anon

a reservoir of ghosts

[zenymayrecidoro]

long time no nothing

just here to tell you all that i've gone on to create another blog: snorouscocks

[magrittee-deactivated20190104]

[katelouisepowell]

Rene Magritte - Love from a Distance

[zenymayrecidoro]

it's been a while since i opened my tumbs site.

i'm feeling really vulnerable right now though i don't have to be.

the weather is confusingly bad which makes me sick.

i have just recovered from a fever and it seems like i'm coming down with another one.

for every passing word is a spark of dark and flight of light. and in those things, the evidence of hope even god.

i need to fimd da job, pidaman.

[theparisreview]

Happy birthday, Joško Marušić! Watch the Croatian animator’s short film Fisheye.

[zenymayrecidoro]

strong atmosphere here.

[zenymayrecidoro]

Dream about Daddy

Dried leaves make scratching sounds as they amble down the tin roofs and streets. The curtains in my room rise and fall with the wind and it almost seems as if the entire house is breathing. I turn to my side, the back of my knees sweaty, a small crumpled purple scarf snaked around my left arm, Jack Kerouac's The Subterraneans to my left. A bead of sweat-tear escapes my right eye stops short at the oriental crease. I had just woken up from an ambivalent dream.

It was, unsurprisingly, about my father. We met each other at a grand hotel where I happened to be staying (for what and for how long, I don't know--- it's a dream). It had a spiraling staircase which led to the mezannine where an ivory piano was being played by some maestro. The banisters were wood painted in gold, the parapets were wrought iron. The floors were made entirely of marble of a strange blue variety. The hallways leading to the rooms were well lit with old-fashioned electric lamps, the walls were colored teal, the ceilings were high, the carpets like the floors, were colored blue. I think that in dreams, my taste for luxury and finery finally get their way. I spoke to my father inside my room and had asked him where he had been all these years. But he kept on telling me these tangential things, so many things that upon waking I'd already forgotten. He had not answered my question but it felt like something had finally been accounted for. I felt calm and assured; the fear and insecurities that had always plagued me had gone away with that dream.

What makes the dream ambivalent and what, admittedly, upsets me is the possibility of that dream being a premonition of some kind. Well, I've always believed that dreams were nothing more than projections of the unconscious, of our desires and fears, wholly personal. There is no hand that guides and sends dreams to us to let something be known or revealed. But now, I'm not so sure.

Would it still be worthwhile to hope? For years and years, I wondered and worried about him. My teen years were spent in this kind of fretting and thinking and occasionally crying. Which is also hilarious because, all in all, I think I've only known my father for a grand total of five years (he was a seaman and was always away). I've had longer relationships with former teachers and classmates, and friends.

The dream ended, I think, with me walking my limping father (he was injured on his left foot, which had to be amputated) to the seaside all the way to the port. He boards on a ship, explaining to me that he belonged to the sea. I didn't stop him. We were the only ones there, he boards, the ship disappears. Behind me, in a small tin hut, scratching sounds.

[zenymayrecidoro]

a really pretentious selfie of me during a history class field trip. 2013

[thecolorblockcurator]

In the Studio, Carl Wilhelm Wilhelmson 

[perel]

what a man

[zenymayrecidoro]

love this guy

[thecolorblockcurator]

I’ve been working on my thesis and I took a little break to find some more paintings to store for this blog most of which were rococo paintings, and I realized that a really great thesis would be on the lesbian themes or imagery in rococo painting, and its significance based on the culture of that...

[zenymayrecidoro]

this could actually be a great thesis.

[theparisreview]

“A self-advertising writer is always a self-extinguished writer.”

Archibald MacLeish (via theparisreview)

[zenymayrecidoro]

Moving on and out

Progressing seemed to be like passing through a haze as thick and as hard as a concrete wall. I hardly knew it's there, but my body and mind felt the strain and struggle. Also, that by all means, it seemed impossible, but then again here I am, through with it and feeling the numbness or maybe just the calm that comes after the struggle.

After six years (one spent utterly confused, another spent as a shut-in: in my home and in my mind, with only the final four as actual "productive years") I am finally graduating from college! While I'm not taken to jumping for joy, and the use of an exclamation point in my previous sentence is a cause for alarm in my world, yes, I'm very much happy and satisfied with what I have done with my time.

Of course, this is also accompanied with a tinge of anxiety. I have plans, although many people would say that life shouldn't be planned at all (because controlling what happens tends to cause more harm and trouble). But I don't really plan down to the details--- I try to be flexible, making suggestions with myself, calculating options, and adjusting if something doesn't work out. I may be a romantic and a bohemian, but that doesn't mean that I lack a rationale for my decisions and actions.

So far, I only have outlines. My priority is developing a career that can support me in the long-term. I have accepted a freelance job but I have no desire to get on with it for longer than a year. I've decided to look for a 9 to 5 affair, and preferably one with a ladder which I can climb. By next year, I'm looking to financial stability and moving out--- my mother doesn't mind this as long as I keep in touch with her. At the same time, I really wish to be able to support my mother to her retirement or at least give her a more comfortable situation, having been a single mother for almost two decades. This may not be necessary since she's very good with her finances but I think of it as a gesture of gratitude for her support.

Through all these, I know that working on my own stuff (the writings and the few pieces of art) will have to take the back seat. I can accept this, though of course, I will never leave it. Perhaps I can manage a considerable amount of poems every year. Admittedly, a book seems an impossibility to me, still. Unless, of course, I enter the academe and teach (which I don't want to for various reasons I don't want to talk about yet).

Along with these plans, I sometimes stop myself in awe because with the difficulties I've gone through or have witnessed, it's a wonder how I got through all of it. I think that I really just want to know what happens next. And everytime I do find out, I'm always surprised (though there are repeats and repeats of old lessons and events), especially with how I cope with situations and outcomes.  And now, again, I can't wait to see how this year will turn out, what will become of me, and who or what I will encounter. Please, even if you do not know me, wish me luck and may you be blessed.

[turtlenecksweaterneck]

[zenymayrecidoro]

notice from adviser

I just received a notice from my adviser about the best thesis deliberations. One one had: YAAAAAY! On the other: still yaaaaay!---- poverty (I'm required to produce 6 bound copies excluding mine).

[theparisreview]

“Certainly, you can see a birthday coming from many miles away, and it should not be a shock or a surprise when it happens.”

Happy birthday, David Cronenberg. Read his introduction to a new translation of The Metamorphosis.

[antiqueart]

Josefa de Óbidos - Paschal Lamb (1660-1670)

[spanishbaroqueart]

Josefa de Óbidos (20 February 1630 – 22 July 1684) was a Spanish-born, Portuguese painter from the seventeenth century. Her birth name was Josefa de Ayala Figueira, but she signed her work as, “Josefa em Óbidos” or, “Josefa de Ayalla”. She is one of the relatively few female European painters known to have been active in the Baroque era. All of her work was executed in Portugal, her father’s native country, where she lived from the age of four. - Josefa de Óbidos was born in Seville, Spain. Her father, Baltazar Gomes Figueira, was a Portuguese painter from the village of Óbidos. He went to Seville in the 1620s to improve his painting technique and, while there, married Catarina de Ayala y Cabrera, a native Andalusian, who would become the mother of Josefa. Josefa’s father worked in the studio of the Spanish Baroque painter Francisco de Herrera the Elder. The famous artist was her godfather. The family returned to Portugal in 1634. (read more)

[centuriespast]

Untitled (Netsuke)

Magician, during spiel before opening his box of tricks.

Artist: Unknown

Gift of Senator Andrew J. Sordoni

Samek Art Gallery, Bucknell University

[zenymayrecidoro]

Now this is something I can make a story out of.

[centuriespast]

Group of Inebriated Ascetics, c. 1800

India: Rajasthan, Kishangarh Workshop, 1775-1825 Opaque watercolor and gold on paper image: 7-5/8 x 6-5/8 in. (19.4 x 16.8 cm); sheet: 8-3/4 x 7-5/8 in. (22.2 x 19.4 cm) Genre scenes, such as this group of inebriated male ascetics smoking hookah pipes, were popular subjects in Indian painting. Hindu holy men, or sadhus, were also known to imbibe an intoxicating drink made from a marijuana derivative, perhaps referenced here by the scattered cups and jugs. The turbans of the ascetics have loosened and begun to unravel, and most of the men appear to be asleep.

Norton Simon Museum