My Brain Hurts

Being at a liberal arts school, and more specifically, a freshman at a film school, makes me feel incredibly unproductive. At least that's the epiphanous moment I had today. I usually encounter one a day so my epiphanies really mean nothing now.

According to this random article, and well, logic, stress is not good for your body. Stress is especially a villain for the brain, because what is stress if not an overload of mental pressure, overworking your brain? I would say excessive thinking qualifies as a crapload of mental pressure. So, if a equals be equals c, excessive thinking might make you an intelligent being but it could also very likely give you a brain stroke. That's why geniuses die young, right? Except Bill Gates is somehow still alive and kickin'.

Back to feeling unproductive. It's ridiculous that I feel unproductive when my brain is overworked at the same time. I guess this means all my mental efforts are not translating into productivity. My brain feels especially tired when I wake up in the morning after a night of violent, spectacular, exciting dreaming. Perhaps I should actually start a dream log so all the work my brain is doing involuntarily can serve a purpose.

Let me work, work, work! These behind-the-scene photographs of Fritz Lang films are so mesmerizing and surreal. I fell in love with this one instinctively:


Frau Im Mono (Woman in the Moon), 1929

Where is the distinction between fantasy and reality? The painted backdrop has completely merged with the crew and the rest of the film set, and the result, in the film and in the documentary footage, honestly takes you to a different world.

I want my future home to look like this. My furniture can be painted to camouflage themselves into the backdrop, whatever it takes. If I intentionally place myself in a fantasy world in my hours of lucidity, maybe my brain will stop working so hard when I'm sleeping. And rest with me as it is supposed to.

You brother, you are all thoughts
The rest of you are just bones and sinews
-Rumi

A Month

A month, when we are young, feels fleetingly short. But it is nonetheless a significant block of time that lends itself to opportunities for life altering changes, which really only need a second to have their profound impact.

An average month (for we know there are different types of months, 28 29 30 31, isn't that strange, a month is so regularly used to define time when its own definition shifts constantly, but anyway, I digress) is 730.484398 hours.

What am I going to do in these next hours of "freedom"?
I want to travel and see some trees.

More importantly, I want to find the capacity to be intensely devoted to something.

"Erlandson was very secretive and refused to reveal his methods on how to grow the Circus Trees (he even carried out his graftings behind screens to protect against spies!) and carried the secrets to his grave."

Then, I want to whittle it all down to a manageable size.

"Le sol de la planète en était infesté. Or un baobab, si l'on s'y prend trop tard, on ne peut jamais plus s'en débarasser. Il encombre toute la planète. Il la perfore de ses racines. Et si la planète est trop petite, et si les baobabs sont trop nombreux, ils la font éclater."-Le Petit Prince, Antoine de Saint-Exupéry

Instinctive Appeal

I wish I paid attention to the photographers more when I flip through the pages of fashion magazines or the e-pages of fashion blogs.

Photography as an art form is still all about instinct. Everyone can do it; not everyone can do it well. A recognized set of aesthetics has yet to be developed, which makes it that much harder to master the art. It's first about who's taking the photo, then what is being photographed.

Craig McDean caught my eye recently, and ever since, he has been omnipresent. His photos always appeal to me, although I don't always agree with the photographed subject or the theme. I just know I like him.

Wouldn't it be nice if everything were that simple? It would save us a lot of essay writing.


Natasha Poly


Coco Rocha


Kate Moss


Mary-Kate Olsen


Italian Vogue


W Mag


Gisele Bundchen


Another Mag

I like Mocha, knitwear, gray-turquoise, fast talkers, tree branches.
I like slightly soothing, slightly foreboding songs.

Rogue

You can be anything and say anything if you can provide a convincing justification. Now, one might argue that mass murder, ultraviolence, and self-made god complex should never, ever be justified. But that's what makes psychopaths and totalitarian leaders so impossibly fascinating (at least for me), the way the clockworks in their brains produce reason and purpose for all the crazy shit they get up to.

"Ordinary people ransack factories for parts that can be sold for food. Party members face detention or death for questioning the beautiful lies of the Great Leader. The economy deteriorates as white elephants rise to glorify Kim. And all the while, the construction of tunnels designed to hide weapons of mass destruction proceeds apace as Kim holds fast to his plan to manufacture and test a nuclear bomb." - Jasper Becker, Rogue Regime

Take me to Pyongyang now! Just don't leave me there by myself, I'm still a little afraid.

--

On the m60 bus from the airport today, an ad caught my attention but I was too suspended in disbelief to take a photo.

It was an ad calling for witnesses and informers of murders of cops, with a $10,000 reward and guaranteed anonymity for the participant. Complete with patterns of blood patches and bullets scattered across the white posters.

--

And to finish up the anarchic tone that seemed, by accident, to dominate this colorless post:

This is what I really want.

Madonna, Like a Virgin era

Negative Space

I'm in New York.

New York is part of the negative space of the canvas on which I find myself. I say I find myself with every intention of the word, for I must take a moment to regroup my five senses to return to the conscious fact that I am in what they call The Big Apple. Another moment of forcing back together the rebel parts of my scattered brain, and I realize that I'm not really here. Like a guest at The Playboy Mansion I find myself in a carnival, from which I can extract myself easily and instantaneously. I am merely sexing and teasing the apple. I do it, I feel it, but there has yet to be an emotional attachment. I would rather see it from a distance, looking down from my dorm window or through the viewfinder of my Canon SLR, but never confronting it emotionally, and retreating to my temporary home without cuddling afterward. There is no explanation, I am to bear all the blame. Hi, I'm Anita, and I'm a polygamist. I do not feel ashamed in toying with this city in complete apathy.

Patty Smith in Greenwich Village, sometime ago

Must-Read List:
Betty Smith- A Tree Grows in Brooklyn
William S. Burrough- Naked Lunch
Objectivist Anthology
Jeanette Winterson- Oranges are not the Only Fruit
Iris Murdoch- A Severed Head