pixelated.me

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Discovered this wonderful site. Makes me Smile so i've decided to share it.

http://www.explodingdog.com/

Writing is such a curious bitch. There's no recipe. I've read about all these writers who force themselves to write x ammount during y time and so and so forth and i think its bullocks. I write. There are moments when things take longer to make their way to the page, screen, google blogspot server, etc and yes i am completely full of it and making excuses for the lack of updates. I wonder if there needs to be some filter, or if just the random observations of my day to day are worth sharing with the faceless more often than not commentless few who frequent this patch of internets.

observation: dating a stripper is sort of like dating a nudist or a girl who frequents the French Riviera. You sort of stop making such a big fuss about exposed breasts. I still love breasts but really sometimes we really do get a bit fixated on them as men.

vagina's on the other hand are still beautiful magnificent, delicious, mythical bits

Was it all just a dress rehearsal? Running lines to make sure we nailed our marks and hit the right notes with our “i love you’s” Cause lately, i fear, it’s all been for a performance that doesn’t exist. 
Am i the 5 year old boy dressed up as a carrot with no lines because no one cast him in the play.
Will we just keep being slightly better version of ourselves with every guy and girl we find fits a little bit? Do we keep telling ourselves they’re just another dress rehearsal when it all goes to shit? When inevitably, perfection never comes? Always the missing prop, the fumbled line, the cue we somehow missed. All for an opening night that doesn’t really come, because it’s all improv isn’t it? So who ends up with the best version of who? who gets the best version of you? did i?

antiquated romantics:

The noble concept. The Romantic. The dashing hero. Richard Gere riding in on his white limo. These are enduring images. They exist in almost mythical quantities in our literature, cinema, and music. I grew up with these concept driven into my skull by having the misfortune of reading far too much Shelly and not enough Bukowski.
Of having an awful preference for rock ballads. I also grew up frustrated by being labeled as a really nice guy, a proper gentleman, and not getting laid nearly as much as i wanted.

The thing is, the rub, the jux, of it all is that these concepts, the idea of the romantic as its presented to us is surely based on some antiquated concept of women that ceased to exist somewhere after the first bra was burned. Who is this woman who swoons at the gentlemanly courtship, at the outlandish gestures? If this was a lecture i would already see the smiles creeping across some of the female faces, i can picture the many who would say "me, me, me" but ladies, ask yourselves how many very respectful, gentlemanly nice guys you've put in your pockets as "friends"? I think the noble gent existed at some point out of some necessity. Those grand gestures needed by woman who for hundreds of years lived in secondary roles in society. Needed for assurance, comfort, to make tangible the intangible? "Prove you love me" subtext: because i'm insecure and need assurances.
and so we tried and much of our concepts of the romantic were born.

Standing for hours in the rain just to see you. CHECK
walking 500 miles just to see you smile. CHECK
giving up forever to touch you: CHECK and nicely written by the Goo Goo Dolls
Slaying the dragon, knight, evil king, to win your heart? CHECK

So we slay the dragon, walk the walk in the rain, and nod a polite no to forever when it's offered. Expecting i imagine the maiden in distress to tend to our dragon inflicted wounds or massage our tired feet after walking for so many miles, at the very least to offer us a towel to dry ourselves off and maybe wash our soaked clothes. perhaps i lived in New York City for too many years, maybe there is a very particular kind of bird that lives in that city, but somehow i can't imagine the average (and few of them are average) NYC blackberry toting, web-marketing exec, Carrie Bradshaw idolizing woman to meet those expectations. She's probably dating a drummer or a wall street exec who treats her like shit but who's GORGEOUS.
Many of them would no doubt disagree but i think romanticism needs a refresh. It needs a dose of sincerity.

I think romantic is to say yes your thighs look fat in those jeans, which is why i prefer you naked! Or i fucking hate your dog but i put up with it because i love the way you give head.

Would it hurt to say no you're not the most beautiful woman I've ever seen but I'm absolutely fucking delighted to be here with you.

Maybe it would, or maybe I'm just confused. After all I'm dating a stripper who took very good care of me when i was ill and walked to to the pharmacy for me in the rain.

It's early  morning. I'm sitting at one of the indoor tables at my favorite cafe "el cafe de la selva". It's my favorite for two reasons it takes less than 5 mins for me to get from this desk to one of their tables and it's cheap. The Cafe has outdoor seating, which offers a delightful view of the fountain in front but which also draws a larger share of smokers. 

I'm inside enjoying my breakfast when one of the other customers lights up. I turn and look at the table in front of him that reads no smoking, i then turn and look at mine and see no such sign. At my sisters suggestion i ask our waiter. Excuse me is this whole section no smoking. "oh no just that row" he replies with a smile "you can smoke at this table if you like" From the 14 inches or so seperating the non smoking row from the smoking row i deduced that the proprietors of the cafe had installed one of those cool star trek like force fields that would force smoke to adhere to their rather slim margins of seperation. FUCKING COOL. I LOVE TECHNOLOGY. I mean to have two rows side by side and have smoke completely stay within the confines of the smoking row that's fucking incre..(cough.cough.cough)

She barely had time to ask. In fact I'm not even sure if i gave her time to ask. I was wearing my headphones listening to a piano version of some radiohead song that made my walk from the supermarket through the park to my flat seem that much more cinematic.
I did manage to hear her say "disculpe la molestia" (Excuse the bother)
instinctively before my mind had finished processing who she was or what she might want i threw up a polite but firm, very well worn, no sorry don't have any. She might have been asking for directions, clever quips, hell, maybe even mac advice, all of which i would have had to confess i had plenty of.
She may have also wanted money, of which i had some.
Beggars, Pan Handlers, Bums, Street Urchins all of these are common fair in most large cities, and more so in the more affluent neighborhoods,
Sadly as i walked away i realized she was none of the above. My mind finished processing the visual clues as i reached the edge of the park.
She was dressed normally, wore some makeup, had her hair gelled back, and seemed in genuine distress. I'd seen her moments before she asked me, ask the man walking towards me and watched his reaction, his well rehearsed shrug off, and as i walked, as i in fact started thing about writing about this experiencing, slightly appalled that the writer in me would somehow profit from the moment, i realized maybe she was just like me, or you, or anyone i know who through fate and circumstanced needed to ask for 10 pesos to grab a metrobus, maybe there was genuine need of a helping hand and not merely the every day begging for a handout.
But my callousness is a coat i throw on even on the most unbearably hot days, without much thought, as i grab keys, wallet, music, callousness and head out the door.
Somewhere along the line, with the everday litany of people asking for money i became a man who wouldn't even stop to hear what that woman had to say, and for that i'm sorry because at the very least i could have let her get far enough past "excuse the bother" for it to actually be a bother.

i think it becomes a process of embracing and letting go simultenously. we all have concepts of home, built on childhood, great loves, perhaps even a dog and we look for those patterns in new places, we make those choices, to live with white walls, and not invest emotionally, it seems easier perhaps, to be a vagabond, to act like some wandering nomad with innner roots. For me ultimately i have to try, i have to find it in my selection of teas that i brew in one of my favorite cups, i find it in the familiar things i have brought with me, but some days its harder than others, some days i crave something so intangiable, so unspecific, that it feels like the noise of the mosquito buzzing past your ear at night even though you've already killed that mosquito. 

"would you mind taking our dogs for a walk?" 
asked delightful british neighbor

that's a deceptively simple request. After all her dogs are very nice dogs, and i do like walking, but really what she was asking was,

"i'm on set all day tomorrow  and my dogs need to be walked twice, cause otherwise they might go stir crazy and possibly shit in my flat, I've got the first shift covered but not the second, so would mind taking them out at around 8pm and following them around until they both shit, then picking up the shit and hunting for one of those elusive Condesa public trash cans to dispose of it properly?"

It changes the nature of the favor doesn't it, and least for me. The truth is i love...well maybe just like, dogs. I'm certain i like them, but having lived in NYC and seen the delightful ritual that is the plastic bag crap scoop up i am convinced that to clean up dog shit, to not mind doing so must be very much like changing diapers. No parent i know of likes doing it, most of them find it a bit gross, but they all do it because they love their child, and i think those people walking around carrying their dogs shit in plastic baggies love their dogs, and their dogs love them, and its a beautiful symbiotic relationship.

But i do not love the neighbors two dogs. I have in fact only met them on two occasions. The truth is i'd be much more inclined to pick up my neighbors shit than their dogs, them at least i know. 

plainspoken truth.

somewhere just south of nowhere
near the park and a fountain and a pile of garbage waiting for its ride to the city dumps.

In there, some where, The hard floor was a shiny white something which made him think of a hospital waiting room.
It was the floor he'd wake up to in his shinny new but old apt.

The ceiling looked like the pockmarked face of a teenage Bukowski, "popcorned" was the term they so charmingly referred to it as.

It was a home, but not quite home. It lacked the little bits of memories that had filled his small avocado green living room on east 35th st or his unearned highrise apartment overlooking central park.

There'd been no great loves in this room.
No breathless "oh god's" to mask an "i love you" that's bashing to get out.
No snowy days spent in doors watching movies.
Just sex, good sex, fun sex, but..

...There'd been no arguments filled with bile and love
no promises,
no broken promises
no betrayals or reconciliations.
no hard hitting, core diving, conversations on a living room couch, no truths, no beautiful girls that would break his heart, on a beige living room couch, in fact
there was no couch here, just an old futon on the floor that didn't belong to him and didn't belong to the person that'd lent it to him.
Just an old futon that smelled of sex, and uneasy sleep, and strangers dreams.

His books and movies stood like soldiers against the wall, a cardboard box and a plastic shelf from his fridge were the extent of his coffee table,
He doesn't spend much time in this makeshift living room.
He wakes in the mornings and imagines a large wooden table that would welcome coffee stains and tea rings and nights of writing on its dark wood surface,

He wakes in the mornings and takes to the familiar confines of his music library and the people on his buddy list. To the list of movies or albums torrents he's left downloading overnight,
to the comfortable surroundings of the websites he reads, the blank "page" of a word document, the porn he knows is tucked away on his computer, that he'll rarely ever bother looking at.

To the half watched documentary on Bukowski that sits patiently paused for the last few days.

And his feet feel the cold shiny surface of that white floor in his bedroom,
and his feet walk to the living room, the slumped futon looking very much like an overnight guest asleep after a very heavy night of drinking, he opens the doors to the balcony, the tiny balcony that smells of dog piss when it rains heavily,
that overlooks the treetops and fountain and pile of trash,
He does this and thinks...this is home.
he does this and thinks...this is home?

in sleep duality disappears.
the most complex women look kind.

but i'm going a tad bit...

"Show me all the blueprints. Show me all the blueprints. Show me all the blueprints... show me all the blueprints... show me all the blueprints... show me all the blueprints..."

there something so intriguing about the way something like an american apparel advert stuck on a wall can seem to gain an ounce of truth in its decay

I just finished reading a GQ interview/profile/excuse for having someone to photograph/ on Jessica Alba.
She comes off as low key, sweet natured, trying very hard to be something more than just a tantalizingly sexy woman who seems plague by an public interest that doesn't stray far from "when is she going to do a nude scene"
The interviewer in his own description seems empathic to this, to the fact that the 'industry' keeps trying to put her into bikini's and yet the accompanying photo shoot seems to go in direct contrary to this empathy. The last photo of the piece is a medium close up of Jessica Alba in a white bikini top, holding a water bottle and dribbling water down her lower lip and onto her chest. What the fucking fuck?!?
It is a good photo, sexy, well shot, and Alba seems to nail the whole pseudo improvised, "i don't care" attitude of the shot but i still felt a mild revulsion towards it.
I'm a pretty straight shooter, i like calling things what they are and the rest be damned, so if you want Jessica Alba for a cover so you can put her in fucking bikini then for god sake don't fill an interview with empathy over her having to do the whole 'bikini thing'. Acknowledge that you too GQ are part of that 'industry'

In the end it got me thinking about the role of beauty. It's a old debate but frankly i'm getting a little bored with beautiful women who seem so aware of their beauty. I believe in the following quote that I've always heard attributed to Ingmar Bergman "beauty that is unaware of itself is the most beautiful"

and really, girls. women, any and all of you who are genetically blessed. How many times can you hear a guy tell you you're beautiful before you begin to crave something a bit more substantial, substantial even if it is still superficial, like...wow you're really elegant, or poised, or stylish, hell...even cool would seem an improvement on 'you have beautiful eyes'

Maybe i'm wrong, but i've dated very beautiful women and in most cases it wasn't me telling them they were beautiful that carried any weight, but the substance of conversation, connection, click that really gave the situation any headway. I love a pair of beautiful eyes, or a striking nose but both are really quite dull if it isn't in the context of a brilliant cackle. laugh, a witty remark, or a bit sincerity.

So while in reading this celebrity interview, a genre which gets more and more painfully predictable with each issue (notable exception of a recent GQ interview with Halle Berry)
I can't help but wonder why bother with the pretense of intimacy, why mention that Alba considers herself clumsy, or that she tugs at her shirt nervously, but that it also makes her shoulders look sexy. Why bother when the accompanying pictorial rarely ever reflects the superficial intimacy gleamed by the author for the interview?

i'm 26 years old. tonight i wore a tuxedo for the first time. These are my thoughts at 3:20 am sitting in my boxers and black socks, having careful undressed and hung up my tuxedo and its accouterments in the closet:

Tuxedos make you feel like the pimpest motherfucker in the room, unless that room is full of other equally pimp feeling motherfuckers. (or any other fuckers for that fact.)
walking down the street, stepping out of the taxi, running into your hot 19 yr old neighbor and her friends drunk in the elevator, you feel like one pimp, suave, debonair, GQing son of a bitch!
but for the most part the occasions in which one is required to wear tuxedos are those in which every bloke wears a tuxedo, and lets face it, tuxedos vary very little, trying to...differentiate the tux from others usually ends poorly, like the bloke i saw with the pink cravat.

So right now i'm thinking come tomorrow morning i should wear that tux to grab a morning cup of coffee while i read the paper, i should wear a tuxedo next time i get laid, not TO get laid, but while doing the laying, i should wear a tuxedo taking myself for a walk, because man does it feel good! Tuxedo's are wonderful things to wear just as long as you're not in a room full of other blokes wearing the same.

the average human life span is 73.43890 years. (That figure is completely made up)
We divide and subdivide our personal narrative into years, months,
relationships, cities lived, people known but almost always within a
very narrow forecast.
But in doing so we overlook the fact that some patterns will only
emerge over the course of longer units of time. Decades for example.

I've spent the last 18 months of my life trying to forecast patterns
for some of the people who are or have been in my life, trying to find
the ways that the might fit into the narrative, like an overcaffeinated
writing staff on a sitcom trying to write back in a character.

I've felt jittery, I've commented on it in various forms on this very
blog, and in the end i realized that in trying to script them into my
narrative i was just getting in the way.

sometimes you meet the love of your life a decade too soon, and
sometimes the love of your life becomes a life long friend...and
sometimes people are just momentary catalyst that poke at your insides
and remind you that you still have them.

you were 5.
every picture of you showed you pouting or frowning.
you hated being photographed.
you're on a beach and don't want your picture taken.
your father tells you that if you close your eyes you'll turn invisible and won't show up in the picture.
you told me this as i looked at a photo of you, 5 years of age, in only your swimsuit bottoms with your eyes firmly closed.
I was glad your dad lied.
it's a beautiful picture.

this is what's left behind.
talking to a woman who happened to mention what she was like when she was a baby, i found myself distracted by the memory of your childhood pictures.
i will remember you in random moments.
inopportune moments.
i will randomly remember something random from the drawer marked 2000-2005