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[undergroundarling]

why not me?

[undergroundarling]

Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil, for Thou art with me.

-Privilege (Set Me Free) Patti Smith

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Susan Abulhawa, from Against the Loveless World: A Novel

[Text ID: “Nothing can move in confinement, not even the heart.”]

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kiss me in D A R K

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Black swan (2010)

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suicide is the ultimate revenge act?

thinking about this excerpt from giovanni's room as i lay in bed staring at the ceiling endlessly

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Virginia Woolf, from a diary entry written c. March 1920

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une femme est une femme 1961, dir. jean-luc godard

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I racconti di Canterbury (1972) // dir. Pier Paolo Pasolini

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writing about u (or who I think u may be)

[undergroundarling]

Part of April, May, June, July and August: A summary of getting high on life.

I’ve been meaning to write nonstop about everything, but for one reason or the other I couldn’t get past any of the simplistic thoughts I created on the daily. My muse drives on failure, or the negative feelings I often stumble upon. I always come back when misery runs me over and leaves me gasping for air over the concrete. It would be disingenuous to paint my life as this constant pain and struggle to find a scrap of happiness. In May and June I felt the most alive I have ever felt, my body fueled by joy and the adrenaline I’ve been craving my entire life. I was floating through life, gravity didn’t apply to me, I wasn’t like the rest of the mortals, my feet couldn’t touch the floor, my body was as light as a feather and my dancing hair exuded floral smell day and night. I became gentle, my words, touch and gaze were as soft as a bed made of daisy petals. I was full of tenderness, couldn’t get any higher. I was constantly running from one place to the other: bus, train, subway, work, subway, workshop, train, home and repeat. I was in love with the turbulence of my little dreamy life.

From April to June I was attending a filmmaking workshop, met tons of talented people, the best teachers I ever had, got to be part of the creative process of multiple short films. I acted in a few, helped with the clapperboard in others, assisted and wrote some improvised dialogues and finally saw myself on a screen for the first time. Made incredible friends with whom I was able to have conversations, I only had with myself and my reflection. I also connected with others in a more superficial way but still important. Everyone was so passionate it made my soul vibrate to the rhythm of the cadence of their words falling from their lips. I didn't take long to realized I had found my people.

In one of the short films I played a deranged character, someone who gets crazy over a carpet and makes a full blown scandal. Very on brand if you know me. In another one I played a chainsmoker late teen who breaks a boy’s heart while wearing a vintage leather jacket with a shirt of The Smiths. At the end of the workshop I got to play a little role in another short film. I danced around with extras and then said one line. It was the best one we made. Everything was perfect to my eyes, from the lights to the camera’s movement to all the kids acting and setting the beautiful tone. At that exact moment I knew I wanted to feel like that for the rest of my life. I reassured myself “this is my path and I shall not derail from it.”

That day I met someone and developed an innocent crush, I don’t have much to say about it. Hang in there, there's a chance I'll become delusional or maybe this is my first time falling in love. Either way it will be interesting. (October’s correction: nothing happened and I think I’m no longer interested)

In the midst of it, more precisely in May I found a job after months of searching, I became a salesman for Chevrolet, it wasn’t what I wanted or even something I would enjoy but it was better than nothing. In the beginning I tried to avoid the obvious conflict of interests this job had on me. On one hand I had a book on the climate crisis and on the other I had a speech designed to convince people to keep on burning oil. I decided to play the part and do as I was told, to not rationalize it that much and take the money I needed. Turns out I’m great at convincing people to buy a car. Who would have thought? Not me or anyone who knows me. Everything was perfect, I was good at my job and the workshop was beyond everything I ever expected. 

It was in July, when sickness came around to remind me how much of a human I am. Days in bed flying in fever were the sign life was turning on me. The workshop had ended, there was nothing to be excited about, and now my body was suffering the withdrawal of the adrenaline creativity carries with it. I couldn’t sustain that elevated state and I fell to the ground, my hair didn’t smell like flowers and couldn’t dance with the wind, it was a brown mess, my body felt stiff and heavy as a piece of marble, and my words, touch and gaze went back to their furious state. I went through life raising fire in my surroundings , fighting, screaming and hysterically crying. It was then, when everything was painted red, that I remembered I used to have convictions and principles I was actively betraying everyday by going to work for a multinational that profits from the destruction of the planet and the end of humanity. I was part of the problem that not so long ago I was so passionately talking and warning people about. 

There was nothing able to calm me, my bed felt like it was made of thorns and my brain didn’t have a night of decent rest. Each night when the moonlight shined in my face I wondered: “Am I heading to eternal destruction?” I emphasize on the concept of eternal, because I can only hurt myself so much while still alive, but I can perpetuate the hurting with these words I’m writing beyond my last heartbeat. Will my soul keep on being torture every time someone reads the past and paints me in their head as this crying kid? I hope not. Either way July was the cruelest month. 

Now it’s the end of August and the workshop began again. I’m trying to reconnect to the original feeling without frustrating myself. I also shot a music video of someone I met while shooting one of the short films I mentioned before. He looks and sounds like a character that escaped the pits of my mind. I hope he can stick around and become part of my life. On a personal level I’m transitioning from cynical to delicate, I'm caressing the edges of my personality until they become softer to the touch. I'm filtering my words and choosing peace even in the cadence of my speech. I’m becoming more rational and patient with myself and surroundings, turning my back to envy and fury. I still cry, but not out of rage, rather sadness and logical frustration. I cried in front of others for the first time in a long time, it wasn’t humiliating, I felt validated and supported. I hope by the time we arrive in September spring also flourishes inside of me.

[undergroundarling]

the queen of justice

#evita

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sweet with a pinch of cynicism

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Sailors, Pensacola, FL, Photo by Allen Frame, 1995

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Flower Fairy 1905 | dir. Gaston Velle

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Bourgeois Riddle

It's night-time and I can hear my neighbors' dogs barking, some in unison and others out of sync. What do they bark at? To the moon, to the night, to existence itself? Lots of barks like intrusive thoughts that collide and create the sound of the night, along with the cars and motorcycles that pass in the distance, the crickets, the breeze caressing the trees and the voices of teenagers hiding in the patios smoking cigarettes and laughing quietly so as not to be discovered. Dogs don't bother me with their barking. I feel we have a lot in common. I don't bark or yell, but I write in the shadows illuminated by a lamp. My act is similar to theirs and the response is the same: silence.

As I've been sleeping poorly and having nightmares for days, I avoid going to bed. Because it’s there, between the sheets and pillows, when my eyes can’t close the moment I cannot run anymore.During the day is easier to escape, I fall on my back to consume as many tiktoks I can in the lapse of an afternoon. However, this distraction is causing me to become addicted to social media, the lamest addiction there is.

The other day at night, while I was walking from class to the train station, and I looked at the daily scene of the city disarming, with few cars passing fast through the large avenues, with homeless people wandering through the streets and entering the squares to rest under the trees after walking exhaustively looking for a piece of reason to keep walking. the street vendors dismantling their precarious stalls, and the workers walking through the smoke of the recently extinguished grills. I began to feel my throat squeezing inside me and some tears coming out of my eyes, the first violently opening the way for the others to rundown as if they were falling from an open tap. In those minutes of pure anguish I avoided making eye contact with the few people who crossed my path. I refuse to be seen crying. By the time I sat down on the train seat there were no tears, my eyes felt cold and frozen and my mind exhausted. I slept the entire hour back home with my head against the freezing window. 

The second time I couldn't escape this anguish was at my uncle's birthday party. After mixing wine and gin without eating dinner, I ended up succumbing in front of the toilet bowl. I have never been so embarrassed in front of my family. Three hours after I arrived I ended up in the bathroom, crying and vomiting while my stepfather, whom I call dad, held me. Most embarrassing moment of my life, I still feel like ripping my face off and digging a grave with my own hands to throw myself at.

In the sporadic moments in which escape is not possible, I wonder what’s this anguish I carry with me wherever I go. How can it sometimes seem so heavy? Then nonexistent at other times? Isn't it simply spleen? Or could it be something real? I’d confessed in the past my melancholic tendencies, but these tears are different, heavier and louder, impossible to ignore. 

I asked a friend what loneliness was to him and with his poetic tongue he told me “it is like being an abandoned house waiting to be inhabited by the people you love or are willing to love, but left to a perpetual longing.” I melted into his words, he was right. I do feel like a decaying house sitting on top of a hill, letting the winter wind cross me through my big windows from room to room, freezing every trace of my humanness. Leaving dust and brown leaves sitting on top of the old furniture acquired god knows when, always threatening to extinguish the fireplace inside of my virgin heart. Maybe I’m a little like House of Usher, falling into the hands of madness, guarding over my innocence resting in a crypt buried somewhere deep inside. Or maybe I’m more like Wuthering Heights, inhabited by the ghost of someone I never had but somehow lost. 

I am a loner, always been, but there’s a difference between loner and lonely. To have time to be alone when reading, writing, watching a movie, or doing just about anything creative, is the most blessed blessing of all. To sit with a cup of tea and just be without worrying about the short term and just immerse oneself into whatever world you opened, is a privilege not all people have. That pleasure leisure brings is as sweet as a summer breeze, but rare in humankind as justice in the capitalist mind. This difference lies in that, the pleasure, when lonely it never comes, it is not free time and leisure, it is a sentence you have to go through every single day. It starts when I open my eyes, the sound of birds singing together carry me through the day almost like my personalized torture, a reminder that even them have each other, and it ends at night when I succumb to an unmade bed. In those days I learn nothing, and there isn’t one thing that interests me. I feel devoid of myself, like a shell wandering around the house waiting for the dark.

Maybe I did the transition so smoothly I didn’t realize. The truth is I can recall more nights at home, in my purple bathed room, listening to The Smiths or Lana del Rey, or watching some sordid film like Blue Velvet or Christiane F, than nights out with friends and lovers.

One time I asked my mother why didn't she abort me? Stupid question of mine, having in mind that back then it was illegal and most methods ended with the death of the woman. She told me, despite not wanting to have any connection with my biological father, that she knew once I was there in my crib, she was never going to feel lonely for the rest of her life. As tender as it sounded, at first I couldn’t understand how someone so young could give up their lives for something like me, but as I grow older I’m starting to understand her, I guess it is a matter of time for me to do the same. 

I can conclude I find myself in a bourgeois riddle of feelings, perhaps if I didn’t have the time to contemplate life I wouldn’t feel this way. 

[undergroundarling]

Buenos Aries Zero Degree: The Making of Happy Together (1999) // dir. Kwan Pun-leung, Amos Lee