School stoops

You want perspective?

Sit on a schoolyard stoop at night, look at the stars and think.

It's then that you tell yourself all the things that you know you should have said, that you didn't have the guts to say, that you know were the right words...and you swallow them down. Digesting the day, the night. Sitting there in the dark, honest... negative space. Negative..self loathing and deep. Quiet and deafening at once. The blackness rushing away ... endless and infinite become quite real as you sit.

Perspective comes quick and catches your breath. Taking the air with its dusty, nimble and precise fingertips and rushing it out into that dark night.


And leaves you there ,looking up and hating that the space isn't more full.

mmmumph

I am capable of this sound, and this sound alone. At least now. With a quick small americano I might be able to mutter a "hi" or a "whodat".

Work.
Store is open.
yay.
Tired little girl, here. Let me tell you.

Today is Sara's birthday. Quick veggie burger and then home to beddy bye for me.

Then to finish off my Halloween costume. Sheesh. I am slightly fucked in that department I think.

Went to see Lars and the Real Girl last night. GOOD movie. cute but better than I thought. It was a bit deeper and continues with this introspective thing I am doing...but it was good. The theater also had great fucking popcorn!

ha!

Ok.
Wash face.
Walk to work.
Smile
Talk
and then come home.

*smile*
ok.

It's time that we grow old...and do some shit

Overwhelmed.
windows open.
inhale, exhale.
change.

Watching a movie.
about to get ready for work.

Amazing movie.
The kind that makes you sigh.
Simple. Truthful. Human. Tortured.

Tortured.

I am a crier. I cry. Almost all movies make me. I don't know why. I relate on the greater scale, perhaps. The underlying emotion. It takes me.

I am took.

I guess its a good release for me. It's like a stop-valve has been tugged free...letting it all out. It is good. It is good to do.

*sigh*

Time to get ready for work.
Tomorrow is it.
Pop the champagne at about 5pm.

Shower time.

2 on, no outs....Ortiz at bat...SHEIT.

Yes, the man with the scary beard is scary good....

Don't think the Sox will get beat this year....

*sigh*
so much for the underdogs...or for just a team with a massive payroll...losing.

ha
oh well.

Bathtime

I love to take long baths.

Luxurious.

Relaxing.

Re-aligning.

Just out of one and,by Merlin's beard, I think I might have just been calm for 30 minutes straight! An act of the spirits, I say ...pagans ...nymphs? I can only hope for more...

After pampering and painting my nails....
I sleep.
'Til tomorrow...
I don't have to be up until 8am! Holy Shit!!! I can sleep IN!

Haha, thats ridiculous, eh?

Breaking the F%^&! OUT!

Ok.
No work posts.
No deep inner thoughts posts.
No celeb posts.
No "i'm worried about my friend" posts.
No I am missing the man posts.
No this is an awesome movie posts.
No read this book, you illiterate fuck posts.

You get this:

Top choices for this year's Halloween Costume:
1. The Horny Fairy
2. Axe Murdering Midtown Legal Secretary
3. Murderous Flapper
4. Vampire Red Cross Blood Bank Nurse
5. Sexy (insert heroic profession here...aka.COP, FBI Agent, Fire Fighter, EMT, etc)
(the above choice is mandatory for all women thanks to the Act of Heinous Bitches Are given a Second Chance Statue of 1979.)
6. Joan Jett-son
7. out of work Investment Banker


Please...time is short.
And I have mush for brains.

Without your help I am liable to just choose #5. Which, I must say, bows down to the corporate monster and advocates the validity of stores like SPIRIT...and places like SPOOKY TOWN...

....AND makes me cry.

Let a girl know...and save the East village from having to see yet another drunken latex cop stumbling home at 5am!

p.s. the person who actually dressed up as a bloody pad with tampon nunchakus might just be the coolest (or dumbest) person alive...at least when this photo was taken.

Sleeping

My usual regimen consists of:

*2-3 cups of tea (preferably chamomile, meditation, or decaf kombucha green tea)
*1 hour of reading
*20 minutes of yoga
*10 push ups (not the pansy kind either...real, honest, no knees on the floor, "Jesus Christ, my lower fucking back!" pushups)
*washing my face, moisturizing same face
*brushing my teeth, flossing
*washing my hands post floss because floss hands are gross (lavender soap...relaxing)
*drinking 1 tall glass of water

*crawling into bed
*setting my alarm for an ungodly early hour
*elevating my feet for 10-20 minutes (depending on how fucking tired they are)

..and falling deep into the dark of exhaustion.

Tonight, I bypass steps 3-4.
Tonight, I am really tired.
Tonight, I want to dream, not lie stationary in my cycle...

Tonight I want at least 2 cycles.

vaulted heavens, endless reflections

Change my way of thinking... HA! I used to laugh when people said shit like that to me. Really?

While most think they are open to change, that arrogance, a deluded sense of an instinctual ability to see the instrument of change as it approaches, has a tendency to blind the eye of reason to being sideswiped.

I state this as I lie face first...shaking, confused and somewhat stoned from the rush of it all.

The space around me seems a new colour. A shade brighter, lighter...wider (if that makes sense at all.)

The air tastes sweeter in my mouth, my nose, my throat. Sugared breaths coating my lungs with candy that adds to the high.

Pushing off the ground, I feel my back muscles tense...working against the gravitational forces that land-lock so many people. I lift off the ground without hesitation, with a smile...new meaning, new understanding, new thought.

These days have been long. They have been filled with plainness, repetition...with the resignation of routine. They were normal. Were. Now, they seem foreign...the thoughts that were quick to come are now labored...new ideas and logics shrieking through the din of the day. Arching my back, lifting my head. Giving pause where there once was movement in the usual direction. Giving reason to turn slowly and reflect upon the new.

Sky, land, building and flesh.

I enjoy the pause. I have reason to revel in the quiet.

It has afforded me the much needed time for reflection. It has given me the joy of simply being. I had forgotten what it was like to be an inactive part of a whole. Observing, watching...secretly wanting to be more...for it to be more...for it to be real in some place other than my mind, but understanding that my mind is the only place that what I see is real or relevant or true. That hidden, silent need...making it all make sense... hands waving me forward into the fray. It is different, good, calming...quietly formulating your path... constructing your bridges from the observations of your surroundings, forging the steady frame from the lessons and pains that you endure vicariously.

I roll onto my back.

I miss the stars. I miss looking up and seeing them, aweing me to question my reality...forcing the realization that I am inconsequential... one in billions. One such twinkling light in a mass of moving flashes...brightening and fading all around me. I miss laying on my back, and feeling the weight of that knowledge. Humbling, inspiring...and frightening. The cost of humanity, the shocking moments that make you realize that you might be the only person thinking that thought at that moment.

Solitary.
alone.
real.

I can't remember if when I felt it last I felt empowered or scared out of my mind.

or numb.

Or just crippled by the harsh beauty of the concept of the universe and its endless rivers of worlds....

The extreme tiredness of me

Think back...sitting here, I tell myself to think back. Back to the moment that I was this tired before...

Reach back through the cobwebby and muddled memories that clutter my brain and find the precise time that my body ached this much, that my emotional stability was this frail and that my need for quiet was greater than it is right now.

I remember the first time I did inventory when I started working retail back in St Louis...18 hours on my feet. Tired. Dead tired. I remember coming home at 3 in the afternoon, stripping my clothes off as I walked to the bed and tying a black tee-shirt around my head to block out the light. My legs were numb. My feet were numb. My head so incapable of the ability to construct sentences that I managed only to let random words slip from my lips, with no real relevance or meaning.

And then I slept.

Now that I think about it, the only other times I have been this physically and mentally drained has been due to work.

Telling. Truly. Fuck.

I almost have to laugh, because when it comes down to it...I just care too much. I have never been able to walk away from something that hasn't been completed. I have always forced control over my surroundings and placed a hold on my own needs to finish the task at hand.

I think that is why I have been avoiding people, places and things of comfort. Or why I seem to crave it more. Hyde and Jekyll...who am I today.

My job has taken control back. I felt it go. I didn't like it much. No, not much at all. I know that it is temporary but, dammit, that isn't how I operate. There is a methodology to all I do. Trying to be spontaneous is just that for me...trying. I am scientific, observant...studying the correct way to control the situation and then pushing my way to the lead and doing it. I don't do drugs..why? Because I hand my control over. I try to moderate a lot of things. I desperately try to place markers, guidelines and fences all around, so I can accurately determine if I have been successful.

Pathetic, huh?

But the exhaustion? This is it...the apex. I stand teetering atop the other instances of weakness of body and mind. Conqueror of what? My body? My intellect? My need to do more, be more...take more on?

Maybe this feeling is because I am really under it all...slowly being buried by adding more and more weight to the pile. Suffocating, swallowed by the mountain of memories of soaking my feet and standing in hot showers and washing away the ache of too many hours of existing vertically.

Who knows. Who really knows, really. I am probably stringing thoughts and feelings and fatigue together into an unknown element to the natural world. A chimera.

My brain hurts. My feet hurt. My legs are logs, big creaking timbers that feel the heaviness of their load with the precision of a perfectly calibrated doctor's scale. Bitterly and blindly honest.

Time to pack and sleep.
More to come later...
Tomorrow is St. Louis.
Then Sunday I am back.

This.is.me.

it feels good to get back to the things I enjoy doing.
*smile*

once done with work, I can actually forget work...

so glad.

:)

Photos, books and movies.

thank you.

wow.

Just finished working on some photos.
Man, I love photography.
Its fantastic to have such an interpretive medium to express my ideas and thoughts through.
I would say that it is unique, but it is really just like an artist working on canvas or paper or a musician letting their hands and voice tempt your psyche.

I guess it is all interpretive.
Its a way for me to show my feelings, through flat surfaces. Looking glass into my brain, seeing what I see when looking at certain things; trying so hard to convey depth and force instinctual reaction with one image.

So challenging.
I do like it.
It gives me focus.
Writing has been helping, but lately I have just been so consumed. Work, life, relationships, friendships...

These last 2 months have been me trying to focus on doing things differently. Not being so routine based. Trying new things, being more social and doing more than just heading to the bar. And for the most part, it has worked!

So I dive into my photography with the same mindset.
Change, approach different topics, steer away from what you are comfortable doing...make it new, make it exciting for you again....

...and hopefully it works!

Keep checking my photo site. I upload at least once a week.

Ok, now back to fixing my iMac's internet disconnectivity.
For such a pretty, big, expensive and groundbreaking thing, it sure sucks at keeping my internet connection.
(as I type this on my laptop....jeeez)

Alarm companies = retards

So far I am not impressed.
Just got back from having to walk to my store @ midnight because the alarm company had a burglar alarm at my store (although there was construction workers on site) so needless to say,

i am not impressed.
This is the second time I have had to do this after midnight. weehaw.

oh yeah, and nothing was wrong.
both times.
argh.

Finding my feet...somewhere

I walk.
Somehow, I arrive somewhere.
Have you ever had the notion that you are on autopilot? I do...I do all the fucking time.

Somedays I lift my eyes and realize that I can't remember getting here.

Somedays I just keep them pointed at the floor...silently imagining a different environment that consumes me...and deludes me through another day.

I recently have found my feet.
Yes, I know it sounds strange.

But there they are....there *points down*
See?

I realize it is long in coming, but there they fucking are!
And I can control them.
I can set the pace.
I can trot or stop.

Fuck auto-pilot.
Sorry for my crude words and crass attitude.
But yes, who CARES if I fall into the lines of marching autobots...not I.

Where can my feet take me?
Can they get me to the spot in my mind's eye that makes me exhale with sublime satisfaction...the sigh that only comes from the notion of utopia?

Perhaps.
I think first I should take a step..outside the common line.

fucking autobots.
*points*
MY feet.

Book Release Party - doriana.

Last night I had the pleasure of attending such a random party that it took me until today to realize just how awesome it was.

A friend (dj doriana) just published her first book. On the scale of 1-10 on the kick ass meter...she totally is a 10.5 for kicking her own ass into gear and actually DOING the thing she has been wanting to do for a long time!

Everyone got all gussied up and we looked DAMN good I might say.

The performers were fucking RAD-i-CAL.

B-girls, cross dressing dominatrixes, burlesque dancers interpreting stories in doriana's book...? Yeah, it was pretty bad ass. Only in New York. I saw a woman blow up a balloon with her right tit..then twist it into a penis.

I am working on the photos tonight.

Soon to post.
Stay tuned.

Movies? Check it-

Here are a few on my list that I recommend...
(I have had a recent resurgence of theater addiction...much to my inner child's glee)
Popcorn, candy...
Now I remember why movies in the theater are so much fun!
So, here...a few worth checking out:


This movie is fantastic. In the same vein as most other Wes Anderson movies, it is witty, comical and every shot in this movie is flawless.


Eastern Promises was not as deep as I had hoped, and the story was a mite lacking for what I expected...but it was a good movie to see in the theater. Vigo is amazing. Naked Vigo fight scenes? Blades? Assassins? Tattoos? I mean, those are a few of my favorite things... HA!



Now this movie had bite. I love legal "thrillers" and I was pleasantly surprised that this didnt really fit the major motion picture "legal thriller" profile. It was stinted, scattered...with some of the best acting I have seen in the theater in a while. Please see this...


This is a movie that I am going to see tomorrow night I think. It comes recommended from a movie buddy and I have to say, I am intrigued...because the reviews so far are excellent. And Brad? I mean, c'mon.


More to come. Isn't great to rediscover something that you loved to do? Although it is SUPER expensive to see movies in the theaters here in NYC, it is worth it, when you realize its cheaper than having 2 beers. HA!

*grin*

Books rule

I just had to drop a quick post shouting out this new book that I just started to read.
I think everyone would love it.

It takes you back, makes you happy you aren't back there at age 11-15, and then makes you realize that a whole hell of alot of the emotions that you struggled with back then are still with you now (just cleverly masked behind the comfortable routine of an adult life.)

I read one short story waiting for the train and by God, I felt like I was back there, in the 5th grade....overcome, and then angry as I wiped the teary grin off my face with the sleeve of my hoodie.

Please.
This book is fantastic.
Escape back to the time that you tried to forget about, but made you who you are now.

How refreshing....short films and short stories are now some of my favorite things (other than good wine, cheese and sex...oh yeah, and music too....)

This book is available at all bookstores nationwide.
Great collection and vivid memories.

Blink

inhale, exhale
blink, blink
inhale, blink
exhale......
blink, blink.

forcing myself to meditate was something that I thought would work. I mean, shit... here I was... frustrated, angry...useless. The only thing I seemed to be getting right lately was that I could wake up on time, get ready, make some oatmeal and be out the door without forgetting my deoderant. At least, that is what I felt most of the time my work day was done ...unaccomplished...unrewarded...unimpressed. What a "Debbie Downer" I was lately....

*sigh*

And that is what got me here. Lying on my back ....in the dark ...breathing like I was trying not to hyperventilate. Forcing myself to become light headed ...forcing myself to think of nothing (which is way too difficult a concept to grasp when you are pissed the hell off at the world and all you want to do is scream at some stranger .... or cry alone in a corner.)

Blink, inhale.

What the fuck am I doing?

Lying here ... acting a fool... looking at my ceiling thinking of nothing but the fact I was an idiot for trying this.

Where the hell do I get off trying to do something I dont know how to do?
Jesus.
The nerve.

Rolling over, I swear a solemn vow not to fuck with the laws of Gods and forces that I have no knowledge of...and to quit acting like an asshole, thinking I could just wing it.

*sigh*
Blink.
exhale.

I throw myself to the other side.

How to remedy this. How to revive. How to reinvent?
Where can I look...When will I realize how to do it?
Why havent I thought of anything better before?
What , why, how, when...
FUUUUUUUUCK!

Stop the thoughts...just think of nothing.
Think of a fireplace (not throwing some unknown precious documents into it....just a nice fireplace) and sitting back, reclining...music...company...laughter...smiles...closeness...

*sigh*
inhale, exhale
sleep.....

***how i fall asleep lately...yes, work is slightly stressful***

When work and life collide

Post family visiting, wedding attending chaos...pre store re-opening, holiday preparing...

Here I am.

This past week was decent...a bit frazzling towards the end, but overall good.

I went to an advanced screening for the new Clooney film, Michael Clayton. I recommend it to all. Wonderful film, great serious topic, and a gritty look at corporate law.

Went to see The Darjeeling Limited last night with friends...another great one. I definately liked this one (Wes Anderson films are just so subtle and amazing) but I still think the Tenenbaums is my favorite.

Work yesterday was busy and crazed, but today was an off day and just filled with shit.

An ally at work resigned. I'm feeling like I am sacrificing SO much for this store, and to date I have no payoff.

Might not be able to go to STL, still cant plan my wedding....starting to feel stressed - yet TRYING ...fucking trying SO hard not to be.

Hung with my good friend Jenna for a bit last night (went to the movie with her and Andrew and Miles) and had a long discussion of a mutual friend who we are concerned about.

Trying to be a good friend, yet feeling like I just want out of the situation entirely.

I dunno.

Is that wrong of me?
I mean, I could ask how I can help...but she just shrugs me off...
I ask what is wrong and she just shakes her head...
I could give her advice, but it might just make her feel bad...

I dont know.
Part of me just wants to write this email to her stating my concern and telling her I cant watch her do this to herself anymore.

Today I decided that I would just not go around her and when she asks why I havent been around, I will say "focusing on myself and being happy" and see if that works...

I just don't know.

I just don't know.

*sigh*
life is hard...why people do the things they do is beyond me.
(just step back, Carrie....just step back...let her figure it out on her own)