blue pill

hanging on to things beyond their natural expiriation is an ultimately destructive though very comforting skill. it’s much like struggling against a tide… futile, but in the short term strangely satisfying. even if the transition is assured to make things worse the best course is always to look forward instead of behind. but “best” is rarely the same as “most comforting”.

i fucking hate the end of things.

humming dirigible

i found two new friends this summer.  one was actually old but hadn't been my friend in a while.  and the other was brand cellophane new.  they made the late summer months much more fun.  i had forgotten how nice it was to have infecund friends, my other such friends having faded some time ago like dave and linda mcfly.  the very first thing we three did together was weekend in a country mansion on a cattle farm.  if you haven't done this recently i would highly recommend it.  it has a way of reaffirming what is most important in life:  absinthe, the world's  cheapest chicken, sunshine, and a mansion-wide integrated audio system to wake you up to whjb's classic hits in the morning. when you really consider it i am a cowboy at heart.

tango

things change so fast. 

not me of course.  i never change.  but my luck, my seasonal affect, my sheets… they all flip from state to state with breakneck pace, many times rendering the interim conditions essentially like they never happened for lack of external observation. 

so much has happened since the last time i wrote here.  more than the whole of this log up to this point.  but things are never the same when you write about them from a distance.  and with the constant whirring of change the words written about some semi-solid event could be totally different even hour to hour. 

i am not sure i will write about everything that happened in the gap.  but i will write about some.  and that is really all you can ask for without a voice.

mrs. cold

kings of convenience’s “mrs. cold” was the soundtrack to a sunny sunday.  conditions were perfect for both running and daydreaming.  cool outside the sun’s rays and warm in their path, the air itself seemed to massage my skin with alternating strokes.  palm muted lead riffs in headphones gave the distinct sense of unreality and i spent the rest of the day trying to recreate that feeling.  pretending my voice was on perma-echo, i alternated between the garage and the shower to sing any words that couldn’t be held in.  i didn’t speak a word in normal cadence all day.

rebuild

the darker the place the tinier the speck of light needed to completely change perception. a few of the holes i carry in my swiss cheese soul were made opaque recently, filled with the malleable clay of a good friend.  working that familiar but still fresh loam through my fingers helps me forget about the other pieces of me that remain absent.  i hope they will also be filled one day.  those jagged-edged frames of emptiness are a real eyesore.

lost

last night was spend wandering through space, feeling like words or even a touch have to be twice as forceful to register.  in no particular order:

talk to some girl and boy at a bar as fireworks crack in the distance.  the girl knows several people i know through strange coincidences.  the boy plays soul coughing’s “circles” on the electronic jukebox.  debate with myself whether it would be better if it were actually the year two thousand four.  if it were i certainly wouldn’t feel like a boy scout without a compass.

pass two men in a parking lot and they tell my friend and me that we look like cops.  i get irrationally angry at this.  eventually i let it go without arresting them.

find myself in what is obviously a dive bar that for some reason has obscenely loud current pop music being played by a d.j. so out of place that he may as well have been spinning at a funeral.  even for this city it is a new low for the attractiveness of the patrons.  women either too heavy or too old dance poorly and eye my friend and me.  we leave quickly.

early morning on a deck.  sol beer and carnival popcorn from a blue plastic bag.  girls come and go between this house and another.  eventually i follow one to the other place and find it full of high school boys who are friends of one of the girls’ younger brother.  they are playing unlistenable music and microwaving food.  i stay for as long as i can stand it then leave, thinking to myself that happiness is elusive.  and relative.

one time a week

it is strange which muscle motions become habits.  in the course of driving my car i find myself reaching from the gear shift knob over to touch an invisible thigh.  it happens at random times and has no bias with regard to whether my mind is active with thought or turned off.  when i realize what i’m doing i immediately pull back, like the passenger seat is glowing red electric stove coil.  the only thing that gives me a sliver of relief from these constant burns is the video for gauntlet hair’s “human nature”.  i’ve watched it on a loop for several days.  i like when andy and craig smile at the end.   

splinter

my soul hurts.  it aches with the dull throbbing of a contusion under two fingers of pressure.  the fact that time is slipping away from me did not matter so much when that time was sucked dry of pleasure.  now it rushes past, taunting my parched throat with its oozy wetness.  i want to purr again at the end of the day.  and wake up without wanting to vomit.  

lady liberty avenue

tears for fears is the soundtrack of freedom, late afternoon in the summer until dusk.  it plays in my head when it’s not swirling out loud.  we made mojitos and used our tongues to keep the mint from kissing our teeth.  brazilian rum and citric acid  and bubbly water cooled by ice provided the gravitational pull back to reality between pages as we read aloud from choose your own adventure number three.  the left fork in the underground river is always the right decision.  we ended our adventure abruptly to retire indoors and recline at right angles on the couch as the last hot air balloon left for paris.  i have a feeling the professor would not approve.

baum boulevard

when a man’s an empty kettle he should be on his mettle

someone once called me robotic.  i think it was a comment on the lengths i go to not waver from my logic-based decisions.  even in the face of overwhelming emotion i try to do what is right and not what any particular urge pulls me toward. 

i hear a beat (thump, thump).  how sweet!

however, giving in to emotions is one of the greatest things about being human and i allow myself to become overwhelmed as often as i can when my actions in this state don’t affect others or have a small probability of negative consequences.

just to register emotion: jealousy, devotion

recently i listened to “evil bee” by menomena, a song about yearning to be a machine.  the amazing bass breakdown and overall musical genius of that song made me yearn instead to be human. i think, however, i got the point quite clearly.

lawrenceville love letters

tender, new amsterdam, cantina, thunderbird.  atmosphere, dive, courtyard, smoke.  time flows differently through the hours of a warm night, weaving in and out of conversations and skipping long stretches like a needle moving perpendicular to the groove.  the boys can’t help but let portions of their tightly guarded happiness reserves escape in the form of smiles.  the warmth makes the dark no longer menacing but womb-like, erecting temporary barriers against reality.

signifcant & sublime

saturday emily and i went to a local art gallery in the basement of a house.  it was the opening for an exhibit featuring regional art teachers’ work.  i was impressed both with some of the pieces and with the open bar.  my favorite piece was ram skull with stripes by josh criswell.  it reminds me of austin, texas.

after art we sat in the car outside emily’s house for about twenty minutes trying to decide which direction the night should take us.  bouts of silence broken with discussion, followed by whispers, then building to crescendo.  imagine the conversation as the spoken word equivalent of “breakers” by local natives.  it was awkward yet perfect, the stuff of larry david situational comedies.  i’m not a sadist so i wouldn’t want to drag out decisions like that all the time but when the perfect storm of factors causes a simple choice to be much more difficult than it ought to be it’s hard not to enjoy it from ten thousand feet.

the black keys

is it sad that the black keys song i’m most into is the tobacco remix of “i got mine”? i don’t think so as it is just as slimy as the original, with attitude dripping down its sides.  it does add, however, that psychedelic and noise mixture that i love from tobacco.  and it has lost any resemblance to the sound of strings being plucked.   

i caught the black keys last night at the consol center.  it is never quite as good to see a band in a huge venue but i liked it. my favorite two songs were “sinister kid” and “everlastinglight”.  “sinister kid” had so much swagger.  the rhythm was sharp but the guitar was warbly and that made for an awesome contrast.  the bass didn’t come through like in the album version so it sounded a lot more like they played it as a twosome (even though a backing band was there).  two huge disco balls and hundreds of beams of light danced around for the falsetto-only “everlasting light”.  it was like prom at the school for the ordinary-challenged.

morning

the loss of a friend is a shock to the system.  you have to learn to breathe again in an unfamiliar environment.  you have to weave duct tape and booze into a barrier to prevent your insides from spilling out of the hole in your chest.  most importantly you can’t give up hope that you will commune with them again. i have and i have and i haven’t.

take me dancing! (boom boom boom boom)

was it apparent to anyone else the major flaw in patton oswalt’s facebook post about humanity and good and evil? it is possible that the post was meant to inspire and in that case it did the trick. the trick, however, is on the reader if they are comforted by his words.  he writes:

“But the vast majority stands against that darkness and, like white blood cells attacking a virus, they dilute and weaken and eventually wash away the evil doers and, more importantly, the damage they wreak. This is beyond religion or creed or nation. We would not be here if humanity were inherently evil. We'd have eaten ourselves alive long ago."

it is not in the nature of good to destroy.  good is rather compelled to help and nurture.  because of this and the nature of the world there will always be evil.  and while the good may outnumber that evil it is still no consolation to me.  the reason humanity is still here is because never before in human history did evil have the access to extinction-level technology.  and when the tissue is dead both the virus and the white blood cells die, no matter the ratio. 

wow, that was gloomy.  anyone up for some wham! on vinyl?

to be young and wild and free

a few days ago i went back to college for alumni weekend.  it was warm and full of pollen and the buildings smelled like college.  there were no lack of nametags or mammoth tents and the flagstone paths revealed the way to me whenever my memory failed.  i retraced the dutiful steps of an engineering boy and the wobbly steps of a fraternity boy.  as i listened to smashmouth playing live in the quad i realized both that pop music has regressed in the last decade and that my mindset has stayed relatively the same.  i still love the beauty of logic and routine.  and i still love the beauty of the unknown and chaos.  mathematics in fluorescent light and day-drinking in the sun.  training in the morning and stumbling around with random faces from the past at night.  i don’t find these things a contradiction.  

do not open until

there is music reserved for singing alone

there is music reserved for whispering with a heavy heart

there is music reserved for humming while running

and running and running and running

there is music reserved for projecting with the top down

there is music reserved for chanting with the boys

and then there are the junior boys

and then there are the beach boys

oakland zoo

the greatest thing about experiencing grizzly bear in person is hearing the multi-part vocal harmonies start softly and gradually gain strength until they feel like a subtle but firm shove backward. the second best thing is watching and hearing a flute at a rock and roll show.  i experienced both veins of gold on saturday.  i made sure to angle myself so that the shove pushed me closer to the person i was with.  

dilation

when is a couch not a couch?  when it frames a certain space in which time moves at a different speed than that of the ordinary world.  when four arms and a blanket all intertwine like orange-white strands of molten glass.   when the floor is made of lava and the thought of leaving is so absurd that it is immediately gone with the next breath, like a stray eyelash (but without the wish). 

papercut/lovebug

it rips through the skin so fast the aftermath smells of friction.  the involuntary drawn breath ensures that this smell permeates the nostrils.  several moments free of exhale follow like children.  and the inevitable gravity-influenced tear-shaped crimson drops taste warm and metallic.  it’s always deeper than what seems possible for such a delicate thing.