wondering and wandering

it is amazingly beautiful out today and seems far more like june than april here in brooklyn. so i got some awesome books from the brooklyn public library and went shopping at a thrift store in park slope. i'm also feeling really happy because when my mom was here a few weeks ago, she heped me to organize my room, and i'm really loving how it looks. some pictures and such:

me in new dress, attempting to show a little of room (i'm not so great at the taking pictures with photobooth).

Map of Home, A

Randa Jarrar

Selected Poems (Penguin Classics)

Christina Rossetti

The Loved One

Evelyn Waugh

Olympic forest

during the summer i spent living and working in the forests of olympic national park, i would daydream as we hiked to our work sites in the mornings, and again as we headed home in the afternoons. i would breathe in the clear air and let the green all around wash over me. and then i would worry and plan.

it seems incredible to me now, when i feel like all i want is to get back what i had that summer - i was building things, useful, important things, with my hands. i built a staircase (with other folks, of course. but that was also the project where i was most often team leader and that i took the most pride in). we re-routed a small stream so that the path was clearer. we rebuilt bridges and cleared trails. we worked long hours and it was hard and it hurt but there was something to show. it was easier for people to move around in the park (without hurting it or themselves) because of us. and i was surrounded by beauty, all the time.

but this is my personality. i daydream, my mind wanders. i had almost no emotional connections in that place to focus on. so i read harry potter and thought about that world, while my companions made fun of me for carrying its weight and looked down on me for doing something as banal as reading when we were in such a heavenly place. i was told i should consider carefully, when we went on our backpacking trip the last week, whether it was really a good idea for me to bring along a book. in carrying dan beachy-quick's north true south bright i felt like i had contraband. it might as well have been refined sugar (my habit my munching on excess brown sugar after dinner, when i was still hungry and longing for sweetness, was also frowned upon). what was this fascination i had with words? what was so wrong with me that at the top of a bluff i would breathe in with great joy as i surveyed the view, and then retreat to the shade with my poerty and stories? to me, that seemed to be, in part, the point - the exertion, the beauty, and then to top it off, the words, the cascading language. fantasy come true.

but however ashamed i was made to feel at my attachment to books, i'm sure it was nothing compared to what i might have faced if i had shared my thoughts on our long walks to and fro. my conscience wasn't clear. instead of meditating on the forest spirit, i was thinking about schools. except, i was meditating on the forest spirit, too. i was in certain ways so much in my element, i turned to something i loved to do, the thing that i find mentally calming. i planned out classes and life paths. i systematically went through each college i was considering, and then each major within each college that i might have, and each career it might lead to. i considered my religious affliation and my relationships. but mostly, i thought about what classes, and what careers. because as long as i can remember, this fixation in what i should do, what i could do, what i might do and what it would mean, has given me immense pleasure.

at some point i decided that instead of majoring in environmental studies, i would integrate environmental studies as a central part of my life, and study something else. i think this was in part a response to the way my personality and hunger for reading and articulation was being responded to in the situation. and at the time, it was hard to imagine, surrounded with the beauty and constant work of nature as i was, that it might be harder than i expected to make the environment a fundamental part of my life the way i wanted to. maybe i should have taken notice, at that time, of what i was doing and what it was that made me happy and sad about it - happy about the setting and the sense of accomplishment from important work well done, happy with my stories and my plans, sad about my lack of human connection, sad about not having clear goals towards growth, sad at not having more control over my own life. what i wonder now is if i didn't make the wrong choice. maybe i should have studied enviro studies/ enviro science, knowing that passion would always return me to writing and langauge, and that a discipline different enough from my inherent inclination would give me fuel to feed that very passion. i can't imagine, really, who i would be if i hadn't studied literature and writing and gender and sexuality and media and theory. but right now i wonder if i can make any of those passions into any sort of satisfying profession. or maybe the real issue is that those things will be with me no matter what, and if i want other things - nature, work with my hands, tangible accomplishments - those are the things i must somehow go out of my way to find, and perhaps the way to do that is to focus a career on those. but can i, still? and is there any way i can integrate these things?

i think that summer was the only time in my whole life that i made physical thins that were important in their own right, and not just to me. i miss that feeling every day. i can't even re-make my own body, much as i'm aching to. i've spent the last four years trying to get myself to exercise regularly. i love it when i do but i find it almost impossible to keep up. i don't ride a bike, i don't make crafts, i dropped knitting, i don't garden, i don't run, i don't do pottery, i don't write poems.

worst of all, i don't write. not creative writing. i'm afraid that i don't know how. i'm afraid i won't know how to learn. and i'm afraid that there will always be the conflict i felt that summer, between the part of me that loves the woods and the labor of my body and the tangible results and the part of me that loves the words, that wants decadent sugar even at risk to my health, the part of me that stubbronly resisted fasting, the part of me that daydreams and categorizes and is never still, not even in a place that seems like heaven, not even when i lie down.

i want to find this balance. i believe it's possible, maybe. but there's so much going on right now that's difficult. sometimes i just want to run away from it, re-route a stream, build some stairs. but then, of course, i'll be dreaming of a world of wizards, anxiously awaiting the break when i can return to the page.

I am restless. I want to be doing something productive. I want to be creating things, acting in ways that feel to me somehow more real. I fantasize about someone saying to me, "Anne, let's just go. Let's spend a year in Montana." Or North Carolina. The Ozarks. Pittsburgh. Kansas City. Marin County. Just go someplace new, try it out. But it could just as well be here. It could happen in Brooklyn or Manhattan or anywhere. It's just a way of relating to a place, to the people. If only I biked. If only I exercised. If only I wrote and took pictures and filmed and changed things, and built things. Most of all if I built things.

I have spent most of my life hungrily consuming media that speaks of people and places and actions and thoughts. I deeply want to be creating that media, telling stories. But I feel like I'm stunted, stopped. Lacking movement. I can't sleep. I lie awake, thinking about all that I want to do. I feel better when I'm on a train (above ground, mostly amtrak). I look out the window and dream of the world. But then I get wherever I'm going and then I go home and nothing has changed, and I rarely have anything to show for it. No stories. Or I do have some stories, but they seem personal yet petty, shallow. Not that my relationships are shallow but that my inability to act within them and through them feels inadequate.

I have ideas. I should just pursue them. Make them happen. I want to create a blog that profiles career choices for people who are mesmerized by fantasy books, try to examine what actions could give the same feelings or tap into the same desires as doing magic or being a bard, how to make that possible in our world. But it's just projection.

I feel like I don't have the talent to do anything truly important, but I itch too. And also, I worry. Global warming and nuclear warfare in particular terrify me. It seems ludicrous to me that there are people unemployed or underemployed when there is so much work we need done. There is so much to do. It all feels very immediate to me. The need to stop climate change and attempt to offset its effects. The need to work together collaboratively, to stop violence and warfare that threatens so much harm. The need to educate people so they grow up understanding that these are problems that need addressing and how to go about addressing them. I feel powerless. I want to work for Al Gore's team, I want to learn how to persuade people and figure out what the most effective things we could be doing are. I want to find out what works. But each piece of the puzzle feels too small and isolated. I want people to feel connected, to be connected. I want us to build better systems. I want to help build them. To put our energy towards solving the big problems. And there are so many people & orgs that are trying. But none of it feels like enough. And I don't know how to access my place in it. So I google "green jobs" and fret about all the still born ideas I wish I'd enact and I'm searching for some way to feel more alive, to feel like I am acting in the world, instead of this constant worry while I sit idly by, watching everything fall apart.

besides the people.

- having a free gym across the street

- having relatively easy access to printers & $40 of free printing a year.

- legitimate student status for discounts.

- library access/ several places to go at most times to read/hang out/ work on computer.

- daily events that were close by and often free or inexpensive.

- of course, the classes - reading a bunch as the main thing i was supposed to be doing.

- communities & discussions/ feeling like a part of a definable community.

-providence.

enough for now.

yesterday i was feeling all, yay new york! then today i daydreamed about moving to san francisco. but i think a lot of that was about the arm weather today.

there's so much stuff i want to read and write and do.

i sway back and forth between consumerist lust & worry about the economy & my financial situation. this results in me putting off purchases i should make and then randomly buying things that i maybe should, maybe shouldn't. that said, i bought some clothes this week. felt for me like a lot of money, but i'm watching what not to wear & it reminds me that it's not so bad to get 3 shirts, a hoodie, a nice pair of jeans, socks & a pair of tights for $145. still, i wish i could be better at effectively spending money on clothes.

bought these from etsy:

and went to this place:

Colors

so i have this big idea. i haven't developed the full articulation of it yet (it's mostly occurred to me today though it has been brewing for years), but basically the idea is production of creative/fictional works & art pieces, so, movies (non-documentary), tv, short stories and novels, poetry, plays, but with an emphasis maybe on tv & movies b/c i feel that's the most lacking in the models i'm looking at, through the model of grassroots community media organization, making use of a bunch of stuff that is going on in the web TV and social networking worlds and the rapid changes in the accessibility of the technology of production and dissemination, for purposes of social justice and creative expression and representation of marginaized voices and also just spreading of who gets to create based on the idea that fictional works & artworks (with appropriately blurry distinctions) have a value of their own and a place in the world and we should be cultivating artists playwrites screenwriters tvmakers producers directors etc., which would in many ways develop the same practical skills that thegrassroots media orgs are going for, but also engage in a certain process of content creation that i feel is being left out. are these discourses talking to each other somewhere in action and i'm missing it? i think this might be more advanced with music, which is taking a different but more interconnected route than citizen journalism/ memoir-esque writing. i also think some of it is happening in podcasts, which is part of the reason why i'm interested in seeing about TV, especially now when this is the moment web tv is springing into action. there's some sort of opening.

in case that was completely opaque, what i'm going for with this idea is some blend of these ideas and programs, or a nonexhaustive list of things that are inspiring me in this thought journey:

appalshop
young chicago authors
people's production house
center for digital storytelling
current tv
about face theater
new teevee
organization for transformative works
mountain area info network
prometheus radio
national museum of the american indian (their video/film parts especially)
826 valencia
academy for alternative journalism
humanities councils like RICH/the programs they fund
this american life

and things i can't think of off the top of my head about independant film and poetry slams and creative writing and encouraging art + social justice...i may try to link more here as i try to find out about them. some places i'm starting to look are at the programs that have CTC Vistas.

also being inspired by bitch mag & other feminist media makers like those involved with $pread and glaad and colorlines and racialicious and by writers like ariel gore kate bornstein nikki giovanni alice walker daniel quinn scott turner schofield and on and on...and by classes the gay 90s, tv on the internet, native americans in the media, tv, gender & sexuality and open source culture...and if you have looked at all these links you really probaby now know my soul)

a lot of things like the thing i'm imagining focus on youth which makes sense, but i also think there is potential, as in many of the above, for a youth & wider community focus. my basic argument is that i think fictional forms, and in particular often maligned ones or ones associated with big budgets like TV and movies, can be valuable spaces for change and representation in various ways, and that not enough is being done to actively encourage a diversity of creations depictions representations in these formats from a grassroots level. meanwhile there is right now a whole movement around web video, which seems from my limited knowledge to be coming more from a small business/entrepenurial standpoint than a media justice one, although some of the missions and rhetoric overlap. it seems to me like there's an opportunity here that i have yet to find people/orgs really taking up to bring together these campaigns in order to build something that values both fictional media forms, particularly the formerly inaccessible to most folks to create forms of tv & movies, and is working on media justice in those forms. it seems like a lot of the media justice that happens in tv and movies is more after the fact - in reception. there are indy film people and indy creators and creators who i think have a media justice agenda at least in part, but i don't know that they are being hooked into these other movements for grassroots work.

if any of this is making sense i would really really really love to hear what people think, if anyone knows anyone who is doing this stuff, etc.

continuation: now i'm actively looking around and this seems closest to what i'm thinking of, though i need to do more research, and i am guessing it will be more movies than tv.

p.s. this is of course in a way all selfish b/c it's what i wish i'd had and what i want to do...but what good ideas don't have some piece of that in them?

(camera is broken, so only a few, sad)

sorry that this blog is so often about material desires - but it's the next best thing to buying things! or something. soon i will post pictures of my neighborhood. until then, things i want to buy if i sometime can save money without giving it to save bitch or elect obama or something:

Librariandress

Hoodie

spent this weekend watching tv, reading young wives tales, and wandering in the park. i love the park - i need to spend a lot more time at prospect park, because it is amazing. it's a big version of what hyde park's japanese garden and wooded island are trying to do, and that is great. forests, fields, water, zoo, museum, pond - so much stuff! i want to live their. near there would be ok, but i really want to live in the park. in lefferts house would be nice (it's several centuries old). ah, museums and trees and walking distance to shops and a city area - if there was internet and television, it would be practically perfect. too bad it's not actually possible to live there. too bad more places aren't like it!

there's so much more i'd like to be and do. besides the aforementioned skills, here are some things:

knitting
dancing
pilates
biking
gardening
volunteering/organizing things

also these would be good ways to meet people. gotta work on these, as well as being kinder and smarter and generally doing things better.