Henry Miller's "Tropic of..." Twins.

i read both of the books, and can't say that i enjoyed one moreso than the other. they both end up reading very much like the books of the beat generation that i've begun to fall in love with, though the internal dialogues seem to be played up a bit more in these. there seems to be less of an explorer, yet more of an observer in miller's words. where you'll find kerouac excited to find his feet planted on new soil, miller seems to take on an element of acceptance of his surroundings, though he's not quite sure what to do with himself now that he's found himself there. it's hard to explain these books to anyone who hasn't read them, though they seem to be the predecessors of the BLOG writing style, sort of capturing moments as you've witnessed them, presenting a bit of internal narrative as opposed to giving a story that you can follow with characters and plot. these both have moved quickly to the top of a list of my favorite books. great reads, though a little rambling at times (on several occasions, paragraphs found themselves running on from 5 to 7 pages.) as always, these quotes are more or less for my own archiving/note taking purpose, but also to give you an idea of his writing style. sometimes, i've just underlined words amid other words, not for the meaning necessarily, but more for the way that those words work as alchemy.

TROPIC OF CAPRICORN

"once you have given up the ghost, everything follows with dead certainty, even in the midst of chaos."

"everybody around me was a failure, or if not a failure, ridiculous. especially the successful ones. the successful ones bored me to tears."

"people usually took me to be good, to be kind, generous, loyal, faithful. perhaps i did possess these virtues but if so it was because i was indifferent; i could afford to be good, kind, generous, loyal, and so forth, since i was free of envy. envy was the one thing i was never a victim of."

"the present was only a bridge, and on this bridge, they are still groaning."

"i was the evil product of an evil soil."

"it's a wonder things didn't explode around me."

"what strikes me now as the most wonderful proof of my fitness, or unfitness, for the times is the fact that nothing people were writing or talking about had any real interest for me. only the object haunted me, the separate, detached, insignificant thing. it might be a part of the human body or a staircase in a vaudeville house; it might be a smokestack or a button i had found in the gutter. whatever it was it enabled me to open up, to surrender, to attach my signature. to the life about me, to the people who made up the world i knew, i could not attach my signature. i was as definitely outside their world as a cannibal is outside the bounds of civilized society. i was filled with a perverse love of the thing in itself -- not a philosophic attachment, but a passionate, desperately passionate hunger, as if in this discarded worthless thing which everyone ignored there was contained the secret of my own regeneration."

"living in the midst of a world where there was a plethora of the new i attached myself to the old."

"whatever set the object apart, or made it unserviceable, or gave it a date, attracted and endeared it to me."

"soon i too would become like these objects which i venerated, a thing apart, a non-useful member of society."

"somehow i had managed to sever my connection with the world that human hands and human minds were creating."

"but the way of the world is more insidious than that. instead of being punished you are undermined, hollowed out, the ground taken from under your feet. it isn't even treachery, what i have in mind. treachery is understandable and combatable. no, it is something worse, something less than treachery. it's a negativism that causes you to overreach yourself. you are perpetually spending your energy in the act of balancing yourself. you are seized with a sort of spiritual vertigo, you totter on the brink, your hair stands on end, you can't believe that beneath your feet lies an immeasurable abyss. it comes about through excess of enthusiasm, through a passionate desire to embrace people, to show them your love. the more you reach out toward the world the more the world retreats. nobody wants real love, real hatred. nobody wants you to put your hand in his sacred entrails -- that's only for the priest in the hour of sacrifice. while you live, while the blood's still warm, you are to pretend that there is no such things as blood and no such thing as a skeleton beneath the covering of flesh. keep off the grass! that's the motto by which people live."

"you will never die again but only pass away like the phenomena about you."

"to sleep listening, to dream listening."

"i wanted a metamorphosis, a chance to fish, to leviathan, to destroyer."

"i wanted to feel the blood running back into my veins, even at the cost of annihilation."

"durable as the atom, heartless as the earth itself."

"the dream of men before the flood."

"there is no solution for a man like myself, i being what i am, and the world being what it is."

"the spark that unsparks, the soft purr of the perfect mechanism."

"i am going to die as a city in order to become again a man. therefore i close my ears, my eyes, my mouth."

"confusion is a word we have invented for an order which is not understood."

"above us the gas tanks, and below the marine life."

"why do the skeletons dance so ecstatically, i wonder. is it the fall of the world?"

"seemed possessed of a weight unnaturally. she had a more than human gravity, the gravity, one might almost say, of a warm corpse."

"between the time she took off and the time she returned i lived the life of a full blooded schizerino. it was not an eternity which elapsed because somehow eternity has to do with peace and with victory, it is something man made, something earned: no, i experienced an entr'acte in which every hair turns white to the roots, in which every millimeter of skin itches and burns until the whole body becomes a running sore. i see myself sitting before a table in the dark, my hands and feet growing enormous, as though elephantitis were overtaking me at a gallop. i hear the blood rushing up to the brain and pounding at the eardrums like himalayan devils with sledge-hammers; i hear her flapping her huge wings, even in irkutsk, and i know she is pushing on and on, ever further away, ever further beyond reach. it is so quiet in the room and so frightfully empty that i shriek and howl just to make a little noise, a little human sound. i try to lift myself from the table but my feet are too heavy and my hands have become like shapeless feet of the rhinoceros. the heavier my body becomes the lighter the atmosphere of the room; i am going to spread and spread until i fill the room with one solid mass of stiff jelly. i shall fill up even the cracks in the wall; i shall grow through the wall like a parasitic plant, spreading and spreading until the whole house is an indescribable mass of flesh and hair and nails. i know that this is death, but i am powerless to kill the knowledge of it, or the consciousness persists, and, as the inert carcass expands, this flicker of life becomes sharper and sharper and gleams inside me like the cold fire of a gem. it lights up the whole gluey mass of pulp so that i am like a diver with a torch in the body of a dead marine monster. by some slender hidden filament i am still connected with the life above the surface of the deep, but it is so far away, the upper world, and the weight of the corpse so great that, even if it were possible, it would take years to reach the surface. i move around in my own dead body, exploring every nook and cranny of its huge, shapeless mass. it is an endless exploration, for with the ceaseless growth the whole topography changes, slipping and drifting like the hot magma of the earth. never for a minute is there terra firma, never for a minute does anything remain still and recognizable: it is a growth without landmarks, a voyage in which the destination changes with every least move or shudder. it is this interminable filling of space which kills all sense of space or time; the more the body expands the tinier becomes the world, until at least i feel that everything is concentrated on the head of a pin. despite the floundering of this enormous dead mass which i have become, i feel that what sustains it, the world out of which it grows, is no bigger than a pinhead. in the midst of pollution, in the very heart and gizzard of death, as it were, i sense the seed, the miraculous infinitesimal lever which balances the world. i have overspread the world like a syrup and the emptiness of it is terrifying but there is no dislodging the seed; the seed has become a little knot of cold fire which roars like a sun in the vast hollow of the dead carcass."

"sunday came like a thaw."

"in the shape and weight of skulls."

"an age with less instruments and stronger antennae... a different kind of suffering has to be experienced before such music can be appreciated."

"despite the outward appearance of coma."

"death is the automaton which rules the world of activity. death is silent, because it has no mouth. death has never expressed anything."

"each page must explode, either with the profoundly serious and heavy, the whirlwind, dizziness, the new, the eternal, with the overwhelming hoax, with an enthusiasm for principles or with the mode of typography."

"i had a marvelous sexual dream that ended with the guillotine."

"i remember the first time we were separated this idea of totality seized me by the hair. she pretended, when she left me, or maybe she believed it herself, that it was necessary for our welfare. i knew in my heart that she was trying to be free of me, but i was too cowardly to admit it to myself. but when i realized that she could do without me, even for a limited time, the truth which i had tried to shut out began to grow with alarming rapidity. it was more painful than anything i had ever experienced before, but it was also healing. when i was completely emptied, when the loneliness had reached such a point that it could not be sharpened any further, i suddenly felt that, to go on living, this intolerable truth had to be incorporated into something greater than the frame of personal misfortune. i felt that i had made an imperceptible switch into another realm, a realm of tougher, more elastic fiber, which the most horrible truth was powerless to destroy. i sat down to write her a letter telling her that i was so miserable over the through of losing her that i had decided to begin a book about her, a book which would immortalize her. it would be a book, i said, such as no one had ever seen before. i rambled on ecstatically, and in the midst of it i suddenly broke off to ask myself why i was so happy."

"i realized that the book i was planning was nothing more than a tomb in which to bury her--and the me which had belonged to her."

"...this atomic eternity..."

"the very sight of these papers, of the strange languages in which they were printed, was sufficient to dislocate me for the day."

"her talk is as formless as dream."

"i have the feeling of being drowned in a deep mesh of words."

"two hemispheres, two skies, two sets of everything."

"tack your womb up on my wall, so that i may remember you. we must get going. tomorrow, tomorrow...."


TROPIC OF CANCER

"my thoughts are spreading. the music is slipping away from me, now that the drums have ceased."

"sleep is the keynote. no one is listening any more."

"the grief from his breath."

"if i am a hyena, i am a lean and hungry one; i go forth to fatten myself."

"in the midst of his reveries he suddenly arrests himself, and grabbing my arm excitedly, he points to a whale of a woman who is just lowering herself into a seat. 'there's my danish cunt,' he grunts. 'see that ass? danish. how that woman loves it! she just begs me for it. come over here... look at her now, from the side! look at that ass, will you? it's enormous. i tell you, when she climbs over me i can hardly get my arms around it. it blots out the whole world. she makes me feel like a little bug crawling inside her. i don't know why i fall for her--i suppose it's that ass. it's so incongruous like. and the creases in it! you can't forget an ass like that. it's a fact... a solid fact. the others, they may bore you, or they may give you a moment's illusion, but this one--with her ass!--zowie, you can't obliterate her... it's like going to bed with a monument on top of you."

"it takes it out of you, that fucking job! i want to write my life, my thoughts. i want to get the dirt out of my belly."

"it's a pretentious place with one of those huge empty lobbies in which englishwomen sit for hours with a blank look."

"a huge mirror covered with green gauze and tipped at an angle of 45 degrees hangs directly opposite the entrance over a baby carriage which is filled with books."

" 'you think i like myself... that shows how little you know about me.' "

"and the more he reads, the more disdainful he becomes. none of them are satisfying; none of them arrive at that degree of perfection which he has imposed on himself. and forgetting completely that he has not written as much as a chapter he talks about them condescendingly, quite as though there existed a shelf of books bearing his name, books which everyone is familiar with and the titles of which it is therefore superfluous to mention."

"the day is sneaking in like a leper."

"the alchemy of sound and sense."

"no searching for formulae, no crucifixion of ideas, no compulsion other than to create."

"the wheel is falling apart, but the revolution is intact..."

"now and then, it's true, i did think of mona, not as of a person in a definite aura of time and space, but separately, detached, as though she had blown up into a great cloudlike form that blotted out the past. i couldn't allow myself to think about her very long; if i had i would have jumped off the bridge. it's strange. i had become so reconciled to this life without her, and yet if i thought about her only for a minute it was enough to pierce the bone and marrow of my contentment and shove me back again into the agonizing gutter of my wretched past. ...when i realize that she is gone, perhaps gone forever, a great void opens up and i feel that i am falling, falling, falling into deep, black space. and this is worse than tears, deeper than regret or pain or sorrow; there is no climbing back, no ray of light, no sound of human voice or human touch of hand."

"since then of course, i have learned what every madman in paris discovers sooner or later; that there are no ready-made infernos for the tormented."

"the language apocalyptic."

"that day a woman addressed her puppy in the apocalyptic language of the slaughterhouse, and the little bitch, she understood what this greasy slut of a midwife was saying. how that depressed me!"

"wherever there are walls, there are posters with bright venomous crabs heralding the approach of cancer."

"it has eaten into our souls and we are nothing but a dead thing like the moon."

"it's a name you give to an abstract idea..."

"how the hell can you climb over a woman when her mother's dying downstairs, perhaps right beneath you?"

"a climate that eats into your soul."

"[about whitman]: there is no equivalent in the languages of europe for the spirit which he immortalized. europe is saturated with art and her soil is full of dead bones and her museums are bursting with plundered treasures, but what europe has never had is a free, healthy spirit, what you might call a MAN."

"windmills overlooked by cervantes."

"gold is a night word belonging to the cthonian mind:it has dream in it and mythos."

"the dream slides into artifice."

"an arabian zero rather, the sign from which spring endless mathematical worlds, the fulcrum which balances the stars and the light dreams and the machines lighter than air and the lightweight limbs and the explosives that produced them. "

"dear, crazy, metallurgical eyes."

"the story of art whose roots lie in massacre."

"if now and then we encounter pages that explode, pages that wound and sear, that wring groans and tears and curses, know that they come from a man with his back up, a man whose only defenses left are his words and his words are always stronger than the lying, crushing weight of the world, stronger than all the racks and wheels which the cowardly invent to crush out the miracle of personality."

"she used to say to me, mona, in her fits of exaltation, 'you're a great human being,' and though she left me here to perish, though she put beneath my feet a great howling pit of emptiness, the words that lie at the bottom of my soul leap forth and they light the shadows below me."

"i believe that today more than ever a book should be sought after even it has only one great page in it: we must search for fragments , splinters, toenails, anything that has ore in it, anything that is capable of resuscitating the body and soul."

"yes, i said to myself, i too love everything that flows: rivers, sewers, lava, semen, blood, bile, words, sentences."

"the thought of such absolute privacy is enough to drive me mad. it's like a clean birth. everything cut away. separate, naked, alone. bliss and agony simultaneously. time on your hands. each second weighing on you like a mountain. you drown in it. deserts, seas, lakes, oceans. nothingness. the world. the me and the not-me. everything has to have a name. everything has to be learned, tested, experienced."

"he didn't seem exactly nuts to me -- just caved-in ilke. typical anglo-saxon crisis. an eruption of morals."

11:42.

plus sign oh no where an exclamation point would be

i see you everywhere. Even when i see you evil, I share things. With you the evil point across blue tacks and red tacks. I told one would be other hands in other hands. She sees it but doesn't speak it loud, some sunrise prior hollers in word form or music form. I trust this. She would never say in, so I'll have to know it. In the eyes she'll speak it in parting glances. Could've had you in less facts.

Could have made you love.

Thinking of all wandering of the mindhands,
thinking of all living in the undercircumstance:
it's you who are where we should be,
INDIVIDUALS,
it's you who are what we are.

It is so cold.

Things are better but they are not better. Appear better I should say, but I feel the same. Doesn't matter what she says in eyes in action or in voice, matters what I feel in life, in heart, in overgrown. What I'm thinking is waiting out what's happening here. She wants things comfortable with that job here (aqui) with that intermittent long-distance there, with that hot rod travelcase. Me, I want that longtime freedom, that silent four-wall breathroom, that sadmusic sadsong sadliving sadthinking ohbaby I miss you you are what I thought I could be! love affair. Ah but she stopped it without my chance to make it obvious. Ah I lost it without my chance to dip apart.

Zig when I
should have
zagged.

Population count ticking down in a timescale. Living through big experience, I'm not ready for what it would be for our arrival. Silence among arms and mouthwordkiss. I have nothing to say to you that is not friction, and I don't care if I feel nothing. I'd say wait for me, but I've already said wait for me. I didn't wait. I let that come and go. I'll have to start from bottom up, from grasp and go, from got me don't got me.

I lied to you,
and it was convenient.
I've showed you us in little becomings,
and i never meant it to be what it is now (ahora).

You come and leave and come and leave.
We touch for touching sake.
[removed]
But I doubt that it's you.

It's always you.
Old age, new age.

And there's a proximity love, a fire i can't ignore to the touch and to the hold; to the hear and to the say. it's from some source I never saw until I saw in her love and element, from some source I never saw until her origin. I'd tell her but it's an unsure thing and I've got no cure for the cowardly. I find her in mindplay, and I plan to make me know her more. Words she loves sounds she loves. And also. More for what she hates.
-

"Yesss, spanish soap operas are amazing for what I love to do. Find the right crew, ripe for dialogue. Free movie production. If u know nothing u say anything."

posit.

wandergone.

She was there!
In the mirror, I loved her, behind me arm over my right shoulder. She was my bride the one I could feel in the summer life, the one through storms and quiet conversations. I loved her and she left.

I don't know where they are and they were my life. No sight and little sound, we live the life as they do in France, small and unknown ones but not far far from celebrity.
Sent via BlackBerry from T-Mobile

this! this epiphone!

Let's give it a go.

I've disappointed everyoe I've loved. No way don't stop me. Robot voices and not reall. I say what's written in books. You don't even know. It's too cold to feel all that we want to feel, distracted by nothing other than the body shaking. She wants to feel but doesn't feel, she wants to sing and sing and sing and sing.

HE DIGS AND DIGS AND DIGS.

There are friends of mine that still turn up Lil Wayne.

This is what I'm saying!
I'd live with you if it weren't for living!

There's no way to leave fast enough so I separate myself faster than actually possible. Where those thay speak 631 shout 631 I shout PORTUGAL AND FRANCE AND ENGLAND. -- by ship

they say bring a lot of weed because they know what I say is what I say AND I SAY IT LOUD!

There are no peers who know me and they see me as that kid. Some boy, some weirdo.

It's not so bad, it's not so bad.

I stay with her when she still hurts me
She still hurts me!

I need to be alone but she fit herself in the cracls, in the small places of my ego/self esteem/my life. She wants to stay going forward. Ohhh no.

Ohh no.

I'm still hurting.
It's that bad, it's that bad.

I'm lying to me.






What do I have to do?

ombrigo.

I have lost the appreciation for life and living. No particular distaste for it. I'm glad I exist, though that's all I've been making my days up of. The kind of thing we grow old to the sound of:

"
You know, same old.
Work, home, eat, sleep, repeat.
"

Since when?

I blame it almost entirely on the lack of music and alcohol, though alcohol plays much less of a role. It's the enhancement of different memories and the recall thereof that it really affects. Some writing, little finger singing.

[sweet, the driver lights her cigarette first with the console flame]

I'm not being stopped or held back by anything. Even by credit debt, or a lack of cash, or anything financial. I think it's that I have no idea where to go from here. Is it that I have no oath now? Just going to grow static on this gamestop paycheck? Really get invested in it? Dug in? No more Arizona, no more sunsets against clay? No more filling in the check boxes? I did lose that list, and I've forgotten most of it.

I think of downing bags of pills, each white and smooth like plastic furniture. They highlight all the senses and stimulate a new mechanical organ inside, puffing out the dust of atrophy. Breathing in a blue gray smoke elevating from some burning stick to mute out the entropy. Shoved syringes to the hilt full of the brown and the clear to rearrange the eyereception earreception. There would be no terror no loss of control no bending or electron pivot shaking. Just a lusting for vocabulary and words, a refresher for what's not to come and what's to be dead and what's to be born. Some calling no longer distant to what's been put to rest for years. Going everywhere again. Starting where it doesn't count, ending where no one cares.

I hate to say that I am a weird kid, an odd person or that sort of thing. But I do trace back a great deal of the lack of former luminescence to working with an all male staff, male to the degree of being vacant of any vibrancy or color outside of drinking stories the color of green glass, or bright red stories of women, lust, and the positions beyond positions and positing they find themselves in. Then, as always, the video games and the time they've spent with them. There is no one thirsty, hungry or pained like me. There is no one seeking, searching, or wandering like me. There are young men patient and comfortable. Existing with no need for improvement.

-

Facing the snow in manhattan, just for forty five seconds or so. Felt the need for it. Some odd craving to live. Reminded me of where she is where she could be and less importantly where she has been. I don't guess, or assume. I'm not sure if it's better or worse that I know she's out there.

Send me letters, impartial or complete.
Page, line, or word.

-

laughing hysterically, hard and genuine, I say, "yeah man, I'm really hitting bottom."

Jeff tells me to listen to Colors.

every little button.

MIDLINE
between
i don't think you understand!

[what i'm saying here]

a&nd
it just does not matter anymore.
i heard you [just fine].



time passes.

darker, as my love.

i wish my dad would write some book or journal about all of the grumblings he brings to the dinner table when he chooses to squash what it is we might be describing as things we enjoy or love. at least then it would have some value, and would be instantly relevant as soon as the reader opened the book instead of being the Monty Python 'God's Foot' that hurtles two dimensionally on our unsuspecting world. we're rarely met with screams or roars, just doused with negativity gas and ignited.

topics might include:
the Baltimore Ravens
any and all American presidents that are not JFK
Jim Carrey
the NHL not-Rangers
dogs
Mother & Brother


it wouldn't have to be a long book. even a page essay on each would do. there would be more topics as welll, though many chapters would be born in others. it might read like a manifesto.

if you needed it told to you:

Star Wars: Retold (by someone who hasn't seen it) from Joe Nicolosi on Vimeo.

waiting, walking, talking, ticking.

once i leave in a few minutes it's a one way road to do or don't. what'll more than likely happen is nothing. i couldn't even fire a stranger.

january, 2009.
most dense 11 days.

intersay.

i have so much going on behind the gory synth tonight.

1.
i ruined everything for absolutely nothing. i don't linger on it until i feel something about it. only then it's misery, and only then it's the only thing that matters at all. i don't think anyone really believes me when i say what i say about it. but it's true. she is. here's to futurewoe.

2.
so, what do i say when this whole ordeal is going on and how long do i wait until the scenario is faced head on. little time to breath it out or unpack and resettle. some ice ages would never end, given time. ohh it's not working out so well, is it. goddamn you, goddamn it, i want to know and i'll never know. am i wrong to bring it up? something needs to change, else there's no closure.

3.
where am i going to be living and who is it going to be with? so many / too many options.

4.
okay. if things end up going nowhere in the event that she comes home and we work this whole situation out and come to terms on everything and things are admitted and changed and amended to the point where if they went forward on a daily basis the way things should go in any healthy and appropriate relationship, how do i then eliminate the urges and desires to keep this activity in check? i think the best way to ask this (and then, more than likely, to answer this) is how does one cure a jealousy issue? my first response would be to say that you absolutely don't. it's something spoiled, an airtight fixture breached and its vacuum rendered irrelevant.

big tough guy, "emotional juggernaut".
i know i probably shouldn't drive tonight.
they're all out of town, anyway.

--

outside of all of these questions that i tried to filter out as i was floating around on the internet, i happened to find a handful of new bands that i currently believe, somehwere in the next two years, i will be telling you, "no, i don't think you understand" as i've been known to say when i love a band more than i can accurately describe to the best of my ability and you aren't having your eyes roll into the back of your head when you first hear it, looking at me as if you've had something largely important revealed to you.

thick paint, more texture than color.

so much
so
so
much
is happening right now, and is about to happen (or not happen) and it's not that i don't know what to do, because i do. at least, i know what i would matter-of-factly tell myself to do. it was such an easy thing to do,

to just wait

.

i think the next week (or month) will probably determine a few things, like how i allow myself to feel about myself, where i will be living and how, a certain level of self respect, and the ways that i continue to or no longer feel guilty about feeling.

it IS!
it's a crossroads!
been hearing about these for years, been plowing through them for years.
could be i have to not let it be this time.
the last three days or so have been spent surrounded by friends and me revealing facts that i've hid from them.

a sort of clarity and solitude is going to be lifted.
this is not a drill.

full well.

thinking about dying in a black hole?
the brochure.

my dad gave me his copy of tropic of cancer and i started reading that one instead of the copy that i'd bought and had been going through. a little bit of it has to do with the fact that it has a vintage feel to it, and seems to sound more the way it should without being aged and feeling a little classic, a little bit of it has to do with the dramatic level of credibility that i will no doubt gain amidst the microcentric circles of book clubs and esteemed undiscovered writers i surround myself with... uhhhhhhh but yeah the REAL reason is because i'm sort of hoping that i end up finding something that HE highlighted, or underlined or noted on in the margin. that's the kind of thing that i love to discover, even by accident. library books can be GOLDMINES for this sort of thing. someone thought that this was important or vital or interesting or noteworthy. go through books i've read and you'll find marks everywhere. in ways, i think it might mess with the real sense of things a little bit. it makes you read falsely ahead a bit, just out of distraction, stealing away any real chance you get to enjoy that line making its own footprint on you as it would without any sort of push in the right direction. i'm not very far into the book, but i've yet to see any pen hitting paper. waiting patiently.

ricky bailey called me today, and while i did fully intend to call him back, my phone died and i had his number on the phone and now it's way too late to call. but i'm going to give him a call tomorrow and work something out to hang with him, and make that happen, and hopefully make good on the only new year's revolution i've made thus far, and that is to not let trivial things (or NO things) come between me and people inviting me out to do things. i think i talked about it in the previous post.
-
i don't know why i didn't post this yesterday. it was written sunday night.

it's odd the sort of hatred that i get when i read the wrong sort of thing. i'm sure i never had this before late last year (or i could just say a few months ago). murderous emotions, the kind to tear apart a person or choke someone down to the ground with one hand, letting blood rush to my face, getting all light headed and heavy with rage. i need to know someone's not testing me. i have trouble trusting anyone anymore or relying on anyone anymore, and i think this could be some reflection of myself in ways, but also a result of everything that i've seen this past year, both affecting myself and not affecting myself. things i've done and things that have happened to me. the points, i guess they equal out, though it still doesn't ease the impact of it all, or the reality of the kind of thing. i've tried and have found no direct relation to any one event. there's stress there, but only lacing some of the discourse. i don't know if it's that i've lost the reins on something that i've had under control for a long time, or if it's some new sort of beast or thirst that i have no idea how to quell. i guess i'll learn with The Change.

my mind doesn't have its freeform anymore.
i can't relax enough to let it go where it goes.
thinking back to the summer of 2007, i remember coming home on a daily or nightly basis, ready to listen to the same music again and again and allowing it to figure me out and weaving little things with it. long or short, sensical or not. they came from different places that had once been tied up. i, uh, i don't have that anymore. or i don't have the time or opportunity to revisit it.

i don't listen much anymore, and that has a lot to do with it.

to follow up:
i didn't call ricky back today.
though i did get daryl a copy of the cd.
and still no notes from dad in the book before he was dad.

--

http://jamesjean.com/ --> sketch --> 2008 mole a/b

ali, adios.

i don't know how long i have chosen to play this card or how long i will continue to play this card, though i am resolving in 2009 to make the solo night at home alone the very last solution. granted, it wasn't until 6:30 or 7:00 tonight that i realized that i didn't have to be here alone, but at that point, i'd already purchased my mini marathon, and was ready to indulge in a night alone. that, of course, is when the messages come. the answers to the questions asked days, and even weeks ago. i don't know when i started this, or why, but i think it must be years. with some longer than others. and while there is a definite option at this point to leave and make this the beginning of a sealing issue. unless there's something significant going on, or something i find myself doing that's more enthralling than anything else might be, i should more than likely accept and embrace the invites of other people to go out and be a part of their lives as much as i want to be a part of their lives. i really don't know what's wrong with me.

i've done it with most [if not all] of my best friends.
not just acquaintances.
and it's embarassing.

it's like getting over anything else. an addiction, or a habit. a way home. a relationship. it's going to take time, and i'm going to hate it at first, and i'm going to need help. but it's for the best. and even if it's better eighty percent of the time, it's still progress. and it should be easier come february, because i'll be entirely alone with no easy out here for the first time in a few months. and while most of the time, it's been me being alone that i've done it, another person here has been an extremely potent excuse. and that'll be done soon.

let's go.
happy new year.

a piano actor: who they get when they need him.

i thought about last year and this time of year, and things are different but i feel like it was yesterday. not in the gap of time way of speaking, in that it seems like i just lived a day, and here we are. more like nothing has changed all so much. everyone's scattered about and in some new sort of mode or stasis. but it's all the same. outside looking in.

i could be poor again before we know it. maybe i'll work it out. i've got my eyes peeled for some new kind of opportunity. nothing active. but things happen.

thought about how i have no goals, just desires.

-
this is already turning out different than i anticipated.
what i wanted to start with was:
"it's odd how my fingers missed the keys. i never knew it until they hit them."

it seems the devil's got a grip on me.

aloe.

more style and less put together.
more collarbone and clavicle.
more the ready to run, so i've learned.
oh, you don't want to be there. it's your love and fire, but not your steady stream,

and i'm still looking, too.

i saw him the other day and how he's not good enough for you. i wanted to make sure he said the right things to you, and never took you for granted, and could never see the end of you, that big unwinding. i don't think i approve of how he does and does not look at you. but i don't know what's best.

i lied to you one too many times.
i should have told her, "why, yes i do."

some storm happened and you weren't there.

shaking, i suppose.

some story of color,
a streetlamp orange green still ocean [no wave].
presence on the floor, had shoes tied.

"i'd take you anywhere, we've suffered enough."

and would you believe it? they cut us short! just where we ended they told us this is where you're going and this is where you're anyone. no, i don't know anyone here. so you moved on out of here. i'll have your bags packed when i'm ready, keeping all that doesn't remind me of you, and fits the most convenient dreams of you. o', teeth and toe.

you have some load of blankets,
shut out to the world.

1. CBC 2. Blood Chemistry; on like that.

what i did today was make copies and mail out said copies of a summer's worth of dreams. standing in front of the copy machine with phone in hand, i went down a list and tried to figure out who would want to read it, and who would read it because they knew me. i went with the people who would read it if they came across it and will build from there. inside are some of the funniest things i've read written in one liners all by accident, manifested entirely while sleeping. i just happened to record them. i take no credit.

so, what i will say at the moment is that i will, eventually, tell the whole story of what i've referred to in the last update. i do hate alluding to things, and being vague about them, but this is the sort of thing that had to be talked about. i was there. once i know the full in and full out i'll get it all down. most of it never seems real when i think about it. i've already started to write it out. and some of it is pathetic, and some of it is typical, but some of it is the kind of thing you cock your head at.

And...
1. Tranquilization
2. Sedation
3. Restraint
, or so they kept saying.

calamity.

last night everything got just a little bit crazier than the tuesday before last. i can't process what is or what isn't. i assume, going forward, that day by day will have to do.

i'm back online via a new computer.
photos hope to be born soon.

i finished transcribing my dreams from this past summer. it's about 18 pages (i think) and will be printed on tuesday. copies go out then, as well.

i'm glad to be back.

we think aout our

symptomatic.

Hm.

Me: "yo, you saw that george wallace is the new mr. Vegas?"
Him: "yeah, I think it's cause someone's dead."

Indeed, vegas has some of its best and worst moments. I've had a few odd run-ins, mostly because

Oh I stopped typing for a couple of hours so I forgot what I was trying to say. I apologize.

to become this less often.

.
pretty soon, i'm going to hurt until it stops
.

Violins.

I saw her only that once but I wanted to see her again. I thought a little about her, only once as well. Just how she looked and how I imagined her to be. Couldn't have been older than 19. It wasn't that. She could have been 30 or 300 it wouldn't have meant a thing. Her hair was too dark to be natural, some kind of crazy black which could have looked so dark only because of the severity of her pale skin. It seems like a canvas to me now. Blue eyes i think, or green, or grey. Something that made her entire eye stand out against her impossible dark hair, as it dangled, covering half of her face.

I don't think she smiled.
She was with a friend.

Her knees were extremely knuckular. They looked way too gnarled and swollen to be on this person I hadn't met yet. It was definitely her first time here. And why don't I just go over to her and ask her a question, or humanize myself.

I was talking to Jeff, hardly a friend in the way that you traditionally think of a friend. Just a person that's come in enough that you feel relief that they've come in as opposed to a stranger, because you can follow up on old conversations. He was looking too, but we were both casual about it. It's hard with a friend-non-friend to non-overaggressively illustrate attraction and/or interest to a female or male in or outside the nearby area. So we said nothing to each other. Kept talking shop. I was genuinely interested, in one portion of my conscious brain, about what he was talking about (which I later followed up on and did get actually excited about), but some other fraction of my attention center was modulating and spinning around her, the bichromatic girl of silence with the bogus knees.

When she left, I tried to wll her back. Not in some active way, with magick or telepathy or reverse psychology but with deep internal thought and hope.

Although she did come back, I'm not a believer in some deep seeded undercurrent of the mind in which we are all recipients of mental callings from odd creepy strangers that saw us in their place of business weeks before they saw us. No, I assume she just lived in the area and was filling out applications everywhere in her proximity. So I see this application sitting on a desk in the back office and her name is her name and suddenly she's more than this girl who could only be described as physical features and who I thought she was.

Who did I think she was? Well. Probably a really shy but confident young lady who'd never been told that her art was incredible because it was just too abstract for the average male or female of her age outside of her demographic to fully grasp. And she had never seen anything outside of the surrounding two hour radius so she was anxious to get out, but never had anyone share that dream who would actually do it. And she loved to text.

But as I'm looking at this application, I'm thinking there is no other way to handle this situation than to move forward with it. So I called her cell phone and hung up when it asked me to leave a voice mail. And when she called back in 3 hours, I said I'd try to find out about setting up an interview.

She said that the next day she'd be busy and she'd definitely be okay to come back on Monday at 1030. That's fine, but my last day was two days prior to that, and oh well and oh no. She'll never be human now.

(you must be powerful;
for you have a more human face,
sad as the universe;
I abhor you with all my being;
and i would rather,
from the beginning of the centuries,
have had a serpent coiled around
my neck than look on your eyes.)

one clip.

Not getting enough sleep has always had the same effect on me. The distinct feeling that I am always forgetting something, or not retaining knowledge. Writing memoirs on some seismic etch-a-sketch. things going away, more things coming in. Some slide show.

Unrelated: I'm not sure if I'm just sad, or starting to give up.

Go-Getter.

I think while tearing through a taped box, I felt a vein or blood vessel erupt. It wasn't painful, but internally wet. Something thin and skin-soluble slowly gave way. Warm gave way to warmer. Some small flood engulfed by body.

But I'm almost positive this would have left a mark. I'm probably just elaborating.
-
I finished reading a few books this week, since down time has been at a pretty soaring high while babysitting the store (see <a href="http://www.flickr.com/iamnoimpact">my flickr</a>).

Spook by Mary Roach was great. It was essentially 'science tackles the afterlife,' as stated in the subtitle, though it did have quite a bit more history than experiment. Or, history of experiments. Either way. I expected (my first mistake) more modern interface with the way the afterlife was perceived, but as it was it held up very well. The author did do a good amount of hands on stuyff, but most of the meat of the text was in going over how it was relevant that she carry out what it was she was carrying out as well as a pretty good recounting of the people and inventions that others had used to question the existence of a soul and to prove its presence. I emailed the author and she emailed back which is great as well. I never fully expect to hear back from the people I send words to, so when I do, it's always very exciting. My initial goal, at all times when sending "I-checked-out-yo'-stuff" correspondence is simply to let one human know that another human is listening. Crucial.

The Drunkard's Walk was a book that was meant to explore randomness and how it affected our daily lives. It completed its task. However, without any level of conversationalism or much human element. In an e-mail to carissa, I explained, "I thought I was on a train to humanity town, but ended up in robot city." This was a book which proved itself via probabiliy, statistics, and mathematical history. I should have expected as much from a man who had worked with Stephen Hawking on a book (A Briefer History of Time). It was enjoyable, but more like reading a text book or an essay than a standard read. While unexpected, still good. I actually used the phrase, 'all things eventually deviate towards the mean' yesterday to a customer. Zero social skills.

Today, I actually cracked, and finished Coma by Alex Garland as well. It was fine. A little amateurish, in that I think I could do better but maybe not. I'm not very good at gauging my own skill outside of my own perspective. I might have delusions of grandeur for all I know. But it was a quick read, and had some good imagery towards the end, though the ending itself was wet hot garbage. And come to think of it, too, the actual events of the story were kind of floppy too. I'm a bit of a fan of Alex Garland, but mostly in the way that I'm a fan of The Mars Volta. One of the things that they've put together really showed me this vast, limitless amount of potential, and while their subsequent works haven't floored me and haven't even entertained me as a whole, there are passages and tracks that have given me glimpses of the strength of their past work as well as promise for that taste which I grew fond of coming back at some point in time.
-
I'm currently working on this premise; trying to prove it:

If I can not send images via email then I can not send images to flickr
AS OPPOSED TO/RATHER THAN
If I can not send images to flickr then I can not send images via email.
-
Mike Knoll came in yesterday and got me thinking about checking out a couple of bands. Ride and Mogwai (specifically, their second album). I'll try that.
-

Tornado invocate.

Show merit for the pathogenesis.

stud lise lise? shari earthmen.
stereo incisive incisive reflexive lise.
zen portraiture:reflexive hemingway.
part zodiac.

6179.

At first, it was because there was no internet connection to be had, but I thought I'd make due, and head to a starbucks or wireless hotspot from time to time and unspool that which had been spooled. Read. Keep tabs.

It turned out that this whole internet thing was very much a habit of convenience for me. The fact that it was there at the end or beginning of a day made it the reason I went to it, though it's apparently not so much a hunt or a chase of it that I'm finding worthwhile. Kind of upsetting, in a sense. I get lost in thinking what I used to actualy do online for the hours I'd spend there. I never would even attach myself to AIM. I guess a lot of wiki'ing and that sort of affair.

I have no laptop now. Hardware failure, etc., whatever. So this phone is it at this point. I set up mobile blogging to see if maybe this'd keep me connected. We'll see. I'd like it to.

Blog

Blog

FAR too comatose!

and how would they know?
far too gone, my face is their liver feeling.

grand theft auto iv is far too much like this addiction that won't stop a life that just won't stop these tasks that just won't stop.

m.

the saxophone sound. the drifting off needle in arm. won't she know me? it's words. ahhhghh, it's only words. you talk to it like it's something else. human! she/he human!

mod.

TO DAVE: ON LSD

a tweet:

awinedrowning: if you are blind and you take LSD... does anything happen?

my initial answer to this is you probably feel an extraordinary amount of different things, not just things you can SEE as we have come to know what SEEing is.

the blind SEE with their skin, their ears. their mouths, their noses. think of a pentagon equally divided into five sections, each shaded in a certain amount. remove one section, leaving four sections, but still distribute the area equally, this time between four sections instead of five. this is how i always understood the way that those with sensory disabilities adapt. i could be wrong.

my initial answer would be to say that they'll probably start to continue with the standard effects of LSD (hyperactive, lucid imagination) that plays itself out in the standard sorts of ways. new ideas, new experiences, free from the boundaries we're used to, and almost haunted in each new idea's life.

my initial answer would most likely continue through to say that they would probably feel things that weren't real on their skin, they'd hear things that weren't real in their ears. although with their other senses, they might smell or taste things that weren't real as well.

the initial answer changes a little bit when you throw the idea of someone who wasn't blind their entire life. which then gets more fine tuned when you think about how much of their life was spent with vision, and at what accuracy. did they lose their sight by way of degeneration, or an instant act?

i read up on the drug, though, when i got home tonight. apparently, albert hofmann, the father of LSD, experienced "fantastic pictures, extraordinary shapes with intense, kaleidoscopic play of colors" when he closed his eyes on one of the first days of accidentally stumbling upon the more 'psychedelic' uses of this drug. three days later, he went on a full-on TRIP, taking a theoretic "maximum dosage", and ended up experiencing a maelstrom of things, as you can imagine.

he began to speak unintelligibly, and on his assisted bike ride home felt that he was completely stationary while in reality he was actually moving at a "very rapid" pace. for several hours, he thought he was possessed, his neighbor was a witch, and that his furniture was threatening him. one key thing he mentioned (in specific reference to the blind) is every acoustic perception, such as the sound of a passing automobile, was transformed into optical perceptions. the next day, he mentions, though, (in contrast to the blindness) that his breakfast tasted unusually delicious, and all of his senses were "vibrating in a condition of highest sensitivity, which then persisted for the entire day".

to further color coordinate:
...an experience of radiant colors, objects and surfaces appearing to ripple or "breathe," colored patterns behind the eyes, a sense of time distorting (time seems to be stretching, repeating itself, changing speed or stopping), crawling geometric patterns overlaying walls and other objects, morphing objects, a sense that one's thoughts are spiraling into themselves, loss of a sense of identity or the ego (known as "ego death"), and powerful, and sometimes brutal, psycho-physical reactions interpreted by some users as reliving their own birth Many users experience a dissolution between themselves and the "outside world".

further breakdown:
VISUAL:
includes the illusion of movement of static surfaces ("walls breathing"), after image-like trails of moving objects ("tracers"), the appearance of moving colored geometric patterns (especially with closed eyes), an intensification of colors and brightness ("sparkling"), new textures on objects, blurred vision, and shape suggestibility. the inanimate world appears to animate in an unexplained way.

AURAL:
echo-like distortions of sounds, a mixing of all sounds which makes it harder to discern distinct sounds, the feeling that what you're hearing is your thought, a general intensification of the experience of music, and an increased discrimination of instruments and sounds.

--

so, i think my answer is close, although there seems to be a lot more going on with the visual end of things.

and what in those possibilities.

i wasn't sure if respite is the word, but it was.
for various things, at the moment.

it took me a few pages to say everything, and it was all disjointed until the end. there were a lot of small things i needed to say that didn't make sense in summary or conclusion. big liner notes. remember-the-time's. perspective. i don't even remember what it says. i get arrogant or egotistical or archival, and always find the need to have a copy of things that i've written to someone. i didn't this time. again, for various reasons.

-

SEEKING:
creative peers.

we're all very silly about our feelings. popping them up in the electronic field. let's feel good about what we're making and share it with each other instead of making it a VIP experience as part of a larger audience. call if you need to ask.

objects downstream propagate upstream.

what i need are really good headphones.
again.

i started thinking about who, exactly, i'm writing for. the perfect, "correct" answer would be myself. i write because i need to and i want to. i don't care who my audience is, what they think, how they react, or what they would like more or less of. i write to exorcise my own demons, and to manifest my own emotions into wellsprings of wordsplendor.

while this is true some of the time, it's not true all of the time. there are callings for both sorts of explorations, and i think that since i've just started to think a little bit more about these different facets as real functions, it starts to add a little bit more mechanic to the magic of the medium that i love most.

i've had more than a fair share of ideas for fiction that i thought i would start to unwind for my own love of the concept, and my own emotional output. the vision that i would have for a project would begin to collaborate with the ideas that i'd been inspired by and the collective surrounding environmental elements (background music, room noise, setting) to make a real product out of the raw skeletons that i were starting to collect muscle and skin in the brain. the more that i would get out the initial ideas, the more i would start to draw upon my peers and heroes for inspiration. what would THIS person do, or how would ANOTHER person write this? what would make SO AND SO love this?

and it becomes hard to retain that creative vacuum once you've gone that far.

i haven't written in a while, and it's certainly not because of a lack of ideas or emotions. there are plenty of both running completely rampant right behind the membranes of my fingers. my problem, at this point, is the idea that maybe no one would care. i think that's a very wrong outlook to have on any hobby, but especially one that tends to have such a relieving effect as a creative outlet.

i recently went through my old livejournal account and deleted much of what i read that i felt shouldn't exist. it was an odd thought process. i wasn't embarrassed of it or anything. well, i think i was. but i also just did to it what i think i want to do to anything that i read and don't approve of. approve may be too harsh a term. but looking back on those entries, i feel that there was this enormous imaginary audience that i felt i might have been speaking to. that concept sort of disgusted me. i'd start off entries by saying, "hey folks," and would apologize for "not writing as much" as if anyone noticed.

it's not something that i'm about. make the music you want to make, and the people who should find out about your music will. that's kind of the overall mindset i try to keep on all things. the whole "be yourself" ideal. if you try hard to impress someone by being something you're not and you succeed, you can either fail in the long run or become someone that you're not. there is no success here. if you live what you want to live, the others that live the way that you live (and therefore should be your peers, friends, associates, etc.) should become attracted to you. this goes for writing as well, and really, everything.

i feel like that whole concept is applied even in the distribution of this blog as a whole. livejournal and the myspace blog system just seem to become too watered down, and even when they aren't watered down, it almost becomes interpreted that you're trying to bring out a reaction or a response.

i've been having a hard time with that whole thought process for a little while. i thought maybe if i'd confront it by giving it a body of words it might be a little easier to tackle and eventually overcome.

--

i posted the poster for THERE WILL BE BLOOD back when i first saw the movie at the farmingdale theater during a matinee showing with about 7-10 other people, all at least twice my age. to me, that's always how this movie will feel perfectly viewed, and i've described it the same way every time:

it's a very silent, personal experience.

if i saw it in a packed theater with someone else, that might be how i'd feel it needed to be seen as well, but i'll never be sure.

i've since watched this movie twice. at first, i wasn't exactly sure what i'd taken from it aside from the fact that daniel day lewis crafted a masterpiece of the soul in daniel plainview. but after seeing it a third time overall, i know what it is.

it's the morals.
no new revolution.

the tweet i'd posted was meant to be about him:
a man of exquisite, relentless morals and no remorse.

i can get a sense of it, but can't quite define it at the moment.

moobout,

SOMEONE'S DEAD!
call me on it.

tonight had a sort of specific purpose which got shifted in the interest of media and awkward circumstance.

that place never was real
that face never was real.

i'm looking back "loading..." is what i'm getting but even without pure memory, textwords, i know what i was feeling in brackettime. i still love you.

relative.

i feel heavy like i need to carry myself.

the library; the garden.

i'm not that into it anymore.

i almost called in sick today. i was so into this weather and it brought back intense vibes of when i first came back and who i was seeing and what we were doing and what i was reading and listening to and writing. and so much has changed since then and i've mired myself down into this particular situation and have been working and coming inside and playing video games and not reading a word that didn't lead to shooting or cutting someone down but i have been earning a lot of achievement points which is more or less alright. i looked at the weather over the next few days and it's not more of the same, it goes back to what it was doing before it was doing this. but today is like a trailer. i'm okay with that, because i've been waiting long enough.

today makes me feel good.

this upcoming week, i get to legitimately find out some information which will affect the next months or years of my residential life. and romantic life.

i still haven't been paid, but they said it's coming.

channeling.

artist adie russell lip-synching ginsberg, and kerouac as well as others.
when you're done, go back and check out her other stuff.

on the road for the illiterate.

this is pretty wonderful.
the artist took the book ON THE ROAD and broke it down into colors and numbers, essentially. the color of the burst is the subject, and the size of the burst is the number of words.

not only is it impressive in vision and scope of the work, but for me, at least, it works as a great reminder of all of the different things i felt while reading this book.

outstanding.

subject.

when they come home, they steal all of my air and my silence and drive me back to my corner.

"slow motion."

http://jeremyharris.com

go to portfolios, and american asylums.
not sure how to direct link it.
those are pretty fantastic.

whoawhoawhoa.

i'm having a hard time feeling anything.
i'm in a serious depression but it's not real because it's not external but it's internal. it's a more or less severe thing where i want to lay in bed all day but i don't and i never feel relieved from dreaming but i'm dreaming. and i'll think of the most relentless most depraved way for me to find happiness and i find NOTHING. that's the kind of empty i'm on. and i'm worried that this isn't chemical imbalance but actual chemical disruption. one of those kids. i don't get it because i'm fine. it's been weeks since i've been alright. i feel like i'm beat. skin. i want to know she's there. i sleep and dream and write them down but it's of no console. it's stupid because i'm smarter than this. there's nothing worse than being smarter than what yo're being overcome by. divide yourself in two. i'm a walking civil war. i can laugh and you can watch me, and i'm moving and you can watch me. but there's a little bit more doing than might be done. i won't live to be old.

\////////

this is something new to me.

again, you're not listening.

some subject.

i read somewhere, i think it was the new york post or the daily news, that there was a man who was just recently arrested for dealing a half pound(?) bag of heroin for further distribution out of his girlfriend's town house apartment in new york city. it went on to talk about this man's history of drug use, and that at one point he was on a habit of fifteen uses a day of junk.

that's fierce.

it also mentioned that "heroin goes for about $10 to $20 on the street."
love the info.

12.000

it's growing to be 5am and i have work tomorrow and i don't care when i go in but if i am up i'll go on time but if i don't i'll get there when i can and they can call if they want but i'll be tending to things like self maintenance and a quantifying of worth. i've just had so much i've wanted to do and i'm finally unwinding after three straight full days there. the past 30+ hours of that store have been me. i've been that store. but.

i wanted to talk a little about this new job prospect but it makes me too nervous to put words to it. i'm not qualified for it, or excited about it, nor do i see myself in it for a long time and i assume this will pose a large problem considering it's going to be in an office with my father which could prove to be a whole new sort of chapter in and of itself. what i'm already hoping is that it doesn't work out but i have too much ethic to sabotage myself consciously.

i wanted to dedicate march to getting through all of my video games that i'd had sitting on my shelf but then all this work stuff started to happen all the way through. just nonstop. who could even breathe. i just beat god of war for psp tonight. such good things, just not enough of them. not really a complaint, though. size doesn't matter.

i need to stretch tantrically, and extend all of these compacted upper body units. this is one of the reasons i so badly want a high school desk when i finally finalize where i live.

i was going to mention something about it, but then stopped, but then thought about how stupid it is to NOT mention it. i checked out the new nine inch nails album's first disc and couldn't even formulate an opinion on it. for my definition and format, those weren't even songs. they were just musicians starting playing together on the same wavelength and then stopping. rahul sent me the rest of the discs which i am i am going to give an honest chance to. told rahul and brian the same deal. what i'd like is for one of those discs to be somewhere between sigur ros, explosions in the sky, and beside you in time with no drums, just electronics and lo-fi sounds. it's not going to happen, i don't think. but.

there's a book of artwork that comes with this new album which contains about 40 photographs taken by Phillip Graybill and Rob Sheridan which make me think they were taken for me. i don't know another way to put it beyond the fact that these are the places that i want to be to take on the largeness of the world and of the life. apparently, the only way to get this book is to buy the record package and i don't want to buy the record package. what i'd like is the book and i'd pay probably no more than $27 for it, unless it was bigger and(/slightly or) had words to accompany it. either way, these are perfect photos, the kind that i would want enlarged on glossy photo paper and framed in a new white apartment of mine. maybe numbered with silver pen.










ghosts.nin.com

blue gray hat, blue gray suit, swishing motion.

i'm currently unhappy at my job situation, and it's due to money and i never thought it would come down to that. i've never been into money. i'm not "into" it now. that's not what i'm saying. the thing is, i'm finally able to quantify the way that i've been stiffed this time around.

it started with another employee badgering me about my lack of video game knowledge and wholly different approach at retail, life, video games, entertainment, media, dress, etc. then the optionless calling on my days off. then the manager not showing up for a week. two weeks. now two months. that was all just things that you could complain about, but in a way you were doing your job as part of what you'd signed on to do.

but this time around, it's finally to the point where something is on paper that the hours that i've worked don't add up to the compensation i've received. numerically. i worked 50 hours each of these last two weeks. i got paid for 80 hours. that's twenty hours that i was in the store, that i wasn't at home, that i was keeping their store going that i won't get back or get compensated for.

see, they moved me to a salaried position without telling me. and it's not like i didn't have options here. they asked if i wanted coverage. but it's our store. i like the feeling of knowing everything that's going on in those walls. we had someone fill in yesterday, and it's just weird trying to explain a certain different way of doing things. it's not my thing. but i took on these extra hours and days thinking that i'd be getting overtime. and you know what, forget overtime, just PAY in general.

i'm scheduled to work 54 hours next week. i don't think that's going to happen. i'm out. i've gone on an interview and it went well, and i hope it went well enough to be taken on as an associate and begin to make money doing those things.

this was all useless to say and point out.
it's pouring.

ingargantuan.

i haven't had a lot to say in the past month.
the joy of life hasn't left me but i almost typed that it did.

i'm trying to evaluate what i want to do and how i want to do it. i like writing more than i can express through words, which i guess would be an ideal job in a sense. but i don't think i have the style or skill to get noticed to the extent of a remarkable or lived-on paycheck. at best, if at all, my words will be noticed by a niche crowd and enjoyed by a percentage of them. and i wonder if i'll even ever get there.

i don't think i make very much sense anywhere. i can't sell things because i don't want to be too pushy, i can't build things because i don't have the hands or the mind for it. i can't cook. i can't draw. i wish there was a way to take an accurate and updated aptitude test so it can plop me in the right place and i can continue walking onward and make enough for a meal or two a day, transportation, and a home. that'd be nice.

i often say that i wasted my life by not going to or continuing school. but i think that i might not need it sometimes, and i think that it's the only thing i need sometimes. i see people in paid positions doing things they're not so qualified or excited to do and it's all because they spent four years in classes getting approved for such a position. i think i need to harness some sort of potential that i have somewhere, and utilize it to the best of my ability and beyond and get recognition and compensation for it.

i've got an apartment in harlem that i can move into once i secure a job somewhere in the city/queens limits and i have an interview tomorrow morning at nine which i hope i can land at which point i will give my resignation in at gamestop which should get me a lot of scorn which makes me nervous. we'll see.

hopefully someday i'll be hip, too.

july, 2002

while trying to find the tracklisting for my last mix cd (11, not 12) i came upon this. it's not good, but it exists.

it's hard to be ashamed of someone else.

--

Everytime I walk through a dark room I can hear them. I can smell them. I can feel their eyes rolling across the length of my body. I don't know why I was the lucky one to be able to see these foul things. Why I was the pick of the litter. But I was born with it, and therefore I have to live with it. Everyday from now on, as far as I know. But I always have the hope that I can wakeup feeling free of this burden. Yet everyday for the past year, it has gotten progressively worse.

That first day was most likely the worst. I woke up feeling normal, until I looked out the window and saw it raining. It was that hard kind of rain. the kind that you think is going to dent the hood of your car. I was on my own at that point, so I made that comment outloud, although no one was there to hear it. What a great feeling that was. Living without wondering who or what is hearing what you say, or knowing what you think. I went into the bathroom to shower and shave and get ready for work. I stood over the sink looking at my sorry face and then smiled and laughed. Today was the day that I was going to be interviewed for my promotion. Fuck, I was nervous. I went into the shower, and washed every part of my body with my mind running through things which have absolutely nothing to do with anything. Like making up new lyrics for songs which already existed.

Have you ever slipped in the shower? Have you ever had the hopeless feeling of sailing across the tub and trying to grip for anything to stop you from falling, but the only thing you can touch are the wet, slippery walls, or toppling shower bottles. I hadn't fell in tub in years is the first thing i thought. Ouch was the next. I got up clumsily and as I was doing this i caught a glimpse of the blood running down into the drain. That's what I started to panic. I tried to wash the gaping wound above my eye brow as best I could, but it just kept bleeding. I turned off the shower and looked in the mirror.

Fuck. It was right above my eyebrow. I grabbed the washcloth and applied pressure. Why waste time? I started brushing my teeth. I went over the interview over and over in my head as I stared at myself in the mirror. In the mirror, I could see the closed bathroom door. Here I am, living alone, and I still close the door to my own bathroom. I rinsed, spit, and put the toothbrush back in its home, and then turned nonchalantly to go back to my bedroom.

What I saw as I looked up was about as tall as my father but twice as wide. And it stunk like death. I dropped the washcloth as a sting and a shiver went through my entire body. As the bloodied rag hit the ground, he... it was gone. It had been nothing short of a second, yet I knew I saw it, and I knew I smelled it. And apparently, so was the gash above my eyebrow. But the cloth was still bloody and my head still stung where the wound had once been. Not having done drugs throughout my entire life, I knew that this wasn't some sick flashback. This had happened.

as if the world was more than he could bear.

one of the best. 10/10.

and eyes.

this picture. no words.


more from 2007.

MY HILLARYISMOMJEANS.COM SUBMISSIONS:

...COMMENTED YOUR MYSPACE WITH A BROKEN .JPG
...CAN REALLY RELATE TO ZIGGY.
...CAN'T SYNC HER WIRELESS GUITAR.
...SAYS OKEY DOKE.
...HAS NO LOVE TO GIVE.

this is the woman.

stripper try-out photos.
not dirty. just women wanting to be beautiful.

with/without photography.

this would still be happening.



nature as photographed as nature.

i had something to say about ALL of these.

otis.

a 30 year man.

solid movie; 8/10

a man of great interest.

just ask.

there's nothing wrong with being lonely.

the old spill canvas album reminds me of her so much. and i guess the thing is i haven't seen a mind completely independent since the first time i heard her listening to this album on her own, completely. i remember how sexy i found her being entirely and silently overwhelmed by something i knew nothing about.

that was the kind of thing that completely intoxicated me. i can think of her at a distance, in silence, singing along, eyes closed, to a single line of the entire fifty five minutes.

she was downstairs. and i didn't even know this band.

i have nothing to claim to her. my mind is on a long, long leash. i love another time over. i'm a little mad. i have a trust issue that i ignore.

i want to run but i want to stay.
apply this to her and to me.

i sort of know she has a passion that she's having a hard time evaluating. putting into words or pictures or sounds. i was this way at 20. fucking 20. what in the world was i at 20? in a relationship that wasn't suited to my lifestyle, with certain friends that couldn't keep up, without a solidified dream/goal, and pre-anything, and pre-growth stage.

i don't think i'd seen anything i'd wanted to see that would really touch me. i thought i loved but didn't know what love was.

i was a youth and these things are going to happen. it took another half decade (maybe more) before i realized what it was and what i was. i still don't think i know what i want to be, but i know what i want to see and how i want to see it.

i'm old.
i ain't got time for a reinvention.

wee!

a gunner,

oh, i don't like the looks of this.

the thing is, i don't generally remember my dreams. in fact, for years now i've been saying that i don't dream. occasionally, i'll have to backpedal and say that yes, i know i dream i just don't remember them.

in the middle of january, i started writing down my dreams, no matter how small, in a pad i'm keeping next to my bed. i don't want to say that it's become important to me, but i'd like to definitely stick to it.

coming back to a dream that i had even just TWO days ago has been an almost rewarding experience.

before i go to sleep, i can usually hear voices. useless conversations. i'm not saying they're ghosts or anything. just scenarios, in a way.

maybe you're just not in the habit of it anymore!
three straight children. //
my parents aren't still divorced..
- kim-voice

you're gonna BREAK it
- mikey-voice

and they all leave.

During the 1950's the town was deserted and the dunes began to reclaim what was always theirs.

the persians!

it hurts to text message. that's where i'm at right now. my fingertips feel dense. my knees feel rusted. my teeth feel uprooted. my back feels freezedried. what happened here. i feel like i'm going through withdrawal. i can't stand loud noises.

i started writing my dreams down. i don't remember them, and i don't want to read them for a long, long time.

i finally own american football's album.

i feel like i need to be on a stretcher.

big. giant.

i apologize. i'm a bit distracted.

portioned falling. so much collapse,
35mm stillframes,
momentum building.
UGLIEST OF FACES.
hollow skeleton partitioned for the sake of flight. overcoming a solo meeting place. she writes forever, face plastered on hologram posters, shouting "REBELLION."
i will. i will.
i was told i was jaded because i was world weary. what's next? i can't meditate anymore. slothing through death, like i sloth through death. too many lines. oh, she screams and speaks like she's with me on the road about nobody but everybody. "that which is not, IS." aspects of one person that you come to face. one brain, two rules. my body is far too happy as she mumbles so i hear it, "i want to take you somewhere beautiful." a fear of botany. i want to kiss her in front of everybody and just have it be what it is. And this machine needs fuel. SO WE FUEL IT!

dead teeth.

pachefsky gave me a heads up about this anime last night over drinks at friday's. i know he's talked about it a little bit since he's been back on break, but usually, i take nothing he says seriously. there are only a few people whose opinion i can take to heart, and only about certain things. recomendations can only really come when you not only know and like what you're pitching, but also knowing the person you're pitching it to. i would never recommend look, mexico to rahul, for example.

but this time, he's come through in the clutch. i've only seen the first episode, but it's pretty solid so far.

www.deathnote.tv

el arbol.

we both took things from him.
hers are just a bit more worn on the outside.
the alcoholism the blind fury.

i've got little bits of his hidden psychoses.
the ones that are there for minutes at a time when he talks to himself, circling the kitchen. the ones that make him thrash in his sleep. whatever it was inside him that made him say, "the family that kills together, dies together. and they all get into their little black moods."

it'd make me fear him if i didn't go there myself, sometimes.

and i know when She passes, most likely from lung cancer or emphysema, he is going to go into a fierce plummet. there will be darkness and there will be blindness. we're all going to go down.

let's not talk about this again.

american girl.

ALL FOOLS,
we try terrible hard
to make them hear our
voices but we're saying
nothing. we are bored
with ourselves. daring in
LIFE AS WE ARE IN DEATH,
or sleeping still. i'll call
you back tomorrow when
i think of what i meant.
i really don't even
remember that night and i
almost got so sick, but
i went to work instead.
and shit... we have to keep
living this year.
xo

the dead alive!

click.

the remainder.

someone random. insert picture. ummm. dave. there is a damnit [in] the place of the [despicable]. feel me. when u don't know [what's] hitting u its [going] to be [calamity]. muscle memory intermittently. it's silence. no [music] a silence. and [the] ones I love are the ones that make [my] [voice hit]. and the ones that oh my [god].

the sun approaches.

we wouldn't know what to do with each other. and eventually, we'd have nothing to talk about. there's nothing that you want to do that amounts to much more than stories of the other night. and there's nothing that i want to do that amounts to much more than plans i think i'm trying to make. i wish i wasn't addicted to falling in love. at least then, i could take this as far as i knew it would go. but i still stick to the belief that guilt beats hate. you just won't do; you're the kind of person that asks why. we could do this if i got beautiful and dirty. we could do this if i got beautiful and dirty. and it's not really tearing me up.

i didn't know who you were before i met you but i swallowed hard every time i saw you.

i could probably never turn you around.
you just don't have the right kind of eyes.
and i bet you still don't touch pen to paper.
i actually don't even believe in you.

i'd have to be the kind of man that would fight the kind of man that i am.
my canvas jacket would be worn thin everywhere.
i'd wear filthy boots caked with mud.
i'd wear hats.

i should stop being who i am.

the movie for which the above poster was printed for was slow, and long but amazing. the most i can say for anyone with nearly three hours to spend watching turn-of-the-century oil drilling is JUST WATCH DANIEL DAY LEWIS. get the DVD and fast forward if need-be. the man made art of a character.

there are many things that i want to do, in some level of priority listed hereafter.

- watch the game
- respond to that e-mail
- finish reading water for elephants (& on the road & wastelands)
- finish half life 2
- watch the cell (& ghostbusters & bloodsport & fido & pit fighter & shutter)
- watch gangs of new york (& the pursuit of happyness & it's a wonderful life)
- watch constantine on HD (& children of men)
- play more NY TIMES CROSSWORD PUZZLE on DS (& finish new super mario bros.)
- listen to the gaslight anthem's album parker had recommended (& the tegan and sara album kimi recommended)
- start reading junky (& only revelations & romannitarian & dermaphoria)
- get rollins tickets
- get through the series gungrave (& battlestar galactica & the grim adventures of billy and mandy & lost season 2 & foster's home for imaginary children & firefly again & malcolm in the middle)
- be well
- make shirts (or A shirt)
- get new shoes
- get a cable box so i can watch television in HD
- shower
- finish bioshock (& mass effect)
- start condemned (& assassin's creed & fear files & gears of war & dead rising & crackdown & lego star wars)
- write this blog.

you can be me.

what would it be like if jared leto had a tail? the talented, beautiful, versatile lead singer/actor/walking portrait with another extremity. and i'm not talking about an easily manicured tiger striped three foot exotic tail, as we've seen in sci-fi movies used as an additional layer of attraction. i'm talking about a nasty, hard to maintain, impossible to remove freak of nature tail. the kind that looks like a skin tag that wouldn't quit.

what would u do then, ladies?
what would u do.


i'm just trying to even the field.

a memory without remorse.

click.

i'll carry your name with me to the end.

the poor keep their lies moving. fingers sweeping across dusty counter tops wrapping crustily around anything more than miniscule. they cry that heaven's found a way for them. she done got that stone veil propped across her nosebridge. she's calling us in all the way. the children she bore and we misunderstood. we all just misunderstood. don't look at them now because they're hungry and they've been sleeping alone these nights. mouths curled up at the corners because there ain't no safety here. cities cities cities. just more blood oil to burn down. they've been walking to get here, leaving piles of clothes they've shrunk out of. burnt out into last night's home. children born into grown men. disoriented irises that speak in networks of tongues.

the derelicts follow these train tracks from the coal mines to the oil fields: down down down. they live to live some more. they're never going back the way they came. it's only tales of other years. the mothers the fathers stopped calling them home. jazz children and copper kings. here where it's safe to drag your bones down the windblown plains across the reddened clayhordes. the past is the collapse of today and this is why these people are dangerous things. they're cupping raw souls in their raked chests. a heart with eyes wide open. a mile isn't a mile when it's home and you'll never need to mourn if they're laying in your dust trails. "i'll replant this soil, drive harvest home harvest rain. the sky just ain't what she used to be, and this is why to you we supplicate." from the shore to the borderlands, through fog haze mist, it's a chant that goes silent in their throats but resounds in their knuckles.

through me, you'll know them as they know ghosts.

only i can stop this.

... it's because she can't look me in the eyes. as bad as i want to. when she's ready to be silent and still in the small of my palms, intricate like a whisper, she'll press up against me like she can [only] she can.

me and all my little records.
violence where no one gets hurt.
just the worst of intentions; the subtleties of raw skin.

the dream terrorist: laying sideways. only open for oxygen at that point. and i'm feeling the pressure applied from my incisors to my canines. escape shouts. gravity melts. evac. she just couldn't wait.

i kept my jacket in my car tonight.
on the jacket are pockets, and in the pockets are razors.
i've got the keys to my car.

i saw you tonight without color. your portrait moving our door frames. you spoke rounded, like they did in the 20s. i see you in every soft beauty. i found you. i found you. i knew what i saw when i saw you. we once had. we once had. i don't think i've ever seen you on a wednesday. let's blend into the daytime hours again.

i deserve this head of mine.

could have gone away.

it's actually really funny, but not.
everything is wrong.
mandibles upon the choke screen.

i'm calling on you to save me and you've been here.
i know it.

i'm repeating where we've been. never together only separately. i know this feeling.

say what you have to say to me.

i'm sorry.
so damn sorry.

show me a sight. how can these two hands and ten fingers?
allornothingallornothingallornothing
i'm sorry.
so damn sorry.
i..
we both know....

x

i'm trying to disappear.
it's all the same shakedown.





































you & i.

i can't tell from the size of it.

i saw two hand tattoos today.
one was a peace sign, one was a happy face.
.
one step forward, two steps back.

growing.

used to be easy to run here,
and now my feet don't touch the ground.
no!






time goes too slow.


/tx

sleeves.

unwitting.

reign.

pirouette.

the new generation of crime.

take one eighth!!!

i'm glad there are telephones and not just stage coaches.

i'd work at 9am if nine am weren't less than 5 hours away.

so much for the light show.

it's insane that silversun pickups, the band that i found, goddamnit, judging a book by its cover, is on mtv commercials now. oh blast.

sunday, as cities burn + olympia in NYC w/ kimi, +++?

i've recently discovered problems.

i left my shoes in the car. don't be so surprised when you see them today.

in a clean room, you can think more directionally.

when people ask her, "so, how's old boy?" i'm sure she just says, "he's good." yeah, they call me old boy down there. i'm not sure if it's some sort of knock on my age, and the fact that she's twenty and i'm twenty five, or if their country voices can only carry the proper things to say about as far as they can stand to improve themselves. but i know that's what i say when anyone who cares to ask me asks. "she's good." i mean, what can i throw in for detail?

"she's good, man! she goes to her sister's volleyball games, and has this weird thing going on with her manager where he's sort of in love with her, but you know, she's in denial. um, her best friend, a male here ya know, left her a voicemail that says he wants to kiss her on the forehead and tell her how much he loves her. yeah, like, she's just working for gamestop, and chillin' out. i make her cry sometimes, i'm so scared over here and i project the fear directly onto her canvas! can you believe it?"

but again, there's that whole bottleneck effect. i mean, when they ask her about old boy, i'm sure she says, "he's good." if she wanted to really roll on about her end, it'd be something like, "yeah! he's good, i think. he just got offered his own store, but turned it down. yeah, something about wanting to work for two more months doing the same sorts of things, just with more people in the store. he plays a lot of games, and watches a lot of movies, for the most part alone. wonders why i don't listen to the cds he sends down here. talks way too much about sports, and is weird, i guess. says weird things. talks to himself out loud to me."

but i think about how little that defines me, yeah? i think a more accurate description of old boy as me would be:

"he's probably the best he's been in a very long time! listens to a lot of music that means a lot to him, more than it would if he had been through less. finds a lot of one liners in and out of those songs of his that mean more than they were intended. something about specific unintentions. he's found two of his best friends again, doesn't want to leave them, but wants to be with me, and is so confused about the whole situation. and we're getting married. we'll see as much as we can see for the dollar that we can spend. a vagabond life. drinks a little bit alone. drinks with his sister who's not really his sister a little bit, laughs/thinks more than he thought he was capable of. my baby he's beautiful because he's alive, thinks he's ugly because he's still living in that world of bodies."

or something.

found someone in her who i thought i'd never find. got the Little Lover and the Baby Talker in there, the one who says how much she loves me in twenty one different ways, each one progressively decreasing in age and maturity level. got the creator, the one who paints for herself and for me, and writes on a random whim; makes me think "what does that have to do with US," then remember if everything i wrote was about us, she'd probably be dead or armless by now. she thinks, and if i would just unleash a thought tornado at her just once, she might just have something to say about it.

my baby, i think she'd be so disappointed in me on some days.
on others, i think she's be so in love with me.
for the same reasons, yeah?

just move here and live life with me and do things with me, and live with me somewhere new. i'll keep you here, right next to me. and we'll be so happy.

<3

this is my life.

a nonrequitable pacifist.

knowing full well how the job works, i fully anticipated waking up, waiting until gamestop opened, and going in to pickup my copy of the phantom hourglass. again, knowing FULL well that the damn shipment doesn't come until at least 11:30. idiot.

-
i saw across the universe for the second time last night. still don't feel like i need to see another movie ever again.

-
i'm not generally a night time dreamer. if there are any fantasies, voluntary or not, they come to me while i'm awake. performing processes, etc. but last night, as i slept on carissa's couch, praying in my shallow sleep for the cat to not start his rumored biting, i had THREE dreams. and maybe, i do dream often, i just can't remember them. this time, though, i wrote them on my hand. well, the "titles" of them anyway. and each dream, however short its description, is labeled as the one i dream-scribed on my palm.

ryan mcgregor & vegas
for whatever reason, ryan mcgregor and i were at a hotel in las vegas. it didn't outwardly feel like any conference, or anything, but as the entire thing panned out, it seemed that there were people there from all throughout my life. division avenue high school, FYE #1783, gamestop 2605, loews, nassau community college, family gatherings... everyone who was there was somehow tethered to my life. not necessarily negatively, just was somewhere in my glossary of faces. and we started obliterating them with bottles and chairs and tables and guns and grenades. it was like a street brawling video game, but no one saw it coming. people would see us and get psyched, or happy, or at least salutatious, but we would then begin to bring the pain. it was violent. vicious. we were really throwing down on these folks. it was unnecessary. but the overall feeling of the dream was positive. i was having FUN doing this.

mantis
this was one of those dreams that appears as a relevant documentary. most of the imagery was of grasshoppers, mantises in old film stock footage. eating some form of acorn or grain. and as i was seeing all of this, i had the distinct feeling that what it was that they were eating was in plentiful supply around where i was at the time. i never saw me or my surroundings. and as i was watching and realizing this, i started to get the stinging realization that they were coming.

soul team
a female friend of mine and i were laying on a couch, reading a magazine. laughing and talking and being our random selves. at some point, she rolled on top of me, and pushed me on my back, and wiped my lips with her fingers and smiled down at me. we kept talking about the magazine, and moving in together. i rolled her down and lay on top of her, and sort of looked into her eyes and continued talking, and she was doing the same. it was almost like we were having this intense makeout session but our lips never touched, not once. a few times, we came close, and we kept touching each others faces, and lips while we were talking. but it never actually happened.

-

manning a successful campaign.

Pen to Pearl
2005

4:38am
00 "The Hutch"

Spasms. A Timepiece. Heartbeat a tuxedolapse. feel the bloodgate? loathe further than another hemisphere. lost your wick. flame match marriage stasis. frozen nerve cell mind bath. killed a man effortless. cupped hands, water poured through fingerlegends. a cinnamon love. you left me when the tongue told collapse, no elbow stretch, a march bridge sky plane. proximity, make me love you pore to pore, the ins the outs, lose track for hours. these are your minutes. believe me: you're just fine.

my fresh skin, a blessing.