A belated tribute

No... not to the 75th annual Hunger Games.




But to the same kind of man who taught Katniss to be awesome so she could WIN the 75th annual Hunger Games;



that is, to my father.

A tribute to the man who taught me to read at stoplights.

Who threw me an unsurpassed 12th birthday party, wherein my house was transformed into Hogwarts (This is before  HP movie paraphernalia, people. We MADE chocolate frogs and Bertie Bott's EFBs and used chopsticks for wands).

A tribute to the most consistent mustache-wearer and 3x5 card carrier.

A tribute to always having "a back up" and wheezing like the penguin from Toy Story when being tickled.

A tribute to the smartest human being I've ever met.

To the most thoughtful, loving and generous human being I've ever met.

 To the man who has kept my skinny, cold-blooded lizard body warm and alive for over twenty years.

 And to the man who still tucks me in and sings cowboy songs  every time I'm home.And who probably always will.
 
I love you, Daddy.
"Now, what was your name?"

-Banana Lassie

Poor banana

Today I went on a great run and got an amazing facial and made lunch for my darling girlfriends and went to the temple (and it was nice and very holy) and performed in a beautiful play. Then I came home and cried my false eyelashes right off. Literally...they slipped off my lids and down my lashes due to my powerful, seemingly bionic, glue-eating tears.

Why, you ask? Is your uterus bleeding? Are you a victim of a sublime, destructive unrequited love? Are you just bored and tired and inferior and lonely?

yes yes yes.
 But I'm also a beneficiary of a very nice life.
So why is it such a poor, sad, desperate little banana?

HMMM?

The thought occurred to me while I was dish washing today, this very nice little day, that I need to start writing.
I need to start writing.
I NEED TO START WRITING.

What should the poor banana start writing about? She's awfully tired of her weepy little self. 

Hi

I'm eating my cereal with a fork, but that's fine because I HATE soy milk and want to taste the least amount of it as I possibly can.

In other news...
I graduated from college (big wup).
I jumped out of an airplane (bo-rring).
I received an awful lot of rejection letters (cool).
I had a few existential crises here and there (what's new?) and took this picture of the lovely, consistent spring weather:

I took some more Holgas in Moab:

Ally Snack and me

Every time someone said "there's cairn" I said, "who's Karen?" 

...And I meant it.

Everyone seemed to know her.

so.
I'm trying to decide what to do now.
It's cool because I can technically do anything (nothing tying me down, dontcha know), and yet the rejection letters and bank account seem to say that I can't. I wish I was some sort of economical genius and could create a large, glittery loophole that created a huge demand for my skill set. You know, like, watching clouds and taking long showers and stuff.

uh.

clocks and things

I'm either happy or productive.

Today I'm happy

(Which sucks).

I need to be productive.

"If some great Power would agree to

make me always think what is true and

do what is right, on condition of being

turned into a sort of clock and wound up

every morning before I got out of bed, I

should instantly close with the offer."

-Thomas Henry Huxley

I would so much rather be happy and a little selfish and happy and a wee bit oblivious than to always be doing something I'm supposed to be doing. All the time! Yerrghghgh. 

Today I want to eat Gardettos and ice cream and shave my legs and get started on my reading list in the sun. I want to write a song and a few letters and play with a baby or two and go on a hike and perform on stage tonight.

I suppose today I want to be a housewife.

yerghghghhhhhh.

Come to My Garden

When I was very little, I watched this movie over and over, and sometimes it made me weep:

When I as a teensy, tiny bit less little, I loved this book to death:

I spent most of my childhood looking for this door:

 When I was in France this summer I thought I found it. In the sprawling English garden of Fontainebleau Castle, I found a dilapidated door covered in ivy, opening to a magical little garden filled with bits of medieval pillars and things. I was in the middle of having a conniption of the long-forgotten secret that was MINE! ALL MINE! when the gardener came in to look at me strangely, mumble "bonjour" and move the sprinkler.

So, the point is, you should come see this play because the modern world is conspiring against us all and it's impossible to find a real secret garden (trust me, I've scoured Europe), BUT for two hours you can forget all that and watch one of the most beautiful, magical live theatre performances you'll ever see and hear some soul-shaking voices sing some pretty legit/ bad a#$/ glorious music.

Anyway. Monday, Wednesday, Friday through the end of May. You're welcome.

 

is it okay

to go to bed for the rest of my life?

well... IS IT??

A few things

1. I deleted my facebook.

2. I got in to grad school.

3. I miss this puppy:

photos by Alex

Even though he's just across the street now, it's just not the same. I want to be a puppysitter for life.

I love him I love him I love dancing with him I love him.
Which brings me to:

4. I want/ need a dog.

5. Can I really be here for two more years? Can I really do that?

I am at such an incredibly transient point in my life. It's nice in a way (probably in the same way that leaning over a gaping precipice is nice), but it's also, well, a b*%$#.  This kind of freedom is more horrifying than liberating. I have a few more weeks of college, an extremely single self, an acting gig that expires on June first, a housing contract that expires on June first, and... oh yeah, that's it.

Come June first I am either a new woman/ lone, adventure-seeking shewolf/ freelance writer ninja.... or just. Me. Alone. With nothing to do.

ummmm cool.

...What should I do? 

I just want people to be real

whatever that means.

This stupid post-modern education of mine has doomed me to be unable to think in absolutes.

 Reality. pff. There is none. 

So, really, my struggle for authenticity is so futile because I'm trying to be authentic. Which is the opposite of authenticity. But anyway.

My point is, more and more when people are talking to me lately I just want to scratch off all their insecurities and puttings-on and somehow let them know that they can just be with me. What if we all were to just be? Would we end up being anything or would we just... evaporate somehow? I don't know what I'm saying.

But every day when we choose how we're going to be that day... could we at least choose to pretend to be real? Or something like that?

Choose to pretend to act like we're being the idea of "authentic" that we conjure up in our own heads which is merely a self-created reality that probably has very little to do with real reality?

Ugh. Come on, people. Just stop acting like you're too cool. We all matter.

Schelling said, "Most people turn away from what is concealed within themselves just as they turn away from the depths of the great life." 
I'm annoyed because what I want most is to dive right into those great, dark depths, but I'm afraid of being lonely once I get there.

good things.

1. good things still happen.

Brookie.

"With rushing winds and gloomy skies

The dark and stubborn Winter dies:

Far off, unseen, Spring faintly cries,

Bidding her earliest child arise;

March!"

Bayard Taylor, "March"

  

  

(We would like to go outside, please.)

2. Good things still happen.

Just when I'd consigned myself to be a shriveled up loser forever, the theatre gods magnanimously cast me in The Secret Garden.

And just when I'd decided to go to bed until graduation (or, more likely, much later) because my brain doesn't work and I'm tired and I've (for lack of a gentler term) screwed up my college education (and everything else), the research paper gods told me I won second place in a prestigious essay contest.

AND DESPITE THAT I still decided that I'm never going to be a writer and no one wants me to be a writer and my life is, for all intents and purposes, over. But then the publication gods said that a Women's Studies journal wants my Mormon feminist rant paper that I wove together with my soul.

I am humbled and so happy about these good things. 

Just a few days ago a dear friend told me that I was "about to turn a beautiful, beautiful corner." I so wanted to believe her. I should have.

And now it's time to turn back and tell everyone I love the same thing-- to help them find their corners. I have been way too sad lately to be anything but selfish, selfish, selfish. 

But there's time to change. Because good things still happen.

Love, light, and singing the most beautiful songs every night at rehearsal/ starting to write words again because I AM a writer, dagnabbit,

Banana

Time flies with strings attached.

Just discovered Duy Huynh

It's just sweeping me away and I'm not sure if I have much control over where I'm going.

Where am I going?

as the saying goes...

"A leap year is never a good sheep year".

I'm afraid this may be indicative of my year as a whole. Which is sad because it's only the 29th of February and I have quite a bit of year left.

Though I have had good sheep years in the past:

Can you have a good sheep year, sans the sheep, when you don't live in Jerusalem?

Is this post merely an excuse to post pictures of myself with animals? Perhaps. 

The point is, I'm depressed.

No. The POINT IS I have a new baby nephew. Welcome, Andrew Daniel Fortner, you perfect little human! I can't wait to meet you. And I love love love being an auntie again.

Now someone give me a baby and a sheep and I'll be happy.

Okay? 



my favorite video of all time

10 cool things about being a secretary

Almost as cool as Maggie [via Detour Magazine]

1. If you purposefully put an extra large selection of paper into the three-hole puncher, you have to use both hands and thus get a good deltoid workout.

2. Important people get so used to your unimportant presence that they will say any important thing in your unimportant presence. So you end up knowing a lot of important things (I am being vague on purpose in order to emphasize the important mystery of my importance).

3. It's so easy to stay hydrated.

4. It's so easy to eat candy (It's really really easy to eat candy).

5. You learn to beat the copier into submission even though you know nothing about technology, but everyone asks you to "fix" the copier and you say well yes, certainly, and since you always do end up "fixing" the copier, everyone sees you as some sort of wizard. Which you're okay with.

6.Pinterest.

oh... that's about it, actually.

love, electric staplers, and spinning around and around and around and around when no one's watching,
Banana

it gets cold then warm

then cold again.

brookie and I spent the long weekend with her lovely old camera.

  


I've always figured February had something against me. Something about the word "doldrums" that seems to epitomize the very generally grey feeling that wraps its tentacles around the month and anyone living in it and refuses to let go. Can't you feel it? It told me to come home and go back to bed today, so I obeyed. And then to take a bath and then to go back to bed again. Oh February, you naughty, restless thing.
 And this mostly snowless winter has suddenly become a snowy one. And then springy and warm. And then snowy again.

I wrote a poem about it [or about the evasive something inside me that just wanted to be written about] a couple Sundays ago. Enjoy.

snow falls
deathly quiet--
doesn't anyone else want to scream?

the window protects us
from the chaotic wash of white,
and inside we talk of God.

I am so alone in here.
I am so cold in here.
But I see Him out there--
tickling the trees til the branches break.

Those who listen do so on
hand palms,
heads loll in lethargic worship
and God blows past in silence.

Where does He live in Winter?
We see Him risen so effortlessly in Spring--
in Daffodils and Blades of Grass,
in the resurrected sun that cradles
our newborn love.

Can we find Him in the
hard sky, solid ground, blank dawn?
Where does He live when all life
is gone?

Does He sleep in the silent snow?

We wait to awaken.
We listen with dull ears and
frosty hearts;
We shut the door til Spring.

back.

I'm getting feisty in my old age.

 I am very quickly irked, it seems, by everything. Racism, sexism, general rudeness, road rage, people who scam elderly people, genocide, my own intellectual limitations, everything... zero tolerance. And it gets to the point where it makes it very hard to be happy about anything because pretending to be Little Susie Sunshine when everyone else seems to be hurting feels insensitive and fake. I vowed to never use my acting skills to be someone I'm not. There are just so many things to care  about everywhere. So many injustices.

Sooo...what right have I to go on a lovely little bike ride in the sun and read some poems and just feel all lovely and tickled and ignore all the disgusting pride and arrogance and cruelty out there????

Well. It also seems like a disservice on my part to be Little Susie Raincloud all the time, you know? I'm not contributing anything by just caring and getting pissed and being rude to everyone because I think they are just preserving their comfort by ignoring important human rights violations. Oh dear. Listen to me! 

I decommissioned this blog for a while because I was disgusted with myself. I do NOT want to be another post-pictures-of-myself-every-day-so-I-maintain-a-carefully-constructed-illusion-of-what-my-life-is-like-and-everyone-can-envy-me-and-validate-me-with-their-comments-and-giveaway-entries blogger. And since I began to sort of lean that way I pulled the plug. Straight up.

BUT. Here's the point of all this ranting. No matter how much I care, I can't solve the world's problems. No sirree. And by  acting all put-out all the time about things that really are awful, I'll just become a negative person and you just can't keep friends that way, not even the ones that really love you.

What to do then? Well, I've decided to keep caring. Stay human. But a big part of being human, I've decided, is also loving despite things. Not just loving the underdog, but loving everyone. Loving women who PREFER to be controlled and don't want to think about the alternative. Loving grandparents who were raised in the 30's and 40's and really didn't have much of a chance to not be racist. Just loving.
Because, as I discovered, being intolerant of intolerant people is still intolerance. And probably worse since I consider myself so "enlightened." Being narrow-minded about narrow-mindedness is the ultimate hypocrisy, I think. I am going to change.

I am going to keep blogging because words and pictures and pretty things are my life force, and that's okay. If I can make the world a teensy bit prettier by dwelling on the beautiful things I discover, there's no shame in that, is there? Sharing is caring. Or so my childhood taught me.

So. The point is... I'm back. Come back with me?

banana

The month of birthdays.

Today

I'm just thinking about how special this little boy is.

When I first met him as a teeny, flat-headed 2-month old fluffy blue bundle, I never realized he would become my brother, my dear friend, and one of the greatest joys of my life.

Happy 10 years, Ethan!

I love you, crazymonkeybuttonnose.

p.s. there are so many birthdays this month. I am excited about them. Except, I can also hear the death-toll of 22 growing ever-louder...