Looking uptown with my head in the stars

My third week back in New York City. It feels like home so quickly here.

IN ANY MOMENT, I CAN BEGIN AGAIN.

ALL ENDINGS ARE INEXORABLY TIED TO NEW BEGINNINGS.

THAT'S THE NATURE OF THE JOURNEY.

IT CONTINUES TO UNFOLD.

IT BUILDS ON ITSELF.

IT CAN'T HELP ITSELF FROM DOING THAT.

CHERISH THE MOMENTS, ALL OF THEM.

YOU HAVE SEEN AND FELT MUCH IN LIFE SO FAR.

BUT STILL, THE BEST IS YET TO COME.

-Melody Beattie ['Journey to the Heart: Daily Meditations on the Path to Freeing Your Soul]

Freedom is what you've done, with what has been done to you.

There's a house for sale. An old woman still lives there. She's dying inside. And her children are already selling her things. And it's sad. Not because "things" matter, but because the old woman doesn't know it's happening, and all she feels is pain, and nostalgia, but she's not sure for what because she can't remember anymore. She doesn't remember the names of her children anymore either, or what is so special, or not so special, about all the "things" that they are selling to strangers who keep coming to the house. She doesn't even know that these people are strangers, because her children are strangers to her now too, so it doesn't really make a difference. All she knows is that there are faces: some the same, some different, she can't remember their names, or if she's seen them before - they all seem new, so it doesn't really matter who they are, or what their names are, or where they came from, or if they are her children, because in two minutes she won't remember anyways. And it's sad. Not because she can't remember, but because her children have grown apathetic, and never bother to explain to their mother what is going on, or why she is in pain, or why she is loosing her hair -or what hair is for that matter- and why her hands no longer look like her own, and why they don't want to work like they use to. All she knows is there's an old woman in a house [it is her house, but she doesn't remember that], laying in a bed [it's her bed, but she doesn't remember that], wearing a stained nightgown [it is her nightgown, but she does not remember that either], this old woman has taken her hostage and is hurting her, and no one will explain -that this woman, is her.

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Mathematics assume the model is correct

There's a man, he's riding the C-train, headed downtown toward Brooklyn, after a long day playing with numbers on the upper west side. He's reading a book, about consciousness and metaphysics, and all that crap that seems to be oddly trendy right now in New York City, and other cities where it's never quiet outside, and even harder to keep quiet inside. He looks like he's reading this book, but he's really thinking about how much he hates his job, and misses his family, and feels guilty for never being present. Even when he takes them on vacations to places where the skies are blue and the air is moist, and you can breathe real deep, he's still doing work, or thinking about work, and numbers and money, or on his computer, or phone, answering emails about numbers. He's there on the beach, his family is playing at the shore line, they are laughing, they are calling his name and he doesn't hear them. He's never present. He's always playing with those numbers in his head, instead of playing with his children. And even when he is playing with his children he's still playing with numbers in his head. He doesn't hear them calling. His eyes are scanning those words on the page, he looks like he's reading, but he's really just seeing family portraits, and he's not in them, and no one is smiling, and his wife is sleeping with another man, and he convinces himself it is okay, because he feels guilty, but he misses her, he misses them, he misses who he use to be, but now he's just another number riding downtown.

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SOS

Hi Beth,

I spoke with a friend of mine who was diagnosed with fibro too, she gave me some really inspiring advice. I feel hopeful, but she says I need to be patient with myself - and that is very difficult for me, because I always expect greatness, and most days "greatnss" consists of getting out of bed and brushing my hair and actually making it to classes. She's rather spiritual, and she helped me realize that this is just a time to "learn," and a reminder to be silent and slow down and "work on my heart." I've always tried to avoid feeling pain, physical or emotional, I've always had a way to numb it - with my eating disorder, or a busy schedule, or being medicated... but with physical pain like this, I can't avoid it. It's a reminder that I have to feel, I can not numb this. She said something that keeps repeating in my head, cause it is exactly how I feel "It's like a loose rat finding new parts of my body to torture." It makes me acknowledge all the things that are both physically and emotionally painful... and the physical pain makes everything emotional seem so much more painful as well. It's such a trap. I feel trapped. There are knots inside of me, dozens, hundreds, thousands, both big and small, knotted so tightly around each other, and I feel like my fingers are just fumbling numbly to undo the mess, but they're so tangled, and my fingers are so tired and are always the wrong size for the knot they are working on, and I need patience, and I need to focus on one knot at a time, and then maybe it will free up the opportunity to undo another knot, but maybe it won't, and maybe if I work too aggressively I'll just create another mess of knots and pain that'll bury the rest of them deeper... - kind of like a tangle of necklaces in a jewelry box. That is how my insides feel.

-Ali

everything is a cycle

all of his new girls.

they all look like she did.

back then.

back when she was sick.

back when she lay dead.

in the garden.

with the roses.

with one hand on her mouth.

and one hand on her heart.

It's, Partyyyyy Time!

Brand identity

I use to criticize myself for wanting to make "pretty things," but I'm starting to think it is "a-okay." Our World needs beauty to bring it out of the darkness; to escape the ugliness and suffering of the human condition. Beauty is not just something of an artist's fantasy and imagination, it is already a part of the reality we all share. Peace : war, love : hate, beauty : ugliness- we experience all particles within the whole... Our quantum self, experiencing four dimensions of consciousness, is interdependent on all things (seen & unseen, present and not present) - if the potential energy exists in the imagination, then it too exists in reality.

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Spring of 2012

If you have any sort of imagination: imagine yourself there.

Its all in the tea leaves

Dear Daewoo,
Not knowing where you ran off to, not knowing if I am near or far makes me miss you even more than the time we were at polar opposites of the globe. Its the not knowing that distracts me the most. I'm always writing scenarios of new adventures you could be on in my notebooks, illustrating them with shaking sketches on my morning commute. But it's the memories of you and I in these streets that follow me home on lonely walks from the train on the coldest of nights, when I'm the only person for miles on Fulton. I keep seeing you in the faces of strangers in passing cars, head down in a book, or laughing with a pretty girl, or falling asleep on an unknown shoulder... I'm projecting you all around this town, in the memories I'm making on my own. It's your ghost who practices French with me on the third floor of the Bauhaus museum I'm living in with the Swiss couple. We practice American words "the French way" when we speak with our friends, like "coleur, and patronage, and cinema," they seem to be an inside joke between our lips. Reminding us of the months we spent in Paris studying art, and fashion, and food, and our love for one another. Oh Daewoo, if you're listening, send me the word.
From my lips to your chamomile sips,
BLB 1544

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What is forever, anyhow?

Dear Daewoo,

It's been so long since our last correspondence, please dont think i have forgotten about those passionate weeks we spent together. Its just that i caught myself getting too caught up in you and the fantastic and the dreams and the adventures, and i was living in the letters and forgetting to live in the outside world. But, you are still on my mind daily, in my heart forever (and from what ive hear, forever is a long time!) you especially come to the forefront of my mind on those nights I can't master the science of sleep. Ill find myself driving from one side of the state to the other, cause when I can't sleep, and the highways are empty, I like to race to the edge of the horizon line, to finally meet my childhood friend Mr. Moon on the soft spot at the apron of my Mother's driveway (did i ever tell you about Mr. Moon? It is a quite endearing story to hear!), where the cement has cracked from our seasonal weather, dissolving back into original elements, sinking into the place we stole it from. I'm laying at the edge of my childhood home, my face in the sky, my eyes jumping like the stars seem to do when you stare at them too long. Im acknowledging all the constellations above me, letting my imagination play connect the dots with the ones i dont know (kind of like you use to play connect the dots with the freckles on my lower back). I never got to see the sky clearly like this in the city, Not with all the dirtiness: the pollution, and smog, and light (you always said u missed the dark skies of your travels, you hated the city lights so much.)- so to see these light fire balls burning through time to awaken in me this familiar place, feels "special." (special like the time you rescued me from those crook pirates when we sailed through the polynesians, after we recovered the lost journals of your late brother in Atiu) Oh my dear Daewoo, In the midwestern darkness sometimes it feels like you're laying next to me - even though you've never been to this part of the country- and in the singular moment the universe seems to exhale our thoughts simutaneously collide beneath a transparent blanket of stars, and dust, and space junk, and time, and consciousness, and love. Its so infinite, you see? The answers to all the things i struggle to understand about myself, the things that keep me from sleeping, that follow me to my driveway on my night drives, a whole lot of things I never understood seem to be OUT THERE! but from what I heard, it's all "in here" (as in us) too. Soo maybe it's all less complicated than I make it out to be in my head, (you did always laugh at me for making things so damn complicated on myself...), Maybe all this space and time and cracked pavement and inability to forget (you) is really just as simple as the handful of times our parallel lines crossed, those handful of nights we spent wrapped in the blanket of a singular night sky. My darling, my love, my Daewoo, I will count the stars until our love dissolves back, like the sand beneath our feet, into the oceans, where it came from and where it belongs.
Speak to the stars, I will be listening,
BLB 1544

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An infinite pause and a blanke stare.

This morning...

I awoke with the tormenting idea: this is not January 18th 2011.

I mean, I always accent the anxiety that oppresses my acceptance of this thing we call:

"time."

But this gray-blue morning...

might very truly be January 18th 1947.

Maybe this these so-called with-drawl symptoms they call :

"brain zaps"

[or shivers, or sizzles, or conscious seizures]

and the unconscious insomniac nights, spent convulsing in a jungle of sheets,

"coming to" [seconds, minutes, hours, days, years later} soaked and shivering...

[they call them cold sweats i hear]

I don't remember when it began, or how i got here,

but could it be a result of the white coats

& those experiments with electroconvulsive therapy?

Yes.

Electroshock therapy

is happening here in this

"place" that I am

trapped by physical walls, made of wood, and plaster, and insulation, and on the outside I believe it is brick, reddish brown bricks of varying shades, and shapes, and held together by that cement stuff which they neatly lay inbetween each - what an art - but I do not remember the last time I saw the outside. I only see the insides

and the walls are all painted different contrast colors that make the shivers in my frontal lobe more consistent

(I think they did that on purpose.... the paint choice)

Couldn't they have just painted them all white, or seafoam green like most places where sickness hides inside?

Maybe this man, the house keeper, my keeper, the one who I call uncle, the one with the thinning hair, and nice suits, and fast cars, maybe he is another one of those doctor people he keeps talking about in the 3rd person?

Buttttttutttt, I just can not remember because they are

zapping

all those "things" away.

And by "things," I mean my MEMORIES

(We must keep our suspicions to ourselves, because you know.... they could do worse "things.")

And by "things" this time, but not for the last time.... I mean lobotomies.

Oh dear, and then I would really lose "it."

And by "it," I mean my.... my.... myyyyyy, mind.

(Please pardon me for continuously redefining all these varying pronouns, but that "it" and

"thing" I am most affraid of... of... well, of loosing is my: m i n d

But, perhaps it [my mind] has already been lost?

Somewhere amongst this morning psycho babble....?

Please, please, please, please

just don't let me forget that ONCE, before all of "this" [and by "this" I mean being a

guinea pig for the lithium experiments, and the ECT, and the lobotomies]

I mean, I really don't know anymore... if I have "it," my mind..... anymore?

A brain, a conscious, and all that too. Dear contrasting walls, don't let me forget

what it meant to be: "alive."

BUT, if they took "it" [my mind that is] what will comprehend the contrast

you want to remind me of?

There will just be a big

b l a n k

they arent just dreams. they are snapshots of what is to come.

Let this be our little secret

The only thing better than a midwestern love,
is a Parisian love.

One day...

Questioning everything, saying nothing...

Does she sleep on the left side, regardless of the coast, or planetary alignment, or day of the week, or change in polarity between her east and west personalities? Do you hold her in her sleep? like a breathing time machine with lips a shade of homicide and kisses sharp like wasabi: unexpected, yet welcomed, refreshing, cleansing, a pain in your addictive nature? Do you trace that constellation of beauty marks in the hollow of her back? Bouncing between hemispheres of her cold blooded body to connect the dots. Do you pin her down beneath the warmth of your body and the sheets? just to admire the contrast of her ghost like flesh with your perfectly tan complexion? Does she whisper "Ahlam! Ahlam! A ahlam!" in your ear, confusing you with tongues that are not your own, like love notes disguised as riddles only your heart would care to investigate? Does she fall for your crooked smile, like you fell for her toothy one? Do nights feel like days, and vice versa? Does every second of contact seem infinite, and timeless? still and quiet? an endless highway on a canyon drive? or palmed in your hand on a walk downtown? or swinging beneath the falling stars on an adventure to nowhere? - but really, mon petit hiboux, you're going some 'where', but that 'where' defies Webster and conventional definitions of time, cause she's a time machine. Do you realize you're spiraling towards one another on the same plane, not the kind that takes you places, but the mathematical, metaphysical kind? The kind that moves in to the IV dimension. Do you feel the pull? Do you realize you're both on that plane [it exists because of you], that map, that is both in side you, and out side you, and in side her, and out side her, and in side the dead, and outside the living, and both a part of and not a part of everything seen and unseen... all at the same time, all before, during and after these words were ever thought, better yet written. It's all just a shiver of mindfulness and mindlessness, and you're moving really fast and slow at the same time, but in reality it can feel really lonely sometimes, but we're never[ever] really alone cause if we're a part of it, then it's a part of us, and she's a part of you, and you're a part of her, and you're everything and nothing at the same time. Isn't it great, when you can do anything? and everything? Are you writing down all the details of the pull? Ce n'est pas un rêve, mon rêveur... just close your eyes and revolve with me.

This is your moment to do something original!

"Yeah, the ellipsis, it's dumb. It's dumb. It's an awful idea. I'm not gonna do it, okay? Cause like you said, this is it. This is life. And I'm in love with you... I think that's the only thing I've ever really been sure of in my entire life. And I'm really messed up right now, and I got a whole lot of stuff I have to work out, but I don't want to waste any more of my life without you in it. And I think I can do this. I mean, I want to. I have to, right?"
-Andrew Largeman in Garden State [2004]

I could kiss your face all day.

The city keeps on going...on.
Float down the river with Matty D & Jay
Get off the boat and board a plan to JKF and I, ain't slept a week
But it don't seem to matter to the subway squeakers, squeaking at my feet
The city keeps on going
We just keep on rolling
The city keeps on going
We just keep on rolling...on.
Grand Central Station got a windy coming down
Independence yesterday, ain't no one around
I still recognize her after all these years and she still looks the same
Ah, she still looks the same.
When we left Brooklyn it was raining so hard
Come up on 8th and the rain it cleared off
We're just people watching on 3rd and St. Mark's
Wendy girl just kissing my face, my face
She was just kissing my face
Just when I was sick and down
There was a shaking on the ground
We were hiding from the rain, we were riding on the train
Just when I was sinking down
There was a shaking on the ground
We were hiding from the rain, we were riding on the train
She was dancing on the midway
Just kissing my face
She was dancing on the midway
Just waving goodbye.

Imaginary Musings

"You're far too beautiful to be real," I whispered.
"You're far too real to love a thing so dead," he replied with bourbon breathe.
And as eloquently as I leaned in to kiss his lucid lips,
he dissolved back in to the overworked canvas on my makeshift easel.

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I was a dancer all along.

"Degas takes his place somewhere near the top of the class of those painters who could not or would not see a contour as if it were the edge and the end of something; as if the mind, having followed the eye across the expanse of visible surface, had no interest with what lay behind, had no concern to go farther on, but had to turn and travel back the way it came; as if the eye and the object were stuck for ever in the same relative position, and as if the slightest movement of either would not altogether transform the contour and reveal new forms that a moment before were invisible. Degas knew not only that the contour is insatiable but that in its instability lies its great meaning for the artist intent to solve the double problem of volume and movement. The mutability of the contour is the starting point for an imaginary exploration of the complete form depicted; once the mind grasps the significance of the drawing of that single area, the imagination quickly takes in the whole; the artist's attitude to his subject sweeps into our consciousness, the inertia of our mind is over- come' and there suddenly awakens in us those loud echoes of the artist's own emotions which the experience of his art can alone induce."
"Degas Sculptures" by R.R. Tatlock

Just hold on a little more...

Death sentence

He wishes he could forget
that Autumn in the Midwest
where childhood desire bloomed
and the greenery slowly died.

Her eyes burned like an opal
at dusk - in the setting sky,
he could never look away.
He could never fight the trance...
the lust... the magic... the darkness...
that danced inside her

He watched helplessly
His hands turn from green
to yellow
to red
to brown
to dead
in her cold palms

He wishes he could forget that
Autumn in the Midwest
when le magique of a girl
drowned the fire in his soul.

He wishes he could forget...

A Young Dancer and A Few Hundred Horses

self contained [f.rag.ment.s]
sculpted
into familiar body parts
a cluttered studio, cleaned out by
apathetic hands.

they will never appreciate
the love
you cast.

Who am I anymore?

i may never understand this lifetime
or the next
but i may only hope to leave a watermark
of my pathetic existence on the hearts
of those i have loved along the way.
you and i
are just the same.

This is exactly where I want to be tonight.

Dear God,
It is easy to talk about love and justice, mercy and peace.
Help me live the truths I speak of.
May my actions always reflect Your presence within me.
And so it is.
Amen