As of ~10 PM tomorrow, I'll be in Louisiana until the 29th. K-mail or email or IM me if I haven't already talked to you and you'd like to hang out. I don't have a cellphone, but Bibbly or Brandon should be capable of determining my whereabouts.
I am bringing a half-dozen brats to battle your boudin. I am confident that my brats shall triumph.
Yesterday evening found me with an embroidery hoop in my hand, embellishing a skirt that I'd had sitting on my desk for about five months. When I finished the skirt, I picked through my wardrobe trying to find other clothes that needed decoration, but nothing seemed right. Instead, I altered a dress I have that wasn't tight enough. I was almost done when the needle on my sewing machine broke.
I guess I was on a roll. I'm not sure why, all of a sudden, I felt the urge to read a book or create something. "Doi, Kara. You don't write anymore because you don't read!" I guess I knew that. So I'm going to start reading some fiction.
I don't know why I suddenly felt productive last night. Could it be that my little trip to the Chincoteague rejuvenated something in my mind? "I like Chincoteague..," I often tell my mom, "but I just prefer the mountains, the woods..."
"That's how I was when I was your age," she has said to me.
On Saturday, I stood in the ocean, submerged up to my shoulders, letting the swelling waves pull me around just a little bit. The ocean is a frightening beast. I only ever go out just so far, but always know I could be swallowed whole just the same.
When I was a child, I would spend the entire day at the beach in the water. I would come in for a sandwich and then go right back out there. When I'd lay down for bed at night, and close my eyes, I'd still feel like my body was bobbing up and down in the waves. I loved that weird feeling, my confused equilibrium failing to re-adjust.
This beach trip, like most good times in my life lately, doesn't have any crazy happenings or plot twists. No drunken antics, bizarre encounters, or risky situations. My brother showed up with two friends. They talked about Harry Potter, drank beer, did push ups, and bought crabs. I ate a crab. Almost everyone else ate a lot of crabs.
We went to the carnival. I had a lousy snow cone, and a lousier crab cake. I got on a ride with my brother and he screamed my ear off. Like the urban assholes we are, we all marveled at the array of trashy white people. There were about four black people there, one of whom provided the best quote of the weekend.
When my brother and I were waiting for a ride, a girl said "these rides are a real adrenaline rush!," to which a woman replied, "That's what it feels like every day, waking up black." If she always hangs out at places like Chincoteague, I guess that's probably true.
I need to go down to that house way more often. I say that every year.
I have a lot of mosquito bites. My hair still has salt in it. My face is covered in freckles. The weekend went by too fast. I'm back at work and thinking about what I can embroider.
As for writing non-Harry Potter fiction, she hinted she might consider a pen name.
"A fake name is very attractive," Rowling said. "I'll have less pressure and I can write any old thing I want and people won't be clamoring for it and that might be nice."
Since Rowling first introduced Harry and his fellow students at Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry to the world in 1997, the books have become a global phenomenon, selling 270 million copies in 62 languages and inspiring a series of movies.
Rowling is now the richest woman in Britain _ wealthier than even the queen _ with a fortune estimated by Forbes magazine at more than $1 billion.
Rowling said she has no complaints, though she is sometimes nostalgic for the days before she was famous.
"But one of my regrets would be that I will never again have the pleasure of sneaking into a cafe _ any cafe I like _ sitting down and diving into my world and no one knowing what I am doing and no one bothering about me and being totally anonymous, that was fantastic."
I can't decide what I'm trying to say with this post. Maybe something about eye lifts. Or something about being a billionaire. Or maybe, nothing. But I think we can all agree that $1B seems to buy a lot of magic anti-aging potion.
Following my requests for free christmas lights and other outdoor party lighting you might want to get rid of will be a super rad invitation to the party of the the summer!!!
But first....
I am callling for any and all available free lighting. Christmas lights, themed lights, lanterns, tiki torches, whatever you have that you might wanna get rid of or loan out, please send it my way.
in exchange you will have your mind blown by a night of extreme pleasure. Who can refuse??!
I am incredibly sunburned from spending too much time out in the sun at the beach. I went to Chincoteague with a bunch of Friends and had a lovely time. I engaged in a fair amount of boozing, some intense beach action, and the eating of crabs. It reminded me really of how much I love being near the ocean. The nuanced climatic characteristics of places close to the ocean give me some sort of intense peace that I rarely feel when I'm inland. The wind becoming a constant gentle pressure coming from one or two directions rather than gusting this way and that; humidity seasoned with salt, creating a much thicker, more satisfying film on my body. I notice what it does to my hair also: the salty humidity creates tons of curls and for some reason it always seems like my hair looks more natural when it's been soaked in salt water. I love the coarse feeling of sand in my shoes, rubbing against the different parts of my feet and letting me know where I'm calloused and where I'm still tender. The smell of harbors, pungent with rotting fish and crab carcasses, are granted reprieves when fresh sea air decides to billow in. Little shacks where the only cooking implement is a vat of hot oil. La Mere!
I need to go to Block Island more.
As a child, Block Island was not some place I really enjoyed all that much. It was not very exotic or exciting for an urbane little boy who spent most of his time inside playing with legos or video games. I enjoyed the fishing, and the donuts that came afterwards - still hot from the fryer sitting out on Payne's dock on the great salt pond. My grandmother always had chores for us to do, and I had a strong aversion to chores as a child. I still won't do chores - I'll do errands, housework, but not chores. Our schedules were really just poorly copied versions of her schedule: clamming, fishing, something with the harbor Baptist church. None of it was very fun. Perhaps something was lost in the drunken process of copying them. Trips to the island were usually fun for the first 4 days or so and after that, all of that outdoorsy shit - nature hikes, beach cleanup, cutting a path through the intensely thick blackberry patch in the back -- became tiresome, old-fashioned, and miserable. My grandmothers’ overzealous environmental lifestyle combined with her reluctance to ever throw food away made everything much more tedious than I was used to. How I longed to go back to my house, where there was television and food that came from the turf rather than the surf.
Looking back though, I realize what a shitty kid I was. All of those things should've been so much fun, but they weren't. I don't know if I was misplacing my resentment towards my new step family, if I was such a fussy complainer, convinced I was too unathletic to enjoy being outside, or if I was just a shitty kid. Now those memories have such pleasant shadows cast upon them - more than likely skewed by my more grown-up perspective.
I want to go back to the ocean this weekend. Possibly head to the beach, alternating between frolicking in the cold waves and sprawling on the hot sand, back and forth, until my body is completely exhausted from adjusting to the change in temperature. Then, I want to put my shoes on over my sandy feet (I hate the toe-thong in flip flops and refuse to wear them), walk up to a little shack reeking of boiling oil and old fish, grab a fish sandwich and some clam chowder. Then possibly look in the mirror to see what interesting stuff the salt water has done to my hair.
I started a fiction blog today. The piece that's up there is just a short sketch that took me fifteen minutes to vomit up; it's definitely not even close to good yet and will be tweaked over the coming time.
It's scary to make yourself vulnerable to criticism from all comers, but if I'm ever going to produce anything worthwhile, I feel like I'm going to have to do it. I need to learn to not take everything so personally. Trial by fire.
Y'all are a smart bunch, and good writers to boot, so I am asking for your time, if you'd ever like to read things I write.
just got off the phone with ma, who tells me that not only am i marrying my cousin to a very nice man with a graffix jester tattoo, not only will the ceremony be conducted on a civil war battlefield where thousands died and i swear i used to smell blood when i was a kid...
but we will all apparently be in period dress. CONFEDERATE period dress. with the stars and bars flying and men shooting guns.
oh-ho-kay, then!
mind you, my family has no grand war history. my uncle was way into the re-enactment scene (i can't explain it if you didn't live it, but for little girls it pretty much involves collecting sticks and boiling soup. slaves? what's a slave?). he owned all the time-life books on the subject and various things made from fine pewter. there are sepia-toned photos of him all over the place in the weird regalia. but as far as i know, no one in our family fought for the confederacy.
but that hasn't stopped my motorcylce-riding, pickup-driving, pall mall-smoking family from thinking that this, somehow, is our history. mostly because they want it to be.
i mean, i love them, but do we have to add on MORE cracker accoutrements to our crew, guys? having a shauna joye, a shalana joye, a santana, and a savannah in one brood counts for nothin'?
i guess it's okay that a heathen woman representing a made-up internet church is marrying them, though! if they make me wear a bonnet, fuggit.
