Winter Intro Round Up

Today I found a bunch of quotes I have used in the past as inspirational desktop backgrounds. I shall share them with you now.

"Nothing is original. Steal from anywhere that resonates with inspiration or fuels your imagination. Devour old films, new films, music, books, paintings, photographs, poems, dreams, random conversation, architecture, bridges, street signs, trees, clouds, bodies of water, light and shadows. Select only things to steal from that speak directly to your soul. If you do this, your work (and theft) will be authentic. Authenticity is invaluable; originality is non-existent. And don't bother concealing your thievery-celebrate it if you feel like it. In any case, always remember what Jean-Luc Godard said: "Its not where you take things from - Its where you take them to."
-Jim Jarmusch

"Happy are those who dream dreams and are ready to pay the price to make them come true." -Leon J. Suenes

"Do we not all agree to call rapid thought and noble impulse by the name of inspiration?"
-George Elliot

"First say to yourself what you would be; and then do what you have to do."
-Epictetus

"The power of imagination makes us infinite" -John Muir

I hope this helps you out. I know it really reminded me of some good things about life when I found it.

xoxo

Elite Weight Loss Package

Hello!

How are you?? Its been ages since we've spoken!! I'd like to think I've changed ever so drastically, yet stayed the same person you always knew. I feel old in many ways, and so young in others. I've grown past the wild and endless days of energy and vigor, to have them replaced with a sense of longing. I find myself slipping into the occassional melancholy over what appears now to be wasted time and effort in pursuit of something I never really wanted anyway. I have a job waitressing which really translates to walking in circles all day, carrying heavy plates and attempting to dodge customer criticisms and bad tips. I make enough money to be satisfied, but I'm not working full time. I'd like to have a second job, an office type job I can work weekday mornings at so as to not interfere with the days I actually make money at my current job. My search for said second job is not going so well, but I'm making further endeavors next week with several temp agencies.

In other news I have a wonderful boyfriend. The term sounds so passe, and I'd rather call him my partner. We have a plan for the semi-near future, the slightly-more-distant future and more vague long term plans. Its a good relationship, and I'm finally comfortable with having stability in my life. I always objected so harshly to it before now. Somehow this time it feels right, and it still feels adventurous. He's very supportive of my various endeavors. I'm working in my spare time on a series of haikus, and a several collages. Perhaps there are dreams of published works and art showings in my mind, but I'll keep them to myself. Anyway thats all for now. Over and out.

-Claire

Breakin' it down

Dear you ;)

Its been a while!! huh! Well I've mostly been studying. School, this involves reading novels, plays and translations of ancient medieval texts, and then analyzing and writing all about them. Sounds fun right? Yeah well its not so bad, I like the stuff, but it takes all my time. So a couple exciting things that happened and I forgot to tell you about. Eric and I went camping!! It was sooo great. You can read more about it on the other blog. But in general there was practice in making camp fires, and hotdogs and smores and hiking around in the woods. This week is my Spring Break. This means I will be taking it easy for a week and doing some fun things I'd rather do instead of studying.

Here's my list:

Email friends!! (want this to involve you? let me know!)

Clean my apartment

Hang out with my grandparents

Sleep a reasonable amount

Do some awesome yoga

Buy a plane ticket to France for May (does this invovle you??)

In other exciting news I got a program that may or may not be able to teach me French. So I will try to work on that a little bit this week while I'm on break too.

kisses kisses

Claire

This is it

Hello,

Recently I have been reading and writing a lot of things. You may ask "What do you do when you're not reading Strindberg? or writing papers about how awesome he is?" Well my friends,

I think about how much I want a bathtub that will sing to me.

And earlier I was eating a hotdog with some onions and mustard on it, and I thought "hm this tastes odd" but I finished it before I could determine which element of the situation was causing the confusion, so I made another, and ate that too.

I'm glad to have answered your question. Now I will go back to reading a novel by a crazy person.

Cheers!

xoxo

Claire

you/me/august strindberg

I'm pretty sure I don't have a sense of curiosity over certain things. Stories and human nature don't seem to concern me. I ponder over things that never occur to others. My sense of wonder is off base, its off the field, its out of the parking lot, its beyond the grasp of any fan of the sport. I miss the days that I think never existed, when I could sit home and sew, knit, paint, collage. When I could write secret stories, and secret poetry and post things on my secret blog (with a growing readership I'll never know- I'll never even wonder about). When I could eat bacon, and drink apple cider and be inspired by the sheer joy from the taste, when I felt nothing in life could be better than that. When I thought that maybe one day I could feel that way about a person. When there was no contradiction in my head over what I like, what I love. There was a time, and I know it existed. It was before that first realization that I could be happy giving up all of my dreams, for that one thing that I love. I wouldn't go back, but I can't get it out of my head. The age of innocence...

This post is to August Strindberg, despite being dead for 98 years I think he'd appreciate this, at least on his own crazy level (if he can remain unaware of my gender).

and I meant every word I said

Kära vän,

I hope this letter finds you in good spirits. I've heard that things are going well for you, and you seem happy. Things in my life have been okay recently. I've been very busy doing the same things over and over again. I go to class, I run in circles, I read things, I write things, I eat, and I sleep. Recently a few things happened to classify themselves out of the ordinary reiteration of days. Both my cousin Alisa and my cousin Hannah had their babies on the same day!! (feb 17th) Both are boys and are (along with their respective mothers) doing quite fine! This is really quite pleasant but also means that there may be seven small boys at the next family get together.What fun?? Today is one of my favorite days all year. It will be spent taking practice exams and drinking champagne, and then implementing chaos whereever I can.

Kisses kisses!!

Claire

WORDS

Incoherent rambling of excitement!!

I ran for 30 minutes! I ate some steak! I went to IKEA I love IKEA I LOVE LINGONBERRIES I ate some of them put em in my belly got my bro a housewarming present from IKEA ate some more lingonberries other awesome things I LOVE MY CLASSES but there is sooo much to READ TO READ TO READ LINGONBERRIES

WORD VOMIT!!

I'M DONE.

oh, and new blog. Check it out?

Namelho arrives

Hello, and oh my goodness,

so things have taken a turn towards the absurd! Two new things that have happened since we last spoke:

1. I am going to run a half marathon in May

2. I am now the lead singer, lead tamborine, and "front-man" of a band called Namelho

So, along with my associate Kelsey (Jelsew) I have started "getting-in-shape" for the half marathon. We need to be able to run a half hour without stopping by Feb. 22nd. Then the actual half marathon training starts. So we've been running twice and recruited several (sort of unmotivated but very supportive) guys to join us. Today J and I ran a seven minute warm up, stretched, ran 21 minutes solid, stretched and ran a seven minute cool down. The guys lifted some weights and we convinced one of them to join us for our cool down. Then we hit the hot tub (wooo!)

Jelsew is also in the band. She plays the mandolin. Our band is very young still, but will soon be fully formed and loved by many. (I'll keep you updated)

So a recap of my goals this semester:

1. Go to all classes/pass with flying colors

2. Become sufficient in outdoor survival techniques

3. Make authentic victorian era clothing (have picnic)

4. Run a half marathon

5. Have dinner parties

6. Have game nights

7. Have a flourishing and wildly successful band

Wish me luck?

xoxo Claire

New New

Dear Friend(s),

I have intriguing news and developments to share with you and I have done a bunch of exciting things in the past few days! First off, I totally went monogamous. Crazy right? So you must be thinking "who the hell is this guy?" yeah, well he's alright! (or pretty awesome -- he is with me after all...) Trust me on this one, I know a thing or two about it. So, he (Eric, aforementioned boyfriend) is totally into camping and is on board for wilderness adventures, and we've been sketching out a rough plan for the success of this recent ambition of mine. So far we've got the idea of building up to the actual trip with a succession of weekend trips and mini workshop type deals building skills and useful wilderness possessions.

Here is the list:

-Turtle catching and practice dressing in my apartment

-basket making from natural materials

-knot tying

-bunny hunting (and dressing?)

-hide tanning

-bunny moccasins

-fire building (mini-trip)

So that is what we've got so far, and we're mostly still in the research phase, but I think the more practical applications we throw in the more interesting it'll be. So in hopes of improving familiarity with dead animals, Eric and I helped my mother's boyfriend (Norm) skin a dear he hunted down. We then proceeded to remove the meat from the bone, and store in the freezer (I have to admit I really had only minimal involvement in the actual handling of the animal). Then Eric and I made chili out of it, which was DELICIOUS. So yumz (except the part where I got jalapeno in both eyes...) -- I've been considering making a new blog specifically to chronicle my wilderness adventure progression, sheerly for my own amusement, but I'll let you know if it happens.

I also got to see my brother's future house this weekend, which is really nice!! I am very excited for them, and I'm working on a house warming present for them (suggestions welcome). Additionally I got to hang out with my grandparents and we ate my absolute favorite meal ever (turkey, homemade mashed potatoes, homemade noodles, homemade stuffing, green beans, cranberries) and she even sent some home with me! So now I have massive quantities of amazing food in my apartment.

Today classes started. I had four today and they're all upper level classes with a colossal magnitude of reading "imperative" to the proper working of each. I really like three of them, and the other one, I sort of want to take, just as a personal challenge. Tomorrow I have two more lower level courses.

I think professors can be judged based on what they choose to do with the first day of class. Today I discussed sexual stereotypes of Scandinavia, the purported existence of King Arthur of Medieval England, and something best described by THIS. We didn't discuss anything in my fourth class. [what I wrote initially: My fourth class wasted an hour of my time, and managed to fail at any form of actual discussion, in which I seemingly impressed the professor anyway.] So from this I shall base all future judgements, and I hope they're content with their first impressions.

Miss you tons!!

Love Claire

babies

hey there!

So guess what?? I'm not pregnant. Oh man I really hope that isnt' a surprise to you. Bunches of people in my family be poppin' 'em out recently (or in the near future) though. three of my cousins are pregnant (two due in feb. one in april) and another just had a baby girl (Sophie!) three months ago! I think babies are adorable in burst of one or two hours, and I even had a dream the other day that I had a two year old son. It was the most awesome child I have ever encountered anywhere (reality or subconscious) and thats about par for my dream children (always awesome, always boys). But what prompted me to tell you all this was the celebrity Katy Perry's recent twitter response to pregnancy rumors about her, which is as follows:

"ur gonna make me cry, maybe that's my period tho. THAT'S RIGHT I'M BLEEDING. Face. Better luck next month peepz."

My favorite part of this succint response is when she says "Face." lol what? so great.

Sort of related... I told you my brother got married a while back right? Well he also got a new job recently, and bought a house DANG. So JJ if you're reading this I think you know what comes next *wink wink*

Kisses kisses love Claire :D

To make it more interesting

Hello!

I have several new life goals that I would like to share with you. These range on several different spectrums of life's brilliance and edges of obscurity, and I would like to invite you to join in the fun.

1. I would like to live outside with a minimum of "civilized" tools. I'm thinking of starting in short bursts testing out my skills and working in a team. Things I've thought important enough thus far to include: tent, sleeping bag, knife, flint, and steel pocket knife. Please don't hassle me too much about all the details in this one as I haven't worked out all the kinks, and I'm already a bit sick of people asking me how I plan on cooking a turtle.

2. Making authentic Victorian era clothing and wearing them around in large groups. I think this one would be most effective with a large group of girls, but a few guys couldn't hurt. I can imagine any ordinary activity would be sufficiently entertaining in such dresses.

Do you have any new goals I haven't heard about?

Kramar!

Claire

Advisory committee for making all the decisions necessary

Dear friends,

This is to a bunch of people I know that are going abroad next term. You're all leaving me at the same time and I can't believe such crazy timing, but good for you for making time for it in your life. I have two pieces of advice for you.

1. Do not stay in your room all the time.

2. Don't forget your friends at home

kisses Claire

Smiles

Hey

How've you been? I've been doing alright. This picture, and this song. I feel that these two things pretty accurately describe how I am feeling these days. The photo was taken in Barcelona Spain at a playground outside the hostel in which my friend and I stayed (Dec 08). In addition to that theres a bunch of other things going on, but I'm not sure how to present them. I feel like its not out of the ordinary though, that life is basically like a juggling act where everything is constantly moving around and changing. I've been a bit nostalgic lately too, and the Jenny Lewis CD I just found somehow fits the mood perfectly. This may or may not also be due to the rereading of my favorite book (Vladimir Nabokov's Mary) which has an interesting perspective with consideration to nostlagia as a tool to memory, and the longing for an ideal that never existed.

"You are what you love and not what loves you back"

- Jenny Lewis (You are what you love)

Kisses kisses

Love Claire

2010

People are just people. Are we all really one in a million? I've heard that people are the same everywhere. Then why is it I can't go anywhere in the world, and find someone just like you? Someone as amazing and fun to be with? I search and search and no one comes close to being like any of the other friends I've made already. Of course I make new friends, and I always have fun, but its never the same kind of fun, the same kind of amazing. So maybe we are all that special, that unique. What I'm trying to say here is I miss you, and let's get together real soon.

Love Claire