xandra lee

curvature

xlr331 — Thu, 26 Jan 2012 17:34:47 +0000

11:30am on a thursday, by this time i need a brain break.

the clouds are silver lined today outside my desk window, the weather is in less dreary of a mood than yesterday. moving slowly overhead, i wonder if they’ve not slept much either.

2012.. what can i say; this year has started off so strange. pro and digressions of all sorts. all i really want right now is to jump on a plane that travels through time and revisit chicago, circa 08/2010. lollapalooza and this really interesting time in my life where i had no angst about anything. nothing was really figured out, i’m only just becoming an adult for whatever that is worth, but i felt like i had myself under control. that’s life though, right? things change. like thursday into friday, and sunday into monday. it makes sense, but feels really strange.

like 2011 into 2012, and what imagine 24 to 25 to be like.

” “

xlr331 — Tue, 17 Jan 2012 04:22:40 +0000

school starts tomorrow. in less than 24 hours i will be home again, doing probably the same thing i am right this second.

providing myself with lullabies and mental stimulation in preparation for a semester full of rocks and money.

all i really want to do is lay on a mountain somewhere, closer to the sky, and enjoy the sun and then the moon. sometimes i wonder if i’ll ever really grow up.

switches

xlr331 — Wed, 11 Jan 2012 05:19:57 +0000

There is the me sitting in my bed worrying about every-little-thing in a future that may or may not happen the way i try to map it in my head. There is the me that is a Columbia grad student with a giant skeleton key for all the doors I think I want to open. There is the me that ran away to live on mountain in Peru a few years ago without any notice. There is the me that stayed in San Antonio and waited impatiently for everything to happen the way I may or may not have wanted. There is the me that never was because my parents never met. And then there is a me that will never be.

What is important is ‘what is’ and not ‘what should be’.

I am restless to no end, skilled in the ancient art of self inflicted anxiety and boredom. Holding standards for myself that are simultaneously too high and too low, I get caught in some proverbial mental purgatory where everything that exists in reality is skewed into this massive blur of time and what ifs and how’s and when’s that I fail to enjoy what ever the hell may be. But at the tender age of 24, I’m realizing that it’s all entirely too big to try and control it. Perspective is a powerful tool.

seasonal overlap

xlr331 — Sun, 08 Jan 2012 21:05:51 +0000

Sitting in the grass, drinking plum juice, wearing sandals and sunglasses in January. I’m happy to be in Texas while nature has a brief affair with spring.

bocote

xlr331 — Tue, 20 Dec 2011 20:53:43 +0000

the new year is ‘a comin.

that means a lot of things. it means ending, and beginnings, and a lot of in betweens (both literally and metaphorically).

i don’t feel any specific emotions. i don’t feel pressure like i normally would, i don’t feel the anxiety of getting older or losing more time without having moved forward much.

i haven’t been thrilled about being an adult lately. i miss my friends, and simpler times when i didn’t care about school or having a real career down the line. the older i get, the more anxious and neurotic i get. but right now? no, not so much. right now i have the promise of next year and enough common sense, as inherited by age, to know that it’ll be whatever i make of it.

the problem is, i don’t give myself enough credit. so if resolutions must be made, one of mine will be to enjoy more and worry less.

.. to be continued

Season One

xlr331 — Wed, 02 Nov 2011 19:01:57 +0000

Perpetually having moments where I feel like this is a life I haven’t lived yet and others where I’m a completely different person. I dress for work and for play and feel like thirty different people to thirty different people all in one day. Thinking back, segments of my life are so non-linear that I feel like I was living another life or dressing up as a character in some reality television show with no cameras…

Today is Dia de Los Muertos, and I keep thinking about my loved ones who have passed- some long ago and others more recent- and I wonder what of theirs I carry around. Eyes? A nose? Their fiery personality and increasingly more complicated thoughts? Is this feeling something we shared at separate points in time? Like a hazy scene in a movie that’s supposed to depict a memory or the past- are our times running parallel to each other?

Wherever you are, today I’m thinking about you.

Bears, all things

xlr331 — Sat, 08 Oct 2011 12:40:24 +0000

It’s an early Saturday morning, which means it was an early Friday night. Driving across town the clouds look amazing- greyish blue, moving across the sky. Early mornings usually induce self reflection for me, I guess I like the feeling that everyone is still sleeping so there’s no rush to do the millions of things I always feel like I have to do.

This week I saw some friends of mine that are a huge part of me and how I came to be the person that I am today. And I guess those hugs and watching them do what they love were things that I might have needed on a random Wednesday night. Blasts from the past get you thinking about the present.. what would my former self think? From a year to three to five ago, I guess gauging is something I like to do in relation to personal growth and change. It’s important for me to know where I’m going and remember how I got here; accountability and direction are traits I admire greatly.

A year ago I might still be sleeping, recovering from all night conversation, and/or dancing hangovers but this morning I’m driving across town to babysit someone I cannot even begin to describe my love for. And so the gears have shifted- because they always do – and a year from now I’m sure it’ll all have changed a bit more. Just a testament to the fact that life is fast and time is faster… makes me appreciate tiny moments like this morning’s and how long an hour can sometimes feel.

beach boys

xlr331 — Wed, 03 Aug 2011 15:42:43 +0000

Lately I’ve spent a lot of time daydreaming about the many places I’d like to go right now. So that we can share some of those daydreams; the following is a rather long list:

Barcelona, Spain
Australia
Washington state
Montreal, Canada
Oregon
Toronto, Canada
Paris, France
London, England
Machu Pichu, Peru
Teotihuacan, Mexico
Crete, Greece
Cape Town, South Africa
Brazil
Iceland

Vicar

xlr331 — Thu, 28 Jul 2011 21:08:57 +0000

When I don’t have the right words someone else has better ones:

Old Age Gets Up by Ted Hughes
Stirs its ashes and embers, its burnt sticks

An eye powdered over, half melted and solid again
Ponders
Ideas that collapse
At the first touch of attention

The light at the window, so square and so same
So full-strong as ever, the window frame
A scaffold in space, for eyes to lean on

Supporting the body, shaped to its old work
Making small movements in gray air
Numbed from the blurred accident
Of having lived, the fatal, real injury
Under the amnesia

Something tries to save itself-searches
For defenses-but words evade
Like flies with their own notions

Old age slowly gets dressed
Heavily dosed with death’s night
Sits on the bed’s edge

Pulls its pieces together
Loosely tucks in its shirt

grey days and eight hour waste

xlr331 — Tue, 12 Jul 2011 21:35:07 +0000

i’ve finished a book this week already, well today really. no colossal accomplishment, except that i haven’t picked up a book outside of mandatory reading for school in a little over a year. a far cry from my adolescent self, who spent countless weekends in bed with books. like all good love affairs, i suppose we are rekindling our flame. this time i became aquainted with Jean-Dominique Bauby and his diving bell. having never seen the movie or discussed the book to any extent beyond the title, i wasn’t sure of what to expect. short and sad, a story told by blinks and grunts no doubt. there’s hope there, between pages and lines and endings. with all of it’s appreciation for the smell of french fries and simple tasks like playing hang man, self reflection is impossible to avoid. i suppose i’d like to see the movie now, for a better picture of all the French landmarks I couldn’t build in my imagination.

on an entirely unrelated topic: i dreamt about post apocalyptic US last night. more specifically my life.. people i know, being randomly pulled out of buildings and hushed down fire escapes by invisible forces. like some bad sci-fi/lifetime movie some of us manage to not be picked to receive an implanted disease our captors are passing out to unlucky souls. everyone has lice. and we’re living in this weird, paritally concrete forest. it reminded me of that owl guardian movie crossed with battle la and planet of the apes. random people i haven’t seen in years suddenly appeared in my dreams from the depths of my thoughts to be held captive along side my loved ones and i. i wish i could describe it better, it was really quite grandiose and i woke up exhausted. i slept negative six hours. sometimes i wish i could attach a projector to my head while i’m dreaming and record what happens in those seldom restful hours where my brain crosses the planes of space and time and surreality.