thoughts (fragments)

___i.
it's funny that we kiss slowly because my heart rate's insect wings. but it is slow. _so o _s l o w.
__- i forgot how pleasant this was.
__- maybe you should stop disappearing for days huh?
a car passes, its headlights smiling at us.
the warmth and light of the night lingers, hands in pockets, not yet ready to roll over, shut its
eyes to us. to those darker parts that'll roll around eventually.

so this must be life. _something you forget and find again, _like keys.


___ii.
chumpstick and chumpsicle we are you and i.
and i've never lost a friend, though there's a bunch i don't speak to anymore, _so that's that.
__say what you want, we're both getting the omelet (again).


___iii.
Serious Man ends. credits start. i don't notice it at first, takes a minute to hit me, surprise impact. like a car accident. or terminal disease. unexpected package at your door.
receive simply all that happens to you. _yes, _well, __that sums it all up pretty nicely ; my palms open upwards, like two strange monochrome flowers, skin tingly.
___afterwards i ramble about the failure of karmic logic - that God/Hashem/Allah/our Misplaced Father who art where? owes us nothing more than the heartbeat we have and occasionally not even that, and the nonagenarian rabbi who quotes Jefferson Airplane, and Heisenberg's uncertainty principle and fourteen breathless minutes and four red-lights later, it occurs to me, why? is a question devoid of even the possibility of an answer.

i suppose a better question would be so what?


___iv.
since then i've stopped believing in hometowns. __love's a sudden fall, _maybe. _just: maybe. __even so, a smart man still edges down the diving board slowly. ___then there's faith. which i'm still ok with - to the extent it doesn't detract from the pleasure of sex, chemical highs, lazer lights, cell phones, the right to eat meat, justified rage, and a filthy mouth. apart from that three cheers for the Bearded Guy who invented the mango, decided oscillating perpendicular magnetic and electric waves shall be deemed light, and was the first to try out a 69er to make sure it was safe for the rest of us. ___but, seriously, believe what you want, i'm telling you right now there's no such thing as stability. nothing stays the same. there's a mountain where a tombstone once stood and a garden of weeds brat-faced-teens pee in where Atlantis should be. plan what you want, measure your life out in coffee spoons, do what you gotta do - cancer, infidelity or an otherwise existential crisis is lickin its lips lookin at your thighs right now. just sayin.


___v.
i'll be honest, i see myself as 14 thousand butterflies engaged in an extraordinary feat of organized motion. __i've lost at everygame it's possible to lose in, have $6 to my name, have 2x 5mg dexamphetamine and a coffee for breakfast, disappear for days on end sitting on my couch staring off at nothing i haven't had a creative thought in weeks i don't have time to call my mother i have names of friends in my phone but few to kick rocks with i'm growing older by the day and for everything i supposedly know i believe none of it not a word i believe only that happiness isn't a must have it's a gourmet vanilla icecream you paid too much for, it's remembering the path you used to walk to school down everyday, it's kissing girls you like, listening to music too loud, watching a bunch of movies, feeling great about masturbating till you're dehydrated and after all that it eventually dawned on me, one night, around 4am as i whimpered softly to myself and rubbed red eyes redder and fumed and cried into a bowl of too-sweet cereal: life isn't a game of win and lose.__ frankly, i'm starting to doubt if it's a game at all. more frankly, it's not really all that much fun, there are no rules, nothing we can all agree on, not a single one. so what're you gonna do?right, you throw some together, borrow some, amend some, read a couple of books and quote a few you think you outta agree with and keep your eyes focussed on the to-do list until your heart's filled with fat, your lungs with tar, your head's soo loud they got you takin my thingamjigees to quieten it all out, or your DNA decides to eff-you and warps itself into nails and matchsticks where your liver once was. wake up one day your bone marrow's making the emerald water flowing down the Styx instead of red and white blood cells and your bones crack clean and tidy like KitKats. _what kind of game is that? ___i see myself as... these ten trees got together and put together what they'd saved up and bought me a mouth and 9 lives and are hoping i come back to them with something worthwhile. ___i see myself as the last few memories an angel's having, soon to be forgotten so i can have my eyelids kissed by sheer amazing delicious impeccable untainted pristine nothingness (how sweet the sound).

otherwise, i'm just another car on the road. too hot under the sun and late for a service.


___vi.
one day soon i'm gonna have my brain back.
my own thoughts. whatever they are (were).
it's too clear this lake. not a ripple. it's creeping my out, i keep thinking it's frozen over.


___vii.
do you believe that dreams can be severed from us? from our heads or whatever? detached from a person and from nighttime or sleepytime or whatever, and just kind of roam around. hovering in the air like a scent or pollen that makes you sneeze. and every now and then you breathe one in and imagine an ace of clubs for no reason. or an upside down tree with a trunk growing upwards. you see some old guy you've never seen before (and someone else is chatting to your grandfather). and you're at the drink fountain and inexplicably you hear a canticle in your head, or the ocean while it rains so you can't tell the waves from the drops hitting, or you're driving home and you see Chagall and his wife flying over-head holding umbrellas. is that a thing you believe?

writer's block

there was a time you know. once. once upon. i took such solace in words. it was helpful to say things. not even to say them, i'm sitting in my room alone, but just... to think them, to take abstractions, hazy murmurs, half-formed things floating about and memorialize them. trapped in little boxes made of sentences. little cages. small ones for passing musings. larger ones for bigger things... emotions, feelings, what have you. brilliant idea, mausoleums.

but now... [shakes head]

i've been thinking a lot recently about hard-work. work-hard. you know it, it's a common phrase. you say it a lot. we all do. i've been working hard. right now, it occurs to me, how often that is a lie. how often i think i am working hard, when i'm not. and i know this now, at this juncture, because, i'm working soo damn hard. and it's not that you're going through lots of things. that's different. that's like holding something up, like you're moving a fridge and you just have to hold it up for a minute. that's tolerance. mettle. strength. valuable qualities, to be sure. but hard-work... it's the proactivity that's the killer. it's not just tolerating or 'putting up' or resisting something external, it's the opposite. it's being a wedgy up the crack of fate. f*ck you that result isn't good enough, i need better. you see? it's... i will not drop this plate, blow me gravity, i won't. i've dropped plates before. i have because i got tired of tolerating things. because i was exhausted from the sheer force, the weight of... everything i guess. all of it. from all angles. oversize shoes. diet-plans - gluten free or whatever. broken hearts weigh a person down. family issues, knife party right there, invite your history and some sharp cutlery. money. comes goes. like water. all of it. so i've dropped some plates i can't juggle who'm i kidding? but for once, just for once, for freaking just goddam once, i actually want something. which is nice. that's a weird feeling to. not to want something, but to want something and... to want it enough to work for it. someone once said that to me. and she was right. maybe you do love me. who knows these things, half the time even we don't know. but listen to this Q, love is more than a word. it's easy to say it. it's easy even to dream it. it only becomes real when you put it on the table. when you make bets based on its validity. when you actually have f*cking faith Q. have f*cking faith in it - in us. and you _don't. smart girl right? (i thought/think so). she meant that love is not just a thing you have, but a thing you have to _w a n t. _and if that's the case, then it needs work.

and who knows why we choose what we want. tha benjamins. to shoot 100 straight free-throws. a threesome. to be a world famous international DJ. a high-court judge. a playboy. that happy looking old guy that greets you at Wallmart. __in any case. here i am. cursed. blessed. one or the other, probably both. something i actually want. and here i am working-hard for it. for the second time in my life.

[just as an aside, i've been writing stuff for some websites. and... people comment on my articles. and you know what strikes me most often about people's comments on my posts? how few people are willing to see themselves as... included. most of the comments are accusatory. people who do that are so blah blah. or, they quickly distinguish themselves, i have a friend like that who... few people actually absorb. or try to absorb. try to imagine that perhaps at some point or another, they were that person. (whatever that person is). the lonely guy at the coffee-shop. the girl who's in some improbable infatuation she can't seem to abandon. the downers and outters. the goodwilling. the fortunate. molesters and users. liars and masturbators. rebels and conformers. just... people. in any case, sometimes when i make statements like that now, 'that it is only the second time in my life i find myself genuinely working-hard for something', in my head i see thirteen posts from people saying 'oh yeah, i always work hard. i give 100% to whatever i do'. bullshit. bullshit you do. you're the same as everybody else, own it and move on.]

because hard-work is not something you can lots of. it's hard-work to work hard. i ate today. i had lunch at 4pm. that marks the first meal in three days. sure there was a can of tuna at 5am (but i can't remember what day that was). and 2-minute noodles for breakfast when i woke up (after a three hour sleep) at 10am, but it was my first meal. i am unused to speaking to people. when people see me they're a little shocked. i have a regular shaving schedule. when my girlfriend says she wants to see me, i shave. i smell of decomposition. this is what it means to work-hard. to say: dear fate, dear all-realistic-most-likely-probable-ility: EFF YOU. i _w a n t_ it. you don't, so EFF YOU. i'm going to suspend gravity for just a sec because i _w a n t_ this. it means, essentially you resign yourself as a human being. i have long now ceased to be a person. it is something even i myself find difficult to reconcile. that i have now lost most of my once-were-friends through neglect. through not picking up the phone or returning emails and texting back. through sitting in libraries and on my couch for days. days. my body is decrepit. a temple of amphetamine and caffeine and 2minute noodles at 3am and tune-breath and i brush my teeth incessantly and i wash my hands every 20 minutes and i can't handle bright lights and too much speech or noise bothers me and when i have panic attacks i actually think the 20 minutes it takes me to drive home isn't worth it and i consider sleeping under the desk in the library. __it really is a shame that intent and effort count for very little in this world. __chance just owns too many shares. major stakeholders are a bitch like that.

but just... to want. that's enough. helps the time pass. one minute it's May, the next time you look up it's November. dear god November's almost finished now. (i suppose they call it speed for a reason)


i just have soo few thoughts nowadays. so few things pass through my mind.

everything would be better if i had a suntan.
maybe a jog.

or somethin

thoughts (fragments)

yes, but, i don't know either. but here we are. besides me Chad leans over the balcony and shakes his head side to side to the beat. i meant to dance. i certainly intended to. but right now i'm stupefied. i notice my hands clenched into fists. some people have smiles on their faces, talk to one another and jump around. but when i look over the landing it's largely people standing still . rocking gently side to side. incapacitated by the music. a slick muscular chugging. space-age beasts. every so often i wipe the sweat off my forehead. people bump into me frequently. has alot to do with my having my head down. eyes closed. the light rocking. they just assume i'm high. no one cares about bumping another kid off his face on ex at a rave. __i'm not though. i'm in a strange communion-state. sending out ESP signals to whoever else needed to be here tonight. needed. whoever needed a jump start. anybody out there who needed to slam themselves up and down for three hours to remind themselves they're actually alive? i see a few people. there's a kid standing by the stairs. he doesn't really dance. bops with his neck. has a messenger bag. eye-glasses. __he's a trainspotter. they're a new-breed of academic tracklist/sample spotters. you seem them sometimes with notebooks, marking down what tunes the DJs playing. afterward they get online and argue about samples and loops and whose re-edit (s)he played at 1:32. they're good too. make most graduate-students writing about the Wasteland look like fools.

a massive reverb, hovers and grows. a huge swirling indecipherable noise. fades away and there's a new beat underneath, having snuck through the fallen leaves of the last track. the people up the front jump up and down. this blond to my left lets the guy she's with sneak his hand into her dress. Chad turns to me with an overwhelmed look on his face, mouths what IS this? i smile. a monster. he shakes his head, one arm goes up. i close my eyes and drop my head again, take a step back so the rail can hold me up. head side to side. music made of bombs, i'll be damned. i shiver through the next break and when the beat kicks back in i can't help a semi-coordinated seizure.


*___*___*

__- what is it about those movies though?
__- i thought it was depressing.
__- for sure, but what do we love seeing about the world exploding like that?
__- ... you think it's true? __all that Mayan calendar stuff?
__- not i. no. __but i suppose everybody's got to believe in something, right?
__- [shrug]
__- you think the Mayan's were on to something?
__- no. i don't think so.


*___*___*

i think my once-were-friends are going out tonight. i don't get notice anymore. it's a fair assumption i suppose, i haven't been out with them in months. it doesn't hurt, but dear god, make it worth it, i'm putting everything into this semester, if i don't get the results i need i'm going to be... ___unconcerned actually. i'll have tried. sincerely. can't do more than that.


*___*___*

dear 2009,

i noticed the other day you were coming to an end. what an oddity you were. i've become rather reflective over the last week or so. trying to piece together... everything. where we started and where we're at now. looking at leaves in gutter-streams and trying to discover their motion that led them here. runes.

the year of miracles might be too strong a name. maybe... up for air. a year for air. even so, i sit here having eaten a can of tuna at midnight and mcdonald's pancakes for breakfast and nothing in between. (a coffee at 3pm). my heart beats soo fast and i sleep after the sun's come up. there's paper everywhere. i have $6 in my bank account. still. still. i've managed to forget everything of the past, and i'm not the least bit scared of the future. that seems to be a victory of gargantuan proportions. to have severed myself from all alternative selfs. to just... drift along. a phantasm in the library. in a car. on my couch at home. it's been a solidifying year. a year where things have mostly felt real. in place. walls you can trust enough to lean on. that's a feeling i haven't had for years. a miracle right there.

of course i've watched too few movies and read too few books. i made a whole menu of new friends but lost most of them through neglect this semester. not to worry. friends always manage to find their ways back into our lives.

i don't know what to say to you 2009. i'm going to think about it. maybe we can have a chat about it all later.


*___*___*

i believe in redemption. at this point, it's one of the only things i still believe in. of course, i have no idea what that concept looks like in its entirety. sometimes you taste certain things, or sense oddities inside yourself. you get intimations of it. but it's not like in movies. and that's fine. i'm happy with shards and threads of it. one day you look back and everything's some place, just as you left it, the mayhem in your wake. but it's different. less glare. less dust. its like someone pulled the force and fear out from under shadows. now it's just... a room. just light. just open windows and the sound of whatever's outside. the world. nothing more. that to me is a decent basis for redemption. beyond that i guess it's an each-to-their-own type of thing.


*___*___*

the future is comin on
is comin on
is comin on

is comin on

writer's block

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humanity (mine or otherwise), some questions

i am home again, matt caplin


i do not know if i should cook steak, or eat noodles and tuna out of a can. __for a while there, i was scared to come home to an empty house, but this is no longer the case. i don't mind it anymore now.

it's not a matter of cynicism, what' i'm about to say, i want to say this: i believe that hard work makes you as good as you'll get, but the problem is how good you'll get. that's what bothers me, the ceilings. in music school, i remember, much was made of this. inherent gifts. a subject i'm not at ease with. it's common knowledge, i am uncomfortable with finality. things that are capable of definitive completion. over. done. bye. the end. it makes little sense to me, in this world of grey and half-tones and possiblies and fine-lines to find things that... are. study, fine, no problem, go your hardest, 18 hours a day if you must, you still won't beat the kid that 'gets it'. 100 free throws, the scale of b-flat minor over and over till your fingers bleed, whatever, you won't catch 'that' cat. not the natural. they exist outside of the rules of hard work. (though sometimes they're naturals and they work hard too - god help us if they do).

i get older and... i see it more and more. people who just 'know'. __hours pass. read and reading. soo much so it's hard to write, i'm too focussed on it. all these things there are to know in the world. and all those people who somehow know them. and you. and your books/free-throws/b-flat minor scale.

and sadness too. when i come home to an empty house is the only time i sense a little of it. a certain... brittleness to my days. puddles leftovers weeks later, well after the sun's come out. surprised to find them, we stare, how'd it miss you we think. but there it is. in a shady corner, one cold, reflective, thin as a penny puddle of water. a fossil of winter. a discarded fragment of a cloud. silence incarnate. sits, wise and endangered. one scale of the loch-ness monster.

but we try anyway. that's my point. somehow. gotta pass the time i suppose. can't spend all day listening to music and chatting online. sooner or later, you gotta face the fact you're mediocre and make a go at being amongst the best of the mediocre. if you like what you're doing then that should be satisfaction enough... maybe. life was always going to be a course in humility. this much we learned from trees. their silence told us that. they bow to you when you walk. drop their ripest for your malformed, yellow-stained teeth.

one day soo much will be made clear. one day i'll lie in a hospital bed and breathing will be painful and my eyes will blur occasionally. i will mumble words to myself incoherently and what's left of my family will determine i'm mad. (those who haven't concluded at that just yet). and i'll be fed pills for breakfast lunch and, and the white ceiling will look like stars to me. when people touch me, my red blood cells will shout_ m a g i c ! _and i'll float in-and-out of six-thousand senses of myself. one moment i will be a dream i once had of being stabbed in a savanna, another, when i was 12, with Eman crabbing at Seacliff. the next moment i will be Estragon waiting for Godot, or a kid sitting on the train staring at the printed-score of 2 Elegies for Piano by Bela Bartok, confused and thrilllled. all that. but people will see the crazy-man with the ragged skin and the patchy hair. mumbling Schoenberg flowers, tulips are best but when i said it she laughed at dandelions, forgive us those many whoever all who looked twice, failing's all i did best tried tried tried all these stars look there, that one is a macaroon my mother liked those best in Africa there was lightning in Haifa too, love death all in between time between bookends oh Moses Baha'u'llah Jesus-or-his-Mother Luther, where art thou? outside it will be summer. i will die in summer, summer will be the death of me, my hair follicles and peritoneum tell me as much now.

delirium , isn't it madness just being hello human now? (what does that mean 'hello human now'?, i don't even know, saying hello always seemed soo hard and soo first-things-first and scary at times and sad at others and perfectly ordinary in every way othertimes, what's more human than hello and to be so now is ... i suppose all we've got. (or hope to have).

how time turns its back... , i am not ready for this to be memory. (and all the while crammed in not-old-enough-to-be-cool libraries reading god-knows-what taking notes and memorizing and freaking (my skin inside) out, the principle to be extracted from this case is:

oblivion is not just to be reserved for the future.

i used to dance to forget this. play the piano. make love. i used to sit at coffee shops for hours. scribble in notebooks. think outside of myself.

but what is this now?


and when the drugs start to wear off i spasm. i don't like to tell anybody about that. just... kinda here and there. jitters. find myself standing in the middle of her room staring at the fan unable to walk back to bed. couldn't make a decision not between life or death or banana-bread.

if you want consolation, remember that Odysseus starts the Odyssey sitting on a beach crying softly to himself because a sorceress has him strapped won't let him get off the island he's too good for sex and conversation and in any case, i hear it ain't so bad having a man around. (light bulbs need changing and spiders need killing anywhere you are). __Orestes heard they were comin' for him he took off running like Forrest Gump didn't look back till he got to Athens - a band of cacophonous banshees howling at ladybugs and rotten peaches under trees trying to find a scent of him. ceilings everywhere i guess, made of father's wishes and mother's expectations and societal misalignment and incorrectly diagnosed whatever-this-week-disorder and eating sausages and depression for lunch and a blueberry muffin and bulimia as a snack. bottle of rum and another silent art-house flick for dinner. dancing like an epileptic fit by yourself standing on your coffee table (every inch counts, gotta climb beyond it, this damned ceiling by whatever-any-other-name-iz-still-a-biatch).

or just sit and read. read words into hours - funny i always thought hours were made of moments now i know i was wrong they're made of words and paper and underlined passages and references and some parts of time are made up of walking to bathrooms and drink fountains and idle chatter in walking to and fro



look here. a puddle out of place. i'm sure it's cold, looks cold.

look at the time. an hour that passes without a chapter being read is like time not existing.

once upon a time i was human... a failure therefore. and partially okay with that notion and its consequence).

writer's block

stay tuned, anna morosini

i hand in the paper. sort out the slowly escalating altercation i'm having with the library. ends fine. fine fine, i'm calm, flattery. always. no point arguing principles. then i stop. wait. is that it? oh, no, there's the thing due tomorrow.


*___*___*

someone asks me have you seen such and such. no. i haven't left my room, except to go to the bathroom or the kitchen for tea, in 50 hours. it must have been night when i started, and i never opened them, the blinds, so i haven't seen sun either. this is hurting my eyes. she gives me a weird look.


*___*___*

after listening to 50 hours straight of techno, trance, glitchy minimal, anything to keep you awake and typing i have an adverse reaction to noise. i'm driving, i want fresh air but wretch at the sound of the wind through the window. listen to music with no percussion. Bon Iver. Pan American. caalllm.


*___*___*

i deserve a short break. 90 mins. 30 to eat, 60 to break. i walk around Borders. whenever it gets close to a break, Christmas or otherwise, i start to contemplate my holiday reading. the current short-list: Pale Fire, Nabokov. Men Without Women, Hemingway. Norwegian Wood, Murakami. Something or another by Marquez. i didn't mean to buy anything but i walk away with a few short reads just to keep me motivated over the next three weeks. On the Abuse of Words, Locke. Fear and Trembling, Kierkegaard. An Introduction to Chomsky. gotta start somewhere.


*___*___*

my god she's beautiful. something about women's skin, hair in the sun. fresh. that's what i mean, that's the word: fresh. like after a shower. the beach. or a deep breath. or a garden. something youthful and alive and existent about it. beauty can be like that. almost hurt. she walks by. bye.


*___*___*

SONGS THAT HAVE KEPT ME COMPANY IN MY SADNESS, A (SHORT)LIST:

___- Re: Stacks, Bon Iver
___- Gravity, Bic Runga
___- Exit Music, Videotape, Radiohead
___- Sunday Smile, Beirut

SONGS THAT HAVE MADE ME DANCE WHEN I AM HAPPY, A (SHORT)LIST:

___- Sinnerman, Nina Simone
___- This Time Tomorrow, The Kinks
___- Brown Eyed Girl, Van Morrison
___- It's My Life, Talk Talk
___- A Milli, Lil Wayne


*___*___*

can't tell if i'm warm or cold. it's annoying. and skin's numb. so when you rub your hand on it it's... strange. tingles. rejects the touch a little bit. my eyes hurt... i can't bear to look at anything. i speak slowly. deliberately. it takes effort. yes. i'm driving i hate my car. and the other cars. and everything. a diffuse sort of hate. like a knowledge not a feeling. it'll pass. a couple of days of quiet. that will fix things.


*___*___*

i haven't had a creative thought in weeks.

i have to go. i have 10 hours to prepare for an oral exam. that means i have to shave, dude, this is just ridiculous now.


*___*___*

[we will return to normal programming hopefully this weekend when life settles]

[time lapse]

untitled, casimms


THINGS THAT WOULD IMMEASUREABLY PLEASE ME, A LIST:

(1) Burial releases a new album

(2a) i can swap three summers and a spring and get two and a half autumns a year for the rest of my life, or alternatively,
(2b) travel around from place to place dodging seasons so that i'm only ever in the summer once every three years and even then only for three weeks and even then probably only LA will do

(3) the green pens that i use to underline and that have gone inexplicably missing from every store that used to sell them return

(4) Kx Kx Ho Ho please

(5) accidentally impregnanting a male-misogynist hippie vegan lesbian feminist who insists i have nothing to do with my spawn and best thing is i just take off running like Forrest Gump but before i go she agrees to let me name hapless bastard Roygbiv

(6( to sleep , to sit still , to __s i l e n c e _)

(7) to give up writing once and for all, save us all the time. instead be one of those hip photographers who always has naked women lying around to take pictures of

(8) Christmas break
_______DURING CHRISTMAS BREAK I WILL..., A SUBLIST:
__________(a) read my book of Nobel Prize in Literature acceptance speaches
__________(b) read the Watchmen
__________(c) go to Palace-Nova on Rundle St. and watch everything that's not in english and everything that's artsy-fartsy
__________(d) sleep , sit still
__________(e) write something possibly decent. or at least try and start
__________(f) return phonecalls and txt messages, actually show-up when i say i will, listen when people speak to me
__________(g) spend too much money in every bookstore i pass
__________(h) watch Stranger than Paradise, Godard's Breathless and Paris,Texas
__________(i) go to the library on Gouger St., spend hours in the T-bar reading and then walk the 55 minutes home up O'Connell St.
__________(j) dream about rain


*___*___*

sorry i'm late. on the upside i'm here. which is something, right?

i walk up the stairs towards the library, i'm not wearing my glasses and i'm off in my own lala land anyway so i don't realise the guy walking towards me is an acquiantence. how are ya how are ya? he says, finefine nodding, this guy turns up randomly all over the place at all hours yah big night last night just doin tha walk'a'shame now woke up in godknowswhose bed thought what-tha-f*ck time to bail oh man i'm tired must'a' been awesome though big party big party last night shoulda been there Johnny was there you know Johnny right?, Johnny Pishtek or whateva his'namz' anyway crazy look i hava cut on my chin no idea how i got that ppphhh, f8ck-my-life man i betta get on with it i gotta get home and he turns around and keeps walking. i take a deep breath for the both of us.

extended intro / Happiness is...

RY, heimdalsgate



CREDIT:
Ashleigh took the above picture which i really like. i really like lots of them. (more here).

PROLOGUE:
i don't feel like writing. i felt like dancing. but i can't. on account of not really having enough energy to move , study , or sleep. i do have enough energy to slump on my couch - which is what i'm doing - and listen to M.A.N.D.Y., which makes me mildly euphoric. so i'm writing. hello. next problem... what to write about?


FILMS I HAVE SPENT MOST OF MY LIFE DEFENDING BECAUSE THEY ARE AWESOME BUT NO ONE AGREES WITH ME, A LIST:

___- Marie Antoinette
___- Magnolia
___- the Watchmen
___- Happiness
___- the Texas Chainsaw Massacre (the original, duh)
___- Team America: World Police
___- Burn After Reading
___- Eyes Wide Shut
___- Saved

AWESOME TEXT-MESSAGE FRAGMENTS THAT DESERVE ENDURING LITERARY FAME:

___- we're heading out soonish. If you change ur mind about being a pirate arrrr!-tard hit me back &i'll come get u.
___-Yeah yeah. Boo to u, & ur delinquent riff-raff band of social-pariah miscreants and outcasts you call bros-and-hoz, while the rest of society scowls and stares at you and your one-legged, blind eyed brood of pirates and pack of jokers not an ace amongst you but perhaps three jacks and a lonely one of hearts, rot away and be forgotten to the sewers and under-funded public-libraries from which thine bastard scent came!!


WHY I FEEL LIKE THIS:

___X = (a + b + c + ... + ∞) - (a' + b' + c' + ... + ∞')
___= ∑ A - ∑ B

where A = (a + b + c + ... + ∞) ___and ___B = (a' + b' + c' + ... + ∞') ___and,

where A = B = apathy, which is infrequent.
assume for all purposes that: A ≠ B

by definition, if:

___A > B : happiness, ___and,
___A < B : unhappiness, i.e.,

Define: A: the summation of all happy-inducing feelings,
e.g.: one possible example is the following set:

___A = (friends + smile from stranger + awesome blueberry muffin + disco disquo disko + payday + ... + ∞)

Define: B: the summation of all unhappy-inducing feelings,
e.g.: one possible example is the following set:

___B = (gossip + insecurity + missed the late bus + they're out of muffins + penile dysfunction + ... + ∞)

But this model necessarily assumes that everything can be classed as belonging to set A or B, respectively. That is,

___anyeverypossiblepossibility ∈ A or B

This is inaccurate on account of alexithymia, or, untaxonomic, inexplicable, immeasurable, 'things'. Therefore, must include a third class such that:

___X = ∑ A - ∑ B ± Λ

Note that Lambda specifically chosen because it looks unfinished. Furthermore, it is necessary that the amount has the possibility to add to, or deduce from, X because an undigested emotion/feeling/'thing' may effectuate either happiness or unhappiness. One simply does not know until one knows. Furtherfurthermore, defining the variables of a (by definition) immeasurable quantity Λ pose their own difficulties, which we cannot hope to resolve here. We leave that to your prayer books, crackpipes, and 3am epiphanies. Notwithstanding, we proceed thus:

___Λ = (α ± β ± γ ± ... ± ∞)

Where each term of the sum is an unknowable term that may be conducive to positivity or negativity, that is, a member of either-or A or B. In the interests of simplicity, we take only the overall sum of those incremental forces and define it, as we have, Λ. An alternative construction would have been to take the sum of all terms contributing to A and the sum of all terms contributing to B thus:

___X = ∑ A + ∑ Λ' - (∑ B + ∑Λ'' )

where:

___Λ' = positive contributions of Λ ___and,
___Λ''= negative contributions of Λ

Our approach, to take the two together from the outset, is more elegant.

Finally, some account must be made of half-formed emotions. Things that will eventually go towards making us happy (or not). These 'investments' and 'risks' are considered as being partial emotions, we cannot take account of them as being positive or negative presently, because their nature may change before the end of the day/season/year. For this reason we will not prematurely divide them into elements, but define the set as a whole, those that will eventually be positive summed with those that will eventually be negative to give us a total. Also therefore, we call them partials and adopt the nomenclature of multivariate calculus:

___∂Υ = (∂y ± ∂y' ± ∂y'' ± ... ± ∂∞)

Needless to say: the future's a mess.

What we have, in summary, is:

___X = ∑ A - ∑ B ± Λ + ∂Υ

Or, stated in words:

I FEEL: the sum of all the constituent things from-forever-until-today that make me happy, minus, the sum of all the constituent things from-forever-until-today that make me unhappy, plus-or-minus, the sum of all the constituent things from-forever-until-today that i cannot distinguish as belonging to either of the above categories, and then summed with: my hopes and apprehensions of the future, which, because, may be or may not be proven to be founded/unfounded, cannot be considered at the time being. But, will with the passing of each day be picked at from the bread of time, and chewed and (only) then determined as belonging to the bowl of happiness, the bowl of unhappiness or the bowl of (as yet) (still) (perhaps never) decided, so that in the end (at our death) (goodbye babyialwayslovedyoureyes, hello lordie!, here i come) ∂Υ will have ceased to exist all run out (sands in the hourglass so speak and all that's left is:

___Life = every happiness + every unhappiness + nevermadesenseof

(and i hope somebody somewhere has an Excel Spreadsheet open and an abacus at arm's length and is (while grooving to M.A.N.D.Y. keeping count of it all) humming and looking at 5billion television monitors going:

... frozen-coke, yes, you needed that, good work Stevie, point for you, no! NONO! dude. lame, plus one B for Carol because she heard a rumor and a B for dickface-Brad for startin' it but also: because Carol's gonna get you back and you're both gonna lose a couple there - oh, yes Ashley's giving a present which makes about 4 people happy, points for all, Leo's writing another poem that's gonna bum everyone that reads it out (seriously dude, stop being soo emo) and, Q! you're praying!, woah. point for you, i'll giv-ya an extra-one just cause it's rare, so damn rare i'll pop open the aged bottla-nectar we keep around here somewhere...


*___*___*

i haven't slept in days. even when i do it feels like i didn't. i fell asleep in class and popped more pills than numbers are made for and drank more caffeine than is measured in oceans and palpitated my way till 7pm when i eventually crashed from godknowswhatever on my couch and was tempted to scream seriouslyEFFFFFF it, except i didn't have the energy for it (or to watch Contempt or Being John Malkovich) and now i'm awake but still not and ... honestly, the night is just so perfect and the air of itself a bath in tulip-petals, so soft, like lying in a bed with skin-sheets or a lover's worth of body, either, any, all, will do, cereal is sweeter and my whole frame wants to sprout just one last breath today, hereherehere, this one's for you tuesday 11pm, my breath was here, cigarette smoke,magic,or miracle, just a moment's worth, but still worth(ful) something,

(we do mouth to mouth, she's better at it, sucks out my lungs everything i have it's the strangest feeling i suck it out of hers back into mine and she again, back and forth like that, afterwards she takes her hand off the back of my neck and i fall over on my back gasping for air and coughing and she giggles ...

___there are soo many ways to be breathless.

dreamscape / i haven't slept in a few days / ramblings

untitled, mike caplin


naked she rolls around on a bed covered with newspapers giggling about the puppy she never had. she asks is it dark yet? because when it is she's going to get a tattoo. the phone rings (again) and no moves to answer it. she points to a small mark on her back you see this here , see that? that's how i know she says. a moment later rolls over onto her front and stares away thinking nothing and says it's too quiet too bad we don't smoke.

i have breasts you'll do whatever i ask, and i look up to see her. maybe she's right maybe you're right. she nods. i like it when its quiet i listen to too much music, far too much. i get up to make tea but instead walk into the backyard to stare at the pool. something i've never done before. whenever my stepdad comes home he asks did you try the pool? and i always shake my head, no, sorry. maybe next summer and when summer comes i ask an outcast if they wanna share a busfair towards the winter again. we take turns, one in the duffel bag in the storage compartment and one on the seat. we grow beards to look similar enough and no one seems to think much of it.
___this girl, attractive too, steps in front of me, hands around my neck groin against my thigh sex in her eye. everything girls. damn damn all everywhere soo damn beautiful sorry i have a girlfriend. can't even believe the words came out my mouth, but they're soo easy to say i thought i was breathing. half erect and the wetness of the tongue-kiss she placed on my cheek still tingling i walk on - it's my turn back on the bus anyway.

someone said we're going to karaoke so that's what i expected. but he stands up there and starts making odd noises he says he's singing the Beatles with the mouth of a tortoise. or a banshee. two hours and three vodkas later he's slumped on a red velvet couch and teary-eyed, though won't say why, and stares at the stripper climb up the pole damn she has muscular legs he mumbles and sips again. i try to kiss a girl with pretty lips but she's only teasing me i know that. gives me a gold-star-sticker worth of attention and eventually yawns and leaves what the hell am i doing here? i think and step away from the pool and walk back inside. without having made tea.
___what's that?
___a pen duhh
___i see that, what are you doing? [it's obvious, she's drawn all over herself]
___planning my tattoo
[in shaky font it says: LET THEM EAT CRACK up her arm]

when i come out my bedroom again it's 7am. mom and dad eat breakfast and bicker about spilt coffee and toasting more bread and hhhey, look who's up, how'd you sleep? i shake my head didn't. i take my glasses off and eat bread with nothing on it and stare at the cieling working through the process of entrenching restrictive procedures into state consitutions by means of matter and form provisions which specifically bind parliaments to adhere to burdersome requirements so that alterations to sacrosanct constitutional provisions are protected from successor parliaments and maybe even to put 'em in a treasure chest so that 'the vandal hands of political pirates' don't come near them. what are you saying? mom asks i've been mumbling to myself holding the bread up against my mouth. what?
___you're mumbling something about pirates.

we have pictures, one of my first halloweens , Africa maybe. no. America, we were in America then, i'm a pirate i remember my grandfather drawing a beard on my face with my grandmother's makeup. her bag smelled funny, like secret women's business. and i wore a bandana around me head and baggy scarlet pants and had a toy sword whatever happened to it god knows. of course my grandfather died and the makeup who cares. in the end it's the photos that always turn up. in your garage. between the pages of books. under your couch. you spend a lifetime trying to remember things and the whole while there's a photo somewhere in a shoebox that'll prove to you how faulty the image in your head is___ f*ck it this picture's all wrong the flowers were brighter than this i say. she holds the book open in her lap they're pretty bright q, it's alright. ___of course the toys all disappear. in the 99c store i see a plastic yellow baseball bat just like the one i had in Africa look mom look and she laughs too she remembers it. 5 hours later the storeclerk says listen, you wanna buy it or not we're closing up here? and teary eyed and mid-delerium i shake and shrug and he frows goddammit it's only a dollar while i shake back and forth like an Orthodox Jew on an El Al flight over Jordan as the sun comes up. it's only dollar. buy back your childhood here you go. yellow and plastic and cleaner'an ya remember

LET THEM EAT CRACK i shout and run out into the parking lot where the bus is stopped and my doppleganger is smoking a blunt with the fat single-mother he's been shagging when it's his turn in the storage compartment. i tried too but she prefers him you don't have his eyelashes she said. besides the bus a man on a milk-crate wearing a shirt tie admonishes me to come back to god or at least to have NORMAL BUT SPECIAL tattooed on my arm so i don't forget it meanwhile the television in the gas station says mediocrity is a sin and i can't handle the dichotomy so i ask to have another turn in the storage compartment
___hey? ___hey?
___what?
___come over later, we'll watch southpark. it's ok if you fall asleep ok?, i know you're tired.
___yeah.
___yeah?
___Yeah.

assignment all done? mom asks between mouthfulls of omelette and funny smelling coffee and throwing a few words at my stepdad about more toast. yah. about so. took long enough.
___get any sleep?
___nah.
___sleep when you're dead?
[i don't say anything] what?
[i smile:

dance while you're alive.