gullible travels

‘This morning, for example, I felt as if I had come to...

Tue, 14 May 2013 21:48:44 -0400

‘This morning, for example, I felt as if I had come to myself on a strange island. And what does such a castaway do?’

“I do not know what I was thinking, I do not remember...

Mon, 13 May 2013 09:07:10 -0400

“I do not know what I was thinking, I do not remember thinking anything. There are times like that, not frequent enough, when the mind just empties.”

Racing to finish, I never think before I run

Mon, 13 May 2013 08:43:27 -0400

Racing to finish, I never think before I run

Art Imperial - Cult of Love

Sun, 05 May 2013 08:54:06 -0400

Art Imperial - Cult of Love

"Arriving at each new city, the traveler finds again a past of his that he did not know he had: the..."

Wed, 01 May 2013 09:18:58 -0400

“Arriving at each new city, the traveler finds again a past of his that he did not know he had: the foreignness of what you no longer are or no longer possess lies in wait for you in foreign, unpossessed places.”

- Italo Calvino, Invisible Cities

Audio

Mon, 29 Apr 2013 09:18:07 -0400

if i move this could die

Sun, 28 Apr 2013 10:30:36 -0400

The week that just elapsed has been so important to my life, for too many reasons. A good hammer to this frozen lake. So Yeats said happiness is ‘neither this thing nor that, but simply growth. We are happy when we are growing’. Somewhere in this mix of joy, anticipation, fear, boredom, disappointment, confusion and the whole helluva smorgasbord of emotion, I think we miraculously are growing; we’re getting somewhere at least - we’re onto something.

How does one sublimate a week of experience into words or images? So much to sieve…For starters, the image of sitting in Jewel Cafe across faces I’ve somewhat grown to love to distraction. Three of us feeling somewhat displaced and spaced for individual reasons at this point of time, but fastened together by a mutual bond of ridiculous affection and that impulse to simply be-together. Food was on-the-house, courtesy of Joy’s gig of illustrating for the cafe. It was an occasion which exposed our rather vulgarly (gastronomically) exploitative tendencies, but what the heck, YOLO, or rather, YOGetFreeFoodO.

Heartily exhausted from the earlier conversation of the day (worthy of 20 blog posts in itself), I was in a little bit of a casual daze as we sat down to order. At this point early Franz Ferdinand was playing out of the speakers…

So if you’re lonely, you know I’m here waiting for you

I’m just a cross-hair, I’m just a shot away from you

And if you leave here, you leave me broken shattered I lie…

Instinctually mouthing these faux-despairing lyrics I was washed with a gradual wave of mild nostalgia. Yes, this is the 90s kid equivalent. It was a missing that couldn’t properly locate itself as often is the case with songs or smells. It evoked not places nor persons but just another previous state of my being, slightly younger; that slightly more primitive point of self (in hindsight) and how the world appeared then, to which these lyrics obviously had no relevance. (Well, almost nothing has changed in this respect since I’m cajoling no one…)

Then slowly came the host of associations in more concretized forms. I was sad because I remember, if I’m not mistaken, of sharing this song with Chong Lii when we used to exchange stuff through thumb-drives, and in the midst of it creatively making intricate/humorous folder-mazes inside the drive for whatever pleasure could be derived from opening digital folders. Then I remembered also the video for this track - the collage and posterized look and all, which my brother and I watched in those days when I was for some strange reason, glued to MTV all the time, when the vitality of MVs was so magnetic.

All the power and potency of faint traces of lyrics and melodies. How you could be listening to one song again to resurrect a memory on a bus ride, while new memories are being encoded through the headphones of the person next to you. Such was the tiny phenomenon that happened yesterday at Artistry. I will never be able to listen to any reggae track without the image, or thought of Mr. Jackson filling my mind. Watching him completely in his element, DJing in that leisurely charged setting was very heartening. The sensation was amplified by the fact that the VA students were together, even strangely united in that place, albeit by our rather incongruous presence.

I’m sure somewhere beneath all that leisurely banter was a sense of urgency to make connections, or rather make them last, for we knew that in several months we’d be hurled off across different continents (or stretches of wilderness). A comforting discussion of various threads/options of trans-continental communication seems peripheral at this point because we’re really dealing with the very fact of change itself, of being apart in new ways. The implications of us growing up as individuals; citizens of this bigger country of - the world.

This week has, in its own way, renewed my faith in human connection and in the beauty of emotional nudity. In one week alone I have felt so much tenderness and affection for those who have taught it to me, and this is only a fraction of the story. I don’t want to think that time is being siphoned away by the universe of whatever governs us. I don’t want that sense of unfairness or unnecessary urgency anymore. With help perhaps we can be seasonable, reasonable people; moving with grace. With a little help from each other.

Photo

Mon, 22 Apr 2013 11:51:15 -0400

“They did not have the power not to die. They were, we...

Mon, 22 Apr 2013 08:22:49 -0400

“They did not have the power not to die. They were, we are, all flesh, and then we are all meat.”

"I forgot to tell you how happy I am to be talking to you after all this while."

Wed, 17 Apr 2013 10:05:00 -0400

“I forgot to tell you how happy I am to be talking to you after all this while.”

The devastating plights of overcommitment…weeps…

Sun, 14 Apr 2013 10:06:33 -0400

The devastating plights of overcommitment…weeps…

"When launching a life raft, the prudent survivalist will not toss food overboard while retaining the..."

Sun, 14 Apr 2013 03:49:03 -0400

“When launching a life raft, the prudent survivalist will not toss food overboard while retaining the deck furniture. If somebody must jettison a part of life, time with a mate should be last on the list: he needs that connection to live.”

- A General Theory of Love

if everything happens that can't be done

Sun, 31 Mar 2013 06:27:13 -0400

if everything happens that can’t be done
(and anything’s righter
than books
could plan)
the stupidest teacher will almost guess
(with a run
skip
around we go yes)
there’s nothing as something as one

one hasn’t a why or because or although
(and buds know better
than books
don’t grow)
one’s anything old being everything new
(with a what
which
around we come who)
one’s everyanything so

so world is a leaf so a tree is a bough
(and birds sing sweeter
than books
tell how)
so here is away and so your is a my
(with a down
up
around again fly)
forever was never till now

now i love you and you love me
(and books are shuter
than books
can be)
and deep in the high that does nothing but fall
(with a shout
each
around we go all)
there’s somebody calling who’s we

we’re anything brighter than even the sun
(we’re everything greater
than books
might mean)
we’re everyanything more than believe
(with a spin
leap
alive we’re alive)
we’re wonderful one times one

"Routine shortens and variety lengthens time, and it is therefore in the power of men to do something..."

Thu, 14 Mar 2013 08:34:12 -0400

“Routine shortens and variety lengthens time, and it is therefore in the power of men to do something to regulate its pace. A life with many landmarks, a life which is much subdivided when those subdivisions are not of the same kind, and when new and diverse interests, impressions, and labours follow each other in swift and distinct successions, seems the most long…”

- Lecky, The Map of Life

"Love has offered us a hundred proofs; we are looking for reasons."

Sun, 10 Mar 2013 03:51:26 -0400

Straw, sticks, brick

Mon, 25 Feb 2013 07:42:00 -0500

It’s good to have a desk by the window. That is one thing I would never complain of. In preparing or delivering what seems like hour-long lectures I find myself learning more than I expected. I’m pretending to know everything, to be standing on the summit and telling you what I see from up here, there. But I’m new to this, and really, just walking a space in front of you. And when I turn around I always hope you’ll be standing behind, following - or I’ll be leading no-one into a wilderness I can’t be sure of, alone.

Classes aside, these are some things I’ve learned, or was reminded about, this turbulent week.

Ego, matters. Acknowledging your voice, your very own, and letting it ring - matters. I suddenly understood that I had to be careful, that the weight of effort thrown into suppressing one’s ego, one’s passions, can exhaust and kill. It’s a slow death, I imagine - with your spirit exhaled piecemeal in very, careless breaths. Many of us are fervent practitioners of self-effacement, in our own ways. I would like to boldly proclaim my permanent resignation from this title, but the fear catches up. The doubt creeps in. I’m afraid to go back to the brush and canvas, to the empty notebook. I suppose though, despite it all, that you’ve got to start from that proverbial somewhere. That’s Here and Now, and I know this.

I’ve had a few casual run-ins with this word, this idea. But the most memorable, and un-casual encounter was in Franny and Zooey when I was 16. This was what I turned to immediately when this understanding came - three years later. I can’t describe Salinger’s conception of ego, in fact I’ll humbly avoid this whole enterprise altogether and let the author, in one of his many guises, supply the words:

“What about your beloved Epictetus? Or your beloved Emily Dickinson? You want your Emily, every time she has an urge to write a poem, to just sit down and say a payer till her nasty, egotistical urge goes away?…half the nastiness in the world is stirred up by people who aren’t using their true egos.”

Act your age. Words of one of my art mentors, that suddenly surfaced this evening. I’ve been gorging myself - on the generous artistic, literary, scientific, and philosophical feasts abundantly brought forth by the many men and women who have came and gone before me, of those still creating as I write. It’s an unbearable and overwhelming weight, especially in this day and age when intellectual ‘treasure’ (as once again expressed in F&Z) is so easily amassed and feverishly hoarded. And in response to every byte of information that is shooting towards us at illegal speeds, I almost feel, at 19, to be fundamentally inadequate in contributing anything meaningful to the world. At 15 I tried to make art like I was 30, at 19 I find myself trying to think like I’m 70. It’s an exponential rise in the disparity between what I am and what I try to be - when I’m 20 I’ll beat myself up for not having the wisdom of a centenarian. With this knowledge all around, so available and availing, I would expect to create as though I had lived through epochs and wars and experienced the subtle vagaries of human life in our delicate condition. I have not. Not even a fraction of it has entered my existence, or rather, I have yet to enter the world of such things. It takes courage to act your age when you are standing upon the heavy, accumulating residual knowledge from all that has come to past. Despite it all -and this is the challenge I set to myself- I pledge to be 19. I will be content with what little I know now: my clumsy encounters with love, hurt, physical or emotional joy or pain, all the feelings in-between, my people, my places, other people, other places that I had reason to know…they are all I have, and everything I need for now.

Life is unpredictable. This is not so much a realization, or a reminder…but a riddle that keeps resurfacing after agitated and fruitless attempts at solving it. I shall once again take the backseat on this one, and humbly, if not desperately, seek the much needed aid of another voice to articulate my own fear and uncertainty.

(Chp 8. Death - of The Philosophy of A. Warhol) “I don’t believe in it, because you’re not around to know that it’s happened. I can’t say anything about it because I’m not prepared for it.” - Mr. Andy Warhol, whose lovely candor shines in this chapter.

theparisreview: The first use of OMG? This letter to Winston...

Mon, 03 Dec 2012 08:05:04 -0500

theparisreview:

The first use of OMG? This letter to Winston Churchill may be of tremendous significance in the history of texting.

For more of this morning’s roundup, click here.

Photo

Tue, 20 Nov 2012 09:32:54 -0500

Photo

Tue, 20 Nov 2012 09:30:44 -0500

wordsmith.org

Wed, 14 Nov 2012 04:12:00 -0500

Today’s word - 14 Nov.

blitzkrieg

PRONUNCIATION:

(BLITS-kreeg)

how apt!