connections to dorian gray

"Everything one does in life, even love, occurs in an express train racing toward death. To smoke opium is to get out of the train while it is still moving. It is to concern oneself with something other than life or death." -Jean Cocteau

btw...i finished the book at last! woohoo! and it occurs to me that stories that are written today have no moral to them. it seems that in previous centuries, literature and the author wrote for the purpose of "having something to say"...to express some notion to the general audience that everyone "knows" but is afraid to say out loud. a friend of mine just finished reading "pride and prejudice" by jane austen and i "the picture of dorian gray" by oscar wilde. i recall the immense sympathy that i felt for raskolnikov in doestoevsky's "crime and punishment". the modern novel, perhaps i haven't read too many novels written of our time, doesn't seem to possess the same type of power to relate the character to you, the reader.

for example, although dorian gray was a 20 something male who had a benefactor which made him forever wealthy, attending operas and smoking in opium dens, i could very much understand the voice in his head. i'm definitely not forever wealthy, nor have i ever been to an opera and much less an opium den, but i could hear the conversations of thought that made his heart & motives go tick-tock very much within my own self.

everyone is in love with the dan brown novels these days..."the davinci code" and "angels & demons". i haven't read them yet, and so maybe i'm judgments that i shouldn't, but i just can't imagine how these books can "speak" to an audience for such a long period of time. what are going to be the dorian gray's and elizabeth bennett's of our day?

maybe eric is right...in our day and age, no one wants to be reminded of morality.

classic us

and i quote from her myspace page: "liz + jenn reunited at last : mayhem and french fries ensues. "

a map to add myself to...

once we drop off deposit money tomorrow and i know FOR CERTAIN this is where i'm going to be living, the first thing i'm going to due after sighing for relief from the freedom of homelessness, is to add myself to the

nyc bloggers by subway stop map.

yippee...jump for joy for i'm such the dork!

i'm here sitting in liz's new apartment, next to my darling liz. we are silent at the moment, both tip-typing away on the laptops (flashbacks to java-u!)...i owe her much loove for letting eric and i stay here with her and ruining her weekend of good sleep (she's putting herself out on the twin sized air mattress just for he & i...poor girl). anyhoo, i owe her dinner...something more rewarding than just a hug. we went out last night and had drunken ice-cream twisted, of course, and massive amounts of fries (more flashbacks to $2 canadian chinese windows). i'm going to like being in this city...

now, eveyone just keep their fingers crossed that the apartment we want will be ours by tomorrow afternoon...pray for divine intervention this time.

we've been spending a lot of time on blankets & sitting with one another

a capitol fourth, er i mean third...the dusky evening hours of july 3rd were spent on the west lawn of the u.s. capitol. we were able to see the entire rehearsal minus the crowds and fireworks and torrential rain...the symphony played in our ears and small children bounced and spun around us...we got hungry because everyone else had brought picnic munchies...all i had to offer was water and a box of mentos.

the sun went down on us and it was the most beautiful piece of orange warmth setting just above the canadian embassy on our distant right. how wonderful it is to lay on a blanket, smell the green, green rass around you, look up into the sky and see one small moving dot of a plane above leaving streaks behind it...even more wonderful when you realize everyone else around you is looking at the show instead and you are the only two who see the treasure in the sky.

saturday lounging in alexandria by the water at powhatan park...we had our own little piece of grass, he went for an afternoon run along the boardwalk towards the wilson bridge...i picked wild flowers, tied them in a green stem bow, and bestowed them upon him. *smile*

we went to the spy museum this day...the afternoon was so perfect that it called for afternoon reading in the sun at the national sculpture garden fountain and then later a magnolia tree shaded nap on a bench.

at home relaxing on the couch...he's installing linux on the desktop in the background & showing me his joglog on his laptop...

posting just to post

i've been urged that i should write something in order that my previous 4 emails get pushed down, down, down out-of-sight and swallowed up into the deep dark depths of the scroll bar. i haven't really felt like writing anything at all. perhaps it is because things just don't seem to be falling quite into place as i had dreamed of (not that i have been working extremely hard at changing that)...the only thing i can attribute it too is the phrase "resistance to change". i think that we all at one point or another resist change. in this case i mentally and emotionally welcome it. i cannot wait to leave this city, to find new places of solace since i feel i have established none here even after five years of living here. i've never really been able to call this town my home...yes, it is the place where i lay my head down to sleep at night. yes, it is where i have managed to scrape out some existence of a living. i've allowed a very small amount of people to enter into my heart and call them my friends, only to be burnt time and time again. i was so happy when i first moved here...i remember doing cartwheels in my studio apartment, the first time i have ever really lived all by myself for myself. and now, reminiscing such a moment i can't help but think, "what the hell were you thinking?" i suppose all of this may be subconsciously lingering in the recesses of my brain, contributing to my "resistance to change". i cannot wait to move and begin anew...to do cartwheels in my new apartment, which if all goes well, i'll be able to do more than just two before having to turn around the other direction.

the boy has been here with me now for a month and this in itself was change. i was fearful and scared of this by itself, not to mention the prospect of moving to new york with him, living with him, and just plain BEing with him. i am secretly happy that our july 1 apartment fell thru the cracks, it has minimized the stressed and drastic changes of getting to know each other + finding a new job + living in a new city rather to just enjoying each other's company...and for this i am very grateful. although at times i realize that he himself has picked up and changed cities and is in a sort of waiting zone...sigh...

so...i wonder just exactly how much i need to write to get that "i'm drunk" post off the top of the page...

did i mention that i bought my very own domain www.linesthatwalk.com the other day and started fiddling around...there isn't too much to see at the moment, just some tinkering that i did in flash, but hopefully soon it there will be more pretty things to see. i'm so happy that i could name it after my favourite paul klee regiment - "a line is merely a dot going for a walk" - you can see my silliness and how i made my dot go for a silly little shuffle across your screen.

i'm sorry i haven't been more blog inspiring or flickr happy...as i say, i write when i'm happy...and tho i'm happy (er, content is probably better) i am not settled and so that leads to unease and a discomfort that keeps me from writing constantly. i don't want you to worry, it's nothing to get upset about...change is in the air, that is all...