Mmkay cats and kittens, this is my last ever blog post. I have to admit that I dislike blogging so I'm stopping today. I should probably mention that this evening I'll be presenting my Polish deliverables, blah blah blah blah blah. I oughta make some sort of closure now. This retreat has been wiggedy wack. Senor Blaké Bolés has sent us through vast deserts, over high-ridged snowy mountains, beneath the deepest of oceans, and once got us caught in an avalanche.* It was all worth it, because in the end, we made it through the isles of Yawefas and destroyed the One Ring and all the evil dudes who were bad.**

*These are lies.
**That's totally true.

Gauntly,
Amber

Tadoo list fo tomorra:

-taka de photos
-dansa de belly
-posta de blahg

Hopefully my lulu book will come in the mail tomorrow, and if it doesn't, oh well I suppose, that's it then. I'll figure something out.

At like eight-thirty or whatever I decided to go to sleep, and at nine fifteen or so I decided that I was done. My head is itchy with the maddening nothingness of sudden irritation one acquires when the universe delivers such abstract pointlessness as these twangs of annoyance tingling beneath the top layer of skin that clings to my scalp so subtly and insanely that without reason and/or comprehension will never go away not with a single scratch nor two solitary movements refined and Polished for the purpose of scratching the itch upon which settles the midnight lunacy of a head that is not on a pillow to repose or manufacture zzzzz's but rather it is suspended in oxygen and it is propped up by the exhausted neck that is sick and tired of all of this nonsense that rules its galaxy such as these hours that only seem to be abominable and ungodly only due to the massive accumulation of weariness creeping up in the veins of the exhausted life form who is crumpled in a chair at a laptop because who the hell knows why.

mutter mutter mutter mutter

tenebrous

Work experience is lame because of the bitch teacher from hell whose eyes were humongous and froggy and judgmental of every child who crossed her flaming demon path she justified with warped righteousness. So I don't know how to put that down in a resume. Besides that, I extracted from Chris the old writer the things that are wrong and right with my words. In addition to this, I did my laundry.

Here are the 100 goals that are mine! They belong to me; I created them, using my mind. They belong to no one else but me. Now here they are, these 100 goals that are mine, and which, belonging to me, belong to me. Without further ado I present to you my one hundred goals which are mine and no one else's, as they are in my own possession, because they are mine.

100 Goats:

1. Write an entire album of songs
2. Hike the Appalachian trail
3. Publish a novel
4. Learn how to make my own clothes
5. Backpack around Europe
6. Film a crappy horror movie
7. Be good enough at belly dancing to improvise
8. Organize a poetry reading group
9. Learn 20 new songs on mandolin
10. Ride share around the Western U.S.
11. Go scuba diving off the shores of New Zealand
12. Write and publish a children's book
13. Perform my own songs onstage
14. Go to the cherry blossom festival in Japan
15. Write a play
16. Have children and unschool them
17. Open up a coffee shop that has a stage for musicians
18. Show my photos at a gallery
19. Learn how to knit
20. Go to an Iron & Wine concert
21. Learn to play poker
22. Be in a romantic relationship that is healthy
23. Be made fun of on South Park
24. Learn how to give marvelous massages
25. Practice yoga daily
26. Invent my own salad dressing
27. Sail on a gondola in Venice
28. Fill up a notebook with nothing but poetry
29. Get my driver's license
30. Learn to play Beethoven on the piano
31. Learn to play hobo songs on the harmonica
32. Watch all three LOTR films in a row... the extended editions!
33. Drink real chai in India
34. Crash a family reunion
35. Hug a California Redwood
36. Vote in an election
37. For one Christmas, hand-make everyone's gifts
38. Learn to play the cello
39. Work at the Renaissance Festival
40. Learn how to plant/maintain a garden
41. Write a humour book
42. Learn to play the banjo
43. Make an impact in the fight against factory farming
44. See the aurora borealis
45. Acquire a massive collection of scarves
46. Deliver a pie to someone on March 14th
47. Do a pin-up photo shoot in Hawaii
48. Junior staff and then maybe regular staff at NBTSC
49. Eat a pita in Greece
50. Work as a statue street performer
51. Visit the graves of dead poets/musicians whose works I love
52. Take a mega bus up to NYC
53. See a total solar eclipse
54. Master cursive writing
55. Plan a Halloween wedding
56. Read everything J.D. Salinger has ever published
57. Act in a Shakespeare play
58. Celebrate every holiday from every religion one year
59. Photograph an endangered species in its natural habitat
60. Dress up as the Eye of Sauron one Halloween
61. Quit Facebook forever and never join a similar site
62. For my birthday one year, give everyone else presents
63. Buy professional photography stuff (camera, spotlights, etc)
64. Take voice lessons
65. Plant an apple tree
66. Rescue a cat or dog from the animal shelter
67. Do the "one self portrait a day for a year" project
68. Write a novel using the "flow of consciousness" technique
69. Meet one of the Pythons
70. Learn all the constellations and be able to look up and instantly know them
71. Learn 50 songs on guitar in one month
72. Visit a Buddhist temple in Tibet
73. Ride in a hot air balloon
74. Get a secret published on PostSecret
75. Learn to speak fluent Italian
76. Find my favourite colour
77. Create an animated cartoon with Erin and Camoi
78. Beat my dad at chess
79. Master the art of tree-climbing
80. Visit all my NBTSC friends
81. Accumulate a vast collection of jazz and blues music
82. Film a mockumentary
83. Eat palak paneer in India
84. Learn to drive
85. Start my own poetry journal
86. Make a webcomic and stick with it for at least a year
87. Leave a job on good terms
88. Learn how to identify edible/healing plants and herbs in the wilderness
89. Climb a mountain
90. Create a book which is composed of photographs I take of odd-looking people on the street
91. Memorize all my favourite poems
92. Expand my cooking horizons over the border into baking
93. Get my belly button pierced
94. Write an allegory
95. Learn my favourite David Gilmour solos on electric guitar
96. Learn to play the saxophone
97. Work at an independent coffee shop
98. Go whale watching
99. Exercise "college without college" at the Jack Kerouac school in Colorado for a month or two
100. Learn to tap dance!
101. Go on Blake's New Zealand LOTR trip next December!

It's all better though. Yesterday, poetry guy with stress and friends sleeping in a van from whom we purchased 3 poems handwritten on crinkly rain sheets. Marina and Zach in person with real faces instead of pixels. Sleep. And this morning Jeff and I navigated the streets with no iphone as preferred by us both; we asked a gas station man with an Indian accent for directions, but he didn't really know the difference between right and left unfortunately, or he might just have gotten them mixed up like people sometimes do. We've been in the Backspace cafe about nine times combining these two days, the beard guy with the mega gages always smiles when we walk in. Worked for 15 minutes at Sisters of the Road washing windows and wiping fridge doors to be handed a meal ticket which we didn't need since we were new. There was gritty cornbread and many beans, and loudness, and crowdedness. I knew what it was like then, at least a little bit. We gave our tickets away since we didn't need them. Now: pouring rain and leaves as we're waiting to go to Sociology class. This day's been better than yesterday. Now that I don't care about blogging I can write a stream of consciousness and not care how it sounds. The coffee girl said I have beautiful hair, which is ironic because I haven't washed it since Friday night. I want a shower shower. There's a rain shower out right now but that's not exactly what I mean. Or maybe it is. I don't know. There was more stuff that happened but I don't feel like talking about it, it's not on my mind really. What is is that one of the guys at Sisters of the Road reminded me of my dad, in the way that there was a cigarette dangling from his mouth, and he moved in a similar way as my dad. And when he needed to cut through the crowd he said "Excuse me" in the same way as my dad. I wonder if his name's Randy. That would be odd. Here, now I've written an entire thick block of a paragraph, i guess I'm done blogging!
Swimmingly,
Amber

I decided yesterday that all my blog posts sound totally pretentious and I don't like them anymore. Also, I think my writing style is stupid as well. Oftentimes I'll look at certain authors' writing and go, "Oh my god what is he the king of France?" It takes a lot to please me as far as writing goes. Jack Kerouac's the only person lately who is an actual writer. I think I mean mostly novels and short stories. Poetry's a somewhat different thing, although there are pretentious poets too, but it's just different somehow, like how nobody wants to bother with poetry because not as many people care for it and it doesn't make you any money. People can just write poetry and then they're done with a poem, and they leave it alone or maybe get it published somewhere. It's not the publishing that annoys me I guess. I think it's mostly when I read a poem in a poetry journal or something that everyone adores and that everyone fawns over and it's really not good. And not only is it not good, it's very not good. It might not be terrible, but it isn't brilliant, and I think the only reason people think it's brilliant is because they're applying the bullshit laws of poetry some idiot created as a means to measure people's writing, but what they don't understand is that you write words and words and words and who CARES if some of them or most of them don't make any sense? Don't critique a poet and say "I don't understand this line," because well if the Great and powerful YOU doesn't understand it then it must be unworth writing, so please take out the line immediately. That's stupid. Shut up. The only good writing is writing you don't think too hard about, which has been my problem lately, I write at a glacial pace and so I hate everything I write because it strikes me as pretentious. Including my blog posts. Blogging has been such a strenuous task for me because I wanted my blogs to be good or whatever, but honestly now I don't care. Thinking about blogging has made me hate blogging. So guess what, for the remainder of my trip I'm going to write however I want to write instead of writing like An Author, and to hell with grammar and logic. I can contradict myself if I want to.

So anyway, we're in Portland on our weekend challenge thing. This hostel is way cooler than the one in Ashland, but I don't feel like talking about why, except that they have a pot luck every Sunday which I believe we're attending later today. We have a long list of crap we have to get done, and it all includes stuff we've done on previous weekends.

That's it, I don't care if this blog isn't poetic or has a good flow.

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Best Led Zeppelin album: I. For sure.

So anyway, I haven't got a picture this time, oh no. That's mainly because I've been formatting my novel template and uploading it to Lulu.com which was painstakingly painstaking. And I think it's a tad stupid that I have to buy my own book. Oh well, whatever, nevermind.

We have no idea what the weekend challenge thing is going to be, but I have my theories, and probably none of them will be true. All I know is that Blake told us all to be up and ready by noon o'clock sharp tomorrow. In addition to this, I need to go forth and buy some snack foods for tomorrow, and also I need to pack. Bleh

Well. Anyway, seriously, this album is one of the best I've ever heard in my entire life. Sorry, just getting that out there.

I also dropped off my unfinished first chapter at Shakespeare Books & Antiques for a guy named Chris to read. He's an older fellow who is incidentally a published author. I want to pick his brain a bit about that next time I see him, and I'll extract some feedback from him, too.

Okay, I really am not in a blogging mood, like, ever. I don't really like blogging...

Groovily,
Amber