My independent feminist nature constantly conflicts with the soft-hearted girl, the one that wants to hold hands and draw hearts on her arm. I am a goddess, a powerful, world-shaking intellectual in frolicking in flowers. The hopeless romantic keeps a small bunch of glitter hearts locked away in a safe place, because the imagery is just far too overdone, but she feels angry that everyone is so reliant on that single image to replace what should be real emotion. Both sides of my psyche feel that real emotion course through my veins. The strong woman reserves her right to fall in love, to have her heart protected, to be herself in a land of imagery, false advertisement. The hopeless romantic is still in awe of the mystery that is love. The strong woman can smell her lover's hair on his pillow as she writes poetry to the glow of a laptop but will undoubtedly shower him in kisses the moment she sees him.

The self-absorption of others is beginning to wear on my soul. I am perpetually indignant and somewhat akin to a melting ice cream cone. The only thing left to do is recite Shakespeare.

From "The Tempest", Ariel's Monologue:

"You Fools! I and my fellows
Are ministers of Fate. The elements
Of whom your swords are tempered may as well
Wound the loud winds, or with besmocked-at stabs
Kill the still-closing waters, as diminish
One dowl that's in my plume. My fellow ministers
Are like invulnerable. If you could hurt,
You swords are now too massy for your strengths
And will not be uplifted.
But remember-
For that's my business to you - that you three
From Milan did supplant good Prospero;
Exposed unto the sea, which hath requit it,
Him and his innocent child; for which foubleed
The powers, delaying, not forgetting, have
Incensed the seas and shores, yea, all the creatures,
Against your peace. Thee of thy son, Alonso,
They have bereft; and do pronounce by me
Lingering perdition, worse than any death
Can be at once, shall step by step attend
You and your ways; whose wraths to guard you from-
Which here, in this most desolate isle, else falls
Upon your heads - is nothing but heart's sorrow
And a clear life ensuing.

Alice In Wonderland + Psychological Thriller + 6 actors playing all the parts = way too many Pink Floyd Songs stuck in my head.
New concept that could change the way I approach certain subjects in my art/writing: the fact that those close to death, through disease, poison, fate about to strike in crazy ways, have a closer relationship with the supernatural than those that are healthy and are on the right side of the astral plane.
My sinuses are throbbing. I think they're playing the rhythm to "Sweet Child of Mine". Since when does Guns & Roses have full creative control of my cranium? Pineapple!

I'm watching all the eighties teen movies I have in my collection right now out of some sort of memorial to John Hughes. I've realized two things: 1) I am Andie Walsh. That's kind of scary how I've watched myself so many times settle highly emotional arguments by hitting the other person repeatedly on the shoulder and screaming "Just tell me the fucking truth!", and 2) The average artist only has so many memorable pieces of art in their repertoire, and for some reason if they're really worth their salt, they start becoming very notable at age 30. Especially people in film. This somehow gives me hope.
The registrar's office at Tech hounded me today, wondering when the hell I was going to graduate. Two more classes, two more classes. I've officially been in school nonstop for two decades. Time will tell what I do with this overeducation, though, besides sarcastic replies to taco-consuming customers and seducing nerdy boys with my big, sexy brain.
I've gotten to the point where I've been so into sewing and thinking about the design of clothes, that I look at a dress or something and I can actually mentally take the garment apart into its basic pattern pieces. Odd thing is, I've been doing this for the simple reason of vanity. I have one of those shapes that most clothes, unless they are very well constructed, hang over poorly. If something isn't cut right, my boobs disappear and my midsection takes on an oddly masculine shape, which disgusts me when I look at pictures of myself. Cheap clothing is not for women with actual curves.

I hate that I have so many artistic ideas, and not enough time or resources in which to accomplish them.
I hate that my video camera won't tell me what it wants, what it needs to produce cinematic magic.
I hate that my lack of internet has caused me to abandon blogging.
I hate that I smell phantom tacos on an empty stomach.
I hate that being quiet is considered being boring instead of mysterious.
I hate that I have the feeling again of being awkward.
I hate that people continuously question what I do.
I hate that my mom blew up at my dad during his birthday lunch.
I hate that my boyfriend is figuring out just how fickle his friendships are because he's in a good place in his life, his heart is healing, his body and soul are clean, and he has love. What I hate more is the fact that to make his friendships less fickle, he would have to live life in a haze of maryjane, numb himself, lose IQ points, and become a drone, if that even makes sense. I hate that if it came to that, I would probably leave him and sever my soul.
I hate that I can't find good spooky mystical pictures on googleimages.
I hate that I'm jealous of those two-dimensional and/or scandalous. I hate that I'm jealous of a dark dye job and eyeliner, of revealing clothing and converse shoes, and that I feel like I'm alone in my persona.
I hate that I have self-imposed responsibilities right now, and that I can't just rush out into a grassy field, throw off my shoes, and roll around until my entire being is covered in green. But maybe in a couple of hours...

I start work at Taco Bell this week. Odd, for someone who is about to graduate college with a 2nd degree. But that was the place that hired me. And I was talking with the boyfriend last night about this poem I wrote the last time I was employed at a fast-food place, and I guess I made the poem seem worse than it was, because he thought that I thought that I would hate the job from first thing, since I've *obviously* never done a bit of labor in my entire life (yeah, right. I would trade two weeks making pizzas for a day in the Techionery). Then I went back and read the poem, and realized that I did feel very frazzled by the job, but in my defense 1) I was 19 when I wrote the poem, and had never set foot anywhere near technical theatre, and 2) I wrote this poem while on break during my second day of training, which also happened to be Super Bowl Sunday. So, for your reading pleasure, I present to you... this poem.

The phone rang in on my Saturday morning

“Can you come in an hour to train?”

Subway Subway Subway

Found my last minute pen-to-paper

And now the groans behind the counter are mine

Little 16-year-old girls yell at me

But I can’t complain – just a trainee

They say food service isn’t for everybody

I’m beginning to think so after tonight

Customers mutter under their breath

I know what they say though I’m partially deaf

As they push the glass door I want so badly to leave

The manager perches at my side like a parrot

“Why is there roast beef in that BMT?

Take it back – make sure they get everything.”

At 5 I found out I don’t know how to sweep

That’s funny – I’ve cleaned houses since you were 13.

Go ahead and complain to your boss about me.

And what? The customer didn’t get ranch dressing?

Fuck the customer. Wait, let me start over...

Did the customer just watch a work-permit kid

Slice open her finger like a red ripe tomato

Screaming and screaming with the blade still in her other fist.

Oh well, extra meat for free, someone said.

Give the customer the whole damn bottle.

It seems I’m only here to serve

Yes, you could say I’m a minimum-wage slave

The bruises on my feet are from my designer khaki dance:

Hop onto one foot then to the other

Lettuce goes first but last is tomato

While you’re at it, don’t get anything on the apron

That blessed black apron

Stain-treated and one size fits all

Emblazoning my title : sandwich artist

I am the master of mayonnaise

Creator of the Chicken Bacon Club

The flick of my wrist

A few seconds in a microwave

And the over-priced wax paper delicacy

Is theirs to own

I am beyond the mere sandwich artist

I am the sandwich priestess

Serving low-fat, low-carb sustinence

From behind a glass-covered temple

In a shrine of painted red, green, tan, and brown

Preaching against the evils of deep-frying

Oh, yes, the job is swell

But I guess it’s my own personal hell

That I have so many things to say, but the words never reach the lines of communication, so I wind up taking three pages to say "Look, I found my pen!" That I have to, almost impulsively, explain things that are simple in complex terms, and things that are complex in simple terms. I feel as if I always have to explain. That if, given the right hallucinogenic vapors and special effects crew, I could be the ultimate Oracle. I always feel as if the world should never need an oracle, it should have understood its own humanity by now. I feel as if when I do speak, that my words were wasted on the air. I feel as if nonsense is my only language. I feel as if my soul is too massive for my own temporal body. I wonder and ask it often if it would like to escape for a while. I always feel that a good bottle of wine is all I need to solve my problems. I always feel that my problems are both more and less pressing than others at the same time. I always feel that I have to rescue everyone I know. I always feel that if I rescue anyone, they might resent me later. I always feel that... well, that's it. I always feel. Always. I can't turn off the emotion, the empathy, the fullness of my heart.

From http://www.time.com/time/time100/heroes/profile/milk01.html

Harvey Milk
People told him no openly gay man could win political office. Fortunately, he ignored them
By JOHN CLOUD

Monday, June 14, 1999
After Harvey Milk became the first openly gay man elected to any substantial political office in the history of the planet, thousands of astounded people wrote to him. "I thank God," wrote a 68-year-old lesbian, "I have lived long enough to see my kind emerge from the shadows and join the human race." Sputtered another writer: "Maybe, just maybe, some of the more hostile in the district may take some potshots at you — we hope!!!"

There was a time when it was impossible for people — straight or gay — even to imagine a Harvey Milk. The funny thing about Milk is that he didn't seem to care that he lived in such a time. After he defied the governing class of San Francisco in 1977 to become a member of its board of supervisors, many people — straight and gay — had to adjust to a new reality he embodied: that a gay person could live an honest life and succeed. That laborious adjustment plods on — now forward, now backward — though with every gay character to emerge on TV and with every presidential speech to a gay group, its eventual outcome favoring equality seems clear.

When he began public life, though, Milk was a preposterous figure — an "avowed homosexual," in the embarrassed language of the time, who was running for office. In the 1970s, many psychiatrists still called homosexuality a mental illness. In one entirely routine case, the Supreme Court refused in 1978 to overturn the prison sentence of a man convicted solely of having sex with another consenting man. A year before, it had let stand the firing of a stellar Tacoma, Wash., teacher who made the mistake of telling the truth when his principal asked if he was homosexual. No real national gay organization existed, and Vice President Walter Mondale haughtily left a 1977 speech after someone asked him when the Carter Administration would speak in favor of gay equality. To be young and realize you were gay in the 1970s was to await an adulthood encumbered with dim career prospects, fake wedding rings and darkened bar windows.

No one person could change all that, and not all the changes are complete. But a few powerful figures gave gay individuals the confidence they needed to stop lying, and none understood how his public role could affect private lives better than Milk. Relentless in pursuit of attention, Milk was often dismissed as a publicity whore. "Never take an elevator in city hall," he told his last boyfriend in a typical observation. The marble staircase afforded a grander entrance.

But there was method to the megalomania. Milk knew that the root cause of the gay predicament was invisibility. Other gay leaders of the day — obedient folks who toiled quietly for a hostile Democratic Party — thought it more important to work with straight allies who could, it was thought, more effectively push for political rights. Milk suspected emotional trauma was gays' worst foe — particularly for those in the closet, who probably still constitute a majority of the gay world. That made the election of an openly gay person, not a straight ally, symbolically crucial. "You gotta give them hope," Milk always said.

As supervisor, Milk sponsored only two laws — predictably, one barring anti-gay discrimination, and, less so, a law forcing dog owners to clean pets' messes from sidewalks. He lobbied for the latter with a staged amble through a park that ended with his stepping in it. Editors loved the little item, as Milk knew they would, and he explained the stunt this way: "All over the country, they're reading about me, and the story doesn't center on me being gay. It's just about a gay person who is doing his job."

Realizing one is gay is usually cause for terror, or at least mortification, but Milk felt too great a sense of entitlement to let either emotion prevail. Born to a successful retail-clothing family on New York's Long Island, Milk was a popular high school athlete and jokester. According to the biography "The Mayor of Castro Street" by Randy Shilts, Milk had no trouble recognizing his desires; as a boy he would venture to a gay section of Central Park, where in 1947 he was arrested for doffing his shirt (he was 17). The experience didn't radicalize him, though. Milk served in the Korean War and returned to Manhattan to become a Wall Street investment banker.

But banking bored him, and the gay Greenwich Village milieu that he slipped into was full of scruffy radicals, drug-addled theater queens and goofy twentysomethings fleeing Midwest bigotry. Milk befriended or had sex with many of them (including Craig Rodwell, who would help lead the 1969 riots outside the Stonewall bar that launched the gay movement). By the early 1970s, Milk had moved to San Francisco, enraptured by its flourishing hippie sensibilities.

The few gays who had scratched their way into the city's establishment blanched when Milk announced his first run for supervisor in 1973, but Milk had a powerful idea: he would reach downward, not upward, for support. He convinced the growing gay masses of "Sodom by the Sea" that they could have a role in city leadership, and they turned out to form "human billboards" for him along major thoroughfares. In doing so, they outed themselves in a way once unthinkable. It was invigorating.

While his first three tries for office failed, they lent Milk the credibility and positive media focus that probably no openly gay person ever had. Not everyone cheered, of course, and death threats multiplied. Milk spoke often of his ineluctable assassination, even recording a will naming acceptable successors to his seat and containing the famous line: "If a bullet should enter my brain, let that bullet destroy every closet door."

Two bullets actually entered his brain. It was Nov. 27, 1978, in city hall, and Mayor George Moscone was also killed. Fellow supervisor Daniel White, a troubled anti-gay conservative, had left the board, and he became unhinged when Moscone denied his request to return. White admitted the murders within hours.

A jury gave him just five years with parole. Defense lawyers had barred anyone remotely pro-gay from the jury and brought a psychologist to testify that junk food had exacerbated White's depression. (The so-called Twinkie defense was later banned.) Milk's words had averted gay riots before, but after the verdict, the city erupted. More than 160 people ended up in the hospital.

Milk's killing probably awakened as many gay people as his election had. His death inspired many associates--most notably Cleve Jones, who later envisioned the greatest work of American folk art, the AIDS quilt. But while assassination offered Milk something then rare for openly gay men--mainstream empathy--it would have been thrilling to see how far he could have gone as a leader. He had sworn off gay bathhouses when he entered public life, and he may have eluded the virus that killed so many of his contemporaries. He could have guided gay America through the confused start of the AIDS horror. Instead, he remains frozen in time, a symbol of what gays can accomplish and the dangers they face in doing so.

I found a pair of fake eyelashes today while unpacking all my junk. It feels like Christmas all over again.
Letting my boyfriend watch "V for Vendetta" has kind of fucked his world up. Not in the way I expected, though. He plays the "1812 Overture" on his mp3 player often and wants to make me Eggs In A Basket tonight for dinner. Thoughts of political and social indignation will come soon enough, I suppose.
Inappropriate quotation marks are "enjoyable" when writing, for reasons I can't even begin to "explain"
Still holding out for the signal that lets us all know that it's time to don warpaint and togas and run amok in the streets.

I met quite possibly one of the most interesting teenagers (I rage on about how everything is about an image to them, but some of them give me hope for the next generation) ever last night. And I suddenly want to pull her out of the clutches of leering 20-something year old males, which, oddly enough, includes some of my friends.
Too many undeveloped disposable cameras clutter up my thinking space.
In the grand blogosphere of the world wide web, I've been stumbling upon blogs lately that use the most random ways of advertising their product. There was one that was a blog-based rolling advertisement for sex toy sales parties, and it answered things like Yahoo questions by touting their service as the answer to a problem. That is sneaky advertising, but I kind of dig it, even though it annoys the piss out of me.
This room feels too empty with bare walls. But, the bare walls mean that I am soon to be living in an apartment where I feel so at home that I do laundry in my underwear and cook breakfast at 2 in the morning during a thunderstorm. And someone to share them with, and then talk about spirituality and the nature of our beautiful union until we drift off to sleep. But we sleep on a matress on the floor, so that means I'm a... domestic hippie, of some sort. Somehow that makes it even better.