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abandoned house, hanover, illinois



the art show last weekend was phenomenal and super fun and i'll have some pictures up from that sometime soon. thankyou to everyone who put it together and to everyone who came out!

the weather is so nice. i love spring. i love rainy days and sunny days and every day. i love adventures and learning to drive and flea markets and abandoned houses and diners and noisy music and fucked up shoes. i just want to go to sleep for the next few days because on thursday i get to go to portland, oregon, for the weekend! i'm way excited. i've always wanted to see the landscape of the northwest coast. i think if i could spend my whole life traveling and going to all sorts of new places it'd be the best thing. just the act of movement makes me unbelievably happy. i have so much hope for so many things. i'm crossing my fingers on a lot.

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no job, but school is almost over and i'm so ready for summer. i want to listen to fast music and jump off things. everything is getting better all the time.

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i don't feel like writing posts enough to keep up with how often i take pictures, or to supplement the amount of pictures i take. it's funny i used to want to be a writer.

i wish my life was interesting enough to write about all the time but it's not, and i don't want to become one of those lame blogging people who just write about their dumb boring lives like what they had for breakfast or what they did at work or the funny trick their cat did or something. i'm not talking about anyone in specific. i just don't have any opinions on what happens in the world, i don't pay attention to music or art or fashion or celebrities or culture, so i only want to talk about my life but only if it's not boring. it's not like when i was younger and everything had this sting to it. nothing happens and i don't feel torn about most things that do. and some things are secret and there's no way i am comfortable talking about those things on some old blog.

mostly i am just in my head and i go to school and i go to work and i come home and i eat a microwaveable dinner and i go to sleep and then i wake up at 5:30 in the morning and spend two hours doing my eyeshadow but it always looks like i got punched in the face.

i am just waiting for someone to discover me i guess.

emily jane white - time on your side

richmond fontaine - song for james welch

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i am so terrible at keeping up with writing in a blog. i still do not like the word blog.

life is maybe not so interesting lately, but i do love fall very much. i think this summer went too fast. i don't know if it was as iconic as other summers. but maybe it will start to be that way the farther i get from it in time. there's always those songs of summer and they're starting to make themselves apparent for the summer of 2009. i wish i had time to do things besides work and school and homework. it's all very boring. and then when i get home all i want to do is sleep. i really really like sleeping lately, which is weird because i don't usually like sleeping. i remember when i used to like writing and i wish i still did.

i hung up some maps on the wall and this place is starting to feel more like home, but i don't like how messy it is and how cold it is and how there isn't very much sunlight, especially when the painters are here and they cover up the windows with big strips of brown paper and barely any light can get in at all. i hate having to use electric lighting all of the time. it makes me feel very drained. like maybe i am made of light and i need to suck it in through my pores to be active. like a plant or something. maybe i am like a plant.

brian and i had our one year anniversary in august, august 20th, i don't know if i talked about that. i am really happy about that.

you know, i don't think that person i thought was dead is actually dead and i am not sure if i am more scared of him being dead or him being alive. i don't know what to do past think about it so i try not to think about it because it isn't very productive now is it.

i would like to be a healthy person. i would like to get a tape player and some books on tape and then go running and walking and just listen to stories. but i don't have time for anything except work and school and homework. it is not a very satisfying lifestyle. i am dissatisfied with my level of production. i don't think i make very much out of anything. and plus i am a horrible procrastinator.

for halloween i am going to visit some friends in central illinois and i am very excited. i will take a train, and i love train rides. i will make some mix cds. or maybe i will have an ipod by then and i could just listen to that. but i really like being on public transportation and listening to music on very large headphones and looking out the window. in the city at night is lonely and wistful and beautiful and simple, and in the fall in the countryside with the light flickering fast through the trees rushing by is rushed hopeful and invigorating. i wish there were a hundred hours in a day. i wish i didn't love the way it feels to sleep. i like to be inside a world of soft and warm. i want to make a fort.

i very much need a photography friend to drive around and take pictures with. that is if i had time for anything. i don't understand why i am so bored of music lately. i am happy but i am very restless.


and farewell to the girl with the sun in her eyes

tom waits - old shoes (and picture postcards)

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summer ended so fast, i didn't even see the whole thing happening at all. i am in enrolled in a community college now and it is very strange to be in school again, but i think i like it, i like being there and the only thing that's intimidating is having to be around people my own age. i don't really like being around people my own age, i feel very uncomfortable and like i am too peculiar for anyone to relate to, thus impeding the forming of friendships. i think i'm going backwards, i think you're supposed to get less shy and socially-inept as you get older, but i just keep getting worse. but the positive side is that as i get older, i care less about the consequences of being this way.

i went to ohio and california and ohio and i'm going back to ohio this weekend again. for a secret project, i can't tell you about it yet. brian and i had our one year anniversary on august 20th. i am more happy and in love than i have ever been with a single person or thing. i am excited about life but i am so afraid of disappointing everyone. i cannot stand it when i don't do a good job for someone who is expecting it of me. i still feel like i'm playing at being professional when i really have no idea what i'm doing. with photography mostly, but with life and everything too. my heart beats fast like a little bird's before every time i enter a room. sometimes the thought of everything that must be achieved makes me sick and i have to go throw up. sometimes it makes me feel like my lungs have been lifted.

fall is the best season for me, and it's gotten cold quick around here. i don't know how i can be energetically listless, hopefully hopeless, and creative in soft desperation but that's always how it is around now. and i always fall in love in the fall. there's that, too. i am trying to make better decisions. i'll be 21 in a month and a half! it's exciting but it's also really scary and sad because i already feel old enough. sometimes i think it's pointless to make art now because i can no longer be a child prodigy. i have felt that way for many years. i wish i was a fourteen year old girl. i am so jealous of them all.

okay i'm talking too much. goodbye, blog.

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hello, i forgot i had a blog.






the best thing to me is to meet people who really wholy and completely give a shit. about anything. i don't understand people who don't make things. it's incredible to meet people who entirely invest themselves in something. i don't know, the words made more sense in my head then. last night was one of the top ten nights of my life.

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i left that message in glow in the dark letters on the roof of a building in a forest three summers ago and i went back last week and it was still there. but i couldn't find the canyon i climbed up when i was thirteen, so maybe i made it up in my head, but i swear it was there, and so were all these hollowed out trees you could hide in, and a field at dusk full of fireflies going up. i like what a huge field faraway looks like just when it's starting to get dark, and there's a million fireflies and you understand why they're called lightning bugs, like little zaps and sparks out of every corner of your eye, something tiny and electric in the organic dark. we drove around last night while it was half-raining and found a look-out-point, and big empty fields expanding to a pitch black horizon, and tiny crowded neighborhoods on riverfronts where every single person owns a boat. listening to def leppard and hands reaching out the window.

this summer has been less than epic and i didn't really notice that it's almost over. i didn't even really notice it started. it's been so cold and rainy but i really really like that. i want every summer to feel like the beginning of summer, like june is just starting and i've been hopeful all the time. it's not like last summer which was epic in this sad way, sad in this way that i got hysteric sometimes and i would laugh a lot and not think and see six red foxes in a grey cemetery, slumped against headstones. and then i couldn't wait for it to end, to move on and out and get to the city, and now i sortof miss it, like it was this tiny cute sad chapter of things and i get nostalgic for just about anything. summers especially. maybe i'll just remember this one as calm and sweet and undefined and i'd be okay with that. but maybe it's verging on some hidden epic event, some turning point, something is about to begin.

i like sitting on train tracks and writing secrets on rocks and throwing them, and rickety metal pole playgrounds that aren't safe or made of plastic; forest fortresses and looking up walking distance on google maps from where i am to somewhere i am not. it would take me 27 days and 14 hours to get to portland oregon, 49 days and 3 hours to anchorage alaska. only 4 days and 4 hours to detroit, the great smoky mountains 8 days on the dot. it doesn't seem that long. but it'd take me longer i think because i'd get distracted and stop off the road for so many things and my legs are small. horoscopes are weird, it said my best days for love this month were july 10 and july 18/19. i don't know, i guess i see it.







jessica lea mayfield - for today