And suppose I never met you

Alright, so we meet again, huh?

Well, here we go, I want to present to you some characters seen while at Punta Cana...

(all are real, none are figment of my imagination. Ha! fig...)

Today, I want to talk about Maya.

Dominican, 20-something-ish, she's hard to describe. Words can't really capture her, she's that sort of person. Long brown hair that on anyone else would be described as a mousy color, with streaks of orange blonde bleached by the sun. Her hair falls to just below her shoulder blades in cascades of uneven waves, and every time we have glimpsed her walking on the beach there is a straw cowboy hat atop her head. She always wears a slim white polo shirt with sleeves that end just below the muscles of her upper arms and hug them close. Her shorts are always shirt but not buttcrack short, like most of the other girls at the beach. They end halfway to her knees, the perfect length. No matter what she is wearing, she always has a big black digital camera hanging around her neck, which my father tells me is called a DSLR. This is her normal dress, her uniform. It changes a little from day to day, but the fundamentals stay the same. For instance, when I first saw her she was wearing denim cutoffs, and around her waist was slung a flat hemp belt with a pouch on each side, extra pockets, and I think you all know by now how much I value pockets. I have since fallen in love with the ingenuity of this particular invention, and want one of my own. Another day she wore greenish twill shorts and a beautiful fire colored tasseled scarf that hung from her shoulders and talked in the breeze.  She was such an intriguing figure, slim, short, her tanned limbs weaving through the air. With a slight accent, she was decidedly foreign, yet when she turned her back to me I was reminded of someone I knew, though I could not remember who. 

Maya worked for the resort we were at, photographing whatever tourist would pay for it, posing them on the sand, occasionally flinging her hat haphazardly on their heads, laughing at their bad jokes. She was ever so interesting, I believe I envied her and her natural sauveness, her beauty that seemed to not even be there, as it is with a tree. And I thought that I would try to put her here in words, because maybe you know someone like her, maybe you would benefit from her image, whatever she looks like to you. Anyway, I just wanted to say,

Goodbye, Maya.

Live well.

Title Quote: Regina Spektor, Fidelity

Nothing’s measured by what it needs

Today, Lola was challenged to speak in the third person. For the whole day. And so she accepted, which is why she is now writing her blog post in the third person. Lola learned a lot today. She is one who fairly often opens her mouth and regrets not thinking through her words first. Well, speaking in the third person got rid of that. She had to think so much about what she was going to say and how before she said it that she wasn't half as compulsive. The slightly irksome thing about speaking in the third person though, was that she continually had this feeling that she was just saying facebook updates (i.e. "Lola thinks that she will go out and get some pizza now." "Lola thinks Joe Biden would be crazy if he acted like a 7th grade girl." etc.). But she got over that, and found out some pretty cool stuff. She realized that this was the most she had really ever said her own name, because, think about, most people don't use their own name often. She found that it was an amazing brain exercise, that she had to think that much harder in order to say things, instead of just blurting them out. And that no matter how hard she tried, she could not get her own mind to think in the third person. She wondered if possibly, there was some language that spoke of everyone in the third person,t hat they would think in the third person. She thought that if there wasn't one, there should be, for that would be interesting. So she thought about animals, and now she is wondering if animals have grammar in their languages, and she assumes they must, which is very very interesting. She now thinks back to a book she read, long long ago, for younger children,but still good, called music of the dolphins, by Karen Hesse, she believes. It was about a girl who had been raised by dolphins, and "rescued" and taught to speak and all. And Lola wondered, did she still think in dolphin? Could she translate, perhaps? I wonder, because that would be incredibly useful to have someone who can speak in an animal's language and a human's so they could translate. Wouldn't that be interesting? There are always fairy tales like that. Lola wonders what we would find out... She bets that they find that dolphins or porpoises are smarter than humans, hah, then the joke would be on them...

Anyways, that's all Lola has for today, she has to go update HoneyFuggler, and she's sorry because she was meaning to post some other parts of her vacation, which, yes, she knows was weeks ago, but she hopes this will interest you for now, instead.

Goodbye,

Lola

Title Quote: Already Dead, Beck

We're burning a new sunrise into Yesterday's skies

So this is my idea. I have so many fantasies of the amazing things I could do for the world, making little gems of places and things that would brighten someone's day, change someone's life. If you can't change the whole world, how about starting with just one person? One of the things I would love to do, if I had the money and time for it, would be to start a shop. And I can't really do that, because I'm still in middle school, and obviously, I also don't really have the money for that. But maybe if I write this down, either someone else with the money and time can get inspiration from this and do it, or I can look back on it when I have the money and time and remember to do it. Now this shop, it would not just be any shop. It would sell all sorts of little handmade trinkets, each one different and unique. 

They would be by local artists, and you didn't have to be famous, all you had to do was come to the store and see if we liked it. Along with the stuff from local artists, there would also be all sorts of exotic things from places around the world, made by locals there, which we would send an employed scout around the world to find. Glass beads from Italy, sherpa flags from Tibet, woodcarvings from Oaxaca. And you wouldn't need money to buy any of it. As long as you had something to trade for it, something we wanted. Perhaps some art we think is beautiful, maybe some old subway tokens made into earrings. 

And there would be a clothes section too, one part for new clothes, for sale or trade, and another that is secondhand, for free. Whatever anyone needs, but only if you need it, there would be a section for it. People who had no need for that old fleece coat, or those corduroy jeans, would drop it in that section for someone who did. Actually, the clothes thing itself is another one of my ideas, where I would have a boutique of only the most cool and un-mainstream clothes you could get, in all sizes and for all ages, something you could wear and be sure no one else would be wearing too. And the cool thing about my store would be that it would only sell it in something, like for example I would have a store that sold only things with stripes, or only things with pockets. What I especially want to do is have a store that only had one color, say, for 3 or 4 months, and then they had a new one with the next shipment of clothes. So you go in one day and all the store carries are blue clothes, every shade imaginable, and you walk in a few months later and it only sells things bright yellow. I think that would be amazing, because it would keep bringing people back.

But back to the other store. I think we would have a blog online, and publish a zine once a month, an idea from the wizardress. And in the summer, we would have a little table outside, and we would do what a grown-up friend of mine who used to live in New York would do every summer in Central Park: Give out Free Advice. Essentially, any volunteers would sit at the table and listen to people's problems and give out free advice. And perhaps we would have free hugs, as well. I can just imagine such a store, with great music always playing, and cool people always hanging around, the best graphic novels and the most interesting books stocking our shelves (We would have one shelf where you could just bring in a book you finished that you want to share with the world and pick up another that someone has dropped off, so that we could save the terrible fates of all those books left out for the garbage man), we would have all the most fantastic baubles to wear and keep and show and the most vibrant fabrics to twirl around it.  

And there would be one last amazing thing: I have sworn that when I master the art of sewing, the first thing I will make is a beautiful patchwork dress, made completely of pockets, so you will enough to pick up stones on the beach, a nickel on the street, a four-leaf clover, so that you can put colored strings away for later, a cookie, and all the amazing other things the pockets will just be waiting to carry. And when I master making that dress, I will make a million, each one with different patches, so everyone can have beautiful, amazing pockets, and they will all hang in my beautiful, amazing store. 

So who's up for it?

--Lola 

Title Quote: Daybreaker, Beth Orton

Photo Credit: Katherine Mann

I guess, half a dozen cases doesn't last that long Come tomorrow morning it will be all gone

"These are from a book called Disorder in the American Courts, and are things people actually said in court, word for word, taken down and now published by court reporters who had the torment of staying calm while these exchanges were actually taking place." 

Disorder in the American Courts

here is one, and click the link above to see others!

ATTORNEY: ALL your responses MUST be oral, OK? What school did you go to? 

---

WITNESS: Oral.

omb it left me laughing so hard...

 AND NOW FOR SOMETHING COMPLETELY DIFFERENT 

the Fish n' Flush! ('nuff said)

and just cuz this sandwich is like a fluffernutter without the fluff (i think you all know what I'm talking about) I will just have to dollop a big load of fluff into here in the for of pics and quotes yay!!!!

Never try to tell everything you know. It may take too short a time.
  - Norman Ford

If the English language made any sense, a catastrophe would be an apostrophe with fur.

  - Doug Larson

I'm not a vegetarian because I love animals. I'm a vegetarian because I hate plants.
  - A. Whitney Brown

Title Quote: Beer Run, Garth Brooks

A band of angels coming after me, coming for to carry me home

Butterflies into the skies. And each one is different. People say we would look like ants if there was a giant looking at us, but I would say we are more like pigeons, that we squawk and scatter and pick at things. But we are not industrious like ants; oh no, we laze around and scheme of ways to get things with minimal effort on our part. We do not work as one, we fight. And perhaps that is better, for if we did what the queen commanded, and worked and did not care for our own lives, we would not be unique, and that is one of the most important qualities to me. I wonder how those poor ants get on. 

Title Quote: Swing Low, Sweet Chariot

Oh I can see you brought some herb for me

New stuffs found lingering on the interwebs:
Make something cool everyday.

it is what it sounds like. Here is what the artist, Brock Davis, has done so far. Simply interesting. Here are my two favorites:

sugar stacks

this site has taken pictures of food and the number of sugar cubes they have in them. Check it out, it's slightly freaky.

surprisingly there's that much sugar in watermelons. My grandparents love to put salt on theirs... xp

If you check on the site, it shows that there's no difference in sugar for the ice cream or the frozen yogurt, if only that the froyo is a bit more sugary.

title quote: Black Uhuru, Guess Who's Coming To Dinner

Bringing love into my eyes

Today is poem in your pocket day! There is no need to actually have a pocket to have a poem--(god i hate how girls never get pockets on their clothes--I think i'll blog about that later!) I just think poems are so needed in this world and to know just one is to have knowledge. Read just one. I promise it will make you feel better. In fact, I will share this beautiful one by Martin Espada that my teacher gave to me:

Rednecks

At Scot Gas, Darnestown Road,

the high school boys pumping gas

would snicker at the rednecks.

Every Saturday night there was Earl,

puckering his liquor-smashed face

to announce that he was driving

across the bridge, a bridge spanning

only the whiskey river

that bubbled in his stomach.

Earl's car, one side crumpled like his nose,

would circle slowly around the pumps,

turn signal winking relentlessly.

 

Another pickup truck morning,

and rednecks. Loitering

in our red uniforms, we watched

as a pickup rumbled through.

We expected: Fill it with no-lead, boy,

and gimme a cash ticket.

We expected the farmer with sideburns

and a pompadour.

We, with new diplomas framed

at home, never expected the woman.

Her face was a purple rubber mask

melting off her head, scars rippling down

where the fire seared her freak face,

leaving her a carnival where high school boys

paid a quarter to look, and look away.

 

No one took the pump. The farmer saw us standing

in our red uniforms, a regiment of illiterate conscripts.

Still watching us, he leaned across the seat of the truck

and kissed her. He kissed her

all over her happy ruined face, kissed her

as I pumped the gas and scraped the windshield

and measured the oil, he kept kissing her.

  --Martin Espada

Happy poem in your pocket day!

-Lola

title quote: Coloured Rain, Traffic

Could you tell us where we are and the best way out of here

Ok, so here I am, sitting at home, being sick, so I realize this would probably be the best time to blog. I will now type in an excerpt from my travel journal from when I was in Punta Cana. It might be a bit philosophical, but that is because at the moment, I was reading The English Patient and it was very profound and philosophical, and when I read, I start to think in that sort of writing. The writing is about becoming accustomed to having everyone(including myself) speak Spanish there. So here it is...

To hear such words slip from my mouth, like honey slips from the lip of a jar, is new to me. To say "Gracias" and remember, enunciate the ci, is different. The language, the words that mean something to someone, that are compulsive to someone else, but for me I must form and think and rehearse them in my head. But I learned a language before. Studying Latin, words have slithered from my tongue with the English translations immediately forming in my mind. I sometimes wonder, do people who were brought up learning to speak two different languages equally fluently, think in both languages? 

As I said, I have learned Latin. But it is different, this new learning of Spanish, for with Latin I learn grammar and translate from a book and put words in declensions and cases.

 Here, now, learning De Nada and Manana, it is a wholly new sensation, for I learn the flow, without rules, just words. And in this way, I can mostly understand the rough outlines of dialogues, like shadows emerging from the night, but I cannot put the flow together, to move smoothly from my mouth as it moves from the speaker's. In time, if I wanted, I'm sure I could, but for now, I only marvel at the sensation.

Title Quote: They Got Lost, They Might Be Giants

Were captive on the carousel of time

ok, well i think that's really enough about Punta Cana for the time being. But there will be more posts about it in the near future, I assure you. For the meantime....

Here is a beautiful video for you, title-MI



(credits: Korik Jones, for VFS-Vancouver Film School)

title quote: Joni Mitchell, Circle Game

Lay me on the ground Fly me in the sky

So I have promised to tell about my vacation, and I will. We get up at 5-ish and leave for the plane to Punta Cana, the Dominican republic(It's basically a third-world country in the Caribbean with lots of inclosed resorts that only has tourists coming in the flight--no one from there coming back from a vacation in New York). In the taxi to the plane station, I marvel at how the sky--night blue--turns so fast to robin's egg then rose then lemon and finally settling on a light gray. We board the plane, my brothers and i in one row, the rest of my family scattered about (i.e. dad, cousins, aunt and uncle) in other seats. I chew my gum furiously as we take off and land. Then we're there and ohmybuddha we're actually WALKING DOWN STEPS FROM THE PLANE TO THE RUNWAY BELOW! 

Never done that before, we've always gone through some tunnel to a building or something. So then we walk into a thatch covered open air building with these enormous fans. So large that if you look up at them the sign says BIG ASS FANS and has a donkey's butt on it. ^_^

Seriously! So then we get in this line and the first thing they do, they have these women dressed up in "traditional" garb (yeah, right.) and they smile and take a picture with each of us. Too touristy already. Then we pay a fee for coming in, and later we pay a fee for leaving. That's just ridiculous! They should be paying us! But we get past that and finally board the bus that will take us to our all-inclusive touristy hotel where we will stay locked in for a week. (Not my choice, believe me.) It's called the Majestic Colonial, don't go to it if you are not touristy, like the real world, and/or are vegetariano(pronounced vay-hee-tal-iano). But I'm going to make the best of this vacation. Get some sun, go swimming at the beach, have fun, right? I'm even going to get my father to teach me how to windsurf! But unfortunately for me, we get there and though they advertise 6 DIFFERENT restaurants, they are all cooked in the same kitchen by the same "chefs". and none of the menus really have any vegetarian options, which for me is a nightmare, being a veggie myself. but my family and I go to the buffet as often as we can, for my father (top-notch best cook I've ever tasted and I'm a pretty big foodie here) can speak fairly good spanish and has taught the cooks there a little bit about cooking and they have the most options. Their food is bad, at best. The only reason I'm eating it is because there isn't anything better. And I can't windsurf because it turns out there is too much wind, which is not good for learners. We can't even go far out on the beach because the crazy dominican boat drivers and the inexperienced water skiers would chop our heads off. But don't get me wrong, not everything is bad here. We're all-inclusive as I said before, so everything (or almost everything) is free free free! We have not one, but two mini-bars stocked with dominican soda, beer(which none of us drink)and bottled water, the only kind safe to drink here. Our bed is four-poster and enough for all four of us to sleep in it, though only two of us do. They are the two biggest rooms ever, not counting the bathroom which could be the size of my room, and believe me, my room is fairly large. Then the beach is very nice, despite the water restriction. WE can go snorkeling there and the fish nibble at your fingers even without bread. I get a tan just sitting under our palapa(which kinda looks like a fake tree with dried out palm leaves to shelter our beach seats). And the pool is just great, being around 80-something degrees without even being heated. I have my family, and great books ( read The English Patient, by Michel Ondaatje, The Constant Princess by Philippa Gregory, who also wrote The Other Boleyn Girl which I read last spring break, and Bound, a book about a chinese cinderalla type thing with a girl and her half-sister's bound feet)and heck, I'm in the Caribbean! 

But oh, do I miss home and do I miss the taste of our food. We start to make a list of all the things we'll eat once we get home, we're that desperate. This goes on for a week, and then we get on the bus where we pass numerous shantytowns and where my father had spotted a man with a gun patrolling outside a building on our way here. Every resort we stop at to pick up more travelers looks the same as ours. We get to the station where there are still no palatable vegetarian options for lunch, except the difference is that now everything is super expensive. We wait and wait and wait some more for our plane to come, and I am almost sure I saw Russell Crowe waiting as well but I only recognized him once I got home and opened the 'paper, which had a picture of him in the arts section. So we get on the plane and come home, having wasted an entire beautiful day waiting to get on a plane and then waiting for the plane to take off and then having the plane take off and not getting the window seat even though my brother's promised it to me but are feeling jerky from the waiting and then finally getting the window seat halfway through the flight only to have to wait to open the curtain because my grandfather and other brother don't want the light, and (yes I do know this is a very long run on sentence thankyouverymuch) finally opening the window to see us land, get out, and ohmygosh it's 7 'o clock already! Wow. I hate the waiting most of all. So that was my trip's overview. But though I couldn't blog while I was there, I wrote material in my notebook, and insight on the parts of the trip, good and bad, will come streaming in as soon as I feel like it, 'cause this is my blog and I can decide when to post or not, so there! Hehhhhhhhhh *deep breath*

Okay, I'm letting go now...

Lola

Title Quote: Collective Soul, Shine 

All photos are mine, thankyouverymuch

When he's underwater does he get wet? Or does the water get him instead?

Hey, I know, I know, I promised to blog about the vacation, but it will all come in good time. For the moment, I have found something amazing for you guys. Many of you may have seen the phone commercials on billboards with hands made up to look like, say, an elephant, or fish and coral, and they are spectacular. Now I have found the artist who did these masterpieces. His name is Guido Daniele, a professional artist specializing in body painting and trompe l'oeil who resides in Milan. Here are some of my favorite works of his. 

check out his other works here. 

alright, I'm off to making vacation posts.

out,

Lola

Title Quote: They Might Be Giants, Particle Man

Nude noodle model parlor in the Nefarious zone

Alright! I'm back. Did you miss me? I am too busy smelling my room, tasting the filtered water, preparing to actually leave the house and walk somewhere, to post about the vacation. You will understand why I am doing these seemingly normal things with such gusto as soon as I get around to explaining. In the mean time, I must just tell you that the plane did not crash and the post before I left was my last, so be happy and rejoice! Now, with my apologies, I shall just show some random pictures and not so random words.

Never try to teach a pig to sing. It wastes your time and annoys the pig. 
by Bankhead, Tallulah 

A house is not a home unless it contains food and fire for the mind as well as the body. 
by Fuller, Margaret 

(this quote is actually referring to books, but we can say strawberries, right? ;p) 

when is a caterpillar a butterfly?

BuTTeRfLiEs fLuTTeR By *sigh*

title quote: Joe strummer and the Mescaleros, Mondo Bongo

I loved you since I knew you

Okay everyone, I am going to Punta Cana, in the Dominican Republic, for a week, and I hope to come back with new insight and stories to tell, but in the meantime you will just have to wait and bide your time. I know; I'm sorry. And I would write a million posts for you and have them be posted every day or so, but I don't know how to work blogger to do scheduled posts. Sooo, you will just have to do with the ones already here. 

And don't forget we need a funny picture...!

Luv ya!

Title Quote: Roxanne, the  Police

I will not wait, I will not wait for what the world may not create I'll take fate day by day

Hungry. Oh, am I ever so hungry. And thirsty, too. I would lick the damp, moldy walls that keep me here, but I already have, hours ago, to no avail. My stomach has imploded. I must sit here, twisted into a fetal position, to possibly survive the pain, the hunger. I try not to cry, so as to conserve the little water left inside my dehydrated self. I try to close my eyes, but it is too hard not to look, not to watch. Slowly, my eyes rise and stare, my lower lip trembling, at the table above. At the food above. My eyes stalk the food, the steaming plate of mac and cheese and huge bowl of salad and the ten layer cake and the platter of little sandwiches with olives stuck in them--I will die with the food right there, trapped like a goldfish who has jumped out onto the ground, it's nose pressed to it's glass bowl filled with water. Mmmm. Sooo thirsty... With one last burst of effort, I get up, and run at the table, jumping on it, jumping on the food. But yet again, like all the other nights, my fingers only touch hard, clear glass, sealed over the feast, my feast. One last longing glance and then I jump from the table, throwing myself again and again at the concrete door. My mind watches my body, is startled to hear a wail, an inhuman wail of the most horrible suffering, and watches as I collapse on the floor, shivering uncontrollably. To be the infant in her mother's arms, to taste the strong milk between my lips, to taste anything, to feel my belly full. 

"I'll tell!" I whisper. "I'll tell!" I try to shout. To tell is to get food and water, to tell is to get mercy. Why won't they hear me? I'll finally tell, I am so Hungry. But no one hears. My voice too weak, a thin gossamer thread against iron cables. With one final breath, my voice breaks the cables, informing the world: "I'll tell!" No more breaths are drawn. I feel darkness close in, I succumb, just as I hear the heavy footsteps of my entrapper triumphantly storm into the room. My soul--shriveled as it is--rises and watches as the man comes in with a smug grin on his face that turns to puzzledness as he reaches down to check my pulse. His expression morphs to anger, to rage, to the prize dangling there and now, only just by a hair, lost, as he finds no pulse in my lifeless body. Now it is time for him to utter an inhuman scream to tell us "So close, so close!" To suffer, as he made me. Slowly, I smile, and turn, misting through the glass, to feast on the essence of the sustenance laid on that rough table. Yet I am hungry, Oh so Hungry. 

Title Quote Quote: Mieka Pauley, Fate Day by Day

she sang into the shadows to be free

Advice is what we ask for when we already know the answer but wish we didn't.

-Erica Jong

I wish, sometimes, that I didn't. But I still ask and ask people, my family, my friends--I still ask the world. It helps, even when they tell you the wrong answer. It helps.

            

photo credit: eduardo bertone

Title Quote: Luscious Jackson, Chrisitine