something vague that we're not seeing

My uncle, Mr. Crosby, was driving. I could see his eyes watching me through the rearview mirror, worried. Feeling bad for this, I told him I was taking a nap and that he could wake me when we got to San Francisco or somewhere beautiful. He lowered his head and nodded.

The next thing I knew, twilight had begun. The sky was an incredible purple; lit with bits of stars, like broken glass, anticipating their own failure as the fight to outshine the sun carries on. I'm lead by Crosby to a door which says---Exit Only.

Blurry eyed and foggy I stumble up the steep stairs, and into a dark room; thin slivers of neon lights streaking the smokey air. The music is almost unbearable. It's so loud I cannot even hear it, only feel it inside my chest. It's vibrating my nerves so intensely that I feel they're strumming the song itself.

But then you're there and the world disappears and makes sense. Then what do I do? Fall. Fall and spill someone's glass of water. You're a DJ and I'm a mess. Feeling all the wrong things at all the right moments.

You're jumping and spinning. It's like a scene from True Romance. And as I look up at you from still down below, I think, at least I've made it this far.

be fair to me, I may drift awhile

I chased the sunset

as the last violent red and purple rays

disappeared over the skyline.

I was surprised to find my reflection

waiting patiently across the water,

fragile and fearless.

Dulled lights, Tetris molds

and still waters support a city infected with chaos;

like the pores, skeletons and blood supporting my own empyrean self

simple (living)

Fathers

Observing and adoring he'll patiently sit--contemplating and counting his blessings. He'd carry the world, with all its tremendous weight -for you- dreading the day you'd have to hold it on your own.

And so, there's strength and pride, fear and distress--but their faces are so beautiful, emanating love and joy. Nothing matters except for the sounds of their laughter and the pure vision of their existence.

He knows life is short and can be a terrifying place, but there's nothing he can do besides
_sit back and love
_stand up and protect
and bring forth some wisdom

to love and be loved,
can be more than enough.





rest peacefully, grandpa.
[Antonio Malatesta; Oct. 23, 2011]

move for me, i'll move for you

hydrogenesis 

^^^^^^^^^^.

everybody's where they need to be, but nobody's where you need them...

Leaving Bushwick late last night,

I made my way past families and their friends and their kids and their families;

enjoying their final moments of humid evening

out on their stoops

under telephone lines and dangling sneakers.

I see a young boy a couple yards in front of me

holding onto a tree for dear life.

I notice that he is wearing roller skates;

and completely baffled

by how they are supposed to work

how is he seriously supposed to move or roll or skate?

he cautiously and semi-frantically looks over his shoulder

to his friends

seeking support.

After no acknowledgement, he calls out,

"A LITTLE HELP WOULD BE NICE!"

By this point I am basically in front of him. 

We make eye contact.

No one responds.

A little farther now, I turn back around empathetically.

"Make them tighter!" I yell.

He stops moving. 

Eyes me suspiciously,

"Tighter?"

I half smile and nod.

He nods back, "Tighter."

[Dust under the rug.]

Subjectivity

"Because most of our knowledge of science is communicated to us as finished and accepted facts or theories, that is, as "final form presentation of science", we do not have any knowledge of the process of "private science," which is influenced and bounded by social, intellectual, metaphysical, and creative processes that most of us would believe to be quite "unscientific".

Thus, in examining the world of the scientist, I find that the interpersonal--that is, talk and the laboratory--is linked with ideas that emerge from the purely personal playground of imagination and wonder. The very private musing of a child finds its origins in wonder and may eventually be transformed through reflection, dialogue, and finally collaboration into a question and ultimately a theory about the world. These are the seeds that the classroom can nurture and build upon as teachers and children mutually engage in the world of science."

Amen.

you can't measure something that doesn't exist

i am in this moment, but i have been in every moment. i am here, but i have been there and everywhere. i am whole hearted. i am enough.

what does it mean to live? really live? is it to breathe?
and think and move?
Is it to feel love?
and happiness and sadness
and fear and shame and jealousy?
It is pride and courage.
Is it to cry?
is it to feel pain and inflict pain?
It is to kiss.
and taste and to orgasm.
is it to dream?
It is to imagine.
to play.
to laugh.
to help. and fight? to challenge.

Those are all primary facets to living, but what about the space in between? How does A connect to B? What kind of living does that constitute? Those are the choices we make. Those are our stories. I am an individual. I am nothing, but I am someone. Unique bodies developed through experience and  understanding. It is about connection--human connection--that reminds us we're alive and living.

Artificial connections boil below the surface, capturing the simplest elements of a body and vibrate the moments captured. They are a small reminder to ourselves that we're alive. Reminding us that we could always be our better selves if we do...if we buy...if we look like...if we listen to...if we believe...

we are enough.
without an army telling us so?
confront it; don't ignore it. why would you?
to not to be afraid of what you might find.

you are enough
be vulnerable
invite A (honesty) to meet B (shame)
you are enough.

New York...

"New York is an ugly city, a dirty city. Its climate is a scandal, its politics are used to frighten children, its traffic is madness, its competition is murderous. But there is one thing about it -- once you have lived in New York and it has become your home, no place else is good enough."- John Steinbeck

State of Being

This whole month+ I've been feeling so emotionally, physically, spiritually and politically stunted. It's all temporary, I know myself; I've just been so absorbed in my work, trying to grasp all that I'm learning, taking it to the next level and trying to respond and act accordingly in my work. Key word: trying. I suppose it's because I cannot really tell if I'm actually "getting" it. I'm not receiving anything in return for my efforts, so it's all just flapping in the breeze. easy, breezy, beautiful Covergirl. Anyway, aside from my personal strifes, it's also what I'm observing, socially and culturally, that makes me uneasy. 

What really started to irk me was the whole Republican presidential nominee nonsense. Trump, really? It's all become such a joke. This country seems so uninspired and despondent; what with the multiple wars, incredible national debt, unemployment, and the natural disasters, it's bound to be the case. Then over the weekend I watched the President's speech at the Correspondent's Dinner. I smiled, I laughed. I felt better.

The montage at the beginning? His live birth video? It was brilliantly written; political satire at its finest... reminding me of all the reasons why I liked Obama in the first place. He's a natural speaker, I can sense the sincerity in his voice, and therefore his motivations. Our political system is a convoluted hell hole, and the people that are currently in its place are there for a reason. How much freedom we actually have, we'll never know, but this country needs a face. And his is the one I'm happy to be looking at. By the end of his speech I found myself in tears. I cried because I don't want things to be this way anymore. I cried because there's so much tension and stress underlying our everyday interactions and activities, whether we acknowledge it or not. I know that in the end it's all a matter of how we accept these hardships and frustrations into our life that make us who we are, but what if that's not enough? Shouldn't we care more for the state of our being and existence to want more from the body that governs us? Shouldn't we try to fight for what's ours? I cried because I'm fighting in my own ways, small but satisfying. I cried because I'm afraid others have given up the fight and submitted. Maybe not. But I cried. I was also really drunk.

Then I watched Seth Meyer's speech. He's awesome. I was thoroughly impressed by the extensive wreckage placed on Trumps stupid looking skull. 

These clips are long, but well worth the watch. One of my favorite parts was when Seth was pointing out to Obama how much he's aged physically and withered in spirit since the 2008 election. "I tell you who could definitely beat you Mr. President--2008 Barack Obama. You would have loved him."

So all this, then woop! bang zoom! We've killed Osama bin Laden.

?!

Neil Gaiman

http://www.redbubble.com/people/darkestartist/journal/2029283-neil-gaimans-i-believe-speech-from-american-gods

I can believe things that are true and I can believe things that aren’t true and I can believe things where nobody knows if they’re true or not. I can believe in Santa Claus and the Easter Bunny and Marilyn Monroe and the Beatles and Elvis and Mister Ed. Listen–I believe that people are perfectible, that knowledge is infinite, that the world is run by secret banking cartels and is visited by aliens on a regular basis, nice ones who look like wrinkledy lemurs and bad ones who mutilate cattle and want our water and our women. I believe that the future sucks and I believe that the future rocks and I believe that one day White Buffalo Woman is going to come back and kick everyone’s ass. I believe that all men are just overgrown boys with deep problems communicating and that the decline of good sex in America is coincident with the decline in drive-in movie theaters from state to state. I believe that all politicians are unprincipled crooks and I still believe that they are better than the alternative. I believe that California is going to sink into the sea when the big one comes, while Florida is going to dissolve into madness and alligators and toxic waste. I believe that antibacterial soap is destroying our resistance to dirt and disease so that one day we’ll all be wiped out by the common cold like the Martians in War of The Worlds. I believe that the greatest poets of the last century were Edith Sitwell and Don Marquis, that jade is dried dragon sperm, and that thousands of years ago in a former life I was a one-armed Siberian shaman. I believe that mankind’s destiny lies in the stars. I believe that candy really did taste better when I was a kid, that it’s aerodynamically impossible for a bumblebee to fly, that light is a wave and a particle, that there’s a cat in a box somewhere who’s alive and dead at the same time (although if they don’t ever open the box to feed it it’ll eventually just be two different kinds of dead), and that there are stars in the universe billions of years older than the universe itself. I believe in a personal god who cares about me and worries and oversees everything I do. I believe in an impersonal god who set the universe in motion and went off to hang with her girlfriends and doesn’t even know that I’m alive. I believe in an empty and godless universe of causal chaos, background noise, and sheer blind luck. I believe that anyone who says that sex is overrated just hasn’t done it properly. I believe that anyone who claims to know what’s going on will lie about the little things too. I believe in absolute honesty and sensible social lies too. I believe in a woman’s right to choose, a baby’s right to live, that while all human life is sacred there’s nothing wrong with the death penalty if you can trust the legal system implicitly, and that no one but a moron would ever trust the legal system. I believe that life is a game, that life is a cruel joke, and that life is what happens when you’re alive

and that you might as well lie back and enjoy it.

Alan Watts__The Joyous Cosmology

"...but it doesn't matter a bit if you don't understand, because each one of you is quite perfect as you are, even if you don't know it. Life is basically a gesture, but no one, no thing, is making it. There is no necessity for it to happen, and none for it to go on happening. For it isn't being driven by anything; it just happens freely of itself. It's a gesture of motion, of sound, of color, and just as no one is making it, it isn't happening to anyone. There is simply no problem of life; it is completely purposeless play—exuberance which is its own end. Basically there is the gesture. Time, space, and multiplicity are complications of it. There is no reason whatever to explain it, for explanations are just another form of complexity, a new manifestation of life on top of life, of gestures gesturing. Pain and suffering are simply extreme forms of play, and there isn't anything in the whole universe to be afraid of because it doesn't happen to anyone! There isn't any substantial ego at all. The ego is a kind of flip, a knowing of knowing, a fearing of fearing. It's a curlicue, an extra jazz to experience, a sort of double-take or reverberation, a dithering of consciousness which is the same as anxiety.

Of course, to say that life is just a gesture, an action without agent, recipient, or purpose, sounds much more empty and futile than joyous. But to me it seems that an ego, a substantial entity to which experience happens, is more of a minus than a plus. It is an estrangement from experience, a lack of participation. And in this moment I feel absolutely with the world, free of that chronic resistance to experience which blocks the free flowing of life and makes us move like muscle-bound dancers. But I don't have to overcome resistance. I see that resistance, ego, is just an extra vortex in the stream--part of it—and that in fact there is no actual resistance at all. There is no point from which to confront life, or stand against it."