YES

What Pseudo Historical Figure Best Suits You? created with QuizFarm.com

You scored as C.G. Jung You are more of a spiritualist than would be immediately apparent. Some of your notions are questioned by the cynical, but deep down you know the human consciousness is more than the flesh and tissue can account for. You tend to take a scientific observationist look on matters the average person wouldn't even begin to analyze. You personally are responsible for most of the ideas that are floating around in modern psychologist's/psychic's paltry little skulls. On the down side, you tend to be associated with that asshole Freud. C.G. Jung 100% Miyamoto Musashi 75% Steven Morrissey 67% Friedrich Nietzsche 67% Dante Alighieri 58% Sigmund Freud 50% Adolf Hitler 42% Charles Manson 33% Mother Teresa 33% Hugh Hefner 25% Stephen Hawking 25% O.J. Simpson 17% Elvis Presley 17% Jesus Christ 0%

Communism was just a red herring.

So today in the mail I got this:


Which on the back means this:


I didn't take it personally, of course. It was eleven in the morning, hardly a time to get angry, so I poured a Mirror Pond Pale Ale into a frozen glass and topped it off with a generous amount serving of golden rum, and went on Craigslist.

After avoiding the initial temptation to let someone harvest my eggs for six grand, I sent emails to a couple of charity organizations, a hotel and the SAT tutoring service. I have an interview with the charity people tomorrow; they might just pay me ten clams an hour to stand on a street corner and try to get people's signatures.

A couple hours later the doorbell rang, and a man from the DNC was standing there, ready to take my money. I told him that I had hardly anything in that area to give him, however, I was looking to get a job. So he wrote my name down and now I'm going to see them tomorrow, too.

All of this is because, before I go to Seattle, I have to get a job otherwise I'm heading back to Oak's Park, where the misery never ends.

No, it's not a completely miserable job. I just want something that makes my brain work.

Last night I was in Target, and scored one of the finest movies ever, for a mere $5.50!



That's right, Clue. It's one of the ultimate lazy day movies, entertaining but not thought-provoking, but not in a gross-out sort of way either. I would put up a full explanation as to why, but I think that should come at a later time, along with explanations for the other sorta-bad-but-still-fun movies that I love but would never, ever say that I loved in film class: Josie and the Pussycats, Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade, The Mummy, The Great Muppet Caper, and The Rocketeer.

Oh, and I had a writing workshop that I went to on Saturday. I wasn't, in my opinion, worth the money that I thought it should be worth (less), but at least it gave me something to do, e.g. walk around downtown in 100-degree heat.

It was Oprah on the TV show, she told me so!

What a weekend! Nothing happened, and yet here I am, ready to talk about not one, not two, but THREE movies, and not three, not two, but ONE album that I have since become acquainted with. I also did a painting (that one) and began reading Goethe's Faust for real this time. Here's a quick quote before I move on:

FAUST: Where can I grasp you, never-ending Nature?
Breasts, where? You founts of all of life,
That earth and heaven hang upon with love
And where the parched soul craves to be,
You flow, you give drink, but not to me.

I shouldn't have to explain that one to y'all.

First up: let's do the album.

So I was in Everyday Music with my mom (she was picking up the Alison Krauss and Robert Plant album, which is actually pretty good despite how I can't get it out of my head that one of the songs might, might be a sonic ripoff of Tom Wait's "Underground") and I passed by this album on the "new releases" shelf. I'd been meaning to look into her, since she did such great work on the Leonard Cohen documentary I'm Your Man, where she did an ethereal cover of "Tower of Song", among others. Since then I've been familiar with only one of her songs; the intense hate-on song "Bloody Mother Fucking Asshole", about her father Loundon Wainwright III.

So anyway, I saw the album, and fell in love with the title (in case you can't read it, it's called I Know You're Married But I've Got Feelings Too), and now I've listened to it and I'm not disappointed. The production is smooth, her voice is wonderful, and the lyrics are coarse enough to keep me interested; they seem to fit somewhere between "You Oughta Know" Alanis Morrisette and "Horse and I" Bat For Lashes: Wainwright holds her ground as a jilted woman and as an artistic personality without getting too bemoaningly bitchy on one end nor too shut-the-fuck-up on the other.

Have you ever listened to The Red Shoes by Kate Bush? It's this album that she put out after she had an apparently nasty breakup with her longtime boyfriend. Before that time, Kate Bush hadn't really had any need to digress into writing love songs, not to mention rejected love songs, and really we should be grateful that she didn't. She's not good at it. The album also was written for a live band, so it lacks the production and depth of something like Hounds of Love, which is about twenty times better. It's poppy, it's sappy, it's like Kate had to roll out of bed and wipe off the salty mascara tears before she crawled to work and slumped over the microphone, smelling like anything but soap, naming each tile on the studio floor for something that makes her miserable. And you know what? We all know Kate was better than that. Hell, he was the ugly one, she's Kate Bush. She's talented and musically brilliant, she could have taken that relationship and turned it into something spectacular, but instead it's tired and self-pitying.

So here's my point: I Know You're Married But I've Got Feelings Too is what The Red Shoes should have been. Hell, half the reviews I've read say that Wainwright evokes Bush on at least one or two tracks. "In The Middle Of The Night" sounds like something right out of The Dreaming or the better parts of Never For Ever. It seriously does, you'd think that it was a cover. All in all, I liked I Know You're Married But I've Got Feelings Too on the first listen, and right now I'm on listen number two and I'm still liking it. I should point out that it is definitely an album for women, or at least men who aren't completely ignorant. There's definitely a note of Lilith Fair in there, only less unshaved-armpits and more patent-leather heels, which I think we can all be thankful for.

Okay, next up: the movies! The weekend was a B&W triple-feature. First on the list:
The upside:Peter Lorre. The downside: Mary Astor, the script. The stupid, stupid script. I know that at the time it was hailed with an Oscar nod, and that since then it's been put on every goddamn AFI list ever made, and that Roget Ebert thinks it's top shit, but to my modern ears, the overly-explanitory script makes the Da Vinci Code adaptation look like To Kill A Mockingbird. Humphrey Bogart's apparently irresistible Sam Spade is a decent enough character, but seems a bit dumb in the way that he sets himself up for, well, any kind of physical pain. And he's not very nice to all those women who can't resist him. 1940s tough guy dilogue is tossed around so much it's like the characters are playing for points. This worked well enough in the darker and more claustrophobic The Big Sleep or in films like The Thin Man, but either I'm getting bored with it, or it turns into a joke after too long. Bogart is plain terrible at laughing on command, instead of the slower, thoughtful guffaw that would suit the role, he starts giggling like he's being tickled with an ostrich feather. And Mary Astor. Mary Astor. Maybe it's the character, I don't know. But it's possibly the worst femme fatale type that I've seen in a while. Yeah sure she's a murderer, but she doesn't have the attitude of a dangerous woman, she just runs around saying that she's dangerous: "I haven't lived a good life. I've been bad, worse than you could know." Puh-lease. She just pretends to be helpless but never shows the wolf under her wool, at least not on-camera. And she just annoyed the shit out of me. And all the "aha, you're lying, but guess what, i was lying to you, so we are all liars, haha! That was a lie!" stuff was grating, like bad guys and P.I.'s only have one trick up their sleeves. Guess what it is: lying. Like a lying liar. The cinematography was pretty decent, though, and Peter Lorre, who played Peter Lorre, was fun to watch in his role as Joel Cairo, also known as Peter Lorre.

Second up: More Bogart/Huston!

You'd think; same director, same actor, similar result? Not in the least. This one is a Western, but only so much as it takes place in the West (Mexico, to be exact). The film is almost flawless, actually: the script, performances, cinematography, pace, settings, so forth. Even Bogart is good, and usually I don't like him too much (it's the voice, really). The story, basically, is about a few homeless Americans who decide to go prospecting for gold, led by an older prospector. They begin with confidence and friendship, then descend into greed, mistrust, and eventually madness. Nearly every element is treated with maturity; from the depiction of the men's poor lives in the small hole-in-the-wall Mexican town where they're stuck to the reading of a letter in the pocket of a man who they had planned to kill, to the prospector's rescue of a young indian boy that saves him from the misery that the gold brings them. There is one drawn-out section of Bogart talking to himself that isn't the easiest thing to watch for lack of finesse, but other than that I can't find any criticism. Yeah, it's just that good.

And finally, something completely different:

Madcap screwballery that is wonderful to watch, but gets a bit too screwballed toward the end. Katherine Hepburn as a spunky young woman is surprising given what I'm used to from her, but she still completes the role perfectly, I can't imagine anyone else pulling it off. Likewise Cary Grant as an uptight scientist is delightful, since if you put him thick-rimmed glasses, he does look so awkward and boyish that you forget, for a moment, that under that he's Cary Grant. The scenes of just the two of them are the best, or better, the two of them with the leopard. The inclusion of other silly characters makes the film too loose and gets in the way of the developing love story between the two leads (though I adore the line "He can't do that, he's the only man I've ever loved!"), especially when it results in everyone getting thrown in jail, which is, um, clichéd. But if you have a free afternoon, watch it, it's one of the first movies that I've genuinely laughed at this much in a long while.

By the way, I'm listening to Martha Wainwrights eponymous debut, and it is quite good. Also, I'm tired, which means that I should get off the blog and go to bed. So here I go, off the blog, into bed.

Chapter 7 completed!

One down, 38 to go. Well, any start is a good start.

I'm going to watch my favorite episodes of Planet Earth again and then go to Lake Merwin for the weekend tomorrow, which means that I will be away from both internet and Charlottesburg in general. I'll take pictures, though, and get as much done as I can.

Also, we're probably gonna watch The Rocketeer. I flippin' love that movie. Everyone has one of those "I watched it so much it became a part of my life" movies from when they were little that wasn't the same as all the other kids', and this one was mine. Here is my tribute:

"We're gonna need one hell of a lawyer!"
"....we're gonna need a helmet."

"Where's your stuntman now, Sinclair?"
"I do my own stunts."

"Jenny, prepare yourself for a shock. I'm the Rocketeer."
"The Rocka-who?"

"Oh my prince, would that you drink of my lips as sweetly." "

You got a good thing goin' on with that girl, Clifford. And I'm tellin' you right now, if she flies the coop, it's gonna be your fault."
"Aww what do you know about women, Peev? You haven't had a date since 1932."
"Flora Maxwell......no point in datin' nobody after her."

"Sweetheart, acting, is like acting like you're not acting."

"I finally played a scene with Neville Sinclair."

"What's it like working for a Nazi, Eddie? Does he pay you in dollars or reichsmarks?"

"Everything about you is a lie."
"It wasn't lies, Jenny. It was acting."

"House? We don't got a house, Cliff, we got a gazebo."

"How do I look?"
"Like a hood ornament."

Maybe I've just read too many things?

I have a problem with the novel. It's not that I can't write it, and it's not that 2,500 words a day is too much to ask of myself, it's just that every time I'm writing and I'm not in that rare, completely batshit crazy inspired mode, I feel that everything that I write is full of cliché and ideas that have been used before, by better, older writers. Take this for example:

Gimbal picked up the tuxedo jacket and turned it inside out, rummaging through the pockets on the inside. There were quite a few of them, mostly made by Gimbal himself. There were pockets under the lapels and in the sleeves all the way up to the elbow, and eight or nine pockets on each side–Gimbal had lost count a log time ago–that were sewn in with such skill that, unless you had sewn them yourself, you could never find them. Gimbal picked through seven pockets before he found what he was looking for: a cigarette case. It was gold and incredibly thin, with AGW etched onto one side, and a rather elaborately etching on the opposite side of a gloved hand holding forth an ace of spades. Gimbal twirled it in his hand, it glittered in the dim light of the dressing room. The once-sharp edges were worn almost smooth, and tiny scratches scattered across the surface. A good deal of the case, around the hinges and front, was tarnishing. Gimbal popped it open and took out a slightly flattened cigarette. Four more pockets and he produced a lighter.

Tell me that doesn't sound like old hat, like a dime-a-dozen description. I'm worried about it! And the thing is, at the same time, I know that it's really okay, and that my style of writing still has some originality to it, I'm just so used to, well, myself that I find it boring, and I can't write in any other way because, in truth, I'm just not that good at being en pointe all the time.

Of course, I have to be fair and say that in those moments of inspired prose, I can't write much more than 2,500 words, and that's the completed story. I can't keep up such heavy pacing for anything longer or it starts to get tiring or just fades out, and I don't care.

Ah, well. I do what I can, right?

In other news, I saw Iron Man today, and yes, Robert Downey, Jr. was wonderful. Yes, Gwenyth Paltrow was somehow tolerable and, actually, cute. Yes, Terrence Howard was thrown in there for no apparent reason but to make a cheap War Machine reference, yes, Jeff Bridges totally phoned in the Bad Guy Character Acting With The Weird Facial Hair. Yes, the special effects were perfect. Yes, they handled the comic-to-movie adaptation well. No, it was not worth sitting through the entire credits sequence just to watch Samuel L. Jackson in full-on Nick Fury garb say the word "Avenger". No, it will not end up being better than The Dark Night, just like how Spider-Man was not better than Batman Begins.

I might be the only person who thinks this, but I have never bought the Marvel Comics canonical characters (mainly the ones Stan Lee created: Spider-Man, X-Men, Fantastic Four, Captain America, Iron Man, Hulk, Darevdevil). Maybe it has to do with me growing up with DC (though to be fair, this generally means "Batman", and I don't have the complete expertise that I'm sure countless other people have, don't shoot me), but I always thought that the Marvel heroes were a tad wimpy, hiding behind their sob stories (waah, my uncle died, waah, I'm persecuted for being different, waah, when I get angry I turn green and smash things, waah, I'm a rock-person, waah, I'm blind, waah, I don't want to be the Silver Surfer) and relied too much on them (people refer to it as "humanity", but I call it "the easy way to get sympathy") instead of creating solid, interesting characters, settings, arcs, and so on. DC heroes are born out of death, man. How does Superman come to Earth? His planet dies. How does Bruce Wayne become Batman? He watches his parents get killed in front of him. Wonder Woman was exiled for loving a mortal man. The Martian Manhunter is the last Martian because he watched all the other ones die including his wife and daughter. Not only that, but DC heroes seem to have a lot of smarts among them. Batman, Elongated Man, the Martian Manhunter, The Question, The Sandman, all are brilliant detectives who seem to be smarter than the entire FBI put together.

One thing that I've always loved about the DC universe is that it is just that: a universe set apart from ours, that reflects certain elements but keeps the rest to itself. This universe is full of places that we don't have: Gotham, Metropolis, Star City, Central City, so on and so on. What does Marvel do? Set everything in New York. Why? Sympathy, man. Look, this hero is in a real place, he's just like you and me! Shut the fuck up, Stan Lee. I would take Gotham City over New York any time.

Anyway, my brother and I got into an argument on the way home about whether or not Batman Begins was a good movie. To which I reply, HA. Of course it was good. My brother's not that smart.

To be fair, I never got the Fourth World stuff from DC. But then again, Jack Kirby was always a little out of it.

Oh, and DC Comics publishes Vertigo, which printed Sandman, Watchmen, Constantine, Fables, and a whole bunch of other great titles that I can't remember right now, because I'm tired.

Breaking it Down

...And I have felt
A presence that disturbs me with the joy
Of elevated thoughts; a sense sublime
Of something far more deeply interfused,
Whose dwelling is the light of setting suns,
And the round ocean and the living air,
And the blue sky, and in the mind of man:
A motion and a spirit, that impels
All thinking things, all objects of all thought,
And rolls through all things.

Wordsworth

So today I'm going to seriously start being serious about Secret of the Clockwork Mouse, and I'm started to do some revisions of the drafts for the earlier chapters. Here's how I've broken down what my work schedule is gonna look like for the next three months:

1 page single-spaced (helvetica font)=approx. 600 words
1 chapter=8-10 pages single-spaced=4800-6000 words
36 chapters=288-360 pages single-spaced=172,800-216,000 words total

12 weeks=14,400-18,000 words per week=2057-2571 words per day

Ready steady go! Based on how I usually write fiction, that's about three to five hours a day, depending on how motivated, rested, inspired, and generally smart I am. I'm plastering my walls with chapter summaries and writing out full character bios and descriptions, as well as location descriptions. I still have research to do, especially in reference to Atlantic City and money at the time, but I don't think that'll be a problem now that I'm in the states.

I think that the summer reading list will be shot to heckidy heck

There's gotta be some nobility in biting off more than you can chew; at least you have the bravery to say "I believe in myself enough to chew this much!"

I went to the library today. It was the main branch of the library, it was big and pretty and full of books, and I couldn't help myself. So I'm currently working my way into Save Me The Waltz, which is full of beautiful Southern imagery and was written by Zelda Fitzgerald, who was pretty great? So I've got that, and Portrait of the Artist, and Goethe's Faust Part One on my "to read" shelf. I don't actually have a "to read" shelf. It's the floor by my bed, and whatever I roll over and grab is what I'm reading. While at the library I also grabbed T.S. Eliot and 1x1 by E.E. Cummings, to serve as the petit-fours desserts to my big happy heavy reading.

And the best part about Save Me The Waltz (besides giving me an excuse to buy the poster)? In the collected works that I grabbed, it's followed by a play Zelda wrote called Scandalabra: A Farce Fantasy in a Prologue and Three Acts. Who wins at everything except not being crazy? Z. Fitz.

It was a busy day downtown; it's Pride Fest and like twelve Saturday markets, all full of fiddle players. Saw a few sterling silver rings that were handmade and $5, as well as a fabric store that had the cutest dress patterns.

And I went to Anthropologie. They're hiring, I picked up an application and will submit it tomorrow, hopefully. Mom says that getting a job at Anthropologie is dangerous, but I say that it's practical. I need a job, I need a new wardrobe. So I'm applying for that as well as Urban Outfitters, since it's the same discount and goddamit I want to work in a nice air conditioned store that sells things that I would buy to people that I would talk to.

Aaaaaand for $2.50 I picked up a CD of "Great French Classics", which isn't the most distinguished sounding classical albums, but it has a few pieces that I was wanting to fill: Debussy's La Mer, The overture from Orphée dans l'enfer, Habanera from Carmen, and some Ravel. I'm also going to see if I can find a download of Martha Wainwright's new album, I Know You're Married But I Have Feelings Too.

Did you know that Saint-Saën's mother fainted the first time that Danse Macabre was performed?

Still writing writing writing. My mother seems dead-set on getting a kitten, which is the smartest thing that my mother has done or thought in the past year.

Stephen Dadelus' Lonely Heart's Club Band

Made of happy things.

I'm about 40 pages into A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man. Despite it not being anywhere near my summer reading list, I'm really liking it, and it's only like 300 pages so I might finish it in the next couple of days. Here's an excerpt from "Stick Silvertail", as promised:

Each shipment of goods for the general store meant that Stick would be first in the door the next morning, feeling every fabric and smelling every preserve, as though he had discovered some ancient buried tomb full of luster and magic. Polly introduced him to cakes and muffins and pies, and all other baked foods, and Stick would go to his room at the end of every day and write down a list of all the new things that he had discovered and loved. He would write things like “Horse Shoes” and “Blueberries” and “Chocolate” (this was an especially magical day), “Beans”, “Baked Potato”, “Nails”, and “Knitting”. At first, he had hoped to show his lists to his father, to prove him wrong about the human world, but as the days went by he thought less and less about going back to the manor under the river. He hardly ever went down to see it, and he never crossed the bridge, not knowing that the house on the other side was where he was born.

Sorry that there isn't more, but I really did like that paragraph. If you feel the need to read more, give me your address and I'll mail a copy; it should be done with the editing and such by the end of the weekend.

Also;

Still feeling love, guys. I need to go back in time to the fictional 1930s and propose before my heart just turns to goop and goops out of my belly button, or however that could work metaphorically...

I'm gonna blow up the ark, René!

Seriously; if I had to do that whole "desert island" thing and take only one movie, despite all my love of animated films, musicals, classic movies, indie films, and Titus, it would be hard if not impossible to beat Raiders of the Lost Ark. Even though G. Luc is better known for the Star Wars franchise, and though I totally dig that stuff too, man, you just can't find anything better than Indiana Jones. And even if I'm not a personal fan of, shall we say, "el cock", I would hit it. I would hit it with a whip. He could explore my temple and excavate my relics. You get the idea.

And you know what? Ask any woman, anywhere, and they would agree with me. Hey Mother Teresa, wanna do Indiana Jones? Yes, she replies from beyond the grave, and as soon as he gets here I'm putting on my white satin nun robe.

But still, man. Marion. When I was little, I wanted to be her, and now that I am older, I want to be her. And if I cannot be her, I would like to be her special friend. Special friend. The only downside is that I would have to be the designated driver all the time! She's so cool.

Anyway the reason for posting this is that my family, while I was off undereating in Norwich, bought Raiders of the Lost Ark on DVD. The film is fully restored and looks beautiful, and it's got nice little special features (how they made the guy's face melt!) that I'll be watching tomorrow. Have you ever seen any of the little blurbs that they do on the movie with Steen Spielberg in them? He talks about the movie like he's a little boy; his favorite parts are apparently when the little monkey salutes the nazis and when Marion says "we just don't get a break, do we?" because she's so cool.

I can't believe that I'm still drooling over a character Karen Allen played thirty years ago shut up.

A couple other things: in the previews for The Golden Compass, Dakota Blue Richards narrates a little piece about how we need to help the WWF save the polar bears, because they aren't as strong as Iorek because...sniff....they don't have armor to keep them protected. All this over pictures of bears lolling around in the ice, like they DON'T want to be killed by global warming.

I always feel so awful caring more about conservation than, like, humans. Something about it strikes closer to my heart, I guess. Hey, I might be a cynic who has no faith in humanity, but at least I'm a good cynic.

And I watched Jamie Lidell on Conan the other night (the video is up but I'm really too lazy to post a link). He and his quartet (keyboard, bass, sax, drums) played "Another Day", and though it was trés cutée, I feel like the live band kinda took away some of the fire that I was expecting.

Then again;

Why can't you just do both of them? Why is life this unfair?

Please notify my next of kin

There's something gratuitously fun about watching Absolutely Fabulous. I'm almost done with the first season, and I swear that I know it's bad, but there's something good about it. Everything is so predictable, so outdated, and yet, yeah. I'll watch it.

So funny that I'm more than happy to watch old BBC programs, but hell if I can get into watching Heroes or Grey's Anatomy or back into watching Lost. Apparently it's all gone haywire and crazy in that department, anyway. And TV dramas never did much for me, at least the network ones. On NBC or ABC or whatever, you're looking for ratings. With comedy shows, this is pretty simple: be funny. And that's excusable, since funniness is the essence of comedy (and social commentary too, blah blah blah, the point is if it's a comedy it should be there to be, well, funny). All you have to do is offer a few jokes for the next episode, and you're in the clear.

With drama programs, though, there's more that you have to keep in mind. There's the issue of continuity, which means that for most programs (save all the Law & Order shows) you want to have at least one unresolved cliffhanger issue at the end of each episode, so that the viewer has to come back and watch the next one. The need to have unresolved issue after unresolved issue means that you need to pile more and more drama onto each and every episode, and after a while the plot starts to get too contrived, the cliffhangers too cliffhangey, and the audience (me and the smart people) realize that they've been had by some dollar-chasing executives. Just look at soap operas to see the worst of it.

Of course in the UK it should be noted that soap operas are completely different animals; instead of being about beautiful millionaires who never grow old but seem exceedingly good at being possessed or incestuously pregnant with their amnesiatic brother's baby, British soap operas are about boring old people sitting in pubs and getting heart attacks.

Nothing has happened here for 50 years except age.

Moving on: I re-watched The Golden Compass with my brother just now, and I'm still enjoying it. The script, however, is starting to grate on my brain. The book was so much smarter.

Tomorrow I'll post an excerpt from Stick Silvertail, which should be done by then. The story is a southern fairy tale, and I'm actually pretty proud of it.

If I were queen then you and I'd be neighbors, I would pick you up each morning for doughnuts and tea

An album recommendation: My Brightest Diamond's output for this summer, A Thousand Shark's Teeth. Though it doesn't blow me away as much as Bring Me The Workhorse it's still got that great moody feeling that I love so much; and Shara Worden's vocals don't ever ever disappoint. I hate her for how good her voice is. Since I don't want to go into a long-winded review of the album, all I can say is this:

Have you guys seen the Romantics series on the BBC/PBS? No? Well, in the series, Mary Shelley was depicted as a beautiful woman writhing around crazily on her bed in a red satin gown. This gives you the impression that a night with Mary Shelly is full of opium and pretty colors, and the most mindblowingly physical sex you can imagine; the kind of sex that makes you question existence. This, to a somewhat lesser yet still powerful extent, is the impression that I got from Bring Me The Workhorse, it was just so different (to me at least) and had such a well-done cinematic feel that was beautiful in a polished but raw way, like madness that definitely had a method, a method so good that it seemed like madness all over again. With A Thousand Shark's Teeth, the method is still there, but there's less of the madness, though that works out just fine. The big orchestral feeling is more chamber-like, thanks to the help of a string quartet, and there's a thicker production quality on some tracks that seems reminiscent of Tear It Down, a group of remixes of the stuff. There's also a wider array of music here, and Worden is obviously borrowing from various styles, maremba, baroque, etc. It's all done as best as it could be done, albeit a little sleepier than I expected. So, to continue the metaphor, if Bring Me The Workhorse is the crazy rolling around on the bed Mary Shelley sex, then A Thousand Shark's Teeth is calmer but still fantastic after a few months of dating Mary Shelley sex. Yeah, that works perfectly.

Another thing of interest: I made Sachertorte! True, the chocolate glaze was not as thick as I'd want it to be, and making it was a giant mess of baking goods and abusing the standing mixer, but it was fantastically good and my mom, for whose birthday it was made, thought it was delicious. And really, if I had more time and wasn't trying to make it for a surprise, it would have turned out better and I would have had more time to enjoy the cooking, which I really did enjoy.

Oh, and I cut my hair. Ironically, on the same day that my 14-year-old brother was taken to a salon to get a $60 haircut. Yeah, I did it myself. Again.

Dr Crookedmouth to the OR, Stat!

It looks like it did while I was in France, only the front looks better. I took off about an inch from the bottom just to clean it up. Here's how it looked before, about two weeks ago:

Oxford, home of hot chicks and bicycles.

So it's less shaggy now. Also, I don't know who that girl on the left is. I look AWESOME.
And yeah, I promised Girl On The Left that I would grow it out this summer, which I might still do. The good thing is that the shortest layer in the back is down to my ears now, so it should grow out pretty even. Or keep it short, because that always looks good, right? Right?

God, I need to use this blog to talk about more interesting things. Like, why am I not writing right now? Because there are DVDs here. And I have torrents now? And........yeah. I'm gonna get going on that within the next week, for real. Right now I'm trying to get a job for the summer, and my expectations are being throttled by the boa constrictor of minimum wage part-time positions.

Gonna have to get along without ya instead of asking "where'd you go?"

Now that I'm back in a country that doesn't suck at things that are plugged into the wall, I finally managed to download Jamie Lidell's newest album. Jim is marketed as the product of one of Lidell's alternate personalities, who is sort of the conniving devil in the back of his brain, making him do craaaaazy things. Whatever. Anyway, the album itself is good, and fun, and pretty perfect for summer; just don't turn to it when you're looking for the perfect lyrics to write on your livejournal. Of course, the production is so good that you can't really care about the lyrical quality.

Jamie Lidell always gets accredited mostly for his voice, a Marvin Gaye/Otis Redding croon that you don't expect out of a guy from the middle of the UK; not to mention that it's his voice--run through a computer--that serves as the primary instrument for Lidell's live shows. He's got a great amount of control and breadth with his vocals, it's one of those voices that could read the phone book and make you want more and he knows it. And usually it's felt like Lidell is the only person in the recording studio; Multiply has a soulful yet electronic feeling where the music revolves around and is led by Lidell's voice. But with Jim, the music has a broader sound, backing vocals, bass, percussion; everything seems legitimate and real, like it was cut in a studio by a real person in the 1970s and not by a few guys with computers. It's this bigger sound that is the strongest part of Jim and makes it so damn catchy. There's such a sweet nostalgic feel to songs like "Wait for Me"and "Where'd You Go" that you don't think that you're listening to an album from 2008. Of course, the computer isn't gone forever, as it shows up to good effect in "Hurricane" and "Figured Me Out". All of the music blends with Lidell's vocals instead of just being a backing track.

But, as I said before, the only real weakness is Lidell's writing. I've seen him say in interviews that this album was going to be about the lyrics, but that just doesn't seem believable when you listen to them, I mean, really listen to them. On more upbeat songs this is never a problem, and Lidell does have a good ear for the words that fit with the lyrics. But some of them are just silly; "Out of My System" talks about exercising while "Wait For Me" declares " Don't you know you can't believe all that you've heard/I know it's rough when all you have is my word" and " Without you by my side I just can't sleep/That's why I'm up all night counting sheep". And yeah, this seems a little immature compared to the skill of the vocals and production, but it's those latter two elements of the song that make the lyrics irrelevant. But this really suffers in the slower numbers where we're forced to listen to what he's saying. "Rope of Sand" is a desperate attempt at existentialism which is too simple for its own complexity; and as an aside I don't think that Jamie Lidell has to constantly repeat how he just doesn't understand anything. "All I Wanna Do" is equally meh, "It's a world full of magic/It is never ever tragic". Not that it's bad per se, but I'm pretty sure that I wrote that when I was in high school and thought I was pretty deep. And I just don't understand "Another Day". I think that it's about a guy who was always afraid that he and his lady wouldn't have anything else to say to each other, but now they don't but it's okay because silence is now what can do the talking for them? I love you even though I have nothing to say to you?

All in all I like the album a lot; Jamie Lidell is one of those artists who seems to be full of an earnest sense of life that says that he's enjoying his work, not just doing it to fulfill a record contract or because he thinks he has some sort of artistic obligation. Jim doesn't resound with any "greatest album of a lifetime of work", but it sure as hell isn't a bad patch.

A battle of Arrondisments

So a few months ago, my mother and I had a conversation something like this:

Mom: We're so looking forward to our Paris trip! We rented Paris, Je T'aime. Have you seen it?
Me: Nope. Is it good?
Mom: Oh, it's wonderful. It's such a great Paris movie!
Me: Have you seen Amelie?
Mom: No, but I know that you want me to see it.
Me: Yeah, that's my personal favorite Paris movie, I guess. It's really sweet, you should see it.
Mom: Well, how about you watch Paris, Je T'aime and we'll watch Amelie before we all go to Paris!

Of course, that never happened. My family has a pretty wide lazy gene.

So tonight, almost exactly one month after we left Paris, my parents and I sat down in the basement to watch both of these movies. First up: Amelie.

.....okay, I'm a woman between the ages of 15 and 25. You know exactly what I'll say about Amelie. Aside from the initial "I want every aspect of Amelie's life, every article of clothing, every painting on the wall, every dark red throw pillow", the film is a wonderful whimsical feature, with a romanticized Montmartre as its back round. When my dad asked me what it was about in the video store, all I could reply was that "it's about this girl who lives in Montmartre and it's really pretty and I love it", which is the closest that you can get to the plot description. It's a story not just about Amelie, but the small yet colored lives around her that she watches and influences.

Now, there are three ways that a setting can work in a story. First, it can be there simply by virtue of things needing to take place somewhere. This is the sort of "anytown USA" setting; it's just somewhere to put your characters so that you can focus on the other stuff. The second is the type that Amelie uses, which is when a setting becomes a sort of character in the story, the place makes the characters or plot fit better. In Amelie, Montmartre is a place of artistic absinthine fantasy and childlike joy, coupled with the obvious yet still playful sex trade; we cannot imagine a character like Amelie Poulain living anywhere else, they are so fused together. In the end, Amelie is a cute film, a feel-good film that doesn't make you feel like you had to make yourself dumb or anesthetized to feel good, it's one of the most earnestly happy feelings that you can get from celluloid.

Paris, Je T'aime is the third type of film; one that tries to be the latter but ends up being the former. The film sets out to be a series of eighteen shorts, all based in a different area of Paris, all supposedly about love. Because, you know, Paris is the only place that love exists. What should be happening is eighteen stories that are distinctly and completely Parisian; but what happens instead is that we get eighteen stories that just happen to take place in Paris. I can let that slide, of course; after all, Sleepless in Seattle had nothing to do with Seattle itself, but it still worked as a film. But Paris, Je T'aime is constantly reminding the viewer of where the stories are with transitional clips that focus on the many monuments and recognizable sites, as though to say "hey, pay attention, this is in PARIS. Isn't that CREDIBLE?" Yeah, sure, but the truth is that without the Parisian location, each vignette would be nothing more than a short play put on by high school students (seriously, a lot feel like that). There are several about falling in love in five minutes, a few about long-term relationships, a handful about death or life generally sucking, and a couple that focus on tourism there. Actually, that's a pretty good breakdown of what Paris, Je T'aime says about what your experience in Paris is: you fall in love, your life sucks, or you are a tourist. And the worst thing is that, if you didn't worry so much about the languages used (thankfully, mostly French), then almost every single story could take place anywhere; there's nothing about them that says "only in Paris". It could happen in London or New York or San Francisco or Boise; which wouldn't make it very special at all. This means that, really, the only reason why I'm paying attention to the film is because it's in Paris. It's playing to one of my biggest weaknesses, which to me is a "bravo" coupled with a "fuck you".

The cast and directors were good enough for what they were doing, and there were no poor performances. But on the other hand, it sort of felt like one of those giant birthday cards that someone passes around the office. Sure you'll sign it, but you're not shooting for a penmanship award, nor are you going to impart any words of wisdom in it, after all, it is a giant Hallmark card, and Paris, Je T'aime, for all of it's glitter, is still just that: one big giant Hallmark card en français.

The only short that seemed to resonate with me at all as a really Parisian one was, ironically, about an American tourist named Carol (Margo Martindale) who delivers her narration in completely mispronounced French. Her story is simple; she's in her forties, has no children or spouses, and has always dreamed of going to Paris, so she studies French and packs up to go visit the city by herself; trying unsuccessfully to speak French to the locals who are only too willing to reply in English, following her guidebook that she keeps in her fanny pack to the letter, eating and sleeping alone. She sits in Montparnasse cemetery and thinks about her sister and mother who have died while she sits near the grave of Jean-Paul Sartre, she misses her now-married
-with-children ex-boyfriend as she looks over the city and realizes that she has no one to say "doesn't this look beautiful?" to. Finally, she sits in a park and eats a sandwich, and comes to a realization:

"Sitting there, alone in a foreign country, far from my job and everyone I know, a feeling came over me. It was like remembering something I'd never known before or had always been waiting for, but I didn't know what. Maybe it was something I'd forgotten or something I've been missing all my life. All I can say is that I felt, at the same time, joy and sadness. But not too much sadness, because I felt alive. Yes, alive. That was the moment I fell in love with Paris. And I felt Paris fall in love with me."

The thing is, I remember having moments exactly like that. What seemed to be missing from Paris, Je T'aime was not just that Paris is where people tend to fall in love, but where people have been falling in love for hundreds of years. The beauty of Paris isn't just it's sex appeal, it's the history, the muggy sense that it is a living, breathing organism that can hear and feel you. It is both magical and real, old and new, male and female, full of livelihood and tragedy. And though the other shorts seemed to have these elements somewhere in them, none resonated past their characters. I can tell you that only in Paris does Carol's reminiscence of sadness and happiness and life happen in that way; or if not only in Paris, then in very few places in the world. Unfortunately, most of the film seems to fall into too much of a clichéd set of love stories, held together by the circumstance of being set in Paris.


Of course in the end there's not really a battle between films here. My mother adores Paris Je T'aime, and though I think that she really liked Amelie (she was smiling the whole time!) she just called it "cute", which is still a perfectly fitting compliment. I, on the other hand, would never betray Amelie Poulain, and I lied about liking Paris, Je T'aime.

Things and things and things and things

It's time to start organizing my summer, since this one is gonna be a relatively short one, and I don't plan on wasting any of it. There's more to it, of course, than just getting a job; and I want to sort out the things that I'll be doing while I'm not sucking up to the man so that I don't go to school and go "ugh, I wasted my summer."

Summer is not a thing to waste, though of course a "wasted" summer is a matter of opinion. You might say I wasted my summer by not joining the Peace Corps or building a house somewhere. In that case, I'm a waster.

Anyway, I'm gonna break this down, and remember, I'm more or less making this up as I go along.

Things to Do
(This means all the activities that I could do without necessarily spending gobfuls of money.)

• Write as much as I possibly can of Secret of the Clockwork Mouse, and possibly even find a better title somewhere in my brain.
• Do more stamp-making, and make stationary for writing letters.
• Actually write letters to people this summer.
• Finish my oil pastel self-portrait and work more steadily with oil pastels in general.
• Same goes for charcoals.
• Practice guitar, saw, and (maybe) tin whistle.
• Pro-actively learn magic tricks so that I can amaze my friends and annoy my enemies.
• Experiment with that herbal tea set I got for Christmas.
• Do more outlining for Archer stories, get a big-ass calender and fill it in with story ideas.
• Repair my cowboy boots and my black flats
  

Things to Read
(Like, you know, books?)

• Goethe's and Marlowe's Faust
• Ulysses
• Orlando
• The Faerie Queene
• Jung
• The Hero with a Thousand Faces
• That Hermann Hesse book that Peter gave me, like, three years ago
  

Things to Buy
(Okay, this list needs to be short)

• Pants (3 pairs)
• Shirts (2?)
• Ballet Flats
• Art shit
• A watch (Fossil?!)
  
• More RAM for the lappy, if I end up keeping the lappy
• Elvis Costello, My Brightest Diamond CDs

That actually seems manageable, now that I look at it. I need to avoid overspending this summer, since that was the worst mistake of last summer. Of course I'm leaving an allowance in there for sale items (especially in the clothing department), and I'm sure that I'll buy a cheap Powell's copy of at least Ulysses, since I know that I'm more likely to read a book when I'm not thinking of returning it. And there's definitely a trip to the library to come in the next few days. I'm kicking myself for not bringing my Virginia Woolf book with me, since that had Orlando already in it; but oh well. I'm looking forward to Goethe.

And I guess I should think about getting that perfume from Anthropologie. Maybe.

Good news: the family is talking about maybe going to Disney this year! Bad news: they'll be going while I'm still 20. Laaaaaaaaaaaaaaame.

Find that dappled dream of yours, come back and see me when you can

I'm back in Portland, after one last wet but wonderful day in London and a couple of cramped but uneventful and decent flights. I'm back, and things already feel like I never left, and I hate that. By the end of today the afterglow of "I was in Europe yesterday" has faded away, and now it just feels like I never really left. It's the house and the room and the people never changing that much, not having friends who just want to hear you tell stories about your trip, so on and so on. I know that I always sound terribly depressed whenever I talk about being home; the way I always describe it is that I suddenly have to sit in the backseat, which just feels wrong after spending all that time taking care of myself and getting out of some shitty situations. Last night when I got in dad asked me:

"So can you believe that it's over?"
"No," I said. "but I still can't believe that I got through everything, I mean, it was tough."
"Haha. Yeah." He mocked picking up a phone with his hand."'Mom, dad, can you put more money in the account pleeeeeeeeaaase?'"

Anyway, that's basically how things have gone so far, but it's only been a day. This weekend is the Rose Parade and the Ballet, and then mom's birthday. By next week I hope to have some prospects of a job. My goals for the summer so far are:

• Get a job
• Make money
• Save 90% of the money I make
• Write a novel
• Read Ulysses
• Find a good place to live in Vancouver
  

Pretty simple, huh? I think that I can manage most if not all of it, I'm getting more and more comfortable with the writing that I've done for the novel (tentative title: The Secret of the Clockwork Mouse) Here's what I have so far:

PART ONE

Chapter 1
Bridget in Atlantic City. Meets Michael. He tells her suchandsuch, magic is a lie, la la la.

BEGIN FLASHBACK ARC

Chapter 2
Three years earlier
Bridget at home in Missouri with family. Description of family life, etc.

Chapter 3
Two weeks later
Some sort of community event (dance? something like that) where she sits with Michael, hint hint he’s shallow. Hint hint so is her family. Michael gives her a book or something that he thought was “pretty”.

Chapter 4
Two days later
Reads book, it blows her mind, tries to explain it but no one gets it, first real solid inkling of wanderlust.

Chapter 5
One day later
Has a sort of existentialist breakdown, makes plans to leave Missouri.

Chapter 6
One week later
Leaves Missouri. Is awkward but determined. Stays in a couple towns, locations TBD

Chapter 7
One week later
Gets into Chicago, creepy hotel, finds Gimbal poster and enough money for a ticket, decides to go, goes and sits down. MEANWHILE, Gimbal gets all pissy about performing, thinks about his wife leaving him, et cetera.

Chapter 8
That day
Performance. She’s blown out of the water. Sneaks down to the front of the theatre to try and see the magic stuff. Gimbal takes a liking to her, decides to take her on as a road assistant since she has nothing to do. Bridget goes back to hotel, meets other guest and tells her about new career as a magician’s assistant.




Chapter 9
Two weeks later

On the road. Learning tricks. Shows a serious knack for illusions. Gimbal lets her on as an assistant, first show, big success, she’s found a place where she belongs, la la la.

Chapter 10
Three months later

A few months later, she and Gimbal are BFFs, though he seems suspicious of her. She is probably falling in love with him, more or less. Tour has moved to Atlantic City, Gimbal gets a contract to play a show there every night for a month. A few days into the show a clockwork mouse breaks, he gives it to Bridget to fix. She does, and the next day he is gone. The theatre manager says that she will have to complete Gimbal’s performances, or else the company will owe everything back to the theatre. She does, and of course it’s spectacular.

END FLASHBACK ARC

PART TWO

Chapter 11
Two and a half years later

With Michael gone after saying that magic sucks, Bridget is totally bummed. She is up on her extended contract, so she closes the show and saves the money, while getting odd jobs on the boardwalk, like working at a soda fountain. Spends her extra time trying to figure out magic tricks without the aid of props. Notices cute blonde girl (May) sitting outside the Psychic booth across from the soda fountain.

Chapter 12
Two months later

Rainy day, May comes in to the soda fountain. She and Bridget get to talking. She reveals how she’s too scared to know her fortune but she still wants to find out anyway, she was a former winner of the Miss America contest a year back but has fallen into obscurity and stayed on the boardwalk anyway. More magic practice.

Chapter 13
Five days later

More flirting, more magic practice. Bridget has been trying to stay awake in order to make her unconscious more active in her conscious life (she doesn’t say it that way though). The girls go out to dinner and get cozy, there’s a kiss before Bridget passes out from exhaustion.

Chapter 14
The next day

Bridget wakes up in May’s room. Awkwardness followed by making up, just-being-friends attitude. Bridget thinks that she has enough to start rehearsing a stage show. May confesses about her financial woes to Bridget, and Bridget decides to let her stay in the guest room of her apartment.

Chapter 15
Three weeks later

Couple weeks later. Still working on magic act, quits soda fountain job and May takes her place there. They are living pretty cozily, though still just friends. MEANWHILE May finally gives in to her curiosity and goes to see the psychic. The old woman gives her a reading and tells her about her fear, lack of self-esteem, and says that it is all caused by a blockage to her heart (she doesn’t say it that way though). May comes home a bit half-crazed and shaken by the reading, Bridget comforts her and they just end up, well, you know.

Chapter 16
One month later

Happy couple-time! Though they don’t think of themselves as a couple. La la la, they’re still happy and all so that’s good. Bridget is ready for the magic act, and May is eager to be an assistant. So they rehearse a bit and everything seems to go fine. May keeps going back to the psychic, but doesn’t tell anyone what she hears there, though the readings seem to disturb her slightly.

Chapter 17
The next day

First performance of new show. Blows people away, but Bridget loses control of herself, accidentally setting the stage on fire and nearly killing May. May gets put in the hospital and then comes home, does not blame Bridget but still seems shaken by the event. Bridget, totally obsessed with her own guilt and disturbed by her own ability, leaves in the middle of the night.

PART THREE

Chapters 18-23
The next six months

Letters organized by month from Bridget to May. Describe the places that that she visits, the people she encounters, and especially the revelations that she finds and the new acts of magic that she is able to perform. Letters get more and more lovery-dovey emotional and confused and less logical and straightforward as time goes on, but not too much yet...these first five months are still mostly dominated by reason.

Chapter 24
A few days after the last letter

Returns to Missouri. Her family is overjoyed to see her, and don’t seem to be angry at her for leaving, especially since she has found her own success. She meets Michael again and he doesn’t realize even when she tells him just what an impact he has made to her life. He is only a few days away from getting married, so her family insist that she stay for the wedding.

Chapter 25
Three days later

Bridget has spent the last couple days trying to reconnect with home and she can’t really do that. She opts to leave in the middle of the night before the wedding so that she won’t get stuck. Her father finds her about to leave and tells her how hard it actually was for them the first time, and that it was wrong of her to leave them. However he does not object to her leaving this time, and they have a generally loving father-daughter moment before she goes off.

Chapters 26-28
The next three months

More letters from Bridget to May, explaining her reactions to the family visit. The letters are more manic, more emotionally written. Bridget begins to convey a real sense of love for May, and expresses how much she misses her and how wrong she feels in leaving. The magic becomes bigger and more abstract, suggesting that Bridget’s abilities go beyond the simple manipulations she thought she could do.

Chapter 29
The day after the last letter

In Las Vegas, Bridget finds a man fallen in the gutter, drunk and ill. When she realizes that it is Gimbal, she takes him to the hospital and then rents him a room to rest in. He explains to her how he lost most of his money, became alcoholic, got arrested for attacking his ex-wife’s husband. Explains more about their relationship before the divorce, how she was an assistant that cheated and left him.

Chapter 30
One week later

In taking care of Gimbal, Bridget has rekindled her affection towards him. Though he is still not well, he seems happy to see her. Finally, she asks him why he left. He replied that he was both afraid of her abilities and wanted her to have opportunities for herself without the influence of another magician. He explains how what she does isn’t illusions, but real honest-to-god magic, because she thinks that it is real and that somehow makes it real. He proves this by showing her the clockwork mouse that she fixed all those years ago. The inside of the mouse is still in shambles and doesn’t seems to be capable of working, and yet the mouse works better than any of the clockwork ones. He admits that he has always loved her, but that he also supports her relationship with May, and tells Bridget that she should go back to her. A few days later he is dead.

Chapter 31
Two days later

After sorting out Gimbal’s affairs, Bridget writes one letter to May, declaring that she is finally going to Los Angeles, but that she wants to come back to Atlantic City as soon as she has visited LA, but only if May will let her come back. She begs forgiveness, summarizes her trip and her meeting with Gimbal, explains how she feels about May.

PART FOUR

Chapter 32
One week later

Bridget arrives in LA. Finds place to stay. Should echo her first day in Chicago, though now she is more worldly. Gets a hotel room, wanders around, sees the Jazz Singer, explores around the studios, hears the name Mary Camden thrown around as she is apparently a former beauty queen and a new starlet. At the hotel she learns that a woman had come to see her, but did not leave a name, just a message asking her to stay in her room in the earlier parts of the next day.

Chapter 33
The next day

Bridget waits as per instruction. The woman who shows up is May, who moved to LA ahead of Bridget, knowing that she was going to be going there, and had her mail forwarded from Atlantic City. She did not get the last letter about Gimbal yet, so Bridget tells her, and May is at first cool with her, but then forgives her, though their relationship seems platonic at this point. MEANWHILE May goes back to her new Beverly Hills home and reads the Tarot cards that the psychic woman gave her when she left Atlantic City.

Chapter 34
Three days later

Bridget and May go out to lunch while she is shooting her new film. May suggests that Bridget use her skills in motion pictures in order to create special effects. Bridget explains in more detail to May just what she is capable of. May seems interested but also concerned for Bridget, and is secretly afraid that Bridget’s obsession about controlling her abilities is nothing more than an excuse to not stay in one place at a time.

Chapter 35
One week later

Bridget has her audition at the studio, after rehearsing her “effects” for the past week to make sure that they will be safe and work in a studio. The studio heads are stunned by what she can do, and offer a handsome paycheck, with the exception that she will be credited under a pseudonym, Herman Waite (Gimbal’s real name). Bridget and May go out to celebrate Bridget’s success, and spend the night together. Two days later, Bridget moves into May’s apartment.

Chapter 36
Three months later

Bridget is living happily, occupied both with her new job at the studio and her newly renewed relationship. She still practices the magic privately, but is no longer intimidated by it. She seems to have influence over most of the elements around her. MEANWHILE, pressure from the studio department forces to May to lie somewhat about her relationship with Bridget, and to create a pseudo-romance with her current co-star.

Chapter 37
Two months later

Bridget is still kept busy, but is feeling jealous of May’s co-star, especially since publicity seems to require him to come over to their house often, as well as be at every event or dinner that they attend. Bridget asks May if her getting her own house would help to ease the pressure from publicity, to which May reluctantly agrees. Bridget buys a house down the street from May’s. The two discuss how, when May’s contract expires in a few months, they could find a few investors and executives in order to fund their own studio that would exclusively feature Bridget’s effects.

Chapter 38
Three months later

The two women have found a few backers for their studio, and have scouted out locations for it in Beverly Hills. On the eve of May’s contract expiring and the night of the wrap party for the film that her and her fake boyfriend starred in together, Bridget has a crisis of conscience. She goes to May’s house and when she’s not there, Bridget waits for her to come back by randomly setting out the deck of tarot cards that May keeps on her table. The results seem to show that she is destined to be alone, so she panics and goes home to pack her things for another journey.

Chapter 39
The next day

May, having figured that Bridget was at her house the night before, confronts Bridget just as she is finishing her preparations for leaving. She begs Bridget to stay, but Bridget refuses, saying that her magic is still too dangerous to fund an entire studio for, that May would be happier with her fake boyfriend, that her life would be easier if Bridget wasn’t an active part of it, and that she is destined to be alone. May replies by bluntly declaring her love for Bridget, and that she can only be destined to be alone if she allows herself to. Bridget replies that her feelings are the same, but that she is still to worried about herself to be with someone. May replies that she’s staying with her anyway. The two agree to go to Europe or something for a few months while the studio is being constructed.


Next thing to do is character summaries! Then fleshing out the chapters. Those letters are gonna be hard to write.