i see my self

"the paradox is that whatever you resist persists - 

the more you resist something the stronger it gets."

- inner worlds, outer worlds

artem chebokha

nur nielfa

@0073.UV

henrik aarrestad uldalen

i spend so much time writing through an institutional lens - a privilege, no doubt - that i want, at times, to see my own contours. its something i should put into practice more: to write down those thoughts that are my own, to put a frame around my mind every once in awhile as it, of course, wanders and grows. i want to make a record of what i believe right now - just an unfiltered list, let's see what comes out - and, years from now, revisit it and repost it with detailed annotations next to the items that no longer fit my criteria.

something ive been trying to work out especially lately is how important it is to have an immutable, i-will-argue-for-it- type of belief system, one that remains steady on issues both personal and political. i say this for two reasons: a) as you get older, people expect you to be more set in your ways and b) because i've noticed that people increasingly enjoy taking a solid side on any given topic, regardless the degree to which they know about the issue. taking my usual stance that 'every stance has a point' doesn't seem to work in conversation anymore: if im metaphorically swimming in a sea of beliefs, where everyone is right at least some of the time, my friends and foes alike are picking me up in their boats and bringing me back to the shore, where the shouting people are! the internet! the comments!


anyway, the list is coming. but this stems from a place of thinking the world is inherently contradictory lately, that we're having trouble as a civilization finding a difference between dualism and balance. one polarizes us by creating separate categories of everything, and the other reckons with the categories and finds stability and a center amid chaos. i want to exist at that center, and to a certain extent that's the only place i find myself and it's a little troubling philosophically because i don't see very many other people here. deep down, my life's concern is bringing about the joy in humanity and i focus myself more than anything on the state of the planet's happiness, and what worlds we're building with our words. with that said,

i believe you dont need to be political to be cool

i believe in saying yes

i believe in harnessing the wind

i believe there is a connection between music and art,
and dance and flight

i believe in killing several birds with one stone

i believe in bringing people together who are strangers to each other

i believe in stretching in public

i believe in eating in the sun

i believe we're part of the same consciousness

i believe in female goddess power

i believe we're all trying our best

i believe distraction is a tool

i believe in making displays out of items at the thrift store
and not buying any of them

i believe life's too short to be embarrassed

i believe we've forgotten how to spell

i believe stories are more real than memories

i believe love is magic

i believe love is limitless

i believe our bodies are in crisis

i believe in protecting our water

i believe in focusing on myself

i believe in throwing extravagant parties
and buying pinatas and shrines for the sake of a good invitation

i believe in killing them with kindness

i believe in letting people off the hook

i believe in making it work

i believe in writing on public transit

i believe in keeping it short
and that the world is beautiful
and that you should never take more than you need

brandi read

"you are not merely a collection of thoughts and ideas 

because behind the thoughts 

is the one witnessing them"

 boo mitford

~ ~ ~

the unremarkable day

the unremarkable day

i had quite the unremarkable day today

the sky was white, but the air was warm

and i was in that zone between early and late to the bus.

work was work.

a journalist called me without one decent idea -

but she did take my suggestions.

the story ideas appealed to my boss,

who i ended up talking to for an hour and a half after 5.

my roommates were unwinding when i got home, and they helped me cook

an excess of kale.

it was a monday, by the way

so i went to yoga, and we have a really talkative sub right now

she came up to me while i was in happy baby

and grabbed my biceps.

she says, in a tedtalk she watched,

someone somewhere said something along the lines of

it is rare for a woman to have both beauty and power,

and that i should watch out.

a stranger on the walk home stopped me to ask if i had a great class

holding my yoga mat i said, yes, i did thanks

and i kept walking.

a man clutching noisy toddlers on each hand

joked, 'y'all actin like you had a drink!'

as i walked into the corner store.

i forgot my money

but the cashier taught me how to use apple wallet

and i spent a moment reveling in that.

my roommates were already on the couch

sitting, texting, waiting for me

to start the next episode of bachelor in paradise when i got home.

today netted out at zero.

there were no lows, no highs,

no losses or wins

nothing extraordinary to me or anyone else.

just an unremarkable day,

for once

chloe wise

'literally me' series

im reading michelle tea's 'how to grow up,' a memoir about her evolution from punk to published writer which i actually purchased (used on amazon for $5) after reading a review that it is like getting advice from an older sister you never had. where would i be if i took this advice? probably writing a memoir. probably a published writer. probably a bit more grown up. it's been hard to put down, for every page i turn is another life lesson i could experience from the comfort of standing on the bus on my way home from work. i'm not sure a paragraph has ever resonated with me more:

"when it's hard for you to grow up--because you're poor and can't afford the trinkets and milestones of adulthood, or you're gay and the mating rites of passage don't seem to apply to you, or you are sensitive to the world's injustices and decided long ago that if being a grown-up means being an asshole you'll carry out your days in Neverland with the rest of the Lost Children, thank you very much--when adulthood seems somehow off-limits to you, growing up takes time. you have to want it, and then you have to make a lot of changes. some changes you make consciously and some without knowing it, and some changes get made for you. it's so much work i forgot i was even engaged in it; it just became life."

now, my best ideas take the form of abstract images or metaphors that sink into my pysche and stand in for what the thing really is. most recently, growing up makes me picture michaelangelo chiseling down david's supple boy body, making him a man. by removing, by paring down, you sophisticate. it's like the idea that boxes breed creativity, because nothing is more motivating than being stuck in a box. we thrive on limitations; it's what reveals our inner strength. and in a world full of choice--where surviving is the easy part, and choosing is what's hard--we don't have enough limitations to want to break free of any of them. maybe growing up is creating your own.

i havent bought cheese from the store in almost a year. with that comes a renewed interest in the phrase "anything is possible." if i can chisel something out of my life that i used to eat for breakfast, lunch, dinner (and second dinner), then what else am i capable of? what dairy-free opportunity awaits in my midst? when you remove one of your top priorities in life, what will move up in its place?

we are looking at david's defining features - his tight torso. his puckered-in stomach, his toned arms - and are thinking about him beating goliath.

~ ~ ~

definitions

writing is the engineering of language

using precise placements to erect the beams and bridges of society

friendship is making history together
having people to share your stories with 

and keep past experiences...existent.

friendship is a way to source your memories,
to correct each other on them

technology just saves you time

to spend more time on your technology

music is the massaging of emotions

working out knots of feelings

kayaking is the biking of the arms

biking is the kayaking of the legs.

~ ~ ~

today's featured artists: matthias brown, peter tarka, fredrik söderberg, cinta vidal, kidmograph

going there

ill give away one of my secrets
artodyssey1.blogspot.com

 

chaos is survival

i was at a djembe show last weekend after getting some free tickets (industry), and the craziest thing happened.
everyone in the audience was given a djembe drum so they could learn to play along with the performers, and everyone more or less played at the right times. except these couple of dudes in front. they played whenever they wanted,  swatting at the djemebes with their clumsy american paws in direct competition with the performers' cheery island songs. there we sat, our eyes beaming in delight with that familiar childhood feeling you get as you watch decent performers in costumes sway and clap and mime the gestures for you to do "after them, one more time now!", and then there were these dudes.
the house manager, poor soul, gave the lead member of the Bad Boys in Front a couple of chances until his tantrum shaped the perfomance before our sore djembe hands. what im about to explain is, as my friends have since pointed out, pretty vulgar for an exit from a drum circle. Bad Boy goes from whisper to yell in one drunken swoop while telling the manager to get her face the fuck out of his face!!! the performers one by one stop playing until the soundtrack of the room is just filled with this guy swearing at us all, enjoying it a little bit with his arms raised and his middle fingers shooting toward the nosebleeds of the 100 seat theater. the rest of us are wildly banging our djembes in protest. he drunkenly lurches his heavy body out of his seat forward at the amiable MC and unshirted men in island garb that are populating the set, but before he reaches the steel drums, the performers rush out to back stage. multiple employees find a way to hold him back - holding him by every limb, separately - as an elderly lady volunteer usher tries to talk him down from his little toddler fit. screw you all, he says, you all should go to hell! :)
they remove the man, and we all start clapping, our adrenaline pumping like a thousand djembes.
what a bit of chaos, right? when's the last time anything like that happened in a theater, such a prescribed ritual experience? this was absurd - thrilling! - and we all got to riot on our djembes for the next hour and a half, so excited that we got the chance to see it. what a show, what a night!
we felt like the luckiest people alive, in that audience - and that's just it. we were alive. "oh, wow, something could have happened in there!" the uber driver says on the way home.
you're insanely right. we live in an insane world. 
luckily all of the instruments and humans were spared, but i guess what i tasted, what we as an audience experienced together, was a burst of survival. that animalistic rush we feel when something is on the verge of going terribly wrong but then nothing really happens, or we narrowly escape, and all of a sudden you can feel where your heart is in your chest and you think: great odins raven, im safe! whether that's straight downhill on a mountain bike or sailing a giant gust, or in a djembe concert,
the body all of a sudden feels itself alive. it does a gut check, a role call for all its parts working in order. there's a rushing current of energy as your senses awaken and assure you this is real, you're real, this world is unfathomable but you've gotten yourself this far, at least.
just as we enjoyed watching them, these Bad Boys enjoyed being naughty on purpose. we're so drawn to chaos, and to other people's chaos, that we couldn't look away. there's an inherent satisfaction in leaning into what we think is madness, an unleashed moment, and harnessing it by putting it into words. and even by *giggle* gossiping about it later.
chaos is the taste of survival and the constant state of it.

~~~

on writer's block

did you know that humor only works
when you sacrifice yourself first?
fact.

as an existential person i cant help but apply the questions of my life to this blog. what is its purpose? what does it contribute to creative fulfillment? what does it contribute to other life?

i think a lot of these questions - and perhaps a fear of audience - have held me back from sharing as much as i would like to. it's not really growth, just to age. you have to actively work at keeping your sense of youthful abandon, especially as a creative.

it dawned on me that without this output, im the only one in conversation with myself. people don't know what's going on in here, in this brain. the sunflowers. the music playing with the art. the smiles with strangers. the tears welling up with a song, surging. the meaning i see in just about anything.

for a while, too, i was thinking: what value are my words and posts when there are millions and billions of words, images and articles posted to the internet everyday? perhaps you, reader, can relate. i'm just contributing to the noise, i thought.

but there is a place for what i do, i must remind myself. from the start, my goal has been not on gaining readers, but on curating meaningful internet experiences - for myself, definitely, but also others. it's meant to be a respite from the noise, something you read late at night it's dark and you're in your room doing whatever and no one else is awake. possibly my favorite thing in the world is to experience - and express - the ways music and art and text engage with one another in my head, forming a sort of intersectional poetry. it's something you and i can get our thoughts lost in, and we don't even have to talk.

i cant go back and fill you in on it all, and i realize i dont need to - after all, wouldn't that just be noise? what's more important than recording everything is accepting that your life story is never all going to be in one place. digital tools certainly exacerbate feelings of disconnected storylines - you've got different ones on every fuckin social media platform you're on - but it's always been this way. our life stories have always been told by everyone around us, with us, hopefully.

once im gone, maybe you'll find my various journals and scribbles and iphone notes, my slew of unsorted images of artworks and personal photos, and make a story out of it. if you're reading this: oh, it's worth it. i rarely am what you may think!

in the meantime, i should probably wrap up writing about writing and just start writing!

julia ciccarone

~~~