Not that you'll care, but...

...as I am a book fetishist* and a compulsive list-maker, I feel the need to inform the world that today I swapped these old books:

Issues in Feminist Film Criticism, by Patricia Erens,
Documenting Ourselves: Film, Video and Culture, by Sharon Sherman,
The Man with the Dancing Eyes, by Sophie Dahl, and
Bare Bones Camera Course for Film and Video by Tom Schroeppel,

for the following:

Life of Pi, by Yann Martel,
Dubliners, by James Joyce,
A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, by James Joyce,
Orlando, by Virginia Woolf, and
From the Mixed-Up Files of Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler, by E.L. Konigsburg.

I plan to teach Konigsburg to my middle school class during graduate school. My only hope is that I won't be held fully liable if one of my seventh graders decides to either a) run away indefinitely to the Metropolitan Museum of Art, or b) grow up to direct a series of esoteric films featuring outcasts and narcissists (see Wes Anderson). This book inspires that kind of thing; it's effing fabulous.



*Yes, a book fetishist, and my case is innate, incurable and acute. When I was four I filled my Radio Flyer full of books, alphabetized them, and tried to check them out to friends and family; I even made my own little check-out cards and card pockets. In college I majored in English and am now pursuing a Masters in high school language arts education, and I'll probably go for a certification or second Masters in Library Science. And when I die, I'll either ascend to a heaven stacked high with poetry and prose, or descend to a hell fully stocked with science textbooks and how-to manuals.
Or I'll be reincarnated, and rise again as Orlando.

Yes, books.

And it's done: college.

I have been thirty thousand different people in the last three weeks--everyone from the C-movie-watching, perpetually pajama wearing house-hermit, to the cool, confidant, poised and polished teacher-woman, to the celebrating-while-simultaneously-crying college graduate. It's like I've been putting on my own masquerade, my own little private freak show, and I'm not sure when the curtain will finally draw to a close. I'm oscillating between too many feelings to define. At least some of them are good, but damn it, I wanted euphoria--not whatever this is.
Perhaps I should get a puppy. Pre-packaged euphoria, and all that you have to do is scoop a little bit of poop...I could deal with that.

Short of, you know, getting a puppy (ha), there are a handful of therapeutic activities that can temporarily provide me with a stout heave-ho out of this emotional quagmire, and they are the following:
1) Watching Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind (check; feel 20% better)
2) Calling Reed and solidifying my plans to return to karate (check; feel 40% better)
3) Tearing apart, reorganizing, and redecorating my apartment while listening to my new albums (Micah P. Hinson and M. Ward) (pending)
4) Writing obscene magnetic poetry that will embarrass my boyfriend when company comes. Such as the following, which I authored long months ago but still remains:
Our fuzzy love ball could
leap electrically above all
You are the foe of the fair fluffy moon
Because your butt is white and shapely.
(pending, and also)
5) Walking down to Smith Family Books and swapping boring Feminist Film textbooks for crisp new classics (also pending)

So you know what I'll be doing in the next 48 hours before Andy and I rocket off to Santa Fe.

Life will improve exponentially.

It arrives.

Just got home from tutoring, and lo and behold--a long-expected (but much larger than expected) parcel had been deposited on my front porch. I scurried to the kitchen table and rapidly began ripping off packaging tape... and out of layer upon layer of--thankfully unused--bright blue adult diapers (a completely bizarre substitute for bubble wrap; made me wonder about the seller), my vintage Polaroid OneStep finally emerged, bright and shining after its 2-week Ebay-auction gestation period. We regarded each other like mother and newborn child.
Ah, Winston: how many years I have waited for thee, and thou wert only two dollars.

The first picture I took (with this Polaroid or any Polaroid, ever) was of my face, in bad lighting, and it made my nose look monstrously large--more monstrously large than it actually is, which is substantial; I'm Scottish. I posted it proudly on the fridge nevertheless, next to my lithograph of Mary Sidney and Andy's scribbled pissed-off-sunshine drawing. Classy.
Next stop, the UO campus--where I'll finally get a snapshot of the stenciled spray-painting that I noticed on a sorority door several months ago--featuring Richie and Margot Tenenbaum, face to face.
But first, an extensive test in linguistics. Shittity brickity.

I just keep telling myself...

Well kids, we've got aboot two weeks left before I abruptly explode into a Shakers-esque celebratory freak-out of college graduation euphoria (predicted to be an approximate level five on the Richter scale, n'so-on-n'-so-forth). It'll have you shaking in your shoesies wherever you may be, guaranteed--as will the photos from the graduation costume party that I'm planning, even though (alas) I can't go as Margot Tenenbaum anymore. I cut my hair too short, you see, and now I only vaguely resemble her. I'll come up with an equally good alternative.

Anyway, here's what's cooking lately:
+ Andy and I bought a Super Nintendo and have been reliving the early 90's childhood dream in what little time we can scrape together between our finals preparations. Totally radical.

And coagulating for the next few weeks on my mental backburners:
+ plans to put together a flickr account, and to create a mini-site with downloadable bookplates, recipe cards, and fake citizen/bad parking violations, made my me. For no particular reason.
+ plans to start up with karate again in April, and to NEVER QUIT AGAIN for as long as I live--because I go through a sort of crisis of meaning without that kind of non-school-related discipline. And also,
+ plans to put together Polaroid photo collections on the following themes: "Tacky Americana Fabulousness," "With a Nod to Wes Anderson," "Evidence of Gender Performativity," and "Andy's Bizarre Subconscious Habits" (documenting my boyfriend in all of his wonderful weirdnesses).
+ our monumental roadtrip through the southwest.