back on my feet / farmer's luck

for the past 2 weeks i have been on crutches. but yesterday i walked again. at least it was yesterday when i started writing this post (3 days ago).

club i apologize. i have never done anything like this to you. but i was literally on crutches and hobbling around and i would get home and pass out instantaneously! this is why i have been on such a terrible hiatus! but now i'm back. just in time for college season when i will prob take more extended leaves if i'm being honest. but today, i'm back. 

during my crutches time i was basically bedridden and thus i did a lot of things: sleeping, homework, and movies! i have watched 8 movies since i was hit by that car and they have made me very happy. i've been reminded of all the things I want to try in the world, so there's a silver lining in all of this. actually i think there have been many.

this whole near-death experience reminded me of the tale of the farmer's luck. i first read it in a book called Zen Shorts, a children's picture book about a panda named Stillwater, but i think the story is originally Taoist. this is my retelling:

there once was a farmer and he had a horse. but one day his horse ran away. all the townspeople said "oh no your horse! what bad luck!" and the farmer was like maybe idk. 

then the next day his horse came back and it brought 10 horses with it! and the townspeople said "oh my so many horses! what good luck!" and the farmer said i guess so idk.

later in the week, the farmer's son tries to ride one of the new wild horses. the horse throws him off the saddle and the boy injures his legs and he's walking around on crutches now (like me). all the townspeople said "oh dear your son! what bad luck!" and the farmer was like i'm not so sure.

a couple days later, military recruiters come by to draft the son in the war. but they see him and his crutches and they passed on him. the townspeople see this and say "oh lovely! such good luck!" and the farmer said maybe.

the story exists to remind you it's all about perspective and that at least you're not getting drafted into the military. and for that i am grateful. some good things about things about getting hit by a car are as follows:

• my pecs and left calf got super muscular from the crutches because it's a calisthenics workout no matter what you do
• i did a ton of college stuff because i couldn't do anything else and now i don't have to do it when i have the option to do fun stuff
• my friends brought me cookies
• a man in the subway saw my foot brace and asked "how'd ya bust your flipper?" which is an exchange i wouldn't have experienced if i didn't bust my flipper in the first place
• generally made me thankful for the ability to walk
• filled me with ideas of what to do when i could walk, which was both sad because i couldn't do them in the moment, but also good because now i have things i'm excited for
• i watched a bunch of movies which i already said but i love movies! Riddle of Fire was my favorite and i think i'm gonna have to write a whole separate post about that

there are some sad things too of course. is it worth it to mention them?

• my cats were scared of my crutches and i virtually couldn't touch them for 2 weeks
• the night pains. oh, the night pains
• rethinking everything i did that morning that led to me taking that specific road at that specific time
• had to call my mom and tell her I was in an ambulance
• dreams of being paralyzed!

enough of that. I just figured it's only fair to show both sides of my experience. i truly did flip around constantly like the farmer's luck. now I am still wearing the boot and i'm very slow to walk anywhere and i sound like a pirate with a peg leg traversing a ship deck. my stitches came out and my knee bends as normal. i don't ice my foot anymore. 

usually I have some pictures or something to put at the end of my text posts, but honestly I haven't been taking many pictures because 1. i didn't go anywhere, 2. it's hard to get a camera out when you're on crutches, and 3. my main camera is broken. so I will leave tonight with a picture of Stillwater the panda. 

topics soon to come are:

• my upcoming photoshoots inspired by many ancient greek deities
• Riddle of Fire review
• linking this sacred blog on my Vassar applications (controversial)
• the song i wrote with my friend to process our falling out (emotional)

good night club

truck: 0 me: 1

 im not gone and i have so much to say!

coming this week i solemnly swear!! a lot is just happening right now so i can't today! but definitely soon!

pedestrian blues

 hi club. i got hit by a pickup truck 3 days ago and it is unlikely for me to post anything this week. i got super lucky and i only injured my ankle and knee, but still I am super tired and i don't have the energy to post anything.

maybe next week! bye for now

lock in o clock

 Hey club... I feel like i haven't been giving you any attention lately. that's because its Lock In O Clock.

i have been so locked in. I have so much to do and i am doing all of it. but today I extra locked in and I have no immediate homework to do right now and I have like an hour to kill and I am in a fancy tea shop so I figured i would get back on the blog.

thus, I am going to talk about myself for a while. and media and art and stuff.

I have been reading Meet Me in the Bathroom: Rebirth and Rock and Roll in New York City 2001–2011 by Lizzy Goodman. it is a super thick oral history of the rock age in NYC (think Strokes, Yeah Yeah Yeahs, Interpol, etc.) and I love it. as a biproduct I have been obsessed with electroclash, like Ladytron and Peaches, even though in the book everyone hates electroclash. I also love Karen O all over again. Y Control is probably my song of the year. I am only like a third through the book and I fear it is preventing me from reading other things. I really want to read Dante's Inferno because of Virgil and Hell. 

I also really want to read The Odyssey translated by Emily Wilson because I overtranslated Book 9 for Greek class and now I feel on par with her skill (jk). I met her in May and she was so cool. She was covered in tattoos and did an amazing impression of Priam in the Illiad, reading in the dactylic hexameter and everything. I have been generally obsessed with Greek mythology for a long time, but right now I really want to watch mythological movies. I think this is because I binged Kaos (2024) on Netflix and the Eurydice song is a new guilty pleasure of mine. Hopefully soon I will leave Locked In Land and watch some movies. I especially want to see Gladiator (2000), O Brother Where Art Thou? (2000), Jason and the Argonauts (1963), and Elektra, My Love (1974). Classics fans love to be picky about movie adaptations, but what is the fun in following the myth to a tee? Then you know exactly what happens.

last obsession for today is my film camera. my grandparents gave me 2 cameras last year: a Pentax SP500 and a Nikon N2020. both are super old. the pentax is ancient. But i asked my friend to check out the N2020 and fix it for me and he did. I got very excited and bought a roll of film for like $18. and then i go to try it out. and it does not turn on. Apparently my friend forgot to put some essential parts of the camera back into it. so then I try the pentax just for fun. but it also does not turn on. and I can't even open the battery compartment. and then i google the manual and it is so old. i am going to show pictures from it after this. but through the manual I find out it only takes mercury batteries. so I was about to open this compartment and get mercury poisoning probably. hopefully tomorrow my friend will give me the parts to my camera. and I can take some super cool film pics. 

i will never betray my digital camera. even though I accidentally broke it this week and now to take a photo I must use the wiring of my earring to push down on the shutter. but one thing my friend said was that he likes film more because it is much more intentional. I reject that notion. i love digital because of how accessible it is, how i can capture a moment so effortlessly. after all, why would I want to remember the moment for how hard it was to take? when you live through moments, they should not be hard.

one of my favorite pics I've taken is this one:

because it feels so much like that day and that memory. as I type this I am like 2 blocks away from where it was taken, and i think about whenever i walk past it. i wont lie the picture is better in my head and definitely better on my phone but whatever.

not only have i been locked in, but there has also been a lot of drama in my life. i got into a fight over film. i have been invited and then uninvited and then reinvited to a party (i didn't go). there was a bomb threat at my school and we were evacuated for 2 hours?? this was all in the past week.

i have to leave this tea shop. i have sat here for a long time with a $5 lavender lemonade that I was 5 cents short for and the barista had to bail me out. i have to meet with my cousin to get some clothes from her on E Houston. and i have to go to a meeting to plan out an epic Halloween show at 6:30. 

i have other topics to type about including but not limited to:

• my guitar teacher moving to nashville
• videos of 1950s alaska i have found
• whether or not to put this blog on my college apps
• my waste of an adobe subscription

coming soon ;0

senior year start

i am five days into senior year. i am enjoying myself so far. i am not stressed yet.

at school classes are still easy so I have just been taking videos on my camcorder and doodling. I love doing these doodle dumps so here is one now. Except i am trying to format them better this time because Blogger sucks with sort of stuff. I only have something to say about like 5 of them so...

this one is a short comic i made based on the story of Dido and Iarbus i learned in Latin class where Iarbus told Dido he would give her all the land she could cover with a bulls hide, so she cuts it into strips and outlines what would become Carthage. i love comics. I also drew my characters from the other comics that I made over the summer.

here they are except I gave the boy a tan and a different outfit and I forgot the robot's main body design and also what his eyes looked like. it's fine because designs change. I don't think i ever gave the boy an actual name. i think Androkles stuck with me though. Andro for short? and then its like man and robot wowwww right. one day a comic about them will actually be made.

these are the last doodles by the way.. as you can tell I like to label my drawings. I will make more comics in between classes. 

other things going on..... the photoshoot! i learned a lot about taking photos. for one, i know what ISO is but I don't know how to change it on my camera. one of my struggles was shooting in the day and the night. one of my models (friends) woke up at 2pm and the shoot was delayed to 6:30. so half of the pics are a totally different vibe than the other. let me just show the pics.

this is my example. i also experimented with editing but i just can't get them in the same ballpark (pun intended). 

I am really tired so i will write more on the shoot later. i loved it though.