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.

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.

"super skinny me"

this is a bbc documentary. this is the first segment of a longer series. the rest can be found on youtube.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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 ).

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

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.

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.

savage grace, tracey fragments, water lilies

Each trailer is different. Amazing to see how even the editing of trailers tell a different cinematic story.

Words + Editing = A Good Mind!

I feel like this film got a lot of flak or at least the New York critics didn't think it was strong. I still think it is a must see. In fact, there are a handful of must-sees and I am so tired of going-with-the-flow-film-outings where I fall asleep in the theater.

guy maddin

Brand Upon the Brain! trailer

personal past, present personal.

When we spoke in our conference together, she told me how profound my writing was—how it was absolutely lyrical, but difficult and abstract. She explained that because of this that it did not fit within the genre of personal essay because it did not attempt to tell or share an experience in a straightforward nature that others could understand at ease. She seemed proud and confident that she had untangled my metaphors and had begun to deduce my suggestions with clarity. But she still believed that I had never intended to tell a personal story, She remembered the first day I met her, where I pulled her aside and asked if I could do something different—do something that shook the standards of the genre. I’m not sure I ever did though. My essays read like poetry—there were revelations but they were symbolic and not concrete—it was necessary that they be decoded because the language in which they were told was with a voice that was for myself alone. It followed the belief that poets are the most genuine—for their voice is spoken only with their ear in mind, and not the audience of the world that could assume and relate only a fraction. Later I termed the voice the essays spoke with as, the language spoken in the interior city. After our talk, I felt dissatisfied with my performance—as if I had been acting safe—not wanting to be emotional, repetitive, obsessive, personal or in other words, labeled as an self-reflective, self-deprecating female. I could go on and on, finding new reasons why I avoided the subject of myself, my stories and the responsibility of the two. I did, indeed, tell her many—if not all that I could think of at the time. When I left she told me that she felt like she knew me more than she ever had—more than she had expected she would. Those words—though simple and possibly contrived—inspired me. I wanted her to know me, I wanted my readers to as well—I felt like I turned my back on the group who read my work and candidly said that it felt like it was philosophical essay and not a personal essay—that it was beautiful, powerful but after reading it they knew nothing about me. Somehow—someway, I did not expect, last night I finally wrote a personal essay. A political personal essay, which I was convinced was the furthest topic I would want to try and feel toward. But I did—I wrote and wrote and wrote twelve pages—and the political became the story of my struggle as a person, my existence on the Internet and what it became through the years, how I suffered from emptiness my first year of college and what that combined with my prior history did to my physical presence. There was something invigorating about just telling it as it was and as it is. Not letting language get in the way—and not letting an audience either. It took me back to those years when I wrote to tell my story, to explain myself and with the drive to have other people understand what it was that had happened—what it was that was being felt.

Tonight after a day of feeling absolutely terrible with shopping. Side note: this is precisely why I never shop. I fear clothes. I fear the mirrors. I fear the shapes, the sizes. I fear being so close to my reflection in a space that is lighted. But I tried because I am going to Miami and want to feel good—but this almost feels pointless, especially when knowing my past, of never feeling good in clothing. The bottom line is I can always feel my body on me. I think I feel its substance more than most people do. No one ever said living in your skin would be easy always—but it has never felt easy for me; not as far back as my memory goes at least. That story aside, tonight I began packing and reaching through my towering “things” I found seven pages in a summer journal I had written. It was what I bought for my summer last year in Europe. I had promised myself that one thing I could accomplish while being there was to begin writing again. Unfortunately, I did not. Writing a mere seven pages does not qualify as writing while being there. But as I read through them just a bit ago, there is something there—there is something candid—and because I chose to write like that I was actually able to write on the go and be able to understand myself even a year later. It reminds me of the personal essay—and how important it is to not over think your thoughts—how necessary it is to just let them go, let your words be less ideal and a bit out of your control. When you don’t try and feel for the words, they remind you of your being.

July 29 2007 BERLIN

At this restaurant/lounge, Intersoup, in Prenzlauer Berg (“Cool District Spotlight”). Alone, alone. Lifted on top of this Asian platform, sitting with my back against pillows that outline (my own) three walls. Shoes are off and I hear the flutter of German voices that bounce off the two separate rooms I am wedged between.

Amazing where you—singular—can place yourself. All it takes is a curious mind and a vibrant eye. We lust for others with the assumption that they (he/she) will provide the extra hand and/or the comforting shoulder AND the soothing voice that together will help you both, collectively, have The Experience.

Well here I came to Berlin alone and newly single...certain that [unfortunately] it is just you that you need to do these things. If the desire is there, then be your own driving force.

If it is some other thing that is needed to do, to be, to “live in love” (yes, Stephen, that is your phrase) it is a peaceful mind. A mind—a state—that encourages you, supports you, allows you to be here and not there or just anywhere alone or with others inside the experience. The partner is yourself. The self you love. The self you do not forbid. The self that you applaud for exploring and experiencing with no shadow, but her/your own of self reflection, to follow her/you about. That is good. Try not to examine this shadow though. Think of it, look to evaluate, to observe and understand. But try and examine less, Chelsea. When one examines one anticipates a problem/an offset. Look to find less problems within the self and, instead, expose the joys of your dynamic being. Enlighten yourself from this exposure and in doing so enlighten all the others that admire this decision to love what you have, instead of walking through life hating the self you are not and need to be.


August 4 2007 TRAIN TO AMSTERDAM

“This is an exaggerated spectacle, and it makes me comfortable. I was always an exaggerated character because I was trying to create all by myself a climate which suited me, bigger flowers, warmer words, more fervent relationships, but here nature does it for me, creates the climate I need within myself, and I can be languid and at rest. It is a drug...a drug...” –Anais Nin, Seduction of the Minotaur.

After a long chase of finding my sister to get to the train station (miscommunication, livid and dramatically not wanting to talk) we arrive and I stare in disbelief that I have read or, rather, not read the tickets. The arrival time in Amsterdam was indeed not our departure time from Paris. How could I be so unaware? So dumb? There is no word/adjective for my state. After getting $1600 stolen the 1st day in Paris and then my cell phone stolen two days ago...how could I be so removed from something that should have been easy to not mistaken. My mind is elsewhere. On my self inflicted pity? So I had to spit out over 240 euros to get Allison and I to Amsterdam, hours after anticipated arrival. I need to be slapped—but worse I know I am doing the slapping, and thus it is harder to bare.

Regardless, I am terribly happy and in a state of bliss riding on the train now. I sit alone...Alli passed out with a family to my left. I filmed our departure and the open fields, read the European newspaper (articles on Salvador Dali, Warhol and literature turned cinema), finished a novel by Anais Nin, now I have started another, drinking wine and had a lovely meal of fish and veggies. The sun is making my right side glow, but I feel (regardless of earlier, my stupidity and unspoken need to be taken care of) like my whole body is glowing inside out. I am happy to be moving and in the midst of all that travels in the chapters of the story of our lives.

Quickly Speaking: There is a little girl to the left of me...so vibrant, filled with “the” energy, greeting everyone with “Hello the most beautiful” in such a Parisian Princessa voice! [But] she has a bit of a lazy eye, I’ve recognized. And coming from America, I want to shelter her from the harshness in/of life. The others she will be faced with that may soak the energy and vibrancy out of her because a “lazy eye” is different, freakish and not perfect. I loathe the prophecy.

aches

so few days are now spent reminding myself of the richness of wine. i do not mean the product of wine, as much as i mean the effect it produces. it was only last year that i was addicted to reds. a day was not lived without a glass and social sittings were not spent without a bottle uncorked and finished. i remember climbing my seven flights of stairs and falling onto my couch with my lips already touching a glass. in retrospect my necessity to bring upon relaxing aids was rather irrational. but then again, what can one say now of my dependency on ambien? although, unfortunately, its hallucinogenic effects no longer fall over my eyes or contaminate my mind. i admit, now i only fall asleep. however, relaxation dependency equated with irrational behavior or not, there is no question that wine's power to intoxicate one's body, infatuate one's eyes and romanticize one's mind is rightfully the qualities that reside within one's perception while the wine is still heavy on their breath and beating on their lips. immediately after one taste, one's face is flushed and in need of fanning. wine flows within one, coating his interior and crystallizing carnal curiosities. petals fall over the drinker's eyes like a masculine body that cloaks a woman's human cave. and partners held within the framing of one's sight tear at the landscape of the other's skin. becoming impregnated with a liquid that soaks the fold of her lips, the night is saturated with a more blinding darkness. how can one see what one knows should be felt, if one is as drunk as they? i have asked myself something similar: what came first attraction or inebriation? and when i woke was it because i was no longer in love or sober to the situation?

April 10 2005: "guided by shoes"

i told him to look down at my shoes; study them hard against the dark night. "love me," they said. i figured he would laugh, say that i was fashionable and brush his hand against my hair. but he pulled me in harder, asking me why why. until someone knocked into me, interrupting a moment of question, of potential truth. i figured that the interruption would carelessly change the mood. he would forget my chance to explain and that would be all; my shoes' statement fading into the dark of the sky. but he only looked at my stone eyes and told me to jump two steps back. let us begin where we had left off. "why shoud i fall in love with you?" each word broken through the twist of our lips upon the other. we have intense passion, yet kilometers that run inbetween us - paychecks to keep us far. i rely on coincidence, fate to fuel such relationship. because you have to, i think it is planned to be, i say we stop with avoidance.
-April 10 2005-




This throws me so entirely backward. As I have recently mentioned I found many old "journals" I had forgotten existed. I remember telling him that I had never been able to write about him. And yet, it must have slipped my mind completely. It is unreal to me--the fact that I was never writing fiction. That reading those words I can now remember that memory. Those were the exact words. I know where we were when they were said. My shoes were gold wedges from Irregular Choice. And yet, as vivid as the air at that moment seems now, I would not have remembered that time had I not written and found it. I would not have known that that was a moment out of multitudes that I wanted to have--that I wanted to be inescapable. Damn, and to remind myself now of the concentration of his words--and how his question today would not be questioned. But one expects all things to feel different when they are out of place.

over time thoughts are exchanged to letters.

I am distracted by myself. I am a distraction to my self. Myself is distracted by its others. My others are distracted by my self. Myself distracts others. I distract others when I am my self.
February 28 2008

In passing I have dreamt this familiarity, and still now, I see I know I’d like even more a kiss to you, but I, I am breathless.
March 14 2008

“You are too much.” That I am, but then also, it is likely that I am less of others and somethings too.
March 19 2008

The magnitude of what I feel is nothing short of a commitment to a certain color of thought, a shade of humanity, an exploration through traveling towards youth less awareness. It is an investment in a study. Surely by the aging of experience, other studies will be brought into being and it is then that I will be devoted to another area of feelings, another training in time.
March 27 2008

Let us find ourselves again comfortable in silence. Our bodies arranged in an entanglement and then fixed in some sleepy pose where our figures are woven to each other’s. I want to fall asleep inside a bear hug and if I awaken be able to tangle the crazy curls. I miss my partner. He had the softest lips and a mouth that spoke only of dreams. But he is, here, prevailing in memory and never ceasing to exist. Simply still, I miss kisses consuming lips, the relationship with romance and the inexhaustible fascination that made this love distinguishable.
April 3 2008

I have no secrets—only questions I have yet to be asked or stories I have not found the chance to tell. With time and curiosity, everything can be known.
April 4 2008

Yesterday I was given a paintbrush for putting on my face. At night I went walking through Manhattan’s maze. I was wearing a nightgown over a black winter coat and eating a pear when a man with his dog said hello and told me I looked healthy, “just like spring.” I laughed, revealing to him the secret of my nightwear. “I like it. You look fresh.”
April 6 2008

Write around me. Have this—whatever you end on doing—not be about me. When you begin, am I there, as you write around me? Well, have me go away. Look at me and have me vanish so you see you can look at me no more. Now, what is it all about? Does it make sense, without me being there? If you can feel it, then I probably have not yet gone. Make me go.
April 12 2008

You are here, but I was not just expecting you. Can I come again later? I do not know if I will be ready for you. When will you know? After it is over and once it no longer is. Then I will not come back if you are to want me only when I am not with you to enjoy it. You have the advantage. At least you know now. I always have to wait till after.
April 28 2008

How can I explain myself? One cannot. I have a lifetime worth of mindful material to work with but I cannot write forever. And if I could and would what will happen when I have died? Will someone continue explaining myself then? Oh I cannot possibly trust such happenings. I cannot explain…
April 29 2008

Perhaps we are the main characters in the dreams of others. I feel I have been such and imagine I have done the same to another.
April 30 2008

I have retired into the ink of the night. And here, I have written within darkness on the black face of reality.
May 3 2008

Of course, I would never go as far as saying I am lie. But I do admit that I become something other. Maybe it is someone more than just a past self. Or further more, maybe when writing, I go behind memory and beyond time and become an existence for the future reader or reactor or, blatantly, a reminder for my future self.
May 6 2008

genre: the journal

response to what is a journal? sometime in february.

Between two states: that of past and present. The process is a product of after thought. I am among mental reflexivity which effects me psychologically--displacing the location of rationale logic and casual thought, or perhaps just the coherence of the two. I assume that with distance the formulation of thought becomes more contextualised, bordering on theory, and because it is less casual than impulsive reactions it is therefore more rationale. But who knows, the act is simple: I am deeply thinking out my mind. Attention to thoughts come and go--and I come and go with it. As quick as my mind goes there, I am here, and we are not truly present or permanently embodying presence anywhere at the same time. My eyes refocus and produce a film that filters a new gaze--a type of documentation that is exposed by cross processing and a layer of multiple stop action images that I illuminate by present light (insight) shaded by situational human interest. The only way to recreate an experience for paper view is to substitute new experience (the current moment of writing) with memory. The event from which I remember transcends time and actuality, thus existing now out of time and in a higher form of fictional imagination. As I write about "I" and from that eye, I embody a passing self that died events ago--and on the page am remade and read as a new character. To write is to tell a sort of story, project the production of a project--a story structured by an autobiographical existence and edited by fictional elements. I create a model of a world and self that is more exact or, rather, refined in mood and substitute the air that brings the living beings to life with an aroma[tic] substance that exaggerates the presence the beings are contained within.

mind wanderings

The Kills was a trip. The true pleasure of living in this City is the endless gifts (ie. phenomenal bands always coming to town every week). In Manhattan you want to do it all--overreach and still find the way to relaxation, consuming the exteriors and then giving yourself time to unfold the experiences and live them. Otherwise, you end up a mess. I need speed in the end. Piles of books, collections to read, soon this sensual space will turn into a library. Cameras are piled on top of each other and I just want to dedicate myself to production--traveling perception--Basically, I need some good vibes with myself. My intensive writing program begins in June so the month of May I am hoping will make me high. With the traveling in May, I'm just going to see what my eyes can tell me--lots of photographs will have to be in the making--I'm looking for materials: quotes, settings, kisses that feel. Hopefully during May my mind will be trying to take in everything and sort through so much. Come June time - the writing is on - from meeting with publishers - actually getting work shopped - and I am curious whether what I do will appeal to them---how many boundaries can be broken. I know for sure though that traveling before going into the intensive program will provide me fragments of moments--scenes--senses--discourses--everything always feels different. I hope everything will make me euphoric---I have a lot I will have to begin writing. I don't know where anything will be taken or how fixated our rules may be. My writing is like floating situations. Where does it fall? Where does it want to land? I predict the month of June will be the most fascinating time. I want to be brilliantly producing--I want the sounds, music, voices, the hose in the morning, coffee making, fan in the room--I want those to be characters in my work. To write one must write with intoxication. I need to find a situation and then all the rest will follow soon after. I haven't made an ounce of sense. Delirium... I just ate ice cream hershey kisses with peanut butter. Yikes.



a.o. scott review & clips from mister lonely
I must say, it was wild hearing his voice after reading his writing so often.

I never mentioned that last weeks New York Magazine was jam packed with goods from beginning to end. I've never been especially drawn to Augusten Burroughs, but after the article I dig his character.

LSD article from Sunday's NYTimes. Makes sense that it was in the "Ideas & Trends" section, figuring after reading the article the drug has never sounded so appealing -- great, a trend renewed.

I'M GOING TO THE KILLS TONIGHT!

Recently, I have had more than one person ask of me the same thing. It has happened at the same type of moment, too. Right as I am thinking it is time he goes, he must read it on my mind. Because before I can let my speech take space in the air, he interrupts my parting lips and silences my vocals. It seems so sudden that I cannot help but now believe all these episodes were compulsively enacted. Stunned to speechlessness each time, I stand unaware of the coming words—let alone the thought they evolve from. Will you put me in your work now? I tell him his stay is over. Four days ago, I told the forth inquirer the same strand of saying, like a stranded sign. Who could possibly question my response? Anyone who has to ask whether he will be remembered within writing, I will only take this far and after this he will not be continued. It would be a tragic joke!—him probably not even knowing his self enough to see his being here.

wednesday conference

You just said, “I am intriguing.” Chelsea, do you want to be a mystery? I don’t know. It’s confusing. I suppose I am a bit of a paradox—a contradiction—because I have become more abstract and elusive, but I can be open, so easily, but someone just has to ask a question. Otherwise nothing is heard. Why would someone ask a question? I-I-I guess one would have to be interested. But what would make them interested? The mystery—the unexpected. Do you want to be found, Chelsea? Known—known internally. I want someone to see through my face because it is what I am instantly associated by and for—and yet, I live behind it and it is beyond my control, so it is not really me, even though it is mine. You said before that as a writer your audience of readers would have to know your body of work to understand what you were saying or suggesting. Is that another way of making sure they read into you? My reader has to be interested in knowing me—he has to be dedicated. I think awareness is the most important thing. I want my reader to be aware. Otherwise, it may not make sense. I can’t be straightforward anymore. It is more challenging for me to do that than deconstruct the way I say it. Maybe that is what you want—and that is okay if you do. Maybe I do, maybe I don’t want them to know, maybe I want them to be smart readers. But at the same time, I have to tell you—yesterday I realized that I have grown a bit insecure about my experiences. They all seem relatable and nothing unusually impacting has happened recently. I couldn’t just wait for something and at the same time I couldn’t keep writing the same story because I would absolutely bore myself. So I see that I have changed the way I am saying, telling or shaping it. I am choosing to make the way it is transmuted individualistic because the experiences won’t separate me. Sometimes I am not conscious I am doing this though—it just happens and then it becomes me so I try to find reason and make meaning for it—possibly just so I can control it or experience it. Do you think you are fascinating, Chelsea? I think I am curious—and I believe that is fascinating. But do you think you are fascinating? I think I use to choose experiences that I thought would make me fascinating for my stories, but that didn’t work. You know, fascinations are a fabrication and a construction. I know, I know. We laughed. Time went by. The time fascinated me. She fascinated me. The revealing of our stories fascinated me. I expected her honesty, but her personal realities surprised me. I told her so. I told her that her appearance and mannerisms did not portray what she was internally manifesting. She said we are both very similar—and though it may be hard to see because of her age, that it was true. I told her it had nothing to do with her age—that she had just perfected unexpectedness. After today, I find her to be admirable. Before you go, I want to ask you about your piece where you referred to “the internalized city of dreams” as a “sewer”. Why a sewer? Oh because dreams are a collection of wasted ideals. But most people would describe dreams idealistically. That is my issue—my point. Ideals are waste—they don’t do anything and they don’t go anywhere. We hope--we dream they will rise above but they remain under the surface. Ideals are just scraps of selves and scraps remain in the garbage.