Magdalena O!

We each have a special something we can get only at a special time in our life. Like a small flame. A careful, fortunate few cherish that flame, nurture it, hold it as a torch to light their way. But once the flame goes out, it’s gone forever. What is it like—on the other side?*

I’ve had the same dream many times. The pain is always the same when I wake up. The longing for that something. The details differ but the single theme doesn’t waiver. When do you know that the flame has gone out? When you realize it’s not there anymore? But dreams can play tricks on you, make you see things that aren’t there. Make each world appear more true than the other. How do you decipher which one to believe? Can you believe in both simultaneously? 

Sputnik Sweetheart reminded me of The Double Life of Veronique and also of Persona. I want to watch and read the books with this identity split. With the half somewhere else, left behind, and the half that is tangible, or realized as tangible in the present moment. Why is the half we yearn for always there and we here? Is that half over there thinking of us here? We always seem to think, No.

Are we afraid to admit the flame has been caught by the wind because we are part of that flame? We created it, the synergy did. So, ok, we admit it is gone, where are we? 

Is there a place for me over there?*

What are you doing on the other side? Without me? Cheerful smiles that only whitening toothpaste can provide. I’ve been told my teeth are big, supposedly it’s the Jew in me. When do you give up? When your cheeks start hurting so much and the inside of your mouth is dry and rubbing against your gums? 

You started this chaotic journey, he writes among indecipherable words on eight pages and nineteen definitions for the word “double” as provided by dictionary.com. He also writes that doppelgänger was the first definition he thought of, and it is her possible doppelgänger Miu sees in Sputnick Sweetheart, and Veronique sees in Double Life of Veronique.

Where is yours (right now)?

*from Sputnik Sweetheart – italics from the original text

One day in 2004, my grandpa and my younger brother were arguing about pretzels and nothing at all, just like a loving grandpa would with his grandson. It was getting out of control and I managed to record some of it.

I haven’t listened to it since he died in 2005, but today skimming through iTunes I put it on and all I can do is laugh especially because after I recorded it I pitched it up, so they both have chipmunk voices. It’s so important to make art to immortalize experience and identity, or at least to have for memory for those around you.

Please please listen to this.

MP3: Pretzels – Tomek & Dziadek

Einstein said:“If a cluttered desk is a sign of a cluttered mind, then what are we to think of an empty desk?”

There he is sitting at his desk, just like I do, but with my back way more twisted. There are papers everywhere surrounding him and his genius. I am not cluttered, but merely complex and thorough.

These images of Albert Einstein’s desk in his office at Princeton were published by Life magazine in 1955, just months before his death. They can contemplate a blackboard full of equations, a pile of old magazines and even his own pipe momentarily abandoned on one of the notebooks.

My birthday. Messy hair. Dilated pupils. Love. Holding hands. Cupcakes. I’m sick now. I need to rest. 

One of my birthday wishes came true in a way that makes me believe I can have anything I want. 

One of my exes was in town and I saw him today. I miss him. I miss him like you miss a sibling you can say anything to and they question you not with anything but the desire to understand. He’s the special one. We lost our virginities to each other.  We discussed our cities respective music scenes, the bullshit, our relationships, growing up. It was exactly what I wanted. It is now, all of it that makes it so worthwhile. I can’t appreciate enough that he’s still in my life through everything. It makes me feel so good as a person, as a judge of character. It’s so important that we have been able to get here, to care for each other so deeply. Even though we became friends again many years ago, I am constantly grateful.

On(e). hbd…GHOST.

My lungs weighed heavy, breath was short and my voice barely audible but I had to do it.  

My birthday is on Sunday. I’m not making a big deal out of it, although I’m sure it’s still big compared to some people but to me, not planning a birthday party, not announcing myself to the people in my life is totally unthought of. People messaging me, calling me to ask what the fuck is up with my birthday, and with each response I grew more anxious about not doing anything, so in the end I’m having a few close friends lose their Circa virginity with me to see Martinez Brothers and get really fucked up. Same as every other weekend. I don’t want gifts, truly I wish I could just skip this all together and that no one even knew it was my birthday. I’m doing this because lately I’ve been wearing myself out publicly, and I’m not in any mood to have people celebrate me. What I really want for my birthday I can’t have, so I don’t see a point in making an effort in anything but. What I really really want is possible in a world where love truly does no wrong, but love always ends up warped into odious nasty things. The other thing I really want is possible, but not at the moment – getting into grad school. The third thing is also within reach but not quite – moving back to Europe. And the last is starting to come to fruition. These four things occupy my mind all day long. I wake up and there they are, I go to work and go through the motions while conspiring on how to make my dreams happen. I go home and try to work on them.

Last year was so big, so explicit, so all about me, about the party, about the music. Being explicit is fun when you have everything you want and the resources to claim it your own. I was living the richest period of my life.

Anais Nin says, “Most of my life has been spent in enriching as well as I could the long, long waiting for the great events which fill me now so deeply that I am overwhelmed. Now I understand the terrific restlessness, the tragic sense of failure, the deep discontent. I was waiting. This is the hour of expansion, of true living. All the rest was preparation.” (Henry and June)

How long then, does it take to come to terms that, that great event is over? Until a new event comes to enrich me again?

Objectively, I want to scold myself for being so ungrateful, for always wanting more. I am surrounded by love from my family, the friends I keep so close and that person that has proven to do anything and everything for me. How can I not have enough? I don’t know him though, he is more than me. I excite myself on knowing about a lover more than they know about themselves, being the omnipotent voice in their life. But with him, the roles are reversed. He is the patient one to my childishness, he is the one full of unrelenting forgiveness, he is the one I go to when I’m curious about anything, or want to try something new. Is that why we are still here? Is that why all my past lovers have been so strong to hold on, because I open them up? A guidebook at all times. Is that what he is? How did that happen? But then how do I marry the childish ego with the tolerant mother? Fuck. I totally get it now.

MP3: Chimatu, Phaeleh – Reflections EP

from my old blog (Jan 2006),

The tales of absence, castration, deficiency, negativity and substitution were all composed by Freud. It’s really easy to dislike Freud but it’s also very fun to see others so eloquently trash him. Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari describe him as “an overconscious idiot who has no understanding of multiplicities.”

Although a bit daunting with its descriptions of technology processes, I had no idea of who Ada Lovelace was before reading Plant, Sadie. zeros + ones: digital women + the new technoculture. Doubleday: New York, 1997.

It’s interesting how Ada was Lord Byron’s daughter and Lord Byron was in cahoots with Mary Shelley (mainly through the affair with her step-sister Claire Claremont) who wrote/imagined Frankenstein (the relationship between nature/technology) & is also the daughter of feminist Mary Wollenscraft. I guess I have created a simple weave of prominent people; the weave being the only invention women are capable of since it mimics nature and our pubic hair, by Freud of course.

“I have a heart murmur.”
“So we both have broken hearts.”

Murmurs are abnormal heart sounds that are produced as a result of turbulent blood flow which is sufficient to produce audible noise. Heart murmurs are most often caused by defective heart valves.

Turbulence is predicted.