My favorite toy? Well of course its my camera.

sounds silly but I was obsessed at a young age. I was four when I took my first photo - still have the picture. Its of my mom's hand and half of her face as she tries to grab it from me. 

I began filming as soon as my parents bought a camcorder. It was one of those big VHS recorders, the ones you balance on your shoulder and give you a kink in your neck? Well, I was filming my sisters Bat Mitzvah.  and after that, I swore I would someday be famous, and buy a camera that doesnt invlove needing muscles. 

I've done part of that - my camera is now handheld - but have altered my desires a little. It doesnt matter to me if Im famous or not. The camera is my life. I live and breathe through it, hoping someday I will make a difference. I see the world through a lense, the city dirty, people starving, and when my camera is on I am providing the world with irrefutable truth, that America is not the country we think it is.

And so my favorite toy is more than a plaything, a part of my life.

It is my life.


Muse: Mark Cohen
Fandom: Rent

Tell me what you guys think. I have a lot to say about this but I want to discuss it and not rant about it. Okay thanks. talk to me.

Wow. I just changed my layout. Partly thanks to the_bothererer and partly...well, I figured it out myself. Wow. It's rather pretty I must say.

I never knew what pain really was, I guess. I would like to say I did – you know, my parents would give me curfew of 10:30 and that wasn’t fair, not at all. So for me, that was pain. When my sophomore girlfriend broke up with me, that was pain. It wasn’t until I moved to New York into the loft apartment with Roger and Collins that I really understood pain.

 It began slowly; first the cold, then gut cramps from too many days of not eating. After only a few weeks I noticed things about Roger – he would sweat, have mood swings so bad and if he didn’t have enough money to get a fix, he would take money from Collins, or me, or our food-fund.

Collins found out he had HIV. He handled it well – better than I did. And only a few months later, in the middle of a severe withdrawal phase, Roger found April dead in the bathroom, with no explanation except for a note saying “we’ve got AIDS”.

How have I handled this so well? I’m not sure. Its not because I haven’t felt the pain – I cant begin to tell you how many nights I’ve woken up in a cold sweat, listening to Rogers sleepy groans and worrying that he will never wake up in the morning.  But as I stand back and watch it happen, think about the fact that my two best friends are going to die before Im thirty, and I realize, I don’t have to feel their pain.

I’m a survivor. And the survivor – he feels the most pain of all.

So of course things are, as usual, sucky to no end but Im comfortable with it. I like it. I don't mind freezing my ass of in winter and dying of heat in the summer.   

Okay, lies. I do mind. but sometimes when I'm sitting there, feeling sorry for myself because I cant make the rent and I cant get my film finished and the powers out and my girlfriend is a dyke and shit Im fucking starving, well, I remember why Im here.  

Because Id rather be here than Scarsdale.

So we'll see how this works out for me. 

 I guess I'lll start out to say that Im new at this, spilling things on to an empty page for others to read - Im better at prying it out of other people - but I'll give it a go, mostly because it's something that I think I have to do, a) for my sanity and b) because if I have no other outlet maybe it'll give me a good idea for either a script or documentary idea.  

That said I'll give out the basics.   

I am independently employed creating my current film - the one with no name and more importantly no script. And yes. that means Im broke up the ass. I live with my roommate Roger, Collins (sometimes), and have just been dumped by my extremely attractive girlfriend for her lesbian lover. I know. Who could dump a stud like me. 

But on another note, I'll look foward to making friends and chatting with old ones (if they're out there)  

Mark out