paintedonwater

[paintedonwater]

Sign: We are to public storage like Hollywood is to dreams.

Me: So you chew it up and spit it out?

[paintedonwater]

My life is the punchline to a Cosmic Joke.

[paintedonwater]

Cashier: You're weird.

Me: So they keep telling me.

Cashier: Not like it's a bad thing or anything.

Me: I'm starting to believe that less and less.

[paintedonwater]

[paintedonwater]

Alaa Wardi chronicles an evolution of Arabic music from pre 1900-2015 using only his voice and body. While each period of Arabic music remains distinct, Wardi’s interpretation leads each period to naturally progress into the next, resulting in a harmonic flow of history.

[paintedonwater]

Chicago

[paintedonwater]

I watch endless amounts of t.v. shows on Netflix. I can’t remember what I did 5 minutes ago. I vacillate between feeling a pervading numbness in my heart, my lungs, my hands and sobbing uncontrollably (including at the bus stop).I haven’t made up my mind as to which I prefer. 

I never want to hear the sound of laughter again. The sound of joy and the smell of love fill me with bitterness. I wake up each morning disappointed that I’m still here. My things are strewn about my room. I’ve been eating oatmeal out of the same bowl for 5 days. “What’s the point?” I ask myself each time I dare to think about picking up. "I’ll just have to clean again eventually.” 

Food gives me no pleasure because it all tastes like sand. Hunger and thirst become abstractions. I am a black dot on a white surface. I want to talk about it. I really, really don’t want to talk about it. Smiling feels strange, like half of my face has been paralyzed due to a violent accident. “Why do you hate me?” I lash out at God. “Wouldn’t it be kinder and more merciful to just kill me in a car accident, and get it over with? Why this torture? Is my anguish enjoyable for you?” 

My cries are met with the void. 

[paintedonwater]

http://lyricstranslate.com/en/szerelem-love.html#ixzz40BhFwfuF

Love, Love Damned anguish Why didn't you bloom in the top of trees?

On top of the trees, Girls and fellows would've plucked Leaves of walnut tree.

Because I've plucked one either, And I had let it go. I've plucked one either, And I had let it go.

But I would pluck one too, and if I've found one good, A good and a beautiful one and I could find my old lover.

I would do anything for my old lover, I would dip the water of the sea.

I would pick pearls from the seabed And I'd sew wreath of pearls for my old lover.

[paintedonwater]

“ In Manzhouli, he spent time with Sun Shengchang, a Chinese logger, and Katya Dianova, his young Russian wife. In Monteleone’s photograph, they look like archetypes: Sun with the high cheekbones, long nose, and angled eyes of the northern Chinese; Dianova with fair skin and gentle features that could have been described by Tolstoy (“this black-eyed, wide-mouthed girl, not pretty but full of life”). She holds their daughter, Natasha; he holds their son, Ramin. Their apartment is decrepit: peeling paint, rusty radiator. But there’s a glow to the little family—in this strange borderland of fake churches and invisible bridges, the dingy room contains something intimate and real. “They didn’t have a lot of money, but they were a very sweet couple,” Monteleone said. “You could tell that they really loved each other.”

Invisible Bridges: Life Along the Chinese-Russian Border

Davide Monteleone’s photographs capture the blending of two cultures in a still-remote part of the world. See more of his images. 

[paintedonwater]

Just forget for a minute that you have spectacles on your nose and autumn in your heart. Stop being tough at your desk and stammering with timidity in the presence of people. Imagine for one second that you raise hell in public and stammer on paper. You're a tiger, a lion, a cat. You spend a night with a Russian woman and leave her satisfied. You're twenty five. If rings had been fastened to the earth and sky, you'd have seized them and pulled the sky down to earth.

Isaac Babel, “How it was done in Odessa”

[paintedonwater]

#moon On the road to #lasvegas, Christmas 2015

[paintedonwater]

Complete the story... part 1

“The yellow lines on the highway sped by in a blur, and we flew through the night, and we felt free. But we weren’t, and we knew it. We were running away from something, and running away was never the path to freedom. I thought about telling John to turn back. I thought about suggesting...”

abandoning this ill-conceived jaunt and going back. To her, to them, to anyone he had claim to. Or rather, who had claim to him. A part of me screamed in ecstasy in the wind, while the smaller, though growing, piece knew I would never really be his. His fingers still had a memory, a memory obscured by our joy, but one that would never really be suppressed by my conquest. Somehow, I knew that one day his body would stir at her memory, that his fingers would no longer move towards mine. I would be alone with him and be more lonely than ever before. But love, or something like it, is a many splendoured thing, and it quickly extinguished any other thoughts than his presence next to me, anything other than the thrill of being ourselves, entwined in our momentarily collective self.

[paintedonwater]

An exercise in creativity. #creative writing #story time,

[paintedonwater]

 Cambria, CA December 23rd, 2014

[paintedonwater]

Classic song from a classic Russian film. 

Translation:

“If you don’t have a house/You don’t have to be afraid of fire/And your wife won’t run to someone else/ If you don’t have/If you don’t have/If you don’t have a wife. /If you don’t have a dog, your neighbor won’t poison it/And there won’t be any fights/If you don’t have/If you don’t have/If you don’t have any friends. Any friends. The orchestra rumbles the basses/The trumpeter blows into the brass. Think for yourself/Decide for yourself to have or not to have. /If you don’t have an aunt, you’ll never misplace her,/ and if you aren’t alive, you will never die. /You’ll never die, you’ll never die, never die./ The orchestra rumbles the basses/The trumpeter blows into the brass/Think for yourself/Decide for yourself to have or not to have

[paintedonwater]

“I’ve had some bad luck with living arrangements. I’m on my seventh apartment in three years. My first place in New York was a room in a warehouse with a semi-translucent piece of plastic as a wall. I found it on Craigslist. I shouldn’t have moved in but the guy told me he had three other people waiting so I panicked. My neighbor was an eighty-year-old photographer who sat around in his underwear all day and either watched violent porn or really sexualized war movies– I’m not sure. I got out of there after a few months, and found some new roommates who accepted me on the basis of a tarot card reading. That place wasn’t too bad, actually. But the lease ended and I moved into a place with no heat or hot water. Then the landlord was caught siphoning power off a nearby streetlamp. I did get to go to housing court that time, which was kinda cool I guess. My next apartment had smoke alarms that randomly went off at four in the morning. Then I lived with my girlfriend for awhile but we broke up, so I started sleeping on couches. But I’m in a really good place now. I almost don’t want to say this, because it sounds like I’m bragging, but there’s a washer and dryer in the apartment.”

[paintedonwater]

“It feels so scary, getting old”