By Myself.

In class assignment: Isolate a moment. Write "I remember" every time something from memory erupts. Then remove "I remember".

All the time I feared we may lose what was meant for us. Alone, I didn’t have anyone else. Silence could not be harmed. But what isn’t affected could never change me, and perhaps for some time now this absoluteness replaced all the other things I couldn’t depend on. How different I was before I came. And did you notice? That’s okay, too. Not everything is meant for memory, although we intend it to be. Meaningful, I think. At least, I don’t remember, the feeling of my hands. Whether absence was my punishment for going under too long, not considering what was meant for us. How I stared like I was fascinated by water, like I had found my eyes. In my bath, the body retains nothing it already knows. Wondering who I’ve become, hands wander in the shape of an opinion. And I, I push under; holding breath, I challenge consciousness, every time more severely. The heart pulsing is not something I can fall asleep to so I wake to whatever hasn’t happened. Leaving myself drained, I step out lighter, smelling of something, but can’t remember the feeling of my hands. We almost were close. Red, splotchy. My eyes see reflected a newborn child. I am numb to sensations coming from myself. My first feelings are never mine. I think. I don’t know. On the tile floor, I am kept clean. And if we are anything alike you probably know this and hear the sound of my body dripping wet. Which is why you call out, why I move. I am coming soon. Driven faster by fear of losing what was meant for us. From marble to rock, I’ve a moment still in being by myself, so I slow. Stepping on the outside, I’m aware only of the sounds I make. A moment more to wonder whether you can cause change, if not just be it—the feeling in my hands. This, you already know, before I wrote, will be how, be why I begin to write us. There’s less chance I’ll stay clean once I walk across the rocks. But it’s less likely we will lose what was meant for us if I do, so I do and I trip, thinking of the time we’re approaching and the harm I’ve already effected. In silence, you watched me cause my own mistake as if this was the first chance in seeing me, really.

JJJJJ

Can't believe in missed this one...

Survival

Heathers - Remember When - Live At MUZU Studios on MUZU.

I'm getting bigger every day.

Today is one of those days. I woke to the sound of a hairdryer blowing, my body smothered by piles on the bed. To open your eyes and immediately wonder in light whether it is the environment that is a mess or only yourself - what a way to spend time, if only a moment or two, it's too much! I know. Danced my tush off last night, after eating a six course meal. Walked east, hoping open air would pacify my nausea. Men everywhere. My ears hanging onto their words. After awhile all the eyes make me feel grotesque. They watch me become more, watch me be less. Today is one of those days I wish I were lighter. My skin tighter, my hunger controlled. Of course, last night wouldn't have been able to happen had I been unwilling to eat. This body I'm in never feels like mine because it is always changing, always shaping itself and deforming who I see myself as. These thoughts make me less of a person, although because of them I am who I am. It's just tough, confusing really, when you don't know if you'll make it in language, and when so many people tell you to use your image to succeed. That I can, that I should, that ultimately I will. It's terrible the comments - the compliments; how they make me feel pressure to maintain some ideal, that isn't natural nor maintainable.

Acceptance.

Last night I reached new heights. An epiphany. Acceptance.

I don't think I'll ever derive the satisfaction, the pleasure, the purpose of my life working in media. I always thought high; thought once I got a foot in, I could change the system. But the mass media doesn't want my morals, my ethics, the sobriety delivered in truth. Entertainment wants me to dream; a mentality I would have to fake. Ultimately, a behavior I would never succeed at. Sure there are directors whose films epitomize the theories and lifestyle I want to deliver in literature. And these are individuals I respect, admire, applaud. But unfortunately (because it can't be better known), they have done something I am trying to do. They have chosen not to be popular. They have chosen not to come easy. They have chosen not to accessible.

I was cornered into fiction probably out of an insecurity with not being an intellectual. Motivating me was my commitment to, once again, change the standards: what one expected and thought they could handle. Ultimately, I knew fiction reached the masses, the youth, the generations in development and I thought I could use the genre to manipulate one into sitting down with fiction only to discover psychoanalytical philosophy was entertaining, engaging, illuminating - fooling them into, not the imagination, but truth. This will forever be my intention - an aim I know, now, won't be a phase because last night I realized this mind body duality has been a lifestyle, my obsession, my commitment since I was a child.

In the midst of friends over, I found myself on my bed with my mouth hung open over this article. At some time I will talk about things I experienced as a child, that ultimately effected my self and shaped my life. From this, I know the first piece of literature I want to be remembered for; a piece my life has already been devoted to. It will be a split piece - two halves - and there will not be anything fictitious about it.

When I was asked to stay after class on Tuesday night, I was faced with a situation that is increasingly becoming more difficult to shake off. My professor, whose presence I have been in only twice, basically insinuated I was either on drugs, have lost my mind or am bipolar. He did not understand my shifting pronoun was intentional, that it was a mind body exploitation and a reference to myself as a child and as an adult, now looking backward. He proceeded to question whether I had any experience with reading fiction. And I proceeded to feel most uncomfortable and left after feeling obligated to apologize multiple times. I would have felt entirely okay had I been apologizing for just not spending time on the work and not reading the fiction, which all had been the cases. I had been up for 24 hours after a flight and a week long vacation - opaqueness was the result; why did my mental health had to be called into question - why inability to write fiction? And why, just because I am a writer, was I expected to be able to write about anything, all the time? Perhaps, the creative writer can.

My focus has been on post-modernity - a consciousness that certainly confuses the self, but these things were part of development, part of the process of finding clarity and making meanings Perhaps it was my fault for ever thinking creative writing/fiction professors would understand my philosophical slant. If I was trying to expose the psychoanalytic effect of the anorexic: seeing her actual self and wanting her ideal self, believing her mind (ego) could be severed from her body (superego) - than, in the fiction realm today one didn't understand why I just didn't write about not eating certain food or looking at how ugly my body is. But those things weren't what was important, and they aren't what the disorder is about. They avoid what the anorexic is always hungering for.

Perhaps to them I was always stepping into the wrong class. My other professors - outside of fiction - appreciated me, whereas the former thought I was all messed up. Again I was told that I was unwanted by the mass media, as if it were something I didn't already know and/or accept. Because of this, I have been feeling this overwhelming pressure to have an imagination, to invent tales and to disregard my thoughts. In entertainment internships, I see repetitively that the workplace has no handling on creative or even conscious control. I'd like to think producers are being critical when reality shows are edited for audiences, but they never voice an argument and therefore, the importance of the issue goes missing and people remain underdeveloped. They fail to be a substantial self freed of images and ideals. Small talk and kissing ass would be me failing as the person I have always been in mind. I

f my life aim is to reveal the core of individuals, to let ourselves be vulnerable, open and candid, to keep the youth from wasting time on complexes like I have then my career must step away from mass media to focus on one's relationship with the self. If I can't be heard in novels, than I want to be heard face to face. If I can't filter in confession, than I am devoted to helping the other confess. If I can't save lives with the written word, than I have every intention to do so with the spoken. Psychoanalysis. The merging of literature and self. Ultimately, the individual is the creative composite. The character I want to develop. The way I can impact others without compromising my self-belief.

Rachel: Chelsea, I love how your bag remains packed, as if you are here but leaving.

I Want Time To Write

There are an overwhelming amount of sensations I would like to actualize with words. So rather than solely feeling them, I can confirm their existence by sight. Somehow, because of this, I suspect we could - together - recognize the reality of our interior and perhaps trust that we can achieve permanence for one another. Maybe all it takes for us to be, is this acknowledgment: what makes the feelings of two seperate selves significant is the chance they are the same. What would we become if we didn't have to be strong, which is to say, if we let our feelings take advantage of us? What would you do if you let yourself go and from doing so achieved/received your desire? An overabundance of time devoted to self-consciousness prohibits the profound. I respect this opinion but have to add, it may paralyze as well. Was it Woody Allen who said postmodernists perform mental masturbation? Still, Woody, this right here doesn't make me feel like I'm grazing any base. Especially after last week, when it seemed pleasure was pursuing me, instead of I to it. Which is to say, I was more natural and did not dwell, even though I laid in a bedroom that wasn't mine for longer than I have ever allowed and looked upon some other without the will to escape being seen. During this time, I looked outward more than the reverse and discovered my eye became newly fascinated by someone I wasn't thinking about. I found us lucky and successful without regard to the goal of attaining a sort of selfish state. My eye saw without thinking, and this I believe is how I found myself indulged in pleasure. I am facing the fact that without activity, my smile is lifeless and my character paralyzed. I am committed to thought and live for conversation, but I can't stand the retelling of stories. Why? Because one finds themselves in explanation, which postpones the real and truly severes us from our sensual social self. And I don't want to hear myself sounding seperate from how I feel. And I don't want to stop my process within the present to live in a past that has already happened. This detracts from the pleasure and the overarticulation is an awareness where I am portrayed unnaturally - where in order to expound I must exaggerate; ultimately a romanticization that is humorous (in that entitites become an ideal) or tragic (in that analysis is not in tune with the moment's true time). Perhaps because I was seeing sense, sensuality and sensation in such different terms last week I inevitably fell from not thinking about where I was going (consequences, reason, logic). But the fall didn't hurt (or it hasn't, not yet, and if it does it will be a seperate chapter all together). What did happen is I had to bring myself up and think how I had fallen. Instead, the only thing I could think was: why can I not say but one word, that feels so easy and natural from within. There was such tension - how my tongue was tracing over that single word and yet, I couldn't sync it with sound to make it mean something. Maybe even to confirm we matter.


Message 1: Chelsea you are quite elusive.
Message 2: You are interesting, as always, but unclear.

- Is clarity a result of knowing one's self and being fearless? If so, what does this say about me? If I were clear and therefore, also the symptoms that come with it, would I have opposed the logic in remaining speechless, and just said what I feared I felt?

Ep, now I have an hour to write about masochism and sadism...?

2005 "My Future Has Been Planned Out"

A picture with then's post.
Today four years ago, my senior year of High School, I wrote this:

"My future has been planned out"

I am moving to the UK to pursue a modeling career.
I will work for Dazed &Confused
&within time create my own European magazine called Edge.
I will fly to Milan on the weekends for runway shows
&then grace the streets of New York for fashion week.
I will play foozball with Matt &go to pubs.
Then drink wine with my dearest Alex as we dance the night away.

- I haven't any recollection of who these Matt and Alex characters were. Also, I feel most disinterested in fashion. And this has been going on for the last 3 years. But to be reminded of my desire to create a magazine called Edge. Wowow, does that bring me back. I remember wanting the name to go down the right corner edge of the magazine. All in all on that Valentine's Day in 2005, my wants were quite superficial. I was absolutely acting a role. And my future prediction is rather dissimilar to the ones I have pursued up through today. The post went on to receive 45 comments. My sister never wrote in, just as she never reads my blog now, but the few times she did she knocked the socks off me:

Attention to the two who masturbate to the thought of making others more miserable than themselves -despite what mtv and the demons in your heads might tell you- stupidity is not a virtue of any sort. And you are so unfunny that you put shame to 'anonymous' users all around. go bathe your souls or read a book and learn the value of intelligence and then I can only hope that you've obtained enough confidence in yourself not to need to put down others or concern yourself with their life to the degree you have.

As Time Darkens, The Body Becomes Shadowed.

I look behind me to forget my future for a while. A green lawn turns yellow after lunch. Eyes feel brilliant discovering the change. Next to trees, flowers are insignificant. But alone, each dandy is wild with appeal. Fingers pluck pink suckles ornamenting the bush. Her palm becomes heavy with afterlife – it is nature, not everything is meant to show a vigorous bloom.

She takes no notice, that it will only be her that grows from this experience. A bead is at the bottom of every stem. She studies it in light and pulling gently, draws honey. Her tongue is sweet, her desires tender, her pleasures tasteful. Simplicity is why she smiles.

But the youth are lucky because they don’t think of that. They don’t waste playtime concerned with cause.

In the backyard, she has no limitations and the unknown doesn’t exhaust her. A hammock leans, the palms wave. The afternoon appears to be yawning, but she’d rather not wait for dreams. Parents let their children go.

A fence doesn’t determine how far an eye sees. Columbus didn’t stay between the lines and he lived beyond his death. We learn from adventure. Our Muse is Courage, our life force Curiosity. Inhibition doesn’t define us or decide who we are becoming. In youth the imagination is free to wander and picture who or what lies beyond an arm and a leg’s reach. Facts don’t disturb us yet and we aren’t anxious for our reality to change or think it can, know it will.

We write our own chapters. We share our own lives. And sometimes, even she likes to sign a different name. But never encouraged by fear of who may read our words, who will see our mind. On paper, an unwrinkled hand doesn’t avoid the superficiality filtered through the everyday. Whether we live for our self then or creation is a product of age, we sound better not trying to impress. Genuinely, the child is proud of a merging ego – thinking she’s been promised a lifelong friend.

Dad is testing chlorine, as Mom watches from the kitchen cleaning lunch off dishes. I follow, while everyone has her in mind. Although it’s never been said, we all hope for the same: please let us remember these times.

Where there was water for him, there is earth for her. Feet walk godlike, careful not to crush a snail’s shell. Attached to bark, a butterfly’s wings are folded from sap. Her breath provides mobility. They both proceed, not crushed by death. She believes caution and compassion are all one needs to keep the living safe. Should I warn her now or let her continue exploring? In memory I will be insensible and her knees will bruise either way. At this time, it’s too late to save her. She has already happened.

Trailing behind, like a tail, her blanket is soiled by dirt. Each stain lends character. Shh, Mom is the only one that likes things to appear new. But even when she sees her daughter in need of a deep scrub, and says a child’s carelessness is a clever way to end up in timeout, Mom will still close her eyes a few years after hoping a stain’s trace will lead her back to a vivid memory. Lead her back to a time when everyone was a bit younger and children encouraged us to be brave, to be careless; when the child tried to teach those looking down to be free.

My fear is I don’t know myself as well as I’d like. That my fascination has been disturbed and my attention now is fixated on intangibilities—minor sensations that the poet is intent on exploding, expanding for the eyes of an audience that will never show. Hell the writer rarely is attracted to cinema because intelligence isn’t awarded and his difference is always translated without care for the screen. I fear my attention now is fixated on inexplicable compulsions to discern meaning in ideations that don’t literally matter. I fear I went to college as a writer and became a critic. I fear being labeled “dense” is really no different than dressing up in a costume no one understands. I fear my personal library is the best thing I have going for me, but with it and because of it I will only achieve solitude—a self-designed, a self-imposed think-tank. I fear I am female whose feelings can’t make you feel. I fear the translation: I am a female who has forgotten how to feel. But most of all, I fear the rate at which I forget a character’s fabric, the texture of experience, the pattern of life. I fear the dark where dreams can’t be seen. My assignment today was to write three childhood memories subjected to mystery. Sensations circling the unknown. I have never done these exercises and it’s best I do, but I can’t deny the difficulty. I thought backward and in mind could see nothing. I fear I am unmemorable, my experiences undistinguishable. A lemonade stand there, a goldfish here, a bunny in a bag, a tent and a father with a blistering body from sleeping in the sun. Otherwise, the lines you read are lies by imagination, times I haven’t seen or known in body. My mind is patchy, my feelings underdeveloped, my attachment severed. The past four years are speechless. I spent many hours traveling alone, narrating the disparity between exterior and interior vision. And what I came up with in mind is something I’m not confident I can tell you. But to me—and this is the critic or as the professors say, “poetic philosopher” speaking—the few mysteries I could discover from my past are exactly what made childhood so special. I lived. I didn’t question, not in the way that prevented me from acting in the present. Pulsating through my every piece is the nostalgia for youth—a memory of a Self I do adore—where I lived unconsciously, when I was fearless and unaware of time or theory, and when I didn’t judge that certain being as naïve.

This Transparency

Lighter than a cork I danced on the waves.
Rimbaud, The Drunken Boat.

2005, April 13

[today i began reading a book on love; the definition of it as a starting point. every time i think of love, i automatically begin training my mind and body on how to reject it (the feelings &person i associate the possibility of potential with) from now on my phone is turned off; i cant handle phone calls, just leave a message. i just want to concentrate on my future; if that means clearing my path of others.. okay]

-April 13, 2005.

A shame, I was ever so fatalistic, so seemingly guarded. The problematic about words though is they are the result of an idle body opposing a fragmented mind, that and exaggeration. I have kept journals since I was in elementary. At a certain age the material changed significantly. The angle was elsewhere. The moment I became aware of my own self-consciousness, I stopped recording action and the chaos of happiness. The moment I felt the weight of others was the moment I stopped writing about pleasure. I avoided the superficiality that is so often evident in the everyday. The summer I experienced love was the season I stopped romanticizing memory, figuring a translation discredited sensation and was too removed from the real. After the spring, once I reread seven years of entries, I promised if I were to begin writing again I would be ambiguous. What I discovered in the journals was a story that had taken control of me, a perspective that determined me from afar. I had forgotten pleasure on the page because I was committed to living it in life. What has happened now? Two and a half years since then? A density - a result of discovering voice and resisting a conscious commitment to my obsessions, my query. Then there are the translations of my lived experience - a compulsion to find meaning, so I never regret - a result of feeling responsible for truth, for promising my self, a result of the ego and the inability to invent a life which isn't mine, a result of dissatisfaction with self, the desire to be in dialogue with those I can't speak naturally with, a result of anxiety, an anxiety that overwhelms my ability to think elsewhere, a self-consciousness that deters me from feeling, an image disorder that exhausts me and prevents me from living beyond my body, a result of being a journal-ist and perhaps not a novelist. What has happened now, always? An audience. The result? Ambiguity, to keep you unnamed, unrealized, to keep my memory of you a mystery, a truth I can deny.

What transpires is a reluctancy to be transparent. Most of what I live in body never makes it back to the journal. What I do on daily bases, how often I sleep, what I do once I wake, the routine, the surprise, the event. For example, last night: a curly haired dude on my couch, had on a Modest Mouse shirt under his overshirt, followed the band around one show to the next, a devotee I suppose you could say, or is it a fanatic?, thought he looked good, hadn't seen him in awhile, he called attention to my hair not being blonde, I thought about time, whether the speed gave it more or less value, Chad knocked on door, friendly high spirits, could cats play?, no I'm on the way out, we rode the elevator down, thanked curly haired guy for introducing me long ago to hypem.com, said he was responsible for my new music internship, talked about Miles Benjamin Anthony Robinson, walked a street over to friend's, I wore black and gold, met someone new, drank rose, danced in my friend's shades in front of her mirror, said I wanted to be in a dance video, had a vodka cranberry, organic vodka (I think it was called Rain.. jazzy bottle indeed), took a cab to Terminal 5, said I never dance at concerts, too much in awe, sometimes unfortunately too aware of my body, want to get out of it, can't, they said they didn't believe me, I said wait and see, never listened to Black Keys, was there ready and willing, got a beer, hate beer, never drink beer, drinking beer, liking beer, text message: "You doing anything in the city tonite" "Black Keys baby" "Info?" "Sold out concert at Terminal 5" "I see..." "Do you? How! Are you here? :)" "In lespirit" "You are sensation" opening band, dancing, surprise surprise, sister disappears, messing around with people in audience, laugh about what it would be like to be "that person" who won't let someone pass through the crowd, sarcastically flirt with some guy, tell him he is going to have to tell his girlfriend to move ahead, fires back "she isn't my girlfriend," I tell him to dance, ten minutes later, he gets my attention "how are you? can you see?" "no, no, I think you might have to cut her at the ankles." "you got an ax?" I laugh, thinking if anyone ever heard this it would sound absolutely hostile and terrible, but it's fun and I like not having to make sense or be rational. Send a text message to someone I actually have the urge to see, receive message, confirms how much I hate messages, the void in distance, how I need face to face to feel in any way more so in the known, sis is back, mixed drink for me in hand, nice, girls are complaining, at first I let it go, then it just becomes foul, boys with Xs on their hands are bitching about smoke, telling girls they are with that they have seen plenty of those "weed cigarettes" before and those are okay, but cigs are just nasty, I'm dancing, we're dancing, we're going crazy, the three of us turn out to be the only dancing, I have a guy in front of me, he is a stand in for a prop, he doesn't move, but I'm grinding, my friend's gloved hands are grabbing air, hypnotic, I watch some dark hair pearly teeth guy talk with a girl, he looks like Alex Nahai, I'm loving this, their behavior is telling, I hope they end up back together, somewhere, kissing, they have to, I've never seen anyone speak with a smile, he's got it down, I make this known, we're so close to the stage, it's completely packed, somehow I am able to do 360 spins the entire night, eyes are staring, people assuming we are on ecstasy, if this is ecstasy I'm for it, some girl that cut in front of us bitching to my sister for having her body touch hers, I remind her she was the one that stepped in front of us, she doesn't stop bitching, I tell her I was being easy when I said she was killing the mood earlier, but now she is determined to destroy it, they stop bitching when I ask them how this can be the worse thing that has happened to them tonight, then remind them where we are and how good this is, then they start dancing and at one point even manage to laugh, I smell like garbage, I wonder whether people think my twin and I are in some sort of relation, guys on second level waving down, getting my friend's attention by pointing to her glove, shows over, they motion us to the left, the brother of the singer from The Black Keys wants us to go backstage, we go, friend acting starstruck, adorable, more beer, everything is lax, not what I think people expect, uncles in the corner, the brother's birthday, 15 minutes until 27, M&Ms, dark chocolate, can't get enough, never thought I liked M&Ms, loving them, mirrors jagged all over walls, 5 4 3 2 1, happy birthday, no one really cheers, feels weird, it comes with age I suppose, go downstairs, Geoff, Alli, me, she smokes a cig, we watch, take pictures, look at pictures, see picture of his puggle, staples all down his stomach, swallowed an ornament, I'm not really sure what happens, what the hours were filled with, but it was nice, friendly, and we were all sorta just there, together, they say he likes me, I don't catch on to any of that, slaps my ass on stairway up, tell him that was my back not my ass, ask him when he is coming to Miami, ask him whether he's ever been, says no way no way, not hip enough for that, not one for hours in the sun, I laugh, what has MTV done to the image and assumption of my hometown?, closing place down, going to some bar, my ass is still being talked about, "It's just I never have been an ass guy, but" "But how do you know if you've been with the same woman for 9 years?" I never know what to think, is someone always fleeing the relation?, excited about potential, possibility, sensation from achieving the unknown?, cab back, cab stop, bathroom break some ex's apt, driver upset, understandable, cab start, smoke, text message, invite to go again tomorrow night to Black Keys, tea, phone shut off, Chelsea Lately, pizza, cat knocks 19$ vegan green-tea pizza on floor, lying on ground, 3:50am, wake up on ground to buzzer buzzing non-stop, think it's the neighbor, sister isn't budging on couch, close eyes, 4am still buzzing, "Shit, Alli, it's the delivery" "Okay okay" "No get up", thirty seconds later, in one gulp I take down a mint-chocolate chip shake, wake in a mess of make up, paralyzed body, spread chocolate frosting on toast, happy that I danced after I thought I wouldn't but knew that was the only thing I want, the only thing I need.

But what happens when I can still hear them/me.

It was unfortunate. My voice. How when heard, it never failed to suggest my being there. And yet, never was I always. So who was responsible for the deception: the voice or the ear? I swear I wish I knew for it is definitely deceitful, being it feels difficult—the constant activity and ceaseless changing or at least the expectation that I am never not being. To live up to this fate requires a high I have never been confident I can maintain. Maintain without crashing. Chipping tooth and splitting spine on spiral downward. And even during plunge toward passive tense, I’d persist in inhaling. Truly, addicted to life force. But even now, I cannot promise whom I will end up as. And I should never know! Because when this much awaited and insignificantly anticipated event takes place, I will not be present. Ah, I may care here and now, but ultimately whatever I am captured for and seen as won’t matter much to me. So don’t dare to find a way for me to hear it. I promise my body won’t be wanted back once I am finally free of its encumbering existence. (It isn’t mine, even though, yes, I may be attached to it or it to me, but you see, this happens often, this attachment that is). Keep myself away! I give you and all others permission. But this matter won’t happen soon—at least I have my Self believe—so it is of no critical concern, simply let us promise not to betray our promises. And anyway, really, there is no way of knowing who we are or which one of us will forget to live first and in doing so, be finished with time. But this doesn’t mean I haven’t tried to figure this “I” out. Already, always, again and again. Until…Oh, enough! Already? Yes yes, enough!

But my words must go on because the thoughts won’t die out.

It was unfortunate. My voice. How when heard, it never keeps listeners from assuming I am someone I, myself, haven’t felt I live being. And even if they themselves would argue they are not defining me as one way or an other, it was no doubt unfortunate they attached certain qualities I never regarded myself with having. This voice of not me, but my words, I ask you: How is it we permit you such power to project who I am heard as and what I am not thought to be? Yet another controlling me!

Why? Yes, I wonder too. The class of bobbing heads rise up, fall down over the mere utterance of love. A trope, I think, for attachment. But I don’t share that. I don’t let myself sound as critical as I know myself to be. Inside me this urge to shake, to smother, to laugh and roll my eyes. Twenty-three females theorizing love, standing in for the lover, others speaking on behalf of the beloved. The dialogue of crushes set their faces aflame. A word I’d rather stomp out when I hear injected with importance in the claim, “I have a crush on Tom Cruise. He’s so wonderful and perfect. So well traveled and affected.” I can’t help it. I can’t help my hand from jetting through air. Reaching out, me! me!, my voice it has something it wants to say, would like to ask. “I think this whole notion of the crush is underdeveloped. The mere use of it is a reminiscer for childhood. And so far the class seems to define the crush as an unattainable object of undeserved fascination.” My voice has said too many words, together falling very, very short of a question. To them, the truth is I am how I sound. Right now, I am a smattering of fear and right then those whispering girls fear who I am. Who cares who I was at birth when no one is comforted by who I have become. Crushed by abandonment. They fear their future is reflected in me.

Those girls whispering. Across the table. They free their mind, unraveling my core with a narrow selection of words. Plunging depths without remorse for my interior. Those whispering girls. Epitomize the distance between self and other. I share my Tuesday and Thursday morning with those girls, their whispers. Those girls that always whisper. And when there isn’t a shallow vowel rubbing out through throat, they scribble words on loose-leaf. Tear my waist in half. I catch their eye as they are breathing “hang’er up” with pen on paper. What’s worse than whispers—ink, the irrevocable trace of having been.

To survive, I become drugged—a passive unfamiliar stateless self. My eyes close to escape sobriety. To escape committing to a promise. The promise of being some way I am not certain I will be, continually. To escape the practice of commonality, control, clarity—indulging in sense, not sensation—pledging to be not I but one and the same—to escape nothing, I close my eyes.

See, those whispering girls were always absent, until they began sharing their Tuesday and Thursday mornings with me. Until those meaningless girls became visual. Until those girls took it even further! Until they became phonetic, physical beings. To escape what I know they know, to escape the self I am seen as, I close my eyes. Blind behind lids, I abandon their being. Again and again. Their exhaustion allows me to be free. Allows me to be me, the me I'll think myself to be. In blackness, reflecting nothing, they are all the same: in visible and no one. For each other, we are back to being as we were. Not sensed. Safe. Fortunate to be unknown.

Thought Him So Beautiful

Alessi's Ark - The Horse

Keith - Up In The Clouds

Keith - Up In The Clouds from Lucky Number Music on Vimeo.

I can't quite fathom how good dance remixes to this song will be.

How Little Was Left Undone

Who else woke beside their ashes? Or were you not there but by the window? A jarred? Beneath the pillow? Where safely your tooth laid? When you were a child who was it you believed? From dusk to dawn we traced images on eyes. Touching skin, he’d pull off my morality. My, I write, for this is me having known neither pleasure nor humility. But I pined for pain, that dying moment when thinking before all else, What is love? It isn’t this. You/us were hysterical, The need to want and feel it now. Unseen we spoke, then and only. We split, and exploring, exploding, we sighed. Traces scaring eyes. You woke leaving. I wake beside her. Body wrapped in dyed sheets. Unemotionally guiltless, I gather someone in pleasure came. Came, then left color, but no mental note. Yet, had he stayed, this bedded woman may have woken with knowing eyes and together figured pleasure out.

Chadd: Sundance Select

FADER TV: Sundance Selects "Asshole"
by thefader

I'm floored... Chadd was featured in FADAR as a Sundance Select. Though this is a collaboration and a comedy about an "Asshole's asshole" that also references Ambien (gotta love it), his own personal style is that of riveting beauty, reminding me of Alain Resnais' film Last Year at Marienbad. Bottom line, what he directs and writes is what I hope to see more of and pursue in my "art". And, the film that has been selected did make me laugh my ass off... a rare happening in the theatre.

A Likeable Loneliness

Instants after, I came.

With other words I will make it known, I was late like always. Consoling me was an obscure idea, a possible delusion yet not definitely so, that others were further behind than myself. With this mindset, if I were first to be at the promised place, it could seem and it would be as though I were always and able to be in a rush to place myself around another figure, to need some body. What sort of impression was it to be so very willing? The things I could do, I did, to prevent association with the given portrayal. However, even I, who pursues meta-narration does not feel it is always agreeable to be as self-conscious as the above awareness makes me out to be. One should be mindful without inhibiting instinctual behavior. One should be conscious without committing neurosis upon the Self. But how can any of us make sure extremist don’t meet their fatalistic extreme? Awaiting me was a thoughtful gesture. A drink anyone who knew me—which is to say, had been aware enough when around me to take notice was one of the three drinks I only drank. A Black Russian. I certainly had my tastes, as I hoped everyone did. Shying away from what one wanted became obvious with maturity. I was someone who found passivity in taste aggravating. Of course being shy, open-minded or considerable were fine and genuine entitlements. But to say jack and coke is what you’ll take, when it isn’t close to what you want and nothing that anyone is forcing you to have isn’t an admirable quality in being. At the leg of L-shaped bar, we sat with backs to the window and faced a swelling crowd. Red hair wrapped around her shoulders and my boy cut made us eye sores in this room of all males and a few other females with mustaches pasted above their lips. What called for such behavior? No one said they actually knew. But I figured there was no reason other than we lived in Manhattan where people did this all the time. It was appealing that a little hair and glue could change an ordinary day into something remarkable and which could be thought upon. Together we called attention to the men our eyes found attractive. Someone in a gray hoodie. For her, a blonde that was unquestionably not straight. I said I wasn’t attracted to blondes and she asked whether my taste changed with my hair color. I figured it hadn’t. We ordered French 75s. Got a round free. A man came over, his speech slippery, his arms reaching out to both of our chairs. A sort of all including embrace. He wanted to know what we were having. Wanted it, too. Oh, but couldn’t, no not gin and champagne. He couldn’t tank himself tonight. I smiled, slightly, thinking a few bubbles could never be a bad thing. He left, but he’d be back. She said any interest would keep someone from going away. I found it unfortunate—this separation and expectancy in behavior. Didn’t people retreat from home, pursuing the possibility of meeting someone they hadn’t ever met, but felt—if only even for that night—they wanted to know. And yet here we were, with no obligation to anyone despite what our rings suggested, talking about turning others away. I wondered whether it was hypocritical—if people predicted too many of their experiences and as a result ended up with fewer surprises and artificial intrigue. She assumed correctly and he came, many times, never wanting really to leave, let alone remain alone. Taking up our hands, he saw rings he felt meant marriage. And she told him all these little lies that she didn’t ever mean to be that way, but said just to make stories shorter and lifestyles more of an illusion to marvel at. He became sad, a bit tormented inside with his self against his self. Older, watching friends marry, kids come, feeling he was missing something someone important, as if those extraneous appearances would make his life automatically special. More and more, I witness and hear fragmented confessionals about needing not to be alone in Manhattan. Relations keeping their relation out of fear of approaching the city singularly. Single in the city and everyone was waiting to be approached. Some even made ads on Craigslist, hoping that at the very least they would have someone to dine with. It seemed interesting to me—the tactics and the rules that dating services inspired. I heard a story where after a few dates, a text was sent to come by her usual spot for a drink, he responded, “I don’t feel there was any connection. Good luck on your search.” No bullshit. Just a straight up shot served, swallowed and hopefully digestible. A following night: Although my response was let’s do it some other time. He came over Friday. Not taking what I said to mean anything. It was nice to see him back. Even though, it was three by now and I had no interest waking tomorrow with a guest and separate things we both wanted to do. There was television. Something I never use. But we put in It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia and to my surprise, we were both folded over with laughter in the other’s arms. At times we would wait, purposefully, in silence. Only to appreciate this awkwardness we allowed ourselves to maintain. He was more pressing than he’d ever been. But I still mentioned how he made me feel like I was 6. And he said he felt even younger. I said there was nothing to say. Our dialogue always resembled French film noir. We were inverted. Then again that was how and where we met, so maybe we were just conditioned. His hands are big, his eyes always so small, as if he can barely see. And he says he is so tired. And I know how bad he wants to stay. Even when we would keep our clothes on, I knew he was happy to be there, closer to someone. That someone on nights was me. But I couldn’t have myself do it. Not this time around. And I grabbed his hand instead, saying again how they are always so soft. We held them next to each other. For the first time, I wondered whether the lines ever changed. Would that line on his palm always cut into that other line? We should photocopy our hands, do it ever so often and see what changes. But I didn’t have any ink. Now he was really ready to stay. In Manhattan there are so many people that it’s hard to rationalize why or how you end up leaving and lying down alone. It was 6am and I was lifting the window in my bedroom, closing curtains and pulling my sheets loose. Sitting for a moment, watching him outside my door, waiting to see if I’d call. But I just couldn’t. And instead, I joked about how his coat looked like a dress. I pulled the sides out as he stood considering himself in the mirror. It was a precious moment. And then I pushed him outside the door, not waiting to watch him be taken on the elevator away. Both of us starting this morning, waiting for our bed where we would lie alone.

It's Questionable

The internet involves distance. I am here and imagine you, as you read this, becoming closer to where I use to be - maybe only moments ago - in mind. One would hope this intangible presence of mine would be honest. I may even think that in no way is my compulsion to write in fact the desire to show myself off. I don't know what it has become, this webbed persona, since it is so long ago that it started. Graduating High School I received the superlative for "[Most] Unique". I remember being uncertain of what that entailed and whether I felt I was being over or underlooked. Most of the time, I have decided, I don't think even I am seeing or hearing myself right. I expect myself to be freer than I feel. Once not long ago, I opened my Senior Yearbook and found messages streaming across the pages. To my surprise, I had forgotten everything that had been written. It wasn't words from friends, but rather classmates, people I spent hours with but did not necessarily ever see outside school life. Regardless, I went to a small school, so we all knew each other well. Even stranger was what they chose to say - what they would always remember about me and in repetition was this statement that they wouldn't forget how I made class better, lighter - how funny I am. This humor, carelessness, euphoria are ways of being that fueled even myself, but that I haven't felt consistently in years. I like to imagine that depending upon the city, I am a certain way. But I can't help but think this is nothing short of an excuse. Do we not choose our being? Can I not just wake and force my body into action? Since May I believe I have felt self-contained, as if there is someone inside of me that is trying to force themselves out through my skin. I always do try to force myself out of situations I feel stuck in. Usually, by immersing myself in more and other work. Interviews. I've had many of them. This Wednesday a modeling agency wants me to come in and interview for their marketing department. It's either that or publicity for an entertainment company representing musicians. This is going to be the hardest semester yet, but I want something other. I want to be on someone else's hour. I want to think less about my self-production.

Thursday taking the elevator down. Packed. Toward the back. A guy turns to me in the midst of his friends. Hello. I tell him he looks familiar, as if I have memories of him. He tells me, insecurely, that we sat next to each other in class this morning. Of course I remember that I tell him. I meant before I saw you then. The elevator opens. Students walk further away from school. He keeps talking. I'm tired, hungry, starving maybe and a bit caught off guard. He keeps talking. Wanting to know all these things about me. Small things. But they seem like they are dire questions. What class was I just at? What am I taking? How is it going? What do I like most? I laugh telling him I have noticed he is the only male in our Anatomy of Love class, but that I have found where all the other Gallatin males go - in my class on Perversion. We laugh. All females in Love. More males than I have ever seen at Gallatin in Perversion. I laugh again, but think Iike I do so many times, that I have rarely laughed genuinely in Manhattan. This to me is not right and seemingly impossible. But everyone I know, everyone I meet, seems to behave like I am being listened to rather than talked with, as if I am advising or speaking in confessionals. It feels isolating. I lack emotion. The guy keeps talking. I listen to how my voice lacks tone. I seem shy. How has this happened? How have I gone from the other extreme then moved to New York, gotten older and yet, become more shy. Girls come up to him. Cut our conversation and involve themselves. Their arms hanging on his neck. They seem like they are begging. He seems unattached. He says he wants to go for pizza. Every guy always asks to go grab pizza. But I say I've got to go the other way. We have Tuesday to speak.

What prompted this rambling was Franz Kafka's quote: My peers, lately, have found companionship through means of intoxication - it makes them sociable. I, however, cannot force myself to use drugs to cheat on my loneliness - it is all that I have - and when the drugs and alcohol dissipate, will be all that my peers have as well.

For months a thought comes into my head, a thought I never let stay too long: Does Manhattan turn some into addicts? Needing something to give you the energy for achieving all that waits outside your door. And then wanting something else to come off that adrenaline, so one can be calm for once. This has begun to concern me. And yet, I am in a better place than I have ever been. Or so I write that. Having you assume this is all honest. That this is all me. And I, too, assume that by editing the footage of life, you will receive me. Even though you may forget it is, not so simply, a select self. I don't know if this is the better part, or rather the one you may want to read. I doubt.

I never have felt happiness reads too well. Just as I have often tried to explain how when I am in love it is the last thing I can write about. Maybe my writing isn't all so present. Perhaps, also, my pieces are more fictious than I think.

Tortured

Already it was dark when we met. The end of the week. A month since I felt home. What they meant. These details. Escaped us.

I can’t see how they could mean. And yet I, absolutely, don’t know. But think this, also, was the way you thought. Even though we never once spoke. About that.

I have a feeling it wasn’t all so important. Watching you move through vision. Standing with my back blocking light. Already it was dark when we met. Separately friends said we should go home, just not together. But I had a feeling they didn’t know time. Or how much we needed. Also, they weren’t my friends because never did they try to know me.

It was the end of the week and I was ready to go home. But even though nobody noticed, it had been a month and I hadn’t been there. Moving through vision, my eyes kept you close. Since closeness and closure are certain ways I like to have it.

Inside where we were. Down below. Walled in seduction. A sort of cave, you could call it. Many open rooms. Faces kissing. People without their mouths. Walking. Moving. Following you there, then and around. My back blocking light. Friends talking over talking, talking about times. Details that should have been forgotten by now.

Someone was doing something with music. To torture me. And I’m dancing. Trying to get high. Higher off ground. Away from where all these people like to be. I’m dancing. Doing someone. Tortured. Something with music. You’re dancing. Moving me all around. I’m waving. Not to you, to who I said are not my friends. Telling them I’m leaving, not staying down, going up, getting away from what is being done to me. I can’t dance with this music. This isn’t how I am. Not the way I want to be. And I’d really like if I could find someone. Anyone who will get me home. But it’s a month till I’ll be there and a month since I’ve been. Gone. So I’ll get him, yeah you. And we’ll wait. But it's not as if I don't not like to never not be alone.

“Hey you, yeah you, you’re the one. Take me.” “Tonight? Where? Where do you see us going?” “Some place. We won’t need light.”

And it’s good because he hasn’t any. I’m following. Following you there, then, to a place I’m still settling in. Zippering down with my back blocking light. The light you don't have. It’s as I said. These details, they escape us. We don’t need them. To mean anything. Hey him, yeah you, he's the one. I’m staying and I’ll be gone once I go. But we have many hours and I don’t need my eyes till then.

But we never once spoke either. About what that. What it. What, what? What we meant.

Slide Show

Silent by Steven Meisel (Vogue Italy, August 2008)

View more presentations or upload your own. (tags: vanderloo mark)

It's not that I do not know.

We were ridiculous for discussing love as if it were some object we are entitled to attain. Even worse was the groping, your hideous procedure of having gestures determine commitment. Were we both not completely made up in mind? Making ourselves believe we mattered more than it meant. Lying there, I wanted to laugh or altogether hide behind my skin, when you suggested my passivity was a result of the hour’s lacking energy. As if time were responsible for anything at all! You can only wish. I didn’t not fall down on you or tie my ankles around your neck because the way my body reacted when the clock’s hands were positioned wide open. If I had the will I would have done even more than you expected. More so to set you off, than turn you on. Sometimes I think of all I never say. I think how what you do not know affects us. How it makes you seem ignorant and manipulable. And then I see I am the partner in control. This makes me feel important, which isn’t what I think I need. I need you to tell me what you want: “Push me down or I’ll push you away.” Tell me you want me to want you back and then, I will give you my all. Tell me I am deceptive, delusional, addicted to algolagnia and maybe I will call, ever so genially, begging you be near. Tell me I have no heart and then, maybe, I will reconsider this act called love.

Oh hush, I was only practicing my part. But say it! Are you coming? 'Cause I could really use you now. 

A Close Call

Without a word, the city speaks to me. Outside I hear a coin constantly being turned on its head. Not one mouth mouths tails or the other. The dime drops, dumb and unvalued. On the opposite side of the street, a man polishes the rail. Going up, he is on the third step with his back facing this I. Twice each season, he comes placing a coat over fingerprints so past presences linger no longer. Though they aren’t here, those touching people feel obscure now, dense even. Pausing, they look down and inward, unable to decide whether they are wanted back.

Inside it is a stranger world that others never catch. Doing things, we think no one can see or tell. But if they did, should we mind? would I say sorry? sorry you were looking. My feet seek warmth in mittens. Tucked beneath opposing thighs, I resemble a ribbon as I write this on some Wednesday, in light of afternoon, too quotidian to be remembered but simple enough to idealize now. 

I never get very far before the sky appears destroyed. It’s the day’s final hour, so I stand on the balcony, watching time be taken and darkness diffused. My age stares me dead on. I’d rather turn, taking up interest elsewhere, and avoid nature to say something but it is weird when no one is around pretending to listen. 

The evening is later and I worry you will not have come. Not even close. It’s sad, this singularity, you cause me to claim. Achieving fewer experiences, which in class I am taught isn’t where intellect fosters. I am unsure which I’d rather more of—the body or the mind. My hands take up you if there, or books when I’m here, speechless and thinking it’s not me who is being seen. 

Hanne Karin Bayer

"It's about being human. It's beautiful. It's touching. It's fantastic. It's acting. It's acting and reality at the same time. We always end up resembling the characters we play. Or the characters end up resembling us. That happens too... It always surprises me to be in this situation, because after all, I interpret a role. I don't have a gift for making up lines, just like that." - Anna Karina.

Carrying you around in my eyes.

On the seventh floor nature is deceptive through the raised window. A vulnerability in light, my body sleeps in the final frame of dream. Entwined in not arms of last night, but vines of emerald and diluted jade. My springtime purchase, these sheets retain your presence. Those hours spent falling into my open shape. Clinging to me, like a memory I try to feel closer with, is a deeper perfume. During day, I live the nostalgia for our evenings. When we spoke of ourselves as if it were the only thing we needed to learn before light took us by surprise. We were engrossed, I am sure they said. And didn’t need each other, which was probably true. But we never asked anyone to watch, though I don’t blame so and so if we were found noticeable. We only thought to know ourselves, while lying in bed with backs against time. I felt we were on our way.

It is impossible now not to see contours of a figure set outside a dream. To turn over and remember you there. It hasn’t anything to do with love, rather a touch I felt I’d enjoy in repetition. Even if the moment never seemed real, I can’t just open my eyes and blame impressions on the hour and its quantity of light. I slept as well then as I lived; there was no place I went to hide. To feel is a luxury we are entitled to allow. But that doesn’t mean we control when or why it happens or whether I achieve resulting comfort. 

What did you say? I try to remember when our faces are apart and I can’t whisper, again, what it is you think I should know, which is more or less what you hope I remember. When I listened, I acted like a child. Seeing you always for the first time, I was a trusting girl with large eyes that stare. Not wanting to overpower hours most appropriate for my learning, I became smaller as you were developing into someone I hadn’t considered you’d be. Keeping quiet was my mouth who didn’t say a thing about what my mind was carrying on. I shouldn’t always reveal everything, even though I knew you would remember me more had I given myself away, nicely. 

Another word. A longer glance. If I chose it well, you may have seen me perfectly. My palm kept open instead, and you read it without a clue. Subtle signs of my aging. You pressed them against the wall, waiting for my urge for freedom. Something I wasn’t wanting to have. The only thing I think I thought was how in winter, when nothing moves in apartments, I’d miss this time. And sure, I know ways to replace, so what I miss can be forgotten as a mistake. But that doesn’t mean I am in any rush to do so. Because a sigh for a sigh is not exchangeable, although it’s the consequence of two bodies and lips that moved their way into communion. Knowing this, still, I’d like to think what makes a difference in mind are the eyes and a bit of heart. As much as we try to manipulate the quality and quantity of what we feel, nothing is ever the same. Each moment is unmatchable.

Today is not like the day before. Outside is a city I can never hear. And I wake with the light thrown in, to watch a vacancy compartmentalized, hoping someone is left that at times I cannot see who will come and move me closer to a feeling you are responsible for.

Emerging Surrealist Director

Filmmaker Sophie Barthes plans to open her first feature, Cold Souls, with a title card containing words from the French philosopher René Descartes: “The soul has its principal seat in the small gland located in the middle of the brain.”

The quote is typical of Barthes’s ironic and unexpected sensibility. In both her Sundance short Happiness and her upcoming feature Cold Souls, she tackles dark themes (loneliness and existential crisis, respectively) with a witty blend of fantasy and character-based humor reminiscent of Michel Gondry and Charlie Kaufman. “I’m very interested in poetic science fiction, films like Alphaville, that play with philosophical concerns,” Barthes says.

extracted from Filmmaker Magazine

Ah, a woman director compared to Gondry and Kaufman cannot be anything short of brilliant or at the very least worthy of seeing. Not to mention she is a fan of Godard and her last name is Barthes... any relation to Roland Barthes? I don't know, but if you don't know either of these two, spend some time checking them out.

Also, Sundance has begun, as well as Slamdance (The Indieroad Film Fest). What is great about the latter is you can stream the films online ($9 usually) and take part in screenings and voting. Already on my list is Only written, produced and directed by Ingrid Veninger and Simon Reynolds.

Below is Alphaville by Godard. If only I were French and could be mentored by French screenplay writers. They know precisely what should be included and what is a waste of breath. My opinion, of course.

And to end, a quote by Descartes: And so something which I thought I was seeing with my eyes is in fact grasped solely by the faculty of judgment which is in my mind.

I am acting for the other eye.

claudeleanmusee.tumblr.com

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

hungry? eat me.

loads to indulge in later.