there and back again.

call it a homecoming or call it a vacation. call it a visit or call it an adventure. whatever you want to label it, this past week was one of the greatest capsules of time i've ever experienced. all of you who've been a part of it, you were elemental in what it's been to me. it's not the place, it's the people. it's not the where, it's the who.

if you know me, i don't have to say
"you have to believe me."

i'd known i was coming up since june 30th. one person knew what was going down, and only because he was going to be my ride from the airport, sort've. it never happened. regardless, we both did a pretty crafty job of keeping things under wraps. the faces people make when a phantom walks through their door is no longer something i need to have imagined to understand. as far as that portion of the week goes, it was a complete success.

my flight was surreal. i sat next to a five year old who was attended by his grandmother, and his sister who sat behind us. he was all five year old, with his fidgeting, his rolling in his seat, and his button pressing. what made him stand out was the looking up at me and making pac man noises. what made him memorable was his mumbling in deep voices that said, "hi, i'm chris. i'm chris. i have a big beard. i have a... i have a big beard. my name is santa clause. but my name is chris." and his imagination left the biggest impression on me when he ran this line of logic towards his sister.

"Melissa. Melissa. Do you know Jaws? [no reply] Do you know Jaws? [no reply] Oh. He's a shark. [oh, yeah, i know Jaws.] Some people are scared... some people are scared that he's in the bathroom, in the toilet or the bathtub. [Are you?] No."

Mid-morning, some thousand miles high, after iced tea, but before an oatmeal cookie, he was pondering Jaws and how the concept of this fictional predator plagued his peers. You can't fake that.

I landed and was picked up by my dad in his pickup truck. I found myself talking to him like I would anyone else I hadn't seen in a long time, and not like he was my father, or my dad, or that guy who raised me. No, we talked about the transvestite population, smoking, weight loss/gain, people I've met down there, and music. Things were already beginning to change while I was living here, and between e-mails and distance, things have just continued to gel to the point of copasetic stature. I used to think he was someone who was just there to keep me in line, now I know he's someone I need.

Especially when my mom's cough is scaring me the way that it has been for months.

After coming back to the house, seeing my dog who didn't seem to recognize me, and seeing the progress that the summer has shown my backyard, I went to Vitamin World to make the first jaws drop.
And drop they did.
I stayed there for hours, and we all looked different, with beards missing, hair and bodies grown or shrunk, and all the little things you'd never see over the course of everyday living. I'd worked in that store for a couple of years, and it was still the same, but it looked much better. More open. More inviting. As I complimented them, they had no idea how to take it, partially because they couldn't see the progress they'd been making since they see it every day, and partially because when you work somewhere, it always has that stock look of where you work. You start to notice tape dispensers, and awkward boxes instead of "real" things like shelving, and the appeal of a display.

I got home, made a sandwich, and watched ESPN. My sister walked in to a scene that she'd been walking in to for years. Some routines just do not die. Seeing her was great. We're both just like everyone our age: always online. But we've never been the best at talking on AIM, but we've done the myspace thing, every so often. She's great. She's grown so much as a person and become more of a developed person as opposed to the bit of a characiture of an NCC Student she was forming into before recently. She's calming down. The drinking, the partying, the smoking, the useless friend syndrome, all of it sort've fading away. Still definitely there, definitely real, but to a more conscious degree. I think she finally shook free enough of the bullshit to be able to step back and observe herself instead of being caught up in the observing what she could DO to herself. She's definitely one of the best people I know, and I think once she gets both feet back on the path that she has mapped out, she'll be on a steady course. For now, though, it's a little shaky, but at least not lost.

We ate dinner together as a family, as I dominated in Jeopardy!, and nailed a Wheel of Fortune puzzle without the use of one letter. Typical Cuocci family dinner fare. And, as expected, my mom came in to me in tears. My mom's a cryer. Happy. Sad. Laughing. She's just a cryer. That's pretty much the only thing that I didn't get from my mom that I didn't get. Other than that, I'm more made up of my mom's blueprints, and my sister is made up of my dad's. I still adlib a lot. But the basic foundations are definitely from the Barna line.

Rahul showed up after leaving work and taking the train, etc., and it was my first time seeing my damn brother since I left, and there was not ONE THING that was different at all. It was like we both just had a busy week and hadn't seen each other since the past Thursday. Same jokes, same momentum, same silence-as-conversation. Kid looks good, man. We designed the plot to meet up with Kim and Mikey, with me being the punchline to the "i have a surprise for you" joke. It worked. Took pictures in a bra. Some Nilla Wafers were involved, also. When Mikey got off of work, we went to the Diner that we always went to. Our diner. Embassy Diner. Saw Anthony, Jon, Nick Carbone (pissed), & Lauren of Phase 9, and Billy Calderon of Envy Arcadia, and Saw The Cay in the mirror in the mirror. Ate half of a grilled cheese and tried my best on the fries. Got shunned because my appetite isn't what it used to be. Took more pictures. Returned to Flamingo and made jokes about bodily functions and horrible human beings. Then took the party back to Dix Hills where it was all video games, and keeping things copasetic.






I haven't slept in a bed in months.
So I haven't been able to sleep in any beds this week.

I woke up, and had missed the ride/plan to go to a Cracker Barrel with Carissa, Mike, and Stephanie. But that's just randomization. I read magazines (1. 2.) until Rahul woke up, and we went to Best Buy where I picked up some movies (1. 2. 3.). Headed back into Levittown to see Miami Vice, or do anything that would kill time. Got Kim, visited the old movie theater, and talked to some kids who I've missed. Didn't see Miami Vice. Went to Bill's Friendly's instead.

Ate a sandwich, an ice cream cone.
Met his new woman.
Made plans which would begin the randomness of 48 hours.

We followed secondary horrible directions to the Seaford/Massapequa area which held Bill's new lady's home. Brought Red Stripe and Dixie Cups for beer pong. We had no idea what to expect. The house was on the water of a canal. The family was home and in the backyard, with iTunes songs streaming both in the basement with the Yankee game on, and outside, which held a tent reserved for beer pong. Between Bill and Kristen and their friends, and us, we had an okay amount of people to play a bit of an exhibition style of a tried and true drinking game. It was the first time Rahul or I had seen Bill drunk in front of more than just us. It was the loosest we've seen him. Chilling and being expressive in front of people who we barely knew he knew. More progress. It was a relief. The story behind Bill has always been a little weird. He always had his own thing going on, and wasn't really into our new things that we'd grown into. It never felt like growing apart, but that's what it was. It seems like the new girl is shaking him down a little bit, and keeping him a bit more grounded and less concerned about siphoning himself off from pieces of conventional recreation that people our age are a bit more adjusted to. If that's the last time I see him until I go back, it will be a perfect cross sectioned look at what is to come in his immediate future. If it matters at all, know that I approve.

Our lucid night continued into Stout's, a nice bar that has always been down the block from my house, apparently, that I'd never even noticed on the side of Hempstead Turnpike. Rahul's friend, Amy, decided to get the East Meadow clique (Rahul's new crew) together over there, and had a decent showing. I saw people I knew (Brynn, Askin, Chezz (of the Mercurial) and lots that I didn't (nameless group) and had a good time, for what it was. I was already starting to get relatively buzzed by the canal, and had a couple more beers there. I wasn't drunk, but if I picked up the pace, or started shutting down the mental, I could've been. Got a few phone calls with dashes of minor panic, and requested that when we left, instead of getting dropped off at my house, I could go to Carissa's.

We left, and blasted DJ Khaled's Holla At Me, which has definitely become one song of the theme music of this week. I got out once we reached the Hicksville stop, made minor plans, sort've, for the rest of the week, and made the call to the sister figure. It wasn't that she didn't pickup, it was more that the phone wasn't on. Sitting on the stoop, Red Stripe/bottle opener in my pocket, I'm trying to figure out whether to knock on the door, or call, when I see a car pull up.

I was confusion.

Her boyfriend gets out, and I think I get the picture. She comes out of the house, and I'm almost instantly asked/requested to come with them. Where, I guess, didn't matter. I got in the back seat of her boyfriend's brother's car, and end up at another party in Hicksville. It's the kind of get together we would orchestrate. Six to seven kids in an apartment, listening to music (Cursive), sitting on couches. There was beer, and an uncut cake, and eventually weed. I was that kid who shows up. I'd met one of the kids once. Suddenly, the dynamic of Carissa's boyfriend went from dude I barely knew to kid I knew the most out of the non-related. It was mildly jarring. I finished my Red Stripe, and retired to the outdoors to talk to Dave about what was happening. It went like this.


loveitxleaveit: Craziest vacayion ever.
awinedrowning: [AWAY] my computer is possessed.
awinedrowning: how so?
loveitxleaveit: Existentialism.
awinedrowning: ex.is.ten.tial.ism. noun. A philosophy that emphasizes
the uniqueness and isolation of the individual experience in a hostile
or indifferent universe, regards human existence as unexplainable, and
stresses freedom of choice and responsibility for the consequences of
one's acts.
loveitxleaveit: Dude.
loveitxleaveit: Get this.
loveitxleaveit: Tonight involed a lot of insanity and I dono if can
deal.
loveitxleaveit: I went tp a party and met my friend bill's gf who is
completely out of his leauge..
loveitxleaveit: Maybe not out of his league, but out of the league we
put him in.
loveitxleaveit: THEN/
awinedrowning: LOL
loveitxleaveit: We went to a bar where I went to meet all of rahul's
friends frome ast meadow who he's chillin with who I don't even know.
awinedrowning: you're definitely typing like you are drunk, that's for
sure. lol
loveitxleaveit: It was awesome.
awinedrowning: so bill's new gf is hottt?
loveitxleaveit: Completely out of this world, people who I've heard
names, but never heard voices, and never heard more than their name
mentioned.
loveitxleaveit: NO
loveitxleaveit: A
loveitxleaveit: But she's a 7.
loveitxleaveit: Whereas the kid used to be at a 2.
awinedrowning: noa?
loveitxleaveit: So,, yo, IMPROVE,ENT.
loveitxleaveit: And now, believe this.
loveitxleaveit: I'm at a party at a kids house I don't even know...
awinedrowning: against the last beast he was with, a napalm victim would
be an improvement.
loveitxleaveit: Who's birthday was on august 98th
awinedrowning: AUGUST 98TH.
awinedrowning: AMAZING.
loveitxleaveit: And carissa's birthday ois on the 100th.
awinedrowning: you are perfect right now.
loveitxleaveit: So I'm hanging otu with her ON HER BIRTHDAY WITH a kid
who is sortve completely sanctioned for birthday right now.
loveitxleaveit: I have no idea who this kid is!
loveitxleaveit: Hahaaha
loveitxleaveit: Mazing@!
loveitxleaveit: And then like kids are smmking and flipping out and I'm
in hiksvile without a car, and I dono how I'm getting home, but its
sortve close-ish..
loveitxleaveit: Ya know..
awinedrowning: not close enough, man
loveitxleaveit: Red stripe has been here the whole time, so that's OKAY
at least I'm not stranded.
loveitxleaveit: I've been trying to slip chris and carissa (chris is her
bf who is also here without advocate) a $20 for driving me here (I think
it was his broither)
loveitxleaveit: But i t won't work!
loveitxleaveit: And its only my second full day her\!
loveitxleaveit: And
loveitxleaveit: The best part is..
loveitxleaveit: I am a shady monstrosity!!!!!!!!
loveitxleaveit: Because I showed up to her house at the same time as her
boyfriend!!
loveitxleaveit: Like what a weird kid.
awinedrowning: i don't understand what you're saying, but i will defend
to the death your right to say it.
awinedrowning: so are you enjoying it at least?
awinedrowning: i wish i could have been there when you walked into
vitamin world.
loveitxleaveit: Best.
awinedrowning: you got a cd in the mail to review. i haven't opened
it.
loveitxleaveit: Fagets.
awinedrowning: LOL
loveitxleaveit: Lol
awinedrowning: awinedrowning signed off at 2:11 am.


More than hilarious, it was also a pretty good sign of the type of night I was having.

We called Sean Botcher (Welwyn) to pick us up, and he took a little while. I was on my back, talking on the phone/AIMing. This will ruin your equilibrium on its very own, let alone when you have some substances in you. I got up obnoxiously fast. I fell down obnoxiously slow. I wished more than anything else that I would've had a video camera capture it (for future usage). Because it wasn't a dufus fall, and it wasn't a drunken mess fall. It was a goofy kid who stood up too fast fall. I didn't get hurt, and I never get embarassed. I would've at least liked to get it as a digital memory. This text based retelling will be the best we'll have.

Apparently, I was speaking too fast on the ride home.

As soon as I got out of the car, Marissa's brother, Chris (current screenname: shakeyourweeweex, former screenname: ilovepotxx; member of Kidnap Tonight) calls me and since he lives around the block, I start my walk over there. I'm a block away from his house when I get pulled aside by a girl who was with a group of kids sitting on a lawn at 7 Cove Lane. One of the kids there included Lenny Gomez, someone who I'd been to a ski trip with, who hungout with Matt McGregor (>his short films) who'd just gotten back from backpacking across Europe. We discussed Europeans, travel, art, music, and Levittown acquaintances and exchanged #s just in case. The other girls there were all on their way to college in a few days, and were moderately free from passion, but it was too early to tell if it was worth giving up yet. They were still youngish. Pete (see: Billy Calderone, Envy Arcadia) IM'd me and I told him to mapquest where I was (X), and he showed up in seven minutes, and sat with us for a little while. We went to the Embassy Diner again. We had the waiter who has the bowtie, easily one of the most down to earth people in that joint. Not a cartoon. Not a mess. We talked about a lot, as always.

He dropped me off at home, and I slept in my shoes, in my Gardiners Ave. bed for the first time in two and a half months, with a large stuffed dog as my pillow. It took little to no time to fall asleep.

That was my first full day in Levittown.

I woke up at 10:30 with plans to put in action. It was the birthday situation at night, with the party bus, etc., and I had to find out what the attire was supposed to be, and what the vibe of the club was. I headed to the website (Culture Club) and found out that I would not only need a shirt that could both represent my taste in clothing (camiseta) and look decent. I would also come to find out that I needed shoes that weren't sneakers, something that ended up being a hard thing to come through with. I showered, and headed out to the Roosevelt Field Mall to surprise Kerry at work. She bugged out, fantastically. She said to be back at one.I went to see who was working at the pink box, but it was someone completely new, who apparently did a good impression of me. I got my shirt, and walked around the mall, really trying hard to find shoes that I was going to not only wear for one night, but a pair that would last me through other situations as well. I couldn't find The Pair.

I was frustration.

With a half hour to kill, I decided to look in the book store for a little while. I found an amazing magazine that I plan to subscribe to once I get back home. It covers anime, multimedia, and video games, all things that I find as part of my hobby set. The art design is really thick, and filled to the brim with pictures. You'll be hardpressed to find any sort've of blank space on the pages. Some games even had full page spreads of game artwork, untouched by text. It felt like the first time I had flipped through Giant. Which, actually, has since gone to shit. They had a nice run, definitely a specific niche of magazine which was targeted towards guys, but not Dudes, men but not Men. If you had no sense of geek running through your headpiece, you weren't going to like it, and we were all really into that. They had lots of good obscure/B actors in there with great interviews, and even very interesting re-running features which included looks at what some actors had in their book, DVD or CD collections. Now that was cool. It's starting to blend a little bit with the rest of the men's magazines which get a little too fratty or my taste. We'll see. They're still progressing. I'm not sure that they've been around for a year yet.

When I went back to the store to meet Kerry for her break, she told me that she got the rest of the day off, which meant we were going to be on our way out to do some awesome stuff. We went back to her house to let her shower since there was no running water in her house, and while she was getting ready, I watched a DVD that she set up for me, which was a pretty awesome way of showing hospitality. Once we were ready to roll, we went back to the mall to get my mom's car, and to see if Mike Magnetico (OpOp, xKEGSTANDx) was working, but he wasn't. From there, we left and headed back towards home, but since I had a song stuck in my head, I had to head into Best Buy again to cop the disc. We went briefly back to my house to wait for Kim and Rahul to get to the trainstation, and we ended up heading back out to a mall, because the fact that I couldn't find a specific book was frustrating me. So we hit up the Broadway Mall which I hadn't seen in a while. I ended up really getting caught up and found a bunch of books that I wanted (1. 2. 3. 4.)

Even though we don't game so often anymore (read: never), whenever I'm inside book stores, I want to check out the gaming section. Whereas the World of Darkness series used to be these five games of a world nearing the apocalypse, things have happened in the game. That, to me, is insane. The world itself has progressed. For example, check out how Werewolf went from :the Apocalypse to :the Forsaken. Vampire went from :the Masquerade to :the Requiem. I'm really very interested in the whole storyline, and what exactly happened (hence the two books above). I also started browsing the White Wolf site again and found a game called Promethean: the Created (here, too). It seems like it will be an outstanding game. I may have to creep up on a rulebook somewhere. Stoked about them, big time.

Sorry to break the train of thought of the day. Bought books, then went to Hot Topic so she could visit her old manager from the other store, and then we went to the Hicksville Train Station to pick Kim and Rahul up. While there, I got a call from Carissa who I had been trying to get in touch with for most of the day to let her know about the difficulty I had been having getting non-sneaker kicks and possible pants (but jeans were cool; i had no idea). So when I told her I was having a hard time with the shoes, and might not be able to come, it was pretty much disappointment city.

And I was guilt.

We swung by her house, right around the block, and I ended up deciding that I'd be going, as the original plan was. That was the plan from the jump, and literally, I was the one who decided to change that because I couldn't get the answers that I was looking for. It's been the most stressful thing this entire week to try to work out a situation where I can figure out what I'm doing at night or during the day. Everyone wants to do something all the time. And I want to do things all the time. But whereas it was first come first serve at first, it was coming to the point where I was making absolutely sure I was seeing the people I hadn't seen yet. I feel like that was frustrating, letting down, and guilting out other people. That's fine, though. By Sunday, I hadn't really spent quality time with Carissa, Mike Magnetico, Anthony, Tina, Lauren T, or Kailyn, people who I really had on the check list to make a point of making sure I saw, no matter the mileage or timing.

But, regardless, when I broke down the situation to Kim, Kerry, and Rahul, they were understanding about it. I'm trying to think how I would react in that situation, and I think how they did it was the best case scenario. We ate dinner, and again, my weak appetite ended up overfilling me after eating HALF of my meal, and then we went our separate ways. I went home, got arranged, and headed over. The kids there were all kids who knew each other, and then me. Her brother was there, her boyfriend was there, both of whom I'd met before. There was a kid, Chris, who I'd met several times, with the JTHM tattoo. Then there were kids from Never Hurt Better. Sean showed up, and so did Cerami (novemberkills), so things got a little bit opened up, socially. The party bus showed up pretty late, and when we entered the damn thing, it was a pretty chill little situation. We got on the move and a mix CD was playing which was from 2003, but sounded like it was from 2001. Everyone was drinking or dancing while we were rolling. People found it was a necessary step to babysit me to make sure I wasn't sulking, since I was doing neither. I was carrying on a conversation via instant messenger on the sidekick. Once we got inside, the place there was empty, but it was fine. We brought the most beautiful people with us, and left our stamp on the place. The dance floor was colored and lit up intermittently like a Simon game. Pacman artwork along with Atari and Delaurean paraphernalia were all represented in neon platelets everywhere. They played music that was old school, but it was almost bad-wedding-ish in its variety. I was hoping for some other bands or groups (1. 2. 3. 4. 5.), but it's fine. I still had a good time for what it was. I had some good conversations with the Michaels at the very end of the night which involved hip hop, and other types of things. I tried to get some of those kids' numbers, and I'm not sure when I'm going to be using them, but it'll happen. We'll see what happens. The ride home was scattered conversations and passed out sweaty bodies. When we got home, the people who were too drunk to go home slept in the living room while everyone else headed home. I drove Sean home, and had a good conversation with him in the process.





I took passport photos which came out hilariously bummy and malled and ate good taco bell for the first time in a long time. Mikey accompanied me to Chris and Marissa's house where I finally got to see those kids and their family. It's been a pretty weird ride with those kids, but I'm sort've a welcome addition in their family when it comes down to it. They were in Florida, but hours away. I got to see the little sister, the mom and the dad. They said hopefully they'd be coming through to Miami next time, so hopefully we can coordinate some sort've situation. After hanging out with Brian and rocking Wing Zone at his house, a bunch of us met at Leisure Time where we named some nicknames, and ended up by a library playing soccer.

Hanging out with Brian is always some of the best times. We always end up talking for the entire time, it seems. It just comes from learning so much about communicating with each other for hours at a time while working together. We know each others' pacing, and the quirks, and just exactly what each other might mean by certain movements, or under/overstatements. We are just on top of things on perfect levels. It's helpful that we share a ton of the same interests. He actually had a copy of Rolling Stone magazine with an interview with Kurt Vonnegut. He's one of the few people that actually remember that he's my favorite author. It's things like that that are key. I saw Tina and Nikki at Mr. Beery's at night, and verbally agreed to coffee on Monday. Not one of you can blame me for not believing in it.

For an entire Sunday, I was home in the house. I finished Atlas Shrugged. It took me about seven months, mostly because of long delays I would put in between reading sessions, but when it was gametime, I would be completely devouring the plot, the characters, and the philosophies that were let loose on the world through text. The amount of depth that Ayn Rand went into made it hard to believe that this was a work of fiction. As I've stated time and again, this book is most likely one of the most important pieces of literature I'll get through in my life. Ms. Rand and her objectivism have been a part of me through most of my adult life, this book just gave it a name and a focus. I plan to continue to let it live through me. There are more than enough people who can learn from it in my sphere of influence and hopefully it will spread from there. I wish to hopefully affect someone as greatly with anything I do, say, or write as much as this book has affected me. Scroll down to the entry directly before this to see the quotes that I underlined. The asterisks, sort've obviously, depict the strength the quote showed to me. What I find incredible, you might find heavy handed, which is absolutely fine. All books are not for everyone.





Make it happen.

I did leave to sell a few DVDs and CDs at FYE, and made $37 off of a small fraction of the pile I wanted to give to the company. Unfortunately, since I came in sort've late, they couldn't take more than 10 off of my hands, so I am left with a B. Dalton bag full of homeless media. I could hold on to it until I come back here, this way I can drop it in for some easy cash. Not a bad idea. I finally got to legitimately see Carissa outside of buses, random hicksville apartments, and 80s hype houses, and it was a casual rendezvous consisting of the reading and the talking that we always do. If she isn't the most important person in my life, she's definitely a candidate. Top 3. A lot of it is because of both the random action of our get togethers as well as the zen moments of our comedowns. Aside from sleeping at our homes, we spent several consecutive hours together with popcorn, fruit, starbucks, notebooks, and soaking wet cargo shorts. Appropriately enough, I'd have to say that the fact that we hungout on five of the eight days that I was there, but extremely sporadically and not doing anything in direct particularity is an exact cross-section of our relationship. C'est la vie.

I also had this conversation with a random person, which they started early Sunday morning/late Saturday night. Times have been included.

White Tear Angel (3:59:45 AM): Hello?
White Tear Angel (6:46:54 AM): TALK TO ME
White Tear Angel (6:46:56 AM): PLEASE
White Tear Angel signed on at 5:13:09 PM.
White Tear Angel (5:15:16 PM): ??
i am no impact (5:15:25 PM): YOU
i am no impact (5:15:31 PM): what's up, who are you.
White Tear Angel (5:16:38 PM): I'm Jessica.
White Tear Angel (5:16:46 PM): Nice to meet you deary.
White Tear Angel (5:16:48 PM): Finally.
i am no impact (5:17:53 PM): haha, man. you were definitely in desperate need to talk to someone REAL early this morning, huh?
White Tear Angel (5:18:07 PM): lollol
White Tear Angel (5:18:09 PM): I was like.
i am no impact (5:18:11 PM): or real late last night, either way.
White Tear Angel (5:18:14 PM): All messed up./
i am no impact (5:18:20 PM): hahaha, it was awesome, either way.
White Tear Angel (5:18:26 PM): Lol why?
i am no impact (5:18:36 PM): White Tear Angel (3:59:45 AM): Hello?
White Tear Angel (6:46:54 AM): TALK TO ME
White Tear Angel (6:46:56 AM): PLEASE
i am no impact (5:18:45 PM): kid was buggin' outtt.
White Tear Angel (5:19:55 PM): looffflll/
White Tear Angel (5:20:01 PM): I was fuckkked up last night.
i am no impact (5:20:09 PM): nice. what'd u guys do?
White Tear Angel (5:20:25 PM): C-bombs.
i am no impact (5:20:40 PM): ha, that'll do it.
i am no impact (5:20:53 PM): yo so where'd u get my screenname?
White Tear Angel (5:21:05 PM): I read one of your posts on a site.
i am no impact (5:21:23 PM): oh alright.
i am no impact (5:21:29 PM): any idea which one?
White Tear Angel (5:21:32 PM): About mutated babies and such.
i am no impact (5:21:37 PM): MUTATED BABIES! INSANE!
i am no impact (5:22:04 PM): i honestly wish i could remember where i wrote about mutated babies, man. that's sick.
White Tear Angel (5:22:32 PM): o.o??
White Tear Angel (5:22:36 PM): So you don't even remember? lol.
i am no impact (5:22:49 PM): i might, it could just be slipping my mind right now.
White Tear Angel (5:22:57 PM): Baby with no face...
White Tear Angel (5:23:10 PM): The girl who turned to stone.
i am no impact (5:23:15 PM): ohhhh yeahhhhh.
i am no impact (5:23:20 PM): duuuude, that was horrrrrible.
White Tear Angel (5:23:51 PM): Yeah, I saw the Baby Without a Face on the Health Channel.
White Tear Angel (5:23:57 PM): And I was searching for more pictures of her.
White Tear Angel (5:24:01 PM): And then I found your post.
i am no impact (5:24:18 PM): did u see this while u were fucked up??
White Tear Angel (5:24:26 PM): No.
i am no impact (5:24:44 PM): damn. cuz that could've been a night to remember.
White Tear Angel (5:24:58 PM): lol
i am no impact (5:25:01 PM): or one that you just want to forget FOREVER; either way
White Tear Angel (5:25:58 PM): I've had horrible experiences with like...
White Tear Angel (5:26:04 PM): Mutated babies and such.
White Tear Angel (5:26:07 PM): Like fetuses.
White Tear Angel (5:26:11 PM): Aborted babies.
White Tear Angel (5:27:10 PM): Because there was this protest outside of this high school that I used to have a carpool person dropped off.
i am no impact (5:27:12 PM): really?? jesus. where do you live...
White Tear Angel (5:27:46 PM): And there were protesters and shit with picket signs of aborted babies.
White Tear Angel (5:28:38 PM): And I was like 10 years old.
White Tear Angel (5:28:55 PM): I had fucking nightmares.
i am no impact (5:28:55 PM): whatt. dude, that's definitely not subject matter for 10 year olds.
i am no impact (5:29:00 PM): yeahh, man. definitely.
White Tear Angel (5:30:03 PM): So when I saw this (I'm 17 now, saw it when I was 16 not too long ago), I FREAKED THE FUCK OUT.
White Tear Angel (5:30:22 PM): Cuz when they said "Baby without a face" I thought just like...a blank face with no skin lofl.
White Tear Angel (5:30:25 PM): I mean skin.
White Tear Angel (5:30:36 PM): Just like no eyes or anything, just a blank head.
White Tear Angel (5:30:51 PM): And I was like dude I gotta see that. It turned out to be some scary as fuck baby.
i am no impact (5:31:08 PM): yeah, it was definitely a lot worse than that.
White Tear Angel (5:31:49 PM): And you know at that part where you could hear her panting all scared through her air tube when they were sticking that needle in her stomach.
i am no impact (5:31:56 PM): YESS
White Tear Angel (5:32:04 PM): I CRIED.
White Tear Angel (5:32:06 PM): SO HARD.
White Tear Angel (5:32:12 PM): BECAUSE SHE WAS IN SO MUCH PAIN.
White Tear Angel (5:34:28 PM): http://images.google.com/imgres?imgurl=http://www.homeworking.ws/children/juliannaat2.jpg&imgrefurl=http://www.wrankmusic.com/forum/viewtopic.php%3Ft%3D1802%26view%3Dprevious%26sid%3D7eb764803ce7e66ffe854e3d1d512880&h=161&w=200&sz=9&hl=en&start=1&tbnid=sOZagyX7SpaGCM:&tbnh=84&tbnw=104&prev=/images%3Fq%3Dbaby%2Bwithout%2Ba%2Bface%26svnum%3D10%26hl%3Den%26lr%3D%26client%3Dfirefox-a%26rls%3Dorg.mozilla:en-US:official_s%26sa%3DG
i am no impact (5:34:54 PM): yeah, it was pretty much insanity city, dude. i hated it.
White Tear Angel (5:35:00 PM): ^Your post that I found
i am no impact (5:35:05 PM): i've seen it twice, and both times, i can't watch but can't look away. u know how it goes.
White Tear Angel (5:35:06 PM): And added your sn.
White Tear Angel (5:35:33 PM): I think it's cruel that they make that child live.
i am no impact (5:37:06 PM): totally.
i am no impact (5:37:15 PM): i'll be right back.
White Tear Angel (5:37:21 PM): Awww..okay.
i am no impact (5:38:12 PM): ha, yeah sorry. don't mean to break the momentum.
i am no impact (6:09:12 PM): i'm back.
i am no impact (6:09:43 PM): i agree. at the very least, i know i wouldn't have the patience to raise a child who i'd have to put through X amount of pain in order to keep them barely teetering on an enjoyable life.
White Tear Angel (6:09:54 PM): I know.
White Tear Angel (6:10:05 PM): I mean it's not even the money, or the fact that she's really monsterous.
White Tear Angel (6:10:11 PM): She's fucking not able to even enjoy life.
White Tear Angel (6:10:45 PM): I found another fucked up disease
i am no impact (6:10:48 PM): yeah. that's that whole moral conflict, though. sounds horrible to break it down this way, but she's "a living thing" and at what point in time is it okay to end the life of a living thing
White Tear Angel (6:11:28 PM): http://www.hayleyspage.com/gallerys/reunion2006/IMG_9716.html
i am no impact (6:12:09 PM): wow. this hurts my life.
i am no impact (6:12:12 PM): i've definitely heard of this.
White Tear Angel (6:12:24 PM): Where kids age like.
White Tear Angel (6:12:26 PM): Really fucking fast.
i am no impact (6:16:08 PM): yeah, that's pretty insane.
White Tear Angel (6:16:31 PM): Yeahyeah!
White Tear Angel (6:18:59 PM): http://www.spokesmanreview.com/stories/2005/feb/4/PERU_MERMAID_SURGERY_02-04-2005_VR3N580.jpg
i am no impact (6:19:42 PM): daamn. is this what you do?


Pretty out of control, but also pretty interesting as well. It's been a while since I'd thought of that situation, and I'm glad that something came up to make me think of it. That's the sort've genetic deconstruction that I need to continuously be aware of. It's the kind of thing that makes you not want to stare. You've been there already. You've seen that already.

The last night on Long Island consisted of the necessaries. I love my boys and my girls, and while the end of the night ot a little misarranged, it was still a good night overall. Brian and I watched my home videos from the 89-90 era. This means I was a slowly ballooning blob-child with mullet to rat tail sensibilities. I was interested by sports and sports almanacs, games, and the unending hunt for friends who were the best at hiding/avoiding. I can't even see any small semblance of the today me to that initial larva portion of my lifestyle. It's almost sad. But not really. I got to see Brian on Sesame Street interact with Three in a Row Smith and Oscar the Grouch. I also saw the Disney World Brian as a fat kid instnatly, though tape editing become a slim mustached Brian in a two year span. I ate Taco Bell again and rocked that harder than life itself. It'll be the last real good Bell that I ingest for a damn long time. A damn long time. We were going to watch Old Boy but never got around to it, as it got late, and ended up leaving both that DVD and my home videos at the Hernandez residence. I really wish I got to say goodbye. It's something I've gotten pretty good at. I had to dish them out to Brian, Natalia, and Rahul. Kerry and I met up with Tina. She has nothing to say that's really up my alley. It's official that we've grown completely apart.

- What're you reading?
A bartender's book

- Did you hear the new Cursive?
Yeah... it was alright

- Where'd you get the tiara?
I was named Miss Ale House

Et cetera, et cetera. As if I needed a night like this to tell me that things were officially over. I really didn't. But it helped. The next 6 months in FL will be a little easier knowing that there is nothing at all related between us anymore. You can be a little disapointed that it took me this long to be okay with that, but it takes what it takes, and I did what I could.

Tuesday, really, was a day I was really looking forward to. Mid Rhode Island trip, Kailyn was going to be coming through to finally get really met. We'd done the initial interaction in her workplace, and had filled in the in-betweens via some of the longest sets of correspondence I've been a part of. She accompanied me to say goodbye to my youngest sister, and by the time she left, I think I'm pretty sure I wanted her to live with me. I've talked about borders and boundaries. She was the moreso. I've got words on reserve.

Tuesday is still today. I'm at the airport way too early. Dad drove me here, after handing me $500. I was floored. I have an hour and fifty minutes until I board. I have a headache. I have to work tomorrow. It's all back again tomorrow. I'm back in the business of figuring out what it is, exactly, I want to do, whether it's the realm of moving, working, living, loving, or creating, I'm very confused. I've seen two places where I can easily get settled. But I'm not entirely sure where I'll be at my happiest. My momentum is in the south, my heart is in the north. I want to look for a job that's more career oriented. I want to take some shots that mean something more than getting by week by week. I'm returning home, Dave will pick me up at Fort Lauderdale Airport, and I'll be back to the grind which isn't even a grind. It's just a slow push.

I've got voids to fill.

Records listened to while writing this entry:
Saves the Day - Sound the Alarm
Moneen - The Red Tree
The Mars Volta - De-Loused in the Comatorium
Busta Rhymes - The Big Bang
Common - Be (three times)
Thelonious Monk & John Coltrane - At Carnegie Hall
Welwyn - Demo
Desert City Soundtrack - Funeral Car
Folk and Stress - Untitled
Kanye West - Late Registration
Secret Lives of the Freemasons - This Was Built to Make You Dance

transcript.

A book like Atlas Shrugged is not meant to be blown through. This is a book that you take with you for the rest of your life. A book that comes with you everywhere. A book that you keep at the corner of your desk. A book that speaks when you speak, sometimes. I feel like speaking with people, I'll be able to then tell if they've ever read through it or not. Ayn Rand has an outstanding outlook on life, and it's one that I've already kept with me for a good portion of my life, and as I've started to have things fall a little bit more into place for me, and I've started to have my head level off, it's the philosophy I've already taken on. Atlas Shrugged has told me to keep on. This is a path that I'm not inventing. While I'd love to be a trailblazer, I also get a new sense of comfort knowing that I'm not alone in uncharted waters. Objectivism is something to be embraced through to the end. Thank goodness I've found it. Thank Nicole for setting me up with it.

Following are some key quotes that I've underlined in the book. Some may come across extremely obscure, being out of context, but just the way that they've been written might make you feel inspired. Some of them are full quotes, others are just three or four words used together. Regardless, these are all statements that have moved me. Enjoy.


"...handing the dime to the shadow that had no face."

"...the color of a fading masterpiece."

"...the blood vessels on a map."

"How can we compete with a man who's got a corner on God's natural resources?"

"She resented the small defeat of being tired."

"She did not want her feeling to be the thing one was supposed to owe an uncle or a grandfather."

"It has taken so much to build this city, it should have so much to offer."

"It was the smile of a man who is able to see, to know, and to create the glory of existence."

"If joy is the aim and the core of existence, she thought, and if that which has the power to give one joy is always guarded as one's deepest secret, then they had seen each other naked in that moment."

"She looked at him silently, as if a voice within her were saying: Not the things that are, but the things we'll make... We are not to be stopped, you and I..." *****

" 'Francisco, what's the most depraved type of human being?'
' The man without a purpose.'" ***

"...she did it because she felt, for some reason which she could not define, that the incident was a secret too precious to share."

" 'The things you were talking about. The lights and the flowers. Do they expect those things to make them romantic, not the other way around?'
'Darling, what do you mean?'
'There wasn't a person there who enjoyed it,' she said, her voice lifeless, 'or who thought or felt anything at all. They moved about, and they said the same dull things they say anywhere. I suppose they thought the lights would make it brilliant.' *

"He listened silently, looking at her for the first time with that glance of unmoving mockery which he reserved for others, a glance that seemed to see too much. She felt as if he heard, in her words, more than she knew she told him." **

"...every man, woman, child and abortion..."

"...the diamond band on the wrist of her naked arm gave her the most feminine of all aspects: the look of being chained."

"...as if sight could wipe out sound." ***

"...proud detachment..."

"...the oil derricks rose to the sky..." [note: imagery] **

"Cheyenne" **

"...like an arm of naked bones and nerves." *

"...the windows had turned gray with daylight."

"...all of them starting on a shoestring and moving mountains." **

" 'It's dust, lady. All dust and blood.'" *****

"'What is morality?' she asked.
'Judgement to distinguish right and wrong, vision to see the truth, courage to act upon it, dedication to that which is good, integrity to stand by the good at any price.'"

"...words had become sounds which transmitted nothing." *

"...the unlimited power of reason." *

"You can all stay home, take no risks and make no enemies." **

"'I hate it! I hate the doom you're all waiting for, the giving up...'"

"For the moment, with an unnatural clarity, with a brutal simplification that made it almost easy, his consciousness contained nothing but one thought: It must not stop me. The sentence hung alone with no past an no future." ****

"...conscious of nothing but pain, a screaming pain without context or limit... pain that stopped thought."

"He had not been guilty of evasion: he had not thought of it, because there was nothing to think."

"Thought is a weapon one uses in order to act. Thought is the tool by which one makes a choice. Thought sets oine's purpose and the way to reach it."

"There is an obscenity of evil whic contaminates the observer."

"He wished he had a friend who could be permitted to see him suffer, without pretense of protection, on whom he could lean for a moment, just to say, 'I'm very tired,' and find a moment's rest." **

"What is it we hear over the telephone - sound vibrations, isn't it? Well, her voice sounds as if it were turning into light vibrations..."

"Such tenants as it sheltered were half-bankrupt, existing, as it did, on the intertia of the momentum of the past."

"This is not the world I expected." ***

"They were alone in the silence of the dead city." **

"It was their daily duty to serve as audience for some public figure who made utterances about the puiblic good, in phrases carefully chosen to convey no meaning."

"...she could not distinguish the sky, the sun or the sounds of an enormous crowd, but perceived only a sensation of shock and light."

"For the moment, there was no future. They had earned the present." ***

"...the sight of an achievement was the greatest gift a human being could offer to others." *

"...a sustained impulse."

"Not to trust, but to know."

"Between sight and touch, between wish and fulfillment, between spirit and body." **

"She did not want to think, but the sound of thought went on." **

"Was this the surrender of a man's spirit to his body?"

"...he snapped the question at the unknown judges of his unwitnessed mood."

"The empty structures were vertical rubble."

"It was like having to perform an autopsy on the body of one's love."

"In this world, either you're virtuous or you enjoy yourself."

"'Yes, that is what I said: the hemophilia -- the slow leak -- the loss of blood that cannot be stopped.' "

"The measured tone of gravity went through every syllable of her voice..."

"...circling violence..."

"...devouring the unborn child of greatness."

"...the element of an emotion never to be admitted."

"'Thought is a primitive superstition. Reason is an irrational idea. The childish notion that we are able to think has been mankind's costliest error."

"The giants of intellect..."

"The men of blood and rust..."

"Of what account are praise and adulation from men who you don't respect?"

"'He's unreconstructed.'"

"She needed a span of time as a bridge between her days and his nights."

"'Why have we left it all to fools? It should have been ours.'" ***

"...but what came from it was only a desire to desire her, a wish to feel, not a feeling."

"'Most peple feel that they rise in their own eyes, if others want them.'"

"...the violent clarity of percetion."

"...he was past the need of words..."

"...an unknown destroyer."

"The moratorium on brains."

"...she felt that she had full control of her body and that she was not aware of her body's existence."

"...the capacity and the concept of doubt..."

"...a great clarity."

"...muscular habit..."

"...a walking classic." **

"...the return of motion and safety."

"Too shaken to sleep."

"No call for victims."

"The beauty of self-immolation."

"'We can never lose the things we live for. We may have to change their form at times, if we've made an error, but the purpose reamins the same and the forms are ours to make.'"

"But the cities has been left behind."

"...the state where disaster is no longer possible."

"...the spinal cord of a dead train."

"...her voice had no color..."

"The green circle glowed in space, announcing a clear track, inviting motion where there was nothing to move. Who was that philosopher,she thought, who preached that motion exists without any moving entities? This was his world, too."

"...a face that bore no mark of pain or fear or guilt."

"'Mine,' he answered, kicking the door in." [note: YEAH! That's action movie!]

"...no remnant of violence."

"...conscious of her hands."

"'There it is -- it's your earth, your kingdom, your kind of world."***

"...the unrhythmical abruptness of the involuntary."

"The emotional sum..."

"...to shelter the birth of a skyscraper." **

"...the night of closed eyelids."

"...her single, unchanging reality."

"...a glance like the visual equivalent of the words: What's your angle?"

"...restlessly demanding anything but this pause."

"...submerged hysteria..."

"They seemed to be waiting to be told what to think."

"...a voice like a machine gun spitting smiles."

"...slouching against the sky..."

"...a look of fear in the process of being accepted as permanent..."

"We are those who do not disconnect the values of their minds from the actions of their bodies, those who do not leave their values to empty dreams, but bring them into existence, those who give material form to thoughts." **

"...the thing to do is not get scared, but to learn."

"She had to learn to understand the things that destroyed her."***

"...flooded by the dead."

"He carried an automatic pistol in one pocket and a rabbit's foot in the other."

"...making one conscious, not of the gems, but of the living beat behind them."

"'I saw the world as he made it look, as if it matched him, as if he were its symbol.'"

"...past crying or feeling or moving."**

"...a monument of guilt."

"He had not known what the destruction of a person would be like."

"...threadbare phrases."

"'I swear -- by my life and my love of it -- that will never live for the sake of another man, nor ask another man to live for mine.'"

"If a naked bullet could feel in mid-flight, this is what it would feel, she thought; just the motion and the goal."

"...the spitting violence of their bullets the storm, it would not bring comfort to their bodies."

"...neither their God nor their guns..."

"'The desire not to be anything is the desire not to be.'" ****

"That is the payment I demand. Not many can afford it. I don't mean your enjoyment, I don't mean your emotion -- emotions be damned! -- I mean your understanding and the fact that your enjoyment was of the same nature as mine, that it came from the same source: from your intelligence, from the conscious judgement of a mind able to judge my work by the standard of the same values that went to write it -- I mean, not the fact that you felt, but that you felt what I wished you to feel, not the fact that you admire my work, but that you admire it for the things I wished to be admired." **********

-

Some of the chapter titles are even out of control. Check this.

1.1 - The Theme
1.2 - The Chain
1.3 - The Top and the Bottom
1.4 - The Immovable Movers
1.7 - The Exploiters and the Exploited
1.10 - Wyatt's Torch

2.1 - The Man Who Belonged On Earth
2.2 - The Aristocracy of Pull
2.3 - White Blackmail
2.4 - The Sanction of the Victim
2.7 - The Moratorium on Brains
2.10 - The Sign of the Dollar

3.1 - Atlantis
3.2 - The Utopia of Greed
3.4 - Anti-Greed
3.5 - Their Brothers' Keepers
3.8 - The Egoist
3.9 - The Generator
3.10 - In the Name of the Best Within Us

the monolith.

i think i know what i want to do now.
a full telling of the homecoming is coming.
a big breakup of the breakdown.

tenant.

this post will contain pictures.

to start off the festivities, though, our duck/geese/chicken birds that live around here had babies. it's pretty great, because every once in a while, you'll see the whole clique of them wandering around with either a male or a female (you can tell them apart by their coloring, i'm pretty sure, though i'm not sure who's who) accompanying about 8-10 little chicks. i'm not really sure if these birds are actually ducks or geese, but the reason the word chicken comes into play is the color scheme as well as those gobbler type situations they have on their face. either way, here are pictures that i took of them.








that's that for them.

but let me tell you a story about a parking spot and some chalk.

each apartment in this complex gets one parking spot dedicated to them. so me and dave switch off trying to find a guest spot. sometimes coming home very late from the beach (i'm talking 1 or 2 in the morning, due to work, or any other reason) means that there are NO spots left. so we try to find guest spots earlier on during the day so that one of us is at least guaranteed a spot if we're home late. but we found a loophole in the situation. what if there were a vacant spot?

dave started monitoring this without my knowledge. he found a spot right in our lot that wasn't parked in for a month. i moved in real quick. i left my phone number, just in case there would be a problem. maybe, in some odd situation, the person only parked there when we weren't home. not on purpose. just due to availability and lifestyle differences. so i left my phone number, and our apartment number, and my name. for three days, there was no problem.

on the third day, VERY early in the morning (6:57a) i got a call from a 786 number (that's around here) and they left me a voicemail about the parking spot. i was like oh shit. but that's fine, either way. i take my shower, because i have to go to work, anyway. around 8:57a (i usually leave at 9) i am about to leave, and i hear voices outside the apartment mildly agitated and panicked. so i open our kitchen window a little bit more so i can listen.

the dialogue is something like this.

: yes, it's a little black car, and it's been there for three days.
. three days? overnight?
: yes, and i'm not sure whose it is. they've left a number, and we tried calling it, but he didn't pick up.
. that's horrible. i can't imagine who would do such a thing.
: (unintelligible; still pleading)
. i'll take care of it. did you call the front gate? believe me, this will be taken care of.

at this point, i slipped out the front door, booked down the stairs, jumped in my car and left. i have no idea what the guy who was willing to "take care of it" would've done, but i mean, there was no need at all to find out. i, technically, am in the wrong here. so i leave, and once i get to work and have been there a couple hours, i call the number that called me back. i leave my name, my cell #, my work #, my apartment #, and how they can contact me. i tell him the story about how no one's parked there for a month, and we didn't think it'd be a problem, to get back to me about what the situation is with the spot, and if he just plain didn't want to discuss it any further, that it's fine, i just won't park there anymore unless i hear back from him.

i didn't hear back from him.

it's been another month, and STILL, no one parks there.
it's STILL vacant.

so last night, i took some sidewalk chalk that we picked up on the drive here, and made this.





it might stir something up, and it might cause trouble, but i really would like a reason that i can't park in your spot. even if you CALL me and tell me that it's just principle, that's fine. but at this point in time, i see no reason not to come back to that spot.

any reason would do. "my older mother comes to town intermittently, and we like to keep the spot open for her, because she can't walk very well." ; "i like to have a spot open for friends when they come so they don't have to look for a spot." ; "this is my july home. park there june and august, etc., but just NOT july." give me something; anything, man.

hopefully someone starts parking there. it really pisses me off that such a ridiculous situation has come up. i'm going to try to protest in the most creative ways i can.

a smile tells you just for now, or just keep going.

i have so much going on in my head that i turned my computer on to blog. just to blog. i had to get it all down because i thought i might lose something. that's the kind've fear the words and their conjunctions feel. that's the kind've fear that i feel.

gentlemen, start your engines.

i meet someone new every day. every day. it's empowering. it's a revelation to the miniscule reality that i might face if i don't continuously put myself out there. if i resort to a life on an island. i'm having second third fourth and fifth thoughts about where i want to be forever. the real answer is nowhere. i want to... really, i long to be a traveller. somehow, someway, things might happen. the only way that they will happen, though, is if i end up making them happen. i talk a big game.

tonight, it was a french girl named Ellen (it could've been Helen, through the accent) who came back in just to hangout because she was "passing through." she came in wednesday night, buying things with family. her father, her brothers. and we spoke a little. mostly about where to find certain DVDs. lame. but she came back in tonight, looking for me, and talking to me, and still looking pretty great. at least, for a girl who i will only know for a day or two. she didn't tell me when she's leaving. but i feel like it'll be on sunday. all of them always leave on sunday.

you know, because life begins again on mondays.
even in europe.

i find it hard, sometimes, to get really dedicated to words and their output while music is playing. music that i care about, anyway. i get easily distracted by one of the two, either creating, or the creation. i'm never sure which one is more important. example: right now, the new post roman is playing and i want to give it my full attention, because it really deserves it. there's so much happening.

there's a thunderstorm brewing just on the outside of where i'm living. i think it's passing by, though. there was no real gradual process to it. it'll be gone in a half hour, hanging over the head of someone else entirely.

that's fine. headlights are still streaming in to our apartment complex.

i think of her less and less.
even though i wrote that, you need to believe me.

in the tomorrow which is actually today, i hope that i can see that light of day. i want cloudlessness. something beyond warmth. i want to feel something other than the insides of the walls. i want to hear my beating heart. i want it to hurt when i open my eyes.

i think next week i'm not going to sleep for the best reasons.

she'd never think it, i think.
i think it's the distance, i think.
if she understood, i'd say i can't understand it either.
leave it alone.
tell 19 year old me where he'll be today.
tell 19 year old me that this will even exist.

as much of failed attempt as a lot of it seems, for one thing, i've lost absolutely no one in my departure from home. it started feeling like maybe i had. the new groups of friends, the silences, the silences, the skewed text messages, and the out of importances. when i think about how it all really is, put up and held together by nothing different than A Home Life, I can see that I've only gained a greater understanding of who will be left when it's all put together at the very end. what's been the borders and boundaries, and what's been the heartland. and yes, most of who i've added is just more borders, more boundaries, and more peripheral. but some are lifelong lifelines, if i've got anything to do with it. the new area codes, and new sorts of dialtones. random exposure through vocal representations. some days, having to dial out of the country just to be remembered.

remember, the world's not falling apart, no matter how it feels,
because it's falling in place.

a monologue.

i have all the characteristics of a human being.
flesh, blood, skin, hair.
but not a single, clear, identifiable emotion except for
greed and disgust.

something horrible is happening inside of me and i don't know why.
my nightly bloodlust has overflowed into my days.
i feel lethal; on the verge of frenzy.
i think my mask of sanity is about to slip.

the piano plays for days.
the piano is drunk.

five, ten, ocean, twenty.

Someone asks "So, what's ur deal?"
"I'm taking over america," I say. "One word at a time."

I see someone mouth the words, "fuck everyone." I'm not sure the context he's referencing. Somewhere surrounded by silence I think we'd agree on a lot of things. Then again, maybe not.

Where I'm at, I think Matthew Fox is the DJ. And he loves retro lounge music.

Here, no one likes me, except the one person I'm here to see. A goal set 6 years ago. I'm for real.

Here, no one likes me, but they like the people they speak to even less.

I wonder what the cutoff is. The age limit, the price limit, the size limit on t-shirts. And at what point humping your friend is better than minding your own business, and waiting patiently. I'm for real.

"He knows nothing, and I know too much."

Here, in miami, no one looks like me. I could be Slovakian. They don't know how I do in my town. My country.

I laugh at conversations happening in different timelines. In different lifelines.

Second looks are worth what it takes to make that first look.

Imagine Nextel Walkie Talkies. Now imagine them in other languages.

What if I never make it home?
That's a fear I can't bring myself to face.

It Dies Today - My Promise
Poison the Well - A Wish

killbettystrashh: today has been quite the day for you, hasnt it?
i am no impact: the dayest.

10/90
90/10
(95/5)
85/15

back to square.

"don't have a supplier?! you got me, nigga!"

no.
you're going to save your money.

slave to the page.

in light of the so so many things that are happening in other places, for fuck's sake, i thank certain situations for crushing me to the point where i can now keep it together. you can take that on a worldly level or a personal level or a local level. it works on all of them. but i think if you're reading this, you know. cross your forehead, cross your lips, cross your hearts. amen.

i got asked to be on an album today. i met with a kid who i've been talking to who raps. i hadn't heard his demo, and i'm thinking, okay, it might be weak, but whatever. it can't be any worse than myspace.com/hiphopwannabes, and it can't be any worse, music-wise, than local artists who are constantly constantly sending LISTEN TO US messages around. so i scope this kid out, and he spits me some verses that aren't on his thing. and me, the resourceful one, takes out the damn composition book.

: what's this, all of your secret thoughts?
. ha, naw man, this is my book of rhymes, haha.
: oh shit, sorry nasir jones.
. aaight, give me a second.

i drank from a glass of water and made sure i had flexibility of the mouth.

: hahaha, you see this kid?
. aaight, man. here it is.

i gave him what i thought was some of my best stuff. as i'm reading it, my mind is going blank, writing new things, new places, new people, new characters, new pronunciations, and new ways to read old passages. to make things that've already happened and that people have already seen completely painted in new colors. i thought about a story i'm still trying to finish up. my mouth was doing the movement. before i knew it, i was done, and i slammed the book closed. for effect, mostly, but also, because i needed it to end. i'm only nervous just before and just after i read.

: i want you on my album.
. what man, really?!
: i want you on my album.
. dude, that's crazy. just like that?!
: i want you on my album.

that's the sort of thing i've been waiting around to happen for a while. what am i doing. hopefully that's the sort've effect i can have on more people than local rappers, but if this is as far as it goes, so be it. i'm looking at it as a hobby. it's never going to be a career. that's not why i do it.

however, getting so inspired by a mild success, i ended up writing and sending out a bunch of e-mails to a bunch of magazines, local and larger, to try to see if the success would come in avalanches. it won't. i'm not expecting any e-mails back.

dave said it best, though.
"sending e-mails out is better than NOT sending e-mails out."

i'm thinking about what's going on with my life, really, and i accidentally start thinking about people approving/disapproving of what i'm doing, and what i want to do. that's usually not the sort of thing i get all caught up in. but i have a lot of time on my hands here. it just creeps in sometimes. i think about certain things that i could say about anyone else doing what i'm in the middle of doing.

"so, he just went to florida to go? is there a job there? is there a girl there? is there anything there? oh. well, i mean, that's cool that he wants to do that... but, i mean, isn't it kind've pointless? what happens when he comes back? he left his job. they won't take him back. people usually get this sort've stuff out of the way by going away to school. he's out there not accomplishing anything. i could see if he was really living it up, and it was one big experience that he wouldn't forget, but it's just more life in another state." -- it goes on and on.

all of that stuff is the sorts of judgements i pass on myself. i can't even imagine the things that people who AREN'T me think. the people who don't have to set up walls between the things they say and the way they feel inside, because they can say the most painful things because they won't be hurting anyone but him. but me.

i'm trying to really not fall behind the ball here. i'm trying to get some moves in order. trying to make more than $20k/year, because i'm just not accomplishing very much. i have nothing to show for anything i've done, other than memories, and the way people feel about me. that, to me, is more valuable and rewarding than anything else that you can pickup behind a desk or a laptop or a counter or a steering wheel. but it's not going to keep you dry or memorable.

it's finally at the point where i've fallen the furthest behind my peers. officially. i don't want to keep up, necessarily, but i don't want to be completely obsolete.

i could talk like this forever, just until i start to make that difference.
it's time to make the believers get their ways, man.
it was cute for long enough.

hammerghasted.

i told you this already. "you're making a huge mistake."
i saw you already. there just aren't any surprises.
welcome to the periphery.

i just want to think that i missed out; is that okay with you?

nothing is happening here.
i just saw you already.
and if it makes you feel any better,
probably not, i've already left, sign at the bottom,
they'll never see it coming.

shopping.

i think going food shopping is becoming one of my favorite things to do. for some reason, all of this stuff actually feels like it's going to make a difference. i'm not really into clothing (except for fullbleed, and band shirts, but those are mostly just random accounts of fashion) and shoes come once in a blue. right now, i'm rocking asics that i'm really digging but i saw some more kicks right across from where i'm putting in hours, and i'm thinking about picking them up, too.

so, anyway, let me give you a run down of what i bought tonight.

• vitamin water: endurance (2)
  
• vitamin water: energy (2)
  
• vitamin water: formula 50 (2)
  
• vitamin water: essential (2)
  
• lean pockets: supreme pizza (2)
  
• kashi cinnamon harvest cereal
  
• publix frozen cheese ravioli
  
• publix fudge swirl sundae cups
  
• stouffer's french bread pizza deluxe
  
• stouffer's french bread pizza plain
  
• voila chicken alfredo bagged pasta dinner
  
• red stripe 12 pack
  
• wheat thins: honey
  
• mott's cinnamon apple sauce
  
• publix fat free milk
  
• publix baby cut carrots
  
• boar's head turkey breast (1 lb.)
  
• maruchan ramen chicken flavor (2)
  
• maruchan ramen creamy chicken flavor (2)
  
• maruchan ramen roast beef flavor
  

about $64. i dig.

dave's on his way to NY at the moment. his flight got delayed two or three times. that was kind've out of control. i have the place to myself until sunday night, at which point he'll return with his brother for a week. i'm semi stoked to see the kid.

my mom sent me shorts, and bathing suits, and sandals, and a ton of records from record companies for review. it was all awesome. i'm glad to get care packages like that. so far, the only mail i've got is from family. i've sent out a pretty fair share, and i guess i shouldn't expect much in return. that's fine.

in fact, i wrote a letter late last night, and didn't send it because the envelopes are in dave's room. i woke up this morning and wanted to send it, but i just couldn't do it. i feel like i need some sort've clearance first. it's a ridiculous dynamic that i don't know how or why i created it for myself. it sparked from this thought that i had last night about time bombs, and blue wires and red wires. it's two pages, and folded up, and signed from me, and will probably end up being just another piece of undelivery.


i work in a city by the beach

birth after/state.

written at 9:35a
South Beach
right here:


Okay, so maybe it does get better.
Maybe you show up to work a little early and you get to sit on the beach.
Maybe the 50 minute commute turns into a 15 minute one (and when you tell them on the phone, they can't tell the difference).
I wonder if they want me here tomorrow.

Okay, maybe last night instead of sleeping I was making big plans.

I get breaks here at this record store for a half hour a day. We run parallel to Ocean Dr., where all the bougie girls wear their sequen and drink margaritas. Here, where no one really lives, is where the tall glasses with those umbrellas made their name. I walk faceless and alone through this crowd, because for now, these are my streets, and they're the faceless, and they're going home.

Where they stop at corners and main street attractions, I know people's names behind counters halfway down Washington Ave.

I've been here for four days.
I drink coffee under palm trees.

I meet europeans who fish for words in my language as I try my best to be articulate in my line of questioning. Beyond small talk, I'm meeting characters on their own stage. One day, I hope to be in their shoes. Some ageless Londoner writes on his laptop, "I meet americans who swim in yankee accents..." and the list goes on, me on my stage.

I met a girl in Jersey who liked to sketch.
I think I look for her sometimes, because she's my type of people.
She guessed our age.

Next time, I'm bringing shorts.
Today, on my clocked out, unpaid half hour, I'm going to Urban Outfitters on the strip to scope out some slip-ons.

Lesson One: Expect nothing from anyone, even if they're the Everyone.
Lesson Two: I need to be working to remain happy.
Lesson Three: Bring your life with you everywhere. You never know who might have a ticket.

the arcs of your pockets.

the first thing i'd tell you if you were to pick up and leave is to not expect a damn thing from anyone or anything. don't overgeneralize or grant an overfidelity in the way the world works.

mistake #1.

just because you're not afraid doesn't mean that things are going to work out.
it doesn't make the coals any cooler.

at least this is practice.
this is nowhere i'm needed.

life displacement.

i'm over 1300 miles away from home.
1300 miles.

i think people think they know what that's like, but really, they don't. i thought i did. i thought i could project an emotion or at least an emulated emotion on myself to simulate the feeling of what it is to be away from everyone, every thing, every place that you know. but it's really completely different.

in our gated community, there's a path you can walk up as a pedestrian to get back into the buildings. i literally couldn't open the door. it's things like that that make you feel completely new to a whole new way of life. there's no way you can figure something like that out without trying it again and again and getting completely used to it. that's just the start of it.

i've been trying to do as much shopping and as much living as possible. south beach, whole foods, compusa, publix, gnc, julio's, etc. there's a ton of different places that i still want to see. simple things like movie theaters (which i think i'll be in tonight) and best buys (probably next tuesday for The Sleeping [who i will likely be seeing tomorrow] and Peeping Tom, and The Sound of Animals Fighting) and things like that. things that might even remind me of home just a little bit.

things like maps, and soda bottles, and manhattan rocks, and spanuga.
i miss my sister.

i miss all of you.

i got here and within two days, i had an application filled out and ready to hand in to a music store. i went back in the next day and spoke with a man named dano, who's over 35 years old and has sleeves and a pony tail. i think i'll fit in with him pretty nicely there. he seemed pissed, and focused, and in the mood to work. i go back in tomorrow for an interview. i hope that i nail it, and start working down there, right by the beach, right by a ton of interesting people, and just away from here, a community, and just another opportunity to meet new people.

i need people. i love people.

i think about what i'm doing as a human being, and what i'm looking to do on a long term and short term person. it's not really a fear i have just yet, but it is definitely something that i want to sort've pinpoint.

i come close to saying what it is that i want to do in conversations. i want to have people put their hands on their heads with MY words. i want to educate people, and motivate people.

it's too much.

i went shopping to find some things for dinner. i got chicken patties and whole wheat hamburger buns, some pasta sauce, and some tortellini. i'm hoping that'll be good for a little while.

listen to me. look at her.

aloha.
it means hello and goodbye.

june carter, ladies and gentlemen. she's real. i think i've harvested her spirit. where i've been digging, i think i've uprooted something realistic in the way the eyes can trap a way of life.

i've found june carter and on the eve of a killing she's made decades tap like unsynaptic bookends. count the words of separation on a leper's fingers. she's calling home to check the wooden houses and shaking the corners free from the cobwebs of clockwork.

june carter left a stockcar driver to be in love. she left the ring at home when she locked the door, a spiral to pawn or packrat. she left until the day she came back to stay back. she left a house to make a home.

she left a house to make a home.

baby
baby
baby
baby
baby.

june carter, her and i, we live in love that lasts.



i will illuminate
slowly the orbs that grow
to warm you.

i'm trying to find the right way to say
more than
but less than.

tres semanas.

i have a hard time finding someone to keep up with me.

not just the late nights. not just the conversation. not just the demanding musical taste. not just the humor. really, just all of it. and maybe i'll never find that. but i've been finding it lately, or at least feeling (or imagining) a burning desire from others who have been trying to match it because i'm on the verge of departure.

this is the right thing to do, because it's something that i want to do, and that i envy and daydream about. it's something that i want to write, and something that i hate to read, because it's not me. the problem is, it's a retreat and a dream that can only be pursued through disconnection. there's no way to write it off. when i'm so far away, things are going to be different. i lie to myself sometimes, or maybe it's just me forgetting. i say there are phones, and envelopes, and an entire ocean of information keeping us connected. airmail, and packages, and cameras, and visits, and all of the words i have at my disposal which should be able to fill the void of late night hangouts, movie nights, ice cream, windows down, solitary album confinement, headbanging, beer runs, ecstacy and locked doors, arms, small bodies, "i'll come see you at the store," or "come outside! i'm here!"

yeah, like there is any amount of words that can match the way my eyes meet yours.
all of you.

i'm taking a chance.

last night, as part of a huge first step in the rest of the way an interaction will carry on throughout my entire life (christina romito), i cried remembering back to the first night i told all of you that i was leaving. the saddest night that i've ever had without romantic heartbreak was on valentine's day and just bawling because i told carissa that i'm leaving. it was probably one of the most genuine emotional releases i've ever been subjected to, because this wasn't something that was done to me, or some sort of rejection... this was the fear, and the acceptance of a change in the way of life. this was a realization of everything at once, and a denial of reality. this was the first breathe of growing up and getting out. i remembered the nerves of trying to tell rahul that i'm not going to be able to be a part of the endless cycle that we've created. telling brian that, yes, another one is leaving. telling kerry that there's no more 3-5am. telling mikey and kim that as they're waxing, i'm waning; i'll see their child grow up in phases in photos.

that whole emotion, so heavy, that, listen, when i'm gone, it's all just sporadic contact from here on in. maybe i'll be home. telling tina, someone who was once my best friend, my lover, my entire existence from time to time, that for these past three months while we've been reconstructing, and destroying a way of life, we've been wasting all of the time that we could've been logging building up a buffer that would make it okay to be far away from each other. the same way i've been doing with everyone else. making every second count.

instead, we hear about each other through various questions that we pretend not to want to ask, and through a photographic networking site, and through acquaintances who say, "hey, have you heard...?" fuck love, fuck new love, fuck old love... this girl is my fucking friend, and we work on any level we want to work on.

admission: i wish we never stopped talking, and that we had filters that would make us just end up leaving all of the baggage at the door back then, instead of waiting for the baggage to become boxed up in a glass cube that isn't feared any longer. just something that we could look in on at our own discretion. i wish i had at least march and april back. it might be too short of a time span to try to rebuild enough of a rapport to even keep in touch, dedicatedly, while i'm away.

c'est la vie.

nicole was probably the easiest to tell the saddest part too. we've done this before. we have miles under our belt that no one can even touch. 6 months of romance, a jersey farewell that i can't ever drive away from without looking in the rearview, and a few close calls of silences that were absolutely necessary. we've done this through tears, and screaming, and laughing, and sighing, and blabbering, and talking, and advising, and everything. i know no matter where we are, we will always be great. this time, it's just my address changing, and my location being transplanted. i love that she won't know where she might be in three to six months. because i know that i'll be finding out just as she will.

but those sad emotions all came rushing back to me and overshadowed all of the amazing emotions that i feel about a completely new place. the experience, the drive, a completely unattached life, the warmth, the world, the environment, the freshness, the new faces that i just won't recognize, the new streets, the shaking free any intentional or unintentional shackles that've held me down. this is what i need, and what i've been looking forward to. maybe not THIS city, but ANY city other than home. i love home. i love long island. i love here.

i am not a laser.
i am rays.

i'm not like anyone else that i know. i'm going to find out which parts of me stick and which parts of me will grow and which parts of me fall away and which parts of me blossom that i never knew i had. i'm going to find out everything.

this could be the best thing that's ever happened to me.
this could just be the beginning.
this could just be 'nice try.'

anathallo.

Yo are you serious? She says "let me hit that before I go out." A mixing and mingling of mind and matter. "I feel like a bunch of fucking hippies." Reliving a lifetime and an experience completely un our own. Tell me that it'll be good enough to not invent our own time period. Our own generation. Hippies set the bar, and we all reach it and fall down, reach it and fall, reach it and fuckin fall. Make new names for your lifetimes. a living legend of a hero that has never even been met yet. That works a job. That makes

Quote. "Oh, you graduated in 2005? I graduated in 2004. You a baby." I'm always the oldest of all the occupants.

"Can you stop climbing on me? I'm not a mountain."

Incubus - The Warmth
Jose playing sideways. Brandon singing. Not everyone here is that fucked up and cold.

Eyes open halfway and never had a chance. Can't see past tonight. Tomorrow might be work tomorrow might be selling or buying. Tomorrow could be another chance to waste a chance.

Thursday - Jet Black New Year.

I wrote her, she never wrote back and ill wait for her forever I think. Where is she right now. Either the worker or the drinker. The swimmer. The lover. The lover. The feeler. The thinker. The writer. The laugher. The lover. The misser. The memory. The disaster. The ever.

And ever.

A fight over who can smoke. And who stole who's joke. "My neighbors are old, but they hear really well." Pwned.

Only three left. Four now. Silence, and eating cookies. And wanting water. Outside and there's a hoodie I can grab and call someone and get in their damn way.

Matter of fact... Daves girlfriend... Her name is jen or something... She looks like Her mom. Kids are going to sleep or making out. What's happening here.

the things we pack away; the things we keep at home.

i have to start to realize, some day, that when people aren't hanging out, that doesn't mean they're not appreciating you. i forget this all the time. not so much FORGET, but overlook. because i know that it's fine.

i never realized that i throw things in people's faces as often as i do until tonight. my spot was blown up right before my eyes. instead of being covered in the aftermath, i sort've watched it explode and trickle down. i get it now.

the past few days, i just haven't felt like myself. especially at home. i find myself not even knowing what i want to do; what i want to hear, or watch, or experience. no clue who i want to hear from, or what i want to say. what questions i want to ask. what words i want to write. i'm usually so focused, and deliberate. it leaves me feeling really lost. i think about the fact that this is how some people lead their entire lives. jesus.

he's just trying to scratch the itch.

a tidy inparticular.

i didn't see anybody the whole ride home. the whole 3,000 miles of it, just about 7 exits. not one car, no taillights. it wasn't until i stopped at the bank that i jumped out to make a deposit of the tin cans i'd turned into robots that i left the door open to blast the techno out into open spaces. when i get back in i settle back into the reclinable but unreclined cockpit to unwind and readjust (but still not recline) and a man with brass knuckles and no degree knocks on my window. he tells me to drive, right after he calls me a mother fucker. unlocking the doors, i let him in on the other side, and i ask him why he didn't just take the car and fly solo. "i can't. i'm illiterate, he says." his knuckles mouth the words five times, and they all look like the c3p0 version of his dali-self. i dropped him off at the blood bath as three cars drove into dead churches in reverse.



my lover's antiquated. nigga, she don't even exist.

never mention my name to them.

weakly lived; weakly written.

the baby i'm holding, he's mine. i don't remember his name, because i never really chose a boy's name that i liked. it's no big deal. i see his face and it doesn't look like me, or his mother, who's nowhere in sight. i can't even picture her face. or her name. but this little guy here, he's all mine. i bring him in close to me and i'm holding him tight. it occurs to me that it's a baby, and maybe i shouldn't be holding him this close. i open my eyes, and his face is exactly the same as i left it. wide open, and smiling, and picture perfect.

my arms realize before my mind does, before my eyes do, this little boy, "my" little boy, is just a pillow.

with eyes closed, i hear a music box playing, repeating, a subtle techno loop again and again. i have to take my glasses off of my face, and i think i know that they're bent. i shove the box of wheat thins to the floor. matter of fact, i think to myself, i search for the dvd remote, and click the power off. fight club's looped menu has played enough times for my liking. it's eleven o'clock AM, and my light is still on. what's happening here is a result of the night before.
-
sunrise highway was never like this before. thin, and unassuming with a thirty mile an hour speed limit. i'm looking for grand avenue. someone show me grand avenue. days away is playing in no particular order from the ipod. i'm trying to fight the urge, the habit, to slide the tab on top to HOLD. i think that's the reason that the damn thing keeps freezing. i thought that before i left, all i'd have to do was read the directions once, and figure it out. it's a good thing that i brought the little slice of pad with me out there. 27 to grand to foxhurst to cheshire to anderson to essex to chelsea. 557. or 577. billy gets in and i realize there and at that point in time that me and billy have just about nothing in common. we both like some music sometimes. i think it ends there. i figure i'm adaptable. i figure things will be fine.

we drive the three or four blocks to truhn's house. from the front, it's covered in trees, and other kinds of overgrowth, and i'm thinking of things like messy houses, and clutter. walking into the front door, the kitchen seems fine. something nice here, a little novelty there, a box of poland spring on the table. you know. an everyhouse. but we're headed to the basement. where a bunch of people i've never met, and the singer from a band i sort've like are hanging out. could be high. could be bored. could be hanging out. could be watching a movie. when you try to paint the picture in your head, it's hard to start when you don't even know what colors, or what shapes to use.

slim, narrow stairs take us down to a barebones, paritally musically minded basement.

this continues when JEOPARDY! is over.
-
the wood walls are covered in old punk rock flyers. posters. advertisements. duct tape graffiti with names of people i'll never know. somewhere near the back of the room where the light from the bulbs don't stray is a collage of photos including faces like daryl palumbo, and chino moreno, both idols and celebrities in specific circles. there's a bed in the corner where you'd think someone might be able to sleep. an empty two liter bottle of sprite, a garbage pail full of tissues, and a pirate eye patch sits on the floor. for some reason, i'm thinking, "so, this is where they fuck."

i haven't thought like this in months.

the people in this room are charicatures. there's the guy with the long hair who knows everything about guitars, but nothing about the world. this guy, the last thing i remember him saying is, "it's the kind of film that leaves you feeling a little fucked up when you come away from it." like i've never heard that before. there's the guy with the goatee and the long hair who's been on the outskirts laughing the whole time. the dude with the hemp everything who's been playing guitar and laughing. then there's the three dudes sitting on folding chairs in the living area of this little habitat. paulie with his pea coat and nondescript initial cap. craig with the black jacket and goofy slackjaw smile. and specs with his nickname adorning his face, wearing a vaguely military jacket and a camo hat. these kids make you feel stupid just by saying nothing. i feel alienated by being someone. someone with an opinion and a bag and an identity. these kids, they blend in with deadheads; they stand out at the mall.

time passes by and the kids are adjusting audio via an electric pedal. for the most part, it's connected to a guitar. for about seven minutes, we're all speaking through headphones, through the pedal, and we're saying the first thing we're thinking as someone fucks with dials, knobs, and buttons. we sound like the voice of the matrix v. 0.5. this is fine.

this carries on for a half hour or forty five minutes. i don't want to leave, but i don't want to be seen. for me, just observing what would happen without any virgin witnesses (aka me) would work. i want them to just be as they are without this new, this weird kid checking out everything they're about. the things they do on a daily basis. i want to see what real recreation is in a setting that i could never dream up is like. but instead, they all leave to play xbox 360. apparently, someone has brought over condemned.

after the room clears, kenny billy and i discuss a topic that doesn't matter, and then resolve to smoke a blunt. evan (someone who i don't know; someone who i couldn't even pick out of a crowd) definitely has more shit in his car, and that's the stuff we're going to use. when we get upstairs, i realize craig has been down there the whole time. in the kitchen, someone mentions that we can't find specs who has never been in this house before. in some living room, on some couch or bed, specs is passed out. the only way we deduct this is that's the only thing that makes sense. kenny gets evan and we head out to the car to smoke.

before anything goes down, we head to 7-11 to get a philly and a vitamin water, some starburst, and some other assorted garbage. while we wait in the car, kenny plays for us a cd that was made between 2004-2005 in brooklyn when that's where he called his home. much like the team sleep record, this album contains a lot of music that seems founded in hip hop but never boils down to simply a rap track. beat boxing, scratching, singing, and joking around are all to be found. i can't remember the name of the group, but it seemed too long to really matter. i wanted something else. either way, it was cool to see that it was actually done. but one thing's for sure, i'm sick of seeing white mcs rhyming with jokes and having absolutely nothing to say. it's a damn shame.

we drive back to kenny's house, and while we listen to the rest of the album and discuss the future of phase 9 from an angle i've never heard before (the angle that has always been made to seem like the wrong angle) i think about the last time i got high while i wasn't alone, in the back of nicole's car, with marissa between me and some kid who i can't remember with chris in the front seat trying to tell me about something which stemmed from a discussion about the sound of animals fighting. i remember driving to jones beach completely out of my mind worrying about who was driving, worrying about vomiting, and overanalyzing everytime i had to swallow a bit of saliva. it was nothing like smoking alone, and completely out of my zone. plus the fact that i was nervous. this was that girl. but i remember not really knowing what was going to happen this time, this next time that i was smoking again with people who i didn't know, people i wasn't invested in, people i had absolutely no connection with.

the blunt was so dank that it seemed to be dripping in our hands. i feel like i needed a towel to really control it. that first hit that leaves you coughing for no reason at all, and the mouth begging for that third or fourth hit, it's almost like there is absolutely no method, no logic to the mayhem. i want it to stop just as much as i want it to start. there's that threshold and that limbo between the THC in your lungs, and the time it hits your brain. the synapse between the cause and the effect.

just like the moment i picked up billy, it's exactly the same: i have nothing to say.
so i wait.

once i'm high, it feels like i'm listening to a conversation amongst roaches. clicking and slapping in the english language. i joke around that harrison ford is the subject of the movie con air, and that it stars val kilmer. no one takes this exactly as it was meant, and they laugh. this is my sign, my cue to hold back any and every joke i have from here on in. they throw on an old dirty bastard track that sounds genius, but i have no motivation to ask about. my whole head is wrapped around the idea of "fuck these kids." instead of departing mentally, i'm paying way too much attention to the fact that i'm thinking "fuck these kids." instead of thinking on an inner cycle on the inside, i'm thinking about what thinking on an inner cycle looks like on the outside. i start to get shaky, which is my way. i feel like i've pissed all over myself, all over my pants, all over the carseat, my socks, my shoes, the carfloor, the textbook, and billy, and i'm worrying and checking my pants and my ankles what feels like every thirty seconds, but what could be every five minutes. i want to get out of the car, and find a book to write in. but i don't want them to ask about it, so i sit still. i wait until someone else wants to get out and do something, anything else.

when we're finally out, someone is passing around skittles, and somehow, specs is there, and i'm staring into the middle of a conversation circle that i could care less about. i'm trying to split my concentration into three pieces, one to my left, one to my right, and one to my inside, but instead, the surface area is too large, and i think of absolutely nothing except for the fact that it's freezing, and i've pissed myself, and it feels like my dick has retracted into my body. i'm thinking to myself, goddamnit, i've lost my penis. my cock is gone.

i blink, and we're downstairs and craig is asking me to eat a candy which i think is called RIPS, and they're a combination of angels, and sour patch kids and twizzlers. whatever it is, my mouth is so dry that i can't swallow any piece of it, and i try to force peristalsis, but it feels like my teeth are stripping out of the gums, so i give up. i let the little flecks of rubber cement candy wreak havoc on my gag reflex. almost as submission, i ask kenny if there's a bathroom up in here. through hazy ears, this is his response:

"there's a piss pot right through there. there's no light and it smells like ass [background laughter] but it's there. piss on the floor, piss anywhere, just make sure you get it in the water. i don't care if you get it on the seat, either. just piss in the water."

pissing feels like i'm in That Bar from Trainspotting. what feels like minutes pour out of me onto everything except the water. judging by the fact that i have this much urine, there's no way that i've pissed myself. i didn't believe my senses that i was dry. i just couldn't. it's pitch black in this little hallway of a restroom, and i wish i had a way to just get out. i don't even know if they have a sink in there. or a mirror. i leave and sit back against the same pole that i was leaning against before i stepped away to maybe vomit, relocate my phallus, and to piss. billy is literally dancing while kenny is playing music on the guitar. i feel like this is some terrible knockoff gypsy parade. i've been had.

someone wants white castle, and craig and specs have never had it, so i know we're definitely going. me, ha, i'm thinking, bullshit, there's no way i'm driving. but i know, shit, i know they see my key, and if i don't volunteer to drive, they're getting that key one way or another. so i decide to check my voicemail. i know mark left something there earlier but never had to check it. i dial in and there's that woman (or that woman's voice) that i hear, and i start thinking about this. the voice, the woman, and the fact that she's holding my message. i'm waiting to hear the message, and i'm wondering when this bitch is going to turn into mark. i'm not sure how much time went by, but eventually, i started hearing options that i never knew existed on tmobile's voicemail. i press 1, and i knew that was what i had to do in the first place.

mark's message sounded like he was a forty seven year old british oaf talking directly through a loaf of bread into his phone which was submerged in a fish tank filled with earthworms. i had no idea what he said, or what he was implying, or how on earth he really expected me to help him out. i deleted the message.
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here, i just fell asleep. i woke up two hours later, and it was unplugged, and there were over twenty seven error messages on the screen. i'm wondering what the deal is with what happened. what could've made it popup. i was sleeping for chrissakes. i shut it down, plugged it in, moved a miller lite can to a dresser, and went to sleep.
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we end up at white castle and i get nothing. i sit down so damn far away from the line, because, to me, i think i'm just setting up the place where we're all going to sit and eat. in truth, to them, as witnesses, it probably seems to them that i am just continuing to be that weird kid with nothing to say, not contributing to their good times, and not rolling with their punches. to them, they see me as this kid who can't handle it. meanwhile i'm writing things in my head at a mile a minute that start with can i get a witness. things like i want to set my eyes on their sides, standing tall like funeral car rides. the brain cells that carry the rest of those are dead.

craig and specs are eating white castle for the first time, and thusly, ordered way too much food for their stomachs. i told them they'd probably be shitting a lot the next day. they said, "why didn't you tell me that before we ate it, man?" i do not know, man. i do not know. billy ordered crab legs. what the fuck.

we drove home listening to glassjaw which, like any other high encounter, made the music seem deeper. i actually understood it. i've yet to throw the album on again, but i'm sure when i do, i will have absolutely no recollection of what it sounded like at that moment.

me and billy went home once we reached kenny's house again. he "was beat" and wanted me to drive him home. i'm almost sure it was because he was embarassed from me not being very much of a presence all night.

honestly, i don't know how i got him home, but one thing's for sure, i got lost three times between a main road and billy's house. days away was playing quietly in the background, and i didn't want to turn it up at all. it'd throw me off way too much. i feel like the roads were silent, and empty for the entire ride home. i have no idea what time it was when i got into my room, but i know i didn't touch my computer, or even try to document any of what just happened.

this retelling is days later, and all of the details are hazy. hazy isn't even the word. everything is just conjecture. everything is sort've how i remember it, but with less life. that's why everything that i wrote tonight is weak, and undescriptive, and really not even average. this is just another story of another person getting high. but it's also a reminder to me that i don't have to go out of my way to be high or to have a good time. i wish i would've stayed in, and played Gun, or took another deep chunk out of Atlas Shrugged. i don't know what i'm doing.

for the entire next day, i was high. it was definitely some strong stuff. but that's that.

it's probably going to be solo from here.

satellite.

i'm at brian's house on his laptop. i'm checking out his little situation on here. it's definitely perfect for his needs. small size, light weight and completely portable. this is going to be his gateway to creativity. i'm glad i can say that i've used it. this is going to be a famous machine.

more later on my night in oceanside.

fuck the new age, baby, i'm ageless.

i want to make sure that my words get sewn like seeds across a field of personalities and when they get driven, follow, when they get harvested, holla, the ideas the concepts are ripe with finality.

i say that now.

the fear of having something to say.

i don't even want to get into this right now. i want to delete my delete key so i can't fix any mistakes that i make. i see the way these kids live their lives and fill them with nothing but the inner layer. there is no peripheral, no outside, no future. and that's just how their lives will carry on. they'll figure something out, and move on. they'll leave the (r)evolution for the next generation.

smell the leaves, tell me they won't hit nice.

tonight, it's not what she was wearing, it's what she wasn't wearing.
don't tell me these things. why do you tell me these things.

i feel my tongue rest on the top of my mouth. the roof of my mouth. salivate the rumor, salivate the memory. one drop at a time, salivate the muscle housings. penetrate and taste secrets. taste teeth. taste blood walls.

i thought about beautiful who shouldn't be a pretty girl to me.
then
i thought about a new beautiful who i never expected to think about.
then
i thought about beautiful who i just saw.

a cello plays deeply.


dawn is here

magic hour.

as the sky was lighting up, to crashing.
love it.

slide if you could ever remember me.

a vicodin deal went down tonight.
a profit of $100.

X: did they blockout goddamn?
Y: yeah, i think so.
X: yo, fuck christians. i'll beat the shit out of god.



i pick a playlist of music like i'll ever remember anything that plays.