past days.

How to describe the last half of this week?—other than by saying the experiences feel like faint sketches, almost tainted traces in time, that I must back peddle through, hoping my memory is structured well enough to yield significantly to truth. Why is it that I have come to rely so heavily on recording if I am to breathe life back into anything at all? How come memory is the only thing I have to remind me of how my days were cast? Perhaps the reconfiguring of time plays no purpose in the lives of others—I would not doubt that the thoughts, triumphs and plagues that I dedicate my time and purpose to, seem like torments and assignments to others. It is human nature to be paired with different desires, practices and attributes—and so we branch out and fall in clumps around those that participate as we do (the doctors, the mathematicians, the musicians and on). But my inner workings are the patterns to my work, and everyday I work fanatically to stitch my design and hope for beauty, art, style that is new and can be worn. Writers cannot be born over night, it is not something one just decides with a snap—they must constantly pursue work, decode the signs and symbols that encode their days and define their world, strengthen their voice. They fall asleep after finally surrendering to the fight of images and words that pervade their psyche and they wake ready to sit in front of a white washed world and begin breathing, from their inside out, the imaginings of an interior world they have created and that plays out behind the vague look that passerbys try to read into. Each and everyday, I go through the motions and partake in the movements that are asked of me and that I ask of me—but I cannot deny that I am partially and sometimes fully removed (a fault, I know), for I am constantly involved in another act that feels out of my control and discipline. I walk, and my world is narrated to me, a story begins, sentences stop and new ones pick up, but a version of the world is constantly being played out and formatted. After years of this behavior and finally accepting the pace at which my mind goes, I have decided, I must be a writer. It is believed that a writer is constantly absorbing details and drawing in energy; perhaps that is what I have been doing inside my interior for so many years.

On Thursday I had my interview with Harper’s Bazaar. The more you do these things (come face to face with people, underneath the roofs of the places and companies you dreamed of being so chosen, so fortunate, so achieved to be invited into) do you recognize that your world does not realign itself, that no secret and exclusive answer has been passed beneath the door for you and most of all, that you must avoid redesigning or studying yourself so specifically before entering into the situation. I remember the days where I would have bought a sharp new outfit and tried to plan a monologue to deliver, but now I have begun to catch on to the game—and so I show up and try my best to not perform at all. But perhaps, that is no secret either.

Inside the lobby, it is nighttime and the building seems pacified. Waterfalls drip down and the escalators and elevators make me feel like I am a special guest on the Jetson show, but present day less animated. I can’t believe I am finally here—after all the horror stories and declines from FIT to send their students on interview at Bazaar. This is better than Conde Naste, better than Vogue—yes. I spend a good ten minutes or more in the lobby, talking to one of the young guys on staff. He wants to write screenplays—and so, asks excitedly for all the inside scoop. I begin talking, and surprise myself at how much I seem or maybe just appear to know. Sometimes I really doubt myself, but there I am sharing secrets, telling him which companies may be best, what position to try for, websites that list jobs, accounts to register to. Somehow, during those moments, I was really able to convince myself that I knew what I was talking about. He gave me his contact, and assured me that my personality was dead on, to just keep the smile and I’d be fit for the interview.

I’m outside the glass doors, and everyone is watching me struggle to push through the door. In my bomber hat and cape, I already feel like a dumbass. The woman is beautiful, and for whatever reason I’m kind of surprised—though how could I be, this is the magazine industry, and thus my underlying fear. I don’t often think about the physical presence of women or place myself in [a ruminating] comparison to them (say whatever you want about that, I’m just constantly having too many experiences where I feel like their insecurities get the best of them and their personalities become frightfully flat or vicious—both of which makes me feel like their appearance suffers as a result). But she was personable and everything opposite of her-shit-don’t-stink-Vogue-woman I met with last year. Story short, the position is actually with their Italian branch and had I been more confident that this was an interview for storyboarding and the like, I would have accentuated by interest, but alas she apologized that I seemed to be such a writer, and that this wasn’t in editorial. Arg, I don’t want to write about beauty – production and photo is what I want to do in a magazine. Regardless, she said my answers and Gallatin study were interesting and she was impressed. I’ll find out soon. I hope it happens—especially after her explaining how much the candidate needed to be particular to details, be especially focused and organized (all things I constantly want to be more of).

My way home, I got completely turned around and in a fluster found myself walking through the veins of the subway with some guy. It ended up being a hilarious digression that I really enjoyed, his family was from Orlando, he lived a few streets from me and as I slid out from the subway doors he told me went to NYU for finance. I couldn’t help but laugh to myself. How come all the way uptown in the stream of the subway, I can make such good conversation with an NYU student, but have suffered from making any lasting bonds during class time?! I stepped onto the platform, and some guy on a mic projected to the swarms of people, “Yeah, I’m a designer, too, I like your bag miss.” This, too, makes me smile—with fingers crossed, maybe that will help me with Bazaar but I doubt. I try and have humor with it all.

The day before was delight to the max. It was Chelsea time, literally. Galleries, and strange video art. Inhaling Pinkberry and sightseeing all the seafood restaurants. The Electric Encore Props warehouse. Floors four and five dedicated to the world of fantasy and the retrospect of times past. My favorite were all things old Victorian—the snooty, upright, proper common. Olive greens, caramel beiges and blushing pinks. Mirrors that reflect a darker tonality of yourself. 70s eye popping, or maybe just blinding, yellows, kelly greens, fire engine orange and violet purple furniture. Plastic solid state, Sony, Hitachi, Panasonic and Philco televisions in every shape and size. Radio clocks that look like astronaut head gear. Old television set props: microphones, on air lights and Vidicon TV film cameras. Unicorns and horses parading around upstairs. Raggedy Ann dolls and old Cornell pillows. Giant size crayolas, Lloyd’s 8 track player, marble dog statues, a family of mannequins, chairs circling the walls and 50/70s “curtains” hanging like ornate drop earrings. The place was genius.

There’s been more. I could write forever. My body is suffering the consequences of waking up every night and stumbling into the kitchen for feasts of peanut butter and butterscotch morsels sandwiches and biscottis with milk chocolate icing. I guess in my dreaminess, I just want to defy all I resist and fucking have some delights. I can laugh about it in the midst of all the action, just not the morning after when I wake to the results. Oh, pity me (yeah right). It has been almost a year—this is going to be a struggling time, but I’m just trying to push through with a higher head than I ever have had. In addition, in a haze of Ambien induced eyes and mind, I woke to my two messages that I had sent. One) a love letter/confession/revelation. Two) an artistic proposal to my sister. Both brilliant, ha.

“hi sissy strangerrr. 4am checkin. my taste buds are gone, perhaps the blend of ambien and radiohead? always seems deadly or disorderly. REGARDLESS, the walls are shaking, doors are slamming, the wind is rockin' its way in. AND ALL THAT IS OUTTA MY MINDFULLESS CONTROL. alas my wandering mind found you something special: "of course rules are made to be broken but when they have been broken they must be made again. periodically all the arts break their own rules, to renew themselves and to invigorate themselves when the letter is killing and the spirit is offering life." PUSH ON CHICK. make a riot in your art. tell the system you'll work with them, then upon presentation make their eyes pop forth. DON'T SILENCE THE ARTIST OF YOU WHO NEEDS TO SPEAK. tomorrow--when--before i go--can i buy us supper sweet and succulent sparkling glitzy wine for us to drink all glammed up, sprawling across the carpets, piles of blueberries and froyo, no artificial lights, only candles, traceable paper. lets begin making our magic. now or never. more image books. buttons. different sized canvases. frames. documentation. next time you work individual on a piece, i want to film different points of entry. allison -- it is time. time to lay ground for the new. d e d i c a t i o n. lets have fun. crazy sobers. sober crazies. that brings in our world, let it breathe a bit. i love you, sleeping beaut. lets talk magical business productions. letting photography (a disposable medium / the unpainted beauty of the everyday) stop the fleeting moment of time. stop the time from flying, let other time fly as you stop to stare and reflect removed from the time others are functioning in and on. these images leave us with a mysterious and poetic sensation, the melancholy of seeing things for the last time. by framing you as you begin your art, i capture eternity in a moment. allison do whatever you will do within the process, that fits you, for making a piece. this piece is yours. have it all. i'm here recording, exploring the whole thing. music bursting in whines. the collage of the corruption. plan? the way the mind moves.”

That shit is pretty serious, dead on. ☺ Oh, I almost forgot! I got accepted to NYU’s intensive summer fiction course. Working with two authors (one a professor at Columbia, yesss!), publishers and editors. This is exactly what needs to happen. I’m not at home now, night is definitely descending, I’m wearing beach sandals, my toes are going to freeze off. I need a bottle of red wine, a changed and cleanly bed and a special sleep-over.