thursday, march 27
Till I Fell in Love with You - Bob Dylan
album: Time Out Of Mind (1997)

Well my nerves are exploding and my body's tense
I feel like the whole world got me pinned up against the fence
I've been hit too hard; I've seen too much
Nothing can heal me now, but your touch
I don't know what I'm gonna do
I was all right 'til I fell in love with you

Well my house is on fire; burning to the sky
I thought it would rain but the clouds passed by
Now I feel like I'm coming to the end of my way
But I know God is my shield and he won't lead me astray
Still I don't know what I'm gonna do
I was all right 'til I fell in love with you

Boys in the street beginning to play
Girls like birds flying away
When I'm gone you will remember my name
I'm gonna win my way to wealth and fame
I don't know what I'm gonna do
I was all right 'til I fell in love with you

Junk is piling up; taking up space
My eyes feel like they're falling off my face
Sweat falling down, I'm staring at the floor
I'm thinking about that girl who won't be back no more
I don't know what I'm gonna do
I was all right 'til I fell in love with you

Well I'm tired of talking; I'm tired of trying to explain
My attempts to please you were all in vain
Tomorrow night before the sun goes down
If I'm still among the living, I'll be Dixie bound
I just don't know what I'm gonna do
I was all right 'til I fell in love with you.
10:26 PM

wednesday, march 26
today dad would have been 61.

strange to think of him as this old.

he would have looked amazing.
2:57 PM

monday, march 24
today my headache is round and deep. ----- i did watch the entire Oscar show. i love steve martin and peter o'toole. listening to o'toole, i was in mental ecstasy. ----- i didn't see Bowling for Columbine because i find Moore so visually appalling. also he is so very angry and i have a feeling he isn't balanced in his "reality". i thought he was an irrate, unhinged buffoon. by attacking bush in such a childish manner he (in my opinion) shot himself in the foot. "shame on you bush" - it's so condescending. i hate that. who made Moore god? i found adrien brody and the other Pro-Peace speakers much more effective and eloquent. also i loved when a few of the people mentioned the US fighting men and women soldiers. steve martin saying at the end he hoped the troops enjoyed the show, that it was for them. adrien brody mentioning his friend who is in kuwait. maybe i'm too old-fashioned but i still care about delivery. to hear michael moore be such a (like i said) condescending frat boy (no offense meant to nice frat boys) - it diminished his intent. what WAS his intent? to me he came across more rash and insane than the people he criticizes. i guess he has a lot of self-confidence and he's building his persona. overall: does no one spend time composing their speeches? ----- saturday night i found out i have the vocal range of blondie. i'm not saying i sing as well as she, but her songs are most comfortable for karaoke. life goes on.
5:33 PM

friday, march 21
"SUFFERING: MURDERED BY LIFE: In her great work on the body in pain, Elaine Scarry lucidly notes that the pain of others is but a transitory fact in our own consciousness. Is pain something you cannot share? Even more, is pain something that can be said at all? It is undescribable, writes Virginia Woolf. You can know the thoughts of Hamlet, but you cannot truly describe a headache. For pain destroys language. Philoctetes, the Greek warrior bitten by a snake, is abandoned on the island of Lemnos to his fetid wounds and his horrifying screams of pain. His speech is punctuated by animal screams and grunts, by the monosyllables of inarticulate suffering. And when Conan Doyle, in one of his eeriest stories, sends a scientific expedition down to the very center of the earth, all that the explorers receive, when they touch the planet's core, is a terrifying scream which almost makes them lose their minds. Pain, writes Scarry, resists becoming an object of language. So pain is best expressed by those who donnot feel it but speak in the name of pain. In a famous page, Nietzsche says that he has decided to call his pain "Dog." "It is equally faithful, unobtrusive and shameless, equally fun to be with... and I can scold it and vent my evil tempers on it..." -- Carlos Fuentes in his introduction for The Diary of Frida Kahlo
7:03 PM

wednesday, march 19
"And the day came when the risk to remain tight in a bud was more painful than the risk it took to blossom." -- Anais Nin
3:33 PM

friday, march 14
saw Onegin (1999) movie with Ralph Finnes, Liv Tyler and Toby Stephens. i liked the movie a lot. i remembered being younger and diving into sadness. dreaming of men who were in truth mean or unprepared or both. i've been cynical of people who say we attract what we "need" or seek... it may be true. i complained about being unhappy with love but looking back i don't think i was willing to change. it feels like i was trying to act without a script or clothes or any idea of mySelf. i do wonder how much closer i am Now. ----- i've taken off the main link to this journal, from my homepage. since i am planning to interview, i don't want to color strangers' first impressions. to think i could have moved out of here twice this past year. both times it didn't feel right and didn't seem smart. is this time my big chance to toss caution to the wind and do extraordinary things? how many more chances will i have to strike off my regrets?
11:01 PM

tuesday, march 11
"To burn always with this hard gem-like flame, to maintain this ecstasy, is success in life. Failure is to form habits; for habit is relative to a stereotyped world; meantime it is only the roughness of the eye that makes any two things, persons, situationsŪseem alike. While all melts under our feet, we may well catch at any exquisite passion, or any contribution to knowledge that seems by a lifted horizon to set the spirit free for a moment, or any stirring of the senses, strange dyes, strange flowers and curious odours, or work of the artist's hands, or the face of one's friend. Not to discriminate every moment some passionate attitude in those about us and in the brilliance of their gifts some tragic dividing of forces on their ways, is on this short day of frost and sun to sleep before evening." Walter Pater (found by ashley c.)
10:40 PM

da Vinci at the MET... from afar his drawings are bubble bath. up close you discover entire armies, madonnas with children, more than reality. it was nice to see jae and amy. it had been 7 months, a heartbeat in this town. i am very very tired after the full day. have also decided Vegan restaurants in nyc are not for me. they may use healthy food but the combinations must be lethal.
10:27 PM

sunday, march 9
i've had a very busy weekend. saw the matisse-picasso Moma Queens exhibit thanks to roberta. it is beautiful and interesting to see the comparison of their work. i Love matisse now. he was incredible. i still however dislike picasso, save his blue period and his elegant drawings. i didn't know the two were friends and competitors for 50 years. it's a worthwhile show except the tickets are $20 which i find insulting. so many people can't afford to pay for art. why should they be sifted out? unfair. ----- yesterday i went to a 5+ hour free symposium on "Metaphorical Gestures" at the Austrian Cultural Forum. it was good for me to hear some intellectuals speaking and a few of the thoughts were interesting. for the most part it was disappointing. there were two women, both "artists", both old and both wearing red boots. they were totally cuckoo. i hate it when i see irrascible females because it touches on my dislike of female hysteria. i know men can be hysterical as well but it's somehow easier for me to ignore them. one of ladies was arguing there is no such thing as having an abuser be a victim. she used romania as an example saying she had worked there extensively and she mentioned the "securitate" but she said NOTHING. she used the country because she probably knew no one could retort. i didn't feel comfortable to ask what the heck she was yelling about. ----- a lot of the discussion centered around memorials built about the Holocaust. there were 5 main speakers who gave 30 minute lectures. then there was a break and afterwards 8 of them got up for a round table discussion. i saw a lot of missed opportunities though simply following long sentences with big words , spoken in foreign accents engaged my brain in a way that has been frosted over this winter. actually the best person to hear was the most concise, eloquent, and universal speaker. he mentioned in england a man asked his ashes be turned into an egg-timer so his family would remember him every morning. i think that's sweet. overall, i forget that even though people may be old and have an education, they aren't mature.
7:29 PM

wednesday, march 5
if i don't start taking a yoga class again i will implode. i used to meditate every day but after my disappointing experience at the Himalayan Institute and their pushy "you must join us" attitude, i stopped. besides winning the lottery, i don't know what else will take me out of this valley.
3:40 PM

monday, march 3
today was 03.03.03
11:12 PM

sunday, march 2
note 1: i have to get a simon & garfunkel record.
note 2: there always has been love
note 3: tough times come in big batches
note 4: must research writing and sketching on silk

"I passed so many vacant acres and looked past them to so many more vacant acres and looked ahead and behind at the empty road and up at the empy sky; the sheer bigness of the world made me feel lonely to the bone. The world is so huge that people are always getting lost in it. There are too many ideas and things and people, too many directions to go. I was starting to believe that the reason it matters to care passionately about something is that it whittles the world down to a more manageable size. It makes the world seem not huge and empty but full of possibility. If I had been an orchid hunter I wouldn't have seen this space as sad-making and vacant - I think I would have seen it as acres of opportunity where the things I loved were waiting to be found." The Orchid Thief by Susan Orlean
7:43 PM