Wednesday, December 31, 2008

NOT FOR YOU

Restless soul, enjoy your youth
Like muhammad hits the truth
Cant escape from the common rule
If you hate something, dont you do it too...too...

Small my table, a-sets just two
Got so crowded, I cant make room
Oh, where did they come from?
Stormed my room!
And you dare say it belongs to you...to you...

This is not for you (3x)
Oh, not for you...ah, you...

...scream...my friends...dont call me...
...friends, no they dont scream...
...my friends dont call...my friends dont...

All thats sacred comes from youth
Dedication, naive and true
With no power, nothing to do
I still remember, why dont you...dont you...

This is not for you (3x)
Oh, never was for you...fuck you...
This is not for you...
Oh, this is not for you...yeah, you...
This is not for you...
Oh, not for you...
Oh, you...

-Pearl Jam

Friday, November 14, 2008

Dissolve

My emotions change daily, hourly - the continual shift like water, perhaps symbolizing the fact that I have no solid feelings, no hard stance on anything.

In class:

I'm not dumb, just unable to pay attention.

WVLNT (Wavelength For Those Who Don't Have the Time

This was one of the most disagreeable things I've ever seen. After the film ended and the screen went black, silence filled my brain like oxygen pouring into my ear canals. The struggle to watch WVLNT was worth it, the blank silence afterward had a cathartic effect. It put a stop to the fifteen minutes of nail-biting agony that left me in a state of nerves, and tense sitting on the edge of my seat, clutching my head. Once the DVD was again in my hands, I wanted only to be rid of it, I still felt nauseous and tingly.
I had to search hard to find any beauty in the film. At some points, the lineups of superimposed windows and their coloration brought to mind Rothko and his paintings and the image wasn't completely barren of beauty, but generally speaking the entire film was completely in juxtaposition to the sort of aesthetic I find pleasing. I hate to use the word "ugly," but I found most the images to be uninviting to look at.
Watching it was an experience, which is the only acquisition I rightly feel I took away from it. The film pulls nerves, forcing the viewer to be extremely uncomfortable the entire duration. Visually, it consists solely of superimposition that contain no action - simple static shots. Staring at these for extended periods of time allows the mind to wander. These static images actually look like dissolves - they twitch at the edges - like they are about to fade into the images behind it yet it never comes into lucid fulfillment. Waiting for the images to change continually was tantalizing and dissapointing - it never changed.
Then there was the accompanying soundtrack - which, as a sufferer of migraines, I would only describe as agonizing. The white noise is some buzzing mechanical noise, you sit there, already perplexed at the images wondering is it a vacuum? an eggbeater? a whirring fan? a factory background? some torture machine?
As you sit there, painfully experiencing all of this, one dominant thought strain emerges: suicide. Seriously. "When is this film going to end? Is fifteen minutes over yet? I feel I've spent my entire life watching this. Please just let it end. I am in so much pain. Please, stop all of it. Everythinggg." I found myself numbly saying repeating this, mouthing prayers, as if that would do anything. Credit to WVLNT, it effectively does something - it's just not pleasant, and my shortened experience with this is just about all I can take. I wouldn't watch the full length version of this. Not even out of curiosity.

Sunday, November 9, 2008

I think I might prefer being emotionally dead than being trapped in this tornado of various desires. I'm being pulled in so many different directions, it might tear me apart. Maybe it is better to sit numbly and watch skin tingle with cold rather than feel physical heat.

Friday, November 7, 2008

The Cinnamon Peeler

If I were a cinnamon peeler
I would ride your bed
and leave the yellow bark dust
on your pillow.

Your breasts and shoulders would reek
you could never walk through markets
without the profession of my fingers
floating over you. The blind would
stumble certain of whom they approached
though you might bathe
under rain gutters, monsoon.

Here on the upper thigh
at this smooth pasture
neighbor to your hair
or the crease
that cuts your back. This ankle.
You will be known among strangers
as the cinnamon peeler's wife.

I could hardly glance at you
before marriage
never touch you
-- your keen nosed mother, your rough brothers.
I buried my hands
in saffron, disguised them
over smoking tar,
helped the honey gatherers...

When we swam once
I touched you in water
and our bodies remained free,
you could hold me and be blind of smell.
You climbed the bank and said

this is how you touch other women
the grasscutter's wife, the lime burner's daughter.
And you searched your arms
for the missing perfume.

and knew

what good is it
to be the lime burner's daughter
left with no trace
as if not spoken to in an act of love
as if wounded without the pleasure of scar.


You touched
your belly to my hands
in the dry air and said
I am the cinnamon
peeler's wife. Smell me.

-Michael Ondaatje


A girl read this out loud today during open mic and it really left an imprint on me. I had never heard it before. The only poetry I get nowadays seems to be through others - open mic and such. I crave it.

Thursday, October 30, 2008

"Thank God I'm an atheist." - Luis Buñuel


"There is a way of going to the movies as others go to church and I think that, from a certain angle, quite independently of what is playing, it is there that the only absolutely modern mystery is celebrated."
-André Breton
un chien andalou

Saturday, October 25, 2008

Walking through a cold rain of sharp-edged leaves

Yesterday a boy pointed out that the way everyone in my family calls our dog our own different names only signifies the schismic issues in our overall communication.
Another boy I talk to has wormed his way twice into the ugly composition notebook that I am forced to write in for film class. I promised myself that I wouldn't use it as a journal, the way I sometimes use my preferred moleskin notebooks. Didn't want myself getting all personal for class, but I guess I've been having an overspill of emotions lately - I keep finding traces of them on those wide-ruled pages, even where they're not supposed to be. Those damn splotchy composition notebooks. Everything I write in them ends up looking like fifth-grade homework.

I'm at home right now, and it's really painful to be here. All the unhappiness from previous years living with these people has flooded back, whipping my migraine into a frenzy. I hate when people ask about my family. I'll give them all the conversational basics - I have a mother, father, two little sisters, and a dog. My dad's a professor. I like my mom's cooking. I don't actually like them. Please, don't delve further. It's really difficult having people trying to get to know me better. "Tell me about yourself," they ask. And I know what they want to hear. Each person wants something different, a new side of me. And I could give it to them, but I would rather have someone stare at my naked body than hear my naked mind. It's really hard for me to share myself. I have a clamshell instead of a skull and even I seem incapable of opening it except maybe to filter out the occasional thought or two. Naturally, this seems impairing and god do I know it. Help, I need to change.

Wednesday, October 22, 2008

slashing ink in the shade of the blinds

I'm scared.I just watched Nightmare on Elm Street with our neighbors across the hall. I was worried that Heather wouldn't be here when I got back - I didn't want to sleep in the room alone tonight. I suggested we put in another scary movie to cancel out the first - my tried and true remedy for scaring away the frights - and they put in Saw III. (It's a room of boys). Now, I lie back here in bed - not alone - listening to Heather's sleep noises. She moans, her bed creaks, I cringe. Maybe I should have wished her to sleep over at Pauls. It's funny - I always say I've never had a nightmare - but watching Nightmare on Elm Street for the first time tonight, I realized that I had a dream as a child, almost exactly replicating one of the scenes from the movie. I don't remember being frightened however. In my dream, I was on the couch, and all of a sudden long claw-like fingernails came up from beneath and pulled me under the cushions. I didn't die. Instead, when I opened my eyes I was lying on an examination table, with bright lights in my face surrounded by alien-looking creatures with Nosferatu-like fingers. Then I opened my eyes again and I was awake, or maybe I continued dreaming, but don't remember the rest. There are a few standout dreams I have had in my life, and that is one of them. Right now I cannot sleep with these violent images flashing through my mind in the montage style of Saw III. Although I have not slept for days, sleep eludes me still. I feel like the guy from Fight Club. I'm afraid everytime I think of that movie that boy in my Rhetoric class will cross my mind, although a week has gone by since I last saw him and I've forgotten that I'm supposed to have a crush on him. Ah, enough insomniac ramblings. This is not supposed to be a diary entry.
P.S. The pile of textbooks on the pillow next to me is poking my back.

edit- P.P.S. I slept on a pencil last night. RAWRGHHHRRRR newkucfniwEB SJK BVK the sharpened fingernail was real, only i didn't dream about it.

Monday, October 20, 2008

Losing Argument (With Myself)

I smell like smoke. I was hungover this morning. Well, it is so late now, I suppose I should say yesterday morning. All the great writers drink and smoke. Why am I not churning out any good writing?

Sunday, October 19, 2008

I've been thinking - Handsome Boy Modeling School (feat. Cat Power)

In the course of the past months or weeks, I have realized two things.

1. Home isn't a definite place. It is created when I'm surrounded by my belongings. (I am a materialistic person)
2. I am not a person who can be defined by their actions.
(I've been doing things that don't match up with who I thought I am/wanted to be)

Monday, October 6, 2008

Menthol Cigarretes

college is a play-ground, this quasi world i feel i'm not really living in. i don't know what i'm doing here - just living day-to-day. sometimes, i wander around at night and it feels like home, like the city is mine. then the sun rises, and the people come out and the city is lost in the crowd although i'm still walking the same sidewalks.

Sunday, October 5, 2008

times have changed to the point where i can't stand being alone with myself anymore.
is this a sign of actual loneliness or self-hatred?

Thursday, September 25, 2008

currently: watching the ceiling light drip rain indoors

An excerpt from "After Dark" by Haruki Murakami:

"Have you got a boyfriend?" Korogi asks.
Mari gives her head a little shake.
"Still a virgin?"
Mari blushes with a quick nod. "Uh-huh."
"That's okay, it's nothing to be ashamed of."
"I know."
"You just didn't happen to meet anybody you liked?" Korogi asks.
"There's one guy I used to see. But..."
"You didn't like him enough to go all the way."
"Right," Mari says. "I had plenty of curiosity, but I just never felt like doing that. I don't know..."
"That's fine," Korogi says.. "There's no sense forcing yourself if you don't feel like it. Tell you the truth, I've had sex with lots of guys, but I think I did it mostly out of fear. I was scared not to have somebody putting his arms around me, so I could never say no. That's all. Nothing good ever came of sex like that. All it does is grind down the meaning of life a piece at a time. Do you see what I'm saying?"
"I think so."
"Someday you'll find the right person, Mari, and you'll learn to have a lot more confidence in yourself. That's what I think. So don't settle for anything less. In this world, there are things you can only do alone, and things you can only do with somebody else. It's important to combine the two in just the right amount."



This short passage contains a lot. There's a lot I want to say about it. I really like reading Murakami's work right now, especially this book. It puts me into mind of my own sleepness nights but in a soothing way, placing me in a slow-moving world of darkness lit with the fluorescence of a likewise insomniac city.
Picture

Lost Lolita




Brigitte Bardot was once described as a woman-child. And although no one would ever liken me to that screen goddess, I feel as if I am the same way. When I was a little girl, I looked very mature. Now mature, I feel I look like a little girl.
(This maturity comes not from physical development but from my rather serious nature.)
Given, I have a penchant for strapped flats with socks and skirts and dresses. I keep my hair cut in a bob, the style of hair most little girls have worn at least once in their childhood. I'm small and often have the word "cute" applied to me. (Seriously, I'm not "cute".)
I know that people don't see me as looking like a child, but that's how I feel lately.
I have just used the word "feel" so often it's beginning to look funny, like I'm spelling it wrong or something.
But, continuing on with my "feelings" - walking around the city, I just feel lost and swallowed up in myself. The reach extends where ever I go. I feel small and insignificant again, and it feels wrong when grown men look and stare at me through their car windows. I am dizzy and disoriented in the streets and often look up in bewilderment when a car whizzes by just barely missing a collision with my body. My work is sloppy, and I keep making mistakes only to wake up from my shallow sleep to realize them and pound myself on the head. I can't concentrate fully on anything, my mind is teeming with all the other things I have to do. I'm fully awake from lack of sleep but I feel so dizzy, like this lack of it had elevated me to some high altitude and left my brain deprived of oxygen. I'm in a constant flux. Time is a 24 hour cycle, the division between night and day has been melded. Day or night is irrelevant when you're sitting in a windowless box.
Picture 1
Picture 2

Wednesday, September 24, 2008

"Or is this not the secret of the obstacle between us? - that his type is the large buxon woman, heavy on the earth, while I will always be the virgin-prostitute, the perverse angel, the two-faced sinister and saintly woman."
-Anais Nin from Henry and June

Sunday, September 21, 2008

Hello stranger

It's been a long long while, but I feel like writing again. About myself. About my life. About me me me. And some other things too.
So, I've started college and as much as I love it here, I just don't want to be HERE. I feel so alone being constantly surrounded by people. I keep rethinking everything and therefore never get anything done. Which has always been the way the course of my life has taken place. I lie inanimate on my bed just thinking about the way I want things to be, and never taking action, nothing happens.
Things aren't like that anymore. I'm still the same person, but things happen now. And that's what I want to write about.

edit: New life, new blog, that's always how it goes (with me at least...). So all the old posts have been hidden away in the recesses of Blogger and I'm starting anew.

Saturday, February 2, 2008

Cotton Candy Machine

[THIS POST HAS BEEN ADDED LATER, MUCH LATER, today's date is december 6 2011. the originial post had no words, only a title "cotton candy machine" but i wanted to write this memory down before i forget because it was a very pleasant one.

i think i had a sleepover at susy's house, we woke up early because we had to volunteer at an elementary school in her neighborhood to get hours for national honor society. there was a festival of some sort and susy and i were in charge of working the cotton candy machine. it was hilarious. we had never made cotton candy before and it was so much fun! susy took over sales and i made the cotton candy, dipping the paper cone in the whirling machine until it was covered with enough fluff. i kept changing colors and flavors and we actually enjoyed the volunteering. jordan vaa and tg wignall were volunteering too and i remember talking with them a lot which made me happy because i had a huge crush on jordan and was attracted to tj as well. when we got back to susy's house our shirts were stiff from all the crystalized sugar, and our eyebrows and eyelashes were frosted pink. our hair felt like it was covered in hairspray. we took and shower together and it took FOREVER to get it all off. that was a fun day in high school, i iwsh i had written about it at the time instead of recalling the events 4years later.]