toronto trip (mercury in fucking retrograde, various rolls)

last roll of the yashica, may that little plastic turd rest in peace. the camera didn't rewind the roll so i  opened 'er up and i lost half of it, scrambling inside my closet to push the film back into the canister, wondering if that sliver of light from my roommate's door would find the roll. some of it did. canada was weird. i'm not sure if my goddmother reads this blog but if she does, i mean weird in the sense that places are now just places i've been. i have little attachment or sentiment, or is that a lie? i mean i never lived in toronto, i just slept inside of a dresser drawer for a few months before being taken to south america for a few years. the top photo feels like greece, or somewhere in europe. the second to last photo feels like something i found in modesto in 2008, and the bottom photo feels like a virtual forest by the sea. in a sense, all redundant images, a theme i've been thinking a lot about lately, what with instagram, student tumblrs, contemporary tumblrs/blogs, and vilem flusser. i see most things as redundant and will clarify what i mean a little later on. but anyway, insofar as snapshots go, i was not snapping much in canada. i was taking in what it meant to be sleeping in a quiet room on a quiet street, with cats and cars and homemade food. and what it meant, again, to have a mother put breakfast on the table. i have not been around a 14 year old, actually, ever, i guess, for any extended amount of time. i noted parallels in only children and their primary caregiver and provider (Mom) and I realized one never has a fair shot out of the gate where roles are concerned - the 14 year old will forever see his mother as that, and vice versa. Where maturation is concerned, I think life is far too unflinching and where the pendulum swings one way (love, support, unconditional everything) it will immediately swing the other way another generation later, in time, in time as with everything in time. I am in that now, my pendulum, or metronome, or whatever it was that i thought had 'helped' to define me, now swings heavily towards the other side, right off the base that had anchored it, and refuses to go back. as such the back-and-forth, the ebb-and-flow, the exhale-and-inhale, the open-and-close ETC ETC ETC is perhaps imbalanced, and by definition now makes a sort of one-sided song, keeping a one-sided rhythm but regardless i say, regardless, it is now my rhythm. and it's better this way, though very somber and often complicated to articulate or share. and those are just my observations on mother-child relations at work on this weekend visit, for where mother-friend and mother-mother and mother-surrogate and adult-adult relations go, there is no time for that here. ( 'thank god,' you say! i agree). in the aftermath, the canada trip was much more complicated than expected, because rare is the care-free experience these days, unfortunately, and the whole time it was loaded with the promise of someone to return home to, a boy who, inevitably, crashed his vehicle nicely into my expectations, which, though already lower than ever - AND equipped with passenger-seat airbags - still managed to shock. our play was recently adapted off-broadway. you should go see it! or perhaps you have already seen? my role should be filled by a wary, down-to-earth type with a tendency towards optimism verging on naivety. she should have a tattoo of a palm tree, a machete, and a staff of caña de azucar on her arm. they should form a triangle and under that should read the words "apetito de obrero." she should be nervous of all things technical (like texts and facebook) and imaginary (like texts and facebook), perfect (like nice hands) and beautiful (like the superficial). she should be wary, because who the fuck are you? the only requisite for the person playing the male lead is that they be a dickhead, top to bottom, asshole to piehole. tight pants are optional, though a bit predictable.

i returned from canada in a green, fuschia, and purple thrift store dress that i adore, jumped into a cab, and jetted to sarita's roof-top birthday party. there i found a host of wonderful types, german grandmother cakes, an elated birthday girl, and beauty in plant, sun, male, and female form. i spoke of my experience with the 14 year old and mentioned that i thought he would be all right! he will be, he will be. we rode bikes once that weekend, him and i. he was in a helmet that was too small for him, and i was on a bike that was too big for me, with a seat that kept swiveling around. it was almost a mr. bean sketch. i found that he was kind of mature for a 14 year old, full of conversation and prepared to share his personality, which was developing just fine! i found it crazy, though, that in front of his mother he was closer to immobile, a mute; not anything much more than a taker, a baby at the table. it broke my heart, because i realized that ever really seeing anyone is close to impossible, from all of our fucked up vantage points, foundations, and fault lines. everything is out of control: non-smokers get lung cancer, fathers become vincible, people land in our laps only to disappoint, a train crush crashes, instead, with the flip of a vowel, and the word "amar" lives comfortably within "amargura," that bitterness most encounters leave us with, no? we have too many blind spots to come out unscathed; only one of which is visible by turning our head over our shoulder to check before we merge.