it's been a long time. that anonymous-secret-comment-post scared me a bit, i'll have to admit. i don't know maybe i won't do those anymore.

so i guess the first order of business is to say that i moved! well half-moved. brian and i are now living in a 200 year old schoolhouse on a historic cemetery built on an indian burial ground, in this tiny town about an hour or so from the city. it's so amazing. it's white with chipping paint and lonely porch lights at night and trees everywhere. and deer, i saw four deer there the other day at dusk and everything looked like it had a green photoshop filter over it, like everything was covered in this green shroud. and it gets so dark out there. the other night brian and i were moving stuff in and i sat down on the van and looked up at the sky and there were all these stars. no orange light pollution glow anywhere to be seen. and there's so many trees. and we have a really big front yard. we live at the top of this hill with this long path that goes down to the road, and in the front yard there's a big old tree with a chain hanging down from it that looks like it once had a tire swing hanging from it. maybe we can attach a new one.  and there's plants all around the perimeter of the building that are from the last person who lived there. she liked to plant flowers i guess so maybe they'll grow again. and if not, maybe i'll make a garden. i don't think i'd be very good at it but i guess i could try.

and when we look out our windows we look right out over the cemetery, which only has really old broken stone graves and one from a kid who died fighting in the civil war when he was sixteen. it has one bedroom and a living room and a kitchen and a bathroom of course, plus a whole basement to hide in if there's ever any tornadoes. brian is going to use the living room for his recording studio and he says i can decorate the bedroom any way i want. and the kitchen has checkerboard white and black floors and the ceilings are really high and the light that comes in is really nice and it's so cold, even without air conditioning or anything, not like my apartment in logan square, which was 90 degrees in the dead of winter.  it's pretty much the exact opposite of that place. actually i'm there right now, getting easily distracted from packing.  i suppose the city was okay for awhile but i think i'll be really happy in this new place.  the town is so tiny and pretty blue collar. it feels so much better out there.  driving fast down roads through tunnels of trees and the wet rush of the leaves passing through the air when you go by with the windows down. and it smells so good. like a campfire in the distance and like the molecules of whatever makes up air are farther apart from each other, like open pores of oxygen, unlike the city where the air feels so heavy and hot and hard to breathe and tight when it goes down to your lungs. and i live like five miles from my mom now, which is nice because i can see her more often. i'm worried she gets lonely even though i don't think she does, i still worry about it, especially since my grandma died and all. and we're less than a mile from the train into the city, just in case i ever want to go wander around downtown or go to a museum.  it's pretty much the most perfect place in the entire world and if you couldn't tell i'm real real excited about it and so genuinely happy about this situation it's kindof unbelievable. i suppose those of you who know me will think i'll get sick of it and start feeling displaced and complaining eventually, and maybe you're right, but i don't really care right now. i am so excited to go live in a pretty schoolhouse in the forest and be a hermit for awhile. lately i've been feeling like i have to impress everyone, and that everyone i know is disappointed in me, even though i have no real reason to think that. just maybe that i am selfish and typical and boring and everyone has grown very tired of me and my antics. i'm just going to learn to ride a bicycle and ride it all over the town every day. and then come home and read a book and drink mint juleps on the porch with my boyfriend. in rocking chairs. with mosquitos all over.

so with moving comes a new job, which i just got today. i'll be working at ups store, that wraps and sends packages and things. it will be nice i think, a nice and quiet job for the most part. i hope i do well.  this means i'll be leaving the dog hotel which i'm really sad about. i'll miss the dogs a lot and there were some nice people there for the most part. i've been thinking i'll try to work just sundays there for awhile, take the train in. but i'll probably get sick of that real quick and end up quitting for good. i don't know, i don't like the sound of that, but it's probably what will happen.  and also with moving comes the potential of going back to college, though it would be community college this time, which is just fine with me. i'm actually really excited and i hope i can go.  it probably sounds weird, but the thought of doing homework is pretty thrilling to me right now.  and learning about things and writing papers and being in classes and maybe making some friends, but i don't know about that last one there.  but i think overall life is working out and going in fantastic directions. i am very hopeful and excited.  especially about brian.  i feel silly writing love things here for all to read, but i hope i can say without jinxing anything that this relationship is looking promising and good, in the purest, truest sense of the word. not beautiful because it's doomed or anything. just beautiful for the sake of being beautiful, and amazing, and he's like my best friend, for real, and wow i seem to get stupider and simpler when i start talking about that so maybe i just ought to stop and end with this is the kind of love that's going to last, i think, i'm pretty sure, i know.

anyway, when i get a chance i'll take some pictures of the house and post them. we don't have internet there right now. but i can't wait until i get a spare minute to take lots of pictures.

he said this place is his dream place, and it's mine too, and i really like that he thinks that way.  so many people we talk to can't understand why we want to get away from the city, why we didn't find it exciting to live there. i only lived there for two years, but maybe i know enough about it from that and i've figured out that it's not the place for me. it's weird that when i was sixteen all i wanted was to live in the city. i'm slightly afraid that i don't like living anywhere, and all i really like doing is escaping, or having something to escape from. but i have to keep trying to find the perfect fit, and i'm pretty sure this is the closest thing to it.  and i know sometimes i will feel trapped or isolated, i acknowledge that, but i will always try to keep in mind that my heart just gets fluttery sometimes, my muscles get twitchy and anxious to run, and just to keep running won't ever get me anywhere except really out of breath. but that's such a good feeling sometimes.

this is still my favorite thing.


Comment anything that you want, and post it anonymously. Anything. A story, a secret, a confession, a thought, a fear, a love, an opinion -- anything. Be sure to post anonymously and honestly. Post twice if you'd like. Then, put this in your LJ to see what your friends (and perhaps others who you don't even realize read your LJ) have to say.

i have a habit of wanting to rescue people from their boring wretched wasted lives and thrust them into enlightened forms of existence, sparkling and drenched in sun glares, but i really should stop assuming people want or need to be saved in the first place.  i seem to think that no one has thought to search for secrets in a forest, or found redemption in the windows rolled down, hands making tidal waves of air currents and weather patterns rushing by.  it’s like i want to think nobody knows about the brilliance found in barren beaches in winter, or what it’s like to lose your heart and eyesight in the blur of carnival lights.  it’s like i want to be this magic girl who takes you back to playgrounds at night and makes you stand on the edges of bridges overlooking dried up canals and expects you to feel something, but maybe you don’t feel anything, and that’s not your fault, but mine, for wanting you to so badly.  i want to teach everyone to waltz in dusty light in dim basements, to come out of comas only because of the color of the sky, to run through corn fields and to know as their own the wilderness in the hearts of horses.  but not everyone is banking on a wish, or walking on a dream, waiting for a line to be cast in their direction, not everyone writes messages on their hands or picks up strings off the ground, wears them around their wrists for secret meanings.  not every man who doesn’t wear his wedding ring has a reason not to do so, sometimes it’s just so your fingers don’t break.

i went to missouri for a weekend, to visit a friend at his college. it's probably a sign that there's something off about me when i'd rather be in a tiny town in the middle of nowhere than a big exciting city, that i find old farmhouses and sonic drive-in restaurants more exciting than places to go shopping or concert venues.  i don't know what it is, but i'd rather walk around a town with small buildings it takes 20 minutes to see than be surrounded by giant skyscrapers and streetlamps instead of trees.  i'm starting to realize i don't know why i'm here anymore and my legs feel stiff and like a breaking point, like horse legs about to go through opening gates, like i could jump at any gunshot and run.  friday night when it was very late we drove out down a gravel road, and it's so dark out there, i'm not used to seeing such blackness, just orange glowy skies from light pollution, which feels so fuzzy and warm, not thick, and black like oil or spilled ink bleeding over fences and horizon lines.  at the end of the road there was a thing they call the train bridge, where you stand on the railing of a rickety wooden bridge and lean over and wait for trains to come and speed underneath and the air current they bring pulls on the edges of your body and you feel like you're getting sucked over the edge, down onto the tracks below.  that's a good feeling.  we walked around a lot, and once in a giant rain storm, and got completely soaked, and watched movies and i had a really great time and i would rather be in a country town some more, instead of this big dumb old city.  it was an eight hour bus ride each way, and on the way back i ended up talking to a really nice stranger the whole time about spirits that govern time and chaos magic and pointed out every empty farmhouse out the window on the way.  unfortunately i left my camera battery at home.  but i want to get out again.  i have finally come into some money and all i want to do is go places.  i could sit on transporation vehicles for hours and hours and i wouldn't care one bit.  i'd stare out a bus window over at a computer screen any day.

this probably sounds conceited and bad, and maybe i'm the only one who notices things like this, but i think it's weird when an ex boyfriend ends up dating a girl who is like another version of you immediately following your breakup, like cari 2.0.  it's happened a handfull of times for me.  like, a girl who appears and acts very similar to you.  i don't get it and it sortof makes me uncomfortable and i can't exactly grasp why yet.  after breakups, i tend to go for radical opposites.  or at least in my mind they are, maybe to everyone else they all look exactly the same.  anyway, the art show went great, i think over a thousand people came, both days total.  it wasn't just for me, of course, and i was really nervous and mostly just sat in a chair by my art most of the time, as opposed to mingling and talking with viewers, but it was really nice and i hope i get to have another show some day.  i haven't taken any pictures since the ones for the show and i really need to get out and do so soon. 

i wish i had a car and could drive more than anything.  but i think it's probably good i don't, sometimes i'm pretty sure it's the only thing that keeps me from bolting.  i am so sick of the city.  brian says that after he finishes these two albums he's working on, we can take a trip somewhere together, and i can't wait, i really can't.  i wish i was excited about summer, but i don't even notice that it's going to be happening soon.  it's different when you're not in school and you can't feel the oncoming of an ending.  just work and boring things as far ahead as you can think.  i wish i had a lot of friends, too, that's another thing i wish for.  lots of people i could spend a lot of time with, but it feels like all my friendships are flawed and everyone has huge amounts of resentment for me built up inside of them.  i don't know how i fuck everything up.  maybe it's in being afraid.  but it's probably just that most people i meet think nothing of me.  i have to admit i am sortof afraid of moving out to des plaines (or another suburb) with brian in august.  i am so afraid of being isolated again, like the summer of 2007 when all those strange events occurred and i became bent on survival and knee-jerk movements and nothing else.  moving out to a tiny town where i know no one.  at least in the city i know people and i have those options.  it's not like i'll be that far away, but i don't want to hurt brian like i did andy, i don't want my life to become a pattern of summers that repeat themselves every two years, i don't want to make the same mistakes over and over again.  i don't want to get lost in myself, i am just very very afraid of allowing myself to be tied down again, even if it is to the boy of my dreams and even if i'm more prepared for it now than i was then.  i just don't want that to happen again and while i am so excited about looking for apartments in pretty neighborhoods, it's this thought that's at the back of my mind that's warning me against it, that i should stay in the city longer and be a regular young person with fleeting relationships and searching for meaning in the backs of used bookstores.  that i'm not ready to grow up, but i think i am and i can handle it now.  still, i'm just afraid.

this is the best email spam message i have ever received:

in this entry, there is going to be a lot of complaining and wanting to crawl into a fort made of big soft blankets and dim lamps and hide and only be friends with people who live in books from now on.

it's annoying how things can only be really great for a little while and then all the bad things have to happen all at the exact same time.  my grandma has maybe 24 hours left, i'm sleeping in a cement room and i wish i was better at poetically describing things because this is one of those things that should be poetically described but all i want to do is be angry at everyone for every bad thing that has ever happened in the history of the world. and i don't want to die, because i don't want to drown, when you watch how people get smaller and shrink under hospital blankets, how skinny old people's legs look, you know it has to be like drowning, or like sleep paralysis, when you're stuck because your mind's part awake but your body won't move and you're suffocating and you're trying so hard to speak, to scream for help but you can't because you're suffocating, that's why, because your arm or the pillow is over your mouth or something. dying is probably like that, dying people breathe like their mouths are full of water. 

and i don't think i'll be going back to college, again, this year, of course because of lack of funds and the fafsa that doesn't make any sense and my parents who are simultaneously stupid and selfish with money. i don't want to work a shit job at minimum wage forever but with the way things are looking i probably won't be able to do that, even. i want to be a normal kid who goes to a nice university and has nice friends and does homework and writes extensive papers on obscure movements in literature and doesn't have to worry about big world things for at least another year or two or three.  i don't want to live in bad neighborhoods anymore, i want a back yard.

i have my first ever art show on the 17th and 18th of april and i am really really nervous. it is going to be in rockford in this giant old brewery, and the idea is that four photographers (one being me) from rockford who like to take pictures of abandoned things are going to take pictures of the place and that's going to be the show, our four different takes on the location.  i'm the youngest and the only girl.  we also get to show our other pictures not of the building. and maybe sell things. and i'm really nervous. i wish people were going to be there with me, but brian is a very busy person with lots of work to do and all my other friends have parties to go to and stuff.  maybe my parents will come for a little bit.  it's okay though, most people i know live in chicago or faraway places anyway.  i'm just really nervous though. but i think the only people who actually like my art are people who live faraway and don't know me personally, and all the people who live close and know me personally don't like my art because they don't really like me for some reason or another, or something about me bothers them, so the people who know me don't want to come and the people who don't know me do.  i don't know what it is, but i think a lot of people i know in actual life don't care for me too much, not even my family or anything.  but it's okay. i'm just really happy i get to have a show.

escapism is starting to creep all over me again.  i'm spring-loaded, i want to jump from tree branches.

this is what i look like:


should i dye my hair goldish blonde + strawberry blonde/reddish highlights or dark brown?
or something else?

i want to be a driver of things at night, i want to feel the memories of the road as they ache down my spine and the wheels creak beneath the balls of my feet, i want to know what it’s like to be a beacon of light, a symbol shot through the night, a hope contained in two glimmers whining across an asphalt road, a lap steeel guitar.  i have known love i have known it to sleep in my hands and fall from my grasp i have known no other things.  i will swim in a lake, i will know the world and to count the castles in the air, i will live for the gold in your hair, in the sun, as it shines on your face and on the outlines of mine.

i went to a party and i didn’t feel bad, i left early and i have work in the morning but maybe i will make soup or captain crunch cereal.  my boss lifted my skirt at work and it was funny.  my ex boyfriend keeps a knife in his boot, he clasped it in his back pocket and opened the blade when he saw the man i left him for, at the bank, in a small town where i used to live.  i will not be afraid.  my scarf is red and my lips are chapped and i will fall asleep in the passenger seat of the car of every boy i have loved, i will close my eyes and my head will be cold against the window pane, the black sky reflection will blanket me in down feather star lights.  i am in love with a boy and i couldn’t be happier.  i will never be more beautiful than i was at my greatest tragic moment, blissed and poetic, a girl in a gingham dress with my hands above my head, around your neck, my tongue between your lips.


(i'm drunk, sorry.)

i want to remember the morning when brian and i were waking up in bed and the first thing he said was, "we should get married."

i also want to remember the morning when brian and i were waking up and i was wrapped up in the sheets and the first thing he said was calling me pet names that were actually taco bell menu items, and he called me his "little seven layer burrito" and then continued to name each of the seven layers: epidermis, dermis, subcutaneous, and then i don't remember what else, but there were seven. 

i'm really tired of being friends with people who aren't happy for me when i am happy. i'm tired of thinking that people i am close to secretly hate me when things are going well in my life. i have a nice boyfriend and have achieved moderate success in various photography-related things, but i feel bad about it. i realized that's not good at all. i feel like a total jerk for nice things happening to me, or at least i feel like a jerk for being happy that these nice things are happening to me. it might all just be in my head, but it seems like friends and former loves are starting to feel resentful towards me for ..i don't know, shit finally working out for once? i don't know, this is awkward to try to put into words, but all i'm saying is i think it's really fucked up when you can't be happy for someone you care or once cared about finally settling into some level of content in their life. i hate that i feel like i'm bragging when i talk about things that happen to me that i think are total miracles, that i'm truly and genuinely excited about because things were complete shit, there, for awhile --2007 to 2008 was one of the worst years of my life and i'm so incredibly grateful for all of the wonderful things that have happened and turned my life around. not everyone has to be a miserable teenager for the rest of their lives. sure i'll always be restless and anxious to move onto something bigger and better than ever, but i'm happy, and i like being happy, and i don't like feeling bad about liking being happy. i don't know what i'm doing wrong, that's making (or at least making it seem this way) a lot of people in my life act strange and distant to me, but i wish it would stop. a lot of the time i just want to move to a new city and start over and make new friends who don't want me to be a miserable wreck forever, people who don't find solace in some sick sort of sympathy, i don't know, people who don't make me feel bad when wonderful things happen.

i'm not saying everyone i know is like this. there are a whole lot of people who are really great and i don't want to move on from them. it's weird, i think i've grown up insanely fast in these past few months. but i still feel bad for feeling good about myself. is that fucked up? i don't know. but don't worry everyone, i still scratch massive wounds into my skin and throw up my dinner afterwards. i still hate myself a lot and it's okay.

anyway sorry, i'm drinking a little bit right now, which results in being a bit freer with my words. my words are so clumsy these days. i still want to write a story for once in my life. though i am really excited to begin an awesome project which i am going to keep a sortof secret until we have it figured out more. it's going to be a sort of photo-fairy-tale! also there's these two stories that just keep following me around everywhere and just for sanity's sake i should pound them out of my head by writing them down, but i still feel so shaky with words. i don't know how i ever was a creative writing student.

brian and i are house-sitting for a friend of his family right now, in this suburb called palatine. or inverness, a suburb of the suburb called palatine. it's a house the family built themselves and there's a lot of grass and trees around, and a park nearby. we are watching their very old dog named lexie. or lexi, or lexy, or something. she is a german shepherd and collie mix and she is very nice, and i like staying in this big house not in the city, i don't really want to go back to my apartment. i like my apartment, but, you know. being somewhere new is just horribly entertaining for me even if i'm not actually doing anything. i kindof want to draw a picture. maybe i'll do that. i'm scared.

wow i don't know, writing all of that made me feel angry and energetic. i don't like feeling so full of power.

anyway my external hard drive crashed recently, as i may have mentioned before, so i lost all of my mixes, which was very devastating. i am in the process of re-compiling them all, so until then, here are a few songs i like that i hope you will like too.
( songs, lyrics, informaton under the cut.. )

okay this makes me too angry for words, so i apologize if this is a long, endless, blubbery rant, but i need to say it, i need to say it now, for myself and for many other photographers on flickr and elsewhere. ohmygosh, i can barely even type, i'm tripping over my own fingers.

i've noticed that a lot of my flickr images are being used to make user icons and other various graphics by numerous livejournal users. this i do not mind! and actually it makes me very happy that my work is being noticed and liked by a lot of people. don't get me wrong, i love that. but what i am very furious about is the ridiculous amount of "icon makers" who use my work (and many other photographers' work) and do not give any credit. my name is not listed near the graphic, a link to my flickr is not listed near the graphic, not even a measly link to my livejournal. a lot of the time it's not even listed in their "resources page" (which i have an issue with, which i will address in a moment). so here are a few things i'd like to stress:

flickr is not a stock photography website. a website like getty images is a stock photography website, where photographers agree to license their pictures for commercial use, thus agreeing that credit need not be given near the picture. flickr is a personal photography site intended for use similar to that of a portfolio. it is not an image catalogue. the artists' work is protected under copyright, it is not free for distribution, and you must obtain permission from the artist before you use the work for anything --even if it is something as minor as a livejournal icon. most people don't mind if their work is used for other purposes --so long as it is not altered and credit is given. credit usually refers to the artist's full name or alias and a link to their personal site of choice. this means a direct link to their own, specific flickr page--NOT sites such as "weheartit," "tumblr," "ffffound," or even the flickr main page.

for those of you who don't know, the process of an icon maker is usually as follows: the maker finds pictures, saves them, resizes and crops them, then posts them in batches on their livejournal. they often add tags such as "fashion" or "stock" or "photography" to describe the icons and facilitate easy searching through previous batches of icons. then, other livejournal users are asked to comment with the corresponding number(s) of the icon(s) or graphic(s) they are using --and then to give credit to the icon maker. but the icon maker is not giving credit to the artist of the original picture. icon makers are asking for credit, but rarely do they actually give it. so heads up, icon makers: you're not the artist, you don't deserve the credit --all you are doing is resizing and cropping an image. nothing more. personally, i'm fine with you asking users to credit and link to you when using one of your images --as long as you ask them to do the same for me. i fully expect that when someone uses an icon, there will be two names in the keywords: the icon maker (if you must) and the artist. if you want credit, you'd best be giving it, too.

and in my personal opinion, a "resources page" does not equal credit. a resources page is a long list of links to websites the icon maker has found images on --it's not specific enough. i expect that the artist's name and a link to their website will be located on the same page, right next to the images, every single time the artists' images are used. i'm sorry, but i don't think that in order to find the original source, you should have to find the resources page, then go to the icon maker's weheartit, etc. account to rummage through a million images to find the one they are looking for, and then finally find the link to the artist's personal page. that's vague and trickled down and completely unfair.

and once again, "weheartit," "tumblr, "ffffound," and other image-cataloguing sites are not the artist's page. i have a huge problem with websites like the aforementioned because they do not properly credit, either. users can simply just add any old picture they find on the internet to their list of favorites, and then the image is circulated throughout other users on the website, and the actual creator of the image is treated as irrelevant. a lot of icon makers think that because an image becomes somewhat "anonymous" via websites such as these, that they do not have the responsibility to find out who the creator of the image is, and thus do not credit them. these websites are not artists. they did not create these images. they do not deserve credit. art comes from people, not from search engines.

so please, if you have used any of my pictures to create an icon or graphic, please please please credit me. it's so important to me, because in this day and age, an artist has to be so desperate and try so hard to keep their name attached to their work. my photography is the most important thing in the world to me, and i am pursuing it as a serious venture --one day (or at least i hope so) my art won't just be pictures floating around on the internet --it will be real, legit artwork, and maybe someday if i'm ever big and famous and people will be able to recognize my work by just looking at it, then i won't be such a nagging whiny bitch about this. it's just that i want to pursue a future as a professional photographer, and i'm doing everything i can to make sure that the opportunity isn't pulled out from under me via senseless people on the internet who don't give a shit about respecting art and artists. i know it's impossible for me to find and contact every single person who has ever used my pictures for something and not given me credit, but i am going to try my best to find those i can --and if any of you happen to notice my art out there in the big wide internet, without credit, please let me know. i would be so grateful, i really would.

(note: i'm sure it goes without saying that this does not apply in even the least bit to all of the icon makers out there who have asked and used my work with my permission, and given credit. i am so so so so incredibly appreciative of you and the respect you have for the art and the artists. you are truly wonderful and rare creatures in a sea of mindless oafs.)

please join and support this amazing community, protect flickr, which is a movement to uphold the things i discussed. i am so happy it exists and i am so glad i'm not the only one who cares about this.

also, there is a very popular icon community called photocons which is a place where various icon makers post their icons, often made of what they refer to as "stock" photography --and i'm amazed that every single post i've looked at does not credit any of the artists! i'm thinking of perhaps writing a message to send to the maintainer of the community, to request that in order to post in the community, it is required that the icon maker credit the artist in the post. what do you guys think? would any of you be behind me in that? it probably wouldn't make much of a difference if it was just me, but maybe if other people whose art was used were involved, as well, the maintainer would realize it's an important issue. maybe i should talk to the creators of protect_flickr about it. i don't know. i'm in such a fury right now, my mind is racing and i'm eating too many gummy bears.