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 5th, I was in the audience

Dear October,

I went to anime club today for the first time. The club has been trying to get through the first episode of every new anime so that everyone gets a preview of each series, and then they can decide which ones they won't be following in the club, and which ones we'll continue watching as new episodes come out. Today we watched 4 first episodes, and we're currently in only the K's. 2 of the 4 were surprisingly good, so we kept those, although the latter of the two was just ridiculous, but the ridiculousness was great because it was hilarious and surprising in a way that makes you laugh and drop your jaw at how it just keeps going, and the animation is just extremely over the top. I never realized how enjoyable it was to watch anime with a group of strangers, but it seems fun no matter the quality of what we're watching.

At one point in the first anime we watched (Kyoukai no Kanata), there's this guy who is apparently "half-phantasm" and he's talking to this girl who's pretty clumsy (I know, stereotypical, but the way it's done is just perfect) and at some point runs into a mop closet or something and gets hit in the head by four mops in a row, which I don't think anyone's ever seen before in such an adorable manner. Anyway she seems so nervous and shy and we all think she's just following the guy because she likes him, but then the guy says something like, "Do you know how many times you've stabbed me this week?" and everyone who missed the beginning goes, whaaat?? Then we find out the girl is actually a phantasm hunter but doesn't have much experience, so since the guy is only half-phantasm, she's just been stabbing him after school for practice. LOL. And the guy is immortal so that's why she can just keep stabbing him. Later a real phantasm thing appears and it's giant, furry, and slobbery, with long swinging arms. It appears by flying, quickly growing larger through the window behind the talking male protagonist, and making impact while the guy's still mid-sentence. It's so unexpected that when it hits we all say WHOA WHAT and as the thing crashes into the room and we're all just realizing that the thing is a phantasm, a girl in the audience says of the guy, "Wait, so he's half of that??" And a second later while the thing's rampaging the room, someone squeaks, "I thought that was a squirrel!" because it did kind of look like a really big squirrel at first flying towards the window at high speed. The anime has beautiful art by the way, and looks really interesting. The other good one we watched that was ridiculous was called Kill La Kill and it involves an authoritarian school with different ranked uniforms that kind of give you superpowers. I didn't think I'd like it at first at all, but it's funny and won me over with its craziness. Everyone applauded after that one because it was so much fun guffawing at the visual effects and characters.

Afterwards I went to a casual open mic event, where people put their names in a bucket and are then picked randomly to go up on stage and perform whatever they like. So people sang, read poetry, did some stand-up comedy, told funny stories and bad jokes, read excerpts of bad books, and some weirder things. A lot of people played guitar while singing, and one guy brought his accordion and another brought a hand drum (my favorite was when this one RA sang Skinny Love by Bon Iver and then You and I by Ingrid Michaelson with her ukelele). It was early night, and we were all sitting and standing around a concrete "stage" that has a few folding chairs and microphones on it. Behind are some trees extending from the floor below, and some strung up christmas lights, lovingly colorful and mismatched. I was on the floor above, which conveniently has a sort of corner-balcony so you can easily see the stage from there. Anyway it was nice, and really wonderful when the trees above (there were really just trees everywhere, extending from dirt areas around the concrete tiles) let go of some of their leaves, because the lights that were above lit them up in the night so that they flashed and glistened a bit when they twirled into a patch of light, and then disappeared as they fell out of it. The leaves were small and yellow, and I think it's really cool that you have the trees change color here. It's so amazing seeing trees full of yellow leaves here, or even trees with only the tops of their bushes of leaves yellow. I keep trying to figure out the logic in how it's decided which leaves turn yellow, because there's clearly a pattern, but it doesn't seem to fit the explanation of "where the sunlight hits the tree most" or "where the leaves are furthest from the roots".

I also like that according to the forecast you'll be warm for at least another week!

See you then and tomorrow,
Indigo

song of the day: You and I by Ingrid Michaelson (Couldn't resist. Note: learn to play this on the ukelele and sing it cause it's such a great group song.)

October 2nd, you made it pretty to eat

Dear October,

Today was warmer than I expected. Even at night, when I went to grab some midnight pancakes with my roommate and we forgot where the midnight pancakes were, it was surprisingly just a bit cold, but not really chilly. At lunch I sat at the end of the table with two class friends and while they were laughing (they each laugh much more often than I do! which is weird!) I saw one of the staff wiping the tables with a wet towel and it was really mesmerizing. We were facing the windows, so you could see the reflection of the light from the windows on the table, and usually it just glows a tiny bit as it bounces off the tables, but once wiped with water, it shines. I know that's obvious, but it's really interesting watching table after table transform into these gleaming swishy reflectors. It's kind of like watching someone squeegee water off your windshield, or watching that girl in From Up on Poppy Hill (kind of a weird movie, but nice music and art) apply plaster onto the wall of the clubhouse. Just watching someone cover so much area so quickly and efficiently is really fun. Anyway I took a picture of the tables but didn't catch the staff person as he was wiping them. My friends suddenly stopped laughing to see what I was taking a picture of, and they asked if I was trying to take a picture of the group of guys at the far end of the tables.

At dinner I was talking to a friend about how I used to really hate having one class of food touch another class of food, but now I have chicken bits on my cantaloupe and scones soggy from waffle syrup (I don't know when I stopped hating pancakes and waffles, but it was a recent thing). I still find it slightly annoying and I look for an extra second at the honeydew at the end of my fork if it has a little bit of parsley or lasagna on it, but I find it to be an ok sacrifice because I really just want to stuff everything on one plate if possible and I try not to use the trays because they're so large and at most I'll probably only have 2 plates and a cup of water on it. It's fun to struggle with carrying all your food. The worst combination would probably be if I got soup, a plate of stuff from the main bar, a plate of fruit and pasta and stuff that couldn't fit in the other plate because of how much they overfill your plate, dessert on a plate, a bag of chips, a wrapped sandwich for later, and a cup of water. Imagine carrying that and then having to get your id out somehow at the checkout, hand it to the cashier, then take it back and run to the utensils station to grab that and napkins.

See you tomorrow,
Indigo

song of the day: Near to You by A Fine Frenzy

October 1st, you were nice and breezy

Dear October,

Your morning was pretty today. It was kind of a drowsy day, but in a nice mellow way. I woke up at 7 in the morning incidentally (even though I set my alarm for 9), wondering how I got to procrastinating over work yet again. At 9 I brought my camera with me as I headed off to the Homer Lab to print out

a. my revised essay on Candide
b. a list of my design assignments
c. the weather for you

Looking at the forecast between you and me, you get significantly chillier day to day. I think I’m going to need to start wearing pants on a regular basis now. Every time I put on pants these past few weeks, I've regretted it later because September always decides to be warm and sunny on those days I wear pants.

So I left the Homer Lab because the printer was out of toner, and I noticed that you lit up the leaves outside really nicely. It’s just ordinary trees surrounded by buildings, but there was one tree that was half lit bright yellow, because a building cut off its sunlight. I'm so excited for the leaves to turn colors. Your breezes came occasionally and ruffled the trees until tree dandruff drifted out (this is a term my friend coined. I thought it was fitting and cute and maybe nasty) in little flutters of confetti. I tried to get this on film but you were being disagreeable. I also spent some time trying to catch a leaf as it fell without looking stupid, and I succeeded and tucked the tiny yellow leaf in my pocket so that I could later sandwich it in my journal and call it the leaf that I caught as it fell.

Don’t forget to shower,
Indigo

song of the day: Sayonara no Natsu by Aoi Teshima (From Up on Poppy Hill)

(psst read about the Letters to October project laurapoet's started here!)

Light, Grass, and Oceans

Once again, here I am writing a blog post while I should be working on my college applications. These college apps are really inspiring! Anyway, here are some awesome things I have seen recently:

• While walking to an art museum – saw amazingly long luxurious grass. The most beautiful grass I have ever seen. It grows in tufts and tumbles, thin and green, and immediately reminds you of the ocean, or short wavy hair. It looks like it should be moving but it’s still. I reached down to touch it and it is oddly rubbery. If you have ever reached down to pet grass, well, this would have been kind of disappointing(but it was kind of interesting, how rubbery it was)
• The trees by my house. They sound like the beach. I will explain later sometime.
• The light that escapes the blinds and curtains and hits the edge of the windowsill really sharply at 7am sometimes 
• Driving to school one morning – sun is shining with those streams of light, one hits some parked cars windshield(lots of dried water marks on the glass). Then we drive down more, and pass by a girl who has really long hair and some Pocahontas-like stuff in her hair. She is getting in or out of the car, and her hair swings and the sun passes through it in slow-mo while we drive by. Very cool. 

One day I will be brave enough to open all the blinds of the windows in my room at night. Then I will sleep(early). I expect to wake up to an explosion of light in the morning. You know, for some people, dreams wake them up. But more and more often for me, I wake up and then decide to go back to sleep hoping to continue my dream or have more dreams(even if it’s scary, I am more interested in what will happen next than I am afraid) and then wake up hours later. It used to be sad to wake up so often in the afternoons, and now it isn’t. Hmmm.

Auditorium

I found this a while ago, just forgot to post it. (Actually, I did post it. I just didn't so into detail.)
http://www.playauditorium.com/

Auditorium is a game with light and sound combined. You try to lead the streams of light towards the bars, and then it starts filling up the bar with the light, which makes a sound. There are multiple bars, so you try to bend and use the light to hit all the bars, which makes a symphony of sounds. As you get further into the game, there are more sounds, and the sounds make more complex music. They arent just straight, yellow beams of light. Oh, no. They're glowing, flowing, and multicolored. It's pleasing to the eye and sounds nice. At the moment, it's down for maintenance. When it's up again, play!

Toxic II and Stuff

http://www.nitrome.com/games/toxic2 - Toxic II is out!
http://playauditorium.com/ - A game with sound, where you bounce streams of light onto bars that light up and make a tune. Very pretty. @_@
http://jayisgames.com/games/ifiction/game/violet - Violet, a new interactive fiction game.