Miranda July´s Quotes

What a terrible mistake to let go of something wonderful for something real."
— Miranda July (No One Belongs Here More Than You)

146 people liked it

"I laughed and said, Life is easy. What I meant was, Life is easy with you here, and when you leave, it will be hard again."
— Miranda July (No One Belongs Here More Than You)

98 people liked it

"Look at the sky: that is for you. Look at each person's face as you pass on the street: those faces are for you. And the street itself, and the ground under the street, and the ball of fire underneath the ground: all these things are for you. There are as much for you as they are for other people. Remember this when you wake up in the morning and think you have nothing."
— Miranda July (No One Belongs Here More Than You)

82 people liked it

"Some people need a red carpet rolled out in front of them in order to walk forward into friendship. They can't see the tiny outstretched hands all around them, everywhere, like leaves on trees.

Ten True Things"
— Miranda July (No One Belongs Here More Than You)

tags: friendship

78 people liked it

"But, like ivy, we grow where there is room for us."
— Miranda July (No One Belongs Here More Than You)

60 people liked it

"Inelegantly, and without my consent, time passed."
— Miranda July (No One Belongs Here More Than You)

tags: time

58 people liked it

"This pain, this dying, this is just normal. This is how life is. In fact, I realize, there never was an earthquake. Life is just this way, broken, and I am crazy for dreaming of something else."
— Miranda July (No One Belongs Here More Than You)

58 people liked it

"Are you angry? Punch a pillow. Was it satisfying? Not hardly. These days people are too angry for punching. What you might try is stabbing. Take an old pillow and lay it on the front lawn. Stab it with a big pointy knife. Again and again and again. Stab hard enough for the point of the knife to go into the ground. Stab until the pillow is gone and you are just stabbing the earth again and again, as if you want to kill it for continuing to spin, as if you are getting revenge for having to live on this planet day after day, alone."
— Miranda July (No One Belongs Here More Than You)

tags: loneliness

57 people liked it

"People tend to stick to their own size group because it's easier on the neck. Unless they are romantically involved, in which case the size difference is sexy. It means: I am willing to go the distance for you.

The Shared Patio"
— Miranda July (No One Belongs Here More Than You)

46 people liked it

"That day I carried the dream around like a full glass of water, moving gracefully so I would not lose any of it."
— Miranda July (No One Belongs Here More Than You)

41 people liked it

"Do you have doubts about life? Are you unsure if it is really worth the trouble? Look at the sky: that is for you. Look at each person's face as you pass them on the street: those faces are for you. And the street itself, and the ground under the street, and the ball of fire underneath the ground: all these things are for you. They are as much for you as they are for other people. Remember this when you wake up in the morning and think you have nothing. Stand up and face the east. Now praise the sky and praise the light within each person under the sky. It's okay to be unsure. But praise, praise, praise.
"
— Miranda July

36 people liked it

"Some may say that such a girl is not ready for a relationship with a man, especially a man in his late sixties. But to that I say: We don't know anything. We don't know how to cure a cold or what dogs are thinking. We do terrible things, we make wars, we kill people out of greed. So who are we to say how to love. I wouldn't force her. I wouldn't have to. She would want me. We would be in love. What do you know. You don't know anything. Call me when you've cured AIDS, give me a ring then and I'll listen."
— Miranda July (No One Belongs Here More Than You)

tags: love

32 people liked it

"If there were a map of the solar system, but instead of stars it showed people and their degrees of separation, my star would be the one you had to travel the most light-years from to get to his. You would die getting to him."
— Miranda July (No One Belongs Here More Than You)

32 people liked it

"I looked at other couples and wondered how they could be so calm about it. They held hands as if they weren't even holding hands. When Steve and I held hands, I had to keep looking down to marvel at it. There was my hand, the same hand I've always had - oh, but look! What is it holding? It's holding Steve's hand! Who is Steve? My three-dimensional boyfriend. Each day I wondered what would happen next. What happens when you stop wanting, when you are happy. I supposed I would go on being happy forever. I knew I would not mess things up by growing bored. I had done that once before."
— Miranda July (No One Belongs Here More Than You)

31 people liked it

"The idea that you might end up in a job that doesn't allow you to be who you are, over the course of a lifetime, is still one of the most chilling nightmares to me. It's a good metaphor for fears I have about losing my soul in some accidental, mundane way. So, to me, these jobs that my characters have are very loaded. They immediately suggest a complex character to me, a woman who is, say, a secretary, but also a vigilante on behalf of her own soul."
— Miranda July

29 people liked it

"You always feel like you are the only one in the world, like everyone else is crazy for each other, but it's not true. Generally, people don't like each other very much. And that goes for friends, too. "
— Miranda July

tags: friends, misanthropy, people

27 people liked it

"He seemed to be waiting for me to move forward. Weren't we all."
— Miranda July (No One Belongs Here More Than You)

27 people liked it

"Live the dream, Potato."
— Miranda July (No One Belongs Here More Than You)

26 people liked it

"It was a real whale, a photograph of a real whale. I looked into its tiny wise eye and wondered where that eye was now. Was it alive and swimming, or had it died long ago, or was it dying now, right this second? When a whale dies, it falls down through the ocean slowly, over the course of a day. All the other fish see it fall, like a giant statue, like a building, but slowly, slowly."
— Miranda July (No One Belongs Here More Than You)

24 people liked it

"We were excited about getting jobs; we hardly went anywhere without filling out an application. But once we were hired - as furniture sanders - we could not believe this was really what people did all day. Everything we had thought of as The World was actually the result of someone's job. Each line on the sidewalk, each saltine. Everyone had a rotting carpet and a door to pay for. Aghast, we quit. There had to be a more dignified way to live. We needed time to consider ourselves, to come up with a theory about who we were and set it to music.

Something That Needs Nothing"
— Miranda July (No One Belongs Here More Than You)

19 people liked it

"They wordlessly excused each other for not loving each other as much as they had planned to. There were empty rooms in the house where they had meant to put their love, and they worked together to fill these rooms with midcentury modern furniture. ("Birthmark")."
— Miranda July (No One Belongs Here More Than You)

tags: emptiness, love

18 people liked it

"There was nothing in this world that was not a con, suddenly I understood this. Nothing really mattered, and nothing could be lost. "
— Miranda July (No One Belongs Here More Than You)

18 people liked it

"This person realizes that staying home means blowing off everyone this person has ever known. But the desire to stay in is very strong. This person wants to run a bath and then read in bed."
— Miranda July (No One Belongs Here More Than You)

tags: alone, home, read

18 people liked it

"People are always breaking through, like in the Doors song 'Break on Through (To the Other Side)'. But I really had. I had broken through twice now, and my feeling about the universe was that it was porous and radical and you could turn it on, you could even fuck around with the universe."
— Miranda July (No One Belongs Here More Than You)

15 people liked it

"I made orange juice from concentrate and showed her the trick of squeezing the juice of one real orange into it. It removes the taste of being frozen. She marveled at this, and I laughed and said, Life is easy. What I meant was, Life is easy with you here, and when you leave, it will be hard again."
— Miranda July

15 people liked it

"I walked down the hall and saw that [she] was sitting on the floor next to a chair. This is always a bad sign. It's a slippery slope, and it's best just to sit in chairs, to eat when hungry, to sleep and rise and work. But we have all been there. Chairs are for people, and you're not sure if you are one."
— Miranda July (No One Belongs Here More Than You)

tags: life, sad

15 people liked it

"Inelegantly and without my consent, time passed.

How to Tell Stories to Children 
p198 "
— Miranda July (No One Belongs Here More Than You)

14 people liked it

"I really did not feel okay about any of this, and there was really nothing I could do about any of it.

How to Tell Stories to Children
p199 "
— Miranda July (No One Belongs Here More Than You)

13 people liked it

"I cried in English, I cried in french, I cried in all the languages, because tears are the same all around the world."
— Miranda July (No One Belongs Here More Than You)

13 people liked it

"I looked out the window for other passengers in love with their drivers, but we were well disguised, we pretended boredom and prayed for traffic."
— Miranda July (No One Belongs Here More Than You)

12 people liked it

"Sometimes I would make left turns all the way around a block, and when I returned to the original intersection, I would feel disappointed to find all the drivers were new. It wasn't like a square dance, where you miraculously end up with your original partner, laughing and feeling giddily relieved to find him after dancing with everyone else in the world. Instead, they swung around and kept on going, some people were at work by now, or halfway to the airport. In fact, driving might be the thing most opposite of dancing."
— Miranda July

12 people liked it

"In the weeks that followed, we amazed ourselves. Our habits slid apart easily...And our very few intimacies were simply discontinued. Where did they go, those things we did? Were they recycled? Did some new couple in China do them? Were a Swedish man and woman foot to foot at this very moment? "
— Miranda July (No One Belongs Here More Than You)

tags: loneliness, love

12 people liked it

"Would she understand that time had stopped while she was gone."
— Miranda July (No One Belongs Here More Than You)

11 people liked it

"... we had once called out hello into the cauldron of the world and then run away before anyone could respond."
— Miranda July (No One Belongs Here More Than You)

9 people liked it

"That is my problem with life, I rush through it, like I'm being chased. Even things whose whole point is slowness, like drinking relaxing tea. When I drink relaxing tea I suck it down as if I'm in a contest for who can drink relaxing tea the quickest."
— Miranda July

9 people liked it

"I went to the bedroom and lay on the floor, so as not to mess up the covers."
— Miranda July (No One Belongs Here More Than You)

8 people liked it

"It is terrible to have to ask for anything ever. We wish we were something that needed nothing, like paint. But even paint needs repainting."
— Miranda July (No One Belongs Here More Than You)

8 people liked it

"I could not make a move without making love."
— Miranda July (No One Belongs Here More Than You)

8 people liked it

"He breathed out the bitter air that makes women doubt everything, and I breathed it in, as I had always done. I expelled my dust, the powder of everything I had destroyed with doubt, and he pulled it into his lungs."
— Miranda July (No One Belongs Here More Than You)

7 people liked it

"She never inquired, but she never recoiled, either. This is a quality that I look for in a person, not recoiling."
— Miranda July (No One Belongs Here More Than You)

6 people liked it

"We don't have intercourse anymore. I'm not complaining, it's my own fault. I lie there beside him and try to send signals to my vagina, but it's like trying to get cable channels on a Tv that doesn't have cable. My mind requests sex, but my vagina is just waiting for the next time it has to pee. It thinks its whole job in life is to pee."
— Miranda July (No One Belongs Here More Than You)

6 people liked it

"I asked myself if I would kill my parents to save his life, a question I had been posing since I was fifteen. The answer always used to be yes. But in time, all those boys had faded away, and my parents were still there. I was now less and less willing to kill them for anyone; in fact, I worried for their health. In this case, however, I had to say yes. Yes, I would."
— Miranda July

5 people liked it

"She bludgeoned me with a look of such limitless compassion that I immediately began to cry."
— Miranda July (No One Belongs Here More Than You)

4 people liked it

"Things usually make sense in time, and even bad decisions have their own kind of correctness."
— Miranda July

4 people liked it

"Two plus three is five, check the email, one plus seven is, check the email, eight, check the email, which comes to a total of, who the hell am I anyway, eighty five. This is how he dismembers his day, in the most painful way, moment by moment. A bigger man would just shoot it, put it out of its misery."
— Miranda July (No One Belongs Here More Than You)

3 people liked it

"When she saw my messy desk, she said she was the same way, and there was no dust on the TV, and I was easy to love. People just need a little help because they are so used to not loving. It's like scoring the clay to make another piece of clay stick to it."
— Miranda July (No One Belongs Here More Than You)

3 people liked it

"Inelegantly and without my consent, time passed."
— Miranda July

2 people liked it

"I laughed and said, life is easy. What I meant was, life is easy with you here, and when you leave it will be hard again. "
— Miranda July (No One Belongs Here More Than You)

2 people liked it

"Some may say that such a girl is not ready for a relationship with a man, especially a man in his late sixties. But to that I say: We don’t know anything. We don’t know how to cure a cold or what dogs are thinking. We do terrible things, we make wars, we kill people out of greed. So who are we to say how to love. I wouldn’t force her. I wouldn’t have to. She would want me. We would be in love. What do you know. You don’t know anything. Call me when you’ve cured AIDS, give me a ring then and I’ll listen."
— Miranda July (No One Belongs Here More Than You)

2 people liked it

"We don't really believe in mowing the lawn; we do it only to avoid unnecessary engagement with the neighbors."
— Miranda July (No One Belongs Here More Than You)

1 person liked it

With these wonderful quotes, I conclude my series of posts about Miranda July and her various works. She is an amazing artist and I hope you liked it. 

Getting Stronger Every Day - Miranda July´s short story

"There are two movies I saw on TV about boys who were taken from their families and then returned to them years later. One boy was on a fun spaceship for years and the other boy was kidnapped and molested. These boys were never the same again and they just couldn't re-integrate into the family. I saw these movies when I was little. I've often described them to people, always paired together. They are sort of the comedy and tragedy version of the same story and it is a mundanely spiritual story. Getting Stronger Every Day includes these boys' tales, but they are like mystical objects placed on the living reality of the man storyteller. In other parts of the movie actual mystical objects hover in peoples lives without a myth or story attached. I like to think about how these dimensions interact simply and can be enacted: real life / story / worldly / spirit / video / flat drawing." Miranda July

Atlanta - Miranda July´s short video

1996, 10 minutes
A 12 year-old Olympic swimmer and her mother (both played by July) speak to the public about "going for the gold".

Videoed by Miranda July, Wu La Dawson, and Summer Mastous
Edited by Miranda July

Miranda July makes movies, performances, recordings and combinations of these things. July's first feature-length film, Me and You and Everyone We Know premiered in January 2005 at the Sundance Film Festival, where it received a special jury prize for originality of vision. It debuted internationally at the Cannes Film Festival where it was awarded with four prizes, including the Camera d'Or. It was released theatrically in July of 2005. July's videos ( Haysha Royko, The Amateurist, Nest of Tens, Getting Stronger Every Day ) have been screened internationally at sites such as the Museum of Modern Art, the Guggenheim Museum and in the 2002 Whitney Biennial. July participated in the 2004 Whitney Biennial with learningtoloveyoumore.com. July's multi-media performances ( Love Diamond, The Swan Tool, How I Learned to Draw ) have been presented at venues such as the Institute of Contemporary Art in London and The Kitchen in New York. July's stories can be read in The Paris Review, The Harvard Review and Zoetrope All Story.

Miranda July´s - Neumo´s Seattle

The acclaimed filmmaker, performer and writer reads short stories from her book "No One Belongs Here More Than You." A Q&A with the audience follows the reading.

Miranda July´s reading at Hammer Museum @ UCLA

I have first had contact with Miranda July´s work by her movie You and Me and Everyone We Know a while ago. Since then I have been following her work which spreads itself through performances, art, interventions, books, acting, music and videos, for example. She is trully a multi-artist and I love her artistic tone. She has insightful ideas and questions, as every person should have and as every artist must have.

You will enjoy this video.

Miranda July´s interview

Miranda July is a prolific performance and video artist. She stepped into the mainstream limelight when her 2005 film Me and You and Everyone We Know became an international hit. But instead of rushing into another feature film project, Miranda has been "in a hurry to do everything else". Like making exhibitions featuring the delicate and personal do-it-yourself art from the ever-expanding Learning To Love You More web project. We met Miranda at MU, an art space in Eindhoven, a few hours before the opening of the exhibition. Miranda July is the first in a new series of Pretty Cool People Interviews.

Miranda July Interviews her own book: No One Belongs Here More Than You

Miranda July´s Book No one belongs here more than you!

That´s it: four different color that you can choose from.

Miranda Interview her own book. It´s funny! 

Check it out:

Funny video montage a fan put together about Miranda´s work

"Things We Don't Understand And Are Definitely Not Going To Talk About" - Miranda July

A tale of heartbreak and obsession so familiar you could tell it yourself.

performance at The Kitchen 03/02/07 by Miranda JUly

Birthmark - Miranda July

Birthmark

by Miranda July

On a scale of one to ten, with ten being childbirth, this will be a three.

A three? Really?

Yes. That's what they say.

What other things are a three?

Well, five is supposed to be having your jaw reset. So it's not as bad as that.

No.

What's two?

Having your foot run over by a car.

Wow, so it's worse than that?

Just a little worse, not much.

Okay, well, I'm ready. No - wait; let me adjust my sweater.

Okay, I'm ready.

Alright then.

Here goes a three.

Right. Here we go then.

The laser, which had been described as pure white light, was more like a fist slammed against a countertop, and her body was a cup on this counter, jumping with each slam. It turned out three was just a number. It didn't describe the pain any more than money describes the things it buys. Two thousand dollars for a port-wine stain removed. A kind of birthmark that seems messy and accidental, as if this red area covering one whole cheek were the careless result of too much fun. She spoke to her body like an animal at the vet, Shhh, it's okay, I'm sorry, I'm so sorry we have to do this to you. This is not unusual; most people feel that their bodies are innocent of their crimes, like animals or plants. Not that this was a crime. She had waited patiently from the time she was fourteen for aesthetic surgery to get cheap, like computers. Nineteen ninety-eight was the year lasers came to the people as good bread, eat and be full, be finally perfect. Oh yes, perfect. She didn't think she would have bothered if she hadn't been what people call "very beautiful except for." This is a special group of citizens living under special laws. Nobody knows what to do with them. We mostly want to stare at them like the optical illusion of a vase made out of the silhouette of two people kissing. Now it is vase ... now it could only be two people kissing ... oh but it is so completely a vase. It is both! Can the world sustain such a contradiction. Only this was better, because as the illusion of prettiness and horribleness flipped back and forth, we flipped with it. Now we were uglier than her, now we were lucky not to be her, oh but then again, at this angle she was too lovely to bear. She was both, we were both, and the world continued to spin.

Now began the part of her life where she was just very beautiful. Except for nothing. Only winners will know what this feels like. Have you ever wanted something very badly and then gotten it. Then you know that winning is many things, but it is never the thing you thought it would be. Poor people who win the lottery do not become rich people. They become poor people who won the lottery. She was a very beautiful person who was missing something very ugly. Her winnings were the absence of something, and this quality hung around her. There was so much potential in the imagined removal of the birthmark, any fool on the bus could play the game of guessing how perfect she would look without it. Now there was not this game to play, there was just a spent feeling. And she was not an idiot, she could sense it. In the first few months after the surgery she received many compliments, but they were always coupled with confusion.

Now you can wear your hair up and show off your face more.

Yeah, I'm going to try it that way.

Wait, say that again.

I'm going to try it that way. What?

Your little accent is gone.

What accent?

You know, the little Norwegian thing.

Norwegian?

Isn't your mom Norwegian?

She's from Denver.

But you have that little bit of an accent, that little way of saying things.

I do?

Well not anymore, it's gone now.

And she felt a real sense of loss. Even though she knew that she had never had an accent. It was just the birthmark, which in its density had lent color to even her voice. She didn't miss the birthmark, but she missed her Norwegian heritage, like learning of new relatives after they have died.

All in all though, this was minor, less disruptive than insomnia (but more severe than déja vu). Over time she knew more and more people who had never known her with the birthmark. And you would assume that these people didn't feel any haunting absence, because why should they. Her husband was one of these people. You could tell by looking at him. Not that he wouldn't have married a woman with a port-wine stain. But he wouldn't have. Most people don't and are none the worse for it. Of course sometimes it would happen that she would see a couple and one of them would have a port-wine stain and the other one would clearly be in love with this person, and she would hate her husband a little. Which was ridiculous because he was innocent. But he wasn't an idiot and so he would notice.

Are you being weird?

No.

You are.

Actually I'm not. I'm just eating my salad.

I can see them too you know. I saw them come in.

Hers is worse than mine was. Mine didn't go down on my neck like that.

Do you want to try this soup?

I bet he's an environmentalist. Doesn't he look like one?

Maybe you should go sit with them.

Maybe I will.

I don't see you moving.

Did you just finish the soup?

I thought we were splitting. I offered it to you.

Well you can't have any of this salad then.

It was a small thing, but it was a thing, and things have a way of either dying or growing, and it wasn't dying. Years went by. This thing grew, like a child, microscopically, every day. And since they were team, and all teams want to win, they continuously adjusted their vision to keep its growth invisible. They wordlessly excused each other for not loving each other as much as they had planned. There were empty rooms in the house where they had meant to put their love and they worked together to fill these rooms with high-end, consumer-grade equipment. It was a tight situation. The next sudden move would have to be through the wall. What happened was this. She was trying to get the lid off a new jar of jam and she was banging it on the counter. This is a well-known tip, a kitchen trick, a bang to loosen the lid. It's not witchery or black magic or anything, it's just a way to release the pressure under the lid. She banged it too hard and the jar broke. She screamed. Her husband came running when he heard the sound. There was red everywhere and in that instant he saw blood. Hallucinatory clarity: you know for sure. But in the next moment your mind relinquishes control, and gives you back to reality; it was jam. Everywhere. She was laughing, picking up the shards of glass out of the strawberry mash. She was laughing at the mess and her face was down, looking at the floor, and her hair was around her face like a curtain and then she looked up at him and said, Can you bring the trash can over here?

And it happened again. For a moment he thought he saw a port-wine stain on her cheek. It was fiercely red and bigger than he had ever imagined. It was bloodier than even blood, like sick blood, animal blood, the blood racist people think beats inside of people of other races: blood that shouldn't touch my own. And the next moment it was just jam and he laughed and rubbed the kitchen towel on her cheek. Her clean cheek. Her port-wine stain.

Honey.

Can you get the trashcan?

Honey.

What?

Go look in the mirror.

What?

Go look in the mirror.

Stop talking like that. Why are you talking like that? What?

He was looking at her cheek and she instinctively put her hand on the mark, and then she ran to bathroom.

She was in there for a long time. Maybe thirty minutes. You've never had thirty minutes like these. She stared at the port-wine stain and she breathed in and she breathed out.

It was like being twenty-three again, but she was thirty-eight now. Fifteen years without it, and now, here it was. In exactly the same place. She rubbed her finger around its edges. It came as high as her right eye, over to the edge of her nostril, across her whole cheek to the ear, ending at her jawbone. In purplish-red. She wasn't thinking anything, she wasn't afraid or disappointed or worried. She was just looking at the stain the way you would look at yourself fifteen years after your own death. Oh, you again. Now it was obvious that it had always been there, just around the corner. She had startled it forward, back into sight. She looked into its redness and breathed in and breathed out and found herself in a kind of trance. She thought: I am in a kind of trance. But she didn't try to shake out of it, instead she shallowed her breathing for fear of waking up. In the trance there was one sound and one smell and one sight and one sensation and it was the sound and smell and sight and sensation of her port-wine stain and this stain was her, it was her body. She didn't have to think because plants don't have to think about themselves and weather doesn't have to think about itself, it just blows around. It was this kind of trance, she was just blowing around. It's hard to describe it any more than that, except to say that it lasted about twenty-five minutes. That is a very, very long time just to be blowing around. Mostly you waft for a second or two, a half-second maybe. And then you spend the rest of your life trying to describe it, to regain the perspective. You say: It was like I was just blowing around, and you wave your arms in the air. But there were no arms like that and you know it. It's become this long story you tell about this half-second of your life. Only for her it was twenty-five minutes. Do you understand? Twenty. Five. Minutes. If it could have lasted forever, she would have gladly lived there, inside the stain, a red and limbless world. She came back like a plane taking off, she was no longer in the stain, but looking at it from above. It grew smaller and smaller until it was just a tiny region in a larger mass, one which this pilot favored, hovered above, but would not touch down on again. She pulled some toilet paper off the roll and blew her nose.

He found himself kneeling. He was waiting for her on his knees. He was worried she would not let him love her with the stain. He had already decided, long ago, twenty or thirty minutes ago, that the stain was fine. He had only seen it for a moment but he was already used to it. It was good. It somehow allowed them to have more. They could have a child now, he thought. There was a loose feeling in the air. The jam was still on the floor and that was okay. He would just kneel here and wait for her to come out and hope he would be able to tell her about the looseness in a loose way. He wanted to keep the feeling. He hoped she wasn't removing it somehow, the stain. She should keep it and they should have a kid. He could hear her blowing her nose, now she was opening the door. He would stay on his knees, just like this. She would see him this way and understand.

The Man on the Stairs - Miranda July

                                    The Man on the Stairs

                                 by Miranda July

It was a tiny sound but it woke me up because it was a human sound. I held my breath and it happened again, then again; it was footsteps on the stairs. I tried to whisper, There's someone coming up the stairs, but my breath was cowering, I couldn't shape it. I squeezed Kevin's wrist in pulsing units, three pulses, then two pulses, then three pulses. I was trying to invent a physical language that could enter his sleep. But after a while I realized I wasn't even squeezing his wrist, I was just pulsing the air.That's how scared I was; I was squeezing air. And still the sound continued, the man coming up the stairs. He was walking up in the slowest possible way. He had all the time in the world for this, my god did he have time. I have never taken such care with anything. That is my problem with life, I just rush through it, like I'm being chased. Even things whose whole point is slowness, like drinking relaxing tea.When I drink relaxing tea I suck it down like I'm in a contest for who can drink relaxing tea the quickest. Or if I'm in a hot tub with some other people and we're all looking up at the stars, I'll be the first to say It's so beautiful here. I only say it because I know it has to be said and I'm trying to hurry the experience along. The sooner you say It's so beautiful here the quicker you can say Wow, I'm getting overheated.

The man on the stairs was the total opposite of me, his thing was How long can I make this last? He was taking so long that I would forget the danger for whole moments at a time, and almost slip back in to sleep, only to be woken up by him shifting his weight. I was going to die and it was taking so long. I stopped trying to wake Kevin up because I was worried that he would make some sound upon waking, like he might say What. Or What honey.The man on the stairs would hear this and know how vulnerable we were. He would know my boyfriend called me Honey. He might even hear my boyfriend's slight annoyance, his exhaustion after our fight last night.We both fantasize about other people when we're having sex, but he likes to tell me who the other people are, and I don't.Why should I? It's my own private business. It's not my fault that he gets off on having me know. He likes to report it the second after he cums, like a cat presenting the gift of a dead bird. I never asked for it.

I didn't want the man on the stairs knowing these things about us. But he would know.The second he threw on the lights and pulled out his gun, or his knife, or his rope, or his heavy rock, the second he held the gun at my head, or the knife at my heart or the rope around my neck or the heavy rock over my chest, he would know. He would see it in my boyfriend's eyes: You can have her, just let me live.And in my eyes he would see the words: I never really knew true love. Would he empathize with us? Does he know what it's like? Most people do. You always feel like you are the only one in the world, like everyone else is just crazy for each other, but it's not true. Generally, people don't like each other very much. And that goes for friends too. Sometimes I lay in bed trying to decide which of my friends I really care about and I always come to the same conclusion: None of them. I thought these were just my starter friends and the real ones would come along later. But no.These are my real friends. They are people with jobs in their field of interest. My oldest friend, Marilyn, loves to sing and she is head of enrollment at a prestigious music school. It's a good job, but not as good as just opening your mouth and singing. La. I always thought I would be friends with a professional singer. A jazz singer. A best friend who is a jazz singer and a reckless but safe driver. That is more what I pictured for myself. I also imagined friends who adored me.These friends think I'm a drag. I fantasize about starting over and eliminating the thin film of dragginess that hangs over me. I think I have a handle on it now. There are three main things that make me a drag:

I never return phone calls.

I am falsely modest.

I have a disproportionate amount of guilt about these two

things and it is unpleasant to be around.

It wouldn't be so hard to return calls and be more genuinely modest, but it's too late for these friends. They wouldn't be able to see that I'm not a drag any more. I need clean new people who associate me with fun.This is my number two problem: I am never satisfied with what I have. It goes hand in hand with my number one problem: rushing. Maybe they aren't so much hand in hand, as two hands of the same beast. Maybe they are my hands; I am the beast.

I had a crush on Kevin for thirteen years before he finally started liking me back. He wasn't interested at first because I was a child. I was twelve and he was twenty-five.Then after I turned eighteen it took him seven more years to think of me as a real adult, not his student anymore. On our first date I wore a dress that I had bought when I was seventeen especially for this occasion. It was out of style but I'm superstitious so I wore it. On the way to the restaurant we stopped at a gas station. I sat in the car and watched a teenage boy clean the windshield while Kevin pumped the gas. The boy used the squeegee with a kind precision that made you know that this wasn't just his field of interest, this was exactly it, this was all he had ever wanted to do. La. As we pulled out of the gas station I stared through my perfect, clean window at the teenager and I thought: I should be with him.

The man on the stairs pauses for such incredibly long periods of time I almost wonder if he is having a problem. Like maybe he's disabled, or very old. Or maybe just really tired. Maybe he's already killed everyone else on the block and now he's all worn out. In moments I can almost see him, leaning against the banister, his eyes swimming in the darkness. My eyes are open too. Kevin's eyes are shut, he is so far away and he always will be. The silent pause stretches longer and longer and gradually I wonder if the man is there at all. The only sound is Kevin breathing. What if I spend the rest of my life in this bed, listening to Kevin breathe. But lo. A strong and certain creak issues from the stairwell and what I feel is thrilling relief. He is really there, he is on the stairs, and he is coming closer in his own breathtakingly slow way. If I lived to see daylight I would never forget this lesson in care. He was putting more care in to hunting me than I had ever put into anything in my life. And it was worth it, because he had earned my admiration. I don't think anyone has ever admired me the way I admired him. What if I were to spend this much time listening to Marilyn, what would happen? Maybe she would adore me and then I would respect her and we would both become professional jazz singers or at least reckless but safe drivers. Maybe. Maybe the man on the stairs would come in our car with us and when he looked scared by our reckless driving I would hold his head close to my lips and whisper: It's safer than walking.

I opened the covers and stepped out of bed. I was only wearing a tee shirt and I didn't put on pants because who cares. Maybe he would be halfnaked too; maybe he would be headless and covered in blood. I stood in the doorway of the stairwell, on the top step. It was darker there than in the bedroom, and I could see nothing. I stood and waited to die or for my eyes to adjust, whichever came first. Before I could see anything, I could hear him breathing. He was right in front of me. I leaned forward into the darkness; I could feel his breath. Our faces were almost together. I could smell his sourness. It wasn't good, he wasn't good, he did not have good intentions. I stood there, and he stood there, and he breathed out the bitter air that makes women doubt everything, and I breathed it in.And I expelled my dust, the powder of everything I had destroyed with doubt, and he pulled it in to his lungs. My eyes were adjusting and I saw a man, an ordinary man, a stranger. We were staring into each other's eyes and suddenly I felt angry. Go away, I whispered. Get out. Get out of my house.

After we pulled out of the gas station, we drove to a restaurant that Kevin thought I might like. But I was still thinking about the boy with the squeegee and I systematically did the opposite of everything that Kevin wanted. I didn't order desert or wine, just a little salad, which I complained about. But he did not give up; he made jokes, ridiculous jokes in the car on the way back to my apartment. I steeled myself against laughter; I would rather die than laugh. I didn't laugh, I did not laugh. But I died; I did die.

This Person - Miranda July

This Person

by Miranda July

Someone is getting excited. Somebody somewhere is shaking with excitement because something tremendous is about to happen to this person. This person has dressed for the occasion. This person has hoped and dreamed and now it is really happening and this person can hardly believe it. But believing is not an issue here, the time for faith and fantasy is over, it is really really happening. It involves stepping forward and bowing. Possibly there is some kneeling, such as when one is knighted. One is almost never knighted. But this person may kneel and receive a tap on each shoulder with a sword. Or, more likely, this person will be in a car or a store or under a vinyl canopy when it happens. Or online or on the phone. It could be an e-mail re: your knighthood. Or a long, laughing, rambling phone message in which every person this person has ever known is talking on a speakerphone and they are all saying, You have passed the test, it was all just a test, we were only kidding, real life is so much better than that. This person is laughing out loud with relief and playing the message back to get the address of the place where every person this person has ever known is waiting to hug this person and bring her into the fold of life. It is really exciting, and it's not just a dream, it's real.

They are all waiting by a picnic table in a park this person has driven past many times before. There they are, it's everyone. There are balloons taped to the benches, and the girl this person used to stand next to at the bus stop is waving a streamer. Everyone is smiling. For a moment this person is almost creeped out by the scene, but it would be so like this person to become depressed on the happiest day ever, and so this person bucks up and joins the crowd.

Teachers of subjects that this person wasn't even good at are kissing this person and renouncing the very subjects they taught. Math teachers are saying that math was just a funny way of saying "I love you." But now they are simply saying it, I love you, and the chemistry and PE teachers are also saying it and this person can tell they really mean it. It's totally amazing. Certain jerks and idiots and assholes appear from time to time, and it is as if they have had plastic surgery, their faces are disfigured with love. The handsome assholes are plain and kind, and the ugly jerks are sweet, and they are folding this person's sweater and putting it somewhere where it won't get dirty. Best of all, every person this person has ever loved is there. Even the ones who got away. They hold this person's hand and tell this person how hard it was to pretend to get mad and drive off and never come back. This person almost can't believe it, it seemed so real, this person's heart was broken and has healed and now this person hardly knows what to think. This person is almost mad. But everyone soothes this person. Everyone explains that it was absolutely necessary to know how strong this person was. Oh, look, there's the doctor who prescribed the medicine that made this person temporarily blind. And the man who paid this person two thousand dollars to have sex with him three times when this person was very broke. Both of these men are in attendance, they seem to know each other. They both have little medals that they are pinning on this person; they are badges of great honor and strength. The badges sparkle in the sunlight, and everyone cheers.

This person suddenly feels the need to check her post office box. It is an old habit, and even if everything is going to be terrific from now on, this person still wants mail. This person says she will be right back and everyone this person has ever known says, Fine, take your time. This person gets in her car and drives to the post office and opens the box and there is nothing. Even though it is a Tuesday, which is famously a good day for mail. This person is so disappointed, this person gets back in the car and, having completely forgotten about the picnic, drives home and checks the voice mail and there are no new messages, just the old one about "passing the test" and "life being better." There are no e-mails, either, probably because everyone is at the picnic. This person can't seem to go back to the picnic. This person realizes that staying home means blowing off everyone this person has ever known. But the desire to stay in is very strong. This person wants to run a bath and then read in bed.

In the bathtub this person pushes the bubbles around and listens to the sound of millions of them popping at once. It almost makes one smooth sound instead of many tiny sounds. This person's breasts barely jut out of the water. This person pushes the bubbles onto the breasts and makes weird shapes with the foam. By now everyone must have realized that this person is not coming back to the picnic. Everyone was wrong; this person is not who they thought this person was. This person plunges underwater and moves her hair around like a sea anemone. This person can stay underwater for an impressively long time but only in a bathtub. This person wonders if there will ever be an Olympic contest for holding your breath under bathwater. If there were such a contest, this person would surely win it. An Olympic medal might redeem this person in the eyes of everyone this person has ever known. But no such contest exists, so there will be no redeeming. This person mourns the fact that she has ruined her one chance to be loved by everyone; as this person climbs into bed, the weight of this tragedy seems to bear down upon this person's chest. And it is a comforting weight, almost human in heft. This person sighs. This person's eyes begin to close, this person sleeps.

Excerpted from No One Belongs Here More Than You by Miranda July. Copyright © 2007 by Miranda July. Excerpted by permission from Scribner, an imprint of Simon & Schuster, Inc.

Miranda July - Are You The Favorite Person of Anybody?

Thats an interesting question which makes you think if YOU are the favorite person of soemone.

It´s kind of scary to think about it, because sometimes you are just not.

Well, for that, there are always oranges.

Take three... 

Diesel Store's Design

Japanese designer Chikara Ohno of Sinato has created the ROLLS installation at the Diesel Denim Gallery Aoyama in Minato-ku, Tokyo.

The characteristic of the material used for this installation, which is aluminum, is that it is very thin and easily bent by hands, yet harder than cloth or paper. Therefore it possesses both soft and hard qualities. By winding and sometimes extending this single, long strip of aluminum from the entrance to the back-end of the store, it creates a beautiful waving form, changing its function and features as the material strength changes. This flexible quality of the material represents a gentle connection between the softness of clothes and hardness of architecture.

I think it is really cool but it has serious acessability issues.

Serge Tiroche Podcast

In this edition of the ArtTactic Podcast, we're joined by Serge Tiroche, Founder of ST-ART, the first Israeli artist incubator project. Serge breaks down what an artist incubator project in addition to discussing some of the ways in which ST-ART aids their artists throughout their integration into the art world while simultaneously investing in their future success.

Then, he speculates as to whether or not this business model could become more prevalent in the future in the art world. Lastly, Serge speaks on the development of the Israeli contemporary art market over the past few years.

Listen to the podcast HERE!