un-live

I want to enter a parallel universe in which I am aware, but not alive.

listlessnesses

Full of life and other stupid things, I set out to do nothing (and do it well).  Instead of doing nothing, I did a lot of something that just seemed to AMOUNT to nothing.  "You do nothing well!"  "Well...you certainly do nothing. Oh well."  "You're not well! You do absolutely nothing!"  "You fell down a well doing nothing, OH WELL."  And the quotable continue quoting themselves, imagining their fingers forming invisible quote signs with their hands as they speak.  That's true.  Can't deny the truth, even when the truth is usually not worth telling (not in daily conversation, at least).  If I could shut my mouth for ten seconds, maybe I could tell the truth?  Maybe it's ...

NOT 

WORTH 

TELLING.

Then, nothing turned inside-out, and something became everything -- up side facing down.  To make a long story short: I've been there and back, mostly around and down.

shatter down

It's weird to see an ending thing, when we really only want to see beginning things.  

Sweet sunshine and warm nostalgia -- one place isn't the same place forever

.... and therein lies the problem.

Nightly Poison

The other night, I saw three infomercials I've never seen on television before. And, 

believe me, I am a connoisseur of late-night television,

so this is kind of bizarre.

Here is a clip from one of them:

I'm glad I have these precious treasures to lull me to sleep at 4 AM.

PS: Klee really is a dead ringer for John Waters. Just sayin.

Ends

Impending death, expected death, the grey funeral song of winter... all things that compel one to travel long lengths during a short day.  

Not sure what I think, not sure if I'm even thinking.

One of these things once = all of these things forever.  

So strange, and sudden.

Time is such a bizarre, short thing.  (The emphasis on short.)  Most of this is left unrealized until it goes from being a short thing to being a heavy thing.

Time is heavier than it has been in a while, right now.

dreamSCRAPES

The other day I woke up from a dream (that I do not remember), scratching across my ribcage with my pointer finger.  I felt a strange burning, as if a cat had scratched me, but it was 5am so I was way too tired to worry about it.  (Also worth mentioning: the Klee Irwin colon cleanse informercial was blasting on my TV.)  I woke up later that morning with a chunk of skin under my pointer fingernail, and I instantly remembered waking up scratching myself.  I got in the shower, the scratch swelled up and burned under the warm water, like a fresh wound.  I'm kind of confused, dreams and realistic pain have been a theme with me lately, though I always believed the pain to be mostly imagined (such as the pain in the teeth dreams).  It's really strange to realize I actually inflicted pain upon myself in a dream, most people are in a semi-paralytic state during dreaming.  I am a former sleepwalker, and maybe I am capable of dreaming and overcoming the restraints this semi-paralytic state places on the human body.  

Regardless, ugh.... unsettling.

My thoughts are edible things (evidently).  The strangest of the strange things being that:

Every dream I've had lately has involved root-melted, bloody, dangling, lassoed-by-a-nerve-sinew, teeth hanging out of my gums.

... In these dreams, I feel situational pain -- the kind of stinging pain I would not get from simply having a case of teeth-grinding amidst sleep.

A years time, in rational thinking, would have eradicated this strange dilemma.  But...no.  No.  NO... this has been haunting me for about.... 2 years to the day.

"On many an idle day, I've grieved over lost time.  Moaned, and groaned, and rolled my bones... but there is no lost time." 

living

I AM LIVING INSIDE OF THIS COMPUTER.

hey...

hey you --

it's winter out there. 

(good thing it's warm inside of a computer.)

longhorn lobotomy

I can't seem to focus on finishing one drawing right now. Instead, I'm manically working on about 12 -- overworking them to the point of ridiculousness and back (just the way I like it).

I had a dream last night that I suddenly decided to move to Chicago, but I had to drive there myself. I google mapped it in my dream, and it came out to be 11.5 hours, and the bizarre thing is -- I've never Google Mapped Chicago before, so there is no way I'd know the length of the drive. I woke up today, and I Google Mapped it out of curiosity, to see how close I was...and I was right on (11 hrs 28 min, says Google). A lot of weird stuff happened then, but that's extraneous (involving plastic, glowing santa heads in my car, and lost keys to a mysterious spirit-filled house I was supposed to live in for a week) . Maybe I should move to Chicago, maybe that's what this means. Maybe I also need to find a job and build some sort of a productive adult life, since I'm drawing 12 drawings at once and having dreams about Google Maps, wanderlust, and glowing santa heads.

Anyway, here's a simpler drawing I have (actually) finished. (My scanner is horrible, beware of that).

that silly grey matter

returning.

after trying out tumblr for a little...i've decided: blogspot it is.

a horrible attention span coupled with impatience is a deadly cocktail. i enjoy drinking it DAILY.

anyway...i'm working on a video. It is a compilation of videos i filmed this summer into indian summer. it's an autobiographical documentary...of sorts. and trust me, i use the term loosely. it's going to involve music, animation and other assorted insanity eventually, right now i'm just editing the clips in a very raw manner. i have a preview video edited, i'm going to post it here. this is an extremely rough sketch, but worth viewing nonetheless, especially if you don't like to think. (i don't want anyone to think when they watch this.)

disconnected memory strain is a brain pain, a pain in my brain that i gotta learn to DRAIN.
oh, grey matter -- you are so SILLY!



-kcr

vic

my body is a warm blanket right now and i regret nothing (ever). this would not make sense to anyone except for me, which is why i keep this strange, secret thing to which no one has complete understanding of but myself. there is a strange buzzing, and other-worldly fuzzing of the extremities that i cannot lie and say i haven't been familiar to before. it is just nice to have this back again, for myself, for secret, and for now. i needed this now and i have this now. it is as if the color red merged with blue and green, but in a really peaceful blending, to create a color that has never existed before; unrecognizable to the eye but calming to the overworked brain. all of the organs in this body -- this body that witnesses this particular hue -- are reduced to sweet-smelling, and softly-crisp dryer sheets (smelling of childhood, smelling of clean). i want it back, but i have it back -- just not the way it was. i want it never and forever. for this and for lying alone, wishing it gone.

foreverevernever

late hate come brain fail is fogging up this stupid incandescent lighting (which is already hard to see). what i say is what i say, but it's never what i mean. come on, brain drain, drown out dead nights that (kind of) bleed over into early mornings. i'm listening to winter music in the fall. i don't want winter, but i do want to listen to winter music. my parting shot: i want whatever infomercial that will lull me to sleep tonight instead feel like a warm hug. i just want a warm hug.

brainmelt

In some groggy, half-cognisant way, I think I saw every infomercial on television the other night.

i wrote a careless love

i woke up today, with this horrible feeling. The kind where...I know I had experienced something less than desirable, and I know that it must have been in my subconscious. I soon shook it off, chalking it up to whiskey and sleep aids. The day goes on, mostly -- especially summer days misplaced in fall (even though I truly dislike humidity; it was excusable).



-k

My birthday.... ugh.... 25 is just an unfortunate number. It just... sounds drab. If you repeat it over and over again, it gets increasingly more boring within its 3 syllables with each repetition. Clearly, i'm over it.







(new drawings, the first of which is an actual illustration of a recent nightmare)

the great brain drain

Tonight, when I was driving home, I looked over at the mountain and it was covered in cloudy mist. Then I thought of that one time I was driving by that same mountain at 4am, and it was actually on fire. Well, not the whole mountain, but there was a fire on top of the mountain. To this day, I haven't found out what that was all about.

On another note, I've been having bizarre dreams lately. I take that as a sign that I really need to change my location, or something of the like. Enough with the weird dreams, though. From bleeding/falling out teeth, to all of the skin on my torso peeling up (revealing my ribcage and internal organs).... these dreams are driving me crazy.












-k

by nighttime, my fingers shrink. all of my rings feel looser. i also listen to the same albums on repeat, but only at night... and only after a certain time.

Lately

Tonight I performed in a bimonthly cabaret/piano bar series at the Allentown Brew Works in .... Allentown (in case that wasn't already obvious). It was great to get to sing again, and be swanky, and have a reason to wear red lipstick, high heels, and black (not that I don't do that anyway, even if it does not befit the occasion). Anyway, the point of this is that everyone should come to this piano bar/cabaret series, because after the set list with the performers, it's like... karaoke with a live piano player to accompany you. So, that basically means no horrible midi accompaniments that come with karaoke. The only catch is, you have to bring your own sheet music, or pick from a list of standards that are available to sing. And unlike karaoke, you might not want to sing Bon Jovi or Boston. But, definitely check it out. http://www.thebrewworks.com/events/

black dress, high heels and red lipstick are my favorites:



After parking my car in Allentown tonight, going into Brewworks for the Cabaret, I had a conversation with a man solely based on the fact that I went to NYU and have an NYU bumper sticker on my car. Apparently, he went to NYU for grad school. I like making random friends, lately at least. And making friends from bumper stickers is even more random, and pretty rad.

It was kind of strange -- the other day I dropped off film to get developed and scanned, from my huge pile of film that I've shot but haven't gotten processed. One of the roles was from my visit to South Carolina in the Winter... so weird. I mostly photographed my Grandmother's house (where we were staying). It's such a strange, forgotten place. One of those places that had its hey day, but has been forgotten over the years. It really reminds me of "Paradiso Perduto" from Great Expectations. I hadn't been there for (at minimum) 7 years before the visit this past Winter, and it seemed dwarfed and shriveled, compared to my youthful perception of it. Looking at these pictures, even, makes me realize how quickly time has been going. My birthday is already around the corner (next week), and it has already been over half a year since I took these pictures, even. Time crawls when you're really young because all you know is based on anticipation and the future; and time flies the older you get, because your perception of life is mostly based on reflection upon past events, and hour-to-hour existence. I can't wrap my mind around all of it, it seems. I want everything slower, all of the time.

the epically strange day

Thursday was a really strange day, I thought. Strange for one particular reason unnecessary to mention; but also strange in that "waking up from a bad dream and not remembering it" sort of foggy brain haze. It was a day full of staring into space, which is okay, those are necessary every once in a while.

I finished thursday, (well, technically "started" friday), off by going to bed at 4am and then having this recurring dream of traveling on a road that suddenly becomes vertical. So I wake up Friday morning, and remember that I am pet sitting for my neighbor's dog. I go over to their house, get the dog and take it down the path to walk, even though she said I don't have to walk him if I don't feel like it. For some reason, I just feel like i should. As I'm walking down the path, I see something moving by a tree in my peripheral vision, in someone's yard. I turn around, quickly -- and in a paranoid manner, thinking some large cat of prey is lurking in the corner or something. I see an owl, on the ground, looking back at me with its bright yellow eyes and wings splayed out to the side, sort of struggling in an attempt to fly. He is obviously hurt, and he is absolutely gigantic. I kneel down and cautiously rub him on the back, to calm him down (which surprisingly works). I run home, forcing my neighbor's slightly overweight dog to run down the path with me (for some reason I am wearing wedge heels, too....how mysterious and impractical). The dog is extremely stubborn and slips out of his leash twice -- I have to chase after him ... good thing he's not fast.

I finally get him home, and go to my computer and look up the Wildlife Conservancy's number, change into my moccasins and run like a bat out of hell down the path, with my camera, phone and house key (even though I leave the screen door unlocked). The owl is still there when I get back, so I call a representative from the Conservancy, who ends up referring me to a woman who does wildlife rescue in the area. She is currently dealing with another case, so she instructs me on how to safely get the owl contained so it can be transported to a vet. I run back again, carrying a big box and a stiff board to slide underneath the box. I keep running into people's fences, I am wearing red lipstick, my hair is crazy, and I am in a vintage western-style shirt and skirt. I'm pretty sure I look like I have completely lost my shit. I get there, and it takes about 20 minutes to get the owl to calm down and stop gripping the ground tightly with its talons, so I can slide the board underneath and carry it back to my car. I am eventually successful and I carry the entire thing all the way back down the path to my house, making sure he can't get out, because those talons and that beak can do some SERIOUS damage. I am pretty sure I am pulling a major muscle in my back, and he is hooting the entire time in the box, as well as making some hissing noise.

I get back to my yard, and my neighbor is out mowing his lawn while I am frantically carrying a large box that has hooting and hissing noises coming from it. I get to my car and realize...I have no gas. The gas light is on. Luckily, my dad took my sister's car, so I just use his, even though it is really confusing and I have no clue how to drive it. So, I load the owl up in the car, making sure it is secure, and I drive about 10 mph under the speed limit the entire way to the animal hospital in Bethlehem, making turns like I don't know how to drive and am scared of tipping over. The owl keeps making noises in the back, the same hooting and hissing, which is good, because I want to make sure he is still alive. I get him to the vet and everyone seems really confused as to how I was able to get him in the box, and carry it around and such. I feel pretty awesome, actually. They take him back and I wait in the waiting room for a long time.

Eventually, they come out and (awkwardly) ask if I want my box back....and they say that he passed away while he was back there, that he was old and was going to die anyway; but it was great that I had made an attempt to rescue him.

Apparently, they can use him for veterinary classes and educational purposes, so at least that is a positive thing. It is just so weird, all of that sweating and almost getting grabbed by talons, and running around my neighborhood like I am possessed and....the owl died anyway. Not that it is my fault, and I do feel really positive about being able to help -- even in some nominal way. At least he didn't get eaten by a hawk, or a dog or anything...but still. What a strange, and really sort of soul-crushing day. So bizarre.

Luckily, things have gotten better from there. Between margaritas & champagne, lurking the Allentown Fair, hiking and other assorted events, i've covered over the bad with lots of good.

and.... so it goes

... the other pictures from this week can be viewed at http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2524975&id=825294&l=953762c4cf (copy/paste it, for some reason the HTML for the link isn't working)

-k