at my lunch table

i just started a twitter account a couple weeks ago, and so far, it's serving the purpose for which i meant it: keeping up with world news headlines. at first, it was overwhelming, the amount of things that go on; the constant update and/or correction of facts and figures. and how exactly does one go about getting- what is it?- retweeted?

aha, i see.

still, the news corporations, businesses, entrepreneurs, actors, authors, musicians; etc. that i have decided to follow on twitter have all delighted me in this one way: they all seem to follow each other.

and you're like, "Duh, Justine. Celebrities follow celebrities. Normal people wish celebrities followed them."

be that as it may, it's not just celebrities following celebrities- they are, after all, still normal people just following other normal people (for the record, they only seem so fabulously abnormal because we know them, but we don't know them- at least the strangers we encounter on a daily basis are actually strangers. anyway...); and because they're still just people they follow the people they admire, or are their friends. so when i find that MIKA follows Neil Gaiman and Jamie Cullum, and that Alton Brown follows Jamie Hyneman my first thought is: "Oh, my gosh! We could all sit at the same lunch table, and all get along!"




you ever have that writing prompt presented to you? "If you could have lunch/dinner/tea with any five people, dead or alive (perhaps not yet born) who would they be and why?" well, according to the amount i follow on twitter, i'd have a hard time picking just five, and they're all alive so i don't even have to wait for them to be born or resurrect any of them from the dead.

EXCELLENT!

now i just have to make sure i find the perfect day for all their schedules to coincide... oh, and i can't forget: i also need to find the perfect stationery for the invitations, and the appropriate location-!

IS THAT DOMINIC COOPER TOM HIDDLESTON IS FOLLOWING? oh, wait, duh- they're both involved with 'The Avengers'. right. okay. i forgot. that's about as normal as me following my friends.

okay.

man, i hope one day i get to meet some of these people, even for just a handshake.









edit: 12 November 2013--i just realized all the people i mentioned i followed are all older white males. hmm, well, whatever- we're all human, right? but i suppose that also says i really need some female role models, huh?

From Ideas to Stories

Lately, I've been thinking a lot of ideas. A lot.

A few weeks ago, July 4th actually, I was with friends out in Chelsea, and jotted this down on my iPhone: "I like thinking many ideas, but I don't know that I'd put many of them into practice, or sincerely believe in those thoughts/ideas. I think of too many [ideas] to indiscriminately accept all of them [as Truth]."

So, I've had all these ideas, but I've yet to bring them to light. Mostly because I don't know how to bring them to light. My ideas are incomplete, and the only way to make them complete, or somewhere near completion, I would have to write them down, or speak them aloud. I hate doing that. I hate speaking before I'm really sure of what I mean; what I really believe.

Of what have I been thinking?

For starters, beginning sentences with prepositions is a great grammar-release!

Okay, okay, okay.

My thoughts have generally leaned towards the state of humanity.

"Oh, how perfectly vague."

"I know."

But if I become any more specific I promise you, I will go back to the state of humanity, which I am sure, as we all observe, is in a constant state of flux and discontent. Those who are content are so because they know what it is to be discontent.

Hello, Humanity. I'm glad to greet you like an old friend.

But since I don't want to overthink, or rethink, or drag on for too long, I've decided it best to illustrate any ideas or thoughts I have with stories. I don't know why it took me so long to acknowledge this. Every other author and writer has!

Whatever made me think I was better at writing essays than writing vignettes or extended metaphors?

Of all that I've thought this past month I am confident in that idea: that the best way to portray the 'state of humanity' is to illustrate it. To gather up its many images, smells, tastes, words, and feelings, not into some neat little box and leave it there, but for the neat little box to be opened!

Like Pandora's box! But without all the sickness and sin, and horrible things--they're already in the world. Ooh, we don't need more of that.

I know that we learn from our mistakes both in and out of our control, but that does not make me wish bad times upon even the worst of my enemies, and even then, I have no enemies. I live life as though all were friends: yes, it is denial, and yet confirmation that these friends, like my thoughts, though I entertain them, are no less real, or lost, or hungry, or wishful, than I am.

I may not re-open Pandora's Box, but I'll label it for you.

Phoenixes

My last blog post was depressing, I'll give you that, but from it's depressing ashes I have planted, grown and am now tending to a new experiment! I am finally going to start a youTube channel. Took me long enough! All because of the question: Why not? Yeah. Yeah, why not? If it fails, it fails- then at least I'll know I'm not good with the visual arts and maybe practice to get better at it! 

The topic for my first video will be 'death'. I know, again, depressing, but I promise you it will end happily. Not fairy-tale-happy-ending, but happily. It'll be like the phoenix...like Dumbledore's phoenix, Fawkes. Seriously: I'm totally brushing off the ashes.

My first video won't be a blockbuster.

People may not even watch it, but I don't like being watched anyway. 

I just want to know what it means to communicate through different medias: portraying something like 'death' in a book is very different from portraying 'death' in a movie. Not that I've mastered writing (barely a yellow belt) but can I act it? Can I find something, record it, and have you know it's 'death' without my saying so, without a billboard that reads 'This! This is what Death looks like!' 

Subtle. Subtle.