Thanksgiving

I usually catch myself apologizing for things that aren't 'wrong.' Sometimes it's a lack of gumption, a missing thread of empowerment. Sometimes it's simply what it is, a terrible habit.

"I'm sorry for living."
"I'm sorry for being unclear."
"I'm sorry for not saying."
"I'm sorry for not being brave."
"I'm sorry for being un-able to [insert word]."

Whatever it is, my apologies for not being fair to You.

Today IS thanksgiving, however. And the only apology I can think of is...I'm sorry for not being able to appreciate these things all the time.

Thank you for those who know when to continue hoping and for those who know when it's time to give up. It's still a continuous struggle for me to decide when enough is enough.

Thank you for those who remember the past so clearly and for the few who can forget. Fiction and history are not too different, I think. Memory gaps make stories more interesting. What happened again? You tell me. I am grateful to have the strength to change and re-member myself...if only to survive and live with the person I've become.

Thank you for those who are brave, I want to be like you. Thank you for the things that I fear, for allowing me the strength to surpass the odds when I need to. It always surprises me, to rediscover these hidden forces of pure will.

I am grateful for my family who have shown me how it is to love with no limits. But also for strangers who have been kind to me for no reason. I hope to figure out how I can give back in my own way to anyone who needs me. There's a place for every sort of kindness and for every talent, I suppose.

Thank you for the stars, for slowly passing clouds, and for the darkest of nights.
Thoughts are clearest to me then. Although I would appreciate it if I could get more sleep.

Thank you for the rain, for the sea, and for every wave that carries me back home. We witness destruction and rebirth over and over again. And yet we return to what draws us: gravity.

Most especially, I am grateful for the little things, the little things that redeem their scale in the long run.

All of this, for your greater glory. [Amen.]

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Final Promo Piece

Part of the reason why I chose Hallmark was because of it's business track. Right now, we've just finished submitting a pseudo-draft of a self-promotion card that we can hand out to potential clients. I ended up using an old image prior to Hallmark, only because it showed the kind of work that I want to do in the future. That seems kind of sad in a way--What am I waiting for? Sometimes it's so frustrating to deal with myself and these doubts that continue to poison my mind.

Art is by Sasha Descartes

Here it is:

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Stars.

New Warpaint Video - "Stars" - Video - Stereogum

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Photorealistic Sculptures

This would be sooo awesome for a photoshoot!

WHOA.
Check this out.

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The key to happiness is to eliminate [insert word]

Sometimes I wonder what the past meant for us to be reincarnated like this--traveling in parallel paths, hoping for intersection. There is no need for fences or walls now that we exist on the same plane. I suppose we were destined to seek comfort in the periphery. Did it take centuries to learn how to live apart, disciplined and unable to remember what it is to curve, to lean over--to touch the small of someone's back? This constant attempt to search for you is like an old habit of loss. I probably lost you so many times: to someone, to something somewhere. So many times, that sometimes, I don't even remember what it was like to find you.

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Lights will guide you home

This is the perfect fog-blinking-lights-song. "You could be happy" by Snow Patrol.



November 16, 2009: On the way home from school it was so foggy. All I could see were colorful lights glowing from a distance. Here's the street where I live, viewed from the parking lot.

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The Beauty of Sorrow by Eric Gamalinda

The Beauty of Sorrow, after Pauline Oliveros

The best time to look at sorrow
is a quarter before midnight.

It looks dead from the ground up,
a single withered stick.
Then opens gently,
like the luna flower.

It bursts with all the radiant loneliness
of the desert,
a shock of moonlight that pulses
only once a year,

when you least expect it,
when you've forgotten
the intoxication,
the pungent scent of grief.

.......

Reina de la noche
covers the arid valley
from here to the moon.

They open their mouths
like fish in water,
sucking in the dry air.
Their small tongues
are smeared with silver.

Such beauty can never last.

.......

The best time to listen to sorrow
is anytime if you are
in the desert.

You can listen to it
in the just intonation
of summer, when everything
is one music, seamless and slow.

I like to place my ear against
your sternum, I like to hear life
being pumped all over you.

I like the way the sage
is always silent
and full of healing,
if we only knew.

It's not like here,
in this shitty apartment,
where sorrow yells in your ear
and all you hear
is your heart opening and closing,

and only because
it's supposed to.

.......

I can live with sorrow
all day without you.
I've gotten good
at making it feel at home.
I think I will get even better
tomorrow, and the day
after tomorrow.

I will be so good I will have
rivals, I will evoke such envy.

I will wear it around my neck,
the way those pimps
wear a viper sometimes,
just to show they're somebody,
just to show they're special and mean.

I can live without you
sometimes, I can feel your name
scratched into my heart
like graffiti.

Someone must have left it there
in the dead of night,
when no one was looking.

I swear it wasn't me.

.......

If there's a best time to eat sorrow
it must be now,
when your hunger gnaws so deep
it feels like having a soul.

You can let it take over you
like the spirit
the shaman wakes
with a single drum.

You can turn it into poetry
or religion, whatever
is easier to swallow.

Either way it remains
what it is,
a slow, elusive bloom
that opens your body up,

and you can't help staring
at the dead light streaming
towards you,

the dead waking the living
with these small revelations.

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Gamalinda

 La Ruinas del Corazon

(Continue...)
But before she did, she asked the poets to record these moments
in song, and the architects to carve the song in marble,

and the marble to be extracted from the most secret veins
of the earth and placed where no man could see it,

because that is the nature of love, because one walks alone
through the ruins of the heart, because the young must sleep

with their eyes open, because the angels tremble
from so much beauty, because memory moves in orbits

of absence, because she holds her hands out in the rain,
and rain remembers nothing, not even how it became itself.

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Thanks Cams and Mikael.

Subterranean by Eric Gamalinda

Let me be the first to say
that I know the name for everything
and if I don't I'll make them up:
dukkha, naufragio, talinhaga.
Just like the young
whose hearts give no shame,
I love the excesses of beauty,
there is never enough sunlight
in the world I will live in,
never enough room for love.

I fear none of us will last long enough
to prove what I've always suspected,
that the sky is a membrane
in an angel's skull,
trees talk to each other at night,
ice is water in a state of silence,
the embryo listens to everything we say.

I am afraid for the child skipping rope
on the corner of my street,
the girl on the train with flowers in her hair,
the man whose memory is entirely
in Spanish. I am more afraid of losing consciousness
when I go to sleep, or that in my sleep
I will grow old and forget how desire
once drove me mad with wakefulness.

Just like the perfect seasons
they will die
and I will die
and you will die also;
no one knows who will go first,
and this is the source
of all my grief.

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Save the pandas!

Reading J's blog and found this. THIS IS AWESOME!

Save the Pandas!

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Posture

I think being required to pose for my classmates has ingrained a completely different sense of myself--a posture, an awareness of what people are seeing when they look at me. It's awkward being watched, especially if you are anything like me. But then again, being surrounded by such talented people, after everything, I do enjoy seeing what they did see. It's not about feeling beautiful but more about learning how to work with gesture, emotion, and revealing a sense of myself to someone in a natural and ordinary way. This is what I want to attain whenever I photograph someone--to be able to discover qualities of them, a quietness and a touch of honesty that's theirs alone.

The best part of it is, I'm learning this valuable quality of seeing/being seen in a fun way because I'm with such dedicated friends. It's taught me how to step away from myself and think as an observer, see myself apart from the 'me' in front of the camera. Although sometimes I wonder how much a photographer should do to cause a reaction. I suppose it is a balance of things--of watching as closely as possible but at the same time not showing it and allowing the subject to feel comfortably "unwatched."

It was a Friday night and of course my friends and I decided to head back to school. It's week 9 and we have free use of the portrait and commercial (product/table top) studios. This is a photo that my good friend, Shaun took last night that I absolutely love.

We are taught to start with darkness and bring something to light. This is the joy of seeing.

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I miss youuu.

“I think we dream so we don't have to be apart so long. If we're in each other's dreams, we can be together all the time.” ~ Calvin & Hobbes

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(wooo...craaazy night.)

What can I say? The night was action-packed.

Oh, I am a fool.

Is foolish.
Is fooling.

Is falling down a rabbit hole.

The past is done and over.
Is over again and again.

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Phase 1 is OVER. :) The review went pretty well. My pictures (stopping motion and backlighting with flash) were called the best ones in class during the three times that our stuff were up there. :) Now it's phase 2. And seriously time to clean my apartment.

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