Yahoo!

I just deleted my Yahoo! account. My mom received an e-mail she suspected as spam coming from my Yahoo! address, and upon getting word of this, I immediately set to delete it. It only made sense since I never use it anyway. I must have created it the same year as my livejournal (2004) because my first message received was from that year too. I dug through my sent folder since my inbox was brimming with weekly digests from various non-profits, shopping blogs, and general news sources. I excavated the remains of my teenage life, which in retrospect was more typical than any teenager would have thought growing up. You know how that goes.

Deleting my Yahoo! account also included the deletion of my flickr account, something else I never use. There were pictures of Rogue Wave performing at Amoeba Records, pictures uploaded from my cell phone of my grandfather's funeral, pictures of a grammar school Thanksgiving, pictures of a Euro-trip, pictures of last year's stint in the Philippines. All told, they amounted to five flickr pages, not much, and I bet they still exist somewhere in the microscopic annals of some long forgotten data device. Regardless, I am happy to let go of these memories, effectively speaking. This feeling of finality does not occur very often for me, but on this occasion, it feels good to know that I can get past the immobility of sentimentality and move on with a clearer more spam-free life.

Slight Return

November brings beards, a brief break from midterms, and National Novel Writing Month. For the past fifteen days of this month, I've been slowly building up a draft for my novel, The Ultramafic Magazine. It's undeniably Sci-Fi pulp, and the title came from my intent to produce an art-related magazine in Davis that fell through the cracks, so the title is either a) my own memento mori, reminding me to follow through with my personal endeavors lest I die with a life unfulfilled or b) simply an act of reconciliation.

Anyway, today marks the midway point of the month, and I've written twenty thousands words since November 1st. Once a writer submits at least fifty thousand words worth of a first draft of a novel, then that person automatically is considered a winner. The prize is the experience, they say, instead of some kind of tangible trophy. According to Nanowrimo organizers, the second week of November usually marks a dry period of creativity. After the first productive week of writing and a more or less clever plot line, many people, myself included, lost steam. Now, I am in the third week of this writing marathon, and I'm quickly gaining second wind, and though it may be attributable to my generally vacant Mondays, I'm opening up new plot lines and complicating previous ones. (Basically: more planets = more writing fodder, duh!)

P.S. I need a real website, like, right now.

From "Creative Places: A Dean's Welcome" by Peter Salovey

"These and other work environments fostered spontaneity, collegiality, intellectual intensity, and most importantly, the opportunity for the unfettered exchange of insights and ideas, some bizarre and others amazing. The curators of the Centennial Exposition unabashedly declared, 'The creative process is extremely dependent upon the individual's surroundings.' The point is that whatever brilliance we have been able to attain, is in part a function of the environments in which we find ourselves."

Song #2

Kings of Convenience - Misread

On Drawing the St. Cecilia Church

It was another day in San Francisco, so I continued drawing the building-scape of St. Cecilia Church. I'm very fortunate to have such nice images to draw so close to my house. In fact, I'd draw my whole neighborhood if drawing weren't such a conspicuous activity and if there were more benches for me to sit. Usually, drawing buildings calms me. It is comforting to do something that you can admit you're pretty good at. I also appreciate the humility of a drawing; it doesn't beg for your attention. Instead, it's encapsulated on a given sheet of paper, and the responsibility falls on the individual to observe the drawing. I am always fascinated by things that behave this way, though I know that careers are seldom launched by such passivity.

Today, as I drew the church, I came to a realization that can only be described as profound. I hesitate to use such a descriptor as profundity is a fairly subjective experience, but as I drew the power lines, electroliers, and other public works structures in the foreground of my drawing, I could only think of the parallels to the San Bruno fire. I was watching the news several nights ago and learned that a little girl that had perished in the fire last week was the student body president of St. Cecilia. It just so happened that I was also once a student body president of a San Francisco private Catholic grammar school. My parents had also initially tried to get me to attend St. Cecilia School, but I was a number of months too young to be accepted into the upcoming class, a questionable logic that I had falsely attributed to the school's desire to have beefier and stronger athletes against other Catholic schools.

So, as I mentioned earlier, I had been drawing St. Cecilia, and in the foreground was a cacophony of power lines and street poles all managed by, I presume, PG&E, the company responsible for the San Bruno fire. I felt useful, for once, during my one and a half week's worth of a summer vacation, and so I was glad that finally my drawing skillz would be put to use on something worthwhile. I resolved to send a copy to the St. Cecilia principal as soon as I finished it. I even came up with a working title for my drawing, "Neighborhood Imperative". Yeah, it felt pretty good.

But several hours later, I wondered whether the importance of my drawing was indeed as culturally relevant as it seemed. Am I really just exaggerating its value from the lens of a lover of buildings? Is the analogy too personal for anyone else to recognize, let alone appreciate? I still don't know, but I will continue drawing it. I have spent three hours on this drawing so far, and I have maybe a good third of it done. I never know at what point a drawing is finished. I'm still an amateur, and what I have in my mind doesn't translate in execution, but I do hope to send it to St. Cecilia School someday. Maybe they will like it. I don't really know, but either way I really want to finish this drawing.

I think the side window at the top of my living room isn't straight. In fact, I'm sure it is angled ever so slightly within a margin of one or two degrees, and it's making me go crazy.

I heard this on the radio today.

Please excuse the YouTube video. I'd upload an mp3, but I don't know how.