last night in a dream to a man i said "i like to experience things alone." we were walking through a crowd, the newest Spiderman movie just out, Spiderman number 3423. i told him i hadn't seen any of them. but one day i will watch them all, in my own time, alone.
i need to come out of my shell, i thought, this morning awake with a book in my hands. 4 hours of sleep. 4 GODDAMNED HOURS OF SLEEP? did the hours of intoxication work itself into the equation as part of sleep, as nonawakenness (make up your own words, why the fear!) trickery. resting is memorable, as in there are no memories and this complete lack of, is remembered as strange yet nice. soft. soft like skin. not all skin. not like my hands. i was born with hands already been in use for a thousand years. i was born with such deep indentations and so many lines i am afraid to go face a palm reader. she would laugh, then become bewildered. she will tell me "i am not fond of 10000000 page long stories." and i would know from her face she was telling the truth. this woman would burn pages of all the greatest books ever written (and still to come) to keep warm in the coldest winter, instead of letting words already scorching red-hot on the pages fuel the very furnace inside of her. she would still demand the ten dollars, and a tip. a true clairvoyant. she knows i am a sucker, the one sentence she did peak said so (explains her laughter.) she 20 dollars richer, i, still too far from understanding my very own hands.
the callouses come and go. they shift from one place to another. jumps over one finger tip in the midst of my sleep that i wake up confused, 'but i thought...' one day i am a worker, another an artist. sometimes within the same day this shift occurs. these are the days when my callouses dance and trade places. over-stimulated and unhappy staying still. i find unfamiliar marks, bumps on my body and i think it's my body trying to play tricks on me. one day i may wake up in a completely new body but the same mind. which is i? the body or the mind? i would have to choose to live as myself but never recognize the face in the mirror, or to become someone new. it is easier to accept things so unacceptable when they happen slowly over time and not fast like a revolution, an overthrow over night. in the dream there were geese shitting everywhere flying above us. even deafeningly loud noises from a group of identical little children could not frighten them.
Woody Allen’s “Vicky Cristina Barcelona” has a natural, flowing vitality to it, a sun-drenched splendor that never falters. Two young American women go to Barcelona for the summer—Vicky (Rebecca Hall), who is bright, skeptical, and cautious, and Cristina (Scarlett Johansson), more adventurous than her friend but unformed and easily dissatisfied, a seeker without a lodestar. In the magnificent city, they meet Juan Antonio (Javier Bardem), who is incapable of spending a night alone. Bardem’s natural-born lover—a painter, by trade—is as devastating as his natural-born killer in “No Country for Old Men.” He’s almost criminally attractive—soft-spoken and erudite, decent in his way but relentless, a Don Juan brought back to life as an English-speaking charmer. Both women get involved with him, and the movie becomes a complicated triangle that forms, breaks apart, and reforms; it’s also a lengthy exploration of the eternal struggle between security and passion, dependency and anarchic freedom.
I want to see this play. I wish I lived in New York. It's playing this month. It probably is time for me to revisit NYC anyway... Laughter and Anais? Sign me up.
Anaïs Nin Goes to Hell by David Stallings, is an existential comedy with a strong ensemble cast of characters. This new play explores the question of whether Sartre was right and hell really is other people, or whether we carry around our potential for damnation or salvation within ourselves. The play opens on an island off the coast of Hades where five women have been stranded for centuries. They are Heloise (a twelfth century nun), Andromeda (a Grecian princess), Victoria (Queen of England), Joan of Arc (soldier and prophet), and Cleopatra (queen of Egypt). Each woman waits for the love of her life to come and rescue her—except for Joan of Arc who is waiting for God himself. They cannot leave the island out of fear of a giant Hydra that reputably circles the island and eats any who attempt to escape. These lively women are each stuck in her own century and time—never willing to release old wounds or failures.
Their world is turned upside down however when twentieth century erotica writer and psychoanalyst, Anaïs Nin is shipwrecked on their shore. Anaïs reinvents her life long struggle to awaken autonomy and self-confidence in this band of women. She also struggles with inner turmoil—never knowing if her only purpose is to see in others what she cannot see in herself. At the climax of her fight, her purpose is endangered when a man swims ashore. He gives the group hope in finding their men and ending their time in solitude. Each woman must decide whether she has evolved beyond what she was in life and if her goals have changed. Discoveries are made as some of the women transform and enliven—realizing that they do not need to be defined by their past achievements or views.
In the end, some women change and some do not, but Anaïs is still left alone in her question; once the use of our battle is over, once we have won or failed…do we still have a purpose?
Anaïs Nin Goes to Hell received its first public reading as part of MTWorks NewBorn Festival 2007 directed by Cristina Alicea; later in the fall it received its second reading at Boston Theatre Works: Unbound Festival, garnering the First Prize win. In Christmas of 2007, Michael Howard Studios hosted a reading of the play, as part of its Friday Night Series, directed by David Wells.
"I can't tell you what they mean to me, each one of them: except that I have a feeling that they are in a way of warning- that if I can't learn a lesson through beauty (like those notes) then I damn deserve the pain I invite."
"He once put a bowl in front of me, a blue bowl with some oranges in, when I was stuck again, and he said, well, if you don't know what to do, paint that. And you know, horror, horror, you see, I couldn't. There's no faces there, no faces."
Thank god for bestfriends that sing a song to you at a dive bar 2 a.m. that.you.just.have.to.hear. Thank god for bestfriends who's taste, intentions, love and dream you never have to doubt.
Clinic- Distortions
I'd like to know completely What others so discreetly Talk about when they leave me Not that I notice when they're gone It's eerie and so scary I don't know who to marry Your sister came to bait me But I love it when you blink your eyes I've showed me once to often. You'd never know how often I've pictured you in coffins My baby in a coffin But I love it when you blink your eyes Oh I, I want to know my body I want this out not in me I want no other leakage I want to know no secrets showed I leave, oh I leave, now I leave care Free of distortions, free of distortions, free of distortions.
Michelle Jane Lee’s art is minimalist in form yet muscular in content. There is a complexity, density; to put it simply, there is a lot of heart in her often times sparse drawings and paintings.
She is about going back to the moment of childhood possibility before our imaginations become impoverished and our options seemingly circumscribed. Her work reminds us that things could be different, if only we are brave enough to embrace the free fall, letting go of all of our prosthetics that keep us from realizing our freedom.
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