raine

Or, how a notorious Egyptian blogger described perfectly, painfully, what happened to my heart, soul and body 2006-2008.

Make with the clicky, people, it's a good read:



Potential, while nice, is nothing. It's an empty promise with no guarantees, given to you by an asshole who could've fulfilled it today if they chose to, but don't. Nope, I am sorry, there are no hidden gems; beauty doesn't get discarded for long for no reason, and you have not uncovered the great hidden treasure that was in plain sight for all to see. You are the Indian who thanked the white man for his very nice and un-expected blankets, and two days later wondered why he suddenly was feeling very ill and everything around him was going to shit.


There's so much I left unsaid, and I've yet to make a public tally of how much blood, bone, treasure and more importantly time was squandered in those years.

But Sandmonkey seems to have captured very nicely some of that anger and futility. Thank you, friend. I wish I'd read these words sooner.

Fourth day.. Very laid back, just the beach near the Reading Powerplant and Sdedov Airfield & Night of Beer in the Burbs of Hod Hasharon with friends from the comic store.

All good days begin with a high five...













and end with a beer...


Day pictures here

Night pictures here

Finally finished developing/processing the pics from Israel!

Best shots from the first few days - arrival, Tel-Aviv, beaches and nightlife... Much more to follow. The entire set is on Flickr but I'm manually picking out my faves to save folks the trouble (and b/c LJ is an easier archival mode for myself)










I worked at the office until the last possible minute. I'd been burning myself out hardcore at my job and jacked out just in time. I raced home, met with Shay, leaving my precious kitty babies in Yanick's capable and kind hands(<3). It was a cold and rainy cab ride, I felt nervous and nauseous. I didn't know what to expect, I'd been owing Shay a visit to Israel for years (since 2003 probably) and I'd never in my wildest dreams thought it would be like this, with both of us leaving from New York together. I felt guilty for taking a vacation, and unsure if doing so would kick our relationship up a notch I wasn't prepared for, nervous to see Shay's family and meet his friends and definitely not used to someone else taking the reins in a way not completely noxious. It was all such uncharted territory. I packed a lot of books I told myself I'd read, mostly about photography. At the airport, my American-ness caused Shay to get assigned a different 'risk category' by the El Al security folks. Nobody knows what the categories mean but his was different thanks to me.

The flight was exciting but I've done transatlantic before, so I acclimatized. Shay had a hard time sleeping. When on transatlantic flights you'd think its great to be able for once flop down on the person next to you but actually it just meant we slept only as much as the least of us.



After a long and fairly restless flight we arrived at Ben Gurion where we were picked up by Shay's mum and dad. I'd met them before in New York on my birthday, which is also their anniversary. We were both exhausted but it was great to see them. The area with the arrival ramp reminded me of the area with the Temple of Dendur at the Met, here in New York.

Shays mum and dad drove us home, They were very kind to us. I remember my body being all askew with the time difference. Their house was big and felt light and down to earth at the same time, didn't feel like an American house. Reminded me kind of my grandfathers house in Stevens road in Trinidad, maybe the Bauhaus vibe. Thats pretty much the Tel-Aviv vibe, this laid back, vaguely middle eastern mashup of Bauhaus style and eclecticism. A skylight lit the stairwell, inviting light in, and sandstorm shutters sealed the bedroom, keeping light away. We must have slept a lot.

The next day was very laid back.

We drove into town, I don't usually ride in anything but yellow cabs so already it was sort of surreal. I kept checking for the meter running.



We parked near Shay's old apartment in Tel-Aviv.



A stroll down the main Boulevard, Sderot Rothschild, framed by sandblasted white Bauhaus houses and trees, where people go to greet each other. It is so social, and utterly unlike anywhere in America. I forget how social people are naturally, the nurturance we get from the ambience of just being around other people. I live in New York so I'm around other people a lot, but it just isn't the same. We had a sandwich in a little cafe in the middle of the alee of trees, and people watched. Everyone is really skinny (relative to us) tanned and quite a few have dreadlocks, or piercings, or tattoos but they're not goth. Its weird. I realize I've seen them before probably, because its a familiar look but I could never place it. I nursed a coffee and I tried to read the first line of the Hebrew newspaper, I totally sucked.




We walked around the city, the whole first day set is on Flickr if you're interested I took a few more shots. We cut through Shuk Hacarmel market towards the sea.






i dug my boots into the sand as if to convince myself i was really here.



I'm forgetting the exact structure of our wanderings but it was kind of unstructured (yay!) for both the first and second days.

Behold, the mall:


It actually doesnt feel too much like a mall, which is surprising and I can't figure out why. Maybe its just these little un-americanness. It feels way more like a mirror-world than Britain, in the Pattern Recognition sense, and it felt easy and comfortable like an old broken-in hoodie.




then the nightlife:

the first night was.. missing something. I don't know what it was. Accessory was headlining at a goth/industrial night in a nightclub/industrialy area of town. Maybe it was that Shay isn't really feeling the 'scene' anymore or that I've been listening to a lot of drum and bass and dubstep, or that we didn't know anyone there (except for one person later on), or that there was a 90s throwback night we'd passed up to go to the local G/I club.. or that the scene was alot of newly emigrated Russians.. but it really felt like going through the motions.



Accessory was OK, good even. I don't know what it was, the scene just felt dead for me. It was really disappointing and a little scary. And the predictability of it, which I find comforting when I'm at home here in NY/NJ felt disturbing when I was in Israel. It was like finding out that a Big Mac really *does* taste like a Big Mac half way across the world. You want it to taste at least a little different, but it just doesn't. I had liked the internationalism of it, and thought that I could just plug in to some new clique somewhere else in the world and know what to expect, and probably be no more than three degrees of separation from the second family I took on when I moved to NY.. but .. I dont know man.. I just dont know anymore.



Theres something awkward about the picture above that kind of encapsulates the experience for me, a hesitancy or an unsureness. I was unsure of the gender of the person on the right, unsure of the subjects' relationship to each other, and unsure of my reason for being there.

The most exciting thing was probably the booze run to the local store, and making out in the car, but even that, albeit delicious, had an air of trying to recapture something that was sort of pointless. It's not like we weren't going home with each other anyway.

And thus begins my serious trip into melancholia and longing with respect this relationship, because I REALLY REALLY feel the lost years between us. I wish we had been in each others lives as IRL friends when we were younger, if I think about it too much I will have to keep swallowing so I don't cry. It's so frustrating because he was always there, on the periphery. He knew everyone I knew in NY, all my Subkultures friends and he knew Chris. Like most of my beautiful and good friends, I kept him at arms length for a long time and I had no idea what I was missing, and now that I do it feels sharp and heavy and irreversible.

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But I digress. As Monty Python would say, Now for something completely different!
Breakfast!

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This is the BEST FUCKING BREAKFAST EVER.



Called the "Oriental" breakfast on the English menu, and the "Arabic" breakfast on the Hebrew menu.
LOL.

It can be found at a Cafe called LoveEAT. Eggy weggs, hummous, tahine, fried eggplant, and that wonderful, ubiquitous, Meditteranean salad of cucumbers and tomatoes and of course a beautiful frothy latte. YUM. I probably went back about 3x for this breakfast, I'm obsessed with it.

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More night life - the second night was SO UTTERLY COMPLETELY unlike the first.
Shay took me to a breakbeat night at a club called Zizi, put on by T-Break, with the Freestylers.



It was fucking AMAZING. The club was packed and underground, the vibe was positive and upbeat, not dead and ABOUT THE MUSIC, not the 'scene'.



Fashion wise I couldnt really get a read on anyone, maybe it was that I was in a foreign country? But I found myself dancing next to people in NY I'd have bitterly labeled "hipsters" to breaks/drum and bass/ etc.. even some of the tracks i'd been listening to at work before I came over.

this is an example:






I was delirious with happy, uplifted and for once I felt like my cultural past (goth/industrial heritage?) was just another thing that happened and not something defining me, I felt liberated, free from judgment(!) and jolted into the Future, only it didn't really need a capital "F" because it was a future that was simultaneously epically and trivially true. We flopped down on the couch behind the DJ/lighting booth and I think I let Shay understand, really see how happy I was. I know it sounds silly for just a night on the town to evoke this sort of thing but I guess I took for granted how accustomed I was to the same old same old. I'd have a great time later at Kinetik, but it was so good to break the mold, so very fucking needed. And personally too, I think this was the night where I just broke, my anxieties and tensions built for years just washed away in white light, and I surrendered myself to the future, to let it take me where it may.



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Another night of sandstorm blinds blacking out the light, winning the jetlag war an hour each morning with plenty of mornings ahead.

A day on the beach with some friends from Jerusalem. Some time for reflection. I think the title speaks for itself.









moar drivings, and I think these photos below were like a fading fictitious image of israel projected on the walls of a media cave, because nothing like them reappeared in the subsequent sets, and they aren't truly representative of any reality i encountered but more a reflection of the reality i expected to encounter. They're still pretty cool shots though.





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complete sets on black:

Day Zero - Arrival at Ben Gurion
Day One -Tel Aviv
Night One - Accessory Show
Day 2 - Tel Aviv
Night Two - Freestylers and T-Break

Day 3 - Breakfast- Beach- Towers

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Moar later. Thanks for watching/reading/listening, and thanks in advance for respecting my boundaries by not polluting my vacation entry with politicrap! :D It's my first vacation in yeaaars and its been an uphill struggle through a very dark path to get there... so no raining on my parade!

ran into an old classmate yesterday, it put me deep in thought.

i don't know if the end result, or the holy grail of this trying to integrate the past/present/future stuff is to return to the architecture program at CCNY (assuming they'd have me)..

but I do know i don't spend very much time contemplating returning to my old home before i start getting really pissed off.

saw this today...

http://www.cnn.com/2010/LIVING/06/15/architecture.economy/index.html?hpt=C1

those ivy leage adjuncts who went slumming it at a public university taking students' money & time in exchange for years art/cultural theory indoctrination which would soon render them unemployable.. really could have used an ethics/reality check back when it fucking mattered. Ugh.

seriously if i post at any greater length I'll end up linking Deleuze and all those other frequently-namechecked french philosophers to Encyclopedia Dramatica's entry for "shit nobody cares about" and nobody wants me to start linking to Encyclopedia Dramatica. Trust me. It's just not a good sign.

I dunno man, maybe i should stay far far away from architecture, i find it tends to put me in battle mode :[ It makes me feel all obnoxious and opinionated and bitter like some other architect I know (my grandfather). Not really sure I want that road... Not really sure I know what I want... Tempted to say that life is pretty good as-is.


Spent yesterday's lunch reading the wikipedia entries for Clash of Civilizations and Fukuyama's End of History. It was a chewy and thoughtful lunch.

Started cleaning out all the compartments of old hard drive backups (due to frequent formatting). Unpacking my archived photos from the hated taxonomy foisted on me by my ex ("People?" "Places?" Thats what tags are for! ) and started recovering lost memory in my own head, enough to place them chronologically. At least I'm not afraid of them anymore.. but it's actually a lot harder work than I'd thought, and is making me simultaneously feel both accomplished and irritable.

I haven't said a word on here in months. I was having a conversation last night with Shay, telecart about honesty online, and I think that we both (and most of my friends) were lucky to come of age after technology made connecting with others possible, but before EVERYONE was on the internet including parents, younger cousins, and employers, before the act of blocking a website had political ramifications.

Shay has said, rightly that the internet is "no longer cosa nostra". And it's true. This sense of home, and displacement, of being a stranger everywhere, have been recurring themes in our discussions of late. Actually our relationship (we've been together over a half year now, I believe) feels like a forum thread, a movie, and a novel simultaneously, but moreover like one long freewheeling discussion with breaks to work and sleep and dick off on the Actual Internet. Theres a sense of natural interweaving between topics, technology, politics, philosophy, gender to be very broad, and although its frustrating to see these great discussions leave no residue (as they would online), it's exciting to see how they evolve, and I find the evidence lived, and internalized instead of documented. It feels reflective, not in the least bit forced... So it would seem I've found someone decent to be dragged kicking and screaming into the 21st Century with. The constant online presence, and being highly visible at the periphery of my friends (Livejournal, Subkultures and IRL) gives the whole enterprise this sense of deep familiarity juxtaposed with strangeness, that feels like rediscovery or deja-vu. It's hard to describe.

The safety I'm extended, and the sheer magnitude of his good-naturedness is very humbling. I struggle with a sense of worthiness, especially given the dark legacy of my family and my own spotty and drama-filled history. And the carnage I come dragging with me from previous lives, which in terms of "baggage" feels like asking if an entire mangled 747 jet is OK as "carry-on". I'm a little nervous and frankly uncomfortable, but I'm crossing my fingers that it's the good kind of discomfort, where you (as the 'courage wolf' meme would put it...) "Bite off more than you can chew... THEN CHEW IT.

It's funny, I came to try and reconnect with my lost-self, but I end up talking about my relationship instead. As important as he is to me (and always has been, for years, though at a safer distance).. There's a lot of stuff I need to look backwards, and face head-on, and I hope maybe recovering my sense of authenticity through writing, through sharing, through my good old transparent self, can be recovered.

I feel like the past years, the past 5 years really, have been a big wound, a huge chasm, each rip deeper and darker than the others, but that it's a chasm that wants to heal itself.

So many wonderful things have happened this year. Starting with the most recent -

I watched Steve and Sara get married... it was so beautiful!
I saw Travisz and Yanick and Eric and Mark and .. the list just goes on... and there was so much positive energy there, it was like he'd brought us all together the way he brough Steven and Sara, and the grief turned into a bond, and a sense that we were all bound by our good fortune more than our bad. It was a wonderful night, we were very honored to be part of watching two beautiful people who absolutely get it right share some of the "good stuff" of life with their friends, that we could celebrate in it with them, just .. wow! There are no words.
I went to Kinetik, in Montreal. I saw Paul, he squished me so hard I thought I would die! and Brad, and Bea and met new friends and old, musicians I admired already and would come to admire by the end, the list goes on! And after posting my pictures, I made my peace with Facebook, as everyone got tagged, even famous people :P And Shay and I went to meet my cousin Jonathan who is flourishing so well in Montreal after finishing his engineering degree at McGill.

So much live music lately. We've seen Massive Attack, we've seen Covenant, and Pearl Jam. On top of stuff around Kinetik.

We have tickets to Atari Teenage Riot at the end of the summer.. CRAZY!

I paid off all my Credit Card debt.
I plugged in all my debts, student loans and otherwise, to Mint, and got a real birds-eye view of my financial picture.

Its really the sense of panic and closing in about that which prompted me to come here and try and focus on something more positive.. And for the time being I will try and keep it positive.

Biggest of all: I WENT TO ISRAEL. Words can't express what it was like, I did not go for religious reasons but the trip had a depth of importance that defies everyday explanation. I loved every minute, and honestly it felt like the only thing missing was work, and on a deeper level, time, as I wished I'd been there sooner. I wish I could have shared my younger self with Shay, all the enthusiasm and imagination that is feeling challenged with all the responsibilities of the now, and cleaning up the mess that bad relationships and death and school and financial struggle has left. I'm glad that we knew each other as friends back then, even in an algorithmic sense, which is to say, guessing between the bits and bytes. I went to Israel because I've owed it to Shay for almost as many years as I've known him and certainly since 2006 when he visited. Honestly I wish I'd just have packed myself in his suitcase back then and been done with it.

I started taking pictures. Andres helped me get started, and it gave my soul a voice, it brought light into a dark place, gave me the chance to know myself again, to know myself obliquely, refracted via single lens reflex mirror, a reason to engage with the world, to turn unfamiliar corners, and to re-envision the familiar itself.

My 'work', if you want to call it that - is here.

http://www.flickriver.com/photos/konstruktsiia/sets/

There's more history here, so much, beneath the surface, much of it dark and complex and scary. I'll get to it in due time, and when I win the internal struggle against its having been, I hope I will have some of my honesty back.

I think the current theme of my life is going to be reaching backwards through the chasm of years, and gaps and through the horror, pulling what was good, and bringing it forward. It's scary, I forgot what it was like to try and make and keep friends, having been trapped and isolated in a violent, impoverishing relationship, with so much unresolved grief and sadness. And I'm a goth for christs sake, this shit was always pretty hard.

Anyway I think it's good to leave with a quote of Lebbeus Woods. I kept thinking of the reaching-back I want to do, to take all of Lorraine, the imperfect grades, pick back up the missed opportunities, the dusty but patient friendships waiting on the shelf for hands to pick them up, the music, the words, the art, all of it and hold it without shame, up to the light for what it is. Not to write off, as I'd initially thought, the past decade like a totalled car. It's reaching into the past, and the future, and trying to make something more contiguous out of it, more harmonic. "Healing" sounds so new agey, and I don't think I'll get it right anyway, I think it'll be an imperfect effort at an imperfect process, but I'm willing to stand up and give it a shot, as many shots as it takes. It's not really a conscious effort, it's happening and its slow but it feels deep, and like it carries an inertial momentum.

I leave whatever is left of you, my valued readership, with a quote from Lebbeus Woods:

"The scar is a deeper level of reconstruction that fuses the new and the old, reconciling, coalescing them, without compromising either one in the name of some contextual form of unity. The scar is a mark of pride and of honor, both for what has been lost and what has been gained. It cannot be erased, except by the most cosmetic means. It cannot be elevated beyond what it is, a mutant tissue, the precursor of unpredictable regenerations. To accept the scar is to accept existence. Healing is not an illusory, cosmetic process, but something that -by articulating differences- both deeply divides and joins together."
— Lebbeus Woods