no touching!

today i had a meeting with mccallum printing group, who are going to do all the printing for lingua in the spring. it was both mind-blowing and emasculating. when one looks at the end product of a print job, whether it be a journal or a pamphlet or a folder or a book, one does not suspect that so much attention to detail goes into it. i, for one, was not aware that there were so many different kinds of paper.

i looked at so many different samples of paper stocks with so many additions: matte, finished, matte with a slight finish, uncoated, uv gloss, embossed, printed in four colors. it made my head spin. i got sent home with a few samples so that i can really study them through touch and decide which i prefer. i suppose if i need a second opinion, i’ll just ask someone to touch the different paper stocks… because that’s not weird at all.

i’ve had the “which would be worse: being blind or being deaf?” conversation several times with several different people, but how much do we underestimate the importance and power of touch? touch informs how we view and respond to certain, perhaps even to a greater degree than sight or sound. i would probably still be pricking my fingers on the thorns of roses had i not experienced the unpleasant feel that resulted from it when i was a child… because i could see the roses and see that they were pretty, but simply seeing didn’t alert me to the pain of being pricked. maybe it’s just me, but i think that being able to touch things makes them more real and profound because your sense of touch can’t be tricked like your sight and hearing can.

now that i’ve said that, i want to touch every single object in my room. it’s time to get re-acquainted with my material possessions.

dreams and synchronicity.

last night i had dream about someone who used to be close to me, someone who i lost a while ago and haven’t spoken to in several months. josh had a dream last night about the person in his life equivalent to the person i dreamed about. he hasn’t talked to his lost one in several months either. as i’ve said many times, i don’t believe in coincidence, but i think that even for someone who did, it would be naive to assume that these two independent dreams aren’t connected somehow.

the thing that is even more bizarre about it is that our dreams were uncannily similar, plot-wise. they both took place at large gathering of some sort, where we both saw the lost person there and tried to avoid them. josh didn’t even talk to his lost one: he spoke to her friends and resolved some remaining negative feelings that she had, through them. he got closure. i, on the other hand, only remember flashes of what happened: we were both standing; he stood next to me and touched my arm; he told me he missed me. that’s all i remember.

synchronicity is a strange thing. i think a couple months ago, this would have kept me awake tonight, wondering why this happened and what it meant. i’m glad that i’ve come to a place in my life where i can be at peace with the fact that there a lot of things that i don’t, and never will, have the capacity to understand. it makes living a lot more free-feeling. and it allows me to sleep a lot better, and thus continue to have strange and beautiful dreams.

from out of left field:

since when were mandy moore and ryan adams dating, let alone married?
i am devastated. so is my mom. we had a conversation via text that went a little something like this:

me: perez [hilton] told me that ryan adams and mandy moore are married. i am so pissed.
mom: i heard that ugly rumor. she just wanted a rock star or something. ryan, what is wrong with you?
me: he should have married me. or dean [my dad, a very big ryan adams fan], at least.
mom: bahaha. i will pass that on to papa.

but seriously, i’m very upset. jackie and i were googling pictures of them together, and it seems ryan has become exceedingly unattractive since he’s been with mandy.

he bleached his hair blonde! it looks hideous! please, ryan, go back to your ruggedly attractive, reckless, drug-adled, alcoholic, rebellious ways. dump the pop tart and shack up with me.

zooey and ben are a way better couple.

dear m. ward: i would like to see more of your face.

so i went to an m. ward show on friday night, and it was amazing. i saw him play about five years ago (with conor oberst and jim james… such a good show) and i continue to be amazed at what a full sound his guitar-playing makes; it doesn’t seem natural that one man and one guitar can create such richness. something i noticed, though, is that m. ward does not appear to be a fan of his own face. before the show, my friend calin and i were discussing whether or not we thought m. ward would play whilst wearing a hat, because he had been wearing a hat that obscured his entire face on the two separate occasions that calin and i had previously seen him perform. m. ward did not wear a hat this time around, but the stage lighting kept his face in deep shadow for the duration of his set. i don’t feel like that’s a coincidence, so i have to wonder why m. ward wants to keep his face hidden… is he very insecure? does he have panic attacks if he knows people can see him clearly? does he just consider himself unattractive in general? i can’t say. i, for one, think that he’s very attractive. perhaps he just wants people to focus on his music instead of on him, to avoid the temptation of his outer appearance being “celebritized.”

regardless, the man puts on an excellent show.