a few words after a long string of nothings…

I guess it’s been a bazilliontrillioninsanillion amount of time since I sat and wrote something worthwhile, and even longer since I sat to write in my wordpress blog specifically. Not sure what it was about last summer…the confusion of an active moving transition? the hot, humid Jersey air?…but I definitely couldn’t stop puttering about this blog, and at times editing and deleting the foolish ideas I recorded here.

However, between my unnecessary facebook posts and lately twitters, I am more compelled to return to writing, even if just on a stupid blog, in order to decrease my usage of these other, word-limiting, brain-numbing online community sites.

I am pretty depressed. Yes, it’s true it hit me again. And what could be the cause, this time? It is unavoidably in part, the residue of yesteryear’s gloom. But it is also, and more essentially, gaining the increasingly internal conflict between play and work, my childish and innovative self, and my practical adult self…a conflict between the realistic and strong little girl that wanted to be an anthropologist, and the contemporary version of myself, insecure and lonely, wanting to be a lover, the inner spoon in a bed of body-porridge, warm, wet, settled…

I am pretty sure that this latter, sticky self is grinding to a halt, and the inertia of this abrupt stop will lead either to complete, final destruction, or some lasting, glowing, golden something. I would rather not contemplate the former result of the inertia, so contemplating the latter, I see the potential of companionship, or good work, of confidence.

I also currently see a lot of unavoidable connections with people. And yet, they are leading to nothing, because I’m tired and I like to stay in when I’m not working. And it all seems like work. Well, I see people, mostly coworkers and people from last term’s school, who are definitely connected to my life, and yet after a short stint of relative socialness at my initial move to the Bay Area, I am once again immersed in solitude, in waiting, sometimes this feels wholly natural and steeped in patience, and many other times I am restless, and again, headed to inertia. And if I am headed to nothing? Than what? the future is too dark to tell. For the first time ever I have no real plans, nothing relevant, nothing pulling, crucial, cogent, vivid, decisive, bright.

I am just living each day. Otherwise, I feel I might go off the rocker, and that, my friends, my empty internet space…that, is unacceptable.

Two points

I don’t know how to go from point A to point B (point A being these chats and awkwardness and not knowing if you like me in that way or not and point B being cuddling with you in bed).
I wish I knew.

People are linguistically challenged…

It hurts my feelings when I see misspelled words on websites.
Personal, professional websites. I can understand misplaced commas, apostrophes, and the like (to an extent) but basic word misspellings on a professional site. It just seems, sad.
Because to me it is arrogance. And in reality it’s probably just ignorance.
And if you don’t share my discontent with normal spelling problems than you probably don’t read much, and with all the kindles, nooks, and online blogs (like this one, of course) there are few people reading actual, real books, including classics where there were complete sentences and plots, so I can see there this (twitter) disregard and ignorance comes from, but still it’s…
sad.

I am so overwhelmed. Grad school, the commute to the city, and back. Work. My small paycheck.
My massive list of wants, and don’t need but could really really really use (car, canon 5D, lighting equipment, bookshelves, new friends, a boyfriend).
I am so needy. I am feeling so need. Needy. Need me.
Blerg…

Recording and Desiring to Experience what we Record…a Contemplation.

First of all, I am confused by my new tank: Jacobs for Marc Jacobs by Marc for Marc Jacobs. What?
Second note begins with a preface.
Preface: Not that I have, completely, so this is just a hypothetical question. (Even with Adam, photographing him nude, I was already fully involved with him on every intimate level, and most of the mystery, or at least the rush of excitement involved in new mystery, was gone.) But my question is, to my fellow artists, have you ever painted/photographed/written/sculpted a person that you felt intimately drawn to on a SEXUAL level? I have to add sexual, as in a physical desire for them, because there is a difference between desiring to know someone intimately, which can be divulging a facet of their soul, and usually is a desire that I feel for everyone I photograph…there is a difference between this desire and a desire to not only understand and connect to a part of their soul but to further experience them on a material level, to possess them not just mentally and spiritually, but also physically. Photography, let’s face it, and other art forms that attempt to identify, deconstruct, and record a person or a portion of a person, is at once recognizing the soul and vibrancy of that person, and also negating it by objectifying it into this limited, physical space, whether a molding of clay, a piece of prose, a picture within a frame. It can be a form of destruction as well as beauty, each recording a perspective of the author or artist, imposed upon the subject as if their perspective is the greater truth in the longevity of their proposed perspective. Anyway, to accompany my question, if you HAVE felt that intense desire for a model, what did you do? Did you feel more comfortable, flustered, inhibited? Did you drink some whiskey or wine before the shoot? (Here I have to omit the writer, who is more detached from the subject, because in the case of the visual artist working directly with the subject is looking at them and knows, even if they are not recorded that they are being looked back upon, and judged, understood, and undressed in just the way they are undressing, judging and understanding their model. And the model, without the tool with which to record their hunter, as the prey, has the power of the hunter’s desire behind them, to pressure and excite them. If they remain uninhibited by the gaze of the artist recording them, they are infinitely powerful). Recording, and desiring to experience on multiple levels what we record, this is the recreation of anxieties that have plagued me since mu first crush in elementary school. A fear of rejection and failure. Of brutally remolding a model into something grotesquely distorted from their true selves, and finding that distortion to be a reflection of myself. And a fear of liking that. I have to recognize these anxieties, embrace these desires from which they are spurned, and deconstruct, recreate and consume them. This is the essence of what attracts me to photography. And in its best moments, it is intimate, and in its very best, it’s sexual, or I imagine, in a way, it will be. So there we have it. And again I pose a multi-layered query: what do you desire, how does it move you, what do you do about it?

A nose by any other name…

Well
This may be rude of me to make via thumb typing a short critical judgement without any moral but regardless I felt it was horrifying enough to mention:
I’m sitting on the Bart 4 o’clock to an elderly lady (this means many years have passed in this state) with a bulbous, round mole hanging from her right nostril. And at first I thought it was a giant booger so I stared akin to the uncontrollable ogling of the fire fighters in the movie Roxanne when Steve Martin’s Cyrano de Bergerac clone walks in the room.
So I stared and she smiled at me! It made me think she kept the monstrosity to disturb people because more horrifiyingly she enjoys inflicting pain through her mysterious unique dangerously painfully wickedly fat freak face. Or maybe she finds it beautiful, and that’s cool.

Meh

Waiting for the shackles to drop off. The flicker of my candle is going to give me a seizure. Must be up pre dawn for photo landscape showdown at the Berkeley marina. I have never been so thrilled for morning to arrive…

Martha and I Finally Catch UP…

Martha to Me:

“to go round a pothole and then they CONverged again!

Hey,

I am so sorry I have been amiss these last few months. I really want
to get in contact again though. I have started working full time at
the Swedish Physician Division — the same medical center that Michael
works for. I am the Patient Service Rep (receptionist) at the
Gastricenterology clinic and it has been great so far! Its a
completely different “kettle of fish” compared to serving and the
other random jobs I have done but I like it and its reliability.
Besides that, I just got a new apartment (today, OCT 1st) and after
work today some dude I hired off of craigslist is coming to pick me up
and is going to help me move my futon and couch into the apt. I am
totally still in super transition mode since getting this new job
entails changing insurance, stopping ebt card, signing up for all the
new aspects of benefits, and figuring out the bus schedule, blah blah
blah. So I have been bogged down with those kinds of responsibilities
that take up your time. The reason I didnt have your phone number is
because my wallet got stolen along with my phone. The effers
liquidated my ebt card and charged all these downloads to my phone so
I had to file a police claim and freeze accounts. SO, I know this is
no excuse but I have been stretched really thin and exasperated with
all this and wasn’t following through on relations. Please forgive
me….?
And where are you and what are you doing?
xx
martha”

Me to Martha:

“Well that’s good to hear, not that you had to deal with assholes, but
that you had an excuse for being absent from my life!
I really could have used an ear though, and I wish I could have talked
some with you, as we’ve both it sounds been through our own respective
hurricane katrinas…
I am just going to quickly address the chaos of my life to catch up with you:
I just got a job today, at Transports, a swimming and running store on
this cute street called College, which has bunches of good cafes and
cute boutiques. It is pretty close to my new place in Berkeley ,on the
border of Oakland in a neighborhood called Rockridge (ont he Oakland
side) and Elmwood (on the Berkeley side). I live next to a park and a
block from Telegraph near the Cal campus and am back in grad school at
AAU in the city, which is downtown. So I’m worn out because I moved in
with a girl from craigslist, and shared this basement room where
everything echoed. At first she seemed distant but then when I asked
her to clean a little (big mistake, pigs don’t clean their pens), she
turned into a bitch, and was all miserable as her ex had just moved
out due to being bipolar and addicted to wippits, yadda yadda…we
stopped talking but she did leave a big mess and finally moved out to
live with some other guy who called me a cunt and looks like a fat
stoner.
Anywhoo, I am going to move into a unit upstairs half way through the
month when it gets cleaned up and glue is removed from the floor…
and am getting a dog to accompany my wee cat.
I miss you. Did I ever get to tell you about Angels Camp, and running
away from the Mercantile store in the boonies, having to rent a car
and have my mom wire me money to escape the nasty farm, and my dad’s
friend’s a big liar with a bogus charity?…
we should catch up. I’m so happy to be here now, and studying
photography, and getting my life in order and it sounds like you’re
doing the same. And it is just beginning. My number is ____. Love __.”

Today: Cappuccino, etc.

Last night: Mishi redid my hair (“what do you want?” “I don’t know, really, whatever, what do you think?…well um, I like Mia Farrow’s Rosemary’s Baby look, or Twiggy’s but they’re short, maybe Shannon Sossoman’s that’s dark, and messy, I like that… but I want blonder like Mary Kate Olson’s, low maintenance, and color but not on her scalp, but it’s so long and mine is short, so I don’t know, what do you think?”). I edited her photos by the window. I’ve been so tired, and lost in my head. Lots of organization required once the salamander leaves. I’ll explain that in a minute.
Today: cappuccino (so much foam, why did I get this!?), hope (in a long list, sum it up as the FUTURE), a new canon (7d DSLR) on its way in the mail!, sunshine, hot, hot belated summer in the bay Area…sexy jazz sax on the cafe stereo, and my sore back from heavy lifting…a mixture of anxiety, minor pains, and happy contentment. What sense in all of those sensations?
But it feels good to be here, and alive, and with my financial aid.
I miss Adam, I can’t help it. Sometimes I think he wasted 4 years of my life. Or has it been 5?
Sometimes I think he’s the best thing I’ve ever known.
Haha.
Amidst the chaos of the world and my life, my biggest priorities are Mad Men, and seeing a handful of movies at the local theater. Is that wrong?
I tend to be told I’m selfish if I overshadow the immense problems of the world (from the righteous these usually involve them, it reminds me of the guilt-mongers in the Fountainhead: “We’ve tied happiness to guilt”), with the humdrum whimsies of my existence (observing old lady Yvette with her book and cane at the coffee shop, and the white haired lady with the purple high lights and funny bobbing step…and my interested from poetry to photography in all things humdrum).
What is humdrum? (By the way it is no surprise Yvette and purple highlights lady are friends).
Humdrum: [ˈhʌmˌdrʌm] (what a great word, hum, drum, two good things to contemplate)
adj
ordinary; dull
n
a monotonous routine, task, or person
[rhyming compound, probably based on hum]
I’m sure that what is passively aggressively hinted at being humdrum in my life is merely outside of the scope of another’s passions, namely an attempt to control others.
I like the little things. And the big things. Depends on the time of the day, and the weather…

Latest GOOD news: Never did I hear from the ADD potential roommate in SOMA. However, I no longer need to couchsurf and pay tons in rent, or move my things three more times from a room to the laundry room to another room or another city….I found out through my landlord that my roommate was moving out. After all of her INSANITY, specifically paranoia, victimhood, passive aggressiveness, and most perturbing inability to clean up after herself and flush the toilet…well she has found a replacement for her wippits-addicted bipolar musician boyfriend, who returned to LA, and is now seeing some dude with long fluffy hair and love handles. When they were in the kitchen making grunting noises that echoed through the basement studio, I tried playing Erroll Garner’s “Misty” on my iphone, but when Radiohead came on it scratchy from the wee little speakers, I decided to make my presence more known: “So if ::ahem:: you’re having sex I’d appreciate it if you would do it somewhere else rather than here where I can hear it”, but all I got in response from the formerly mute new housemate/bear was a loudly whispered “fucking cunt” so needless to say I haven’t had much sleep lately, and I am excited the 30th and the end of a short-lived era are tomorrow. And then even if it is left in massive disarray (enjoyed the whole toilet paper roll in the toilet this morning), the room will be mine to rejuvenate and feng shui the shit out of…
fingers crossed that my belongings are all still in my corner when the pariah leaves for her bear cave or wherever she can continue to spew the misery of her special soul.
I have to go apply for jobs. More soon…
ps. Did I forget to mention the salamander’s dad? A New Jersey comedian. He stayed nearly a week, in the room with me, snoring louder than a garbage disposal, and whispering when she was in the shower: “Um, don’t tell Alyssa but I think you’re really cool…and you’re really pretty” and similar declarations of his affections the last night when she stayed with the stoned bear and left me in the room with the garbage disposal…bitch. There’s no other word for her.
But it’s sunny, and sixties/seventies soft rock is playing on the speakers (“Make it easy on yourse-e-e-elf”), and I’m about to find a job on College St., so off I go, tired but exhilarated, oh the mixture.
I feel good.

Check out- http://meerchant.wordpress.com/2010/07/11/the-fountainhead/
and photos of Margo Moritz at AAU gallery 625 Sutter

To be or not to be an adult, that is the question…

Silhouette of fear: my childhood guilt. It pressures me now, my parents raising their wood gavels in the hands of strangers, roommates, associates…
A rising tide I perpetually run from to keep my sense of self. So I don’t drown in the sea of fish and minnows. It’s only a sense too, and a wary one.

Disclaimer: I have nothing against young marriage or hometown settlers. I’m just generalizing for the sake of a point and my tired thumb typing on the iPhone wordpress app….
Anyway, it weirds me out how the average person ages immediately, almost over night, after they reach adulthood. They settle down, marry, have children and before they known it they’re 75 and can hardly bend over to tie their shoes with special built in othotics. I have an aunt who was the most gorgeous red headed baton twirler in high school. She was radiant, a major head turner like from anoyher planet. I know my mom envied her, envy being her biggest personality trait.
My aunt married a fellow classmate at 17 and cut her hair off to her ears. She had one of two kids the following year and found a job in real estate- an office near her church. She stayed in her childhood town. My mom moved to be a nurse and became a captain in the airforce where she met my dad. They married when she was my age and she started doing whatever he wanted and waiting and thinking and living for him, unhappily. Both women could be happy but I know my mom never was and they both have been on auto mode for years. Maybe that’s the usual, the idea of being an adult. What some coin discipline and livin for others, the responsibility of being a grownup. I see why Peter pan cringed and tinker bell flapped her wings away into a sparkLing haze.

This concept of adulthood is fear. A loss of vibrancy. Settling down by setting aside life for fear of loss, failure, guilt. And guilt tripping others in turn.

Maybe I’ll never be a proper adult, and maybe because of that I’ll never settle down and squirt out kids and get fat or settled. But as it stands now this seems completely okay and I’m relieved that my biggest responsibilities at 27 are still figuring myself out and feeding my cat. I know now why I thought everyone was a robot when I was a little girl, and I know what I must be, in a different form of adult, in order to ever feel deserving of children. My parents are disappointed but the world disappoints them and they don’t know me now any more than they ever have so the disappointment only makes me sad that we can’t be closer, but whatever happens, I have to live my own life. So there you go!
Some people are happy staying put and pooping out kids like eggs in a hen house. The true test is their laugh lines and the sparkle in their eyes. And basically, do they act righteous? Righteousness I find to be a reflection of misery and misery a component of bitchiness; and misery really does like company becuase it guilts you into feeling selfish and self centered and tells you to be some idea of someone which causes androidism. Until you follow you’re heart no charity, no children, no special work day for crippled people is going to come from the pit of your gut and there along with the heart is where a child lives preserved; so embrace that with grace, and maybe an adult is born. Of course I’m just rambling now.
Thumbs.
I can’t access my own kitchen (see bitch from hell entry) so on my way home from ordering take-home Italian, I eavesdropped in the conversations of bums and transients on Telegraph. Of course, it’s not hard to eavesdrop on them because they’re talking to you and anyone who will listen. They aren’t selective in their audience. Nor do they care much to know who you are as ling as you keep quiet enough to unjudgementally listen to them. Maybe they had to many rules growing up, studied hard, had settled through their childhood, and were fed up. They seem pretty nuts lots of them. But they definitely have some sparkle, a Dionysian fervor. If adults could retain that with Apollo’s careful discipline, I imagine there would be less of a shift toward robots and more of a higher consciousness not yet defined by Eckart Tolle and Ken Wilber.

Rejections

I would say it was someone I’d once flipped off in an intersection but I haven’t been back in the Bay Area long enough for that, I don’t think.

This afternoon, on my way to San Francisco to shoot photos and see a studio for rent, I received a call from Soledad. I originally thought she was a man for some reason, something in her written voice and my lazy scanning in place of reading. However, Soledad was a young woman, an artist from the city with an extra sunny southern Berkeley room to rent who’s craigslist ad I had responded to a few day earlier. Soledad had been using the studio room as a work space but needed extra money to pay the bills. The ad included a long, intricate questionnaire which I answered with diligent thumbs and many backspaces on my iPhone.
We corresponded a few days and I finally was able to drop by today on my way to the city. However once I arrived and had just walked by a window of the blue, rundown place, still not sure if I had arrived, she called me on my phone:
“sorry claudia don’t bother coming here I dont think it’s going to work out” she said in a singsong voice.
“but why…” I started to ask but she had hung up. And I peered in the window. An easel, a few paintings, a photograph of a smallish girl with queer punk Mohawk hair and nose rings.
I looked at the other room and called back. No answer but a cat jumped up o the barred window, big and hairy grey with a look of pretention and malice. Animals do tend to mirror their owners in mood and behavior. I rediscovered the original craigslist ad. Some pics, info about the room, the questionnaire and a brief but informative paragraph about the girl Soledad: “ROOMMATE: I co-founded a non-profit in 1999 that I run and am studying for the California Bar. I am a queer, late-20′s, multicultural, multinational, biofemme, bilingual native Spanish-speaker from San Francisco.” Since I didn’t get a reply with a proper explanation and was basically rejected at first sight I felt a little ego bruised and then relieved. Another roommate hassle negated even before a proper meeting. I ben saw a photograph of either the owner or someone she would approve of if looks counted so much. Queer? Well Im not that. White? Yes. Biofemme? Maybe I don’t appear to be that either, because I’m not really sure what that is but I imagine dreadlocks and hemp sweaters. Ok my multicultural bigot. I found myself curious about this Soledad. Why the art of herself and the photo of herself in the empty room? Because it was her right? And did she intend to leave it there when the successful stranger moved in? Did she want someone to worship her? Another biofemme? A multicultural queer?

It’s a really hot day and between all of the mixed social encounters I’ve experienced in the past week or rather past two months, I’m feeling faint and dizzy. Me lately: attracting lots of men, older men, wicked roommates comedian dad sleeping and snoring in my room for a week, the argentinean neighbor translator with the wine and pot…and younger men, the AAU film students, the Asian business man with the barage of questions like a match.com for unassuming strangers.

I’ve never liked surveys from bar flies. And I’ve never been good at rejection whether from basket case roommates or mysterious queers on craigslist. A turtle could reject me and I’d be offended…and a man like aforementioned mutton roommate’s visiting new jersey dad can whisper in the night while roommate showers: “don’t say anything this is between us but I think you are really cool…and you’re really pretty” and I am flattered but mostly disconcerted and anxious to have my own home again, but relieved I haven’t been rejected.

I like the fog city. It keeps me in a thick of humidity that feels comfortable. Cloudy me. I want to be washed clean and hidden away into a sacred spot of fog. Maybe I’ll discover that spot today. I’m waiting at a coffee shop playing Gypsy kings, drinking a cardamom iced coffee and reading Kundera’s “the book of laughter and forgetting”. One passage reminds me of the empty room with the art of Soledad, except here art is replaced with language. Yet today we live in a visual age rather than a literary one. But here is the passage: “in the era of graphomania…everyone surrounds himself with his own writings as with a wall of mirrors cutting off all voices from without.”