girls with make-up will fuck you up!
not that 'natural organic' "this is how i really look!" make-up
but that tacky crazy colored matching make-up.
"he likes them girly and fancy though" his friend told me.
but he's not like that?
go get yourself a human
an artist that doesn't have to hide her face under a mask of glitter.

oh man, how funny

"will build a fort with me"

she said my veins were hard to find.
make a fist again please. the nurse uptown kept exhaling.
the other nurse downstairs said my blood pressure was too low.
and the one in florida said the levels of medicine in my blood were too high.
well?
what am i supposed to do with all this fucking information?
sometimes i think i am so fragile i am invisible.
i can close my eyes, begin to spin, tracing back to where everything began.
long night, hard paper, elmer's glue and swing-arm fluorescent lamps
the rain the rain
i can't hear you.
slipping language and outlines of foreign pictures
why is everyone talking so quick. wait for me. please.
please
please
this air is running out....

TOP DOG

It only lasted three months. They met every Monday at 53rd and Lexington, next to the hot-dog stand outside of the subway stop. As she walked out of the underground train and into the real world, she noticed the eloquent streets. They roared with clashing trumpets and traffic as the sidewalks carried waves of people everywhere. Wow, so this is what magic looks like, she spoke softly under her breath. As she hurried to ask the hot-dog man if he'd seen him, she found a curious hand pulling her shoulder back. It was him! They sat inside the Manhattan Public Space garden with their hot-dogs and smiles. How is your work going? They asked each other. And as conversations progressed they shared secrets and stories. Mondays turned into layers of collected days as weeks matured into consolidated abstract months. Every time they met she listened to him mention the shiny high buildings and she spoke about the piercing magic in every block, in all the traffic lights. One crisp cold Monday she waited almost forty minutes before he arrived. No I'm sorry miss I haven't seen him, the hot-dog guy told her. Disconcert, she still stood there, looking for him left and right. All the while she gazed at the power on the ground, as he eventually appeared. He told her that his eager eyes had found something in a far away building. All the buildings glistened and soared, overwhelmingly leaving the city with the same dim man-made shadows. She didn't understand the difference. He squinted his eyes in a difficult position, closed his glowing hands, and walked away, into the streams of people in the streets. Lost and embarrassed, she walked towards the garbage to spit out her last hot-dog pieces in such a bitter manner, and took the train downtown; back home.

what a waste of eyeliner.

invisible dresses
facy model: Fran Rather

thanks katie.

In my current design class we have to come up with a design proposal for the aging. Like a nursing home that is a social structure for the elderly, which would take the place of the traditional family. But before thinking about the appropriate design guidelines that should be involved, I just began thinking about a concept of memories. I love Gene Kelly, his tap dancing and smile, and so I have began to see and learn about the particular glitter that each B&W film holds. Those lost movies that people used to watch at the theater; I wonder what the elderly can say or remember about those times in their lives, and if there really was a sort-of mist in real life that every one of these films project.

This thing that I'm saying

I had a nightmare last night, that as I see now was actually more like a dream. I barely ever remember generic words, or daily events but I do know about my dreams. I remember the intricate details always. And I don't know why.
In my dream last night I found myself walking aimlessly alone, stranded at night in an intimidating empty area that reminds me of the neighborhood in deep Bed-Stuy-near the JMZ train tracks of where I once lived. I was so lost and so tiny in my dream, walking in circles captured by the shadows of the brownstone apartments and seemed to be looking for something, someone.
You know when you're dreaming and feel yourself as an omniscient presence? Where you can see yourself - as if you were in third person but are so deep in your sleep so you cannot warn or talk to your 'actual dream self' to let them know what is going on and give them advice, as you do see the bigger picture. Yet, like any, well all really, third wheel person, you are invisible.
Well anyways, as I turn into the unknown alleys and cracks of this neighborhood inside my brain, one which I have never been to, a man comes running up behind me. I, as the third person, the one watching the whole episode cannot do anything but freeze my breath and try to wake myself. However as he grasps my face from behind, his hands are not what the third person expects. They are sweet, nostalgic. When I turn around to see his face, what a strange surprise. It is the first man I had ever fallen in love with, and the first man to break my heart. Why are we here? I don't remember the last time I had thought about him, I don't even know why I remember his hands now instead of ever learning how to get around Manhattan!
Regardless, he takes me to a party in a gallery. A party where only people from those high school days are there. But now they are grown and dressed up! And I am so excited, like everyone else. It seems like everyone is waiting for some very special guest to arrive, in the meantime we all greet and smile as we hold wine glasses and I remember the bright white flowers in the background. Melanie is here, Grant and James Ward and so is everyone else from DASH. But now the guest has arrived! And here he is, Seraphin Bernard make his entrance so slick, on a motorcycle.

even though they were dead when i found them, i am confident they still withhold some good luck.

similar message in diff languages

Shakira: No Creo Fourth album, ¿Dónde Están Los Ladrones? 1998

English translation:
"only you know well who I am
and why my heart is yours
only you bend my reasoning
and so I go where you want to,
I do not think that the sea will one day lose the taste of salt
still I do not believe in me yet"


Alanis Morissette: You Learn Third Albumb Jagged Little Pill 1995

"I recommend getting your heart trampled on to anyone
I recommend walking around naked in your living room
Swallow it down (what a jagged little pill)
It feels so good (swimming in your stomach)
Wait until the dust settles
You live you learn
You love you learn
You cry you learn"

i looked for you yesterday

I looked for you yesterday and all I found was this rococo lamp on the street. It was pretty neat. You come back from that business trip and give me a gift. Ok cool. A mug made out of mud. How nice of you my dear; my darling, my darling.

i am writing letters addressed to you that i will never send. why are we here and why are you oblivious to the meanings in everything? i bought my own flowers today, did i tell you? yes they were sunflowers! beautiful sunflowers that lit up my room like Van Gogh's corny paintings. me and him can relate you know, on that crazy level. Poor artists and epileptic brains. i wonder if Van Gogh bought his own flowers though. i am betting he did.

draft 1

This is about Arleen today-

"There's a huge heat wave in Miami! ughh! I am getting tanned against my own will! Your so lucky you have that fan from QVC, what is it called? the 'Ionic Breeze' right?" Arleen tells me over the phone, as she rushes to catch the bus to her new job at Jackson North Hospital where she is a "custodian". A janitor. Arleen, my friend for nine years has just graduated from Rhode Island School of Design, with her full scholarship as a painting major. Now living in Miami, in a time like this, I would say anyone with a job is pretty 'lucky' ; whatever that word implies.
Our high school was a weird one. Design& Architecture Senior High School a tiny community inside Miami's Design District where Dali's video installations and our four hour critiques were always much more important than algebra and any science; no one in that damn school could add or multiply then. And it is probably the same way today. As seniors we anticipated about those college responses. One envelope that would determine where life would 'lead' us. We feared that "we regret to inform you" sentence and jumped when the envelope was thick, meaning that the university's 'student life' brochure would be inside.
Those days were over five years ago and everyone was accepted to their dream college all over the world. Yet like that saying 'it is easier said than done' being accepted is one thing-and graduating is another. So I ask myself- who in that little senior 05' class actually graduated college? Who gave up, who stayed home? I never knew. I can no longer recognize people from those classes anymore; I could never imagine grown up faces of those children I once knew, can't fathom any idea of those kids in Miami's bars or beaches.
However, growing up in New York far away from my close friends seemed easier than I thought it would, like Arleen.
It is easy to recollect ridiculous memories of Arleen. Things that have happened in our perennial thanksgiving parties here in my dorm in Brooklyn and laughs from just yesterday about the bucket of blood she had to dump from the ICU but avoided by sleeping in the Hospital's chapel while hiding her garbage cart.
"It is easy to see the beginnings of things, and harder to see the ends." Writes Joan Didion in one of her essays. I quote this now because I feel like we are back to those high school days. The days where we were starving and she worked at Burger King and I worked at Krispy Kreme and took the day's left overs home along with the penny tips.
I have never had over $200 in my bank account in New York. Brooklyn to me has always seemed like a place where life is free, and money is insignificant. Now that I will graduate in less than a year and cannot sleep at night because of money on my mind, or the lack of it, that 'free' idea begins to fade quickly.
And as me and Arleen share coins for the train, cheap immigrant buses and lotto, when we are home for the holidays, I wonder about about the impact of money in our life. It's significance throughout our entire lives.
All holidays in Florida were the best. The few of us who were still friends came back from college all happy and unaware of cash. Even when we all worked stupid night shifts at Guess, Stuart Weitzman, GAP and of course Arleen's random shit job- a phone agent for Direct TV, we usually always ended up laughing at Wendy's as we watched Arleen complain about her dollar cheeseburger. She didn't get a tomato slice and any lettuce so she called their customer service, the number on the receipt. Receipts she saved. After realizing she was wasting her minutes and watched us giggle, Arleen hung up and laughed along with us.
We still eat where soda refills are free and share cigarettes. We are all twenty-two and money for me is an expensive idea. While none of us own cars or know how to drive, money is just that- money. Pieces of paper that we don't own, a simple fact in a recession that we accepted. Like accepting that in the end we are still the same people we were nine years ago. Broke and good friends.
"They couldn't afford to pay me or have me anymore at the hospital anymore. Whatever, that place was a piece of shit anyways. Man I had to take all those damn vaccines for nothing! I only worked there for a week! But good news good news, I have an interview for a new job tomorrow! It's a fancy office job. When I went to buy nail polish at Walgreens I paid the cash register lady all in coins and told her I was broke. She looked at my fake nails, where I was missing two, and said ' I can tell ' " Arleen tells me later.

95 degrees in this bitch and no AC

"I was never a big fan of people who don’t leave home. I don’t know why.It just seems part of your duty in life. " -Joan Didion

I bought a few books this summer. Old books that I never read because I was lazy and probably wouldn't understand anyways. And books like ghosts and memories, that have been following me around, telling me to buy them already. I have bought Virgina Woolf's 1927 novel "To the Lighthouse" and Betty Smith's 1943 "A Tree Grows In Brooklyn". But perhaps the best thing I'm doing is reading books that I already own and never actually read or finished. Smart recession move here huh.
For instance I never did finish "The Art of The Personal Essay". It's a beautiful anthology from classical to a present structure of writing. It is filled with seventy-five essays and because they are all short essays and there is no need or rush to finish such a thick book, I found myself carrying it everywhere. Reading next to the pool, on the plane and in my job. Each essay is very personal, an experience where each author draws you in a very elegant and distinct form.


"when I was six or seven years old growing up in Pittsburgh, I would take a precious penny of my own and hide it for someone else to find. It was a curious compulsion; sadly, I've never been seized by it since. For some reason I always "hid" the penny on the same stretch of sidewalk up the street. I would cradle a penny at the roots of a sycamore, say, or in a hole left by a chipped-off piece of sidewalk. Then I would take a piece of chalk and, starting at either end of the block, draw huge arrows leading up to the penny from both directions. After I learned to write I labeled the arrows: SURPRISE AHEAD or MONEY THIS WAY. I was greatly excited during all this arrow-drawing, at the thought of the first lucky passer-by…. The world is fairly studded and strewn with pennies cast broadside from a generous hand. But–and this is the point–who gets excited by a mere penny?… If you cultivate a healthy poverty and simplicity, so that finding a penny will literally make your day, then, since the world is in fact planted in pennies, you have with your poverty bought a lifetime of days."

Annie Dillard's "Seeing" 1974

"working on it.jpeg"

So I've been working on interior renderings on 3D Studio MAX. When I found out that barely anything had saved (aaah!) except one blurry jpeg, and no actual document, I just decided to give it a rest and look at funny things like this online>

click the image to see & read it good :]

FB chat: It's free speech right!

Sooo... our design class/major is filled with more politics and favoritism than any other major in the entire school. Maybe because there are only girls and gays, and then- like the five of us, weird art kiddos that don't fit in-but want to build stuff too! Our chair, Anita told me once "with your work you could never be an interior designer, and trust me I could be nastier!" what the hell right! I would say that 99% of our class has cried because of this system and mostly Anita. Maybe it is like the real working world, maybe it's like the real corporate insider system. I don't know, but shit still sucks. It's also crazy to see this happen to other people like Irene, Courtney, Niesha etc. Ahh what to do what to do! well, just to give you a taste- here's a little chat I had with my good friend, Irene.

Irene

there you are

you okay?

11:58amElena

yea!

11:59amIrene

i know you feel like shit. i totally understand

11:59amElena

yea

11:59amIrene

well,good think you have some optimism

i admire you for that

11:59amElena

aww thanks.

11:59amIrene

she killed me and took away my soul long time ago

i'm not doing interior design anymore

for reals

11:59amElena

ima work work and prove that bitch wrong

11:59amIrene

yea

you should

do it for me too

12:00pmElena

i will. promise :]

yo i wanna screen-shoot w/e this

it's awesome

12:01pmIrene

screen shoot wat

12:03pmElena

our chat! its so sweet, like how we are strong even though when someone can hurt us so much with words

12:03pmIrene

haha

you're strong

i'm not

it's all money and politics in the end for her

12:04pmElena

your strong & crazy because your sill going to school and doing something else. Not giving up basically

12:04pmIrene

lol

right....

lol

12:04pmElena

lol

its true

she's going to hell man. or Karma is going to get her good

but wateves :]

12:05pmIrene

yea i hope she gets cancer

so i won't have to kill her

12:05pmElena

lmao i was wishing that tooo! omg

you read my mind!

12:05pmIrene

let her own cells kill her

12:05pmElena

lmao

12:05pmIrene

slowly and painfully

and yet, no one can help her

12:06pmElena

im laughing so loud in my job right now hhahah

12:06pmIrene

then she'll know how we feel

i can write a book about her

how great of a personality she had

she helped so many innocent ppl

12:06pmElena

hahaha oh lord.she will feel it good

12:06pmIrene

yet, she got cancer and died alone in her dark room

so many ppl will have pity on her, but oh well, she's DEAD!

12:08pmElena

hahaha too bad for that hoe. God see's how much she hurts us. So many people

girls at that

12:08pmIrene

it's going to rain from 2pm

did you bring an umbrella?

12:08pmElena

did u just stop from our "cancer-hate' talk?

nope.

12:09pmIrene

honestly elena, i respect you a lot more than anita

hahaha

12:09pmElena

lolz

12:09pmIrene

i just checked the weather so

i was just telling you

but back to our cancer talk

12:09pmElena

lol

12:09pmIrene

i have absolutely no respect for her

12:11pmElena

me neither. Now i have to borrow $40G's AGAIN.

Dear Sister

Dear Susy,

I am sorry because never realized how much I never appreciated you.
untill now.
I am sorry that I couldn't go your wedding in Florida.
I am sorry that I don not pray like you do before each meal,
so humble.
When you actually pay for food,
while I have the opportunity to to "live large" in the benefit of FoodStamps.
For the little things you buy me at the mall when I am home.
And never do I thank God for it.
Never do I thank god for you when I am in church every Sunday.
For us knowing each other and being so damn different like sisters are supposed to be.
It is only now that I realize how far we are,
where we stand and how guilty I am.
I am so sorry.
So sorry because I love you.
Because I miss you.
Because I trust you.
Because you are not like the fucked up people I have met in this city.
Because you are worthy of so much more than I ever imagined.

my voice through this blog.

Where have all our voices gone?
Twitter, Facebook and texts; computers and programs.
little gadgets and systems that exercise our fingers out like motherfuckers.
Have we sunken our voices into little crevices of space that we can't even touch?
Have we translated our vocal folds into data like those who have a speech disorder?
or did we chose to hide our human voice which reveal our own harmonic content.
I remember me.
I remember you.
And the songs we use to hum,
the intricate pulses of our breathe and contagious laughter.
The fuel in our voices could stop cars and break any glass.
Still your iphone could break all of that.
And now your voice fades slowly, balancing into and out of my fingers,
when i write you twitts and texts,
messages and comments.
Voices no longer resonating in my mind like they once use to.
Do you remember me, my voice, while you receive the digital me?

lady

Every time I begin to play on my harmonica there is a little ladybug that comes in through my window. Maybe the ladybug is hot and just wants to hear some music. It's funny because this has happened like three times! the ladybug is there when I'm done cleaning my mind, room, ready to practice.
Patience makes perfect I say; and there is my lil' ladybug patiently listening to all my mistakes and first steps into becoming the next Junior Wells.

Destination: anywhere;

"Sir, I told the man at the railroad station"
"I want a ticket just for one"
He said "Well, if you insist
But where you wanna go, miss?"

strange&recent things in this month

sat. july 4th- I took a 13$ taxi from the city, exhausted from the entire day's events. When i swiped my card inside the taxi it was declined. OH SHIT! i only had 2$cash, so I told the driver i would borrow money from my roommate, but of course no one was even in my floor...so i never went back down to the taxi guy. oh man, i felt so bad.

sun. july 5th- The church pastor talks about how every action has a consequence.
We went to the HighLinePark for the second time, and i got a 50$ ticket because I stepped on the grass. The security fat guy said if i keep laughing so 'disrespectful' there'd be a warrant for my arrest. what!? lol but but it's a park!
-while this fight was going down Mike Myers walks right by....

was that ticket karma from july 4th ? like Common says "Karma is a bitch and i know that she bites"...

Finally, we went!

I spen this friday nigh at the Nuyorican Poets Cafe, listening to strong spoken word and at the end of the night, the 12th 'open mic' person was me!

read my poem "To Do" here

Nuyorican Poets Café is a non-profit organization in Alphabet City, Manhattan. It is a bastion of the Nuyorican art movement in New York City. Home to NYC's freshest artists, is a multi-cultural community dedicated to artistic empowerment and creative diversity.

what the?

It was pretty beautiful hearing everyone blasting Michael Jackson songs all over the streets of Brooklyn.

NY Times-

“His race was very blurry,” said Ning Liu, 28, an electrical engineer who moved to the Chicago suburbs from China four years ago.

Still, it was Mr. Jackson’s changeability that, in part, allowed him to resonate with millions of people around the world.

Mr. Liu, who went to Gary to place flowers outside Mr. Jackson’s childhood home, said: “His voice, his look, the way he did things — it didn’t fit the stereotype people had of black people. People were not afraid of him.”