Twentyten.

"This is what I thought: for the most banal even to become an adventure, you must (and this is enough) begin to recount it. This is what fools people: a man is always a teller of tales, he sees everything that happens to him through them; and he tries to live his own life as if he were telling a story.But you have to choose: live or tell." - Jean-Paul Sartre

Home sick.

In lieu of my sickness, I've spent my Monday consuming bad movies inbetween shallow naps. This adaptation of Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet is pretty abysmal (as most films taken directly from Shakespeare tend to be), but it'd be a pity to not acknowledge the magnificence of the Capulet aesthetic. Sadly, this is the only decent still I could google with the little finger strength I possess right now. If only I could find a photo of Abra, Tybalt's wingman, and his custom platinum grill (which reads "SIN" in all caps)...

Painting a Room.

“I want to paint a room with someone.”

“So paint your room!”

“No,” I said, “I want to paint a room with someone else. I want to wake up early and get coffee and take the subway to Home Depot. I want to have already pre-planned our color scheme so we know to look for cool or warm shades. I want to argue over paint swatches, laugh at the mustard yellows and pale pinks that remind us of our childhood bedrooms. I want to annoy the other person by asking strangers for advice. I want to settle on a marigold or maybe some kind of bright green teal. I want to look the list we wrote together so we remember to get big rollers, little brushes, the tray you slosh the paint around in, tarps, and duct tape, and that gummy painters tape. I want the other person to suggest we get aprons that we can use for our next project. I want to kiss them when they say that. I want to buy gum and magazines and Coca Cola because they are right next to the register. I want to ask the cashier to double bag it, because we are taking the subway. I want to go home and put on music and old clothing and realize we forgot primer. I want the other person to be ok with just painting anyway. I want to cover all the furniture and then offer to fry up some eggs. I want there to be beer in the fridge for when we are halfway through. I want the painting to commence in a passionate, memorable stoke that we photograph. A splash of bright marigold on a industrial white wall. I want the painting to be done in stages, as we quietly sing along to songs. I want to make love on the floor when it strikes us. I want to nap while the paint dries, and wake up just in time to see the other person moving the furniture back. I want to offer to help and have them say, ‘I’ve got it.’ I want to brag about it to friends ‘this weekend, we painted a wall!’. I want to paint a room with someone else.”

Brittawnee looked at me plainly. She understood.

“Yeah,” She said, “Sometimes I feel that way too. But then I think … what if we don’t agree on the color?”

She giggled loudly. Brittawnee has the loudest giggle. The best part is almost anything could set her off. I envy this about her.

I was being honest in my desire though. My need for this one experience. To share something. To be at that place again. I no longer knew what it was like to function as a coupled organism, and I was wondering if I was starting to get weird.

Read the rest here.

Good writers always seem to comprehend the concept of "honesty" better than everyone else.

Baby Steps.

I'd really like to quit social networking all together.

I should probably quit whining.

"As I get older, I find that I believe with all my heart in the comic approach to life. I mean, we’re all sitting in this room very seriously, we all selected clothes, but in X number of years, we will all definitely be rotting in the ground. Which is kind of hilarious when you think about it. Or at least humbling. The pretense, all the elaborate stuff we go through to bolster our egos, and the truth is that nothing — none of this – will last. That’s very funny. When you hear anybody in any context talking, including me right now, and think he’s just a corpse in progress, it’s kind of hilarious. The other side of it is that it argues strongly for kindness and compassion."
— George Saunders

Pathetic but predictable.

"The worker who sleeps with BlackBerry within touching distance, the girl sitting alone in the cafe but texting furiously while waiting for a friend, the woman on the bus on her mobile telling a friend that the test was negative for chlamydia, the solo traveller who Skypes home most nights from the hostel in Borneo, and the TV personality who tells you via Twitter that right now he is running a bath.

These are all symptoms of the death of our ability to be alone…

We are not just relinquishing our alone time, but we are gleefully sacrificing it, and doing so for multiple data streams, and even so our employer can contact us around the clock. Is the 11pm call from the boss better than nothing, silence, being disconnected - and perhaps missing out?"

-The Sydney Morning Herald, July 4

A little too penetrating considering my current situation. Less than 24 hours have passed since I've been without my beloved Blackberry.

Sadly, my life has come to a screeching halt. My thumbs are basically useless without the full qwerty keyboard of my Blackberry Curve.

I'm pretty peeved at how incapcitated and disconnected I actually feel (and I'm fully aware of how annoying this all sounds) but I suppose this feeling is the immediate consequence of having been spoiled by Blackberry-brand instant gratification for so long and knowing so many people with unlimited texting plans. (And on a more serious note, what if I end up in a dangerous situation before I get a replacement?)

Oh Blackberry, I'll never drop you again! Just come back soon and promise never to leave my side.

I Had A Dream About You by Richard Siken

All the cows were falling out of the sky and landing in the mud.
You were drinking sangria and I was throwing oranges at you,
but it didn’t matter.
I said my arms are very long and your head’s on fire.
I said kiss me here and here and here
And you did.
Then you wanted pasta,
so we trampled out into the tomatoes and rolled around to make the sauce.
You were very beautiful.
We were in the Safeway parking lot. I couldn’t find my cigarettes.
You said Hurry up! but I was worried there would be a holdup
And we would be stuck in a hostage situation, hiding behind
the frozen meats, with nothing to smoke for hours.
You said Don’t be silly,
so I followed you into the store.
We were thumping the melons when I heard somebody say Nobody move!
I leaned over and whispered in your ear I told you so.
There was a show on the television about buried treasure.
You were trying to convince me that we should buy shovels
and go out into the yard
and I was trying to convince you that I was a vampire.
On the way to the hardware store I kept biting your arm
and you said if I really was a vampire I would be biting your neck,
so I started biting your neck
and you said Cut it out!
and you bought me an ice cream, and then we saw the UFO.
These are the dreams we should be having. I shouldn’t have to
clean them up like this.
You were lying in the middle of the empty highway.
The sky was red and the sand was red and you were wearing a brown coat.
There were flecks of foam in the corners of your mouth.
The birds were watching you.
Your eyes were closed and you were listening to the road and I could
hear your breathing, I could hear your heart beating.
I carried you to the car and drove you home but you
weren’t making any sense

I took a shower and tried to catch my breath.
You were lying on top of the bedspread
in boxer shorts, watching cartoons and laughing but not making any sound.
Your skin looked blue in the television light.
Your teeth looked yellow.
Still wet, I lay down next to you. Your arms, your legs, your naked chest,
your ribs delineated like a junkyard dogs.
There’s nowhere to go, I thought. There’s nowhere to go.
You were sitting in a bathtub at the hospital and you were crying.
You said it hurt.
I mean the buildings that were not the hospital.
I shouldn’t have mentioned the hospital.
I don’t think I can take this much longer.
In the dream I don’t tell anyone, you put your head in my lap.
Let’s say you’re driving down the road with your eyes closed
but my eyes are also closed.
You’re by the side of the road.
You’re by the side of the road and you’re doing all the talking
while I stare at my shoes.
They’re nice shoes, brown and comfortable, and I like your voice.
In the dream I don’t tell anyone, I’m afraid to wake you up.
In these dreams it’s always you:
The boy in the sweatshirt,
The boy on the bridge, the boy who always keeps me
from jumping off the bridge.
Oh, the things we invent when we are scared
and want to be rescued.
Your jeep. Your teeth. The coffee that you bought me.
The sandwich cut in half on the plate.
I woke up and ate ice cream in the dark,
hunched over on the wooden chair in the kitchen,
listening to the rain.
I borrowed your shoes and didn’t put them away.
You were crying and eating rice.
The surface of the water was still and bright.
Your feet were burning so I put my hands on them, but my hands
were burning too.
You had a bottle of pills but I wouldn’t let you swallow them.
You said Will you love me even more when Im dead?
And I said No, and I threw the pills on the sand.
Look at them, you said. They look like emeralds.
I put you in a cage with the ocelots. I was trying to fatten you up
with sausages and bacon.

Somehow you escaped and climbed up the branches of a pear tree.
I chopped it down but there was nobody in it.
I went to the riverbed to wait for you to show up.
You didn’t show up.
I kept waiting.
--------------------------------------

I'm still hammering out my personal definition of "Bullshit." I hate oscillating between these fleeting but similarly flat and hostile emotions. It feels like I'm in high school again--except the music I listen to is significantly less angsty (and I dare say "better"), my face is less acne-ridden and I'm a bit less prone to self-initiated isolation. I've been known to poke fun at all the jaded-twenty somethings spawned from modern romance (in staggering numbers no less) and the rest of the general population rushing to "put a ring on it"--with or without any deep emotional connection to another human being. I genuinely (and foolishly) believed I was somehow above such human emotions. While I still harbor a healthy disgust towards empty, convenient marriage to justify my disdain, I fear I may be on the cusp a very jaded 23rd year of survival (and 22 isn't even over yet).

Joke's on me...

GrinDING.

The Birth of Boring

I've got this twitch, see
thumbs nod yes yes yes
press press press
head-banging for some
technicolor morphine
no-no--novacaine--
eyes glazed donut holes
and blank brain black rot
vertebrate curvature
and buzz smothered tone deaf ears

Don't know if I believe in souls--
gotta have one to believe in I guess--
but this one here's deep asleep to a lullaby of:
Lose weight now!
Natural male enhancement!
Need cash now?!
Sign up for your free motherfuckin trial
and put yourself on the road to self-erasure in no time

We're talking suicide, folks
the bloodless kind
the mindless loveless needless kind
that fattens you up,
shoves sleep under your eyes,
numbs your ass
and puts the salivary crust at the corners of your mouth

Nervewracked,
jittery,
ants in the pantsy
frightened by mirrors
cause
it ain't a pretty sight
when the best, most painful parts
die by way of life.

Taking inventory: In My Purse

Contents:
Wallet
Blackberry
Two types of chapstick
Ipod and foldable headphones
To-go pack of tissues
Nearly empty bag of chicharrones
Red and yellow bandanna from Mexico
Keys
Solidified paint, Yellow
Mini Moleskine
Two black, fine-tipped pens
Two envelopes to be mailed
An impromptu (and very silly) poem I wrote
Bank receipts
Salonpas Pain Relieving Patches
Box of truffles from NYC *
Napkins
Small pill box containing two Advil and a vitamin

The things one accumulates. What variety!

*Note: I find it necessary for an individual to have chocolate easily accessible at all times.

Watered down.

I used to be such an undeniably vibrant individual, with an unrestrained wit and the ability to make nothing into something at the very least entertaining if not significant.

Is this what growing up does to the imagination? Or have I been stupid enough to take myself too seriously as of late, resulting in the use of adverbs to prop up my weak adjectives and an unforgivable amount of hedging in my speech?!

No, it's probably TV.

Sarah Manguso

"One mourner says if I can just get through this year as if salvation comes in January.

Slow dance of suicides into the earth:

I see no proof there is anything else. I keep my obituary current, but believe that good times are right around the corner

Una grande scultura posse rotolare giù per una collina senza rompersi, Michelangelo is believed to have said (though he never did): To determine the essential parts of a sculpture, roll it down a hill. The inessential parts will break off.

That hill, graveyard of the inessential, is discovered by the hopeless and mistaken for the world just before they mistake themselves for David’s white arms.

They are wrong. But to assume oneself essential is also wrong: a conundrum.

To be neither essential nor inessential—not to exist except as the object of someone’s belief, like those good times lying right around the corner—is the only possibility.

Nothing, nobody matters.

And yet the world is full of love …"

Though I question that last statement.

Middle child.

She had a heartbeat, a crippling peculiarity in modern times. Her blood was organic and she still processed oxygen through her lungs (new humans absorbed atmosphere topically). The world was 93% water, yet she had been overlooked by the assisted evolution movement. Beaks filled with fine, jagged teeth replaced nostrils and lips (features appropriated from various birds of prey--eagles particularly). In addition to amphibious skin, new humans had a thin layer of membrane connecting each finger to the next, as well as their arms to their sides--a useful adaptation stolen from bats. These desirable advances had been achieved by splicing precise segments of animal DNA into human embryos, coupling each new set nicely with side effects from the each subsequent creature. They all donated their evolutionary gifts to the cause of human thrival.

She watched the new humans gliding overhead, every now and then piercing the muddy green-orange surface of the Paciflantic System, hunting no doubt. She scared them. She had no webbing, earthbound, brandished no beak nor claws; her softness was repulsive. She was the mistake, the before, she was a horrible reminder of how nature, left to its own devices, led only to failure.

Can't wait until the end of missing someone.

"I like to see people reunited, I like to see people run to each other, I like the kissing and the crying, I like the impatience, the stories that the mouth can’t tell fast enough, the ears that aren’t big enough, the eyes that can’t take in all of the change, I like the hugging, the bringing together, the end of missing someone." - Jonathan Safran Foer

What swine flu?

Learning French.

“ Other than being called childlike, the criticism that I most often receive is that I can’t really tell a story. That while I have a strong sense of the visual, my narrative skills are weak. I would like to think, instead, that my movies are more like real life. In a relationship, so much goes unsaid, but that doesn’t mean the emotion is not felt. In my films, I want to show all the abstract ways that people can affect us when we are in love." — Michel Gondry.

A Rowboat Built for Two

Anna Karenina vs. Anna Karina

Pierrot le fou - Written and directed by Jean-Luc Godard

A film about making film.

"Yes... that's what makes me sad: Life is so different from books." - Anna Karina

Push or carry?

Nails.

No more doubts as to my ethnicity eh?

I have never had acrylics and don't really plan on getting them in the near future (unless I can figure out a way to type, pick up coins, open soda--function in general while wearing a set). But hot damn if these ain't something.

Pancho Villa Happy Hour

Dollar tacos from 3-5pm.

Severely disappointed in this joint going "green"--missing the old days of the 32oz. styrafoam larges instead of the current shotglass-sized biodegrable cups they're peddling now. Yeah, cool, it completely decomposes in 50 days but I'm still thirsty--at twice the price.

Micro-business - "Signs of the Time"

From Signs of the Times

Though it's probably necessary to point out that these signs aren't a recent phenomenon...or a phenomenon at all for that matter.

Lazy.

Slow Roll

Filler.

I should write something one of these days.

Making Buttermilk.

To make your own buttermilk:

1) Put one tablespoon of white vinegar into a measuring cup
2) Add enough milk to make the liquid one cup. Do not stir!
3) Let sit for five minutes.

You now have created buttermilk.

The "model minority"

Forget where I found this.

For reference: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N4hUtSG1m3g

Music and Movies

Smash the old world / Establish a new world

Maoist poster, Cultural Revolution.

Raccoons lope intoxicated across thoroughfares, four pawed jaywalkers with an acute aversion to traffic decorum, adorably rabid little thieves with sticky fingers and dark circles round their eyes, probably from all those late night rubbish raves. Catch the garbage when it's cold, condensated and fresh, like recently sprayed market produce; not overly ripe but a subtle sweet and sour, a little burn down the throat akin to a fine red wine. Lazy halts before twice-white lights, apple cores and bits of meat wedged between needle point fangs, pausing, presumably ready for a close-up--you know the kind that leaves fur matted with blood (and guts if you're speeding)--but conceit blossoms unhindered when danger looms imminent. Strike a pose and it's pancake city, poor thing, road kill. Scavenger now scavenged, cute little crook maggot-riddled, insides coated with wiggling, flesh eating babies, new meat turned mold meat under the thrump bump of those 22" rims.

How I feel today!

"Terror, grief, and desolation--
Hut, tup, thrup, fo!
Come to every Earthling nation!
Hut, tup, thrup, fo!--
Earth eat fire! Earth wear chains!
Hut, tup, thrup, fo!
Break Earth's spirit, spill Earth's brains!
Hut, tup, thrup, fo!
Scream! Tup, thrup, fo!
Bleed! Tup, thrup, fo!
Die! Tup, thrup, fo!
Doooooooooommmmmmmmmm."

-Vonnegut, Sirens of Titan

I bake when upset.

Second attempt at red velvet cake, two attempts at snickerdoodles, matcha sugar cookies (first time around).

Things aren't looking too good.

It's routine now. I sit down in front of my computer or make motions to open up a notebook and force words out of my fingertips to convey something meaningful. A compulsion? Maybe. But sadly, a fruitless one.

The writer's block has lingered for some time and the frustration is unbelievable. I want to spend my life telling stories--not necessarily my stories, but any story worth telling--and to make them come alive through my words. I'm not sure if I'm capable of doing this yet, but I have many thwarted attempts to show that I'm trying to become capable. A for Effort.

Writing has become an enemy, a familiar comfort and an obsession. All my thoughts are laced with an itch to write; sometimes I can see the text scroll behind my vision, as if on an invisible marquee. I never really know what it says though, like a dream where you wake up with a feeling, but no concrete recollections of people, places or events. The feeling is important--but the process behind its creation is indispensable.

My ideas are not original but inanely repetitive; my voice, diction and even knowledge of grammar and punctuation are fuzzy with mold, sour to taste. I possess the tools but have yet to wield them (self doubt?). The nuances in words and rhythm tend to command me, not the other way around. I seem to have lost control or perhaps gained too much control and have plateaued in my prime. My diction is predictable, my pacing is dry. Wit has abandoned me and left only an echo.

There is no distinction between poetry and prose; I can write neither. I write only self-indulgent essays, pertaining usually to nothing in particular. I long, always, to write fiction. I want to write organically, directly from my imagination, to tell stories about struggle and revolution, to craft characters with pithy, clever retorts to everything, complex personalities and mysterious, dark histories. Literature is always the aspiration, something sick, twisted and so grotesquely beautiful that it spawns addicts out of readers. Reading to completion, reading multiple times, both imperative.

A story as an heirloom, to be passed from generation to the next because truths never really change.

My problem is that I want and may not be able to do. I must learn to do what I cannot.

Since the reintroduction of television.

It's been a while since I've created something ultimately copied by undetectably so, a while since I've created anything that makes me pause, stick out my bottom lip and nod my head in approval.

I got THE best notebook yesterday in the mail from an artist I hold in very high regard.

4am is the only time of night and day
when I can hear the ocean
from my bedroom.

4am is the only time of night and day
when I can feel my heartbeat
rock my body like a metronome.

4am is the only time of night and day
when pride loses to tenderness.

and 4am is the only time of night and day
when nothing means complete devastation.

Pressure in Exponential Form.

Ever go door to door, in the dark, on the wrong block because you misheard an address? While elderly Chinese people watch from their doorsteps and windows? While the clock ticks down the minutes and you just get later and later, looking more and more unprofessional with each ring of a wrong doorbell? Then after getting home more than an hour later, throwing your one car key into the hallway and pouting in front of your mom, have you ever gotten a call back from your interview subjects telling you that you were ringing bells exactly ONE block away from them?

Well, that worked out.
But my deadline is still in two days.

Oscar Grant Case.

Corporate media is such bullshit--but we all knew that already.

But how does it justify its efforts to depict Johannes Mehserle, the police officer who shot Oscar Grant--who was not only handcuffed but also lying stomach down on ground--in the back, as some sort of fallen hero? Despite his efforts to evade/delay arrest in Nevada (misconstrued as a simple "respite" from the public eye), the media can't tell the public enough about Mehserle's complete cooperation with authorities.

Correct me if I'm wrong, but when you're arrested, I doubt you have much choice over whether or not you want to cooperate. Furthermore, I'm sure Mehserle's "high" cooperative standard is upheld only because his status as a former police officer provides ample protection against police injustice.

Gee, how honorable.

In the same breath, this bullshit media manages to make those who are angry over Grant's death look like wild, uncontrollable heathens. Don't misunderstand me--I'm not saying that protestors should be toting Molotov cocktails around in their backpacks. But, if people are angry, it's certainly easy to see why. To regard the assaults on cop cars and raised voices with surprise doesn't make any sense. In fact, I'd be fearful if this incident didn't ignite the community's rage.I don't know about you, but if someone in my community was gunned down without reason, I'd be pretty fucking pissed off.

Ugh, I'm nauseated.
Perhaps this is why I try not to watch the 10 o'clock news.

If Mehserle gets off, the shit that'll go down in Oakland will make the LA riots look like a slumber party pillow fight.

STATE OF PANIC.

Gutter.

Jan. 1 is the only day when dropping the ball is not only acceptable but celebrated. As I unwillingly acknowledged the meandering descent of some oversized, sparkly orb down along some metal rod in Times Square, I considered my situation: out of an internship due to the pitiful economy, my olfactories and auditories simultaneously clogged yet uncontrollably leaking mucous due to illness, and an increasingly stressful non-disclosable situation that destroys any semblance of a good night's rest.

Generally, I'm an optimist, a rare breed that teeters on the brink of extinction as the years increase in number. Indeed, it's getting more and more difficult as time progresses, as life lurches forward before I'm ready to let it, as the world slips further into the depths of despair and cynicism to remain loyal to my youthful and dream-filled visions.

Sometimes I wonder if this is the "miracle" of growing up, but quickly squash the thought by indulging in deep fried foods, dense literature, and city excurisions via public transporation. The key is mobility, the lock, well, everything I have yet to learn. I have an opportunity to apply as an editor for Hyphen Magazine, hopefully a fruitful endeavor that will somewhat satiate my need for written cartharsis.

I feel confident in my ability to persevere, the only real threats to my luster for life being myself and a choice few individuals I deem closest to my heart. If any of these individuals, or most importantly I, cease to hope, my optimistical demise will follow.