goodnight, world.

goodnight. say
your
prayers.
goodnight.

noche brillante.

tengo ganas de reflejar. y por algun razon tengo ganas de escribir en espanol. aglunas veces cosas me vienen en maneras diferentes. he descubierto que cuando ya no se de lo que escribere, escribo en espanol. me ayuda separar, organizar, y generar mis pensamientos. pues...esta semana ha sido inolvidable.

el lunes rogue a dios que me mande las leciones de "la vida." queria sentirme, queria sentir lo que una humana vivaz sentiria. pues, cosas acontencieron. dios era bueno.

el lunes carolyn y yo halbabamos sobre la vida. viajar, hablar otras lenguas, encontrar nuestras pasiones. era la vida.

el martes beth y yo hablaboms por telefono. tenia realizaciones sobre mi hermana y un amigo y su relacion y mi relacion con los dos. y era bueno.

el miercoles regrese a los anos de colegio medio...viaje a otro tiempo, un tiempo cuando tenia solamente 14 anos y experiencia el amor por la primera vez. corazonitos dibujados en el papelito. si, tenia un "crush" enorme en un muchacho. un muchacho guapo y inteligente y con muchos talentos. lo conoci un dia en mi trabajo, y era muy espontaneo...un dia lleno de coincidencias extranas que me ponia como un moto. emociones que no se podian controlar. halbamos sobre la fotografia. caminabamos por una senda hacia un campo de beisbol. y no me he sentido como eso hace desde...pues, un ano a lo menos...cuatro a lo mas.

el jueves solidificaba un amistad con meagan...y hablamaos sobre...la problemas de la vida. me sentia como Nicole Kidman en una pelicula muy tonta sobre una maga quien queria ser "normal" y halbar sobre las problems ordinarias en un cafe con sus amigas. y eso es lo que hice.

el jueves algo increible occurio: alcance la confianza. te preguntare ese chico si podiamos tomar un cafe el sabado. nunca hablo con los muchachos.

el jueves hablaba con ben sobre el tema de salir con el sexo opuesto. y...me sentia como si ben fuera mi padre. o mi pastor. (pues, es mi pastor, claro que si). el punto es que aprendia sobre una relacion que es agradable en los ojos de dios. hablamaos sobre mis sentimientos...lo que es malo, lo que es pecadoso, lo que es bueno, lo que es recto.

el viernes...lo mejor. lo mejor lo mejor lo mejor. aparte de una nota mala en mi examen de "midterm" en mi clase del economia, tome un cafe con eso chico...y era natural. soprendentemente natural. no glorioso, pero comodo. y no quiero comerlo, pero quier ser su amiga. pues...admito que quiero ser mas de una amiga, pero puedo esparar.

y entonces tenia una pasion otra vez por la fotografia. la fotografia del journalism...no solo por mi propio entretenemiento. me encantaba mi trabajo. y tomaba muchas fotos. de todo y todo. y queria estar en mi trabajo todos los dias. y queria hacer la fotografia. y queria hacer nada mas...sin viajar y hablar espanol.

(tambien me estilice mi cabello y me ponia alegre).

y ahora estoy con carolyn, ah mi amiga buenisma. gracias adios por bendecerme con las riquezas de la vida . gracias, mil gracias. y espero que no va a durar; ya lo se que no va a durar, pero por ahora...me sigue contenta.

adios. y buenas noches.

chicago.

isn't chicago nice?
isn't distortion nice?
isn't art nice?
even if it is a giant bean.

p.s. did you know that me cago means "i defecate" in spanish. i wonder why any city would be name chi-CAGO. that's gross. but i still like the city.

carajo

Whenever I read a new book I claim that it is my new favorite book. It usually is, too.

But this book really IS my new favorite book, and it stands apart from all of those other new favorite books.

Carlos Eire, am I myopic and naive to want to be you, or something like you...to see the world the way you see it? To live in Havana, or shall i say Habana, in 1959...even with Castro?

Yes, perhaps it is a bit twisted of me to wish that upon myself. But I am envious. I really am. And I compare my life to yours...my ordinary, white, suburban, middle-class life. Even the phrase "white, surbuban, middle-class life" is a white, suburban, middle-class phrase. Why can't I transcend my upbringing? Why can't I change my roots? That's the wrong question...why can't I absorb my roots, my childhood, my homeland? Why don't I feel comfortable calling America my homeland? And I supposedly have more: more education, more Christian principles, more this, more that. Why do I eschew it? Why do i want less? Or is it more??

It's not just the superficial. Sure, one can make the blaringly obvious comparison: I grew up in the Midwest in an age of PBS and backyard fences. You grew up in a tropical paradise in an age of paradoxical unbridled liberty...despite Castro. You had the ocean, that dark abyss that you write about, and recklessness and firecrackers and iguanas. Tangerine sunsets, lo exotico, and ciruela, furtabomba, and guanabana icecream. Your father was Louis the Fifteenth reincarnated, and your mother was Marie Antoinette.

So before looking past the superficial, I must confess that I long for that. Long isn't a good enough word. Anhelo para todo que es tuyo. I I yearn for all that is yours. #%$ARGH%#!&*$%# Culo, cono, hijo de puta, carajo. Culo, culo, culo feo. spanish explitives emitted by a tropical parrot... I want to be that parrot. because it gets to speak the language...it gets to KNOW the language, the culture. and it's a FREAKING BIRD! I really do think in Spanish at times...not to the extent that I did in Spain. Reading this book has been a trip back to Sevilla, but I am struck by so much MORE anhelo and longing and pain...I had something...I had Spain, todo que es espanol, for two glorious months, and now I have lost it. I don't wish to merely regain it though; I wish to be defined by it. and that's why I'm sad...because it can never be my native tongue. I love Spanish...the vowels, the accents, the smooth cadence of the lengauje cuando se habla como se canta. I wish I had that culture shaping my identiy; I wish that from birth I could have soaked all that is Spanish in my skin. The paella, the palms, the history, the beauty, even the tragedy. No, all I have is...America. new. democracy. the best country in the world. (sighs).

I want to say that I don't believe that wholeheartedly. I don't. But i feel obliged to say it. But i really don't. Yes, there are so many good and comfortable things about America, but that is just the problem. Where are the risks, the brushes with death, with life, the dramatic hues of experience? Where is the rich history and the culture and beautiful language? America is nice, but America is not beautiful. America is good, but America is not enthralling. America is all right, but it is not embued with that rich complexity. Rica. Hermosa. Llena de Pasion. Exotica. America no es eso.

And that's where i get stuck, lost in my own emotion...my own lack of emotion, rather. Carlos Eire, you had all that I want in Cuba. And you KNEW you had it...you are Cuban, you are shaped to the core by your country, your language, your history. The spirit of Cuba is the Cuba in you...it IS you. Hahaha, Courtney is being so dramatic and poetic you all think...but for Jesus. H. Christ de los culos I'm not! I read about beauty and tragedy and history and culture and life and death and sadness and lenguage y tristeza y el mundo de experienca rica. I read about it...it's so real or else all creative authors are just fucked up and deceiving us all. Why do i face criticism for wanting that richness? even the sadness? yes, i want the tragedy...because it's more interesting than my own life.

Show yourself to me
and let your gaze and your beauty kill me;
for the wound
of love,it can't be healed
save by your being here"
--Saint Thomas Aquinas, quoted by Carlos Eire in Waiting for Snow in Havana.

oh, there is so much more. Carlos Eire, I both admire you and envy you with endless celos for your thoughts. your perception, your understanding, your wrestling with the hardships of life itself and then the way you work out your salvation on paper with pen and spanish memories. you can write because you can feel. i want to feel. i want to experience such attachment to my homeland or my first love or my last love or my grandmother or my backyard. and i cry for you...i hurt for you because you have lost Cuba. you had paradise...and then it was seized from you in the name of "equality" by that tiny speck that squashed your home, your estate, your parents, your relatives, your homeland, your soul with his big fat muddy boot. fuck castro.

again, i repeat, culo culo culo feo. cono cojones carajo hijo de puta.

Is it stupid of me to want that unnumbered chapter? that vault of oblivion ? Those memories that are ugly as hell itself? argh why do i have to romanticize everything? you feel...you feel so much and it shows in your writing. you write, "Some chapters just can't be numbered. Not at all. I'm sure you have chapters like that in your life. ...You can't assign numbers to these chapters. Not even zero. Not even a zero ringed with thorns. You can't write them the same way as all the others. They can't look the same either. No. If you were to write them, you could only begin to do it at 2:30 a.m. after a horrible day."

Maybe i just need to dig deeper. Maybe i really am capable of unlocking the vault of emotion buried within my calloused heart. maybe i really am capable of feeling life so richly, albeit painfully. so real-ly. unadulterated.

It's just that the life that Carlos Eire writes of is so...paradoxical. At times I don't believe him...it's just a magical pardise and he writes with magical realism. Other times i think he's writing about hell itself. ANd then he's funny...so satirical. he paints pictures of incongruity and hilarity...juxtaposed with his seven proofs for the existence of God...all written with the urgency of a confession. It's not one thing or another, but many things and all things. Like those crazy holograms. Life is a hologram.

And that's what I liked...he showed everything, expressed every emotion, invoked every emotion in his readers...and it wasn't cheezy or unbelievable, even though it was unbelievable.

you won't understand unless you read it. so read it, and tell me if i'm crazy.

Estas despierto, hijo. Mas despierto que nunca.

all of human experience.

"I was the first to lay eyes on the woman with the big butt. Her rear end was monumental, large enough to contain all of the world, and all of human experience.

Thinly, very thinly veiled by red fabric, it spoke of many things without speaking. Fertile fields, sunlight, water, earthworms, hard labor, sweat, roots, greens, fruit, udders, milk, flies, muddy hooves, feathers, trucks full of produce, market stalls, blood, meat, money, canvas shopping backs bursting at the seams, kitchens with banged-up pots, rusty kerosene stoves, lard wrapped in wax paper, dripping tins of olive oil from Spain, diced onions hissing in black pans, garlic fumes, knives that gave off sparks when sharpened on pedal-driven wheels lined with flint, sparks that flew like planets being born, Band-Aids, iodine, aprons stained with memories, ladles, sptaulas, spoons, forks, dishes, glasses stained with lipstick, cups, napkins, table-cloths folded by grandmothers, dishes steaming on the table, thinkly sliced avocados, fried plantains, malanga, yucca, carne asada, arroz con pollo, picadillo, ropa vieja, tasajo, papas rellenas, tons of rice, blakc beans, garbanzos, red beans, paella, beer, wine, rum, coffee, flan made in old chorizo tins, custard with vanilla wafers stuck inside, guaba paste and cream cheese on crackers, lots of sugar, sunsets, endless talk, whispers, shouts, gossip, songs, music on the radio, dancing in place, hands around the waist, hands on the back, familiar bones felt under the flesh, new ones discovered, heat within, heat in the air, kisses, joy, disappointment, betrayal, sorrow, arguments, prayer, sex, birth, ration cards, firing squads, illness, and death.

And egglplants, of course.

And oh, yeah, love too. I'm sure love had a lot to do with making that butt so big."

--Carlos Eire, in Waiting for Snow in Havana

that's humanity for you.

old albums

something special happened tonight. not everyone would find it special; in fact, I feel as only beth and I felt the moment for what it was. my family members wouldn’t appreciate it for what it was. nor would my RUF friends. nor would john. not even joe.

I’m not bashing them for that; it’s not a negative trait, just a mere observation.

I think that art does that to you. When you look at art and someone else sees it the same way you do…and you both make discoveries about it with each other, building off of each other’s unique observations and comments…you sort of create art and create an experience in itself.

I really do have goosebumps right now.

I looked at beth jaxon’s photo albums with her. a casual browsing through her digital albums led me to second and third base…and blossomed into an erotic love affair with art, photography, childhood, emotion, and humanity itself. I’m not joking. nor am I striving to be “poetic,” whatever that is. photography can capture so much; no words can adequately describe what I’m feeling right now. it’s not really an excitement or a euphoria...just a calmness and peace and warm happiness emanating from my core that warms even the tips of my fingers. like stepping inside of a warm house after making snow-angels. rosy cheeks and an ice-cold nose. wet clothing forsaken, and you are naked…embracing the warmth of the fireplace and indigo wool blankets.

composition, light, and moment. these aren’t core elements, after all.

I’ve never had such and intense picture-viewing session…especially with someone else’s childhood photos. yes, at first I saw japan, paris, Dublin, pretty mountains, cool shadows, some fog, and lots of buildings. but it was so much more than that…it was like with each picture I fell more in love with photography: with the places IN the photos, the way the composition captured the subject matter in a fresh way…and then the whole thought process…the whole visual experience. I really can’t explain it.

Beth has such an inventive spirit with unbridled curiosity. It comes out in her photographs, and I really admire that. My pictures are quite uptight in comparison...not necessarily the final product, but the thinking behind each photo. I don’t let myself loose; it’s like when I was in cross-country and I would slow down at the end of the 5ks when everyone else was speeding up, numb to the pain and heat…succumbing ethereally into the adrenaline and the endorphins. Climaxing. I want my pictures to do that…yet I am confined by photojournalism and DTH assignments. Rarely do I venture outside on a rainy day to play with shadows, explore the campus, climb the trees and just sit. my outlook on life is stale. photography is a free ticket to a life of exploration, devoid of boredom and stagnancy. I have not yet tapped into that…I am holding back, scared to express myself. MYSELF. not beth jaxon, not joe madden, not pat Davison or sam abell or ansel adams. I wonder what Courtney Ann Potter’s photographs can be. And I wonder how much fun I can have taking them. I wonder what places I can see, what moments I can freeze, what emotion I can feel.

Raw.

I am going to take pictures of my children. I am going to take loads of pictures of my children.

If I never get anything published and remain a starving artist the rest of my life, then so be it. I will have pictures of my children.

beth’s childhood photo albums…oh my goodness. it wasn’t just the composition (which was stellar). It wasn’t just good lighting. It wasn’t even moment…though there was plenty of that. It was…I dunno, I can’t really put my finger on just a single term that describes what it was. it was so many things…beth’s expressions in the pictures. so emotive…so intense and then so carefree. swirls of motion blur, soft blinking eyes, wiggling toes. all sorts of creating…she was so artful in her demeanor. it seemed like in each picture she was exploring.

Exploring nature.
her backyard.
Exploring intimacy.
her family
Exploring common everyday objects.
plasticware
Exploring basic human emotions.
laughter, rage, curiosity, love, ecstasy.
Exploring her own sense of exploration.
with intensity.

how did her parents capture that in the pictures? I don’t think it’s just good photography…or is it good photograpy? good photography transcends the rulebook and gives you a powerful, unadulterated glimpse into Soul. you forget all about the photography and focus on the emotion, the moment. You understand it with your whole being. You feel it. You are it.

(I swear I’m not some New Age guru).

I’ve never looked at pictures in this way. I’ve never looked at photography in this way. I’ve never looked at people in this way, human life in this way.

I want to take pictures of my kids. I don’t want to just record the superficial obvious things…the birthday party…the crying face, the sleepy face, the happy face. I want to capture so much more…and I want to create. beth jaxon, three years old, sitting on a yellow fire hydrant clad in a yellow dress with yellow shoes. creation.

I’ve figured it out. This is the answer to the question I’ve asked for the past few years, posed by Thoreau. It’s how you suck the marrow out of life. You let loose, you explore, you create, you partake, you share.

I vow never to be too busy for taking pictures of my own children. I want to let loose…to constantly explore these real humans under my own roof. I want to discover their essence and capture that on film…record it for generations and generations and generations. Discovery, Exploration, Creativity, Curiosity…all bound together by Love.

This is my joie de vivre.

sparks.

Such a perfect way of thinking about those fuses, and also life. You begin at one end, and as you make your way forward, point by infinitesimal point, you give off sparks. And what you leave behind is charred, consumed, transformed. But that glorious voyage towards the end: poets never grow weary of trying to describe it. The end, or telos, as Aristotle or Aquinas would tell you, is the very reason for existence, the purpose of anything that exists. Our telos as humans, yours and mine, is to abide with God for eternity. The sparks on our way there, large and small, call them love. The telos of a fuse on a firecracker is a nice explosion. The sparks on the way there, call them love too.

happy list.

I once made "Happy List" when i was a naive yet happy-go-lucky fourteen year-old. Though still naive and slightly more straitlaced (darn), I feel like creating a new list.

Things That Make Me Happy
staring at artwork for a long period of time
christianity
ben inman
Bosch
Sam Abell
photography
creativity
spontaneity
late-night swimming in the moonlight
summer
grass under my toes
the way spring smells
cloves
endorphines
running, ellipticalizing, biking, and frolicking
fields full of sunflowers
finger-painting
rainy days
dark, moody skies
lightning and thunder
tornados
tomatos
blueberry bushes
soap bubbles in the sink
the word 'bicho'
japan
chopsticks
existential movies
woody allen
love movies
love
passion
beauty
abstract ideals
screaming at the top of my lungs
crying
doing laundry
letting my room get really messy and then cleaning it up in one gigantic undertaking
downy detergent
lavenders
bumblebees
british music
indie rock
learning
discovery
college
knowing someone really well
deep conversations
mindless conversations
sleeping
foreign men
tin lunchboxes
window shopping
craft-fairs
chicago, st. louis, new york, and valencia.
south america
travel
dreams
my roommate
living primitively (relatively speaking)
friendship.

okay, so i'm going to stop here. there's so much more. i'll add to it later.

pit hit

taken fifteen minutes after the Pit Run last friday. six students were injured when a crazed alumnus drove through the Pit at 35 miles per hour, avenging "muslim deaths around the world" and injuring students in the name of Allah. two students react, stunned, at the Nubian Queen Luncheon after it was rudely and tragically disrupted by the Pit Run. i stopped shooting the Luncheon to go to the Pit...it was chaotic and quite disturbing.

Once upon a time.

The Aventuras Extraordinarias de Courtney.
As of today to forevermore.
By Courtney A. Potter.

Once upon a time there lived a girl named Courtney Ann Potter. She was neither a beauty nor a goddess; neither a genius nor an inventor. And though these realities bothered her, she tried hard to ignore them and be herself.

Courtney had an affair with Photography. In fact, she cheated on Writing in order to flirt with a dark, mysterious, and handsome Canon Digital Rebel XT. He took her on romantic dates: they dined at Caruburritos over a juicy black bean burrito, they built a house together at Habitat for Humanity, and they watched the sunset streak the Carolina blue sky with pale orange and rose strokes.

Courtney discovered new knacks and personal characteristics as she batted eyes with Photography. He helped her meet her cohort in crime in co-conspirator in sleep: Drea Krutulis. The two roommates slept, ate popcorn, and facebooked quite often.

Courtney went to Chicago over Spring Break and had a smashing time with her best friend Julianne. Together they wreaked havoc upon the Windy City, and Rebel Xt was there the whole time (but this story is no longer about him). Then Josef picked Courtney up and they traversed the frigid Illinois plains to Chambana. At the foot of the rainbow there was a chessboard, cinematic productions, classical music, and good red wine.

Courtney went back to UNC and made lots of new friends and played with a super-long telephoto lens. During the summer she got an internship with the Duke Center of Documentary Studies and got to speak spanish a lot. and play with cameras. and children.

then her family moved to North Carolina and she was happy. tuition went down like a billion dollars and she could do laundry for free. and spring started in february.

the next year courtney roomed with carolyn gray in the beautiful north campus dormitories. never again was she late to class on account of sheer laziness and dread of walking uphill for fifteen laborious, tedious, endless minutes. ccourtney and carolyn watched lots of grey's anatomy and foreign films. and they dined on popcorn and played with playdough.

in the spring courtney went on a big boat around the whole world for a semester. she went to brazil and south africa and india and taiwan. she learned about oceanography and black and white photography and world art. and she saw the great wall of china.

in the summer courtney came home and got an internship with a reknowned newspaper. she took lots of pictures and feel more deeply in love with Photography.

in the fall Courtney decided to be like the protaganist in the Motorcycle Diaries and went to Chile. she spoke lots of spanish and ate good tamales. and petted llamas. and she really liked south america and didn't want to return to UNC.

but she did.

many photographs, blogs, deep conversations, and frolicking passed. and courtney graduated. and then she fell in love with a south american beauty and they got married and traveled the world together. they evaded the white suburban dream and made a difference, telling compelling stories through poetry, writing, and photography.

courtney had lots of babies and lots of grandchildren. she died in africa at the ripe old age of 87. she was trampled by a giraffe.

the end.

well, i don't know about the ending, but those are my dreams for now.

i actually want more than that...and those sounded horribly self-centered. i want what everyone wants, really: love, passion, relationships, spontaneity, vitality, invigoration, innovation. i want to suck the marrow out of life.

Thank you, and goodnight.