Fun at Work and Serious Fun

Here's the first thing:
I went into the bathroom to take a shower and when I took off half of my clothing a colossal moth was flyin' around, and we have two mirrors that face each other in the bathroom, so it looked like an infinite amount of Mothras were having light-induced seizures IN MY BATHROOM so I used my skirt like a nun-chuck and flailed wildly until it finally settled on a shelf and became immobile just STOP BOTHERING ME, MOTHS!

SO TODAY was my actual first day of actual work. Basically, I assist three different art teachers at 'Iolani from morning to noon. I was charged with the daunting task of cutting sheets of tracing paper. Sounds like picking flowers, I know, but I think I mentioned in a post once upon a time that I am disinclined to working with numbers. As in, it is actually painful for me to measure things out sometimes. I had to cut 5x7 pieces of paper from sheets that were 9x12 which MEANS TWO 5X7 PIECES CAN BE MADE FROM EACH SHEET AND I HAVE TO MAKE 63 OF THEM AND THEN PUT THEM INTO GROUPS OF 15, 15, 16 AND 17 OKAY! It... really wasn't that complicated but I was terrified when the drawing/printmaking teacher was explaining it to me. I only messed up one sheet of paper due to inattentiveness, so I'd say I'm an A+ helper.
I also created files on our Photography server for students (because we can't trust them to use the keystroke shift/command/N themselves. No, really) and I made physical labels for physical folders.

PHEW, HARD DAY.

But really, I am already in love with this job because I get to be around teachers who love what they are doing. One of them is a 2008 'Iolani grad filling in for the regular mixed media teacher. She seems so young but so very excited to be working with the little twerps. I checked to see if she (Julia) needed help with anything and the students were creating fingerprints by writing inspirational words in spirals, it was awesome. Today actually rekindled my desire to be a teacher.
Part of me feels like it is the absolute perfect career. I love learning, I love sharing what I know, and what I love, and I love being in control and bossing people around! Especially insolent children! (I'd probably have to work through a lot of impatience related issues before becoming a teacher because when the students were incessantly giggling or talking when my photo teacher was explaining things I wanted to blast an air-horn in their eardrums). I want to study writing or literature in college alongside photography, so part of me doesn't want to go to art school.. but at the same time it feels like I would be shutting myself out from becoming a Successful Artist or something. But what is success?

To laugh often and much 
to win the respect of intelligent people 
and affection of children; to earn the 
appreciation of honest critics and 
endure the betrayal of false friends;
to appreciate beauty, to find the best
in others; to leave the world a bit 
better, whether by a healthy child
a garden patch or redeemed
social condition; to know even
one life has breathed easier because
you have lived. This is to have 
succeeded.

Actually, after rereading this Ralph Waldo Emerson poem, I realize it sounds like the exact definition of being both an artist and a teacher. So I guess I know what I'm doing with my life now! Thanks, Ralph, buddy.
This summer I'm going to the east coast to look at COLLEGES. I've never been to the east coast before, so I'm psyched. Right now, either doing a dual-degree program at the New School with Parsons and Eugene Lang or designing my own major at Sarah Lawrence sounds particularly appealing. I wonder if New York is scary. I always picture it as a completely impersonal and impossibly busy place by day, and Satan's Basement at night. But I have friends who live there and love it so obviously it's not like that! GOOD.

Here's a recap of the rest of my Great Super Cool Awesome day:

I went to Coffee Talk (a place I frequented so often this past semester that one of the baristas knew that my order would always be a Dirty Chai and I completed two and a half 10-spaced stamp cards) after work and just ruminated, in a pleasant way. I wrote some fluff in my journal and doodled this–

I'm really digging this pseudo-pointilism thing I've started doing out of nowhere. I implored my Best and Only Jewish Friend Ilana, as well as David pictured in a post a few days back, to join me, and we romped for a while, then David went to do Bible homework because that's actually a class we actually have to take at my school, and Ilana and I sat at the top of a hill (Christmas Tree Park) and listened to music in the grass and it was beautiful–

If I actually had a smart phone and not a 3 year old samsung slide phone, I would upload my own filtered fotos instead of mooching off of Ilana's.

'Hey Rachael if this park was so beautiful why aren't you showering us with conceptual photography right now because you obviously take pictures profusely wherever you go?'

Glad u asked, actually.

If you'll notice, the camera whose strap appears to be gagging me (metaphor for images speaking louder than words? Now's not the time for a poem, dudes) is a manual film camera. So, I did take copious images today, but you will not see them until I get my first paycheck on July 1st. I like to shoot in slide film, the chemistry of which I AM GOING TO EXPLAIN RIGHT NOW (if you're one of my close friends and you've been given the slide film lecture too bad read it anyways).

Most of you are probably familiar with what film negatives look like. You shine a handy light through the negatives onto light sensitive paper and it registers as a positive. Slide film was created mostly for those old school projectors that people used to torture family members with horrible vacation photos, usually involving children crying in front of monuments and dads wearing shorts that were just way too short. Anyways, when slide film is developed, the plastic negatives are actually positive, so they can be copied and cut up and made into slides. Creating the positive effect on the negatives has to do with the way that the film is processed and the type of chemical used.

NOW, why use slide film if I'm not taking invasive family vay-cay photos? Well, when slide film is processed in C-41 developer, the chemical used for normal colour negative film, the slide film does develop as a typical negative, WITH SOME ADDED PSYCHEDELIC COLOURS AND VIGNETTES AS SEEN BELOW:

The colours are completely unaltered from the original scans in these pics, and the results always vary depending on the lighting, the brand of film, whether it was expired or not. The point I was going to make earlier about you not seeing the pictures I took today for a long time is that slide film is very expensive to develop, around 20 bucks a roll I think.

'Dude those just look like Instagram pics why do you need to spend money on crap you could make with–'

NNNNNNNNGREHHHHHHH

SHUT UP. SHUT. UP.

I've talked about it before. Film is extremely satisfying to shoot with, and because I'm working with my Photo teacher, she is letting me borrow my favorite Nikon FM10 + 50 mm 1.4 lens combo for the entire summer. I also have access to expired slide film that someone donated to 'Iolani, so that's all free. I love not knowing what is going to come out of the blue and white package from Rainbow Photo. 

And also, the particular brand of slide film I was using today is Kodachrome which is pre-treated to correct Tungsten (or especially yellow) lighting, which means that if I use it in normal lighting and process the film normally everything will have a blue cast over it to compensate. So what colour will it turn if I cross-process it? Who the hell knows. That's what I'm going to find out.

PHEW I HOPE THAT WASN'T BORING!

Here's a video of Ilana and me dancing to A-Punk by Vampire Weekend. I suggest you listen to their new album and follow Ezra Koenig on Twitter for a richer, fuller life.

I love you forever for reading all of this to the end,

Me me me me

Less words

Welllll, heeeyyy.

I've been cleaning the house for the past two days because someone is coming to assess our house and hopefully reappraise the mortgage tomorrow (notice how mortgage has the word mort in it, a.k.a the word for death in French), so the whole enchilada has to be spotless. The only interesting thing that has happened to me was a graduation party yesterday where the above photo was created. We definitely raged.

                    

Friend Maya and Friend Angie respectively. Could you tell it was Angie's party by her non-real flower leis?

Even more interesting than the facial expressions of my peers and me was the sunset, which I am very sad I didn't have a full view of, because it was PINK.

Pink sunsets don't happen very often in Hawaii. People may say Hawaii is beautiful, but honestly I have seen many more beautiful skyscapes and sunsets in the midwest than I have in this tropical paradise. It must be something about our geographical location. The Great Pink Sky always sends me back to my youth and causes introspection. I either wanted to fall into the rec center pool and submerge into the past or rise into the light-stained clouds and dissipate into the future.

Anyway, I did make an image today, but I'm not too crazy about it–

It's just a thing commemorating the fact that I completed the final page of my journal today and can now officially start writing in my new one. The way my handwriting lays over my hands feels trite, but I'm going to play with it more eventually.

Another thing I made today was the second quinoa and kale pilaf of the week. I've always been interested in healthy eating but I never have time to cook for myself during the school year.

The Health is practically radiating from the stove.

Cooking with Rachael always involves a lot of improvising and substituting ingredients with whatever is lying around the house (red onions and shallots are the exact same thing, right??). 

So, tomorrow is my first day of work at Iolani as the assistant to three different art classes, and I will definitely blob about that.

I'm having more anxiety problems which is why I did not blog earlier today or last night. Sometimes I get into a place in which everything feels terrifying to carry out, even things that I like, perhaps out of fear of failure. I'm going to transcribe one of my final journal entries to vaguely elaborate and to add more substance to this post–

I feel like one of those corny magicians who swallow technicolour scarves and draw them back out, slowly, in aided regurgitation, coated with wordy slime and untrue secrets for a sparse audience to view. Only, as far as I might reach into myself, I can't grasp that woven line of thought and feeling. Maybe it merged with my spine, red and green and blue filling the spaces between my vertebrae. But that can't be it. Then my internal words would strengthen my skeleton and I'd stand leagues deep into my lifesky and tower above the drowning dreams that swarm from my bones. So the words are not my spine, because I've retreated to horizontal complacency, quietly screwing myself over, bringing my anxiety down to a simmer to expel the violent bubbles of doubt.

FOR NOW, LDFKGJL;DSKGJSDFKG!

Me.

0% Sense at 5% Brainpower

It is 1:05 AM currently, and there are two thoughts on my mind:
1. I went to the beach this afternoon and somehow there is still sand floating around in my eyespace and this needs to stop
2. I technically missed a day of blawg again because it is Tomorrow but I'm okay with that because I made coffee and that's not really a reason but I'm getting there–

HELLO!
I didn't plan&create a picture today. I laid in my bed for about 30 minutes not doing anything but staring at my tri-coloured* walls. Then I took the following pictures:

Overwhelming quality, I know. Look at my sunburnt, slightly acne-marked face. That's the real deal. #nofilter.

So then after faffing** about I suddenly had the desire to draw things, which I don't do very often anymore. Actually I drew religiously when I was a kid. They were horrible, horrible things, and I stopped advancing in the art probably somewhere during eighth grade (which is a dark time for everyone, but more about that later). I just didn't do it anymore. It wasn't replaced immediately with taking pictures, I think. It's a shame, really, because now I completely lack any sort of technique and my hands are quite shaky when it comes to drawin'. To give you an idea of how important drawing used to be to me, I'll let you know that when I was in kindergarden I drew a picture of every Spongebob character I could think of, both major and minor, including the generic fish guy that yells "my leg" and a clam, and I brought them in for show and tell, my eyes no doubt glittering with immense pride and an ardent desire for attention and affirmation. We still have these drawins. There are many.

               

 

               

 

                      

 

"Spochbob."

These are pretty good for a 5 y/o I'm assuming! Anyways, here's what I drew today–

This picture really doesn't do it justice, but I'm not about to go on a boring rant about my autofocusing problems. I didn't want to break out the scanner because then I'd wake up the whole damn house and I want to be consistent with these post things! I'm pretty psyched that I drew this. It's on the second page of my new journal, which I guess is going to include drawings too! The pages are meant for sketches anyways, but I just bought it because I enjoy unlined pages. 

Part of me hates those "In case of loss" pages at the beginning of journals. I WON'T LOSE IT, THAT ISN'T AN OPTION, PAL. I also don't like journal-makers putting words in my mouth. Come on, Moleskin, you're better than that.

And look, I titled this journal! Weird, I've never titled an entire body of work before actually creating it. I took the title from a poem I wrote, which I'll share now...

Can you blame me for wanting to sleep?

Look at these small drops of light

that once flamed but

are now just white echoes

in a pool of ink.

How many, I wonder.

More than I could swallow, or than

could line my stomach.

Hah. I'd glow for one

trillionth of a second

and burst inward–

fall, lifeless, a

swarthy mass of

human possibility.

Can you guarantee me a place among the fine marbles?

Or do I get to choose my own

? I think they'd burn right though insipid skin

(You'd laugh, look how holy I've become).

Where can I find 

some blank space for myself

between the bleached punctuation

??

a pause before a paragraph,

or,

the trench below a question mark.

maybe I can wedge myself into darkness,

waiting for another

interro(big)bang.

I pinky promise that not all of my poerrrtry is this existential and depressing. I revoke that statement, I'll promise with my index finger.

Last thing:

I was going to write more about this but Ezra Koenig is serenading me and I think my pelvis is falling off from sitting in this chair at an awkward angle for five hours. I am terrified of applying to art school because I'm worried it is too expensive and I'm not a talented enough artist in the traditional mediums (hark, drawin') and that what I am really destined to be is an English teacher. I feel like I should just go to a great liberal arts college and spend my life reading books and tormenting teenagers with my sweet diction. This would not be a mistake! But another part of me feels like I would be losing something if I didn't try to make it as an artist/photographer somehow. This fear is paralyzing because I don't think I'm going to actually go anywhere in life besides to the toilet. 

Now if that made any sense give yourself two gold tea bags and a pat on the back! I'm gonna go do bedtime yoga and eat something cheesy.

LOVE FROM YOUR FRIENDLY FRIEND,

ME.

*I spell 'colour' the Brit way because of Neopets. Neopets was my life for a good four years and that's how they spell it. Don't judge me, Judy.
**Okay this is another British term but I only learned it from Charlie McDonnell

Books n' Things

Hello again.

I originally put this image on my flickr oriented vertically, which is how I took it. I decided to rotate it this way because it looks more surreal, like some sort of menacing book sprite is haunting our shelf of classics.. The previous orientation has different connotations, like I'm being CRUSHED BY THE SWEET DICTION OF DEAD AUTHORS. I was working off of my desire to consume as much classic literature this summer as possible. I stopped reading profusely starting in freshman year, I think. Iolani just sucked me dry of motivation to explore books outside of class. Although I've been getting better at consuming and analyzing books, I can't define myself as a book worm. Yet! Until recently I viewed our Classics as furniture, because they are floridly ornate and we've had them since before I was spawned. You know, looking at this image, I just realized that three of these books are required reading for AP English next year. I have to tackle Crime and Punishment as summer reading, MAN I'M PSYCHED. 

In other news, I have exactly one page left in the journal I started for Creative Writing this past semester. I'm a little sad. I chose a 64 page moleskin because the thickness wasn't intimidating. Now that I'm actually done, I wish it were longer so I could look back at my previous "golden nuggets"as I continue my ever-changing scrawl.

My last page, sighs/cries. Also my boutonnière from prom which is aging 

quite nicely!

My CW teacher would read our entries every few weeks and send us evaluative comments. She always told me that my writing is visually interesting, and actually suggested I handwrite my final portfolio. I would've loved to do that but I woke up at three in the morning to revise and write introductions for my five pieces the day it was due, so I stuck to my pal Microsoft Word. My handwriting has seriously evolved over the past year because I switched to almost exclusively writing in pen. I take tests in pen, even in math. Because you all know I don't make mistakes in math. Hah, yeah but when I took the SAT last Saturday I almost had a heart attack when I realized I had to write the essay in pencil, but I managed to crank out two pages without my hand cramping up.

I'm currently revising a poem I tried writing in iambic tetrameter, but it's not quite ready to share yet. So instead, I will share the introduction to my portfolio:

I remember spending twilight on my swing set in Kansas until I couldn’t feel my legs propelling myself forward. I swung through the fading of the sun’s gold, the pink and orange stain of light, and into the blue hour. I wasn’t thinking about anything in particular. I just wanted to see how long I could swing out there before I got tired, or before someone would notice me and bid me come inside. It could have only been an hour, but time moves the way a flower opens at dawn when you’re a child. I thought it was strange that I existed in that moment, swinging on a clock’s pendulum, and I felt myself turn inward. I became, probably without ever hearing the word used before, introspective.

            Junior year of high school is never a swift one. The nature of this penultimate epoch breeds confusion, anxiety, and more identity crises than should be confined to a period of nine months. Up until this year, I had been slacking on my writing. A poem would emerge now and then, hastily scratched onto paper and forgotten. I started to wonder if it was still appropriate to list Writing as one of my favorite pastimes. The threat of applying to college and displaying my self-worth for a board of admissions officers made me feel physically ill and caused me to reevaluate my priorities. Like so many melodramatic writers, I examined my mind. I journaled frequently, and plan on continuing to do so. My entries are sprawling and often proclaim fatigue and hopelessness. But there are moments of clarity, small fragments of literary gems lodged in angst and stone. These words come from me, and I need to know that. It is possible to commit my life to sifting through my words and refining them until they glisten and exist the way I want them to.

            Each of these pieces reflects a way I’ve tried to understand my voice and myself, whether it was written through a facet of my mind or through experiences with souls who’ve tried to help me along. The pieces are lugubrious and hopeful, fictionalized and truthful, and each of them is a small step towards ossifying my identity.

Yea, verily

Does that make you want to actually read what was in my portfolio? I'll share that later maybe. For now I'm going to clean my rooM MORE AND MORE and continue reading Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close by Jonathan Safran Foer (I'm not very far in but wow it's good).

I'm still doing this

Alright, so I figure that I can't post every single day, but I will create some sort of image every day and make up for it the next. Here's a boring picture of the bus. I was sitting in the back for a short ride from Kaimuki to Aina Haina. I don't take the bus very often because most of the time I'm able to use my mother's car to drive around. In fact, my mom didn't even allow me to take the bus by myself until midway through my sophomore year of high school, either out of strained attempts to keep me safe or to contain me to the house (on the bus, I could be going ANYWHERE. Probably to parties. Total ragers). I was going to a friend's house to watch movies and eat food (what else), and I actually really enjoy taking the bus alone.
I have anxiety issues. Whether I am reorganizing my room by myself or walking through Pier 1 with a group of friends, I always feel like there is something else I could be doing. My brain jumps from the present moment to the immediate future, pre-analyzes possible conversations, and burns through every possible occurrence that could disrupt the preconceived idea of how the day is going to play out. I'm trying not to be overly solicitous when doing things with friends or especially harsh on myself when I don't follow a list of tasks I've set for myself for a particular period of time. All of this relates to me riding the bus, I promise. I find that when I'm in transit, whether I am being driven or I am driving myself or I am sitting next to anonymous bus riders in a faint miasma of gasoline and body odor, that is when my anxiety is at its lowest. If I'm not extremely pressed for time, I often enjoy the journey more than the destination. In those moments, I know I have nothing more to do than listen to Broken Bells or The xx or Mutemath and think.
The Bus is bumping and bending through hot metal bodies like a communal, two-segmented caterpillar. I think when I stay at home for too long, the complacency of any-time rest and lull sets in. Being out in town and on my own is one of the most comforting and salubrious experiences, for me.
Quoth the journal, because I said it more eloquently yesterday when I was actually sitting there. I wish I could leave the house more, but I don't have as much independence as I'd like.

I'm going to write another post later with, hopefully, another image.
I leave you with a picture of my dear friend David with whom I got burritos* yesterday (they pretty much fell apart upon being lifted, it was burrito anarchy), attempting to pluck Holocene (Bon Iver) on his fairly new and very gorgeous guitar. Don't worry, David, I've been pretending to know how to play guitar for four years and I can't remember a single song.

Sincenkrjelryekhjrylretkh-ly

Me.

*Edit– I originally wrote "with whom I got burritos with," I really need to proof read these posts more carefully BARF, BARFFFFF!!

Stuck at home

Today I cleaned the bathroom and made a kale and garbanzo bean soup-thing which I am currently eating, and that's about it.

And for some reason I took another Lying Down photo in almost the exact same position as yesterday's.

I'd like to say that this has a profound concept behind it, but I was just experimenting with the small kitchen we have downstairs. It's an interesting space because it's sort of disgusting and grimy, so I'm going to be shooting there frequently. I took the image below in the same spot earlier this year, on a whim–

The hands are mine, dawg.

I think I was angry about something when I got the idea for this, but I have no idea what. This goes along with a series of inevitable self-death images that I've been taking this year in various styles, film and digital, stemming from Acute Teen Angst. The SUPER FUN part of self portraiture is figuring out how to focus on the spot that your body will be. Usually I place an object in the frame as a stand-in and use autofocus, but the autofocus on my camera isn't very accurate anymore and I have no idea why. Maybe I will buy myself a new camera with the money I am earning this summer with my actual job. 

I'm not sure what to write about but I'll figure it out eventually.

Tea that burns with Irish fury

So, YESTERDAY, Sunday, I visited my friend Sarah (who also blawgs about fashion over here) and told her I wanted to take some creepy pictures of her involving tea bags. I don't think she would've agreed if she knew I was going to smear Irish Breakfast tea on her face.

It was very difficult keeping these slightly moist tea bags on her back. After about ten minutes she said, "Okay, my skin is burning. Is that supposed to happen...?!" Probably not, Sarah, but thanks for agreeing to do this you're the best ten gold stars for you!

I've been experimenting with tea in my photos recently. Pictures involving tea are usually cute or serene, but I associate the steeped beverage with late nights and loss of nuanced motor control due to caffeine intake. These images are creepy. I like creepy. Expect to see many more creepy images this summer.

COOL THANKS YES GOOD.