October 2nd, you happened so fast

Dear October,

I have a lot to say. I’ve got so many thoughts to put down! Where do I begin? You came and went yesterday and I barely noticed. I love how happily people on social media post Happy October! for you, but they don’t do it so much for any other month. There is something about you that feels like beginning. You in the sky in Arizona look better than anywhere else I’ve been so far. Long blue clouds that look like a repeat of the mountains. Repeat repeat. I’ve been thinking lately about what I am capable of. It’s funny that I can imagine myself in all these situations I could not imagine myself in before. Little things that were scary are now kind of exciting, like stepping foot into new territory that turns out not to be so unpredictable after all. I feel like I’ve opened a box, and there are lots of things I want to do. I want to try all the easily achievable experiences in life, like talking to people on planes, and stepping in public fountains, and following a bee to its hive, and seeing more than a thousand stars. I want to be able to crochet a scarf, and to be able to say something true and clear without room to take it back. There’s a storm approaching outside, so the windows in my office, where I am now, are a dull, dark lavender. They shake. You can hear the rain beating harder and softer from the little piece of the hurricane that broke off. The ceiling leaks in one spot. 

October, you have a tendency to be dramatic here. Clouds are clear and billowy and numerous and every kind of texture, all over and forever, sometimes many different kinds along the same horizon, undulations high and low, a heavy vertical blur and a smattering of cotton, darks and brights and many blues, a line of blobby brightness, a smothering gray, two shafts of light. Then the next day there is nothing. Just blue above and I can’t tell what my eyes are focusing on. How far does it go? Just by the sky the days seem so distinct and vibrant. There are blue blue days and then a descending fog, showers and wind and no sunset, no mountains, no horizon, and then puddles for a day and back to the endless blue. 

I sprained my ankle recently, for the first time. I didn’t realize it at first, but I’d been walking in the dark in an unfamiliar building, and stepped down abruptly to a step I didn’t realize was there and felt very sharply how careless I’d been. I limped to my desk and waited out the pain for 20 minutes, thinking it would go on forever. Afterwards my foot felt kind of weak but it was walkable. I don’t know why I didn’t think to look at it. The next day as I got into bed, I happened to glance down and saw that the left side of my left foot looked alarmingly large. I checked my other foot to make sure that’s not what ankles always look like, and realized with a dawning satisfaction that this must be a sprained ankle. It didn’t hurt much anymore, but the next day the lump grew to the size of half a tennis ball, which was fun to look at from different angles, and then abruptly the swelling went down and left a crescent shaped bruise. This was one of many first experiences I’ve had here. Here was also where I had my first bee sting, my first scorpion sting, first prick from a cactus (and many after), first sight of a bobcat, a javelina, a coyote, a mule deer, a roadrunner, a packrat, a wild snake, a quail, first experience of how the desert smells after the rain. Did you know, there are little rivers in the desert after it rains, in the wash? 

Today I'm home, in my temporary home, which I will be leaving soon for new adventures. What an exciting, scary, optimistic time. I met someone a week ago when I was in Wisconsin, who I think may be fearless. This person was doing a lecture on architecture in Rwanda but I was more interested in his life. When I first met him next door, he said, Hi neighbor! We waved at each other, two feet apart in our doorways, and I said I’d heard he was the speaker for tonight, and he said, widening his eyes, Yes. Well. That’s what I’ve heard. After the lecture, while we all milled around with wine and little plates of cheese, I asked him how he could say and how he could be totally unafraid of certain things that make most people anxious. He said, smiling, that he thinks his problem is that he has always been extremely optimistic. Even when growing up. Later he said, exasperated, that is the problem with this country! People are afraid of certain problems because they don’t know what the solution is, so they don’t go forward to deal with it. But if it’s a problem that has to be solved, that we can’t not deal with, then we must go forward to collect it. So with architecture and probably life, he’s used to throwing himself into problems without knowing what the solution might be. I said often I want to be more prepared. He said everyone always wants to be prepared, but you should just go! We figure it out as we go. I think you must have a certain amount of trust in yourself to be capable of that, even with ample optimism. It’s easier to be self-defeating than to be optimistic—I’m not sure why people seem to link optimism with ease. My favorite part about him is that he is both an optimistic and a realist. When you tell a pessimist what they are, they say they are not pessimists, that they are realists. But optimists don't ever make that connection. Why is it believable that a cynic is more realistic, more in touch with the world? For this guy, optimism has better prepared him to deal with reality. Because he engages with things other people are afraid of. And gets a chance to see more of the world. He believes more things are possible, and so more things are possible. Doesn’t cynicism bat something down before it has a chance to succeed? It’s like people who reject themselves before others can do it for them. The world of possibility is so small. How does the light get in? Why is everyone so afraid all the time, he asked. With most problems, we are just dealing with people. When people are afraid, they close. So we must be open. Things are not so difficult. He takes the future as he goes. He said this drives his wife crazy because he never knows when his flight is. I asked how many flights he’s missed and he laughed and said, Surprisingly, only two! Because he has a general idea of when it’s coming up. As it approaches, he checks the time and remembers it more and more specifically, down to the week, then the day, the hour, the minute. He said he tries to focus on the present because he doesn’t see much of a point in focusing on the past or the future. Don’t we learn faster that way anyway?

I left that lecture feeling like I had listened to someone articulate something I already believed but that had not ever seemed so clear or so simple. It’s been a year and I’ve changed my philosophy, and I didn’t even realize I had a philosophy until it was suddenly different. Mainly, I’ve realized I trust myself to figure things out as I go. The world looks so much bigger that way. This letter’s been so long, can it count as two?

See you tomorrow, 

Ruth

Shelving memories

I'm wondering how much I can remember from each year of my life. If I were to try to extract all the memories I have from each year I can remember, what would I get? To help, school would be used as a framing device, since I know I'll be able to recall things better if I can remember what grade I was in and who my teachers were, and from there I can remember the names of my classmates and where I might have been sitting, and from that I can remember certain class assignments or funny things that happened then, and who my friends were and what things we might have done in elementary school. Some memories would easily fit into certain years, while others would kind of hover around in the area of "elementary school" or sometimes in "that time before I went to London for vacation, and after I became friends with so-and-so." If the specifically placed memories sat on shelves numbered by year, which themselves were stacked one above the other, I could draw the larger vertical brackets for elementary school and middle school and adolescence, etc. where the hazier memories could sit, and they could wait out there in the margins till I remembered what year they were from. Meanwhile the other memories would be packed in tight like socks in a drawer or spread out loose like a silk shirt, depending on what the number of memories for that year was, and if I guess the shelves were drawers instead, and if sometimes one large, thin memory covered the year pretty well.

But that would be kind of fun, right? If we wrote down all the years we've lived and tried to make notes to indicate any broad swaths of memory we've still got like that we played cards after finals in 7th grade with people we didn't know very well and it was surprisingly fun, then we could see all the blank patches and the times that were supersaturated with memories (I think colorful balloons for some reason). It's getting weirder for me to realize that when I remember middle school, I only have 3-4 overarching, go-to memories, and if I rely on those and think, right, middle school was those 3-4 things and a whole lot more, I'll forget the whole lot more slowly over time and then one day they won't really be there. It's weird that I know a whole year happened, probably with a lot of stress and anxiety and joy and awkwardness, and I can only remember one thing from that whole year of experiences, like somehow a year's worth of stuff was condensed into one memory, or bits from that year fell out until only that bit was left. I'm not sure if one averaged out memory or a random sampling of one memory from a year's worth is better.

Just now I was trying to review my Spanish, and one of the sentences I was supposed to translate reminded me of this moment in class, and it might have been Spanish class, but I'm not really sure. But it was a moment when I was sitting with 3 or 4 people, and we were supposed to be working as a group to do some I think holiday or unit-themed assignment that was slightly embarrassing. I think the assignment was to use the new words we had learned to act out a scene where someone is single and looking for a boyfriend/girlfriend, and everyone else is vying for their attention. For some reason someone in our group ended up volunteering us to present our scene from our seats and act out the dialogue. I remember I was supposed to convince our bachelor that I was the best choice, while my other classmate was supposed to present himself as the better choice, and he said something about how he made a lot of money because he or his parents were doctors, and then I'd said something about how money doesn't matter, and that I cared more, and the person who was choosing between us ended up being very diplomatic about it in sort of a weird way, because he spoke really formally, like he was weighing job offers. He said something about how he could see the advantages for both, but in the end he chose one of us (can't remember who) because (I can't remember why, but it sort of made sense. It had something to do with how because the other guy or his parents were doctors, they must ___, so he would rather ___ and so he chose __). I just can't place this memory. I'm not really sure it was Spanish class, because I don't think I knew enough Spanish to say that exactly, and I'm not sure my classmates knew enough either. But I just can't imagine in what other class or situation this might have happened. Anyway, maybe I'll remember sometime. I don't think I've recalled that memory in years, so there are a bunch of holes. I don't remember whether I was in middle school or high school, or who my classmates were, except by gender and generalized personality, or who my teacher was, except that she announced the assignment with joy and some people groaned, and she might have clapped her hands together to get our attention to announce the last assignment of the day.

I'm starting to think actually, that it might have been in this Chinese class I was sitting in on, because we might have known enough Chinese to go through that scenario. I also just placed the classroom and now the group and everything is fitting together, because we were sitting near the door and there weren't that many students in the class, and I'm pretty sure we had just learned majors and occupations and how to say that a job was lucrative. We definitely learned how to say doctor. Mystery solved!

Sometime, I'll do the listing the years and extracting the memories from each exercise. It could be almost like a bookkeeping thing, just for memories and for fun.

New Year's Resolution

1. Start early.

2. Do what you say you will do. Make it into a habit to follow through on everything you say you will do, even (or maybe especially) if it is just to yourself. Try to establish a system of consistency for yourself, and follow the consistencies others follow, like celebrating holidays on time and sleeping at night, because it'll make you more responsible. Really!  Tip to get this done: focus on the system rather than the goal (from http://jamesclear.com/goals-systems). Also a random quote: "We begin to work only when the fear of doing nothing at all exceeds the fear of not doing it very well." —Alain de Botton 

In other news, I've accumulated this very long list of interesting advice/lessons for myself that I almost never look at. It's just there, a repository for future reference. I just checked and it's 18,527 words. I occasionally scroll through it when I add something new to the bottom, but there's just too much to go through for it to be practical/useful. It's a mainly a compilation of quotes from random articles I've read where the advice or story is surprising and seems useful. One day I'll organize it and put in all the correct sources where they're missing (see resolution 2). Maybe I'll post bits of it as I organize, whenever that happens.

Well, that's all. Our neighbors are throwing off some major fireworks. Here is the cutest default smile emoji (do people not really say emoticon anymore?) I've seen in a while ☺.

💤☺💤,
Happy New Year!

October 9th, some scribbling and a thought

our simplest signs from another day

Dear October,

It’s the ninth already. We’re moving so quickly! Yesterday, I got together with Tar, Rim, and one of our classmates, and we pretended to be 6 year olds, drawing and making posters for an imaginary lemonade stand as an ad campaign exercise for psychology class. It was surprisingly relaxing. I think it would be so therapeutic to have a six year old drawing session every week, just to de-stress and get out of our graphic design (and other college-major-imposed) mindsets. Even when we were just starting on our posters (our group was a mix of graphic design and illustration majors), we really had to tamp down the urge to sketch out the composition… Two of us immediately took out pencils and sketched for a few seconds until we remembered that we were supposed to be six year olds—unimpeded by hesitation! Maybe. So we went in with our sharpies and crayons and chisel-tipped markers, and it was such a relief to just let go.

I had a random thought today, while I was absentmindedly tearing a few layers of paper scraps on my desk in studio. I’d cut pages of my book draft out of the center of several sheets of paper, and all that was left were white floppy frames. I kind of absentmindedly tore these frames into segments as I talked to friends in studio, and there was this strange tactile quality to the slow and steady ripping that made me wonder what it would be like if I spent a whole year ripping this one segment of paper. When I finally pulled the two pieces apart completely, would I feel some sort of relief? Would it feel surreal, to suddenly have ended something that I’d been working on for so long? I don't know why I was wondering this, because it seems like there's no point in wondering about it, but I just couldn't let go of that thought.

song of the day: Tell Me What You Want From Me by Good Old War - a good, upbeat song from the Kodaline concert (Good Old War played too) I went to, and super fun to sing out loud in a crowd

Indigo

October 4th, it's not so busy

the view up from our 'secret' spot

Dear October,

I liked the weather today. You weren’t very cold, or overly windy, so I didn’t really need my scarf, but I also appreciate that every fall you remind me how soft my winter clothes are. I’m proud of myself today because I left studio earlier than usual, and all my friends and I are going to get a lot of sleep tonight. Part of it is because I’m working as part of a group for this project, so things get done more quickly, and brainstorming is so fun and snappy. Sometimes I forget how helpful it is to bounce ideas off people.

I’m slowly finding myself missing the feeling of reading a book in my bed in the evening. I can’t remember the last time a book made me stay up late at night!

Things have been a bit low-energy since last week… Yesterday I even watched movies with friends while we worked in their lounge. One of the movies was Perks of Being a Wallflower, which I’d put off watching for a long time because I wanted to finish the book first (I’m 60% through it?), but I just never did. I didn’t have very high expectations for the movie, but it was actually really good! I hope I’ll read the book sometime.

song of the day: Wildest Dreams by Taylor Swift - Jam is obsessed with this song.

See you tomorrow,

Indigo

October 3rd, it was cold and there was food

looking for interesting sites with a friend

Dear October,

It’s really nice to see you again! It’s getting cold a little too quickly for everyone, I think, but sometimes when I’m dressed just right for the weather, it feels perfect. Like today, when Tar and I hiked along the canal to an open field that seems to have no purpose. It’s especially windy right by the canal, and it was so cold that we only did 2 sketches before our hands were too frozen for us to continue. 

Tonight is Waterfire too… I can hear the music through my window, and sometimes it’s this strange, ominous music, which is VERY characteristic of Waterfire, but later in the night, like right now, at 10:33pm, sometimes they’ll play surprisingly beautiful music, with high tones and just a slight eeriness. It’s always instrumental music or opera. The fire is dwindling down at the canal, but there are still some people walking by around all the stalls.. the assorted nuts stall, the pastries stall, all the vendors with their art and ceramics and jewelry… kettle corn and clam chowder, which always runs out early… the occasional accordion player and shadow performance, and the parade of blue paper star lanterns that glow in the shady park by the water… I see it all now from my window and hope it doesn’t end soon.

Later, I went up to a friend's room to work but then got distracted by the random movies they were playing, and we ended up watching Mean Girls. Jam was making creme brulee in small ceramic cups, and I got to try some of it today. According to her and her roommate, Rin, it has the texture of flan and isn't crispy enough on top. "It's supposed to be like an egg," said Jam, pretending to hit the top of the creme brulee with an invisible spoon, "it should crack." To me it was just slightly too sweet, and Rin and Jam laughed about how Jam had accidentally discovered how to make flan without gelatin. "Oh well... creme brulee test number one," said Jam. She has said the same thing when she tried to make the lavender latte I kept talking about but could not find here. 

Everyone was cooking today! I think we all just happen to be in a lull with work. It's really not very common usually, but this year seems to be a little different. Earlier today, I arrived back in my dorm to find that my roommates, Eggs and Mint, were already cooking soup and vegetables. I just boiled corn. It's really nice, cooking with people and being with people who are cooking. 

song of the day: Unclear by Kodaline - because I went to their concert last Monday with Jam and Lays, and it was amazing.

See you tomorrow,

Indigo

P.S. I know I skipped two days... I have them and will perhaps post those in the near future.

October 5th, I visited friends

more related to yesterday's post, but look at the yellow trees!

Dear October,

Today was a good day. I’m currently in a friend’s room, and no one is awake, but everything is calm. There’s music playing quietly from my laptop, and I like this wooden table that my computer is on. A few hours ago I facetimed an old friend from pre-college, whom I haven’t spoken to in 3 years, and I talked to my parents, and I talked to more friends. I listened to good music today, and had too much sleep. I played around with homework due in a few days. My friends visited my room, and I visited theirs. Something I’ve noticed is that showering at night makes me feel like I’m in control of my life. Isn’t that strange? I think it’s because I’ve been showering in the morning most of the time, and as nice as it is to begin the day refreshed, I’m always rushing rushing through everything then. At night it’s calm, and the times I do shower at night, I actually am doing okay with time and sleep and things. It’s just a funny thing. Tomorrow class begins again, and that’s fine. Nothing particularly good happened today really, and there’s a fair number of things I’m worried about that I’m not usually that worried about, but there’s just a general sense of goodness running through the day.

Also, our dining area has fortune cookies that you can pick up every time you get a meal, and I picked up one today as I usually do, and this one said this: Pass the bill to the person on your left. Fortune cookie writers are funny people. Also, I think it’s my turn to buy toilet paper soon.

song of the day: High Hopes by Kodaline - I LOVE this song right now. A friend introduced it to me a few weeks ago I think, when I asked what song was being played. And then my pre-college friend recommends the remix.

See you tomorrow,
Indigo

October 4th, I closed some blinds

pool-like reflections, seen from Jam's window

Dear October,

I wonder whether you mind when people close their blinds. I closed some blinds today because I think it’s weird when blinds are open at night, since it’s so easy to see inside if your lights are on! It’s weird for me when I meet people who don’t mind that at all. Since I’ve gotten here though, after I turn out all the lights, I tilt the blinds so that I can see the city outside from my bed. It’s a really nice way to go to sleep, and a great way to wake up. From my window I can see the first yellow tree of the fall, and the yellow is spreading slowly to some of the trees around that tree. It’s so gradual but so exciting to see the change from here. I wonder how quickly you’ll change.

You may not have been able to see much of it, as I closed the blinds at some point, but I worked with friends today, and then we took a break and played our traditional group-game of cards. My friends were very silly, which made me want to be sillier, and afterwards we sang loudly to disney songs and maroon 5 and thai songs that only two people could understand. We also did squat jumps, because it’s tiring and fun to do. I went to one meeting for martial arts, and that plus kicking is the most valuable thing I learned there. Squat jumps are just what they sound like—you squat, then jump, and pull your legs up with you. You should try to do 20 of those.

Earlier in the evening, a bunch of us were working in Jam’s living room. Jam was drawing boxes, and Tar, Boo, and I were working on separate design assignments. Suddenly Jam asks, should I cook noodles? Boo says yes, because everyone likes noodles, and anyway instant noodles are quick and smell good. A few minutes later, Jam is standing in front of the kitchen sink, facing away from us, apparently still contemplating. Boo asks us about one of her compositions, and we talk about moving things into corners and the word, “suspicion”. Taryn mutters to herself and occasionally says something aloud like “WHY is this—“ and I plug some nice calming music into the stereo. From the kitchen we hear, “Did Kevin use all the garlic?” And there’s Jam standing in the same place, looking at the cabinets with her hands on her hips. She contemplates. “But that was a lot… There was still like, half the garlic in there!” I finish a few letterforms for class, and Boo calls us over again for feedback. Half an hour later, we hear sizzling and there’s this gorgeous steam rising from the stove, and everyone smells food. Tar gets up to see what Jam is doing, and in a little while Jam brings over a big bowl of flat wiggly noodles with mushroom and onion and beef. I’ve never seen noodles shaped like those, but they reminded me of the tentacles you see under jellyfish. So Boo is looking at the noodles, so Jam asks if she wants some, and Boo says, yeeees. Jam puts another bowl right under the lamp we’re working by, and the steam rising from it is glorious. I tried to record it but caught it a little too late. Tar asks if she can have some noodles as well, and so do I, and Jam brings over a few plates and chopsticks and places them on the table. We've been eating for a while when Tar says,

"You know, when you said you were making noodles, I thought you meant instant.”

“Yeah, I was wondering why you were standing there for so long, thinking about it. I thought, it’ll just take 3 minutes.“

“—And then when you were asking about the garlic, I was like, wow, she’s getting fancy with those instant noodles!” Tar and Boo laugh and high five, laughing over “the extent of their cooking skills.”

“And then we see you at the stove with REAL noodles.”

Ha,
Indigo

(song of the day: Lost Stars by Adam Levine - one of the songs we sang, except not acoustic. this was after singing a bunch of disney songs)

October 3rd, you are funny

a peek into my bag

Dear October,

Everything felt a little off today. Like time went slower than usual or sped up when it doesn’t usually. We had an odd fire drill/alarm during history class, for instance. An hour before the lecture was to end, a loud alarm began blaring, and if that sound had a color it would be bright white. Not quite BLARING, but like a calmALERT sound, if that makes any sense. It wasn’t nearly as immediately alarming as fire alarms were in middle and high school, but it felt more ominous. It would go, WAAAHHNWAHHHNWAHHHN THIS is an EMERGENCY evacuation. Please ex-it the building as quickly as possible. And after a few moments of confusion, everyone immediately started packing their bags. Either the alarm was surprisingly effective in sounding official and calmly dangerous, or everyone was just excited to be let out early. Our professor looked at us, waved out his arms in a large open hug motion and said, “See you all next week!” so we left.

Anyway, it was rather lucky for us since an event was going on that day that all the art students look forward to. A bunch of art vendors set up stalls in a market square outside, and they give out all kinds of free samples, and let you try all these different tools. It’s the same as last year, and this time I got a lot more paint than last year, which was very cool. Everyone also was crowding especially around this one table that had a big basket full of 02 Microns, which are pretty good archival inking pens. There was also this poor vendor at a stall who was just showcasing palettes, and he had no discounts or free things or demos really, and people frequently skirted around that one. :( Among the things I got was an oil bar, which I’ve been meaning to try. It’s like a crayon for oil painting. Afterwards, I fell asleep on my bed and woke up slightly later than expected and missed dinner, and then went to a bubble tea place with a few friends. We played Sorry! and it was actually very similar to Parcheesi, except Parcheesi is somewhat less brutal (and has animals). I ordered honeydew milk tea since I’d gotten fairly similar flavors the other times I had gone, and it was pretty good, although just slightly too sweet maybe. The last time we went, Jam and Tar and I played Taboo!, which by the way is a great way to study for tests because of the nature of the game.

Alright, must go! I’ve noticed your leaves are slowly turning yellow! It’s very pretty.

:),
Indigo

(random good song added later: Salvation by Gabrielle Aplin - good for mornings!)

October 2nd...

it's funny when programs lag

Dear October,

Today was tiring. We had a semi-final draft of a poster due, and a test on the first segment for History of Graphic Design. We learned things today. We didn’t sleep. But it was a nice kind of staying up, in a way, in that you’re enjoying what you’re doing for the most part. What else? You rained today, a little bit like usual. We were in a small group of six people studying for GD History, and the kinds of things you learn are interesting. It was actually one of the first times I think I’ve ever felt somewhat exasperated at how everyone was talking over each other. It was this mini pandemonium going on around the table, and people were talking across the table and switching conversations and getting confused when they heard fragments of another conversation, and at some point two pairs of people would be having a conversation about the same thing and then the conversations converge and they readdress everything they had talked about with the other pair to ensure that both pairs were equally confused, and suddenly someone checking their calendar would remember something and interject another topic into the conversation, and everyone would be distracted by the importance of that topic, etc. Everyone kept trying to redirect the conversation every once in a while and it wouldn't work. It was fun, and it was a funny day.

Oh yes, and the funniest thing I heard today was when we were all working on our posters. When it gets late, often people take turns napping so we know we'll wake up in time. Sometime in early morning, my friend Suds said, “Wake me up in 15 seconds” and flopped down onto the floor.

See you,
Indigo

(these are going to be actually on time soon, really! and no song today)

October 1st, it was glittery today

the view outside my window! has nothing to do with this post

Dear October,

I was walking back to my dorm from my furthest (which is not that far) and latest-running class and I noticed that everything looked particularly sparkly. The street lamps were the typical warm-sun color, and the lights from cars were blinding white as usual, but the rain from earlier made everything slick, and the black roads looked like they were shellacked tree trunks, because the rain highlighted all the cracks and bulges on the ground. There was a puddle ahead that was rippling from occasional raindrops, and shaking slightly from other things, and a bright blobby white light was reflected in it, and I remember it wobbling in strange ways. It was dark and pretty empty, and there were so many subdued warm highlights on the ground that things began to feel hyper-real. You know when you see highly rendered images and immediately know it is not real because of how clear everything is? Or when you're in a game with detailed 3d-graphics, and the whole world looks so crisp? On cold days, it sometimes look like that in the white mornings, because I think the angle of the light makes everything look sharp, and a whole bunch of light is bouncing off everywhere anyway. It was like that outside today, but at night. You know when warm street lamps reflect off parked cars at night, and that warm strip of light is like a dim but strongly yellow-orange highlight? I want to describe the color but I can't think of a simple word for it. It's like melty dim orange, or a warm tangerine color. The ground would glitter with that low orange light and every once in a while you would come across a wet bench where the light would just slide on and right off the panels.

Before this I was with my friends Tar and Jane, and we went to a "cafeteria" event called the Cornaval. The cafeteria was covered in corn-related decorations, which meant there were lots of yellow garlands and christmas lights and that shiny stuff that looks like thin gold material that's been put through the paper shredder almost all the way through before someone tried to hang it by the last bit of material that's holding all the strips together. Tables had gold corn on top, and we had a menu with corn dogs, cornflake-crusted chicken, popcorn, corn chowder, corn on the cob, corn cakes, cornbread, corn vinaigrette (with salad), corn pops, etc. This year they had posters for it that said, "It's coming", except the com of coming was overwritten with corn. So everyone knows it's corning. There's another poster with a unicorn on it, who has a corn horn. My favorite is Cornibilism, which has a corn on the cob that has evidently eaten another piece of corn. We got carnival screen printed yellow shirts and temporary corn tattoos. People took pictures with giant cardboard cutouts of corn in a small field of giant cardboard corn. Some of the staff wore giant corn hats, and every time they turned their heads, the corn would swivel around with them.

Well, that's all. Can't believe my first letter to you is already late! But this was what I was thinking yesterday.

(edit- wow this was a pretty late start for a first letter!)

Woo,
Indigo

P.S. Here's the song for "today":
Hello/How are you by Ritsuka - I went looking through old posts and listened to old songs, and then I found this one in one of the related videos. It's cheerful (sounding), so here you go.

poor memory

I recently read a collection of short stories in a book I borrowed from a friend, called The Color Master by Aimee Bender, which was by the way very good and beautifully written and strange and interesting and really enjoyable to read. It's also great for reading in installments, as many anthologies are. But anyway, this post is not about that book. Actually I went from writing a short review of the book (which is why I won't be writing much about it here) to writing a blog post about something else, to writing about things that writing my blog post reminded me of, and somehow I kind of came back to writing about something that came up while I was reading the book. So on we go:

Something that Aimee Bender’s story, Wordless, reminded me of. That we are losing our words. Sounds very dramatic, but more specifically, I definitely know that I am either losing my words or have always had trouble grasping for the right one. My mind is a total jumble, and I am 57% convinced that it is because I got so caught up in trying to master the art of multitasking. Now I’m just terrible at everything. Just kidding, but I became a lot more inefficient with doing simple things like just remembering what I was talking about, or where I was going, or what it was that I meant to google just now. Where did I last see my glasses? Did I leave them at the store? And once in middle school, the biggest temporary memory dump I’ve experienced so far: once I was walking down the hall right after class, with my backpack on and all my books in arm, surrounded by the streaming traffic of hurrying teenagers, when suddenly I stopped and noticed this gaping blankness in my brain. And I thought, “Where am I supposed to go? Where am I supposed to go?” and just stood frozen in the middle of this hallway-intersection, feeling this growing panic as I stared at the floor, trying to recall where I was going, and then where I just came from, what class? And I couldn’t even remember what class I had just left. It was like I didn't even have any recent memories that morning, and all my memories of other school mornings came flooding in as a little tick tick slideshow, and I could only preview them one at a time and tick them off, no, no. I remembered one morning in math class, the teacher at the front of the class, and the light that came in through the windows. But it felt a little too distant just then, that math morning, so I accurately identified it as “not-this-morning”. Then I thought ok logically it had to have been first period, my first class. So that would be Spanish. It was Spanish last year too so I can’t be wrong. 

And that makes sense since I’m in this hall, so what’s my next class?

… 

… 

... 

… 

… 

ok I can figure it out, it’s either A-day or B-day classes. No idea which. Ok, narrow them down. What classes do you have? 

… Spanish. 

… 

...

...

... English.

...

uh ok… what are common broad subjects that people teach? Math, science. Do you have science. Who is the science teacher. All I can think of is the teacher I didn’t have in 6^th grade that everyone else had. Oh my god. How am I not remembering? Is there anyone here I know? Who’s in my classes? I recognize her!!  She doesn’t know my schedule. People are leaving, the bell’s going to ring soon, everyone's leaving, there’s no one here I know--that’s a 6^th grader. I'm the last person here. I better head to some class and just hope it’s the right one, or by now it’s just--I need to check them off one by one by visiting them. But where are my classes? I have no idea where ANY of my classes are, or who the teachers are. Then someone on the brutal and scary member of school staff comes hurrying over in a huff, whistle dangling around her neck, “What are you doing? What are you doing here? GO TO CLASS.” And I’m like, ok ok! sorry I! I can’t remember what class! Mumble- swivel, start walking. I. oh my god.
Math class. 

It was math. I think that was the class I forgot, and I finally found it and walked in and was super relieved. Maybe the memory was frightened back into place by the staff person. This was, by the way, definitely well into the school year, and I had long ago stopped looking at my printout schedule by then (and didn't have it at school when I happened to blank out). I still don’t know what happened then that made me forget everything so fully and ridiculously. 

Anyway, there was a lot more to this post, and if you remember, this post was part of another post that I’d meant to write on a different subject, but I kept hopping to concurrent topics that later were maybe less concurrent, and now we’re here. And I didn't even really talk about what I'd set out to talk about in that first sentence up there of the second paragraph. Or third sentence, maybe. Also there’s a new poll! Hooray! The old ones got so dusty they lost their vote count, ha. Oh wait, no they didn't. They usually do by now. Hmm.

Also, do you title posts or things that you write before or after you write them? When it comes to blog posts, I usually title them after, and it's fun because I find that after all that rambling, I actually sometimes still have a somewhat cohesive topic by the end anyway. Or if they have nothing to do with each other, they suddenly do in the title and then it's cohesive.

October 31st, it's Halloween!

Dear October,

You have been very fall. The trees are all different colors. My favorite are still the yellow ones. I tried to hang a little spinning mobile on a tall tree today, after it got dark. It was difficult because I looked for the shortest tree I could find by the canal (because it's windy and open there) and I picked one, but it's limbs were still much higher than I could reach. So I tied my "string" to a heavy metal hinge and just aimed it between the branches and threw, and if I was lucky it would fall back to me. Often though it just got caught in the branches up there, but with a little bit of tugging and odd maneuvering I got the end of the string back, and tied the mobile on the tree. I'm doing this, by the way, for my design midterm project. I'm a little worried though, because tomorrow it will be raining, and tomorrow is when I install my piece, which involves tissue paper. We'll see how it goes. My roommate and her friend and I went trick or treating today, but we only knocked on maybe six houses. It was especially awkward when college students opened the door. Also that one time we rang the doorbell to a probably college-dorm and this girl was walking past us and she said, "Oh, are you trying to get in?", and the three of us in cheetah, chimney sweep, and "ice climber" (my coat looked warm and could be buttoned up past my nose so that's what I went with) costumes look at her, and then my roommate the chimney sweep says, "No, um... we're trick or treaters!" (the girl stepped back and said, "oh." then kept walking) (my roommate was a chimney sweep because she had Drawing today and would inevitably get charcoal over her face and hands. also it is a good costume for fall/winter).

So I haven't posted for these past 10+ days, and that's mostly because of that one hectic week of big projects and midterms. I do have a few things written on some of those days though, so I will slowly fill up those blank dates after I post this. I really enjoyed writing to you though, October, and I didn't realize how nice it was to look back on previous posts and remember what happened on every day and what I was thinking of on that day at that time. I'm feeling a little nostalgic, and actually I've got to finish up my midterm project, but it feels good writing to you this last time (at least for now)! So sad things: I didn't wear a costume while trick or treating, but I have one in development! It will be prepped and ready for the Artist Ball that's happening tomorrow night and yes, it is a lazy one but it isn't quite as cliche or sad as it could have been, because I spent a long time trying to pick the easiest, cheapest, at least somewhat original last-minute do it yourself costume and now I am ok. Also, you totally snuck up on me. No one here has really mentioned Halloween at all, and suddenly yesterday my roommate and I were like, wait. Halloween is tomorrow. We went to grab midnight pancakes and when we got back my roommate saw the clock and said, "Oh... Happy Halloween!". The weird thing is, even though most everybody isn't in costume, and I wasn't even sure if the city celebrated Halloween (because there were no decorations!! except in a few houses), and it didn't feel like as big a halloween as it usually does, it was still nice. There was like this light feeling of festivity and that's all I think we really needed. :) Now back to work.

See you next year!
Indigo :D

music of the day: This is what it feels like by Armin van Buuren ft. Trevor Guthrie (honestly I think this is another day's song. I heard it when we went to the mall. I may change this out later)

October 19th, the only thing I look forward to tomorrow is breakfast and buying granola bars and nuts and windex

from a week ago, but the light is my feelings

Dear October,

I am drawing a self-portrait on a large piece of paper. It is a sad time.

Sincerely,

Indigo

song of the day: rainy mood

October 16th, the sun was next to me

my friend warming her hands at our clay hatchery

Dear October,

I had a chai latte at a very nearby cafe today, plus a croissant with nutella. That croissant was delicious just by itself. It was crisp and brown on the outside, with crunchy delicate rings and then a warm interior, with just the right amount of nutella. I went to the cafe with a small group of people from my Spatial class. We'd been working with clay today, and the kind we were using was really hard, so we got a bunch of lamps that easily overheat and used it to help warm up the clay. The lamp was so bright though, I felt like the sun was setting next to me. It really made our table sleepy, and as soon as it was turned off it felt like we'd returned from a dream state. After working for a few hours, we asked for a break (since we usually have one in the morning and one in the afternoon) and , because the cafe was about ten strides away from our nature lab, we all went to the cafe for a snack/drink break. One of my classmates asked if they could have a "croissant with nutella" because the cafe was out of chocolate croissants, and I think the person behind the counter said they could do that, so once we saw that was a viable option, everyone got croissants with nutella. When I got to the cashier, I asked for a "chai latte... and a croissant with nutella" and the cashier closes her eyes and smiles and says something like you're the fifth person to get that (in a row). Lol. I wonder if that'll actually end up being an official menu item sometime.

Yum,
Indigo

song of the day: Dreams by Fleetwood Mac, covered by Bastille and Gabrielle Aplin. (wait till a minute)

October 15th, I am tired

no photos taken today, but someone cool visited and gave a talk yesterday

Dear October,

I love running outside at night when you're the perfect temperature for DDR. It's strange because I feel I'm being inducted into all these different cultures that before I would never have thought of joining, I guess. When I say cultures, I mean stuff like

playing DDR despite being terrible at it
encouraging the idea of karaoke
anime club
saying hello to classmates who aren't friends, when you see them in the hallways or outside
badminton (sort of)
not noticing when people are upperclassmen
being mistaken for a senior by a sophomore (lol)
waking up at 7am in the morning NATURALLY

Ok I deviated a bit from my idea of cultures, but you probably see what I mean. I honestly feel a lot less boxed in by my idea of me. So yay! I sing sometimes instead of humming, and dance when I want to (sort of). And if I feel like running down the steps to the next outside level, I do, even though it's at night and no one knows why I would be rushing anywhere. I feel strangely happy despite not always being on top of things, and I both look forward to and am extremely worried about the cold that you are bringing soon. I already get hints of it in the mornings and even though I thought I really liked the cold, I am reconsidering that a bit. Morning cold is not fun unless you have a warm jacket and did not just wake up. Cold is nice in the middle of the day though, because you feel prepared for it. I hope you won't be too chilly when I wake up!

Whee,
Indigo 

 song of the day: Little Traveler by Clear (anime club is how I find many of these japanese songs lol)

October 14th, here's a haiku

it was a friend's birthday today! he seems to like floral shirts so (those are flowers, not fire!)

Dear October,

ate dinner late cause
chatting with friend who worries
now I go to sleep

Sorry it's short, but I'm sleepy!
Indigo

(edit: wow I wrote this last night and I'm reading it now hahaha)

song of the day: Set Me On Fire by Bella Ferraro (same girl who auditioned w/ Skinny Love in a previous link)

October 13th, you saw me carry laundry

I zoomed into the sunset from the bathroom

Dear October,

So just now my friend and I were trying to get our laundry done. Before I go on about that, let me name the different sections of our dorms. There are four main ones in the building/structure/area that contains the Caf, and we shall call them North, Soot, Eats, and Ham. I live in the North Hall.

Soot Hall is famous for its air conditioning (because it's the only section of us 4 that has it) and it has a curving hallway on its first two floors. North Hall is unfortunately, the highest in elevation compared to all the other Halls, and I happen to live on the highest floor in North Hall, so everyone on my floor has to travel more than anyone else in the dorm area to get to their rooms. We try to feel better about it by telling each other that at least we're getting a lot of exercise.

All the halls are connected to each other, mostly. For instance, if you walk in the correct direction on the correct floor in North Hall, you can get to Eats Hall. And if you head uhh north(?) from the third floor of North Hall, you enter a breezy passageway that goes into Ham. Soot is the one that's a bit isolated from everyone else :( Theirs is the only one with an entrance into their hall after the very first flight of steps. Everyone else has entrances on either the next outdoor "floor"/level or the one after that. But they have air conditioning and they're right in front of the entrance to the dorms, so when carrying things they don't need to go up another 1-2-3-4 outdoor stairways to just get to the entrance of North Hall. I guess it all evens out.

So my friend (her name will be Pugs) and I brought our laundry down to the floor with a laundry room in North. We put all our clothes in the washers and I swipe my card--and the little card swiping machine doesn't work! It just has the same display on. I swipe it slowly and then my friend swipes hers too, but it doesn't work. So we put our laundry back in our bags, go up some stairs, and get into Ham. We enter their 2nd floor laundry room and try our cards and it works, but then we find that 2 of the 3 not-currently-washing washing machines have clothes in them. :( So we talk for a while and then this guy comes in to get his clothes and says 'oh yeah I kept checking back but those machines have been left full for a while'. So we take all the clothes out and pile them on the table that people usually put other people's clothes if they've been in the washer for too long. We feel bad, but then we put our clothes in and swipe and yay everything is good!

I forgot to mention, Ham has pretty much the most facilities of all of us. They have a very nice lounge by the entrance, which includes some pool and ping pong tables and maybe foosball (can't remember). They have the typical large tv hanging on the wall and new carpets and couches. Then right next to that is the kitchen, and outside the kitchen is a little reading area by the glass walls. It's very small, but at least there are couches and tables and its cute. Next to that, there's also the sole computer lab in the dorms. Then, if you go up a few floors, there's the sole DDR machine. There's also one of the "hidden" old pianos up there and a foosball table. So Pugs and I go up and play DDR as we wait for our laundry to dry. Unfortunately the front and back of the room are glass, so people from both the second and third level outside can see you play DDR. Also, the room is in the middle of this connection between the Caf and Ham, so occasionally people pass by behind you. So it's a little weird, but for some reason nobody really cares, and I don't either!

Beep beep alarm, so we go back to get our laundry. Then we find that another dryer has broken (there was one that was already not working before) so now only one dryer works, and there's someone in line for that dryer. So we hear about this laundry room on the ground floor of Ham, and so we sadly put our somewhat damp clothes into our bags and go down and yay there are two dryers! We hooray but then look at this girl standing next to one of the to dryers and Pugs asks if she's going to use it and she says yes, her boyfriend is just getting something so she's kind of holding it for him. So then Pugs says that I can use the dryer first, and then I say that maybe we could just both go to the Soot laundry room, which our friend Cat said always worked (we made it so complicated lol) and then Pugs says I could just dry my clothes here and she'll go to South, and then I say that I'll come with her in that case because I felt bad about taking it first (oh laundry etiquette). So that's what happens. She lugs her laundry to Soot and then I carry it around the stairs in Soot until we get to the Soot laundry room, which is on the ground floor (which has nothing except a laundry room...). It's kind of creepy, all alone and with pipes creeping around and pretty blue paint that turns into tile that turns into something else, but there are plenty of open machines (no one wants to trek all the way to Soot if they don't live in Soot). Yay unload.

Back to DDR! I am steadily improving! Whilst before I always got D's I finally got a few C's and then once I got a B and I was so happy that it was sad because well it was DDR and also it was for a B. We were cheering whenever one of us got a C, and we were playing in the easiest mode possible that still gives you grades. So we're terrible at DDR but just ok enough that we hit enough arrows for it to be fun!

Before all this I went to the nature lab to finish my drawing homework, and I chatted about drawing and classes and majors and things with an acquaintance-friend, Ming, while drawing! Meanwhile she was setting up a very complicated self portrait, which was interesting. Later I had to move downstairs to set up a skeleton and finish that with the some of my drawing classmates.  I also talked to my parents over the phone today, which was something I missed doing, so that was nice.

Thanks for the perfectly chilly night (so nice after DDR and laundry hiking),
Indigo

song of the day: Home by Gabrielle Aplin (!!!)

October 12th, it was a nice night

a bird I was drawing today

Dear October,

I forget that I'm addressing these letters to you sometimes, October. How has it been? You seem to be pretty happy lately. It was nice weather today, perfect for the parents weekend. My roommate introduced her parents to me yesterday and we all got dinner (I forgot to mention) and today we had a really good lunch. It was a little sad separating because they were so much nicer than I'd expected and they have really friendly faces and I like them. The streets were surprisingly busy, and you actually had to run if you wanted to jaywalk across the road. I bought a little graphic novel at the Library Book Sale today (all the events were going on today of course, in honor of parents weekend) purely for its colors, and my roommate got an even more beautiful graphic novel, watercolored and brown, and together they were only five dollars! Most of the other books were about art, which was nice, but then most of those were old and about various museums of art, and it's just so much more exciting to going to the museums rather than buying a book about them.

You finally let me see the moon on the nights after the night when I actually went out searching for you. This night was really pretty. I left the second floor cafeteria (let's call it the Caf from now on) after anime club and suddenly noticed this movement from above. You know those spotlights/searchlights that sometimes show up on clouds? There were about fifteen of those up there, little blurry ovals of dim light, all moving around in spastic circles. It was really amazing to look at, like something global was happening and I was the one person on campus who got to see it. I looked around to see if anyone else was noticing. There was a group of people by the wooden picnic tables who just recognized friends from another group of people who had just exited the dorms, and then there were some people in the kitchen of one of the dorm lounge areas, doing nothing, and then there was a lone guy playing DDR on the floor above, staring into a screen I couldn't see. None of them saw the blurry light circles though. When I looked up again, all the light circles were lined up in a semicircle, moving around its perimeter slowly, and for a moment I considered it as a UFO. I was just thinking that I should go get my friend (who I was carrying a scone for at the time) or my roommate and bring them out here to see this too (and also grab my camera), when the lights suddenly disappeared. I walked a bit farther to the side to see if the light show was going on beyond the tops of our campus buildings, and they were for a few seconds before those were gone as well. So then I just walked over to a ledge and looked around, contemplating this thought that one of my friends told me a while ago. I spent a few minutes there, admiring how nice it was in that space, and then I looked up again and the lights were back, moving around frantically like they were when I first saw them. They looked so surreal that I leaned in various directions under the trees to see the lights moving above the branches, and it was weird how real it all looked. I watched those for a while and then stepped inside, to the area with the kitchen of people doing nothing, found the stairs, and walked up a few floors to deliver my scone.

Got to wake up early tomorrow!
Indigo

song of the day: Little Traveler by someone covered by Clear. wait till the chorus, about 1:30 minute in

October 11th, I missed you again

Dear October,

It was a Friday, and we were in Design. At some point that day, we were told to align ourselves along the walls and then were given three seconds to scream at each other as loud as we wanted (which is apparently a communication exercise in a princeton architecture course?). So that was fun, but most of us had nothing to scream about, so we just went ahhhhhhhhhhhhh! It was fun losing your voice in others but still being able to hear it somewhere. Later we were set loose into the city for an hour, with camcorders to experiment with and the assignment to film ourselves screaming. It was nice, walking around while it was fall, knowing you would never scream in public normally, but that it was ok for people to look at you strangely if you had your arm straight out in front of you, holding a camera as you walked nonchalantly down the sidewalk, screaming as loud as possible.

whee,
Indigo

song of the day: Secret Base from Ano Hana (anime) but just guitar