Mel you are not alone on this blog!! Virtually, and psychologically!!! As soon as I downloaded some images on Flickr during my coffee break, I started thinking about landscapes, imagination, reality, fantasy, places and spaces. Cities and towns. Small people and bigh people. Giants and munchkins. Covers and facades. Structures and pages. About reality being a book of our everyday stories. Dramatic, funny, noir, grotesque, comic, thriller like, documentary. For some reasons we overlay moments, situations and visual images creating sort of a real fake place. Or a fake real place. I am in a B&W moment. Sometimes it shows more details than the colored world!

I love this picture. I don't know why. it was taken long ago. it's always wonderful to surround yourself with your own images and imagination and of course great company! it's like a do-it-yourself world.... making it all yourself!

***http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e7spjU4zDdI (all is see kylie - acoustic!)

I keep mis reading this sign in my friend's studio, does it say 'not here'? or 'no there?'

right outside this door there are vines falling,and a small garden. last night I saw a huge potted sunflower, here in the philippines? how bizarre!

there isn't much that is really inspiring out here. but in the past 24 hours, somehow, it was different. I went to a couple of friends' studios and they were all these mad crazy worlds... not just physically, in the objects and spaces they dwell in. but also in our conversations. in the way they dressed. the way they all lived were pretty fascinating.(all have relocated from someplace else, mostly new york ... paris, milan...)the structure is this gestalt, more than it is prescribed by time or productivity. things just unfold. I guess there are many funky people living out here ... secretly, and in private.

perhaps this is a place where you can really do whatever you want. and become who you really are. no rules. except to have as much fun as possible at every single moment.

still rockin to kylie!
and kanye - paranoid

another proustian moment. another picture that shouldn't have even existed.
the reality was a mess. mixed up flight schedules. I arrive in manila with 3 other full flights in the torrential rain. the driver leaves my car in the middle of it all. I run into the car with all my luggage...soaking wet. driver is missing. (car left running)the past couple of hours were the opposite of paradise...thank god, he left the cd player blasting some kraftwerk.... ahhhhh. nice...so it's those little things that make a huge disaster, funky and funny.

thank god no one bothered to steal my car.

why is it freezing here in manila??? what's going on?

amazing to be back in my forest of an apartment. (plants are all in good shape, dog is missing) a jar of nutella on my desk, and a bottle of wine... wow... how did that happen? who left that (for me?) there's this talented janitor in my building who made me some little ecologies in pots for me too (4 different species in one pot! and well a carafe and rocks with plants growing out of them.) ok not good, how did that happen???)! so sweet (to be back home!) my brother left a huge photo of water bubbles, framed. with ribbons hanging all over it in my room.

my 6 fluffy pillows and organically dyed sheets... ahhhh ... my funky paradise!



jose gonzales (cover) - love will tear us apart

I am back in my little freaky town after a fantastic week in St. Moritz. I really had fun skiing like there was no tomorrow and descending the slopes like a funky avalanche!!! Just some pictures from, litterally, above the world! I love the snow! But now I am here, sitting in front of my computer wearing a tshirt...it's unbelievably warm here in Bellinzona. I am not sure if I rather preferred the cold or, the warm weather with the birds singing and the flower already blossoming. Now, since Mel keeps talking about surf I want to learn too! Maybe Efrem and I should join you on the waves!!!!

I miss my old roommate, gabby. no matter what was going on. we always just danced and celebrated the things that we loved....today I ran into him, and it was hilarious.in one of our secret spots in this city.I won't tell you where it is...


I don't know what anyone else is thinking or feeling. and I don't really want to hear it. I don't understand why it's not enough just to celebrate the things you love. enjoy it. and just be!

why does everything have to make un-funky sense? to me, I love funkiness. if it means playing kylie all day for 3 days, why not?



when we had nothing to do, we'd make party boxes. just in case, you wanted to throw a party spontaneously, you had this magic box from which an instant party could just pop out of! molto ghetto chic


*** thats's gabby (we're cousins) and my sister, they used to live close by, him in milano and she in bcn - 'gay-ciample, him in the red light district, with models and tartugos and a fantastic rooftop terazza! so funny!

he told me the other night 'mel, when things aren't working, just play kylie'

***of course I am wearing eairth, my funky paradise! I can't do much about my surroundings, but man, I could wear my own (funky paradise!)

all I see - kylie
your love - kylie

erika, emmylou's little sister works with me now... and it turns out she takes the funkiest pictures... here are some she shot from somewhere in our building. every afternoon she and gogo take a vertical stroll through our building, to get some air...

this one's for milena gruber! ah ah ah... let me post some when the party starts.. will pop some champagne for the 9th wonder fo the world...too bad I cannot cook, I had to order out... no garlic tonight... sorry milena...

***plus the flower market in my city is terrible these days...

right now I am 'cleaning'--- actually I have to turn it into a very funky paradise --- up my apartment for a shoot tonight...
look what I found!

now off to buy some flowers!

having been what they call 'a foreign' student for 7 years, this meant I was always on very long flights several times a year. like lily I never felt I belonged anywhere, and I still don't, except of course in my own funky paradise. I love being locked in an airplane for hours hours hours! somehow, I feel in between places and time (zones).

up in the air!

on land and 'normal' days, I found another paradise, taking pictures. when I have to go to a wedding or some very social event. I take my camera and disappear in the pictures I take. recording the funkiness that I actually see within all strangeness of it. bill simonian once stopped me in the hallway and said 'your brain is always on holiday'. he was right. and you know what, it still is!

the party in my head never stops!

I was just posting about life on my blog and I decided to continue my thinking on Funky Paradise. I feel strange since a couple of days. Carnival as you by now all know it's over and life just went back to the normal routine. Thinking about it I have to admit it actually really sucks! On top of that I am living my last couple of days with a terrible arm and neck pain. My body isn't really functioning the way it usually does! It is even hard to write this post but posting seems to be lately the funniest thing to do! Anyway, while downloading images on Flickr (For those who didnt read my other post I am actually repeating things but hey! Who cares!!!) when I realized I didn't save all of my Paris shots. Some of them I posted already on Freeform today but these I wanted to put them on Funky. Why? Mel was writing about what she really wants (in life) and that is surf (and a hot smart surfer dude...find one for me too pleaseeeeeeeee!!!). Life is quite boring in this town of mine lately. The weather is crazy. People are insane and I cant quite fit in...like Greg (Walsh) would say "you make like them I don't"!!!! So, when I saw these images I started thinking about a musical paradise. An urban symphony. A rocking place. They say places change your mood. It's what experts called and still do "Psychogeography". Finding these images just put some music into my day. Imaginary music. You can hear whatever you want to hear! But let's think about the blog world. Funky Paradise or Keepmecompany or Freeform or Protocaust or one of my favorite Paris2e can they be a virtual urban realm in which each post become neighborhoods? Each post become a place, and your mood, your feelings change in relation to what you read, what you see and what you ultimately feel. The orchestra is playing in some store window. The instrument are waiting in the other. An this song is the soundtrack of my day...a song that is making everybody hate me here at the office!!!!

I don't have many silent moments... There's always someone who recognizes me (Lily has seen this personally...) or someone I'm aquainted with tagentially. Like yesterday a good aquaintence named John who performs an impressive drum show on the Promenade here in Santa Monica, told me about how his father died and how his mother gave and did bad things to him that ruined him finacially, then ther was his almost fatal accident... I've known him for about a year now and this is the first time he'd ever said this to me and somehow deep inside, I appreciated this and I felt confused about it. So many people out there are hoping, dreaming and believeing... They all want paradise and the terrible reality that human life is so very frail and short, it doesn't make sense to me that evil and deception could have such a stranglehold on us: so you get people killing each other, cheating on their wives, becoming politicians, etc.

The evening my girlfriend (we would've been married by now) passed away, I realized that I hated people in general... They turned the greatest sorrow I've ever experienced into their personal crusade: 'She's in a better place now..." or 'God has her , she'll be fine...' or still, 'It was her time...' I wanted to kill them. All! I've seen where the dead go and NO ONE CAN TELL ME THAT THAT IS THE 'BETTER PLACE.'

Paradise is not a cemetary.

Paradise (at least for me) is silent, it's a quiet walk through your memories, it is listening to yourself...

Now I lie a quiet life when I'm in my apartment (my books, my drawings, my photos...) I get to do things for me, and there are a lot of 'Me' things to do.

God can never be the End of who I am (or hope to be), though the dream is seductive, we have a religion based on it. Mel, I think you're headed in the right direction (though my Life-values depend on how near Death is to me). Paradise is a personal destination. Not everbody will join you there, but I don't think its a bad thing...

all I really want to do is surf. and keep doing creative things that I love. talk only to people I adore. be with people I like or love. be in places that are real. the rest --- I don't know, stay far from me please. I've been very dismissive and rude (well snotty)I hate socializing. yesterday I told someone off (my grandmother's wake has been grueling), I said I only talk to people I like. and walked away.(in my head, I imagined slicing his head off with a samurai sword, today he didn't go near me! thank god!) that's why I grew my hair out so I can cover my face when it's too dark to wear sunglasses. I always look forward or the opposite direction, to avoid all possible contact.

paradise is privacy, some isolation and making a choice about it, to hell to 'obligations', I'm so moving out (to the beach, I hope)!!!!





U2 - sunday bloody sunday