Yes, I haven’t been updating anything these past few weeks. But there’s a lot of stuff coming up! Band photoshoots, live photography, a ton of instant film for my two new (old) Polaroid SX-70s ready to be scanned, design work, music, et cetera - here, a small appetizer: Cult of Luna @ Siddharta Club, Prato. The entire set is available on Flickr. Enjoy!
I’m passionate about what I do. Such passion can be seen by other people as compulsive behaviour. And that’s probably what it is. But I really enjoy crafting marvelous CSS designs and admin areas - still pretty basic features, but I’m learning new stuff all the time - for hours. I’ve recently taken into account many useful resources as to how succeeding in getting rid of procrastination. Last night I surfed the internet compulsively as I’m doing more and more often, but among the usual dozen sites that don’t carry the frequent updates I wish they did, I found guides to overcome this big monster haunting me. The fact that I didn’t simply print the webpage out but instead delved into a “quick” half-hour typesetting job is relevant to my general attitude towards everything. That is, seek for perfection by all means. If I don’t like something or feel it could be improved, I just get my hands dirty and improve it. And it’s often on useless things. Maybe more the useless than the useful ones anyway. Procrastination is rooted deep in me because, being a perfectionist, I always focus on the results. I’m always trying to get praise or recognition. Which isn’t really a bad thing per se. What’s really ruining the magic is the fact that I can’t stop thinking about failing. I’ve had my fair amount of success and my fair amount of failure, but the latter is just more powerful to me. It has a grip on my stomach. It tells me to stop, and when it does I just have to. I just do it. So here I am with stomachache, my spine hurts and my ass is most likely flat for having been sat all day. Oh, I was forgetting my elbows. They hurt too. So the sun is up and I haven’t slept a wink. I haven’t been sleeping properly for months. Forget the bad dreams, those I can forget. It’s about the life I’m not living, that’s what it is.
As I’m stuck most of the time in the process of deciding when I have to choose between alternatives, I think I’ll better start practising this rule pretty much right now.
Male cicadas (and only males) have loud noisemakers called “tymbals” on the sides of the abdominal base. Their “singing” is not stridulation as in many other familiar sound-producing insects like crickets (where two structures are rubbed against one another): the tymbals are regions of the exoskeleton that are modified to form a complex membrane with thin, membranous portions and thickened “ribs”. They rapidly vibrate these membranes with strong muscles, and enlarged chambers derived from the tracheae make their body serve as a resonance chamber, greatly amplifying the sound. Some cicadas produce sounds louder than 106 dB (SPL), among the loudest of all insect-produced sounds. (This amazing sound has frequently inspired haiku poets in Japan to write about them.) They modulate their noise by wiggling their abdomens toward and away from the tree that they are on.
From Wikipedia. All this mess to say that this morning I was waken up by the sound of cicadas. They’re quiet now.
I always thought, as a kid, that the queen in the cards was naturally the wife of the king. And I think you could agree with me on that. The point is that I was also damn sure that the queen had an affair with the jack.
Today I was waiting a bus on the street of one of this city’s suburbs and there was this white and green building right in front of the bus stop. I was so bored out of my mind that I wished the building to collapse. I don’t know, maybe with explosives that would have make it implode. No, I thought it would have just cracked and fall apart. With big chunks of gray concrete smashing on the pavement.
A big solid concrete block cracking and smashing to the ground, for no particular reason other than my personal amusement.
I think I thought of an H bomb for a second, but that was far more than what I was hoping for. I was dreaming of an organic failure, more than physical destruction.
Yesterday night I wrote a full page of my diary (yes, I have a diary) after three months of nothing. Sometimes you really need to get things out, put them on a page and read them. And put them somewhere real. Blogging is fun but ephemeral.
Mood isn’t particularly exciting this week, and as I read the pages from january to febrauary I saw some kind of continuum regarding this uneasiness I’ve been suffering of lately.
But I’m still positive it’s going to pass, sooner or later.
Going back from studies room casually without music in my ears.
Going back home number two humming Friday I’m In Love.
Long walking stare at a yellow-lighted silent open window, second floor, on one side of the street.
Brief thought of the stickered insides window panes on the other side of the same street, a little higher, no light though.
Young lovers kissing under one of this city’s porches.
Concerns about the act of walking itself, right leg cloth rubbing rhythmically left leg cloth.
Dead cricket on the third step of the stairs in the entrance.
Loud slam of the noisy entrance door, I’m here.
I always carry at least one camera in my backpack, but I never shoot.
Life is just being boring lately, but I can wait. You never know.
A post in Italian! 65% of the readers should be happy. Let the flame of misanthropy burn bright before us to light our way through all this crap.
- Sì?
- Ciao, sono io. Mi apri per favore?
Arlene. Sicuramente non mi avrà riconosciuto.
- Ciao. Ma sono da solo, qui non c’è nessuno. Cerchi Marco?
- Eh.
- Marco è alla Jappelli.
- Ma non c’è neanche Michele?
- No, è anche lui alla Jappelli. Non c’è nessuno qui.
Ma cazzo, mi ascoltate quando parlo?
- Cominciamo bene… Ma tu chi sei scusa?
Ecco.
- Stefano.
- Ah, va beh. Grazie lo stesso, ciao.
- Ciao ciao.