relation to the past.

Tonight I left class feeling good, high, better than when I arrived. Not to say I felt bad or ill when class began, but more that it is impossible not to feel better after coming and going. We sit around this island of a table, the professor at one end and myself at the other, and talk about Kristeva and Kafka. Next week more of Rilke and Baudelaire. These are all some of my favorite minds. I can’t help but prefer the hours I sit engaged in the exchange of ideas, rather than the hours I feel forced to talk, listen or occasionally share—out of pure necessity—reflected stories on people and things. No one talks in class, and I see how the silence feels disturbing to the professor—how the speechlessness and vocal inactivity is distracting and distressing. I talk, bring handouts, try and give something without being too much of a character; the one male in the class had a piece of writing passed out, anonymously, to the class (but I knew it was his, despite other female’s perception that “males don’t write romantically or expose feelings”). Still the class said very little. I couldn’t help but copy sentences from his work, quoting them in my new book of materials. Male writers… ahhh… where do the words come from? and yet, how intrigued and struck I am by the men who materialize their thoughts. Home, and I find more Blanchot to buy, come across more and more photography portfolios (more and more work that excites me—photography makes me see the world differently, literature helps me see the world). Made up a big pot of soup, which really was “thick as fog” and as it cooked read Durrell’s Balthazar (Justine was exquisite—genius, so on to his next). Walked through the park to a friend’s apartment. The night was already much colder, but this winter the city keeps you conditioned and whatever its temperament may be I never seem to mind, dispute or fight it. Though as I thought all this, a man in passing said, “Nothing changes but the weather.” Ah, the routine of life, we all experience it to varying degrees. Perhaps, routines are the one thing we can rely on, if it is not the weather? Before the curtains fully draped their secret insides, the windows exposed pairs sharing wine—red cheeks caressed with emotion. This always makes me happy to see. The intimacy of red wine is a weakness of mine, regardless. I listened to a pizza boy continue on his delivery with a flat—cursing his luck. Heard some guys at a bar talking about how he wasn’t his father, unfortunately, but at least he looked damn good. Climbed the stairs of repetition and fell back on the couch, greeted by the usual ashtray of couple’s cigarettes and a freshly poured glass (and soon later, glasses) of Baileys, which in its coolness would seemingly make me feel warm. Listened to stories of love, the Honeymoon phase (which can last the entire relationship, if you do as I did ☺ treat dinners as continuous dates which is a constant reason to celebrate…and all the other secrets), work disasters and on and on. I felt like I was talking through glossy eyes and a perpetually merging smile. Leaving, I couldn’t help but take notice of how storytelling is really just a practice in enlarging ideas (usually idealized ideas) and expounding beyond the natural and intended. I mean, really, how can any of us really trust what we “know” or “say we know” of the actions and truisms of others? I shouldn’t be the one that tries and decides what another feels or felt. That is up to them. But, I guess, imaginations and assumptions lead us elsewhere and back into the minds of others. Also all the talk drove home how I miss intimacy—not physicality, but intimacy. And though hearing about relationships and seeing partners here, there and sometimes what feels like everywhere may always appear special, I know that I am lucky to have experienced what I have—to know those feelings and have an archive of those memories, but still I see how hard I judge everything else in comparison. I give fewer things a chance. And I certainly don’t believe in excuses, which can be translated as, I don’t believe in wasting time or energy. I think back through my writings, take notice how relationships, love and sex never surface on paper. My writing seems uninterested in those topics. My journals portray zero engagements. Yet, I have multiple stories that have all been so different. Stories that surprise me, stories that all have lent themselves to shaping my idea of romance, physicality, sensuality and all that isn’t that. I realize how much I have “forgotten”—that seemed to slip away into oblivion, but still exists buried beneath all the more recent or more glorified layers of engagement. It is interesting how past relations have revealed themselves in my work in a very influential and yet, masked way. As if I have worked from the essence of the individual or the questions he inspired rather than, using our storyline/plot. This is a style I discussed further with my professor this week—which I want to flesh out in writing further. Recently in talking to an old loooove and perhaps forever, infatuation, he spoke to me about my writing (I should admit, this took my breath and won’t be something I forget) and I told him how often I want to write of our times. A time where it wasn’t necessarily myself that felt differently, but the space around me that felt reborn, newly discovered and uninhabited. I felt like a stranger to the city—a city I have known and lived in all my life, but which in being there with him, I noticed I had never been and never lived inside of. I spoke sincerely of my interest in reviving those moments of memory in writing. Almost as a way of giving the enchantment a tone of realism. However, I think sometimes one needs distance from the experience—one needs maturity, perhaps to reason and not be as effected in all the wrong places. I refrain from admitting… but it is always when I am outside of the time, that I am most inside of it. Is it then that my imagination seems most real? There is no saying. But I think I am ready, or at least getting closer, to developing the character analyses, finding where the story really lies, beginning the novel and devoting myself at length to crystallizing my past and celebrating the characters that have helped develop my writing eye.

silent portrait

I stare ahead into the snowy silence of the sheet. See a sight that at once blinds me with its whiteness and deafens me with the extremity of its sound. The blankness of its stare maddens me. Its virginity is a perfection that aggravates me. The page seems like a mentally empty phrase that lives, indistinctly, between the spaces of silence. Soon—I assure myself—once my voice feels, the page will no longer be so isolated. The sheet will no longer resemble a virgin’s skin when my pen marks it with the depth of a mature woman. Once the penetration of my hand against the stillness of its exterior breaks the surface and makes my interior ink bleed, I will be made known.

The sun is plummeting behind my back, as the tight stretch of the sky loosens and lets it eventually descend into the grave of the night. Our eyelids will fall with it and time will not object or wait for me. I must rush to begin, and make the most of the light that is left that helps me see myself. A shadow falls over the page, like a stranger at my back, but it is only me waiting to begin my portrait, mixing the paints that will give color to my character and brightness to my life.

A collection of photographs lay baking underneath the warmth of my eyes. I laugh in indulgence at their appearance—how these photographs of ages seem more like evidence of the scatterings of my mind and a series of selves, than an adolescent documentation of glamour shot visits. I have a transformative quality that is undeniable. Yet these images of style account for a manner of thought, rather than speak of a suit I was colored by or my generation rebelled for.

These images are fixated by a format that encloses me in a place in time and captures an expression of an instant, perhaps nothing more than a fleeting moment, maybe even a lie I acted when the camera’s eye was present. How accurate can this representation be of me? How effected can one become from the little evidence a picture reveals? There is no conscious thought that radiates because the anticipation for the flash stopped the speech of the subject. I want to know words—I want to see how I sound.

My psyche reads like text, I can see that it does. It is in myself—and nowhere else—that my true meaning can be found, discovered and attended to. My memories of these selves that are strung out before me in pictures are markings that are as insubstantial as the fine traces of a portrait. Can’t you see, I choose one to paint: one side of my face, one gazing of my eye, one color for my hair and give you a packaged portrait of one persona, while all my other characters disappear into the vague mystery of unbeknown truth. But I want you to know all of me, if you are to know me at all.

Within the fictitious framework of my portrait, I hope to place the essence back into my body from which it was exuded. I hope my body that is restored within the frame of this art can be crystallized by its profound interior change. I hope my subliminal self is who will rise to surface, rather than a model that is formed and fabricated by fashion. I hope my words will fall on to the page, like petals falling off a rose—giving less and less form to an object of idealization, because I am not perfect and neither is the rose, but we both can show and be loved.

I avoid the mirror of reflectivity, knowing by now that I won’t fall like Narcissus into the pool of himself. No, my appearance is someone I am challenged by, not someone that I love—at least, not immediately. I have always had a waking dream of a world where there are no mirrors, a world where thought is not driven or influenced by sight, but by the sensations of touch and levels of feeling. In imagining this world, I assume that I will love it and that I will love my self that lives there. Perhaps this is why I find it difficult to paint a portrait of myself when it relies heavily on sight. It is the visual image of myself that terrifies me. And if I was forced to come too close in contact with it, I would suffer from my consciousness spiraling out of control. I would paint scars—the sickly engravings that have weathered around my thighs and remind me (over and over) of my rise in weight, and how the exact moment I took notice of them changed my perception of myself forever.

Staring over it, the paint would run as my tears moved it to ruin. On paper I would grow into a different woman—enlarged by the superficiality of exterior impressions and yet, wholly diminished by the conflicting view motivated by self-analysis. Whether accurate or inspired by my own self-invented myth, the appearance I believe I am covered by lacks sensibility. It is shaded by a materiality, I am long since removed by and that deters me rather than defines me.

Finding how my body as an image was a personal portrait I repressed, rather than used to impress, helped me decide that it was an object of speculation—that of varying degrees of truth and fiction. And because of its nature, my body was something that I was very much inside of, but something I could not rely on for concrete conveyance.

It is often said that you can tell something of a person’s life by observing their body. At first I resisted this phrase with tears, and then I was also told that if I could not survive in this world, I had better make a world of my own. I began writing because it helped me contain the tears and see with clarity. Once I developed into myself as a writer, I started building the world I needed—the world I wanted to live in, where I succeeded, where I shined, where I stood confidently. Now I have no qualms or insecurities about someone observing my body. I give them my body of art, show them the psyche of my text and have the essence of my words pervade their perception. Maurice Merleau-Ponty said, “The body is to be compared, not to a physical object, but rather a work of art.” Well, here is my body—an art I will forever be working at. You will find, it is the materials of my mind that matter.

pinback - how we breathe

famished

the female heart faints, it flutters but no matter how famished it may become, it never fades.

Lying

Lying - by M. Blash


Jena Malone, highly insightful and a very strong speaker.

curls of the tongue

The underbelly of the ocean has rolls of waves which move like the fine curls of the tongue, and speak the language of the sea. Sometimes we are not sensitive to its sound, playing like background music in the ears of the shells who lay cushioned in the bedding of the carpeted sand. We look up at the stars throbbing in the sky. And watch how their pulsating praise mimics the beating of our heart which is held confined in a cage closed in by our chest. How much longer until the heart can be released from the ward--removed by a lover and carried away?

again.

yesterday was filled with fathers who made the choice to begin their weekend a day early, and spend the afternoon with their sons and daughters throwing snow and running around their very own snowmen. the day felt all attaining. last night, i arrived home and heard the words i will forever fear--words that left me as cold as the outside air, between the walls of where ever i tried to go. i fell on to my bed earlier than i ever have in my entire life. i cried with my entire body, for my entire body, against my entire body. this will be something i never win, something i will forever be up against, a challenge that will have me always feeling handicapped. i haven't cried for something or for myself in so long, but last night i cried, i hung up the phone on a desperate scream and i said, "no not again. i can't let this, again."

on top of everything, all my files are currently being "used by another user" and my iPod has failed on me again. pretty soon, all i have ever worked on will be not accessible.

everything feels like nothing

stars sewn into the cloth of the sky looking down upon the flowers growing through the ground and wedging their languid bodies between the flimsy figures of the grass, raising their faces to the wind who whispers into their hair every secret which feels like nothing they haven't known.

mutual orgasm

I want to stretch an image across the Sky
When she reveals her darkness.
Clothe over the black cloth that drapes her figure at night
And make her tears—falling as stars down her skin—go missing.

Perhaps to dampen my pulsating praise,
I will hide behind the noise of good humor,
And seemingly mock, though privately intend to mirror,
The writer who stretches his text across the white ice of a page
And perfectly breaks the stillness of the surface with his mindful matter
That arrives from beneath the fluidity of his passing streams of language
And has you arise, star struck, on his mise en scene
Which moves to the music of his vocals
And sends you falling—floating erotically around
The curves and contours of the cities in your dreams.

His writing taking place
Over time and space
Wraps you inside his world
Where all you can see is his language of images,
Personified as characters and places
You know of, you lust for
And which he embraces you with in mutual orgasm.

I want to stretch an image across the Landscape
Of your reading eye.
An impression of words, I have helped you imagine, rising to view.

I may have created a world
A world we want to live in.

sally mann, photographer

blondays.

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/02/21/fashion/21agyness.html?ref=fashion


13 years old? someone tell someone, I was reppin the short way before that. point blank.

Writing is nothing more than a guided dream -Borges.

---began editing for the first time ever. i've resisted up until the very last hours that it is due and i found myself writing impulsively in a direction that i am shaken by, where, whether obvious or not, a relation was made and the personal revealed alas. there is always two points in writing, the one you intended to make and the one that surfaced after the fleshing out of what you were allowing your mind to hold in attention. there is always something and someone else behind the image seen. there is always two truths in every story-two sides that are committed to the same one relation-one being what you share from boldness, what is easiest to believe and admit to yourself. and the other, you didn't notice to be true because you had been denying it, that exposes itself after integrity, that allows itself to be made once you let yourself go, once you get out of control--

add ons:
Suspended between the life and death of day, the soul falls beneath its body as the sun sends forth its final yawn. One is enclosed inside this engagement—behind the curtains of an enormous sky, one goes wandering. Feet feel lifted, as time carries one disorderly, illogically but within certain reason. Here time moves without routine and one gives in, without a fight, for the sleeper knows that he must be moved and that his motions transcend what matters to his mind.
------------------------
I try hard not to regret the time invested in this engagement. How having it stolen from me has left me feeling estranged. How the mechanics of my memory have already been conditioned to go missing. How if I were the conductor controlling all directions of my life, I would operate according to alternate plans. How I am expected to make no mention of its trace by concealing the manifestations with stony and severe silence. Yet, enclosed behind the gates of silence, I speechlessly resist this refrain. Unable to compromise, I feel like the material should matter. Unable to deny that my involvement with a relation should have me feeling connected, not fixated on my current frame of mind and position in time—that of disjoint and fragmentation. Where is the stage of my youth where a sprightly young blonde stood open to and in view of the world? Where I wandered, ingenuously, through ponderings. Where my impartiality kept me feeling wholehearted, unmoved and grounded in the present. Where happiness was easily spoken about and just as easily done. Where eyes were dewed with enchantment—not sleep—and fiction felt real. The reality that broke off, falling forgetfully into oblivion, where did it go?

belly of my Eye.

trying to write while listening to a song, during the duration of the song. this was to rob crow's no sun--his song UP is altering my days though--shocking knowing that he is the lead singer of pinback--who i was addicted to throughout highschool. check them both, if you don't know of them.

I want to be where the Colors are exposed
With no need for the Sun, to make it happen
Where the Shadows fall beneath the Blades
Or stand undiscovered behind erected Trees
Whom are reaching upwards to be pulled off
From the Ground who pulls them down
I want to be where Sight can be seen
Behind the eyelids of the Moon
I want to be centered within
The circumference of that interior Darkness
Where wanderers who wait
Will never feel the weight of Light
But I do, on the belly of my Eye.

class mind wanderings

How does Memory seep, in perseverance,
through the holes in the sponge of our mind
Persuading us to preserve it
and perfect our understanding of its embedded significance?
--Sliding beneath the door of our heart--
How long will Memory situate itself sleeping?
How will Memory make our souls' body sigh?
How, Memory, will you say to my mind,
"You, no longer, shall stay"?

drawing board:

For the last week I have been feeling low, when I should be feeling high. And of course, maybe there is no such thing as “should”—at times I have been told that feelings are yours, and because they are honest reactions, they do not need to be verified, justified, or even something we are ashamed of. Maybe we can control how we react, but we can’t control that we feel the urge to have a reaction. Maybe I’m not entirely happy (but the more and more I see of people, the more I recognize that others do not know whether they are entirely happy either), so maybe we are all involved in this ever going attainment together?--maybe we have a fidelity to be genuine, so at least we know (at most) that our individual actions, expressions and intentions can be depended upon. I just am, and always have been, mindful (perhaps, too mental and compulsively so) but I know that it stems from this self-motivating drive to attain a better understanding of my self, to reach a perfect understanding of my surroundings and the existence within and throughout—and this, I believe, can only be attempted/approached by examination, interpretation and experience (being within the moment, but yet somehow being removed enough to judge). But why do I have this need—this amount of work set out for myself that is at once so all consuming, evocative and yet possibly destructive? I am taken by feelings (though have become less and less emotional) and their ability to produce (potential) euphoria. As a child, I always read (especially historical books), kept self-designed diaries, wrote plays, produced plays and made newspapers that I sold in the mornings at school. I think the further and further I get from youth, the closer I come to seeing ever so clearly that with age we are most like (or most want to be) who we were as a child—before we were aware of the influence of others, media, the outside coming in, the perceptions that would eventually make us falter, alter and reconsider the position we dreamed and believed we could take in and on the world. As a child there never were any barriers; there was just hope and the dream of attainment, achievement really. I always wanted to share history—an emotional reality that was evidence of a particular history: The Frame of Mind. I wanted there to be a memory of what was, what was felt, what was believed to be true. This is still my dream—and the reasons or rationale are so outside of myself now, yet something I am so entirely invested in, that I have no control over whether I will do it or not—all I know is that I feel I have to, I feel like it is something I must try and do because if not, than what was a thinking mind for?

So within the week, I said I didn’t want to have expectations and I tried hard not to. But it was still outside my control, that I found myself being and have been leading up to the times, especially excited for them to happen. But, for one, being in LA only confirmed my lacking desire to want to be there and the difficult time I have to conform to that way. When I was younger, I was able to laugh at the whole dynamic and I found myself playing into the game, using it for my own self-promotion, but since college I have become increasingly incapable of doing such things, of going with it, of risking coming off dumb or more unaware than I am. Hollywood has a pretty fair share of bullshit (and perhaps, the reality is all business does), but a circle that is run and feeds off of self-importance and deceit is not worth any amount of glamour. Seeing how these plans didn’t change a damn thing—running off to different cities, countries, doesn’t change your world drastically—makes me want to slow down and become more invested in what is here around and within me, now. I feel like I have to go back to the drawing board and it makes me anxious (and I am aware how possibly silly and serious it all seems, but I put pressure on myself to make for my own success and to do it sincerely). Maybe I do need to be shaken (and trust me, I can’t help but find myself most attractive when I catch myself with a natural smile) but I also just know how imperative it is for me to be stimulated by someone (otherwise, I feel and come across rather flat). I want to open myself and have someone come walking in my world, and I want to fall inside theirs as well. But I am not passive and I can’t just do what I am not riveted by. The best of me emerges when I am fascinated by the relation I am immersed in (work, hobby, individual) but I am not involved in it yet—it has yet, to strike me (and the mediocre engagements coat me in an appearance of disinterest and it is then that I bore even myself). I am eager to be taken, consumed, surprised—and I know I will feel shock at the moment [I let] it arrives.

radiohead - karma police

"What I want to say most strongly is the fact that you can only do your own work if you are going to be authentic. You can only do it the way it suits your psyche. No matter what you've learned, all the learning has to drop away."

voices giving character.

Mind you, each voice transcends the language that forms it. Speech seems to be carried through the object the subject directs it to: passing through his body, dumped inside his soul and ejected out into the aura of the room. Voices are all fulfilling (in that they succeed in making each presence realize his being there), however the breathiness of the vocals leaves no one feeling complete. There is always still more to attain, to look for, to ask for.

Love paints. Love coats.

While in LA, I couldn't keep myself from recognizing:

Love transforms. The glass of the eye is smudged by lips, Lovers see differently. Together you experience The Touches that alter your standing, change the positioning of reality. Love adjusts the movements in and around you, so your body syncs to a new rhythm, in step to a different arrangement of words, a new pattern of feelings woven to your blushing skin. Everything feels unreal in Love, and your attention to this change, influences your imagination furthermore in believing that reality has transfigured: realism no longer judges in the case of sense, idealism coats your sightings gold. What can one make of those who metamorphosed within the metamorphosis of Love? The reality that broke off, falling forgetfully into oblivion, where did it go?

to lala land i go.

In a few hours, I board and fly to LA. I always feel transported in time when I travel. None of it ever seems to really be happening, or my participation in the event seems displaced. Upon returning, I always end up questioning whether I actually went—did I already leave? is it over? or am I still waiting to go? Especially in LA—a place already jammed with memories and heightened sensations. It is or rather, feels, as it is often impulsively described: a dreamland. Even the roads are designed like racetracks. Everything feels like a breeze.

I’ve been nervous about going though. My dad said, that when you are nervous about something then that is the thing you do. I have to agree; the more you do, well, the better you get. More or less, the nerves are generated by expectations. Not wanting anyone to have expectations of me and me looking to have no expectations of anything either. Things must happen, people must be and excuses should never be used.

Then there is my mom who relates nerves to excitement, which too is entirely true. See the only way I can make decisions is by impulse—actions not ruled by thought or time. Like Berlin, less than half an hour to decide whether I fly, transfer, fly, find a hotel and travel alone. The excitement aroused by possibility, where energy takes the place of thought was the only way I decided to go to Berlin (and thank God, I did). Fifteen seconds, $500 to rebook train to Amsterdam, yes or no. Yes. Done. Gone. It all comes down to experience. As a writer, one can’t say no to sights, to other worlds. It is the material we use for invention.

And so I am off, alone. And then I realize why I am actually flustered with nerves. Because I am giddy for the time that is about to come (when aside from going to set at Universal for the film that is in production) to be around two people that are especially special to me. One whom makes me laugh hysterically, genuinely smile and all in all gives me a bit of that glow. And another, whom I have admired and felt connected to from the moment I met him. Both, different, but both I am able to seriously engage with. At times the way I live my life can feel removed and I can be alone in my independence. But then there are the moments to come, times you may travel to, that bring all you lay grounded in together—and those are the experiences of reward.

~ ~

hello there,
i noticed you're coming to LA in a few weeks. i know we don't know each other and this is completely unlike me to send a msg. like this. you seem like a romantic, compassionate person and i know you had that boyfriend for quite some time, so you might understand my position, being very much in love with _____ who i have been dating for almost a year. i know you and ____ in the past have been in some sort of communication, and i would really appreciate if you didn't even attempt in contacting him while you are out here. i don't deserve to be hurt, and being a young lady with your attributes and intelligence, i hope you can understand and respect that. thanks chelsea

Unfortunately, to the misfortune of others, within moments of confirming I was going my inbox flagged with delivery. If this were the first time this has happened, than maybe I would have written back—perhaps, as impulsively as the individuals who write messages like these. However, this is not the first nor close. It is slightly distressing how communication is used nowadays, vehicles like Facebook hinder any emotional maturity and disadvantage those who use it as an instrument of identity, yet contradictory hide behind it because supposedly within a click of the mouse, one is instantaneously connected to another. I hope for their sake, that in due time they will try resolving any issues within the frame of a confrontation that requires actual presence. Also, my head spins. Am I missing something? How am I dragged into the personal dramas of people I am not involved in the lives of (to my knowledge). Must I wear a sign that explains my general disinterest in not only the triangle of others, but them singularly as well. Another problem with Facebook: one becomes “friends” or exists within the same network, and all of a sudden one is expected to take notice of the minute mentions of their ever expanding existence. Aye, I digress, it just makes me more critical of the maturity and judgment of others, and the judgment that they hold over me. It makes me want to shake people that are in these relationships and instead of evaluating their behavior, they are evaluating others and then using it as an excuse for when they or their partner hasn’t measured up. Want to know why my relationship was successful when it was? Neither of us looked for excuses. And when the security was low or I questioned the relation, I listened to myself and let go. People are afraid of being alone and so they hold on (for longer than they are comfortable with) and it only suffocates and strangles the memory of what had been successful.

Spine

This afternoon I sat cornered in my closet/desk area, writing some thing. I swear, my eyes must look different when I write. My surroundings dissipate and my eyes absorb a reality that I see inside my head. My sister told me two nights ago that I need to start listening to people when they make points about my writing. I simply told her she should listen to me and get the fuck out of my room. She apologized minutes later--saying it came out wrong and agreed that no one ever tries to push anyone/give an honest opinion in a workshop. Not only is this true (hence why I end up being overtly honest and never back down from my blatancy--people need opinions, and criticism is inspiration, accept it) but 1) I've never been in a writing class that teaches craft or guides you with workshops 2) my writing has a point--it may not be polished because I am impatient (etc) and never edit--but it is highly designed and I would rather perfect and explain the points that are imbedded in my text, than subscribe to the points others propose I make.

So I began writing. Basically it came into being in two separate columns, than three, than eight. I was trying to pay particular attention to voices that came upon the scene. The interruptions, the layers, the silences--just like in actual conversation. Then I glued all the passages together to flow as a timeline may be read. However, the main thing missing is voice, speed and silence around the language. The best way I could approach it being understood is through recording. Music is beginning to take so a huge role in my life, that I notice my writing is trying to embody all senses and use all instruments. Voices need to be felt. Language cannot only be heard. I could work on the mechanics and layering for days--in time it will be fleshed out to more detail--but now, I am physically exhausted (as writing does to me-- a surge than stillness). I hope that readers become more engaged with words, how they are written, positioned and related. I hope as readers slow down and examine, they begin to see how an author can play with words and have fun with meaning. But more than anything, I hope authors begin committing to this, requiring this from their art. I hope they begin to expect more; to ask the reader to work, just as they have worked. Regardless, this is what I will do, whether the points go slipping between the translation or not.

All writing in normal script is the man's voice.
All writing in italics is the woman's voice (except if it is a word within a sentence).

We have been dropped here. Positioned in the fixture of a place, made sense by language, alone. Its parameters measure the length we can travel: –How far we can go— (The distance we can explain we went). Our relation, too, will determine how we are defined. It is a condition that affects us, influences us and will decide our behavior. We will be different because of it. You won’t touch me though, will you? I can’t say what I will do. I can only act to show you. How will you act? Nothing has been decided. Won’t you stand? Eventually, I may. Please stand, so I can see you. You can see me, if you have recognized I am here. Yes, but with sitting like so, your stomach goes missing and the soles of your feet disappear. I must take note of the length of you, so I can recall it later. Your eyes make me feel shy. They look out from where you are towards where I am positioned, and I feel withdrawn. But we aren’t Strangers—No, not to another. So we must respond as if we were familiar, as if we have already been accepted. Come, (waving her in) come closer. I re-cognize you. We’ve seen each other in the past? You’ve come from the future. I remember you as I wished I would. You are a memory the future has already decided. I’ll know you then, but there is no disclaiming, I have already discovered you now. See, how easy. And this is where we will begin.

Suspend yourself inside this engagement that encloses us. Remain here until no longer now. Lift your feet and let time carry you disorderly, illogically but within certain reason. Here time moves without routine. But why? Habit suffocates art. And you, artist, need to breathe, must move. The current beneath the surface (that divides you from below) will make sure to stimulate you and encourage your direction. Feel it? Hold the state of mind, you currently occupy, in the curvature of your palm. Carry it with you, confined, as it lays half awake in the deep bedding of your stained skin, stamped by the residue of sleep. Nesting there, safe, it won’t slip away—as it could through the compartments of your mind. You are controlling the matter of your mind, or so you will believe. Do you believe? I’ve accepted it as so. How did you begin the acceptance? After many questions, I eventually arrived at a single truth. And I have brought that truth with me and have it, existing now.

What does it tell you? That in you, there lived a child once, within you she let herself play. Was she beautiful? She was just herself. Then what is she now? She became you. But you are not her, because she is a person of the past. What am I? In the future, the sum of your selves, but now—here—you are subtracted from the day and half exposed in the nakedness of the night. Do I look different? One always sees differently behind the curtains of visibility—the light changes the appearance masks take to the face. One seems different inside his new interior, like a city whose streets change slightly underneath the sun of day and the lamps of night. Look around you; we are cornered by mirrors—a skyline of visibility, a sea of sight. Don’t you see yourself watching you? Ah, yes. But I am behind you and your back is to my face. How come you won’t turn and look at me as I speak? No, I see you in front of me and we are talking at each other. That isn’t what I see. Look, turn and you will face me. (turns, stops) You are behind me. The mirrors multiple and reflect our double. Where am I? A city in your dream. Who made it? You self-designed it, fabricated by wishes for the future and ruminations of the past. Will I remember my being here? Faintly, as though it was something you slept through. A trace of time, a trance of emotional reality you were removed from, just like dreams themselves. But I will remember the words we have exchanged. No, one never does upon waking. The dreamer may make memory of the images, but always reasons no one talked—that in dreams language does not exist, that in the dark speech wasn’t seen. But we see ourselves talking. We understand the language we use. Yes, we think that we are, but the dreamer who watches us can’t make sense of this higher form of interaction. Perhaps dreams existed before language had and this is our memory of the unexplained past breaking through into our conscious; the materials we weren’t able to explain formally at a former time. And that is how you know me? Because this dream, that involves both you and I, is not a design of the imagination, but is a dream that rested inside the memory of a previous engagement where we existed perfectly in the eyes of each other, but we couldn’t speak to make sense of it? Yes. It was then your hand slipped from mine, leaving the fingerprint that made you real on the glass of my eye. And as you walked away, your footprint left an impression on my mind, so you would never be able to leave me completely. But I left you before and am reminded of it now. What if I wake and find I have left you again? Why are you here, telling me this now? Because I am closer to becoming real in all realms of your unreal realities. I must stop my sleeping self from avoiding the ability to hear the language we speak. Sound is not the barrier. It is the code of speech. You must find a new means of recording our language. Quickly, before the last sand drops inside the figure of the hourglass. (looking up) I can start to see the light of day breaking through the veil of your sleeping lashes. I can’t have you go. I must transcribe the language of our voice that explains this time we share. I can make signs. Large signs. And I’ll walk with them within the parameters of this city we have been dropped in. I will walk until I have used up distance, until the streets will no longer let me travel further. I will press, so hard, these signs against the borders of the darkened sky, against the edges of the eye—that the dreamer will feel them penetrating her vision. And there and then, will be able to read our message clearly, the letters of our character, the engagement of our words. What will the signs reveal? What will you choose them to tell your other self? That I need you. How I lost you once to sleep, and have come here ever since to find you, make sense of you and keep you breathing. (holds her hand and kisses her) I had to show you, in case what I say is something that still won’t help you see.

roomie:

record

A girl told us in class that for her, journaling always revolves around giving an account of her social engagements. She went to this party. She met this person. They said this. She said that. No one really expounded upon how or why she chose to edit her life as such. Instead, they all just sort of nodded and spoke out in agreement. It hasn’t been the first time I have looked on with huge question marks in my eyes. The time before the students spoke about living in New York. From their experience and judgment, they believe the only way to survive living in the city is to be numb to the external stimulus, to block the majority of it out, disengage and (this is the best part) never engage in eye contact. Are those really ways people successfully carry on here? I have always thought the only way to even approach having any “game” in New York was to make suggestion through eye contact. In fact, the only way to attempt making an engagement with all the hoards of people you walk amongst in the city is to look them in the eye. But then again, this is my opinion versus theirs, and it isn’t to say I am correct or better off. Lets be real, these girls probably have been more socially successful than I have been in New York (but that’s another story). I just can’t imagine myself doing these alternatives; recording the actions of my day, rather than attempting to explain the feelings or give notice to the observations. I have pages and pages from journals throughout the years, and I don’t think I have ever successfully been able to jot down social happenings or just blatant and unquestionable details that occurred. Early on I probably just figured, what use could they possibly make for? Reiterating actions feels mundane and appears flat. They shape nothing and give perspective no coloring. But, of course, people are fascinated by such recordings. Professors love Virginia Woolf’s day diaries—claiming how simple and assuring they are. Whereas, I am an Anais Nin fiend. But that, too, is a whole separate discussion.

I will try to give an account of the two former days: Tuesday, I began my Independent Study called Disguising the Self/the eye’s I. We sat in a corner that “felt like a café.” Discussed Kristeva’s semiotic vs. symbolic plane (the vast sea of languages), Woolf’s breakdowns that placed her in another world (the theory for moment’s of being), Barthe’s theory on linear literature vs. scriptable text, the ambiguity of poetic language, the portrait of an artist (all of our experiences we draw on to ourselves & the painting is about the paint, not just the surface). Came home to write a piece but digressed and wrote something off topic. Walked next to Cory Kennedy for the fourth time down St. Marks. I don’t get it. She wears plaid, eats pizza, turns around often to see if anyone is taking notice of her—and yet, is infamous for this. Sometimes she’s with Agyness Deyn who is shorter in person, lounges outside at Starbucks, goes to the always-bubbling-Veselka, lives on my old street and am often stopped and likened to (probably only because we both have this notable ability to change our hair colors from one extreme to the next) but all in all she doesn’t take herself too seriously, has a field day with her image, being British and the popularity it has brought her and for this, I give my respect. Was surprised with a gift from my professor: a brand new copy of Nadja by Breton. I hope to remain close with her for years and years to come. Went to Mud café. Watched one guy laugh at his coworker’s mistake of letting the beer drain out for 5 minutes (and let it remain being drained after taking notice). Tried on old glasses (folded frames, too). Went to my old apartment, felt so different. Saw Bill who still is convinced that when he doesn’t see me for long spouts that it is because I “went home to London.” “Get engaged, Chelsea!?!?” and he gives me a nudge and laugh. Ohhhh Bill. Ate crabmeat. Played Jack Johnson’s new album for my sister as she sat drawing on my bed. Stayed up after 3, acting as a relationship counselor and then, frustrated, tried to fall asleep. Wednesday, I went running. Bought 10 rolls of special film and two cameras: Diana F+ and Lomo Smena 8M. Hurried through the villages of Manhattan looking for confetti for the film (who would expect the only place that carries it is Party City). While I was there, reconsidered the career path of event planning, just so I could bring back to life Social Chelsea. Swore NYC was experiencing Florida weather. Talked with a woman about her apricot poodle (that I want!) Walked through the rain in a t-shirt and gold boots. Rented Agnes Varda’s Le Bonheur. Could only physically watch half. Felt like I was beginning to finally die of exhaustion. Couldn’t nap. Ate peanut butter. Picked up boxes that were shipped to me. Old luggage case in one. Popcorn styrofoam everywhere (when will UPS put that stuff in extinction?) Half watched Project Runway with friend. Watched behind the scene videos of Leibovit’s photoshoots. Read recipes for salmon and soups. Still up at 3. Began applying to Vanity Fair. Took half an Ambien.

Yet looking upon it, those were only a few hours out of the 48 (which I was actively doing things in, yet somehow got edited out). Reciting my actions actually humors me—I could kind of see myself doing it for some sort of delirious self-indulgent side project/excuse to explain myself more (just kidding). I still find myself going back to the question of what does one get out of that type of journaling? Is it a way of reminding yourself that you did indeed do something/was active? After all that, I remain even more eager to write about the tiny observations/recordings on the actions of others (not myself). For example, how all the tiny Asians on 8th street manage to run down the sidewalk by barely picking up their feet from the ground and making it spring through the air, even a centimeter high. It’s like The Genius Shuffle. Now that is a secret I want to hear more about.

hunger

If I were to happily divulge truth in its entirety, I would hear myself speak these coming words. I will never be happy with my body, in the condition it assumes, at any time I find myself in. The situation is irrelevant. In retrospect, I may admire the former figure—slap myself around for belittling or holding grudge to it, but I will never feel comfortable with it, never make friends by basis of its current appearance. It shames me, the recognition and yet acceptance of what I say. But it is what I have felt for years and where it once spiraled out of my control, I am and have made progress that surprises even me. And for that I look at myself in approval. This is a topic that can be and has been exhausted; a topic that on the surface bores me and I have no interest in paying attention to, whether under the umbrella of fashion, beauty or feminist esteem. Unless we engage in the historical, psychological or theoretical inspection of beauty, I have no concern or patience for its fuss or attraction. I have long since exhausted the issue and have had its infatuation projected on me in multiple mediums that the only way to remove my identification with it was to try and dismiss its seriousness altogether. Still, I struggle through it in contradiction. Advocating how imperfections are what make an individual perfect in their own right—and yet, hypocritically, shy away from my body for the imperfections that I subscribe to it. If I could throw other people under the bus, blame them instead of me, I’d admit that the stops on the street and compliments that should, supposedly, make a young woman’s day, leave me feeling more ill-fit and regretful of how my body actually measures out. It usually feels like pressure, instead of a breath of fresh air. Sure I could become a slave to my physique once again, but I have already done that (multiple times) and it is just a more “health-conscious” way of excusing an addiction. And, as we should all be able to collectively agree, addictions aren’t healthy, normal or interesting—nor can they live on safely through the span of your life. At times when I need an extra boost of motivation (if you will), I use myself. Because it has not even been a year since my weight of a little above 80, I will fall upon pictures that don’t seem plausible. How could it have been? How could I not have died? How could I have done that to myself and still remained strong and alive in so many other ways? And so, I am left to question reality and rely on energy that comes from within areas you do not even recognize you retain. This is, of course, as I said a much longer essay, reaction, reflection or confession but soaking yourself in the past for too long is not usually the most productive activity nor is this, in and of itself, the most comfortable read or review. But I will quickly and carefully say that watching others disappear, lose half of their size and thus themselves, right in front of my eyes will always make me want to reach out and shake them, tell them not a single moment is worth the extra thought, that these are the years to live your life. I have had to readjust my entire life to the self I am actively trying to be today—a self that acts against the control food once had, a self that is trying to make up for the youthful years lost. I always said that even if I could find someone to hate, I would never wish a weight issue upon s/he. I have lost energy, time, focus and happiness to something that should never have and never should define someone. Yet, it has defined me and because of that I will always consciously and unconsciously convince myself that it has helped me live deeper within myself and as a result, use something there, which would have gone missing. I am accepting the changes as they come (sometimes slowly and sometimes by the morning of a new day) and I hope everyone will let their changes come to them, rather them seeking or wishing them upon themselves.

between class, a meditation for mediation:

Upon evaluation, I fail to recognize the new presentation that shows itself on the surface of reflection. I take notice that my skin no longer stretches tightly to the circumference of my face. Reminded by retrospect of how it once clung to the contours of my cheeks—those feminine and exquisite structures that were shaded and shadowed by depth. Reminded of a, now, distant reflection whom even at a distance was recognized for the carvings of her cheeks, the moldings of a sculpted stature. This season’s displayed face falls like an ornament, wears weight as if, by excuse, dressing in extra decoration was necessary for the revival of a new celebrated year. This is an embellished truth that to the ridicule of the host is not favored by second and third parties. To no avoid, it falls gracefully over the trunk of my neck but it hangs to its embarrassment below all the mounting adornments that demand immediate fascination. I am held in sight by this emerging visibility—this mask that wears itself differently on the scaffoldings of my face. Aware that in winter, we weather differently and must assume alterations to the exposed appearance. This is a condition, and nature must continue forth, regardless of my persistency to take time and wander backwards with it into inexistency. She is no longer here, only half alive in the framed fixture of a photograph that is locked in time and manifested in a moment. She, miles of hours and spaces away, is related to the “I” I am now writing from but she does not share the same eye. She is there: a number beneath the diction of my name, a faint face that slowly fades out of focus from the film that once made her real. She is still pervasive in an aroma one can find and breathe. But, even after falling in clouds around you, she can’t be tangibly touched and held. Here am I, with full-figured cheeks that have rose to the surface, whom curl beneath the green seas of my expansive eyes. And how, really, did this variation become if wasn’t entirely appropriated by charm? Where have the shadows hidden, if they were not cast into the hearts of young men—if they have not sunk beneath the bedding of a dream? Perhaps during the night when the mirror’s faces had busily kissed the walls with their backs turned out, it was the layer of a writer that threaded itself through my skin. Maybe this new material has made my coating thicker, my substance dense and heavy. I review the body of my new art form and speak aloud for the first time, “I am a writer and must commit to tasting the world.” Smiling, my cheeks swell in approval, “My rising weight will actively feature my increasing knowledge.”

in&out

On certain days, it is often that I will surprise her with a visit inside her room. Twins know each other, and I know that she is not particularly good with silence—despite whatever she may request at times. So I will come in with a knock, disrupting the silence that sits still around her form, this weapon she has held against her. It pains me to see the pressure of the world trembling on her lip—how words stretch and fall, desperately. Silence isn’t good for her; the low hums of her mind. The loyalty to a day, when you dedicate yourself to one thing and have it occupy you—just doesn’t make her fill full. And now I am here, on the opposite side of the space, wondering if I too should gather the world and have it stand on my shoulders until I sink below the ground. Our day was closely related, not altogether reflective of the same mirror, but similar enough to give no compare. Why must a single day that is absent from chores and rituals end with the belittlement of self-worth? Why must one feel the need to exchange their image come the closure of a day? One can feel all sorts of things when living parallel lives to another. Should my happiness be questioned or retracted from me because I read and wrote in my apartment through the day and demanded nothing more “socially impressive”? Who is to say—whom is judging? If someone were capable of peering in, pulling back the curtains to my life and watching a scene from my day would one be amused, baffled or bored? And if so, how could it even matter. The judgment of another is often exaggerated and often far from any totality of the subject’s self. To know of another is to have seen a glimpse—to understand the other is to have seen a collection of glimpses and have let them reflect off the perspective of one’s eye. The latter takes commitment and even compromise, whereas the other is entirely self-involved. I must keep strong in my ways, not question the immense alternatives that spiral before me and call for me to come. I must stay pleased (if it remains the way I feel) and not deregister from my state of mind just because the rhythms of another, fluctuates. I must keep the energy rising for my head feels high in success.

no rest

Last night, I anticipated my ability to be up for hours long after the reasonable. Sometime after midnight I found an Ambien and gave in, swallowing it down. Twenty minutes in and my wallpaper was shifting places and conversational remarks were being flung amongst my body (I had yet to open my mouth). Approaching one am and Ambien had not put me to sleep, but had invited a whole party inside my head. Needing to make the most out of the experience, I grabbed sheets of paper and ferociously wrote notes, documenting my changing world—the vision of my night. The letters were life size and took shape in an arch, rather than a straight line. Looking back, what is coherent enough to comprehend reads as follows: this scene dashes, her words give her face shape and levels of color, the background is bordered, slightly coming and opening the door, this was a concrete unchangeable image but now it is me, whimsically, there seems to be different colors of her, she is a goddess, hair polished by pearls with earrings that hang in ornamentation, walk in, walk out, upon looking at this which captivated her once, a photographer stole her image, putting it in his photograph and claiming the subject of the image was achieved by himself “The Photographer,” look at the models on a page, they are stuck in their shot, crying for us to see that they want to move on. Take the meaning of that as you will. Standing up, my sight patchy, I stumbled into the kitchen and attempting to satisfy a hunger that wasn’t even there made oatmeal and raspberries (it was atrocious and sat discarded by the sink). Minutes later, completely blind by Ambien’s fighting urge to place me in a world of darkness, I unburied my phone and began taping away messages. Automatic spell check, trying desperately to stop me, revealed that all words were spelt wrong…put the phone down! I resisted, and in some linear manner typed up my messages into a Word document and then accurately text messaged them. They were immediately a terrible embarrassment and am awakened by the reality that no one will catch their imbedded humor or laugh with me at how within my own drowsiness I still have the persistency to candidly communicate. I resigned to my satin bed and playlist of music, woke seven times through the night for grapefruit juice, hummus and a slim fast bar (I don’t think I wanted any of this, but rather just wanted to make room in the refrigerator and cabinets by morning), fell back asleep and was awoken for the eighth time by a man’s voice (which turned out to be Hotel Chevalier playing on my iTunes), turned to my side and upon looking out the window watched it snow (most dreamers slept through this and woke with no sign of it having occurred). To sum up the relevance of the story: no matter how many drug-induced agents I take, I don’t sleep. I have a fighting urge to remain actively aware.

I believe this sleeplessness comes only because I write. For no matter how little and how badly I write, I am still made sensitive by these minor shocks, feel, especially towards evening and even more in the morning, the approaching, the imminent possibility of great moments which would tear me open, which would make me capable of anything, and in the general uproar that is within me and which I have no time to command, find no rest. -Kafka.

bed

I write with my back propped on the bed. Trying to mold my body into a more comfortable figurine—attempting to see whether a relaxed positioning will make my writing appear simpler. Impossible, the facts are: I am cushioned by a bed that envelops me, by pillows that comfort the pains that strive down my spine. My writing turns lush—why of course, I am in bed and picturing marvels.

inside the city of a cage:

I need to write about a place. The instructions are my own to call forth. First, I must find this place upon opening the doors within my mind, possibly held captive in the compartments of a conditional state—the trappings of my memory are the only boundaries I may fall between. The shell of my soul is hard to penetrate, so I must be invited inside before I risk breaking through. I will retrieve an all access pass when the mood purrs as word sounds to my liking. I find myself, lying casually: my arms act as bookmarks, keeping the body of my soul in an ordered place. This area of honor is where one can read my substance and find markings of my praises. Words designed, placed in a pattern and woven to the materiality of the textured page. Upon reading, sights arouse and prints of imagism pop forth, presenting the reader with a clearer spectacle of my insight.

How can I commit to the telling of a single place? Reshape the contours of the space, which is etched in my memory, and appear in my line of vision if and only for the impulse of an artistic attempt. And by some impossible mathematical method and laborious interior design attempt, fit it between the frame of a page to be critiqued by the elite and viewed in passing by the intellectually young. I hurry to admit that my memory has not solidified. I still see scenes the way a child plays on his etch-a-sketch—the way an adolescent whimsically carves her and her lover’s initials into the sand and upon turning her back at the beach, has them stolen away by the sea’s waves. I mean to say: nothing and no one may ever truly exist for long in the cities of my interior.

A place? Think! A place. But I know so many. One written assignment already in and the motor of my mouth already run across the landscape of the classroom, and my teacher tells me I am powerful with poetics, rich in the quality of words and have used ink to create images not just show alphabetical letters. But (and there is always a but) I can tell that with this assignment, she would like to see me use different hands that won’t steal her breath. I can guarantee her that I know how, but can’t guarantee that I will act upon it. Instead, at the moment, I will site a quote that proves I do think in academia and never neglect my research, no matter how many rules I defy; “Sometimes one option such as mine may seem out of time and out of pace with the present, but it may be because I see further,” Anais Nin.

Out of pace, out of place, a sight not seen in the space but seemed. These are all qualities I want to bring into judgment before you and have you question. Most read the value of place one way—for example, Location: Sanibel, Time: Summer. But of what use is the obvious if is already known by one and assumed by many? I question this term, “place.” A place in mind? in time? a condition? real or surreal? been to or dreamed of? All do exist! All are locations one is capable of getting lost in, if that is what must prevail to term place as true.

I must begin. I must begin mapping out the location of where this place can be found. I take out my map from the filings of my memory. Blow off dust, push away the clouds and stomp out the smoke that still burns on the places I needed to no longer exist. Sights speed past me down the highway of remembrance. I stop and peer in to view a few distant towns: old faces, a skeletal figure that hides itself away, stale sheets, closet corners and a confetti of words that still lay with their face to the ground and have been deliberately walked over (once, twice, always). I look out the window and watch the wind blow the stars away. Holding my breath, I wish for nothing. Turning to look back in, I wonder whether there was an experience there and that is why I stand before it, examining signs that signal me in—what crime took place? The material of this memory may not show up till later. But who can wait?

I get inside the vehicle; my vision impressed by footprints and by default go swerving down the streets of my veins. Accidentally I crash, split by two visions and separated into selves. Senses speak off of the tunnel where I remain. Where was I? Where. Did I or anyone really exist inside the space of the place that is wishing itself into my recollection? Or has my imagination intoxicated me so drastically that my perspective is goggled by a point of view displaced by my other self? Resulting in impaired storytelling abilities, where I as the creator and narrator have hung my characters inside of a cage. Instilling us in time, trapping us in a container of space and persuading us to move within the borders of a place injected with air, where we hang so convincingly between the layers of time and many levels of a self-imposed world that we claim it to be real, the story to be true. Look out, Reader, and between the places in time try and locate your self.

piled high

I could write for days at no end. And within the act, develop another experience that needs closure between the start and finish of a sentence. Right now, my mind is piled high with material. There are moments I must transmute, meanings I must transcribe, material I must transfix. The urgency sets off alarms inside of me. A hand knocking at the door of my mouth, saying, “I need to step outside of you.” I don’t know what to begin with or what part of me should step outside first.

"I can't catch up with all I know. I hope I will be given time. The chemistry I am producing of turning experiences into awareness is not yet finished" -Anais Nin.

something small.

By midnight, we will come to have refocused our eyes. And appearing under the new stage of light, undeveloped figures from day will expose themselves. You did not know? They had always been there. Shadows will imprint their costume's mark on the paper of vision, like this ink, who leaves traces of my mind's moment in time across the sand of the beach, on which my hand is now resting--the face of my knees hidden in.