Exploration/Examination

I'm destined to never have more than 7 hours of sleep. It's my life's quest. Soon it will begin to happen. Soon! I was on the right path tonight... a nice, solid tempo ride, a delicious dinner dancing through all the food groups and back again, no alcohol, lots of water, a hot shower, a facial, a clean room, a prepped coffee machine, and then... then, I found out about Raymond Scott. And now - I'm completely and senselessly enamored with this new discovery. 'Manhattan Research, Inc.' is officially a lullaby. Thank you Petter. 

My mind is aglow, I'm giddy. It's as though someone has let me in on a playful secret. I feel like holding my hands up to my mouth and giggling. I'm happy to find new treasures! I want to explore more and more, retrospectively, introspectively, prospectively... Self exploration, artistic exploration, musical exploration, academic exploration, human exploration. No stone unturned. So much to hunt, so much to find, so much to discover.  

It's funny how we can come out of weeks of feeling down and then one day it's over. I realized this as the sun was setting tonight and I was sensing something imminently. Watching the glittering lights of a construction caravan, watching the colors bleed from the dusky stretch of road blown around with pinks and taupes and everything is going to be ok. 

Lately I've been having a lot of dreams about driving cars that have failing breaks. It's the most out of control feeling, I remember my second car had its breaks go out while I was driving and it's a feeling that, apparently, one never forgets and lately I've been feeling that same sense of panic in my sleep. And even still, in these dreams I'll keep driving the car and experiencing the break failure over and over again. They're usually other people's cars too. The one earlier last week was in my grandma's car, I was steering from the back seat and someone else was controlling the foot pedals, from the front seat. We couldn't coordinate our steering and acceleration. I didn't know if or when the car was going to stop or go and then the brakes were shot on top of it. Last night I was driving the parent's car of someone I know. I kept crashing it, I wasn't leaving a good impression on them! I wanted to impress them. 

Wow, Viva Radio would be great it it would actually stream. I listen to it while I read or write, it makes me want to lay out and tan and I'm not the lay-out-and-tan-type, which is why it's so funny to listen to it. 

Ok, time to snap out of it and get to work. Lot's of constipated old people to do abdominal series x-rays on this morning... and I wonder why I dream all day...

What happened? The young summer has matured overnight into a wrath of blistering, heavy heat. We're at its mercy, standing under the waves of dissipating solar power, falling over us in particles. Smouldering blankets of hot winds and crazy energy.

I'm lying around on my bed while glimpsing out the window. I can see the heat rise in gassy little bits of curling waves off the streets and rooftops. I realize ironically that I have a summer cold. It makes me feel hot have to fight off the urge to sneeze every time I roll over. I knew something was off last month, something was wrong. Then I went straight into a few weeks out of town to race hard, driving me into the ground. I've been so tired since I've been home, so down. Now it's been a week, working with the sick, and I'm sick again. The same thing happened when I returned from racing in California... I push my immune system into overload racing and pick up some sort of little microbe on a mission at work. Well I'm home now, ready to relax and recover my legs from racing. I guess the recovery has now moved into other areas as well; as long as it stays out of my lungs, that's all I ask.

///Tonight I've had time to think, in my bed, where the best thinking occurs. I've realized my mind has been running around playing with new colors, stirring forgotten emotions.
My eyes are parched, they've been looking in a distant direction, looking at the sun, blinding them. Now it's difficult to discern anything familiar or unrecognizable, perhaps instead rediscovery through touch. It feels like being outside on a sunny day, then running indoors and everything is dark while all the little rods and cones adjust to the state of things. I feel my way around reaching out for the wall that I know is safe and there.

/////I had a dream that I was in an arid landscape without cover and the heat was emitting itself in waves off of all the plants and stones around me. There was a huge mirrored billboard sign. I didn't know I was lost, but engraved in cursive onto its glass it said, Apocalypse: This Way. Everything beyond the mirrored billboard was badlands and I was almost there.

I'd been wrapping myself up, in a spell that ended being only caused by myself and a figment of my imagination. It was unfamiliar and exciting and fun and odd and WONDERFUL! But now reeling and lying here in bed, alone, thinking. My head hurts and I know all I need is sleep but I cannot.

//////He's found a doll. It's small and seemingly resilient and stuffed with wool and wrapped in a pinkish felt. It's a not much of a doll but it amuses him. It has pearls for eyes and pink lips, her hair is drab and brown like boots. He places a small wreath around the top of the dolls head and it stings because it is made of barbs that attach roughly to her woolen skull. It's like purple thistles but it's not, it's made of needles from the sea. They glow an indescribable color that exists outside of the spectrum. Their color makes up the ink that pulses inside these otherwise invisible creatures that dwell in caverns at the bottoms of the deepest oceans. They can only be found by those who are lost. He's collected these needles all his life. They're shaped like barbs and he weaves delicate wreaths and sometimes necklaces with them.

He finds the old scissors he used in grammar school to cut Valentine's cards. His fingers are too thick now, but he pushes the tips inside the holes. He begins to cut through the smallish ruffled neckline of her pale & yellow dress that looks like a tulip. He runs the blade along the lines of her torso, following possible nerves and imaginary bones. Its blade is so cold, but it feels like heat. Burning her, he misses and cuts the flesh a little bit. He sews it up with pink staples.

On land and when he was a young at heart, he found rusted pins in an old jewelry box in the attic while his grandmother was sleeping. He's always held onto them for protection, but now, he pushes them along the doll's spine and combs her hair with their sharp edges, running the points across her head and along the bridge of her nose.

He uses rusted carpenter's nails from a tin box that he dug up one evening while the sun was setting. He pushes the nails into the doll's chest, peppering her dreams with anxiety, awakening her with paranoia, and restlessness & unease.

Before bed he opens a box of moths. They're hungry. They feast on the wool that makes up her belly.

Lastly, he pierces her heart with and old feather pen and watches it bleed with blue ink. It stains all of his fingers.

Videoclip from Gabo Gesualdi on Vimeo

Letters From L.A.

Oct 22, 1983

Dear Sean,

I'm sitting in the penthouse apartment of some friends in Century City. It's kind of late in the afternoon and I'm very relaxed. Someone gave me a Dalmane (I think I've spelled it right) because I had a headache and they told me it would help it. I feel very comfortable and relaxed right now. This is the first time I can remember since I was a kid that I am glad and content to be where I am. I don't know if you have ever felt like this, but I've always felt very uncomfortable and impatient with wherever I happen to be after a certain point. I get bored and irritated and everything I think is in the future tense (maybe like the way you got up suddenly that night we were all sitting in the Cafe and you looked at me and abruptly left). I've always felt jumpy, like I couldn't stay in one place for any length of time. But something's changing. Totally rad (short for "radical"), as we say around here.


This is not going to be much of a letter because we're about to go out to dinner soon because someone made reservations at Spago and we're leaving in an hour to and hour and a half, someone says. What I want to tell you mostly is that I'm thinking about you and hope you are all right. Are you? Will you write me? I want to hear fromyou. Please?

Love,
Anne


The Informers, Bret Easton Ellis, (pg 139) Vintage Contemporaries, New York, 1994

"I Know Where The Summer Goes' By Ryan McGinley

 

I'm up to my neck uploading music for sleeping/vegging purposes. My little gray cat Leopold likes to sleep with music too. Hehe,  what a cutie. 

So I'm uploading my run-of-the-mill old stuff, the ebb and flow of my musical past. Greats like Stereolab, Ladybug Transistor, Love, Modest Mouse, Radiohead, Brian Eno, Yo La T, My Bloody Valentine, Kaki King, The Sea & Cake, Tortoise, etc, etc, etc. Melodies that I've heard hundreds of times but still want to keep near and dear.

On the drive up to Wichita Falls last night (aka weekend extravaganza). I got to thinking about images of sound. I was listening to Deerhunter on the drive, no surprise there as I seem to not be able to listen to much of anything else these days, and when I thought about what their music would look like set to color I thought of Ryan McGinley, the photographer/wizard. I checked today for any new work of his and of course he has a new show. And of course! I am enamored. Even though the solstice isn't for another hour (hey, cool!) I already know that I'll remember this summer as the one when I was completely absorbed in crushed-out music and, in particular, Deerhunter & Atlas Sound. I think if Ryan McGinley's photos made music they would sound like Bradford Cox and his band mates' magic.

So here are a few of my favorites from Ryan's newest show titled 

"I Know Where The Summer Goes" 

Apropos title, me thinks...

I'm off to bed, the dust from piles and piles of discs is putting me under. Histamines & popcorn and I grow so sleepy.

Happy Solstice to all sun lovers and the like. 

I'm packing to get away for the weekend and am already feeling much better. I haven't run off to a relaxing getaway since January. Everything has been race-race-race. It's definitely time. I'll finally get to see my little cat Leopold, cook something delicious on the old gas stove, lay around under the wall of books and records, burn some nag champa, listen to my Moody Blues records, take a dip in the huge tub... etc, etc, etc! I love the way the apartment feels. It's been so long. I can't wait to be in my niche. I'm actually grateful for the quiet town of Wichita Falls where rush hour doesn't exist.

I was wondering this afternoon why I've been so gloomy and sad and it reminded me of Superweek my first year racing, it was 9 days of crits and road races. When I returned home I remember feeling pretty depressed for about a week. Mina my good friend and mentor, told me way back then that it's totally normal to feel depressed after coming out of a long stage race and months of racing on end. Nature Valley last week was a beast. There was 2 more stages than the last time I went. Also, I've only been doing 60 minute crits for the last 2 years. Yeah, the occasional road race but nothing more than 40-50 miles with a pack of regional riders. Aside from Redlands, but that was a season opener. Last week was 1. a crazy hard time trial, 2. a crit averaging 28.8 mph, 3. a 70 mile road race where I contested all 3 QOM sprints (Queen of the Mountain - hey, I even got one! and to think, I was 2 points away from wearing the climbers jersey! ...wtf?!) After that 4. another crit averaging 27 mph, then 5. a 92 mile road race with a 4 lap circuit and a 1 K 18% climb, and FINALLY 6. a small circuit including a 250 meter climb averaging 20%.

No wonder I'm totally bugging out this week. The last time I did a road race more than 70 miles was in 2004!

So my apologies for being so melancholy. I definitely have my bouts, but I do tend to feel happy most of the time. Ahh, mania, it does make for better writing.

And hey, I'm already on the up & up. I found an absolutely stunning pair of pink and purple faux snake skin 4 inch quasi modest stilettos for 75% off. Nice... nice...

Last night I rode my bike around for a couple hours, completely mindless, spaced out riding. Paying attention only enough to avoid a catastrophe. Seeing other riders pass in the opposite direction but paying no mind to them except that they had just gone along. I didn't want to talk to anyone, if someone I knew happened to sneak into periphery, I would have acted as though I didn't notice, even though I didn't notice. I don't know what sets me into these moods. I think I spend too much time alone and that leads me into wanting to be alone more and more. I think I'm unhappy and all I want to do is submerge myself in music and books that take me away from the reality that I am, at times, so unsatisfied with. I think that's why I want to write again, I want to escape. I want to create something that sounds better. Like the way books sound better, no matter what the circumstances... a good story always excludes the frustrating nuances of the everyday. It captures only what's noteworthy in some way, even if it's not part of the story, it just sounds better than to experience it. Maybe it includes the facts that, 'Sheryl had really bad breath' or, 'Mike has this annoying habit of snorting his nose all day' but these things are better on paper than experiencing them! They are only for a moment, read the sentence and it's over. Unlike some assholes in a movie theater who won't stop talking. Life is better on paper. Good art excludes so much of the uncontrollable ugly reality that spills out before our eyes. Or if it does bring it into question, it does so in meaningful, thought provoking ways. At the moment, I'm thinking less about the profound and more about all the shitty strip malls, chain stores, bad food, traffic, info commercials, crime, or just cultural rudeness and laziness in general. The types of things that sink in like pollution, or just pollution in general.

I think I'm just really, really bored. Totally under stimulated. I fear feeling plain, ordinary, bland, old, stale. I wait and wait and wait and wait for Ross to finish school missing out of years of my life that could have been filled with something more... not living in the burbs with my parents while he finishes year after year. Sure I've made the most of it, but I can't shake the feeling of what I'm missing out on. I'll be almost 32 by the time he's done. Aging scares me. I feel so anxious. I'm so tired of The South, just can't shake the feeling of disappointment.


I'll try to try be a little more positive for the remainder of the weekend. I'm going north, to almost Oklahoma and it will be a really nice change, long country roads and fresh air. I haven't been there in months, it's going to be great. I'm leaving tonight.

Today felt like one of those days when you hold your breath until the point of panic or pain and then (pshoooooooshhhhh) a long waking gasp of air sets everything straight again. I felt that way this afternoon. I felt that great sense of OK in the sky in big letters created just for me in a little airplane with a little elephant in a yellow scarf piloting and promising nothing but eternal ok-ness. That was my inclination this afternoon, for an evening of everything is ok, everything is cool, everything is as it should be. The last few weeks I've felt like hiding, unsure of anything, today I have certainty and it's a breath of yes.

Sometimes I want to write letters to people who don't really exist. Well maybe they exist but not in a completely recognizable form. Most of the time they are bits and pieces of everyone else in my life, and creating them out of everyone who has been inspiring. Anyone who I've ever respected or loved. I'd like to have the time to write hand written letters to everyone and no one at all. It's a lost art, letter writing, something very romantic has been disassembled. Then I'd like to leave them places to be found. Left here and there, on bikes, on tables, on chairs, on doors, on pillows, in drawers and cupboards. Left for those who feel forgotten. If only to remove them for their dismay and place them into a moment of the unreal. A moment they will long for and think about while driving to the post office or video store, and wish upon. I want to bring wishes to others, to all that have been something important. To all who have been unrequited.

Sometimes I collect leaves and keep them so that they don't return to dust.

Sometimes I write poems on them and pin them to trees. Sometimes I watch the nape of your neck and touch a drop of sweat with the tip of my finger. A perfect bead rounding the tip of my finger before I flick the tip of my nail and watch in explode into the atmosphere like a poof of dandelion seeds. One by one each holding a code, holding life and your answers. 

More waiting, I'm good at waiting, particularly in a Victorian house, on a balcony, overlooking the final stretch on today's race course. The parked cars are slowly dwindling in number off their place on the streets of Uptown Minneapolis. The air is crisp and chilly with cloud coverage. In 1 hour I'll begin my warm up but for now I'm meditating with my computer, some ambient writings, photographs, and my feet are up! I'm finding a place of my own to clear my thoughts and fill them with words and images that correspond in no particular direction other than that they exist together and this brings me peace of mind. I'm holding on to these serendipitous notions because in 2 hours I'll be sucking air through my ears at speeds of 30 miles an hour with the best women's field in the western hemisphere. It's going to be fast and relentless, yet I find it fun because where else can I go to ride my bike as fast as humanly possible with nothing to hold me back except myself? No stop lights, cars, people... just a hundred other girls who are really, really strong. I'm beginning to feel charged, my tummy is starting to turn, the hairs on my neck are starting to stand. My endorphins are alerting me to danger and they'll make me go fast, those wicked little buzzbots. The adrenaline rushes through me like a warm wash, just under my sternum spinning though my chest. Time to push the body to the limit and see what it can do. Time to push, push, push. 

Star Date: Walk Me Into the Unknown

The guy sitting beside me talks about landing in Bali while I concentrate on not throwing up my lunch. I landed in Chicago a few moments ago and I'm waiting here at the next gate to board for

 Minneapolis. Uncrossing my legs, shifting my seat, crossing them again, taking a deep meaningless breath. I feel sad. There's a wave of heat warming my shoulders and neck, then a cool draft sways around my feet and arms. 

On the head phones Michael Jackson's 'Billie Jean' is playing and I notice an Asian guy playing on a baby pink electronic device, it looks pretty sweet. I'm intrigued for a second, then looking down I try not to stare at the toes of the people sitting around me wearing sandals. I think about x-raying feet, at which point a flutter of tension pangs through my already queasy stomach. 

I wonder if I'll loose my job over bike racing, I wonder if I'll have a good week in Minnesota. I wonder if I'll ever be completely happy, or if I'll ever stop wanting it all. Maybe I need something really profound to happen in my life to make me reevaluate my depth and proportion of importance. I would stop thinking so deeply about things that are insignificant. Maybe I need to have more fun, maybe I seek happiness in all the wrong places. Maybe the coming weeks of racing will help me sort it all out, I'd like to stop thinking about myself so much. That would be nice, it would be like a vacation, a really lovely time.