Posts Tagged 'rant'

Posting here always feels like a soliloquy… at least initially. One would think after so many years of writing entries about anything online I’d know how to introduce an update post, dermatologist but no. I think this has more to do with not knowing what my audience is, having this blog format NON-BLOG buried here under all these distractions and not really knowing who reads it, IF someone reads at all (besides the usual 2 or 3).

I try to imagine that strangers come here and read this… though the site’s tracker says most of you land in from facebook or tumblr. But in spite of the awkward beginnings, it’s a comfortable feeling.

I also try to keep it objective and impersonal… IF I ever succeed- I try.

I’m 28 now. It’s a tradition of mine to go over my progress since my last birthday, to feel both good and terrible about where my life is going. Hence, I feel both good and terrible. But birthdays are mostly about feeling good, so, like every year, I need to thank my friends and dearests for making birthdaymonth an awesome one. I have this fantasy of throwing a wild party for my birthday and it never happens. But that’s okay.

As much as I hate work, one of the perks of working somewhere nice is people you don’t expect to make a big deal out of your birthday. When I worked at the UPR a few years ago, my co-workers (who are still great friends) made me cry over chocolate birthday cake made from scratch. Last year I started working at Instituto de Banca and, having only worked there for a month, every group I taught sang me the happy birthday song. This year one of my groups made a little birthday party out of the class, and it was more fun than I expected.

 

Visual confirmation of the fun:

 

Earlier in October, SLF had a spot at Festival de la Palabra thanks to my friend Max Charriez. Visual confirmation of that:

And an extra. Walking around the MAPR with Yaya. Posing.

But back to SLF, the info is mostly updated on the facebook page, because fb makes everything easy, so if you haven’t, please:

https://www.facebook.com/StarsLikeFish

https://www.facebook.com/StarsLikeFish

https://www.facebook.com/StarsLikeFish

 And hey, Christmas is near… put it on your wishlist. Your amazon wishlist. Even if nobody buys it for you.

Anyway, SLF has its own website for which I’ve sketched out a much nicer layout, but I don’t have the time to update it. I barely have time  to update myself!

But do go “like” it on facebook? It makes me feel fuzzy. Seeing new likes and all. “Like” suggests that you actually LIKE it, maybe that’s why.

Where Everything Lost is Found is on hold until I’m not too exhausted from this tiredness I’ve been carrying around for a few months. I had to quit my second job because I was burning at both ends.

Returning to the subject of updating oneself, I got a haircut… a professional one (shock – I hadn’t let anyone cut my hair since I was 16 years old). A colleague (styling prof) helped me out. I wanted crazy, untamed mermaid hair, but it was getting out of hand… so now it’s a few inches shorter, but it bounces. Please don’t take into account that the “before” pic looks like crap (which I took before I even considered the haircut). I was at home and not wearing any makeup (or a shirt, actually), and I was at work in the “after” pic, so I obviously look more presentable (I hope).

Obviously, that last bit about my hair was forced because I’ve run out of safe topics.
October to November has been kind of whirlwind, in retrospect.
Stay tuned for dangerous topics.
No promises, though.
Also.
Plugging:

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 Today I was bicycling home from work and struck by yet another perfect October moon… I always have to mention it, neuropathist year after year, search when I feel our tropical Autumn setting in. Summers are such a drag.

On the subject of drags, I’m sick again.

I don’t know if it’s acceptance, but I’ve come to appreciate sick days, but for one reason only… I don’t know if this is true for everyone, but fevers always cause a sort of tilt of consciousness.

Between being highly uncomfortable, I had some mild hallucinations… auditory ones. I heard conversations, pure noise… I tried to think of a comforting melody to drown it all out, focusing on one sound, but the involuntary noise was overbearing. So I let it take over and felt my thoughts being drowned… like a flooding room. I wanted to get up and write them to let them out, because they felt so alien, as if in another language, and with this impulse, started seeing the words and felt my mind going black… saturated. Only rhyming saved me from losing it. I spent what felt like hours rhyming nonsense in my head. Oddly enough, the more I tried to calm the torrent, the more I was bombarded with this unbearable noise. Eventually, when I got up from bed, I just felt numb. And dumb. Not necessarily a bad feeling…

I also had a handful of comforting dreams… lately I’ve been feeling self conscious about even mentioning them because (and this is in no way a complaint), since SLF and people’s interest (thank you) it feels (only to me) like most of what I’ve done in life is dream… and collect memories to dream, and dream to write, because dreaming and writing feel so similar.

After a few days of fever-dreams and isolation, there’s a refreshing feeling of re-integration… of disconnection, seeing through a haze of slowness, trying to grasp reality through filters of imagination running in the foreground.

And now I realized I started writing in the wrong blog.

This is where I update, and I have no updates – lie. I do. Just not the right motivation.

I do have a photo of my sick face.

Krisia kidnapped me on Saturday night for a short while to take me to an art expo. I know I was probably the worst company that night, but it added to the fever-trip. The night seemed like a dream as well.

Krisia: “You’re sick, I know. You have about 40 minutes to get dressed, I’m coming to get you.”

Me: “Okay.”

I took this photo to see if I looked as messed up as I felt. Surprisingly, I only had eye-bags to show for it.

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It’s 1:11 am and I’m still up, search and so overwhelmed by everything I want to do on my last vacation night – so overwhelmed, side effects that I have achieved absolutely nothing.

I spent part of the night grading tests, generic because on Monday I go back to work again, and work was so easily forgotten this past week! Even though it wasn’t particularly vacation-y… I went to bed late, picked up abandoned books, spent time online doing not much (though I reconnected with a few abandoned friends) and spent real time with some of my best friends. Sometimes I don’t realize how much I miss my friends until I see them again… kind of like old habits. I didn’t realize just how unlike myself I’ve been feeling since I started this new, repetitive schedule of going to bed early – to wake up early – to come home and work.

I’ve heard it from several people, more than once, that you have to make time to do the things you love, and this is something I intend to do, because even though one never really loses oneself, you might forget yourself from time to time… the prospects of that terrify me, not to mention, sicken me in a subtle way that make me feel dulled, restrained and absolutely miserable (but only to a tolerable degree). Because I always, on the brink of the unmentionable, have little bouts of insanity, sometimes painful, that bring it all back.

And, on the subject of work (pouring my heart out here still seems like an intimate thing to do, since I know only a very few read me, though I’m about to promote a change in that), more than once I’ve heard myself labeled “teacher,” which bugs me. “Oh, no, no, no, I’m not a teacher!” Though I am, I am not. The term as defining seems so limiting and dull… no matter who says it (a student, for instance). But I mean it in the context in which I’ve heard it used (more than once), as if what my work at this moment defined me as a person.

I am so much more comfortable undefined, even when I can’t figure it out for myself: I don’t care to.

End of rant.

(It’s late. )

Now, switching to something completely different… are you on bloglovin?

Click it: Follow on Bloglovin

I remember Sophie telling me about this months ago, but I am slow to do anything suggested sometimes… Not sure to what extent I enjoy the privacy of anonymity I’ve enjoyed thus far, I guess we’ll see…

To break the monotony of letters, I made another gif of my face, this time with a wig (also making a statement about wigs, a mini-rant I included with a shot on facebook), enjoy (if you enjoy that type of thing).

And back on the subject of things I want to do, all at once, but ended up ranting here instead, I really love painting and got back into it because I was commissioned by my uncle to paint something for him (which I haven’t started because he owes me a reference pic). But I finished an owl painting I started about a year ago (and abandoned about a year ago), and everyone likes the outcome (including myself). Click for larger image. Or click here for devation.

I finally bought myself a camera… all I need now is to start taking pictures (something else I wanted to do tonight but didn’t bring myself to). Hopefully, I’ll be photobombing soon.

And something that deserves a fair mention (on the subject of picking up abandoned books that I didn’t continue reading tonight), my friend Miguel published a book which is, so far, possibly too good to ever become ridiculously popular. Click it and follow the White Rabbit.

Anyway, there will be a very interesting and interactive presentation on August the 23rd (announced with specifics here) and I was invited to be a reader! Along with Daniel Pommers (El Esqueleto Presenta). I think this is pretty rad and I’m excited.

Plugs related to this: Generación del Atardecer Presenta | Postdandyexpress | Cosmos Burlesco fb page | Gato Malo Editores | Le Papillon

 

Now it’s 2.

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Autumn’s started… not that there’s a drastic difference in climate here in the tropics, look but it’s my favorite time of year.

Some real life updates… as expected.

I’m a middle and high school teacher at the moment.

It’s absorbing most of my time, here because I’m designing the Conversational English course as I teach it… so far, this web it’s been pretty awesome. I get to be as creative as I like because I wasn’t given any rules or limits, and the students are alright. It’s exhausting work that takes up SO much mental energy (I plan lessons in my free time or giggle at a memory of something one of my students said), and it’s changing my behavior just a bit (for example, telling children I don’t know to “get down from there” or shushing when I hear a curse word), but at the same time, it’s fun. For the most part.

I was kindly asked by the principal to change my blue hair after all the kids had seen it so now I’m asked every day, since August, when I’ll be dying my hair blue again. It’s not just the children who miss it. I don’t recognize myself in the mirror sometimes… 10 years of blue, I think the universe accepts it. But at least I’m getting away with fuchsia.

Not that it matters much, but people tend to assume I am a teacher, that it’s what I studied for (literature what?) or that this is what I plan to do for the rest of my life.

Hell to the no.

In the meantime, some teacherly photos:

I was made to change my hair color to something more socially acceptable and less youth corrupting. And yes, that's Frida.

My desk. Not that it looks like this anymore... I had to buy a laptop, which is actually a practical investment I had survived without for this long.

 

But back to my real life.

I’ll be DJing for RadioClandestina’s Halloween party. Click for the FB event.

Stay tuned for an important announcement to be made… soonish!

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So much has happened since I last updated. 9 months, viagra approved seriously? Not like it’s truly relevant, migraine I don’t do much around here – and I know I don’t have many guests (though thank you, whoever you are who’s been stumbling upon me via stumbleupon!) so it doesn’t make that big of a difference.

Plus, those of you whom I want to know what I’m up to already know… and I usually don’t care to let everyone know what I’m up to, not really. Which can be a problem sometimes. People assume you’ve either vanished to another country and are having an awesome time or are doing nothing at all.

Things that have gone on after August: I moved in October. Everything’s changing… as it does. Though I treasure consistency, oddly enough. Not boring routine, but I grow attached to those consistent elements I do like. Like my old home, which I miss so much. The freedom of living out in the wilderness, opposed to the paranoid, repressed and exposed lifestyle of  “civilization.” My escapes aren’t as easy as stepping out the door or looking out the window, as they used to be.

And I’m not spending my days online being creative, either, because now I spend hours in front of a screen – working. Working a job I don’t care for, but that is enough for the moment [of indecision and transition – but isn’t this the moment I’m constantly tripping over every year or so?]… Changing the subject a bit (distraction?), a shot of me in “my” new town…

Now, back to the topic of relevance… Relevant news: I am now writing for my friends’ sci-fi and popculture webzine, Vórtice. Which is a pretty awesome concept.

More relevant news (are they?): I’ll be DJing again! Next to my friend Naelle and Barbie Blasphemy. Click the flyer for the FB event.

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This video below is one of the prettiest animations and most entertaining stories I’ve come across in a while.
I found it through someone who posted it on tumblr and just had to share it one more time.
Actually, buy more about maybe I just want it on my blog to look at it time and again.
(Turn off the music on the left by pressing “pause.”)


The Tale of How from Shy the Sun on Vimeo.

Now, medicine onto personal matters.
I have no material to add because I’ve been caught up in other things.

Lately I feel my hours pouring into nothingness… like staring at the sand falling trickling inside an hourglass, visit web then turning it over to watch it again, and so on and so on.
I know this is only temporary, but meanwhile it just has me confused.

I dream so vividly… I need, very badly, to scrape out all the noise inside my head.
I’ve been trying, but nothing is working, not right now. Maybe I’m not trying hard enough, or maybe I need to pay the ocean more frequent visits.
I find underwater music to be the most soothing.
Maybe if I listen for long enough I might memorize some, for my mind to play back for me when I need to block out the unbearable ruckus that has me exhausted.

But this is all my problem.

Wings are in the workshop and I might stop being cryptic when I finally draw the map.

Since I’ve basically written nothing but metaphor, I’ll compensate with a photo.


I’ll be back when I’m back.

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