a duel of doves, a murder of crows
��������� �����neglect, neglect ...no impulse to write in here lately. nothing overly dramatic in life, no sweeping weathertones to mark down.
tried to watch the english patient last night and invariably, fell asleep. a beautiful, multilayered story - engaging characters, but holy shit did i hate the acting. the nurse who burst into tears every two seconds, the overdramatic and overly dry face of almasy. the only thing i liked was the dialogue, the beauty of the landscapes, and the music. a delicious, depth-defying score by gabriel yared. i'd like to read the book by michael ondaatje. what a talent for names he has .. caravaggio, hana .. count laszlo de almasy. fluid, thick tongue-names.
spending time with friends. not-watching gangs of new york last night in kristin's room and instead pizza and the cable guy randomly. then a walk with anthony downtown, smoking a cigarette. haven't done that in a long time. sandals on sunburned feet, and later, a purpleblack blister sneering up at me. a few days off from work, though, and maybe a trip to the beach. it looks like it might rain today. i feel languid, like lukewarm bathwater, or gray wolves lounging on a heath. the blinds are still inverted, and it's noon. every once in awhile when i hear the scuff of footsteps on the asphalt, i slide one up to see who's passing by underneath.
no one i know. let the blind fall back into place.
a long discussion with kaylen the other night about art, and what it means. she talks about socrates & plato, and the "triangle" - i've forgotten most of it already, which is mildly peculiar. oh, right. that the mind of god creates, and then that artists only copy what god created. although then, she said, then there's innovation, and that's when the mind of the artist bypasses and accesses the mind of god directly.
"and most people think they're Bypassers," i said cynically. when i talk to kaylen i imagine that our AIM windows are huge and frosted, with lettering backwards on them, and there we are in front of them, a coffeeshop with books and quiet rumblings of chopin or faure in the background. her eyes are quiet and lighthearted, like a group of doves - a duel of doves, both sad and lighthearted all at once, in a gray piazza in italy. the buildings are encrusted with mold and the verdigris of centuries. tenacious and tenuous, as if a war is constantly going on inside of her - a strange civil war for a city that is built and walled inside of her heart.
and a seizing of the fist to pound the table whenever something is ultimately, indefatigably true. in the moments following, she'll pull back the fist and laugh awkwardly over the outburst, or maybe not -
one of them - kaylen or peter - said once that we should become the next league of expatriate artists, and move to paris, and share a small garret. henry miller, anais nin, lawrence durrell. the warbling vibrato of nearby opera singers as some vainglorious artistes try to recreate the story of la boheme solely unto themselves - and fail miserably. they eventually give up, tacky posters hanging limply from weak walls and an empty suitcase's mouth gathering dust as it sleeps beneath an empty bedframe. the filmy window is also left ajar, and a pigeon lights on the sill.
i wondered aloud which one i'd be, and i'd like to think i'd be durrell. although henry miller shares some astrological coincidence with me, which is always amusing, and kaylen would most certainly be nin - peter, perhaps, the sybarite, would be miller -
how do i reconcile the people i know? you can't, as kristin said she likes to do, separate your friends into groups of acquaintanceship. to ... organise your life like it's the backroom of a general store - to take inventory of your friends every once in awhile - you can't. i know so many varied and shifting people. i know wildly intelligent and passionate people, i know passionate people and artistic people, like brushstrokes on a single work of art, each one is completely different, but shares the same make, if different colours -
i don't know what it would be like if peter ever visited here - i can't honestly imagine his tall broadshouldered frame pushing through the hallways of robie or anderson, stopping into the postered room of erin, casey & jill. i can't see him enduring company with jason or even corey for that matter. i can't see kaylen doing it - but then, sometimes i envision those two as demigods, above the crude and clay reality of USM - and how horrible that is, too, for me to categorise when i just said it's impossible to.
it's noon and the sky is shuddering gray with tinges of yellow, like smoke from a long-burned out fire. i wish for the ocean, the end of summer, and travel to ancient european plazas - zocalos and piazzas, endless stone steps that lead to the balcony of some enormous basilica. "i've never been to europe," i tell sandi, "but i feel like that's where i belong, eventually." we're talking of driving crosscountry across america.
"then you can know how much it really sucks," she says, opening the bottle of nine-dollar bardolino wine. she shares, and is endlessly generous.
"but there's so much i want to see," i say. "then maybe i can go to europe. it's like .. a destination. somewhere i'll go when i've seen everything else."
i want to make a movie. i want to show the world the delicacy of a single strand of hair, of the last bleeding tinge of sunset, of the tiniest crevasse of silence between keys on a piano, the shifting patterns of dust, the whir of sunlight off of an airplane's wing. i want to do so much. and from here, i can only go forward.