EL EMPLEO / THE EMPLOYMENT (animated short film)

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We were acquainted as curious children. A little less ripe, but a lot less routine. I remember when we used to live on our lawn that didn’t have sharp, prickly grass, only a piece of smooth land, and then grass that grew long and lustrous like hair. At the prime of your youth, you found the mower that left our home empty again, so that you could invite the visitors, whom you loved for a while or for a long time, without feeling ashamed of our clandestine affair. You let them have a taste of me and to have all their ways with me, as you lie contented.

My dear, you don’t need these lovers. They’ll soon forget me once they’ve forgotten you. You who have forgotten the us who have experienced the ecstasy, under a blanket in a dark room with a locked door. As you moved me about in our secret place. As we relished the floods of bliss together. As we lay together with your hand still over me, spent but satisfied. One day, when you realize that your visitors can no longer give you what we had, my dear, you will come back to me and I will still be here for you, a little more routine, but a lot more ripe.

“As it is, I can’t settle, I want someone who is fierce and will love me until death and know that love is as strong as death, and be on my side for ever and ever. I want someone who will destroy and be destroyed by me. There are many forms of love and affection, some people can spend their whole lives together without knowing each other’s names. Naming is a difficult and time-consuming process; it concerns essences, and it means power. But on the wild nights who can call you home? Only the one who knows your name. Romantic love has been diluted into paperback form and has sold thousands and millions of copies. Somewhere it is still in the original, written on tablets of stone. I would cross seas and suffer sunstroke and give away all I have, but not for a man, because they want to be the destroyer and never be destroyed. That is why they are unfit for romantic love. There are exceptions and I hope they are happy.

The unknownness of my needs frightens me. I do not know how huge they are, or how high they are, I only know that they are not being met. If you want to find out the circumference of an oil drop, you can use lycopodium powder. That’s what I’ll find. A tub of lycopodium powder, and I will sprinkle it on to my needs and find out how large they are. Then when I meet someone I can write up the experiment and show them what they have to take on. Except they might have a growth rate I can’t measure, or they might mutate, or even disappear.”

       -  Jeanette Winterson, Oranges Are Not The Only Fruit (p. 165)

There lies a still hoop
leading to a fireplace
The tired dog pants

Hipstamatic Adventures: Singapore Biennale 2011

http://hipstamaticapp.com

Dive into the blue

On a hill, overlooking

The pink of blossom

Holden on constructing the self

“The way I see it, a lot of us (or people, because I’m not sure whether to involve myself in this) are trying to be righteous and saintly, but not without acknowledging some truth about being quite a bunch of nasty people with some kind of nasty, sorry past.

Now, my key word here is “some”, because not everything is acknowledged. We (again, I use this pronoun loosely) can see through ourselves perfectly, but we can also choose to leave a few things out in the midst of constructing a self that seems perfect, but because of a few acceptable imperfections. Or we can dilute the hard truths about ourselves, making them despicable but forgivable, justifiable.

Or we can be beasts, or devils, or saints. We can throw our faults around, or deny all of them, or accept all of them. Or we can accept all of them, but realise that some of them are simply too difficult to rationalise and hence, we toss it away, sometimes wondering why the stench of that trash continues to linger on us.

And then we are a perfect self; identified and unique. But to those who can see us, we’re just another product of society, no longer the person who came out of our mother’s womb.”