Midnight In Paris
Drive
The Artist
Another Earth
Monday, January 30, 2012
Painting Medicine
At work, there is a breathtaking view outside the window (16th floor, top) of the city, the Bay Area, the Marin Headlands, and the Golden Gate. And while it is a wonder and a lovely thing, at the same time, every time I walk by and fathom the expanse of beautiful land, water, grass, trees, and mountains of the Bay Area and beyond, I feel pangs of regret at the choices that have landed me here, sitting inside at a computer rather than out there exploring, experiencing, and digging my hands into that world. The Marin Headlands call to me especially - that point where the lighthouse is poised at what seems like the edge of the Earth. So after months of pining, husband and I made an excursion.
I felt a sense of rejuvenation after a chance to really take in the natural world, sit for an extended moment of pause in wonder and awe. I believe this is my new medicine, and something that is absolutely necessary if I'm not going to lose my mind. I could've stayed out there for hours in the cold, and will again.
I love that it is a different flavor, every one of these excursions I make, and each very different personality who accompanies me.
I want to learn to see the world in terms of light and shade, in terms of pigment and textures of paint.
I felt a sense of rejuvenation after a chance to really take in the natural world, sit for an extended moment of pause in wonder and awe. I believe this is my new medicine, and something that is absolutely necessary if I'm not going to lose my mind. I could've stayed out there for hours in the cold, and will again.
I love that it is a different flavor, every one of these excursions I make, and each very different personality who accompanies me.
I want to learn to see the world in terms of light and shade, in terms of pigment and textures of paint.
Apocalypse dreams
Dreamt of a zombie Apocalypse last night - influence of husboy - but this time I got to become a zombie, rather than just be pursued by the mindless monsters - gradually enough so that the humans I was with were able to try and dismember me, a fate to which I acquiesced willingly. They cut off my head and cut my body in half at the waist but it didn't work. I wasn't able to be dismembered. But I didn't want to eat anybody, I simply wandered the foreign wasteland of the earth and encountered other zombies, as if they were just another community of people to whom humans did not have access for fear of being eaten.
In this reality - in that indisputable way "impossible" things assert themselves as truth in dreams sometimes - extra teeth are stored in the knuckles of human bodies (or human bodies become zombies). A group of thugs wanted to use my teeth for something, so they held me down - six or seven of them - and they broke all my knuckles and dug out the teeth with the tip of a knife. I struggled and screamed.
I'm sure this dream had nothing to do with the fact that I woke up in the middle of the night thinking that this conventional life and everything about it besides the husboy just isn't for me, it's suffocating and I can't do it much longer.
In this reality - in that indisputable way "impossible" things assert themselves as truth in dreams sometimes - extra teeth are stored in the knuckles of human bodies (or human bodies become zombies). A group of thugs wanted to use my teeth for something, so they held me down - six or seven of them - and they broke all my knuckles and dug out the teeth with the tip of a knife. I struggled and screamed.
I'm sure this dream had nothing to do with the fact that I woke up in the middle of the night thinking that this conventional life and everything about it besides the husboy just isn't for me, it's suffocating and I can't do it much longer.
Friday, January 27, 2012
No Title
I feel all this pain, and softness & sadness, and al the End of the Day, the End of the Night, it's only about getting to crawl into bed with him, and have him hold me.
We're So Hard - When All We Want Is Tenderness
I'm sorry whoever has to clean the streets I've walked.
If you take a stroll down Webster to Fulton, you'll find the broken pieces.
I beg forgiveness of whoever's feet the glass tears apart.
If you take a stroll down Webster to Fulton, you'll find the broken pieces.
I beg forgiveness of whoever's feet the glass tears apart.
Monday, January 23, 2012
One Flame of Original Passion
From Equus:
" 'Worship isn't destructive. I know that.'
'I don't. I only know it's the core of his life. What has he got? Think about him. He can hardly read. He knows no physics or engineering to make the world real for him. No paintings to show him how others have enjoyed it. No music except television jingles. No history except tales from a desperate mother. No friends. Not one kid to give him a joke, or make him know himself more moderately. He's a modern citizen for whom society doesn't exist. He lives one hour every week - howling in the mist. And after the service kneels to a slave who stands over him obviously and unthrowably his master. With my body I thee worship!...Many men have less vital with their wives."
"'I mean he's in pain. He's been in pain for most of his life.'
'Possibly.'
'Possibly?! . . . That cut-off little figure you just described must have been in pain for years.'
'Possibly'
'And you can take it away.'
...
'Look...to go through life and call it yours - your life - you first have to get your own pain. Pain that's unique to you. You can't just dip into the common bin and say 'That's enough!'...He's done that. All right, he's sick. He's full of misery and fear. He was dangerous, and be again, though I doubt it. But that boy has known a passion more ferocious than I have felt in any second of my life. And let me tell you something: I envy it.'"
. . .
"'All right! I'll take it away! He'll be delivered from madness. What then? He'll feel himself acceptable! What then? Do you think feelings like his can be simply re-attached, like plasters? Stuck on to other objects we select? Look at him! . . . My desire might be to make this boy an ardent husband - a caring citizen - a worshipper of abstract and unifying God. My achievement, however, is more likely to make a ghost! . . . Let me tell you exactly what I'm going to do him!
I'll heal the rash on his body, I'll erase the welts cut into his mind by flying manes. When that's done, I'll set him on a nice mini-scooter and send him puttering off into the Normal world where animals are tethered all their lives in dim light, just to feed it! I'll give him the good Normal world where we're tethered beside them - blinking our nights away in a non-stop drench of cathode-ray over our shriveling heads! I'll take away his field of Ha Ha and give him Normal places for his ecstasy - multi-lane highways driven through the guts of cities. Passion, you see, can be destroyed by a doctor.'"
I've been living in Arcade Fire, wondering in reflection of these words that resonate with something all too deep and real inside of me, how much it requires 'insanity' to truly not only feel passion, but to live in it wholly. Some lifestyles, some professions allow for it - but most, I believe, do not. At least in the Western world, the only world I really know, where just as I find myself settling for a work life that not only leaves me passionless, but what is so much worse, robs me of time to even indulge in the things that bring about the sensation of passion, and make life worth living; I still abhor the idea of it.
I wish I really could deny the laws of physics and the chemistry of my own body to throw everything in gestures of feeling and devotion. But I participate in a society (Sartre would not allow me to escape saying that I actively choose it) which puts limits on my ability to completely listen to my heart, and demands unnatural things of my body. I find myself in this place where the more effort and energy I put into cultivating the self that gives me heart, energy, vitality to be, the more I take away from the self that sustains me insofar as my job is concerned, because that second self is one that buckles under. I want to be able to rush to your aid, but I was defeated before I walked through the door.
And, as soon as I closed up this post, I opened up Paul Tillich, and found these lines expressing what he has to say about grace:
"It strikes us when we feel that our separation is deeper than usual, because we have violated another life, a life which we loved, or from which we were estranged."
" 'Worship isn't destructive. I know that.'
'I don't. I only know it's the core of his life. What has he got? Think about him. He can hardly read. He knows no physics or engineering to make the world real for him. No paintings to show him how others have enjoyed it. No music except television jingles. No history except tales from a desperate mother. No friends. Not one kid to give him a joke, or make him know himself more moderately. He's a modern citizen for whom society doesn't exist. He lives one hour every week - howling in the mist. And after the service kneels to a slave who stands over him obviously and unthrowably his master. With my body I thee worship!...Many men have less vital with their wives."
"'I mean he's in pain. He's been in pain for most of his life.'
'Possibly.'
'Possibly?! . . . That cut-off little figure you just described must have been in pain for years.'
'Possibly'
'And you can take it away.'
...
'Look...to go through life and call it yours - your life - you first have to get your own pain. Pain that's unique to you. You can't just dip into the common bin and say 'That's enough!'...He's done that. All right, he's sick. He's full of misery and fear. He was dangerous, and be again, though I doubt it. But that boy has known a passion more ferocious than I have felt in any second of my life. And let me tell you something: I envy it.'"
. . .
"'All right! I'll take it away! He'll be delivered from madness. What then? He'll feel himself acceptable! What then? Do you think feelings like his can be simply re-attached, like plasters? Stuck on to other objects we select? Look at him! . . . My desire might be to make this boy an ardent husband - a caring citizen - a worshipper of abstract and unifying God. My achievement, however, is more likely to make a ghost! . . . Let me tell you exactly what I'm going to do him!
I'll heal the rash on his body, I'll erase the welts cut into his mind by flying manes. When that's done, I'll set him on a nice mini-scooter and send him puttering off into the Normal world where animals are tethered all their lives in dim light, just to feed it! I'll give him the good Normal world where we're tethered beside them - blinking our nights away in a non-stop drench of cathode-ray over our shriveling heads! I'll take away his field of Ha Ha and give him Normal places for his ecstasy - multi-lane highways driven through the guts of cities. Passion, you see, can be destroyed by a doctor.'"
I've been living in Arcade Fire, wondering in reflection of these words that resonate with something all too deep and real inside of me, how much it requires 'insanity' to truly not only feel passion, but to live in it wholly. Some lifestyles, some professions allow for it - but most, I believe, do not. At least in the Western world, the only world I really know, where just as I find myself settling for a work life that not only leaves me passionless, but what is so much worse, robs me of time to even indulge in the things that bring about the sensation of passion, and make life worth living; I still abhor the idea of it.
I wish I really could deny the laws of physics and the chemistry of my own body to throw everything in gestures of feeling and devotion. But I participate in a society (Sartre would not allow me to escape saying that I actively choose it) which puts limits on my ability to completely listen to my heart, and demands unnatural things of my body. I find myself in this place where the more effort and energy I put into cultivating the self that gives me heart, energy, vitality to be, the more I take away from the self that sustains me insofar as my job is concerned, because that second self is one that buckles under. I want to be able to rush to your aid, but I was defeated before I walked through the door.
And, as soon as I closed up this post, I opened up Paul Tillich, and found these lines expressing what he has to say about grace:
"It strikes us when we feel that our separation is deeper than usual, because we have violated another life, a life which we loved, or from which we were estranged."
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