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

dennis' quote of the day

12,07,08. 'don't thank me for being me because i'm you.'

past quotes (dates unavailable)

'it's so easy to control these robots.'

words

humans are social beings; soul is without division.

w/ri/ght/e

i wonder what is most important? am i supposed to be challenged? by work for example? by people? relationships? art? day-to-day happenings? i'm not sure. i know that your job in itself doesn't matter. what you do. it isn't who you are. but what is it that you do that is who you are? i remember. who you are doesn't matter because you are not who you think you are. who you think you are is just an idea, a construct. you need this construct to function socially, for example. otherwise you are just sort of a hovering intangible. i like this idea. it means so much more than functioning socially though. i have to remember how it works. i have to write it down a few times.... 

okay. how does it go? there is one intangible thing that we like to think we are in order to cheat death. that is our ego. our mind. you can find traces of this identity construct in common sayings and beliefs. like in the way people tend to relate to their bodies, for example. most of us 'have' bodies (as opposed to 'being' bodies.) you say 'i have a body' and not 'i am a body.' but if 'you have a body' what is the 'you' that possesses the body? the 'you' is not the body itself. do you see? the 'you' is a "subtle something" (dan millman) that resides in that body while standing carefully beyond it's earthly cycles and limitations. while earth logic dictates that every body dies, this nebulous 'you' creature finds safety outside of the same logic. if 'you' are not your body 'you' might go on existing long after its expiry date. this identity construct, fuzzy as hell,  is our ticket to immortality (dan millman). (i have heard this concept explained before, but am drawing specifically from 'way of the peaceful warrior' here.)  

so back to one of my original questions. 'what is it that we do that is who we are?' well, i guess it's nothing. nothing that we do is who we are. because everything we do is tied to this constructed self, to this ego, to the mind. so who and what are we? we are consciousness. we are everything. ducks and trees, elbows and babies and old people and ancient rocks and water vapour, sunshine and dust. so there is no need to cheat death. we are forever. outside of time. everything. eternal. that's kind of nice. it still feels a bit weird to say that. i mean i understand it, but i haven't "realized" it yet (in the dan millman sense of the word).

if you like this blog or need/want to make sense of it please read 'way of the peaceful warrior.'