POST SECRETS

I can keep a secret, just not my own. 

I'm a open book, but I wish I wasn't. I want to share when I shouldn't.

I could lay in bed all day if I let myself. I'm still in bed right now. 

I get mad at myself for not being creative, when I know I've got it in me.

I'm automatically drawn to shiny and sparkly things. Like a raccoon.

These are stolen from Post Secret, one of my favorite blogs: 

Patricia: Secrets

1. There is a song I have been hearing for years in the Mexican-infused back kitchens of California and New York restaurants. It's called "Amor Secreto" and at times I cannot get it out of my head.

2. I have one secret in the world, and it's temporary. Maybe two. And a select number are privy to both.

3. Posting pictures on this blog is still a mystery (secret) to me. I will do my best to find out by next time.

Dirty Little Secrets from Otherwise Perfect Moms

Dirty Little Secrets is a book of compiled quotes from real American Mom's who are confessing what they do just to get by. While I'm not a mom, I can relate to a lot of what these women are saying (I do have a boyfriend that needs a lot of tender loving care). Here are my favorite quotes:

"I let my two toddlers eat Milk Bones right out of the box. I figure if they're not barking, they're fine."

"My shrink tells me to laugh more. What a waste of
money."

"My rule is beer at lunch, wine at 5. Wine at lunch feels
like I have a "problem" but beer just seems OK."

"I bit my daughter's finger while trying to steal a bite out of
her cookie."

"My seven-year-old son walked in on us having sex. We
told him we were doing karate in bed."

"I do my son's homework just so we can get through it
faster. I grab his pencil and he just looks at me like I've lost
my mind."

"We forgot to buckle our two-year-old up in the car... when we
went around the corner, he flew over to the next seat and screamed 'f*#$ers!!'"

"It's impossible to keep my house clean so I just don't invite
people over. Ever."

"I tell my husband I am going to potty but actually lock myself in the
bathroom, sit on the edge of the tub, and read People."

Love, Olla
www.loveolla.wordpress.com

Secrets - Jessalyn

She took all of us and we in turn took each other, if only to find a morsel of her scent on each others' skin. And then, as was inevitable, we were left again only with each other and a fresh bitterness which we took turns playing nursemaid to.

What was it about her. That kept so many of us baying at her doorstep. Salivating for the slightest flick of her Atlantic colored eyes in our direction. She was a brutal teacher in the allure of silence. Anyone can be desirable if you can be quiet enough. If through silence you can suggest that the carrot seeds you hold in your palm are really emeralds.

The first time I split her I gasped and said, "You're pierced."
"No one ever notices," she murmured.
I did not understand how that was possible. She told me the story. As if the story was explanation:

The summer he left her. Wanted to become something exotic for him. Something strange and desirable in her strangeness. Went back to Florida. Went back to the humidity and the banyans and her mother and the man who did it had it photographed. His living room. Spread and knifed. Could not bring myself to ask her if from her body had flowed the most obscure and obscene tincture: clitoral blood. O what gold could you create, with that. What sicknesses you could you heal. The cunt already alchemic in its metallic lunar conjurings. Look here. Add this pale fluid. Transform. Did not ask but instead pulled her underwear up over her hips. Slept beside her in her slick gold sheets. In the morning left her dreaming in the waxing desert light. Returned home, as ever, to the man I lived with.

Only later understood just how much she had revealed. And much later, much much later, after she had gone, after she had left all of us, I found a line of mine in a poem of hers. Mine, yes, though refined to what it should have been, the pit expertly extracted with no soft flesh clinging to its whorls and folds: Secrets are telling.

Secret // under the table

sb - secret

unsent

unfinished

SECRETS, BOOK OF

death is a process


My very good friend Terra used to read Osho's Book of Secrets and send me text messages of bits of wisdom she found in there..

"Whenever you inhale, it is life, and whenever you exhale, it is death. The first thing a child does is to inhale. A child cannot exhale. The first thing is inhalation. He cannot exhale, because there is no air within his chest; he has to inhale. The first act is inhalation. And the old man, while dying, will do the last act, which will be exhalation. Dying, you cannot inhale - or can you? When you are dying, you cannot inhale. The last act cannot be inhalation; the last act will be exhalation. The first act is inhalation and the last is exhalation. Inhalation is birth and exhalation is death. But every moment you are doing both - inhaling, exhaling. Inhalation is life, exhalation is death.
You may not have observed, but try to observe it. Whenever you exhale, you are more at peace. Exhale deeply and you will feel a certain peace within. Whenever you inhale, you become intense, you become tense. The very intensity of inhalation creates a tension. And the normal, ordinary emphasis is always on inhalation. If I tell you to take deep breaths, you will always start with inhalation.
Really, we are afraid of exhaling. That's why breathing has become shallow. You never exhale, you go on inhaling. Only the body goes on exhaling, because the body cannot exist with inhalation alone. It needs both: life and death.
Try one experiment. The whole day, whenever you remember, exhale deeply and don't inhale. Allow the body to inhale; you simply exhale deeply. And you will feel a deep peace, because death is peace, death is silence."


If you are really alive you will not fear death.

PS: I just boarded a plane bound for Estonia. Wish me luck! My posts for the next couple months will be made from a few different countries..

St.Ofle -- Secret Smell

"You can tell by the kindness of a dog how a human should be."
- Captain Beefheart


this is a collage of a few photos that I took while visiting a slave plantation in Vacherie, Louisiana last week.

it was a slave plantation, but no one called it that.
They called it a "banana and sugar cane plantation" but they were kidding themselves.

I felt awful being there.

even a hundred of years after the last slave died, the stink of the evil part of the holy human spirit was still putrid and filled the air with the terrible secret smell of our horrible history.

Secret: The Key To Success Is Hidden Right Under The Mat

quitely

04/16 -- secrets

the topic for today is "secrets"

adrienne. consumption

nom nom nom.

Straight Shot

Hi everyone, photographer here.

Consumption - Michelle

-By Chris Von Szombathy

I came across this image today in my interneting. It made me giggle and I thought it fit in perfectly with the theme of consumption. If you ask me, there isn't much in this world that a giant burger won't fix.

Genaro - Consumption

"Before the twentieth century, the word consumption meant tuberculosis, and consumer was a non-entry in the lexicon. Now, parroting capitalists, even our purportedly left-wing pundits label us 'consumers,' treat all our off-the-job product-related activities as acts of 'consumption,' and tell us we live in a 'consumer society' with a 'consumer culture.'

For all that, do we roll our cars off cliffs to see them explode? Do we scramble to pour our just-bought beverages out in the grocer's parking lot? Do we rush home to smash our appliances with sledgehammers, then burn the sledgehammers in our fireplaces, then allow fire to burn down our houses--all to maximize our destruction--our consumption--of goods?"

-Michael Dawson, The Consumer Trap

I'm sure everyone has heard conspiracy stories of car manufacturer's capabilities of producing cars that won't need servicing for 50 years and can run on dramatically lower levels of fuel--or some of the first generation light bulbs that have been in operation for over 100 years, all in efforts to ensure the perpetual dependency of the consumer to their goods. Unfortunately, this is the natural progression of maintaining a 'healthy' economy. A rational argument would be that if manufacturers made goods to last, their markets will cease, and in turn the demise of the company, and so on . . .

More important than making goods that don't last (how many ipods/cellphones/computers have you gone through in the last 6 years?) is the detailed offensive against the consumer created to ensure dependency and confidence despite the longevity of usefulness of a product. Welcome to the world of disposable everything. Now companies rely on marketing strategies to keep us buying, disposing, and buying again. Internet networking sites, email service providers, and search engines blossomed into a marketer's wet dream, carefully and meticulously collecting valuable consumer data from the “counter cultures” they have tried oh so hard the past 60 years to replicate and authenticate to sell right back at you. Anyone that has gmail is usually perplexed to find several advertisements pitching you something that vaguely is connected to the last email you wrote.

The sad state of affairs is that most of ideological foundations of rationalizing consumer culture is our agency granted through capitalism with the wide variety of goods we can choose from. And if there aren't, we have the power to create our own good to provide competition (monopolies don't exist, right?)--moreover, our identity is somehow imbedded within our consumption choices (are you 'green'?). We are only what we buy. If there were some agency, marketing is set out to destroy it. Some would say that its pervasive qualities have made marketing successful in this arena. This microcosm of the self in our own consumer universe is intentionally perpetuated through marketers' strategies of individualizing the consumer, to the point where it has influenced the general form of marketing. Iphone, Ipod, myspace (and shortly afterward my-everythingelse.com—even campbell's soup got in on it). This is, in part, to ensure your identity is affiliated with their product (are you a Malboro Man?, or maybe a anthropomorphized version of a mac or pc?), and also to ensure the notion that you are so important to their company's wellbeing. You not only exist through these products, but for these products. Even worse, one's decision to avoid consumption of products on a moral or ethical stance reaffirms the existence of individuals only as consumers (I am terribly guilty of such actions).

I don't intend to take some anti-consumption or anarchist related stance on the issue at hand (not today, maybe next week), but it may be interesting to take some time to evaluate advertisements that seem to glorify your individualism, sell you 'you', or attempt to jump start your identity.

marc horowitz - free gold (consumption)

With Souls Like Baby Birds...

... mouths wide open, eyes closed, waiting blindly for "stuff." Pac-Man's in there, too: a voracious consumer and nothing more (a round-headed Patrick Bateman?) — the perfect mascot?

Consumption - graciela.

I guess I'll write too but I'd like to make a point for consumption. This is an opinion piece with bits of a conversation I have with an alternative universe version of myself.

Consumption as Individuality
One of the things that drives mass consumption and production, strangely enough, is our need to be individuals amongst the masses. It’s not enough that we physically are different but we need to show people that we are. Through some combination of marketing and our own issues about living in modernity, we’ve managed to extend our personalities, interests, and individuality to objects outside of ourselves. These things represent us and we use them to communicate things about ourselves to others around us. You can tell some things about people, like their tax bracket, musical interests, beliefs, etc. just by looking in their closet or around the house. For some of us, consumption makes us feel guilty and if you’ve become aware of the fact that you do “express” yourself with objects, it can be even more cumbersome. But what is the alternative?

A few months ago my dad went on some tirade about how we don’t need 70 different versions of the same shoe. But imagine if there were only 2 styles of shoes that came in 3 colors. We’d like to believe that we’d be okay with this because we don’t need to consume. As though somehow we’re on some kind of fringe where no one can touch us. But how could any of us be “different” from one another if we are limited by our consumption choices? G-d forbid any of us dress exactly like Britney Spears because that is the only choice in the market. Products help define us and it extends beyond fashion and bleeds into any and every aspect of buying power.

“Ok, well how could the laundry detergent I buy say anything about me?

Well, which kind do you buy?

“The Seventh Generation one. You know, the eco-friendly one.”

Eco-friendly. You take the time to buy a product for laundry that fits into your personal convictions and you don’t think that purchase says something about you?

“Hmmm. You make it sound like I can’t escape it.”

That’s exactly what I’m telling you. Why do you want to escape it? Because you think you’re different and you’re not comfortable being manipulated by ads and marketing?

“Well, yeah. Don’t you?”

Not really. It’s not about running away from consumption. It’s about being more aware. Aren’t there some businesses that you want to support?

“Of course. I like local businesses in my community and there are even some large companies that pay good wages, offer programs for their employees, and heck, even some want to help with causes I care about.”

Then be an educated consumer, do your homework, and make your money count for something more than a T-shirt or soap. After all, it’s your money. Just because they market to you doesn’t mean you can’t come to an educated decision about your purchase.

Consumption as Conscience
I’ve come to accept my role in the world and I’ve come to terms with the fact that I buy things and I buy things that I feel represent me in some way. I don’t think that makes me sad or delusional. It makes me more aware of the game and if I understand the rules, I have a better chance of winning. What makes consumption and marketing terrifying is that a lot of people choose to be oblivious to the ads being fed to them and the companies they buy from. It’s just easier to block out some of the truths about sweatshops and other ills because we can’t be bothered to do some research when we have full time jobs and a family to care for. The ad men exploit the fact that everyone fits into a market and that too many people are lazy or apathetic about their buying habits. So it’s up to the individual who wants to run away from that to make wiser choices and start different buying trends that are healthier. It’s why some companies shifted to sweatshop-free models and manufacture clothing in the US. Or even how all types of companies are trying to create eco products and operate in a sustainable way. They didn’t wake up one day and want to do it out of the kindness of their own hearts. Consumers drive consumption and we don’t have to fall into the pitfalls that make consumption evil. We can change things and there is a growing trend of “conscientious consumers” emerging in the market. People who care about where and how a product was made. The market will have to shift to meet those demands.

“So consumption in itself is not evil.”

Not at all and we can control it no matter what they’re trying to advertise.

Consumption

My name is Jessalyn Wakefield. I am a writer and letterpress printmaker. My website is am i human. Thrilled to be participating in this blog. I suppose my contributions will mostly consist of very short fiction.

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There is what is consumed and then there is what consumes me. What mouths I offer my Self to, what stomachs I am seized by. There was once woman who appeared to me as a bear. She left me tongueless. I kissed her and she devoured my voice. Consumed what I said and the organ of the saying as if they were perfumed sweets. Or as if they were hers. Rolled my tongue around her tongue, slow and full. And then: that swallow. My flesh became her flesh. Afterward she told me, I come from a land where we feed on books, our piss smells like old leaves, I come from the land of....