answering questions like what is this story really about and having her teach me about african american mysticism, rolling out of bed wrapped in the covers and burning eyes can't even open them sneezing on my knees on the hard floor breath to heaven and drudging off to the toilet. shrugging my shoulders sayin' i don't know all the time i don't know i don't know yes, i'll come sit with you and keep you company sit close on the sofa come close i want to read you something oh heaven oh breath i don't know i don't know and all paragraphs ever written a large sweeping i don't know.

and don't be sorry

"deni is meanwhile very busy tellin me what a mess i've made of my life but i've heard that from everybody coast to coast and i dont care generally and i dont care tonight and this is my way of doing and saying things."

-jack kerouac, lonesome traveler

my dinner, dress, associates, looks, business, compliments, dues,
the real or fancied indifference of some man or woman i love,
the sickness of one of my folks - or of myself... or ill-doing...
     or loss or lack of money... or depressions or exaltations,
they come to me days and nights and go from me again,
but they are not the Me myself.

-leaves of grass

let me tell you something, baby brother

"our girlhood was spent like a found nickel on you.  when you slept, we were quiet; when you were hungry, we cooked; when you wanted to play, we entertained you; and when you got grown enough to know the difference between a woman and a two-toned ford, everything in this house stopped for you.  you have yet to wash your own underwear, spread a bed, wipe the ring from your tub, or move a fleck of dirt from one place to another.  and to this day, you have never asked one of us if we were tired, or sad, or wanted a cup of coffee.  you've never picked up anything heavier than your own feet, or solved a problem harder than fourth-grade arithmetic.  where do you get the right to decide our lives?  i'll tell you where.  from that hog's gut that hangs down between your legs.  well, let me tell you something, baby brother: you will need more than that.  i don't know where you will get it or who will give it to you, but mark my words, you will need more than that."

-song of solomon

"no one knows how greatness comes to a man. it may lie in his blackness, sleeping, or it may lance into him like those driven fiery particles from outer space.  these things, however, are known about greatness: need gives it life and puts it in action, it never comes without pain; it leaves a man changed, chastened, and exalted at the same time - he can never return to simplicity." 

-sweet thursday

rue cambon, 1937

jean cocteau sketching elizabeth gibbons

"i know you don't intend to make it more difficult for me.  but it's my place to suffer for my children," she said. "i can bear it." 

- the sound and the fury

it occurs to me that i am America

stamp collector

"i love people. everybody. i love them, i think, as a stamp collector loves his collection. every story, every incident, every bit of conversation is raw material for me. my love's not impersonal yet not wholly subjective either. i would like to be everyone, a cripple, a dying man, a whore, and then come back to write about my thoughts, my emotions, as that person. but i am not omniscient. i have my life to live, and it is the only one i'll ever have."

-sylvia plath, journals

taken by me
canon ae-1, kodak
santa cruz, ca
april 2012

what they wanted

"But it was Fauna's conviction, born out of long experience, that most people, one, did not know what they wanted; two, did not know how to go about getting it; and three, didn't know when they had it."

-Sweet Thursday, John Steinbeck

it's long desert stretches that

i want for.

adobe houses and horses

some leftover los angelean/santa fe

replica cheap art and lonely hotel

house on a frontier-stead

whizzing in my head

all orangey and dusky and

full of heavy odor

things of death and danger

and romance.

weary.

vignette.

repose.

sweep on down across the west

and on into the deep green of a

tennessee williams louisiana.

pearls and goodbye kisses,

lace, a cream colored cheek and

so long.

for the story written down.

my womanly, southern heart.

goodbye out west,

so long.

forever and ever and ever

"one of the strange things about living in the world is that it is only now and then one is quite sure one is going to live forever and ever and ever. one knows it sometimes when one gets up at the tender solemn dawn-time and goes out and stands alone and throws one's head far back and looks up and watches the pale sky slowly changing and flushing and marvelous unknown things happening until the east almost makes one cry out and one's heart stands still at the strange unchanging majesty of the rising sun - which has been happening every morning for thousands and thousands of years. one knows it then for a moment or so. and one knows it sometimes when one stands by oneself in a wood at sunset and the mysterious deep gold stillness slanting through and under the branches seems to be saying slowly again and again something one cannot quite hear, however much one tries. then sometimes the immense quiet of the dark blue at night with millions of stars waiting and watching makes one sure; and sometimes a sound of far-off music makes it true; and sometimes a look in someone's eyes."

-the secret garden

toujours et toujours

quite contrary

"might i have a bit of earth?"

-mary, the secret garden

me, in college

my utopia

"human beings will be happier - not when they cure cancer or get to mars or eliminate racial prejudice or flush lake erie but when they find ways to inhabit primitive communities again. that's my utopia."

-kurt vonnegut, jr.

march

it's ok because there is a season for everything

and right now i'm not writing but instead

taking pictures and being very busy and making

plans and learning my lines and reacting truthfully

and acting on impulse and making food and sleeping

in the middle of my bed and all things like that.

home

i took these.

love letters to the end

my wonderful, beautiful neighbors and friends (tin santos, peter dean, julia mcalee, ryan maxey) have created a new project. a short webseries called Love Letters To The End. below is episode one of the 12 part series (one for every month of this year). inspired by the possibility that it all might come to an end this year, write your anonymous love letter to the world and send it here:

Love Letters To The End

PO Box 17693

Los Angeles, CA 90017-0693

your letter could end up as part of the narrative. keep your ear tuned to the music of shawn morones and brittany weston of cigarette barbies in the background of this episode. and also, stay tuned for yours truly to show up in episode two. visit their website here to learn more.

Love Letters to the End - Episode 1 from Love Letters to the End on Vimeo.

liberation

"the theatre must be more than a factory for producing plays...it should be a living spiritual and intellectural focus, a place for social self-awareness, a vanishing point where all lines of force of the age meet, a seismograph of the times, a space, an area of freedom, an instrument of human liberation."

~vaclav havel

sive

biology meditation and keeping

out the things that give me headaches,

drinking in things that give me small

pains like a stretch in my side, a lift

in my shoulders.

painting walls the color of sunset

and gazing upward at tall trees; at their smell.

staying impulsive and happy.

growing my branches at the right moment

and keeping light on my toes.

on top

bruxelles

there was a time when i wandered half of europe in the winter, alone. it was sad and magical and i found myself in belgium with megan where it's gray. and we wandered. and we laughed.

january

toy piano

come home with me.

mattie

i like when movies inspire fashion.

because it encourages me, that i'm not

the only one who is thrilled by getting into

character by getting dressed. that a great story or

grand adventure will happen with a western coat and hat or

a slinky dress and heels. it usually does. at least for me anyway.

river

sometimes, i love so hard.