holyshitiloveyou

Despite respite

2012-01-23T17:10:00.000-05:00

It hadn't even been a full day and night. The initial tilt had become isolation, and then a swift possession of gestures. What warmed up as a dizzy waltz became a full-blown gospel choir of near dementia. Was it the Lord, our Father who art in Jersey, inside him or some other sinister marionette?
Whatever it was leaked milk-tears from his eyes. His head was too heavy to hold them all. It hung low as the moon.

Weight is what filled the void where that animal spirit bended and billowed within. I was unfamiliar until then, like a motion detector. A shy ghost. Without the spirit to defy science, what was once my pet had just become biology-- in my futile arms, reduced to geometrics and physiology.

If he was scared, I couldn't tell if the fight was to stay or leave. I stayed to feel the shift. He bucked. Something awakened inside him, knocked for release and demanded expulsion.
Lastly, the breath. I'm always perplexed at how something so visceral remains invisible, nearly undetectable. A neck rests like wet leaves against my jeans. No wild eyes, just still glass. Still everything.

Raising his limp form, suddenly heavy for his size, I considered CPR and then thought against it, afraid to breathe a demon back into his body, as if what would come back would not be the same, but a feral spook, resentful for the invocation.
That manual resuscitation would not work did not even occur to me. It is a uniquely mad moment when a phantom reality settles and you truly believe that if you willed it, you could do anything. Like bring back the dead, for instance. I won't mention the stopping of time because you just wouldn't believe me. It lasts not even a minute, but long enough for you to become formally acquainted with a part of yourself that will always be reserved to fill a depth created by the love that clings to your own senseless resolve. Desperation is to Godliness.

I stared and stared, watching the atoms and ions which become visible behind my eyes in the rare moment when you are seeing-- really seeing-- what your heart knows. They are moved by some breeze I don't feel but they make quick work, solidifying the furry vessel that just a moment ago I was desperately trying to hydrate with Pedialyte in a tiny turkey baster to the mouth. I didn't think to close his eyes before they too stuck.

I waited for the stiffness to take. I waited for the warm to leave. For it to change its mind. To trail it for questioning and brutalize it into creeping back into its body. But these forces won't humor me, not today. Today they enforce the only thing we know for sure, more than circumstance and sin. They bring to me, in serpents' jaws, a reminder of inevitability. I never heard it coming, I only felt the sting.

weapons of mass communication

2012-01-11T03:16:00.000-05:00

After wanting these for wayy to long, I decided to DIY it and voila: An iPhone case that doubles as a bludgeoning tool. The spikes are flat-tipped so they're actually quite comfortable in your hand, like one of those ergonomic massage tools.
I put them on my Etsy whilst currently scheming on color/spike combos.

So now when I walk home alone late at night and I'm on the phone, I won't have to throw my keys in a potential assailant's face. Who does that? I hear a lot of people do that. Doesn't matter- not gonna do it. Phone hit!

something borrowed, something nevermind

2012-01-05T03:51:00.000-05:00

I fed him the first night I met him, sitting on my stoop, a wedge of pot pie from a Tupperware container. I knew before he was finished that this would be the last time I would want to do anything nurturing. Not that I wouldn't, just that I wouldn't necessarily want to.

When it's this cold outside, you have to make a firm decision before stepping out into the elements. What kind of behavior attracts the kind of heat necessary to make it bearable. It's funny because I am what I need towards any body else, though the magnets are rarely well matched. Somehow we come as close as we are, veering away and back around again.

It's a real life thrill, of scientific expectation. If I relented all of my expectation to science, I can be better prepared... for the elements, for the chemistry that denies itself over and over, for the haphazard variables that aways seep into misguided assurance. My body speaks in languages that do not translate to my heart. How could I ever expect it to speak to anyone else's?

Imagine my chagrin when he got up to get a beer from the fridge and demanded, "So in the time in takes me to get a beer, tell me one interesting thing about yourself."

"No." I don't mean to be difficult, but this is shocking, the unabashed dullness. Part of me is relieved. I never know what to say to interesting people anyway.

My efforts at becoming a more amenable and kinder person have vanished with that meager attempt at posturing. He cares about the kind of person I am about as much as I care about the double standards that are bound to intervene-- that is to say, not very much. Of all the men to underwhelm let it be you, mid-thirties and single struggling musician/freelancer.
He tells me I'm too young for him. If I rolled my eyes he didn't mention it. Perhaps he was a rooster in his past life. Perhaps I was a jester.

"I think you drew blood," He said, touching his lip. He pulled away, examining.
"Let me see," I offered, eager to see my handiwork. "Hmm, too dark to tell." I shrugged and he returned, more timid than before. I shouldn't be, but I can't help but be pleased with myself.

I think if I can inhabit the negative space I reserve for others, I will feel more in control. It's just another thing to own, but it is excess. Control is worth nothing if you don't want what's underneath it. So rarely am I allowed the kind of arrogance to not want anything from a person...

I remember the ones I use to want as one remembers an injury. The intensity is an intellectual memory, not an emotional one. I take inventory of them only as a scrawled reference to the things I hope to feel. It's a pleasure to have somebody, but the greater satisfaction to belong to them.

We would have them but we would not be owning them. Not tonight and perhaps not ever. With nothing to hide and even less to offer, I took no prisoners, just an Advil on the way out.

Last Fox-mas I gave you my heart

2011-12-25T15:59:00.000-05:00

raised by wind

2011-12-13T02:36:00.000-05:00

You don't have to show me the end of a rope to know how it's hung. I've picked apart sailor knots to see how they keep, working my fingers almost to the quick, but I have never bothered to learn how to tie them. The quicker lesson is always to deconstruct. Having never quite reaped the benefits of a wholesome challenge, I can at least share a quiet appreciation of its humble law.

I found myself tightening his knots the more he prodded at mine. He handled me. I knew it was only in return for my insolence, how I used every code of decorum to upstage his affection. I knew nothing of fastening them, but only the maintenance of tension-- if there were strings to be attached, they'd be just about taut as a drum right now.

"Someone said to me that I didn't get enough affection," he tells me. He means in general, since the past. I think it a bit odd that he chooses to say so now, as I've relented in letting his six foot frame occupy the left side of my twin bed. It's a small bed and I'm rarely keen on sharing it. Anyway, I'm unconvinced.

"That's funny because I was just telling myself that I don't get enough of a break," I retort. It's an easy quip, too easy and even a bit too sharp. I've just proved his point, but he still wraps his arm around my neck.
If you don't get enough affection, you must take it. It is perhaps the reason for his success and his misery. It isn't always easy to accept. I take most of it with a grain of salt and give about as much as I take. He kisses my shoulder and I think to myself, 'atta boy.

"You and I will be good for each other," he said several days ago. "I'm home before 4am and you need to get out more. We could help each other." The pitch smacked of sponsorship more than romance.

We often discuss parodies of romance and the bleak nature of human connection and our experiences with alienation and disappointment.
"You should date women your age or older," I tell him. He gives me a piteous look and I know he's right-- they're all quite taken at this point.
"All the good girls get snapped up around 25-27," he says, averting my eyes as if to say yes, you too will die. "I think I need to find someone young and kind of raise them in a way, you know?"
"To love you?"
"No, just to raise them. That's just how it needs to work."

I don't know if he means he wants someone to take care of or just someone to absorb his methods. It's so important, looking after. Everyone needs looking after. Too often, you raise a thing and it just runs off anyway. Domestic rebellion. Unlike the both of us, we did not so much run wild as lurk towards dreams. It's more than survival, it's a separation of desire and instinct. If he raised her would she tame him, in turn? It's a nice thought but I know better.
To be raised by wilderness implies a sharper instinct than reasoning. And what's reasoning against the instability of human nature and its arrogant expectations?

I think of his raising and of my own. Careful owls perched over coyote dens. Watchful and camouflage. Were there ever colorful deception, it was the fault of the prey, never his. It's just as well I'm underwater, well beneath the island he fancies himself. We meet at the surface, tethered to the element of our own familiar solitude. It's murky business, trading these wanton intervals.

bring on the xmas

2011-12-07T03:15:00.001-05:00

Chalk and Numbers recorded this original Christmas song a little while ago and here it is-- Just in time for the thing I am singing about in this song!

Also, it's a free download on our Bandcamp just in case you want to listen to it more than on this blog:

<p>&amp;amp;amp;lt;p&amp;amp;amp;gt;&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;lt;p&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;gt;&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;lt;a href="http://chalkandnumbers.bandcamp.com/album/happiness-this-time-of-year-single"&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;gt;Happiness This Time Of Year (Single) by Chalk And Numbers&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;lt;/a&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;gt;&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;lt;/p&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;gt;&amp;amp;amp;lt;/p&amp;amp;amp;gt;</p>

It feels oddly unnatural to be involved in such an unabashedly cheerful project as this song, but what the hey- it's xmas, I'm allowed to feel feelings!

mon pull rose

2011-12-01T02:57:00.001-05:00

Anyone who knows me knows that I NEVER wear pink. I kind of hate it. So how weird then that I totally love this sweater? I'm not going to think too hard about it. Whenever I wear it, people feel like it's okay to pet me because it's fuzzy and I guess pink is inviting to the touch (everyone knows pink is kind of a slutty color that is also maybe just a little naive and doesn't mean to come off as so inviting but it's just cuz it's so damn nice to everyone indiscriminately).

Well it's not okay, but I don't hate it either. We all need some love. We all need some pink sweater love.

Yeah, that's what my couch cushions look like, wanna fight about it? They got my back.

Money in the bag

2011-11-30T23:27:00.001-05:00

I was thinking about bank robbers' sacks with the dollar sign on it. And then I wondered if that was a sort of international concept, never even considering that grand theft was primarily an American pastime.
You think people in the UK rob banks with a Pound sign on a briefcase? Or maybe one of those leather school bags that are entirely too rectangular. I think I would find the Euro on an oversized kiss-lock purse. So french.
Yen, wouldn't happen. Diamond, why not.

Either way, I'm giving you options, robber people. Check your monies!
I printed them with gold ink (naturally).

Put on sale on this Etsy.

fad romance

2011-11-24T03:18:00.000-05:00

What was your biggest dream as a teenager?

Victoria: I definitely wondered about the future but I think I also just wanted to be in love. I just really wanted a boy to be in love with me. I was pretty sure it wasn’t going to happen. It didn’t happen.

~SUP' MAGAZINE 22 (SUMMER 2010)

Before it happened, I never attached the sentiment to a real live human being. I attached it to callow skepticism and the sort of dumb patience of youth that it will happen when I'm older and when it happens I'll just know because that is the kind of Band-aided adage adults tell adolescents when really no one is ever or always sure. They should just tell you, "I'm not sure, but I'll ask my manager."
I worried my impatience would always force it and it would always escape me. That maybe that's just how love works. When I was younger I was more worried about not recognizing love than not finding it. Now, I find it quite turned upside down. I'm not sure who's working for what anymore. Should I coax it or beguile it? Or let it deceive me, foolishly believing that the knowledge of that fact makes it any less dangerous?

The worst deception was beauty. Equally compelling and dangerous, and altogether misrepresented. Is it natural to react to beauty and think, "Shit, man..." Every beautiful man I've met has inspired that thought in me to some degree. You won't ever love me the way I will you, I would think to myself, but goddamn if you aren't fantastic to look at.

A great misleading concept is that beauty and love are by nature mutually inclusive. The idea is that you will be okay with beauty being the sole redeeming factor. More often than not, you won't be. More often than not, it just isn't enough. At the very least, it upholds the principles of romance.

Romance charms the good from those who are beautiful. And when they are not good and the charm is lifted, the void feels that much deeper. Was it love that I was in or romance? Romance without love just becomes vulgar with time. We were alright at it for a little while. It tatters though. You wear it as well as you can until it makes you indecent with a different kind of bloodlust, galavanting about like a loon, leaping naked through hoops for the feeling of love. Until it becomes a joke that goes on for far too long and the person not telling the joke loses interest before the punchline.
It seemed to decay in three quarters time, a Dorian Gray portrait of our still hopeful hearts. You and I were beautiful, but you and I were lying to each other. Not in love, in romance.
Romantics make the best liars. They can really stomach their own shit.

This is the sort of nature of romance though. The element of surrender and blissful ignorance that is so essential to uphold its integrity--that represented in one person, is the notion that we are not all simply indifferent and self-serving creatures. That we could find a genuine and requited counterpart to our counter acts, regard them more highly than we regard ourselves and be happier better people for it. And even more fantastically, that it will last. Romance tends to have a complicated relationship with time.

scrap paper

2011-11-22T00:55:00.001-05:00

I've been doodling.

in bed all day

2011-11-14T23:11:00.001-05:00

Sometimes it's nice to think about if we lived here.

charter chump

2011-11-07T02:09:00.000-05:00

I had seen the backseats of more taxis in one day than I had in a whole month. I watched the Capital creep up over the horizon of a city I made less acquaintance with than a party guest in a bathroom line. We were on a mission and we were bad at it.

We spent the entire reception discussing how we would do it differently. As if marriage was even a realistic prospect for either of us. But when you are here, seated at Table 7, alongside a handful of bridesmaids and their reluctant boyfriends, you can't help but never want to subject anybody to this. I'm mostly reeling from an unwitting crop up of PSD from my teenage days as a cater waiter. All the ill-fitting and gender-crippling polyester tuxedo uniforms, to me it's an indicator of not only indentured servitude but some sort of void of the American Dream. Lose a turn, take two steps back, become a cater waiter.

One of them kept pouring red wine into everyone's champagne flute, cringing when he realized his faux pas, only to be doomed to repeat it with every refill. These are the things worse people would criticize, but I don't think he even spoke enough english to understand if he was being criticized.

I watched my friend, who I have known for just about 11 years now, dine with his wife at the table reserved for the bride and groom. They chewed as if in secret, bearing the social ceremony with the kind of grace that the 21st century affords.
I wasn't there when they fell in love. I was barely there when things got "serious." I remember him telling me several months ago that "if things go well, I think we're going to get a place together in the Fall." Soon after that, I remember him telling me, "if this goes well, I think I'm going to propose to her on New Years Eve." It went well. I wish I had bore witness to a friend falling in the kind of love that sticks and stays. I wanted to see the transformation and the transcendence. So I could remember it for the next time I might ever see it again, like some sort of Halley's Comet.
I eyed the scene with a skepticism only of someone who has never looked at the end of the line and seen the same person there as at the start of it. We met eyes and he raised his glass. I raised my dinner roll.

Two hours later of the kind of modern dance music that only wedding DJs and my corner bodega plays, two servings of cake for me, and a few whiskey neats for my date, the reception hall closed their doors and everyone was shuttled off to an after party of sorts at the 3-and-a-half star hotel they were booked at. A lounge with oversized plush armchairs surrounding smokey glass-topped coffee tables, and piano jazz standards on the speakers. Business class. Cops played silently on the inset wall monitors. I sat deep in a chair, my feet dangling off the end, clutching my phone that tethered me to the time and place I came from. This was the first day I was going to use the entire battery in less than 24 hours.

Fleeing on a midnight bus on a trip to span at least four states and graze maybe two others, was not what I had in mind that same night. It was enough of a twilight zone, that inaudible voice that carries in the concrete and every hostile breeze, pleaded with me to either leave this city or return to my own. I'm not sure which sentiment was greater.
Instead of sleeping (as to avoid any vulnerabilities to the no doubt dodgy folk on a midnight bus), I stared blankly out the window. Past highway terrain that always looks like untamed brush that could be reserved for something, but probably just more highway. Past the strip malls. Past the parking lots, and gas stations and small glowing diner signs.
Something says "Welcome to New Jersey" but I never meant to be in New Jersey. You can't really get anywhere you want without going through places you never meant to go to.

They could take or leave you so they took you and they left you

2011-11-02T01:09:00.000-04:00

The moment when you realize you are in a dream places you in exactly the half-life position of awake and asleep. Semi-conscious. It's the only moment when you can honestly lie to yourself. It's brief, but powerful.

For example, I have never been to Spain. But I was in Spain and who should I meet in Spain but any old ghost who probably has also never been to Spain. I don't think he expected to see me either, in Spain let alone in my own dream. We loved each other, knowing full well the chronological hiccup. We wanted something that needed no explanation, no disclaimer. We wanted to be kind to each other and make good choices and learn new information. Not much else more than that.

If there was anyplace for such transgressions against one's own heart, where better than in a dream? It's a hyper-present tense. The trick is to fool yourself into believing that it is a self-aware dream. But if you can't, you might as well indulge anyway. You may never get another chance.

The ceilings were 80 feet tall, and the walls the same beige in his living room. We would mostly watch TV in there. There were no televisions here. Just sunlight and beige. I imagine Spain is a beige and sunny sort of place.
There was a party, and everyone I haven't spoken to in years was there. I avoided them. Who wants to waste a dream with small talk fictional catch-up? All of the questions I wanted to ask him but didn't resurfaced. In the punch bowl, the screeching birds in the garden, an RSVP.
I didn't really need to know, but I found myself wondering: How much alcohol did you consume when you left me? How many email drafts did you neglect to send? Did you get your books in the mail okay? Did you ever fully realize the absurd things you said to me? Could you ever, in all your years, ever tell me anything that will make me feel okay about speaking to you again? Would you even be clever enough for that?

I didn't ask. I ate the hors d'oeuvres and thanked the host and he sauntered off for the loo or whatever, saying he would be right back. Even in dreams I didn't respect him enough to bother. Besides, he'd probably just tell me things my subconscious would want to tell me.

What a fantastic feeling, to wait in a dream. For nothing and anything. To not be able to anticipate your own expectations. While they gnashed at me in waking life, those sleeping dogs lied here.

He returned, transformed. Some other replacement specter I know in the now. When he told me he had to leave, I was thrust into full but sleepy consciousness by the ding-ding of my phone alerting me to a new text message. I picked it up in the same trajectory of that conversation.
It was a premonition. I did not even have to read it to know.

I don't think I've ever had a dream transition so acutely into reality. Something transcended but I was left behind. The rest of the day I dared my subconscious the takeover it was threatening, provoked it even. How much crazed and erratic behavior would inspire another deja vu?
How long will I have to wait to surprise myself?

Steps

2011-10-30T03:36:00.001-04:00

You can hear a Year of the Tiger song in this dubious commercial about I don't know what.
Surfing? Sunglasses? Extreme Sportz? Perhaps some amalgamation of all of those things I just said. Yes.

bike lanes

2011-10-27T02:18:00.000-04:00

On a rooftop, there really isn't a whole lot of room for reticence. There are no four walls, just the one important plane. The one gravity holds you to. And good thing too, otherwise who knows where you'll end up.

F skateboarded around the concrete surface, leaning in low around turns and kicking around. We were supposed to be at a party. I was getting claustrophobic. Some parties are like that. Those parties, they impose their presence upon you the way a camera does. You're never quite yourself when you're in front of the lens.

The night before, we sat in his bed taking turns reading James Salter passages to one another. I had never done this with another person before, read to each other. He hummed at lines I read that he appreciated, the satisfied hum you hear digging into a Thanksgiving feast.

"Is that not the most gorgeous thing you've read?" he asked, possessed. I wasn't about to burst that bubble by saying, actually not really but it's up there. Then again, I find beauty in context. Call it a contextual blindness perhaps.

I found beauty in the ride home, paralleling one another, me on my bike and he on his longboard. We took all of Manhattan ave and down Driggs. Swooshed past the smokers of Saturday night, standing like pillars outside of bars. Past the dogs on midnight walks, and the park, dark and silent. At the point of diversion, near the subway, a man pleaded into a pay phone, weeping vehemently. An angry lover, I presumed. Although something told me it was leading up to this anyway. "Please don't do this! Don't say that!" He spewed. "Why are you doing this!"

F and I looked at each other and paused to witness. If you have to ask...

When his pleas switched to angry insults, we parted ways. "You sinister bitch!" the man shouted into the phone, "You're ruining my life!" People making their way home stopped to stare. The indignity of having your heart ripped out for 25 cents a minute.

chacun ses goûts

2011-10-24T01:27:00.000-04:00

When I had reached the other side I discovered that there is such a thing as grace and pardon. It was under a white fluorescent sky and crisp sharp air. It was in dark store windows and drawn curtains under ivy-covered trusses. I could see my breath in front of me if I walked briskly enough. I could hear every wet echo of my boot heels on cobbled streets.
It is Sunday. And if you find yourself in Paris on a Sunday, rolled off a plane and electric with jet lag, you will discover how little Paris has to say to you. The day of rest. Even their version of Macy's Herald square respects the Lord's day. Even the hunt for a baguette is an ordeal. It's as equally peaceful as it is eerie.

We don't have that here. I had to ride their trains and eat their food and butcher their language for seven whole days to appreciate everything I hate about this city I live in. But still, their backwards beauty wasn't lost on me, if nothing else for the parlay of lifestyles. Different lovers, different losses. I loved no one in either place and no amount of time zones would cease to remind me. The city of romance has no vacancy.

I returned and it was as if the city moved on without me. It usually does, whether I'm in it or not. Time passes. Time passed and then some more time passed and I felt better and worse and better and worse. But I didn't feel differently, I was just more okay about not feeling better. I said to myself, I don't need to feel better-- I have TIME! Look at all this time I have to not feel better! The concept of abundance is so appealing that I forget it depreciates in and of itself.

When I didn't hear from you, I waited a week before I checked the obituaries. It was less depressing than checking a Facebook profile. I knew I'd find you there, on the internet. I wanted you to surprise me. If your name was there next to one date spanning to 2011, a small part of me would have been relieved. But you weren't there either and I didn't bother to wonder why you felt the need to disappear.
There is little point in chasing vapor.

But let's be honest about you. You were never very good at explaining yourself, either because you lack the practice, or else doing so would reveal the lack therein. It's not a secret, but it is impolite conversation. You cannot call your own ghosts. They don't hark your beckon, as elusive to you as you are to the idea of them. You don't have to see them to know that they are there, just the same as you don't have to speak it to know that it is vulgar.

Everyone always comes back until everyone gets what they want. It's a Groundhogs Day scenario checking into the Hotel California.
If caught between the two, it's generally always better to trust the things that you have rather than the things you want. I have time. I trust that. I trust that with time, I won't even want to know what did or did not happen while I was gone. Or even more so, while I was around.

Everybody always thinks they are right

2011-10-14T18:41:00.003-04:00

I checked out the Stefan Sagmeister exhibit at Les Arts Decoratifs gallery, and it was pretty cool. I like that coffee table with compasses under glass, and custom espresso cups with magnets on the bottom so the needles all point to the cups. It's called Be Here Now, I'm supposing in reference to how when you're lounging around having a coffee with a pal in your living room, you should do so without distraction.

The monkey hanging out of the building overlooking the Louvre Palace gardens is my favorite I think.

If you aren't familiar with him, you should look up Stefan Sagmeister. He's one of the most original graphic designers out there and his work is a favorite of mine. He even carved a poster into his body. Well, rather had an intern do it. It took something like 8 hours and hurt a lot. Talk about bleeding for your art-- dude is hardcore.

monmartre

2011-10-13T20:08:00.000-04:00

Still in France, guys!

a petit peu

2011-10-10T19:38:00.002-04:00

So I went to Paris.

The living valley

2011-09-20T02:32:00.000-04:00

I watched a dog chew at cigarette butts on the sidewalk, eagerly gnawing concrete for a taste of ash and rust. I wondered how hungry you have to be to find that an appetizing flavor. The leash attached to the dog's neck tugged taut and it was dragged away, relinquishing the morsel of rubbish with a look of such untainted sorrow I did not know capable in terriers.
I wonder if it tastes the way someone's mouth tastes after they had been smoking. I wonder if that's the sort of thing that's any indication of the kind of night I'm having.

I'm surprised at the ease with which I'm able to accept the kind of affection that boasts no virtue or promise. I take back everything I've ever said about true love. I take back all the awful slander I've hissed beneath my breath about it. It's all just a bunch of sorry self-pitying rubbish, still embarrassed at having been caught by it with my pants around my ankles, so to speak. Sometimes I can fake it, but most the time I'd rather just make it.

Do all men in their early thirties in Brooklyn seem to have the same modular sofa? The back cushions are tossed aside to make room for bodies, lain straight and tangled. The lights are off except for the dingy sepia streetlamp filtering through the horizontal blinds. It's enough to mute the color but not shapes and forms. It's enough to make someone uncomfortable. That someone isn't me.

"You're right-- you do have a staring problem," he remarked, half smirking. I hadn't realized I'd been staring. I don't even know what I was looking for. I don't even know if I'd recognize it if I did.
"Yes, sorry," I apologized. "Does it make you uncomfortable?"
"No..."
"Are you lying?"

I shut my eyes and stared at that instead, relishing the dumb contentment of proper affection. This must be how pets feel. They don't mind who coddles them, they just require a good scratch behind the ear from a well-intentioned hand.
I spent most of those efforts concentrating on relinquishing all my former associations with this sort of rapport. It's difficult. It is difficult to not wish you were someone else, that I was somewhere else-- to exist beneath those layers, like a veil of cinematic retrospect. That smoke stays risen. It can smother you if you let it. I hold my breath, nestled in the valley below.

I have taken to sniffing around the neighborhood, searching out old portals for nuances. There are neither. It's not the same place as a year ago. I am grateful and restless. The moon hangs too low to howl at. It's only a low and insistent hum. A hunger pit.

We found a cat that comes when we call. And it looks at us like it knows us and it sits in front of me expectantly and lets me pet it and pick it up and looks at me with a less than discerning gaze that suggests I could be anyone. A stranger.
It climbs onto my lap, resting its head beneath my hand, this cat that does not belong to us. It stalks away and licks itself, quite pleased. Then, glancing back with a swish of its tail, it's through the gate. A pause and a decision. It heads towards the bushes once more.
I step to the fence, put my hands on it, clicking my tongue. But I don't call it. If I call it now and it doesn't come, it won't ever come back again. It's the only tactical instinct I know of, rain-checking all those exhalations.
I always hold my breath. I always wait too long to call. If I called you, would you come?

Positive Negatives

2011-09-09T20:29:00.001-04:00

I finally completed shooting the roll of film in the camera the Lomography store gave me back when Year of the Tiger played a really awkward in-store performance there last February. There were 75 exposures (several of which were inscrutable) illustrating moments from the last 7 months. I can tell which are more recent from how clear the shot is. Here are a few of my choice selections:

It's odd seeing some scrappy barely comprehensible image of events that happened months ago and to suddenly recall them today, so acutely. I don't remember taking half these shots. Moments were had. At least, like four. Four moments.

When all is said and done, countless blurry/cropped prints will attest to the fact I am clearly a shit photographer who can't load film or compose a half-frame shot.
I am sticking to square format from now on!

whisker trails

2011-09-07T01:37:00.003-04:00

Our cat's gone missing.

Most likely to succeed

2011-08-31T12:09:00.000-04:00

I'm a little obsessed with fennec foxes at the mo. Bear with me.

as above so below

2011-08-30T02:54:00.000-04:00

I don't hate this post-hurricane color palette at all.

the devil wants to know

2011-08-27T03:44:00.000-04:00

What would an angel say?

This music vid is so sex.

In an alternate universe

2011-08-26T02:15:00.002-04:00

From before until now. The one where the road does not fork, and I didn't say those things, and you didn't say those things, and we never had that conversation, and I didn't walk away, and you didn't let me walk away, and I didn't wait that long to tell you I loved you, and you never tested me, and I never took that pill with you, and I never came around, and I didn't read your emails, and I didn't call you back, and we never met that afternoon because I didn't follow through like I had reconsidered, and I never said yes, and you never found me.

Directionally speaking, it works like a palindrome. All the in-betweens are reserved for various black holes that congregate around the places I thought to dream when instead I chose to sleep. There is when I will feel the same as I do now. In that alternate universe, vacuumed between double walls (were I thermal-protective), I am still bulletproof. Or at the very least, I have still forgotten, and not yet recalled the fact that I am not.

Tease Lightning

2011-08-16T21:34:00.000-04:00

Are you a Travolta?

Or a Bettie?

There are few things as iconic to me as hairstyle. And there are few things as iconic to America as Pompadours and Bettie Page. Get my drift?

Now break out them 3D shades!

dog days/salad nights

2011-08-14T02:29:00.000-04:00

"If you ever had a chance, it was right now, today," I said to my silent phone. I tossed it on the table and wiped paint from the bottom of my feet. Light blue clover-shaped footprints followed me around the kitchen.
"He's totally going to blow it," B remarked, crouching near the shelf. She was taking much more pains in neatening corners than I was.
"He's totally blowing it." I stabbed my paint brush in the creases of the wainscoting. "But that's okay. I don't even... he never had a chance. Even when he had a chance."

"I mean..."B grunted behind the shelf, "It doesn't have to be serious. You can let yourself have fun if you want."
I grunted in return. I actually could not. Even if I wanted to. Even if I knew what I wanted.

You cannot trust the things you want. They fear too much their own mortality to let you believe that you could ever learn to accept the trappings of having. I've never seen a person who wore accommodation well, who wasn't equally an effigy as a model.

I was not even surprised when I heard back hours later. The moment had passed. I was secretly grateful for the delay. Who knows what I would've said when I thought I wanted you. Some dumb lie, I'm sure.
But since I've been practicing this, how to meet you halfway, I'm glad to be kept waiting.

In the meantime, you're smoking a cigarette on my stoop and for the first time this summer, it's a perfectly pleasant night. I don't even mind that I'm downwind. I hardly mind when you're flirting with me, and you don't seem bothered by my deflection. I'm trying to explain it to you without saying the words, but my intimacy is a bit rusty. You might already be dead, and I can't love a dead person. That is just crazy. But I think it's nice that we can not speak and I can feel at ease. It's nice that I can want nothing from you at all.

No one is ever sure if they will want this forever, or even 5 years from now or even 5 miles from now. But you can't evade it and it won't be ignored. It's the never-ending swim of sharks. To stop would be to sink. So you wait for resolutions that may never come, all the while indulging your lovesick longing that someday something will be so sure and doubtless about you.

Footholds and leverage are found in the wing-flap moments of what feels right, the wisps of good fortune that have hailed you from static. They guide you but they don't keep you.
If you collected them up, it is almost as if you can backtrack to the precise moment where things went wrong.

summer nights (and summer days)

2011-08-11T12:52:00.000-04:00

<p>&amp;amp;amp;lt;p&amp;amp;amp;gt;&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;lt;a href="http://chalkandnumbers.bandcamp.com/track/summer-nights"&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;gt;Summer Nights by Chalk And Numbers&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;lt;/a&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;gt;&amp;amp;amp;lt;/p&amp;amp;amp;gt;</p>

Chalk and Numbers just dropped a hot new summa jam. You can listen to it and think about how maybe you did none of the things in this song. Or maybe you did all of the things in this song?

How are your summer romances going? Flingy or clingy? Whatever it is, I hope y'all have AC. Lemme tell you, summer lovin in NYC is brutal. BRUTAL. I may just need to defer to autumn for all ensuing romance/human contact.

kitchcity

2011-08-11T12:39:00.000-04:00

B and I redecorated and painted our kitchen (really, just the wainscoting). Now it is how the hip kids refer to as "stupid cute".

I would puke from quaintness if I wasn't so enamored.

that's not our deal

2011-08-11T02:51:00.003-04:00

If this is a campaign for lady pompadours, count me in.

your famous nightmare

2011-08-08T02:50:00.004-04:00

"Oh my GOD," B shrieked, stumbling over the threshold of her room. "WHAT is that?"

"What." I didn't look up from my computer.

"It's like a bee? No. A big.... it's the biggest... I've ever seen, and it's on my wall!" She scrambled for a weapon, or defense, while keeping an eye on the thing.

"A bee?" Still not looking up.

"Please look at this," she begged. "You have to tell me what that is."

I got up, prying my body from the ground between the coffee table and sofa, making no less than a totally strenuous effort. Because I am a good friend. But I am cranky. She thrusts a rolled up L Magazine into my hands, eyes like saucers. I look at it, look back at her.

"Pleaaaaassseeeeee!" She pleads in the whinny normally reserved for bossing around her boyfriends.

I take the magazine silently and peer around her doorframe at the wall in question. She stands behind me, hands to the teeth, as if I'm investigating a strange noise in a slasher flick.

"Kill it, kill it!" She is goading me on. "WHAT IS IT TELL ME!"

I climb on her bed, to get a better look at the nickel-sized creature clinging to the crease between the ceiling and wall.

"If you kill it, I will buy you all the dessert you want!" She bargains.

I would've done it anyway, if nothing else to spare her the grief of a 6-legged bedmate, but I'm not opposed to accepting a reward. I roll the magazine tighter to stiffen it.

"Wait, I don't want you to kill it," she reneges. "But what IS that?"

I didn't really want to. Kill it, I mean. If only because squishing bugs that are bigger than ants or mosquitos yield more guts to clean up, and doing so often produces sound effects that are gross and make me uncomfortable.

"Give me a cup," I tell her, not taking my eyes off the thing. It has a light brown shield-shaped shell, six small legs, and tiny antennae bobbing around to vibrations I don't hear. I rip the cover off the magazine.

She scampers off, exclaiming, "A cup, yes!" She returns, brandishing the 12oz measuring cup from the kitchen.

"I know what you are," I whisper, cupping the creature and slipping the paper underneath the cup to trap it inside. It takes to it, puzzled, crawling all over the place. It has a pink belly. I hop down from the bed, triumphant.

"That's it, I'm buying you dinner tomorrow," B exhales, relieved. We both peer into the cup, examining. "Oh my god, it's so scary, like queen of the bed bugs."

"No. They're harmless," I say. "Just visiting for the season. It's a kind of beetle. But they don't bite or anything."

I eyed it suspiciously before opening the window and chucking it along with the leaflet out, fluttering to the ground. The stupid thing didn't even bother to fly, it just plummeted onto the street below.

Shutting the window, B turned an investigative tone once more. "But how do you know it's harmless?"

"Remember that time I went to that house in Jersey for that wedding party thing in March? It was near a body of water, kind of, and these things were everywhere come nighttime."

Her eyes grew wide once more.

"I mean, not everywhere, but... every time I'd see one and kill it, I'd turn around and another one was there. The people renting out the house left a note mentioning that they were just these beetles that seek warmer temps, usually in people's homes. They live near water."

The answer seemed to satisfy her and she went about her business. As soon as I saw it, it was a reminder. A foretelling plague of one. I didn't know what they were called and I wasn't even sure if they actually were harmless. All I knew was that they didn't put up much of a fight and they seemed to be quite dull as well.

I remember in March, brushing my teeth in the master bathroom of that house in Jersey, the one with the claw-footed tub in the center of the room. I freaked out when I saw them too for the first time, mouth seething full of Colgate Plus Whitening, gesticulating wildly in their direction while he regarded them with the same nonplussed reaction as I did now. "KILL IT!" I believe I implored, beckoned through foamy chompers.

He swatted one on the wall, only to find a second walking along the sink. Swatted that one too, and another fluttered from the lighting sconce. They made a pretty weak swarm and didn't seem opposed to brute force. We flushed their bodies down the toilet.

After rifling through his toiletry bag, it was apparent he had forgotten his toothbrush.

"Guess I'm borrowing yours," he said, like it was less gross to use another person's mouth-cleaning utensil, than it was to go to bed without brushing. I let him. And I never let anyone use my toothbrush. For good reason, it's gross.

Though I guess if you're frenching someone, they could probably use your toothbrush in an emergency or something and it wouldn't be too far off. And I guess when you think you are on the verge of telling a person that you are in love with them, letting them borrow your toothbrush is the kind of implicit gesture that says something to that effect.

The toothbrush was the ergonomic kind, with the head at a slightly bent upwards angle for easier reaching. Soft bristles. I can only find them at Trader Joes or some other froufy health mart that would carry something like toothbrushes made from recycled bottle caps.

"Oh man, this is great," he remarked through white foam, rubbing it in. I bought him the same kind the next time I found myself at Trader Joes. I doubt he still uses them. I found a beetle nestled on the handle of my toothbrush the morning after that night, left lying next to the sink. I'll bet it walked all over the head of it. Bastard.

Seeing them again brought back to me the smell of that house, a strange synesthesia. Cedar and fresh paint. The office room with the pull-out sofa bed and polyester quilt with the JETS logo emblazoned everywhere. It wasn't really, but he called it our first sort of vacation. The happy occasion of celebrating his friends' nuptials on a weekend getaway with 40 or so people I didn't know. We stuck with each other, just hoping to make it though the night. I think we had fun.

Beetles may not be a harbinger anymore, albeit very creepy in large numbers. Science can explain most of their inclinations. But just in case it was an omen tonight, I wasn't about to kill the messenger.

Bedroom eyes

2011-08-06T15:32:00.001-04:00

Click to download

Kind of dreamy, a little electro, a bit of doo-wop. Undercurrent with current undertones. And jellyfish.

1. Cat's Eyes... Cat's Eyes
2. Lykke Li... Sadness is a blessing
3. Flight Facilities... Crave you
4. Diamond Rings... Something else
5. Le Tigre... Tell you now
6. Amy Winehouse... Wake up alone
7. Timber Timbre... Lonesome Hunter
8. Dept of Eagles... No one does it like you
9. Wanda Jackson... Funnel of love
10. Twin sister... Meet the Frownies
11. Twin Shadow... Forget
12. Crystal Castles... Tell me what to swallow
13. Nouvelle Vague... The killing moon
14. Twin Sister... Lady Daydream
15. Holly Golightly... There is an end
16. Appaloosa... The day (we fell in love)

soft spot

2011-07-31T02:30:00.002-04:00

"Fondness has become an antiquated sentiment. Nothing is so tender or endearing to anybody anymore. It’s as if we’ve forgotten what lies between ennui and complete obsession."

When you remember your soft spot, what you left in there, bring it to me. I want living proof that we are not the only things that need protecting.

a la mode

2011-07-29T00:28:00.001-04:00

After amassing quite a collection of wacky vintage clothing from various estate sales/inheritance, my BFF is starting her own web store. Naturally, I was harangued into studio organization/acting as guinea pig for showcasing such gems as this derby frock (my favorite!) and that adult-sized onesie.

Also, those Charles Jourdan pumps are perfection.

Here's a preview of the stylings of Flying Squirrel Vintage for Chalk and Numbers' latest photo shoot.

Cat's Eyes

2011-07-26T01:42:00.000-04:00

Canadian opera singer + Frontman of hip Brit rock band = Cat's Eyes.

It seems like a lot of unexpected duos are making 60's-inspired pop or vaguely pop-like music these days. Or maybe I'm just hyper-aware of it because I am in a band with one other male person that does that as well.
I like the name, Cat's Eyes. It's perfect for their darker gloomier version of twisted 60's rock and/or pop.

how to beat the summer heat

2011-07-23T13:38:00.000-04:00

ACCEPT IT.

But remain well-accessorized. You'll feel better, trust me.*

*You probably won't.

golden-plated cage

2011-07-22T02:21:00.001-04:00

I'd been going blind for three months now. It was completely voluntary. Selective, even. The self-effacing kind, where I didn't care to address anything happening to me. I knew it was going to happen and I thought what more convenient a time than now, summer. Not me, I thought. I don't want to see me at all. Anyone but me.

The days L and I spend together are spent in relative functional silence. It's a beautiful thing. I don't understand more than one thing about her at a time but there is a sadness that reverberates from her that is as compelling as it is unduly timorous.

I don't know what I did to make her confide in me, but more often than not I find myself nodding raptly and making supportive clucks at the appropriate notions of a woman wronged. Perhaps it's nice just to have another female around. Maybe she sees the same in me that I do her. Maybe we are nothing alike, but in the same terrible boat.

They aren't secrets, but they are not badges either. The charm lies in her ability to boast without bragging. In between casual stories of actress friends (the names of which I've only read in magazines), actress foes, decadent party favors and jet-setting, chain-smoking, up all night, a golden cage's worth of tales-- in between all that, I would inquire, since I am so curious, from absorbing her stories of torrid love affairs with rock stars and lifestyles where money comes as easy as the next cool party you find yourself at, and you're one commercial contract away from boasting a Lana Turner story of discovery, I would ask, What is it like to be young, thin, white and beautiful and not try at all?

But I don't ask. And I don't pretend I don't see it but I don't mention it, out of politeness. You, a broken-hearted shopgirl with no health insurance and no idea what next. You could ask me the same thing, save a few small details.

"Isn't it obvious?" I would say, hoping that to somebody, anybody, that it was.

today i discovered Bjork

2011-07-13T01:35:00.000-04:00

Of course I was always aware of Bjork.
What I mean is that I did my homework this time.

And I'm into it.

pulp/nonfiction

2011-07-12T00:43:00.005-04:00

Instead of "heartbreak," they should refer to it as Heartwreck. Because it's never a clean break. Not even a dirty break. It's just an all-inclusive oblivion. There's no conceptualizing when it's not there, once it is.

The imagery of "break" is far too brittle. It's not an antique vase, tipped to bits off the credenza in the front room. It's not the snap of bamboo. There is a collision, or at least that's more how it feels. It wraps around tree trunks at 90mph. That metal cannot be bent back to its original form, not perfectly. Your mettle remains dented, at least slightly. Or else it's a slow pressure. Like being exposed to outer space, that vacuum wrenching everything inside out.

There is a wreckage, not a breakage. Things must be salvaged from the remains. Remains are involved! Aftermaths! Everything is there but everything is changed. Charred dust, shattered glass, burnt and melted things-- nothing safe to touch ungloved. You will talk about it like a natural disaster, if natural disasters had personalities.

Witnesses will tell you, Well, it could've been worse. It's always, At least you still have your... or A similar thing happened to my friend Steve and you're not nearly as bad as him.

You tell yourself what doesn't kill you makes you stronger, not actually knowing if that even makes sense in a logical or practical manner. You run mad, kicking up dust and fury. You drink the Cool-Aid.

For me, it's the pulp. The gross visceral inside-out of a beating twitching muscle, gurgling its own life force like mouthwash. There's squishy things and slimy and sticky things. I only ever feel it when it wretches in complaint within me.

It doesn't sleep well, twisting in the sheets. Yet it seems to sleep forever. In recovery or in coma, it's at the bottom of the ocean, collecting barnacles.

At least that's how it feels. And I just don't get that kind of perception from heartbreak.

artificial gaze

2011-07-08T00:55:00.000-04:00

On the hottest day of the summer thus far, I rented a bunch of terribly trashy movies to watch in the comfort of my air-conditioned apartment. Having just watched Sucker Punch, which was kind of awful (so naturally I effing LOVED it) with the heroine, aptly named Babydoll in a skimpy Sailor Moon getup and made up to look like a blow-up doll, I could take just one thing from that viewing:

Must Have Lashes!

On an erranding run to Duane Reade in which B and I do girly things like smell hair products and purchase unnecessary cosmetics, I snagged a pair of falsies and after approximately 30 minutes of intense struggling... CHECK OUT THIS FUCKING DRAMA:

Less pornstar, more Bambi. My eyelids feel at least a pound heavier and I think these babies are actually supporting my overgrown bangs from poking me in the eye, like some sort of hair-scaffolding.

How do I make this happen everyday without spending disgustingly gratuitous amounts of time gluing them to my eyelids? Extensions?! I might have to. I just might.

too old to die young

2011-07-07T02:28:00.002-04:00

A new coworker recently introduced me to the concept of a Saturn Return. He was on the phone with a friend going through a particularly shitty ordeal (bedbugs, heartbreak, injuries without health insurance!) and remarked, "Oh she's just going through her Saturn Return, but she'll get through it."

Now since this is a semi-professional environment, I felt compelled to inquire what this planetary movement was all about, since this is the person who is telling me what to do and stuff and I'd prefer it if he was as mentally accessible as a person who signs off on my paychecks and essentially ensures that I'm not homeless and totally broke.

"It's like when you're turning 30," he explains, whispering the number thirty the way some people talk about cancer. "Saturn takes about 30 years to revolve around the sun and when it comes back to the position of your birth your life gets all chaotic and stuff-- but don't worry, everyone gets through it."

I presume he means everyone aged over thirty years. Kurt Cobain, not so much.

Wikipedia says this:

The first Saturn return is most significant because it represents the first test of character and the structures a person has built his/her life upon. According to traditions, should these structures be unsound, or if a person is living out of touch with her/his true values, the Saturn return will be a time of upheaval and limitations as Saturn forces him/her to jettison old concepts and worn out patterns of living. It is not uncommon for relationships and jobs to end during this time of life restructuring and revaluation.

But the Saturn return is not all about painful endings. During this time, astrologers note that goals are consolidated and people tend to gain a better vision of where they are going in life. There are added responsibilities and a person may reap the rewards from her/his hard work. Many major life milestones seem to happen around the ages of 29 and 30. This is why astrologers believe that the 30th birthday is such a major rite of passage — because it marks the true beginning of adulthood, self-evaluation, independence, ambition and self-actualization.
The planet Saturn represents many archetypes, such as Father Time, the Grim Reaper and its scythe, Chronos, and the Lord of Karmaand teacher. It is the ruler of limitations, fears, seriousness, responsibilities, burdens and lessons. While those concepts may come across as negative, Saturn also astrologically rules over civilization, government, structures, harvests, prestige, maturity, discipline and order.

I mean, this sounds totally like something out of the Deathly Hallows or something, right guys? It's gonna be huge and super serious. It's gonna mean Business. All of the Business!
Having recently come into acquaintance with a handful of 29/30 year old people this year, I can attest that it really seems like they are having kind of a shitty time. Maybe even to a point of taking it out on other folks. Maybe sometimes I'm those folks.
I'm not a terribly hokey, spiritual person, but I don't think you can believe in science and not put a little bit of stock in astrology. Becoming a casualty of this fat planet's rotation, as unfair as it is, at least somehow justifies the undo upheaval. It's like your life is on its period. Gross.

And having just turned 25, I have this to look forward to. Even though it feels like maybe I'm one of those early bloomers in this case. Or my parents lied and I'm totally 30 now and I'd never really be able to tell because Asian people age really well so they generally look younger than they are. Or maybe Saturn's training for a marathon or came back from vacation early or something.

Julie Klausner says that your twenties are the worst part of your life that you can't and don't realize it is until you're in your thirties. I'm sure her Saturn Return was very helpful in providing material to be spun into hilarious memoirs.

I have to turn my head until my darkness goes

2011-07-01T02:26:00.001-04:00

It's a hazy collection of days that disperse into humid nights. This season, arguably the most imposing, doesn't have to do much to charm the clothes off this city. Nobody is decent after 80 degrees. The bleached-out atmosphere has my eyes to the ground and the blush in my cheeks.

I find myself trading grimaces with the video store clerks a few times a week. They indulge my truly atrocious tastes in the entertainment I choose to distract myself with. Lately, it's been a teen rom-com fest from at least 10 years ago. Latest hits include Buffy the Vampire Slayer, She's All That, Party Girl, and then I cheated the decade rule and rented Easy A (which was actually GOOD). But you get what I mean. Really dumb stuff.

Tonight is Josh's shift. Instead of a uniform, and because it's a small neighborhood business (and a dying one at that), the employees at what I have affectionally dubbed Videoloco are issued generously-sized white coffee mugs with the store logo and their names printed on them. Josh's is usually always filled with probably Asahi or maybe some IPA. I can't really tell, just that it smells like beer, but not the cheap stuff necessarily. He's about to put John Carpenter's They Live on the store monitor but I snatch it away instead to rent. Because of this, he denies my alter choice of Beastly. "On principle," he says with a half-hearted sneer.

Agness Deyn pops in to toss a DVD into the return slot. I notice her blond pixie crop preceding her tall lanky frame.
"Did you just check out that lady?" Josh raises his eyebrow.
"That's Agness Deyn. She's a supermodel," I say, matter-of-factly.
"Is that so?"
"So they say."
Josh shrugs. "I thought she could've been some sorta pretty dude for a second there." He lifts his mug to his face.

We share a cigarette outside, except I don't smoke. He's telling me about a girl he's met.
"See, she started out really interesting and clever and outspoken. And I'm into that. Now I don't know," he explains.
"What's her deal? Crazy? Too intense?" I siphon off of the major girl stereotypes of why things don't work out from the get-go.

"Nah, she's cool. She just likes me a lot and now she doesn't talk about interesting and weird stuff anymore. It's just about... her liking me," he said, unsure. "I mean, don't get me wrong. That's a good thing, that she likes me."
"Didn't you like her at first?"
"Well yeah. We totally had that quick banter thing going on right off the bat."

"Mhmm," I think aloud. "It's surprising how much more attractive someone is to you when you know that they're into you."
"Right?? Makes my life a lot easier," he says, exhaling smoke downwind.
I nodded, glancing streetward.

People liking me has generally had the opposite effect on my life, but I didn't need to confuse him any further by explaining that. There hasn't been one instance of infatuation where being on the receiving end amounted to much more than blind flattery backed by muddled devotion, followed by a sharp and unforgiving tug on the rug beneath me.
Sometimes for a month, sometimes a season. I've learned to stop indulging it. That's the nature of infatuation though, isn't it? It's an unchecked indulgence in admiration. Projecting one's own ideals onto a living person.
Infatuation never seems to be about the person you're admiring, it's generally always about the kind of ideal embodiment of all things you want in a person. Realizing this has rendered me near incapable of being infatuated with anybody. Not in a romantic sense anyway.

But I would never admit this to a probably drunk videostore clerk. Even one who is my friend. And not most anyone else for that matter. I may be young enough to still even be remotely desirable to probably the widest spectrum of age and demographic that I'll ever be--The things you take for granted in your twenties. I may be young enough to be wrong and not completely hopeless for being wrong.
And I may be kidding myself. But if there's anything I should learn from everything it's that if there's a spark, there's a very oft chance it may burn your life down. At least for a little while.

holyshitsummer

2011-06-29T22:05:00.000-04:00

Printed these today.

Now you can let everyone know what's up AND carry your stuff in it.

In the shop, for the toting!

in case you haven't noticed

2011-06-28T17:34:00.001-04:00

Just running off a common theme here. Expletives followed by stating the obv.

the new classics

2011-06-27T22:01:00.001-04:00

A couple new Moleskines in the shop!

Freshly printed, always irreverent, classed the F up.

long walks on the bitch

2011-06-25T02:13:00.003-04:00

Ok. Sometimes when you live in NYC instead of going out to public forums to interact with people, you do it on the internet. I've met a lot of genuinely great people this way. And lot of weird whatever people.

Exhibit A: 29/M/NYC with a tagline of "I'm married to medicine but she lets me see other people." He explains that he is looking for an "extraordinary" woman with which to have chemistry and enjoy each other's company and fast-paced active lifestyle(s).
Not an unattractive dude but I can tell he wears his clothes at least a size too big and sports a shaved head because he's probably prematurely balding. I would want to She's All That him, I think.

So he's a young doctor, or some practitioner of medicine.
There are photos of him teaching children in a classroom. The children are some sort of homogenous ethnicity, I wanna say Indian. Oh look, so you're an educator and philanthropist, is what this photo says to me.
There's another photo of him scaling some rock face, all rigged up to bungee no-fallsies ropes or something. Carabiners and shit. Okay, so you're "outdoorsy" and keep "active" or whatever.

(I should note that any self-aggrandizing photos of dudes being overtly athletic or white dudes wearing traveling attire against some exotic backdrop, not only bores me but immediately turns me off. I might as well be browsing a library of pollen allergy statistics or something equally whatever)

The rest of the photos were boring, "This is what I look like on the regs" photos. And of course, since this is the internet and the internet is inherently tacky, one gratuitous shirtless photo but he's lying prostrate on a bedroom floor reading a book. I get it. You wanna show off your abs but also your brainz. Cheers. Also, the bed size is twin and the sheets are lime green.

His initial communique was inoffensive and even a bit jaunty, which is always well-appreciated. But the point where instead of just ignoring him, I feel compelled to remove him from the internet comes after reading one segment, wherein I shall clip for you the main selling points, as it were:

"i admit it's probably not going to work if you need to be taken to restaurants, if you don't love sex, if you're not thin, and probably some other horrible-sounding stuff that i woudln't tattoo on my chest. i wear tshirts and hoodies on dates. i'm probably going to be bald by the time im 45. i'm actually 5' 9" and a half. i dont drink and i'm vegetarian, but i'm not looking for crunchy ascetics. "

Despite all the typographical errors that have me cringing already, this passage can sum of what the rest of a rather verbose self-representation of a tactless narcissist kind of just buffered with a cloud of blahblahblah.
What I don't understand is why people like that struggle with searching out the perfect lover (which, lets not kid ourselves, will just not endure for their fickle standards) when they could very well just pay for one. I don't mean prostitutes, per se. But I did read a very enlightening feature in a Marie Claire a few years ago on a high profile courtesan. Plus, the dude's a doctor-- he can totally afford this. How could he not have thought of this option?

Here's where I offered a helpful suggestion:

You know, and I would only suggest this for you since working in medicine and all one can presume you're awarded a fat paycheck on the regular, there are women out there who are intelligent, clever and conventionally beautiful in a professional sense. They're so talented in this craft that they are well capable of creating a veil of chemistry unfounded by probably all of the other women you don't take to restaurants while you wear hoodies and t-shirts to... not a restaurant. But that's the point, isn't it? Keeps 'em thin. Clever you.
Since you'll be rather busy climbing all of the rocks and studying all of the medicines as it seems, I think this would be a much more effective attempt at romantic engagement. She might even be better at fixing things than I am. Well, she'll at least be better able to provide a much more absolute demonstration of decorum.
But since I failed out of Finishing School, the only wisdom I can impart is that if you're on a dating website you probably don't want to volunteer to anonymous women on the internet that you're most likely going to be bald within the next 10-15 years. But it's okay, because you're a doctor and that's like the jackpot of man-hunting these days, right? Ladies are totally into that shit. And hey, you can always temper it with a gratuitous topless photo of yourself. Well done.

I'm quitting the internet basically. I've had enough.

ear worm

2011-06-25T00:59:00.001-04:00

Local pal, Bill Pearis, writer for SoundbitesNYC and Brooklyn Vegan (and to me, a personal saint for letting me rent truly the most awful movies) asked me to put some album art together for his Summer Fridays playlist series on his Soundbites blog. So I did. Here it is!

cactus ambiance

2011-06-23T23:46:00.002-04:00

I repurposed this busted Alessi citrus basket into a lamp shade.

It casts pretty cool shadows. The base is from another lamp with a boring fabric shade. I kind of had to ghetto-rig it to the new one but there you have it.

I was looking for one of those half-chromed round lightbulbs but found this cool hexagon-shaped bulb at the hardware store and that was that.

Going to lighting supply stores makes me want to design lighting fixtures. Going to hardware stores in general makes me want to be a maker of things.

please don't feed the tigers

2011-06-21T21:57:00.001-04:00

My pal Graham shot these Year of the Tiger photos... in our "natural habitat."

Just another lazy day as a tiger!

retrospectacle

2011-06-15T00:49:00.001-04:00

Oh remember that thing I was telling you about, before I got all emo and stuff for a while there?

NYC Popfest was a lot of fun and the music was good and I felt good about it and didn't fuck anything up I think, and people actually came (I don't think you realize how difficult it is to get people to actually attend events in this stupid city-- pulling teeth, amongst other body parts) and... yeah.

My friends, Graham and Jakob shot these. They are magicians who make me look way cooler than I am. Thanks dudes!

Photos by Graham Meyer

Photos by Jakob Layman

Chalk and Numbers is still demoing for the summer. Another music video potentially in the works. More spangled dresses, I think are in order...

unless it's beautiful

2011-06-10T00:13:00.002-04:00

Waiting never quite felt like waiting when the waiting was with you.

rabbit radio

2011-06-08T02:15:00.002-04:00

His ear is an extendable antenna and his eyes are “reset” and “scan.” Scanned the airwaves in hopes of picking up some late night emergency broadcast. No such luck. Found a good blues-country station as well as Hot Summa Jams ‘11, though.

Yey, presents!

sadness is my boyfriend

2011-06-05T02:14:00.000-04:00

I like to imagine her dancing to Hall & Oates or something while they were shooting.

daddy issues

2011-06-02T12:19:00.001-04:00

All I said, was "Sorry... Oh, nice shoes."

They were dad shoes. But hot dad shoes. They were light brown sueded brogues.
I like dudes who dress like hot dads. I hate to make references to The Notebook, but yeah. It's the only movie where I legit thought Ryan Gosling had it going ON.

This does not mean I have daddy issues. But yeah, I second-thought that too for a moment.

afraid of what we're made of

2011-05-31T02:30:00.001-04:00

I saw the peek of lime green in the mirror before I turned around to take a better look. Arched over a generously bent spine, the polyester lime green blazer against stark white modern architecture grabbed my eye.

"Shit. Ruth alert," I muttered to my co-worker.
"No," she looked at me, no smiles. "Not today. Not fucking today. I can't..."
I shrugged. I leaned over to catch the reflection. Still the crescent of a hump, hinting at her impending arrival.

Ruth is probably the oldest upright person alive that I've come in contact with, personally. That she is still respirating and forms coherent sentences and shuffles herself around Soho (for all intents and purposes, just to keep up said activities in themselves), is a wonder to me not unlike patterns of bee mating or wooden roller coasters. Barely four and a half feet tall, she is the image of the Fear of Death. Decrepit dressed up in a century's worth of industrial-strength mortality. I think I can see the cells breaking down in her face when she talks, spittle trailing with ever more emphasis when you really get her going. Her teeth with ample saliva bubbling between them, the crooked tombstones lining her gums. There's a perpetually open wound, like some sort of scab that's given up healing itself, on her left cheek. Perhaps she keeps scratching at it. At this point it's become a crater about the size of a pencil eraser, the color of dull rust. She doesn't bother doing anything with the maybe four dozen strands of wily white hair that still cling to her skull, hanging limply past her ears.
It hurts to look at her, is what I mean. I'm frightened. Death in a lime green polyester blazer.

But she is sweet, Ruth. Nothing but kind words and flattery for us. She totters over, beckoning the barista to hold her hand as she approaches. I give my coworker apologetic eyebrows because there is nothing we can do. She will arrive and she will fuss over us and get in our faces and not take no, and there's nothing much we can do about it other than kill her probably.

"Oh, it's you!" Ruth exclaims to my coworker. I'm relatively new in the saga of her visits, so I'm often overlooked. "I'm not well! I've been very ill!" She sighs. "But you look so lovely, the both of you!"
I pull my lips thin and smile, looking into her hazel eyes, still watery and curious.

"I know, you haven't been well," my coworker coos. "It's so hot out, you should be at home resting."
"Oh no no no," Ruth waves the words like smoke from her face. "I simply can't stay inside! And I haven't visited with you in so long, I miss you!"

"We miss you too, Ruth," she says.
"And my husband just passed away!" Ruth includes. "He was such a good man. I'm all alone now."
"Yes, we remember. We're very sad for your loss."

Ruth searches the counter in front of her, putting her hands palm down to gain her bearings. She looks at me, noticing that I've been standing there for the first time.
"And who is this? You're a new one!" She smiles. "And very pretty indeed!"

"Aw thanks, Ruth. We've met before though. A while ago," I tell her.
"Yes, she's been here for almost a year," my coworker chimes in.
"My dear, has it been that long?"
"Uh... yup," I say. "That's okay, I'm not around so often as these guys."
"Well you're lovely and I can tell you're very good friends," Ruth says to me, gesturing to the both of us. I smile and nod.

She asks for a bag to hold her newspaper and complains that the handles are cutting into her skin. She asks my coworker to hold her hands as she speaks with her, leaning in conspiratorially for what a 100 year old woman would consider "girl talk."

Ruth can be trusted to do a handful of things on her visits. One is to ask for a bag to hold whatever it is she's carrying. Another, is to talk about her dead husband. And the other thing is to touch some part of your body when she's talking to you. Your hands if you're lucky, but a cheek caress or combing her fingers through your hair is not an uncommon gesture of hers. The idea gives all of us chills. I had my hair up that day.

I started to tune out, after she grabbed my coworker's hands across the table in between them. I was off the hook.

"... If I didn't have you guys I would just sit at home sad all day. Since my husband passed away, all I have are my friends," Ruth continued.

The idea that a couple of disgruntled store employees are what she calls friends, compels me to near suicidal sentiments. How does a person find a purpose for going on when their only daily respite is a conversation shared with someone who considers it some sort of spooky burden? I would pity her if it wasn't for the next thing she said that explained everything.

"... Sometimes I visit him in my dreams, or he in mine. Each other's dreams! I love that man and he loves me and that's all there is to it. I will always love him and he will always love me."

If there's one thing you can attest about a dead man who died before he stopped loving someone, you can pretty much confidently argue that he will always love that person. Like, forever I mean.

Staring at this ancient and possibly senile woman who has lived so long that she's starting to take on the shape and texture of tree bark in preparation for returning to the earth from whence she came, I can't fault her for at least living a romantically fulfilled life.

In her day, with a wardrobe filled with all the tropical-colored blazers Bloomingdales had to offer, and some brightly collegiate approach to posh metropolitan living (at some point it came out that she published several books, on what I don't know) and her husband for better or worse, Ruth had achieved the best possible scenario that most of the disenchanted shop girls can hope for in this life we choose to cultivate in a pathologically lonely city teeming with all kinds of antagonistic pressures upon some skewed American dream that keeps us in this station.

She has the kind of love that she believes transcends death. The myth and the marrow. How could you be afraid of anything ever again, with that in your pocket?

he knew

2011-05-25T01:50:00.002-04:00

Aside from a severe audio lag, this is probably the most adequate video footage on the internet so far of Chalk and Numbers' first gig ever during NYC Popfest.

And there you have it. I am probably (re: definitely) more uncomfortable than I look.

bad rituals

2011-05-24T02:41:00.000-04:00

The horizontal strip of exposed window above my curtains does not allow me to sleep past 8 am. Though the black curtains hush the morning light from anything more than a faint hum, still that damn slat of light insists itself upon my consciousness. I should do something about it but I don't. Black curtains are drastic enough. The idea of blocking out all the light somehow feels more depressing than the insomnia it inflicts. If I can go back to sleep, and wake up feeling anything at all, I think it will be an alright day. That repentant drift back into futile sleep for an hour or two. My silver screening. It only works if I want it to.

I don't remember the dreams I have, but I wake up with scratches on my arms and chest. Small insistent lines already scabbed, scrawling no messages, just a vague evidence. That at one point I was dreaming maybe, that at one point there was injury with no insult. They won't leave a scar. None of this will.

I tag along with the idea of waking up, until I'm awake and waiting. Until I'm hiding and seeking. Until my heart beats and bellows. The most difficult part of this is that all I want to do is get on with the day, and all it wants to do is search itself out. It's looking for the bit it's left behind or can't remember. Like misplaced glasses that are already perched on top of your head. Like mismatched socks. A crooked bobby pin. There's bags of sand in its place, holding down the fort.
I just don't have it in me to tell it where that is. I don't have it in me to take it back. Not by force anyway, and certainly not by folly.

Just wait, I say. Wait and you won't even remember you've forgotten. Because you won't get it back. Leave it where it chose to go. You can watch the horizon every morning, but it's always going to be the same silver screen. Sooner or later, the curtains will be enough. And I'll have slept the whole night through it.

princess problems

2011-05-23T01:13:00.003-04:00

pure at heart

2011-05-19T01:33:00.001-04:00

The director of Chalk and Number's first music video happens to be pals with The Pains of Being Pure at Heart... who were keen enough to tweet about it! Kewl.

Oh yeah, and we have a Twitter now. Follow it if you want to?

sorry bout the bullshit

2011-05-17T00:20:00.002-04:00

Shit happens, but bullshit doesn't mess around either. And neither should you. The expression "shit-eating grin" comes to mind. Or bad lemonade made from powder mix that makes your teeth all gritty-feeling and leaves a bad aftertaste that should never be tasted in a mouth ever.

Or sometimes you just feel shitty and you really don't feel like taking it so you make a mix-tape since you can't really do much else about it.

01 Peter Bjorn and John - Breaker Breaker
02 The Bird & The Bee - I Can't Go for That
03 The Raveonettes - Ignite
04 Class Actress - Careful What You Say
05 Belle & Sebastian - I'm Waking Up to Us
06 Kings of Convenience - Toxic Girl
07 Black Box Recorder - Child Psychology
08 The Wicked Tomorrow - Frenemy
09 The Like - I Can See it in Your Eyes
10 Slow Club - Giving up on Love
11 Tilly and the Wall - Pot Kettle Black
12 Jenny Lewis with the Watson Twins - You Are What You Love
13 The Morning Benders - Lovefool (Cardigans cover)
14 The Byrds - I'll Feel a Whole Lot Better
15 Best Coast - So Gone

Download here.

Let's go away

2011-05-13T23:52:00.002-04:00

So my recording project, Chalk and Numbers, made a music video. After about 3 weekends of shooting around Coney Island, Williamsburg, and a bit of New Jersey, here is the result! I learned how to successfully pee in the woods. And to not look cold on a beach when it's really cold and windy because it's March in New York. Now I am a serious musician just like on the TV.

recant, we can't

2011-05-10T01:30:00.002-04:00

I want to take back the weeks I spent studying you, trying to find ways to fit into you, to see why someone like you would want someone like me. I want to take back all the times I feigned interest because I was never good at it anyway and you could always tell.
I want to take back the times I stormed out of your apartment, but I especially want to take back counting to ten outside your front door, knowing full well you weren't coming to stop me. I was anxious the entire day afterwards. Both times.

I want to take back all the times I was afraid to say your name aloud, so as not to jinx it. I should've jinxed it from the start; maybe I would be less surprised now.
I want to take back calling you neurotic and fidgety because you took it the wrong way. Because you couldn't hear the endearment behind the criticism. Rather, every time I chose to be clever or facetious instead of being sincere.
I want to take back all the half-assed, timid attempts at opening up to you about the things that have hurt me in the past. If I knew you would use it against me, I would've gladly pretended they hadn't happened. I should've owned them with the respect and significance they deserve.
I definitely want to take back the first time I cried in front of you because you yelled at me for taking my bad mood out on you. I should've just told you I was upset at you for not giving a shit. Or not appearing to anyway.

I want to take back the shred of my heart I gave to you. If I didn't feel that you were worthy of the whole thing, why did I bother butchering it up just to sate the relationship? I want to take back every time I told you I loved you towards the end, not because I didn't mean it, but because I mostly needed to hear you say it back. I turned it into a weapon that only hurt myself. Because you never said it in a way that made me feel loved and I just walked away feeling slightly empty and deluded. I want to take back the love I created in spite of you.

And not that it even matters, but I want to take back the time in my bedroom after our first big make-up when I confided in you that I was afraid you weren't going to love me as much as I would love you. I never meant for the foretelling. I never wanted to be right.

looking glass houses

2011-04-27T00:58:00.001-04:00

A mirror seems to tell you the opposite of a truth that isn't a lie. Some things I'll never see exactly right, but thank God it has the mercy to just stop at the surface. If I found myself on the other side, you would meet the me that I know. The one at the seams that keep friends and enemies at arms' length on either side, face to face. Everything is the same, except it happens over and over again-- first one way, and then the opposite, trading places into infinity.

I can look at you from the one side now and it's like I've just met you once more for the first time. I'm polite and too embarrassed to confess the things most dear to me. You never ask anyway, I presume because you don't want to know. We get along much better the less we know. We get along much better in this vaccuum with the imagined reflections of ourselves, the ones who appear to be solitary beings without the burdens of separate lives. I like you much better when your presence is perfectly parallel to mine. We may travel near each other, always at the same distance, and never converge. There's safety and comfort in this science. The science of indifference.

I've forgotten my manners and eat from your fork. I say her name and I say it wrong and you correct me immediately. But it doesn't matter because I've already decided a while ago that I don't give a shit and I let you know in not so many words.

"Well wouldn't you be annoyed if someone kept saying your name wrong?"

"People do say my name wrong. And it's not like you're going to tell on me, are you?"

I ask you how you feel about her marriage. I remember asking you that before a long time ago, I don't know why I asked you it again, if only to hear something more substantial.

"It's weird for me. I mean, breaking up is one thing but after marriage it's like that window is closed forever."

"Theoretically."

"Well... yeah."

"Nobody really til death does they part anymore."
"No, they don't."

"And it's not like you were going to get back together anyway."

But what I meant to say was, it's not like you're ever going to get the chance to make things right again. What I meant to say was, it's not like that window was even open to you anyway. It's not like this is real friendship and it's not like I'd prefer it if it was. I'd prefer to have the ability to rub it in, but I don't have the stomach for it. Not after I've long digested the words I was forced to eat.

I wanted to know if you ever really loved her, but I already guessed the answer. I wanted you to know what you were missing. That it will always hurt and it will always be worth it.
But you can't see behind your own reflection, can you? The opposite of your truth is that you deserve everything you've done for them that makes it worth it to you.

Here is an ambiguously pagan and/or anarchist shoe-gaze dark wave band t-shirt.

2011-04-25T00:46:00.000-04:00

if you walk away I walk away

2011-04-24T01:38:00.000-04:00

Some nights are more alive than others. It's breeds distant hooks and tires thumping in a city that breathes tar and leaves lipstick on your pillowcase. Sometimes you can sing along but most times you just watch and nod. You don't talk back when they say "Hello, hi!" with wide triangle grins. Sometimes the night shows teeth, but most the time it's just a sidelong smirk.

I find myself at some warehouse and there's a party happening in it. I believe it's some sort of art party. You know you're at an art party when they don't call it an art studio or gallery. It's just a "space." I guess a BFA teaches you not to define the real estate you hang your sticks and stones in. Then again, in Brooklyn any space is an art gallery. So it doesn't quite matter then.

Everyone here is at least 30 so I feel the feeble protection of grown-up pretenses. Not that it matters since the folding table of empty bottles of Grey Goose and Jameson have thoroughly reduced whatever this events was supposed to be into some lazy rave, with projected laser-looking screensavers on the walls and ceiling. A skinny boy behind turntables fancies himself a DJ. There's disco thumping out of shitty speakers, there's no toilet paper in the bathroom, and there's little framed squares of brush strokes on white paper widely spaced out on the walls. Everyone looks like everyone and no one at the same time. They all must've called each other while getting ready tonight.

I stood in the center, bending my knees and waving my elbows and said, "Ok so this is Having Fun, right?"
"Pretty much."
"It's Saturday night, isn't it? This is what people do on a Saturday night."
"I guess so."
"I'm having fun then... It's just okay, I guess."

It's the kind of night that appreciates your well-heeled shoes, your unwashed hair. "Light jacket weather" never knows what it wants from you. Don't bother chasing that tease because the more you flirt, the longer and colder the walk home is. It taunts you with your own breath. Some nights are eager to please, but mostly they just want your money.

Some have more to prove than others. But they don't want a thing to do with you. All nights secretly believe they'll live forever, but they still try real hard anyway. They live vicariously through you and everybody else, giving you the wherewithal you couldn't see in the sun. It's the kind of bad influence you could use more of. Just don't watch it changing in the end. It's embarrassing for the both of us.

I walk home in a slow drizzle debating the likeliness that I'll get jumped.

Keep the right one out

2011-04-16T02:18:00.001-04:00

We listen to broadcast war stories, rapt, but we don't hear the same things. There's a massacre masquerading as a revolution several continents away and all I can think about is how awareness does not a concerned citizen make. It's battle talk from box seats, disaster procrastination. Does any of this even effect you? and I'm back at square one.
You asked me that and ever since I said nothing in response, pretending I wasn't listening to you, I can't help but feel some form of crushing embarrassment every time I am compelled to express any kind of genuine emotion, spurned by intellectual guilt. It's a eulogy every time.

Because I've never felt a real love without a tinge of its poison. If I knew how to really care without painstaking obsession, I would. If I could give a damn without letting it possess me, I might try that too. Because the answer is and always has been yes, everything and entirely. I don't know how to tell you about that.
We must be more judicious in the things we let effect us. Otherwise how are we to know what to mean? How can we defend ourselves? Maybe at a certain point that becomes irrelevant, but there's only so much blood in a body.

I don't worry about anticipating an apocalypse-- you can be confident in its impending abilities. You can wait all you want for the world to end but in the meanwhile, you might just catch on to how impatient the world is for you to end already.

uhuh mhmm

2011-04-15T14:31:00.000-04:00

A playlist of 16 songs for what lies between the lines.

work space for space work

2011-04-12T17:03:00.000-04:00

I like it.

live fur

2011-04-07T20:44:00.000-04:00

My roommate's cat hates me.

Air cat-tar solo!

You are a success if you get up in the morning and get to bed at night, and in between do what you want to do

2011-04-06T23:16:00.001-04:00

Ok. I'm getting use to this whole short hair thing.

On another note, here's a tin can cover of a Shirelle's song. I can't tell if I'm getting worse at Garage Band, or Garage Band is just getting hip to the times of shitty lo-fi-sounding tracks. Hm.

What's not to like?

2011-04-06T00:16:00.002-04:00

It's like Twiggy and Zooey, maybe a cleaned-up Amy Winehouse and then another nondescript but probably British blond decided to make really good music.

Comme Ci, Comme Ça

2011-04-02T23:19:00.000-04:00

-DL

this is my t-shirt about space

2011-04-02T01:59:00.001-04:00

I suppose this is also quite inaugural for this neat "space" color theme I got going on. Space is neat, I guess.

layer cake

2011-04-01T11:36:00.000-04:00

Z got a bit razor-happy this time around.

Still getting use to this. But I feel more like myself. And that's a good thing, right?

Why is it 35 degrees today? Fuck.

vocabulary lessons

2011-04-01T02:22:00.000-04:00

-David Levithan

stuff on my head

2011-03-26T19:33:00.000-04:00

A friend of a friend got wind that I'm shooting a music video for Chalk and Numbers and generously offered to lend some of her hats for the shoot. I liked these the best.

Mich makes beautiful and whimsical headgear, and I wish I actually looked good in hats because I'd be all over them. These fulfill both fancies of being part bunny/part elegant lady.

polyester is the color of my true love's hair

2011-03-23T00:28:00.000-04:00

I'm not really a "Look at the new clothes I bought!" kind of blogger, but look at this crazy weather balloon-lookin' 60s swing dress I found at a local thrift shop!

A belt adds extra polish, or let it hang loose for a trip to the buffet.

It pretty much has the versatility of Marge Simpson's green tube dress (do with that analogy as you like).

In case you are overlooking it in these grainy iphotos... it's pretty metallic, yo.

I'll most likely only break it out for the one (and as of yet, only forever) Chalk and Numbers gig we have for NYC Popfest in May. That's, like, appropriately retro... right?

dark darker darkerer

2011-03-17T21:27:00.002-04:00

A creepy playlist for creepy times (or creepin'). I guess I was feeling kind of spooky when I made this.

Click to download.

You can listen to this at night when you've got the house to yourself and you just aren't sure about anything anymore.

Tracklist:

1. Dandy Warhols- I love you

2. The Raveonettes - Lust

3. Dean & Britta - I Found it Not So

4. Timber Timbre - Devil's Dress

5. Blonde Redhead - Oslo

6. Beach House - Auburn and Ivory

7. Beth Gibbons & Rustin' Man - Romance

8. Bettie Serveert - Lover I Don't Have to Love

9. Bright Eyes - Coat Check Dream Song

10. Danger Mouse & Sparklehorse - Everytime I'm With You

11. Black Box Recorder - Kidnapping an Heiress

12. Phantogram - 10,000 Claps

13. Glasser - Apply

14. Malcolm McLaren - About Her

15. Karen O & Squeak E. Clean - Hello Tomorrow

New girl crush

2011-03-16T01:20:00.000-04:00

Her name is Ritzy and she may not be a natural blond but I'm not really into blonds anyway. I am however into girl rockers under the trifecta of blond, bark, and bite. Redhead is also acceptable, but only in the respect that it is intentionally dyed to look cartoonish (falsely realistic redheads: why?).

I imagine she gets a lot of Emily Haines comparisons. I'll be honest, I thought it was Metric when I first heard them. Or some other 90s alt rock band I was too uncool to know in the 90s.

smoke/signals

2011-03-15T02:03:00.002-04:00

How long had it been? I had a habit of appraising the gravity and temperance of everything into its accumulation of presence-- physical and mental. It didn't matter how far we got, or how many meals we shared or how many secrets were divulged, or how many things had been ignored or put off in the process (not that that was ever an issue with me, really). At some point, awhile happened. Had I checked your odometer I'd have found that I've spent roughly 1,630 hours on you, like some manifest sans destiny, just a vaguely nomadic ball of yarn. Maybe a third of the way through you had started drawing maps, consulting compasses, crossing our paths. And still. All I could argue was, "Wait, we've only known each other for about 87 cumulative hours!" Not that any of that mattered, but I found comfort in the numbers. I wasn't sure if they were a warning or a threat.

Sometime around the 37th cumulative hour I promised myself that I would not be the one to go first. Not that I ever keep those kinds of promises. At this point, I believe I make them to be broken because what's more fun than destroying something so self-important and arrogant? (and don't ever promise yourself you aren't going to do something. If you're ever going to do something as futile as a self-promise, promise yourself that you will do it right.)

I'd like to think it was not the circumstance that made me break it. It was the cool bedsheets on my bare legs, the weight of the light bearing from your work lamp, the unfamiliar music. I was here with you in this room and I'm pretty sure I've been in this room before but it was here too inside itself, with us as much as around us. It breathed velvet, dimensions jut into the shadows and enveloped all rules of physics (well, the dumb ones anyway). Every doorway led to here. Gravity lost its instinct and flung our masses to all four corners. So we clung to the center and laid there, I kept you from falling up and you collected every bit of me, equal parts anchor and buoy. Our eyes were saucers.

It was the circumstance that made me say fuck it, but you were the one to claim the words. They belonged to you anyway. I was just holding them for when you needed them. For once I was grateful that you cut me off, snatching the tail end of my prelude and professing my own stupid broken promise. I didn't know what it sounded like, but whatever molten sentiment I had brewing beneath the bunker in my chest solidified at the sound of your voice. I echoed what felt fiercely right and terrible.

"This will sound stupid," I began, appropriately, "but I promised myself a while ago I wouldn't be the first to tell--"

You cut to the chase. It was the phrasing that surprised me most. Falling in love. As if you too were privy to the reckless discard of gravity and bottomless everything everywhere. You made it sound endless. A deliverance and a verdict.
We'd rarely agreed on much until now. I wonder how long and how sure. There was a multitude of clues you would slip, intentionally or not; I couldn't tell if you were testing me. Otherwise, the richer the silences and lulls became. It loomed.

"I've never been wrong with anybody before," you told me after a few beers last weekend, "but I've been wrong with you."
"You mean you've never admitted to being wrong before," I said, but the music was too loud and we were already dancing.

I might have guessed it then. And I might have guessed it every time I asked you with my silence. When I would blame you for the stalemate I imposed upon myself. When I didn't know what to do with myself. It creeped in everywhere I wouldn't initially notice, chewing holes in my socks and slyly setting my watch ahead or behind. I lost track of our hours. It didn't matter anyway. I knew I made that promise just to see it break. To make sure it would happen at all.

I know what I know

2011-03-12T14:13:00.000-05:00

This is probably one of my favorite songs. In general. And I want that gold ballerina dress.

everyone says i love you but

2011-03-09T20:02:00.000-05:00

Taking into consideration all of the conversations I've been party to lately involving folks and their noncommittal emotive house-playing with tentative boyfriend-girlfriend types.... I felt compelled to log all of these lazy lover anecdotes on the internet. It's fun. Like some sort of premeditated Mad-Libs.
Jury's still out whether Twitter actually has a purpose beyond a word vomit receptacle. I will probably get bored with this soon.

when we weren't young

2011-03-05T00:19:00.000-05:00

"Does it hurt?"
I flexed my fingers and propped myself on my elbows. "No. Why would it?"
I turned over onto my stomach. You closed your eyes and dug into your pockets. I knew what you were looking for before you found it. "Do you absolutely need to smoke right now?"

"No, I guess not."
"Then, maybe don't?"
Your hands appeared again, empty, and you placed them behind your head. You didn't say anything, so neither did I. It stayed that way for maybe twenty minutes or fifteen. I wasn't tired.

I listened to your breathing. It sounded like you were pretend-sleeping. I knew better to believe a regular nicotine/caffeine user could drift asleep just by prolonged sedentary silence. The same song repeated, meaning it has been at least the length of one round of whatever this album was. My limbs were tingling asleep.
Eight years ago I wouldn't have minded playing dead with you. I'm getting too old for this. I curled around and sat up. The blood in my head oozed back into upright consciousness. You didn't even budge. I dug through your jacket pocket, slung over a kitchen chair. Your personal effects include a cell phone and a pack of loose tobacco (no lighter or matches, naturally). I took your phone and chucked the tobacco. It's a dirty habit, but I looked through your text messages. Not that there was a point. There's never anything of interest. I don't even recognize any of these names. But I like reading the conversations as if it was my social life involved. My wrist ached and I guess that serves me right.

I tossed your phone on your chest and that seemed to rouse you. "You can't sleep here. And I looked through your phone."
"Oh. Okay. I'm not sleeping. And shame on you."
"You can look at mine if you want."
"No thanks. I don't wanna read all your sexy sexts."
"But they're... so sexty."
"I like when you're grumpy at me."
"Okay, thanks?"
"You're funny."
"Yes..."

You opened one eye and smirked at me. I hate when you're smug.

It's surprisingly exhausting to know you and it hasn't even been for very long, but I think I've had it. You may be the first person who makes me realize how much energy and patience I don't have for other individuals with imposing wit and tenuous emotions. And all you have to do is lay there, consuming the attention of every atom in the room. It's easier to realize this when I admit that I don't actually like you that much. Only sometimes and always for the wrong reasons. I mostly just like that you like me. I like the way you smell-- it's a non-scent. Clean and unoffensive but most definitely male. It's very calming. I like that you know when I'm going to say no but you ask anyway. I like that we don't have to talk and we don't have to touch. It's easy to be around you because it's like being around no one. I don't want anything from you. You have the most inconsequential presence. So why am I so tired?

digital through an analog lens

2011-02-23T22:15:00.001-05:00

This is what our Lomography gig from last week looked like:

You can see the rest here.

luv or milkshakes

2011-02-22T01:19:00.000-05:00

snap

2011-02-17T23:59:00.000-05:00

Played a show at the Lomography store in the city. Got a free camera!

Too bad I shredded the film on the first load. Eff.

in no particular order

2011-02-15T01:52:00.000-05:00

Maybe it was the wolves. They just don't shut up. Not tonight and not all of the last few hundred or so days. I imagine them hoofing it to the peak of clearing just to get the perfect silhouette of moonlight. Wolves don't howl at the moon. That's a great misconception. They just happen to know exactly how to display their good side.
A lone wolf is a common parable, but every time I've seen one, you can be sure enough that another isn't far off. I've never waited around to see it show, but you know. I don't suppose a natural predator would remove its gaze from a potential meal for one moment, unless it was bragging. And to my understanding wolves are proud creatures, aren't they?

Or perhaps it could have been snakes. The only ones worth bothering with are always the ones you really shouldn't. They tend to live up to all that cold blood. They are in no way more afraid of you than you are of them and they certainly have no qualms striking first just to let you know.

No, I haven't seen either in over a year probably. Only sometimes in a foggy mirror, on a bad day with good lighting. The tricky kind. A winter this cold is bound to have an unfavorable reaction with the hot-blooded. It doesn't take a lot. Like a virus, it barely needs a thing. And here they are. Warm particles will always travel to something cold, it just can't help itself. And sometimes I can't either.

I didn't use to be like this.
This, amongst other inparticulars I've been told, is a lie that doesn't know itself. It's a collateral statement that has never ever in its existence having been uttered mattered. It is neither qualitative nor quantitative. If you don't watch your mouth, you might lead anyone to believe it. Luckily, I don't.

I have always been like this. Hot-blooded, teeth bared at anything as presumptuous as false intimacy or even something as innocent as true affection. That rabbit heart kind that spooks easily and is loyal only to its next impulse. If you listen to that heart, you'll always jump in blind, but if you listen to wolves you'll always be running. And since I am the way that I am, with just the most hypocritical democracy of head and heart, I have the distinct grief of indulging both at once.

It's only blood, I keep telling myself. Some days when I'm just about boiling point, all I can do is bleed at you. It's only blood, but sometimes something in it just makes me hate everything. It's everything I've got to give but there's just no way to siphon out the venom, not completely. It will not take no. It will kick and scream its way through every vein until it works its will. To make you listen, to understand this, to prove itself, to search and destroy, to fill you up, to love you.

And I come to you now in no particular order, no jackal's mask here. Just scale-clad wrath and all four-cornered instincts, freshly licked wounds already forming scabs that inevitably always get scratched apart. I nip at your throat and drag my teeth across your chest just so you know how it feels.
How difficult it is to accommodate an itch that no one will reach.

new couch smell

2011-02-12T18:01:00.000-05:00

There's just too many options for lounging on this thing!

We're doing some serious living room upgrades, starting with a new couch and fancy rug.... from Ikea. Next step: painting and training the boy-roommate and cat to behave around them.

you remind me of home

2011-02-09T16:45:00.003-05:00

It could be this roofie croissant-wich I just ate (re: a sandwich you eat that makes you alarmingly sleepy immediately after ingestion), or my constant bedroom envy wherein I've always wanted a larger bed than twin sized, or better yet to live in a place that accommodates a larger bed than twin sized, but these bedrooms are giving me a serious case of

my bun my man

2011-02-09T01:29:00.002-05:00

less is the new black

2011-02-05T01:38:00.001-05:00

From spooky-haughty

To not so spooky anymore but probably just as haughty!

Apparently short hair inspires me to wear pink?

I am dubious. Must change top asap.

(It does however inspire more boat neck shirts and off-the-shoulder business. That is acceptable.)

mouthful of probably my foot

2011-02-04T01:05:00.000-05:00

If you look closely you will my find moppish head (and Henry's) jamming out/looking scared behind Phantogram on that Jimmy Fallon talk show.

I was randomly selected via email drawing to see them perform on that show I said and stand in the "band bench", which is really just a set of risers placed behind the band to make the stage appear fuller or like more people care about this show. They made us sit through the entire taping of the show. How tedious...

But that isn't even post-worthy. What is, is the freakish cosmic serendipity that we happened to dine at the same restaurant as the band all the way in our neighborhood after the taping. I couldn't resist approaching Sarah and charming the crap out of her (read: geeking out over her band).

Why am I so inelegant?

year of the

2011-02-03T23:44:00.002-05:00

copycats

2011-01-31T11:31:00.000-05:00

I think the theme here is "there's no such thing as an original idea"

With a subtext of "hehehehe"

While I'm endlessly amused with the idea of walking around with a CATS: The Musical t-shirt (since I covet my roommate's cropped version I found for her at a thrift sale) that is kind of parallel-dimensional, probably gonna go with the top one. Maybe not that exact color gradient, but who knows. People like wacky stuff like that, right?

only the young die young

2011-01-31T01:21:00.001-05:00

I want to be around everyone at once and I also want to be where there is no one at all. This is pretty much as impossible to do as it sounds. In fact, I'm pretty sure this is what people use the internet for-- so you can exist all over a place where no one is in physically proximity of you. You can ghost yourself without the messy uncomfortable faux pas of dying (It makes me wonder if health facilities will include "deleting one's social network profiles" in pamphlets as an indicator of impending suicide plans. Kind of like when people give away all their stuff). I watched that Facebook movie the other night and instead of thinking about my sense of personal privacy it only made me wonder what going to a real college would've been like and if I would be doing more career-y things now. Somehow I doubt it.

Every time I check my email or log into any social networking site, I think the only thing I am actually doing is checking for confirmation that I actively exist. That my existence is a network-wide acknowledgement. Don't be confused. This is nothing like an existential crisis, nothing as complex as that. Just a whole lot of self-concern, or some private abashed egotism.

A heartbeat just doesn't seem to be enough anymore. Not unless it's a digital pulse. Not unless you're a heat-seeking missile.

I like this 70's sweater

2011-01-30T22:35:00.001-05:00

I found it hidden deep in the recesses of the closet I share with my roommate.
Clothes are weird. Like this Green/white/pink stripe combo. I think it tells the world that I really support Italy but I'm also kind of conservative, what with the crew neck and all this beige.
Now I am warm.

Good day for a Tiger

2011-01-26T13:10:00.000-05:00

Year of the Tiger just released our EP for free download on our Bandcamp page.
6 tracks all re-recorded and mixed for the optimal thrash-worthy, bass-bumping, face-melting experience!

Also, Mochi helped. I think he just likes being put in containers because he was all too well-behaved during this little album photoshoot. Look how he fills that thing up. It's at least 3 quarts...

cartoon catharsis

2011-01-24T01:49:00.000-05:00

There is no reason this shirt should be more optimistic than I am right now.

such great heists

2011-01-19T01:03:00.000-05:00

Strike once. Strike anywhere. Make sure when you do it, you don't dabble in any kind of half-assed warning shots. If you've done it right, you'll see a ghost of a flesh imprint. It takes only a second to turn stark white and then blush once the blood refills. It should hold the blush for a while. If you've done it right, it should keep going straight on to black and blue.

I don't think I did it right. I sat in the corner of the couch, my muscles coiled, ready for the shift. I felt a lightness on the tippy top of my head, an invisible tethered thought bubble buoy.

"What if I get all weepy and girly?" I asked, a few moments prior. He shrugged and smirked.
"I don't know. I'd be interested in seeing that."
"Sicko."

I prodded at the pencil eraser-sized fuschia dot in the crook of my arm. A few hours earlier I watched a woman I had never met before take three vials of blood from my arm. She shimmied the needle around between each vial, frowning at my uncooperative veins. If this sounds like it hurts, that's because it did. The result was a small but defiant welt, not quite a perfect circle.

Inside your body, blood is a dark violet oxgen-deprived hue. Your insides are airtight, which is why your veins appear blue under fair skin. Once it meets the air, it immediately oxidizes, turning that rusty reddish color. Even the small tube of air between the needle and the vial counts.
The purple you see from bruises are blood cells strangled to death with nowhere to go.

Your blood will always tell the truth. In film it's always portrayed as being thicker and stickier than it is really. The thing about fake blood is that when you mix it with real blood, you get a rather attractive salad dressing.

It's much cooler at the surface right now. I don't feel much different but I'm aware that I'm supposed to. I'm beginning to think my blood is lazy, it has no sense of urgency. This all results in poor circulation. So much of our waking conscience relies on these currents, and I'm permanently low tide I think.

I am feeling around for the seams in my own regular conscience. It feels like pumping fake blood. There's soft shock value. It's just as visceral except nobody is injured and there's still the same mess to clean up. It smells like the body bag without the body. Instead of oxygen, it's carrying old film cells and radio fuzz within me. My brain just sighed and looked at the clock. I decide that breathing harder is the solution. That oughta speed up those little pions. Instead I just got dizzy.

This is what it's like to be everyone else at the same time. If being myself wasn't enough I didn't have to be. I could be anyone right now and it wouldn't matter because I would look and sound the same and you would never know the difference. You could never tell, unless you unzipped me and just found a whole lot of fake blood sneaking naps behind the bleachers.
I touched his arm and felt a little better. It's not an anchor but it brought me back. Who knows how long that thought bubble would've survived in the stratosphere?

"How are you?" He asked me, expectantly.
I shrugged and tipped my hand side to side. Comme ci, comme ca.
"Anything?"
"Mhmm... yeah." I wanted to tell the truth but you can't really do that with a heart full of fake blood, now can you. It's not like I was lying, I was just having a difficult time admitting the reality of the present. The reality being that I did not feel like myself and I was pretty sure I may actually not be myself at all. And that it felt kind of good. Everything I wanted to feel had been right in front of my face, just out of range. It moved just as fast as me and always kept it's same distance.

I went into the bathroom just to make sure. The mirror showed me a disguise. She had a diligent circulatory system. She was fast enough. She could do it right this time. Yes. This was good.
I returned to the couch with that new momentum and found the heat beneath his skin that told me just how everything was working. I cornered everything that felt right that I couldn't get to before, sandwiched in between us, let my blood borrow his and struck there, right where my low tide breaks. Right where it'll still show in the morning. Where I could imagine living forever, if forever was the kind of thing that accommodated slow hearts and ignored the rusty nature of reality.

Like real blood, these notions never look the same as when its hiding within you, dark and waiting.