memorizing poetry

in tenth grade, our composition teacher made us memorize poetry. it's one of the few things he still remembers from high school to this day, he told us. then he proceeded to recite one of them. word for word.

i don't remember any of the poems we memorized. just the subject matter, vaguely. a walt whitman about the wall neighbors rebuild every spring between them, one about the assassination of president lincoln ("oh captain, my captain," i think it was), another about king ozymandius, the wiliam carlos williams one about the red wheelbarrow. see? famous poetry. i can't even remember the poets or the titles for most. i could google, but i don't.

at emo times in my life, i remember memorizing the poems (although not the poetry itself) and wish i still read poetry. concise, simple, powerful, evocative. the way i want the things i create to be.

too bad i am wordy and complicated.

new year, looking back

i don't have a great new year's post with reflections on 2009 or bright eyes and a bushy tail for 2010 (yet), so you'll have to settle for these in the meantime.

remember these?


1st grade

so serious in osh kosh b'gosh and pigtails.

2nd grade

uneven eyes, uneven bangs.

3rd grade

uneven teeth.

4th grade

snobby potato.

5th grade

finally put my foot down regarding perms.
too bad it turns out my natural hair has texture.

6th grade

awk.ward.

7th grade

drunk? sleepy?
still awkward.

8th grade is lost somewhere. probably in the keroppi picture wallet i threw out last time we moved. kindergarten is probably in one of my mom's old wallets.

oh, and so weird, but i just noticed that until 3rd grade, the photos are mirror images--the way i see myself in the mirror. 4th grade and on are how you all see me IRL. i can tell because my smaller eye moves from one side to the other.

no, i'm not that much of a narcissist. i just happened to clean out the last few boxes of stuff i have at my mom's house over the break and came across these. the bear enjoyed looking at them, so i figured you would, too. plus i don't know what's wrong with me, but i don't have much to say these days.

ARkidTECTURE

i had lunch today with on-maternity-leave lilcee, lilcee's lil cousin, and funemployed SAHW winnie. yay for ladies who [temporarily] lunch! anyway, that has nothing to do with this post. i just had fun. and wanted to share. oh, and we ate at wurstkuche [sniggle, sniggle]. thanks for coming to me, ladies! so good to see you all.

earlier today, i was in the woodshop at school cutting some shelves out of melamine. yes, it's one part in the never-ending moving story (that flying dog from neverending story totally creeps me out, by the way). anyway, there was a box marked as "scrap--donations for A+D museum's ARkidTECTURE program." i had no idea what it was, but i tossed some of my scrap pieces in since it sounded better than sending it to the landfill.

i just looked it up, and it sounds awesome. i really wish something like this had been available when i was a kid. if you have or know a kid ages 8-12 that is interested in industrial design, architecture, and/or landscape architecture, you want to expose to these fields, or you just wanna keep occupied for a few saturdays this summer, ch-ch-ch-check it out. it's FREE!

oh, and the a+d museum's website is kinda eh right now, so go to their facebook fan page for more info. they've had some good exhibits, and i hope to volunteer at some of their events soon.

takin' it back

for various reasons lately, i've been feeling a bit insecurrr despite the fact that the concept of school seems so securrr. ha. anyway, no worries. i should snap out of it soon. overall, i'm pretty secure in who i am and know myself, good and bad parts, pretty well. or so i like to think. however, yes, circumstances can get me down. i may come off quite confident or even overconfident most of the time, but man i promise i'm so self-conscious--that's why you always see me with at least one of my watches [or actually, one of weemo's watches, i should say.]

alright, enough with the kanye lyrics. last night, i was cleaning out my old photos/cards/letters/misc. sentimental crap boxes and came across some baby photos that made me feel a little bit better about myself. to be 100% objective, i wasn't the cutest baby. i looked like a boy, i had crazy, crazy hair, hardly any nose, and small eyes. my saving grace? i was F-A-T FAT FAT FAT! the most comforting thing about these photos? seeing that some things, namely who i am, never change. yes, i age and grow, but who i am is who i am. and there's always room for even more growth and change, hopefully of the good variety. yeah, i don't know what i'm blabbering about, either. here's some photographic evidence.

some of my favorite things then AND now:

sleep.
doesn't matter where.

silence/blocking out unnecessary noise.

myself.

eating.
even when i don't have teeth.

waiting to be fed.

eating some more.

since we're takin' it back, i thought i'd scan these before tossing 'em in the recycling bin. they were postcards from the local 7-eleven in korea that my brother and i would visit almost daily with our cousins back when we visited in around 1992, i think.
please don't ask me about their fashion and coiffure choices. i have no answers. i have no words, even, when looking at these. well, they did somehow revolutionze k-pop despite (because of?) those choices.

oh, and please please say my baby face is cuter than seo taiji's baby face. like i said, i wasn't that cute, but look at those cheeks! cheeks!!! after all, i am feeling insecure. boost my self-confidence, if you so desire. ;)

we are si-am-ese if you ple-eease

photo class was interesting tonight. we learned that since our eyes aren't shaded, we usually see everything with a bit of glare. one way to cut this glare is by putting one hand over your eyes and the other under it to block light coming from those two directions at least.

or you could wear these:

[screenshot of their website]
[brought to you by why wednesday. WHY???]

yeah, i was a bit annoyed/disgusted/offended as a first reaction. it brought me back to the elementary school playground.

white kid: [making slanty eyes] ching chong chang
non-white, non-asian kid: are you chinese?
me: no
some other white kid: then are you japanese?
me: no
non-white, non-asian kid, again: then what ARE you?

if i were quicker with the wit and comebacks, i would have responded, "human." this answer is courtesy of the bear's friend who responded that to some girl that called in for him on desperate and dateless back in the day. but that's another story for another time. or never, as i don't think i'm at liberty to tell any of the rest of it. too bad that response came like 15 years too late and from a source other than my witless brain.

anyway, back to the slanties. i got over my offended-ness pretty quickly since the thought of seeing someone wear them in public and how i will laugh my butt off made me happier. good news is they should actually work as sunglasses by cutting down on glare per what i learned in class today. too bad slits/holes in paper/board/wood don't have UV protection, though, like real, modern-day sunglasses. there's more fun reading on others' takes on them in their press section.

oh yeah, i'm too tired to upload my photos from this past week's assignment. they were just aiite anyway. instead, here are a few i took while waiting for class last week. yep, rain in california in june.


our instructor said today, "now you're all photographers." i don't believe him. i'm just a dabbler who now knows the basics of how to shoot in manual and what a dSLR camera does to produce photos. that a photographer does not make.