Don't know where this one came from, but hell, it's more cheerful than the Maya Deren one. Whatever, I like the exploding apple. Get yo' lazy ass back online, B!

Labels: Art

Beloved, you are the cure for every malaise.
My plinking around in Photoshop today (I've become addicted) yielded this little pictoral in-joke. Who's that boy with the foul mouth and the demonic shadow climbing the walls? Who do you think?

Labels: Anfini, Art, Procell

Today's excursion into Photoshop... I'm learning, I think.
Today has been awful. It's not really improving, but Photoshop makes me able to make beautiful things, which is comforting. I find it... extremely soothing, actually.
The face in the ether, there, is Maya Deren, one of those women I consider to be goddesses... she was so beautiful, the picture seemed to cry out for her face. She has such quiet, sad eyes. She looks, actually, a lot like I feel right now... so worn out and unhappy.

I'm... tired? Beaten, I suppose. Beaten, for today. I'm going to rest my head until I have to go to work.

Labels: Art, Missing You

I woke up at six this morning, to the phone ringing.
Yet another lovely voice from my past.
GOD DAMMIT WOULD YOU ALL JUST GO THE FUCK AWAY?!


I.... I'm going to scream at this person now, for a moment... everybody else can just turn their eyes away, it's.... not going to be pretty.


Listen... all I want in the world is to live my life as it's becoming now. My life is finally straightening itself out, I have the potential to be deliriously happy and satisfied for the rest of my days if I play my cards right... so please god why won't you leave me in peace to do it? Don't ask me, don't beg me, don't make me hurt you, because I will. I will strike at you and tear at you until you go away, because you have no place in this pretty picture I'm painting. Don't make me destroy everything that was ever fun about being with you. Don't make me hate you, and don't make me tell you that I hate you before you'll believe that I don't want you around! And don't--god DAMN IT DON'T say that you love me. DON'T SAY IT. You don't. You don't have any fucking clue what love is, if you did do you think I would have pushed you away so many times? You don't have any idea, and I told you that, I tried to be gentle with you because dammit I didn't want to hurt you, you're my friend and my best friend's cousin and we did have some good times. But we were never more than that, don't you understand that? How can you not understand that? I fucking told you that every time I--for some reason, for whatever reason--ended up in your bed. I told you that. I told you it didn't work between us, and you know it. You told me that once, don't you remember? We don't understand one another. You've known me for three years and you know what? You really don't know a damn thing about me. You've seen me naked but you couldn't tell me my middle name or what I want to do with my life. Because you've never asked. You just jump on me, every time. Is this your foundation for a goddamn relationship?
Go away. Just go away and leave me the fuck alone. Because now I'm not alone, now there's someone who loves me beyond all reason and beyond even these idiocies I stumbled into, and he's earned the right to say it. When he touches me it doesn't feel like a crime. It doesn't feel like I'm going to have to scrub my skin later and try to figure out why I let you do it. When he looks at me he sees me, not whatever image you've superimposed over my face so you can have my body without ever even knowing enough about the person you're touching to recognize them on the street. When he talks to me we have things to say, not just empty "making conversation" attempts that fall to nothing as soon as you get your goddamned hands on me. And you dare.... you fucking dare to call me, to wake me up at goddamned six in the morning when I'm wrapped around my soulmate's ghost, trying to bear the last six days until I can have him back, you dare to wake me and cry in my fucking ear, protest your goddamn love, beg me to come over. I should have destroyed you. I could have, do you realize that? I could have cut you apart with words alone, and I should have, for trespassing, for daring to think that you have some kind of claim on me and daring to think that gave you some right to come into my space, to disturb me in my quiet dreams and demand your share. I should have ripped you apart the way I wanted to. But I didn't. I was gentle, I was compassionate, I let you have your say and told you as many times as you needed to hear it that I didn't want you, that I didn't ever want anyone else but my man, my beautiful boy. How many times did you have to hear it? Ten, fifteen? You still didn't believe me, but I still didn't tear into you the way you deserved. I told you to say goodbye, I told you to go look elsewhere for someone to hang your obsession on. I didn't even hang up on you the way I was dying to. I let you finish and say goodbye all by yourself. And then I went back to sleep and had a nightmare that woke me up three hours later hyperventilating and convulsing with sobs in my sleep.

Brendon, save me.... don't ever let anyone else touch me, don't ever let them see me, don't ever let me know them again. It's times like this that I know what Rivaine wanted.... I wish you could pass your hand over my eyes and relieve me of the burden of knowing these names that weigh me down. I wish you could make me forget them, make me a wall of oblivious unknowing that their cries could never penetrate, and for all their grief, all they would get from me would be bewilderment.
Let me say this now and let it stand for all of my life, so that I remember never to do such a stupid thing as I did with Sebastian, and so that you know where I stand:
No one else, ever, no one anywhere in the world, no one I know now or will come to know, none of them except you has the right to touch me. None of them have earned that, and for every one of their hands that falls on me I feel my skin crawling and coming off, in patches, like something diseased. You give it back to me, you heal me... every touch of your hand is a bandage, a salve, a skin graft, making me whole again. You are the only pure, perfect, untainted soul in the world, and yours are the only hands that will ever lay on my body, ever again. I make you that vow now, although I know you know it already, and I don't even have to say it, I make it to you and to myself. I will never do such a stupid thing again. Lust isn't enough, I'll never let anyone make me believe that it is. No hands will ever touch me but yours. Forever.

Save me from them.... make them go away. Make me see only you.

Labels: Brendon, Missing You, Rants, Stress

So I played around in Photoshop today, aspiring to understand its workings. The two following works are the result... let it be known that they are the divergent products of something that was one picture to start with. I worked on something that looked kind of like the first for about twenty minutes, then unexpectedly achieved a "dark" version of it, whereupon, entranced, I saved two different versions and took each in entirely different directions. So... the results of my first tentative pokings in Photoshop: Otherside and its dark twin, Guernica Revisited. Whaddaya all think?

Labels: Art

Labels: Art

No pain remains, no feeling... eternity awaits. The craziness subsides with your words, and now just a waiting stillness inside... waiting for life to begin.

Well I'm lying on my bed
The blanket is warm
This body will never be safe from harm.
Still feel your hair, ribbons of coal...
Touch my skin to keep me whole.

If only you'd come back to me
If you laid at my side
Wouldn't need no Mojo Pin to keep me satisfied.

Don't wanna weep for you, I don't want to know
I'm blind and tortured, the white horses flow...
The memories fire, the rhythms fall slow
Black beauty I love you so

Precious precious silver and gold,
And pearls in oysters' flesh
Drop down we two to serve and pray to love
Born again from the rhythm screaming down from heaven
Ageless, ageless and I'm there--
In your arms.

The welts of your scorn, my love, give me more!
Send whips of your opinion down my back, give me more...
Well it's you I've waited my life to see
It's you I've searched so hard for.

Labels: Brendon, Missing You

A brief point before I begin my spiraling: B, you have to see Charlie and the Chocolate Factory. Anfini is there. In the fucking flesh. I'll elaborate tomorrow if you wish.

Onward.

This is a great song, beautiful. I smile and I laugh and I see what I'm doing to you, or maybe what you're doing to yourself... you are freer already. Do you notice how our conversations all seem to dovetail? Talk of loving you, talk of Procell's views on vampires, talk of wanting you, all come down to animal, to instinct, to this, the primal inside.

We wear masks and they unsettle us both, sometimes, not because we are too close to them, too immersed in them, but because we are not immersed enough. My characters interact with you, each in a different way, but while I wear that face it is me, if I have the courage to let it be. And it's all true.

I am Procell, serving you, vulnerable but accepting anything you choose to throw at me. I am your experiment, your mark, your wild card. I am your uncontrolled animal, I am your vicarious villain, smooth criminal. I am the world you sold.
I am Rivaine, forgetting everything, knowing nothing but your eyes. I am bound to you, by necessity and desire, your mate in more than life, in more than soul. I am yours, your responsibility, your child, your helpless madwoman, leaning naked on your arm and trying to reach the stars. I am your shapeshifter, shedding skins for your pleasure, wearing faces and discarding them at the speed of love. I am your blank slate, silence in my soul for you to draw on, believing everything you tell me, even as you agree with everything I tell myself. So we build up a web of fantasies that are all foundationless, but bring us closer together because we do not let anything divide us--not even the truth.
I am Noir, your mother, your destroyer, your protector, your savior, your hunter, the murder in your world. I am your masterpiece, your unfinished work, your first love. I am the end of your world and the beginning of another for you to conquer. I am your check and balance, I am your bodyguard and your prison-guard, I am the one who remembers and knows and forgives even the unforgivable. I am your secret and secret keeper, wearer of masks, but never intending to hide. I am your safety and your safeguard.

You will be here... our eyes will meet with a blue spark like a firecracker, our whispers like leaves, like rushing blood... our bodies will meet like waves crashing, breaking apart and into one another, becoming one overwhelming tide to wash the world away in a fiction-worthy wind. I'll wear any face you like, I'll be anyone you please... for it is in this permutation, this protean nature, that I am most myself, and it is myself that you love. I do not hide behind these masks, lover... I am revealed by them.

For your love... anything.
In your love... anything.
Ask it.

Labels: Anfini, Brendon, Love, Procell

Lemme talk about writing here for a minute, 'cause hey--kind of my field.
Now, I keep hearing about people who think they're writers. Maybe these are people who scribbled poetry in high school and think they can publish it. Maybe they're people who wrote short stories and submitted them to their school paper. I'm talking mostly about my generation here, be advised. Maybe these are those people who always seem to be talking about something they're working on, but never seem to have anything to show for it. Let me lay it on the line for you people.

I believe writers are born. Just as some people are born with a natural aptitude for baseball or drawing, or some girls are born to be models because they happen to have hips that fit the standard of their time, some people are born with a natural ability and passion for writing. I'm not being elitist here. I'm one of those people, but it doesn't really matter. Plenty of people who weren't born into the craft do very well at it regardless. There are plenty of big-name authors out there who didn't start out with any amazing talent, and who might not even have all that much love for what they do. These people sell. Hell, some of them are bestsellers, because I'm sorry--the mainstream audience has no taste. Dan Brown, recent golden boy of the media, the man Christians love to hate, is one of these people. He can't write, he just can't. The man could not write his way out of a hole in the ground (and isn't that a weird phrase? Just imagine someone trying to write their way out of a hole in the ground. Now start adding more fun things: "You couldn't write your way out of an eight-car collision!" "You couldn't write your way out of a hostage situation!" "You couldn't write your way out of a cauldron of boiling oil!" It gets better and better.). But guess what--nobody cares if he can't write, 'cause he's selling millions of books.

That's not really my point here, however. I want to talk about writer's block. Here I go, I'm gonna drop a train on you:

There's no such fucking thing.

Writer's block is a myth. It's a cop-out. It's a flimsy excuse writers use when they run out of everything else. No one who was born to be a writer is ever blocked.
You see those guys up there? The big guys, the ones you know? Stephen King is always the first to come to mind, but you can make your own list. Prolific, high-volume people who keep bookstores in business. Those guys have so many ideas rattling around in their heads every day that there is no way they'll ever write them all down, not if they live ten times their current span. These people can't be blocked. And neither can anyone who was born into the craft.

So what's that mean? What's that imply, when you're sitting there with a blank sheet of paper and nothing to say? It means one of two things. Either you weren't meant to be a writer, and anything you do is an uphill battle (in which case, hey, more power to ya, work at it and get good and I'll buy your stuff when it comes out in paperback.). Or you were meant to write, but you're just lazy.

This is hard for people to accept, and I understand that. The fact is that no one can be as intellectually lazy as a really smart person. I'm paraphrasing The Man here (Stephen King again... god damn, he's everywhere!) when I say that given half a chance, brilliant people would rather just ship their oars and dream. This means that writers, with their intellect and with that kneejerk cry, "You can't rush art!" are extremely likely to be extremely lazy. But the fact is that writing, and any other art, is not just an airy-fairy inspirational business of capturing words out of the air like butterflies when they land on your nose. No. Stop that. Don't do that. Don't do it, and don't depend on it. You have to treat any art like a job if you expect to get anything done. You have to take it seriously, dammit. I'm not saying ride your own ass, I'm saying--well, hell yes, I'm saying ride your own ass. You're never going to get anything done if you wait for the muse to descend, 'cause you know what? He's the laziest one of all. He's never gonna show up if you're hanging around waiting for him, he's gonna stay home and watch his goddamned Nascar. He knows damn well it's not him who has to put in the legwork. You want to be a writer, you do the work. You sit there and sweat over a blank piece of paper for two hours every day, or more, just to turn out a few crappy pages of drivel. You signed on for this, remember. But if you do that, if you put in the time, if you devote the effort, if you really commit to your art like you maybe want to be productive, then eventually the muse will get up off his ass and start dropping by. Mostly he won't be much help. Mostly he'll sit there and grunt and drop his cigar ashes on your rug. But he's allowed, you know, because that little man has what you want--magic. And he'll give it to you if he sees you trying.

It sucks, it does. The whole point of writing is to feel that buzz, when you're riding high on inspiration and the words are flowing, those days when you can get fifteen pages, those days when it feels good and you go back and read and the typos are terrible because your fingers couldn't keep up with your whizzing mind. And sometimes you can't do that. Sometimes you have to write in cold blood, when you second-guess every word and the paper has holes in it from your erasures, when the words seem dead and you finish up feeling tired and betrayed. But guess what (Quoting again'd!)? And this is a mantra for life, so repeat it to your little self, got it?

Sometimes you're doing good work when it feels like all you're managing is to shovel shit from a sitting position.

Trust me on this one.

Judged: Good
QOR: 35% evil, 65% good.

Labels: Art, Rants

Sure. Every day you're not here my glow fades. But why should I worry, when just talking to you brings it back full-force?
My phantom... you're magic. I mean that as a noun, not an adjective.

Judged: Good
QOR: 35% evil, 65% good.

Labels: Brendon, Happy, Missing You

So I have this idea. It outpaces current technology, from what I know of it, by quite a bit. Right now I'm still holding my breath for full-surround, full-sensory virtual reality, and that's what it'll take to realize this idea in a way that does it any justice. But I'd be content with doing it in a more limited fashion for now.
It's an interface, really. I don't know as much as I should about the mechanics of operating systems, but from what I do know what I'm talking about is a highly interactive, beautiful, visceral graphic user interface. It could probably overlay Windows, I wouldn't mind that, but ideally I'd prefer it to supplant Windows' interface entirely and be the sole point through which I interact with my computer.
It's like a game, almost. It's a world, is what I mean, a space. So here's what I see in my head, regardless of techonological constraints:

I start up my computer, right? I don't see the Windows loading screen, though. I see, instead, some kind of sexy loading thing that I haven't determined yet that involves "The Interim." When it's done, the first thing I see is a door opening, and the viewpoint moves into a small rectangular chamber, which is the login screen. It's a really nice room, great graphics, and the place is peaceful and beautiful. Hardwood floors and a running rug, paneled walls and pictures that change all the time. A couch, soft and upholstered in worn rose-colored velveteen. An end table, several bookcases. Speakers in the corner of the ceiling play Pinback's "Tres." It's a study, basically. There's a window on the left with a view of a wide green yard with trees. Directly ahead is a desk, covered with the debris of good use: papers and notebooks in stacks, a glass with pens in, chair pushed back a little. To the middle right, there's a silver tray with nametags in the "Hi! My name is..." style. This is the login menu. There are two nametags from which to select. One already has my name printed on it. When you touch the nametag (e.g., click with mouse, or, in my virtual-reality fantasies, actually reach for it with your hand) you're asked for a password. This is the entry point into the system.

What I'm envisioning here is an actual house. Halls, rooms, gardens that open one onto the other, and each is a subdivision of data. It stores not just the things I have in my computer, but more, everything in my head... it's a visual, interactive representation of my brain. I want to walk in my own brain here, is what I'm saying. From here I can access any of my data, go online, what have you, but I can also work on projects in an extremely hands-on kind of way, manipulate data by means of tangible graphical representations... such as, for example, moving music into certain files by lifting and reorganizing stacks of sheet music. Which I wouldn't want to do, but you see what I'm talking about.

I ask you: can it be done? I know the VR is beyond technology right now, but could I do it with just a normal videogame-like system with really good graphics? Could it be an operating system all by itself?

Geeks, discuss.

Judged: Good
QOR: 28% evil, 72% good.

Labels: Introspection, Technology

I was making a comment on your post, B, but then I started thinking and it got lengthy, and I discovered I had a lot more to say, more of an actual answer than a comment. So here it is.

I dreamed a long time ago, the first time I saw him in my dreams, of walking through halls, looking through windows, and of wearing masks to show him and make him smile. Masks and faces, disguises, costumes are a recurring theme between us--we're both storytellers, both dreamers, and both frequently yearn to be freed from the limitations of the form we occupy. Both aching for magic, for wings, for a sword or a spark, a deus ex machina, a spanner in the works to force a change in our lives like the ones in our dreams.
The irony here, the beautiful irony of the way we relate is that it flies directly in the face of the way a lot of people think about "relationships." You could say, and we do, with some hilarity, that we started off with a broken promise, and that's true. It's also true that we both spend a great deal of time wearing masks, speaking to each other through faces and people that, in many cases, bring us into direct conflict. Our characters frequently fight, sometimes physically, and with the catalyst of their respective foibles (Anfini's curiosity, Procell's neuroses, Rivaine's innocence) do things to each other that are, in civilized society, considered quite horrible.
There are a lot of reasons why our relationship is odd, and I love it. The way I think of it is that we spend... all of our time, really, telling each other stories. Telling each other things, in general, sharing information, trading media, showing each other stories, in pictures, in writing, in movement. It's all stories, and we're in all of them. I want you all to read the short story by Kurt Vonnegut called "Who Am I This Time?". It's exactly what I'm talking about. We wear faces for each other, not to hide from each other, always in total consciousness of who we really are, but evolving that concept of who we are by wearing faces that allow us to feed off of each other, to change, to wield magic, to fly. Together. Becoming greater, reaching new heights... I defend him with my sword, with my fire-breath. He lifts me and saves me with his wings.

Judged: Good
QOR: 15% evil, 85% good.

Labels: Anfini, Brendon, Dreams, Lies, Love, Procell

I had a good day today. I think I've... stabilized. I woke up with a sinking feeling that I'm learning to live with, but after that I felt pretty decent. This whole "Eating Food" thing helps.

So I have this new thing I'm gonna do. I'm gonna use this page to test the evilness or righteousness of each of my posts, and also each of the comments on those posts. The idea here is to see whether I tend to post evil or good, and whether I generally get evil comments on evil posts, or good ones, or vice versa.
In all honesty, I'm bored out of my fucking skull and I'm doing this for the sheer unadulterated hell of it. But then... what else is new?

This post has been judged: Good
Quotion O' Righteousness (QOR):
18% evil, 82% good.

Labels: Missing You, Technology

It's tough, I guess... I keep feeling better and then... not... again. My main endeavor just now is to distract myself. Throw myself into something. And surround myself with the miscellany of your presence--drawings, forgotten objects, pictures, words. The trouble, actually, doesn't come from losing the sensation of you being here. Oh, no. The trouble is that I keep on forgetting that you're not, because the fact that you're not is so... well, wrong to my subconscious that I just keep on rejecting it. Then I have to remember all over again when I enter my bedroom, unthinking, and see that bare space of sunlight, with no you curling up in it like a cat. Have to remember again as I'm going out the door that I needn't look for you or ask you if you want to come with me, have to remember when I look at the white-board that you haven't been in to scrawl something new in the corner.
Y'alls want to see pathetic? Here it is, in the flesh: I went into the kitchen today, to make a quesadilla, and discovered a pitiful amount of cheese left. I was irritated for a moment, and then, remembering who it was who ate most of my cheese, wanted to cuddle the goddamned sad hunk of dairy! I swear to fucking god, this is ridiculous.

But all this pain will pass in time. That I know. What distresses me is the change in myself... while you were here, you know that I looked different--everyone saw it. So different it was like a new face, a beautiful, happy face on my body. But you haven't been gone two full days yet and already the change has slipped away, and my face is the same as it ever was... nothing really wrong with it, but that young, bright beauty is gone. The change faded so fast without you here to maintain it.
So I'll work harder at distracting myself here... maybe get something creative done in spite of myself. The only thing that will really bring the sun out on this face again is having you back. My body, my mind, every part of me has made its decision that it needs you, and will accept no substitutes. And so, like the acts of will I forced upon myself as a child, carrying or climbing or pushing beyond my strength just to see if I could, I'll wait. I'll endure. Oh, come home, darling... come home and talk to me, and then come here, come to this home, here in my arms, and never leave me again.

< / pathetic girl>

Judged: Good
QOR:
12% evil, 88% good.

Labels: Art, Brendon, Love, Missing You

This morning feels raw and wrong beyond reason... I know he's coming back, and soon, and that this pain is illogical, but apparently someone down in my throat, and another rebellious peon under my ribs, are both away from their desks and haven't gotten the memo. My body is numb from the neck down; my head is agonizingly not. I'm squashing irrational impulse after irrational impulse, and not squashing some of them, like what I'll be doing in a few minutes--returning to bed at this ungodly hour to see if there's a space that's still warm from his skin. For the next few days I'll be intolerable, I'm sure, so I hope you'll all excuse me... but more than likely I'll be discovering fragments, little things he deliberately forgot, like breadcrumbs to lead him back to me... but starving as I am already, I fear I'll devour these crumbs as I find them, and then leave no path, no reminder of the way. But he can hear my voice regardless, and when the time comes I'll walk and call and bring him back where he belongs by will alone if necessary.
This sadness seems so ignoble and ungrateful in the wake of all the happiness, everything he's given me this week. But I can't help it. My selfish, greedy heart demands forever with no hiatus. When I've quieted its cries some, I'll share the happiness too... but for now this is what I have. Forgive me.

If the world could fall apart
In a fiction-worthy wind
I wouldn't change a thing now that you're here...
Love is a verb here in my room.


Judged: Neutral
QOR:
50% evil, 50% good.

Labels: Brendon, Missing You