merry chen christmas 2011

http://s758.photobucket.com/albums/xx224/chenfamily1/

"Cheerful company does me good till some bitter truth blazes through my brain, and then the present of a bullet would be received with thanks." -branwell bronte

“Ideologies separate us. Dreams and anguish bring us together.” Eugene Ionesco

"Dirt Road Anthem" Cover

history of sadness from the film "beginners"



dougie fresh accepting an award at nbt's teer spirit awards yesterday

"you know when you meet someone and they just have this soul and it understands you? thats how we were"
(she leans over to me and whispers smiling)
"that's you, to me"

http://www.newyorker.com/online/podcasts/fiction/ these arent bad to listen too tonight.
http://altscreen.com/ want to take myself to one of these movies
http://store.americanapparel.net/ want to send $100 here on fall/winter clothes because it all fits so well and i'm cold and lazy and want to only go to one store.
half filling out applications to summer art residencies to paint or take photos and get away from the city and being single and acting and designing.
----------
Work week over, want sleep more lately. I feel like a kid at a sleepover who just wants to go home. I want to rest, and be around people who love unconditionally. who look and smell like me. and I dont have to try and be pretty or interesting around. who dont substitute other people for me.
Also i learned how to use google calender tonight. and 'how i met your mother' is a really funny show, and on netflix instant watch. the new korean building looks definitely like the twin towers being attacked, 'cloud' my ass.

I had the craziest dream last night that I was super broke and only had 0.554 cents in my account and was trying to figure out where I could eat for fifty cens.
Then it went into a recurring dream I've been having where we (my family) all live in a big beautiful house I just bought and we're having so much fun getting settled. We finally put a tv in the livin room but it's really thin like a frame flat panel. There's a part of the ceiling that juts down so it's put there, in the ceiling and you (my dad) spend all your time lying down staring up at it and I'm constantly trying to tell you we should move it because it's too close to the floor/ your eyes and also it could fall on you.

i took this a little while ago on the Diana. totally how the city feels sometimes staring through a grate

nothing between us but air

'i ask, why are you putting that pillow between us, he said oh i like how it feels on me like a blanket, and i said you have a real girl here, and he moves it and says ok, there, nothing between us. It's weird to hear you say that. out of context. nothing between us.'

my brother and i were pretty awful kids. I picked on him a bit, as the oldest. But mostly we were a team when it came to babysitters, grandparents, and superiors in general.

We could answer the phone in the same voice, pre-puberty, and in fact looked pretty similar too. When we were in a car, there was a game where whenever the car stopped (for a traffic light, stop sign, dog in the road, etc), we'd unbuckle, and with difficulty, move as quickly as possible to the other's side of the backseat. Also, in stores, we'd like to hide from whoever'd brought us, inside the round clothes racks especially.

My grandmother used to have 'kiddie leashes' she'd bought, so we couldn't keep running away. I have this small scene I remember of using my whole weight to drag away from the captured arm, tugging against the leash, while walking along this sidewalk on a bridge with my grandmother. I understood that I shouldn't, but didn't know why. The essential difference between discipline and punishment, or I didn't care. But there was a little yellow flower in the cracks in the pavement just a little too far from the path my grandma had chosen, and I was resentful and longed to stretch a little farther to see it; it was very important.

In my two previous posts I describe pranks we'd participate in related to memory-keeping because keeping diaries and this blog makes me want to write about the idea of remembering more.

seasons as children / honey bunny

When we were little, my brother, sister and i used to spend a lot of time in the backyard of our house in Framingham MA. It must have been around 4th grade.. I had one very good friend named Lauren Graurer-Gray and we would bike to the library together. She insisted we walk around her prickly crab-grassy backyard with no shoes on, which my mom said later could give someone lyme disease.

In our Chen backyard, there were three gardens. My brother had a vegetable and fruit patch; I was envious most of the strawberries. I had a neighboring plot of 'springtime' little flowers that were mostly pastel and blue hued blooms. My little sister had the 'summer' flowers, big and bold and colorful, sunflowers and tulips.
A note: these 'seasons' are mostly what they looked like visually as a kid, not actual blooming time of year.
It was behind this house that we also had a shed where I wanted to house a family horse, and there was an opening to an aquaduct that our family would walk along behind the houses in our neighborhood and stroll together. Usually my brother had a big stick he would wave around.
One of our neighbors upon moving away gave our family our first real pet (besides when we were babies and had two dogs, good stories for another time.); Honey Bunny. She, like the house, couldn't be taken with us when we moved and lives among the memories we had there. One afternoon my brother and I were standing in the front yard with Honey Bunny. We had a little harness for her, almost like a ferret leash, though she was a fat Rex rabbit. Suddenly, and I ragged on my brother for a while because of this, she bolted, and the leash tugged so fast we saw her bolt off into a neighboring yard which we were pretty sure had large dogs. It was a strange coincidence that soon after, we had to move. Right before we left, my brother and I stood again in that yard and did a strange thing. I dont remember who's idea it was, but we started making a little dirt pile there where we'd lost Honey Bunny. I've always had sweaty hands, and I tried to mix as much sweat as possible into the handfuls of dirt, and we spit a little I think. That way Honey Bunny would know we'd remembered her, if she ever came back. It was very important, as we drove away, that the dirt pile was still there.
Later as a family we'd have at one time, four parakeets. and another bunny. But she was the first.

oh ps. happy thanksgiving
(i think what i mean is. in other words. time is sensory rather than linear. and your first loss doesn't get replaced, even if its just a mound of crap that remains.)

childhood in autumn

One of the differences between my brother and I, while both creators at heart and introverted in different ways, is best illustrated with a scene from our childhood during autumn when we lived in a community of townhouses called I think Harris Pond? in New Hampshire I think. It was while living there that we learned how to bike and had a babysitter named Brittany. I developed a healthy fear of swimming and my brother and I once climbed a mountain that was really a hill near our house.
Anyway so it was Fall and we were interacting with nature in different ways. I have a really visceral memory of my brother trying to collect all the leaves into a huge pile in the backyard field and asked me to help which I halfheartedly started to assist with but lost interest. My mom had said the only real snakes in the Northeast were an especially dangerous and sneaky type who would hide in foliage.
So instead I had been noticing the sap running along cracks in the trunks of trees in our front yard and careful to not get my fingers sticky, gathered the sap onto an acorn, bits of bark, and some pine leaves and things to make baby-Moses-in-a-basket figurine which I left on our front steps for someone discerning to notice later. We both had erected little monuments of value to both of us individually, and were always to be in this way similar but different. Instead of trying to make the biggest leaf pile and possibly encounter a snake I wanted to make something weird out of sap.

When we moved to another house I remember we left little messages surreptitiously for the new tenant, welcoming them and saying different stupid things. In our home in Southborough MA where Oliver had been born we were always trying to explore the 'swamp' in the woods behind the house, and upon finding some firewood, and having had to leave our pet bunny behind in our old house ( who we'd left a dirt mound in our front yard in memory of the night before leaving) we started working continuously on a log/ mud combination hut type habitat for the future bunnies we'd have again one day, behind the shed attached to the house. When it was too cold we'd hose hot water on the mud so we could keep playing.
As the oldest I'm afraid I instigated many of these sort-of-in-hindsight-strange occupations, but many of our inclinations natural as children symbolize more how our minds work rather than the subjects thought about themselves.
We were strange, smart children without too much conflict in our lives, were only bullied marginally once or twice and the offenders were always justly punished. A black boy in my 4th grade class called me 'chink' because someone said I could draw better, and my parents protested and transferred me to a different school. My brother was picked on by a guyfriend, so he gave him a black eye somehow with a tennis racket and we had to transfer private schools. To this day I'm very interested in race issues especially among children, and my brother gradually left sports. What else.. and we also role played being sort of the Pevensie children in Narnia, with my little sister Emily, but we called the place Nomania and our bikes were our horses. Another story.

head down typing all day every day
-a zen meister

I'm so annoyed and have all this bad energy just sitting here right now. I know I should do something get it out, shower, maybe. uuugh but there's a certain pleasure out of knowing one can be almost blindingly frustrated with everything for no reason.

i'd like to redeem myself.

(Clip from Pandoras Box)

Last night was the screening of "A Good Friday" a short film I starred in, that showed at Tribeca Cinemas, as part of Big Apple Film Festival... At the risk of not being humble for a second- I was so honored to meet Loui and he and the whole team were great, loved how it came out... we started off the series, followed by a short with John Heard, the next had Sean Astin and some other names... it was so cool to see them in things I might not have seen otherwise.

I had an idea earlier in the evening.. I'm an older rich guy on the subway, who sees a homeless guy asking for change. When he leaves, he turns to the guy and we're alone and I give him $100 and say something profound like the man who gives Jean Valjean the candlesticks to turn his life around in Les Miserables... The homeless guy thinks of all the good things he could do with the money, but in the end does something self destructive and dies.

love this. esp the ending. whatever it is that's been so far away... to finally just have to jump in and get swept away..

All week been sort of feeling.. powerless. Halloween is coming. got candy at work today.

I realize I look best when I feel like sh*t

bless and danny and mussels at whatever tattoo

me sipping with jenny and oscar in the back of pop burger

i confess i messed with the sign in the bathroom in my favorite indian restaurant on bleecker. sorry indian taj

"I'm not calling you a liar, just don't lie to me
I'm not calling you a thief, just don't steal from me"
-florence and the machine

I still believe in man, a wise one asked me why
Cause I just don't believe we're wicked
I know that we sin but I do believe we try
We all try, the girls try, the boys try

ONLY THE YOUNG DIE YOUNG

ONLY THE YOUNG DIE YOUNG:

via http://suicidewatch.tumblr.com/page/5

been thinking of this forever... jung, oscar wilde, every actor, all talk about these two faces. theres a male and female side. hidden and shown side. real and aspirational side. and I'm obsessed with time and watches more than debatedly lewis carroll. slightly phallic lookin. I'm thinking yes.

waiting for things that might not come.

as in: friends to call back, acting jobs, the best holiday plane ticket prices.

The other night my friend jenny (who's going through some stuff), asked if i'm ever going to settle down. It got to me; she's known me forever, and didnt know. I dont want to be like these douches who never have families or want to give of themselves to others in that way.
Also I'm getting the sniffles despite lots of vitamins and emergen-c in my water at work.. so cold out. Holidaze!

EDIT: I ate the cookies.
Robert Downey Jr: "It's like I've got a shotgun in my mouth with my finger on the trigger, and I like the taste of the gun metal."
Originally:
Eating sunflower seeds in vanilla yogurt, and concord grapes for breakfast. (I couldve eaten halloween cookies but thought better of it)
Lying in bed, typing into the macbook air, about to watch some ally mcbeal...

I know I should choose my thoughts carefully, because they define oneself. But if I could just allow a little self indulgent angst out... that'd be great.

If I were to be really honest with myself I'd say I never really forgot it.

The somehow self pitying self loaning sickness that starts in your stomach and creeps through your bones till it leaks out your eye creases.
When the heart aches, it comes out in cold sores and pimples and tightness of the upper back muscles. Wanting to sleep all day, and not being able to sleep at night. Food tastes different, and your mind seems clearer, sharper, but obsessed with this inner life that one just wants to get away from- and therefore kept from any real purpose.

my heart is soft/ my dad

"My heart has thawed and continues to beat." (from "June on the West Coast" by Bright Eyes)

Someone very dear to me is about to lose her sister.
People who I never thought would be in my life again, are like a ghost coming back. And others I thought would stay are very far away. The song 'wheel' by john mayer especially the bit about airports comes to mind.
So my dad and I have a pretty strong amazing relationship that I've always been grateful for. Despite me and my brother feeling like we had to run away and suffocated during high school, and me running away basically to boarding school because I felt so oppressive and stifled (although I studied classical singing which was me and my dad's way to bond growing up), there's no other relationship that's so unconditional and that I've valued more than others. His views on my friendships relationships and career were never wrong, so I always followed it while sometimes being stubborn... and because I followed it logically i must've valued him more than any of those things. It's so strange, really. An inordinately high amount of my close friends lost their fathers young and I think are drawn to the relationship which informs so much of what I say the advice I relay to them. And maybe is why I've never completely fell away from religion ever, the idea of a Heavenly Father that will always be there. And why I love and expect so much from people, even other men; because I know it's possible to really care. Until nature or God take him away I'm reminded of the only guy who's ever always been there for me my whole life, who I must always keep close.

new glasses!

Friday, worked all day at 1st dibs, then went uptown n worked with shirley. then bless and danny and lawrence had some food at happy hr at this place called mccormick and schmicks, hung out at my place for a while and watched this show on netflix i like called louie.
Saturday i ate at veselka (salmon latka something and borchst with beef), got glasses at fabulous fannies, cheesecake and spogiaghetti (?) at venieros, and hung out in belchertown brooklyn, where eating is always strange and healthy.
"you're using your headphones to drown out your mind"
(eet by regina spektor)
Audrey Hepburn as Holly Golightly in "Breakfast at Tiffany's" had it all wrong. I love the movie- girl with a cat who loves her neighbor in NY- but instead of the eclair with coffee (which does have its merits)- this is where its at! Strawberry Sprinkled, with a tall, skim, with sugar.
Is this an oriole? i found it on my block walking around this morning. Sad.. Also its so cold lately. Toni and Nick are in town again and around. Havent heard any news from Katy or Wendy, almost pointedly but people get busy.
I think people stress the most about things they can't control- precisely for that reason. I said last night that I'm at 23 not ready to wife anyone but there are definitely moments where I look at a person and go soft... I look at objects and the rain and friends and my heart catches.

thats what its like

Three of Us Studios has to be the only casting office in the city with a weapons policy sign in the lobby... right? Mac n cheese experiments

Booty and I having cupcakes for dinner
Love's like the sun, always giving never getting.

Conversations with my brother

Oliver and I live our lives in strange parallels- by being directly opposite in certain ways- if that makes sense. (*Emily's like a super combo of the two of us I think) For each career move one makes- the other seems to unconciously pick the opposite. Relationally, he avoids closeness to avoid the impermanence of romance. A comedian we both like, Louie CK said the most ideal outcome is that you'll meet your best friend and lover, and spend years together, to just have one die first. It's like bringing a puppy home and saying "Here's what's going to make us cry in a few years."
EDIT: Here's the quote (off his wiki) "It's hard to really, like, look at somebody and go, hey, maybe something nice will happen. ... Or you'll meet the perfect person, who you love infinitely, and you even argue well, and you grow together, and you have children, and then you get old together, and then she's going to die. That's the best-case scenario."
Conversely (to my brother), I get such a pleasure out of talking to others and seeing how it could change my perspective. It makes me sad now and then, but although it'll end, relationships are what make life worth it. Since we're always growing and changing, relationships have too as well.

me: oh i asked ---- yesterday
relating to your subway story
Oliver: ??? oh yea
1:53 PM me: i was like- do u ever choose what subway car to go in based on the prettiness of the girls on the platform with u
and he was like yea in a noncreepy way
hes definitely done that
and i said yea ive wanted a cute guy to duck into the same car too
Oliver: totally right?
1:54 PM it's like maybe i'll get to sit next to her
me: ya ya
Oliver: and then maybe we'll talk
and then i can hit it from the back
me: omg hahaha
Oliver: my mind skips when i'm out of work
but yea
me: had a dream last night that our whole family was at a wedding
and we knew a few ppl but not most
it was a huge thing
we were all dressed up
and we said hi to some of the ppl but were mostly in our own chen thing
people started holding hands into a big circle and dancing
1:57 PM and like mommy was holding the hand of the lady next to her and we were a part of the big circle
but in our own little circle
and not dancing really
just facing each other
it was really nice. i think what it means is we should try to all be together this year
1:59 PM i'll come to london first and spend a weekend with u and we could fly out together for xmas break if u want
2:00 PM Oliver: yea sure
wanna go to pakistan for a wedding?
2:06 PM can we talk after i watch tv
it's not that it's more important than you
just more entertaining
me: yes!
Oliver: for limited amounts of time
me: u asked before
Oliver: lol

good people stay and bad people fade and that's the way I'd like it to be. We'll see who sticks around I guess.

I get over shit quick if I do say so myself. Made a list to be happy again and its worked- personal goals will do that. I really hope I get this pilot.. been going out for more voiceover and commercial stuff. the design job's good. And I'm pimping again. no feelings. It's been largely like that since graduation, casual stuff here and there, but I was a little thrown for a loop recently. But that's done and I'm back!

I had brunch at the trilby sunday. It was china day in a random park on e. houston st and chrystie. went to good news church (part of remnant fellowship) with wendy.
I read the start of "the birth of venus"... and liked it.. about a nun in a convent, dying from a tumor but when they uncover her there is no tumor but a fake pigs bladder, she's been slowly poisoning herself... and a huge snake tattoo circling her whole body..

Saturday

Saturday was nice, went to yoga and walked around Park slope. Someone had suggested I get a little french press coffee maker because I do drink a lot o coffee lately, and so I saw one in the morning and after trying this morning, do prefer it over instant. Took the train to Park Slope, visited Film Biz Prop Shop (pretty cheap furniture and house things that were on film sets in the past- thats where i got the books shown) and Gorilla Coffee.

Down the street from my apartment, on 11th between Greenwich and 6th ave, someone drew this on the side of the old St Vincents Hospital. I liked.

The saddest part of a broken heart, Isn't the ending so much as the start

I wanna love someone inside and out, backwards and forwards with my heart hangin out

i'll carry you. you'll carry me
that's how it could be.
don't you know me?
don't you know me by now?
(poet reciting to the protagonists in 'before sunrise')

Friday Hue came and stayed with me and we went to her old bosses fashion week event. Jenny's presentation of her first collection was saturday and I want her to do well so much http://notaligne.tumblr.com/ . Then sunday was 10 yrs since 9/11, just stayed in... Monday was work (I was quiet and tired) and then the Metal Mag fashion week party I always go to... now its basically tuesday and I should sleep before the long day...

I've had this recurring dream where all my old journals and diaries are all lost somehow, my parents move and lose them, a fire gets to them.... I guess that's one of the advantages to having this one since moving to NY... i can get it from any computer and no one knows about it really and besides when I die nothing's secret anymore. My worst fear is losing remembering who I am and whats happened.
I've been so dumb at times though. Everything I ever want careerwise boywise it's always shown in time.

I am not to speak to you, I am to think of you when I sit alone or wake at night alone,

I am to wait, I do not doubt I am to meet you again,

I am to see to it that I do not lose you.

(walt whitman)

ideas i have that you cant steal

ok? ok.
1. tip jars. i've been taking pictures of tip jars around the city that are hilarious... 'just the tip', 'support counter intelligence', etc... i'm thinking a little book called 'here's a tip' and it'd be a sort of comment on how to charmingly ask for $
2. a montage of little 2 minute iphone videos of my computer screen, i've been taking of the climactic realizations of different rom com's I watch, of people expounding how important love is. it'd be titled 'hence our ridiculous obsession with love'
3. the childrens book illusrations for a book shirley and i have been planning.
4. expanding on my thesis about peoples dreams, on the pages of my 'sleepless nights', and other doctorly books on sleep...
this is a note to self... and i hate when i get attached to ideas and then see them out in the world a year later and its not that well done.

Lelaina Pierce: I was really going to be somebody by the time I was 23.
Troy Dyer: Honey, all you have to be by the time you're 23 is yourself.

from my favorite poet...
Trippers and askers surround me,
People I meet, the effect upon me of my early life or the ward and
city I live in, or the nation,
The latest dates, discoveries, inventions, societies, authors old and new,
My dinner, dress, associates, looks, compliments, dues,
The real or fancied indifference of some man or woman I love...
These come to me days and nights and go from me again,
But they are not the Me myself.

knuckles and the heart

I was just thinking about when I was young and my dad told me not to crack my knuckles ( you know when people bend their fingers back so it makes that cracking noice).. he said everytime you do, it feels good, but it's breaking muscles in your joints, so it has to grow back over the broken parts, so when people crack their knuckles too much, their joints become too big and deformed. I dont want to do that to my feelings, you know.. potentially crack and tear up my heart if i meet a nice boy, and it could hurt so much and I'm afraid my heart will be like that- overly deformed and big, making my hands look old before they're supposed too.

hurrican schmurricane

an earthquake, hurricane, and some little tornados all this week, who would've thought. camping out with the cat, with above supplies for the weekend.

The weekend was pretty crazy and in its fluctuations between stressful and nice and relaxing. friday i wanted to go out, but the rain was coming down really hard and I ended up staying in and having really good conversations in the apartment with a few drinks. I really want to get a copy of the codex seraphinianus and of the voyinch manuscripts. Woke up a little late, and walked through a street fair and tasted a really good $3 chili dog. Then that night i got to see one of my oldest and dear friends vivian, who's about to start harvard law, and was only in town for the evening. but things were really crowded, the bar and then club, and two girls with us passed out and were vomiting and two made out with each other, and it wasnt the best situation. plus girls get dramatic sometimes, friday and saturday night i ran into little moments where i had to just not be a part of it.

Someone asked me whats the one thing you like most about a guy.

I said when you find one that knows exactly what to say. not like smooth talking, but just knows what to say to you. or when to call.

The inside cover for my little journal.

this week in pictures

bbq
booty paddington chen

messing around on the chevron print ad shoot

charlie moms with the girl next door

I made this! finally! for the bathroom. from a david bray print

little postcards i made this morning

this week in pictures

I've been daydreaming of traveling, and trying to save money. Got my horoscope read to me (which of course is like a fortune cookie, just fun), and want to do what it said - advances in my career this year and meet new people in those opportunities. ooohohh

I like this song, wanna live that way, slow. learn not to rush things, and have the next relationship be because i fell in love with my best friend

Been hanging out more with my old boarding school friends this summer... Work exhausts me still some days, but I like being able to move my hands like magic over the tablet, using Photoshop like a winner.
Learning to be cautious but want so much.

I really like this http://www.medicinalpen.com/dreamlogs.html

I'm not going to lie, I love Wendy Williams- girl is smart. One thing she says in the below video is that in a marriage, she believes it might not last forever, but you ride until the wheels fall off- you give it four chances, like the wheels, to fix it and get back together before calling it quits. Four?


So I have one of my own that I've said for a while and I'll just say mine to go along with this- I want to be like Goldilocks, first relationship was too hot, second too cold, the third one I want to be perfect, and I think that's why I've been so picky this past year.

Also I'm doing this

She said nothing


Since Saturday I've been feeling like life is so short and passing by every moment that could be significant.
This song made me sad, wanting someone so much but wondering and feeling silence on the other end. love is the right timing.

coney island today