cutting bait

"I imagine the feelings of two people meeting again after many years. In the past they spent some time together, and therefore they think they are linked by the same experience, the same recollections.

The same recollections? That's where the misunderstanding starts: they don't have the same recollections; each of them retains two or three small scenes from the past, but each has his own; their recollections are not similar; they don't intersect; and even in terms of quantity they are not comparable: one person remembers the other more than he is remembered; first because memory capacity varies among individuals (an explanation that each of them would at least find acceptable), but also (and this is more painful to admit) because they don't hold the same importance for each other.

When Irena saw Josef at the airport, she remembered every detail of their long-ago adventure; Josef remembered nothing. From the very first moment their encounter was based on an unjust and revolting inequality."

— Milan Kundera

I find it quite hard to leave people behind, even when I know I ought. Yes, more than places or work, people prove my foil. Don't they have a way of weaseling in and making it nearly impossible to completely abandon them? Even when it would probably all be for the best? At least, that's what I find...

This photo, entitled Nancy is by the fantastic Alex Prager. It's pretty clear to me that whatever impending circumstance awaits this red head, she needs an extra dose of courage. Whether she is running from or arriving at her fate, there seems to be an ominous fog and longing in the air of the sort we'd all rather avoid altogether if we could.

On a related, but wholly separate note, if you missed Prager's stylized short film Despair (somehow I did!) starring Bryce Dallas Howard - do waltz on over to Nowness for a viewing. It's totally worth the few minutes - ha - for me, watching it conjured up the the equally technicolour work (albeit, written) of Nick Hornby's A Long Way Down.

city of hollow angels

"It's redundant to die in Los Angeles."
— Truman Capote












Oh Truman, how I concur. There's a lot of walking dead in the town that tinsels; souls that have been sold - or would like to be.

Goodbye LA... I presume that, once again, it will be a while.

writing the script as i live along

"Leave it to me: I'm always top banana in the shock department."
- Holly Golightly from Truman Capote's Breakfast at Tiffany's

I'm clearly the sort of person who can't just imagine what it must feel like to be dazed by an electric fence, nor do I buy into the conventional wisdom that messing with high voltage is a potentially bad idea... oh no, when I get it into my head that I want to tamper with sparking matter, I waltz past all the 'achtung' signs, and despite knowing what's possibly in store, grab the wires with both hands, just so I can feel the charge convulse through my system before, sufficiently stupefied and singed, I can finally let go and say, "ahhhh... so *that's* what it feels like. Well, now I know and can describe it with acccuracy."

Don't worry, someday it will all go into the novel, which will aptly be titled, The Seagull, I think... or some variation thereof...

Fabulous illustration is by Nicoletta Ceccoli.

before lift off

these past weeks have read like some kind of pop fiction novel. paranormal appliance malfunctions, sickness, backstabbing, sociopaths, burgeoning doomed romance, legal intrigue, and classic comic relief. think 'hamlet' meets 'sex and the city' meets a wannabe john grisham novel... i mean, *nuts*

i leave for LA in, well, mere hours... and the journey to get to this moment has felt a little like i was running toward the boarding gate while life threw everything it could *think of* at me. crazed 4am phone calls from strangers? check. twice-flooded flat? check. betrayal? check. meeting a reincarnation of my ex? check.

as all this was going on i was reading 'one day' by david nicholls. relatively brilliant compared to most contemporary fiction, yet nonetheless an entertaining and swift read. i'm actually trying to decide where i will weigh in on it in the end - whether i *really* liked it or not. but i came across the below quote in the midst of - well, what turned out to be *not everything* - but in the midst of enough, and thought, for as many times as i feel that i've comforted myself with the notion that "when i look back on all of this i will laugh..." i couldn't agree more with this particular character:

"an amusing story? she didn't want an amusing story, she wants change, a break, not anecdotes. her life has been stuffed with anecdotes, an endless string of the bastards, now she wants something to go right for once. she wants success, or at least the hope of it." - emma (from david nicholl's 'one day')

so here's to me making my flight to LA, antibiotics in-hand, and to it hopefully ushering in a turning of tides.


photograph is my own... a ferris wheel charm my sister gave me for my birthday... may it provide both inspiration and luck!

meanwhile, back in la la land...

Ahhhh, L.A., the city that sleeps early and doesn't eat. The Buddhist monk, Thich Nhat Hahn, says America is a nation of hungry ghosts, but I think no place is this sentiment more starkly felt than in the City of Angels.

Yet, somehow, seeing the video above made me strangely nostalgic for the empire of sprawling freeways. Entitled Lost Among Them, it's an entry from Brand X, the LA film festival's shorts competition - meant to depict what it means to live in "next generation L.A."...whatever that means. This was the short I liked the best by far... though I'm curious how the filmmaker is going to get the music rights (perhaps you remember the track from Garden State?) C'est...

Enjoy!