tis the season to enjoy this tune from 1982. ho ho.
Showing posts with label daily life. Show all posts
Showing posts with label daily life. Show all posts
while making our bed yesterday, i had a sudden thought: money changed and money changes. a friend told me that he thought and still thinks of me as someone who understands money (i don’t). maybe it simply says more about his understanding than mine. i suppose that it is nice to be thought of as a responsible person (i’m not).
anyway that sudden thought was that money has changed in my life several times. i have been both a deep recluse and absolutely homeless - once i even owned a home.
i have completely walked away from several careers and their comparative salaries and relationships. there have always been consequences which accounts for some apparent changes in money.
the introduction of the debit card by banks is another example of money changing. it made everyone aware of the feel of a credit card and naturally coincided with the speed of our attention spans. time is money but time is not money and plastic. time is erased by plastic. and plastic feels so cool in my hands and yours too, evidently.
one of my uncles suggested that greed also changed money. he’s right but greed is one of those obvious concepts when talking about money (it's in the top ten on family feud). and i prefer words to have broad strokes of meaning rather than seeing them tied to specific definitions or everyday allusions.
money changes and money has changed.
anyway that sudden thought was that money has changed in my life several times. i have been both a deep recluse and absolutely homeless - once i even owned a home.
i have completely walked away from several careers and their comparative salaries and relationships. there have always been consequences which accounts for some apparent changes in money.
the introduction of the debit card by banks is another example of money changing. it made everyone aware of the feel of a credit card and naturally coincided with the speed of our attention spans. time is money but time is not money and plastic. time is erased by plastic. and plastic feels so cool in my hands and yours too, evidently.
one of my uncles suggested that greed also changed money. he’s right but greed is one of those obvious concepts when talking about money (it's in the top ten on family feud). and i prefer words to have broad strokes of meaning rather than seeing them tied to specific definitions or everyday allusions.
money changes and money has changed.
DIFFICULT TO MAKE A FEEDBACK
a new internet friend of ours writes exclusively in spanish. tonight i am plugging her text into a crude translator in an effort to at least understand her basic sentiment, which has rendered this strange and lovely little poetry. i think it's nice.
broken english is not broken, not really.
THINGS KEEP HAPPENING
despite my suspicions to the contrary.
at least i don't have kids, hoo-ray
a sustained, romantic relationship will slow the pace of my life--this has always been true, and is even truer now that i am married--but when i think about it my life was never moving much faster, even when i was alone.
then what happened?
a woman i work with remarks that when people ask you about your life, what they’re really looking for is to be entertained, the same way they look to entertainment to entertain them, which is an awfully tall order, actually. she tells me that 2008, for her personally, was full of small improvements, privately meaningful but amounting to nothing much in the way of a good story. so i may worry that i have very little to report, but that doesn’t mean i haven’t done anything.
it just means i haven’t done anything i'm ready to tell anyone about.
VANITY
i think more about my skin than any other single thing in my life. i fantasize more about clear skin than i do about sex, and the promise of one day having perfect skin forms the basis of all other fantasies about my success in the future. i've never said this to myself in so many words, but i realize now that it's true.
am i thirteen again?
magic molly's take on good skin
i thought about keeping a skin log, a daily account rendered in loving detail of every wash, every pimple, every improvement, and the mere thought of doing it got me more creatively motivated than i have been about anything in a long time. if harnessed right, can vanity be generative? let's see if the log thing pans out.
OPEN EARS, OPEN MOUTH
a friendly reminder to check out film orgy, going strong in its fourth week.
current pick: the american friend. it's one of rhan's favorites!
ON APPROPRIATE RESPONSES
still from found film flashes, 1973
attended an la filmforum screening of work by coleen fitzgibbon, an experimental filmmaker working since the 1970's. have you heard of her?
i hadn't before last night.
still from internal systems, 1975
they showed four of her early films. the headiest of the bunch: internal systems, which consists entirely of a blank screen shifting gradually from light to dark, dark to light. it runs 45 minutes. i found myself absorbed in other thoughts, unrelated to the image; next to me i heard a man's breathing grow regular; he had fallen asleep. appropriate responses both.
a perfect end to a great sunday. counterpoint to the subtlety of internal systems:
kimono my house, sparks, 1974, finally secured at amoeba yesterday. this album is 34 years old! sparks will be playing this and another album in their entirety at royce hall, february 14, 2009. will rhan and juliet spend their valentine's with sparks? there's a heavy lean towards yes.
ON SUCCULENCE
i bought a small succulent for the apartment last month, and it gives me far more pleasure to look at than it cost me in dollars. my response to our financial woes is to draw my resources indoors. i want to beautify our home and make it a factory haven, a productive, inspiring, working space where we can make things instead of buy them. now is the time to spend my evenings reading, educating myself in film, or improving my skills in piano and french. there are pleasures that are cheap or free, and i intend to find them. let the world come to us.
PS: EVERYBODY VOTE TOMORROW.
WEEKEND ROAD TRIP
ah, the biggest little city in the world. if what happens in vegas stays in vegas, then what happens to what happens in reno? we'll be back in a few days with the answer. my guess is that "it follows us home."
in the meantime, i answered some fun questions at no good for me for a new feature they've started called "love yr blog." i am honored! read me gush about frederick wiseman, andrew bird, and baby elephants here.
thank you, liz, kat, and laura!
ON UNEXPLORED TENSIONS (NEUROTIC)
you're standing around with your friends, and something silly comes on the radio. so you start to silly dance. your friends encourage you with giggles. the understanding is that you're all laughing together, tickled by the same ironic, unmerited enthusiasm, but wait--are they also laughing at you? how different is your silly dancing from your actual dancing? i would venture to guess that the moves are perilously similar. before you know it, you're sort of actually dancing, and you won't remember when you crossed the line.
i can think of only one, maybe two people in my life who dance in earnest no matter what the circumstance, and the pivotal differences between me and them seem to be facial expression and movement of the arms. i've given this a lot of thought. dancing is difficult for shy people, you know.
ON THE BUS (DELIGHT)
having caught the wrong line, i had to get off the bus at fairfax and walk the mile or so home in the dark. i passed the lights at lacma and peeked in on the richard serra sculptures from outside the museum windows. a man walked a big, shaggy dog to my left. there's construction on the walking route to my bus, and the makeshift sidewalk they've created is an improvement on the original. i wish they'd keep it. short winter days make night feel like night again.
ON THE BUS (CYNICISM)
i rode by two movie premieres on the bus home tonight. one benefit of living in los angeles is the demystification of things like these. a small, listless crowd on a dark street in front of a small building, with a few lights and camera flashes here and there. in person, the red carpet just looks sad and self-congratulatory. especially considering how awful most movies are.
MISH-MASH II
i've signed us up for basic cable, a first for me in over two years. i'm curious about what this will mean for my free time. the cable guy arrives tomorrow between 9 and noon. the fact that i called today and secured an installation for tomorrow makes me feel unusually powerful. it's all at my fingertips. the feeling is kind of gross.
lately i think of almost nothing but movies. i'm doing well this month. i got a raise at work. the cat caught the same bird twice yesterday, though it will go down in the books as two birds. we help his ego where we can. also, i've had a number of dreams with celebrities in them lately--wallace shawn in front of our apartment building and jennifer aniston in a deleted scene from friends with money. my best friend is moving to los angeles soon. i look at all the buildings everywhere i go; i keep thinking about where she's going to live.
it has been an exceptionally nice month. the days are getting shorter, too.
ARCHITECTURE TOUR I
835 north kings road
west hollywood, ca 90069
unassuming, quiet. it induces awe and envy.
FORTUNATE
i woke up at seven this morning. made myself a bowl of coffee. read from a book a little while. stared out the window and felt a sense of low washing over me like a morning fog.
juliet woke up and walked around in this weather for a bit and realized, fast, that it was coming from me and not the outside. she tried to dance away the fog but it was real thick, so i left for work, hopefully taking the clouds with me.
at work, as soon as the other guys arrived- around 11:30, i told them that i was going home. i could not be there today. i wanted to see juliet, desperately. i needed to hear her voice. when i got home, she spoke in perfect quotes- little post it notes, saying exactly what i needed to hear.
one of the quotes, she told me in a smart and confident voice-
"love does not consist in gazing at each other but in looking together in the same direction." –antoine de saint-exupéry, from wind, sand, and stars
i can feel the fog lifting.
PRINCIPAL DAYTIME FANTASIES
FANTASIES OF BEING IMPRESSIVE:
-off-the-cuff insight
-formidable piano/public speaking skills
-mesmerizing physique
FANTASIES OF BEING DEVASTATED:
-all loved ones dying together in a van accident (on the way to my birthday party)
-shot or stabbed in public
-family shot or stabbed in public
SUPERNATURAL RELIEF FANTASIES:
-new nose cleansing technology uncovers superior sense of smell
-same as above, but with earwax and hearing
-full-body chemical peel uncovers skin like baby's
ON POSTURE
the approach may be different, but the result is the same: what a hopelessly shy person and a hopelessly sarcastic person share in common is a compromised ability to behave honestly. this, above all things, makes overcoming shyness and sarcasm the good fight to fight. enthusiasm is a valuable resource.
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