Dale Dale!

I think its time. Time to revitalize, restart, reboot. To push myself - to stop worrying, fretting and fussing and just DO. I truly believe that we are often paralysed by our own inactivity, convincing ourselves that we can't, so we don't - fulfilling the prophecy again and again. Maybe this can be a space where I force myself to write, about stuff that fires me: feminism and trying to be a good person. About stuff that people have created that makes me laugh or cry or think: TV shows and books and smoked salmon bagels. About the frivolous and the fortuitous: space phenomena, songs and salty liquorice. To stop relentlessly self - editing and self censoring, to stop trying to make everything palatable and right. So that sometimes things may be awkward and sit badly - but as Dustin Hoffman once drove home we are "flawed, flawed, flawed". So I'm going to try anyway.

Silver Magic Ships

There was no mushroom cloud. There was no explosion, no incineration, no shockwave. It was a slow dissolution, quiet wasting - sugar in the rain. It was the unavoidable realization that I no longer recognized my face, my thoughts, my voice. I couldn't remember when this became my life, and it frightened me. And the line between my days and dreams grew thinner and thinner, as my thoughts became more convoluted and cancerous. And now we have poisonous volcanic rain, days that end badly, failure after failure, holey t-shirts, the end of a world filled with exams, drunk weekends, mean teachers, cafeteria food and semester grades. And all I want to do is curl under my blanket and watch that 44th episode of "In Treatment" and eat doritos. I don't know when that sad little half-life became so appealing. I also don't know when I became such a sad little half-person.

PROCRASTINATION SENSATION

It's an illness. A disease. And it's ruining my life. Excuse the melodrama, but I think I am being murdered by my procrastination habits.
In the past two weeks, instead of revising for what are probably the most important examinations of my life so far, I have watched more movies than I have this year. The first five of which I absolutely adored. Cinematic escapesim is so ridiculously tempting.

- The Private Lives of Pippa Lee

-Cracks

-Adam

-Less than Zero

-Chloe

- Up in the Air

-Leaves of Grass

-Sherlock Holmes

-The Blind Side

-He's just not that into you


-It's complicated

I have also been watching one of the most mindblowing TV series ever, HBO's "In Treatment", which is based quite heavily on a Israeli programme called "BeTipul": It revolves around a psychotherapist and his weekly meetings with four patients. Each episode features one of four recurring patients, with every fifth episode Paul Weston visiting his own therapist and mentor.

Less than 48 hours till the bloodshed. I want to die.

three brain cells, light and airy

Completely content free post, (as they always are) my brain has gone into hibernation at the worst possible time it could. Wish I was a scintillating little insect - possessing only instincts and the ability to sense light and warmth. Wish it was summer NOW.

MY KNEES ARE COLD

Your life is not an episode of Skins. Things will never look quite as good as they do in a faded, sun - drenched Polaroid; your days are not an editorial from Lula. Your life is not a Sofia Coppola movie, or a Chuck Palahniuk novel, or a Charles Bukowski poem. Grace Coddington isn't your creative director. Bon Iver and Joy Division don't play softly in the background at appropriate moments. Your hysterical teenage diary isn't a work of art. Your room probably isn't Selby material. Your life isn't a Tumblr screencap. Every word that comes out of your mouth will not be beautiful and poignant, infinitely quotable.

Your pain will not be pretty. Crying till you vomit is always shit.

You cannot romanticize hurt.

Or sadness.

Or loneliness.

You will have homework, and hangovers and bad hair days. The train being late won't lead to any fateful encounters, it will make you late. Sometimes your work will suck. Sometimes you will suck. Far too often, everything will suck - and not in a Wes Anderson kind of way.

And there is no divine consolation - only the knowledge that we will hopefully experience the full spectrum - and that sometimes, just sometimes, life will feel like a Coppola film.

Oh Lord.

It's getting to that time of year when all I want to do is throw a toaster in the bathtub. Or I can drink more.

The Pulchritudinous Review

we've lived in bars and danced on the tables - hotels trains and ships that sail

For some reason these songs all have such a feeling of summers past and those awaiting. I can't explain it - its almost like they have flavours and texture. Greece, Ibiza, Italy and Sweden, you can't come too soon.

Mad Love, 2009

Buenos Aires through the Facehunter's lens

Last words from 2009, Buenos Aires. We're ushering in a new decade, with all the exciting possibilities that that entails. A chance to begin afresh on a whole other level. I've had the most wonderful holiday here, my only regret is not having brought my camera, so all the pictures will have to remain in my head, unshared. Everyone seems so gorgeously excited about a new year, except for myself. Probably because this (school) year hasn't turned out exactly as planned - and all the new opportunities seem like chances for failure rather than success. But I'm not going to end the year on a bad note, so after celebrating tonight like a madcap mad cat - let's hope the first action of twentyten is one of change!


Now go forth and fill your veins with joy, warmth, love and champagne!

Volver

Only seven more days till I get to escape to another hemisphere, another season. I can't wait for the humidity, the heat, the noise, the music, the endless nights, the tattered boulevards and cemeteries, the theatre, the bars, the glorious family, friends and strangers that await me there. The energy of 15 million people. Buenos Aires, Paris of South America.

The hardest substance of the purest pain

I feel like I've been on mute for far too long. All the colour drained out, like undersaturated photographs from the 80's. That's what I've been doing now. Looking at pictures of my parents when they were young and full of oxygen and dreams, wishing I'd known them then. Reading the Penguin Book of American Verse instead of writing long overdue essays, eating junk food and watching too many movies. I want fireworks. Colour and Emotion and Excitement - all capital letter madness. Watermelon seeds and frozen ice Saturdays, sticky taxi seat leather and hot red dust raindrops. Cold beer at corner kiosks, 3 a.m, neon blue lollipops and blackened feet.

Celluloid Escape

"En Kärlekshistoria" (literally meaning "a love story") is Roy Andersson's 1970 debut film about teenage love, and its as beautiful as it was when I watched for the first time as a seven year old.



Another movie which hasn't been hyped to death on the blogosphere and which I'm dying to see is Lone Scherfig's "An Education". Peter Saarsgard is always dope, and Carey Mulligan is such a gem, reminds me a little of Jena Malone.

Nineteen Ninety Eight

Bubble gum flavoured, power pop nostalgia. When the lights in our heart blinked as furiously as those in our sneakers, when Baby and Posh and Ginger sang their sticky commercial dance tracks to us, and we loved them for it. When Johnny still loved Winona and we were true. Hurt was hurt, anger was anger and joy was joy. Before we were taught to feel shame we were bratty liars, story-tellers, playground bullies, sandbox lovers. The days were long and evenings were fluorescent jelly fantasies, storybook glories. Sometimes I miss you, 1998.

Devouring

If you ever have ninety minutes to spare, spend them watching "Etoiles: Dancers of the Paris Opera Ballet, Class, Rehearsals and Snapshots". Nils Tavernier spent three months in 1999 filming the ballet company, and has created one of the most beguiling documentaries I've ever seen. I wasn't expecting to love it, but there was something about these dancer's lives, the disciplined austerity contrasted with the glamour and prestige of their careers that did it for me.

"This too shall pass"

I want to be a person with a story. I want to be warm, glowing, exude the kind of golden heat that some just do - they drip in viscous honey.Throaty happy. No more quiet little tragedies by bedside tables, no more false romanticism, no more pretence, no more clammy hands and pins and needles. Truest true, white blood heat that cuts through your bones. Expectations. Not knowing what one wants at seventeen, they look at you like you're a slacker brat. So one just rambles on, quietly, painfully. I grit my teeth and give myself headaches and worry. Thank you, alexander supertramp, cristopher mccandless - you break my heart. One cannot live off hope and beauty, but I still want Alaska. I want Alaska with you. You called for for the first time in 14 months. To tell me it would be Georgia. You coughed your dry little coughs, I could tell you were nervous. But we were so young, and so giddy. And today, nothing. I didn't feel your fingers drumming my skin, I didn't feel your lips on my collarbone. You provoked nothing. And I wished you the best on your new adventure and you told me about Atlanta. And we laughed and said bye, letting you hang up first. When the phone line clicked I knew I would never speak to you again. And I push forward, long strokes, muscles taught in turquoise water, summer incandescent in my veins.

p.s: superbomba's photostream on flickr is gold