Name's Meg, Purveyor Of Short Films

Here's the latest installment of Arts Deux Films's expanding repetoire: "The Blank Paper". From this, and from "Teddy Bear", I'm starting to outline a project of sorts: to make thirteen short stop-motion films, in black and white, each one corresponding to a movement from Schumann's Kinderszenen. Already, I've used numbers one and five for these last two films. Eleven to go! Each piece is between thirty seconds and three minutes, so it's not too much to have to do. We'll see how that goes.

To get away from that, here are some selectedly wonderful poems by my favorite poet (guess who):

somewhere i have never travelled,gladly beyond
any experience,your eyes have their silence:
in your most frail gesture are things which enclose me,
or which i cannot touch because they are too near

your slightest look will easily unclose me
though i have closed myself as fingers,
you open always petal by petal myself as Spring opens
(touching skilfully,mysteriously)her first rose

or if your wish be to close me, i and
my life will shut very beautifully ,suddenly,
as when the heart of this flower imagines
the snow carefully everywhere descending;
nothing which we are to perceive in this world equals
the power of your intense fragility:whose texture
compels me with the color of its countries,
rendering death and forever with each breathing

(i do not know what it is about you that closes
and opens;only something in me understands
the voice of your eyes is deeper than all roses)
nobody,not even the rain,has such small hands

*

o by the by
has anybody seen
little you-i
who stood on a green
hill and threw
his wish at blue

with a swoop and a dart
out flew his wish
(it dived like a fish
but it climbed like a dream)
throbbing like a heart
singing like a flame

blue took it my
far beyond far
and high beyond high
bluer took it your
but bluest took it our
away beyond where

what wonderful thing
is the end of a string
(murmers little you-i
as the hill becomes nil)
and will somebody tell
me why people let go

*

"o purple finch
please tell me why
this summer world (and you who i who
love to live)
must die"

"if i
should tell you anything"
(that eagerly sweet carolling
self answers me)
"i could not sing"

*

if everything happens that can't be done
(and anything's righter
than books
could plan)
the stupidest teacher will almost guess
(with a run
skip
around we go yes)
there's nothing as something as one

one hasn't a why or because or although
(and buds know better
than books
don't grow)
one's anything old being everything new
(with a what
which
around we come who)
one's everyanything so

so world is a leaf so a tree is a bough
(and birds sing sweeter
than books
tell how)
so here is away and so your is a my
(with a down
up
around again fly)
forever was never till now

now i love you and you love me
(and books are shuter
than books
can be)
and deep in the high that does nothing but fall
(with a shout
each
around we go all)
there's somebody calling who's we

we're anything brighter than even the sun
(we're everything greater
than books
might mean)
we're everyanything more than believe
(with a spin
leap
alive we're alive)
we're wonderful one times one

*

I'm in Aletheia's room while she's painting a sky on a clock and we're listening to Joanna Newsom and it's really quite lovely.

Film experiment number two!

Honestly, I should be working on my presentation that's due Monday (Blade Runner and Metropolis: Postmodernism vs. German Expressionism/Modernism (note: German Expressionism always wins)), but since I'm in Portland for the weekend, I really can't help myself. The film took about four or five hours to get together (that means photograph, edit, re-edit, score, add titles, et cetera), which is pretty nifty. Though I did learn something disturbing: iMovie '08 is not as great as it claims to be. Unlike the '06 version, it has absolutely no video editing effects (except for being able to change the color/saturation of the film). That means no speeding up, no grainy effects, no cool little gimmicky things. So I had to re-download iMovie '06, film and compile all the pictures in '08, export that as a .mpeg, re-open it in '06, speed up the animated part of the film, export it as a second .mpeg, open that in '08, and add the titles. Still, though, I shouldn't complain, the result is pretty good, and better than if I tried to use any other non-professional editing software. Even so, my neck hurts like a bitch (I never understood that expression completely) from hunkering over the keyboard.

In completely unrelated news, today my Disney World maps came in the mail and I got to play with a kitten named Kiwi. Yes and double yes.

Un Petit Film

I put together a video in about two hours today, using experimental techniques and such. Stop-motion, two minutes. Here it is:



I think it's fun, though my technique is still a bit sloppy (what can I say, though? I did it completely by myself!)

International relations, grumble.

So there's this resolution going through the house that labels the mass killings of Armenians in Turkey during the first World War as genocide, and the White House says that's a bad thing.

Why? Because Turkey is a "key ally" in the war on terror. Because most shipments of oil from the Middle East to the U.S. pass through Turkey. And admitting that their country commited genocide would make them upset, and that would be mean.

Pardon the colloquialism, but what the hell? Is a country only guilty if they aren't useful? Is it really a lesser evil to omit something so heinous in order to continue with a war that is, to a great amount of people, wrong? How can we deal with modern acts of genocide, like Darfur, if we act as though the definition of genocide itself is fuzzy? Ugh. Ugh ugh ugh.

This is just one of those weak-minded things that makes the administration so intolerable to watch or listen to. There are some things that are still in conflict, that are partisan, that you can choose to support for the sake of your administration (see: marriage, abortion, progressive Western thought), and no matter what the opinion is, I'm fine with that. But genocide is pretty straightforward. And if we can't admit that something so definite and so terrible happened 90 years ago, then we don't have the right to define anything of the sort that happens now. And that isn't just risking the war on terror or the Bush administration--it's risking our humanity.



Oh crap I'm late for work.

On a cold afternoon you can float room to room like a ghost

I've decided that this bloggidy update needs to be daily, if not bidaily (that is a word now), if not semiweeky, if not weekly. In short, regularly. It will be my place for analysis and insight into the literature that I am both reading and writing (if you can call that literature--har har), as well as notes upon what's going on in the world around me, interesting things on the internet, and parenthetical notes (I doubt that will get annoying whatsoever). So here goes.

I think it would be best to start out with the classes that I'm taking now.

Shakespeare and the Renaisseance: a fun and engaging class. The prof, Patricia Badir, is one of those who constantly talks about how much she loves the readings, and we spend a good amount of time watching film adaptations of plays we are reading. So far we've gone over two gems, Hamlet and Twelfth Night. Of the two, I would much rather discuss Twelfth Night, because it's more fun than Hamlet. The play itself is madcap, and Dr Badir brought up an interesting point about it's conception: that everyone involed plays some sort of language game, with the exception of Malvolio, who is the only person who ends up getting really shafted at the end (if you haven't read the play, I won't go into detail about it, but it's a really horrible thing they do to him). This accounts for all the witty banter that goes on between the most interesting characters: Olivia, Viola, and Feste. The fact that Olivia ends up marrying Sebastian at the end despite that she really fell in love with Viola always made me sad, as well as Viola marrying Orsino, who is an idiot and doesn't deserve her (basically). However, it's one of the best comedies, and one of the most bizzare, so I deeply recommend it to anyone with eyes. Next on the reading list: Henry V. It's a bit silly and hard to believe so far, but Henry's speeches are good, so pfah.

Postmodernism: dear lord. This course is interesting, but frustrating. I love some aspects of Postmodernism, and I think that my own writing style falls somewhere betweem Postmoernism and Modernism, but the prof's (Paul Endo) choice of literature is a bit bothersome. Too much of it seems to focus on the "sensory overload/modernism sucks/no resolution/artistic deconstruction" side of the movement, instead of that which actually changed the way that we look at narrative and expression. Also, I had to read Baudrillard and several other criticisms of Postmodernism. It's an odd movement, really. There was really nothing wrong with Modernism, but Postmodernism seems to be an idea sprung out of irritation instead of revolution; that it didn't really follow Modernism but ran beside it, like a kid who claims to hate his parents and become an anarchist but still relies on them for most of his or her well being. Sad, really. So far, along with the philosophy, we read A Wild Sheep Chase by Haruki Murakami. I didn't like it that much, the narrator just spent most of his time talking about how bored he was, and when he finally found something transcendant or deep, he would shrug and walk away from it. Next on the reading list: Blade Runner. The movie, not the book. Yeah.

Virginia Woolf: Mixed feelings. I love Woolf in all senses of the word, but the class focuses on war and feminism, paying hardly any attention to other aspects of Woolf's writing. Bummer. I could go on forever about what we've read so far (Mrs Dalloway, To The Lighthouse, A Room of One's Own), so I might skip it for now. I'm getting kind of sick of this list, anyway...

Metaphor and Thought: one of the profs talks like a Polish Grover, one is very cute and browsome (adj: a degree of handomeness that extends from one's forehead; having a dramatic brow). The mappings we use are interesting and fun to do sometimes, and the material is interesting, though one of the classrooms we have has poor acoustics and tends to make me sleepy. Still, a good class to take, I'm glad to be in it.

Grammar: So. Much. Fun. We get to figure out clauses and subjects and predicators, and make trees and use formulas and learn about the differences in language between areas of Engish-speaking countries. Also, it is easy to skip and still be caught up; and most of the classes involve "investigating" what words mean. Word detectives!

So there's that. I don't have much else going on now besides school. Well, work. That's not too much to crow about, except that it's divinely easy and I have to wait more than two weeks between paychecks (example: I got paid last Friday, my next check is on the 23rd). It's getting colder fast this year, and September seemed to be more like October, and now October feels like November. I hate not being able to read leisurely at all. I did finish The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay by Michael Chabon. Fantastic read. At least I can watch films still; I just got The Iron Giant on DVD and watched Raiders of the Lost Ark as well as some of Aletheia's Avant Garde films recently. All quite wonderful. I'm sure I'll have something truly substantial from them to blog about soon.

Wow it's been a while

Like, almost a full month. I think that I need to put more things up here; and I would have better pictures and stuff if I had my camera cord or if my scanner worked. All I have is a few pictures that I took with my webcam of a few drawing that I've done, but I don't feel like burdening blogger with such mishmash.

I do have a sonnet that I put together last night, quite suddenly:

cherubin

there is a boy that sits high on a cloud,
who gathers the pieces and throws them all down.
and when they are landed and scattered in sand,
he picks them back up and he does it again.
sometimes he lives neath the lid of your eye,
collecting the colors and letting them fly.
he tears up the shapes and he makes them anew,
taking words than seem nonsense and turning them true.
and where will he go when he is gone from your sight,
when he has shaken your days and splintered your nights?
he will back to his cloud with his quiver and bow
and sighs will mark all of the hearts he has known.

And, just for fun, an abstract that I wrote during Grammar class a couple weeks ago:

her gives he flowers
gold bluebauble wrapped,
him to she kiss returns
fullandfine, two intact.
and morning and evening
and finding and being
so somehow seeing delight,
he feels roundabout her eyes
and sleeps him into night.

(sonnetloves best expression is never
than the fair and free, her and he,
being and billowing kites without tethers)

Then there are a couple seasonal sketches that I worked out some time in September:

summer

run kite new
your
sky to blue

stand dawn till sun
be comes

goodson

wheatfields on homewalk way
blue as june, free as frayed


winter

play softly flow your dreams and snow,
dear children in days short you go.
echo trees like spines of eyes,
the blackbird brings eternal night.

so shiver through the nameless days
and beg to keep your boots away
till frost becomes a river slow,
dear children, in days short you go.



autumn

winds! breeze!
beckon leaves

in whirlwinds at your feet.
shiver nightly but smile brightly
in fields of pumpkin poppyseeds

and rake around your life so far
remember moments where you are
neath sunset leaves and bristling clouds

oh how!
we do love seasonal shapeshifting,
ghost stories and schoolbooks,
far below spinning tree-feathering leaves


spring

do not stay insidethehouse

tis too cool
too dew-strewn

moth-covered and snowless
buzzing and bristling with redcaps and chirps
raining and drizzling the blooms from the earth

you'll roll in the springtime
your trousers will green
and the deadness of winter
will be less than a dream

There, that's what I have for now creative-writing-wise. Anything that I'm working on with Archer will have to wait, since I'm really busy right now and most of that stuff isn't complete at all anyway.

I should start updating often. If only I knew how to do a cut...

untitled

She was born somewhere west of the desert and east of a valley, where the fields stretched past the horizon. A thought and a breath and she would be off running, her hair streaking with gold and bronze, a moving statue of fluid and life. Her name is not important, nor is her family history. She is here, she was here, always. Her dress is blue gingham. The hem is fallen and strings like spiderwebs curl around her bare dirty knees. Her heart is a space filled with time and tears and snow, though she has never known such cold. She is the heat of the stars and weighs as much as moonbeams. Her home is in her eyes, their lashes the front door and her ears the window through which the birds fly away from the hunter and his gun. She is wind and the rare rain which floods into her breaking house so that the floors are cleaned of dust and footprints and she is forgotten again by the land. She has no shoes. She is, more than anything, free beyond freedom, a face without horizon, a body that will grow and change and live forever. She does not walk paths, she does not know them. Years ago a road was carved by wagons and the curves wrought in the ground are canals for her to jump over and to wade in, dipping her frayed skirt in the brown and beige water. She is America, she is a thought in the back of your mind, she is the open plains that jut out from your driveway, waiting to be found again. I did not say my name because you know it well. And it is not a word. It is a symbol older than time itself, and in the curve between her chin and her neck you know it all too well. She is the color of the last ray of the sun and she is the hope that comes after it as you stand on tiptoe to watch the light die. You will go with her one day into the field, and if you return you will want only to go back again. Her step is a dance to a tune older than sound, the rhythm of a jackrabbit’s twitching ear and an earthquake are the same and they move our legs to steps we learned long before our grandfathers knew our grandmothers. She stretches out her arms that are made of milk and dust and you already know the question and you answer, softly, without speaking or moving, in a voice made by the breeze on your sleeves, yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes.