subliminal

It has been a while since my last real update. I have been sick for what feels like three months now. On and off every 2-3 weeks and even during my trip to Chicago. I haven't fully recovered, but today I just felt the need to write something down, despite feeling like my head is full of clouds. And such is my style, I write when I am slightly delirious and only then can I actually form words to purge these thoughts.

These images weren't intentional. I took these pictures with my mind set on documenting how things are now over there to update my memory bank. And well, memories are a funny thing. It is always interesting for me to come back home, or to any familiar place, only to find that though things are different certain feelings remain the same.

Then you realize, memories come back in the form of what they have grown to become. And you meet them again and again and again, spiraling into a rabbit hole you try to avoid falling into. But I digress..

Though I arrive thinking I have new eyes to see with, there is always a greater gravitational pull (perhaps from my mother's couch) that makes me want to just lay there with my eyes closed while bathing in the sunlight. Possibly wishing I was someplace else and nevertheless, comforted all at once. But that is all I have to say about that.

So I have come to accept and love how the images turned out. I believe it was meant to come out distorted or abstracted because truthfully, it comes closest to conveying what my memories and thoughts are made of (with the exception of the last two photographs).

Finally, I will just leave you with this quote, which may or may not further explain/distort what I am trying to say:

"We comfort ourselves by reliving memories of protection. Something closed must retain our memories, while leaving them their original value as images. Memories of the outside world will never have the same tonality as those of home and, by recalling these memories, we add to our store of dreams; we are never real historians, but always near poets, and our emotion is perhaps nothing but an expression of a poetry that was lost."
— Gaston Bachelard (The Poetics of Space)

~*~

ps.
100dBs finally dropped a mix today!!
40 minutes to freedom

click the image ^ and listen.

let's just say I'm dancing in my seat at work right now.

Manhattan

Chapter One:
‘He adored New York City. He idolized it all out of proportion’ – er, no, make that: he – ‘He romanticized it all out of proportion.’ – Yes. – ‘To him, no matter what the season was, this was still a town that existed in black and white and pulsated to the great tunes of George Gershwin.’ – Er, tsch, no, missed out something. –

Chapter One:
He was too romantic about Manhattan, as he was about everything else. He thrived on the hustle bustle of the crowds and the traffic. To him, New York meant beautiful women and street-smart guys who seemed to know all the angles.’ – No, no, corny, too corny for a man of my taste. Can we … can we try and make it more profound? –

Chapter One:
He adored New York City. To him, it was a metaphor for the decay of contemporary culture. The same lack of individual integrity that caused so many people to take the easy way out was rapidly turning the town of his dreams into …’ – no, that’s a little bit too preachy. I mean, you know, let’s face it, I want to sell some books here.

Chapter One:
He adored New York City, although to him it was a metaphor for the decay of contemporary culture. How hard it was to exist in a society desensitized by drugs, loud music, television, crime, garbage’ – Too angry. I don’t want to be angry. –

Chapter One: He was as tough and romantic as the city he loved. Behind his black-rimmed glasses was the coiled sexual power of a jungle cat.’ – I love this. – ‘New York was his town, and it always would be…’

Before Sunset

Jesse: “What do you think were the chances of us ever meeting again?”

Céline: “After that December? I’d say almost zero. But we’re not real, anyway, right? We’re just, uh, characters in that old lady’s dream. She’s on her deathbed fantasizing about her youth… so of course… we had to meet again.”

"Rachel says that love is like a big black piano being pushed off the top of a three-story building and you're waiting on the bottom to catch it. But Lourdes says it's not that way at all. It's like a top, like all the colors in the world are spinning so fast they're not colors anymore and all that's left is a white hum.

There was a man, a crazy who lived upstairs from us when we lived on South Loomis. He couldn't talk, just walked around all day with his harmonica in his mouth. Didn't play it. Just sort of breathed through it, all day long, wheezing, in and out, in and out.

This is how it is with me. Love I mean."

— Sandra Cisneros (Woman Hollering Creek: And Other Stories)

Things Remembered

via Things We Forget: #542

my friends & i did a lot of jumping off of cliffs in our day.

which reminds me...

karen & i were supposed to start a project like this a while back.
definitely one of the things we forgot.

such is life

"it seems as though lately you think less than you used to.
and why should you think?
there's nothing to decide.
there's just walking forward."

The Hallway from The Hallway on Vimeo.