songs i heard tonight:

blur, song 2

we found love in a hopeless place

i just died in your arms tonight

we'll burn this bridge when winter comes around

this morning i woke up to angus and julia. 

notes:
- the kindness of strangers
- the thickness of accents
- the rapidity of chilean spanish
- discussions about spanish literature
- discussions about literature
- tango dancing on gravel
- gravel on my toes
- motherf*cking sunshine in a cup
- oreos in pudding, which is also called mud pie
- smart children
- kite flying at midnight

notes:
- walking home, singing aloud
- things i see multiple times: the valet guys, the black cat, the people walking to bars
- things i smell: jasmine

A Prayer for Rain

Lisel Mueller

Let it come down: these thicknesses of air
have long enough walled love away from love;
stillness has hardened until words despair
of their high leaps and kisses shut themselves
back into wishing. Crippled lovers lie
against a weather which holds out on them,
waiting, awaiting some shrill sign, some cry,
some screaming cat that smells a sacrifice
and spells them thunder. Start the mumbling lips,
syllable by monotonous syllable,
that wash away the sullen griefs of love
and drown out knowledge of an ancient war—
o, ill-willed dark, give with the sound of rain,
let love be brought to ignorance again.

Mark Strand:

The Coming of Light

Even this late it happens:
the coming of love, the coming of light.
You wake and the candles are lit as if by themselves,
stars gather, dreams pour into your pillows,
sending up warm bouquets of air.
Even this late the bones of the body shine
and tomorrow's dust flares into breath.



The Everyday Enchantment of Music

A rough sound was polished until it became a smoother sound, which was polished until it became music. Then the music was polished until it became the memory of a night in Venice when tears of the sea fell from the Bridge of Sighs, which in turn was polished until it ceased to be and in its place stood the empty home of a heart in trouble. Then suddenly there was sun and the music came back and traffic was moving and off in the distance, at the edge of the city, a long line of clouds appeared, and there was thunder, which, however menacing, would become music, and the memory of what happened after Venice would begin, and what happened after the home of the troubled heart broke in two would also begin.

there is another shore somewhere,
we have been drowning towards it;
as we near the bottom of the water,
we realize we're in the sky

I went to the ICP and found Weegee's exhibit informative, but Chien-Chi Chang's work was what really hit home. I stood in front of the exhibited contact sheet and wrote this down from the article:

"I started doing my single-frame project in 2008... Usually when you shoot, you work the image. You shoot a strip of film and pick the best. I work it, too, but in my heart or mind. I press the shutter when I feel connected. I don't really care about the 'before' and 'after' anymore. I feel that one shot is enough. Sometimes I might feel I'm missing the so-called 'decisive moment,' but when you accept you're going to shoot this way, you accept that you'll be missing something: you win some, you lose some. I take pictures increasingly slowly, trying to make every frame count even more. I spend time watching, observing, interacting. Sometimes I feel, 'enough,' and I put down the camera and have a bowl of tea."

Chien-Chi Chang, Taiwanese photographer 
Quote: "Photography is still instinctual, but I am more disciplined now. I am trying to make every frame count, just as in Tai Chi every breath counts."

it's interesting how you can turn the negative things over and see that the not-so-positive things turn suddenly brilliant and full of possibility

leave it to me to write off a movie about baseball as one that would be thoroughly boring.

and leave it to me to be standing in the middle of my room bawling watching the last 10 minutes of a really phenomenal story.


notes:
- he was about to find out why they were laughing. he was so worried about getting to 2nd base that he had no idea that he had just hit a home run
- it's hard not to be romantic about...
- "i'm just a little caught in the middle..."
- what do you care about? what do you care about? what do you care about?

Whereas active love is labor and perseverance, and for some people, perhaps, a whole science...in that very moment when you see with horror that despite all your efforts, you not only have not come nearer your goal but seem to have gotten farther from it, at that very moment...you will suddenly reach it.


- Dostoevsky

"these are the moments that inspire me to take pictures. so quiet you could hear a pin drop. your heart beating. one out of a million that feels eerily similar, like a carbon copy of a copy. it feels like nothing. it has happened before and it will happen again. you would forget it if you even noticed it’s there.

but it is there. it’s there all the time.

and it’s your life.

happening."


- mehmet

i'm lying in bed listen to teddy wilson on the piano (i've got the world on a string)
 and inside me this light is growing,
 the sun grows in my belly and rises to my throat, and spreads to my face
i can feel the heat of happiness tapping on the inside of my cheeks

Note- to be so passionate about something that you spend hours speaking about it, that you spend your waking hours wishing you were doing something about it, and eventually the need becomes so great that you do.


From NPR:

Juan Carlos Echeverry, who studied in the U.S. and Europe, says that's all people knew of Colombia — even years after Escobar was killed by police.

"Ten to 15 years ago, I studied in NYU in New York City, and I studied in Germany, I studied in Spain, and every beer with friends from those countries, we spent hours speaking about Pablo Escobar and narco-trafficking," he recalls.

Echeverry says it was tiresome.

Now, he's Colombia's finance minister. At the Summit of the Americas in the coastal city of Cartagena, he'll give his side of the story to heads of state — including President Obama — and CEOs from some of the biggest companies around. He says many people are already getting the message.

People are talking about this, infrastructure and oil and tourism. And people want to come to Colombia, and this humongous, tectonic change of stereotype, Colombia as a promised land.

"People are talking about this, infrastructure and oil and tourism," he says. "And people want to come to Colombia, and this humongous, tectonic change of stereotype, Colombia as a promised land."

secret is, find chaos in the order

notes on tonight:
all good relationships must go through difficult times to grow stronger.
white suits.
"ice cream cone". (fingers)
dirty martinis.
authenticity.
truth.
we need a few times to know. not just one.

i unlearned the languages you taught me,
though our fluency was really just a construct of our bodies

we inherited a war
stacked it on our eyelids
and slept for years

today we are awake
trembling with desire

Wow.

NPR says that it is worth reading solely for the opening paragraph. which is true.

Ashley Judd talks about The Conversation about women's bodies for The Daily Beast:

The Conversation about women’s bodies exists largely outside of us, while it is also directed at (and marketed to) us, and used to define and control us. The Conversation about women happens everywhere, publicly and privately. We are described and detailed, our faces and bodies analyzed and picked apart, our worth ascertained and ascribed based on the reduction of personhood to simple physical objectification. Our voices, our personhood, our potential, and our accomplishments are regularly minimized and muted.


As an actor and woman who, at times, avails herself of the media, I am painfully aware of the conversation about women’s bodies, and it frequently migrates to my own body. I know this, even though my personal practice is to ignore what is written about me. I do not, for example, read interviews I do with news outlets. I hold that it is none of my business what people think of me. I arrived at this belief after first, when I began working as an actor 18 years ago, reading everything. I evolved into selecting only the “good” pieces to read. Over time, I matured into the understanding that good and bad are equally fanciful interpretations. I do not want to give my power, my self-esteem, or my autonomy, to any person, place, or thing outside myself. I thus abstain from all media about myself. The only thing that matters is how I feel about myself, my personal integrity, and my relationship with my Creator. Of course, it’s wonderful to be held in esteem and fond regard by family, friends, and community, but a central part of my spiritual practice is letting go of otheration.

"When I was alive, I believed--as you do--that time was at least as real and solid as myself, and probably more so. I said 'one o'clock' as though I could see it, and 'Monday' as though I could find it on the map; and I let myself be hurried along from minute to minute, day to day, year to year, as though I were actually moving from one place to another. Like everyone else, I lived in a house bricked up with seconds and minutes, weekends and New Year's Days, and I never went outside until I died, because there was no other door. Now I know that I could have walked through the walls."

The Skull
from The Last Unicorn

from TM's blog:

"Heidegger suggests that truth holds us, we do not hold it.

What is it then, heavy and hot and full of tiny morals? What is this in my head and lap?"


Truth. Truth. Truth. Truth.

For the morality of humans, we say if we do not tell the truth, we have lied. I am not sure I agree or disagree.

In the past months that I have studied how people treat truth in our daily lives, the greatest motivator is fear. Our instinct to protect ourselves works against (or for) us in so many ways. But... does that prove the nonexistence (or existence) of morality in ourselves? Is morality a human creation?

I said to my soul, be still, and wait without hope
For hope would be hope for the wrong thing; wait without love
For love would be love of the wrong thing; there is yet faith
But the faith and the love and the hope are all in the waiting.
Wait without thought, for you are not ready for thought:
So the darkness shall be the light, and the stillness the dancing.
TS Eliot from the Four Quartet

Thank you s.

We'll check the belly of the sun
To know exactly where we're from

- Mirah

“Cherish your solitude. Take trains by yourself to places you have never been. Sleep out alone under the stars. Learn how to drive a stick shift. Go so far away that you stop being afraid of not coming back. Say no when you don’t want to do something. Say yes if your instincts are strong, even if everyone around you disagrees. Decide whether you want to be liked or admired. Decide if fitting in is more important than finding out what you’re doing here. Believe in kissing.”
― Eve Ensler

we are trees,
tango with lions,
one hour before the trip,
no clear mind,
my brightest diamond,
euphoria

(if you can guess the pattern, you win)

Everything is biographical, Lucian Freud says. What we make, why it is made, how we draw a dog, who it is we are drawn to, why we cannot forget. Everything is collage, even genetics. There is the hidden presence of others in us, even those we have known briefly. We contain them for the rest of our lives, at every border we cross.

- Michael Ondaatje, Divisadero

the end of march left me like a blazing wildfire. i feel stripped like the bare trees in the aftermath, really, breathless, anew.


“That which we manifest is before us.”


notes:
- korean restaurant on the third floor. it is raining outside. your umbrella is mint green, mine is pink (i stole it from my roommate just in case). sweet-sounding korean from you, a silent nod and smile from me. chicken kar-jeabe for the both of us. with handmade long noodle & dough flakes. chicken, potato, onion, green onion. our lives pouring out of our mouths, our eyes unblinkingly wide at the similarities of what we are saying.
- how there is no chronology in my writing. how i write out of order, but somehow it is absolutely in order
- moving every year
- ebay
- shedding things while growing possibility
- photography photography photography
- music making my heartbeat a warzone. not sure what weapons were involved (but surely the pitcher of sangria helped).
- an email i read on the way home. my heart pounds, i can't believe that you know exactly what i needed to hear at 12:41AM.
- sunset across the train tracks
- pretend-ballet at night, looking a fool and skipping across the carpet with audacity
- noting how the guy's photography was not at all like the Decisive Moment as described by Henri Cartier-Bresson
- oh, cindy sherman!