I.AM.SO.EXCITED.TO.BE.A.F***ING.JOURNALIST.

YES.

voluntary confinement

how much do i tell/ how much do i hide

there is a hiding place next to that shelf

but i'm not saying where

come catch me:

i'm the invisible science of scrolls

invincible arm of letters

am i in trouble, sir?

oh yah.

am i going to feel pain?

you bet.

but the question is, rather,

are you scared?

and how many scars

make a map

for my wall.

first sneeze

W. K. L. Dickson, 1893

There's a first for everything. This was the first time human sneeze was captured on motion picture.
I'd say bless you, but I don't believe in it.
And you're dead anyways.

for all the story tellers

pictures and sounds, sounds and pictures,

and holograms

and words.

in

your

hands.

Yesterday I saw this little prince again, and I bought another copy.

Whenever you see it, just get it. Don't think twice.

Trust me, you're gonna need it.

smiley circles

Today, among all the brilliant things that Joe Fiorito said, this was one of the best:

“Be here, right now”

Obvious, right?

False.

After years of writing columns- and fucking good ones, too- for Toronto Star, Joe knows what he’s doing. He told the teens and twenty-something-old students sitting in front of him to take off their ipods when they’re walking on the street, and look, listen, and ask. He told them that if they don’t care about what they’re doing or writing about, no one else would. And if no one cares about any one, and if there are no more stories to tell or to listen to, then what the fuck are we doing here?

After all, there is one ultimate ending we all share –death, and meanwhile, we’re all in this together, right?

Right.

This all can sound so mundane, obvious, or cliché. All of us at some point or another have thought about these things, and continue to do so depending on who we are (socio-paths excluded). And yes, they can sound out-dated and paternal. But that doesn’t change the fact that they’re true.

After class, as I was waiting for the streetcar, I saw a cute little old man sitting on the sidewalk, looking at passersby with ragged clothes, a curious look and a (literally) frozen smile. He was holding tight to a Second Cup, that was inside a Tim Horton’s cup, all inside a venti Starbucks cup. He had a cardboard on his left side with pictures of jesus, and some other saints I’m not familiar with, taped on it. He was of Asian dissent.

I gave him a dollar and he smiled.

On the subway, there were three people, a robust woman and two other men, who were talking in sign language. I tried not to stare and also not look like I’m trying. It’s a hard act to maintain. Two women standing next to me did stare at the animated conversation, but with a wide smile and kind eyes. They were speaking a language I guessed to be African.

By the time I was strolling on Devonshire toward the library, I felt warm and exuberant. I didn’t know why.

A cool boy was holding an old stranger’s hand and was trying hard to understand where it was that the white-bearded fellow wanted to go.

I smiled at them.

A girl across the street and walking in the opposite direction was looking at orange leafs falling in front of her, when she smiled.

I smiled.

A man was walking towards me and as soon as we crossed eyes,

We smiled.

Cliché. Cheesy. Flakey.

Whatever, I was happy.

"'God,' he said, 'why have you chastised me with such a terrible deformity as thinking? Why have you taught me to think, instead of teaching me the humility of cattle!'"

-Shah of Shahs, Kapuscinski

welcome to the jungle

When it comes to friends and friendships, there are two traits (or slips) that I dread the most:

One of them is stupidity; those very awkward moments in your head when you realize -while looking at your friend and listening to them talk or make some sort of remark- that he/she is stupid. And the definition of stupid in this context shouldn't be mistaken with lack of knowledge or ignorance on a very specific topic of interest to you. By stupid I mean closed minded, passive, rigid, aloof.

What’s worse is when that person actually thinks very highly of himself/herself.

The second one, which is much less tolerable to me than the first, is being full of shit. When a friend exposes this ugly and revolting side of himself/herself, my initial reaction is shock. Then it turns into anger, thinking: “seriously?”, and then pity with a tint of mockery. Finally you have two options: an outright reaction, calling their game and spitting on their face, or, going along with the puppet-show and then slowly adjusting their presence in your life, to a bare minimum.

In any case, I hate it when I lose a friend to either one of these awful tragedies.

word of the day

decadent |ˈdekədənt|

characterized by or reflecting a state of moral or cultural decline.• luxuriously self-indulgent : a decadent soak in a scented bath.a person who is luxuriously self-indulgent.• a member of a group of late 19th-cent. Frenchand English poets associated with the Aesthetic Movement.

“Sartorial techniques insist on the beauty of a geometrically measurable body.” Fascists did too, breaking the body into fragments in search of an ideal. Here, a chart of movie star glances aims to sum up the beauty of the eye.

-The New Yorker, Fascist Fascination

the gladiator

your foot taps right into my head

jesus! how far did we get

bonus elements, firefighters cutting through

push-elbow-bones

cracking

you groan like a stranded fly

stuck between the window

and the screen

a cinematic scream

gravitating masses with bruised faces

their complexions bleeding into one another

sticky foreheads sticking to one another

let go of me

let go of me

let go of me

a predictable mass of harmony

hangs above.

a lesson not learned

The other day, as I was moving through the Indigo crowd, with all their diversity and at times visible stuck-up attitude, I thought of love.

Someone, whom I didn’t get to see, smelled of my ex-boyfriend’s cologne. For a moment -much like those cheesy, Hollywood-moments, images of “us” flashed in my head.

I remembered how my heart would vehemently beat in my chest, and my cheeks warmed up with passion, whenever I saw him. Even the thought of seeing him would produce the same effect.

And, like any other lover in a long-distance affair, the smell of Chanel’s Allure was the definition of love and longing to me. At least for a while.

And then of course, the moment passed and I was waiting in line for my Chai latte and desperately hoping for that warm window-couch that was occupied.

I’ll save you the details of how, when, why we broke up- allure and I. And I will also save you the number of other fragrances that became my temporal temples (Armani, YSL, etc.).

All of a sudden, I asked myself, have I kissed love goodbye?

Is it possible that my intense and agonizing experiment with amore, has made me impenetrable, even biologically incapable of love?

It’s become so difficult for me to recognize it. When it comes to my friends and their fairy tales or lack thereof, I am usually right-on and the go-to girl for advice. But when I’m faced with a tale of my own, as a Persian expression goes,“I put my tail on my back and run away.”

“You just haven’t met the…”

Yah. How many times do we hear that one.

love, is probably the most cliche topic for someone to write about. But it truly seems like whatever we do and how ever we distract ourselves from it, it keeps coming back.

I’ll update you when I meet the next allure.