I smell like strangers.
Ended up dancing because I opened myself up for long enough to be swept into it.
I smell like the prettiest girl in the room, who agreed to dance and laughed as we spun, among other strangers. Sometimes something invisible transpires. Then sometimes you get all cocky when she doesn't know what "Padawan" means and you're trying to be funny but just seem like a tool.
Somebody important told me I need to learn how to quiet my mind when it gets carried away with itself. But it's impossible when the heart complains in concert.
After the dance, after an incomplete goodbye, I detached, exasperated. Wandered around staring beyond things. I've been there lots. All fingernails on chalkboards, hunger heaped upon hunger. Treading the perimeter of familiarity and kicking at the walls.
Tonight I realized something, really learned something, not in an artificial poetic device narrative way, really had a minor epiphany.
These moments are rare, but they're among a very few breeds of moment that make banality tolerable, make life livable. I mean that. It's my greatest love.
I do not love drudgery. I do not love the morose. I FUCKING. HATE. THE MOROSE. Know this, please.
Buoyancy comes with new things, new people. The heart quiets.
This is my greatest love.
My singing coach (I have one) called me to ask me if I wanted to learn Space Oddity. I explained to her that I associated the song with a very close friend who died and it would be too emotional for me to handle. So I walked into today's lesson prepared to sing "How Soon is Now." Yes, Padawan, much less emotional.
"Y'know what your trip is? You need to sing happier songs."
We had been singing Suzanne by Leonard Cohen.
So I found "Afternoon Delight" in one of her songbooks, turned it around to show her, grinning, still heart. We belted that shit and it was glorious.
There are so many chances to bring wonderful things into your life. And I am just so poorly equipped to rise to that potential. So the moments are rare.
Authoring memories out of nothingness. Rivers of alien faces. This is my greatest dream.
Shh.
Saturday, February 23, 2008
Friday, February 15, 2008
Lost in Space
This beautiful girl is glaring at me witheringly over a 40 of Steel Reserve, her eyes completely empty. She turns away to talk to her friends. "Let's go find the hot guys at this party. It's gonna be hard."
Five minutes later,
"Let's go to Jake's! LET'S GO TO JAAAAKE'S!!!" (a gay bar downtown)
Yes, please go to Jake's.
It's farts in the dark, the little rejections that lump up in the arteries. Repugnant but ephemeral, passing.
Then they are redeemed by moments like Steel Reserve's friends, who are nice, having a minor argument interrupted by a dreadlocked guy wearing a parka doing a magic little pixie dance.
"What the fuck are you doing, hippie? Get the fuck out of here, man."
But he keeps dancing anyway and eventually blisses off somewhere else of his own accord.
My house is full of strangers. Requests for the wandering band of Woody Guthrie junior folk musicians in my living room to put down their tambourines long enough for people to dance to an Outkast song or two are met with more absent, withering glares. A guy from my class, gone, is talking about how much he loves Hitler. A couple is making out in my garage while a girl takes pictures of them.
Then I think about the handful of times in my life I have held the same feeling in my heart as someone else, simultaneously.
It's all farts in the dark. A gaseous nebula lingering in space, dotted every million light years or so with a few bits of dense matter and a whole lot of fire. Marbles jangle loosely in the belly's expanse.
Then you get loose and send them hurtling towards collision. Which often destroys things, but sometimes makes bright new constellations to guide you, out in the salty tumult.
Klink.
Five minutes later,
"Let's go to Jake's! LET'S GO TO JAAAAKE'S!!!" (a gay bar downtown)
Yes, please go to Jake's.
It's farts in the dark, the little rejections that lump up in the arteries. Repugnant but ephemeral, passing.
Then they are redeemed by moments like Steel Reserve's friends, who are nice, having a minor argument interrupted by a dreadlocked guy wearing a parka doing a magic little pixie dance.
"What the fuck are you doing, hippie? Get the fuck out of here, man."
But he keeps dancing anyway and eventually blisses off somewhere else of his own accord.
My house is full of strangers. Requests for the wandering band of Woody Guthrie junior folk musicians in my living room to put down their tambourines long enough for people to dance to an Outkast song or two are met with more absent, withering glares. A guy from my class, gone, is talking about how much he loves Hitler. A couple is making out in my garage while a girl takes pictures of them.
Then I think about the handful of times in my life I have held the same feeling in my heart as someone else, simultaneously.
It's all farts in the dark. A gaseous nebula lingering in space, dotted every million light years or so with a few bits of dense matter and a whole lot of fire. Marbles jangle loosely in the belly's expanse.
Then you get loose and send them hurtling towards collision. Which often destroys things, but sometimes makes bright new constellations to guide you, out in the salty tumult.
Klink.
Tuesday, February 05, 2008
Unlikely Elephants
Go to bed. Instead of writing about things that will make you excited and think about dinosaurs and Jericho and resurrected woolly mammoths piloting flying cars around the Eiffel Tower.
That first audacious crazyman to say, "We will carve this unmovable boulder into a wall, that will stand in the desert with other walls, and we will live inside."
And now the audacity is holding up a plastic cup and feeling like a skydiver with a malfunctioning parachute masturbating until he hits the ground. When did we stop being thrilled over the fact that we have the power and the resources do whatever the hell we want? We threw stones, then we threw spears, now we have WALKED ON THE MOON.
The future is taboo. Don't have hope, kid. You're killing everything. The story is ending. Buy some wheat grass at the co-op and tuck your race into bed for a long, long sleep.
One of those things you can't really let anyone stamp out if you don't want to is thoughts like supercharging silver linings, expanding them, setting up a lemonade stand in the fucker. Thoughts like "The human story is beautiful and frightening and unpredictable and is leading somewhere none of us can even imagine so let's pop some popcorn and see what cosmic dramas we get to enact before we die."
Let that rattle around down below. It feels so strange, to have hope. To have confidence? In this enterprise we've been steamrolled into dismissing as the death rattle of a golden order and the dissolution of all things, forever and ever, anon anon? To hold up a piece of plastic and see something that will stand testament to our existence thousands of years after we've all eroded back into the ground?
How absurd. How thrillingly, thrillingly absurd.
That first audacious crazyman to say, "We will carve this unmovable boulder into a wall, that will stand in the desert with other walls, and we will live inside."
And now the audacity is holding up a plastic cup and feeling like a skydiver with a malfunctioning parachute masturbating until he hits the ground. When did we stop being thrilled over the fact that we have the power and the resources do whatever the hell we want? We threw stones, then we threw spears, now we have WALKED ON THE MOON.
The future is taboo. Don't have hope, kid. You're killing everything. The story is ending. Buy some wheat grass at the co-op and tuck your race into bed for a long, long sleep.
One of those things you can't really let anyone stamp out if you don't want to is thoughts like supercharging silver linings, expanding them, setting up a lemonade stand in the fucker. Thoughts like "The human story is beautiful and frightening and unpredictable and is leading somewhere none of us can even imagine so let's pop some popcorn and see what cosmic dramas we get to enact before we die."
Let that rattle around down below. It feels so strange, to have hope. To have confidence? In this enterprise we've been steamrolled into dismissing as the death rattle of a golden order and the dissolution of all things, forever and ever, anon anon? To hold up a piece of plastic and see something that will stand testament to our existence thousands of years after we've all eroded back into the ground?
How absurd. How thrillingly, thrillingly absurd.
Saturday, February 02, 2008
Passenger
I got a comic book for free once, an illustrated guide to keeping an art diary. On the first page it references most diaries as being "filled with longing for a transformation." I've repeated that phrase in my head hundreds of times. Longing for transformation. Being dissatisfied with what you have but unable to capture that which you lack.
And it's not grass is greener. It's the blessing that becomes a curse - our birthright as thinking, emotive, self-aware creatures: absolute freedom to create your own life. It's horrifying.
I go to the gym every morning to try to work my way through accumulated injuries and the body-based insecurity I've been fermenting in my gullet since fifth grade (big goddamned surprise, everyone).
Well, who really gives a shit about that, Matt? You're right.
So I go home and look at all the books I haven't read, ostensibly containing some vast revelation that will dump itself into my soul and catapult me into the driver's seat. Then I push a few keys on my music keyboard, peeking timidly from behind the corner into rockstar land. Then I think about maybe I should be writing something profound, or should be doing homework. But I usually end up consulting the oracle for a while, thinking about how things could be.
Could be if I said "I love you" every time I felt it and meant it (I will be bringing up the topic of loving people frequently, so if this makes you uncomfortable, ask why, but I don't apologize), could be if I had been true to my birthright from an early age, could be if I could learn to pick up the reins NOW and get on with it, could be if I weren't so self-aware all the time, a cup pouring endlessly back into itself, which is a line I just found in my journal, which is filled with longing for transformation.
But really, Matt, who gives a shit about that?
You're right. Really, you are. Just keep driving.
And it's not grass is greener. It's the blessing that becomes a curse - our birthright as thinking, emotive, self-aware creatures: absolute freedom to create your own life. It's horrifying.
I go to the gym every morning to try to work my way through accumulated injuries and the body-based insecurity I've been fermenting in my gullet since fifth grade (big goddamned surprise, everyone).
Well, who really gives a shit about that, Matt? You're right.
So I go home and look at all the books I haven't read, ostensibly containing some vast revelation that will dump itself into my soul and catapult me into the driver's seat. Then I push a few keys on my music keyboard, peeking timidly from behind the corner into rockstar land. Then I think about maybe I should be writing something profound, or should be doing homework. But I usually end up consulting the oracle for a while, thinking about how things could be.
Could be if I said "I love you" every time I felt it and meant it (I will be bringing up the topic of loving people frequently, so if this makes you uncomfortable, ask why, but I don't apologize), could be if I had been true to my birthright from an early age, could be if I could learn to pick up the reins NOW and get on with it, could be if I weren't so self-aware all the time, a cup pouring endlessly back into itself, which is a line I just found in my journal, which is filled with longing for transformation.
But really, Matt, who gives a shit about that?
You're right. Really, you are. Just keep driving.
Wednesday, January 30, 2008
Oracle
Or wishing well, whatever few things you thumb through on the internet when you should be going to bed. Pages with pictures of people you miss, people you'd like to sleep with, people you don't know. Flipping out coins, staring, measuring the parameters of yourself against the traced lines of friends and strangers.
Their mouths live. Sometimes they burp and keep on talking obliviously and it's adorable. Sometimes the lines solidify, in scratches, in being awed by how beautiful she is when she cries, in drawing pictures of unspeakable things all over your friend's homework. In graduating. In seeing his head shoved down so it doesn't hit the top of the police car.
But the tracery - of gameface pictures, of names of things, of glib glibness - is the lattice empty? Maybe not. A bookmark of time spent with various presences. This person you miss because the words "I love you" actually came out of them and they meant it and sometimes it helps so much. This person you want to sleep with even though you know better. This person you don't know but think about telegraphing because their names match yours.
You can look at the thing, make wishes, construct the future, see yourself reflected back in dim lines. Because finally, you thumb through your own names, your own pictures, your own carefully assembled nexus in the web. And then you see all the points coalesce into what you made for other people, truth (both the happy whole of the part and the ugly concealments) wriggles somewhere between your diaphragm and your kidney, and you think,
"Really?"
Then you drop another penny in the water.
Their mouths live. Sometimes they burp and keep on talking obliviously and it's adorable. Sometimes the lines solidify, in scratches, in being awed by how beautiful she is when she cries, in drawing pictures of unspeakable things all over your friend's homework. In graduating. In seeing his head shoved down so it doesn't hit the top of the police car.
But the tracery - of gameface pictures, of names of things, of glib glibness - is the lattice empty? Maybe not. A bookmark of time spent with various presences. This person you miss because the words "I love you" actually came out of them and they meant it and sometimes it helps so much. This person you want to sleep with even though you know better. This person you don't know but think about telegraphing because their names match yours.
You can look at the thing, make wishes, construct the future, see yourself reflected back in dim lines. Because finally, you thumb through your own names, your own pictures, your own carefully assembled nexus in the web. And then you see all the points coalesce into what you made for other people, truth (both the happy whole of the part and the ugly concealments) wriggles somewhere between your diaphragm and your kidney, and you think,
"Really?"
Then you drop another penny in the water.
Monday, January 28, 2008
One fast move or I'm gone.
Made my whiteboy pilgrimage to City Lights in San Francisco this weekend. I told myself I wasn't going to drop money on books, as I never read any of the ones I buy. But it's City Lights and I'm a whiteboy with seriousness in his heart so I picked Big Sur by Kerouac as my memento.
I open it in the motel room later and it's like going home and visiting a teacher that believed in you; like talking with closest friends at night, on a cliff, staring out over the place you grew up in, remembering why you're doing what you're doing. It is remembered, that Kerouac writes things that are true, that I am not the only person ever to spend too much time rubbing their fingers over the texture.
Awakening from a three-day binge, hearing bells in the mist, seeking refuge from himself, he writes, "One fast move or I'm gone."
I put the book down and think about tattoos.
Made my whiteboy pilgrimage to City Lights in San Francisco this weekend. I told myself I wasn't going to drop money on books, as I never read any of the ones I buy. But it's City Lights and I'm a whiteboy with seriousness in his heart so I picked Big Sur by Kerouac as my memento.
I open it in the motel room later and it's like going home and visiting a teacher that believed in you; like talking with closest friends at night, on a cliff, staring out over the place you grew up in, remembering why you're doing what you're doing. It is remembered, that Kerouac writes things that are true, that I am not the only person ever to spend too much time rubbing their fingers over the texture.
Awakening from a three-day binge, hearing bells in the mist, seeking refuge from himself, he writes, "One fast move or I'm gone."
I put the book down and think about tattoos.
Monday, January 21, 2008
Spend a lot of time with my fingers stirring around in the past, rubbing them over the texture of things. Trying to get my bearings. And there's nothing to bring back. So much to resolve. So little assurance there will ever be a chance.
Yes, here we go, right back to the back. This way, friends. Never left anyway.
You spend so much time wanting one thing, etching out a slot for it, staring into the space, filling your head with want. For years, maybe. Then a few simple words pass, a simple barrier or two overcome by a breeze of momentum - Really? That's all it took? - and it's gone. You're outside of it. Staring at this useless hole you dug for yourself, wondering how many hours you spent shuffling around in the dirt at the bottom. But it's not sad because you never filled it with the Thing. It's sad because the Thing was in your head the whole time.
How much can be devoted to "I love you, oh, I love you, love you, I love you so wholly that it hurts me, physically hurts me in the morning first thing upon waking, is how much I love you." How little we really want the labor of actually loving. How easy, in comparison, is the hole in the ground.
Stirring the fingers, touching the rough spots, pressing, finding them give way into little depressions where a body should have been, but, instead, there is just morning aches.
Imaginary friends don't make good company.
Go kiss someone on their living mouth. This business is so much harder than wanting.
Yes, here we go, right back to the back. This way, friends. Never left anyway.
You spend so much time wanting one thing, etching out a slot for it, staring into the space, filling your head with want. For years, maybe. Then a few simple words pass, a simple barrier or two overcome by a breeze of momentum - Really? That's all it took? - and it's gone. You're outside of it. Staring at this useless hole you dug for yourself, wondering how many hours you spent shuffling around in the dirt at the bottom. But it's not sad because you never filled it with the Thing. It's sad because the Thing was in your head the whole time.
How much can be devoted to "I love you, oh, I love you, love you, I love you so wholly that it hurts me, physically hurts me in the morning first thing upon waking, is how much I love you." How little we really want the labor of actually loving. How easy, in comparison, is the hole in the ground.
Stirring the fingers, touching the rough spots, pressing, finding them give way into little depressions where a body should have been, but, instead, there is just morning aches.
Imaginary friends don't make good company.
Go kiss someone on their living mouth. This business is so much harder than wanting.
Monday, December 17, 2007
This blog has sunk way back into the Id. It kind of goes in cycles but it hasn't been aired out in a while. Reading my friends' blogs has reminded me that events are usually more interesting than feelings.
I have decided to take a break from writing. That doesn't mean I will no longer write. It just means I'm unburdening myself of the self-imposed expectation to achieve brilliance in the form. I haven't written a poem in months. The dating blog kind of sucked the enthusiasm out of me, not that I ever really had that much to begin with when it came to sitting in front of a blank page feeling exasperated.
As a consequence, I'm trying to make music. I'm even taking singing lessons. Right now I'm feeling like I'm just poking my head out from beneath a rock. But screw the rock. I've routinely embarrassed myself in the past over things not one one-thousandth as worthy.
For Christmas, I'm taking my mother to a shooting range. Anyone who has met my mother will understand how bizarre this proposition is. My whole family are pacifists - I have never shot a gun. And that's the point. She quit the nursing job she held for twenty-some years, finally overwhelmed by the lack of self-preservation most of her patients demonstrated.
After I got into San Diego, we went to Balboa Park. As we were walking, I suggested off-handedly, "You should dye your hair purple." For all the times I've mocked this sentiment, it seemed like a good idea. To do it appropriately is a tall order, though.
When I resurrected Dillon, I reaffirmed an idea I've knocked around for a while: the big secret of life is that you set the rules for yourself and you can do anything at any time as long as you are congruous and confident about it. People move aside to accommodate your momentum. The strongest reality wins.
So I told my mom she should do something that threatens her comfort levels. I told her the best thing you can do for yourself is to temporarily become something you resent, or to participate in something that you hitherto felt you could never be a part of. We reached an agreement: she would go shooting if I agreed to take a personality test out of one of her "find your ideal career" books; something I have openly resisted for years.
It makes more of a difference than you might think. A lot sticks. Try it.
I have decided to take a break from writing. That doesn't mean I will no longer write. It just means I'm unburdening myself of the self-imposed expectation to achieve brilliance in the form. I haven't written a poem in months. The dating blog kind of sucked the enthusiasm out of me, not that I ever really had that much to begin with when it came to sitting in front of a blank page feeling exasperated.
As a consequence, I'm trying to make music. I'm even taking singing lessons. Right now I'm feeling like I'm just poking my head out from beneath a rock. But screw the rock. I've routinely embarrassed myself in the past over things not one one-thousandth as worthy.
For Christmas, I'm taking my mother to a shooting range. Anyone who has met my mother will understand how bizarre this proposition is. My whole family are pacifists - I have never shot a gun. And that's the point. She quit the nursing job she held for twenty-some years, finally overwhelmed by the lack of self-preservation most of her patients demonstrated.
After I got into San Diego, we went to Balboa Park. As we were walking, I suggested off-handedly, "You should dye your hair purple." For all the times I've mocked this sentiment, it seemed like a good idea. To do it appropriately is a tall order, though.
When I resurrected Dillon, I reaffirmed an idea I've knocked around for a while: the big secret of life is that you set the rules for yourself and you can do anything at any time as long as you are congruous and confident about it. People move aside to accommodate your momentum. The strongest reality wins.
So I told my mom she should do something that threatens her comfort levels. I told her the best thing you can do for yourself is to temporarily become something you resent, or to participate in something that you hitherto felt you could never be a part of. We reached an agreement: she would go shooting if I agreed to take a personality test out of one of her "find your ideal career" books; something I have openly resisted for years.
It makes more of a difference than you might think. A lot sticks. Try it.
Monday, October 29, 2007
Sunday, October 28, 2007
One hour left. Just a number, just a number, just a number. But the heart says different.
It's my eighth birthday and I'm at school, fourth grade, orange shag carpet, even twelve seeming impossibly distant. All is bathed in holy self-assurance. Pain, yes. Loneliness. Purity, though. Selfness.
Then I'm bored and gradually diluted until the self-assurance is buried, seemingly irrevocably.
Then I'm burying friends and part of me secretly thrills at the thought of my house burning down.
And the only really heartwrenching thing, truly agonizing, is the ineffability. The story is too big. There is too much holiness. It can never be retold. It can never be understood, even by ourselves.
So I honor what I can.
Honor finding my mistreated pet hamster dead and stiff on the living room carpet.
Honor a dream of absolute, searing LOVE and togetherness, ONLY SIX YEARS OLD, waking in tears at the beauty of it and kneeling beside my bed, praying with clenched hands that it not be only a dream.
Honor the impeccable sanctity of the first years of a family.
Honor my first kiss, stolen, then given.
Honor the pain, HONOR THE PAIN, the dilution, body hatred, HONOR IT, loneliness, fear, HONOR.
Honor the joy of looking into friends' eyes and seeing there a home.
Honor the dead poets with black and white faces. Honor my desire to throw their books into the ocean and walk away forever.
Honor death. Honor change, which is death.
Honor Bryan. Honor to you, Bryan. You are here in my heart forever.
Honor my component realities. Honor Skate Town and Superbad. Honor Kerouac's Great Emptiness. Honor the cripple. Honor the hermit. Honor the King. Honor a distrust of the pointedly cool. Honor the pointedly cool. Honor inconsistency and the freedom to travel between these realities without fear of congruity.
Honor the bullies. Honor those I have bullied.
Honor Miramar Ranch Elementary School. Honor Thurgood Marshall Middle School. Honor Scripps Ranch High School. Honor The Evergreen State College. These places are in my blood. I trace their geometry with fondness and tragedy.
Honor moving at the age of five, telling my dad I want to go back and suck all the memories out of the house through a latch in the door.
Honor wanting to suck all my memories out of the world and keeping them in a chamber close to my heart where they will stay warm and I can protect and preserve them.
Honor this weblog, which is a chart of my sincerity.
Honor overwrought tone. Honor the ability to laugh at anything, even staring down the barrell of two decades with damp eyes for the spectacle, the IMMENSE, CRUCIAL, YET UTTERLY UNGRASPABLE IMPORTANCE OF THE THING.
Honor the spectacle.
Honor the past.
Honor the future.
Honor the present, which is both.
Honor to these things.
Honor to these things.
Honor to these things.
Because that's all we can do.
It's my eighth birthday and I'm at school, fourth grade, orange shag carpet, even twelve seeming impossibly distant. All is bathed in holy self-assurance. Pain, yes. Loneliness. Purity, though. Selfness.
Then I'm bored and gradually diluted until the self-assurance is buried, seemingly irrevocably.
Then I'm burying friends and part of me secretly thrills at the thought of my house burning down.
And the only really heartwrenching thing, truly agonizing, is the ineffability. The story is too big. There is too much holiness. It can never be retold. It can never be understood, even by ourselves.
So I honor what I can.
Honor finding my mistreated pet hamster dead and stiff on the living room carpet.
Honor a dream of absolute, searing LOVE and togetherness, ONLY SIX YEARS OLD, waking in tears at the beauty of it and kneeling beside my bed, praying with clenched hands that it not be only a dream.
Honor the impeccable sanctity of the first years of a family.
Honor my first kiss, stolen, then given.
Honor the pain, HONOR THE PAIN, the dilution, body hatred, HONOR IT, loneliness, fear, HONOR.
Honor the joy of looking into friends' eyes and seeing there a home.
Honor the dead poets with black and white faces. Honor my desire to throw their books into the ocean and walk away forever.
Honor death. Honor change, which is death.
Honor Bryan. Honor to you, Bryan. You are here in my heart forever.
Honor my component realities. Honor Skate Town and Superbad. Honor Kerouac's Great Emptiness. Honor the cripple. Honor the hermit. Honor the King. Honor a distrust of the pointedly cool. Honor the pointedly cool. Honor inconsistency and the freedom to travel between these realities without fear of congruity.
Honor the bullies. Honor those I have bullied.
Honor Miramar Ranch Elementary School. Honor Thurgood Marshall Middle School. Honor Scripps Ranch High School. Honor The Evergreen State College. These places are in my blood. I trace their geometry with fondness and tragedy.
Honor moving at the age of five, telling my dad I want to go back and suck all the memories out of the house through a latch in the door.
Honor wanting to suck all my memories out of the world and keeping them in a chamber close to my heart where they will stay warm and I can protect and preserve them.
Honor this weblog, which is a chart of my sincerity.
Honor overwrought tone. Honor the ability to laugh at anything, even staring down the barrell of two decades with damp eyes for the spectacle, the IMMENSE, CRUCIAL, YET UTTERLY UNGRASPABLE IMPORTANCE OF THE THING.
Honor the spectacle.
Honor the past.
Honor the future.
Honor the present, which is both.
Honor to these things.
Honor to these things.
Honor to these things.
Because that's all we can do.
Saturday, September 22, 2007
I was on the beach with my parents and we found a duck floundering in the sand. A female Northern Shoveler, probably point-guard of the winter migration.
"It's a duck."
"Well, it's a Shoveler. Look at the long beak."
It tries to move away from us by rolling its belly forward and kicking with its legs. Something is broken.
We stand and stare for many moments before going to look at the water. Blackbirds hop all around us.
Then we walk back, towards the duck. In my mind a man is standing over it, torturing gleefully and staring defiantly into my eyes. I am filled with hatred for this imaginary person, stamping out the bird's vulnerable life, every little kid flushing anthills with a hose, every person who doesn't care. Suddenly I am beating this man, screaming.
The duck rests in the lap of a woman sitting on a log with her boyfriend. We walk up and stare. She lifts a wing and I motion at the underparts with one earpiece of my sunglasses. I don't know what this is meant to signify. Neither of them speak English. We smile at each other, not knowing what we mean by smiling. "Ah, yes, what is to be done?"
She pets it as we walk off down the shore.
"It's a duck."
"Well, it's a Shoveler. Look at the long beak."
It tries to move away from us by rolling its belly forward and kicking with its legs. Something is broken.
We stand and stare for many moments before going to look at the water. Blackbirds hop all around us.
Then we walk back, towards the duck. In my mind a man is standing over it, torturing gleefully and staring defiantly into my eyes. I am filled with hatred for this imaginary person, stamping out the bird's vulnerable life, every little kid flushing anthills with a hose, every person who doesn't care. Suddenly I am beating this man, screaming.
The duck rests in the lap of a woman sitting on a log with her boyfriend. We walk up and stare. She lifts a wing and I motion at the underparts with one earpiece of my sunglasses. I don't know what this is meant to signify. Neither of them speak English. We smile at each other, not knowing what we mean by smiling. "Ah, yes, what is to be done?"
She pets it as we walk off down the shore.
Saturday, August 25, 2007
I'm almost done reading The Gospel of Food, a book all about how liberal food politics are mostly based on fallacy and anti-science.
I think about the possibility that maybe everything is JUST OK and something shifts on a primal level and releases all kinds of confidence and endorphins. That maybe McDonald's provides edible meals and a welcoming atmosphere to poor families that would have to live on crackers otherwise. That maybe I can swear off the horrible "reduced" whatever food I was raised on, every bite laden with the unspoken fear of diabetes and cholesterol implosion heat death.
That maybe ballasting your soul with doctrines limits its potentials for fulfillment. That maybe limiting your potentials for fulfillment cripples your soul.
That maybe we're not all going to go screaming into an icecap apocalypse, that doomsday has been lurking at the edges of our dreams since we were squirted into the universe for a purpose whose continued obscurity honestly renders all judgment, comparison and prediction inherently faulted, that somebody's going to look back and regard the idea that bicycles and veggie burgers will save the world in the same way we shake our heads at how it was once believed that masturbation causes blindness.
That maybe we can drink in huge, blustering breaths of liberated air, embrace our ignorance, assume nothing and go tromping off into the future with excitement (how alien this concept, once so central to the human mind). That maybe the only gospel of worth is: go with it, dudes.
I think about the possibility that maybe everything is JUST OK and something shifts on a primal level and releases all kinds of confidence and endorphins. That maybe McDonald's provides edible meals and a welcoming atmosphere to poor families that would have to live on crackers otherwise. That maybe I can swear off the horrible "reduced" whatever food I was raised on, every bite laden with the unspoken fear of diabetes and cholesterol implosion heat death.
That maybe ballasting your soul with doctrines limits its potentials for fulfillment. That maybe limiting your potentials for fulfillment cripples your soul.
That maybe we're not all going to go screaming into an icecap apocalypse, that doomsday has been lurking at the edges of our dreams since we were squirted into the universe for a purpose whose continued obscurity honestly renders all judgment, comparison and prediction inherently faulted, that somebody's going to look back and regard the idea that bicycles and veggie burgers will save the world in the same way we shake our heads at how it was once believed that masturbation causes blindness.
That maybe we can drink in huge, blustering breaths of liberated air, embrace our ignorance, assume nothing and go tromping off into the future with excitement (how alien this concept, once so central to the human mind). That maybe the only gospel of worth is: go with it, dudes.
Monday, August 13, 2007
Tuesday, July 17, 2007
Couple days ago had a quarter-conscious dream of retreating into a dark apartment, everything stone and candles, the home of Kenneth Patchen and also the idea of Kenneth Patchen, waypoint for every poor soul who inherits the holy William Blake endless night holy holy bullshit. No name dropping here, according to Patchen there is no name for it, just a vicious Knowledge creeping down the generations, beaming its doubt into the hearts and minds of serious serious serious young men. Sat there, in the stone room, at a wooden table, drinking something and dwelling in the residual company of those who came before, serious, ashen-eyed, dead and electrified by Loneliness.
Augh. Would rather not be one of the victims. I'm repeating myself.
Woke up into unbelievable head-shattering sleep paralysis, my body made of lightning, amplified again and again until it's never been so bad, trying to call out to someone to maybe come slap some life into my arms and legs but being only able to mutter out, "...muh." Then seeing my reading lamp hovering over me, thinking AHA, here is the trickster who renders me paralyzed two or three mornings out of the month! "Fuck you goddamned shit ass motherfucker..." realizing it is a lamp and, indeed, not a malevolent sleep demon from the nether.
Fun morning.
Dwell dwell dwell dwell malaise malaise Happy Self Indulgent Blog cantankerous buttercup. Zummm. Fuck it.
Augh. Would rather not be one of the victims. I'm repeating myself.
Woke up into unbelievable head-shattering sleep paralysis, my body made of lightning, amplified again and again until it's never been so bad, trying to call out to someone to maybe come slap some life into my arms and legs but being only able to mutter out, "...muh." Then seeing my reading lamp hovering over me, thinking AHA, here is the trickster who renders me paralyzed two or three mornings out of the month! "Fuck you goddamned shit ass motherfucker..." realizing it is a lamp and, indeed, not a malevolent sleep demon from the nether.
Fun morning.
Dwell dwell dwell dwell malaise malaise Happy Self Indulgent Blog cantankerous buttercup. Zummm. Fuck it.
Friday, June 22, 2007
I'm sitting in a hostel in Munich and I have less than five minutes of internet time left.
The obscurity of my situation - opposite side of globe, don't know what time it is back home, an empty checking account - is mighty powerful black magic against my state of mind.
Walking in circles around old cities, seeing the human creature poke its head out of history, feeling the experiment churn on under my feet, part of me, everyone, an equation of old statues, bronze becomes steel, mud becomes concrete, growing on forever.
Homesick fever dreams. Wonderful times, really, amazing, but no place like home.
Happy world. Lonely and OK world.
Out of time. Love you.
The obscurity of my situation - opposite side of globe, don't know what time it is back home, an empty checking account - is mighty powerful black magic against my state of mind.
Walking in circles around old cities, seeing the human creature poke its head out of history, feeling the experiment churn on under my feet, part of me, everyone, an equation of old statues, bronze becomes steel, mud becomes concrete, growing on forever.
Homesick fever dreams. Wonderful times, really, amazing, but no place like home.
Happy world. Lonely and OK world.
Out of time. Love you.
Tuesday, April 24, 2007
SWEET MOTHER OF GOD, WHAT THE HELL IS GOING ON!
I just received notice that I am being picked up for blog syndication on Nerve.com. I'm going to be paid $100 a month to go on dates and write about it for 1,000,000+ people to read.
Four hours in the computer lab filling out an application has set my life on a completely unexpected, bizarre, potentially wonderful course.
I can't express to you the joy and amazement I feel right now. I've basically started a career for myself and it all came to a head in a matter of two days.
HOLY SHIT!
I'll soon be appearing here: blog-a-log
My head is spinning. I don't even know what I'm going to do. I'm floating.
I just received notice that I am being picked up for blog syndication on Nerve.com. I'm going to be paid $100 a month to go on dates and write about it for 1,000,000+ people to read.
Four hours in the computer lab filling out an application has set my life on a completely unexpected, bizarre, potentially wonderful course.
I can't express to you the joy and amazement I feel right now. I've basically started a career for myself and it all came to a head in a matter of two days.
HOLY SHIT!
I'll soon be appearing here: blog-a-log
My head is spinning. I don't even know what I'm going to do. I'm floating.
Thursday, April 19, 2007
Yesterday I was on an America West flight from Las Vegas (wonderful playland fantasy city - totally bizarre and horrible but kind of endearing at the same time) to Seattle. Those little flip-down screens that are built into the ceiling consoles of many planes were flipped down when we boarded, playing a montage of placid music and scenes of mountains and fish and whatnot to soothe raging, panicked us. After we taxied, they retracted, then when we were at cruising altitude they extended back down and started showing advertisements for the airline and Cranium trivia. There were also ads for some stupid Cranium offshoot toys and photos of all the wonderful places America West - and only America West - can take you.
When the stewardess asked me for my drink order, I leaned over and asked, "Is this business going to be going on the entire flight?"
"Yeah."
"Can it not be going on the entire flight?"
"No. The advertisers require that we show it."
I groan and shake my head.
"Well it's not like you have to look at it. ("You fucking caveman idiot.") Does it really bother you that much?"
"Yeah, well, it's so obnoxious and intrusive."
She looks at me incredulously. "You're the first person to ever complain about that." Another stewardess approaches with drinks. The stewardess already berating me turns to her friend, motioning at me: "The first one."
"That's ridiculous."
I order water, and when I put my tray down I laugh, put the tray back up and take a full thirty seconds to process what I had just seen. The whole top of the tray was plastered with an ad for some obscure laptop. I put down the tray for the seat next to me and saw a different ad for the same laptop.
It may seem like I'm being affectedly shocked at all of this, but I was genuinely surprised. It was like some overdone movie parody of American marketing materialized before my eyes.
At the end of the flight, the Alpha-stewardess made this announcement to the cabin: "As we make our final descent, flight attendants will be coming through the cabin to collect any remaining service items."
WHAT! "Service items?" Who is so offended by the word "trash" that they require a euphemism for it? Do the America West managers really believe people could ever possibly be offended by that word if it wasn't suggested that they should be?
Craziness. George Carlin rolls over in the grave he has yet to fill.
When the stewardess asked me for my drink order, I leaned over and asked, "Is this business going to be going on the entire flight?"
"Yeah."
"Can it not be going on the entire flight?"
"No. The advertisers require that we show it."
I groan and shake my head.
"Well it's not like you have to look at it. ("You fucking caveman idiot.") Does it really bother you that much?"
"Yeah, well, it's so obnoxious and intrusive."
She looks at me incredulously. "You're the first person to ever complain about that." Another stewardess approaches with drinks. The stewardess already berating me turns to her friend, motioning at me: "The first one."
"That's ridiculous."
I order water, and when I put my tray down I laugh, put the tray back up and take a full thirty seconds to process what I had just seen. The whole top of the tray was plastered with an ad for some obscure laptop. I put down the tray for the seat next to me and saw a different ad for the same laptop.
It may seem like I'm being affectedly shocked at all of this, but I was genuinely surprised. It was like some overdone movie parody of American marketing materialized before my eyes.
At the end of the flight, the Alpha-stewardess made this announcement to the cabin: "As we make our final descent, flight attendants will be coming through the cabin to collect any remaining service items."
WHAT! "Service items?" Who is so offended by the word "trash" that they require a euphemism for it? Do the America West managers really believe people could ever possibly be offended by that word if it wasn't suggested that they should be?
Craziness. George Carlin rolls over in the grave he has yet to fill.
Tuesday, February 27, 2007
I am done with this college that reads The Dharma Bums and sits in a circle sighing and nodding
you all talking about how it is a book for young people with a slow drawl making young people into
words like fuck and shit
(DO YOU HAVE NO PASSION MUST YOU SIT THERE AND BE ASTUTER-THAN-THOU AAALWAAAAYS!)
and I try to tell you No this book has conquered literature because it is Truth Forever and Ever
because it is a piece of a soul it is beautiful things and emptiness and honesty pacing back and
forth at the top of a mountain kicking rocks into the void
but your pencils go scribble-scribble-scribble
and your years calcify in your bowels.
you all talking about how it is a book for young people with a slow drawl making young people into
words like fuck and shit
(DO YOU HAVE NO PASSION MUST YOU SIT THERE AND BE ASTUTER-THAN-THOU AAALWAAAAYS!)
and I try to tell you No this book has conquered literature because it is Truth Forever and Ever
because it is a piece of a soul it is beautiful things and emptiness and honesty pacing back and
forth at the top of a mountain kicking rocks into the void
but your pencils go scribble-scribble-scribble
and your years calcify in your bowels.