My first of hopefully many more

A few days before Thanksgiving break Oliver told me that he and his roommates were planning a post Thanksgiving film "festival" (i don't know if that’s actually what he called it) but that I should try to have something shot, edited and ready to show by the Monday after break.
The last time I filmed something was in 8th grade, I don't have a video camera and I didn't know how to edit. But I was into it. On Saturday November 24th I left my home in Connecticut to go to my home in Durham. I had an hour drive to the air port and then a days worth of flying ahead of me. So I started filming or I think the correct term is shooting (as Adam Shiffer once told me because there was no actual film involved) on my tiny digital canon camera.
At times during my travel in which I usually found myself bored or lonely I found myself exited and comforted by my modest but efficient camera. Thanks to the size of my camera I was able to illegally shoot the take off of my first flight (something that I have always thought to be a beautiful event). I do have to admit that the woman sitting next to me who had also heard the "please turn off all electronics for take off" announcement was not so pleased, I also have to admit that I was slightly nervous that my artistic ambitions would be the cause of the entire flights doom...oh the things we do for art.
I also added a little twist in to the project for my own enjoyment. I tried as much as possible to shoot places my eyes wouldn’t normally be looking. For example while walking down the terminal I let my camera record while I held it in my hand pointed behind me, at my feet or my luggage. Then it was a total surprise and sometimes a treat to see what had been recorded.
When I got back to Wilmington Oliver installed an editing program on my computer and gave me a fast lesson on how to use the basics. We were off; side by side we edited our individual projects. We occasionally asked for each others artistic opinions and I more than occasionally asked for technical help.

With all this being said my movie/film/whatever it should be called is nothing to right home about but I love it. I loved shooting it, editing it and the whole process of expanding my creative eye.

So thank you Oliver for encouraging me to be a part of your film "festival" and thank you to my tiny little camera.


Oh, and in the end Oliver and I were the only ones who actually completed our films.

Here it is, “HOME”, don't worry after you press play it stays black for a bit but be patient

hey oliver why is the quality so bad?

HAHAHAHAHAHAHHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAAHHAHAHAHAHA...LOL

Camping

Very late, but here are some photos from our camping trip, they are a little out of order but hey... From Left to right.

• Sunset over hotsprings
• the last day of our trip
• Oliver and i after soaking in the hot springs tubs
  
• Oliver jumping over Laurel river
• Oliver and i after we set up camp the first night
• Me on the Appalachian trail
  
• Roasting marshmallows
• After we found dodger
• Oliver, me , Josh (sara's boyfriend), and sara
  
• For more details see Oliver's Blog
  

Fall, in season & feeling

There are several books out titled something around the lines of "things fall apart".

For my piece of mind I'd like to think that for the most part things stick together.

Sometimes it takes a while for us to realize that despite the ups and downs & back and forths of living, resilience is abundant.

Scared that once I have let things fall there down for good…its easy to forget to…

1. To let my hands uncover my eyes

2. To release the breath I’ve been keeping inside my lungs as if I let it go it might never come back

3. To let the lump in my throat become the tears it is destined to be.

And then it goes,

it falls, out the eyes and down the face.

Sorrow, anger & fear escape in the form of salty liquid.

And in most incidents, when it’s over things are still in tacked!

Books are still waiting to be read, papers to be written, there is music to be heard, dances to be danced, there are classes to attend, and people to love and be loved by.

So, things stick together until they don’t for the moment of temporary collapse; then they stick together again.

Tip:

Recycled emotional debris can build beautiful normalcy ( and art).

new beginings

School is up and running and i'm trying to keep up.
A quick cap of whats happend so far:
*Moved into my new apartment "The Seahawk Landing"
*Learning how to feed myself without parents or a meal plan and loving it!
*Done some major grocery shopping
*Got a job at The Landing coffee shop right outside my appartment building (worked a couple times; made sandwiches, smoothies, fancy coffee drinks and worked the register)
*Was named Jr "class president" for the social work department
*Made my first stencil (with help from oliver)
*Made guacamole with oliver
*Grew and ate first batch of sprouts (seeds and jar given as a gift from oliver)

Whats on my mind: Being as it is my Jr year i thought "hey, i'm an upper classman, i've got this whole college thing under control" well, not so much. I had an extremely frustrating time with my schedule and have spent the last week running around trying to find the "right" people to pull the "right" strings to get me in the "right" classes. I attended two English classes that i am no longer enrolled in and i have now replaced English entirely with a sociology class (which i am actually quite happy about). This week also brought some discouraging and disappointing news. After meeting with the secretary of the social work department to talk about studying abroad i was informed that if i wanted to both graduate with a degree in social work and study abroad it would take an extra year. The money aspect of staying an addition year in school is a bit anxiety provoking, but for the most part this information just caught me off guard. For the past two years of my college career i've been working with a four year degree in mind and, of course was looking forward to graduating with the friends i've made along the way; this part is just plain disappointing. But, after spending a good half hour in the SWK department today, feeling down, an encouraging word came my way. Dr. Blundo, a proffessor in the SWK department i had never met before, noticed me with my head resting on the secretaries desk and degree audit in the other hand, "whats wrong kid?" he said. I explained that i was struggling with weather to study abroad or not because the academic set backs. He then took my degree audit out of my hand, began waving it around, looking the the complete ex-hippie im sure he is, and made a speech that went something like this..."ten years from now when your telling your kids about your college experience do you think their going to jump up and down and want to know more when you tell them you graduated in four years? NO! But they will when you tell them you studied for a year in London! So do it! So what if your class ring has a different year on it!" A seed of confidence was planted.

So here i am, my complete and hopefully final schedule for fall semester 2007 by my side, and my application to Roehampton University in the United Kingdom in front of me. Now that i have said all this it is important to remember, myself included, that i haven't yet been excepted to study abroad so nothing is set in stone.
FLEXIBLE is the word of the week.



Despite the complications and frustrations of school i am so thrilled to be here. I am so grateful for everyone who supports me in all the different ways i need it.



After thought: While riding down chancellors walk from my class, at 6:45 this evening, the world was breathtakingly calm. The bright blue sky screamed mid day heat, but Summer is fighting the inevitable Fall. Autumn crept in amongst the pine trees and i could feel it... always on time.

After dinner Oliver came over with a present he said he had found for me the other night, it was a flier from down town advertising a restaurant across the top it read, "The last evenings of late summer are among the sweetest times one can spend."

This is the start

Pull some thoughts out of my brain cart

May be sweet may be tart

But will be from the heart