The address is www.hitrecord.org and its an online community that thrives on people working together, remixing other’s works, uploading their own work, with everyone’s individual strengths coming together to produce something worthwhile. Also, it is a legit production company, and pieces uploaded can be in future films and you could get a pay check.

This sit inspired me so much, I signed up right away. I listed this site in my profile, so, I decided I would need to work more on writing on here, make it into something more than it is. Good thing about a blog is it can be changed all the time. And change is good. If people browse my profile, maybe if I upload something, and click on this site, I want it to be something worth to read

Because I have a lot of ideas, and before this site I thought I was alone in them. But I am not! What a feeling!

Lately, I have been thinking about how wrong the entire education system is in this country, and every country for that matter, and what I could do to change it. One major idea I had was, collaboration. DON’T divide up students, DON’T standardize them, DON’T show them the “right” answer; but ask them to interpret the question, then find their own answer. I am positive if teachers were allowed a more open communication with their students, they would be more world-minded and have great ideas. Then, those ideas could blossom into actions and those actions could make the world a better place. Instead of trying to train students for a job market that may not exist by the time they graduate, inspire them to be independent self-thinkers. We are so strung up on blue-collar white-collar, woman man, black white, money money money mine mine mine. I have been a blue-collar worker. I am an intellectual. I know blue-collar workers. They are also extremely intelligent, and do things I could never do. They can make things with their hands AND do geometry in their head. In the words of Dewey, “Every working man a scholar and every scholar a working man.” I love being intellectually challenged, but I also love physical work. Like, planting potatoes and making beds. I don’t hold the opinion you have to be a laborer because you’re dumb, and an academic because you can memorize well and interpret texts written hundreds of years ago. NO ONE FITS THE MOLD.

This education system has failed me, and I KNOW had failed others. Others like me. Who don’t fit the mold. We are active learners, constantly questioning, thinking up ideas, interested in many things, not all of them labeled as a major. We are people interested in the world. So why do we pay thousands of dollars to NOT learn about the world? Why are we shut into classrooms with people not our equal peers and be judged against them?

Why are we all divided by age, anyway? I am so much more than my peers, in my academic knowledge and world knowledge. At UMD anyway. I feel like a complete outsider, I feel out of place. But I am not! I am the one who loves learning, reading, listening, writing what I know. THEY are going to school solely to get a job, because their parents told them to, because they want to meet girls. So why do I feel left out? I’m the one going to school for the purpose it was meant for, academic achievement, which to pass on to others. We are stuck between vocational and academic, middle and high class, standards and molds. We are stuck, at a cross roads, trying to do both in one institution. Plainly, its doomed to fail!

Looking back on my entire education, I was always an outsider. Reading levels above my grade, I was in “advanced” classes without my friends, without my familiar teacher, put on a pedestal I did not ask for. I was happy knowing I was levels above my peers in reading, but that was only because I liked to read. I knew in other areas I was very, very behind.

I am constantly right brained, I have such a hard time using my left brain. I don’t absorb history and I cannot solve a math equation. Its all theoretical! I leave that for the theoretically minded people. In this education system, right brained people are shut down, art classes cut, and deemed unimportant. How many projects required creative writing? How many essays did you write in high school? How many essays does a person NEED to write, I mean seriously, why do you think people dislike writing? Because they have never felt the joy of release when they have finished a poem! When they have expressed their overwhelming feelings through our primary mode of language! When they learn to use their own words to express something great, when they learn to express themselves at all!

So, I’ll continue to struggle my way through college, try and find those others like me, and when I get out, I’m going to advocate for some change. I’ll learn all I can about education, and then the same mistakes won’t be made in the future. History will NOT repeat itself. Kids will know their food comes from, what they are and who they can be, they will know about all the other kids in the world. They will know they have a voice, and it can be honed well, and all the officials will smack their lips and spit out their words at this uproar of voices but the many voices cannot be drowned out by the few! Their high chairs of power between white pillars are no match for jungle gym kids, for sun kissed kids, for literate kids, for free kids will not be afraid of “don’t do this, don’t do that, don’t talk in class, don’t doodle, no you can’t have lunch until 12:30″, and thus they sure won’t be afraid of “don’t be a homosexual, don’t question religion, don’t look at homeless people, don’t question ME!”

Kids with drive and ambition, with hope.

Revolutionize!

I am adjusting well to Duluth. The city that is. It was hard at first, super hard, I didn’t have a job or know anyone and school is just ridiculous in general, and I had a period of doubt. I didn’t really come to school prepared, on the Gunflint its impossible not to get sucked into the “safety net” of life there, and of course I always throw myself into my experiences so looking towards the future was difficult. I got here, and realized, every little thing I did had to be by myself. Also, I realized I did not come prepared financially. And I am trying very hard to be financially independent, which I am not, it is the last adult area of my life I have yet to conquer. Next semester. Next year. Next year, I will have a real restaurant business job and won’t be stuck on the end of the totem pay roll.

Being by myself constantly was horrible. It is, in a word, horrifying. I am so acutely aware of my unusualness talking with strangers and living in my head. It is also horrible feeling like an outsider, not that the conversations I hear, “omg if he texts his ex I am going to be so pissed” and “dude, she’s so into you!” and “I think I do better writing when I’m drunk, I wrote my essay for class drunk” interest me at all. Why do homework while drunk? Why not do homework, then get drunk so being drunk is as fun as possible? And people say I’m weird.

I did, though, meet some cool chicks to rent a room from next semester. When Dave my best friend in the whole world moved here I thought of living with him but, decided it was unhealthy to not have other relationships with females who wear ninja turtles t-shirts and watch LOST. And I am so done being a young unstable whiskey abuser. It is so good to think, wow, I won’t be an unhappy hermit forever! Wow, I can have real healthy relationships too! Even if it is just a friend to study with.

Because honestly, I don’t have the best track record for making healthy relationships and healthy life choices. But UMD is great, its big its full of life I am a volunteer for the outdoor bound program and yesterday I just taught people how to make rattle bags for hunting deer. I didn’t know what they were until yesterday but I do know how to sew so, I got to teach people how not to break sewing machines and to serge in a straight line. Oh, and I am advocating for a seminar on winter survival, complete with SNOW FORT. Well its not a snow fort when for survival but same thing.

I am doing well [not perfect] in my classes, and am doing all my homework. And am going to class! Yes, I attend class! I am getting a B- in drug education though..I didn’t think I would do well in that class anyway. It is only because of two small assignments I did not do because I totally forgot about them, but, now I do know they exist! So better luck for the future. But I got a 92/100 on my history of education midterm! That is something to brag about! For me, at least.

But the most exciting thing I have been doing, saving the best for last, is writing spoken word. I have written two poems so far, and am planning on performing them on the next open mic at school, and in the future open mics around the city. They are good, really good! I am proud of them, and they make me feel awesome. I have only performed them for Dave but, I trust his opinion and he said he was impressed. Then, I started figuring out some tracks on my garageband program on my lovely macbook pro but I am no good, haha! I don’t know what I am doing but maybe someday I will have a track to record with my freeverse stuff. Not only do they make me feel like a lyrical genius but they are very healing, its a powerful way to express all the anger, pain, and loneliness I have felt and ignored until now. I won’t post my lyrics because they really are meant to be performed, not read.

But thats all for now, I will post again after the semester and I’m sure tons of changed will have happened by then.

Oh, and I have been practicing pool [taught by Dave, pool school!] and I am close to being decent. Haha! But it has been a lot of fun, and we have played at this dive of a bar where all the old boat captains drink at 6 pm. Well they look like old boat captains anyway. And they play the Grateful Dead there and J. Cash so that is good. But they lost all their cue balls…so we might try the Irish Pub on Superior Street instead. Oh, and that is where my new writer friend I met on the bus hangs out! So many exciting things!

I wasn’t suffering so much from loneliness as uncertainty, of the future in particular. Which in retrospect is the silliest thing to get upset over because the whole premise of the future is uncertainty!

But everyone comes from somewhere and gets somewhere else, I like to think somewhere better. We can’t live life everyday without growing a bit, without learning something. Most people do want to make headway towards goals, even small ones.

I have always been inspired by journeys. How do people become great? I always used to ask myself that question, how did this writer become published, how did they become known? They start out small. Like me! Sometimes they get lucky, sometimes they are too talented for their own good, but mostly, they start small, and work hard. I can work hard too! I would always say to myself.

Then I did work hard, in the totally wrong directions, and ended up somewhere else. Now, I do not dream of “making it big”. Now, I dream of a house and my job which I will go to everyday and the garden I’ll have, and I will enjoy it. I am not an idealist anymore.

And it shows, in everything I do. I am a realist, an existentialist, everyone has a million choices, and those all make up your life. I had a choice, I moved to the Gunflint Trail. Then, I had a choice to go back to school. Then, I had a choice to get a degree in a career, not a dream. I think, I realized I was not so special as I thought I was. I need a paycheck. Consistently.

Lots and lots and lots of people become successful writers. I know, I read their biographies and they all did not come out of pristine circumstances. But, I suppose I figured I could help more, hands on, than in words that, well, only other literary people would read. And they would like it, and they would chat about it for a while but it wouldn’t go down in history. If, I can get one student to realize the beauty of Shakespeare, I will have done a much better deed. If, that one student realizes they have found a passion for words, I will have changed the world. I will have made one more reader, one more free-thinker, one more artist! I will be their beginning!

That, to me, seems better than wallowing in my own words.

Right now, I am in constant need of reminding myself what I am doing all this work for. Everyday when I tire of reading page after page, I remember, someday, I will be long gone from here. Maybe not so far from this locale, but from the tedious work of classes. It is not about the life I am living now, this is not what I’m working towards; renting a room in a house, being poor and slaving my weekends to more homework. Someday, I’ll spend my weekends growing green beans in the warm sunshine and painting murals on my walls!

Maybe those aren’t the biggest goals in the world, but I look forward to them with vigor.

A small tree outside my window is starting to turn, bright orange on its edges, a few leaves scattering the ground below. I am missing the fall in the north woods, which I know are spectacular. I miss the trees and rocks already, but am always reminded of the services I might soon take for granted. For instance, I can listen to NPR and talk radio that is about the world, not the BWCA world where the most featured news is about squirrels…and beavers. Not that they are not important too, but in the larger scheme of things, I need a radio station with some insight!

Wine! There is wine, not that I buy expensive wine but there is moderately priced wine for a moderate palate.

Newspapers! I don’t like reading online, I like pages…and paper…and ink. And being able to cut pictures out if I want to.

Ok, maybe wine and news isn’t more important than the entirety and beauty of nature, but I am marveled at these things at the moment. Also, I’m not sure what to think that these are the only things I am marveled at coming back to civilization.

Not everything is all its cracked up to be, there are people, and sirens, and car doors opening and shutting and big trucks with big exhausts. There is the fact that walking around campus, I am increasingly aware that I am an alien to modern society with their new shoes and fancy phones, always on their fancy phones. What happened to everyone wearing chucks?

Its not that I mind being an alien to modern society, it has never been otherwise, but as my linguistics teacher said, groups of people are brought together by language, and I feel like english is my second language. English being shoe brands, Katy Perry songs and…..video game/you tube quotes..the only game I play in word jumble on my ipod.

I’m making myself out to seem like an old fart, mainly because I usually am, but its just odd walking around UMD, I do not see the usual hippie-punk-freaks I can be seen walking around with, with unbrushed hair and wine in their thermos [ok, maybe I just wish I was friends with Carrie Fischer from the one episode she guest starred on 30 Rock]. But really…is it too much to ask to find a Van Morrison reincarnate? Maybe some nerd wearing a Pink Floyd t-shirt? Maybe, maybe, some, flannel? I don’t usually choose my friends on their looks, if I did, I’d have very few friends, but its hard when you are in a new place. Perhaps its even natural to seek out other non-shaving women who enjoy wearing mens clothes. Every female is so darn cute! Seriously?!

This is just my first impression of the campus, I’m positive that once I start attending events that interest me, such as the BWCA camping trip coming up, the lit mag and the KUMD radio I’ll find fellow rebels. Rebels without a cause!

Just a few observations of UMD, which may or may not be more than fever driven delirium,
1. Why does every one look like they’re 16?
2. When 16 year old looking college boys check me out, I feel the need to yell “don’t even try, I am so much more woman than you can handle” which, makes me too close to that ugly habit of pride. [Even though its true.]
3. All the girls in my linguistics class look like barbies…and talk like them too. I take pride that I am smarter than them, but am humbled by the fact they will probably receive the same grade as me since college isn’t necessarily about smarts, but persistence.
4. ALL of my teachers are really smart, really friendly, and really excited. Really excited. They get me all amped up!
5. I get a silent chuckle out of the looks on stranger’s faces when I talk to them. Yes, I am a stranger, no, I am not a creeper, can you please tell me if we have homework in this class? Or, am I in the right class? They always look a bit weirded out, but I have to start somewhere! Making friends, that is.
6. There are some serious snooty gay guys at UMD. I think it is because they have no competition. If one of them said to me what they said about this other girl, “its so sad seeing students waste the most attractive years of their life” I would give him a swift lesson to the jaw. He wasn’t even that much to look at. Also, how is now the most attractive times of our lives? Students are tired, stressed, wearing sweatshirts and slippers to class, I’m sure when I am 30 I’ll look way classier, and not so hobo-ish. I like to think, every time is the most attractive, because when I’m a cougar they’ll be stuck in a striped scarf spending all their money on face cream.
7. They seriously have poor eating choices on the campus, don’t think I’ll be eating their misshapen pizza…..ever.

Because, you see, I have conquered mountains! I moved here looking for solitude, and I will leave shining in beauty!

Last night was a typical night, Dave and I were drinking whiskey, I was beating him at 500 Rummy as usual. We went down to the lodge and said hello to Jason, Rollin, Kristene, John Mark, watched the clouds roll through in anticipation of a thunderstorm. At some time, I passed out and woke up to Dave mumbling in his sleep about fishing. These simple acts may not sound like much, but the constance of love, laughs, and simple entertainment with a deck of cards is wholly holy.

I could not have asked for more pleasant people to work with, The Giggle Gaggle we dubbed them, Kristene and Molly were my little sisters. I couldn’t ask for more laughs than the people I lived with, Kaci, Mic, Alice and Travis, listening to their sorrows and cheering on their joys. It seems almost, fateful. Then, of course, I found a worthy man who lives by ancient values. Respect for the land, optimism, hard work and good food. Two adults, enjoying each other’s company in a mutual bubble of love. I really won’t find anyone like him in this age, he’s a rough jewel, he’s a voyageur from the past, he’s historic.

Mountains, canyons, rivers and oceans are all beautiful places to see, but nowhere is as beautiful as here in Northern Minnesota, only for the fact that it is my home. Not my childhood home, but the home I chose for myself as an adult. And nowhere is as good as home.

The new place I will be residing in will be oh so new, I will have immediate contact with anyone by phone, I will have to carry my ID and cash around all the time. Cumbersome. Here, I know all the bartenders by name, and we chat and drink after bar close. Here, some of the bartenders are my roommates. Here, I can charge anything to the lodge and run into the kitchen for a snack or a drink. Here, everyone says hi and knows my name [and all my buisness] and when we drive down the trail we wave to the sherriff, the post woman, friends. Duluth won’t be home but it will be a place, a rather nice place, where I must work and work and become something worthy. Its like moving away from home all over again, taking chances with the hardships of the real world. But, thankfully, I’ll be able to come back every once in a while and enjoy the comforts of home.

Never have I, and my roommates have confessed as well, been happier than since childhood. It is true, I cannot remember being generally happier in recent years, or any time since puberty where hormones and confusion take over. Everyday I hang out with cool people, whether we are watching tv, drinking, reading, or sitting on the porch talking all evening long until the stars come out. Not that anything in life is perfect, but the feeling of being content with the future and present nothing can compare.

Up to this new life style was a trip, moving up here in the middle of the cold, dark winter, with more thoughts and issues I knew what to do with but, I worked hard all winter long in my job and quit drinking for a few months to get my head straight. Then it started to get warmer, the days were longer and more people started to arrive at the lodge, and I started a new relationship with a generous, intelligent, man who would walk across glass on his hands to bring me a glass of cold water on a hot day. Then I started being more social and active in body and mind- fishing, camping, canoeing, laughing.

So it seems that I made a life change, changed who I was to be who I wanted to be, changed my path to accomplish these new goals and I am happy to say, I am well on my way, and this happiness I experience everyday here I will carry with for some time to come.

Now, as I am sharing this with my readers I am looking out the window at the grey sky, listening to the chilled spring wind rush by, wearing an over sized rather ugly men’s flannel and drinking a Grain Belt Premium beer.

Feb 09 Tuesday
Walking to the High Bluffs, the sky was the same grey slate as my previous expedition to Lonely Lake. A blended, musky sphere of sun guided my way, occasionally striking through the trees in stripes of yellow on the blinding snow. Grey snow, with a layer of fluff shadowing the footprints before. After turning off the main path, crossing over ski trails, careful to not disturb the classic tracks the footprints died down to just one. There had only been one other mysterious person on this trail since the last snow fall a few days before, I felt like I was following an old friend as they walked with me to my destination. I ducked under low branches, skirted around encroaching limbs that grabbed at my hat and scraped my coat and pants. The path opened up to show a wide ski trail, freshly used, I leaped across. The footprints stopped. They must have walked down the ski trail to hidden trail. I was on my own now. Up, up, and up, the trail became very steep. My leather wrapped mukluks had no firm grip, my thighs burned as I launched my way from icy step to icy step. Trying to make my own footholds failed, the snow was too slippery. I grabbed onto worn trunks of trees on the trail, hoping every one wasn’t dead and would crumble in my hand. Digging my toes into roots, throwing myself up and up the steep slope I came to a more level spot. Catching my breath, I turned to look behind me. Through the golden lighted trees I could see the edge of the lake. I was rather far up already, I kept climbing.

More steep slopes, my lungs were tight and gasping for air. My nose, impossible to breath through, snot threatening to fall out. I knew I must be near the top, I couldn’t go back now. I unzipped my jacket and let in the cold breeze, invisible breath through my long underwear. I arrived at an overlook, even though I was weary I wanted to see what else was here, at the top of the High Bluffs. I continued down the path, it was increasingly becoming less padded down untl a pole with two signs on it, both directions painted with the words “South Rim”.I went left. Here, the friendly rabbit tracks that were on the path all the way up the mountain stopped. My feet sunk deeper in the snow, my ankles twisting in a few steps from dips and sticks. I veered off to the side, crawling under some low branches and came to an edge. A giant rock, pointing its head towards the Gunflint Lodge. Little rodent tracks darted across the surface, mini pads and mini claws. The wind, making its presence known was waving through the tree tops. I could see the frozen lake, and on the other side, Canada. I could see all the buildings, looking very small. To my left I could see the sky, the far off bluffs, a mass of forest. Some of the pines were tall and green, standing out from the black snow covered ones. They separated themselves as ancient beings. The sky, turned from one grey mass to blue, white stripes across my vision. I felt like I did everyday in Utah, seeing the sky look so big, the cliffs outline so prominent. While fully wearing clothes, boots, mittens, a scarf, the cold wind chapping my face, I felt like I did in the middle of the desert canyon; free, small, part of the natural world.

I surveyed the world I hardly felt a part of. No, I did not feel God for I felt no entity. No one powerful force. I did not fee each individual animal, plant, molecule for I do not even know what they all are. I just felt complete.

On my way down, my back was chilled with sweat, my mittens damp with snow. The steep path led itself to impossible with my flat mukluks and I proceeded to slide down the path. Faster, faster, grabbing at trunks and branches I ended with an abrupt stop in a fluffy snow bank, laying on rocks and sticks off the side of the path. Afraid I would continue to slide down the side of the bluffs I wrapped my leg around the nearest trunk, pulling myself back onto the worn path. Though I very well could have broken a limb sliding into a tree at great speed, I did not feel death upon me. I suppose I will when I need to. I continued on my feet down the path just as before, knowing I should shock but feeling none. Only calm. My walk came to a close as landmarks started becoming more familiar, the path worn and littered with footsteps. I knew what awaited me at home, voices, television, eyes, but I knew I would find peace again recalling my events in black ink.

Almost every book, every author I have helplessly fallen in awe of, I have found them by happenstance in shelves of used books. Ones with wrinkled covers, with hard covers, with signatures inside [its kind of intriguing how many people pen their names into the inside covers of their books, as if as an adult they still brought their books to school with them and didn't want them to be misplaced but if so, found by someone who knew them]. Out of the entire shelf of meaningless titles I automatically am drawn to the most amazing ones. For all my pondering, it seems to be a spiritual habit. I, consciously, do not choose these books that all I can see is the spine, but somehow my hand reaches out, I glance over the cover and the back, and decide it worthy to lug home in a paper bag. And then, miraculously, they are!

Books that have changed my entire perspective of literature, art, philosophy, I have found because of what I can only decipher as fateful coincidences. For example, I recently traveled to the Grand Marais thrift store/recycling center [how I love both!] and while most of the books on the shelf were romance, biblical, or how to make dinners in the microwave, I pick out Thomas More’s book Utopia. I had never heard of More, but, the cover has the painting of the Tower of Babel which, in the film Metropolis, which I wrote a paper on at MCTC in film studies, they made a replica. Now, I come home, start reading this thin book of less than 200 pages to find this author had written it in Latin in 1516 as a twist of Plato’s Republic and social movements in history were influenced by these very words.

How did I, living in the vast wilderness, come across this mentally stimulating piece of history after complaining of not being mentally stimulated [even though my room is mostly books and papers of Ernst typos] in the most dingy, small, junk filled center of nothing amongst so much Tom Clancy and flannel?

This is not a one time fateful date, either. When I picked up Murdoch’s The Unicorn at the Casket Arts book store, only because it was called, The Unicorn and I like, unicorns. I also like that tapestry of the Unicorn lying on the ground in the fence that is supposed to be Jesus or something which COINCIDENTALLY Murdoch mentions in the book. Then I had my first taste of philosophical literature, and had found a kinship through printed words. I had found, a much more intelligent version of myself, and the writer I realized I wanted to BE. My perception of myself changed as I looked through every character, finding I most reconciled with the shut-in philosopher Max Lejour who drank whiskey and watched everyone make fools of themselves, to my surprise.

All of this happened because I liked horses as a young girl, never managed to grow up and chose a book based on a phase I had twelve years ago.

It happens every time, finding Hesse’s Klingsor’s Last Summer which made me materialize my acceptance of death [http://elbowsquid.wordpress.com/2009/12/14/thirty-six/]. Finding The Artist in his Studio by Alexander Lieberman which showed me a new vision of happiness, which also sparked a deep conversation with my mother about world perceptions and how sometimes, people come to the same conclusions from different experiences. [http://elbowsquid.wordpress.com/2009/12/11/thirty-five/]. Nausea, by Sartre, freaked as well as enlightened me to see existence in a rather dark, new light. Even my pocket thesaurus that I picked up has become my new favorite book.

It seems my intellectual journey is, in fact, fueled by fate. I am looking forward to what I will find next.