restive

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

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

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

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*

* 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

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

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.