C'est si bon

I'm running away to Paris for a few days, pulling an Audrey and getting sucked into the clutches of semi-creepy philosophical hipsters spouting about empathicalism. Okay, probably not, but it's going to be awesome anyways. Updates when I return!

There's only one instant, and it's right now. And it's eternity.

Today, the weather was beautiful again. Priorities: Enjoy Sunshine. Smiling.

It seems my fickle friend insomnia has returned, although I must admit that I feel much less angsty about this than I normally would, mostly due to the fact that I haven't a schedule of any sort to keep these days. And, despite the fact that I only slept 2.5 hours last night, I feel more attuned to myself, my creativity, my core of happiness, than I ordinarily do when I am fully rested.

I sang Frank Sinatra to myself as I strolled down the street. I smiled.

I wonder how deeply I ought to allow myself to retreat into my mind, my daydreams, my sunshine delusions.  I think I am happier here.  I may never sleep again. 

An invigorating Miró for an invigorated me---

Joan Miró, Dancer, 1925

PS. Granola is f'kin delicious.

this is the wonder that's keeping the stars apart

I wish chocolate wasn't so delicious. Nay, let me rephrase that. I love that chocolate is so delicious. I wish chocolate wasn't so caloric. Nom nom nom.

OH. And I've re-ignited my passionate love for E.E. Cummings. 

It is time for a poetry reading. Get ready for your finger-snapping applause. ahem.

-----------------------------------------------------------------------------

let's live suddenly without thinking

e.e. cummings

Let's live suddenly without thinking

under honest trees,
                                a stream
does.the brain of cleverly-crinkling
-water pursues the angry dream
of the shore.        By midnight,
                                            a moon
scratches the skin of the organised hills

an edged nothing begins to prune

let's live like the light that kills
and let's as silence,
                                  because Whirl's after all:
(after me)love,and after you.
I occasionally feel vague how
vague i don't know tenuous Now-
spears and The Then-arrows making do
our mouths something red, something tall

------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

*snap snap snap snap*

also:

Piet Mondrian, The Red Tree, 1909

It's funny how long a moment can seem when you're trying to hold on.

Love taught me to lie.

To be honest, it's a lesson that I've come to appreciate. Deceit has become my favorite bed-fellow, a true comrade, a familiar sidekick.  Why, you ask? How could someone come to appreciate such a loathsome skill?

Because, quite frankly, the truth sucks. Ol' Jacky boy had it right when he exclaimed, "You can't handle the truth!" The thought of it makes me cringe. Truth is my least favorite foe. 

It's truth that laughs at my clumsiness and lack of rhythm at dance parties. Truth points out that I wear too much makeup, but concedes that I look worse without it. Truth laughs bitterly at my pretenses of confidence and caring, knowing that underneath it all is an emotional dead end. Yet, truth revels most when I am pensive and indulging my self-flagellation, as I sift through past regrets and my biggest mistakes. And, worst of all, when I say it was all my fault, truth agrees.

So when I say that I am glad that love taught me to lie, I mean it. More than anything, it's a method of self preservation. And there is no one I lie more to than I lie to myself.

And there is no where I lie more to myself than in my dreams. I dream of how it should have been, trick myself into thinking that it still could be. Little lies that keep hope alive and a glimmer in my eye. Because there is always a possibility. At least that's what I tell myself.

There's always the possibility that the past doesn't matter anymore. That we both haven't changed and become different people. That I still feel like home to him. 

Sometimes I secretly wish that I was completely exposed, that my mind was open and free to be explored and discovered by anyone and everyone. That all my faculties for deception have been torn away, leaving me vulnerable... but free. I wonder what people would think of me. I wonder what I would think of myself.

---

Last night, I dreamed that I saw him. He was looking out on Lake Michigan, deep in thought. I silently watched him for awhile, selfishly soaking in the details of his face, burning it into my memory, reveling in my unconscious delusion. Suddenly, he laughed quietly to himself, a crooked smile on his face, shaking his head softly. I called his name and he turned, surprised. His face lit up, seeing me, and my heart stopped. 

I dreamed that we were on the beach, spread out on an old blanket, staring at the stars and listening to the waves. I ran my fingers through his unruly hair and he closed his eyes and smiled, moaning softly with contentment. He told me about his best friend in first grade and his first girl friend in college. He chatted animatedly about music and composing, confessed his passions and fears. He spoke warmly of his mother and proudly of his nephew. He had a smile in his eyes.

I dreamed that I no longer felt afraid. I told him about visiting my great grandmother and the way I felt the first time I saw a grown man cry. I told him about my love for fresh flowers and my secret childhood crush on Joey Lawrence from Blossom. I confided that my biggest fear was dying and growing old alone. He hugged me. It felt natural to be in his arms.

I dreamed that he was perfect and that I was perfect and that we were perfect. We made love and we were closer to one another than we had ever been to anyone before and would ever be to anyone again. We were the only two people who existed in the world. It was strange and it was beautiful and it was absolute.

It had to be right. It has to be right.

--

Disney and Dali?

A film collaboration between Walt Disney and Salvador Dali. 

(I would like to preface the following excerpt simply by pointing out that it is complete rubbish. It makes you feel all warm and tingly in the recesses of your brain, your intellect squeals in delight as it prepares to bask in the pleasures of discourse on the irrational, closer and closer to that noetic, cerebral climax...  and then you ascertain the source. And you die a little inside. TRUMPERY. That is all.)

Our ideas of good and evil are only relative. In that other world where all values are transformed beyond recognition, why should not the relationship between good and evil be changed out of all proportion? Deep in the subconscious there must be a stream of continuity, some mysterious power linking us with that source whence all ideas originate... For a moment, then, let us surrender to the ultimately absurd. Pull down the barriers of sanity and let us indulge to the fullest in the realm of unreason... The escape from reason allows one to create a world that at last has meaning. The intelligence is put to rout.
-Robert D. Feild, The Art of Walt Disney

For the record, Walt Disney is not Surrealist. Not at all. Not even a tiny bit. NEVER. *HUMPH*

For more on why Salvador Dali is a sell-out, read: "An Amusing Lack of Logic": Surrealism and Popular Entertainment by Keith Eggener in the American Art Journal.

...the disciple of Art an abandoned wretch...

Hans Bellmer, La Poupee, 1934

Eternally chained to only one single little fragment of the whole, Man himself [sic] grew to be only a fragment; with the monotonous noise of the wheel he drives everlastingly in his ears, he never develops the harmony of his being, and instead of imprinting humanity upon his nature he becomes merely the imprint of his occupation, of his science. But even the meagre fragmentary association which still links the individual members to the whole, does not depend on forms which present themselves spontaneously (for how could such an artificial and clandenstine piece of mechanism be entrusted to their freedom?), but is assigned to them with scrupulous exactness by a formula in which their free intelligence is restricted. The lifeless letter takes the place of the living understanding, and a practised memory is a surer guide than genius and feeling.

----Friedrich Schiller, On the Aesthetic Education of Man, The Sixth Letter

Hans Bellmer, La Poupee, 1935

i want to drift

the sun is shining. in manchester. true story.

I wouldn't have believed it myself if I weren't seeing it.

as the last chills of winter leave the city, they take with them my brooding mood.

the sun brings new perspective, no?

a new perspective is what I needed all along.

*smiles*

'and your very flesh shall be a great poem...'

My nephews, Evan and Chase, b. 20 April 2009.

"The fruition of beauty is no chance of hit or miss … it is inevitable as life … it is as exact and plumb as gravitation.

From the eyesight proceeds another eyesight and from the hearing proceeds another hearing and from the voice proceeds another voice eternally curious of the harmony of things with man.

To these respond perfections not only in the committees that were supposed to stand for the rest but in the rest themselves just the same.

These understand the law of perfection in masses and floods … that its finish is to each for itself and onward from itself … that it is profuse and impartial … that there is not a minute of the light or dark nor an acre of the earth and sea without it—nor any direction of the sky nor any trade or employment nor any turn of events.

This is the reason that about the proper expression of beauty there is precision and balance …"

Walt Whitman, 'Preface to Leaves of Grass', 1855