21 Mar 07 Wednesday
11:01 AM - a moment of clarity
Category: Pets and Animals
so, i wrote this in an email to a friend and i hope he forgives me, but i thought that it kind of had a blog-ish feel to it and there were some things in it that i would be writing about anyway, so i thought i would save myself the labour of re-wording.
things have been alright actually. today is justin's b-day, so i took off. its his 21st, so of course, he plans on getting sloppy drunk. things have been good between us, but sometimes i wonder if they're going so well b/c we realize that we only have a limited time together. i've been in a tion of relationships. for a while i was serial dating. not so much a fear of being alone, but more eager to find my true love that was waiting for me (yeah, i know...i was young, lol).
after a while theres this sort of malaise that sets in and the goal seems to be to have a solid foundation set before that malaise hits or the relationship crumbles to dust very quickly. justin and i had that for a very brief period of time, but then all of this came about and now we appreciate each other.
it's wierd. dunno.
work is going alright i guess. i probably told you that htey're disolving my department. i gave notice to my landlord that i'm leaving at the end of april and as far as work is concerned, it couldnt be soon enough. the best people are leaving our dept and things are becoming very strange right now. imagine any third world counrty in the middle of a coup. suddenly, your piece of the world becomes unstable and almost anything goes.
so, i talked to a very old friend of mine and he offered to let me stay with him but he lives in the valley. i had another old friend just find me on myspace and offer a place. he lives in weho. i'm not sure if that's too close to the lion's den. i'm hoping to get a place in west LA when i can save up the scratch.
its funny b/c all of the people who have offered me a couch to crash on have cats and i have a rat and 2 mice that i'm bringing with me. this should be interesting.
well, theres not that much going on, but thats it. thanks for the kind words of encouragement. it means a lot to me. i almost forgot to tell you. i had kind of a breakthough this morning.
i was sitting in bed and justin was out of the room and i was just staring at the wall in that way that you do when you got up and dont have to be anywhere soon and you just want to enjoy being in bed that extra few minutes.
so, my mind wanders and i think about my blogs, and i think about the fact that they are one big arc in terms of my dealing with recovering from addiction. so then i think about the word "meth". now normally, it's enough to run shivers down my spine, but for the first time in years, i feel nothing. like diana in "a chorus line"
i am shocked that i feel nothing, almost enough to sing a song about it, lol.
then there was the clarity of recognizing the moment. it was very cool.
oh, also, i was at the library and i found this amazing book that i had almost forgotten about called "geek love". i cannot recomment this book enough.
well, thats enough for now.
your friend,
Wednesday, March 21, 2007
Tuesday, March 20, 2007
exile
02 Mar 07 Friday
6:39 PM - exile
Current mood: angst sliding into complacency
Category: angst sliding into complacency Automotive
alright, here goes.
this is the beginning of another blog that i fully expect that no one will actually read. if you are reading this asnd you get to the end, then i guess i apologise in advance for all of the spite and venom in the following entry. some of these things i actually think and some of them are just sort of random statements made in a cloud of rage and frustration.
i am so fuckijng sick and tired of this exile. this was supposed to be a "three hour tour" as the tv theme goes. to extend that metaphor, it seems that anytime i get the wood together for a raft, a hurricane comes through and blows all of the building materials to the farthest corners of the island. the more times that i am forced to start over, the more upset i get.
i think that i have been pretty patient while i've been here. i've tried approaching each ridiculous situation with humour and aplomb, but i dont know how much more i can stand.
heres what the sitch is:
justin and i moved up here with the distinct idea ofd moving back to LA in august (together). justin has decided not to come back with me to LA. now i am dead sure that someday when he looks back at this, i will the one that will be reviled for "abandoning" him. i actually condiser the situation the other way around. i love justin. granted, he's a pain in the arse, but then so am i. i love him very much, and the prospect of being without him scares the crap out of me. i cant begin to express how much i dont want to be without him, but i also am so tired of being here. to other eyes, this is a nice quiet town nestled in the mountains, cradling a beautiful lake. to me, its a prison that cages me while i watch the rest of the world pass me by.
i have a friend in LA that is working on the restoration of The Godfather for paramount and he's working with allen daviau. i have friends shooting films (some that would want me there, one who wouldnt) and all i can do is go to work, answer the phones, and fix the errors of asinine people who make insipid mistakes.
like tectonic plates, these concerns and fears rumble together and make ripples in my psyche that i can only hold back for so long. my time and patience are running out.
justin's family is here, and there are other considerations that i cant go into here. i dont blame him. his support system is here. he is all i know in the way of a support system. now, i am on the verge of one of the toughest years of my life and i will have to do it alone.
blah
add into this equation that we just found out that my department is being dismantled in the next 2 months. one could argue that i'm leaving just in time, but there's been a moratorium on overtime (which means that i will have to manage on my measly 40 hr check). the upshot is that it will take me the rest of my damn natural life to get together the needed money to leave here.
this place has the same damn problem as the midwest. i always thouight that where i came from had this distinct problem. you can never get the momentum to leave.
david wojnarowicz once wrote that an object has to be moving at 7 miles a second to break from the earth's gravity and i guess i've always felt that i always seemto get stuck in these gravity wells.
LA was the only time that i felt any kind of freedom. i guess it was just a different prison, but i never seemed to mind b/c it was a prison of my own choosing. thats not something i can say about wisconsin or idaho.
one can argue that i chose to move here w/ justin, but i got bamboozled. this is nothing close to the situation i was supposed to be walking into.
the next time someone asks me to move for or with them, i will let loose a string of obsentities at such a volume it may be offensive to little old ladies, children, and exotic fish.
anyway.......
being sober in idaho has been reasonably easy. G-d only knows what fate holds for me when i get back into the city whose darkest corners i know so well....
on a rational level, i am aware that that fate crap is just an excuse; at the end of the day it is entirely up to my willpower to hold me up. i guess that's the midwesterner in me. doesnt matter what it is, you can plow through with grit, if you've got it.
i guess i will always be on the precipice, hoping that a strong wind wont blow me in the wrong direction.
i know someone at work that i know for fact has access to it. i actually broached the subject once, but i decided against pursuing it; for a variety of reasons, not all of them virtuous.
i had to go to the store the other day and buy new pants. i'm a size 38 now. un-fucking-believable. i was maybe a 30 or a 29 when i moved up here. i'm tired of being tired.
i started walking home from the office b/c its literally the only exercise my fat arse ever gets. i miss swimming. i miss just going for walks, taking photos in west hollywood. i miss LA.
blah
6:39 PM - exile
Current mood: angst sliding into complacency
Category: angst sliding into complacency Automotive
alright, here goes.
this is the beginning of another blog that i fully expect that no one will actually read. if you are reading this asnd you get to the end, then i guess i apologise in advance for all of the spite and venom in the following entry. some of these things i actually think and some of them are just sort of random statements made in a cloud of rage and frustration.
i am so fuckijng sick and tired of this exile. this was supposed to be a "three hour tour" as the tv theme goes. to extend that metaphor, it seems that anytime i get the wood together for a raft, a hurricane comes through and blows all of the building materials to the farthest corners of the island. the more times that i am forced to start over, the more upset i get.
i think that i have been pretty patient while i've been here. i've tried approaching each ridiculous situation with humour and aplomb, but i dont know how much more i can stand.
heres what the sitch is:
justin and i moved up here with the distinct idea ofd moving back to LA in august (together). justin has decided not to come back with me to LA. now i am dead sure that someday when he looks back at this, i will the one that will be reviled for "abandoning" him. i actually condiser the situation the other way around. i love justin. granted, he's a pain in the arse, but then so am i. i love him very much, and the prospect of being without him scares the crap out of me. i cant begin to express how much i dont want to be without him, but i also am so tired of being here. to other eyes, this is a nice quiet town nestled in the mountains, cradling a beautiful lake. to me, its a prison that cages me while i watch the rest of the world pass me by.
i have a friend in LA that is working on the restoration of The Godfather for paramount and he's working with allen daviau. i have friends shooting films (some that would want me there, one who wouldnt) and all i can do is go to work, answer the phones, and fix the errors of asinine people who make insipid mistakes.
like tectonic plates, these concerns and fears rumble together and make ripples in my psyche that i can only hold back for so long. my time and patience are running out.
justin's family is here, and there are other considerations that i cant go into here. i dont blame him. his support system is here. he is all i know in the way of a support system. now, i am on the verge of one of the toughest years of my life and i will have to do it alone.
blah
add into this equation that we just found out that my department is being dismantled in the next 2 months. one could argue that i'm leaving just in time, but there's been a moratorium on overtime (which means that i will have to manage on my measly 40 hr check). the upshot is that it will take me the rest of my damn natural life to get together the needed money to leave here.
this place has the same damn problem as the midwest. i always thouight that where i came from had this distinct problem. you can never get the momentum to leave.
david wojnarowicz once wrote that an object has to be moving at 7 miles a second to break from the earth's gravity and i guess i've always felt that i always seemto get stuck in these gravity wells.
LA was the only time that i felt any kind of freedom. i guess it was just a different prison, but i never seemed to mind b/c it was a prison of my own choosing. thats not something i can say about wisconsin or idaho.
one can argue that i chose to move here w/ justin, but i got bamboozled. this is nothing close to the situation i was supposed to be walking into.
the next time someone asks me to move for or with them, i will let loose a string of obsentities at such a volume it may be offensive to little old ladies, children, and exotic fish.
anyway.......
being sober in idaho has been reasonably easy. G-d only knows what fate holds for me when i get back into the city whose darkest corners i know so well....
on a rational level, i am aware that that fate crap is just an excuse; at the end of the day it is entirely up to my willpower to hold me up. i guess that's the midwesterner in me. doesnt matter what it is, you can plow through with grit, if you've got it.
i guess i will always be on the precipice, hoping that a strong wind wont blow me in the wrong direction.
i know someone at work that i know for fact has access to it. i actually broached the subject once, but i decided against pursuing it; for a variety of reasons, not all of them virtuous.
i had to go to the store the other day and buy new pants. i'm a size 38 now. un-fucking-believable. i was maybe a 30 or a 29 when i moved up here. i'm tired of being tired.
i started walking home from the office b/c its literally the only exercise my fat arse ever gets. i miss swimming. i miss just going for walks, taking photos in west hollywood. i miss LA.
blah
a story...the beginnnings
09 Nov 06 Thursday
6:09 PM - a story...the beginnnings
Category: Writing and Poetry
i was at work today and i just got this bizarre urge to start writing and i got an idea for a story.
think the windup bird chronicles meets neil gaimen meets bukowsi and burroughs
i posted it b/c i am incredibly rusty and any comments or critiques on the style of the writing. btw - dont worry about the punctuation and capitalization.
thanks
The sun was shining brightly through the leaves that covered the dog park in shade. to be fair the park wasnt all that big and the trees in it werent that many, but they had long limbs and many leaves that helped to give the place a serene kind of feel. Thomas was sitting under one of these trees, watching the random dogs weaving around the park catching various objects with the natural athleticism that dogs have and sniffing each other with that carefree sensibility that dogs also seem to have.
Thomas was sitting down because he could walk no further. to be fair, thomas couldhave walked further, but his chosen place to throw up was in the bushes a few metres from the tree. the rest was just a moments' recovery.
a huge labradour raced up to him and a momentary wave of panic washed over thomas. standing on its hind legs, the dog would have been as tall as Thomas. the dog approached quickly and began to sniff around thomas. It began to lick his face, much to the discomfort of the fallen boy. for a moment Thomas was blind as the dog filled up his field of vision.
"ben!", a voice barked from somewhere behind the dog. thomas pushed the dog away from his face and his field of vision catching a young man of indeterminate early 20's appraoching from the corner of his eye.
there was a whistle accompanying a loud, "here boy". the dog stoppped and looked back to see his owner approaching. the dog though about it for a moment, turned back to thomas, regarding him and ran to the voice.
"sorry about that," the young man said, rustling the dog's head, "he's really sweet, just big."
thomas wiped the dog slober from his face and looked up.
"its okay." he croaked.
the man grabbed the dog by the sides of it's head and slid his ears back and forth.
"isnt that right, gentle ben..."
Thomas chucked a little.
"gentle ben, like the bear,"he laughed.
the man looked over and smiled, "yeah."
"thats a bit retro, isnt it?"
"a little, I guess."
The moment slid into silence while the momentum of he conversation died. The man looked at Thomas taking measure of him. Thomas was sitting with his back to the tree, wearing a doubtful expression. he wore it well, thomas wore most things well. he was in shape, (which is mandatory in los angeles) and wearing a plain white t-shirt and a pair of faded blue jeans. the bottoms of the legs were frayed from where they had reached the ground and been slowly unraveled. the space where the shirt met his jeans was mussed from being tucked in and a small stain of sick accented his left shoulder.
The man smiled awkwardly and let the dog lead him away. Thomas leaned back into himself and quietly smiled. Ah, yes, the distance sets in, he thought.
Thomas leaned forward and rolled himself forward off of the slope of the trees roots at it..s base. As he stood to his full height, the withdrawl hit. For a moment, a force from beyond that seemed to grab his soul and hold it out of his body for a moment. The park warped out of his view.
6:09 PM - a story...the beginnnings
Category: Writing and Poetry
i was at work today and i just got this bizarre urge to start writing and i got an idea for a story.
think the windup bird chronicles meets neil gaimen meets bukowsi and burroughs
i posted it b/c i am incredibly rusty and any comments or critiques on the style of the writing. btw - dont worry about the punctuation and capitalization.
thanks
The sun was shining brightly through the leaves that covered the dog park in shade. to be fair the park wasnt all that big and the trees in it werent that many, but they had long limbs and many leaves that helped to give the place a serene kind of feel. Thomas was sitting under one of these trees, watching the random dogs weaving around the park catching various objects with the natural athleticism that dogs have and sniffing each other with that carefree sensibility that dogs also seem to have.
Thomas was sitting down because he could walk no further. to be fair, thomas couldhave walked further, but his chosen place to throw up was in the bushes a few metres from the tree. the rest was just a moments' recovery.
a huge labradour raced up to him and a momentary wave of panic washed over thomas. standing on its hind legs, the dog would have been as tall as Thomas. the dog approached quickly and began to sniff around thomas. It began to lick his face, much to the discomfort of the fallen boy. for a moment Thomas was blind as the dog filled up his field of vision.
"ben!", a voice barked from somewhere behind the dog. thomas pushed the dog away from his face and his field of vision catching a young man of indeterminate early 20's appraoching from the corner of his eye.
there was a whistle accompanying a loud, "here boy". the dog stoppped and looked back to see his owner approaching. the dog though about it for a moment, turned back to thomas, regarding him and ran to the voice.
"sorry about that," the young man said, rustling the dog's head, "he's really sweet, just big."
thomas wiped the dog slober from his face and looked up.
"its okay." he croaked.
the man grabbed the dog by the sides of it's head and slid his ears back and forth.
"isnt that right, gentle ben..."
Thomas chucked a little.
"gentle ben, like the bear,"he laughed.
the man looked over and smiled, "yeah."
"thats a bit retro, isnt it?"
"a little, I guess."
The moment slid into silence while the momentum of he conversation died. The man looked at Thomas taking measure of him. Thomas was sitting with his back to the tree, wearing a doubtful expression. he wore it well, thomas wore most things well. he was in shape, (which is mandatory in los angeles) and wearing a plain white t-shirt and a pair of faded blue jeans. the bottoms of the legs were frayed from where they had reached the ground and been slowly unraveled. the space where the shirt met his jeans was mussed from being tucked in and a small stain of sick accented his left shoulder.
The man smiled awkwardly and let the dog lead him away. Thomas leaned back into himself and quietly smiled. Ah, yes, the distance sets in, he thought.
Thomas leaned forward and rolled himself forward off of the slope of the trees roots at it..s base. As he stood to his full height, the withdrawl hit. For a moment, a force from beyond that seemed to grab his soul and hold it out of his body for a moment. The park warped out of his view.
the hummingbird of wishes and the salmon of doubt
08 Nov 06 Wednesday
9:25 PM - the hummingbird of wishes and the salmon of doubt
Current mood: blah
Category: Automotive
and so it is; back by popular demand....:)
things have really been interesting lately. justin and i went through a pretty rough time for a while and i came close to the breaking point a few times, but things are starting to turn around like they always do.
i have this friend ruben that i talk to a lot and he's been incredibly helpful in terms of understanding what i have been going through. i found a book i had bought quite a while back and it's called "Tulsa", its by larry smith, the guy who directed kids and bully. its a small book of photographs, but they're good ones. i suddenyl noticed an few things i had never noticed about the book.
turns out there was text in it and theres a great quote that larry has. the book was published in 1971 and theres this passage
"i was born in tulsa ok in 1943. when i was sixteen i started shooting amphetamine. i shot with my friends everyday for three years and then left town but i've been back throuh the years. once the needle goes in it never comes out."
"once the needle goes in it never comes out."
i think that never has there been a more true statement. its funny because i've been working this job at this call centre and things were getting kinda hard for me b/c the job is dead-end to say the least, but it kept me busy for a while. until i got into the swing of things. then i got bored and listless. just in the nick of time, i got promoted up the chain a little bit.
so far it has kept me fairly busy. what i do is write the actual code for the orders so that people can get their tv and online services.
its challenging and its the kind of thihng i can become good at. its keeping me occupied for the moment. example; there is this guy that i knew over the summer that was mates with the guy who owns our house. i havent seen him in a while and the rumour factory has it that he has fallen into bad meth use. he was a cool guy, so its a shame.
the day after my first day in my new postion, he was visiting one of my roommates and i caught him in the hall when i got up to go to the bathroom. there was a moment of hellos and then i realized that this guy could hook me up.
all i had to do was ask.
i thought about my job and about justin and it was enough to keep my mouth shut. barely.
when i sit and think about this its kind of like phantom limb syndrome.
stay with me.
imagine waking up one morning and getting up and going to scratch your nose or something and then realize that you lost that arm in a tragic accident involving venetian blinds or something.
theres that moment when you truly forget your disability.
yeah, its kinda like that.
there are moments when i am going to bed and my mind starts to wonder and i now know that every pleasure truly has it's price. theres a lot i wanted to forget, a lot that i was running from; but its all coming back to me, with interest.
i think that i am normal, in my mind, i have reverted back to who i used to be in a lot of ways, but i forget to factor in the toll that this has taken on me. i forget that i now have some emotional instability that makes me very unpleasant to be around, but then i guess living with someone means that you dodnt get the space you once had to blow all of that off harmlessly.
i know in my heart that the last place i belong is in a relatinship. i have expressed to my friend ruben that my biggest fear is that i'm not strong enough to keep this away from me.
of course fear of justin helps to curb the instinct, lol.
i'm not afraid of him kicking my ass as i am of hurting him.
so far i have acheived sobriety by putting one foot in front of the other and trying not to look back, but if you dont look back, then theres no point in walking forward b/c then you're gonna repeat it if you cant figure out why you did it.
i did it b/c i was bored. i did it b/c the world that was scary and weary became new again. i did it b/c it was easier and ultimately more rewarding to be in a fog that required nothing from me. i did it b/c i didnt care enough about myself to stop.
to be completely honest, if i ever lost justin i would probably start up again, only because my love for him outweighs any sense of respect i have for myself. maybe that will change. couldnt say.
maybe thats all it is; maybe theres a delicate balance, something precariously keeping one from crossing those borders. i mean, how often do you want to bash someone's head in in a fit of hot anger? what happens when the anger out-weighs your sense of decency and self restraint? they have a term for it actually, its called a crime of passion.
enough of this; there have been so many other things that have happened to me that are far more interesting. i've been hunting and logging. they were both intersting experiences.
i went hunting w/ justin's dad. it was fun and i had a good time, but it sort of opened old wounds that i didnt know were there. if i am to be honest w/ myself, i have to say that the experience gave me a remote taste of what it must be like to have a dad.
i grew up with imposters and hegemons.
i'll always be grateful for the experience. if nothing else, it opened up an avenue of though that i hadnt let myself flow into it. actually we went huntiing twice. the first time was with justin and his stepmother and father. the next time was just his dad and i getting up and going out at half past Oh-my-God-its early.
the first time was grouse hunting around my 30th birthday. hunting grouse is about waling down the road and hoping a bird will saunter past you and that you will be fast enough to blow it to kindom come.
think wolfenstein 3-D meets duck hunt.
it was interesting to me to remmber that my 29th birthday had been a small affair at the Abbey in west hollywood. i was wearing a suit and sipping martinis. my 30th took place in the back of a pick-up truck w/ a shotgun.
one is forced to ask oneself what happened during that year......
anyway, that is quite enough for the moment. on a completely unrelated note before i go, i have to rant about idaho drivers for a second.
at first i thought they were just humble folk.
then i thought that they werent in a hurry and the pace of life was much more relaxed here.
then i realized that they lobotomize the people after the driving test.
-"congratulations timmy, you passed the test, heres your licence"
-"gee thank, mr. thompson."
pause
-"-hey! what're you doing with that ice-pick...no!!!!"
just a theory, no hard evidence yet.
thanks for listening if you got this far.
ben
ps- if you get a chance listen to the Decemberists and the Ricky Gervais show (the podcasts), the first season is brilliant
9:25 PM - the hummingbird of wishes and the salmon of doubt
Current mood: blah
Category: Automotive
and so it is; back by popular demand....:)
things have really been interesting lately. justin and i went through a pretty rough time for a while and i came close to the breaking point a few times, but things are starting to turn around like they always do.
i have this friend ruben that i talk to a lot and he's been incredibly helpful in terms of understanding what i have been going through. i found a book i had bought quite a while back and it's called "Tulsa", its by larry smith, the guy who directed kids and bully. its a small book of photographs, but they're good ones. i suddenyl noticed an few things i had never noticed about the book.
turns out there was text in it and theres a great quote that larry has. the book was published in 1971 and theres this passage
"i was born in tulsa ok in 1943. when i was sixteen i started shooting amphetamine. i shot with my friends everyday for three years and then left town but i've been back throuh the years. once the needle goes in it never comes out."
"once the needle goes in it never comes out."
i think that never has there been a more true statement. its funny because i've been working this job at this call centre and things were getting kinda hard for me b/c the job is dead-end to say the least, but it kept me busy for a while. until i got into the swing of things. then i got bored and listless. just in the nick of time, i got promoted up the chain a little bit.
so far it has kept me fairly busy. what i do is write the actual code for the orders so that people can get their tv and online services.
its challenging and its the kind of thihng i can become good at. its keeping me occupied for the moment. example; there is this guy that i knew over the summer that was mates with the guy who owns our house. i havent seen him in a while and the rumour factory has it that he has fallen into bad meth use. he was a cool guy, so its a shame.
the day after my first day in my new postion, he was visiting one of my roommates and i caught him in the hall when i got up to go to the bathroom. there was a moment of hellos and then i realized that this guy could hook me up.
all i had to do was ask.
i thought about my job and about justin and it was enough to keep my mouth shut. barely.
when i sit and think about this its kind of like phantom limb syndrome.
stay with me.
imagine waking up one morning and getting up and going to scratch your nose or something and then realize that you lost that arm in a tragic accident involving venetian blinds or something.
theres that moment when you truly forget your disability.
yeah, its kinda like that.
there are moments when i am going to bed and my mind starts to wonder and i now know that every pleasure truly has it's price. theres a lot i wanted to forget, a lot that i was running from; but its all coming back to me, with interest.
i think that i am normal, in my mind, i have reverted back to who i used to be in a lot of ways, but i forget to factor in the toll that this has taken on me. i forget that i now have some emotional instability that makes me very unpleasant to be around, but then i guess living with someone means that you dodnt get the space you once had to blow all of that off harmlessly.
i know in my heart that the last place i belong is in a relatinship. i have expressed to my friend ruben that my biggest fear is that i'm not strong enough to keep this away from me.
of course fear of justin helps to curb the instinct, lol.
i'm not afraid of him kicking my ass as i am of hurting him.
so far i have acheived sobriety by putting one foot in front of the other and trying not to look back, but if you dont look back, then theres no point in walking forward b/c then you're gonna repeat it if you cant figure out why you did it.
i did it b/c i was bored. i did it b/c the world that was scary and weary became new again. i did it b/c it was easier and ultimately more rewarding to be in a fog that required nothing from me. i did it b/c i didnt care enough about myself to stop.
to be completely honest, if i ever lost justin i would probably start up again, only because my love for him outweighs any sense of respect i have for myself. maybe that will change. couldnt say.
maybe thats all it is; maybe theres a delicate balance, something precariously keeping one from crossing those borders. i mean, how often do you want to bash someone's head in in a fit of hot anger? what happens when the anger out-weighs your sense of decency and self restraint? they have a term for it actually, its called a crime of passion.
enough of this; there have been so many other things that have happened to me that are far more interesting. i've been hunting and logging. they were both intersting experiences.
i went hunting w/ justin's dad. it was fun and i had a good time, but it sort of opened old wounds that i didnt know were there. if i am to be honest w/ myself, i have to say that the experience gave me a remote taste of what it must be like to have a dad.
i grew up with imposters and hegemons.
i'll always be grateful for the experience. if nothing else, it opened up an avenue of though that i hadnt let myself flow into it. actually we went huntiing twice. the first time was with justin and his stepmother and father. the next time was just his dad and i getting up and going out at half past Oh-my-God-its early.
the first time was grouse hunting around my 30th birthday. hunting grouse is about waling down the road and hoping a bird will saunter past you and that you will be fast enough to blow it to kindom come.
think wolfenstein 3-D meets duck hunt.
it was interesting to me to remmber that my 29th birthday had been a small affair at the Abbey in west hollywood. i was wearing a suit and sipping martinis. my 30th took place in the back of a pick-up truck w/ a shotgun.
one is forced to ask oneself what happened during that year......
anyway, that is quite enough for the moment. on a completely unrelated note before i go, i have to rant about idaho drivers for a second.
at first i thought they were just humble folk.
then i thought that they werent in a hurry and the pace of life was much more relaxed here.
then i realized that they lobotomize the people after the driving test.
-"congratulations timmy, you passed the test, heres your licence"
-"gee thank, mr. thompson."
pause
-"-hey! what're you doing with that ice-pick...no!!!!"
just a theory, no hard evidence yet.
thanks for listening if you got this far.
ben
ps- if you get a chance listen to the Decemberists and the Ricky Gervais show (the podcasts), the first season is brilliant
jackson pollock, abstract expressionism and bukowski....go!
27 Sep 06 Wednesday
8:54 AM - jackson pollock, abstract expressionism and bukowski....go!
Category: Jobs, Work, Careers
my friend ryan wrote an interesting blog that i responded to and then i decide to open up the conversation and see who though i was full of shite or what. i am lucky enough to have many intelligent and well informed friends. what do you guys think?
here's an excerpt of my friend's blog:
"....and i dont buy that the spark of creativity strikes hard and fast and requires the artist to move quickly to capture it. if a guy paints a 120' x 180' mural in 35 minutes, he's just trying to get done. theres no way a canvas that large could be covered with any thematic or creative concern that quickly. sorry. nope.
so i dont know. i know the guy did some great stuff. but i do think, if the film is accurate, he was f&*ing around to get done so he could get to his next important work, popping the cap off that beer.
but thats the advantage of painging, i suppose. bukoiwski liked his booze as much as the next guy, but i would think if he just randomly dumped keystrokes onto the page just to fill it up, he'd have a lot harder time convincing anyone it was genius"
ryan,
the genuis of pollock was not where he laid the paint, but that he understood the dimension of time in the act of painting. i would argue that pollock's paintings were an extension of cubism in that cubism dealt with time and space as honestly as one could.
cubism actually anticipates relativity when you understand that the initial painting of cubism "les madamoiselles d'avignion" begins by showing the face and the profile at the same time, something that relativity states postulates is possible if one is traveling at the speed of light.
basically, the marks that pollock is making on the canvas are a document of his movement around that canvas. the fact that is may be aestetically pleasing is entirely besides the point. pollock's work is about time and basic mark-making. pollock may have not always understood that, but thats why he is an important artist.
most people never really understood abstract expressionism outside of the art work b/c it was a bunch of artists talking to each other. to wit; mark rothko is an amazing painter. he's the one that did those huge fields of colour on a canvas.
the pictures dont look very impressive in a book and more often than not, some smart-arse says "oh, yeah, i could do that".
i happen to be lucky enough to see a rothko show in paris. those paintings are huge. rothko intended the works to be viewed up close so that one painting would fill your peripheral vision. mark rothko was a manic depressive working in a little attic studio in the villlage in NY before it was cool, back when it was a ghetto.
his paintings are actually many thin layers of colour undulating to make one deep, rich tone juxtaposed with another. rothko considered his works to be emotional landscapes that would bypass the senses and affect your feelings. sound like a manic depressive to you? yeah, me too.
on a side note; bukowski was a genius not because he was a drunk, but b/c he was an unrepentant drunk. if bukowski had gone written a book about sobriety, the first one would have been angst-ridden and great. the rest of his work after that would have been cheesy and bucolic.
bukowski was one of the beat writers in my mind. beat writers were all about the "everyman" that you could relate to, working outside of the confines of society and therefore able to get a clearer picture of the way we are as a race. bukowski's best moments are when he is either saying exactlty what he thinks, and he is an asshole, or commenting on his own failures.
so, enough of that.
by the way, on a side note: kind of going through a "rent" phase right now. holy crap, that show is amazing! that is all, carry on :)
8:54 AM - jackson pollock, abstract expressionism and bukowski....go!
Category: Jobs, Work, Careers
my friend ryan wrote an interesting blog that i responded to and then i decide to open up the conversation and see who though i was full of shite or what. i am lucky enough to have many intelligent and well informed friends. what do you guys think?
here's an excerpt of my friend's blog:
"....and i dont buy that the spark of creativity strikes hard and fast and requires the artist to move quickly to capture it. if a guy paints a 120' x 180' mural in 35 minutes, he's just trying to get done. theres no way a canvas that large could be covered with any thematic or creative concern that quickly. sorry. nope.
so i dont know. i know the guy did some great stuff. but i do think, if the film is accurate, he was f&*ing around to get done so he could get to his next important work, popping the cap off that beer.
but thats the advantage of painging, i suppose. bukoiwski liked his booze as much as the next guy, but i would think if he just randomly dumped keystrokes onto the page just to fill it up, he'd have a lot harder time convincing anyone it was genius"
ryan,
the genuis of pollock was not where he laid the paint, but that he understood the dimension of time in the act of painting. i would argue that pollock's paintings were an extension of cubism in that cubism dealt with time and space as honestly as one could.
cubism actually anticipates relativity when you understand that the initial painting of cubism "les madamoiselles d'avignion" begins by showing the face and the profile at the same time, something that relativity states postulates is possible if one is traveling at the speed of light.
basically, the marks that pollock is making on the canvas are a document of his movement around that canvas. the fact that is may be aestetically pleasing is entirely besides the point. pollock's work is about time and basic mark-making. pollock may have not always understood that, but thats why he is an important artist.
most people never really understood abstract expressionism outside of the art work b/c it was a bunch of artists talking to each other. to wit; mark rothko is an amazing painter. he's the one that did those huge fields of colour on a canvas.
the pictures dont look very impressive in a book and more often than not, some smart-arse says "oh, yeah, i could do that".
i happen to be lucky enough to see a rothko show in paris. those paintings are huge. rothko intended the works to be viewed up close so that one painting would fill your peripheral vision. mark rothko was a manic depressive working in a little attic studio in the villlage in NY before it was cool, back when it was a ghetto.
his paintings are actually many thin layers of colour undulating to make one deep, rich tone juxtaposed with another. rothko considered his works to be emotional landscapes that would bypass the senses and affect your feelings. sound like a manic depressive to you? yeah, me too.
on a side note; bukowski was a genius not because he was a drunk, but b/c he was an unrepentant drunk. if bukowski had gone written a book about sobriety, the first one would have been angst-ridden and great. the rest of his work after that would have been cheesy and bucolic.
bukowski was one of the beat writers in my mind. beat writers were all about the "everyman" that you could relate to, working outside of the confines of society and therefore able to get a clearer picture of the way we are as a race. bukowski's best moments are when he is either saying exactlty what he thinks, and he is an asshole, or commenting on his own failures.
so, enough of that.
by the way, on a side note: kind of going through a "rent" phase right now. holy crap, that show is amazing! that is all, carry on :)
happy 30th...hmmmmm (a promissary note)
01 Sep 06 Friday
10:45 PM - happy 30th...hmmmmm (a promissary note)
Current mood: like a character in a werner herzog film
Category: like a character in a werner herzog film Fashion, Style, Shopping
so, yes.....oh my brothers and sisters; i, your humble narrator, has suddenly turned 30.
its far too strange for me to comprehend. theres so much to say, maybe too much to say. its bottlenecking inside of me. need to sit down and write out my blog. its kind of already written in my head (note to self:it starts out talking about our rats). anyway, i cant let today go by without at least marking it. theres no quiet place that i can sit down and write right now, so i'll wait until the house settles and i can get a moment to just it flow from me.
consider this a bookmark, a public promissary note to myself that i will write these things out. i have to, its threatening to burst from me like one of those aliens; and not the cool rip-you-apart james cameron aliens, but one of those catch-you-off-guard-at-dinner-and-kill-you-through-a-long-agonizing-tunneling-through-your-lower-intestines-ridley-scott kind.
soon....
10:45 PM - happy 30th...hmmmmm (a promissary note)
Current mood: like a character in a werner herzog film
Category: like a character in a werner herzog film Fashion, Style, Shopping
so, yes.....oh my brothers and sisters; i, your humble narrator, has suddenly turned 30.
its far too strange for me to comprehend. theres so much to say, maybe too much to say. its bottlenecking inside of me. need to sit down and write out my blog. its kind of already written in my head (note to self:it starts out talking about our rats). anyway, i cant let today go by without at least marking it. theres no quiet place that i can sit down and write right now, so i'll wait until the house settles and i can get a moment to just it flow from me.
consider this a bookmark, a public promissary note to myself that i will write these things out. i have to, its threatening to burst from me like one of those aliens; and not the cool rip-you-apart james cameron aliens, but one of those catch-you-off-guard-at-dinner-and-kill-you-through-a-long-agonizing-tunneling-through-your-lower-intestines-ridley-scott kind.
soon....
sometimes you just cant run or so it seems
10 Jul 06 Monday
9:54 PM - sometimes you just cant run or so it seems
Current mood: tired and distraught
Category: tired and distraught Fashion, Style, Shopping
so here i am again.
i've been meaning to blog for a little while. it seems that it's a kind of mental river and this is a healthy way to keep the flow in balance, if that makes any sense....
i cant sleep tonight.
my past is coming through to me in small short vignettes and its driving me nuts right now. i have been clean for two months and it seems that i am just at the beginning of a long road.
its hard for me to express myself lately, so i will try to do so as best i can. i guess i always write a blog assuming the reactions of my audience, but for just once, i want to write with reckless abandon.
i live in idaho with justin. i love justin very much. i realized today that i have complete faith in him, in a way that i never have before. i was reading a book and in it, the protagonist's wife leaves him for a lover and he is taken completely by shock. not because he is stupid, but because he trusts her so much that it never even crosses his mind that she is with someone else.
i realized that i have that same trust in justin and it scares me shitless. if justin were to cheat on me, it would crush me because i would never see it coming. that someone has that kind of power over me scares me because it means i could get hurt, but i guess if you really think about it, you give that trust to someone becasue you believe with all of your heart that they would never actually harm you.
we have our problems like any healthy couple that has only been together 7 months, but we always get it together at the last second.
as for me, well, i've put on a bit of weight recently. the end result is that i look healthy again, but i have a bit of a spare tire. i hate this. one of the things that kept me under the thumb of my particular weakness was the fear of losing my girlish figure, so to speak.
i really need to talk to someone, but who has the time? i'm so busy just trying to survive still that i havent had the time to lay down the right foundations for a long-term fortress. the siege has already begun.
today when i was in the shower(showering is when i do a lot of my thinkning becasue, well, what else is there to do?) i started remembering things. usually i can chase them away, but not today.
all i could/can think about was how good it felt the first time, or rather those times i had gotten my sytem clean enough to feel it again. remmebring the expressions on others' faces as well.
its kind of like high school. looking back on high school, i remmber how much i hated it, but some days i sit back and get caught up in a moebius strip of good memories and the ghost of the past doesnt seem to have such sharp claws.
went fishing the other day. it was a blast. went shooting on the fourth; aside from a distinct lack of hearing in my left ear for a while, it was a good time. justin's parents(read: father and stepmother) have been good at helping me learn how normal people relieve stress and tension, but cant really go fishing every day.
i have to find my own outlets, but i have none.
its funny, when i look back at some of my older blogs. blogs strike me as a kind of journal. i would usually blog when i was sober, because being fucked up, i had no urge to sit down that long. usually the sober voice of me in those blogs is the voice of someone who is quick witted and very hyper-aware....like a child again.
its not like that this time. i get bouts of dim-wittedness, where i just tune out completely(drives justin up a wall). i dont know what happened to that guy that referenced everything all the time.
maybe its idaho?
no one here, well most folk would look at me funny if i started referencing movies all of the time(my native language). its not that they're dumb, its just that its not their way up here. its not the way they think and talk.
i feel like i'm walking in a fog most of the time these days.
whats wrong with me?
maybe its my metabolism; maybe its low? would certainly seem to be after the last two years of accelerated existence.
i want to get back to LA quite badly, but a big part of me recognizes that i'm not ready yet.
one slip and i would lose justin. my entire life would simply unravel if i simply tasted the forbidden fruit. i let that shite eat away 2 years of my life....i'm going to be 30 soon and instead of working in film, i'm working for a fucking staffing company playing moron to construction companies. the jocks i hated in high school have their own work world and i fell into it.
sometimes i get super fucking pissed off about it, but then i realise that there is no one to blame but myself. so here we are back at the beginning, i guess. i know its bad, but for just another taste i would give most anything.
anything but justin.
i need help, but who has the time to seek it, and where can i get it in the middle of northern idaho?
if you read this all of the way through, i apologize for this whining session, but in order to get some sleep tonight, i was hoping to simply exorcise the demons floating in my head.
9:54 PM - sometimes you just cant run or so it seems
Current mood: tired and distraught
Category: tired and distraught Fashion, Style, Shopping
so here i am again.
i've been meaning to blog for a little while. it seems that it's a kind of mental river and this is a healthy way to keep the flow in balance, if that makes any sense....
i cant sleep tonight.
my past is coming through to me in small short vignettes and its driving me nuts right now. i have been clean for two months and it seems that i am just at the beginning of a long road.
its hard for me to express myself lately, so i will try to do so as best i can. i guess i always write a blog assuming the reactions of my audience, but for just once, i want to write with reckless abandon.
i live in idaho with justin. i love justin very much. i realized today that i have complete faith in him, in a way that i never have before. i was reading a book and in it, the protagonist's wife leaves him for a lover and he is taken completely by shock. not because he is stupid, but because he trusts her so much that it never even crosses his mind that she is with someone else.
i realized that i have that same trust in justin and it scares me shitless. if justin were to cheat on me, it would crush me because i would never see it coming. that someone has that kind of power over me scares me because it means i could get hurt, but i guess if you really think about it, you give that trust to someone becasue you believe with all of your heart that they would never actually harm you.
we have our problems like any healthy couple that has only been together 7 months, but we always get it together at the last second.
as for me, well, i've put on a bit of weight recently. the end result is that i look healthy again, but i have a bit of a spare tire. i hate this. one of the things that kept me under the thumb of my particular weakness was the fear of losing my girlish figure, so to speak.
i really need to talk to someone, but who has the time? i'm so busy just trying to survive still that i havent had the time to lay down the right foundations for a long-term fortress. the siege has already begun.
today when i was in the shower(showering is when i do a lot of my thinkning becasue, well, what else is there to do?) i started remembering things. usually i can chase them away, but not today.
all i could/can think about was how good it felt the first time, or rather those times i had gotten my sytem clean enough to feel it again. remmebring the expressions on others' faces as well.
its kind of like high school. looking back on high school, i remmber how much i hated it, but some days i sit back and get caught up in a moebius strip of good memories and the ghost of the past doesnt seem to have such sharp claws.
went fishing the other day. it was a blast. went shooting on the fourth; aside from a distinct lack of hearing in my left ear for a while, it was a good time. justin's parents(read: father and stepmother) have been good at helping me learn how normal people relieve stress and tension, but cant really go fishing every day.
i have to find my own outlets, but i have none.
its funny, when i look back at some of my older blogs. blogs strike me as a kind of journal. i would usually blog when i was sober, because being fucked up, i had no urge to sit down that long. usually the sober voice of me in those blogs is the voice of someone who is quick witted and very hyper-aware....like a child again.
its not like that this time. i get bouts of dim-wittedness, where i just tune out completely(drives justin up a wall). i dont know what happened to that guy that referenced everything all the time.
maybe its idaho?
no one here, well most folk would look at me funny if i started referencing movies all of the time(my native language). its not that they're dumb, its just that its not their way up here. its not the way they think and talk.
i feel like i'm walking in a fog most of the time these days.
whats wrong with me?
maybe its my metabolism; maybe its low? would certainly seem to be after the last two years of accelerated existence.
i want to get back to LA quite badly, but a big part of me recognizes that i'm not ready yet.
one slip and i would lose justin. my entire life would simply unravel if i simply tasted the forbidden fruit. i let that shite eat away 2 years of my life....i'm going to be 30 soon and instead of working in film, i'm working for a fucking staffing company playing moron to construction companies. the jocks i hated in high school have their own work world and i fell into it.
sometimes i get super fucking pissed off about it, but then i realise that there is no one to blame but myself. so here we are back at the beginning, i guess. i know its bad, but for just another taste i would give most anything.
anything but justin.
i need help, but who has the time to seek it, and where can i get it in the middle of northern idaho?
if you read this all of the way through, i apologize for this whining session, but in order to get some sleep tonight, i was hoping to simply exorcise the demons floating in my head.
a strange state of being
11 Jun 06 Sunday
5:43 PM - a strange state of being
Current mood: climbing the walls
Category: climbing the walls Art and Photography
where were we?
oh yes, my brothers, i, your humble narrator, was deep in the mining towns of the great north woods.
well, things have kind of declined a bit.
its strange, really. i have been clean and sober almost a month and i have never had more reason to use.
to explain;
i used meth as an escape. i wanted to get away from the pain of a bad relationship, from a dull life, and from myself most importantly. justin pulled me out and he has been amazing. unfortuntly, i know that if something happened to "us", i would run to the first crackhead i could find. i realized that i'm sober for him more than me.
thats not really good. though its not entirely true, really.
when i have a moment to reflect on a few things, i realize that i have to do it for me as well.
i wasted 2 years of my life on that shite. its time to grow up.
no one WANTS to grow up, but eventually you HAVE to.
i swore to myself that i would age with grace and not be one of those idiots that tries to be 20 when he's 45. theres no onther path that assures that future than the one i was on.
i have met and crossed paths with many who sold their souls and their lives to pretend that they were 20 again.
i once told a good friend of mine that meth is an all or nothing proposition. at the time i meant that there was no "dabbling", either you do it or it consumes you. now i'm thinking that it means that its a trade off. you give it all for nothing in return. LA is full of people that think they're getting a brand new pair of golden clothes, but thy're only getting air.
its depressing to think that i was one of those people.speaking of depression;
i went to school for 18 and a half years ro so, total.
you know what i do every day? i commute up to coeur d'alene(45 minute drive) so i can sit at labour ready and get a job working some brainless constructiuon job.
justin got a job at McDonalds. w're barely making it.
i miss my home and my family. i miss my friends who can help me by reminding me who i am is not limited to whether or not i have abs.
i long to return to LA, but i need to do it on my terms.
we're barely limping by and neither of us is happy. we have each other and our newly adopted pet rat, anabelle(i got her for justin to cheer him up). life is simple, but so very very hard.
i've never been so poor and depressed.
justin's dad and stepmom are really cool, but theres really only so much that they can do....
justin and i will be going on 6 months soon. i love him very much. i know i sound like a whiney prick, but i want to go home. if i am going to withstand the temptations and trials of living in LA, i need to recharge my soul and i'm realizing thats not going to happen here.
theres no money, no comfort and few options. it takes people here weeks to do anything. i got an interview at a photgraphy place, but its next friday and i'm hands down the most qualified person in a 90 mile radius; thats not even a question, thats a promise. i didnt tell her that, but i did, humbly, list all of my qualifications and still....next fucking friday.
i'm adjusting to small town life, living in a trailer that leaks all the time (because it constantly rains - mind you, the rain is the only thing i DONT mind)
i need to get out of here.
i guess, one could argue that i have had some breathing room to get my head screwd on str8 and figure out what i need.
G-d has a wicked sense of humour. sometimes it feels like he has abandoned me here, but i've been thinking; what if he has? but what if its for my own good? what if he has left me in the proverbial "corner" to think about things for a while? the dunce hat certainly would be fitting...he he. the reason that i still blog on this thing is that it helps me to organize my thoughts. thats why they usually play out very stream-of-consciousness-like.
what i need is to get out of here and go home. i have a room at my mom and dad's house, rent-free. we have to pay to live in our leaky trailer. as soon as i can get the money together for petrol, i want out.
gotta run,
have a bunch more things to do and only so much time on the internet.
btw-my phone has been suspended; T-mobile doesnt have any presence in the silver valley....AT ALL. i will try to have my phone back on by august.
cheers.
ps-if any of you know any stock photgraphy websites that i can post to and get a few bucks from, that would help me out a lot, thanks.
5:43 PM - a strange state of being
Current mood: climbing the walls
Category: climbing the walls Art and Photography
where were we?
oh yes, my brothers, i, your humble narrator, was deep in the mining towns of the great north woods.
well, things have kind of declined a bit.
its strange, really. i have been clean and sober almost a month and i have never had more reason to use.
to explain;
i used meth as an escape. i wanted to get away from the pain of a bad relationship, from a dull life, and from myself most importantly. justin pulled me out and he has been amazing. unfortuntly, i know that if something happened to "us", i would run to the first crackhead i could find. i realized that i'm sober for him more than me.
thats not really good. though its not entirely true, really.
when i have a moment to reflect on a few things, i realize that i have to do it for me as well.
i wasted 2 years of my life on that shite. its time to grow up.
no one WANTS to grow up, but eventually you HAVE to.
i swore to myself that i would age with grace and not be one of those idiots that tries to be 20 when he's 45. theres no onther path that assures that future than the one i was on.
i have met and crossed paths with many who sold their souls and their lives to pretend that they were 20 again.
i once told a good friend of mine that meth is an all or nothing proposition. at the time i meant that there was no "dabbling", either you do it or it consumes you. now i'm thinking that it means that its a trade off. you give it all for nothing in return. LA is full of people that think they're getting a brand new pair of golden clothes, but thy're only getting air.
its depressing to think that i was one of those people.speaking of depression;
i went to school for 18 and a half years ro so, total.
you know what i do every day? i commute up to coeur d'alene(45 minute drive) so i can sit at labour ready and get a job working some brainless constructiuon job.
justin got a job at McDonalds. w're barely making it.
i miss my home and my family. i miss my friends who can help me by reminding me who i am is not limited to whether or not i have abs.
i long to return to LA, but i need to do it on my terms.
we're barely limping by and neither of us is happy. we have each other and our newly adopted pet rat, anabelle(i got her for justin to cheer him up). life is simple, but so very very hard.
i've never been so poor and depressed.
justin's dad and stepmom are really cool, but theres really only so much that they can do....
justin and i will be going on 6 months soon. i love him very much. i know i sound like a whiney prick, but i want to go home. if i am going to withstand the temptations and trials of living in LA, i need to recharge my soul and i'm realizing thats not going to happen here.
theres no money, no comfort and few options. it takes people here weeks to do anything. i got an interview at a photgraphy place, but its next friday and i'm hands down the most qualified person in a 90 mile radius; thats not even a question, thats a promise. i didnt tell her that, but i did, humbly, list all of my qualifications and still....next fucking friday.
i'm adjusting to small town life, living in a trailer that leaks all the time (because it constantly rains - mind you, the rain is the only thing i DONT mind)
i need to get out of here.
i guess, one could argue that i have had some breathing room to get my head screwd on str8 and figure out what i need.
G-d has a wicked sense of humour. sometimes it feels like he has abandoned me here, but i've been thinking; what if he has? but what if its for my own good? what if he has left me in the proverbial "corner" to think about things for a while? the dunce hat certainly would be fitting...he he. the reason that i still blog on this thing is that it helps me to organize my thoughts. thats why they usually play out very stream-of-consciousness-like.
what i need is to get out of here and go home. i have a room at my mom and dad's house, rent-free. we have to pay to live in our leaky trailer. as soon as i can get the money together for petrol, i want out.
gotta run,
have a bunch more things to do and only so much time on the internet.
btw-my phone has been suspended; T-mobile doesnt have any presence in the silver valley....AT ALL. i will try to have my phone back on by august.
cheers.
ps-if any of you know any stock photgraphy websites that i can post to and get a few bucks from, that would help me out a lot, thanks.
things that go bump in the night; and other things from the walthers catalogue.....
24 May 06 Wednesday
9:09 PM - things that go bump in the night; and other things from the walthers catalogue.....
Current mood: strange, but okay
Category: strange, but okay Movies, TV, Celebrities
dear mom,
so....here i sit in wallace idaho.
yup, thats right, just outside of kellogg and just down the ol' 95 from
coeur d'alene (pronounced core-delane for all you outside folk). let me
tell you how fucking strange this place is and how i got here.
for those of you who know me well, you will understand when i say that
i have never been in love like i am with justin pennington. ryan who?
the wounds from 5 years ago have healed and i have let this person in
further than i ever thought i was capable of. today is our 5 month
anniversary and we still are going strong. moving to idaho was a
disaster, but yet since G-d works in such starnge ways, we are closer
than ever.
heres the back story:
justin's mom offered him room and help with board as well as a job. we
talked about it (it was to be a 3 month gig with her bf, kurt) and we
both agreed it was a good opportunity for him to be with his family and
earn some extra money. i knew that my drug use had flared up and i was
in danger of being lost again, and lets be honest here; 3 months
without justin would have killed me(because of my self-destructive
behavior).
so i packed up my few things and threw some in a car and moved to idaho
with justin.
theres a line in "america" by simon and garfunkel:
"let us be lovers, we'll marry our fortunes together"
well, thats kinda what we did. lumped our money together and drove
through the dark and forbidding lands of the mormons (remind me to
opine about utah some time). well..................
it seems that on the way up here, "mom" desided to change her mind and
recinded the job offer; then when we got up here, she wasnt going to
help us find a place to stay unless it was in the room next door to
hers(where she apparently wanted to keep an eye on us...well, "spy' is
the word that was used.
we had no jobs, no place to go, and i had just packed my life into a
toyota on faith. it looked like we were screwed, but then justin's dad
and stepmom stepped in. they helped us out in so many ways it is hard
to describe.
justin's memories of his father were much like my memories of my
stepfather growing up, but the stories told of suffering far worse than
my particular idiot-tyrant-step-parent could have imagined. he had
trouble with justin's homosexuality and my existance didnt help much. i
didnt want to meet him and the feeling was mutual. we pull up and
justin goes in to talk to them. i wait and then suddenly j comes out
and tells me his dad wants to meet me.
my first thought is:;
"great, he's sizing me up so he can kill me later"
but i was wrong, it seems. G-d has wrought a trmendous change in his
father and he's a pretty fun guy...little rough around the edges(much
like my present stepfather, "pops").
hell, we just went hiking up the mountain this evening, just him and
i......
i cant seem to get over it.
his stepmom, heidi, has been our dearest friend and best ally since we
got here.
i am stone sober these days. justin is happy about that and i just feel
right about it... i dont think about it much. strange as it was only a
week or so ago, but i dont think about meth except in passing when
doing this blog stuff. in fact thats the first time i've thought about
it since we got here. i threw away my accoutrements and the like at a
rest stop in montana.
heres the punchline....
i live in the mountains of idaho. it looks like a model railroad set,
complete with tracks that go over mad rivers and logging trails that
swirl up mountains of pine trees. the towns up here are all mining or
logging towns, or were, respectively.
because we were displaced, justin and i ended up borrowing his dad's
old camper trailer.
yes, thats right, mom...i live in a trailer. no internet and my phone
service doesnt work in the valley where i live...i need to drive 45
minutes to get phone reception.
i keep telling justin that i cant wait until we get a double-wide
apartment in LA.
but heres the amazing thing...i go to bed like my parents do...read:
before 10pm, and get to wake up holding justin after we fall asleep
listening to the soft idaho rain falling onto the tarp covering our
trailer.
i love watching him laugh here. he never laughed like this back in CA.
i hope i can keep him laughing like that when we get back.
mom, he brings out the best in me, without even thinknig about it.
we're like a married couple, well, more like newlyweds. in fact, its
like starting over with him.
its kind of like "october sky" meets "barefoot in the park"
i couldnt be happier.
(but dont get me wrong, i CANNOT WAIT until we move back to LA)
with love,
your son,
b/k
ps- i will try and write more so that you know whats going on with me,
but its kinda rare that i can get to a computer.
9:09 PM - things that go bump in the night; and other things from the walthers catalogue.....
Current mood: strange, but okay
Category: strange, but okay Movies, TV, Celebrities
dear mom,
so....here i sit in wallace idaho.
yup, thats right, just outside of kellogg and just down the ol' 95 from
coeur d'alene (pronounced core-delane for all you outside folk). let me
tell you how fucking strange this place is and how i got here.
for those of you who know me well, you will understand when i say that
i have never been in love like i am with justin pennington. ryan who?
the wounds from 5 years ago have healed and i have let this person in
further than i ever thought i was capable of. today is our 5 month
anniversary and we still are going strong. moving to idaho was a
disaster, but yet since G-d works in such starnge ways, we are closer
than ever.
heres the back story:
justin's mom offered him room and help with board as well as a job. we
talked about it (it was to be a 3 month gig with her bf, kurt) and we
both agreed it was a good opportunity for him to be with his family and
earn some extra money. i knew that my drug use had flared up and i was
in danger of being lost again, and lets be honest here; 3 months
without justin would have killed me(because of my self-destructive
behavior).
so i packed up my few things and threw some in a car and moved to idaho
with justin.
theres a line in "america" by simon and garfunkel:
"let us be lovers, we'll marry our fortunes together"
well, thats kinda what we did. lumped our money together and drove
through the dark and forbidding lands of the mormons (remind me to
opine about utah some time). well..................
it seems that on the way up here, "mom" desided to change her mind and
recinded the job offer; then when we got up here, she wasnt going to
help us find a place to stay unless it was in the room next door to
hers(where she apparently wanted to keep an eye on us...well, "spy' is
the word that was used.
we had no jobs, no place to go, and i had just packed my life into a
toyota on faith. it looked like we were screwed, but then justin's dad
and stepmom stepped in. they helped us out in so many ways it is hard
to describe.
justin's memories of his father were much like my memories of my
stepfather growing up, but the stories told of suffering far worse than
my particular idiot-tyrant-step-parent could have imagined. he had
trouble with justin's homosexuality and my existance didnt help much. i
didnt want to meet him and the feeling was mutual. we pull up and
justin goes in to talk to them. i wait and then suddenly j comes out
and tells me his dad wants to meet me.
my first thought is:;
"great, he's sizing me up so he can kill me later"
but i was wrong, it seems. G-d has wrought a trmendous change in his
father and he's a pretty fun guy...little rough around the edges(much
like my present stepfather, "pops").
hell, we just went hiking up the mountain this evening, just him and
i......
i cant seem to get over it.
his stepmom, heidi, has been our dearest friend and best ally since we
got here.
i am stone sober these days. justin is happy about that and i just feel
right about it... i dont think about it much. strange as it was only a
week or so ago, but i dont think about meth except in passing when
doing this blog stuff. in fact thats the first time i've thought about
it since we got here. i threw away my accoutrements and the like at a
rest stop in montana.
heres the punchline....
i live in the mountains of idaho. it looks like a model railroad set,
complete with tracks that go over mad rivers and logging trails that
swirl up mountains of pine trees. the towns up here are all mining or
logging towns, or were, respectively.
because we were displaced, justin and i ended up borrowing his dad's
old camper trailer.
yes, thats right, mom...i live in a trailer. no internet and my phone
service doesnt work in the valley where i live...i need to drive 45
minutes to get phone reception.
i keep telling justin that i cant wait until we get a double-wide
apartment in LA.
but heres the amazing thing...i go to bed like my parents do...read:
before 10pm, and get to wake up holding justin after we fall asleep
listening to the soft idaho rain falling onto the tarp covering our
trailer.
i love watching him laugh here. he never laughed like this back in CA.
i hope i can keep him laughing like that when we get back.
mom, he brings out the best in me, without even thinknig about it.
we're like a married couple, well, more like newlyweds. in fact, its
like starting over with him.
its kind of like "october sky" meets "barefoot in the park"
i couldnt be happier.
(but dont get me wrong, i CANNOT WAIT until we move back to LA)
with love,
your son,
b/k
ps- i will try and write more so that you know whats going on with me,
but its kinda rare that i can get to a computer.
shifting gears without a clutch
14 Apr 06 Friday
12:41 AM - shifting gears without a clutch
Current mood: violently happy
Category: violently happy Fashion, Style, Shopping
so....
normally i am sitting in front of my computer at home listening to
something somber. at the moment i am in palm springs, at justin's
house. he is playing some video game and i'm just taking a moment to
reflect on a rather bizarre turn of events.
there have been two people that, if i had the means, i would have had
removed from the earth. one of them is a regular email correspondant
now and the other has offered a olive branch of such earnest weight
that i have no choice but to consider it.
these are the people that taught me to hate.
there are times when life seems to shift gears and not tell you.
justin and i have been together almost 4 motnths and i couldnt be
happier with our relationship. truth be told, i havent figured out how
i havent fucked it up yet, lol. everytime that we come to a problem,
one of us has the exact right thing to say at exactly the right time,
and it all works out.
justin knows all of my faults and still loves me. he even knows jacob
(in passing). he has been my life-buoy in a turbulent time and i dont
know if i have ever yet been able to tell him how much he means to me.
i know it all sounds cheesy and very dan fogelberg, but i wanted a good
blog amongst all of my angst-ridden diatribes.
theres actually a lot to be angst-ridden about, but i have to process
it before i can write it out. besides; its amazing what a little sun
and a few days by the pool does for your demeanor
off to bed.......:)
cheers
12:41 AM - shifting gears without a clutch
Current mood: violently happy
Category: violently happy Fashion, Style, Shopping
so....
normally i am sitting in front of my computer at home listening to
something somber. at the moment i am in palm springs, at justin's
house. he is playing some video game and i'm just taking a moment to
reflect on a rather bizarre turn of events.
there have been two people that, if i had the means, i would have had
removed from the earth. one of them is a regular email correspondant
now and the other has offered a olive branch of such earnest weight
that i have no choice but to consider it.
these are the people that taught me to hate.
there are times when life seems to shift gears and not tell you.
justin and i have been together almost 4 motnths and i couldnt be
happier with our relationship. truth be told, i havent figured out how
i havent fucked it up yet, lol. everytime that we come to a problem,
one of us has the exact right thing to say at exactly the right time,
and it all works out.
justin knows all of my faults and still loves me. he even knows jacob
(in passing). he has been my life-buoy in a turbulent time and i dont
know if i have ever yet been able to tell him how much he means to me.
i know it all sounds cheesy and very dan fogelberg, but i wanted a good
blog amongst all of my angst-ridden diatribes.
theres actually a lot to be angst-ridden about, but i have to process
it before i can write it out. besides; its amazing what a little sun
and a few days by the pool does for your demeanor
off to bed.......:)
cheers
who needs shelter from the sun?
25 Mar 06 Saturday
10:41 PM - who needs shelter from the sun?
Category: Pets and Animals
so...what the fuck?
how is that the hardest thing to do is ALWAYs the fucking RIGHT thing to do?
my career as a DP has been so great lately...
i shot dave's film and it looked great..without a video tap, dave got the film he wanted...EXACTLY
i spent 3 months in pre-pro with nick and a hellish week of prep and a nightmare of a shoot that was only made possible by an AMAZINg crew. nick and i just did telecine last night.
i gambled to be perfectly honest..
anyone who knows me knows that i never gamble unless i know the outcome before. to me, gambling is not knowing the outcome 100 percent.
it paid off, even though it could have blown up badly in my face, i somehow found the exact colourist that i needed to fiind in LA...i.e.-i saw some of his reel in the lobby of post logic and he was THE PERFECT guy to time my work.
creepy.
well for me at least.
see, i didnt see his work until nick and i were walking out(after i had timed 2 films with him)
the footage looks gorgeous and my reputation at LMU has been secured.
i also have found an amzing AC that i would let operate for me...i am a snob and incredibly egotistical about my eye and my composition and i think that he is as good or better than i am. there is no higher compliment in my world.
so...found an operator, have options for gaffers, found a director that i am sympatico with and a colourist for when the shoot is over..its all falling into place and i am amazed.
my career is going REALLY fucking well.
then i got an offer to work on a short 48 hour film project for IMDB credit.
let me say that again...
IMDB credit.......
i have worked my whole life to get that and more to the point i got DP credit.
ready for the punchline?
my personal life is so disasterous i cannot begin to enumerate the legion of issues.
i love my boyfriend, justin, but we have way more issues than i think he is aware of..no, i know that he has no idea.
i'm still unbelievably poor.
i dont know what to do about work. justin is having a hunky fucking dory time and doing fabulously well. i just wish i could turn off my humanity just as well as he can...oh wait i can..it just requires becoming a different human being..no..it requires being a monster.
you know..when robert louis stevenson let his wife read teh first draft of jekyll and hyde, she begged him to burn it; which he subsequently did...
i always thought she was a bit of a bitch for that.
it occurs to me as i write this that maybe she understood what she was reading. maybe she understood innately that she was seeing a part of her husband that he had always hid from her. the "stranger" of billy joel fame.
we hide away our deepest selves. glenn worked for 2 years and he never saw what i gave to ryan in 2 days.
i dated justin (the first one) because i knew that he wouldnt judge me because he was just as bad as i was. i cant date or be comfortable with good people becasue i donty think that i belong amongst them.
becasue i know my "hyde" side very very well.
rememebr that cartoon with the sheep dog and the wolf and how they would punch in and then go to work being natural enemies? it works as humor becasue of the scene where they clock in.
i feel like jacob and i sort of take turns driving. when i get tired, i punch out and let jacob take the wheel. the sucky part is that he runs into things, backs into poles and runs over old ladies(all metaphorically speaking)
i fucking hate jacob.
at the same time, i have come to rely on him.
when i'm working on a set, sometimes i will delegate to my gaffer with the words, "you have complete autonomy" which means, this is your chance to light a scene, go have fun, you know what i want, work in those perameters.
i feel like i do that with jacob.
complete autonomy for a few days..just dont kill me too much.
i have given him a few days for ever few that he gives me and it seems to be working.
you know, in lord of the rings, i always sympathised with gollum, but the films made me re-think a bit and i beleive that the saddest characters are the ring-wraiths.
not alive, not dead, trapped into servitude of an evil they could have avoided if only they hadnt been blinded by their selfishness and greed.
i have hope...
after all...ST. Augustine lead a long life of sin before he was saved.
his mother prayed daily for her son.
i have many people who are pulkling for me..shouldnt the odds be more stacked for me?
on nicks shoot, some of th same things happened with the weather...
we would sahoot a scene in the am and then it would snow for a as long as it took to get the camera set up in location after lunch and the clouds would part.
my defining moment for dave:
when we first parked the RV that 14 of us were going ot be living in for 3 days at the campsite, i got out to use a bush or something and a few of us piled out. it was a full moon and th valley that we were in looked like something directly out of a john ford movies. it was night time in the old west; just like i remmeber from the old movies.
i knew that dave would understand this reference so i yelled out for dave to come take a look.
i told him the john ford thing.
he just looked at the moon for a second and simply said,:
"now tell me theres no G-d"
touche.
i just looked over and all i felt was amzing respect and shame that that wasnt my first thought.
G-d has brough a lot of good people in my life... and subsequebtly it has been harder to be bad(though i seem to find ways)
i just get tired of being me.
i'm rambling.
tired.
cheers
10:41 PM - who needs shelter from the sun?
Category: Pets and Animals
so...what the fuck?
how is that the hardest thing to do is ALWAYs the fucking RIGHT thing to do?
my career as a DP has been so great lately...
i shot dave's film and it looked great..without a video tap, dave got the film he wanted...EXACTLY
i spent 3 months in pre-pro with nick and a hellish week of prep and a nightmare of a shoot that was only made possible by an AMAZINg crew. nick and i just did telecine last night.
i gambled to be perfectly honest..
anyone who knows me knows that i never gamble unless i know the outcome before. to me, gambling is not knowing the outcome 100 percent.
it paid off, even though it could have blown up badly in my face, i somehow found the exact colourist that i needed to fiind in LA...i.e.-i saw some of his reel in the lobby of post logic and he was THE PERFECT guy to time my work.
creepy.
well for me at least.
see, i didnt see his work until nick and i were walking out(after i had timed 2 films with him)
the footage looks gorgeous and my reputation at LMU has been secured.
i also have found an amzing AC that i would let operate for me...i am a snob and incredibly egotistical about my eye and my composition and i think that he is as good or better than i am. there is no higher compliment in my world.
so...found an operator, have options for gaffers, found a director that i am sympatico with and a colourist for when the shoot is over..its all falling into place and i am amazed.
my career is going REALLY fucking well.
then i got an offer to work on a short 48 hour film project for IMDB credit.
let me say that again...
IMDB credit.......
i have worked my whole life to get that and more to the point i got DP credit.
ready for the punchline?
my personal life is so disasterous i cannot begin to enumerate the legion of issues.
i love my boyfriend, justin, but we have way more issues than i think he is aware of..no, i know that he has no idea.
i'm still unbelievably poor.
i dont know what to do about work. justin is having a hunky fucking dory time and doing fabulously well. i just wish i could turn off my humanity just as well as he can...oh wait i can..it just requires becoming a different human being..no..it requires being a monster.
you know..when robert louis stevenson let his wife read teh first draft of jekyll and hyde, she begged him to burn it; which he subsequently did...
i always thought she was a bit of a bitch for that.
it occurs to me as i write this that maybe she understood what she was reading. maybe she understood innately that she was seeing a part of her husband that he had always hid from her. the "stranger" of billy joel fame.
we hide away our deepest selves. glenn worked for 2 years and he never saw what i gave to ryan in 2 days.
i dated justin (the first one) because i knew that he wouldnt judge me because he was just as bad as i was. i cant date or be comfortable with good people becasue i donty think that i belong amongst them.
becasue i know my "hyde" side very very well.
rememebr that cartoon with the sheep dog and the wolf and how they would punch in and then go to work being natural enemies? it works as humor becasue of the scene where they clock in.
i feel like jacob and i sort of take turns driving. when i get tired, i punch out and let jacob take the wheel. the sucky part is that he runs into things, backs into poles and runs over old ladies(all metaphorically speaking)
i fucking hate jacob.
at the same time, i have come to rely on him.
when i'm working on a set, sometimes i will delegate to my gaffer with the words, "you have complete autonomy" which means, this is your chance to light a scene, go have fun, you know what i want, work in those perameters.
i feel like i do that with jacob.
complete autonomy for a few days..just dont kill me too much.
i have given him a few days for ever few that he gives me and it seems to be working.
you know, in lord of the rings, i always sympathised with gollum, but the films made me re-think a bit and i beleive that the saddest characters are the ring-wraiths.
not alive, not dead, trapped into servitude of an evil they could have avoided if only they hadnt been blinded by their selfishness and greed.
i have hope...
after all...ST. Augustine lead a long life of sin before he was saved.
his mother prayed daily for her son.
i have many people who are pulkling for me..shouldnt the odds be more stacked for me?
on nicks shoot, some of th same things happened with the weather...
we would sahoot a scene in the am and then it would snow for a as long as it took to get the camera set up in location after lunch and the clouds would part.
my defining moment for dave:
when we first parked the RV that 14 of us were going ot be living in for 3 days at the campsite, i got out to use a bush or something and a few of us piled out. it was a full moon and th valley that we were in looked like something directly out of a john ford movies. it was night time in the old west; just like i remmeber from the old movies.
i knew that dave would understand this reference so i yelled out for dave to come take a look.
i told him the john ford thing.
he just looked at the moon for a second and simply said,:
"now tell me theres no G-d"
touche.
i just looked over and all i felt was amzing respect and shame that that wasnt my first thought.
G-d has brough a lot of good people in my life... and subsequebtly it has been harder to be bad(though i seem to find ways)
i just get tired of being me.
i'm rambling.
tired.
cheers
so maybe its all worth it.........
11 Mar 06 Saturday
2:16 PM - so maybe its all worth it.........
Category: Automotive
so.......
here i am listening to death cab again and blogging.
i was talking to an old friend of mine yesterday and he pointed out the absurdity of the fact that "blogging" is a perfectly understandable word, but that it was a strange word to communicate what it was, the concept, that is.
if that makes sense.
what did we do before the internet?
i honestly cant remember. i think i read a lot more. i was about the same socially; correction- i talk to more people now because i can overcome my social awkwardness by a litany of subterfuges.
last weekend i shot dave's film. then on thursday we went to post logic on vine and yucca.
for the first time and hopefully not the last, i felt almost like a professional. we walked in and worked with the colourist, mike.
for those of you who havent heard me go ove4r the process, film is exposed then processed and then on student and television shoots, the film is then digitally transfered onto tape so that it can be edited .
telecine is the name for the transfer process.
telecine is where the film is really made at the student level. this is when the director and producer who paid tfor the production see if the footage is worth what they spent.
let me share something quickly.
i have always beleived in G-d. but it has bena long time since i felt his hand directly. it seems that he is all around me and gently nudging me back like the prodigal son that i feel that i am.
i joke that He and i arent talking right now, but its my fault. let me correct.
he's talking to me, but i am not listening.
i'm a jew because i couldnt find more than 3 real christians. i met my fourth.
david menenberg.
we went to shoot and it wasnt easy but dave got exactly what he wanted, or so i believe, at any rate he got exactly what i promised him.
to wit, when we showed up on friday morning it was raining. friday was supposed to be all exteriors. i got behind the camera to start shooting and the clouds parted and the sun came out. there are 12 or so witnesses to this.
in high school i read scorcese's biography and they talked about how in "last temptation" during the crucifiction scene there is a shot of willem dafoe hangin gon the cross and behind him the sky becomes black. this was no special effect. if you look at the other shots, they dont quite match. during the shot, the sky changed as if by divine intervention.
can you imagine being the operator and looking through the eyepiece as this is happening.
i can, now...
say what you will, but there are 12 born-again christian actors and a film that is the most deeply religious film i have ever seen. mel gibson's film is to idiots what last temptation is to the thinking christian. distilled: they both try to show you what it was that christ went through for us.
i truly believe that G-d stepped in for dave. dont get me wrong, it was a tough shoot, but an incredible crew, an amazing gaffer, and a crack crew of AC's helped make it all possible.
i was still unsure how all of the footage was going to turn out. a friend once told me that no one ever makes a mistake on purpose(though that friend ironically is still raking me over hot coals for a mistake) so i was nervous about the footage
what if i forgot to carry the one, metaphorically speaking?
showed up for telecine and the footage was gorgeous. i usually adjust about a stop and a half so that i get more informatin and a thicker negative and even the unadjusted image was good.
i'm really proud of what i shot for dave and he seems to be happy with it(which is ultimately my goal)
i guess i'm kind of a big golden retriever; i just need to get a pat on the head once and a while and make sure that my master is happy to be content. i guess i have a bit of a pack animal mentality.
i beleive in set hierarchy and i learned from ender's game how to run a good crew and lead men, but like hephestion, i still need a good commander
rob richardson keeps a journal and in it, after his first set of tests for kill bill, he wrote "confidence shattered, must continue...."
i feel the opposite.
confidence renewed. i have to try not to get cocky. though, apparently i will have ryan to remind me of my past for a long time come.
what is it with fucking ryans?
ryan james joseph hallett - broke my heart and crushed my soul so badly that i am still dealing with the shockwave 5 years later. my romantic life resembles hiroshima in far too many ways. theres a picture of downtown hiroshima at ground zero.....there is a building standing but everything around it is leveled. the building is a skeleton of itself. speaks for itself.
ryan - a short but rocky run down love's rapids this past summer
ryan tungate - a great friend of mine that i hurt and disappointed. completely unable to help me move past my past. everytime i think that we are okay and have moved past it all, i get an email that drags me back into my past. i dont think he understands what he is doing when this happens. they say that when the nervous system gets overloaded with pain, it shuts off-burn victims, for example feel nothing after a bit of extreme agony.
after being stabbed so many times, caesar died. at what point will i stop feeling pain and shut him off completely? i hope never, but he is relentless.
i'm just thinking out loud.
i dont expect anyone will actually read this far, lol.
the punchline is that nick's film is coming up next weekend.
that shoot should become the stuff of legend and i'm proud to be part of it.
not to mention that the footage should look amazing.
spending a few minutes listening to G-d wouldnt hurt either.....
cheers
2:16 PM - so maybe its all worth it.........
Category: Automotive
so.......
here i am listening to death cab again and blogging.
i was talking to an old friend of mine yesterday and he pointed out the absurdity of the fact that "blogging" is a perfectly understandable word, but that it was a strange word to communicate what it was, the concept, that is.
if that makes sense.
what did we do before the internet?
i honestly cant remember. i think i read a lot more. i was about the same socially; correction- i talk to more people now because i can overcome my social awkwardness by a litany of subterfuges.
last weekend i shot dave's film. then on thursday we went to post logic on vine and yucca.
for the first time and hopefully not the last, i felt almost like a professional. we walked in and worked with the colourist, mike.
for those of you who havent heard me go ove4r the process, film is exposed then processed and then on student and television shoots, the film is then digitally transfered onto tape so that it can be edited .
telecine is the name for the transfer process.
telecine is where the film is really made at the student level. this is when the director and producer who paid tfor the production see if the footage is worth what they spent.
let me share something quickly.
i have always beleived in G-d. but it has bena long time since i felt his hand directly. it seems that he is all around me and gently nudging me back like the prodigal son that i feel that i am.
i joke that He and i arent talking right now, but its my fault. let me correct.
he's talking to me, but i am not listening.
i'm a jew because i couldnt find more than 3 real christians. i met my fourth.
david menenberg.
we went to shoot and it wasnt easy but dave got exactly what he wanted, or so i believe, at any rate he got exactly what i promised him.
to wit, when we showed up on friday morning it was raining. friday was supposed to be all exteriors. i got behind the camera to start shooting and the clouds parted and the sun came out. there are 12 or so witnesses to this.
in high school i read scorcese's biography and they talked about how in "last temptation" during the crucifiction scene there is a shot of willem dafoe hangin gon the cross and behind him the sky becomes black. this was no special effect. if you look at the other shots, they dont quite match. during the shot, the sky changed as if by divine intervention.
can you imagine being the operator and looking through the eyepiece as this is happening.
i can, now...
say what you will, but there are 12 born-again christian actors and a film that is the most deeply religious film i have ever seen. mel gibson's film is to idiots what last temptation is to the thinking christian. distilled: they both try to show you what it was that christ went through for us.
i truly believe that G-d stepped in for dave. dont get me wrong, it was a tough shoot, but an incredible crew, an amazing gaffer, and a crack crew of AC's helped make it all possible.
i was still unsure how all of the footage was going to turn out. a friend once told me that no one ever makes a mistake on purpose(though that friend ironically is still raking me over hot coals for a mistake) so i was nervous about the footage
what if i forgot to carry the one, metaphorically speaking?
showed up for telecine and the footage was gorgeous. i usually adjust about a stop and a half so that i get more informatin and a thicker negative and even the unadjusted image was good.
i'm really proud of what i shot for dave and he seems to be happy with it(which is ultimately my goal)
i guess i'm kind of a big golden retriever; i just need to get a pat on the head once and a while and make sure that my master is happy to be content. i guess i have a bit of a pack animal mentality.
i beleive in set hierarchy and i learned from ender's game how to run a good crew and lead men, but like hephestion, i still need a good commander
rob richardson keeps a journal and in it, after his first set of tests for kill bill, he wrote "confidence shattered, must continue...."
i feel the opposite.
confidence renewed. i have to try not to get cocky. though, apparently i will have ryan to remind me of my past for a long time come.
what is it with fucking ryans?
ryan james joseph hallett - broke my heart and crushed my soul so badly that i am still dealing with the shockwave 5 years later. my romantic life resembles hiroshima in far too many ways. theres a picture of downtown hiroshima at ground zero.....there is a building standing but everything around it is leveled. the building is a skeleton of itself. speaks for itself.
ryan - a short but rocky run down love's rapids this past summer
ryan tungate - a great friend of mine that i hurt and disappointed. completely unable to help me move past my past. everytime i think that we are okay and have moved past it all, i get an email that drags me back into my past. i dont think he understands what he is doing when this happens. they say that when the nervous system gets overloaded with pain, it shuts off-burn victims, for example feel nothing after a bit of extreme agony.
after being stabbed so many times, caesar died. at what point will i stop feeling pain and shut him off completely? i hope never, but he is relentless.
i'm just thinking out loud.
i dont expect anyone will actually read this far, lol.
the punchline is that nick's film is coming up next weekend.
that shoot should become the stuff of legend and i'm proud to be part of it.
not to mention that the footage should look amazing.
spending a few minutes listening to G-d wouldnt hurt either.....
cheers
....and........scene. part one
26 Feb 06 Sunday
6:14 PM - ....and........scene. part one
Current mood: none; or other
Category: none; or other Goals, Plans, Hopes
so.
i just had a monologue in which i just expressed all of my fears and hopes and realised some of the things that i was/am truly afraid of.....heres the punchline;
i stopped halfway through realizing that i shouldf be writihng this down because it made great dramatic dialogue.
does this mean that i have officially gone "LA"...whatever the fuck that means.
i am so tired of apologizing for this town. on my worst days, a tiny part of me loves LA, you know why?
this town will push you to your limits.
they say that NY'ers have their identities vested in the city, but in LA ur forced to deal with yourself and your own identity.
this town will test you and more importantly; this town will break you...sometime some how, it will break you
i drown once when i was a kid.
my mom alweays tells me that i survived becasue i hadnt done what i was put on this earth to do....kind of a head trip when you're a 6 year old.
thomas keneally said in his book"gift of the jews" that the defining moment in western civilization was when G-d spoke to abraham and said "i am rthe G-d of your fathers, lechi lach; go forth and make a great nation ".
in that moment, the idea of self, the idea of vocation and lineage. the ideas that are the basic tenets of our society were created.
sometimes i feel like abraham, if its not too obscenly egotistical to say so.
i was born to shoot film. it has always been my vocation.....
ever since i was a child, i have felt the weight of greatness on my shoulders.
that doesnt mean that i feel predestined to be great (though one can always hope), but rather...i understood early that i could be great and that for some reason i was spared...that put me ahead in the stats as far as i was concerned. i have always felt the weigh of personal expectation to be great...to deserve that rescue. i have to deserve waking up on that beach, bewildered and cold(sorry-sombre music makes me morose and dramatic at times).
this whole thread comes on the heels of an interesting day.
i met a friend of mine for coffee and we talked about many things. its the end of the month and that means that i am trying to figure out how the hell i'm going to make rent with out peddling my arse on santa monica blvd.
i went to samy's camera as a welcome distraction and i asked the sales clerk a few simple questions, ending with an off-the-cuff inquiry about job openings. first off, the guy was from my home towm...used to work at helix, for those of you in the know. i basically got offered the position by the guy. i apparently exude knowledge and they need a guy for sales in their grip dept.
heres the twist.....
i cant shoot.
LMU shoots start on friday and end on sunday....might as well thursday as a pre-pro day. samy's is a FULL-time job.
like keslow was....
speaking of which; i had to call them and ask for a quote for a cam package...not sure how i feel about that place...pretty sure they dont like me.
a long time ago, i was forced to make a decision betwixt shooting and working. i chose shooting.
i'm tired of living hand to mouth.
show up with a resume and i have the job
not being able to shoot was one of the key factors in my being a crackhead. is that a cop-out?
i was the key factor in being a crackhead, but my soul demands to be fed...its like a twist on little shop of horrors. if i dont feed it, it withers and dies and i get overgrown with big green talking venus fly-traps that talk like isaac hayes......
i edit my reel tomorrow.
i apply at samy's tomorrow night, if not tuesday morning.
theres so much more going on;
...but thats....another story....
this blog was brought to you by the letters K, L, and the number 5 (no significance in the chosen alpha-numerics, those letters had better agents)
6:14 PM - ....and........scene. part one
Current mood: none; or other
Category: none; or other Goals, Plans, Hopes
so.
i just had a monologue in which i just expressed all of my fears and hopes and realised some of the things that i was/am truly afraid of.....heres the punchline;
i stopped halfway through realizing that i shouldf be writihng this down because it made great dramatic dialogue.
does this mean that i have officially gone "LA"...whatever the fuck that means.
i am so tired of apologizing for this town. on my worst days, a tiny part of me loves LA, you know why?
this town will push you to your limits.
they say that NY'ers have their identities vested in the city, but in LA ur forced to deal with yourself and your own identity.
this town will test you and more importantly; this town will break you...sometime some how, it will break you
i drown once when i was a kid.
my mom alweays tells me that i survived becasue i hadnt done what i was put on this earth to do....kind of a head trip when you're a 6 year old.
thomas keneally said in his book"gift of the jews" that the defining moment in western civilization was when G-d spoke to abraham and said "i am rthe G-d of your fathers, lechi lach; go forth and make a great nation ".
in that moment, the idea of self, the idea of vocation and lineage. the ideas that are the basic tenets of our society were created.
sometimes i feel like abraham, if its not too obscenly egotistical to say so.
i was born to shoot film. it has always been my vocation.....
ever since i was a child, i have felt the weight of greatness on my shoulders.
that doesnt mean that i feel predestined to be great (though one can always hope), but rather...i understood early that i could be great and that for some reason i was spared...that put me ahead in the stats as far as i was concerned. i have always felt the weigh of personal expectation to be great...to deserve that rescue. i have to deserve waking up on that beach, bewildered and cold(sorry-sombre music makes me morose and dramatic at times).
this whole thread comes on the heels of an interesting day.
i met a friend of mine for coffee and we talked about many things. its the end of the month and that means that i am trying to figure out how the hell i'm going to make rent with out peddling my arse on santa monica blvd.
i went to samy's camera as a welcome distraction and i asked the sales clerk a few simple questions, ending with an off-the-cuff inquiry about job openings. first off, the guy was from my home towm...used to work at helix, for those of you in the know. i basically got offered the position by the guy. i apparently exude knowledge and they need a guy for sales in their grip dept.
heres the twist.....
i cant shoot.
LMU shoots start on friday and end on sunday....might as well thursday as a pre-pro day. samy's is a FULL-time job.
like keslow was....
speaking of which; i had to call them and ask for a quote for a cam package...not sure how i feel about that place...pretty sure they dont like me.
a long time ago, i was forced to make a decision betwixt shooting and working. i chose shooting.
i'm tired of living hand to mouth.
show up with a resume and i have the job
not being able to shoot was one of the key factors in my being a crackhead. is that a cop-out?
i was the key factor in being a crackhead, but my soul demands to be fed...its like a twist on little shop of horrors. if i dont feed it, it withers and dies and i get overgrown with big green talking venus fly-traps that talk like isaac hayes......
i edit my reel tomorrow.
i apply at samy's tomorrow night, if not tuesday morning.
theres so much more going on;
...but thats....another story....
this blog was brought to you by the letters K, L, and the number 5 (no significance in the chosen alpha-numerics, those letters had better agents)
a strange sensation
10 Feb 06 Friday
10:22 PM - a strange sensation
Current mood: speculative
so here i am
yes here i am; its me again.
i feel like i did when i wrote my first blog. like a groundhog.
speaking of which, did pxtny phil see his shadow or what.
oh wait;
i live in CA, so it doesnt bloody matter. the weather is the same all the damn time. ha ha.
(sorry mom, but it is funny)
the last few days have been interesting.
i was reminded of the sting that love carries with it, but i'm also remembering the warmth that closeness with another human soul creates.
i have been sober for about a week; and it was effortless. there was a moment or two of weakness, but i was able to stave it off.
i can't do it alone, i found. but my source of strength lives 2 hours away.
theres so much to say about the last few days...
i made my rent
i fell in love
i defeated Zur and the Ko-Dan armada
and porn was involved.
somehow i managed to see gus van sant's "elephant".
that film is FUCKING AMAZING. not only did harry savides do an amazing job as the dp, but his operator should be given major kudos.
how the fuck did no one see this film?
maybe it was because i saw the film with an audience of people to whom i had to describe the film as "they blow shit up....later" to get them to watch it that i found it particularly poiniant(sp?)
i have been kinda "meh" about van sant, but i thought that his storytelling was amazing.
see this film.
TiVO the g-ddamn thing; whatever.....just watch it.
finally got to see "five easy pieces"
its amazing what they did with such little money and a lot of booze and coke, lol.
that film was lazlo kovacs at his finest. granted, theres something to be said about the decadence of ghostbusters, but i dont know if he ever topped his work in "five...."
burnt out for the day.
i, your humble narrator, will delight you with tales later, my little drooges.
until tomorrow,
doogie hauser, MD
i just noticed something....you can usually sense my level of sobriety by the amount of references that i make per entry.
remmber that and call my ass on it if i slip and try and fake it.
goodnight my friends
btw-listening to death cab for cutie..
FUCK
these guys are amazing; do they have a bad song?
10:22 PM - a strange sensation
Current mood: speculative
so here i am
yes here i am; its me again.
i feel like i did when i wrote my first blog. like a groundhog.
speaking of which, did pxtny phil see his shadow or what.
oh wait;
i live in CA, so it doesnt bloody matter. the weather is the same all the damn time. ha ha.
(sorry mom, but it is funny)
the last few days have been interesting.
i was reminded of the sting that love carries with it, but i'm also remembering the warmth that closeness with another human soul creates.
i have been sober for about a week; and it was effortless. there was a moment or two of weakness, but i was able to stave it off.
i can't do it alone, i found. but my source of strength lives 2 hours away.
theres so much to say about the last few days...
i made my rent
i fell in love
i defeated Zur and the Ko-Dan armada
and porn was involved.
somehow i managed to see gus van sant's "elephant".
that film is FUCKING AMAZING. not only did harry savides do an amazing job as the dp, but his operator should be given major kudos.
how the fuck did no one see this film?
maybe it was because i saw the film with an audience of people to whom i had to describe the film as "they blow shit up....later" to get them to watch it that i found it particularly poiniant(sp?)
i have been kinda "meh" about van sant, but i thought that his storytelling was amazing.
see this film.
TiVO the g-ddamn thing; whatever.....just watch it.
finally got to see "five easy pieces"
its amazing what they did with such little money and a lot of booze and coke, lol.
that film was lazlo kovacs at his finest. granted, theres something to be said about the decadence of ghostbusters, but i dont know if he ever topped his work in "five...."
burnt out for the day.
i, your humble narrator, will delight you with tales later, my little drooges.
until tomorrow,
doogie hauser, MD
i just noticed something....you can usually sense my level of sobriety by the amount of references that i make per entry.
remmber that and call my ass on it if i slip and try and fake it.
goodnight my friends
btw-listening to death cab for cutie..
FUCK
these guys are amazing; do they have a bad song?
digression
05 Feb 06 Sunday
9:57 PM - digression
the last few days have been strange.
i dont have the money for rent and i'm past due.
i spent today location scouting for a film with my friend, nick. its his film and it is a challenge as a DP.
we are going to be up in the angeles forest, 10 of us in an RV camping out and then shooting while the sun is up.
EVERYTHING must be carefully planned out before we start shooting.
i'm honoured that nick felt i was up to the challenge and that he has every confidence in me. he knows about what happened on ryan's shoot and yet he still trusts me as his DP. i also think that we are becoming fast friends.
i have a list in my head of the dream crew of LMU studetns and he has always been on that list.
there is kind of a cliche of students at LMU, its simply a cliche of people who love film more than anything. its exciting that all of us will be working together in such close quarters.
today nick and i, out of breath(from being over 6, 000ft high) and exhausted from climbing trails and hills all day still walked a good half a mile out onto a trail that led to a precipice that we need to shoot a scene. it took all of our energy, but we found the locations that are going to make this film amazing and make a very dangerous situation harmless.
it was then that i knew that i still have work to do in this world.
mind you, i think i have pneumonia again.
there is a short list of people who understand the gravity of that statement.
i'm going to get tested tomorrow.
been fighting all day, but i'm sober.
thinkning about leaving this apt and living in a recovery house that a good friend recommended. dunno.
tired.
9:57 PM - digression
the last few days have been strange.
i dont have the money for rent and i'm past due.
i spent today location scouting for a film with my friend, nick. its his film and it is a challenge as a DP.
we are going to be up in the angeles forest, 10 of us in an RV camping out and then shooting while the sun is up.
EVERYTHING must be carefully planned out before we start shooting.
i'm honoured that nick felt i was up to the challenge and that he has every confidence in me. he knows about what happened on ryan's shoot and yet he still trusts me as his DP. i also think that we are becoming fast friends.
i have a list in my head of the dream crew of LMU studetns and he has always been on that list.
there is kind of a cliche of students at LMU, its simply a cliche of people who love film more than anything. its exciting that all of us will be working together in such close quarters.
today nick and i, out of breath(from being over 6, 000ft high) and exhausted from climbing trails and hills all day still walked a good half a mile out onto a trail that led to a precipice that we need to shoot a scene. it took all of our energy, but we found the locations that are going to make this film amazing and make a very dangerous situation harmless.
it was then that i knew that i still have work to do in this world.
mind you, i think i have pneumonia again.
there is a short list of people who understand the gravity of that statement.
i'm going to get tested tomorrow.
been fighting all day, but i'm sober.
thinkning about leaving this apt and living in a recovery house that a good friend recommended. dunno.
tired.
..................
04 Feb 06 Saturday
8:23 PM - .......
Current mood: suicidal
someone once told me that the only thing in life that was unbearable is that nothing is unbearable.
io wonder how much that is true.
all day i have had hemingway in my head..."the world breaks everyone...and those it will not break it kills"
my brother once told me that its not about living your life in years.
i'm tired of the whole thing, but i cant let my story end here.
not here.
not here.
8:23 PM - .......
Current mood: suicidal
someone once told me that the only thing in life that was unbearable is that nothing is unbearable.
io wonder how much that is true.
all day i have had hemingway in my head..."the world breaks everyone...and those it will not break it kills"
my brother once told me that its not about living your life in years.
i'm tired of the whole thing, but i cant let my story end here.
not here.
not here.
the last banana
04 Feb 06 Saturday
1:24 AM -
the last banana
Current mood: melancholy
Category: melancholy Parties and Nightlife
fuck.
i slipped.
i need help.
when i first met my ex, i hated him immediately upon sight. then i reviled him and then settled into loathing. that was just the first hour or so..
but later in the day, we were at a friends house and he played the piano for me, something of his own composition....i heard proof of a soul;
with a new vision i saw him and heard greatness in his voice.
i once told my mother that we had the same taste in men and its only partially true. my mother's fatal flaw as been that she saw through the present person and saw the person they could grow to be and she would instictively nurture that(often against her better judgement and my appeals)
i saw greatness in someone that didnt see it in themselves and it nearly cost me everything.
now i catch up with him or just keep my ears to the ground. its funny that he is finally starting to bloom into a real person. i am truly happy for him.
it stands as both an example of the redemption possible, and my inabiltiy to follow in those steps, 12 or otherwise.
i suppose it's rather fitting that my sexual awakening was while reading burroughs' naked lunch. an irony that this was the book that kicked of my 15 year adolecence...
i realize that i have slid too far away from that way of life. i finally understand the significance of the title trainspotting. its about the extreme distance from society that addicts keep from themselves and the chutes and ladders of addiction.
i like who i am sober...why fuck that up? what is it that i need so much that i cant find it in my finest state; that i would give up everything for it?
when is it enough.
i'm tired and i feel like i want to vanish into oblivion.
heaven is for the hopeful, hell for the guilty and oblivion for the lucky.
no worries though......vitamin B sould make this all feel better.
"i believe that what i'm feeling changes how the world appears"- neil peart
1:24 AM -
the last banana
Current mood: melancholy
Category: melancholy Parties and Nightlife
fuck.
i slipped.
i need help.
when i first met my ex, i hated him immediately upon sight. then i reviled him and then settled into loathing. that was just the first hour or so..
but later in the day, we were at a friends house and he played the piano for me, something of his own composition....i heard proof of a soul;
with a new vision i saw him and heard greatness in his voice.
i once told my mother that we had the same taste in men and its only partially true. my mother's fatal flaw as been that she saw through the present person and saw the person they could grow to be and she would instictively nurture that(often against her better judgement and my appeals)
i saw greatness in someone that didnt see it in themselves and it nearly cost me everything.
now i catch up with him or just keep my ears to the ground. its funny that he is finally starting to bloom into a real person. i am truly happy for him.
it stands as both an example of the redemption possible, and my inabiltiy to follow in those steps, 12 or otherwise.
i suppose it's rather fitting that my sexual awakening was while reading burroughs' naked lunch. an irony that this was the book that kicked of my 15 year adolecence...
i realize that i have slid too far away from that way of life. i finally understand the significance of the title trainspotting. its about the extreme distance from society that addicts keep from themselves and the chutes and ladders of addiction.
i like who i am sober...why fuck that up? what is it that i need so much that i cant find it in my finest state; that i would give up everything for it?
when is it enough.
i'm tired and i feel like i want to vanish into oblivion.
heaven is for the hopeful, hell for the guilty and oblivion for the lucky.
no worries though......vitamin B sould make this all feel better.
"i believe that what i'm feeling changes how the world appears"- neil peart
bouncy
22 Jan 06 Sunday
1:05 AM - day two
Current mood: bouncy
Category: its the red bull Automotive
so here i am.
i was told that livejournal is a btter, more stable site, so i am posting a mirror on that site; kind of a redundancy race....who fucks up first, lol.
so,
day ten and things bode well.
just finished cutting together the final visual edit of the last film i shot. the director is a dear mate and the editor turned out to be a schmuck so we did it together. colour correct is tomorrow.
so excited.
check out flickr.com(my redscrewdriver account...see last blog)
to see some of the colour corrected stills i am working on right now.
so...got an email from a friend i have never met, but liked and thought everything was cool with, but turns out, not:
here it is(names have been deleted to protect)
----------------- Original Message -----------------
Date: Jan 21, 2006 3:35 PM
its alright~ I've just been feeling the need to forget about you, as mean as that may sound, because I know i'm never going to meet you, and I spend too much time thinking about you.
I'm out to meet new people~ proximity is everything.
It was strange, I thought I saw you yesterday O.o Driving a green buggy.
I'm glad to have heard your life story and progress to success ^^ It was very enlightening~
i'm not sure what else to say. I think one day I just realized you weren't my type after all and thought it best to distance myself O.o then again, im a crazy virgo.
i replied:
anyway, the whole thing was based simply on the premise that we had a mutual respect for each other's photography; maybe i misunderstood that. there was a moment that we connected as people but what did you think was going to happen?
i have a freidn that is moving up to ****** and i was planning to see both of you when the opportunity arose.
i am not dating material right now......
does that measn that i am not speaking material or somehow less of a person to you?
kinda fucked up...
but, one of the drawing points has always ben that we have far more in common than you suspect and i have been where you are
in life.
no worries, mate.
happy hunting.
when you finally get bored with placing your happiness on the possibility of nesting, you let me know.
cheers,
ben
when did this become a dating site? (meaning myspace.com)
dunno.
i live in los angeles.
dating here is usually a one night stand that goes on for far too long....i am starting to suspect that happiness is vaguely possible; i have always beleived in G-d and true love.
i just havent been on speaking terms with the former and i have trouble believing in the latter is possible for me.
someone once said, "one can have a great life or great life, but never both."
consider hemingway
which brings us to the quote of the day:
"The world breaks everyone and afterward many are strong at the broken places. But those that will not break it kills. It kills the very good and the very gentle and the very brave impartially. If you are none of these you can be sure it will kill you too but there will be no special hurry."-- Ernest Hemingway
of course i always hear clive owen whenever i read that.
i am a true film geek..i got my hemingway from Croupier. well that and a love of paris got me to read "movable feast". cant really get into hemmy much. iin school i passed by on his NICK ADAMS stories, cuz in my head - and admit it, yours too - nick adams was HOT...
back to clive owen
one of the 3 most underappreciated actors of our time. in no particular order;
clive owen (have you seen BMW films?)
richard roxburgh (even in van helsing)
billy crudup (jesus' son....say no fucking more; better yet he blew me away in stage beauty)
done ranting for today.
not at the stage where i can bare my soul yet...scroll down to a feew months later and see if i am any better at this or if its just all superficial bullshit.
hope its interesting superficial bullshit.
cheers
1:05 AM - day two
Current mood: bouncy
Category: its the red bull Automotive
so here i am.
i was told that livejournal is a btter, more stable site, so i am posting a mirror on that site; kind of a redundancy race....who fucks up first, lol.
so,
day ten and things bode well.
just finished cutting together the final visual edit of the last film i shot. the director is a dear mate and the editor turned out to be a schmuck so we did it together. colour correct is tomorrow.
so excited.
check out flickr.com(my redscrewdriver account...see last blog)
to see some of the colour corrected stills i am working on right now.
so...got an email from a friend i have never met, but liked and thought everything was cool with, but turns out, not:
here it is(names have been deleted to protect)
----------------- Original Message -----------------
Date: Jan 21, 2006 3:35 PM
its alright~ I've just been feeling the need to forget about you, as mean as that may sound, because I know i'm never going to meet you, and I spend too much time thinking about you.
I'm out to meet new people~ proximity is everything.
It was strange, I thought I saw you yesterday O.o Driving a green buggy.
I'm glad to have heard your life story and progress to success ^^ It was very enlightening~
i'm not sure what else to say. I think one day I just realized you weren't my type after all and thought it best to distance myself O.o then again, im a crazy virgo.
i replied:
anyway, the whole thing was based simply on the premise that we had a mutual respect for each other's photography; maybe i misunderstood that. there was a moment that we connected as people but what did you think was going to happen?
i have a freidn that is moving up to ****** and i was planning to see both of you when the opportunity arose.
i am not dating material right now......
does that measn that i am not speaking material or somehow less of a person to you?
kinda fucked up...
but, one of the drawing points has always ben that we have far more in common than you suspect and i have been where you are
in life.
no worries, mate.
happy hunting.
when you finally get bored with placing your happiness on the possibility of nesting, you let me know.
cheers,
ben
when did this become a dating site? (meaning myspace.com)
dunno.
i live in los angeles.
dating here is usually a one night stand that goes on for far too long....i am starting to suspect that happiness is vaguely possible; i have always beleived in G-d and true love.
i just havent been on speaking terms with the former and i have trouble believing in the latter is possible for me.
someone once said, "one can have a great life or great life, but never both."
consider hemingway
which brings us to the quote of the day:
"The world breaks everyone and afterward many are strong at the broken places. But those that will not break it kills. It kills the very good and the very gentle and the very brave impartially. If you are none of these you can be sure it will kill you too but there will be no special hurry."-- Ernest Hemingway
of course i always hear clive owen whenever i read that.
i am a true film geek..i got my hemingway from Croupier. well that and a love of paris got me to read "movable feast". cant really get into hemmy much. iin school i passed by on his NICK ADAMS stories, cuz in my head - and admit it, yours too - nick adams was HOT...
back to clive owen
one of the 3 most underappreciated actors of our time. in no particular order;
clive owen (have you seen BMW films?)
richard roxburgh (even in van helsing)
billy crudup (jesus' son....say no fucking more; better yet he blew me away in stage beauty)
done ranting for today.
not at the stage where i can bare my soul yet...scroll down to a feew months later and see if i am any better at this or if its just all superficial bullshit.
hope its interesting superficial bullshit.
cheers
so, um yeah...this blog thing
21 Jan 06 Saturday
1:29 AM - so, um yeah...this blog thing
Current mood: awake
Category: more accurately, "here" Art and Photography
so here i am, writing at the advice of a dear old ex of mine.
i dont really know how these things work because i'm usually far too self-involved to read them.
wait,
simple rules that i am going to try and abide by....
first, once a night; but i have the option of taking shabbat off(but after temple is when i have my strongest thinking
second, honesty.
you may find that you hate me if you read more than one of these.
as an artist, i have found that honesty, however ugly is going to ring true with someone somewhere...is it worth it? dunno.
tertiary, i will always welcome feedback.
(ever been somewhere isolated and gotten a package or a letter from someone that was written on paper? yeah, its kinda like that)
so,
january
a new start......well, i always consider september the new year because traditionally i have had my birthday, the first day of school, and more recently, Rosh HaShannah, the jewish new year.
heres my quote for today:
My father says that almost the whole world is asleep. Everybody you know. Everybody you see. Everybody you talk to. He says that only a few people are awake and they live in a state of constant total amazement. -john patrick shanley.
the man is a genius. one of the great tragedies of film is that that film was panned at the box office, of course the other is raul julia's(did anybody see moon over parador?) last film was "street fighter" playing opposite jean-claude van damme.
moment of silence.
apologies: i think out loud and my brain is finally waking up after a year long stupor. i analize EVERYTHING and misspell a lot; after a particular sociopathic ex, i chose to anesthesise myself and didnt come out of it for a long time.
like puxatawney phil, i am just now poking my head out the foxhole, to mix metaphors, and theres so much to say, so much to do, so many things i should have been doing, so many things i wish i could be justifiably upset about and lastly so many things i have to start accepting responsibility for.
like the detritus from last night's party, i have to pick up the shattered china plates and scrub off the obsenities from the walls(though it seemed like so much fun at the time)
make no mistake about it, oh my brothers, i am enraged.
david wojnarowicz once wrote (paraphrase)"i am ten feet of rage stuffed inside a six foot frame"
i'm too tired to feel that at this moment and i havent really dealt with that phase of the recovery process, but it's in the post.
tired now.
i think i am going to throw off everything from my bed in one drastic motion and finally get some well deserved sleep.
cheers
btw, my photographic work can be found at:
www.flickr.com/photos/redscrewdriver
1:29 AM - so, um yeah...this blog thing
Current mood: awake
Category: more accurately, "here" Art and Photography
so here i am, writing at the advice of a dear old ex of mine.
i dont really know how these things work because i'm usually far too self-involved to read them.
wait,
simple rules that i am going to try and abide by....
first, once a night; but i have the option of taking shabbat off(but after temple is when i have my strongest thinking
second, honesty.
you may find that you hate me if you read more than one of these.
as an artist, i have found that honesty, however ugly is going to ring true with someone somewhere...is it worth it? dunno.
tertiary, i will always welcome feedback.
(ever been somewhere isolated and gotten a package or a letter from someone that was written on paper? yeah, its kinda like that)
so,
january
a new start......well, i always consider september the new year because traditionally i have had my birthday, the first day of school, and more recently, Rosh HaShannah, the jewish new year.
heres my quote for today:
My father says that almost the whole world is asleep. Everybody you know. Everybody you see. Everybody you talk to. He says that only a few people are awake and they live in a state of constant total amazement. -john patrick shanley.
the man is a genius. one of the great tragedies of film is that that film was panned at the box office, of course the other is raul julia's(did anybody see moon over parador?) last film was "street fighter" playing opposite jean-claude van damme.
moment of silence.
apologies: i think out loud and my brain is finally waking up after a year long stupor. i analize EVERYTHING and misspell a lot; after a particular sociopathic ex, i chose to anesthesise myself and didnt come out of it for a long time.
like puxatawney phil, i am just now poking my head out the foxhole, to mix metaphors, and theres so much to say, so much to do, so many things i should have been doing, so many things i wish i could be justifiably upset about and lastly so many things i have to start accepting responsibility for.
like the detritus from last night's party, i have to pick up the shattered china plates and scrub off the obsenities from the walls(though it seemed like so much fun at the time)
make no mistake about it, oh my brothers, i am enraged.
david wojnarowicz once wrote (paraphrase)"i am ten feet of rage stuffed inside a six foot frame"
i'm too tired to feel that at this moment and i havent really dealt with that phase of the recovery process, but it's in the post.
tired now.
i think i am going to throw off everything from my bed in one drastic motion and finally get some well deserved sleep.
cheers
btw, my photographic work can be found at:
www.flickr.com/photos/redscrewdriver
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