Shouldn’t be surprised that there is more of life’s happenings when you are running harder and faster. Recently had a chance to take a hands-on-your-hips breather with some friends and look back at the distance covered.

“How have you been?” between casual friends means “How work and your love life.?” Amongst real friends it means “Hey you getting laid and paid?” Real friends keep it real. Reflections of recent events out loud (often for the first time) and friends’ telling and retelling of stories about me that have been purposely forgotten help me find my bearings as well as focus my sights on the next milestone.

After the night of roasting each other I thought of how much I was trying to not to repeat, backtrack. Maybe I have just taken some scenic back roads and detours but still am running towards the same destination. Besides stories about getting A to B directly are boring.

Soundtrack of Mi Vida: Seat Yourself-Roots Manuva

Faith47  from S. Africa is showing her geo-political messaged pieces at http://www.carmichaelgallery.com along with 4 other artists from the U.S. of A and abroad. Many of the pieces were surprisingly affordable but I am afraid its gonna be my new crack if I start buying art now. In the meantime free galleries for me.

I have been noticing a trend of guerrilla spaces that intrigues me on 3 levels: putting vacant uses to space, juxtaposing places and people that normally do not coexist, and introducing/exposing new ideas to the surrounding community. Phantom Galleries is an example of the former and the Comme des Garcons store near Jtown is an example of the latter. What is lasting? What has permenance? Where is the line between function and symbolism. More and more, it seems like brick and mortar are becoming vehicles for ideas.  In someways guerrilla spaces  are theatrical since those who venture these places come for an experience. I don’t claim totally to understand my draw to these spaces myself but their messages somehow permeate and lead to other questions. I remember what I don’t understand.

Soundtrack of Mi Vida: Melt My Heart to Stone-Adele

Trying to hold it together, keep it together, fit it together, make it work together, stay together

forever.

Life is just obeying physics,

trying to get to its lowest state of energy.

A life alone.

Uphill, we continue.

Soundtrack of Mi Vida: So Many Roads-Fink

One thing of note that I’ve enjoyed during my runs is all the smells I come across. If you know me, you know my nose. Dinner cooking, Jasmine flowers, wet grass, fast food grease, lingering perfumes, soapy shower steam, and the confluence of all those smells when you are running through dense apartment flanked streets.

Street art by Swoon, “I don’t buy that some absentee landlord neglecting the side of his factory is better than citizens participating in what happens to it. What if I can make something twice as powerful, so much tinier, and right at the ground where everyone is? What if I made something with my hands that became more important to people’s experience of the city?”

Dish of the Day: Comfort food classic, Chicken Fried Rice

Soundtrack of Mi Vida: Twirling of the ceiling fan and Low Stars – Calling All Friends

Dish of the day: Coq a Vin

Soundtrack of Mi Vida: Pictures – Sia

Me, distance. You, walls. Us, reaching.

Soundtrack of Mi Vida: Colors – Amos Lee

I am all about the FREE events in LA. RSVP is closed but don’t worry, hipsters are mad flakers. Meet up at the house if y’all wanna caravan.

Soundtrack of Mi Vida: Headlock – Imogen Heap

When I was a kid I had a a cheap blue clock much like the ones Felix Gonzalez-Torres‘ used for Perfect Lovers. I bought the clock with a bucket of arcade tickets because I didn’t want more candy or parachute men and didn’t have enough tickets for that red radio controlled race car. So when I first saw Perfect Lovers in a magazine and after in more periodicals, TV, and even in person a couple years ago at MoMA, I wasn’t too impressed and never paid it too much mind. It was up there with that swirling plastic bag in American Beauty in artistic value to me. But I saw it again in a magazine recently and this time it made me stop and feel that there was more to it.

The clocks are like the relationships in our lives, always changing. We may begin perfectly in synch with the same passions and directions in our lives but like the clocks, over time we will grow seconds apart. Seconds can become minutes that become distant hours. That moment of perfect timing has come and gone. We either choose to re-synch our clocks with each other or find someone else that is at this moment in time already in synch with us.

“Good timing” was something I never really thought I had in relationships. More and more I see it’s because I am resetting my clock to someone’s else’s time thinking we can move forward together. Right or wrong? I don’t know exactly. Its just what I have chosen to do and never have or will regret it. The better and the present question is am I where I want to be now and if I am on my to where I want to be later. When I can say yes to both, “I” can be replaced with “we”.

Soundtrack of Mi Vida: Question – Old 97′s

I’ve flown, driven, and ran. Back and forth. In circles. And. Gone nowhere.

Soundtrack of Mi Vida: Emile’s Vietnam in the Sky – Elvis Perkins

*Long exposure photography by Matthew Pillsbury

-Anselm Kiefer. Bohemia Lies by the Sea.

Sometimes choosing “this or that” is not as simple as getting one thing and not the other. We seem to forget the non-tangibles that are involved in a decision. Why do we need, want and do the things we do? Is this decision and all the decisions I’ve made leading up to this moment been true to who I am and what I believe in. Have I negotiated, compromised, wittled the core of me away. Maybe this consumer society is partly to blame for the growing disconnect I feel we have to ourselves which in turns disconnects us from each other. Time and time again I see that we choose what is immediate and tangible to fill the voids in life because that’s what been prescribed by media, society, or whom or whatever we have chosen to give partial authority over our lives. Living a life where you just float along or get caged in by what others “think” (you are the only one who will ever know) is right for you, is to choose to ultimately starve your heart and soul.

“Tiger got to hunt, bird got to fly; Man got to sit and wonder, ‘Why, why, why?’ Tiger got to sleep, bird got to land; Man got to tell himself he understand.” – Kurt Vonnegut. Cat’s Cradle.

Side Note
I was declared psychologically healthy as a horse by my friend, a clinical-psychologist-to-be. So, I ain’t as crazy as I thought and I am somehow disappointed. It’s kinda cool and even cosmopolitan (that word always connotes martinis and Fitzgerald) today to have a mental/behavioral disorder. Like the topic of pets, people connect over their neuroses and OCD behaviors. Oh well, guess I will stick to current news and semi-dirty jokes.

Soundtrack of Mi Vida: Open Your Eyes – Eric Roberson
“i can pray for your dreams,
if that truly means,
that if your dreams come true,
that i won’t be with you…” ~sigh