Life is but a Dream

Abandoned Cast Aways:

a letter to you both

Okay, so we've been stranded on this little boat for 3 years now. This I've not to tell you, it isn't or shouldn't reach you as a surprise; you've been right here beside me, the both of you and I beside you just as well, or worse. I should think that if at all surprised, it should be by the length of time being so short not so long. I may not speak for the 3 of us but it has felt like much, much longer. If either of you have truly been here, solidly, then I do confide that I must speak for the 3 of us when I say its felt like far much longer than 3 years. The farthest of "much longer" in fact.

We've each spoken of going our separate ways, taking a chance on our own. By the time you read these words, that is where I'll be, for well or worse, I have swam out further and am now possibly alive just as likely as dead. My morning swim has become a full day, depending by what time the two of you discover this letter. It shouldn't have been hard to find, our Titanic would surely sink if even one of James Cameron's camera's parked on our stern. At the driest corner where the sun upon its proudest of noons would bow down its rays and hold warmly an inviting attention; there; you must've found this page and on the page, over the sketches that documented as well as tormented my thoughts, I have written these words. Boldly and violently etched into the 8" x 11" manilla sheet.

I am gone. I have left. I wish you both the best but I am gone and I shall not return. I am selfish and I apologize if the consequence of my action hurts or harms either of you whom I do truly care for but I refuse to die out here. Out at sea, in the middle of the ocean. Stranded on a row boat that sips in water through the three holes under our feet. 3 years and we've become comfortable with transforming the situation into a unique circumstance and adapting ourselves as if we could go on as this for 3 more years, or whatever it takes before we either die or are rescued.

I realize I am leaving you both with more work, we are three but without so much as 1/3, the labour of each remaining person increases but twice. I hope my departure awakens in you both, a sense of alarm, a sense of time and necessity. I hope that my example strengthens your courage, provides a battery for your will, gasoline for your self-preservation and promotes your urgency to act now. This instant, as you're reading...I hope that your minds are made up regardless of your feelings towards me, for abandoning you both, for writing this letter and having the neural gall to claim its an action executed in love; despite your immediate impression of me this instant, I do wish you both, do urge you both to please leave this boat. Lets part ways and we'll be better off alone, I am sure of it. If only one of you leaves, please do your best to convince the last person not to remain alone, not to attempt to keep the boat on their own. You'll surely sink, the 3 holes are much stronger and consistent than any one of us. If you die even an inch further away from where we've been stranded for 3 years, then you have made progress. You have been as consistent as the holes that mean to drown you.

Goodbye, so long.

We'll meet on dry land,

Our End.

God Won't Show, He Sent a Poet Instead!

So I buy a Bible...you know a friend of mine has an idea, some sort of photo shoot, involving me and a Bible--I don't ask questions. I buy the Bible on my lunch break, I took a really long time deciding between cover colors, a black pleather or a mahogany pleather; "what would god choose?" I think to myself and go with the black. Now I feel a bit strange as I purchase this $6.99 Bible, King James' Version. As I walk out of Shakespeare and Co. onto Broadway, this was just the preview, this was when the Bible still had the plastic wrap, the condom if you will. We all know God with a condom is no God. After work I strip the cover from out its protection and take down Lafayette with one hand in my pocket and the other swinging the Bible. Something strange occurred after a few moments.

Before I get into it, I should now mention that I looked like a mormon, in dark gray viscose pants with a striped collared tucked in and covered by a light, almost heather gray v-neck. Its breezy enough that I can get away with my gray skully, not because of its color but because others tend to take too personal another person's apparel.

Anyway, as I'm crossing Astor, northern bound to 14 St, I suddenly become reached, held, proposed by this overwhelming sensation. Its almost as if the Bible beside me with the words, "Holy Bible" thick and gold on the pleather cover, were a weapon not a book. A pistol, some sort of side arm, phallic and making up for some need within me to extend my manhood through the power of a weapon. I feel as if I could control, fear, excite people, shape their minds with whatever I feel they should interpret as relevant. For whatever reason, as I walked up Lafayette, I felt a legacy of murder, conquest, violence, and prejudice surge through my palm and like a bribe, slipping in, I savored the imagined taste of taking apart a human brain and reconstructing the pieces as I saw fit. This was strange, perhaps even uncomfortable but not frightening. Not frightening in the slightest bit.

You Feel Cold

John and Mary - (1969) Directed by Peter Yates

Starring Dustin Hoffman and Mia Farrow

As a month passes by; one that began with a birthday and a girlfriend has ended with a developing beard and a heart that isn't as broken as it is loosened, I have gone through a flash flood of thoughts. Merciless thoughts, un-silenced thoughts, restless, questioning, oppressing thoughts. Endlessly haunting, staring at a reflection that stares at you as if you were the one in the mirror, displaced, unsure, identity as thin as your patience, as thin as your nerve endings and what suddenly makes them spark and sizzle like cooking oil.

As a month passes by and Scott Walker sings, and Beach House fits me like a glove, and everything is a living code of itself. And instead of seeing things as they are, I only see the code. I spend my days deciphering, cross-referencing, running the answers in my head, vividly observing as they, like a subtle metamorphosis, become questions. The period stretching into a line and curling into a question mark as a new period parks underneath it.

What good does a film like John and Mary to this tenuous condition? The impressions absorbed through this ripe fidelity towards romantic melancholy. Almost like a mirror played as moving pictures, with a story that stands there like a body, showing you yourself. But its one of those funhouse mirrors, it has to be--Because everything looks slightly nicer and works out better, its memory the way a memory is usually kept, with bias. If its a bad memory, you focus on the bad; if the opposite then the opposite. John and Mary took all the good and made me a body song. Something to look at and hum along because I don't know the words but the melody is so familiar.

If You See Something Say Something

Doctor Zhivago - (1963) Directed by David Lean

Starring Omar Sharif, Julie Christie, Geraldine Chaplin

Rod Steiger

I saw Doctor Zhivago today. On a big screen, digitally restored and for the first time, viewed at the Tribeca Film Festival. Should I talk about it? Tell you about how great the story was, or spin sentence after sentence about David Lean and all the beautiful shots he gives you. Omar Sharif or Julie Christie? Better yet, Tom Courtenay and Rod Steiger?

I'm not going to talk about it. "Please watch Doctor Zhivago if you get the chance", is all I'll say.

I, instead, am going to tell you about the episode I witnessed today just before entering the Clearview Cinema. As I cued along with others, an older gentleman spoke to me and others about films, music, history, many subjects, each in which he held some sort of worthy insight to share. He wasn't really bothering anyone. He made silly jokes and teased some of the Cinema staff. Whenever one of these ushers in bright yellow windbreaker TFF jackets and sunglasses would approach he'd ask if they were bringing him his ticket. It was a harmless joke and I couldn't imagine that it got to any of their nerves. As the line grew, I'd say about after maybe a good 15 people cued, the older man's younger wife showed up. He, by the way, was the first person on line; and when she showed up, everyone noticed. She was cool too, both really nice, friendly people. He told me about an film essay he has been working on for 2 weeks now, he told me about Hedy Lamarr and how she pretty much invented the technology responsible for the cellphone and internet with any due credit. Seriously. If you heard the story yourself it would not sound as crazy as it does when I write it.

Oh, I think I smell a rat!

It appeared that someone on line did not agree with his wife showing up late and taking a spot in the front. "It wasn't fair." Anonymously, word was slipped into one of the usher's ears and they approached the older man. "Its been brought to our attention that in all fairness, she (his wife) should go to the back of the line since its ticket per body, first come - first serve." Paraphrase, whatever...They split up the old man and his younger wife, the first 10 people are escorted to the ticket vendor, I'm glad to be moving as I had been shaking from a chill that echoed through me. He buys his ticket then explains his case to the vendor. I smile inside and think to myself he's a slick bastard, smooth operator because he had complied without much of complaint when the ushers linearly divorced him from his lady. He knew who to talk to. The vendor was ready to sell him the ticket or at least have one of the managers hear his story. I paid my tickets and then three people after me handed the vendor their ticket vouchers. The three people behind me were together and they were speaking with the old man earlier, everything seemed cool. But as we all headed towards the Cinemas entrance we passed on of the ushers who spoke with the old man earlier. One of the three people behind says to the usher, "hey, the old man is trying to game the box office." To this, the usher says, "good call," as he directs his energy on heading towards the box office where the old man probably was about to get his wife a ticket.

You ratted me out!

What business is it of yours if he gets his wife a ticket? Really, you ratted out another person, for what? What did it get you, doing "right", you got your ticket, what was the point in interfering? I don't get it.

Confessions of a Crap Artist: I Just Wanna Say...

I try and try to fit all my thoughts into words. I try to make speech a conduit to brain, a channel from where one is able to express itself through the other. I don't know how to talk out loud...I stop sentences short...I trail off and change topics awkwardly and...its all bullshit anyway. I can't make sense of how anyone can do it...I premeditate the words and it sounds so good, so exact and confident...it makes sense and I'm definitely in control but then its like the words aren't really words; like liquid and solid, the same but not the same. Better yet gas and solid. My thoughts are like some gas that floats and lightly obscures but one could walk through...words on my tongue are solid blocks with weight, height and mass, texture and density. You can't walk through it, you can't make it float and reshape it like clouds at the slight inspiration of wind, once its spoken a word is a word. A thing jumping out of you and you can't have it back...but you can add more words to direct a thought. I'm no good at directing spoken words. Maybe on paper or text/edit when the words are not quite solid, writing is the liquid phase of communicative matter.

Film Logue

A Little Bit of Plague Makes the People Come Together

Panic in the Streets - (1950) Directed by Elia Kazan

Starring Richard Widmark, Paul Douglas, Barbara Bel Geddes

2 or 3 years back I read The Plague by Albert Camus and I've been meaning to read it again. There is something about Plague that fascinates me, any contagious disease in fact, if it groups a number of people together its everything short of uninteresting to observe human solidarity.

Panic in the Streets is a story that follows a thinning clock, a race against time, as the threat of an epidemic deepens in a New Orleans town when a man with pneumonic plague is murdered and his infected attackers unknown. Richard Widmark and Paul Douglas play the unlikely pair of doctor and policeman in charge of finding the contaminated murderers. The doctor, Lt. Cmdr. Clinton Reed M.D. just as Dr. Bernard Rieux in The Plague or even Dr. Steven Monks in Val Guest's 1963 plague film, 80,000 suspects; all dealt with the tremendous strain of stress, every life that pass, passed through their hands and every action they took was met with immediate response. Under such restraint of time during plague, one must act fast, truthfully, and with little or no regard for ego. I guess this is why plague stories interest me. Only when the threat of death is made a real solid fact, only when it looms about not as a spontaneous thief but as an invited guest who makes you uncomfortable nonetheless, only then do we shed the material layers of life. It brings out of people, that which they are at their essential make up. Heroes can become cowards, beggars can ascend to aristocracy; plague has no class division. During a plague, everyone is in the same position, death may come and carry anyone away. This is true even without plague, Death most certainly can never be called prejudice or predictable but without such an experience like plague, Death can be ignored, a person may distract their attention to other things. And as I would agree a preoccupied obsession with Death isn't healthy nor is the fear of Death that stunts one's experience of life. Plague sheds our costumes and what we are becomes known to us and others.

I'm surprised I haven't heard about Panic in the Streets before. Perhaps because its not based on a Tennessee Williams play and it doesn't star Brando, he isn't in it at all, actually. There are some great performances nonetheless, Richard Widmark is intense and practically blew a few capillaries as Clint Reed and then there's Jack Palance (then billed Walter Jack Palance) as Blackie, the lead assailant who's unknowingly carrier to the pneumonic lung candy that's got the city officials all hot and bothered. Barbara Bel Geddes plays Clinton Reed's wife, Nancy. It took me a moment to realize she played Midge Wood, Jimmy Stewart's friend in Vertigo, I'm very fond of her. I wonder if she was part of Kazan's method class? I'd like to see more of her.

American Idlers

Yesterday I went to see a friend perform live at an open mic showcase in the lower east side. It was an interesting night. However, I came to a rather obvious conclusion based upon some of the other acts of that same interesting night. There are people who are purposely attempting to become pop stars. This is a no-brainer if I'd only stop to consider today's entertainment, Making the Band, American Idol, and other shows that turn nobodies into pseudo-stars overnight. It shouldn't surprise me then, when a girl heads on stage half-naked with back-up dancers at an open mic. The back-up dancers, shocked me more than the see-thru nylon bodysuit. All she needed was a headset microphone and flashy lights. Of course the song was generic and the performance was an insincere attempt to ironically "dress up" the otherwise boring song.

The notion of chasing fame is not a new one, I'd just never experienced it in person before. Half of the acts in this open mic event were doing just that, purposely promoting themselves to become the next copy of whatever pop artist is currently the representation of their respective genre. I'm not angry, nor am I passing judgement, I'm only a bit confused. I don't understand why someone would purposely want to become that big. I guess to me, I only see the bad side. Tabloids, Paparazzi, E! Hollywood stories, stress, claustrophobia, or even simply not being able to do everyday things without people freaking out about it. To each is own, "one man's waste is another man's soap." I suppose being rich and influential is enough of a compensation but thats only if you're poor. Once you're rich and influential, where do you go from there? No Human is satisfied once they're dissatisfied. All it takes is one grievance to get the dominos tumbling. Any brief moment of accomplishment is only going to bring about more confidence to attempt new accomplishments; ones you never even desired before becoming rich and influential. And the higher you climb the harder you'll fall, and if you fall too early, you'll try so hard to get back up and in the Entertainment Industry, which drools out new versions of what's Popularly Acceptable weekly, you'll find that you've been replaced even before you fell.

But Fame and The Pursuit of Fame is a talent. It really is, its hard work to be safe and relevant during an entire career. It takes energy, innovation, and an uncompromising will to try to "make it" in the commercial music industry. My problem is that I usually expect an artist to use this energy, innovation, and uncompromising will on their music itself. I don't care about the gimmick, because more than anything I listen to the music, not the recording, not the video, or stage extravaganza. But listening alone, is no longer enough, we have passed that point where listening is stimulating enough; we need that television from Back to the Future II, the one Marty's son is watching with like 12 channels on at once. We need phones that can be used as the media equivalent to the swiss army knife. Ours, is the ADD-Age, in addition to not being able to stay interested in one thing for too long we need a sum of everything at once. Sadly, its nearly impossible to thoroughly appreciate anything through such simultaneous over-indulgence.

Fish Out of Water

I had a dream last night

a fish on land

gasping for breath

just laughed

and sang this song

is life like this for everyone?

is life like this for everyone?

Gill Expansion

I love these lyrics. They are by an artist who's songs are instantly residence of my heart and mind. Lhasa de Sela, who I have blogged about a number of times already, is like if my brain were to separate from my body and sing to me riddles that may one day lead to a reunion.

Forget that "fish" is a very common symbol for savior, forget that "water" similarly symbolizes origin or purity and truth, just think of yourself and your life, just think about how you breathe. Its no big deal to you because you are used to it. How painful it must be to a fish? What were the steps for that ancestor of ours that dared to venture further than the rest and emerge from that primordial beach. Surely Grandpa Zoa had to become amphibious before reptilian and later mammal. How painful was it, breathing air, to the amphibian pioneers? That is before they got used to it.

I immediately think about scent. Have you ever been on a train with a noxiously oppressive odor? Have you noticed that some commuters remain in that same train car, regardless of the green cloud above their heads. After a while, the olfactory senses become used to the otherwise repugnant stench. The way a serious cigarette smoker can't smell his/her clothes the way a non-smoker (like myself) can immediately become repulsed by it.

The lyrics bring to my mind, overstimulation and how an outsider may respond to what may appear absolutely normal and in fact, natural to others.

I love that the fish laughs, perhaps finding the situation ridiculous. "Only a masochist would live under these conditions," the fish might think to itself. If breathing in this song can be said to be the act of living itself, then you may do well to conclude the fish observes a pain that rolls synonymous to living. A somewhat prerequisite suffering taxed on us land breathing creatures. If this is the case then we don't seem to mind, in fact, some of us believe it natural. "Life's a bitch and then you die!"

I don't think Life is a bitch, Aesop Rock sums it quite nicely when he said, "Life's not a bitch/ life is a beautiful woman/ you're just mad cuz she won't let you get that pussy/ maybe she didn't feel ya shared any similar interests/ or maybe you're just an asshole who couldn't sweet talk the princess..." Its all about circumstance, true-- but is pain truly part of life? Has someone lived more simply under the basis that they've experienced more pain and suffering than another? Or even experience itself, is Life defined by experience? If a person does, by comparison, very "little" in life, does that in some sense imply that that person has wasted a chance to truly live? By such criteria, only the thrill seekers are worth the lungs in their chests. But most thrill seekers are just bored and overstimulated, they constantly need to "raise the bar" to feel as if Life has any meaning. Nothing wrong with that. I myself am bored and in many aspects overstimulated. But is there anything wrong with being satisfied, truly satisfied and happy doing nothing.

What was I talking about? Whatever!

In the Beginning There Was the Word

I just finished reading God: A Biography by Jack Miles and I must recommend this book to anyone at all interested in religion or mythology or literary criticism. Jack Miles presents his thoughts through neutral intrigue and carries the reader forward, on a second hand adventure. Its almost as if I'm watching the author read the bible and following as he draws commentary that provides more for The Bible as a work of literature than a work of spiritual worship. Providing the first helps you understand the second, or at least opens new perspectives on the second.

I think I began reading this book in November. Or I began reading this book once again, since I've owned the book for a few years now and only was able to get passed the first 3-4 chapters this November. I've been really bad at reading, lately. Finishing the last sentence last night while attempting to watch The Matrix: Revolutions was somewhat satisfying. In fact very pleasurable, if it were only the book. I really want to talk to people about Jack Miles' Pulitzer Prize winner but so many of my friends don't want to hear about God. Immediately, guards go up and they assume I'm at all interested in a manner that finds me attached religiously to the subject. Not so, I couldn't be more detached after reading God: A Biography. Ironically enough, I'm quite eager to buy a copy of The Holy Bible to read. Its an important piece of literature and history. Not that the events in the Bible are in fact historical but the Bible itself and its effects have shaped history since its completion. It brings to mind, what religions have come from the reading of this work and also how much has become interpretation versus what is literally written in the scripture.

I think I will now reread Philip K. Dick's The Divine Invasion accompanied by a side reading of another book I've procrastinated to commence, The Gnostic Jung.

Benji the Hater: Make Your Face Behind Closed Doors, Please

Benji Says:

I fucking hate these chicks that are in so much of a hurry that they have to put on make-up on the train. I don't give a fuck how fly you are, that shit makes you look desperate, ho! That shit embarrasses me for you. Either wake up on time and fucking fix your face in the privacy of your own stupid home or just deal with your natural face, which quite honestly isn't helped much by make-up unless you're about to get your picture taken; if you're cute then you're cute and if you're not then you're not, you don't really expect to fool me. After all, its powder and lipstick not fucking CGI! Get it together ladies. You heard it from me, Benji!

Confessions of a Crap Artist: If You'd Been a Dog...

KNIVES OUT

Job searching is depressing, I'm quite unmotivated; and what some might be shocked to hear is that I'm okay with being unmotivated. Just to be clear, I mean unmotivated with job searching, not life! Life is very inspiring but job searching is like walking around looking for an available knife to be stabbed with. Only no one wants to stab you unless you are a certain type of bleeder, better yet unless experience has proven you to be a certain type of bleeder. So even if you are what they're looking for, it counts for nothing unless someone else says it for you, like a previous knife that can vouch for you.

I still haven't mastered how to pretend to be excited about being bled. Analogy aside, there is nothing that I want to do as far as jobs are concerned. Not only is there nothing I want to apply for but there's also nothing I want to learn, or study to develop some sort of career in a certain field or another.

I'm sick of the whole affair. I got to figure something out because a man gets to certain age where he deserves the face he wears, and I don't want to deserve that face that might await me on the other side of that mirror. Its a tired face, an accusingly cold face, with regrets hiding in every wrinkle like water collecting into erosion.

First Scene Dissolve

Anonymous Love Letters to Athena

I'm so tired. My legs barely stand me and there is a hunger inside that echoes tumultuously, with tempest of most concrete vigor do I move about. Hatred is my propeller; my engine, a glowing heart erupting with magma and fumes of shame. The few times I saw you today (I try to see less and less), it was as if, my hatred were offered a compromise. As if noted by my palely apparent countenance, one of deprived honor and starved dignity, a pathetic hand was extended forward with a cupcake.

My sweet tooth and all its fallen graces!

Its an insult! One perfectly visible and recognized, yet how I long to reach for you; such a waist to not have.

I took a break and on a street, under a canopy, I stood. The rain was cold but the air warmer. I had space and my lungs went to work on the early night's dew. You walked out with a colleague, speaking. I wanted some water, it was raining all around me; I was the thirsty, drowning man. It took every bit of each lung to punch my chest forward; every wattage of street lights, to keep my eyes from parking on you.

You are all they have to offer me, and it is true that you are indeed a great offer; but I can't--it wears me out. My fake plastic love, do you understand? It wears me out. I need this hatred and these lungs to roar, snatch, claw, and tear at the winds that so eagerly wish to pass me by. I need my tension, my open eyes that sleep and cry very little but do only absorb, greedily, everything in its path.

Its with love that I must leave you, its with further hate that the action springs awake into motion.

Universally yours,

Une Ammiratore

Let Me Know What You're Like

Anonymous Love Letters to Athena

Look there, among scatters of voices and roused audience, that by their volume and pace orbit like violent debris; a gauntlet for the cosmonaut's atmospheric departure, among this spinning tetris my queen in black speaks.

Like a death, you announce with vivid detail, words from which I am absent. I make from one end to another; beats of hearts like bullets firing through a spark, an angry, tiny spark that shoots a long way. Your body, like a continent, I the foreigner. From borders I climb and hide in the tresses of your most abandoned attentions, where no thought inhabits such barren lands. Like a thief I make for these edges and consult my stubborn friend, Humility, its with the softest caresses that she convinces me to stay while opening my back with her blade.

What do I wait for? Is it Opportunity and its grifter tricks that send parlors a-roar? Is it Amnesia, that darling little fairy of repair, who patches the wound in a band-aid, too much matching the complexion that one forgets to remove it, mistaking it later for skin.

She's a Deftones song, something like Moana, something especially like Moana. A last song, an empire desired invitation to. She so carves my heart, and the stage with all its actors and rustled anxieties, glows like trembling jellyfish in fields of gossamer bedding. The sparks of nerves, the same bullets but now firing information, sensational execution!

And Moana as she exits this stage in her creme colored winter coat, an indigo scarf noosed about her pretty neck, on an escalator my eyes say goodbye to the back of her head. Yet another day that has introduced me as, "coward".

Universally yours,

Une Ammiratore

Must've Look Like I Was Dancing with the Wall

Anonymous Love Letters to Athena

When I saw you today, in your bright red peak coat, black skirt and black leggings I had to stop reading. I wouldn't be able to continue reading if I heard you speak and I couldn't stand reading if you stood near without saying a word. And you did speak, of course not to me but all the same, for me. When you left the room, I put my book away and I had no more use for being in a room without you.

Later on, when you're on my floor, I make my way up. I time it precisely so that while I'm on my way to my room you're on your way down. As we pass, you smile at me, possibly only because I'm staring. Its a quick, automatic smile; the kind you give to a sudden, familiar stranger when you catch their eye for a moment, unexpectedly. A smile already prepped at the border of the lips, rigged to go off for any mailman, doorman, police officer, and any other insignificant variable that deems harmless enough to spare a twitched curve of kindness.

I didn't see you for the rest of the night. Purposely I remained away. I thought to myself, how fulfilling a smile a can be, regardless of its motivation. Finally when I was ready to see you again, you were already gone. And I was like that fisherman who excitedly battles the waters because finally his bait got a hold of a bite, only to reel in a disappointed reality, my hook got caught onto a boot.

Universally yours,

Une Ammiratore

There Will Be Love

Anonymous Love Letters to Athena

Day by day, you are that thought which has been spanning throughout my mind. Yes, darling to me you are like an imperialist, who's power and ambition recognizes not any limits or boundaries. The thought of you in my mind, steals land, kills or cheats landlords, marries memories and all their fortunes; yes dear, the thought of you in my mind is doing quite well for itself.

Today -

I pass you by and pretend to not notice you, betraying my every instinct to stand directly before you and into your eyes, stare until sight or its focus, expires from me. In your department with your girls, your voice heard here then there, how it travels and so faithfully is it, how I follow. Its perfume to the ears, and then when coursed with a visual accompaniment, it becomes flavor to the eyes--an aromatic, gourmet cuisine. As fine as you are yet you starve me, or more so to the point, I starve myself from you. I chase myself away, the perfume I treat as a stench and the flavor, like an acrid taste, which I then dry heave with perfect disgust.

Am I like the beggar who pretends the banquet is nothing more than a culinary compilation of vile slop, simply because he isn't invited to any access of it?

O love of mine-not-yet-mine, if only that you could see through the facade; perhaps I reveal as much, when distanced from my countenance. Know that my disgust is the darkness from which I invite light to evolve. I want to hate you, despise and detest you so that I may savor every subtle dissolution that transforms, slowly, that enmity into love. Experiencing every atom of love that gradually collects until a planet results, and hatred becomes an atmosphere that shields that love and all of Life within it.

To you, all this love and further, all its future.

Universally yours,

Une Ammiratore

USSR: Thats Short for Russia

One, Two, Three - (1961) Directed by Billy Wilder

Starring James Cagney, Horst Buchholz, Pamela Tiffin

Billy Wilder delivers once again, this time in a comedy starring James Cagney as Coca-Cola's main man in West Berlin. Constantly tugging at Cold War sensitivities yet mindful enough to not make it the center focus of the film, One, Two, Three is a good comedy brought to the screen by a master director.

The pace of the film is fast and matched admirably by James Cagney in the role of C.R. MacNamara, the fast talking, multi-tasking, schemer who represents not only Coca-Cola but Capitalist US of A. MacNamara manipulates, cheats, and lies throughout most of the film but is still as charismatic as ever.

Horst Buchholz was animated and indignantly exasperated every chance he could get, he's so good at that and I'd be lying if I said I didn't enjoy the performance. As Otto Piffl, the idealist youth who's caught between communist and capitalist and is coming to terms with what both competing social ideologies' practical definitions are, Horst is primal, energetic, and distrusting; much representing of the world that either of the mentioned ideologies seek to conquer. The gags do not unfold as they would in a slap stick comedy but the script is full of jabs and quick punches to both capitalism and communism.

Lilo Pulver as Cagney's secretary-sometimes-mistress seals the deal for me. Her table striptease to Aram Khachaturian's Sabre Dance has just made it to my list of best uses for that musical piece in a film.

To Not Know so We May Know

On the Occasion Where We May Exchange True Words

For the way you smile and the way your voice sounds in my mind, I'll hope for the day when we no longer see one another so that by chance, one day we'll have a casual reintroduction. On a day when we have no occasion to think about one another; on a setting foreign to the association of either you to me or I to you. Taking a second to even recognize our faces, and then scurrying into the archives of our memories for each other's names that do not arrive immediately to the grasp of our tongues.

You'll smile and your dark, wide eyes will hold me in place for a second. We'll talk when we remember who we are; we'll talk as if we were more than just a brevity of familiarity, as if we were friends. You'll tell me what's new in your life, even though its all new to me, since I never knew anything personal about you. Likewise, you'll listen and update my profile as I anchor the news. We'll see one another out of context and as a result, for the first time. Its as if it was only through costumes at a ball that we experienced one another, until finally an opportunity has randomly placed us side by side without our masks; and the surprise of what lies beneath somewhat interests us both.

Indulgence and Nameless Cats

Breakfast at Tiffany's - (1961) Directed by Blake Edwards

Starring Audrey Hepburn, George Peppard

I'm sure as I write, there are a dozen people in New York discovering Breakfast at Tiffany's, purchasing the film, renting a netflix, purchasing the novel, hearing about the story from others; then there are those who've done all of this already and are just watching their own copy of the film, or rereading Truman Capote's novel. I knew about the film before I knew who the name Audrey Hepburn belonged to. Such being the popularity adorned by Holly Golightly, I will spare any talk about Breakfast at Tiffany's only mentioning that the film did not surprise me in being good but did however, surprise me in that, I was expecting a high end fashion film about some spoiled upper class socialite who learns a lesson somewhere between thousand-dollar-wardrobe changes and pretty jewelry montages. I couldn't be any more wrong. The contents of the film are full of substance, this wasn't simply, How to Marry a Millionaire. And Holly Golightly, I've seen before...in many bars and the opening receptions of many art galleries. Her apartment is familiar and I understand everything about her. I sympathize but its also self-sympathy, so its more along the lines of empathic reflection; placing yourself in someone else's shoes because you recognize them as your shoes as well. I hope that doesn't inspire a cross-dressed conclusion. I've read In Cold Blood by Capote and have been curious to read some of his fiction, specifically anything before In Cold Blood.

After Breakfast at Tiffany's TCM played Days of Wine and Roses. I couldn't stop watching. I'm not a fan of horror films but thats exactly what films about alcoholism tend to be for me.

Days of Wine and Roses - (1962) Directed by Blake Edwards

Starring Jack Lemmon, Lee Remick

I myself do not drink and I don't hold it against anyone who does nor do I morally judge them for it. However, as a teen I used to be straight-edge and gave friends a hard time whenever I saw one of them leaning a Friday night drink against their lips. I gave this righteous inquisition up a long time ago; besides noticing it made me an asshole, I soon also realized I didn't care whether they drank or not, so long as I remained sober.

Therein lies my true addiction, remaining sober. I want to be conscious and aware at all times, to feel, taste, experience through the dryness of sobriety; untampered or altered by any outside influence. Being drunk reminds me of a kind of sleep, and I hate sleep, I participate in very little hours of slumber, just enough in fact, to not be deprived of it. Sobriety is also my sort of rebellion, my anti-soma with which I remain awkwardly awake and self-conscious, over analyzing and tensely uncomfortable. A stubborn refusal to obscure the world from its intensity, for better or worse, to see it as it is at all times. Comfort, for me, has come to mean: safe; unworried and unaware of any danger or unexpected circumstance. I cling to my sobriety ironically, for the comfort of control. To be drunk is to let go, hands off the steering wheel, to free oneself of control. I find this an impossibility for myself. I view my life within a universe that is random and my life just as random and beyond my control except for daydreams. But my body...that, I can hold. My body, this I can control, I can watch and be master of its every step like a director through a camera lens. This control is the only control I have in my possession and to forfeit such a power seems grotesque to me.

Again, I don't spend my time worrying about if anyone else drinks, lightly or heavily. Your life is your life and live it you shall, as you see fit to. There is nothing too awful about alcohol consumption other than it being an obsession and as of all obsessions, it can take over your life...warping your judgement, reasoning, and performance. This however, is true of all obsessions; whether they are considered vice or not. I myself, have my obsessions which I won't give up. Who am I to say this obsession is right but this one wrong? This one casual and this one severe?

All the same, I am embarrassed by drunk people, maybe even a bit ashamed. I try not to be the latter of the two but it happens. Even if they are strangers, even if its from a distance, an inebriated person makes me blush a little inside. That lack of reserve, denial of inhibition is truthful and should be applauded but its not delivered from such a purpose as a confession. These revelations of the individual who's had too much to drink aren't offered by a conscious decision to do so. I agree to any theory that considers it a subconscious working, where the drink is desired as a vehicle to drive the truth upwards and out, like an exorcised ghost. But this only further reminds me of the inability of a sober confession, from both the inebriated and the sober. It haunts for me, an image of a person with 20/20 vision who does not like what he sees so he wears glasses that not only blunts his vision but also damages his eyesight in the long run. This self-damage is hard on me to witness, it also feels like voyeurism; as if I'm peering into an intimacy offered, one which the individual who is offering is not fully aware of this proposed invitation.

This is why as I watched Blake Edwards' Days of Wine and Roses, I might as well have been watching one of the Saw films.

You sit there and all this self-abuse unravels before you through these characters who can't help themselves. The film is well paced and handled very respectfully. Without coming across as preachy or morally overbearing, Edwards builds up a fluent antagonist of alcoholism without forgetting the humanity of both Jack Lemmon's Joe Clay and Lee Remick's Kirsten Arnesen Clay; married, parents, and both alcoholics. With glasses in their hands, you feel as if they're walking down some dark corridor, where its obvious a killer is going to jump out and slit their throats. You want to help them not condemn them. Both Jack Lemmon and Lee Remick give amazing performances, the fall of Lee Remick's character was grippingly sad and a perfect match for the ingression of Jack Lemmon's character from alcoholic to admitted alcoholic. Watching both, and through powerful performances and direction, you invest in a woman who doesn't know how deep she's drowned and a man who does know the fathom of his situation but any pause can swallow him back down as he swims upwards to dry out.

Confessions of a Crap Artist: New Directions

New Country for Young Men

"At this hour of night, his life seemed so remote to him, he was so solitary and indifferent to everything and to himself as well...he had at last attained what he was seeking, that the peace which filled him now was born of that patient self-abandonment he had pursued and achieved with the help of this warm world so willing to deny him without anger."

In the wake of a new job with very little hours and lesser pay than my previous; at the news that my parents are moving off to DR next year and my sister and myself left to fend for ourselves; in view that most of my childhood friends are married or parents, if not simply career holding individuals, I should think myself worried about the current state of my life. But I'm not. I mean, I'm somewhat concerned but overall, it doesn't really intimidate me.

The news is all good and I'm flying higher, I'm back on my own. Don't worry about me I got no more baggage...threw all my old things away. I got your letter and thanks for the offer, I really don't need a thing...open the door in front of me.

I'd rather die than get more hours at my current job (I hate that place), and so long as I withhold from spend drifting, I'll be alright. My parents, well they deserve DR as much as I want to move the hell out! I'm glad they're leaving, I'm tired of home cook meals, domestic household interaction, and ultimately, I'm tired of seeing my family everyday. As far as friends that are married, parents, or just successful, thats all good but all I want to do is make music, art, and write...if wifing a dime, sprouting a jr., or becoming a professional will allow me unlimited time and space to work on the bright little activities that keep the darkness from swallowing me into the shape of an average american adult, then by all means count me in!

I spoke with my homegirl recently, we texted back and forth about how strange the sensation was that, even though ones life is out of certainty, even though the mind may be stressed and uncomfortable, the body can remain steady. I feel energetic and fit, my body feels responsive and alive. Movement has always been associated with life for me; animation even contains within it, the word "anima" which means "life" and "soul." The Body is not less than the Mind nor visa versa, the Mind any lesser than the Body. The collaboration of the two is life. These events that have recently introduced themselves to me as Crisis have brought forth the internal realization that the needs of my body are just as important as those of my mind. And since, of the two, my body feels more primitive and therefore all the more urgent, then those needs of the mind such as psychological security and social standardization are deemed subordinate at the moment, outweighed by the almighty id. To my advantage, this keeps me from feeling stressed out and depressed.

The sun is now shining on me; meet me as soon as you can, bring me the money you're holding for me...taking my head out of sand.

He Wanted to Make a Big Bang!

I Hope There's a Bar Where They'll Show V for Vendetta and Play British Rock All Night Long to Commemorate What I'm About to Try.

Remember, remember the 5th of November

the gunpowder treason and plot

I know of no reason why the gunpowder treason

should ever be forgot--

Apparently New York City in all its cultural diversity feels the need to appreciate British people on November 5 in the guise of Guy Fawkes Night. So what better way to celebrate an act of rebelling against one's government from the 17th century than by drinking british beer and listening to the Beatles. What's funny is that most of the people who go out and party in NYC for Guy Fawkes would be the same to call him a terrorist if Guy pulled that stunt tomorrow. In fact when was the last time we celebrated Ted Kacynski Night in NYC. Don't mistake me...I'm not against the Gun Powder Treason and Plot, but let us celebrate by attempting to take an example from Mr. Fawkes, if you are upset with the rules then you must take action against them.

I'd even settle for fireworks or good old fashion fire, I heard in the UK they burn a figure of Fawkes. You'd get arrested for that in NYC, you can't do anything anymore too many rules, laws, prohibitions. The only fireworks are mainly for July 4th, ironically, Independence Day.