trouble

trouble, trouble

move away

i have seen your face

and it's too much for me today. 

saturday

there are times that walk from you like some passing afternoon

summer warmed the open window of her honeymoon

and she chose a yard to burn but the ground remembers her

wooden spoons, her children stir her bougainvillea blooms

there are things that drift away like our endless, numbered days

autumn blew the quilt right off the perfect bed she made

and she's chosen to believe in the hymns her mother sings

sunday pulls its children from their piles of fallen leaves

there are sailing ships that pass all our bodies in the grass

springtime calls her children 'till she let's them go at last

and she's chosen where to be, though she's lost her wedding ring

somewhere near her misplaced jar of bougainvillea seeds

there are things we  can't recall, blind as night that finds us all

winter tucks her children in, her fragile china dolls

but my hands remember hers, rolling 'round the shaded ferns.

naked arms, her secrets still like songs i'd never learned

there are names across the sea, only now do i believe

sometimes, with the windows closed, she'll sit and think of me

but she'll mend his tattered clothes and they'll kiss as if they know

a baby sleeps in all our bones

so scared to be alone. 

Ghosts

Boo!

Things That I Know

Whatever I have said or left unsaid

Whatever I have done or left undone,--

Tell me. Tell me the truth . . . Are you afraid?

Do you think that Love was ever fed with lies

But hunger lived thereafter in his eyes?

Do you ask me to take moonlight for the sun?

The Woman And the Wife, e.a. robinson

yo la tengo

You and me we're at the goldfish pond
and I, I was tagging along for the ride
all the big mouthed fish really made us laugh
and while I stood still I felt a chill
I thought that maybe you did too
I wanted to feel that way forever
And that's why
If you're looking at me I'll try to be what you want to see
and if I'm, if I'm, ever that lucky
You won't have to be so, You won't have to be so sad
You won't have to be so sad.
Last night I was trying to read in bed
But I got to watching you sleep instead
Even when I got tired I couldn't stop
Because I love you so, and I pray you know
But I'm not much for praying
I knew I couldn't say that without making a joke
And that's why if you're looking at me I'll try to be what you want to see
and If I'm ever that lucky you won't have to be so
You won't have to be so sad.
You won't have to be so sad.
Yeah that's why
If you're looking at me I'll try to be what you want to see
and I, if I'm ever that lucky you won't have to be so
You won't have to be so sad.
You won't have to be so sad.
You won't have to be so sad.


---------
Wrote 2 pages about my life, but still nothing for the proposal. Future looks bleak.

slow

I miss this! who wouldn't. slow day.

I just have this thought..that is going somewhat like...TELL ME WHAT TO DO TELL ME WHAT TO DO TELL ME WHAT TO DO. Because I don't know what to do. About anything. It's like this thing...where there's too many open doors, and then you get stuck thinking about all the possibilities but no solutions and I'm afraid of a lot of things, like big dogs and being a senior and the psychology exam in 2 weeks and all my friends being haters. dunno. dunno. dunno. something like when you close your eyes and all you see are newspapers that won't stop printing and spinning your vision.

dream: I look down at my legs, and there are white spots everywhere that are actually mosquito bites that have become really dry. My ankles are super white looking too. I remember thinking..."michelle..you ashy."

Dumbest. Dream. Ever.

Blagh.

Last night I dreamt that I was wearing my new shoes from bloomingdale's and they were ruined then I looked at my friend's shoes and she said "this happens to kate spades all the time."

fin. qu-est-ce que tu pense?

foolish games

(on our way to Chartres, France)

"always the mysterious one with dark eyes and careless hair, fashionably sensitive and too cool to care. you stood in my doorway with nothin' to say besides some comment on the weather. well in case you failed to notice, in case you failed you see, this is my HEART THIS ME DOWN ON MY KNEES..."

It's been kind of a Jewel-ed 2 weeks. The other day me Deren and Brian were discussing her songs, and I remember banging this out on the piano and singing soulfully at the age of 11. It's a funny idea. And then later we were in Diana's bed trying to figure out the lyrics to Hands.

Dream:
I'm in Paris again, or a part of France. My mother is visiting or is with me. All of my friends are here. My best friend comes with me to go to the bakery, and there are many of them (all asian, actually) there is a cute bread in the shape of an octopus and another in the shape of doraemon. Then we are told we can only buy the cold ones, not the hot ones like the doraemon one. Then [when I was a kid I had this fake plastic set of kitchen and diningware that was precious to me because I loved playing restaurant and kitchen] and then my best friend asked if she could borrow some of it for her kitchen and I got mad, "secretly", and said yes. Later I'm with my mom and she asks why I'm so angry about her borrowing it and I say I don't know and then maybe it's because I don't know how to share. When she comes in to get it, I push all of it on the floor and say "whatever". Then we bike down a cobblestone hill and I can't stop because one of my brakes doesn't work.

I felt like a big baby when I woke up.

Seven, Seven, Seven

Jie on a dock in Chicago. The summer has been strange, but I have to say 2008 has been the strangest year..nothing really seemed to happen. Even China thinks it's been a bad year (for obvious reasons...) or maybe things did happen, and nobody really cared. Oops. 

Dream:

My mother, me, and my sisters are traveling. We are in our old car, the one we had when I was in middle school. We are going driving around Pittsburgh, except it doesn't look anything like the Pittsburgh I know (of). There are floods or a natural disaster, so we drive in hopes of fleeing it and end up at a toll booth where they demand to search our car and then detain us. This whole time we are fleeing this girl that's torturing everybody by calling their cellphones and making them dance in strange, demonic sexual ways. It's unnerving because everyone who has been detained is a girl, and the one I remember most is a girl named Ruby who is little. 

Addicted to the HBO series Rome, cannot stop watching. I have a thing for historical dramas? I wish I had been a roman philosopher? or maybe poet. Although I admit the  storylines are getting crazier and crazier. Lesbian loves? Incest? S&M with your henchmen? Roman gangsters and a monster tyrant by the name of Caesar..I LOOVEEE IT!

Five

( view somewhere in between villages in Cinque Terre, Italy)

Dream:

Involving rollercoasters, some kind of amusement park, and someone wearing Morgan's shirt which has been sitting in the kitchen. Starting to have trouble remembering these, a deterrent to my grand scheme of making Dali-esque paintings about my amazing dreams. Melting clocks and all.  Today marks the 2nd day of my 2nd week in America. Running out of excuses as to why I am still unemployed. 

Down and Out

These are things, at the faintest, that I can remember of my summers in Taiwan at the age of 6 or 7. We are spending the day with my aunt, who is married to my father's brother. I remember an apartment building where we eat a sweet gelatin drink that has a lemon flavor. My cousin and I buy matching Felix the Cat swimsuits. At the beach, we have to wear swimming caps. I only remember this because of photographs. Later, auntie takes us to her family's house, where the grass is very green and we eat tapioca pearls. In chinese, they are nicknamed frog eggs and since these are a bit undercooked - or overcooked, you can taste the powdery center, and I believe I have eaten real frog eggs! It makes me sad, since my mother's father always had a bunch of frog eggs in his pond and fountain that grow into tadpoles we try to catch with our squirmy little hands in Buena Park, California.

Another time, we spend the day at hot baths in the mountains. Megan, Wunyieh, and I are sitting in the bathtub. Megan is little, and too young to swim. My mother was watching over us, playing in the bath and she steps up to leave as my grandmother says she will watch us. Then she leaves, and my mother comes in again. She asks me, "Where did Megan go?". I remember telling her "She went to look at the fish". Megan was actually underwater, and almost drowned that day. On the drive back to Pittsburgh, my mother recounts the story to me again, and this time I realize how scared she was.

And there I was, talking about the fish.

Cranberries

This morning over breakfast, listened to the Cranberries greatest hits.
Had a dream, can't remember it. This blows, considering one of my summer goals is to not only find a job, but also to record my dreams everysingleday. I believe that my dreams are channeling secret meanings of life, or my personal fears (such as destroying a commune of well-meaning hippies by letting it rot to disease and debris - yes, it's true)

I was born on March 9, a day which celebrates the creation of Barbie in 1959 and the birth of American rapper Bow Wow (1987). Ronald Reagan is president, and my parents are currently residing in New Jersey, in the basement of a local priest's home. My father is working on his residency at New York University. I kick and refuse for 8 hours to exit the womb. When I arrive, I'm 8 pounds and my mother saves the bit of umbilical cord attached to my belly button and they christen me Michelle, which I will later say refers to my love for Full House.

Escalators

Dream:

We are going on an amusement park ride. It is the choice between the log fumes and the rocket ship that is like the log ride, but in space sans water. We get in line for the logs, but realize we are actually going to the space ride (rocket ship) instead. The line is not as long, but we have to keep going up escalators, and I wonder when we will actually get to the ride. I'm with fragments of my family and someone else's family. I offer to carry their stroller with the baby in it and I'm amazed when I can carry it on the escalator but when I get on the next escalator, the baby is gone and the stroller is empty. We just keep going up, and then I woke up. We never went to space.


Thoughts:
Applied for a job at the creperie, peut-etre my experience in France eating the best crepes ever will help, ha!

the good old united of states of american

the grocery store is so big!

i kind of miss paris, but missed pittsburgh even more.

must find job. 

speaking tongues

(super cute mailboxes, stockholm sweden on gamla stan)

(the prettiest bicycle chain cover. stockholm, sweden)

dream:
i'm on my first day of school, and on mondays i only have chinese class. so i'm getting tutored by this guy, and 10 minutes into a montage, i'm about to get tutoring from him and i realize "he likes me! but he has a girlfriend, but he likes me!" and "he's been tutoring me because he likes me!" and i'm shouting this all in chinese while i'm standing in line to be tutored and i think some girl doesn't understand me, but she does. we kind of argue about it, and later we spend a lot of time (me, several other kids, the tutor, his girlfriend) running around and trying to avoid and find each other because i don't want to screw with his relationship, but he keeps up because he "likes me". the next day i am in elizabeth raymer's photo class and we are learning about CMYK and what each letter stands for. to the left, barbara walters is teaching a 60 minutes photo class. dylan vitone is also hanging out in my class, and this girl i know turned out to have a penis and some guy was taking advantage and photographing her.

totally WEIRD.

IT MUST HAVE BEEN LOVE

touch me now i close my eyes! and dream away!
it must have been love!!!!!!!!!111

don't get no respects

(hole in the sky, praia das macas portugal)

(moorish castle, sintra portugal)

(duoro river, porto - portugal)

all i ever wanted, all i ever needed is here in my arms. 

new directions

(a beach near bruges, belgium)

I realized I have barely posted about my travels, or anything of the sort since I've been in Paris.
Well, it's been fun.

bad in a bad way

a really beautiful scene from my blueberry nights - but probably the worst wong kar wai movie to date. i remarked that maybe he needed tragedy to befall him before he makes another film and cheryl said this was probably it. i can't believe how bad it was, i wouldn't even watch it for kicks. norah jones' character has absolutely no emotion whatsoever, and her "spiritual journey" seems like it left her fairly unchanged. jude law is likeable though, and natalie portman and rachel weisz actually do really well considering the heinous dialogue written in the script. also, chan marshall's appearance -- while they keep a stupid opening/closing doors metaphors going for too long -- was gorgeous. it seems like everything i ever loved about his movies was totally missing..

weather is cold, then hot. hate paris for that. weeks are flying by. brian will be here in no time at all. my summer options are dwindling. need to think about life, arts, in general.

dream: okay, so basically i am in a house (my house? someone else's house.) and the parents kill their son's girlfriend for his own good. their son is my friend, i am at their house and we can't find her and we don't know where she is. but then we find her, in the shower, her body looks horrific but my friend keeps saying that this is good that we found her even though she is dead and bleeding while we all have to take showers there. (literally, in my head, i shower and see her dead body). meanwhile, turns out we all live in a house together and a girl from the lithography studio is downstairs investigating the water, turns out it is diseased because there's blood in the water -- but not red water, but stream of blood red. so we can't drink the water.

pretty disturbing.

Tripes a la Tomate

I accidentally ordered cow stomach today at dinner. I thought "tripes" was a type of fish. Turns out its cow stomach boiled or something with tomatoes. It smelled pretty bad and to be honest I was done after four bites. At least I can say that (a) I've tried it and (b) I will never eat it again.

Last night, Cheryl and I went out to the Marais and decided to try some bars after dinner at Le Colimacon (so full, very french, excellent and really cute). First we went to Politburo, which is kind of a small, indie rock (i guess) bar, kind of kitsch with its wood bearings, red walls, and apparently a chinese-restaurant style decoration on the ceiling. Drinks were pretty cheap, but the crowd was okay. Next we went to Stolly's which had a really good atmosphere and again, pretty cheap drinks (I don't know where we've been drinking, but it was amazing to get a beer for 5 euro) and after that, we hit Flavela Chic. We had been rejected the previous night for most likely random reasons, but got in and it was actually pretty fun. I love the decoration in Flavela Chic and the music is pretty different from most of the techno clubs we've gone to so far. The crowd was luckily less underage than Le Truskel, the "punk rock" bar we went to the night before and the free drink ticket was a nice bonus. We ended up dancing on the benches as it was the safest way to veer from the strange, older creeps hanging around trying to make conversation..

Going to Porto on Thursday! can't wait.

courtesy of: when deren was in paris

these past few weeks have felt kind of rough. my landlord decided to kick us out (pittsburgh, pas paris) and attempted to get me to move out before I was back France (pas possible, that would a damn mess), which only added to an excellent stew of bad things happening while I'm over here, such as the stolen bike, the lack of a summer "thing" since I didn't get the SURG grant, and not being able to see my family when I get back because I have to be back in pittsburgh to move. things are getting better, but I don't really want to move out, and I wish I had a summer job. 

last weekend I went to Bruxelles to visit a friend of my mother's. I felt a real urgency to get the fuck out of Paris, even though I'll be embarking on easter break stuff soon. Bruxelles was pretty neat, not really like Paris, maybe a smaller version. Bruges was very cute, and the buildings reminded me of Amsterdam. maybe some pictures, later. the countryside was just incredibly flat and gorgeous, the trees were really odd and tall. the road we were on reminded me of a scene in the girl with the pearl earring. 

today I tried, unsuccessfully, to find photographic inspiration. it's hard in a city that's probably the most picture-sque city in the world or something. it makes sense then that almost all the photo students at ENSBA do not photograph in paris. I took some okay pictures 2 weeks ago at a gymnase/stade next to a school in the middle of the les puces area that me and Deren had wandered into while she was visiting. it's a cool place, and I'm kind of obsessed with taking landscape-ish pictures now (oh noooo) so I tried to find a place similar to it, as in a place of activity...sports things...to no avail. The places I found were neat, but full of children which is fine except who wants to be the creep taking pictures of kids playing soccer? I just felt weird about it. and obviously I would probably need to ask for permission..it's hard to be discrete carrying a tripod. and I hate finding these places by myself. 

starving for a grand macaron. later. 

l'aventure

Deren came to visit a couple of days after my birthday, sometimes in March. This was taken at the Parc de la Villette, a very awesome complex of museums, grass, and amusements. In the summer they show free movies. The museums were closed and the weather was a bit too gray for us to picnic outside, so we picnic-ed inside the cafe at the Geode, where they show 3-D movies.

For my birthday, we went to the Social Club to see Yo Majesty. They only did 5 songs or so, but it was still really good, they're more angry than I imagined, but it was cooler than seeing an electro-dj anytime of the week. March has been cold and rainy. I am only here for two more months and if it stays this way through april I'm going to be the most miserable person to deal with. Paris has been really good though, and I've been trying to figure out what I'm going to do for my last days in Paris, it's kind of a tough call. Probably pastries everyday (including flan in every flavor), but I think what would make it perfect is just hanging out in the evening on the Pont des Arts, looking at the Seine, and drinking two euro wine from Nicholas. I'm going to be really sad to leave.

The Eros exhibit at the Bibliotheque Francois Mitterand is on its last day today, so we went yesterday. There were many pornographic engravings that were unexpected, some of the phallus drawings from the 19th century can be likened to the sketches from "Superbad". The Japanese woodblock prints were great but also pretty funny, for example the size of the penises were bigger than the man's face in the drawing and also of course the image of the old gross man and the young woman in the kimono..not so hot. They also had these really cool prints from Britan that had fairly boring scenes but when lit up erotic images were shown, for example in a haystack..behind a door...Magali's favorite was the sex in different countries, which basically showed people havings sex in a canoe...sex on the a rock/forest-y area...not that i am really immature or something, but you'd think more people would be laughing during this exhibit? How can you look at a drawing of a "King Phallus" from the Victorian Era and not smile just a little?

GHETTOBLASTER #4: PERCEE P, ROC RAIDA, FRAGGLE ROCK?

- 2 weeks ago, I went to a cute but too small exhibit at the MUSEE ARTS DECORATIFS, entitled "Toy Comix". They had 20 artists create short comics based on their favorite toys, as well as create some amazing installations, such as the one above. There was also a very cool stamp collecton done by this guy. Pretty much in love.

-"CELLAR DOOR" at Palais de Tokyo. by LORIS GRÉAUD. first time an artist under 30 has taken over the entire space, a bit weird at times and scary, but awesome. He had neon lights flashing everywhere, along with bits of a strange dialogue/story I didn't quite pull together. Also, tons of sound as well as a huge forest bathed in a weird pink light, and surprise, paint ball!

So, I don't know. I guess I've just been going places and doing things, and those were my favorite things so far. We did go to the Geletin Group opening at the Museum of Modern Art, but while it was quite cool, some of it smelled bad and a fake handicapped man spilled wine on my nicest trench, so it was not the greatest experience (by fake handicapped man, I mean hat he fell out of his wheelchair, we helped him up, and then he proceeded to get up and grab a glass of wine to spill all over my friend and I).

Last night was the GhettoBlaster party! Who knew that Batofar was actually a boat. We got there just in time for Percee P of Stones Throw, who was pretty damn good but nothing beat the dance party when Roc Raida of X-ecutioners started djing. The boat was actually rocking at some points, which was awkward but really it's kind of cool just so someday you can say you were jamming to Roc Raida on a boat in Paris. At some point he played Wild Wild West, which everyone seemed to be really excited for (????)

HOUSE SHOES - "hey, y'all, y'all remember fraggle rock? thas what I told my moms I wanted to be, this goes out to my moms, we haven't talked in 9 years, but this goes out to my moms, yeah, fraggle rock."

Paris, France.

Alors, 7 1/2 hours later and many days of stress and fear of the French..I arrived in Paris. A few things have been surprising, but it has not been so bad to be honest. School does not begin until next week, and classes the week after next, so I have some more days ahead with not many plans. Yesterday I set out to walk around and see some things, but the St. Germain Des Pres Church (oldest one in Paris, supposedly) was not that exciting, and everything was pretty much closed. But that was alright. I guess today I'm going to go to the Palais de Tokyo. It's hard for me to wake up early (who knew) and I feel like I spend 75% of the day getting ready for other 25% I spend outside before I run back home because of the aches in my feet or a hungry stomach. Because Magali already has classes, I feel pretty lonesome. I do feel lucky though that she's here because if I were by myself I would probably hide away in my apartment until forced out for classes. Large cities tend to do that, sometimes. And it's so easy, too, in a place where no one knows your name. I have blisters the size of Texas. s-i-g-hhh.

Our apartment is located on a street that apparently only sells cheap jewelry and wholesale purses/bags made out of plastic leather -- oh wait, pleather! with rhinestones and other fake gem varieties. IN fact, the store right next to us, the fatou bijoux, sells the bling-est bling i've ever seen imported from the greats of China. The grocery store is pretty amazing, but I still have yet to figure out where the tofu would be if they have tofu (in which I am sure they don't) and/or chicken broth. If I knew how to cook French, I would. I don't now what to eat except pasta. and my glue-y stovetop rice.

Maybe it's good to take things easy. Anyway, no one can yell at me for being lazy since no one I know is here anyway. After Palais de Tokyo I plan on cleaning up any messes I've made and perhaps trying out the 3 hour washing machine. It's very energy efficient.

it's a new year, a l'espagne

for christmas, i gave megan a fish-eye camera that i had desperately wanted in high school, but my parents never gave in to my repeated begging. i took pictures of the city barcelona with it, and it was awesome.