slacker

not to be mistaken for youth without aim or aspiration, slacker (1991, richard linklater) is the portrayal of various discursive minds roaming the streets of the texas capital, "deeply" wanting to change the world around them, but mistaking socializing with evangelization along the way.

partly sympathetic, partly satirical, beginning with the movie´s title.
the "independent" type caught up in this conceptual web of somewhat utopic but true notions of reality...
a slightly pretentious self-indulgent text that takes a crack at the life ponderings of a whole range of intellectuals and pseudo intellectuals, all commenting on "structure", "order", chaos. the film is narrated in this chaotic turn of chance and rhizomatic encounter that left me hanging on each syllable.
a chain of random thoughts that manage to weave themselves into the next, even though the previous seemingly has nothing to do with the quickly arriving array of events. a pastiche of fragments and philosophical inquiries that have become tangled in our immediate and automatic responses.
topics ranging from parallel realities, conspiracy theories, anarchic fantasies, a smurf and krishna theory (how they´re both blue), and basically everyone "selling" their truth to the person beside them.
the evasion of frustration... thinking the okay, good, or great ideas, and not knowing how to put them into action.
i began considering the hypocritical nature of the thought thoughts without kinetic energy, left to be taken by time and the undone acts forgotten by the passing of the days. procrastination.

for me, one of the highlights of the film include the opening scene when the director richard linklater is taking a cab and talking about how as soon as we begin having choices, parallel realities are constructed (my hook).

and personally i could sum up the movie in this phrase:
"the tragedy of life is that man is never free... the more the pain grows, the more this instinct for life somehow asserts itself.. the necessary beauty in life is to give yourself to it completely, only later will it clarify itself and become coherent."

and not without a madonna pap smear.

the art of being grateful

i came back to ny after three months of leaving, it felt like a quick return. i still feel like i´m assimilating all the things that happened on my last trip. on this occasion it has been more of a mapping of experiences, retracing steps, and moving forward. lingering in the past, but moving on to the present/future.

i received an email from my father yesterday around 2 am here/1 am mexico, he was wishing me a happy thanksgiving, and telling me other stuff. he got me thinking on direction, instinct, and trust; figure out what direction you want to go, walk firmly north/south/east/west, trusting with some strange intuition that life will eventually lead you to the place you need to be.. story of my life, sometimes i have to remind myself to keep gliding, taking the good, learning from the "bad", repeat.

it astounds me how we´re standing side by side so many people on this automatic impulse to move forward, most of us don´t know where we´re moving, we just know we have to wake up and move... what fuels the impulse? why do we want more? what mechanism sparks the one step after the next?
what?
life?
love?
company?
friendship?
routine?
contempt?
it´s this longing to feel alive right? and how we pinch the air for it to react.
and all of us essentially looking for the same thing; integrity, grasping a whole/hole for a rough instant.

it´s so strange to live this pre-thanksgiving buildup after not living it for more than 10 years, my family still celebrates back in mexico and to me it was just some other night where we got together and my mother made pre-christmas turkey, didn´t take much account of it until now and didn´t really understand why they still celebrated it. it felt ridiculous telling your friends that you´re having thanksgiving dinner, and you couldn´t go out. now that i am "consciously" back here, i kind of get it. i´m beginning to observe what it means to so many people. i mean this is the city that makes you move away from your family, it´s the city that makes you fight and squirm to move every which way on your own, where you never actually feel alone because you´re always surrounded, that´s why the loneliness is bearable (the distraction), here is where you can have so many things instantly (all an illusion). the city is starting to feel a bit "empty", everyone´s gone back "home", back to some origin, some place where it all began, the smell, the sight, the surrounding, remembering when you thought everything was possible, a comfort zone.
a second to come back,
another second to numb that out.

a void everyone is trying to fill, swapping cards to see what fits, constructing the puzzle, figuring out the instructions of the map, creating the way, inventing the directions... the city you had in mind.



as i was writing, i let prefuse 73s -meditation upon meditations- play on, a fusion of jazz, idm, and of course, glitch electro, characteristic of mr. scott herren. i think it´s a pretty good instrumental album for cold nights, goes well with a oversize grey knit sweater and a cup of berry infused tea.

on some other note, i´ve been getting comments on how i´m a nice person, i´m not actually sure how this makes me feel... i´m not sure i like being nice, is that bad?... should i be grateful for being nice?

i feel so disperse, i´ve been trying to write this for a while and i´ve been going back and forth from twitter, facebook, cellphone, phone, hotmail, youtube, blogger, gmail, zipeg, some movie on tv, liquor store, shower, joe goddard, prefuse 73 and a couple of four tet remixes.
i´m not even sure if what i´ve written makes any sense or if i like what i wrote, i had to write it... so i´ll hit publish post and i´ll be off.

oceans in a meteor shower

I was feeling pretty good
Thought I finally understood
How to be free, free, free, free
Like the birds, like the bees
Like the wind in the trees
So I went out on a limb
Thinking maybe we could swim
Into the river of light
Into the ocean of pain
Where angels get their wings
Where babies get their names
I wonder if you were aware
How much
You rock my boat
I wonder if you were aware
How much
You rock my boat
I wonder if you were aware
How much
You rock my boat
You rock my boat


it was my birthday this weekend, i´m being very specific, and i´m still pretty much lost in translation, but this could sum it up, except the part where it says:
"Where angels get their wings
Where babies get their names"...
that´s just wayyy too cheesy for anyone to handle, even for one who is sentimental, or dramatic.

god, science, life, death

this quote has been circling my mind ever since i left the airport...

shit turbulence.

it always crosses my mind that i´m going to die every time i´m on a plane, i´m always sarcastic about it because i don´t usually get scared, so i think, "what if this is the airplane that´s going to fall, even if everyone tells you it´s the safest way to travel?", or what if it´s my turn or whatever..
i find comfort knowing that if i do die, my life has been awesome, even if some parts haven´t been all that much, i couldn´t really complain, i feel happy... anyways, way too much melodrama for this blog and for my arrival at my always favorite destination..

so i´ll leave the quote i was talking about in the beginning, it ties into flying in the sky and feeling so small among the immensity of space/time, and at the same time feeling contained in our ever expanding universe.


poets say science takes away from the beauty of the stars- mere globs of gas atoms. nothing is "mere". i too can see the stars on a desert night, and feel them. but do i see less or more? the vastness of the heavens streches my imagination- stuck on this carousel my little eye can catch one-million-year-old light. a vast pattern- of which i am part- perhaps my stuff was belched from some forgotten star, as one is belching there. or see them with the greater eye of palomar, rushing apart from some common starting point when they were perhaps all together. what is the pattern, or the meaning or the why? it does not do harm to the mystery to know a little about it. for far more marvelous is the truth than any artists of the past imagined! why do the poets of the present not speak of it? what men are poets who can speak of jupiter if he were like a man, but if he is an immense spinning sphere of methane and ammonia be silent?
richard feynman



i love flying.
this is what came along with my ears (gracias a dea & a alex por el regalo pre-cumpleaños.)

making lists

color coordinating my shelves
30 min looking for the right pen
making tea
jumping from one idea to the next
checking emails
writing emails
making tea
starring out the window
smoking a cigarette
doodling
tapping pencil
doing 8 things at once
getting drunk
avoiding the inevitable
not finishing something.....
not knowing how to finish something.