Getting my hair caught in my purse outside the Houses of Parliament; falling asleep within (and everywhere else)

Everyone knows that before actually taking a tour of Westminster Palace, it is proper protocol to take a picture in front of Westminster Palace, which is far more important and productive than not being allowed to sit on any benches in the House of Lords because they're reserved for "only very important bottoms," and so instead you stand there, in the gorgeously gilded, dripping with history chamber, nodding off while standing and coming dangerously close to careening right into Jo, the friendly and highly-informed tour guide, and taking her down right onto the very important carpet. Whether or not I actually did this, I will refrain from admitting here.

Thus ensues probably my favorite (or favourite, if you prefer) series of photgraphs I own. You may need to zoom in on Jacob's face to appreciate just how inexplicably strange it looks.

Thank you, Emma, for capturing this moment. Emma is my dear new friend with whom I can take perfectly successful posed photographs on the first try.

Proof:

Emma and me in front of Elizabeth Tower

 Emma and me at Wicked

Emma and  me at Hampton Court Palace

Emma and me at Canterbury Cathedral

 
Emma and me reading about the cats of Canterbury Cathedral

Maybe not such good proof:

Emma and me attempting to take a jumping picture because the statue from the Parthenon was also taking a jumping picture

In case you're wondering, the tour was wonderful. But we weren't allowed to take pictures (most likely, once more, because of the important bottoms). Probably the most important thing we learned from Jo is that the Thames is pronounced Tems  and not Thames because no one wanted to make King George I feel bad about how very bad his English pronunciation was. When in doubt, change the way you've been pronouncing something for centuries.

Illegal photo taken by Emma during the tour

Indeed, the tour was wonderful, but my "Annalepsy," as Jacob fondly refers to it, is not. Following is a list of  some other places I have recently almost died in because of falling asleep while standing and, a result, have nearly smashed into something sharp, marble, or archeologically significant (some of these I haven't even told Jacob [or Emma] about because I was ashamed):

1. Canterbury Cathedral

 Okay, so I fell asleep on the heater. Sue me.

2. The Roman Museum in Canterbury

 Particularly humiliating.

3. Waiting for the tube (A particularly dangerous place)

On the Tube  (of course)

4. Boat to Greenwich

I was trying SO hard to read Judith Butler...

 Us straddling the Prime Meridian Line like a Mormon Engagement photo on train tracks

This is the boat ride back from Greenwich, the entire length of which I was... asleep.
 
5. All over the National Maritime Museum

Me falling asleep at the wheel (unfortunately, this is the only staged one)

...I'm embarrassed to keep adding locations.

But the point is, we're happy and we're lucky and we're learning a lot. Especially when we're awake. And I've been having the most outrageous dreams... so maybe even when we're not?

Love, fatigue, and The East India Company,
Banana

Being sad in Holland

Look how happy we look.

I know I've written about this sadness phenomenon maybe a smidge too often. Sorry. But, as I sleepily told Brookie on an evil Skype connection last night, "So much of life is so sad for everyone."

Anyway, when you love someone and (Coldplay is expecting me to break into song any second here) you do it so much for so long, and it happens that for various reasons you have to not do that anymore, then you spend months trying to fill up your life and your sadness with other things and other love, but they don't really work out.

So you get a prescription and you run away.

And you realize that you don't understand anything about anything and you make horrific discoveries inside your little self like vanity, fear, and need. And you feel like nothing is quite as shiney as it should be, and the universe feels a little crumbly and unstable, and suddenly you find yourself in Holland.

And here's the thing about Holland:

It is so beautiful.

Hallo, Kinderdijk. I love you.

Capelle Schollevaar, where I'm staying, is a haven of peace and quiet, canals, lily pads, and the ubiquitous bicycle. Even a thriving community of 18th century windmills! It's almost too cute. And clean. And quiet.

Beautiful Delft (not Gouda, which is also beautiful-- like the cheese). Gracie dearest is sharing her camera.

And beyond all that, we've had two (very rare here) warm, sunny days. Even the elements are trying to convince me to be happy in Holland. And, ungrateful wretch that I am, I'm being a sad, crumbly-universe-observing fool that is sad in Holland.

Some very unAnna-like behaviors have reappeared. Namely, inability to sleep, lack of appetite, blah blah blah. I just want to wear wooden shoes and smoke weed (just kidding, I don't do that... wear wooden shoes, I mean).

And here's another thing: There are baby animals everywhere. Fuzzy swans, awkward calves, prancey lambs, ecstatic puppies. I ride through the countryside (the whole country is a countryside, I've noticed) on a generously-loaned bicycle, and smile at all the baby animals and baby Dutch humans on their Dutch mommies' bikes and think about how much I miss those three little human girls that my siblings gave birth to, and then I remember that I'll never be loved enough by anyone to have babies with them.

...Brookie says this form of paranoia is quite common, but I question the normalcy of becoming devastated at the mere sight of a duckling who is minding his own Dutch business, or how possible it is to even be sad in Holland.

Wednesday Gracie and I leave for the Mother Country. Jolly Old London. Do you think I can be happy in England?

Love, stroopwaffles, and Anne Frank,

Banana

True confessions of an electromagnetic forcefield

One of the minor drawbacks of being a pivotal center of electromagnetic energy is that unsophisticated technology (or any technology, come to think of it) has trouble functioning in my presence. 

The weak ones just give up the ghost and short circuit (i.e. every microphone in every show i've ever participated in). The more proactive ones throw themselves into harm's way (phone ran over by car), take their own life (phone down the toilet on an already awkward first date), or simply run away (phone that left itself somewhere in Oregon, or, most tragically recent, netbook and ipod that sneakily stowed away in the taxi my first day in Paris).

This minor drawback evolves into something of a rather major drawback when I happen to be in Paris, already computer and music-less, and my previously stalwart digital point and shoot camera or its memory card (but probably both) decides it's had enough of my harmful rays and it's high time to conduct a bloody revolution of its own, effectively sending ALL of my pictures to the guillotine.

  This Reign of Terror has left me hollow and sobered and a rather poor blogger from now on, I'm afraid (I was planning on amazing and delighting with everything I've been seeing an learning in my photog class). I don't mean to complain or anything, but WHY ME!? Ce n'est pas juste! 

If you sais que je mean.

Love, loss, and no photographic evidence that I'm having the time of my life,

Banana

P.S. All this is made significantly better by the memory of seeing Fleet Foxes live last night (In fact, today when I went to this cute hipster photography store, Lomography [here], to soothe the blow with some food for my Holga, the guy who worked there asked me if I was at the concert and I said why yes I was. And he said it was incredible and I agreed and he said it was really really hot though and I said yeah it was really hot. And then I smiled at how amazing the conert was and he smiled at how bad my french is). Wow. I'm going nuts with parentheticals.

oh, the horror!

I suppose this is my annual post on fear.

Last year I took a slightly humorous approach regarding nonsensical phobias. 

That seems to be my idea of defensive coping skill.

You see, during my most intense moments of heartache, hurt, or panic I have always found myself satirizing the whole ordeal. Describing it as a tragic farce; a clown with a painted purple tear on his cheek. Morbidly funny. Self-deprecating. I find that if I make someone else laugh when telling them of the things that truly strike fear into my heart making my knees and chin tremble and lightning flash and the walls cave in all around me in a cloud of nasty black smoke and charred ruins of life ambitions, well then, it can't be that bad. That way I've (sort of) vented, and am justified in keeping the rest in. To fester, probably.

But the new me won't allow it, I keep telling myself. Someone wise probably said once something along the lines of, a life lived in fear is no life at all. Yes, I'm sure of it now. Maybe it was Dumbledore or someone.

So... what am I afraid of, you ask?

Well, the problem is that the answer is probably everything.

Uh oh. I'm afraid of EVERYTHING?

yeah, kind of.

Here's the thing. I've never successfully explained to anyone the world in which I live. It's just... so personal. Its borders are completely within my own mind and idiosyncratic tendencies.

But people have definitely made attempts at describing it.

"spacey" "reclusive" "creative" "silly" "private" "shy." I've even got "inconsistent" at worst ["bi-polar" at very worst] or "dynamic" at best.

no, no, no people. the truth is I'm just terrified of being ripped out of the very deliberately crafted existence within my brain.

I surface on my own from time to time, just long enough to apply to college or get a job or feed myself or whatever else I figure must be done. But, honestly, I feel very much detached from most of those lifely duties.

Sometimes I feel like my dreams (day or night) are more tangible than my waking hours. Which is weird, I suppose.

Yeah, probably really weird.

I've always had this talent of falling asleep as soon as I decide to. As soon as my head gets anywhere near the pillow (sometimes before). I feel like an inability to sleep is for people who are involved in this world. Whereas I am just slipping naturally back into my own.

Anyway.

That may or may not explain why getting out of bed in the morning gives me the heebie jeebies from time to time.

let alone becoming the grown-up I'm supposedly supposed to be becoming.

or the fact that, as tough as it has been to be living at home much of the last two months,

I'm a little scared of the move I'll be making on Sunday.

With friends, fun, summer delights, and an adorable lovefriend waiting for me,

it still scares me a bit.

Now that's just silly.

...right?

Banana

Opus 37

I’m really feeling music today. It could possibly be my radically enhanced emotional state, not much altered even by the slight overdose on Midol I might have had this morning.

Or it could just be that music is what brings life to my veins and thus oxygen to my brain and clarity to my eyes and richness to my senses. It always has, after all. I’ve been ignoring music; skulking around, hiding behind corners when I see it coming. And I’m not sure why. 

I’ve just been so afraid lately. But it’s hard to say exactly what I’m afraid of. Maybe it’s nothing. That is, maybe I’m scared of dissolving into nothingness. Amounting to nothing. Being nothing. Or at least not being what I always dreamed I would be and what I’m now doing nothing to become. And returning to the piano with stiff, forgetful fingers and forcefully shaking my startled voice awake, which comes out creaky from neglect, is scary when I’m already so scared.

And yet, today I’m craving only one of those magical corners with a small open window and eighty-eight slightly dusty keys. They’ve always been such a refuge- such a sanctuary- waiting patiently to absorb every moment of disappointment or frustration or euphoria with life and its potential for being lived. It’s all there in those keys and my fingers that know them so well, even if they’re a little awkward at first reuniting. But like any true friends, they soon know they never really spent time apart, after all. They quickly remember one another’s idiosyncrasies; their shortcomings and their greatest abilities. Their mutual desire to produce something worth listening to. Worth getting lost in. Worth feeling.

So I sit here in this stark, florescent box of a facility, as far away from that corner as you could really get, listening to the genius of Dustin O’Halloran and Iris Litchfield with itching fingers. RLS bouncing my knees all over the place under my desk, my feet blindly bumbling around, searching for the pedals. But my insides feel warm and sparkly with the anticipation of greeting one of my oldest and dearest friends. Perhaps the most loyal friend of all, always waiting patiently, always knowing that someday I’ll come back to raise the blinds and crack open the rain streaked window, to stroke the old worn oak bench, lift the cover, inhale a deep, nervous breath, arrange my cold, frightened fingers into the key of G and…

Play.

-Banana 

 [These photos are from a  special day in Hawaii about a year and a half ago. Taken by Bremen McKinney and me and featuring Tessa Brady and my hands, feet, and occasional indiscernible reflection]

I can see clearly now

Well...almost.
Here's how it goes down:

1 I walk up to the eye test chart, cock-sure of my 20-20 bestowal...

2 My left eye takes 4 or so lines up before it can distinguish a p from an f...

3 I walk away with 20-50 vision.

4 which is quite a bit worse than my mother's...
5 who's in her mid-fifties.
and had a rogue bungee cord severely damage her cornea.

I admit I am sufficiently humbled, and will just have to get cutie specks.
yours in meekness,
Banana

I'mma gonna tell you a leetle secret.

thanks for the photo
I work at the office/ practice facility of the Spokane Shock Arena Football Team (But that's not the secret).
The nearest restroom is located strangely in a large room used by the sports medicine people to treat troublesome players (not the secret either. Just hang on a second!).
So there's a lot of room and a cool rubbery floor.
Here's the secret:When I get bored typing in work orders and daydreaming, I sneak into the bathroom and do ballet leaps.

My greatest fear is that someone will catch me in the act. But I think inside I also sort of think it would be fun.

...Wouldn't it?

love, banana

Not gonna lie...

...I love this stuff

♥Anna. Nina, Whatever.

p.s. Aaand I'm off to the plasma center!
p.p.s And today is cloudy and cozy
p.p.p.s. David Gray, frothy hot cocoa, and Turner's Classic Movies

A confession

Happy love songs often make me sad.
There's something wrong here.

I love ya, Frank. But something's gotta change.

♥Anna

Breaking Things (like...norms)

Today I went swimming in the ocean.
In the daytime.

Without my swimsuit.

Cheers!

Ah, shucks

Last night I gave a kiss that I meant to say
"I'm sorry",
"I love you",
and "goodbye."
...But I'm afraid it only said "I"m crying."

Needless to say I'm new at this.