THE MIGRATION OF RARE BIRDS

cult of memory # 100 (and something):

2012-02-01T03:12:00.001-08:00

tell me the long scar on your face really belongs to you,
too rough to lay on your sweet sixteen skin,
a fibrous bridge
trailing down to the sleeve
of that blue t-shirt of yours
printed with the name of some punk band,
its ink bloated by the wash
i rub the letters
to dig my fingers into your chest--

don't you know what i feel about
you, who
makes piles of newspaper
in the corner of the school coffee shop,
to hide from the undergraduate girls
who move closer and closer
in-between your legs
spreading your hips,
to suck on you
like a wad of that newspaper--
oakland is falling, north korea is coming,
something is happening with sarkozy-
yet you
with all that hair sulking in front of your face,
how could you care about anything really at all--
how could you care about me?

oh really it's nothing, the skin
to skin contact, our mouths that night
collapsed upon each other
and i continue to collapse over
the hands, self indulgent for that hour--
don't worry it won't be
remembered for too long--
but if you could give me a chance
perhaps we can start over
and collapse and collapse again.

excerpts:

2012-01-30T02:49:00.000-08:00

My First Solo Show:

2012-01-17T22:12:00.000-08:00

I decided to name the show after this blog. It is, after all, the inspiration that led me to this project. :)

What started as a blog project turned into a weekend ritual with a camera: walking to the Vermont/Sunset rail station, taking the train toward Union Station, and then traveling on foot for miles through Downtown Los Angeles and its surrounding neighborhoods. The result of these ventures is a collection of encounters, thoughts, exchanges, and the anxiety about photographing Los Angeles.

The Migration of Rare Birds is a street history of Los Angeles people amidst the age of surveillance and xenophobia happening throughout the country; it is a questioning of the ethics and intentions of being a street photographer in Los Angeles; it is a documentary of movement to and from, of being stopped and stopping oneself, and then moving onward.

.

40 years? 50? and then?:

2012-01-09T14:32:00.000-08:00

.

from usc's public archives.

.

time & money in baja california:

2012-01-08T15:12:00.000-08:00

morir:

2012-01-05T12:15:00.000-08:00

mojave desert:

evergreen cemetery in boyle heights:

more information about mass graves in LA: http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/lanow/2011/12/hundreds-to-be-buried-in-mass-grave.html

(2008 is the burial of 3 years worth of human remains.)

.

merry christmas!:

2011-12-25T16:40:00.000-08:00

because judy garland is beautiful & amazing.

the christmas song of my childhood.

and my favorite christmas cover.

.

the mundane, #7 & #8:

2011-12-24T16:35:00.001-08:00

I think I'll be calling this series "The Cult of Memory".

.

The old man with one leg
wanders through the parking lot.
He drags his prosthetic in a march--
what was a familiar pace
is now performed by an unfamiliar body.

His strange muscles move him
back and forth from each end
of the complex parking lot.

Late at night, I often see his wife
attempt to help him with his stride.
He shakes her off with a grunt
and her tired, sad eyes follow him--
what was love for a familiar you
is now directed at an unfamiliar him.

But once, during summertime,
he was walking with his wife around the pool
and looped his arm around hers.
They walked in circles for a long time,
til the moon was above the water,
casting down a bright eye
that softened as they strolled.

.

I am writing about my neighbors
who are mostly retired and elderly,
because of their relentless desire
to hold onto each and every memory
what can be recalled and treasured
in the space of their small
1-bedroom apartments.
This strange dislocation between
memory and the present
is starting to happen to me
as I cannot let go of
what I can remember,
these memories of you & me.

.

I Love B-movies & Obscure Films:

2011-12-24T14:23:00.000-08:00

In-between looking for jobs and enjoying Christmas vacation, my love for strange movies has been rekindled. Here are some recent gems (a few trailers & some full length movies):

I love car culture movies, especially when they're set in the kingdom of all freeways, Los Angeles! (Full length movie)

Holiday movies kinda scare me. This one takes the cake with its bizarre costumes and hokey acting. Haven't finished this one yet, but here is a better quality link: http://www.archive.org/details/SantaClausConquerstheMartians1964 (Full length movie)

"Don't talk to me like that. I'm still your mother!" Amazing. (Trailer)

So bad it's sexy. (Trailer)

Another gem set in Venice Beach, CA. (Full length)

The music makes this a worthy watch. (Full length)

And last but not least...

Turkish superman. No words on how awesome this movie is. (Full length)

Grab some popcorn and a beer, cuz shit is gonna get crazy!

.

selections from coyote territory:

2011-12-22T22:07:00.000-08:00

the colors are off in this preview. i had a weird issue with the color profiles of a printing service i was using. turns out, the profiles i was instructed to download weren't calibrated and effed a bunch of my prints. but! the final versions on display at my class show turned out pretty awesome (44x30 matte inkjet prints). expect the final images on my website sometime in january!

i also made a giant faux fur coyote rug in the shape of california (about 100 inches long, 80 inches wide) and some mini pamphlets full of the stories i collected from the internet. here are some excerpts:

.

the reason why i chose coyote is the play on words. yes, we have coyote the animal (also coyote the trickster from mythology) and we have coyote, the name for individuals who take advantage of immigrants trying to cross the US-Mexico border. i was inspired by this ridiculous map i found on the los angeles/california wildlife and game website. it was an entire map of california that tracked coyote territory, except the entire map was filled in (basically, all of california is coyote territory... what a useless map, right?). california is indeed coyote territory, a homeland we constantly encroach on by building suburbs in wildlife areas. this too symbolizes the historic relationship we have with mexico: this land was originally mexican (originally native), but we took over. now immigrants who want to come here for a better life will even put their lives in danger to be here. those who do come here are the backbone of l.a.; the foundation of the hollywood landscape.

coyote is a native yet seen as a pest; coyote is borderless and yet caught up in borders.

.

pierre the pink balloon & i:

2011-12-11T22:31:00.001-08:00

pierre is still alive. though he's starting to sag a bit.

we are sad because we've been living in my studio for the past 5 days. one day these projects will be done... even though they were due today!

.

it all started with a clown:

2011-12-06T18:35:00.000-08:00

i was struggling with creativity downtown when all of a sudden, a clown showed up and made a doggie balloon for me.

i loved the balloon so much, i took it with me on my adventure.

others became interested watching me take pictures of my balloon animal (i looked pretty silly photographing it on broadway). some wanted to help me with my quest... to play with the pink balloon.

the pink balloon is in my studio at school. he is slowly deflating but still has shape. i'll update tomorrow on his condition.

.

A proposal:

2011-12-05T17:53:00.000-08:00

While sharing art in the community is largely important in my work, another artistic goal of mine is to examine the importance of photography and memoir in our culture. Love & the Photograph is a series of scholarship essays, poems, image-text artwork, and memoir anecdotes. These works are inspired by the joys and tragedies that a photographic memento can encompass: a Polaroid of my friend who committed suicide; an exuberant portrait of my father and I, before he passed away from cancer; a significant romantic relationship and the breakup that happened over the Internet; and a found vintage photograph of a man and a woman, the latter whose face has been cut out. In this work, I analyze how photographic mementos have come to function in human society—a keepsake that embodies memory, intimacy, and the remnants of our own mortality. I also confront how the photographic memento changes with the introduction of digital photography and social networks—whether digital mementos hold the same aura and emotional momentum as its analog predecessors.

.

To be posted on the blog soon!

.

california, you are my home:

2011-12-03T12:22:00.000-08:00

my little brother!

.

the mundane, #5 & #6:

2011-11-28T22:38:00.000-08:00

5.

The war bride next door complains
that my apartment lacks
the godly knick-knacks
that could help me
get through the hell of living.

I've got a bad air.

Last week, she invited me to
her apartment-blessing.
A fat catholic priest hummed
prayers at her kitchen counter
and for $300,
he spread incense over her bed.

The priest offered to bless me for the same price.
I decided to air out my apartment instead.

The war bride had worked as a dancer near
an American navy base in the Philippines.
A man eventually carried her away
to this apartment complex in Los Angeles.

It was what it was:
He gambled away their romance
on horse races
and drank heavily.

For years, she waited for him to die
and finally he did.

On her dresser,
there are no pictures of her husband,
only figurines of saints
clustered together like dull fruits.

She had to get rid of the bad air.

Today, the war bride comes over
and talks of celebrating Ash Wednesday.
I should have made palm crosses--
Hers are made of blessed dollar bills.

6.

Sleeping with other men who are not you
reminds me of the time when I broke
the sanctuary lamp at church.

Ten years old,
I had learned in school that day
the essence of God was
to forever be held there
in the form of a flame.

I snuck into the empty church
and threw a rock as hard as I could--
the lamp burst,
spilling the waxy entrails
of the Lord onto the floor.

I felt no remorse.
I had broken
Adam’s maker.

.

the mundane, #3 & #4:

2011-11-26T22:29:00.000-08:00

my landlady is old as hell,
hell being the armenian genocide
that caused her parents to send her
to greece without them.
she told me she never saw her family again,
clutching my arm tightly while she
handed me my lease.

her apartment living room is surrounded by
daguerreotypes of dead relatives.
she has replaced their old casings
with brightly colored plastic frames.
i gawk at the pictures
sitting up in their new frames
as if lifted from chromatic coffins.

inside her bathroom
there is another wake:
above the toilet is
a portrait of a grey infant
with droopy eyes painted blue,
dye that has since dripped down
what were once cheeks,
what were once lips.
i am afraid to touch the picture,
to bruise the child,
his skin a decaying emulsion.

my landlady surprises me
every time i encounter her
she holds me so close,
a stranger-daughter,
and she kisses me,
like she has thought about me
for so long,
and she tells me she loves me,
a promise of love that will outlive herself.

.

let my single word to you transmit
through the blood stream i enter
with my teeth at your lip.

let my single word be packed up
with your clean shirts and pants,
when you leave my apartment for good.

and if you won’t take it,
toss my single word
into the swimming pool of my complex;
the guttural sound to drown itself.

Waltz #2:

2011-11-26T16:52:00.001-08:00

"The degree of slowness is directly proportional to the intensity of memory; the degree of speed is directly proportional to the intensity of forgetting."

-Milan Kundera

"Photography is privileged within modern culture because, unlike other systems of representation, the camera does more than just see the world; it is also touched by the world. Light bounces off an object or a body and into the camera, activating a light-sensitive emulsion and creating an image. Photographs are therefore designated as indexical signs, images produced as a consequence of being directly affected by the objects to which they refer. It is as if those objects reached out and impressed themselves on the surface of a photograph, leaving their visual imprint, as faithful to the contour of the original object as a death mask is to the deceased. Photographs can thus claim to be a kind of chemical fingerprint. It is surely this combination of the haptic and the visual, this entanglement of touch and sight, that makes photography so compelling a medium. Compelling, and strangely paradoxical. For as Barthes has suggested, 'touch is the most demystifying of all senses, unlike sight, which is the most magical.'"

-Geoffrey Batchen, Forget Me Not

spooky:

2011-11-21T21:30:00.000-08:00

Current & upcoming shows:

2011-11-14T20:17:00.000-08:00

Showing this week:

Femme For All; Rum Gallery, California Institute of the Arts
Reception 11/24 @ 7pm

Upcoming:

Visualities of the Alterglobal; Main Gallery, California Institute of the Arts
From Dec 11-16; Reception 12/15 @ 7pm

Wilderness & The Garden; D301, California Institute of the Arts
From Dec 11-16; Reception 12/15 @ 7pm

Americanos (solo show); Mint Gallery, California Institute of the Arts
From Jan 23-27; Reception 1/26/12 @ 7pm

.

Bronchitis can't stop me now!

Coyote Art Project - Got stories?

2011-11-11T09:14:00.000-08:00

Hey blog readers! Could ya help me out for a sec?

I'm doing an art project about Griffith Park coyotes and their tendency to stalk the surrounding city areas. I'm looking specifically for encounters/stories about coyotes in Griffith Park, Los Feliz, Silverlake, Hollywood, Glendale and other nearby areas. Other areas in the L.A. city center are okay too.

The link to submit stories: http://www.surveymonkey.com/s/8P3D223

Many thanks!

selections from death valley:

2011-11-08T19:44:00.001-08:00

went camping for the first time in my life. more pictures to come!

zabriskie point

shoshone

the desert has this amazing, mysterious culture. i can't wait to photograph it after my l.a. projects.

.

it's raining in l.a.:

2011-11-04T19:05:00.000-07:00

mayor villaraigosa told protestors they can't stay forever on the city hall lawn. he boarded up the fountain to "protect" city property.

.

the mundane:

2011-10-31T22:49:00.001-07:00

midnight, i'm lonely.
i take out the trash and
glance through my neighbors' windows--
on the first floor there is an elderly woman
whose front apartment is completely encased in mirrors:
the walls, overhead lamps, a dining room table
are all submerged in a sea of glass.
whenever i pass by, i try to catch my own reflection,
my face intrudes upon a panel or two,
like an accidental stranger in a family photograph.

tonight, i see the old woman look at herself,
a tiny face spread out into a thousand impressions.
her images stare at themselves,
desperately trying to account for each version.
overcrowded inside, my image remains with me this time,
unable to join hers.

.

working on my first solo show:

2011-10-31T03:27:00.001-07:00

slowly but surely.

.

the cult of memory:

2011-10-28T12:48:00.001-07:00

i don't want it, you say
in the dining room, we sit and drink coffee
having trouble piecing together
the assemblages of night and day
spent in my apartment.

you say it again,
my nerves recoil.

i want to tell you
you can't have your coffee here
because it's not fair game.
i'm receiving all your words
no language of mine could counter.

i don't want it anymore.

it is tinted with resentment
a cloudy stare of a dead fish,
it is magdalena
going door to door
looking for another savior.

the rest of your language,
it empties itself onto me
leaking down the stairwell.

for the last time
i let you put yourself into me,
all that is left is
a dry heave.

.

i've been busy:

2011-10-27T00:48:00.001-07:00

wait until you see my studio at school :)

.

praxis:

2011-10-19T00:51:00.000-07:00

he made me an awesome t-shirt!

as long as i live:

2011-10-18T23:25:00.001-07:00

studying translation:

2011-10-18T13:20:00.000-07:00

Nocturne: Nothing Is Heard
by Xavier Villaurrutia

En medio de un silencio desierto como la calle antes del crimen
sin respirar siquiera para que nada turbe mi muerte
en esta soledad sin paredes
al tiempo que huyeron los ángulos
en la tumba del lecho dejo mi estatua sin sangre
para salir en un momento tan lento
en un interminable descenso
sin brazos que tender
sin dedos para alcanzar la escala que cae de un piano invisible
sin más que una mirada y una voz
que no recuerdan haber salido de ojos y labios
¿qué son labios? ¿qué son miradas que son labios?
Y mi voz ya no es mía
dentro del agua que no moja
dentro del aire de vidrio
dentro del fuego lívido que corta como el grito
Y en el juego angustioso de un espejo frente a otro
cae mi voz
y mi voz que madura
y mi voz quemadura
y mi bosque madura
y mi voz quema dura
como el hielo de vidrio
como el grito de hielo
aquí en el caracol de la oreja
el latido de un mar en el que no sé nada
en el que no se nada
porque he dejado pies y brazos en la orilla
siento caer fuera de mí la red de mis nervios
mas huye todo como el pez que se da cuenta
hasta ciento en el pulso de mis sienes
muda telegrafía a la que nadie responde
porque el sueño y la muerte nada tienen ya que decirse.

/

In the middle of a silence deserted as a street before a crime
not even breathing so that nothing will disturb my dying
in this loneliness with no walls
at this hour when angles are escaping
I leave my bloodless statue in the tomb of my bed
and go off in the slow-moving moment
in the interminable descent
with no arms to stretch out
with no fingers to reach the scale falling from an invisible piano
with nothing more than a glance and a voice
that can’t remember having left their eyes and lips
what are lips? What are glances that are lips?
and my voice is no longer my voice
within this unwetting water
within this plate glass air
within this purple fire that slashes like a scream
In the miserable game of mirror to mirror
my voice is falling
and my voice incinerates
and my voice in sin narrates
and my voice in sin elates
and my poison scintillates
like plate glass ice
like the screams of ice
here in the shell of my ear
the pounding of a sea where I get nothing
wet nothing
for I’ve left my arms and feet on shore
and I feel the net of my nerves being cast outside me
and everything escapes like a calculating fish
counting to a hundred in the pulse in my temples
a dead telegraph no one is answering
for sleep and death have nothing more to say.

Translated by Eliot Weinberger

occupy this!

2011-10-13T01:03:00.000-07:00

being the shy person that i am, i challenged myself the other day. to talk to these brave people who are camping out at city hall, not afraid to get ticketed. granted, the mayor of l.a. is supporting them so far-- but how long will they stay until the city of l.a. gets upset about having their front lawn "dirtied" by upset citizens?

to be alone:

2011-08-12T20:54:00.001-07:00

looks just like the sun:

2011-08-04T23:39:00.000-07:00

all this time spent wondering:

2011-08-04T02:03:00.000-07:00

i've been thinking:

2011-07-31T20:44:00.001-07:00

summer mixtape:

2011-07-31T12:29:00.000-07:00

because summer is the time to fall in love with everything:

and for you to spend the time indoors if it gets too hot:

The Gardener:

2011-07-28T22:55:00.000-07:00

decided to keep working with the Secret Garden text. i am writing a new story for this chapter.

.

THE GARDENER

INSTRUCTIONS:

1. take
a common moor boy,
a wuthering boy

2. tenderly rip
neat packages with teeth;
a pull apart dream

3. begin to make heaps
of earth

4. lay down
the green gauze veil;
flood with springtime light;
add the waters of some
lovely bottomless lake

5. wait for flowers
to bloom
and hang
and cluster
around the freeway overpass.

.

WEEKLY REPORT - WEEK 1:

the Someone had been crying in
the room

the Someone had known too much
about the pitifulness of people
ill and nervous

Someone, who seemed to sleep
for a hundred years
solemnly enraptured
upon a mattress on the floor

when the Someone speaks,
the voice shakes as if there's no one left--
so soft and eager and coaxing,
his mother
the snake charmer,
lulls him to bed:

"the lord knows
you are my ghost
made into a boy."

.

WEEKLY REPORT - WEEK 2

the wuthering boy
wandered out into the garden
to watch the
bright-breasted birds
wearing colors of the
indian mothers
who light up the neighborhoods
like a burning desert sun.

.

WEEKLY REPORT - WEEK 3

the object of his affection
became one small bloom
despite its lackluster frame;
surrounded by rows of
broke glass and plastic ties and church flyers,
it tired aimlessly to grow--

"i need to be careful
when i look at you."

.

WEEKLY REPORT - WEEK 4

the Someone could no longer sleep at night

the immense quiet of the dark had gathered inside
the Someone's mouth

the Someone whose ivory whiteness seemed to change
from gazing too long at the purple bloom of distance
surrounding morning light

for even the wind ceased wuthering,
when she walked around the apartment.

.

feel it all around:

2011-07-26T15:23:00.000-07:00

on this side of the world:

2011-07-26T01:34:00.000-07:00

.

i took the metro rail by myself today. spent 5 hours all around the city. best part of today? that little fiesty gentleman in the second photo & also this amazing boba place i found in little tokyo. mmm almond milk tea.

.

dyingfall.com:

2011-07-11T06:48:00.000-07:00

after a 2 year hiatus, i've brought back my website. still working on a few adjustments, but i have to sleep now... enjoy!

DYINGFALL.COM / photography by jamora crawford

.

rare birds:

2011-07-10T22:06:00.000-07:00

whenever i see a buddhist monk in los angeles, my soul goes crazy with hope that my encounter may bring some spiritual healing into my life.

.

artifacts:

2011-07-10T17:47:00.000-07:00

click here for a bigger view

back to square one:

2011-07-09T09:35:00.000-07:00

the secret garden (transcript):

2011-07-09T09:10:00.001-07:00

--The Secret Garden--

Part I:

for years,
i stole for you

to give you what you always wanted:

golden haired sons, thick ring fingers,
a soft front lawn;

a fortress for your ill-humored heart;

the jasmines during el nino;

to finally hold you--
a coil for an embrace--

yet
for you,
time is cruel

like an endless, dull, purplish sea

underneath,
the great secret so secretly kept--

you could have as much earth as you want
and yet you still never wanted me.

Part II:

his eyes,
full of fire & brimstone,
his mouth,
full of breathy psalms
and

soft vowels

the sound
the sound
the sound
the sound

against her neck

the softness
the softness
the softness
the softness

dragging along
with his dry, heavy
obtuse lips

he licked her mouth--
a flicker of light--
and they became
this hazy tangle--

(inside, her heart
followed a procession
that would cause her to
move slowly away)

.....

PART III:

(the garden--
a gesture--
that which curled 'round
the secret--)

when she opened her eyes in the morning,
she began to cheer as she saw
the new bulbs finally sprout in the garden--

in the afternoon,
she went to see him
running with the wind
until her blood had grown warm
with the thought of his secret.

she had dreamt of his speech,
the soft drone of his voice.

he was a harmless little thing,
too weak to care much about anything.
he would lie on the grass
watching things grow--
he had fallen to his grandeur
and was stuffing himself with grief.

finally together--
he looked into her eyes with desperation--
lying on their backs, they drew long breaths of it--

color glowed in his face,
she had found the
rose-colored brocade boudoir,
the rotten hole where he kept his heart--
and his strange eyes widened
as if she were an animal charmer--

oh! the sounds his heart made!
like birds arriving--

on the day she left him for good,
he sat without stirring,
gazing at the sky--
one lonely mass of blue.

softly pushed,
a stagnant feeling
was rising and rising inside of him.

sure love will die in a few days--
a cry in the corridor.

dust, dust:

2011-07-07T11:09:00.000-07:00

the burn (the palette) of summer:

2011-07-06T23:00:00.000-07:00

land of milk & honey:

2011-06-28T12:40:00.000-07:00

americana:

2011-06-11T00:00:00.000-07:00

.

overcast weather doesn't stop venice beach from buzzing on a friday.

lately i have wandered:

2011-06-06T09:39:00.000-07:00

and so the story goes:

2011-06-05T17:17:00.000-07:00

collage exercise (the secret garden):

2011-05-20T16:47:00.000-07:00

so it was kind of hard to jump start my writing again. i've been pulling sections from the secret garden, piecing them together, and then structuring the stanzas. i think this work will be paired with images... kinda like paneling in a comic book.

.

when she opened her eyes in the morning,
she began to cheer up as she saw
the new bulbs finally appear in the garden--

she had dreamt of his speech,
the soft drone of his voice.

he was a harmless little thing,
weak to care much about anything.
he would lie on the grass
watching things growing--
he had fallen to his grandeur
and was stuffing himself with grief.

his beautiful eyes were clear and the hollows under them
held immense, tender, terrible, heartbreaking beauty--

.

in the afternoon,
she went to see him--
running in the wind
until her blood had grown warm
with the thought of his secret.

.

she stayed with him--
she wanted to try to make him
talk to her about
the secret:

he looked into her eyes with desperation--
lying on their backs, they drew long breaths of it--
a procession that would soon
move her slowly away.

when she finally found the
rose-colored brocade boudoir
and the hole where he kept his heart,
she flooded it with her love--
color glowed in his face
and his strange eyes widened
as if she were an animal charmer--
oh! the sounds his heart made!
like birds arriving--

on the day she left him for good,
he sat without stirring,
gazing at the sky--
one lonely mass of blue.
softly pushed,
a stagnant feeling
was rising and rising inside of him.

sure love would die in a few days--
a cry in the corridor.

summertime:

2011-05-18T12:16:00.001-07:00

during the most quiet portion of night,
her dress in the closet
slipped from a hanger
making a sound as great as
his disbelief was unable to hold him--

how did it happen?
the fabric, brushing against the air
became a hollow shape--
a hoarse gasp--
falling downward.

he thought of his tongue,
bitter and rough
his mouth to hers,
licking the fibers--

he then closed his lips
as if it stung--

later, he wondered if she had heard it too--
the dream welled inside him:
a memory of undressing her
plummeting to the floor.

a brief encounter with the rest of the world:

2011-05-06T21:53:00.000-07:00

(found on the lawn of the downtown prison)

.

sit in our urban treehouse:

2011-05-01T23:35:00.000-07:00

it burnt and it burnt:

2011-04-22T08:29:00.000-07:00

1.
forget los angeles—
and look at me instead
all your time spent
under horizons tagged
by graffiti
the california sun dragging on
in one gesture of the hand
let it go and look at me instead—
make arrangements to leave
the songs you tended to
out here on the boulevard
carrying out to sea
the red smear of traffic,
forget this now and look at me instead—
you and your slow gaze
as if there will suddenly be a drought of color
the thick fiber of afternoon smog
to permanently cover
the wildly overgrown neighborhoods
overfed greens and blues,
littered yellows—
forget los angeles and look at me instead.

2.
you who celebrates bygones
you who never collects his dues
who dislikes impoliteness, comparing it to
the rain in los angeles and its latest intrusion
you who avoids communion among the avocado trees,
the fruit nasty with pregnancy
you who wanders in & out of daylight,
quietly afraid that the time will do you no good
you who holds my hand, hoping that nothing will ever happen,
you who meticulously counts his worries, for nothing
will ever happen

you who makes love to me in the afternoons,
trapped for days in your apartment
you who speaks less and less at the expense of the evening,
drowned in car lights and a jaundice moon
you who intakes the shadows instead,
mulling over how every moment
should have played out and
you who spends all your time
recording this down

as if all would go stale
when the city stops to breathe again.

fear of landscapes:

2011-04-09T15:12:00.000-07:00

.

sometimes i still get afraid of taking pictures on the streets. i've only been doing this since september. it's natural to get nervous though-- you don't want to upset the people and here in l.a. you don't want to get arrested because you "don't have a permit".

i'm getting better though...

life is good. so good. i got into the mfa photo program at cal arts and now i've expanded my master's degree (so called interschool?).... a creative writing / photography & media master of fine arts candidate at the california institute of the arts. fancy!

what were we before?

2011-04-09T15:08:00.000-07:00

la urbanscapes class led by la artist and cal arts professor harry gamboa jr!

chinatown chickens... sad chickens.

my favorite food!

2012 will kill us.

walking through the tunnel of doom (3rd street tunnel).

look at those 88 gifts above!

alphaville.

to have the words:

2011-03-19T00:14:00.001-07:00

500 days of los angeles:

2011-03-17T00:20:00.000-07:00

when i first watched "500 days of summer", i had no idea it was set in downtown l.a. now i know where everything was shot!

to deal with the continuing uncertainty of the future:

2011-03-09T23:02:00.000-08:00

i'm overdue with a new post regarding my los angeles (life adventures) but here are some pictures to show you i am still alive & haunting the streets of l.a.

disposable sunday:

2011-02-03T00:55:00.000-08:00

i am too lazy to scan these in high res but echo park can be magical after a rainy morning (also we went to a very early happy hour). rainy l.a. is like a wet old dog. it smells like shit but you've been friends for so long you can't help but feel a little love.

wild one:

2011-01-21T07:52:00.000-08:00

it would be nice to feel summer again,
glad that his sweaty palm drags against your face.
and you're walking in that polyester skirt, gazing at
the avocado trees nasty with pregnancy.
there is the dark house and its fence that separates you from the fruit--
you'd do anything to suck on those seeds
but you're holding hands, and you can't see the expression of the night,
it's drowned in car lights and jaundice moons--

you wish you could be free, free inside someone else
but when you turned around to stare at me

Pico Blvd Flyers:

2011-01-12T22:31:00.000-08:00

.

A section from my photography statement of intent:

The documentary element in my work does not attempt to evoke the spirit of straightforward journalism, but serves as a threshold to artistic practice. I create series of images and much of the time, the images present a documentation of the photographic journey itself: as the images progress, the stages of development and evaluation can be seen. I continue to work extensively on the Pico Blvd project as well as on the ideas behind the Doppelganger piece (male and female images). Both projects present series of images that play with ideas of space, transformation, and translation/mistranslation.

These three themes (space, transformation, and translation/mistranslation) are important in my photography as they also work as investigative tools and lenses. In the instance of the Pico Blvd. project, space functions arbitrarily-- churches inhabit space as randomly and spontaneously as the store fronts in the surrounding area. The issue of translation and mistranslation also appear in the flyers I collect along the way-- the attempt to communicate or attract members of the community into filling in the space of the churches. The flyers also bring to light a post-colonial existence of certain cultures in Los Angeles. Conversely, the Doppelganger images approach space and translation through the body. The presence of both male and female body parts converges in the space in a way as to not intentionally create an overcrowded image, but offer a hoarding of body parts-- the desire to obtain and occupy an identity that incorporates both sexes. The idea of translation stems from the diary entries that inspired the work-- the diary entries are from a younger self who writes about wanting other people's body parts. Translation in Doppelganger works then in communicating and acting out a fantasy through photographic representation. Both projects touch upon transformation in the documentary sense: the stages of the work, the stages of growth of the photographer and the subjects in the images, and the stages of ideas.

My photography projects usually begin out of spontaneous field work-- an impulsive curiosity for a second look. I have learned that the act of capturing a subject happens in layers: the hope that what starts off as personal inquiry will, in time, transform into something bigger than myself (as an artist and person); the first initial wave of photographs to bring discovery and insight (what unfolds as a documentary process); and then when going back again to shoot for the third or fourth time, to reach a transformative state that will instigate a reworking or regeneration of that first inquiry into a final thesis.

Flea Market finds!

2011-01-09T15:05:00.001-08:00

One of the things I love about Los Angeles is how awesome our flea markets are....

Records, old photos, a darling suitcase, and a map of Baja California!

How to begin?

2011-01-06T10:31:00.000-08:00

Lesson #1: We make mistakes sometimes. Embrace it. If it happens—forgive yourself. Learn from these early mistakes… and don’t give up hope.

My first year out of college was one of the hardest years of my life. Many of my friends had graduated early and were sinking into that well known funk: the post-college crisis. You’ve heard all about it. It’s the quarter life crisis… so now what? What are you going to do with your useless degree? How will you find a job? Well I didn’t think such a depressive phase would happen to me! In 2008, I finally graduated with the feeling of accomplishment and great hope for the future. Why were my friends being so dramatic over nothing? Post-college crisis…. Psh! I was bright and ambitious. However, I didn’t know I would be facing a very crippling problem—the despairing economy—an issue I never truly gave much thought about until I realized I couldn’t find a job. I was naïve.

After completing college, I moved to L.A. I was an adult now… I had my degree. It was time for me to become independent… or so I thought! Moving to Los Angeles was a mistake at first… a mistake that later turned into a blessing in disguise (but we’ll talk about that good fortune later…). By forcing myself into this city with no real job skills (no money management skills) and not much worldly knowledge, I endured a lot of suffering before I found my place here.

My goal this year is to write about that past experience as well as to write about reflections on the present…. to document the post-graduate crisis, how I got out of that funk by finding a great job and then going to graduate school, and the experience I’ve had here in the city of Los Angeles. That’s a lot of crap to write about, I know. Perhaps I need more focus. A specific lense? Organization?

Well, let’s outline some key points. Here are some of the issues I’ll be discussing:

1.     Not having a job
2.     Sinking into semi-poverty
3.     Finally having a job and then dealing with an evil boss from an unsuccessful temp job (and temping in general)
4.     Disaster/heartbreak (a couple of them)
5.     Depression
6.     Money management (okay, I’m still dealing with this)
7.     Accepting that people change
8.     Motivation (don’t give up)
9.     When you finally get yourself out of the post-college crisis
10. Success in a mixed bag (to deal with the continuing uncertainty of the future)

More on this later…

los angeles, tumultuous you:

2010-12-13T09:05:00.000-08:00

a very special thank you to nancy fumero, who worked with me yesterday on pico blvd.

.

Upcoming shows:

2010-12-11T12:07:00.001-08:00

My first shows at Cal Arts!

Tuesday, December 14th:

Parallel Worlds exhibition - 7pm in A116
Safe Word: Lorena Bobbit - Screen showing of Dandy Dust by Hans Scheil - 7:30pm in D301

Thursday, December 16th:

Safe Word: Lorena Bobbit - Reception - 6:30pm in D301
Documentary Poetics: Poetry and Potluck - 7:30pm in the Cube (Butler Building)

....

It's a bit overwhelming that I have all these shows/a poetry reading at the same time, but I am high on stress and giddy about showing my art work. Even though I'm exhausted and it's painful, I am scared I will miss it when I go on vacation for 3 weeks. At least I'll be working full time again. Busy busy busy.

The Lord's Domain

2010-11-13T09:19:00.001-08:00

LITTER / a treasure
EL MUERTE / LA MUERTE BONITA
DO NOT CROSS
la resurrección
la muneca / virgin mary
she shall eat all your worries
IGLESIA
for a fee
la mujer
woman
man
hombre
your hair is brown like mine
your skin is almost as dark as mine
la basura / the treasure
IN MY LANGUAGE IT IS HERMOSA
in mine it is maganda
IN MY LANGUAGE IT IS EL BAÑO
in mine it is also el bano
and yet, i feel like i’m not being truthful
MUTTER
some rosaries, tears of christ

(los angeles - a land of colonized peoples, dispersed
EL AMARO, the bitter
and the eternal
heart, left here, in flames
at union station.)

all around:

2010-11-07T00:42:00.000-07:00

on hope st.
a woman carries a bag of recyclables
like carrying a second womb.

on figueroa st.
a group of teenage girls
wear lavish dresses
the fibers catch the sun
colors ignite like brushfire.

on central ave.
a man stares at me
a long stare
like one hundred years have passed
in front of his eyes
a hundred years of longing.

on wilshire blvd.
buildings rise like
stalagmites
soaked in their own shadows
while others wither.

saturate yourself with love:

2010-11-07T00:29:00.000-07:00

olvera st. and then some pico blvd mixed in:

Her prayer was dead on arrival:

2010-10-03T20:13:00.001-07:00

when you see her on the streets again
and her hair is glazed with afternoon song,
do you ask yourself
what is it like for her, what is it like-
in a book that you wrote,
still reads like it did since morning,
words you saved for painting in a bird, or perhaps
you traveled to each apartment window,
the grass wet with mourning
a shutter made half closed eyes,
its creases disturbed you-
how could any creature
sleep through what you could not
with that same face mourning-
these words, she would understand
the stagnancy of your hands
and why they bend, and sag,
the nails bitter with failure.

it read like a mass
and how the children looked
through the tabernacle, in afternoon smog
for a hole in the wall savior, ashes fell
and placed themselves on their tongues
running through pews and kissing widows,
you were young, still
how did she lack such innocence then,
standing with that look, sick with prayer behind you-
could you tell her how,
you read a million pages of skin unfolding skin,
when you touched her,
everything scattered when she asked you
what would happen in a few years and all that is left,
will there be a child,
will you love me when your cheek is close to my cheek,
will there be no money?
will we be together when my eyes
close against yours finally,
the ocean sweeps us away and
eats us into sand?

buried under the holy dark,
used condoms wet and warm,
your words built around
"vacancy" and "humiliation,"
the dark rising in her face,
blooms with weeds and dried roses-
what you tried telling her,
wasn't worth keeping,
instead a psalm to sing of
how the night un-lights the day,
when you wrote the end.

Like a blossom in reverse:

2010-10-01T21:54:00.000-07:00

This is a starting point in making new work. I haven't been a true practicing writer in a long time. The subject material is very cliche, but I like the rough framework. I sort of have a general idea of what I'd like my thesis to be... a collection of poems and photographs of the city. But how to reconcile text and image?

.

sorrowful you on a hot L.A. night--
the sweat and the smell
of the streets
has got you down.
it is september, it is fall
and yet you are here
in the sweltering heat
california's carnivorous weather
biting at your ankles, at your feet.

it's this damn city,
this is a picaresque town
and you are the lead role--
yet you hate the bright lights
the people here are all shit
and yet you yourself think shit
like how
the ego is invincible
with all of its fire and brimstone,
the lack of humility
now conveniently attractive.

and you're attractive.
with your new city vernacular:
bring in the patronizing scum of the westside
says you,
and the relapsing gentiles of the east
weeps you.
this damn city of narratives,
you want to make an impression on each one
you want to belong,
to play the part
of a hundred thousand ancestries,
with a hundred thousand facades,
you need the attention,
you need them to be starved
for you--
it brings you
to tears
to think
will we ever truly be seen?

and now you like to get lost here,
lost on a evening like this one,
a parishioner of the city streets
worshiping your own
reflections
from the glassy stalks of buildings,
the overly pollinated windows of bright light--
wide eyed and tall,
you see
such a handsome man--
how could you be so unseen?

we come across
trees in the park
lit up like fiber optics,
the perfect lighting--
and yet your leering face
grows dark
like a blossom in reverse.

Of a poetry

2010-10-01T08:31:00.001-07:00

"of a poetry without sound in the culture of the deaf"*

of a poetry without sound in the culture of the deaf
of a sound without poetry in the culture of the austere
of a couple without words in the tense air of their bedroom
of guns firing without pity in the war of the white men
of a song without music in the cacophony of the youth

of a poetry without sight in the culture of the blind
of children without worries in the playground of the boarding school
of a chandelier without its crystalline fringe in the dark of the old house
of an old man without his leg on the walkway of the park
of a woman without a dress in the world of the seeing

of a poetry without life in the land of the dead
of a brightly burning sun without a breeze in the horizon of mid day
of skyscrapers standing without falter in the shadow of their own greatness
of a street naked without pedestrians in the middle of the night
of a harvest moon smoldering in the darkness of the sky

*A phrase pulled from the essay “Contemporary Poets on Poetry” by James McCorkle

- Posted using BlogPress from my iPhone

She told me:

2010-09-28T08:04:00.001-07:00

she told me you
cannot make
someone feel
what they cannot
feel-

their fingertips
brushing through air,
molecules darting
past the gaps.

their mouth
dry, putrid from too many sweets
the sticky tongue sliding across glossy teeth,
the belly groaning.

their legs
struck by cold,
bare and numb, dragging as if made of wood
down the beach, no shoes, no crowds, just wet
shadows of birds and kneeling down to look at
seashells, holding onto beautiful ghosts of former occupants,
laying there like broken rosaries.

their eyes
heavy, carrying a glance to that part of the room.

their shoulders
barely touching the wall on the opposite side,
draped in thin cotton stuck to the shape of the spine,
the lack of light penciling in a deep groove.

their eyes
which want to meet, they want to contact.
their eyelashes
which seem to shield them from seeing what must be seen.

their head
short pieces of hair curling like wires
circuits growing out from the brain, like nerves
to be touched, signaling sighs to escape,
waiting, gurgling in the throat.
their skin
bare except for the torso, emerging from a sea of warmth,
sheets which will soon bathe
limbs hanging loose like a marionette's,
wanting to be set in motion.

their nervousness,
their desire,
their wanting to be conquered
their wanting to be loved
their wanting to be satisfied
their wanting to be only near you,
to be near you
to be near you.

America:

2010-09-16T23:22:00.000-07:00

America

Allen Ginsberg

America I’ve given you all and now I’m nothing.
America two dollars and twentyseven cents January 17, 1956.
I can’t stand my own mind.
America when will we end the human war?
Go fuck yourself with your atom bomb.
I don’t feel good don’t bother me.
I won’t write my poem till I’m in my right mind.
America when will you be angelic?
When will you take off your clothes?
When will you look at yourself through the grave?
When will you be worthy of your million Trotskyites?
America why are your libraries full of tears?
America when will you send your eggs to India?
I’m sick of your insane demands.
When can I go into the supermarket and buy what I need with my good looks?
America after all it is you and I who are perfect not the next world.
Your machinery is too much for me.
You made me want to be a saint.
There must be some other way to settle this argument.
Burroughs is in Tangiers I don’t think he’ll come back it’s sinister.
Are you being sinister or is this some form of practical joke?
I’m trying to come to the point.
I refuse to give up my obsession.
America stop pushing I know what I’m doing.
America the plum blossoms are falling.
I haven’t read the newspapers for months, everyday somebody goes on trial for murder.
America I feel sentimental about the Wobblies.
America I used to be a communist when I was a kid I’m not sorry.
I smoke marijuana every chance I get.
I sit in my house for days on end and stare at the roses in the closet.
When I go to Chinatown I get drunk and never get laid.
My mind is made up there’s going to be trouble.
You should have seen me reading Marx.
My psychoanalyst thinks I’m perfectly right.
I won’t say the Lord’s Prayer.
I have mystical visions and cosmic vibrations.
America I still haven’t told you what you did to Uncle Max after he came over from Russia.
I’m addressing you.
Are you going to let your emotional life be run by Time Magazine?
I’m obsessed by Time Magazine.
I read it every week.
Its cover stares at me every time I slink past the corner candystore.
I read it in the basement of the Berkeley Public Library.
It’s always telling me about responsibility. Businessmen are serious. Movie producers are serious. Everybody’s serious but me.
It occurs to me that I am America.
I am talking to myself again.

Asia is rising against me.
I haven’t got a chinaman’s chance.
I’d better consider my national resources.
My national resources consist of two joints of marijuana millions of genitals an unpublishable private literature that jetplanes 1400 miles an hour and twentyfive-thousand mental institutions.
I say nothing about my prisons nor the millions of underprivileged who live in my flowerpots under the light of five hundred suns.
I have abolished the whorehouses of France, Tangiers is the next to go.
My ambition is to be President despite the fact that I’m a Catholic.

America how can I write a holy litany in your silly mood?
I will continue like Henry Ford my strophes are as individual as his automobiles more so they’re all different sexes.
America I will sell you strophes $2500 apiece $500 down on your old strophe
America free Tom Mooney
America save the Spanish Loyalists
America Sacco & Vanzetti must not die
America I am the Scottsboro boys.
America when I was seven momma took me to Communist Cell meetings they sold us garbanzos a handful per ticket a ticket costs a nickel and the speeches were free everybody was angelic and sentimental about the workers it was all so sincere you have no idea what a good thing the party was in 1835 Scott Nearing was a grand old man a real mensch Mother Bloor the Silk-strikers’ Ewig-Weibliche made me cry I once saw the Yiddish orator Israel Amter plain. Everybody must have been a spy.
America you don’t really want to go to war.
America its them bad Russians.
Them Russians them Russians and them Chinamen. And them Russians.
The Russia wants to eat us alive. The Russia’s power mad. She wants to take our cars from out our garages.
Her wants to grab Chicago. Her needs a Red Reader’s Digest. Her wants our auto plants in Siberia. Him big bureaucracy running our fillingstations.
That no good. Ugh. Him make Indians learn read. Him need big black niggers. Hah. Her make us all work sixteen hours a day. Help.
America this is quite serious.
America this is the impression I get from looking in the television set.
America is this correct?
I’d better get right down to the job.
It’s true I don’t want to join the Army or turn lathes in precision parts factories, I’m nearsighted and psychopathic anyway.
America I’m putting my queer shoulder to the wheel.

Berkeley, January 17, 1956

Beauty:

2010-09-16T23:19:00.000-07:00

Beauty

B.H. Fairchild

Therefore,
Their sons grow suicidally beautiful. . .
-James Wright, "Autumn Begins in Martin's Ferry, Ohio"

I.
We are at the Bargello in Florence, and she says,
what are you thinking? and I say, beauty, thinking
of how very far we are now from the machine shop
and the dry fields of Kansas, the treeless horizons
of slate skies and the muted passions of roughnecks
and scrabble farmers drunk and romantic enough
to weep more or less silently at the darkened end
of the bar out of, what else, loneliness, meaning
the ache of thwarted desire, of, in a word, beauty,
or rather its absence, and it occurs to me again
that no male member of my family has ever used
this word in my hearing or anyone else's except
in reference, perhaps, to a new pickup or dead deer.
This insight, this backward vision, first came to me
as a young man as some weirdness of the air waves
slipped through the static of our new Motorola
with a discussion of beauty between Robert Penn Warren
and Paul Weiss at Yale College. We were in Kansas
eating barbecue-flavored potato chips and waiting
for Father Knows Best to float up through the snow
of rural TV in 1963. I felt transported, stunned.
Here are two grown men discussing "beauty"
seriously and with dignity as if they and the topic
were as normal as normal topics of discussion
between men such as soybean prices or why
the commodities market was a sucker's game
or Oklahoma football or Gimpy Neiderland
almost dying from his hemorrhoid operation.
They were discussing beauty and tossing around
allusions to Plato and Aristotle and someone
named Pater, and they might be homosexuals.
That would be a natural conclusion, of course,
since here were two grown men talking about "beauty"
instead of scratching their crotches and cursing
the goddamned government trying to run everybody's
business. Not a beautiful thing, that. The government.
Not beautiful, though a man would not use that word.
One time my Uncle Ross from California called my mom's
Sunday dinner centerpiece "lovely" and my father
left the room, clearly troubled by the word "lovely"
coupled probably with the very idea of California
and the fact that my Uncle Ross liked to tap-dance.
The light from the venetian blinds, the autumn,
silver Kansas light laving the table that Sunday,
is what I recall now because it was beautiful,
though I of course would not have said so then, beautiful,
as so many moments forgotten but later remembered
come back to us in slants and pools and uprisings of light,
beautiful in itself, but more beautiful mingled
with memory, the light leaning across my mother's
carefully set table, across the empty chair
beside my Uncle Ross, the light filtering down
from the green plastic slats in the roof of the machine shop
where I worked with my father so many afternoons,
standing or crouched in pools of light and sweat with men
who knew the true meaning of labor and money and other
hard, true things and did not, did not ever, use the word, beauty.

II.
Late November, shadows gather in the shop's north end,
and I'm watching Bobby Sudduth do piece work on the Hobbs.
He fouls another cut, motherfucker, fucking bitch machine,
and starts over, sloppy, slow, about two joints away
from being fired, but he just doesn't give a shit.
He sets the bit again, white wrists flashing in the lamplight
and showing botched, blurred tattoos, both from a night
in Tijuana, and continues his sexual autobiography,
that's right, fucked my own sister, and I'll tell you, bud,
it wasn't bad. Later, in the Phillipines, the clap:
as far as I'm concerned, any man who hasn't had V.D.
just isn't a man. I walk away, knowing I have just heard
the dumbest remark ever uttered by man or animal.
The air around me hums in a dark metallic bass,
light spilling like grails of milk as someone opens
the mammoth shop door. A shrill, sullen truculence
blows in like dust devils, the hot wind nagging
my blousy overalls, and in the sideyard the winch truck
backfires and stalls. The sky yellows. Barn sparrows cry
in the rafters. That afternoon in Dallas Kennedy is shot.

Two weeks later sitting around on rotary tables
and traveling blocks whose bearings litter the shop floor
like huge eggs, we close our lunch boxes and lean back
with cigarettes and watch smoke and dust motes rise and drift
into sunlight. All of us have seen the newscasts,
photographs from Life, have sat there in our cavernous rooms,
assassinations and crowds flickering over our faces,
some of us have even dreamed it, sleeping through
the TV's drone and flutter, seen her arm reaching
across the lank body, black suits rushing in like moths,
and the long snake of the motorcade come to rest,
then the announcer's voice as we wake astonished in the dark.
We think of it now, staring at the tin ceiling like a giant screen,
what a strange goddamned country, as Bobby Sudduth
arches a wadded Fritos bag at the time clock and says,
Oswald, from that far, you got to admit, that shot was a beauty.

III.
The following summer. A black Corvette gleams like a slice
of onyx in the sideyard, driven there by two young men
who look like Marlon Brando and mention Hollywood
when Bobby asks where they're from. The foreman, my father,
has hired them because we're backed up with work, both shop
and yard strewn with rig parts, flat-bed haulers rumbling
in each day lugging damaged drawworks, and we are desperate.
The noise is awful, a gang of roughnecks from a rig
on down-time shouting orders, our floor hands knee-deep
in the drawwork's gears heating the frozen sleeves and bushings
with cutting torches until they can be hammered loose.
The iron shell bangs back like a drum-head. Looking
for some peace, I walk onto the pipe rack for a quick smoke,
and this is the way it begins for me, this memory,
this strangest of all memories of the shop and the men
who worked there, because the silence has come upon me
like the shadow of cranes flying overhead as they would
each autumn, like the quiet and imperceptible turning
of a season, the shop has grown suddenly still here
in the middle of the workday, and I turn to look
through the tall doors where the machinists stand now
with their backs to me, the lathes whining down together,
and in the shop's center I see them standing in a square
of light, the two men from California, as the welders
lift their black masks, looking up, and I see their faces first,
the expressions of children at a zoo, perhaps,
or after a first snow, as the two men stand naked,
their clothes in little piles on the floor as if they
are about to go swimming, and I recall how fragile
and pale their bodies seemed against the iron and steel
of the drill presses and milling machines and lathes.
I did not know the word, exhibitionist, then, and so
for a moment it seemed only a problem of memory,
that they had forgotten somehow where they were,
that this was not the locker room after the game,
that they were not taking a shower, that this was not
the appropriate place, and they would then remember,
and suddenly embarrassed, begin shyly to dress again.
But they did not, and in memory they stand frozen
and poised as two models in a drawing class,
of whom the finished sketch might be said, though not by me
nor any man I knew, to be beautiful, they stand there
forever, with the time clock ticking behind them,
time running on but not moving, like the white tunnel
of silence between the snap of the ball and the thunderclap
of shoulder pads that never seems to come and then
there it is, and I hear a quick intake of breath
on my right behind the Hobbs and it is Bobby Sudduth
with what I think now was not just anger but a kind
of terror on his face, an animal wildness
in the eyes and the jaw tight, making ropes in his neck
while in a long blur with his left hand raised and gripping
an iron file he is moving toward the men who wait
attentive and motionless as deer trembling in a clearing,
and instantly there is my father between Bobby
and the men as if he were waking them after a long sleep,
reaching out to touch the shoulder of the blonde one
as he says in a voice almost terrible in its gentleness,
its discretion, you boys will have to leave now.
He takes one look at Bobby who is shrinking back
into the shadows of the Hobbs, then walks quickly back
to his office at the front of the shop, and soon
the black Corvette with the orange California plates
is squealing onto Highway 54 heading west into the sun.

IV.
So there they are, as I will always remember them,
the men who were once fullbacks or tackles or guards
in their three-point stances knuckling into the mud,
hungry for highschool glory and the pride of their fathers,
eager to gallop terribly against each other's bodies,
each man in his body looking out now at the nakedness
of a body like his, men who each autumn had followed
their fathers into the pheasant-rich fields of Kansas
and as boys had climbed down from the Allis-Chalmers
after plowing their first straight furrow, licking the dirt
from their lips, the hand of the father resting lightly
upon their shoulder, men who in the oven-warm winter
kitchens of Baptist households saw after a bath the body
of the father and felt diminished by it, who that same
winter in the abandoned schoolyard felt the odd intimacy
of their fist against the larger boy's cheekbone
but kept hitting, ferociously, and walked away
feeling for the first time the strength, the abundance,
of their own bodies. And I imagine the men
that evening after the strangest day of their lives,
after they have left the shop without speaking
and made the long drive home alone in their pickups,
I see them in their little white frame houses on the edge
of town adrift in the long silence of the evening turning
finally to their wives, touching without speaking the hair
which she has learned to let fall about her shoulders
at this hour of the night, lifting the white nightgown
from her body as she in turn unbuttons his work shirt
heavy with the sweat and grease of the day's labor until
they stand naked before each other and begin to touch
in a slow choreography of familiar gestures their bodies,
she touching his chest, his hand brushing her breasts,
and he does not say the word "beautiful" because
he cannot and never has, and she does not say it
because it would embarrass him or any other man
she has ever known, though it is precisely the word
I am thinking now as I stand before Donatello's David
with my wife touching my sleeve, what are you thinking?
and I think of the letter from my father years ago
describing the death of Bobby Sudduth, a single shot
from a twelve-gauge which he held against his chest,
the death of the heart, I suppose, a kind of terrible beauty,
as someone said of the death of Hart Crane, though that is
surely a perverse use of the word, and I was stunned then,
thinking of the damage men will visit upon their bodies,
what are you thinking? she asks again, and so I begin
to tell her about a strange afternoon in Kansas,
about something I have never spoken of, and we walk
to a window where the shifting light spreads a sheen
along the casement, and looking out, we see the city
blazing like miles of uncut wheat, the farthest buildings
taken in their turn, and the great dome, the way
the metal roof of the machine shop, I tell her,
would break into flame late on an autumn day, with such beauty.

sustain:

2010-09-12T00:11:00.000-07:00

santee alley:

2010-09-12T00:09:00.001-07:00

Some practice shots to get myself back into photography...

New photography project, fall 2010:

2010-09-05T23:34:00.001-07:00

The Face of God

Proposal: To study spiritual people in an urban environment and how they occupy and manipulate space on Pico Blvd.

My project aims to document all forms of “spiritual spaces” on Pico Blvd- starting from the beaches of Santa Monica to the street's end downtown. The purpose is to capture the wide variety of spirituality in Los Angeles and how people construct places of worship in an urban environment. The project focuses specifically on Pico Blvd because of its immense diversity; the street runs through several neighborhoods in the city, every area unique to each other. The attributes, characteristics, and appearance (or façade = face) of these places of worship are shaped by the differing socioeconomic conditions, culture, community and language- all depending on the section of Pico Blvd. Location then plays a vital role in the collaboration and construction of spiritual spaces.

The project will explore these questions: “How do these spiritual spaces come to be? How is spiritual space determined by location on Pico? Most importantly, how do people and religion adapt to the city landscape?”

Ultimately, the project will lead to a photo installation, with a map of the entire length of Pico, and written accounts and interviews from the experience.

.

.

from a dear friend:

2010-08-12T21:05:00.001-07:00

Esse

I looked at that face, dumbfounded. The lights of métro stations flew by; I didn't notice them. What can be done, if our sight lacks absolute power to devour objects ecstatically, in an instant, leaving nothing more than the void of an ideal form, a sign like a hieroglyph simplified from the drawing of an animal or bird? A slightly snub nose, a high brow with sleekly brushed-back hair, the line of the chin - but why isn't the power of sight absolute? - and in a whiteness tinged with pink two sculpted holes, containing a dark, lustrous lava. To absorb that face but to have it simultaneously against the background of all spring boughs, walls, waves, in its weeping, its laughter, moving it back fifteen years, or ahead thirty. To have. It is not even a desire. Like a butterfly, a fish, the stem of a plant, only more mysterious. And so it befell me that after so many attempts at naming the world, I am able only to repeat, harping on one string, the highest, the unique avowal beyond which no power can attain: I am, she is. Shout, blow the trumpets, make thousands-strong marches, leap, rend your clothing, repeating only: is!

She got out at Raspail. I was left behind with the immensity of existing things. A sponge, suffering because it cannot saturate itself; a river, suffering because reflections of clouds and trees are not clouds and trees.

-Czeslaw Milosz

Song

2010-07-05T18:05:00.000-07:00

by Frank O'Hara

.

Is it dirty
does it look dirty
that's what you think of in the city

does it just seem dirty
that's what you think of in the city
you don't refuse to breathe do you

someone comes along with a very bad character
he seems attractive. is he really. yes. very
he's attractive as his character is bad. is it. yes

that's what you think of in the city
run your finger along your no-moss mind
that's not a thought that's soot

and you take a lot of dirt off someone
is the character less bad. no. it improves constantly.
you don't refuse to breathe do you

(from Lunch Poems)

my best virtues are also my worst vices:

2010-05-18T22:59:00.001-07:00

a short mixtape through youtube music videos:

i'm too romantic.

and yet i like to be free.

i'm too idealistic.

i think too much.

i'm young.

i'm too forgiving.

i like to party.

i like to have too much fun.

and because i have a crush on you:

College vs. Post-College in Graphs

2010-04-04T22:17:00.000-07:00

So I haven't written in such a long time. It's been a year now since I've graduated college, and I haven't really blogged much about that journey. Maybe this blog needs revamping... spring cleaning. A new direction? Ultimately, the blog needs new writing.

I just want to show you though, how much I've changed since college... or really, what has changed since college... like the things I worry about. From pondering existence, Yeats, and what kind of mixer I should buy to balancing checkbooks, holding a full-time job, and counting calories in my dinner... I feel like my life has gone from a state of emotional infancy to a state of... emotional constipation? I don't know if that makes any sense, dear reader but...

let's just get on with it and compare graphs!

This graph was made during the last bout of finals I endured before I left college:

Simple, carefree worries. It was a personal tragedy (then) to see a plant die!

Also, I don't think I really understood how to graph properly during that time. Thank god for all those temp jobs I did last year... I've got data skillz now.

Look at me now:

(Ok... the new graph is a bit redundant, but definitely an upgrade.)

Although it's only 5% of my worries, not shaving your legs can be a personal tragedy... more than reckless plant killing. In fact, the sight (presence???) of your freakishly hairy legs will totally kill plants. Two tragedies in one! Trust me, I know.

Worrying about finances is probably the worst of the worst. Paying for my own place... paying my own bills. It's crazy to think that I now pay an electricity bill, instead of paying for a portion... or just escaping that responsibility altogether.

Well, I can tell you this:

It's wonderful to be independent. It's another kind of carefree- you are your only responsibility. Crazy, ain't it?

I've got my own place, my own bed, my own lamp that burns up my electricity and makes that damn bill expensive. Is it worth it? Yes! Just as long as I don't turn into that guy in Fight Club. (Please keep those Ikea catalogs away from me!)

Testimony:

2009-10-19T19:01:00.000-07:00

(To Be) Blindness: A Photo Story - Part 1

2009-09-27T11:25:00.000-07:00

Wave of Revelation:

We have our mouths open- even the horse- as if to taste the whirlwind happening around us. Lights are darting in motion, colours flying- all so warmly vibrant despite being old hues of a bygone era (a comforting wash of gold remains, characteristic of Kodak film). There... there is my former self, a little girl on the horse who is out of focus, blurred, not centered (but heading there from the left)- her appearance is more like an echo of an image than a static apparition. The joyous expression she has, racing toward adventure wherever it goes (infinite or circular, she doesn't seem to be picky), makes her particular (and slight) evasiveness more exuberant, and thus establishes her as the main subject of the photograph.

Scanning the picture again, I look for things that I have missed over the years. I notice people residing in the right corner, pulling me toward a different time by their outdated outfits. I don't dwell too long and again forget about their presence. Then I see there is a man standing behind the little girl (my former self), barely noticeable (you'd have to look twice). His head peeks out between the horse and the pole, and though he is "behind the scene" so to speak, he is still part of the adventure. The huge grin underneath the bristle-like mustache (you cannot see the coarseness, but I know it is there) radiates- and the man's presence ensures that my former self will not fall. He supports me like iron, stronger than the metal pole that holds the horse- allowing the adventure to continue. That man there is my father and in this image, we are transfixed- to each other, onto the carousel platform, and to this photograph.

Nevertheless, the pronounced movement captured in our photograph embodies anticipation and somehow exceeds our immobility as a still picture. My father and I (as well as the horse, the other people) will eventually move out of the frame but the action has not stopped yet, nor will it until the photograph is destroyed or lost. And though this photograph does not technically go on to the next movement, does not completely continue on, something else does- something I have yet to understand.

Sight as Revelation:

Pulled out from time and stamped onto a roll of film, the image of my father and I on the carousel now exists as a intermediary between past and present. The future is questionable, as the life of the photograph is unstable and destined to be short-lived. The chemicals that once brought the image into being (like the ignition of an engine) will slowly eat away at the picture over time (like our own aging bodies, the betrayal of cells; the engine, corroded by its own fuel). The fate of the photograph, meant to be partially immortal (memorabilia to at least outlast human memory), will ultimately lead to a death. Now that digital has been replacing film cameras, snapshots like this one shall either perish or be transferred onto a computer, diminished from its physical state. This is how the presence of photography will end, evaporating into a semi-existence of pixels and fragments. The loss of film does not break my heart so much as the fact that I may never work in a darkroom again- a place I call a source of revelation.

The carousel picture was most likely processed commercially with not much technical difficulty or artistic frustration (looping film into an automatic processor, etc). But I want to feel that the picture is more unique than its origins, especially because of the way the photograph feels in my hands. The picture is small, smaller than the size of a standard 8x10 snapshot and holding something so minute, so modest- it's like I'm holding a miracle... a delicate miracle that somehow appears on glossy emulsion paper. This divine-like aura makes the image more of a novelty, a relic; the remnants of a time and a good feeling now gone still lingers, still exists for the meantime- though it shouldn't.

Wanting to believe that this photograph is special, I would like to imagine that the carousel photo was made in a similar way I print pictures- with absolute care and wonder. Yet within the excitement of artistic creation, I find that I also have an unusual amount of fear when producing photographs. As a photographer working in a traditional darkroom, I am always anticipating fear and awe at the same time (a kind of sublimity). The first wave of anticipation is strong- fear not just of ruining the photograph but of the dark. Unlike black and white printing, where the photographer can work under a red light, colour printing must be done in complete darkness because of the emulsion (photo paper) used- its high sensitivity cannot be allowed any light other than the brief moment when the enlarger quickly flashes whatever image (and any photographer, working in darkness, appreciates long exposures for this reason). The photographer working with colour must blindly stumble around, trying to make sense of equipment and space in the darkroom. Difficult to let go of the need for light, I have always had a fear of the dark (and now you'll ask me why I love the darkroom so much, retaining such a childish fright), but I find myself in the dark eventually. After placings the print into the processor, I anxiously await for my image to come out of darkness (and fear) and into light, the photograph thus becoming a product of revelation- I see the image, I finally discover what was hidden from me in the dark.

Sight is a conduit of revelation and this traditional association still resides in our society, our spirituality, and our eagerness for discovery and creativity. We enter the process of revelation when the act of seeing transcends physicality (coming forth from the body, flesh, metaphorical darkness) in order to truly see light (a brilliance unseen by physical eyes, only seen by the mind, shaped into enlightenment, epiphany). If sight leads us to revelation, the dark and our blindness (whether temporary or permanent, physical or mental) must be the conductor of seeing- catalyzing the search for enlightenment.

Photography (of course) circles around (the art of) seeing, but also significant is the action of not seeing and not knowing. Therefore photography comes out of blindness and into sight- into being, into realization, and into recognition. The carousel photograph came from the same process, carried by the camera, processed in the dark, printed in the light, and now laying in my hands, is seen.

My fear then is not truly of the dark, but this: what will I find in this image, what will I see, what meaning is portrayed (if any), and what will the image reveal?

An Elaboration:

2009-09-07T13:29:00.001-07:00

How would you describe your work?

Maybe this is a contradiction (being a photographer, I'm supposed to have some sort of vision) but to be honest: I'm blind (can't see the bigger picture), I'm afraid (don't want to see the bigger picture), I'm nervous (won't accept the bigger picture) about living, truly living. Whatever that entails (living, breathing, believing), I'm probably not doing it right, and this has caused a life-long anxiety to continuously move around and find others to collide with. And by colliding, sometimes it is love (mostly it is not) and it always seems like we travel in the same direction- hitting this great and overpowering wall of (failure and) disbelief. Friends and lovers blend together and I cannot differentiate who my enemies or meaningless contacts are- somehow we are all the same and yet our inability to come together is my greatest disappointment.

Though I'd like to think I'm mostly successful in my life (as well as with others), my art circulates around this notion that we can never meet each other and in that we have failed in the grand scheme of things. A man whose picture I took, with his chest puffed up and his mouth closed tightly (the muscles bulged, ready to give out from the tension), carried out his insecurities on camera and I loved it. Standing stiffly and naked with a mask on, he was afraid to truly pose without flexing his muscles. The masculine, overtly sexual tension was so profuse in the air, it felt like I was swimming through time (past loves, other naked bodies) rather than conducting a photo shoot. In the same room, his stripper ex-girlfriend (who gave him a ride to my apartment) approached him and proceeded to go down on him while I took pictures. The act was shocking but so tender, I left the room in my shy naivete so that they could temporarily be together once more.

The ex-girlfriend told me her reasoning for the blow job was to make great art (he had great male genitalia) and I knew I could never properly present their moment. Instead, I wanted to capture the debris of their contact- the aftermath- his slow and eventual sexual upheaval and then decline- the blood flow trying to be constant- my presence and hers the trigger of arousal- and at the same time, his greatest disappointment. I didn't want her in the picture and yet I wanted her to be there at the same time- forcing him to constantly grow and die.

After the shoot, she wouldn't hold his hand as they left my home. What a curious thing to do, considering the misalignment of contact. I didn't understand his endless wanting, her immediate love and then rejection, or my desire to interpret their states of being.

You mentioned something about your insecurities; is this a main focus in your work?

My favourite thing in the world is getting lost in the city these days. Instead of sitting in traffic on the 110, I get off on Adams Blvd (or street, I can't remember) and navigate my way from the Staples center to Los Feliz. Usually it is 6 or 7 by the time I even get a chance to take this route, and the sun is the most weak in the city during this time. Buildings seem to topple (or at least their shadows do) and the sun barely makes its way in-between these giants. People walk through their own SQUALOR- trash, the budding unhappiness of business as usual (full bloom at the end of the day), the homeless (somehow a result of everyone's failure), and the chrysalis of apathy.

I am a twenty three year old woman (girl seems more appropriate) who currently lives in the city of Los Angeles and constantly tries to make up for her complete shyness (and why be shy in Hollywood! let's get famous and fuck everyone's brain out!). Perhaps it is because I fear the length of my desire- to crawl into someone else's skin, tell stories, build cities, live in synchronized time (living or dead). Sometimes my shyness is not shyness at all but a feeling that stems from my anxiety to escape from someone (entirely myself and entirely myself in relation to a YOU).

The medium of photography (especially my self portraits) then is my only way to document my own anxieties. For some reason I am unable to express myself to others (often unable to talk freely) and so I project different versions of my self to study that greatly feared interior of mine (where's my transcript!). Some versions are better than others, some are true of me, some are complete lies. I think most of my self portraits are lies especially because I usually OBJECTIFY myself. Again, another contradiction is the way that I have learned to present myself on film- a shy, sometimes vulnerable girl who poses in sexually charged images and pretends to take control of her body. I try not to take these pictures anymore, try to give up on finding a physical mediator (that person on the other end), try to find my middle ground in other ways. You just can't be an object- to yourself, to anyone. How was I ever living before?

I guess getting lost in the city has led me to discover a new type of anatomy within myself. All the while, running through streets, enjoying the pollution of other people, from the beaches of the Santa Monica area, to the heart of downtown, and then the outer reaches of Griffith Park, I am getting more comfortable in being myself. My favourite picture right now is of two Buddhist monks at the observatory. The colours drip from their orange and yellow robes and leak out like a contusion in the cold April weather atop the city. It is a polaroid and though the picture frame is quite small, the image's modesty makes the vibrant colours worthwhile. The clouds collect a little bit of colour and the buildings warm to the monks like being illuminated by brushfire. This picture makes me feel a little less SELFISH.

Who/what is your main source of your inspiration?

Mostly it starts off with a string of bad luck.

And though after a string of bad luck, you'd expect little is left of you- exhausted from throwing yourself all over the place- I am the exact opposite, ready to take on challenges with a manic attitude. I am opposed to luck in the first place and I often seek retaliation anyway (does that make any sense?). Recently, my bad luck (and inevitable inspiration) has started with this: an afternoon after a bad temp assignment led me to seek refuge at nearby Redondo Beach. Not knowing the area (and wanting to disturb any and all bad feelings with a good, hearty adventure), I somehow found water and sand. Unfortunately when I arrived, man decided to enforce parking meters on every street and having my luck, there were no quarters to be found. I started to sweat (here in the center of summer, that's when this all occurred), wanting to feel the ocean air. Yet a woman who, with a van full of kids, tapped on my window had slightly changed the direction of my bad luck by giving me her parking space- one full hour to enjoy myself.

Boldly alone (boldly distressed, tired, sad) on a Friday evening, I went out on the beach. Walking down to the water (and wanting to forget about everything), I tossed my shoes aside and prepared all the senses for an impending interaction. Firstly affected is smell- the sea, strongly sour and salty. Then sight and sound is hit with water- calm, but also wild, voluptuous blue and violent green. After touch, everything else perceived prior becomes secondary as you feel it all- the grit of sand, the weary muscles of your legs trying to keep you from sinking, and the rich abundance of water overwhelming your skin- cold, so cold it's delicious- deliriously delicious.

I will always an affair with the ocean and I guess it is the symbolic conductor of my work. The churning of the tides always seems to rupture all of the senses, knocking you down, sometimes wanting to drag you out and drown you, sometimes letting you keep afloat- and that is what I set out to do (maybe not the literal drowning part, but you get it). Though I cannot truly activate the senses physically, I can try to tell you a story through a photograph, hope for the best, and get a reaction out of you (flood you, flood your senses with something deliriously delicious).

You I Have No Distance From

2009-08-30T12:01:00.001-07:00

"I can't remember what it was like before I met you. Was I always like this? I remember myself lost. I know that for sure. Wandering. Moving from one wild woman to the next. Staying, sometimes, just long enough to understand that their bewilderment was more pronounced than mine. At least that's the way they put it across. But I can't remember being this nervous before; this frazzled. I'd watch them from a distance: taking stoned sponge baths in their sinks; shaving black hash balls with razor blades; moving like slow-motion queens. Then they'd change into backyard girls from long ago, giggling and tucking their long legs up under themselves: the way they'd plunk down on their soft heels and then toss their hair like horses switch their tails.

But you I have no distance from. Every move you make feels like I'm traveling in your skin; every glance you take out the window, as though you were completely alone and dreaming in some other time. It does no good to wave my arms. Now everything's reversed."

Sam Shepard, You I Have No Distance From

I keep losing myself:

2009-08-10T17:06:00.000-07:00

hopeless, these things i show you

degenerate:

2009-08-02T22:07:00.000-07:00

your indifference shapes me
haunts my neighbourhood streets
i walk through
the expanding hollowness
now hoovering on
every lawn.

i wade in
your indifference
a great volume filling houses,
penetrating through windows-
nobody's home anymore
nobody's able to stay
in the rocking ocean
of your negligence-
your apathy corrodes me-
i'm the only one
who welcomes
your rough waters anyway.

home now,
there's still no you here,
your absence rises
in my room-
i look outside
and see
only your unkindness
now built into the city-
everywhere lights beam back
like carrying a code, a message
as if to tell me
what i've already known,
you won't be coming,
you won't change your mind
and take back
the love
you don't feel.

Untitled:

2009-06-17T02:01:00.000-07:00

last night i dreamt
that you weren't dead--
familiar were the footsteps
sombrous as they waded through carpet,
and hearing
the sound
as you passed the stairway
and to my door
left me shocked,
electrified,
bewitched--

you weren't dead,
a dream it was to see
your face, milky-eyed
by the light
of an unforgiving moon--
instead of getting up,
rushing over to you,
to wash your feet with my hair,
give you a daughter's kiss,
to hold you til you dissipate again
to say any last words at all--

i pretended to be asleep.

And I feel like we've never been ourselves around each other:

2009-06-12T18:34:00.000-07:00

.

My response to yours:

The sun has always been a painfully brilliant and divine object, a giver of life though it can blind, burn, and refuse to show its face when it desires. Despite these minor shortcomings, we still adore the sun, love its heat, its light- or we used to. I find that this generation has become desensitized to the heart of our existence, the core of life. We say we care and we don't, we don't see. We no longer see the sun as divine or brilliant or even cruel. The sun has been marketed, its mythology forgotten, reduced to a singular and regular place in society. So now we go around in circles and we close our eyes, distant even from each other, and it is no longer the sun that forgets to love.

I'm learning how to cook:

2009-06-12T01:30:00.000-07:00

On a less serious note...

I love my cast iron skillet! The chicken turned out so well... I can't believe I was a vegetarian for 7 years. I'll probably go back someday but for now I will enjoy myself and repent later... before I become a starving artist, of course.

Everything is getting better.

For the sleepless nobodies like me - my favorite poem:

2009-06-11T04:01:00.000-07:00

All the Schoolgirls Together
by André Breton

Often you say making a mark in the earth with your heel at the wild rose blooms in a bush
Wild one seemingly made only of dew
You say The whole sea and the whole sky for a single
Victory of childhood in the country of dance or better for a single
Embrace in a train corridor
Going to the devil with rifle shots on a bridge or better
Yet for a single timorous word
Such as must be said while gazing at you
By a blood-stained man whose name goes far from tree to tree
Who keeps going in and out among a hundred birds of snow
Where then it is nice
And when you say it the whole sea and the whole sky
Scatter like a cloud of little girls in the yard of a strict boarding school
After a dictation in which The heart takes
Was perhaps written The heart aches

And I waver, I wander:

2009-06-09T11:31:00.000-07:00

Last Friday, I spent all day at the Griffith Observatory watching people. It is my new favourite place to go (and having such a place makes me feel more at home in L.A.). When I lived in Orange County, I would frequent the beach at Balboa Pier in Costa Mesa. I used to love this beach so much- especially in winter. No one was there during the rainy season except for dedicated surfers and old time residents (and also me!). I had the place mostly to myself and while that may seem selfish, I wanted to be solitary. I wanted to completely study the area without the mass interference of others.

To give any fancy justification for my time there would just be another lame excuse pulled from the heavy artistic/academic bullshit baggage I've been carrying around forever. To be honest, going to Balboa Pier in the wintertime felt like I was standing at the edge of the world- confronting some kind of endlessness and at the same time- an ending. The clouds were the most intense, jarring, and so perfect for infrared film (think photography by Ansel Adams); in this coldness, I felt such desolation (in a good way) and the absence of others allowed me to see clearer, or at least see in more definite terms. Just like the intensity of black & white infrared, I saw myself starkly alone, taking a pause in the tumult of my life, where the winter rain meets the tide... the sky bleeding into the ocean. And somehow I found comfort in the cold there, kicking around in the surf and taking polaroids. I was my own.

My new attachment to Griffith Observatory is based on the same feeling except now I am looking down at the world and see a different kind of landscape (a different kind of confrontation). There is this sad endlessness when I look down at the city, at the accumulation of buildings and human debris that continues to grow- overwhelming, just like the ocean.

This is my favourite picture from the Friday photo expedition. To me it looks like downtown is made up of litter, especially with the leftover rough border of the polaroid.

I love the city of Los Angeles in all its dirtiness. It's full of life... it's overflowing. And despite this vast human occupation, I still feel an absence- or rather, an impending absence. And maybe that impending absence is what will be determined by the future... (should I say it?) The end of all things? The end of all that I know?

Getting back on my academic soapbox, I think these current fantasies of complete isolation, my interest in man vs. nature, and doomsday thinking comes from an obsession with dystopian novels. When I was 16 years old, my mentor and high school English teacher introduced me to T.S. Eliot. Eliot's "Waste Land" became the center of my personal discourse and has inspired the body of my work- poetry and photography (especially these landscapes). I know I sound really dreadful right now (maybe even misanthropic), but I cannot help but feel like my century is going down that path of extinction. It would be banal to point out how current events are probably leading up to humanity's ultimate destruction, so I'll let you think about that on your own (dear reader, dear nobody).

Eliot somewhat had the same feelings- World War I wasn't so kind to his section of the world/Europe/all of the world in general, and the brutality and destruction (as well as the technological advancements that made the war even more terrifying) seemed to foreshadow a terrible outcome for mankind. "The Waste Land" is a prophesy- a collection of fragments of the dead (or the soon to be dead), satirical vignettes of what will become man's last days, and numerous, shadowy colloquies that merge together into a last chant for peace (makes me think of my picture of the monks at the Observatory...).

I know it's melodramatic or cliche or even a naive academic attempt to point out that Los Angeles is an ideal location for doomsday predictions (all those goddamn Hollywood flops have already done it for me... Come on, "Volcano"), but I can't help it. It's not even really Los Angeles that captures my attention. It is man's attitude toward living, the most important aspect being man's disdain and his growing carelessness for others as well as himself, that frightens me.

This famous stanza from "The Wasteland" haunts me:

What are the roots that clutch, what branches grow
Out of this stony rubbish? Son of man,
You cannot say, or guess, for you know only
A heap of broken images, where the sun beats,
And the dead tree gives no shelter, the cricket no relief,
And the dry stone no sound of water. Only
There is shadow under this red rock,
(Come in under the shadow of this red rock),
And I will show you something different from either
Your shadow at morning striding behind you
Or your shadow at evening rising to meet you;
I will show you fear in a handful of dust.

.

So it was Eliot's poem that catalyzed my love for all things dystopic- the intensely pessimistic vision of the future because the present still ain't looking so good. And I have read 1984, F451, Brave New World, etc. Those were the best books I read in high school. However, my favourite dystopian novel (and my favourite book of all time) is one of the first texts that established the genre (and was the inspiration for Orwell's 1984). Written in 1921 by a Russian author (a front seater to extreme social upheaval, war, political corruption, etc.), Zamyatin's We is awful vision of the future that is still a plausible prophesy despite the fact his novel was written almost 90 years ago. To briefly sum it all up, dystopian texts predict disastrous futures (and are usually critical responses to current trends of society/politics... in Zamyatin's case- messy Russian politics) where mankind has either failed or succeeded too far with his technological advancements. The successful, technologically advanced futures are the most interesting, because man's fabulous achievements are always failures in the end. Technology comes with a price, as man sacrifices himself in order to achieve things greater himself. Consequently, man assumes the role of God and loses his self in the process- sacrificing his spirit, emotions, morals, history in exchange for perfect equations, formulas, and ultimate human order.

Although I'm skipping over H.G. Wells (one of the first fathers of Sci-Fi/Dystopias), Zamyatin's We is most unique to me in its portrayal of a futuristic society gone to hell (so to speak). Zamyatin's visceral and visually empowering diction as well his experimental narrative (more experimental than Wells) established the writing style/format that became specific to the dystopian genre. Zamyatin sets up the protagonist's account via a journal. The protagonist, D-503, is a witness to the inevitable and terrifying future, and his candid thoughts not only capture the experience of the future but project the changes within mankind- his altered sense of identity, attitude, behaviour, emotions, beliefs, etc.

Zamyatin presents a society called One-State (a satirical connection to the messy outcome of the Russian revolution) that is made up of members who are only defined by their assigned numbers and occupations. In One-State, individuality is scorned and the human capacity for emotion seems to be burnt out- all caused by a war that completely devastated the world (just like Eliot's "Unreal City"). So survivors attempted to avoid repeating the same mistakes as their ancestors did. To prevent any more acts of hatred, One-State citizens eradicated what they saw as the cause for the ultimate imperfection in mankind- soul. Embracing a more logical and mechanical existence, One-State must purge the soul, the human error that must be taken out of the equation.

One-State stands for the abandonment of imagination, individuality, and free will (what its citizens consider the causes for unhappiness and imperfection in mankind) in exchange for the supposed happiness of being one collective and thus efficient body of people (ultimate perfection, no distractions). D-503 is the embodiment of that mechanical dogma (and I could go on about how One-State is the new paradise, the new Garden of Eden grown from the seed of the fruit of knowledge, something about atavism, etc. but then you would die of boredom). Zamyatin's main character D-503 is a man of pure mathematics, proud and obsessed with his "perfect" society. Within the first chapters of his diary, the reader sees the world through a monochromatic lense- D-503's depiction of the world framed in numbers is fanatical, disturbing, and sterile. D-503's mind exhibits a dismantled humanity- the complete denial of human characteristics, man disowning himself, his past, basically becoming less human with time, all seen in the way D-503 describes the environment around him:

"On days like this you can see into the deep blue depth of things, you see their hitherto unsuspected, astonishing equations"

and,

"The ancients' God created ancient-- that is, prone to error-- man, and so erred himself. The multiplication table is wiser and more absolute than the ancient God. It never-- repeat, never-- makes a mistake. And there's nothing happier than figures that live according to the elegant and eternal laws of the multiplication table. No wavering, no wandering."

.

In Zamyatin's We, I find more than just a dim prediction for the future. I love the novel because of how Zamyatin redefines or really reawakens what it means to truly "see". And by "seeing" I mean looking at the world with the curious and creative insight solely belonging to human beings. D-503's mechanical thoughts become interrupted by the introduction of a woman, I-330, whose rebellious ways and link to the past catalyzes a new way of seeing for him.

One-State still contains a flaw- the society has not yet eradicated the act of sex, and attempts to assign people together in order to neatly satisfy needs (without the daddy drama) while maintaining a mechanical order. Sex becomes the loophole as D-503 discovers the feelings of jealousy, lust, love, and even hatred (emotions that were inside all along, never asleep only unrecognized)- all rooted in his desire for I-330. The reader's lense thus begins to pick up hints of colour, bursts of extreme beauty, and familiar emotions viewed in a different, brighter light (brilliance shown even in the worst of feelings). D-503 finally "sees:"

"We on this earth are walking the whole time above a boiling crimson sea of fire, hidden down there is the bowels of the earth. But we never think of it. And suddenly the thin shell beneath our feet seems to turn to glass and suddenly we see... I became glass. I saw into myself, inside."

D-503's perception of his surroundings drastically changes. The sky loses its mathematical quality and becomes abstract, indefinable, unable to be contained in an equation. D-503 finally acquires a soul, a sickness of feeling:

"Those of you reading these notes, wherever you are, you've got the sun above you. And if you were ever as sick* as I am now, you know what the sun is like in the morning, or how it might be, you know that rosy, transparent, warm gold. And even the air is a little pink, and everything's saturated with the tender blood of the sun, everything's alive; soft and alive-- the stones; warm and alive-- the iron; the people alive and every one of them smiling. It might be that an hour later everything will vanish, in one hour the last drop of rosy blood will be gone, but for the time being everything's alive."

This description of the sky is so beautiful to me because it portrays something so fleeting- this intense sunset, D-503's new perception does not last. The book ends with the return of the monochrome lense, washing away those hints of the brilliance. The final loss of the ability to truly "see" is the symbolic death of mankind.

I can try to correlate what I feel about We with how I feel about Polaroids. Polaroids capture what is fleeting; their instantaneity, their temporariness, instability, and best of all- unpredictability- makes me love and appreciate the medium. I especially adore the intense colours in a Polaroid because they give off a random, surreal aura. Polaroids pick up bursts of beauty, even in this sad and endless landscape. And now Polaroids have become mostly extinct, remnants of the past, especially now that the film has been discontinued.

The most important thing that D-503 "sees" is his own self- reconsidering what it means to be human, to feel, to have an identity. Whenever I reread We, I feel a need to retreat back to my core, to look within my self, and also be weary of the future- will all of this soon end?

Standing atop Griffith Park, looking down at the city, thinking of the past and of the future, thinking of myself and how I fit into this location, I can only point you in the direction of this last quote- it says more than I can ever express... delicate, tragic, not mine and yet it is:

"Evening. A light mist. The sky is covered over with some milky gold fabric, and you can't see what's up there: their magnificent, bored sceptic-- God. We know that it's a crystalline blue, naked, indecent nothing. Now I don't know what's there. I've learned too much. Knowledge that is absolutely sure it's infallible-- that's faith. I had a firm faith in myself, I believed I knew everything about myself. And now...

I'm in front of a mirror. And for the first time in my life, I swear it, for the very first time in my life, I get a clear, distinct, conscious look at myself; I see myself and I'm astonished, like I'm looking at some "him." There I am-- or rather, there he is: He's got straight black eyebrows, drawn with a ruler, and between them, like a scar, is a vertical crease (I don't know if it was there before). Gray, steel eyes, with the circle of a sleepless night around them; and behind that steel-- it turns out I never knew what was there. And from that "there" (a "there" that is here and at the same time infinitely far away-- I am looking at myself, at him, and I am absolutely certain that he, with his ruler-straight eyebrows, is a stranger, somebody else, I just met him for the first time in my life. And I'm the real one. I AM NOT HIM."

.

This is only a shallow summary and analysis of We (too subjective as well) and I hope you go off and read this book. It's amazing. I promise.

P.S. Look what I found when I went to the library the other day. Does anyone know the name of the tree with the blue flowers found everywhere in Los Feliz?

My favourite quote:

2009-06-09T01:15:00.000-07:00

"And then to her, 'I hate the fog. I'm afraid of the fog.'

'That means you love it. You're afraid of it because it's stronger than you, you hate it because you're afraid of it, you love it because you can't master it. You can only love something that refuses to be mastered.'"

We - Yevgeny Zamyatin

I wanted to know what was in her mind, whether I survived or withered there:

2009-06-05T22:18:00.000-07:00

(Buddhist monks at Griffth Observatory)

There are so many different shades of you. Like the shifting colours in late afternoon, unraveling into the uproar of twilight and then resting briefly in the flatness of night-time... only to be awakened in yet another hue, you share with the dawn, the way its colours first pool around the sun and then swarm the sky, like blood from a wound. What other way could I tell you- I see you,

I see you.

Untitled:

2009-06-04T12:11:00.000-07:00

when i passed by our old house, after years of forgetting its location- with its craggy line of trees that hung over the roof like broken elbows and the confetti bits of leaves and pits of rotting berries laid out on the lawn- when i stumbled upon its street, i did not think it would have caused me pain and it did not. but as the weather was bitter- sticky, sweltering, the kind that seems to eats away the flesh- and that is how i remembered it last time- i could not help but feel the remainder of a more childish emotion that i left there. not so altered now- in the street i always thought to look like a large gap in a set of teeth; a passageway like a throat with houses on each side, cramped inside a mouth- the house was as i left it. no one walked down either sidewalk, no cars lingered, and nothing happened except the tumult of the trees in wind. how funny, the joy i once felt whenever i walked home. this childish emotion that took over was not confined to be rage nor disquietude, but a poignant wave of feeling, startling though it had crept inside me quite slowly. perhaps i recognized it to be loss, misplaced- almost close to fear. how does one react to something you no longer care for, once so obsessively admired, and now you almost scorned? yet there it was, a ghostly architecture of memory. i turned my eyes away before i could really look upon its face- tense in its decay, or that is what i would have expected.

One of my favourite poems about cities:

2009-06-03T23:41:00.000-07:00

My Sad Self
.
To Frank O'Hara
.

by Allen Ginsberg

Sometimes when my eyes are red
I go up on top of the RCA Building
and gaze at my world, Manhattan—
my buildings, streets I've done feats in,
lofts, beds, coldwater flats
—on Fifth Ave below which I also bear in mind,
its ant cars, little yellow taxis, men
walking the size of specks of wool—
Panorama of the bridges, sunrise over Brooklyn machine,
sun go down over New Jersey where I was born
& Paterson where I played with ants—
my later loves on 15th Street,
my greater loves of Lower East Side,
my once fabulous amours in the Bronx
faraway—
paths crossing in these hidden streets,
my history summed up, my absences
and ecstasies in Harlem—
—sun shining down on all I own
in one eyeblink to the horizon
in my last eternity—
matter is water.

Sad,
I take the elevator and go
down, pondering,
and walk on the pavements staring into all man's
plateglass, faces,
questioning after who loves,
and stop, bemused
in front of an automobile shopwindow
standing lost in calm thought,
traffic moving up & down 5th Avenue blocks behind me
waiting for a moment when ...

Time to go home & cook supper & listen to
the romantic war news on the radio
... all movement stops
& I walk in the timeless sadness of existence,
tenderness flowing thru the buildings,
my fingertips touching reality's face,
my own face streaked with tears in the mirror
of some window—at dusk—
where I have no desire—
for bonbons—or to own the dresses or Japanese
lampshades of intellection—

Confused by the spectacle around me,
Man struggling up the street
with packages, newspapers,
ties, beautiful suits
toward his desire
Man, woman, streaming over the pavements
red lights clocking hurried watches &
movements at the curb—

And all these streets leading
so crosswise, honking, lengthily,
by avenues
stalked by high buildings or crusted into slums
thru such halting traffic
screaming cars and engines
so painfully to this
countryside, this graveyard
this stillness
on deathbed or mountain
once seen
never regained or desired
in the mind to come
where all Manhattan that I've seen must disappear.

New York, October 1958

This is why Polaroid needs to come back into production ASAP:

2009-05-30T16:42:00.000-07:00

Although I almost got attacked today for taking a picture I really shouldn't have tried to take (and won't be posting!), I am challenging myself to take more street photographs. Next time I have to be more discreet (need to buy that expensive camera that takes pictures from the side- the lense in front is only an illusion).

Someone taped a bouquet of roses onto this RV named "Robin Hood!"

It's really odd how this woman basically lives in front of the Masonic temple. I want to talk to her one day. She has platinum blonde hair, wears a white fur coat some days, and has a shopping cart full of clothes.

He was kind enough to pose. And he sold me delicious oranges.

The only thing I regret is the picture of a homeless man that didn't develop correctly. I did however catch him on 35mm. His name is Patrick. He lives on the corner of Vermont and Sunset at the subway station. I shook his hand, gave him two dollars (that was all I had) in addition to the untouched Albertson's lunch I bought for myself. Patrick will be getting a copy of his photograph.

The Shape of Things:

2009-05-17T12:51:00.001-07:00

I understand everything so perfectly now
this feeling that loops into a perfect circular shape,
yet not shaped like a crown of thorns,
when worn, we know it rips away at the skull
a pleasure to stare at the colour of blood
draining from the pallid forehead for
a few smears of brilliance-
struggle, then, is
a glory to glare at.

It is
not shaped
like a hoop set on fire, ridiculous
to dash through it
with a half open mouth
secretly swallowing on purpose
a hot wave,
festering heat drifting along the tongue-
and the body, given the chance to be set on fire,
feeling the slow softening of flesh for
a beautiful illumination to gawk at.

Could I say it is
the brief moment we made
a coil but not an embrace-
in dreams, you came to me this way again
and my mouth opened to taste the familiar air
seeping from your bedroom-
I listened for
the creaking of the bed we once laid in,
the framework sickly rocking
wood which in time will finish its decay-
and the grey carpet from your room,
flourished here like fat blades-

I became trapped,
and then you bent down to kiss
what could not help to return,
the shadow of your face over mine did nothing
to further shield
my eyes that were closed anyway,
eyes that dared not to look.

The Sisters of Broken Chords:

2009-05-17T12:33:00.000-07:00

if you were an organ, which organ of the human body would you be? that's easy, a paper shredder. are you currently in love? yes, my heart belongs to the atmosphere of a freeway and you can hear souls pitter patter crash like electric waves and hate crimes and the hillsides are shaved kitty clean and all the people have concubines here. i want to be those people with pouting lips that suck suck suck hearts out like egg yolk. with spanish eyes and dandelion veins, i walk home everyday from school as a seventeen year old with homework tucked between my thighs because rape is not a product of fate- i’d like to be alone and not let you touch me right there right there RIGHT HERE RIGHT HERE is where i've misplaced my teeth, broken english/frustrated tagalog- confused vowels rattling piano keys.

for every sleepless night i've thought of you standing in the doorway, of fate and you standing in the doorway. i never loved like this since i was twelve, practicing ballet and liking the idea of mr. f rubbing my crotch. he taught me english and the jazz of billy holiday, about the radioactivity of suns and the greatest generation. what's your favorite book? a coloring book i saturated in the flood of breakfast cereal, el nino, latino street writers, poems of the gangs down in colonia, conquistador apartments, and mr. columbus- his boy stole my virginity.

i used to know a talkative cuban girl with sick redness and a goatee, gave birth in a bathroom, but that was just a minor leak and she tied her hair in knots and jungles and i loved that girl's breasts more than i cared for my own. oh silvia, they exhausted. and when you touched me, you soaked my name my name my name- your name is beautiful, please you can't tell anybody about this at all. these streetlights whimper and i just wanted to have held you until i dissolved. do you hear me? the months i spent waiting for you, watching for any sign of you- eight o’clock county news, the community channels, looking in dead static. why aren't you here with me?

and well, life goes on here- the girls are still kinetic, with their leggings and pubic hairs, collating pornos sticking out from their curious halos. and the mothers of miss mary south carolina of the four stars, poker at nine, still worship crazy bloody saints made by fathers of unborn children. what do you want from me that you haven’t stolen, all those mexican successions, california, my native island? can i even mention your name in my prayers? and so what of your prayers to ave maria. question: is she even as beautiful as me?

come into my life, come into my life, between velveteen ruby sheets and the nurse’s logs of sedative drugs, and love these immigrant tactics of mine. when you walked, you walked with fingers and lenses and beautiful. tell me that i'm beautiful, so i wouldn’t need you. tell me tell me tell me please.