letter from ernest hemingway to his friend on february 22, 1953 (from the latest issue of Harper's):

"Dear Gianfranco:

Just after I finished writing you and was putting the letter in the envelope Mary came down from the Torre and said, "Something terrible has happened to Willie."  I went out and found Willie with both his right legs broken: one at the hip, the other below the knee.  A car must have run him over or somebody hit him with a club.  He had come all the way home on two feet of one side.  It was a multiple compound fracture with much dirt in the wound and fragments protruding.  But he purred and seemed sure that I could fix it. 

I had Rene get a bowl of milk for him and Rene held him and caressed him and Willie was drinking the milk while I shot him through the head.  I don't think he could have suffered and the nerves had been crushed so his legs had not begun to really hurt.  Monstruo wished to shoot him for me, but I could not delegate the responsibility or leave chance of Will knowing anybody was killing him. 

Afterwards I was crying when a Cadillac came to the door with a worse psycho than that big one I had to hit.  With him and his keeper, I still had the rifle and I explained to them that they had come at a bad time and to please understand and go away.  But the rich Cadillac psycho said, "We have come at a most interesting time.  Just in time to see the great Hemingway cry because he killed a cat." 

They were inside the house and so I locked both the doors and sent their chauffeur away.  The one said, "You have a gun.  There is always someone with a gun."

So I gave him the gun (cocked) and then he started to make compliments.  So I took his horned-rim spectacles off and took the gun away from him and put it away in Mary's room.  Then I humiliated him as he should be humiliated, omit details, and then the awful thing happened.  He thanked me and his keeper thanked me and said that was what he needed and what he came for.  What sort of people are these?

He was a rich boy, officer in the 11th Airbourne Div., which never jumped in combat (not their fault); they would have made the assault in Japan if we had not used the atomic bomb and I suppose never got over it.

Certainly missed you.  Miss Uncle Willie.  Have had to shoot people but never someone I knew and loved for eleven years.  Not anyone that purred with two broken legs."

"June 14, 2006

He says I am a jealous mess.  I guess I am jealous - territorial?  But I really don't think I am a jealous mess.  I think I'm a mess, yes.  But I was hurt , so sharply, that I don't know if I can recover from it.  I think it will be one of those things that stick with me for all of my life.  She and him have inflicted this torture into my heart forever.  If I will ever get over this I don't see how I will be able to get through my parents' death, or anything else that is actually worth fighting for.  I like things but as only places and ideals and visions.  Being in small town New York is wonderful but even as I am psychically here, during actual time, I still know it isn't real and none of it is as wonderful as I see it.  I guess the cynicism I maintain has started to push any perception of real beauty to the middle of my mind.  I don't see how anything real can stay consistently beautiful.  I am only beautiful when I am alone and cannot see myself.  Nature and sky are always beautiful but your voice always interrupts it, whether you are there or not.  It's a piercing, sharp voice." 

"July 2, 2006

When I was a little girl, I used to think that the further I put my face down in the water in the bathtub, I would dive into another world where everyone would be mermaids.  And as I transcend from the bathtub into the other world, I would also morph into the other world, I would also morph into a beautiful mermaid.  I am surprised I didn't somehow drown myself, from the times I tried, desperately yearning to create a magical bathtub.  I would always pretend anyway.  I used to be very good at pretending.  I was never bored.  I wish I could remember all the names of my imaginary friends.  And all the games I would play with Leo [my teddy bear].  So many games I used to make up, and tell my friends.  Erin ---- and I used to play the Ireland game, because we both thought we were Irish.  So in grade five I made up a story of two Irish people trying to make enough money so they could go to New York.  We would speak in (terrible) Irish accents and play it all day in my backyard.  Then there was the ice game with Andrea -----.  The best, and one of my favourite memories of my childhood is leprechauns, with -----.  Hours and hours we would spend in my backyard, using my old tree house as a base, pretending to be leprechauns.  We even wrote a little book with all the secrets and codes written down, and we buried it somewhere.  Now my way of pretending is to run as fast as I can away from my problems and real life.  I am really good at avoiding reality until the very last second.  That's what I'm good at: pretending."   

old journal fragments; past lives

" November 13, 2008

I am in bed trying to fall asleep and I just heard a plane passing over above me in the sky and I had the strangest feeling of peace and happiness.  Just for a little under a minute.  I don't know why, really.  Hearing planes fly by overhead brings me to other places in life I guess.  Lying in bed in Toronto, even my room on Riverside Drive.  You can only really hear planes fly by when you're only listening to yourself or silence.  It also reminds me of my backyard in London in the fall, or the summer.  Lying on the deck in the dead of summer, with Dudley asleep by the door.  It is one of those universally familiar noises.  It is always the same noise, wherever and whenever you are.  It is such a peaceful noise.  For some reason I imagined that plane flying through the navy blue French skies on its way across the ocean back to North America.  I guess because that is where I would like to be right now.  I can hear another one!  It sounds like air and silence and beautiful sleep.  I don't know but I feel flooded with fragments of memories of blinding sunlight from the summer sky in London, winter in St. John's.  You only hear it when you stop listening.  I feel so calm knowing home is so close."

everything i've learned in under grad and grad school - right here. for free. pay attention.

http://www.youtube.com/user/hennesyyoungman?feature=results_main

some songs are the street car, some songs are the subway, some are walking, some are london ontario, some are you, some are him, some are you, some are that summer, some are the rer, some are the tube, some are outdoors, some are mostly you, some are places i've never seen

someone's alone in the city tonight

from here: http://50watts.com/#Nitrate-Nocturne

 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WrkWtJkuj0o

john maus - do your best

"...irresistible metaphors both for the skin that forms the barrier between the internal and external, and for the costume that enables its interpretation"

mary tuma is an artist who has an educational background in textiles, fashion history, and design.  her latest work is a tribute to palestinian prisoners on hunger strike.  the fabric and fiber of silk become agents which symbolizes the body, space, and time of these individuals.  

"There is an intangible "place" where the body becomes an emotional landscape. Though I cannot define this, it is a goal of the work to describe that place. Ideally, this leads to work both mournful and humorous, simultaneously real and surreal."

Mary Tuma. Home for the Disembodied. 2000.

an interview here about her latest work:

http://www.drainmag.com/ContentHORROR/Reviews/Frakes.html

her personal website and artist statement:

http://marytuma.com/index.html

"the difference between a barrista, and some jack ass who makes a cup of coffee"

rip, mca.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qU0qe99kgtQ

Eva Lake, Photo montage Series

http://www.lovelake.org/

no where and everywhere

when i was a third year art history student, i took a course in asian art and the western construction of 'orientalism' and how we as western dominating assholes appropriated chinese, japanese, persian, etc. cultures to suit our own ideal versions of how we thought they should be and represent.  consequently, we had to read the essay entitled Of Other Spaces by monsieur Michel Foucault, and his theory of heterotopias.  this essay has for whatever reason impacted almost every independent study i have ever pursued since then, and it has influenced the way i see and interpret space and humanity everywhere/ every place i go.  so, inevitably, my current research for my Masters project is based around this very thing.

i find it interesting to compare theories that may not at first seem like they relate, like space and interiors to how women/ men/ whatever disguise themselves, or how they are portrayed visually.  with keeping the term 'orientalism' (which by the way is pretty derogatory... obviously), this is the image our professor showed us to demonstrate how western idiots believed how 'the orient' should be represented in their more 'civilized' culture:

i actually don't remember who exactly this is, but I know it is someone from the French court somewhere in the 18th or early 19th century.  clearly he looks like a douchebag fool.

i googled the term "heterotopia" and i was lucky to find a link with the entire essay written.  so here it is.  it may or may not change your life.  probably it won't.

http://foucault.info/documents/heteroTopia/foucault.heteroTopia.en.html

if, by the way, you, the internet, are interested in reading further about orientalism, i suggest you read Edward Said's Orientalism.  

i can see you but my eyes are not allowed to cry

julia holter is my latest music obsession.  she reminds me of a female version of john maus, but with more feminine, ethereal sounds and a dreaminess that reminds me of cotton candy and summer.  in a way reminds me of how women are meant to convey that ephemeral lightness and prettiness.  reminds me of sofia coppola movies or like, girls floating down rivers with long red or blonde hair, running though forests or laying in grass.  lots of sunshine and lens flare.

 listen to this song, and you'll understand why:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c5d_J3CPeiI

i bet if ophelia could listen to modern music while floating down the river out of desperation and aching, pining away love over a dude that doesn't deserve her, she would probably be listening to julia holter.  poor girl.

Ophelia, John Everett Millais, 1851-52