There and days and there are times and there are poems that make me do things like this. Talk like this, fragmented, thinking like the string theory and forever interconnecting myself with myself. The times like this are the moments before sunset when the sun is still alive in its fervor, still in domination of the daytime sky, still exalted Helios. However, the sun begins its descent behind buildings; it is hidden, but its power still reigns (like aristocrats in agrarian times). The sky is still triumphantly blue, signaling daytime and time continuum, but where is the instigator of the light? I can not continue like this and I can not halt.
Anyhow, here is an excerpt of a poem that puts me in such, the cyclical form of rumination and regurgitation:
Da kine for me is the moment when
things extend beyond you and me
and into the rest of the world. It is
the thing.
Like two who love each other
breaking eye contact and coming
out of that love and back into the
conversation.
Thursday, February 05, 2009
Monday, January 12, 2009
On Snow.
It’s snowing in Rochester.
I’m struggling with the cliché idea snowflakes have been endowed with. Surely, I can believe that no two people are alike, the sheer idea that any of our magnanimous atomic structures being aligned in the same manner over the spread of, let’s say, the 20 billion people that have been alive. You and I are surely not the same, though it oft seems we’ve fallen from the same tree of life, just on separate continents to separate mothers.
It seems like snowflakes, though, could very possibly have an identical twin floating somewhere in the atmosphere. In a single storm, perhaps trillions of snowflakes fall. If we take into account the relatively few atoms in each snowflake, it seems nearly impossible that the atmosphere has never (by accident of course, atmospheres have a reputation to protect) created two crystals that are, if not exactly identical, so strikingly similar that it would be hopeless to name them and try to remember which is which should they be scattered among their relatives. I mean, the weather is practically begging for a Mary-Kate and Ashley style switcheroo film. Worse still, would be to name these snowflakes similar sounding names like Ayumi and Tetsumi, should they be Japanese, for example. We can’t assume all snowflakes American, now can we? Some may very well be immigrants from other continents, traveling across vast oceans, morphing into raindrops and waves and perhaps specially bottled water from the French Alps.
I would much prefer to believe that no two snowstorms are alike, since, from where you stand, you can never take in the full expanse of shivering people and scuttling cars. All you can see is what you see... and that is often far different from what you actually see, all snow personification aside.
I’m struggling with the cliché idea snowflakes have been endowed with. Surely, I can believe that no two people are alike, the sheer idea that any of our magnanimous atomic structures being aligned in the same manner over the spread of, let’s say, the 20 billion people that have been alive. You and I are surely not the same, though it oft seems we’ve fallen from the same tree of life, just on separate continents to separate mothers.
It seems like snowflakes, though, could very possibly have an identical twin floating somewhere in the atmosphere. In a single storm, perhaps trillions of snowflakes fall. If we take into account the relatively few atoms in each snowflake, it seems nearly impossible that the atmosphere has never (by accident of course, atmospheres have a reputation to protect) created two crystals that are, if not exactly identical, so strikingly similar that it would be hopeless to name them and try to remember which is which should they be scattered among their relatives. I mean, the weather is practically begging for a Mary-Kate and Ashley style switcheroo film. Worse still, would be to name these snowflakes similar sounding names like Ayumi and Tetsumi, should they be Japanese, for example. We can’t assume all snowflakes American, now can we? Some may very well be immigrants from other continents, traveling across vast oceans, morphing into raindrops and waves and perhaps specially bottled water from the French Alps.
I would much prefer to believe that no two snowstorms are alike, since, from where you stand, you can never take in the full expanse of shivering people and scuttling cars. All you can see is what you see... and that is often far different from what you actually see, all snow personification aside.
Thursday, January 08, 2009
Americano with Skim
I need to do this thing. In fact, I’m doing it write now. Document the moments when I feel content, woven into myself with just the right amount of espresso threads, like a giant, pro-active rug (which I realize makes almost no sense as a metaphor). That way, when I look back on my youth, I won’t be able to fool myself into believing that I was a constant outpouring of angst.
Sure, I hang on every word Elizabeth Wurtzel pours out, copious stories of broken families and lithium and ecstasy trips.
But not today. Today, I am sunny and wonderful and listening to Devendra Banhart and taking photographs for the new identification that will live in my wallet. Today, I am May in January.
Sure, I hang on every word Elizabeth Wurtzel pours out, copious stories of broken families and lithium and ecstasy trips.
But not today. Today, I am sunny and wonderful and listening to Devendra Banhart and taking photographs for the new identification that will live in my wallet. Today, I am May in January.
Monday, January 05, 2009
Friday, 01/02/08
Written on the 2nd. It sees trite now, but it's been sitting on my work computer all weekend. It would seem a tragedy to not give let it see some light...
Fridays are always dead here in Stabile. Aside from a few footsteps around the cryostat and surgical rooms, the only sound I can distinguish from the whir of the thirteen abandoned computers around me is the shuffling of paper a few cubicles away and my constant click-clacking of keys A through Z.
Today, I bought a faux leather jacket I’ve had my eyes on at Macy’s, but I still want and want. I’m the ideal American in some respects, fueled by the need to constantly purchase and consume. You can bet that if there were more like me, the markets would never take a dip, I suppose no one would have a 401k, either. So, the markets give and take.
Meandering around the mall on the first day of two thousand and nine, and I’m suddenly suffocated by the meaningless scurrying and frustrated glance of its inhabitants, and I can’t find a way to stop myself from wanted things, and my tastes are ever-more expensive. I want a graphite damier louis vuitton planner with spiral binding and horrendously silver dog tags by david yurman.
I want a job at loring pasta bar like patrick had, even though I’ve never even met patrick, to walk away from a few hours of work with a few hundred dollars. I want to meander back and forth down aisles of people around tables, laughing at nothing, sipping on white wine. I want to sit across from kara and brittani in some nameless sushi bar again and pretend to watch my weight; something I constantly lose at home because I cant stand to sit around with my family and eat eat eat.
I want to know every language ever spoken, wander through the streets of prague and buy something overflowing with carbohydrates from a market vendor. I want to be irresponsible with no consequences, flitting across borders at my leisure to have coffee with someone in belgrade. Eat handmade pizza in florence again. Mostly, I just want to feel like I don’t always have to be oppressed by this constant hammering of responsibility, pounding on and on like a neverending techno thump. I would take voice lessons and learn to play the guitar if I could holler a single note on key.
Fridays are always dead here in Stabile. Aside from a few footsteps around the cryostat and surgical rooms, the only sound I can distinguish from the whir of the thirteen abandoned computers around me is the shuffling of paper a few cubicles away and my constant click-clacking of keys A through Z.
Today, I bought a faux leather jacket I’ve had my eyes on at Macy’s, but I still want and want. I’m the ideal American in some respects, fueled by the need to constantly purchase and consume. You can bet that if there were more like me, the markets would never take a dip, I suppose no one would have a 401k, either. So, the markets give and take.
Meandering around the mall on the first day of two thousand and nine, and I’m suddenly suffocated by the meaningless scurrying and frustrated glance of its inhabitants, and I can’t find a way to stop myself from wanted things, and my tastes are ever-more expensive. I want a graphite damier louis vuitton planner with spiral binding and horrendously silver dog tags by david yurman.
I want a job at loring pasta bar like patrick had, even though I’ve never even met patrick, to walk away from a few hours of work with a few hundred dollars. I want to meander back and forth down aisles of people around tables, laughing at nothing, sipping on white wine. I want to sit across from kara and brittani in some nameless sushi bar again and pretend to watch my weight; something I constantly lose at home because I cant stand to sit around with my family and eat eat eat.
I want to know every language ever spoken, wander through the streets of prague and buy something overflowing with carbohydrates from a market vendor. I want to be irresponsible with no consequences, flitting across borders at my leisure to have coffee with someone in belgrade. Eat handmade pizza in florence again. Mostly, I just want to feel like I don’t always have to be oppressed by this constant hammering of responsibility, pounding on and on like a neverending techno thump. I would take voice lessons and learn to play the guitar if I could holler a single note on key.
Monday, December 29, 2008
Oh. 2008.
This, two thousand and eight, has been a metaphor in its entirety. If I were to pin it to something concrete, I would say it has been a hand. The type of that that lifts itself briefly for a swift thwack on the backside of one’s head.
Its motives, though not altogether sinister, could not be considered amicable either. In fact, when I finally took my eyes from my shoes to look the year right in the eye, I felt the short beam of an ambiguous rhetorical question, thinly-veiled in high-brow sarcasm. The kind of question that Mr. Row, my 9th grade math teacher, once asked Brad when he attempted the pluralization of rhombus. Rhombi. A steady squint accompanied by a long pause. Then, slowly, meticulously even, “When you’re outside waiting for the bus to bring you to school, and several approach, do you say to yourself, ‘I wonder which bi is the correct one?’” Clearly, you do not for the correct word he meant was “buses,” but no one dared to offer an answer.
Two thousand eight was a Mr. Row type of year.
Though often despised, the year offered something I haven’t gotten in a while, change. Albeit rapid, it was a quick toss of my hopes and dreams into yet another mixed metaphor, a vortex of actuality. Suddenly, I found myself in a world where my ambitions are realizable, and speeding toward me, another slap-upside-the-head. When you have plans laid out years in advance (five, we’ll say), you have a long time to ignore the fact that one day they may be carried out. This year was a reminder that I can do what I had planned if I so desire. Actually, I must do what I have planned or find another way to wander along.
I can’t say that two thousand eight has been malicious year. Just as I can’t say that Mr. Row was a malicious person, but sometimes the techniques of teaching that are most effective are also the most abrasive. As time and experience have it, I later asked Mr. Row for a letter of recommendation (a task that would prove difficult if asked of a personified, arbitrary length of time).
So, farewell good year, I will see you around whilst browsing through numerous facebook photo albums and scouring the depths of my memory for remnants of biochemistry.
Its motives, though not altogether sinister, could not be considered amicable either. In fact, when I finally took my eyes from my shoes to look the year right in the eye, I felt the short beam of an ambiguous rhetorical question, thinly-veiled in high-brow sarcasm. The kind of question that Mr. Row, my 9th grade math teacher, once asked Brad when he attempted the pluralization of rhombus. Rhombi. A steady squint accompanied by a long pause. Then, slowly, meticulously even, “When you’re outside waiting for the bus to bring you to school, and several approach, do you say to yourself, ‘I wonder which bi is the correct one?’” Clearly, you do not for the correct word he meant was “buses,” but no one dared to offer an answer.
Two thousand eight was a Mr. Row type of year.
Though often despised, the year offered something I haven’t gotten in a while, change. Albeit rapid, it was a quick toss of my hopes and dreams into yet another mixed metaphor, a vortex of actuality. Suddenly, I found myself in a world where my ambitions are realizable, and speeding toward me, another slap-upside-the-head. When you have plans laid out years in advance (five, we’ll say), you have a long time to ignore the fact that one day they may be carried out. This year was a reminder that I can do what I had planned if I so desire. Actually, I must do what I have planned or find another way to wander along.
I can’t say that two thousand eight has been malicious year. Just as I can’t say that Mr. Row was a malicious person, but sometimes the techniques of teaching that are most effective are also the most abrasive. As time and experience have it, I later asked Mr. Row for a letter of recommendation (a task that would prove difficult if asked of a personified, arbitrary length of time).
So, farewell good year, I will see you around whilst browsing through numerous facebook photo albums and scouring the depths of my memory for remnants of biochemistry.
Saturday, December 20, 2008
Snowstorms and Aftermath
This is slightly revised, post-champagne.
The living room and kitchen are dotted with half-empty beer bottles, blue moon and moose drool, standing ominously, casting shadows three times their length against the lights from Christmas tree. Torn from her belt, Kara has hung sleigh bells on the tree, haphazardly dressing it up like a holiday Frankenstein. We always take things a few steps too far.
I can't hold my eyes open this evening. erika and dan are upstairs, jenna has turned in and abbey is nowhere to be found. I ran the dishwater thirty minutes ago, when everyone left, but the glasses and pans are suspended surreally in the water. They'll be there tomorrow when I wake up, Charlie entangled with me in the comforter. These days, he's the only one cutting off the circulation in one of my legs, the only one I have to wake to slide away from.
Now, I'm home and reverting to everything I used to be. I'm not wearing black anymore. Drifting from the vampire I've become. Don't pick up the phone. Don't answer the door.
The living room and kitchen are dotted with half-empty beer bottles, blue moon and moose drool, standing ominously, casting shadows three times their length against the lights from Christmas tree. Torn from her belt, Kara has hung sleigh bells on the tree, haphazardly dressing it up like a holiday Frankenstein. We always take things a few steps too far.
I can't hold my eyes open this evening. erika and dan are upstairs, jenna has turned in and abbey is nowhere to be found. I ran the dishwater thirty minutes ago, when everyone left, but the glasses and pans are suspended surreally in the water. They'll be there tomorrow when I wake up, Charlie entangled with me in the comforter. These days, he's the only one cutting off the circulation in one of my legs, the only one I have to wake to slide away from.
Now, I'm home and reverting to everything I used to be. I'm not wearing black anymore. Drifting from the vampire I've become. Don't pick up the phone. Don't answer the door.
Friday, December 12, 2008
Complexities
My self-analyses are always so shallow, misted over. Everyone I've dated always tells me I have all of these issues, confidence complexes, but I'm ever-blind to them. I'm a racing horse that stares at the finish line, and no one's so far ahead that I can see them through my blinders. But God damn, they're kicking my ass. I recount stories radially, small things. Like I've said, I don't have a single secret. I let my hubris fly. It's this manuever I've done to convince myself that I'm good at lying, this gymnastical sidestep that defies all evidence of damage and exhaustion, unhappiness.
The key is that, when you lie, you have to believe yourself.
Folded down and dried up in the tired olive green chair in the cathouse talking to Amy and Jack about family; Kara about discipline. It's starting to feel like everyone has a complex, frayed ends hidden behind thinning cigarette smoke and scarves pulled across our mouths. It's starting to feel like we're all so jaded at 21. Is it because I'm already losing some of the hair that I used to work so hard each morning to shape? I've lost that perfectionist motivation. I can't remember what it feels like to feel disguisting when I haven't showered for a day. I could go weeks if it meant my skin wouldn't break out.
I wrote once that I'd sit with everyone and know them if I could, but I'm starting to think that I already know each single person on the Earth. At times, I can feel us all breathe in unison, somehow connected through reverberating atoms, pressure build-up in the atmosphere. I'm sighing and converting oxygen to carbon dioxide at an alarming rate, and some shrub in the rainforest will exhale brand new oxygen right back out, into the mouth of the next South American dictator, and I can already feel him, too.
Now, I'm drinking tea with sugar and milk, sweetening sweetening. I'm trying so hard to thicken the evidence, but I'm as transparent as I've ever been. The only difference is that I've gotten better at lying to myself. Everything is just a magic show, an illusion.
The key is that, when you lie, you have to believe yourself.
Folded down and dried up in the tired olive green chair in the cathouse talking to Amy and Jack about family; Kara about discipline. It's starting to feel like everyone has a complex, frayed ends hidden behind thinning cigarette smoke and scarves pulled across our mouths. It's starting to feel like we're all so jaded at 21. Is it because I'm already losing some of the hair that I used to work so hard each morning to shape? I've lost that perfectionist motivation. I can't remember what it feels like to feel disguisting when I haven't showered for a day. I could go weeks if it meant my skin wouldn't break out.
I wrote once that I'd sit with everyone and know them if I could, but I'm starting to think that I already know each single person on the Earth. At times, I can feel us all breathe in unison, somehow connected through reverberating atoms, pressure build-up in the atmosphere. I'm sighing and converting oxygen to carbon dioxide at an alarming rate, and some shrub in the rainforest will exhale brand new oxygen right back out, into the mouth of the next South American dictator, and I can already feel him, too.
Now, I'm drinking tea with sugar and milk, sweetening sweetening. I'm trying so hard to thicken the evidence, but I'm as transparent as I've ever been. The only difference is that I've gotten better at lying to myself. Everything is just a magic show, an illusion.
Sunday, December 07, 2008
The Lost Week
Amy, paraphrased: When you're alone, the mornings are the hardest. Once your feet are on the ground, and you've started shuffling around, making coffee, scrubbing your teeth, everything's fine. When you open you're eyes, though, you have to say, 'Okay, I'm alone. This is was what I'm doing for a little while.' But when you wake up and you've got someone in your life, some of the responsibility is suddenly off of you.
I've been wrapping myself in layers and layers to keep warm when I sleep. Hiding. Charlie sits on my legs. I don't really have any secrets, not ones that matter. Every thing I'm feeling bubbles to the surface before it's even properly folded into a sentence, even when I sleep. I mumble things like, 'Everyone has a leather jacket.' Kara's around to hear it the most. I haven't ached with love for more than a year. I don't even remember what it means to give a fuck about anyone but myself. I go through men like denim. No no, this is much closer: I go through boys like jeans.
I'm starting to depend on the cathouse. The enforced study habits and constant outpouring of free food from one source or another. It's easy to feel like you matter when people clean up your dishes for you, when they let you sing a song they hate.
It's winter and suddenly its a blizzard out and everyone's hunkering down with some other warm body to hibernate. God knows I've eaten enough to live for a month or two in bed, and I'd never have to let my feet touch the ground. Everything around me would waste. The plants in my room. Charlie. Alone, starting and finishing are the hardest. Everything in between is just horsing around, keeping your pace. Momentum. With nobody in your bed, the night's hard to get through.
I've been wrapping myself in layers and layers to keep warm when I sleep. Hiding. Charlie sits on my legs. I don't really have any secrets, not ones that matter. Every thing I'm feeling bubbles to the surface before it's even properly folded into a sentence, even when I sleep. I mumble things like, 'Everyone has a leather jacket.' Kara's around to hear it the most. I haven't ached with love for more than a year. I don't even remember what it means to give a fuck about anyone but myself. I go through men like denim. No no, this is much closer: I go through boys like jeans.
I'm starting to depend on the cathouse. The enforced study habits and constant outpouring of free food from one source or another. It's easy to feel like you matter when people clean up your dishes for you, when they let you sing a song they hate.
It's winter and suddenly its a blizzard out and everyone's hunkering down with some other warm body to hibernate. God knows I've eaten enough to live for a month or two in bed, and I'd never have to let my feet touch the ground. Everything around me would waste. The plants in my room. Charlie. Alone, starting and finishing are the hardest. Everything in between is just horsing around, keeping your pace. Momentum. With nobody in your bed, the night's hard to get through.
Sunday, November 23, 2008
Defragmenting
I'm eliminating "should" from my vocabulary, like Angie said in Espresso Expose months and months ago. Apropos. It's sinking in. Basing my life on "shoulds" has thus far been anything but fruitful. I'm not the same person I was. Present fights the past, fears the future, etc. I've been messy like this for months and months.
I know why, too. I live in fragments. I am different between sueded sheets than between aisles in a supermarket. I morph somewhere between the telephone lines and text messages. Transforming for each setting, different on different buses; 6: stand-offish, 3: polite, 14: razor-edged, 16: exhausted. I'm setting up Christmas trees, decomposing them in a time lapse. Sifting through cardigans I can't afford and woven sterling silver bracelets I'll buy anyway. I would order everyone something beautiful, if I could. Stackable rings or 1000 thread count sheets or a self-portrait by Belenciaga. An animal to love.
But I'm two knees deep in layers and layers of messes I've made. Things I've stomped, beautiful things I've purchased only for myself. Cigarette butts and empty coffee cups. Old albums, different versions of myself, cat litter, fleece tied blankets. Other peoples' sweatshirts that only smell like me. I accumulate and consume mechanically. It divides me into all of these different people, and I can change attitudes faster than I can rip myself from my jeans (and that's some record time, broseph).
I know why, too. I live in fragments. I am different between sueded sheets than between aisles in a supermarket. I morph somewhere between the telephone lines and text messages. Transforming for each setting, different on different buses; 6: stand-offish, 3: polite, 14: razor-edged, 16: exhausted. I'm setting up Christmas trees, decomposing them in a time lapse. Sifting through cardigans I can't afford and woven sterling silver bracelets I'll buy anyway. I would order everyone something beautiful, if I could. Stackable rings or 1000 thread count sheets or a self-portrait by Belenciaga. An animal to love.
But I'm two knees deep in layers and layers of messes I've made. Things I've stomped, beautiful things I've purchased only for myself. Cigarette butts and empty coffee cups. Old albums, different versions of myself, cat litter, fleece tied blankets. Other peoples' sweatshirts that only smell like me. I accumulate and consume mechanically. It divides me into all of these different people, and I can change attitudes faster than I can rip myself from my jeans (and that's some record time, broseph).
Monday, November 10, 2008
Several Inches From the Door
My utter lack of momentum remains a complete mystery to me. These days, I spend hours and hours laying upside down on the huge floral couch on the main floor of the cathouse, drifting in and out of consciousness, munching on chocolate chip cookies and doughnuts that other people have mashed into being. Crossword puzzles and starting even more books that will probably never be finished.
I constantly acquire new fears, absorbing them from everyone around me. I can thank my wife for my sudden claustrophobia and immediate urge to urinate every time I step into an elevator. I think the only fear that's really mine is the fear of conclusion. I begin things left and right, here and there, books by Oscar Wao and F. Scott, my own novel, I suppose. Workout routines. I start relationships with practically everyone I meet. You know, obnoxiously prolonged eye contact and new Rock and Republic jeans. These things never find culmination. I'm afraid to follow through because I know myself. I understand that I'll be disappointed.
It's why this college-life-crisis comes so easily to me. I excel at backing out, lying. Now that everything's solidifying, it's nothing I want. Why would I ever want to commit myself to 7 additional years of school when I've longed to escape for the past couple of months? What I want is to be George Saunders, or not George Saunders per se (because his satire is exhausting after just a few pages), but someone George Saunders-esque. I want to drop the fuck out of school and work in the mines, join the army, train myself as a barista (of course none of these would last a year). My expectations for myself are so high, but all they continue to do is limit me from what I want to do: nothing. I want to bake souffles and play with Charlie Katdinsky.
I want to be the only one for miles and miles.
I constantly acquire new fears, absorbing them from everyone around me. I can thank my wife for my sudden claustrophobia and immediate urge to urinate every time I step into an elevator. I think the only fear that's really mine is the fear of conclusion. I begin things left and right, here and there, books by Oscar Wao and F. Scott, my own novel, I suppose. Workout routines. I start relationships with practically everyone I meet. You know, obnoxiously prolonged eye contact and new Rock and Republic jeans. These things never find culmination. I'm afraid to follow through because I know myself. I understand that I'll be disappointed.
It's why this college-life-crisis comes so easily to me. I excel at backing out, lying. Now that everything's solidifying, it's nothing I want. Why would I ever want to commit myself to 7 additional years of school when I've longed to escape for the past couple of months? What I want is to be George Saunders, or not George Saunders per se (because his satire is exhausting after just a few pages), but someone George Saunders-esque. I want to drop the fuck out of school and work in the mines, join the army, train myself as a barista (of course none of these would last a year). My expectations for myself are so high, but all they continue to do is limit me from what I want to do: nothing. I want to bake souffles and play with Charlie Katdinsky.
I want to be the only one for miles and miles.
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