Wednesday, October 12, 2011

Bill Murray Money

As a joke, I entered a Bill Murray fan poetry contest last month. I got the paperwork for the rights to my poem in the mail yesterday. The publishing house attached a letter explaining that they wanted to buy my Bill Murray poem for a coffee table book called “Celebrities in Our Hearts.” This is all very silly. 

Thursday, September 29, 2011

Alright Alright

   And they are paying to fly me there and back. And giving me free lodging. This is what dreams are made of. I feel like I have so much more reading and getting classier to do before November, now.
  

Thursday, September 8, 2011

Heady


First draft/ try at an experimental/ lyrical nonfiction piece. Not so sure about it. Help and comments appreciated.

Run Until You Finish

In Lavoisier’s bell jar, a bar of metal experienced a lifetime in three hours. Through tubes probed on either end, hydrogen pumped in, eddied around the bar and stripped away decades of youth at a time.  Pinpricks of rust surfaced within the first hour.  Here and there, little marks of character like the tattoo your librarian covers up with a Band-Aid each morning, or a man’s false finger drumming on a counter--small details that make a person look like they’ve got a story to tell. The flecks of rust christened the metal bar with years of maturity in the time it takes an infant to put together his first cries.
 If you were in Lavoisier’s jar, you would start at one end, sweet as a child’s breath, and sprint down the expanse of the jar, into your future, leaning forward while you’d run just to get there that much faster--so your youth won’t take so long. You’d hit all of your growing moments with staccato fists as you pump your arms harder and harder on your way to finding out what it’ll all add up to.
Now, you would be a child at night, walking downstairs for a cup of water. Reach in the dark for each stair with your sock feet. You fall, chin-down, losing your balance and your two front baby teeth.
Now, you’re a shy girl sitting on the pilled armrest of a crowded couch, in a house you’ve never been to before. You adjust your skirt and take a sip from the tervis tumbler a friend gives you, tells you it’s the good stuff. But it gnaws at your chest while you wonder if you’ll ever grow to like that feeling.
Now, you’re in an abandoned tobacco field, end of summer, lying on a quilt and looking at the sun. You realize the young man who took you here, the one who said he’d be back in a few minutes, has been gone over an hour now, and he’s never going to come back.
You’ve experienced this all, but you don’t feel an ounce wiser. Life in Lavoisier’s jar makes you dizzy--unsure like a newborn colt’s legs, buckling at the shock of themselves.  
But you’ve already got some marks to show your journey—the scar across your left calf from the time you snuck out of your bathroom window and fell from the lattice outside your house, a liver-colored cigarette burn on your shoulder, an empty spot in your mind that you keep trying to fill—but you’ve been living so quickly, you can’t remember how they got there. You’ve got stories to tell, but no way to tell them.

By the second hour of Lavoisier’s experiment, the metal bar was the same shape, but entirely covered in rust. All of its sheen gone, rendering it unrecognizable. Still, Lavoisier kept the hydrogen turned on high while he took notes on the bar’s loss of identity.

Living at this pace, you’d never get to know yourself. Every time you’d pass mirror or a row of windows on a building, you’d look different. And as much you’d want to stop for a breather, just a few seconds, to re-count the freckles on your cheek, examine the new gray hairs, you can’t. Time in Lavoisier’s jar moves so quickly, you have no choice but to run until you finish.
Now you’ve thrown yourself headlong into job where the only conversations you have are with the automated voice of a printer. You have to push its buttons for it to talk back. You spend the rest of your abbreviated days hitting the red button just to hear the machine say, Cancel. Cancel. Cancel.
Now, you’ve been married for twenty-three years, but you got here in such a rush, that every morning, you’re still surprised to wake up next your husband, who stretches his sleepy arm back around your waist after you push quickly away.
Now, you’ve felt your back crane down with the weight of seventy-nine years as you struggle to lift your shovel and dig holes in your backyard. You are alone. You could be digging graves for all your friends you never got to know. You could be digging escape tunnels from the bombardment of years. But the truth is you found yourself here so suddenly, you have no idea why there’s a shovel in your hand, or how it got there in the first place.

In the third hour of Lavoisier’s experiment, flakes of rust floated around in the current of hydrogen like plastic bags catching the wind from passing cars. That’s all that was left in the jar. Little relics, too small to do anything besides wade in the air that was killing them.

  In the last hour of your life in Lavoisier’s jar, the hydrogen would whip away at you, tear off the coat that covered your aching bones, tear away at the memories of what you were. And with a one last gust of fight left in you, you try remembering one more time:
Remember that vacation your family took to Vermont when you were just a child. When you stood knee-deep in a creek and looked down at all the life in the shallow water, little bugs squirming to the surface on the first and last day of their life. And after hours of looking in the water, you found a heart-shaped rock and held it tight in your fist for the rest of the trip, just to feel like you owned something.
Remember the end. Right before your parts where thrown to tread in the air all around you. When the end didn’t look like you thought it would. Mature is the last thing you wanted be. You had no stories to tell. You’d kill to start over. From the beginning. To pace yourself. You didn’t know what you wanted. You were confused. The end didn’t look like you thought it would. Not a pinhole of light to walk into. Instead, the sun from a window. Beams of it pouring right through you, through the curves of the jar, fishbowled and warped.

Wednesday, August 3, 2011

Celi-ACK!

I think I can speak for most kids who grow into celiac/ gluten sensitivities when I say, we have a hard enough fumbling through a few normal kid things. Like not being able to have cake on your birthday, or never eating a Lunchable, or drinking with friends, ordering a pizza, and then eating it because you swore, "I've got this, guys. This time, I promsies."

Well, fellow young celiacs and weak tummies, we finally have a hero. A protagonist of a book series about the struggles we face on a daily basis (not very many struggles.) Now we can identify with a face!

And this face is absolutely hideous! I mean, come on! How is this character supposed to make kids feel good about themselves when they relate to her. It looks like Waldo took Daria's 90s teen-angst behind a high school dumpster and got it pregnant. I've met a few GF people in my day, and none of them look this bad. In fact, everyone with celiac that I know of is fairly attractive. Some celebrity examples:

Emmy Rosem- Beautiful
Zooey Deschanel- Beautiful
Bethany Cosentino- Beautiful
Bill Clinton- Well...

I mean, really, that chick (chick?) looks like a pubescent Kathy comic.

Also, It is rumored that JFK was allergic to wheat. So take that, Woodbine House Publishing. God bless America.

Tuesday, June 28, 2011

Unconventionally Conventional Looks

Film is a male-dominated profession. No question. And film school is a direct reflection of that. There are seven girls and forty three guys in the program. It's a man's world and that's fine. What's not so fine is that all the male screenwriters wrote scripts with characters that are "loosly (pfft) based on their ex-girlfriends." It's how teenage-boy-writers air their not-so-dirty laundry, I guess.

This doesn't sound like too much of a problem, young people "expressing themselves" through cinema. But, it turns out, it's a real problem for me. So far I've been casted in four different movies as a girlfriend who kisses their boyfriend a lot and carries around books. I haven't even begun my career in acting (a career that will never develop, I assure you) and I've already been type-casted. Even my cinematography teacher (who uses me to model during lighting exercises and tells me I look like his wife) says I'm the only girl here who has "unconventionally conventional looks." Now, I know I'm not hideous, but I'm not that attractive either. I wake up every morning, just like the rest of the girls here. Pull my self out of bed, debate on wether or not I have time to brush my teeth, and then pray that my jeans will fit, even if I did eat a quart of fried rice, alone, while sitting cross-legged in front of a mirror the night before.

I really wanted to come here, roll up my sleeves, and do some real filmmaking. The dirty work. Lighting. Lifting. Editing. Anything. But I feel like the remainder of my time here will be spent pretending to be in puppy love with boys I just met, all on screen. At least in one of the movies I'm in, I get to kill a robot at the end. That's something.

Tuesday, June 21, 2011

UNCSA: Fabulous

The head of the film department, Jonus (pronounced Yawn-ish)refers to everything as "fa-bu-lous" with his heavy accent. His nationality is still a mystery to me. He gave us a two-hour-long lecture on how me must find our one and only "Superior Objective" in life before we direct any film, and some other Existentialist/ middle-Euro-pride stories. He starts all of his classes with the same youtube video of an older Ray Davies singing "Lola". Needless to say, he's the awesome foreign grandpa I've never had.
My screenplay idea was sanctioned (YAY) and I'm almost done picking my crew. The only problem is finding the right actors. Everyone here is so far up their own butt that they can't possibly act well. Thank you, arrogant kids from California who have Cannon 7d's and the newest $2,000 version of FinalCutPro. I'll be over here in the corner with my little handcam, trying to figure out how to make you express pain when you're daddies made sure you've never felt it before.
Woah, sorry. That was a bit much. It's a wonderful program here, really. The equipment is all state of the art and we get to see movies at the local theater for free.

P.S.
My roommate (who is in the same film section as me/ has never heard of Wes Anderson, David Lynch, or Clint Eastwood) just turned down her new Britney Spears CD to ask me if I'm "one of those people who don't like things just because they're mainstream." Good one, Roommate. You fascinate me. You really do.

Saturday, June 18, 2011

Last Day Pinks

My dog is the worst. I'm going to sell him to David Lynch.


We gave him a "home-hair-cut" for the sake of saving money on a trip to Petsmart. Didn't turn out so great. He's really... pink now.

Leaving for UNCSA in the early morning. Packing is easy when you live out of your suitcase. I'm excited.

Thursday, June 16, 2011

Poem Swagg

Just got off the phone with Princeton. I got an award for a poem.
Hollaaaaa.

Wednesday, June 15, 2011

yum-O

Really, Ben and Jerry's? Is Bonnaroo a flavor you want to sell?


MMmmMM. Tastes like dirty hair, weed, and making out with strangers in a pile of someone else's vomit.

Tuesday, June 14, 2011

M.L.I.A.D.

My Life Is Arrested Development

Reasons:
1) I live in a show-home for a housing firm.
2) Our R.V. basically equates to the stair car.
3) I'm a teenage girl beyond her years who writes screenplays that garner success, but still doesn't have a valid driver's license.
4) I've seen my dad wear lady clothes.
5) A boy with severe aspergers writes me love letters (My version of Mr. F.)
6) I've hid in the attic when company was over on more than one occasion.

All I need now is Steve Holt


STEVE HOLT!!

This blog post is brought to you by me hopelessly searching for personal essay ideas for Creative Nonfiction Class. Thanks, Ladies and Germs. I'll be here all summer.

walkabout

-noun
Australian
1. A brief, informal leave from work, taken by an Aborigine to wander the bush, visit loved ones, or return to native life.
2. That thing where Anna goes to Bonnaroo.

A few pictures












I had my face in Alexis Krauss's crotch when she stage dove. I got the Drums's set list. Bethany has/ liked my poster. Everyone was really nice/ caked in dirt. I'm way too used to clean water. Only three people and one dog died this year. I met Ron Jeremy (Hear that, Ma?!). So much dust. It'll be awhile before I do anything like this again.

Tuesday, June 7, 2011

And They Call It Kitty Love

My fandom of/ excitement about anything never gets this girly/ teenie bop/ far. Thursday evening will be an exception.


Lucy owes me one.

What a Powerhouse

On the topic of class shirts for next year:


Mind you, this kid was already asked to not come back to our school next year after he had a Charlie Sheen moment/ was sent to the hospital for a week. You're a rockstar, kid who won't even be at our school anymore. I nominate you new class president.

Monday, June 6, 2011

Wednesday, June 1, 2011

Anna Does Not Walk Simply into Mordor, I Mean, Bluffton.

No.
Sure, I'm glad to get back home and rest. I haven't been home since march. But still, why do I have to go back to a place where things are like this


this

and this?

Now, I'm not ragging on my hometown. I've tried to love it. Tried going to the beach. Tried golfing. Even went a week where all I read was Nietzsche and "Lolita" (really, the few literate young people of Hilton Head/ Bluffton? Are those two things [along with "The Perks of Being a Wallflower", LOL DUHH] the only things you can get your hands on? Just saying. I don't get it.

ANYWAY
June 15th is film school. Soon enough.

New York Don't Heart You

School has been over for a week. I haven't had time wrap my head around that. It's been all go in New York City. Here's some things I've learned:
1. Public transportation is nice when you don't have to get from Jersey City to your interview in Brooklyn in thirty minutes or less (Yes, thirty minutes or less, like the title of that bad pizza movie that's coming out soon.)
2. Scholastic Medals are heavy.
3. Don't get on the subway with your medal on. This is not out of concern that a stranger will steal the medal, no. The people on the subway are nice, to themselves, and all-in-all normal/ better looking than people from your hometown. You don't wear your medal on the subway because people will look at you like you're a complete idiot.
4. You probably are a complete idiot.
5. Whoopi Goldberg is super nice via video-greeting/ still gender ambiguous.
6. In the eyes of the best teenage artists of America, John Baldessari--possibly the most re-nouned, talented American painters of this century--giving an inspirational speech about his journey and accolades will most definitely be upstaged by Tony Hawk skating through Carnegie Hall and then giving a cookie cutter speech about "not selling out."
7. Your dad might be a little racist when he refers to an Indian cab driver as "Amigo."
8. Writing is so freaking important, still.
9. Even in New York City, your poetry teacher will manage to find you and make you feel like a terrible person and loose her luggage at the same time.
10. At an award show, never sit next to a girl who is wearing the same exact dress as you, especially if she is tall, mixed, and gorgeous. Remember, you are short, stocky, pale, and just changed in the bathroom of some place called "Joe's Rolls."
11. The people at The New Yorker Magazine do not like teenagers. Rightfully so. (note: Don't ever wear sandals/ ask to use the bathroom in a publishing house. Ever.)
12. The Governor's School is my home.

vs.


For right now, I'll take the second one. I'm not quite ready for the city yet.

Saturday, May 28, 2011

Me to Belong or Belong to Me

This city used to roar through its belly back when all the buildings were less and sienna,
when the copper was copper and everything was the shined penny promise of Lincoln's cheek bone,

when women, if told the word Vegans, would ask if that was the name of a savage tribe in a new world.

One that turned their healthy belches of stone gild industry into one white gallery that holds one piece of art, a chrome sphere with a protrusion, and not even the savages know what it means.

But they take guesses in their coffee shops, in their billboards, in their micro micro mega metropolis confusion.

Yes, this city still roars, but only through its nose. And yes, I am also confusion.
Every doorway in this city lets me in and quickly spits me out onto its stoop. Tells me to curl back into myself until I'm my own baby.

If Walt Whitman rode that ferry into the city today, would he tell us wonder and patriotism with double question marks and emoticons?

In the spirit of rejection, I'll take a tour on a double decker bus, armed in a bright plastic poncho. I reach, high five every stop light craning past, because no one else pays attention to them.

And in this lack of reverence, stars don't live enough to report their deaths and coruscate the city.

In this lack of reverence, the tour guide of this bus sings a half-heart America America to the lit up Empire State Building,
a daily routine, as it stands in competition with everything else she'll sing to tonight.

Wednesday, May 25, 2011

Fins and Ends

The school year is over. I don't even look the same as I did when it all started. Don't know what state I'm sleeping in tonight. Hannah gave me her "I only sleep with the best" t-shirt before saying goodbye. I should write country songs.

Theory of Generations

You're it.
You're it.
You're it.

Monday, May 23, 2011

Gallery Piece

My poetry is in Scholastic's online gallery. One step closer to getting published in Best Young Writers.
The link isn't working, but here's a picture of one of the poems on the page they made for me.


Woo. Two days left of school. Princeton on Friday. New York City/ Scholastic Art and Writing Awards Ceremony on Saturday-forever.

So much all the time.

Monday, May 16, 2011

Done

My English class kills most if not all of my creativity. My final project begins with the protagonist falling asleep and ends with them waking up. Embarrassing. Whatever. That class is over. Even though that class wasn't really a class in the first place, rather the hour and a half that Hannah and I walk around the academic buildings while eating bananas or sit in the rec room watching Maury and while eating bananas. Anyway, here's the video

Thursday, May 12, 2011

Chest Full of Peas

I workshopped my friend's poem the other day. One of his lines:
"And a woman could cry into the ocean,/ the waves rocking a boat the way she breathed."
Kid's got game.

I had my collection of fable/prose poems workshopped yesterday. They involved deserts and utopias and Gaudi and ghost towns and loving and geese and Juan Ponce De Leon. My classmates weren't too thrilled about them and gave really vague advice. But my teacher freaked out and said that I was the only writer doing real art. Shakira Shakira.
Then she compared my poems to a "beautiful cedar chest filled with peas", and I was lost all over again.

I'm working on video project for my English class.
So far it's pretty rough
preview:

Wednesday, April 27, 2011

Fighting Pickles

I got into UNCSA's summer program for film. I'll be spending a month in Winston-Salem.
This is the school's mascot

I'm taking an intensive course in screenwriting from now until the end of the school year. I have to have a screenplay written by the end of it. I've got less than a month. sigh.

Yesterday was my last day with my after school mentoring program (as a mentor) until next school year. I was bitten by a five-year-old girl with one tooth. She drew blood. I blame violent video games and food-preservatives. kids.

My buddy in the visual arts department has been sneaking me into the arts studios. I learned how to throw pottery on a wheel. I'm going to learn how to weld soon, too. Fast times.

Tuesday, April 12, 2011

A Weekend, Sans Sherbet

Friday:
John T. Edge (food writer) came to our class for a Q&A session. He was great. He talked about pig lips, performance artists, and how the best tamales are in Mississippi.

Went to the mall and bought bubble tea (gross) and a lot of records (not gross). Got back to the dorm to listen to them and my player didn't work.



Saturday:
Woke up at six for the ACT. My least favorite genre of person sat behind me. I'm not usually one to stereotype, but I'm certain there's at least one of this kid at every high school. You know, the ones who know all the words to every Lamb of God song and the Kingdom Hearts theme song (the second one in English and Japanese, of course).
They also look like this:
This kid kept talking throughout the entire test about how he had "perfected the ten-minute-five-paragraph essay" and was "the smartest person in the room" and "planning on majoring in creative writing." He also talked about wanting to stab the administrator in the eye with his pencil, repeatedly. She was a nice administrator. She gave us mints. I have no clue where this anger came from. He also talked about he was going to Zaxby's as soon as his mom picked him up.


After that there was prom. A circus-themed prom. It was actually not too bad. Nothing like a regular high school prom, mostly because of the following

- Everyone had to ride to the hotel on a school bus

- There was a kissing booth

- The toast brought nearly everyone to tears

- The D.J. was good

- A newly-wed couple crashed the prom by sharing their first dance with us. They later proceeded to use our photo backdrop and photographers to take wedding photos.

- The waitstaff spiked some of the sherbet and gave it to the kids who weren't dancing. I missed out on the sherbet.

- There were boxes of sushi and Mellow Mushroom pizza and an after party and waiting for us when we got back on campus.



My group also looked nice.




Sunday:
Went hiking.

All in all; No sherbet. No sleep. I'm still exhausted. Six weeks left of school.

Wednesday, April 6, 2011

Pretty Prism

Chicago Manual of Style final, Salem College Book Award App, ACT, and a circus themed prom. This week is punitive.

Tuesday, April 5, 2011

Teaching First Graders About the Italian Renaissance

I taught an art history lesson to an after-school program.
The kids were great and said great things, too. One boy said he had a pet owl who lived in his mouth and talked to him when he was alone--a little bit too The Shining for me, but still adorable. I wish I did this more this year. Its going by too fast.

Thursday, March 31, 2011

Moley

looked through an old moleskine. It wasn't very helpful.
A few lines:

"I head-dance in Cuba."

"Dream; I awake to find a tapeworm on my pillow. I also find that my mattress is floating above the dining hall. Confetti everywhere. Barbara [cafeteria worker] tells me that I've won the raffle."

Parent:"Can you say, "waterfowl"?"
Child: "Waterfowl."
Parent: "Good. Do you know what they are?"
Child: "Yes."
Parent: "No you don't."

"Imagen Laudi's mother dressed in a green uniform coverend in medals--"The Adorable Tyrant."

"Oh, you silly people. Your churns. Your buckets."

"The You Factory"

"I'm afraid I've been building entire cities on the wrong pro-noun."

"Idea for children's book: "Bye Bye, Bramble", a story of a bramble who tries to pack up and leave town. The conflict arises when he sits on his suitcase to latch it close, and gets stuck."

"A Norman Rockwell painting, except everyone is drinking smoothies."

Gutsy

I won two more poetry awards from Hollins University, but so did half of my writing class.
Here's the publication




I've been put on bed-rest all week with reflux. First I was reading Nabokov, but it just made me sad.
"I was an infant when my parents died./ They both were ornithologists. I've tried/ so often to evoke them that today/ I have a thousand parents." - From the first Canto of Nabokov's Pale Fire.

Not exactly heart-warming.

So I had a Woody Allen marathon. But formulaic, Jewish humor doesn't cure everything. Going to the doctor with a driver I don't know today. Just one of the downsides of living at a boarding school.

I didn't get into NYU's summer program for film. But they told me I could go to the same program in Singapore (with no scholarship). Sure, NYU. Sure.

Monday, March 28, 2011

Don't Want to Bump No More, You Big Fat Woman

I'm taking a month-long intensive course on this book.



Also

Dan Chaon is our Spring guest writer. He talks like Zach Galafianakas. I got a book signed.

Wednesday, March 16, 2011

Sprung

I won a national gold medal from Scholastic for three of my poems. Invited up to New York City/ Carnegie hall at the end of May.
This guy is the keynote speaker at the ceremony


'

Thursday, February 3, 2011

Key

1) This blog is a bit messy, and when I get some free time I will put my full portfolio up in a better format.

2) Today I was informed that I won a Gold Key Award from Scholastic for three of my poems; An Aria, Performance Art, and Transient! The poems will be going on to nationals. Time to keep writing!