the halves that halve you in half

I'm not young enough to know everything.
But I thought that at least this... this precious little bubble of my life was safe
Protected and true.

And even when it burst I denied it to myself
but now the pain, the incomparable pain rests upon my shoulders
pressing down until I become a smudge of the self I'd always known

No one ever told me that knowledge and truth were anguish.
I feel the agony but at the same time am removed as if I'm watching my actions on a screen from a seat in a movie theater.

It doesn't feel real.

THERE ARE CERTAIN things about women that men will never understand, in part because they have no interest in understanding them. They will never know how deeply we care about our houses—what a large role they play in our dreams for ourselves, how unhappy their shortcomings make us. Men think they understand the way our physical beauty—or lack of it, or assaults on it from age or extra weight—preys on our minds, but they don’t fully grasp the significance these things have for us. Nor can they understand the way physical comforts or simple luxuries—the fresh towel or the fat new cake of soap—can lift our spirits. And they will never know how much our lives are shaped around the fear of bad men and the harm they can bring us if we’re not careful, if we’re not banded together, if we’re not telling each other what to watch out for, what we’ve learned. We need each other’s counsel, and oftentimes it comes when we’re talking about other things, when we seem not to have much important on our minds at all

the disaffection of romance

Edit: this post doesn't reflect my personal life but more of an observation/amalgamation of thoughts from reading scripts, articles, and situations.

Of course you've seen it all before but you always forget until you get to that place again. Past romances which had slapped the hurt into you always become shrouded and cloudy, withered memories like an Alzheimer's patient, in the face of the new object of desire.

Yet eventually, the perfect little seed that you've kept close, polishing it like a pearl nightly with love and fevered breath, begins to stain with every verbal sling, every injured feeling that gets buried, only to bubble up when least expected.




In the face of a world where new love objects are a click away, albeit virtual and remote, how do we persevere when most other daily activities of our lives have been simplified? Considering the breadth of our access to a wider range of partners, is it easier for us now to dismiss potential relationships because of some perceived or imaginary slight, knowing that our physical and intellectual ideal could still be out trolling the web highway?

It's so much easier not to care. Love/like/sex is so much simpler. A groping towards some sort of mutual satisfaction with no side of emotion, no risks, no problems. After all, how many couples actually make it, who don't just maintain appearances to fool their children, where the appreciation and respect grows instead of falling by the wayside. Does the dissolution happen because two people were never a right fit from the start or do the ravages of monogamy chip away slowly but surely, like the waves beating against the rocks on the beach?

We do it because it's precious. When we find it, we resort primitively to guarding and defending it to the death. We do it because we want to feel needed, we want it to be realized when we're not around. We do it because it feels good- not just the physical benefits but those moments after an argument where you realize that little fightquakes aren't going to tear it apart.

we can cross rivers with our will

Usually these photographs that I post are an abstract image that I find captivating, an image that I think is "cool"- whereas this image is a literal depiction of my state of mind.



Off-kilter. Off-balance. Twisted and tumbled over.

I know this from certain tendencies. Eating the same foods over and over. Whenever my brother was feeling this way, that was the time that certain foods populated our refrigerator. Dozens of vanilla yogurts, a bunch of poppy-seed bagels, whatever made the chemical connection that united mood with taste buds was plentiful in our household.

I haven't listened to music in a week and a half. I always vacillate between listening to primarily podcasts or music. I'm in the podcast mood because music access a too raw and primal set of emotions. Podcasts are comforting and clinical- dispensing stories, information, or hilarity- I can choose the conversation I want, I can choose the company I keep.

I'm being irrational. I don't want to say it aloud because speaking words breathes life into it. So rather I will type. I'm allowing the demon of my past rear his ugly head. The victim is not a comfortable role for me to play, usually an awkward and cumbersome fit, yet for some reason I'm slipping into it comfortably. The devil's dance that I entertained for three years left more scars that I realize, scars that manifest themselves more prominently in the face of a relationship with the opposite of everything I have known. Time to rewrite my emotional neurons.

I know I will climb out of this.

but a little fantastic, fleeting, and out of reach

I came to this realization. Just now. While watching ADAPTATION. The movie about a guy writing a movie-which is in fact the movie that you are watching.



I realized this while watching the movie while simultaneously searching for reviews on the movie I was watching. Reading other people's words, other people's perspectives. Because I was doing this, I didn't watch the movie intently. I wasn't fully engaged.

I also do this with restaurants and food. For some odd reason, I have to read these reviews and see how other people feel. I can't just experience anything for myself. I have this need to know something before I get in. I can't just leap before I look.

i'd always known it would be like this

there's something so seductive about apathy. about disconnection.



if you really want to break it down, thoreau was the first hipster. he said (in a less eloquent way) "f*** this. i'm going to get away from our society and live in the wilderness". He broke away from the bullshit, from the socially established constructs, "to front only the essential facts of life and see if I could not learn what it had to teach, and not, when I came to die, discover that I had not lived." Okay, Bright Eyes.
I mean, look at the name of hipster bands lately: Fleet Foxes, Caribou, Wolfmother- if that's not an attempt to harken back to native roots then what else is it (perhaps the members really just enjoy nature)?

Whatever, back to the main subject of this post. Now I've read number upon number of articles bemoaning that our increasingly virtual lifestyle causes depression because of the lack of real human contact. I grew up in the time where AIM was prominent and numerous soap operas of the teenage era unfolded in the minutes of those exchanges therefore I can understand the assertion of these articles and the logic. Despite the fact that what we write on Facebook posts/blogs/comments etc is essentially like tattooing yourself with the inanity that you post on the web, we do it because its easy, instantaneous and seemingly harmless. Also the problem with this shift in living also causes ourselves to critically and fully construct our identity via likes, dislikes, music taste, and quotes. Everything we post, every sentence we write continues to label our identity in this vast space.

But the vastness is appealing. The remoteness is freeing. The fact that we can say what we really, truly, in the deepest and darkest recesses of our mind think without fear of immediate societal repercussion- I mean is that nothing but truly freedom. Although Thoreau's journey was much more of the kind of a confrontation of natural forces and the human fallibility in face of those, I think that what we are dealing with now is the struggle to force oneself to be heard in the face of the abyss of empty space. And although people may respond favorably, you know the emptiness of their validation. It's all a lie.

gluttony

In other random news, I tried to type in the address for my blog and lo and behold I get re-routed to a Bible Study website like some practical joke. The agnostic in me say this might be some sign- that my frequent imbibing, carousing, and living in sin with my boyfriend has caught the big guy's attention. That "He (JC) may be reaching out to me right now". The atheist in me tells the agnostic to shut the fuck up.



Anyways back to the point of this entry. At about the point of our second mimosa, Ken made a decent point as my Southwestern scramble and his crab cake Egg Benedict arrived. I am consciously preoccupied with food-why not start a food blog? I had to admit, the thought has crossed my mind before and after all, it would be a nice hobby of sorts to make me feel fulfilled beyond the soul suck that is work (which I love like a BDSM addict). Yet I always steered away because I don't think my tastes are broad enough (I tend to stick with creamy, salty food or carbohydrates of any kind really) and also although I am a voyeur and frequent visitor of food blogs, I kind of think the people who create them are sad desperate housewives who substitute fleeting culinary pleasures in lieu of frequent sex with their husbands.

However, I'm ruminating on making frequent but not constant entries in related to food/cooking/restaurants for the budget conscious. Who knows- this might fall by the wayside like so many of my projects. List of the following projects who have passed on:

-Photography portrait project of attendees at racetracks (using Polaroid camera)
-Starting singing/songwriting (the most action my voice sees is the good ole car sesh)
-Taking UCLA extension course in something nonrelated to my work-but something I never could in college
-Writing a script

These might/might not be resurrected at some point soon only to die once again. I'm painting every weekend which feels nice and fulfilling but my drive to create something...ANYTHING is getting stronger.

thanatos

Suffering is pleasurable. Rollercoasters, scary movies, extreme sports-the appeal is all the same.
These visceral experiences of a Russian roulette variety allow us to flirt albeit briefly with our demise. Some go further.
They destroy their mind and body with toxic substances, starve themselves to fit an illusion, some careen into the abyss rather than face society's responsibilities and expectations. It all points to the same thing: a subconscious longing to return to an inanimate state.

Although you would think that people would seek to avoid these experiences and instead pursue the path of most pleasure, we still continually find ourselves consciously putting ourselves at risk. Willing self-destruction is the death instinct- Freud posited it as the opposing force to the pleasure principle. Initially when I discovered the theory, I scoffed at its implications. Why on earth would I want to be dead? What happened to the survival instinct? Maybe this toying with the ending of existence allows one to feel "more alive" after surviving the risk. Living is hard after all- trying to satisfy your desires while working to maintain a means for economic survival, find someone to love, procreate, the never-ending exhausting circle of life.

Maybe that's why I like to drive fast and recklessly. Maybe that's why I like to drink and go out constantly on the weekends. Maybe that's why I "go there"- prudence has never been my thing. I can be reckless and misguided but maybe deep down I just want to get in my two cents.

as i scan this wasted land

This is horrifying.



After an hour of watching videos and images, a process that left me feeling dirty, like I'd been watching some sort of destruction porn, it came to me.

All the stepping stones we try to follow in life, go to school, get a good job, settle down, buy a house- it's all so tenuous in the face of the forces of nature. We are insignificant specks in the face of the yawning abyss. Watching the water swallow factories, farms, towns...it reaffirms my moderate hedonism. Enjoying life's little moments of pleasure whether it be in a bite, a song, or an orgasm is the true gateway to heaven. There's only so much you can guarantee until the big one comes.

cause we never turn out the way we thought we would

Patience has never been one of my virtues.
I'm the kind of girl that rages in Los Angeles traffic.
Waiting is not my strong suit
I'm the kind that pulls off your jeans before you can even think of getting down to business
The sticky process of becoming an adult involves becoming more rational, more empathetic, more and more of your best self.
Is it terrible that I still want to fly? Think happy thoughts and live in the moment, unconcerned about the future, mortgages, babies, credit scores.
Don't get me wrong, I understand the appeal of autonomy-responsibility can be a seductive bitch yet the burdenless lifestyle of the unbridled siren call is hard to resist. I just want to stay immature (and therefore blameless) for a litttllllleee bit longer.
(Jonny Sist you know what I'm talking about)

Two movies I've seen have really got me thinking lately. First of all there's RESTREPO-a documentary about soldiers battling with Afgani's in the most dangerous part of the world- the Korengal Valley- the brutal grounds where you have to be constantly on guard which consequently forces the soldiers to extricate life and pleasure from every moment where they aren't dodging bullets or fighting for their lives.

Second is SOLARIS. Man goes to space station near a planet that attempts to communicate with its earthly visitors by manifesting itself as a human construct of their most repressed or secretive memories. In the end, rather than face the pain of enduring the earthly reality without his wife who committed suicide, the protagonist chooses to lead a life with an artificial manifestation of his dead wife- to make amends for inadvertently causing her suicide while living in a bland but eerily calm world that exists only within his memories.

What perplexed me was the symbolic meaning of his journey. Is his fall into acceptance his entrance into death? Isn't human life nothing but a struggle and the protagonist's fall into ambivalence symbolic of his individual suicide?

It's a supremely easy thing to say that life is a struggle. Oftentimes, we fail to realize that without this struggle, our existences wouldn't nearly be as interesting. Entertainment (or rather our preoccupation with our lives/other people) is only as strong as the obstacles that befall the situation or person. I'm not an advocate for drama but truly, what is more satisfying than obtaining something that was not easily won? The heroes choice in SOLARIS is the most cowardly of any story I've ever beheld- rather than face life without his wife, he is content with existing within a fake world with a fake her- the construct of his memories about her-no elements independent of his perspectives.

Is how we see each other stronger than how we perceive ourselves?

what fresh hell is this?

I don't know what's happened to me.
This person I've become lately- I don't recognize her...I don't like her.
They say "you", personality, soul, whatever that means, changes every 7 years.
The internal self that you perceive, the way that you see yourself to you remains the same, yet your actions, reactions, behaviors fluctuate.
So does the "you" that you perceive really exist? Or are we just an amalgamation of shifting traits, some of which are picked up by the company we keep?

earthly pleasures

So they say you're supposed to starve a fever and feed a cold.



These are damning words to my ears. The human instinct of wanting what I can't have is primed and all I dream about is a bountiful feast with the most delicious food I can possibly imagine. So in lieu of this feast, I'm going to list all the foods that I want right now- ideally simultaneously:

-Cheesy margarita pizza
-Crisp salads with a tasty vinagrette
-Medium raw filet mignon that melts in your mouth
-Truffled mashed potatoes
-The Lambwich from Venice Beach Wines
-Creamy soups like potato and butternut squash
-Citrusy desserts like lemon meringue pie
-Quail ragout from Via Veneto
-Breakfast burritos-scrambled eggs, cheese, bacon, avocado, and potatoes please with lots of tapatio
-Chick fil-a sandwiches
-Mac & Cheese
-Roasted vegetables- peppers, onions, squash, zuccinni
-Pumpkin Ravioli
-Carpaccio-if you haven't tried it-uggghhh do itt
-Caprese salad with lots of oil and balsamic
-Pancakes-blueberry, ricotta w/lemon etc
-Milkshakes-strawberry please
-Bacon-wrapped dates
-Prosciutto on ANYTHING
-Ricotta gnocchi from Gjelina
-In fact, anything from Gjelina
-Wontons
-Ken's garlic salmon