nonstop a gogo

so my bag arrived this morning right before i left for work, and everything was a bit compressed but present, accounted for, nonexploded. beautiful.

another day, another dollar. well, not really: i don't get paid. really, i don't understand what is going on at this damn job. but after my first caffe this morning (quality stuff, pure and strong) I am liking selecting slides from weird movies from years past during my mornings (all the while I get to update my blog and keep everyone posted as to the events of my days that are always gogogo. At this pace, I am not sure returning to Canada will be very much fun :P Anyways, we'll see where this internship goes, I am figuring out a bit more as to the 6-week plan, I would love for this experience to be a valuable one.

Allora, so yesteday, I was a bit out of it and managed to walk straight into a plate glass window. boy, was that funny. it was just so clean, so clear. There is still a smudge from my oily face and the impact of my lips, che bello. I felt so dumb. SO dumb. But my fellow student intern let me know that she too had done the same thing her first week here, and hence me and Gaia bonded a bit. I am getting a bit tired of the work, because somehow I want to be the super productive person I always am. Lunchtime found me in a local street fair and walking around the truly monumental monumental cemetary closeby. Today, however, I am just going to take it as is, slowly, taking my time, enjoying it. There is an opening at the gallery here, a little cocktail for a small show of photos of Hermes fashion (usually Grazia Neri does stuff that is more political, moving, thought-provoking, but fashion, per me, va bene).

Italian is creeping into these blogs, watch out people, before long it will be entirely in Italian since I am getting more and more exposed to la vita italiana. So yesterday, I left work early, a bit frustrated but happy I had escaped, to go on my British Airways sponsored shopping spree. I met la Marina in Piazza del Duomo and off we went to tackle the affair. Trusting her completely we wandered into Zara, H&M, Mr. Kenzy, Celio... all the good deals in town. The typical Italian way of shopping is specialty, going to one store for one thing etc etc. All those famous names Armani, D&G etc. are a bit pricey and well more for brand whores than myself. Finally, after a nice chit chat at a cafe, pausing from failed shopping, Marina and I hit up United Colors of Benetton and found stuff on the first try: three quarter light grey pants and a light blue polo. One stop later and we had gotten a cellphone... now to figure that out.

My life here is insanely busy, much more than it would ever be at home, so all the details are down here.

The evening was something quite special. Dorota, Matilde's mother, teaches English and we were going to a dinner hosted by one of her students for the students in her class (who range in age from early twenties upwards). Before going, I thought: nice Italian dinner, should be great. Well, I really didn't know what I was walking into. It was as if I had entered a wild soccer game, this one of conversation... la partita di conversazione as I like to call it. I could barely follow what was going on, moving my head to and fro. Matilde was trying to keep me up to date at first, and told me of the circle of Italian conversation (from sports to gossip to politics to love and over again). I was at a total loss. I have been totally lost in the past few days but it doesn't really get to me at all somehow, like the lit sign in the piazza del duomo tells me 'everything is going to be alright'. So to help me, some of the guests and hosts filled me in and ask me questions to me directly which was especially nice. What was also a big help was the wine tour of Italy I took last night. From Venetian prosecco, to hearty sicialian 13% alcohol red wine, to homemade tuscan wine, to dessert wine and finally to blueberry grappa. Needless to say we were all pleasantly tipsy by the end of the evening and the ride home was, shall we say interesting. I laughed so hard when I understood broken English or understood a joke in Italian (none of which I remember very well). The one thing I do remember is Dorota, who kept going on the balcony to smoke never closed the screen (to which there was an uproar) and when she did, it sprung right back open in true comic fashion. I may not have managed to say very much, but amidst the storm of conversation, jokes, and brazil's world cup game playing in the background (to which someone always yelled out eccola (here it is!) in anticipation of a goal) I had a real good time.

With my bag arrived finally, I can now settle in more and truly embrace life in Milano. We'll see what new adventures await.

gli azzurri vincano!

Men in suits riding motorcycles. Women in stilettos on bicycles. The people here are so put together that I can't help but be self-conscious... but in a good way (aware of how I look but not really caring what other people think... it's not like I can understand everything they are saying). Fine shoes, tailored shirt, nice pants... is as if many of these Milanesi have walked straight out of a fashion catalogue. Men, straight or gay (and now I really can't tell), wear really nice clothes that, well, are real fine. Things match, look new, go together. Yea, life's different here: the temperature is warmer (up for interpretation...) the breezes are cooler, friends are closer, people are more open, and the emotions are purer (you'll see with the world cup game shown in the piazza del duomo later...).

In the afternoon, when most of you North Americans were just getting up, I was going through boxes of slides in the archive here to find slides from a certain distributor so that they could be sent back to them. Picture a room with lots of file cabinets and piles of orange boxes stacked up on all of them with names of famous people and normal subjects. Sorting through pictures of drugs, people eating, festivals, awards, gay pride, architecture, I tracked down a couple of folders from the desired distributors. After an afternoon sorting through the dusty piles, I went home on the Metropolitana, now savvy of its directions.

Once home, we went to the GS supermercato, although Niki was convinced it wasn't anything special, I thought it was an adventure. Hamburgers shaped like Mickey Mouse, pesto in a jar, rabbit and carpaccio at the meat counter, and tons of varieties of juice. I think I am going to spend much time at the GS...

So night rolls around and Italy is playing Ghana at the World Cup. And of course, we're going to see it in the Piazza del Duomo. Although the Duomo has been under renovation for the past 6 years, the openness of the square along with the beautiful architecture of Vittorio Emmanuelle II were breathtaking. Seconds after our arrival, Italy scored their first goal, thus we were lost in flag-waving, firework-burning, horn-blowing, cheering Italians. The game was intense, drama mounting high, seems like gli azzurri complained of foul-play every two minutes, the Milanesi cheered and booed but were sometimes silent (rare according to Marina). And the night was spent cheering and walking around downtown Milan, quite picturesque I might add. I've noticed the Italians are a people of pure emotions: telling all, showing all, being open and direct. They'll swear ardently at the bigscreen (ma che cazzo fai!) and shake their hands up to the Madolina on top of the Duomo when things go wrong. But in the end they were happy for a victory of 2-0 against Ghana. Saturday we will see the Italians up against the States... oh boy, let the sociological study begin! Once my bag arrives, I will bring my camera everywhere and will click click click away and send out photos. I've been missing quite a bit without my stuff. The good news is I have a mini shopping spree in the works thanks to the missing bag, so today, I'll leave work a little early and go a little crazy on British Airways' tab.

Benvenuto a Milano

After 14 hours of travelling, I arrived in Milano only to discover that, unlike me, my bags had not made it to Milano. Although pissed, I was welcomed with smiles and open arms by my old friend Matilde, her brother Niki, and Mati's friend Marina. I was resolved not to sleep my first day until the evening (although I was exhausted) so I stayed up and tried my very best to make conversation in Italian and get to know my surroundings. Assuring me that losing my bag was part of the experience (luckily I had another bag packed), Mati drove (as the rest of us held on for dear life... another authentically Milanesi experience I was told by Marina) back to her place. It was really nice to just sit back, and not sleep, and follow the conversation and already feel myself improving in Italian. Mati's family apartment is a nice and cosy two bedroom apartment with a nice breeze. The balcony overlooks a courtyard that feels so typically Italian, with bright coloured walls and many other balconies. Somehow things here are more lively. After much conversation (which, as Marina also tells me, typically centers around love and food), we finally went out to dinner. I feel wonderfully at home with Mati and her brother and mother Dorota, and look forward to spending much more time with them. My first day was spent sitting around, listening and laughing with my new company, still arriving mentally.

Dinner was tough, only because I grew increasingly tired. But with such lively company (and a bit of wine), I managed to stay awake through dinner, learn a bit of slang, and become more aware of the North-South animosity that exists in Italy. Still without bags, but well fed and arrived, I figured out where the hell I was going the following day (to WORK!) and was asleep without much trouble at all.

The following day, still a bit jetlagged (but of course!), I awoke at 7.45, had some cornflakes (yea, they're called something else...) figured out the whole shower apparatus (you have to sit down, no shower curtain, wild) and was off on the Metropolitana to work. Of course I had to get a bit lost. I overshot the street I was looking for, but wasn't too far off (at least I wasn't on the other side of the city). I am now working at the photo desk (i think...), scanning images using this super nifty slide scanner called the nikon super coolscan 9000. With a name like that, it can only be supercool. I'm a bit hungry but I'll get used to this Italianate schedule soon. For now, that's my story. I'm glad I am here, a bit pissed my bag didn't want to come with me, completely out of place, swimming in Italian, needing a cellphone, and a familiar face. Give it a few days and I'll be super.

save the last dance for me

Inspired by a recent encounter with the Canadian crooner's (Michael Buble) rendition of the classic...

Just go...
Well we've already gone
Already split our separate ways
But now I let go of your hand
And spin around the dance floor
as you step the other way

You can dance all the rest of your dances
with the guy who gives you the eye
You can smile all the rest of your smiles
for the man who brought you close
Just remember not to give your heart away
and save the last dance for me

I know we may lose touch and forget
the feeling of being in each other's arms
Somehow we'll dance back across each other's path
look deep and see how far we've really danced
having maybe waltzed the night away on the moon
or tangoed across the milky way
perhaps, sadly, we'll have drifted to other planets

Maybe touch and sight will bring us back from distant dances
recalling just where we left,
rewind the kiss-walk-away
and bring you back in my arms

But for now, go and dance the night away
I'll waltz here by myself for tonight
but will go out dancing once again
How far I'll be able to go, I don't know
Because I can't forget the last dance
I've saved the last dance for you

that feeling

note to people: much of what I do is creative writing, so the shit written may not be happening... the craft of a writer to conjur up emotion... keep that in mind children

that feeling
of raw skin
exposed
everything hurting
throbbing
bleeding
pain
right at the center
screaming silently
pulling you in
to the boiling
moaning
pit of your stomach
silence
spurs more pain
as you see the david enter
in your soundless reverie
and another gnat lands
on your bleeding flesh

cut off

4 hugs a day for survival
left unfilled

daily emails, phone calls,
attempts

broken communication

in silence i lurk and discover
a digital reality i don't want to know
a bright light screen message i shouldn't have discovered
i shouldn't have had access to

but i can't help but feel the fact
that our hearts forever bleed
and i feel wounded
when i shouldn't know anything at all

really i should just be hopelessly pacing
imagining you dead on the road
slumped over the wheel
cell phone ringing in your pocket to another voice message

really i should still be holding you up
to honesty
to loyalty
to your pedestal

you think it's fine, it's great, it's far away
with so much distance, what's the point
of continuing
holding on to nothing

so we'll talk and exchange empty pleasantries
while foundations crackle and spark
smouldering when you think them stable

i don't think this should be continuous
or that pearly dreams last touchless months apart
but when silence reigns
and i still remember the lively blue of your eye
and the touch of your skin
I feel sinned
I feel rotted
I feel stained

unfinished

I have never reached the end of a notebook
Writing in its final pages
but never filling that final third
leaving a thick region of white
untouched, unfinished, potential
limitless possibility, the call of cyberspace
perhaps I was just meant to write forever
on line

on one hand

time flows, never stopping
hearts beat, forever bleeding

no button to press pause
to watch your wounds, wrap in gauze

years compressed in memories
seconds molded, relived pleasantries

looking forward, one hand's worth of days
blink, and left are no fingers' worth of stays

photographs

these pictures
they're useless
seconds captured
seconds already lost
already fading
how I felt just then, I now
reconstruct:
remembering,
imagining,
forgetting....
these images won't tell me
how I felt, or
what I lived
just a monument
a posed smile
blurred lights
all gone away

Titanic

legato violins always struck me
as the best music
for sinking
cry in time
with the Merry Widow Waltz
As your world becomes tilted
no longer parallel with the horizon
the two will meet and merge
hope floats away
in lifeboats

Absent

All I want to do is make sweet love to you,
make you smile that infinite unfading smile,
send you to the moon.

But you gently lay me down
and turn my head aside.

My heart swells
beats a rhythm
anxious.
Full
and spinning

You peel away my skin
I tremble
Feel misplaced
Unnatural

I reach
To grab onto nothing
Hearing reverberant echoes
Lover’s laughs

Hollow hallway
I stand
Head pressed
To the wall
Body pressed
To the wall
Staring, hearing my heart
Beat through the wallpaper

when cravings go too far

give me
a wall
of chocolate

something to dig
my teeth into
eat pure satisfaction
swallow

something to press
my face against
get involved entirely
drips down my nose

something to melt
against my body
forceful grip of desiring
a moment of death

I'd really love to cry, but I'm not really sure how

Put on your running shoes
shorts
and tshirt

Go outside
Take a deep
breath
exhale

Simply start
running
Any direction will do

Run hard on the concrete
Let out
loud sighs
angry yells
vicious swears

Slowly
It will release
You will taste
the heat, the waste
bitter
exhale

You'll feel
the sweat, the pain
jagged
release

And slowly
the gates will open
water will flow
and you'll stop
to lie, curled up
on the grass

wanting to feel close
to yourself
to the earth
catching shuddered breath
releasing uncontrolled tears

roll down
your cheek
and give
the earth
to drink

Nursing light

I don’t want to share this with you all, I just want to keep it close to my heart, clasped between my palms, a delicate and fragile light, pulsing with its first breaths, still young, I want to hold it close and nurse it, perhaps never let it go. Love only shows up unexpectedly, happening organically, growing slowly. Sometimes I wonder how long it will be until we fight, until we are separated, until we have to deal with unfaithful actions. But I can’t even think of that. I can’t see beyond this moment, here, you, now, sharing who I am without thinking about it, no filter, nothing held back. Open hearts connecting. There are things about you I could grow to hate, but I don’t care, it doesn’t bother me. They’re superficial, I’m attracted to so much more, to something within you that always smiles. It’s something light that we share, passing from one to another, smiling and growing. I could just lie wrapped in sheets, in pause, in words, in laughter, losing myself. Even silence is sweet, subtly powerful. It still grows, we still explore, and it feels like it’s been so long already. I just want to let it silently germinate, breathing, growing brighter.

We shall grow old

You're growing old
growing hair in places
I've not yet discovered
You start forgetting me as I fade from your vision
You hallucinate wonders that don't exist;
leafy branches sprouting from out heads
We worry about you
We don't know what to do
You crumble before our eyes
Somewhere within you there is this supernatural will to live we cannot understand
You keep going
We keep envisioning the day you die
But you cancel that dream, you postpone the fateful day we all know is coming
We've seen you unravel as time continues spinning under your feet
And we look behind as another part of you falls to the ground
You keep walking
We are all worried, don't know what to do
You keep walking
And we keep walking too
Shades of yourself glimmer beneath the surface
As you fade from our vision and we fade from yours
There is no connection, we're losing you slowly
Your face is now unfamiliar
We try to piece together the words of your struggle
Smiling hopefully
Looking, wanting so much to make it work
But we can't help you
We can't
we're losing you
You're going away slowly,
fading,
falling out of reach
One day we'll forget you too,
forgetting how painful it was to be forgotten
to not be recognized before your eyes,
Although you smile at my being here, do you remember me at all?
Have you left me far behind already, just smiling because you haven't yet forgotten how?
You waste away and I wish I could hold on to you even more tightly
But I too grow tired seeing the grains of sand just fall out from my hands
Please stay
Don't go
I worry miles away, hearing of your slow decline, your slow fall into darkness,
your slow fall into a painful yet comforting darkness where you once again know nothing,
the freshness of a baby to the world
but this time your eyes close gently shut

Capital F

I just see myself standing in the middle of the river, mouth pointed up towards the heavens, screaming. Yelling for the Gods to hear my frustration, letting all that anger out. Feeding the tension in my muscles out in breath, in sound. Release any way that makes you feel good, whatever is your practice. You're just as good as everyone else, it just hasn't materialized yet. Rejection somehow fuels me to try and succeed more. Rejection also makes me comedic. I will do what I want whether you sustain me or not, so HA! Look it up, I'll be up there some day, just not here, not with you people. I swim in the class of the elite and I am silently bubbling at the bottom of the river Styx, steeped in mud, you thought I was slothful. Capital F. Boo.

Dipping into the Stream

BETWEEN BLUE AND BLACK
At night I look up at the sky
the sky indulged in deep midnight blue
blue as my feelings dipped in lukewarm water
soaking, dripping dry
in the sun tomorrow they will wait
wait watching the rays of the hotness
as one after another passes by
twirling around over up down
as now it cycles in the midnight water
swimming, where inside men stroke rhythmically to no destination
I leave for Canada on Friday I think
Lost in thought, wishing you were back, smoking a cigarette
burning, marking me, heartshaped fire
night of death, diner, pancakes
thick maple syrup oozes over
and my eyes wander asleep
next to you past midnight
the darkness wraps me
carrying me from the arms of lady day
and you sing me a lullaby with notes of moon light
softly shining
cradling rocking
a mind lost again
to sleep and night
goodbye

--

UNDEFINED DESIRE
Why is mystery so sexy
sleek curves of silence
unheard, thousand possible names
I can call you anything
In my mind you will do anything that I desire
It makes me hot to think of possibility, ambiguity, undefined
You take many shapes and draw no lines
not drawing the chalk outline on the street
and curling into it to call it home

Retreat from Myself

Some days, you feel like you are holding the reigns and guiding things along. Today was not one of those days. Who really cares about details, grant/program rejections, grade results etc?

I woke up this morning with that feeling that your mind is on fastforward but your eyes are registering everything normally. It feels like someone is yelling in your head, blasting a soundtrack quickly through your head. It's as if the day should end in five minutes, and you should just stop and go back to sleep.

So this is going to be bloggy- ugh- sorry folks. Lately, I've wanted to take a retreat: stop everything and evaluate the stuff in my life. What do I want? Who do I want? Where should my family be? How should I dress? Can I be super organized? Will I write a book?

As an art history student, and just an aesthetic person, I feel that besides personality and expression, style is the best way to express your identity. I feel like you need to renew yourself- life is about constant change, constant flux... seems to be the only thing that is constant in this existence. Although I enjoy my paint stained pants, and memories get attached to them, there comes a point where I should say goodbye and fins something that looks better, fits better. Am I becoming fickle? I don't really know, but I am becoming increasingly conscious of my appearance and what it communicates to others. In one glance, there's only so much you can say in silence. Why don't things depend more on the get-to-know-you part? Or is that first glance electric no matter? Perhaps if you base yourself on looks, you'll attract the moths to your light... only its the wrong light.

I just need some peace right now. To reconstruct all that's falling apart, seeing ruin and sensing an impending fall. Not a good feeling. So I am going to write, and write some more. Let things flow out and go to sleep, hoping tomorrow classical music will play at a nice, regular pace

What is it really?

If you think that passing glance excited you and made you take a second look, you were soon deceived. Your eyes begin to focus and you start to think, that's where it all goes wrong. The real answer is to loosen up and let those inhibitions slip off your shoulder, Madame X. Then, you'll be able to lose yourself in whatever you fancy. And, tomorrow, you probably won't remember through splitting beats.

Sculpt the body, sculpt the mind, until you cannot move another inch. When the two become fused into an irresistible whole, then you've liquefied desire. Maybe you too will come out of the sea and express all the carnality of Aphrodite. It's not explainable, it's a little bit of the divine, losing a bit of yourself, le petit mort... a trip around the moon and the sensation of swimming with the stars.

Worth

Are you really worth it?
Broken heart, failed beginnings,
lost in cyberspace

Will I fall back whole
Watching the pieces crumble
Thinking: who am I?

Seek to please the world
You're left without foundation
Be a good boy, live

Ambiguous hush
Not one communication
What is the message?