insides

("Shadow Dance" by Martin Lewis).

("Mother and Child" by Gustav Klimt).

For every route, could haves/should haves/might haves in infinity.

It's a dangerous game: the either/or, the re-writing of choices.

There so many pulls inside me.

So many entryways, leading to new entryways.

words

boxes.

things I don't have the English for.
(definitions/explanations/ words taken directly from here and here)

Vovohe Tahtsenaotse (Cheyenne)
To prepare the mouth before speaking by moving or licking one’s lips.

Sigurista (Tagalog)
A person who is particularly concerned that everything goes as planned. The kind of person who will not initiate a particular action unless s/he feels 100% sure that the desired result would be obtained.

Komorebi (Japanese)
The sort of scattered, dappled light effect that happens when sunlight shines in through tree leaves.

Hiraeth (Welsh)
A feeling of longing associated with displacement, but not necessarily displacement from one’s original home. An intense yearning to be somewhere you are not.

Khalas (Arabic)
A term used to mean that something is completely and irrevocably done, finished, and over.

Zastóy (Russian)
Intellectual stagnation.

Moit (Scottish)
Pretended indifference/shyness while speaking about a thing one is very keen for.

Talkin (Indonesian)
To whisper instructions to the dying.

Saudade (Portuguese)
A vague and constant desire for something that does not and probably cannot exist, for something other than the present, which indicates a mental turning toward the past or toward the future. It is not an active discontent or poignant sadness but an indolent, dreaming wistfulness. One can actually have ‘saudades’ of someone with whom one is. In this case it would indicate a feeling of loss projected towards the past or the future.
It can also be described as the emptiness and absence one feels when something or someone “should” be there in a particular moment, but is missing.

(Also described as "the love that remains")

(*** it's different from "nostalgia," though that might be its closest english equivalent, because it has a sort of fatalistic connotation attached to it; it is at once an emptiness and a living again).

Torschlusspanik (German)
Literally translated as a “gate-closing panic”. It is sense of anxiety or fear that one’s life is passing them by and that their future opportunities are diminishing.

Dostoprimechatelnost (Russian)
A place you can take notice of a hundred times. It is generally translated as a “point of interest," but it means much more.

Toska (Russian)

Vladmir Nabokov describes it best: "No single word in English renders all the shades of toska. At its deepest and most painful, it is a sensation of great spiritual anguish often without any specific cause. At less morbid levels, it is a dull ache of the soul, a longing with nothing to long for, a sick pining, a vague restlessness, mental throes, yearning. In particular cases, it may be the desire for somebody or something specific, nostalgia, love-sickness. At the lowest level it grades into ennui, boredom."

Mamihlapinatapei (Yagan) (indigenous language of Tierra del Fuego)

The wordless, yet meaningful look shared by two people who both desire to initiate something but are both reluctant to start

----

Do you understand? I'm not sure I understand. And maybe I'm manic and maybe I'm musing, but Oh! it's impossible to say it all.

floating? falling?

1. Fear of trapped.
2. Fear of future.
3. Fear of loneliness.
4. Fear of failure.
5. Fear of unconsummated talent.
6. Fear of too much.
7. Fear of not enough.
8. Fear of boxes.
9. Fear of being ripped from boxes.
10. Fear of language.
11. Fear of finality.
12. Fear of change.
13. Fear of rejection.
14. Fear of never-ending tiredness.
15. Fear of peaking.
16. And slipping.
17. And disappointing.
18. And disappearing.
19. Fear of forgetfulness.
20. Fear of losing perspective.
    
21. (Fear of unaware irony).
22. Fear of money.
23. Fear of apocalypse.
24. Fear of mindlessness.
25. Fear of rabbit holes.
    
26. Fear of being too afraid to jump them.
27. Fear of losing agency.
28. Fear of history repeating.
29. Fear of arbitrariness.
30. Fear of being too small.

And I plan to be forgotten when I'm gone

[when I die]
can it be in the midwinter springtime?
(but not this midwinter springtime)
and will you let me burn before I'm buried?
before I'm scattered?
and will you celebrate my life?
(because funerals are morbid, and--, oh, and--)
will you play "Rollin' Back" by My Morning Jacket?
and will you laugh at my earnestness?
and will you laugh at my awkwardness?
and what will you remember?

(because I am sometimes land//sometimes ocean//sometimes land//sometimes ocean//sometimes land// sometimes--)

Østers i Vest from Sebastian Schuster-Rossel on Vimeo.

Oysters have pearls inside, you know.
(and our bodies do, too).

words Microscoft Word tells me aren't words.

1. liminal
2. situationally
3. intersex
4. intranationally (strangely; it accepts "internationally" as a word--go figure).
5. intersectionality
6. transnationalist
7. transnationalism

There's a word in Spanish I've always loved: ensimismamiento
the definition is: concentrándose en los propios pensamientos.
(and a loose English translation would be: a noun for the action of two beings' uniting themselves in each other's thoughts, which become the same thought).

My parents call it "minds touching."
And there's a pretty sweet Stephen Dunn poem about it, too.
Ensimismarse is the verb, and ensimismado is the participle--but get this: ensimismado, the participle, is also used as a noun to mean the person whose mind touches yours. (Ensimismada would be the female equivalent).

That word doesn't exist in English. I'm not so sure the person exists outside of language, either. Maybe for moments, but not for a lifetime.

Love isn't thinking the same way; it's caring enough to commit to trying to understand.

Transnationalism, on the other hand, is very real.
And so is liminality. Oh, liminality. I can feel it.

"if I could go back-ways" get you no-ways fast.

Sometimes, funny things haunt me--like shoe strings; sometimes shoe strings haunt me. Like Cat Steven's Trouble haunts me. Like Gumby and putt-putt golfing haunt me.

Sometimes, I am afraid of losing faces. Other people's faces. I can always recognize them. I never forget. But I can't close my eyes and create the isolated image. And somehow I feel like this is losing. This is losing faces.

Sometimes I remember belonging to the Communion of Saints. Before my experience of agency complicated my understanding of fatalism. Before the two became incongruous. I remember when doubt was more consolable. When faith was easier. And sometimes I swear I still do belong. Sometimes, when I think or feel or love strongly enough, I swear I hear echos from all around that are not my own. And I know. I know it's the Community of Saints.

Sometimes poetry is laughable. And sometimes poetry is laughing at me. (For not believing in masks// For self sacrifice// For causes).

Sometimes I laugh at myself.

Sometimes oatmeal makes everything better.

But most of the time it takes more. More than oatmeal. More than peppermint and honey. More than immersion in a safe place with safe things-- until contentment and discontentment become simultaneously and increasingly necessary; the former at an immediate, personal level; the latter at a macro-political level.

"No amount of 'if-I-could-go-back-ways' gets you back-ways," they say.
And I say: Oh, God, where are my boxes?



no-ways fast. by Leslie Albanese is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License.

presently.

de-cluttering (my life in boxes).

[the science of Tetris, and sleep-memory].

flashes:
1. faces.
2. routes.
3. sounds.
4. inventions (deconstructions/fusions/syntheses).

discoveries:
1. everyone but my father thinks I look like my mother.
2. laughter disappears when we are solitary (and without 'supplemental' social mediums)

tensions:
1. what constitutes a 'social medium,' anyway? (the line is blurry).
2. I am special; I am special; I swear I'm special; I'm just like everyone else.

presently by Leslie Albanese is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License. Inspired by Radiolab; on Laughter, among other things.

[[a little red box]]

(click to enlarge photos)

"One must be thrust out of a finished cycle in life, and that leap is the most difficult to make--to part with one's faith, one's love, when one would prefer to renew the faith and recreate the passion."
-- Anais Nin

crowded.

Thanks, Tim Xie, for sharing these photographs.

Drew is totally a creeper in this one:
This break is surely killing me. But only a little.

my heart and Ohio

[12/07/10] Leslie Albanese: Ohio is such an important place
[12/07/10] Eddie Barnes: it's everything
[12/07/10] Leslie Albanese: a lot of ppl who live here do not value it the way they should, I think
[12/07/10] Leslie Albanese: also- unrelated- but aesthetically i think it has the coolest outline
[12/07/10] Leslie Albanese: of all the states
[12/07/10] Eddie Barnes: yes! haha
[12/07/10] Eddie Barnes: i think we may be a little biased
[12/07/10] Eddie Barnes: but it is a nice shape.
[12/07/10] Leslie Albanese: haha
[12/07/10] Leslie Albanese: ok maybe a little
[12/07/10] Leslie Albanese: but we are not a box
[12/07/10] Leslie Albanese: so many states are shaped like boxes
[12/07/10] Eddie Barnes: indeed
[12/07/10] Eddie Barnes: that's true. This is my heart and Ohio.

I've been wearing an old (basement-retired/retrieved) hat of my mother's for the past week. It's wool and has loons on it. I like it because it's warm and makes me feel safe. And maybe also because it allows me to make bad puns about being loony.

But it's not just the silly hat. It's everything. Oh, Ohio! [My friends, my habits, my family, they mean so much to me/ but I'm (not) just a box just a box in a cage (no I'm not) just a box just a box in a cage].

It's not that I don't love you, all musty.

my heart and Ohio by Leslie Albanese is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License.