this old house

I had a dream last night, I was at this old house built in colonial style. It was sort of like a winchester house, with lots of staircases and levels and hallways, and it was like a huge maze. everything was painted white and covered with dust and cobwebs. I was supposed to be going through the house like an obstacle course in competition with this other guy, and the goal was to get to the top of the house. He went first, but for some reason, I followed him, and our audience followed behind me, so it was more like him being our tour guide and everyone followed and poked around as we went along. We would go up stairs and have to turn back down because they didn't go anywhere, or staircases would move or be traps. And as we progressed, level by level, we started to hear this voice. Someone whispered that the house was haunted, and it was the voice of the ghost of the man who built the house. I could picture his face, although I didn't actually see him, and his voice was deep, booming, and threatening. It seemed like only I and the other guy could hear him, and we were both terrified. The voice was warning us about reaching the top level- that we shouldn't venture up there, that we had gone too far already. We were on the second to the last level, and there was a bed there, an old wooden bed. And I felt his presence so strongly around the bed, and the voice telling us that we were standing in the room where he died, and not to go up, DO NOT GO UP. I was so petrified of what we would find upstairs - I imagined something akin to the attic in ju-on/the grudge! I was completely frozen until the guy looked me straight in the eye, absolutely blanched of color from his face, and both of us turned around and worked our way downstairs, the crowd following us curiously. We convened on the bottom level and I remember liz and aimi poking around in this old desk that was down there. They found a bible that people had sort of turned into a guestbook, signing their names and little messages in its pages. And then I woke up.

it's only been a couple days...

but so much has happened, so i'm back. :3

sea wolf
so i never actually got around to decorating, we just cleaned the house and then anna invited me out for a concert at the roxy, so i went, and it was ridiculously great. the opening band was called chasing kings, and they were fantastic! the second band was a little forgettable, but headlining was an LA based band called sea wolf, and they were just....mesmerizing live. surprise surprise, they have a song on the new moon soundtrack...but this fact should be largely disregarded. haha! well...all you need to know, is that the soundtrack is far better than the movie, and that the subsequent publicity for the band is probably very positive. they were a little arcade fire, a little moody and a little folksy, but they won me over pretty quickly... nothing like comfortable, idyllic melancholy when you're feeling a bit lost and despondent.

jazzzzzz
today, i put up the tree, and nothing else. and then went to brave the crowds at the mall. i got a little xmas shopping done, but there's just a week left and i still need to get a lot of presents. :( i dunno what it is, but this year...i'm pretty uninspired. and then...anna and i went to her friend alexis' jazz show at this little coffee shop in old town monrovia...and music brought me solace once again. for anyone a little sick of christmas music, or anything they've been listening to a bit too regularly, try some jazz. it's just so alive, a pattern arriving then playfully slipping away, only to come back again and again, each time different than the last. he sang sabor a mi at the very end, a song in spanish that was all velvet and so lush... i blushed terribly at the first verse. i am still so blown away by his talent and his passion for jazz...gah.

hokay...i'll stop pretending i know how to talk about music now. >__< just wanted to share!

winter breakkk

hope everyone is having a good break so far...hope it gets better for those who aren't (feel better emie and aimi!!)

quick update:
12th = left seattle, had the most turbulent flight of my life, but got home safe and sound. went to bed at 8 pm!
13th = got up at 10 am, went to mass, lazed around the house, then hung out with anna, made a list of people for xmas gifts, and went for pool and beer at barney's.
14th = got a feeble start to xmas shopping with k-squared (the couple i hate to hate!) anddd... had dinner with them. was very excited when i went home, to say the least. :P
15th = did mostly nothing. yay! umm...painted my nails and organized my music. oh, and we're apparently switching to t-mobile as of january 4th...?
16th = went to sea world with my parents and my aunt. haha. i now have an annual pass to sea world, as it was the same price as a day pass.
17th = today, we're decorating the house, finally! maybe it'll start to feel like christmas around here.

otherwise, home is nice, but i miss everyone already. haha. that's it for now! tell me how you guys are doing... :)

for the difference we make

whoa. so...here's my film debut. as a healer. HAHA!

the weird part is...i'm a bigger star than jesse david. :O

i should tell you i'm disaster

hey. happy first of november/all saints day/dia de los muertos!

this is kind of a test post...it seems like blogger hasn't been showing that i'm posting? well...i'm still here, haha.

last weekend, i went to a support group for my addiction studies class (this quarter i'm taking intro to drug and alcohol addiction - it's kind of fun to walk into class and start talking about heroin and crack).

i walked up madison to an open, gay narcotics anonymous meeting and i wasn't expecting much. i was listening to rent, mentally singing along to "i should tell you". i followed a man through the door, mentally singing along: “i should tell you i'm disaster”. we walked up the stairs to the third floor, and into a meeting of nothing I expected. there were a handful of men chatting, milling around, grabbing coffee, some sitting and lost in their thoughts. i meekly approached a man sitting behind a table, verified that the meeting was open, and that i was in the right place. i was fleetingly relieved of my anxiety, as i had tried another meeting earlier in the week to no success. that is, until my dreaded inevitable awkwardness that i was actually now in a room full of strangers that i knew to be addicts reared its ugly head. i shook it off nonetheless – these men kindly acknowledged me, but did not ask anything of me or why i was there. i felt neither accepted nor rejected, so i settled in and prepared to be the silent observer, a sort of elephant in the room.

the topic of the NA meeting was "principles before personalities". in NA there are 12 steps just like in AA, and there are also 12 traditions. the twelfth tradition states that "anonymity is the spiritual foundation of all our traditions, ever reminding us to place principles before personalities". the meeting focused on judgment of other people, how universal it is, and yet, how it causes damage to both ourselves and to others. the things that were said there in that room were supposed to help people in their personal recoveries. but the things that were said there just struck me and left me with a lot to think about.

i judge people all the time. it's a reflex...when caught in unfamiliar territory, or even all too familiar territory, the first thing i do is assess. i think it's gotten out of control, and i think that too many times, i can't see the persons for the people. because what they look like got in the way, or their clothes...or the things they do...or the things they say. i don't know if this makes sense to anyone, but just putting what i've been thinking about out there.

so, the main reason for this post was to explain that i needed to change the name of my tumblr, and this is what i came up with...because it needed to be different from what's in here. i should tell you i'm disaster. it's a reminder to myself of the story i told, and hopefully some of the stuff there speaks to you. at least...i hope you find a bit of a story there.

one sentence

is all it takes to tell a story.

http://www.themedmagazine.com/issue1/realworld.html

forever is not so long

i watched this and didn't realize that i was holding my breath. until the very end.

Forever's Not So Long from garrettmurray on Vimeo.

it's time to reevaluate.