the submerged submersible

goodbye den-warcrimes-haag

2012-01-21T15:48:00.000-08:00

pretty moment den haag by apennyfortheoldguy

so. i have three more days. on the fourth i leave. goodbye Hague. goodbye Netherlands. goodbye Europa. perhaps it is high time to stop and take stock of the last four months.

WHO WHAT WHERE / ALLEVERTHING /A CONCLUSION OF, SUMMARY OF, A RECOUNT, A LIST:

(1) for the second time this decade i stumbled around europe broken-hearted, confused, sad;
for the second time this decade i tried to run the clock on days by finding strange cinemas and dreaming myself into a different life.

(2) such fireworks. (i've never seen.) such madness. what a thrill.

(3) the Netherlands is a perfect place for an alien invasion to commence. never in my life have i left a country having developed an outright prejudice,_ but there you have it. i have discovered a place that is truly charmless.

(4) i grew a beard i loved. now it's gone. i see its shadow every day. what an odd thing to miss.

(5) inexplicably, i've had more lovers in the last four months than i've had in the last four years. all but one of them singular, stark experiences. icebergs scattered over 4 months of cold nights. things i couldn't cling to even if i had wanted to. phantom hours. the bones and fossils of affection. i have never seduced more women i have not been seduced by.

(6) in the rain i rode my bike. in the wind, when it almost knocked me over twice - a man walked besides me quicker than i could pedal. i rode by bike in the mist, i could see three feet ahead. the light lit up just that. i kept imagining the world would end and i'd tumble over off away into nothing and nothing and nothing. (it would be so quiet)

(7) when i danced with you i was alive and young and everything was something. you were something i could hold in my hands. i grasped you with my whole body. wouldn't let you go. haven't let you go. ___the ebb and flow of memories. i know you'll come and go. i'll find you from time to time when i drink tea and stare out of train windows and run on treadmills. you'll drift in and out of focus, blurred and green and dancing. i remember when we met, that's unusual too, i don't usually remember things like that. (here's one goodbye i put back in my pocket and avoid spending)

(8) today was my 22nd consecutive day of work. not a day off in almost a month. three more to go. my trash can today was nothing but paper coffee cups, cans of redbull and wrappers from muesli bars. what are you always doing? the others in my office want to know. i can never answer them directly. i don't want to upset them. are you really that busy?, what are you working on? i've crossed the intern-lawyer divide. ahh. just some evidence credibility stuff i say. truth is she's checking the footnotes on my draft. i offered to do it myself but "no. __nonono. we need your brain. come pick up the BiH draft from my office after lunch. A few people have been through it but... just... i don't know, fix it."
___I'm proud of myself, but i'm more proud of life. i had hoped it were true, and it is. work harderest. do anyevery task you get as well as you can. do it enthusiastically and with a smile. #Conquer.

(9) i am presently alive. which means in 4 months i have managed not to kill myself on a bicycle.

(10) the great mexican standoff. i refused to pay rent for my last month, he refused to guarantee return of my deposit. the art of war i kept saying, planning the next email response. the next move. he rejected, i challenged. he agreed, i vacillated. he changed the locks, i got in through a closet. then i walked away, destroyed his reputation, calmed my nerves, tried to meet a deadline and several hours later found myself mostly-naked falling asleep in a massive bed with a beautiful girl whose brown eyes sparkled at me in the dark.

(11) night after night. lying awake. not a wink of sleep. when i had them, i'd take a pill at 3 just to put an end to the shadowed monotony of it. __during the day i'd take the opposite pills to keep me sitting at my desk. sad as a teenage friday just keep reading i'd tell myself. keep reading till it's all over. (the waves) . (the furies) . (by any other name ... ) . they catch/caught up (me).
and then.
they left.

just like that.

(12) i just want to work out. i can run my way out of this. there's a solution to any problem in the convulsions of my body.

___*___*___*

it's taken nearly 2 hours to write this.
i don't know why.
maybe time is heavier than i thought.

(and faster)
(and slower)

good bye ICTY - which i'll miss
good bye holland - which i won't.
_

birthday notapoem.

2012-01-15T06:31:00.000-08:00

NB: letter to mar + portrait to follow. (when i'm not at work). (with people's... noises) (blame them for cutting this short)

___*___*___*

even this time , i can't decide if it holds any water

an imaginary line a clock or two trip over ::
here now ends.starts another walk around the park.

i always feel loved at the quiet dinners. the same words we've used all day
spin them around our cups and roll them out again

it's almost midnight. they know the score but ask anyway: will i call a girl or hava drink or what?

(i smirk. another of those questions we lose immediately down a drain and don't miss).

___*___*___*

i'm grateful for the lack of wind. _for once
i arrive with something in my lungs.

to be considerate i let my room sit on mostly in darkness.
we share tea and nod through the things our mothers sisters fathers tell us -
the same words we've used all our days.

when i smile for my sister i remember what honesty is ;

i don't know much about the circus-show. in the parking lot i meet my friends and what we have
we hide in our bones.
_____(good luck worms gnawing their names off)

___*___*___*

when she picks up: you remembered i say. her response settles it: mothers don't forget.

i had hoped she would. it would make me feel better for not knowing how to count days.

i wouldn't give you the satisfaction she says.

because i feel suddenly so completely loved i'm overcome with guilt for each of the allbirthdays i've (always)forgotten - all my lost chances to make someone feel like this delicious

___*___*___*

i lie , alone . : ' , _think_ .

compare it.

when women purrr.breathe through the night, _gradations in gravity
__it's a tide ,
_______warmth.. _and sound,

in four hours i'll get up again for work.
on sunday.
__(it seems appropriate to me that today is a sunday)

the clock reads 3:59pm.
_i edit what i edit. __check what i check. ___occasionally add a sentence.

you're going home alone and working tomorrow? she's a little appalled. howwhy?

___*___*___*

because at the fingertip of my 29th year,

perhaps for the firstest time , (( maybe it always feels like the first when it's fresh ))

at the liptip of my 29th year

i can finally stand. _upstraight.

and over beyond that curve there's a-something i can't imagine yet ,

___*___*___*

what's new.

these are our words , always been.

our days, a few of yours in my pack of cards, a few of mine in your wallet.

when i sleep in the cold i whisper mar's blanket:

____it could never have been anything else
____it could never have been anything else
____it could never have been anything else

(thank god).

__

now playlist

2012-01-03T14:30:00.000-08:00

30 dec - 3 jan

written on the sky by max richter

an echo from the hosts that profess infinitum by shabazz palaces

solitary native by alix perez & sabre

kaputt (LP) by destroyer

clouds (live unplugged) by patrice

palace by A$AP Rocky

video games by lana del rey

song for shelley by larry fegan the vegan

marvin's room by drake

sahara mahala by the jezebels (recently removed from illicit music list)

a little piece by the jezebels (as above)

the rock of 2011

2012-01-03T13:26:00.000-08:00

i suppose it's expected that i write about 2011. a review or something. but i can't. not that i don't want to, i have lots i'd like to explore about it. but i actually can't. there's no way to do it and not write about _her. __i can't do it without her, she's too much of everything of it.

the problem is i can't seem to write about anything else either. it's a bit of a standstill. a mexican standoff. a rock standing between me and myself.

but tonight's not the night to try and fight it. i'm too tired. too old tonight. maybe tomorrow i'll be younger, and i can tackle it then. maybe tomorrow i'll be braver and braver.

tonight no.

31 december 2011

2012-01-01T03:00:00.000-08:00

flowers around your feet by meyrem

after some minutes of staring at the ceiling i decided no. i'll go. no point sitting at home all day. so i got dressed, had my delightful bowl of cereal, got the tram got tea got on the train and headed off.

___*___*___*

one of the most helpful things would be to know what my triggers are. for days i'd felt a sadness approaching. you can sense it in your brain's weather. you just know it's on its way. you hear it pacing outside your door, that sort of thing. i wish i knew what event(s) trigger it, invited it in. ___anyway, here it was now.

___*___*___*

i stare out the window and think if maybe it's simply a response to the 31st of december. on anniversary dates i'm often contemplative and moody.

in my head i compose a quite nice poem i don't currently remember a word of.

i drink my tea.

i watch things pass me.

___*___*___*

there are firecrackers everywhere. at first i think it's just mischievous youths setting them off under people's cars, but then i pass a family - a father and his two sons and he's showing them how to light them and when to throw them. Amsterdam sounds like a war zone. relentless shelling. my first thoughts are the siege of Sarajevo. my second thoughts are the first time i heard a bomb hit in Haifa. only difference was that in Haifa the ground shook. the ground doesn't shake. i stop being scared, but it has a strange effect to walk through a city that sounds like it's under constant artillery barrage.

___*___*___*

it's a horrible day to be here. every riff-raff-miscreant-mislead-youth from England and continental Europe has descended upon Amsterdam for a new year's spend smoking, drinking and whoring. everyone you pass is a red-eyed youth in a tracksuit speaking in louty-vernacular and spitting too often. mostly men. a few girls straggle along from time to time.

at one point the crowd is just too much and my heart-rate rises noticeably. this hasn't happened in a while i think to myself. i breathe deeply and look for the most immediate route out of the horde. yes yes, that's right, next i start to feel a little nauseous, i'm strangely comforted by how consistent this is with my memory of former panic attacks.

but i'm out of it all soon enough. i walk towards the edge of a larger street where people are better distributed. i do little skips over puddles and concentrate on the church in the distance. i wonder if she's disappointed in us.

___*___*___*

it's new year's eve. i can't not attend. i'm always conscious not to over-step the boundary between 'independent/mysterious/fickle/he-sometimes-just-doesn't-show-up' and simply 'plain-weird'. not showing up would be 'plain-weird' behaviour. i have to show.

shaking off the spooks is going to take a serious campaign.

i load up a playlist of southpark episodes. grab two redbulls out of the refrigerator. take one pill (not two, that'll calm me into roboticism). pull up the Get_PSYCHED! playlist on my phone and play that in the background.

___*___*___*

FROM: apennyfortheoldguy
TO: another guest

SUBJECT: (no subject)

outfit selected. temptation to revert into PJ mode successfully averted. all signals cleared for take off

___*___*___*

the municipality arranges a firework display. but i don't notice them, i don't even know in which direction to look for those ones. on every street of the Hague residents armed with professional grade fireworks are lighting the sky. it's unlike anything i've ever seen. the almost freezing air is smoky like a nightclub. in the centre isle of the street men attach things to lightposts with electric tape and put out boxes that look like car batteries. they light them with their cigarettes and run quickly back to our side shouting with a smile 'big boom' or 'little boom' or 'big light' or 'whoooosh'. each of these, i learn, is a true description. big boom sounds more or less like tank artillery crashing into the building next to you. the whole street shakes. big light makes midnight look like midday.

some of the neighbors see me jumping up and down in glee screaming let's burn something and hand me a box of firecrackers and their lighter to keep me out of trouble. i spend the next 50 minutes running up and down the street lighting these things and throwing them around and an hour later notice the tips of all my fingers are burnt.

___*___*___*

when i look back i see person A speaking to person B, who's leaned in to hear his words, and he's leaned in to hear hers. Person C and D have disappeared together. My boss sits at the table behind me having a conversation with someone from Serbia, asking him specific points about grammar and pronunciation. someone i met 2 hours ago is speaking to someone i met 2 weeks ago in animated fashion in furious french.

i'm not particularly involved in any of this. i'm watching from the kitchen, where i've covertly made myself a cup of tea and am watching with distanced pleasure. i'm spotted: is that... tea?
- do you mind? i just helped myself.
- no, actually, i was thinking how much i'd like a cup of tea myself.
[i put my mug down and re-fill the kettle]

___*___*___*

eight people stand around in the kitchen, each holding a mug of tea to their lips. approximately four conversations are passing between them.

i'm not sure if i'm involved in any of them.

but this is my life. i'm involved in that. and the year has put itself to sleep as gracefully as it can. and, what i can say about 2011 is that it'll sleep with a few bumps but no nightmares. and we celebrated her funeral like a birthday.

the hague: 5-7am

2011-12-19T13:49:00.000-08:00

distance won't hurt us by meyrem

i hear a mad crash and run to the window. hail, the size of marbles. it's 5am - a pitch-black 5am, if not for the streetlights. come look, it's amazing i say and she jumps out of my bed and comes to see. the sound is enormous. in a minute the whole street, the cars, everything i can see is covered in it. the streetlight just outside my window makes the hail look like fireflies. the street is a pale yellow, a pale fire. we stare out with the window open, a cold rush like a slap against our faces. i want to go outside and slide on it i say. she gives me a quizzical look: better you stay with me she decides. i laugh as i close the window, shaking my head.

___*___*___*

i'll behave, i'll behave i mumble as i hide my face in the pillow. she leans over and whispers in my ear. something in french i don't understand but all the silk of night isn't as soft as her words. hot chocolate and warm showers and lace lingerie stitched together. i'm dead-serious: i won't behave if you do that again. a few moments later i feel her hair against my ear and a little fairy slips into my head and a star passes across my body, my lips go straight for hers. she turns her head a little so i get the side - ok. you weren't kidding she realizes. ___from farther away this time she whispers something into the air. i try and remember the sounds, but they all vanish a second later. dissipate like the loveliness of a summer afternoon i can see the sun set on them and no matter how hard i try i see them go. they're absorbed into me. the memory of them is locked in my bones. __sounds soft as an eyelid. dear god, those sounds what they could did do.

___*___*___*

her hand rubs across my cheek. i've never had a beard before so many sensations are new to me. a hand across my cheek feels brand new. a complete novelty. an amazement, it's gentler than i remember. _but, then again, it's been so long since i had this sort of affection, a caress. maybe it's not new, maybe it's just a rusty memory.
___her hand passes. i see ship's sails unfurling, moons rising, a white dream expanding. i'm suddenly so calm. drifting.

___*___*___*

mid-dance i've lost my temperance and bitten her clavicle. i felt her shudder, taking that as a positive sign i kissed her shoulder, ran my lips against her neck and kissed somewhere behind her ear, just hair and that always-perfect scent women have.
- hey what do you think you're doing!
[i'm still holding her around the waist, with my face against hers]
- i have a legal excuse for my behaviour.
- you don't drink, you never have an excuse.
- i blame the dress.
- the qua?
- your dress, this one [i run my hand up her arm and under her shoulder strap so i'm holding her shoulder]
- ah! so now you're blaming me?
- you bewitched me. how dare you take advantage of me like this!
[she laughs]
[i escape un-slapped]

___*___*___*

when i wake it's light outside. the sun rises about 10am, it must be... g'dammit. it's noon already. i manage two bowls of cereal and fall asleep again. __it's 6 when i get up. another bowl of cereal. what's wrong with you? my roomate asks. i shake my head. i heard voices in your room, did you get to sleep late? i think how to respond to this. Finally: friendly ghosts make for happy nights. he has no idea what i'm talking about. go back to sleep, you can tell me about it tomorrow.

oblivion?

2011-12-12T14:15:00.000-08:00

in loving memory of loving memories by anna morosini

sometimes it's night. other times not. __i can't tell really.

i do my best to feel my way through it, a blind worm to each day.

___*___*___*

i crave aloneness to a fault. i crave it and satisfy myself until i'm well beyond lonely and even then i don't know how to recognise that feeling. it's not a thing that i notice. in the past GF or mom would have pointed it out to me. you need to get out q, you're lonely. the name for this feeling you have is loneliness, that's what it is. and i'd think that's what this is? and she'd nod, and i'd believe her. __is that what this is? i don't know. i haven't had my fill of aloneness yet.

___*___*___*

the washing machine stopped working. i punched and kicked it till i was panting and lightly sweating. i guess the gym isn't the stress-relief mechanism it used to be.

ninety minutes later, of its own accord, the door opens and there are my clothes. half wet, half dry, smelling of sweat and smoke and misery. i stare into the cavity but can't decide what to do with them. can't decide at all. i leave it for another day. a mass grave to exhume tomorrow. tomorrow tomorrow, there's only so much atrocity i can bear in a day.

___*___*___*

she's in bed, reading with tea she tells me. she tells me to come over, her nightcream smells nice she says, she says it might cheer me up. i'm not sure what kind of invitation this is. in all honesty, i'd love to be lost in someone's skin for an hour where i could close my eyes and feel the stars inside my body mix with the stars in someone else's and feel wrapped and blanketed and hide my head in breasts and close my eyes and forget who i was and never think another thought again so i don't lose the moment.
___i'm not sure what kind of invitation this is. i can't risk it tonight. thin ice abounds.

___*___*___*

i haven't slept a full night in weeks.

i order things i don't need off the internet at 3am.

when they arrive i can't remember a thing about them.

___*___*___*

it is dark, wet.
i hear my bike rattle along the path.
the little light flickers on and off so i'm frequently lost in darkness, complete nightness.

just a rattle in the darkness.

so this is youth i think,

this old man adrift in the night-sea, this is youth.

___*___*___*

once upon a time, i left what i knew, and went to the other side of the world. and there i lived on the third floor, in a room shaped like a womb, with dark carpets and a small window. when i woke it was dark, it was morning but it was dark. and i lived on a bike and i read about the most horrible things people can do to one another. and i met people who complained incessantly and i tried to avoid them the best i could. and i stayed up all night ordering things i didn't need off the internet and lived through days like a blind worm nibbling on soil. i ran on treadmills till i was shaped, once again, like a man. i grew a beard and rolled up my pants to feel young. i kissed mostly french girls and slumped on the corner of my bed at 4am unsure of what to do about it, about myself, about tomorrow, about yesterday. i traded what i could to get sleeping pills and i used them like tic-tacs till they were gone. i felt odd taking my glasses off because i felt they hid the dark puffiness of my eyes. i felt lost sometimes. not always. i felt homesick but i wasn't sure for what. i knew when i returned it wouldn't be to any home i'd ever known before. what i had known was gone. disassembled and released back into the river. what i dreamt of had passed, i'd been there, but only once upon a time. and in my most frightened moments all i could see was time before me, and i rattled along its road, looking this way and that, hoping to get a glimpse but my lamp would flicker and what i'd see was only in little bursts. in my frightened moments faced with the prospect of my life unfolding before me and collapsing under the weight of my own self and drifting away from me so that it was a thing that happened to me and not always with me and all the time walking through these streets with the same red-brick buildings when i get lost i can't tell where i am. when i get lost i sit on the side of the street knowing that won't solve anything. i only know what i know.
and that seems to diminish every year.
less and less every year, god knows.

___*___*___*

there is too much that i miss.

at least two couches. half a dozen names. decent vietnamese food. seven or eight feelings i don't know the words for. tea that tastes like it has cookies in it.__ more. much more.

___*___*___*

when i wake up, it will be as dark as it is now. always, dark.
always the rattling.

play list

2011-11-30T14:32:00.000-08:00

+ NY is killing me - Gil Scott-Heron (Jamie XX mix)

+ Marvin's room - Drake
__i dislike most of what he's saying, but he's spot on in catching the vibe

+ Carry me away - Chris Lake feat Emma Hewitt (original club mix)

+ Jimmy - Moriarty
__music vid is pretty neato

+ Titanium - David Guetta feat Sia
__can't help it.

thoughts (fragments)

2011-11-27T04:09:00.000-08:00

a good way of making life awesome-r is to wear ridiculous socks. (see photo for evidence).

THINGS I KNOW AM THINKING MIGHT BE SURE OF CAN'T DECIDE AM PREOCCUPIED WITH, A SUNDAY LIST:

(1) life is a two-player sport.
i suppose it's easy to get a bit existential/overly-thoughtful when all your friends are having babies. but, it's just a personal truth i've arrived at. consider the following:
- two people can get a hotel and share a bed, a solo person sleeps in a hostel
- duos laugh more frequently - so life is more fun
- being with another person is irritating so you get to practise being patient more often, making you a more gentle, thoughtful and open-minded person.
- having a special friend means you regularly have to care for them. which means you're human more often.

my point? it's not that i think cuddles, humour/fun, gentleness and humanity are important. i'm saying they're basically the only important things.

(2) no spirituality no pivot. no pivot --> undefined unhappiness.
it's just been made really clear to me recently. when i'm disconnected from my sense of spirituality, and my practice of spiritual... 'stuff', i get unhappy. fast. and then everything is kinda not-so-good, for no apparent reason.

and when i say spirituality i mean something quite counter-intuitive actually. i believe in the Bahai Faith, which means i believe that you kinda have to do something to make the world a better place. of course i understand spirituality to be something that centres me, and makes me feel peaceful and at one with myself. but the fastest and most effective way of strengthening my spirituality (my connection to myself) is to do things for other people. ie, the fastest way to being happy is to forget myself and work on what i can contribute to other peoples' happinesses.

so that's one of my current think-projects. moving forward in life, in a life where i expect to spend more of every day working, how can i find avenues to contribute to other peoples' happinesses in a substantial and meaningful way? and regularly. it's not a problem, it's just a logistical calibration that needs to happen in how i approach my spirituality as 'an adult' <-- ew.

(3) when i'm single i rediscover my masculinity. (or at least one aspect of it.)
it's no secret: men behave differently in relationships then when they are courting you. it's okay, to attract a woman, we have to demonstrate certain elements of our character - things to get you to like us. then, once you do like us, we need to exercise the qualities necessary to maintain a relationship and care for a person. those things aren't mutually exclusive, they're just different. (and when men forget about the courting-version of themselves - who happens to be more playful, teases you all the time, is challenging and difficult to pin-down, does spontaneous crazy things (which women often interpret as danger, romance or fun), creates sexual tension, is more attentive to his appearance - women start complaining about how "where is the man i met 20 years ago? where'd he go? when did you get so... so... boring!")

ok. so i'm un-boring-fying myself. which happens naturally actually. certain things i might find inappropriate to say if i was in a relationship, i can say quite easily:

___- anything look good at the movies?
___- yes: you will. tomorrow night. 7/8ish.

all of which is quite fun. being more assertive than i usually am. pushing every situation/moment/conversation to its climax - which is terrifying. walking across a room more frequently to introduce myself to anyeveryone. being fit enough find myself undressed anytime any place and be able to stand proud.

(of course there's a... counterweight to this. because after the smart-talk, and the overly-brave-touchy-feely on the dance-floor, and the exaggerated gazing into pretty girl's eyes, the mildly disappointing first kisses, you're left sitting at a table with a bunch of people at 4:35am thinking: gee i miss XYZ / gee i wish ABC were here instead / gee i'd rather have stayed home tonight and watched LMN paint her toe-nails).

(4) where?
where do i want to be?
how will i get there?
what will i do there?

over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and.

words to describe ...

2011-11-24T07:59:00.000-08:00

your face is up against mine
and i'm too terrified to speak
__epilogue, the Antlers

untitled by kagogo

__________(rain)

________/ // // / // //
________// // / / _/ //
_________/ // // / //
________/_// / / // /
__________/ / _//

__________*
__________[
__________|

__________(snow falling on a tree)

__________* ____*
__________ *__*

____________*
__
___________ _ *

__________\\ __//
_________ \___/_
____________||
____________||

__________(everything else)

____????

___

the Hague at 6:07am

2011-11-21T13:04:00.000-08:00

talk to me please,
i don't have much to believe in
__Drake

arinaceous seams by amber ortolano

__- it's too cold. damn it's too cold
__- it's cold
__- cold? no_ lady it's ccoolldd.
__- what's the diff -
__- there's a cab, c'mon.

___*___*___*

i expect to see the sun rising when i get home. it's pitch black, there's no sun anywhere. (6:07). disappointed.__ it's soo misty i can't see anything out of my window except for orbs of colour where the streetlights below are. it's an alternate, miniature solar system.

___*___*___*

i've decided this has to be the weekend of my life, because if it's not, i'm through. done. i'm not sure with what, but it will have repercussions. with that in mind, i don't ask myself whether i actually like the song(s). or whether i look stupid. or whether i even know the people i'm with.

___*___*___*

halfway through dinner she says you don't know what zouk is? and i say i don't. she claims i couldn't handle it, and she's probably right, but i inform her if it involves the hips i probably invented it. this is a complete lie. she doesn't flinch, she's standing up in the hall. i'm up right behind her. (the fish on our plates feels neglected) (but the other guests are amused). even the host doesn't mind the interruption to her perfectly civilized dinner with the two idiots grinding their hips into each other with their knees locked together in the hallway no, your hand has to go here, you have to make it hottt she says, i could make it hotter if my hand could move i tell her. she gives me a cheeky look - take it easy tiger. baby steps.

___*___*___*

in the midst of laughing, he tries to kiss her playfully. she laughs and pulls back, and since she's being hugged on either side, she ends up leaning towards me. so i put my lips where my money should be and try my luck and end up somewhere between cheek and lip. to my surprise, and hers, he ends up on the other side. is this actually happeni -

the whole thing evaporates somehow.

i hear a group of people laugh and somehow recognize my voice amongst it. he looks at me and shakes his head. i'm not sure what to make of all this, but i stand besides my laugh and wait to see what happens next. someone from the other side of the room shouts out naughty!. i'm not sure who to.

___*___*___*

my unhappiness i've done my best to hide. no one seems to notice anything.

__- you disappeared again last week.
__- i did?
__- yes.
__- maybe.
__- you did.
__- ___yes. _i did.
__- what do you do when you disappear?
__- prepare myself mentally, physically and spiritually for the next time i'm going to see you.
__- seriously though
__- i take the preparation very seriously.
__- seriously, what do you do when you disappear?

i want to tell her it's exhausting. that i spend it trying to cram my unhappinesses into a box. and then sit on the box waiting for the din of its contents to shush. it's like holding your foot while it cramps, knowing it'll end but still hurting the whole time. i want to tell her that, but no one wants to listen to talk about undefined unhappiness. not even me.

__- truth is i'm a superhero. sometimes, there are cats in trees i need to save. sometimes there are super-villains.
__- you're crazy.
__- on that point, you're quite right.
__- you're mysterious you know that.
__- what? how so?
__- you just are. you're a mystery. no one here knows you. everyone knows you, but no one knows you.
__- no one knows you either. no one knows anyone. we haven't been here long enough for that.
__- that's not true. everyone knows everyone by now. we've all worked each other out and we know what we're dealing with and who we like and who is interested in what. __except you.
__- i wear a tight lycra suit when i am being a superhero.
__- of course you do.

___*___*___*

there's only 5 of us out now. it's a dream-team of psychos.

___*___*___*

this place closes at 5, so it's full of the most eager partygoers, the freaks and anybody else who'd rather not be asleep at this hour. a 40-year-old man in a partially unbuttoned shirt tries 'the robot' with his eyes closed. if i didn't know better i'd say he's tripping. there's a guy from our first bar, where he sat on a stool against the wall staring off into space. i recognize him from his deerhunter hat, but the stare is gone. he jumps around wildly and his eyes are electric. he puts his arm around me and we can-can for half a song, and spend the other half trying to make up our own hi-five. at this point i'm sure he's tripping.

___*___*___*

we'd tried the zouk a few times over the last 4.5 hours in approximately 3 bars. there'd been something in the air this last half-hour, which i couldn't quite place, other than i sensed a heaviness. a delicious tension.

i'd spent the whole evening pretending i loved every song, that i was lost somewhere outside of myself, completely unconscious of myself.

i come up and place my forehead on hers. she's shorter than me so this works. usually i hold it there and stare into her eyes and then move off. it's a tease i suppose. this time i take the opposite approach and move in. put an arm behind her and slide my body between her legs. my eyes are closed so i can sense her more intimately , respond to her movements and pace. my hand holds her back with a firm grip. __it's a grinding motion but our bodies also move in a circle. it's like gyrating and spinning at the same time. with my eyes closed it feels like a two-star dance. in a few minutes i'll be too dizzy to consider stopping. at first... i'm overcome with a tingle and i worry. it commenced with some intensity, more than i had anticipated and i feel a dull erection. i worry she's going to freak, but perhaps she finds it complimentary because she doesn't pull away. in fact, she pushes in harder. when i was 17, the first time i lay atop a girl, clothed but discovering this movement for the first time - that was the last time i felt such a thrill. now i can do it standing. turning.

i prove to her it can be hotter if my hands move. one is on the back of her thigh, under her butt, holding her up so she doesn't fall when she occasionally leans back. the other runs through her hair, down the side of her face, neck, chest, scraping the side of her breast down her side and then onto her back and thrusts her back into me. my face is in her neck, smelling, kissing, biting and breathing her in and back out. hers does the same, a gorgeous installation made of two wrapped figures. the lips resume their wandering and i sense spasms in her. it's hard to summarize it in words. i'm sure it lasted 8 or 9 minutes. building. i wonder what she's going to do with her lips. despite the tension and the charge in the situation, she's behaved herself thus far. there's an inherent danger in this, she has a boyfriend i know, and i wonder if even she anticipated where this has gotten to. i want to let her go, but i notice she move back. she's too involved, i sense she doesn't want it to end. i persist a few moments more, but i release her. more for her sake than mine. i'm confirmed in this when i see her face. she's terrified. i've seen this look before. women are always terrified when they've been seduced, or romanced. women are always terrified when they realise what almost just did could've should've wanted-to has happened. the feeling of 'losing control' is so powerful in women, terrifyingly powerful. she stares at me in shocked awe of what just happened, how the moment came to exist. and in fear of where it wanted to go. the gravity of it leading to a clearly-defined point that we managed to thwart. ___a 10 minute universe.

i give her a cheeky smile to welcome her back into the otherwise-ordinary-here-we-are-stuck world. for the next 30 minutes she'll keep looking at me questioningly. it will eventually make me uncomfortable and i'll go to the bathroom for no reason other than to wait it out, and stand around. and wash my face. and return hoping that that will do the trick.

___*___*___*

__- it's too cold. damn it's too cold
__- it's cold
__- cold? no_ lady it's ccoolldd.
__- what's the diff -
__- there's a cab, c'mon.

the hague at 2:37am

2011-11-15T17:37:00.000-08:00

___may my mind stroll about hungry
___and fearless and thirsty and supple
___and even if it's sunday may i be wrong
___for whenever men are right they are not young

_________ee cummings

saturday afternoon iphotography by me

THINGS - AN I-CAN'T-SLEEP-LIST:

(1) i have found the perfect musical representation of a panic attack / ADD-freakout-what-the-eff-am-i-doing-where-how-what-here-is-this. also it's the highlight of my day. it's 2am, so clearly i mean the highlight of my yesterday, which is still technically attached to my today because i haven't slept yet and so it's just one long freaking won't-ever-end-ness-es thing.

modeselektor & thom yorke - shipwreck <-- click on that to lose your mind.

(2) also on the listening-menu:

__+ the jezebels - dark storm ep
__+ atlas sound - parallax (parallax is my favourite word. so i'm glad the album is actually awesome) (otherwise i'd be upset) (and no one would care and i'd have no one to tell). (thankfully this sad fate has been avoided)
__+ massive attack vs burial - four walls <-- if you have an eargasm listening to that then email me, we're going to be friends.

(3) my list of current interests includes:
- my BMI
- carrot-fit trousers. preferably in wool.
- whether or not to grow a beard. (i'm thinking something like this.) (this one takes up lots of my mental time at the moment)
- yes i did include my body-mass-index on my current interests list.
- why i plan every night to come straight home from work (via a 2 hour gym session) and pray and still somehow manage to evade it even though it's actually the . only . thing i feel like i want to do.
- missing my dad.
- planning on how to escape every single where except for NY. (unless Oxford decides to accept me in the next year or two). (if i decide to apply).
- whether my war criminal will be acquitted or not.

(4) yes i can't sleep. that's obvious. it's not new. it's unexplained. i took a pill last night i don't want to take one tonight because then that would be similar to taking one every night and that's not cool.

(5) say what you will, agree or disagree, you gotta admit the red queen looks like a fascinating read. if i (a) could be bothered to turn on the lights and find my wallet and type out the little numbers and (b) could reconcile how i intend to persuade Qantas to let me take all the extra weight back onto the plane, i'd be ordering it right now.

(6) i use path. i love path. it's like my BFF social-connectivity-thingamajigee right now.

(7) i think it's important to have chocolate chips in my (otherwise rabbit-food) muesli breakfast cereal. waking up to a perfectly nutritious breakfast somehow induces... well it makes me despondent.

(8) it is imperative that i enjoy my weekend. really, i can't stress this point enough. if i have a bad saturday it will be the end of q-as-we-know-him. with this in mind, i'm trying to decide whether to go on a day-trip with others, or just pick a place and gallivant solo-dolo. i'm thinking the latter. additionally it means i can shop. for some reason shopping (and optimizing my BMI) seem to be the only things that make me happy this month.

(9) when people realize that i'm not going home to Aus. for christmas they give me this sad face like it's the end of the world. i don't understand this. i don't like christmas, and australia is 3 days travel from here. plus i still kinda hope it's going to snow lots and lots and i'm going to go get lost and pretend it's in a cloud and fall in love with a tree and kiss its trunk silently and never be seen ever again THE END.

(10) tthhiiss is actually the same recording of Bach's tocatta and fugue in d minor i used to listen to as a kid. it only took 25 years to find it again. (and of course it's Karl Richter <-- which probably means nothing to anyone, but if ever there was Big Pimpin to be had on a pipe-organ this is tha dude that would be doing it)

(11) 3:04 a m .

(12) i'm gonna try sleep. part III now.

the Hague at 4am

2011-11-10T11:49:00.000-08:00

untitled by coolhandluke

maybe you're just lonely she says. maybe she's right. maybe you're right mom, who knows. there isn't an explanation for it, but there's never been an explanation. 'the wave'. that's what we call it in my family: the wave. (is there a wave coming? / has the wave hit? / sorry i'm late, i can't move, i've been stuck under this wave for days)

___*___*___*

she lets me pick the music. she wants gravity repeated. that's not fair i say, these songs don't mean anything to you, i'm the one that has to take a beating when we listen to them.
- what beating?
- a beating.
- from what?
- from history.
- qua?
- my past. my history. i've been carrying these songs with me a long time.
ah. __i see she says.

she starts to describe silentuim (excerpt). in the abstract. completely novel. i smile , silently . sadly , looking at the ceiling. __where are you? she wants to know. 2008, it's... impenetrably dark. 2010, driving a friend back from the train station, she's asleep on my shoulder. ___israel. __brisbane, __staring at four white walls trying to find a window... hell. ___we listen for a minute more, then i add: heaven.

___*___*___*

just make sure you contact me every few days, you understand? i say i do. don't disappear again for two weeks with no word. and if you're feeling... ya know, then you call me okay? i nod into the phone. okayyy? she stresses. yes mom yes mom, of course it makes me feel better just to hear her say these things. good boy she concludes.

___*___*___*

i'd gotten the hint that nothing was going to happen. maybe i was relieved. i listened to the music and was happy in my world and she wrapped me around herself and was happy in hers. the next tune came on, i turned onto my back and she, two-thirds-asleep already, followed her head onto my chest.

if i had to relive the memories in the music, it felt appropriate to relive the memories in my body too. ___i ran my hand through her hair. __my fingers across her cheek. (song after song this is. an hour's worth, maybe more. who knows, it was already that indeterminable time of night. __hand. __hair. __fingers. __cheek.

lost in my own reverie, i kissed her forehead. half hers. i'm certain half was hSara's. __half was oMna's. god knows who else. ___it was so slow, __so perfect.
a minute later , __another.
_____another.

another.

i felt a shudder.

________a minute later , __another.
_____________another.

________another.

little spasms. barely sensible.

for my part, i felt so still. so perfectly, fossil-still.

________________a minute later , __another.
_____________________another.

________________another.

when it happened it was(not) a surprise.

it was just there. a noisy shadow amongst us, within us. between us.

___*___*___*

i've never seen a place so abandoned. the whole way home there isn't a single moving thing. i hear the traffic light change colours. it's loud enough to startle me. anyway i don't stop, there's no need.
i think the wind might be questioning me.

___*___*___*

she's so strange to touch. i'm accustomed to softer women. she... feels like me. i get the strange sensation i am touching a mirror image of my own body. i wonder if she feels the same , i'm not too distracted to ask, but i don't pursue it.

___*___*___*

it's nearly dawn , i lie in bed rubbing my cheeks. trying to decide what to do with my beard. it's past drug-addict-chic. now it just looks... feral. my hair's long too i look like a mountain lion. or a hezbollah operative. maybe i should shave ;

i wonder if it's too soon. __(if it was too soon)

if i'm suddenly younger or older.
if i can suddenly be made younger or older.

___*___*___*

how would you like me? _this makes me smile. _she knows this smile, it's the awkward translation smile. qua? she's confused, she's not sure what she got wrong. _wrapped in a ribbon i finally say. now she's really confused: no, what i mean was - i could - __my hands reach her and again , that noisy shadow

___*___*___*

are you lonely though? she repeats. i'm not sure. i don't feel lonely. but i'm never conscious of it, even when i am i don't know i am.
- what will you do?
- _... _nothing. _wake up. _go to work. _go to gym.
- sounds good.
- it is good.
- sounds good.
- it has to be. _there's no other option really.

__[we both know there is, but we pass over this in silence]

- you call your mother more regularly, you understand?
- yes.
- i'm not kidding.
- yes mama.

___*___*___*

- do you want to hold on to it?
- no no. i won't be around for a few days so take it with you
- okay _[so i grab my beanie from off her head. put it on my own and turn around to descend the stairs]
- hey, no hard feelings right? it's okay?
- [i'm not sure what she's referring to] quuaaa? [i'm mimicking her]
- stop teasing me!
- [descend a few more stairs]
- it's okay?
- c'est bien c'est bien _[descend a few more stairs] _let me know when you're around again
- of course. _good night
- bon soir [from the bottom of the stairs]

___*___*___*

at 7:30 my alarm sounds

the hague at 3am

2011-11-03T19:10:00.000-07:00

untitled by xixi cao

we're supposed to leave but for whatever reason sit on a park bench. i won't lie, there's a cup-cake involved. midnight strolled by just recently. __a few minutes pass.
- i don't wanna get up.
- me neither.

- i don't wanna go home.
- me neither.

___*___*___*

the palace. i hear ducks in the water. the parkway is lined with alternating trees and lightposts.
the odd droplet of rain.
some words.

___*___*___*

when the streets are empty like this i ride my bike down the middle. a showing of sovereignty. an hour ago i had said but this is my world. quite literally, it's mine. it belongs to me and i love it. each and every part of it. she'd given an odd look. and half yours too then.

slice the street in half like an orange.

there's wind but i can't see it in the darkness.

at some point things were wet. there's an echo of wetness, the shadow of wetness lives everywhere, even without the rain.

___*___*___*

when i was 17 i'd met this girl. we were introduced through a mutual friend:
- q, this is eRgani, she likes cheeky trouble-makers.
- ieaRng, this is q, he likes blondes with big boobs.

we spent the whole night talking and kissing.
the sun found us walking by the beach, she collecting shells, me memories.

___*___*___*

leaves drip from the trees, heavy and wet and in the streetlight insincerely auburn. the bike paths and sidewalks are tucked away neatly under a blanket of them. i ride my bike as though over carpet or cloud. the trees opening up in front of me to reveal more blanketed forwardness. i pedal through. through, always through.

___*___*___*

i'd forgotten night has no other side. there is no tomorrow. it is a thing that is, a simple existence. unquestionable and unfathomable in its own honesty.

___*___*___*

she leaves at a large intersection. i go another way. unknown thing in unknowable night.
red brick buildings bundled together tightly. i pass a garbage truck. i ride in the middle on the wrong side of the road. the dotted line is my spine. my arrow.

___*___*___*

in the mirror my muscles quiver with tension and loneliness. the bumps feel hidden away, cast out. the striations of my shoulders, and the cuts in my abdomen call out to hands in the shadowed corners of the room. nothing wearing flesh lives there but me.

moments later i'm dressed , but loneliness is always naked. __always asking to be touched by fellow nakedness.

to lose water in water.
lips in lips.
bodies into bodies.

___*___*___*

it sits like liquid in a cup ,
unmoving pitiless wonder
dreamtime and lovetime:

what i know of it, it taught me itself.
grew into my bones.

there are only brave men now.

.

2011-11-01T17:15:00.000-07:00

emotion: sad
reason: unspecified
physiological response: insomnia
soundtrack: laughing stock by talk talk and Into Clear EP by Glass Vaults
solution: undetermined

thoughts (fragments) at 2:33am

2011-10-26T17:20:00.000-07:00

untitled by meyrem

maybe 2:33am is an okay time to start watching a scary movie. if someone were here i'd ask them for their opinion on this.

___*___*___*

i shave sporadically so that every time i (inadvertently) touch my face i'm surprised by what i feel.

___*___*___*

i worked for 12 hours today. when i left the gates were locked i couldn't get my bike. i walked through my front door i was sure i'd collapse irreparably. that was 5 hours ago. seems the day's not quite ready to fizzle out. this i can live with, i am all patience when it comes to letting the evening play out its fermata.

___*___*___*

she's hinted at it several times now. like i can show you that place, we can get coffee?. or have you heard about the XYZ movie?, looks interesting. i think it's playing at the ABC. i respond each time: sure, sounds great. but don't proceed beyond those three words.

___*___*___*

still alive? That's all the email says: still alive? i think about it a while. it's a relative question i decide. it's a trick question i decide. it's a loaded question i decide. then i undecide everything.

___*___*___*

three obnoxious jokes about the siege of sarajevo into lunch i realise i'm sitting besides someone from sarajevo who once told me the siege was my highschool. i know what he meant, that he was in high-school during the siege years, but the double meaning is too rich. sometimes i wonder if words don't pick us, reward our sincerest feelings with a perfect phrase that catches everything, all of it.

___*___*___*

loving you made me feel young.

___*___*___*

i still don't have a phone. at first it was a matter of finding the time to go and organize one. it's not that anymore. there's something delicious about knowing you can't be reached, that your time is your time and cannot be penetrated. i make plans when i want them, otherwise i'm cut off from the pace of... of... all externalities.

___*___*___*

a winter is slowly reclining around us. when i wake in the mornings it is soo dark.

___*___*___*

every now and then i remember that i'm working at a UN war crimes tribunal. (and i feel proud of my last few years in the purest way). (and i'm confirmed in the only lesson i've managed to extract from my life thus far: striving for excellence makes things happen. i don't know why, or how, but strange things exist in that space where you expend yourself fully for the sake of achieving something greater than you're capable of).

___*___*___*

for the first time since i was a child i'm not consciously terrified of the future.

___*___*___*

it's a feeling i've had a few times now, not so much a feeling as a realization. a little click 'it's time q'. it's time to maybe settle the relationship status definitively. it scares me, it's not a thought i've ever had before - in fact, it goes against everything i'm sure i believe(d) in: that that is something that can't be coaxed or willed. that it just grows from the ground up, twirls around you like ivy. one morning you look up and you're wrapped in a garden made of someone else's life and spirit. that's how i thought of it: as an organic amalgamation of lives and souls. not notnot something that's decided and pursued and ticked off a list.

___*___*___*

loving you gave me gravity - it kept the world in place so it wouldn't all float away from me

___*___*___*

almost every morning i stop at the bakery. i rest my bicycle against a wall and take off my gloves. the same girl serves me but slowly. everything in this country is too slow so i'm always a little flustered. it's early so the croissants are warm, the smell is a lip-kiss from heaven. i put the paper package in my bicycle bag and continue on my way to work, where i stop by the machine and get a 50c latte. that's my name for it - the 1/2 a euro coffee from the machine: i call it a 50c latte. it tastes better than the proper coffee from the cafe i don't know why. i return to my desk and make a mess that's impossible to clean up. crumbs everywhere - desk, clothes, carpet, computer keyboard - everywhere.

when the others arrive i don't stop i smile without removing the pastry from my lips.

i love loving my little rituals. happiness is too hard a thing to strive for, i've given up on it. but these little moments, bricks of happiness, i can build great things with them. (and things that aren't so large and ambitious that they fall on me in the end)

___*___*___*

she walks and brushes up against me occasionally, and i'm in a flirty mood so i take her arm and wrap it around mine, say there you go like i did her a favour. she seems pleased with the situation, we walk on. me kicking the conversation along for her sake, though i'd rather walk on in silence into silence (thinking about this feeling of having someone's arm in mine. this familiar sensation. dull echos.

___*___*___*

at 7pm one of the lawyers walks into the office i share with 5 other interns - they all left hours ago - he leans against the wall and picks up mid-thought: but where it gets tough is how we frame the credibility arguments so that we ... i grab a muesli bar and hand him one which he takes still carrying on right?, because at the end of the day, if we rely on the alternative argument we still need to ...
i feel like an adult. i'm not one of the interns, the interns went home hours ago, i'm one of the grown ups. after 5 it's only the grown ups still working. i'm having a big-kids conversation. By the way, i was thinking today we should file that motion anyway just to get it on the record, doesn't matter what they say, it'll be useful for the appeal i say, he nods true, good point ___it occurs to me, i feel... home - _the farthest most distant version of it i could ever imagine,__ but unmistakable : home.

false alarm.

2011-10-25T14:52:00.000-07:00

i blame the future for what it did to us.__ a tuesday, this could only have happened on a tuesday i thought to myself. __i held my breath when i looked up again i was swimming through europe - just keep walking i remember thinking, just keep walking. and after 10 hours of it i remember masturbating just so i'd fall asleep in a strange bed on the 5th floor of a building in the shadow side of town , when i came down for breakfast there were only meth-heads and a family of scarved muslims and an old woman with no teeth who stared at her toast without touching. __just keep walking i prayed with pills and the silence of speaking to no one walled me in so i promised not to think about you but i willed you into every shadow and i leant against the streetlights while i ate my sandwich-and-coffee lunch but really i was just lonely and i imagined it as a hug __and i slept through the bad dreams but didn't know what to do about all the awake hours so i walked __until somewhere in paris __where my feet had bled through my shoes and i couldn't walk anymore every morning i spent an hour bandaging my feet and still i couldn't stop and wait for you to catch up to me , or regret or guilt or whatever other name the Eumenides take __earthquakes like this can only happen on tuesdays.

today was a wednesday. when i woke up i didn't know where i was, why i was dressing the way i was. when i returned home i looked in the mirror and my eyes were soo red it scared me. i received an email are you still alive?. __after considering it: no. ____whatever i am is another thing, __the other thing. __... no i thought after considering it.

but death is such a constant

the sound of the ocean, __or the violins in my neck

gravity, memory, the whole sky is your big blue eye sitting on my shoulder - all these things i cannot escape, even if i wanted to.

___*___*___*

ok. this is all rubbish. i can't write about this all yet. i thought it was there, but it's not.

where the wild things are

2011-10-20T14:04:00.000-07:00

untitled by coolhandluke

here the song is played with no instruments. it's windy so i don't hear so well.

what i had known about myself grew up and wished me well and walked away.

i'd have stayed up late, waiting for it if i could.

only i wouldn't have known i was waiting. i wouldn't have known what i was doing,

other than balancing seconds of night on my forehead and measuring gradations of light.

what i knew of sadness was an ocean. a desert. an entire nightsky - a whole universe to float in.

but now just this muffled song i can't make out. like a mild forgetfulness,

or the need to scratch but not knowing where. __(not knowing where was always my problem)

these propositions that follow on from each other: like night and wings , or

lust from out of loneliness , or my current predicament of white upon white upon white.

__my clothes smell funny. all of them, i consider burning all my shirts until i realise maybe

i smell like a roommate of myself. a stranger i don't remember welcoming , a proposition

that followed from something else, like shadow or dreamscape or piano wood.

anyway, maybe it's him and he knows no sadness or happiness, but lives in my tshirts

so that they smell like a blanket-apology of okayness.

__but after the sadness there was love. (if you can even call it that - for a change it was soo kind to me).

if ever there was a couplet of years i'd be happy to be trapped in maybe it was those , huddled

in your chest until you said i thought the girl gets to sleep on the boy's chest? and i mumbled

a dreamsound from a distant contentment even now i can't remember the shape of.

and after the pleasantness of love there's this... this... damned song. this uninteresting thing

i am stuck with. __the mornings are disappointing. maybe that's all there is to say about it.

__granted: it was a sadness that kept getting stuck in my tie. but what i remember of it

it was real. personalized and dedicated just to me. an emotion to call my own that i had on a leash

(that had me on a leash) and together we'd tug and pull across parks and sundays.

but now there is this synthetic cake of pills and forgetfulness and dull memory of geometric forms

and not a word of any of it makes any sense.

__by 2pm i'm five coffees into my day and still closer to sleep than the other thing.

somewhere around here i buried the things i didn't know how to hug anymore. one day,

when they excavate my remains they'll find the diamonds you hid there.

when you laughed i sucked it in and the weight of them and the pressure of them turned my

bones into jewels. __have my femur, i wish i could do something nice for you.

(she wore my ring so proudly).

__all i want are redder eyes and the satisfaction that comes with self-sabotage.

it's winter in europe. when my head gets too heavy it's hard to move. the nights elongate and

memories grow fangs. (yesterday is where i hide my black words).

where i find .

(why does recovery move at the pace of geology?) maybe the trick is to do laundry more often.

wash the you and the chemicals out of my clothes. armed with just myself i'd lose any card game.

i wish i understood it sooner my mother says. it's in your genes, poor you. can't escape it!

a starless night i can't escape or the drone of the fuzzy song.

when i land , when i land , when i land:

if you are my friend, hold my hand so i don't float away again.

__the memory of happiness is a costly sentiment. (maybe i was rich before, but when i land my

pockets will be licked clean). so spare a penny for the old guy so

where i find .

when i land .

w h a t ' s h a p p e n i n g n o w h e r e

2011-10-14T14:37:00.000-07:00

untitled by amber ortolano

my body caved in today. gave up. i've been feeling 'odd' for a few days and i couldn't place it. i took a break from gym, made an effort to eat more.

___*___*___*

there's a lot of talking. you hear people in the next office laughing all day. walking in and out of mine. they're confused now that i've stopped looking up from my desk to acknowledge them.
- wow, you work hard.
- always.
- good for you.
- i'm trying to keep up with the genocidists. they work really hard.

(this is a lie. i'm just taking as many random turns as i can hoping to get lost in something).

___*___*___*

when i leave at 7pm my body hurts and i want to throw up.

i can't keep the bicycle steady.

just looking at the weights in the gym makes me pant heavily, and i can't understand my heart rate.

___*___*___*

MECHANISMS I'VE ENTHUSIASTICALLY ADOPTED/ATTEMPTED TO HELP ME DEAL WITH RECENT 'STUFF', A LIST:

- walking without rest from wake up to sleep now in paris
- pills x2, twice a day, without fail, without question
- read --> understand --> confirm --> WORK
- keep working. from 8 till 6:30
- then gym
- not write
- under no circumstances listen to: Hospice by the Antlers, For Emma, Forever Ago by Bon Iver, High Violet by the National, Dark Storm EP by the Jezzebels

___*___*___*

drug overload. work overload.

i'm going to stop both for the weekend and let my body deal with it. (god help me)

i expect spasms of fatigue and sadness. so to offset that i'm planning a shopping expedition in Amsterdam for tomorrow and pjs-and-movie-sunday. i also expect to watch this about 400 times between now and monday.

one,
two,
here goes...

notapoem.

2011-10-14T13:45:00.000-07:00

surprise party by pinkyhonor

yesterday's zombie.

i have all the lights on, there's not a shadow amongst them to hold out its hand

__(from my white desk i would watch you sleep , turn my music off at 4am to hear you better ,

your breath: the night's ocean )

and you'd smile at me at 9 when you woke up.

this bike makes an odd noise , the cold wind hurts my neck.

at least i've forgotten about my hands.

someday i'll find this dream again, hug it tenderly , and remember what love is to hold.

there's morning, and afternoon, and then night. __this much i know.

sometimes there's more than that.

__(around me people dance. i'm not sure what i'm supposed to do. one body moving alone
makes little sense. (how these stars burn so far away from each other. (not a shadow amongst them - their hands can't reach

and then night and then a heavierest blanket that comes after ,

i thought maybe a pot-plant but its breaths sound wrong and its skin doesn't glow like yours.

the treadmill and i disagree about a few things and part ways early.

someone's tied strings to my bike pedals so i drag two and a half happy years behind me as i try and get home.

__the bike makes an odd noise , the cold wind hurts my neck.

i haven't forgotten what happiness feels like. _(white light). _(so vulnerable__,
_______________________________________ ___the hush of sunrise could scare it away)

an echo of it is trapped, i hear it bouncing around like warm summertime streets after dark.

someone asks me so, what brings you here? and i say that i was in a dream once but got lost. other than that, i don't know.
__she doesn't understand and i don't explain.

i hesitate to turn the lights off. i let each day linger as long as i can hold it.
when i'm alone with it - with silence and with night -

when i'm alone ...

i'm alone.

i stack my logic back up on the shelf , and measure its corners for right-angles ,

in my underwear dance slowly staring at nothing in the mirror listening to my wake-up alarm,

waiting to be overtaken by the treadmill and restless fridays i hope to drop and see crawl away splintered and sad never to be remembered.

in vietnam, when we were sick, and i was hot and you couldn't eat - only hot water with ginger and honey,

i'm terrified of airplanes now. did you know that?, have you heard?

can't face the departure board without becoming panic stricken. when i pay for my ticket i know i'll pay.

it's a high price to be a man nowadays.

(and who knows if you ever get the genuine thing).

i tell her i got lost in my happiness and ended up here. __she doesn't understand.

the bike leans awkwardly against the stairwell and i stumble up the stairs nauseous.

on wednesdays i'd feel like this and we'd hide in your room till i stopped shaking
and convulsing through the night.

(any minute now i'll land and then i'll work out where i am)

any minute now.

every time i divide i'm left with a remainder that chases me.

yesterday's tulip yesterday's zombie.

at least i've forgotten my hands.

someday i'll find this dream again, hug it tenderly , and remember what love is to hold.

there's morning, and afternoon, and then night. __this much i know.

playlist

2011-10-09T11:51:00.000-07:00

+ burial & four tet & thom yorke - mirror
+ how to dress well - just once EP
+ rick ross - i'm not a star
+ holy other - with u EP
+ glass vaults - glass EP
+ jamie xx - FACT 282 podcast mix

can_not con_troll, must_can't_stoppp ... wallowing. [run]

2011-10-09T09:23:00.000-07:00

it rains without warning. i'm already shaky on my bike, now my glasses are covered in droplets and i have to tip my head to see anything. i'm soaked in seconds and suddenly the wind as i propel myself forward hurts, stings even. cars spray hello to me with their tires as they pass. it's immediately darker.

i crack open a smile on my face. hello life. i've missed you.

___*___*___*

it's a strange feeling to know, had i not taken my pills this morning, i'd have spent the day in my room measuring the contours of a sadness i couldn't explain, understand or fathom. since i missed my afternoon dose, i can feel it climbing out of its well now. it's such an odd feeling. i can sense my brain's chemicals ebb and flow, a little this way, then back that way. a neuron war.

finally, as i walk into my house (it being too late to take my dose now) i ... actually screw it i'll take half. (i don't like where tonight's going)

___[goes] ___--> ___[returns]

___*___*___*

FEARS I AM TOO TERRIFIED TO SPEAK OUT LOUD, A LIST:

- i am too far gone to be lovable, or loved.

- i am not too far gone to be lovable, or loved - but i will feel like i am and therefore sabotage all opportunities to love and be loved

- i will spend the rest of my life wrestling with my sadnesses that i might as well name since they visit for tea so often

- mediocre. mediocre. mediocre. mediocre.

- i am not growing old. i am old.

___*___*___*

one day we'll all tire of this.

___*___*___*

i'm not allowed to think about you. i decided that was a good mechanism to handle myself. to keep me locked onto the train tracks so i could stay the course.

somewhere inside me there's a room full of origami swans where i've hidden you. and the whole of Vietnam. and two weeks worth of Adelaide. and our first coffee at 2am. and whatever i might think,

your eyes
the sky
half the blood in my heart -

is all the same colour. blue.

and the sky here is perfectly grey, which means every tree-branch and church spire and electric line is the black of your hair.

and my pills eat my loneliness like cookies. insatiable for it. but every now and then, when there's a crack of clarity in the otherwise drugged haze i keep myself in, when warmth creeps into my fingers (the pills make me cold. peripheral-vasoconstriction) ...

i'm not sure what the word is for emotions anymore. for wanting things. i've been excluding myself from those things. from wanting. from emoting. it's... a mechanism. to handle myself. that's why it's difficult to write. to describe. i could never understand, but i used to be able to describe things pretty well. i can't do that anymore either.

foggy glass.
another shadowed sunday,
with wet trees
and when the streetlights come on
everything will be toxic yellow outside my window.

and i'll consider the silence.
count the words i said today, or remember saying.

___*___*___*

one day i'll have to pay for all this.
the skin i've borrowed and the eyes that were loaned to me.
these hours i've amassed or squandered.
i'll return with pockets empty but for lint, a few receipts, chips of paint off a red
heart i've banged up a few times and

who knows what the total'll come to.

___*___*___*

dear god,
remember i have tried to be a man.
and have tried to divine what that means.

but again i have been defeated by sunday. by love. (once every 4 years). by the rain and the colour blue.

by distance and time. and the distance between time(s) which i cannot count.

and by my hair which i cannot save. and my skin which sags now.

next spring they'll come looking for me in my silence, and find me frozen.

remember, dear god.
you can't fail if you didn't try.

nocturne (4:38am)

2011-10-01T19:17:00.000-07:00

PEOPLE I AM ADMIRING/LOVING TONIGHT (AND WHY), A LIST:

+ Bill Cunningham --> because he's sweeter than babycakes. just watch Bill Cunningham NY

+ Anselm Keifer --> he was the highlight of another art gallery today. no image will ever convey the depth and size and gravity of his images. he's totally my guy.

+ Adele --> seriously, watch it again. she's so young to be this elegant ,

+ Ryan Gosling --> i listened to Dead Man's Bones today. 'nuff said.

___*___*___*

earlier, in the shower, i tried to remember
what sort of man i wanted to be.

i wonder if i'll ever get there.
moreso if i'll ever remember.

___*___*___*

a beautiful girl smiled at me today.
the first in weeks.
maybe. ___the first i've noticed.

amazing how quickly the ghosts vanish.

___*___*___*

my sister tells me i'll be successful,
my mother says i already am.

i just want my laundry to dry.

___*___*___*

night accommodates me.
hospitable.
shares her blanket with me.

waits for me to feel my falling.
or land.
whichever comes first.

nocturne (4:16am)

2011-09-30T19:16:00.000-07:00

untitled by lauren treece

for the third time this week i've missed out on bon iver tickets.

___*___*___*

i can't sleep. __or won't.

wait (ing) for the rest of it.

any morning now i'll wake up to myself.

___*___*___*

the 4ams are too existential. ___quite contrived really.

i have no deep answers though. _am not even that concerned.

my energy i invest in forgetting._ avoiding.

i wish i could walk into snow.

___(when i went out to run the moon was red.

___till half an hour ago i could hear people howling at friday night)

___*___*___*

my energy i invest in being eroded.

any morning now i'll be smoothed-over.

lost again and founder than ever at the same time (depending on where you look from).

___*___*___*

it occurs to me i'm drained. __maybe.

no motivation. __no interest. __not much happy or sad.

quite inert really.

it's a funny feeling - approximated by dizziness , floating with nothing to hold.

___*___*___*

wherever i land i must remember to grow roots.

what i have failed as a man i can remedy as a sunflower.

___*___*___*

for two years i never stumbled across flowers to bring you, and never sunflowers.

now every corner is sunflowered._ in the grass. __there are stalls selling them everywhere.

i feel emasculated when i see them. __they scratch.

___*___*___*

this must be the final chapter of my youth.

it's about time now , there are too many pages already.

all our patience has dwindled.

___*___*___*

any morning now.

a knee mourning gnaw.

(these sounds make no sense anymore)

___*___*___*

madam, excuse me. i am lost. can you help me escape the sunflowers?

girl with a pearl earing

2011-09-30T09:46:00.001-07:00

Girl with a Pearl Earring by Vermeer

From time to time, when you enter a room, your eyes immediately settle on a particular individual. For whatever reason, they're fascinating, or beautiful - whatever. The point is they are arresting. Art is much the same. When you enter certain gallery-rooms, there'll be one painting out of all the others that immediately calls you. Not necessarily the most 'famous' image, but... an image that speaks directly to you. It's like there's nothing else in the room. Often I'm surprised by the images that manage it. (eg Soutine's le groom beat a bunch of Picasso's recently.)

Today I spent a good hour with this young lady. In all honesty I hadn't gone to see her. I'd gone to see Rembrandt, but I knew she'd be there. I walked into the last room, and there she was, sitting besides a very impressive Dali that I barely noticed was there.

In lots of ways she's comparable to the Mona Lisa. They're about the same size. They're both quite detailed and completely vague. Both their eyes follow you around the room. But there's something about her because of her look. It might be a masculine thing that the look resonates so strongly. The slightly open, moist lips, the vulnerable eyes - something that straddles the erotic/submissive/paternal divide. Indeed it's hard to estimate her age. But it's not a take-your-eyes-off-me-if-you-can morality exercise (eg almost any of Balthus's images). You don't feel guilty looking at her, because you love her. She looks (at me at least) the way women who love(d) me have looked at me. At least... I think so. It's hard to remember. Maybe it's a look i hope women who love me will use. It's hard to say, but it's a look that registers simultaneously on several octaves (erotic through to paternal).

It's like that when you love someone though. Completely blacked out - there's nothing but them. That I remember. You don't notice others around you, you don't notice streetlights and wallpaper. It's just a face etched into your memory. It's a glorious thing actually. I have a few such images tucked into my ventricles that I cherish. If you split me down to my atoms they'd still remember those few moments where the world disappeared and all i saw was your lips in the motionless car I couldn't get out of. (for example).

There's a lot to it I guess.

A group of American high-school children came through. None of them recognised the image. The tourguide was shocked. You've never seen the movie? They hadn't. I felt a little old. He was a wonderful guide. Taking their (almost shocking ignorance) and trying to stimulate the way they looked at the image. Yes, but every image in this room has shadows, why is this image so valuable? One student offered: cause she's pretty. He nodded, and tried another approach. Maybe they're too young still to have given/received this look. I've known the painting a long while and never really... connected with it.

Some of the children lingered on, while others moved off to look at other things. Eventually they all left and I was alone in staring at her.

When I walked down the stairs to leave I felt like I'd broken someone's heart. That's been happening a bit lately so I'm a bit hyper-sensitive to it.

Here, maybe my friend can explain it better:

___For hearts so touch'd, so pierc'd, so lost as mine.
___Ere such a soul regains its peaceful state,
___How often must it love, how often hate!
___How often hope, despair, resent, regret,
___Conceal, disdain — do all things but forget.
___But let Heav'n seize it, all at once 'tis fir'd;
___Not touch'd, but rapt; not waken'd, but inspir'd!
___Oh come! oh teach me nature to subdue,
___Renounce my love, my life, myself — and you.

thoughts (fragments)

2011-09-28T10:44:00.000-07:00

untitled by helen korpak

who is this man who isn't this man without you.

___*___*___*

it's sunny and we sit and i don't want to leave so i order another coffee and people walk to and fro. and the people besides me, friends as of 4 hours ago (who will disappear again in 20 more), talk about music and television. my feet are bruised beyond recognition so i'm thankful to be sitting. (other things are bruised too, so i'm thankful to be partially distracted by the discursive conversation).

___*___*___*

the music i am listening to you gave to me. my toothbrush too. look at her, her dress, we spoke about that colour once remember? and here, this store, you'd like this one, but not the other. [ad nauseum].

___*___*___*

this man is too old. when we are not in love we are always too old. when we are most recently out of love we are oldest.
___it's the active disengagement that does it. the conscious need to be distant from caring for another person and lust and hopes and dreams that once were shared and now must be redefined. all this is unnatural. inhuman. and so we grow old while we do it. later, when we've polished the memory of it all into a beautiful, distant dream that was perfect beyond recognition we return again, with the full force of youth and wanting and desire and so we are young without restraint.

(she always said to me: remember, promise me you'll remember: you are young. you are soo young).

___*___*___*

and for the third time this decade i found myself wandering around europe, broken-hearted and lost and loster and getting no closer to being anything but. ___watching films in strange cinemas to pass the time and walking till i lost count of bricks.

i asked matisse for help, and he had some things to say.

he said: when it's real the brush-strokes are soo perfectly placed. the colours so much more alive. but you must see it for real, in the flesh. you must stand face to face with me and then you understand. (and i nodded)

___*___*___*

one day i will pay for who i was, who i am. what i decided.

i wonder if i can afford it.

no one thinks they're a bad person. i wonder if i actually am.

___*___*___*

i come out of the shower and think f&ck it and play an old song that used to make me dance. i play it louder than i should and i play it thus defiantly. then lost for a moment, dizzy from the effects of my pills taking effect i shake from the hips and then from the shoulders and i dance. drop my towel and in my underwear dance like i did 8 years ago when i first heard it.

and for a few moments... maybe my body overtook my mind in youth. (rather than the reverse).

___*___*___*

my next-room-neighbour is inclined to show me around town. i don't have the spirit to keep up conversation, but i go because it's useful to learn what i can. also it's important to keep active. (activity is life. activity is life. activity is life). and we walk around. and he points out supermarkets. the better electronic shop. the better 'lunch places'. ( he calls the cafes the 'lunch places').

i'm between doses so by the end of our walk i'm a little dizzy and i hear her voice behind every sunstreak and i want to talk to her and i promised her i wouldn't and so i ask my tour guide more questions as enthusiastically as i can: what's that building? what's one? what's this thing about? where do you park your bike? oh really. that's interesting.

___*___*___*

at the supermarket. i have my cereal, some yogurt. a frozen pizza. about all i need. i take a can of dr pepper just because i deserve a treat. i see the alcohol and i stand in front of it. take about 8 minutes to stare at a bottle of rum and think whether it's a good idea. i can't decide. so i walk away. i'm committed to doing this thing the right way, for once. for once being graceful in my sadness. the way sick people want to show their loved ones how hard they're trying, how hard they're fighting to get well. and how students with poor grades want to show their teachers and parents how hard they're trying to do better. look, friends, loved ones, look how much better i am this time than the last! look at how functional i am! look at how centred and active and nice i am being!

i really am trying.

but for two years i knew happiness in your shadow. with your shadow as my blanket. for two years every memory i have is a tangent to you. such beautiful memories, the most wonderful years i've ever had.

i am, really trying.

___*___*___*

i didn't know what sort of clothes i'd need here. so i've brought a little bit of everything. very formal. less formal, but still in the shirt/khaki range. some gym clothes. some sleep clothes. and a few more casual things. in sum: i don't have enough clothes for any sort of 'look'. it seems i'm endlessly rummaging through my bag trying to make an outfit work and none of them do. i can't understand why, they should work. but they don't.

where's ash when you need a stylist / shopping buddy. since the hipsters have totally appropriated my look, i've been trying to re-assert myself. it's been difficult. i've spent countless hours in paris trying to work out how they did what they did. in conclusion: i'm still not sure.

(if you know of any decent style blogs let me know. don't send anything i'd already know about - but if you have some gems stashed away for a fashion-crises, now's the time to bring it forth m'friends).

___*___*___*

a sunday smile by beirut is still the perfect song i think at mixing the happiness of life with the sadness. the little miss sunshine soundtrack (and film) manages to perfect it for a whole soundtrack (film) but... if you only have 3 minutes to spare... then this is the song.

one day i'll ask god why even in my happiest moments, my most triumphant moments i still had such a reserve of residual sadness that i could never surmount.

but there you go. i have a stock answer for when my mom asks me how i'm doing: good days and bad days mama. she seems to understand that.

it's nice to feel understood. a sunday smile understands me perfectly.

___*___*___*

i got an email today from the Court of Appeal. do you know how cool it is to receive emails from the Court of Appeal (or its President directly in your gmail?).

anyway. i better find me a wednesday smile and a scanner so i can get this thing signed.

no-pill day

2011-09-26T13:30:00.000-07:00

'running up that hill' by my iphone

i don't know why it feels like home, i haven't even slept a single night there but i'm more happy to see it than i've been happy to see anything. just the silence of it. the hostel bunk-beds and bed-mites and cramped showers were starting to get to me. the swell of social interaction.

___*___*___*

i barely make it in the door. i've spent nearly 30Eur on band-aids and associated goods this week. i've been stumbling around for days, wincing with each step.

___*___*___*

no-pill days are never a good idea. but they are a necessary evil. i've listened to Hospice about 4 times and Bon Iver about 3. when i'm not listening i mumble to myself:

___But we'll make only quick decisions
___And you'll just keep me in the waiting room
___And all the while I'll know we're f&cked
___And not getting unf&cked soon

Which for once isn't actually how i feel. (though this comes close, especially the little story in the introduction <-- g'damn this girl can sing) (i love a little story). (love is always a little story. sometimes a big story, but it's always reducible to some... little essence you can carry around with you in the wrinkles of your face).

___*___*___*

as i get older i come to appreciate more and more that delicious 'entanglement' that love brings. having someone weaved throughout your entire life - one memory leading into another, reminder text-messages, little gifts, quiet sundays, everything being somehow related back to one person (and them to you). it's not a constant presence, that's what i like about it. it's (literally) an entanglement. it's just streaks of their colour here and there throughout your day. when you're alone it's like a silent companion. and then you come home and argue about mixed-berry muffins and she likes to watch television in bed and you like to read but you both know you'll be asleep in her lap in 3 minutes flat and still every morning you see she bothered to put the bookmark back to the right spot.

entanglement.

(but love is a dangerous pass-time. best left to the young. i won't last another of these)

___*___*___*

the Matisse almost made me cry. i don't know why, paintings don't often do that to me. i'm always very moved by the virgin on the rocks, and i can never explain why. maybe it's the ambiguity in it that does it. but, Matisse. in person it makes such perfect sense when you see them. the colours and the shapes.

and just when my breathing returned to normal, i turned a corner and saw Alice. Balthus is very dear to me. when i was younger i felt close to him because of his risque, mischievous streak. his pictures always made you feel guilty for feeling aroused. that's basically what he does: he arouses you with things that you (morally) feel you shouldn't be aroused by (see eg). but they are electric. i mean it. quite unlike anything you'll see. they rush through you and make you feel wild and young and perverted and old and amazing and so completely alive. i spent 30 minutes with Alice.

___*___*___*

while i eat (yet another) baguette with 'jambon' (ham) i watch two junkies at play. one is wearing an unbuttoned puffy-vest with his hairless chest exposed. the other is shirtless altogether. one is in yellow, the other blue. they hug and hold each other close. then, they slide their arms together ('entanglement') and begin dancing in circles - kicking out their legs every so often. they erupt into laughter and run together from trash can to trash can howling and throwing things out and laughing outrageously. shoppers pass them quickly as possible. the people sitting out the front of the gallery stare at them exclusively.

hours later when i come out i find them, having grown tired, asleep in each others' arms on the stone-paved courtyard of the centre pompidou. amongst 16 year old girls tanning their legs and a young busker playing (appropriately) Brahms's Hungarian dances.

___*___*___*

mom reminds me this is actually the best time of my life, and that i should not forget that.

i thank her for her reminder.

___*___*___*

but the myth has started to take shape. all women leave a mythology behind them. in their shadow my memories of them grow and bleed and live and little scraps take on new(est) meanings. anessVa it was: cats, green eyes, escape into the desert. _ _ _ _ _ was: autumn, silhouetted shapes against white skies, gold eyes, creased hands.

the new myths are forming. i sense them. there's a gravity to certain memories. they're provoked too often.

___*___*___*

As the song goes

___You know how time flies
___Only yesterday was the time of our lives

(like i said, she really sing). ___

why i have not / can not write

2011-09-21T12:30:00.000-07:00

i can't remember the last time i got on a plane and didn't feel sad. makes sense though - the other side of every 'coming' is a 'going' or a 'leaving'.

___*___*___*

formally, i'm not permitted to write think indulge reminisce... (but because you asked, it being an anniversary of sorts and all)

pills and walk. i'm on a strict diet: pills and walks.

___*___*___*

i dropped a bag in an attic somewhere in Den Haag (the Hague).

Bruges was exactly what you expect it to be. lifted out of a fairytale and magic.

Anwerp was trendy and i slept in a strange room in a hostel full of shady characters from a methamphetamine script in a dark back-alley of the orthodox jewish district. two days later i'm covered in red dots but that could be from anything.

___*___*___*

a fortnight before i left it occured to her i didn't have a chance in hell of looking after myself and she set about putting together a toiletry bag. for me. it was a gift but it was too sweet and now every time i shower or brush my teeth or need a band aid i get very sad , or feel guilty , or ... in any case, it's a something.

___*___*___*

they tell me it's an hour away. great i respond, i'll walk. they think i've misunderstood - an hour each way they clarify. i nod. that's two hours i don't need to worry about.

i'm covered in sweat and goad myself to walk faster, faster, i don't know why though. i pant and stop occasionally to check the map. i don't care where i am / going, but it's better to have some vague conception of where you are on the map.

every step i notice a black ink stain on my jeans from where my pen leaked on the flight to sydney. you calmed me down, kept me calm before my interviews. i bought you flowers.

___*___*___*

and when we get home, you said it's been a really wonderful three weeks, q. thanks for staying with me. i turn to stone every time i hear you say it.

___*___*___*

i get back to my room, shower, and find myself having a conversation. my first in about 8 days. it sounds weird to hear my voice out loud.

the next day my feet hurt soo much i have to sit in each gallery of the musee d'orsay and look by twisting my neck.

___*___*___*

i'm not allowed to be sad. q. Q!, you're not allowed to be sad. you have everything, every thing. you never even thought you could be where you are today. didn't dare to hope for it. now you're there. you made it, you're not a loser - for the first time in a decade there's a tangible future that exists.

i'm not excited. i feel guilty about that.

i'm not allowed to not be excited - i have to be gracious, and humble. i'm not allowed to be sad.

___*___*___*

they asked Shostakovich why the end of his 5th symphony ends on such a victorious note. he said to them it's irony. they asked what he meant. he said it's like someone beating you with a stick saying be happy! be happy! and you get up from the dust and mumble to yourself i'm happy, i'm happy as you limp away.

___*___*___*

i take my pills immediately when i wake up. before i have time to think anything.

then i walk. and walk.
__________________(and try to walk out of your shadow where i was happy

__________________but had to leave

__________________but i can't remember why. )

but it's ok. ___these are the things we don't talk think write about.

age.

2011-08-01T00:28:00.000-07:00

Oceanside Wildflowers by sMacshot

it is important that i recall what enchantment feels like.
the mermaids are not singing to me.
my body has lost its focus and occasionally merges with couches and table-legs and
twice last week it thought it was a bedsheet.

creative as the ocean, tumbling and spasming to spit something out, and always coming up with chipped fragments of itself.
___the aquatic-engine and i are getting tired ,

sleep is out of the question.

i can stare at wood for hours, waiting for , contemplating some excitement, mentally scraping
stones together hoping for a spark

these thoughts are leaves in a stagnant river.
i can smell them from here.

what do i do? what do i do while i wait to be seduced by women's ankles and baby's
miraculous cheeks and another Bach cantata and the summer-glare-red of 1967 Mustangs parked in the street?

i get the feeling we're all screwed without knowing why or where from and more dangerously
i get the feeling i don't care a bit not in the slightest ,
i get the feeling of a happiness-variant i don't know the name of

that sits in the waiting rooms of hospitals and while people laugh at me waits patiently
and when i fail forgets to mourn

and tackles day after day by waking up. __just that much. __(tells me that's enough.

thoughtlessly walks straight where once-upon-a i'd thoughtfully get lost in circles

does what's asked of it without requiring anything more than the liberty to grunt,
when it's too much sits in the bathroom with the fan on and stares at the moldy wall

waiting for decisions to pick him

looking under car-seats and twenty-year-olds for first kisses with tulips and

god damn when falls over it hurts in a new way , these bones are no longer made for breaking
all the while: the knived words of youth are mostly milk now,
except for when they're not.

my loves fall to marriage and distance like flower petals you lose track of when they slip from your fingers after having rubbed their soft eyelids and the backs of their ears and the napes of their necks for so long ,
___the smell of you my love...

more and more words are unnecessary, it is a matter of what you know and more of what you don't.

the beginnings of all these motions i can see now , nestled safely (now) in my years-ago , locked away where i can't tamper with them anymore but merely watch the trains come past and think whether it's time i stepped on. or off.

it's ok when you wake me. _i like to find your body again and again , each time with the room a different colour ,
a new miracle between our aged kisses ; where your hand touched me i've grown flowers
but the rest is moss now

when they bury me i'll spit out three crab legs and some shells and gasp for air as i ebb a step back

i am finding life easier to bear but myself more and more anomalous

how blurry have the shadows become

the hair i have lost has borne no children

the mermaids are hushed , the waves try for sapphires and land on seaweed that'll be cracked by noon.

shhh, my love, look at this, how this room has changed, how we sit now so new amongst this
weatheredness

(look my love, how weathered we sit amongst this newness)

nothingnothingnothingnothingnothingnothingnothing

2011-07-30T01:14:00.000-07:00

untitled by Mel Ruiz Morena

it's times like these i watch movies. one , two a night.

i can't think - i don't have a thought in me.

can't read. am not happy or sad or anything very much one way or another.

and usually , i have very little to say.

MOVIES I HAVE WATCHED RECENTLY, A LIST:

- a single man
- harry potter and the deathly hallows pt 2
- an education
- easy a
- friends with benefits
- genius within: the inner life of glenn gould
- get low
- captain america
- monsters
- bad teacher
- morning glory
- paranormal activity 2
- the troll hunter
- sucker punch
- wonder boya
- unforgiven
- the wrestler
- uncle boonmee who can recall his past lives

and now.
i'm going to watch another.

Europe, it's time we had a chat...

2011-07-27T23:38:00.000-07:00

glam canyon

it occurs to me, i'm going to be in europe for some months. soon. this is exciting, i've been wanting an opportunity to live in europe for ages.

most responsible people would start to prepare for their european adventures by saving. this is important because the Hague (den Haag if you want to be culturally snobby) is a notoriously expensive place to live. accommodation is expensive, food is expensive, life is expensive. ___i decided it made more sense to begin preparing for europe by purchasing a kick-ass psuedo-briefcase from a little known leather maker because it was awesome and if there's one thing i need more of in my life it's exactly that: awesome. (i'm not going to say anymore about the briefcase because i don't want to steal too much more of Ash's thunder - but if you need to appropriate someone's style, it really out to be Ashley's). (i will say:

).

THINGS I PLAN ON DOING WHILE IN EUROPE; A LIST:

(1) not riding bikes, g'dammit i hate bikes

(2) feeling short

(3) growing one of those amazing uber-kool beards but with an even more kool Hezbollah twist cause i've got those middle east genes that make everything look totally war-on-terror

(4) meeting strange new people and raiding their itunes for strange new music made by people i've never heard of while arguing about John Locke over coffee and thrift-store shopping that turns into impromptu flower picking kissing showering before falling asleep in a different city that's only 20 minutes away by train

(5) rolling my pants up even higher

(6) refashioning myself into a newer betterer q

(7) sitting alone in a darkened room listening to contemplative music and drinking tea to celebrate my birthday

(8) kissing every girl with a beautiful accent. not really. GF would kill me. so: thinking about kissing every girl with a beautiful accent

(9) dancing around in my underwear in my little overpriced living space listening to Beirut on my headphones fantasizing about never going back (ever) (ever) (ever) (EVER)

(10) writing

(11) buying more cool stuff than i can afford (i'm looking at you Filippa K)

(12) getting depressed for reasons i don't understand but i manage it everywhere i go so i've stopped demanding reasons

(13) hopefully ending up naked in natural salt water boiling baths in towns i can't spell or pronounce the names of with people i met the day before when i caught the wrong bus and got lost

(14) frequently straddling the : i'm disappointed in you vs i'm liberating myself divide

(15) walking in snow and listening to the crunch it makes underfoot ; delighting with each step the way you do when you crush autumn leaves

(16) probably none of the above because i'll be working 17 hours a day to put genocidists behind bars and that's kinda important to me. and by 'kinda' i mean it's worth it to me enough to work 17 hours a day for

what is this

2011-07-27T00:34:00.000-07:00

untitled by helen korpak

what?___what is this?
i'm thankful when no one answers ,
when no one comes.

i wake at 5 it's still dark. i think it's raining but soon understand the neighbour's left his garden fountain on through the night.
a few hours later i wake again , find myself half on the couch in grey socks and black midway briefs , a grey tshirt and a
long cardigan still draped around me.
i leave a note but don't leave. i fold the blanket i borrowed and sit back on the couch staring at myself in the television. ___listen to the fountain.

___*___*___*

sometimes, when Ashtree drives past Santa Monica and Pontius she sends me photos of the dusty starbucks on the corner.
___there's a hidden world on that corner it's important i don't forget , she sees to it i don't.
__you need your friends to remind you of magic and shooting stars and first kisses.

when i get to the corner i'm a little sweaty and the roads are so busy and noisy i step inside without considering it sentimentally ;
so it hits me hard.
suddenly.

i actually get nervous.___ start staring around wildly swimming across the channel between us
my hand shakes a little but i order easily enough.
___sit outside and think about the days i would arrive here at 4am and open the doors and turn on the lights. _with Carla. _she had a little son she did the morning shift and still had time to take care of him throughout the day. she went to community college in her spare time. she joked with me before the sun came up , i admired her immeasurably as that breed of woman that amazes you with its strength and joy and the immensity of its power. ___(in broken man-glish i once attempted to tell her.

___*___*___*

by 5pm i've had a moderate size panic attack regarding just about every thing that's worth having a panic attack about.

employment. relationship. family. finances. friends. health. prestige. impending galactic obliteration. ___failure.

___*___*___*

i watch an education and resolve to devote my life to chamber music concerts and framed 19th century maps and leather interiored sports cars and young, witty girls with delicious shoulders i must kiss incessantly as they lean into me trying to find my lips.

it's one hundred thousand degrees in the valley. it's always dusty so your sweat is sticky. hordes of poor men and women walk around for no apparent reason or stand on corners trying to sell bags of toilet paper (which tumble out of the battered van that's positioned next to the picnic chair the stone saleswoman sits on)

i resolve to lie on wet grass till my clothes are ruined and smuggle home my GF some sunflowers in my suitcase and have slow sex on couches listening to Louis Armstrong and wear pocket-squares and real leather shows like a grown up.

___*___*___*

i like listening to glass vaults tonight.
it sounds like wind not music.
even music is too much for tonight.
wind is right.
some rain wouldn't go astray.

in 2 months i'll be in europe.
it will snow , i will put out my tongue for it to fall on and each will be a delicious kiss i deserve.

i will slow dance on cobble-stoned streets with 40 year old women who have escaped their lives humming the tune into their ear and inhaling the scent of their hair and neck and then read poetry with 13 year old boys who embody it while sprawled on park benches wearing beanies and gloves and wearing tailored two-button Hugo Boss suits (which i must remember to pick up tomorrow) and pocket-squares will listen to Mahler in Berlin and Mozart in Prague and will eat barbecued meat on the side of the road with gypsies in Bucharest.

i will slow

dance

.

my roomates will hate me because my couch will be occupied with a stream of friends who stop by for days and weeks, and when it's too full we'll shower together and huddle in beds and i promise to kiss - man or woman - your forehead goodnight , and if woman: your ankles and knees and belly and clavicles before leaving you alone to retire to my room to read Tolstoy and practice french and masturbate until i can fall asleep.

___*___*___*

leave me my fantasies , today was a bastard of a day.

___

letter

2011-07-23T03:04:00.000-07:00

the first news of you i've had in years: i hear she's sad.

i hear the words the way you hear a foreign language.

after some thinking i still can't make it out. - it's hard to think of you as something that exists somewhere.__ i didn't know if you'd made it out of the wreck.
(i knew one of us had to be a ghost i just hadn't thought it might be me)

what do i know?, there are no words for the distance between us.
even the closeness, when it was there, i had trouble describing.

it feels like someone's returned a goodbye to me , __maybe my bones knew it all along,
but i feel heavier with it now ,

maybe they're telling you the same thing about me: the sun will be up in an hour i live off pills and distraction- maybe i don't know i'm sad anymore than i know you are.

all the fantasies we indulged , and sold each other out for , something about your sadness bothers me.
but i lose hold of that string too, like all those others -

time, memory, _motions in the dark.

you have of me an ocean's worth of silence , you took it along with my well wishes
and you still have both.
and all the sad dictionaries i filled

before i got so lost it became home.

thoughts (fragments)

2011-07-21T23:23:00.000-07:00

in the silence of the park
and every darkened cinema
___Election Night by Bic Runga

physics by meyrem

'sometimes, some trips, i feel so welcome. so at home. i feel like this is where i belong and i never wanna leave.'
' ... '
' ... '
'and?_'
'_____and. __and othertimes, i feel distance. all these people, i feel like they're from another planet. i can't understand how they think. i feel like a foreigner and i can't wait to leave. it's not even like a holiday where you enjoy the feeling of difference. it's worse. i feel like it's wrong for me to be here. i'm an intruder, stepping on all these people's lives with my misunderstandings.'
' ... '
' ... '
'i think it's just you. what you're afraid of at any given moment.'
' ... '
' [shrug] '
'so what are you scared of now?'
' [notices another 10 out of 10 blonde walk by] i feel like LA is only for the successful and the rich and the beautiful. New York too. all these places. these are places where you hear about so-and-so and how (s)he made it.'
'you're doing alright.'
'it's coming along. it's not a competition i know.'
'it's not.'
'but i have Gatsby-syndrome.'
'you have a Daisy?'
'no. i wanna disappear and reappear years later all of sudden like the Wuthering Heights/Gatsby Knight in Mysterious Armor who made it.'
'you're weird.'
'uncontested.'

___*___*___*

after it happened i was dizzy for a few years. when i woke up i stumbled around not knowing what to do with myself. you were sad about your divorce and my latest therapist had just broken up with me so we drank rum out of plastic children's cups and i ended up starfish on your white carpet laughing and writing in my notebook i am so sad as tears rolled from my eyes and yours were red with anger but we laughed anyway.

___*___*___*

___i asked her what she was doing and she messaged me saying i undressed after work but forgot to take my heels off. i'm alone with champagne and my imagination. what are you doing? i ignored it because you were free for coffee and your lips would send men to Troy.

___*___*___*

someone plays the trumpet while the others dance besides the pyramid. _when that dream ends your skin's soft as ash and i refuse to touch you ,
_on a cloudy night a quiet guy walks into a party

arriving home it is soo quiet, i would sit in the car for as long as i could with the engine running to avoid it
___black slinky dress, and the mild protuberances of your ankles and wrists
_the angles your body makes with itself,

i fell asleep in the park once , it was sunset , i was waiting for my sister.
i dreamt of distance without words

she was cooking he kissed the back of her neck and she smiled
i can't sleep when you can't sleep ,
if i unwind this road where will it end or have started?

when we relive this we'll do it better

she takes my hand to lead me out. stops besides a girl i've never seen and asks for keys. i realise what's going on and panic.

(when was i last asleep?
_when you wake i'm still at my desk. i think i've worked it out i say.)

anything with a start or an end i resign from.

we turn off the freeway, we used to live here. Hey, let's count all the different places we had arguments , after 8 she's heard enough , but i keep counting all the way towards the beach

you inject your medicine , i take two more pills and wait for my hands to grow cold and my mouth to go dry. quite the pair she says.

anything with a start or an end ,

___*___*___*

i can't write. this isn't working, i can't say what i mean.

:(
_

restive

2011-07-20T00:08:00.000-07:00

But come said the boy,
let's go down to the sand

__Come Said the Boy, Mondo Rock

Fireworks by bunny jennyy

it's a compulsion i feel very strongly now. a sense that a great distance must be covered, and very quickly; and that i must do it. i must create some danger, manufacture it in a lab somewhere and drink it in a vial and next think you know i've signed things i shouldn't have signed and said things i shouldn't have said and packed all the wrong stuff and find myself living on the floor of an apartment in a foreign city somewhere. if life has decided it's time to strip me of my youth then i'm just going to have to work harder at making mistakes, being in situations where i don't know - can't know because they are completely new.

___*___*___*

down bottles of pills with cold tea and dance with empty wheelchairs and sing with my sister while playing cards shouting out the words to Paul Simon songs neither of us knows the lyrics to.

___*___*___*

i'm eating a lot less now. skipping anything sugary. anything that doesn't need to be eaten. my body's running better. i'm thinner too, which i like the look of.

___*___*___*

i don't want to be in america right now. i don't like the way my voice sounds here. i don't want to be in australia either.

___*___*___*

maybe fall in love with something new. something strange and under-appreciated. something mine and no one will know about it - a secret. a secret window that gets amazing light. a barber shop. an iphone app. a person with small feet. that's what i need to do, i've grown dispassionate. i'm not scared. i think in circles that have no end. don't listen when people are speaking. distracted during sex.

i'm sitting on a perch waiting to be seduced. the world's philosophers, harlots and ngo fundraisers are licking their lips and swinging their hips walking towards me.

___*___*___*

i need new friends. guys who throw popcorn at me in the cinema and get drunk and scream quotes from Hegel and southpark and collapse on couches crying about things their mothers said to them on their 9th birthdays; girls that draw with sticks of charcoal on restaurant napkins and give me lap-dances without provocation and waive at children in the street and scold me from time to time for things i shouldn't have said. and together we'll do handstands in living rooms and ask 11 year olds in the park to let us play soccer with them and throw girls into the water at the beach and makeout in showers with our clothes on and sit on kitchen counters drinking tea and crying about Thursdays and sit quietly with espressos we don't remember ordering thinking about how old we've gotten and talk about how old we still have time to get. that's what i need.

either that or to listen to more tori amos.

___*___*___*

i think i might have an affair with a married woman. in her 40s. like Mrs Robinson, but i wouldn't have made such a mess of it. she would smoke and i'd stare at her breasts move as she breathed in and out, and she'd tell me about life in a quiet, satisfied voice and i'd stare out of a secret window with great light and listen to her like she were the Faure requiem.

later i'd watch her as she dressed. when she put her heels on i'd tell myself memorize this memorize this memorize and she'd look up and see me and know what i was thinking. we'd both feel sad. exhilarated and sad and lonely in two different ways. we'd smell of sex and smoke and our hair would be damp and our faces wouldn't be able to settle on an expression.

eventually she'd stop returning my text messages and i'd stop sending them.

___*___*___*

where can i find a volcano?

___*___*___*

my sister tells me she's never seen a real dinosaur before. i tell her jurassic park is located in and around her kitchen. she asks what that is but i can't hear her because my grandmother is assaulting me about why i haven't had breakfast yet and the phone is ringing and there are 2 televisions on.

nocturne

2011-07-16T03:27:00.000-07:00

even with the lights off there must be people awake .

there's not a thing i can do about it, i must leave _(

but i'm not interested in photos of all that , why do you insist on showing me again ?

__)

so we sat in silence for a while, and this settled me.

in my perfect world where i live when i fold my skin up and run away into late-night-lonelinesses every kisses are first kisses ;

and when something's gone wrong you can start again

and old men dream of daisies too.

__(of everyone you have my youth , you alone ;
__hidden away somewhere with your other scraps and papers.

__while the rest of us make do with the old man )

_____(who dreams of daisies too , but what of it , it was redder then)

i console my sister by telling her how long it takes to grow roots into a place ,

i'm distracted by distance(s)

me to you i once knew as a physical constant

spiritual certainty

_. . . _one hour's certainty is another's (__?_)

i wished i could cry into your chest

one day i'll feel better about walking into packed rooms wearing just myself

i ask my sister who will die first and she says she still doesn't know , but she's working on it

maybe you're the only person who's seen me be young in years _( you'd agree with that you'd probably like it)

but even you know it's dimming. __your eyes are sweeter to compensate

thinking of no one in particular i think: we'll dance one day my dear

delicate as lace and tender as memory , barely touching

of all my misunderstandings how i miss this one most.

there was once a time i could grasp things firmly

but when somethings go they take more than you expect with them

so now i'm colourblind

dance only when my back's against the wall .

when you next leave me i'll be ancient.

__( i'm sorry i missed my chance to be a sailor )

i tell my dad a story and he asks me to forgive him , i wrap the memory up and forget it for him

no young man can do that.

it's too hot to drive let's swim instead i suggest.

you stole three of my books but gave me three first kisses i still can't decide if we're even.

los angeles mon frere

2011-07-14T14:41:00.000-07:00

untitled by littlegirlblue

i am finding this visit to be difficult. my first reaction was an immense fright - that of having returned to a howl of a year i fought so hard to escape. and i have escaped. but i find everywhere in this city echoes of the weeks upon weeks i spent in a hazed, confused, displaced-ness. one that everyone who met me was forced to hand-hold and hug me through. if ever i wrote a story about LA i think i might called the displaced persons camp. of course it wasn't quite like that. it was more like a breather-space. in hindsight it's obvious i needed a big long breather from being 'me', and i need to just go be someone else for a while until i found my way again. it brings me no solace to know that 'finding my way' was not in any way an act of my doing but something of a benevolent stroke of circumstantial luck (otherwise known as: faith) that kicked me along to where i found more than my fair share of happiness. alas.

alas, LA scares me. it reminds me of too many sleepless nights trying to answer a question people incessantly asked of me in those days: so what are you gonna do? (or it's more devious permutation: so what are you gonna do now?)

my second thought is a great surge of happiness. not exactly the happiness of 'victory', but the happiness of 'triumph'. of 'having overcome' <-- that happiness. the happiness - which is really a form of well-adjusted, well-deserved pride - is sourced in my having (one way or another) made it out of a pit. i found an answer to the question: so what are you gonna do? (or rather: it found me). but i found, i took it in my arms, it was my child and i reared it as such. i gave it every waking hour (and i was always awake) and nursed it until it was a thing that existed. what i mean is i took it from being an inchoate possibility, a fantasy of sorts, a dispassionate: yah whatever, let's try this one out to being my reality. who i am. what i'm doing. it's a vector now. a quantity that has not just magnitude but also direction. where it goes is immaterial. LA is/will be/might remain/never was/was what it was because there were no arrows. no directions. it was just a hollow space to sweat out all my filth. to remember who i am is so much more than my job, and at the same time, a future is not about a job, it should be about a direction. about an identity, and that's what needed to be revisited. identity.

and i suppose that's where i remember the taste ('ta'am' in farsi) of LA; since it's also a place i remember as being full of friends. the bestest of friends. which makes sense i suppose, if we believe (or at least hope) that our identity is shaped to some extent by the smiles and caresses of those we love. i like that thought. i am a man of my own making, but it doesn't take anything away from me to also be a man made of others' generous lovingness. so anyway, there's that too.

these things make LA difficult for me, a difficult place to be.

when i am hear i become hyper-self-conscious. i develop a terrible need to constantly prove to myself that i do actually have my own life now. that everyone's time and love and patience wasn't wasted and that i did sort myself out. i suppose it's the result of being out of my own environment. away from my bookshelves (yah, the library's grown) that prove that i've learnt a few new tricks, away from my routine and activities and evidences that i am in fact something new (or anew). when i am here i must rely again on... just me. identity ;

[yesterday in the food mart; it was full of persians and greeks and israelis and indians, everyone speaking some foreign language, smashing their shopping carts into each others' because that's what you do when you're ethnic and over 50; in the midst of all this, by the deli, a tall blonde girl, the figure of a model, and the face of one too. stood quietly amongst the shouting and smashing, waiting her turn with her legs crossed. long blonde hair like a smudged halo and half the room just stated at her thinking: what are you doing here? and in my head i could hear: so what are you gonna do? so what are you gonna do now? what do you want? what things? where to?]

there are other things too. i suppose now is not the time to get into them.

meanwhile, i'm struck by how wonderful it is for a place to have such a sense of... placefulness. for somewhere to exist as a real place. not just as a bunch of roads and a few photographs. but as a place, a real kingdom, with an identity and an entire mythology that has grown around it. LA. has long joined the list of Kingdoms that have their own mythology: Seattle. Haifa. Shanghai. Brisbane. Adelaide...

for some reason this makes me happy. the reason is it makes me feel alive, and i don't feel that way often enough.

freaking_yumness

2011-07-09T06:40:00.001-07:00

the Hague, Holland

it is probably abundantly clear by now that i don't do too well with protracted bouts of bad news. nevertheless, i haven't had any good news for a few months now so i'm going to go ahead and be hyper-psyched about the tentative offer i just got for an internship with the Office of the Prosecutor at the Special Tribunal for Lebanon at the Hague!! (insert "freaking psyched!!!!" right here). i shouldn't be too thrilled yet and i probably shouldn't be telling anyone either (so don't tell anyone) because it is subject to a bunch of security clearances and blah blah i didn't read that far into the email i kinda just scanned it looking for the word 'unfortunately' (which i didn't find) and then re-scanned only to find the word 'pleased' and i thought no.freaking.way. what was i saying? oh yeah, so, as far as i'm aware there are no outstanding INTERPOL warrants for my arrest in connection to war crimes or crimes against humanity in any jurisdiction and i haven't been involved in any underground activity constituting sedition or treason so... should be alright. and my facebook profile is pretty clean too.

how much work i might (tentatively) get to do is a bit worrisome because Hezbollah kinda told the Tribunal to go screw itself the other day when the indictments were released. if they don't hand the accused over the trials will be in absentia <-- which is epic uncool. i was kinda hoping for the spectacle of the Saddam/Milosovic trials were the accused called the judges dogs and threw their shoes at them. (a friend of mine is at the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia and they're getting a bit of fiestiness out of Mladic).

ok i promised i wouldn't tell anyone but then i was about to burst and i don't want to actually tell anyone and so then i got confused and i'm tired and my dad didn't respond to the text i sent him and so wha evs i'm telling you. there. i feel better now. (and now i can be less whiny on the blog for a lil while. unless if i'm not accepted, in which case brace yourselves for hell_on_earth_moping).

peace outtie
(tentatively) happy pennyfortheoldguy

why i am so wise*

2011-07-07T08:15:00.000-07:00

* the title of this post is a self-joke. it is a reference to the Penguin Great Ideas series version of works by Nietzsche. the reason it is a 'joke' is because when i think Nietzsche i think a lot of things, but wise isn't one of them. brilliant, maybe. smart, sure. compelling, occasionally. wise? not quite. in fact, wisdom is so far from how i see Nietzsche that i find the title to be... well humorous (although i haven't read this particular collection, so i'm not certain whether the title was intended to be humorous or not).

SOME OF MY FAVOURITEST SONGS OF ALLLLL TIME, A LIST:

- a sunday smile, beirut
- what a wonderful world, eva cassidy
- gravity, bic runga
- mr jones, counting crows
- i'll try anything once, julian casablancas
- roads, portishead
- jazzybelle, outkast
- my weakness, moby
- wild is the wind, nina simone
- bachelorette, bjork
- new slang, the shins
- brown eyed girl, van morrison
- in the air tonight, phil collins
- scarborough fair canticle, simon & garfinkle

i suppose it could go on forever.

___*___*___*

the plane landed (late). i'm home for 4 days, then off again. none of this makes me feel particularly good. to be honest i'm not sure i feel any whichway about it. it just is. is what needs to happen now. i know better now than to fight the tide of the times; i've learnt that much over the last few years. sometimes you have to tumble along and wait till you land where you're supposed to land. it's not a process i'm ever going to be completely comfortable with. i'm probably too proactive and too regimented to leave my future up to circumstance. but, despite my best efforts all my victories/failures have been entirely circumstantial. sometimes i get letters in the mail. acknowledgments of my applications. some are rejections. i like it, as a token. as evidence that people are maybe actually reading my letters. flipping through my resume and thinking: who is this q-guy, do we like him? (meanwhile, my plan B is now firmly standing on its two feet and my position on the faculty has been confirmed, if i want it). (so there's that. smaller dream, but then, dreams shouldn't have any volume anyway).

___*___*___*

i did finally watch the tree of life. i'm not sure what i think of it yet, i liked soo much of it but the ending really bugged me. if anyone has an opinion i'm keen to hear about your experiences with it.

___*___*___*

if i dream nowadays it's about the zombie holocaust. it sounds amusing but it's not really.

___*___*___*

life isn't often episodic, not the way hollywood films are. if anything, it's thematic - with the themes leaking into one another like held notes on a pipe organ. sometimes two themes can exist simultaneously for years. developing a little bit here, a little bit there. then finally, one disappears into the other. maybe colours is a better example than held-notes. like watercolours that slowly shift and merge into one another.

for years my theme was: home. then 'just like that' it seems to have subsided. i think i stopped feeling it. or wanting it. or understanding it. i made my peace with the fact that i don't know what it feels like anymore. my current theme is: age.

'did it make you sad?'
'what?'
'all the babies.'
'oh.'
'they're all pregnant right?, that's what you said, they're all... pregnant or having babies.'
'yah, they are._____ but no. not sad._ not exactly.'
' ? '
'distant. it made me feel far away. and worse, it made me feel... far away and drifting farther away still, like there was some crossroads and if i... '
' ... '
'you know the rest. maybe.'
'i think i get it.'
'i just felt behind in life. whatever that means - since there's no objectivity to these things. who can compare the things they've been through versus the things i've dealt with - '
'right'
'right. but. __still.'

a g e . in other words: time when you start to see time as a distance. that's what age is. when you start to conceive and understand and feel and measure time in terms of distances to/from people, places, experience, ___that's age.
___also, it's a physical thing. a thing that happens in and to your body. my face is 'squishy'. my skin. there's something to it, it's weird i don't remember it being like this. my patterns of fatigue and the way my excitement feels is different. my thoughts have a way of drifting into nothing and coming back again, their pace is different. anyway it's something that happens in you because you grow to resemble your favourite tree. also, it happens to you, something you didn't want anything to do with and it falls on you like a blanket.

anyway.

___*___*___*

i'm exhausted but i refuse to sleep. i have a long day tomorrow too. still. ___this is the first alone moment i've had in over a week, i'll be sorry to see it go.

___*___*___*

i'm tired.
i'm scared. i don't even know of what. just of something. something waiting.

a great note to sleep on.

post

2011-06-27T07:53:00.000-07:00

untitled by littlegirlblue

the whole day i haven't left my room. i just read. for no reason other than to keep distracted.

BOOKS I'VE READ RECENTLY, A LIST:

Diary of a Bad Year, JM Coetzee
Junky, William S Borroughs
Foe, JM Coetzee
Nocturnes: Five Stories of Music and Nightfall, Kazuo Ishiguro
My Sister Guard Your Veil, My Brother Guard Your Eyes: Uncensored Iranian Voices, Lila Azam Zangareh (ed)
On War, Carl von Clausewitz

___*___*___*

i can't write though.

:(

apennyfortheoldguy dresses like an old guy

2011-06-17T01:38:00.000-07:00

untitled by shesaskeleton

- why are you wearing a tie?
- what do you mean?
- you're wearing a tie.
- yes.
- why?
- i'm going to a thing.
- is it tie-worthy?
- ...
- right, i get it, you wear a tie to everything.
- ...
- wait.
- ...
- i'm not wearing my glasses, what's the pattern on your tie?
- llamas.
- the pattern on your tie, it's__ llamas?
- yes.
- godhelpme. __ok. right. have a good night.
- thanks.

midnightettes

2011-06-16T08:08:00.000-07:00

when we were young today could not have existed.

___*___*___*

we land where we fall.
sometimes too far; but most often, too close.

so try again.

___*___*___*

if you don't repeat your mistakes often enough they're forgotten;
and you're left with all the right answers, and what will you do then?,
when you've used up all your nighttime?

___*___*___*

the roof of my house yawns

___*___*___*

the things that need to be said
are lost. get lost.
so. silence then,

medal tulips

2011-06-16T06:14:00.000-07:00

moonface by missikovsky

tunnage: bug in a web by CALLmeKAT

the thing with this song is her voice. either that and/or the minimal instrumentation + arrangement. a couple notes here, some repeated chords there. a chick and two keyboards. simplicity works well for old men like me.

___*___*___*

the medal sits in my room. on my desk, where i put it down when we got home in the evening. i haven't touched it since except to put some papers beneath it. there you go, it's a paper-weight. i'm uncomfortable with it i think. it's heavy. when i first saw it - from across the stage - it was bright it caught me off guard. when i held it it was heavy, the Chancellor must have seen the look on my face because she said now hold on there, let's get this right and she waited for me to adjust my hands around the half i was holding, then i looked at her and she smiled and waited for me to adjust my face. then she looked at the photographers who snapped their pictures. don't trip don't trip don't trip and i was off the stage. went and sat in my seat again.

i'm told by my friends that people clapped very enthusiastically and that i was composed and dignified. this may be true, i don't know. i just remember my thoughts (don't trip don't trip don't trip don't trip) and shininess and the weight and now hold on there, let's get this right and my seat again.

___*___*___*

i think i need to do it in phases. get high on sugar, enough to lose myself enough to take a few too many pills, enough to take a few too many twirls around to dizzy me enough to make some dumb decisions and wake up empty pockets next to a dumpster somewhere with a cut on my cheek i don't remember getting.

___she laughs just promise you won't be an asshole to me so that i can never wear it again
___after you leave, and i look away uncomfortable with her tone

walk home from the Valley, used to take 4 hours. sometimes 5. remember Rich? call it a night at 1am and get home about 5. have breakfast and sleep to the birds' singing. that was the thing with that window, it'd open just to the leaves of this one tree, the light would flow into the room green, everything i had looked green. and loud. those damned birds, kept me up all the time. i'm sure that's what it was, just the birds. four walls all brick my head would bang against the wall - it'd hurt (in different ways) - on the phone to _ _ _ _ _ for hours thinking the whole time i've gotta get off the phone i've gotta run (which of course was the problem with that whole... thing). sometimes we'd stop for a snack midway; walk into the casino about 3am just to get out of the cold. we'd complain we couldn't afford the $20 for a cab but somewhere we'd find enough for large fries we'd pick at slowly watching the sad divorcees over-laugh with another glass of wine and 'the boys' order another round of drinks, all of us washed in the peculiar light of the casino. dip the last few in the ketchup and walk back out to kick rocks the rest of the way home thinking to myself the rest of my life would feel more or less the same way.

___don't trip don't trip don't trip i thought; but deeper than that, in a forgotten, violent dreams
___kind of place i was thinking about how many of my past lives were being buried that very minute,
___how many broken things were forgotten.

waiting for the damned bus, squinting because i couldn't read the numbers anymore so i'd miss it every other day and cold all winter and wet and would have a panic attack every third and have to walk away from the station breathing deeply and sit on the side of the road counting numbers and imagining myself playing the piano, scales over and over until i was calm, but by then so tired it hurt to walk back to the station and squint waiting for a metal mousetrap to take me home.

___distance from all that.

___*___*___*

X: will you get a job here?
Q: [hesitates] no. no i don't think so.
X: far?
Y: you should get away for a while.
Q: ...
X: far?
Q: as far as i can get.
X: why so far?
Q: _i can't explain.

___*___*___*

it feels like my birthday. isn't that odd? i don't really remember my birthday. i think i forgot it actually and GF reminded me. but i don't remember the day at all, if we did anything... or... i've lost it. another day amongst days.

___*___*___*

i've been dreaming of the Special Court for Sierra Leone. of working through the day and finishing at 6 and taking a long walk around Freetown while people stare at me when i pass. it's not a good idea to take pictures so i promise myself not to forget anything i see. come home at 9 and sit behind my desk and start scribbling in notebooks. in my dream i've decided not to take my computer (just to be safe). everything gets written on paper. keepin it real, an old dude, a pen and a mind/world full of things to think about. time passes. i work with war crimes and write poems about time. and home. and love. and age. and women's lips which are sometimes worth fighting wars for.

___*___*___*

maybe i should have been a photographer. women always seem to end up naked around photographers. i could just sit and stare at them, as though they were cats or daffodils, no one expecting anything. motion stalled and eventually, we forget about it, so used to just sitting and staring at each other motionless. the light changes. i notice it's that later time of the afternoon. darker now. i'd ask her if she can wait while i shower, i feel dirty. (i always feel dirty. although sometimes i think it's just i feel nervous. other times panicky. so i shower. what else can i do? i can't think of anything else). i return from the shower and she's half dressed. i finger a cup of tea and thank her for stopping by. when she leaves i sit by the window and look out. the day dips a little closer into darkness

___*___*___*

the book still isn't finished. i've taken to carrying it around with me everywhere i go. at traffic lights i'm tempted to flip it open and read a paragraph or two. i try in the evenings but i fall asleep before i can read more than 2 pages. still i persist. it's heavy and bulky and doesn't fit naturally into the recess under my arm-pit. are you still reading that thing? my mom asks when i walk in with it. meanwhile a new pile has started to grow next to my stereo of newest things to read. i plan and re-plan what order i'll read them in instead of finishing the current beast. plan. re-plan. plan. re.

___*___*___*

i'm not sure how to explain this new sadness.

i don't think i understand it.

___- anymore

- what?
- understand it anymore.
- what are you talking about?

she explains. i haven't been taking my pills. it's been long enough. maybe it's default-Q poking his head out.

i shrug.

- can you describe it?

i tap my teaspoon against the side of the cup.

- what are you doing?
- ___describing.

___*___*___*

X: far?
Q: as far as i can get.
X: why so far?
Q: _i can't explain.

A --> oh! (thus: B

2011-06-08T08:22:00.000-07:00

untitled by me
(ps if someone could explain to me how to upload my own photos without losing quality i'd be very appreciative)

i wasn't much concerned with my graduation. mom made such a big deal about it, GF too. then it occurred to me because of the medal there'd be photos for the faculty bulletin. i thought it might be appropriate to get a haircut. i finger a new tie. i run through all my ties in my head, they all have names: grandfather's funeral tie; med school interview tie; Jinab's tie Nos 1-6; grandfather's tie (the former is the one i wore to his funeral, the latter is his tie. but i feel it's important i have it, history, heritage.) i try out it's name: graduation tie. seems right. this is what i do. every occasion requires, every tragedy can be thwarted by a correctly chosen tie. it must be found, discovered, then, the worst excesses of misfortune can be avoided. no. not this time. i feel weird enough i actually care. i'm still uncertain about the big dinner and the... everything. it's all the wrong people anyway. i wish i could staple photos of you guys to their foreheads and listen to my ipod through dinner. i draw the line at the tie. i'll buy a tie when i have a job, that seems more fitting, at least then i could afford it.

___*___*___*

dear special court for sierra leone,

you should give me an internship position with the Judge's Chambers because i know all about international humanitarian law [this is law-speak for the laws of war]. i also need to be far away right now, just for a little while. i need to be in a room reading important things, i feel like it is necessary that i do that. i am not scared of the dark, even though people keep telling me i should be. maybe you can teach me to be. i will not bring fancy suits or shoes. i will grow my hair for the whole 4-5months that i am there and will learn everything about everything and am happy to go get you milk for your tea.

thankyou for your time,

apennyfortheold guy

___*___*___*

it's hard to write tonight, i don't know what the feeling is. it's hard to describe. it's like having your eyes closed and touching an object. it seems familiar enough but you can't say exactly what it is, that's how i feel. a little bit goodbye, a little bit i'm scared, a little bit onwards ho!, a little bit happy-to-be-alone, a little bit

___*___*___*

PRAYERS (A NOTAPOEM)

___i.
dear amazing all powerfulgrace deliciousness:
if you put a coin in me i'll dance.

___ii.
o Everything:
take a random letter from every word i've ever said to You it always spells
please?

___*___*___*

i'm half asleep in the morning, lying in bed staring at the ceiling trying to avoid wednesday (dear god why is it always wednesday?) she's cooking mushrooms and spinach. and turkish bread and hummus. she'll say see how kind i am?, i made you nice breakfast. i like that she uses the word 'kind'. not 'nice' or 'sweet'. kind.

the weather report says the sky is a little overcast because there is a cloud passing over us. it stretches from western australia to queensland. what? i think. i look at the television the cloud covers two-thirds of australia (the news reporter's moved on now). i tell a few people throughout the day but no one seems to care one way or the other about it. dude, that's a big effing cloud. they shrug. 'whatever. i wish the sun came out'.

i'm fascinated with this cloud.

what are you thinking about? she wants to know.
- the giant cloud.
- what giant cloud?
- did you hear the weather report?
- uhm, it said it'll be overcast right?
- yes. because of a big giant cloud that's covering the whole of australia.
- seems a bit big.
- it is.
- is this like your obsession with giant squid? am i going to be hearing about this for a while?
- it's a rreally big cloud.
- want more mushrooms? here, let me get you more dates, don't worry you can finish them i got them for you anyway.

___*___*___*

i know what this post is about now. i know how these posts work. i've discovered them at last. it seems recently i can't 'write' (in the proper sense). so i tease at ideas until i discover what i'm actually writing about (or trying to write about) (or at least trying to avoid). today's post is a question, the question is:

is it time yet?

i don't know the answer to the question. or even the context. or what it means. i just know it feels like everyone around me is packing and cleaning and putting things in boxes and i'm sort of trying to keep up. that's how it feels anyway. i've packed myself into boxes so many times i won't bother with newspaper and folding stuff or anything like that. just throw it in.

but seriously:

is it time yet?

how i met this notapoem

2011-06-03T17:59:00.000-07:00

note: against my better judgment i click play on conversation 16. everything that follows i attribute to this initial bad decision.

___i.
she waives at me from across the room.
oh god, not now ; i don't have time, i'm late.
she never cares.

___ii.
it's sunshine outside,
i've been robbed my winter.
she undresses and slips into my pea coat.
sets the AC on low and gives me
grey-tinged sunglasses to wear.

___iii.
what do you want to talk about today? she asks
but i didn't plan on speaking today.
she laughs and pats me on the shoulder,
i've been told whispering to people in comas sometimes works.

___iv.
in white underwear i dance like a junkie-OD around the coffee table she's standing on -
laughing as she kicks over piles of paper and empty tea mugs
with her black heels and snake hips ;
my body rocks its bones, i think please, but can't decide if i want it to stop or continue.
she turns up the music, dancing , lies down on the table, her red hair
dripping onto the floor and closes her eyes in a delighted sigh.

___v.
she asks me to make a list of all the things i've lost or forgotten
but i can't remember most of them and still haven't realized the other half.
she starts burning my photographs and ripping my books,
see how nice i am i give you things to write down she says, playing
with my hair she occasionally pulls a few out and sprinkles them on my page
so i don't forget them.

___vi.
i cough my tears into a tissue i've been using for a few days.
she waits impatiently.

___vii.
did you lie to me? if you ever betray me i'll kill you.
i'm sorry... nono, i... don't think so. sometimes i can't tell truth from the other thing
the tears in her eyes retreat and she smiles like a child.
she's trained me to love her smiles.

___viii.
she drinks it up,
asks casually about affairs it's too sharp to talk about and
failures i can't put into words yet.
speaks names that make my ears bleed and refuses to leave
until i show her the scars you gave me.
even then she's staring away ,

___ix.
nice try she says.
not sure if it's what i'm looking for,
but i'll have it in mind.

when she leaves the room
i've pressed myself into a wall

a sleep with no dreams

2011-06-03T06:58:00.000-07:00

untitled by nobutyes

this picture is a picture of a reoccurring dream i have. maybe i have the reoccurring dream because of this photo. i'm not sure if it makes a difference: i'm stuck with it now like a memory. only it's not a memory, i wish it were. i wish it was something that had happened to me. but then i remember all the things that have happened, and i get confused - was this one of them? or something similar enough. i think truth is this picture is a picture of how i remember the things that have happened , even though this picture never happened (or anything similar). this paragraph is not one of my favourite paragraphs. it might be deleted. i'll decide later.

___*___*___*

i am not feeling super.duper. i'm not sad either. i feel like i'm waiting for godot. there's someone in this room with me. i can't write about him. if i write about it then he'll grow, he eats my thoughts. he's waiting. he has his tsunami coat on. couple of wrong thoughts, a bit of self-indulgence and some bad luck, a wretched day or three and i'm through. i'll wake up on a marooned beach too far from here and i'll have a beard and i won't know what my name is. it's messy. (might get some decent writing going though). (he eats my loneliness and writes poems about it. i find him to be a selfish, lazy bastard). (he's staring at nothing and asking me to repeat no aphrodisiac again. fine fine, i admit the piano part is brilliant)

___*___*___*

i haven't dreamt for two years. (the pills you see) ,
and now , all evening i'm busy. i awake exhausted
and spend my days waiting for things to happen.
i watch the ants ,
___news headlines ,

when i'm brave i daydream.

i awake startled. distracted. ashamed.

if i had my way i'd swim in clouds (they feel like porcelain bathtubs full of frangipani) ,
i'd be clean and young , the skin on my face would stay put.
the cars would shine and everyday would slip into the next and we'd be dizzy from turning around too fast and when we fell down we'd laugh like the magic-producing dynamos we were.

this ant isn't busy today either.
i sip tea and click around on my computer.

an old-man of a cloud labours by, dropping bits and pieces of himself as he goes,
she goes to hold my hand but always stops short. __sometimes i want to too ,

___but am stopped by some gravity.
___i have no idea where i picked up this new hesitation.
______she's understanding, she nods and slips her arm around mine.
______we walk on ,

i leave the ant and shower. second or third? maybe after lunch i'll have another.

before i sleep i stretch. gather up my breaths. crack my knuckles.
move odds and ends away from the bed in case i kick.

the next morning i roll myself up from my supine position. stand up looking at the doorway.
what? she asks, but i don't answer.

______i wish i were farther.
______farther and farther and farther and farther still.

i walk into the kitchen and stand staring at the sink. my shoulder hurts. my lower back too.
want breakfast? i shake my head.

when they find me a few days later i'm contorted inside my laundry hamper, under the dirty clothes from the fourth shower.
they ask me what i'm doing.

isn't it obvious?

___i'm playing hide and seek with the ant.

___*___*___*

maybe i should try those pills again.

it's just a 'transition time', it's normal.

maybe i should

it's just a

maybe

___*___*___*

we come out from the birthday party and i've been pinching her in the elevator and she takes three quick strides to escape me. i run out in front of her in the lobby of the apartment, and she yelps and i jump and give her an awkward ha-ya! and kick my leg forward. she laughs in confusion what was _t h a t ?_ i stare at her dumbfounded. i just fly kicked you! she cracks up and i open the door for her to walk out. hey i say and when she turns i take her hands and lean back and start turning quickly with our arms stretched out. you're crazzzy! she screams with a perceptible doppler shift. she laughs but the more she tries to escape the more she leans and the faster we go. __time stops , like a polaroid, a last page or a happy death.

___*___*___*

HOW I FEEL / WANT TO FEEL / THIS IS A NIGHTMARE / THIS IS ALL I WANT / A LIST:

link

___*___*___*

another psychic tells me it'll work out.

it makes me feel better.

maybe i'll start frequenting them the way other men frequent brothels.

sneak in late at night, with my savings from the week.

sit in a waiting room and select a lady who fits my preferences.

inside i'll ask her to take my hands and close her eyes and not look at me if i cry.

of course, it's her job to take me as i am and be discreet with it.

i'm just another car with a half-empty tire that veers to the right, and grunt in my cough to her.

she tells me it'll be alright in as many different ways as can fit into an hour.

sometimes we just sit in silence. at the end of the time she whispers it.

other occasions i need to hear it harder. furiously, i make her repeat it, over and over,

beg her to say it louder and harder ('scream it into my ear i don't want to forget your words').

___*___*___*

the creature in my room is cutting into his third course. he's pleased with me he's got my liver on his plate. he wants to know what the problem really is. what's this all about?

and that's when i have a strange realisation.
for years the problem was that i felt a sense of homelessness. not just that, but that i had lost the meaning of the word home. misplaced the concept. was so distant from it that i couldn't even understand the memory of it. and it made me cry in my lungs and bones. places were people wouldn't see me doing it.

but that's not it anymore. home is irrelevant now, one way or another.

age.

he nods.

i guess he doesn't care much as long as he has a new toy to play with.

i ask him to sow my arm back on but he won't.

(if i wait it out maybe he'll bury me under a nice tree and there'll be no more dreams)

words

2011-05-25T07:40:00.000-07:00

untitled by coolhandluke

i'm sad ; if nothing else it'll explain the dreams (the
dreams alone i'd run back to my pills just to avoid them -
every night i spend chasing busses i'm too late for to arrive
at interviews it turns out i was never invited to after returning
home twice, three-times to fetch a tie or a jacket
only to arrive wearing one shoe and one purple sock,
i break out crying holding onto a metal shelf in the backroom of
a library i don't remember ever having been to in a city
that resembles half a dozen i have visited, crying to my dad
who hasn't appeared in a dream of mine ever so long as i can
remember and whom i haven't cried in front of since i was 11.
just to avoid it

___*___*___*

a bleached-blonde, thin as a rake with strange-shaped feet walks away and i think i might just give up on everything and follow her around.

___*___*___*

suggested (currently listening as i type) tunnage: welt am draht (animal collective remix)

___*___*___*

i think about being a serious lawyer. this older guy gets home about 9pm. eats his dinner which has been left out for him quietly. he walks upstairs and reads a story or two to a kid or two who appreciate the gesture but truth be told wonder why he bothers , but even as a token gesture it means something to him (so he does, bother). shower. tea. a few words with a distracted woman he lives with. walks back downstairs wearing pyjamas and turns on the lamp on the desk. clicks play on a gentle string quartet. this late he needs more heavy duty glasses. arranges the stacks of papers into an agreeable order, and continues to read , to what end he can't quite remember.

___*___*___*

suggested (currently listening as i type) tunnage: i'll try anything once

___*___*___*

it sounds serious. too serious. why is everything 'important' so... serious. i'd like to spend my life wearing knitted socks. having time to indulge in self-pity. writing. making friends instead of spending soo much energy trying to ditch them all the time. (she says you know you'd probably get a lot more done if you just accepted you had them and called them back, which i ignore) my friends are dads. husbands and wives. full time employees. doctoral candidates. i'm still scared of marriage, refuse to commit to a puppy. my time still doesn't feel full, no matter how busy i get my time feels hollow , just 'on the way' time , obiter time. i'm not sure about any purported growing up that's been done. (she sits and complains about why i won't move in with her, but i stick to my guns and let her be mad. turn the corner, nodding the whole time. you're hiding behind it she says, truth is you just want your alone space. i shrug, who's hiding?, of course i do. exasperated she falls back into the seat. an apple falls and rolls below her feet). i'm seeing my age as a distance. i'm feeling it as a distance, i'm not sure from what, but it's multidimensional. a distance from youth which very clearly is puffing its last few smokes. a distance from the future which isn't going where it was supposed to go. (of course there's no such thing as 'supposed to'... but there you have it). (she asks if i want to come over when i get done and i say i do. she'll watch the news in bed and i'll read three pages of a book that's too heavy to hold up for much longer. i'll sleep, or not. i might wake up and kill a spider at some point.)

six years ago a girl i barely knew sat across the room from me and said you'd have made a wonderful partner, too bad. and i, amused, asked why. she smiled to indicate what she had to say was not ill-intentioned. discontent. you're always going to be discontent sooner or later. and with everything. i couldn't live knowing you'd sooner or later become discontented with me. i'm stunned. not offended, but that much insight usually packs a punch. i smile back, it scares me that you can read soo much. she shrugs. (so that's that. a memory amongst memories)

___*___*___*

it's getting late now. i still avoid , ya know ... sleep.
"take deep breaths" (this is mom now) "deep breaths, before you sleep, inhale intensely, really fill your lungs up, in / out, in /out, like that. you'd be surprised what it'll do for your brain". my mom thinks breathing exercises can solve all the world's afflictions. yesyes. i'll be sure to make sure i breathe , and at least you can have some peace knowing if i forget, at least my autonomic nervous system will remember because as it turns out, i'm not the least bit in control of it. she's not amused.

___*___*___*

suggested (currently listening as i type) tunnage: oh my stars by a weather

___*___*___*

fours years now - since the room with no windows. 'the year of disappointment'. seems 'four' is too short a number. seems like the bottom of a well. not sure how we got out. my mom's discovered facebook, my god she says i saw photos, XXXX's lost so much weight she looks amazing. i nod, yes. it's amazing. i wonder who lives in the room now, if there are scratch marks from my nails in the walls or a slight indentation where i'd bang my head trying to make the noisiness in my head stop.

hope is a dangerous dangerous ... a thing i guess. a liability. like love, or the little bird in your hands. just a twitch. the bump of a passerbyer. anything.

i try and dodge fallen palm-tree debris and manage to run two tires right down the middle of it. this could be it. this could be the moment i punctured my tires while being late and having no gas. i drive on and wait to see if it is. that easy. (turns out it's not)

___*___*___*

she wants to know what this is all about , what have you been trying to say?

"you should have been a ballerina"

[ ? ]

"there's still time"

"race you to the gate and back"

"this cologne, i remember it like a story"
("so maybe it was")
"i remember it as a story"
("so maybe it was")

"from here, how strange it sounds"

"and we all fall down"

paragraph

2011-05-20T04:10:00.000-07:00

someone speaks on the phone. i don't like the sound of people speaking on the phone. there's a time for sad songs, this isn't it. i change the song. try something else. but eventually come crawling back, maybe this is the time for it. it's always a question of time. (what is? she wants to know, everything i say. She isn't much impressed with me oh. just like that she says.) It's been raining, this i can see. i awake feeling like i missed out, it's already sunny. i hear dogs barking and wish i had a cat that could wake up with me and feel sorry to have missed the rain. i make some inquiries, they tell me i can bring whomever i want because they have VIP seating set aside for me. i make a joke of it while we eat dark chocolate and raspberry muffins but i feel really embarrassed. wrong guy i want to say. there's a part of me that's not looking forward to it at all, there'll be questions. i'm not so good with those at times. are you sending out many applications? a friend asks, no no, i'm trying something new i respond. she wants to know what i'm trying so i explain that i'm spending my days wearing pyjama pants walking circles in my bedroom. somehow this will make everything ok. she laughs. i guess she's not sorry to have missed the rain. maybe i should grow a beard. i'd like that. skip the haircut too. draw a big black circle on the street outside and then step on pieces of chalk into it so it looks like smudged stars on the nightsky. maybe it'll confuse birds too, but that's not an end in itself (if it's an end at all i don't know because i don't know much about ends (i might know a little bit about little ends though - as in endings, which are small, and come and go not like a 'goodbye' more like a 'see ya' or an 'until next time' but there's always a next time that seems to be the thing). no one in particular wants to know why this is written in a single paragraph but i didn't think it was being written at all it was more something i was thinking or am thinking or - all words that just stumble around in all ours heads in one out the other or the other way around growing and dying waiting for a decent one to come along and ring our doorbell and give us a thing or two to do to remind us we're worth more the hair on our heads that we can sell for wigs that third world countries might buy. i'm not a rich man but i do love the sound of a violin when played right and a detuned piano when played right and i try my hands again (it's been 10 years since i tried it) Rachmaninov's elegie in e-flat minor it moves along nicely until i get a headache from all the flats and my fingers can't find the keys and my brain can't process it anymore - it feels like i've managed half a conversation in a foreign language but now the whole thing's fallen apart and my eyes hurt and my hands aren't sure what to do <-- which is nothing new right. i don't know the word for this feeling and it's not in this paragraph but i hoped it would be and now i feel like... i don't deserve the VIP seating.

post-JD

2011-05-20T03:50:00.000-07:00

untitled by swimminginmilk

when it finishes it is a quiet but in a different way.
i sit and wait.
i spend quite some time with letters and envelopes.

___(i'm always very careful before i staple things.
___it's a new superstition: if the staple's messy i won't get the job)

mostly i like to stay in my room. editing things - i've become expert in punctuation -
semicolons receive tremendous care.

someone asks me what i've been doing lately. editing a paper for publication i say.
it sounds so adult , still ,
i'm glad when they don't ask me anything else.

later i send more applications in between tinkering on the piano.
i stare at a book by my bedside table but refuse to read it.
instead i walk laps around my coffee table.

my mom wants to know if i feel relieved or lighter or calm since i've been done?
no i say.
she wants to know why.

i miss being busy. (she nods, 'maybe you're a man afterall')

notapoem

2011-05-14T03:17:00.000-07:00

i.
i make a small stack,
delicately adding
each thing i don't know
the answer to.

ii.
everytime it rains
i send you the same text:
it's raining. godlovesme.
funny thing is...
i believe it.

iii.
A PERFECT DAY AS UNDERSTOOD BY Q:

11am
brunch with Mar at Greg's.
after, we walk down 19 terraces.
at the bottom there's a beach i don't remember seeing before.
there's no sand. only rocks.
in the water half a mountain stands alone,
waiting for someone's hand to lead it back to shore.
i sit on the rocks and put my socks back on.
Mar looks out at the waves breaking, which, sprays up into a haze
that never quite merges with the sky.
don't worry. i haven't quite merged yet either.
she nods. waiting. without ever taking her hand away either.

3pm
an old man walks into my office.
i'm tired he says. i give him a seat, which he reclines in.
closes his eyes. god it's quiet in here. i nod.
i am offer him some tea but he shakes his head with his
eyes still closed and puts a finger in front of his lips, shh.

3:30pm
i get a call, there's something in the mailroom for me.
it's a scarf. grey, with an orange stripe.
i'm confused, go home: hey Matt, did you send me a scarf? he hasn't.
John? not me.

two years later someone compliments my scarf. it's grey, with an orange stripe.
i smile. my best friend gave it to me, a rose petal from when we first met.
have you known her your whole life?
i shake my head. nono, of course not.

___longer.

4pm
i'm too tired to talk i confess, guiltily.
she understands. we meet anyway,
sit opposite each other in plush chairs.
i smell like coffee beans, for months i smelt like coffee beans.
it's less obvious in here, Pontius and Sepulveda.
every now and then you still send me a picture when you drive by.
the dusty valley, dusty stucco walls - beige from paint or dust i can't tell,
and your always fluorescent toe-nail polish. it's all i see sometimes, when i think of it:
a buzzard of a year, and your understanding face that for half an hour here,
ninety minutes there, silences the Furies.

6pm
you cry on the phone telling me about
how they want a drug test and you did this
naughty thing weeks ago just once and how
you wish you hadn't now oh my god how terrible
because it means you might not go (which to me
sounds like you might just stay) and you have to go
(you really should i say) because it's just what needs
to happen (in a few years i'll really know what you mean,
and you'll call me and remind me of it too) distance, sometimes
it's just distance just to be far and away and amongst strangers which
are so often just the friends you needed who don't know you and don't care
the name of your highschool boyfriend, and i nod through all this, unseen
because phones lack eyes - they crawl through the dark like salamanders
or something, i tell you it'll be fine, it's got to be, there comes a time
for distance and when the times come it just happens (in a few years
like it or not i'll know exactly what i meant) after i hang up the
phone i think to myself god i hope she can go/stay and
despite my best intentions never did separate the two.

words written by the dude who write this blog

2011-05-14T02:16:00.000-07:00

untitled by kagogo

so what are you doing next year? he asks, looking at me expectantly. there's only a few correct answers to this question. associateship with a judge (but only State Supreme or Federal Court level); work for 1 of 6 top tier firms; miscellaneous. i want to say i'm taking a year off to find a new shipping route for merchant vessels and accidentally find the new New Indies; take a year off to listen to the full discography of the Beatles; maybe read something really long... the Story of Civilization, in 11 volumes... the Golden Bough: A Study in Magic and Religion (3rd ed, 1906-15) in 12 volumes.

___*___*___*

when we were young we sat in coffee shops. we drank hot chocolate. we spoke of the future (which... looking around me, must be about now sometime).

___*___*___*

- whatchya reading? [i'm sitting on the 38th floor of a fancy high-rise in the city. the question is directed towards me by the partner of 1 of 6 (said) top tier firms who will spend the next 40mins telling me about himself while i nod in feigned interest]
- bit of light on-the-train-at-8-am-reading: Crimes Against Humanity by Geoffrey Robertson. [he laughs]. Oh, it is funny, i mean, who doesn't want to start their day with 600pages worth of genocide and systematic and serious violations of human rights? [he laughs]
- count me in
- that's the spirit akrM [i know his name already because the receptionist told me 'you'll be interviewing with krMa today', as i say this i reach out my hand and we have a firm, very satisfying hand shake].
- i read [can't remember the title] at a hearty 900pages a few months back. it was so damn heavy i got sick of holding it up in bed - i had the wife find me a copy for the ipod. even then you read for hours and you see the little %read dial move up from 1.4 to 1.6. [i laugh]
- it's annoying heavily <-- get the pun? [he thinks...
- ha! yes. exactly.
[i forget the rest other than to remember to nod occasionally and say: wow, really? that's incredible. sporadically: is that right?]

___*___*___*

after the coffee we forgave each other our/their shortcomings.
___what now?
easy.
___what?
something that involves glitter. sparkle.
___like what?

(___k__i s_s
_________t_a_ s
____________r
_y o u r_ e ye__s

l__a_c k___ time. )

(i wish we did)

___*___*___*

i never sleep on planes. not until i'm the last person awake. darkdark, everyone else huddled in cocoons made of just-not-quite-large-enough blankets. me and one of those little lights. pluto that'll eventually get annexed. or just an out of the way star, one of the too-many temples that you visit just to say you've been there take a compulsory photo of a wall or cement something-or-another and walk on thinking whether you're brave enough to try the street food again while trying to psychically connect to your stomach's mood-of-the-hour.

everyone wakes refreshed, i'm trashed. why didn't you sleep? i can't answer that question. it was quite. so? so... it's too delicious not to have too much of it. but now you'll be annoying and dopey all day. this makes no sense. no sense at all. i'm always dopey and annoying all day. my point is acknowledged, more so.

(but i'm saving up to cry about it all one day).

___*___*___*

they sit silently in the coffee shop. she resents him for having picked up a magazine before he sat down. in their secret parlance this means 'no-talkey-time'. she flicks through photos on her camera. does experiments by taking photos of reflections in the glass. he's oblivious. although it would ordinarily amuse her, she's irked to think she's like a child playing around while her father minds her absentmindedly. she tries to start a conversation. mmm-hmm he responds and turns a page. it will be winter when we get back. he nods this time, rright-right.
(but everything is so lovely she thinks).
he looks up to watch her take a photo of nothing. takes a sip. smiles. what are you thinking? he makes a face that means he's not sure there are words for it. just wandering he says. about what? not wondering, wandering, with an 'a'. oh. about what? i'm not sure there are words for it.

___*___*___*

on election night i wore burgundy pants and a tie, with a sweater-vest. some people drank and i spoke to this guy about what he'd do after he graduated (one of three options). later we went to the bar and i hugged some people i hadn't seen in months. where have you been? they kept asking, studying i kept saying. after that i realised i hadn't much left to say to anyone. half an hour later i walked back to the apartment. sat and watched the elections while eating little cubes of cheese just because they were in front of me on the coffee table.

that was... like a year ago.

how'd that happen?

___*___*___*

so what are you doing next year? he asks, looking at me expectantly.

goddamit i can't go through this sh*t again.

giggle-worthy

2011-05-11T07:15:00.001-07:00

True Stories

2011-05-11T07:05:00.001-07:00

+ i am alive.

+ i have been in Vietnam for 2 weeks. now i am not. this is sad. i walked between villages and buffalo blocked my path and it was green and my muscles hurt and that hurt made me happy. i have not felt so much sun for 2.5 years.

+ goodbye law school. hello (more) job apps. (officially finished)

+ i feel like writing again. so. look out.

THINGS I HAVE READ, A LIST:

(1) Memoirs of a Survivor, Doris Lessing

(2) Man Walks into a Room, Nicole Krauss

(3) Classics, a Short Introduction, (can't remember, it's the Oxford University series)

2 weeks in Vietnam, a story in ailments

2011-05-11T06:33:00.000-07:00

untitled by Valeria Heine

characteristically, i sit at my desk for 26 hours straight. she sleeps. wakes, i'm still there. it's humid, so i'm slippery like a sea mammal. smell like death. (she informs me of this). i hear voices, occasionally my door opens or closes, but it's a blur. i hear something about packing. i'm told we have to leave now. i shower. i'm handed a brown bag full of tshirts and the only two jeans you ever wear anyway. she drives. i continue to edit the document on the laptop that sits on my lap. i have a purple pen in my mouth that's been there 2 hours i forgot to take it out before and now my mouth is numb around it.

___*___*___*

by the end of the first week my body overheats and i shiver in bed and sweat and gasp and can't sleep. what's wrong with you? exhaustion i explain. what's that that's not an illness. i lay still for 27 hours and wake up the next morning ready to walk some more. that's it? it's over? i nod. Ho Chi Minh City ain't killing me this week. let's hope so she says.

___*___*___*

by the 9th day i'm back in bed. this time it's not exhaustion. at least, not one i'm conscious of. again? this one's different i explain. i lay in bed for 19 hours and wake up the next morning, still dizzy from the sound of the Discovery Channel that's been on all night and shower myself back into health.

___*___*___*

- hey do you know where the bathroom is?
- i think it's...
- no time to think. must walk faster. meetyouherelaterjustwaitgottagobye.

___*___*___*

then for three days i try and keep thoughts out of my head that want to be in my head. she wants to know why it's such a big deal. first i have to identify what exactly is 'it'. it's mediocrity i finally admit. i'm terrified of it. i'm worried i'm perfectly ordinary and will live an ordinary life and will be miserable in that ordinary plain way that everyone is (without knowing), and happy in that ordinary plain mediocre way that everyone is (forced and strained constantly for three flower petals to call romance, and every year a bigger tv must mean you're advancing in life). i swear, no one who knows you thinks you're mediocre. you're actually like the least mediocre person i know. nothing about you is mediocre. i smile, gently. i know it's all in my head... but 'it' is what it is. what's mediocre about being told you were just awarded a first-class honours degree? i mull this over. 3-5% of people have those i say. that's too many. she stares at me horrified. you are actually delusional. oh my god. i'm dating a delusional person. i nod. she's right. she is.

- hey, guess what.
- what?
- on day 14 Vietnam tried to kill me through my brain.
- ha. i suppose your immune and GI systems fought it off, what's left?
- don't jinx us into broken bones babs.
- amen bruthaman.

___*___*___*

i arrive home. hand out some presents, put in a load of laundry and fall asleep for 14 hours. i wake up, pick a tie and go off to a clerkship interview.

late afternoon i collapse (again) on my couch. put up my feet, and close my eyes wishing myself into stone.

...

2011-04-11T03:56:00.000-07:00

amongst the tea leaves there are little blue flowers.
they're brighter than they should be ; my tea has eyes.

the teapot is blue too. almost. maybenotquite.
colours are indeterminate. i'm not soo good with them.

you wait for me to make my mind up.
it takes a while, i stand when i read papers and you ask why.

'i don't know the answer to that question' i respond.
you nod.

at 5:54am i jump onto the bed, yelping frantically till you're
up and awake and telling me a half-asleep story until we're both

half asleep the next morning.
after your shower you grow roots into my couch

and i stare off at somenothing and (by now) am no longer playful.
'it's dark-' you say but i get up and turn the lights on before you finish.

your tea's gotten cold. it means you can drink it now, your first cup.
i finish my fourth and get up for another.

walk past the fridge which has been beeping for an hour and shut it right.
stop in the middle of the hall to contemplate how tired i am for a moment.

you find me 20 minutes later and ask me how long i've been standing.
'i don't know the answer to that question' i respond.

for dinner we discuss what to have.
eventually we eat whatever your mom cooked us last.

the menu's written on the plastic containers.
when i wash them i hold them up to the light to read my fortune.

it is silent.

sometimes it is silent and you are hidden in my phone.
amongst the tea leaves there are your blue eyes.

it beeps and your handprint is still on the couch.
i open the window to give it light, maybe it will grow;

by morning i could have three fingers with Chanel coloured tips.
'which colour?' you'd ask and after reading papers for a while i'd say

'i don't know the answer to that question'.
when it's silent a sad voice speaks.

you thought the song was dainty, 'it's dainty' you said, 'it sounds like something dancing ;
what do you think it sounds like?' you asked.

i said it was a ghost dancing.
even when it is silent the ghost is dancing.

i put on shoes when it gets dark,
when i walk i bump into stacks of books

papers fall and slide. every 3 minutes you see me get
up for 10 trying to find my needle in a rainstack.

eventually i stop jumping on the bed at 5:54am.
'sometimes you are the little spoon' you say, 'when you are running away from me'.

it is quiet but i hear swimming.
there are blue eyes in my tea.

between the cushions, i push aside some papers,
there's a fingertip.

four days later they'll find me rowing out to sea,
dreaming in vermilion on a blue-flower ocean

listening to a silent voice
ask my why i'm playing Mozart at 3am.

[bland]

2011-03-21T07:08:00.000-07:00

untitled by eriver

___so he decided to write about the things he knew about. _but there were less of them. many less. cardboard boxes. things with four corners and straight lines and rooms with harmless air-conditioning.

so he decided to write about things he knew nothing about. _but there were too many of those. everything in the boxes, and bordered by the lines, things entrapped on one side of the line or the other, and the question(s) of whether the line ever ends and if it does, what happens at its tail-end :: none of which really matters. (it doesn't).

sometimes you feel nothing. and that's fine. writing about 'nothing' is pretty hard. 'nothing' is actually a pretty amazing place to be, such vastness - caverns of emptiness - think an anti-ocean, the whole volume of an ocean but worth of emptiness and silence. it's not easy to express. sometimes you feel allamazingeverything at once. that's crazy ADD writing right there. you just go nuts, start at one end and run like a madman till you drop.

but then there's sometimes you feel... beige. missionary position. 4/4. generic questions HR always wants you to fill out with catchphrases like 'leadership' and 'enthusiasm'. when it gets like that there's just nothing to say. there's no poetry to such blandness. none none none. and that's what makes it hard to write.

i need sex with strangers or rooftop sunrises or children with little red shoes who tell me stories or middle of nowhere car accidents or just accidents or _t_h_i_n_g_s_ freaking-some-any-please--goddamn thing to happen to give me a heart attack small enough to remind me i'm alive and there's enough amazingness worth dying for to bother.

there used to be a bottled-up feeling i'd get. i would let it build up, and just let it sit and sort itself out into thoughts and images. then i write it out. it would come out more-or-less how it had planned itself to be and that'd be that. an exhalation. very nice. __but it hasn't been around in a long while. no bottled up feeling. maybe i'm not alone enough. i don't know how people manage marriage. someone around, all the time, around around around. just moving and speaking and even when they're not moving or speaking you can hear their noise and you know they're there. causes shifts in the weight of air i think. temperature changes. two noises and it's a whole different universe. alone is it's own universe. it won't share, it's selfish as all everything. it's an endangered species, everywhere i go there are its enemies trying to capture it. and of course it's like a rainbow when you have it in your hands it's gone. poof! and gone. maybe you hold a butterfly coloured roughly the same way, but that's not what you were after. 3 million butterflies maybe. arranged in the right way. pin-pointed in just the right spot(s) and from the correct angle it'll look like a rainbow. ___just maybe though.

dear god why am i bored? i dont' 'do' boredom. i don't get bored i have too much to read. but i am bored. tired and stifled and not really sure what to change because my usual practice is to change... well... everything. you. even new eyes.

i'll go the gym again. and get a girlfriend with blue hair who uses the C-word alot and then recites Montaigne. buy stuff. not sure what. an ipod? is that right?, is that a good place to start? and i'll stop going to classes and instead sit and read Just and Unjust Wars by Michael Waltzer (which is pretty much the only thing i feel like doing right now). oh: and be a sailor. that would be fun. the piano is annoying me because i've been playing annoying music. so ignore that. take up the accordion instead.

all of the above.

kick some blood back into the stone.

Q looks for a job

2011-03-14T22:37:00.000-07:00

Mallesons Stephen Jaques (commercial law) <-- boo.

International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia <-- yay!

Clayton Utz (commercial law... a bit of energy) <-- boo

Special Tribunal for Lebanon <-- yay!

Minter Ellison (commercial law... oh, add corporate to all the above) <-- boo

Special Court of Sierra Leone <-- yay!

conclusions of study?

i'm a hippie. fml.

thoughts (fragments)

2011-03-06T06:53:00.000-08:00

strange lifeforms by luis dechtiar

the day actually starts at 12:01. not when i wake up , not when it's light out.

[he looks at the time 12:57am] , an hour already it's been newness.
[he smiles and licks his lips] , new new new 'how beautiful' he thinks.

and newness makes him happy at 12:59am monday morning. a new darkness. there's less to worry about this new darkness. it's not the end of something. not the middle. we're not stuck in it. left alone with it on our hands like the old car that doesn't start in the garage. it's the start of it. the A of the alphabet. a whole 25 more to go. the whole periodic table before us.

*___*___*

so he does nothing. swims in it. eats mini muffins and takes a minute at the end to pick up crumbs and eat them too so his fingers are a little oily.

sshhh. don't speak she says. he says nothing with a smile. and she smiles back. he picks up another crumb , asks if she wants yogurt. she shakes her head reminds him i don't eat yogurt. she almost adds remember? at the end but realises he probably doesn't. maybe he does. who knows.

he gets a text on his phone: send thingee in today.
he responds: GF-secretary service, exceptional. please renew subscription another yr. direct debit.

later they dance. in one dream or some other - every whichwaythere is always someone dancing. always? she wants to know._ a l w a y s_ he says definitely.
and the music always plays.
and bodies are always warm.
and lips are never far when you need them,
and hands grow like trees and when you are sad one's not far away
and we grow up to be cherry pies and dandelions and piano melodies ,
and we die like our perfect sleep : an island floating on our own most memorable laughs and the smiles of daughters and highschool boyfriends and ivy dangling

and that's why we're dancing he says loudly , shouting it as he gets out the shower , comes running out naked and laughing , leaving a slippery wet streak behind him like a snail ; she's startled and laughs ppeeenis! and they both laugh (and take out their notebooks and jot down the date and time to remember it for ever and never) what a gift, i thought it might be valentines day she says.

*___*___*

i am old enough now to feel it.

it's lovely.

i once wrote a story about a boy who inhaled the nightsky.

i am old enough now to feel it.

*___*___*

i've been listening to, and love very much..., a LIST:

(1) ::M∆DE::IN::HEIGHTS:: __(you need this)

(2) Shostakovich, string quartet No. 15 in e-flat minor

(regarding the opening elegy Shostakovich told the Beethoven Quartet, before they premiered the work to play it: so that flies drop dead in mid-air, and the audience start leaving the hall from sheer boredom; of course that's impossible. instead it inhabits the air. takes over your room like four separate ghosts, sitting on the side of your bed and behind your desk, and your lounge chair and one on the couch besides you, sitting patiently, and seconds turn into leaves and fall drop out the sky and dry up)

(3) The Invisible Insurrection by Desolate

(4) The King of Limbs by Radiohead

(5) Dark Storm EP by the Jezebels

(6) Ravedeath, 1972 by Tim Hecker

fuzzy love, fuzzy time, fuzzy how it all works or tries to and changes merges grows or jammed and hated is pushed from one to the next discontinuous discontiguous ...

*___*___*

he wakes up sweaty. not remembering anything.

and hungry.

he hopes he dreamt of being underwater. walking along the bottom. everything was blue. it sounded like a pipe organ. everything was slow so he had time to remember it. and it was slow so he had time to let his body feel it. and it was dark. and silent. and still. and those are things he loves and tries to fit into his bag wherever he goes ; and failing 9 times out of every 8, he wants to dream stillness into being. get home from work and walk to the closet and get it out like a jacket and put it on. and then it is slow. and wear it to sleep so he dreams slow. and not take it off when he makes love so he dies slow.

eats cake for breakfast. with tea. and reads the new york times on his iphone and scratches his head trying to play a move on scrabble. gives up on all three and walks to the glass and looks out over the lake to assess the coming sunlight. he remembers the day started four hours ago. has been sitting waiting for him. excited like a puppy. ___he finishes his tea, puts the rest in the sink, and decides to dream a little more of aquatic pipe organs.

Walking In Los Angeles by Kate Micucci

2011-03-06T06:48:00.000-08:00

notpoems

2011-03-03T18:14:00.000-08:00

i.
when i wake up i cannot move.
i try stretching, playing my piano, religion;
fantasies about braiding black hair,
about adopting a mountain range, counting
all the things i've lost and found.
so i sit on my couch.
stare out the window, watch it rain in summer.

ii.
donuts. frozen drinks that you slurp till your brain hurts.
chocolate bars. my blood thick and heavier from the sugar.
(muffins the size of baby's heads and cupcakes dainty and
gorgeous as Marie Antoinette) so thick it can't be pumped,
i'm cut and bleed in gelatinous raspberries. emerald and
candied geraniums. i smile and put it to my lips.

do you need gas? she asks as i pull in and stop the car
nono, craving cookies. (yumyumyum)

iii.
it's nothing, it's a hole in my middle name.

i am a ghost ; to many people, i am a foreign long-distance oh-yeah-remember-him? name.
former once-upon-a-time girlfriends who might from time to time remember my hands on
their waists and feet they'd never let me kiss. former how's-about-a-time roommates who i slummed with and ate $5 noodles sitting on the side of the road at 2am

it is weird to not exist to so many people.

i am introduced to her. i say hello, she asks to hear my name again, i say: for your whole life you'll remember a sunday afternoon when i watched from the hallway you come out the shower and put on your underwear. and the window was half open so the milk grey sad rained on dream of afternoon infected our lives forever more and you turned and saw me and picked up your lotion and and held it out to me. ___she asks about my name again, but i've already told her all she'll ever remember.

iv.
you should be standing on your own two feet by now.
that sounds lonely. __standing on just two feet. __i think i prefer to stand huddled together,
standing on the backs and shoulders and feet of people who love me.

(and when i walk i hear a small army every step i take)

3 petit pieces : a response to MB

2011-03-03T08:39:00.000-08:00

allison in london 2011 by lina scheynius

i. the furies

it got noisy. sometime post-youth this was. felt like wind, someone had left a window open in my head and the buzz of it ... couldn't hear a damn thing. so i sat in quiet spaces and listened to it, like deciphering the rain (which is also possible with enough time and skills in cartography). they were murmurs. little snippets of voices. ostinato words that i didn't quite, couldn't quite want to make out. home home home. that's an example. words that had no meaning. the ghosts of words. memories i wasn't ready to dispense with. phantoms of myself. buzzing and humming.
___and just like that it'd all be silent again. smile-worthily silent.

and just like that (again), i'd hear it. distant at first. Sartre's flies. a hum. micro-conversations i've had/hadn't had/couldn't have/didn't want to have/wouldn't have had if i'd known/didn't know not to have had/ bleeps and blurps and mixed up with images of skinny girls' wrists and single high heels on my floor i'd kick on my way to the bathroom in the dark at night ; houses i'd lived in, rooms with no windows, Haifa's geraniums, yellow couches we kissed on, the whiteness of breasts in the moonlight, like bones or clouds made of dead gossamer ... and all the words it takes to say those things scrambled and mashed, here it comes now, like waves waves waves upon a shore, or knowing you're about to fall down some stairs .:: the buzz grows , fractal geometries ..::: closer now ;: dispense with formalities, when it hits i'll sink into a corner and stare off into nothing like a junkie or a tulip in a coma till

___and just like that it'd all be silent again. smile-worthily silent.

(these are not the kind you see. except to see them coming)

ii. by the river i sat down and wept

he hands me an empty bottle and asks me to comment, i tell him i cannot, which does not please him. but the party rages on. all around me. youth, or some similar tragedy with a rhyming nickname. and i follow my shoes around and try not to notice all the things i notice which make me feel a gajillion miles away in another galaxy somewhere where all of this makes as little sense to everyone as it does to me.
a girl approaches me, a little tipsy and fingernails painted what colour are your nails?
- that's a lame question to start off with.
- that's a shame, i was hoping you'd say 'tangerine dream'.
- what?
- your nails. 'tangerine dream'. or maybe 'psychedelic ruby'.
- that might work, psychedelic ruby.
- you're a psychedelic ruby.
- you're weird.
- better that than the alternative.
- which is what?
- unsmoochable.
- are you hitting on me? why do i feel like you're hitting on me?
- i want to smooch you, and then ask you questions.
- why not ask first?
- if you give unsatisfactory answers then your smoochfulness may vanish

(after i get lost between the magic of her long neck and red hair and her breathy alcohol breath that rises and falls here and there ; people walk past us, and i'm a little sweaty and i'm uncomfortable with my pants still on with the sudden lack of space in my pants - so i pull off, and say hey space cadet, she looks up waiting for the next question ... are you happy?
(these being words that have made her sad) (which i don't understand because this is the germ cell of every question anyeveryone's ever asked anysomeone else. if not that then what else? by now she's repacked herself into herself and gone to blahblahblah.
my sweat subsides and i can move in my pants again. my shoes move and i follow, and about a zillion miles away the true me is sitting reading something interesting in the quiet and i am saved from myself and all this.
___hey q, you leaving? i'm asked by the front door; but how can i comment on that effectively? empty and empty i respond ; which makes no sense to him, but which means quite simply: but i was never here.

iii. run. rabbit.

having stated the facts in clear chronological order, i suspected i would receive suitable advice. but he just sat there and stared at me. i indicated that the future is wordless by not saying anything. but representing it in silence. i stared back in other words. (and in other words i stare back all the time.) (that's what i do when i write. stare back. summon forth to me little damsels i have saved in the cozy bits of 2002 for my own personal remembrance)

the stage is set, but if it rains the whole thing will be wasted. i see a mime with a white painted face and he walks up to me and says if it rains we're all f&cked back to new caledonia. i ask him if there's not some way around it , couldn't you just pretend it wasn't raining? and he tells me he'll think it over in the restroom. ___(a few minutes later he returns). ___no he says. ___the performance is slipping up he says. i'm not sure what he means. he could very well mean the performance is the act of slipping up. he sees i'm evaluating the two options. he indicates he meant the whole thing, the whole show, the spectacle of the scaffold he says (by which i imagine he meant Friday 3:04am when i write this) is coming apart. he continues:

at the limbs is where you can see it most. severance. time starts to drift off. space (you get fearful of large spaces for a while. other times, the closet is suddenly not good enough. and age is age, and you bounce from birthday to birthday and realise somewhere between 26 and 28 you lost another hub cap and your mom calls everyday to see if you've found a job yet and you pop your pills like breath freshners and paint your happy face and walk out into monday mornings and thursday afternoons and eat burgers and sweet talk sweet looking girls into going to the movies with you and sooner or later you just realise being what the everyones are calling 'well' is a freaking mountain obstacle mission impossible to climb).

he'd keep on going but then we hear a deep rumble. thunder. well then he says, at last the time has come. sooner or later, the sky was always going to fall. i'm not sure if i agree with him on this point but he cuts off my thoughts :: heed well my advice young man. what follows is another round on the merry-go-round. you know where you are, you know the rest, you know all of everything. i disagree with this too, and i say but i know nothing.

he's walked away. he's moving briskly so he's far along already. he turns his head over his shoulder and shouts back: fine, try that one out then.

i'm not sure if i'd gone out looking for advice. but as it starts to rain, i'm pleased not to feel to cold about it all.

small stories.

2011-02-21T03:32:00.000-08:00

and even if it's sunday may i be wrong
for whenever men are right they are not young
____ee cummings

untitled by buradori

to my right a girl sits eating in a black corset. to my left, another. more nude.

when i get into bed she automatically climbs over me, pushes me back into my own side. it's one clumsy motion, another of night's awkward fumblings. i kiss the back of her neck and she purrs.
i like that sound.
so i do it again.

the rain tries to fool me. i'm not fooled. the humidity gives it away. this is a ploy. a stratagem. i ignore it, waiting for the ghosts of the heat to seep out of the hot cement : the rough tar of roads and sidewalks : and drift off,

i am bored and tired of everyallthethings we bore and tire of. today i am bored and tired of Monday. i am tired of vacant spaces,
sometime between 9am and noon i resolve to lock myself in a room somewhere. switch off my phone. to rest in being alone.

when i awake i am scared i cannot love.
i cannot be in one place.
cannot admit satisfaction.

i am soo proud of you she says. she says you're really shining right now she says when you were in my class i saw hints of it, sometimes you showed signs of it, but... well done. i ignore the inadvertent diss, i say if i may inquire, to what do i owe your generous laudations? she laughs, i worded it humorously, but i was serious: i have no idea what she's talking about. she laughs and walks away.

if this is not my body then whose is it?

when you give a recital it is a strange feeling. you sit on the stool. sometimes you have to lift the lid of the piano. other times not. depends. my teacher always said hear the first bar in your head, sound it perfectly in your head before you put your hands on the keyboard. then it starts. it's a dance for your hands. it's odd because the rest of your body feels like it's just hanging around waiting. like when you wait for your centre-of-attention GF/BF to get done talking to his/her friends so you can leave. you kinda just sit there. on the stool. try not to look around. try not to look to out of place. i'd always say to myself your role is to sit here politely. you hear the sounds and think oh, nicely done right hand. nicely done. sometimes there's a mistake. snaps you out of it long enough to make a few changes (like adjusting sound on the stereo). then you go back to sitting politely. daaaaaaa - dum!.
then it ends. you stand up, wonder how it went. it sounds different from 20 feet and a body away, so who knows what they heard. __bow. __shuffle off stage.

the rain stops and summer's thick tongue takes a big lick and exhales.

i do not want to be here.
to know anyone.
i want to be in Vietnam,
amongst white flowers.

it is hard not being myself. __i am tired of waiting for the opportunity to catch-up to myself.
so i shower again. reassess my wardrobe. worry about the future. __measure stuff.

i enjoyed the King's Speech. __mostly i want to live in Lionel's chambers. with the wallpaper and the model plane hanging from the ceiling and the wide spaces and the dark wood and the fireplace. ____i want Thom Yorke to teach me to dance.

- are you happy?
- i am not unhappy.
- then what are you?
- i do not know a word for it.

time is making me claustrophobic. and agoraphobic. one or either. maybe both. both. definitely both. i'm not sure whether i have too much of it or too little. i think it's both. like those days you feel fat and skinny at the same time. fat in the wrong places, skinny in the wrong places. but with time. and space.

i'll get them framed later he thinks.
to which she responds but there are no photos of you around anywhere.
that's true. there aren't. so he says there are photos of my memories. that's almost true. it's true, bar one missing photo. he gave one away. it is important to do that, once in a while. to give away something that means the world to you. give someone your version of the world. nice thought. a little jupiter-photo, a dusty saturn-ornament.

it is very Euripides. yes. i know, we've covered that ground already. but the furies, i can hear them. almost wish to hear them. maybe this time it's not even them, it's just me. it's the hum in my head. wants to run. move. relocate. scrub. restart. calibrate. purge. exorcise.

maybe though.
maybe what?
just maybe.
what ever. __so what's next?
the thing.
what thing?
whichever thing. the everyanynothing.
are you gonna have trouble sleeping tonight?

i cannot act this well for too much longer. __there must be some water here somewhere.

...

2011-02-14T04:03:00.000-08:00

untitled by irwin romain jules arthur

THINGS I WOULD INCLUDE IN THE STORY I WOULD HAVE WRITTEN IF I FELT LIKE WRITING A STORY (WHICH I DON'T), A LIST:

different coloured books, stacked some horizontal, some vertical, at first glance haphazardly on white shelves. but on closer look coloured, thematic, chronological organizational schemes start to appear. on an even closer look the schemes fall apart. on an even closer look coloured, thematic, chronological ... repeat.

i've lost that sense of home again. i had for a while. but it's gone now. everything feels foreign. it's all very Sartre (unfortunately). __i cannot sit through too many more classes. __or dinners. my house irritates me. i'm soo bored driving to and fro i speed just to put myself out of the burden of it.

a shopping trolley. kicking it. over. over. again. and over. and over. always wanted. over. to. again. over. over. again. and. again over. over.

maybe it should be set in summer. i hate summer. too much light. can't see a thing. always squinting, sweat dripping down my temples, drops on the inside of my lenses. my glasses always dirty. bright as all hell. can't bear to be outside, the air soo heavy you need a straw to breathe it in.

bad writers. bad writing. to make up for it they were tighter jeans. if can't act the part might as well look it. sitting in cafes. drinking soy somethings or another. complaining about irreparable environmental damage. __either that or throw together a couple hackneyed similes, slap a rhyme on the end and give it to a girl so she'll feel pretty and let you kiss her later and later into the night till there's simply no alternative left. (if can't act the part might as well abuse it). bad writers. bad writing. mostly by people who have bad haircuts.

distance. can't decide from what though. __from the future maybe. __also from the past. there's nothing further than the past. it's an impossibility away. distance from yourself ; even in the present. that mixed up mumjumbled wha tha feeling like you just woke up can't make a decision about anything so you just sit there staring away hoping it'll all just keep managing itself like it has for ever and ever.
distance. __that much is clear. __the rest...

a hospital. someone probably works there. i'm tempted to say it's a she. but then for fun it'll probably be a he. not a doctor or anything though. maybe in the cafeteria. maybe this guy wheels a portable television around from room to room for patients whose tvs have stopped working. room number. push. leave. collect. room number. again. again. white pants. the funny smell of the place. funny strange looks on people's faces. sick children are too sad to think about. he concentrates on how hard it is to find parking around the hospital. he hates parking. he drives his mother's van. the central locking doesn't work anymore. it smells like suburbia. there's a half-full bottle of water somewhere when he drives he can hear it rolling around. he never bothers to find it and remove it because ... ... because ... ... ... who knows.

nights we can't be alone but can't bear the sight of a person or the noise or movement of them. are thankful just to get home and close the door behind us. __when i was 16 i got my first notebook. it had a blue cover. somewhere inside it i wrote the line: i let my beasts eat me because they say i taste good. i still do. funny what a little flattery will do for ya.

if i wrote a story it would be like Hospice by the Antlers. fuzzy. but with clear melodies. several voices. i've never bothered to listen to the lyrics. i have no idea what they're on about. i just like the fuzziness. the melody. it's what i listen to when i'm sad. it's perfect for that. i feel like i'm being told a story. something about a hospital i assume.

there would be an after-shot. a '20 months after'. everyone would be ok. it's important that the reader is reminded that more or less, people are ok.
but still, sadder or stronger or farther away thanks to the experience. (distance).

no sex. __no love. __i've already made my money off those two. __this would be platonic.
platonic is under-rated. i'm bothered that it's easier to get laid than to make a friend. that makes me feel distant (except i don't know from what <-- but that's the point right?). she works at a carwash. on the weekends. that's where they met. (his mom was coming home for a visit so he had the mama-van washed). she didn't wash it though, she works the till inside. sells gum, old donuts. that kind of thing. __during the week she works as some blahh or another.
they have friends. as in... people that blahblahblah to each other, and drink on weekends and talk about that bitch or television shows or whatever it is friends talk about. but that doesn't fix anyone's loneliness - i'm sure it causes it more often than anything. __fuzzy. fuzzy lives. just kinda rolling along. you wake up knowing you have to get dressed but not sure why, next thing you know you're reading someone's left-over paper with your lunch, except you're not reading you just have your eyes set on it so they don't have to look around, after that you regain consciousness because you need to pee really bad, after you wash your hands you walk back out into the hall, it's almost dark when you find yourself trying to find the keys to your car. __wtf.

sometimes i get panicky about receiving text messages. i get nervous about hearing the noise. i don't know why. it terrifies me. i dread it. i turn my phone on silent and hide it somewhere where i won't hear it and where no one will hear me and know where i am and come find me and force me to talk to them or listen to them or know their name or make decisions or accompany them somewhere or be responsible or save money or get a job or be an 'adult' and get married and have babies and be a good person all those things they thought my parents would have instilled in me.

she gets drunk and cries to some guy she's never met before and tells him she ruined it for everybody. that she wasn't good enough to have been on the team and she knew all along she couldn't keep up but that she couldn't admit that to anybody least of all herself. so she stuck it out and basically ran the rest into the ground. she cries to the first guy but he has a GF so he leaves eventually. she plays the card on a second, who just doesn't really care. a third is found who doesn't care either (only it confirms what everyone around town had been saying anyway) but takes her home anyway. figures it's what she's after anyway. she is. except she's not. but she doesn't know that at the time. or for a few years yet.

i don't know of any story that has a start or an end. they just kinda pick it up somewhere and drop it off somewhere. it's just what they are, how they are. just distance between points.

apennyfortheoldguy exists again

2011-02-12T01:14:00.000-08:00

Book, let me walk on the roads
with dust in my shoes
and without mythology:
return to your library,
I'm going out into the streets.

__from Ode to the Book (1) by Pablo Neruda

i see you by frederico erra

believe me. i'm as surprised as you are. __i was wondering how long it would take me to work up the courage to come back here. __(and if there'd be anything new to say) __(is there ever?)

let's just do this once, and then we can all move on:
the Phillip C Jessup International Law Moot is no joke okay. you might think there's time for things like brushing your teeth and writing on your blog, but there's not. there just isn't. so i did that. and that did me. and now we're both sick of one another, and at long last i've come back to my infinitely silent little place on the internet. if i haven't responded to your emails, your text, your call, your... everything, then, please please accept my apologies. six months it's been since i've been on your planet. where i was before was somewhere else. far far away. unless you've been there you wouldn't believe me.
i've just come back and i don't believe me.

*___*___*

so. someone remind me how this thing works. i remember the process, pick an image, pick a random sentence, the rest kinda just happens how it wants.

*___*___*

everyone i grew up with is pregnant. __it was raining. i remember that. __five months i've misplaced somewhere. doesn't seem like much, __but there's a scariness to knowing you misplaced yourself. __and then you wake up and remember all your friends are pregnant and Martha got married, and GF was gone for 3 months and came back without me really noticing, __and i had a 4 day break at some point which consisted of me sleeping. i think i woke up 4 times to eat. cereal. bowl. milk. back to sleep.

i find myself sitting thinking about who i was before, who i am after. i think it's the same. the very same. just that for a few months in the middle i was ...

*___*___*

it's coming back slowly though. __took me a week to kill the spiders in my house. __i shower four times a day , just to make sure i'm alert.
i have a to-do list. __but i move slowly.

i want to write. but i'm scared to. i'm not sure what i've hidden or where i've hidden it. not sure what the sentences will spell. maybe that's what the spiders were about. a portal-link between my psyche and the house i haven't slept in for weeks. baby spiders. everywhere. little freckles on every flat surface. i'm not scared of spiders really, but when the inside of your bedroom looks like a woman's freckled back, moving and breathing and conforming to your motions... it's creepy.

"hi is this pest-raid?"
"yes it is, how may i help you?"
"my bedroom is Jumanji"
"excuse me?"
"the amazon, it's in my bedroom. and spread to my living room too. can you come?"
"are there bugs?"
"yes. they've evicted me. i refuse to go back there."
"haha. okay, so what are we dealing with?"
"i need you to come."
"haha. we will, how bad is it?"
"do you have napalm?"
"haha. i don't think that will be necessary!"
"you keep laughing. i'm not laughing. we need napalm because it is too difficult to procure enriched plutonium nowadays."
"hahaha. okay okay, tomorrow, first thing? i'll change the schedules."
"now you're understanding me."

*___*___*

in about 8 weeks law school will be done. (bye law school, bye!)

the rest is unscripted.

i suppose we'll just do what we do. meet. smoochy. be dicks to one another. be lovely. get married. or not. get jobs we hate. find things we love doing. dance uncomfortably under strobe-lights and with manic glee around our bedrooms in our underwear. write songs about it. cheesy poems. make babies. stare at dogs at the pet store and contemplate buying one instead of making babies. stuff like that. jogging. running in circles, that's always necessary. take our pills, forget our pills, dream big, live small - fall big, live large ...

what does all this add up to? (Saturday February 12th i suppose).

i love Sinatra's little introduction before he starts singing Send in the Clowns. __someone should teach me to sing. __(or write) ____(or live)

*___*___*

i cleaned everything. under ever couch. vacuumed. sprayed. mopped. disinfected. washed everything.

then i sat on my couch. stared at my bookshelf. thought about April. __about May.

i thought about hiring someone to play somewhere over the rainbow on the ukulele so i could dance with my eyes closed and forget where i am. how far i am from who i am. (whatever that means).

one day i'll remember how to write again.

until then... i suppose we can all just listen to Scarborough Fair-Canticle by Simon & Garfunkel and dream of those quiet heavens that sometimes we stumble upon in the corners of our weekends when we hadn't expected to.

much love to you all,
i'm glad to be alive once again.
i hope you are too.

up day teh

2010-12-03T08:07:00.000-08:00

one a scale of 1 to death: i'm still breathing. you decide.

my body stopped working yesterday about lunchtime. i came home and been asleep ever since. almost two days of it now. groggy and stumbly and i got a bunch of texts at some point with people complaining that i hung up on them but i don't remember any of that. it was raining at some point. i remember fantasizing about crawling out of my bed and on hands and knees crawling outside taking my clothes off on the way and digging a hole back into oblivion. i remember next waking up and it was dark. darker than i remember. it always confuses me when i fall asleep in the afternoon and wake up in the dark.

i've half-finished writing the case for the lawfulness of the 'war on terror'. sometime next week i will have to write the counter argument. then i'll sleep again.

GF: where were you?
Q: you know. doing... stuff.
GF: you can't do that. you can't disappear for days and not return calls or emails or anything.
Q: i told you i was checking out for a little bit
GF: checking out is fine, but you can't disappear.
Q: but you knew i what i was doing, i told you i was going to do it
GF: yes, fine, or a day or two or three i haven't heard from you in like a week. that's a long time.

i'm too tired to write more.
i'm going to go fall asleep again.

introit & two stories

2010-11-19T16:53:00.000-08:00

i watched Harry Potter with a 9 year old and was more scared than she was. PS if the animated scene about the 3 brothers didn't blow your mind then please take this opportunity to go shoot yourself in the face twice, once where each eye should be. it's not a matter of taste it's just that yours are obviously dysfunctional which is totally ok but not point keeping them if they're feeding you mistaken signals.

STUPID THINGS YOU SAY TO RANDOM PEOPLE (USUALLY CHICKS) WHEN YOU HAVEN'T HAD A DAY OFF YOUR MEDS IN WEEKS AND CAN'T FEEL YOUR LEGS ANYMORE, TWO STORIES:

_____(i) first story
i'm staring at my phone as i say this while i eat a McDonald's cheeseburger, inside a gourmet burger place named Grill'd. hi says i, hi says she.
- as you can see i'm nomnoming a McDonald's cheeseburger in your fine establishment. i just want you to know this is nothing personal, i much rather be ordering a burger from you. only that my bromance movie date and i are having a domestic about whether we can take a Grill'd burger into the movies. and this is where you tell me i did the right thing buying a cheeseburger from McDonald's. [spoken about a mile a minute]
- actually, i've gotten food from here in. just gotta be a bit sneaky with it.
- i used to like you. i walked in and i thought, wow, there's someone i can have a meaningful friendship with. now look what you've done.
- [she smirks] so what you're saying is you can't have meaningful relationships with people who disagree with you?
- honesty is for masochists not lovers my dear how about i order now?
- sure
- [reading off the text message sent to me] may i please have one Grill'd burger with brie.
- sure
- and no retard tomatoes.
- what?
- don't blame me i'm just reading what it says here it says 'no retard tomatoes' and i want to be a responsible friend who orders responsibly for his friends. so make sure there are no retard tomatoes in the burger, is that cool?
- sure. i don't know if we have any retard tomatoes today, i'll just put in normal ones
- NOOoo!
- [she laughs] i'm not retarded, i know what you mean.
- ok fine we'll be deep and meaningful friends again. you've really come through for me today, how can i repay you?
- that'll be $13.50
- very good.

_____(ii) second story
10 minutes before story (i) happened, i walked towards a mobile phone accessories stand in the mall to get a cover for my newly acquired iPhone4. as i approached i saw two girls of youngish age (18-20) muchly concerned with their appearance and blocking the portion of plain coloured phone covers leaving me to peruse the glittery section.
- girls you're standing in the wrong spot
- what?
- look at where you're standing.
- uhm... we're looking at phone covers.
- right. exactly, but did you somehow fail to see that the one you really want is on this side.
- which one?
- dude, you must have noticed that this phone cover is a leopard skin pattern in pink and white diamantes with glitter, what more could a girl want?
- [they half laugh because they're still confused. i think they think i want to have sex with them which is what girls always think when you talk to them, especially if you're being facetious which is probably fair because if we didn't want to have sex with you why would we bother to leave the very comfortable quiet-think-space we were inhabiting to come forth and speak, but i promise dear GF i was not trying to have sex with them i was just being facetious and also because they were blocking the half of the covers i wanted to look at] [they laugh because they're still confused]
- ladies, i'm not actually kidding. i'm trying to do you a favour. consider this: in about 3 months, one day you'll pick up your phone, and it'll be black and it'll have a black cover and you'll think to yourself is this all there is to life? just... black phones and black covers? ew. how pedestrian right? and let me tell you what you'll think next, you'll remember that random dude in the mall who tried to save you from this fate, and tried to remind you that life can be excellent. it can be amazing. every time you wake up in the morning to your phone-alarm or receive a text message can be an adventure if your phone cover was pink and white leopard pattern diamantes. it would be like... an adventure a day. and people will be like oh em gee how cool is your freaking phone cover i wish i were as cool as you and the whole world would be sooooo not pedestrian and in 3 months you might actually be on the cover of a magazine because some talent-scout spotted your phone and thought what a champion who is that chick.
- [they giggle because girls like this are only capable of giggling, playing with their hair, giggling more]
- all i'm saying chickees, is don't be a phone-cover rascist. seriously uncool in this day and age to hate on a phone cover just cause it's pink and white leopard pattern diamantes. at least give it a go. at least give it a chance.
- fiiiiine! ok! [they walk towards me and leave the other half of the stall, i take a step back so they can fit and i walk to where they were standing. i pick up a plain black gel phone cover and say to the man behind the counter:
- i'll take this one thanks [handing him my credit card. he scans and i take my card back and my purchase. i hear the girls say:
- hey! you just bought a plain black one! what's that about?