You're a Celebrity. So, Gimme Your Playlist.

Jessica Cakuls's Playlist

Release Date: May 23, 2009

Total:  23 songs 

$29.67 

Jessica Cakuls currently sells bridal gowns to the tri-state area's most discerning clientele.  She can be seen in syndication on "Watching Meta Cook...and Then Eating It," "Yes, That Is a Pancake I Pulled Out of My Purse," " How to Eat Five Breakfasts on a Table for Four," and "Obsessive Painting: The Formative Years."   If you are lucky enough to catch her in the flesh, she is probably out walking her dog, and you will probably see her with her face lifted to the sky, staring at a leaf on a tree.  She will one day be a financially independent individual; how she does this is yet to be revealed to her.  She believes in love, she once thought she was Jesus Christ when she didn't sleep for two weeks straight, and to her, everything sparkles.  Literally.  

"Scythian Empires," Andrew Bird.  "Really, this whole album is just remarkable.  It was so hard to choose one track, but 'Scythian Empires' and its lyrics - 'kings of Macedonia' - reminds me of Alexander the Great, whom I'm obsessed with.  This album was playing when I first hooked up with a very dynamic guy I fell in love with, and I will always remember being in his apartment, and the blue light caused by the night's falling snow, as we kissed.  It was heaven.  I also did my first painting as an adult to this album.  Incidentally, I cannot break up a song from this album into another playlist.  To me, the album is heard in it's entirety, or not at all.  It's utterly sacred to me.  Andrew Bird, you rule!  I'll follow you anywhere." 

"Sunday Smile," Beirut.  "Again, another album which, in it's entirety, I consider to be perfection.  This is the song that drew me in, but I heard about the band from Evangeline Lilly's playlist.  I was haunted by the 30 seconds I heard.   This album has seen me through from the most carefree of afternoons, walking my dog, to crying my heart out, in the dark of night, thinking of all the things I no longer have, and the people I've done wrong.  Utterly life-changing, and so simple in how it does it." 

"Sweet Thing," Van Morrisson.  "This song is simply perfect."

"Little Star," Madonna.  "Such a different type of song for her, a lullaby, actually.  I think of it as a song to the person I know I am, the invaluable jewel, the little star that was created in love: 'may the angels protect you, and sadness forget you, little star...'  I lost a man I had loved about a year ago, and he didn't really like Madonna's music, but he absolutely loved this song, and because of him, I looked at it with new eyes.  Amazing, what another person reveals to you."

"Last Goodbye," Jeff Buckley.  "I can remember, as an insomniacal high-schooler, being awake at about 2 am one morning, and this clip of new music from then-unknown artists came on MTV, and this was a featured song.  I had to stay awake to wait to see the whole video, and it was a song that played in my head for literally weeks on end and definitely was all I could think about all that next day in class.  I was obsessed with him, and I thought that I would meet Jeff Buckley before he became really famous, which I knew he would,  and tell him how much I loved his music, and that he would fall in love with me."

"Lonely Girl," Pink.  "This song is such an anthem for me.  Starts off with uncertainty, and then she uses the same lines in the chorus to shout out her strength and defiance at the end: 'I'm just trying to make all my dreams come true....'  It's amazing, and in one song, I see for myself the journey I know I will take as a person.  Thank you, Pink!  Your grit and your angst are the hottest and finest we've got from a woman in pop today."

"Read My Mind," The Killers.   "There’s something about their guitar licks and their lyrics, to me they are on the verge of a U2-like stardom.  They have an amazing ability to be completely and even painfully honest, but there’s a hopefulness about it all that cannot be denied.  When it comes down to it, they really just make me feel so good, and so alive, and reinvigorated.  Rocking out to this tune makes me feel so inspired and alive and energized that I feel like I could fly.  I want to jump all over furniture when it plays."  

"One Tree Hill,"  U2.  "An over-looked, absolute gem off of 'Joshua Tree,' another amazing album.  Utterly impossible to choose just one from their entire repertoire.  I think they're the greatest rock band, unparalleled.  They gave dignity to rock and roll music.  You could no longer call it 'The Devil's Music' when they came onto the scene.  Any song by U2 tends to be so gripping, so emotionally intense  for me, I actually need to prepare myself before listening to them, because they're just too much.  They hit a raw nerve that I allow to be struck only every so often."

"Paper Planes," M.I.A.  "I can be fairly 'in the cave', in terms of pop culture.  When I heard this song roll out during 'Slumdog Millionaire,' I was floored, by the visuals onscreen, and by this sound: so intense, so gritty, and so totally inspiring to me.  I was utterly a changed person when I heard it.   And I feel like the biggest bad-ass whenever I hear it.   A friend of mine made up a dance to it and one of my fondest memories, ever, was when she casually performed it, at work one day.  This song resonates through my cells."

"Smooth Criminal," Michael Jackson.  "Say what you want about his recent legal problems and accusations, but this man put the 80's over his knee and spanked it, and it walked away with glitter on its ass from his glove, and we all loved him for it.   No one had better moves, no one had better production, and no one will forget his 'Thriller' album cover.  I think every current pop artist who doesn't use an electric guitar owes a lot, a lot a lot to MJ as an influence.  This song energizes me in such a way... all I want to do is dance - VICIOUSLY - when I hear it." 

"Trouble," Cat Stevens.  "This song plays in the first 'Alias' episode, when she's telling Danny about joining SD-6.  It's such a heart-wrenching song.   I knew I'd heard it before, but it's forever tied to those images, and that sadness for her character, whom I'm obsessed with - I love spy chicks.  When I'm feeling frightened or sad, this is the song I instinctively start humming, without even realizing." 

"Hey You," Madonna.  "She's the Queen, and she out-Beatled the Beatles with this one.  It's totally the opposite of everything she's done, and I think it's utterly her most inspiring, most spiritually evolved song.  It cuts me right to the grain, so I can only hear it every so often. When I first heard it, which was by watching the video, I broke down in tears and cried, literally, for hours on end.  Heartbreaking, inspiring, beautiful, hopeful, and just divine....like her!"

"The Twist," Chubby Checker.  "Probably the most classic of oldies tunes.  It puts me in a good mood immediately.  How can you not be?  The Twist is like the first dance move every single person does as a toddler!  Go Chubby C. for coining the move and making one of the happiest songs ever created.  Pure joy."

"Light My Fire," The Doors.  "My dad was the music guru in our family.  I was listening to the Doors, Carole King, Simon and Garfunkel and Cat Stevens since I've had memory.  This was always my favorite, and I'm forever grateful to my pops for introducing me to music in such an unconventional, fun, and psychedelic way.  Go dad!" 

"Girl From the North Country," Bob Dylan.   "This song kills me.  I forever associate it with the older brother of my best friend from junior high, whom I absolutely loved and adored and who I wish I still spoke to....The nostalgia of it, the heartbreak of it, the wistfulness, the bittersweet hope that Dylan clings to...it's archetypal."

"Michaelangelo," Emmy Lou Harris.  "Off of her 'Red Dirt Girl' disc, this is my favorite song of hers, which is a very difficult statement to make, because she's an amazing voice, an amazing song-writer, and she got Bruce Springsteen and Dave Matthews to do back-up vocals for her.  This woman don't play.  She's a legend in country music and for good cause.  She will split your heart right open with her voice and her lyrics and you will come crawling, begging, crying for more, it's that good." 

"Lola," The Kinks.  "The first time I did karaoke, this was my song.  It always puts me in a good mood and it invigorates me like the first shot of Jameson for the evening.  Plus, the embracing of youthful trans-gender love in a big city?  Hello!  Way ahead of their time, these guys.  They rock hard and they do it with so, so much fun, you know you want to sing and dance along."

"The Zephyr Song," The Red Hot Chilli Peppers.  "I imagine my dog, Diego, running around in the sand, while the sun is setting, on a beach in southern California.  I'm going to get him there someday soon, and when he's scampering around wildly, his floppy ears flying in the breeze, in front of a radiant pink-orange sunset, this song will be playing, and life is going to be utterly, divinely, perfect."

"Rainbow Connection," Kermit the Frog.  "Um, hello!!  This is the sweetest, most innocent song ever!  'Who said that every wish, would be heard and answered, when wished on the morning star?  Somebody thought of it, and someone believed it, and look what it's done so far....'  Who else but Kermie could take metaphysics and noetics and sugar it up for the Playskool crowd?  Jim Henson is a genius, as his influence still remains to this day."

"I Believe (When I Fall In Love it Will Be Forever)," Stevie Wonder.  "I heard this in 'Hi-Fidelity,' and, well, fell in love with it.  It made me believe in love again, in the possibility of it, in the existence of it, for me, and that it will be everything I want, and that God will answer my prayers.  Stevie can make you believe in anything."

"All the Umbrellas in London," The Magnetic Fields.  "This song kills me.  I don't know how they did it, but they managed to make an utterly sweet and sad ballad inspire me, and make me feel hopeful.  And the lyrics are TT: 'cause I've got a sense of perfection, and nothing makes much sense at all....' " 

"Chicago," Sufjan Stevens.  "I first heard this during a road trip to NYC.   The lyrics are amazing, because even if you haven't sold your clothes to the state, or slept in parking lots, when you hear them, you know know this guy is still describing your life.  It pushed me over the edge and I broke down in tears.  Again, another tune that is utterly brilliant in it's ability to both make me cry and yet inspire me fully.  At times I feel like he wrote it about me, and that I'm going to do something really amazing for mankind, and this song will be sung about me." 

"It's the Hard-Knock Life," 'Annie' Soundtrack.   "When I was little, I wanted to be Annie.  I wore a dress that was pink but I called it my 'Annie' dress, and I even wanted her dirty Depression-era clothes, and of course her fabulous wardrobe once she moves in with Daddy Warbucks.  I just wanted her life!  I thought I was Annie.   This soundtrack to the motion picture always, always lifts my spirits and reminds me of being a kid." 

So, fellow celebrities who are not quite as famous as you one day will be!  Let me know what you listen to and why, and why you think others should listen to it, too.  I want to know what's on your mind and on your Ipod.   Music is a gift and should be shared. 

Original Disposition

In the beginning, there was chaos.

Our philosophy class was a terrorized, perilous alternate universe smothered with villains with superpowers who were draped in the clothing of liberal arts students…and Jamie?  Jamie was Superman, striding through the door, cape flying, with a single bound he’d leap on top of the desks, and with x-ray vision and undefeated strength, he incinerated the apathy of our classmates, who thought philosophy sucked and that everything was relative – and who were mostly there because it was a required course.  Jamie had a giant, Gold “T” burning on his chest, and that T stood for Truth.  Jamie, more than our teacher, cut through the fog and cleared a shining path to the best qualities inside of us, that reminded us of what makes us good, what makes us human, and our classmates loved him for that.

He was the most courageous person I’d ever met.  He would slice your argument to the bone with the one question he knew you couldn’t answer, and it would defeat you.  And you’d either love him for it, or you’d hate him (and most people hated him).  But if he knew your argument was superior, he’d gesture with his arm, as if to say, “You…YOU deserve to go ahead of me”, and he’d praise you, with genuine kindness, and say, “That’s excellent.  I never thought of that.  That’s very good.”  And if the truth was unpleasant, and no one wanted to go near it, Jamie could deliver it. This was why I worshipped him: because he could do something that I admired, and that no one else had the strength to do. 

Jamie had another super-human ability.  See, I have this, ultra-intense, hyper-affectionate way of conducting myself in a relationship, and Jamie was the only man I’d met who could withstand hundreds of kisses in a single day, excessive petting and small headlocks in public (where I’d throw my arm around his neck, tightly, and say “I love you so much I’m gonna fucking kill you”) and phone calls on the hour asking “whatcha doin?”; it’s an infra-red type of attention, which no mortal man could digest.  Jamie not only absorbed this radiation; he’d kick back, underneath it, and toss on a pair of shades and smile.

You know those photographs of deep space that are taken with the Hubble Telescope?  With those yawning gases that are blue and pink and bright orange, stretched like gaping webs across stars and galaxies?  In my eyes, there is nothing more beautiful.  Black holes, dark matter, comets, spiraling galaxies, I think you can look to all of these, and use them to explain and understand not only life, but human behavior.  I have this book that Jamie gave me a month after we met.  We smashed ourselves on the bed together to look at it, flipping through each page, and when we were done, I kissed him square on the nose and I said “You got it.”  

The first time I got Jamie to myself was at a lounge, near school, where the drinks are 10 bucks, everyone speaks Russian, and the lighting makes your teeth a matte, white-blue.  He sat right next to me on the leopard-print couch and while I’m holding my glass, that has glowing ice cubes, I’m trying so hard to be still, I’m determined to find a way to lock myself down to the furniture, or just contort myself, over my knees, all while I’m trying to face him, because I’m vibrating SIMPLY because I’m CLOSE to him. 

I day-dreamed about an evening like this, I actually visualized it, like, creatively visualized this, while I sat in class.  I imagined blue lasers shooting out from my forehead and into Jamie’s frontal lobe, and the lasers had a ticker-tape message that said, in capital letters: COME GET A DRINK WITH ME - YOU WANT TO DATE ME - THIS COULD BE GOOD.  And now, his arm and thigh are edging in on mine, it felt awkward to be sitting next to him, because I should have been in HIS LAP.  The darkness and the black-lights have made everything contrast, our clothing, and our skin, so we are bright blue and dark magenta blobs, floating among the black, and neon.  And the alcohol?  And his body right next to mine?  And we’re talking about things we both felt we’d die to defend?  This combined to form a certainty replacing the marrow in my bones, the certainty that my life was now different.  All of it was swirling, and spiraling, and it was pulsating with a heartbeat. Jamie and I were going to leave, eventually, and we’d leave together, and we were going to combine somehow, and anything less than that would have gone against nature.

Four years later, in a café, over eggs and pancakes that we’ve barely touched, Jamie is making a face.  It’s the face you make the moment right before you vomit.  Where you can feel the bile rising?  And your mouth is turned down, as if you’re trying to hold it back, but you know you can’t, because nature is, in fact, stronger than you, and it’s going to take over; and your eyes are lowered, because anything above the ground is nauseating.

          And then his lips parted: “that’s it,” he said, and then he was silent. This is his reaction to the confession I’ve just made, about something I’ve done, that I have to tell him about, because every cell in my body that can witness something cannot bear to leave him in the dark.  Jamie’s silence is unnatural, and it causes everything around me, in the café, to shoot forward at light speed, and pass me in a blur, and only Jamie remains still, and in focus, but he won’t even look at me.

Life, and dating, after Jamie, is goal-oriented:  Search, and destroy. This is not so much a thought, as an instinct.  Develop a laser-like focus for the type of guy who is Jamie’s opposite.  Disappoint all of them – and there are many - in a uniquely devastating way, like, by getting another guys’ phone number…at the party they brought you to… while you know they’re watching.

Because you’re no longer in a relationship, you now have time to focus on yourself, so in addition to new mating habits, your hair color changes, your uniform disappears, its replaced by abbreviated clothing, you start wearing high heel boots, and one day when you look at your reflection, you actually say, out loud, “that’s not even my face.”

One year after Jamie and I dissolved, I’m standing in front of this bicycle shop that has closed for the evening, and I’m watching these gliding spots of light on the window in front of me that reflects the traffic behind me, but it’s the kind of looking where you do it to settle something inside of you, where you don’t actually care about what your eyes are resting on, but they have to rest on something, because they’re open, only you wish, in that moment, that they weren’t, because you have just heard, over the phone, that Jamie’s body has been found in his apartment, and that he had hung himself.  And that it had been days before he had been found.  Someone that you didn’t even realize you were STILL taking for granted, has just been torn out of your life…again.  

Because Jamie is gone, you desperately need everything that reminds you of him.  You search frantically through old boxes in your basement, and tears are streaming down your face because you threw away presents he had given to you, and you would trade everything to get them back.  You are not sure if you threw away love letters he had sent to you, after he broke up with you: Did he really write those?  You remember walking down the hallway of your old apartment building, reading a letter he had written you, but was it real? Or did you dream it?  You keep searching, because if it’s true, if he wrote to you, saying “I’m sorry, I changed my mind, I miss you” then you’d have to find it, because it would exist, because you wouldn’t have thrown that away, right?  You couldn’t have been that angry, and that cold, right?  But you never find the letters. 

         I’m standing at the window of my bedroom, and I’m watching this radiant, hot-pink sun setting behind the trees across the street, and I’m on the phone with a friend of mine who knows quite a bit more about physics than I do.  And we’re talking about neutrinos.  Neutrinos are these subatomic particles that are so small, that if an atom is the size of a football stadium, a neutrino is smaller than a dust mote passing over the field.  They carry the energy and momentum that results during a chemical decay, and they have this partner, called the anti-neutrino, which is it’s opposite; It’s like a negative energy.  These random chemical decays, which rarely happen given the nearly infinite amount of neutrinos in the universe, are essentially the anti-neutrino, trying to break through. 

“Neutrinos are so small, and they’re everywhere, there’s so many we shouldn’t even bother counting, we may as well just shift the decimal and look at them as something greater, or singular, like a force.  What if they physically represent something metaphysical, that we can’t control, like the existence of decay, or death?  What if they’re like a scientific metaphor for why things end?  I mean, why do things have to end?  Why do we have to die?”  At this point, I feel like I’m really onto something, like, the people at Fermilab have nothing on me.

My friend digs in.  “So you’re saying, if most humans are like neutrinos, then Jamie was like an anti-neutrino…his composition in this life was essentially an anti-neutrino trying to revert back to it’s original state, or it’s original disposition, which is the energy that we come from, but we just can’t see…by taking his own life, he returned to something that was home, because he had never felt right in this state.”  “Yes, that’s basically it.”  “Huh…” he said. “That’s…pretty good.”

My ice cubes are glowing and rattling in my glass and I have to rest my head in my hand to stop my arm from shaking.  Jamie leans into me, his highball cocked in his hand, right next to his chin.  He’s glancing around.  “You know what made Stanley Kubrick a genius?  He had the balls to say NO.  When he wanted to light a film using only candles, what do you think happened?  Someone fucking created a new camera lens for him!  When he said  ‘No’, studio executives, who would have told God to go screw himself, would say ‘Okay, Stanley, that’s fine.  YOU tell US.  We’ll just be standing over here.’  He’d do 67 takes of people walking down stairs…just walking down stairs! – to get it perfect.  It’s true!  You can read interviews with Tom Cruise and Nicole Kidman.  They were pissed. 

He knew what was at stake, and he never compromised.  He was an artist because of this, because he pursued, perfection: he pursued the truth.  It’s so intense, I LOVE IT!  You know, if a man like that defeats you in a debate, you’re a better man for it. Always, always, pursue the truth, if you’re going to be an artist, you can’t afford anything less.  And surround yourself with people who do the same.  I need another cocktail.  Let’s go.”  

Are we meant to suffer?

Here's an entry I once published on an old blog I used to have, several years ago. 

Though much time has passed, and many circumstances in my life have changed, these are still thoughts I own.  I'm glad to know some parts of me are consistent! 

5.11 pm, may 19, 2005

Last night I almost got my finger chopped off while trying to shut my living room window.  It's one of those windows that's just the huge sheet of plastic and it has two little tabs at the bottom corners that are always rusty, and you have to push them inward in order to unhinge the sliding mechanism - this is the beauty that post-modern suburbia affords  - and, wouldn't you know it, the window was stuck so I had to pull it down while engaging these tabs.  I knew, prior to conducting this exercise, exactly what was going to happen, but the sick part is that I continued, and succeeded in smashing my finger. I'm pretty sure I chipped the bone.  And I screamed the f word so many times and punched the window so many times and with such force that it not only impressed the hell out of me but it woke my boyfriend and my mother, who were taking naps (not together, though).  The f word proved to be the majority of my vocabulary for the rest of the evening, occasionally peppered by the c word, the b word, and the g/d word, almost like I was a synthesizer set on "SCREAMING SWEAR WORDS", being keyed arbitrarily like a John Zorn piece.  What hurt the most was not my finger, although I was concerned because I had an incident when I was a kid where I banged my knee on a piano bench - no cut or anything - and ended up with a bone infection.  Now, I like my left hand, so I don't want that to be repeated.  But what bothered me about the situation was that I knew, I knew that this was going to be the result.  And I still proceeded.  Why? 

 

I don't know about other women, but when I get hormonal, I need chocolate, sweets, and fat as though I know no other reality.  While I'm at the Krispy Kreme window, chewing on a slice of pizza, I am fully aware of what I'm doing, and I know that it is not going to be good for my constitution.  I'll get a headache from the sugar o.d., I'll get fat hands from the salt and the fat, and I'll just generally feel like I've been thrown against a wall when I come down from the high.  But I still do it.  Why?

 

One could, if they wanted to simplify things, simply call it masochism.  But why does that exist?  If we know that it's bad for us, but we do it anyway, fully aware that it's called masochistic behavior, well, why don't we stop?  Alcoholics Anonymous has a term for behavior that we repeatedly engage in, even when we are aware of it's undesirable consequences: insanity.  That still doesn't solve the issue.  I know it's masochistic.  I know it's insane.  I know it's harmful.  Maybe I do it because it's harmful.  Why?  Because I want to destroy myself? 

 

Who are the people in the world who see evil in donuts, prostitutes, drugs, cigarettes, gambling, pornography, whatever, and simply say no?  Really, if you are one of them, and you are reading this, please let me in on your secret.  You have an obligation to mankind. 

 

I think humans like to destroy themselves.  I think we are, at any moment, fully aware of the implicit consequences in our harmful behavior, but we still like to live life frolicking about the pond, leaping around on the closed mouths of waiting alligators and swinging from the vines.  If I feel like I've been "good," like I've been working out, eating well, reading philosophy, calling my friends, keeping my room clean, I decide that I can handle buying another pair of shoes or getting a slice of key lime cheesecake.  But what I forget is that it only takes one step off the path and then it all goes to shit.  Because I'm not going to just buy a pair of shoes, right?  I need a skirt to go with it, and while I'm there I may as well pick up a new shirt, and some lip gloss, and since the sandals come in two colors...  Similarly, you don't eat cheesecake in a vacuum.  You eat it at a restaurant, where you want some cappucino to go with it, but then you're up all night from the caffeine blast, and you've just got to get a movie to zone out to while you're digesting the atom bomb of sugar and fat in your stomach, and then you stay up until 3, but whoops you have to go to class in the morning and on and on.  This progression (or regression?) is amplified when you bring in things like infidelity, drug use, gambling, etc.  Because who does coke at confession? 

 

There seems to be this consciousness lately that it's not good to dichotomize good and evil.  Well, if they were meant to be gray and fuzzy, they wouldn't exist as two seperate words.  I prefer to know what is good and what is bad, so that I make no pretenses when I am about to fall.  I don't know many people who can take one step down the slippery slope and walk that fine balance.  But there's also a difference between those who take that step, and know it's just a step, and those who take that step and think "F**k!  I totally messed up!  I may as well just jump off!"  I know I'm definitely the latter.  I'm still waiting for advice from those who are the former.  

 

However, I've noticed that when I do one good thing, it leads to another.  I didn't feel like flossing before I went to bed last night, but I did, and then I decided to read a Martha Nussbaum essay, because I was thinking about a girl I once knew who a friend at the time said was better for this guy that I liked because she was "smarter than me" and well, I just won't stand for that, so now I have a philosophical basis, predicated on the writings of Cicero, no less, as to why we have a moral obligation to provide material aid to our international neighbors. 

 

All that, just from flossing.

Hm...sounds a lot like life.

This photo above is not really a painting of mine.  It was a phase during the life of one painting that now looks absolutely nothing like this image.  But I had to document it because, during my baby's childhood - and yes, I do refer to my paintings as my kids - this particular moment, I thought, was especially captivating; trails of paint on the canvas, with the sun streaking across it's face.  I almost wanted to stop right here.  But I kept going: first, because I didn't have the courage, and second, because I knew there was a bigger story I wanted to tell.  

Here are the things I've learned from painting.

1.  If you don't lay a proper foundation, all the work you do has to be repeated.

2. It is impossible to duplicate.  You can get something close, but even the flies who kamakaze into your painting will tell you it's not the same.

3.  You start off with one thing, and it looks good, but you know you'll feel like a cop-out if you don't take it to where you know it needs to go.

4.  When you spend a lot of time on it, it shows.  When you don't, that shows, too.

5.  When you've thought a lot about it, it shows.  When you haven't, that shows, too.

6.  Color is everything.

7.  You have to be fearless in your exploration.

8.  You cannot judge either the process nor the finished product, because if you do, you won't want to continue.

9.  Having said that, you should still, always, retain standards, and raise them, constantly.

10.  If you allow yourself to get comfortable, you're going to feel like s***, and your stuff is going to look like s***. 

11.  You have to take chances in order to get anything good.

12.  You also have to know when to stop.

13.  Sometimes you labor and labor and it's genius; and sometimes, it takes one little squeeze from a tube, and it's genius.  Don't sweat the former, and don't diminish the latter, because the best pieces tend to be a combination of these two. 

14.  You have to clean your tools constantly, or you're not giving each new work it's clean, fresh chance.  

15.  Wear the proper attire.

16.  Make sure there's fresh air circulating.

17.  Heed your instincts, because they're all you've got.

18.  You tend not to have a desire when you don't have the material with which to express. 

19.  I wouldn't know, but it's probably a lot like birth: the idea is pleasurable, but it's painful until it's completely out. 

20.  You can always paint over.  

You know, shepherds used to break a sheep's legs, if they wandered off. Heh heh....

I am completely not tired at this moment, and it is 3:42 in the morning.

I have just impulsively started and finished two paintings tonight, and have two others, also begun this evening, on pause. One of these finished paintings, of which I'm especially proud, is called "I know not what I do". Oil. Black. Glossy. With blood-red splotches swimming helplessly towards an invisible vortex.

I cannot stop thinking about two people I used to be friends with, who no longer want to talk to me. I think about one of these two quite a bit more than the other, because I had been romantically involved with him, and truly believed myself to be in love with him. It is a testament to this belief that for the better part of a year since he had and I had started dating, and basically 9 months since I last heard from him, despite attempts on my part to speak, that he does not leave my mind, no matter how much I try to cancel him out, no matter how much I argue for his dismissal against my heart, and no matter how many different ways I try to mourn the loss of him, in order to just forget about him. I've prayed countless times; I've tried to tell myself he is deceased; I have written persuasive essays to myself as to why he's not worth one moment of my time...and guess the result.

It's a funny thing, how love and thought work. And, by funny, I mean, fucked up. What do we really have control over, if not our minds? And do not our feelings evolve from our minds, what we take in with our senses, what fits in like puzzle pieces to form a picture that says to us "yes, this is it, this works!"?

Moreover, in the grandest of schemes of things, what can it possibly mean, to care so much, so relentlessly, so devastatingly, for a person who doesn't even want to see your face?

I've spent much time lately taking stock of my life, of myself as a person, of my choices, my paths, and my actions, not to mention the root of it all: my thoughts.

I've arrived at this:

Change is nearly impossible, but it's not impossible.
If you desire change, you must get very, very comfortable with being incredibly, unbelievably uncomfortable, at every second of the day.

But if you are content with who you are, as well as the limits to your nature, then you accept certain outcomes for your life, and you also accept that you will not rise higher than these limits.

Now, this might make me sound like a negative nelly, so if anyone perceives that I missed a third, positive option, let me know, because I'm more than happy to be proved wrong.

So where does this leave me, a girl who, in some cases, doesn't have a clue as to what she might have done wrong? Or, in other cases, knows exactly what she did wrong, but won't be forgiven by someone? Or, is simply disliked, because of who she is?

I don't know the answers to this. It's also a lot harder to deal with people who explicitly refuse to make apologies for their behavior, even if their behavior is, on all rational counts, bogus. Because if you apologize to people like this, for errors you know you committed, this makes you weak. It's a no-win.

I've never had a relationship, in my entire life, that, if I so desired, could not be repaired.

This year, I've been blessed with four. 

Now, I have not forgotten the new relationships, and new old relationships, that have begun this year.  For those, I am exceptionally grateful.  But, the wisest person once said, even if you've got 99 sheep, when one lamb wanders off, you're going to go after it.

So, what do you do with this? With people who don't want you?

You move on. You remember that life is, fundamentally, change. That everything, as the Buddhists say, is fleeting. You cannot form attachments because there is no actual form to which you can actually attach.  I'm going to make a slogan tee: "Life makes a Buddhist of me." 

But the hardest thing for me has always been the very crux of life: impermance. I like it when the things I love stick around. But it's not to be.

Did I mention I have a real hard time with this?

How do you get wholly involved with anything, if you know that it's going to go away? Maybe the answer is, you don't. Maybe you get economic about it, and you exploit it fully, and wring it dry before you send it packing, denying it the chance to do it to you.

Maybe I already do this, and I don't even realize it. I've spent a great deal of time thinking I'm a much better person than the outcomes in my life are revealing me to be.

Or maybe I've been spared a great deal. After all, the way certain of these relationships have ended, I wonder that these people were ever emotionally involved on the level I was, and still am, with them.

It's the easiest thing in the world: you meet someone, they are nice and chatty and outgoing and you have the same interests. You hang out, you hang out some more, and about this person, you can say, "man, so-and-so is sooooo cool, I'm so glad she and I are friends!". But then so-and-so does something that chafes you, and you bring it up to her, and low and behold, so-and-so blows her top and insults you when she is confronted. This is her nature. Sure, she's real sweet when it's sunshine and rainbows, but what is that worth? You could meet a murderer on the street and be the best of friends in T-3, but does that mean they're a great person? Does it mean you should be near them when it's a full moon? H-no.

Relationships are built on the easy but they live or die by the hard. What matters is not how well you can shop or laugh together; what matters is how someone conducts themselves in a disagreement. This is the only way you can really know someone: when the gloves are on.  The good has to be good, but the bad has to be even better. 

So, after several years of two relationships, and several months of two others, I can now say that I know four people, but I know them no longer.

I know I haven't granted forgiveness to certain people in my life. And I know there are certain people that I simply have no desire to be around. I know that this is the case for the people who refuse to speak to me. After all, if you wanted to speak to someone, and have them in your life, even if they had hurt you, wouldn't you? Truly, what would stop you? Yes, some people are like crack, but either you 12-step them and get restraining orders, or they're in your cell phone. There's no in between; the desire to see them, continually, is either there or it's not.

So, for those not in someone's cell phone any longer, you move on. You find replacements, knowing that, unlike what one of these people said to you, everyone is NOT replaceable.  Every person is unique, and they, and only they, can bring certain things to your existence. If you view this any other way, you're not seeing the divinity in them. You are sorely missing the spark that makes them a unique gift, a brand-new song, a specifically radiant sort of light.

So you have to fill what these lights, now departed, left void. You have to find new music, different songs, and in your mind you may still be, all the while, humming old tunes.

Here's to new shows.

The Long Way Home

I took my dog for a walk this afternoon and experienced the most beautiful things.  

An elderly man was walking behind us and soon passed us when Diego paused to survey and sniff out the grounds.  Then Diego bounded off back on his way, and shook himself exuberantly while sauntering off towards the man, and I felt for a moment that a little family had formed in this moment, on this journey, and I had to laugh joyously over how full that felt.  The spots of sunlight on the ground patterned Diego as he bounced along "after" this man, who was now oblivious to us, and for a few minutes, we were like a little trail of ducks.  

I was listening to music on my Iphone and forgot about the song "Viva La Vida" by Coldplay on the playlist to which I was listening.  "I used to rule the world..." go the lyrics and the beautiful violin and cello chords that begin the song, and it reminded me that there's so much to learn, and the first step of this is being aware that what you used to think was true was only an illusion.  

I felt that it was time to turn back on this journey and head home, and something said to me, "Take the long way."  My dog and I turned down a street we'd never walked down, and I saw it curve away at the end.  If it were a cul-de-sac, and we'd have to double back, I'd be, well, bored, but I would take it in stride.  But we walked on, and as we neared the curve, I saw that it turned out and the street continued through, and the dead-end was an illusion. 

I heard the opening chords to "Once In A Lifetime" by the Talking Heads and remembered the morning I returned to classes at UIC after missing several days, after my break-up with Dayne.  I remembered walking in the throes of a group of my classmates, all of us fresh off the train, and it was a crystal-cold day, and my heart was completely broken, but I was listening to this song, and I saw the sunlight scattered through the hair of my classmates and on their hats and heads, and there was a subtle pulse to the rhythm of our walk, and I knew then, that everything was going to be okay.  

We passed two men standing near a garage, talking.  One of them smiled at me and I smiled back.  He was Indian, and he smiled at me like we were familiar.

We passed a woman in a red jacket, standing close to the wall of her house, tending a small flowerbed in a sill raised underneath her window.   

We passed a lawn and I saw four mallards nestled in the grass; 3 drakes and a hen.  Diego didn't notice, and I was glad, because otherwise their peaceful Sunday rest would have vanished.  They looked so content, just looking out upon this lawn, at the world that lay before them.  

We passed the wall of a garage that was utterly radiated with light by the setting sun.  It was so bright and nearly blinding that the only distinction I could see were the dark parallel lines created by the siding.  I was looking at the sun, with horizontal lines drawn in black, against the wall of this garage.  It was brilliant and beautiful and it burned in my vision, and I wished I could have painted it. 

We passed a little boy, across the street, throwing a tennis ball against his garage.  I remembered doing the same to our neighbor's garage, in the alley behind our house.  The boy stopped when he saw Diego sniffing around the ground.  I smiled at him.  He watched us, the ball in hand, his little windbreaker open, his hands at his sides.

We walked on and I passed under the branches of a coniferous tree and felt the long strands tickle the top of my hairline.  

We passed another tree and I saw a scattering of baby pine cones forming.  I wondered how some formed in some places, and not in others, and thought that God must choose every single formation of these, and He must have a record of all of them, as well as His reasons for creating them in certain spots, and not in others.

We walked along the sidewalk and I realized that I was really walking vertically, only, my perspective afforded me the perception that I was walking along a level horizontal.  What an odd thing, I thought, to be in this head, and for everything to be relative to my perspective.  

We continued and I saw a silver-gold splash of light on the pavement; as we neared it I thought it must be freshly fallen water, and as we got closer, and were finally walking over it, I realized it was tar, carelessly scattered across a bit of pavement, and it was as black as night as I stepped through it's painting.  

We passed a bundle of sticks that had been gathered and bound with cord.  There was a formation of wood that looked like a rotted root, dug out of the ground.  It was gnarled and caked with dirt, and I leaned in for a closer look and saw a mountain range scattered in brown.  

I sang along to "This Must Be The Place" by the Talking Heads as we crossed the street to my house.  

Several times during this journey, I knew, that if I had taken another way, all this, I would have missed.  

Gandhiji

I watched the film "Gandhi" the other night and, as the quote by Einstein goes, I could scarcely believe that a person such as this had walked the earth.

You see films, and hear stories all the time, about epic rivalries between warring gangs, warring factions, warring nations.  And when the underdog decides to take a stand and fight back, it inspires.  

Yet, here is a man who knew he had to walk into the ambush, with no protection, and you could see the light and joy in his eyes as he argued, with enthusiasm, about the fact that he would be severely beaten, and he inspired his countrymen to do the same, and moreover, to do it with joy.

After this, watching a film about a war seems....  What is really being conquered?  Not the mind, which is what matters.   

This is the beauty of satyagraha.  It is the practice of a person or group of people in possession of truth.  

   

"If they kill me," Gandhi said, "they will have my body.  But they will never have my obedience."