Irreducible

quickling

2008-06-22T12:31:00.002-04:00

I have no time for words,
they do not sit still for me.
There they go! and they've gone again
and I cannot get them back.

Children of Meaning,
mischievous under my ward.
"Get in line!" "Stay out of there!"
"Don't you start what you can't finish!"

They hide.
They ignore the pleas of anger and of mercy.
Toys within a language,
making games of who I am.

A quest for four-leaf clover wielding gnomes,
the origin and end of rainbows.

[blank]

2008-06-14T16:51:00.001-04:00

i was sitting and eating lunch and I had a really good idea for a story....

had, not have....

dammit.

Watch the Weather....

2008-06-13T12:05:00.008-04:00

so i woke up yesterday and found that both sides of my bed were the wrong ones. after hemming and hawing and laying paralyzed and clueless as to how to start my day, I received a message from god (my bowels) that it was time to up and at 'em (poop violently).

My late morning and early afternoon was spent moping around, trying to read, going for a walk that went nowhere, and eating random shit I made. I was having trouble just being. My future and time itself were weighing down on the back of my neck and I didn't much feel like being conscious. I was contemplating my summer plans, experiencing the lack of certainty therein as a visceral void behind my eyeballs. I, of course, got to extrapolating, and entered a new level of despair when my uncertainty in the near future transmigrated into the expansive world of my life ahead of me. There the uncertainty really came into full bloom and become full blown depression. What to do, what to do....

I ended up moping around until quarter to five, when I had to rush out to work. I wasn't looking forward to the night shift, but the boss left mad early and the night progressed rather smoothly. Somehow pretending to be affable and levelheaded in front of coworkers and customers made me forget my shit for a while and actually become jovial for a spell. I felt quite good, laughing, joking, making fun of customers, sneaking a beer into the ice-bin for myself after work (mmmm, wit bier!).

Anyway, work ended and the masquerade became reality again, and anew I felt unsure of everything. To a lesser degree, to be sure. Work had helped with my mood, but the "facts" remained.

I was riding my bike home (after hanging out with some friends from work and having a brew) when I ran into another friend from work who had gotten another job and now only worked weekends, so I hadn't seen him. We got to chatting, about work and his tiny tiny little dog named Kong (korean for "bean") and about the summer/plans. I loosely related my troubles, for as anyone who knows me will tell you, I loathe expressing my sorrows unto anyone's listening ear....just a character trait of mine. But I hinted at some distress about wanting to travel over the US and how I really wanted to make the journey into Japan to see my girlfriend, my cousin who oddly enough would be there, and the gorgeous country.

My friend, being from Japan, instantly put forth an offer that vindicated the entire day and served as another example of proof for my own personal form of god (not my bowels). Of all the random and infinite turn of events possible in even the simple act of riding home, this one happens. This one possibility makes the leap into actuality and in doing completely helps me out of a pretty big bind. Thank you whoever or whatever you are, or if you be not addressable by a substantive then I entrust my thanks to the wind and pray they reach ears.

You see, I wanted to travel to Japan, and I had enough $ for the flights, but I had very little for the stay. I would possibly staying in a hotel, motel, hostel, whatever I could get. I wanted to stay for a good bit of time, but I didn't want to return to the US with no financial cushion (cowardly? maybe). So I was hemming and hawing over the trip, but my friend came out of the shadows behind his apartment building like a shining knight with a Chihuahua steed of onyx hue and noble birth! He offered me a place to stay in japan. Two actually! One with his brother about 30mins outside of Tokyo, and one with his good friend who lives right smack in the heat of Tokyo. I find out tomorrow what they say, but he assured me that it is part of his culture that a friend of a friend is welcome, always and for no reason other than the loose bond of friend's friend. how fucking cool.

so my day became, in one quick moment of conversation, a momentous and inspiring day. I ended up being so happy that I stayed up til 5am (the whole afternoon I was inexplicably -in physical, not mental terms - drowsy). Just goes to show, even if it only shows itself to me, that you can slave away at a dreary existence and keep on in the face of the insurmountable and grim and someday, somehow, the clouds will break and a beam of solar consideration will bear itself upon you in the most curious and unforeseen fashion.

.... Change.

mascul

2008-06-09T14:17:00.001-04:00

I am the man upon the cross,
my bearing days are over.
I am a fragment without difference,
a stitch between naught and nil.

I am the man who came up the stairs
to light, now on descent to black.
I am he who tarries, trembling
toward the indistinct, the night.

I am the man propelled,
thirty-two feet per second,
per second
to the grave.

I am the man nailed to a flailing star
by barren waves of atmosphere.
I move not, yet move,
like waking into sleep.

I am the man insomniac.
The giftless, the Godless.
The loveless, the flawless.
The paradox is more me than mystery.

All I own is ownership,
I am intransitive.

I am the man whose hand
has wielded soul,
and I am ....
....disappointed.

solipschizophrantic

2008-06-09T10:52:00.001-04:00

its getting to be that time where I am seriously planning and getting myself (mycell) ready for a big road trip across the US. I have some great resources, my boss at work has a near photographic memory when it comes to travel and he's done quite a lot of it, and another coworker has been all over the US with special focus on the places I want to go to: The pacific coastline. I feel like the scraggly Stamper teenager from Kesey's Sometimes a Great Notion: I don't feel like I can settle, like there's always a greener pasture where I haven't yet explored, and maybe my life's random chance at being forged into this form will be squandered if I don't experience the offerings of the world. And there is so goddamn much of it, so much to see in every small radius of every parcel of the earth -- it's a textbook absurdity to desire to see all of it: the goal of the aspiration is far outweighed by the facts of the actual circumstances.

And yet still my aching heart... the thought of unfulfilled death plagues like bad cholesterol or some angina I've inherited.

So much to do, so little time. Its like being thrust into a monstrous amusement park and being told that you can only go on two rides. As a kid and as a man I've always freaked with constraints: which two will I pick, are there better ones if I hold out on my choice a little longer and search, what if I don't like one of the rides I pick. Anxiety and angst and conglomerates of things that make me sick. The real problem is that Im terrified of regret. My worst fear, or maybe second after being eaten alive by insects, is to be lying in my death bed, impotent and used up and unable to tear my mind from all the time I wasted not doing what I wanted, not making dreams reality, not standing up for myself and my image of the world. This is starting to sound a little conceited, but you know what Im trying to say, right? (cricket chirps, dial tone, whatever the internet sounds like when its sending bytes and receiving none)

I really just wish I didn't have a split mind about nearly everything that tarries important on my consciousness. All these life decisions and ventures never seem clear-cut options, there's always some little voice of dissent or dissuasion in my inner ear. I once talked to Dan about how I envied those people throughout history who dedicated themselves mind-body-soul to some cause or some art or some idea or world-image that they had, those who worked tirelessly and as if the hounds of death were closing in upon them at every moment (which, ladies and gentlemen, they certainly are). He was totally right when he said that those people were way out there, not fit for friendship or any love besides their preternatural drive ( maybe they are vehicles of some expression of the universe that only humans can unearth and must be unearthed and are therefore divinely dedicated way past what seems normal for we who do not have the hand and will of the unknown so closely laid upon our brow). But I still wish I had that single-minded lunacy rather than this schizophrenic indecision. I wish I could lose myself in some creative force that would overtake my discretion and perhaps make a monster of me, a psycho to the mass of inept madmen is indeed the only sane and apt inhabitant. And yet I am not sure....I see both sides always, and the counters to my hypotheticals weigh just as heavy and heady as my wishes. Antinomy, I know you well and just as well do I remain unknown to you.

And all the while I feel like time is running away from me, or dragging me tooth and claw away from birth and into the other, the Other grim and ravenous. It's a forced decision on my part, for my refusal to choose and take part is itself a choice to abstain from participation (which in our world amounts to a superficial participation in the rat race of consumeristic commerce, capitalist colonialism with corporate constitutions, and a congress of crap commercials.

See?

I want no role in this plastic pantomime (bowie in space!). Of what value is life, that which, when valued, is devalued in the experience of it? For, every time I've had those transcendent and life-redeeming moments I have been confronted gently with an eery sentiment of disconnectedness, a schism between my consciousness and my life -- a strange divorce that is both a triumphant blossoming of the flower of existence and my appreciation of it as well as an uncanny apperception of my own acceptance of death and the inevitabilities. How can the affirmation of death in turn affirm life? How can being ready to die transmute all of life from its natural bittersweetness into the most delicate honey of the soul?

drive-time co-mute

2008-06-05T02:00:00.001-04:00

i drove all the way home on mute.
i smoked half a stog' on top of yellow lines
and wrote a requiem in rhyme.

I wrote a requiem in rhymes
as newly-summer air whipped past,
a dirge for all my futures that never seem to last.

I thought of all my futures that will never last
and fancied them as emerald butterflies
who flitter as my fingers try and try.

My fingers tried and tried to pry
my conscience from the wheel,
but every way has a will from me to steal.

Every way forebodes to turn my will from steel
into softer stuff that cannot act determined.
I up my brights to scout the traffic vermin.

The lights reveal the covert crouching vermin,
it's the eyes that are the give-away.
Mortal lungs on asphalt breathe heavy like its prey.

Mortal lungs inside me, to which I am the prey,
Wheeze heavy with remorse and counter-culture rhythm,
I mourn the loss of future buried deep inside them.

the last step?

2008-06-03T16:56:00.001-04:00

you know when you are climbing up the stairs in the dark, making your blind way to your room or the bathroom or wherever it is you go when you trek all the way upstairs at night, and you come to the end of the stair without realizing it? You almost stumble with that awkward step that should have been another increment but instead was a feeble landing. The floor comes up too fast and you thank the darkness that stultified you, because at least no one saw.

You know that feeling? that star-crossed climb, that destined misstep?

That is what graduating from college feels like.

I feel as if Ive made this arduous and drawn-out climb to this pinnacle that came up on me and caught me unawares. Not only that, but its as if ive blundered into the entrance of a pitch black room in a distant relative's house. I cannot see the obstacles strewn about the floor: the bed to trip on, the dresser to viciously stub my toe on, the lamp to knock over before I can flick the hidden switch... Yet I must go on, I must go in. It's my family's house, I'm not forbidden entry. Nonetheless I don't feel the open-arm reception that I was naively expecting, against the cascading admonitions of all my loved-ones, from the bright and scary post-college reality.

Im lost. My compass only points south, back from whence I came to this....place. I am a pawn of time and space, my only path is forward and all my past is but a trace.

there will be blood.

starshine, never gonna find me

2008-01-06T18:12:00.000-05:00

it is a brand new year, the 2008th Christian year, and the million-somethingth for the rest.
can you feel it in the air, in that bitter frost (or oddly warm breeze, the wheezing of a dieing planet)?

I can't either. Just like a birthday the time passes just the same and I am left with the same
feelings I had yesterday. New Year's reminds me of a Steven Wright joke, something along these lines: I came home one morning to find that someone had broken into my apartment, stolen everything I owned, and replaced each with an exact replica."

But New Year's does mean change, even if it is an arbitrary date on a superimposed industrial calendar (I could be more circadian/pagan and save my resolutions for an equinox). I've made a few resolutions, two maybe three, but I'm procrastinating. I don't see the point in holding myself to some champagne-hungover, drearily cold and grey morning to violently amend some vice of mine. If I'm gonna start a new habit or kick an old one, I'll do it when I feel like it is a momentous and fresh day, a day I can wake up, shower, go outside, smell the air, give that Coca-Cola 'ahhh' and say "Goddamn I feel like shaking things up."

That did not happen to me yet. If anything, the holiday reminded me of all the shit I want to change, a nice little inventory of idiosyncracies that could use some tweaking. It also reminded me of a maxim that I like to keep close to my awareness at all times, one of those enlivening
and trippy sayings that can go as deep as you want it to: "The history of the entire universe has led up to this very moment."

As pressing as your concerns may be, as massive as your problems may seem, take a look at them from outer space. Become self-conscious from the point of view of the stars: con-sider yourself in the scope of all things. It is that "disinterested" P.O.V. that I am looking to cultivate, for I feel it is crucial for the power to amputate the unwanted and mend your life. It is not the outlook of a character in the novel of personality, not the protagonist's nor narrator's, but the author's.

nigh but never over

2007-12-05T22:41:00.000-05:00

school time is winding down.

of course, that means that school work is going nuts....

before my inevitable release from the grips of this semester i have: one final exam, 4 final papers,
and a CW portfolio to make out of the nothing-of-mind. do i feel like doing any of this? not bloody likely. Im getting that wierd sensation in my chest now, that burning that means shit needs to get done, like now. It's accompanied, as always, by that endearing friend o' moi: the subtly pervading melancholic outlook and crippling self-loathing. well, maybe not crippling, but it is certainly not very nice. i know that these negative feelings will be alleviated by a (large dose of heroin) bit of hard work. If i bust my ass and get some of these papers done and get the others on their way to done-ness i will start feeling worlds better.

could that be a valid motivation? nah, i think ill blog a little cause im starting to like it, and i like reading my friend's blogs so why not? maybe ill go back home, walk in the cold, read a little and pass out. with the light on (which has been happening a lot recently, after i discovered that when nearing sleep i could more easily pass out if i kept my mind on the fact that i needed to turn out the light, and if i got up and turned it off i would always have a harder time crashing).

does anyone read this? I once heard a quote that inspired me to do this sort of thing, a quote that made it a little more fulfilling than an online diary: [this is a gloss of the actual quote] "Only the man who speaks of himself and his time speaks for humanity and all times." something like that....

exorcise the futility

2007-11-29T23:05:00.000-05:00

The moon hangs low tonight dipping into the skyline with a grace unmatched and barely noticable.

whats the point really?

ive heard some say it's love, family, relationships, friendship, living the dream.

I seem to just be holding on to that slim branch of breath,
waiting til the last minute to see if maybe everything will be revealed to me.
as it stands im enshrouded in dark, though i can feel some divine
exhale tickling the back of my neck
right where the skin becomes scalp and suddenly fertile
with another part of me.

I wish I was creative in a way that I could see. I wish I had the kind of problems that spawned art - art with impact and presence - but all I have is me. All i have is petty shit; the small recurrent nonsense that never seems to cease. At least if I had something monumental I could rise up with honor to face it; to rise to the occasion and 'speak in fear and trembling'. i wish i had spent less time wishing all these years - fuck its come to years now hasnt it?- wishing for talent; wishing for fame; wishing for someone to love and love me back; wishing for God; for truth for confidence for gratefulness and love and love and love. i am too good at wishing; i've had quite a bit of practice. im getting better at regret; its not quite honed yet; not quite debilitating but it will come with time. I think i have a headstart on most of my peers - maybe they dont have the natural knack for finding things to regret in so short a span of life- I could one day come to be a mentor to them and young ones looking for instruction. ill tell them: mind the silly shit and always be more hard on yourself than you have to be; go that extra mile and it will take you where you want to go.

On nights like tonight i think these are my only skills: tripping myself on pebbles in my path and cursing myself for being blind and kicking myself while im down.

'the deeper you go the higher you climb, so come on!"
i think thats true; the stumble is always hardest when you've fallen from such heights; and Heaven's not as high above when you've done the work to stand back up. I dont want to get back up; this is home to me; this is where i return - this is my home; my truth. I feel compelled to wish it otherwise; but im so fucking sick of wishing.