we are your friends

i am feeling, bless-ed young

dante's sestina

I have come, alas, to the great circle of shadow,
to the short day and to the whitening hills,
when the colour is all lost from the grass,
though my desire will not lose its green,
so rooted is it in this hardest stone,
that speaks and feels as though it were a woman.

And likewise this heaven-born woman
stays frozen, like the snow in shadow,
and is unmoved, or moved like a stone,
by the sweet season that warms all the hills,
and makes them alter from pure white to green,
so as to clothe them with the flowers and grass.

When her head wears a crown of grass
she draws the mind from any other woman,
because she blends her gold hair with the green
so well that Amor lingers in their shadow,
he who fastens me in these low hills,
more certainly than lime fastens stone.

Her beauty has more virtue than rare stone.
The wound she gives cannot be healed with grass,
since I have travelled, through the plains and hills,
to find my release from such a woman,
yet from her light had never a shadow
thrown on me, by hill, wall, or leaves’ green.

I have seen her walk all dressed in green,
so formed she would have sparked love in a stone,
that love I bear for her very shadow,
so that I wished her, in those fields of grass,
as much in love as ever yet was woman,
closed around by all the highest hills.

The rivers will flow upwards to the hills
before this wood, that is so soft and green,
takes fire, as might ever lovely woman,
for me, who would choose to sleep on stone,
all my life, and go eating grass,
only to gaze at where her clothes cast shadow.

Whenever the hills cast blackest shadow,
with her sweet green, the lovely woman
hides it, as a man hides stone in grass.

fast times

unemployed again. i feel like, is it time for dinner yet?

your old dog

look at your old dog

who never asked for

carpeted floors

i'm melting melting

chalfonte family

i could exercise anywhere, but only at the chalfonte can i collapse off of the elliptical after fifteen minutes and lie on the floor panting and sweating and have our building maintenance man luis stick his head into the gym and exclaim in his tenor voice, "Valeriee! Good job! Good job!"

impromptu visit

our old neighbor french, who moved out last may, came knocking on my window last night. we were afraid he was wandering the los angeles streets homeless, but he's been laying his head on the other side of la cienega with a celebrity friend. the creative genius serenaded us with his wild guitar playing and we gave him back his vacuum cleaner.

keurig morning

i am having my coffee. the world is becoming progressively lighter and brighter.

cupcake baby

i've been taking care of my cat-niece. she's newly adopted and skittish, but i've been turning her into a model citizen. i like when she jumps onto the bed with me and tentatively treads through the safari of blanket and body. she makes me think of my sweet Jo, and how she used to bat me awake with her paw in the mornings.

bath day

baba's bath day

ragdoll

walking around with a cat in my arms makes me feel like a 15-year-old in a judy blume book

mannequin work

today i spent six hours on a set that was supposed to be the shanghai airport. the chinese policemen costumes were very convincing and it was quite funny to see the production wardrobe people come over to adjust their hats and tell them to pull up their pants.

i also liked the lead wardrobe woman who threw an adorable double-foot-stomp tantrum because the hair people "are ruining my outfit!!!" she and her co-wardrobe lady fussed over how to tie the scarf, following different styles demonstrated in a book in origami-step-by-step. they mused that they should practice tying these one night over white wine.

all day i had to stand in the most uncomfortable shoes of all time, red pointy-toed horrors. by the end of the day i was limping across every scene and looked like a very weary irritable airport traveler indeed

cannery row

i've been trying to figure out what i'm going to do alone in san diego for a weekend while i'm watching my cat-niece. i considered tidepooling, but as i've just finished reading cannery row all i can envision is finding dead girls in the water.

breakfast

waking up on those mornings in the drunk tank,

busted lower lip, loose teeth, brains swimming in

a cacophony not yours, with

all those strange others swathed in rags, noisy

now in their mad sleep, with nothing for

company but a stopped-up toilet,

a cold hard floor

and somebody else's law

and there was always one early voice, a loud voice:

"BREAKFAST!"

you usually didn't want it

but if you did

before you could gather your thoughts

and scramble to your feet

the cell door was slammed

shut.

now each morning it's like a slow contented

dream, I find my slippers, put them on,

do the bathroom bit, then walk down the

stairway in a swirl of furry bodies, I am

the feeder, the god, I clean the cat bowls, open

the cans and talk to them and they get excited and

make their anxious sounds.

I put the bowls down as each cat moves to

its own bowl, then I refill the water dish

and watch all five of them eating

peacefully.

advanced face recog

cash flow

funny small things, like when my pa tells me about how he's calculated the ten cent cost difference per serving between brewing a cup of coffee and making a cup of instant coffee, or how he buys everything online so he doesn't have to waste gasoline, remind me not to be so frivolous with money. i need to be more dogged in my efforts to earn my keep

horrible music

insomnia is incredibly bad at selecting ambient classical music to play. i had to stop reading my book because the apocalyptic background music was completely distorting the severity of the story. the song currently playing sounds like a boys' choir singing the words one two three four five six seven eight in repetition at different high pitches. it makes me feel like i need a lobotomy

clifford

near a plate glass window

dogs and angels are not
very far apart.
I often go to this little place
to eat
about 2:30 in the afternoon
because all the people who eat
there are completely sane,
glad to be simply alive and
eating their food
near a plate glass window
which welcomes the sun
but doesn't let the cars and
the sidewalks come inside.

really need fire axes

the 1930s

places to hunt

places to hide are

getting harder to find, and pet

canaries and goldfish too, did you notice

that?

all the clouds'll roll away

Being Judy Garland is quite a chore.

spam i get at work

Indeed,I’ve been to Solage and that i prefer it very much. The rooms look is austere,with a monochromatic shade scheme and minimalist furnishings. The landscaping hasnt grown in yet, so the cottages patios arent hidden yet.However the suites have private stunning tubs (which are surrounded by fencing,so these are indeed private) and lots of room,if youre planning to remain indoors.The palm-tree-lined foremost pool is large and feels very glamorous.There are loads of canine aroundyou can carry your pet. The spa is likewise austere,nevertheless it has couples therapy rooms with open air soaking swimming pools and mud-treatment rooms.I l-o-v-e the clothing optional mineral pool.The restaurant is the appropriate in town,meaning you need never go away the resort,except to go wine-tasting.The only real drawback Ive found is that the resort design may be very open: you watch each constructing on the somewhat level grounds. Again,this may exchange as soon as the landscaping fills in.

my own means

day off! day off! i ate brussel sprouts and chocolate pudding until i almost explodeddd and then i napped for an hour so could have more quality insomnia time tonight

when the right or left dogtooth falls

chalfonte chic

cupcake

i have a new cat niece

artificial warmth

oh my god i've been sitting too close to the heat dish and my body is breaking out in hives

dog names

this morning at runyon -

BANKSY! BANKSY! BANKSY!

and

COME HERE CHICKEN

the old folks

drinking coffee at novel cafe until my head floats away

window blues

un, i have been drinking for ten days with no end in sight. not dead yet but my soul may be

deux, i haven't shared a room in a long while and i don't think i'm doing the best job of being a quiet roommate. hello olivia!

trois, golden ferrets

kelly osbourne

I took more hell for being fat than I did for being an absolute raging drug addict. I will never understand that.

and they stay there

my favorite songs right now are WINDOW BLUES and ALL I DO IS WIN

caffeine od

so so much coffee. this heart is about to stop.

women's day rebellion

Aleksandr
dorogaya valerachka. podravlyayu tebya s 8 Martom!!

mig
spacibo
tak, pochemy menya nado rabotat sevodnya

Aleksandr
LOL!!
go home!
tell them sasha said you can go home today.

women's day

I was sentimental about many things: a woman's shoes under the bed; one hairpin left behind on the dresser; the way they said, "I'm going to pee . . ."; hair ribbons; walking down the boulevard with them at 1:30 in the afternoon, just two people walking together; the long nights of drinking and smoking, talking; the arguments; thinking of suicide; eating together and feeling good; the jokes, the laughter out of nowhere; feeling miracles in the air; being in a parked car together; comparing past loves at 3 AM; being told you snore, hearing her snore; mothers, daughters, sons, cats, dogs; sometimes death and sometimes divorce, but always carrying on, always seeing it through; reading a newspaper alone in a sandwich joint and feeling nausea because she's now married to a dentist with an I.Q. of 95; racetracks, parks, park picnics; even jails; her dull friends, your dull friends; your drinking, her dancing; you flirting, her flirting; her pills, you fucking on the side, and her doing the same; sleeping together. . . .

There were no judgments to be made, yet out of necessity one had to select. Beyond good and evil was all right in theory, but to go on living one had to select: some were kinder than others, some were simply more interested in you, and sometimes the outwardly beautiful and inwardly cold were necessary, just for bloody, shitty kicks, like a bloody, shitty movie. The kinder ones fucked better, really, and after you were around them a while they seemed beautiful because they were.

living spaces

i'm thinking about becoming a nomad. los angeles transient.

kind plus

i'm eating something really delicious. it's some sort of food bar of cranberries and nuts and little crispy spheres all glued together with honey.

mountains

epic landscape in alhambra this morning. the clouds are coming to earth.

i quit

i want to make a living taking stock photography

should have jumped on the big camera shallow depth of field photo bandwagon years ago

point-click. point-click-click-click

domoi, dom moi

my house looked nothing like a house. get your gimmicks straight. also, i don't think i can drink like this anyymore. too old.

jfk lax

my friend peter is arriving in one hour and im going to go and pick him up

blue wagon

if the internet insists on acting up this way, how am i going to watch unlimited cheburashka videos?

if i can't even understand krokodil gena, how am i going to understand anybody on RUSSIA TRIP 2012?

revelations

my dad just told me that my brother was an accident

the truth is out after thirty years

vareniki vecher-inka

not surprisingly, russian dinner at the chalfonte ended with alcohol spilled across the kitchen table and all over the floor, kvas no one drank, a significant decrease in liquid mass from the svedka bottle, drunk crying, dirty dishes and vareniki in the sink, red velvet cupcake strewn across the living room, and a hangover. typical typical typical

blood breakfast

after a manic episode last night i dreamt about sitting in shallow water in japan with tons and tons of blue and green fish nibbling at my skin and tiny, absolutely millimeters tiny, ruby-throated hummingbirds in the water as aquatic creatures and paul mccartney was also in the water, with a security guard who also had to sit in the water, feeding the fish. all of the sudden the water was gone and the fish were gone and there was only sand and i worried that they were all dead and i was sitting on them. i woke up with knots in my hair so bad that i had to cut a fistclump of my hair off this morning.