the transsiberian

detroit, michigan!

2012-02-23T07:35:00.001-08:00

Any attempt at an explanation of beauty would only come up short. But what is beauty if it's not in the attempt at understanding something ? Beauty is abundant in this small space, the six inches between your face and mine. And as he struggles with his diction he finds that words almost become superfluous. Our tools and our language hinder any emotional honesty we hope to find. And she smiles back at him, knowing they are both individuals with their own personal subtexts and histories. But everything matters in this small short moment, the exact time of day, this beautiful city you find yourself a guest in, the minute - like the ground beneath your feet and the warm light that falls upon her face illuminating it in a candescent glow. The minutes in his world merge for that short amount of time. And there is beauty, a deep personal beauty that sustains and leaves a mark. Their words overlap one another as if they know that this real, all-encompassing connection has an expiry date and they race to get their explanations out in a dizzying haze of words and laughs and knowing silences. As they embrace they realize that their pasts and futures are bound by one line alone: To remember someone is to be very happy or very sad.

-

Tonight I have been romanced by life. She teases the world to me and I can't help but follow her. A mix of Etta James, Billie Holiday and Nina Simone is playing in my room as I am writing all of this. Lost in between the lines of verse and song I listen to her voice till' early morn.

less than zero

2012-01-27T11:07:00.000-08:00

The only thing that you cannot affect is eventuality. She whispers that without looking at me, instead she stares ahead at a mirage that begins to form in the middle of desert. She's lying back on one of those long deck chairs, sipping away at her drink. There is no one else on the balcony and the sun is beginning to set. This is what we do to ourselves, we scrutinize the past details of our lives in order to obtain a sense of clairvoyance about the future. We are all unreliable journalists, our columns contain no traces of truth which our readers can discern. I turn to look at her but her eyes offer nothing. They are vapid and washed over with an expression that has advanced sadness. A nonchalance that has been my doing. I make my way down to her neck, my eyes following her till the curve of her shoulders. In the middle of her solar plexus just below her breasts something begins to form. A black hole which is widening before my eyes. I have helped it grow larger and larger with every word and half formed gesture. Soon there is nothing left of her except this void which I have filled with objects impure and hidden. I am in love with my kidnapper but my Stockholm syndrome is wearing off. I stare ahead as the mirage becomes more and more vivid. In the middle of the sky two words form within a bracket. (disappear here) / There is nothing I can do but oblige. Every cell in my body dissipates into the desert air. I am all too familiar with this disappearing act and the parentheses closes removing me with it.

au revoir simone

2012-01-13T21:17:00.000-08:00

An idea I have for my room:

Chalkboard paint over one wall to create a canvas of sorts for when I want to write. Did you know that words in your head and words on paper have totally different meanings? The borders of the wall will retain the original colour of my room so the chalkboard will look like its framed. Also, the problem of dustiness will be solved with ChalkInk!

sunday smile

2012-01-12T10:44:00.000-08:00

Contrary to the title of this post, this has nothing to do with Sundays or smiling for that matter. And with that out of the way: A friend once asked me why we should try for anything when we know that everything will end eventually. I think the only logical answer is that we should try because the world does not exist in our head. In heads everything is structured and planned according to your hopes and expectations but these dreams rarely make a safe transition to reality. We should try because after countless years, after our bodies catch up with our minds, all that will be left for us is what we did and did not do. All our memories will work like foreign imagery; cities we have vague recollections of, polaroids we have to shake in our hand. And when we grow old all our experiences will be transmuted into little snippets of dialogue, our retinas will fire countless images, our hearts will exist as uneven shards, each one belonging to a different person. So everything will end in the end. We cannot affect eventuality. There is nothing we can do to preserve permanence or life on earth. But there will be no more regret left. We will look for it but we will never be able to find it.

-

writer type

2012-01-08T10:07:00.000-08:00

Writer Type
(a short story)

Let me write this down before I forget. I have a friend named E. This friend of mine is a writer or at least he thinks he is. There is a reason why E's writing should be privileged over other writers and this is because everything he writes in his notebook becomes the equivalent of literature gold. The way this works is that when writing in the notebook, creative and neural pathways in E's brain are so stimulated that he can write a draft for a novel in a day.

Don't inquire about the logistics of this or how his notebook never runs out of pages but what I do know is that this notebook would be coveted by artists and writers all over the world. Anything they envision in their mind would be automatically enhanced and given form through the notebook. This position that E finds himself in cannot be attributed solely to himself however, it is the notebook and not the writer that causes this dissension in the time-space-logic sphere.

All writers want to leave something tangible on the facade of this planet, a strain of beauty, an outcry of controversy. So of all people this chance has fallen to E, whom some would argue possesses more insecurity and pretense than actual talent.The notebook provides E with an easy existence, he has molded a life for himself - that of a highly successful author who is well respected in critical circles as well. His first novel, The Transsiberian was described by the Seattle Times as "a profound inquiry into the nature of human emotion which blurs the line between prose and poetry". David Foster Wallace called E the "Jack Kerouac of a feeling deficient, ADHD generation" shortly before his death in 2008.

All this works out very well for E because all he really does is scribble in his little notebook for a few frenzied hours and the following day after some editing he has a book so important that literature courses all over the world scramble to include it in their syllabus. Now you must be thinking that my friend here leads a pretty swell life - a financially secure and distinguished existence. However like all things that sound too good to be true, E's notebook also comes with a catch.

The more he writes in it, the more he forgets his past. Only the other day he was telling me that an unknown woman screamed at him, claiming to be his wife of 7 years. You can imagine the shock my friend must have been in, even more so when he found evidence of this apparent marriage in the family photos he has at home. This forgetting had never been much of a problem before because it only used to erase memories that he felt he would be better off without - he forgot about the girl in college he never really fell out of love with, he forgot how estranged he was from his father, he forgot the numerous promises he made to himself about self-worth and artistic integrity. But now the notebook was erasing gigantic portions of his memory and the worst part was that he couldn't stop writing.

So my friend flees in a panic from a wife he doesn't love and a daughter he does not recognize to this old motel a few miles outside the city. What an existence it must be, to have a seemingly perfect future yet not have any semblance of a past. Can you even make any meaningful progress on this long linear line they call time when your line is slowly fading away from back to front? Do you cease inhabiting this world and slowly transform into a wraith? We are but products of history and when history gets washed away the minutes in our lives may tick on but we stop travelling forward. I shudder at the position he finds himself in, the past and the future cannot exist independent of one another. I worry greatly for my dear friend and it saddens me to say that when I called him yesterday he showed even more signs of deterioration. I am surprised that he still remembers me and he leaves me with something to muse over before he hangs up: "The writer types all turn half-crazy in the end."

I plan on visiting my old friend soon but I have problems of my own. I do not know why I've been clutching the same book close to my chest for the past hour. It is titled The Transsiberian and I'm holding it as if it is supposed to mean something very important to me. The walls around me are grey and unfamiliar but I am not bothered because I am too busy scribbling away on this notebook. It is important I write all of this down before I forget.

-

etymology

2012-01-05T01:01:00.000-08:00

I wonder sometimes if dreams are the glimpses we have of our alternate lives in other universes. So often I see a face in my dream that is so familiar and foreign at the same time. Maybe we do know these faces, just not in this life. I woke up feeling the youngest I've ever felt. I used to think that I was an old soul trapped in a young body. I guess that comes when you generalize the little you know about the world to everything you come across in life. I have great designs in my head, but the person I think I am does not correlate with the physical that inhabits my place on this earth. Writing is the only connection I have with myself. Writing is just a way of guiding my dreams. There is so much to see and feel and learn about the world. I have spent too much time thinking and rationalizing. I feel that the further I travel, the deeper I go within myself as well. This post may or may not be an attempt at honesty, I have tried my best to filter out the unconscious which seeps through these lines. I have already said too much, I shall stop now for there is much to live for. And I am filled with excitement.

guilty of romance

2011-12-26T12:22:00.000-08:00

Prologue:

"Lie down with me, show me no wrong. "

Scene One:

All of life is crying out for attachment to something real. The reason we look for lovers and the reason we look for religion. | Justine, life is only on earth. And all life on earth is calling out for something to connect to. See how beautiful planets are when they align. | It is said that a sentimental person hopes that things will last whereas a romantic person hopes against hope that they won't. Me. You. Earth. Our place in the sum of things. When I think about it that way I guess I'm guilty of romance.

architecture

2011-12-21T14:35:00.000-08:00

Cities are the most beautiful works of art. Every other form is constrained within its medium to some extent. Painting is often abstract, its beauty relies too much on the beholder and writing is too contextual. Cities on the other hand pull you in. The notion of the sublime, every street its own art form, every corner a different stroke and stanza. It's overt in its great and towering designs while the cobbled sidewalks and chipped marble lend so much subtlety to it. Art explodes from within - stage productions, sidewalk painters, poets, sculptors all meshing together to create something abundant with life and beauty. The unsaid, which sticks in your throat and sleeps in your brain. Raw and unrefined on every corner of every street, its luminescence visible even from space.

-

And there it is, why privilege grief when beauty is so abundant in this world? From the cracks in architecture to the ink in books, beauty - unabashed, unconfined, uncontrollable beauty in the smallest of everything. You just have to look harder to find it. So my place in this world. Life is only on earth. What strain of beauty can I leave on a universe that will outlive me by a billion years? Maybe when time loops back upon itself we'll all have a second shot to fulfill the dreams we built. I have so much to express, it exudes from every atom in my body and yet I am fraught with self doubt and this sense of lacking. There is a romantic and a cynic fighting for control of my head. But perhaps it takes both to find the measure of a man.

this is a promise with a catch

2011-12-16T23:49:00.000-08:00

Last night I lived for years. In the hours I found so many lifetimes, all competing to be privileged. In the morning I woke up older, but everyone is older in the morning. I grew up. Leave the windows open, leave the doors unlatched. I am coming back after all this time away. Though you may seem unfamiliar at first, forgive me for my mind has come unstuck in time.So don't be callous, I'm sure it'll be fine. So many territories, so ready to be sold, so many forests, so many forests. In the middle of the garden there was a cement tomb. Children danced barefoot on top of it, singing songs of love and hate not knowing what their loves would make. There were lovers dressed in flowers and my friends all painted me black and blue. The shoes on my feet sank deep into the river, I couldn't retrieve them without dragging you along. Then when winter rolled in the river got frozen and the babies turned blue. All friends and lovers they melt in a rosy tinted hue.

-

brief lovers make quick beds
but good friends stay long in your head

darlings

2011-12-14T08:43:00.000-08:00

So I'm sitting here struggling with something I don't need to get out. But perhaps we kid ourselves when we say that we're able to deal to deal with the situation. Surface verisimilitude is dependent on detail and detail can always mask some form of muted substance underneath. We tell ourselves to be strong and we resist opening up because the world is formed in shards and the glass from which it was cut is sharp and unforgiving. That is why we fill our surfaces with detail and sometimes neglect the person underneath. I feel I am almost losing track of the innate which supposedly resides inside of me. I resist thinking and succumb to my cognitive misery only because it provides a brief respite. But this respite is only temporary, I'm still looking for something. Something I will never fully understand until I find it.

-

softly and wavery:

all the blue roads lead home
i can't accept that my lover has passed
i can't accept that my lover came last

charlotte forever

2011-12-07T23:34:00.001-08:00

city drowned itself heard like sirens from the shore,

i don't feel it, i don't feel it anymore.

and canyon started getting dark / to trudge back where your car was parked

barefoot intheshallowcreek, i waited for you to speak to me

i can't stay away when everyone i meet they all seem to be asleep,

in the valley where your soul was harked, lined with trees you stripped of bark

only i still hung around, only i still called you mine.

beginners

2011-12-05T10:18:00.000-08:00

You forget that the only constant in this life is you.
You forget that you will never need anyone else.

-

There is a beautiful place in Copenhagen called the Tivoli Gardens. I will arise and go now, away from the fucked up hopes and dreams of this world.

"Justine"

2011-11-30T13:36:00.000-08:00

-

I was teased by your blouse, spit out by your mouth.

obstacle one

2011-11-24T08:02:00.000-08:00

I enter the room and take in the players as well as their positions on the stage.

-

Mise-en-scène:

Cole Porter in playing softly in the background. Men and women move deliberately, interwoven in permutations rehearsed and fluid. The edges of the frame blur, the soft glow of chandeliers illuminate faces and cast diametrical shadows upon the marble floor.

Obstacle One:

I drift unnoticed into the heart of the room. The music plays for a few more minutes before stopping and everyone in the room freezes as if someone broke a window and winter seeped in. Delicate cheeks rest on dinner jackets, hands gently cover the small of backs, faces stare into one another with warm hints of recognition. The players remain statuesque in their places, I am the only one walking through them. Champagne suspends in mid-air from tilted bottles. Light is frozen in rays, disturbed only when I glide my hand through it. Holden Caulfield and Hamilton Leithauser sit at the bar, their conversation put on indefinite hold. Very slowly the scene rewinds and all the beautiful players dance in reverse, the convergence of limbs fascinates when not in chronological order. The scene rewinds till coats fly off stands and back onto shoulders. Everything resets and the malleability of time is made apparent as the players start their dance again. They will never leave this room. I feel the sharp pang of discomfort before reassuring myself. Why should I feel sad for them when all they will ever know is music and dancing and laughter? I exit the room and leave them to their unfinishable rituals.

Nostalgia is the cruel denial of the present.

dream story

2011-10-28T08:58:00.000-07:00

All the railways and paths in my dreams lead to the same long winding corridor. The sum of my thoughts and feelings have brought me here to the Dream Hotel. And what ecstasy this brings, to search but never find. To be lost but never found. And all my dreams and all my thoughts waltz deliberately with each other, smudging the line where one ends and the other begins. This corridor is familiar. You only know it because it was taught to you. These walls are smooth as I run my fingers along them(yourskinissmoothasirunmyfingersoveryou), these lights remind me of someone I once knew(theselightsremindmeofyou). I must stop here, for dreams like memories can be confused with reality and I get melancholic when both my worlds begin to blur. The corridor starts to fade but I no longer worry. I have been back many times to the Dream Hotel and it won't be long before my return.

stella was a diver and she was always down

2011-09-26T07:06:00.000-07:00

sex and syntax

-

photos by Aaron Feaver

-

elizabeth had much rather not/ fill your mouth with/ on your skin like little bruises/ oh no now our love turns sour/ you come at the right time/ you come too fast/ you were a fever/ darcy draped in lace/ what she puts in my head/ what i put in her mouth/ i'll still be up by four/ say you'll do me my way/ you were a kindness/ not too rough touching touching/ pull you in close/the braids that you came in tonight/ fix me up in the bedroom we'll go a long way/

love is coming coming coming/ coming coming coming our way.

thursday

2011-09-22T03:32:00.000-07:00

brief lovers make quick beds

paint me in mahogany

show me where fingers have strayed

your fingers trace blood red

the only way to love. is to love with abandon.

all my great designs

2011-09-10T05:13:00.000-07:00

i am my beloved's and my beloved is mine , he grazes among the lilies .

Words have a wonderfully restrictive nature.

People.

Person.

The word is recognized and an image begins to form: You're in a strange dream, walking through the streets of some strange city you can't remember the name of. You're walking because, well, cars aren't allowed into this city. You can drive to a certain point but you have to stop there and continue your journey on foot. You're walking through a crowd of people, their faces as foreign to you as yours is to them. Amidst this convergence of faces and sounds and lights and scattered thoughts everywhere something stands out. You can only afford this person a fleeting second glance before the crowd comes between the both of you, swallowing any real connection you feel you had. You wander about this city with no name, what was once beautiful and mysterious has turned on its side, the streets are dark and unfamiliar, every lost step you take fills you with dread. You walk into the center of the city. But that one person is nowhere in sight. Nothing is replaced. Everything else, even in its scale and grandeur, seems less. You stand up straight but your love is nowhere in sight. Do you remember? The snow started falling and we were stuck out in your car rubbing both your hands and ain't this just like the present to be showing up like this. You wake up. The dream is bad. The images linger for awhile before they're stored in that place in your brain meant for forgotten dreams and difficult lovers.

there is a suggestion at trauma . for i am broken . i am not w h o l e .

diorama

2011-08-28T10:08:00.000-07:00

*the guitar riffs kick in!*

Hamilton Leithauser: Come for me, comfort me. Come for me, comfort me. Come for me, comfort me.

You see in these parallel universes I'm just a portion of a larger diorama. Only this version of me is feeling lonely. Somewhere else I'm happier, more hopeful and more in love.

While it's raining: It's past midnight but why is everything so bright? *comeformecomfortmecomeformecoverme*

I've forgotten how good this feels. Its been awhile since this feeling hasn't depended on someone else. *andaftersometimeiknowiwouldgoblind*

This is my zen moment. The point between swooning and cynicism. Ah won't you come for me, comfort me.

afternoon

2011-08-21T23:59:00.000-07:00

In these drawers are the compartments of myself I keep hidden. Sealed in envelopes, wrapped up in boxes, buried in thoughts. These are extensions of me, they further my understanding of who I am. I keep these because the past is important, the past is pertinent and the past affects my understanding of things present and things yet to come. The connection is no longer there however. The lines I am reading trigger brief physiological responses from time to time: a skipped heartbeat, labored breaths, a convection of sorts, a transfer of the ink on the page onto my skin. I rub it and it smudges. Just like all this compressed time has smudged. Archived and safe but no longer accurate. I cannot remember anymore. I rub the ink on my skin again and again until it almost disappears.

in dreams / in heads / in beds

2011-08-16T09:36:00.000-07:00

Dreams are structures just like buildings. You start from the bottom and slowly build upwards from the ground. If the foundations you build aren't strong enough then you won’t go very far up before parts start falling off. In the same way, if your ambition gets the better of you then you may be prone to irrationality and design elaborate and ambitious plans for your building. Again, it may all come tumbling down because you were too quick to make it perfect before you made it stable enough. The blueprints of how things should be are still in your head even as the building doesn’t quite look the way you imagined it to be. If everything comes crumbling down then you only have poor planning to blame. The architect in your mind is disheartened and confused for none of this was meant to happen. As long as you have the plans though you can still start all over again. The air is cool and light on my skin, the sun hasn’t yet come up fully and there’s a serenity to the proceedings. I need to dispose of these maps and diagrams in my head which attempt to tell me how things should be like and refocus instead on the basic and the simple. If I've realized one thing, it’s that dreams never die or disappear. In dreams everything is exactly the way it should be, intangibly permanent. It is when dreams stop being dreams, the moment they attempt the transition to reality, that they become fallible and cracks appear everywhere.

I thought I understood it. But I only grasped the vagueness of it. Only the smudgeness of it.

abel

2011-08-13T12:44:00.000-07:00

Well,

My mind's not right

My mind's gone loose inside its shell

Tie me down in a chair, fuck me and make me a drink.

trouble

2011-07-17T12:01:00.000-07:00

the blue tide is pulling me away

tomorrow will be easier

because tomorrow you will say,

spanish is the language on her tongue

my afternoons all warmed up

do you feel as blue as your blood?

see my bones all swelling up

my name sounds foreign from your lips

ah, you should know that there's no life

if it's not living by your life

write me letters from all your islands

lick the stamps, spell me out in postcards

red moon, red moon

oh how the dawn breaks half in bloom

see how streetlights all fade out

i'll give you everything but not so soon.

And she won't let me go.

jesse in the park with celine

2011-07-05T00:23:00.000-07:00

We walk down this cobbled street and take a left at the end into a park:

Memories are impermanent as long as you're still alive. You can revisit memories, tweak them a little here and there or even change them entirely.

The day is fading into evening and leaves crunch under our shoes:

We are young, we have all the time in the world to revisit the feelings found in the people from the places we have been. But time is taken for granted when you're young. You assume that the process of change only applies to you, and that the world will be forever frozen the way you want it to be. But the world doesn't wait for you to grow wiser before slipping back into it.

You get really excited when you talk about things you're passionate about, astrology, the universe, our place in the sum of things:

The only permanence lies in these few seconds that make up the present. We are the very sum of our experiences and memories at this very moment. And as time goes on I feel I'm being filled up with all these thoughts and feelings and scenes that I splinter into many multitudes.

We've been walking for fifteen minutes. But I remember these fifteen minutes better than I do whole years:

These fragments wander for a little while, bringing me back to events meaningful enough to be retained, like the wonders of a first encounter. Of all wonders that surely has to be somewhere near the top. And then these bits and pieces slowly merge into a more solid and chronological whole, with its own history and story. The thing is, when you pull everything you've stored over your life together again, you suddenly don't remember anymore.

une année sans lumière

2011-07-02T23:40:00.000-07:00

Hey, my eyes are shooting sparks,
La nuit, mes yeux t'éclairent,
Ne dis pas à ton pere,
Qu'il porte des œillères.

And in the end, the love you take is equal to the love you make.

tour

2011-06-23T14:37:00.000-07:00

The fallacy is this: assuming that everything will eventually form a coherent and understandable whole. The belief that all these distorted and disjointed thoughts and images will somehow, someday merge into something that's quantifiable and tangible. I am many different people. I am multitudes of the same incomplete picture. And I will remain the same for as long as I'm cognitively aware. The boy who's wrapped up in books. But there is little time left for philosophy for time would be more wisely spent living and loving. Or loving and living. Whichever comes first, and whichever exudes an air of equal dependence. I am an empty vessel. Fill me up with everything you know and cherish and hold dear. For you half adore me and half forsake me. Half fill me up but by that same measure leave me half in longing. And the romantics swoon as they exclaim, half of your heart is not enough. But it is unfair! To compress the world into these little moments where we touch and kiss and rub against each other until our skin grows sore. And the bruises fade almost as fast as the memories. So leave little blue scars on my chest and on my back but never on my brain.

because it brings me back you

2011-06-17T02:01:00.000-07:00

Are we leaving or have we just arrived?

-

As the air pressure begins to equalize in my ears:

1. I stretch out like a tree and its many beech wood branches whittled down fireplaced in a pile flickering all throughout the night.

2. And all my sketches for all my sweethearts lie unfinished beside sad songs for dirty lovers while the only things you see are black and white and blue.

3. No picture seems to be forming as I'm shaking the polaroid in my hand and the unformed faces plead: let me out because it's hell when you're around.

4. Maybe we should take a trip across Wisconsin with some green-eyed girl and show her that we left our secrets under floorboards and reveries.

5. To live underwater for more than a month:

pomelo

2011-06-13T03:17:00.000-07:00

Something that made me smile: Ben on Storytellers telling everyone that he should be allowed at least one love song as a recently married man and proceeding to play Stay Young, Go Dancing.

There are symphonies playing in my head when I think of you:

I had a secret meeting in the basement of my brain.

Our bones are too heavy to come up, squished into a single cell of wood.

We might kiss, when we are alone, nobody's watching, we might take it home.

She may be young, but she only likes old things.

Lie down with me my dear, lie down under stormy night, tell nobody.

I'm in love with a girl who's in love with the world, and I can't help but follow.

-

doors unlocked and open

2011-06-05T08:33:00.001-07:00

dancing

designs with roses all over

tiptoe with soles worn out

children that won't get older

faces

their intricacies won't show

friends and lovers all forgotten

histories lined up in a row

streets

empty with neighbours all sleeping

frozen driveways slick come morning

into our shoes it started seeping

grey

cars and houses and people

from a palette that's gone dry

you hold on to your beautiful beautiful boy

pray

to whom it may concern

mysterious skin half revealing

although you've got no savior to discern

sleep

leave empty beds all neatly made

love or grief? choose one as your reprieve

the other keep, to wear forever on your sleeve

where all hope sank waiting for you

2011-05-27T12:10:00.000-07:00

1979 - song played again while walking to hand in the last of my assignments before the study break.

6 - hours passed in a haze of music, laughter, avocado sandwiches and the only company i feel i need right now.

3 - times i've listened to unknown pleasures on repeat. lyric that's stuck in head: tears in their eyes tears in their eyes tears in their eyes.

1 - relatively normal post that has nothing to do with sadness, longing, emptiness, happiness or anythingness in fact.

Roy Lichtenstein is pretty amazing:

Cinema Reykjavík: Icelanders go to the movies more often per capita than any other country in the world.

a tree as old as me

2011-04-28T12:26:00.001-07:00

If I were an astronaut these are some of the things I'd miss upon leaving earth:

People talk a lot about regret but I don't think I have much anymore. After leaving our atmosphere I think all the regret would just evaporate away and a kind form of sadness would remain. I say kind because it's the type you think about but it doesn't play much on your mind anymore.

I would miss the stars as seen from the ground or through my first telescope because I think everything looks more beautiful when seen from afar.

I would miss telling people that I love them. It's kind of sad to think about how much some people can mean to you at that very moment in time and how they don't mean as much now. Things happen in moments and in their own private, personal spheres. Maybe all we're meant to do is genuinely fall deeply in love and then slowly grow out of it before someone else comes along to continue the cycle. But that doesn't mean you haven't loved anyone with everything you have in those brief fleeting moments.

Rain on the window as my mixtape plays. As I scribble away on my notebook and occasionally sip tea from a paper cup because I don't like coffee and because polystyrene is non-biodegradable.

There isn't so much to miss as there is to look forward to:

The long silences.

The absence of human touch.

Time to think and reflect and hopefully not regret.

The view would be pretty amazing. I'd play "To Build A Home" while looking down at the planet and perhaps in that very moment I'd feel as if I had fallen in love again.

solaris

2011-04-07T13:07:00.000-07:00

palms open

eyes like pools reflecting

thoughts that hinge

on words half formed

half steady

articulate and smooth

waver through a lie

flow, trickle into streams

unmanned trajectories

i am lost

in what i cannot say

hands gather

in a small home

a place in the mind

where everything

can be tucked away

and trembling hands

smoothen out the creases

trace the seams

they gently fold

place in these compartments

the thoughts of you

stored and safe

everything in its right place.

One day I'll write a book of longing,

And fill it with love,

And fill it with hate,

But most of all with the things I couldn't fake.

songs of love and hate

2011-04-01T06:18:00.000-07:00

cold wood:

for morning comes too soon
the hazy glow of waking light
sparrows sing and jest in open candour
dreams they slip with diminishing splendour

ah soft words that swell and seem similar
a lonely mind that represses the familiar
oh bright morning you dim and dissolve into evening
a dozen more dreams and re-dreams while you were sleeping

against the cold wood i rest my head

half asleep in sweet surrender

from the cold wood i build my bed

small and narrow without room to remember.

the boston diaries:

happiness

sadness

happiness

sadness

happiness

sadness

happiness

sadness

happiness

sadness

at the end of the day, the feeling is always replaced.

blankets:

Craig and Raina.

"to describe what it feels like to sleep next to someone for the first time."

As they alternate between guilt and passion and love and anger and resentment but perhaps worst of all, regret, Neil Young's Only Love Can Break Your Heart plays softly over the stereo until the characters and their stories fade to black.

never let me go:

we'd walk side by side while thoughts converge in spaces left behind. perhaps we'll always feel that we never had enough time.

padraic my prince:

split me open at the veneer
take everything you see
i’m letting out the emptiness
so come plant your roots and remain

oranges:

And if one day you ever wonder about the heart you had to break
Please don’t lose any sleep teething thoughts in your bed
Oh i love you so how could there be any hate?
All that’s left is sadness and only sadness permeates.

for a redeemer, saviour, friend:

lover, may i come over?
this world will never really know, i'll be yours until i'm old.

the romantics

2011-03-09T22:58:00.000-08:00

winter by the amazing bferry

To feel for ever its soft fall and swell,
Awake for ever in a sweet unrest,
Still, still to hear her tender-taken breath,
And so live ever--or else swoon to death.

(an excerpt from bright star)

blue blood

2011-02-21T00:38:00.000-08:00

I'm sitting in the car watching a sea of break lights smudged by rain which has slowed considerably and is now falling in a gentle drizzle on everyone and everything that's on this street. I look out the window and all of a sudden I have a vested interest in the lives of everyone around me. I'm curious about these strangers I will never come to know. Two people sit in a blue car adjacent to mine. Are they lovers? Better yet, are they friends? What are they thinking? Are these people happy? Are they even wondering if they're happy? Thoughts culminate and I really like where I am although the lights turn green far too soon. Fascination ends. I watch as they pull away as we gradually slip out of each other's lives forever.

"Just cause some cute girl likes the same bizarro crap you do that doesn't make her your soulmate." She laughs really loud when Tom's sister tells him this. We're watching the movie together because I tell her that it's good, that it's really popular with my generation and that everyone has seen it so she gives it a try. As the credits roll she allows herself a half smile which is probably meant to be wistful but can't help turn out sad. Like she's thinking: All the magic in the world has a sell-by date but she doesn't want to say it. Instead she says: I like the ending, it's very (she pauses for awhile, She's Got You High by Mumm-Ra is playing over the credits) hopeful. She gets up to wash her empty coffee cup and leaves me sitting on the couch wondering if I've made her a little sad. Love. Chances. Hope. Wonder. Dreams. Maybe all that is meant for when you're young.

Why does my room smell like mint? Because I'm using a mint scented liquid air freshener.

While inhaling mintyness I'm listening to:

Night Fighter - Raised By Swans

New Dawn Fades - Joy Division

A Waltz For A Night - Julie Delpy

Blue Blood - Foals

transatlantic letter

2011-02-15T21:32:00.000-08:00

paris by brianwferry.

In between the little assurances we allow ourselves and the doubts we never explore. In between what's been said before and what we may never be ready to say. In between everything we've done and everything we one day hope to do. In between growing up and growing old. In between talking, find silence. In between silence, find comfort.

Why does my room smell like oranges? Because I'm using a citrus scented liquid air freshener.

Why should you be happy? Because being sad is too easy.

Lonely Russian Six Degrees Fun Fact: The Trans-Siberian Railway crosses 10 time zones and passes 87 cities and towns along the way.

Mine

2011-02-13T03:03:00.001-08:00

I've been writing a lot lately. I think it's because I've forgotten how to talk. I'm out with so many people so often but being involved with their conversations just takes too much effort. Words that need to be pronounced. Sentences that require careful construction so as not to make a fool of yourself. To further enforce the fact that - I am here, I am relevant. But I no longer feel here anymore. The here being where I was last night. The physical sits in a chair and tries its best to play a role, but it has forgotten all its lines. The I is somewhere else, a million miles away from the endless chatter and occasional laughter that permeates the night air. After awhile they ask questions like: "What's wrong?" and "What's gotten into you?" Questions I find ignorant and careless coming from people who assume they have an understanding of who you are. They are bewildered by this impostor in their midst, who has inhabited my body but is not acting like the me that they have come to categorize, label and accept. The impostor stares back through vapid eyes and again struggles with it's diction - excuses are croaked out, even apologies are made which fills it with a resentment directed both inward and outward. After what seems like a long while the I starts to return to the physical - the fact of being here and being now. It feels itself breathing and it feels its toes stretch out. It starts to smile and will even try to lengthen its replies upon being asked a question. They see this of course and welcome back the friend they all know so well. It starts talking even though it has nothing to say. The words will come they always do. Even if they're not the right ones. We somehow always make do.

Today's set meal comes with free dessert! Choose from either:

The Blues Are Sill Blue - Belle&Sebastian

Blue Skies - Noah And The Whale

Somewhere

2011-02-11T12:27:00.001-08:00

Surreal like

The wind on your face

Windows down

Eyes glaze over

Lights strung out

And count them

Like each one mattered

Now you're back

On a bed too big

Stare up at the ceiling

And down the same time

Into yourself

Close your eyes

Gather everything you want

To remember

Try to dance

Try to surrender

You're not here anymore

Lost to waves and waves of dreaming.

Space Pilot Fun Fact: There are more stars than all of the grains of sand on Earth.

on the road

2011-02-10T00:00:00.000-08:00

When I said "I can see me in your eyes" you said, "I can see you in my bed." That's not friendship there's romance too, you like music we can dance to.

I'll Try Anything Once - The Strokes

I would like to live a full and happy life.

Reykjavík

2011-01-28T00:40:00.000-08:00

You construct a person in your head. How often is this person the same.

and the medley plays on and on even as everything else is switched off i don't feel it i don't feel it anymore the city drowned itself the essential belle and sebastian see usually when things have gone this far people tend to disappear i can tell something is going on i always tend to disappear disappear disappe

flume

2011-01-05T03:23:00.001-08:00

i wear my garment so

only love is all maroon

sky is warm but

she's the moon

January like all things new

Different feathers through a rosy hue

In the morning you'll be selfish you'll be bitter

You won't believe that only friends don't wither.

tea for two

2010-12-30T12:37:00.000-08:00

I will never understand why people make a huge fuss about the transition to a new year. Time is just one long permanent straight line and we will never live to see it loop back on itself. Apparently clocks run slower in regions of lower gravitational potential.

The point perhaps, is that the people who weave in and out of your life will be the same regardless of the hands on the clock quivering in anticipation at 11.59pm. I will remain the same. Time is but a parenthesis in an unending sentence which meanders on and on but never really gets to say what it wants.

Tonight the air is a little warm. I'm guessing it'll be slightly more chilly where you're at.

Copenhagen, to die in your arms would be such a heavenly way to die.

re-dream

2010-12-20T00:49:00.001-08:00

christmas in berlin

i am in a hotel corridor. i walk along the corridor and it is bathed in a dim yellow from the highly mounted lamps hanging from both sides of the wall. the carpeting under my feet feels soft and is blue in colour. or red, it doesn't really matter. the smell in the air brings back vague recollections of ikea. clean and airy with pinewood undertones. i am holding someone's hand. that someone is much younger and much smaller than i am. the face is as clear as glass at this very moment, but like all dreams will slowly be rendered unrecognizable. i walk from room to room pressing on each individual doorbell, asking the guests inside if they know me. none seem to recognize the face staring back at them through the narrow space between the frame and the door which is restricted by the door chain. all of the people inside tell me the same thing, that they're sorry and that i should keep looking. i continue pressing doorbells. i persist in the rapping of wood till my knuckles thin and turn white. there is a hope that these opened doors will eventually be accompanied with someone smiling in recognition. i reach the end of the corridor. there are no more rooms, no more bells to ring, no more sad bewildered strangers. i see one last door against a drab empty wall where paint has begun peeling off at its sides. above the door there is a single dimly illuminated sign which spells out the word EXIT.

padraic revisited

2010-12-05T02:00:00.000-08:00

split me open at the veneer
take everything you see
i’m letting out the emptiness
so plant your roots and remain

the words they’re all lost at sea
anything tangible would fill these _____
they’d fit but never for very long
linger for awhile then outstay their welcome

disembodied thoughts drift unconnected
can you string meaning from disaffected feelings
you’ve been educated you’ve been told
these fractions form part of a w(hole)?

breath warm and palpable on the cheek
feels like august through the streets
oh staccato lover, why so brief?
but permanence is _____, permanence is me.

I remember reading somewhere that Denmark is the happiest country in the world. Completely plausible considering you can wake up in the morning to something like this:

by Mario Reisner

dear catastrophe waitress

2010-11-22T04:50:00.000-08:00

These events are not in chronological order for the neurons in my brain fire randomly triggering disparate and mostly incoherent memories that fade and dilute unless written down:

Upon arriving, I think it was at the Harbor Front Center if I'm not mistaken, I see a French woman(at least I think she's French, I'll never know) leaning against a rail, reading a book. I remember thinking that I wouldn't mind reading my entire trip away.

I'm going to switch to a stream of consciousness now although all events have happened in retrospect: I find myself in a cab heading for the hotel I'm going to spend the next five or so nights in. It's pouring outside and the seventeen minute journey takes place in silence. At one point, the cab stops at a red and the rain falls rhythmically on the dashboard merging all the colors from the different lights outside into one softly luminous blur. I almost dissipate here but the car lurches forward jolting me out of my self indulgence.

A woman smokes a cigarette a few benches ahead of me. The morning air is cool and breezy on my face. An Auster lies open on my lap. I'm supposed to be reading but I realize that I'm completely content doing nothing.

"In my head there's a greyhound station, where I send my thoughts to far off destinations."

I'm walking around a strange city when suddenly you come up to me and say: Stand up straight at the foot of your love, I lift my shirt up. I'm taken aback for a second before saying: If you keep a record of our failures then I will document our love. At least I imagine the scene being played out but in reality nothing happens and I just keep walking.

"Shakedown 1979, cool kids never have the time."

The lyric which keeps looping as I'm surrounded by the crisscrossing of different and completely foreign lives: Stay Inside Till Somebody Finds Us, Do Whatever The TV Tells Us, Stay Inside Our Rosy Minded Fuzz.

Suddenly the day goes numb as all the freeways and buildings blend and shade into one another and through this obscure and unfocused mess of thoughts and sounds and images I realize I'm leaving.

in a city you can't remember

2010-11-11T08:08:00.000-08:00

And I think it would be impossible to leave here. Especially if all you've known your whole life has rendered you unprepared for something like this. Maybe this is only good because it's a beginning. But all beginnings are the ends of something else.

Then again, perhaps we only work in these brief moments. If we never get accustomed to each other we will never have to let each other down. There's got to be more to love than some sterile permanence right?

all photos from fys

There will be an infinite amount of time after we die just like there was an eternity before we were born. All we have is this barely noticeable in between. I think if you were to touch me, I'd just dissolve into molecules.

there are places and in them you are likely to find people. but fall in love with places for places are permanent.

i'm wide awake, it's morning

2010-11-06T08:31:00.001-07:00

And you don't have to worry or think too much because we have no immediate control over the future at this point in time and after all the future will happen on its own regardless of how we try and shape it.

Maybe we are perpetual lines that follow a specific and unique trajectory and perhaps our lines have met before, just grazing slightly as we almost pass each other unnoticed but still, even back then there was some residue from your life in mine.

What's your favourite colour? I've never thought about it, I keep changing my mind because when you have a favourite anything you only end up getting tired of it don't you? Who's your favourite person? That's a trick question.

We're both in a plane and all of a sudden both the engines just give up and we start plunging thirty thousand feet in the air. Would you tell me everything you ever wanted to tell me at that very moment? Or would you just hold my hand, tell me our worlds would be alright and then recline in your seat and close your eyes.

These are snippets of dialogue from the head of a person who doesn't completely trust his memory anymore. Don't be alarmed, we have our looks and perfume on.

Rub the last remnants of sleep induced images from these eyes. Breakfast? Yes, please.

via ilovebreakfast

pilot

2010-11-03T03:45:00.001-07:00

New beginnings never really do begin at the start of anything, there is much that has come before which I realize cannot be dismissed with the turn of a page or the folding and storing of a memory. I guess this is an attempt at something different, something lighter, less personal and because of that less dreary I hope. The day was spent on the road between home and somewhere else and then back again. Yamagata's Sunday Afternoon playing through the speakers on a sleepy Wednesday afternoon. I kept turning the volume lower and lower each time I replayed it until her voice was reduced to a barely audible whisper. Good music has always been the best companion on journeys like these. The optimist inside of me says: I want to travel all over the world, to the most picturesque of European cities where everything will look like the movies I keep watching to fuel my wanderlust. Soft orange glow and a deep focus to everything, the background and the foreground merge into one, flooding my senses. As I'm dreaming I feel like someone both young and old, slowly coming to the realization that past experiences and memories coupled with future hopes and dreams merge into one single present: Waking up begins with here and now.

Disjointed(but hardly random) lyrics which have stuck long past the afternoon:

"You're scared cause I feel like home"

"Oh we're so disarming darling everything we did believe, is diving diving diving diving off the balcony"

"I love you I've a drowning grip on your adoring face, I love you my responsibility has found a place"

"Daylight licked me into shape, I must have been asleep for days"

"On dit qu'au-delà des mers, Là-bas sous le ciel clair, Il existe une cité, au séjour enchanté."

"I am yours now so now I don't ever have to leave, I've been found out so now I'll never explore"