(chris’s) blog

I’ve been staying up very late, lately, until 4:00am. I heard about the recent lunar eclipse, to be seen in the night skies at 3:37am Pacific time, so I went outside alone at 3:15am.

No, back up.

A little after dinner that day, after dark had fallen, my father took me to our backyard and asked me what I could smell. I said, ” It’s something, some kind of plant.” ” Do you know what kind of plant?” he asked. ” No.” In the corner I discovered night jasmines, grown five or six feet high. My father wore a smile in his voice, ” They only bloom at night.” I hadn’t thought about it then, but that makes it a sort of loner plant, blushing beautiful only when no one is around, like the shy child who smiles only alone, and to the mirror. He said, ” You should stay up for the eclipse. You’re awake that late anyway.”

Okay.

I sat with a flannel over-shirt on, outside on our deck at 3:25am staring at the night sky. The moon was almost fully eclipsed, glowing a deep orange with only a slight dark crescent. I was falling asleep waiting for something more meaningful to happen and realized how few people were probably watching this event; even those awake to view it, like myself, were more than likely alone. A loner, lunar event. Available to all, but nobody cared.

And just then, feeling alone and small in sight of the cosmos, came the sweet smell of night jasmines.

Anybody interested in doing some music collaboration online? Add-on or modify these music tracks I made over the last week and send it back! Contact me if you want the original 4-track tape.

AT&T Commercial-Aspiring Track
Snow Track
Shoegaze Rhythm
Atari Jam

Anybody interested in doing some music collaboration online? Add-on or modify these tracks I made over the last week and send it back!

• AT&T Commercial-Aspiring Track

I saw a number of really good movies lately. The first is “Blow Up”, a 1960s mod style, London based film by Italian director Michelangelo Antonioni. The film presents the events of the day of a photographer who may or may not have photographed a murder in the park.

Originally based on a short story, Blow Up is very slow going and has a sparse plot, but it is dense stylistically. The cinematography is gorgeous and epitomizes the mod movement. Fans of literary criticism will also have much to chew on as uncertainty saturates the film, and a number of symbols and plot devices charge the film with enough intrigue to warrant multiple viewings.

The next film is was banned when it first came out in the 1960s. À bout de souffle (”Breathless”) from French director Jean-Luc Godard is perhaps the most well-known film from the French New Wave movement. While the plot of a French criminal and American ex-patriot being in love is interesting, the noteworthy features of this film is it’s revolutionary cinematography. Shot entirely on hand-held cameras with bits of improvised dialog, Breathless was shot on location in Paris on a very small budget. This is the sort of film that will either love or hate. Word of warning though, the beginning is rather slow, so give it a good 30-45 mins before making your judgment.

The last film is the Marc Forster/Zach Helm movie Stranger Than Fiction, starring Will Farrel and Maggie Gyllenhaal. Stranger Than Fiction is the modern tale of a man named Harold Crick who begins hearing the voice of a narrator that seems to be telling his life story. Annoying and concerned, Harold tries to figure out what is happening after the narrator announces his eminent death. Like the recent offerings of children’s movies (Shrek, Cars, etc.), Stranger Than Fiction projects a movie of two layers: while the scene-to-scene story is enough to entertain anyone, scholars will be especially pleased to see the interacting layers of metafiction pulled off brilliantly as Harold participates in a story while aware of his own fictional nature. If you aren’t a fan of Will Farrel movies, give this one a chance; Will Farrel employs little, if any, of his slap-stick, ridiculous humor style and instead shows a refined self, employing his unique humorous tone only when appropriate. Indeed, one could point to this movie to demonstrate that Will Farrel has more to offer than just his wit.

I drove my grandmother to the optometrist and she asked me to take the old road back, instead of the highway, so she could visit a friend. The old road is out of the way and miles longer than the highway, nestled in a valley of farmland and horse trails. I pulled off the road and drove until the sounds of cars and people melted away into the silence of the breeze.
Rose is my grandmother’s ninety-six year old, wheelchair-bound friend. She lives with her daughter and personal nurse Sally. After minutes of ringing the doorbell, I found myself sitting on Rose’s bed while she explained that one day she was going to walk again. I felt incredibly out of place. I tuned out.
There was a large painting on the wall of a little girl, sitting in front of a mirror holding her hands upon her cheeks and making an surprised look, with a sagging magazine between her knees. A beautiful actresses face could be seen in the pages of the magazine, the face that girl was attempting to imitate.
I thought about the more general case of celebrity worship, of simply of our inspired desires. Here was this woman envious of the ability to walk, and I was sitting next to her, envious of I-don’t-know-what. I couldn’t bring myself to want anything in her presence: I’m young, I can walk. She said I was “very tall” and “very handsome”, and I’m sure she meant it.

I ride my bicycle with camera in tow. I notice a sign upon a fence. My ride stops then, for a photograph.

I hold my hand straight and let the shutter blink. I think:
Why does the shutter need so little time
to read a sign which states,
“No Admittance”?

I sit up, Polaroid in hand,
excitedly passing the minutes.
I do not know why, with such a clear sign,
I felt surprised at all.

The whites of the photo turned to grays of the photo, and by the time it was done, no photo developed at all.

“No Admittance”, I suppose.

I’m at the Sacramento airport right now, waiting … which seems to be what everybody else is doing as well. Uncomfortably, people sit alone, while surrounded by other people who are also alone. I don’t know the history of our culture, but I’m curious as to when it became rude to prod a perfectly good stranger into conversation. Although here I am with a laptop in my eyes, an iPod in my ears, sitting saturated in my own controlled senses.

Still, the airport is a decent place to people watch. Even if you aren’t engaged with one another, you can still watch and wonder, not receiving conversation but still enlightened by presence alone.

Is that poetic? “Presence alone”?

I smile! Across are two strangers smiling in each other’s faces. One can feel a metaphysical connection emanating from them, inspiring the rest of us, if only minutely, to appreciate another. Or perhaps that is my own desire to connect, coming out from my eyes. Ironic then, that I should “talk” in blog than face to face.

When I look up they are gone, and that is the end.

I finally bought more 120 film for my Holga, 5 rolls of Kodak 125px. After watching the the 60s film, “Blow Up“, I’m quite inspired to take more photographs. It’s an expensive hobby though…
I took two classes this summer, an English course and an upper-division math class. My English grade was an A — tomorrow is my math final and it just might become my second failed college course. The first, fittingly, was also a math class. If I do fail, I won’t be bothered so much that I have to take the course again, but rather that I wasted (sort of) tuition money.

I have been alone since my roommate left for China, but I have not been absent in the presence of life.
I was laying on my bed reading “Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close” when I noticed my blinds swaying with the air. They sighed gently, in and out like breathing. Through my window, the room breathes, through its lips, breathes in air to sustain me, and I as its symbiont keep it clean and dwell within.
The stairs outside my room extend through the wall to act as my neighbor’s stairs too. When they march up and down the stairs, the wood underneath buckles and moans, moans in my apartment too, as though a ghost is living with me.
A talking ghost, if you listen closely. I’m less than a mile away from a 9200 watt radio transmitter. With such proximity and power, it vibrates the wires of my stereo, even when not plugged in, and I hear the faint murmurs and whispers of voices singing songs; of a ghost, off the stairs, singing songs even when I’m not there.
So as you see I am not alone.