jennay14's Xanga

wow

Fri, 09 Nov 2007 16:47:35 GMT

i've been a member of Xanga since 2004. four years of my life are more or less recorded on this here slice of the internet. someday i will go through blog by blog, and copy down in a safe place all the more witty or wise morsels of myself i've let slip out here.

but... this was high school. i love reading up on you all, and i will continue to.

but i'm moving to a place with an easier, less commercial layout.

find me here:

http://littlespoonspeaks.blogspot.com

as always...

later days.

*~Jenny Kay~*

late night thoughts to kick off a new month

Mon, 01 Oct 2007 00:15:15 GMT

life.

it's so good.
it's going by quickly.
i'm learning a lot - patience, humility, working hard. loving people.

i'm in love with a wonderful man... nicholas morgan cristofaro. if you're interested in learning more, contact me and we'll have a conversation.

i'm finally settled in to the most kickass house ever. we opened our doors and hosted some stuff last week, and it worked out really well. i think it is the homiest cincinnati will ever get for me. i love my house mates. i am learning tons from them. i'm only sorry that i don't see them very much - everyone's schedules are pretty crazy.

how does one get random bums to stop from smoking on one's stoop? we have a problem with this at the Tux DUH Luxe (name of house), i think. clifton can be pretty sketch sometimes, but i love the people of cincinnati! for example: i went to a reds game on saturday with nick and some friends, and we were walking down towards the stadium and passed a band doing a live recording session in the lobby of the Contemporary Arts Center. there was this old man dancing on the sidewalk to the music eminating from inside the glass building. it was ridiculous and amazing at the same time. it really doesn't get much better than Cincinnati, i tell ya what. hopefully I will be here for a while.

learning of michael keane's death this week reminded me once again that i can't take anything for granted. it sucks so much. i didn't know him very well, but it's more the ripple effect that i'm concerned about. i love others that his death affected very much, and it pains me to see them hurting and grieving. i'm praying for you, friends.

i don't know what God has in store for me this quarter. i'm just learning and walking along with Him and seeing where it leads me. one direction has been volunteering for Uptown Arts, a "school" of sorts that gives free music, art, drama and dance lessons to under-priviledged kids to help level the playing field with the spoiled kids in Indian Hill that can afford to pay for the best instructors. i absolutely LOVE working with the kids... it's the adults that are hard to handle. the lady in charge of everything has it out for me, i'm pretty sure. she definitely enjoys putting me in my place. she's one of those shriveled up ladies that at one time really loved working with kids, but has been at it for so many years that she's dried up into a very disciplinary shrill totalitarian, of sorts. if you couldn't tell, she scares the ever-loving pee out of me. i can handle being "put in my place" (read: being new and not knowing what's going on) once or twice a week, but the fourth time in an hour had me blinking back the tears. i am not very good at handling criticism/people not liking me, when i'm trying to do the right thing. it's hard to handle, fo sho.

12.11 am. i have to be up soon. it's going to be another thrilling week at steed hammond paul. i'm still basically doing the same things i was last quarter... i really hope that changes.

love you all.

jenny

Monday, August 27, 2007

Mon, 27 Aug 2007 09:23:21 GMT

for the first time... in a really ridiculously long time...

i am incredibly happy.

joyful, even.

picture in april: picture taken two weeks ago:

there's a physical difference, non? there's also a spiritual and emotional difference as well.
i am free. i am happy.

it's glorious.

ps - i am coming HOME on friday... i will be camping in traverse city next week but would like to stop at purdue on the way up/someplace else on the way down. k?

k.

love you allll!

My Adopted Design Mantra

Sun, 26 Aug 2007 13:32:54 GMT

This is Bruce Mau's Design Manifesto. I'm following rule #35 , and imitating it for myself. Enjoy!

An Incomplete Manifesto for Growth

Written in 1998, the Incomplete Manifesto is an articulation of statements that exemplify Bruce Mau's beliefs, motivations and strategies. It also articulates how the BMD studio works.

1. Allow events to change you. You have to be willing to grow. Growth is different from something that happens to you. You produce it. You live it. The prerequisites for growth: the openness to experience events and the willingness to be changed by them.

2. Forget about good. Good is a known quantity. Good is what we all agree on. Growth is not necessarily good. Growth is an exploration of unlit recesses that may or may not yield to our research. As long as you stick to good you'll never have real growth.

3. Process is more important than outcome. When the outcome drives the process we will only ever go to where we've already been. If process drives outcome we may not know where we’re going, but we will know we want to be there.

4. Love your experiments (as you would an ugly child). Joy is the engine of growth. Exploit the liberty in casting your work as beautiful experiments, iterations, attempts, trials, and errors. Take the long view and allow yourself the fun of failure every day.

5. Go deep. The deeper you go the more likely you will discover something of value.

6. Capture accidents. The wrong answer is the right answer in search of a different question. Collect wrong answers as part of the process. Ask different questions.

7. Study. A studio is a place of study. Use the necessity of production as an excuse to study. Everyone will benefit.

8. Drift. Allow yourself to wander aimlessly. Explore adjacencies. Lack judgment. Postpone criticism.

9. Begin anywhere. John Cage tells us that not knowing where to begin is a common form of paralysis. His advice: begin anywhere.

10. Everyone is a leader. Growth happens. Whenever it does, allow it to emerge. Learn to follow when it makes sense. Let anyone lead.

11. Harvest ideas. Edit applications. Ideas need a dynamic, fluid, generous environment to sustain life. Applications, on the other hand, benefit from critical rigor. Produce a high ratio of ideas to applications.

12. Keep moving. The market and its operations have a tendency to reinforce success. Resist it. Allow failure and migration to be part of your practice.

13. Slow down. Desynchronize from standard time frames and surprising opportunities may present themselves.

14. Don’t be cool. Cool is conservative fear dressed in black. Free yourself from limits of this sort.

15. Ask stupid questions. Growth is fueled by desire and innocence. Assess the answer, not the question. Imagine learning throughout your life at the rate of an infant.

16. Collaborate. The space between people working together is filled with conflict, friction, strife, exhilaration, delight, and vast creative potential.

17. ____________________. Intentionally left blank. Allow space for the ideas you haven’t had yet, and for the ideas of others.

18. Stay up late. Strange things happen when you’ve gone too far, been up too long, worked too hard, and you're separated from the rest of the world.

19. Work the metaphor. Every object has the capacity to stand for something other than what is apparent. Work on what it stands for.

20. Be careful to take risks. Time is genetic. Today is the child of yesterday and the parent of tomorrow. The work you produce today will create your future.

21. Repeat yourself. If you like it, do it again. If you don’t like it, do it again.

22. Make your own tools. Hybridize your tools in order to build unique things. Even simple tools that are your own can yield entirely new avenues of exploration. Remember, tools amplify our capacities, so even a small tool can make a big difference.

23. Stand on someone’s shoulders. You can travel farther carried on the accomplishments of those who came before you. And the view is so much better.

24. Avoid software. The problem with software is that everyone has it.

25. Don’t clean your desk. You might find something in the morning that you can’t see tonight.

26. Don’t enter awards competitions. Just don’t. It’s not good for you.

27. Read only left-hand pages. Marshall McLuhan did this. By decreasing the amount of information, we leave room for what he called our "noodle."

28. Make new words. Expand the lexicon. The new conditions demand a new way of thinking. The thinking demands new forms of expression. The expression generates new conditions.

29. Think with your mind. Forget technology. Creativity is not device-dependent.

30. Organization = Liberty. Real innovation in design, or any other field, happens in context. That context is usually some form of cooperatively managed enterprise. Frank Gehry, for instance, is only able to realize Bilbao because his studio can deliver it on budget. The myth of a split between "creatives" and "suits" is what Leonard Cohen calls a 'charming artifact of the past.'

31. Don’t borrow money. Once again, Frank Gehry’s advice. By maintaining financial control, we maintain creative control. It’s not exactly rocket science, but it’s surprising how hard it is to maintain this discipline, and how many have failed.

32. Listen carefully. Every collaborator who enters our orbit brings with him or her a world more strange and complex than any we could ever hope to imagine. By listening to the details and the subtlety of their needs, desires, or ambitions, we fold their world onto our own. Neither party will ever be the same.

33. Take field trips. The bandwidth of the world is greater than that of your TV set, or the Internet, or even a totally immersive, interactive, dynamically rendered, object-oriented, real-time, computer graphic–simulated environment.

34. Make mistakes faster. This isn’t my idea -- I borrowed it. I think it belongs to Andy Grove.

35. Imitate. Don’t be shy about it. Try to get as close as you can. You'll never get all the way, and the separation might be truly remarkable. We have only to look to Richard Hamilton and his version of Marcel Duchamp’s large glass to see how rich, discredited, and underused imitation is as a technique.

36. Scat. When you forget the words, do what Ella did: make up something else ... but not words.

37. Break it, stretch it, bend it, crush it, crack it, fold it.

38. Explore the other edge. Great liberty exists when we avoid trying to run with the technological pack. We can’t find the leading edge because it’s trampled underfoot. Try using old-tech equipment made obsolete by an economic cycle but still rich with potential.

39. Coffee breaks, cab rides, green rooms. Real growth often happens outside of where we intend it to, in the interstitial spaces -- what Dr. Seuss calls "the waiting place." Hans Ulrich Obrist once organized a science and art conference with all of the infrastructure of a conference -- the parties, chats, lunches, airport arrivals — but with no actual conference. Apparently it was hugely successful and spawned many ongoing collaborations.

40. Avoid fields. Jump fences. Disciplinary boundaries and regulatory regimes are attempts to control the wilding of creative life. They are often understandable efforts to order what are manifold, complex, evolutionary processes. Our job is to jump the fences and cross the fields.

41. Laugh. People visiting the studio often comment on how much we laugh. Since I've become aware of this, I use it as a barometer of how comfortably we are expressing ourselves.

42. Remember. Growth is only possible as a product of history. Without memory, innovation is merely novelty. History gives growth a direction. But a memory is never perfect. Every memory is a degraded or composite image of a previous moment or event. That’s what makes us aware of its quality as a past and not a present. It means that every memory is new, a partial construct different from its source, and, as such, a potential for growth itself.

43. Power to the people. Play can only happen when people feel they have control over their lives. We can't be free agents if we’re not free.

Thursday, August 16, 2007

Thu, 16 Aug 2007 11:15:19 GMT

just wanted to send a big shout out to the City of Cincinnati:

thanks to you, I am in the top running for the Guiness Book of World Record:

"Most Parking Tickets Garnered in a Quarter."

thanks again, guys! i couldn't have done it without you!

Tuesday, July 31, 2007

Tue, 31 Jul 2007 14:28:18 GMT

big girls don't cry....

sometimes the hardest thing and the right thing are the same.

sorry, wrong popular artist.

Safety in God's Will

Mon, 23 Jul 2007 10:41:31 GMT

"If anyone is a worshiper of God and does His will, He hears him" - John 9:31

My will is not a place, but a condition. Do not ask Me "where" and "when", but ask Me "how." You will discover blessing in every place, and any place, if your spirit is in tune with Me. No place or time is more hallowed than another when you are truly in love with Me.

I direct every motion of your life, as the ocean bears a ship. Your will and intelligence may be at the helm, but divine providence and sovereignty are stronger forces. You can trust Me, knowing that any pressure I bring to bear upon your life is initiated by My love, and I will not do even this except as you are willing and desire.

Many a ship has sailed from port to port with no interference from me, because Strong Will has been at the wheel. Multitudes of pleasure cruises go merrily on their ways, untouched by the power of My hand.

But you have put your life into My keeping, and because you are depending on Me for guidance and direction, I shall give it.

Move on steadily, and know the waters that carry you are the waters of My love and My kindness, and I will keep you on the right course.

-- Come Away My Beloved, page 20.

slow down, you move too fast

Mon, 16 Jul 2007 22:35:45 GMT

it's only appropriate to write a post when i have a million JILLION better things to be do than write in xanga.

i'm scared that i'm losing sight of the important things in lieu of school.

i feel like i've been running beside a train. or maybe a bicycle...

at any rate, i've been keeping pace so far, but i'm starting to become short of breath, and lag behind... i'm very tempted to slow down even more, but i know the more i slow, the faster the vehicle beside me is going to go, and the farther behind i will get.

the LORD is my strength, and my song.

that's easier said than done. now that my own strength is running out, God will get to play a bigger role.
little things happen all the time. some people call it 'clutch', or luck. i know that i'm being taken care of.

/fin

happy school...

Sun, 24 Jun 2007 17:22:31 GMT

this is MY quarter. at least, that's what they tell me.

seriously though.

learning, learning, learning. it's my third year? really?

i miss co-op.

i love college.

i miss friends back home.

i miss friends who aren't here in the summer.

i want to move into my new house.

*********************
*********************

I never loved nobody fully
Always one foot on the ground
And by protecting my heart truly
I got lost in the sounds
I hear in my mind
All of these voices
I hear in my mind all these words
I hear in my mind all this music

And it breaks my heart
And it breaks my heart
And it breaks my heart
when it breaks my heart

Suppose I never, ever met you
Suppose we never fell in love
Suppose I never, ever let you kiss me so sweet and so soft
Suppose I never, ever saw you
Suppose you never, ever called
Suppose I kept on singing love songs just to break my own fall
Just to break my fall

all my friends say that of course it's
gonna get better....

hear in my mind
All of these voices
I hear in my mind all these words
I hear in my mind
All of this music
And it breaks my heart

Thursday, May 31, 2007

Thu, 31 May 2007 14:57:31 GMT

(october 04)
"After a while, you learn the subtle difference between holding a hand and chaining a soul, And you learn that love doesn't mean leaning and company doesn't mean security. And you begin to learn that kisses aren't contracts and presents aren't promises, And you begin to accept your defeats with your head up and your eyes open, with the grace of an adult, not the grief of a child. And you learn to build all your roads on today because tomorrow's ground is too uncertain for plans. After a while you learn that even sunshine burns if you get too much. So plan your own garden and decorate your own soul, instead of waiting for someone to bring you flowers. And you learn that you really can endure... That you really are strong. And that you really do have worth."
-Veronica A. Shoffehall

i want to sleep for a week.

and wake up with a new mouth, and know what i'm supposed to do.