My MOTHER is giving me shit about the lack of substantial updates in my journal lately.
Boys, girls, pens, pencils…what’s wrong with this picture??
GET YOUR OWN DAMN BLOG, MOM!
Haaaa!
Although, considering what happened the last time I managed to persuade a family member to start their own LJ, I guess we’ll just let sleeping blogs lie.
I organized the couple-of-year’s worth of photos that had accumulated in the study yesterday and put them into 2 photo albums. I realized, while I was sorting them, that most of them had come from other people’s cameras: my mom’s, my brother’s, various friends, Anders’ parents. Since we got the digital camera, we NEVER have printed versions of our photos. Everything is on the computer or burned onto CD. I think it’s a drag, in a way, since I enjoy looking back through photo albums, but since I already have over 20 of the big books overflowing on 2 shelves, maybe it’s not so bad. We keep meaning to send some of the digital photos to print, but we never get around to it. We are photo slackers in that regard, even though we make up for it with the sheer quantity we archive electronically.
Karin asked me at dinner tonight what I was like as a child, and I went blank. “Umm…,” I said, “Call your grandma.” THERE’S a good reason for Mom to start a journal! For the sake of the grandchildren!
I was shy with strangers, and bossy with my friends. When reading, which I did a great deal of the time, it was really hard to get my attention and usually took several tries. I liked to draw and paint and sing and play make-believe. Much like now. 😛
So much of what makes up what I think of as the essential ME is internal. I’m thinner in my head than I am in real life. I’m more exuberant and daring. I have much stronger opinions than I tend to let on. There’s so much more ME in here, you have no idea. It’s a learning experience: How to dish ME out in blog-sized servings, creating a tasty feast which serves to whet but not satiate, to keep you coming back for more, and keep ME not only interesting, but interested. Avoiding staleness on both sides, for you and for ME.
***
Sitting in the slowly collapsing Poang chair, I stare at the rack of mixed cassettes on the wall. There are over 100 of them, the rack is full and there are some stacked neatly on the top edge. Once, making mixes was a transcendental art, a careful blending of the perfect songs, the perfect bands, the perfect sound or mood. I take one, put it in the car and play it over and over for months, those 10 minutes to and from work, an evening drive to town now and then. I put so much thought and care into making them, and into making the covers for them as well. Now they sit silent on the wall, a musical collage, a dusty and dated memorial.
Stolen by Killer/Too Rowdy For Liz
Marshmellow Tunes
Dandelion Break
With Traffic Noises in the Back
Shall We Begin?
Quiet Noises in Loud Places
Pick It Up…I’ll Go Alone
Just looking at the titles evokes other times and places, that younger me. 2 transport me to the bagel deli, rocking out with hairnets while we slapped cream cheese on egg bagels, with canadian bacon, provolone cheese and sprouts: a Yellow Submarine. 1 lands me in the middle of a road trip: stereo blasting, windows rolled down, doing aeropalmics by the side-view mirror, cupping memories in my hand with the wind. Several send me spinning to the dorm room down the hall, sitting in the windowsill, daydreaming while Killer and Jooje argue in the background. I stopped making mixed tapes, for the most part, after I married, so most of them raise ghosts from MSU or the good old days in Chicago. Rake-n-Rail! There’s that inner ME again, jamming inside to music in my head.
Really Great Writing Out There Right Now: Portrait
Bouncing Bubbly Birthday Wishes to kimbis!