Monday, June 25, 2007

its been some time now since i was home. it feels like i slipped back in at a moment, like stealthily getting into a room without being seen. as if class had already started but i managed to make no one notice my late entrance. seeing all my friends wells me up and i feel really good just looking at their faces and hearing everything they have to say. just sitting around a room with people. i walked a little bit, and the afternoon is wonderful. i had a moment of nostalgia for norway as jake was driving us home last night. i felt a pang at for the empty roads and the starry sky. 

it still feels like i haven't done anything. as if anything i did was just a gesture, like waving, but its impact, the striking force or whatever an impact is. no, see, right there, i was stringing together a thought but it fizzled up like fireworks so now its just failure. heh.

im working on a painting. its very different from my usual paintings. but now its sitting against my wall staring at me and i wonder when ill get back to it. or get back to anything for that matter. summer is an awesome expanse. i wish it just went off into the horizon forever. i remember tom plastering that endless summer album cover on the door of the house. i attribute that to the whole appreciation of holidays. its all symbols (holidays, that action). and symbols are important because they are a whole conversation, a whole lot of meaning in just this thing. and symbols were important to the surrealists, thought im not entirely sure. i remember reading somewhere that they intended to make things absurd and completely strange / different / out of the ordinary to reduce the complacency or just bring this sort of mysticism or imagination into life. honestly its vague but there was something about symbols in the surreleast wing of the Reina Sofia museum in Madrid. so every summer or whenever everything feels really great and everyone and all the people feel really great and everyone in my head is always smiling, always moving, i just imagine that endless summer album cover just plastered up on that there door.

like it was our religion that summer graduation senior year. there he was throwing down our commandments, and the only one was, to just live it up fully, relax and live and let it all just fall and scatter and we'd watch and be down there with all the pieces of life scattering about us and it was all forever. like we just slipped through a gap and we had found this safe place. i don't really know, or im not entirely sure but yeah, it felt good, and looking at it now its important.

so i guess im just sitting here in bed and the fans are blowing on me, nothing pressing, and i can think of endless summer and let it all be there with me. 
Went swimming last night with the desert breeze chilling me to my bones as i stepped out of jake's pool. and before, as we drove into the night from the lit up casino we passed by the whole of the city as a blur of light; like those 4th grade art projects. and all the workers seemed to be happy working, with glare and the erected construction lights casting menacing shadows along the road but we felt safe because we were still going fast in our car. i recited some thoughts and words that just came out. as if they had to be said. at that very moment i felt the great urge that everything inside of me needed to spill out so i let it, as my head was stuck out the window feeling the wonderful air.

i was up at the top of summerlin parkway just listening to music and letting all the light blur together and everything was as silent as it could be. the music itself coated all my feelings over so thickly that i didn't feel anything except awe at the orange lights. and everything past the freeway glimmered so it made me feel as the world past me, as hands moving past my body, was moving faster than i was. everything was  a movie screen that i was watching and someone had pushed fast forward so that those two arrows that signify that action were held down and they all buzzed below.

when i was finished there i gently went back to my home and there were people and everything was alive again for a moment before i closed my eyes and went to sleep.


Tuesday, June 12, 2007

Last night in Oslo. Tomorrow morning I wake up early in the morning, turn in my keys, drag all my luggage onto the train and ride down to Oslo Central Station. I take the bullet train to the airport and get my ticket for my flight. The sun is still up its 11 pm right now. The sky is beautiful, a spreading blue like thick ocean water with the sun all off in the distance as a point and then back in front of the eyes is a pink cap across the tall buildings and all the clouds drift by in a lit up night. I will miss the seabirds that fly by my window, and the feeling that im at the edge of everything.

Madrid and Lisbon were surreal paradises. In Madrid I spent most of my time at the Reina Sofia, art museum, camped out on benches overlooking the garden or walking through the exhibits. Dali and Picasso, hundreds of other artists. Massive works of art that set the mind on a ride through imagination and feeling. I camped out for hours in the surrealist wing watching old french movies written by Dali and directed by one of his friends. People in love, clashing society, a bull in a woman's bed, a man kicking a blind man after he escapes from the police and takes a taxi in escape. All in a dark room on solid wood benches that reminded me of my father's work as if he had been commissioned by the director of the arts himself to produce those specific benches for this specific movie room. The projector making silent humming and my books and red notebook sitting idly by the side as my hands were cupped at my chin supporting my head, i was crouched and watching intently feeling nothing of the world outside.

The whole trip was an adventure, all alone and I met many people and most of them i didn't like but either way. And i slept in rooms populated by 7 other strangers. Except in Lisbon where I had reserved a private room. When I found it to be located in a renovated mansion, where my window overlooked a plaza, the floors were wood and there was a giant double bed and nothing else, i felt at home. lying on the bed and letting the warm sea air blow across my body as the sun splashed gently on all the people and stone buildings. i found tiny bars and cafes and sat there reading and writing until i felt intrusive but never really was. ordering drinks and sweet bread, then walking up all the steep hills and watching yellow ancient rusty cable cars sliding up and down filled with gaggly eyed tourists as i walked alongside watching.

and i ate in fancy restaurants and had revelations that i told myself i would write down but never did so they slipped from me in my sleep when all my memories were being reorganized and put away. and i am missing almost all of it and only able to put a shadow down of where i was and what i experienced. of a jazz bar off in some small apartment neighborhood with children playing futbol in the park across, old men laughing and me ordering beer after beer reading in dark / light, murakami, and only in a small room with the free jazz playing loudly and the neighbors bringing in their dogs. the bartender bringing out a bowl of water, until five hours had passed and i left to go lie on my bed. until two romanian girls invited me out to go have a drink and eat tapas and we sat and talked until the late night.

all of it just a glimpse and in a year i was told i probably wont think any of it was real. but already none of it feels that way, that real, all like an image i saw in a movie or in television. everything just far like i never even touched it but i did because i still feel the sunburn and the soreness in all my body. and i can taste the freshly grilled tuna and delicious spinach boiled in cream. all the fish and pastries and juice and coffee. the beers upon beers.

now im sitting in an empty room and i forgot how big this window actually is. the tree outside that was so barren and scary, terrifying when i first arrived is now a leafy giant in slumber and here i am smiling at it until the dark comes for only ten minutes and its not really dark. just a shade of darker blue until the sun decides it never went away. then again the tree is illuminated and i cant recall how it ever scared me. tomorrow ill leave my sheets and blankets downstairs.

donate the last things i have and take all my stuff and i left my plants to be watered by any stranger that reads my note and feels a compelling reason to do so. its over and ended and now, well, i suppose i dont understand really where it leaves anything and, rather, if any of it was anything at all.

Wednesday, June 06, 2007

Im in a bar internet cafe somewhere in the soho district of Lisbon near my hostel. It has been a while since Ive touched a computer and Im just spending some time here. Resting my walking the streets. Lisbon is a sunny paradise filled with friendly people who dont speak much english but enjoy helping none the less. I spent about ten minutes ten minutes ago in a liquor store trying to explain to the old woman who owned it i was looking for absinthe. However, after a while we couldnt reach a common understanding and the closest i got was absinto which is absinthe without the thujone.

im not entirely sure what exactly i was going to put in here. i feels a little empty now staring at the page. so much around me, narrow streets, happy faces, hills and ocean. i suppose if youve seen the life aquatic then you have a pretty good picture of what this place looks like. i think i would live here. out of all the places ive been. its tiny, its san francisco but old. far older. i have a room to myself in an old mansion house that i rented. the floor downstairs is filled with art deco furniture and a flatscreen tv. the bottom floor is a kitchen. it leads out to the park. i leave the window open at night and the breeze is cool so even in the heat of the day its wonderful. stripping of my clothes and just lying there staring at the cieling.

i wander around the streets each day and hop into cafes drinking cold orange juice and reading and writing. im sun burnt and warm and im all strung out and tired. my clothes are worn and i feel just like them. i dont understand what it is exactly im doing except a whole bunch of nothing. regardless i think i like it. at least in a place like this. i get lost for most of the day. at night its cool and the smell of ocean mixed with the taste of cold beer is delicious. i hop into trendy bars and sit alone watching the groups of kids move in and out. my first night i wandered into a fancy place to eat, an underground crypt now renovated and was given my own private room to eat a meal of grilled fish and creme de spinache. i had a coffee and then the waitress walked out with me and pointed me off in the direction of all the bars.

i still, i dont feel like ive put anything down. or, i dont know how to put across anything ive seen or experienced from madrid to lisbon. but for now. here. i dont know.