meta, bro.

Storyteller, Photographer, Philosopher. And I do not exist.

[hyperboreanvoyager]

Sorrow begins by being nothing more than a facing towards the past, an impoverishment of our sensations and ideas, as if each of them were now contained entirely in the little which it gives out, as if the future were in some way stopped up. And it ends with an impression of crushing failure, the effect of which is that we aspire to nothingness, while every new misfortune, by making us understand better the uselessness of the struggle, causes us a bitter pleasure.

Henri Bergson, Time and Free Will (via a-femmefatalist)

[cavetocanvas]

Roberto Ferri, Prison Tears

[likeafieldmouse-deactivated2015]

[alexleong]

Todd Hido - Homes at Night 

[alexleong]

She’s a beautiful girl. She doesn’t know it and she doesn’t see it, but she’s a diamond in the rough. Like a fragmentary comet gone to ground, craggy and burnt outside but once you peel the layers back, she glitters. You think of her the minute you wake up and she’s the last thing you think of as you fall asleep. And like that old poet said, some days she’s like a daylight star.

[alexleong]

Chitlins con Carne

My bones are weary and my muscles pound weakly - it’s the end of a long day. Finding coordination amid the chaos of moving people into a residence hall tends to have a discombobulating effect on people.

A few thoughts that swirled around in my head today, as I rode the elevator up and down; monotonous robot. 

1. “We can be bold, and we can be caring. There is always time for both.” I am full of contradictions. I try not to be a hypocrite and it shows. I say I don’t do small talk but what are our (almost) daily conversations if not just that? After a while the big talk has to trickle down and small talk is what we have while waiting for it to replenish.

2. I would like to sit outside and lie down on the grass and smoke a cigar, watching the clouds go by. It’s funny how we try to treat space like an up/down, north/south/east/west kind of deal, when really it is not. Up and down have no meaning in the greater scheme of things. I think it’s the frailty of the human mind that leads us to try to reduce things, simplify the galaxy into dim-sum chunks that we can make better sense of. In space there is no north.

3. There is a certain brand of masochistic folly associated with me working in my position. I dislike most people and the lives they lead, especially if I apply my unassailable standards to them. Too white, not white enough. Too black, not black enough. Too ignorant, too unsavvy, too unintelligent, too unattractive. I idly wonder how I get along with anybody at all, least of all a few score younglings, half of whom are not ready to be here.

Maybe it’s a perverse fascination I hold.

[black-wolves]

I actually attack the concept of happiness. The idea that - I don’t mind people being happy - but the idea that everything we do is part of the pursuit of happiness seems to me a really dangerous idea and has led to a contemporary disease in Western society, which is fear of sadness. It’s a really odd thing that we’re now seeing people saying “write down 3 things that made you happy today before you go to sleep”, and “cheer up” and “happiness is our birthright” and so on. We’re kind of teaching our kids that happiness is the default position - it’s rubbish. Wholeness is what we ought to be striving for and part of that is sadness, disappointment, frustration, failure; all of those things which make us who we are. Happiness and victory and fulfillment are nice little things that also happen to us, but they don’t teach us much. Everyone says we grow through pain and then as soon as they experience pain they say “Quick! Move on! Cheer up!” I’d like just for a year to have a moratorium on the word “happiness” and to replace it with the word “wholeness”. Ask yourself “is this contributing to my wholeness?” and if you’re having a bad day, it is.

Hugh Mackay  (via transitoryy)

[alexleong]

Just the tip.

One thing people always leave out when they talk about a long distance relationship is how much time there is. It's infuriating, when I give it due consideration. Between the too-brief phone calls (because it's too expensive) and the little conversations that light up our phones like the little kilobytes carrying text light up just for us - there is an abundance of time.

I take my coffee black and it's never as bitter as the daily realization that you're not here to fill up the long hours and minutes. I could open the door, I could leave and have a conversation but my heart's not in it. Of course it wouldn't be; I left it in that strange nonexistent space where our minds meet. Where time has no meaning and our hearts are always together.

But my love, our bodies are not.

You aren't here, and I am not there. This is a vexing situation, and the funny thing is that as clever as we are, there's no thinking our way out of this. Now that's not funny at all. The summer is already half gone and before the cold comes I have to commit everything to memory, for fear it will be lost.

Your bright eyes watching me reproachfully as I smoked a cigarette, even after I said I'd quit. You would tell me later that you found it sexy. The way your legs moved and your bum swayed as I followed you beneath red-tiled roofs down mossy alleyways in search of something. Anything. The way the afternoon light danced on your skin as if it was afraid to set down roots but then the clouds passed over and the moment was lost. Your skin still felt warm to the touch.

So I will collect all these moments. Fragmented as they are. Store them and nourish them and wrap them up in the grey folds of my mind. Make room between my repository of 40K lore and scientific tidbits to store you. Did you know that the universe is expanding because atoms are expanding? Or that if you remove the queen electron in a calcium molecule from its shell, a Helvetica Scenario will occur?

I know all these things. I know you.

[alexleong]

Nobody.

On a long enough time scale, everything will die.

A molecule of Selenium SE-82 has a half-life of 130 quintillion years. Twice that number to fully decay. When you consider that the average human being has a good four decades to trundle about on this planet before taking a dirt nap, life doesn't seem like anything at all. In 130 quintillion years, not even your bones will exist.

On a long enough time scale, everything will die.

It took a long time for me to get over you, and the other you. Some days I idly wonder what the half-life of a memory is. The ancient Chinese had a saying: "The faintest ink is better than the clearest memory." Would that it were completely true.

On a long enough time scale, everything will die.

But we have plenty of time to see the world together. You'll make your first million, I'll buy you dinner, we'll smoke a pipe in the shadow of the Angkor temples. Plenty of time for that.

[alexleong]

Silence. I wake up in the morning and all I hear is the soft whirr of the air conditioner. No room-mate. No birds. No sounds. Just quietness lying on top of me like a thin layer of nothing hear.

Certainly no you, too. Damn.

I have breakfast alone. Across the hall all you can see is glass and steel struts holding it together. Outside the sun's been up for hours and as it plays through the leaves the only things I think about are that I should make a point of waking up earlier, and that you would like to see this. You would love to see the trees here, the way the hot and warm light kisses things in ways impossible back home.

There's a homely black woman making eggs and pancakes in the buffet hall. In a couple of weeks I bet I won't even have to tell her what I want on my plate. It's always the same - an omelette with no cheese, and everything else. I've been eating a lot more since I came here, with no appreciable weight gain.

I should be so lucky.

My American friends think it's weird that I don't drink soda, or diet soda, or even fruit juice. It's always just tea, or coffee, and not even sweetened tea and coffee at that. They speak as if from an undeniable addiction to sweetness. Maybe they crave a different kind of sweetness... one that can't be found at the bottom of a little paper bag.

I know I don't need it because all the sweetness I need, comes from you.

[alexleong]

Why did the chicken cross the road?

Plato: For the greater good.

Karl Marx: It was a historical inevitability.

Machiavelli: So that its subjects will view it with admiration, as a chicken which has the daring and courage to boldly cross the road, but also with fear, for whom among them has the strength to contend with such a paragon of avian virtue? In such a manner is the princely chicken's dominion maintained.

Hippocrates: Because of an excess of light pink gooey stuff in its pancreas.

Jacques Derrida: Any number of contending discourses may be discovered within the act of the chicken crossing the road, and each interpretation is equally valid as the authorial intent can never be discerned, because structuralism is DEAD, DAMMIT, DEAD!

Thomas de Torquemada: Give me ten minutes with the chicken and I'll find out.

Timothy Leary: Because that's the only kind of trip the Establishment would let it take.

Douglas Adams: Forty-two.

Nietzsche: Because if you gaze too long across the Road, the Road gazes also across you.

Oliver North: National Security was at stake.

B.F. Skinner: Because the external influences which had pervaded its sensorium from birth had caused it to develop in such a fashion that it would tend to cross roads, even while believing these actions to be of its own free will.

Carl Jung: The confluence of events in the cultural gestalt necessitated that individual chickens cross roads at this historical juncture, and therefore synchronicitously brought such occurrences into being.

Jean-Paul Sartre: In order to act in good faith and be true to itself, the chicken found it necessary to cross the road.

Ludwig Wittgenstein: The possibility of "crossing" was encoded into the objects "chicken" and "road", and circumstances came into being which caused the actualization of this potential occurrence.

Albert Einstein: Whether the chicken crossed the road or the road crossed the chicken depends upon your frame of reference.

Aristotle: To actualize its potential.

Buddha: If you ask this question, you deny your own chicken-nature.

Howard Cosell: It may very well have been one of the most astonishing events to grace the annals of history. An historic, unprecedented avian biped with the temerity to attempt such an herculean achievement formerly relegated to homo sapien pedestrians is truly a remarkable occurence.

Salvador Dali: The Fish.

Darwin: It was the logical next step after coming down from the trees.

Emily Dickinson: Because it could not stop for death.

Epicurus: For fun.

Ralph Waldo Emerson: It didn't cross the road; it transcended it.

Johann von Goethe: The eternal hen-principle made it do it.

Ernest Hemingway: To die. In the rain.

Werner Heisenberg: We are not sure which side of the road the chicken was on, but it was moving very fast.

David Hume: Out of custom and habit.

Jack Nicholson: 'Cause it [censored] wanted to. That's the [censored] reason.

Pyrrho the Skeptic: What road?

Ronald Reagan: I forget.

John Sununu: The Air Force was only too happy to provide the transportation, so quite understandably the chicken availed himself of the opportunity.

The Sphinx: You tell me.

Mr. T.: If you saw me coming you'd cross the road too!

Henry David Thoreau: To live deliberately ... and suck all the marrow out of life.

Mark Twain: The news of its crossing has been greatly exaggerated.

Molly Yard: It was a hen!

Zeno of Elea: To prove it could never reach the other side.

Chaucer: So priketh hem nature in hir corages.

Wordsworth: To wander lonely as a cloud.

The Godfather: I didn't want its mother to see it like that.

Keats: Philosophy will clip a chicken's wings.

Blake: To see heaven in a wild fowl.

Othello: Jealousy.

Dr. Johnson: Sir, had you known the Chicken for as long as I have, you would not so readily enquire, but feel rather the Need to resist such a public Display of your own lamentable and incorrigible Ignorance.

Mrs. Thatcher: This chicken's not for turning.

Supreme Soviet: There has never been a chicken in this photograph.

Oscar Wilde: Why, indeed? One's social engagements whilst in town ought never expose one to such barbarous inconvenience - although, perhaps, if one must cross a road, one may do far worse than to cross it as the chicken in question.

Kafka: Hardly the most urgent enquiry to make of a low-grade insurance clerk who woke up that morning as a hen.

Swift: It is, of course, inevitable that such a loathsome, filth-ridden and degraded creature as Man should assume to question the actions of one in all respects his superior.

Macbeth: To have turned back were as tedious as to go o'er.

Whitehead: Clearly, having fallen victim to the fallacy of misplaced concreteness.

Freud: An die andere Seite zu kommen. (Much laughter.)

Hamlet: That is not the question.

Donne: It crosseth for thee.

Pope: It was mimicking my Lord Hervey.

Constable: To get a better view.

Yeats: She was following the Faeries that sang to her to come away with them from the dull, bucolic comfort of the farmyard to the waters and the wild.

Shelley: 'Tis a metaphor for the pursuits of man: though 'twas deemed an extraordinary occurrence at the time, still it brought little to bear on the great scheme of time and history, and was ultimately fruitless and forgotten.

Tolkien: Chickens are respectable folk, and well thought of. They never go on any adventures or do anything unexpected. One fine spring day, as the chicken wandered contentedly around the farmyard, clucking and pecking and enjoying herself immensely, there appeared a Wizard and thirteen Dwarves who were in need of a chicken to share in their adventure. Reluctantly she joined their party, and with them crossed the road into the great Unknown, muttering about how rude the Dwarves were to take her away on such short notice, without even giving her time to brush her feathers or fetch her hat.

Hussie: He didn't, he died four pages after being introduced.

[dracoelixir-deactivated20111201]

I will remember your small room, the feel of you, the light in the window, your records, your books, our morning coffee, our noons, our nights, our bodies spilled together, sleeping, the tiny flowing currents, immediate and forever. Your leg, my leg, your arm, my arm, your smile and the warmth of you who made me laugh again.

Charles Bukowski  (via elenimanganas)

[alexleong]

Sunday Night.

The night was close. The air was warm and empty. 

He sat on the couch. Alone. All he had with him for company was a laptop and its glaring screen that filled the living room with false light. Tonight would be a quiet night. It was going to be one of those nights. Sitting. Doing nothing. Just idling until the energies within him could no longer be contained and then he would spring up and do fifty pushups and squats. Then he would resume sitting and the cycle of waiting would begin all over again.

Then pacing. On nights like this, always the pacing. He didn't know why he did it. He thought: he'd long lost the desire to know why he did some of the things he did. Maybe it was because some part of him felt trapped, and this vessel of flesh was just acting out what the unconscious mind was thinking.

"Pacing about in a cage of my own making. Hi, I am the jailer and the keep."

He felt restless. Restless and volatile. He thought, he didn't even know why he was doing this. Waiting. What was he waiting for? What was he trying to accomplish? What did any of this mean to him?

Somewhere close by, the last train for the night would be passing by, and people would be getting ready to turn in for the night. Tomorrow, he thought, tomorrow would be a new day. All these people would wake up, getting ready for school, getting ready for work. 

Getting ready for life.

What was his life, the man wondered. It currently revolved around three items, all on the coffee table before him like a magic triangle. The table was short and handsome, lacquered and dark.

An old camera, the sort with two lenses - one above the other. Time had not been kind to it. A black leather notebook with a similarly black rubber band running vertical along its side. It looked tired, as if the passing of time had made it sag and its pages wrinkled.

A cellphone. Its screen was scratched and its cover was scored and cracked. Looking at it one might have thought all life had deserted the device, but the man knew that it was just an illusion. It was asleep for now. And perhaps, some time soon, it would awake.

He didn't like nights like this, not for the fact that he was alone. Being by himself was something he was used to. Being by himself was something he often relished. But nights like this were different. What made these so very different? That turned the commonplace and generally agreeable into experiences so very hard to contain?

Maybe these questions somehow fed into themselves in an infinite loop, dragging ever more of his thoughts into a gravity well of doubt and negativity and unfocused anger. Just maybe.

But ah, there was hope. One thing that could change this and take him away from his own mind. He gazed intently at the cellphone. Willing it to come to life. Willing it to show him the face of someone else. Someone real.

Seconds passed.

Then minutes.

An hour.

The screen stayed black. Its dark, scarred emptiness seemed to leer at him mockingly.

Gradually, he started to hear a dry chuckle. It was hoarse, and sounded like the halfway between laughter and a sob. He looked around, his gaze on the cellphone broken. No one. He was alone.

[alexleong]

This state of missing someone brings a peculiar and awful sort of joy. My philosophy towards waiting has always been the same - it comes when it comes. And it's best to fill the time between the great moments that make or break our fates. 

Waiting for her is not painful. I'd never say it is. This self-imposed state of not talking to her is a choice I make for myself, a choice I've made willingly. I like her a lot. And because I like her so much, I will fight it. I will fight the urge to talk to her, to hear her voice. 

Everything.

Because I know that the minute I do talk to her, I won't be able to stop. And perhaps, neither will she. So I wait. Did you know? Waiting can be such a delicious experience. Every minute, every moment, dilutes and expands and becomes something unimaginably vast, so that each one that passes is like an epoch. 

But what is it I'm waiting for? Sometimes I don't quite know, myself. But whatever it is, it roughly boils down to her being in my arms and telling me, "I'm so glad you didn't give up. I'm so glad you didn't stop waiting." 

That's how I roll, baby. Never give up, never surrender.

[consensuous-deactivated20110829]

“I do not want to be the leader. I refuse to be the leader. I want to live darkly and richly in my femaleness. I want a man lying over me, always over me. His will, his pleasure, his desire, his life, his work, his sexuality the touchstone, the command, my pivot. I don’t mind working, holding my ground intellectually, artistically; but as a woman, oh, God, as a woman I want to be dominated. I don’t mind being told to stand on my own feet, not to cling, be all that I am capable of doing, but I am going to be pursued, fucked, possessed by the will of a male at his time, his bidding.”

 Anaïs Nin

so, so relevant.

(via consensuous)

Good she can write, love her stuff!

(via youmakemeneedyou)

Beautiful. 

(via eveing)

Ladies.