okay. I have a little free time, so I thought I'd actually write something about what's been going on in my life:

I made (I think - we haven't gotten all of it yet) nearly twenty thousand dollars in alaska this summer. this has temporarily afforded me the luxury of a true college drop-out dead beat's life. I might get a job eventually, but for now I've been wandering between santa cruz, redding, and san francisco as I feel like it. I'll get a job in santa cruz, or I'll move to battleground, washington, and live with my aunt for a few months.

January I'm moving to Kenya, or that's the current plan, anyway. I want to stay for a few months, come back for a month or so and then go back and fish next summer.

I have a truck now (it's HUGE) and can drive myself and everything I own anywhere.

I guess my cat can't stay with me in santa cruz, which is kind of heartbreaking, but it's probably for the best.


all in all - I feel freer and lighter than I think I ever have before.

I so just bought a theremin.

I really don't have much else to say on here at this time, except that everything is continually better than ever.

<3

I'm back! I arrived in San Francisco last friday and Rebecca picked me up and brought me to Santa Cruz. It's good to be home.
I'm in Redding for the night to pick up Rosie, my cat and some clothing, and may or may not come back to pack the rest of my things after spending the weekend with her (we haven't seen each other in something like eight months!!).
I'm living in this wonderful house on Potrero with seven wonderful people and will be in Santa Cruz for a few months at least.
I should be getting a phone with my old number this weekend, so please call if you'd like to meet up at some point so's I can have your number again.
love all around!

i dropped my cell phone in the ocean.

pah.

i'm miss home.

i'm coming back to santa cruz for a while after this because i miss you guys too much.

please call me in a few weeks- my parents are sending me an old phone with my number transferred over, so i'll have everything but your numbers. you can email them to me too or whatever, but i can't make it to a computer very often.

i miss yous.

to send me letters, candy and/or love:

f/v kendal
brooke bowman
c/o seward fisheries
po box #8
seward, ak 99664

i'll be in seward for at least another week, so therefore i have cell phone reception for another week.
i'll be working some, but the sun already doesn't sleep until after midnight, so i'll find time to call back.
the days are long and they'll only get longer.
i love all of you.

(i lost one of my sheets with addresses on it, so if you don't get a letter from me within a month or so and want one, write me first or call within the week to give it to me.)

things have been kind of crazy. i'm leaving saturday morning and between santa cruz friends visiting here and impulsive visits to santa cruz, i've hardly had time to think about this summer. leaving after a month isn't an option with this one, and with vague travel plans for after the season, i might not be back for a long while. it's going to be a rush now to try to pack and clean up after last weekend and sell my bagpipes and then i'll be there. i won't really have access to a computer, but when i can, i'll post an address yous can mail things to.

love

this isn't working.

I never thought I'd be so happy to be in redding.
my parents and I have been treating each other like real people and it's perfect vespa weather all the time and there's so much land to take in with every breath (redding smells like manzanita and jasmine and citrus and summer).
it's exactly where I want to be right now.



we also have a guest house open to all of my friends, if anyone wants to come visit or stop by on your way somewhere else.

if for some reason i were forced to choose, i would rather be friends with someone kind but socially awkward than with someone who perceives others as being worth less than her/himself.

i can't help but feel like we're all the same person, characteristics branching out in fractals but never truly novel.

I just posted this on facebook, but here it is again for any livejournalers that didn't notice it. you're all invited to both games.


alright...some of you just got a message (or two) from me informing you of the upcoming werewolves and diplomacy games. (diplomacy is not recommended if you don't know what it is already, but I've never heard of anyone not loving werewolves. it's like mafia, but better. and drunker. every one of you should come)

this note is for gamers and people I'd love to see sometime before I leave. (there's a limit on friends you can tag in notes, and I didn't tag anyone I've already made plans with, so if you weren't tagged it doesn't mean I don't want to hang out with you)

I have less than two weeks left in town now, and I'm not planning on moving back to santa cruz next year. there's very little chance that I'll be back to visit before going to alaska, so it could be almost a year before I'll be able see some of you again.
that being said - my last final is at 8am today, and after that I have basically no obligations until leaving...so if you'd like to hang out before the first, let me know! call (331-9826) or message me or whatever.



here's the game info (if you're not interested in the games, you can stop reading now):

Diplomacy: wednesday night, probably at my house. gather around seven. call or message me FIRST and find out if it's going on for sure. if I don't hear from enough people beforehand, I'll postpone the game. this is important - - if I don't hear back from enough people, I might not even be home during that time. so PLEASE call before showing up.
Werewolves: thursday night, around the same time, probably. it's even more important that you tell me whether or not you can make if for this game than for diplomacy, as the number of required players is so much higher.

if you skimmed that stuff, this is the important part: please call or message BEFORE SHOWING UP at my house EITHER night!

If a different night for either of those would be better for you, let me know and I could maybe switch around the dates.

somehow i managed to not realize until about 3am this morning that i have seven different papers to write and a presentation to give, all due between monday and wednesday morning.
let me repeat that for emphasis...

SEVEN papers!

i'm pretty sure (but have been afraid to doublecheck) that the longest is 6 pages, but...still. with any luck, the total amount due will be less than 30 pages..

this is kind of extreme, even for me.

sigh, here goes!

night before last/yesterday i:
went to a cemetery in felton
went to panther beach
rode the vespa to the lighthouse on westcliff
rode the vespa down the pier and chased seagulls with the scooter
went to another cemetery in santa cruz
got drunk and walked until dawn
sobered up and built a fort
slept for a few hours in said fort
ran around town and climbed things for a few hours
watched firefly in fort

after leaving the friend i did all that with, i napped and tried working on a paper and then napped again until 2 am, when i woke up suddenly and went to the bagelry to read a great book out loud to cailin.

...what a wonderful couple of days.

hey, for those of you i knew in redding that i just added...i'm sorry! i meant to find all of you ages ago. i miss you guys. i've actually been getting a little nostalgic for some redding times. i wouldn't go so far as to say many of them, but some, anyway. i'm coming back soon.

for santa cruzians:
tree nine is still there!

i got hail on my toast this morning.
the weather lately has been doing mostly what it was doing this time last year.

i just lost my job.

wellwellwell, life. i'll get you yet.
this one's tricky, but i'll spend some time with the map, and you'll see. my defense troops are almost in place, almost ready for deployment.
strategies.
game plans.


...for what war? 
there are no games anymore, and

violence is never the thing.

so here is(?)

i told you i get crushes on everyone i see.  (not true, not quite.)
i told him that as though it were the answer,
the problem.

attachments.  we want this person to look at us that way, to need us, to want us to look at them that way.  we want this person, this beautiful person, to be ours because then we'll have some beauty too and then maybe someday, maybe someday they'll show us whatever it is they know that makes them beautiful and then maybe someday, we'll be beautiful like them. 


i told him i fall in love with whoever i'm with at the moment. (not true, not quite.)
i told you that as though it were the answer,
the problem.
i am in love with everyone.

and that's it. 

rosie suggested i write more letters a bit ago on the phone. i think that sounds wonderful.
anyone who'd like a letter from me, leave your address in a comment or email it to me at theworldforgetting@gmail.com. i'll write to you even if you're not interested in writing one back.

i've been having a pretty emotionally intense week. i found out why aram isn't speaking to me anymore, and in turn ended my friendship with dylan. for a while now i've been working on being aware of my assumptions and acting on them depending on what evidence i feel supports them...but i realized today that actually i'd been paying attention to my initial response and then assuming the opposite instead of being aware that either could be more 'accurate' than the other (the '' because we can never feel what another does; in other words, we can only guess based on what dots on the map they point out).
so, when aram stopped returning my calls and never showed up to take in the vespa, i looked at the anger (hurt) i was feeling and recognized that i'd responded that way because i took his behavior to mean that he didn't want to be friends with me. that's a fairly common interpretation of the actions of others in general, i believe, and seems to usually lead to misunderstandings and suffering on all sides. but! then i started acting under the belief that that wasn't the case...that he just had other things going on or didn't want to pay for the vespa or any number of other possibilities. i defended him fiercely, to myself and others-never really tracing my behavior back enough to see that i'd only traded one assumption for another.

and it turned out that my first assumption had been closer to aligning with his motivations. it took the same sort of thing happening with dylan for me to see it, though.




i've never been this consistently content for this long before, at least not this sort of content. every day i'm surprised by the sheer amount of things there are to be learned every moment.

just kidding! going to ucsc this quarter afterall.
my parents gave me the money i lost with my scholarship and some extra to help get me back on track! they've been really great.

by the way, i bought 4 tickets for the of montreal show, if anyone wants to just get one from me. if you don't, watch out for sites selling them for over 50$. i saw at least one. i got 'em for 13$.

<3 all around.