Summer and Why I Hate It

_{from John Baldessari's Invitation}

It's hot

I have no air conditioning

When it is hot and you have no air conditioning, bucket seats become uncomfortable

When it is hot and you have no air conditioning, your clothes get all wet

When it is hot and you have no air conditioning, the traffic gets worse

I hate wearing shorts

I have to water my plants more

My cat gets fleas

Because I have to get up early, I have a hard time tricking myself to go to bed when it seems like the sun just went down

I read even less because I am tempted to just sit on my stoop and do nothing

Fruit flies! Hate 'em

Kids on those deafening gasoline-powered razor scooters go up the street at about 4mph and then turn around and come right back

Bodies of water, such as lakes, oceans and ponds, stink more

I find it extremely hard to buckle down and work when that is exactly what I should be doing

People tend to all happy-go-lucky and this makes me irritable

It is freakin' hard to find a roommate in the summertime

Let's just say I were to play devil's advocate here and found some reasons to actually like summer such as there are more BBQ's, there can be found a better selection in produce, free municipal events occur weekly, and well, mas sol equals more ebullience even in Casey; can any of these really outweigh the overwhelming chlorine-filled nostalgia for childhood in the summertime?

Stay tuned for Casey's next post, a revisit from a previous one: Am I really so horrible to live with?

The I-5 and Why I Love It

from Cindy Sherman's Film Stills

Or Do I?

I've driven this portion of the I-5 countless times over the last 17 years. With three different vehicles of my own (a 1976 Toyota Corona without reverse; a 1984 Jeep Cherokee that bled oil; my current trustworthy Toyota Tacoma) a number of rentals, and one or two driveaways. I've been a passenger, I've taken the bus and I've been a stowaway in the back of a pickup. I've probably stopped at every gas station there is. I know exactly which stop houses the In-N-Out (Kettleman City), which one the Pea Soup Andersons (Santa Nella, silly), where one can eat at the new Indian Restaurant (that formerly was Mexican), where one might find the single Starbucks (if that's your thing), and which turnoff brings you to the fancy restaurant with the freshest steaks (conveniently owned by the largest cattle ranchers). I've spent the night on the side of the road shaking as every truck whizzed by while someone's dad drove up to tow us away. I've broken a fan belt twice at the bottom of the Grapevine. And I've waited patiently all along that rumbling interstate, coolant and water bottle in hand, for my car to stop overheating.

And who doesn't love a journey even if it is one well-trodden? Who doesn't love to get away even if it seemsnothing new here can be possibly seen? This portion of the I-5 is straight and dusty. Unmemorable in so many ways: no ma and pa diners, no breathtaking vistas, it offers nothing but the shortest route from here to there. Nonetheless, it is my passage home and I am never more full of hope and despair, anticipation and anxiety then when I am driving it. Each time I wonder: am I coming home for good? The drive down is more of a pulling. The drive away, an escape. My mind wanders, opens up and splits into a million fragments of memories and before too long, my lips are mouthing the title words to that Oates short story: Where Are You Going, Where Have You Been?

Did I mention that I have no air-conditioning? That this drive is mesmerizingly straight and flat? That I love each and every one of the truck stops with their tiny chapels doubling as cineplexes, the shower stalls you can rent by the minute, and the mind-boggling selection of self-help and cowboy books-on-tape in the store?

More than anything, this drive is familiar. This drive is mine. And the fact that I share it with so many others can be surprisingly consoling. I love seeing the license plates from Oregon, Washington and Vancouver and imagine them driving, driving, driving North in a straight line until they reach the tip of the Americas. I take refuge in every car I see full of furniture with its promise of a new beginning, a starting over. I watch the little girls in the back of the station wagon waving at the drivers facing them. Their cheery message, their joy at any response, their ability to hold on to their end of the bargain.

How to Get a Date Without Even Trying or

1. Start a blog
This has proven to work only in a small number of cases and possibly over only a finite period of time. WARNING: one may realize the blog is better than the real life simulacrum of the blog. But dates can and do occur and they can be relatively pain free.

2. Have a room available for rent.
Have people over to look at the room for rent. Inevitably, there will be one who will turn down the room and inquire about the possibilities of hanging out or getting coffee with the owner of the room for rent. While I cannot at this time attest to the level of the date on any numerical scale that would give you, the readers, an indication of its success--as for me personally hanging out barely registers on the Richter Scale--there is something to be said for just practicing.

3. Have sneaky friends.
That is to say, friends that will just happen to run into other friends when you are out drinking beer with them. WARNING: because aforementioned friends are married, must be willing to date single dads with children approximately the same age as your friends' children. WARNING NUMBER TWO: this might not immediately get you a one-on-one date, but rather, a group outing involving a lighthouse, pirate shanties, loads of kids and more beer.

4. Dine at your local public house.
When dining, consult your spiral-bound to-do list containing highly evolved systems of color coding and charcoal shading including histograms, box plots, scatter plots and other graphical representations of data. Grow frustrated and then wildly animated when you cannot read your own goddamn writing! Note others staring at you in wonder and engage in pleasantries about their compelling to-do list practices and byzantine methods of sub categorization. Realize that you and the other chronic to-do lister are neighbors and both recently dumped. Allow yourself to be bought more beer and share the misery. We really do like company.

Stay tuned for our next posting:
Casey Discovers Her New Lot in Life: The Single Daddies

a bit of a recap

Because it's fun. Because it's satisfying. And because this is a wholly unoriginal idea--I bring to you The Best Of 2005: Google Searches That Brought Folks Here. Interesting only to me, I'm sure, but an easy post to dash off from work. In order of relevance to me:

A search for "Miranda July never went to art school." YES, nor did I! Unless film school counts.

How about "accidentally killing a cat?" Fortunately something that I didn't actually do.

Multiple searches for the "plural of massuese." People, how many times?! Can we just lay it to rest? It's masseese!

One "fear of elevators- news stories." I have many fears and it surprises me I haven't gotten more hits on all of them.

A "booty call frequency." 'Nuff said.

How about "Clay Christmas Figures?" Yes, we remember those fondly.

One person trying for "'the rainbow connection' song gay." I hope they found whatever the hell they were looking for.

"log sexy casey" Can't possibly imagine the answer to this request.

And actually one that is near and dear to my heart: "michael cazian" Is someone out there searching for him too?

Another date with the Bachelorette

Saturday night. And we're both broke, bored and single. Simultaneously, we are also struggling artist types in our thirties who haven't figured out what we want to be when we grow up. So we decide to park it in a cafe--the kind we can sit in for hours and only one of us has to actually purchase a tea--and make lists. We are both excellent list generators. Bachelerotte is not so good at the hanging on to of the lists, so I am the designated filer. The lists, of course, we write on napkins because that is the only way of generating lists truly culled from the incisive stream of our collective consciousness. This does, however, make it somewhat challenging for the filing and subsequent cross-referencing were such a thing to ever occur.

The first thing we tackle is how to make art, make a living, ignore all the people settlin' down, and not feel isolated, uninspired, and exhausted. And then we had our light bulb moment: start an artist commune. First things first, write down the names of all those who could potentially be a part of our really cool commune. Quickly we come up with 2 names: mine and hers. But we get a little stymied after that. We write some other names down and keep having to cross them our for various reasons like well, she's already a successful artist and oh wait, I dated him or I hear she's way into wheat grass. Apparently the Bachelorette has 80 acres of land in Kansas on which her distant cousins are farming. But Kansas can be so cold. And with only two of us so far in the commune, it might be a little too isolating.

We move on to our next idea, because tonight we are idea machines! Simply unstoppable! The next brilliant scheme unfolds like this: the Bachelorette and I both seem to suffer from the same exact problems, like, we've been working on the same piece for way too long, the aforementioned piece is not wrapping itself up in any satisfactory kind of manner and we are totally unsure anyone would be interested if we ever were to finish. We decide to ask her therapist if we could start our own group therapy session, just the two of us. It'd be like 2-fors. Bachelorette agrees to call her therapist the next morning with this THE SOLUTION TO ALL OUR PROBLEMS. Since I am the designated filer, we are careful to also note down that I will actually have to call her in the morning to remind her to call the therapist.

And then, lickity split, another idea hits: because we are both such perfect messes and quite the more so when we are together trying to muddle through it, perhaps we could offer ourselves up to science. Or maybe even some aspiring screenwriters. They could pay to watch one of our brainstorming, list-generating sessions and in exchange understand how the complex, profound, neurotic and prone to extreme exaggeration mind of a mid-thirties woman works. We could be the next great case study for any up and coming psycho-therapist. Think Dora but with all the modern trimmings and well, more anti-depressants.

Finally, we came to, what it always seems to come down to: dating. Neither one of us is really willing to expend much energy on the whole internet dating thing but perhaps between the two of us we could muster one internet ad and just split the dates. It would sorta be like a surprise for the potential datee--they would never know who to expect. In fact, splitting potential dates has many advantages: it takes half the amount of time, half the having to tell our story over and over, and half the humiliation. Plus, were it to go the way of a second date, we could always swap and thus get a free second opinion.

We ended the evening on a positive note, feeling like we had accomplished a lot and more importantly, amusing (and ridiculing) ourselves in the process. Although slightly off-topic, we realized that it would be really great if we had groupies, of the kind musicians and comedians so readily acquire. But not only is it hard to get people to actually come watch experimental films, it is equally difficult for audience members to identify us as the artists when they leave in the middle of the show.

Exhibit A

Omar dreamt that he hadn't seen me in two years and that I became a Born Again.

Exhibit B

A woman I know once dated a man. They had been dating not too long when they rented the movie, Who's Afraid of Virgina Wolf? They decided it would be a brilliant idea to get really drunk and scream and yell at each other much like Burton and Taylor did in the movie. Just really let each other have it. Well, things were said and not forgotten and the relationship ended pretty much that night. What they failed to remember was that the characters in the movie had been married a very long time.

Exhibit C

I have still not found a roommate and thank you for asking. I did receive a promising email from a QueenMelina_superQT@hotmail.com who apparently is a model in Nigeria and can have HER LAST BOSS WHO OWES HER MONEY AND WILL DO WHATEVER SHE ASKS forward me the rent for the room.

Exhibit D

Did anyone read that Tessa Brown short story from Harper's? Friggin floored me in its flawlessness.

So the plan was to print out this entire blog and file it away. Be done with it. But I have been too lazy to cross that one off my list. And besides, wouldn't it just be easier if I continued? That way, I don't have to waste all that paper and energy. Energy that could be expended for something, well, more useful. Like blogging!

I can make no promises. And it mightn't be here. But because we are all prone to moments of excessive vanity and delusion, I offer this link, the best blog post ever written about little ol' me.

For more information about our Catholic School upbringing, read this lovely post written by the badass writer and my other high school chum, Kate Sullivan.

TO BE CONTINUED

Omar,
If it is you, who in fact stumbled upon this website from the corporate offices of tivo, I am sorry. You weren't meant to read any of this. I am glad we are talking again, if that is, you still plan on talking to me.

Meagan,
It only took me 15 years to figure out that your name was spelled with an "a". Thank you for being so patient. Even though, I always get on your case about updating your blog, I am hoping this now means you will actually pick up the phone and call me.

David,
Thank God, someone else moved to Mudville. I know I introduced you to the blog just as I am shutting it down, but you really should try it. Maybe I can be a guest contributor.

Laura and Laura's partner,
I can't wait to meet you. We'll have loads to share.

Kurt,
Two words and I'll put them in italics:
offblog

Keep your ears to the ground, Casey just might be popping up out there in the not-to-distant future.

Conversation with another female artist...

...who, like me, is not really making a lot of art at the moment. Her excuse is that she is a new mom. We can't quite figure out what mine is. But over lunch we talked a lot about making art and it was as if we were going to actually make some! We came up with many ideas: a handful of screenplays, one or two video installations, a bizillion documentaries, the crying log quilt, and then there were the tiny packing tape boxes, my specialty, and sure to be a hit at the next Biennial. All of our ideas were original, never-been-done before, one-of-a-kinders, very cutting edge, so I can't share them here. But with my contacts at the Home and Garden Channel and her contacts in her mommy group, we feel pretty positive that Jerry Bruckheimer will be calling us back soon.

Really, the whole lunch made me feel a helluva lot better (and no, it wasn't just the sake talking). So much better, that by the end of the meal I was actually able to say Miranda July that bitch at least a coupla times. OK I said it many times, and kept slamming down my sake cup for emphasis until we were asked to leave.
But when I left, I was whistling.

and out of nowhere there appears a roommate

3 Women, Robert Altman

A potential roommate appeared at my front door, bearing the fair name, Bonnie. With my overactive imagination, I pictured long blonde tresses, a certain pastoral demeanor and a hearty enthusiasm for helping out in the yard. In my head, she was comfortably moved in, cooking elaborate country-style meals, and instructing me in the fine arts of clogging. She opened the door and a bright light streamed in behind her. She was actually glowing. And then the door shut behind her.

I was a little suspicious when she blurted out that she was currently living out of a residential hotel, that the place she had been going to move into fell apart and that she only had 6 boxes to her name. But then again, there isn't a lot of storage space, and what the hell are my other options? From the start, she made it very clear that she was interested in the room and hoped I could make a decision within a couple of hours. She was beginning to remind me of Shelly Duvall in The Shining, prim and pert, yet wide-eyed and helpless. Whereas I thought I had been desperate, one look into her eyes and I discovered the true meaning of panic.

Any other person would have realized this as a perfect point to begin negotiations. How many meals a week would she be willing to cook? How little time would she spend in the living room? Could she get her hands on a Tivo? I guess I'm just not any other person and, well, Shelly Duvall has always had a soft spot in my heart. Fair our Bonnie was not, companionable perhaps, but willing to rent the room, you betcha!

become one of these people

L.I.E

The woman walks towards the man. The man sits on a freeway overpass. He sits on an empty paint bucket. There is an umbrella, a water bottle and a pair of crutches beside him. The man faces the rush hour traffic. He sits so that he is just in the middle of the 5-lane highway. He wears an orange traffic vest. The traffic moves at 25 mph or so. It seems the perfect speed.

The woman walks toward the man. He talks but she can't make out what he is saying. He gesticulates wildly. He looks like he has been there a long time. He looks like he is prepared to be there even longer. The man throws peace signs. Rapidly. With both hands. The man makes eye contact with the drivers in the cars below him. The people below him respond. The people flash peace signs up at him. The people look up and honk their horns. The man keeps pumping out peace signs in rapid bursts. Peace brother peace brother peace sister. He never stops. He never stops talking.

The woman walks toward the man and stops. She wants a lane or two of that oncoming traffic. The woman has a different system. The woman grabs hold of the mesh gate, the gate that protects pedestrians from throwing themselves off. The woman holds onto the fencing and faces the cars. The cars pass beneath her. The overpass shakes. She can still hear the man. She still can't make out what he is saying. The woman makes eye contact with the cars passing beneath her and cries. The woman is soon wailing.

The woman likes being near the man. She is relatively young and he is relatively old. She feels him reaching out to everyone who passes below. She feels his insatiable need to communicate with each and every one of them. She knows she could turn around and have the other side to herself. Park herself in the middle. Get everyone's undivided attention. But that's not the point. She knows no one can tell that she is crying. Her gesture is so small.

The joggers pass behind them. The cars beneath them. Many in the cars are alone. Many are commuters, but there are also families, picking up the kids from school, dropping them off at practice, coming home with the groceries. The woman tries to remember a detail from each of them: red hair, short bob, glasses, beard, cigarette, singing, car seat, tapping her fingers, looking up, throwing a peace sign.

The woman leaves the man. The woman gets into her car and drives away. The woman still cries. The woman sits in a different rush hour traffic. The woman listens to loud music with the windows rolled up tight. The woman's face is splotchy. The woman tries to make eye contact with the other drivers at the red lights. Some of them don't notice. Some of them turn away. Some of them point her out to other passengers. The other drivers can't always tell she is crying. The other drivers think she might be talking on the phone. Or that she is laughing. Or perhaps that something sexual is going on.

The woman looks at as many people as possible. She is no different from the man. She is waiting. Waiting for someone to not laugh. To not turn up the music. To not push their elbows out the window. The woman is waiting for someone who will stop their engine. Unbuckle their seatbelt. Get out of the car and come to her window. The woman is waiting for someone who will stop in the middle of rush hour traffic and knock on her window and open the door and climb in.

the crying log

from Miranda July's Getting Stronger Everyday

The young-uns here at work have decided to post a crying log on a dry-erase board for public perusal. Eagerly, I was one of the first to sign up. It is my humble opinion that people do not cry enough and, if I am honest with myself, those people are made up of mostly men. A crying log affords the same opportunities that a dream journal affords. With a dream journal, you start remembering your dreams. A crying log, ergo, could help people cry and, since crying is so very cathartic, the world, or at least my workplace, would be a much better place.

Upon closer exploration, however, I discovered there were many flaws to the workplace crying log. For example, people started making up rules. Apparently, crying during movies didn't count as it wasn't really crying about oneself and someone else suggested that crying after a bad haircut might not be serious enough to include on the log. Furthermore, I detected more than just a whiff of sarcasm as entry #2just below mine stated that the person cried every Friday. All this to say, I am going to start my own damn crying log as it really is an excellent idea!

Now, I am the kind of person who saves every missing child flyer that comes through the mail slot. Yes, it's true. So a crying log is right up my alley. I love a list. I love a permanent record. I love a solid chart than can easily be converted to any number of illustrative graphs. I am not sure any of this will make me a better person, but both you and I, can learn a little bit more about who I really am. Plus, I am running out of things to blog about.

So.
Here goes.

May 3, 2005
Casey cried uncontrollably throughout the evening. And yes, a movie was involved. The movie in question, Me, You and Everyone We Know, was so good, so heartachingly sweet and so made by a younger and far more talented woman than I that the whole experience was quite devastating. In a good way. Casey cried some more on the drive home and once again later in bed.

April 21, 2005
Casey cried uncontrollably throughout the evening. And yes, a movie was involved. The movie in question, Closer, reminded Casey that people in relationships can be very cruel to each other, even when they resemble Jude Law and Julia Roberts. In this case, she didn't actually cry during the movie (so it counts!) but after she had downloaded that damn song they insisted on playing multiple times throughout it. She continued playing the song for the rest of the evening, moping around her house while intermittently hugging her pillow. For those who are concerned, no scotch was involved in this incident.

April 15, 2005
Casey cried uncontrollably throughout the day while staying at her mother's house in Los Angeles. And no, a movie was not involved. It was her sister's birthday and everyone was downstairs enjoying themselves, being happily married, loving their adorable children, and being loved back unconditionally in return, when Casey simply could not take it anymore. She had to lock herself in the bathroom at least 3 times that day and cry while staring at herself in the mirror. This was quite sobering and made it especially hard to adjust to the bright Los Angeles sun when exiting the bathroom.

The average I believe is about once a week. And these are the patterns for analysis thus far: I cry during movies, when listening to National Public Radio, in the midst of long drives, when I see old people crossing the street, when stuck in really bad traffic, and occasionally during sex.

Portrait of the artist as a young saint

Once upon a time and a very good time it was, I went to school. Kindergarten. It was public. We walked there. We walked back home. There were twins. They were blonde. They were boys. They could snort milk out of their noses. They liked milk. There was a farm. The sheep got sheered. The wool fell on the yard. The wool fell everywhere. There was a cat. It came to our classroom. We put out milk. I made a planter. I painted it red orange green. We put in dirt and a flower grew. The flower died. There were many other planters. My teacher was Mrs. Oto.

Then I went to the religious school. We could not wear what we wanted. We had to pray before every meal. Before we sat. Before we stood. The teacher threw my books on the floor. I didn't know why. We colored dittos. The ink smelled good. The play-doh tasted good. The crayons got under my nails. The crayons tasted good. The teacher threw my books on the floor. I still didn't know why.

We read about the saints. They all died for Jesus. The pages in the bible were thin. It was hard to turn the pages. People colored on the pages. People wrote their names on the sides. I did not. On the dittos, I tried to color inside the lines. For Jesus. I tried to pay attention during mass. I tried not to giggle. Even when Jere put a round paper sack behind Jessica's pew so that when she sat down she made a very loud noise. Even when Paul Garcia who was not very tall fainted during a long sermon. I tried to finish the rosary every night. I tried to lie in bed and not move for as long as possible. To hold my breadth for as along as possible. To not scratch myself. To think good thoughts. To come up with the longest prayer, the most amount of people to pray for. The highest I ever got was 11.

But how to be a saint? What could I die a martyr of? Could one die from being honest? What if I walked home without my shoes on? Could I die from pain inflicted to my feet? What if I was first really bad, then I could be really good? I needed to find a way to become a martyr. It needed to be close to my First Holy Communion. It would be best if I found the way to die just a few hours after my First Holy Communion. But what about my First Holy Confession? Maybe I should wait until that. And that wasn't until 3rd grade. And then I could die a saint and go to heaven. And be absolved of all my sins. Maybe it would be best to be very bad now and confess and then be very good from that point forward.

There were many ways to get to heaven. Through a needle. Pierced by arrows. Eaten by lions. Burned at the stake. Beheaded. Or put into leaden caskets and thrown into the river. Or death by calling upon god to protect your virginity. I was not too sure about how that last one worked, but one of these would have to do.