Wednesday, May 31

Contre



Vive le documentaire

I watched a documentary about a man with a thirty second memory. He was a music composer from Surrey, a man of great creativity and intellect. He came down with a flu something like 25 years ago, when he was in his 20s and newly married, and brain damage from the resulting high fever wiped out his ability to remember his past. Any of it. And he cannot move anything from short-term to long-term memory, precluding the formation of any new memories.

He now rides along on an island of time roughly 30 seconds long, and cannot remember anything or anyone from his past, except for his wife. And when she visits him (he must live institutionally now), he is always surprised how much older she looks and thinks it's also (paradoxically) the first time he's ever seen her. In fact, he's continually convinced that he's only 'just now' woken up from a long sleep. He writes compulsively in a journal that's been set up for him saying things like "NOW I am awake, I don't know who or what wrote the last entry but it was not me!" This gets scratched out within minutes with an 'X' placed next to it and something very similar will be written on the next line.

And so his life goes, tragically, unimaginably. When asked how he feels he says he feels he's just woken up, he's never seen a human being in his life, or been outside this room. When asked what he remembers before the present, he appears confused, then compares it to death. He says, "You don't remember anything when you're dead, do you? There you have it. I must be dead." I am reminded of the integral part memory and the awareness of time's passage plays in our picture of reality. What it contributes to our sense of being alive, being human. But mostly...

I cannot watch this documentary again or think on it too deeply without risking throwing myself into one of those near-inescapable loops of insanity.

Untied

time passes slowly when you're in love
nothing else sounds fun
you stand so strong in the sun
and in the evening stoop so lowly
when she's gone

things aren't very important when you
live under the glass bubble of happiness
and craziness that is love
the razor edged shafts of light
descend from heaven,

you welcome them with open arms
escaping shadows for a lifetime or two.

Tuesday, May 30

A cat in motion

tends to stay in motion.

Gegen


Monday, May 29

Favorite Oscar Wilde-isms

High hopes were once formed of democracy; but democracy means simply the bludgeoning of the people by the people for the people.

Women have a wonderful instinct about things. They can discover everything except the obvious.

The absence of old friends one can endure with equanimity. But even a momentary separation from anyone to whom one has just been introduced is almost unbearable.

The good ended happily, and the bad unhappily. That is what Fiction means.

Relations are simply a tedious pack of people, who haven’t got the remotest knowledge of how to live, nor the smallest instinct about when to die.

The only way to behave to a woman is to make love to her, if she is pretty, and to someone else, if she is plain.

Really, if the lower orders don’t set us a good example, what on earth is the use of them?

The youth of America is their oldest tradition. It has been going on now for three hundred years.

My experience is that as soon as people are old enough to know better, they don't know anything at all.

I can resist everything except temptation.

To get back my youth I would do anything in the world, except take exercise, get up early, or be respectable.

To be popular one must be mediocre.

A woman will flirt with anybody in the world as long as other people are looking on.

Each time that one loves is the only time one has ever loved.

I always like to know everything about my new friends, and nothing about my old ones.

Beauty is a form of genius - is higher, indeed, than genius, as it needs no explanation.

He knew the precise psychological moment when to say nothing.

The only way to get rid of a temptation is to yield to it.

When I like people immensely, I never tell their names to any one. It is like surrendering a part of them.

There is only one thing in the world worse than being talked about, and that is not being talked about.

All art is quite useless.

There is no sin except stupidity.

It is through art, and through art only, that we can realize our perfection; through art and art only that we can shield ourselves from the sordid perils of actual existence.

No great artist ever sees things as they really are. If he did, he would cease to be an artist.

We have really everything in common with America nowadays, except, of course, language.

He is really not so ugly after all, provided, of course, that one shuts one's eyes, and does not look at him.

Saturday, May 27

5:14 pm




7:41 am

There is this day a glow of gold
Upon the boughs of this green forest
And nothing's dying, nothing's old
There is this day a glow of gold
For in my heart new love unfolds
Which will not bow to night's grim chorus
There is this day a glow of gold
Upon the boughs of this green forest.

No part of it.















































Tortilla volcano

Today I made a tortilla volcano. Not on purpose. I put two tortillas in my toaster oven and left them in a bit too long. When I opened the door what I saw befuddled my senses.

The toppermost tortilla had puffed up with hot air and the middle part, being closest to the heating element, had gotten burnt.

I couldn't have made a better one if I'd tried.

I instantly dubbed it Gunung Quesadilla, which is Indonesian for "Mt. Quesadilla." This despite the fact I was mixing two languages and that I was not, in fact, even making a quesadilla with these particular tortillas. The name seemed necessary.

This picture fails to show it, but at the very top of the dome a small hole had formed and steam bellowed from it for a time. The inside layers were soft and doughy, just like a real volcano.

I will never again doubt the existence of God.

The horrors...

The quality of horror films seems to (in general) have an inverse relationship with the technology level of the time. Nowadays films rely heavily on CGI, quick-cuts, startling music, and other gimmicky techniques to achieve their aims. Previous to, say, the 80s, horror films used subtler techniques to create their disquieting atmosphere. They weren't heavily colourised and post-processed, they were shot on sets or on locations that actually looked the way they appeared on film. Monsters or possessed people were not created by Silicon Graphics farms but were real people skillfully made up to look scary and properly acting the part. In turn, the protagonists had visceral foils to react to. The whole thing was, to my mind at least, much more believable and in the end much creepier.

Compare films such as The Hole, Silent Hill, and The Fog to slightly older fare like Prince of Darkness, Halloween, or The Exorcist. And of course there is The Shining. Going back even further we have the original Dracula, The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari, and Nosferatu. These oldest films have an eerie quality that cannot be matched by today's films. It's possible to make a film just as good, perhaps (The Ring scared the bejesus out of me and The Sixth Sense was superbly crafted), but not the same. Nowadays directors tend to go over the top in some way - either with gore (though the heyday of that style has passed), kitsch, external movie references, or special effects. Older movies by contrast had a stately, theatre-esque pacing to them that many today find boring, but others appreciate as artful building of suspense. See: The Hunger.

There never has been a hermetically sealed platinum-iridium standard bar to measure horror flicks against, and there never will be. Too many subgenres exist, and each director's vision is equally valid. Fans of slasher films may not like monsters movies or supernatural thrillers, and teen-horror buffs may not go for gothic films or religious nightmares. And all that diversity is good. Still, there are opinions, and my opinion is that some of the artistry overall in this genre has been lost. Fortunately we have ways of preserving and enjoying the older films side-by-side with the new.

Friday, May 26

1,000 Years

(Jarboe)

I'll live forever.
I'll never be filled.
I'll never imagine
I can change what I kill.
I destroy what I love.
I drain what is filled.
And I live by the hope
Of the things I've killed.
I will be alone
For 1,000 years.
This memory will never leave,
This body won't die.
This body is a temple stolen from the Lord.
I'll walk in His shadow for 1,000 years.
This is the gift I was given at birth.
I'll walk in your shadow
For a thousand years.
1,000 years.

Ok, clarity

There are nights when I almost come apart. I shouldn't complain. I've had an easy life on the outside, while many people are starving, losing loved ones, or dying in wars or of terminal illnesses. People have to deal with hardships all the time and they generally do it with much more grace and nobility than I do. I've had it pretty hard on the inside, though, for whatever reason. Probably there IS no reason. A (biochemical or psychological) cause perhaps, but not a reason. Reasons don't really exist in a materialist/scientific view. I suppose if you believe in god then everything must have a reason. I think I prefer the randomness of a godless universe, because that way I merely feel unlucky but at least I don't feel like I'm being punished purposefully. But like I said, I really shouldn't complain. I was born into a normal family with normal health, at least physically. My body has withstood all sorts of maltreatment, and I'm not 400 lbs or in a wheelchair or pursued by terrorists or living with HIV. What do I have to complain about?

I react to situations in life by being sarcastic, arch, ironic, self-denigrating, elitist, condescending, attentive, kind, manipulative, helpless, overwhelmed, witty. Always maladaptive. Always something to cover up the fact I'm just a little boy inside still, who wants so much to be happy. For life to be simpler. To live honestly and apply myself somehow and be content with myself. I'm not really good at anything. I don't have many skills that are of use in a practical sense. I just have a lot of interests and curiosities. But you can't really be a professional collector or reader or a hobby photographer. No one's gonna pay you for sating your curiosity about how the world works or spinning your wheels wondering why it does. People want shiny objects. They want you to make something for them or to be part of the chain of people involved in that act.

I never got over the adolescent stage of wandering through art galleries, getting my lid blown off by the masters of the past, trying to fit their ideologies into mine, or rejecting them as frauds. I never ceased reading for edification instead of pure escapism. I never stopped being fascinated by the basic concepts of science, though it does lose its sheen a bit when it turns into maths or proteins. I like the gee-whiz big subjects. Most of all, I never lost my propensity for asking "why?" When most everyone I know has moved on and forgotten those heady, bohemian days of university and accepted (if not embraced) the matrix-y real world, I still live my life like a rockstar, idealistic and feeling my life must mean something, if only I could find out what it is. If only I could write my opus.

I make fun of people who are cogs in the machine; I despise that life, and yet it seems I am much less happy than many who follow that road. Our physiology seems to be set up so that if we work hard, don't think too much, eat right, and accomplish basic survival tasks, we feel good. Endorphins are released. Concrete work feels like altruism while a life of the mind seems somehow selfish and wasteful. As a rationalist I believe this is caused by our genes, which through natural selection have been honed for practical survival skills. People who build things and grant their family high status in society are more likely to pass on their genes successfully than someone who stands on bridges staring out at the water, too teary-eyed and scared to commit. Iffy when it comes to getting paid. Looking for something grand to paint or write about, burning out in that endless process of exploration.

I know there are the occasional true artists who also become financially successful. Or at least remain viable in the gene game. But I'm not talented enough to do that, and I lack the critical complementary skills that would seem to be required to make headway in the more mundane aspects of life. I don't want to be in the minority or feel isolated. I usually won't admit it but I do want to be happy and not think about things so much. I just don't know how. I don't want to call attention to myself in an effort to shore up my crumbly self-confidence. I don't want people feeling sorry for me. That's a trap that's too easy for me to willingly jump into. I have to do it on my own, or just give up. Find strength. I can't legitimately complain - we're all facing the same facts of existance. Some seem to coast through with little hardship, others with a tremendous amount. I know I'm somewhere in the middle. I know there must be a way through it all.

Wednesday, May 24

Purpose

I debate over the purpose of this blog. It's not like I think it's important, but when I do something, I want to do it right. My original purpose was to stay away from mundane journalistic routines. It was to be a thought-log, a sort of intellectual playground. As time went by, I found myself including poems and, eventually, photos and visual creations. I still shy away from "ordinary" blog topics, as it seems that is done quite frequently and seems rather self-centered. But I don't know. I'm aware I've posed this general question before, but I'm thinking of it again.

Viable topics could include opinion pieces, poems, goings-on, pictures, original art, jokes or funny pictures not authored by me, showcases of friends' creations, quizzes/questionaires, reviews of books and movies, educational primers on subjects little understood, and more. I'd be interested to get some feedback on what people like to read. One part of me wants to keep it clean and austere; academic. The other half sees it as a forum for anything that pops into my head. I'm not asking but if you have an opinion feel free to voice it. The blog is for me, but I hope to make it entertaining for my few readers as well. I'm sitting on the fence between exclusive intellectualism and popular dissertation.

1:05 pm

All plans for creation go out the window
When heady heaven unwraps its most sublime
Gift, the bath of sunlight
It makes me want to hunt tigers
Fold paper airplanes and run hard
Laugh until I'm lightheaded
We could play on carousels
While cradled here,
Struck silent by grace and calm
Because the cage has been opened
The shadows are peeled back, the walks
Seem to lead in all directions
And go on forever
Everyone in the haze is friendly
With faraway smiles
A twinkle in the eye
I remember the park in Munich now
Don't try to understand
Or push this tree onto a photograph
Infrared afterimages - ants laying down tracks
Don't pretend you aren't affected
I drift like smoke in a bright afternoon
Across the face of an easy hour or two
Breeze seems to have a purpose
Clouds a destination
By the stream I am something primeval
And everything I'd set up so carefully comes
Gently tumbling apart, transparent
Fades with every care no match for summer
And behind my eyes it is alright
I take it all in wide-angle
Feel the white spirit soak through like a
Healing balm that asks no tough questions
Water is only water, after all, and light
Only a source of illumination
And that is the way things really are,
So fantastic.

Revisionism

There's this overarching trend in science and history of revisionism. It's in vogue to take an opposite stance on a long-accepted view just to be controversial and make a name for yourself. It's not really new, but it's gotten more pronounced in recent years. Startling reversals of ingrained dogma make for good headlines and attract grant money and disciples. They also make the scientists feel like misunderstood messiahs.

So we have the snowball earth theory, the dinos-into-birds theory, the various mass extinction theories, punctuated equilibrium, zero-point energy, Jesus doing the unmentionable with Mary Magdalene, and so on. It sells books and makes for enticing documentaries. One of these sensationalistic ideas is that T-Rex was not a fearsome predator but merely a scavenger. I've read a lot on both sides of the debate and both have some decent evidence in their favor. But for scientists (eh-hmm, Jack Horner) to stake their careers on the absolute assertion that this beast didn't hunt its own kills seems way premature to me, given the paucity of data.

Besides, just look at the fossilized skeleton of one. That's supposed to be a glorified vulture? Call it unscientific intuition, but it sure looks like a stone cold killer to me. You don't get that big, muscular, fast, keen of sight, widespread, and just downright cool-looking without being an A-list predator. Does the T-Rex remind you of a tiger, a crocodile, or great white shark, or does it remind you of a hyena or a vulture. I rest my case.

Tuesday, May 23

Ugh

What's up with all the junk mail in our (physical) mailboxes, especially in apartment complexes? If we want to save the forests we ought to start there. I throw away huge piles of coupons and newsletters every week. Nearly every day, there is something in my mail box I didn't ask for and don't want. There's a paper recycle bin next to the garbage, but it gets crammed to the top within a few days of trash pickup day. I've seen the same thing happening at the post office when I had a PO box. Holy hell that's a lot of wasted paper.

People seem to be out in force today for some reason. I just went for a walk and there are people in the pool, splashing and laughing. People checking their mail, like me. People standing in their back patio with a beer or a cigar. People walking the paths around the fountain with blank looks in their eyes. Usually I don't see anyone around here; this evening I must've seen 30 or 40 people in ten minutes. Weird.

True reflection

Untitled

yeah, yeah, yeah
dance all day
world is alive and things
are going my way

the world is alive
and I'm flooded with joy
my hands are untied
what's left is right

and all the odd numbered
asymmetrical structures
are tempered by this glow
scatter the afternoon light

yeah, yeah, yeah
the moon eats the golden sun
too bright reveries
languish in night shadows

but now is forever
now is something new
the world is alive and things
are going my way

You are here

Plough

I don't understand why people don't
Want to feel high
Feet rooted in barren soil
So afraid to fly
It needn't be a pill or a plant
It could be a conversation, a chant
Let you feel the magic of the moment
The view from the sky

And I can't understand how people
Meander through their lives
Never contemplating suicide
Or constructing reasons not to die
I feel it in my gut like it's the only choice
You need to speak with a clear voice
Either you toss your money in and play
Or you waste a lifetime crying.

Baby bones

Child of night, why do you cry?
The policies you lived by left you made to suffer.
In pain they created you; I see the scar in your eyes they gave you.
Your mind was torn - Is that the only place it hurts?
Did they take away your hiding-spots, those black recesses of calm?
No one could hurt you in your world, could they?
Could they, baby bones.

You loved and served them. Made music dark and beautiful.
And they destroyed you in their image.
They made you dependent and selfish.
They couldn't feel; You felt way too much.
They never had a heart like yours, not when it mattered.
But yours isn't so pretty anymore... Black, kicked apart...

Baby bones make rusty cages.
You're missing the parts that made you smile.
It's been a long long time. Time abides.
I don't imagine you even care anymore.

(with Susannah Ballinger)

One

That which can be told is not the eternal
The name that can be named is not the eternal name
The nameless is the beginning of heaven and earth
The named is the mother of ten thousand things
Ever desireless, one can see the mystery
Ever desiring, one can see the manifestations
The two spring from the same source but differ in name
This appears as darkness
Darkness within darkness
The gate to all mystery.

(Lao Tsu)

Pandemonium

A poem of noises
A painting of words
Your head in the atmosphere
Life among the trees
Dancing to an otherworldly hymn
A hurricane of faces
Pandemonium
Fallen things

Curled bits of tempura
Hand so unsure
Injected poison
Broken toys
A universe full of stars and planets
With nothing friendly about it
We were made as second and third
Thoughts, unasked for.

Monday, May 22

Untitled

a hummingbird came by today
but didn't linger
nothing sweet to eat in all the din near my window
a tear appeared in my eye today
and fell onto my finger
as I typed and tried to keep from being drown by the sound.

Untitled

Camilla
Love's lonely road
She asked you once
If you'd done that before
You said you loved her
You said you were in love with her
But that wasn't you
You were a face and a body
And a projection screen
Nothing more
You had me from go
I memorized your blonde flip
And squirmed in your anguish
I embraced you with the same
Believing passion
I knew things all happen
For a reason
Camilla, aren't you breathing dear?
Don't you love me any more?

Friday, May 19

Leave your cares at the door

Scattered thoughts

Today it's raining again, out of the blue. I thought summer was here to stay. Well if the weather can be random than so can I. Time to unload lots of little tidbits scratched on the back of envelopes and ripped triangles of paper.

***
I may be hopelessly simple and naive, but I know a few things. There's nothing you can't take and make it better, if only a little. Time, effort, and consistancy will improve 99% of your troubles. Not cure, but improve. So why aren't you working at it?

***
It's not pretension if you mean it.

***
When you're little you think nature films are great and animals are so cute. Then you grow up and you realize that everything just eats everything else.

***
Bad habits bear the hallmark of being easy to repeat, while correct habits seem to beg you not to continue them. Only if we understand this reverse psychology correctly, that denial is giving and easy pickings come up empty, can we navigate our way successfully through the maze of challenges each day presents.

***
Capitalism is replacing religion with an ethic for living which is just as insidious and brain dead. What we need is humanism, a system of morals based upon altruism and not selfishness, whatever its guise.

***
I learned about simplicity the hard way.

***
I know what is right, but it's boring. I need stimulants and alterations which take me outside of my normal thought-space so I can see things from without; gain some perspective on social mores and daily habits; produce works which hold a mirror to these things and illuminate what is otherwise too obvious for us to see.

***
Forgotten is the god of the woods

***
You have to find your stride. Don't try to walk to fast. There are no shortcuts. Art and fame are products of opinions, they are artificial. They depend upon perception, not reality. Find something more real than art. Otherwise you'll spend your whole life trying to communicate the ineffable to people who aren't interested in anything but the messenger. That is art and it's the most unreal thing in the world.

***
I really don't like humans.

***
Life is weird
I don't remember much about it
I seem to have lost touch with everyone
Like a pool toy taken by the tide
Every relationship I have seen has ended
Unhappily
Everyone thinks I am a lunatic
Including me

***
Only insecure want to date 'above their station.' They think it will make them feel like a bigger person, and will impress others. People who are comfortable with themself look for an equal match.

***
You can only get so happy. After that it turns into something bad again. On the other hand, there is an infinite shrinking sine wave on both sides of peace, leading to the center. You can travel this road safely, but you have to give up the idea that there are better things.

***
My day is 26 hours long.

***
I'm pathetic. I've lost all confidence. Real confidence, not that reckless brand of daring-do brought on by chemicals or pathologic moods. Nearly every night I dream about being late for work and getting fired, ditching classes and failing my finals, or something equally humiliating. Everyone laughs at me and shakes their heads. I can't find the keys to my car or my way home. I end up crawling in the gutter just trying not to be seen, crying all over myself.

***
Time to go eat some worms.

***
If I created a roleplaying game, you could only be an aboleth, a githyanki, a beholder, a mindflayer, or a gelatinous cube. The object would be to slaughter all the humanoid races.

***
I have a charm, but I use it irresponsibly. I charm other people with words, with flattery, with need, and with sincere cavalier enthusiasm. But it's not in their best interest to accept me, I'm starting to suspect; maybe I'm a cancer in the lives of everyone I know. I want to save people from that, even if it means being lonely and denying myself happiness. I wish I could find the road to healthiness. I should focus on things other than love and pleasure for now. I need to learn the discipline of hard work and denial. It's too easy to dress up nice and talk nice and pretend everything will be great, and end right up back in another predicament, and lose interest and not want to change, and never change.

That's the answer. I need to focus on denial instead of gratification.

***
If it seems I've fallen on hard times
In recent weeks,
Months...
Maybe even years
Who cares
I go where the wind blows me;

If it seems like I care about you
Don't let your
Mind fool you
Don't let desire
Rule you
You've been taken in to be ground up like the others.

***
I need a proof-reader with startlingly insightful powers. I long for a companion who treats me not as an absurdity, much less a deity, but who follows on because she sees the light of consciousness in my eyes and because she has lost sleep over similar universal conundrums, and recognizes an alliance with me, where we can share our distinct synnergistic overcertainties. We are not intellectuals in any sense; we feel the patterns coming togther and swing for the fences. One day we'll connect.

***
I think the whole universe is sentient/preserves its its organisation/survival to various degrees depending on scale. Molecules show very little natural selection, cells more, animals more, superorganisms even more, etc. Is the universe itself aware?

***
All the research doctors and men of medical science, all those busy coldly charting neuropathways and pinpointing the temporal-spacial locations of creativity and consciousness, those men and women who attempt to understand a thing by looking from the outside in, like through cleared glass into a toasty cabin, who somewhere along the line decided that a thing can be reduced to its parts and conceptualized to operate only at this miniature level, in machinelike fashion - all these people are fools. They're correct in their own minor ways of course, like shamans and fatimas and rabbis are correct in their reading of the less discretely modeled aspects of human social behavior and need. But they'll never see the thing as a whole, or be any wiser about the actions of madmen. They only understand what has a meaning.

***
You are full of yourself like a pinada is full of old and worthless candy nobody wants, and yet still everyone wants like mad to smash you open.

***
I really dislike the type of people who get so enthusiastic about something, talk a novel about it, then as soon as things don't go their way and they get that first kick in the stomach, take their ball and go home. Take your time; step gently and carefully at first. If it feels right, take a bolder stride. Be tough and believe in yourself. No one in the world is a better person than you! If you get to a point where you don't feel you can take the scrum, or don't want to debate, then leave and be even more cautious next time you get involved in a thing. Just don't blame it on others and give everyone the finger on your way out - it's sour grapes and just makes you look like a faggot.

***
Truth and beauty

I love TRUTH and I love BEAUTY
And the TRUTH is that sometimes there is no truth
And BEAUTY can sometimes come from the most horrible places
Atrocities are an addiction
Freedom a lie disguised as affirmation
And time floats all around us keeping us chained
To the things we most despise;
So, yes, I love everything that is REAL
And that includes, by definition, what is
Completely fictious as well.

***
Her eyes matched her name.

***
Life is going to be the death of me.

***
I had bad dreams. I dreamt my daughter was pregnant. I dreamt my cat had run away and I couldn't find him. I dreamt I was away at a camp with students from all over the world, learning fascinating things, mostly about each other, and I fell in love and just then there was a disaster that flooded the place and everyone had to be whisked away by emergency vehicles, and I never got to know her name or tell her how I felt. And everywhere I looked were mushroom clouds, extraordinarily distant and yet still unimaginably huge. They swallowed up the fuzzy sky and the electric sight of the air made my lungs hurt and the world go weary. I think then I fell into a dream then; the dream I'm living out right now.

***
Only one transcendent truth that trumps all else - but, by god, this pink pill is making my head hurt and for the life of me I can't remember what it is.

***
I like it when people tell me to cheer up, it means I'm on the right track.

***
I took one of those online personality test. This is seriously what it came back with:
Disorder | Rating
Paranoid: High
Schizoid: Moderate
Schizotypal: High
Antisocial: Moderate
Borderline: Very High
Histrionic: High
Narcissistic: High
Avoidant: Very High
Dependent: Moderate
Obsessive-Compulsive: High

Hmm.

***
This is how it will go I regret to say
It will happen in a closed room in the broad light of day
And the blue goddess Set will come take me away
From the misery,
And from the savagery.

***
Sometimes I want to black out and never wake up
Most of the time, I just want a little peace
To be left to my own devices
To not have to answer endless questions
That seemed like a good idea some eager young prick with a degree
And his army of nurses eager to serve medical science
Mostly I just want to be left alone
If I rot then my body will do the rest of the world
That little bit of good
If I succeed I only suceed at consuming those same goods
People so deparately seem to want
So here's what I will do:
I will seal myself in an impervious container
One that will last 10,000 years
And bury myself somewhere no one will every find me
So I can contribute nothing whatever to this superorganism
Of which we all act as limbs
And which seeks to vanquish lovely chaos and conquer all of reality
The cancer called life we only throw our wills and bodies at
Because that is what it compells us to do
I will be the ultimate protestor
Forget Ginsburg, Kerouac, forget Lennon and Trungpa
They all found themselves sucked back into the web
Despite their earthly protests
And in the end their eloquent sermons of rebellion,
Of liberation,
Were only heard by worms and maggots
And paying customers
And they meant nothing;
But I, I will separate myself from this tumor
And experience eternity on my own terms
Or until the enemy finds a way to corral me and
Put me to its ultimate unholy work
Of uniting every single atom in this clockwork universe
Into a living, thinking whole, scared of death,
Scared of lonliness, scared of God,
Puzzled why it exists and desparate for some kind of escape.

***
Yes the dead will walk again, when you are all sleeping He
Pours like a mist over your unmoving bodies and removes
Dream-tears like tiny black threads from your unseeing memory
And in a morning slow to light you rise and know only vague
Trepidations of the limbo'd hours laying still
Turn a fornight's counterclockwise spinning in your covers
To watch the blinders torn away from your eyes
See out with the vision of ancient men across unnatural
Chasms of time, the world as naked and empty as its natal day.

***
Would I be safer and happier in a long-term "facility" than I would on my own? I don't want to accept that. Still, a question central to my heart at the moment, when each day seems to present an air-tight reason for one or the other.

***
Give me another reason to accept darkness,
Savage world.

***
Labels are the worst thing to ever happen to the world, and the oldest.

***
Some of the coolest animals are orange tomcats, proboscis monkeys, bull elephant seals with those huge schnozzes, gibbons, yaks, and man-o-wars.

***
I guess I'm a slow learner. Or I learn quickly enough, but I cycle interests rapidly and never become expert in anything. I feel like a robot who's been programmed with robust tools but without a specific purpose. So I just sit there, lights blinking, trembling. I don't know what to lunge at.

***
Is the whole "Founding Fathers" reverence just patriotic hyperbole? What are the chances of such great men living at the same time and acting together? Can't really take my own theory seriously, though. Most of the larger body of "fathers" (revolutionaries; lawyers; politicians) comprising the movement may have been ordinary men inspired by visionary leadership. But when you look in any detail at the lives, careers, and writings of Benjamin Franklin, George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, and Alexander Hamilton, you reach the inescapable conclusion that all were extraordinary thinkers and doers. Some glorification has no doubt occurred in the intervening years, but I think a truer explanation is that the revolutionary period was simply one of those times that brings greatness to the fore in those in whom it may have lain otherwise dormant, and then brings those men together when else they may have wandered into unrelated discliplines and even countries. We've seen this before with scientists (think the first couple decades of the 20th century, with Einstein, Bohr, Heisenberg, Planck, Dirac, Schrodinger, et al).

***
The subtle approach always beats the mad dash for pleasure. You end up with more pleasure, of a more satisfying kind, if you are moderate and work hard. It's an earned pleasure and not a guilty one.

***
I can't work when it's cold like this
I just want to crawl back in bed and hide.
I can't work when it gets hot, either
Makes me want to lay down and die.

***
I can't wait till I'm on the upswing again
I'm so tired
Tired of seeing women half-dressed soul-disguised
Sick of people being professionally polite
I'm just drawn
Stretched a bit thin
Over the lathe of what are supposed to be my best years
And I can't enjoy them because I'm comatose with fear
Can't get off the chair
I want to be excited
Believe what I do means something
But I am unable
And around the bend of another day or another week
Maybe a new ship will come in
And I'll give it a go again
But I'm unstable

***
I envy people who are innocently earnest, who take a delight in something simple and feel real joy. I know now I'll never be a part of that world again. But I can enjoy it vicariously.

***
A really huge small bear.

***
Hell is already full of people who have tried to control life and failed.

***
Critic: a bundle of biases held loosely together by a sense of taste

***
there's a sadness
behind everything.

***
My road is the same before me and behind
Like a snake eating its tail
Feel like I've been to hell and back
Through the belly of a whale.

***
There are a lot of bad people out there. More than that, there are a lot of selfish and jaded people out there. Where are the gentle men and women? The kind people who listen and care what happens to you? So rare indeed. If you find one let me know.

***
My whole life I've been craving an audience, and then doing everything in my power to alienate any potential ones.

***
The big, big world is nothing of the kind. It's a lot of small worlds connected together.

***
Why do children develop personalities corresponding to their birth order? Why do people tend to behave the way they look? Personality, I believe, develops to conform to expectations, and is largely NOT inborn.

***
People around me say, "you're always asking why, why, why." This is true. I want to be with OTHER people who ask Why, not people who remark on my doing so. I like ideas. I am curious. I am an intellectual being more than a physical one. I'm also a recluse. A tough combination sometimes. But fertile grounds, I suppose, for Art.

***
I'm not coming back this time. Time only goes forwards. When I stood on my own two feet I saw how bleak the land was, how stifling the air, how unfertile the soil. Some of us want to live rather than just exist.

Don't bend over to please me. It doesn't. Don't watch me carefully and say what you think I want to hear. I know when you do it and it's lazy and selfish on your part. I want to be with people who are genuine and have something of their own to offer. I don't want to be with someone who is the whole show, nor someone who makes me the whole show. That's not the point.

I like things that buck trends, that are unexpected. Like a memoir that everyone expects to be glossy and say all the right things actually turning out to be an unbelievably raging inferno of vehemence and a philosophical mindbending journey that throws off all you ever knew of the person and kisses off everyone and everything that person's every known or done. Something like that.

I don't know what "success" is - it's not supposed to be a game, right? - but I'm at least as successful as many around me. I've gone rather far along my own path in this journey of life. I've thrown off the slaver's chains for moments of exaltation, if only occasionally. I've looked outside and around. I haven't quietly played my part and that is ALL that counts to me. I've lived a life less ordinary. That is a kind of success.

It's funny how some people almost seem to pity me. I may get sad or go mad or lots of other scary and negative things, but it's not like I want to be like those people, or feel they're in any way in a superior position. I feel more accomplished than them in ways; I've dared to dream, and then to look. It's hard for a person to take full reality in the gut and keep going. The one on the front line always gets shot. I certainly don't feel I should have or could have gone any other way. And I certainly don't think people who live conventional lives are to be unduly applauded.

***
You're a nothing
You don't stand for anything
You don't have anything to say
You are hollow inside
You don't even choose to be the way you are
You are mindblind
Simple natured and silent
First to get in line
(You are a planner's dream),
The very last to know what it all means.

***
In general, males want to hold somebody. Females want to be held.

***
Re-normalization is both our best friend and our biggest curse. I need to expand on this.

***
Kate Beckinsale is yummy.

***
The time it takes a tear to fall
A snake to shed its skin
Is all the time it takes to forgive.
-Bjork

***
Caffeine, the savior of the universe.

***
I'm turning into a cardiovascular disaster. Need to hit the gym pronto.

***
Why doesn't Mountain Dew or 7-Up fizz like Coke or Pepsi when it's poured into a glass (especially over ice)?

***
Just then, a huge Thesaurus came around the corner and chased them away, roaring at the top of his lungs.

***
I like that Bauhaus song, Histogram Sam.

***
Sometimes I feel like I'm unarmored, carrying a spear, charging uphill all by myself against a batallion of archers fortified at the top behind walls. And that's just, like, getting out of bed and brushing my teeth. After that it gets harder.

***
I tend to speak in hyperbole. You know, that land where Conan lives.

***
3 Reasons:
-Because I'm sad
-Because I want to be something special
-Because I can't think why not to

***
Whosoever hold me back, I will
Come and find you and break your neck

***
Text file, oh text file. You're the only one I can talk to truly, it seems. My mood changes so often. I have so many different takes on everything, all the time. I'm nervous and pessimistic and optimistic and proud and determined and apathetic. I'm tired and I can't relax. I can be so many different things, like roles an actor might play. But I'm not acting. I really inhabit those clothes and become that person, if only for a brief time. Who am I really? I don't think that question has any meaning. Life without meaning is ideal. Unreachable.

***
Life skills ... yeah. I missed those classes while I was off reading about physics.

***
I want to pick myself up by my bootstraps and "get things done" ... but I truly am phobic about some of these things, and fearful of mental breakdown as well. I feel completely blocked from doing anything that will change the protective micro-world I've built around myself. I begin to feel extremely threatened and anxious. I don't know how to get beyond this point.

I don't want to be manipulative or self-centered or anything else. I want to find out what I'm really like, how others see me, and to fix what needs fixing so I can be a person I am happy with. I want to build better relationships. I want to know if it's me, or if it's the people I've happened to meet. Or both. Just need to know so I know what needs to be fixed. Maybe I'm the problem and wherever I go I'm going to run into the same problems. Maybe I'm fine and just need to get away from the people (person) who makes me feel like shit. Or maybe it's some combination; I have issues and so does she. This last one is surely the case. But I want to find out the details, see it from the outside with an impartial eye, find out what's really going on.

***
If I could do anything, I'd fly into space
If I could go back in time, I'd go back and kill Leo Baekeland and Walter Hume Carothers, Inventors of plastic and nylon, repsectively.

***
Do I need to be in treatment of some kind? Sometimes I feel woefully self-insufficient. I have a hard time functioning and coping. But I'm afraid of losing control, of putting my life in someone else's hands. I don't trust people. I would hate to lose the writings and things I've collected my whole life. My books. I don't want anyone to take these things away from me.

***
I want to be in a situation where I am appreciated and cared about, valued for the things I am good at rather than chastised for the things I am not.

***
Why does anyone fight in a war?

***
When I got older and began to realize what the world is like, that is, what human beings are like...to say I was disapointed is a grand understatement. Why do people make porn? Kill other people? Why do they act so immature? Why is everything about money?

***
The thing is,
Everyone's got a personal story
Personal stories - personalities - are great
I love them
Fear of surviving this runs rampant
We are in our bunks talking about sneaking sweets
The most unusual looking people become our friends and our
Objects of desire in this crossroads of a place
I can't find a rake among the trash cans and old laundry
But I'm one of the crowd:
For once that doesn't disgust me.

***
He struggled greatly over the idea of being happy. He wanted to be happy, but needed justification for it, and that was his stumbling block. His stone.

***
1. I don't want to do things half-assed
2. Everything done in the real world is half-assed by definition.

Therein lies the root of my inaction.

***
I don't think people who are content feel compelled to look at things very deeply. That's the reason art comes from the down-and-out. The Norman Rockwells are comparatively few in the annals of art, and they're boring.

***
People who don't listen are the most selfish people of all. People who avoid conflict aren't being kind and keeping the peace, they are dodging issues which honestly need to be addressed and therefore contributing to misunderstanding and resentment. Avoidance is just as destructive as anger in the long term.

***
Lives are different with every mindset you have. You could be drunk. You could be sober and serious. You could be fresh off a fantasy novel or lovemaking, your head far away. These are concretely different things, and they have only indirect bearing on one another. Goals shift, understandings change. I am only in this for some sort of authenticity, the kind I always seek. Has that become a game? Somewhat, I suppose. But I don't want it to. I keep trying to refocus on the original heart. I don't want to live a life to be looked at later. I want immediacy and then finality. I think.

***
You don't have to understand everything. You don't have to take all that is out there at fit it into some kind of grand scheme, with everything slotted into a category and building toward a conclusion of some sort. Search for structure. Big Mind. Just relax, enjoy your time on this liquid earth, relax.

***
Every man wants his wife to grow a spine, then secretly fears she will.

***
The thing about being up in the clouds is you have to come down sometime. And it's a long way down.

***
Ugly Americans?? They're ALL ugly.

***
The world is all at odd angles
The lake like a black sheet thrown over the valley
Sighs take the night

***
Michelle Branch is a serious betty. Never actually heard her music though. I don't want to be disappointed.

***
Red, White, and Black II

I've had some problems... I have problems sometimes with my mind. I don't know what to believe. Everyone seems crazy.

Don't know what to think about things that happen and then unhappen, people saying I've done this and that, journal entries that make no sense, pictures of places I can't remember.

Sometimes I want to carry a bright red flag, white skin pale beneath the artifical light of the sun, dressed in solid black. These are the only symbols that mean something to me anymore. People come and go and stories change. Old favorites become new hatreds. Life is an oroborous in four dimensions.

I don't belong in any of them.

***
My greatest fear is the ultimate one: Being alone and immortal.

***
I want off that particular treadmill
And I don't want back on
I want the things I was afraid of as a child to be gone

***
The thing is, one or the other of us always feel compromised. The two outcomes of our basic disagreement always make one of us feel better and the other feel worse. The problem is, we have fundamentally different needs that cannot possibly be met by the same resolution.

***
I had a dream I met a mortician
Who was bigger than me in every way
Larger than life, one could even say
A meta-mortician to his dying day

***
What has this world come to when Debbie Gibson is now known as Deborah Gibson.

***
I hate onscreen displays. I always feel like I'm playing a game of Simon when I'm using one. If you don't press the right keys in exactly the right order to magically stumble on the setting you're trying to find, the whole thing explodes and it's back to the beginning again. Only retards and engineers think this way.

***
A quest for the world's darkest, saddest, most ethereal music. Meet me at 3 am under the oak.

***
You don't think I've been alone, been scared most of the time? You don't think I've been going out of my mind? What do you think I am, some kind of monster? Maybe I am a monster, a rational monster. Maybe I make too much sense.

***
I'm on the verge of losing my insanity.

***
Everybody's scared in one way or another.

***
America: A vast, vicious corporate theme-park for junk brains.
-Andrew Eldritch

***
Television is embarrassing.

***
This generation has been ruined by television, sensationalism, extremism, and base human nature. The masses have no reasoning abilities, no perspective, and no class. All life is not equally valuable in my opinion. For every articulate, moderate, mannered person alive there are 50 wastes of flesh and blood who would benefit society best by being tied to a large stone and cast into the sea.

***
Dreams can be frustrating. You're trying to run, or wake up, or be a man, and you can't. I just had a dream where I was trying to look up "malthusian" and kept getting different, nonsensical definitions.

***
Are you dreaming now?

***
I've been unhappy ever since I popped outta my mom's placebo.

***
You sit a few feet from me
You don't smile much or answer any of my questions
You have the bluest eyes I've ever seen

It needn't be definable, you say
I am off in mind-sights of cotton clouds and slow,
Measured deep breathing all along the curves of your body

As you lay next to me half sleeping
As I take another blue pill and two tan ones for
All the abhorrent conditons you deemed might afflict me

But now I've etched your name on the wrong memory
You were the one who discredited that lunacy
I think you may be as loony as I am, as I am

You still sit a few feet away, talking
For a second you play with your hair and I understand
You have the bluest eyes I've ever seen.

***
Higher

The speed of love
Instant in mind's eye
If you send love in all directions
Then love will be all around you
Space around you breathes and exhales
Doesn't matter that you've broken your own rules
How far from yourself can you go?
Outward into the playground of the stars
In, in, in to a soul
Infinite in scope
And swaying trees
Bird hangs motionless on an ocean breeze
Baby cries in the woods
Drums.
Pulse spreads from the heart
Like wildfire dancing
Stars are all aligned
The pattern of the leaves
The eaves
Hold faint echoes of yesterday
There is no should
But there is love
Love is
This is the Tao that has always been
This is God to me.

Wednesday, May 17

Untitled

Welcome to california
Home of the coldest and worst things on earth
Pressed flowers scattered on the floor
I see my own shadow against the wall
It's going to end in tears

I can feel it
Goodness needs to be punished
But ugliness grows ever stronger
It's no wonder people turn to drugs
Look what the world is made of.

Sunday, May 14

Layers of name

Aviso: This is a work of fiction

...which just happens to be mostly true. I feel the need to say this from time to time in my life because otherwise some people seem to think I mean everything I say, I really have done everything I've written about, or I'm speaking from experience in every poem I compose. (What's it about?)

I'm pretty much a hermit who just writes what comes into my brainspace, and most of the time it's fairly pleasant up there so there's not too much to write about. From time to time however dark clouds gather or some horrifying thought or another creeps in, and then I have to run to the keyboard and punch it in so I can get it out. This behavior tends to keep me on the nicer side of that fine line.

But like with any art form, there is a mixture of sincerity, sarcasm, intentional misdirection, metalanguage, knowing winks, simple irony, and deliberate obfuscation. I like to play with words and sounds and the way things look look on the screen. I also like to scare children.

In other words, it would be a mistake to think this was a journal of my life as such. I could update it at a certain time each day and tell you where I ate lunch, compose a searching review of the movie I saw afterward, and muse about my relationships. But that's not what this is about. The art is itself part of the art, if you will.

Ok, I'm done talking.

Friday, May 12

Wednesday, May 10

Jackson

Cats have crazy minds. Jackson likes to leave the apartment when I do - probably thinks he'll miss out on something exciting if he doesn't. Usually I'm just walking down to the store or grabbing a sandwich or seeing a movie. He'll follow me for a long way, darting ahead and alertly scoping out the scene, then manuevering under a parked car or a bush while I catch up.

At some point he gets more and more hesistant about keeping up, probably sensing he's getting far from home. Finally, his little CPU tells him he must stop; but, seeing me continue ahead, he starts meowing and pacing around behind his invisible barrier. I always feel a twinge of guilt right then, and contemplate turning back if just to reassure him I'm not leaving forever.

Today he tried a new tactic. When I got a hundred yards or so from my front door, he turned and sprinted back towards home. I was curious what he was up to so I followed him, keeping far enough back so I don't think he saw me. Turns out he'd gone around to the back of the apartment and was scratching at the back door. When I'm inside and he wants to come in, that's the door he scratches at to let me know he wants in.

Apparently he thought that since he wasn't able to get me to turn around and go home with him, he'd run back to his usual place and maybe I'd magically be there to let him in and all would be well. Crazy Jackson.

Tuesday, May 9

Things on trees

summer days seem to take their time
i like how this frond dribbles shadows on my face
keeps that brightest ray from my eye
but i wouldn't deny good light any further
the tree is large and old
brazen fruit have spent their time in the sun
they have gotten too ripe
back round that cracking branch is a nest
tiny shuffled noises amid bigger things
where sometimes life is allowed its small victories
and grateful impatience multiplies
surely as the sweetest brothered fruit
they fall to the hungry soil untasted in full
to spend the rest of eternity as strangers
like this will a chick grow and kill and be killed
and fronds soon turn brown and expire
like things on trees we take our turns with
waiting mouths and lonely eyes
we prosper for a time and feel we must endure
but surely these dreams meet their sunset too.

Untitled

Don't go back out there
It's scary out there
No one cares
It's just a trip to the stars and back
And another monkey
On your monkey's back
It's not weakness to choose life
To want to feel real
To look people in the eye
It's not too much to ask of yourself
To be kind
To make time for another person
Say please, hello and goodbye.

Gold in the clouds

There's gold in the clouds today
That I can't have
I spent all my powers of flying a long time ago and I'm tired
But I'm trying
I'm still looking skyward
Not gonna pretend there's nothing up there at all
Just have to reach higher.

Lost and broken

I am at a loss because I don't know what to do with this blog; I feel it has been sullied already - introduced imperfections, asymmetries. Lies? No, I don't think I have lied. Let's be plain. The litany of grievances and insights mingled with photos and humor (if disguised as sincerity) has imbalanced the aesthetic of the whole. My worst fears are realized. My only ambition in life resulted in failure and my attempt at fine art seems to me now some sick joke, wrought of inferior materials and flawed fundamentally. This is the way the world works and how it grinds even the most idealistic person down. I knew that to take any action would erase the perfection that existed in my mind. Here is the proof. Revel in the chaos!

I want a globe


To see the world in proportion, to erase my Mercator past. To see the true size of the Indonesian archipelago and picture Krakatau erupting and spewing dust round the earth to be painted in macabre portraiture. To know the ball whirling in space amidst the stars, before me in miniature spinning inches from my hands in its controlled deterministic way. Natural wood. Painstaking cartography. I don't want to play God. I only want to see his creation in all its glory before me, a scale of its true self but true to itself. I only want truth. Technology does what it can; flat elementary room worksheets push what they must. That's ok. But in my chair when I need to know something about the topology of Kampuchea, I need something more real. Real.

The middle way

Who am I? Lots of people have ideas. Everything that has been thought up by someone and which is the least bit clever has been latched onto by many and made mean. Nothing new under twin suns. Who am I to think I have a patent on the true way? My stance is built atop original takes of obscure but known constructs. Lots of people proselytize and bolster pet ambitions. Many are the people who claim an angle into heaven.

But in the billions on this earth, I have yet to find the right combination for me; I remain unique to my mind, because it suits me perfectly. Are there any out there like me? In my world I am the only one to choose correctly every time. I will show you every kernel of wheat in the world and avoid every chaff. I have a lock on all the best of what is not mine, and have added my own unifying analysis. I'm no messiah. Please don't put my person any higher than mud level. But through me realize the grim artistic truth that no one else in this world can show you.

It's all here, I have catalogued it.

Saturday, May 6

Knock me out

I am here, but I don't want to be here.
Knock me out.
I woke up this morning, I hit the alarm 27 times.
The clock didn't seem to mind.
I am simply an earthling
Trapped in a rhythm my body doesn't understand
And my mind refuses to comprehend
So knock me out.
I am asking you, kindly assembled
Bottles, pills, books and toy soldiers of imagined freedom
Fears and interests of the blind deaf mute auteur
Knock me out before the pain
Gets unbearably mundane
And cold numb reality sets in.

Gazelle

Along the muddy river bank
A simple drink of water
A chance for true communion
You look so convincingly kind

And then does the lamb turn meek
And die in your sarcophagic arms
Dire and bleak
Reek lady of a thousand charms

And sommersault madly
Like a dying gazelle
Still headed for the sun on the horizon
Till his breath runs out.

Thursday, May 4

Bb

People have weird belly buttons. There seem to be a couple basic types. There's the total innie, a sinkhole disappearing into the darkness. There's the semi-innie, where the bottom of the chasm is easily visible and the whole thing is rimmed like a crater. Then there's the godforsaken outtie.

I wish everyone would stop wearing those half-length tops so I wouldn't have to see their grotesque belly buttons all the time.

Wednesday, May 3

Tuesday, May 2

Cliches

If I hear "it is what it is" one more time I'm gonna commit Seppuku. Why people seem unable to express themselves in anything but cliches is beyond me. To be fair, I understand the impulse - it's easier to spit out a pat phrase that encapsulates your intentions than it is to mine the English language for something original. But the difficulty of crafting your own speech is more than made up for, in my mind, by the precision with which you are able to express your true intent. Thoughts are subtle; no two are the same. They are tinged all around with subjective emotion. No pat phrase can capture this more than generally, so those who attempt to avoid cliches (and it's impossible to do so entirely, just try it) are rewarded by clearer and, hopefully, more memorable communication.

Would Kennedy or Lincoln or MLK be remembered for their stirring speeches if their speechwriters had simply cobbled together a litany of cliches? Of course not. Those of us who watch sports are continually bombarded by that most finely honed verbal art, the sports cliche. How many athlete speeches do you recall? The few I can think of - Lou Gehrig's farewell comes to mind - stand out precisely because they broke the mold and actually said something original. Shakespeare created many of the cliches we use today, but that's not his fault; in his time his sentiments were as stirring and original as they come.

Next time you find yourself reaching for a cliche to ask or answer a question in the hopes of maintaining a conversation with minimal cerebral engagement (so you can simultaneously watch The Family Guy, maybe) - snap that rubber band around your wrist and refrain. Please. You will undoubtedly surprise and delight your conversation partner when you instead utter a truly personalized comment, and, who knows - maybe the habit will wake those around you awake from cliche-slumber as well. Fully aware communication... wouldn't that be something!

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