Dodging The Apocalypse!

girls going into club, early saturday eve near hollywood blvd.

2009-07-25T15:46:00.001-07:00

los angeles friday july 3

2009-07-04T17:22:00.000-07:00

decemberists in may

2009-05-22T09:45:00.000-07:00

thanks to Gary L who got me a pass to see the decemberists at the palladium last tuesday night

GOOD GOD WHAT A GREAT SHOW

and thanks Gary for letting me steal your mobile uploads from your facebook. i'll send you a coconut tree for your farm

shara worden was a revelation to me- bought my brightest diamond's "bring me the workhorse" the next day

i haven't had a rock crush in a long time, but this girl's special

go see this tour if you can, is all i'm saying...

2009-05-22T09:32:00.000-07:00

weloveyouso

2009-05-18T12:16:00.000-07:00

came across Spike Jonze's little blog weloveyouso

I like the links here

and this pic, which includes some FEET from a little project spike and I worked on

ok, he did most of the work, BUT I HELPED

on a mac (well, this mac) I can't create a link? jeez

ok- cut and paste this: http://weloveyouso.com/about/

last saturday

2009-04-20T17:26:00.000-07:00

Love After Love

2009-04-20T17:23:00.000-07:00

Love After Love

The time will come
when, with elation
you will greet yourself arriving
at your own door, in your own mirror
and each will smile at the other's welcome,

and say, sit here. Eat.
You will love again the stranger who was your self.
Give wine. Give bread. Give back your heart
to itself, to the stranger who has loved you

all your life, whom you ignored
for another, who knows you by heart.
Take down the love letters from the bookshelf,

the photographs, the desperate notes,
peel your own image from the mirror.
Sit. Feast on your life.

-Derek Walcott

2009-01-27T17:52:00.000-08:00

for no good reason, other then to prove, at one time, i was a horseman

christmased 2008

2008-12-29T00:04:00.000-08:00

rilke quote

2008-12-18T10:19:00.000-08:00

"O Lord, give each person his own personal death.
A dying that moves out of the same life he lived,
In which he had love, and intelligence, and trouble."
-R.M. Rilke

future

2008-11-06T14:10:00.000-08:00

Joy.

2008-11-04T22:08:00.000-08:00

Electing...

2008-11-04T15:38:00.000-08:00

walking to my glamorous Hollywood polling place (Selma Elementary!) I dared to hope.

like many of us, I will believe it when I see it- but it lloks very, very good right now

8 years ago i was the office online returns watcher ... there were @ 30 of us then

After 8 years of Bush, there are 3 of us here today...

surely we have hit bottom and are beginning the long hard crawl, right?

And one more parting shot:

Boo.

2008-10-31T18:33:00.001-07:00

Sense

2008-10-27T15:16:00.000-07:00

(author unknown)

Fall

2008-10-22T16:38:00.000-07:00

Coming out of these dark woods I have lingered in before
Circuitous paths betray me, I betray me
Sweet, sweet complication
Innocent vampire
Lost other
Armless wanting

I forgot how good and bad and bad again you feel
Never forget
Never remember
Back in your box you go
Into the sack slung over my shoulder
Wearying steps and lifted eyes and daylight up ahead
It is Fall, that is all

saturday l.a.

2008-10-19T01:24:00.000-07:00

The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock

2008-10-14T18:36:00.001-07:00

The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock by T.S. Eliot

S'io credesse che mia risposta fosse
A persona che mai tornasse al mondo,
Questa fiamma staria senza piu scosse.
Ma perciocche giammai di questo fondo
Non torno vivo alcun, s'i'odo il vero,
Senza tema d'infamia ti rispondo.

Let us go then, you and I,
When the evening is spread out against the sky
Like a patient etherized upon a table;
Let us go, through certain half-deserted streets,
The muttering retreats
Of restless nights in one-night cheap hotels
And sawdust restaurants with oyster-shells:
Streets that follow like a tedious argument
Of insidious intent
To lead you to an overwhelming question ...
Oh, do not ask, "What is it?"
Let us go and make our visit.

In the room the women come and go
Talking of Michelangelo.

The yellow fog that rubs its back upon the window-panes,
The yellow smoke that rubs its muzzle on the window-panes,
Licked its tongue into the corners of the evening,
Lingered upon the pools that stand in drains,
Let fall upon its back the soot that falls from chimneys,
Slipped by the terrace, made a sudden leap,
And seeing that it was a soft October night,
Curled once about the house, and fell asleep.

And indeed there will be time
For the yellow smoke that slides along the street,
Rubbing its back upon the window-panes;
There will be time, there will be time
To prepare a face to meet the faces that you meet;
There will be time to murder and create,
And time for all the works and days of hands
That lift and drop a question on your plate;
Time for you and time for me,
And time yet for a hundred indecisions,
And for a hundred visions and revisions,
Before the taking of a toast and tea.

In the room the women come and go
Talking of Michelangelo.

And indeed there will be time
To wonder, "Do I dare?" and, "Do I dare?"
Time to turn back and descend the stair,
With a bald spot in the middle of my hair—
(They will say: "How his hair is growing thin!")
My morning coat, my collar mounting firmly to the chin,
My necktie rich and modest, but asserted by a simple pin—
(They will say: "But how his arms and legs are thin!")
Do I dare
Disturb the universe?
In a minute there is time
For decisions and revisions which a minute will reverse.

For I have known them all already, known them all:
Have known the evenings, mornings, afternoons,
I have measured out my life with coffee spoons;
I know the voices dying with a dying fall
Beneath the music from a farther room.
So how should I presume?
And I have known the eyes already, known them all—
The eyes that fix you in a formulated phrase,
And when I am formulated, sprawling on a pin,
When I am pinned and wriggling on the wall,
Then how should I begin
To spit out all the butt-ends of my days and ways?
And how should I presume?

And I have known the arms already, known them all—
Arms that are braceleted and white and bare
(But in the lamplight, downed with light brown hair!)
Is it perfume from a dress
That makes me so digress?
Arms that lie along a table, or wrap about a shawl.
And should I then presume?
And how should I begin?

* * * *

Shall I say, I have gone at dusk through narrow streets
And watched the smoke that rises from the pipes
Of lonely men in shirt-sleeves, leaning out of windows? ...

I should have been a pair of ragged claws
Scuttling across the floors of silent seas.

* * * *

And the afternoon, the evening, sleeps so peacefully!
Smoothed by long fingers,
Asleep ... tired ... or it malingers,
Stretched on the floor, here beside you and me.
Should I, after tea and cakes and ices,
Have the strength to force the moment to its crisis?
But though I have wept and fasted, wept and prayed,
Though I have seen my head (grown slightly bald) brought in upon a platter,
I am no prophet—and here's no great matter;
I have seen the moment of my greatness flicker,
And I have seen the eternal Footman hold my coat, and snicker,
And in short, I was afraid.

And would it have been worth it, after all,
After the cups, the marmalade, the tea,
Among the porcelain, among some talk of you and me,
Would it have been worth while,
To have bitten off the matter with a smile,
To have squeezed the universe into a ball
To roll it toward some overwhelming question,
To say: "I am Lazarus, come from the dead,
Come back to tell you all, I shall tell you all"—
If one, settling a pillow by her head,
Should say: "That is not what I meant at all;
That is not it, at all."

And would it have been worth it, after all,
Would it have been worth while,
After the sunsets and the dooryards and the sprinkled streets,
After the novels, after the teacups, after the skirts that trail along the
floor—
And this, and so much more?—
It is impossible to say just what I mean!
But as if a magic lantern threw the nerves in patterns on a screen:
Would it have been worth while
If one, settling a pillow or throwing off a shawl,
And turning toward the window, should say:
"That is not it at all,
That is not what I meant, at all."

* * * *

No! I am not Prince Hamlet, nor was meant to be;
Am an attendant lord, one that will do
To swell a progress, start a scene or two,
Advise the prince; no doubt, an easy tool,
Deferential, glad to be of use,
Politic, cautious, and meticulous;
Full of high sentence, but a bit obtuse;
At times, indeed, almost ridiculous—
Almost, at times, the Fool.

I grow old ... I grow old ...
I shall wear the bottoms of my trousers rolled.

Shall I part my hair behind? Do I dare to eat a peach?
I shall wear white flannel trousers, and walk upon the beach.
I have heard the mermaids singing, each to each.

I do not think that they will sing to me.

I have seen them riding seaward on the waves
Combing the white hair of the waves blown back
When the wind blows the water white and black.
We have lingered in the chambers of the sea
By sea-girls wreathed with seaweed red and brown
Till human voices wake us, and we drown.

a card-sharper's trick

2008-10-13T11:37:00.000-07:00

"Oh absurdity of absurdities! How much better it is to understand it all, to recognize it all, all the impossibilities and the stone wall; not to be reconciled to one of those impossibilities and stone walls if it disgusts you to be reconciled to it; by the way of the most inevitable, logical combinations, to reach the most revolting conclusions on the everlasting theme, that even for the stone wall you are yourself somehow to blame, though again it is as clear as day you are not to blame in the least, and therefore grinding your teeth in silent impotence to sink into luxurious inertia, brooding on the fact that there is no one even for you to feel vindicitive against, that you have not, and perhaps never will have, an object for your spite, that is a sleight-of-hand, a bit of juggling, a card-sharper's trick, that it is simply a mess, no knowing what and no knowing who, but in spite of all these uncertainties and jugglings, still there is an ache in you, and the more you do not know, the worse the ache."

-Dostoyevsky, Notes from Underground

Bernini and The Getty

2008-10-10T22:20:00.000-07:00

today I ditched work and went to the Getty for the first time. I have lived in Los Angeles for 10 years now and this was my first visit. Cripes.

I went with a sculptor friend- very handy for answering questions...

No photos allowed in the Bernini room... the bust above is The Vexed Man by Franz Xaver Messerschmidt.

a clean desk means...

2008-10-07T17:11:00.001-07:00

it's no accident that my desk calendar was buried and stuck at July. I had a bit of a psychic shock in July (ooo- mysterious and dramatic!) and it has taken some time to work through it

one side effect is i just haven't given a flying f at work, but I'm still one of the most dependable people around here, even when I'm phoning it in...

but the fog is clearing, the integration of the shadow had begun (!) and life goes on regardless

a messy desk means...

2008-10-06T16:11:00.000-07:00

hi kids

can you find, on my work desk, the following :

Fraggle Rock DVDs
Letter opener
FedEx bill
What I am supposed to be doing
my vocatus (hint: it may not be there at all)

2 coldplay songs have the lyric:

"if you never try then you'll never know"

UPDATE: If you look closely, you will see under the pile o' crap, that my desk calendar is still on July 2008. And of course, this is October.

Vocatus atque non vocatus deus aderit

sunday i went to probation camp

2008-10-06T12:22:00.000-07:00

cassandra had me come to work with her to film the play she helped these young men write

they are in a probation camp in san dimas

i am very proud of cassandra

children need help in our world, children that are born to children, being raised by children

and when they get older and screw up they still need help...

you'd be surprised how wide a mind can be opened in a moment

this is saturday october 4 2008 in north hollywood

2008-10-04T21:40:00.001-07:00

finally, a day that felt Fall-like here Los Angeles... foggy, slightly chilly

(may I take a moment to curse blogger for the ridiculous difficulty it seems to have uploading simple photos? this is taking forever!)

we went to EAT and then bucks and then vinvoks, and stayed in the valley until dinner at zankou

i had a low-grade persistent headache all day

i dreamt of a badger last night. it was in the backyard of the house I grew up in. i squirted it with a hose to encourage it to move along, but it LOVED it. it closed its eyes and relished the water flowing over its badgery face. it moved closer. soon it had broken through the screen onto the porch, then it was in the kitchen. i nudged it with my foot and it rolled on its back like a dog. i expected it to go all feral and bite me any second, but it was a pretty gentle, rolly-polly (sp?) badger.

i tried to warn my parents and enlist their help in getting the badger out of the house, but ultimately I just nudged him out with my foot all by myself.

what the hell does that mean?

this site tells me:

A badger is a fierce little animal and to see this fellow in a dream will show that you have put up quite a fight and won out over your opponents. An injured Badger tells you to fight another day.

shocking

2008-10-04T12:12:00.000-07:00

cassandra shared this with me just now- it's a year old.

watching klein on colbert, she caused a little a chill when she pointed out that the last act of the bush robber-baron era is the bailing out of their friends

they didn't do all of their dirty work right under our noses- they did it right before our eyes