Showing posts with label utter randomness. Show all posts
Showing posts with label utter randomness. Show all posts

Wednesday, December 12, 2007

An Ongoing Post: Random Quotes & How They Apply to Me

"Writers can only break the rules afer they've mastered them. I'd be surprised if you didn't break the rules."

- A creative writing professor at NYU. I don't know if this was her intention, but when I'm manic and writing a million words per minute, I remember this moment and feel like God.

***

"[A]nyone who is doing something creative, they're always chasing something. And a lot of the time you're not even sure what it is you're chasing."
- A.C. Newman of The New Pornographers

My newfound calm is derived from the feeling that I no longer have to chase anything as passionately as I once did. Instead of an impending sense of doom, I now feel confident that everything I want will happen.

***

"I hate that I think so highly of you. Sometimes I'll act a certain way and do things for a long stretch of time, then realize it's because of your influence, and I can't tell if I'm me or an extension of you."

"Everyone's an extension of me and I'm an extension of everyone. That's what good artists can do: expess themselves in such a way that practically everyone relates and everyone's actions are tainted by the whim of the artist - whether directly, inversely, or indirectly. The artist's eyes are the lenses with which we see ourselves."

"That's-That's-That's... True. Fuck."

- Sydney Jo and Me, on the subway this morning (Dec. 13, 2007). Quintessential manic conversation, after a sleepless night spent writing my latest novel, planning my left-brained life, philosophizing with Rob over the merits of the TV show Journeyman.

Tuesday, December 4, 2007

It's occurred to me that I probably shouldn't say this...

But when have I ever adhered to convention or regulations?

I've stayed home all day, smoking weed, drinking wine, and eating pot brownies and spaghetti laced with special mushrooms. All this after fucking most of the morning away and being visited by a good friend who shall remain nameless. Good friends will do that: come to your house after conveniently forgetting you've existed for the past three years, only to inundate you with news about all the men you used to fuck and all the yummy illicit goodies you can buy from their new dealer. But I digress... The fact is, I've been a sloth all day, listening to music, reading articles on nerve.com, and generally wasting away my day whilst feeling artistic - and when I say "artistic," what I mean is "eccentric."

I've written twenty pages for my creative writing class while under the influence, and now that the effects are slowly passing, I want to be productive. There are papers to write, orphans to teach, money to make. I'm thinking about my artistic endeavors and realizing that I could always play the "damaged beyond repair card." You know what that is, right? That's when a creative person - let's say, a writer - is good at their craft, proficient and all that, but the reason that people continue to read their work is because it's like watching a trainwreck unfold before your eyes. You peer into their psyche and feel - what? grateful? hopeful? disgusted? alive? - because you realize that you may or may relate to them, but you are definitely not so screwed up in the head as to share your general screwed-upedness with the masses.

I can feel myself slipping into manic mode. Pretty soon, no one's gonna see me/hear from me except on-stage and on-line. At least, that's the way it used to be, when I needed to digest a little life. Right now, I'm struggling not to revert to outdated ways while hanging on to my sense of self...

Fuck this. My keyboard is sticking and I need to write papers...

End.

Saturday, December 1, 2007

Filipino-(American) Air Force Ones

Even though Clark Air Base is closed, American influence will always endure in this corner of the world.





Friday, November 30, 2007

Time happened. I loved. I fucked. I lost. I won.

Everything can be summed up in those four verbs, and it makes life feel subjective - like nothing anyone can do is worth dick. We just keep on keeping on, and the best of us happen to learn a thing or two - but communication? That's what keeps us living even after our lungs have collapsed and our hearts have stopped beating and our fists are retreating from the fights that we've fought and the disasters we've wrought and the lies we've bought ourselves into. We trade information and experiences, let our lives flow into each others' footsteps, retrace the paths we've so novicely maneuvered, and deftly control the trembles in our chins that give away our minds' inability to process our realities. Our selves are wholes that are smaller than the sum of their parts. Our present is a future tense achieved by our former selves - people we abandoned in order to become the people we are today. I know this. I'm almost certain I knew a variation of this fact back then.

***

I once watched a documentary about Charles Bukowski. Never had I realized that he spent so much time in front of the typewriter all day, just banging the shit out of it, making sure that some kind of beautiful music came from it. He said that he’d worry later if the piece was any good, if it made any sense. As I’m banging the shit out of my laptop, I have to keep my eyes closed in order to follow his method. Do not look, I tell myself. If I look at the screen I’ll want to change something that can be changed later, after this high of interest has piqued and there’s nothing left to say.
***

The need to get laid is just as valid a sentiment as any other, though some shmuck will probably say that it’s not a valid sentiment and that I shouldn’t say anything like that - especially because I’m a woman and god forbid that I want some guy’s cum all over me, inside of me, suffocating me with its thick, white stickiness. Licking the results of a bukake movie in my bedroom every night is not enough to ensure that my sexual appetite is appeased.

***

It is as if my love for the written word were that for a childhood beau whose arrival I have eagerly awaited with livid hope and breath long bated.

I file away all other priorities and prepare to spend quiet quality time, just we two, alone in a room, figuring out what has been lost and what has been gained during our time apart. I do not hesitate to feel out his body with thirsty hands clamoring to be soaked again in a puddle of our mixed perspiration. I crave no tangible evidence of our union - dreams of a potential future together are enough to satisfy my romantic urges.

Thus, I am swallowed whole by this permanent capacity to continue the act of Love. For making words and making love are the same, and I do not intend to lay down my pen.

***

Life invades the lungs of words whispered between the walls of one’s mind, causing each thought to resound down the echoey corridor of memory to one day splash in a pool of pure purpose and be activated by action.

***

George W. Bush is a man of limited ability put in a position of power. He attempts to decipher his own meager reality while unapologetically staking claim as “Leader of the Free World.” My egotism allows me to empathize.

***

The perfect distance between words and their readers is an amount only distinguishable by quantum physicists and creative geniuses - and only so in the realm populated by no one but their own subjective attitudes and hypothetical realities.

***

My otherwise sharp tongue imprisoned in a dull haze, I articulate my thoughts improperly in several silly turns of phrase.