dragons on moraga

Two dragons dropping art and thoughts off from SF to New York

[dragonsonmoraga-blog]

[dragonsonmoraga-blog]

Plotholes on my mind.

Potholes In My Lawn by De La Soul running and playing in my mind at the moment. I hear yodeling in the background. Yo - Le - E - Hoo  Yo - Le - E - Hoo  Oh - Yayeeee

Plotholes on my mind. Gaps and voids I'm working to fill in. Crawling in a defeated position around the bend. The corner. Around the wall blocking my way forward. The re-occurring wall I can't run from. It follows me. A shadow I can't shake. Body run over by time and battles. Everyday struggle. I used to have more energy than this. A lot more hungry. A lot more drive. Blazing forward with no second thoughts or doubts. Pure confidence. Sole driver of my own life. Sometimes seeking a co-pilot but for the most part content with myself. It takes time for information to sink in. Can't rush the process.

Don't panic. Let go. It will come to you. At ease. Breathe in. Deep and slow. Breathe out. Whoosh!

It's hard to feel comfortable in your own skin when you're shedding a layer of yourself every time you go to sleep. A strong anchor is key to keeping you grounded and sane. Any of us can float away at any second.

Our former selves following us around until we stop giving it power over the selves we will be tomorrow.

-B

[dragonsonmoraga-blog]

Sunglasses

Stepping into the world without your hand in mine, a deep emptiness announces its presence. Justified in my self-pity, I scowl at the sunshine. Misfortune feels like home these days.

[dragonsonmoraga-blog]

stream 001

OK Julia here it is. My stream of consciousness. I'm going to just pretend like I'm having a conversation with you because that makes it easier to navigate my mind when I have to think about the art of conversation while I'm doing this. The thing that's been on my mind is my undeniable trust in myself and how it feels like I have to move mountains sometimes to convince my mom of this trust. I reference my mom first because she is the door to the rest of the world that is outside my own thoughts and feelings. The one that can push all my buttons. But at the same time that i'm struggling with her there is every reason why she would be concerned about me. She doesn't know what I'm trying to do. How can anybody? We don't live inside each other's minds. But do you remember that cartoon Pinky and the Brain? If I had to be divided into two, I'd think they represented the flip sides of me. There's an evil mastermind that wants to take over the world, constantly plotting out the path ahead like it's a battlefield and I must move among the shadows to avoid getting spotted and bombed upon. It never quite hit me how hard it would be to make money and survive off being an artist. I never even really thought of myself as a real artist until recently. I always felt like I was posing, just training to be something but never quite good enough no matter how hard I tried. It took a really long time for me to be comfortable with what I was outputting. I was always aiming for the skies, trying to emulate the artists that I looked up to. Photographers. Film directors. Whether that was Chase Jarvis or Sofia Coppola or Steven Soderbergh or Wes Anderson. Wanting to be as great as them. To have just as good of an eye as they did. You enter tunnel vision this way and time doesn't exist. There is only the road ahead and the city that always seems out of reach until years later you arrive. It's not like how you thought it would be though. The city was really a mirage and there is actually another long road ahead. One that spans greater distance. Your bubble bursts and it's time to get moving again. Except you realize that maybe rushing isn't such a good idea. Maybe you think I ought to sit down for a second. Look around for a second. Listen. Blank out. Try to be that uncarved block you read about in The Tao of Pooh. It's hard not to judge and be hard on yourself, to want to be the best you you can be against the natural flaws of being a human being. Everything and everyone around you is pushing you to be that person they imagine you to be at your fullest potential. It overrides your true self too often this way. I tell people I feel like an old woman stuck inside a young body sometimes. They laugh like I don't know what I'm talking about but I'm not really joking. What if our true minds were different forms and different people and our bodies were only the antennas to that universe that contained these thoughts and impulses we have? What if we were merely projections? My mind wanders to places like this if I let it and I think it's important that I let it. You can so easily not trust yourself when your thoughts sound out of the ordinary to most people. I was walking down the street with two of my friends yesterday after leaving blunt jazz sundays. The sun was out, and I just kind of did a random twirl from the euphoric moment. One of my friends commented that she loved how happy I was. I don't know if I was ecstatic but it's funny how so many of our unconscious feelings can rise to the surface when we stop being such control freaks over our feelings and thoughts. I wish telepathy existed sometimes. If we could pick and choose when to convey our thoughts to each other just by thinking it. Or even transferring everything we're feeling to someone else for a few minutes so we can resolve issues and fights in more empathetic ways. I wish I lived in Douglas Adams' Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy for real a lot. He created this world I didn't want to leave and one where I feel translates into my everyday life in the most random ways. Arthur is a bystander, a simple observer of life and the random places the universe takes him to constantly. I used to complain about being bored a lot when I was younger. My mind was always looking for puzzles, things to dissect, to figure out because my family was this unsolvable puzzle to me. It frustrated me that I couldn't figure them out, that I didn't have so much information that was locked away from me and only over time did it start to reveal itself through stories my mom would tell me. Took me a long time to let it go. It's the unsolvable rubik's cube because I wasn't there when these past events happened. There was nothing I could have done because I literally was too young to do anything. How was I to know of why my mother's side of the family hated my father that much that some of that disdain would trickle down to myself. Certain things like that are out of your control no matter how much you want to fix things, to make things right. That desire doesn't really go away though and only finds other outlets to push out that energy. I liked technology because it was a puzzle to me that felt solvable in a sense. I could understand its logic. Most of the time. My mind needed distractions so that became the thing I fixated on. My mom instilled in me an all or nothing mentality growing up. She used to tell me all the time that if I'm not going to finish something, don't even start. If you're going to do something, you better commit to it and you better take it as far as you can go. This can get exhausting if you want to do everything under the sun. I'm a curious person and I wanted everything when I was younger. This would only have been possible if I had 9 other identical versions of me running around. I wish I could know and be everything all at once. This isn't very practical though so over the years I would cut down 10 activities to 2 to 1. Focusing on one thing at a time is essential. You can make that one thing really good. Make something really count instead of a bunch of half-cooked ideas that never grow into fruition. One well-prepared meal with the right flavors and ingredients can do a stomach well instead of one that has one too many ingredients and a flavor that isn't quite well-developed. Ok my mind wandered off into the internet just now. I'm also currently blasting Mac Miller's Watching Movies With The Sound Off. I've been listening to the album on repeat for almost 2 weeks. Never listened to him before this album and really glad I gave this one a chance. Really well produced. Love all the sounds he used and the cohesive sound design throughout the album. It just sounds really full and I connect with more than half of the lyrics which are comprehensive and complex in a way I thought no one else was really doing besides Kendrick and Frank Ocean. Music is my therapy. It's what got me through too many storms and I'm true to what moves me. Growing up in the bay, hip hop is around a lot and I just gravitated to that bass line. Fuck I think I have slight add or adhd because I definitely became distracted again for the past 45 minutes… 5 hours later… Back to Pinky and the Brain. What I mean by that is there's a part of me that is completely lazy and wants to just do whatever the commanding officer in charge of me says. I could be completely content being the janitor at some school somewhere for the rest of my life. Take it easy. I don't want to be any one's leader because that would mean I was responsible for them and that only leads to stress. I can't take it easy if there are things to be taken care of all the time. The other part takes pleasure in being in the game of war, practicing my skills and understanding of the art of it. I'm creeping around the back of those mountains right now, gaining on you from afar. You won't even know what hit you. I want to win. That's all. I'm not trying to kill anyone's spirit. I just want to be the best I can be while staying true to my inner nature. That's a hard thing to do.

[dragonsonmoraga-blog]

Tell me you miss me Tell me you think about me, as if I was by your side all through out the day. Tell me the wonderful things you think and plan for us. Tell me your fantasies about our future. Tell everyone you know that you love me undyingly. Tell them you’ve seen light. Tell them I love you like you deserve to be loved. Tell them we’re happy. Tell them. Tell the world from a mountain top that you’ve joined my cult- that you’re a devout follower. Tell yourself you’re lucky; you’re privileged to have me. Tell yourself that you can- and will, be a better man, for me. Tell yourself the secret that you love me. Tell me Tell me everything, like a child after their first day of school. Tell me your fears and fantasies. Tell me your thoughts and reactions. I want to go inside you.. To dig around with a flashlight and duster. To prod around, connecting the bits and pieces of your life. Tell me you love me and I’ll tell you back.

[dragonsonmoraga-blog]

The universe writes love songs to Us

The universe writes love songs to Us. It can feel the tickle of being loved, and now that we've awakened, it lures us to it like a shy girl with a crush. It felt the caress of our nose against its cheek, our fingers stroking the baby hairs on its head, and our full, loving attention, sending a flood of lightening through its body, mind & soul. Having felt the orgasmic truth of our love, it sits by its phone, waiting for us to remember the good times. 💜j

[dragonsonmoraga-blog]

"I have to believe in a world outside my own mind. I have to believe that my actions still have meaning, even if I can't remember them. I have to believe that when my eyes are closed, the world's still there. Do I believe the world's still there? Is it still out there?... Yeah. We all need mirrors to remind ourselves who we are. I'm no different."

-Christopher Nolan, Memento

[dragonsonmoraga-blog]

ontological inertia (_from jeremy)

ontological inertia: ideas in motion staying in motion; makes us fill in the blank to the "logical" conclusion

Jeremy breaks it down: Fuck, man, John Hughes was a liar. He made it look like your 20s were going to be rosy. Ferris Bueller. Breakfast Club. Those two in particular gave the notion that while yes, your teens sucked, your adulthood would be ok. I guess I'm really saying that we've all been prey to the notion of ontological intertia. After a story finishes with its happy ending, everything stays that way. When in fact, it doesn't. That's why unresolved/bad endings are so powerful in storytelling - no closure, that universe doesn't tie back up the way it's "supposed" to be. Consider walking past a room and looking through the door with only a few seconds to look inside - and you see something - say, a couple about to kiss. You leave before you can see what happens. And so, in your brain, they are always about to kiss, and *will* kiss. It never enters the mind that one of them might break away at the last moment.

[dragonsonmoraga-blog]

raw life philosophy (b)

Jeremy: Ahhh, God, I love music therapy

B: Hells yeah it's the only thing that keeps me going, on an everyday way. Of course my mom and dad definitely and a lot of other things but life is uncontrollable. Situations you have no control over on an everyday basis and that something that keeps driving me forward past all that shit is music. Sitting on the bus for an hour to and then from work everyday is a lot. 2 hours total. If I was just sitting there with no music, I don't know if I could keep that up. After a few days of observing people while listening in on some snippets of conversations here and there. I would grow to be really sick of that, hearing fragments of what's been and is going on with people around me.

I remember in New York when I was taking the trains everywhere, I'd start up conversations with complete strangers. In the end of all things, I continue living life because I don't want to miss out on listening to people's own stories. Tapping into another world essentially. I'm just collecting all these memories all the time and that's why I put myself into these crazy absolutely insane situations like getting into strangers' cars all the time, asking questions and being open enough to ask them. To really want to know, and not the shallow level -20 shit, the level 3000 shit.

I walk super fast down the street because I don't want to miss anything. We spend so much time being static and we must move fast to switch to being dynamic. I'm on a race with myself to get to that next place I have to be at. Over the years, I've turned that shit around to where it's not specific anymore, it's abstract. I have a vague idea of what the next thing is going to be like a blurry photo and only as I'm going through the adventure of filling in those details by living and being spontaneous does the visual clear up and I can see what's been going on. And then I make sure I remember that shit. The memory, the story has to be completely clear from that point on, stored away in that memory drive in our minds forever.

The only decent thing we can do as human beings is to live and act freely without fucking other people up as well as yourself.

At least be fucking decent.

[dragonsonmoraga-blog]

how far we run (b)

It's 8:30p. I've just gotten off the phone with my mom and a wave of emotions washes over me. Her love is transcendent to all. I can literally feel the intense love radiating from her 800 miles away from her voice. One of the few calls I've made without asking for help or money. Just calling to say Hi. Wanted to know how you were doing. Are you still at work? I am too. She says that call made her very happy. I'm not very good at making my mom happy. Born a rebel child from a room filled with shit that wasn't my own that I figured out how to clean out over the years. Dark childhood. Suicidal half the time. Hell I'm still suicidal here and there. It's that love I feel in these rare moments though that makes me want to Live, and Thrive, and to make her proud as much as I can while going my own way in life. To make something of myself not just for me but also for her. A reminder to take care of myself. Someone is out there right now caring about me so much that I can feel it hundreds of miles away. You CAN'T take that shit for granted. It's a humbling wave of feelings. Be grateful you made it this far.

6 months ago I was in New York City. Living in Bushwick Brooklyn with my thinking partner in crime for about a month celebrating my 23rd birthday in this world. We had gone out to Central Park on a cloudy but sunny Tuesday afternoon and split a quarter of shrooms. I had the most zen-filled trip of my life. It pushed me to realize I'M RIGHT WHERE I NEED TO BE. No rush. Follow the river. I saw myself in a honeycomb with bees intensely buzzing around me. ZZZZZ ZZZZZ ZZZZZ in my ears. I remember lying out on some rocks for hours with her just silently experiencing everything happening at once. I'd break away from one portal and look over at her and just laugh. Laughter ruled the day. I couldn't stop laughing at how ridiculous life was. How everything we perceive is so small compared to all the untapped parallel universes that were happening right before our eyes but our socialized minds built a blind spot for. I remember feeling like Cate Blanchett playing Bob Dylan in I'm Not There when she's tripping balls with The Beatles in London and everything was in this clean stark black and white. I witness crazy shit because I'm open to experiencing the endless stories in this universe. Walking around with no weapon into ANY neighborhood and being daring enough to not feel paranoid about getting raped or beaten up. It's this fearlessness that has gotten me this far. Not overthinking everything. I used to do that a lot and it stopped me from going out and doing the things I needed to do to get to where I needed to be. Where my energy needed to be. The Tao of Pooh taught me in ways that we're all connected and the minute we're not open to the fun that is life is when life isn't fun and we've turned it into a life of suffering in our minds. That Biggie line "My mind is playing tricks on me" immediately pops up when I think of this.

We're not meant to have everything figured out according to some preconceived time schedule. It's all in the everyday flow, the everyday struggle of being human and admitting to being a flawed human because that's what we naturally are. J, my thinking partner, was with me when I made a call to my mom 6 months ago after that trip and I had come back down to earth as a 23-year-old child. A child that was demanding money while strategizing ways to get it stressing I would make back the loan from the art show I was about to have. Overly optimistic about my expectations. The ego taking over love. Taking advantage of that love. When I hang up the phone, J turns to me and shakes her head. We talk about what just happened when we go underground to catch a train. That behavior is simply unacceptable. Expecting something when you haven't earned it. It was rough and I didn't feel too great about it but look. I did what I did and I don't regret it. I never do because that's raw nature coming through. I wasn't dishonest about what my mind was justifying to be ok behavior at the time. You must fall to rise in this life, the only way we can truly learn.

I did the same damn thing 3 weeks ago. And that's the last fucking time I'm doing it. Because this call I just had with her. I see an adult relationship growing between my mom and I. An understanding. I drove myself out of this tunnel. I moved out of San Francisco and moved up to Seattle in these last few months. Flew over to Europe for a cumulative amount of 3.5 weeks before and in-between the move with my mom. I spent quality time with her. And I'm now coming to terms with these decisions. I get my paycheck tomorrow that will flush my account that's near $0 at the moment. I spent a lot of money on equipment when I got this job. I have a job now. That's crazy to me. I've never been in a position like this my entire life. And I just want to do her proud. I want my mom to see I'm laying down the groundwork for the life I am meant to be living. And I'll find my way through any kind of darkness because her love will lead me through any shit that comes my way. She's got my back and I will always have hers. Trust.

Heart, Honor, and Respect (HiiiPower)

"the three i’s represent heart, honor and respect. That’s how we carry ourselves in the streets, and just in the world, period. Hiiipower, it basically is the simplest form of representing just being above all the madness, all the bullshit. No matter what the world is going through, you’re always going to keep your dignity and carry yourself with this manner that it don’t phase you. Whatever you think negative is in your life. Overcoming that and still having that self-respect." -Kendrick Lamar

[dragonsonmoraga-blog]

A fantasy served to me on a silver platter. It took a month of patience, and before I could begin to pay attention, it figured itself out— leapt, spun and stuck the landing, which was his rough stubble kissing my neck.

“Come home with me ” -yes- “It’s the right thing to do,” he urged.

Sticking to my guns But really, turning him down. It wasn’t enough. His kisses were passionate but distant. His mouth swallowed mine, and as I catch up and play along, I still know this isnt what I want. But the weird thing is, I expected this. I learned, in my years, that simple boys don’t know how to make love- how to ride the same wave in the middle of an endless ocean. They don’t understand the language my tongue speaks. They think the warm up is the first lap. However, old boy’s got some years on him. Years of fucking, sucking, cuddling and Catching. Catching those clues, hints and come-hithers. Responding to a pelvis pressed to his; stroking the skin which begs his touch. Begs for his breath, his scent, his stares and squeezes.

[dragonsonmoraga-blog]

wakenbakeramblings #3:

B: What I'm trying to grasp is time perspective and how much of youth is spent wasted away by this need to race with everyone else around us when really this race is inside ourselves and we lose sight of the unconscious voice from blurring most things into blind spots so we can get through the unbearable pain of awareness of how animalistic our true natures really are which goes against the ego of the mind which strives for a dream. Magic versus primal nature. We are always on the hunt because that is what life's pattern goes around. Life is circling around one simple energy which we are all spurred from which is movement and the transferring of motion. Mono no aware is something I picked up last week which means the awareness of the transience of all things and a gentle sadness at their passing. And I think deep down really down there is this feeling. A deep peace of feeling grounded and moving with the waves. Morning wakenbake rant I thought you might enjoy officially over and out!

[dragonsonmoraga-blog]

Arachnids

Once again, I leave my love to sleep late as I catch an early train to work. He snores heavily in a grizzly manner. I'm more sad than tired; tired because I chose to stay awake and relish our few hours together rather than waste them in my dream world. I spent the night squeezing and stroking his strong arms, which were wrapped around me tightly. His breath on my neck was a warm kiss, in and out. If it were anyone else, I'd squirm my way out of work in favor of day long love making. But I know better with him . I know not to rush it. I know we'll be together in years, and years after that. Time doesn't exist with him, only bliss and contentment. His sleepy hand squeezes mine and I breath. Don't cry, girl, i say to myself. He is forever. I can live my life and know mine is out there. I've waited before, I'll wait again. Until then, smile and be happy.

[dragonsonmoraga-blog]

[dragonsonmoraga-blog]

Just seeing your name again, that familiar brown jacket- with the hood resting over your hunched back. You offer a friendly, genuine smile; but I feel you resisting, as I assume you feel me. My heart drops to meet her. The one whose face I recognize immediately-- the bandaid I've been waiting to rip off. You're standing in front of me now and I have to bow. To greet you courteously like a fucking ambassador. "Welcome to my life, as if you weren't ruining it sufficiently from afar." But a part of me finally escapes, gasping for breath from the under the piles of denial, "if I can't sleep with you, I really don't care about the other stuff." hush! I tell myself. "I know who you're going home to. The game is over; there's no point in even playing." She pouts her lips, unconsciously, from the corner.

[dragonsonmoraga-blog]

::BMAN

"LIFTOFF" (PART 1)

[dragonsonmoraga-blog]

ROBOTS OR DINOSAURS?

ROBOTS