:.
'97:
to mention your embrace,
fine, resiliant, subdued,
is to not withstand a shallow stride
of gargantuous proportions. relive it
to deny it and uphold it with your tongue.
imbue it with a sense it cannot retain:
a mnemonic device of semantic proportions.
Thursday, May 30
:.
"This finding suggests that both creativity and manic depression, also called bipolar disorder, may share some of the same genetic underpinnings, Connie M. Strong of Stanford University in California told Reuters Health."
Wednesday, May 29
:.
i dreamt of you last night. and it was pleasant and vivid, and the melancholy of awakening lingered the day away, and flashing monitors and booming loudspeakers were soft and distant on the show floor, as i stumbled around like a dead man in denial or a man underwater staring at the surface. i missed you. my mind had its fill of you at night, and like staring at one color for too long, all after seemed the opposite, and everything related back to your absence. i missed your smile, which stretches a perfect horizontal across your face, the ends slightly open, eyes blinking and searching, an occasional laugh errupting despite your best efforts. and your confident high-heeled walking, in which you throw your boots forward as if you were casting fishing nets onto the sea with every stride.
there's something of you permanently embedded within me. and i'm not only going to have to learn to leave that shrapnel alone, but i'm going to have to make room for others', as well.
Thursday, May 23
:.
la and e3 and the devil's playa where money and heat and gasoline make a volatile mix. be back sometime later.
Monday, May 20
:.
it was quarter to nine as i drove to the gym, and with its dying breath, the sun had set the clouds on fire with orangepurple and pink cotton candy puffs were strewn overhead while a dark cloud loomed behind the city skyline like a tsunami wave eager to cleanse those turbid skyscrapers. and i drove and i parked and i ran on a machine made for running, under the 60 hertz glow of flourescence.
Saturday, May 18
:.
the guys made me pick one, and i chose you because earlier you had asked to, and proceeded to, sit on my lap despite my smiling and saying i'm not interested in a dance, thank you. so they hunted you down and brought you to me. and then you led me by the hand to the back of the club, where the long vinyl seat spanning the wall was covered with young naked bodies writhing against their johns, and you searched for an open spot upon which to consume me. and it was a busy night and it took a bit of searching to find a place to transact. a space opened up and i sat down, and you straddled me and then began to do that which you do so well, and our eyes locked. and even though i didn't think i would get aroused, i was glad that i did, because i imagine it must be insulting otherwise. and you didn't expose yourself or remove any articles of clothing or anything of the sort, and i didn't notice. and you told me that you're studying massage therapy and i told you what i do. and when you turned around to grind in reverse, i told you to turn back so i could look at you. so you did, and continued until the music stopped. and you said that you weren't used to so much eye contact and that it was nice. because aside from the tattoo on the inside of your arm, i didn't notice anything but your face. and when you got up and failed to buckle your left heel, i took it and placed it on my lap and buckled it for you. and then you led me back to my group and gave me a kiss and a hug, and i like to think that i left an impression that lasted at least until your next trick. and for one moment you made me wish that i was someone else, someone that had at least one thing in common with you; you do what you do so well.
and just who are you this time?
you look rather tired
are you pretending to love?
well I hear that it pays well
- tom waits
Friday, May 17
:.
and i would say this to her. i would tell her that i won't transgress the boundaries of 'us', not because we were made for each other, because we're not. and not because i'll always feel about her the way i do now, because i won't; (a guarantee of future emotion is a wasted breath.) nor would it be because i won't be attracted to other women or have crushes or opportunities, because i will; but i shan't betray her trust simply because, first and foremost, i respect her.
Wednesday, May 15
:.
3 months. but it feels like forever and a day ago. how does time move so fast in such a short amount of it. i had to think about it over and over.. yes. i was in this apartment. yes... it was in february. this february. and all the leaves have fallen but where has all the time gone? i get hyper-bored with emotions and they flip like a book. i'm in constant transmutation and everything idles along. short attention span. i'm not even the same person i was 3 months ago. all that maintains is that ubiquitous sense of urgency, and this damned monotonous writing voice.
Tuesday, May 14
:.
service announcement: my personal email account is flaky and bouncing some of the emails, some of the time. please use the one listed at the bottom of this site if you need to reach me. the sporadic reliability of my pop account is not representative of my own, or of how i feel about you, personally, even though it might coincide with some odd paranoid plot you're fantasizing about.
Monday, May 13
:.
read this twice: the strongest positive signal a woman sends is the only one that matters to men. women are trained from a very early age to actively and utterly discourage men at all times. no eye contact, no smiling, no nothing. the smallest motion that might be interpreted as interest will result in undesired approaches. hence, when a woman sends a positive signal, the male understands that it is a most decided and conscientious course of action which she has planned out and thought through. he figures that there are no mistakes made here. and so since discouragement is the background noise of daily female life, the wily predatory male pays attention only to the reinforcement. this results in common miscommunication with such phrases as "but i have a boyfriend," and "i wouldn't sleep with you if you were the last man on earth," and "no."
Sunday, May 12
:.
there exists a violent creative boredom that used to visit me as a teen, and did once more this morning. it's the type of restlessness that would make one attempt to create large iron installations by bending bars with one's bare hands; or paint on large canvases by throwing down buckets of paint and vigorously scratching the paint into position. i used to try and write it out and writing is such a delicate art, physically speaking, that all that energy made a lot of noise, verbally, and physically. two fingers would move with such violence that i strain now to read the journal entries.
computer games would often sedate it, channel that vigor into something unreal. like putting a rabid dog in front of a tv tuned to a dead channel, i was bled of my energy. and sometimes i lament the depletion of that creativity, but mostly i shudder at the recollection of the frustration of unsatiated creative drive, which at its core is a drive of violence (or is violence just the extreme form of all drives?); wanting to just slam a fist into a block of clay and open my eyes to a beautiful sculpture, or ejaculate out a perfect movie script with one long fragmented sentence.
ah... frustrated youth. so energetic, neh? so much to do? and undo, neh? i don't know why i felt it this morning. maybe because my computer game playing has all but stopped. or maybe it was the 1am timed mensa test that had me recalling the painful stress of school and all of that energy stirring within. i function more than adequately, to say the least, in a corporate environment with deadlines and progress reports and learning and achievement and accountability, and it's strange to think that my schooling's focus consisted primarily of timed tests of knowledge. but that's a different entry all together, neh?
:.
i got 28 out of 30 (timed @ 30 minutes). i missed 7 and 19. what kind of mensa candidate are you?
Saturday, May 11
:.
and the m coupe fell through, but now i'm looking at an m3 in chicago. and i'm still uneasy about all that money, but here are the two most likely scenarios of the next 10 years:
a. the market crashes, depression hits, meteor destruction is imminent and i have no money to buy a coach class ticket to mars, where the new colony is starting up. for the 6 months of chaos before armageddon, i live in a cardboard box and tell any passerby that i could have been on mars if i hadn't spent my savings on a car.
b. world war three erupts, nuclear devastation knocks out all governments and institutions. the banks are raided even though all that green and black paper is completely worthless. except in exchange for some furniture and a case of beer, i get a guy to mount a 50 caliber machine gun onto my car and put some ginormous spikes on the front bumper, and i live like a king straight out of mad max because i've got some fast wheels and no dirty old bandit can catch me and all hail me and we start a new civilization. except this time, i'm in charge and and we don't protect people from their own stupidity, only from large mutated albino man eating tigers. also, they're invisible.
obviously, i wouldn't buy the car if i didn't whole heartedly believe in b.
and it's not just me. i think it's a male program to intake information and apply it in a survivalist situation. every guy that sits in his comfortable suburban home watching some movie in which a guy, lost in the jungles of brazil in 1812, fashions a man trap out of a top hat, a tin of hair grease, and a bobby pin, will file that information away just in case he'll need to use it someday in some life saving situation. just in case. hence the a-team and mcgyver.
Thursday, May 9
:.
what will i ask myself about the now after it's slipped away. and it's five years later and this, all of this, these, that, is just a big blur that i confuse with yesterday (or was it tomorrow?). is the now memorable? worth remembering? will i smile when i read this sentence and recall that eight plastic asterix characters, purchased at a virgin megastore in france, stand on top of my monitor (left to right: legionnaire, caesar, getafix, obelix, asterix, vitalstatistix, unhygienix, cacofonix), or will they still be there and i won't smile at all? will i wonder what filled my days? i don't even know now, and i still remember everything. what am i doing that was so much more important than all the things i'll regret not having done? i feel like i'm standing still and the days just pass underneath me. i work a full day's worth, but it doesn't even register. i'm just an observer in this life i call my own. tomorrow is already thursday and i pick up my laundry and it seems like i just picked it up yesterday. am i getting closer to something? further away from something else? there's something i'm not doing. is this too easy? do i need to raise the stakes? again? or maybe there's just no way to remember all 365 days.
"we have an excellent show for you tonight." they say that every night. they can't possibly mean it every night. is this how they feel when they're lying?
Wednesday, May 8
:.
we're not spirits. we're not souls. we're not star-crossed. just skin and teeth and shit and mucus. we're neither smart nor chosen. not destined or purposed or noble. we're not more than habitual recidivists that hide ancient patterns behind higher brain vocabulary. we are not the means, nor the ends. we are not special, nor unique; not watched over or cared about. we are completely and utterly alone, without meaning or shelter or refuge or solace. whether we cure the sick or create wars, in the end, we will be equally dead. we weren't 'meant,' period, let alone for each other or anyone else. but when i look at you, i understand how man can believe in a god.
Monday, May 6
:. and jodi has reminded me that tomorrow two new tom waits lps come out.
There was thunder
There was lightning
Then the stars went out
And the moon fell from the sky
It rained mackerel
It rained trout
And the great day of wrath has come
And here's mud in your big red eye
The poker's in the fire
And the locusts take the sky
And the earth died screaming
While I lay dreaming of you
- bone machine
:.
what the fuck do people with important jobs do when they have days that just go blah and shit hits you from odd angles and you're not even sure what you feel let alone how to tuck it away so it doesn't get in the way. do they just go hey what does this button over here do or that greedy bastard couldn't frickin wait for me to buy the car so he sold it to someone else so i'll just fire this guy over here or goddammit maybe the cute one on the fourth floor by the water cooler will notice me if i stop all american aid to cambodia or that motherfucker's porking his secretary and we've just decided to have another child and they won't notice if i nuke uganda because that would so hit the spot. yeah. that is what they do. which i guess is why we have superheroes.
Saturday, May 4
:.
cars are evil. they pollute; they congest; they're promised dreams of lives unlived and fantasies unrealized; they're a lie. they're a sink for hard earned blood and sweat currency; they're killing machines; they're superfluous mechanical constructs; and to celebrate, i'm getting one of these. some people say it looks like a shoe; others, a big penis with wheels. most think it's ugly. i've always associated it with the batmobile and i say it's a sexy bitch. see you in hell. :)
Thursday, May 2
:.
"i wanted to be like jesus." - overheard at a taco shop.
i can help. got any nails?
and how come judas is such a bad character? wasn't he just a part of god's plan? or was jesus supposed to die for our sins by dying of old age? and what's the big sacrifice in getting stabbed and carrying the cross and getting crucified? that was a good deal. that was the romans' equivalent to a slap on the wrist. and exactly how is becoming a third of the holy trinity considered a sacrifice? if jesus went to hell, or started out as a deity and then became mortal and died a regular old vanilla nine to five death, then that's something noteworthy; giving up a big gold plated throne in heaven with flying babies playing harps and an all you can eat buffet and dying like dirt and staying like dirt, like the rest of his peers-- that's a sacrifice. but being born from nothing, spending a measly 36 33 years walking around, not working, turning water into wine, topping it off with a run of the mill crucifixion, and then ascending into heaven straight to full partnership, with no internship, associate partner, or any of that crap. "sacrifice." pff. where do i sign up? i swear, you christians have some odd notions of ultimate suffering. and the idea that god gave up his only son for man? how is bringing him into the cockpit "giving him up"? and why can't he have any more kids? and zeus gave birth to athena from his forehead. because he did, that's why.
also, today is national prayer day, a christian fundamentalist effort to bridge that silly gap between church and state. and we've got harry s. "the buck stops here" truman to thank for this constitutional aberration.
Wednesday, May 1
:.
i'm not unhappy being alone. i'm just lonely being alone. i miss the companionship and all that junk and sharing moments and life and laughs. but i love not being responsible for anyone's happiness. or second guessing expectations or having to be honest with someone else when i'm just struggling to be honest with myself. or being able to let someone down, or having any power over anyone that can't simply say fuck you when they should. or vice versas. or trying to descramble actions and words independantly of each other and then seeing if they match up, or riding the fader to make sure that we're moving at the same speed and god damn it's such a mess and a whole lot of fucking work and i just don't need it badly enough to bother if she's not worth bothering about. and yeah, i know that when it's good, it's really good. but so far, the best high i've had is that feeling of wholeness and independence that surges after i get over an ex or what not. and that one's all mine. it requires no testing, no validation, no trust, no faith; nothing. just me.
but sometimes i lament that this perfect specimen of a male is going to waste and i feel a social obligation to share all of this goodness. i can only make one woman happy, but all others can live vicariously through her, because they talk a lot and do that kind of stuff amongst themselves. i know. i've seen the movies.
i've generally considered myself to be a very lonely individual, but i guess i'm not as lonely as those who are willing to settle for less than stellar, just to quench their thirst, because here i am, not doing just that.