High Contrast Grey.

My new roommate. Her name is Marie (for the time being, it could change). I couldn’t wait for the bus because I was feeling rather impatient and instead carried her for about two miles. I thought that the feeling in my arms would come back after an hour or two. No. Still even have some of the slight twitch going on..

Fox fur in a convenience store. Art nights and interesting characters.

The final hurdle.. I still don’t know what to put in the advertising mural above the entrance to the hotel. And I need to come across some pretty fabric/paper for the final rugs. Plus, of course, all the minute ink details still left to do…

Lunch. Accompanied by the soothing Erik Satie. /The bottoms of my absinthe tumblers are becoming coated in crystallized sugar./

My 4th/5th home. I don’t even know the number these days. Such a fun community. By the end of the day I had moved from sitting at the bar to a booth that became covered in tea pots, cups, and art. It seemed that almost all day I had a revolving door of different characters to come and sit with me. Changing and adding new people. I’m on the final hurdle of the alleyway picture. Perhaps to the point of naming it something. I love how these people can make me feel like more than just a name written down to a date and time, but instead by just hanging out at the café I get invited to go to spur of the moment ideas. Art project gathering where we just work on our different art projects. Parties for people I have yet to meet. For a trade of some art I might be getting a translucent tea cup in a Egyptian art nouveau style with gold leaf on the inside to show through made by one of the Butterfly staff. It’s odd to feel welcomed instead of neglected and rejected..

Venice is Sinking Masquerade Ball; Seattle. Soundtrack for performance: Paper Planes by M.I.A.

Skins s4e4 I miss stupid declarations of love.

Tea was what kept us going. We took care to have a pot always stewing, and drank pints during the day. Down and Out In Paris and London . George Orwell.

I had some odd dreams this morning involving my father. First he was trying to convince me to get something on my right ear pierced to help balance things out, he even recommended a small dermal behind my ear. In reality he usually just says nothing about my piercings, though he did tell me, before I started getting pierced and expressed an interest in such, that the history behind piercings was that sailors would get them for every time they crossed the equator. He stated that while trekking through Kenya that he crossed the equator so many times, many unknowingly because he was just in the Savanna, that he could get pierced as many times as he would like, he just chooses not to. Somehow this dream then jumped to me talking about student loans with him and how in borrowing 4thousand dollars I now owed the government 40thousand dollars, immediately. I did not like this aspect of the dream. As a consolation, a friend (who seems to only exist in my dreamscape) invited me over to play vid...

Today I have only eaten halves. Half a pizza for breakfast/lunch and half a banana after class given to me at the Butterfly. It may not be a normal thing to do, but I think that for our date tomorrow I will take Eden out to the grocery store before we start to make dinner and watch our film(s). I think I am going to take up yoga again. Fin.

Natasha yelling at Dustin over the music. God I miss these two.. though Natasha is saying that she would like to make a trip down (over) to visit me in Missoula sometime. Do some hiking, some nature related things, and whatnot. That would be very nice to have happen. I had a somewhat depressing conversation with Lindsay about how I no longer live with those two and I am slowly disappearing more and more. Being hundreds of miles away and all.. Surprisingly I wasn’t the furthest traveled to go to this masquerade ball, some people came from somewhere over in Canada..

As I finish, or at least get closer to finishing, my painting of the alley way I think that I am going to work on something abstract and for emotion, instead of the aesthetic of architecture like my work is usually. Not sure what the image will appear as, but I’m thinking it will be something like a few images I did back in my sophomore year of the BSHS. Hmm… It might be interesting to pull some of those pictures up to compare and contrast over the years.

While sneaking about Dustin and Natasha’s this morning not being able to sleep and not wanting to wake anyone, I thought that Dustin and Natasha had woken up and were talking only when I was out of the room. Turns out that Dustin’s computer speakers have NPR softly coming out of them at all times for reasons unknown and I was just being paranoid. That is all.

Part of me thinks I shouldn’t have come back for the weekend and just lived in ignorance… I don’t know how to feel about any of this anymore.

It seems so easy to go bar hoping when all the bars share the same building.. I was informed of a new way in which to get cheap drinks. By going to the casino they give you three free drinks for playing on their machines ($5 minimum they say, but just walking behind where the tender can see can make that a $1 minimum for three drinks). I figured out by setting the ISO on my camera up to the highest setting that I can capture pictures in darkened settings, like inside bars at night. Time for some fun to be found with this new knowledge… This helped in me getting some pictures for my photography assignment due tomorrow. Just need three more pictures and one more different camera/lens.

http://assets.tumblr.com/swf/audio_player.swf?audio_file=http://www.tumblr.com/audio_file/382875614/tumblr_kxnnhx8ygF1qa6icr&color=FFFFFF This song came up randomly on Pandora today. I’m loving the feeling behind the song. I should probably keep away from finding more beautifully depressing music… I get so tired of being told that one of my least redeeming qualities is that I am depressing. I like to think of myself as a realist, but in how dark this world is I guess that can be misconstrued as depressing. /Insert rant/.

Part of the herb section of my new café haunt. The café is in the back with booths and a bar and a paper maché dragon climbing up above the bar. The ‘punk rock kids’ who run the café also seem to be artists. Thin with tattoos and piercings and queer seems to be the image of the employees. Perhaps a job at a café one day? I was told about an artist collective that put on an Alice in Wonderland themed burlesque show last Friday. A couple of the people involved were working at the café and hanging out at the café.

“Why so pretencious (sic)?” - desk in French class. After adding sic it stopped being red underlined… I didn’t know that Firefox spell check was so, advanced?

Playing around with the Lensbaby lens that I borrowed from my alternative photo class. It’s kind of a bitch to focus.. I wish I had the nikon focusing circle on my canon to handle this. Then again that might not even work with this lens.. I want to actually write a song or two for my accordion. Not really knowing how to play makes this an issue, but I think I will give the buttons all new names, like Fred Baby and the Good Morning Cord.

I’ve been working more and more on my new painting. Its gotten to the point where I only have the color purple left on my saucer since I’ve only been working at cafés and don’t have the ability to add more colors when I finish one off.. So to fix this problem of stagnation I have begun inking. I’m finding more hangouts and continuing my horrible diet of tea and baked goods. This is going well as I am reading Down and Out in Paris and London by Orwell. Living off small portions of bread.. I am as well trying to track down where the artsy alternative kids hangout (somewhat like Bauhaus on Capitol Hill) and have been having lots of confusing results. The café that I thought was ‘the one’ the other day was today filled with old people, transients, and a punk rock kid sewing his clothes back together. It seems promising still. Luckily its not too far from the Senior Center where my salsa class is so, when I have to kill three hours before class I can go there. I woke up with Pian...

Pinhole photos and the yellow notepad I write my grocery lists onto. I’m liking this alternative process photography class, but I have found that using a pinhole camera is a pain. Even if close to a darkroom. Especially when both the cameras you planned to use as light meters decide to crap out… Eh. I got the assignment done and hopefully I’m on my way to getting more done. Sadly I missed French club while printing photos. I have still yet to go… here’s to going next week… I had never done a contact print before… I lost some detail, yes, but I think it added some interesting effects. It’s odd taking this upper level course in photography because, yes I know how to do it, but I have no idea where everything is or how some of the machines work. The enlargers here seem much more advanced than the others that I have used in the past. No complaint.

Every time I walk past this place at night this mannequin freaks me out. They should never have emotions like this. Only the deranged have emotions like this. I worked more on my painting. Though not so much in the painting aspect and more in the drawing aspect. So many different and confusing layers. I’m liking how it is starting to come out though. Perhaps starting to capture the ordered chaos of the city. Now I just need to add the detail and color to capture the grime. I ran into someone playing the trumpet on the street outside of Barnes and Nobel. He said that I dress nicely, but wondered if I was gay. So from my mum telling me that I don’t know how to dress myself to everyone else telling me that I dress so well that I come off as gay.. I need to start ignoring what my mum tell me. Segway. The man playing the trumpet then asked me that when you do something to better yourself why is it that people don’t seem to acknowledge it. Is it out of jealously? Is it just becau...

I spent the day working on my new painting. Since my classes aren’t really filling up my schedule too much I thought I’d try working on my artwork more. Also hoping to get this done for when I go to Seattle on the 19th. My ruler is too short. I went café hopping today while working on this. Needed to get out of the apartment. I kept getting complements today. It was nice. It seems that today was the artwalk in Missoula, but I didn’t really know what was going on. I didn’t really want to do the whole artwalk thing though because I had both my bags and didn’t want to be wandering through crowded areas with that much ‘junk in my trunk.’ Instead I drank too much tea (well, lots of tea, can’t really admit to it being too much) and worked on my painting. The paints were just the one’s left over on my saucer from the last painting, so I ran out of most of the colors that I really needed.. Just need to re-add some colors and I’ll be good. Well, namely black, which is a shade, not ...

One of the desks in my French class. I like the jellyfish. I didn’t get to make it back to Seattle for Nouvelle Vague. It was snowing and I had a test the next day.. Kind of kicking myself about this. The whole day was kind of a let down every time I realized I wouldn’t be seeing Nouvelle Vague, or being back home in Seattle for the weekend. I counteracted this by going out to the Dead Hipster dance party again. Daniel kept buying me shots of tequila, which he said was to catch me up to him. The crowd really seemed to be completely comprised of the cliché college student. The frat/sorority image. Boring. I met a girl named Banana though, at least that is how I heard it through the thump of dance beats. I was told I have pretty eyes, but since I wear eyeliner that I’m gay. Welcome back to Montana.

I’ve been sketching all sorts of city scenes lately and finally decided to go out to a café and work on getting it sketched out onto some watercolor paper. I miss working on art at Bauhaus café. It wasn’t as dead as I would have expected it to be on a Wednesday night in Missoula, but it definitely wasn’t alive. Probably the wrong place. I wish I could find where other artists go instead of overhearing flirting about how she is crap with art. The cliché can’t draw a stick figure line en cue. I started reading Down and Out in Paris and London and the first chapter renewed my love of falling apart compact architecture (as if it needed a renewal…). I got a lot of complements today for looking “sharp.” As well as a complement from my French professor who said that I should be in the higher level class because it seems to come so naturally to me and that he thought it was surprising that French was the class that would bring down my grade point average back in high school … I kin...

100 mind masturbations.

A snowman was shot outside my apartment this morning.

Why do you feel this need to keep bringing her back into my life? One of those people who I want nothing more to ever do with. Yet time and time again she comes up somehow or another in some random conversation that, somehow, always leads to talking about her new beau. I am not worthless and in the end I am better than this shit. I’m done being nothing more than someone to keep the bed warm. Someone lied to and manipulated to make /you/ feel better. Sure, I may have a more “realistic” view on life that can sometimes be misinterpreted as depressing, but all-in-all, all I want to do is voice some exasperations from time to time and have a nice cup of tea. Whatever. We can all hit below the belt and in the end I can’t believe I let a high school dropout get to me, and in the end all my friends were right, I am better off without you. Gin. The ratio is a little off and the gin cheap so the rubbing alcohol-like bitterness is showing. I wish I had my Versailles glasses...

Hiver. The other day this spot was brushed clear and showed signs of being a small local ice skating ‘pond.’ Today a snowman takes a bow with it’s one angelic arm outstretched.

Missoula. It was nice and grey today. I went by a bakery I found to wait for my salsa class but it was a bit hard to waste three hours today. I finished The Road and sketched out some ideas, but couldn’t get my mind to stay focused. I miss the dark dreary people of Seattle. Instead in Missoula we have the marshmallow jacket people. Too cold. Turns out I’m not eligible for any work study. I’m not too sure why not, but it looks like I will be living off of my unsubsidized student loan. Meh. Could always work on selling some of my artwork, if I could motivate myself to work on it more often. I wish I had a muse here.

I have an assignment for my alternative process photography class to take five words and put pictures to them as representations. I bought a new dictionary to facilitate this assignment, but have become quite distracted by the dictionary and attempting to find esoteric words. Grime. Of course my first word to attempt to create a photo for. In my distraction I found grey water and thought it to have an interesting definition, but lacking a bathtub in this new apartment (long rant…) I think that I might pass it up for déshabillé. Still so jealous of the bathtub with feet that Dustin and Natasha have. I have spent today living off cups of tea, a few cookies, and a croissant. The British saw an overall health improvement when tea became popular by around the 1750s due to having to boil the water for their tea. This cup of Lapsang has steeped into a gritty color of olive green.

I have found a pretty nice antique store here in Missoula. The prices are a bit more reasonable than what I would sometimes find in Seattle (though I have still yet to find an amazing thrift store..). I’ve been wanting to work more on my collection of tea pots (and tea cups of course…), being somewhat jealous of Charlotte’s collection I got to see so much while being back in Seattle this past fall. I have found two candidates. One is metal and gorgeous with faces coming off of the framing and leaves stamped into the body. The other is an off white clay with a beautiful dark blue and gold painted on and comes with three tea bowls to match. The first is $44 (on sale) and the latter is only $15. Translation: Addiction.