oh catalina...

She laughed because she knew she couldn't take it with her. Some things are too immense to drag around by the wrists and some things are cemented like the sword in the stone. Her laugh echoed off the high hills and bounced back against the bay, chasing the sunlight out to the horizon. The day was fleeting and the eucalyptus trees hung around just to hold everyone in place. She thought she could dance the night away and watched the stage lights bounce across every ones eager faces. Things always looked best from the side line and when it was all finished she fell asleep on the floor of the boat to the rocking of the waves taking her home.

more love

how do you love?

         I met a man who was only interested in keeping the company of women who always left. Always tethered to some sort of time line, the end always in sight, they leave a day a week a month or so later, inevitably they would leave. I wondered while I watched him what it was that drew him so near to these women. Was it the blueprinted lack of commitment or the passionate fight against fate that forced him to love them so dearly? And love them he did. He loved these women in a way I have never witnessed someone love before. He loved them like these were their last days on earth together.
         A part of me envied his ability to love so truly so deeply so madly, if only for a moment of time. Was it the hurt he was after? He sat there in the summer light sipping hot coffee on a hot June day and everything about him made me question the way I had lived my life thus far. The women he kept company with all held the same virtues, they were frighteningly similar mirrored and distorted images of each other where traits seemed to bleed from one to the next. I wondered which came first, whom had inspired the selection of the rest, or if these women without knowing naturally gravitated toward him.
       They were all painfully bright to a fault and remarkably self aware and yet all seemed to be blindsided by his network of touches and glances, late nights and star gazing. They were all inspired and inspiring on a daily moment and he seemed to draw something from that. She was a dancer and the other a thinker, one was a designer and the other a writer, one was a model and the other a photographer. I am sure there are more I hadn't had the pleasure of sharing a breakfast table with over the summer.
       For whatever reason I became convinced that he had in one way figured out something that the rest of day after day were completely blind of, or he was cursed to love in the most painful way possible. So I ask you, is it better to love fiercely and fleetingly or to love steadily and constantly?

eleven isn't unlucky

For all the things I have ever seen only twice
and once has it since been
a quick look or a subtle smile that I haven't kept
you let everything go far to easily, allow it roll out with the tide
But where will you keep her when they coming looking?
What will you say when they ask you to please, please lie?
You say you're afraid but I could never imagine of what
you have traveled this far on a wish and bad luck
every time you meet you look at something that is not there
but every time you leave you still want once more.
Nothing of something is never enough
and something of her is more than you want.

Can't Move

Against The Bottom

Love the song, Love the video, Love all the fine ladies... well done boys, well done.

A Fine End

I find myself staring down the last week of July and wondering where this summer has gone. Days seem to slip through my fingers like water, quick but beautiful. These days have been filled with yoga lessons, records, beach days, song writing, long lunches, mid day cocktails, sweaty night at La Cave, early morning beach runs, concerts, photos, and endless afternoons of imaginary stories. When I am slaving away this year working two jobs and putting myself through yet another degree I hope I can remember how slow, how sweet, and how simple life will be again come next summer. Some well deserved time off wil be followed up by some honest hard work and while I assume August will flash by as well, I have to remember: it's not over yet. Close, but not quite. We still have some serious havoc to wreek on the fine city of San Francisco and another weekend spent celebrating true love. To the sun that has come and to the horizon beckoning us all onward. I bid you all a fine end of July...

This is what I look like late July, just shy of twenty five. For more Love and Photographs CLICK

If I Didn't Know

...

"I want to be here and nowhere else, rationing off bits of myself..." -Jenny Owens Young

more

ghosts

more

I keep thinking of placing my efforts into other endeavors but then I remember that there isn't much time left to play with ghosts. He told me I couldn't think clearly because the thoughts were too heavy and I was carrying too much of the past with me in my pockets. Even if I wanted to turn back the paths have changed and there wouldn't even be a way to get to where I have come from. I have to stop thinking in the past tense, "should have." There is no way to do now what I should have done then. 

Color Me Coral

I have a new obsession. I know, shocking right. The color coral. I want to be constantly draped in it, but I think I think that may be a touch dramatic so I've settled for lipstick. Learning to wear lipstick (yes apparently it's something you have to learn how to do) makes me feel like no one ever taught me how to ride a bike. Did I miss out on this day of class? Must have been the same day they taught us to keep our hearts in our chest....

a good day.

It's a good day when you gems like this pop up on your twitter feed. Take some time...
Click Here for Love

use it.

I am learning I can write songs. Not the music just the words but they mesh quickly. Expect a gypsy country folk album sometime this fall. New adventures make me smile and I have a feeling this could bring the pulse back...

could I.

If I could be anyone else beside being me right now I would be...

best

Check this out. Jenna's best of the best when it comes to her photography are now on display in one place. Watch her grow and change and impress us all, and watch me get my pretty on.

BlacqueBelair.4ormat.com

yep.

I'd Rather have a bottle in front of me, than A Frontal lobotomy.

spin your spokes

It only takes a little bit to move us from here to there.
But that's the funny thing about movement, it can give you the illusion that you're going somewhere.
I feel sometimes like I am screaming into the abyss so loud that it's silent.
Black is the absence of light, it can be used as a protective shade to enhance invisibility.
Time seems to have this liquid quality to it right now.
I can feel it slipping away and yet act endless all at once.
I try not to wish the days by but sometimes it's hard to stand in one place for this long.
I'm not looking for an end in sight.
And I'm afraid that you always are.
We're all just rambling through the universe.

glimpse

In the final stages of editing what I would like to call draft 1.5 of I'm sure 8 or 9 this is one of the seemingly finished passages from, Love is Not a Town (the series of vignettes I have been working, slaving, creating, crying, laughing, and puking over for the last two months.) Enjoy, I hope.

Universed
Sometimes she looked at me like she could trade it in, like I could be anyone, but I just happen to be me. She would run her thin fingers along my jawline and hold my skull in her hands after I kissed her as if she was second-guessing the kiss itself. Sometimes when I spoke her eyes fell through me, looking at someone that was never there. I would pause and the quick silence would reel her back in. She had one foot out the door. She had her head out the window and was never entirely listening to the real world. She existed in her own universe. It was one of the very things that made me fall in love with her. In her presence I too felt out of time and space, as if the world was of no consequence to us. But there in lies the problem. It was always her universe, I had entered it and it was never ours.
She invited me in, held me by the heels, and kissed my mouth. It was only a matter of science that the rest of the world end up dull and faded, as if the colors weren’t coming through properly. So first I fell in love with her universe first. Then I fell for the way that I felt there, the place that I held. I liked how she saw me. She made everything more interesting, more creative, and more sexual than I had ever known it to be.
It’s strange really, I mean, who we become when we are with someone else. I think in best possible scenario we remain ourselves, maybe just a magnified, glorified version. I was tapping into some unknown potential. She was my muse, she was my daylight, and she was like nothing I had ever seen in my life. I was thinking about all of this while watching her near the window at the front of our apartment looking out over James Street. She was listening to Joni Mitchell, A Case of You, on an old record player we bought at a garage sale on Hennepin in the spring. I could tell she was thinking of something sordid because of the way she was breathing. She was perfectly still aside from the light rise and fall of her shoulders. At this point her frame had begun to look whittled away. I could see bones in places where there used to be soft corners. I knew she wasn’t thinking about me. She was somewhere else entirely. I took a step trying to remain invisible but the creak of the floors gave away my presence. She looked over her left shoulder and smiled at me. I didn’t know what it was saying and before I could hear it she was looking back out the window. I couldn’t always read her; sometimes she was in a different language entirely.

Bad Bad

I dance around my living every morning to this song, just make sure things are feeling right.

jump

I have a good feeling this could be my downfall.
Jump if you're ready.

hiccups and heartbeats

     "I am trying not to become dependent on you to make my heart beat," she said through shifting mannerisms.
     "Did no one tell you, that this isn't real life?" he said through blue eyes.
     "You know that confuses me when you say that."
     This time when kissed her she had to hold onto the fence behind her to be sure the earth was still there, and this time for the first time; she believed him.

4th time around

A few photos recovered from the interweb of Aly and I causing trouble all over the place on the 4th. I'm sure more will surface, or if were lucky, they wont. I feel like an asshole today, but I think it was so worth it.