I alone pedal in the mud

Cycling is freedom. When I am on my bike I am released from all worldly ties. No media, no interpersonal interactions, no consumption. I just move at my pace, communicate with whoever I deem necessary to interact with, and do work rather than purchase someone else’s labors. I choose between being a car or a pedestrian. I bomb down hills, and twork it up them. Cycling is isolation. For the past year I have avoided flyer-ing on bruin walk, been able to ignore any awkward acquaintance glances (or the even more awkward corollary to that, the obvious trying to avoid looking at you encounter while walking to class), and haven’t had to listen to the most irrelevant, unintelligent morning conversations. I can choose to ride sans music, where I get to absorb all the city sounds, or I can cruise with my iPod as a motivator to overcome the many hills of Westwood. Biking is a form of solitude because even if you are riding in a group (not so much Critical Mass status, but a minor biker brigade) you are alone. You can pass people or lag behind, you can be in the middle and still not be talking with anyone. It is the most fascinating of paradoxes when you are a in crowded room, or amongst a group, and still feel completely alone, estranged, isolated. (Now I’m thinking about a quote from Daisy in the Great Gatsby and also a song by the National) But then again cycling can be the most intimate of experiences with another, it allows for another dynamic of a relationship to develop. I can think of specific nuisances biking brings about in a person, such as Gary Fisher bouncing down the nighttime SR streets, or the fixed gear boy who shakes his butt as he slows himself down a hill, or me and my big smile as I zigzag between LA traffic (its exhilarating when you swerve in and out of traffic to emerge as the first place runner on an “open” road). Cycling is freedom from consumption. I don’t have to pay seventy-five cents to ride my bike like I would have to with the bus, I don’t waste any oil to make myself me and it move--instead I am the kinetic energy that produces motion; so when I am biking I am the opposite of consumption, instead I am conserving in terms of the worlds economic endeavors-- and I don’t waste my time frustrated with other drivers or pedestrians, because in the end im still trekking at my steady pace. I am certainly hated on by motorized drivers, but I remain true to the bike lanes and stop signs (well mostly), so their honking is only a douche-bag move, and not an informative warning. Biking is also a form of strengthening your hand-eye coordination and how you coordinate with others. Sometimes drivers don’t check their blind spots, or check their spots at all, and just turn like it ain’t no thang, when bam fuck you buddy I’m slamming on my brakes and swerving into a bush. Other times I can sense their stupidity before it becomes a danger to my life, so i brake and swerve with plenty of time to zoom by the driver’s side smirking and shaking my head in amusement, cuz it ain’t no thang I didn‘t see coming. Misanthropic doesn’t even begin to touch the surface of how I feel sometimes about people in cars, but in the end biking reigns supreme over any other form of transportation.
Obama Trek is my lover. I ride him over here, I pedal over there, I bike him everywhere. He has character of course, with his travel shelf which has yellow side satchels that I can attach to it for easy transportation of goods. The back tire has a slow leak, which is fine by me considering how many bike hotties I encounter when I go by the shop for a refill. He only sometimes likes to listen to me commanding his tension gears, we have had many disagreements which usually end with me black handed from reworking the chain onto the rails. He is not a fresh baby, he’s been around the block for about twenty years, but he is faithful and dependable. He’s the type of guy you just don’t let get away, unless your on top going along for the journey.


Listening to: Aesop Rock’s Labor Days
“This cat is asking if I've seen his little lost passion
I told him: "Yeah, but only when I pedaled past him"

No Dull Moments

Balcony livin'. It just IS.

There is never a bad time for the balcony. I have made it a part of my everyday summer routine to make sure i am on my balcony around 7 to watch the sunset. In the beginning of summer it was falling right behind the Getty, creating a beautiful silhouette, then the chariot took it slowly south west of that monument and the sea breeze gifted us with amazing cumulus and stratus clouds that had sun rays bouncing off of them as the sun went to sleep and the clouds came into our towns to insulate the pollution. I love that i dont have to wear pants at night, but sometimes i actually think about why that might be and well you know. This last stage of wonder involves the sun falling behind the trees of Ophir, allowing for an even more intriguing night shot of Westwood at its best time: dusk. We live in La but where we actually live is NOT LA, which only makes laugh at the thought of whatever path i crafted for myself strangely being too appropriate for my adult self, especially considering how much knowledge i had about this place (which was none until I came for orientation). I didn't just take my finger and place it anywhere, I have wanted to come here since i could say a universities name--acronyms make inspiration easy sometimes--but i hadnt seen the campus or this area until i took the eight hour drive here by myself for orientation. Two years past and now i am re-seeing this area for something beyond the bubble that was the hill, now it is the balcony that is life. but back to here: we are very lucky, and very grateful to the room assignment gods because we have one of the best views in town. our balcony faces the best side, the west side and i am always happy to rep it. We dont look out to high rise office buildings such as the Oxy tower, that say the roof of certain frat houses see, but rather we peer at a great expanse of Rear Window opportunities, OJ's old backyard, and flight paths mixed into one. We get the trees of Brentwood, the beginnings of the Santa Monica Mountains, and LAX before it is LAX all in one glimpse. We get reds and oranges as the sunsets, but we also get green and grey as the trees sway and the smog creeps in. This is not a completely LA view, which is why i am thankful, but I'm not denying that i live in a concrete compound, the bubble of school life doesn't allude me, but at least when I'm on the balcony i am unaware of all of that. In the morning i wake up and step out into the fresh ocean clouds, somehow we also live on the beach at times. Balcony mornings are usually about:
a.) macon doing her awesomeness in her notebook
b.) smoke in your mouth before water
c.) sipping coffee as we watch the game that is westwood parking
and maybe
d.)me studying.

Afternoon balcony is a funny one because the sun doesn't actually start to grace the patio until 2:30. Long mornings with great breezes is really all it means, but once the sun comes Bam! like emeril you be grillin. We have plenty of fun things on the balcony such as a big white door (from a mysterious room 402) that everyone colors with crayons. BAM! melty crayons indeed, but we remedied that situation by finding them a shady lane. we have a clock set at the appropriate time of course, about the time where i did my wizard business today:





And my new profile picture is a testament to the first stage of wizardry, and it is also a homage to the great King Theoden. yes, we have some other fun friends on the balcony, such as the king, the water curse, zeus, and dub-o-dub who all hang out under our newly Macgyvered cardboard condo that exclaims "No longer Bakin' in the sun, just Chillin". the best is yuri's awesome puzzle, glow in the dark orcas for all who come to visit our wonderful plot-o-air-space.
Balcony night life is exactly what you expect. And we certainly have the evidence spewn about to illustrate that point. But that isnt what matters about our ADULT- "Nite Life". The best is that we have my computer speakers set up in a way that allows them to play music out of the windows into the balcony and onto the streets below. we get a lot of "are you the girls that play all that really good music?", and yes it us dance partying amongst ourselves in the night.
Balcony livin' is about living. the balcony is a portal (with only the most timid of monsters sir david) and the time spent in the portal is always pleasant. If there is one theme of my summer it is balcony livin' because balcony livin' is everything, which we know is nothing, but they are one in the same, so hence balcony livin' just IS. Balcony livin'; a world unto itself, a world of all sorts of energies.


Listening to: Air's Talkie Walkie throughout the formulation of this whole entry, but "Universal Traveler" was the key component to it all

The Beginnings of Nothing

Andy Warhol is a paradox. He states "I want to be a machine, dont you?"; yet his profession was that of an artist. If he wants to be a machine, something that doesn't feel, why does he spend his time thinking of ways to make everyone else feel and critique their world? He created POP!, in which he took the benign everyday objects of our life, the items we consume both for physically beneficial nutrients and for media driven consumerism, and made them larger than life. He took one object made it big, colorful; he made you stare at something you already knew but that you only realize you know it because you see its faults in an expanded form. Liz Taylor wasn't multi-colored, Brillo Pad boxes aren't two feet by two feet cubic boxes, but they are both things we know and feel something towards. Whether it be envy for stardom, or sadness for what it means to actually use a Brillo pad (you know actual domesticity, cleaning like the modern human does) sadness for labor and gender divisions, whatever it was he was saying "hey look guys we all know this as Americans and it all means the same thing but yet something different". We all know the overarching societal consequences of these things, celebritism and consumerism, but do we know the intimate sides of these things, the things that make us truly human: emotions. For Warhol Campbell's soup wasn't just an american colored can, but a meal that he had almost everyday of his childhood. Campbell's soup wasn't just about 32 different flavors each on a canvas, it was about Warhol taking something so personal and exploiting it so that America would also have to face him taking the sacred and making it profane. Did he do it so that his memories could be immortalized and felt forever? Did he do it because he knew making something small into something large would make it lose its meaning? After all Baudrillard talks about a hyperreality where each new carbon copy is just a less valuable replica of the original, authentic item. So is Warhol just beating his feelings to the ground? All I know is no matter what Warhol felt something everyday, he was never free from the ultimate human struggle, no new/fake persona, no art, no replicated picture, was going to make him stop encountering sensations. Really what it comes down to is I don't completely buy it Andy; but as someone who also lives their life with a Nothing philosophy, I see exactly what you were trying to do: talk, create, be nothing that someone already hasnt/didnt/or isnt. We are all nothing, we are all everything, we are the yin and yang for eastern oriented thinkers, we are Chicken and Vegetable in a can for Americans, we are Andy's favorite meal: bread and jam. We are something, we are nothing.

Man Man sums it up best with "Van Helsing Boombox":
"When anything that's anything becomes nothing that's everything
and nothing is the only thing you ever seem to have

but only time will tell if I'll allow
the scenery around to eat me alive"

Just Potential Energy isn't for me. It is for all of you. For those birds that have flown to other continents for culture and self-expansion. For those of you that I wish i could talk to more often, for those that don't quite get my mind or words. It is for nothing and everything. Maybe it is for me, but only as much as it is for you. We all have a just potential energy in us to share with the world; but sometimes all it is is JUST potential energy that goes wasted. Potential energy sitting,waiting,wishing, so i hope to enlighten you in someway with justice, with words, with "truth" whatever that even means, even though i am constantly searching for it. But maybe its just pot energy, i mean obviously if you know me it is, but i'm hoping to expand that three letter word into something potent and poetic.

Currently listening to: "Modern World" By Wolf Parade