last week, i got lost in the forest on my way to my piano teacher's house. the forest looked like this:



she scrubbed my brain and said, "the first round of the competition is in november." my initial panic gave gave way to a determined relief. i hadn't realized how much i'd missed that mindset. clear and purposeful, maybe to a point of myopia. i finally feel like i have something to do. like i've stuck my head out from underwater and the air is warm on my face. (that metaphor is depressingly functional.)

i'll be playing the first movement of ginastera opus 22, the first movement of beethoven's sonata opus 31 no 1, and debussy's etude no 1 -- pour les cinq doits, apres m czerny. it's not a ChineseFighterRobot! set, but it is a funky high energy. i dragged out the ginastera today for the first time since last spring and man it felt like switching on the front christmas lights in the rain.

i feel good, oh i feel so good! suddenly!

decadence in northern california

somebody else
had got there before we did,
found the shark,
and kicked it onto it's other side.

in good judgment, i poured some of my beer on it.
it sounded like march rain on a lawn that is already soaked through.
i said, "good luck, homie."
you didn't say anything. it didn't have any eyes.
the dark sat on our shoes, hugged our ankles
like children who didnt want us to leave.

the phosphorus on the edge of California
crackled like a creme brûlée under our feet.

when you make me laugh i throw my head all the way back.

taken from history cooperative.

Army sergeant Ron Haeberle photographed these women and children in My Lai, Vietnam, seconds before American soldiers shot and killed them. They were among more than 500 unarmed women, children, and old men massacred by American troops on March 16, 1968.

The photograph captures the climax of a narrative that began with attempted rape and ended with mass murder. Roberts and Haeberle came upon several G.I.'s attempting to rape the girl at the right. Haeberle recalled their comments as they pulled off her clothes: "Let's see what she's made out of," one said. Another called her "VC boom-boom," or a Viet Cong whore. As they assaulted the girl, the woman "tried to help her, scratching and clawing at the soldiers." When the soldiers noticed the journalists, they abandoned their sexual assault and herded the women and children together. "I yelled, 'Hold it,'" Haeberle recalled, "and shot my picture." As he did, the assaulted teenager, who had already pulled up her trousers, attempted to fasten her blouse. The denouement followed quickly. As they walked away, Roberts said later, "I heard an M-60 [machine gun] go off, and when we turned back around, all of them and the kids with them were dead."

The emotional power of the photograph derives from our knowledge that it was taken during the last seconds these people were alive, as they realize they are about to be killed. They were surrounded by bodies and burning houses, and they could not have missed the sounds of gunfire and screaming. They must have understood the G.I.'s meant to shoot them also. Few photographs show people contemplating their imminent, violent death as vividly as this one.

i took this probably about a year ago, now.

god i wish my fucking camera worked

from fabian unternährer's just passengers.

getting an email from a 13 year old that starts:

Thank you so much for being my piano teacher for that short while. You are a great teacher and I want to thank you for that.

really fucking makes my day.

best to fear the educated youths

following the images of a family in tajikistan, salt miners in mali, and a west african boy on the beach, the next slide he clicked on was of a dog sledding team. in front of a class of nearly two hundred, he gestured with his laser pointer to the team driver. "this is sarah palin," he said. "she's on her way to city hall. in the sled, here, are --"

"five kids!" somebody in the classroom shouts.

"five kids, yes," he says. "and the dogs have been fed on homosexuals."

we all laugh. two hundred of us in a giant lecture hall.

we have nothing to talk about except our work. i am exhausted during the day. i leaned over and whispered to him, when she called i explained to her, i want to wave my arms in the air and scream pathetically to the man who is the sane-conscience in my head, "i am surrounded by creatures that seem to be freshly beamed down from outer space! what do they eat? why are they here?" he looks at me and laughs and i realize the violence of the outburst was all i needed to find firm ground again.

the weather is just that sort of dreary where it has spent all day threatening to uncover the sun, but never managed to follow through. in the evening, my roommate sits on the balcony and plays some blues on his guitar, a cigarette dangling from his lips. i am drinking licorice tea and memorizing violin parts. our brains are heavy. i feel like i'm pushing through the thick, rubbery foliage of a primitivism painting. i'm all out of green vegetables.

keep trucking, keep trucking, all night long.

two portraits of a friend.

from three weeks ago or so.

tickle me pink, you naked swedes, er, danes

"The core of Løber Nøgen - Danish for 'running naked' - consists of six individual, working photographers hailing from France, Norway and Denmark. Personal styles and boundaries are annulled and vanity is left behind in a childlike attempt to lose ones self."


that is all for now.