Category Archives: Posts

the Persistence of Yellow

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Poetry by Monique Duvall

Despite her husbands objections, she gave a brief demonstration of her flying technique to the other ladies at the dinner party.  #6

Once upon a time, a girl prayed for true love. Her prayers were answered. She learned to love herself.  #30

“Most of my life,” she says, “I’ve been in search of IT. And I thought that IT came inside a big box with a bow on top carefully marked and labeled and numbered. I brushed away all the ‘incidental’ discoveries like cobwebs. But now everything counts. Now I search for traces of miracles…and I find them everywhere.”  #172

spring break ’09

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Tim drove up to stay the week with us. It was really cool to have him here and soon he will our new house mate. I was so glad that his visit lined up with our spring break and I had four days off in a row.

Thursday night all six of us went to see the Watchmen in IMAX at the Metreon. I was one of the only ones that had not read the graphic novel and I did enjoy the movie, but I covered my eyes a lot. It was much more violent than I had anticipated. Pretty much the consensus was that the book was way better, but that is usually the case.

Colin came up the next night, just in time for us to really get into playing Settlers of Catan. It is such an awesome game and we played it a lot (maiki went back to Eudemonia to buy the expansion Cities and Knights and now it is even better). The game is both intuitive and interactive so I really get into playing it. Sunday Amy and Rodrigo came over to play some Settlers and meet everyone at C9th. More geekery ensued and we had a lot of laughs.

Tuesday Tim and maiki and I went to SF and walked over to Japantown. I bought my favorite melon pan we ate lots of other treats. maiki and I picked a bunch of stickers. My lappy looks so wonderful all decorated. I will post a picture soon.

Wednesday I walked with Tim up to the UC Berkeley library and checked it out. Tim said that he cannot wait to get a card there once he is a Berkeley resident. It is one hundred dollars a year and I know that he will get his use out of it, but I wonder if I would if I had it. I am becoming much more interested in teaching myself and learning everything that I can about what interests me. After being back in school for a while, I am in a groove to do this without getting too side tracked. I think that Tim living here will also inspire me—as my other house mates do.

Thursday night maiki and I went to a Literary Potluck at Susan M’s house. She is such a wonderful hostess. It was so much fun seeing familiar faces and meeting new people and everyone that came read something aloud. I brought The Doubtful Guest by Edward Gorey and The Persistence of Yellow by Monique Duvall, my two favorite yellow books. I read poems from the Persistence of Yellow and the other guests seem to enjoy them as much as I do. Before that night I had never heard so much wonderful poetry. I guess that in school I didn’t read anything that really interested me so didn’t I explore it further. It was a really special evening for me.

Now I’m working this weekend and I have some Typography homework but still feeling very much relaxed. The weather has been beautiful and warm and the flowers are all in bloom. It is so enjoyable to stroll along and smell the jasmine that I don’t even want to ride my bike lately because it will all go by too fast. I want to savor every beautiful moment, even if it makes my allergies crazy. Its worth it.

a trip abroad

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When I was going through a box of photos the other day I found pictures from my family trip to Germany from when I was a kid. I was in the third or fourth grade when we went and we stayed for about a month. We drove across the country and spent about a week near the big Oktoberfest (that is where I got the big goofy glasses). We were accompanied by my aunt, her husband—whose family lived in Munich and his relatives. I went on a few rides at Oktoberfest and was amazed at how large in scale everything there seemed. Huge tents packed with people, beer steins larger than I had ever seen, giant roller coasters—one of them even had rings of fire. We danced on the tables and I drank steins of orange Fanta. All of the little towns that we passed also celebrated Oktoberfest and had small carnivals. It was a neat experience staying my uncle’s mom’s house and visiting his with relatives. It was the first time I had ever slept under a down comforter. I will always remember how they served coffee and tea with lots of desserts in the afternoon. And the chocolate was the best I have ever tasted.

During our travels we went to many castles and churches. My favorite of course was the Neuschwanstein castle because it is the castle that Disneyland’s Sleeping Beauty castle is styled after. We walked up the big hill to the entrance and the view at the top was amazing. I loved all of the cobblestone roads and thatch covered roofs. Every place we went to felt old and worn but rich with history. While on the road we stayed in guest houses, sometimes on farms, that served wonderful breakfasts with real butter and jam. I remember eating tomato soup that was made with cream and the hot chocolate topped with real whipped cream that wasn’t sweet. It was colder there than I was used to and there were wonderful forests to walk through. I saw an abandoned cabin and told my mom that that’s where the witch from Hansel and Gretel lived. I felt like I really was in where all the fairy tales came from.

Towards the end of the trip we also went to London for a few days and saw the sights. It was nice to hear English being spoken again but I still strained to understand the accents. By then I was ready to eat some different foods. I was not accustomed to eating as much meat as we did in Germany. In London we shopped at Harrod’s and even then at a young age thought it was incredibly exciting. It is such a neat department store!

revenge of the goldfish

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I really like the picture Revenge of the Goldfish by Sandy Skoglund. In fact it the first piece of art that I ever bought. My sister took me to Melrose (Street in L.A.) sometime in the eighties when I was young and I bought a postcard of Sandy Skoglund’s Revenge of the Goldfish. I loved it so much and thought that someday I wanted to become an artist and paint all of my furniture the same color. Pretty funny now that I think about it. _ This semester I am taking an online photography class and this photo was featured in our module on style. I was so happy to see Skoglund’s picture because it took me back to a time and place that I had forgotten about but I still love it and I still want to be an artist so I suppose not much has changed.