but i long for this place i’ve never been to and that i know yet somehow. and as i watch the stars of light made up by reflections and an endless moon behind the clouds, i’m reminded of it, some red sands, sharp mountains and dry bushes i’ve never seen, it’s all buried deep inside me and as i watch slow motion water flow in my screen, i’m mesmerized, i’m hypnotized and i’m hoping it’s washing it all away but i have to find the right speed first.
well, if i don’t fly the whole mess into the sea first… that’s always been the thing with me. i’m already so far.
i long for this place i’ve never laid my eyes upon, for i believe it’s strangely connected to who i am or will be.
i have the right speed.
i only have to find the right music now.
then follow its rhythm.

i’ve dreamt i was angry, but less angry than i was when i finally found sleep. i shouted for a long time to defend someone but by doing so, i was also defending myself. i’m not that surprised to shout like madness itself in my dreams, every day is just another fight to avoid resent swallowing me. i’m even angry at the fact that i’m angry, but i won’t allow it out or i might hurt anyone i touch. it will probably swallow me entirely, eventually, but i can’t care enough, it’s just slightly better than another scar. it’s swirling and crawling under my skin and it sinks deeper with every move i make, so i’m standing very still, just as long as i can make another good picture…
***
i’ve got yet to meet someone who’d understand the urge. i don’t care that much about mere memories, about fixing mere memories. and i really don’t care about showing where i’ve been or what i’ve done, i don’t need proofs. i barely see images when i look at old pictures, i see things beyond that. i watch feelings. mine, others. feelings at the time i snapped the shutter, feelings about about relationships to others, about their feelings toward anything and everything. i’ve really got yet to meet someone who understands this urge. fixing things and faces, either because i was feeling something strong, either because i was craving to feel something which i wasn’t sure was there. a long time ago, i’ve fixed smiling faces to feel like i was there, like i was part of something. now i’m certain that i’m not but i could never be sure that i really was then. and a few pictures don’t prove anything, if you haven’t been taught yet that physical closeness means nothing, you will someday. not that i really wish that anyone would learn that. not in the way i did anyhow.
***
it’s been a while i haven’t felt time. physically. like when you don’t let it flow through you but make plannings and lists of things to do and schedules and keep track of things. i haven’t kept any of my usual ways to plan things and december fills in and it could as well be october or next march and i couldn’t really tell. it might as well be december 2010 or 2002 and i couldn’t really tell and in a sense, it’s liberating. i’m going to have to pay for that somehow, it’s going to fall on my head someday or maybe it already has. like running at full speed into a wall. i’m sort of trusting myself for not being able to settle forever in the mediocre life i’m living right now, but maybe i’ve hit my head against one of my walls one too many times. but honestly now, who cares?
***
i’ve dreamt that i was angry, but it was nothing compared to how angry i was when i fell asleep. maybe somehow i’m not letting anything out and hold on to that because it’s the only way that i know that i do care. and after i shouted my eyes out, someone i can’t know was there and i looked into their sparkling eyes and i saw love…
so… just as long as i’m making pictures i like…

Eels – Love of the Loveless

i picked up a boy at work and i met a girl and we ate the very best sushis. i met a french girl who was warm and happy. i told the boy why i hadn’t seen anyone in months and he understood. i met a dark haired boy who loved virginia woolf. i met an australian girl with a pretty face and the best accent. i met a french girl who loved art. i met a cute boy who was dressed in black. i met an austrian girl. i was invited to a birthday. i gave advice about photography. i got some mail. i was invited to a foreign country. i talked in english and drank and talked in french and drank and talked in english and drank again. i looked at the boy who’s my friend and i said i’m happy. and i really was happy.

i came home and erased so many things that it should’ve hurt. but i really was happy.

Eric Andersen – Violets of Dawn

i noticed a girl whose presence i had no intention or reason to really acknowledge by saying hi. i met a boy who asked me if i wasn’t macfly, by any chance. a girl told me this evening was sort of awkward and i understood but disagreed. i met a sicilian boy who was well on his way to have a foursome with his friends. i took some news of a girl who didn’t recognize my face but knew who i was. but i couldn’t find a boy i’d swear i’d seen ten minutes before and say hi. and i didn’t see the brown eyes i’d sort of expected to see. i guess it was sort of an awkward evening after all. feels like living ten different lives each day, let me blow out some more smoke, this was four hours or four lives ago, see, i’m not here, i wasn’t there.

it occured to me then : how can you tell what’s focused from what’s unfocused if all you see is a perpetual slight blur? just like in the movie i’d watched earlier tonight. sharpness makes blur even more beautiful. blur makes sharpness even more meaningful.
i threw my daily contacts away, it felt good and normal, except i couln’t see anymore what the old man far across the roofs and courtyards was doing in his livingroom around his table at 5.25 am.
i got up and went to the window to finish my cigarette. the night was incredibly clear, the rain clouds were vanishing in white curls far above the city, i thought that it might be a pretty morning tomorrow. only one room except mine was lit all around me, it felt like being the only humans alive in the world. from my window, i can see a lot of roofs, there’s a school and its courtyard and a large building with too many windows to count behind it. i looked at the other room lit: for the first time since a long while, i could see in it, the table in the livingroom and a old man looking at something on the table. he paused and arranged something then turned slowly around it. he sat down, got up and paused again. my cigarette was finished. i thought that maybe, i ought to buy myself pretty glasses soon. i left the window to take my daily contacts off.
i turned my computer off and quickly glanced at my window. i needed some fresh air. a text i wrote some weeks ago came back to my mind, i had been writing about the sharpness of things, of reality, i had thought that maybe it was a good thing that i couldn’t see properly and refused to wear glasses or contacts everyday, like to protect myself from the sharpness of things. i had been writing about possibles and impossibles, about things happening even though no one believed them possible but how you can spot an impossible from far before you can get slashed by it, with or without glasses. i’d been wondering why anyone would want to be cut again by reality when they’ve already experienced it and know for real how deep the cut can be. i’d considered that not correcting my vision was choosing what i wanted or didn’t want to see. or more precisely, preferring the word watching to the word seeing, not as a refusal of the reality, really, but more as a helpful distortion. does facing the bare reality one hundred percent of the time make it less ugly? not facing it doesn’t make it less ugly of course, but distorting it helps, i thought.
the thing is, i wasn’t all that sure about it now.
i came home slowly, looking around a lot, it all seemed strange and somehow perfect. the lights, the reflections on the pavements after the pouring rains, the compact mass of leaves, the streets and cobblestone, it all looked beautiful. then again, maybe it was only the lasting feeling of beauty of the movie i just watched.
we got out of the theater with the exhilarating sensation of having experienced pure beauty. we looked at each other with the same craving to make something as beautiful, whatever it would be. short movies, pictures, grain, tons of colours, whatever. it’s just the kind of movie that inspires deeply because it reaches so deep. with crisp images, strong warm colours and a lot of blur.
i got out of the subway under a pouring rain, i ran to the theater as fast as i could, it had been a long while since i last ran like that. i felt light, jumping across the large puddles, stopping a couple of time to escape the rain for a few seconds, then running again. i wasn’t even catching my breath when i reached the theater, how odd.
i put my contacts on just before leaving home, then i headed to the subway. the world was so sharp it felt eerie, the wet pavements were covered by a thick layer of leaves and they glittered under the street lights, i made a couple of pictures, focus on infinite.