feather2pixels

How do I want you to feel about my life today?

Well, I finally started cranking out some silkscreened postcards. I am still cutting most of them out, but a limited run (of postcard no. 9, out of sequence only because they were the most plentiful) was dropped in the Mission and 24th mailbox on Friday. Prepare yourself.

There are more on the way. I seriously underestimated the issues involved in screening 220 postcards (matching fronts and backs, successfully printing little letters, finding a good halftone but that’s vague but not too vague) but that’s what workshops are for. Joanna continued to crank out some pretty cool stuff too. I grabbed one of her test strips.

On Wednesday, Phanna and I won trivia night with an unprecedented two man team! It came down to a rare tiebreaker question: “what was the average weight, in lbs, of a knight’s armor in the middle ages?” We said forty-five. It’s fifty. Add one Pig Buck to the bank.

Work is so silly. I read about valves and programmable logic controllers and things like that, and the next day I show thirty-five college kids what I learned. Part of their training is licensing as a third engineer (on a ship) and this week Baby Bluehawk and her friend passed the exam requirement. She stopped by my office beaming to deliver the news and it was charming. So that’s a good part of my job, right?

The second Critical Mass of 2007 was much more successful than the first. This time I coralled the Bulldogger and Marella to join me, but we cut it too close and, again, I missed the beginning (do they really start at 6:30?). Luckily, we intercepted a fellow straggler who came prepared with a walkie-talkie and he led us to Fisherman’s Wharf, where somehow the mass had extended itself. After that (and besides a rare Pac Heights excursion) it was a pretty standard ride. The guy with the ridiculously loud speaker cart was there this time, which makes a big difference.

This week, after nine and a half years of post secondary education, Jill started her first job since the ol’ sandwich shop in high school. That’s the kind of irony grad school gets you. But suddenly she’s a development engineer at a fancy biotech company on the Peninsula and I am very proud of her. I still remember first meeting her in Dr. Stewart’s Physiscs class on virtually our first day at Pitt. We ended up choosing the same major (bioengineering) and working together on just about every group project, sometimes against our will. I caught up with her for a rushed Guinness (which she claims to only drink with me) on Wednesday night and asked her how it was going. “Lonely,” she said. She will be fine. Jill is always fine.

Oh Morgan Jameson, what the fuck are we doing? I wrote her a really heartfelt email a little while ago but it was utterly unsendable. So I didn’t send it, we didn’t speak for a while, and now, somehow, I am doing this thing where I write her about every little detail of my madness. And make no mistake, it is madness: we wrote 5,548 words to each other this weekend. It’s helped bring things to a conclusion but now she just thinks I am insane and self absorbed, which of course is kind of true, but I think I regret it. As it stands now, the plan is to not write each other for a month.
I went to an Oscar party at Louise’s tonight. I will say several things about Louise: (a) she throws a damn good Oscar party. Just like last year, it featured her baked potato bar, which is executed with such authority that it transcends the irony that would surely destroy any lesser baked potato bar. This brings up another good thing about Louise: (b) she’s groomed her irony into sincerity, which seems to me like your only viable option if you are going to stick with this type of disposition(At least without becoming an insufferable Mission jerkoff). Louise does karaoke and Stevie Nicks parties and sundae bars because she loves them. We also made buttons, which I realized is an awesome thing to do.

After another Sparky’s breakfast this week, Sadie took Nowell and I to the giant camera obscura at the Cliff House. It was closed (apparently because the day wasn’t “beautiful enough”) but at least it made for a good Polaroid.

The rumors are true: Ben Hill and Aimee made a San Francisco pit stop to begin their mid-winter drive up the coast to Portland. They were a short twenty-two hours, but long enough to eat out three times and purchase two different quasi-legal drugs. For all his last minute-ness, it was Ben Hill‘s third visit to San Francisco. His first year out, Ben Hill was just reentering society, dazed and despondent after an autumn of skeleton shifts and nights on the couch. Ben Hill was on the move by the time of his second appearance, and on Saturday Ben Hill arrived married.

Nowell got involved for the unexpectedly good sushi feast on Saturday night and was a good sport the next morning, beating us to an early morning rendezvous at Sparky’s for breakfast. Later that day and as usual, he left us in awe of the new home that he and Sadie purchased that week. It is not so much a home as it is a compound, with square faucets and soaked in thick buttery sunlight on a pretty block in Cole Valley. It’s hard to imagine being unhappy there. Not that I was happy. Anyways, the weather was spectacular and there were plenty of glow in the dark tattoos to go around.

Ben Hill: A short Appreciation:

As a the first guest blogger on the online juggernaut that is Feather2Pixels, I must immediately point out something that has been distressing me about the site. If one (say, me) types in “Ben Hill“into the search engine, NOTHING comes up.

How long do you think I can survive off crumbs?  I still say mid-March.

The sudden (re)emergence in my life of the Ashby BART station in Berkeley has yielded interesting results. The area seems like ground zero for the classic back to the earth, crafts night, east bay living. Maybe that atmosphere is a result of proximity to the Berkeley Bowl (the most well-known of the Bay Area’s left-leaning groceries), the Thai Temple (where you can get a Sunday morning curry feast, mega-church picnic style), and/or the enigmatic semi-private hot springs someone set up in their backyard. Anyways, I’ve found myself with less patience than usual for San Francisco Cool culture in the last few weeks.

Like, I went to a public roller skating party on Friday night (coincidentally, at the place where I am silkscreening) and it was lots of fun, but part of me couldn’t help feeling a little disgusted at what an event it had to be. And, at the risk of sounding self-righteous, why do people wear hip clothes to make messy art? And why do the alternative weeklies seem to exist primarily for purpose of beating the city down with their perverted vision of the San Francisco dream? Why does everything seem so trifling?

So I convinced my screening instructor to let me print with him on Saturday. I should have a series of 6 new postcards by Thursday. I’ve enthusiastically got $40 worth of postage waiting in the wings.

Big postcard developments are happening. Get excited. I got a backing coat on a series of two hundred forty last night at silkscreening. I also got covered in blood red acrylic. My workshop-mate, Joanna who has a sloped pointy nose and a soft touch, was working on a valentine for her boyfriend. I really liked the way they came out and convinced her to donate one to feather2pixels. Apparently, her boy friend is really into pork. Do you see why I am so excited about silkscreening?
Anyways, it’s a symbol of the first of several predicted stupid, fucked-up situations that I will be torturing myself over in 2007: one valentine, two women. It’s not a simple situation and feather2pixels has been vague about details. In the hopes that I can finally shut the fuck up about it:

Morgan Jameson is bad bad bad news. It’s hard to imagine what good can come of my dealings with her.

“you want to be close to me and i have a problem with that. i
have a problem with anyone wanting to be close to me. i know
this. this doesn’t mean there’s anything i can do about it. you
seem to think this has something to do with you but it doesn’t.
at some later point i’ll feel better about life and i’ll feel better
about myself and i’ll feel more secure and optimistic, and then
i’ll be ready to open up to someone. but that’s just not right now.”

Hmm. You would think that would be the final word, but the fucked-up begets the fucked-up and she surely needs my attention (which, given the proper circumstances, is not effected by such secondary concerns as my job, life, and happiness) as much as I crave her breath on my shoulder. I am crazy about her.

Sarah is gentle, active, and stable. It’s hard to imagine someone with more positivity to offer.

The polarity of the situation was recently pointed out to me. I have all the power with one girl and none of it with the other. But relationships are not supposed to make you feel dreadful. It’s obvious that I am a classic control freak–it got me to California–but what precisely is the noxious relationship in the acids of my brain between power and love? Who will receive the pork valentine?

I am at work. It’s 5:44 and I get wistful here at night so sorry about this. I’m walking back to work after an on-campus dinner. Outside the mess deck, one of my favorite students, Baby Bluehawk, eying my load of manila folders offers to help me finish my grading while she is at work. She’s starting her shift at the library and will be there until ten. A group of five sweating students on an Indian run passes me on the left, chanting militant nonsense.  It’s getting dark and there is a light on in my office.  I hate to quote indie rock on my blog but this has stuck with me for weeks:

“we sailed away on a winter’s day
with fate as malleable as clay
but ships are fallible, i say,
and the nautical, like all things, fades.”

In the distance, a tugboat squeezes a barge out of the Carquinez Straight towards open water as the sunset casts the San Pablo Bay soft pink. I should know more about that–barges and things. But I am just floating through all of this. My energy is focused on things that will surely collapse. People who will surely fade. And I cannot stop myself.

I started a silk screening workshop last week. I don’t know where silkscreen has been all of my life, but I am glad its here now. Anyways the workshop runs for 8 weeks or so and I think I will take the opportunity to make as many postcards as possible. So this will be a temporary departure from translating my own images, but I’ve always said that what I need is more time in front of the computer, dicking around with my digital camera and Photoshop. Oh gosh, why can I not not stop thinking about Morgan Jameson?

I tried to start this blog post a bunch of times but it hasn’t worked. I guess that means I can’t figure myself out. I can’t. The imaginary is a drug and I am addicted to it. And that inevitably means pushing away the real and the people who actually have something positive to offer me. I am powerless. I live to torment myself. But hey, it was another wholesome weekend. I went surfing for the first time. I got a plant. I went to a Berkeley party where people had names like Pepper and Io. I ate Taco Bell. Check out these Polaroids!