I remember having Krazy Glue on my fingers for years. I remember that I never left the house without wearing something I'd made. I remember that the loose wire ends always snagged my hair and pulled it out of my pigtails. I remember the college counselor at my high school being frustrated because she couldn't get me to talk about anything but my art projects. I remember the explosive ideas and the heart-soaring feeling of walking around with a brand-new creation. I remember how the one thing I could never make was a way to keep everything organized.
I remember the things that didn't work, and how there were more and more of them until nothing worked at all. I just found that black necklace with the hex nuts and knots, and I remember finishing it and feeling like I'd lost something. I found a bracelet made of candy-striped capacitors and I remember making it for my friend Tamar. I remember her asking if I could make her something else instead, because that one was kind of ugly. I don't remember whether I ever told her how much that sucked.
I remember sitting at my desk under the window listening to Murmur and making foil balls out of copper foil. The corners cut my fingers to hell, but by the next day it didn't matter because they were covered in glue again. I remember the puddles of slowly-drying resin on the back patio, the smell of metal, the shoes covered in buttons, and the weight of a bag of 500 spiky washers. And the grey top hat.
I don't have the clothes anymore, and sometimes I think I don't have the brain anymore either. But I've taken a bunch of the jewelry out of its bag in the closet and pawed through to see what's still intact. I'm wearing guitar-string ends on my right wrist, resistors on my left, fractured window glass around my neck and one of those damn blue wire spirals on my thumb. It feels familiar. The necklace is itchy and the bracelets are too heavy, and when I look in the mirror it looks weird to see cargo pants and a sensible, sporty green tank top instead of that godawful acid-print dress and the yellow paisley tights.
What, you may be asking, the hell is Dianna talking about? I don't know. Once upon a time, I was a giggling 15-year-old mad scientist working with pliers and string instead of scalpels and sutures. I woke up in the morning and was greeted with thoughts like, Wear every watch you own to school, and Zip-tie chains are the bangles of tomorrow. I was high on my own synaptic fluids because I believed that my ideas were genius and the world could only watch me admiringly as I worked my magic upon everything in my path.
I miss it. I'm not sure what changed. I do know that just now when Jacob wandered out into the kitchen where my old jewelry was all spread around, and came back and told me how great he thought it was, I felt like he was complimenting someone else. I don't even know what to say here except that somewhere in the process of growing up, I think I lost the personality I used to respect in myself. Maybe not lost. Maybe just... misplaced.
I'd like it back.
Posted by dianna at April 26, 2004 12:15 AMMuse-like, your post has infused me with the desire to create, to remember, and, most immediately, to completely and utterly copy your post idea. Thanks for all of the above.
Posted by: Erik at April 26, 2004 07:36 AMwell now I know what to get you for your birthday: ground glass. I knew there was a reason I'd been putting off taking out the recycling.
doesn't matter about the end result. just do it and have fun. is what i tell myself night after night as i stare at a blank word document and write nothing.
Posted by: didofoot at April 26, 2004 11:49 AMI dunno dude, everybody changes, but I don't think you've lost or misplaced anything. In all fairness, we haven't spent any extensive amount of time together in a good while, but it seems to me that you've just refocused. When we ran into one another online, chatted, caught up a bit, and started bombarding one another's online journals with comments, it very quickly occurred to me that your vegetable production efforts were decidedly mad-scientist like (at least in the modern era of supermarkets and chemical agriculture). I naturally assumed that it was simply another manifestation of some of the same traits that motivated you to create jewelry from calculator innards. To a lesser degree I figured that body modification was another manifestation of the same traits, although I admittedly have never and probably will never understand. (No value judgment intended, I feel the same way about classical music; if you like it, good for you, I just don't get it.)
I would further claim that while your art in high school was big part of your image, that it was far from what defined you. And while I find myself unable to put into words exactly what did define you, I think of certain intangibles that I still see, despite only having contact with you thought text-based, online means. You're still a smartass, an independent thinker, and you still seem to avoid the status quo like the plague. And I would bet at least a small amount of money (bear with me, I don't have that much of it) that you still do so with flair and style, and immediately lower those who look down on you for it to "you shall be but a simple peon once I am ruler of the world" status.
And hey, if I'm completely off, I haven't seen you in at least a few years, so cut me some freakin' slack, alright?
Posted by: Chris at April 26, 2004 02:36 PMChris, your response to this post is not entirely dissimilar to Jacob's, and it prompts to say that I'm not quite sure we're interpreting my nostalgia the same way. Let me try to clarify.
My saying I feel like I've lost something may be more dramatic than accurate. In fact, it's definitely more dramatic than accurate, but if I can self-indulge anywhere, a blog is the place for it. Anyway, I'm not sure I've lost something. I do, however, feel that I'm not quite satisfied with what I'm doing now... the part of me that drove me to ever-greater heights of sartorial absurdity in high school isn't totally appeased by gardening and tattoos. I feel the need to find something else that's creative and personal into which I can fling myself headlong.
Applications currently being accepted. But if you say underwater basket-weaving I'm going to flick you on the ear. If I have to travel cross-country to do so, the flicking will be all the sweeter.
Posted by: Dianna at April 26, 2004 03:48 PMWell it's okay, were I to propose such a thing, I would then coming in your direction for my deserved flicking, since I'm California-bound in a week anyway.
Posted by: Chris at April 26, 2004 06:04 PMDamn cutting and pasting, always makes verbs and prepositions fall through the cracks.
Posted by: Chris at April 26, 2004 06:05 PMText programs which allow you to remove sections of text from one place and insert them into another place always call these functions "cutting" and "pasting".
Drawings, site images and other stuff put together at my work by sticking discrete pieces together on one sheet are called "paste-ups".
It could start to bother a girl when she hasn't seen any actual paste being used for anything at all in over a decade. Also, Chris, I've been harboring notions of somehow meeting up with you at your nearest point of approach to Berkeley. Is there going to be any way at all to reach you while you're on the road?
Posted by: Dianna at April 26, 2004 06:16 PMChris, perhaps you are using that little-known Paste variant: Paste-but-fuck-up-my-grammar. if you ever wondered why computer sientists always to have real bad gramer && spelig, its coz they use that command alot 2 mes with the n00bs. yeah...
Posted by: Erik at April 26, 2004 06:22 PMAm I the only one here who finds the italics in this font to be damn sexy? I mean, c'mon! C'MON! It's like typing with Barry White's voice!
I am convinced that if I changed the font of my own blog to Palatino, that the ladies'd be all over me.
(and pardon my web faux pas...normally I try not to respond to my own responses...[whoa...French in this font in italics is even better!])
Posted by: Erik at April 26, 2004 07:31 PMYeah. I noticed that too.
Should we suggest to Chris that he try augmenting his impressive forearms with tilty text to win the hearts of the girls?
Posted by: Dianna at April 26, 2004 07:58 PM#1 - The image (now, with audio!) of you with Barry White's voice just made me laugh out loud in the lab in which I am currently working...it's good that nobody else is here right now...the combination of that and giving an offhand (and TOTALLY unintentional) 'latez' to my boss on his way out the door tonight would probably have me in for psychological counseling.
#2 - With the combination of impressive forearms and tilty text (well, anything and tilty text...I've got to stop looking at it...), he's going to be winning the heart of ME...so no, I'd have to advise against that suggestion...my heart can stay right where it is, tack sa myckett (sexy Swedish...that shoulda been my screen name...).
#3 - Ok, I'm still laughing...goddamn it.
Posted by: Erik at April 26, 2004 08:14 PMI decline to comment on most of what was said above. As far as reaching me on the road, one of my goals after I get my car back from the shop tomorrow is to procure a cellular phone.
/me shudders with distaste.
Posted by: Chris at April 26, 2004 10:21 PMDon't despair. Just take my handy pledge to always speak in normal-to-quiet conversational tones, to use the phone because you have pressing matters to discuss instead of because you're just browsing in the bookstore nothing much is going on with me how about you?, and to not give your cell phone number to people who present a clear and present danger to your following the first two portions of the pledge.
It helps, I swear.
Posted by: Dianna at April 26, 2004 10:38 PMAlso, you must pledge to always split infinitives whenever possible. Like right there.
Posted by: Dianna at April 26, 2004 10:39 PMI still wear your jewelry - the car window pendant, the hex nut necklace, and sometimes lots and lots of rings made of wires and buttons. And I would have never called it ugly, because, quite simply, it's not.
Happy Memory Day.
Posted by: Arianna at April 28, 2004 12:55 PMdianna, where have you been all day? ch is a duller place.
Posted by: didofoot at April 28, 2004 03:27 PMI've been at work, which doesn't necessarily preclude being online. However, when you factor in my feelings of guilt, it precludes being online when the head of the office is around. At the very least it prompts me to have cnn.com up on my computer screen instead of Kadhfiwufehsdfsjdnfskd Square, the last post of which nearly prompted me to answer the phone, "Good afternoon, Bisexual Problem."
It would have been hilarious, I'm sure, but possibly problematic for the company's reputation.
Posted by: Dianna at April 28, 2004 04:25 PMas in "good afternoon, [you are a] bisexual problem" or "good afternoon, [i am this company's] bisexual problem"?
Posted by: didofoot at April 28, 2004 05:53 PMAs in:
Good afternoon, the Bisexual Problem speaking, how may I direct your call?
Not:
Good afternoon to you, Mr and/or Ms. Bisexual Problem, what may I do for you?
Posted by: Dianna at April 28, 2004 06:31 PM