Worst Pies In London...

I'm watching Sweeney Todd, eating Ben & Jerry's Phish Food and writing a book for my creative writing class. I love my life.


In other news, Law & Order UK premiers on BBC America next, once I finish my icecream I'm going to have cheesey noodles with veg, and I'm looking at an apartment tomorrow after I get done at the community college. OH! And I understood my math homework!


And my boyfriend is getting his car back from the shop and his phone is getting turned back on, is going to look at job things if he's feeling better, our 9 months was on the first, and I'm tutoring for pocket cash.


Life is good!


Well, I have a book to write. So I've got to go. 


XO
FREAK

The Bohemian Life

For anyone who's watched the movie or musical "RENT" or seen the opera La Boheme, or read any of the dozens of books or articles written about Bohemian life, or seen the movies, or...

Ehem. For anyone who's come into contact with those advents of culture, "La Vie Boheme" is a familiar term. It's French for "The Bohemian Life" and the Bohemian life...

IF you want a long-winded description, read the Wikipedia entry on Bohemianism. If you want to really fall in love with the culture, read Bohemian Manifesto by Laren Stover. 

What it is, though, boils down to a group of people living outside of the confines of convention. The concept of the "starving artist" is a modernization of la vie boheme. It spent years meaning the same thing as gypsy life, and came from 19th century French. 

Bohemians have long been associated with seemingly unorthodox and often anti-establishment political/social views. Free love, frugality and voluntary poverty (which in todays world bring to mind hippies and flower children, not artists and other bohemian subgroups) were keystones in the lifestyle. Yes, sometimes people assume that it also involves bad personal hygiene and a dislike of things like fidelity, but judge not an entire cultural movement on the happenings of a handful of situations. 

For a long time, la vie boheme has really drawn me in to it's romance and artistry, because I've often theorized that I'm just not cut out for traditional life. I really am happy to live on pennies in a shitty loft somewhere and just work on art, and am jealous - yes, jealous - of the starving artists I meet, who aren't trapped by life in cubicles and on payroles. I don't want to have a car - though I'd be sad to give up Janis - and while I adore material possessions in some senses (clothes from resale or inexpensive stores, vintage things, artwork, books, and technology) I also don't give a fuck. I don't want a diamond or a brand new designer gown or a mansion for the sake of having a mansion. 

I'm happy to be unemployed, learning and reading and working on my creative pursuits instead of showing up to do a menial task day after day after day for people who I really fucking DONT like. 

Perhaps I really will fair better in a life undefined by the conventions of money and popularity, where artistry is king and judgement isn't a way of life. 

Gelett Burgess, an American writer and member of the Bohemian Club, wrote about Bohemia like this:

"To take the world as one finds it, the bad with the good, making the best of the present moment to laugh at Fortune alike whether she be generous or unkind - to spend freely when one has money, and to hope gaily when one has none - to fleet the time carelessly, living for love and art - this is the temper and spirt of the modern Bohemian in his outward and visible aspect. It is a light and graceful philosophy, but it is the Gospel of the Moment, this exoteric phase of the Bohemian religion; and if, in some noble natures, it rises to a bold simplicity and naturalness, it may also lend its butterfly precepts to some very pretty vices and lovable faults, for in Bohemia one may find almost every sin save that of Hypocrisy. ...

His faults are more commonly those of self-indulgence, thoughtlessness, vanity and procrastination, and these usually go hand-in-hand with generosity, love and charity; for it is not enough to be one's self in Bohemia, one must allow others to be themselves, as well. ...

What, then, is it that makes this mystical empire of Bohemia unique, and what i the charm of its mental fairyland? It is this: there are no roads in Bohemia! One must choose and fine one's own path, be one's own self, live one's own life."

(Thank you Wikipedia for having that listed as a description, I've read it before but had lost it and always loved it.)

To be a Bohemian isn't to give up the joys of worldly possessions but rather to share them. Make money on something, then do something good (though perhaps frivolous) with it. I may be of a slightly more of a nouveau bohemian mindset than the bohemians of lore, but that doesn't make me less of a bohemian soul.

J'adore la vie boheme. Some day I shall live la vie boheme. Viva la vie boheme, mes amis... viva la vie boheme.

XO

FREAK

Check In

I'm over half-way done with my first week of Community College and it feels like I was never on summer break. I'm so used to it - home to the cafe, cafe to math, math to cafe, cafe to english, english to home/work/boyfriends house.

Unfortunately, I realized I'm allergic to my favorite organic cafe that's a block away from the community college, so my new cafe is the one in the college itself.

Whatever. It's cheaper on campus anyways.

So I started my advanced writing course and I love it. I'm going to be working on a story... well, it's complicated, but it boils down to a modern fairy-tale with a relatable but extreme protagonist, a good-v-evil plot and a romantic twist.

Oh yes. I'm that good.

But I just wanted to check in before heading for yet another day of coursework.

XO

FREAK

Dear Community College,

I'm not sure what I think of you yet. In two days, I've seen a lot of very, very strange things. 


One of the first things I encountered on my first day of classes, while sitting at a group of tables near the cafe in the HEC building, was an older man with a kind of creepy vibe about him who talked to me for a good half an hour - without my knowledge - because he didn't notice that I had my headphones in. One of the other girls there told me this after he left. After that, a group of teenage boys told me I looked like "Kurt Cobain reincarnated as a chick but with better hair" and then we spent twenty mintues talking about RuneScape. They made my day. 


Other than that, my math teacher is obsessed with parenthesis, and in my 50 minute long class period on my first day, 15 minutes went to the syllabus, 20 went to parenthesis and the remainder resulted in nearly four pages of notes. 


Day two started with 20 minutes on parenthesis and the rest resulting in even more notes. Unfortunately, once I left math, I still had an hour between that and my first writing class. 


An hour in which...


Another older dude didn't notice my headphones, a girl told me I was pretentious because I want to study french and not Spanish (though she double checked what "pretentious" meant before using, just to be sure) and then I realized that I recognized a LOT of people but couldn't quite figure out where from.


And that was before writing, during which the girl who sat next to me and was meant to be my partner for a project was so quiet we didn't get the project done, the guy behind me was very nice and is a Criminology major, and then I actually got IN to the class. 


After writing, it continued. As I waited outside, a guy and his friend (both in their forties) walked up to the building, and as they did, one questioned the other...


"Do you think the teacher would be mad if I ditched class to go to get a burger?"


Yeah.


I feel like I'm back in high school. 


So as I said, I'm not quite sure what I think of you yet, Community College. I have one more class today, then we try this whole circus again come morning. 


XO
FREAK

The toxic nature of teenage relationships...

Last night, I found myself sitting on the kitchen floor in my pajamas, listening to Man Ray by the Futureheads while I waited for the french-fries I'd just put into the oven to finish cooking, contemplating making a batch of chocolate frosting even though I didn't have the energy to make a cake to put it on, and wondering where the brownies I'd bought earlier that day had ran off to.


For some reason that put me in a poetic mood. 


When a friend posted on facebook about some relationship issues, mainly how everyone hurts him, this was what I had to say:


"People walk in and out of our lives every day. Some go through like wrecking balls, some go through like ghosts... and some never leave. Chuck Palahniuk said "your heart is my pinata" and maybe you just keep picking girls who could have that as tag lines. But not every girl is like that, I promise. We have to slog through the bad to get to the good. Even the blood and guts is worth it in the end."


This is a guy who I asked out via comic correspondence, where I'd draw a page of a comic and pass it to him and he'd add a page... and I got turned down, because he was trying to "work it out" with a previous incarnation of the heartache that plagued him. 


Over all, that makes me sad. I'd have been a good girlfriend if I was given the chance... but instead I got a "no" drawn into a set of six comic frames. That ended with "it's a long story". 


Apparently it's not. 


Teenage relationships are so... virulent. 


XO
Freak