I like films, but I rarely have the free time, money, or equipment necessary to watch them when I'm at school.

My local public library has a surprisingly good DVD collection. It's summer. I don't have a full-time job, a driver's license, or any real obligations to anyone.

Yeah, so.

( Films Watched, May to August 2011 )

I stopped to talk with two of the little girls who live down the block, and the one wearing the glasses and the pale blue headscarf (I think she's the eldest, and I know there's a better word than "headscarf" for the type of clothing I mean, but it eludes me) called over to a third, who was busy running through the sprinkler on their lawn, to come ( Read more... )

My mother really does not understand the difference between "Julia doesn't know how to do X," "Julia is afraid to do X," and "Julia finds Xing emotionally, mentally, and/or physically taxing/unpleasant enough that she prefers to avoid it where possible so as to avoid what is for her massive energy expenditure on something relatively trivial." It's ( Read more... )

The streets are older than the walls and the places where bullets and shrapnel bored ragged holes through stone are older than most of the people who live here now. You would not know that this had ever been a swamp, and though the city has war on its skin and war in its bones the way cities like this always do, it's hard to imagine that once it ( Read more... )

And then she got really high on common pantry spices ( Read more... )

( silly meme from alicia! )

Oh, my. It stormed all night. I might've got thirty, forty minutes of sleep. It was exciting, though, energizing, and I sat up and I got some milk and I listened to the thunder and felt like Meg Murray at the beginning of A Wrinkle in Time.

I have a copy of this anthology, which I've been reading-- it's quite good overall, but it's an ( Read more... )

I love thunderstorms. My mom doesn't, she's scared of lightning. I said, look, we can't wait under this awning till the storm blows over. If you're scared to run to the car by yourself, I'll run with you. It's okay if I get wet. Really. She said, no, I know you don't want to get soaked. I said, Listen, the thunder comes forty to fifty seconds after ( Read more... )

It is really, really hot here. Again. I don't have air conditioning, just a fan. I'd sort of rather have to put up with excessively hot, muggy summers than excessively cold, snowy winters, but I'm not thrilled by either. I just feel bad and sick in the heat, mostly.

I like katabasis-as-coming-of-age narratives, apparently. Is that a thing, you know ( Read more... )

When I was a little girl in Marburg, a swan attacked me by the river one day. I don't know why. I was probably trying to pet it or chase it; maybe I stepped on its nest by accident. Maybe I just came too near. Anyway, swans are attacking things. They don't look as though they would be, but they are. A swan can kick your ass. It came running at me ( Read more... )