subject verbs object; hijinx ensue.

lilted Paolo Musagedes

2010-01-10T00:45:00.009-05:00

“I think, as far as openings go, that’ll do,” lilted Paolo Musagedes, a language long dormant under his tongue warping vowels with the acetylene heat of its eastern origins; English was his language now, or perhaps had always been, owing to some bucking and rampant Anglophonic imperialism, he belonged to it, and it belonged to him. The accent was thick, but qualified speech of grammatical, syntactical perfection penetrated the equally thick mustache with reedy, meticulous musicality.

Ivorrs searched for something more than approval in this, but none revealed itself and anyway this wasn’t about fishing for compliments. He shuffled the ragged pages from the tabletop and into the beaten notebook, to a folder behind its front cover, the stray gangling spiraltorn edges peeling up and reaching through one another. Vines of ironed pulp still climbing toward sunlight. He lost this notebook not too long afterward; one night, drunk, in a parking lot maybe, behind a girlfriend’s apartment building, but as he was not yet through a significant number of its pages, and he’d already copied out the most pertinent notes, Sam Ivorrs would try not to think about the secrets he had confessed to it, or that they may be floating out there now, untethered in the reading, folded malignantly in some finder-keeper’s hollow stewardship. He hoped the girl had not somehow found it…

Musagedes proceeded in his achieved English: “My suggestion to you would be not to labor over the minutia, the things you might edit out at some point; typos, clichés, even characters, those things can be excised later. What is important is that you progress through this narrative….” They poked at theory for some time, fanning it out and probing its dimensions until either the one or the other had no more to say, and Ivorrs was ready to indulge his growing compulsion for loneliness in exterior regions, paved, cool, and away from what was becoming a fetid gloam in the noiseful coffee shop. Ivorrs wondered if he had at all concealed the nature of his farewell or his handshake: the one foreshortened, the other contracted. He decided no, he did not, but the air was like warm leaden paint and he let his socially transmitted awkwardness bother him only until he chose a direction on the sidewalk, grinding suddenly now underfoot.

Where to? What to follow? I will go where you send me... north/south? The perfect solar ecliptic of the Parkway? the Department of Works' graffitic sidewalk neon scrawl, this way gas, that electric? But never the twain shall meet...he smiled at the thought of a pleasant blossom of fire. Perhaps God would deign to speak to him from between the wavy petals.

resolves

2009-12-18T13:22:00.003-05:00

last bit of schoolwork from this doomsday scenario of a semester: late homeworks under the office door of a professor who is not showing signs of returning to campus before the year's out.

at any rate, i'm too finished with this semester to be looking back. clapping its dust off my sleeves, i'm ready to feel burdened with the things i want to be burdened with. real priorities are allowed to breathe now, and have their due. in the particular order that they occur to me, they are as follows:

- begin writing, again. that is, continue to work on the opus (for which i've found a title), but also be writing. be working with language. set aside regular time during the week for it. once the spring semester starts, i will have three classes at most, though hopefully less, to worry about. it will feel unbelievably light, i imagine. and i have a lust to kick out a draft of this book; it's wrapped around my brain like fierce ivy. i hope to write experimentally and aimlessly as well, as i will have the mental squarefootage for things to begin occuring to me again...

- get this house in order. that equals: the necessities of furniture and belongings to begin appearing in this new apartment of mine. a box spring. curtains. places to sit. things to eat off of. but also, even just as important: a desk or writing station. i am in this apartment because i didn't want to have to carve my own space out of someone else's home any longer, where i would hope, but not actually get around to, sitting down and doing some creative work. its a small place i have, but what little extra room there was ever going to be in whatever place i landed was always already devoted to this...which leads me to...

- the studio. finally unhindered by others, significant or otherwise, i have freedom of space, freedom of motion, freedom of quiet, freedom of late hours, freedom of mess. it takes more than ability to do something creative, unfortunately, but i no longer have to let anything stand in my way, or excuse my inaction. i need some more tools for course, but those can and will be gotten. nothing but myself and the level of my own dedication will be responsible for my productivity...

- the joe kubert school of comics and cartooning correspondence courses. i love comic books. they make up more of my being than the water content found inside every human, and i think that's at something like 90%. i'm so full of superheroes that the first and only very clear career desire i've ever had was to draw comic books. it's an extremely difficult business to break into nowadays; comics are at a peak like they've never been before, and were on the rise even before all these superhero movies came out. few publishers accept submissions anymore. but there are ways to get noticed and i feel an obligation to my eight year old self to take a crack at it, before i shuffle off to gradschool and become a stuffy ol' academic. i will need all the practice i can get, and the correspondence courses offer a perfect opportunity to brush up, as well as a good reason to get my ass in the studio and log some hours doing artwork....

these are the plans i've been developing while my life has been on hold since september. it is coincidental that i am able to voice them and focus on them at year's end. they are not resolutions, they are my resolves. it means the world and all my future to see them through.

sundered, scattered, fleeting

2009-08-08T01:10:00.004-04:00

someday i'm going to write a book about all the people i've known -- i mean really known, in the way that two people share something wonderful and inexplicable with each other. those rare connections people fall into that are closer and more tender than anything produced by similar backrounds or comparable stations in life. those connections that arise spontaneously, almost psychically. natural as square pegs in square holes. filling in for you in spaces you didn't know were negative. missing pieces of identity. kindred.

i'd like to write a book about all of those people i've felt that connection with. it would be an interesting book, full of quirky, funny, sweet, intelligent, for-one-reason-or-another-remarkable people.

i would meticulously reconstruct all the laughter, conversations important and trivial, points we agreed or diverged upon; recount all the places we'd gone together, the trouble we'd gotten into, the quiet moments or the movies we'd seen; i would recall the members of their family that i had met, had dinner with, drank with.

i would do this for no other reason other than to simply remember; who they were, what we had; confirm its incidence.

because i don't know any of them anymore...

at a pace that could best be described as 'at a dog paddle'

2009-07-23T20:08:00.003-04:00

...i am still working out my hatreds and my loves...

i will write whatsoever i goddamnwell please

2009-06-22T17:56:00.006-04:00

1/24/07

In, from the front porch, and the cold follows me through the door. I am thinking: somewhere, in the sky, there is a new moon floating by that I can’t see. The shadow of my soul, going by; your face, turned away from me. Hot chocolate is not as good as coffee with a cigarette. Through them both I can taste my dinner; mostly the red wine marinade I made. It sticks, distinct, lingering on my palate. Like a crown of blood around my tongue. You know those stories of people that die of heartbreak? That will never be me. I think of you, when I think of the moon – your face is like it, beyond touching. Whatever beautiful light it casts down at me, though I might chase it through its own thrown shadows, I won’t catch it. It tingles on my skin, like aloe on a sunburn. I want to eat it, the peppermint moon, but…that is absurd. You’ve heard the stories of those people…the elderly, the aged, living full, married, childed lives of umbilical devotion to each other with silver anniversaries to look forward to. And then, one of them dies, and the other doesn’t know how to live or what else to do but to follow. That will not be me. I will have driven all the miles around the moon and back, listened to as much music as one could stack, know every distant inch between here and the moon before that is me.
When I die, it won’t be of old age and because of emphysema. Whatever chance I will leave behind a well worn corpse, it will be because of some great grace, but God knows I’ve lead a less than graceful life. When I die, it will not be because her spirit beckons me, no. that passes me every night. I am well acquainted with her leaving, I know her only by her going. I will not die because of some spirit I’ve lost. It will be because of a spirit I’ve finally found. When you die, you find yourself truly, and once you’ve found yourself, you are truly ready to die. It happens like that. You may not get the chance to say goodbye. It happens in pre-mortem comas, or in the eternity it takes for one to breathe his last, the exhale into infinity. You do not get a chance to bear the secret out into the fleshly life; it is not a secret the fleshly life can discover. When I go, I will have struck the gold of my soul, finally. A life’s work…completed in death. By dying. The loadbearing cornerstone of life. I will give my life to complete my life. I will die because of the soul I’ve found. I will follow because its truth beckons me. I think: she will continue marching black across the night shining light on far shores, and I cannot follow her with my death. I’ve only got one death to die. The task of my life awaits me, here, on this veined, life-glazed ground. To her I cannot cleave and die. Perhaps I do not love her enough for that. I do love her some; I love her still. But to die, it will not be to follow her leaving; it will be to finally meet my becoming.

...darker with the day

2009-06-18T15:03:00.002-04:00

listening the end of the Nick Cave album "No More Shall We Part" as i start this...its mostly a winter album, or an album for sad days. today is close enough to both, and so it fits in the right places where you need to hear it; if you listen closely, you can hear lines like incisors, backed by rows and rows of thunderous and passionately delivered performance...it is sad, yet somehow bouyant. not hopeful, necessarily -- or at all, even; that certainly wouldn't do. i wouldn't enjoy listening to it half so much if that were true. there is no resolve to its sadnesses; rather, it just pushes through them, it continues. coincidentally, the line that plays as write this: "i was lookin for an end to this for some kind of closure, time moves so rapidly i had trouble keepin track of it."

perhaps there isn't much closure; perhaps there is no end as long as time keeps moving so rapidly.

i was in love with a girl for about ten years who grew to hate me so much that she has nothing but malice for me now in her crooked and abusive heart. i'm not sure what to do with that, and i wonder: how could i have misjudged somebody so completely? how did i ever think i wanted a family with someone so thoroughly disappointing? what was it that i saw in her in the first place? i guess even love at first sight is not beyond making an occasional joke. one of the last things i said to her was that i was afraid to lose her because i couldn't see how i had anything good to look forward to after her. she told me that it wasn't fair to put that kind of responsibility on her. it wasn't. but it was what i've felt for so long, i suppose the 10 years of hope and expectation were too much pressure as well. yet there was no one else with whom i wanted to share good things with more than her; the let down was almost too much to handle. now, i only wish her all the emptiness and misery she has wrapped herself up in.

now, she is taking me to court, for being mean to her; ironies abound. i find it almost funny that she was the one to cross lines of appropriateness when it came to what we said to one another. the hateful, evil things i've heard come out of her mouth were nothing short of astounding. i tried to call her out on it several times, but she either apparently thought she was justified in telling me she hoped i fucked around, caught aids and died, or she just didn't think it was an awful thing to say. more surprising was when she couldn't understand how furious it made me when she said she may be pregnant but that i would never know my child. how someone so psychologically and verbally abusive has the stones to take me to court for harrassment is just another pearl of shit on this string of reprehensable, conscienceless behavior. the other irony? just as i start waking up without the sickening, laser focused hatred for her blazing through my brain every morning, she slaps me with this legal bullshit, which will only now draw out the process of letting go that much longer. it is nothing but sheer malice on her part. she has no qualms about the serious harm she does towards other people as long as it serves her own ends. i want to be done with her as much as she wants to be done with me...there are other, new, and better people to love....for God's sakes, there are better people to hate; she is just vacuum and void.

so. maybe there is no resolve to this sadness; that i haven't been able to tidily package up and store the old hurts doesn't take away from the necessity of starting new and beautiful things, nor does it detract from their sweetness. their may be no resolve to the sad realities that grip me now other than that time passes quickly, and it may fade into the background behind what is next, what is new, what is more deserving of my attention and talents....where i put the past isn't nearly so important as where i put my feet, and what i point them toward...

seized today

2009-05-11T17:12:00.000-04:00

i am incapacitated.

i can transcend time.

2009-02-02T11:19:00.003-05:00

i am existentially incapable of perfect attendence, or anything resembling the phrase.

there are a number of reasons why i didn't make it to my first two classes today; a number of reasons why i haven't been able to get to my art history class at all other than on the first day.

sometimes i don't wake up on time; sometimes, when i do, i take too long to get ready. sometimes bus schedules are lies. the worst is when i need only an extra minute, two minutes, five minutes to be able to make it somewhere on time. my day could be all well oiled gears, if i hadn't just missed a bus that came early; if i had not laid in bed for so long; if i would have just, and if only and etc., etc. the list is long, and only partially legitimate. its true that i do have bad luck; i have buffalo luck -- that kind that keeps you from falling completely on your face, but refuses to extend itself for your success.

sometimes i wonder if i had been born on time, rather than five days late, whether or not i would be in a different place right now -- i am working on a time deficit that has not allowed me to be anywhere i should have been my whole life. would i have made it to class? would i have made it to art school? would i be successful doing something i love, instead of a 30 year old boy with no money, prospects, or anything to show for all the time i've been here?

of course, that points the finger at just about everything else i can point the finger at other than myself. the problem is i tend to genuinely more than jokingly believe all of that. but even if i am right and it is all true, it doesn't excuse this fact: i am capable of taking responsibility for my own life and making it do what i want it to do. cabs may not show up when i call for them, and i might miss buses, and the entire world may be revolving against me and unwinding all the slapdash itineraries i've come up with...but with some more astute planning, with an earlier jump on the day, there is no reason i have to miss the mid morning delight of art history or afternoon charms of introduction to fashion merchandising.

even if things are not inclined to go my way, that is all the more reason to put an effort into them.

luckily, i've still got three more classes i can attend today; two of them are the good ones; one of them is "romantic movement in america," (read: transcendentalism). Emerson, Thoreau and Whitman have never been my "go to" guys when i think of what i like to read -- truthfully i've read very little of any of them -- but there is something exciting about the concepts they deal in. man is a "locus of infinite possibility" for them; ingenuity, creativity and the imagination are paramount above all other human qualities. these ideas are classified as romantic, but for people living the dream, they are the basic tenets of reality. doing what i know i am meant to do is within my grasp -- living well is within my grasp. even getting to class on time is within my grasp. these are contingent upon me.

re: blogging.

2009-01-28T20:42:00.002-05:00

...as in a phenomenon.

i no longer do it.

i will no longer do it...but i have decided to continue writing here.

there are a number of reasons i haven't been writing -- on this here website and more generally -- but i don't feel like getting into them at the moment, because my point is not to bitch or complain or blame.

there were a number of reasons i used to write on this here website, and as genuine as i was intending to be, there was often just as much exhibitionism involved.

i guess i mean to say this: all the reasons for which i have written, and all the ones which have muted me are beyond me now in the same way in which sometimes the past seems episodic and irrelevent to the present...that is...i peck at this keyboard in hopes of finding something to stand on...in hopes of discovering "whys" and "hows" that are otherwise shapeless unless the right vessel of a phrase is chanced upon to contain it. i want this to be a constructive effort, rather than a starry eyed or theoretical expression.

i am sick of not knowing what i am doing; sick of not examining what i am doing, or attempting to answer the questions about my life that i all to often ignore. i am free to be honest. i want things to stand on, i want to discover the ground i tread and whether or not there is a path there.

i am not tired of the pursuit of beauty or truth or all of those grand ideas, but they mean nothing if they cannot be supported by common life, intimate interests, and earthly concerns; or, rather, beauty and truth cannot be supported unless they are also drawn into those things. they cannot be considered compartmentally, or as separate. its not in human nature to exist unalloyed.....neither is it the nature of the world we live in.

i've had a rough week.
i am tired. i am afraid. i am hungry. i have bills to pay. i have to go to work. i have wet feet. i take the bus. i go to school. i am alone. i am lazy. i am guilty. i am in desperate need of a shower, and the immediate application of deodorant. and i want to cut open the sky, and shake mountains, and shout down the naysayers, reach into the thunder, rattle tombs and pierce souls, and change a thing so that it is never the same again.

these are all things i have to confront, question, resolve, learn how to do; and they are all things i need to make an effort at every day. the one set of priorities does not supercede the other; i have missed out on too much of both already.

today i stop blogging

the case of the desperately interesting job hunt

2008-02-04T21:28:00.000-05:00

i keep wondering for how long i will have nothing to say; the fun and creative parts of my brain feel dormant or even comatose, while the boring parts deal with boring matters that are, of course, unavoidable and pressing.

right now i am sitting at a computer in the bedroom of the girl whom i love; she is away at work, and i am resting the pads of my fingers in the divids of the keys in the keyboard. it is the same tired, slightly warm lure of complacency i feel in my body -- like i've been gently pressed into a featherbed and kindly asked not to move very much. but maybe that's just the midday, post-late-lunch nap talking.

as of sunday i have been new york state certified in a responsible alcohol service program which means if i happen to get a job bartending in buffalo, drinking capital of the world, i will know when to cut you off, and how, but will in all likelihood leave you to fend for yourself against the combined forces of erie county sherriffs and their charges of DWI. hey, i was there once too.

as a matter of fact, it was two years and about 18 hours ago that i had my run in with the law, from which i am happy to say i have nearly made a full financial recovery. i still owe the DMV two hundred and fitty dolla.

speaking of financial recovery, i have decided that i need to turn over a new leaf, that being one of fiscal responsibility. i plan on doing this as soon as, or perhaps just a little bit after i have a job. i thought that maybe, after having taken this bartender training course and broadening my skillset, that i'd be a more marketable candidate in the service industry. unfortunately, this is the time of year when nobody quits their jobs and nobody goes out to eat, so however qualified i may be for any given position, there's no telling when it will be available. i am scanning the classifieds for jobs, and the obituaries for dead servers and bartenders, hoping Death has been kind to my employment debacle.

i did have a near miss though, this morning. on friday i was called by the co-owner of Shango, and asked to come in on saturday for an interview. it only took my three separate trips into the place to get them to call me. the lady, whose name is either unpronouncable, or made up of secret letters that only the initiated are able to hear, sat me down with two other people with some other names, and conducted one of the most pleasant interviews i had ever had in my life. it was nothing special, it was just fun; a laidback, conversational, tangent riddled interview. if i'd ever kept track of those things, i'm sure it would land inside the top five best interviews i've given. i won't get into a major set-up for a story that you already know will end anti-climactically and in disappointment, but we chatted it up, and connected over bravo's "top chef," and laughed at corporate restaurants and miserable albany folk, and covered a good chunk of my resume all inside of fifteen minutes. another fifteen and bottle of wine later i'm sure we'd have solved whatever global problem is en vogue to solve during hyperboles these days. they said they'd get back to me today, which they did; to thank me for my resume, which they would keep on hand in case whomever they hired "didn't work out," and also to tell me that i left a "very strong impression." the prompt "thank-you-bye-bye-click" from me stifled the "how do i pay bills with 'very strong impressions?'" that was sure to be followed by the gently worded, sincere hope that their new server ties them up in the night, empties their buisness account, and flies off to vegas to spend it all on slot machines and repeat viewings of the Celine Dion show.

i should've had that job all tied up.

tomorrow i'm going to the Saturn Club on Delaware to make someone talk to me about a banquet server and/or bartending position they may have there; the best part is i've got to literally race somebody else who pretty much outqualifies me for the job...
sigh.

somebody please hire me.

i'd love to turn over that new leaf soon...

why the sudden obsession with new leaves? because life could be better. because a certain level of domesticity -- the comfortable level -- can only come if you work toward it as a goal. i have been too used to visiting it on the weekends when i'd come to have dinner at my parent's house. carving out a little nook in the world takes some sponsorship; inside a nook, there might be opportunity to wake up a little and find things in life that are both more important, and more interesting than the boring problems that plague and stupefy a boring brain...

i'd like to take my girl and go live in a nook.

for shame

2008-01-25T16:34:00.000-05:00

i am so sorely out of practice when it comes to this, i don't even know why i've tried to start blogging again. its been a little over a half a year since i'd shut down this blog, and i'm not certain that i have anything interesting to say now that i've reopened for buisness; re-reading the bulk of my earlier posts, i'm not sure i had anything interesting to say then either. yet lately i've been feeling a desire to post, that if neglected long enough might have graduated into a need. perhaps something worth the effort of words will fall out in the process. in addition, i can imagine that i've lost any readership i might have had due to my hiatus, but that isn't enough to discourage me now either. i'm compelled to blather.

i quit this thang seven months ago because i couldn't read what i was writing without rolling my eyes. who wants to hear someone take their sad excuse for a life and make it sound even sadder? its embarassing. it is the writing equivalent of a half-hearted suicide attempt; you could practically hear the Cure playing in the next room as it whined "i took all the green ones because you wouldn't love me," between fits of shallow breathing.

ugh. ugly. in fact, this blog is festooned with ugly, and the worst part is its all me, in an unavoidable, non-fictional way. and so bloggy, with its bloggyness. when i shut it down it was out of shame. it didn't feel worthy to be read. i didn't want you to know how pathetic i was anymore. i didn't want to wear it on my sleeve so much, like some sloppy emo panzy. i didn't want to give anyone the opportunity to judge me over what i'd written as harshly as i was judging myself. long story short: i wasn't ready to own the fact that i am the poor sap who's signing his name on those pathetic posts.

sigh.
can't escape it now.
i could hide the posts, tuck them away in a drafts folder, or just plain delete them. but there is something manipulative and shady about that. i shouldn't need to hide. honest writing fosters discovery, and i am just hear to learn. there are parts of this blog, just as there are parts of me, that are tough to look at, or sad, or ridiculous, or just plain wrong. so here is a blog full of my failures; what does running from them do? they don't get better until i recognize them for what they are.

albany confession

2008-01-22T17:13:00.000-05:00

i've done well with the things i've set out to do.

when i left buffalo with the objective to minimize the distractions of my life, to run from temptations, and toward simplicity, i never really thought it would work as well as i believed that i wanted it to. i imagined that i'd have the loads of extra time to finish at least a half a draft of a novel that had been fermenting in my brain for the last few years, and get to carve a place in the huge family i barely knew.

life with my sisters in schenectady was an epiphany, in a practical, bold-faced sort of way. and as far as writing went, i did about as well as i can realistically expect of myself, which is to say i made inches of headway towards a mark i fell horribly short of.

the other goals? simpicity? the marathon run away from distraction and temptation? i did amazingly well with. when i moved out to the fairytale kingdom of Albany, NY, i got exactly what i wanted. i wanted to leave behind what i was relying on in buffalo to get me through, and strip everything away to find out what i really am and what i'm made of. i was very much afraid of what i had become in buffalo, but i didn't even really have a true sense of what that was until i'd spent some time away.

yet, as the ancients used to say, when the gods wish to punish us, they answer our prayers.

i have to include the caveat that there was one noble goal that i did acheive in the course of the move. i left buffalo a physical wreck, because smoking cigarettes is not as good for you as it looks and binge drinking will swallow you up and puke you out. those are bad habits i seem to have wrestled under control, now. and thank God, because it catches up to you.

now, on to answered prayer:

the reasons i give for wanting to leave are at most only half as noble as they sound: in a nutshell, i abandoned buffalo, and everyone in it, because i didn't want to need anyone, and i didn't want anyone to need me. i didn't want people to get in my way, or hold me back, or let me down. and if that meant not having friends, then so be it. and with a violently selfish shove, i landed myself in Albany, where i even ducked out of responsibility to my family there to remain isolated. i might as well have had an off button. i walk around describing Albany as a bad fit for me, but i think in retrospect, i was a bad fit for it -- i never gave it a fair chance. i arrived only half believing that the party, and the fun, and the good times i had in buffalo somehow wouldn't follow me. but in so often i went out of my way to not make friends or connections. i thought i was trying, but it was really only for the purpose of fending off boredom and loneliness.

in albany i had the anonymity and social disconnectedness i thought i'd craved. and then, somehow, what people thought of me became suddenly important. how's that for a big ball of irony? -- i didn't give a fuck what the people who loved me thought, and now i was grovelling for any kind of validation from new peers who didn't give a fuck about me. well served, poetic justice, well served.

and when Bill died this summer, i know it didn't just happen to me, or for me, but damned if it didn't teach me a timely lesson. i deserted my friends in buffalo in pieces before i actually left, and Bill was probably one of the first victims of my ego. i can't think of anyone who deserved it less; Bill began and ended with the love he had for his friends. i hacked him out of my life with animosity i realized was misplaced only with his sudden death. death is so polarizing and stark. everything jumps into relief, everything is black and white. whatever little things i wanted to take as liberties to end our friendship, i realized were shields for my own guilty part in the matter. it was a really shitty thing to do.

i ran off into the world all empowered and invincible, on my own power, at the cost of what brings actual meaning to life. i've come home now, a little broken by it. it turns out i had no idea what i was doing. i find myself at times looking for this ideal life, and i keep trampling over the real life that i should be living that is right under my nose.

i've discovered a few things, about myself, when the rest is stripped away, and i've had excess time to think about it. i'm a selfish bastard. i still am, and i know it, and its a slow and supercomplicated feat of engineering to rewire all the shitty behavioral circuits. i am a work in retarded progress.

along the rollercoaster ride of self discovery over the past few years, i've uncovered all of these drastically differing parts of myself. the adventures of my colossal ego showed me things i wouldn't normally have seen, but i put more faith in that ego than it could ever handle. what was there to topple it but lightning, or to do away with it but some act of God? leave it to my ego to demand that kind of end; God yawned and i simply choked myself out. i am nobody special. my own pride prepared my downfall. it was self contained, an un-event, and i'm really the only that thinks it was important enough to give a damn.

i enabled myself, and i disabled myself.

i'm not sure where that leaves me. i have weird, unmatching pieces. i guess the next question is what can i make out of that? and how do i do it? i don't know if its a matter of taking the good, and tossing the bad, or just gathering it all and adding a grain of salt.

it probably doesn't matter so much as it does that i learn to value the things i've come to know are more important. i've trapsed off to fulfill some ideal life that may or may not exist, trampling over a real life, the fulfillment of which i've neglected for too long.

for as long as i've been someone who's thought for himself, i've always been concerned with determining what was "important" and pursuing it. at different stages, what is important has been different things; when i was young, it was spirituality, and at other times it has been matters of heart, or virtue, or quality. good enough things i suppose, but i wonder if i hadn't gotten it all wrong from the beginning. did i even know what was important? are those things even close? and if i started from some faulty impression of what was important, and since i've landed so far from that even, how far off am i now?

it makes me wonder if i haven't failed at everything i've set out to do...

happy june 22

2007-06-22T22:25:00.000-04:00

i can't even go to the bar alone -- i've already established my self as the pathetic lonely drinker in both the bars within walking distance from here.

it occurs to me for the first time ever that today is the approximate date of my conception. the bed i was conceived on is in the next room, currently in use by my sister (not for the purpose of conceiving). they say it belonged to my mum at one point, but since i don't know precisely when, the best i can say is that it is the approximate bed i was made on.

ah, lucky for me i stashed some high priced bourbon a lost friend bought for me in a pretty little flask some other lost friend gave me as a birthday present.

conceived for what?
not for this pathetic existence, i hope.
i reach new lows.

time to sip.

from the mouth of the Horse's Ass

2007-06-07T23:56:00.000-04:00

how are you going to get home? she said

i have two legs, i told her.

i walk home and there is two of every star in the night, and two of every streetlight. two of every star, two of every planet. even this one. i have two eyes. why shouldn't i see two of everything?
i walk home, and round corners, and get to my apartment. it is two apartments.
i live in the upper.
it has its own number; i get my mail at a different address from the landlords, below. but it is the same house. i hear them all the time, the landlords, and all the noise that they make. they hear me. we pay our rent to the two sisters, and their boyfriends.
i live with my sisters. they are twins.

at any different moment, my heart is stretched between two different girls; a blonde one, and a brunette. a brown eyed or a green eyed. this end of the bar, or that.
i have two feet. i walk home alone.
my father never stuck around to make any more like me; my mother dies before she gets the chance to meet me.
my father has green eyes. they go yellow when he angers.
mother was a brunette.
i am sure they would have went well together, if not for all the childhood trauma and the dying.
rafe is a bull. she, some earthly saint.
i live in the dazzling labyrinth of this world
i gallop home, around corners, to the lovely little center of my life, where i use everything until it curling dries up and falls away.
home, all in one piece.
one piece of what? one that is a piece has to be part of something else.
home, all in one, alone, galloping like some beast of two natures.
there are not yet any swords to fall on or skeins of red yarn to choke with. i am home. i wish i could be anywhere else that wasn't a place with just me in it.
send me elsewhere, sword.
send me elsewhere, yarn.
in a parcel, between those two stars, there.
is there such a thing as destiny? and does it clamp me here in the trash town and on the trash sidewalks, walking circuits between trash bars and trash apartments. will it begin and end here, and am i condemned to live a life secreted away from all of the things i want to touch, and see, and taste, and scrape against, and love at, and pray for?
i arrive home, all in one piece. alone.

but, i have two legs...

its easy for me to get to zen

2007-06-02T03:01:00.000-04:00

i am up late
late enough for me to be listening to the Fountain soundtrack
and be all f ull of tears and love

ah. God.

?

with apologies to buddhists...

our bones will live a life after we die

2007-05-21T00:55:00.000-04:00

fret not that to the grave we are betrothed
our bones will live a life after we die
and peacefully in desert tombs alcoved
we'll honeymoon forever, you and i
no reason will we have to leave our bed
each day we spend together, we'll be smiling
though everyone above us thinks us dead
we pass away the pleasant hours, whiling
our skeletons will make love in the earth
they'll go out drinking, they'll go dancing, dining
and gestate in a womb of pangless birth
our stillborn babies never waking, whining
and then, one day perhaps someone will find us
and some foolish poet's pen will mind us.

the music made of our remains

2007-05-20T18:21:00.000-04:00

the grave will not yet mute our bodies' bones
though death may fret the body's muscle-cords
stretch'd over cryptic hollows and Unknowns
and strum away the flesh that we adored
and pluck away our life in quarter-tones,
our sinew clamped to spinal fingerboard
to mocking make a ballad of our moans
at least our love goes not untroubadoured:
here lies the lay of Tristan and Yseult
of married Monatague and Capulet;
Pyramus and Thisbes underscore us
and songs and lays and poems, plays result
arpeggiating lovers down Death's fret
adding measures to our lovesong for us
as if adding verses to our chorus,
epithalamiums to epitaphs
travelling from upper to lower staffs
singing lullabies to their better halves
and other lovers descending in refrains
join in the music made of our remains

strange dream

2007-05-19T20:19:00.000-04:00

strange dream that gives a dead man leave to think
strange death that gives him leave to love past life
strange dram that did dispatch him quick as drink
that lately gives him leave to love his wife
and there, where flesh was tanned and lips were pink
since have been flayed off by his happy knife;
where eyes might miss some sight because they blink,
are now unburdened with that lidded strife...
and with the help of power passion-lent
and drugs, such dreams will guide us out from under
the curse of crossing stars and their intent
to short the hours that we came and went,
the turning earth that's turned you a white wonder,
and gives us leave for new love to invent.

strings

2007-05-16T08:51:00.000-04:00

we close, like scissors, one though another
so, loosed of limb and our worldly tether
our ligaments under earthly cover
then might bind us closer there together
our bones suffer not to be forgotten
connecting tissues, 'round the world it brings
to life star-cross'd lovers, misbegotten
as at the end of marionette strings
they died with knives in desert Araby,
a pride of midnight lions standing near
and with help from an apothecary,
that exile who lived not too far from here.
we cut one cord together so to find
ourselves well-spliced, new-wrought and better twined.

let us not dare not

2007-05-15T09:20:00.000-04:00

darling, we had beautiful bodies once.
remember? how quickly you forget it
and quicker still death resolutely blunts
everlasting love-vows if you let it.
its true that love has led us here to death
in to the arms of each other, dying
cruelly cutting loose our cords of breath
and our knotted bodies limbs untieing
but love and death and life and limb are one
and only are they in our bodies known
let us not end without having begun
or not dare not, do not, and die, alone
darling we are young and beautiful yet
oh, but still how quickly you do forget

...to the houses of the dead

2007-05-14T13:05:00.000-04:00

make for us no tombs nor houses cryptic.
should i fail, then bury me inside her.
should i stumble down long Death's ecliptic,
never rising, let me rest beside her.
there is no terror left within my blood,
and no life left in Death's old mysteries;
the grave will either close us both in mud
or harrow hell, i, mystic Hercules.
perform no rites, nor pay my two-pence fare
(for Death is not so easily impressed)
should shadow join with night and breath with air,
our better parts at least will find their rest
if souls regard their homes with little worth,
we'll house each other underneath the earth.

i make you sonnets

2007-05-11T18:32:00.000-04:00

now bury us inside a lover's grave
and let us clasp and kiss each other's bones.
beneath the overwhelming earthen wave
we'll measure out our love with littles stones.
our spoiling flesh will rot itself away,
staining nearby earth in underplaces,
where love-in-little-stones about us play
spilling through our skulls and out our faces.
sternum to sternum, our ribs entwining,
still, we dance through sunset color'd soil;
touch in places flesh was never finding.
and shuffle in each other's mortal coil.
for us a fading dawn will never break
the earthen lovely slumber that we make.

how to find your one true love

2007-05-02T16:11:00.000-04:00

darling, we'll find our true love in the sky
in the fevers of the year
we will run away on the open road
we can take your car
i'll drive with my knees
so i can hold your hand across the shifter
while we hang our arms out of the open windows.
feathers will cover us
boy, girl, hands, arms, car and all
and we will lift into the yawning blue dawn
engine, hearts, arms pumping
a bird that knows the secrets that souls keep
finding its way back to the unfinished nest
it started building a century before we were born
that we will land in and finish forever
in the centuries after we die.
or, if not
and feathers do not cover us
and you do not hang your arm from the window
and we do not become a bird
and we do not find our true love
i will drive you back home
and give you your keys
and think of you, every time i fry an egg,
or arrive home without remembering how i got there

i am unwilling...

2007-04-24T10:52:00.000-04:00

...to return to the real world today.

paradise by the refridgerator light...

2007-04-21T02:41:00.000-04:00

...or something like it.

its pretty late. i've been working on a few beers (not simultaneously) to little effect (forcing me to rethink my method of alcohol intake), and smoking cigarattes that each make me feel a little bit shittier, a little bit closer to swollen glands than the last. if i haven't mentioned what a delicate boy i am on this blog yet, allow me to do so now: i have the constitution of equatorial vegetable life when transplanted beyond the tropics of cancer or capricorn.

luckily i've discovered the miracles that a daily dose of "airborn" can produce. and no, i'm not a compensated endorser. i go very uncompensated, financially. that's ok. i'd endorse airborn at a financial loss. it is just that good. only vitamins, you say? ah ha! with fizz! and a gritty, waxy scum that coats whichever glass it is contained in. no, sir. no, madam. much, much more than vitamins. it is nothing short of an ol' timey health tonic. you can heal palsy, and cast demons into swineheards with it, i swear. and call down fire from heaven. it will perform both old and new testament miracles.

i should be...any number of things that i have been too scrubbed thin by working to be. asleep might be one of those things. less satisfied with not really writing at all lately could be another. worried, about things i am too ashamed to admit i'm not all that worried about is definately another.

i think i don't really have anything of substance to say, today. i am reduced to talking about the weather, like this: it is getting nicer out, and that bodes well for me. in an "either i'll start being productive/or i'll start having more fun" kind of way. and speaking of things to say, i have been reduced to a wit that just barely scrapes by with my tables at work...you know...the kind that is like a gradeschool verbal spat...where you say something reasonable good though not necessarily a coup de grace, and turn around to think of something really skewering to say about thirty seconds after you should've said it. i've been getting by at work though; when the precision of wit fails, the double barrel of a smile and feigned sincerity get the job done. tonight was definately a 20% night for me. but i was lucky.

i suppose i could talk about my forays into the digit snatching game, in which i've had some recent victories, but that would just sound like bragging, and they probably won't pan out anyway. i find a lot of expectation comes along with this face, and the boldness of my charm that i can't really back up the way anyone wants me to. believe me, i'd like to be more than just disappointing, but i'm not at that stage in my life yet, and we're all just going to have to accept the possibility that i may never get there.

its not that things don't happen; its not that there's nothing big to talk about. i'm just...apathetic about it all at the moment. though i guess not so apathetic as to avoid feeling guilt over it. i guess that says something. (perhaps that want a little more credit than is actually due?)

anyway.
i have been seared closed by this apathetic streak. in some respects, i have been amputated by circumstance (i.e., work, spilling rum and coke on my laptop, not paying my phone bill), but i also haven't fought it quite as hard as maybe i should have. i guess what this post comes down to is this:

i owe a lot of people a lot of things -- phone calls, e-mail, general love. expressions of gratitude. i plan on making good.

..but right now, i choose pasta salad.

in the 80's...

2007-04-06T18:26:00.000-04:00

apoptosis/apotheosis

2007-04-02T14:13:00.001-04:00

outside, there is a bird singing three notes from the movie music soundtrack i am playing in the house, as i have coffee on the front porch. i wonder if the squirrels that live in our crestfallen front yard tree have realized the old landlords, who used to fill the birdfeeder with seed, have moved; i wonder if the squirrels will move too, or just go on living in that same hollow branch, a little less fat than they used to be?

can that bird possibly appreciate this song as much as i do? i think maybe he is more capable; he speaks in music, and he is, after all, singing along. i've heard that man started playing instruments in imitation of birdsongs. funny, when you see a moment where things come full circle. this bird is chatting up my iTunes. he likes Clint Mansell, apparently. i like this bird.

outside, it is like the old poems say; spring is here, but not yet on its way. the ground is so frostbitten, it hasn't yet recovered enough to melt the last few dirt-scorched patches of ice and snow; hasn't yet been able to make the grass look like grass, or bring the trees back to life.

i learned a new word, the other day; a neologism from Greek, that means "to fall away." let me load the phrase with the not-entirely-fabricated implication that it is a falling away with purpose; a self sacrifice, a shedding of the heavy mortal weight to enable...something else. survival. life. paying out a portion to eternity. like insurance.

the insurance of trees is: the souls of fallen leaves come back as spring rain.

when the blind recover sight, ask them what it was they saw first. they inevitably reply: "i saw trees, walking around like people."

sometimes, when i think about why i left buffalo, i have trouble deciding whether i am the tree that shed the crispy leaf of my hometown? or am i the leaf who let go, whose weight is still spiraling towards some unseen floor? it is only half the question: you can't talk about going without conspicuously ignoring the coming, and perhaps in considering the dual nature of all such questions, we can synthesize an answer: i left my hometown to come to my birthplace. i shed a husk of an old life, hoping that the lighter parts might ascend, that the truer parts might become more refined. that i might be distilled; sharp spirits from a dull malt, rain out of escaping vapor, stronger life out of life, to penetrate and cultivate the unyielding earth.

i was a leaf, i like to think.

i looked, and i thought i saw my life, spiralling out of control. it was the husk of a leaf, exhaling its living parts. and if something spirals, it is never out of control. life is subject to seasons, and somehow we fool ourselves into using terms like "beginning" and "ending." life is a perpetual motion machine. the spiral is only a circle subject to time. what goes around, does, in fact, come back around. if all were chaos, there would be no reaction for every action.

so, this life is a loop; a rolling hula-hoop, or a tire like the ones third world children chase down streets with sticks.

if i am spiralling, it is not out of control.
it is no coincidence the bird outside of my window is listening to my music.
the squirrels? they have no seed? let them eat cake. or shed a pound or two. or find out where my old landlords live now.

i have recovered a little bit of sight.

i am a tree, also: walking back to my roots. letting go of my tarnished leaves, and reaching, even through the winter, towards the sky, towards spring...clutching at the skirts of a thoroughfaring God, in the wake of His green glory.

yes, a little bit of glory is what i'm reaching for. it is not as stupid as it sounds.
i give up life to gain life.

mens sana in corpore sano

2007-04-02T02:11:00.000-04:00

"a sound mind in a sound body?"

i'll take a different sounding mind
and
you can keep the body

next time i go, i'm bringing extra cash...

2007-03-31T19:59:00.000-04:00

starting today...

2007-03-22T15:51:00.000-04:00

...i get my power back.

"technical difficulties"

2007-03-11T22:35:00.000-04:00

i'm experiencing some techinical difficulties with the poetry, lately, so you'll have to forgive me when i wax prosaic.

i suppose i'll just come out and say it: i'm adjusting badly to my new life out here. i've been making hints, but i've kept myself from saying it explicity in hopes that i might be able to maintain some level of self-delusion about it. well. i'm done. now. i'm trying not to whine, but it has been a rough six months.

worst of all, my work situation has not been working. its hard to let this stage of my life be what it is and not compare it to my old life, but work hasn't been this bad since i was an awkward whiteboy who could barely man a register in a pharmacy on the edge of the ghetto. i've never been made to feel so incompetent; and its been awhile since i've let anyone make me feel this unconfident.

what it has been is an interesting exploration of what i hang my confidence on. being the resident fuck-up at work hasn't been as bad as it could be, but its still bad. the people aren't so much malicious about it as they are condescending, and i'm not sure which i'd rather deal with. but in a work environment, being stripped of confidence in your own professional skills is...castrating. emasculating. i haven't been too articulate over the past few days, so those aren't exactly the right words, but you get the idea. not to mention the inability to settle in means total lack of a social life (which is just a euphemism for 'i still haven't made any friends').

i guess i hadn't realized that feeling competent at my job and having people around who like me meant all that much to me. to tell you the truth i'm almost a little ashamed. i should be more independant than that. i should be more centered, more self sufficient than that. but this exercise in self-sufficience has shown me this much: i suck at it. i am a suckybaby who can't handle life.

on the other hand, i've had copious amounts of time to myself, and recent days aside, i've been having probably the most productive few months i've ever had, which is exciting. and this is why i ran away. this is what i came out here to do. i came out here not to have friends. i came out here not to be distracted by a great job and lots of people, and to center myself: around the family that i hardly know, and around my writing and creative exploits.

now that i think about it wish i would have better chronicled my days here, rather than saving it up for a weepy bitching blog-post. it would have been a lot more interesting, a lot more productive. the actual living of my life would be less hindered by all the complaining about how i'm not living it. all it takes to live the life you want to live is a choice, and a little dedication.

and this is exactly the life i asked for. its not easy. it is, admittedly, a little uneven. but it is the life i want to be living, for now.

and sometimes its the smallest things that drive home the break i've made with my former life:

--i've finally changed the presets on my car radio from buffalo to albany stations. its a good thing i can't get enough of that new nelly furtado song.

--all the old phone messages i've saved were deleted during those couple months i couldn't pay my phone bill: i'd still had about 15 messages from when i was dating brenna; a slew of hysterically funny messages from eric w.; the last message i'd gotten from sarah before that year of silence settled in. my grampa singing happy birthday over the phone, two years ago. if there's one thing i hate more than nostalgia, it is not being able to torture myself with it.

--i lost the longest, warmest, blackest scarf that was ever made.

--my dad, after chatting with him only a handful of times since i've left buffalo, asked me, a few days ago: "have you ever considered monastacism?" to which i answered: "yes"

the break with the old life will never be clean, and it never should be. i have family in buffalo, and friends who are like family, and it would be tragic -- and just plain morally wrong -- to try to rid myself of those parts of me. on the contrary, and to use a weird surgical analogy, i'm not looking to have anything removed; but i could be a better version of myself, so i'm spending the money, and getting those impants. i'm looking to incorporate new life, abundant life; i'm not looking to get rid of anyone or anything.

some things i've yet to do:

--figure out langauge that more effectively differentiates between my adopted and biological family. somehow i feel like if i can do this, then i would be more comfortable with that part of my life. i still don't know how to talk about it. that i have two dads is among the least weird phrases that i can own.

--hang out with any of my Wickham sisters enough...

--or much of the Wickham family, lately. i'm such a douche!

--be of any reliable usefulness to my blind grandmother.

--cook or clean or not drunkenly break the bathroom sink off the wall enough for Rachael or Rebekah.

--get into a writing rhythm that matches my schedule and maximizes my productivity.

--put shelves on my bedroom walls (or hangers in my closet).

i'm not sure what my regularly scheduled programming is, or when i will return to it. nothing else to do but stay tuned, i suppose. here's to the show still being in progress when we return. let's hope i can get my bearings...

old tricks

2007-03-06T15:48:00.000-05:00

===============================================

abomination that causes desolation

2007-03-06T15:31:00.000-05:00

"blank-verse sonnet..."

2007-02-28T00:38:00.000-05:00

questions, indirect

too often i will question lives gone past;
i must begin to think of future days,
like: where upon the map my foot might fall,
what words might sprout once there i plant my feet,
what paper i might ink my life upon,
how, bound into the spine of open roads,
a freedom steers me out to quiet fields,
to sleep between the rooves of car and sky.
somehow i keep forgetting how it works:
there is no mystery left to the past,
there is no question marking its events.
it crosses state lines, leaves statements behind.
as roads are paved by chasing unpaved roads,
leaps landed by faith, books by reading writ,
so life remains...a forward, leading question.
----------------------------------------------

on the world

2007-02-25T14:07:00.000-05:00

lately, i've been losing my grip on the world.
my feet are beginning to slip on the world.

Thales' head was bent to otherworldly things.
he fell to his death when he tripped on the world.

perhaps i haven't yet fallen to my doom
(though i've bled and broken my lip on the world)

beneath the moon i am walking Thales' path.
from here, that hole looks but a dip on the world.

the hole is a grave, the grave is a ladder.
i must wrestle and break my hip on the world.

i'll ransom an angel to gain God's good will.
i'll parley with a witty quip on the world.

every limping footstep is a passport stamp
i'm leaving my citizenship on the world.

i am walking, with words, through the path, through the hole
i'll leave a turn of phrase to flip on the world.

ghazal

2007-02-22T00:14:00.000-05:00

poetry for you

i wanted to find new forms of poetry for you.
i traded in my prose for love poetry for you.

i looked inside the epics, i read between the lines.
i looked beneath prose and above poetry for you.

i saw you as an ark, carrying my flooded heart.
i stormed it with olive-and-dove-poetry for you.

i wear words like garments, you can read them down my sleeves.
and written down from wrist to glove: poetry for you.

i have pried at your heart, and saw it empty of me.
into its vacant parts i'll shove poetry for you.
--------------------------------------------------------------------

i never realized what a fine line there is between good and corny. i think this takes more than one step across it.

what am i doing trying to find rhymes to 'love'?

because they give me a sense of accomplishment...

2007-02-19T20:10:00.000-05:00

the separable soul

if i knew how to separate my soul
i'd draw it out like poison from a wound
give up the ghost and catch it in a bowl
to tranquil rest, commit it on the moon
and in that silver body, in a grail
far from the earth and its forsaken cries
my life would fester there and never fail
immune to those who kill and that which dies
if, from the body's moribund decrees
i could conceal the dying of my death
and so exchange the language of disease
to gain a tranquil, trance-entangled breath
i'd shed the contradiction of your charms
and shuffle off your mortal coiling arms.

valentine's day offerings

2007-02-14T23:14:00.000-05:00

i wrote something today, that i'm not actually all that fond of. i am posting it here in the comments section. it is a heptina, which i think i may have made up. i accidentally wrote seven lines for the first stanza of a sestina, and just decided to go with it. i had to crack the nearly indecipherable numerical pattern upon which the sestina is built, and change it -- a monumental and historic achievement, i'm sure you'll agree. anyways. that was what i wrote today. and like i said, i'm not entirely fond of the product. i need a break from poetry and go back to prose. it will be nice to say what i actually mean, and do so with emphasis. anyways. check the comments, if you're interested in the other stuff....

i would rather

2007-02-12T21:04:00.000-05:00

i would rather you live forever
in the well-furnished mansion of my heart
than with me, here, today.
my apartment is small, and
it is a mess.
(there are things all over the floor)

Teach Me, Benvolio

2007-02-12T19:36:00.000-05:00

(an english sonnet)

o teach me how i should forget to think
do more for me than liberate my eyes;
though roving, my eyes see her when they blink,
in blinking blooms the face of rosy lies.
give me something with which to replace her,
a potion with which i could cast her off;
ever if my eyes again do face her
my abled mind her image yet could doff.
show me something lovely in a new face,
in the dawn of some new mistress's eyes;
give me the sun, if moon cannot keep pace
or an enemy, if you think it wise.
so let us crush a cup of wine, and drink
and there perhaps i'll learn to forget to think.

re: January 15th

2007-02-08T19:35:00.000-05:00

started it then; picked it back up today.
unflattering to all parties involved.

-------------------------------------------------

i love you, Moonlike
vain, tidal, turning new
best when you are full
you reflect better light
than i have thought to cast
but that is a lonely
day every month...

is it fair
to love you only full,
to love you
less when
you pull me
less,
less when your
head is turning?

i love you, Waterlike...
moving in your dancing-mirror-likeness
best when your lips roll in to kiss boat's prow
i would westward sail you
forever together under
the never-setting sun
if daily you did not
snuff out suns and sailors alike

is it fair
to love you
only as you lift me?
...to love you less
when you are
restless,
less when
you are
drowning...?

i love you moonlike; i love you waterlike.

everything new is old again

2007-02-05T18:21:00.000-05:00

in space there is a galaxy (i forget where), shrouded in its own cosmic breath that is humming the Music of Its Own Spheres.

the new men like to say that there is no sound in space; that, in space, no one can here you scream.

but there, in its own sphere with its own cosmic breath, mathematically, undeniably, there is a singing galaxy, perhaps from which we were all exhaled and to which we are all headed one day to be consumed in its fiery musical ether....

and it makes you wonder if there wasn't something to
that story about Xibalba and Greek musical clockworks and a Christian heavenfull of voices singing one song in a living, breathing galaxy, sharing the nebulous breath of a living, breathing God.

i've written...

2007-02-03T21:05:00.000-05:00

i've written some of my worst poetry by moonlight.

i am building

2007-02-03T12:33:00.000-05:00

i am building
my future
one
word
at
a
time

Happy Candlemas....

2007-02-01T13:15:00.000-05:00

...or is that tomorrow? and i used to be so up on my pagan-turned-christian holidays.

catching up on e-mail today, hopefully. and making sauce.

if i can see your name in my list of frequent contacts, expect a letter soon. if i can't see your name, you should e-mail me more.

and if i can see your last name to the right of my front door, you will be getting the best sauce of your lives.

thanks, Tunte, for the blender.

love,

Wayward Nephew

Since, Eve, We Will Return

2007-01-29T16:53:00.000-05:00

…And God, he made the earth from ash and dust
He lit the stars returning to their place
In dreams of Eve, He fostered Adam’s lust
And stretch’d it o’er with skin and gave it grace
Her body’s sails did fill out with a gust
Of holy breath; a smile licked Adam’s face

The holy heads that tongues of flame do lick
They turn to ash the deeds of murd’rous men
Speak healing to the sails, the seas, the sick
To fathers, sons return from the pig pen
Mud from their skin mortars a house of brick;
The dreamhouse of “thy will be done, amen.”

Sometimes we are commanded in our dreams
To lick and seal, roll a scroll, and eat it.
The parchment skin unfurl’d from candy reams
Is ash when our stomach turns to meet it
The mouth cannot return the words it seems,
Galilean sailors can’t repeat it

One day that scroll, like a sail, will unroll
A future dream illumined to reveal
returning revelations to our soul
that faulty licking lips cannot repeal
this flesh of living ash may take its toll
but your skin at such price would be a steal

How will our skin fare in tribulation?
They will stretch it on a righteous sailboat
To escape the ash of conflagration
Dividing their dreams between sheep and goat
Lick the crux of transubstantiation
Returning to God on a scripture quote

And earth returning to its former state
Sloughs off the shell of life like dying skin
With hands of fire God licks clean the slate
His Spirit over the deep, sailing in
With new dreams of life, the flower of fate
Blooms in the ash where other life had been

Since, Eve, we will return to dust and ash
Wake my dream to your skin; its smiling flash,
Wind-licked like a sail with an open lash

(poem; straddling midnight)

2007-01-29T15:14:00.000-05:00

i am standing in the snowmuffled,
nightmuffled world.

i can see the wind blowing
in the slant of the small snowflakes
through the streetlight;
it rings me like a bell.

in the day, the felled snow
has rubbed out the world to its
edges; winter is a blankened,
bleached-out life.

but at night, the snowy patches
in the blue shadows of my porch, of
the nightfallen park, are
like windows into moonlight
like danced-on landings
for angels' feet.

it is a beautiful oblivion
a silent nightful of overcast snow
silver stars bound and burn out of it
the small, heatless fires of
my trampled thoughts
momentarily glorious
snuffed out by bloodfrightening
bodypeeling cold,
carrying away any good thing i've thought,
away into the muffled world.

...

2007-01-25T20:51:00.001-05:00

i want to write with lightning; i want to speak in thunder.

any similarity to real persons or events is...

2007-01-22T16:34:00.000-05:00

EXT. -- front porch of an urban apartment.

(open on me, a shot from the height of your living room window)

the Voice Over begins: one night,
for sanity's sake, i sat alone on your porch.

(...cut to my profile, pan up to your ruffling curtains)

and the Voice Over continues: you must have watched me
once you'd walked the flight of stairs.

(and the camera cuts to an over-the-shoulder shot
of you,
watching me stand, watching me walk)

and the Voice Over says: finally, i left, and before i got much past the streetlight, you came, flying, into my arms...

(and you did)

...you had no jacket so i held you for a moment.

(its true)

and You said: i love you too much

and: i'm trying to kiss you, boy...

and: ...we are like a movie. this is like a movie. i love you like they do
in the movies.

(and i still held you, close,)

and I said: no

(i turned my head, to the right, so you couldn't kiss me)

and you were a little drunk, and you couldn't hear the Voice Over say: yeah, but...we use real blood in this movie. real hands, real arms around each other. we do our own stunts, take our own bruises; we risk death, and cheat life together...we risk and cheat each other...because this deserves more than a two hour running time, and i can feel you in my real arms and smell your real smell, and i have been directed to dodge your real kisses...

(instead, you were full of soundtracks, and cinematic moments, and i watched you go back home before i left for mine)

THE END

(music swells,)

(fade to black,)

(roll credits)...

Penelope, I wonder...

2007-01-19T12:41:00.000-05:00

By day, with words, you string us all through your loom;
A tapestry of suitors, rapt, around you.
When night stretches out, you retreat and resume
Teasing threads out of the world we’ve woken to.
I am Nobody, no name yet to assume
Till I stretch it on a bow and string it through.
I, your lover/hater, plucking out our doom,
Last alive, home at last, 20 years to you.
I’ll remember what we’ve made a secret of
And ask if you’ve ever moved it from its place.
I have come back for you, through Hell and High Seas;
Will you still mean it if you call me your love?
If I read suitors, strings, that loom in your face
I’ll not forget my Calypsos and Circes

January 15th, there is...

2007-01-15T11:38:00.000-05:00

there is a symphony of rain
in the street

a russian ballet of it
dancing over the
broken phelanges of the trees

there is a bare patch
in my yard
where squirrels
meet
for war counsels;
weather has negotiated
for them a cease-fire

there is a thorny bush,
a bristling cat-o'nine-tails
the bush of a lesser god
bent with ice
to the ground
where no one dare
walk unshod

there is the pretty waste of winter
fallen across the earth
lifeless rain
choking the seeds in the
birdfeeder;
leafless fingerstrokes scratching at the sky;
spirit of the tree barely spared
as an angel with a silver trumpet
passes over, dancing a dirge
for the firstborn days of
this new year

as if i needed to be more emotionally stressed...

2007-01-13T04:32:00.000-05:00

had a parley with a best friend of mine. i'm not sure what to say about it, or what to call him necessarily; i don't know if best friend is really a good term because i have relegated him undeservedly to an outer ring of former frienship. i won't get into it too much, except to say that it was difficult for me to talk to him tonight, and just as emotional as some of the most personal and yet-undisclosed things in my life have ever been.

i guess i remark on it to say that it happened, that it was today, and that it was important to me.

i'm not generally a crier, but i will have to make an excuse and say that things over the past few months (former best friends, letters from my dad, a gravesite here and there) have been (honestly?) yanking the tears out of my eyes. i'm not sure if i'm just "becoming human" or about to get my period. i think i've just been in a bit of a tender situation lately.

i don't know exactly what it is, except to say that i'm sensative, i'm ok with it right now, and goddamn, sometimes this fucking hurts, you know?

-p

also: its almost five in the morning. i'm not sure if the guy downstairs is fucking retarded, or getting laid like crazy. its either one or the other; fucking retarded, or he's fucking retards.

yeah. call me out on that retard comment. i promise i won't feel bad.

good night to all
and to all? a good night.

<3
-p

100th post, and a few things i've noticed about this blog...

2006-12-30T05:08:00.000-05:00

happy 100th post to me.

hello quiet readers. let us all celebrate the overwhelming cultural contribution of this website together, shall we?

yeah. you can thank me later.

just a few things i've noticed about Written Off, in general.

-- the greatest service i think this blog has provided has been to the anonymous commenters, who come here and post because they think its a good way right some wrong i've done them. i'd just like to say i admire your courage. it is an impressive display of testicular fortitude. you've really put things on the line here, made yourself vulnerable, opened up some issues for debate; i really respect and appreciate that. you dumb fucks. grow a fucking life, and quit trying to be anonymously antagonistic; you fail at both. if you want to dialogue, i'm all for it, even if you think i suck and i think you're a shithead. i'm not here to be the vessel for your catharsis. if you really want to tell me what you think of me, my e-mail address is SweeneyAstray(at)gmail.com. i check it every day. sometimes more than once.

-- most of you assholes who know me and leave anonymous comments are going to willfully misinterpret the sarcasm of the opening lines of this post as arrogance. you=stupid.

-- God, is there even anything else worth writing after that? after all the heaviness, its seems a little schizophrenic to point out that the old post i did in the spring about the Tori Amos cover of Famous Blue Raincoat has drawn the most responses from random web-surfers -- among whom the common consensus seems to be that Cohen is God, and no cover, however well done, can touch the original. ok, we're all entitled to our opinions; some of us are more entitled than others. on Written Off, i am the most entitled. Cohen is often grating to listen to. i'm sorry, its true. with the time signature his songs are set in, fruitflies could live entire lifespans between one beat and the next. and (heading this one off at the pass) maybe i have the attention span of a fruitfly, but even so Cohen's voice is like something you expect to hear out of the Lincoln head on Mt. Rushmore: that is, its like stone. and Tori's cover makes my heart hurt. if you can hear Tori's voice and not wince with pleasure, then you, Anonymous Sirs and Madams, have no heart. and you probably eat soylent green. and soylent green is people. its madeoutofPEpAHL. if all of those arguments fail, the cover will always be more interesting, in a lit theory kind of way. so there.

--anyone notice i haven't written about christmas yet? compared to last year, i am really off my game.

--also, it would be nice to know someone was out there...and not just laughing at my food poisoning (?) episode (FRED).

i have...

2006-12-28T05:03:00.000-05:00

...so far to go to become a good writer

...so much to learn

...been comparing myself to other people too much

...not been writing

a poem from the vault

2006-12-25T06:27:00.000-05:00

i think this might be my favorite thing i've ever written. which is saying a lot. i wrote it three years or so ago. usually the appreciation i have for my own writing would lose a contest with the shelf life of unrefridgerated milk.

this is a sestina,
unto the moon
--------------------------------

lady moon you are an apple in the vault of the sky
waiving white lily fingers as you pass me by
drawing shrouds of heaven about you as you go
slowly wheeling through the sky, your light like fallen snow
trust me when you ask me and i tell you of my love
there is madness in the roads i roam which most know little of

wake me not from my sleeping madness yet
though i pass the scent of apples by with much regret
i am trusted by the sun to pick a route between the stars
my fingers clenched around my sword and guiding chariot cars
my burning feet are wheels cutting through the nether-sky
my hand before my face shrouds the burning of my eyes

soothe my restless dreaming with your shroud as thin as light
sing and soothe my madness in the midst of desp'rate night
there are none that go before me but a golden fiery wheel
and none so well has led me but my apple through this field
your fingers spread through nighttime, your fingers through my hair
ever on must i trod and trust that you are there.

trust me though you know not why they call me the Half Red
the shroud of night will come and spark a fire in my head
my fingers itch to work upon their each appointed task
what madnesses I’ll meet, I neither know nor want to ask
but do not even offer me an apple 'pon my road
and risk the falling heavens ever if my wheels be slowed

on the rim of heaven, on the Wheel around the Tree
while i trust my Eastern course, and from the West if you can see
beneath the silver apple-light i'm sending kisses out to you
in the beaks of little birds who'll pierce the shroud and sing them through
their song is mad and keening for the veil that stands between us
their winged fingers harping winds for sleepers dreamless

my fingers are ablaze both with fire and with blood
my burning wheels are spinning in the darkness and the mud
my madness is a tunnel that I must lead and be led through
trust that though I may be late I’ll not break tryst with you
fate is wrapped up in a shroud and bound up in the night
and woven on a loom beneath the bloom of apple-light

your silver fingers trace through the stanzas of this ode, chasing tunes of apple trees across my chest, in woad
the tearful night is tearing and has torn in shrouds behind you; let the always wheeling, turning night and burning stars remind you
that my love is like an Axis, like the Tree, your trusted guide, a constant through the madness you can rest your head beside.

de________

2006-12-21T04:38:00.000-05:00

i was doing so ok for awhile, you know? what happened...?

funny...
"despondent" has just as many letters as "depression"

...another song for emily

2006-12-14T16:42:00.000-05:00

We’ve tried to wash it out with shots lined down the table
Tried to feed it prescriptions until it was dead
To chain smoke it out with Salem green labels
To exorcise it with holy water and daily bread
To medicate the household strife of Cain and Abel

We have been to the end of the rope and found it tied in a noose
In our house you can feel which rooms blood has been shed in
Some days I admit I wonder what’s the use?
And its all I can do not to stick my head in
Or look for something stupid to give me an excuse

(chorus-like part)
And I wonder if I can handle staying...
What does it say when we’ve turned
Chain smoking into praying?
And love is patient, love is kind
But remember the day you came home and
Ah, forget it, nothing, nevermind
Cuz, love, it don’t keep no record of wrongs
And I’m living to learn, learning to love
turning the hangovers into songs

You know I don’t mean to be mean
I don’t mean this to be a dirty laundry airing session
I just wanna have a place to come clean
I just wanna make a love-confession
Even if it requires me to make a scene

(chorus, again)
And I wonder if I can handle staying
What does it say when we’ve turned
Chain smoking into praying?
And love is patient, love is kind
But remember the day you came home and
Ah, forget it, nothing, nevermind
Cuz, love, it don’t keep no record of wrongs
And I’m living to learn, learning to love
turning the hangovers into songs

Sometimes the best parts are what don’t belong
My grandmother once told me that no one is pure
I am not going to live my life trying to prove her wrong
Cuz living with life gets damn close to a cure
and scratches on the vinyl lend their beauty to a song

And God knows we’ve got enough scratches showing
Even He thinks we’re a hell of a bunch
But I’ll be damned if we don’t have what it takes to keep going
Every day is a grind, all our faith rests on a hunch
And sometimes a belief is just as good as knowing...

"boom ba-ba boom ba-ba boom..."

2006-12-12T00:28:00.000-05:00

God himself has struck me ill.

more to come on that later, after i rehab a little.

remember that scene in Stand By Me with Lardass at the blueberry pie eating contest? remember how many people there were, just heaving all over the place?

i think i out-puked them all today.

so, so tired.....

how not to be miserable

2006-12-08T18:51:00.000-05:00

DO NOT leave home to break any patterns of self destructive behaviour. self-destruction is actually quite pleasurable, if you don't count the hangovers.

DO NOT NOT get into the new school in your new city, like you said you were going to.

DO NOT flake out on your previous two semesters so that new school in question does not think you are some kind of joke of a student.

DO NOT move to a new city and get a job at the Olive Garden. (don't move back to an old city and get a job at the Olive Garden, for that matter. actually, just forget the Olive Garden all together...)

DO NOT get what you think will turn out to be a better job at a really cool restaurant only to put up with incapable douchebags who have no idea what kind of gem has fallen into their undeserving laps. (the gem i am referring to is the Van Dyck...but if you thought i was talking about me, the judges will accept that answer as well. contestants, please remember; your answer must be in the form of a question. circle gets the square. would you like to buy a vowel...?)

DO NOT, under any circumstances, move too far away from your girls friday. or true loves, for that matter.

DO NOT tangle with married girls, unless you have a doctor's note that says you knew her from before...(unless?...or especially if?).

DO NOT live outside of a walking radius of the Pink...EVER. neverever. you will always need somewhere to pick up, somewhere to land, somewhere to dance, somewhere to puke...

DO NOT leave your hairstylist.

DO NOT leave your drinking buddies. or buddettes. they are your best friends. remember the long talks and drunken stumbles home? no...? ah, but you didn't wake up with missing teeth, missing money, or a sore ass. no, you woke up on their couches, lip-chapped, bleary eyed and dry. now that is love, friends.

DO NOT somehow manage to still be a terrible brother/cousin/nephew/son/grandson even when your family lives within five miles of you in any direction.

DO NOT stop writing.

DO NOT walk off your last job two weeks before christmas.

DO NOT think about moving back so soon.

DO NOT crumble under pressure.

DO NOT forget to buy gloves at Target the next time you're there.

DO NOT let anyone fuck you over, unless you are fucking yourself. try not to let you fuck yourself anyway, though.

DO NOT let this list go on for much longer.

the end.

small victory

2006-12-06T16:14:00.000-05:00

i'm giving this to emily, if she wants it.
a song.

there is grace in making beauty out of danger
and you're a bad bet, but i've gotta take the wager
i am sitting in the window; i am dangling my feet
and thinking if i did it i could fly above the street

you’re a bet that I’d take a chance on
and the street is a place that we could dance on
even if I lose
if I scuff my wing-tip dancing shoes
it would still be a beautiful thing to glance on

if I fell for you only to crash and burn
i’d keep our ashes on the mantle in an urn
i’d build a private altar to our public scandal
and run my fingers through the votive candles

you are a glow that I want to stand in
a fire I want to stick my hand in
if it blisters
if the fire gives me up in whispers
it would still be a beautiful thing to land in

like it says in the bible, love conquers dying
and I’ll tell you it makes for beautiful flying
regardless of what dangers and how certain
(landin' the leap of faith don’t mean there’s no hurtin).

It’s a thing that I still have plenty o’ doubt of
(and I’m not someone you’d open a window and shout of)
but all doubts lingering
like new and shaky guitar fingering
there’s a danger we could make some beauty out of

love/hate

2006-12-05T01:40:00.000-05:00

i look at other people's lives and i hate myself.

i hate that i knew people that i don't know anymore, that they float around with pieces of me in them that they've forgotten.

i know its my fault. i've been a terrible person. perhaps i deserve to be forgotten. perhaps the reason i can't get it together is because i've let all those people go with all of those pieces of me.

i'm such a fucker. i wish that the people i've pushed out of my life, the people i've burned, the people i've crushed......i don't know. i hope they forgive me and never forget me. i'll never forget you. if i've ever loved you, you have a piece of me in you and i have an aching fondess for you.

i am ashamed of myself.

if it helps at all, know that i'm a pretty lonely bastard these days.

"they say that taupe is soothing..."

2006-11-16T18:03:00.000-05:00

minor overhauls going on here at written off...none of them writing related, of course.

perhaps the new, green punctuated earthtone look of this site will be inviting enough for me to return to regularly and with wit. unlikely, i know. i'm lacking in the wit department these days, but let's please not mention it; its a sore subject for me.

updates:
quitting the Olive Garden.
starting at local resturaunt/jazz club/brewery the Van Dyck.
this, i anticipate, will be a mixed blessing. i should really try to look at it as a blessing plain and simple, but i'm past the age of expecting only good things. this is an incredibly sad admission for me to make.

beginning to not merely enjoy but relish the new Sorkin fare; Studio 60 is really beginning to take off, and is a show that has the potential to last at least as long as the West Wing did (of which i only count the first four Sorkin-written seasons), and be just as good. i wasn't all that sure about the series after the first few episodes...it was almost too much an ensemble cast show. but Studio 60 is really digging in now, all its parts -- dialogue and story arc and character development -- equally well fashioned. i was worried that it wouldn't be able to live up to the West Wing's legacy, but i am only just realizing that i have that legacy to reference while i only have about five or six episodes of Studio 60 to compare it to, and that's not exactly fair of me. i don't mean to give the impression that i've been disappointed with the new show -- quite the contrary; indeed, every episode gets better than the last, and it started out with a pretty good bang.

haven't made or been taking any of the time i'm needing to write lately....full time at the Olive Garden is crushing my soul, and i'm feeling pretty well stampeded over, and not very much like myself. i am afraid that without luxurious and impractical amounts of free time i will dry up like a potsherd and my creativity will blow away like your Aunt Tilly's cremated remains over a choppy, unforgiving, 42 degree Lake Ontario, under mostly cloudy skies and a chilly northeasterly wind.

the point, though, is to try anyway, and maybe something at least interesting, if not good, will turn up. if the garbage and the gold even out, that is more than a good day. and i'm not even sure how to separate one from the other yet, so just getting anything is a victory for me.

so i've got to start trying again. i'd stopped there, for awhile. i've got to talk myself back into it. so here i am, talking myself back into it.

the vacation in oblivion is over.

maxim

2006-10-23T01:56:00.000-04:00

say it truthfully. or say it beautifully. say it both ways if you can.

...by the oxford band, the Radiohead

2006-10-22T02:07:00.000-04:00

gets me more every time i hear it.

there will always be something a little romantic about unashamed expressions of unrequited, self-disgracing love...

True Love Waits

i'll drown my beliefs
to have your babies
i'll dress like your niece
and wash your swollen feet

just

don't leave,
don't leave

i'm not living
i'm just killing time
your tiny hands
your crazy kitten smile

just

don't leave...
don't leave

and true love waits
in haunted attics
and true love lives
on lollipops and [chips]

just

don't leave....

don't leave....

don't leave,
don't leave...

what can i really say about this song? i really have only one insight: i read that the last lines of the last verse come from a news story Thom Yorke heard in England, about a nine year old kid who survived on lollipops and potato chips while his parents left him alone during their two week vacation.

its a pathetic story, a pathetic song...
does true love really resign itself to this, just to keep on loving?

in light of recent events...

2006-10-13T13:48:00.000-04:00

...i've decided to post this link. i wrote this not quite a year ago. last october cared far better for buffalo's trees than it did this year....anyway, some of the final thoughts of this post came from something i had heard somewhere -- in a radio broadcast of a church sermon, i think -- and the i've carried the thought in my head ever since. even as far as the last post i made on this blog, specifically regarding autumn.

reading this post now almost feels like prophecy. it is a real account of that day, which is about as close to calling it "non-fiction" as i can come. i mean to say that the embellishments are literary, linguistic, rather than narrative.

read it and weep

--p

feeling emotional

2006-10-10T14:42:00.000-04:00

i think maybe the reason i want to be a writer so badly is because of how i find my self so affected by what i read.

i've just scrolled through my inbox, and i'm on the verge of tears here. as much as e-mail, and the internet, language in general, and arrangements of electronic signals from my loved ones specifically do not exist in any tangible reality, and though i am sitting quietly here at panera's and everything seems to be what it is every other day, inside i am fallen on my face.

to tell the truth i haven't really deeply missed buffalo since i've left, for whatever reason. i'm not homesick, because where i am now is strangely homelike. i miss specific things like people, friends, family, lovers and loved ones. i miss the towers of the psych ward. i miss bidwell park. i miss the smell of the air.

i got an e-mail from my dad this weekend, which i just now happened to read. several of them, actually. in one of them he sent me this poem:

If You Think

If you think you are beaten, you are,
If you think you dare not, you don't,
If you like to win, but you think you can't,
It's almost a cinch you won't.
If you think you'll lose, you've lost,
For out in the world you find
Success begins with a fellow's will;
It's all in the state of mind.

Full many a race is lost,
Ere ever a step is run;
And many a coward fails,
Ere ever his work's begun.
Think big and your deeds will grow,
Think small and you'll fall behind,
Think that you can and you will;
It's all in the state of mind.

If you think you're outclassed, you are,
You've got to think high to rise,
You've got to be sure of yourself before
You can ever win a prize.
Life's battles don't always go
To the stronger or faster man,
But sooner or later, the man who wins,
Is the fellow who thinks he can.

i know: corny, right?
i don't like posting quotes often, or other people's writing. its nothing personal, its just this strange reservation i have. but this, i have to post.
i grew up with this poem; it was something my dad used to quote to me often, in snatches, and i think i remember most of it being in a frame on an office wall or a desk of his. i had forgotten it had ever existed until he sent it to me. maybe its my tendency to edit out bad poetry or bad writing from my memory for fear that it will infect my attempt at high art. i know, i'm a pompous jackass.

i hadn't realized how overwhelmed i've been feeling, Out Here, away from everything i ever new. i hadn't really realized how much self doubt had caught me by the throat lately; how i've been choking under its growing weight, until i read this. yes, its corny. what's cornier is that it almost made me cry.

there have been a lot of self given pep talks on this blog. often i've got to talk my way out of hopelessness. its the only thing that works, words are the only thing that work for me. medication? not really. therapy? only in as much as it includes the use of words. there is nothing worth more to me than a right word in the right place. there is nothing worth more than being able to frame the right thought with the appropriate words.

i've grown up with this poem -- it is so close to me, i'd overlooked it for years. its words are appropriate, and they are in the right place.

it occurs to me now that the determination i've manifested over the past year, the dedication i've been able to pull out of the quicksand of my lazy self has a lot to do with the sentiment of this poem. this isn't a poem about positive thinking. its poses a question: what is inside you? what is it that you know you can do? where can you take yourself? can you carry yourself to where you want to be?

my grip on the belief that i could has been shaken over the past couple of months; can i really write the way i want to? can i write what i want to? every day the world seems to be what it was the day before, and i'm not seeing any changes, i'm not making any changes. i'm not what i really want to be. every day the world seems to be what it was yesterday, the mundane, the daily, the routine rears its head too often into the plans i have for myself.

i know that i can do what i've set out to do. it may takes years. a life's work should consume at least that much. i know what i am, i know what i can do. it just takes the effort of the reach. it is up to me to meet my own capabilities. that may sound like a tautology, but somehow we lose sight of the simplest truths, because they're so simple, because they're right next to us.

if you think you dare not, you don't.

---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

i'll miss fall in buffalo -- i have favourite trees there, favourite places to be when the leaves shed. there are more trees Out Here, but i don't know them as well, and i have no favourite paths to walk yet. there is this sort of exciting sadness about autumn to me. the back cover of summer has finally closed, and is ready to be shelved; no more smell of hot asphalt or lilacs. the year has matured, and perhaps you have too; now the air smells of cultivated wood burning in cultivated fireplaces in the respectable houses of responsible, childless, happy, turtlenecked adults.

i thought one day i might grow up and be one of them; but i'm grown up now, and i don't have anyone to share a fireplace with...and i don't own a turtleneck. i like who i am more or less, but i thought i'd grow up to be different.

i had talked about this, briefly, with Sarah. she'd seen Colleen recently, a friend of ours from Canisius days. one of the few people i knew who'd started out in school for engineering and actually ended up working in the field. Sarah said she was so put together, and i wasn't surprised. Colleen was always a class act.

Sarah said she felt like a girl in front her. Sarah is a girl, though, and thats part of her charm. its a lot of what breaks down the walls i had tried to build against her while we weren't speaking. she has the girlish energy of an ocean surf, the tickling sea-foam eating walls into sand dunes. i resisted as long as my heart felt i had any right to. but erosion always wins.

i let her back in, into my life, and she came back to buffalo, and it was like the old days except better. she still smells like summer.......
......and she is on her way out of my life again...

i got an e-mail from her this weekend: we seem forever backing into and out of each other's lives. we are seasonal. we are here for a too short summer, and spend drawn out schoolyears apart. this is just how it goes. she is like the ocean surf. ebb and flow. tidal. there are other forces of gravity that tend to her, and that she is required by laws of physics to obey. and i am just shifting sand....

this time, i tell myself, is different. i'm not mad. i'm not bitter, anymore. i understand. still, it feels the same. "back in the alcove, back in the attic," i told her..."packing peanuts and bubble wrap."

this is the time of year to put the seasonal items back into storage...wrap up the summer knicknacks, box up the shorts and t-shirts. time to pull out the heavy blankets, clean the flue; time to break out the turtlenecks....

its that time again. the year has matured, and maybe you have too. summer vacation is over; summer vacation is a myth, now. what was the schoolyear is now your workaday life, and it never ends. winter is on its way. summer itself fades out of thought and memory. out of reach.

she's got to take a step in another direction. i understand. and i'm not mad. even if its off a ledge, and away from me. its fall; its time for the leaves to let go of their trees, else they both break under the weight of winter...............
how can i be mad? she is autumn....

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

...well, why not?

2006-09-25T17:16:00.000-04:00

just coming off a dayful of training at New Job, in New City, and undwinding with a little free internet at the only place in town where i know i can get it (that is, good ol' Panera, which i have been describing to everyone i know -- half of whom visit here and will have heard this already -- as the Starbucks of bread).

the sole reason i am making this post is because it gives me reason to sit at this table and ogle the women and young ladies walking in and out of this fine establishment. right now i am eye-flirting with a well dressed blonde in her late thirties/early forties who does not have a wedding ring. i warn you, readers, so that you aren't expecting any substance here.

so, what shall i talk about, as i try to let this woman know, via eye communication, that i am thinking about her naked?

perhaps the first day of training at Corporate Resturaunt Job? i knew it would start at some point, but i hadn't expected it so soon; they managed to fit a backstabbing lesson in just between a training video and a food tasting. ah, jolly good fun. not even a day on the job and already i've discovered someone i am going to refuse to speak to. yes, if there was any doubt, screwing people is par for the course even at this low level of employment at a corporate company.

this lady, for the record, is in rather good shape for her age....i think she is just as much sneaking a peek at me as i am at her...at least, that is what i'm hoping...we are both half-arcing a stare around the bulging tummy of a chubby girl who has no idea she is caught in our crossfire...

maybe i should talk about what New City is like? the truth is i don't really know, as i am living about 20 minutes outside of it, and have thus far only driven down New City's main drag once, and aimlessly at that. the longer my training at New Job takes me, the more i have to stretch my gas money, which means there will be no further drives through New City in the forseeable future. one day i will have a little money, a little time, and enough gas in my tank to find out, but it won't be soon.

...and with that, she is gone, out of my life. i fantasize that she walks back in and gives me her business card, or slaps a tattered Panera's napkin in front of me with her name and number scratched in womanish handwriting upon it...somehow the latter seems sexier, and a little more frightening. yes in my fantasy she is dangerous, and that's just what she does...

i could talk about what it is like living with my grandparents, but what you are imagining at the moment is pretty much what it is like. early to bed, early to rise, etc. i could talk about the adventures i've had finding an apartment with my sisters here, if there were anything at all adventurous about it, but then, that has been mostly what you'd expect as well (and if one of the descriptors that your thinking of about that process happens to be "pain in the ass" then you happen to be right on). i could whine about not having any money, but i've been doing that to everyone since the first day i've gotten here, and frankly i'm a little tired of it. i could complain that my phone has been shut off, and i am only able to receive calls until i pay my bill, or that my car needs a-fixin, or my things in Buffalo need a-retrievin, or that i'm homesick for my friends...

...but it would all just be filler; what i'm really thinking about is how i haven't hung out with any girls in New City that i'm not related to. i've been staring at this woman, waiting to see if she'll come over to talk to me, because, although i know it is against the Rules, yes, i am egotistical enough to believe that through sheer force of eye-contact i should be able to make a woman take the initiative to come to me. However, we've seen how well that works, and we do regret our decision to poke away at this keyboard instead of being a man and approaching her....

...and now we've missed dinner at grampa's.

i was almost going to update today...

2006-09-12T20:39:00.000-04:00

....but i decided against it.

i moved.
so i've been busy.
too busy to make an update.
but soon, don't worry; soon...sssshhhh....'s okay....sssshhhh...

-p

postcards from the fridge...

2006-08-27T14:58:00.000-04:00

or, fun with magnetic poetry.

sail the bleeding morning from yesterday
let the sad fire of poetry bellow with your secret life
growl like a ghost over a wild ocean;
a son cut from the soft belly of a god,
a daughter of champaigne & flowers
think less of decaying like a prisoner
speak desire
wake up the night
your sacred fever heals you
a window which opens out on to the universe,
a way in to a breeze we will soon explore;
remember,
& learn to breathe

ramblings of a burn-out

2006-08-21T00:02:00.000-04:00

well folks, the end of the world is on its way. the turning of the earth will keep it at bay for only another 11 days -- the process of night to day, and day to night is good for keeping the inevitable away for a just a little while longer. it (that is, the inevitable) will always have to travel the distance of "from then," in the future til "now," in the present...and it cannot do so faster than time will allow.

thank God for that.

but also, thank God its coming.

goodbye Buffalo

i would be infinitely more happy if i had some Lime-aid right now. i am going to go pick some up, i think. at Wegmans.

ah, goodbye Wegmans.

goodnight stars, goodnight moon.

goodnight home, goodnight work

goodnight mom, goodnight dad

goodnight dust of this crummy little town.
i shake you off of my feet and trade you for the dust of some other crummy little town.

-p

reason not to have a girlfriend #6

2006-08-15T16:44:00.000-04:00

the ones you want are too good for you; the ones you can get aren't worth your time.

Quick Insights (tm)

2006-08-14T03:18:00.000-04:00

Fargo = subverted Film Noir

haiku

2006-08-10T18:05:00.000-04:00

long i stayed indoors;
i missed the flowers blooming
autumn fell on us.

breaking news!!! [with commentary!!!]

2006-08-01T05:38:00.000-04:00

....i hate exclamation points!!! [this, in fact, is true]

anyways, the most important news items first: Heath Ledger, charming aussie (pronounced ozzie) of 10 things i hate about you fame as well as that oscar winning gay cowboy romp has been confirmed in the role of...
no, not Sir Penilis in "a knights tale two: stick it in the tail"....but... [drunk at five in the morning and this is funny. in the hungover light of day it sounds a little meaner and a lot like a bad joke cut from a Dennis Leary tv special.]

that's right, you've already googled it... [read this line with the intonation of near cleverness barely disguising the expectation that you've already gotten bored and looked elsewhere for the answer i was so expertly building suspense to.]

the friggin Joker, for the second instalment of Chris Nolan's (or is it David Goyer's...?) Batman franchise...damn. how d'yall feel about that. "y'all" as in everyone but Girish, who stil hasn't seen Batman Begins yet. c'mon, Girish...what are you waiting for. [i don't know why i say "friggin" here. it's barely appropriate. i'm not angry about anything or trying to sound tough. i am showing off the fact that i know that David Goyer wrote Batman Begins. i will show off more by telling you he wrote all three blade movies, directed the last one, and wrote a bad bad less than "B" movie adaptation of Nick Fury: Agent of S.H.I.E.L.D. which starred Yasmin Bleath and David Hasselhoff. also, i am yelling at Girish here for what you might think is no good reason. but if you thought that, then you'd be wrong. he should see Batman Begins. i don't think he'll love it, but i want to hear his thoughts.]

also, in case anyone is wondering, i am slightly drunk as i am writing this. so i forget what my other two breaking news items are. one of them might be: NEWS FLASH!!! the SUN will be coming up again, SOON!!! and 4 bags of Lay's potato(e) chips for $4.44 at the A-plus on the corner of Elmwood and Hodge. ["in case anyone is wondering" here just reads as "in case it wasn't utterly obvious yet." its that tendency all drunks have to get to a certain stage of drunkenness where they want you to know how drunk they are. i really did forget what my other news items were at this point, and i don't know why i was talking about the sun except that it really was coming up. in which case it makes that sentance only mildly relevant and certainly not at all funny. oh, and about the chips: not such a great deal, as it turns out. travelling the wrong way, $2.22 worth of them ended up in the toilet this morning.]

oh yeah, and also: Castro had intestinal surgery, leaving his brother Raoul in charge of the charming little Isle of Cuba...[what i should have done here was change "Isle of Cuba" to something like "la Isla de Cuba." it would have been more charming]

if i were Raoul Castro i'd stuff Fidel full of a strictly intravenously absorbed mineral: good ol' lead, sprinkled with a dusting of gunpowder. seriously. somebody should send this guy a copy of the Godfather part II. make a deal with the American underworld, blow Fidel's ever-stubborn brains out, and turn your economy upside down with wonderful American profits. you know you want to, Raoul. come on. you're brother doesn't know what he's doing. he wears fatigues to bed. and that beard. i mean, its gotta be really hot in that thing. that HAS to bake your head a little, right? something upstairs is a bit overly cooked...Raoul, we're not asking you to become the next Puerto Rico or anything...be your own sovreign country for all anyone else cares...be exclusive, a resort island. whatthehellever.....just stop being communist so we can stop sanctioning you and then we can come spend money at your beaches and on your cigars. no, wait...become a free economy but can your cigars somehow maintain an illegal status here in the states? it is more fun to smoke them on American soil when you know you could get thrown in jail. [this is true. but get ready for a weird tangent...] i heard that cops around here can smell the difference between Cubanos and Puerto Rican cigars...true? who knows. [what the hell am i talking about? this is making me laugh] i know i just want to try to outrun the police when they do. i've heard that Cuban nicotine can give you special powers...like swimming 90 miles with only the aid of two planks of cherrywood and a piece of string. (i am fairly sure you need a cape to even attempt this). [ok, rambling again. its not so much funny to read because its funny as its funny to read because falls so drastically short of being funny. although, really, who can say that i'm wrong about Cuba?....that's what i thought. still had enough wits for masterful political insight]

i would like to say hooray for me at this point [see? i am proud that i can be drunk and still have masterful political insight. at this point i am dreaming of landing a staff reporter position at some major, well respected, widely distributed print periodical due to my blog-reporting, newsbreaking skills. newsbreaking is probably an accurate word to describe it, no?]
and then open the can of mel gibson worms that everyone is talking about.

can i just address Mel here, for a moment?
you really should have been able to get away with what people miscontstrued as Anti-semitism in the Passion of the Christ... [read the New Testament, people. Jesus pissed off the Sanhedron and the Pharisees, and they gave him up. Jesus was a Jew. so were the Pharisees. everyone in this story is a Jew, plain and simple. its not a judgement on a particular ethnic group. people have used it that way, but that shouldn't make the story change. i am qualifying here because the internet is rife with people who like to start fights.]
but now you've just buried yourself and bought your headstone. everyone knows that when you're drunk you say things you actually DO mean rather than things you don't really mean...come on, what were you thinking? here's what you should have done: you should've walked around talking about how much you hated Jews first of all. just to everyone. like in line at Starbucks -- i'd like a tall, vanilla, non-Jew latte please. or maybe -- i'll take whatever brewed coffee you have on tap, as long as its not a he-brew...

ok, puns really are less funny than ethnic jokes, aren't they? sorry 'bout that...
[this is true. i like ethnic humor. i watched a lot of stand-up as a kid, and racially based humor always made me uncomfortable. it always felt a little...i don't know. inherently offensive; black on black humor, black on white humor. anyone on anyone. but. screw that shit. if its not mean spirited, and its funny, and people understand that its both of those things, then go for it.]
but really. you should've talked about how much you hated the Jews while you were sober -- AND THEN gotten drunk...AND THEN talked about how much you secretly liked them. like, i don't know...do a press-release about your Jew hatred and then have a few Basil Haydens at the hotel bar and accidentally spill the beans to a reporter that you love Jews, and that you are in LOVE with Jews, and that you are in LOVE with LOVING JEWS. [i actually think this is kind of funny. really, its a good plan. if he didn't want anyone to think he was an anti-semite, he should've ditched that Holocaust documentary he was working on, walked around admitting to it...and then gotten drunk and talked about how much he loved the Jews. i think it would've worked. we'd all believe him then, wouldn't we? also: i love that i was drunk while writing this part. there is a sort of formal appropriateness, pontificating on drunken activity while drunk.]

i like the alcoholism. really, i do. its a great humanizing quality. the anti-Jewism? well, i'm not Jewish, so its not personal, but....still...not so much. nobody likes a hater. [i think is true, too. see what kind of secrets of the universe spill out of you after you've had a few?]

anyway, Gibson -- in vinum est verum. alcohol is the ultimate truth serum, and you admitted it under the influence. [it i imagine to mean his anti-semitism] now we all know how you really feel. its not that you were driving drunk (heh) its that you were talking when you got caught. i really do like you. i think you're extremely talented and a respectable guy...couldn't you have just not been dissing Jews while drunkenly speeding? i wanted to give you the benefit of the doubt...but do you realize how hard you are making it on me?

Braveheart...Conspiracy Theory...Lethal Weapon...(s)...and.....other stuff.
[apparently i am listing off these Mel Gibson movies as his redeeming qualities, as the things i want to point to and say "see? he's not all bad." the rest of the thought really never came through. this "sentance" was just dangling here all by it self when i came back to this post this morning]
anyway. you are giving MSNBC all of this fodder, this station which is nothing more than a power-surf, an attempt to gain power over a band...seriousl thogh..is a ocontext befearpu jt v

[and then it just ends here. weird, eh? the decline of that last sentance is perfect though, isn't it? the arc of it is like HAL in 2001: A Space Odyssey, when Dave is pulling its circuitry out. i do remember, before i shut down like a de-wired computer, that i was going to launch into a rant about how Tucker Carlson and Keith Oberman are total douchebags. when did sarcasm start passing for newsreporting? not that i'm a newshound by any means but...the whining all starts to sound the same.

at any rate, i wrote this whole post with the fervor of knowing i had several interesting news items in it and that i'd be reporting them in a timely fashion; i was going to post this at six in the morning, but obviously it never got off the ground. six hours later, and this shit's old news. ah well. at least it makes for an interesting read.]

"i spent my life with Superman"

2006-07-19T17:01:00.000-04:00

i love Superman. i tried to write this once already. it was not the piece i wanted to write. it grew into some kind of academic defense of the character, and it felt too much like work and not enough like the nostalgia and love i wanted to describe.

it sounds funny, doesn't it? i love a comic book character. go ahead. laugh. there are endless aspects to Superman that i could intellectualize and examine endlessly. perhaps that is for the evil twin of this post to explore. this post, the good post, is for meandering my way through my memories and impressions of the character...how Superman has informed my identity from childhood...

what little boy didn't want to be Superman? that is the only defense i can offer for my childhood obsession; i can find no excuses for its following me into adulthood. i don't know if i remember my first Superman comic book. it may or may not be the one i'm thinking of now. i don't remember too much of it: i couldn't read, but i knew that 'damn' was part of the dialogue. and i remember a panel with a half naked Superwoman, mid costume change. and there was Lex Luthor, and Kryptonite, the works.

i would sit on my dad's knee, and he would read it to me. he used to tell me stories about when he was a kid, and he'd get a quarter for an allowance. 15 cents went to ice cream. the other 10? a Superman comic book. there must have been something in that experience he wanted me to share; i can't think of any other reasons why he should have read me that comic book. from what i remember it was barely appropriate reading for a kid of my age. as i'm writing this now i think i've recalled how it found its way into my hands -- at a hotel, some kind of convention perhaps. people littering my small field of view, moderately distant to my eyes, and now, my memory; my father behind me, hand on my shoulder. one figure stood close, a thick, tall man, suited, in his mid thirties. he looked at me. he peeled a book off the stack in his hands and slapped it into mine: Superman. my heart raced.

now that i think about it, that was a course altering moment in my life. who could tell that for the next twenty years i'd be enfatuated...?

standing even more monumental in my mind, of course, is Superman: the Movie. it came out two years before i was born, and because video rental back then was something you did secrety out of the back room at the local pizza parlor, i think what i saw was a theatrical re-release. Dad's fault, again. if it were up to my Mom, i wouldn't have seen it, i'm sure -- Superman, and Star Wars and the Last Starfighter -- traditional great 80's fare were too much for an impressionable little kid like me. turns out she was right. but thank God for Dad.

Christopher Reeve was Superman. he brought the character to life, and he's burned himself into the mythos. when comic book artists drew Superman, up into the late 90's, they were drawing Christopher Reeve. that 'S' is scorched into my brain, those primary colors. i hate yellow. unless its inside Superman's crest. there, up on the scree, you could see him fly, could see his cape flap behind him. though couldn't remember that it was called 'heat vision,' i was thrilled at what i could only describe at four years old as his 'laser eyes'(what four year old knows what lasers are?). you could see it all in the flesh. you believed a man could fly.

Reeve's set jaw and blue eyes crystallized the screen. that movie is spectacular. even its frustratingly corny moments endear themselves to me. yes, i am fully aware of the tricks that nostalgia plays on one's judgement. even so, the Superman of the movies became Superman for not just me, but everyone who saw it.

now i'm older. and what of Superman? the gloss of my childhood obsession hasn't worn off, but i can see behind it now. what was relevent to me then -- the desire to fly, to run, jump and take off, to burn a whole through the front door -- is not what is relevent to me now, appealing as it still might be.

people say Superman is a boyscout; that he is somehow two dimensional because he is good, because he follows the rules, because he does what is right. and some people argue that it is just his nature. he is naturally good, that thoughts of evil and personal gain don't, for a moment, cross his mind. its not a terrible argument -- he is an alien, and perhaps kryptonian nature measures up a lot better when put next to human nature. this, they argue, is what makes Superman boring, two dimensional. i say it is the boring and two dimensional argument that does that.

the only point of reference i have for this statement is myself, but through my experiences i've come to this conclusion at least: doing good is not easy. holding yourself to a higher standard is not easy. i don't think its any easier for Superman because of some inherent virtue he has over anyone else. its just as hard for him, and the burdens are bigger, and the stakes are higher. not to mention that he could get away with doing as he damn well pleased with impunity. wouldn't the temptation always be there for him, to abuse his powers? no, i don't think he is more virtuous by nature...it is simply by choice, by force of will.

doing 'good' isn't easy. give Superman a little credit.

listen to me...
i talk about him like he's real...
of course what i mean is, give me a little credit for the good decisions i've made....

as i write this now, i'm also fascinated by Clark Kent. Clark Kent didn't grow up as Superman. we think of "Superman" as being Clark Kent's job. it is what Clark Kent 'does': he puts on his suit, goes "Supermanning," and comes home after a hard days work; maybe cracks a beer, watches Conan, drunk dials Lois and goes to bed. its not, though. Clark Kent's job is as a staff reporter for the Daily Planet. he receives a weekly paycheck for what he does in front of a computer screen: writing. Clark Kent is a writer. people don't go into that field on a whim, they don't try it out because, well maybe it might be a neat thing to do. they do it because they're passionate. they dive into that work; they love what they do. Clark Kent writes news stories. he's a journalist. perhaps he has a dream of changing the world as much through his articles as he does by being Superman. mayabe being Superman is something he does because, as one comic book titan once put it "with great power comes great responsibility." perhaps writing is really what Clark loves to do. perhaps he's working on a novel, and he's halfway through the third draft. perhaps his goal this week is to land a face to face interview with the former Israeli Prime Minister, so he can edge out Lois for column inches on the front page of the Daily Planet. perhaps his heroes are Kafka and Joyce. perhaps he just loves words, and lives to fit them together beautifully, intricately, artfully.

maybe Clark sees himself as a writer, and his writing as his main contribution to the world.

of course, what i mean is that i like the idea that maybe Superman thinks of himself as a writer before he even thinks of himself as Superman. it kind of elevates the profession, and the choice i've made with my life...

there is a sort of trinity of identities that Superman contains, or a layering of identities. his public persona is the Superman identity, the Man of Tomorrow, saving the day. in civilian life, he is Clark Kent, mild-mannered, midwestern farmboy. the whole point of the idea of keeping a secret identity is so that Clark Kent can lead a relatively normal life, and protect not only his own privacy but the privacy of those he loves. though it is his public persona, Superman is the secret Clark Kent keeps. but even these two identities, as genuinely as they are a part of his identity, are veneers the character hides behind...somewhere inside, privately, to himself he is Kal-El, the Last Son of Krypton....no one can dispute the normal, wholesome childhood that Superman grew from; raised on a farm by Ma and Pa Kent, he must have had a solid work ethic, he must have been polite and learned from them his mild manners. as an aging couple who couldn't have natural children of their own, they must have showered Clark with all the love they had. its as good a childhood as anyone could hope for. even when Clark starts to show the first symptoms of super powers, its still a background relatively without incident, right? and yet how many years did he spend not knowing where he came from? not knowing anything except that he fell out of the sky and into the lap of Ma Kent? he knew nothing of his natural father and mother. he must have wondered where he'd gotten his icy blue eyes, from whom he'd gotten his jet black hair. to whom did he owe his natural curiosity? from whom did he inherit his inclination toward writing? how long did Clark spend knowing nothing about his heritage? eventually he heard the name "Krypton," learned that Lara and Jor-El were his parents, learned that he had a name he was born with, and it was Kal-El. when he finally had learned something about who he was, was he heartbroken to know that Krypton had been destroyed with everyone, every living soul, and everyone who shared his blood on it? i imagine Superman having a soft spot for Kryptonite; deadly as it is, it is all that is left of a home he will never otherwise see.

Clark knew all of his life he was not human; he was different, special. unique. the questions about his heritage that he sought to answer were bred with the hope that he was not alone, not singular in all the universe. all the answers could only be half a satisfaction, then, when he learned the hard truth; his family was gone, and he would never meet them. Superman in his soul holds up a lost planet, bears the weight of its ghosts, his parents, and the heavy, black holes in his identity that he will never recover; he holds it up to the light of his memory, mournfully. what else can he do? what other respect can he pay? what other way can make his heritage a part of who he is?

they talk about the Superman origin as being the "ultimate immigrant" story. Siegel and Schuster were children of Jewish immigrants; it makes sense. yet they owe the story of Superman's journey to Earth to their heritage in an even deeper way; the Last Son of Krypton floated down the Milky Way in a rocket, the same way Moses floated down the river as a baby, hidden in a reed basket. their parents sent them both away so that they might avoid certain doom. yeah, in a way these are "immigration" stories, if you want to appropriate them that way. but something more personal is going on here; Superman being sent to Earth as a child is the ultimate adoption story, which is something more intimate and more personal.

who does Superman talk to about this part of his life? how do you think it makes Ma and Pa Kent feel, when everything they've given still can't fill in the missing pieces? do you know how strange it is to miss someone you don't even know?

i was a little boy once, and how could i have not wanted to be Superman? it is the right of all little boys. i am grown now, and the only right of grown ups is to face that which is difficult; we save the heat vision, the power of flight for children; we take on the struggles of goodness, of profession, of identity...struggles for which those powers are useless. Superman is who he is, and he's still like the rest of us. his powers, his alien nature haven't afforded him a free pass on the human condition. as a kid i would never have believed i would grow up to be this much like Superman...

generations

2006-07-13T14:31:00.000-04:00

Ouranos was the first god of the sky. Cronus was his son; he carried the Great Sicle. there must have been no love between them; Cronus took the sicle and cut his father's penis off. no wonder Cronus feared his own children. he never made a meal of Zeus, though. And when Zeus came to collect his brothers and sisters from Cronus' belly, he did not shame him as Cronus did Ouranus. Zeus, third god of the sky, had gotten it right. benevolence, justice, civility was the lesson of the day. Zeus-pater, youngest of the gods, became father to all. having acted honorably, he received honor, and he would have no one, nothing to fear.

you can read the story in the sky; Ouranus, the wheeling heavens, his phallus the axis on which the earth spins. Cronus' Great Sicle carves a circle through the year, the hands of father time cutting up the night in celestial, patricidal harvest. And finally, Zeus, the brightness of day, covers all...

to the greeks, the third generation was a charmed one. fathers, grandfathers, their business was troubled. they may or may not have obeyed the gods; grandsons could set it to rights. grandsons learn the generational lesson. they carry and correct their family name, the adjusted spirits of their sires, as they bleed out blood feuds, calm the Furies, sate the gods themselves.

three has always been a sacred number in most cultures, but i think the significance comes from a more practical observation. in general, there are only about three generations of a family alive at the same time. grandfathers, looking through the scope of their own sons, look hopefully upon grandsons. grandfathers have made mistakes; fathers are making them. grandsons have their whole life ahead of them. the third generation is hope.

whether or not i ever become a father or grandfather, i am a grandson...i have been one, and i always will be. what gifts have i been given? what flaws? what lessons should i learn? what is my contribution to my family, and what paths should i take our name down?

hello, from the land of scattered thoughts...

2006-07-06T13:03:00.000-04:00

so, i've been making more of an effort to do some writing lately, and that feels good. the problem is the riduculous lack of discipline and laughably small dividends: i am barely working or doing anything, so my whole day is generally geared towards writing. which means i can -- and i DO -- wait as long as i want to get started (no surprise here to anyone who really knows me). and i can't seem to eke out more than a couple pages of overly process-conscious writing.

i am trying to work on what i am calling "Vol. 1" of a two volume novel.

its really not coming together just yet, so i have been grinding out pages of experiments -- excercises, more or less, for my faulty mind. there are so many ideas, and i don't know how to weave them together yet. i don't even know where to start.

i recently broke out this past year's writing to look at, hoping for some inspiration. its true, though, when they tell you that success consists less of inspiration than perspiration, so really the best i can hope for is to keep laboring away until i have something. still, i did find some clarity in those older scribblings, a focus of vision that always accompanies the origin of ideas. there is good stuff there, rules to write by, things to remember. the book i am working on in concept deals with the journey of writing as a pathway through life and the self, so reading the written journey of the past year is helpful.

it also makes me realize: i don't write nearly enough.

perspiration IS inspiration...or will lead to it anyway. if you catch enough on a piece of paper, somewhere on that page you'll find something useful. the point is to catch as much as possible.

woodwork

2006-07-01T15:35:00.000-04:00

just wrapping up a busy weekend; the little sis is officially married, and a load of family was in town, some of whom i've not seen in a decade (the realization dawning on me that its not just that i'm a terrible son or terrible brother, but that i'm just a terrible relative in general).

all in all it was good fun. its sad to see her grow up, but there's no denying it now: my little sis ain't so little anymore. ce la vie. what is really going to be strange is when Clint and Katie have their first kid...i hope i'm around, i want to be around for that; it will give me the opportunity to start from scratch, and be someone potentially important and hopefully close to some part of his family.

at any rate, i was on the way to my parent's house to get dressed before the wedding, and got a voicemail from my highschool guidance counsellor. it took me a full five minutes to lift my jaw from the floor. apparently she discovered me via this website -- and as i'm writing this i'm only now finding the time to be confused at how she tracked down my cell-phone number.

in my last post i mused? (...complained...) that the only people who read WrittenOff are people i know in real life. its a mixed blessing, really. its nice thing to know that people are interested. on the other hand it makes me want to be less than forthright, and can potentially get me into trouble.

my boss found this site when she searched our work address. now i'm sure more than half the people i work with have at least seen it. good thing i haven't written anything here in the heat of passion about work or....well...its best to stop there.

there is a lot less security to having this site than i originally imagined. its been here for about a year and more people are reading it than i know; people are coming out of the woodwork. for all i know, my parents are reading it. scary.

i didn't think that really more than five people had ever been to or read any part of this site, and now that i know its not true, i've got to be more careful about what i write, and, most of all, who i write about -- it was all well and good when this was a nook of the internet protected by the fact that i never told anyone it existed, but now i've got to be careful. especially with using people's names.

as in Julie Randolph, who was googled by a boyfriend who found her on my "naughty list" (which she isn't actually on, idiot boyfriend of Julie Randolph -- i know i use some complex sentance structuring sometimes, but really...try to follow along here. english is your native language, right?).

as in Heidi (apparently-having-long-dropped-the-Glick-) Kerr, my highschool guidance counsellor who was googled at work by her husband, who, i am embarrassed to know, is now privy to my secret adolescent thoughts on his wife's legs, which, naturally, went no further than highly intellectual and philosophical musings about their aesthetic value, of course. (ahem)

and then there are other people in the silent wings who are dropping notes (hi Cheryl, thanks for reading -- remember when i quasi-stalked you after we broke up? heh, fun times...)...people who i'd thought i'd lost all appeal to, who've moved or moved on...( --not much to say-- ).....all very strange.

i've been struggling for self-sufficience, for self-hood. in a way i've been doing it ever since i was a kid -- disconnecting...pruning away the dried up branches, sealing off the dead ends. it is why i am not as close to my family as i should be. it is why i don't keep in good contact with anyone. my life is full of false starts and missed connections; there are few people who are electric and dear to me, less than a handful.

and where does that leave me? do i know "me" any better now? am i better for dropping all of those lines of missed connections? i don't know.

perhaps there are levels of connecting. perhaps best friends aren't something adults are with each other. perhaps i need to impose less, to expect less, to be happy with the connections i've been offered at their own frequency. it is comforting, and flattering, to know that people desire that from me in some capacity, be it blog-form or some other way...

maybe this blog has opened a door to those connections...maybe it is the door itself.
friends, family...read at your own risk.
i was never satisfied with the "doing lunch" approach to relationships -- relationships walled within a half-hour's time taken out of a day that otherwise had no room. i appreciate politeness, but i abhor formality between those who are supposed to be friends. i want "dinner and drinks" relationships; "crash in the guest room" relationships. "let's take a road trip" relationships.

which do you suppose this blog is?
are we doing lunch here? or is this dinner and drinks?
it was never supposed to be either, honestly. take it where you want it to go, i guess.
i was just trying to write, here.

love, kisses

p

proof that i could use some more Vitamin D

2006-06-18T21:43:00.000-04:00

it occurs to me now that i've got a wider readership than i'd previously thought. evidently, people are keeping tabs on me through this blog, all of whom i know in real life. in fact, that is all that my readership consists of, and while i'm glad people take the time out of their day to consider me without feeling the need to be ostentatious or expressive about it (like, say, dropping me a note in the comments section), that is not why this site is here.

that coupled with a decline in the material i've been posting lately makes me wonder: is there any point to keep doing this at all? it was ok when this site was just for me, just practice to keep writing, but to tell you the truth, trying to do this for any external reasons other than that it is what i want to be doing or that i have something i feel the need to organize into words and sentances is crippling.

so i don't know how much longer i'll be doing this. i don't want people coming here just because they know me; i don't want anyone reading this site just to be nice.

i want to post here because i am compelled to do so, at my soul's urge, and i want people to read because they find what i write compelling.

i don't want to write just because i feel like i have to put something new up or the blogger police will come get me.

sorry if that sounds like a big fuck you to some people, but i have no grace under that kind of pressure.

on a related note, someone whom i know and am not on speaking terms with replied (via personal e-mail) to a recent post he or she apparently felt was compelling, and you might look at me and say well isn't that more or less what you wanted? and i'd say certainly there is a sense of achievement when you've moved someone you haven't spoken with in a year to break her silence...except what am i supposed to do with a missal that was written with the expressed purpose not to "re-establish a relationship?" what am i supposed to say? thank you for sharing your thoughts, now let's not dialogue about it? what's the fucking point? why did she write me in the first place?...i mean, aside from telling me that she doesn't want to have a relationship which might include discussing the important points brought up in my post? really...what was the point? to assert her "rightness" or authority? that is game i am sick of playing with people, and especially with her. i don't need you to come down and tell me you know what's what. most people who think they know are either stupid or will change their minds. thank you for condescending for a moment to reassert that you have the answers to all of life's questions; i'd forgotten for a moment why i didn't want to be friends with you.

but wait, there's more. the irony abounds. yes, apparently morality is contigent upon faith, seeking self in God, and most all community, according to my correspondent. and she feels it is important to share struggles, questions, and the journey with others. which is all fine. except we're not trying to re-establish a relationship here, remember? so.....how big of a good goddamn do you think i give? what's the point of "sharing" with me if we are nothing to each other? its called logic, lady, try and use some. especially when you're writing a so-called "reply" to a post the point of which you completely missed and utterly failed to address. its not so much that i mind the medieval scholasticism of your indignant, impregnable moral philosophy, its that.....no, wait, i do mind it.

let us break not the rules any longer.

that said, she raises a point personally relevant to me about the identity of the self and its fullfilment being contingent upon the Divine...only because i have read Kierkegaard's the Sickness Unto Death, and have understood some of it. now there's a guy who could comprehend the Schism of the Self. while i have to say that i think i believe Kierkegaard and my ~~friend~~ Sarah are on the right track as far the role the Divine plays in the fulfillment of the self, i feel that Man must come to an end of the rope of worldliness before he can learn to cry out for the Divine so that he might more fully receive what the Divine is crying out to give him. it is not a climb to heaven, it is a climb through the world -- and it is not to earn what is free for all, it is to be able to grasp and comprehend it.

i know you've been working hard...

2006-06-15T02:13:00.000-04:00

...mustering all your thoughts and formulating a reply to my last post, so i'm calling a recess and posting a few links that will hopefully make you laugh. in case you haven't noticed, i've put a few new links up in the "links to visit" area -- one of them is an online comic called Gunnerkrigg Court, which is dark high adventure of the kind i would have loved as a kid and find myself loving even now...definately worth checking out. the other link, from which the following links are drawn, is the website for the Perry Bible Fellowship, which is a comic-strip rather than an actual church, as such. they print two or three weekly in buffalo's alt-newspaper the Beast, and the strips always prove to be creative, if not laugh out loud funny.

here are a few of my favorites:

Bacon Egg
Ballerina Slippers
Goodnight, Full Moon
Book World (the first Perry Bible Fellowship i ever read!)
Astronaut Fall (Josh Wilson would appreciate this)

and there you have it.
use the comment option to express your gratitude for enlightening you in the ways of the Perry Bible Fellowship.

all right, coffee break's over....everyone back on your head.

a new morality (?)

2006-06-12T19:06:00.000-04:00

for awhile now, i've been plagued by the idea of what morality is, why it is and where it comes from. all my life i have been raised within the system of what might be called the Judeo-Christian moral tradition, and i certainly mean it no disrespect by questioning or deconstructing it. i don't mean to pick at it simply to get away from it or pull it apart to justify my immoral actions. the reason is this: i have a hard time doing anything just because somebody tells me to. its incredibly stubborn, i know...and it shows a lack of trust -- in God, perhaps, and the basic goodness of a moral code -- and say what you want about my failures in faith, but i have come to realize this: "because i say so" is an unacceptable reason for anyone to do anything, and biblically, it is rarely the reason God ever gives. oh sure, He punctuates with that a lot, but he never fails to prove Himself.

God, as creator of nature, therefore works through a natural process; as designer of a universe held together by laws of physics He must work through those physical laws as well -- i think of them as the work gloves with which the Hand of God moves. the notion that miracles, that signs and wonders can be explained by natural phenomenon therefore is not a problem for me. to many people of faith, it is considered a blow to what they believe, the work of people who are trying to tear down the supernatural and replace it with a mundane, natural explanation. but if God is the creator, and creation is nature, than there is no such thing as "supernatural" -- or, rather, everything in creation is supernatural...and if you ever study biology or astronomy or geology, it really boggles the mind; nature itself verges on the supernatural, and it is almost incredible -- the perfection of the life cycles of plants and animals, or the immensity of outer space, or the fine calibration of the earth we live on. the scientific explanation never detracts from the power and sovreignty of God, it points out just how powerful and sovreign He is. discovering the physical laws that govern natural events, be they everyday occurances or miraculous wonders, simply give us an explanation of what is happening, and aid our appreciation of how and why it did happen.

when it comes to the question of human nature, things become more controversial, more arguable; few can agree on what is 'natural' for humanity, and discovering the normative properties of the race is either used or seen to be used as a way to oppress the non-normal; certainly there is that danger, and whether or not discovering a norm is undesirable because of that danger is another discussion entirely. at any rate, there is little agreement as far as what human nature is, and there is less agreement about what 'natural laws' govern it. morality is an attempt to the answer that question of the natural laws of humanity.

if our system of morality is God-given, from On High and written in stone, there is still much to be discovered about that system. following the moral code is certainly good enough, but for many understanding why is an important part of that act of obedience as well, to say nothing of the need to explain to those individuals who are disinclined to follow certain of those moral tenents why obedience is necessary. a moral system that does not contain an answer to the question "why?" amounts to brainwashing or mind-control -- to finally use the analogy i've been setting up all of this time, it amounts to observing natural phenomenon without having any concept of the physical laws that govern it -- it is mysterious at best, confusing at worst. therefore, if morality is to be taken from On High, it still requires a why; if God is the source of our moral system in a "down from the mountain" fashion, it still must contain reasons for its own formulation, because we know that God does not allow natural phenomenon to stand alone without physical laws just as we know he does not allow a moral system to stand alone without its own reasons for being -- the explanation of which is not to detract from the authority or sovreignty of God, but to demonstrate its fullness.

and yet by the Divine system mankind is a complete moral failure; so much so that we've managed to fail in several different ways. our inability to live up to the Divine Moral Standard is the reason for Christ (who came not to do away with, but to fulfill 'the Law') and his death on the Cross. as a race we have fallen so far from the finish line we've needed even more Divine assistance than we knew to begin with. in other ways, we have surpassed the Judeo-Christian Divine Moral Standard of the Penteteuch, the laws of which were given to a society that existed on the brink of extermination. laws that seem to govern moral practice (complete with appropriate punishment) are in actuality laws concerned with the health and survival of a people. medical and technological advancements seem to make certain pronouncements of the law obsolete. do clean needles sterilize the immorality of getting tatoos? do health codes and disease control cure the meat of unclean animals? do condoms protect against the depravity of promiscuity or homosexual sex? and what about the medical and technological advancements that the Divine Moral System has absolutely nothing to account for -- what moral code do we take into account when considering the dangers of genetic engineering, or cloning? what happens society has outgrown its moral system? or is it hubris, to think we have come so far? is it pride to allow ourselves loopholes around the Divine Moral Code just because we have the technology to create them? to me, it is clear that we need a New Revelation...

that said, and putting other points to be raised aside for the moment, there are those that argue that the entire cause of morality and the need for a moral code is society itself -- that without society, without a community, without any number of gathered individuals, great or few, there would be no need for any moral system. morality is what governs the social commerce between individuals in a community, and arises alongside and just as naturally as communities do themselves. this sounds entirely reasonable; even if you don't have a moral code from the mountain, you are going to have to end up with a system one way or another. in large, organized, secular societies, you have governments and legislation that order what is proper and improper social commerce between neighbors, and on a subgovernmental level a public, communal sense of courtesy or general morality determines the right- or wrongness of less pressing concerns like manners and personal conduct. in fact, one could say there are several strata of morality, or even several moralities -- a morality of society, a morality of the state, and a morality of religion.

this social origin of morality works its way around the objections that arise with the Divine Moral System -- namely that the Social Origin states that morality is a necessary component of society -- it is inherent to social structure, inseperable from it the way the Divine Moral Code seems to be. an explanation of nature and the laws of physics as an analogy for the DMC and its reasonability is a complication not necessary for the Social Origin theory. the Social Origin theory is simply described as occuring naturally alongside society. the mechanics of its origin of course must involve an awareness of what people are prone to do, an awareness of precedents, and here again we could re-raise the concept of human nature and how the perception of it figures into the structure of the moral system. but because society, no matter how restricted, is inherently pluralistic on some level, its moral system can be nothing but basic, and therefore prove only a basic understanding of human nature.

this is the crux of the question that plagues me. is there a morality that exists apart from society, to govern a solitary man? is there a morality that exists apart from the Divine Moral System? a morality that is not just a "because i said so," or is not a system for survival, or is not just a way for us all to get along? what if there is no one to get along with? are there still moral obligations? what about the man who lives in society and is not a 'part' of it? what about the hermit? where there are many men, moral systems must exist. where there is a God, moral systems must exist; they always do. the question for me isn't the hypothetical "what if God doesn't exist and you are the only man left on earth." its more complicated than that. i guess as concisely as i can put it the question is "what is the moral responsibility of the individual?" is there only a moral responsibility when there are people around? is moral responsibility only a matter of duty owed to the Divine, and if so what is the purpose of that for me?

"what is the purpose of it for me" is the important half of that question. its not that i don't believe in a moral responsbility to society or God...but....what is the purpose of it for me? it helps me live better with other people, and i can follow rules that will make God happy, but to some degree those are outer layers, non-individual layers. i am an individual, and the core of me wants to know what is supposed to govern it and why...

what is the purpose of it for me?.......i'm determined to find the answer to this question, because i believe there is one.

your writing update

2006-05-30T01:27:00.000-04:00

end of month 1

june, july, and august to go.

a quarter of a short story down.

things are not coming along quickly. this is the part of the writing process where i realize i haven't worked on a project in two weeks. this is the part of the writing process where i don't want to go back to writing; where the bottom drops out, and suddenly i'm thinking this isn't something i can do.

a fog has descended onto my head, and i can't follow a single train of thought. i haven't felt this unfocused in a long time. a blog post even this short is tough to make.

so far: i am pretty unsatisfied with my performance.
so far: i suck at writing.

so far: i haven't figured out how to do this.

Achilles had no friends.

2006-05-22T19:28:00.000-04:00

Achilles had no friends; he was the greatest warrior that history -- real or imagined -- has ever known. he killed not only Trojans, with whom he was at war, in the thousands -- but Greeks as well...the guys on his own team, the people of whom he was a leader. the Iliad is a poem about the 'wrath of Achilles;' it was unquenchable, unstoppable...inhuman. Achilles' anger and his sheer lust for glory made him an implacable force on the battlefield. he cut through men like a flaming sword, like a heavenly fire. he was a saint of blood, he was born to kill. by the end of the poem, he has no friends -- he offends his king, alienates his fellow warriors, and his only friend in the story, Patroclus, is slaughtered. he is a brooding, vengeful bastard.

in fact, Achilles is ensconced, encapsulated in the pruned, autumnal garden of his selfish desire -- he has chosen death and glory as the way of his life, and it has isolated him. Bernard Knox, who writes the introduction to the Fagles translation of the Iliad, asserts that it is Achilles' solopsism that grants him godlikeness; his singularity of purpose, his singularity of being, its arrogance, its refusal to join the rest of mankind in a common concession to humanity. Achilles is a man (granted, a demi-god); he is mortal, and lives among mortals, yet throughout the story he makes no connection, cannot join himself in any social bonds with mortal men. he aspires to greatness, to glory and even godhood in some sense, and leaves mankind behind him as something to be stepped over, cut through; until, Knox argues, Priam, king of Troy, comes to supplicate Achilles for the body of his son, Hector. here, Achilles ceases to be a god, ceases to be simply a force of personality, and becomes human........the eloquence and the love of Priam for his son has touched him. Achilles falls into this human reality: he too, has a father; he too, will wound him with his own impending death. he is able to feel something different than his bellicose single-mindedness; Priam anoints him with human compassion.

Achilles is doomed; he does not die at the end of the poem, but we know his life is sealed, bound to the death of Hector (whom he kills, knowing this full well). but he is pulled within the human realm before he dies, joins the race of mortal beings. he too will meet death, like the all the rest; he is as good as human. why not join them in life? according to Knox, the Iliad is the tragedy of Achilles; perhaps he learns too late, but it is never too little to learn how to become a part of this race.

live, from the sunset strip, its studio 60...

2006-05-20T17:25:00.000-04:00

nothing makes me want to blog more than Aaron Sorkin news.

so "Studio 60 from the Sunset Strip" isn't really news...or, rather i'm a very untimely reporter...but suddenly i'm all hot and bothered about it.

it all starts with the West Wing; the show that nobody wants to watch until they get irrevocably hooked. its one of those things that happens gradually, but feels like it happens overnight; just ask my ex-girlfriends, my various roommates, or me. the Bravo reruns caught me around the throat, a couple years ago. its important that i specify the Bravo-run of the West Wing and not its network run at the time; after season 4, Sorkin left the show. i never gave it a chance after that. it might not have been all that bad, but how could it ever be as good again? the point is, i've never watched a whole episode that Sorkin didn't write, with the exception of Sunday's series finale. cute episode, by the way. worth the fuss? no, not really. the show was long overdue for cancelling, without Sorkin's pen. but i couldn't resist watching the very last episode of my very favourite, if devolved, television show. good thing i did. the bright spots? the commercials of course, specifically this one -- a thirty second teaser for Sorkin's shiny new Studio 60. the cast looks phenomenal.

can't wait. :)

buttons in funny places

2006-05-08T12:12:00.000-04:00

i'm elated; i just found a button on my laptop that turns off the touchpad.

you have to understand; its not that i have meathooks or anything, but on my last laptop, i could barely type because i kept grazing the touchpad....

so if i were typing middle of another line something, randomly
my cursor would jump to the

...and i can't tell you how annoying that is when you think you're writing your opus.

as it turns out, what i was writing then wasn't going to be my great work. but touchpad misshaps are no less annoying now than they were back then, so it is nice, now that i have redefined the role and importance and type of writing in my life, to finally be able to peck at this keyboard without having to wonder where the words will end up.

at any rate, here i am with a new laptop, and a summer off from school -- with new plans for my former opus, new plans for a new opus, and most importantly, germs of ideas for other little pieces along the way. these last i'd like to focus on the most. i've only really written two short stories that i'd ever let anybody read. one needs about a thousand man hours of editing. the other needs less editing and more retouching. they are not bad. if i can fiddle with them a bit, they might even be good. they give me hope that i'll be able to write in the short form successfully. i plan on trying it out; if it works out the way i hope, i may send a few pieces out to run the publishing gauntlet. if the little guys survive, they'll be 'real,' i'll get to say i'm published, and maybe i'll even see some money. it won't be enough to pay rent; i'll be able to buy toothpaste and toilet paper and a nice chicken dinner if i'm lucky. but no Gepetto would ever be so happy.

let's set some goals:
i'm aiming low here, i know, but i'm not going to ask for much more than three short stories this summer. that's really because i only have three ideas, but let's all pretend that its because i'm monumentally gifted and that if i try to write any more than that it will put undue strain on my fragile body, and that because being such a genius is so exhausting i'll have to be bedridden for five months if i manage to pump out more that three literary treasures. let's pretend also that the nap i'm going to have to take after writing this post is for the same reason. everyone got it? good.

so, i have three ideas. one of them is what i like to politely call a reworking of Borges's "the Circular Ruins;" you might impolitely call it a "rip-off," but if we can get together over lunch on this one, i'm sure we'd be able to agree on the backhanded term "inspired by" and walk away satisfied.

one idea is about something called 'the Book of Lost Thoughts,' and it came from me wondering what happens to all of the little lines of poetry and prose i've composed in my head while walking, only to forget them completely upon arrival at whatever my destination.

one idea is about buffalo. the phrase that keeps flickering on the screen of my brain is "buffalo underworld"........its not about organized crime, or gangs, or our lovely, corrupt and useless politicians (ok, i didn't vote, i have no right to complain, yadda yadda).......but because buffalo manages to be a small and incestuous and inbred city; people's secrets get passed around like currency, street gossip is almost always reliable, and everyone's got a reputation for something. the word "sordid" is the best i can think of to describe it. the strange part is people take a certain kind of twisted pride in all that sordid stuff here. i'd venture a guess to say that any city is like that, but i don't live in any city, i live in buffalo. and because i am an absolute retard for mythology, i of course plan to work in some references to the classical (and non-classical) depictions of the Underworld....because....sometimes buffalo feels like...Purgatory or something....Sheol...the abode of the dead...

anyway...a story a month this summer.
i should be able to do that, right?

i'll let you know...

"May the Christian Lord guide my hand..."

2006-05-06T23:00:00.000-04:00

"...against your ROman POPEry!"

this has got to be the funniest line ever uttered in a movie. the conviction with which it is delivered makes it funny...and the word "popery." as in "the act of pope-ing."

i am sitting here watching a mediocre movie to watch Daniel Day-Lewis be amazing as Bill the Butcher, and he's the one who gets to shout that line and be admirably repulsive in Gangs of New York; what's more, i'm watching it from the comfort of my own apartment as i type this entry -- fingerwork that would admittedly be put to better use writing all the make-up papers i've got to do before monday. but the point is this: i've just gotten a laptop for my very own. handy in the event that i'd ever want to, you know, be a writer.

which is good news for you. because, now, while instead of just rotting my brain in front of the telie, i can rot my brain AND post to this lovely little site.

which i will start doing. right after i get to watch Daniel Day-Lewis in Gangs of New York.
cheers.

reason not to have a girlfriend #6

2006-05-06T20:34:00.000-04:00

(today is 1/23/07. this is a retroposted draft i had, lingering around, unpublished. why? it wasn't for any special lack of quality...so, who knows. here it is, restored to my lovely little weblog.)

i am going to make a general statement here, and it won't be pretty:

girls are needy.

ok, before half of you get started, give me a chance to say this: of course not all girls are needy. of course there are exceptions, and no i shouldn't be so enslaved to gender stereotyping, and i don't know what i could possibly be thinking by making such a statement except...

girls are needy.
i'm not saying men aren't needy in equally annoying ways. i'm not saying girls aren't deservedly needy. i'm not saying that anyone wouldn't be needy when you enter into the pact that is a relationship. in fact, that demand on your time and attention is justified when you've made that agreement with someone, when you've taken that step. things in your life change, and necessarily so.

i have always been drawn to women who were strong, independant, even stubborn, i think as a guard against that intense demand upon my time.

and the girls i have been drawn to, they will either have nothing to do with me, or they become every other girl i have ever dated. they become 'girlfriend,' and they lose all their own interests and replace them with me. i turn them to mush, for whatever reason. they lose the distinction of character that drew me to them in the first place.

they begin to latch on to me, to get upset when i spend too long in the computer lab, or want to go out with the boys, or spend time wandering my own thoughts. they get upset when i do things that don't include them, or me thinking about them.

like posting on a weblog.
and there this girl, a girl i am not (yet?) dating for whom i must cut this post short.

and she is not my girlfriend.
she is still just a girl.

and reason not to have a girlfriend #6 is:
girls are needy

stealing greek

2006-04-28T15:39:00.000-04:00

feeling the need to ramble a bit today......

let me tell you about two new words i learned this week. they aren't actually new. they're a few thousand years old really. and they aren't english, they're greek. but they are new to me, and i'm excited about them.

word #1: kalon -- abstract beauty, the recognition of beauty without desire, without the need to possess. something like zen-aestheticism, appreciating beauty in and of itself.

i think this is a fascinating idea...mostly because, for me, it is almost incomprehensible. as an artist, the only thing i want to do is capture beauty, or create it, or somehow leave my mark on it. as an artist, i only appreciate beauty in terms of possessing it, in whatever way i can. inspiration is the attempt to acquire beauty, to consume the beautiful so that one may produce the beautiful; sandwiched between that beauty, perhaps one can become beautiful oneself. i don't know. i am not sure that the concept of the kalon is possible, in reality -- i don't know if one can grasp what beauty is apart from grasping after it. but i like entertaining the idea that it is possible, or that as a term it might be able to describe something so magnificently beautiful that the mere existence of it is possession enough. i like that it might be able to describe something transcendantly beautiful, beyond perfection, boiling over with its own ineffable, blindingly endless existence; like God on the top of a mountain.

i have felt some moments where the world and life and its plan were jarred into beauty -- like a re-set bone -- and that beauty had been enough, to know it was there was sufficient for me, and to know that i had a place in it was a comfort. so perhaps i understand the idea of kalon, to a degree. it is a holy beauty, a beauty so sacred that it consumes you, consumes the self...you become a part of it; it is too big to become a part of you.

i concieve of the word kalon, or beauty that is kalonic, as being opposed to beauty that is 'hellenic.' Hellen's was the face that launched a thousand ships. if her beauty had been transcendant, those armies would have turned back, satisfied with the slightest glance at her, and happy to know that somewhere in the world there existed something so beautiful, and for her to be in the world was enough. hellenic beauty inspires lust, desire, war...inspires men to die; kalonic beauty inspires them to live.

word #2 akrasia -- the breakdown of human reason which results in irrational choice...usually due to the contamination by human will.

i didn't know there was a word to describe why i've made most of the decisions i have in life. what it comes down to is that sometimes the reasons for a decision aren't always reasonable; they aren't predictable, they aren't decipherable or very well explicable. and sometimes you choose something just to enact your will, to know that you are still you and you can decide something even when the world seems to spin out of control........eating disorders, anyone? not to mention any number of less obvious manifestations that derive from a similar kind of neuroses...

if you've ever read any of the "reasons not to have a girlfriend" posts, you'll perhaps be somewhat familiar with my personal conflict with the self -- i do and have done things that just don't make sense, a victim of my own compulsions. i have done dangerous things, committed potentially life altering acts, all the while just looking at myself, thinking "what the hell are you doing? you idiot..." everything i do is a choice, because right alongside the reasonable, the sensable, and the safe there shuffles the impulse to do the opposite, the appetite for the edge of self-destruction. and i won't deny that sometimes you've gotta run up to the edge, and walk that line and find out what you're made of...sometimes, you have to know the answer to the question "what if...?"

and sometimes the floor falls out from under you and the wisdom of your decision is apparent to no-one. on the way down, you think "why did i do that," and if the fall is long enough you remember: akrasia. or "a-crazy-a." because, sometimes, we're all a little nuts.

"can't do it max..."

2006-04-20T10:12:00.000-04:00

i used to be a good student. i mean, after i was a bad student for awhile, and i barely graduated high school, and flunked out of Canisius College...i took three years off, and then started going to Buff State, and started pulling A's and the occasional B. and then this year happened. last semester i attended so few classes i had an unofficial withdrawal from three of my courses. my grades in the classes i did attend were...not failing, but nowhere near what i'm used to getting.

so this semester i decided that i'm going to bring my grades back up.

and i just can't do it.

granted, i've been sick three times this year with what appears to have been strep, and have had my share of...troubles...with the amherst town courts. and i had move into a new apartment again.

but honestly, if my head had really been in the game, it wouldn't have mattered, and i wouldn't be in the mess that i am now.

as the end of the semester nears, and the missed classes and make-up work pile up, now, more that ever, i am frantically trying to figure out what's missing from my academic focus so i can get it back and at least not throw away another semester.

i used to love school. now i'm afraid i'll be stuck in the same sort of limbo i was using school to avoid -- doing nothing, learning nothing, being nothing.

i can't wait for summer. i've got that itch. i feel guilty. other people can do this. other people take more classes than i am taking, and work full time, and don't sleep, and they can make it happen. why the hell can't i?

i don't understand the lethargy, but i have a few theories:

1. too much fun -- i used to not have friends. now, i have friends. i could not have them, i suppose. but then i wouldn't have any friends. the unrelenting need to have people like me makes me want to hang out instead of do my work. and i have really only ever operated in extremes in this arena. hang out, every chance i get. or hang out with no one, ever.

2. no girlfriend -- usually, when i have a girlfriend, she is my social life. so i don't need or usually have friends of my own when i'm dating someone. i'd like for that to change next time around, but i am just accustomed to the ol' ball and chain. it made being social easy; just find one person you're comfortable with, and hang out with them. and then ignore them when you have to do something. it takes the focus off of being social, and realigns it on the task of the day. that was really easy. i know it sounds horrible. but sometimes i wish i had a girlfriend again, just so i could get some work done.

3. writing -- since i've decided to own the creative factor of my life as its defining feature, i have little patience for anything else. granted, at this stage, i'd probably be bad at writing for 8 hours a day like a real live writer does; i think that's something you've got to work up to. and so i'm not wishing that i had nothing else in my life to do. but it seems that the times i've felt the most creative are always the times when things like school are my biggest obstacle to creativity. and that is a pain in the ass. don't they have programs for people like me? (anyone says "12 step", and i'll kill you...)

4. lack of wellbutrin -- i was on this drug for awhile, when i first started back to school. i don't really remember it making me feel any different. it was supposed to make me feel motivated and, well, less bi-polar, i guess. but the only reason i took it was to keep the people who bugged me about it off of my back. it made other people happy, but i don't remember it making me happy. i was against the idea of taking a drug to fix something i felt like went deeper than a medical issue. i still am. but at this point, i'm willing to try anything. i had stopped taking it, and things kept moving pretty smoothly. i attributed that to fact that my life actually had purpose and direction, i was paving a path of A's and B's towards a certain goal, and that was good for my spirits. my focus is a little hazy, now. maybe its time to give the ol' doc a call...

5. bad health -- they say that health of body affects health of mind. they also say that strep can stay in your system (which it has in mine, evidently) and swirl around your body and go to your HEART. no wonder i felt like i was going to die when i was sick. i don't think it got as bad as infecting other parts of my body...but who knows? maybe it went to my head, and ate away my brain. i do feel like i have a headful of scrambled eggs. at any rate, i have some health issues i need to take care of; strep was one, so i've got one down. i still need to get my wisdom teeth out. and i still need new contacts. i am so gross. i just want to feel better.

there we go, Buff State. top five reasons why i've sucked at school all semester. can't you just...let me float by....for old times sake?

Journal Entry, 4/17/06, 12:30 am

2006-04-17T21:25:00.000-04:00

i get panicky when i haven't written.

i am panicky.
because i feel like i can see meaning and purpose and greatness receding out of my life, and i will become an empty vessel, useless; a dried up potsherd.

when i decided what to do with my life, all the fear left me. i became fearless. my worst fears, my dreamt fears were no threat to me any longer. i was no longer paranoid. i did not even fear the yellow-eyed monster man in the bushes that i made up. i could face him, bear his attack, run out to meet it, collide with him, and, win or lose, i could know that i would be ok. i had no fear...guns, knives, fists, nails, teeth held no real danger. i had a better weapon. i had words by the hilt, that were carving up and creating my life. i had a sword that could kill and give life, that could make and unmake. a sword of spirit.

and i knew, also, that the yellow-eyed monster man was me, and that meant i could take him. i had the power to look him in his terrible face and scowl back. i had a weapon that could tame and kill him, a weapon whose handle, when within reach, is salvation. it is a sword i can live by.

it is all of and the only power i have.

the longer i keep away from it, the weaker i become. the life i lead becomes less clear to me, the path obscured, overgrown with bushes, where my fear awaits me, with yellow eyes, poised to steal my life, and able to do so.

sorry for hiatus

2006-04-12T18:24:00.000-04:00

sorry folks.
i've been sick again.
last time, i promise.
and i'll return soon with some new material too.

i know you've all been worried.

its not April yet, but you can smell it from here...

2006-03-28T14:04:00.000-05:00

it. is. bea. utiful. outside

i would love to be posting something clever for you to read, but the sun is shining, and its warm out at the same time. and all in buffalo, too.

it is clothes-shedding warm out, the kind that sneaks up on you when you're wearing a few layers. i love it.

now that its here, i'm going to go sniff spring.

catch you on the flipside.

Sir Gawain

2006-03-21T18:12:00.000-05:00

yesterday was the first day of spring.

usually its today, but this year it was yesterday. something about the mathematical imperfections of the earth's revolution around the sun, i don't really know, but voila -- spring comes a day early.

i was born the day after spring, so i suppose its appropriate that my Gram called me today to wish me a happy birthday. by the numbers, it doesn't come until tomorrow.

but then, i've always looked at the 21st as my honorary birthday anyway. it is the equinox, you know; the day the sun starts to his journey out of the ditches of the underworld to reclaim the sky. it is also the beginning of the Attic rites in ancient Greece, where they 'sacrifice' victims who are then brought back to life, symbols of the sun, of returned vitality. i was born on this day.

it is fitting that i just got over another throat infection; that the worst of winter should be bookended with my illnesses (and recoveries) as if to say "you made it, but don't forget how close you came..." winter, illness, death; white throat, white snow, white skin. all the while i have been wearing green, like a banner, to remind myself of spring and that yes, indeed, it is eventually coming; green for st. patrick's day, green for the equinox, green for my birthday.

i wear green; a green p-coat, a green bandana, a green fleece. it makes my eyes bloom, changes them from brown to hazel in the sun. i won green out of the hollow parts of the year, the parts that challenged me, that brought me down to die, i thought. i go out of the barrow of that year with my life, and a kink in my neck, wearing green like a garter.

out of the hollow, on a horse, and into the sun; it has come back to greet me, and i go to meet it.

a day early, the day before and the day after spring, my first day of the year, the first day of my life, of the rest of my life, and of every year; a day early, but the day after spring, thank you Gram;

happy birthday to me.

i fought the law...

2006-03-08T21:27:00.000-05:00

i don't really feel like making too big a post about it right now, but for those of you who are curious:

i got off incredibly light with nothing but a $380 fine, a 90 day suspension, and a special class.

and that is unheard of.

i can finally breathe half a sigh of relief.

off to do midterm work.

blogging about blogging...part II...

2006-03-03T15:57:00.000-05:00

...mostly as a way to avoid doing real work or solving problems in my life...

so, anyhoo....thanks to girish, for checking out TokyoBlog and coming back and letting me know about it...glad to see someone taking a chance...

well, i promised to address the rest of the sidebar, and as a man of my word (mostly), so i shall:

Dead Blogs with Good Writing:

OnceInoticedIwasonfireIdecidedtorelaxandenjoythefall --
not only is it a dead blog, it no longer exists on the web. which is a shame. the gentlemen to whom that blog belonged to was a gifted thinker, who writes essays now for some kind of online journal or magazine. i forget his name, and i forget what the journal was, and i am too lazy to look it up right now. i will find out for you and make an update, even though i'm pretty sure you won't care by then anyway.

Belle du Jour --
the online diary of a call-girl in the UK. her blog is still up, though barely running, as she is writing now for some newspaper in the UK and is also working on her second book. she is a charming, witty writer...rather frank, as you would expect someone in the sex-trade would be...but she can take the most shocking scenes, words, and situations and make them into poetry. there is one post that is gross on a bodily fluids level that she makes seem almost...sweet......weird. but worth checking out.

BellaNovel --
oh my god, just read this lady's writing. just pick anywhere in the novel and read a few paragraphs. words that lock and unlock and dance and stand up on end, and balance and shatter and crush like an incoming tide. its beautiful. who is this woman? where did she learn to write like this? its not human.

Guys Whose Blogs I visit Whom I Haven't Seen in Person for Quite Some Time:

Brian Emerson's "Mystablogy" --
bri was my best friend in highschool. he was Catholic, and i was Evangelical...so i brought him to REAL church and cleansed him of his evil Catholic ways. he went MIA for awhile, and turned up married and an adult, and living in Cleveland with his own house and his own wife. and he's reconverted to Catholocism in the meantime. which i am proud of him for. and he writes about that on Mystablogy; and about So. Euclid, his new hometown, and how he wants it to be a better place. and about his house. and other things of a religious/philosophical nature. he is the kind of person who are my favorite kinds of people, both high-minded and salt-of-the-earth. think of him as your blue-collar priest.

FredSchrock --
easily one of the driest witted fellows i have ever met. he is a guy from my Canisius days...for those of you who don't know, that was my first and failed attempt at college...at which i was more interested in hanging out with a fun-ass crew than getting schoolwork done. and could you blame me? check out some of the funny on Fred's blog, and see what the hype is all about. Fred isn't just funny, he's got a special cortex in his brain devoted to humour, which is wired like a mental reflex. also: check out his newly revived radio show, now in podcast format, with this next blogger...

(yes, the) Joe Ferguson --
Joe Ferguson. long lost joey. i can't even count how many times this kid moved away and came back to buffalo...mostly because i count it as severe childhood trauma and it pains me to relive those memories. eventually joe came back, and he and Fred and Bri and i went to make up part of what was affectionately called the "Nerd Herd"...and he has grown up to become a virtuouso science guy/musician, and a presence more valuable than diamonds, apparently. i believe it. go check out his blog...and the link to his album "Take It from Me"...independant music at its finest...

Ed Snyder, the BMOC --
"B-, B-M-O-C, is driving me/quite carefully (consciencsiously!)"
Ed Snyder is the BMOC...to you knaves, that's Big Man On Campus. but you'll address him as BMOC, because he will whip out German on your ass, and you will bleed and cry, and run home to your mother and she'll tell you that you should've known better.

and that's where the blog links end, and thus, so doth mine rant.

i'll check in again this week with some news.

blogging about blogging

2006-02-27T15:35:00.000-05:00

somehow, between my excessive whining about girls, writing an e-mail, and trying to work on philosophy paper that is due tomorrow, i've found time to make a bit of a blog post; either that or i'm just an idiot.

yeah, i'm an idiot.

anyways, i was just looking at my sidebar there, the one with the links to blogs that have readers and whatnot, and was thinking that i should highlight why they're there. if there's one thing i like more than enjoying something all by my lonesome self, its showing it to other people, so they can get excited about it too.

here goes:

blog heroes?
should be self explanatory. heroes. who blog. or bloggers who've become my heroes. you get the idea.

Neil Gaiman -- haven't yet read Anansi Boys, but i'm sure i will one day, when orchards bloom, and the air is soft, like a baby's blanket, and time for pleasure-reading is abundant like wild berries in summer. as for now, i take Gaiman's writing in pill-form; not quite the luxuriant breakfast that they show on the side of cerial boxes, but still a good way to get your eight essential vitamins, when that's all you have time for...

girish -- excellent, excellent writer. friend from real life, too. mostly a movie blog these days, with some MP3 audioblogging thrown in for good measure: always a good read, and always an educational experience. but, more than anything, and excellent, inspiring, solid writer. girish fits words together like chain links, and his sentances are jointed, angular and strong. check out his dialogues (my personal favorites: conversations with my mom). girish, as far as i know, is one of the first people on the net to institute synchroblogging. it all started with the ten year anniversary of the release of Showgirls. go figure. :)

Overheard Lines -- "Things actual people actually said, captured by an eavesdropping playwright in San Francisco named Tim (or his spying friends)." this description modestly leaves out one other thing: pure genius. Tim's are usually the best, and what makes them so funny is the one-two punch of quote, coupled with it's title. some say the best way to read them is to read the quote first, and the title second; i think you should go there and find out for yourself.

A Softer World -- a three panel photopoem, really, and not so much a blog. i didn't figure that out exactly until after i'd linked to it, and i'm too lazy to change it now. sometimes hysterically funny, sometimes strikingly something else. they've really got a range of things going on here. it is like watching someone sneak up and tear off the bedsheets of a lovemaking couple, mid-coitus.

Progressive Ruin -- a comic book blog, from Mike Sterling. yeah, i don't know who Mike Sterling is either; but he works at a comic-shop, runs a blog, and is funny as hell.

dooce.com -- cliche, you say? the widest read blog on the web, you say? yes, cliche. like Shakespeare is cliche. and if you think Shakespeare is cliche, you're a dolt. that is how i feel about Heather. she's got it all: moving, funny, gross, crude, beautiful, naked. she's a great writer. she's often at her best when she's writing either about her daughter, Leta, or poop. my hand to God. imagine how great it is when the two topics come together for a cosmically amazing post? it does not get any better.

Paul Dini, the King of Breakfast -- i'm not sure why he's the King of Breakfast, but seriously, this guy could be the King of whatever-the-hell-he-wants in my book. things he has worked on, for which he gets mad props: He-Man, and the Masters of the Universe. Batman: the Animated Series (anyone ever seen the episode "Almost Got 'em"?......the best 22 minutes of cartoon you may ever watch), the oversized Superman, Batman, Wonder Woman, and Justice League comic books, painted by Alex Ross. just to name a few things. oh, yeah -- he was also a co-writer for "Lost".......

Broken Glass Makes Me Laugh -- yes, it makes me laugh too. sometimes a comic blog, sometimes pop-culture reflection, sometimes just musings on life chocolate coated with good ol' fashioned north-of-the-border wit that us folks in the states just eat up. Davinder always brings it.

the first rule of blogging... -- if you're curious about what that rule is, go visit Keest's blog. i will give you a hint though: i am breaking that rule right now. what can i say about keest? her phrasecraft is top-shelf scotch; i can't get enough. like the dearly departed John Spencer, as Leo McGarry, once said about alcholism: how can you not want to feel like this all the time? which is why i get the shakes when keest neglects her blog...still....her writing is fragrant with wit and talent, and its got teeth. go check her out. as a favor to me. you won't be disappointed.

Hellboy Animated -- how often do you get an inside look at something this cool? i know i may be the only cartoon guy in the vicinity, but this promises to good stuff; sci-fi, animation, and suspense all at its best. and you get to watch it all come together, before your very eyes. it is a gift from Tetragrammaton Jehovah, as far as i'm concerned.

TokyoBlog -- oh my GOD. such a great idea, so wonderfully executed. just take a look, it is outrageously charming and good. a new favourite of mine. read it. so neat.

ok, you go read those, and lemme know what you think. i'll write about the next set while you're gone.

white barracuda

2006-02-21T18:00:00.000-05:00

in case you hadn't noticed, there was a flurry of flaming blow-out postings attached to my last blog entry. if you're looking for action, i'll furnish the spot; even when the heat is on, its never too hot. its good for a laugh, its a good time, and vicious writing is fun to read. so read it; its me at my meanest, in case you're interested in what that looks like.

my gutless, faceless, nameless friend raises this point: i should either be proud of my self-absorbed singleness, or do something about it [instead of whining].

ok. yes, agreed, the one or the other is an ultimate end. but do i really need to qualify the difficulty of achieving that ultimate end? it mystifies me, that i should have to.

i'm not going to actually; for people who've never felt a tug of indecision, there is no explanation that will make sense. for those who have never felt divided over anything, there is no sufficient reasoning that they can follow. how do you explain the desire for what you know you should not have? how do you explain the conflict with one's own self?
you can't, really.
you get it or you don't.
so i'm not going to try.
but here is a story:
i had a dream last night, about my highschool crush, and i don't know why. and with dreams, there is always and only the "why." at its edges, the dream is scrubbed out and faded. i remember running into her, meeting her again -- my presently charming self fending off the darkness of awkward conversation like a road flare -- all the brightness of smiles were between us, and there was none of the discomfort of the last time i had seen her in person: a group of Amherst grads collected themselves at the Cozumel, and though it would have never happened in school, the way things change after time, i found myself insinuated into a shared social circle. i felt my face go white when i saw her there; it took a half hour and a few bourbons before i could work up the courage to face my fear of her. i managed to wrangle her attention for an awkward ten minutes of clunky conversation. i didn't handle it well, but i made it out the other side. i tried to look normal, to be normal. i felt bad that she had to talk to me, that i had used her awakwardly to face my own demons, that i had attached demons to her in the first place. she'd never done anything to me except look beautiful. i should not have really spoken to her, but it was one of those things you just had to do. medicine, you know. tastes like shit; you have to drink it. afterwards, drunkenly, i was proud of myself. if nothing else, i got to make her a little more human.

last night i met her again, in a hallway, and there was no dark cloud of pubescent clumsiness. it was a school hallway, and i saw her and she saw me and did not dread my approach. there was only smiling, and lightheartedness, and she was wearing an iPod and a backpack. i talked to her about music, and she told me about fake obscure bands with dream names that played music i didn't think a jazz saxophonist would be interested in, in real life. she asked me if i had heard of any of them and i smiled, as we crouched at the seam of the wall and the floor, between two doorways, and i told her that i would check them out. she asked me if i had ever heard of White Barracuda, and i shook my head no. and later, our conversation was done and we parted happily and the only sadness was the wish that real life could be something like this.

she is engaged, now. and would be horrified to know that i still (or ever have) thought, dreamt, or wrote about her; i wouldn't blame her, really.

you can't make an Idol of someone; it isn't fair. but i have made one of her, and the ultimate proof is that i still dream about her. she is a symbol, and not a person -- a symbol of unrequited affection, of unfulfilled desire -- a symbol, ultimately, of my own shortcomings. i was not socially adept in highschool; i was not cool, i was not athletic, i was not attractive. i was a loner. part of that was my own fear of entering the bizarre social world of highschool -- i did not try to make friends or attempt to join in. i excluded myself. but i also never felt good enough -- i did not merit the attention of my crush; thus, i never had the attention of my crush.

i never had a girlfriend, or a first kiss, until i was eighteen. i never really had anything mutual with any girl until then. unless you count the girl down the street when i was three.

this is how women become notches in a man's bedpost -- to be able to "have" with ease something that you were never before considered worthy of having -- it is a rush of power, of pride. there is a world of women at my feet; marriagable, datable. fuckable. a complete spectrum, ultra-violet to infra-red, whose interest in me only goes to illumine my ego, to feed it; to prop the crumbling edifice of my self-esteem.

it is natural, to want to be with somebody, to want a someone to belong to. it is a beautiful thing to see someone find it.

it is also natural to use people to feel better about yourself...but it is also wrong. and its a terrible basis for a relationship. you can't build your self esteem on a relationship, however deep or shallow, and you can't build a relationship on your own self esteem. you can't use people to massage your ego. you can't get anyone else to untie the knots of your own heart. its a disservice to their love. its a disservice to yourself. and i want to stop ruining the people who love me, and try to figure out how to be better.

i am better when i'm single. i can handle being single. but i am not proud of being single, i am not proud of my self-absorption.

there is a girl that i want to be mine, but i know i should not be allowed to have her. not until something in me changes -- changes for good, for me and no one else. i can do something about it then.

until then, i'm going to keep denying myself, trying to convince myself. i am going to keep finding reasons not to have a girlfriend.

i am going to keep whining.
deal with it.

reasons not to have a girlfriend: reason #5

2006-02-14T18:00:00.000-05:00

its (st.) valentine's day...what better way to celebrate than with yet another reason why i should not have a girlfriend?

was it last night? was it this morning? i don't remember...it may have been while i was shaving...you know, those innocuous moments when barbed thoughts come creeping on their elbows, commando style...and the thought is sometimes overpowering enough to be all that you remember of the moment...time and place disappear....

anyway, it was one of those moments, and again, this thought came sneaking in: if i had money, i would probably be married by now. and yes, i know i've hashed out money as a reason not to have a girlfriend in a previous post, but money isn't always as simple a subject as we'd like to make it sometimes.

i'd be in a relationship at least, if i had money, and this is why: it would be easier. money greases wheels. money gives you the option of being generous. money does all of those things i think i've already put more eloquently before and won't bore you with repeating now. at any rate, its no secret: i wish i had money, because of all of the things i would be able to give.

nice thought.

and what load of bullshit. even as it rings just a little bit true -- financial stability is obviously a nice thing -- it is the biggest cop-out-crock of shit.
the real problem is that i love me too much; i am selfish with me. i am my number one. and having money would make it easier to care for someone else, because i wouldn't have to put as much time or thought into it.

the real problem is reason #5 why i can't have a girlfriend:
i want to give what i don't have because i am incapable of giving what i do have.

i'm not here, this isn't happening

2006-02-06T08:12:00.000-05:00

sorry, folks, if you don't hear from me for awhile. if you know why, you know why. if you don't: e-mail me.

til next time.

reasons not to have a girlfriend: reason #4

2006-01-27T11:26:00.000-05:00

If you could see the lover in me

And we could join our hands together

If you could see how good it could be

We'll sing these stupid songs forever

Can you feel it?

Love is here

It has never been so clear

You can't love what you have not

So hold on to what you've got

Is Judy really smiling for me?

I'd change my name in case she found me

Trembling I can't believe

I've got to leave the girl behind me

Can you feel it?

Love is here

It has never been so clear

You can't love what you have not

So hold on to what you've got

If you could see the aching in me

I'd change my name in case you lost me

Trembling down to my knees

I've got to leave the world behind me

Can you feel it?

Love is here

It has never been so clear

You can't love what you have not

So hold on to what you've got

whoa--oo--whoooa--o

-- Starsailor, Love Is Here (emphases mine)

reason #4:

i've got to leave the girl behind me...

i've got to leave the world behind me...