one dreams his self while he is his self

one dreams his self while he is his self
vaguelooksfromoutbehindherlashes, i am but a shade.

Wednesday, April 30, 2008

lovher.

Hey Cheeze [my nickname]-

These entries make me proud of you. As I read this, I realized one day these posts that me and everyone else are so enthralled by will cease...and then I thought about how long you could keep this journal up, and realized you have the ability to take this gift to another level and be an author of some sort...please take the oppurtunity, if for no other reason but that it'll make my life that much better in years to come.

Alli, 07 23 2004



I didn't even remember my sister writing me this. I wonder whether she even does--does remember the entries, does still feel my ability. Years ago the journal I had online received more attention, support and criticism than I had ever anticipated. It began as a way of openly exposing myself the way I wanted to be understood. It was a way of controlling judgment that is out of one's control. With time, my motivation to control appearance had evolved into a habit of revealing an appearance that resided internally. Readers responded and my public journal became a dialogue with all my viewers. At times, a hundred comments were exchanged--and questions were asked, and I was dedicated to the conversation continuing. On the space of those pages are markings in time. I look over them and see dates continue forth with no resistance. Readers truly believed they knew me, and this relationship with knowledge bound us to one another. It is a writer's dream to have an audience want to read her and into her. I had that but I am not sure I thought I was a writer then even though what was being written was me. Each day is filled with such unfathomable beauty--sometimes one must isolate himself or separate the external movement to focus in and see the beauty of a single form. New York City has made me a deeper lover.

explaining

It made me happy seeing him Saturday. I almost felt like I was meeting someone new. He spoke so well and talked through the rationing of his mind, that he had so obviously been doing since I had seen him last. I let him speak and let us laugh—despite the level of meaning that was involved in our discourse. We spoke candidly—with excitement. It made me happy to see him Saturday. It was such a pleasure listening to him and the fact that he wanted to speak made me want to hear every word even more. Such moments are rare. I cherish them. They make me happy with and for others.

How can I explain myself? One cannot. I have a lifetime worth of mindful material to work with but I cannot write forever. And if I could and would what will happen when I have died? Will someone continue explaining myself then? Oh I cannot possibly trust such happenings. I cannot explain…

Tuesday, April 29, 2008

found journals.


"It feels like someone has reached inside of me and ripped out my heart.
I'm immobile. You live with someone for eighteen years and then all of a sudden they are gone."
- My Dad, 08 04 2005, right before I left for college.


I have found all of my old journals. Moments of my life have been reinscribed. I read myself, as if it were a girl I am being reminded of--someone I was close to and whom I should never forget. Last year I wrote twenty pages in an autobiography class. I looked to my journals, pulling entries, transcending time. I went through seven years and remember being mystified and regretful. I remember siting in a corner room with my professor, on the verge of tears. I did not know how I could explain to her that there was no feeling in the autobiography I had written--that I had not been moved by the story I had discovered about myself. I swore to myself that day forward that if I were to begin a journal and/or writing again that I would write more honest to the history of time and emotion, that I would begin looking around myself, that I would see and speak of something more than my weight. However, I find my journals now--more than I had remembered were circulating and still existing--and I see that I had missed, not read myself entirely or very simply I had been looking to tell the story of my image disorder and fear of weight. I read the entries now and I see a confident girl involved with thought, thematics and empowering other minds. And this is what is intriguing about the written life--there is always one of many stories to read into and characters to know.

Monday, April 28, 2008

memory of march 19 to today.

I fell asleep the night before I would have to go. The pond played its usual notes that I had learned to recognize, grown to enjoy and which moved me beyond comfort and into a state of lightness. I had been sad just before it became dark—restless all through the day. There were many reasons but they all involved the same theme. I was leaving, I feared goodbyes and I had not been able to say sorry when it was one thing I needed most. A past relation came over instead. And the irony made me sick with sadness. But there were unlimited ways I had benefited from being together again. Moments I have archived in memory and which one day I will immortalize by writing them into a materialized existence—captured between the frame, isolated, reissued, celebrated, enduring through passing time. The moment he stepped into my home, I acted distant and disagreed with his—for lack of better terms—stoned nature. I responded this way because I knew I could and knew it was not like me to inflict such conscious control. We sat by the pond and illustrated the past. He smoked numerous cigarettes to ease our difference and I sat there looking off and silently thinking through the outstretch of my mind. Night turned us into shadows and so we withdrew indoors and lied shoeless on my bed. I played music to him and for us—and he responded by playing into me. He told me that I had always been the most romantic. I kept his words and said nothing. Our bodies turned and took on their individual poses and I grew more sad with nostalgia and expectancy—that by tomorrow I would go back to sleeping alone, with no arms to curtain me and no eyes to grab my sight and hold my attention. We laughed and became two children in love right before he fell asleep. I watched him leave me behind earlier than he ever has—because usually I fall asleep first. And that was when I was sure the time had changed. I let my body mirror his positioning, and felt the softness that he had still retained since I touched him last. I fell in and out of sleep that night, my dreams being short vignettes that—I did not know at the time but discovered after—were portraits of the future. I dreamt most vividly of being back in the city and in the subway station. I received a call, which was highly unusual knowing that there is no reception beneath the ground. Picking up I did not recognize the voice completely—not because I did not know it but because I knew time had changed it. It was truly the boy of my dreams (who had turned no more real once we began dating). In the dream he told me one thing—he had just made it to Berlin. I woke there after and remembered the impossibility of the dream. I have never seen myself in my dream (or maybe I have and just not recognized how I really look) but I have felt myself and I have experienced my being there. I have felt all the scenes being enacted on me and that is why I trust there is an element of reality imbued in them. I woke up who I was sleeping with knowing it was best to have him go. Part of me felt guilty for dreaming of another boyfriend with him being there—it seemed all too close to reality and the reality of my mind always being elsewhere than where I am physically present. Hours later I boarded a flight back to the New York. I fell asleep again and woke once we had landed. Turning on my cell phone, I saw I had received a voice mail. It was from the boy in my dream telling me he had arrived in Berlin. This is a true story and yet I can find no other way to describe it other than unreal. I had not spoken to him on the phone in two years. And yet I was imagining nothing—the dream was not a dream but an ideal that became real hours later. In the message he said he would try to call that night, but I never audibly heard from him again—only in letters. Today I received another letter from him telling me had just tried to call me but had no luck. I cannot get over this likelihood—my cell phone was just stolen two nights ago, making me out of touch, out of reach and more apparently distant, again. I know that most people think one should let go of what is no longer present or showing tangible presence. But I know that if I were to do that I would have so few things and that there would be no reason to have experiences, create memories or make meaning. The softer side of me speaks to: I fall few times and I when I fall, I fall deeply and love somehow, somewhere and in some place always. The thought of him will never escape me—which reminds me of how real he is.

the world has just begun again.


I always feel there is a world I need to write.

I am completely overcome with stimulus. This is nothing new, just something that becomes increasingly apparent, more real and present. It overwhelms me--just as in a pressurized room, one can feel the weight most intensely--but it does not intimidate me. Still I have been advised that I should want to fix this - that one should not want to be overwhelmed. Are the other options being underwhelmed or passive? Hm, not interested. Of course, I agree in the sense that being distracted by the multitudes of sensations is challenging and that one's focus should become sharpened, but I believe the few things one should strive for or maintain is awareness and insatiable curiosity---simply, to be turned on.

On that note, my mind is on a high more than ever before. My internet has insane amounts of tabs up at all times and my portfolios of clippings, articles, quotes and the like have never been so jammed. This all reflects my state of mind: cluttered, chaotic, filled. I've neglected to write out what has been before me--and to some degree, with time, they have begun to escape my attention--so I must soon begin refiguring and contextualizing all that was and still very much is. I've received more reviews, or rather reactions, to written work. One thing I am feeling good about: "This dialogue format that you have invented is becoming your 'signature'. You do it well, and you do it in a unique manner." Actually this makes me internally ecstatic. Placing down conversation has always been something I avoided and was daunted by but within the past months it finally hit me. And now I just listen to what I hear and invent within--the sensible versus the idealistic, the heroic versus the timid, the ridiculous versus the cunning, the blunt versus the wit, the practical versus the poetic and the other versus the self. It is all seemingly simple, but highly designed, sensationalized and (in a way) performed--which of course, complicates everything.

Friday I went and saw the Henry Darger exhibit. I was able to take a few pictures--but I wrote down a lot of words and names. I'll post it soon. Saturday I took photographs of the behind the scene for a music video. I also got five treasures (ie. Harper's Bazaar from 67' on the 100 most accomplished women and a 62' Town & Country on nyc) at Strand for 43 cents each. The nights all felt good. Last night, at the bar, I got to blow an eyelash. I wished for happiness. Impulse--and I figured, hey, happiness allows for a lot of breathing room - it's like 50 wishes in one. The passing hours were extremely happy and then my phone was stolen. I felt defeated and flew down the streets crying. I had to. It always feels cinematic. Cinematic and extremely cheesy having admitted the self-indulgence over tragedy. I also see that these lines can be read very matter-of-factly. However, as sincere as I am, I also don't take myself seriously--and by that I mean, I laugh at and over myself pretty much always. But that is only because I work in extremes. And since in mind I take it all seriously, I must come up for air and breathe by being the front of all my jokes. I think it is a real successful strategy. Of course, things will smooth out even more so with the experience in aging. And let's be real here, I've been at a real low body wise. Always am, and I hope on everything that I won't always be. It is the slowest process, but it is progressing and that is the least I can ask. Physically I feel terrible which makes it nearly impossible to get outside, dressed - let alone not self-deface, deprecate and/or demoralize myself esteem. It is the single most hindering quality and is a pleasure to and on no one. But, I give myself credit, I'm not starving myself like a year ago or irrational as before. I'm sure I'm still just as disillusioned. I break through though, hold strong, stand high and always feel removed from the stops and silly recognition I receive, all for being a face. Perhaps that is the easiest secret to tell: my work incessantly deals with this issue--my issue-- yourself that has an other that people know you as, but you do not recognized as your self.

Whenever this one guy comes over, he always recommends something to me that changes my world for the following weeks until a new habit takes shapes and I OCD over that. The first was ffffound.com. Material images that are found, discovered, posted, archived all throughout the day. Just recently he turned me on to pitchfork. Now I'm on music blogs every chance I get. Stereogum and my favorite, hypem.com. These are a few--that ultimately just take you to more blogs where you can stream music. In two days I had 300 new songs. It has been absurd. Also, podcasts alas. noise pop new music is my favorite. I'm going to The Kills concert on Thursday and if you live in NYC the best two performers are playing together on May 8 and I can't even fathom it. Buy the tickets up. El Perro Del Mar / Lykke Li. I thought I listened to bomb stuff before, now my ears are turned on to artists that I never would have known about. And of course once this begins, it never ends. Insatiable curiosity, indeed. The world is always just beginning.

Monday, April 21, 2008

i? eye? aye!





I am my own distraction.
The Eye is a distraction to my self.

chosen words



I do not know why my words take and carry on a certain way. But I do know that they become me. And that, when together we find, I come before them.

Sunday, April 20, 2008

The Real World Flips


As the night fell, the real world flipped upside down. Bodies in motion slithered across the surface and with a yawn, slid toward sleep. The moon followed soon after, resting in the shallow bedding of the sea. We kept our minds open and hearts active, unable to make light of the situation—how by morning, our separate travels would carry us beyond this place of coexistence. Thinking toward this time, emotions arrived from behind our veils and became threaded through our spoken line of language. You diverted your attention hoping it would distance the reality of tomorrow. Wanting to hold on to our final frames of time, I watched you let your eyes float upwards. Struggling to see, you sighed and finally had them fall shut, having tried to see through the mist of memories. I laid in wait, listening for the sound of your eyelids pressing open. In between the silence of stillness was the light touch of serenity. I felt myself close to you. Which intensified the necessity to remain wakeful. Held high above my eyes was the soft push of dreams—ready for the very motion of myself having successfully become swayed to sleep. But I did not move; too alert to be deceived. I had become attached to our positioning, fearing how it could be pulled away from me if I let myself fall under the conscious world. I did not mind the presence, which I assumed. It felt brand new being inside the moment and not suspended in thought, far behind where the heart is beating.

tech-no.


With the technology that conforms today, there lies a frightening chance—a risk of fatality. See yourself now, contained within the computer: archived, named, given order, expressed. Then imagine a time in the future when your computer is lost, stolen, dead. This event is probable—and though you dream it up now, you may wake to it soon or less soon, but still at some point. Will you have lost yourself? Perhaps not wholly, but fragments of knowledge that spoke, explicated and told of yourself will go missing. I assume that within this panic you will not be able to remember all that was there. And the burden of not having yourself entirely will weigh heavy on you. This chance of having less of who you were and admitting that part of you is gone and irretrievable sounds tragic. I know I must begin saving myself, but I fathom that even when using much concerned attention certain detailed documents will slip from me. I will have lost myself thinking, and something will be forgotten even when I tried to make myself known.

Thursday, April 17, 2008

Stopping Will Prove You Have Seen More ("fiction piece")



CHAPTER I.
The sun awakens and unclothes herself. Lying beneath, the sea stares up and mirrors her wakeful sensitivity. He tries to look into her, but her exposure burns, causing the fixed stare to break soon after. A world is contained in her eyes, the sea can tell. He loyally waits under the blank sky who has a tendency to wear a demure nightgown, appear transparent and starkly stare at him—if not, through him. Listen to her eyes, the sky whispers through the wind’s gate of privacy. The sea stays, unmoved, until a shiver of suspense capsizes the calm he naturally exudes. He wants to hear of the sightings the sun is shared when she sleeps inside the moon. It is the sun’s omniscient darkness that the sea is restlessly sleepless from.

High on her esteem, the supercilious sun carries on aloof. Low in expectation, the sea stays adrift. The sky, suspended between both affairs, tries to maintain an exterior impression of passivity. But the conflicting relation between the sun and sea causes a rise in tension that affects the world at large. On edge, the surfaces of the sea and sky’s bodies rub against one another’s. A scene is sparked and sets in the sky’s screen—held against the mind’s eye.

CHAPTER II.

I stand in the track of silence watching how wounds transform imagery. Having stopped, I see the way a mood decorates the landscape of skin—reconditioning an appearance—changing the spectator’s impression, expression and at times, unfavorably, his reaction to and of it. Emotions strain the soul—within one and struggling to arrive out, they are revealed and acknowledged as the scars of experience. I see the sun suffer from the condition of her current climate. She extends her color, as if it were a desperate longing to be realized. The sky carries this burden on her shoulders. And continues to collect all the sun’s tears, so they remain from falling onto the face of the sea.

Taking notice that I am the only one that has stopped to see, I think of everyone outside of me. They are now passing, and will not be able to think up these things I see in experience. Imaginations are not self-influential—personal actuality is responsible for the genre guise of “fiction”. The power of vision exists after one sees to know. Those who are passing will know less.

CHAPTER III.
Strangers fall out of space, just as the city burns around me. I am a lone—and left with the one person I know is the single soul that can see me, truly. Wrapped within a world, time stretches and scars palms with lines of years. I could be here forever and not know. One deep sigh is all that stirs before and behind us—but between is silence. We have not heard the noise, just like one does not hear what he is use to. It is a similar feeling and so, we are kept distant from it, although it remains right outside our ears.

On the spine of the hill, I am with you watching everything change. In place and staring out at space, we will later in time essentially be able to share similar stories, found particularly symptomatic by plot—that will be our greatest, if not only, resemblance. But to think that we will forever be woven together just by being here and sharing this time in place!—how romantic a connection can be seen to be. I will have us as is to keep, as long as I can remember now.

CHAPTER IIII.
Keeping your face forward, your mind turns to me. Let us talk. Yes, let us. No, not at each other, but together let us talk with one another. What should we speak of? I do not care about what should, but what can be said. The times of sharing thought and disclosing conceptual experiences have been distant between us—so far behind what I have been knowing, that I feel like I have forgotten how to speak sensibly. You see that I am flushed by this insecurity, so you speak in place of me. I wish only to hear you. You speak to everyone but me. I want to know as much as they know and then, more. I laugh, purposefully, to distract the sadness of your sentence that is kept ruminating in my ears. I do not know what can be said for me. Relatively I have changed, but my eyes are still consumed by and with you and my tongue is still burdened with the weight of your taste. Maybe that is why it is difficult to speak. I feel my feelings as I think them—and they are heavy with you. I hear nothing from you for what feels like awhile after I have spoken. And then you turn to me entirely and say “You have some white in your eyes.”

I open them and see I am surrounded by white light, which startles my sight. I fear I am floating within an imagined city and suspended between nothing and no one real. Taking the chance, I turn and see you safely sleeping behind the morning that has already woken before me. Coming to clearer consciousness, I remember what started and how I have ended here. I laugh, lifting sleep from my eyes. We are in a hammock, swinging between states of rest, high above the sea and somewhere below the sun. A boat moves us toward the final destination, the sky. It all seems beyond me. But the sky is clear, the sea is calm and the sun is aglow so I know today is happy. And I feel I can think this forever, too.

Thoughts thunk, Others sunk.

If I was taken by, what felt like, an offense it was: “I think you are trying to be too cryptic.” It wasn’t the adjective that struck me, but the assumption manifested in the verb use: “trying to be”. I am not trying to be anything, other than what shows itself, which is an after effect—and my last thought. My writing is simply a guided thought, an incessant dialogue falling before the page—it is my thought that has slipped from me, or perhaps just me thinking. My thoughts are bound to change—and it is then, that my writing will reflect that time. At that point, an observer might call me into consideration differently. But I have to support myself now (which is different than defending myself) because it has taken much getting use to and even more pushing through, to just be and not get in the way of that being. Still, if I am to be known, I almost wish at the least it will be for not trying to be anything calculated or strategized. If there is any mystery I “cryptically” exude—it is, has been and will be naturally conveyed in not knowing myself completely. I am not, yet, exempt from being followed by shadows or walking beneath shades. And even still on the flip side, what I am can easily be seen as an accident. There is so much to consider—and maybe one shouldn’t, because it may just get him stuck.
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There are always other letters that speak of you and to you differently, too:

“This genre you’re developing—somewhere in the area of contemplation, mediation—an ‘essai’ in the true sense of the word—an attempt, a try, at explicating one’s self, one’s ideas—this genre, as I was saying—seems to me to be uniquely your own—you’ve appropriated (French sense) the layered genre (Descartes, Montaigne, Baum, etc) and invented—or are inventing a sub-category that is yours alone.”

“You have a gift of articulating complex concepts in beautiful phrases, memorable phrases.”

“You tend to write English as if it were French!—this, I now see, is vital to your unique style.”

"You have written a poetic essay examining your perceptions on your body and your struggle to integrate your conceptions of the mind and body into a coherent whole. As you conclude, your body is an "art that i will forever be working at." However, without a transition--such as, "but," or "and" you sail into the next assertion that it is the "materials of the mind that matter." Furthermore, you explore these perceptions through sensory images. In a way, you are feeling your feelings as you are thinking them. The essay begins with images of blankness and silence--visual and aural images, and then you move to tactile images--touch--and it is at this point that you mention painting scars and "sickly engravings" that have "weathered around"--not on?--your thighs. Your reference to thighs is the most concrete information that you provide in this essay that communicates feelings of objectification (being objectified) and the struggle to assert yourself in the context of these fixed images and mirrors.

Chelsea, I read this as a poignant statement about being "looked at" and your need to "look back" both at yourself and all who have framed you in photos and mirrors. Indeed, those italicized assertions--"I will be made known" and "I want to know words--I want to see how I sound" seem to speak back to the stillness of the page, the visual and psychic entrapment by mirror, the silencing of words. Bravo."
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Living in a world of words is difficult. I constantly am challenged to prove that experiences and/or language will not limit my lasting power. It forces me to "be on", to see the moment in the pursuit of ever sharing it. And not just that, in writing I am incessantly reminded of a time that is no longer tangible--yet some how, known only to the writer, I must feel closely what is out of reach. It is by impulse now that I reexperience experiences--and to not become bored by the stories I know and have lived, or rather to keep things fresh, new and ever changing I must invent a bit (not only where my memory has left gaps) what was and no longer is. Of course there are redundancies within my body of work but it is just me having spoke of my interests, placing the reader where my attention goes--it is threading of motifs that pulls together a collection of work. It is not rare that I am told that I am elusive but luckily I think people have begun to understand where my concentration has been currently keeping me. This helps because regardless of however aloof I may be, I would hate to have my focus be misinterpreted as me offending someone. Out at dinner last night, a guy came up to me who I hadn't seen in almost a year and told me that even though I hadn't been hard on him--that I had given him a hard time. Although it was endearing for him to reveal this, I was surprised that those feelings had stayed with him. And worst of all that I hadn't intended for myself to come across as being interested or not--my mind was just busy elsewhere. Writing is consuming--you have to take the time to know, to stop and see every side and shade and then, you have to allow your imagination to breathe a bit and become involved in a reality it never originally existed within. Pursuing it makes sense to me though--and quite honestly it may be the only thing that makes sense. By giving me the opportunity and forcing me to take time, I find the beauty in every one and thing I have experienced. Maybe I am an idealist, but I think it is most real to want to remember moments most intensely and with most appreciation if you are to have memory of anything at all.

Monday, April 14, 2008

voyeur videos



perhaps all my videos are silly and unprepared. regardless, they are honest. volume needed.

text design

A week since I've posted? Seems impossible. Been busy, guests, etc, but I'm back...

My intention is to design text that will not solely act as a mirror. Do not be dissatisfied and turn from me; it is bound to bring you in sight. Instantly as I craft, it will begin becoming a materialization of a mindful reality—that, or, the reality embedded in one’s imagination. Due to the time’s age, the semantics cannot be singled out—for they are shaded by truths. In the face of the shadows present within the light, it can be confirmed, that the meaning my text is subjected to speaks specifically of an unconscious removal from the physical state and sense of reality that is in existence. I am aware: questions fall loose from answers—a similar feeling for the man who finds no exit from between the maze’s walls and since, remains contained captive in the compartments of his brain. His voice echoes within this divide. I stop here and wonder by this page: Can an outsider break the structure—can we pull him loose? I am confident you have not and do not think up these things. Having taken notice, I am here to make something other present. Factuality is a false concern—let it collect dust. How you will begin to see sense with clarity is by being committed to a condition of the mind’s memory. Remember even yourself now is passing. And though you can see from afar, you do not need distance to know. Looking out from within those certain eyes is a world—a world that is decided by the contextual nature of language. Listen for answers to learn the actuality. It is critical to wield all instruments of perception. Otherwise once your eye is shut from this page, another reality will have begun existing elsewhere—and for you, something will have died perfectly. I advise you to begin to produce and save recordings as evidence of being real. My intention is not for you to mirror me, but to see and learn by me. Trust this. If you cannot right now, look back on me and notice I have written my self into existence. Do as I: Stop external motion—to make one see—to internally hear.

Monday, April 7, 2008

mindscreen



these are what i want more of. have the art capture real time. where there are no specifications. no habit. no guidelines. forgetting about time, you ease into yourself and enjoy your company. the camera watches as his subjects go, naturally. one should be overwhelmed with being and busy living in love. it is then and there that success and beauty can melt into one. i do believe that art should be taken from the natural flow of lived life--perhaps stolen from the materials that set before our eyes. some times i wonder if warhol really was the closest artist that framed life and influenced spectators to stop and look at it in the eye. to capture the rawness of reality and see it unfold into the beauty of the everyday--framing silence, slowing time, catching subtleties. maybe it is interesting--and maybe it is not--or maybe it isn't that it is intriguing but a conflict for my progression as a writer: at school i have designed a program that i entitled, the study of identity and character roles. through observation, experience, reflection, analysis (which really consists of just penetrating the surface faces of all characters in order to see through them) i find that once the "study" has been stored in the archives of my mind. and i look to use these materials and particular individuals for a portrait of oneself. I realize that no critical judgement can ever come out of me. I couldn't write poorly on an individual. I couldn't concentrate on the negative encounters and engagements that were had. And perhaps this is my style. But within my study of identity and character roles, I find I capture that which only came out in glimmers--why expand on what can already so obviously be perceived?--art should bring awareness to what originally could only be felt. And so I sit before the page, wandering back through my mind, wanting to feel the essence of the story, wanting it to take me and consume me. Regardless of the actuality--the poses, the pretense, the story that was coordinated to be there--is of no interest to my pages. I look back on the scenes that I will use for stories. Some how I automatically take out the negativity of the character, how the relation ended poorly, how we had conflicting view points. I'm not interested in exposing the tantrum. I'm not interested in belittling the sound and scene of life. Instead those that reside in my past are like the characters of my work. I remember them within specific moments highly sensationalized and therefore each character is exposed at their softest, where security was fragile and underlying was the soft shelling of a youthful child. All my work hopes the words breath beauty. Look around yourself. Everything is staged and set. Nature falling to a rhythm. In between the space of silence and the place in time, one has the chance to speak, to be heard--the language needs to be fluid so one can be carried forth, poetic realities, the lyrics of life. It sounds like I need everything to be triumphant. I just want us all to be stolen by our senses--to see the world beautifully and to remember the past as a time that one was vulnerable yet overcame--to have romanticized everything, indeed. And why not? It is all about the celebration of life--the lifelong indulgence of life. My memories of others will always be less judged and more developed. I see the best part in them, and I let my imagination carry it further off, perhaps into a dream.

All I have been doing lately is having my mind shoot out from my eyes. Literally that is what it has felt like. Trying to put the entire project together for Tuesday. Photography and Written Words. And a copy of my text for anyone to take home. This weekend has left me brain dead (not a state I like to feel settled in, ever). There are too many materials I want to start--just get outside of myself, so I can see it--see it sound. I won't talk much more since I've been speaking for hours through pages upon pages. But I was absolutely struck by Jorie Graham, author of 11 collections of poetry and her new book is "Sea Change." I had never heard of her before but immediately was taken by her motifs and the philosophy that is so deeply embedded within her text. Check out this article. I'll post some lovely quotes by her later. It really furthered my confidence. There is an audience. I'm going to begin shipping work off--nothing to lose.

Saturday, April 5, 2008

today's times



friday's new york times had the best reviews. leidman's jellyfish, the above flight of the red balloon by hou hsiao-hsien, thando mama's video art flow. today i typed away about bergman's persona and the self's persona. finally picked up my magazines from my old apartment. got caught up on the reads and found the following of interest: cried at the end of elle's profile on michelle williams, supposedly scarlett johansson is set to direct a short film for new york, i love you (american version of paris, je t'aime--hint: watch six in paris from way back when) and a homeless man named jean marc restoux is running for mayor of paris because he thinks he represents poverty and has notoriety. a 1.5 mile walk taking off in four different locations throughout manhattan on sunday that i want to take part in--some nice spring air--that is if i finish everything off for the art festival i'm in tuesday. i've put the design of it all off--why are things achieved only under the pressure of time? a flux of musicians are flowing into the city (from the expected to the obscure), i think i'm going to go see kaki king perform on wednesday. yesterday i heard alix straus speak on her career in writing which i then followed up with my reading of two articles in the observer 1) leibovitz 2) the journalist and novelist, david samuels. all three kept reiterating (what i consider) the turmoil of the media today--how the materiality of text is a dying industry, how the passion of art is being rung dry, how today's era exists in an editor's reality...blah blah blah. it doesn't discourage me but makes me want to shake sense and smarts (!) into society. i just wish everyone was curious or had the wish to be aware. to be thoughtless is unprogressive--i don't care how technically savvy our culture is, things are being done for us and people are requesting that others control their own thoughts. but i still have hope in change--that a touch of thought can touch the lives of another, if only for a moment. and i continue to act instinctively as long as it is driven by my character and find no exception to edit the self i recognize myself to be and respect myself in being. tonight i had a breakthrough. and i roll my eyes at even the sound of such a phrase and the nature of how it evolved. i say breakthrough because it usually happens twice every six months, usually once i have given into illegal substances and as time slows down and the environment reflects a particular change, i begin to pay a different type of attention to the subjects i am around: the content and nature of what they say--and how this speaks towards a certain type of truth. i become so busy being me and staying genuine to this being, that i forget that others do live differently--respond differently--judge by standards--have formulas, practices, rules, constrictions or even guidelines to how one should be and act. and that how i am may not be what they know, see as normal or find to be comfortable--and so i seem to exist differently (and the truth is sometimes two existences just can't exist within the same reality of one's crafted world). trying to package myself for others has not been a reality of mine in so long. for a whole trend of reasons: judgment always, having learned that criticism is inspiration, not wanting to conceal anything that could surprise someone dramatically in the end, my sister convincing me to act instinctively and be true to that character, my actions not being a reflection of someone's advice and then, being loved for the beauty of my day to day faults. i say this because i don't think i am the only one that can or should reap the rewards. i believe anyone that is true to his self can find "an audience" that admires the honesty. i just don't know why anyone is afraid of his self. and i wish one could know another more. are people really so flat that they expect the person to be taken out of the personality and vice versa? whatever happened to one's disposition being endearing? then again, if i do in fact play to any audience, it is not that one. sometimes i feel like my scope is so small, yet my story is so relatable. i'm too drained--wrote all day (supposedly, i am elusive and a recluse that exists in the world of her novel/a world removed from everyone else)--more to say, but as the case will always be: i wrote all day but still my story is not finished. finally turned my phone off--thank goodness--the sound of it always makes me feel guilty. it continues to be interruptions from boyfriends and husbands, none of which are my own. seriously, how could one wonder why i study characters? there is never not material. there is never not a subject one can know better.

There are two ways of living. Either you conceal who you are and get acceptance, or you reveal yourself and risk rejection. I think it's better to be hated for what you are than loved for what you're not. I do want to join the world, but without beveling down my individuality -Sebastian Horsley.

Wednesday, April 2, 2008

i have so much to do, but my mind is wandering elsewhere.

i wonder whether the impulsion that compels the writer is actually an obsession that the writer imposes upon himself. can the state of writing and not writing be likened to being versus not being; the existential i compared to the experiential i--or a step beyond, the writing eye that is split from the written i. at this point (with all the previous words written ahead of the me i now write and write about) there is a conflict that i am consumed by. yet, have i as writer sat down before the page and inflicted this conflict upon me? i am responsible for the chosen words, therefore am i just as responsible for the complexity of my character that is defined by her choice of words? to write on a subject the writer must be mindful, therefore is the writer mental as well? as soon as i begin writing, what began as one stream of consciousness flows into branches that resemble the dispersing limbs of one standing tree, more than a body of water my thought was intended to circulate around. the one idea that impelled me to begin writing at all was this: does the writer excessively write because the courage of words provides hope of an explanation? is reverie, meditation and narrative all structures the writer uses to try and support the show and tell that is explicit in his use of text? at the met panel a man spoke to the audience explaining that by generating text, the blogger is not egotistical. rather than being labeled pretentious or self-important, the blog is a lyric to the self. it is a conversation that is not controlled. a conversation where the blogger opens himself to an audience of critics. if the writer is impelled to explain his self by telling stories of his self--and this is not egotistical, than is it evidence of an individual attempting to accept the complexities of his identity which are exposed through the thoughtfulness of writing? is the writer simply seeking to know thyself? or is it still something other: perhaps, the entertainment of words, the activity in thought and the transaction with the text gives the writer a high. but again, is entertainment not very simply an activity that allows one to expose his self and from the exchanging of words, nothing other than a transaction of what is, could have been and what will be told? if so, than during the engagement of entertainment one still is invested with the explaining of his self. maybe i am pulling at the same string, but really i think i am just trying to expose the vulnerability of writers. writers write to give clarity in sight. in order to be loved one must let himself be seen through. is that it. is the writer's body of text ironically only one confession that ends with a question--a question of whether the writer is now loved?

Tuesday, April 1, 2008

That's That.


YOU WEAR IT WELL - Selection of Films on Fashion, Style & Beauty played at The Tribeca Grand Hotel tonight. That's that.