Life. The collective dream. It is what it is. It is what it was. It is what you want it to be.
- Afrim Gjonbalaj (2024)
Big Ed and Norma 💞
Big Ed and Norma
One of my favorite moments in all of Twin Peaks was with Big Ed and Norma in Season 3, Part 15 also called “There’s some fear in letting go”. After years of missed connections, responsibilities and heartbreak they found each other again and when they kiss at the RR Diner, he proposes and she accepts… What can I say, it brings a tear to my eye every time. Cosmic Love.
People that think David Lynch only does “weird” stuff, I’d suggest watching “The Elephant Man“ & “The Straight Story“ to experience the true depth of humanity he brings to his work. The Big Ed and Norma moment is right up there for me.
Art by @mr_dodge_dart on IG
I gave your postcards as a gift to the 2024 @davidlynchmfa graduating class. Everyone picked one at random and they were all perfect. Thank you for your amazing art.
(07/09/2024)
Just came out of a meditation, sipped some coffee and peaked at my social media accounts. As these Google drive and Facebook memories continue to come up, it feels like I’m looking into another life. Some alternate universe that no longer exists. I’m sure it’ll feel trippy like this for a while. Surreal. These feelings and thoughts come and go like the wind. Some are gentle and some fierce. Some are sweet and some stink. But it’s ok. The next chapter of life is happening right now. Moment to moment.
(07/07/2024)
Starting from square one is an interesting place to be. It seems that I’m being pulled towards the deeper, darker challenges of my life. The things I haven’t dealt with, the things I’ve put off, the things I NEED to deal with, and on the other side of those challenges lies my future. A bright future that I can see coming to pass. I have to trust in the process. The healing process. “The cave you fear to enter holds the treasure you seek.” - Joseph Campbell.
Back to Basics
To be a badass you gotta know you’re a badass.
Never lose the connection to that child like creativity and imagination. There is also sensitivity mixed in there. The infinite balance of all possibilities exists simultaneously in every moment.
(07/03/2024)
In the famous words of Lloyd Christmas “So You're Telling Me There's A Chance?”
Leap
MFA in screenwriting from The David Lynch Graduate School of Cinematic Arts
On 06/22/24 I graduated from The David Lynch Graduate School of Cinematic Arts with an MFA in screenwriting.
2 years of putting my nose to the grindstone while working overnights as a security guard, with little to no sleep most of the time… I imagined this moment and my goals for a long time and If someone told me a few months ago that my life was going to shift so drastically as I came to this milestone, I wouldn’t have believed them. But here I am. I made it.
To my fellow classmates, we made it!
Some big things are coming. I can feel it.
Outstanding Student Award
On Friday 06/21/24 I received the Outstanding Student Award for the Class of 2024, at The David Lynch Graduate School of Cinematic Arts (MFA in Screenwriting) at Maharishi International University.
My favorite pen
A person is like a pen and paper
Be it man or woman
Woman or man
They both write something on each other
Maybe leaving a lasting effect
Or just taking a note
Sometimes they just want to write
A pen can run out of ink
Leaving a work unfinished
Ready for another pen.
Sometimes pens are stolen,
Lost,
Broken,
Or tossed away,
Sold,
Hidden away for a rainy day that never comes,
From your right hand to someone's left hand
Then misused altogether.
How sad I'll be when this pen runs out of ink.
I found you one day on the floor outside
Someone had dropped you
In the midst of that you had been kicked around,
Stepped on
And mistreated.
I enjoy the way you write,
The way my hand has to be for you to work.
- Afrim Gjonbalaj (2005*)
The Dream
I never knew their hunger
Or their need for a better life
I don’t know the language my father spoke
The beauty of the lands he saw
The clean air and clear waters he felt
The lessons he was to teach…
I’m burning deep within
Hungry now not for food or survival
But for a feeling
A weight to ground me
A mountain to leap from
Shouting “I understand!”
In slow motion
Laughing the whole way down
As I float
He’ll be there
To hug me,
Smiling,
Laughing,
Taking me to Coney Island.
The dream of a knock on the door
I’ll be 5
Waiting for my Dad to come home
My Brother will be 15
My Sisters 16 and 17
My Mother still healthy and beautiful
We can all play together
In 1G
The small living room
In Brooklyn.
I would love this
I would pray for this
It wouldn’t matter where I landed.
- Afrim Gjonbalaj (2005*)
Between.
Between your arms and between your ears
Am I still there? While you’re not here?
Between your legs and between our sheets
Someone else playing, makes your heart beat.
The space between beats so short and so few
blink and you’d miss that I’m one and not two.
Nobody’s perfect, we’re human and flawed
But don’t expect joy or me to applaud
Fifteen rotations of earth round the sun
To forfeit for novelty's lustful fun.
I play it all back like tapes in a deck
The memories dance like a marionette
Time in a snap and saying goodbye
Between us and the truth, between us and the lies.
And if not a lie then what did you see?
“I believe if it’s meant to be it will be.”
But to me meant to be means work and goals
I’m guessing the story got boring and old
How would HE feel when you call upon fate?
Two ends of the coin you flip like your face.
Oh dear, never to hug, never to hear
Between your arms and between your ears
Fade fade away, your poems and heart
“Grow up” you said when I picked it apart
Your lies aren’t “lies” they just get you through
“I didn’t want to unnecessarily hurt you”
I’d rather the truth, it’s all I would need
To part with your heart, forever and clean.
Goodbye and good luck is all I can say
What once was between has now gone away.
- Afrim Gjonbalaj (05/28/2024)
"I made this for you!"
Old love letters,
Forgotten moments in time,
Perfectly preserved torture devices,
Infinite hope totems that outlast the writers heart.
All our quivers vibrate the pen,
Devoid of the minds rationale,
Heart string serenades,
A truth detector if there ever was one.
Instantaneous travel,
Through time and space,
Memories aren’t this moment,
Nostalgia isn’t a place.
This Infinite love,
And time with no lines,
Are now souvenirs,
Of words that don’t bind.
- Afrim Gjonbalaj (05/22/2024)
(05/19/2024)
Driving in the rain,
My body moved on its own,
Led by my soul,
To a place no longer called home.
Pushed by the wind,
I couldn’t stop,
Adjusting on the spot,
Considering the flight.
When Love is Cosmic so is the pain,
Driving in the rain, Pushed by the wind,
Eyes on the road,
Hands on my heart.
- Afrim Gjonbalaj (05/19/2024)
(05/10/2024)
A ghost of heartbreak can only observe.
When he speaks, it falls on deaf ears.
Time moves differently.
Moments for them are eternity for the ghost.
Hovering with no place to take root.
Crying out “I’m not dead yet!”
The ferryman rows, he’s heard that before.
No coins on the river Styx is a bad place to be.
“For special cases the fair is covered.” Says the hooded Ferryman with Skeletal hands.
“Special cases?” Asks the inquisitive being.
“The coins aren’t just for the fair, they also help you with the haze of passing through.”
“The haze?”
“The heaviness you’re feeling. To cover your eyes. A way to forget, to dissolve.”
“… I don’t want to forget.”
“Your kind always forgets. Genocide, Love, miracles, you forget them all because you’ve forgotten that you will one day be a passenger on my boat.”
“I won’t forget.”
“They will… and there isn’t much to do but accept it”
“… you said I’m a special case.”
“If you want to scream you can. If you want to hit something, hit me, but the truth is it won’t change anything.”
The inquisitive being starts to cry. Tears roll down his cheeks.
“I’m sorry… most people don’t cry, they just freak out or panic. I’m not really used to that.” Says the ferryman.
“Neither am I.” Says the former man. “I’m not so much scared to be on this boat actually, I just feel so heavy right here.” he points to where his heart would be. “Will she ever know?”
“Probably not.”
Silence.
- Afrim Gjonbalaj (05/10/2024)
(04/22/2024)
All will one day be, distant memory
Most likely for you but not so for me.
Love fades for some before the end
The Heart and brain no longer friends
Crisis of faith, crisis of time
Arms out stretched at the end of the line.
You’re strapped in and I’m caught by the wind
As I’m paying for sins that I’ve never sinned.
Never to land, never to land
The unbearable weight of an empty hand.
on legs that can’t stand, legs that can’t stand
And best laid plans become grains of sand.
All will one day be, distant memory
One day, one day, one day, one day
Don’t ever wait to do what you say.
One day, one day, one day, one day
Will not come and will end wrong.
- Afrim Gjonbalaj (04/22/2024)