[tamil]

I feel odd for putting up this old picture, but I don’t think that many of you have had a chance to see this shot. Despite all the other shots that I’ve taken, I think that this is my favorite one to date. Those mountains out West are incredible. I’m headed up to Virginia for the weekend for some good family time and loads of reading. It’s insane to me how intense this semester is, but I have to say that it comes at the right time. I’ve been meaning to buckle down, and hard information is the best stuff to buckle down into. I may have decided my field of study, too. I’ve been talking to Kaleb a lot about it, and I think I’ve come to the realization that the sociopolitical qualities of conservation really piss me off. I think that culture is incredibly important, but that figuring out alternative forms of resource consumption that can work with local communities but not deny them the agency to develop into the world scope, as it seems is relatively inevitable. I want to investigate the under-appreciated institution of scientific conservation alongside the cultures that know regions by intuition rather than by science. I could go on about that for a while, but it’s a whole new can of foreign millipedes that I don’t know how to deal with just yet. Sociopolitical conservation just pisses me off too much.

I’m listening to the new Kanye West album. This is some pretty interesting music. Good beats.

Hope that you’re all well.

[aries]

I think I’m going to get some pet rats soon. It will be interesting to see if they are really as loving as people say they are. They’re supposed to be able to learn some really incredible stuff, I guess we’ll see if I can teach then to pick up a pencil and draw. That could be pretty interesting.

I’ve noticed something new in the way that I’ve been shooting lately, too. I don’t know what it is, but I think that it might have to do with how much I’ve been trying to play with light recently.

Hope that everything is well for you.

[paint]

I’m procrastinating right now. I have plenty to read, but I am procrastinating right now.

And I say “Fuck.”

And you say “Fuck what?”

And I say “Fuck this. All of this.”

And you say “I don’t understand.”

And I say “You wouldn’t understand. Don’t worry about it.”

And you say “Shit, I don’t even get to know what you’re talking about?”

And I say “Please, stop it. I can’t tell it to you in a way you would get it.”

And you say “There you go again, with your pity party. What is it with you? You’re such a whining runt.”

And I say “It’s all broken. You couldn’t know.”

And you say “What the fuck are you talking about? Nothing’s broken, You always do this! You make everything so difficult!.”

And I say “But you just can’t understand. You just wouldn’t understand.”

And you say “Jesus! Fuck you! What the fuck kind of right do you think that you have to say what I could and couldn’t understand!”

And I say “Please. Please. Just listen to me. Please.”

And you say “No, I can’t fucking do this anymore. I can’t keep trying to be here for you when you invent your own little pathetic world of misery! I can’t stand it. I can’t.”

And I say “Please, I love you. Please,”

And I grasp at air, at where you should be, at the motes of dust swilling around my arms, and I am drunk on your absence, and I try to kiss and hold the space where you should be, my neck bent in angles, twisting, looking for your mouth, wet opinions and sorrows on my cheekbones, on my lapel, on the untouched floor, and I blubber “Please, I wish I could just tell you, please.” and the room whispers nothing back, the corners look at me like owls, the walls band their spines inside, the points on me, the tawny beige paint you chose swallowing me up, and I’m choking with my fingers around my neck, looking for that garrote wire, that wire made of where you use to be, that space that you filled, the air that was sitting so close to your skins, coaxing sweet siren songs from the follicles of your arms, asking, begging for you to breathe it in those lupine lungs, to drink it in great gasping gulps and belt it back out, to give it new life, to sing, to show that joy we missed, like two swirling sunsets from two different memories, so that I misremember the beach or the passenger seat where we told stories with our bones and had new destinies forged in sweat and yearning, with the white tipped teeth of gods in our hearts so cold and climbing and lacking oxygen, so that I’m still choking and I still can’t breath and I still can’t find that wire, digging into my neck, around my arteries until that breath is brittle and everything is light, and the thought never crosses my mind that there isn’t any wire, just my desperate digits and I let go and cough at my shame, eyes sodden cloth and sinking down, down to the floor, laid down like the carpet with the dogpiss stains on it, the smell in my nose like thick black bonfire smoke and cigarettes, the thin ones that you smoked for no reason at all other than for their brilliance, though I know you never found out how much you shone on your own without that bead of orange sparks between your fingers, i know you never felt that tungsten bulb in your stomach that poured out your nostrils and between your teeth every time you smiled, blinding me, sitting me down on a kitchen chair and telling me that this is how things end, and that we were beautiful in that moment when the walls were pulled down, and the soldiers filtered in with their green, angry eyes, and took siege on our chests, never letting go, never putting down their rifles, never turning away their eyes.

And I say nothing at all again.

And you say something to someone else, you murmur sleepless gold onto their skin, weaving, somewhere out there, into their chests, spinning, skittering across their surface like a disc.

(Source: bornfromblue.com)