Most Likely To Forget Her Cap and Gown At Graduation

his morning I was telling a friend of mine that sometimes I would forget my own head if it wasn't attached to my body. Tonight, I was looking through my high school yearbook..Go Dons! I remembered that somehow it was printed in the yearbook that I was most likely to forget my cap and grown at graduation. I remember being so pissed when I opened my yearbook senior year. I don't remember ever getting to vote for these catergories, and I certainly wasn't told that I was receiving this one.

But now, almost 12 years later, I make that statement about myself all the time. It doesn't really bother me, even though I don't exactly agree with it. Its not so much that I forget stuff. Its just that I don't always think we need that much stuff. I learned the definition of the word need early in life, as in, "No, Kara you don't need that dress from Nordstrom. You may want it but that is not the same as needing it." Don't tell my mom, but I was actually listening to her.

More often then not, I have everything I need right at my finger tips. And if I find myself feeling like I need something else, I can usually just look around and find I have more than I could possibly ever need.

Portraits

I'm starting a column for DEEP Magazine. I am thrilled to have my own column and an introductory bio but the head shot is freaking me out. Luckily, I have some very talented friends, one of whom happens to be a photographer. Rebecca Farmer took a ton of photos for me earlier this week. Just this morning she brought over 12 on a CD and I have been shamelessly looking at them all day. Of course, I immediately posted them to my Facebook account, for some reaffirmation and attention. But I keep scrolling through the album, over-analyzing the way my hair falls across my face, whether or not my thigh looks fat, and if I am starting to get crows feet around my eyes.

Its not vanity, I swear. Photos of myself always make me realize that I never actually get to see my own face with my own eyes...logistical challenges of facial geography render this impossible. It still trips me out. As someone who thinks she has a pretty good handle on what type of person I am, I realize that I have no idea what I look like. I know that I am 5'7", ok 5'63/4" tall and that I have short brown hair. My driver's license says I have blue eyes, but sometimes they look green. So when I look a little too long at my reflection, or scroll through my portraits for the fortieth time in one hour, I'm really just thinking, oh that's what I look like.

I Want My MTV, Sometimes

I grew up with MTV. They’re just about a year younger than me. I used to love the Real World, one of the first reality TV shows but people stopped getting real and just started getting drunk. I have to admit that in high school I watched TRL religiously, but that show ended not too long after my college graduation. A combination of my false sense of maturity and a lack of actual videos and shows worth watching greatly reduced my viewing time. To be fair, I don’t watch anywhere near as much TV in general as I used to.

Last night I watched the VMA’s, I hadn’t seen one of the music videos that were nominated. I didn’t really care what attention-whore outfit Lady Gaga was wearing, nor did I think it was trendsetting and original. They gave us the Jersey Shore cast, in a hot tub. Just when I thought there really was nothing left for me on MTV, they gave us Florence and the Machine.

2010 MTV Video Music Awards - More VMA Video

WOW. She is amazing. Her voice is surreal, angelic like Natalie Merchant, with Chrissie Hynde fierceness. She rocked the stage, barefoot in an ethereal Goddess like gown, with her flowing red hair and porcelain skin. She was truly beautiful without shock or scandal, and wowed the crowd with her talent, not T & A or her meat suit. Thank you MTV.

Subconscious

I believe the power of our subconscious is highly underrated, although the subconscious probably prefers it that way, wink wink. This is why, when I clicked my way upon Shrinking Violet Promotions, and their Summer Hiatus Experiments, I fell in love with their blog immediately, well that and they have pictures of shoes.

I tried their most recent experiment, writing down a problem each night before bed for your subconscious to work out while you are sleeping. It has been 3 nights, and I'm seeing results. On their blog, contributors, R.L. LaFevers and Mary Hershey sight examples of problems and struggles within the writing process to let your subconscious work out while you rest but I used the same process for some life issues, although both of those issues seem to be pretty much intertwined for me. Either way, solutions to my questions have been popping up all week like lucky pennies shinning on the sidewalk. I've got a new approach and enthusiasm for tackling some of the same old issues.

ps...I did some more clicking and found that Mary Hershey and I in the same town...I guess the World Wide Web is still a small world after all.

Newest Obsession: Mermaids

Between growing up in a beach town and on a healthy diet of Disney, its hard not to love mermaids. These mythical creatures, also known as sirens have long captured my imagination, and my heart. In Homer's Odyssey, I loved their dark power over sailors. I related to Disney's Ariel, and her longing for another world. And let's not forgot Tom Hanks and Daryl Hannah's grown up mermaid love story, Splash. I'm working on a new story, about a girl who discovers she is a mermaid. There are many subplots, and I am thinking this might turn itself into novel. Along the way, whenever I get stuck, or more likely am just procrastinating, I Google my afternoon away looking up mermaid legend and lore, and lots of images.

The picture I posted today is of a statue in the Copenhagen Harbour honoring Hans Christen Andersen and his story, you know the one Disney cartoonized. There are so many reasons I love this statue, the way she is placed on the rock, looking longingly out to sea, the way her legs are still discernible beneath her flippers--as if she is mid-mermaid-morph. I am half Danish, and also love the personal connection. I hope to see this statue in person one day...maybe on a Danish book tour for my mermaid novel.

Back Roads Baby

This morning I drove from Santa Barbara to Montecito via the back roads. For those of you who don’t know, this route is one of the most beautiful drives in the world, especially in the morning. The sun is rising in the East over an exclusive range of mountains, one of only a hand full of ranges that stretch both north and south and east and west. When it gets over the peak, the sun stretches its golden arms out across fertile farm valleys, sleepy beachside towns, and the blue Pacific Ocean, hugging California with morning light. Ahh, it’s good to be back.

This got me thinking, as one easily does meandering their auto coach through eucalyptus lined lanes, about back roads, route 66 probably the most famous, a novel I started reading in junior high but never finished called Blue Highways, and my Dad who always had a time saving route that never saved much time but offered better view. I caught onto his tactics at an early age. I love back roads. I love going slow. I love the view. I love less traffic—which is why I’m not going to name any of my Santa Barbara roads.

When I was 12 and my parents were going through their divorce my Dad would drive us to school on his days. Every now and then he would drive right past our school and head south. We would take PCH or Highway 1. We’d drive along the ocean. These trips always coincided with a big ocean swell. The waves would splash up over the rocks and on to the road. My Dad would talk story and point out famous surf spots like County Line and Malibu. We’d always stop at the Malibu Inn for a cheeseburger. Now that I’m out of school, my Dad uses airport drop off and picks as an excuse for some back road rambling. The traffic has gotten worse, the surf breaks are more crowded but the stories haven’t changed and sometimes, if your lucky a bit of the Pacific will splash your windshield.

March 4, 1990

(This post is long overdue but I started writing it before the internet was invented so cut me some slack.)

A nine year old girl goes into a packed bookstore. Her 29 year old self stumbles upon the book her mom bought her that day, Zen in the Art of Writing, and appreciates the irony that Ray Bradbury, author of the Martian Chronicles, spoke in the Earthling Bookstore. That nine year old girl didn’t even know what irony meant but she felt it, like an inside joke between her and the universe. It tickled her bones, made the hair on her arms stand up, and put a smile on her face.

This 29 year old has been thinking a lot about that 9 year old lately—in some ways she let her down but it’s not too late, and the day that her mom took her to hear Ray Bradbury speak. She didn’t know who he was then, but reading the book he signed for her 20 years ago she can tell his words sunk in, especially in the way he describes how images sink into his subconscious and resurface in the most mysterious of ways years later. The memory of that day, 20 years ago is seeping out of my imagination right now. Granted I got a little prodding from fate when I found the book on my mom’s shelf.

Holding a piece of that day in my hands, the memories started popping up randomly like shinny pennies laying with Lincoln’s bust up in the street. Sitting on the floor in the old Earthling, next to stacks of books and the smell of them wrapped around me like a blanket, a baby blanket—like one you could buy at Chicken Little, the family run local baby store in the space that used to be the Earthling. A blanket that is still wrapped around me now, a blanket of memories and words as I sit at my computer working on my baby of a story.