a few of these for now.

I feel like I'm getting better at the Holga, although I can see how the accidents of the film (especially the blocks of tone shift in the first few) make it more interesting in a way that I can't. I like the alchemy of a Holga photo. It's a somewhat disorienting thing to take a photo without really focusing or metering or timing the exposure. It's always the shots that I'm not looking forward to getting back that are the best; the most surprising at least.

I would like to be able to see in a way more appropriate to a Holga. I think right now I see in a 35mm SLR way. I would like to have an eye with a bit of chaos in it.

I included that last shot (well, a little bit because it's silly) because when I looked at it just now, going through which to post, i had this moment of 'oh, my god. that's me'. And I don't mean my face. I mean, that's me, sort of half-visible and floating. Transparent. I'm moody lately, and homesick, it's true. But even more than that I feel this strange pull between being disgusted by the fact that I don't do anything that I want to do, and this weird stagnation/lack of interest in doing those things.

I feel like that's exactly what I would say to a psychiatrist in order to get a very interesting prescription.

But I'm trying, I guess. It's more accurate to say that I'm trying to try. I'm reading Slavoj Zizek's The Parallax View, and it's re-connecting some neurons. [I always hear the word parallax pronounced in the Russian accent of the girl in my college physics class. pah-rhah-lahx.] It's inspiring me, but I still feel so dwarfed by everything. I also checked out recently a book on German history, which should help me start to contextualize Gerhard Rohlfs a little bit. What I'm doing is sort of like trying to explain to someone the history of Chinese grammar, only I don't speak a word of Chinese.

I like the idea of making a movie that's about him, but simultaneously about my making a movie of him and about that movie. That's the loosest possible way I can explain this, I think.

In the meantime, I've more or less stopped painting. I've been dragging my heels to finish one particular canvas, but I haven't taken the time to stretch any more. It just doesn't feel right right now. I can't honestly say if it ever did/does. I enjoy it, but a life's work...? I don't know. Thinking feels right. That's all I've ever known. And lately I've let myself get out of the habit of even that.

No more.

brain flash

Over-stimulation/under-stimulation -> death of symbols.

humans need symbols -> need to think abstractly ->structure of language

death of old symbols -> birth of new symbols

world too large? -> too many people? -> symbols no longer universal

uninterpretable symbols -> bad art

red moon (2005)

tonight i saw a red moon
and grey clouds drifting across
and i thought of how you were real
and how much that scared me.
and i thought of how you give me
little moments of laughter
gurgling up from inside,
even when you're not around.
and i thought of how many times i've come so close
to messing this all up
and how glad i am that you
just laugh at me and go on.
and in my head i sent you a postcard.
wish you were here.

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

(i used to write love poems)

the shell (2005)

i ground it right into my skin.
straight through the thin of my back,
pale and luminescent in the moonlight under that bridge.
my spine arching through my skin
to taste the powder
now mingling with blood.

i could have imagined it.
afterwords,
four shards remained
-the only evidence of a treasured gift-
like little white teeth worn
down from gnawing my body.

the rest of it gone.

blown into the river below, perhaps,
dust settling on an intrusive bullfrog.
likely most of it was left on our perch,
unseen by the little boy zeus and i
long tired from climbing and sweating together.

at night, when my body misses you most
-the lonely hours when i pretend it's not the sheet touching me but your hands-

i like to think it's been absorbed.
sneaking in somehow through some crack in my spine,
sleepwalking up to rest, maybe, in the space behind my eyes
or joining the fabric of my skin.
Or better, hardening into my nails,
the very ones i use to dig your back.
we hurt each other like this.