One day, I woke up and realized I don't want any of this.

Then I realized, okay, that's a partial lie.

I don't know what I want. So how can I know if I want what I have or not? Or if I'll ever want it?

I can't decide if I think this has been a good semester or not.

Academic failure. But. Question mark.

"It was November...

...the month of crimson sunsets, parting birds, deep, sad hymns of the sea, passionate wind-songs in the pines."

Look how icy those blues are. So blue, so blue.

I hate November. In theory, I love it. Or, I suppose, I love my romanticized mental image of it. Crimson sunsets and sad sea hymns? Deeply, painfully lovely. The experience? Just painful.

"The elemental vastness of the windblown world."

"Elemental vastness."

Around here, November is a month of transition. The brisk, rosy days of October and Indian summer don't fade - they drain. The skies are emptied of their life and left drab and dull, and even the sun cools to a stark, hard white, piercing through the listless clouds. The nights are darker than ever, except for the glinting stars. Sometimes the stars help, crowding the "spiritual firmament" with a friendly glow. But sometimes they hurt. Sometimes they seem so far away, and the world seems bigger and emptier than ever. Deep breaths of night air just cut like knives through your lungs. Everything reassuring is gone. And the windows of the apartments, the dorms, the houses - their warm yellow lights warn away trespassers. It gets harder and harder to fill the space between.

All I can remember of last winter is the emptiness of the spaces between, and how badly I want to close the gaps.

I'm getting restless again and I don't know what to do.

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Now playing: Simon & Garfunkel - Bookends

Every stupid, miserable word that falls from my mouth or slips from my fingers sounds feels looks is wrong. Every attempt for smooth, fluid motion stops short and fails in action. The words just die, flat and useless, the moment they materialize. It just all feels so hard and plastic. I want loose and elastic. It's like I'm trying too hard. It feels false and premeditated. But my mind is blank and I flounder - I have to try just to come up with anything at all. These aren't images. They're empty structures with fluff plugged into them. Something's missing.

I need to read more.

She said, "Take me to London, tell me something I don't know."

Trying to decide how serious I am about potentially going to grad school in London. If I'm pretty serious, I might nix UCLA, USC, and NYU from my application list and just do 4 or 5 schools in London. And maybe still Columbia.

The upside:

• When else am I going to get the chance to live in London for a year?
• Easy access to the rest of Europe. By which I really mean, I could go to Scotland and France. Finally.
• It's only one year.
• Slightly cheaper tuition...I think.
• Easier applications - they don't care about the GRE's and are less interested in writing samples.
• Last I heard, James McAvoy was living in London. :: Swoon. ::
• Probably easier to get into a PhD program should I decide to continue after getting my M.A.
• West End theater!
• Great chance to get away from everything that makes me think too much at home and have a fresh start. (That's one of the upsides of life, actually: you can always mentally wipe the slate clean and start again.) (It just struck me that that is a very American notion - the idea that a person can go somewhere new and create a better life for himself. Mmm.)

The downside:

• Away from family and friends and home for an entire year. (Even though they could visit!!)
• London is maddd expensive. At this moment, one British pound sterling is the equivalent of $1.656 USD. Better than it was last summer, but still.
• Before I grew up and got a dose of that little thing they call "reality," Columbia was one of my dream schools. Well, okay, it WAS my dream school. That and NYU. I didn't even bother applying to either for undergrad. I don't think I want to throw all my eggs in the London basket. But I also don't want to do/pay for the extra apps.
• The weather. I got depressed when it rained here for two weeks straight. How could I ever be okay in England?

I shouldn't be thinking about any of this, yet. I'm pretty sure after tomorrow (when I fail the GRE miserably), I'll realize once again that I'll be lucky to get into any grad program.

Meh.

"Self-sufficient." Well, that's one way of putting it...

In one sense, I really admire people who can just let things roll off their backs, who can just let go and move forward without looking back. People who never seem to lose, but to leave. In another sense, I wouldn't want to be like that, for fear of taking for granted everything I do have. How can you appreciate what you have if you never mind leaving it for something else?

To find beauty in that moment of loss and departure, for me, means reconciling the two. Appreciating that you're losing something great but having the strength to leave it for something new. It's a peculiar balance.

I wrote something about that once. Junior year I guess. Let me see if I can find it.

Mmm. Here:

I've come to the realization that I'm addicted to sunsets and Island Heights. They're such good company - sunsets I mean - silent, never the same for more than a couple minutes, warm, and so full of beauty, that they're incapable of failing to soothe even my worst mood. Of course, they leave one feeling rather lonely when they end and drain the rest of the color from the sky, but it's that way with people too - only with sunsets, you just have to leave them before they leave you. Thinking about it, I suppose that could work with people too, if you're self-sufficient enough. Or if the people are really bad company. : )

Yes, I did include the smiley face when I originally wrote that. I really was addicted to watching the sunset in Island Heights back then. In April and May, I'd go almost every night after dinner and sit there on my favorite bench in my favorite park and watch the sun set over the river. Sometimes I'd take pictures. Usually I'd bring a blanket and sometimes my mp3 player and would just stew. Depending on my mood, I'd either stay til dusk had passed, or I'd leave just as the sun disappeared below the horizon, before it got dark - before I felt alone again. Soon after that I discovered my preference for sunrises - you start off in the dark instead of ending in it.

"Don't ever tell anybody anything. If you do, you start missing everybody."
- The Catcher in the Rye

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Now playing: Jenny Lewis with the Watson Twins - You Are What You Love

19. Accept loss forever

- Jack Kerouac
Belief & Technique for Modern Prose

Anticlimactic.

The past two weeks, I've mostly been too busy, too cranky, or too overwhelmed to write anything.

Super lame, right.

I don't really have anything to say right now, either. Womp womp.

I realized before that I've put a couple hundred miles on my car since getting home on Friday, purely from driving up and down Rt. 35 aimlessly so much.

I do a lot of that when I'm home--driving around feeling frustrated and angry and lonely and scared and like a failure and trying to pinpoint why I feel that way.

Is summer over yet?

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Now playing: She & Him - I Thought I Saw Your Face Today

I know that I know it.

"The response we make when we 'believe' a work of the imagination is that of saying: 'This is the way things are. I have always known it without being fully aware that I knew it. Now in the presence of this play or novel or poem (or picture or piece of music) I know that I know it.'"
- Thornton Wilder

I would add "person" to that list.
Art is an awakening to something you always knew existed but were never quite aware of.
You could say the same about love, I suppose.
I love being woken up. Especially by people I know.

Generally speaking, I think we lose a little and gain a little every day. Some days we lose more than others; some days we gain more. Keeping it in balance and finding the perspective to see the gains outstrip the losses is how we keep on keeping on.

New Poem.

Formatting's messed up as usual. Whatever.


my words
they're falling in pieces
meandering
trudging through mind muck
breaking up
smaller every second
syllables separate
disintegrate
dissolve
spinning
they revolve
tumbling
down
brain to blood
blood to lips
lips to air to ears
HEAR:
what’s in my brain
doesn’t make it to your ears
fear and nerves rattle my words
they race around mental curves
vibrating herds of garbled noise
jumbled
they are mine no more
the moment the sound slipped from my lips
I knew:
the words were from another
from a foreign tongue
or a clumsy puppeteer
borrowing my lungs
to fuel her mixed up message
to mess with my sentiment
scramble my meaning
my feeling
perhaps it will translate
untangle
unravel
between your ears and brain
aim for restoration
reassemble my narration
patience cooperation
come to understand:
my words,
they have a mind of their own.

Pet peeve.

I hate it when people think I'm indifferent and indecisive about everything just because I don't care about stupid shit.

I'm pretty easygoing about a lot of things. Most of the time, I'd rather that someone else pick what tv show we watch, what music we listen to in the car, who drives, where we go for dinner, what time we go to the movies. If it doesn't matter to me, and it matters to you, why should I decide? I don't want to hear you bitch if I decide and you don't agree, when it doesn't perturb me either way. It makes other people happy, and it's so easy, so why pretend to care about shit I don't care about?

But just because I can go with the flow about little things, doesn't mean I don't care about anything.

Art and "Why?"

I suppose no one ever stops thinking about the "Meaning of Life" or whatever you want to call it, even if they feel like they should stop thinking about it and just live. There are a few things I've concluded in the past few years, though, without really meaning to do so, and I'd just like to jot them down before I forget.

Art is life.

My favorite quote from Dead Poet's Society is this:

"We don't read and write poetry because it's cute. We read and write poetry because we are members of the human race. And the human race is filled with passion. And medicine, law, business, engineering, these are noble pursuits and necessary to sustain life. But poetry, beauty, romance, love, these are what we stay alive for."

We live for art. That's basically what he's saying. And this is what that means to me:

As humans, we each lead singular lives. We are all individuals with our own individual perspectives, views, feelings, thoughts, and these defining elements will never be reproduced in someone else in exactly the same way. At the same time, while we experience separately, much of what we experience is the same, and while we embrace our uniqueness and celebrate originality and independent thought, we embody a strange yet innate contradiction by constantly seeking companionship--by looking for ways to assure ourselves that in fact, we are not alone.

No one wants to be alone. Even if a person takes cold comfort in desiring solitude, it's not truth. No one wants to feel like he is the only person on earth in history to ever experience what he is experiencing. Everyone wants to be unique, and everyone is--but everyone also wants to be understood and heard.

To me, this is the cause of all art.

Art is the attempt to share your perspective, you own individual assessment of an experience, with someone else who can identify with your experience. It's letting others see an experience that they share, through your eyes. It's communicating your thoughts and emotions and ideas. It's introducing others to your way of seeing and feeling. It's inspiring them to reevaluate their own way of doing this.

Art brings people together. It gives them a shared human experience. It makes them feel like they are not alone. It lays the groundwork for connection on a deeper level. I don't think you can love art without loving people. Though sometimes art is making people feel uncomfortable, forcing them to confront something real they would rather avoid, it is still truth. Art is truth--personal truth in words, images, sounds, movement. To create real art, you must believe in what you're creating. You have to be passionate about it. If it doesn't mean anything to you, why should it mean anything to anyone else?

Art is courage. It's risky. It means finding your own personal truth, embracing every vulnerability, channeling it, and opening it to the world. And the world is frequently unkind. I think that stops people from trying to get people to listen and see them. It stops me. I have this habit I've developed of assuming that 1) no one cares about what I have to say, 2) I don't have anything to say worth listening to, and 3) I don't really want to lay myself out so vulnerably, anyway. It's terrible. They're awful excuses, and they shouldn't stop anyone from trying to make himself heard. We're constantly bombarded by images, sounds, words, all the time. There's a lot of garbage out there, and a lot of stuff that just doesn't mean anything to us--but it may mean something to someone. By not sharing, we're potentially depriving someone else of something meaningful. (I've gone off about this before.)

The Pop artist Ronnie Cutrone said that Andy Warhol taught him not to waste time trying to define art because you can't do it. I don't think that's true. I think you can define it--it's when you try saying what is "good" and what is "bad," that's when it gets tricky. I think that to me, "good" art is something that successfully communicates the artist's perspective, inspires interpretation, or both. There's plenty of entertainment that is not art, and I can appreciate it--but it doesn't mean anything to me. The only way I can criticize anyone's creation is look at it and ask myself, "What does this mean to me? What could this possibly mean to someone else?" If either answer is anything of significance, then I can't just dismiss it, can I?

But now I'm getting off on a tangent, and a really complicated one at that. I didn't mean to make this so long. These thoughts are full of contradictions. There's no logic to any of this. If you can find some, congratulations. If you can use logic or reasoning to destroy the validity of any of this, that's cool too. There's not really logic to anything I stick up here, 'cause that's not really my thing. This is all just what I know based on my own intuition, my own feeling and reaction to what's around me. It's just how I feel, in the most basic sense, about what I love and what I see.

I like day and night equally, for the same reason:

I like light.

Make sense of THAT one.

“Have you seen them? The words cut open . . . there’s something living in these lines.”

A steamy mug of dark coffee—or five—
nursed between soft palms as the night becomes
the morning. Lines begin to come alive.
They dance a reel or two and twiddle thumbs
for their audience is dull and drowsing.
Together in a mass of curves and limbs
thrusting out at all angles, harboring
resentment in the hours dark and dim,
they protest in anger: “We are not one,
but many—individuals!” they cry.
“Don’t let us blur, with your weary vision,
into a moody mess of black and white.”
Stare at the sheet in hand, eyes full of tears,
blink til it fades to black and disappears.


'Cause this is really what I need to be doing with my time.

The businessman at Sunday brunch.

I’ll have the eggs over easy, bacon
on the side. But I’d like sausage instead
if you could—Can’t you do that? Yes, you can?
Thanks. On what? Whole wheat or white or rye bread?
Whole wheat. Can I get that toasted? I said,
Can I get it toasted? And on the side,
not under the eggs? And jelly, not red
currant, but grape? And yes, the eggs are fried
but runny. I don’t want them if they’re dry.
To drink? A Bloody Mary, please. Give me
celery on the side. I can’t decide
if I want coffee also. Well, we’ll see.
Maybe later, when you bring me my drink.
No, now, please. That would be better, I think.

I feel exactly like me.

I like it.

It's completely perfect outside.

I hate wasting time sleeping.

I don't want to miss anything.

Another poem.

Awful, but I felt like writing and poetry + 6:55 a.m. don't always mix. It's on the lj too. Something different for me--trying to work with actual structure and form, whoa! I'm not happy with the last line in particular but it'll do for now.

Also, I never really noticed just how hard it is to figure out the syllable breakdown of some words. My meter is screwy and a lot of the rhymes are soft, but hey. You try writing a Spenserian sonnet at this hour. Iambic pentameter is not as easy as you might think.


Staring at the blinking neon numbers,
dim chartreuse entrances—wide eyed lying
flat on my back as guilt washes over
my body like the flow of sea crying,
creeping stealthily toward dunes, sighing.
You never mentioned her—that’s not my fault.
You smiled, shrugged. Thought you were teasing
until I felt your hand on my thigh, taut
fingers squeezing gently, then brushing soft,
tickling my ribs. I laughed helplessly.
Your arm came ‘round me, but I did not stop
your empty gestures. You grinned drunkenly
at my indulgent smile. I know next day,
you’ll forget. I won’t. I should not have stayed.

A poem.

I wrote this a week or two ago and just forgot to post it. It needs work but whatever.

the hours fade away
peel
pare
husk
pumice to the heart
rubbed red and raw
the guards, they fall apart
dissolve into the dark
releasing brief relief
a voice to sing to speak
to mutter to uncover
to liberate and loosen
a tongue stiff but not forgotten
thoughts and words and longing
fears and hopes and wanting
chaotic and disheveled
they were crossed
with inhibitions
lost
in self suppression
fraught
with old tradition
until the night surrounded
unwound the tightness halting
the reticence untrusting
stripping weary wanderers
of their wariness inhuman
but now they see the dawn is coming

and each retreats.


The spacing is screwed up as usual but whatever.

Stream of consciousness.

Atonement is on HBO right now and I'm falling in love with James McAvoy again. I could watch the tracking shot of Dunkirk for hours and totally be okay with the fact that I just spent hours watching it.

There's a Little House on the Prairie musical at Paper Mill Playhouse right now and I'm not sure how I feel about that. I'm pretty fond of the books and they were basically a staple of my reading material for my entire childhood, along with the Little Women books, the Anne of Green Gables books, and the American Girl books. And a bunch of others but those series, those were big. I never particularly cared for the TV show. Melissa Gilbert's teeth annoyed me. The Little Women musical was pretty disappointing, minus Sutton Foster, and I'm pretty sure this would be worse.

Matt Doyle is playing Melchior in Spring Awakening in Toronto and it's ridiculous how much I'd love to go see it. He's pretty much one of the main reasons I'm seriously considering working in theater / going to grad school for theater studies, and the chance to see him in one of the most powerful, moving shows I've ever seen...sigh.

I really like the word "awakening." I was thinking about this the other day. I was trying to think of a way to describe the way I felt, and "awakened" was the most fitting I could find. Not "awake," only, but "awakened." I feel calm and at peace, yet eager and exhilarated and restless and ready for whatever comes next. I feel determined and alive and I like it.

Only when I stop and think, do I feel overwhelmed. The rest of the semester is incredibly hectic and I'm almost afraid it's going to fly by too fast--so many of my friends are graduating, and I'm going to miss them so much next year. It's a good hectic though, mostly. Relay for Life is going to be draining but amazing. That weekend, I have tickets for a screening at the New Directors / New Films program that the Film Society of Lincoln Center and MoMA are doing. The weekend after I'm going to see Guys and Dolls with Dad. The weekend after is Easter. (Toronto? Haha.) The weekend after is the Avenue Q trip with school. Yay for going to school close to New York! Haha.

I'm watching Erin Brockovich. Rugged, disheveled, old-school Aaron Eckhart cracks me up. "The looks of a matinee idol and the soul of a character actor." Love him.

Secret source of pleasure: when my comments on IMDb are high on the list because other people find them "useful". Haha. My comment on The Wrestler is second most useful out of 300, right now. My Persepolis comment is 2 out of 103. My Cassandra's Dream and September Dawn comments are both #3. El Orfanato and Love in the Time of Cholera, #7. I also really like it when I look at an IMDb page and my comment is the automatically generated one that shows up at the bottom of the main page. Hehehe.

I had more but I put it in a separate post. Too much goin on.

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Now playing: Vampire Weekend - Ottoman

the process of discovery

learning = opening mind

open mind = discovery

discovery = awakening

awakening = new perspective

new perspective = freshness

freshness = renewal

renewal = life