Meet The Press

To maintain theories of renovating the human race through systems...is about the same thing as to maintain that man grows milder with civilization. Logically, perhaps, this is so; yet he is so prone to Systems and abstract deductions that he is forever ready to mutilate the truth, to be blind to what he sees or deaf to what he hears, so long as he can succeed in vindicating his logic...civilization develops in man nothing but an added capacity to receive impressions-that is all. And the growth of that capacity increases his tendency to seek pleasure in spilling blood. You may have noticed that some of the most enthusiastic blood-letters are almost always the most "civilized" of people.

~Nietzche

"Western Civilization? Yes, I think that would be a good idea."

~Ghandi

"You have to be something of a butchering murderer to be a politician."

~Henry Miller

Golden Bars (begin)

What were you always waiting for?
All this "getting through..."

What are you waiting for?
All this so-called knowledge
before you begin.

One last book,
one last sentence,
one last word,
one last film,
one last theory,
one last conversation

that will finally end all this,
let it begin.

One last piece that will finally
allow you to say

goodbye,
goodnight,

I'm selling everything off,
I'm burning everything down,
going straight out of business,
and it's about time.

Maybe stand on you own,
speak your own,
hear your own

just this once.

And just when you believe
there's nothing left,

and

it is finally time to begin
there is always one more...

One more question,
one more curiosity,
one more mistake,
one more experience,
one more overgrown path
stretching before you.

So you take the step,
start chopping away,
dive in,
believing this is the last
and afterwards
life will begin,

you always promise this.


Los Angeles - 4/26/06

The Dance - 1/08

The Dance - 1/08, originally uploaded by levari.

Lady in Blue - 8/05

14:12

14:12, originally uploaded by levari.

"...as fate followed in our wake
like a madman
brandishing a razor."

~Zerkalo

La Brea, Los Angeles - dawn

La Brea, Los Angeles - 4:14 am, originally uploaded by levari.

"So much in writing depends on the superficiality of one's days. One may be preoccupied with shopping and income tax returns and chance conversations, but the stream of the unconsciousness continues to flow undisturbed, solving problems, planning ahead: one sits down sterile and dispirited at the desk; and suddenly the words come as though from the air: the situations that seemed blocked on a hopeless impasse move forward: the work has been done while one slept or shopped or talked with friends."

~Grahm Greene

fragments for a song never sung

up in flames
we're up in flames
no pain
we're up in flames.

lost the game
no one to blame
numb the pain
our method
by any means.

up in flames
we always go
up in flames
so take your picture
have a ball
it really doesn't matter at all,

you and me
we just went up in flames

11/06


with no shame

cinema=JLG=cinema

, originally uploaded by levari.

"First there was Greek civilization. Then there was the Renaissance. Now we are entering the age of the ass!"

~Jean-Luc Godard
Pierrot Le Fou

Bus Stop, Echo Park - 3/5/08

Bus Stop, Echo Park - 3/5/08, originally uploaded by levari.

Let It Come Down

"Do not fill your life with gaps, but fill your gaps with life."

~Paul Bowles

Poets and Pornographers

The poets and the pornographers
meet in the same place
every night
after the city has emptied out.

Not the tourists
nor the police
can tell the
poets and pornographers
apart.

In fact,
the poets and pornographers
can barely tell
each other apart,
let alone notice
the absurdity
of the situations
that has brought them to this
state
of comraderie.

The pornographers
provide the cognac,
the poets bring
the cigars;
it's been like this for
longer than either
can remember.

Anything that happens
between the hours
of midnight and dawn
has no
precedent
and is decided on
a case by case
basis.

The poets and the pornographers
laugh at each other's
foibles, ticks, indiosynchrocies;

they admire the same women and men;

they mix freely,
judge each other solely
on moral grounds,
and enjoy the missing
hollows of each;

sometimes they even
crawl in.

The poets and the pornographers
often pair up, make love,
spend days, weeks, even years
only
to split apart and recombine
without wisdom or madness;

it is only the pornographers
that truly lament
the passing of time
while the poets
invite gray hair
and wrinkled skin.

The poets and pornographers
repeat, repeat, repeat
all the same mistakes
over and over again
proudly.

And often,
the poets and pornographers
cannot tell
who is who,
what is what,
where they were last year,
or even this morning.

(They switch sides all the time.)

The poets and pornographers
keep their own secrets,
agree to no memory,
fight each other to the death,
laugh at the rotting body's nakedness,
weep at the rising sun,
think everything of traffic and rain,

and meet in the same place
at the same time
each and every night,

but I'll never tell you
where this is.

Korea Town - Los Angeles 3/31/06

Morning Correspondance

Morning Correspondance, originally uploaded by levari.

Morning Lee,

Are you working away on that screenplay that has this Friday's deadline?

I am happy to tell you I am feeling much better today...

Two nights ago I had quite a horrible dream that today I have come to understand has everything to do with what I have been going through, may I tell you about it?

In this dream, I am 4 months pregnant, and I am starting to have heavy contractions. I am in one of the country hospitals where I was shooting the births during my Vietnam trip a couple months ago. Anyway, in this hospital the nurses tell me that I am in labor. I am so confused and scared and am wondering how I could possibly have the baby at such an early stage, and I am terrified that once the baby comes out it is going to be too premature to live.

Then I suddenly find myself roaming on this mountain road high above the hospital, in ridiculous and horrifyng labor pain, wondering how my baby is going to be delivered. I know that I am going to have a baby with no one helping me and it is going to be in this mountain wildnerness. Aside from the pain, I feel this endless sadness, a sadness I've never felt anything quite like, simply that there is no one to help.

So, I think what this dream signifies is my fear that whoever I love will end up leaving me stranded and alone. The pregnancy represents all my pains and emotions that I have to carry with me about this. Having no one there to help, this is my fear becoming real. Being back in the Vietnamese hospital and mountainside where I took those photographs showed me that when I get sad, usually the only place in my mind I can find peace is to dream about the mountains of Sapa; this is where the tribal regions of Vietnam exist.

I don't know why but about eight years ago, when in
one of my darkest stages, I began to have two images of myself that morph into and out of each other quite at random:

For the first 5 years of the the 8, this image is of me sitting in a small, completely dark room with a small window and there is a tiny speck of light peeking through, but that is it, nothing else but darkness.

Then for the next 2 years, I see an image of myself as an older
lady, roaming around alone in strange, foreign lands, alone,
but finally in peace with myself....

Lee, these dreams, these images...it's always me ALONE. I am starting to wonder if it's also because I do believe that we
are all born alone and too will die alone? I wonder if I believe this, or is it just a phrase that has no more truth than any other philosophy.

Just thoughts...

Hope you are well.

And, oh, dinner on friday, you will be done with your
deadline and good to go right?

k.

---------------------------------

reprinted with the permission of Katie Luong

Evening

"They grope before them like blind people and find each other as they would a door. Almost like children that dread the night, they press close into each other. And yet they are not afraid. There is nothing that might be against them: no yesterday, no tomorrow; for time is shattered. And they flower from its ruins...

"They will give each other a hundred new names and take them all off again."

~Rilke