cuki vagyok!

so, this is me in one of Erwin Wurm's 30-second sculptures at the MUMOK in Vienna. it was pretty sweet to have interactive art at a museum...you could tell some of the docents were just dying to tell you to get away from the installations, and yet there were instructions telling you to touch them all over the place. wonderful. i love love love modern/contemporary art museums, and though i've passed up lots of classics to visit them, it's always been totally worth it. can't say i've ever gotten to actually play in the art until this trip though. yay!


in other news, aside from being in Vienna, i've been in Budapest visiting my boyfriend Stephen (purveyor of the Hungary For... blog)and staying in their totally rad apartment in Jokai Ter, which is right in the center of everything. it's fantastic here, there is art nouveau oozing out of every doorway, along with every other architectural style, great food, it also hasn't been too cold, good things, etc, etc. i can't say that i've done too much on this particular visit, as we all have a tendency to stay up till all hours and sleep til 3, but i've been here before, and who can complain about snuggling in with your boyfriend who you haven't seen for months? (/end cute)

more later. it's four am again, and i have a feeling the day may escape me again tomorrow...

my dog is so totally cute.

a little bit of a rant

deleted, as the things i was ranting about are no longer relevant to my life. sorry reading audience. i'm sure i'll bitch about something else in the future.

ben

 

dear chicago

rain. i think the way that i feel when it rains drastically varies depending on two things, one being season, and the other being music playing while it's raining. in the summer all rain tends to feel transformative in some way, maybe because it's warm and the earth turns up all sorts of shiny green things waiting to drink it up, to turn it in to something life giving and powerful. this time of year, on the other hand, rain just tends to feel depressing. it's cold, it's wet, it floods, it's overcast...it knocks the leaves off the trees before they get a chance to fully realize themselves as "fall leaves," leaving them nothing more than stains on the sidewalk. this is when a well chosen soundtrack can help make the rain seem a little more...can we say, enjoyably melancholy...rather then abjectly depressing. my choices today were the more down-tempo love songs of ryan adams, and i have to say that with a long distance relationship on my mind more often than not, a little rain and a little ryan adams can go a long way towards cultivating the kind of mood that one needs to brood over lonliness and the frustrations of life, rather than the kind of bitterness that quickly develops when you realize that your jeans are soaked up to your knees and it's only 10 am.


in other commentary, it is stupid to drive your car through water, no matter what, and year after year of watching people get fished out of thier suv's in the middle of the highway should teach even the most asinine driver that it's not worth your life.

also, last week i saw pinter's "the birthday party" for the first time, and i have to say i was very impressed with the acting for a college production, and also that even though i really liked the play, the whole time i was watching it all i could think of was my friend dan, who i am positive will go on to write something that good one day and probably doesn't think so.

and those are my unrelated and irrelavent thoughts for today.

first post

well, i decided tonight to set this up mostly because the facebook has been freaking me out and i was thinking i needed some other internet space instead. i don't intend for this to be much of a journal....more of a political, cultural, occasional personal opinion site reflecting the mash-up of my life. it probably won't get much off the ground this week, though...important paper on mary wollstonecraft to write for susan gubar's class (god, i need to start that), other assorted things to do...so, potential readers- see you soon.