quelqu'un m'a dit

my friend leah is sitting here right now.


and in the shower today i had this stuck in my head.

between asleep & awake

i'm dreaming of dreamcatchers

by any breath your lungs could store,

sometimes, on a day off, i might sleep in late and then sit on my computer for a while drinking coffee and sometimes shut my eyes because i am groggy. then i will light a pretty smelling candle and open the windows and play dress up with the clothes on the floor before i put them away and then eat some cereal and then get back in bed and read edna st. vincent millay. sometimes, not always. but definitely today.

the birth of cool

faithful lover

the moon came to me last night

with a sweet question.

she said,

"the sun has been my faithful lover

for millions of years.

whenever i offer my body to him

brilliant light pours from his heart.

thousands then notice my happiness

and delight in pointing

toward my beauty.

hafiz,

is it true that our destiny

is to turn into light

itself?"

and i replied,

dear moon,

now that your love is maturing,

we need to sit together

close like this more often

so i might instruct you

how to become

who you

are.

-hafiz of persia

best coast at the getty

whose comin' with me to see BEST COAST at the Getty FO FREE?! july 9th. save the date.
and omg bobb is wearing a zoot suit shirt? i'minlove.

burn

living for almost a month now with burners has really started to change my perspective, on lots of things. community, success, recreation, drugs, burning man and seeing what a group can accomplish when you put your efforts together. i'm very encouraged to be surrounded by people who are both responsible adults and free spirited twenty-somethings at the same time.

we are still trying to figure out this whole thing together.

and i might be convinced to attend burning man next year.

just maybe.

roy rogers

weheartit

yo ho ho

it's almost summer which means summer reading lists and for me that means: adventure books. treasure island, the adventures of tom sawyer and huckleberry finn, gullivers travels, around the world in 80 days. adventure novels are my favorite, they always have been since i was a kid and would read mark twain in my barefeet and wish i was tom sawyer (NOT becky). they also remind me of the adventure book in the movie the pagemaster. have any of you seen this film? its an animated movie from the 90s starring macauley culkin who gets trapped inside an animated book world when he visits a mysterious library. it wasn't very popular and a little bizarre but it was one of the movies my grandma bought us so we watched it. she also bought us a non-disney version of aladdin because she got confused. hmm.

for my summer:

-captains courageous, rudyard kipling

-robinson crusoe, daniel defoe

-moby dick, herman melville

-heart of darkness, joseph conrad

-o pioneers!, willa cather

-the swiss family robinson, johann david wyss

what's on your summer reading list?

my dear will not catch trouble

"as for its being silly, i don't mind that. sometimes it's great fun to be silly, like children playing statues and dying of laughter. and sometimes being silly breaks the even pace and lets you get a new start. when i am troubled, i play a game of silly so that my dear will not catch trouble from me. she hasn't found me out yet, or if she has, i'll never know it. so many things i don't know about my mary, and among them, how much she knows about me."

-john steinbeck, the winter of our discontent

chung may

fashion goal for may: channel my inner alexa chung, everyday.

hatari

thanks to this guy, i've been listening to mind the gap nonstop this week. it affects me differently every time. sometimes its the cheery music i need after a hard day at work, others its blasting badass while lazily driving through sunny LA. today it was romantic and cloudy and inviting. nonetheless, it has left me super obsessed with the tune yards and this song:

detailed daydream

(bangolan, cameroon 2006)

soft summer

light and air

lines and white

oleander

roll with the blue

signs of soft summer

and summer skin

sleeping in and taking

your socks off in your

sleep, reading old

texts from the middle

of the night, clasping

praying, wishing, saying,

flicking copper pennies

into puddles of water

and saying

cat got yer tongue?

vade mecum

i want the scissors to be sharp

and the table to be perfectly level

when you cut me out of my life

and paste me in that book you always carry.

billy collins, sailing alone around the room

and not look back

the happy virus

i caught the happy virus last night

when i was out singing beneath the stars.

it is remarkably contagious-

so kiss me.

-hafiz of persia

the week in review

NUMBER ONE.

the BLVD. the street where i live. a warm and happy and green and lovely place.

the home of backyard fire pits made from the inside of an old dryer.

the new basketball hoop and hot tub next door.

movie sesh's and family dinners and ladies nights and watching the sunset from the roof.

NUMBER TWO.

i am thoroughly obsessed with nailpolish.

other obsessions include: twitter, lemonade, caps lock, tofurkey and vhs tapes.

NUMBER THREE.

this morning i woke up and thought to myself, a disney cartoon would be perfect right now.

i was flooded with some long forgotten happy nostalgia as i sat through the sound effects and graphics of the walt disney home video of my childhood.

as the credits rolled after aladdin, i was reminded of the 90s soft jams they used to record as a radio edit of the movie's main theme song.

here is celine dion singing beauty and the beast.

i.e. a lesson in listening

i have a pretty kickass turntable/stereo that my dad pieced together from garage sales. all it does is play records. i have no ipod connector, tape deck, cd player or radio. but when you have these to choose from, its not so bad.

i've been giving myself a lesson in music listening.

as in, listen to music and only listen to music.

not just while i'm on the computer or doing chores or in the car.

but grabbing tin's big floor cushion pillow and lying down and listening to my dinah washington '62 album and just listening.

do it.

the future

hey kids.

there has been an overwhelming sense come over me to forcibly change the thesis of this blog. bear with me as whoa, jamie goes through some changes and evolution. i'm not sure what it will turn into yet, but the poetry will be (has been) fading out.

these things i can promise you:

-i will not post pictures of me in "cute" outfits.

but if i post a picture and i look awesome, i can't help that.

-it will always be completely and utterly random.

-BLVD (where i live) happenings will start to show up.

kapeesh?

for now:

i don't think you all understand just how happy this makes me.

if you wanna feel more like me, download some BEST COAST and THIS FREE MIXTAPE and drive around town on a hot day with the windows rolled down and yell obscenities when someone cuts you off.

with tea and art on the floor

"i want the love in my life to feel like a deep breath, a blushing laugh, a view across the sea of cortez always expanding wider glowing. i want the experience of love to lift me up and dance during dinner even when my little sister says she'll pay me $5.00 not to. i'm learning to reinvent what being with a boy can be like. maybe its a fort instead of a movie, with lots of shel silverstein reading out loud or a spring night with tea and art on the floor."

- sabrina ward harrison, spilling open

long beach meets the womb

i dream about the day when all five wombsicles will come together in a rewombion but for now we do the best we can. which means it'll be these four for tonight.

BEAST

honestly

i've been too lazy and too

scared to write. i think i

am just really afraid of

what i might say if it was

just some alone time with

me and a pen. vulnerability

when i've been trying to

be so strong. admitting my

true love and the space with

out you here. headaches from

money and red wine alone

on the couch. i believe in

honesty as longs as its kept

quiet. i want no more of that.

love will find a way

good monday

dimanche

& all i want by joni mitchell

& backyard campfires

& early rising

& free concerts

& lost in LA

& plamts

& hu

and she has gone away

my wife, my mary, goes to her sleep the way you would close the door of a closet. so many times i have watched her with envy. her lovely body squirms a moment as though she fitted herself into a cocoon. she sighs once and at the end of it her eyes close and her lips, untroubled, fall into that wise and remote smile of the ancient greek gods. she smiles all night in her sleep, her breath purrs in her throat, not a snore, a kitten's purr. for a moment her temperature leaps up so that i can feel the glow of it beside me in the bed, then drops and she has gone away. i don't know where. she says she does not dream. she must, of course. that simply means that her dreams do not trouble her, or trouble her so much that she forgets them before awakening. she loves to sleep and sleep welcomes her. i wish it were so with me. i fight off sleep, at the same time craving it.

-john steinbeck, the winter of our discontent

le cheveux long

i want long mermaid hair

vintage

sometimes i think i just ask too much of myself.

we can't be everything to everyone always.

and that's okay.

dad's canon

if i can ever take a whole roll of film without fucking it up, i have a beautiful new subject: koreatown. rookie mistakes like loading the film wrong or it getting caught on a mechanism forcing me to expose the whole roll has led me to many lost pictures. but hopefully you will soon be seeing my neighborhood from my dad's old canon ae-1. and maybe someday from my super 8mm. but that will be a much slower process. also, a new flash for my holga might make those photos come out better as well. mine are just not cool enough for the blogosphere. i'll have to get these things working because soon we will have couchsurfers and i must must must photograph each and every one of them.

here is a shot from an experimental roll.

azusa, ca

canon ae-1

i'm ready

for summer music festivals

via yellowyellow

dishes by maxey

"a small taste of community living. all of our cups seemed to have disappeared. so i went on a cup hunt in all the nooks and crannies of Synchronicity LA. i found over 75 of them. then i washed them and took pictures and sound." - ryan maxey

in the treehouse

i have a new room with new walls and they are blue and sky and cloud colored. my bedroom door swings outward instead of inward and always stays open when i want it closed and always closes when i want it open. my french doors lead to a tiny sloped balcony above a concrete backyard where the neighbors sit on their bikes and hang out after school and i have two potted flowers, candace and amy. there are so many trees that out my window is all green. there are scratches on the floor from the cat cousteau who used to live here and i can hear the synchronicity people laugh and talk next door when i go to sleep. gina makes me feel treasured and tin makes me laugh real hard. they both make me feel good and happy and smart and confident about a new life that is serious, but never too serious and i feel all glowy and as if i were a bead of dew on a small blade of grass in the morningtime.

on the boardwalk

blvd

trying to

gather

words

that typify

my new

surroundings.

my new

home.

but not

just yet.

right now

it is things

like room

painting

and ikea

shopping

and beers

on the couch

and starting

work.

getting back

to work.