views of the northeast

at least it killed the germs

Or, beware the foreign mouthwash.

Ran out of mouthwash this evening so I rummaged around in my parents' drawer and found a bottle of astring-o-sol. I didn't pay any particular notice to the label's proclamation that this stuff is "Concentrated!" I thought, "Oh, it's just like Listerine," and tossed a shot into my mouth. OH. MY. GOD. They are not kidding around! It was like a bomb went off in my mouth. My eyes were watering and I was gulping handful after handful of water to rinse out my mouth as fast as I could. Forget the glass --if it had been physically possible to put my mouth right under the faucet I would have. I swear I felt my lower lip swelling. Yeesh. My mouth is beyond clean; it's been razed to the ground.

snow-covered wreath

Snow day, slow day... Not much on the agenda except a little cleaning up and a lot of printing. I really haven't given away too many of my photographs because I'm afraid of being that crazy friend/relative who inflicts badly knitted socks and popsicle-stick picture frames on anyone within range. But my wallet is feeling very student-ish this Christmas so photos it is. I can't shake the feeling that it's almost as bad as giving fruitcake, but you gotta do what you gotta do!

I'm keeping my fingers crossed that I will have a nice surprise in store when I go to December-Sale pickup tomorrow. I know I sold at least one print at this year's sale but a couple more would be even nicer!

Does this dress make me look invisible?

Someone cut in front of me at Rosie's bakery today. I was second in line waiting for the counter and a gentleman came hurrying in out of the cold. He made a beeline for those pastries like he hadn't seen one in a year. First he zoomed diagonally in front of me to the right and inspected the brownies and cookies in that side of the case. Then he zoomed diagonally in front of me to the left and inspected the cakes and things on the other side. Meanwhile I'm standing there thinking, "Wow, he really wants to get a look at those pastries!" Then he planted himself squarely in front of me. After a stunned moment I stepped up beside him and cleared my throat. He gave me a big friendly grin and I said, "Uhh... I was standing in line." He was totally surprised! Swore up and down that he hadn't seen me standing there. And I believe him! But boy that is weird. I have never seen anyone so completely focused on baked goods. And I am not a little wisp of a woman. How one could not see me is kind of amazing. Diet must be working, eh? I'd better eat another raspberry crumb bar so I don't disappear altogether.

quiche and sawdust

Ah, student life in the last days before the board. This is the wreckage of my kitchen/dining table/workbench. A little cocoa, a little sculpture, a little sawdust (though I vacuumed up most of it), a few shards of wireform (Yum! Didn't notice that till after the photo.).

See the little piece in the foreground? I live a short walk from the Rockler woodworking store and in the past month I discovered the bowl turning blanks. Whoa... Who knew that such luscious blocks of wood existed? They're so lovely that I wouldn't even want to turn them into bowls --nor could I, since I have no lathe but, anyway, they make great bases for tabletop sculptures. Heck, why make sculpture at all? Just hang a piece of wood on the wall! They're that pretty.

too many hot bods at the gym?

Darned if I know what was going on at the Porter Exchange this afternoon but apparently it required >= 8 fire vehicles and a whole troop of firemen.

"Maybe they just needed to get fit," was the opinion of one witty passer-by.

It was only a matter of time

I suppose one can't make it through a couple of years of art school without some blood being shed. It was shaping up to be a stressful day pretty much starting from when I got out of bed at 5:45 and I capped it off in grand style by slicing a chunk off the tip of my left index finger. It was a bleeder, too. I was actually dripping on the floor as I was running around trying to find a clean bandage.

I doused it with bactine and applied pressure but two hours later, still bleeding, so I ended up going to the doctor's office anyway. (The assistant fellow warned me that my blood pressure was high. I have to say: not exactly A Big Shock at that particular moment.) The doc didn't put in any stitches; instead she used some cool blood-clotting foam to stop the bleeding (something like this stuff maybe?). Unfortunately she also used what seemed to me to be an excessive amount of bandaging and my finger looks like it's twice its normal size just from the gauze.

it's not the monsters under the bed that scare me

Every day this week a different unit in my building has been broken into. It makes me anxious every time I go out but it's not like I can just stay in my apartment all day! Gaaah.

Happy Halloween --yipee.

"Due to Boston Fire Department action at Park Street station the red line inbound and outbound is operating with residual delays."

A friend and I met up for an after-work/school stroll this afternoon. We arrived at Park to discover crowds of people, half a dozen or so fire trucks and ambulances and the news that the red line was stopped because of a fire in the station. We retired to Chinatown to have dinner and wait it out. Service was back up by the time we finished but the automated announcements were still going. That wording just cracks me up: "Due to Boston Fire Department action"-- they make it sound as if the fire department just spontaneously struck, like lightning. What's wrong with plain old, "Due to a fire"?

don't wear while operating machinery

I bought new earphones this afternoon. I find myself really turning up the volume at the gym just to hear the music above all the machines. That can't be good for the old ears so I decided to try out a pair of noise-isolating earphones. The good news is they work amazingly well; I can keep the volume low and still hear the music. The bad news is they're kind of scary. I really can't hear a darn thing outside the earphones. I can easily imagine being hit by a truck or mugged or something while wearing these 'phones.

good thing I live near the T

Now I know my vacation is over. I went down to the garage today thinking I was going to just pop over to the post office to collect my held mail. I hadn't seen my car in the 6 weeks since I'd left for vacation so imagine my delight when I discovered it completely DOA --literally lying in a pool of oil for maximum drama! It seems to have suffered a complete failure of, apparently, everything that can fail without actually having collided with anything. In addition to the pool of oil, it doesn't even start, just makes a horrible coughing sound while all the check-this-and-that lights flash and even the automatic door locks don't work. Yikes.

The funny thing is, literally the last thing I did before leaving for vacation was take it in for the 20k service and state inspection! I bought my car in June 2002 --is this some sort of weird 5-year I'm-out-of-warranty-now-I-can-die thing?

memory is the first to go...

Don't you just hate it when you meet someone and then somehow by the time you get home you can't remember their name to save your life??? Yikes. I can't believe I did that.

But at least I'm not the only one having a confusing week. The little weather icons can't figure it out either:

what I learned in art school

It's the first full week of class at the smfa and yesterday I learned an important lesson: Do not wear fleece pants to your woodshop class! By the end of the day there was so much sawdust sticking to me that I felt like a snowman. Also: a lint rollers is not an effective sawdust-removal tool. I'm hoping the washer and dryer do better.

old school

When I was a kid I attended a catholic girls' school in Quezon City. I went back to see the old school over the holidays and took a walk around. When I was a student this rock garden was nowhere near as neat and manicured as it is today. It was a weedy, shadowy, critter-infested no-man's land between the high school and the college. Nobody liked walking through it to get to the auditorium on the other side. Every year a wave of hysteria would sweep through the ranks of the younger students because someone or other had fainted, or seen the statue of the Virgin weeping blood, or swore that they had glimpsed a dwende (supernatural creature) in the rocks. What on earth do the kids scare themselves with now that the place has been cleaned up? I was informed that the tales of the ghost in the room above the high school chapel are still going strong, but it seems a poor substitute.

better late than never

scrub the bathtub
clean out the fridge
purge all the junk mail

Not bad for a first day. All too soon the bathroom will need cleaning again, there will be forgotten leftovers in the fridge and the mailman will deposit another hundred credit card offers in my mailbox, but so it goes...

electricity

It's barely eight a.m. and already my day has been full of excitement. Yesterday evening, I got an air conditioner. I've thought about it every summer for 4 or 5 years now, and it's really been darn hot, so I thought: maybe this is the year. Bright and early this morning I installed it and I turned it on for the first time. Two minutes and the circuit breaker went. Damn. I reset the circuit breaker but some of the outlets were still dead and there was a brief period of panic before I found an unmarked switch in the box that is apparently connected to those outlets. There wasn't even anything else on in the apartment at the time so I guess my wiring just can't deal. Back it goes I suppose, but oh how nice it would have been!

all I want is to hear the phone ringing

Today I'm the proud owner of a new phone!

I'd actually had the same phone for the past 7 years and never felt the need to get a new one. But my parents have been nagging me to get a phone that they can send text messages to so I finally gave in and upgraded. On the whole, I'm pretty happy with it. It's small, it's light, and the keypad glows a pretty blue color when the phone rings. I'm easy. But there's one thing that just plain drives me up the wall, and that is: what is with these bloody ringtones??? Seriously. I do not require the 1812 overture, monks chanting, dogs barking, a marching band or --horror of horrors-- that entire category ominously titled "bodily functions" (why?). All I want is a bland and unobjectionable my-phone-is-ringing-now sound. And I can't get it. I don't understand...

needling

Do you know when your last tetanus shot was? You need to get one every 10 years.

I'm getting poked and prodded with needles today so I figured I would share that friendly reminder. I actually did have a tetanus shot a few years ago so I'm good on that front but in going through the requirements for museum school it turned out that I was missing hepatitis B and meningitis. That was a surprise to me, since I went to college in Massachusetts and figured I was all taken care of --but the requirements have changed since then! That hepatitis B is a pain --three shots and you have to wait 6 months between the first and last ones.

update: Here's a useful bit of information that I learned from the nurse who gave me my shots. If you have trouble getting blood drawn (I do --they almost always have to stick the needle in a couple of times before they get anything) you ought to drink before you go to the doctor. It makes your veins juicier I guess. Makes perfect sense, but it had never occured to me!

You know it's going to be a good trip when in the midst of the planning and speculating the words "I wonder if duct tape will be necessary?" cross your mind...

creative poison

Sadly, my Sunday was darkened by the need to assimilate some creative poison that someone tried to feed me on Saturday night. This guy on a photo critique forum that I participate in had left some snide remarks on one of my images. Not because he had any interest in me or my work (this man has never said 2 words to me that I recall) but because he was pissed off at someone else that I happen to be friends with. That would be enough to be angry about --no one likes being collateral damage in someone else's war-- but it bothered me more than it should have on the surface.

This man's "critique" of my image was twofold: 1) that my photograph was not really a photograph at all and 2) that I thought I was being creative but I actually wasn't.

It took me a while to figure out why I couldn't just shrug this off as mere spite (and it was definitely spite) but I finally realized that there was more than that. Essentially, what this man tried to feed me was creative poison. If I had internalized those remarks without realizing what they were, I would be terrified to pick up a camera again. It would have crippled me. God, I was furious when I figured this out. Can you imagine inflicting that kind of damage on someone under the guise of helping them?

I begin to understand the appeal of burning people in effigy.

I would have marshmallows...

news

A mixed bag of news today.

The big news first: It looks like there will be no crossing the Sahara trip for me this fall because... I got an acceptance letter from the SMFA on thursday!

I'm very happy about this (obviously)! Oddly, it's a much purer happiness than my college admission. When I got my letter for college I was elated but also hideously embarrassed and afraid because I knew my parents disapproved and the letter in my hand represented an awful lot of money and a move of 8,000 miles to the other side of the planet. I wanted freedom but when it was handed to me I was somewhat ashamed for having asked for it in the first place. Today, no such complications!

I'm very curious now about the logistics of the admissions process. I never wondered about that when I was applying to college. I think in my mind "the admissions committee" was some monolithic entity that consumed a steady stream of helpless applications and put up a little red flag if they were to be booted out. Now I'm curious. I'm imagining something like a chili cook-off (I've seen them on tv!) with judges sitting around a table with little scoresheets and a glass of water on the side to cleanse the palate between portfolios.

One of my friends was just accepted to a seminar on the literature of the great plains. She sent us a copy of her application essay. I'd never read any of her writing before and it sounded at once strange and familiar. It occurred to me that I have many good friends, people I've known for years, whose written voices I have never heard. Isn't that odd? I suppose that's what losing letters has robbed us of (and what blogging to a certain extent has given back).

She's going to be at NDSU in Fargo from the end of June to the end of July. We're going to see if we can meet up out there. The only problem is, I'm not sure what there is for me to see near Fargo. Yesterday I stopped by the bookstore to consult a map and it was rather, er, blank. Obviously there must be stuff there, but what? Hmm.

Lastly, the world sometimes gives you photos in unlikely places. The night I got my acceptance letter, I was too keyed up to fall asleep. I was lying in bed staring at the light from the windows on my bedroom walls. I have only two windows but the lights outside throw pale rectangles on every wall. I lay on my bed in the dark staring at the crooked angles and the looming walls and the curtains billowing in the breeze from the window fan and it seemed that the only reasonable thing to do was to go and get the camera.

This is the result. I quite like it!

windows in dreams

(larger version here)

writer's block and other battles

I submitted my museum school application this morning. The woman I spoke to at the admissions office wasn't sure when the decisions would be made, but I suppose I ought to know within 1-2 months.

It was quite a relief to get it in and out of my hands. Now that it's over, I can admit it: I had some real issues.

Getting to the end was a lot harder than it had any reason to be. Under normal circumstances, thinking and writing about my photography is something I would enjoy. Not so in this case! While I was trying to finish the essays for my application I was afflicted with the most appalling, paralyzing terror of writing that I have ever had to confront in my life. It sucked. It absolutely sucked. Not the finished product I hope --luckily that's up to someone else to judge-- but getting to the page just sucked.

I feel like I've emerged from a bizarre fit of insanity. In the past several weeks I have been seized by the desire to perform every single avoidance maneuver that my not-very-exciting life affords. I would wake up in the morning convinced that I absolutely had to clean my apartment, buy and read a trashy novel, eat a tub of ice cream, fold the laundry, cook dinner for 5 friends, take up watercolors, wash the car, call my mother, and perform household repairs that have been on the todo list for years. Not to mention surfing the net and checking my email every 10 seconds! It's a good thing I have no hard vices because if I had any propensity towards liquor, dice, speed sports or loose men I shudder to think of what the results might have been.

Towards the end, I think I would have practically chewed off my arm rather than do the work.

I did do the work. And I think that what ended up on the page was the only truth that I could tell (although I'm not sure I don't regret being so honest now). And it's out of my hands. Still... what a bizarre experience. I can only shake my head at myself. It really is quite funny that I do genuinely want a chance and a new direction --and yet when the time came to act, there was a part of me deep down that was flat-out terrified of change and would have done almost anything to avoid it.

Here is the personal statement that I submitted along with my portfolio.

warm fuzzies

This afternoon I got call from a former boss who just finished writing a recommendation letter for my museum school application. And you know what he said to me? He said, "You know, as I began working on your letter, I realized that it was an absolute joy to write."

I just needed to share that because it totally made my day.

quiet places

Bates Hall, Boston Public Library

Doodles must be like chips --you can't draw just one.

I was writing in the Bates hall of the Boston Public Library today and --of course-- when one is taking a break from writing, it's only natural to turn to doodling. There's lots of fodder for it. The new building of the library is utilitarian and nondescript but the old building is gorgeous. One day I'll take a photo field trip there. I don't bring my camera when I go because it's too heavy to carry along with my laptop. Besides, the whole point of going is to force myself to write and bringing the camera would defeat the purpose.

I like Bates Hall. It almost seems to be two rooms. Down low, where the people are, it's dim and quiet with rows of long wooden tables and warm lamps with green glass shades, one of which you see in the sketch. Then you look up and the ceiling is soaring and vaulted with huge windows along the street side. Stray beams of reflected sun throw skittering shadows across the walls. Sometimes flights of pigeons cross the windows. They hurtle down like missiles and ascending, they levitate more than they fly.

marsh calligraphy

Ink and memories spill.

When I was a kid I took a class in Chinese brush painting at a local children's center. I never got further than bamboo and I have vague memories of practicing shrimp. That seems somewhat involved so perhaps we never got to shrimp. I loved the little rituals associated with it: the bamboo brushes, the sticks of black ink, pots of water and big sheets of newsprint piled on the table. I still have a stick of the ink in my bedroom back home. It's dark velvety black with a tiny gold dragon writhing up the side. We would grind the ink in a bit of water on a slate of dark gray stone and as you used up the ink the dragon dissolved too and left little flecks of gold on the stone.

Links:
Tales from the Land of Dragons with fun facts
Calligraphy supplies
Introduction to chinese painting
This page has a fun little movie that demonstrates how to draw a panda

the fruits of jet lag

It's four am but my body thinks it's five in the afternoon. I've been lying awake listening to the rain grow steadily louder. Earlier in the evening it sounded like a shower of glass shards against my windowpanes; it progressed to pebbles and now, at last, it sounds like there's one of these outside each of my windows:

I feel like the rain is inside the walls.

It's been a while since I've had a case of jet lag this bad. I should have stuck it out in bed but the racket made it impossible to sleep. That and the irrational nagging feeling that I ought to go around checking for leaks, maybe find a bucket in case it became necessary to bail. I got up and did a little photo editing instead. Here's one that I quite like of Mitre Peak in Fiordland National Park in New Zealand:

The mountain is barely visible, but I love the swirl of cloud, the little flare of light. Looking at it, I can believe that something is about to happen.

more adventures with water

I returned home yesterday to discover that my shower had decided to upgrade itself into one of those spa units that sprays jets of water in all directions. It even has a temple feature, created by bouncing water off the ceiling. ...Sadly, it doesn't look this good. Nor do I have an "aromadispenser, loudspeakers and fold-out seat with back rest"! An aromadispenser... the mind boggles.

Speaking of water, my camera is on its way to Canon. I hope I don't get a big shock when the estimate comes back!

two weddings and Christmas

I haven't gone to church so much in years. Two of my cousins have gotten married in the past week and a half. I stopped by San Francisco on my way home to attend the wedding of my cousin Paolo on my Dad's side. The ceremony came off tolerably well, despite a few hiccups: the flowers and the bride were both (very) late, the ring-bearer wailed all the way down the aisle (luckily the rings were actually in the best man's pocket; he was a very young ring-bearer so they just had him carry an empty pillow!), one of the offering bearers forgot to go get the offering, and because we started late, the church began having their regularly scheduled confessions while we were still in there. But everyone had a sense of humor about it and the bride and groom looked smashing and were happy, so it was okay. Pao may have had a slight panic attack as the minutes ticked by and no bride arrived, but I think the most nervous person at the church was the best man, who kept patting himself down for the rings and the arrhae.

Then I got home just in time to go to the wedding of my cousin Lawrence on my Mom's side. That was a much more highly organized affair --even the ring and bible bearers didn't let out so much as a peep, though they were so little their fathers had to carry them down the aisle. The littlest flower girl, my cousin Tatiana, looked positively petrified, poor kid.

progress

I've been neglecting the blog, but life's been busy. This morning I went in for an portfolio review/interview with an admissions counselor at the smfa. Check out a slideshow of the portfolio I showed (flash). It went pretty well. She thought my portfolio was in good shape, though I could cut one or two images, that I'd be a good fit for either of the two programs I'd been considering. I'm optimistic that I have a good chance of being admitted.

The tour was vastly entertaining. Walking around the outside of the main building before my appointment I thought it seemed quiet, a bit small, and honestly not terribly exciting as a building. Inside, it's chaos. Bigger than it seems from the outside and stuffed to the gills with various studio and classroom spaces. There's bizarre and inexplicable stuff everywhere. Bursting out of corners and piled up to the ceiling. With little signs that say "NOT TRASH. DON'T THROW OUT." Because the janitors can't tell whether it's trash or art. (Neither could I.)

But the thing that cracked me up the most was in the middle of the tour when the student showing us around showed us into a middling-sized room full of desks and said, "...And this is the academic classroom." The academic classroom. Apparently, there's exactly one. Oh my. A far cry from the cavernous lecture halls of my college days.

But ... they have wheels in the basement, and kilns, and metalworking and papermaking, and lots of fascinating machinery of unknown purpose. It would be kind of cool to learn to weld. This could really be a lot of fun.

the empty wall

Almost nonexistent posting these days. I'm winding up my last few days in the office and just feeling generally quiet. This weekend I packed up most of my books and old notebooks. But it wasn't until I took my photos down from my bulletin board that things suddenly looked different --not my space anymore, just some rented room.

time to go for a walk

summer vacation, ten years later

I took my leave application to my boss today. End of the month I will be divested of all work obligations through the end of the year. It kind of freaks me out. What am I going to do? Oh, I know I have lots to do --keeping busy has never been a problem for me. I've got things to do, places to see, a squirrelly list of projects that I'm keeping tucked close to my chest. But still, my brain keeps asking what am I going to do? Which I suppose is just camouflage for the real question: where will I end up?

the voice that says "it's time to move on"

Ever taken a year off to do something different?

I'm just wondering... the kind of wondering that ends you up on a corner with your stuff wrapped in a red polka-dot handkerchief (figuratively speaking). I need a change and I need it badly. But I don't feel that simply moving to a new job doing the same thing would do much for me. I want to try my hand at something that's just not me. For those who've done it, how did it work out for you?