L'enfer, c'est les autres.

Hmph.

2009-10-05T09:37:00.001-04:00

Concentrate

2009-08-04T20:37:00.000-04:00

this is no world for poets.

the children are shipped to schools
where they're given the tools
by fools
to obey the rules of engagement;
their parents lost in work
too stressed, struggling in debt,
a new plasma tv set to forget their breath
and how
it's always getting weaker.

no, its all about being too afraid
to fail to make the grade
and let ambition fade,
because god knows
what the neighbors will think.

and for those with the lack of guts to give up,
there's always welfare to help prepare
with no hope for scare or repair
for an endless parade of days.

but in this mad dash for cash
that everyone tries to outlast,
there are thousands smiling wide for their empire's place in the tide.

where you can't construct cages of steel
cages of dreams will contain what's real;
who designed the american dream?
who's responsible for what we've seen?

believe in family, get another divorce, guess it wasn't meant to be

believe in work, tuition gets raised, but don't get caught behind

believe in country, lose a soul in a war, all for our way of life

but i only believe in me
in going mad and living bad
chasing my wicked heart to the end
of an existential well.

i believe in hell.

and how the only way to where you want to be
is through it.

this is no world for poets
but for the desperate with pen in hand
and a throat to speak louder than the band

esp

The Power Of Fire

2009-06-22T11:09:00.001-04:00

Countless nights he's stared at the flames
That dance out of his bare chest.
He wraps it tightly with blankets
Desperate for some kind of rest.
And it seemed for the longest time
That this was a god of his own.
He would become one with longing,
And be free and bold and alone.
Stand tall and see the inferno:
How lost he is within the flame.
And as he holds back the burning;
The black char works across his brain.

'Between the forest and the stairs
I've been running away from home.
The feeling I've been looking for
Is the one that I haven't known.

What is the worth of blood and bone?'

He was promised a simple life,
A wild fox wearing a men's suit.
But drawn out of domestic cage,
He spied the moon and sought pursuit.
Not again would he be a pet,
Having his fate set within stone.
Yet that's when the thoughts consumed him,
Once he set out to be alone.
He had so narrowly escaped
A life of innocence and good.
Yet if one future is withheld,
Is there another in the woods?

'Between the forest and the stairs
I've been running away from home.
But I end up back where I start,
Any which direction that I go.

What is the truth that I should know?'

And like a star you can track him,
As he wanders aimless with dread.
A gentle glow in peaceful night,
An ember in a stranger's bed.
Predictably, he runs away
To a quiet corner somewhere,
To burn bright, to drink, and dispose,
To catch his breath from the stale air.
He renews his vows with darkness,
And then returning to the lie,
Where work is fun and love is grand,
But his fire is the only "I"

'Between the forest and the stairs
I've been running away from home.
The power to live or to die
Is saved for the truly alone.

My only desire is to roam.'

~EsP

Ikari

2009-06-05T14:29:00.000-04:00

Come on Shin, stand up for yourself.
Between the helpless little boy,
And the heartless killing machine,
The true blue, real you can't be found.

You've watched time fly within a cage.
To pass the time between ceilings,
You try to learn what it all means,
But it's all trapped inside your head.

Come on Shin, believe in yourself.
You're smart enough to discover
The path of the least resistance,
But who you are is how you fight.

The nature of life is to hurt.
So don't you ever be afraid,
Because as long as you're alive,
Everything will be okay.

Or so they say.
~EsP

Pantheon

2009-04-20T10:00:00.002-04:00

The city is a heavy heart
Pumping out across asphalt veins,
And from high up enough above
Everybody looks the same.

When I first made my way across,
I'd been trying to find my place
Upon this little pale blue dot,
Careening through a cold dark space.

Now it lights a tiny corner
In a heart that's been made the same:
A lack of defining purpose
Frozen blindly within a frame.

But I have made my peace
With slow and lonely death,
And I have found a love
For every fading breath.

I made myself a god,
Powerless and in debt.

On and on, the sweet winds whistle
Across my face and through my hair,
And the balance that I have found
Exists in neither here nor there.

These stray moments of endless peace,
I've learned to let them enfold me.
They guide me to awakening,
And they allow me to believe.

Deep inside, we know wrong and right
In our empathy and dismay,
The justice in the bitter night
That follows every burning day.

So I have made my peace
With slow and lonely death,
And I have found a love
For every fading breath.

I made myself a god,
To repay heartache's debt.
~EsP

There is no more exquisite pain in the world...

2008-12-17T10:30:00.002-05:00

...than how I use other people's desires for happiness only as a weapon against myself.

Mother

2008-12-17T10:29:00.001-05:00

Mother, it's been long since we spoke,
And I fear the wait won't lessen;
There's no point in conversation
If neither of us will listen.

I've been holding this weight so long
Since I took it from your shoulders.
I can feel your fear in my heart:
This disease I can't get over.

But I will embrace my feelings,
The ones I always hid from you,
And you'll never find me kneeling;
I will stare wide-eyed at the truth.

[. . .]

Mother, we are insatiable,
And it's hard for making the most
When 'safety' comes at such great cost,
And 'happy' is a long-gone ghost.

In truth, I thought it was your fault,
And I resented you for it.
But now I'd kiss you on the cheek
Before leaving for the forest,

Where I will embrace my feelings,
The ones I always hid from you,
Where you'll never find me kneeling;
I will stare wide-eyed at the truth.

[. . .]

"Forgive us, lord, for we know not what we do."
I may know what's wrong, but never what's true,
You kept us all safe, you kept us all blue,
Although I try hard, I won't forget you

As I walk
In the valley
Of the shadow
Of death
~EsP

confabulation

2008-12-15T04:17:00.002-05:00

It's not so easy becoming wise
Beyond your years.
You push and struggle through the
Banalities
Of concentration, and chance
Aneurysms
When you're just as bad off
Letting go.

But if you don't, then you don't.

2008-12-07T07:21:00.004-05:00

Making new friends is hard. I only seem to admire the intelligent melancholy.

The role of an artist.

2008-12-07T06:35:00.000-05:00

be hopeful.

2008-12-03T08:19:00.001-05:00

Be hopeful for the future. We're developing means and ways of communicating instantaneously on a global scale and harvesting enough energy to serve mankind many times over. That is the idea, the ideal, and what I believe is becoming the possible.

In my opinion, we should focus on those possibilities that enrich the entire human race, discern which institutions are counter-productive, and reverse engineer those motherfuckers to get to that future that's better for everyone.

I don't care if it's religion, government, money markets, or what. When the nature of existing in society will always guarantee the rich few and the many poor, the best thing we can do is to make the lives of the poor better. As being "poor" would no longer be much of an inconvenience, then the distinctions between "rich" and "poor" would begin to lose their power.

http://www.thevenusproject.com/

Thank you and goodnight.

2008-11-23T06:05:00.000-05:00

True, a person with a melancholy temperament had been fated with an awful burden—but also, in Lord Byron's phrase, with a "fearful gift." The burden was a sadness and despair that could tip into a state of disease. But the gift was a capacity for depth and wisdom.

Drowner

2008-11-19T03:44:00.001-05:00

The fog settled on the surface,
One pale veil above the lake depth.
I stripped myself bare in moonlight,
I ran, I leapt, I held my breath.

Ever since, I' ve searched for that pearl,
From tangled to torn to torpor.
Floating along with the refuse,
Forgetting what I'm looking for.

But if I can find it,
I think a real me would surface.
I could just spread my wings,
And fly up to that great furnace
I could live
Happy
Now

So I may get caught in your net;
Every now and then, it occurs.
But my packed lungs will tip your bow:
Compress, and it spills forever.

The only way to help is dive,
Lock lips, we will breathe each other.
One day they might find us down there:
Debris of "those smothered lovers."

But if I can find it,
I think a real me would surface.
I could just spread my wings,
And fly up to that great furnace
We could live
Happy
Now
~EsP

I turn emo in the winter.

2008-11-05T10:22:00.004-05:00

I've been changing my strings and dreaming beautiful dreams that make my chest hurt when I wake up into my life. My hair's almost long enough to tie back again, and I am finally living a life that never allows me to feel like anything is steady or comfortable (overnight shift on a part-time basis owns for fucking up every routine you think you have in your life. My wallet's getting bare and my tubbiness is slowly becoming muscle...)

So I've been working on my heart, giving it some room to breathe again. I need to stop using the boring crappy things in my life as excuses to daydream through the rest without ever trying to play a part in my own life. But to do so I have to recognize a few things about myself, and mostly how vulnerable I'm capable of being in a world dominated by assholes. I need to not care.

I need to go on permanent vacation, leave the life I learned for one less inobtrusive and more satisfying.

It's just the here-to-there that gets me stuck. The thinking to doing. I used to be that way once though, in sporadic bursts. I used to be confident and giving...

Well, who knows what the future holds, or who I'll be when I get there.

Resignment?

2008-11-02T19:48:00.000-05:00

I'm finally coming to terms with what seems to be an inevitability: In no matter what company I'm in, a part of me will always feel empty. I have a notion that the person I'm constantly missing is myself.

All I can hope is that the only cure for such a drafty chamber is to live a long and spirited life.

I guess improvisation will have to do.

Getting my head straight (for now)

2008-10-11T16:51:00.005-04:00

I never thought I'd walk away from you.
I did.
But it's a false sense of accomplishment.
Every time I quit

Okay, in less than a week I'm going back into the working world. This has got me reassured, and I've been able to unclench a bit when it comes to thinking about something other than "WTF IS GONNA HAPPEN TO ME NOW" In bold, repeating like a tickerboard at the stock exchange, and I've been sitting in a seat staring at it in a dimly lit auditorium.

And I've been reflecting a lot. I do that a lot; For some reason I think that by truly knowing myself, I can learn how to be happy. Maybe at 7pm when I'm sitting on my roof with my last beer, watching the sunset, I'll come to a profound realization that I'd find life more engaging if I considered it to be a playground. Or, when driving with a cigar and the windows down, listening to Jimmy Eat World loud on the radio, I'll discover that I've lost the artistic way I used to articulate my heart, back when I was so desperately wanting to people to know the true, intimate me, behind the callous and stoic skin I give the world.

But I am a prisoner of instinct, an avatar of conflictive introverted worldview. I'll contemplate on the nature of nothingness, as void being the beautiful mother of all existence, when sitting on the porch at 3am; Yet, put me in a room with a pretty girl and suddenly I'm entirely unprepared. I probably end up prattling on about Carl Jung or Bukowski. Always receiving and processing, I'm not the best at communicating.

Don't mistake me for shy. Words are easy. I look for communication on a profound level, the communication between two selfs; It's the search for self that's difficult.

I can't seem to find it, but everyone I know considers the search to be the ultimate test of character. It's evidently the litmus of a true artist, but I never took pride in it. If the struggle is what it means to know humanism and art, then we're glorifying everyone's path without announcing that there is no end. Is that why people on the other side laugh when someone says they need to "find themselves?"

The trick is that there was no beginning either.

I look back to when it all began. Somewhere between five and ten years old, I was a bored and insulated child. I had finally learned my place in my siblings hieirarchy, which was a true social experiment involving four neglected latch-key kids. Our mother worked two jobs, and we went to church three times a week. She figured that if she provided us with food, shelter and religion, then she wouldn't be a negligent parent. She created a moral standard for the house: the standards of the Christian sect we were associated with and born into. I never made lasting friendships when I was in school because I wasn't allowed the freedom to do so without severe repercussion.

When I was a kid I always used to wonder what would happen if me from the future came to visit with advice. Now I think what I'd tell myself if I could go back, and I think I'd say, "Although your mother is a good-hearted person trying to do the best she can, you should run away. Run away often, because unless you drive her to the depths of exasperation required for a mother to loosen her grip on her ducklings, your life will be spent long before you start living. Endure the hell, and you'll come out alright, but don't take it all down inside, don't bottle it up."

In hindsight, if I told myself that, I'd have probably been put on quite a few drugs. Brave New World, eh?

So early on, I thought a lot about some pretty heavy stuff. You can't have 5 or 6 hours of church a week and not think a lot about death, justice, and shame; That is, as long as you're an introverted soul-searcher. Just as my family life was a social experiment gone awry, forcing me not to interact with anyone outside of school was also an exercise in deprevation. I was the ultimate fly-on-the wall, and in my intellectual pursuit of justice, I catalogued my perceptions, behind a veneer of rage and heartache.

My search for self began when I realized there was absolute injustice, that there is no currency or capital in judging what is fair or unfair. I discovered that we are all just children of circumstance, and that our existence can sometimes be a horror relative to being raised as livestock, from cage to death.

I wrote recently to a friend, asking whether all these boxes we find ourselves in, and struggle so hard to get out of, whether they aren't just imaginary. That is, do we always envision some greater trappings that prevent us from 'true being' just to drive us to try to escape it? And then, isn't it inevitable that we'd find a box so big that we could never escape it?

So, I could probably write a novel for angsty teenagers to illustrate all of these concepts that I wrestle with, but try to talk to a pretty girl on an elevator? I would never figure out what to say. It certainly wouldn't come from my heart, because that would be eccentric, wouldn't it?

That's alright; Once I'm published, I guess those words could serve some sort of introduction. Maybe someone else would want to talk to me instead.

"Be careful what you wish for, old boy..."

2008-09-30T19:17:00.003-04:00

I am a loving and willing slave to good Irish stout.

Heady, crisp and filling, it's never hurt my feelings.

Seven - Vagiant

New Direction

2008-09-28T23:32:00.002-04:00

The song is really coming together. Soon it'll be ready for the stage. I felt like I've learned a lot in writing it.

and a belated happy birthday...

2008-09-24T11:52:00.002-04:00

to me, of 23.

Gripe time.

2008-09-16T03:52:00.005-04:00

I went off to Exton for a job interview (graveyard shift) but it got cancelled, so I started heading back home. That's when I saw on my phone that Kim (my roommate) was inviting me to Molly's with other folks. Since I had some spare time, I gave her a call and asked what they were up to and whatnot. So I head home, I grab a bite to eat on the way, and when I'm home I give her another call.

"So are you guys still there?"

They're asking for the check but they're going to hang around for another half an hour. So I'm thinking, there's no point in going out to drink if I don't buy any drinks (and while I'm unemployed, I'm not buying any drinks) so I scan my head to try to figure out who would buy me a drink. Then I remember that Jesse still hasn't paid the internet bill, so I try to pass along the message that he should buy me a couple drinks.

Now, the way things work in this house, is that our utilities (which up until I got internet installed was just PECO... electricity) are split evenly among roommates, no arguments. This is how it was announced to me when I moved in, and this is how it has always worked. Gravy. Up until this month I haven't charged anyone for internet access because I was making double what anyone else in the house was making. When I became unemployed, I announced that the internet would become a split resource.

So alright, I'm gonna go out and grab a drink and deduct it from what Jesse owes me. So I'm talking to Arlo on the phone and I tell him the proposition and I ask him to pass it along to Jesse. He gets back and he says "He says no, because... you used more PECO or something like that."

"That's fucking bullshit."

"Can I call you back?"

"Yeah, sure." So now I'm fuming, because Jesse has basically said that I should take the internet money he owes me out of the PECO money that he paid to Kim because he was under the assumption I used way more electricity than everyone else (which is mostly untrue; I do use more electricity than him, but Kim runs an air conditioner quite a bit, which contributes just as much if not more).

That's not how the rules work in this house. But whatev; It's not like he hasn't broken house rules before (see the Liza fiasco) whenever it suited him, so I walked through his open doorway into his room, straight to his computer, and grabbed the USB wifi dongle I loaned him from the back of his computer and promptly left, disturbing only the air in my path.

So last month's bill, I have to absorb his portion, and this month's bill, since it wouldn't be fair to Kim or Liza who actually paid for the internet.

After all the movies I've burned for him, shit I've lent him, let him use my phone, and I've even made it a point to stay out of his goddamn way.

I don't know how to earn his respect, but, for the foreseeable future, he's lost mine.

Drunk

2008-09-13T18:39:00.000-04:00

Drunk
Drank
Drink

They say you are what you eat,
And I say you are what you drink.

And now I'm too bitter,
Too sanguine
To be so palatable to you.

But the soul burns
Brighter and brighter still
In a place where everything is reduced
To ashes
Eventually

You are what you drink,
And I've drank too much.

Now,
If you were to drink me,
You'd have too much, too.
~EsP

The beginning is the end.

2008-09-07T23:51:00.006-04:00

"How does it feel?"

"I don't know. Feels good, I guess. Or bad. Whichever works."

"Oh, come on. Can't you ever decide on anything?"

Aleksandr sat forward. "Look, I just don't think it's for me. I can't settle down long enough to get anything out of it." His eyes darted to the corners of the room, betraying a discomfort half between shame and indignance.

"Hey, I'm sure you can do it; You just have to let go a little, yeah? You just need to chill the fuck out, Aleks." Jane sat up. She was a little uncomfortable with being so forward, but she was exasperated; She only wanted the best for Aleksandr, but he was stubborn in every way.

It was five years since they met. Aleksandr had just finished high school and he had been spending time at the local community college, passing time waiting for greener pastures. From his demeanor, however, you'd think he was waiting for a meteorite to fall at just the right trajectory. Just a couple years younger, Jane had been a well-meaning victim of his perennial optimism: His soft features, the way his eyes would wrinkle when he smiled.

But now, Aleksandr's features were stone; His brows were furrowed, and his chest was tight. He didn't say anything, and it only made Jane feel worse.

"Well, I don't know what to say. You just can't get over yourself long enough to meditate, but if you did, I'm sure you'd find something inside yourself worth saving." Jane sighed and leaned back against the wall of his room. It was cool, covered with plaster. It sucked the warmth out of her back, relieved a bit of her agitation.

"I don't know. I don't really know much of anything." Aleksandr stood up and walked over to the door. He sat and braced himself in the frame. His fingers found their way to the pack of cigarettes in his shirt pocket, flipped the top, and plucked one with no rhyme or reason; It was one mostly to the middle, to the front: easily accessible. "I just can't get out of my head how so many people out there just do what they're told; They find some beau, have a couple kids, and then sell themselves into the wage slave racket. I mean, I know that it's the advertised product and all, but does anyone ever really consider anymore whether or not the American Dream is really worth all the effort?"

His earnest questioning belied the passion that Jane had fallen for, five years ago. However, her silent, passionate pleas for him fell on preoccupied ears; They fluttered by a preoccupied heart, like dandelion seeds in the wind around a smooth, unmovable rock. He always had a way of leaving her scrambling for words she never understood until she said them.

"People are fucked up, you know? You can't save all of them. You can't even save some of them. All you can do is take care of yourself and the ones you care about." She sat down next to him, her blue eyes pleading that he pay attention to her, that he show some form of kindness to her. Maybe she saw some form of herself in him; and if he could find it in himself to touch her, to caress her, to comfort her, then she could offer the same to him. But that moment never came. Talking to Aleksandr was often like yelling down a well; All you could hear is your own voice, echoing in the dark.

"I guess you're right," Aleksandr said, craning his head to the side with a sardonic smirk. "But it doesn't change that I want to so badly." He took another pull from his cigarette and breathed in, nose and throat, so that the smoke would thin with the fresh morning air. He exhaled through the screen door.

Why did I come here? Jane thought to herself. It was a thought that she'd later feel guilty for, but in the moment it was enough to mobilize. Everyone else had abandoned him, just as he had abandoned everyone else. It was her sweet and guilty nature that kept her by his side as a springboard for his ideas. She was a solid figure that he could depend on to reflect his sadness. Like a bat flying in the dark, Aleksandr needed a pure soul nearby to reflect and to defy all his problems with life. Without her, he was blind; But of course, he was too self-absorbed to be concerned with the the repercussions of the signals he was transmitting. The only thing he could focus on was his cause, his mission. He had singlehandedly decided to save mankind by suffering on behalf of all those who were too afraid to feel ashamed for their decisions.

"I should probably go, before I'm too late." Jane's damage control had extended thus far. She knew that if she called him a coward and a fool, she'd lose her future opportunities. So she kept it to herself, gathered her things, and, after briefly ruffling Aleksandr's hair, she walked out. She had no engagement to go to, no appointment to be late for. Alexsandr, however, didn't inquire. He let her go; It wasn't that he didn't care, or that he wasn't curious, but rather that he couldn't find the inner fortitude to call her on her retreat. To do so, he would have to admit to himself that he cared, and before that, he'd have to convince himself that he cared about her.

But Aleks was a man who believed that a can of worms was always better than a can of snakes, so he let her go. He let everyone go, but he at least knew that she would be back. She was his light at the end of the tunnel, and although he never gave her what she deserved, he never once took her for granted.

But the dark and lingering fear in his heart was that she was only a heartbeat or a wrong step away from becoming one of the many who would lose their way. He was afraid that she would break his heart, although he had never expressly given it to her.

Staring through the horizon, the sunrise burned through his retinas. Uncaring, he sat in silence, looking for some answer between the molecules, between the colors. The cigarette burned down to the filter.

"Fuck!"

Aleksandr flicked it outside, and went to the bathroom to run his singed fingers under cold water.

anhedonia

2008-09-05T20:38:00.005-04:00

Anhedonia ANhedonia AnHedonia AnhEdonia AnheDonia AnhedOnia AnhedoNia AnhedonIa AnhedoniA ANHedonia ANhEdonia ANheDonia ANhedOnia ANhedoNia ANhedonIa ANhedoniA ANHEdonia ANHeDonia ANHedOnia ANHedoNia ANHedonIa ANHedoniA ANHEDonia ANHEdOnia ANHEdoNia ANHEdonIa ANHEdoniA ANHEDOnia ANHEDoNia ANHEDonIa ANHEDoniA ANHEDONia ANHEDOnIa ANHEDOniA ANHEDONIa ANHEDONiA ANHEDONIa ANHEDONIA.

"If you ever find yourself back in the world of the living..."

What was it... the Ritalin? The broken home? The "God" problem?

WHAT THE FUCK WAS IT?!

I need to know so I can kill it.

Just like I kill everything else...

Hobo Blues

2008-09-01T14:14:00.002-04:00

Rent day. Last night I jotted off a cheque for $300, following up the one I wrote for $200 in unpaid cell phone dues to my mother, $100 for Comcast, and $125 for my new Verizon plan.

Got sick of eating liverwurst sandwiches and drinking water, so I went to WaWa and got a Ham & Swiss hoagie to remind myself what I was missing. Bought cigarettes. Tried to stay up as late as possible.

Still waking up before noon.

I put an ad on myspace in case anyone local knew of any job opportunities, as the panic of unsustainability finally set in. I got news from a vague acquaintance that there was a graveyard stocking shift at Target that's paying $10.50 an hour, no dressup, no customers, and I can listen to music while I work.

So I caved and I'm going to apply and start living the nocturnal life. I've already started downloading Audio Books in mp3 format to culture myself throughout this endeavor, from Stephen King to Robert Anton Wilson, Dawkins & Joseph Campbell.

I am back where I was two years ago.

The future is now the most unclear. I don't afford myself any comfort now. The days have grown long and uneventful, and there is nothing that I want. Now I merely exist.

All I have left is to seek that thread of insanity that made me open the door in the first place. I have to find something inscrutably, undeniably worth living for.

Wish me luck and give me the address to your local philosopher's club.

Boxes and bait.

2008-08-25T19:31:00.005-04:00

Anything that can be found desirable can be used to trap you.

The only freedom is to desire nothing, but only for the sake of desiring nothing.

Because to desire freedom is the most ingenious trap of all.

It's the trap of the Ego.

P.S. Last night I had the strangest dream, that I was hanging out with Obama at some sort of political convention, and we were talking about philosophy and humanism. And he was very friendly with me, like a father (I've been identifying with his fatherless youth too much) and I found it odd and a little unsettling but surprisingly comforting. Then I noticed a bunch of freaks in the room. I'm talking Salvador Dali freaks, large women, like 7 feet tall, and the skin and meat around their knees were shredded. There was nothing but bone and tendon. She leaned a bit and the cartilage snapped out and into the crowd. Then she was crawling on the ground, nothing below the mangled femur. I looked down out of the skybox to the show, and it became a parade of horrors. Rich white oligarchs cackling and drinking, their fangs glistening. I knew it was time to cover my eyes; I couldn't handle the horror of what I was seeing, the inhumanity of it all. Last night was the first time I got sleep paralysis with nightmares in a long time. I kept 'waking up' to realize that I hadn't really woken, and I finally forced my body (my real body) to move so that I would wake a little. Once I had been assured that I did have a link to the real world I fell asleep again. I must have slept for over 12 hours. I was hungover the entire day prior :/ (When I start drinking in abandon, it never ends well.)
The night before there was imagery of finding a videotape of an old western movie and a crystal clear image of me as a boy just looking at the camera, working a smirk. There was a grey fox trampled by a fat jogging woman, and an instant night. All of this was an improvement over the horde of scorpions.
I know this isn't healthy, but it's fascinating as fuck. I'm filling out a resume for Trader Joe's to begin my more humble, more casual life of poor college student status. Once I'm employed, I can get back to my old habits (at least to get to bed.)

P.P.S. In retrospect, I think the mutilated figures are similar to all those "before and after" pictures of soldiers who have lost their limbs, given prosthetics, and have had their appearances mangled by war.

Event Horizon

2008-08-19T15:34:00.003-04:00

3:35 PM

Tuesday, I think.

Just finished reading all of the Watchmen graphic novella. It was really good, but then I idly made a stupid mistake;

I checked my bank account, which, when you're unemployed, is much akin to checking up on an ex you haven't talked to in years: It doesn't help anything, and it's only bound to make you feel worse.

And in that vein, I've been offering trips to see people I haven't seen in a while. So far the only person who's been receptive was Meg. Meg Nicholson, who was once a paragon of innocence in my eyes. So much like checking my draining bank account, I'm probably going to go visit her for a couple days next week or so.

And I'm gonna get to see how much she's changed, how happy she is now, how little I've changed, and come back feeling like 170 pounds of pure shit. But hey, I'm going to do it anyway, because I'm overdue and bored. In the least I might come out with some sort of snarky anecdote that won't change shit.

But it'll fill another blog post, and sitting around playing videogames all day isn't really great for inspiration. It's relaxing, sure, but then that little corner of me starts tugging again... But you could be doing so much more.

If there were one word to describe me, I'm sure it would be insatiable. Everything is tiring, but nothing helps me sleep.

My medical benefits run up at the end of the month, and I'm wondering if this swelling of my gums behind my bad canine is anything to worry about. I'm still not too worried about my next job; I still have time.

When time starts running out, you'll see me worry. And I'm not worried about my car, because I haven't been using it. Every 3 days or so I've been walking about 10 blocks to the ACME nearby for provisions. I've been trying to make buying choices that would reflect a 2-3 dollar per day diet. So it's bologna, liverwurst, water and fruit for me, lately.

And cheap rum. Which is the weak link, and it's been keeping me from taking Kava for my liver's sake.

I have a high demand for apathy; I never have enough of it, and I always want more. I'd have these ideas in my head like, "Oh I should stop medicating myself, because I'll be more active. Unhappy, but active." And when I do follow up on that thought I instead start thinking, "What the fuck was I thinking?"

I thought it would be my draining bank account, but honestly, the urge to get back into my warm and comfortably meaningless routines is going to be what drives me to get another job.

I don't know what I need, but I need it.

And I need it now.

The signal never stops.

2008-08-19T15:20:00.001-04:00

I have two modes: Apathy and heartache.

I need to pour a drink before I ruin today for myself.

Crescent moons and dusty roads.

2008-08-15T17:17:00.003-04:00

I've discovered that my happy place in regards to liquor, rum in particular, is 4 shots.

That's just enough to have me a bit buzzy without a messy tummy.

My dreams were strange again last night, I was an assassin following a blonde woman who had gotten a tad nutty. It was possible that she was the daughter of my character, or my characters employer (even more likely), but she was going around doing lude sexual acts in public. Every time she'd relate something, I'd see the image in my head... Her blowing some random stranger on a bus. Adolescent porn-watching catching up to me? (Always hated those stupid premises)

But it didn't hurt me, so I know I had no connection to this person within the dream, but I felt a tad judgmental, and a few corpses later I found her at the angel oak and I said, "How about instead of a hundred guys, you just pick a few and fuck them a whole lot?"

That wasn't good enough, I didn't "get it," and the light of morning took me soon after, but as with all of my dreams I always twist them around within my mind and pervert the meaning. No, there was no shenanigans going on, but in my waking mind I held her close and put my gun against her temple...

And that's why I had to wake. I had no decision. I have no decisions to make over someone else's existence.

But today I realized that for life to have meaning, it must end. The ending is critical to the point of the whole thing; It has to be abrasive, blunt, like a shotgun blast to the face. It can slowly build, but it must all come to a head. That's how these stories are made, how they have an impact on our lives.

And so, I've contended with a meaningless life, because the only life we can have is a meaningless one. To die a martyr is a beautiful thing, but you leave your story to history, and I don't know about you, but I don't trust other people's storytelling that much, you know?

So I assume I have to do something, but I've instead been dreaming up situations and feelings for my alter ego, Aleksandr. Much like Henry Chinaski, I've started trying to build hypothetical situations based loosely on my personal experience upon which to embellish a truly interesting yarn of modern life.

Hell, he might be the next Catcher In The Rye, the next Wallflower (fuck the perks).

I just have to stop being me and start being him, and put him in some beautifully ugly situations and relate through him... so that's going to be a project over the next few days but right now I don't have the heart.

I haven't had the heart.

It's the caged bird that sings the loudest.

My new hobby: Ridiculing my mother's parenting

2008-08-14T09:39:00.003-04:00

"My party's postponed because the city it was in caught on fire. The whole street's closed off and you can see the smoke two towns over."

"See you were not meant to quit ha ha."

"I choose to believe that yahweh still doesn't want me hanging out with the other kids."

Take that.

I like Ike.

2008-08-14T08:08:00.002-04:00

I just discovered that Dwight Eisenhower was raised in Jehovah's Witnesses too, back when they were still trying to prophecize the exact year the world would end.

I already respected Ike for his views on the sobriety of war and his leaving speech in regards to dismantling the military-industrial complex.

He loses points for becoming a Presbyterian, but you gotta do what you gotta do to become President, I guess ;P

It could make a difference...

2008-08-13T08:21:00.001-04:00

A boy came upon a beach where a storm had just washed a hundred thousand small fish ashore. As they lay there gasping in their final moments, he grabbed one and threw it back into the sea, then grabbed another. Someone came along and seeing the multitude of fish on the beach, told him that his effort wasn't going to make much of a difference. He threw another fish into the sea and said;

"It will make a difference to that one."

Reality check... PTSD?

2008-08-12T09:15:00.005-04:00

"She still cares about you, but she has no control over you anymore."

I've stopped my regular regimen of self-medication (to ease my boredom and take my dreams away) and so I've started dreaming again like I used to when I was younger. The night before last, I explored a few random paranoid fears, but made it through okay.

And last night, my nightmare tutorial continued: I had a dream last night that my mother came up to Pennsylvania to bring me back to my childhood. And in her presence, I was a child again, I was that fragmented kid that I (even back then) was too ashamed to call myself. In my dream, all I could do is hide the contraband, try desperately to deny my hatred for the person who gave me everything, and wish for a new life...

Just like I've always done.

I've been waking up earlier and earlier in this parade of insecurities and torments; This morning I woke up at about 6:38, my guts so clenched with anxiety and dread that I couldn't go back to sleep again.

And it's bringing me back... To when I was a kid and I was too ashamed to tell the other kids why I couldn't hang out with them, when I was too proud to admit that my life was shit from the start.

It brings me back to remembering a condescending comment on my old LiveJournal... "Why would you be scared of a five foot tall red-haired girl?"

And it brought me to a conclusion: I am recently incapable of allowing myself to love, because for the first 18-20 years of my life, my love was a weapon that was used against me. I was the puppy that was kicked hundreds of times too many by the hands that fed him.

And my narrative has always been one of escape, grounded by the cruel reality that no matter how far I ran from others who held claim to me, it only made me trapped further and further inside myself.

My escape is not gender specific, or even confined to a person. Everything in my life is personified as a force that serves it's own ends... And if those confluence of forces fix their eyes on me, I've always been forced to assume that it was in the means of meeting their own desires.

It's the fox medicine at work, and I've been trying to protect my pelt.

So this morning I was clutching my blankets, shaking as my heart was racing, repeating to myself in reality check:

"She still cares about you, but she has no control over you anymore."

No one can control you, now.

I hope the Kava Kava comes soon. I need something to take the edge off.

Ow...

2008-08-06T10:54:00.002-04:00

Drank way too much, but I think sometime between 5am and 10am, I had a very cathartic dream about being lost and scared, just to discover a whole slew of friends in the underground.

Too Drunk To Fuck

2008-08-05T23:04:00.002-04:00

My boy Chris's birthday is tomorrow and we got a start on drinking. Right now I'm 7 or 10 drinks deep, can't really say for sure, but typing has become difficult. We started at Molly's, getting our waitress, Hayley (sp?) making all kinds of shit for Chris, some putrid some quite tasty... Then we moved to Tyler James, I cleaned up 3 games of pool before getting too drunk to win.

Now... I'm fucked, just finished up a conversation with a couple random guys at a local sports bar about politics and Ron Paul and shit. It's so good to hear from people who are informed about foreign policy and our own bullshit.

But now I'm far too gone. I can't type correctly; I'm constantly having to delete and retype, so I'm gonna call it a night.

Here's to spitting in the face of willful ignorance, and for the double standard of alcohol, one of our deadliest vices, being legal against all we are "protecting" our populace from.

Alcohol is a gateway drug. Heartache is a gateway drug.

If I make it past forty, I might find a new lease on life.

I'm all there is.

2008-08-05T16:49:00.003-04:00

I'm feeling better.

She's still a homewrecker, and she's been telling me to shut up with my loud guitar slamming crooning...

But I sent Kim a text this morning letting her know that she was coming onto our roommate and threatening the tranquility of the house, and I got a nice "Ugh" back so I know I've got an ally.

Never, ever ever again will we have a female roommate. It's nice having someone around who will clean up after herself, but I think we should've found one a little less bitchy and self-entitled.

Anyway, this song's been on my mind today, so I'm dropping the imeem embed and the lyrics. It's only 30 seconds in the embed, but if you follow it to the song and login, you'll hear the whole thing.

Hit The Switch - Bright Eyes

I'm staring out into that vacuum again
From the back porch of my mind
The only thing thats alive
I'm all there is

And I start attacking my vodka, stab the ice with my straw
My eyes have turned red as stoplights, you seem ready to walk
You know I'll call you eventually, when I wanna talk
'Til then you're invisible.

'Cause theres a switch that gets hit and it all stops making sense
And in the middle of drinks, maybe the fifth or the sixth
I'm completely alone at a table of friends
I feel nothing for them. I feel nothing, nothing

Well, I need a break from the city again
I think I'll ship myself back west
I got a friend there, she says, "Hey, any time."
Unless that offers expired, I have been less than frequent
she's under no obligation to indulge every whim
And I'm so ungrateful, I take, she gives and forgives
And I keep forgetting it

And each morning she wakes with a dream to describe
Something lovely that bloomed in her beautiful mind
I said "I'll trade you one for two nightmares of mine
I have some where I die, I have some where we all die."

I'm thinking of quitting drinking again
I know i said that a couple times
And I'm always changing my mind, well, I guess I am
But theres this burn in my stomach and theres this pain in my side
And when I kneel at the toilet
And the mornings clean light pours in through the window
Sometimes I pray I don't die
I'm a goddamn hypocrite

But the night rolls around and it all starts making sense
There is no right way or wrong way, you just have to live
And so I do what I do and at least I exist
What could mean more than this?
What would mean more?
Mean more?
Oh...

Cum Hoc Ergo Propter Hoc

2008-08-04T16:22:00.032-04:00

My firey fox,
We shadow box
For what's right or what works.

I've recently found nearly everything in my life has been pissing me off. I think my greatest aspiration at this point is just to be a complete, unapologetic prick for as long as necessary. If no one will give me the respect I deserve, I must thrash them for their insolence.

My mouth waters at the prospect.

(I didn't want anyone to see me like this... but now I'm beyond the barbs of judgment.)

Liza's seriously pissing me off. Now that she's Jesse's handbag (or the other way around; it's hard to tell at this point) she's going to all his social functions and feels like it's proper to be complicit in his criticisms of me... Beyond her own big mouth.

Point in case: The other day, Arlo and I were hanging around talking about sex and vasectomies while J & L were being semi-cuddly on the couch.

"You're ugly! [. . .] I just don't see you having a sex life. You're like a brother to me!"

Now at this point, I think: Watch your fucking mouth.

Correlation does not imply causation. <-- This is the answer to a logical fallacy that people will pull over your head constantly. Remember this saying and learn it's meaning. Does she not think of me as capable of a sexual life because she sees me as a brother (because I was decent enough to keep distance from my roommate), or because I'm "ugly" and she correlates that to her brother-view, implying causation to cover for an insult disguised as a joke?

Regardless, my point is that she hasn't lived here long enough to criticize me or joke with me in such a bitchy way.

More and more, there's a wedge (that might be mostly, but not entirely, in my head) being driven through the house; It's a wedge the size of two bratty introverts in leagues with each other. The dynamic of the house has been uncomfortably altered; It was supposed to be THREE bratty introverts in TANDEM with an extroverted overlord (Kim). Speak of the devil, I'm not sure if Kim knows or not, but when she gets back from Pennsig, I think she better find out.

Because I'm pretty fucking sure she'd feel the same way about it as I do: One or both of them need to move out.

As for Liza, in particular: People who can give out the heat, but who can't take it, shouldn't fucking play.

Because now she's marked as my punching bag.
All decisions are final.

I am not a computer-fixing housepet to be treated with such condescending disregard!

Ghosts from the past.

2008-08-04T14:07:00.005-04:00

PS- when you got angry about dave, i had been looking for apartments in PA and had told my mother that i was thinking about moving out there.

Why bother telling me?

i wanted you to know

I hope you feel better, then.

Because I sure as hell don't.

New Direction

2008-08-04T12:15:00.007-04:00

I've been beaten down and broken
From staring at the big picture.
I've taken on it's weight and size,
But it hasn't gotten clearer.
And in making up for lost time,
Each night I dream my redemption:
A cacophony of feelings
Too conflicted to bear mention.

(I can't make sense of the selfish
And their need for validation.
And I can't pity the selfless,
Always ruled by hesitation.)

So every pair of opposites,
I've balanced on a razor edge.
So frightened to be shaped by life,
I've retreated within my head.
There's no god within my machine,
There's no penance or forgiveness.
Every time my heart has broken,
I've grit my teeth in good riddance.

(I can't make sense of romantics,
Always looking for a saviour,
And I can't condone the antics
Of fucking friends and betrayers.)

So I'm needing new direction,
Because I've been spinning in place.
And the world's been spinning with me,
A kaleidoscope of faces.
And they always get in my way,
With their demands and contentions.
There is no master of my fate,
Just an endless range of questions.

(I can't make sense of happiness;
It's just another state of mind.
And I can't discount my despair;
It's the most meaning I can find.)
~EsP

Who is the master who makes the grass green?

2008-08-01T17:06:00.000-04:00

Note #2

2008-07-31T21:00:00.003-04:00

Two weeks notice is in. As of August 14th I'm going to be the master of my destiny, playing videogames, and trying to work off the fat I've gained in the past 2 and a half years on my ass.

I'm drunk; Fuck you :D

Soon I'll be free and content.

2008-07-31T08:08:00.003-04:00

"Why?"

"Because I 'manage' over two hundred campaigns, my colleagues are working ten hour days, and I can't cope with the stress level and responsibility. I want a month off. I've worked myself ragged enough to be able to take it and I'll call my bank about moving my 401 into an IRA. I've been unnecessarily overworked. Upper management has us doing the combined work of five jobs. I'm falling behind no matter what. I've had to work from home. and screw working ten hours in the office to come home and work three more, go to sleep, rinse repeat. I need something in my life other than constant work."

"You just described my life."

"I know, which is so incredibly emotionally why I want out. I'd take college student lifestyle over wage slavery, since I can still make that decision."

Trying to get my mother's support is like trying to get honey from a bear, but I think I've finally got all my cards lined up to jump into the strange unknown of being poor and having a life again.

Just A Note

2008-07-30T16:52:00.004-04:00

Before the beginning of an epic Silent Hill marathon, Liza told me last night that she and Jesse were getting romantically involved. I told her it was weird, but that they should do whatever rocks their boat, but here's my real opinion:

You don't date your fucking roommate if you live with other people.

This is a domestic disaster waiting to happen, and I'm counting the days until she fucks up our whole housing situation.

Goddamn women. Ye who was once a pretty cool chick has just been relegated into "best friend's girl" zone. She has become temporary, and now I'm wishing she'd just hurry up and move the hell out.

You don't date your goddamned roommates.

Even if things don't fall apart between them, I still have to deal with them being all friendly (god forbid there be a day when they're all awkward instead) while I'm slouching around the house running my geeky errands. I found them last night at 3am. They make me uncomfortable.

Fucking kids.

"It's just dumb luck that got you here..."

2008-07-30T12:19:00.007-04:00

Yesterday, I had an epiphany in regards to my last post. We do have new pressures shaping our genetics: Law. Where there is nothing above us to cull our herd, we have created Law in order to enforce disastrous consequences for undesirable characteristics.

BEFORE THE LAW stands a doorkeeper. To this doorkeeper there comes a man from the country and prays for admittance to the Law. But the doorkeeper says that he cannot grant admittance at the moment. The man thinks it over and then asks if he will be allowed in later. "It is possible," says the doorkeeper, "but not at the moment." Since the gate stands open, as usual, and the doorkeeper steps to one side, the man stoops to peer through the gateway into the interior. Observing that, the doorkeeper laughs and says: "If you are so drawn to it, just try to go in despite my veto. But take note: I am powerful. And I am only the least of the doorkeepers. From hall to hall there is one doorkeeper after another, each more powerful than the last. The third doorkeeper is already so terrible that even I cannot bear to look at him." These are difficulties the man from the country has not expected; the Law, he thinks, should surely be accessible at all times and to everyone, but as he now takes a closer look at the doorkeeper in his fur coat, with his big sharp nose and long, thin, black Tartar beard, he decides that it is better to wait until he gets permission to enter. The doorkeeper gives him a stool and lets him sit down at one side of the door. There he sits for days and years. He makes many attempts to be admitted, and wearies the doorkeeper by his importunity. The doorkeeper frequently has little interviews with him, asking him questions about his home and many other things, but the questions are put indifferently, as great lords put them, and always finish with the statement that he cannot be let in yet. The man, who has furnished himself with many things for his journey, sacrifices all he has, however valuable, to bribe the doorkeeper. The doorkeeper accepts everything, but always with the remark: "I am only taking it to keep you from thinking you have omitted anything." During these many years the man fixes his attention almost continuously on the doorkeeper. He forgets the other doorkeepers, and this first one seems to him the sole obstacle preventing access to the Law. He curses his bad luck, in his early years boldly and loudly; later, as he grows old, he only grumbles to himself. He becomes childish, and since in his yearlong contemplation of the doorkeeper he has come to know even the fleas in his fur collar, he begs the fleas as well to help him and to change the doorkeeper's mind. At length his eyesight begins to fail, and he does not know whether the world is really darker or whether his eyes are only deceiving him. Yet in his darkness he is now aware of a radiance that streams inextinguishably from the gateway of the Law. Now he has not very long to live. Before he dies, all his experiences in these long years gather themselves in his head to one point, a question he has not yet asked the doorkeeper. He waves him nearer, since he can no longer raise his stiffening body. The doorkeeper has to bend low toward him, for the difference in height between them has altered much to the man's disadvantage. "What do you want to know now?" asks the doorkeeper; "you are insatiable." "Everyone strives to reach the Law," says the man, "so how does it happen that for all these many years no one but myself has ever begged for admittance?" The doorkeeper recognizes that the man has reached his end, and, to let his failing senses catch the words, roars in his ear: "No one else could ever be admitted here, since this gate was made only for you. I am now going to shut it."
~The Trial, Franz Kafka

I have nothing against the idea of the rule of law, but I believe since we're dealing with the future of our species, we should be a bit careful in regards with the repercussions of our legal processes. The primary goal, of course, is to create a society of mutual benefit, but throw in too many niggling repercussions, and we start to see social perversions. The fascist Christian morality being forced into law only hurts us by giving the feeble and mediocre, those content with a life built on scraps from the master's table, the fastest path to spreading their genome.

I wrote an essay when I was 14, condemning the domestication of mankind, and here I find myself at the same juncture, with a subtly different reasoning. Just like a dog or a cat is fed and protected for it's mildness, so are people. Those who act up are imprisoned or killed, reducing their chances for procreation and the chances for the survival of any children of theirs. Yet, there's something worse:

By enacting a system of bureaucracy so heavy and, at times, trifling, we create a secondary class of men, designed to scavenge and fight their way to success just as anyone would do in a climate of oppression. If you want to see evolution taking place, just look to the shitholes of the world. The black market drug trade is a mutation to deal with the lack of revenue in these discarded communities. Extremist ideologies leading to terrorism come into favor in order to deal with the lack of political representation in oppressed countries.

Unless we can reform our laws and policies and return to libertarian and humanitarian principles, we will only manufacture new forms of competition within our species between the cattle class and the jackal class. Neither of these classes are happy with their lot in life, but they can often convince themselves that they are or go to great and foolish/insidious ends to temporarily improve their situations.

Ultimately, the universe will pan out as it will; Men will fight and kill men, deprive them of their wealth and aim to succeed in life. There will always eventually be a victor, and the remnants of the race will create more laws to divide us widely enough to renew the process.

The spiritual revolution is close, but will never arrive; The ambitions of individual men, politicians and criminals alike, are too great to allow humanity as a whole to establish a track to a prosperous future.

You can't rush through the adolescence of mankind, but that is exactly what they have attempted and always will attempt.

Right now our greatest hope is in the internet; Humour me. The greatest affront to tyranny is a populace that is well-armed with knowledge and ideas. Together, we're reshaping the paradigm that's allowed these power schemes to come into existence. Yet, is it too late to reform?

I'm at a loss for a good link or a quote, but Democracy cannot function as long as the influential few can tell the mewling masses what to think. We can change that, one iota, one byte of text at a time; Godspeed and keep faith.

"Follow me through a city of frost-covered angels. I swear I have nothing to prove..."

2008-07-24T12:47:00.006-04:00

"It gets hard to explain..."

I've been thinking a lot about the future; Not mine, but our future. I've particularly been trying to synthesize the natural world up to our development with our new paradigm. In particular: Natural selection.

I believe wholeheartedly in the mechanism of evolution; I don't know how many bacteria lab tests you need to do before you can prove it.

What concerns me is that the development of all species begins with "old-tech" and eventually reaches a point where, by means of genetic manipulation or just through augmentation, we enhance our abilities in the short term and forsake the mechanism of the longterm. What I've always felt is that this is a natural progression: Every creature slogs it's way through the single-celled, to the multi-cellular, and finally develops a big enough brain to say "this system is horribly inefficient, and we have the resources to affect change."

At that point, we learn the rules, subvert them, and become masters of them. In a sense, the great unknown was the sure way, uncaring of the soul or the individual, so that the ends would justify the means. We're reaching a point where we're learning to care more about the soul itself and less for the survival of the species (which would resurge if the situation merited).

So evolution, the blind watchmaker, is this the end that justifies the means? That out of the chaos and hell of a cruel and uncaring world, we would become the arbiters of decency as soon as we learn to smooth off our animal edges?

And I think that introduces the greatest dread: What next? I don't believe that we'll ever run out of realms to explore or dimensions to probe, but all we have done has been to spite that which takes everything from us: Death.

We are all born at the end of a world. The question is whether we mourn it's passing or look to what comes next. Phalanges and fins are no longer our tools of change, but revolution and economies, scientific research and bigger, faster computers.

But it's all just to protect the soul, it's all a vain attempt to master the world fast enough that we might not have to die, so that our children might not have to die. If you look at the greater cycle, the hope for a glorious future begins to look vain, based in fear more so than hope.

"Vanity of vanities, saith the Preacher, vanity of vanities; all [is] vanity."
~Ecclesiastes 1:2

The noise in my head doesn't stop. Like snowy static, a forced zen. I must accept and embrace the transience of all things, or our collective defeat and our arrogance in denial will stalk me every moment.

I always hated those people who only cared about their weekend plans, their relationships, or their work. I always hated people who wanted to be successful or happy, because I could never have both. I'm redefining success, but it's so hard to write yourself off.

What I need is the benefit of a consistent perspective.

Oh, the ramifications.

2008-07-17T16:20:00.003-04:00

The Bush administration is trying to redefine female contraception as abortion.

I wonder what such a moral standard would make vasectomy?

Still gone, but just a note.

2008-07-17T13:20:00.002-04:00

This morning, after hitting my snooze about 8 times (as per usual) I found myself stumbling around the bathroom, trying to run a bath so I could wash up in 10 minutes to get to work on time.

I didn't get to work on time, however, because while the water was running, I was gripping the white porcelain, coughing; Coughing led to hacking, and hacking led to vomiting bile. After I vomited, I coughed some more until I saw my mucous tinged with blood hitting the sink.

"I've got to see a doctor," I said to myself. I paced a bit, coughed again, each time trying to assure myself there was no blood there, and each time disappointed with what I saw. "I need to stop smoking" was the decision I fell back on.

So with my innards emptied and the bath running, I checked my computer for symptoms (which I know is usually a horrible idea if you have hypochondriac leanings) and I ran through the list... Cancer... Lung Disease... death, death, death death death.

Until it struck me I had just been coughing so hard that I tore my throat. Today I've been gently drinking a bottle of water, smelling that coppery tinge in my nose, and trying to forget about the sore ache in the back of my throat. My voice is a little lower, a little gruffer, and I can't help but hope that it stays that way a little. Ruggedness is something I can't get enough of.

But if I was going to die, I think I'd have a lot to say to the world. It's always been the missing equation, that without the urgency to live, everything else loses meaning. There's no meaning anymore, and I know it's up to me to make it, so it's time I stopped looking for it. Where is the world of the living now?

I had spent the first 22 years of my life trying to decide who I was going to be, only to discover that the trick is to discover who I already was.

Just an update. This is my starting point. When death does come for me, I'll have an amusing joke for him, told through steely eyes and a tight smirk.

Summon Monsters - Less Than Jake

Roll The Dice

2008-07-16T16:00:00.004-04:00

if you’re going to try,
go all the way.

otherwise, don’t even start.

if you’re going to try,
go all the way.
this could mean losing girlfriends,
wives, relatives, jobs and
maybe your mind.

go all the way.

it could mean not eating for 3 or 4 days.
it could mean freezing on a
park bench.
it could mean jail,
it could mean derision,
mockery,isolation.
isolation is the gift,
all the others are a test of your
endurance,
of how much you really want to
do it.

and you’ll do it
despite rejection and the worst odds
and it will be better than
anything else
you can imagine.

if you’re going to try,
go all the way.
there is no other feeling like that.

you will be alone with the gods
and the nights will flame with
fire.

do it, do it, do it.
do it.

all the way
all the way.

you will ride life straight to
perfect laughter,
its the only good fight
there is.
~Buk

I'm not going to exist for a couple weeks. It's time to reformulate. If you need to find me, crawl the bars and cafes. It's there that I'll be philosophizing, drinking with fellow bastards, and planning for my zine.

If you love something, let it go. (The relationship post)

2008-07-15T10:17:00.009-04:00

Pain [Acoustic] - Jimmy Eat World

Pinker repeats that people often have to convey messages while unsure of their relationships. Indirect speech can minimize the risks in legal contexts with tangible costs (e.g. Bribes, threats). The same thing can happen in everyday life, because relationship mismatches have an emotional cost. Pinker emphasizes that indirect speech prevents individual knowledge from becoming mutual knowledge; mutual knowledge is the basis of our relationships. Humans think a lot about what others think about them, and their relationships are ratified by their mutual knowledge. As a result, to preserve their relationships (while transacting the business of their lives) humans often engage in hypocrisy and taboo.
~Steven Pinker, The Stuff Of Thought

There are a few things I still remember from the first time I fought for love. I was just a 17 year old boy, still ripping off the existential shackles of the fundamentalist Christian morality that dominated my young life. I remember sitting under an old blanket I had in my trunk on the end of the cold and windy Cape Charles pier, where I found a warm soft kiss with an unlikely little curly red-haired friend I had comforted in the odd hours of the night for months. My experiences up until then were awkward fumbling "See, this feels nice, doesn't it?" sessions from a girl who wanted to help me out of the dank hole I had been raised in, but this time I finally had some freedom, and I decided to exercise it.

So I had a wonderful weekend sometime in mid-April 2003, hiding my excursions with Zabe and Charlie from my parent, until I backed my car into Zabe's step-dad's trailer. "My blood sugar was low, and she fed me a sandwich. I felt like I was going to pass out," I said. A pitiful excuse, and my mother was waiting home with a blood test. I was driving sloppy, and my excuse didn't hold up to the blood test, because I felt physically better by the time I got home.

And then, the next morning I found myself hugging the seat of my car, crying, as she rode off back to Richmond, three hours and a whole life away.

The weeks to follow were heart-wrenching. I was taking a stand for myself, but I could never do it alone. I needed her, and she was inaccessible, so I got a job and I started driving out to see her every Thursday. I couldn't visit her and work and go to school at the same time, so I started skipping a lot of my classes. I reformulated everything for her, which was easy because there was nothing in my life in the first place.

I can't honestly recall where it all went wrong, but if you asked me to guess, it would be when we got sexual. Once again, I needed her to support me, but I found myself painted to be a perpetrator, a monster. Crying on the phone, I said, "I think we should give up on sex. It's not that important. It only causes pain."

An underlying tension appeared, but I was too blinded by my inexperience to know to run. Countless nights, I spent, curled up on the floor next to where she slept, wishing she would love me the way I wanted her to love me, wishing that she didn't say such hateful things to me, and essentially wishing that everything was different. I loved her and hated myself for feeling so.

I picked up a lot of bad habits. Next to the tragedy of misplaced love between a self-centered bipolar brat and a defeated-from-birth OCD loser, I couldn't cope with myself anymore. To love her was hell, to leave was hell. I started smoking cigarettes and hid it from her. I started drinking alcohol and tried to introduce her to it. I just made a lot of poor decisions.

And then I cheated on her with a private school girl. "Hey, I don't wanna go home tonight. Since your parents aren't home, do you think I could crash at your place?" And a couple drinks later, she straddled me and kissed me. I went along; I had nothing good in my heart left anymore, just the longing for something to be fun and simple. I couldn't even keep my erection; I never climaxed. The next morning, I got a ride with her back to my car, and she picked up her friend on the way. "WHAT'S HE DOING HERE? DID HE STAY WITH YOU LAST NIGHT!?"

I spent the afternoon in bed. And the next day. I never so badly wanted to take back a night as I did that night.

When I didn't talk to my shameful one-night accomplice again, she started going around saying I had a little dick. My friend Josh regrettably said he wouldn't tell Zabe, but I'm sure that by now she had to have figured it out somehow. Yet, finally I had given myself an ultimatum; "You are no longer good for her. It's time to free yourself and her from this ugly yolk."

So I spent one last day with Zabe, and every one of her cool and callous, warm and gentle kisses felt like a curse and a knife in the heart. We hugged and I said goodbye. A text message I received later on: "I feel okay. It's weird not having someone there and everything, but I'm okay." It may have felt weird for her but it felt good for me to not have to worry about getting calls right before I had to go to work, in which I had to comfort a sobbing girl. I didn't have to dread the next time she would freak out, I wouldn't have to resent my "job" of making her feel better.

The next time Zabe called, I was out with a friend. "This is really a bad time; I'm hanging out with someone." I didn't hear from her again, but I heard through the grapevine that she had told her parents and all of our mutual acquaintances that I was an alcoholic. I didn't care; Whatever made it easier on her. I was just gonna leave that place anyway, someday.

Then I fell into a fuck buddy situation I don't like talking about, because although it reclaimed any capability for a sexual life that I have now, it was also deeply entrenched in shame. I denied any accusations of the arrangement I had fallen into, and quickly ended it as soon as I could.

That's when I dated Meg. I don't have anything to say about Meg. She's a sweet girl, has her own problems, but mine were always more important. My biggest problem was that I didn't want to live in Virginia or hang around in a steady relationship anymore.

And then Marisa, "crazy girl" version 2, someone else to berate me and call me worthless and make me feel generally like shit after a short honeymoon period of making me feel really great. She broke my back. She sealed the deal, so to speak, that had been set in motion a couple years earlier. I don't have anything else to say about her, but only because she's so worthless in my mind. I don't care to praise or complain anymore. She was my heart's last mistake.

Since then, my time in Pennsylvania has been aimless. I had occasionally run into girls who had taken interest in me, and I followed along to see what was held for me down those roads, but it never lasted long. A couple months, maybe. I endorsed and ended 3 or 4 of these "mini-relationships" and eventually stumbled across a novel concept:

Individualism in all aspects of life.

I had always been tied up in girls who wanted to get closer to me than I wanted to get to them. I had to formulate a way to lower their expectations and allow a natural course to take precedent. "You walk away, I walk away." I could finally give up on having other people drag me into their emotional situations. I could finally say, "You can leave anytime you like, honey, and I'll disappear. You won't know, won't have to know what will become of me, or how hurt I will or won't be." And they did, they disappeared, and every time I felt the pang of rejection or shame, but felt better for knowing that anything that doesn't work SHOULD end. I discovered the "cure" for my relationship OCD, to be accepting of all things, no matter how tragic or unfortunate. As long as I wasn't "the boyfriend" or tied down by anything but my own will to continue, I was free for the first time in my life to love and be loved. It was the only way for me.

And I pushed my cure onto others so they wouldn't put the responsibility back on me. I could live in the moment, and not fear about the future; Every time I'd get that feeling like I KNEW for a fact that I didn't want to be with that person in the long term, I'd break it off. But this new way, I didn't have to think about the long term. The door was open, we could leave any time. And I did, they did, after staying for a couple months, or maybe just a night. Our lives went on. They found new boyfriends they could feel real meaning with, and I went on to obsess about the human condition and the nature of the world.

But now I'm a mess again, a self-centered whelp. The girl I'm seeing now, she just wants me to be sweet to her, to want her company, to love her, if I can. She doesn't want to run away, she doesn't want me to run away. She wants to see things progress as they do, as she analyzes our rhythms and habits. She breaks my heart a little every day.

Because I've got that feeling like I know I don't want to stick around forever, and the only way she'll accept my exit is if I give her a reason to hate me, but I don't hate her. I don't want her to hate me. I'm hanging here by my neck, struggling to breathe. She's forced me into a moot decision; Either she hates me, or I hate myself. There is no panacea for my nausea as long as she holds on, and there will be no cure for my regret when she's gone.

"I don't want to be with you BECAUSE I like you."

How do you tell someone that?

As a result, to preserve their relationships (while transacting the business of their lives) humans often engage in hypocrisy and taboo.

I'll tell you how: Out of necessity, once you make a decision between doing what's right and what's emotionally convenient for the involved parties. I'm still hanging on that decision. I will always be hanging on that decision.

There is no right choice.

I hate this, and the only thing I can do to help now is to shut up about it so that I don't keep rubbing it in her face that I'm not the type to tolerate long relationships that end badly anymore.

Chicken or the egg?

2008-07-09T19:16:00.003-04:00

Which came first... The suicidal threats from the desperate girls, or the shell I built around my heart? Did I build it in self-defense? Am I so callous now because of everything I was put through but wasn't ready for? Or has it always been that someone must throw their body on the altar in front of me for me to notice that I even exist to them?

I don't know when my double-life began, but there were always two distinct halves of my life, the part that was wasting away and dying inside every day, hiding in my room from my broken and savage family, and then there was the part that was suddenly forced into company. There was the broken boy I was at home, and the flighty weirdo I was at school.

And when I left home, when I left my family's cultish religion, I locked the broken boy inside my heart. I put him in the back of my mind, and pursued the character that I was to be.

What you see now is method acting. A boy pretending to be an artist pretending to be as defeated as he inescapably always is. All those desperate pleas for my affection, for my self-respect, for my ambition, and most of all for my love, always fell on the deaf ears of my intricate mask. For all emotional matters, there was only one person who could handle them.

The boy, locked in his room, playing videogames and hiding from the noises outside his door, inside my mind.

I now hoard over him like my mother kept me under her thumb and the giant existential thumb of her religion, which cursed the secular world. Which cursed everything little boys are supposed to love growing up. I wasn't allowed to have "worldly" friends and I never wanted the company of those available in my congregation. I am now depriving my "true self" of every experience that life has to offer.

Except I've become too smart, I'm thinking of politics, philosophy, eastern spirituality combined with Spinoza's panentheism. I've figured out everything from my chances in the business world (not bright) to my chances of settling down (also not too bright). But in concerning myself with the world I make less and less room for that boy who's room is caving in.

I've spent lonely months on my futon, going to work, coming home, having no goal, purpose or intention. I crushed him, and he cried. I longed for some sort of meaning, the touch of another, an association that I could make.

But what I've always needed...

Is a nice psychotic break.

Because unless I start from scratch, everything will always just crash against my masks like waves against a levee.

It doesn't make as much sense as it used to; The scars aren't fresh anymore.

I have to trace the lines and then cut myself open.

There is no beginning to the story
A bookshelf sinks into the sand
And a language learned and forgot, in turn, is studied once again
It's a shocking bit of footage viewed from a shitty TV screen
You can squint at it through snowy static to make out the meaning
And keep on stretching the antennae, hoping that it will come clear
We need some reception, a higher message, just tell us what to fear Because I don't know what tomorrow brings
It is alive with such possibilities
All I know is I feel better when I sing
Burdens are lifted from me
That's my voice rising

So Michael, please keep the tape rolling
Boys keep strumming those guitars
We need a record of our failures
As we must document our love
I've sat too long in my silence
I've grown too old in my pain
To shed this skin, be born again, it starts with an ending
So thank you friends for the time we shared
My love stays with you like sunlight and air
Oh I truly wish I could keep hanging around here
My joy is covering me
Soon, I will disappear

It's not a movie, no private screening
This method acting, well, I call that living
It's like a fountain, a door has opened
We have a problem with no solution but to love and to be loved
So, I've made peace with the falling leaves
I see their same fate in my own body
But I won't be frightened when I am awoken from this dream
And returned to that which gave birth to me
Gave birth to me, gave birth to me, gave birth to me
And the story goes, and the story goes, and it goes
On and on and on and on...

Exploitation.

2008-07-02T15:22:00.001-04:00

"I'll accept with poise, with grace, when they draw my name from the lottery."

2008-07-02T11:37:00.005-04:00

There is no solution, no single challenge, no reward. For every inch of stone you can chip away, you challenge a landslide.

I want to quit everything but breathing. I want to "throw my life away" in protest of the unfairness of inevitable defeat. If I can't make things fair, then I have to fold; This is how I function, this is how I have always been. In case you couldn't tell, I am not a gambler. I know I have far more to lose than gain: My freedom.

I'm broadsided by indignantly imperative desires to quit my job, to back away from the girl I'm dating, to find a new town or a distant state, everything. I don't pretend anymore that the grass is greener on the other side. I probably won't find a better job. I probably won't be happier with anyone else. I don't believe that a change of scenery will make everything all better. I've tried and failed, in every account, over and over again. No matter where I go, who I date, I cannot escape myself.

All I want is to die in peace: This is the depth and passion of my anxiety. For every dream I've ever had for my future, this is the reality that consistently imposes itself.

Here, I was just born into the world, and just by being, I already feel like an exhausted donkey whipped to move forward. I'm hypothyroidic, obsessive compulsive, and easily discouraged.

But I am not a coward.

I just don't see the point of living in the rat race. I cannot surmount the meaning to my existence, or find anything worth making it the meaning.

If there is anything of value in me, I sincerely don't feel like the world is worthy or wanting of it. There are 6.6 billion people on the planet; Anything that I could offer has already been capitulated upon. All I have... all I am is another configuration. A reiteration of a lifetime in another nation, at another time.

And for every person to support you, there will always be more who MUST crush you... or exploit you.

And for all of the hell inside, there's also a bluebird in my heart. I only let him out at night sometimes, when I'm alone. And as long as it lives, I'll die slow and agonizing, instead of slow and oblivious...

Like many that you probably know, or don't know well enough.

Post Scriptum

2008-06-26T11:21:00.005-04:00

The CEO of our entire corporation and his cabinet are inspecting our department today. I am not comfortable. About anything.

I traveled though the atmosphere as a wall of feedback climbed
The pegs were gold, the band was old, they played in half time
Now every dream gets whittled down just like every fool gets wise
You will never reap of any seed deprived of sunlight

So I have become the middleman
The gray areas are mine
The in-between, the absentee
Is a beautiful disguise

So I keep my footlights shining bright just like I keep my exits wide
Because I never know when it's time to go, it's too crowded now inside
The dead can hide beneath the ground and the birds can always fly
But the rest of us do what we must in constant compromise

So I have become the middleman
The gray areas are fine
The "I don't know," the "maybe so"
Is the only real reply
It is the only true reply

War, All The Time

2008-06-26T10:00:00.006-04:00

I flip my phone open and shut, open and shut.

"Send something, anything, no matter how trite."
"No, if I don't have anything to say, I should say nothing."
"But it's just a cycle that you're perpetuating."
"Who's to say that I could stop it?"
"But isn't it at least worth trying?"
"You type some bullshit about what's going on in the office again, and then ask yourself if it really changed anything."
"..."

Open and shut, open and shut. I've always been more comfortable talking to walls, or empty text boxes. Open and shut, open and shut. It's in these ways that I begin to disappear, as I feel less and less welcome in the world, regardless of what anyone could say.

I don't know fear, like I assume that others do. I can prepare myself for any inevitability, but the overbearing dread of betraying myself is always present. ("They thought I had guts, but they had it all wrong; I was only frightened of more important things.") The problem is that I never see the same things in myself; I can only catch glimpses of my heart as it rolls along a foggy road at midnight, and my perspective is always changing.

There's a 24/7 party in my mind, and every horrid possibility, past and future, is invited.

It's war. War, all the time.

I always assumed I was incredibly strong to take the dark things in my life in stride, to plumb the depths of the abyss so I could bring them back to everyone else. I thought, "I can handle anything, as long as I forever rule out killing myself." For the most part, that was true. I didn't have to defeat anything in the outside world to prove my strength; I only had to defeat myself.

But the doubt and the nausea... I am not content to live non-existent, to completely disregard everyone else on earth. I push away the people who have supported me, because the only progress I've ever made has been in spite of those who didn't support me. My love goes in all the wrong directions, and brings along very strange bedfellows. Doubt and nausea. Doubt and nausea. Open and shut. Open and shut.

"God is absence. God is the solitude of man."

2008-06-25T17:13:00.005-04:00

I am tasked with convincing you that I am a monster.

My challenge to you is to attempt to discover the humanity in me, and to find a way to relate it to yourself.

If there has ever been a word to summarize the narrative of my time on Earth, it has been "doubt"... of joy, death, fear, pain, love, and even of doubt itself. I am perverse and full of resentment. My passion has shown in the pursuit of my interests, and my hatred has always been aptly aimed at the status quo in my life, in society, or even in the basic elements of human interaction. Of all the things I rail against, you will probably consider me sour-tempered and over-critical, morose or melodramatic.

If there's anything I could ask of you, don't judge too simply. What often we fail to do is care about how the concepts of others bring form and color to our own experiences. I have a hunch that if we all stopped pretending to adhere to one ideal or another, we'd find our motivations and desires to be very similar: There wouldn't be any left, assuming shelter, food, and neutering was taken care of. I can occasionally stop adhering to ideals; I think that too many others can't, for fear of becoming monsters, or failures. They keep themselves running ragged trying to get that job position, that new house, that model wife, a whole goddamned family. I feel compassionately sorry for all of them. And worse off, I feel sorry for myself for even letting such ideas create doomed half-hearted trials into "healthy living". They make me try to save myself from my own salvation.

I'm still beleaguered that I'm even attempting such a project, so I'll cut this one short before I give too much away. I'll leave you with a related poem by Charles Bukowski called "Let It Enfold You." It'll speak for me, for now.

either peace or happiness,
let it enfold you

when I was a young man
I felt these things were
dumb, unsophisticated.
I had bad blood, a twisted
mind, a precarious
upbringing.

I was hard as granite, I
leered at the
sun.
I trusted no man and
especially no
woman.

I was living a hell in
small rooms, I broke
things, smashed things,
walked through glass,
cursed.
I challenged everything,
was continually being
evicted, jailed,in and
out of fights, in and out
of my mind.
women were something
to screw and rail
at, I had no male
friends,

I changed jobs and
cities, I hated holidays,
babies, history,
newspapers, museums,
grandmothers,
marriage, movies,
spiders, garbagemen,
english accents,spain,
france,italy,walnuts and
the color
orange.
algebra angered me,
opera sickened me,
charlie chaplin was a
fake
and flowers were for
pansies.

peace and happiness to me
were signs of
inferiority,
tenants of the weak
and
addled
mind.

but as I went on with
my alley fights,
my suicidal years,
my passage through
any number of
women-it gradually
began to occur to
me
that I wasn't different

from the
others, I was the same,

they were all fulsome
with hatred,
glossed over with petty
grievances,
the men I fought in
alleys had hearts of stone.
everybody was nudging,
inching, cheating for
some insignificant
advantage,
the lie was the
weapon and the
plot was
empty,
darkness was the
dictator.

cautiously, I allowed
myself to feel good
at times.
I found moments of
peace in cheap
rooms
just staring at the
knobs of some
dresser
or listening to the
rain in the
dark.
the less I needed
the better I
felt.

maybe the other life had worn me
down.
I no longer found
glamour
in topping somebody
in conversation.
or in mounting the
body of some poor
drunken female
whose life had
slipped away into
sorrow.

I could never accept
life as it was,
i could never gobble
down all its
poisons
but there were parts,
tenuous magic parts
open for the
asking.

I re formulated
I don't know when,
date, time, all
that
but the change
occurred.
something in me
relaxed, smoothed
out.
i no longer had to
prove that I was a
man,

I didn't have to prove
anything.

I began to see things:
coffee cups lined up
behind a counter in a
cafe.
or a dog walking along
a sidewalk.
or the way the mouse
on my dresser top
stopped there
with its body,
its ears,
its nose,
it was fixed,
a bit of life
caught within itself
and its eyes looked
at me
and they were
beautiful.
then- it was
gone.

I began to feel good,
I began to feel good
in the worst situations
and there were plenty
of those.
like say, the boss
behind his desk,
he is going to have
to fire me.

I've missed too many
days.
he is dressed in a
suit, necktie, glasses,
he says, "I am going
to have to let you go"

"it's all right" I tell
him.

He must do what he
must do, he has a
wife, a house, children.
expenses, most probably
a girlfriend.

I am sorry for him
he is caught.

I walk onto the blazing
sunshine.
the whole day is
mine
temporarily,
anyhow.

(the whole world is at the
throat of the world,
everybody feels angry,
short-changed, cheated,
everybody is despondent,
disillusioned)

I welcomed shots of
peace, tattered shards of
happiness.

I embraced that stuff
like the hottest number,
like high heels, breasts,
singing,the
works.

(don't get me wrong,
there is such a thing as cockeyed optimism
that overlooks all
basic problems just for
the sake of
itself-
this is a shield and a
sickness.)

The knife got near my
throat again,
I almost turned on the
gas
again
but when the good
moments arrived
again
I didn't fight them off
like an alley
adversary.
I let them take me,
i luxuriated in them,
I bade them welcome
home.
I even looked into
the mirror
once having thought
myself to be
ugly,
I now liked what
I saw,almost
handsome, yes,
a bit ripped and
ragged,
scares, lumps,
odd turns,
but all in all,
not too bad,
almost handsome,
better at least than
some of those movie
star faces
like the cheeks of
a baby's
butt.

and finally I discovered
real feelings of
others,
unheralded,
like lately,
like this morning,
as I was leaving,
for the track,
i saw my wife in bed,
just the
shape of
her head there
(not forgetting
centuries of the living
and the dead and
the dying,
the pyramids,
Mozart dead
but his music still
there in the
room, weeds growing,
the earth turning,
the toteboard waiting for
me)
I saw the shape of my
wife's head,
she so still,
I ached for her life,
just being there
under the
covers.

I kissed her in the,
forehead,
got down the stairway,
got outside,
got into my marvelous
car,
fixed the seatbelt,
backed out the
drive.
feeling warm to
the fingertips,
down to my
foot on the gas
pedal,
I entered the world
once
more,
drove down the
hill
past the houses
full and empty
of
people,
I saw the mailman,
honked,
he waved
back
at me.

I hope one day soon everything smooths out.

But for now, I am a monster, because I'm not ashamed of my hell.