crusin' around costa rica til the 5th. wearing these glasses the entire time.
Saturday, December 29, 2007
Friday, December 28, 2007
Hang On
I love when reading you find passages that reconfirm your own thoughts that had been planted in your mind. I mean, nothing thought is truly original anyway. We all meditate over the same central issues. Finding in reading good strings of words motivates, if anything, the necessity to say, write and reveal as many thoughts as one may have. I think it is important for others to recognize the courage and reward of not having to hide and conceal one's feelings, emotions, theories. All it really is, other than a form of art, is a person's personal philosophy.
I was tempted to share the below quote with a woman I had been talking with the other day. She was telling me about how miserable she has become since being married. All the lies. How she is about to call it quits. But yet, she is still holding on. But then I tried to stop and realize by doing that what it would say about me. Do I, without realizing, try and show someone what they need to see and hear rather than what they may like to. My sister told me this morning that the trouble is when I am around (a certain someone) my personality becomes such that I try to instill life lessons. And then I realized, no one wants to be told or called out on what they are doing. No one wants to be given lessons. But what if I can't help myself? I want to help and I can't help by supporting and/or not saying anything that ends with a judgement. Its unfortunate, but I can only imagine how much my presence must kill him and as a result, at times he feels he has to hate me.
"It is a horrible thing to feel what is yours falling to pieces. One even only hangs on to it in the wish to find out if there is anything permanent." -De Lautreamont, Maldoror and Poems.
I was tempted to share the below quote with a woman I had been talking with the other day. She was telling me about how miserable she has become since being married. All the lies. How she is about to call it quits. But yet, she is still holding on. But then I tried to stop and realize by doing that what it would say about me. Do I, without realizing, try and show someone what they need to see and hear rather than what they may like to. My sister told me this morning that the trouble is when I am around (a certain someone) my personality becomes such that I try to instill life lessons. And then I realized, no one wants to be told or called out on what they are doing. No one wants to be given lessons. But what if I can't help myself? I want to help and I can't help by supporting and/or not saying anything that ends with a judgement. Its unfortunate, but I can only imagine how much my presence must kill him and as a result, at times he feels he has to hate me.
"It is a horrible thing to feel what is yours falling to pieces. One even only hangs on to it in the wish to find out if there is anything permanent." -De Lautreamont, Maldoror and Poems.
Thursday, December 27, 2007
Jekyll & Hyde
I always try to look terrified and/or wacky:
Last night I couldn't sleep. It was way after 4:30am and I was still wide-eyed. This lamp I have kept chiming in sync to the fan that I finally have in my room and I had taken two Valerian Root vitamins before bed (supposedly promote relaxation for sleep, but instead give you endless amounts of restless energy). So I did all of two things, ate my grandmother's special chocolate and stared around my room trying to come to a more comfortable understanding of how someone can 1) be an expert at dominating a conversation (which I now figure has all along been nervous talking energy) and consequently, be a terrible listener 2) have never used the word "sorry" or "I apologize." Someone who is so good at lying, performing, putting on an act--who can act all roles, except one that calls for true emotion or honesty (conscious-striken). I can't dismiss feelings. I can't dismiss having to philosophize the actions and inactions of others (which is really an attempt to understand others, the situation, empathize and/or sympathize, and not regret). But I can and do make the effort to dismiss toxic people that try and disrupt a healthy flow in life. It's harder to remain healthy and positive. And it is much easier to fall off and not ask much out of yourself or others. No one else is worth that risk.
Last night I couldn't sleep. It was way after 4:30am and I was still wide-eyed. This lamp I have kept chiming in sync to the fan that I finally have in my room and I had taken two Valerian Root vitamins before bed (supposedly promote relaxation for sleep, but instead give you endless amounts of restless energy). So I did all of two things, ate my grandmother's special chocolate and stared around my room trying to come to a more comfortable understanding of how someone can 1) be an expert at dominating a conversation (which I now figure has all along been nervous talking energy) and consequently, be a terrible listener 2) have never used the word "sorry" or "I apologize." Someone who is so good at lying, performing, putting on an act--who can act all roles, except one that calls for true emotion or honesty (conscious-striken). I can't dismiss feelings. I can't dismiss having to philosophize the actions and inactions of others (which is really an attempt to understand others, the situation, empathize and/or sympathize, and not regret). But I can and do make the effort to dismiss toxic people that try and disrupt a healthy flow in life. It's harder to remain healthy and positive. And it is much easier to fall off and not ask much out of yourself or others. No one else is worth that risk.
Wednesday, December 26, 2007
Before and After Christmas
These days it is endless suspensions around the phrase (so-to-speak) “You look beautifully healthy, so healthy. Healthy.” Today a year ago, I would have been mortified and disappointed with myself. I would have irrationally translated the comment and believed that it was an alternative way of saying I looked full-figured, voluptuous and simply heavy. Despite this being the case (actually being rather curvy) or not—now, it doesn’t seem to matter. I smile, concentrate on what is really being said to me, nod and say, “I have to be. I really need the energy.” Then after my open appreciation and/or recognition of the subject, others want to proceed—“It looks like New York must really be it. Keepin’ yah healthy.” I overly agree, saying, “There can be no other way. Thank goodness, it’s keeping me alive, would never imagine going back to how it was, what it was, what I was, I couldn’t be that now.” Tonight it was a cousin that chimed in, breaking the intimacy or honesty of the conversation and laughingly said, “So you’ve gained some weight.” Yes, pounds. And I thank everything today and along the way, that has inspired me not to judge the play of perception but to go back to just “workin’ whatca got.” Of course, it has been more than just these simple and rather, superficial terms. As on the surface it seems/seemed/and was seen to be, it wasn’t. And because of that, I can look back and grow distant from the experience but always have had it and even as terrible as an experience as it was for me and everyone else, I appreciate, understand and never deny a moment. This was the first Christmas where I didn’t fall asleep wishing or wake up expecting that this would be the chance for something new, that this would be the day things changed. Today, nothing needs to.
Last night even reiterated, for myself (and this is my own way of living), that the end was and is decided for a reason. I cannot return to that moment of feeling in time—it will only be a re-experience of the past, but it will never be what it was in the past. Nor would I like it to be. I feel like the bulk of others remain at a distance because they assume I have become too serious, that I’m not “giving myself up to every experience”, or that maybe I am just simply exaggerating my assertiveness and thus, will readjust my behavior to compliment their flimsy mental states and behavioral inadequacies. The way I behave and the commentary that ensues in response to the deficient personalities I unfortunately encounter (at times too intimately, even if it just be in a locked car) is no joke. I keep pressing for others to grow up, level/ground themselves in reality (and by reality, I mean, at this age the here-and-now is no long a sugar coated existence of Candy Land board games and childhood reliance, dreamlands or wishy-washy attitudes towards others and life). It overly frustrates me; I want everyone I interact with to take “it” seriously, but they won’t—can’t—can’t even let themselves and are fearful of the reality (seen clear only after the guise and disfigurement of drugs and maybe even worse than drugs, self-denial, wears off). One must become sober to the actuality of the world. Perceive, judge and understand the events of the world the way you wish (these are the gifts we are given) but you must accept the fundamental facts—otherwise, goodbye success and goodbye successful relationships. Most suffer so severely from any commitment to the reality of life past four to twenty-two years of age, that it scares me for them. Less and less “adults” will move away from home, face their future without a team holding their hand and wiping their ass and/or brow. Denial of oneself, denial of what it means to grow—what in the world is becoming of our generation? Hungry for their past and ending up starving in their future.
Last night even reiterated, for myself (and this is my own way of living), that the end was and is decided for a reason. I cannot return to that moment of feeling in time—it will only be a re-experience of the past, but it will never be what it was in the past. Nor would I like it to be. I feel like the bulk of others remain at a distance because they assume I have become too serious, that I’m not “giving myself up to every experience”, or that maybe I am just simply exaggerating my assertiveness and thus, will readjust my behavior to compliment their flimsy mental states and behavioral inadequacies. The way I behave and the commentary that ensues in response to the deficient personalities I unfortunately encounter (at times too intimately, even if it just be in a locked car) is no joke. I keep pressing for others to grow up, level/ground themselves in reality (and by reality, I mean, at this age the here-and-now is no long a sugar coated existence of Candy Land board games and childhood reliance, dreamlands or wishy-washy attitudes towards others and life). It overly frustrates me; I want everyone I interact with to take “it” seriously, but they won’t—can’t—can’t even let themselves and are fearful of the reality (seen clear only after the guise and disfigurement of drugs and maybe even worse than drugs, self-denial, wears off). One must become sober to the actuality of the world. Perceive, judge and understand the events of the world the way you wish (these are the gifts we are given) but you must accept the fundamental facts—otherwise, goodbye success and goodbye successful relationships. Most suffer so severely from any commitment to the reality of life past four to twenty-two years of age, that it scares me for them. Less and less “adults” will move away from home, face their future without a team holding their hand and wiping their ass and/or brow. Denial of oneself, denial of what it means to grow—what in the world is becoming of our generation? Hungry for their past and ending up starving in their future.
Sunday, December 23, 2007
in-the-middle-of-sleep:
What It Feels To Sleep
It is as if someone scheming in the dark set of the night, unscrewed my feet from the stalks of my legs and breathed black heat through the tunnel of my body, expanding and permeating in the cave of my soul.
It is as if someone scheming in the dark set of the night, unscrewed my feet from the stalks of my legs and breathed black heat through the tunnel of my body, expanding and permeating in the cave of my soul.
Friday, December 21, 2007
Thursday, December 20, 2007
5:23 am and delirious.
Wondering forward, I wander backwards to a place in time. A feeling sealed tight around an action. A packaged feeling positioned in an action’s space, however,—and this is where it exists out of existence—, retaining the attention of a place in time. This is the feeling of a fixed kiss. A kiss fixed on a place (a pair of lips). A kiss fixated on the space in which the action revolved. But after rationalizing and over-reasoning, this was and that is a kiss fit only for the fixation of a time. Lips match and melt having found their match. Do they freeze to a state of solid-tude when one of the two pairs of lips decide they are completely drained and therein, matchless? I remember my lips matching and melting in mid-kiss. I miss making lips melt and remember having had them match. But I don’t miss remembering the memory or miss making memories from the rememberings. Matchless, I now know three things though that I had not known before the time my lips matched and melted. One of three being, lips melt from a kiss that found its match, but the match is beyond the subject of the kiss. To have a matching kiss that melts, the time is what you need to have it made. I know the subject. I have the lips. I can take our lips back to the space. But it is beyond my natural abilities to take us back to the place in time when the lips matched and made a melting kiss. Imagination can be called upon, but that is not real and the action would be fraudulent. Backwards wondering on a match, I wander forward matchless.
Wednesday, December 19, 2007
flame faints
My light flickered out tonight and the time between the final flick on and the first flick out I feared I would not be able to see.
Awaiting Oblivion
A half a year ago, I courageously bought Awaiting Oblivion by Maurice Blanchot. Without much time or mind, I put it down defeated. Hours passed holding me embittered toward my decision to buy his unreadable literature. In spite of the unfeasible text’s inaccessibility, I aspired to return the published binding of spinning sentences for another author’s work who would make me move and see with his lyrical imagery. Truth be told, my condition never inspired me to make such moves and Blanchot remained shelved, unfinished. And lucky enough for me!—Tonight I squeezed the thin book out from between two others that competed for my attention; courageous, again, for the challenge. A half-year later from the first and last day I tried to read Awaiting Oblivion, I see tonight Maurice Blanchot’s blinding brilliance.
(extracts)
Here, and on this sentence that was perhaps also meant for him, he was obliged to stop. It was practically while listening to her speak that he had written these notes. He still heard her voice as he wrote. He showed them to her. She did not want to read. She read only a few passages, which she did because he gently asked her to. “Who is speaking?” she said. “Who, then, is speaking?” She sensed an error that she could not put her finger on. “Erase whatever doesn’t seem right to you.” But she could not erase anything, either. She sadly threw down all the pages….
While he gathered together the sheets of paper—and now she was watching him through curious eyes—he could not help feeling that he was bound to her by his failure. He did not understand very well why. It was as if he had touched her across the void; he had seen her for an instant. When? A few minutes ago. He had seen who she was. That did not encourage him; it suggested rather the end of everything. Period. “All right,” he said to himself, “if you don’t want to, I give up.” He was giving up, but on an intimate note, in an utterance that, it is true, was not addressed directly to her, less still to her secret. He had been aiming for something else that was more familiar to him, that he knew and with which he seemed to have lived in joyous freedom. He was astonished to discover that it was perhaps her voice. It is the voice that was entrusted to him. What an astonishing thought! He picked up the sheets of paper and wrote, “It is her voice that is entrusted to you, not what she says. What she says, the secrets that you collect and transcribe so as to give them their due, you must lead them gently, in spite of their attempt to seduce, toward the silence that you first drew out of them.” She asked him what he had written. But it was something she must not hear, that they must not hear together.
(extracts)
Here, and on this sentence that was perhaps also meant for him, he was obliged to stop. It was practically while listening to her speak that he had written these notes. He still heard her voice as he wrote. He showed them to her. She did not want to read. She read only a few passages, which she did because he gently asked her to. “Who is speaking?” she said. “Who, then, is speaking?” She sensed an error that she could not put her finger on. “Erase whatever doesn’t seem right to you.” But she could not erase anything, either. She sadly threw down all the pages….
While he gathered together the sheets of paper—and now she was watching him through curious eyes—he could not help feeling that he was bound to her by his failure. He did not understand very well why. It was as if he had touched her across the void; he had seen her for an instant. When? A few minutes ago. He had seen who she was. That did not encourage him; it suggested rather the end of everything. Period. “All right,” he said to himself, “if you don’t want to, I give up.” He was giving up, but on an intimate note, in an utterance that, it is true, was not addressed directly to her, less still to her secret. He had been aiming for something else that was more familiar to him, that he knew and with which he seemed to have lived in joyous freedom. He was astonished to discover that it was perhaps her voice. It is the voice that was entrusted to him. What an astonishing thought! He picked up the sheets of paper and wrote, “It is her voice that is entrusted to you, not what she says. What she says, the secrets that you collect and transcribe so as to give them their due, you must lead them gently, in spite of their attempt to seduce, toward the silence that you first drew out of them.” She asked him what he had written. But it was something she must not hear, that they must not hear together.
Past Present Pasting Present Future
Burning a candle To: A Dream From: The Night.
A candle burns behind the dream. The night blows between its flame. The dream breathes beyond the night. Dreaming during dark depths, the sleeper sensed light and seeks to see the sight seen beneath the night during day.
A candle burns behind the dream. The night blows between its flame. The dream breathes beyond the night. Dreaming during dark depths, the sleeper sensed light and seeks to see the sight seen beneath the night during day.
Monday, December 17, 2007
tale told truthfully:
I watch her the little doll who cries in rapid succession fire flushes her face a surge seizes then leaves the extinguished skin seals her pearly face for protection the wings of her upper lip burnt blood bubble with spittle between pangs the little doll rushes to rip the envelope of her lips words encourage their way up from the vase of her throat bidding for a string of utterances or a successful sentence to bloom as a lotus into flower the lily floats head up dreamily in the collected tear puddle dwelling on the landscape of the little doll’s skin the Poet stares as watchman in the sun of day writing the little doll’s tale to night she will not forget I was watching.
Between the eggs cracking over the pan and entering as an omelette into my mouth, I wrote:
I hold inside myself’s body All that has been sensed. Past and Present reside inside this eternal home. Inside pushing outwards. Skin screams in one long stretch. Scars result and I exist silently. The weight of Space presses its back against myself’s body. In all directions it tries to penetrate. Contact is an attempt to stifle the safety of my senses—to disrupt the shelter of their home. I will resist Space’s entry. I will remain wedged between two mounting pressures, larger than I—the Senses’ push and the Space’s press—for as long as I can hold.
I feel reborn, as if I woke anew. There is much to write, but it is probably best told in increments. Soon.
I feel reborn, as if I woke anew. There is much to write, but it is probably best told in increments. Soon.
Thursday, December 13, 2007
Because I can't fall inside Sleep
—Outside331’sSleep—
Don’t open your eyes yet not until I explain last night I went to bed with Sleep last night I fell for Sleep last night Sleep unclothed me left me naked in a room painted black I couldn’t see Sleep because Sleep was dark too and the room was black and the foreground blended in with the background I couldn’t tell what was far and what was close I became frustrated because Sleep was either hiding inside the room or the room was hiding behind Sleep neither were being fair to my eyes who wanted to play hide and go Sleep I hide inside the room and Sleep seeks I said where are you Sleep I can’t see you my eyes can’t find you Sleep I said I wanted to fall inside you brought me into this black room and I am trying to wrap myself around you won’t you come inside of me you won’t stage scenes in my eyes created with color everything is black one long stretch Sleep are you moving and I can’t see you or are you standing still and I can’t feel you are here Sleep you are silent Sleep I feel alone Sleep I want you to be inside me if you take me to a black room and make me go to bed are your eyes open I can’t see you did you leave is Sleep here Sleep am I inside you explain Sleep explain did you open your eyes Sleep are my eyes open Sleep are you outside me Sleep you took me to bed and left me Sleep I can’t open my eyes until you are back inside me I can’t see Sleep when you’re not inside me open your eyes Sleep do you see me inside you explain last night am I still inside Sleep?
Don’t open your eyes yet not until I explain last night I went to bed with Sleep last night I fell for Sleep last night Sleep unclothed me left me naked in a room painted black I couldn’t see Sleep because Sleep was dark too and the room was black and the foreground blended in with the background I couldn’t tell what was far and what was close I became frustrated because Sleep was either hiding inside the room or the room was hiding behind Sleep neither were being fair to my eyes who wanted to play hide and go Sleep I hide inside the room and Sleep seeks I said where are you Sleep I can’t see you my eyes can’t find you Sleep I said I wanted to fall inside you brought me into this black room and I am trying to wrap myself around you won’t you come inside of me you won’t stage scenes in my eyes created with color everything is black one long stretch Sleep are you moving and I can’t see you or are you standing still and I can’t feel you are here Sleep you are silent Sleep I feel alone Sleep I want you to be inside me if you take me to a black room and make me go to bed are your eyes open I can’t see you did you leave is Sleep here Sleep am I inside you explain Sleep explain did you open your eyes Sleep are my eyes open Sleep are you outside me Sleep you took me to bed and left me Sleep I can’t open my eyes until you are back inside me I can’t see Sleep when you’re not inside me open your eyes Sleep do you see me inside you explain last night am I still inside Sleep?
anonymous
anonymous comments are opened up.
if you feel it, say it.
if you read it critiques and critics help.
if you feel it, say it.
if you read it critiques and critics help.
Tuesday, December 11, 2007
Monday, December 10, 2007
The Kindle
The Kindle: Click for article
Would I actually own one? It's a hard call. One of my biggest interests (though strange) is the materiality of written words. I'm a huge nerd and fanatic for paper, layout and fonts. But then again, all I ever want to be doing is reading, so this would be practical. But I sure wouldn't be able to highlight the hell out of all my books. Oh, technology, it ain't ever gonna to end.
Would I actually own one? It's a hard call. One of my biggest interests (though strange) is the materiality of written words. I'm a huge nerd and fanatic for paper, layout and fonts. But then again, all I ever want to be doing is reading, so this would be practical. But I sure wouldn't be able to highlight the hell out of all my books. Oh, technology, it ain't ever gonna to end.
I'm not referring directly to the Romantic Movement.
She told me, You are a romantic writer. In today’s world there is no room for such a type. People are not readily favorable of such a language. People may not be willing to listen.
My response was simply, Maybe not now. But my writing is not necessarily for the now, nor the people of today. I am a lyrical historian and my voice will not change just for the ears of today’s people.
Then after, and now reflecting back, I am not even sure that my writing is that of a Romantic. I try to visually collect the samples of all my writing. What are they? What are they about? Love? Ek, I don’t even think so.
How could I possibly have my writing favor the motif of “romantic love” in the way it is easily understood: coupled relationship—if in actuality all I am after/seek taking control of in my own life is independence and the self’s relationship in solitude. The exploration of self-love.
I question all this because I, too, am trying to figure out where to pair my writing, how to further it, what to make it a collection of. What I do seems so contradictorily of natural suspicion. Sure, the writing I wish to pursue is romantic in the sense that I only imagine language to be lyrical. I want it to play like music—make the body mentally and physically move, even after it ceases to play. But the actual content of my writing analyses, unravels and reveals the conflict of another type of romance: 1) a romance of the self in a relationship with the other. A romance that one struggles with, a romance that evokes scenes that are staged, performed—a romance that is a self-designed play. Therefore, relationships become for one’s self, more than they are for the other. Intimacy strangles the self. It is something one is not comfortable with—it is an act one hides from. 2) A romance that is understood, explained, experienced and highly dependent upon sensation. This relationship begs for intimacy, craves touch and is seen in the dark confines of the night. Is it a dream? Or is it an ideal?—which is also a dream. Think: in the act of “making love” one is told early on that it is only appropriate to close your eyes. We are instructed, we are guided, at our earliest stages to seal tight our eyelids, close the curtains of our eyes, see at first black and then imagine a scene, a scenario, an ideal fantasy that will take us to a moment or moments of climax. Is ecstasy only achieved in dream? Is dream only awoken in the intoxication of ecstasy? Is The Ideal the figure of highest pleasure?
The romances of my writing are noncommittal. Subjects share nothing. They give. These romantic relationships are involved for the pleasure of receiving. Perhaps, my characters at the core are all femme fatales. Through others’ mystical essences they look for sensations, both erotic and lyrical, they look for words given in conversation (they do not share words because they speak at each other) to be evocative and provocative. This type of romance is explored for the heightened moments that will hopefully awaken one to a different state (reality?) or a different intellectual understanding. Relationships are sought for the emotional awakening necessary for insight. Are my characters most concerned with romance in the way of what the other can do to them—how the other can make one feel—and how one can make and change the other by their own self power? If so romance, more than ever, seems harmful.
And under all that explanation, still, what the hell is it all about?
My response was simply, Maybe not now. But my writing is not necessarily for the now, nor the people of today. I am a lyrical historian and my voice will not change just for the ears of today’s people.
Then after, and now reflecting back, I am not even sure that my writing is that of a Romantic. I try to visually collect the samples of all my writing. What are they? What are they about? Love? Ek, I don’t even think so.
How could I possibly have my writing favor the motif of “romantic love” in the way it is easily understood: coupled relationship—if in actuality all I am after/seek taking control of in my own life is independence and the self’s relationship in solitude. The exploration of self-love.
I question all this because I, too, am trying to figure out where to pair my writing, how to further it, what to make it a collection of. What I do seems so contradictorily of natural suspicion. Sure, the writing I wish to pursue is romantic in the sense that I only imagine language to be lyrical. I want it to play like music—make the body mentally and physically move, even after it ceases to play. But the actual content of my writing analyses, unravels and reveals the conflict of another type of romance: 1) a romance of the self in a relationship with the other. A romance that one struggles with, a romance that evokes scenes that are staged, performed—a romance that is a self-designed play. Therefore, relationships become for one’s self, more than they are for the other. Intimacy strangles the self. It is something one is not comfortable with—it is an act one hides from. 2) A romance that is understood, explained, experienced and highly dependent upon sensation. This relationship begs for intimacy, craves touch and is seen in the dark confines of the night. Is it a dream? Or is it an ideal?—which is also a dream. Think: in the act of “making love” one is told early on that it is only appropriate to close your eyes. We are instructed, we are guided, at our earliest stages to seal tight our eyelids, close the curtains of our eyes, see at first black and then imagine a scene, a scenario, an ideal fantasy that will take us to a moment or moments of climax. Is ecstasy only achieved in dream? Is dream only awoken in the intoxication of ecstasy? Is The Ideal the figure of highest pleasure?
The romances of my writing are noncommittal. Subjects share nothing. They give. These romantic relationships are involved for the pleasure of receiving. Perhaps, my characters at the core are all femme fatales. Through others’ mystical essences they look for sensations, both erotic and lyrical, they look for words given in conversation (they do not share words because they speak at each other) to be evocative and provocative. This type of romance is explored for the heightened moments that will hopefully awaken one to a different state (reality?) or a different intellectual understanding. Relationships are sought for the emotional awakening necessary for insight. Are my characters most concerned with romance in the way of what the other can do to them—how the other can make one feel—and how one can make and change the other by their own self power? If so romance, more than ever, seems harmful.
And under all that explanation, still, what the hell is it all about?
Saturday, December 8, 2007
lowleighlow
I just made the mistake.
I just made the most accurate decision to reminisce at a less sober state. More than likely, the night's own nostalgia and good, good conversations made me stumble or rather, tumble back on to an old (though not long ago enough) photograph. And either my unsober state is making me see selves in alternate realities or my unsober sight is finally seeing images more sober(ly), but thank goodness for proof, the past and for proof of the past. I was thin as death. And as I explained, even tonight, I know exactly why I got to that level and openly reveal and honestly reflect at what brought me there, what it was all really about and how it has changed my 'now'. But to see it still existing in documentation and thus in some form of reality, it is hard to imagine that what I see was not coming from an imagination but a true time and thus reality. I feel most ashamed of those that were linked in pictures or in contact with me or 'that' person (but really, we are one in the same and that was very much me). I enjoy and can appreciate that others involved around me never hid from it or me and that I never hid from the world either. And even months after, that I can still openly have the pictures floating about and still remember the judgment that was given, and not delete it all. Not try and erase what happened, what was experienced, what was real. I am, an inspiration. "The Bounce Back."
I still trust my quote that "I lived by" in middle and highschool: Criticism is Inspiration. That's all it is.
Friday, December 7, 2007
Thursday
I rose and through the doorway, sliced open, saw him coiled, hovering comfortably over the small shell of her body. The sun casting a glow upon the covers helped mimic the scene I imagined: two purring cats committed to an afternoon nap. This made me happy. Happy for them. The budding of something new, something fresh. One should always preserve the early stage and encourage themselves not to rush pass the delicacy and fragility of new romance. Maturity will come and carry itself forward, and it is then, in age, that we look back on the youth and remember what it was like to be childlike, and simple.
I left early, weaving myself through the park that I walk through multiple times daily. The dog run is being renovated and I wonder, where have all the dogs gone? Do they realize that they have skipped a day at the park? Do they question when they will be back? Are thoughts just a continuous strand of propositions that plague us, rather than serve as any form of fulfillment? See, another question.
I think (over and over and over again) how fortunate I am, that I begin my mornings walking instep with a flow of others—merging from disconnected realms, the veins of different streets—and come flowing together, connecting, crossing and moving on. You arrive in New York City completely uprooted and immediately are replanted. And yet, the fascinating actuality is that as you become (and have to become in order to survive) more in control of your self existing alone (more involved in a one-on-one relationship with your self than you may be anywhere else in the world) you are comforted by all the others the city is composed of, existing just as you, on foot in the early mornings, walking themselves to where they have planned to be. You are a portrait intimately involved in the composition of the city.
Listening to music, no different than all the others I walk up, around and against, I idolize the ability rhythms have to reshape and recolor our experienced reality. The songs I listen to paint different scenes of my morning. The person next to me, listening to something different, experiencing the music differently, is seeing the scene of his morning play out differently than I am. And this fascinates me. It fascinates me that with a playlist complied of only two artists, the texture of my reality changes dramatically. Radiohead freezes all places and things in time. And it is only the people that actively exist and also actively resist the mechanics of time. People stretch in place and weave their bodies around a motionless city. The song ends, the artist changes and Amandine acts in opposition to Radiohead. Listening, I feel cemented and all places and things move freely and quickly around me in season. I move but feel like I am getting nowhere and will go nowhere. I think the more I emerge myself into music, the more satisfied I will be with my immediate reality. Even though that really is a contradiction.
Arriving, I sat down waiting for my “mentor” (brief mention: mid 60s, has changed the course of my life in the past half year, created an independent study with her this semester called Reinventing the “I”. got accepted in the Gallatin’s art festival where she will be my mentor for what I am pursing and next semester we are doing another independent study, she is the most fascinating, soft-spoken and intelligent woman that I have been blessed to stumble across). I began taking notes in my third book—alas, since September I have filled three books of notes, quotes, fragmented prose, thought and the like.
She came tumbling in with more energy than I have ever seen her with. We resituated ourselves in, what we laughed about later, a Kafkaesque closet/copy room, to begin discussing. Except, instead of discussing Nin she handed me two works I had done with a note saying, Instead of responding with 20 pages I want to discuss what you have done when I see you. We proceeded for the next hours to unveil what I had done. Never—have I been so honored or so.. I can’t even find the words. All I could do while she spoke of it was laugh and smile… and smile… and smile. My work is inaccessible, indulgent even, opaque, thick, theorized, masked with symbolism and placed in a surreality. I think it was Nin who said her writing was a language that once people learned would understand how important it was. And so, all I could do was laugh and smile because, now, she knows me, she knows my work, she knows the collection of ideas I work with, the bodies of work I read and she is understanding my language—she is seeing how I define my symbols, my metaphors and unveiling the self that is, always, buried beneath the guises of my writing. To understand my writing is to understand me at my purest, gentlest and most honest. To understand my writing is to discover my reactions, reflections and my idealizations. It is to reveal the mystery which is [perhaps] why I choose to make it so inaccessible to begin with, because truth and reality are inaccessible even to me.
I left early, weaving myself through the park that I walk through multiple times daily. The dog run is being renovated and I wonder, where have all the dogs gone? Do they realize that they have skipped a day at the park? Do they question when they will be back? Are thoughts just a continuous strand of propositions that plague us, rather than serve as any form of fulfillment? See, another question.
I think (over and over and over again) how fortunate I am, that I begin my mornings walking instep with a flow of others—merging from disconnected realms, the veins of different streets—and come flowing together, connecting, crossing and moving on. You arrive in New York City completely uprooted and immediately are replanted. And yet, the fascinating actuality is that as you become (and have to become in order to survive) more in control of your self existing alone (more involved in a one-on-one relationship with your self than you may be anywhere else in the world) you are comforted by all the others the city is composed of, existing just as you, on foot in the early mornings, walking themselves to where they have planned to be. You are a portrait intimately involved in the composition of the city.
Listening to music, no different than all the others I walk up, around and against, I idolize the ability rhythms have to reshape and recolor our experienced reality. The songs I listen to paint different scenes of my morning. The person next to me, listening to something different, experiencing the music differently, is seeing the scene of his morning play out differently than I am. And this fascinates me. It fascinates me that with a playlist complied of only two artists, the texture of my reality changes dramatically. Radiohead freezes all places and things in time. And it is only the people that actively exist and also actively resist the mechanics of time. People stretch in place and weave their bodies around a motionless city. The song ends, the artist changes and Amandine acts in opposition to Radiohead. Listening, I feel cemented and all places and things move freely and quickly around me in season. I move but feel like I am getting nowhere and will go nowhere. I think the more I emerge myself into music, the more satisfied I will be with my immediate reality. Even though that really is a contradiction.
Arriving, I sat down waiting for my “mentor” (brief mention: mid 60s, has changed the course of my life in the past half year, created an independent study with her this semester called Reinventing the “I”. got accepted in the Gallatin’s art festival where she will be my mentor for what I am pursing and next semester we are doing another independent study, she is the most fascinating, soft-spoken and intelligent woman that I have been blessed to stumble across). I began taking notes in my third book—alas, since September I have filled three books of notes, quotes, fragmented prose, thought and the like.
She came tumbling in with more energy than I have ever seen her with. We resituated ourselves in, what we laughed about later, a Kafkaesque closet/copy room, to begin discussing. Except, instead of discussing Nin she handed me two works I had done with a note saying, Instead of responding with 20 pages I want to discuss what you have done when I see you. We proceeded for the next hours to unveil what I had done. Never—have I been so honored or so.. I can’t even find the words. All I could do while she spoke of it was laugh and smile… and smile… and smile. My work is inaccessible, indulgent even, opaque, thick, theorized, masked with symbolism and placed in a surreality. I think it was Nin who said her writing was a language that once people learned would understand how important it was. And so, all I could do was laugh and smile because, now, she knows me, she knows my work, she knows the collection of ideas I work with, the bodies of work I read and she is understanding my language—she is seeing how I define my symbols, my metaphors and unveiling the self that is, always, buried beneath the guises of my writing. To understand my writing is to understand me at my purest, gentlest and most honest. To understand my writing is to discover my reactions, reflections and my idealizations. It is to reveal the mystery which is [perhaps] why I choose to make it so inaccessible to begin with, because truth and reality are inaccessible even to me.
Monday, December 3, 2007
without walls
Her eyes carry clouds delicately through the night.
At seven it begins to shower.
Rain trembles out, dangerously defeated, dampening
the exterior decoration of her face.
Snow falls from the ceiling.
Landing on her lashes
And slowly
Licking the corners of her eyes
She is wearing winter’s weather.
Cold blood frozen under her crystalline skin
Looks like rubies contained in a glass case
The vein’s body is frozen with ruby blood
(easily breakable).
She shakes erratically
A dance of deep carnal grooves.
- in motion -
The curtains rise but
the film of her eyes stops playing.
She no longer feels herself
watching her dream
And this, this, wakes her.
Waking drugged by dream,
she dreams she wakes from dreaming.
Her mooneyes give no glow
because they sink in
deep pools of depleted dreams.
Dreamless, sleep dies and she is born anew.
Her sheets are wet and wishful.
Her body must have melted and left
Remainders of tissue as reminders.
Which reminds her to remember that he said,
Proceed from the dream outward.
The clouds rained.
The ceiling snowed.
Somewhere someone said,
Start from the state you are in
and proceed further.
Her face is wrinkled with age,
(She has grown sad)
And is wet from tears.
It did not rain. It never snows.
Beneath where her head sleeps,
she reaches for her pillow book but
Writing nothing shows.
The fearful room turns black to hide.
No one can see her, colorless.
She sees she does not exist.
She reaches for the walls, trying to walk the walls and corner a light that will show a mirror that will reflect her standing self
if she exists.
Nothing. No one.
“There are no walls. There are no walls.”
There are no walls here to enclose her body.
Reaching to her left,
Trying to touch what separates her from
The Other Side.
She falls through the air.
The only thing to catch her is
whatever lies beneath.
(Beneath her dream)
She watches herself saying,
“There are no walls. I feel like I am sitting in the middle of the world. I don’t know if I have come a long way or have more to go. The poet is a lover. Trying to write in the middle of the world a description of an intangible state of dream. Forgetting how it started and how it will end, the poet becomes trapped inside a confusing world of words, trying to make sense of the dream. I want to run forever, shaking myself sober from drugged dreams. But it is dark. And there are no walls and I don’t know if I have already run a long way or still have more to go.”
Silent, she was speaking in sleep.
Only kissing air.
Writing, she never materialized words.
She didn’t want to risk awaking
from the dream she was safely sleeping in.
One should always be drunk with sleep
To avoid seeing the multiple dimensions
of reality.
Thursday, November 29, 2007
Walking On
What happens when the relationship ends but the romance still proceeds? Whether this is you or your other trying to preserve something that has already begun to decay is not what I wish to draw attention to. But another half question. One of the worst truths you have to face when the end of a relationship has been decided but the romance continues is whether each time will be the last time. I remind myself of this at the last moment of every engagement. Just as I am thinking to pull away, I feel like I have to hold on just a moment longer. Long enough that it seems appropriate for the standard that has been set. I wonder is this me wanting to kiss him longer? Or is this me not wanting to not kiss him again?
Walking home today, I finally saw a couple outside of this apartment building I live next to. I have always wondered who lives inside of it. I think everyone that lives on the block does. I can’t help but always stare inside, curious and envious. The place is immaculate, grand, shiny. And I can’t help but be convinced that those that live inside must be too. Each day as I walk by, I hope that I can afford myself that. That I can do the work I love and live feeling proud--- with my curtains always pulled open to the street below. Finally walking by today, I saw a man saying goodbye to a younger woman. She, she seemed like a love interest. I never imagined that all the times I had looked inside the place. I pictured marriage. But by the way she just dangled there, outside his door as he kept the door open with one foot, swinging back and forth. I could tell that this relationship was not yet stabilized. He kissed her bye and just by the way she waited there, you could tell that she wasn’t sure if she would be back. And so, just as he was closing the door, she took the leap… the chance… and kissed him again. I looked down at the flowers I had just bought myself and laughed. Laughed at myself, perhaps the irony and laughed at the possibility, the chance, of our kiss having been our last.
Maybe you should always take the second leap. Maybe you should always say with a kiss, goodbye twice.
Walking home today, I finally saw a couple outside of this apartment building I live next to. I have always wondered who lives inside of it. I think everyone that lives on the block does. I can’t help but always stare inside, curious and envious. The place is immaculate, grand, shiny. And I can’t help but be convinced that those that live inside must be too. Each day as I walk by, I hope that I can afford myself that. That I can do the work I love and live feeling proud--- with my curtains always pulled open to the street below. Finally walking by today, I saw a man saying goodbye to a younger woman. She, she seemed like a love interest. I never imagined that all the times I had looked inside the place. I pictured marriage. But by the way she just dangled there, outside his door as he kept the door open with one foot, swinging back and forth. I could tell that this relationship was not yet stabilized. He kissed her bye and just by the way she waited there, you could tell that she wasn’t sure if she would be back. And so, just as he was closing the door, she took the leap… the chance… and kissed him again. I looked down at the flowers I had just bought myself and laughed. Laughed at myself, perhaps the irony and laughed at the possibility, the chance, of our kiss having been our last.
Maybe you should always take the second leap. Maybe you should always say with a kiss, goodbye twice.
Wednesday, November 28, 2007
Friday, November 23, 2007
Starting Out In the Evening
Starting Out in the Evening Trailer
BY: A.O. Scott
A crepuscular glow suffuses “Starting Out in the Evening,” Andrew Wagner’s intelligent, careful adaptation of a near-perfect novel by Brian Morton. This is not only a matter of the cinematography — digital video given an unusual burnish by Harlan Bosmajian, the director of photography — or of the setting. Late in the day, the sun slanting down over the North American mainland cloaks the brick and limestone of the Upper West Side of Manhattan in a somber, serious light that may, more than anything else, explain the area’s reputation for deep and lofty thought.
One of Mr. Wagner’s themes (and also Mr. Morton’s) is the waning of that old, literary New York, the twilight of an idea of the city as a capital of the modern mind. Leonard Schiller, one of the main characters, is a retired teacher and all-but-forgotten novelist. His four completed novels are long out of print, and we find him, in his 70s, pecking slowly away at a fifth.
Not that he feels sorry for himself or solicits our pity. No, Leonard, as embodied by Frank Langella, is a picture of old-fashioned decorum and steadfast dignity. There is a certain kind of man who will not leave his house without putting on a tie. Leonard wears one, firmly knotted in a crisp white collar, at his writing desk or his kitchen table.
His routine, which is also the slow unwinding of his life, is interrupted by Heather Wolfe (Lauren Ambrose), an ambitious young graduate student who wants to write a master’s thesis on Leonard and then also, perhaps, reintroduce him to the reading public. He is both flattered and unnerved by the attention — which is more than simply scholarly — but to say too much about what happens between them would risk spoiling one of the most delicate and peculiar romances recently depicted on film.
The romance is not only, indeed not primarily, between them, but between each of them and an exalted notion of literature, a passion that the film honors but does not sentimentalize. Writing and reading do not make Leonard and Heather better than they might otherwise be — they may have the opposite effect — or even more complicated.
Ariel (Lili Taylor), Leonard’s nonliterary daughter, is in some ways the most complex character in the story, her temperament a thicket of contradictory impulses and desires. Approaching 40, she wants to have a child but finds herself drawn back into a relationship with Casey (Adrian Lester), whose resistance to parenthood had been the cause of their earlier breakup.
Those four people — Leonard, Heather, Ariel and Casey — pretty much constitute the film’s universe. But even though it is less populous than Mr. Morton’s novel (which featured a cameo from the literary critic Alfred Kazin and a few more fictitious old-timers to keep Leonard company), the adaptation, with a screenplay by Mr. Wagner and Fred Parnes, rarely feels unduly claustrophobic or rarefied. Allusions and incidents that evoked the milieu of Leonard’s younger days, and the texture of his mind, have been pruned away. But in their place is the marvelous fact of Mr. Langella, who carries every nuance of Leonard’s experience — including his prodigious, obsessive reading — in his posture and his pores.
There are not too many screen performances that manage to be both subtle and monumental. Watching Mr. Langella’s slow, gracious movement through “Starting Out in the Evening,” I was reminded of Burt Lancaster in Luchino Visconti’s adaptation of “The Leopard.” In some ways the comparison is absurd — Visconti’s film is a sweeping historical symphony, while Mr. Wagner’s is a stately string quartet — but both movies concern an old man who has outlasted the social order in which his life made sense. And what is so remarkable about Mr. Langella is that he seems to hold Leonard’s intellectual cosmos inside him, to make it implicit in the man’s every gesture and pause.
Instead of nostalgia, “Starting Out in the Evening” offers a clear-eyed elegy for that world. It also notes the persistence, personified by the seductive, uncertain Heather Wolfe, of the urge to connect to experience through the written word. Ms. Ambrose is self-assured enough to hold her own with Mr. Langella and Ms. Taylor (whose sister-in-law she played on “Six Feet Under”) and brave enough to show the vain, insecure, unformed aspects of Heather’s personality. The character’s evident immaturity shows that the actress is wise beyond her years.
And wisdom — the chastened acceptance of limitation, the resolve to keep going anyway — is the subject of this fine, modest film. Not everything in it works — the score, for one thing, is vulgar and obvious in a way that Leonard Schiller would never tolerate in his own writing or anyone else’s — but it has the quiet beauty of a late afternoon, late in the autumn, when New York seems to be not just the center of the world but the crystallization of its finest tendencies.
BY: A.O. Scott
A crepuscular glow suffuses “Starting Out in the Evening,” Andrew Wagner’s intelligent, careful adaptation of a near-perfect novel by Brian Morton. This is not only a matter of the cinematography — digital video given an unusual burnish by Harlan Bosmajian, the director of photography — or of the setting. Late in the day, the sun slanting down over the North American mainland cloaks the brick and limestone of the Upper West Side of Manhattan in a somber, serious light that may, more than anything else, explain the area’s reputation for deep and lofty thought.
One of Mr. Wagner’s themes (and also Mr. Morton’s) is the waning of that old, literary New York, the twilight of an idea of the city as a capital of the modern mind. Leonard Schiller, one of the main characters, is a retired teacher and all-but-forgotten novelist. His four completed novels are long out of print, and we find him, in his 70s, pecking slowly away at a fifth.
Not that he feels sorry for himself or solicits our pity. No, Leonard, as embodied by Frank Langella, is a picture of old-fashioned decorum and steadfast dignity. There is a certain kind of man who will not leave his house without putting on a tie. Leonard wears one, firmly knotted in a crisp white collar, at his writing desk or his kitchen table.
His routine, which is also the slow unwinding of his life, is interrupted by Heather Wolfe (Lauren Ambrose), an ambitious young graduate student who wants to write a master’s thesis on Leonard and then also, perhaps, reintroduce him to the reading public. He is both flattered and unnerved by the attention — which is more than simply scholarly — but to say too much about what happens between them would risk spoiling one of the most delicate and peculiar romances recently depicted on film.
The romance is not only, indeed not primarily, between them, but between each of them and an exalted notion of literature, a passion that the film honors but does not sentimentalize. Writing and reading do not make Leonard and Heather better than they might otherwise be — they may have the opposite effect — or even more complicated.
Ariel (Lili Taylor), Leonard’s nonliterary daughter, is in some ways the most complex character in the story, her temperament a thicket of contradictory impulses and desires. Approaching 40, she wants to have a child but finds herself drawn back into a relationship with Casey (Adrian Lester), whose resistance to parenthood had been the cause of their earlier breakup.
Those four people — Leonard, Heather, Ariel and Casey — pretty much constitute the film’s universe. But even though it is less populous than Mr. Morton’s novel (which featured a cameo from the literary critic Alfred Kazin and a few more fictitious old-timers to keep Leonard company), the adaptation, with a screenplay by Mr. Wagner and Fred Parnes, rarely feels unduly claustrophobic or rarefied. Allusions and incidents that evoked the milieu of Leonard’s younger days, and the texture of his mind, have been pruned away. But in their place is the marvelous fact of Mr. Langella, who carries every nuance of Leonard’s experience — including his prodigious, obsessive reading — in his posture and his pores.
There are not too many screen performances that manage to be both subtle and monumental. Watching Mr. Langella’s slow, gracious movement through “Starting Out in the Evening,” I was reminded of Burt Lancaster in Luchino Visconti’s adaptation of “The Leopard.” In some ways the comparison is absurd — Visconti’s film is a sweeping historical symphony, while Mr. Wagner’s is a stately string quartet — but both movies concern an old man who has outlasted the social order in which his life made sense. And what is so remarkable about Mr. Langella is that he seems to hold Leonard’s intellectual cosmos inside him, to make it implicit in the man’s every gesture and pause.
Instead of nostalgia, “Starting Out in the Evening” offers a clear-eyed elegy for that world. It also notes the persistence, personified by the seductive, uncertain Heather Wolfe, of the urge to connect to experience through the written word. Ms. Ambrose is self-assured enough to hold her own with Mr. Langella and Ms. Taylor (whose sister-in-law she played on “Six Feet Under”) and brave enough to show the vain, insecure, unformed aspects of Heather’s personality. The character’s evident immaturity shows that the actress is wise beyond her years.
And wisdom — the chastened acceptance of limitation, the resolve to keep going anyway — is the subject of this fine, modest film. Not everything in it works — the score, for one thing, is vulgar and obvious in a way that Leonard Schiller would never tolerate in his own writing or anyone else’s — but it has the quiet beauty of a late afternoon, late in the autumn, when New York seems to be not just the center of the world but the crystallization of its finest tendencies.
Monday, November 19, 2007
Little Extra "Volume"
Goes to show you what a little extra volume can make of a figure.
She's never looked so good.
There's a lot bottled up in me: angst, frusteration, dismay. I can recognize all weekend long, but I know the most theraputic choice would be to SAY these things. Aloud. Hear how they materialize themselves. I want to see how words hit a person's face. I mean "hit" in the most gentle ways possible.
I have an inability to relax. I stayed home in New York for an extra weekend alone before boring myself in Miami. I wrapped myself in a robe and still felt under pressure. My breathing had a certain rhythm the entire time; a rhythm you can't fall asleep to. My battery is about to die. More later.
Saturday, November 17, 2007
Monday, November 12, 2007
Risky Business
I know I could dedicate hours to reflecting then writing over all that has happened in the past days. So much goes missing in even a daily journal, that I worry that they have gone missing from my mind's memories as well. The idea that I can't or that it will be difficult to retrieve instances and emotions that I felt seems like self-sabotage.
In class I found myself philosophizing the term "thought." I am feeling more and more that thought (noun) and to think (verb) transmute themselves into actual beings. I look to personify Thought and explain that it lives as a separate being from oneself. We form a relationship with it; always attempting to grasp, understand and have it be a part of us. But it is entirely separate from us. And that is why when I think or I reflect over my thoughts, I find myself looking out at 'some thing' that is not inside of me but is at a distance from me. And then this weekend, I found myself subscribing the same meaning to a relationship. A relationship that I find impossible to gain entrance back into. The memories are hazy. They were there, I know this. But I don't know exactly what was taking place. And in the process of what will be the memory, I know I am completely emerged and intoxicated by what is being said, expressed and confessed. I remind myself to remember, remember, remember it all. And because I feel so awake, so alive in the moment, I am confident I will remember the moment more than most anything. But the next day or even minutes later, I feel as though I have awaken either from a dream or have awoken into the phase of another pattern of sleep. I can't remember what went on, I can't hear what had been said and it is if I had been heavily intoxicated that I wake in a fog of remembrance.
All I can figure is that just as thought can exist as a being outside of yourself, a relationship can too. Even though it is you that is a central figure. Maybe this happens when your thoughts overpower your actions? When your thoughts collide and disturb the truth of the memory? All possibilities. But I still feel almost regret and frustration that I can be removed from a relationship and have it exist separate from me, confined and protected in a glass house. I can't break through it, but am left trying to gain entrance.
In brief, I left the Weinstein Company on Friday because I got hired to be an assistant to a producer. Long, crazed story, that I will tap back into at some point. Working one on one is the interaction I need. I want to be stronger and more successful of a presence. I want to continue to take pride in my opinions and rationalizations and I think the intimacy of working personally with another will develop these wishes. One thing that really made me keen on placing my 'power' elsewhere was when Human Resources called me in and said that I was a distraction at work due to appearance and clothing. Buuuullshit. After putting two and two together and knowing that I never dress risque, it was obvious how threatened others can be of self-confidence or more importantly, awareness. The fact that I was told that I should change this was wrong. Presence should not be constricted, it should be...presented. Sooo, I am looking forward to this new experience. Also, on whim I sent photos of myself into a casting for a film. They said they were looking for "hipsters," so I made a big joke out of the whole thing and said I wasn't a hipster but a hip star. Turns out I got picked and will be filming from 4:30pm till 7am today. I am trying to reserve some form of energy that is not within myself and restrain from letting in nerves take the best of me.
My dad thinks I am going way too fast. I am. But I have to take advantage of my youth's energy and excitement. I'm really taking risks... not worried about getting denied and expecting to come out better than as I went in. Ever since I have been more honest and upfront with how and who I am, I have been surprising others and maybe even myself. More on...more...later.
In class I found myself philosophizing the term "thought." I am feeling more and more that thought (noun) and to think (verb) transmute themselves into actual beings. I look to personify Thought and explain that it lives as a separate being from oneself. We form a relationship with it; always attempting to grasp, understand and have it be a part of us. But it is entirely separate from us. And that is why when I think or I reflect over my thoughts, I find myself looking out at 'some thing' that is not inside of me but is at a distance from me. And then this weekend, I found myself subscribing the same meaning to a relationship. A relationship that I find impossible to gain entrance back into. The memories are hazy. They were there, I know this. But I don't know exactly what was taking place. And in the process of what will be the memory, I know I am completely emerged and intoxicated by what is being said, expressed and confessed. I remind myself to remember, remember, remember it all. And because I feel so awake, so alive in the moment, I am confident I will remember the moment more than most anything. But the next day or even minutes later, I feel as though I have awaken either from a dream or have awoken into the phase of another pattern of sleep. I can't remember what went on, I can't hear what had been said and it is if I had been heavily intoxicated that I wake in a fog of remembrance.
All I can figure is that just as thought can exist as a being outside of yourself, a relationship can too. Even though it is you that is a central figure. Maybe this happens when your thoughts overpower your actions? When your thoughts collide and disturb the truth of the memory? All possibilities. But I still feel almost regret and frustration that I can be removed from a relationship and have it exist separate from me, confined and protected in a glass house. I can't break through it, but am left trying to gain entrance.
In brief, I left the Weinstein Company on Friday because I got hired to be an assistant to a producer. Long, crazed story, that I will tap back into at some point. Working one on one is the interaction I need. I want to be stronger and more successful of a presence. I want to continue to take pride in my opinions and rationalizations and I think the intimacy of working personally with another will develop these wishes. One thing that really made me keen on placing my 'power' elsewhere was when Human Resources called me in and said that I was a distraction at work due to appearance and clothing. Buuuullshit. After putting two and two together and knowing that I never dress risque, it was obvious how threatened others can be of self-confidence or more importantly, awareness. The fact that I was told that I should change this was wrong. Presence should not be constricted, it should be...presented. Sooo, I am looking forward to this new experience. Also, on whim I sent photos of myself into a casting for a film. They said they were looking for "hipsters," so I made a big joke out of the whole thing and said I wasn't a hipster but a hip star. Turns out I got picked and will be filming from 4:30pm till 7am today. I am trying to reserve some form of energy that is not within myself and restrain from letting in nerves take the best of me.
My dad thinks I am going way too fast. I am. But I have to take advantage of my youth's energy and excitement. I'm really taking risks... not worried about getting denied and expecting to come out better than as I went in. Ever since I have been more honest and upfront with how and who I am, I have been surprising others and maybe even myself. More on...more...later.
Wednesday, November 7, 2007
Don't Think to Think.
I require too much from people. It is not that I impose my requirements. They just escape me when I breathe. My mouth opens and they escape from where I was hiding and holding them away from any potential confrontation. When I speak I ask people to think. I am learning more and more of what it is I want out of my work-- I am being told to look at the ways in which I execute what I am producing, what are the motifs, what am I concerned with-- I have faced one barrier, the same barrier, in multiple mediums: first, the novel then, the film and now, the play. In blatant terms, I don't care about actions. I don't care about what people are doing. I am disinterested in the details from that life. I observe individuals and try and see what they are thinking. My dialogue for them are thoughts. The dialogue doesn't instigate or produce action. If anything, it explains the power thoughts have on making an individual incapable of action.
My playwrighting teacher barked at me, "Thoughts don't make anyone feel. The only way you can feel, the only way the audience together can feel, is through actions. Thoughts don't make the characters move. You have to learn to make your characters move, Chelsea." I am still not convinced. Feelings are the byproduct of thoughts. Actions are motivated from the feelings we have reflected over the thoughts that we recognize and take witness of consciously having. Thought controls everything.
And so, back to where I started. I inspire, make, FORCE people to think..which makes them feel..and as a result, act in ways that have left me stupefied at 3am and raising possible psychological scenarios to my sister who then shuts her door with, "You require too much from people. You ask them to do too much. And not everyone wants to see themselves."
No one will understand my play. No, not now.
My playwrighting teacher barked at me, "Thoughts don't make anyone feel. The only way you can feel, the only way the audience together can feel, is through actions. Thoughts don't make the characters move. You have to learn to make your characters move, Chelsea." I am still not convinced. Feelings are the byproduct of thoughts. Actions are motivated from the feelings we have reflected over the thoughts that we recognize and take witness of consciously having. Thought controls everything.
And so, back to where I started. I inspire, make, FORCE people to think..which makes them feel..and as a result, act in ways that have left me stupefied at 3am and raising possible psychological scenarios to my sister who then shuts her door with, "You require too much from people. You ask them to do too much. And not everyone wants to see themselves."
No one will understand my play. No, not now.
Head That Aches
A terrible headache resides in my temples. Sits there, pulsating, since morning and now to night. It is as if, it never moved from my bed when I woke. It as if I have been here all along. I have a terrible headache that resides in my eyes. It sits here on my lids like a child who has grown too heavy for his mother's lap. She asks him to play on the ground and he does. He slides off, smothers the floor and twice every sixty seven seconds bounces up and down on the earth's trampoline. I've asked my headache to move, but it has become too attached. Instead, it stretches itself further across, transmuting my yesterday's eyes into bat wings. A terrible headache resides in my faceless face. Siting here, in my blind bat eyes, fingers beat to the pulsation's rhythmic headache.
If only I had thought about my headache all day, maybe I wouldn't have such a headache. Instead, I took notes on Moreau, Redon, Rossetti and Klimt (read The Red Lily by Anatole France between slides of Fauvism and Cubism), edited my ten pages of play that I'm writing to be turned in by midnight, rambled on and on to a class about Anais Nin's personas and elimination of experiences when proven to be unnecessary work material, began delving into the concept, philosophy and psychology behind morphing, bought The Anais Nin Reader, collection of Baudelaire, Rimbaud and Verlaine, The Decadent Reader and Iris Murdoch's The Sea, The Sea. I have "an addictive personality" (using that label loosely, I actually just have phases in life and during these phases I dedicate mind, energy, heart and time entirely, other than my self which I always try and be most aware of--yes I admit this--to that entity). Currently it is literature. Last night he looked at me and said, "Chelsea, you look actually worried that you are reading and buying books so much. Don't worry, this isn't a bad addiction." I have started feeling guilty though. Why? Well my professor said it today, "Even when you are creative you need to pause, release. You must make sure not to not be dynamic, always. Show the serenity of life, the concentration." He referred to symbolism as the request to study yourself and he advised that we should. It is all I do. And now literature, which once was an escape, is now just a furthering of my study through the philosophy of another's subscribed meaning. I am always working. I am always going.
This actually began as a digression away from beginning script coverage that if up to par will land me an assistant position for a producer.... who has a rather, inviting smile. It is pass 1 am, will be up by 7 and need to have this done before tomorrow's day looks me in. I have a terrible headache... that I am actually, just pretending to be concerned with.
If only I had thought about my headache all day, maybe I wouldn't have such a headache. Instead, I took notes on Moreau, Redon, Rossetti and Klimt (read The Red Lily by Anatole France between slides of Fauvism and Cubism), edited my ten pages of play that I'm writing to be turned in by midnight, rambled on and on to a class about Anais Nin's personas and elimination of experiences when proven to be unnecessary work material, began delving into the concept, philosophy and psychology behind morphing, bought The Anais Nin Reader, collection of Baudelaire, Rimbaud and Verlaine, The Decadent Reader and Iris Murdoch's The Sea, The Sea. I have "an addictive personality" (using that label loosely, I actually just have phases in life and during these phases I dedicate mind, energy, heart and time entirely, other than my self which I always try and be most aware of--yes I admit this--to that entity). Currently it is literature. Last night he looked at me and said, "Chelsea, you look actually worried that you are reading and buying books so much. Don't worry, this isn't a bad addiction." I have started feeling guilty though. Why? Well my professor said it today, "Even when you are creative you need to pause, release. You must make sure not to not be dynamic, always. Show the serenity of life, the concentration." He referred to symbolism as the request to study yourself and he advised that we should. It is all I do. And now literature, which once was an escape, is now just a furthering of my study through the philosophy of another's subscribed meaning. I am always working. I am always going.
This actually began as a digression away from beginning script coverage that if up to par will land me an assistant position for a producer.... who has a rather, inviting smile. It is pass 1 am, will be up by 7 and need to have this done before tomorrow's day looks me in. I have a terrible headache... that I am actually, just pretending to be concerned with.
Monday, November 5, 2007
Why Write
Once you recognize yourself as a writer, you begin to use everything. You begin to see all things, you can use, in dimensional layers that are perceived (at a rather, obvious and unconcealed level) and special to the writer, fabricated and even, fictionalized. Truth becomes entirely subjective. The writer is using these entities as potential material for himself and perhaps, with time, for others who are seeking a voice to listen to. The writer defines what he qualifies as truth; he makes no apologies or excuses, other than one--he writes in his I's eyes. The reader will see as he does, but he does not have to apply the same judgment.
I begin this...this...more or less, as a form of filing, storing or really, materializing. I can write only what I know and thoughts are fleeting. As soon as I sense that yes, I am being perceptive to some thing, I am able to take recognition of it but will easily find myself forgetting just what it was or what it was about it that had struck me. Therefore, I lose the material. I lose the alternate dimension that I can begin judging things at. And my writing becomes less developed and perhaps, less accurate to all I really know or have known. This will help me retrieve, process and reconfigure all I face. Whether to believe it in its entirity? Often I cannot even believe all that I actually "face" but I know that it was there--in some realm of reality, in some guise of truth.
I begin this...this...more or less, as a form of filing, storing or really, materializing. I can write only what I know and thoughts are fleeting. As soon as I sense that yes, I am being perceptive to some thing, I am able to take recognition of it but will easily find myself forgetting just what it was or what it was about it that had struck me. Therefore, I lose the material. I lose the alternate dimension that I can begin judging things at. And my writing becomes less developed and perhaps, less accurate to all I really know or have known. This will help me retrieve, process and reconfigure all I face. Whether to believe it in its entirity? Often I cannot even believe all that I actually "face" but I know that it was there--in some realm of reality, in some guise of truth.
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