She was seized by a spasm of longing for that distant era of five minutes ago

Chim Pum Callao

2011-02-20T19:00:00.000-08:00

All day I've walked with the same feeling one acquires upon discovering something for the first time. In the morning, I made breakfast for my sister and for my mother. I woke up at 7:10a.m exactly. The color of strawberries, blueberries and the clementines gave the dinner table a rural appearance. I took a picture of the empty plates and colorful bowls to send to my brother. I don't know if he received the e-mail. I can't send international picture messages from my phone because the technology requires I call my cell phone company for special requests and I can't deal with companies without feeling robbed.

The benefit of making breakfast for others is being exempt from washing dishes. I like time for myself. I think I have a pretty good time alone. For instance, after entertaining(supervising) my niece, who I adore, I drove to Vromans in Pasadena to buy my friend a birthday gift. I could have phoned a different friend for company but the sad truth is that I like the company of strangers. Her birthday is tomorrow and the plan is to have the early portion of the day to ourselves. I bought her something I know she'll be happy to have, though I really want her to remember me and think of me when she's near it. In the cafe, the one adjacent to the bookstore, I ordered Iced Coffee. I'm not a regular coffee drinker. The guy even looked at me with an expression of doubt despite the vocal clarity of my order.

In front of the large window overlooking the city's main boulevard, I wrote my dad a letter. I described my surroundings: the transparent cup of iced coffee identical to coca cola, the japanese restaurant across the street I frequented with my mother(and a short praise to Japanese Culture for understanding the secret of real comfort, that of aesthetics, simplicity and tranquility) the independent movie theatre next door and the way these places belong to parts of my adolescence.

When I finished, I thought about making weekly visits to the local post-office.

My early 20s

2011-02-08T17:54:00.000-08:00

This is the appropriate age to complain that life is the secret enslavement sponsored by repetition and powerful distractions. I speak for my generation when I say we're cynical, angry, resentful, bitter and indescribably anxious to disentangle the ropes and volcanic chains of youth despite our strong sympathies for nihilism and the comfort of self-pity. Words like Inertia, Depression, Love and Hate circulate our lexicon without the conscious idea of our own level of inexperience. We're stubborn, though everyone else believes we're ideologically flexible.

In love, we behave like drunk animals. Our romantic relationships(if you can call it that) are by-products of lecherous tendencies and neurotic passions. Confounded by the irreparability of romantic rupture, we hide behind protective walls, cursing humanity in the dark, becoming more resentful and hostile to the possibility of amorous triumph.

Youth is a winter storm in the deep ocean. It is the clashing of rogue waves and the carnage left after desperation conquers all aboard a ruined vessel. It is the last stop for passengers of an ill-fated aircraft. Or the distant weeping of young voices confined to rooms without windows. It is a tunnel, perhaps, with holographic visions of escape and disappearing orifices with every human step.

It is the first real sign of disenchantment and the choice between survival or constant lapidation.

Plural vagaries

2010-12-14T11:44:00.000-08:00

For moments, I'm a demented believer in the importance of time and although the idea is in conflict with some of my own rejections and criticisms, time is a silent observer with surprising resistance to proper or improper occurrences. Therefore, as much as I like doing nothing, under no circumstance should I yield to complacent or inactive roles.

I can say with irreproachable honesty that the few sentient beings left in this life(since it is an empty life unless love or hate or any other powerful venom takes over the heart ) have the same condition true in all children: depth of feeling and absorption. Again, the sentient survivors own a wealth incomparable to economic obsessions that define the lives of the spiritually poor. Of course, I'm talking about myself and every citizen in this arrogant and selfish nation.

Children are experts in life management and yet the memories of childhood are vague. If adults had the talent or grandiose ability to undertake new identities to escape misunderstood horrors, there wouldn't be a film industry or the need for fiction in literature. Being now considered an adult with cognitive capacity, though at times hopelessly maladjusted and other times an angry centenarian, I'm discovering that everybody is fucking crazy, and not just my grandmother(or the females in my family)

One day, when my grandfather was alive and living like a Roman despite his elderly heart, he approached me with a question he had respectfully ignored for the 7 years we had lived in the same house. In a soft tone that had been altered to speak to a child( I knew it and he knew it and it was a touching detail nonetheless) he asked if my parents were fighting. Of course, the throwing of appliances in the first floor wasn't poltergeist and surely had reverberated in all interior areas of the 3 story museum or asylum or familial residence. So I replied in the affirmative. He said soon they would reconcile( which really meant stay silent until the next choleric argument) and that couples shouldn't argue.

In theory, couples who love each other are forgiving and kind. But in this forsaken life, the average person is unforgiving and kind only to himself. Because I have some legitimate power to speak on the subject, I'll admit to having a repugnance against long love stories, partially because I've no story of my own, and partially because my friend's love stories mimic theatre and politics.

The year of the unsentimental good-bye

2010-12-13T17:12:00.000-08:00

Five years ago, I met a fun and beautiful girl of the same nationality. We met in Lima, across the street from a park that prior to our first encounter, had ordinary qualities. Though, to be historically fair, the park had long ago achieved distinction for being a focal point of artistry and acclaimed by citizens and non-citizens for its lively and safe district, as well as being the only park in the capital to pay homage to an American president( I hope)

Because my place of residence isn't Lima, though not by individual choice, our friendship continued functioning under common technological procedures- online messages, the rare phone call(which I always initiated) and other tactful electronic acknowledgments. For five years, I maintained a sporadic connection with her because fun and beautiful turned out to be very limiting characteristics.

From June to August, the annual trip to see my family in Lima also gave me the opportunity to see friends, which unquestionably meant seeing her. The first two years of our friendship, our encounters were special(to me) and I think of them with affection because the girl I met 5 years ago is astronomically different than the human being of recent years.

After living the best days of my life in the Andes( a singular period of less than two weeks that I'll never relive with the same intensity or liver), I got in contact with her as we had previously agreed to meet again before my departure to the United States, and since I know my feelings of deep elation are exclusive to the southern hemisphere, I desired strongly to see her, and thus end my visit with equal happiness and grace.

Despite agreeing to meet her on my dad's birthday, I anticipated the final reunion with her, her boyfriend and her friends with excitement. Interestingly or perhaps not, a coincidence in timing occurs between the 22nd of august(my dad's birthday) and the next day. Every 23rd, because small but dispersed fragments of optimism in me believe my life has any vocational or existential purpose, I'm required(coerced) to return to North American territory on the very same morning for collegial reasons. Of course I had the right to drink and be very drunk the whole night and if I drank correctly, the next day as well.

In its early stages, this happily anticipated night had every satisfying element of youthful disorder- the public consumption of beer, the indifference toward money(god bless my dad's heart), the drunk driving, the ideal apartment, the belligerent voices speaking and singing in Spanish ( that I slowly gathered were my own lyrical cadence) Then, at some indefinite point, between the laughter and her friend's seemingly professional hospitality, I fucked everything up and consequently accepted that this fun and beautiful girl would voluntary and very rapidly disappear from me altogether.

By fucking everything up( and with the following sentence, I culminate what has become a sorrowful and quasi-apologetic remembrance of a beloved friend above all else) I must detail with painful exactitude the succeeding effects of the death of a friendship: the obstinate clinging to a handful of irrecoverable memories.

Final peace or respite

2010-12-12T19:03:00.000-08:00

If for mysterious reasons my opinions are taken seriously, I'll say that happiness is an interesting fusion between creative imaginings and serious delusions. In childhood, the nature of my dreams( and the purpose of sleeping) amounted to kind hours of magnificent exile from prolonged interaction with others. The central figures of my dreams were figures of authority: mostly adults and large dogs(two valid synonyms)

However, the great majority of my dreams detailed expansions of the universe. I often dreamt of space. In addition to identifying characters and color, I felt connected to the obscurity that is typical of a starless sky. Many times, I valued the life of awareness over spacial fantasies, specially if dreams advanced into the category of gratuitous torment.

At the age of 21, the recurrence of sorrow and deception and the joy of laughter are part of the same mixture. I understand happiness as a tunnel, perhaps equivalent to the succession of tunnels in the geographic landscape of El Cañón del Pato. Like happiness, youth is another tunnel. And I'm living both with a discreet starvation.

Bashful teenagers

2010-12-05T01:42:00.000-08:00

The time we ended our first conversation via telephone, I hid my face in the shallow depth of my pillow. Our one hour chat, interrupted by her friend's unannounced appearance, was a sample or introduction to nights of inexhaustible dialogue. We didn't have cell phones, reciprocal interest and apathy toward inconvenience were the principal agents of cohesion. When I think of my first girlfriend, I think of the subtle ways a person becomes a stranger.

The night we kissed, I learned to speak a new language. When I think of her, I relive 2006: 4th of july, family outings, Los Angeles; though past convocations are occasioned by my aversion to oblivion.

Is it money or god?

2010-12-01T13:16:00.001-08:00

My mother is disallowing the presence of Madison ( my dying cat) in my bedroom when I am away. She's afraid her virus will mutate into the first case of cat to human infection. If I told her Madison sneezed in my face the other night, I think they would both die.

In class, a friend said she's stressing over the final exam. I reminded her that College isn't life defining, that what's important is her family, living with health and that everything else is artificially important.

Driving home, I made an inadequate turn on the freeway. Reasons for my poor maneuver: 1. I am a mediocre driver(and college student) 2. I saw the carcass of an animal that very quickly transformed musings into a solid philosophical metaphor. 3. Ja Rule's Thug Lovin' started playing and because the abject despotism of rap is intensely attractive, I lost all concentration.

Happy December. For Christmas, I want to die and resurrect as a squirrel. There is a squirrel in my neighborhood that I see some evenings crossing wires from one electrical pole to the other. I see this squirrel jump and climb trees with full mastery of movement and radiance that it's obvious he or she has the complex of martyr or brash exhibitionist. I want to be immortal after my first death.

Natural Observations

2010-11-30T21:46:00.000-08:00

While my dispossessed contemporaries are confident in the properties of drugs and promiscuous sex to revive their decomposed selves, I binge on writing- an infallible alternative, although I imagine sex binges are drastically better. I'm sleep deprived. I sleep intermittently during the night, like someone with a criminal past. In the mornings, I sit in class anxious and tired, determined to stay awake because defeating boredom during lecture is a collegiate triumph. I go home when I can't remember reasons for staying. My cat's health is in decline. The gravity of her illness is producing a desperate urgency to eliminate time's aggressive(deplorable) speed. Inevitably, her quality of life will deteriorate and she will die. My love for this small animal is improper in that it is deeper than my love for humans. Clearly, I'm sad, but I don't tend my sadness with the necessary seriousness.

The good news is that the year is almost over. This statement is illogical.

"You waited long for 21"

2010-11-19T18:46:00.000-08:00

I have a loyal, feral attraction for Colombians. They are charismatic and happy and unforgettably inviting and colorful in their language and style and ever so willing to defend their cultural icons, exports, songs, literary talent. When I say that they are visitors from a superior world, nobody believes me. I admit that my convictions may be mildly degrading to the anonymous majority, but I insist on associating their beauty with that of mythical gods. Why? Why all the subjective accolades? They have a special attitude, a giant's splendor, simply put: Colombia is rare and extraordinary.

Well, the previous paragraph is magnificently out of orbit with my next point. I've been reading past entries( since I lost all initiative to do anything productive with my uncertain life) and I have to say that I tragically surrendered to emotive writing this year. Of course, writing is exemplary of much of the wretched sentimentality inherit to all life experiences, but I'd like to resume writing emphatically boring entries about the (disputable) importance of socializing. In other words, recapture my social life.

I acknowledge being alive in a conventional sense, that I'm a masochist, a lawful citizen by social obligation, an ungrateful daughter. Ordinarily, I would curse the world and would want to escape from it. It's just that now, my repressed 21 year old self is demanding excitement and love and life and a conclusive end to my lifeless and loveless self-imprisonment. I also acknowledge, despite my own disciplined demonstrations of denial, that I self-sabotage. I don't have valid reasons for the habit of ruining myself. It's irritating. I am irritated.

23 de agosto. Luna nueva

2010-11-06T10:23:00.000-07:00

Una playa de arenas sucias de plumas y de millares de huellas.

Llego donde una mujer que ha salido recientemente del mar. Usa un traje de baño de solido prusia, que se pega a su cuerpo cereo, ahora tan pesado.

Sus cabellos humedos y aderezados con arena, le cubren el rostro.

Estoy inmovil frente a ella, quien se recuesta y cierra los parpados sobre una toalla lustrosa.

El mar se encuentra sospechosamente calmado.

- Diego Lazarte

7

2010-11-05T02:02:00.000-07:00

"Sure, I'll talk to him at least once before I leave the park, I don't dare remain in this state if I want an easy night, I'll talk to him after I circle the plaza for jewelry that is to my liking, but somewhat affordable."

As stated, she walked the periphery meticulously comparing items which vendors esteemed most authentic, exotic and durable. She was gullible, despite her age and experience. At parties, her friends criticized her for this weakness, though the criticisms could only be expressed when she displayed little signs of sobriety(she regarded all comments devoid of flattery as a personal attack on her individuality) It was nearing 6 o'clock in the evening and she had not found the right piece to satisfy her manner of neurotic heiress to a non-existent fortune. The gradual retreat of daylight affected her; she lived with the idea that if events failed to induce the feelings she wanted, the night would declare interminable hours of the worst conflicts.

The hope for solving her divisions would rest in the hands of a psychic who strangled a man, plead insanity and named his daughter Neuron when he impregnated his girlfriend- a journalist of suspicious mental health.

"I'll pay you all the money you desire if you tell me where I'll be in the future, with who, and if I'll feel happier than now or recent years; I'd rather be in debt than live with the costs of this uncertainty."

He was notably impressed by her stupidity. A explanation ensued:

"I don't receive illusory things like money without feigning gratitude. I'd like to know my future or your future, which are actually interrelated if you believe in the poly aspects of life, but you probably don't. By the tone of your voice, and the insistent- almost authoritative manner you employ in your demands, I can perceive a despair so great in you that I suddenly feel a responsibility to separate the dishonesty of my selected profession."

Gravely disconcerted but committed to her tendency to emotionally repress herself during times of necessary protest, she said nothing in response. He continued:

"The problem is reason. All your problems are attributed to your patterns of thinking. I've lived the life of an insane man for convenience. I'm not crazy but I am a criminal. I have an aversion for language and social roles too, though I couldn't tell you which I'm inclined to gut first. Now, you're asking me about Happiness and you expect a good answer. I've no answers for Happiness. I can speak to you with approximations to the feeling. For example, if you work for the government and you believe that simplicity deserves primacy over bureaucracy, you'll be unhappy for the years left you have in that position. You have to feel good about where you are. As for the person you'll be with, she will have identical features to you-- everyone knows a person's unconscious motivation is to find who they really are through the exploration of another"

6

2010-11-04T18:09:00.000-07:00

The only advantageous hour of the day is the time I resist sleep. I formed this sinister defiance of the night some years ago when I believed (with enviable conviction) in the infinite production of human tears. The first nights were tactical disasters, as I had just acquainted myself with the beginnings of a permanent practice. I remember the first nights with solemn respect- the counting of real losses and historic misfortunes, most which I acquired through the fatal choice of social integration.

Definitely, I admit to assuming the ungovernable(baseless) tradition of youth that infects all of my vulnerable contemporaries- the idiotic fascination with others.

I am guilty of that,

And more

----

This is about a woman with cinematic beauty. I met her in a time of unknowable transition and I, debilitated by the decline of first-love splendor, could not recognize the wealth of her intensity. With wall-paper around my heart, I described her with trite, unjust adjectives to close friends, obstinately ignoring her unutterable depiction.

Despite the many unkind moments summoned by her absence, I make her exist through the masochistic act of association. The number of quotidian connections become inexplicably impairing in the mornings. I think of her carefully.

The concept of Never and the concept of Always are temporal fallacies.

After-all.

Postales

2010-10-19T01:13:00.000-07:00

Una mujer extraña habita mi boca
Una mujer que alguna vez te ha besado
que ha gritado / ha callado
y te ha dejado ir
a veces cuando ella descansa
el resto de mi cuerpo quisiera llamarte
pero es ella quien esconde tu nombre

el silencio me recorre incansablemente

-Pierre Castro

The video

2010-10-15T22:36:00.000-07:00

5

2010-10-15T19:44:00.000-07:00

Apparently, she is constantly on the verge of a nervous breakdown. To eliminate the risk of her (imminent) collapse, she stays emotionally inept.

"How unfair it is to live with nostalgia for the past."

"Are there seasons in hell?"

At the time, she was dating a famous photographer who was only with her because she overlooked his affairs. They fucked the first night they met. She was the perfect rendition of a dream.

Eventually, problems emerged when they began to feel less freedom, and although they loved each other the same way idiotic couples profess to love each other, she left him for a writer.

She was instantly enthralled. The writer dominated his craft. He captured her with words; unlike her previous deception, who she considered superficial and extraordinarily banal.

The problem with this one wasn't the absence of freedom. One morning, she awoke to find his body hanging from their ceiling fan. She thought his recurring works on alienation were largely fictive.

4

2010-10-14T01:20:00.000-07:00

This is the story of an old man I saw at a tavern five years ago. I was sitting with my mother when I made visual contact with him- his face, disfigured with grief. I had not known a grief so uncontainable.

In vain, my mother spoke with higher intonation, with more gestures to substitute such sight. She turned to my father, who immediately ordered another bottle of red wine. Next he ordered plates of cheese and various meats.

The old man sat in the corner to escape observance.

He blamed himself, especially his cowardice, for causing the pale color of his skin the night he considered suicide and then a real sickness overcame him the following morning and ever since, the concept of recovery existed only in abstractions.

"I love you," His wife would say, uncertain. " I love you because you're mine"

" If I wasn't yours, you would love another who proclaimed loyalty"

" I'd love you more if you weren't loyal, I'm sure of it" And she was.

His job, his wife, his children- required no reparations. His life, at 43, symbolized a flowing river in the middle of the desert. Ten years ago, he had been a happy man.

The night of the attempted suicide, he drove to the local market for vegetables and turkey. Once home, he grabbed the kitchen knife and began preparing what he believed would be his last meal. He liked cooking. The act pacified his feelings; his favorite recipes involved long hours.

"I will kill myself tonight because I haven't felt this brave before"

He had walked into the tavern with a secret determination: to defeat the imagined belief that his life could improve, that he hadn't missed a major turning point, that life was essentially and undeniably a process of survival.

Happiness is only real when shared, or so it is believed

2010-10-09T00:51:00.000-07:00

3

2010-10-08T00:00:00.000-07:00

"That's how some windows were wiped to perfection, through the use of newspapers." She said this with distinct naturalness, the type to create instant personal inadequacy. I am from a laughable generation, I know. We don't read and we're habitually late to appointments, school, dates, job interviews. I listened carefully to what she continued to say, "Ask your grandmother."

My grandmother is from another planetary universe if I think my mom's generation is frugal, obstinate and irritably outdated. Her mother was born in 1899(an epoch when witches could be casually spotted flying about nocturnal skies) I never met my great-grandmother although my mom, since the time I admitted to recognizing the importance of family unity, has taken the laborious responsibility to speak about her legacy with notable affection.

This is an extraordinarily effective way to transcend mortality: Hand-wash wool garments to feed five father-less children.

"Can you imagine what is like to wash monk's clothing with your hands? Have you ever felt the texture of these garments? And to survive with the money, the misery of payment they called 'money'?" Need-less-to-say, my mom's self-appointed responsibility to immortalize my great-grandmother are also demonstrations of the strength of women in the first half of the 20th century.

Would a husband's cruel abandonment lead a modern wife to kill herself? The answer, I'm afraid, isn't no. They would dive voluntarily into a mild depression(which they cure regularly via one-night stands, liquor, pills, shop therapy and binge eating) and emerge pathetically triumphant for brief moments every morning until a break from stubborn denial made them return to reality, crawling.

Several times a day, my mom knows everything

2010-10-06T23:02:00.000-07:00

She suggested for me to stop thinking about immortality, only I hadn't mentioned eternal life in any part of our conversation.

Mom: You're not doing yourself a favor with sophisticated thoughts.

Maria: All I said was that age, aging- is complicated to some people.

Maria: A false sense of self importance is constructed with the end of each dissatisfied year.

Maria: Will I be that way too?

Mom: Don't generalize.

Maria: I know people who fit the description.

Maria: They live fictional lives. They don't know how to self-ridicule.

Mom: Stop thinking about the immortality of the soul.

Mom: Who came first? Humans, Salamanders, Stars, God.

Maria: I'm serious. I don't want to believe in shit that stupid people believe in.

Mom: People are a combination of smart and stupid.

Maria: I'm talking about my friends.

"I'm at a Brazilian cafe. I'm watching music videos with beautiful women doing the salsa and it's making me miss South America"

2010-09-30T19:38:00.000-07:00

Part 2

From the bar, we took a cab back to our hostel, half-aware of tomorrow's decisive commitments. This is the night I learned to accept my vulnerability for the French. I don't remember the reason for leaving our room; perhaps we acquired the urgency sometime during dinner. We were in bed when the decision was reached: to introduce ourselves to others, to socialize. I put on jeans, a shirt and jacket.

The walk to the bar challenged all attempts for nocturnal reliability. I had not known the appearance of empty streets in Cusco. We continued walking and talking, sometimes simultaneously.

Twenty minutes passed with no sight of the main plaza or sight of the local grandeur, which at that point had become strict folklore( the lost, hungry dog inspecting garbage ushered convincing images of a new reality) I remember feeling vexed by my own sympathy for stray animals.

For the first time in life( though I can't be certain) these nights revealed to me a hidden freedom. I don't think either of us wanted to admit our unfortunate sense of direction. Was the enjoyment of each other's company sufficient to mitigate feelings of anxiety? I loved breathing the cold air of the night, which, thanks to the resilience of dim street lights, assumed a distinct nuclear color like that of recent evenings in Southern California.

Losing, again

2010-09-10T23:47:00.000-07:00

I am thoroughly opposed to thinking because untrained minds cause incomprehensible amounts of misery. I am also thoroughly opposed to perseverance as criteria for happiness. Admission is a murderous bitch. I don't want to live anticipating the day I awake in the cold cage of depression. Inside, a person is subject to ironic comfort.

What keeps me at a safe distance from completely disgraceful mornings-

Gustavo Cerati. His voice replaces the present with instant imagery and I can't thank his parents enough for fucking. Favorites: Tu Locura, Si Piensas Volver, Cosas Imposibles, Bocanada.

Denial, the best remedy for sad hearts.

More sleep.

Casa de Las Americas (Numero 56)

2010-09-10T15:08:00.000-07:00

"Ninguna cosa muere que en mi no viva"

Forgivable gluttony

2010-08-28T14:01:00.000-07:00

Postales

2010-08-28T10:37:00.001-07:00

Que no se te olvide esto: El primer mapa fue una carta de amor. Unos rayones indicando el camino a casa. Ahora es facil olvidar eso con tanto papel que hay que desdoblar aparatosamente sobre el capot del auto y esos pequenos simbolos con los que las sociedades cartograficas pretenden confundirnos. Pero recuerda esto: Atras de un mapa no hay mas que un deseo de encuentro. Frases simples como estas:
"No te pierdas"
"Vuelve a casa"
"Ven por mi"

- Pierre Castro

You know this will be all I think about for the next months.

2010-08-20T13:17:00.000-07:00

Part 1
The jar of Pisco Sour was a better idea than the four glasses we requested. I sat in peace, wiping tears from my face with one hand.

Ironically, the nine day excursion to the Andes had similar beginnings. The night before departure, I bawled in front of friends. It was something I previously promised to stop for the purpose of consideration. Then, I threw up liquid because alcohol had been my only consistent meal.

We arrived in Cusco the morning of August 9th. The one hour flight rendered an additional hour of sleep, totaling three at most. We must have looked especially tired for the guy at the Hostel to think his $700 per person tour package was a modest and tempting amount. That same morning, we slept like drunk and high babies.

The altitude became a problem immediately upon rising. So I walked to the nearest pharmacy for Soroche pills, leaving David behind in a prostrate position. On the way to the Hostel, I stopped at a cafe to have the best sandwich of my life( this same impression of divinity would repeat through out the trip)

Prudent travelers know the first days in Cusco are meant for sleeping. We don't necessarily exercise prudence. The second night, we were drinking again, believing we were made from steel.

Favorite drinks: Pisco Sours, Pilsen, Coca Sours, Cuba Libres, Pot.

"I don’t believe one should have experiences"

2010-07-26T09:08:00.001-07:00

Amores Lejanos

2010-07-24T10:49:00.000-07:00

Very well, I am pleased with my involvements this month despite the physical and mental detriment engendered by a single, powerful force, the mother evil, the tyrannical intruder: Allergies. This year, winter has successfully disrupted my happy, peaceful relationship with low temperatures.

The nights are especially sinister. I sleep with gloves, a scarf, two sweatshirts and four blankets, two which are alpaca creations.
The mornings improve, slowly.

For these reasons, and other stupid ones, I don't mind the destruction of this house. It's old and altogether inhospitable if the memories are counted. The other house in California is equally fucked, save the heater and a/c installations. Artificial warmth is indispensable, lasting infinitely longer than the uncertain warmth of a corporal embrace.
Example: Thursday night, I constructed my feelings around a moment of comfort. For a moment, my social self had disappeared with the presence of another person- my heart melted with genuine affection for them. Subsequently, I reflected in silence what I was experiencing, which was this: A tangible, healthy sample of the notoriously intricate constitution within happiness.

If the mind reconciled with the heart, or if the two declared an end to their impossible relationship, or if they did the right thing and withered away, I could sleep soundly later tonight, albeit drunk.

"I've already told you I find Bienenfeld rather like Poupette, in the sense that she endows what she loves with an abstract value, but has no real concern for it. I've often mentioned to you her bluntness when I spoke to her about Bost. That goes on. She'll never ask a question about my real feelings for Kos., or my relations with Sorokine, or what kind of state I'm in regarding your absence. She never for a single instant strives to know me, but takes me for granted- like a mathematical postulate- and builds her life upon that."

There is cruelty found specially in love, its precursors and aftermath; the initial curiosity, the considerations, the secret sufferings.

Why?

Essentials

2010-07-03T12:02:00.000-07:00

Adios USA

2010-07-01T14:59:00.000-07:00

2

2010-06-24T18:03:00.000-07:00

The first nights contained amatory samples of city life; the bottle of wine, the velvety linens, the intoxicated promises. Our anxieties were diffused through rapid codification. We cared very little if they multiplied in secrecy. In dreams, I survived a mismanaged assassination attempt, which willed spasms of self-doubt thereafter. She said security is not gained by the overt defiance of the self.

When we were apart, I imagined her in a throne presiding over non-terrestrial matters. I looked for subtle signs of agitation each time we reunited.

The encounters were constructed strategically, like war. We met at irregular times, we never dined at the same restaurant, and we welcomed with enthusiasm the refuge unleashed by darkness. In public, we performed the role of acquaintances, friends, and sometimes strangers.

Our power to ignite scandal transcended urban modalities. Her mother, the paragon of fear, held a disturbing semblance to the parental characteristics within my household. We were prepared to deny our truths at the first sign of psychoanalysis. We improvised lies like professional lawyers.

They didn't quite succeed

2010-06-21T14:45:00.000-07:00

1

2010-06-19T13:46:00.000-07:00

The sophistication aroused suspicion in the village. Her shoes had withstood the perils of high altitude terrain, snow and the loneliness of depopulated regions. Members of the village sought to project a spirit of indifference, contrary to their communal tendencies, with the hope that her presence would signify no great alteration to the daily cares of wives, husbands, and children. The tactic produced success for the first week.

What she didn't know she compensated with a smile. Those who approached her, the intrepid ones, decried the traditional ideology of elders, which instantly positioned them in the candidacy for favorites to-be. She congregated with mentalities that inspired rebellion. Together, they recounted stories, criticisms and untimely victories. She understood the discrepancy between age and experience.

My name is Elena Franco. When I was 6 or 7 years old, I wanted to be a meat butcher. My mother is a possessive woman. My father is a mystery. I go to school in the city and my classmates are neanderthals. What I prefer at the moment is to live unsupervised until tomorrow or the next day, if possible. My window is open, and I can hear poor attempts to modify noise into music. Close my window, I would like to be left alone.

I hated my aunt, which meant the love for my mother increased each time ugly parts of her personality emerged during revelatory moments. I never envied the world of adults. I only loved my mom. She was the justice of peace, my protector from evil, a conglomerate of pleasing qualities in one person.

It would be unfair to discredit her efforts at a decent hospitality. She's my only aunt, after all. But, truthfully speaking, I would have rather slept with the dog in the garage.

I left on my birthday because birthdays are permission for festive celebrations. But my vacation to the high plain horrified everyone. My aunt demanded family discretion over my mood swings, which I considered criminally manic. In retrospect, I internalized a lot of the grief I skipped from having to immediately experience. During the time I lived inside my aunt's precarious dungeon, I traveled incessantly.

I,

2010-06-18T23:55:00.000-07:00

I grew a brain. That's what I told my friend. The brain developed according to the space inside my head. I can't describe the process, only that it evolved to fulfill adequate capacity. To my benefit, I had to transform my house( my room) into a facility which I modeled after a visit to a rehabilitation clinic. The air I breathed for the first months nearly severed the connection between my pharynx and lungs. My shoes collected dust around their perimeter. The walls learned to emit a solitary chemical. The cat meowed significantly less.
Everybody knows a functioning brain is tantamount to an imbecile dictator. The way I know is because I am the owner of one. Sadistic, angry and powerful, the imbecile dictator will falsify reality, turn it upside down, in reverse and sideways to control human emotion and even the calibration of time.
Under a functioning brain, the subject is enclosed within the fixtures of chaos.

I have mistaken my life for the life of a sad cripple.
I need you.

Tonight

2010-06-15T20:38:00.000-07:00

I recoil at the impossibility of mental and emotional retribution. What I want: less internal demands. And longer bliss, bliss exempt from that breach, the habitual reminder- we are fatefully fucked, eventually fucked. How does one continue?

My body is warm. I feel:

A new distrust
In the phenology of life,
the unsolicited favor,
the stylish appendage.

It's Tuesday. Eighteen days remain.

Instants

2010-06-13T13:11:00.000-07:00

Money
The circulation of money has eluded me for a horrendous time. Traveling requires money, unabashed quantities of money. I have two months to win the lottery, find a treasure and kidnap a leprechaun. I'd rather be joking.

The Laptop
My cat is fundamentally opposed to technology, for conservative reasons. This little creature, with the possessive eyes, demands affectionate worship.

The Birthday
Today is my mom's 54th birthday. I delivered a cynical Happy Birthday. "Thank you", she responded. She's moody. Her daughter is imperfect.

The Feeling
A terrible, profound sensation of happiness.

The Quote
"You should never express more clearly than you can think"- Niels Bohr, Danish Physicist.

España

2010-06-12T11:41:00.000-07:00

Golondrina Viajera- Chavela Vargas

2010-06-10T16:28:00.000-07:00

Di por qué me has amado
si tan pronto te fuiste?;
dí por qué me quisiste.

No future

2010-06-09T22:43:00.000-07:00

To lose myself in empty space and never return. The idea is to tranquilize dread. The dread I feel in my present life. The need to abandon the people I know( or don't) for the arrival of new hours elsewhere. And then, when I begin to smile at faces, leave again, because nothing offered is eternal.

I could live on the periphery. Denounce theory and profundity; live a strict material life, exist in superficially relevant terms.

First

2010-06-08T14:34:00.000-07:00

The epithet Inclusus is the Latin participle for "imprisoned." That's what I understood from the ten minutes I volunteered to watch the History Channel. The opportune announcement, my exposure to cable's only illuminating provision arrived early in the year. I don't remember the program I am to ironically thank; each hour is saturated with americanized tailorings of history, incomplete reproductions, wild speculations and cunning subtleties employed by the network to arouse universal contempt against unamerican sentiment. I don't care for masticated history- autobiographies are sufficiently fictive( nation-states' are insidiously worse)

Today, my mom baked cookies. The cookies are unimpressive in appearance. My god, I wish she knew how to unify aesthetics with health food. Her cooking is purely organic. Her baking is organic. If she doesn't operate with the best products the times have to offer, our family dinners are unusually quiet. Today, we ate French Lentils with radish. I sat in relative contentment until my step-dad began to disparage his supervisors. My mom mispronounced "fish" with "fitch" and when asked about my studies, I was deprived from the little feelings which had successfully and temporarily elevated my mood. I don't like to embitter dinner with parasitic discussions.

Today, I read in El Comercio that Joran Van der Sloot confessed to mortally stabbing a woman he met at a casino in Lima. Her dead body was collected inside the hotel room they shared the night before he killed her. I imagine the minds of transnational killers to contain a higher degree of hatred for civilization. Homicides are deplorable. In contrast, suicides are socially intriguing. Two weeks ago, a depressed woman jumped off a university building. A friend from high school covered the story for the university's newspaper. Public demand for sensationally tragic stories is equal to satisfying the hunger of insatiable monsters.

Today, I don't mind existing on an occasional basis.

It has become apparent,

2010-05-31T21:27:00.000-07:00

I return to the past for traces of temporary comfort; moments in childhood or half-conscious memories. Sleep affords me a paradisal retreat to imagined cities, landscapes, people. Theories and academic concepts are dead. They are buried and often resuscitate for fastidious purposes. In real life, between living and breathing a horror is formed. The effects are circumvented, delayed, pushed aside. I hear it galloping, presenting itself again; shameless, loud, caustically defiant. My body stands in the center. I prepare for the opportunity to witness my own death. Should I rise again, triumphant in spite of myself, in spite of you, I will remain unconscious of power, I will be unorganized, deprived from the prospect of painless happiness.
I am too weak to resist the noise and disorder inside.
Are these called feelings?

Insignificant

2010-05-30T22:29:00.000-07:00

At the dangerous age of twenty-one, I have some things to consider- a career to prevent the costly treatment of emaciation, a resolution to my obsession with 90s culture, my cat's death, Beauvoir's "antiquated" politics, graceful friendships, ungraceful friendships, illness, orgasms, and precocious death. In the present time, I am living cynically detached to popular needs. My phone is unsophisticated- bulky, small, with damaged key pads. Shopping for clothes( shopping in general) puts me in an agitated and confused state. Money is an exasperating thing. On my birthday, I paid an unnecessary amount on a jacket and two shirts. The price for any material item is a financial embarrassment. Paying for entertainment is a different matter. Although, having to pay to remember a pleasant time is unfortunate. Another thing which causes exasperation is the uncertainty present in youth. I would like to know what happens after this year. And if love is really all one needs or if it's an invented necessity like taxation and god.

Moving on, again

2010-04-24T10:56:00.000-07:00

Some months ago, I felt the urgency to decipher the mystery which bounded my feelings in perpetual contradiction. The times I drove home from school, abiding by some arbitrary moral guideline explicitly negating moments of unjustified pleasure( as if joy required strict reasons) propelled long-lasting feelings of unreality, whereby I tormented myself continuously. In the embryonic stages, I imagined the future to exist in a far, unreachable place. I imagined, rather perturbed at the thoughts the mind can conjure without effort, that for every investigative advance toward unraveling this unreality, I would be punished twice with sorrow and regret. Then, in a moment of artificial clarity, I realized that I misunderstood my feelings and that I erroneously referenced "crisis" to describe the mornings, noons, and evenings I languished in an invisible death. And I learned that mysteries are irresolvable. Like childhood memories, jumping mischievously between reality and fantasy, absolute certainty is capricious behavior sculptured in fine stone.
Explanations, rivaled by prevalent contradictions, pause or end at the moment of indecision. I can see the light at the end of the fucked up barrel, it's visible. I've exhausted this thinking already. Human beings were designed for communal life. Yet, the feeling of alienation is pervasive. The graceless, superficial, relations formed through kinship are illusory, transient, and thus lamentable. Uneven fragments comprise a poor representation of life. The mind, having detected inconsistencies, becomes preoccupied, obsessed with resolutions. Time will mediate the process without regard of progress or regression. When I think of you, which is not often, since mistreating my mind is the disappearance of all happy thoughts for eternally long hours( and some thoughts never return to me, coherent) I massacre your memory.

The situation, my shared situation, is immensely perplexing, nothing else.

Reduced Service

2010-03-25T15:42:00.000-07:00

My professors are employed for the benefits of their profession. Under this assumption, I am involved in a mediocre system with mediocre teachings. We are fed recycled information which produce nothing beyond conventional thinking. Critical inquiry is ignored. On a typical day, a discussion will take place based on echoed rhetoric from previous discussions. Books are read in haste. Education is the optional burden.
In 2007, a month after graduating from high school, I began working for a restaurant in Claremont, Walters, and while I learned the many ways fancy restaurants deceive their customers, I left 6 months later, tired and disillusioned from other personal deceptions, the kind to reduce the spirit to an insignificant worth. Walters had taught me to hate ungainly work. One morning, I tended a man who claimed to be Gorbachev's cousin. Another time I was given the title 'perfect bread giver', which, on both occasions, made me hate the restaurant industry, dishonest men, and life another twelve degrees. The quality of work I produced in my final days of mental poverty verified suspicions from staff and managers alike that they needed to search for numbers in the dusty folder of employment applications. Think opening the tombstones of lost Egyptian pharaohs in the old kingdom. I left, bitter and full of stupid resentments.
Every day reality resembles a cheap version of the past.
Wild animals know what real freedom is.

Another

2010-03-22T21:33:00.000-07:00

streetphoto.es

Titles pressure the writer toward unfitting titles

2010-03-01T20:42:00.000-08:00

Little doubt exists in my mind about which country I prefer. The reality is that here I am less complete and less complete. There, I have the energy to believe that an interrupted path does not mean an unhappy destiny. When the time to fly to this country is approaching, that is, when I accept with cold mendacity that inevitable happenings gave birth to this little understood life, I close my eyes to pretend the darkness I see is the same darkness as the inside of a simulation game. Departures are ugly.
Here, I don’t see friends very much. We used to go out a lot when we didn’t have any other responsibilities. Some still don’t have responsibilities. When I say friends, I think of 2 immediate people. The rest emerge from the recent or distant past every once in a while. The person I’m closest to is my sister, and my mom when we are not arguing about stupidities. I don’t have inhibitions in what I tell her. The same is with my brother.
Four years ago, he was the first person to find out about me, “unintentionally”. And well, I told my sister thereafter. She said “you’re kidding right” My dad knows too. My mom told him because she wanted to share the parental misery. I don’t really know any other reasons. They hate each other. Actually, a friend of my dads said they don't hate each other because the love isn’t there. So I guess they just deplore the sight and sounds of each other. I’ve asked my mom why they can’t behave with some normality when we’re in the same room together and she said Latin American couples don’t usually stay friends after divorce. The whole thing can be comical when I’m in the mood for laughter.
Lately, we've been getting along so well that I'm already anticipating our next argument. I stay at home most week nights and weekends unlike those nights in Hollywood where heavy drinking presented actions as separate from consequence. Exposing my brain to non-infant behavior has really advanced the flow of neural blood and awarded neurotransmitters routes to paradise. I'm more accepting of my understanding of brain activity these days. I used to think that I was capable of discerning between the really stupid and semi-stupid.

Slightly less than responsive

2010-02-11T00:53:00.000-08:00

A tolerable day is established by morning. I welcome the sun only in intervals, past breakfast and definitely not before. If my mother leaves a bowl of organic oatmeal basking in low heat: I press a button twice, check for raisins, and walk in a circle before sitting down. Typically, I have a book to obliterate the dull sight of objects. Reading yesterday's newspaper is okay, too, but I don't read each article with seriousness.
When the temperature lowers, the heater responds with immediate protection. All doors and windows are naturally closed, it's winter and nobody likes discolored hands. Mute, immobile, dull- I identify with the same objects I sought to avoid. I read quietly. I emit a sigh in vain.
The possibility of imperceptible openings is annulled.
I anticipated your visit.
Now a shiny blade massages my interior; unclean wounds are long years of affliction.

Birth is the first act of injustice

2010-02-03T10:42:00.000-08:00

When the weight of the world breaks my neck- thinking is trying. The heaviness is slow,quiet, curious in attitude. A predatory snake. Resisting is useless.
I see the future as a passage too narrow for comfortable breathing. This morning, the day organized herself with decisions similar to the day before. I have lived this week in the same order. Animals look happier on television programs.
Routine is a daily conflict. What atrocious imprisonment. The idea of being a product of time and place disgusts me more than vomit on a sink of a crowded train.
People say to enjoy my age. Others laugh when I rest my head on the table: "the enthusiasm of youth." And lastly, I've heard the not at all cliche "live a little" during profoundly uninteresting moments.
I am in search for a manual of instruction.
At birth, life said: "Here, create yourself"
With insufficient tools and a primitive voice, I swallow my ambivalence through transitional periods.

Enigma. Pablo Neruda(Mindwalk)1990

2010-01-25T23:22:00.000-08:00

You've asked me what the lobster is weaving there with
his golden feet?
I reply, the ocean knows this.
You say, what is the ascidia waiting for in its transparent
bell? What is it waiting for?
I tell you it is waiting for time, like you.
You ask me whom the Macrocystis alga hugs in its arms?
Study, study it, at a certain hour, in a certain sea I know.
You question me about the wicked tusk of the narwhal,
and I reply by describing
how the sea unicorn with the harpoon in it dies.
You enquire about the kingfisher's feathers,
which tremble in the pure springs of the southern tides?
Or you've found in the cards a new question touching on
the crystal architecture
of the sea anemone, and you'll deal that to me now?
You want to understand the electric nature of the ocean
spines?
The armored stalactite that breaks as it walks?
The hook of the angler fish, the music stretched out
in the deep places like a thread in the water?

I want to tell you the ocean knows this, that life in its
jewel boxes
is endless as the sand, impossible to count, pure,
and among the blood-colored grapes time has made the
petal
hard and shiny, made the jellyfish full of light
and untied its knot, letting its musical threads fall
from a horn of plenty made of infinite mother-of-pearl.

I am nothing but the empty net which has gone on ahead
of human eyes, dead in those darknesses,
of fingers accustomed to the triangle, longitudes
on the timid globe of an orange.

I walked around as you do, investigating
the endless star,
and in my net, during the night, I woke up naked,
the only thing caught, a fish trapped inside the wind.

Tendencies

2010-01-15T23:59:00.000-08:00

Abandonment,
Discovery.

Prospect,
Doubt.

Distance,
Lament.

Certitude,
Fiction.

The aftertaste of uninvited memories.

2010-01-10T00:53:00.000-08:00

An encounter with the past- dormant sights, now exposed. I close my eyes. I clench my jaw. The moment arrives with dreadful punctuality.
Red-walled labyrinths in the Zoo. Inside, a man chasing after his son and daughter. The small girl begins to count again. She thinks the walls are made from Paper-Mache. After veinte, she runs to find her father, empty-handed.
Above, bystanders drink juice from coca-cola bottles while others kneel to lay their less desired bed sheets on scant grass. A little boy dances to the music in his head. In the distance, a young mother cannot distinguish the ground from the sky.

Point somewhere on the map

2010-01-09T23:19:00.000-08:00

It's okay to leave

1

2010-01-06T00:32:00.001-08:00

It is a new year. My goals don't involve a dream house or future affluence. I still live with my parents. No job. Just college papers. Realistically, economic independence at 20 means I pray in vain for a pathetic raise every night. That's if my room mates come to the conclusion that belligerent midnight discourse and vomiting in a bedroom other than your own is unethical. The best part of my day is waking up because I can almost guarantee to being alone. Unless my stepfather is home. In which case I am still considered alone. Playing hearts on the computer doesn't require conversation. When my mother is home, she's either on the phone or cooking. At night, she watches every show on medicine to satisfy her inner failed doctor. While my step-dad, now before a solitaire computer-screen, takes a deep breath as he attempts to prioritize between opening the door for the cat or switching over to spider solitaire. What am I doing? I'm in my room sleeping unless there is someplace I really need to be.
New Years Resolution: Feign enthusiasm for life.

Some place where I can rest

2009-12-30T14:39:00.000-08:00

Dec.27
Dec.29

I lived in the 60s. Put that in your pipe and smoke it.

2009-12-25T22:43:00.000-08:00

Merry Christmas.
Central Park, Pasadena
2009

Chosen imagery from the BBC archives

2009-12-23T23:43:00.000-08:00

"When things get too painful, we either avoid them or we laugh."

2009-12-23T23:11:00.001-08:00

In January, I embarked on what became a year-long commitment to the undesirable life of college essays and multiple choice questions. I say 'undesirable' to represent the population who view college as a gateway to nowhere. I want to remember the conversation I had with a friend recently, but the words exchanged have escaped my memory. Unfortunate, because I have the tendency to remember stupidity when I hear it. Something "western style of teaching" being "very western" and I don't know what else.

What I know is that many people would like to study in the United States. To trivialize the West for a 'very western' methodology is indicative of a poor level of culture. My response to fractured reasoning is silence. If I was a hippie slob, I would voice similar statements too; anything to resist mental employment.

From January to May, I learned that procrastination is another word to describe people with zero control over their lives. So, I procrastinated a healthy amount. I passed all of my classes except for Biology. On the day of the final, I parked behind the science building only to drive home minutes later; frustrated and defeated with my decision to fail the course before attempting to pass impassable exams.

In June, I left for my winter retreat in South America. What took place during the two-month stay would refine my perspective on matters of life and love. I am thankful for the opportunity to escape the dullness of the American life for moments in another reality.

Once I returned to the United States in late August, I lived like someone who had recovered from a near-fatal coma. I awoke with feelings of novelty every morning. These would persist through the day until night, when the excess of unregulated gains produced interior mutinies.

In October, reality conquered the sensation of plenitude. Slaughtered, murdered, robbed were any feelings containing joy. I sulked. I slept. Then, one day I put it all behind me, as if by resignation.

Next year, my expectations are to continue with college. As for love, its symptoms would be fantastic.

I think that I am coming to like my life, as sad and minuscule as it appears during the least favorable times.

2009-12-22T01:15:00.000-08:00

Tell me why the light burns

2009-12-21T22:07:00.000-08:00

And our world turns.

The day when you will love me

2009-12-20T22:55:00.000-08:00

The day when you will love me
All things will be harmonious.
So bright will be the dawn and
So bubbly the spring.
The quiet breeze will carry
The sound of gentle music,
And we will hear the fountains’
Crystalline voices sing.
The day when you will love me
The singing birds will sweeten
Their chords beyond belief,
Life will be full of flowers,
There will be no more grief.

The day when you will love me
The lovely roses clinging
To my old house will dress up
In all their festive hue.
The wind chimes will be ringing
To tell the world you’re mine now;
The fountains, madly singing
How I am loved by you.

Negative pleasure

2009-12-14T23:46:00.000-08:00

There is lead in my boots
My joints are a reddish brown
Elusive feelings follow me,
I know what happens next.

Taste becomes selective
I eat less
I am bones.

Voices speak
In different languages
I don't understand you
But I like your mouth when silent.

The world is upside down,
I look to my side
I'm alone.

The Melancholy of Distance: Mother of Grave Ills.

2009-12-14T09:50:00.000-08:00

A three-week reprieve from obligatory exams and papers. Fantastic. I have the time to write what due-dates prohibited.

Over the summer, I bought my mom a copy of Beauvoir's The Prime of Life thinking she wouldn't have time for anything else. Actually, I had my dad buy her the book(the very same evening I was scheduled to be at the airport) I remember this. It was my dad's birthday. In May, I had asked him to book my flight from June to August. As customary, we dined at a restaurant and upon consuming half a bottle of Queirolo wine on an empty stomach, my grandma, convinced of living a parallel life as Duchess of Richelieu, declared "A toast for you, Raul, the exemplary father." With suicide on my dad's birthday dinner out of the question, I sought comfort in my brother's eyes who instantaneously sought mine. I remember making every attempt to ignore the concentration of emotion in my throat. The waiter arrived with plates. I ate like a released-hostage.

Out of all places, my parents romantic originated at a grocery store. They were born the same year Che and Fidel instigated a coup in Cuba to overthrow Batista. My mother in June and my dad in August. The zodiac says Leos and Geminis are made for the other. In 1978, my sister would become the only witness to prove any science behind astrology. My grandparents did not attend the wedding.

To this day, my mother tells me early marriage is a mistake. That's fine. All things are defective.

They met at the age of 18. At the time, my mother was learning German. She wanted to move to Germany where she could practice medicine. I think, before Medicine, my mother's intention was to study Sociology. I don't know which came first. My dad's motivation for Diplomacy evaporated after he was rejected from a top school. Cronyism, he says. Ten years later, when my sister thought my brother's birth was 'the best day of her life', my parents graduated as lawyers.

The past does not exist. What remains is emotional residue. Emotions are self-incurred. I can say, for example, that the scarf I lost in La Cuidad Tapada ignited an obsession to safeguard my belongings. I was seven years old and I thought my life had ended. My mother, who sought to console the dispirited child wailing in the backseat of the Nissan, could had mistaken me for an orphan. My tears were not produced by the physical absence of the scarf, but rather, its irretrievability. This mass-produced, ordinary, frail source of sensation affected me.

2009-12-11T00:30:00.000-08:00

Yeah, I have developed an attraction for one of my teachers. The trite thing to say. "Crush" I saw him today by accident. Is it impossible to like someone my age? He's removed from convention. Unconcerned about clothes. Endlessly cultured. Polymath. He has the brain I wish all girls could inherit.
I don't care for Plato, but I'll use the term 'Platonic' because it's suiting. He was walking with one of his friends, or colleagues, as they like to be called. To my misfortune(and to the misfortune of all who risked the trouble of conversation) last minute studying had put me in a moribund state. He waved. I waved mechanically. He smiled. I smiled. When this happens, that is, when I'm at the mercy of immortals: speech is subdued. Thoughts, over-processed.
There is a scene in Tod Williams' The Door in the Floor(2004) where the character played by Kim Basinger- the pure and undiscovered essence of perfection, is approached by husband Jeff Bridges as she sits in her car with keys in the ignition. He knows she's leaving after a 20 year marriage, 2 deceased sons and a remaining young daughter whose birth was accidental. They look at each other for a long time. Neither say a word. She turns the key and drives off.
I don't imagine a reality in which this has the likelihood of occurrence.

Emotions dominate people.

Visitations

2009-11-29T20:05:00.000-08:00

In dreams, images and sounds are merged for the purpose of storytelling. Poignant dreams are designed to be forgotten by morning. The intensity of life upon day break disintegrates all things with little scruple. This doesn't happen out of habit. Emotional diatribes don't subsist alone, without help.
I let the hours pass with polite indifference. I don't hope to dispel the effects of it, or fix its countless metamorphoses.
My eyes open against my will.
I'm arrested by the usual feelings.

Avalon Hollywood, October 19, 2009 – Brazilian Girls

2009-11-20T10:32:00.000-08:00

Click for sounds

College

2009-11-17T17:15:00.000-08:00

Ideal is the separation from all. Parking lots, buildings, stairways, elevators, people. The walk to my first morning class after discovering cement amid multicolor car formations. The sight of faces resigned to obligation. A bi-racial couple fighting over hearsay. The older female late to her speech class, troubled by the inconvenience of buses. The cigarette bud on the floor, alone and divided. Entering a classroom concentrated with inert bodies. Teachers who encourage mediocrity because it's easier to grade, or the time Thomas Hobbes ruined my English essay. Two hours of disengagement honored by a ten minute break. The release of bodies to their next commute. Outside, one great migration. Stoic faces hiding under fancy cell phones. Capitalism's discreet captivity. Two males greet each other with surprise. In Iran, people are executed by hanging. They speak banalities, they only shared one class in Spring.

The great and filthy tide of life.

2009-11-08T20:57:00.000-08:00

For two weeks, I have to co-exist with academic disorder. Stress is prohibited.

Happy Thanksgiving.

Halloween, 2009, West Hollywood

2009-11-06T09:53:00.000-08:00

Halloween isn't a particularly attractive festivity.

W.Wordsworth

2009-11-05T00:39:00.000-08:00

What though the radiance
which was once so bright
Be now for ever taken from my sight,
Though nothing can bring back the hour
Of splendour in the grass,
of glory in the flower,
We will grieve not, rather find
Strength in what remains behind;
In the primal sympathy
Which having been must ever be;
In the soothing thoughts that spring
Out of human suffering;
In the faith that looks through death,
In years that bring the philosophic mind.

2009-10-27T14:39:00.001-07:00

Exposed

2009-10-25T15:44:00.001-07:00

I saw your face in a movie last night. At 30, you'll look just like the main actress. I'm pained by memories a stranger can provoke. Did I say too much? After all these years, I am learning that missing you is very tiring.
My days are more ordinary and quiet than you imagine. I've devoted myself wholly to the pursuit of knowledge. I will not tell you that I am entirely happy where I am. There are days where I can sleep forever. More on this later. But I am fine and I get by with small joys. Remember the things that bothered me? My heart is still sensitive to them. I am still affected by the impossibility of adaptation. As you know, I was home for the summer. I realize that I labeled my experience with unfitting words over the phone.
Summer here is winter there, as you also know. My dad worked through most of my stay, and invented excuses to be away with his secret girlfriend whenever she felt neglected. I spent time with my brother and his new family too. At some point, I came to wish they were my parents. My brother says this desire is very depressing, but I don't care because I am full of ambitions. One night, as you know, I met a girl who did nice things to my mind. Despite how I felt at the time, it would prove to be another temporary fascination. International loves are not any different.
Next year, I hope to speak with a little more enthusiasm. I am transfering schools and I'm going to be doing what is meant for me, which means moving to Paris after the completion of my major. You should know that I am exactly where I need to be. I have difficulty believing this from time to time, as I am sure you remember my unhealthy kinship with pessimism( and nihilism too, I won't get into this right now) On friday, I went to UCLA to see a cuban singer with my mom. She's back from seeing my sister in the east coast. It's so good to have her around. More than good, I have the most important person in my life beside me. I guess you could say we're sort of stuck together, in the plausible sense.
When I said I could sleep forever, I meant it. There are days when mental exhaustion manifests itself physically. Other days, I'm inescapably moody. And then there are those days when I am in love with everyone and everything, including insects.
Still, I can’t deny that I’ve felt alone for a very long time. I don’t know if I am waiting for someone or what. But I know that I have come to accept my solitary life. In essence, I have always known that life is solitary. You know, people rush from one place to the next, curse at traffic and all that. Yet, every night, we are alone with our thoughts.
I hope you have learned from all the pretty girls who have disappointed you. I never liked that you pushed our friendship to the margins every time you met someone you wanted; your repetitive history caused immunity.
I hope you've been fine overall.

2009-10-04T10:42:00.000-07:00

' Of course,' she said. ' I hope that there'll be something else in my life besides you.' She nestled against me. 'But later on--not now'
'No.' I said, 'not now.' I gently kissed her face. There were moments when I found her so charming that I would have liked to say to her without lying, ' I love you.' But how then? Her presence affected me, but when I was away from her, I never thought of her; I would have left her any day without regret. My tenderness, my esteem were far from being love. She closed her eyes under my kisses with a docile and rapt expression. Then she looked at me again and moistened her lips with her tongue,
'Listen,' she said.
'What is it?'
She hesitated.
'Later on. I'll try to detach myself from you, I promise. But that shouldn't stop us trying to have as deep feelings for each other as possible.'
I held her closely to me, her courage touched me deeply.
'Is it really worth while getting fonder of each other, if it's only to be provisional?'
'No matter,' she said, 'we're not going to spoil the present through fear of the future.'

She threw herself back and her hair fanned out on the pillow.

'Id like to be all yours,' she murmured.

Through the golden door, take the golden key

2009-09-25T14:32:00.000-07:00

If that's what's going on inside your head

2009-09-19T00:34:00.000-07:00

I think it's time to turn into a butterfly.

Happiness can come suddenly and leave just as quick

2009-09-18T11:00:00.000-07:00

Now I am in some better place

2009-09-15T00:02:00.000-07:00

The best way to approach a difficult situation is through ostrich-like indifference. What else can you do? She's unresponsive and sickenly deceiving. The most beautiful relations are condemned to end in tragedy. Encarcerated by caprice, we fit each other like lost puzzle pieces; sharing the same enthusiasm for words and expression. Letters, texts, offline messages, emails: ephemeral demonstrations of interest. When abruptly and in an almost diabolically casual manner, a disconnection enters the picture. You want what the other doesn't. The intensity of beginnings nullified by the often callous process of personal evolution. She's sent far into immediate oblivion. You prefer the eclipse of information. Nothing hurts when you don't know. Ignorance is fashionable. We are each other's favorite collection. Illogical, absurd, predictably vain.
After the time of separation, new habits are developed. You allow the plasticity of moments to reshape your life.

Still, her memory will re-surface when you thought she belonged in the past.

Promise me no promises

2009-09-14T21:10:00.000-07:00

If I don't meet a person who understands the art of conversation by the time I reach 25, I will deliberately crash into the center divider at 90 mph, or retire to a life of absolute social seclusion.

The purpose of conversation is to exchange ideas, thoughts, inquietudes. Put away your self-importance.

2009-09-14T13:47:00.000-07:00

"Every night, I expect to see the buildings move"

Caught the moonlight in my shoe with a tiger by my side

2009-09-11T11:21:00.000-07:00

Are you where you ought to be?

Defeat and Resurrection

2009-09-05T14:30:00.000-07:00

Driving to school on a god-forsaken, hot morning in devilish Southern California (mornings when the sun deliberately interferes with all brain activity connected to sound judgement) I heard a lucid soul on a radio show make the claim that "your past doesn't determine who you are." My immediate reaction, almost tourettely: "yesitdoes." But after throwing my inner stubborn out the window and on to the 57 South bound freeway in a miraculous act of self-determination; I agreed, decisively. Experienced through bad decisions, I believe in re-invention and sublimation, that's how I live my life. No regrets. My simple personal philosophy. But, should the past matter if it's not a determinant of one's identity? The answer, my answer, is contradictory and confusing like most fucked up, or rather "instructive", if you like euphemisms, lessons in life. The past is an ever-lasting diary. You share parts of your past with others. This way, even if you forget about the horrible person you once were, someone will google you, travel to your navajo white colored mansion in western europe and kindly remind you, 15 years later. What I mean is, the present is more important than any past, because the future depends on it.

Harri Peccinotti

2009-09-02T10:45:00.000-07:00

How to overlook your stepdad's lunacy.

2009-09-01T21:21:00.000-07:00

If his moderately sound appearance hides the dark truth of a psychological deficiency: This is for you. First and foremost, do what your sensitive heart tells you: Ignore him. Silence is an extraordinarily effective solution. This takes practice. The first attempts for perfect silence might even fail. Be prepared to repress some of those exciting life traumas, too. Save them for when you are older and socially inept. Don't feel bad if you start to hate him in secrecy either. I repeat, silence is of the essence. So when you hope for a placid evening at home after a long, hot day at school and find your needy self suddenly ambushed by a white male displaying a marvelous talent for speaking in tongues: Let him. If you don't follow my advice, he will kill you. Granted he is nice to your mother and friendly toward your friends, he will kill you. In simpler terms, he is the average middle aged man with undiagnosed mental disorders.
Once you have perfected the skill of silence, buy yourself a time machine on sale for traveling to the near, parentless future.

Back to the present time

2009-08-27T17:04:00.000-07:00

Perversely, the start of Fall semester in my college is in the brutal heat of Summer. I prefer breathing the polluted air in developing countries to no air at all. Home visits leave me disconcerted. Pictures since my departure.

Maybe i'm a little old-fashioned, maybe you're a little unkind
Maybe i'm a little impatient, we'll concede that in mind
You won't give me your number, you won't give me your time
You said meet me on the corner, and there's still no sign
Maybe i'm a little outdated, maybe a little out of time
To believe your heart is in the right place despite what you're doing to mine.

Real life in the old side of town.

2009-08-12T22:22:00.000-07:00

The visual kindness of strangers.

2009-08-09T01:32:00.000-07:00

YES!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

The forgotten dialect of the heart.

2009-08-07T16:36:00.000-07:00

How astonishing it is that language can almost mean, and frightening that it does not quite. Love, we say, God, we say, Rome and Michiko, we write, and the words get it all wrong. We say bread and it means according to which nation. French has no word for home, and we have no word for strict pleasure.
A people in northern India is dying out because their ancient tongue has no words for endearment. I dream of lost vocabularies that might express some of what we no longer can.
Maybe the Etruscan texts would finally explain why the couples on their tombs are smiling.
And maybe not.
When the thousands of mysterious Sumerian tablets were translated, they seemed to be business records. But what if they are poems or psalms?
My joy is the same as twelve Ethiopian goats standing silent in the morning light. O Lord, thou art slabs of salt and ingots of copper, as grand as ripe barley lithe under the wind's labor.
Her breasts are six white oxen loaded with bolts of long-fibered Egyptian cotton.
My love is a hundred pitchers of honey.
Shiploads of thuya are what my body wants to say to your body.
Giraffes are this desire in the dark.
Perhaps the spiral Minoan script is not laguage but a map.
What we feel most has no name but amber, archers, cinnamon, horses, and birds.

Yes please

2009-07-19T16:51:00.000-07:00

If you see a hot bartender by the name of Carla wearing a shirt with the word GIRLS on it: please talk to her.

Surprising how organized I keep my vices when drunk.

Someone else's skin

2009-06-23T23:52:00.000-07:00

The shake sends you struggling for safety. Poignant moments have graciously caught you unprepared. But you know it's part of what happens. So you accept it. Almost immediately thereafter, you despair into an absurd belief in telepathy; incomprehensible even to you. Anything necessary for comfort. Deep down, you know actions are easily justified. Despite predictable outcomes, you do them anyway. You enjoy them anyway. Isn't it wonderful? It's what happens. You loved her with all your brain. Nothing else to say. You can write short stories about her hair in the mornings or dedicate poetic pieces she'll never read. You can even retrace the most significant memories from the start until seconds before you question the actual validity of events. A darkness seizes you. You remember writing "Kiss Me", but you'd rather forget.

Eriques

2009-06-22T01:00:00.000-07:00

There is light or more light, darkness and less darkness.

2009-06-21T01:13:00.000-07:00

It's great. Life, you know. Experiences. Some pleasant, others not. All in the mind. Choose what's good and wish well.

Theophile Gautier

2009-06-11T21:46:00.000-07:00

Well, well, I will transform your dreams into realities; I will inundate you with glories, splendors, and lightings; I will take you from your nothingness and make you the equal of a goddess. Then I will plunge you into nothingness again. I will kill you to-morrow instead of to-day. Rise, give me your arm that we may return to the palace. Live to love me still.

The sky stays dark all day, the wind is from the west and won't stop blowing.

2009-06-10T00:56:00.000-07:00

"We are not interested in hiding our sexual preference"

2009-06-07T21:00:00.000-07:00

Last year, a district in Bogota, Colombia elected an openly lesbian mayor. How come I was never briefed?

This is too good.

We bite and scratch and scream all night

2009-06-03T21:49:00.000-07:00

We're so wonderfully wonderfully wonderfully
Wonderfully pretty
Oh you know that I'd do anything for you
We should have each other to tea huh?
We should have each other with cream
Then curl up by the fire
And sleep for awhile
It's the grooviest thing
It's the perfect dream.

2009-06-02T19:43:00.000-07:00

Because he produced art in the 60s and 70s, I'm inclined to favor him over his son, Terry Richardson. Plus, he was crazy and homeless at some point.

'You can't be afraid to suffer. If you're afraid to suffer, you'll never be an artist. Editors used to say "Bob, why are you so difficult?" And I'd say "Listen, I'm not just a photographer -you don't understand -I'm an artist who happens to use a camera. You're not dealing with me right, you're talking to me like I'm some photographer. I don't know how to do what you're asking me to do. I only know how to do what I do. You're making me feel stupid and I'd appreciate if you wouldn't do that." - Bob Richardson in Big #14, 1996.

Satan's only two known daughters: Rejection and Abandonment.

2009-05-31T13:47:00.000-07:00

I can live through moments until a sour taste in my mouth reminds me that you are still alive. It's a condition you don't understand because time obviously delivered its promise in rewarding you with benefits. I don't know why I have been assigned this life or why you ever entered mine. All I know is entrapment. I thought my highs and lows were sufficient punishment for something unclear, but being inside a well is much worse. Is happiness a prize? Ideally, I would like a break from what seems like an interminably long period of mental deterioration. Your delight in the pleasures of vicarious pain is obvious. Everything hurts.
Yesterday, I fell asleep in the bathtub, for the second time. If anything is worth mentioning, I awoke with the fictious feeling of normalcy. That is, the short duration before a tidal wave of human longing returns me to low depths. My familiar depths. Usually, I lie awake for a long time, inspecting the ceiling for small openings or conflicting patterns. Anything to pass the time. More effective is the use of sleep to put away the self. I don't know where people find the facility to continue despite persisting ills. Maybe life is defined by the quantity of successfully replaced experiences. In my 20 years, the pathetic fallacy of inner peace is evident. A scarcity of air makes my skin turn blue.
I am a slave to you.

But I deserve another.

Spring Session finale

2009-05-25T20:22:00.000-07:00

Presently I know nothing else than exceling in what's left of the semester. Academia has come barging into my life with unsolicited force. I like thinking about the future. Thanks for everything you did on my birthday, and for changing the chemistry inside my brain; there's a subtle authority in the number 20.

2009-05-13T22:25:00.000-07:00

Upon the soul-snatching incident(obviously orchestrated by ancient murderous demons), I phoned my dad for guidance. Surely, the guy overflows with insight, I thought. An hour into the conversation, I had forgotten the matter of inner conflict, entirely. Sometimes, he really does pull through with his familial title.

Calendar
May 16th, 17th 2009 LBC PRIDE @ Long Beach
May 24th 2009 my 20 years of life @ Undecided
June 11th 2009 Spring Session ends @ The inside of a bottle
June 12th, 13th, 14th 2009 LA Pride @ West Hollywood
June27th- August 23rd 2009 South America @ Lima
August 24th 2009 Fall Session begins @ Sac

Implied is the universal agreement that my birthday is the most important date listed. The vocal combination of my name with the number 20 is an ineffable(though less known)historical incantation of the gods. Soon, I will be known as a 20 year old life survivor. It's really cool. Specially if I can keep the mischief to a moderate level for another 30 years. I read somewhere that youth is worse than menopause. Actually, that's what my mom said after I told her she had the brain of a rooster. At any rate, I'm receiving my birthday in relatively good spirits. Note, a humble "relatively" is key for preventing a synchronized dive back to dear, sweet hell.

2009-05-07T21:46:00.000-07:00

Universal thanks

2009-04-28T23:13:00.000-07:00

1. Thanks to the newly appointed security guard on duty to patrol the jack-the-ripper-is-here corner every night behind the montclair borders.
2. Thanks to suffering souls in political theory class for their vicarious sacrifice.
3. Thanks to my car for it's strict non-clutter policy.
4. Thanks to all the bitches and sweethearts in the world for unknowingly enriching my life with instruction.
5. Thanks to my mom, because everything would be easy without her.
6. Thanks to friends for sharing alternate perspectives.
7. Thanks to all of my sister's contemporaries who drank pisco sour to Calo's "Formas de Amor"
8. Thanks to all the latin american lovers who lived during the latin pop music frenzy of the 90s for leaving a legacy to envy.
9. Thanks to the neural possibility of positive self-talk.
10. Thanks to Pilot's Dr.Grip for comfortable writing.
11. Thanks to verizon's preemptive(live operator) notice to pay my bill before I'm entrapped in a cataclysmic disconnection from the human family.
12. Thanks to organic food for it's unusual attraction to the interior of my refrigerator.
13. Thanks to beautiful women.

No, we haven't met. You've never seen me.

2009-04-20T23:40:00.000-07:00

Failure to find common ground has led me to believe that my pursuit is purely idealistic. I focus on the exterior world to diffuse the craving inside. But despite the effort to keep away from the suffocating instropection that's had a notoriously merciless history of eating me alive, the same question emerges: How long before the next uncomfortable sense of deja vu?