beautiful, funny, sad & true

As you may or may not have already known, I’ve wanted a camera for a long time now. This was the year that I finally splurged and got a decent one. Here, then, are my favorite pictures from this year.

a beautiful October day in Portlandunder the Fremont bridge in PortlandConstruction site in downtown Boise, Idaho McKinley performing “Jamie’s Got a Gun”, taken from backstage at the Night of the Murder Ballad
another of McKinley at Murder BalladKelly on the waterfront in AstoriaKelly warming up with coffee in Astoriainside a cave in Cannon Beach, Oregon
Also Cannon Beach. A kid knocked them down right after this picture was taken.karaoke night
stormy day in Carson, WashingtonJacob Ray of the Young ImmortalsBreanna Paletta of Rye Hollow

but my favorite of the year is this one:

All pictures copyright 2006 by me.  If you’d like copies or anything, please leave a comment and we can work that out.

This entry is a combination of two entries that I combined into one, and I’m re-posting them from my MySpace blog. This happened last summer, by the way.

I was out walking around yesterday, and I overheard two womens’ conversation, and I’ve been thinking about it ever since. One said to the other, “I’m such a bitch in a relationship.”

The other person just took that in stride. “Oh, I KNOW. Relationships are SO hard. . .”

I wanted so bad to just turn and ask the first person, “Why?”

What’s the point of being in a relationship if all you’re going to do is make the other person miserable? Or allow them to make YOU miserable? Like the second person said, relationships ARE ‘so hard’, even under the BEST of circumstances. Everybody’s got issues. Yes, even me. har har

But at least I can say that I genuinely want the best for myself and whoever I’m with, and it makes me so sad to hear about people who seem to want nothing more than to leave a trail of destruction and heartbreak behind them.

Remember that you’re with the person you’re with because you LIKE THEM. And they LIKE YOU TOO. Why be together otherwise? Reinforcement of each others’ pathologies? Is that the basis of love? I have to believe it’s more than that, but sometimes I wonder. . .

Genuine deep connections with other people are extremely rare, and it seems to me like so many people don’t appreciate that, and they take the other person for granted.

And who am I to comment on all this? I have plenty of faults of my own, but I’m just sayin’. . . I want a real person to care about me for the Real Me, and I want to care about and connect with the Real Them in return. It seems like such an easy request. . .

and here’s part two:

Upon further reflection and re-reading, I felt the need to say that what I wrote earlier sounds more ‘intense’ than I meant it. I meant all that as a bit of questioning, not as a diatribe, which is how it kinda comes across. :) But that wasn’t my intention, or what I was feeling when I wrote it. More confusion than anything else.

Her phrase had been buzzing around in my head, and you got to witness my thought process, that’s all. LUCKY. :)

But anyway.

Man, is it a beautiful night or what? I wish my building had a roof (meaning one that people could go up onto; it obviously HAS a roof), or at least a fire escape, ’cause it’s the perfect night to sit out and look at the stars.

And for gawd’s sake, if you’re with somebody, appreciate them. Give them a hug or something. Try it now. . .go outside together, look at the stars or the city lights, and just hug for a while.

:)

Is there a time of day when your shyness is more pronounced?

For me it’s worst in the morning, and late at night. To really appreciate this, you have to know what I’m normally like when I’m out and about. If I see someone walk past me in the opposite direction, I make eye contact and usually smile or say hello or something. It’s nice to acknowledge another person’s existence. We’re all human beings, after all, but you’d be surprised how few people respond in kind. It’s a smallish pet peeve of mine.

But I noticed it when I was walking over to get coffee. On the way over there, there were a lot of people out walking–it’s an exceptionally beautiful day–and I could hardly meet their eyes. And once I was there and ordering and stuff, I was really anxious and fidgety the whole time; way more than I ever am normally. It’s only Peet’s, y’know? I’ve been there a thousand times! Maybe it’s cause I spent the whole evening inside yesterday, and all of today, and when I go out I have to re-acclimate myself to contact with people again. . .?

Weird. I’m kinda like a cat, I guess. Move super slowly, keep putting your hand out and I’ll come to you. If you make a sudden movement or noise, I’m gonna run. But once I really trust you, I’ll curl up on your lap or maybe even let you rub my belly.

The other time is late at night. Once my body thinks, “OK, goin’ to bed now,” my brain’s kinda ‘done’ too. Not that I’m socializing much when it’s really late at night–no one’s ever around–but I’m just letting you know, for the sake of this discussion.

What’s your experience been?

This is my favorite scene in “Amelie”. . .when she’s sitting at home making her ‘famous plum cake’, daydreaming about her guy going to the market to pick up some stuff, then coming back to surprise her, dragging his fingers across her bead curtain when he arrives. Suddenly her bead curtain rattles. . .no guy, only her little cat sitting there.

Such a beautiful and touching scene.

Whenever my friend Andrea writes e-mails to me, she types random subject lines. The one yesterday was “red star. . .something” (it’s at work, so I can’t look it up).

That reminded me of my favorite book when I was in fifth and sixth grade, besides “A Wrinkle In Time, that is. THAT’S been my favorite book for as long as I can remember. But the red star thing reminded me of the book “Dogsbody”, by Diana Wynne Jones. The word ‘dogsbody’ is a British slang word for a person who has to do all the thankless work. Not necessarily a servant, and not necessarily an assistant, but somewhere between the two.

I’m gonna try to describe the story, but I don’t know if I’ll be able to do it justice. :)

There are all these stars, okay, and they have personalities. One of them, Sirius (you know, the Dog Star) is on trial, and he gets charged with acting recklessly or something, and as punishment he gets sent to Earth to retrieve this asteroid thingy that he lost in a fit of rage (the asteroid has special powers). The trial involves his girlfriend somehow, and how she’s taken up with another star, so he flew into a rage and did something regrettable with the asteroid. The catch is that he’s sent to Earth IN THE FORM OF A DOG, see? So he can’t talk or make his mission known to anyone. He has to muddle through life with the limitations of a dog’s body, but his mind is still perfectly functional.

So this girl takes him in, and she can tell that there’s something special about him, but of course she has no way of knowing that he’s really a STAR, sent to earth to retrieve this asteroid. Oh, that’s right. . .his eyes are a strange color of green, and when he’s angry they blaze in an unusual way. . .

There are certain times, like maybe a full moon (?), when he can turn back into a star again and communicate with the ones who sent him to earth, and report on his progress toward finding the asteroid. It’s called the Zoi, by the way.

As if I’m ever getting another date after THIS blog! :)

Okay, Ms. Jones, I’m just going to stop butchering your poor book now, and I’m going to have to go find it and read it again. It was actually reprinted a few years ago, so it shouldn’t be too hard to find.

I’ll have to write a new blog–one that does it justice!–after I actually get a chance to re-read the book. Maybe you should read it and let me know what you think? I mean, it’s a kids’ book, so it’ll be an easy read. Next time you go to the beach, go grab it.

What was YOUR favorite book when you were ten?