American Pulp, Ind.

2008-06-02T03:49:00.001-07:00

I've been writing a lot for my film blog if you've been wondering where I went.

Life is well, all is well. Summer is here and I'm struggling to find a yob. Interview in seven hours at coffee bean. Wish me luck.

Click here to go to said "Film Blog"

Faith

2008-05-18T23:30:00.000-07:00

Where do I stand on my faith in Christ?

I have no fucking clue about it anymore. At this point in my life, I've become so turned away from the whole idea of organized religion that I cannot say what I believe anymore.

Except that there is a god. And I pray to him some nights in the quiet.

And I'm willing to believe that if God is that loving then there is no correct path, no right way, no straight and narrow. Just a faith that, yea, there's something beyond on the chaos.

Worship is simple physics: when there are harmonious tones surrounding you, and you are singing, then you feel peace. It's the same concept as when you sing along to a song. Harmony rides with peace. But religions have been able to capitalize on worship and mantras for far too long.

I feel too much like I would be led down a corridor for the prospect of a great tasting wine (Amontillado) only to get buried alive.

But the wrench in the cog of this whole faith-based crisis is my innate fear of hell.

Just a Great Fucking Day.

2008-05-13T23:32:00.000-07:00

I'm 2\5ths done with my finals. And, suddenly, they seem manageable.

My Behavioral Bio final was easy as pie for the most part, and I got most of the extra credit questions right so I'm pretty much set on a solid grade in that class.

My World Religions final was a joke. Hell, the class itself was a fucking joke. I'm glad it's over. I'll probably escape with a C. Whatever, I'm done studying religion.

But the best parts of the day were as such: Finding half a pack of cigarettes in the room where I had my first final... Just sitting on the table... Awesome.

Finding Jailbird by Kurt Vonnegut. Awesome.

Finding a lid for my Brita filter while rummaging through the shit people are donating. Awesome.

Today has been good. Tomorrow should be easy except for the bits of studying I still have to do for Hinduism and Geology. But tomorrow is just Journalism so it'll be an easy day in the way of finals.

Peace and Love.

And I got to Paris....

2008-05-06T15:31:00.000-07:00

I skipped geology to take a nap today--it turned out the class was cancelled. Either way, the dream I had was epiphanic and completely worth the nap.

From what I remember, I had spent three months at something called a quarterly polytechnic school or something, and I had become severely depressed, slipping into dreams that I couldn't awake from--dreams where the point was to find something that wasn't actually there. And I kept not being able to wake up. Instead, I just talked to people in the real world, but I was caught in this dream... The whole liminal aspect was something that wasn't even part of the epiphany, but it was still interesting. I called my parents up because I wanted nothing more than to kill myself. The only thing that kept me going was a girl who I only saw every once in awhile. It wasn't Kelley but I'm damn sure it represented her.

And when I finally woke up into my dorm room, I looked at the time to see why my alarm didn't go off--I thought that I had just slept for three months. And the time was correct, right on time: 3:09, but the date said February 11th. I couldn't figure out what had happened, so I checked my computer and the date was the same: Feb. 11th. 2\11\08 and I started to freak out that I have to relive this entire semester again.

And then I finally, actually, completely woke up to May 6th. And that's when it hit me. The last part of the dream where I was stuck in February. The smallest part but the biggest impact.

From it, I realized that, although this semester has had its ups and downs and lefts and rights, I wouldn't change a goddam thing. I wouldn't change any of it because of who I've become of it, who the people around me have become of it. To change it would be to change the changes that have occurred. And all the changes from the ups and [beat]downs have been great changes--in myself and others. And I wouldn't change it for anything.

I am content for once. I can finally say I'm okay with a lot of things I'm usually not okay with.

2008-04-27T05:07:00.000-07:00

Well there goes my tomorrow.

five am. wide fuckin' awake. Awesome not possum. Maybe I can sleep. My mind races refuses to stop.

Things I wonder about not worth wondering about. That's usually how it is. Turn out the light, turn off the music. Lay there.

But then it starts again and I am back again and I am bored again and I cannot find you.

Forget the papers, forget your musical dreams.

2008-04-24T11:12:00.000-07:00

I think I'm growing again. I'm suffering from the same fatigue that happened the last time. A fatigue that nothing but sleep can help. I wake up with random parts of my body hurting--yesterday my shoulders, two days ago my biceps, my legs, elbows. On back it goes. And it's hitting me at the very wrong time. Right now I feel like I could crawl in bed and sleep for three plus hours even though I just slept for seven and had a solid cup of black coffee. When I wake up, I am still in some deep area of sleep, where my brain is repairing and my body is working. So deep that it is hard to move when I do have to wake up. So deep that my day begins in anger at myself for going through this again. I was beginning to be content with being five foot eight and now I'm going through the growing thing again right before finals.

My hands feel bigger, too. My body aches and I am not sick. I don't like this. I wouldn't mind if it had occurred during the summer, when I can sleep for longer and not have to worry about missing much.

Though, speaking of summer, I have applied for as many internships at Movie Houses that I could find. MGM, Fox, Sony, RSA Productions. So we'll see if any of them respond. That would be a cool thing to do this summer. Much more acute to what I plan on doing than working at a Target or a Borders.

2008-04-20T18:18:00.001-07:00

My phone has been on the fritz ever since I got back from Spring Break. Not sending text messages, not receiving them. And, today, it's beginning to overheat unless I plug it in. the battery's completely shot to hell, I hate technology. It'd probably help if I weren't dropping it all the damn time, but what can you do--I've got butter fingers (on the note of butter, when I was little, I used to actually lick the stick in the fridge when no one was looking. Sorry family.).

On another note, I've been struck with this great idea for a movie. I've begun outlining it but I won't state it here because of my paranoia. You know how it is. Tentatively called the Coma, though that's a bit non-subtle.

I had an interesting dream last night about watching this movie where this guy was caught in a pyramid scheme, trying to sell another guy chocolate. And then, later, you see him with bad acne, and I turned to Kelley and said, "He's just been eating the chocolate!" My dreams have become more vivid and paranoid as of late. It worries me because that means that there's something churning inside me that I'm scared of. I know this because last time dreams like the current ones happened, I was getting ready to come up to Humboldt. But, now, I don't know why they're happening. There's something going on and I don't know what it is. Maybe finals coming up, maybe the research paper or the other paper I've already finished. Who knows. I'll figure it out and get back to you.

The winter's overr

2008-04-16T22:46:00.000-07:00

So.

School is well, classes are well. I have a geology midterm tomorrow that I've been studying for all week so I'm none too worried about it. Paper due soon in World Religions, big fat greek research paper due in Hinduism at the end of the Semester which is sooner than you'd think.

Movies watched recently: The Boondock Saints, Platoon, the Darjeeling Limited, Groundhog Day, Back to the Future part I, Part II, Part III, Where the Buffalo Roam, Raging Bull. Follow the links to my reviews of said films...

I'm not too worried about much right now, everything is coasting along real well.

Yesterday fever, tomorrow Saint Peter

2008-04-12T03:36:00.000-07:00

I find it interesting that, with each step we take, we leave a little piece of the sole of our shoes. That is why the tread wears down, we've left little pieces behind with every step and our soles can only take so many steps before they need to be renewed. Boy, no wonder sole and soul are homonyms. We step on both, we leave pieces of each behind in all places--those English-makin' folks knew what they were doing in this case.

Knew and new I haven't figured out yet. Or why there's two to and too. Or there their and they're. But the latter's connections are within context--and contexually fixed words aren't generally very meaningful by themselves. They're filler for their own devices over there in their little world they've created. But and butt is another one--one t means you've got something else to say and sometimes its bad. Butt means ass-end of something. Probably from buttock.

English is one fucked up language.

Filmic Pulp

2008-04-11T03:57:00.001-07:00

So, yea, I deleted my Dodgers blog and started a movie review blog called Filmic Pulp. That's a funny word, filmic. It's a synonym for cinematic. But more terse and just kind of weird.

Check it out. If you're a frequenter of this site then there's nothing new there since I just culled all my reviews from here and put them there, but there will be new ones in the future! And they will all go there... And lord knows what'll wind up here.

I love you all. And I've decided, officially, to take a hiatus from the Religious Studies program to see what the Film Minor program is like. So I'll be taking Film Making I next semester. W00!

Peace and love.

Magnolia\ Ghost Dog

2008-04-11T01:36:00.000-07:00

Magnolia
After I saw There will be Blood, I knew I had to see another Paul Thomas Anderson film. Blood was so beautiful and so rich that it seemed like Anderson had the potential to have other movies as great and effecting as that.

So my first venture into his older films was his 2000 film Magnolia, a three-hour film about the semi-intersecting lives of six people in the San Fernando Valley.

Usually, I don't enjoy films about semi-intersecting lives. To name a few, I did not like Crash, Babel, or Amores Perros. These were films that tried desperately to get you to see that all our lives are connected. To see that our actions effect the lives of others. We get it.

But the beauty of Magnolia is that this film only uses those coincidental intersections for cohesion, not to show that our actions effect others, not to show that all our actions mean something. Instead, this movie is a character study about these people who are slowly descending into loneliness and madness. And, because of these intersections, the movie becomes a movie instead of six vignettes--instead of something along the lines of Coffee and Cigarettes. And the cohesion sinks deeper than accidents, it is a chain and a link that is evident through the characters' pain and their personalities. Their stubbornness to reveal the past (for example, we only find out about the past of John C. Reilly's cop character in the last third of the film), their desperation, their sadness. Each character has their own poignant scene that shows just what they are feeling. And what they are feeling is what the other five people are feeling. And maybe, just maybe, it's what someone in the audience has felt. That's how you make a connection--through emotion since we are all the same at the bottom of everything.

Magnolia hosts an all-star cast featuring the likes of William H. Macy, Julianne Moore, Tom Cruise, Alfred Molina, John C. Reilly (Surprisingly, only once I thought, "Dewey Cox is a cop?!"), and many others. No matter how much I hate his acting abilities, Tom Cruise's character was one that was so well-written to the person that it is scary.

Cruise's character is a sexual-motivational speaker under the mantra of "Respect the cock and tame the cunt." He's a hardass who's showing you how to get any woman you want. His character is a heartless, soulless, bastard... For awhile. See, that's where it starts to break down. During an interview scene, the character begins to crack and suddenly Cruise's acting abilities come into question. He is an actor who simply cannot show sadness. Blame it on L. Ron Hubbard, whatever. He's one who can do pensive, angry, and other emotions that one would associate with the color red. However, when he gets into the blue emotions--sadness, depression et al--Cruise begins to crack and his on-screen presence begins to pull you out of the film.

Luckily, he's only one-sixth of this film. And one-sixth of three hours is only 30 minutes. And he's only blue for about fifteen of them. So for the other 165 minutes, you've got other actors who can do blue and red swimmingly. And you've got a director who knows how to cull the best from most actors. You can tell that these people are genuinely sad and genuinely guilty and genuinely unfit for life.

But the problem with a film of this scope and length is that there's only so much sadness that a person can take before the apathy and the boredom sets in. And that's usually around the 90-minute mark. So what Anderson has done rather brilliantly, is to offset some of the sadder moments with music in the background--like a scene where William H. Macy is in a bar, drinking himself silly and bearing his soul to those who will listen. It's an effecting scene, but one that is overlaid by what is pouring from the jukebox which is typical barroom fare. By doing so, the watcher is allowed a bit of a rest from all the Kafka-esque deprivation and the spiraling towards hell that this film deals with.

There is so much more I could write about Magnolia, but it's so layered and so thick that to explain it would be like giving someone the bottom layer of a wedding cake without the wedding and without the rest of the cake. You have to see this film to truly appreciate its beauty and depth.

--

Ghost Dog: The Way of the Samurai

When I first heard of this movie as a senior, I was intrigued. But I never saw it. Why? Because I'm a lazy cunt when it comes to seeing films sometimes. And I also get obsessed with seeing only one director's films.

But I finally saw it. Forest Whitaker playing a black samurai mafia hitman with a score done by RZA of the Wu-Tang Clan. It sounds like a pitch for the latest Chris Tucker film, but this is a film that, much like Jim Jarmusch likes to do, allows for lingering shots of the emotion in one's face and the oft boredom of life.

Throughout the movie, we follow his character and are intersected with him reading sections from the Samurai for Dummies book Hagakure. What starts as a mafia film quickly becomes a revenge film. The mafia's out to get Ghost Dog but they sure as shit ain't gonna get him. They don't know where he lives because they've never followed the pigeons that he uses as his only contact with them. They don't know his real name. They don't know what he looks like except that he's black.

So they start killing every black guy on a roof wrangling pigeons, which is apparently only one. And I think it was the dad from "Family Matters".

Anyway, Ghost Dog realizes that he suddenly has to protect his master, his retainer, Louie, who they are going to kill because Ghost Dog was his guy and Ghost Dog fucked up.

And by protecting him, I mean taking out the entire goddam mob in "The Industrial State."

And that's definitely something I noted while watching one scene where license plates are changed: the states. In the film, there are two of them: "The Industrial State," and the "Highway State." So we're set in an alternate reality which allows us to dismiss the police for the most part--which is good because otherwise I'd be wondering why they weren't doing dick to stop these guys.

So that's one difference from a typical, cliche, mafia film. I made a list of some others:

Aside from narrations, we don't hear Ghost Dog speak directly to anyone until 35 minutes into the movie. He talks to a little girl in the park who he later gives the Hagakure to (which, along with one other character, definitely allowed for Ghost Dog 2).
All the Japanese references. Rashomon parallels and the like.
The fact that Ghost Dog is a fucking samurai. How awesome is that.

Also, what's interesting is that the readings from the Hagakure first only reflect the actions of the mafia. That is, loyalty to their master and such. Because of the somehow botched hit, and the way that the hit was filmed, we are led to believe that he fucked up and disobeyed his master. But then we realize that these readings reflect both Ghost Dog and the mafia in either parallels or in interchanging pieces. Some only symbolize the mafia. And some only represent Ghost Dog. It's pretty cool.

Jim Jarmusch did an excellent job with this film. The way that it was edited and shot allowed for the room of emotions. It's not taut and ready to burst at the seems with what wants to go on. It allows for the movie to act for itself and to think for itself. And that's the sign of a good director: an autonomous film like this one.

Pocket Map to Heaven

2008-04-09T21:21:00.000-07:00

I had a revelation in Vietnam last night.

While I was watching Apocalypse Now (easily one of my new favorite films), I realized that I really do want to try out the film minor. So my RS major will be on a hiatus for a semester while I see what I like or don't like about it.

And if I realize that I miss the religious studies program, then I can always go back. It's just an experiment. And I'll be taking on more Journalism classes so that I can even things out if I choose to go back to the RS major.

It's been something I've mulled over for a little while. I talked to my mom about it. And it finally hit me that it's something I want to try. I want to see what it's like to be introduced to how to create a movie. I want to know what to do and all that jazz.

It just seems rather strange to me that I come up here for the Religion program and I immediately abandon it. It almost seems wrong. But not to my soul at the moment. I want to find out, I want to know, I want to be certain that Religious Studies is what I want. And maybe it's not. Maybe this filmmaking class is something I really enjoy.

Life is well. I found a room mate and I will be moving off campus next semester. Wahoo! Things are looking up and my previous depression was a direct result of me wanting everything in a now-fashion--the fashion of my generation. But patience is key in life and baseball, so that's what's happened. Patience. Peace. Serenity.

This ship is taking me.

2008-04-02T02:55:00.000-07:00

One of those nights.

I was ready for bed by 1130, wanting to sleep.

Turned out the lights, got into bed, and my mind was off to the races.

About what, you ask? The list: next semester, registering, wondering how my first semester up here will turn out knowing that my first quarters\semesters anywhere usually turn into shit because I'm trying adjust and find my place foremost and I can't help it when academics fall to the wayside but I have six weeks left in the quarter and the paper I'm most worried about will get some consulting tomorrow when I see the professor and what am I gonna do about my religious studies major? Do I still want it? Should I take Intro to Christianity or the Hebrew Bible next semester just to give it one last chance? I'm excited about the Cinematography course, but I'm also leery of the 6 hour filming sessions... Do I want to take photojournalism or do I want to take magazine writing? What the fuck is a Freshman Interest Group and why is it a prerequisite for one of the classes I need? Will there be a seat for me in either of the biology classes? If not, then what about botany? If not then how the hell am I going to fulfill that GE? Why is college always so hard for me? Even harder than sleep? What if I take radio production, have a radio show, what would be the first song I play? The pain in my throat that last timed manifested on my tongue is back but on my gum and it almost feels like a tooth is growing in for some reason. I'm not worried much this time around. I'm more concerned with my overall health. I eat too much junk food. I worry too much about acting suave and cool and trying to impress others when the shit should just come naturally and fuck the rest who don't enjoy my company. I think I'm a homophobe, in part, at heart. Maybe in the same way I'm afraid of Mormons--that they'll try and convert me and am I strong enough to say no? All of this adds and adds and adds and builds and builds and builds so I come clamoring onto the internet to read about the classes and email the teachers and try to go back to reading about Islam for my World Religions class. Paper due on the 25th. Housing lottery on this friday at 9AM. Wake up, stammer and stamp. Say I want a single because I feel bad for having a room mate when I'm awake at three AM hammering keys like some crazed man who meanders out of the building for a cigarette only to look over through the windows of the dining commons to see ghosts moving around, eating, talking. Then to see small cars down below moving around and returning from some night I'll never know about. Never know about it like this post won't know paragraph breaks.

I'm sorry for everything I've ever done and will do. It always feels like my fault. That I'm the one who started hocking shit around only to have it come back and bite me in the ass. I feel sick in the head, I need to see a therapist but I can never feel comfortable with them. I wish I could. And they rape your paychecks by saying to come back every week for twenty years. Even though I guess it's more effective than medication though most Psychiatrists only do med checks anymore. I miss my family. I miss my own room. My headphones cracked and I need a new pair. Probably from sleeping on the one ear bud. I don't know. Ever since I got up here, those headphones have been deteriorating.

And then there's the applicable question of why am I still a virgin? Would it solve some of these problems? Should I heed the advice of some of the younger guys around me and lose it to some drunk girl? Or should I wait it out for the perfect one? I don't know anymore, it's so frustrating when everyone else joneses for it and you have no idea how to relate in this jones fest. Maybe I'm just atavistic, anachronistic--from a different time, plopped into the 21st century on accident for a purpose.

And what if I die tomorrow knowing not the highest form of passion between genders? Knowing only the soul's highest passion of faith.

I feel like I've wasted my life on precepts and I shouldn't have tried so hard for some things that never panned out. The apologies will falter the marksman's shot and the guillotine will miss by only inches, but you will still be alive and forgiven and placed among the holiest crowned and robed in purple.

--

And what, suddenly, was supposed to be a release, has only sparked more and more and more questions within my restless mind. I can't shut down. I hate this.

2008-03-22T02:44:00.000-07:00

Crack your skull open. Re-form. Remiss. Caught in a stalemate, knowing you can't win no matter the stalwart. Keep breathing keep thinking keep knowing. Come to pass. Known unknown. Cramped up and wrinkled and broken and sincere and vile and complacent and pragmatic and knowing knowing knowing that something will come someday keeping the boulder from flailing you to the ground. Dichotomous mind wanting to stay afloat yet wanting to sink. Boulder versus mind. Heart weighing ten thousand pounds. Mind knowing yet no buoyancy can save thee.

Shit.

s
i
n
k
i
n
g
,,,

i will know.

There's a snake in my boot.

2008-03-13T01:49:00.000-07:00

Can't sleep. Four midterms, one quiz, and a spot on my tongue that may be from all this goddam coughing or from smoking (probably the latter.) has gotten me really stressed out. To the point that I can only really sleep during the day when the night of unrest has really caught up with me. And the I end up having crazy-ass dreams about getting high and falling asleep and having a dream that my hands and feet are missing only to wake up into the first dream to find out I'm at some sort of resort, sleeping in a fancy hotel where the doors don't completely lock and the elevator goes sideways and my mom has spread a bunch of small church pencils all over one of the rooms for some reason.

And then I met Flavor Flav. And somewhere in there I started talking in my sleep and having a mid-dream that I was in my dorm, stumbling around looking for my journal so I could write all these other dreams down. Or maybe that wasn't a dream but sleep-searching or something.... All I know is that I can't sleep right now and I'm almost afraid to if I'm going to run into Flavor Flav again.

Over on Dodger Blues they posted a link to the mySpace of Eliot Spitzer's hooker. You can tell she's not a cheap one because she doesn't have platinum blonde hair and tweaked-out teeth.

I finished reading the Plague before I fell asleep. It was good but you could tell there were times that Camus was simply using his characters to spout off his personal existentialistic views. Though the idea of a plague happening is rather interesting and scary as shit.

I saw the Savages the other night. I don't know if I liked it or just thought it was kind of okay. My main problem was with the ending because it's setup as this movie that's solely about two siblings taking care of their father as he slowly fades into nothingness with dementia. Nowhere is there a tonal shift to suggest that the movie's central focus was actually the two siblings and their problems. Instead, I thought it was about the father and their relationship and coping with it, etcetera. However, when the father dies, and they say to each other, "So this is it..." the movie doesn't end. It seemed like the ending, it felt like the ending, it should have probably been the ending. Especially since, directly afterwards they go into some montaged shots of the city of Buffalo (i think) which would have made the movie have perfect bookends since it started with interesting, almost Lynch-esque shots of Sun City, Arizona. Instead, though, the movie carries on to show the ambiguous, partial successes and codas of the siblings. Everything after the montage of Buffalo seemed superfluous given that the movie wasn't about the siblings but about how fucked up their lives were because of their father.

I think it's time for bed, finally.

Fish hands running from rain

2008-03-08T03:32:00.001-08:00

I realize now why I hung out with girls. I'm effeminate and I care about emotions. I care about reality.

I don't think I was made for this reality. Probably a different one. I'm just so unhappy and far too often it stems from interacting with other people. People who aren't in my family or my other family (Kelley, JP, Jasmine, Brad, Rachael and Ashley by default) who don't know me, don't understand me.

People who, once I've "eased in the weird," still don't get me. The final straw was tonight because usually, one of the litmus tests is playing this really nasty\funny song by Dirty Sanchez called "Dig it." And they didn't think it as funny and called me a homo and I'm completely done because of it. They failed my litmus test. And every time I try and mention something, well, meaningful, it gets shot down in a series of "Dudes" and "dicks" and "dawgs." Goes down in fucking flames.

But I know that, at the end of the day, I enjoy my existence much more than they probably enjoy theirs--caught in the loop of classes and drugs and parties on weekends. Constantly caught in a loop of a single climax per week on the ends. Why can't they have the same type of fun without the parties or the booze or the drugs? I ask myself that. I don't understand how anyone could do drugs when there's so much to figure out in this world already without altering it. I know that if I ever did Acid, LSD or shrooms, my head would explode.

Maybe I'm just being a paranoid android, I dunno. What I do know is that I can't take it much longer.

I do know that I feel caught in a crisis because I know I have to stick this out since I'm getting the education I desire. I just wish the good experience in the classroom would extend outwards.

It'll come. These things take time. Be rational. "Don't get butt-hurt."

2008-03-02T03:22:00.000-08:00

All I know is all I know and sometimes it's not enough.

That's been said by someone but now by me and I'm pretty sure I'm still the first to say it. I like to make my own pithy statements and then use them under titles like "Cassavettes" or "The Purple Calligrapher" or "Unknown," because I don't want to tout my own statements even though I really am.

Whatever. School is well, life is well. I'm figuring out where I want to live next year. I really don't want to deal with meeting and dealing with another new room mate. I know Mario, my current room mate, plans on moving off-campus and that's fine by me. I don't want to move off-campus because I moved up here to live on campus. Plus, when I'm 21, I can drink in the dorms if I so choose so there's really no need to move off campus lest I feel like driving to school again--which I don't.

You should listen to Beirut. Bradley recommended them to me a little while back and they're already in my top 10 on last.fm.

I don't have much to comment on. I don't have a TV so I haven't been watching anything though it's frustrating because I know there's TVs around and I have access to none of them. I haven't seen any movies lately because I've been in the poor house.

OH! That's what I could talk about: Eyes Wide Shut. I finally got around to watching the movie last night because I've been slowly getting through the Kubrick catalog even though he's not one of my favorites but he has his merit and his ways.

And any film maker who is as meticulous and perfectionist as he is deserves to be watched. And Eyes Wide Shut took 400 days to shoot. That's not even including post-production and everything else. I can now understand why he didn't pump out movies like Woody Allen. He was too engulfed and swallowed up by details to do that.

And Eyes Wide Shut is no exception. It's very intense and silly in the ways that Kubrick is known for. It's like he knew this would be his last film, so he went hog wild with it. He created New York in London because he hates traveling and he probably chose the names of all the shops on the sets and all the signs in the windows of those shops and the street names and everything.

But I wanted to talk about the censorship of the movie. I viewed the censored version that was created for the MPAA that has, in the scenes at the orgy that Tom Cruise's character goes to, people digitally placed in front of the more graphic simulated acts. You can tell that they were placed after the final cut and everything because they're still and poorly done and they do not fit with the flow of everything else. It's as if they did it intentionally to make you realize that there's something going on and these goddam people shouldn't be here to ruin it. Like Tom Cruise's character. These digitally added people are the ones who showed up in taxis in a rented tuxedo.

And that's why I hate the ratings system. At times you begin to stop seeing the director's vision of the writer's script and you start seeing what the censor's idea of the scene should be. Are children going to be seeing this movie if it's rated R? Hell no. Adults are. It's a fucking Stanley Kubrick film. Nicole Kidman is half-naked in the one-sheet. Parents will know. So why do they censor R-rated films? Why is there even NC-17 but to send films into a nameless oblivion?

It's fucking stupid. Plain and simple. Most people have already lost their virginity by age 17 so what's a little bit of simulated sex going to hurt their integrity? It's frustrating. I can barely even put into words the sort of frustration and madness that the MPAA brings into my mind. It is a broken system and it needs to be rebuilt. That's about it. Everything else is a red haze right now. I'm gonna go take an elephant tranquilizer or two to calm me down now.

Everywhere I go.

2008-02-29T09:42:00.000-08:00

Sick again. I went and saw the health clinic on campus yesterday, turns out I've got the flu. Whoopee! So they gave me some double strength Aleve or something and I've been taking that. Shivering and waking up with everything all damp from sweat and everything.

Otherwise, things have been going pretty well, I'd say. Went home last weekend, staying here this weekend, obviously.

Classes have continued to be interesting. I'm working on an essay comparing Christ and Krishna in their respective religions and hows Hindus and Christians view incarnation and the avatar (not the little picture on forums, silly). Should be fun, though I should probably start reading up on Krishna soon since the prospectus is due the thursday before spring break.

Anywho, I'm gonna crawl back into bed and sleep the day away, hoping to feel better.

Filipino Box Spring Hog

2008-02-25T20:51:00.001-08:00

It's baseball season and, as with my previous hobby (roller coasters), I've started a sort of website in tandem with this one. Except it's just a blog. I don't want to deal with design and all that crap. It's here. Insofar, I don't have much to say, but once the season starts, it should get more interesting as I'll try and comment on every game.

Anywho, let's talk Oscars. On the bus ride home, Kelley was sending me results since I couldn't view the actual program. I'm glad that the Coen brothers finally won Best Director(s). It's an award they've deserved for almost every movie they've done (except the Ladykillers. What was that shit?!)

In the Best Supporting Actor category, I thought Paul Dano was nominated for his role as Eli Sunday in There Will be Blood. But he wasn't. And that was probably a good thing because it was already a hard enough category between Casey Affleck (one of my new favorite actors after Gone Baby Gone and The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford) and Javier Bardem. Both did a great job--I was rooting for Affleck more so than Bardem simply because of the last 45 minutes of TAOJJBTCRF truly break your heart. Affleck thought he'd be received as a celebrity. But instead it's the opposite. He's treated like scum because he killed a national star.

In Supporting Actress, I'm sad that Blanchett lost. She was an awesome Bob Dylan. And I love me some Bob Dylan (well, before his 80's phase. Reaganomics even turned the music into shit!).

The Best Score award was skewed because of Greenwood using, say, thirty seconds from his previous composition (Popcorn Superhet Receiver. It's actually pretty cool) in his score for There Will Be Blood. And that definitely was one of the best musical compositions for film I've heard in awhile.

But, as in previous years, at least one of my favorite films had to be completely ignored. Last year, it was The Fountain and Inland Empire. This year, it was the Darjeeling Limited.

And that's okay because the Academy doesn't make your opinions. You do.

2008-02-19T23:54:00.001-08:00

Let's be reasonable.

I've been sick with some kind of sniffle or cough or chill since the week after I got up to HSU.

And also homesickness. It comes and goes, I try to forget about it--but that's what happens when you have great parents, I suppose. You miss them. It's sensible.

And you miss your dogs and your lawn and your privacy.

But it should pass as long as I bury myself in my studies. I have trouble meeting people, that goes without saying. So it'll come. Come to pass. Boredom will happen always. But whatever. I'm okay, I guess. I just miss everything. And I can't go to any other school because the RS program here is top notch.

Anyway, Spring Training has started, that's obvious by the last post, so there's something to take my mind off of everything else going on or not going on.

Casimir Pulaski Day Already?

2008-02-18T23:58:00.000-08:00

It's been ten days. You deserve something new.

This past weekend, I got the chance to experience Universal Sufism--one of the reasons I actually came to this school. Part of their Religious Studies program revolves around experiencing religions instead of learning about them.

And I can understand why there's an experiential weekend on Sufism, but not a standard class. A lot of what the Universal Sufists believe cannot be learned from a book but instead experienced. And their pretty light or easy on theological discussions. They believe that all religions are facets of the One Divine being. Their founder, Hazrat Inayat Khan, brought this to the States around the 20th century and proceeded to spread it with the help of Samuel Lewis.

As the weekend went on, I realized that this is the exact thing that I had purported at one time--that God reveals himself in various ways to different people. However, when it became actualized, I realized how it feels like a cult. They say that they don't have a Christ or a Muhammad figure in their religion, but it seems like, in time, Inayat Khan will fill that role. He came up with the Ten Sufi Thoughts and he is the one whose teachings they look to the most.

History has an odd way of morphing things, as does time. And those two things seem to be ready to morph this into an all-encompassing theological clusterfuck like most other religions are today.
And the other odd thing of the weekend was that it solidified my belief in Christ without solidifying my belief in the Christian church. I knew that, deep down, Christ was my savior. And I also realized, during an invocation for the Spirit of Guidance, that I still want to be a Youth Pastor, come doubt or high water.

Overall, it was interesting, but it was definitely something I could never truly get into. Next Semester, I plan on doing the Buddhist experiential weekend. Exciting? Oui.

--

Spring Training for the Los Angeles Dodgers of Los Angeles (Fuck you, Anaheim) has officially gotten under way. Most of the team has reported even though the report date for position players isn't until later this week.

Juan Pierre is there and, no matter how much I love watching the guy get extra bases run on him, I hope he gets traded. Andre Ethier and his talent are just begging for a full-time slot. It wouldn't seem to be wise having him platoon with Matt Kemp since both can hit Left and Right Handed pitching. However, it'd be even more unwise and strange to have him platoon with Pierre since both are left handed batters with completely different games. Pierre gets 200 hits, sure, but he also has 668 plate appearances. As a result, his OBP was a meager .331 while his AVG was a decent .293. Maybe it would do him some good to sit down if he can rake in 200 hits again while minimizing plate appearances. And maybe draw a walk once in awhile.

Look, Juan, you aren't a good leadoff guy if you can't hold your bat back. I understand that your arms are as weak as they look, but, please, hold up your bat. Have some sense. Lean into some pitches for Christ's sake. That won us a game once last year. Lean in and steal. Try that strategy. You won't have to tire your arms with the bat anymore.

If you're gonna play every day, Juan, draw some walks so that we don't have to bitch about your OBP. If you aren't going to play everyday, still hit as much as you would. That'd make you hot shit in most books. Get an injury to pad your numbers against mass. That type of thing. I know you've got that streak going, but you also said in an interview that you don't mind if it ends. So let it end.

Or, hell, maybe lift some weights. And don't be a dick in Ethier takes your job. Because he's better. And you probably know that.

In other news around camp, Sandy Koufax showed up to do some shadow coaching. He lives in Vero Beach, so I can guarantee you that this hermit will probably not be flying to the new facility in Arizona any time soon. As a result, it kind of sucks that top prospect Clayton Kershaw wasn't invited to the Major League camp this year. He's a lefty could probably have learned one or two things from him about the pressures of being a hot-to-trot prospect. And also that he doesn't need any time in the minor leagues. Koufax didn't play a single game in the minors, and, as a result, was once voted as the most over rated left-handed pitcher of all time. He spent 11 years in the majors, and the first six were plagued with rookie mistakes. But there was a dumb rule that if you sign for x-amount of dollars, then you have to start on the major league team.

Either way, the type of talk that surrounds Kershaw makes it sound like he and Billingsley will be the new Koufax-Drysdale. Except Billingsley isn't the second most intimidating pitcher of all time--he just has large thighs. And I guess they can be scary, but not as much as a little bit of chin music. That's alright, though, because that's not how the game is played any more even though fans love a fight. That's the funny thing about the strict rules concerning ejections and fighting and so forth. When the dugouts clear, the crowd gets excited and your team gets press on ESPN. It may even help if we had another Ryan v. Ventura fight (great shit, by the way) every week.

Think about it: fans watch NASCAR to see crashes (and drink), people watch the NHL for blood on the ice, people watch football for the contact. Baseball has zero contact and no one likes watching the World Series. Maybe they would if it were prefaced by a title fight? Or if they knew that the teams actually hated each other.

Okay, so this post has become super tangential and it only gets worse because we are now going to talk about free agency. Free Agency has ruined rivalries because it allows for players to go to where the money is, whether or not they first played for Boston and the money's in New York. You would never experience a person retiring because they were traded to the Giants like Jackie Robinson did because they'd probably give him a contract extension would 55 million dollars. You'd never see another Marichal v. Roseboro fight because the teams don't hate each other anymore. Only the fans do. Hell, Jeff Kent signed with the Dodgers. Mark Sweeney was traded to us from the Giants. Jason Schmidt, the Dodger Killer. The list goes on. They go where there's money and necessity. Not where their heart tells them too.

Free Agency turned a game into a sport into pure entertainment. Which is fine by me, I guess.

That's enough for tonight, this should compensate for the ten day drought... if you love baseball.

Bratislava

2008-02-09T02:18:00.000-08:00

Life is good.

I've been reading about Taoism and eastern mysticism, and so I've tried to meditate in the context of Christianity. It's been interesting, but hard to describe. And Zen Buddhists say that if I describe it, then I've missed the point entirely so... I'll let you wonder about it. Maybe meditate instead?

I was reading Bertrand Russell's essay, "Why I am not a Christian," and it got me thinking about where most Christian philosophies that try and justify God fail. They all want to prove that God is omniscient and omnipotent and a good God all around. But this is what I came up with, in response to that idea:

If God is not human, then terms describing humans are not applicable to his being. As a result, we can clearly state that God is not omniscient, omnipotent, nor good. On the contrary, he is also not non-omniscient, non-omnipotent, nor bad. God simply is.

So the atheists can have their arguments about God not being good or omniscient. They can shove them up their ass for all I care. God can't be expressed via adjectives. God cannot be expressed in words. As the Sufists say, it's something you have to taste. For example, we sit here and discuss at great length how delicious cookies are. Their texture, their contents, how fattening they can be and how sick they can make you if you eat too many. We can talk about their taste and their composition, learn from texts of their greatness. But you can never fully know what a cookie is unless you taste it.

The same can be said for God, except that he never makes you sick and he never runs out, never makes you fat or makes you feel fat. You cannot express the Father in words, he must be tasted.

There's my challenge, atheists. Throw down.

Best Movie of the Year?!

2008-02-05T00:23:00.000-08:00

That's tough. I have three favorites, two I've already written about and the third one isn't quite a comedy so I couldn't toss it in that category.

My top three movies of this year, in a tie for first place are:

The Darjeeling Limited
No Country for Old Men
There Will Be Blood

These three movies together show why I love some movies more than others. They all have themes and visual metaphors and some beautiful cinematography. The way that India was filmed and talked about in Darjeeling was beautiful. The way that the brothers never changed clothes yet had all of their fathers' luggage was beautiful. Some critics said that it was Wes Anderson doing a parody of Wes Anderson. But I say they can go fuck themselves. This was probably his best film, edging out the Royal Tenenbaums. He's definitely one of my favorite film makers and this, so far, was his pinnacle. He was able to capture everything about being a family so perfectly. And the way that they were able to finally let go their grief about their father's death was awesome. They realized that they couldn't get on the train, continue on their journey, with all the (literal) baggage of their father. So they just threw it off them and watched it fade from view.

And I liked that the three of them had their things that they could hide behind. Francis had his bandages and the most visible damage, Jack had his moustache and his words and Peter had his Father's sunglasses that, even though they were the wrong prescription, he never took them off.

2007 was a great year in cinema. I hope 2008 is just as good, though I'll be able to see less movies in the theater since I'll be up at school most of the time. I'll see what I can with what money I can, but I know that the Netflix cue will have plenty coming its way when some of these movies come out on DVD.

Comedy

2008-02-03T21:06:00.001-08:00

Let's talk comedy tonight, which seems to be enough of an enigmatic genre to constantly be overlooked. There is a lot of art in making people laugh, but there is also a lot of non-art. I tend to think that people (and Oscar voters alike) would be able to discern what is comedy and what is bullshit, but not often people do. That's why Meet the Spartans was tops at the box office this weekend. Why Meet the Spartans was even made. So let's get to the comedies that I think fall into the opposite category of actually funny movies--movies that made me laugh.

This is not to say that I don't exclusively enjoy good comedic films. One of my favorite comedies is Dodgeball, for instance, which probably falls into the same category as Meet the Spartans: kind of funny, sophomoric and not much substance. Not much art in the film making itself. But there were some damn good funny movies that came out this year, so let's get down to bidniss.

4) Aquateen Hungerforce Colon Movie Film For Theaters -- Here's a prime example of that shit-humor film-making. I'm such a big fan of the show, though, that this movie couldn't help but make me laugh. It's surprising that the non-sequitur style that their humor has was able to play out for a full 90 minutes or so. It somehow didn't get stale, and it kept me entertained for far longer than I expected from a fifteen minute TV show.

3) Juno -- this movie was just downright cute. I liked that it didn't play to some of the Hollywood stereotypes of dickish parents who Juno has to hide her pregnancy from or that the guy who got her pregnant skips town and stops talking to her. She openly acknowledges the mistake and is willing to go through with it and to give this child the best life she can. There are definitely some interesting subplots and the whole movie is rife with awesomeness.

2) Knocked Up -- Judd Apatow knows what he's doing. This movie is one that was made by someone who knows how to make me laugh. Knows how to make a comedy with realistic and well done characters. I liked that this movie was sappy and funny and mean and honest all at the same time. Seth Rogen really showed that he can be a leading man, and one that I'd never want to get impregnated by.

1) Superbad -- I have such a connection to this movie that it would have been hard to not give it #1. In High School, I was Seth a lot of the time, it seemed like. Aside from the drive to get laid, I was the loud mouth, vulgar kid in high school, constantly trying to find a girlfriend. And my best friend was Evan. The names in the movie should be changed for clarity, but it's the truth. He talls and skinny and awkward--not so much anymore, but, still, at the time the movie came out, the characters spoke to us because we've been in that same situation before. We've never gone on a booze hunt or anything, but the whole having to cope with a separation that is looming after spending two years sitting around and talking about nothing. I enjoyed this movie, and it helped that it was funny as hell.

Westerns, horror, Animated

2008-02-02T15:48:00.000-08:00

So last year, I did a straight top ten list of my favorite movies... But this year, I'm going to give out "awards" and then choose my favorite of the year.

In 2007, I saw 41 new films. That's nothing compared to what some reviewers see in a single month, but it's still a solid amount of movies to make an opinion out of. But I know I've missed some really good ones and a lot of the movies I saw this year were ones I finally got around to seeing (like Blade Runner, 12 Monkeys, the Prestige, Factotum, The Saddest Music in the World, etc).

2007 also had a solid amount of Westerns released--all of which I dragged my friends to. There were three typical westerns (There Will Be Blood, 3:10 to Yuma, and the Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford) and one atypical neo-western (No Country for Old Men). So, the first category will be "BEST NEW WESTERN," and it will be a shoot-out between these four films.

4) 3:10 TO YUMA -- A great, badass, slick movie. Christian Bale has really come into his own as an actor and I really enjoyed all the various elements of this film involving his son and Russell Crowe's character and how everything ended. There was nothing overly magical about this movie: it was rough and quintessentially western.

3) The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford -- You choose the show-time you wish to see the movie knowing its ending, you buy the tickets knowing the ending, you sit through the movies 2 and a half hours knowing the ending. So why did people subject themselves to this movie? Because it's a commentary on today's culture of Thirsty Scavengers looking for any and everything they can read about their favorite stars. All the gossip, all the trash, is contained in this film and is embodied by Casey Affleck's character who in the kills Jesse James and then subsequently lets it eat him alive. What we let consume us will eventually finish us off. We always let the beast in, but it's our choice whether it escapes with everything we have. And this movie tried to get at people in the same way, as if to say, "Do you see what you're doing to the actors? They're just people, goddammit!" And having Brad Pitt play Jesse James was a priceless meta tool through this whole movie-game of "Look at yourselves."

2) There will be blood -- Daniel Plainview is a sick, sick, asshole of a man. I don't even know if he is a man, but instead an embodiment of greed. That can't be true though, because there are moments in this film where that hard shell of meanness and money crack and you see that he really does love his adopted son. Eli Sunday is his synthetic opposite--he wants all the same things: money power and fame and control over the people, but he's chosen the religious route instead of the Black Gold Route. This movie is long and slow and it tears at your patience, but if you're able to sit through it without getting up and going out for a smoke or leaving altogether, you'll come to realize that this is a great multi-character study set against a beautiful backdrop of the old west.

1) No Country for Old Men -- The neo-western wins out. Why? Because I love how scary Anton Chigurh (as played by Javier Bardem) is in this movie. He made me shit my pants every time he spoke. He made me cry everytime he killed someone with his compressed airgun thing that they used to use to kill cows (see that creepy scene in the van in Texas Chainsaw Massacre). And Llewellyn Moss(as played by Josh Brolin) isn't his antithesis, but instead, his equal. One who will kill and exploit to get out of his situation and do whatever it takes to bring vigilante justice. And one step behind is Tommy Lee Jones' character as the elder sheriff, slowly realizing that this world is going darker and darker and darker by the moment and there's nothing he can do about it. He hates it, but he knows that if he continues to work, it will just eat him. So he retires. And that's how the movie ends. In anti-climax and letdowns galore. It was a big slap in the face to the viewers who wanted the final shootout and to have some sort of justice prevail. But that's just more blood for the sake of it.

--

So those were the Westerns released this year, and the one that wasn't even really a Western was my favorite. But it grew on me after I read a National Geographic article about how crazy West Texas is. This lady there lives at the end of a 40 mile dead-end road. No shit. People there are weird, and the murders are even worse.

Next up are the Horror awards. If I didn't have to choose movies that were released in 2007 but instead the ones I saw in 2007, the award would go to Dawn of the Dead, the original from 1978. That's one hell of a horror movie. Or it would go to Texas Chainsaw Massacre, a beautifully atmospheric horror movie where not everything is killed by a chainsaw.

But I have to go with movies that were released this year, and so the list is as follows:

5) Planet Terror -- Funnier and more fun that it was scary, but it exuded all the right horror elements: sex and gore and violence. It was great as a setup into Death Proof and as the first half of Grindhouse. But I don't know about it away from the overall experience. However, there were some really good performances and some really great scares throughout the film.

4) 30 Days of Night -- Scared the crap out of me. Maybe it was because all day I was psyching myself out for it by saying, "I'm going to get scared, I'm going to get scared" but it was actually really creepy. The methodology of the vampires didn't seem to make any sense. Why would they want to kill everyone on the first night and then starve? Is a 29-day Disco Dance Party that much fun with out sustenance? Maybe it is, but I'm just hypothesizing. The scares were there but not much else was...

3) 1408 -- Overall, not the best movie. However, I have to admit that I do have a soft spot of John Cusack after he was in High Fidelity. His character has a lot of skepticism and doubt going through this project, and all of it is torn apart by this single room of horror. Stephen King knows what we hate, and he does a great job of writing them. And then people do an even better job translating it onto the screen. Unless it's DreamCatcher. That movie sucked.

2) El Orfanato -- A horror movie in the vein of the original Texas Chainsaw Massacre. Everything is scary but you don't know why. The atmosphere just simply exudes fear. And the last third of the movie is when everything kicks into high gear and it just straight up kicks your ass.

1) 28 Weeks Later -- I have to admit something else: I also have a soft spot for zombies. The zombies in the original "Dead" trilogy where this movie and its predecessor draw a lot from are scary in their ominous way, loafing around and gaining in numbers. The zombies in these movies RUN. They RUN. And that's probably the scariest thing is that these zombies will sprint after you and chase you and keep at you until you fall and they have at you. One reviewer was right in saying that this movie makes you want to get into shape. Y'know, just in case something like that happened. But it wasn't even the zombies that brought this movie to the top of the horror list. It was the US Government and the whole idea that they were running less from the zombies and more from the people who have a total moral and ethical code within them. But they're trained opposite, trained in rage, and thusly become zombies to "The Man." That idea fascinated me, for sure.

And let's run out the one animated feature of the year that deserves any sort of mentioning....

Talking Rats! Talking Rats! I love Ratatouille. It was a great kids film about striving to be your best no matter the obstacles, no matter whose hair you have to pull (har de har). This film was so broad-base emotional that you couldn't help but let Remy and his struggles wiggle their way under the door sill into your heart.

Okay. Comedy tomorrow or tonight. In a different post.

This is the Zodiac Speaking

2008-02-01T21:07:00.000-08:00

I'm up here, feeling sick. I think I just have a cold but if things persist through Monday, I'm gonna visit the campus physician.

I got really sick before I left so I figured I wouldn't get sick up here. I figured wrong. So I'll get better. My room mate and a bunch of other guys are going camping this weekend and I'm glad I at least have an excuse to get out of that. Freezing my ass off? Count me out.

Lately, classes have been going well. There's a lot of papers to write, but they all start in late february-early March. And I figure it's a good start on what the next few semesters will be like. Both the Journalism and the Religious Studies departments seem to prefer papers over multiple choice tests, which I have no problem with. I've never been good at tests, but I've been good at papers, so it should work out well.

I have yet to find a good church around here. I was going to go to the Arcata First Baptist's College Group last night, but I was too sick to go, so I have to wait until next week to try it out.

But I will try it out. I need some sort of spiritual guidance especially now that I am discovering new ideas and everything and I want to stay a Christian. That's my choice. It's not that I want to stay sheltered, it's rather that I already know that it's the one true religion (whatever that means, really) and that all these other religions are merely tempting. That's just how I am. All religions are trying to reach up the same mountain towards enlightenment, but Christianity is the only one that actually achieves that.

What's interesting is the idea of multiple lives. My Hinduism teacher was saying that the fact that this life that we are living where we have the opportunity to learn and to make choices and to have the freedom about these things is like a sea turtle coming up from the bottom of the ocean through the hole in a log--every thousand years. The way he said it made it way more impactful.

That idea coincides with a previous thought about the fact that everyone has the ability to see Christ, to see God, that maybe it's through reincarnation that our choice and our vision is made. Maybe there's no hell, just this Earth perpetuated by broken and lost souls, at one time finally seeing God. And when this cycle runs down, when all have finally seen God, the second coming will occur and Jesus will be King.

But I could definitely be wrong, none of this is biblically based. I wished it was because it makes so much sense, but it's not. So, then, I wait and let this idea simmer until I find something Holy and connected. And when that happens, the idea comes soaring back to life but instead with evidence. And evidence is always what it comes down to. Isn't it?

LOGOS::GOD

2008-01-28T01:15:00.000-08:00

I've been dwelling on this passage from John lately, it's the very very very beginning, 1:1 status. It's this:

1In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. 2He was with God in the beginning.

3Through him all things were made; without him nothing was made that has been made. 4In him was life, and that life was the light of men. 5The light shines in the darkness, but the darkness has not understood it.

6There came a man who was sent from God; his name was John. 7He came as a witness to testify concerning that light, so that through him all men might believe. 8He himself was not the light; he came only as a witness to the light. 9The true light that gives light to every man was coming into the world.

10He was in the world, and though the world was made through him, the world did not recognize him. 11He came to that which was his own, but his own did not receive him. 12Yet to all who received him, to those who believed in his name, he gave the right to become children of God— 13children born not of natural descent, nor of human decision or a husband's will, but born of God.

14The Word became flesh and made his dwelling among us. We have seen his glory, the glory of the One and Only, who came from the Father, full of grace and truth.

15John testifies concerning him. He cries out, saying, "This was he of whom I said, 'He who comes after me has surpassed me because he was before me.' " 16From the fullness of his grace we have all received one blessing after another. 17For the law was given through Moses; grace and truth came through Jesus Christ. 18No one has ever seen God, but God the One and Only,who is at the Father's side, has made him known.

Okay, let's start at the beginning. This is the part that tripped me out the most. "In the beginning was the Word." Okay, Word=Jesus=Light. Got it. I understand that. But the crazy thing is that the Greek word for "Word" used is logos--that is, "logic." So, Jesus is the Word is Logic. Therefore, God is logic. All things logical come from him. This is why nature abhors a vacuum. Because it's illogical. Useless things are illogical. All things made have made sense and had a purpose.

Do you see where it is going? The simple fact that John used the word logos to describe Christ set up the entire theology that we have a purpose. Whoa. We are logical creatures because the Word is God and was with God.

Before we go on, I wanted to mention the seeming oddity it is that the Word was God but also was with God. I have yet to make the clearest sense of this (I doubt the human mind is actually capable of comprehending fully any part of God), but it seems to be that since God is the Light within everything, and he is with us, but He is also in us as the Holy Ghost, then the Word is the same way. The Word is God. The Word is With God. It's the same problem people have that Jesus was God and also was a begotten from God. It's unfathomable, but only if you try and box God and all His divinity into human words as I am failing to do.

We press on.

From this logic, the light which shines in man comes--life. God is life is the Word is Logic is Christ. It goes deeper. This light is eternal, unending. God is within us as the light, or as our souls. Our souls are unending. They are what leave this grave of a body upon our deaths to be returned to the light. It is like when you shine a flashlight into a mirror: it goes out towards the mirror and then returns again. But the metaphor breaks down in that the light goes everywhere else in the room when it is refracted. Our souls only return to one place. Heaven. God's realm. The realm of the eternal.

And John the Baptist had the task of trying to explain all of this to people while denying that he was the Christ. He had the task of explaining to the blind that Christ was coming as a man to repent our sins so get in this river and let me get you all wet in his name. This is a problem considering that Jesus wasn't being recognized because we the people are blinded by sin.

Another aside, concerning the nature of Jesus creating the world and being in the world. That's like you being able to, while still functioning, go into your brain and tell it to shape up. Then dying and returning to your life here. Jesus, from the beginning of beginnings knew what he had to do. Go into his own world so corrupted by free will and make it a little bit better. He knew, too, that not everyone would believe, even 2000 years later.

I will end it here for now because it feels like I've done a terrible job of explaining it thus far. But, instead of deleting, retracting, and denying this piece, I leave it in the hopes that someone gets something started in their minds. Let the logic flow.

It breaks my heart.

2008-01-26T14:10:00.000-08:00

The problem I feared is the problem that's occurring.

I can't meet people, I haven't met people. It's only been a week and a half. Give it time. That's rational, right? But right now all I want to do is go home and see my parents and my girlfriend and my dogs and everything that's familiar to me. Everything I disliked about Rancho Cucamonga I long for now. The traffic, the people, the everything. At least it's familiar.

And everything I loved about home is spinning around into a giant knot of longing. I want Kelley. I want her so bad that it hurts me inside to only be able to text and to talk with her over the air. So much air separating us and all I want to do is breathe next to her. To go home to her, to feel her warmth and her smell. I miss her so much.

I miss the way my dog Annie would harass you until she could lick your face. The way Alvie would growl at everything and it'd just sound like he had something stuck in his throat. The way my dad laughs. The way my mom eats popcorn with a glass of milk. The TV. I miss the Game Show Network and, soon, I'm going to miss the baseball games.

So I'll chunk it out and deal with it piecemeal. First, and foremost: Kelley. I'll get to see her and all of this in a month. But it'll never be enough. I know that the summers and the spring breaks and the winter breaks and the weekends will never be enough.

But I enjoy my classes so goddam much that I'm now stuck in this paradox of wanting to go home but also wanting for monday when classes rotate around and begin again. My professors are so interesting and it's all so awesome... But once class ends, I am stuck again with no friends for now.

It'll all come to pass... Except probably the missing Kelley bit. I couldn't get enough of her when I was home. And now I have to get all it and more in a single once-a-month swoop.

Person: Who are you?

2008-01-22T23:32:00.001-08:00

Wildlife. Let's start there. It's something that, admitted, is a pivotal study for sure. With no ecosystem, we have no humans. Without people studying the effects of humans on the ecosytem, we may have no ecosystem and the Ice Age would surely come.

But I've got to hand it to the people who are into that. Studying an animal that doesn't know who you are or how to contact with you and probably pissed that there's a microphone following it around.

That's how it seems to be with Marine Biology. You can't just pull a Free Willy or a Flipper, latch on and ride these motherfuckers straight to Alaska to observe their eating and their mating and their migrations. They don't come to the surface enough. You'd run out of air.

And You probably wouldn't learn anything, either, because they'd probably be scared as to why this thing in a wet suit and face mask is riding me like a Prison bitch. Or they'd feel like a potential rape victim with a dark submarine lurking behind them and watching them mate. They may not be able to perform under that kind of pressure. You may even get skewed data that says they shit an enormous amount and not realize it may be because they're nervous creatures feeling like a rape victim or a prison bitch...

But they definitely would not feel like a vessel for learning about science. They don't even know what the fuck science is for that matter. They just want to get to Baja from Alaska for a little Slap and Tickle. Lay the seed. Then go home and beat their wives and mutter under their breath (in sonar, of course) "Why didn't I stay with the nice Mexican Gray Back I met down there who gives way better oral."

If I were going to do a science, I'd do something tangible. However, I can't even think of a science I'd want to be involved with because of one reason: 1) I have no fucking desire to ever fucking be a scientist. Find a picture of me. Do I look like the science type? No.

And if I do, then fuck you. I'm an artist (allegedly). I create (supposedly). The scientists do the work and I sit around and wonder why they do it.

But all the world needs all the people to form a society and keep us running. This ties back into the idea of Spiritual Gifts and the Body of Christ I learned about in Church. We are all one Person, broken into little people. And the things we enjoy and the things we undertake all benefit all the other little people and, somehow, the Person, in some way.

That's why we need the homeless. To drink all the alcohol and remind us why we're shooting up methadone now. (That could also be why we need the people who spend their lives performing urinalyses)

That's why we need the mediocre. To remind us that there's a bottom and that they've reached it and Damned if I'll ever work as a Wal-Mart greeter for all my life.

That's why we need marine biologists. To remind us that we want tangibles. Or maybe I just do.

It goes on. It's beautiful. It's essential. It's urinalyses.

2008-01-19T23:34:00.000-08:00

Rightness. wrongness. above it all. We are slaves to morality yet he is above all of that--the creator of all that. I am in awe of that idea. Of the idea of a God.

Even at my lowest, most denying-ist point, I knew there was a God. Maybe because I had nowhere else to turn and old habits die hard. But, c'mon, the human body itself is a great example of how there has to be something greater turning the cogs. The fact that an entire person runs on atoms to click into cells to click into organs to click into fullness in just the right way? That's not the work of chance.

We have free will. The only reason God knows what we're going to do is because he's above time. CS Lewis wrote about how everything to him is the present. And I find that a fascinating insight. The whole idea that the realm of God can seperate moments that run continuous in our lives so he can listen to all our prayers. Address all our problems. That's how he's able to be a personal God. Not by superspeed or anything, but by being removed from the things that restrain us as humans.

Christ was the way that God became human. And boy would I hate to be him... All the temptation and the pressure to do what you know is already going to happeN? Whew. Fuck that, count me out, I'm gonna go get drunk and weep. I'm not that strong. But, then again, I'm also not fully God and fully man. I'm only fully man and fully meat.

If Assholes could fly, this place would be busier than O'Hare

2008-01-19T16:27:00.000-08:00

Well, I'm here.

How do I like it? I think it'll get better once classes start, once my room mate comes back, when things are actually moving, open, and not stagnant. When I have people to talk to.

But it's really pretty, I have to admit that much. I've never lived anywhere but Rancho Cucamonga, and, damn, was I missing out on the esthetics checkmark.

But, still, there were people to talk to in Rancho, usually. Even my mom if I ever got lordy-lord-desperate.

The food is good, my bed is comfortable and warm, the coffee is good, the campus is clean, the people are nice once i get the courage to talk to them. Some are just a little crazy about weed. Others are just crazy. Though they all seem to be from Sacramento. The crazy about weed ones are the expected parts.

I've decided to double major because I'm crazy. I've decided to better myself in any way I can. It's hard being away from the person I love. I lost one of my books already. Have you seen my copy of Mere Christianity? I'd like it back. I haven't finished it yet.

On the note of that book, I feel better about God after reading most of it. It's re-beginning to make sense.

I'll probably go down to the bottom of the "j" and watch whatever movie they're showing at six. Dinner at 530 or so. Now, what to do for an hour...?

Pleas

2008-01-08T01:43:00.000-08:00

I hate that the iPod has become the best mp3 player available. They shut down Rio, essentially. That makes me sad. I hate that the word iPod has become synonymous with "mp3 player" and, when you have something that has no affiliation with the iPod, no affilitiation with Apple--it's a fucking Creative Zen, let's say--it's still a goddam iPod.

It's sickening.

--

I don't think that the Bends is Radiohead's best album. It has too much of that mid-90's guitar feel to it. I can't describe it, but I know it involves acoustic strumming, quick hits toward minor chords, and a holisitically big, big sound.

They began to hit timeless when they released OK Computer. From then on, it hasn't felt time-weathered, even though it's been ten years or so.

--

When people tell you that There will be Blood is too long, and is boring, don't listen to them. It's a long, thick movie filled to the brims of character study and confrontations. One of my favorite reviewers online, by the name of Vern (website here) said that it flirts with greatness, and even get lucky with it later in the night. I think that's a fair assumption because it feels like a really great movie but only time will tell whether it can stand up to its own test--for time is what destroys all, rebuilds all, and creates all.

--
Thingswill probably get weirdfromhere

G;asses pff. lights off, radio off. Something amiss. Yelled at my dog. Afraid to gosleep. Getting antsy. I punched myself in the head last night. Had a dream about something and wound up punching myself twice in the temple. I'm afraid it's going to happen again to night. I almost got a black eye from it. And I'm probably going to say something outlandish tonight, too.

I think it's because I'm leaving in a week and I'm scared of it. I hae to finally admit it: I'm scared of leaving. I'm scared of leaving my family and my friends and my lover and my dogs and my town and my house and my familiar things and my comfort and everything I've ever known. I've only ever lived in one house with blood relations. And now I'm forcing myself to move to another place where the weather kind of sucks and whereI don't know anyone. If this winds up being a horible experience, I have no one to blame but myself.

And the whole idea of blame brings me to my next point. I realized that I've believed in God for so long because i have no faith in humanity. I really don't. And the iea of God being there takes everything out of human hands and puts it in his. I'm much more willing to trust a god than I am to trust a human. Even if that God is a jealous, angry, punishing, atavisticGod with no real sense of anything he's ever done, has fucked up multiple times--he chose the wrong fucking tribe in israel, let's face facts. And he even tried to repair it by sending a part of himself to get crucified. He's a little crazy.

He probably drinks too much. God is probably an alcoholic. maybe everything we are at one time came from sometthing else. And when we die, we just go to the great drunk in the sky and complain about how shitty our years on Earth were. Then we reconcile, and agree to do it again.

I think it's strange when I se people that look like other people. A lot like other people. It's as if our genetics are so interlaced that others and strangers and people we think are funny are all interrelated. We probably are if you believe the great Drunk in the sky.

If you couldn't tell, I'm actually a little mad at God right now because I'm a little confused over his entire existence. I don't even know anymore. I've fallen that far, it's true. What was once strong and solid as rock is now as shifty and foamy as the waves. I can't seem to fathom anything but enough to be enough. It seems that he's not enough. He's the creator and the cause and I want to ust blame him for everything. All I've ever done is use him as a crutch,,, I remember admitting this during some crazy-ass fucking exercise at a summer camp three years ago. I admitted that God's a crutch and not much else. i thought it was interesting but I didn't think of it much until now.

God was never anything more than a way to be cynical about humanity. Sure it makes me sad, but it's the honest to god how I feel right now. He exists, he's out there. He has to be.

He's just nowhere near to me.

EVERYTHING | am.

2008-01-05T11:45:00.000-08:00

A little over a week and not much has changed. I think it's all a little hazy. Can't seem to get a grasp on anything that is or isn't new.

I completed Donkey Kong Country for the Super Nintendo. It may be the most socially relevant, allegorical game I've ever played. I may expound on that later. But I've been really lazy with keeping up with this thing, as with keeping up with some old friends, so I'll try my best. I'm leaving and shit. Distance. Scared of leaving Her. That's the main thing I'm afraid of. Not the room mate or the living away from everything. But the being away from my love for a month at a time. I can't comprehend it. I don't know if I'll be able to handle it without going crazy. I know I won't be getting drunk because I'd probably just start crying about how much I miss her.

And she's what God walked me into before He walked away.That final thing to keep me alive. You don't need Me anymore. All of that.

A little hazy, a little dirty. Still a little sleepy from standing for 13 hours. Not much else to say.

It's hard writing these blogs because I feel like, at times, that everything I say on here has to have some sort of crazy insane meaning. And this doesn't. This is just honesty and pity-me-ity.

Ridonkulous.

Wilted Faith and other Hits

2007-12-26T22:44:00.000-08:00

After a meal at In N Out, we went to church. The two things we do every Christmas Eve since I can't remember.

The church we go to is one that I've gone to since I was three years old, one that I've endured through societal hardships and piety and prevalence. Through High School years that were up and down and very black and white.

But I hadn't gone in a few months because of work and a lacking faith in the religious establishment. And sometimes I was just plain tired.

So this outreach-fest of Christmas Eve service was to be the first service I'd attended in a few months, and I was hoping that the apologetics and the "Jesus died for your sins, but was born today." message would be what I needed to reignite my faith.

What I got was the opposite.

What I ascertained was a wanton desire to get up and walk the fuck out.

Arriving early, we sat and read through the Pastor's written message to the congregation which was filled with seeming theological holes. It all felt a bit off. Too shallow, too easily related to Santa Claus.

And as the message moved through moving clips of the church's mission trips in Central America--things that, actually, were quite inspiring (they were able to get a paraplegic Honduran boy a wheelchair for free from a Mexican wheelchair builder)--and then clips of the Polar Express to explain how we should just believe (in Christ, not Santa) and we could hear the bell ringing. Or the cross burning. Or something like that.

And I realized that my problem with Christianity, my tie into why my faith is struggling, is the same reason why I've never been able to feel out extended metaphors in literature.

When they call us to keep our eyes on God and listen to our Hearts I can't feel or see anything. All these apostrophic callings and creeds seem to be lost in me, lost in my cynicism. I've tried to push it away, tried to erase all this doubt and fear in my heart--tried to keep my eyes on God--but all I've found is more and more layers of doubt and cynicism.

And this is nothing against my church. The Pastor is great, the congregation is unified, everything with it is wonderful.

Just not for me.

Christianity isn't working anymore. I'm walking away for a little while though I'll never be able to completely walk away because I obviously still believe there's a God and I've been taught that once you're a Christian, you're forever a Christian. I still pray when things are real ultra fucked up. And when people need me to. And I fall asleep. I still have my faith.

But my criticisms far outweigh anything I've ever encountered.

And maybe one day a return will come and I will be the zealot I once was.

For now, though? I am stagnant.

God is. I am not.

You're in the Jungle Baby. You're gonna die!

2007-12-23T03:57:00.000-08:00

lFuck.

A lot to write about but nothing to write about.

All of it is only half-congealed thoughts--embryos not quite fetuses not quite babies not quite dissenting teens or twenty-somethings. Yes, I know I left out infancy, but fuck you and whatever.

I guess I'll just sinkk--

Words spilling like boiling mold wine out of a pot to stain your floors since you never seem to clean anything up. You should work on that. Work on being independent but not work on being any different of a person. Fine enough as it goes how it goes how do you do that thing with you tongue that coincides with your hands? I think it was when you stabbed me and told me nothings and then sweetly grabbed my hair and drove the shiv into my lower stomach, releasing at once all the urine I contained because I hadn't pissed. I'd rather be with you than relieve myself.

I have no idea what I'm speaking of. I've never been stabbed and no one has metaphorically stabbed me lately. This is ridiculous. My mind is ridiculous. Isn't that ever enough--to be a little crazy? I can't find it but I know it's there. Like my early modern TB case of carpal tunneling down into the bottomless sea o abysmal masochism like that shit we once knew once made once procured and contemplated if only to throw it back into the ocean to make it late late late for a very important date date date .I know your allusions too well because they're all trite and imperfect and overused.

That's why I'm mad at the Apatow produced comedies and all this YouTube bullshit. I realized this wile watching Juno tonight. It's become way too cool to mention esoteric, bad, shit that came out twenty years ago and only dorks dweebs and nerds understand it. Apatow did it when he called someone Dave Caruso in Jade or Serpico from Knocked Up. Come on, it can only go so far before it feels pretentious. I love Knocked up and superbad and the 40 Year Old Virgin. But they've started something horrible. Mentioning horrible things. Suddenly it's cool to toss out names of characters and actors that were in second rate shit twenty years ago. It's fucking sickening that that trend has caught on. I guess Apatow took the GNR album "Use your Illusion" to mean allusion and then ran away with it.

But I guess that's what happens when you create mega-grossing comedies that can compete with other summer blockbusters. You create funny for everyone else. Because if you make money, then you're "money." And you're funny. and all the girls will love you. We both know it's true that bitches love money and hoes love laughter. Or maybe not. We know something's true though. There's always truth. It's obvious to all of mankind We suffer and that's true. There is no such thing as no death. And if there was, there could still only be one Highlander. And that'd be a lonely existence.

With that Highlander reference I just realized that maybe what became popular of Apatow comedies was what simply came natural to him. Referencing esoteric shit has always been fun. Maybe i'm just bitter because I don't understand some or all of the references even though I watch a lot of movies and know of a lot of movies I should see. Maybe it just incites a small flame of rage at myself and that's why I hate it.

that'ss probably what it was.

And when the cops closed the fair, I cut my long baby hair and stole me a dog eared map.

2007-12-21T05:56:00.000-08:00

Thinking. Thought. Breaking down the barriers and constantly thinking about breaking things down. Crazy Socialist bitch. I'm among the masses yet alone no more.

I can't seem to bring myself to write about loneliness anymore. I wonder why. Probably because I'm no longer lonely. Things have been brought and I am satisfied. I am the King. She is my Queen. Maybe I'm begun to say too much. Maybe I should let things flow out so easily among the plastic tapping rush of keys. that once was the metal pounding of keys that was once the feather scratching the parchment. I blame Gutenberg for the computer. He started with the bible, then probably moved on to printing erotica. Pornography is the mover of the world. It's why the internet was invented. Why the photograph was invented.

That's maybe a bit cynical. I'd say so. No faith in man. Maybe they just wanted to do something good. But that's something I doubt. Sex sells and technology is no different.

Belief. Believe. Believability. I'm one among the masses. But at least I have the queen and at least I have the white space to keep me company in this my small little tiny fucking universe so grandiose yet so minute because I always consistently have trouble meeting people though that may be hypochondria. Move into the words one at a time until they're blindingly fastly comingly out of the words of plastic sheets qwerty keyboard aren't we all out among the masses where the silence is reckoning and beckoning and crying out for shame amongst our ancestor's names and thoughts and plastic toys and action figurines and paratroopers there was no end to the start I know this to be true and I know you're listening to me maybe I should spell check because I know how much you like perfect grammar but don't ever listen to me because your eyes are always closed because you're afraid of the blindly comingly light.

Rain cometh and I am the bringer A little bit of fog that sinks and sinks and sits and sits and pees. As if we're the water cycle's toilet. The clouds squat low and we get drenched. Then we collect it to use in our bathrooms. Brilliant. Cyclical. I love that idea. Of cycles and the beginning being nothing but another end and so on and so forth won't someone stop the madness and monsters of the second timely coming? I think I know what you mean when you say what you meant. I know that everything is a relative aspect of blinding petrification. Bring the bodies to me and I will have them examined for portals and plastics and benign tumors. I know that's what you want.

And all I want is to caress your skin, run my fingers down you back and across your face and tell you that I love with all my heart and mind and mouth and soul and ears and toes and eyes and nose and cheeks (all four). Yep.

Hold me Now.

2007-12-20T09:07:00.000-08:00

Breaking broken bronzed and beleaguered. I am awakening to the cold spot where you used to lay.
Where is the story.

Watch George Romero's "Dead" trilogy. There's a reason it's part of the cinematic canon: it kicks ass. Zombies are scary. But these are an impending doom type of scary.

Everything will fall into place and we'll beaway some day.

I only work at Quiznos for nine more days. I'm excited. There's something about that job I don't like. I think it's the lack of creativity. Whatevs.

Conversations with Whitespace

2007-12-11T02:48:00.000-08:00

I love music that has a conversation within it. Between the instruments and out into the ears. From the accents and drive of the drums to the melody and push and emotion of the guitar or the drive and rumble of the bassline there should be a conversation going on that accents the lyrics.

I'll give you an example. In the song "On Your Wings" by Iron and Wine, we have the consistent refrain of "God..." lines and in the background we hear a growing instrumentation, starting simply with a palm-muted guitar line and a slide-guitar. Then voice. Then maracas. Then the muted, ill-sounding tones of the Children's Xylophone and then, finally, the thunder of the storm (i'll get to the explanation) comes with two bass drum hits, two bass drum hits--beat beat beat driving towards the end of the song. And underneath it all, you hear the faint, slow, creak of an old chair as someone shuffles into it.

It all adds up to something that talks within itself--the xylophone telling the maracas that there's gold hidden deep in the ground. The guitar calling them out from the underground just as the narrator is calling out fragments of prayers he's uttered after he's creaked and shuffled into the old chair.

The thunder and the lines not starting with "God..." are His responses, His omnipresence. I can imagine a man sitting in his chair, uttering prayers about the futility of life and how's there's gold hidden in the ground but nothing seems to bring up and how we're all withering in the shade because of it. Things are withering, the crops aren't growing. Then the storm comes with the booming bass of the thunder. The flood gates open and there's a new guitar melody, a full drum beat and the listless palm-mutes are drowned into the background until they re-emerge from beneath, singing a different, more hopeful tune because the rain has come.

And, the most telling part of this song is that, after the storm, there are no more lyrics. This narrator has no reason to call upon God anymore. He's gotten what he wants and the ennui has subsided. The main crux of Christianity is that we only call upon God when we need him.

And God gives and gives and gives then takes and takes and takes to remind us that we fucking need Him--we must fucking call upon Him.

Sam Beam's an agnostic but I see so much of God in his songs that it's completely unfathomable for him not to be leaning towards the "God Exists" side of the spectrum.

--

I think that this is why I don't enjoy minimalist music. I think this is why I don't like Joy Division. All of their music feels like a single voice-wall yelling out one track underneath Curtis' voice. There's nothing beneath to compliment the above. The capstone is larger than the cornerstone. It's top heavy. Like having 20 clarinets and 1 tuba.

And this is also, I think, why I'm drawn to duos like the Black Keys and Lightning Bolt and the White Stripes--their conversations are so immediate and so intimate because we've only got one or three voices speaking their tune.

Lightning Bolt, especially. The drums and the bass are constantly warring with each other. And every song tells of how their marriage is ready to completely fall apart at any moment--the drums are tearing their hair out because the bass can't stop masturbating. And the voice is so muted and screamed that it transcends all of that into simple accoutrement to the cacophony. It's beautiful in the most ugly way.

--

This whole conversation is seen most in poetry. It's the marriage of words and white space--of light allowing words. What the poem cannot say, the whitespace woven throughout says instead. Silence can be the most powerful weapon for any artist. Invisible castles. Broken dreams. Boweries of divinity.

Talk to me, artists. Tell me what you mean to say.

I'm listening to every part of you. Feet, hands, toes, mouth, white and black and gray and back.

All cheap and debonnaire

2007-12-07T02:40:00.000-08:00

So over the past seven days I've been doing two things: losing sleep and gorging out on movies. Not really, but it seems like it because I can't seem to start one until 11 PM or later.

Movies I've seen, and a scale rating 1-10 after them:

The 40-Year-Old-Virgin (9--the unrated scenes actually add something, unlike many movies where it's just a fucking ploy)

Dazed and Confused (4--fuck you Richard Linklater. Your high school experience was like this? Well, then, you're an asshole.)

Wild at Heart (8--Fuck you David Lynch. You scare me. You're the Freddy Kreuger of directors. I can't sleep after watching ANY of your films.)

Animal House (5--John Belushi. That's the only reason it got a five.)

The Squid and the Whale (8--the most depressing fucking movie you will ever watch. Yes, even more depressing than Requiem for a Dream and American History X. And no one even fucking dies in this movie. Or loses an arm. Nothing like that. But goddam. I just finished it and I am so damned depressed.)

Bottle Rocket (6--Wes Anderson's start. It's only okay and a mere shadow of his better later films. As an aside: fuck you critics who think that the Darjeeling Limited was a self-parodying mess.)

Yea, see? Not too many movies in reflection. Finals fucking suck. My job fucking sucks. I don't wanna fucking leave my girlfriend. But apparently Humboldt will be the best thing for me.

My psych book told me I'm having a major life crisis. Maybe I should do something about it. Oh, right, I brought it upon myself. Okay.

This rain is windier than last time. All the douche-asses on the Weather Channel were talking about how great all the fresh powder was so that they could ride their 4,000 dollar skiis down a fucking slope only to ride back up again and do it all over again. I hope they Sonny Bono.

Fuck the rich. Fuck politics. Fuck fuck fuck. I'm so pissed off right now at Jeff Daniels' character in the Squid and the Whale. He's a pretentious-ass-fucking cunt who says shit that doesn't even mean anything. And his sons take after him. That's when a movie's good: when it's resounding so hard in your mind that you're straight-up-fucking-pissed-the-hell-off.

I have my last final at CSUSB in seven hours. I should've gotten drunk tonight so I could sleep through it.

I hate myself.

It's just got to be

2007-12-01T01:14:00.000-08:00

I think I realized why I'm so scared of going away to HSU. And it's a sissy-ass-fucking-queer-bait-fucking reason:

I've never been that far away from my parents. I mean, the farthest I've ever been away from them was either summer camp up at Hume Lake or visiting JP earlier this month in SLO. Fuckin' a. Something to cope with, I guess. My faggoty ass can handle it, I think. Getting away from them will be a good experience.

--

What if we were all away in the meanest sense? I wish to want to know your touch. We can become alone and one. My feet are cold. Take me home. I don't want to be here. Why are we here? this is the ghetto. This food tastes funny. Everything seems to be in slower slowing swallowing my motion. We're driving on glass. Slow down it's raining. When the day is grey and the road is wet, it looks like you're driving in the clouds--except for the bright fucking yellow line of the carpool lane that you can't enter. That dotted yellow double fucking line that reminds you that your companion and your friends and your lovers are elsewhere not with you left needing them. How beautiful and irrational. I want to be where you are cuddling and falling asleep with my head on your back with your arms around me and us under a blanket dreaming about each other caught in still life. I am yours for the taking.

A knife and a hard-on, I'm not expecting him to be asking for donations to the Red Cross.

2007-11-28T01:09:00.000-08:00

Blah blah blah it's all been said before. I know you believe in me. I want you too. Take me in your arms. I'm in love with you.

Come away and search the scene fro something more than what's been said or evidenced or witnessed or seen touched felt. I am yours for all taking and all time. Yes. Believability is in question. But so are you. We will be together. I know it to be true. We catwalk and skirt around the issue. But it's meant to be. I've never felt so whole. The scariest things are usually the rightest things. And distance is as scary as height. We know too much before the sound has begun .
irte
Carry away the body. I'm listeing to your footsteps coming down the hallway. You are barefoot you look like a model all downdressed and sweatshirted beautiful. You're beautiful. I know you are. You know you are and it's just a matter of time until we're official and we're perfect--we're already perfect. It'll just be a little bit longer until the ahh and the realization set in and the sea is ours and we will be married.

Marriage. There's a lonely beautiful concept. What must be done. We must meet the killer. We love you and we love each other.

Gates like Titans

2007-11-24T04:11:00.000-08:00

Reticence. Afraid of losing it all. Broken blistered and tired. She. The all. Break this bread in remembrance of me. I feel like a liar. Disrespectful. I told her and then ran the table the other way. Reticence. I'm so sorry. Apologies going towards echoes. Trying to be sensical. Be sensical. We're one. And I need to respect my desires. Because they're her desires. It's that simple. Cuddle. Not Kiss. Kill yourself. Amazed and awake and Reticent.

Tired. Broken. Apologetic.

Walk into the jaws of hell

2007-11-19T01:54:00.000-08:00

I can't seem to think of much anymore. It was so cold this weekend, I think my mind was flawed into submission.

I'm not much of a drinker at all. Vein and Channel and varicose Kurt Vonnegut. I believe in humanity, but hell certainly is other people when they act as if they know what want even when they really know that it contradicts all within them.

I think I'm ready to be outta here. I think I'm prepared to face the cold and the darkness and the clouds that seem to hang over Arcata on a daily basis. Apparently, it's one of the most remote locations on the West Coast. Yea, you try getting there. Damn.

I start my final photo project tomorrow. I'll let you know how it goes. Maybe.

I think it's interesting how much alike fire and ice are. Consider this: they're polar opposites of temperature and yet they can both burn you, turning your limbs black and hard and unusable; they can both keep you temperate--if you are cold, you can heat yourself up by the fire, if you are hot, you can find the ice and love it to death. It's almost as if the hotter something gets, the colder it really gets--and when something gets colder, it's really getting warmer.

Maybe temperature isn't as linear as we'd like it to be. Maybe temperature is cyclical.

Makes me think of politics and how that's less a spectrum and more a circle. You've got the fire of Hitler and the Ice of Stalin--two opposite ends--and yet they're synonymous with the same brand of fascism. Strange, eh?

Maybe 3rd degree burns are really frostbite?

And don't let time slow you down--don't let clocks and calendars run your life. This could be three days ago, but it's today for the simple reason that we think we can control nature and we need to break it up piecemeal so that we can create a control in our lives. But the control never comes. That's why calendars and due dates and everything is bullshit.

Because it's yesterday. And tomorrow.

Today never was.

Daddy's ghost behind you, sleeping dog beside you....

2007-11-12T01:58:00.000-08:00

I think you're crazy. About me? Yea, I'm crazy too. I can still taste your smell against tobacco. I love the way you taste and the way you feel and the way I hold you with outstretched arms.

What? That's silly. We both know that's silly.

We've gone deeper than this, but our dirigible must stay afloat and we've only got so much rope. I apologize. we can't go much farther.

I'll even let you hold the remote control. I told you I love the Wedding Singer.

My dogs are better than your dogs. And Alvie could definitely kick some ass in a drained pool Amores Perros style. I ain't getting stabbed and he ain't getting shot though.

Why did you get involved with these people?

We think a lot about nothing. Happiness can only be real if it is shared with another person. Don't go Into the Wild. I promise that you'll regret it. Though i do want to take a road trip cross-countr. I think about it a lot. Driving to NYC then leaving my car on the outer city limits and meandering around there for a few days, trying to find places to sleep--like the subway. That'll get you mugged.

I'll miss you, kiss you, give you my coat when you are cold.

Terror and nightly envisionment of all the greatest things imaginable. God EXISTS.

2007-11-11T00:46:00.001-08:00

I realized that the toughest part of writing is the beginning. You can tell when it's supposed to end because the energy runs out, so you start over and add during the editing process....

But I always seem to want to start in the middle, with everything already structured. I hate it.

I'm watching the wedding Singer. I love this fucking movie.

Then the Oak Tree and its Resurrection Fern

2007-11-07T02:10:00.000-08:00

We are caught in a still life. This our life. I have no faith in this country or human kind that we'll ever get this planet back to normal. It's already trying to kill us. That's how AIDS came. Evolution fucked up and it's trying to repair itself. It was like, "Damn, we shouldn't have created a being with a free will and then allowed it to speak, discover, and torture."

We're fucked. Let's fuck.

Something with a short edge--mildly conniving--it digs deep. Gets at that greater meaning of everything we once knew before operations had us maimed for good and scarred for life. Close your fly were you born in a barn of animals we are animals caught like sheep in the rose bush should have been sheared days ago because the summer months are so goddam hot like a skillet after you've fried pork belly. If only the rains would come and wash away our sorrow. I want you to come over. I'm addressing this to you. I'm crazy about you but it seems that love doesn't spurn in a drought--it flounders and hopes and hopes and hopes and waits and waits and waits and hopefully finally the precipitation will fall and everything will be okay and the weather will be cool and it'll pat our windows like a coach patting our asses for a job well done. And we'll be together. And we'll be in control. And you'll be wearing your bathrobe with the hole in it where your dogs found something good and I'll be under the covers in my underoos, we'll be watching CourtTv. and we'll argue whether or not we should go to bed or switch over to the Game Show Network or watch the news. And then I'll turn off the TV and there will be the great silence that explains our relationship. And i'll hold you hand across your body as we lay side by side by side by side by side and our dog will be content at our feet, so beautiful and small and budding. We sit in the silence and the rain is obviously telling us that we did a good job for turning the TV off. Its rhythms put you to sleep and I hear your breathing go shallow and follow along with the slaps on the window pane. I could never sleep before I slept with you. And now I can. Now I don't spend hours upon hours awake, thinking, wondering, worrying. I've got everything I need right here next to me with wet hair and beautiful tinges of darkness. We work, we play, we come back around together at the end of the day. I love you sweetheart, and I'm glad that we ended up in the future.

Will is my friend.

2007-11-06T02:51:00.001-08:00

Here's a good word: marzipan. It's like marshmellow. Mmmmmarzipan. But I can never find a stanza, a line, a sentence to put it in. Because it's one of those pretty independent words, but it's ugly around other people.

I'm scared about leaving for HSU. I'm leaving, that's settled. But, damn, am I scared. I know I have terrible social skills and that I'm paranoid. These two things don't combine to make a sexy friend. They combine to make a paranoid and reclusive friend who pisses you off a lot because he thinks someone is following him home all the time and won't be nice to your friends because nice is so goddam hard sometimes.

I've convinced that I try too hard to write everything on here. I think too much and everything stutters under the weight of all the things I'm trying to say but can't say and the things I can say stagger, stray, and aren't as impactful because of this shaky weight. Scary, isn't it, that I could be better. I know, because I'm so fucking great now. < /sarcasm >

I want to be a Youth Pastor but I've never worked with Jr. Highers or High Schoolers. And that scares me because maybe I HATE these age groups and am wasting all my time. I hope to connect with a church up in Arcata that doesn't have any people I know so that I can work with the Jr. Highers.

But these are worries. And worries are God's. I have a lot of'em. You guys stay safe.

This is Reckoning.

2007-11-04T01:55:00.000-07:00

"No matter how corrupt, greedy, and heartless our government, our corporations, our media, and our religious and charitable institutions may become, the music will still be wonderful." --Kurt Vonnegut.

Read his book, A Man Without a Country. It's short and it's interesting.

--

It's disheartening when all my favorite writers or directors (Lynch, Beckett, Vonnegut, Klosterman, Steinbeck, Hemingway [granted that those latter two pricks lived when it wasn't unhealthy but, rather, helped with indigestion]) are smokers. Whatever. Lick my ashtray. Viva Zapata.

--

I sincerely think that baseball is the greatest sport because of how far removed it is from daily life. In football, you're stuck with the constant realization that 300 lb. defensive ends are going to take your soul with every play. In baseball, you've got finesse and running and return. It's cyclical in that you hit a ball, create an action, in the hope that you return to the exact spot where you started, as a better person and a winner. Or a loser. Sometimes things just don't work out and you're stuck at the plate for a little longer, then in the dugout, then in the hallway where you take a piss in the sink. That's life. Piss in the sink sometime. You'll know.

And in the same way that I think every sane person should seriously watch and enjoy one baseball game in their life, I think that every theologian and ontologist should read Beckett's Waiting for Godot. We as humans are caught, wondering where God is and why we're waiting here for him when we're not even certain that he's coming or even is where we expect him to be. But then it's not about that, it's about something more--just as religion and life aren't completely about Christ as God's son, praise Allah--something completely absurd like being stuck on a grassy knoll. We know nothing, we only have the guidelines. Estragon and Vladimir know nothing, they only have directions.

And they too hope to return to Home.

We pile the tired. And dig up the poor.

2007-11-01T00:32:00.001-07:00

I am me.

Sink deeper.

Thanks Jasmine for listening and commenting when I need it. You're a great friend to have. And Alycia, too, for the multitude of times I've come to you as a needy bitch of a friend.

And Kelley, I'm so sorry for everything I've done to you. I'm impatient.

JP, I miss you. Things are different now that you're not around. I'll live.

It's amazing how everything I write on here seems to get me in trouble. I should probably slipp backk intto crypticcs.

Everything is so bloody. There's been a war. Are you listening to me? There's something wrong. But don't deplete my resources, I'm going away as far as I know, I've gone to chase the horizon. I face change and it rears its ugly head into me. I fear change and I need duplicity. I am a wayfarer lost in the tag of incendiary complements and imminent threats. We are domain. We put our selves together to be how we we are depending on who we were, but all that changes when we circle back and realize that e are the same and the same is the we within the you within all my present past and future new thoughts old time again we are linear caught within but always without. Know yourself. Please don't go. I don't understand why there's so much blood. The idea just lives on. Give me wisdom, give me peace as I raise my arms to accept love--the love of a lover. I have God, I have my friends, i have my words, I have my feelings and my emotions and my problems and my controls and my deviant needless concubines. But I need a lover. I need You.
from home, the closer I am to getting home--the earth is flat. I may have to run back from where I am to find you again--the earth is round, we may meet up again one day from the point which I started--but I heard that you're still probably with someone i heard from a friend that our distance will change something I heard that when I return to the original horizon that I saw for 20 odd years, that we will be okay. I heard from a friend who said that you are probably still with a friend who knows that you love him. I know too much and yet I can't find the words to explain all this thick blood that's steeped in past trenches and early morning tirades. I will return. I will hold your letters with me wherever I go. i will sink down and let everything toll away from the sound and i will toil but something will be okay within the nothing. Everything will collapse.
but i am chasing horizons and trying to find you out. And the farther I go away--

Enlightenment as Christians.

2007-10-30T12:30:00.000-07:00

Enlightenment is a term that is thrown around with far too much brevity. We are enlightened by food (maybe just me), by friends, by family--seemingly anything that starts with an "f." In reality, enlightenment is a tough and arduous process that many Christians ignore, thinking that it's a completely Eastern idea. That only the Buddhists have to worry about cutting the chain of rebirth, realizing oneness with Him, seeing His face, and then ceasing to exist.

To start, Christian enlightenment differs from beginning to end because we do not believe in rebirth. Life is a one chance, one shot, thing... However, we also believe that we are reborn into Christ, into the body of He who Sacrificed Himself thus making our reincarnation exist in our single life as opposed to it occuring over many lifetimes until we hit it, until our souls have suffered enough, for long enough, that we finally cease to exist.

Before we can be reborn in Christ however, we must see the face of God--there is always something that compels us into enlightenment. As Dr. Ravinda Kumar stated in the article, "We are all Gods in the Making," from the Journal of Spirituality and Paranormal Studies in October 2006, "Seeing God is a very important event. On successful culmination ofmeditation through a "seed mantra," the Deity of the mantra appears before the disciple." A "seed mantra" could be a worship song or a repeated phrase during prayer. That is why, 9 times out of 10, at a summer camp, the call to Christ is usually held on or around an all-worship-night so that everyone sees or feels God and no one feels alienated because they feel something deep within their core.

After we have seen God's face we have a choice: we go deeper and accept what we've seen, accepting that God and you are one, or we reject it. If we reject it, then we are voiding ourselves in the Nothingness.

But if we accept it then once and for all, we have cut the chain of rebirth, and we are dead to sin and Alive in Christ. Our ego is reborn as our Holy Guiding Spirit. We are setting into stone what will be of us.

And all humans face this choice. Everyone has their chance to see the face of God [citation needed--i know this exists, the bible says it somewhere] and thus we all have our point of rebirth. Some will choose away from God while others will choose into God.

And some will be reborn multiple times in their lives, shifting like beached whales until they settle on God or Nothingness.

And if you choose to deny God, your journey towards enlightenment ends there. Your fate is cast. You have no need to seek God's face.

But for Christians, it goes deeper. We can't just see the face of God, choose Him, put a Jesus Fish on the back of our car and call it a life. We must constantly be seeking God's face, constantly seeking repentence and minor-rebirth. In the vein of seeking God's face, it is the reason that most churches have pictures of Jesus or stain-glass windows purveying what God looks like. You see that and you say, "oh! I get it! Sign me up!"

For Christians who are reborn multiple times in our single lives, we must constantly be re-routing and repeating these first two steps, like a worn path, so that we may continue to remain dead to sin and Alive in Christ. Because, in truth, no matter how much one becomes in enlightened, there is still always temptation and there is always something worth getting you down.

So we cycle, we orbit Christ as our Sun as we move around him, and our planetary path and rotations are what keep our lives going. We turn around and around--that's why life sometimes seems so cyclical. It's because we are living out our past lives and our future lives in this one life with one set of people.

We should no longer fear death because we already are dead. This flesh, this body that you see, is nothing but a shell and I am nothing but the Father. My acts are not my acts, but I am the only one to blame. I try and not repeat what has happened before, but that is simply how life works--repeat.

I've felt before that I'm caught in a still life portrait, going nowhere, and never doing anything. I'm just an apple in a bowl caught in its forever-ripened state.

Now I understand why: it's because that's what this life is: it's the consistent waiting and rebirth until we reach the final stage of enlightenment.

Death, that great enigma that needs no more said on it than what's already been said by millions of poets and writers and essayists and sitcoms and movies, is not something we're supposed to be scared of, it's supposed to be something we embrace. It is the final moment where our flesh and our sin finally ceases to be, and we become wholly one with the Father. Is that something to be afraid of? When we die, we cease to be forced to live out this shell of a life in a still-life cycle rounding the Son.

And that's okay by me.

Hold your grandmother's bible to your chest

2007-10-30T02:49:00.000-07:00

I think she fell asleep.

There's truth, there's life. I am yours for the taking and all that.

I feel very disillusioned right now towards being poetic or being staunch or being, well, stylistic. It is what it is.

Nothing to be done.

It is for certain.

I might believe in reincarnation if we're to believe that everyone has their chance to see God. It'd give much more weight to the whole idea of teaching us as humans lessons because, to me, it seems like for God to teach us lessons would be like us teaching roaches how to type. There's really no point to it, it's fascinating, but where does it go? Nowhere. We just die.

But if we came back around, had a second chance and effectively doubled our impact... That may make more sense.

Then, of course, is the most obvious problem: biblical evidence.

I love you, good morning.

Stay safe, be sound.

We push off, we're rollin' boulders.

2007-10-26T03:12:00.000-07:00

It's a conniption.

An occupation. I'm ready for it to end. I'm ready for the world to cycle.

I'm ready for it to end. I know it won't, because my greater purpose is still germinating. But every night I want to die. That's probably why I sleep so much. I tell my friends that it's my way of resetting, but, really, it's a rebirth for the day. Sleep is death's cousin, and it's the closest I can bring myself to suicide. At the end of a nap or a night of sleep, there isn't a great and golden enigma, there's life again, and the day can continue, let us forget about what has unfolded already. Let's reset. I need you to forget I ever said that. Let's reset. I wish that you would too. I mean, really. I've found you among the wheat compressed with despondency, and I really think that you just need a good night's sleep. Don't be irrational and insomniatic. Just lay there. Pray and Believe. Peace and Serenity.

And reset. I want to take a three year nap back in time to slap myself in the face, but instead, I only move three hours forward, because we cannot change what has already been laid--we can only change what lies ahead. We live in a liquid future, a river that runs the path of a concrete past. Like the LA River. That is our lives. Our future moves solemnly through the concrete and the graffiti of our memory until we spill out into the ocean of His Loving Arms.

And sometimes Johnny Knoxville tries to jump our future and breaks his ankle. What a Jackass.

We were Born to Fuck Each Other, one way or Another

2007-10-23T02:00:00.001-07:00

Tell me who I am. Tell me where I am. Tell me how I am--what I am--why why why why why why why the rain falls so hard on the warmest days of the year.

I am the synagogue, I am the Father. We are one. I am God and God is me. We are within and beheld by one another. I will never have another as my goddess. You will never make me learn to lay beneath the mountainside--

you
are
my sk
epti
cism.

Down away, run around and find your tail again. I am Yours. "Before long, the world will not see me anymore, but you will see me. Because I live, you also will live. On that day you will realize that I am in my Father, and you are in me, and I am in you." (John 14:20)) I and the Father are one. I am God and God is Me--I do not exist. I do not exist. This is not my beautiful house, this is not my beautiful wife--HOW DID I GET HERE?! (Thank you, David Byrne).

This body is nothing--just an arm or a finger of the Cross of Sanctity. Be with Me being with the Father.

This is
step 1
towards
enlightenment.

We are on the path,
dear brothers and sisters--we will cut the chain of rebirth.
We will be within eternity and eternity will be within us--

one day.
one day we will Live.

Eloi Eloi

2007-10-17T00:45:00.000-07:00

Although I wholly believe that Christ died for our sins, was hoisted up upon the tree in vicarious atonement, I began to wonder: "How is it that a shorter crucixion (a few hours, as opposed to the many days that some took) than most could possibly be a sufficient sacrifice for our sins that are infinite and ongoing?"

To put the length of time that Jesus was on the cross into perspective, the Gospel of Mark notes in chapter 15 that Pilate himself was surprised to find out that He was already dead when Joseph of Aramathea came and asked for the body. And this was Pilate, the guy who knew that Jesus was pretty much dead by the time he was put on the cross.

Crucifixion was meant to be an arduous, excrutiating, and symbolic death. It was supposed to kill the person in the public sector, on a hill (like Calvary), and allow the person to stay there for hours or even days, as opposed to the guillotine or a hanging which are generally instantaneous. But it seems like Christ, our final atonement, almost got off easy on the cross. It definitely could have been that, because He was beaten and whipped so severely beforehand, that the death was quicker than most. But our sins weren't forgiven via the Cat of Ninetails, our sins were up on that cross.

And shouldn't a crucifixion that forgives an infinite number of sins take longer and not shorter, whether or not Jesus was beaten beforehand?

Well, it should have, but God doesn't really work that way. In 2 Peter, Chapter 3, verse 8, when he is talking about the second coming and the end of times, it is mentioned that "With the Lord a day is like a thousand years, and a thousand years are like a day," so it could have been that, to the Christ within Jesus, it could have felt like six days on the cross.

And so I conjecture that, though Jesus himself was only on the cross for a short period of time, Christ was on the cross for such a period of time that our all our sins are being born into him. Jesus gives up his spirit, according to Matthew 27, when he dies, at around the ninth hour, after crying out "Eloi! Eloi! lama Sabachthani!" Jesus had begun to wonder why God had forsaken him. Perhaps this was the moment that Jesus left the Christ.

If Jesus Christ was fully man and fully God, then he can be in two places at once. Or three. or four. I sincerely think that Christ stayed on that cross for days or even months while our infinite sins were transmuted into his body. Jesus, for a time, feels all of this pain, feels all of our sin and our blackness and our vortex of antagonism, and then croaks while the Christ is still in those nine hours, sucking up our sins. The Christ will stay there until his second coming, when he will, without pain but to us, begin his vengeance.

And it's a vengeance we deserve if this is the case.

This is a song we haven't played in a long time. So we'll see how it goes.

2007-10-15T01:44:00.001-07:00

Here it is. Here I am.

As you know, I have been struggling with my faith because, in the words of Sam Beam, it's "strong as hell but not Hickory Rooted." After seeking and seeking and seeking, I was up late last night on AIM when a familiar name came on that I hadn't seen in awhile because she's been Israel and I've been here and the sun sets according to the axis of God's Son. We exchanged nominal nixceties for a few minutes unitl I jumped into all the troubles I've recounted on here. And, with all the people not three hundred thousand million miles and minutes away, I wasn't able to divine what I divined with her words and suggestions. She's a Woman of God. She's what I hope to me, except a Man (yes...of course....). Jess, you are amazing and I am glad that I met you three years ago at Wildwood.

I realized that I mustn't passively read the bible, just sitting there, taking in the words, allowing them to penetrate my soul. I must takehold of them, aggressively reading them, and marking my findings and meditating on them, seeking God's meaning and God's subtext. I must no longer read my bible without my Pen. So I read John 21, where Jesus commissions Peter three times to feed his lambs, and thne his sheep. I found that this is another commission, a deviation from the evangelism of Matthew 28. This one is more for the disciples helping disciples than for the disciples helping the wayward countrymen in exile. So I wrote it down. Amazing.

I must cast off my cynicism and find hope. Imustn't be skeptical of God's word but trusting (though trust is something I find hard to give out--it's not something I give to trick-or-treaters).

And I must be like the father of the demonic boy in Mark 9: I must ask Jesus for his help with my unbelief. This was the biggest thing, because I realized that I've been trotting out to the mound every day without a Catcher. I need God's help so I can see Him because He's the only one who knows how to reveal himself to me. And, to be honest, this always felt silly. Asking a deity that I was unsure about to help me find him. But then I realized this is something we do with other people, too. We say, "Show me that I can trust you again." Oh God, my God, help me with my unbelief. I must cry out to You in every way. I am nothing without you guidance.

I also wanted to rescind my previous accusations about a cyclical life and how all matter is reborn: there's beauty in the fact that our souls aren't made of matter, in that they will no longer exist. Souls can disappear while matter cannot. And all of God's love is Hickory Rooted in our souls that go up at the end of our lives to meet with him.

And when I am forced out into the lonely cold because of my newfound cigarette addiction, when I am alone with the world and the light at the end of the stick, I realized that those moments are my daily Bethel, where I meet God, because I am away from all distractions, and cannot go inside because I have fire that emits smoke that seeps into everything. I am able to, for fifteen minutes or so a night, enjoy God's company, enjoy God's creation, revel in it all. I cannot be distracted because all things distracting are inside the house where I cannot take my cigarette. Weird how it all works out.

Welcome to Sodom, South Georgia, where we wake like a tree full of bees.

2007-10-13T23:53:00.001-07:00

So, okay, remember when I posted my Selfish Manifesto? (The red, underlined text, means "Click here to jog your memory.) Well, JP wrote and performed his speech about me, using that as a template, right? Well, he gave me his speech, and every fucking manifestation of it, so I'm going to post that because I really think he hit it on the nose as to who I am.

"The back of the classroom knows him well, the scruff haired, awkwardly outging, turtured soul of a teenager whom [sic] feels without boundaries, searches for answers, and who is known by all, but is Known by few. Evan Pugh.

"The Bipolar child whom [sic] thinks he is a man, says what others think, and also what they never wanted to think of...he is blunt with too much edge, people [k]now him as the crass intellectual who oddly enough has horrible grades. He is Evan Pugh

"Born into a Christian househole, he has been told not to swear, not to fight, not to be who he inevitably changes into around other people. He is eternally positive, believing everything will be solved by God in the end, some might call this a fairy tale, he just finds the hope depressing every time something else gets in his way. He can't help but be Evan Pugh.

"Those who have met him never forget him, off the walls and with too much energy, speaking in almost never ending phrases of quotations and obscure references to films only buffs would watch and music only the confused could find. He talks like Evan Pugh.

I will never forget Evan Pugh because he is the one person who although did not graduate top of his class, or have any friends, is too nice for his own good, often coming off as the boy who tries too hard for the girl, and a dynamic moment breaker, with a mind with a peculiar gift for dictation, and a sense of humor and wit too sharp for many. But as Emerson wrote, "To be Genius is to be Misunderstood." And nobody is more misunderstood during a million mile per hour half angry all passion rant on some mundane item than the angry whining voice of Evan Pugh.

"As far as unforgettable goes, Evan is for me. And although some may forget him, or only know him as Evan Pugh the most outgoing, friendless, good guy who have gone to school with the at some point in time; I remember him for the all the times he developed my half formed ideas and unsure beliefs, while I simplified his half baked ridiculous self made philosophies and beliefs. He is memorable to me, and Like Evan would like me to say

" 'We must be humble, we mustn't demand recognition. I was raised to do good whilst flying under the radar--create the tireless chugging ideology of goodness without recognition because being known destroys everything. Be without megalomania. Know yourself, know your God, may it be enough for enlightenment.

" 'Believe in God. The universe tends to unfold as it should.' "

Here's a part that I really like, that sums up the beginning of our friendship, that he left out of the speech (I think. His speech was more a conglomoration of above and his ten pages of hand written scribble-notes).

"Lasting memories are left by his perfect friendship,
"First as a minor acquaintance, a minor annoyance,
"a minor creep, a major influence,
"A Gift."

Yea, I will admit, it was creepy the way I'd wait around for his Spanish class to end so I could give him a ride home even though I didn't have a fifth period. He swears I wasn't dating my current girlfriend Kaitlyn while I did this, but I swear that I was. Whatever, it all worked out in the end. I knew I had found a super-major-kick-ass friend when we would ride home listening to Radio Free Vietnam, laughing about how it all sounded like gibberish, and he wasn't creeped out about it. I'm gonna send him a message, for him to write his own selfish Manifesto, so I can respond to it and do the same thing.

This reaffirmed that, in the most non-queer way, even if I don't find love, I'll always have JP--in that Stand by Me, narrated-by-Richard-Dreyfus-looking-for-a-dead-body way. He will be the best man at my wedding. I love him (in the most non-queer way, of course.)

Carma Police.

2007-10-12T12:59:00.000-07:00

(preface: so okay, a religious essay dealing with theology is weird coming from a guy who doubted his faith a few days ago. Whatever, it's all in the struggle.)

As Christians, we shouldn't completely dismiss karma as a purely Buddhist idea, or as one that is not in correlation to our beliefs. The difference between the general idea of karma--that is, doing good and having it come back around to you in a different form during your life--is that, with Christian Carma, we are asked to do good for others, but we are not expected to receive anything in return. Instead, we are to do good in order to store up our treasures in heaven, where thieves don't steal it and moths don't eat it, because where our treasure is, our heart is as well (Mt. 6:20,21). If our treasures, our karmic payoff, are on Earth, then our heart is with the Earth, and everything which we mercifully do or humbly do not do will pass away with our bodies.

With that in mind, we then begin to have confidence in the flesh, which, as Paul writes to the Phillippians, of which we are to have none.

And this idea of Christian Carma is nothing foreign to the writings of Paul. In the closing words of his letter to the Galatians, he writes, "Do not be deceived, God is not mocked; for whatever a man sows, that he will also reap. For he who sows to his flesh will of the flesh reap corruption, but he who sows to the Spirit will of the Spirit reap everlasting life. And let us not grow weary while doing good, for in due season we shall reap if we do not lose heart. Therefore, as we have opportunity, let us do good to all, especially to those who are of the household of faith."

He knows that we reap what we sow, that we as farmers with plant rows and peas and thusly get peas; if we plant sin and hate and malice, we will reap malice, hate, and sin. He knows that, if we have mercy and humility and expect nothing in return, we will grow weary because we as humans have within us the "What's in it for me?" complex, and, when there seems to be nothing in it for us, we grow weary. We want cognitive results, while Christ Jesus gives us metaphysical results--our souls feel better, our treasures are storing up in heaven.

So we as Christians have Carma. We are to do good and expect good in return. The only difference is that our good will be revealed in heaven, when we pass away from this life. Surely we will get good in return and good will be given to us in our every day life (like someone allowing you to enter a lane to get off the freeway in traffic, or letting you bum a cigarette), but that is not what our ultimate expectation should be.

Our final expectation shouldn't come from man. Because it comes from Christ.

jezebel.

2007-10-12T03:49:00.000-07:00

I've been smoking more than I've been eating lately.

I want to quit, I think about quitting every night. I consider that it'd be easier to quit now, after only three months of casually smoking and two weeks of going half-a-pack to a pack a day, than trying to quit after a year or more. I consider that it's going to destroy my teeth, give me heart disease, destroy my lungs. Smoking will kill me, in essence.

So why do I smoke? This is an interesting quibble I've been dealing with ever since I started. Is it because I'm stressed out about school, life, the universe, and everything? No, I've been able to cope with that for awhile. Is it because I want to be more socially acceptable? No, I will never be socially acceptable except to a handful of people.

Then why do I smoke? Because I want to. I want to experience slow death. I want to experience all the worries. I want to see the world through the haze of the thin line of smoke rising from a burning end. If I didn't want to smoke, I wouldn't have started. If I didn't want to smoke, I wouldn't be smoking. It's that simple, I think.

I remember, about a year ago, I thought about picking it up, without anybody coaxing me into it, and of my own accord. I wanted something to make me feel better, the medication no longer working. But my mom talked me out of it.

So what then am I supposed to do with a terrible habit I wanted in the first place?

Quit, I guess. That would be the most logical thing to do.

The irony in all of this, though, comes from what I was reading in my psychology text book. A lot of the things they suggest to do instead of smoking-- like changing your patterns to avoid situations that encourage it, and to do something else instead--are eerily similar to the things I've been told by pastors about how to quit masturbating. They tell a congregation of young men to not get into situations that allow for you to masturbate, as if we don't go to bed at night.

But smoking is different in the way that it can be avoided, if I just leave them at home or simply throw them away. Think about my black lungs. Think about my poor teeth.

But, see, here's the rub: I have a problem with myself drinking or smoking pot or doing drugs because I see a moralistic problem with it, whereas with smoking, I see no moral problem. I see no grand retribution for it. It's not a sin. I'm not gonna go to hell because I smoke a pack a day.

And far too much of my perception of smoking is focused away from the obvious biological effects, and towards the non-effects it has on my soul. Smoking doesn't give you soul disease or soul cancer. It doesn't hinder you from self-awareness or seeking Christ. It just kills you.

But maybe it does disease my soul... maybe because of smoking, I won't be that girl, because she'll be appalled by my habit. If that's the case, though, then religion itself by narrowing the field of dating prospects down to one religion and one belief. Hmph.

It all seems to be one big clusterfuck. I should quit, there have been points whilst writing that this that I have resolved to quit, but, now I am just unsure. I pray that I make the right decision, whether to opt-out or commit. We'll see.

2007-10-12T01:19:00.001-07:00

Some things i've realized this past week without my parents:

Doubts that God exists are really proof that God exists. If we didn't have our doubts, we wouldn't have our wisdom. If everything was great all the damn time, we'd forget about it. Even though, in philosophy class, we shot down the idea that bad things happen so we know what good is, but I still believe in this. The doubts point out our faith. You can't have faith without doubts. Believe it.
I'm not meant to ever, ever, ever live alone. I need people around me. At least one.
Dogs aren't meant to be owned by insomniacs. They don't sleep until their owner sleeps. And I don't sleep. Hence, I probably shouldn't have dogs.

Corollary to last night's insanity.

2007-10-10T13:08:00.000-07:00

It was a long night. I have my doubts. That's most of it.

Please Don't Go.

2007-10-10T04:31:00.001-07:00

I'm sorry Jasmine. i really am. I've been lying to you. Nothing's been okay. But for some reason I can't tell you shit sometimes. I just can't.

I wrote these to Kelley, and I'm writing them to you:

I'm stressing about housing at Humboldt. Apparently it's really impacted and I get second priority under the people already there (this makes sense, but it sucks cock that they don't have to worry and here I am worrying my face off and smoking myself stupid waiting for the package to arrive with my registration info and my housing info and my God). maybe I shouldn't go. I've actually begun enjoying Cal State San Bernardino lately. Seeing you and being late to work. Smoking and talking with Bradley (camaraderie in the cancer sticks). But maybe I'm not stressin about meeting people for once being I know I won't see'em ever again. I smoked almost a whole pack today. I'm beginning to feel depressed again. I'm really hungry. I want to hang myself with an extension cord from the rafters above my patio. I can't do it. I need to know I have purpose. I don't have one. Nothing to live for. All the good ones are taken. I don't know how much of this you're gonna get. I can't sleep, someone wake me up. I hope I'm not already dead.

I don't know how much longer I can believe in God. He's been gone or I've been gone fro so long. According to my pastor, I should have a consistent place where I find God, but that's always been in the loving arms of another. And it's been so long. It's been so long. It's been so long. Please don't worry about me, I should be fine by morning (maybe sunrise, since it's already 430AM). I don't know if I'm gonna sleep tonight. Call it a watching. Call it a lost faith. I can't see myself believing that christdied for my sins. Every time I say it I feel dirty. Where has he gone where has he gone where has he gone. I'm going to have a smoke (I only got through half of it. Even the one shining light of nicotine that has given me strength for the past two weeks can't seem to push me away from the echelon I seem to be fading into.)

I don't want to die. Alone. I don't want to be alone. I can't seem to find God in anything I ever fucking do. He's no longer there when I pray, and the wisdom of the bible doesn't make any sense when it's all so linear and one-life-to-live while I've come to see everything as a cyclical still-life, where we churn on forever, seeing the same things recur and ebb and recur and ebb before we die to be reborn. The crux of the matter is what we don't remember from our first years. What seems to be the crux of the matter is what everyone thinks will happen when we die. I hate to say it, as a "Christian," but I just don't fucking know anymore. I have lost ten ounces of faith. And that's why, Kelley, I seem to be okay with liking you: I've lost what used to drag us apart. I've lost God. The tether seems to have been cut loose after I've been out among the waters for so long, trying to grab the rope and pull myself back. I can't find back. I can't find forward. I'm so goddam alone. The Weather Channel is on mute, I'm glad it's no longer hurricane season. I was at band camp when Katrina hit New Orleans. And now everyone forgets the devastation. Will everyone forget my devastation?

Where is God? Where is divinity? What is it, who is He but a figment of my imagination? Where am I to go but into the soil and churned back one day to be among the leaves. No matter dissolves. But maybe that ethereal idea of a soul does. God where are you I am here. God where are you. Did I come to the wrong address? I've been waiting out in the cold without a coat for a year now. Where are you where have you gone?

I feel more and more that my religion is more like The Cask of Amontillado than a faith. I am constantly drawing myself into the wine chambers with the thoughts of great Amontillado during carnival season, denouncing that my peer has any right to be judging such a great drink while all the while I am walking myself into the chasm where I will be buried alive with the bones of ancestors.

But this is Beckett. It starts over again, and we never really die. We just suffer and suffer and suffer and loathe and sulk and plea and deny and wonder where is GODot?!

Or this is Kafka. And we sink. And things get eternally worse. Things will get eternally worse.

Maybe I am already buried alive?
Maybe things are at their worst?
I am a liar, a scam, and a phony. I am alone in the most beligerant world. I want to one day be dust in a new star. What were visions of heaven but hallucinations? What was Revelation but a hallucination by an old man in exile? What was Christ but Criss Angel? I feel none of Christ's blood in me. The father and I are not one. Where is HE. I am here, and I was groping in the blinding darkness, but you've given me NOTHING. I have what I've always had. And now I'm growing tired of you giving me jack-fucking-shit but taking everything away from me.

Fuck you, I guess you can pray for me.

Fuck me, I guess I can--

Please Don't go. I'm sorry I didn't write. When I was supposed to. write. mi
xed message
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growing
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Lay eyes on the Fa
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Ple
ase
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Baby with a Cross to bear.

2007-10-07T02:38:00.000-07:00

I told Kelley I was gonna quit. I want to. It doesn't circulate my blood right.

But at 145 this morning, not 4 hours after telling her I was done for good, I was sitting there with a Marlboro 27 burning into Che's face (a bad ass ash tray my sister got in Spain. I'm now using it to its orginal intent...). I hate it. But I have no accountability. No oneI see every day to smell me and say "You fucking dolt."

With each puff, I'm killing myself. With each puff, I'm degrading myself, changing my neurochemistry, making it harder for myself to quit when I inevitably have to in a few years so I can a good roll model.

I had the epiphany today, I'm going to be a youth pastor. And youth pastor don't kill themselves with Cancer Sticks. Shit shit shit. Youth pastors also don't curse.

Lauren tells me that tobacco is a terrible industry, that prides itself on killing people. But, if I'm to believe as Jasmine believes, that animals are equal with humans, then the tobacco industry is no worse than the Meat industry. And I've conceded to them my whole life. The vegetable industry is probably just as bad. And so is McDonald's. Eat that shit every day and it will kill you.

So you pick your battles. I'm a fucking idiot. This year has been a wash.

I started drinking January 1st, had my first drink on new year's eve. I had my first cigarette while drunk about four or five months ago. You see how this is all steamrolling?

But I've been stressed out over a girl. And the last time I was this in love and this scared of dying alone and this scared of never being with her, I stopped eating, dropped 50 pounds or so, and didn't get over it for two years. Which would I prefer? I ain't blamin' either of these girls for neither of my stupid-fucking-decisions.

(Both of you, and I think you both know who you are, know that I do not ever ever ever blame you for anything I ever did. They're my actions. I'm the Cunt.)

So who am I blaming if not them? Myself. I blame myself for taking a two-week high-school relationship too hard, I blame myself for taking on loving a girl who I had no hope with from the start. I blame myself.

And that makes me want to smoke even more. It makes me want to smoke two packs a day and never ever eat again. I hate myself and my weakness. I hate the fact that I am a weak-willed cunt who never has seen the light of day. I blame myself for hating myself. I hate how cyclical life is, manifesting itself again and again, I'm afraid I will be reborn into this life again, I am afraid that I won't remember any of my stupid fucking decisions in this life.

I want God back. I want him to come back. I've done all I can and he's nowhere near me anymore. I need God Back. DO YOU HEAR ME GOD!? This isn't the end. It gets worse.

I need to go to bed. I need God to find me. I'll keep plowing, but he will turn the soil. This is a drought, but I have faith that the RAIN will come. And everything will be okay.

It only makes me cranky.

2007-10-05T03:08:00.000-07:00

I shouldn't be dating right now, I'm leaving... but there always seem to be something that hinders my search to deny my seeking...

And it's generally a someone...

which is weird, on the whole, becaues I am very picky when it comes to women, I've decided, even though I'm not when it comes to how beautiful and wonderful they are as beings. I'm picky because of my two most important things: Sex and religion. I realized, with the help of Alycia, that I need a girl who's ontologically and theologically parallel to what I believe, so that instead of butting heads on the issues of divinity and sanctificaion every night before burning down into lustful, passionate hate-sex on our honeymoon, we can actually love each other. I believe that a relationship should exist within the scope and wingspan of God Almighty. If I were to be dating a non-christian girl, I realized (and should've known all along) that we would be away from Him. And I've been away from Him for far too long.

But Christians are so easy to come by, they're a quarter of the population of the Earth, apparently. And that's where the second standard comes into play, because if a girl is a Christian virgin, then that means she actually cherishes her beliefs and values her, well, values. Sex is the highest passion between two souls (Faith is the highest passion of a single soul), and I believe that it is a passion that can only be met between a man and a wife. I've been asked if it seems scary to do that, to have Sex with one woman for your entire life. And my response is, generally, "Yea, well, it's still Sex." And I'm willing to bet that the 1000th time with my future and always wife will be better than my 1000th woman (I'm looking at you, Gene Simmons, for confirmation) and the whole idea that that rests upon is love. The idea that love in the wingspan of God will be the solid bedrock of all nights of great Sex, disappointing Sex, average Sex, and baby-makin' Sex, instead of having the bedrock being lust-fulfillment and pleasure.

The problem I find with premarital Sex likes in the idea that once the penis goes in, it never really comes out. Once two bodies are made one, they're never really detached from that other person. Our souls are a little like fly paper in that, once that great region of love is reached with a person, we are stuck with them, onto them, within them. And, so, to escape that, you lose a leg. And so the next person you have sex with gets a one-legged fly. Continue this process, and you are eventually a decrepit soul with nothing but your genitals left. And no girl, really, just wants a penis. And guys think they just want a vagina. But we all really want emotions and passion and legs and arms and touch and taste and smell and full-bodied connection (I hope). Not just connection with the vulva or the testes or the clitoris.

And that's what I want to give to my wife on my wedding night. I will give to her, lay down on her fly paper my arms and legs and feet and hands and head and tongue and heart and eyes and nose and mouth and teeth and lungs and kidneys. I will lay those at her feet and say, "I give you all of this. You caught me. I am wholly, and fully, yours."

And I really doubt that a non-virgin girl would understand that concept. And, even if she did,
I still wouldn't have all of her. She'd be missing a leg, while I would be whole, and there would be a gap between us. And I would feel intimidated. And we couldn't be together because I'd always wonder if I'm taking her places her other partner(s) have or taking her nowhere in comparison. And then that would probably cause perennial Whiskey Dick.

But, apparently, this is all pussy-talk and if I were a real 19-year-old college student, I would have at least gotten head by now. At least.

Don't be afraid of persecution, don't be afraid of despondency because you haven't found another who feels the same way. We'll all find that someone who will give themselves fully to us on our flypaper wedding bed. And it'll be "whoa baby...like Charles Bronson in the Great Escape."

Selfish Manifesto

2007-10-02T17:03:00.001-07:00

JP asked me to write him something explaining myself, this is what I came up with.

--

I was born and bred in the amniotic fluid of cynicism, liberalism and passivism. Taught to have an open mind and not to take anything at face value. Have no trust until your heart is completely within the idea and without doubt. Complete the theosophy only if it is completeable.

Christ is the center of everything I think of and every conjecture I pull out of my ass. Christ as the God of Man of God because I am a Man of God of Man. I and the Father are one. I really believe I am enlightened to point of non-existance. To the point that nihilistic malcontention actually makes sense. My parents bred all of these things in me.

I am crazy. I am bipolar. I credit this to being why I am fearless in thought, because you can't be afraid of bullet trains as a blind man. We are blind.

At the same time, I simply am. Perfectly forever, I am. I am I am I am iam. I think that what I was raised to do was love what I like and hate what I must but always have an open mind to different ideologies, theologies, and idiosyncrasies. Pull from everything for all things are beautiful since all things are from God. All the saddest things contain all the most beautiful things as well as all the most beautiful things contain the saddest things. Life is cyclical. I AM.

I try and guide my fucked-up self by this verse: "Therefore, go: get your countrymen in Exile and say to them, 'Thus Says the LORD,' whether they listen or fail to listen." Ezekiel 3:11. It's the OT equivalent of Christ's commission of Matthew 28. Making disciples. But you always must realize that there will be those who will never listen. And you must shake the dust from your feet. But you must push forth to get the exiles and turn them around from head to foot from heart to soul. Believe in God. Trust in God. Know in God. Be with God.

And music, be it secular or Christian, blasphemous or sodomous, is the sinew and the string that hold the ventricles of the heart together, that mend the souls irreparable parts, that tie the lobes together. Music creates the waves to make us feel human. Without music, there is no soul. Without rhythm (aleatoric or symphonic), there is no life, there is merely silence and stagnance. But... silence is its own music. We can't escape the beauty of our most sordid thoughts. Believe in God.

Have faith in Man but never trust it lest the aforementioned prerequisites are in place, of course. Souls are all connected, we are all connected, our sins are everyone's. Christ died for everyone's unifying sin. We are all serial killers and rapists and pedophiles and perverts and racists. We are all lovers and fighters and supporters. We are one. We are each other. Christ died for all of it so we could within the breadth and cover of his silver wings that protect us from Satan's ineffable savvy beckoning. We will all sin. We must all forgive.

We must be humble, we mustn't demand recognition. I was raised to do good whilst flying under the radar--create the tireless chugging ideology of goodness without recognition because being known destroys everything. Be without megalomania. Know yourself, know your God, may it be enough for enlightenment.

Believe in God. The universe tends to unfold as it should.

It's a birthday party!

2007-10-01T00:46:00.000-07:00

I just completed the greatest weekend so far in my short and ill-remembered life. JP, Jasmine, Bradley and I hung out on Friday night, going to a hookah bar for no reason save to have somewhere to sit and talk for a few hours. Sitting there, sometimes smoking, and talking about Devendra Banhart and movies and music and how much the three boys hate Joy Division and JP's blossoming college experience, I was entranced with complete peace. I was completely at peace. This is a feeling that is rare within me because, as JP describes it, I am convinced that everything will turn out okay but, since it's not okay right now, I'm generally very negative involvling the temporal. So for me to be without negativity was something I wasn't expecting for awhile.

But it happened again the next night. We all went to Jasmine's house and then to a park where we sat around and talked about nothing for three hours. I just--it was the best weekend ever. It was reassuring and it was fun and it was interesting and it was loud and it was funny. I had a great weekend and I hope you all feel the same.

Nothing you can say can't be done.

2007-09-28T03:27:00.000-07:00

My sister is in England, I am at home. And I am jealous. Of course I am. The only time I've ever been out of the ountry was when we trekked from Seattle up to Vancouver once when I was a freshman in High School. At the same time, I don't know if world travel affects me very much. I don't know if I really want to travel the world, if I really want to see it. I do but I don't for some reason. Maybe it's because I have a slight fear of flight.

I'm writing this without my glasses on, the screen is about three feet away, and I can't see a word of what I'm typing. I'm glad I learned how to instinct-type because otherwise, I wouldn't be able to write in this situation. It kind of sucks hwo bad my eyes are. Especially when I take my glsses off. It's so hard to find them again when everything blends together. I can't discern between colors at times, I can't see smaller objects within larger ones, so if my glasses were on a black shirt, I'd have a hard time seeing them. Everything kind of bleeds together. It's not the best.

I want to become something more. I want to be transformed. I was watching John Safran vs. God today and he, as a Jewish man, tried to join the KKK. That wasn't the interesting part, for me, though it was rather interesting how militant the group is. The interesting part to me was that, when they showed their altar, it had a bible open to Romans 12, a sword and an American Flag draped over it. Romans 12 is the chapter I memorized one summer during a summer camp. Funny how normal Christians and KKK Christians are under the same rules for living. Somehow, for some reason, I don't think they're following those rules very well. I mean, c'mon, they're a paramilitary racist group. And I'm just a dude, trying to offer my body as a living sacrifice, holy and pleasing to God.

find yourself.

--

So I just recently watched the movie I Heart Huckbees, a movie about existential detectives and Jude Law being an all around dick. I must say, it wasn't very good. It was billed as a comedy, and it had its moments, but it really wasn't very funny. At points, it seemed like it was trying to hard to be quirky what with all the choppy editing and funky pieces of screen floating around. Overall, though, it was just faux philosophical and didn't answer any questions the movie proposed. I don't know, maybe I'm jaded towards the whole idea of philosophy ever since the major didn't work out.

Under the gun gun gun

2007-09-26T05:04:00.000-07:00

I think it's getting better, but it has a cycle. I've been able to fall asleep at 11 or 12 the past few nights. The problem is that I tend to wake up again at about 215-245, struggling with two things: a deep hunger and a full bladder. I know that if I don't move, I could probably fall back asleep. However, I also know that I just may wet the bed. Totally not cool since I'm 19 (for the record, I haven't wet the bed since the fifth grade when I went through a rash of it that I thought were wet dreams.) and that's something for kids.

And I've never been able to sleep on an empty stomach. So I get up and I pee off my patio in the backyard since it's closer than the bathroom, and then I eat something. And then, oh shit, it's my morning ritual at 230 in the morning. I'm wide awake. I don't know what to do. I turn on the TV and try and sink way deep into the couch, letting whatever's on sooth me to sleep. But I just ate something. And it's digesting. So I can't sleep for at least twenty minutes. And after 20 minutes, I'm suddenly engaged with what's on the TV. Dammit.

I turn the TV off and go up to bed, by this time, 330, my dad's awake and is getting ready for work. We say a few words, so I really get into bed at around 345. I read a little bit from whatever book I'm trying to read but will probably never finish, then turn off the light and stare at the ceiling until about 5, at which point I'm fed up with the whole bloated concept of mystic war puppets (something I'm apt to think about), or worrying about my friends or worrying about meeting people.

I'll get over it. I'm gonna go back to staring at the ceiling.

--

Wild and virulent like the children of two manic children. The tome of a thousand aged caveats, all ignored, and now given merit vis-a-vis their proven rightness. Oh tired divinity, giveth me thy cross. Let me walk. Let me churn. It's always midnight in the Ozarks. If only time could stop for me. For only a moment. So I could gather myself, know your name, and press on towards you as my goal against whim and will and way.

Perhaps. But maybe not. I can't offer any certainty save that which has tightened my chest. I will pray for you often and think of you always.

Brand New Waves of Sordid Oncology

2007-09-25T03:32:00.000-07:00

It's 330. I just cleaned up dog shit in my dining room. This is probably the best time to do it, because you're only downstairs for a bowl of cereal when, bam!, you're shocked into having a ZipLoc baggy inside out on your hand while you hold stinky, warm, clay-paste. Then, next thing you know, you're grabbing your dog by the collar and stickin' her face in it. They know they've done something wrong and you have to shove them an inch from their sin. Next thing you know, your hands are clean, your happily stuffed full of mini wheats, and your dog loves you like you're a God again.

It's amazing how similar this situation is to how God is with our sin. Our conscience, AKA the holy spirit, shoves our nose in our dirty deeds (not done dirt cheap, ACDC), and tells us to not do it again, sternly, even though my conscience and I both know that it's a pit we fall into when we have no other options. And then we're both back to happily loving each. A dog can't hold its crap for 43 hours straight, we can't go 24 hours without doing something crappy. A dog's gotta deuce, we've gotta sin. We're inherently evil creatures.

And I think that's how God atones our sins: with an inside-out ZipLoc baggy that he tosses into the toilet, never to be seen again. And the cycle starts over. Luckily, there's no human pound where gods take their followers when they've been consistently bad and they just can't keep them in their temple. That would suck.

[A refrain from quoting Edie and the New Bohemians]

2007-09-24T02:36:00.000-07:00

At some points, threre will always be doubt. At others, there will always be malice. I am awake, my feet are cold.

there seems to be some sort of erhereal disconnect between me and my inspiration. See, I know life is more well than unwell because i feel no underlying sense of worry or spite or unrequited love sick blues to drive these musings. All I've got is this:

I'm so insanely content with life right now I almost want to laugh in its face!

Except for the fact that the Dodgers aren't going to make the playoffs, but who didn't see that one coming?

Rain like Crickets, make the noise.

2007-09-23T11:33:00.000-07:00

Complacency.

I feel stricken by the ghosts of seven different past lives, streaking across the sky until tomorrow's dawn. Having had written correspondence with Jesus Christ to boost my faith, I know this is true. I know you are true. I know that I need to read more than the occassional sports article and short story if I want to become a serious fiction writer. Maybe I'm not meant for fiction, I've hypothesized that before. I know: I was meant for the stage. That's the title of a Decemberists' song I don't ever remember hearing.

Contrition. Contention.

Deep down, glottal feelings in my throat. Real ugly nasty. Things will be okay. One can only hope for the best between two or more souls. We are one within the shells of many. That's what unity is.

We move out, we move upward. I am gone away from here, forewarned and unrequited. Take care of my sisters old boys.

My ears aren't ringing. You aren't thinking about me.

2007-09-21T04:10:00.000-07:00

My last quarter at CSUSB has started. I feel no sense of sadness, no sense of "maybe I shouldn't be leaving," not a bit of a doubt. I just feel ready for this quarter to be over so I can go up to NorCal and freeze my ass off on the beautiful Redwood Coast.

Give me sanctity, give me peace.

2007-09-20T02:10:00.000-07:00

Those are my feet. Like Quentin Tarantino, but less into them, I like feet for some reason. I think for me, the attraction is within how ugly they are and how much people hate them even though they're in our top 10 necessary body parts (top four limbs, for sure.).

Anyway, I just wanted to play with uploading a picture. However, this post does differ from others in two ways: 1) I'm not laying in my bed, doing this from my laptop, falling asleep and letting the folly of thought overtake me; and 2) look at what time I posted this. Now, look at the times for the other posts. See something? This is the earliest one of the last ten or so. I start school tomorrow, I gotta get my whore ass ready to go to bed before 5AM. Don't call it insomnia, don't call it a worry, it's just me being me.

I burned my thumb on the iron the other day. It's a rough spot that's healing. If I had a picture of that, I'd post it too.

The Dodgers' playoff hopes are officially moot. Grady Little even said so himself, and that's just not allowed. You don't write off your own team until you've officially been knocked out. That's just not logical. That's just not nice to your players making a combined 100 million dollars. Give them some hope for their money.

I actually had a moment tonight where I had to tell myself that baseball is just a game. It was when Broxton, for the second night in a row, gave up a homerun to Matt Holliday, who, actually, is a great young player and I'm afraid of the Rockies in the years to come.

I switched my bio class with a photography class. Gonna take it easy this last quarter before I get my ass kicked in the cold. Go Lumberjacks!

I never loved nobody fully.

2007-09-19T04:21:00.000-07:00

As I sit here, listening to my dog bark downstairs, waking up my sister, I can't help but reflect upon this great big collapse that I'm busy recovering from that happened throughout the last three years.

I think it started the moment Alycia broke up with me. I took it as if she had left me at the altar even though we had only been dating for two weeks. She left me in disarray for no apparent reason other than I was way too creepily into her and I couldn't understand that it was just plain weird for that to be.

That year, 2004, was a downward spiral. I was transmuting all of my feelings onto another girl, Katelyn Duffy, who I don't think I ever really liked. But, she was blonde and she was christian and I was crazy--she was my surrogate. And I could never understand why she didn't want to date me. Until the other day when the "Holy Shit, I never realized this even though it's so goddam obvious that I should have realized this" moment happened: what kind of girl would want to date a guy who's madly in love with another girl, of which she knows the ENTIRE situation and how crazy I am about her and about everything else. I am stupid. Or at least was. Hindsight is 20\20, right?

Anyway, by the end of 2004, I was diagnosed bi-polar.

(( and I know that all of this is shit you don't care to hear about, but whatever. I was on meds, finally, and was ready for my senior year. ))

My senior year was basically a plateau for this whole collapse. I had a girlfriend, so shit couldn't be too bad for me. But it was, all the same, because of my feelings for this girl in marching band. Because of Kailee, I couldn't ever fully commit to Kaitlyn. She's why I broke up with a girl who was mad about me on the day of prom (yea, I know, dick move on my part). I thought that I could regain some sort of relationship like Kailee and I had had near the end of 2004, right before I was diagnosed and medicated. The funny thing, here, too, is that, since I could never actually talk to Kailee (don't ask why, I had some sort of ultra-broke-down-sad-ass notion that she was way up in the echelon of sacred-goddesses, and thus could not be spoken to about anything. I think I just wanted to revere her), I always ended up transmuting those feelings onto her best friend, Christina, who I don't know if I ever really liked, but at least she was more human in my mind and thus easier to talk to. So the only girl I had actually expressed my feelings rightly to, and had success with it, was Kaitlyn.

And, by September 2006, I was using Kaitlyn for my own lust and private adoration. Trying to get my fill. I think that, when I realized this and broke up with her for the final time, was the edge and bottom of the collapse. Of my collapse.

And for about a year I floundered at the bottom, not doing much, not surrendering much, just kind of... at the bottom of this big cavernous valley which I had unwillingly, but divinely and unavoidably, climbed down into. And now I'm on the opposite side of this big great valley, having meandered across the bottom of it, climbing out the other end toward normality. I'm ready for it, I've seen the greatest of the lowest, and I'm working on getting my God and my sanity back.

The day I got my letter of acceptance from Humboldt was the first day I started up the opposite side of the valley, when things started looking up for me, y'know? I'm so tired of everyone knowing me. I've had my years of thick-headed, shit-for-brains, dense-ass, stupidity, and now I'm ready for my less-naive self to takehold of my feelings for one girl and actually use them on that same girl, and not on some other surrogate that's never quite the same because no two people are the same (we're like snowflakes, really. We all seem the same at the beginning, until you survey us under a microscope and we're really not all the same because I have a crevice and a turn where you have a dash and a point. Then you look a little deeper, and see atoms, and realize that we're really all the same, no matter where God folded me and cut me with scissors and paper [a vaguely worded allusion the those snowflakes we'd made as kids around Christmas time to decorate the classroom with]). We are all beautiful, we are all serial killers. Moby thinks we are all made of stars.

So, I'm climbing out, I guess. I know now that the stories I wrote in 2004 are shitty. I know now that I put Katelyn and David and everyone else who was ever close to me in 2004-early 2005 through way too much shit to even be apologized for, though I would in a heartbeat if I felt it were something that could actually be forgiven. It can't be forgiven. I can't be forgiven for what I've done to you. I can't be forgiven by you. It's too big for mortals to actually let go of all that crap. It's only for me and Jesus to sort out. And we've got a shit-ton to sort out, it seems. But we also have a lot of time to sort it out as He and I have this big long hike in front of us. I'm glad he can make rocks give us water because damn am I thirsty. But, yea, he's like the accountant that has to sort through a closet-full of unorganized paperwork to figure out why I got a $100,000 tax return even though I haven't paid my taxes in 6 years and 7 moons. Once again, another convoluted analogy.

Anyway, God is love and I am at Peace.

Eyes were made to cry during her birthing a child.

2007-09-17T02:38:00.000-07:00

I feel sick. My stomach feels "wrapped in bailing wire." I'm sick of my soul being sodomized by cynicism and irony. I want my G-D back. I believe in him yet he feels so far away... Like a deity that left and can't be grasped onto.

I'm sick of loneliness. With G-d and JP so far away, I feel like parts of my soul have up and gone away for the winter months amongst the southern flightless birds. It's not queer to miss my best friends. I still have Jasmine, and I love you to death, but I'm so scared of G-d or JP never coming back the same. Being different. Changing the good parts, the warm parts, the sacred parts. I know all of G-d is sacred.

Must I, really, be brave in these the waning months of autumnal change and discomfort?

Jesus is my G-d is my Holy Ghost that haunts the weeds behind my house to scare me awake amongst the night and to keep me safe.

I feel the anguished Autumnal blues coming on--and the season hasn't even started yet.

A Juggernaut heart. And a Japanese car.

2007-09-14T05:27:00.000-07:00

This is something that I struggle with concerning Christianity: everything on Earth, all matter, never breaks down. It simply reappears in a new form, molds and becomes something else. Gets new life breathed into it. I was talking to someone about this once and they mentioned that any one of a trillion people could have a part of Abraham Lincoln in them. All matter is eternal. Is our eternal life to be recycled among the Earth going to from sand to sea to rock to ridge? If that is the case, then isn't this simply an Eastern thought of cyclical still-life reviving itself? How does that fit into the "one life to live?" Is it that our metaphysical, our souls, are singular and made of something other than matter? Or do our souls simply not exist? Is the soul simply a manifestation to give us hope that there's something not so evil inside of us? I don't know, that's why I'm asking you. If parts of me, one day, will be soaking in the dirt, becoming new parts of newer things--if my atoms and my electrons are constantly shifting--then how can I affirm that this is my one life, how can I affirm that I go to heaven and not simply begin sifting back through the dirt until I manifest again?

I've brought this up before, the lessons that God could teach a soul through reincarnation. For example, if a soul (not a person: a person is the soul's shell. Think of us as horseshoe crabs, I guess. We shed our shells and find a bigger one.) has problems with patience, wouldn't it be a great big beautiful exercise in patience if God made the soul come back as a Redwood tree, one that lives for a thousand years and is stagnant, unmoving, and simply reaching higher and higher? Or what if he wanted to teach vain souls a lesson by making them come back as pigs?

Are our souls eternal? If they are not, then how is there a heaven? If they are, then how is there a heaven beyond the eternal that is already on this Earth? Even when the Earth disintegrates, or gets consumed by the sun, or gets blown to bits by our own hands, the matter will still exist, and we will float all over space.

Oh my God, how can one life of a billion heartbeats be all there is?! I just don't understand!

2007-09-14T03:34:00.001-07:00

I went to bed. Read Matthew 11. Jumped ahead to 14. Started reading 6 parables starting with "The Kingdom of Heaven is like..." I caught a second wind. I made a new logo for this site, deciding that two logos both utilizing a sketch or painting by Salvador Dali were indicative of a bygone fetish. Reload enough and you'll see the new one. It was going to have a superimposed image of Charles Bukowski's ugly ass face. But I'm so goddam rusty at photoshopping that I couldn't get it right. I got frustrated. I made this one. I like it. It's got John Fahey driving a car towards hell. And the Daniel Johnston frog on his roof. And a lyric from a song that you should know. If you don't, ask me. Or type it into google. School has yet to start. I miss my friend Kelley. I haven't seen her in two weeks. I don't really miss JP yet. I should consider starting. I won't see him for at least a month or more. For the first time in two years. I applied for housing, I think I want to live in the Academic Area. In Cypress. They have some badass dorm setups, it seems. I'm gonna live in a suite, sharing a common area with 7-10 people, and a room with 1 person. That should be bitchin'. I want to be an underscore.

Fine purveyors of:

___________
(noun)

Transcendental, Mudslung, Heroless Blues.

2007-09-11T02:52:00.000-07:00

Notes:

Listening to John Fahey makes you want to add the word blues to the end of every thing you write blues.

I got accepted as a transfer student to Humboldt for the Spring 2008 Semester. Instruction begins January 22nd. I'm excited.

Meat:

I watched the first Michel Gondry\Charlie Kaufman vehicle last night (The second being the epiphanical Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind) entitled Human Nature. In typical Kaufman style, it's a fucked up script about a woman with a hormone problem that causes her to have hair all over her body like a man which causes her to shun society and live among the wilderness naked for many years. There, she becomes a nature writer and ascertains enough money to get her hair electrically removed by Tina from Do the Right Thing (Thank God for the left nipple...). Through her, she meets a man who's legally blind with a small penis who she falls in love with despite his severe OCD. They both just want love. Meanwhile, they go for a nature hike and discover a man who was raised by an ape who the man, played by Tim Robbins, insists on turning into an ultra-civilized being (he's always trying to train mice to have table manners, a funny aside to the story). During these trials, Robbins' character falls for his French Secretary, and the ape-man, named Puff, sees their first sexual encounter. Immediately he's fucked up. This is subsequently followed by a falling out between the hairy woman (played by Patricia Arquette) and Robbins' character and Puff. Success and wilderness abound.

Apparently, this movie was supposed to raise philosophical questions about nurture versus nature, but, to me, it was just a typical love quadrangle story that just happened to involved some ultra-quirky characters (much like all of Kaufman's works) and it seems to fall short. His writing and scripting is definitely exonerated when you put Gondry's magical touch on it all. That man has an eye and a knack for making things look downright-fucking-pretty in the most cartoonish, arealistic-but-really-hyper-realistic sense. I can't recommend the movie though, because it dragged on for far too long, and definitely sagged under its supposed weight.

I have seen three (Being John Malkovich, Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, Human Nature) of Charlie Kaufman's five (Adaptation, Confessions of a Dangerous Mind) movies, and I have to say that he is an auteur for the weird shit. I don't think anyone can consistently devise strange-ass characters as well as he can and then consistently get directors that can fully realize the quirks he wants conveyed. Gondry definitely has Kaufman's number since Gondry, as evidenced in his writing-debut The Science of Sleep, is also into creating weird-as-shit characters.

"Stephane, what do you want me to do?"

"I don't know, maybe play with my hair for a little bit."

Potatoes:

I hate potatoes.

You're so money.

2007-09-09T02:17:00.000-07:00

I finally got around to watching two movies that've been on my to-watch list tonight: The Outlaw Josey Wales and Swingers.

Josey Wales is a western with Clint Eastwood where he gets betrayed multiple times and then becomes an outlaw, leaving a trail of bodies everywhere he goes. He was an ultimate badass. Gets his house burned down and cries vengeance on the Union--who then force the rest of his gang to surrender. The story's steeped in mutiny, and he takes care of it the only way Western Clint Eastwood can: with more bullets than words. Everyone wants him dead, and he's having none of it. Ultimate badass, I'm telling you.

Odd though, the problem that I had with this movie was the score. It felt way too melodramatic, as if it were for a good vs. evil western and not a vengeance western. It also sounded like the skeleton of all action-film-scores to come after it. Minor trifles. Clint Eastwood fucking rules.

--

Swingers is the story about a guy getting over a girl who he was with for 6 years. She broke up with him, he moved to LA to become a comic even though his character's not very funny. This movie made me want to live in Los Angeles for the rest of my life in hopes of meeting a Heather-Graham-type-girl from across the bar who suffers from all the same woes. It was a great portrait of a guy who's absolutely crushed by a girl and coming to terms with the fact that she's never going to call and that he just needs to get over her. He tries and tries and tries. It's sad at points watching him struggle with the awkward moments of trying to meet a girl while still acting like he's talking to his ex-girlfriend as if he's trying to, through his words, transmute his ex into the girl at the bar. It's relatively sad and deprecated, but still a good movie. Ends well enough to make you leave feeling well.

TCSM, bitches!

2007-09-06T02:44:00.000-07:00

I'm probably going to spoil the whole fucking movie for you if you haven't seen it already. Just putting it out there.

The Texas Chainsaw Massacre from 1974 has been on my mind all day and night since watching it last night on Netflix' Watch Now feature--something that was much more convenient and of much higher quality than I expected. I was expecting something much more similar to its 2003 remake starring Jessica Biel et al, yet what I encountered was something much more organic and true to form as a horror film.

But the odd thing was that, by about 45 minutes in, I hadn't had one scare, I hadn't seen Leatherface, I just knew that something was ultra-fucking-wrong with ultra-fucking-everything. This vibe was especially rampant when they pick up the crazy-fucking-hitchhiker who takes the invalid's knife and cuts his hand open, has a conversation about bashing cow skulls at the slaughterhouse, and making head cheese by using the boiled flesh of a cow's head. That's not scary, that's just fucked up. And it adds something. We now know the locals are fucking crazy.

Because of all of this, we can tell that this movie is seriously based in ambience and atmosphere, that this is all to enhance the scares, the jolts and the terror to come. The opening credit roll is shown over what looks like Corona blasts from the sun that are discolored, precluded by a short narration about the events which unfold, making this opening narration akin to a Greek Chorus telling you what's going to happen and basically saying, "These people you will hang out with for the next hour and a half are completely, and utterly, fucked. Have fun!" During that opening credits roll, there's a typical news report speaking of a Cholera outbreak and oil fires and sweltering heat and shit shit shit. It all adds up to an experience.

So we had tension, but no scares. And by the poster featuring Leatherface wielding a chainsaw over his head, I wanted scares. And at about 45 minutes I was ready to turn this movie off and go to bed--and then it happened. We see one of the kids go over to the house with his girlfriend after the creek bed is all dried up to ask for gasoline since they're going to be needing some to get their asses home. He knocks and no one answers. He knocks again, nothing. He must have knocked on that screen door about five times, figuring that backwoods hicks have got nothing better to do than sit around at home or run around in the scary ass woods around the house. With this in mind, he opens the screen door to knock on the front door, which opens up when he hits it. Oh goody. With the door open, he peeks inside and sees a drab, desolate house with tons of bones everywhere, and one wall behind a door jamb painted blood red, with cow skulls and other bones on it. He calls to his lady to check this out, and he, now thinking no one is home, ventures into the house while she stays on the bench.

The moment he crosses the door jamb towards the red wall and skulls, he is fucking NAILED over the head with a hammer. After 45 minutes of slow, angering explication--tense-ass fucking atmosphere--we are hit over the head by a sledge hammer and catapulted into an insane second half of people getting knocked and maimed and chased down.

But here's the thing. Holy shit: there's very little blood, and very little gore. Unlike today's horror films that try to make us squeam as well as scream, we are treated to a horror film that has some of its most graphic moments (aside from someone getting pancaked by a semi) obstructed by other objects. In the 2003 remake, we saw people get hung on meat hooks at least twice, and, this time, the one time it happens, it's obstructed by the table where the guy who got his head bashed is laying, about to be chopped to bits.

By the time there's only one person left, we learn some things: the crazy-ass hitchhiker is Leatherface's brother; the owner of the gas station is their father; and they have a grandpa who used to be the best killer around, according to them (we see him in his flaccid phase, can't hold a hammer); and the barbecue at the father's gas station is probably cannibal-cue.

This movie is fucking crazy. The 70's were fucking crazy. The girl who plays the character Laurie got her hand cut open because they couldn't get the blood bag to work. The actor who played the hitchhiker said that filming this was worse than being in Vietnam. I'm serious.

I never want to go to Texas again.

Cock-eyed Vindication?

2007-09-05T04:22:00.000-07:00

I think I have writers' ADD. I can't seem to completely round things out, as in create something with some sort of legitimacy. I try, but I always fear that things go on too long. You know how it is. And I'm not good at coming up with titles. That's another problem. Oh, and writing about random shit like this for all of your life will get you nowhere.

I've reading this guy's movie reviews lately, and they make me want three things: to not have writers' ADD, to be ultra-vulgar, and to see 10,000 fucking movies and all their terrible-ass sequels. Jesus. What a man.

3:10 to Yuma comes out this weekend. I'm excited. I fucking love Westerns, where moral ambiguity is as rampant as the dust storms. And yet I haven't seen Once Upon a Time in the West, or the Outlaw Josey Wales. I hate myself.

One of my biggest fears in life: being convoluted. Seriously, it scares me more than spiders or death.

Follow the Lynx.

2007-08-31T03:51:00.001-07:00

Transparency, divinity, wasting air space and committing cardinal sins. Run away with you towards the night. Been here before. Committing cardinal sins. Man I love to eat.

Something's gone awry. I can feel it. I can sense it. Youknow who you are you know i am who I was twenty years ago when we first met, as X found Y and conniption was born of all things small above below ma non troppo. But, more or less, I mean nothing and do not exist.

There's another new one below this one. It's a little bit better.

2007-08-31T01:46:00.001-07:00

Bed time. Craziness. NyQuil. I think in terms of divinity. I am divine, you are divine, you are beautiful, you are my love, I am your keeper.

All at once, I amazed with myself. I put so much weight on finding love, and yet I'm such a cynic concerning it at the same time. Love is just a chance meeting of two people who are ultra-compatible. That's pessimistic, but I think it's true. I put so much weight on this chance meeting and yet I can't make the chance happen. Strange how paradoxical I can be at times. Or hypocritical. But I really think that hypocrisy is a natural progression of thought most of the time. Telling someone not to do something then realizing it's not all that bad. It's natural. Life ebbs and flows and a person's views and actions are more than likely going to do the same. Y'dig?

"Why don't you write a song about this? You can call it, 'I got punched in the face for sticking my nose in other people's business."

"Sounds like a country song."

Great night for insomnia

2007-08-28T05:35:00.001-07:00

There was a lunar eclipse. We actually got use out of our telescope. I would have missed it had I been like any sane person and been asleep at 4 in the morning. Instead, I got to run around my house in my pajamas with a telescope. It was exciting. And the telescope must be made of aluminum because damn was it light.

It was basically a great moment in an otherwise shitty day. And I say shitty in the most literal sense. I awoke at around 8 or 9 in the morning feeling completely constipated, with my stomach feeling like a cow's when you need to stab it to alleviate the bloating. I wanted to stab myself to get the shit out it was so bad. Instead, I gagged myself into the bathtub, vomit that even looked like shit. I was surprised, and said to myself upon that observation, "Golly, there must be a lot in there." At this point I was being a little baby, wailing for my mom to do something because I was completely immobilized. So she brought me water and I drank it and tried to throw up again. No dice. Instead, I sat there, hearing the squeaks of immovable feces caught in some serious LA traffic in my large intestines.

At least I had a stroke of genius. I asked my mom if we had any castor oil, something no sane person should ever do except in the worst of circumstances. Castor oil is the king of laxatives, giving no remorse to the taker. I took two teaspoons of that, stumbled toward my phone and called my work, telling'em in one of the most distraught voices I've ever heard come out of me, "I think I ate something rancid and I really don't feel good, so I won't be able to make it into work." I had the afternoon off to shit myself to death. I then waddled into my mom's bed for some reason, the only one I can assume is because it's closer to the ground and easier to get in\out of. And because it's cooler in there.

I had forgotten to turn off my work alarm for 2 PM, but, once it went off and I awoke, we were off to the races. The shit races. I sat down and what couldn't happen this morning happened in bulk. It's like getting turned away from a fancy restaurant with small portions and then getting into Costco. It wasn't a gerbil-pellet-shit-fest. This was some serious shit. That castor oil tasted bad for a reason: because it's Satan's laxative. Between the hours of 2 and 730PM, I lost about three pounds, and read about a chapter of America: The Book, a funny, but arduous history book by the "Daily Show" writers. I felt completely wiped out.

I fell asleep at about 8PM, and you'd think I'd have slept straight through with the kind of sick day I had. Instead, I woke up at 2AM and finished watching the Dodger game (They won, Derek Lowe's "stuff" wasn't his best, though. Dickhead gave up three homeruns in six innings of work).

So I'm gonna now go to bed, rate some songs on my iPod (it's actually a lot of fun to comprise "Smart Playlists" of your three, four, and five star songs and then listen to just the songs you absolutely love or just kind of like.), wake up at noon, go the gym, try and gain some of this fucking weight back as muscle (instead of shit stuck in my intestines), go to work, then go out on the town.

I love you all. And I'm sorry if this was absolutely gross. Wait a second, no I ain't. Misery is hilarity!

A fifth to the commonwealth, the rest to the track!

2007-08-27T05:00:00.000-07:00

I always thought it was interesting that baseball commentators, as well as players, constantly refer to a pitcher as having "good stuff." Now, that may not seem like proper grammar, but I think it exemplifies what makes baseball, a sport that lasts 3 and a half hours with the ball in play for an average of 12 minutes, fun to watch and keep up on: it's the elusiveness of what makes a player so great. That's why steroids suck, because they give an answer. A player either has it or he doesn't. On a given night, a player can be off or on...

And the pitcher's "stuff" can be anything from his flawless mechanics to his delivery to his mental\emotional toughness to his lucky jock. The season is so goddam long that it tests the endurance of its players more than a sport like football (specifically, the NFL, I dig NCAA) where cocky-ass jocks run out on a field once a week and give each other concussions, then go back and pump iron for a week, practice practice practice, then do it again. In baseball, the only time you have to practice is before a game since for the next three nights you're playing one team, then you're travelling across the country, and playing another team.

Every sport is hard, but baseball is hard without a lot of strategy and with a high-sense of enigma and intangibility. I can dig it.

--

I'm supposed to be hearing back from Humboldt in a few days\weeks as to whether or not I made their transfer cut. Pray for me. This is something we need.

--

I've been working out, and so maybe I'll be sexy one day and not just "cute after two weeks of knowing him."

--

A lot of the blogs where it seems like I'm talking to someone, referring to a "you," are really conversations with myself. I'm an asshole, I will be my own demise. BUT! I believe in you.

I am late for the sky.

2007-08-27T04:24:00.000-07:00

run with me and chase the leaves--This was once spoken of a great altered composer to be once for all time I know your name, come away come away to be waltzed around in circled triplets until we are dizzy and drunk and beaten stolid red stoic crimson stalwart hues of one only color to show new wounds within our toes. What we create is what we've never meant to be but at the same all we've ever wanted to die to love to scream to be eaten by the vultures above our rotting corpse now rooted in the place we died where we will meander if purgatory or ghosts allow us to believe in them... I am driftwood and come along the journey of what we once were i know we once worked in tandem before there was a burst a stress a panic a mood that fell apart i know we were once a one and not a two connected by sinews and ventricles, arteries the great highway across the soul like a concrete gash crossing the gap to be my own way to be away from myself for once wish to tear apart my insides and be left bereft with only one seamless personality and no mood swings the guillotine (was anyone around to remember that phrase? Maybe I can start reusing shitty one-liners from three years ago when you wasn't famous) I am away around away away away below the water up above the trees fucking in the canopies around the sinews shaking my head as to how I got so caught in this batshit ideal of why I once was nothing but here today am something more than most but yet less than all as if the world revolves around myself or at least I think it should even in my own lackluster coherence. Tell the world of what you are because there will be days when they won't know will want to know and you won't secede your answers villains in shame of all the wrongs you've committed against those rhythms that turned our toes red all those long days ago on the gravelly beaches we once knew where the rocks were soft and the waters were calm and we could call each other by pounding rocks against our heads to bleed as a signal up in smoke. I know your name, you across the gap--it's not my own yet it is my own because you are my own. A simple belief and that's something I know for sure but amidst this the waking fey, I can only sense the things that make things skip jump granulate the finality of what was could be i know you want to be with me but there's the greatest soul divide between us that i've created but i know it will one day be repaired....... one day i will be whole.

We just have to wait a little bit longer, I think.

Crown of Storms

2007-08-26T02:38:00.001-07:00

A wiggle. Awoken with a shudder. I am your own demise. There is belief in the deep-down gone-awry things of the soul. Only for good luck. I've grown tired of you.

I once had a dream that a girl had Beethoven's 5th as her ringtone. And it gave me a migraine. I woke up with a migraine. The sometimes-synergy of dream and reality is strange.

One time, in high school, my alarm didn't go off for school. So, instead (and by some divine power), my cat took a piss on my backpack instead to wake me up. What a helpful jackass. My other cat used to wake me up when I'd normally get up. She'd be in a panic because I wasn't petting her. She's still like that... Just, she sleeps in the garage now because we have dogs.

In no point within my memory have I ever liked bananas. Or Potatoes. Or Corn. Because I wasn't getting enough potassium during water polo, my mom gave me handfuls of potassium pills. And I never cramped up.

Make connections, you'll need to build a bridge later.

And I need help with mine.

He was sitting and waiting on the porch for something. Forgetting words as he wrote in the dark, dropping letters as one would carelessly drop a pen. Calling him outward. This is the greatest commission. I am your Babel. Keep me safe.

I put my hands away.

2007-08-25T03:44:00.000-07:00

I think I wasn't made for this world--the 9-5, the in-out-in-out and the litany of lethargic days that blend together to form thirty years of your life.

"Well, then, start writing, asshole."

Yea, I wish it was that easy. I've been postponing it. I'm lazy. I'm big on laziness. Because I'm afraid of commitment in the strangest, inopportune ways.

Dear Kaitlyn, I think I was afraid of what I told you I was afraid of because I find myself running stalwart parallels with the protagonist from High Fidelity. Records, pop music, misery, trials of love and seperation... And that was exemplified by the relationship I was afraid ours would turn into. But that was long ago, I'm afraid.

Here is your beginning:

"Gone all starry eyed, he awoke in a stupor. Believability is fallability. He too often thought in aphorisms instead of textures or shapes. Pithy statements are, if you were to give a shape, round at best. Spherical and applicable to far too many people to be one person's thoughts. But that's what they were: rounded off at the edges and severely altruistic. He had no character and he suffered because of it. He was white as snow in dress and complexion. He seemed to walk in a daze, sifting through doorways as if he were the sand among gold dust, going on without any sort of color or complication.

"Until she arrived..."

I'm intrigued. But then my obvious pessimism plays into my ontology: why is she arriving? Are we going to have another stupid romantic comedy on our hands? Is tragedy all I'm good for?

Oh, the ending to that beginning is that he kills himself. She finds him surrounded by a pool of what looks like white paint, but it's really his blood. Upon closer inspection, it's more like infected milk, because specks of she (her color being a deep, deep, sodomizing green) within his blood.

She is never heard from again. And the color is removed from the wheel.

I believe in you.

Thinking Outrageously.

2007-08-25T02:14:00.000-07:00

God creates missions. I am going nowhere. Today there will be no tomorrow. I am alone for once to see your shining face, but i haven't laid periphory on you in years. Come on down to the shores of Babylon and sense the echoes out among the trees more than you'll ever know...

The birds will flutter up among the echelon, and we will sit down below on the rocky bank, in the shade of the trees so large and covered in moss. We will sit on our asses and hold hands and joke. It will be cool, it will be October. I'm not sure yet if I will be in love with you, but this day will definitely make its case. Plead guilty, I can sense the night coming in. We better get going, the leaves are getting restless.

By the warmth, I will kiss you for the first time in years it will seem, but it will really only have been months.

Like a sonnet, you will be ten more lines closer to my heart. Lines afraid lines divided lines remissed. I can feel your beauty as I swat the mosquitoes away on the porch. They will drive us inside. We will sit upon the rug and look at old photo albums.

I'm afraid of you that this will never happen. I am the Empty Garlic. Filled with hope. Forget about the odd-times ahead, I have hope ahead of what was once my own grace. Give me grace, I think. I am caught, meat-hooked on single-lined allusions and aphorisms.

But I can sense it all, I can smell the trees... They aren't pine but they sure sense that they know who they. All those rings, all those years stagnated.

And the saints will stave off the rest while we are indoors, away from the divinity of the land. This is a calling.

I can fear the Lord. but I fear love more. I fear women.

2007-08-25T01:43:00.000-07:00

So I think that things will have to change between you and I. I don't think I can be as close to you. You scare me, make me nervous. I wish it wasn't so. I'm afraid of you, though, and your undercutting comments. Because my heart is too warm to be filled with the ice of your thoughts.

I am. Am I reciprocated. Things are generally unknown, but I know that now.

I and the Father are one.

Cinder Smoking.

2007-08-24T05:00:00.000-07:00

Seemingly bereft, beleaguered, with anger from the outset. Enough with the saints to bring out the dead with their stiff and bandaged fingers, their popped and erudescent flanges. Concubine, ursine. I am the all told among the different ones below your feet, the worms that turn the Earth for no good reason other than that's what they know how to do. Went to college to properly turn the Earth below us and around us. That's why we aren't floating off into space, why we have days, because the worms keep the world turning.

But that is only one part of the multiplying occupation that is fey beyond comparison. We sit in our chairs and contemplate another sort of life while others and I are among the con--

Oh my God. I have no idea how to write anymore. Is this a limbo period where all within my style changes? I don't want to just use big words, but, at the same time, I don't know where to go when the rhythm sags off below the echelon--

nippted figures below our waist, tugging at our hearts to find the last one. I am your own found among the finders. Come away with me to find a new dawn, I think that's what we're supposed to do. I'm no longer sure what is red. I'm no longer sure how to think about you--

I think I'm losing it.... It it it. The motive, the passion, the complacency. The killing I am among the rushes. Don't lose it. Always keep a little in reserve. You'll know it because you'll feel it--where the nerves and the sinews end and my relationship with you begins. Darling. Among the amazed I am yours for all time.

2007-08-24T02:55:00.000-07:00

It's been nearly two weeks since I last got a decent night's sleep. If I go to bed before 5AM, like tonight, I wake up at 2-230 with an insatiable hunger. If I go to bed at 5AM, my entire fucking day is ruined.

And that's how it's been for the past two weeks, my sleep pattern has been completely fucked up. I'm ready to buy a bottle of Nyquil for emergency cases. This just plain sucks.

Quick--not the usual

2007-08-17T03:26:00.000-07:00

That's all.

I planted rows of peas, by the first week of July I should've come up to my knees but they were maybe ankle high

2007-08-16T02:39:00.000-07:00

I've been reflecting on love lately, and I've come to this: if we are to believe what the scriptures say (we really should), then God is love. If God is love, then God embodies all characteristics of one in love with something, right?

And someone in love is, in regards to the other person, ranged in their emotions--all within the typical arch of humanity. Now, it has been stated by both myself and others that we should not place human characteristics on God because he's above all things human and is simply pure existence. However, if he is just pure existence, then how can he have emotion? How can he smite and bring wrath upons the 12 Tribes without emotion?

From this, we can easily establish that since God has shown typical human emotions such as jealousy and rage and kindness and forgiveness, we can therefore say that God is something of a superman, as any Nietzchean would describe it--God is what we are but all things in their perfect sense. His forgiveness is perfect. His rage is perfect. Everything about him is perfect, but he also exudes human emotion. That's why Christ the deity was also Jesus the human who wept.

As a result, it is therefore absurd for a person to say that God is completely mean and cannot be a loving God. They say, "He's judgmental," and deny their faith. However, in love, are we not judgmental when what we want is best for our lovers even though they choose to go astray, making us angry? God is showing nothing but love to the Israelites in this situation.

They say, "God's a killer, he didn't have to kill all the [insert name of people decimated in Old Testament]. Hasn't he ever heard of diplomacy?" This one is rather tricky. However, I would argue that, in those times, as well as these times, coming into a foreign land and saying, "Could you please hand it over because our God [at this they may stop and say, "One God? How narrowminded of you!] said it was our land of milk and honey." Diplomacy doesn't work in a takeover. God said, "Take it as yours, leave nothing," and the Israelites did as they were told.

We could definitely look at this sexually, this whole murder thing because sex and murder are relatives of trust. Think of it this way: we allow our chosen lovers (within or without wedlock) to ravage our virgin skin and take from us all that was once all we were. However, in this sort of death, we become one with the person more and more, trusting that they are the one to be your companion for eternity. This is God saying, "Pillage my land," and the Israelites doing as they're told, trusting that their God won't leave them in a motel room on the road to Vegas where he promised they'd elope but really just was dragging you along to ditch you in Memphis where he was meeting up with his mistress.

God could have fooled us, said that the Land of Milk and Honey was everything that man would ever need, then turned around and showed the truth that was really the Sahara fucking Desert where nothing survives. It's all about trust. Killing is a trust exercise in God's eyes. It's like that whole, "Fall backwards into my arms," but instead it's, "Kill 100,000 Phillistines."

Therefore, God is simply the holistic embodiment of love. What we do out of love is broadened outwards towards the scope of God where 1000 years is like a day.

Then there's always the, "That was the Old Covenent God. Jesus is the lamb, the New Covenent." Yea, I still think that's bullshit... and for another time.

John Henry

2007-08-12T01:28:00.000-07:00

Reset the counter, it's become aleatoric.

I could have sworn I knew your name, that I trusted you, that we were once alone together on the beach holding back the waves with all the might of 1000 children's addled, scraggly, nightmares. We were sickly, we were tired. We were tried and true and sovereign.

I am the sickest.

You can't become another twang upon the grass, scratching and itching after rolling down the hill as if you're covered in bees.

Seeping into the night of a million.

Quantity. Push everything out there into the echelon. Pleasure. I am yours for all time.

Saw them shake like Wind on Rushes.

2007-08-11T22:49:00.000-07:00

It began in the car, was interrupted by four phone calls, an almost-alarm, a call-on, and a call-off. It last almost six hours.

It wasn't a nap. It was a supernap.

And I am now aflurry with restlessness because I got a usual night's sleep between 2 and 8 PM.

Restless and suddenly I'm ensconced in two seperate conversations while writing on a machine--all three (four if you include listening to Belle and Sebastian) activities I couldn't be doing at this moment 20 years ago--hell, 10 years ago. Welcome to the 00's.

--

It's strange I don't question my faith, become agnostic, or completely drive away from the church because I seem to always have some sort of problem with it. Be it chauvinism, not full-fledged Calvinism (always forgetting about predestination), or anything else. However, I suppose that these problems are not inherent problems with my faith, which is fully Calvinist and relatively open to new-osity, but rather problems with the church, which I am fully critical of and knowledgable of their faux infallibility.

The underlying premise of my theosophy is John 4:8, "Whoever does not love does not know God, because God is love." and Phillipians 3:10-12, "I want to know Christ and the power of his resurrection and the fellowship of sharing in his sufferings, becoming like him in his death, and so, somehow, to attain to the resurrection from the dead. Not that I have already obtained all this, or have already been made perfect, but I press on to take hold of that for which Christ Jesus took hold of me." I have a purpose and I press on so as to takehold of it. Whatever it is.

You are the sovereign.

Then to Lebanon... Oh God... The flashing at night, the sirens grow and grow and grow....

2007-08-11T02:13:00.001-07:00

""

And I groan.

Here, check this,

“In an age where passion has been done away with for the sake of science he easily foresees his fate—in an age where an author who wants readers must be careful to write in a way that he can comfortably be leafed through during the after-dinner nap, and be sure to present himself to the world like the polite gardener’s boy in the Advertiser who, hat in hand and with good references from his previous place of employment, recommends himself to a much esteemed public. He foresees his fate will be to be completely ignored; has a dreadful foreboding that the scourge of jealous criticism will more than once make itself felt; and shudders at what terrifies him even more, that some enterprising recorder […] will slice him into sections.”
Respectfully,
Johannes de Silentio.

I guess I’m here to justify my friend’s work—something that is not an easy task, I think. What follows is didactic and loud and boisterous, bogged down with lyricism and convoluted by ethereal dream logic, all of which is buoyed by the Inland Empire’s drab scenery and bullshit weather.

You may read it, put it down, try and read it again, then say, “Step off your goddam pulpit!” But, really, I can guarantee you that he didn’t mean it that way. He was thinking of you when he wrote it, at least in a round-about way. I was in communication with him when he was writing it, and he said, “I’ve been thinking of the readers. I think they can go to hell.” This is a personal book by a personal person. If you meet the author, he will be shy and nothing like the narrator, despite the fact that 25% (or more…I’m not sure anymore…) of this book is true.

The guilty parties need not worry, he means all the best.

The readers need not worry, because it all makes sense when you take and take and take from the book as he desires you to do. This is a book of passion, this is a book of emotion, this is a book of the great I AM. I think that’s the only way to describe it. A book of God’s dreams and one man’s fear.

I don’t want you to slice him into sections, like a whore, and give him to the 12 tribes of Israel for sanctification. He is already sanctified in the eyes of God. I want you to take everything with grains of beautiful sugar and salt, knowing that it does all make sense, and that the great Idea that is DEATH WALKS IN THE EAST RIVER VALLEY has a purpose beyond sounding pretentious and esoteric.

In a letter he wrote me once, he stated that, “This is a book of God, about God, and for God. I want this book to emote people into belief, into doubt, into something! Everyone is so fucking A.D.D. these days; I want to slow them down; I want to show them the beauty in the mundane, the trials in the slavery, and the greatness of not man, but of themselves. Greatness through value by God. That is my ultimate purpose, I think.”

If you’re A.D.D., take your Ritalin and settle in. If you’re an average American, turn off your T.V. and lose some goddam weight. But, no, read this book.

In truth, I really think he just wants you to believe in God…

But that’s just me. Of his real motives, I could never actually tell you about those.

Johnathan Roberts,
Hollywood and La Cienega, 1979

DEATH WALKS IN THE EAST RIVER VALLEY will never be finished. I lost the map and I am embarrassed. But you are my beloved.

I am alive for now for ever for all time among you all my beautiful

2007-08-07T02:26:00.000-07:00

Lately, since July 27th when my aunt died, I've wondered why I'm not bereft of happiness, why I'm not completely filled with anguish. I've tried to place it in the pocket of "I didn't know her very well," but I had to quickly remove it because I realized that that is not why I am seemingly apathetic towards the death of one hell of a woman. I realized how I feel about death, and how it became solidified.

Death is an illusion. We live on far longer than our hollow grave of a body would like to think. Our bodies are so fragile, like a lamp being shipped, that the packing peanuts are soon to give and we are soon to break. It's obvious. It's unavoidable. That's obvious.

It's also obvious that we live on far beyond what our body says is our life. Our soul, our reputation, live on in the words and actions of the others we have influenced, the others who took from us the good which we held and melded it with the good of others (as well as the caveats of miscreants) to create the next person. And suddenly it trickles into generations--our influence is diluted, sure, but it is ours, and we are forever within this good Earth. People have searched for the tree of life, when in truth we are the tree of life, our branches stretching out among the reeds to hug along the river.

And that is evolution.

And this is why our relationships and our loves must hinder more on emotion and soul & spirit as opposed to physical attraction. Our bodies are finite and crumbling and fragile by the day while our soul lives on among the rushes among our memories that meet on the porch near the fireflies and bats at dusk. If a relationship is merely the husk of lust, what is it that beneath but blackened and burnt corn that is nothingness when you die? I want the husk to, when I perish, to reveal corn so yellow and so delicious that people will remember me and my lover as the greatest cob ever to be passed among the mouths of this goddam forest.

--

And this whole thing brought up another odd theological question: Why must I include heaven in all talk of death? What if I don't believe that we should focus so much on the afterlife, as if religion is a crutch for our fear of death more than it is a faith and a passion? Why was I so compelled to say that our souls and inspirations live on while our spirits dance and praise Him in heaven when it was not a part nor a participle nor a precept of the above thought? It's as if I have to inject Western Christian Apocalyptics into everything I touch involving God.

Life is everything, make it the best you can for Him. And he will understand all your efforts as your spirit drifts up above you eternal soul above your addled and rotting body.

2007-08-05T23:26:00.000-07:00

This is Dementia?

It's time to go.

Let's go.

Grown among the wheat only to be taken at harvest. Oh how the weeds so much the same. Much the temptress grown between.

And place your feet in the sand. I don't need to be carried.

Women and Children first.

Laugh until my head comes off.

--

I feel kind of hollow right now... I think it's because I'm at such a crossroads in my life... All waiting for a letter. I applied to Humboldt and I don't know if I'm gonna get in. So I'm worried about all of that and it all hinges on a letter in a mailbox that may not come until mid-September. And so I want to find a new job but can't, I want to move but can't, and it all becomes a sort of loss-quality derivative.

The rain drops the rain drops the rain drops the rain drops the rain drops the rain drops the rain drops the rain drops the rain drops the rain drops the rain drops the rain drops the rain drops the rain drops the rain drops the rain drops the rain drops the rain drops the rain drops the rain drops the rain drops the rain drops the rain drops the rain drops the rain drops the rain drops the rain drops the rain drops the rain drops the rain drops the rain drops the rain drops the rain drops the rain drops the rain drops the rain drops the rain drops the rain drops the rain drops the rain drops the rain drops the rain drops the rain drops the rain drops the rain drops the rain drops the rain drops the rain drops the rain drops the rain drops the rain drops the rain drops the rain drops the rain drops the rain drops the rain drops the rain drops the rain drops the rain drops the rain drops the rain drops the rain drops the rain drops the rain drops the rain drops the rain drops the rain drops the rain drops the rain drops the rain drops the rain drops the rain drops the rain drops the rain drops the rain drops the rain drops.... We're not scaremongering this is really happening take the money run take the money run....

Well enough. X & Y above and below.

You already know you already know you already know you already know you already know you already know you already know you already know you already know you already know you already know you already know you already know you already know you already know you already know you already know you already know you already know you already know you already know you already know you already know you already know how this will end....

F
A
L
L
I
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G

&

S
I
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K
I
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G

Isn't it relatively arbitrary, don't you think?

To play with your words like that.

Don't play with your words. They're liked Mashed Potatoes.

"This means something."

Day 75 - Arbitrary.

2007-08-05T02:16:00.000-07:00

MySpace. I deleted it because it had a crappy server, a ton of subversive advertisements, and it wasn't allowing links in its bulletins.

And I made a new one (http://www.myspace.com/americanpulp), and nothing's changed. I'm an idiot.

On the lighter side, Superbad comes out on the 17th. That's in 12 days. I'm eczema-cited. In all the rashy ways. I believe in you.

Day 65 - You might sleep but you'll never...dream........into the ECHELON!!! We GO!!!!

2007-07-30T00:29:00.000-07:00

Do You Realize - that you have the most beautiful face
Do You Realize - we're floating in space -
Do You Realize - that happiness makes you cry
Do You Realize - that everyone you know someday will die

And instead of saying all of your goodbyes - let them know
You realize that life goes fast
It's hard to make the good things last
You realize the sun doesn't go down
It's just an illusion caused by the world spinning round --Ye Olde Flaming Lips

So, okay. I think God is having fun tossing shit at my life. My aunt just died in a freak car accident. Jasmine's got her things I'd rather not discuss without her permission. I've got my own personal shit. And now my family's in mourning over one of my mom's and everyone's favorite people.

And yet... I can't seem to feel anything but numb. It's like I can sense everything, and it all sucks, but all I feel is a great irrepressible desire to leave, to get the fuck outta dodge, to "Alright Ramblers, let's get ramblin'." I feel apathetic, I feel mean and cold.... Yet that's how it seems that I'm reacting to this... Cold, yet affected. Aware, self-aware. Amazed. Awe-struck.

I'm so small. I feel like I should do something but, when I ask advice, I get garbled advice that emits from eight sources all at once, and all I can respond with is, "I don't know how to oriwejrjioewjio[wjriojw]!" All the advice I gets reminds of this passage from Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close by Jonfen Safran Foer:::::::::::::

"I found a payphone and called your mother, that's as far as my plan went, I assumed so much, that she was still alive, that she was in the same apartment I'd left forty years before, I assumed she would come pick me up and everything would begin to make sense, we would mourn and try to live, the phone rang and rang, we would forgive ourselves, it rang, a woman answered, "Hello?" I knew it was her, the voice had changed but the breath was the same, the spaces between the words were the same, I pressed "4, 3, 5, 5, 6," she said, "Hello?" I asked, "4, 7, 4, 8, 7, 3, 2, 5, 5, 9, 9, 6, 8,?" She said, "Your phone isn't one hundred dollars. Hello?" I wanted to reach my hand through the mouthpiece, down the line, and into her room, I wanted to reach YES, I asked, "4, 7, 4, 8, 7, 3, 2, 5, 5, 9, 9, 6, 8,?" She said, "Hello?" I told her, "4, 3, 5, 7!" "LIsten," she said, "I don't know what's wrong with your phone, but all I hear is beeps. Why don't you hang up and try again." Try again? I was trying to try again, that's what I was doing! I knew it wouldn't help, I knew no good would come of it, but I stood tehre in the middle of the airport, at the beginning of the century, at the end of my life, and I told her everything: why I'd left, where I'd gone, how I'd found out about your death, why I'd come back, and what I needed to do with the time I had left I told her because I wanted her to believe me and understand, and because I thought I owed it to her, and to myself, and to you, or was it just more selfishness? I broke my life down into letters, for love I pressed "5, 6, 8, 3," for death, "3, 3, 2, 8, 4," when the suffering is subtracted from the joy, what remains? What, I wondered is the sum of my life?" [page 269]

--

I only know how to survive the way I know how to survive. Esoteric, cold, cynical, passive. Death is just an illusion. We all truly live forever within our legacies. The time comes when we've done all we can as flesh and the rest of our purpose can only be fulfilled through remembrance and not our own furtive actions. Though our bodies may cease, our souls surely live on forever as do the memories. We have affected who we are to affect... And soon, they will tell of me posthumously... And I will down, and I will smile....

You are all so goddam wonderful.