4_FILM by Aram Bedrossian

CLYTAEMNESTRA:
__Last night, I say, the mother of this morning.


___*___*___*

THINGS I HAVE THOUGHT TODAY, A LIST:

- i should call mom.
- uh oh. you want to call mom things must suck
- you're fat. go to the gym.
- you're too thin. go to the gym.
- the lighting at this gym sucks. go home and turn a lamp on and hide under your covers.
- don't do pill-free-weekends anymore. this ish cray.
- your eyes are beautiful.
- this is the second time i've tried to make this city work, it doesn't i hate everything about it i hate everything about my life it's all terrible. (mom: don't be so melodramatic) (q: fine.) (mom: there must be something about your life you don't hate?...
- ...these boxer shorts kick butt (mom: there you go. babysteps)
- it's annoying that your name is Barbara. do you know how hard it is to google/youtube 'barbara'? (but worth it:
Tu ne te souviendras pas, barbara
- companionship. what's that mean?
- run. Run. run Orestes, rrruun!.


___*___*___*

RECENT LISTENING, A PLAYLIST:
- stuff i can find, barbara
- domestic scene, radio department
- dream, john cage
- i'm a fool to want you, billie holiday
- election night, bic runga
- (D: i like lost-questionmark better than lost-exclamationmark. Q: wtf are you talking about? D: there's two versions, you know how the album is lost! Q: no i did not know that. D: ok, well the album version is lost!, but there's another version, lost? Q: ninja you trippin i'm looking that up:
lost?, coldplay


___*___*___*

n o c t u r n e

sshh little boy, sshh
tomorrow is not so scary
that you avoid it like this for hours :
close your eyes ,
stop clenching wrinkles into the night ,
__what you need isn't here anymore than there,
there's no point forcing

little things i li(ov)ke about my current life, a LIST:

(1) when you need to go diagonally across a pedestrian crossing so whichever light goes green first you win

(2) getting shirts ironed and pressed. then, every morning you feel like don draper

(3) zoning out on the treadmill. when snap back 10-20-30 minutes have gone and you're human again. i've decided it's akin to meditation. i meditate through my whole body.

(4) pocket. squares. kick. butt.

(5) $1 coffee on my way to work from 7/11. it's the quickest, cheapest way to placate a not-that-serious addiction.

(6) handstands in the living room. well. not well-executed handstands. there's no real standing. handfalling in the living room. on your head.

(7) conversations with my mama.

(8) taking a lunchtime walk to remember what air is and break up the day spent indoors

(9) having something(s) to look forward to.

(10) breakfast. avocado on sourdough with a skinny latte. approx 3 times weekly. at this corner place 2 mins from central station. sometimes with friends, othertimes with the financial review.

(11) connecting with music on the third listen. (welcome to the rotation Atlas Moth)

(12) San Pellgrino as a side-drink to my breakfast cereal. i don't know why, but it works. #serial.

(13) a shelf full of dusty out-of-date legal textbook that are absolutely useless but were too beautiful for me to permit them to be thrown away and will henceforth serve as nothing more than bookcase candy.

(14) the out-of-this-world amazing collection of classical music that has found its way onto youtube which gives me days and days worth of fascinating, new, interesting, loved music

(15) not caring about answering my phone.

(16) discovering 2 seasons of Daria i didn't know existed and therefore have not been watched.

(17) insisting (girl)roomate touch my abs touch my abs they're aaaaamazing

(18) my bright orange pen

clouds.

____(1)

 I think a lot about time. Time is a malleable concept. An hour is not an hour. Sometimes an hour is a second. Sometimes a day is an entire life and when you wake up the next day you are someone new. I have been soo many people. Every few months I think I am a newborn. Sometimes I am an old man, sometimes I am young boy.
____It could be that time is a feeling. Something like that. Maybe it's linked to my heartrate. That would explain it. Since hearts can stop and you die and hearts can fly away and leave you alone while they go off to sit under a tree and recover. To work things out for themselves - I'm sure mine would be better off without me holding it back sometimes. That would be nice right? I could tell my soul: dear soul, you can just tie me to this stop-sign and you fly off and go take care of your things. I'm too slow for you. I hold you back. I'll wait here, and when you are ready, when you have done all you need to do and loved all you need to love you can come back and find me. And we'll be together again and you can tell me about what you saw and I will be proud of you. Farewell Soul. __(just please, uhm, _come back for me. eventually).


____(2)

I also think a lot about space. Where I am. How I came to be here. If there's escaping it. If maybe I were somewhere else I would be somebody else. If it's even possible that I be somebody else. Maybe in the nighttime I am more me. The real proper perfectly honest straight to the core me. Maybe in Paris I am more me. Maybe in Tahiti. Maybe when I'm hungry and hot that is the real me. Maybe it's too far now, too far lost. No longer recoverable. Maybe I've died and become someone new soo many times there's no way to go back to the original.
____In my family we debate this often. Perhaps because my auntie and uncle escaped Iran through the desert into Pakistan. And had to live in squallor before they came to Australia. You don't get much of a choice in circumstances like that do you? Everything is not a lifestyle choice. That's my mother's favourite line. She's right I suppose. You can live anywhere, if you have work and have shelter and you're getting by, you're fine. No one's trying to kill are they? Perhaps not. Perhaps so.


____(3)

One day I stopped dreaming. That's not entirely true, I just stopped remembering them. I don't miss it. Growing up most of my dreams were about me being chased. I thought I was Orestes. Run Orestes, run!! I would giggle to myself in the morning. One night I met my grandfather in a dream, sitting at his kitchen table where he always sat when I was a child. He had made me tea. He tried to speak to me but I couldn't understand what he was saying. He had recently passed away. From that moment on I was certain he was helping me. Maybe I still am, but the feeling is softer now. I have to think about it to remember it. It feels like a hug of sorts. Like the air surrounding you is your friend and likes you. I like that feeling.
____In normal circumstances I know if I've been dreaming because I wake up covered in sweat. Don't remember a thing. Just sweaty. Wherever it is I go, it must be far. Perhaps I am still running. Perhaps not.


____(4)

THINGS I LIKE TO SAY TO MYSELF, A LIST:

- Life's not a game of win and lose q. it's not even a game
- the future has a way of sorting itself out. just leave it alone
- work harder. that's the answer. always.
- this is the only way it could have been. this is the only way it could have been.
- the gym will fix it/this


____(5)

That feeling like I'm falling... it doesn't go away. Sometimes I lie on the floor to remind myself it's there. On Saturday, it was sunny, and I put a towel on the tiles outside and slept in the sun. I rolled my shorts up so I could show the sun as much of myself as possible. I covered my face with a hat so I could close my eyes. I had an invisible blanket. I was soo warm, and calm. In my head I believed I could hear the waves of the ocean. It was delicious. I like to be naked when I am in shape. I like the shapes of my arms and the little lumps of muscle on my back. When I run I pretend I am an engine in a train. Or a robot. (But lying down in the sun I pretended I was a cloud. I had no ideas. No thoughts. I had no dreams. I was not late or early. I was not anything, I was not even my own body. I was just a shape, floating in the sun. Weightless and beautiful beyond compare
 )

check-in. // life , balance .:.

untitled by brett walker


three straight days off the magic beans. no caffeine , no meds. all that happens is i sleep. i eat. i want women. naked and soft and smelling nice and me wrapped around them.

but i find myself able to think about my life , with a certain terrified disenchantment that comes with being undrugged. i can write without the melodrama. and with the danger of any moment falling into a stream of emotions that i don't have any safety from. i could be totalled by day-break. curled into a ball and panic-attacked to annihilation. the safety belts are off. it's just me.


___*___*___*

it's 'Mad Men Monday' , that's what it's called when i watch the new episode on mondays. after much thought, it's abundantly clear - it's the loneliness of it that i most relate to. each person stuck in their little box , unable to escape the confines of their personality, their weaknesses. hoping, waiting for someone else to drag them out into... something/one else. and of course no one can. it's not possible.


___*___*___*

she must have known where tonight would lead. her shirt half unbuttoned she gets out of bed and walks to the kitchen. comes back with a black bottle of cheap brandy. drinks straight from the bottle. guess she needs something to help her cross the line. she takes another swig , on the side of the bed on her knees, looking down at me reclining. i put my hand out for the bottle. she hands it over. you don't drink she says. i reply i know. and take a sip. but you are she says.
- yes.
- pour qua?
- to remember.
- what?
- who i'm not.
- who aren't you?
- whoever you're seeing.

(half an hour later, naked and breathless she says how would you like me? to which i smile, she having missed the nuances of her expression.  
every way mon cherie. everyway. )

(she puts the beanie on my way with more tenderness than i'm used to from her. it's perhaps an apology for throwing me out at 3am to the european winter. you can't sleep here, i don't do sleep overs she says. in a sense i'm relieved. maybe i just tell myself that on the bike-ride home to protect the smallest part of my masculinity. i'm sure there's a part of me that went through the whole procedure hoping for a dreamless, warm sleep at the end of it.
)


___*___*___*

every person stuck in their little box. it's impossible out of. this loneliness i'm thinking of. i have roomates, i have friends, i have people i work with, i have facebook, i have texts on my phone, it's still there. i'm still trapped in myself. unable to be outside of myself. except, perhaps, those few friends whom you love spiritually. in that spiritual sense where the real You who lives sometimes in and often around your body merges with theirs. those friends whose souls hold your hand.

(i said:
so that's it?
yes.
...
...
i think i'm dead.
don't be melodramatic.
...
it's ok.
is it?
yes.
why?
our souls are friends.
...
they've always been. they always will be.
...
...
i'm writing that down.
what?
in my notebook. i'm writing that down, i must never forget that line."

it's actually in my notebook. 3:24pm. then the date. then that line: our souls are friends.

i'd like to see you again one day. even though each time i see you a year of mine goes somehow missing, and i wake up 12 months later with rings around my eyes, an awful headache and having forgotten what my name was - despite that i'd like to see you again one day and test it. see whether we're still friends some part of us (inspite of us) whether some part has made it through. it would make me feel less lonely for the rest of my life if it were true.

i'm sure it's true. you said it, but i apply it to other people. other people make your sentence true even if it's not true between us. )


___*___*___*

when i don't take my pills. eat, sleep, sex. she used to tell me about it, ex-GF: you're hilarious. you wake up, and mumble something about food. i get you half a bowl of cereal which you eat three spoons of before you try and get your head into my shirt. i kiss you and we... ya know, and you're asleep in a minute. but you don't want to sleep alone so you keep holding me mumbling about not leaving. so i watch tv in bed with you. you wake up, mumble something about food, i give you the bowl which you have two spoonfuls of before you start kissing my knees and ankles trying to get my pants off.


___*___*___*

my mom asks me if i'm getting used to be being back. no. it's not easy i say. she wants to know what i miss the most about europe. well, not being weird. making friends so much more easily. and being more... whatever it is, women like me better in europe. and i like women better in europe. i miss my lovelife. she nods. what an adult conversation we're having.


___*___*___*

i've been trying to write a 'life-plan'. something to help me 'fix' the predicament i find myself in, or at least improve it to where i find my days worthwhile. i keep putting it off, that's why i say 'trying'. i can't seem to want to put pen to paper with it, i'm happy enough just adding to it in thoughts. thinking about it in on the treadmill.

'gym is good. musn't let that drop off. keep that where it's at. you need to eat better. must plan your meals and actually go to the grocery store regular. need to have sex. organize that, make friends, if you make friends the other stuff follows. yes but where will i get friends from? call XYZ. you keep saying you will, just do. and lie out in the sun more. i did. i layed out on saturday. you did. yes. it was very good. do that more. agreed, definitely a good play. you need to have more fun. exactly! how can we do that? i don't know really. what's fun? i can't even remember. what did we used to enjoy? walking around. right. need to do more exploring. adventuring.' [and so it goes]


___*___*___*

my dad wants to know how things are going. good days and bad days dad. he nods on the other end of the line. he says i'm glad you're taking a few days off your pills, that's the best thing you can do. give your body a break. i nod in response. in my head i think: how nice it would be to give my soul a few day's break from my body. just to fly out and remember what air felt like.


___*___*___*

all i want is a dolce & gabana three piece suit. it has polka dots on the back of the vest. this is how mundane my desires have gotten. not the elbows and navels and eyelids of beautiful women against my lips. not my fingers bleeding from building tree-houses. not doing handstands on the beach. i just want a new suit.

i'm worried q.
you used to be bigger than this.

round here.

untitled by xixi cao



i walk in the lights are off. __the lights are off and it's quiet. __(just what i wanted it).

so heavy. 


___*___*___*

my tie's half done, flapping outside my vest. i never got through taking it off. one shoe's still on. one of my sleeve buttons open. a trail of papers falling out of my briefcase from door to bed from trying to get my keys at the door.


___*___*___*

it's too late.

for everything.

already.


___*___*___*

there's never an open grocery store i haven't eaten in days.

i had to choose between the dry cleaning and the grocery. __can't carry both.

i wonder if there was another me how i'd carry us both.

(and if there wasn't, how much heavier it might be to just carry ... ___me)

_________(does anyone even know anything heavier?)


___*___*___*

______may came home with a smooth round stone
__ ____as small as a world and as large as alone. []



___*___*___*

in the dark ___ all these words carved in the walls ___i can hear them
calling to be called.

names or daffodils ,

dreams i'd 


___*___*___*

slouched by the bed. it's nice. the floor, it's nice to remind yourself it's there. i feel like i'm falling too frequently much always. ___but here, hello floor. i like you so much. soo much. ___i wish you knew how much. __you'd like me too , if you knew. if you knew you probably would i think.

nice to imagine there's a stop point, end of the sentence, time's up, burger's finished so are the fries.

the closet door is slid open. half the coat-hangers are on the ground. they don't fit properly. they jam every morning i get angry and knock a few more down. ______each time i think i hear.feel a rib break.


___*___*___*

is there anything you need to say to me? she asks as she's rushing out. no judge. she stares back at me a few seconds surprised. i'd usually hand her a giggle or a well-wish or a slightly sweetened second. ______o k. ___see you tomorrow then. ______half a minute has morphed out of shape. yes judge. good night. _________i sound hollow. sound coming out of a pipe-smoked-tree.


___*___*___*

my god. 
mon dieu. 

it occurs to me. 


i'm going to set fire to something soon. 


___*___*___*

in other lives there might be solutions , or problems.

round here it's just time.

just time.

the short and long of it.

crammed into a box and stretched on a rack.


Nothing , . round . here


______here.


no   ______,here
thing.

things, a list:

- the new Chromatics album is kapow!-yum-ilicious. if you need an example, start with the first tune (which some of you may recognize as a Neil Young cover) and go from thurrr.

- since Mar's website isn't letting me comment on posts because it hates me i'm putting this here, hey Mar:

"besides faith in a Creator who seems to bail me out a lot." <-- line of the week #fact.

- the thing that makes me happiest these days is when i get to a pedestrian crossing where i need to cross diagonally. this means no matter which light goes green, i can walk. why it is that this brings me such tremendous happiness is a mystery. but it has something to do with a feeling of fateful invincibility. a conviction that i cannot lose.

- 'i'm sorry if you like the other shoes, but you asked'.
'i did. i'm not sorry.'
'you're not just buying them because i said you should are you?'
'no. i'm buying them because they feel nicest and because they're bright blue. i'm only standing here continuing to discuss it with you because i like speaking with you and i like your eyes.'
' ... what do you like about them?'
'they're cheeky. __i know what you're thinking, they tell me'
'what am i thinking?'
'you're thinking when i take over the world and proclaim national pj day, that i should name it in your honour.'
'exactly.'
'see.'
'come back soon.'
'never soon enough.'

- everyone's been so lovely about giving me sad-music-listening tips. i thought i'd reciprocate, since i think i have the world's greatest armory of chanson trieste (here's a few that come to mind):

don't smoke in bed, nina simone (saddest love song ever made the end)
tijerina, calla
exit music (from a film), radiohead
single (photek remix), everything but the girl
gloomy sunday, billie holiday
ne me quitte pas, edith piaf
slow show, the national
from the rue vilin, max richter
spiders, snakes, a weather
leaving you behind without knowing where to go, herman & kleine 

- i'll be up for work in 3 hours and 12 minutes.

- the other thing that makes me happiest these days is playing with my mom's puppy. i like animals. this is new.  how'd this happen?

- i have serious things on my mind. big things. important things. mostly, i think it's time i resigned myself to certain truths. it maybe was always a question of timing, and it seems the answer is 'now'. and... that is hard. so i work out a lot. i run a lot. i'm in magnificent shape but that just means i have lots on my mind that i'm trying to outrun. the ghosts , the furies. thus far i've managed to keep it all together by gyming my way through it. that and senselessly buying things to distract myself. perhaps it's just time to breathe in the cloud and be done with it.

why does it feel like i'm priming myself up for some newest death?
the (wo)man is perfected.

- i'm not accustomed to receiving poems from people or love-notes or writing. the trend seems to be that i send them. but, today i received something moving. and it moved me , maybe i fell off the chair i don't know. it's hard to remember , hard to translate the heart's seismic shifts and volcanic eruptions into static, black and white words.

I'm thinking about you everytime i'm alone with myself and it makes me feel very happy and very sad at the same time.
[breathless]

- i'm the youngest man i know. i'm soo proud of that. i work hard to keep it that way.

- 'i get like that too sometimes you know'
'no you don't mom.'
'yes i do. i do. i think about you too when i feel it starting. i think, oh, a wave. what would q do'
(i like hearing my mom refer to me as 'q'. she seems to have picked it up)
'what's the answer?'
'what?'
'what would q do?'
'oh, i don't know. __what would you do? i just think about it.'
'what does anyone do really?, what can you do?'
'press on i suppose.'
'i'd say that's about right.'

- here comes tomorrow.
here it comes.

i suppose i should stop putting it off and close my eyes.

...

untitled by pinkyhonor


i think of my days as open mouths that have to be fed each day.


___*___*___*

i sense her looking at me every so often.__ q, that chick keeps looking your way. it's true. i know i respond.
__i excuse myself and go mingle.
it's blank. time.
__what i remember is how small her waist is in my hands when we speak (just speak). i speak too softly and she leans in too close to hear me. i breathe her in. deliberately. i do it obviously and we lock eyes for a moment. __she breaks off first. looks back at the bar where that chick keeps looking your way.

i guess it's starting again.

seems to happen in the winter.

___*___*___*

on the train i watch a young couple. you dickhead! she says in a squeal and gives him a delicious smooch. i smile. briefcase on my lap. umbrella on top of that. hands joined in a neat clamped cluster on top of that.


___*___*___*

every night at about seven i knock on her door.
judge, i'm thinking of heading out - is there anything i can do for you before i leave? i say. she gives me a concerned look, oh - you shouldn't be here still. of course, go home, i'll see you tomorrow. same every night. not to worry judge, just some things to finish up. good evening then. same every night.

(empty, open, eyeless, identical mouths.
such a hunger these days have.


___*___*___*

i get a text:
 ___i had a dream. you were living with your mother because you were a
___ single parent to your illegitimate child.

i'm terrified. i can't speak. i'm a wreck for the rest of the night.


___*___*___*

next year i'll move out alone i've decided. it's dangerous , living alone isn't usually ideal for me. better to have someone nearby. good to force me into smiling and chatting. otherwise i can't differentiate myself from the furniture and half the time i can't remember if i'm me or a dream of myself or a memory of myself that's gotten misplaced or if i'm just a reverie and the real me will be waiting somewhere when i snap out of it. maybe i'll get a place with more space and grab a friend to live in it with me. separate chambers. something like that.

perhaps having my books and frames nearby will help me. i like having them. it makes me feel like mar and monz and jinab are in the room with me. that's always a good thing.


___*___*___*

"q u o k ?"

my mother's inadvertently witty text amuses me no end.

she calls three minutes later and spends the next 27 telling me how wonderful the voice is and tries to encourage me to watch it. and to eat more diverse foods and especially lots of olive oil - drink it if you have to. (yes mama).

"you ok?"
"yes yes, of course."
"i was worried about you, yesterday you didn't sound very good."
"good days and bad days mom" <-- she's familiar with this, this is my go-to line i say this one a lot.
"mmm"


___*___*___*

"q try and sleep okay? don't sit around for hours on your laptop."
"yes naDile(roomate1)"
"sleep. ___right?"
"yes, sleep. of course of course."
"okay. good night."
"good night elDian"

(that was 4 hours ago)