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A girl living, loving and writing in Los Angeles.
August Listening
August Reading
Favorite Places
Copyright 2001 - 2008 by Ann, unless otherwise noted.
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Wednesday, June 29, 2005
This summer is shaping up to be a lovely one;
though I miss quite a lot of people, so please email me or get in touch with me and we'll have a grand adventure in the height of my last summer vacation ever. I want a lot to write about when I get back to school in the fall.
Sunday, June 26, 2005
Welcome to Hollywood, what's your dream?
she keeps your things, she keeps your yard and your home
i keep your heart on my bedstand while i sleep alone
("over me" by jessica harp)
Things are tumultuous lately, I feel rattled like a numbered ball in a bingo hall. People in my art classes, who are at least my parents' age, tell me stories about all the detours in their life. These stories make me smile, help me breathe, remind me that every wrong turn is the right direction.
The following things are very very very frustrating:
1. apartment hunting
2. traffic
3. L.A.
4. people
I'm falling out of love with LA. The city used to be a mythical grown up sophistication, seductive with lovely red starlet lips and hills strung with christmas lights, when I was in high school; but now I feel like it's coyote ugly in daylight. There is abject poverty at the footstep of inflated salaries, and everybody's got something to lie about. Where does the good go?
While digging through boxes in my room at my parents' house, I came across an envelope of pictures from my freshman year of college. There were some amazing moments captured on film, and what's heartbreaking is that I looked so genuinely happy in those pictures. Many friendship casualties have been suffered since, and so much growing has happened in the space between. I'm feeling like a minefield.
Maybe now I'll know better than to anchor my heart onto a boy who didn't care while I held the hand of one who wanted to.
Though I'm still battling with my constant juggle between caring about other people and being completely selfish. In that, I enjoy my solitude where there is no guilt in being selfish because I'm the only person there to enjoy the cupcake.
Where did all the good people go?
The world's on fire and it's more than I can handle. I feel so very very terrible and very very small against the massive, consuming bad in this world. It's a big cold tunnel and I'm holding a very very small birthday candle.
Thursday, June 23, 2005
"My life was falling apart so what do I do? I throw out the typewriter."
I really really really want this typewriter. When I was 11, I typed up my first novella at about 70 pages on my mom's old, cheap Brother's typewriter. I miss the old days.
Wednesday, June 22, 2005
Remember when we first moved in, the piano took up the living room.
I want to live in a Jack Johnson song. On Monday, I dropped in on the magnificent Nicole who took time out of her last few days of finishing her thesis to have a mini adventure with me. We walked into a store in Westwood that was playing a Jack Johnson song neither of us had heard of, but it was so hypnotic and incredibly soothing that we promptly directed ourselves to the closest record-dispensing outlet (which in Westwood, had to be Best Buy, which was awfully disappointing).
Deny as I try, I just love Jack's song. It's like air-conditioning on the hottest day of the summer, while lying flat on your back on the hardwood floors of your apartment next to your honey and a big bowl of strawberry and mint ice cream. It's like digging your toes into the sand to feel the first surf of the summer wash over them. This feeling is particularly welcome to me on the ridiculous commute ANYWHERE in LA. I'm seriously rethinking my commitment to moving here post-grad next spring.
I really love the new Foo Fighters song Best Of You, the new Coldplay song Fix You, and the tracks I've heard off of The White Stripes' Get Behind Me Satan. I would highly recommend those for the ones hungry for ear candy on the radio/iTunes/what have you.
Here are the following cities I've decided I want to live in for the next eight years:
1. San Francisco
2. New York
3. Seattle
4. Paris
5. Los Angeles
6. San Diego
Sunday, June 19, 2005
Applications are being printed up as we speak....
So maybe I will go to The Smiths'/Morrissey Convention at the Henry Fonda in July to pick myself up a new boyfriend.
Even my brain wants to commit suicide...
I have a raging raging raging headache. I'm blaming it on the following facts:
My disgusting roommate and her even bigger disgusting boyfriend had sex in my bed.
The facts, after my parents and I went to move the rest of my furniture:
-- my bed was made even though I didn't make it when I left
-- my bed wasn't made the way I make it, so it isn't because of my senility
-- a condom fell on the floor as my mom was taking out the trash
-- I hadn't slept with anyone in my room before
I hate people.
Wednesday, June 15, 2005
Somebody That I Used To Know
I've discovered that due to the impressionable nature of my written work, a lot of my writing is sometimes influenced by (read: smeared with) the voices of whomever I happen to be reading. Dreamy and whimsical when I'm revisiting Francesca Lia Block, painful and haunting when I'm reading Jeffrey Eunides, and right now meandering and self-indulgent because I am still working on (now plowing through) Dave Eggers' A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius.
Through this journey of madness and meandering in which the author drags the reader enthusiastically down at least twenty paths in two pages, I've discovered that Dave Eggers is a madman -- and that somehow justifies my ability to write as well. I've always gotten it wrong; I assumed that I did not want to be a writer because I did not want to be crazy. I discovered this year that I have to write because I already am crazy. This new revelation about him, however, does not really make me want to meet him at the corner pub and shoot the shit with him any more because he strangely, scarily, reminds me of somebody that I went out with a couple times once upon a time.
OH and here's my Dave Eggers story;
So I was in San Francisco, innocently minding my own business and stocking up on my personal pirate supply when I stumbled across a copy of How We Are Hungry that was advertised as "autographed by author" on the tag. Delighted, for I like to covet the personal handwriting of others (I find a strange, personal pleasure in the art of handwriting and the way it was given personal attention and actually came from the touch of the originator), I happily presented a copy along with my new pirate eye patch (oh yes, I did) to the shopgirl.
Then I noticed it wasn't signed.
"It says autographed by author on the sign," I inquired.
"Yes, I know, but we ran out of the autographed copies and Dave Eggers is out of town." She replied apologetically.
"Oh.." My face fell.
"He's going to be out of town for," she paused as a smirk crossed her face, "quite awhile." What was assumed to be a short business trip is now leaning towards: a) "I killed him and he's in my trunk" or b) Dave Eggers hasn't paid his taxes...ever.
I uneasily pushed the copy aside, explaining that I would buy it the next time I was in this happy foggy town by the bay. Her smile quickly returned to shopgirl sweet, and she sent me on my way with my shiny new eyepatch.
Tuesday, June 14, 2005
You & I, we're gonna be AMAZING
A pomegranate candle is burning on the soon-to-be bare desktop. The chocolates inside a box of chocolate covered toffee with macademia nuts from Hawaii is slowly dwindling in numbers. I'm sitting in the middle of my room in my lovely little apartment, surrounded by half-filled boxes and empty shelves once again. This is my fifth move in the past year.
This third year of college whipped quickly past my eyes like one of those flipbooks that my roommate has in the living room, where the girl gets progressively more naked by the last page. I barely have time to move all my stuff out before my job started last Monday. I still need to find another job that pays. My friends all have jobs and internships too; we're becoming old people who meet for dinner and cocktails and then go home early to sleep our lives away.
I'm going NUTS with the speed of life nowadays.
Third Year in a Nutshell:
+ Vagina Monologues
+ D.C./Maryland/New York trip
+ one novella
+ 2 screenplays
+ 2 apartments lived in
+ 2 trips to Seattle
+ one marketing internship
+ one magazine produced
+ one British boy houseguest
+ San Jose/San Francisco trip
+ one minor determined (photography)
+ one twin houseguest
+ many many many friendships, new old & better.
The way that everything keeps beginning and ending abruptly feels gross. I wish there was something I could anchor myself onto.
Saturday, June 11, 2005
I wish the real world would just stop hasseling me.
I have an internship with a film producer in Santa Monica; I'm ruining dreams daily as I pass script after shitty script. Does that make you nervous, that little college interns like me determine what scripts get considered and which ones get passed? This would explain why things like Not Another Teen Movie were made though.
Tuesday, June 07, 2005
The Unfinished Series
While I was somewhere between San Diego, LA and home this weekend with Gina, we discovered my old paintings. From my span of time between now and when I did those, and now as they stand completely unfinished, I really like them the way they are. And let's be honest; we know I'm not going to finish them, ever.
From top left clockwise:
The Japanese Garden Bridge after Monet for my grandparents (my grandfather died in 2002).
Amelie for Jason's 22nd birthday (he's now 25).
Starry Nights after Van Gogh, a $200 commission piece from 2002.
The Night Cafe after Van Gogh for my freshman year dorm room (I am now a senior).
Maybe some things are better left undone.
Bonjour, June.
I feel like a little flickering lightbulb in an empty hallway.
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