down at the new amsterdam

staring at this yellow haired girl, there is no epiphany. life will continue to teach us the same lessons until they're learned. the ones who get it, move on.

art, expression, i chose the wrong template. i will work on this despite climate, because i have no choice. and i saw some article about the links between creation and mental instability and i laughed like a madman to myself, stating the obvious again and again.

to be a man on wire first requires an ascension, then the line, next feet, followed by gravitas, followed by the ability to laugh at the use of the word gravitas, followed by braving the singularity of being, every ounce of it, moving forward with all the elements, finding balance, if only for one wild walk from tower to tower.

then you can go back to the philandering miniature french asshole or whatever you wanna be in this world, indifferent, until you show them something wonderfully out of the ordinary.

la weekly

"...the most substantial change he made was in the protagonist's rationale for suicide: in the movie, it's not because the character hates humanity but because he feels he has failed to connect with it."

"but i believe inherent in any artist's work is an optimistic truth. that the very creation of art is in itself an act of optimism."

-tom tykwer and lana wachowski

i like the way she sang free falling. i keep ending up in franklin village or some eastside nook, nail lodged in tire, tired and alive. i step on stage and unleash the beginning of an expression, tears spilling to humor rolling to an amalgam of uncorralled energy finding direction. everyone on this planet is making their own movie. i'm always assigning blame for the insanity, my this, your that, her, her, her. and i'm a mess, scrambled eggs, salsa on a plate. now i'm a lightning rod of expression, an outpouring of libidinous current channeled onto fixed canvas with shape-shifting gaze. the pay phone, west hollywood dancing it's gay dance around us, i shuffled, cheered, yelled my strange angry character into the receiver, i was so exhausted it hurt, and they roared like beautiful tickled lions, their smiles and laughter pouring down the sidewalk, and i caught some of this fragile music that people make when feeling that mutual understanding of invisible universe, everything got better that moment. and we all drove to a birthday cake.

finding aqua water and wheat paste on chavez

schoolchildren in a big group on the sidewalk of vermont and something. i'm gathering and bunching, abstracting beauty from everywhere. you live in the world. and you warm the ocean when you enter in pieced together underwear bathing suit bottom and nothing but dark skin. i know you don't wanna laugh but it strikes me in the gut, you thinking i'm overflowing with passion, you. i once accused beached elephant seals of salivating for your presence, gravitating to your earth. and i don't even know if i was joking then. fine, so we're a couple of people full of life energy blasting away and showering the results like stubborn parallel volcanos. but it's not tragic if you can laugh about it and it's not tragic because we're being honest and clashing and living the best we know how and i don't regret the feelings we've shared, however together or away or wrong or right, they've never been mundane and are always combustible and sweat inducing and maddening, evidenced by my pacing on strip of grass near montana and somewhere, talking on the phone and hearing that voice of yours like a spark, rush of wildfire, kiss of windy aftermath. so yes, i find my way on singular journey in the dark, you find reason to be frustrated at my ineptitude, list reasons i'm stupid, then make your life magic like you always do. but trust that we are gargantuan from before, now, whatever tomorrow brings and the form may never return we won't be young and we are still gargantuan like that feeling we've said so many times. now, i'm in a mediterranean cafe eating a "spinachi wrap", it's not named after me, baklava and coffee black, two cups, i won't be able to sleep tonight, but you fire into me like a cannon.

no one will read this

and i wanted to get home and write. i left a message, sometimes you hear a song on the radio and it's so good that you don't finish it, because you have to call someone you care about.

and what do we do?

bond over movies, music, family, life stories, meet out there in the middle and build something in the space, feel it's shape, reflection.

i'll write you a river, carry you to the sea. i can list off a bucket full of bullshit, far more than that trite attempt at novelty you gave me our second night, and i know that i loved you in a way that was previously impossible. i loved you like never before.

i slept in my car. and why do we do what we do?

the ocean was black and blue, bruised morning. i drank coffee and lifted my lights up. my friend and i were talking about the good dying young, she was brave and honest and we spoke about loving some more despite it all, feeling everything.

and i can see the beauty in all things.

yellow victorian

i remember sliding pocket doors trapping wood-burning heat in the room. we incinerated masterpieces because there was never any purpose sustaining them. and that which we contribute is a mere blessed flutter of the figurative butterfly wings flapping man's evolution. now years later, i'm in some kind of nightclub victorian with shabbier woodwork and a feeling of collective non-entity. i wanna shake the shoulders of people taking this at face value. want us to melt in a pot together, witches brew, come out enchanting with life in one burst, that's all. it will make a difference, push followed by push, we're getting somewhere.

french cigarettes

the ashes were for brick steps and seasonal halloween pumpkins, carved out for this time of year. burnt nubs, touched filters, woman, you're voice is meditative for dark nights like these, even if you say you can't sit still. and time heals all wounds is the expression we have in english. six months from now, we will laugh, you're right. grateful smiles and golden commiseration for now. they say expanding consciousness is found at the top of the inhale, bottom of the exhale, and our smoke gives it a little dirt to reflect the muddled feelings and splendid imperfections life offers. but it's night and the sky is black and the stars, moon, are still visible in beverly hills and the emptiness between everything fills me up with hope outside my car, for only now is as beautiful as ever.

we are not that modern

marble floors, ice sculptures, wide glass above a city, everything was in wonderful disarray. we will see each other the next time it snows in los angeles, i told her. each room spinning in different spheres, light cones, directions and i was located somewhere in my mind. there will come a time gigantic waves will crush the junk that i have seen, sparklehorse intoned in my head for months upon months. and now here, she purred something about loving me, which i found strange, the pretty girls don't come to this town to fall in love. i knew truth in some distinct region of reality, believed in the powers of physical proximity, breath touching, electrons intermingling. the dresses of the women spun, music turned louder and more relevant to the moment, everything became urgent, the tidal crescendo of cymbals and strings clashing and cutting into these wounds, this destitute collectivism, buoyed by something invisibly profound. i turned to her and our eyes must have been lit aflame because the entire city caught fire below and i joked about finding traffic to feel a part of something and she smiled and time wandered.

venice

hypnotized, before the sea.

A medium sized head

my heart is working, healthy and alive. i can explain a sliver of my feeling universe. because you need it more than i do. because you must learn by word of mouth, observation, you, a master impersonator until you arrive, i know you will. stubborn and everything, fresh tears and honest, and it won't be in what we created and that's all right. i understand. but it'll be magic. feeling, tree branches, memories, phrases, the books our neighbors leave out on the sidewalk are all clues. laying in shavasana with a reeling mind unspooled and smack dab epiphany, is a reward. with you i learned to be humbled by life's surprises. just like that floating dock with the full moon, black lake, and your voice reflecting my best self back to me like light across the water. was that emotional narcissism or do the meaningful people in our experience illuminate pure understanding? either way it starts with the bastard self and hopefully goes eternal from there and back and around.

you told me to not shy away from my victories, but now you're gone.

two people are ingredients in something more, there is a reason why we come together and orbit, interact, fire asteroids into each other's blank planets. more, i had once written a letter about more, hadn't i? more, because you can't go hiking with another person without getting back into your car knowing more about this living. more, because when you wake up limbs tangled, breath indistinguishable, dreams still hanging in the air explaining themselves to one another, the day is now introduced by more than just sunlight. it's us, a shoebox full of hospital gifts and photos, shared sweatshirt, the meaning in eyes, my smile, and those are only physical, they all exist inside. you can't run from them, dress them up, play someone else, they will be there existing in cells changing.

you will never read this, but will echo into feeling. i promise.

so hear this; my heart is working, healthy and alive. it beats faster some of these days, inside a heavier chest at times, i cough, cough, a dry cough i've had since i was a kid, barefoot on indian earth, california teaches lessons like a violent saint. don't doubt me! don't do nothing or i will eat you! the ground will fall out from under your feet if you don't move! you must move!

and so we all do.

our last day was the event horizon. the rest a black hole. you learn nothing in a vacuum. i see myself again reflecting from every event and lesson, but mostly, from now. i see myself from now. we can do that too and it's more profound, showing ourselves the way to ourselves. fine, but two people, holding up the curtain together, they reveal something else and it's important. it's not everything but it's important, it's why we take all of our hang ups and baggage and mistakes and we put on our favorite torn jeans and try again with another stranger drinking whiskey and eating licorice. i was clever the night we met, honest the next, passionate the rest and i don't regret any of it, i've felt, failed, and given. all we can do is give.

and now i give my self, sacrifice it for expression, flagellate my ego and hopefully remain a channel for the blessed purity. so when i say, i, me, compliment my own smile, it's because i've learned that the best way to discover something new is through this reflecting, inner, outer, inward, out world.

so, thank you. i've been revealed, so have you, to whichever degree. we both have different definitions of time, mine hurts more per moment and it's the only one i can fairly give credence. i have little money, the breeze blows through my windows, and last night i was in that damn grocery store parking lot where we miscommunicated making it official. there was fog in the morning, i wrote another script, sunshine again, the leaf blowers hum like the impending circular saw in a james bond film, cue rolling belt, only noise, outside of the annoyance of machine or ego, is something grand, same with the inside, find this golden blurry fireball of potentiality, of now, of all these threads and folds.

you said something sweet to me once about a picture book, how i put it all together for you like that, thank you, but it's more than sight, or any sense, it's knowing, the hurt reminds us when we forget, but it's knowing.

i hurt, i love, i know.

so thank you.

maude says it's wonderful harold, now go and love some more. i keep referencing her on this blog. my heart is working, healthy and alive.

henry miller

"Only a few days before, she had clung to me desperately and then something happened, something which is not even clear to me now, and of her own volition she boarded the train and she was looking at me again with that sad, enigmatic smile which baffles me, which is unjust, unnatural, which I distrust with all my soul. And now it is I, standing in the shadow of the viaduct, who reach out for her, who cling to her desperately and there is that same inexplicable smile on my lips, the mask that I have clamped down over my grief. I can stand here and smile vacantly, and no matter how fervid my prayers, no matter how desperate my longing, there is an ocean between us; there she will stay and starve, and here I shall walk from one street to the next, the hot tears scalding my face."