A list

My brilliant and beautiful writer-friend Chloe made her list-of-things-to-do-before-she-dies list a few months ago, and hers is so good and perfect for her that I've decided to follow suite (in a less interesting way, probably).

1) Speak French fluently
2) Get my English PhD
3) Be an honest, hard to please, receptive, careful, and sensitive editor
4) Spend at least one year living back out West
5) Get the canopy bed I've wanted since the 3rd grade
6) Be able to cook/bake anything I want, without a recipe
7) Learn to garden
8) Become an expert on something (see #2)
9) Get an article published/publish articles regularly in the NY Times Book Review or The New Yorker
10) I'm sticking with Chloe's best friend/lover suggestion
11) Adopt a pit bull puppy
12) Revisit my natural hair color
13) Continue coffee shop dates with my mom, always
14) Live different places all across the U.S.; Pittsburgh, Baltimore, Utah, Oakland, Chicago, Vermont...and maybe back to the Twin Cities
15) Own an apartment in France

Like

Right now I really love Maria Martinez and her gorgeous pots. The finish is so rich! The designs are so lovely! Every part of the pot and even most of the kiln comes from the desert.

Awesome.
I've really fallen in love with pottery recently; I never would have guessed that deciding to take an introductory Ceramics class (and only because it filled a requirement for my Art History major) would lead to me to a new interest, something fresh to get excited about. Now, everywhere I go I notice ceramics, and it was really amazing to see ancient, beautiful pots all through the Pitts Rivers Museum and the British Museum while I was in England last month.
I'm still no good at making stuff myself, but I've gotten better and now it's routinely more fun than it is frustrating. Maybe I'll post some of my finished products 0nce the semester is over, if I end up with anything I'm proud of.

The point though, is that Maria Martinez is the bomb.

Mmmm

I will never get over this song. It feels like a lot of early summer nights, sitting my my window in my parents house, alone, at that perfect dusky time in June when everything fades out into soft shades of blue and purple and the hot day cools; I listened to this song over and over again on repeat on my shitty stereo and fell in love with it, and that's always where I am when I listen to it.

Like/Dislike

Reading "Where Are You Going and Where Have You Been" right before going to sleep.
Great story, but not what I want in my head right now.

Tonight was another knitting-and-a-movie night for me; I'm trying to get my (totally awesome) scarf done by the time I leave for Europe, but time is running out! Since it's almost 3 AM right now, I technically leave in like, 11 days. Ah! But it's the first thing I've ever knit so I'm not very fast.



Anyway, it was a somber night. I watched Bleu of the Trois Couleurs trilogy by Kryzysztof Kieslowski, which was absolutely gorgeous to look at and only a little sparse dialogue--qualities I appreciate in a movie I'm watching alone and for the purpose of brushing up on French. The film itself was really intense though, and it's definitely time for bed.

In other unimportant news, while I was at my parents' house recently I dug up the crazy little Konica Minolta digital camera I blew an obscene amount of money on when I was 16 and have barely used since. It gives images a kind of yellowy tone which I hated then but am kind of charmed by now. And just in time, considering I can't seem to find my SLR anywhere and have no money for film anyway.
Cool!

Dislike

The misspelling of Hemingway.
The fact that there are 27 pages of Delacroix images on Artstor, but only 4 pictures total by Vieira da Silva.
College dudes who are full of themselves.
The fact that I do not have 3 cats.
The stomach ache the Seward Cafe gave me today.
Insufficient sleep.

Recently I have watched these movies while knitting in bed. It's been fun.

Holiday

In the Mood for Love

The 400 Blows