gorilla art
"michael had a dog named apple, with whom he loved to play chase.
he executed the painting from memory using
black and white pigments, the color of apple's coat,
although he had a large selection of colors to choose from."

michael and koko are two gorillas who were taught to
sign by penny patterson. they all lived in the santa cruz mountains.
michael was able to describe the memory of watching
his mother being killed by poachers.

afternoon dissections
we sat at the lab table each with our individual birds.

marticella had a heron, ak had a finch.

i had a common loon.

marticella: i feel like a fucking freak sometimes

*as she reaches inside her bird and pulls out a chain

of internal organs*

aq: the other day, a duck splashed all over my face.

i wanted to cry.

me: look at all this sand coming out of this bird.

it makes me want to go to the beach.

marticella: once i dissected some kind of unknown feline.

it just looked like a ball of meat.

i couldn't stop thinking about tacos.

aq: this finch is so pretty! i don't want to cut it up.

aww look how cute it is!

*as he cuddles with the bird and rocks it back and forth*

then marticella found the heron's testicles and cut one open.

"these are like earplugs! the texture and everything."

aq shrieked in terror because a maggot rolled out of his bird.

so foooolish.
so foolish.

no one else was as ecstatic to hear how
i went to peking man's site at zhoukoudian
or that i saw the archaefructus fossil
at the beijing natural history museum
over the summer, except her.

A. zihlman, teach me everything you know.

i dragged a box of those cow femurs into the anatomy freezer today.
i almost locked myself inside
(with the human cadavers).

the nude model never showed up that day,
so paul our drawing teacher was the [clothed] model.

i charcoaled him playing his fiddle.
the melody echoed across the studio.

my biggest and only regret is probably
quitting playing the violin :-|

i toasted a tortilla.
it burned.
mary and i played frisbee.
we took bites.

these are my morse code crackin'
tank driving uncles.

let them eat cake.
tonight, i baked a cake from scratch.
i vow to never use betty crocker/pillsbury doh-boi mixes again!

100% slug.
on my way to class, i saw this little creature.
i put down my books and backpack,
crouched on the floor and began to photograph him.
i pet him & he wiggled his eyes.

a guy walks by and this is the conversation we had:

guy: WOAH. is that a banana slug?
me: yes it is! are you a freshman?
guy: yeah. are you?
me: no. i think you need to lick it. it's tradition to lick your first one.
guy: ooooh, okay:

"Let everything happen to you
Beauty and terror
Just keep going
No feeling is final"

mud angels.

osmanthus.

DALI: 大理everything is made from rice in the south:
rice noodles, rice cakes, rice desserts, rice in pineapples,
rice wrapped in banana leaves, etc.

from the corner of my eye, i noticed
strange shadows being made on the wall.
this infestation reminds me of the yellow butterflies
(100 years).

i get to officially meet the adrienne zihlman in her lab on monday.

this is such an honor. i can't get over it.

"don't doubt yourself. just throw yourself into it"
paul, my drawing teacher, told me today.

this should apply to all aspects of one's life.

indigenous knowledge.

wanderlust.
(not all who wander are lost).

these are so interesting to look at now
when you are 6,000 miles away from the place.

my life is filled with dead animals.

i washed huge cow femurs in the lab sink today.
(almost threw up)

i noticed several [human] body shaped bags
in the anatomy freezer.
(....)

i dissected a little yellow finch.
you make one clean cut down it's belly,
and then slice off all the skin & feathers.
goal=protect/extract all bones.

now i'm working on a 10 pg research paper on the bushmeat trade:
ECONOMIC COMMODITY OR ENVIRONMENTAL CRISIS?

boo! from downtown santa cruz.

i am very mesmerized.

"I am convinced that the future is lost somewhere
in the dumps of the non-historical past"
-r. smithson.

it occurred to me yesterday that

my parents could have taken me to
his spiral jetty when i got born,
since it's near the hospital and all.

i will go there someday.
as pilgrimage of some sort,

for V and me.

oh crunch.
"what's a hoppa?"
"you're a hoppa."
when you take foreign exchange students from j-pan around town
you are expected to explain these things to them :-)

"hi. bye"- K.

Dali, 1382.

Lijiang, view from hotel parking lot.

two nights ago, may and i saw a girl shaped cloud.
"those are her arms, her legs, her head"
she was falling through the sky.
but she wasn't scared.
a free, drifting,
gentle,
happy,
desce
nt.

what is it like to fall like this.
looming over the water,
the stars,
the air.
float
ing.
un
afr
ai
d.

taking turns cuddling a rocking horse.

*neigh neigh*

"ideas cannot be owned. they belong to whoever understands them"
-S. LeWitt.

"a place where machines are idle and the sun has turned to glass"

be brave. be honest. be fierce.
be you.

happy birthday navid!

my grandmother still sings songs about him.
he is the red sun.

i didn't really understand before.
but i guess he did give people who had nothing,
something.
(hope).

she had butterflies perched on her eyelids.

people in other countries have

better holidays than we do.

according to rosilind krauss'
diagram on the expanded field of sculpture,

this garden, created during a phone call with ellen,
would belong in the category of a marked site.

eyes for the sun.

today i got to work in the anatomy lab for the first time.
i met a boy who is the combination of
cillian murphy(<3) & prince charming from shrek.
we dissected a female eastern gray fox squirrel.

"once i pulled a bird's face off" -harry.

behold! last year's bed was cozier, but
this will do..for now.

we sketched from a live nude model today.
she had piercings everywhere, a lotus tattoo,
and looked angry the entire time.
tracy was her name.

i watched hundreds of tiny wings
flutter upwards towards the sky.
it was golden, silent, and magical.

since i was late to class anyways,
i stood there and watched.

moths' wings.

"fyi ... if the thesis kills me i want
my skeleton to be used for teaching...."
-c. juarez.

water, unleash your boiling capacity
upon thy pasta.

mops and company.

mops has this weird fat smirk.
i just laughed as i imagined it on his face.
well back to this paper i go...

i've become obsessed with cooking.
to celebrate something fishy
(reading the longest article about salmon hatchery controversy
for my DUELING SCIENTISTS paper)
i made myself the ultimate feast(again):
lamb, brussel sprouts, potatoes, and
some bread.

i feel somewhat uncivilized
gnawing on this lamb rib.
but it.
is.
so.
good.

"I urge you to please notice when you are happy,
and exclaim or murmur or think at some point,
'If this isn't nice, I don't know what is.'"
-k v.

thursdays are hectic.

(9 hours of class & bunny bones)

i came back from class at 10:00pm
& felt the need to bake s0o0ogar cookies (from scratch!!)
there's no need for lofthouse, when you've got this!
i made brianna a bear(since she is obsessed with them).
she screamed when i presented it to her.

i've been sorting out bunny bones,
arranging them into piles,
and labeling(with india ink)
the catalog #060321/07 as tiny as i can
on every single bone.
then i will reconstruct this creature
with string and glue.
and photograph the result.

"nuclear winter, greenhouse summer,
slashed-and burned biodiversity,

kuwait oil fires, the meltdown of
the chernobyl nuclear plant,
wildfires in manchuria, borneo,
and suburban california..."

May, regarding her self-portrait:
"I don't look like that!...at least i hope not"

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goddamn electric bill.
mops' master showed this to me.
i never tire the tune.
it makes me feel cheerful/dreamy/calm/sleepy.

me sculpt til early morn.
it is alive now.

i wonder what it was like
being ~24 inches tall.

at least i'm taller than my grandma now.

hey, it's 10:10 pm on 10/10/10!

~*~*~*
i realized this 1.5 hours ago,
and i told myself i will finish this article
(The Futility of Reason: Incommensurable Differences
Between Sustainability Narratives in the Aftermath
of the 2003 San Diego Cedar Fire).

but time won
(as always)
& a conclusion paragraph still needs to be read.

here is a cool video game room at the NAMOC:

i was distracted by form>function
to consider the practicality of single earrings.
but they can be turned into
useful things...
or just sit in a jewelry box and contribute to aesthetics.

"here I am, a rabbit hearted girl
frozen in the headlights"

a roll of plaster.
a loop of wire.
a bulb of light.
somehow.

he said hello, sang songs,
and screamed when you walked away.

bring your own sunshine.

i woke up & told myself
"today is going to be a great day".
And it has been a great day.
(so, you should always tell yourself that
first thing in the morning)

i've never had anyone of authoritative figure status
look at my drawings, so i was trembling when paul
called my name for him to examine my sketchbook.
he didn't say anything for a while. i felt lightheaded.
but i was so pleased and happy with what he said after that silence.
those ~18 hours on assignment no.1 proved themselves worthy.
"that rocking horse is looking a bit hairy"
"ooh..those are shadows"

my good mood -->cooking a glorious lunch:
got an A on my first environmental anthropology paper!

& had my first unofficial day
at the physical anthropology/archaeology lab
for my independent study.
there are some prettyyyy interesting things
in the osteology lab, such as a tub of
beetles feasting on a dead wolf eel.

then yesterday, i made the ULTIMATE THRIFTED find
($3) all thriftwhores crave:

now i will cook myself a glorious dinner
and go to class @ 8:00!