Venus Victrix

Soulmates?

2010-06-23T03:36:00.002-04:00

Wow. My observations today lead me to this conclusion - there is really, TRULY, someone for everyone.

Funny Strange, not Funny Haha

2010-06-16T11:00:00.004-04:00

It's funny how you don't really remember why it's called heartbreak until your heart is actually breaking.

It's coming.

2010-03-26T13:32:00.001-04:00

Spring!

Little Pleasure of Life #2

2010-03-19T11:03:00.002-04:00

Those rare split-seconds in life when you look around and realize you're actually having fun.

And the winner is...

2010-03-04T01:37:00.007-05:00

You know that moment when the check comes to the table after a fantastic dinner with friends? And how usually that moment is, at worst, an abrupt return to reality or, at best, an annoying math problem?

Jeff Thrope found a way to make it fun. The dinner was remarkably cheap for a party of 6, and remarkably delicious. Thanks Mina!

Forgive me this tangent (an explanation of my profile description)

2010-02-04T14:48:00.008-05:00

Some people love music. Some people love money. Some people love pizza, or puppies, or gardening, or crafts, or cooking, or video games, or photography. But I love... love. I love everything about it. I love being in love, I love pursuing love, I love making love. I love reading about love and watching movies about love. I love desperate-romance love and dull-moments love. I love the light side of love, the way it can make you feel like nothing can fucking touch you, and I love the dark side of love, when you feel like everything that touches you fucking hurts. I love heartbreak, in a weird way, for the beautiful pain of it. I love watching two people in love when they think that no one is watching. I love when my friends are in love, but also when they're not in love and they're searching for something else by going out and getting wasted every night. I love how being in love changes a person, for better or for worse. I love that love has inspired some of the most magnificent art and some of the most brutal battles.

I love love. I just do.

Gossip

2010-01-08T15:26:00.005-05:00

So, a couple nights ago, I was passing the time (or wasting time, depending on your world view) by listening to a friend tell a juicy story about how someone had deeply offended her. She was in full on gossip mode, giving it her all, doing the voices of each character and hitting the intonations of the person-in-question perfectly. I was hooked. The drama between her and this person involved me, but only in a very peripheral way, and I was succumbing to the utterly human temptation to gawk at a car accident.

[That's a gross truth, isn't it? How human beings tend to be fascinated by the tragedy of others? I mean, if you've ever been stuck in traffic outside of normal rush hour time, you can almost be sure it's because there's some wreck a mile or two up the highway. And 50% of the time, the wreck is on the other side of the road, and the only reason cars are backed up is because people are slowing down to gawk.]

Anyway, I was gawking. My story-telling friend (let's call her X) had me hooked. I was on her side all the way, rooting for her, looking down my nose at the other person (let's call him Y). She gave me a specific example of Y's insolence, and i almost snorted. "Figures," I thought. "Sounds just like something Y would do." Satisfied with my reaction, X brought her story to a close and walked away.

Just then, another friend, who had been floating in and out of the conversation (let's call her Z), turned my world upside down in one sentence. She had been there for the entirety of the aforementioned car accident, had watched it happen in real time, and she said, "The only reason Y did what he did was because X did this to him first."

Oh. Um, wow. Oops.

My feelings of superiority and smugness that had been directed at Y mere moments ago just melted away, and I was left feeling like a complete fool. If Z hadn't chimed in and told me what actually happened, from an unbiased outsider's perspective, I would have left that evening believing Y to be the enemy when in fact, neither X nor Y are the enemy. For that matter, neither is Z - her version of what happened that night probably differs slightly from any other outsider. Each version is crafted by an intricate mind, and each brain works in different ways and is encased in different packaging.

And maybe sometimes these minds, that work so differently and perceive the world in such different ways, maybe sometimes these minds don't quite see eye to eye.

Anyway, whatever. My point? The number of sides to a story is equal to the number of people involved.

A Masterpiece of Epic Proportions

2009-11-26T13:58:00.006-05:00

My bag has been so much lighter since I finished this book.

I finished reading it almost two months ago, after lugging the damn thing around for a good five weeks. I took it with me everywhere and read it every chance I got. Still it took me over a month to fully absorb its brilliance, and twice as long to compose my tribute to it.

And so here it is. My paltry attempt to pay homage to a work of art that changed my life.

I will not go into details about the storyline or the characters. I believe that everyone needs to read this book for themselves, and what fun is there in reading a story when you know what happens next? I will say that Atlas Shrugged is a mystery, it is an adventure, and it is a championing of capitalism. It is full of crime and greed and those basest of human conditions. It is a record of what happens when people are overcome by aforementioned conditions. But ultimately and above all, it is a story of love, and the discovering of oneself.

Rand's position on love is a unique one. In loving someone, she believes, you are offering up your own mind, body, and spirit. In effect, your lover acts as a mirror, reflecting what you offer and showing it back to you. In this way she sets forth the idea that love is not necessarily about the worshipping or even the adoration of a partner. Love is not "to choose a person as the constant center of one's concern," but rather "...love is a celebration of one's self and existence." Also, she writes that love is not "some static gift which, once granted, need no longer be deserved." Love must be constantly earned, over and over again. This notion is lost on so very many people, and I believe it is the downfall of so very many real-life love stories.

More than anything else, though, the book helped me to understand that

my life is my own.

If I'm happy, it's because of something I've done, the people I've chosen to associate with or the goals I've decided to pursue. If I'm unhappy, it's my own fault and no one else's, because I am the only person who has the power to change it. Rand says, "Man exists for the achievement of his desires." So, then, what better way to live your life than to strive towards achieving your desires, whatever they may be? Strive, strive for yourself and for no one else. Your true love will join you on that path rather than block it.

SOME PEOPLE ARE TOXIC AVOID THEM.

2009-11-05T15:11:00.002-05:00

This advice, from Milton Glaser's "Ten Things I have Learned," is something we all intuitively know. He just puts it into explicit words. It's gold... Read on:

SOME PEOPLE ARE TOXIC AVOID THEM.
There was in the sixties a man named Fritz Perls who was a gestalt therapist... Perls proposed that in all relationships people could be either toxic or nourishing towards one another. It is not necessarily true that the same person will be toxic or nourishing in every relationship, but the combination of any two people in a relationship produces toxic or nourishing consequences. And the important thing that I can tell you is that there is a test to determine whether someone is toxic or nourishing in your relationship with them. Here is the test: You have spent some time with this person, either you have a drink or go for dinner or you go to a ball game. It doesn’t matter very much but at the end of that time you observe whether you are more energised or less energised. Whether you are tired or whether you are exhilarated. If you are more tired then you have been poisoned. If you have more energy you have been nourished. The test is almost infallible and I suggest that you use it for the rest of your life.

Cold Spring

2009-11-03T23:49:00.002-05:00

I was an Indian princess for Halloween. I wore a feathered headdress and sat at a table collapsing under the weight of a feast. I ate Stacy's truffle mashed potatoes and apple butter salmon and magic bars that were meant to take me to a place called Fairy Land, and even though Astrid was the only one who was supposed to get there, I think I got there too. I laughed, and drank, and tried to fall backwards into the Hudson River, except that Daniel and the wind were so strong they held me up.

When I fell asleep on the couch, Kalen and Dee covered me up with sweaters and scarves and animal pelts, but only after failing to coerce me into the community sleeping pile. In the morning, Justin brought me coffee with soy milk in it because that's what I wanted even though soy isn't good for you. I don't care, I like the way it tastes like caramel candy. Chris' pancakes were so fluffy, they were like eating flat, golden-brown clouds. I figured I don't eat clouds very often, so I had three.

We got to the woods and Jeff and Tim took over. Their determination to conquer the forest almost made me cry, but only once, because I was wearing shoes meant for subways and not for rocks and leaves. I pretended we were a tribe and the boys were leading us on a hunt. At first I didn't know what we were hunting for, but it seemed pressing, so I continued on. Then they led us to the top of a mountain, and I looked around, and I understood.

I was an Indian princess for Halloween.

This little video from Justin Kay may not cause the same welling of emotion for someone who wasn't there, but it almost made my chest burst. The weekend was almost perfect.

Family Band

2009-10-09T14:27:00.006-04:00

The moon was round and full and bursting with cold light. I could see the change of season in it, the thousand years of bounty that it stood for, the pay off at the end of a hot summer.

The harvest moon.

I got to a building, floating, and called and called to be let in. Walked to the top of the stairs, closer, out onto the roof, closer, if I raised my arm I could touch it.

Close.

And then I went inside the moon. Just crawled right in through a little hole at the bottom. All I brought with me was a bottle of wine. Inside, it looked like I expected it to look, all white and safe, with blankets on the ground and moon-people milling around in jackets and boots.

The walls of the moon were waves, rolling with the wind, and the band started to play. She sang, and he sang, and the drums and the guitars and everything made noise and the inside of my head was like the inside of the moon, warm and safe and with blankets on the ground.

Little Pleasure of Life #1

2009-10-02T17:14:00.001-04:00

When you come back from the bathroom at dinner and someone has (unexpectedly) picked up the tab.

Foreverever?

2009-10-02T15:25:00.004-04:00

I asked him what forever meant.

He said forever is till the end that you can't even see. Forever is 24 hours, but it restarts every 24 hours.

I pulled him close and kissed his eyes.

2009-10-02T15:16:00.002-04:00

I'm not sure
that there are any words
in any language
that can
possibly describe
what its like
to feel another human heart
beating underneath your hand.
When your hand
is on the chest
of another breathing person,
someone else who is
alive like you,
and their heart is beating
and you can feel the pulse,
it's weird
and beautiful.

Ice

2009-07-17T10:06:00.002-04:00

Last night I received another little droplet of wisdom from the big man in front of the big door (although this time around, my heart and head were not being pulled in three different directions. I was as grounded as I could be with wine for blood). He said to me, "Don't shed your tears for just any man. Your tears are like diamonds. And diamonds? They expensive."

Amazing.

Time Machine

2009-07-15T22:41:00.005-04:00

On my way to somewhere new today, I took a wrong turn. A mistake in terms of space is easily remedied, however, so I quickly turned around, walked to a place where I felt comfortable, and re-oriented myself.

If only a mistake in terms of time was as easy to fix. If only, upon realizing that I made a bad decision somewhere along the line, if only I could stop in my tracks and head backwards through time to a place where I felt more comfortable. I'd probably stop somewhere well before the unfortunate decision was made, so that I could give myself a nice soft cushion to think things through.

Then again, if I had just stayed on the path after that wrong turn, who knows what new things I'd have seen.

Ecstasy

2009-05-06T01:22:00.003-04:00

One night, when my head was being pulled in three opposite directions, and my heart didn't quite know which way to follow, a large man standing by a large door christened me "The Widow-Maker." I looked at him curiously. "The Widow-Maker?" I said. "Why?" He looked at me with suspicion, from the side, squinty-eyed. "There's something about you," he said, "You be breaking men's hearts and leaving they women widows."

2009-02-19T10:54:00.003-05:00

When you find someone who makes you happy, and your love for them glows golden and keeps you separate from the rest of the world, it's quite natural that you should want to shout it from the rooftops. Indeed, just about the only thing you want to do when you're in love is tell everyone in earshot every detail about the perfectness of your union. The small problem with wanting to do this, however, is that there is no one - not even your closest friends - who really wants to hear that shit.

If you do choose to tell them, they'll pretend to listen, of course. They'll nod and smile, and say something like, "I'm so happy for you!" while they're putting together to-do lists in their head. But they don't really care. And they certainly don't really understand. So, you bite your tongue hard and keep it to yourself, even though it's probably all you can think of.

And this is why lovers never run out of things to talk about.

February

2009-02-12T01:25:00.002-05:00

Gross month. The month of gray days and snowstorms and nights so frigid you can see the cold in the air. Of lonely mornings and winter blues and seasonal affective disorder. Of hallmark holidays and cheap chocolate and flowers that die too early.

At least it's short.

Charles Mee

2008-12-02T11:15:00.003-05:00

Love is

anxiety
remorse
longing
connivance
dependency
embarassment
drama
brutality
identification
unknowability
jealousy
langour
vengefulness
monstrousness
cruelty
insomnia
crying
gossip
loneliness
tenderness
isolation
truth
the will to possess
lying
remembrance
suicide
ravishment

in love
we come to know what it is to be a human being.

--From Charles Mee's crazy whirlwind passionate hurricane of a play, Fetes de la Nuit.

Obama in the Village

2008-11-05T19:16:00.004-05:00

I have never, ever, ever, in my short time in this world, seen anything quite like last night.

Amongst the people, dancing in the streets, more powerful than the men in blue uniforms, it felt like some unseen giant was ladeling hope over our heads. Another helping? Take two more. Flags waved, anthems sung, arms in the air. I climbed onto a trashcan to watch the bedlam and was swept away on the current of pure joy. After the unbearable tension of the past weeks, last night was the breaking of a severely backed up dam. It was the orgasm we all needed after a chaste 8 years. I have only known adulthood under the dangerous farce that was the Bush Administration. I look forward to knowing something other than facist, racist, sexist ideology in the White House.

I look forward to a new America.

To the one I can't have.

2008-10-22T19:06:00.002-04:00

Ah, when to the heart of man
Was it ever less than a treason
To go with the drift of things
To yield with a grace to reason
And bow and accept the end
Of a love or a season?

-- Reluctance, Robert Frost

She didn't know if their love would ever end, but she tried to understand that it had to. They'd tortured each other enough over the years. They built desire like fires all over their bodies. They kissed in the rain under the bridge. She had to stand on her tiptoes to reach his lips, and he would hold her close with strong arms. They smoked cigarettes together, and drank wine in the afternoon, and sang at the tops of their lungs. When she was around him she was enveloped in a warm haze of something beautiful. No one else mattered. He looked at her with a hunger that grew sharper over time, and wanted to take her away from everything dark. In those moments that were perfect, their passion seemed invincible.

A Brief Study: Gustav Klimt & Kattaca in One

2008-10-21T17:42:00.004-04:00

Not quite the real thing, but a damn good approximation and a work of art in it's own right. Check out more brilliance from Klimt and also master stylists/art directors Kattaca.

"The most important element of his fame is his reputation as a master of eroticism."

-Gottfried Fleidel, "Gustav Klimt 1862-1918 The World in Female Form"

Lunar Masturbation

2008-10-16T00:06:00.006-04:00

The other night, I was heading home in a rather foul mood. I don't really remember what caused it, and that probably speaks to how unimportant it actually was, but I do recall that I felt empty. I don't like feeling empty. I doubt anyone does.

In any case, it was a foul mood. I sat on the train absorbed in the electronic toys of my life: I listened to music, I played games on my phone, I ignored the humanity around me. My stop. I threw the phone into whatever bag I was wearing that night, I zipped it up, I stood. Trudged up the stairs. Foulfoulfoul. If that motherfucker who started to hiss at me had continued after I gave him a death stare, I would have clawed his beady eyes out of his tiny little head. Top of the stairs. Annoyed by the always slightly dangerous walk home ahead of me. The song I was listening to ended. A new song began. I took a deep breath, stepped onto the sidewalk, and looked up.

Oh.

The moon. Round, and almost full, clear, and so bright it was surrounded by the most perfectly giant halo of light I'd ever seen. A perfect circle of moonlight. I almost laughed aloud for surprise. I'd never seen anything like it. And in this polluted city, no less? I looked to one side to see if anyone was there reveling with me. I looked to the other side. No one walked next to me. I was alone, so I enjoyed the beauty for myself.

More Ruminations on Fall

2008-10-09T12:55:00.004-04:00

Remember the smell of cold lunch? The peanut butter and jelly sandwich would combine with the apple and the brown paper bag to create this utterly unique scent, a perfume unlike any other. Your mom packed it at like 7am, so by the time lunch rolled around (which was, what, 5pm or something that seemed just as excruciatingly late)the smell would be especially strong. And you'd reach into your backpack, and the smell would hit you, and you would know that for 30 minutes you didn't have to pay attention to Social Studies or Island of the Blue Dolphins. For 30 minutes in the middle of the day, your time belonged to you.

2008-10-06T14:45:00.003-04:00

There's been a sharpness to the air since last week. Gone are the dull-edges of summer, the circular days with blurred beginnings and endings. Gone are the hazy afternoons spent sipping cool drinks and blotting brows. October has brought everything into focus and heralded the return of the triangular 24-hours; days have a specific starting point, a peak, and a decidedly steep denouement.

Even though the crisp sunshine means that winter's bitterly bracing sunshine must follow, even though fall means the death of things which previously thrived, I'm happy. I'm happy! I can feel it in every step I take. The change of seasons always brings a certain excitement, a constant awareness of the beauty of living.

Now I wake up in the morning next to his warm body. Instead of pushing each other away in a sweaty attempt to keep cool, we curl towards each other, a tangle of limbs and hot lips buried under blankets. He smells of autumn all the time - that inexplicably sweet male scent. I'll stop in the street sometimes and put my nose to his scratchy cheek just to breathe him in, when we're walking together in the cool morning from his apartment to mine, or to the train, or to get a hot black coffee (me) and a cappuccino (him).

My head is clear and my heart is on a pedestal. I'm floating through fall, and I'm happy.

2008-08-25T00:18:00.002-04:00

I had a fantasy about my future the other day that was unlike any I've had before. It occurred to me on a trip upstate with three of the most wonderful friends I know. To be precise, it actually occurred on our way back downstate (can you say downstate?), in the little town of Phoenicia, while standing outside of a real estate office. The office was closed, it being Sunday in small-town America and all, but there were pictures up in its window of the properties it had for sale. One in particular caught my eye. They were selling an old hotel on a vast amount of acreage for the unthinkably low price of $150,000.

The hotel needed work of course, lots and lots of work, but it was a beautiful, historic, white-washed, romantic 19th century building, and I saw the potential in it immediately. In that moment, for a fleeting second, I set aside the notion of big city living that I've had my entire life. I set aside visions of myself at 30, 40, 50 years old, hosting cocktail parties for fabulous people in increasingly larger and more expensively furnished apartments located in the various urban meccas of the world. I set aside the (admittedly vague, hazy and ever-changing) concept of a Career with a capital "C," one that I would possibly log 65 hour weeks for, taking public transportation home at the end of long days with the masses of other humans pursuing Careers. I let all of that go for one moment, and I imagined myself purchasing this old hotel and throwing my entire being into it. I imagined renovating, gardening, painting and sanding, giving my all to making it habitable. And instead of hunkering down in a dank subway car at the end of each day, I imagined stretching out on my wrap-around porch. Next to me, perhaps, would sit my lover, my soulmate; he would be strong with capable hands, himself a carpenter. Our bodies would ache synchronously from the day's labor, and we would drink a glass of wine together and listen to the trees.

I realized then, more fully than ever, that the only limits in our lives are the ones we impose upon ourselves.

BKLYN

2008-07-17T17:07:00.006-04:00

It's called Brooklyn, and I live here. I like the way my mouth feels when I say the word, when people ask me where I live. I like telling them, "Brooklyn." I live in this borough, the one across the river from the sybaritic City, that pulsing sparkling gem on the Eastern Seaboard.

In my neighborhood the air always smells saccharine, like burning sugar or baking cookies, because there is a cupcake factory around some corner.

My neighborhood is an industrial wasteland, full of warehouses and abandoned factories in flat gray and brick buildings. More cement exists here than I ever thought possible, and just down the street at D&G Mixers Inc., they are constantly making more.

My neighborhood is lorded over by Hasidic Jews, populated by Puerto Ricans, driven around by Mexicans in big sleek cars and provided essentials (cigarettes, toilet paper, Poland Spring) by dark men from the Middle East whose language recalls hot sun and dry desert. To get from place to place I walk, or ride my ruby red bicycle, or take a train that sometimes works and sometimes doesn't.

My neighborhood is covered in graffiti, monumental works of art everywhere, new ones popping up every day. It doesn't really get covered up here like it does in other places, some ruffled business owner hurriedly slapping a coat of paint over it so that no one sees the vandalism. The graffiti stays around for all to see, as a reminder that the people, not some faceless Authority Figure, still rule this neighborhood.

I wake up and walk upstairs to the cafe in my building every morning. I say hi to everyone I see, because a lot of us have been here for a couple years now and we all understand the trials and tribulations and fear, the joy and lazy afternoons on the block, the summers when everyone is outside all the time, the stigma that was always attached living here. We all understand this and no one else does, or could. We are all watching the transformation take place together. We don't want our bubble to be popped just yet, but we can feel that everything is poised to change. This feeling creates a kind of kinetic energy, a quiet buzz over everything that fascinates and terrifies us and never really goes away.

It's called Brooklyn. We used to live on the edge of the universe, but the center is getting closer every day.

2008-07-09T11:41:00.002-04:00

I saw a girl on the train today. She was sitting across from me and a little to the left, and she was chewing on her fingernail. She was beautiful, but not effortlessly so. Not in that typical New York starving thin glowing skin "I just grabbed this $300 t-shirt off my floor and threw it on" kind of way. She had curves hidden beneath her navy blue sundress, a soft and subtle voluptuous quality that spoke of health and happiness. Her hair was long and chestnut brown and pushed to one side. She looked as though she was preoccupied with something lovely, because her dark eyes danced and I could tell her mouth wanted to smile. She carried a straw bag with a bouquet of small red flowers sticking out, and I imagined she was taking them back to place just so in a green glass vase on her kitchen table. She was not a one night stand girl, a girl you take out on a date and never call again. She was the kind of girl you fall in love with, madly, deeply, scorchingly in love, the kind you think about from the second you wake up until the moment you fall asleep, the kind you dream about in between.

June

2008-06-25T20:05:00.003-04:00

It wasn't quite summer, but it wasn't spring. It wasn't nighttime, but it wasn't morning. In the middle of a country, in the middle of a city, in the middle of a street, a cold wind blew. Two people shivered. Under the orange light of a street lamp, they were the only two people in the world, and the only thing to do was hold each other. So they did. They held each other against the wind, against the past, against everything that had come between them. They held one another so tight against all of these things it seemed impossible that they would ever let go. They were thinking thoughts that weren't really thoughts at all, but memories in the fleeting form of sounds, colors, smells, sighs, laughs; all the good things and bad things in the universe. This kind of embrace had happened before and it would happen again. Actually, it was happening somewhere else at that exact moment. But they didn't care. They couldn't care and they wouldn't care, because for them, there was no such thing as time or space, or light or dark, or here or there. The wind was blowing and it was cold and that was all they knew. They held each other to forget, but also to remember and commemorate, to make sure the order of things understood that there was such a thing as love.

"I feel fine, talking 'bout peace of mind....."

2008-05-27T14:42:00.003-04:00

What a beautiful day! My sunburn hurts from having spent a drunken, drug-addled weekend half naked in fire Island sans sunscreeen. In addition, making matters worse I have humongous scratches on my calves from fighting my way through a patch of nettles in the Pines, and a blue ugly bruise the size of metrocard on my knee from when my friend Mark tried to throw me over his shoulders on the dance floor but dropped me on my knees instead. I can't recall whether it hurt at the time, but it certainly does now.
Now, back in the city, I'm trying to find a job. Walking around Manhattan squinting in the sun and trying to pass out my resume to whomever feels kind enough to take it. I feel like a Free Mumia pamphleteer with whom everyone tries to avoid eye contact.
Who will hire me looking like this? I can't work at Hummus Place! I'd be too embarassed. I have too much pride for that, even if it isn't very much. But beggars cant be choosers, right?
Despite my joblessness and roughed-up appearance, it is a beautiful day.

Tell me, please...

2008-05-21T18:02:00.002-04:00

What is it, exactly, that you see in me? Because I don't think I see it in myself. And it would be really helpful, right now, if you could just tell me. I'm sinking and I need to know. What is it about me that makes your blue eyes light up like that? Why did you look at me across the room that cold night, over the heads of all the others? What sets me apart? I'm not always like this, I promise. I usually take care of myself. Usually, I kick and thrash and fight to float, and no one can get near. But tonight, my head is underwater. I need to feel your arms strong and your voice soft. Tonight, I need your help.

As I stumble into adulthood...

2008-05-14T12:47:00.000-04:00

...things become clearer every day. Not in a steadily advancing, forward-charging way, but in an ever-evolving, one step forward three steps back, progressive/regressive kind of way. Moments of clarity are sprinkled in like powdered sugar - lightly, delicately. They aren't frequent, but they've been happening more and more, and they feel good. They feel like the way things should be, like the first day you realize you can breathe through your nose again after a bad cold. They usually happen during a moment of rapture, while listening to a desperately beautiful song or rounding a corner in this cement-addled city and coming upon a patch of sky.

I don't know what the fuck I'm doing.