sweet dreams

photo by Shirin Fathi

I'm the only one who's allowed to use me

And so, I will use

and be used

grammer

Willem de Kooning - Queen of Hearts

love is plural 

hang in there

Don't remember the artist. But at Saatchi Gallery.

and I could hear them all scream. 

hopeless as they were, hopeful as I was. 

how could I justify that visceral feeling,

I'd been there once before.

a decision was made: I will continue.

musical

speaking of friends, this is what my best friend does on her spare time when she's not working full time and studying full time and just being fantastic, full time.

http://www.myspace.com/rochelt

wings

So my friend Mina is in town from Peterborough, which for us means too much wine and funny shared anecdotes.
She also shared this pretty much perfect piece of poetry with me, which we had with tea and chocolate:

Matisse - Icarus

THIS HEAVY CRAFT

P.K. Page

The wax has melted
but the dream of flight
persists.
I, Icarus, though grounded
in my flesh
have one bright section in me
where a bird
night after starry night
while I'm asleep
unfolds its phantom wings
and practices.

left overs

You know when someone leaves and the house still sounds like them, feels like them?
As if a part of him was still moving the curtain, running the water.
As if nothing else exists outside these walls. And yet, all that really matters, is on the other side.

brunch

I had croissant crumbs in  my bellybutton.

And I thought how stupid it is to believe in destiny.

who loves valentine?

Falling in love again was simple.

It was the marked way that he’d cross his legs, ever so swiftly and controlled, in the middle of conversations that did not matter. The gesture was either a show of confidence or vulnerability rather than practicality. In my eyes it was divine, and I longed for the repetition. I longed for all sorts of repetitions that no one else noticed.

But with every in love there is an out love, and I was powerless to outlaw it. 

whistle

can you?

word of the day

teetotal |ˈtēˌtōtl|adjectivechoosing or characterized by abstinence from alcohol teetotalism |-ˌizəm| |ˈtiˈˈtoʊdlˈɪzəm| nounORIGIN mid 19th cent.: emphatic extension of total , apparently first used by Richard Turner, a worker from Preston, England, in a speech (1833)urging total abstinence from all alcohol, rather than mere abstinence from spirits, advocated by some early temperance reformers.

feet

The only thing that matters is imagination.
To be able to imagine yourself in other unseen locations, vocations, and sensibilities. This has to continue no matter how content you feel you are right now.
Content is dangerous.

the look

" You look so innocent."

I can never tell if that's a compliment or something else. Something terrible.

i figured it out

art is

Arshile Gorky - Diary of a Seducer 

Vik Muniz - Spaghetti Medusa

From a sketchbook of Louise Bourgeoise 

an interpretation. 

status

Einstein was right.

Energy cannot be destroyed . . . it is simply transfered from one state to another.

Nothing ever ends.

scene

girl at a café / by the window / legs crossed:

She is wearing a grass green sweater. Her unexciting blond locks are tied back, she has perfect size breasts and a beautiful pale complexion. Her un-manicured hands are lightly holding a Michael Ondaatje book. Every few minutes she repeats some line or another with a shy whisper. She is slim, but just finished a muffin and a pecan tart back-to-back with a voluptuous latte. She frowns, and lazily at first but then firmly picks up a pen and scribbles in the margins. What is she teaching herself?

la porte

She shut the door, opened it again.

Shut. Open.

Swish. Bam. Swish. Bam.

"Look!"

Swish.

"Look how easy it is!"

Bam.

She was gone.

saving you saving me

  

Philip Guston - Bad Habits (1970)

Saving people is so redundant. It is so naive. And yet it is one of the most defining characteristics of mine.

I was walking home just now, sneezing and compressing my limbs into their smallest proportions, when I saw a tiny old lady with hands full of groceries steadily walking toward me. I was compelled to go up to her and offer to carry her bags home. I made eye contact but she wouldn't have it. I stopped, but she didn't notice. So I kept walking, feeling a little bit colder than before.

This happens every week, and in different scenarios.

I have often broken up fights; from street fights to best friends fighting to parents to cats. I've saved ants from drowning and I have taken numerous birds to the vet (none of them made it out). When I was six years old I jumped in the deep end to rescue an older girl from drowning -- I didn't know how to swim.

Less than a year ago I found a girl passed out in the washroom of some bar and carried her to a stranger's house and left my card for her. She probably thought my card says "Super(wo)man" or something.

What's funny is that I'm beginning to understand that this is not heroism, but being stupid. Yet I can't help it. I especially find it stupid when my help is not needed ("Tara, we don't need you to mediate the situation").

People don't need to be saved, especially the ones that are waiting to be saved.  I'm also against the idea of martyrdom and I guess that's the point of departure between aid and imposition: to be a martyr you are expecting a heavenly return and you are usually sacrificing something precious. I don't ever want any one to do that for me, and I won't do it either. Especially for the people I love, because I will only resent them in the long term.

Anyways. . . I guess I'm trying to say that I like making people happy. Sometimes too much.

Unless if you deserve to be sad, of course.

mooooch

the most unattractive quality in a person is mooching. it makes me uncomfortable and unsafe.

which is sad because i love the word mooch.

it's cute.

and smooch is also a favorite. like here:

so is much, which in Persian means kiss.

from London with pomabombs

I've known her since we were nine, but she still surprises me all the time.

Elham Issari - Pomabombs (2011)