Age of Silence/ Language of Hands

“The first language humans had was gestures. There was nothing primitive about this language that flowed from people’s hands, nothing we say now that could not be said in the endless array of movements possible with the fine bones of the fingers and wrists. The gestures were complex and subtle, involving a delicacy of motion that has since been lost completely.

During the Age of Silence, people communicated more, not less. Basic survival demanded that the hands were almost never still, and so it was only during sleep (and sometimes not even then) that people were not saying something or other. No distinction was made between the gestures of language and the gestures of life. The labor of building a house, say, or preparing a meal was no less an expression than making the sign for I love you or I feel serious. When a hand was used to shield one’s face when frightened by a loud noise something was being said, and when fingers were used to pick up what someone else had dropped something was being said; and even when the hands were at rest, that, too, was saying something. Naturally, there were misunderstandings. There were times when a finger might have been lifted to scratch a nose, and if casual eye contact was made with one’s lover just then, the lover might accidentally take it to be the gesture, not at all dissimilar, for Now I realize I was wrong to love you. These mistakes were heartbreaking. And yet, because people knew how easily they could happen, because they didn’t go round with the illusion that they understood perfectly the things other people said, they were used to interrupting each other to ask if they’d understood correctly. Sometimes these misunderstandings were even desirable, since they gave people a reason to say, Forgive me, I was only scratching my nose. Of course I know I’ve always been right to love you. Because of the frequency of these mistakes, over time the gesture for asking forgiveness evolved into the simplest form. Just to open your palm was to say: Forgive me."

"If at large gatherings or parties, or around people with whom you feel distant, your hands sometimes hang awkwardly at the ends of your arms – if you find yourself at a loss for what to do with them, overcome with sadness that comes when you recognize the foreignness of your own body – it’s because your hands remember a time when the division between mind and body, brain and heart, what’s inside and what’s outside, was so much less. It’s not that we’ve forgotten the language of gestures entirely. The habit of moving our hands while we speak is left over from it. Clapping, pointing, giving the thumbs-up, for example, is a way to remember how it feels to say nothing together. And at night, when it’s too dark to see, we find it necessary to gesture on each other’s bodies to make ourselves understood.”
― Nicole Krauss, The History of Love

wish I was 'goin where the weather suits my clothes' (midnight cowboy soundtrack)

photos: christmas to new years

Saw the ball about to drop in times square from the last plane to land at laguardia airport in 2011.
Family at shao mays (may's ice cream) dallassaw this book (like) at anthropologie with brother sister and family friend

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.
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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.