28 July 2009

ltfmrbytmlta









i had a really strange dream last night. lately they all involve hiding or running. i'm not sure what this means. i need my metrotimes horoscope tomorrow, and someone to read my tarot cards. i think a cabin in the woods, or trees, this is how i remember it: sand, sepiatone, fear choking me, a dark window.

27 July 2009

t.f.i.a.

write? right? right.

my clothes always look better on donna.



24 July 2009

dear b,

i had a dream about you. you had two children and we passed under a honeylocust by a large rolling cemetery. sidewalk too small for a stroller. i don't think you have children. you would be a much more conservative father. i think we undressed by a brick wall near the foursquare cement of middle school. it was hot and autumn. it's been a few days, so i can't be sure of this. they were both boys, young, blonde, blue ringing their eyes. chatty and naked. they undressed, not us. but children don't undress, do they? they take off their clothes. no reservation of disrobing, just throwing off what inhibition couldn't keep on in the first place. a child in the bar last night resembled yr oldest dream son and suddenly, i left my body and when i returned something was broken. broken, or empty. why do i say this to you? because i thought you should know. if you ever have children, be a good father. what is dangerous? i hear you are back in the city, searching.

empty jars don't wanna be filled.



19 July 2009

learning humility

i thought it was brilliant when i wrote it.
i thought i was right when i decided to.

i thought i could get through this without crying again
i thought maybe this time it would be different.
right back where i began
but i'm still growing, heart blooming wider, fuller each day until it bursts from the pericardium. still waiting, hoping you will wait with me.

02 July 2009

are you proud to show me what you have done?

Hey Shaelyn. It's so good to hear from you. I keep meaning to be in touch....you know how my good intentions go. We're so excited that you will be here in the fall- yes, we would definitely love it if you still wanted to babysit for us. All I know right now is that Ionie will be in "school" M&W am and that Kyan will be doing afternoon kindergarten. They still haven't posted our schedules and registration is still the 15th. I will let you know as soon as I do.

Things here have been pretty summer-like, relaxed and full of ideas, some that happen, others that don't. How was your time at the Bio Station? I'm sure you had a great time. Can't wait to hear about it. The kids definitely miss you. And so does this full-time Mama! Hope you're well and that we'll see you soon.

Will we see you this weekend for Joel and Ana's wedding? Hope so.



---------------------------------
i.e. i have a job for next year.

01 July 2009

how i feel now



intraview



damn |dam|

verb [ trans. ]
(in Christian belief) (of God) condemn (a person) to suffer eternal punishment in hell : be forever damned with Lucifer.
• ( be damned) be doomed to misfortune or failure : the enterprise was damned.
• condemn, esp. by the public expression of disapproval : intellectuals whom he damns as rigid doctrinaire idealists.
• curse (someone or something) : she cleared her throat, damning it for its huskiness | damn him for making this sound trivial.

exclamation informal
expressing anger, surprise, or frustration : Damn! I completely forgot!

adjective [ attrib. ] informal
used for emphasis, esp. to express anger or frustration : turn that damn thing off! | [as submodifier ] don't be so damn silly!

PHRASES
—— be damned used to express rejection of someone or something previously mentioned : “Glory be damned!”
damn all Brit., informal nothing at all.
damn well informal used to emphasize a statement, esp. when the speaker is angry : this is your mess and you can damn well clear it up!
damn someone/something with faint praise praise someone or something so unenthusiastically as to imply condemnation.
I'll be (or I'm) damned if informal used to express a strong negative : I'll be damned if I'll call her.
not be worth a damn informal have no value or validity at all.
not give a damn see give .
well I'll be (or I'm) damned informal used as an expression of surprise.


ORIGIN
Middle English : from Old French dam(p)ner, from Latin dam(p)nare ‘inflict loss on,’ from damnum ‘loss, damage.’

for b (god, this is so old)

Solipsist Quiver. Of the late at night variety.

Txt: I am ready
Txt: For?
Txt: That old metaphor.


[2:43 a.m. Boy and Girl walk along railroad tracks past lumberyard. Girl is trying to be artful, stable. She balances slightly on vector, using Boy’s shoulder as support. They come from a mediocre playground with a mediocre swing with a mediocre view.]

Girl: Do you believe in karma?
Boy: No.
Girl: What do you think the world is made up of?
Boy: Other people’s children.

[Girl falls. Sharp left turn into forest of stacked wood. Wind whips, clouds rush to cover full moon. Milk crate beats against chain.]

Boy’s room smells like a barn. Pigs and goats and hay.

Girl remembers the first time she was drunk, drinking beer on a tractor until her body caught on fire. She left, walking home in the grassy middle of dirt road. There was no moon and the stars were too bright to be real.
She sneaks in her bedroom window and undresses, her clothes smelling strongly of space heaters and gasoline and she wants to go ice fishing. Girl takes the pile in her arms like a newborn and throws it out the window, watches it flutter like sea foam and turtle shells and spotted brown trout. She listens to the owls and breathes the cold, cold air until she falls asleep and dreams the liquid adventures of the absurd, sepia-toned double- exposure, beer foam dripping on her pillow.


[Boy watches Girl drink a metaphor from a mason jar. Boy thinks of how strange it is, how personal to hear someone else swallow and think in the dark, without shirts and knowledge.]

Boy: Do you want to make love?

[Girl kisses Boy. Boy does not kiss back. Boy pulls away.]

Boy: I hate kissing.
Boy: It’s too intimate.

[Girl rolls over. Boy apologizes and runs his hand up and down her body, clavicle, neck, sketching compacted breast, avoiding nipple. The ripple of ribs, over slope of ass, like a hill, a knoll. Girl opens her legs and closes her eyes. Boy accepts invitation.]

Boy: You’re stomach looks so good.

[Girl pulls in her stomach like when she was young and had to walk in front of people sitting in a line. Girl feels boy spark and sweat. She pushes her fingertips into the flesh of his arms, his back. It feels like mud, resistance and firm. Girl wants to kiss boy. Girl puts a pillow over her face.]

Girl thinks about contradiction. Girl thinks of old prostitutes in the church district of Paris, Girl thinks of a plastic bag full of Boy’s hair on the sunny mountaintop. How the prostitutes laugh and giggle like Catholic school girls must. She thinks of navigation and compasses and Sunkist jelly coins the color of rainbows and how it felt so good to submerge her hands into them by the wooden barrelful. Girl thinks how she would like to be Boy, just to know, just to feel, how it is to be inside another person. Is this less intimate?

[Boy moans. Hot and sticky. They sleep on wet sheets.]

be because

notes

1. James Joyce, Ulysses. (A repeated phrase throughout)

2. Georg Simmel, ‘Adornment’ in David Frisby and Mike Feathersone, Simmel on Culture, Sage,
1997, 207.

3. Kaja Silverman, ‘The Language of Things’ in World Spectators, Stanford UP, 2000, 132.

4. Maurice Merleau-Ponty, ‘Eye and Mind’ in The Primacy of Perception, Northwestern UP,
1964, 163.

5. Jean-Luc Nancy, ‘The Image – The Distinct’ in The Ground of the Image, Fordham University
Press, 2005, 13.

6. Donna Haraway, ‘The Persistence of Vision’ in Nicholas Mirzoeff, The Visual Culture
Reader, Routledge, 1998, 585.

7. Peggy Phelan, ‘Broken Symmetries’ in Unmarked: the politics of performance, London and
New York, Routledge, 1993, 17.

8. Michel Foucault, Discipline and Punish, 1977, 202-3.

9. Laura Mulvey, ‘Close-ups and Commodities’ in Fetishism and Curiosity, Indiana UP, 1996,
41.

10. Maurice Merleau-Ponty, ‘Eye and Mind’ in The Primacy of Perception, Northwestern UP,
1964, 162

11. John O’Reilly, ‘Thinking With Images’ in Rick Poynor (ed), Communicate: Independent
British Graphic Design since the Sixties, Yale UP, 2004, 229.

12. Kaja Silverman, ‘The Screen’ in The Threshold of the Visible World, Routledge, 1996, 222

13. Guy Debord, The Society of the Spectacle, 1967, #9

14. Jean Baudrillard, ‘Simulacra and Simulations’ in Jean Baudrillard, Selected Writings,
Stanford University Press, 1998

15. Kaja Silverman, ‘The Screen’ in The Threshold of the Visible World, Routledge, 1996, 206

16. Donna Haraway, ‘The Persistence of Vision’ in Nicholas Mirzoeff, The Visual Culture
Reader, Routledge, 1998, 586.

if ends are the ends of beginnings

are beginnings the beginnings of ends


















all photographs in this series courtesy of the lovely ms. laura peterson & north quad-nee-frieze building, may you r.i.p.

not hungry: empty





nostalgia |näˈstaljə; nə-|

noun

a sentimental longing or wistful affection for the past, typically for a period or place with happy personal associations : I was overcome with acute nostalgia for my days in college.

• the evocation of these feelings or tendencies, esp. in commercialized form : an evening of TV nostalgia.

DERIVATIVES

nostalgist |-jist| noun

ORIGIN late 18th cent. (in the sense [acute homesickness] ): modern Latin (translating German Heimweh ‘homesickness’ ), from Greek nostos ‘return home’ + algos ‘pain.’

be still now

The best art and writing is almost like an assignment; it is so vibrant that you feel compelled to make something in response. Suddenly it is clear what you have to do. For a brief moment it seems wonderfully easy to live and love and create breathtaking things. In this section we have archived some of the work that has commanded us in this way. In a sense, these are assignments -- in the same way that the ocean gives the assignment of breathing deeply, and kissing instructs us to stop thinking. --learning to love you more, love



OLD PHOTOS WITH LOVE