study of a wandering mind

stoic

i break it

and let it heal

i follow a thought

until it gets deeper

and my feet are wet

i wonder at my actual surroundings

a little

neglectfully

in another time

i see a woman

her skirt is moving along a line of tall grass

in some direction

toward a market

and then home again?

there is small lake

and fair weather

the day passes without anyone noticing

it is so unpopulated

except for the solitudinous study

of someone walking

style bermuda interview

i was recently interviewed for a bermudian online fashion magazine and i have to say that i am quite proud of the outcome. shiona turini and brittany fox did such an amazing job. it deals a lot with the pressures of the industry. if you're interested please have a read!!!

http://www.stylebermuda.com/article.php?aid=6235

fake empire

saw a documentary last night about a german model. paul boche. it starts with 9 year old paul rowing a boat. he says that when he is older he wants to live in the woods with his dogs. he says he doesn't want to live with people because people hate each other and destroy everything. the rest of the movie follows paul, now eighteen years old, through his fledgling career as a model. we see paul at show castings in milan, at job castings in paris, in model apartments in milan and new york, in every situation that is imperfect, lacking and wrong-footed. other characters that he encounters are somehow bungling- the other german model, drunk, oafish and hard to watch. in the casting settings we see anonymous young men standing in their underwear while the clients survey them. and backstage, models that have passed this kind of test are now costumed, coifed and masked with asymmetrical makeup. we even see the show, a catwalk actually bordered with electrical power-lines that throw off sparks; a spectacle that is as ridiculous and over-the-top as the clothes that are paraded by the models. 

it is hard not to feel saddened by these strange habitats of the fashion industry, a world that is revealed as tragi-comic, falling short of something and pointless.

for a minute during the movie i felt like i understood it. here is a beautiful creature like paul that is hard not to watch. he is beautiful. with big light eyes quietly pouring out at you, like a baby deer, like a waterfall. and here is the modern world looking at this beauty and wanting to experience it, its purity. the problem with the modern world is that there isn't an appropriate avenue to do this on any large scale. the only institution that we have that could honour beauty like this is the family. outside of this are the more dangerous works of capitalism:- private consumerism, advertising, the fashion industry. here beauty is broken down into a commodity, into tiny bits, dollars and cents, into money. everyone is looking at paul but seeing nothing. 

i guess that once upon a time everyone dreamed of a world that wasn't built like this, but somehow, in spite of ourselves, this is the world that just sort of happened.

 

andy griffith

it's funny dating someone outside of the north american pop-culture bubble. dennis, my boyfriend from germany, heard the andy griffith theme song for the first time while we were watching an episode of scrubs last night. heather graham's character molly was whistling it as a means to emphasize her unyielding optimism. anyway, the last five minutes remind me of the first time i saw my baby niece taste ice cream. dennis has the track on repeat and has been whistling along and dancing like a happy kid. anyway, i got all excited telling him about the show- a 1950's kind of pop-iconic american show. opie! barney! andy- what is he? a friendly tiny-town sheriff! that 1950's candy-on-everything kind of loveliness. he's never seen it!

i disagree

i have to be writing right now. there is so much noise being broadcast out here that i need to be a part of it.

i stumbled off the bus today and into the thick of yonge and dundas circus. i am acutely sensitive to the eaton centre thicket. the pitterpatter of shoppers is dumbfounding considering the economic climate. i saw a young guy glance his fist accross another guy's face. you could tell that he basically missed. fighting seems a lot more desperate and clumsy in real life than it does on tv. and everyone seemed to disappear very quickly afterwards. there were four guys. and then they weren't anywhere any longer.

dennis told me that the word "nowhere" was always very confusing to him as a non-native english speaker. he always wondered if it was pronounced 'now-here,' or 'no-where.' i never even thought about the fact that it lodged those words. nowhere. now here. a while ago we decided that he is better equipped to see the 'big picture,' while my eyes descend upon finer details. i think that this nowhere example proves nothing.

anyway.

untitled 8

there is nothing to write

the time has passed

for that

and i can't write to the past

and if i did

it would mean buh-bye

to all of that

i wonder

i read that for albert camus, the larger percentage of the population

is carrying its rotting corpses on its back

this being the business of living,

this being dead

i remember tammy faye baker said something similar-

that in ancient times 

ancient peoples would carry

dead bodies on their backs 

in some sort of penance

until they too were surely dead

i read somewhere that there is only one real destination

that somewhere after going to work

and growing old

that you will be dead

it makes you wonder about

the quality of living

tammy faye said that she had been carrying someone

around like that until at some point she didn't see the justice in it any longer

she knew to cut him off,

to let her live

and she was right

it didn't change the practice of being human

she died of course some time later

and it doesn't mean that we don't all carry this ancient burden

of being punishable for something indescribable, unknowable

but all the more real, kafka-esque

but it's like what dennis said-

the way you feel when a stone falls

from your heart-

being alive 

like that