young, that you should not retrace your steps on a walk, you should just go forward to get back where you came from (he said it in words that made sense to me as a child, but that was the gist of it) and that is a sentiment I have carried with me. Not that there are rules for taking a walk, but the idea of narrowness in simply turning around and going back the way you came.

I have a fantasy in which I pack a small back with a couple of changes of underwear and a couple of tee shirts and pairs of socks, and just start walking one day. Right now it's the northwest that calls to me, but who knows what it may be on the day I start. Like the characters in the fantasy novels that carried me through adolesence, I will just start walking. Perhaps I will create a quest for myself, perhaps the journey itself is all that I need. L and I used to dream of walking to Alaska. Maybe someday we will do it. Just... start walking.

I did walk some in Greensboro, especially in the woods, but there is something incredibly depressing about walking in tamed wilderness. I guess when comparing the Guilford woods to Rocky Mountain National Park there will be a bit of a disconnect. I didn't walk the streets because Greensboro obviously has no value for its pedestrian traffic. Sidewalks were an afterthuoght, and drivers seemed oblivious to the world outside their steel casings. But i did walk, occasionally in Greensboro.

I walked some in Israel, if for no other reason than that it was my only option. I swore that I wouldn't ride buses, and I didn't have a car, and at some point cabs just became, unreasonable. But walking was rarely an enjoyable experience in Israel. It was the way to get from one place to another. Thats a lie. I walked aimlessly on the beach, and through both Tel Aviv and Haifa. But I did not walk aimlessly around Jerusalem. It made me nervous, and I felt intimidated by the neighborhood in which I lived. I suppose that's very little excuse, in the long term, since I try not to live a frightened life. But it seemed like common sense at the time.

In Viginia I didn't walk because there was no place to walk. No sidewalks, and careering cars. And it was so hot. So goddamn hot all of the time. L told me that she used to go into DC to walk around, but we never did that. With grad school on the horizon I look forward to living in actual DC and walking around there.

Whenever I would drive back from the East Coast I would wait anxiously for the first glimpse of the mountains. They look like low clouds on the horizon at first. And they get bigger and bigger. And I take a moment to look at them, as their full scale finally hits me, and wonder what it must have been like for the early pioneers who went west, in their covered wagons and on horseback, or simply on foot. I think about the Native Americans who traversed the land for generations leaving barely a mark upon it. And I am intensely jealous that I will never get to walk, leaving barely a trace, upon this land, to be able to honestly wonder if I am the only person to have looked at a particular tree, or stepped on a particular patch of ground.

It seems that our movements are scripted, as much as we work to defy them.

One of these days, I'm gonna rise up singin'

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Originally uploaded by Rachel Ariel.

Currently Listening to:"Summertime" Ella Fitzgerald and Louis Armstrong

I had forgotten how that line pulls at my soul every time I hear it. I don't care if it's Ella, Louis, Janis, or Me First. Something about the necessary mournfulness, the wrenching truth of that one sentiment. I've got nothin' to prove to you, this is just the way it is.

Summer isn't here yet. But spring, well spring is underway. They've predicted the first thunderstorm for today. I doubt it will come to pass, but god knows I love a thunderstorm. In no other place that I've lived, have I developed the tendency to walk around in the pouring rain.

But Denver.

Denver, I could walk your streets in the middle of the night, in the pouring rain, th ebitter cold or the blistering summer sun. And I have. Oh baby, I have. And I have found nothing quite so sweet as being soaking wet from a late spring thunderstorm. Not running, or even going somewhere. Just wandering around in the rain. The last time I did it was the summer before I left for Israel. A late night storm, I walked out of the house into the rain and walked in a spiral aruond my house. For an hour or more. I was drenched by the time I decided to go home. I tried to find an old post about it, but have failed... for now.

Enjoy the Daffodils

Currently Listening: "Choo Choo Ch'boogie" Louis Jordan

musings on the nature of wood pulp

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Originally uploaded by Rachel Ariel.

I've been cleaning a lot. Getting ready for Leise to move in, trying to shed some of the detritus from the life of a packrat. My problem is paper. I keep scraps with sentimental value, I keep bills and copies of bills, statements and applications. And books. So many books. I don't get rid of the books, not because I think I will reread them (with so many books in the world that I haven't already read, it seems... wasteful to re read any but the most exceptional of books) but because someday I may want to have them. Someday I may have a child who loves Star Wars, or murder mysteries. And god knows I won't be able to replenish my collection of The Cat Who... books, or Star Wars novels as cheaply as I purchased them for in the first place. I bought most of them used... something I so rarely do anymore. I wonder why...? What little piece of me has bought into the idea that I need for something to be *new*? I love the smell of old books, I love the different, older covers, I love the different consistencies of the paper. I keep thinking perhaps I will set my books free... utilize bookcrossing.com but then again... no one really seems to take that particularlu seriously. Alas. The individual sheets of paper can be discarded, shredded and recycled. On Sunday I threw out a scrap of paper with an old love's e mail address and the name from which he derived it written on it. A small memento from the days just after I realized how unreachable he was to me. A message carried to three different states, and across half a country, used as a bookmark, and then merely kept for the sake of keeping it. And now, it's trash, under day old coffee grounds and cat litter.

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Originally uploaded by Rachel Ariel.

I bought four CDs today. I mention this only because two of them contain the words "el oso" in them. A brief amazon search has shown only seven cds that they carry with the words "el oso" involved in them. Unimportant, just interesting to me.

I also bought the Misfits CD "Famous Monsters". Looking over the liner notes takes me straight back to senior year of high school. Do not pass go, do not collect $200. "If I cut off your arms and I cut off your legs, would you still love me anyways?"

Hilarity ensued. It's good to remember sometimes, that high school really wasn't all bad. Just mostly bad (like mostly dead).

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Originally uploaded by Rachel Ariel.

Original description: If we never stand still we can never be possessed.

What is the nature of love? I come to realize that love is not, in fact the wonderful thing i have been lead to believe that it is. When we tell someone we love them we are not giving the person a gift, we are giving them a reponsibility. By telling someone that we love them, we are saying "I am giving you a small piece of myself. Please take care of it, nurture it, protect it, and allow it to grow and thrive in your care."

There are a number of people in my life to whom I say "I love you" I never use the term cavalierly, but there are those for whom I know the words mean, and are intended, as something more.

I have seriously been involved with four guys, each of whom I have told that I love. I meant it when I said it, and looking backwards with the pain of a breakup does not change the feelings and emotions that existed at the time. My understanding of love has also developed significantly in the nearly seven years since I told the first of these guys, men, that I loved him. Only he, my first love, has taken seriously the responsibility of loving, and being loved by me. Though the passion of romance has long since faded, the lust is nothing but a memory, I cherish him, and he cherishes me, in a way that allows me to grow under his protection.

I am in the process of deciding how to become more... discerning in whom I trust this responsibility. I should not give pieces of myself away for just anyone to hold.

And I should not stand still for long enough that they can take it from me while I become complacent.

Listening to: Massive Attack "Protection"

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Originally uploaded by Rachel Ariel.

Unbirthday presents are wending their way through time and space. Keep a look out.

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Originally uploaded by Rachel Ariel.

Reading: Housekeeping by Marilynn Robinson
Listening: Neutral Milk Hotel Two Headed Boy

Right now I am at work and I just want to go home. I was just looking at an old acquaintances pictures from when she made Aliyah (moved to Israel) and, in combination with a discussion earlier today I am feeling nostalgic and homesick. Homesick for a place that isn't home? It's weird, to feel ninety percent perfectly happy in one place, but the pull of that ten percent, sometimes it just eats me up inside, quietly, and when I don't really notice it. When I'm there I miss here, and when I'm here I miss there, and there's really no two ways about it, my body can only be in one place at a time, and there is a world of adventure waiting for me.

curlyqman

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Originally uploaded by Rachel Ariel.

Currently Listening To: Brian Eno "Golden Hours"
Currently Reading: Handwritten: Expressive Lettering in the Digital Age

I'm researching again, and it feels really good. Something shifted last week. I was suddenly out of a rut I'd gotten stuck in. I'm surrounded by ideas, and instead of feeling jealous that other people are so creative and I am stuck, I look at them and say "what can I learn from this?" I want to hang paper cranes from the ceiling, I want to send tiny thoughts and ideas into the world that will make people smile, that will make them want to make other people smile. I want to be a phenomenologist, I want to buy the world a Coke (well, not really, but its a similar kind of sentiment).

I had a dream last night that A. was in Jacksonville with E. and for some reason this meant that I couldn't see him anymore. Then I had a dream that I accidentally used the papertowel I had been using to clean up spilled wood oil to wipe down my computer screen. That was a weird dream. Especially since I don't have wood oil. But it is something I would do.

A Very Merry Unbirthday

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Originally uploaded by Rachel Ariel.

So if a birthday is about receiving presents and kudos from friends who are glad you were born, it would stand to reason that on an Unbirthday one should send presents and kudos to friends who are glad you are alive (or possibly you should send poop in a flaming bag, and criticisms to people who wish you had never been born, but we'll assume that's not the real one).
I have decided to celebrate my Unbirthday this year, and as my real birthday is August 30, I don't have a half birthday (it would be February 30, which doesn't exist even in leap years). So though I have 364 days from which to chose from this year, this year the official celebration shall commence on February 30th, or the actual in existence equivalent day.

If you would like an Unbirthday Present from me please e mail me your address. Even if you think I already have it. Cause I lose things. A lot.

rachelariel.brandt@gmail.com

Faretheewell

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Originally uploaded by Rachel Ariel.

A pink woman with a chainsaw? I think so. I do adore the graffitti art. Perhaps because I'm not quite hardcore enough to actually make my art on the sides of buildings, but rather between the covers of a book which can be conveniently closed and hidden away in a back pocket or a dark corner. I still have trouble believing that I am capable of creating things that other people want to engage in (stories people want to read, pictures people want to look at). Graffitti art screams "You WILL look at me. You have NO CHOICE" and I adore that.

I had an enjoyable, but somewhat tiring visit to New York. I feel like I am still decompressing from it, like the city winds me tightly like a spring, and I'm mostly unwound now, but not quite. That may be some of the emotional baggage from the trip as well.

Dodger has a funny habit of using the litter box and then jumping up on the kitchen counter. I try not to think about it.

Bearing Witness

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Originally uploaded by Rachel Ariel.

I sat in on one of our inservices today, on domestic violence. As I sat in the room I found myself with many different feeling and thoughts, and as I prepared to leave I found in myself a new feeling, that perhaps I have a duty to share my story.

The speaker talked about holding people compassionately, how to hear a person's story, and be affected by it. How sometimes carrying knowledge of another person's experience can be a trauma in and of itself.

Perhaps for the same reasons that I failed to take my abusive situation seriously, I have chosen to mostly keep quite about it. I have moved forward quietly, and with help. I have assimilated my experience, but I reject it as having changed the person that I am, and I wonder if in that way I may be lyting to myself.

I admire the women and men who have publicized their stories of abuse. Of having their heads beaten into the ground, of being punched, of being stabbed and shot, of having their children taken from them and being brainwashed into thinkning that nobody will believe them or care about them.

My experience was no less valid because of its lack of physical component. I still find myself wrestling with this concept on a recular basis. My experience is no less valuable as a testimony of abuse, perhaps for many people who are in abusive situation that are non- physical my story will also be valuable, and valued.

I don't have my story ready yet. But I will, soon.

flickr blogging at work

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Originally uploaded by Rachel Ariel.

I've decided that it's time to get off my happy ass and actually do something. My car *is* going in to get painted this week. I'm babysitting on Sunday, I've signed up for an online course, I've registered for a CPR certification class, and I'm working on finding some volunteer work doing something I'm really actually interested in.

And, I've set up a 6 month review appointment with my boss so I shall hopefully hvae fewer moments like this one.

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Originally uploaded by Rachel Ariel.

I attended a fundraising event for an organization called Women for Women international about a week and a half ago. It was in Los Angeles, which meant that I got to take a short trip and spend some time in the sun. The event was amazing. The organization sponsors women who have survived war all over the world. The woman will receive some spending money, job training, and classes about their rights. On the other side of the relationship, a person can sponsor a woman for $27 a month. They write to the woman and if it is possible, the woman may write back. It was amazing to hear some of the letters that came out of the countries served by the organization, women from Rwanda, Bosnia, and Sudan.

I just finsihed reading the memoir written by the founder of Women for Women International. She grew up in Iraq under Saddam Hussein and writes eloquently about the experience of having had Saddam Hussein chose her parents to be "friends" with, and the myriad ways that changed her life.

It was amazingly exciting to find myself surrounded by people for whom my life's goals are a reality. I want to work on so many of the issues that Women for Women International is involved with. Creating sustainability, empowering and educating women, taking responsibilty for the effects inherent in living in the first world.

Today I looked into a correspondance masters in Public Administration from the University of Colorado. Something to do with myself before I start graduate school for real.

I'd rather have a bottle in front of me....

I just finished listening to the NPR piece on transorbital frontal lobotomies that originally ran on Wednesday during All Things Considered ("My Lobotomy" ).

It amazed and disturbed me. I can only imagine what it must have been like to live in an age in which a parent or guardian, a doctor or a spouse could decide that my unhappiness warranted an outpatient operation to keep me from feeling. Anything.

I was told an interesting statistic at a meeting on Wednesday night, that 1 in 5 Coloradoans is affected by issues of mental health. I have a difficult time believing that the statistic is so low. Considering my own life, I consider myself personally to have mental health issues which need work, I have had two friends commit suicide, and two attempt it. I have three friends diagnosed as being bipolar, I have a number of friends with anxiety disorders, and almost every one of my peers have dealt with issues of depression that went treated and untreated (far more have dealt with depression than have not). Even considering that I have always been happiest on the fringes of any large group, with the people who enjoy being on the fringes of large groups (the exception being Guilford, where there was no one main large group, only numerous fringe groups), thats a fairly considerable number of people in my life. And how many people do I know, and how many people do they know? I would be extremely hard put to find a single person in my life who has not been affected directly or indirectly by issues of mental health.

As much as I am wary of our pharmaceutical driven culture, if it were me (and I embrace a there but for the grace of god attitude when considering such things) I would much rather be on medication for whatever ailed me than have someone stick an icepick in my eyesocket and modify my brain function. The idea that any one person could wield such discretionary power over another, to change their brain, makes me feel on the verge of physical illness. I embrace my right to make my own decisions about my body. In this day and age that will 95% of the time translate into issues of abortion. But contemplate for a moment, the more far reaching effects of our cobbled together legal precedence regarding an individula's right to privacy, life, and what happens to their physical presence in the world. Images from 1984, Brave New World and other such fictional prophecises flit through my head. Then I stop to think about the issues of the Patriot Act that are up for review, the changing Supreme Court, erosion of Habeus Corpus. Do you think it has not occured to someone in our government that a simple, ten minute, outpatient procedure and we could rest safe at night in our homes, knowing that all of the potential terrorists are no longer a threat?

Think about it.

a very kind note to a thief

a very kind note to a thief
Originally uploaded by prettyjjbean.

This is not my picture, it's from one of my contacts on Flickr, but I love it, and I want to share it. I am constantly amazed by people's ability to steal things that will have no meaning to them.

I love the idea that the robber will wantto play the little girl's violin and not sell it. It reminds me of just how jaded I have become.