Last night I dreamed words. I read them as the dream advanced like a scroll of typeface, large enough to read through the veil of consciousness and sleep. Paper flying off the typewriter, scenes of dreams flipped through with the fervor of devouring literature you feel is changing your life. In my dream, I was aware and focused on the ideas motivating the sentences. I figured my Adderrall had not worn off and now I was trying to be productive even in my dream. I am a madman, I thought. I am a workaholic. I cannot put down my pen. I cannot lay down my mind. I wanted to wake. I woke. Still covered in sleep, I tried to move to write down the ideas I had in my dream. I had been writing my novel. These were perfect metaphors. This is what I had been searching for in waking life. I could not unclothe myself from the sheets of dreams though, so I fell back asleep, convinced the ideas were too substantial to forget. I forgot them. I have lost the words. The sensational has passed. I should have written it down. I cannot remember what it was.
Staring into a colorless space in the night, my last thought was that I wish I were sleeping skin on skin. Skin on skin, I said. My sheets had the texture of petals, and with my cheek pressed against its warmth, the bed swallowed me like a rose that closed up. In the flower was an unreal reality of dreams. It seemed like my eye was pealed open against a window of glass, highly designed like a mosaic. You could not see through the window, all you received was the impression of pattern, a kaleidoscope of colorful shapes—this may have been a better gift. I do not know. I do not know what laid behind or beyond that window in the landscape. Maybe even nothing.
These dreams felt weird. They were imbedded with a thematic like an oeuvre of writing. My work seeps in whenever and wherever. I cannot reject its permission. Do I sound passive? Maybe. I probably would sound different aloud. A guy in my program said I had a high voice. No not in tone, he said, but in class. When you speak, I feel like I should have to kiss your hand. You have a royal voice. I do not recognize my voice if I hear it. It sounds unfamiliar. I picture a delicate female speaking. Is that really me?
There were three assortments of dreams. The first I was entirely intoxicated and I had no memory. I slept with this blonde swimmer who went to my high school. It was like a pause in a party scene. I carried on quickly after, disregarding the act and waking in the morning unworried. Days went by and I discovered that he had been begging to talk to me. Did I take the morning after pill? He kept promising that he had told me we had no been safe, that it had all gone wrong. He said this and I faintly remembered, but I had not cared. I had been drunk and without memory. I would probably be pregnant, except there was less probability and more definitive truth.
The dream lapsed into another. There was a social gathering. An ex-boyfriend was there. This was the first I had seen him since being in town. He had a girlfriend. He tried to have sex with me. He did. I did not want him to. Something slipped into my mind that maybe I was pregnant. It felt good. I said, this is why I miss sex. We were interrupted by someone else in the room. I looked at my ex-boyfriend and thought he was an asshole. He had no idea what he was doing with himself, so he was with me physically and according to a title with someone else. But mentally, I had no idea who he was with.
I woke up at 7:30 am, took a few bites out of an “insomniac brownie” that had been delivered last night and fell back asleep. Then my dream went into another dream. Supposedly this guy, who has been contacting me for months trying to tempt me into cheating, was “bucking” alone on a table. The girl who told me was laughing and saying it was the biggest spectacle. My alarm went off and I could not believe how my nighttime had turned absurd. Then I realized that once again I was more responsible than not for my dreams. Before sleeping, my last thought had been a wish for skin on skin. It was a dream that became a dream, but not the dream I dreamed of having. I woke and wrote the below. Once again avoiding writing my Manhattan piece due tomorrow. There is no doubt that I be home by 8:30 pm and be too exhausted to think. Thursday morning I will probably end up gluing together something to be turned in. I want to name it, but more significantly reflect, Solitude in the Heart of Manhattan. The professor it is for keeps reading my weekly reflections to the class. Her voice reading my words makes me sound like the most sentimental soul. But who knows, what I really am, because a girl in class got up from her chair yesterday and turned around to me and said she thought I was arrogant. I wish I had thanked her for her thought and told her there was a gold star waiting for her at the front of the class that she could place next to my name.
----
Daily framing a new being was your perception. Piece by piece the chipping of time, hour by hour, the evolution of momentary selves stretching into space and shaping someone more specific—(you hope someone more substantial). During evolution your fibers are being threaded tight with substance, pulling you closer to your heart. Listening for the lyrics in the rhythmic gestures is an ear pressed against your chest, hearing how it pumps out the words, “thump thump”. Secrets rise off the surface, dampening the island of your body with a sigh suspended like a cloud in air. It moves delicately, as if not at all, and can be passed as a whisper to a lover through sheets stitched with sultriness. Skin on skin is the dream you dreamed for. Skin on skin became a dripping realism, palpable and tangibly torn at, drawing the scent of blood. Skin on skin was a dream, but not the dream you dreamed of having. You fall asleep with skin on skin, dreaming of the other type of skin you dreamed you would be dreaming upon. A skin intricately woven with affection, not affectation, so it is sensuously layered with a deeper self. Giving the imagination a fleshy fabric it can bring to life. You want to wake with him pressing into the soft cushion of your ass. You want to hover over his sleepy pose and smile at his flesh, imprinted with your naked shoulder. But no, not last night. Pulled down on to the sheets of dreams, you treated this skinned figure like a wax doll, molding his figure as you went deeper into the realm of your night’s other. In the darkness, perception frames new beings, not through sight but by touch. Against the morning light, you wake to see internal relations have deformed his image and so, you tare apart the stitching of skin on skin, threaded loosely with heart.
Wednesday, June 25, 2008
Tuesday, June 24, 2008
two dreams in manhattan
Last night I had a dream. There were a few dreams, I am sure, but this one I remember. There were about a handful of us, but most meaningfully there was me and the two of them. They came to Manhattan and were staying at my apartment. I thought it curious that they had come together, but I let it pass without mention, too willing to see him in any sort of way and under any sort of circumstance. It was nighttime. The time when people go out, but I was not. Opening up the bathroom door, I found them with her arms around his waist as they were getting made up. I did not call attention to this either. Instead, I punched him playfully in the stomach. That was the first time we came in contact with each other, since his being there. Immediately, I thought myself not charming. I do not hate many things, but at that moment I knew I hated how my flirtatious tactics were always aggressive with him. They left and exchanged no words with me. I tried to fall asleep in my bed, all the while thinking, this is my bed! why have they been sleeping in my bed? this is my bed! why have I been sleeping on the couch? if I just fall asleep in my bed tonight it will eliminate any chance of them being or becoming anything. I woke and asked my sister if she had seen them at our home. She said yes, they were sleeping on the couch. I told her I was not asking for a fact check, but that I wanted details. She said she had walked in and they had been holding hands in their sleep. I could not believe it, but I had to believe her, at least. She had seen it. I internalized my bitterness: why had they come to my apartment, why could I hear him calling her “baby” through the bedroom walls and why was I alone wandering through my mind to find impossible answers I hoped could conclude things? Then in the dream I thought, because none of us communicate has it been so impossible to understand.
I woke and pressed snooze on the alarm five times, just to see if I could find out whether they ever kiss. I believed that would give everything more clarity. But of course it would not and of course, once I woke, I never would see them again. Instead, I slide into another dream. I was in my same apartment building, but I had moved down the hall. For some reason living at the end of the hall came with another set of setbacks. Homeless people wandered into my living room and when I walked out of my bedroom, I saw college boys finger painting and others with their eyes rolled back. My sister was flushed and droopy eyed, so I asked her what the hell was going on. Passively she answered, they took LSD. I was the only one that did not laugh. I told her she was disgusting, but as the words were coming out of my mouth I remembered that placing attention on the decision to do drugs was the last thing anyone was suppose to do while someone was on drugs. So then, knowing everyone knew this rule, I just turned and told them all they were disgusting. I looked at my sister and told her the boy she kept bringing around was a terrible influence. I want him out. I grabbed my camera and an extra long lens and left them to themselves in their own little lala land. I was in the subway taking pictures, while they were on LSD in Candy Land. I wondered which of us was making better use of our time. I was not convinced whether it was them or myself, so I kept wondering.
My alarm rang through my dream and I decided it was time to come into clearer consciousness, so I did. My first waking thoughts were: I need to do the laundry to make my sister happy, my breath tastes like peanut butter, why did I eat all that peanut butter, I have so much to write for my final week of classes, watch me end up spending more time in the morning writing about my dreams than a fiction piece on Manhattan, I have no willpower to read another bland contemporary novel for this course especially not one on cocaine.
I went downstairs with my hair smashed up around my face and silver shadowed eyes last night. I thought about my first dream and how ridiculous the idea is that dreams are not real. I wondered whether there was any way to prevent daydreams becoming night dreams. I want to escape my ruminating imagination, not live through it longer during the night. My dreams are never far off from my waking thoughts. In fact, my dream scenes usually confirm my day scenes. There is imagination in both and they are also close to reality.
I use to never retain my dreams. I would wake and remember blackness. Soon enough, I found this to be a waste of time, so I rarely slept at all. I thought it normal for me, but was repetitively told it was not normal not to sleep. I received a prescription for Ambien. I told her I could not sleep. She asked me why. I told her I was up thinking. She kept refilling my prescription anyway. My intention was never to use it for sleep, but for its hallucinogenic faculties. I took it and was overcome with its ability to relax me. I believed and still believe it was the only thing that was capable of relaxing me. With no longer smoking for a year now, wine no longer seemed to work its magic as well. As a result, I became less addicted to wine and unrealities and more addicted to awareness and being productive. It exhausted me but I could not sleep.
I felt I lost a boyfriend in his dreams. As he slept, I watched them steal him from me. I was dreamless. I was awake when I saw we were becoming different. He slept through the reality. We left each other: me to a city and him to a dream. I wrote a play in the fall entitled Sleep less Shadows. It dealt with two drugs: Ambien and dreams. There was a philosophical undertone and was compared to Sarte’s No Exits. I wrote it because I wanted to continue a dialogue with my ex-boyfriend. I also wanted to continue living suspended in time within the unreality of relationships. Therefore, I explored the relationship between dream and reality, the unreal and the real and the artist and the muse. It dealt with appearances and persona. One character was a painter and poet. The other was an actress and model. The play did not end on an answer. It was left for the imagination. I did not have an answer. I believed less in realism.
Now all my work deals with dreams. But I define dreams differently than the assumed definition. Simply, dream is synonymous with the ideal being. It is something or someone separate from the sober self. It is something outside of one or someone that is one’s other that is trying to be attained, lived in and proved to be credible. It continues to be a motif of mine because I still do not have an answer, nor am I necessarily interested in finding one. I am interested in taking myself closer to truths.
I feel like I am continuously being asked, why write? The question never makes any sense to me. I think over the question, I stare at it and am left with the thought I started with: this question is about as stupid as why breathe? Lately the comments are: your philosophy has been keeping me up at night (a laugh comes after and I am not sure if it is there to remove the truth) and but really Chelsea, what is the writing for? I never can fathom why it seems people are cornering me. Writing is extremely straining on the self because there is no denial in its exposure. No one repetitively asks why someone paints, writes a song, performs surgery on a heart, reshapes a nose. Less people find those acts mysterious or strange. But somehow with writing, people that don’t do it, that don’t work on it, also do not seem to “get it”. It is a shame and it is no fun feeling like you have to explain yourself as if it was your ploy to prove you are truly without any neurosis.
I just need to be moved. Unfortunately, the six hundred and plus people on my Facebook stream leave me indifferent. This does not speak for or mean much. It is neither good nor bad, just a whole lot more like nothing. A boy told me this was depressing. How is it that at eighteen things seems to have lost their novelty. He was not asking a question. He may not have been musing either. It could have just been him believing he was stating a fact. I told my sister what he said and she disagreed with him. I told her I just want to be riveted and captivated by someone. She used to always tell me that I expect people to be beyond their age. She tells me that less now and just listens. Recently, interrupting me to inform me that I have to take a breath and stop using the word “like”. This can be extremely distracting when I’m in the middle of a thought, so I play music for her instead and I can see she understands what I was trying to say. Everyone wants to be riveted and captivated by someone though. I am not different.
This is the final week of the intensive writing program. One minute it was before me and now it is almost entirely behind me. I know that even when it ends, it will not be over. Yesterday I handed out a bit of mind and half of my soul. Tomorrow I will sit and listen to it being discussed and pulled apart for more than thirty minutes. Those minutes may seem to stretch on forever or they could feel like less than five. On Thursday I will read some of my work aloud in front of many faces. I hope my voice can give the words poetry, as I intended.
Yesterday one writer—the most conventional, knows the rules of writing, the guidelines, etc—said that the professor was trying to shape our writing into a format. He said that she was especially trying to edit out my and another writer’s voice. That it was obvious she was doing this, terrible too and that our voice should not be changed. I took this as the greatest compliment, especially since he said she was doing this to me and this other male writer in the class whose work I admire. Workshops do not inspire me. Philosophy influences the content of my work. There is a big difference and this speaks for the dichotomy I will have to decide for graduate school.
I need to write a Manhattan piece by Thursday. There really is no time, but there is no doubt that it will happen. Manhattan is a dream, but not the dream I dreamed of having. Still it has the effects of a dream and the consistency, as well. Each morning you wake up to Manhattan with an imprint of your being there. It has an effect on your mind. You are conscious of it being a dream and become increasingly aware that each experience has minor differences. This leaves you waking each morning with a newly developed impression of it. Manhattan is a dream, but in the morning it is vague.
I woke and pressed snooze on the alarm five times, just to see if I could find out whether they ever kiss. I believed that would give everything more clarity. But of course it would not and of course, once I woke, I never would see them again. Instead, I slide into another dream. I was in my same apartment building, but I had moved down the hall. For some reason living at the end of the hall came with another set of setbacks. Homeless people wandered into my living room and when I walked out of my bedroom, I saw college boys finger painting and others with their eyes rolled back. My sister was flushed and droopy eyed, so I asked her what the hell was going on. Passively she answered, they took LSD. I was the only one that did not laugh. I told her she was disgusting, but as the words were coming out of my mouth I remembered that placing attention on the decision to do drugs was the last thing anyone was suppose to do while someone was on drugs. So then, knowing everyone knew this rule, I just turned and told them all they were disgusting. I looked at my sister and told her the boy she kept bringing around was a terrible influence. I want him out. I grabbed my camera and an extra long lens and left them to themselves in their own little lala land. I was in the subway taking pictures, while they were on LSD in Candy Land. I wondered which of us was making better use of our time. I was not convinced whether it was them or myself, so I kept wondering.
My alarm rang through my dream and I decided it was time to come into clearer consciousness, so I did. My first waking thoughts were: I need to do the laundry to make my sister happy, my breath tastes like peanut butter, why did I eat all that peanut butter, I have so much to write for my final week of classes, watch me end up spending more time in the morning writing about my dreams than a fiction piece on Manhattan, I have no willpower to read another bland contemporary novel for this course especially not one on cocaine.
I went downstairs with my hair smashed up around my face and silver shadowed eyes last night. I thought about my first dream and how ridiculous the idea is that dreams are not real. I wondered whether there was any way to prevent daydreams becoming night dreams. I want to escape my ruminating imagination, not live through it longer during the night. My dreams are never far off from my waking thoughts. In fact, my dream scenes usually confirm my day scenes. There is imagination in both and they are also close to reality.
I use to never retain my dreams. I would wake and remember blackness. Soon enough, I found this to be a waste of time, so I rarely slept at all. I thought it normal for me, but was repetitively told it was not normal not to sleep. I received a prescription for Ambien. I told her I could not sleep. She asked me why. I told her I was up thinking. She kept refilling my prescription anyway. My intention was never to use it for sleep, but for its hallucinogenic faculties. I took it and was overcome with its ability to relax me. I believed and still believe it was the only thing that was capable of relaxing me. With no longer smoking for a year now, wine no longer seemed to work its magic as well. As a result, I became less addicted to wine and unrealities and more addicted to awareness and being productive. It exhausted me but I could not sleep.
I felt I lost a boyfriend in his dreams. As he slept, I watched them steal him from me. I was dreamless. I was awake when I saw we were becoming different. He slept through the reality. We left each other: me to a city and him to a dream. I wrote a play in the fall entitled Sleep less Shadows. It dealt with two drugs: Ambien and dreams. There was a philosophical undertone and was compared to Sarte’s No Exits. I wrote it because I wanted to continue a dialogue with my ex-boyfriend. I also wanted to continue living suspended in time within the unreality of relationships. Therefore, I explored the relationship between dream and reality, the unreal and the real and the artist and the muse. It dealt with appearances and persona. One character was a painter and poet. The other was an actress and model. The play did not end on an answer. It was left for the imagination. I did not have an answer. I believed less in realism.
Now all my work deals with dreams. But I define dreams differently than the assumed definition. Simply, dream is synonymous with the ideal being. It is something or someone separate from the sober self. It is something outside of one or someone that is one’s other that is trying to be attained, lived in and proved to be credible. It continues to be a motif of mine because I still do not have an answer, nor am I necessarily interested in finding one. I am interested in taking myself closer to truths.
I feel like I am continuously being asked, why write? The question never makes any sense to me. I think over the question, I stare at it and am left with the thought I started with: this question is about as stupid as why breathe? Lately the comments are: your philosophy has been keeping me up at night (a laugh comes after and I am not sure if it is there to remove the truth) and but really Chelsea, what is the writing for? I never can fathom why it seems people are cornering me. Writing is extremely straining on the self because there is no denial in its exposure. No one repetitively asks why someone paints, writes a song, performs surgery on a heart, reshapes a nose. Less people find those acts mysterious or strange. But somehow with writing, people that don’t do it, that don’t work on it, also do not seem to “get it”. It is a shame and it is no fun feeling like you have to explain yourself as if it was your ploy to prove you are truly without any neurosis.
I just need to be moved. Unfortunately, the six hundred and plus people on my Facebook stream leave me indifferent. This does not speak for or mean much. It is neither good nor bad, just a whole lot more like nothing. A boy told me this was depressing. How is it that at eighteen things seems to have lost their novelty. He was not asking a question. He may not have been musing either. It could have just been him believing he was stating a fact. I told my sister what he said and she disagreed with him. I told her I just want to be riveted and captivated by someone. She used to always tell me that I expect people to be beyond their age. She tells me that less now and just listens. Recently, interrupting me to inform me that I have to take a breath and stop using the word “like”. This can be extremely distracting when I’m in the middle of a thought, so I play music for her instead and I can see she understands what I was trying to say. Everyone wants to be riveted and captivated by someone though. I am not different.
This is the final week of the intensive writing program. One minute it was before me and now it is almost entirely behind me. I know that even when it ends, it will not be over. Yesterday I handed out a bit of mind and half of my soul. Tomorrow I will sit and listen to it being discussed and pulled apart for more than thirty minutes. Those minutes may seem to stretch on forever or they could feel like less than five. On Thursday I will read some of my work aloud in front of many faces. I hope my voice can give the words poetry, as I intended.
Yesterday one writer—the most conventional, knows the rules of writing, the guidelines, etc—said that the professor was trying to shape our writing into a format. He said that she was especially trying to edit out my and another writer’s voice. That it was obvious she was doing this, terrible too and that our voice should not be changed. I took this as the greatest compliment, especially since he said she was doing this to me and this other male writer in the class whose work I admire. Workshops do not inspire me. Philosophy influences the content of my work. There is a big difference and this speaks for the dichotomy I will have to decide for graduate school.
I need to write a Manhattan piece by Thursday. There really is no time, but there is no doubt that it will happen. Manhattan is a dream, but not the dream I dreamed of having. Still it has the effects of a dream and the consistency, as well. Each morning you wake up to Manhattan with an imprint of your being there. It has an effect on your mind. You are conscious of it being a dream and become increasingly aware that each experience has minor differences. This leaves you waking each morning with a newly developed impression of it. Manhattan is a dream, but in the morning it is vague.
Monday, June 23, 2008
two dreams and a reality.
I had a dream we were kissing but we did not have lips.
I had a dream that I left my newly filled Adderall prescription in the yard. I wasn’t sure if I left it in the grass or if the dog brought it out. My focus must have been flighty because I left it twice. The third time, I went running into the yard looking for it and saw that the majority of the pills had been crushed into a powdery substance. The only thing I could think was Damn I’m gonna have a lot to snort.
Last night a man asked me for my number and I said thank you.
Q. Has it all turned pathetic.
A. That was not a question.
Thursday, June 19, 2008
some story: a sense of scent.
During the day she would stay suspended in her apartment, like a rare bird perched in its cage and locked away from the expanse of the high pitched city, which could be heard but not felt. She rarely slipped out of her pocket of rest to be carried through the veins that pumped the heart of Manhattan full of life. A window was all she believed she needed to admire the colors the city’s shell had been delicately dipped in—dyes of gold, coral and jade—that bled together and dried into a color with no name.
Today her glances from the window drank the juice of the city, but gave her no satisfaction. Only in Manhattan, Claudelean sighed, would there be no horizon where the sea and sky came to kiss. This morning, her eyes were circled with nostalgia. And it was as if, her mind looked through the hole in a door and only saw shapes of her past. The vision burned her eyes and she drew the curtains in self-protection against the world that throbbed liked a wound.
Falling into the palm of her bed, she masked herself with last night’s sheets and contorted her body into a fetal position until she was lulled back to sleep. She swallowed darkness, as if it were a breath of air, and sewed her eyelids into the bedding of her skin to keep her vision centered within the dream and outside reality, which weighed heavy upon her eyes and tried to make contact with her conscience.
Claudelean consumed dreams as if they were drugs given to prisoners of distinction. There was a drug for forgetting and a drug for awareness—and she was reliant on both. She usually controlled her environments so meticulously, assuring she would never become situated in a state that surprised her or she thought she was not ready for. But today she was unsuccessful. She had woken, and before setting down to her writing, memory had splintered her leisure hour and torn right into her flesh—bruising her mood and breaking her mind into fragments of times that she was not prepared to have isolated. She did not want to think yet. She did not want to heal now. And so, she hid beneath her imagination until dreams wore off, and woke her sober to the light and obligated to the real. She knew then there would be something she needed to write—a part of her substance that the page would frame—a splitting of self, she would have to be ready for.
Sunday, June 15, 2008
sea sight.
There is a quality the sea carries that makes me want to spread it out across every story I write. My eyes wash over the hundreds of photographs I have taken or have been taken of me. And my favorites are those featuring the landscape of the sea. Is it the surreality of the photographs—fixing two opposing motions at one time—the subjects still, frozen, captured and the sea forever in motion and in pursuit of escape? Or is it because it is ethereal, constantly breathing and airing out, externally calming yet in a constant flux of internal emotion? I know how to experience its essence when writing, but quite contrarily I am not the type of person who takes dips in the water, basks on the sand or in the winter envisions vacations by the sea. Perhaps, if I did not think of South Beach beer bums or having to wear a bikini, it would be otherwise. The irony is that whenever I have spent time at or by the sea, the time has been impressed upon my mind and embedded within my memory. And it is there that my most romantic moments—and by romantic I mean: inspiring, captivating, phantasmagoria, passionate—have been produced. As a result, the sea pervades the story I am writing—which I hope can be read like an extensive simile—and saturates the characters involved. I see how in Manhattan I have grown to miss the horizon where the sea and sky came to kiss. But that is just a metaphor for a time when the two touched, and fell beneath each other once the night curtained the city.
---
I tried to choose my favorite sea photographs and realized the extent of the one's I loved:
---
I tried to choose my favorite sea photographs and realized the extent of the one's I loved:
Saturday, June 14, 2008
Friday, June 13, 2008
i fly away in 2 weeks.
half way through, and unsure of any feelings. i want to be selfish about my time but my mind is never on or in the present. it is like an unfulfilled prophecy - caring so deeply about time, while always experiencing that i am absolutely disengaged from it. i recognize the problem, and have plenty excuses, which are - excuses - and nothing more or less. reasons: withdrawn inside my interior and listening to this fragmentation of narration and dialogue that streams through my mind (a persistent effort to take note and notice for written work), impassioned by a bulk of engagements that i find myself in and a constant pressure to be receiving inspiration and pursuit to be captivated. now writing this, i realize it has become such an extreme because last year i was captured, captivated and inspired by my relations always. it is what i need in my life - for happiness, appeasement, sanity. but on the flip, i must admit, i was never entirely within the present then either. it is such a terrible trait. by the end of the month i will have, likely, finished forty pages. what will those pages say? how will i feel about them? how will they be received? and all those questions probably don't matter much. the professor is pushing me for towards clarity and whereas i use to be too stubborn to compromise, i now am allowing myself. as clarity breaks through and abstraction is lessened, my writing is left with lyricism, prose and sensuality. my writing becomes about desire, intimacy and the spaces in between, coldness, passivity, silence, stillness, desperation. i think that being abstract and dense was probably a facade - an effort to make my work not about myself - a hope to not be read as overly feminine and emotional. i didn't want feelings to nag, i didn't want to sound like i cared and even though i was most concerned with the senses, i didn't want to sound and therefore appear affected by my involvements. although i believe my work is highly imaginative, i feel it is only imaginative in its construction of language (thought, word, image) and not in terms of the substance of the story that is thread within it (although i care less about plot and action) which is closely related to truth. it can be read as a construction of the imagination, but that is only because it is a view of a situation from one mind, one heart, one nerve and as a result, the memory that it is based on resides within the imagination (since it has to be located within recollection) of one individual who knows only his truth, not the whole truth. i re-read a book of essays by anais nin today and it just reaffirmed that she is the only author i have ever read or heard who explains what i hope to do and where i wish the novel will go. i read her and am entirely engaged, her importance is undeniable and yet, she confused so many. i will have to provide quotes from her at some point. i did an independent study on her last fall and now as i am trying to penetrate further into fiction, i feel like she is one of the most powerful examples i have that will explain what i am trying to do or rather, what i hope will latch on and readers will become emerged in. what i ended up taking the most to heart (probably because my first efforts in writing could never approach the idea of dialogue) were the positive reactions about my dialogue and that the readers saw how it was not the words that mattered but the meaning they exposed. this is so special to me because i believe individuals have many restraints that restrict clarity and the exposure of exact emotions and therefore, it is not so much what is said rather than it is what is not said or the pressure that can be felt within the spaces of silence (a result of speaking at each other rather than to or with each other - which is so often the case). its like 3am, early morning tomorrow, to the met we goooo, so i must try and fall asleep without an ambien. i will end by saying that what was most on my mind tonight when i got home and again came back to a room of people, was that i only want to speak to someone that i, too, want to be kissing and falling asleep with. then, i realized how exaggerated that sounded, so i edited my thought and made it clearer: i miss having a best friend who was my boyfriend and i miss living alone and i miss sharing my apartment with one guest who was my boyfriend and also my best friend and all i needed intellectually and intimately. my art relies so heavily on the experience of being physically involved with another, that i can't believe i have avoided it for what feels like so long. i feel like i make myself so unavailable in new york but yet, some other part of me that i enjoy comes out when my bed is shared. i use to run off with all these others, and now it seems just the opposite. i kiss and am unmoved and don't persist. but then there are these rare cases where i am impulsively, if not mindlessly, drawn and i want to fall entirely. i can't fake an interest - at least not after the first night, and when i do, i disappear from contact like a flake - i can't fake an interest, even the pure joy of just having someone around. interested or disinterested, never an in between. and in really loose terms, that is what this "extended story" that i am writing is revolving around.
Tuesday, June 10, 2008
soon it will be seeing.
the process of writing is a double burden, but the product that appears at the finale is a reward that makes the author feel weightless. although i feel like i am always collecting matters that will shape a larger and hopefully, more substantial text. i worry whether it will ever become more real. i suppose that is the great burden - that leaves you avoiding the moment of beginning, but wanting, if not needing, it most desperately. there is the excitement you experience, once text begins streaming across the page, when thoughts position themselves upon the page and can be seen, and not just heard in imagination. a writer holds his breath for the length of his work and even the times between when it is best to rest.
i begun saturday - and wrote through that one day alone. i despise the situation, but the day to night of class leaves me too exhausted and now the apartment heat leaves me in a state of delirium - by no means the tone i am going for in my work.
life is funny though, and perhaps the artist is more so. i never imagined what i am writing would become so romantic, so involved with the language of the nerves, the mind of the heart. moments and mood fall upon you at certain times and i reason this is that time where i am pulling apart this texture that feels thick around me.
the fascinating truth -at least for me- which i become more involved in, is how those we experience, even if only slightly, and even the places we have escaped to, all become subject to material we can use. and the extremity in which we can indulge within these times - how well we can explicate them - will no doubt determine the writer who uses them as words within his voice. a professor said the other day, that we will grow as an author and become less selfish--less occupied--with framing our personal story and in doing so will become truthful to the lives of our characters. i am insecure that i will always write out the same thematic - with different chapters, but with similar desperation - a meta exploration that exposes my voice, my heart, my memory and no one more.
with the story i have begun, i experience the pressure - as i always will, and as most artists do - to not exclude a shade of thought, the many moods that capture but one action, the multitude of attributes that rest within a moment and of course, the comparisons to draw upon that do not distinguish our differences but spotlight, or maybe even give theory, to our similarities.
i know i am young and new at writing, but i can not find comfort in this situation or excuse any truth that can be found within it. the more i write, am read aloud and hear other contemporaries, the less i feel i am a storyteller. and nor have i ever felt like i was or wanted to be. i remember somewhere in some journal writing that i had no interest listening to stories, exchanging everyday gossip, pushing characters to move and act. i just needed them to feel for me, their fewer actions will be replaced by the movement of their thoughts. i am not writing for the stage or screen, why should it be expected of me?
there are so many beautiful books i own, and everyday i want to search out and find. author's whose words i place on notecards and file but which really need to be framed. i am on two poles of language that situate me with different statements. that of the deconstructionists, where i become abstract, where feelings feel less, and the personal is too preoccupied in being redesigned that the self slips out completely. and then there is the lyrical novel - the borderline between poetry and fiction. where sentences carry a musicality - where the richness of words for setting can be tasted. i am told that i am a brilliant intellect in one, and a lovely sensualist in the other.
i just hope i can be proud of anything that falls out of me. this new work surprises me. my memories and where they take me. the portraits of characters i was suppose to create, but really just helped build myself, and who i have known intimately.
it is fun, i see. to begin, immediately bond with the characters, and then not know how anything will become. i laugh in silence now, wondering how if i ever come to a finish will i think of the real characters that inspired the fiction. will i see them differently--intricately, revealed, depth, designed, decided--blah blah blah.
because again it all comes back to the writer who felt she had to write her mind out, so she crossed time, selected scenes, picked characters with such dissimilarities that scents, sense, sensuality will be the leading factors that make the love feel replete or just something other.
i am excited to re-see memory, share characters that would never have been comfortable sharing and I do-do-do want to come stuck and come to the point where i know i have to feel completely in order to continue writing.
what will any of this become?
Monday, June 9, 2008
There is no romance in June.
If I knew how to make believe, I would tell you the winter weather would have made us feel differently. I would close my eyes, let reality disappear in the darkness and forget I was wearing shorts and he was without a jacket—forget how in the summer one is expected to be happiest. This was not the case, nor the situation I was kept within—I am too sincere to lie—too real to imagine it being as it was not.
It was June. It was night. It was the first place I remember where it felt empty. And it was the last place I remember being not entirely alone. That night in June, I would come to ask him what he was thinking. Without turning to look at me, he would respond that he was not thinking, just seeing. Feeling I understood the language his thoughts spoke in, I would carry the conversation further—question him more—needing him—needing to hear more. What, I asked. Can we be remembered for? He never looked at me anymore than it was required—just away from me, thoughtfully—as if he were answering to someone else. Oh come on, I would laugh playfully. Once we are finished, what will you remember? That is impossible, he responded. When something is finished, there is nothing continued to be remembered. Then silence spoke and we sat still, expressionless and just listened. You sound so fatalistic tonight, he interrupted. I sighed—his voice sounded unmoved—his tone made it seem like I was listening to someone I had just met and may never know.
In between the silence of stillness was the light touch of serenity that I could not feel, but I knew was there and waiting to be realized. On top of the roof we felt distanced from the world, but it was the night sky, acting as a curtain, which separated us completely. We did not take advantage of the privacy though. Instead, we became more uncomfortable because of it. I saw myself acting unfamiliar—as if the lack of light changed the way I was exposed—as if the night hid me from myself. I looked at the four balloons, shadowed by the spotlight of the moon, and watched them danced with their partners. They experienced a romance I no longer know presently, only in memory, which soon will become soft, drop into a void and leave me with no clarity.
His camera’s view framed me, and made the night burn with its familiar flash—fixating me forever. He took pictures that pleased me—and over time it became so habitual that I learned how to perform—how to be captivating—how to make myself captured. Our motivations were different though. He used his camera to stop time—to make me last in a moment he wanted to know me for. But I knew all along, it was a way to create me and fulfill a desire that would make him feel more complete. It would help him remember me in a way he wished I always stayed—a way to hold me in a presence I no longer assumed—a product of the past that placed me in a moment that no longer belonged.
I watched him as he sat there unintelligibly. He was overly cautious of the need to perfectly pretend that he was not aware of being beneath the gaze of another. He untangled a knot, laughed at something no one else had heard—all the while being entirely consumed with the importance of appearing attentive elsewhere and on something other. I looked at him—or rather, the side of his face that he had angled to be seen—and truly tried to look within. For so long I had felt the need to believe that his eyes were centered within his self—that his silence spoke for a personal situation where he was spending social time retreating within his own interior. But now, I no longer knew what to see to believe. After time away from him, I came back and saw him differently and perhaps, the distance had decided this. Watching him now, I found an alternate reality that could be possible. He was not looking deeply into thought—he had fewer thoughts than I had originally given him credit for having—he was looking into nothing. He existed for me passively. And this—this very being—annoyed me. But he stuck around because his presence occupied time that would otherwise be spent singularly in the seclusion of the mind. I began to know less of him though, which was no help in understanding any more of him, and I became silent more often because of it.
He turned to me finally with an expression that promised an excuse for his behavior. But he promised nothing. To you, I am just weird. You are always saying how weird I am. Listen, I don’t want you to think weird would be the primary word I would use to describe you. How could I, when everyday I am told I am either weird or crazy? I cannot decide which I prefer. But you, you are foreign. Well I would prefer unique. You can have unique, I assured him. They are not mutually exclusive. But strictly speaking, in terms of our relation, you are foreign.
I remember that night in June. A night that spoke of the distance, but which I have never been able to grow distant from. It was not winter and perhaps that is why there was no romance.
Saturday, June 7, 2008
between thoughts and beyond exhaustion.
i feel like much has happened. although, i see even less has changed. i began feeling an extreme change just over a week ago. the pressure was at its most extreme. i woke and felt like my breathing was strained. then over coffee and a novel, i began a long conversation with a stranger at my left. which helped my day and made my mind feel better. the next day, i expressed to a woman that i felt we were led to believe there was such thing as a "platform of perfection"--a point we worked to arrive at, a steady calm, an ease where we existed calmly and unaffectedly. i told her it wasn't what i was going for--that we exist and are affected differently in different environments. maybe in new york i kept myself from behaving freely. maybe here, my mind was always perceiving and translating. maybe in the city, it was in my character to focus and produce. and maybe, i should recognize this and accept the differences. a few days later, i just broke down. i cried because i had not. i said i have been depressed because it was an excuse and it was a jumping off point to excite change. but what mattered most is i acknowledged the necessity to find a balance--a balance i have never had, that i have expected and which is probably not always natural. i also came to terms with still having ideals--interior and exterior ideals that were motivated by reputation, appearance and acceptance from the two. i know i am no different. i fall into extremes, experience those addictions and make judgments for a more normal quality of life because of them. i am just ready to find a balance. a balance that will make living and living in new york city more beneficial and rewarding. i hold back from what i would have written. i am calmer and less eager because of the distance from that temperament.
i think i was also ruminating myself raw. nervous about the month of june, which i am now experiencing at full force. i was and am experiencing emotions from and over it everyday. and this is because i put an irrational amount of pressure on myself to perform perfectly. basically, i am in an intense writing program for fiction. and never have been in a writing craft and workshop class, nor wrote for the genre of fiction. i eat to keep myself alive and awake, energized and in tune for performance. but i am two times the self i was last summer, and it is hard to see myself always changing and never at a constant. sometimes i fear what i will become, and i hate the sound of myself saying that. in the end, i persevere through the absurdity and let the smarter side of myself decide. knowing it is more gratifying to eat to attain mindfulness, than eat disorderly and have no capacity to think at all. let no one fool you, it is a battle everyday. sometimes it exhausts you, other times it excels but you never exist not feeling changed by it. it is an utter waste, and everyday you tell yourself that today you will begin to live without it.
i realized i was kidding myself if i was hoping to be less serious after the month of june. i feel like my seriousness in new york is not pleasurable or attractive, and i have grown insecure because of it.
the writing has begun. and i say begun because it feels different and comes out differently now that it is being made for a story and/or is structured for a novel. now my activity is this: thinking less abstractly in the genre of fiction and being more fluid because of it. there is a difference in thoughts when told in story form and the mind digresses when thinking for the novel. i am not sure where i sound smarter. although, i am learning that fiction may not be the space for it. i was told my philosophy should be eliminated in the edit and that logic bending sentences are no way to open a story and invite your reader to stay. and then i was told that my writing resembled margurite duras' the lover, which made me smile even though i didn't expose it.
i believe i feel differently. i think my thinking is different than theirs. then who changes here?
i think i was also ruminating myself raw. nervous about the month of june, which i am now experiencing at full force. i was and am experiencing emotions from and over it everyday. and this is because i put an irrational amount of pressure on myself to perform perfectly. basically, i am in an intense writing program for fiction. and never have been in a writing craft and workshop class, nor wrote for the genre of fiction. i eat to keep myself alive and awake, energized and in tune for performance. but i am two times the self i was last summer, and it is hard to see myself always changing and never at a constant. sometimes i fear what i will become, and i hate the sound of myself saying that. in the end, i persevere through the absurdity and let the smarter side of myself decide. knowing it is more gratifying to eat to attain mindfulness, than eat disorderly and have no capacity to think at all. let no one fool you, it is a battle everyday. sometimes it exhausts you, other times it excels but you never exist not feeling changed by it. it is an utter waste, and everyday you tell yourself that today you will begin to live without it.
i realized i was kidding myself if i was hoping to be less serious after the month of june. i feel like my seriousness in new york is not pleasurable or attractive, and i have grown insecure because of it.
the writing has begun. and i say begun because it feels different and comes out differently now that it is being made for a story and/or is structured for a novel. now my activity is this: thinking less abstractly in the genre of fiction and being more fluid because of it. there is a difference in thoughts when told in story form and the mind digresses when thinking for the novel. i am not sure where i sound smarter. although, i am learning that fiction may not be the space for it. i was told my philosophy should be eliminated in the edit and that logic bending sentences are no way to open a story and invite your reader to stay. and then i was told that my writing resembled margurite duras' the lover, which made me smile even though i didn't expose it.
i believe i feel differently. i think my thinking is different than theirs. then who changes here?
Sunday, June 1, 2008
stay, here.
the moment may be forever, if you don't think it otherwise.
the moment may remain unchanged, if you don't know its difference.
-the point of not having let go.
silence because.
She watched him as he sat there unintelligibly. He was overly cautious of the need to perfectly pretend that he was not aware of being beneath the gaze of another. He untangled a knot, laughed at the television—all the while being entirely consumed with the importance of appearing attentive elsewhere and on something other. She looked at him—or rather, the side of his face that he had angled to be seen—and truly tried to look within. For so long she had felt the need to believe that his eyes were centered within his self—that his silence spoke for a personal situation where he was spending social time retreating within his own interior. But now, she no longer knew what to see to believe. After time away from him, she came back and saw him differently and perhaps, the distance had decided this. Watching him now, she found an alternate reality that could be possible. He was not looking deeply into thought—he had fewer thoughts than she had originally given him credit for having—he was looking into nothing. He existed for her passively. And this—this very being—annoyed her. But he stuck around because his presence occupied time that would otherwise be spent singularly in the seclusion of the mind. She began to know less of him though, which was no help in understanding any more of him, and she became silent more often because of it.
Friday, May 30, 2008
i am bored of myself.
After a few short days, time will begin being used in a way most exaggerated. Focus and attention to details are interests I will have to be most actively attaining. I will need most of few things, and less of so many others. My work will call upon me in a tone less calming and more urgent—and I will make the commitment to come to and for it. In a few short days, I will need to see myself twice. I will have to take time to reconsider and reappropriate my two-tone reality: experiential eye and writing I. I don’t yet know what the difference will make of me.
Thursday, May 29, 2008
escapism
February 12 2007
My mind ruminates over the same “issue” every time I am given a pen, asked to think and advised to dive deeper into the folds and crevices of my so called self. It may not seem so tedious, if I were not my own teacher guiding myself through the plagues, discourses and ecstasies that I find myself experiencing daily, moment by moment and innately.
I am convinced that some people do not think; they act when demanded and fetch when they know a game is being provoked. At large, they resemble animals. Their behaviors are routine, expected and mildly grotesque. They think in the confines of what they have to; they wake up, pee, drink water from the toilet bowl, eat the same prepackaged food they have been fed all their lives and lay in the corner sleeping the day away.
But this is fine for them. In fact, this is ideal, because they do not have any other ideas that would challenge them to ask themselves and others for new possibilities—-a higher potential. And maybe that is a reason to be jealous, to envy the normalcy of their lives and to wake up each morning the same as them, eat from my bowl and think, “That was a perfect ten. Always something I can count on.” I wouldn’t think otherwise because I had never known more.
April 24 2007
The truth is I have been following her for days; following her with my eyes up and down her body, finding refuge in the consistency of her being here. It was as if she were coming for me---showing up each day so I could escape into her. I haven’t tried to disguise my gaze either; secure that she was escaping, just as much as I, into the life of another.
And this is where the story of a life and another begins. I had been outside when it suddenly began to pour, the sky was sad and I was too, for it. A long walk from my apartment and nothing there I was obliged to pay my time too, I decided to sit at Café de Flore and wait until the sky was no longer suffering.
It was rather empty and something about all the present states felt emotionally exhausted. I needed a drink to make me full; the taste of bold blackberries and plum flavor hanging heavy on my palate. The aromas of cocoa and anise escaping into my nostrils would make me well again.
Just as I lifted the glass to the flesh of my lip, I saw her. And from that moment on, my senses have wanted nothing more than to taste her distinctive flavors, drink the fluids that rest in her mouth and consume her body, her private temple!
But these feelings were far from familiar. Not that another woman had never ravished me, but never had I been inviting of such feelings towards a woman like her. She was simple and boring; simply beautiful, yet boringly disinterested in everything but a novel by D.H. Lawrence. Her indifference to her surroundings overwhelmed me. What life so enthralling lived between the pages of that novel? If she were so fascinated by the story of another, did that render her own unreadable?
I had to know and I have come here each day to watch her read the life of another. She: watching the text float into visualized scenes. I: reading her expressions as she reacts to the plot. Both: imagining an involvement in another. Together: finding meaning in what began as a mystery.
By sight alone, I know her. She is loyal, devoted and reliable. A single rose rests behind the back of her ear as she reads. When she stops to contextualize or leave for the night, she places the rose between the cleavage of the pages. I wonder what it means. What man shares my passion for her?—and gave her that rose to reveal such desire.
By sight alone, I know her. She is pure, innocent and untouched. Her ivory skin, powdered to perfection. Her satin hair that moves in waves around her shoulders. And her budding cheeks blushed by roses are all attributes I want my fingers to linger over. I wonder how it would feel to discover her body. What our odor would smell of after nights when our bodies favored the other.
By sight alone, I am surprised by her. Just yesterday, I found her capable of mischief. Reading, the rose at rest behind her ear, she untangled her legs and unknowingly exposed the print of her panty. The print of a rose. I wonder what it means. What I could be responsible for if she let me have her; to deflower her, take her under me and in herself let her experience a new world.
Day by day, she was slowly seducing me. I knew it, I knew her. She is the object of a rose and I am the thorn of difficulty trying to overcome such temptation to reach her, Perfection.
Today she holds the final pages of the novel in her right hand. She looks sad to see them go and I feel sad knowing she may not return if she does not have a life she can escape into. By sight alone, I know her, but nothing of her name. I must write a letter asking her. Maybe once she is done reading the novel, she will care to escape with me into the story of Us.
I write in my best cursive, asking her name and tell the waiter to deliver it to the woman with the rose in her book. Opening it upon its return, I read:
“What’s in a name?
That which we call a rose.
By any other word would smell as sweet.”
Looking up and expecting to meet her eye, I see she has left. By sight alone, I knew her; a name was nothing more than a title. She was Rose, a symbol of the time—a time when we both escaped into the life of another.
My mind ruminates over the same “issue” every time I am given a pen, asked to think and advised to dive deeper into the folds and crevices of my so called self. It may not seem so tedious, if I were not my own teacher guiding myself through the plagues, discourses and ecstasies that I find myself experiencing daily, moment by moment and innately.
I am convinced that some people do not think; they act when demanded and fetch when they know a game is being provoked. At large, they resemble animals. Their behaviors are routine, expected and mildly grotesque. They think in the confines of what they have to; they wake up, pee, drink water from the toilet bowl, eat the same prepackaged food they have been fed all their lives and lay in the corner sleeping the day away.
But this is fine for them. In fact, this is ideal, because they do not have any other ideas that would challenge them to ask themselves and others for new possibilities—-a higher potential. And maybe that is a reason to be jealous, to envy the normalcy of their lives and to wake up each morning the same as them, eat from my bowl and think, “That was a perfect ten. Always something I can count on.” I wouldn’t think otherwise because I had never known more.
April 24 2007
The truth is I have been following her for days; following her with my eyes up and down her body, finding refuge in the consistency of her being here. It was as if she were coming for me---showing up each day so I could escape into her. I haven’t tried to disguise my gaze either; secure that she was escaping, just as much as I, into the life of another.
And this is where the story of a life and another begins. I had been outside when it suddenly began to pour, the sky was sad and I was too, for it. A long walk from my apartment and nothing there I was obliged to pay my time too, I decided to sit at Café de Flore and wait until the sky was no longer suffering.
It was rather empty and something about all the present states felt emotionally exhausted. I needed a drink to make me full; the taste of bold blackberries and plum flavor hanging heavy on my palate. The aromas of cocoa and anise escaping into my nostrils would make me well again.
Just as I lifted the glass to the flesh of my lip, I saw her. And from that moment on, my senses have wanted nothing more than to taste her distinctive flavors, drink the fluids that rest in her mouth and consume her body, her private temple!
But these feelings were far from familiar. Not that another woman had never ravished me, but never had I been inviting of such feelings towards a woman like her. She was simple and boring; simply beautiful, yet boringly disinterested in everything but a novel by D.H. Lawrence. Her indifference to her surroundings overwhelmed me. What life so enthralling lived between the pages of that novel? If she were so fascinated by the story of another, did that render her own unreadable?
I had to know and I have come here each day to watch her read the life of another. She: watching the text float into visualized scenes. I: reading her expressions as she reacts to the plot. Both: imagining an involvement in another. Together: finding meaning in what began as a mystery.
By sight alone, I know her. She is loyal, devoted and reliable. A single rose rests behind the back of her ear as she reads. When she stops to contextualize or leave for the night, she places the rose between the cleavage of the pages. I wonder what it means. What man shares my passion for her?—and gave her that rose to reveal such desire.
By sight alone, I know her. She is pure, innocent and untouched. Her ivory skin, powdered to perfection. Her satin hair that moves in waves around her shoulders. And her budding cheeks blushed by roses are all attributes I want my fingers to linger over. I wonder how it would feel to discover her body. What our odor would smell of after nights when our bodies favored the other.
By sight alone, I am surprised by her. Just yesterday, I found her capable of mischief. Reading, the rose at rest behind her ear, she untangled her legs and unknowingly exposed the print of her panty. The print of a rose. I wonder what it means. What I could be responsible for if she let me have her; to deflower her, take her under me and in herself let her experience a new world.
Day by day, she was slowly seducing me. I knew it, I knew her. She is the object of a rose and I am the thorn of difficulty trying to overcome such temptation to reach her, Perfection.
Today she holds the final pages of the novel in her right hand. She looks sad to see them go and I feel sad knowing she may not return if she does not have a life she can escape into. By sight alone, I know her, but nothing of her name. I must write a letter asking her. Maybe once she is done reading the novel, she will care to escape with me into the story of Us.
I write in my best cursive, asking her name and tell the waiter to deliver it to the woman with the rose in her book. Opening it upon its return, I read:
“What’s in a name?
That which we call a rose.
By any other word would smell as sweet.”
Looking up and expecting to meet her eye, I see she has left. By sight alone, I knew her; a name was nothing more than a title. She was Rose, a symbol of the time—a time when we both escaped into the life of another.
Wednesday, May 28, 2008
"super skinny me"
this is a bbc documentary. this is the first segment of a longer series. the rest can be found on youtube.
Monday, May 26, 2008
derrida
Why has language become such a calling to me? I have a magnitude of answers—reasons that set me in different directions—that have me arrive at similar, but other explanations. Many thinkers have dedicated their thought to defining deconstruction. Some say deconstruction is literature’s revenge on philosophy—a repetition of dead-end themes in German idealism—a quasi-transcendentalism—an esthetical response to conceptual complacency—a needless and frivolous hermeticism—and in deconstructions expected irony, a resistance to questions which begin “What is…?”
All possible meanings situate the reader, the thinker, the explicator in a situation of limitations. But yet, there is irony in that too—for the limits that language is bound by is the limit of always being able to go beyond, to seek further, to stop nowhere. I say this is binding because language is a discourse that provides an escape of thought, yet withholds attention and time. We need it to explicate the self’s existence—and therefore, it is an escape we seek and which proves to be inescapable. We desire it, we need it, we try and control it yet it controls us and decides the power of control we can have.
It feels impossible. And I wonder why I have chosen it—or why it has chosen me—why I have become so fascinated and entrapped in, not just language, but the deconstruction of it? Some theorists analyze language at a more basic and definitive level. Why have I not chosen to follow that path? Not seek questions, not rival rules, not to work with the flow, not stay within the design?
Perhaps because language is what I have been using my entire life—what people have based their critique of me around—a critique that affects me most deeply. If I cannot use language well than, I will always seem to exist on a superficial basis. Maybe I find I am studying it now because it is in the only instrument I have to study the self I see. I also am not like most people I know—in that I have manuscripts of writing that have recorded who I have been along my way through life.
Derrida, probably the most prestigious deconstructionist within the movement, is not only the most significant contemporary thinker but the most denounced. People use him to derive meaning, and then use his words to analyze his own self. I cannot explain this better at the moment. But what I mean to show is the paradox or maybe just the irony.
After having a public journal for a little less than half of my life, I have proof that one uses his self to analyze and critique his self. And that also observers take your own words and pin them against you, when they were supposedly all meant for yourself. The idea of being judged is also an inescapable effect—an effect that starts from the instant one visually sees you (written, face to face, memory, imagination—all uses the psychic text of sight). Derrida’s writing undermines usual ideas about texts, meanings, concepts and identities. The reactions that were aroused were criticism and abuse. And there is a simple reason—deconstruction is controversial. Just as the self is controversial. It can not be entirely known and it can’t be escaped because we are inside of ourselves. So why doesn’t one give up? The recognition that we cannot have control over it drives us to seek control—to obtain power, to prove wrong, to find access. A lot of individuals avoid this issue—they simply choose not to think of it. Sure, there are plenty of other things to be consumed with and be subject to. What gets me is that the individual self is language. We read meaning into everyone. They contain meaning—they use language to explain their meaning and we use language to explore what we are told. Letting someone talk usually brings on a level of commitment—the commitment to actually listen—and whenever I do, I feel as though it is rewarding because I am always surprised about the meaning that unfolds, about the life I am able to read. Again I can’t talk to many people about this subject. It bores them, they think I am thinking too much—and this is fine because there are many things I can’t pretend to be interested in. All of us find meaning where others do not. But I can’t help but use in my defense—if the individual is really just a body of text, why would anyone ignore it? They must be fearful of the undertaking, the dedication, the challenge of curiosity. When people turn their back to it, they are basically saying that it has less meaning to them—that there are other things more meaningful. But what is more meaningful than our relation to others? Rilke said that all we can achieve here is to recognize ourselves completely in what can be seen on earth. The man is brilliant and was also one of the few individuals that Heidegger admired. These men thought and saw beyond and thanks to their obsessive questioning and complexity they advanced where we are today. Maybe you’ve got to piss a few people off, have them not understand you, have a divide take place in order to make a difference and illustrate the commitment to irrationality that proved to be rational with time, even if the impact transcended your physical time. The more involved thinkers get with a certain thread of thought, the more addicted they become. The thread of thought is not necessarily a trend—and it is better that it is not. I have always been addicted to something—I’m just glad that this time it is productive, or rather, something that produces meaning.
Sunday, May 25, 2008
written words have been worked
I feel myself always working life through without pause. Working with words. Examining their actions and expressions that are impressed upon the page. And lastly working the relationship the words have with other nouns and with the perform of actions. I feel myself becoming invested in the language of an inaudible soul. I stare within the transcended world that hangs above the surface text and between these two realms of real my eyes stare within. I am looking for the word I feel feels most. Ultimately, I want writing to be an art piece—philosophically unnerving but courageously risking criticism and not receiving immediate comprehension. I want the writing page to be a pattern design—experience fabrication imagination hope pleasure principle all threaded through the materiality of the text—as the sentences must fall into set as a strand of pearls. Romanticizing memory as a ploy to honor time, and breathe beauty into the not blossomed—into the flowers cut too soon to ripen and grow. I stare, my figuring eyes fixated on the words below me. I want each word to feel immensely and act suggestively. My words need to be characters on their own—capable of being mused at, followed, mimicked, influential. I want each word to pierce the eye with an image so heavy, that the head hurts less while the eye feels the weight of seeing more.
Friday, May 23, 2008
fantasies feel less.
We spoke about what it all is. But now that I think back upon it, I don’t believe we ever questioned the term that was used to narrow down the wide-ranging feelings. And is that not strange—suspicious even—how the naming of something, the labeling, attaches you to that one word and what we have decided that word evokes, suggests, means, says. As if we are all so simple minded—as if one word has the ability to determine the enormity of thought and feeling. I don’t believe it does, but still we go along with it because perhaps it eases us—determining a definition helps us make up our mind, and settle within the result of what has been chosen. I’m sure I could make myself clearer if I used examples, but even if that seems tedious to me at the moment. But I will give one: even in writing this, I have so many words to choose from to convey a feeling—to bring me closer to illustrating my intangible thought—and yet, I choose certain words because they are within my mind’s reach and imbedded within my lexicon and therefore I construct an idea that ties itself back to me, but it is not my single idea, nor may it be the one I believe in most. It is simply what I have chosen—what felt most appropriate to the condition I was in. I learned this especially when I was working in documentary classes and taking memoir courses. I saw how I exposed the subject in one very contained and yet, possibly artificial light, just so I could begin somewhere—just so I could begin the act of art. In doing so a perception of the subject was illuminated and so was a perspective of the individual directing the story (myself). But was it all true? In my mind of reason, yes, but it was not always true. In art you focus in on a certain passage way—you pull one thread from the ball of thought—you use one side of sense—one shade of thought—one eye in sight—and you stay true to those qualities, and those determine or perhaps, over determine the reality. I realize I have been doing this for years—I try and perfect it every time I sit down and think the art through—it has become so immediate that my real life (if you will) has become less and less different. I don’t know what came first: the compulsion to concentrate deeply on a certain characteristic in a character I have constructed or my own obsessive compulsiveness that drives me in my own life. I think the latter. I think writing has become my cure—just as I think it has always been the platform where obsessive compulsiveness—or is it neurosis—is accepted. But my life has always been the vantage point that I look out from.
I use to worry that I would not be able to write a novel. I feared conversation. I feared planning. Stories always came in strides to me—I knew only as much as the moment told me. Days moved forth, deadlines came around every week and I held back on the rush to decide the direction of my stories and let my experiences lead me and influence my writing imagination. I got into college for Writing and Publishing, then dropped it—thinking the glamour of the media industry would not only provide me with more money but would be… easier… for me. I didn’t have to feel, I didn’t have to acknowledge myself, my surroundings or my awareness of either. I entered into a new relationship and documented that through photography, but never lifted a pen to breath life into anything. Later I read a quote, “Lovers who truly love, never write down their happiness.” It reassured me but I couldn’t help and wonder if it had been a mistake. Ultimately, this past fall I got back into writing. I stopped watching films—which I felt like I was not really watching but drinking wine and drifting off to—and began filling time with literature and writing. There are so many reasons for it, but one is that it was a dialogue I could escape into when loneliness would otherwise overburden me—and it also gave me a reason to get healthy. When anyone, including myself, read my words they didn’t have to see me physically—they could imagine me—and therefore my body mattered less and I let go of controlling it more and more.
But see, now I have completely digressed because I chose certain words that have delivered me elsewhere than I had intended. What did I intend? What we spoke about and the word we used which our conversation revolved around. The word was fantasy. What is an expectation for an experience but a hope that our imagination has assumed for the future? Hope hope hope hope. I use to always want to name my Manhattan dog that. There is a reality in fantasies though—and the reality is that they are fabricated foresights—we attribute these hopeful scenes for future happenings—and we remind ourselves so much of the wish that they become apart of our memory. We even dream these moments—these scenarios—and we wake feeling as though they had been memories or a result of a memory. And they were because in foreseeing the future, you play out a scene you expect and anticipate will occur and when it does not you feel let down, deprived and unjustified (as though you have been robbed or deceived of what you deserve). But the truth is those moments never did happen—and maybe they were never meant to or never even should have. Sometimes the imagination needs to be cut loose because one builds an idealization—one works towards a future that had never been issued—and one reminds his self only of what he constructed for pleasure. The thing is fantasies do not just end, unless a new one comes one’s way. The fantasy is otherwise not destroyable. I have heard people recommend to others to act aloof—to play if off—but to act a certain way is to be conscious and aware the entire time of the fantasy not being reality—not being the current presence. Therefore, I think this is not useful advice. One may never be satisfied with a fantasy not being fulfilled, but one can be assured that it was never as real as the dreamer wanted it to be and that the dreamer did not even desire it as much as he had romanticized he did. The only advice I can give is to find a peace within oneself—a security that does not involve the exterior environment. It requires a degree of selfishness and a definite degree of comfortableness in oneself. One can live only his own life. Fantasies are fun, but they exist in bubbles that will never be entered and they pop when one tries to penetrate its surface or tries to get too close. I have gotten better about living within and for the moment—and when one is focused on here and not there, fantasies feel less and less.
I use to worry that I would not be able to write a novel. I feared conversation. I feared planning. Stories always came in strides to me—I knew only as much as the moment told me. Days moved forth, deadlines came around every week and I held back on the rush to decide the direction of my stories and let my experiences lead me and influence my writing imagination. I got into college for Writing and Publishing, then dropped it—thinking the glamour of the media industry would not only provide me with more money but would be… easier… for me. I didn’t have to feel, I didn’t have to acknowledge myself, my surroundings or my awareness of either. I entered into a new relationship and documented that through photography, but never lifted a pen to breath life into anything. Later I read a quote, “Lovers who truly love, never write down their happiness.” It reassured me but I couldn’t help and wonder if it had been a mistake. Ultimately, this past fall I got back into writing. I stopped watching films—which I felt like I was not really watching but drinking wine and drifting off to—and began filling time with literature and writing. There are so many reasons for it, but one is that it was a dialogue I could escape into when loneliness would otherwise overburden me—and it also gave me a reason to get healthy. When anyone, including myself, read my words they didn’t have to see me physically—they could imagine me—and therefore my body mattered less and I let go of controlling it more and more.
But see, now I have completely digressed because I chose certain words that have delivered me elsewhere than I had intended. What did I intend? What we spoke about and the word we used which our conversation revolved around. The word was fantasy. What is an expectation for an experience but a hope that our imagination has assumed for the future? Hope hope hope hope. I use to always want to name my Manhattan dog that. There is a reality in fantasies though—and the reality is that they are fabricated foresights—we attribute these hopeful scenes for future happenings—and we remind ourselves so much of the wish that they become apart of our memory. We even dream these moments—these scenarios—and we wake feeling as though they had been memories or a result of a memory. And they were because in foreseeing the future, you play out a scene you expect and anticipate will occur and when it does not you feel let down, deprived and unjustified (as though you have been robbed or deceived of what you deserve). But the truth is those moments never did happen—and maybe they were never meant to or never even should have. Sometimes the imagination needs to be cut loose because one builds an idealization—one works towards a future that had never been issued—and one reminds his self only of what he constructed for pleasure. The thing is fantasies do not just end, unless a new one comes one’s way. The fantasy is otherwise not destroyable. I have heard people recommend to others to act aloof—to play if off—but to act a certain way is to be conscious and aware the entire time of the fantasy not being reality—not being the current presence. Therefore, I think this is not useful advice. One may never be satisfied with a fantasy not being fulfilled, but one can be assured that it was never as real as the dreamer wanted it to be and that the dreamer did not even desire it as much as he had romanticized he did. The only advice I can give is to find a peace within oneself—a security that does not involve the exterior environment. It requires a degree of selfishness and a definite degree of comfortableness in oneself. One can live only his own life. Fantasies are fun, but they exist in bubbles that will never be entered and they pop when one tries to penetrate its surface or tries to get too close. I have gotten better about living within and for the moment—and when one is focused on here and not there, fantasies feel less and less.
Wednesday, May 21, 2008
crying, i changed.
I woke after few hours of sleep, checked my phone, saw I had mail and began reading what would make it impossible to fall back to sleep. The message went on and on easily, but each word was difficult to digest. I read the words aloud—through and through—and then paragraphs in, I couldn’t hold on anymore, and cried. Cried through the remaindered of the letter. Cried through the disclosure of another individual’s story. This morning I cried, no more than two minutes after I woke. This afternoon I cried at the kitchen counter over lunch. Today I cried because of the honesty of a single secret. I cried because I was the chosen ears and eyes to have it shared with. I cried because I am practically a stranger, existing in appearance through photographs and words on Facebook, and yet I woke and was given the intimacy of someone else’s words to me, but so desperately for themselves. I cried because no one has it easy but everyone believes it can be—and that is where the complication lies. I cried because when we are in trouble—when our interior takes on a new mood—we have ourselves convinced that the moment won’t change, that the mood wouldn’t take on a new shade soon enough, that the feeling of those times will define us forever and that we won’t last much longer within this new state of being we occupy. I cried because if only we could know—then—that we will change, that feelings will fall from us, that life will assume a different story, that in retrospect we will remember and we will see more of the good than the bad of the times. I cried because during my vacation in Miami I found more photographs of my past and not only did I see my selves but I saw the apparent happiness in each documented happening—and yet, I had been convinced that I had been otherwise and consumed with wanting to be pained and wounded—just so I would drive myself further, to discover more, experience more, understand more, acknowledge more, feel more and ultimately be more. I cried because I can talk to, am interested in talking to and am talked to deeply and enjoyably by almost anyone, and yet someone who I have shared multiple nights with and woken to in the mornings has an inability to speak—yes, the mouth moves, words are made but nothing really comes out. I can’t think back on the last time this has happened to me—that connection has not been made through communication. I cried because I can get labeled for over thinking but on the flipside those that don’t think seem the most complicated and not understandable. I cried because communication is all we have, and yet something some people know so little of. I cried because people reach out to others—wanting them to provide a validating answer that they can hold on to—but there is no answer, only truths they can uncover within themselves and perhaps this is less of what they want, but more of what they need. I cried because we write from addictions—our minds speak from a place of urgency. I cried because ironically I had called attention to pictures of this person one day before and my concerns were only assumptions and now, twenty four hours later, I know and am no longer someone who can only assume a personal scenario. I cried because I was scared of the story. I cried because I read myself in the letter. I cried because sometimes regardless of the stupidity of the mistakes one makes, one is not stupid but actually smarter for seeing what has been done. I cried because this letter was sent and intended for me not because we know each other, but because the individual feels like he can—because the assumption was made that I would not judge, that I could and would help, that I would keep the letter within me, that I would never fault the imperfections that we try so tediously to mask. I cried because I woke up, read a letter and am now changed because of it. I cried because I knew I did not cry when my grandmother died but am crying for someone I do not know. I cried because I am glad someone recognized why I am here—candid on the Internet and sincere in person—revealing what can so easily be held beneath my tongue and guarded for effectuating mysteriousness—I am glad when someone takes advantage of it. I cried this morning because in less than five minutes I knew a new world and feel the desire to help shift the scene and reposition the perspective. I cried because I feel the pressure to be strong everyday—to learn everyday—for myself and for others.
Monday, May 19, 2008
s. johansson
"the genius of scarlett johansson"
listened to her stuff awhile ago and i couldn't figure out where the demon voice was coming from. i mean, i know her talking voice is husky, but her singing voice sounds inhuman. you can get it for free at hypem.com. also, i mentioned it awhile back but she is rumored to be directing a short for the film New York, I Love You (play off of Paris Vu Par and Paris, je t'aime ).
listened to her stuff awhile ago and i couldn't figure out where the demon voice was coming from. i mean, i know her talking voice is husky, but her singing voice sounds inhuman. you can get it for free at hypem.com. also, i mentioned it awhile back but she is rumored to be directing a short for the film New York, I Love You (play off of Paris Vu Par and Paris, je t'aime ).
Sunday, May 18, 2008
videos
Too much candy from Capucha on Vimeo.
Balloons With Fishing Wire from Jordan Clarke on Vimeo.
i am in love with jordan clarke
Davey Dance Blog -45- LOUVRE - Katerine "100% V.I.P." from Pheasant Plucker on Vimeo.
http://www.vimeo.com/daveydanceblog
Thursday, May 15, 2008
baumer
"Take What's Mine" by Baumer from Jason Debiak on Vimeo.
i have become preoccupied with another element in life -- music. i just want to spend miami days blasting music and singing while spinning around in my car. it is also very easy to spot me doing just that. honestly, after fanatically finding music blogs, my dimension of/on/in life has shifted. what gets me every time i see a performance is that the viewer and musician are both experiencing the moment of creation at the same time. it is the only art form where there is no delay - both parties are entrapped in the ambiance of sounds, the feeling of sounds. and that is why i stare speechless every time i listen to a musician play.
Wednesday, May 14, 2008
We Were Together
Together we sat and quickly began maneuvering through introductory topics that keep discourse frivolous and the act of being and conquest of knowing shamefully superficial and rather impossible to achieve when paired with the elemental constraints of time. I am not altogether sure whether it was the subjects of our conversation or the exaggerated expression that his eyes embodied which intoxicated me. But I do know that his eyes contained a world within them—that they saw, captured and explained more than what is presumed natural for the human eye. And inevitably, it was the vocality of his emphatic eyes that decided my inhibitions—that persuaded my tongue—that caused me to fall victim to the paradox of our enchantment. It was not that I became damaged from the wake of our exchange, but that a person within myself was destroyed. Destroyed for the better—ruined for good.
Asking me, he said, “But is not a lifetime of journal writing, an oeuvre entirely fragmented by the rapidness of thought and incautious framing of expressed experience and recollection of event? How could a collection of times be regarded as superior text, aside from its aspiration to remain genuine to the behavior within the interior city and the factuality of feeling?”
Growing more comfortable with the question and the reply I would generate, I spoke, “See that is where I have refrained from being classic. I do not know the performance or process of keeping a journal that is bounded by the personal and contains the interior secrets of subjectivity. I have never been that type of writer who unpeels his membrane and discloses his moments of being only for his self to read, judge and relate. Knowing that there will always be someone outside of myself who will be brought into my interior sightings and who will react to the discharge of my disclosed divulgences, changes the direction of my records of time and the processual pace I have them drain from within me. Perhaps my explanation is simply that I am a perfectionist who cannot imagine writing words that fall over themselves and sentences that tumble together. That type of writing would make me fall apart—and I could not consciously let myself do that. Therefore, my lifetime of journal writing has been fragments of performance—an exercise in bettering myself through language or possibly bettering the language that explicates myself. So in one way it has been a practice in perfecting linguistics and in another way, I look back and see a lifetime that has been dedicated to literature. My entries come quite impulsively, but I react to the thoughts that word the phrases before letting them take place and shape on the page. In that sense, I have never lost control of the crafting of myself—each journal entry has contained hope and has concluded with a revelation that is woven within the writing, rather than a product that came after it—each aspires to be a piece of literature, not a capsule I exist within unedited."
Coming up for breath, he stared at me and took over, “So you have managed to make art out of the normalcy of life. You have succeeded in injecting extravagance in the unmurmuring flatness of experiential time. You have taken the title of Storyteller, given it a twist and invented a new role. I now understand the superiority of this oeuvre—it shifts the nerves, it is the cross processing of beings and it redetermines the eye’s and I’s sight. It is awfully sublime.”
Together we sat and spoke within ourselves. Time moved on around us, but we kept back with ease. When the moment was right, I spoke again, “Neither of us should worry though, nothing here has happened that I would like to change.”
Read, Maybe (07.22.04)
July 22 2004
I feel like I've had some sort of self realization. This will probably be one of the honest tellings of myself that you may decide to skim over, ignore, or read feveriously. I'll tell you, a lot of me was wound up about coming to camp. I'd be around no one I knew - and for the first time in awhile, I'd be doing something completely on my own, starting out alone. I wasn't looking foward to that aspect of it for the reason I often hear some people use, which goes "no one knows you, you can be whoever you want to be." I didn't want to be anyone else or be the person I've always wanted to be. I was excited and anxious because I wanted to be comfortable and confident with who I was by the time I left. It was a lot to ask for, in three weeks I wanted the confidence that my insecurities wont bare out. And at the same time, ironically, I wanted to change. Yes, change - change what exactly? Oh I dont know, just a touch of my innerself and more of how people viewed me from the outside. I wanted so badly to be above, to have this thick shell that covered me from any potential hurt. I have these certain characteristics that make me who I am, that give me my edge, but that I just hate. Like how I feel so much for others, for myself.. it's pain it's happiness it's jealousy it's being proud of another persons accomplishment. I analyze, I worry because throughout the years I've felt like the people I started off being most confident with let me down so now I can never believe that what I see is how it really is. But now after all this yearning to change, to get rid of such flaws or maybe my real perfections, I see a different side to it. Why do I have to get rid of something? Maybe it's just how a person is, maybe it will always be in them and you can't work to get it to go away.. and maybe, maybe it's what makes you you. I can't really try and erase my sensitive, big hearted conscious - it's what makes me Chelsea, this emo tenacious altered perspective and deep hearted individual. And why should I look to change that? Just so the people who struggle against me or give me my insecurities THINK I'm above it all, that I'm okay with it, that it doesn't phase me? Bullshit, it would be me not being who I actually am - and after tiny games and altered personalities I've come to realize that people can't help but like me when I'm being myself and once I'm not, well that's when I loose people's interest - and maybe forever. And I've definitly made that mistake recently and I did it because I wanted to seem like I didn't care.
----
A lot of this comes from me feeling like I have shit in place in my life. I've got something that I love, that I'm learning right infront of me - I have a path - I have something to go after and it feels better and better each day. It makes me think; Chelsea things are putting themselves in their place, things are taking off and you don't deserve to be around anyone that doesn't bring out the best in you - which are the times when I'm how I always was, the goofy happy Chelsea. And maybe with that I'll have to do what Andy Dick does and "clip" a few.
----
Printing went great today - things may not be finalized but I'm seeing things take off - and I'm sensing improvement in myself. It's weird, there have been so many pictures taken of me or people that want to use me as a subject, we joke that maybe the gallery at the end of the program should be all the pictures taken of me. I mean it's stupid, but maybe I should stop looking at the little things that aren't perfect about me and look at the things that are and well like I said on the first day of class, beauty is about having flaws because it's what makes you perfect and what makes you an individual.
Soon Enough (08.06.05)
August 8 2005
I've never thought about the concept of the indescribable. As in a moment, an individual, a sensation. I just expected words to be powerful enough to convey anything. To reinvent any moment and breathe life back into it. But last night I found it all to be otherwise. It was shown to me that, for example, if you know someone so well and love them you can't seem to describe them. You can't thrust five adjectives on to them and label them like a package. And after thinking about it - that is exactly the way it should be. If you love something enough you shouldn't be able to sum it up, narrow it down, confine it to limits. Think about it. Well, last night was indescribable. At the moment I could have spoken about it in the most poetic prose. I could have matched the perfect words with each individual feeling. And now, hours later, I can't find even one word for it. Sometimes you realize that no word could give something justice and if you can't give something the credit it deserves, you choose not to try.
The hardest thing about last night was not crying. I do all these small things to try and contain myself. My two front teeth bite down on my lip and I close my eyes so no one can witness how glossy they have become. I felt like the weakest girl and yet simulatenously the strongest as I sat on those steps staring into nothingness. And it was then that I knew how fragile I am, how young and hopeful. There are times when the air feels different, where every face amongst me blurs and I become completely captivated in a trance that for the time being is incapable of being broken. Sometimes during these moments I feel inspired, reconnected, content. It is a feeling that comes and goes, long enough but never often enough. And so in order to hold on to it I take something with me that held my eye at where ever I was. One time I bought a necklace that says Persevere. It went with the mood I was feeling and wanted to always remember. And it may be years before I take it off. But there are other times, like last night, where there is nothing around you that you can buy to remember a place or feeling by. And I guess that's when you hold on to the person you shared it with.
Soon enough, I'll have nothing to go by but mailed letters. Distant voices and starved feelings. I'll look for something I have now, just so I feel comfort and I will do just like I told myself not to. But sometimes when you want to do your best, you start doing your worst because you feel like if other people hate you, you now have the single reason to hate them. This summer is one I won't forget. For all those that I always wanted to return to, that promised new and better things after throwing their back to me - I now know, I never will choose to return. You should only give yourself to someone once and if they took advantage of all you gave while you were giving it, you are far too deserving to give love a second chance, to give hope a chance to live. He asked me if I knew how many people were out right now looking for what we have, for this. And all I could think was how I use to always be that girl. Outside, alone, searching for something, anyone that would give me one chance to swoop them off their feet or would swoop me off mine before I even had to try.
What We Had August 3 2005
This summer I've learned that the best things seem to last the shortest. Coming the quickest and leaving us the fastest. As if it never existed, merely a name etched out in the sand, washed away by the tide and to be forgotten like a chill breeze on our back. Meaning something momentarily, but capable of being no more than just a milestone on one path out of the twenty seven thousand in one's life. It is something I have always been most fearful of; putting time into something and then having to walk away from it, just to watch it disappear. Three months erased from your memory as if they never existed, as if he never existed, as if the two of you never were, as if it was no more than a faint dream in the night. Lately when I'm laying in bed at night or when I'm in the backseat of a car I trail off. I think about the letters I am going to write to particular people before I go. I bite my tongue so much that I know that a letter will be the only way to get a few thoughts out, to breathe existence into all I wish I had said. I just want certain people to know how they affected me - the girl who may appear to never be affected by anyone. I suppose it will be a final touch on something that I may never return to. I mean call me crazy, but whose to say that once I leave I won't put people behind me and they won't put me behind them? Nothing is ever enough. There is that line, "You can never be too thin, too rich, or too young." Well nothing can last long enough either. Once the moment is over I always think about how I wish I had held on to it longer. Gone slower just to heighten the existence of the moment at hand. The rush only speeds up the reaction to the realization that the moment is no longer there. And from there we only have a memory and a memory is always intensified or weakened by one's imagination. The best things leave us at their best. We have to walk away when we like them most. And I think that is the only way to do it, because then at least we appreciate what we had.
I've never thought about the concept of the indescribable. As in a moment, an individual, a sensation. I just expected words to be powerful enough to convey anything. To reinvent any moment and breathe life back into it. But last night I found it all to be otherwise. It was shown to me that, for example, if you know someone so well and love them you can't seem to describe them. You can't thrust five adjectives on to them and label them like a package. And after thinking about it - that is exactly the way it should be. If you love something enough you shouldn't be able to sum it up, narrow it down, confine it to limits. Think about it. Well, last night was indescribable. At the moment I could have spoken about it in the most poetic prose. I could have matched the perfect words with each individual feeling. And now, hours later, I can't find even one word for it. Sometimes you realize that no word could give something justice and if you can't give something the credit it deserves, you choose not to try.
The hardest thing about last night was not crying. I do all these small things to try and contain myself. My two front teeth bite down on my lip and I close my eyes so no one can witness how glossy they have become. I felt like the weakest girl and yet simulatenously the strongest as I sat on those steps staring into nothingness. And it was then that I knew how fragile I am, how young and hopeful. There are times when the air feels different, where every face amongst me blurs and I become completely captivated in a trance that for the time being is incapable of being broken. Sometimes during these moments I feel inspired, reconnected, content. It is a feeling that comes and goes, long enough but never often enough. And so in order to hold on to it I take something with me that held my eye at where ever I was. One time I bought a necklace that says Persevere. It went with the mood I was feeling and wanted to always remember. And it may be years before I take it off. But there are other times, like last night, where there is nothing around you that you can buy to remember a place or feeling by. And I guess that's when you hold on to the person you shared it with.
Soon enough, I'll have nothing to go by but mailed letters. Distant voices and starved feelings. I'll look for something I have now, just so I feel comfort and I will do just like I told myself not to. But sometimes when you want to do your best, you start doing your worst because you feel like if other people hate you, you now have the single reason to hate them. This summer is one I won't forget. For all those that I always wanted to return to, that promised new and better things after throwing their back to me - I now know, I never will choose to return. You should only give yourself to someone once and if they took advantage of all you gave while you were giving it, you are far too deserving to give love a second chance, to give hope a chance to live. He asked me if I knew how many people were out right now looking for what we have, for this. And all I could think was how I use to always be that girl. Outside, alone, searching for something, anyone that would give me one chance to swoop them off their feet or would swoop me off mine before I even had to try.
What We Had August 3 2005
This summer I've learned that the best things seem to last the shortest. Coming the quickest and leaving us the fastest. As if it never existed, merely a name etched out in the sand, washed away by the tide and to be forgotten like a chill breeze on our back. Meaning something momentarily, but capable of being no more than just a milestone on one path out of the twenty seven thousand in one's life. It is something I have always been most fearful of; putting time into something and then having to walk away from it, just to watch it disappear. Three months erased from your memory as if they never existed, as if he never existed, as if the two of you never were, as if it was no more than a faint dream in the night. Lately when I'm laying in bed at night or when I'm in the backseat of a car I trail off. I think about the letters I am going to write to particular people before I go. I bite my tongue so much that I know that a letter will be the only way to get a few thoughts out, to breathe existence into all I wish I had said. I just want certain people to know how they affected me - the girl who may appear to never be affected by anyone. I suppose it will be a final touch on something that I may never return to. I mean call me crazy, but whose to say that once I leave I won't put people behind me and they won't put me behind them? Nothing is ever enough. There is that line, "You can never be too thin, too rich, or too young." Well nothing can last long enough either. Once the moment is over I always think about how I wish I had held on to it longer. Gone slower just to heighten the existence of the moment at hand. The rush only speeds up the reaction to the realization that the moment is no longer there. And from there we only have a memory and a memory is always intensified or weakened by one's imagination. The best things leave us at their best. We have to walk away when we like them most. And I think that is the only way to do it, because then at least we appreciate what we had.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
Posts
