2 minutes
I checked my sitemeter today and apparently the average view time for this site is about two minutes. I wonder what it is people learn about me in two minutes. What measure of curiosity and fascatination ties one second to the next as they browse through the personal entries and photos that are my life. Do they delicately turn pages, careful not to leave smudge or crease. Do they judge me, and stereotype me. Are they as cruel to me as I might be to them, or kind. I wonder if they smile at my passions, quip at my short comings and laugh at my silly jokes. Are there people out there who read this because they don't know themselves and find comfort in the fact that other people know themselves even less. I don't know. I think I'll need another two minutes to figure all that stuff out, ya with me?
Pictures of where you Are
You take a deep breath and tell me to relax. You tell me everything's going to be all right. And I don't know who you are, and I don't think you know who I am, but I think you're right. You ask me if I'm in love-- you say it's in my smile. And so I smile at you. And though our friendship occurs on such a casual level, I am infatuated with you. I study the profile of your face against the sun, the stride of your step , the shape of your shoulders, and the color of your hair. I measure you against my expectations only to find no template exists and you are a beautiful mystery to me.
I remember a younger, more hopeful, version of myself that would hold dark secrets like these with a certain sweet pride. Imagining the possibility of a day where secrets are revealed and my feelings we're not so unrequited. I am that young person no more. All that is left are these burning secrets, and idle fantasies.
Cold Hope
I have this tendency to keep things in until they pour out of me. And I want to write out all the things that bother me, that I hate. But instead these sores build until they are a festering mess upon my mind, and all I am possessed of is a passionate loathing for people, culture, and my surroundings. And I peel that layer off my onioned life to find a new skin even more opposed than the last. And I like it. I can see it taking me somewhere. I can see change. And the hardest part is peeling the mess away and finding the fight. Finding the quiet note of rage, that makes no sound but tears everything down. And I have more to learn about myself and about the world before that happens. As much as I don't feel happy about things, I know I've come a long way and that progress has been fast in this toxic culture that pretty much inhibits any unique or truly rebellious emotions. It has, as always, been a fight for my mind-- to steal a phrase from Ben Harper.
I'm drunk and things make sense. Shakespeare down there, he makes sense. He always does. Sensible guy. I wish I was more like him, more connected to things that mattered in my life. More connected to love. Love is all you need--- Lennon.
XCI.
Some glory in their birth, some in their skill,
Some in their wealth, some in their bodies' force,
Some in their garments, though new-fangled ill,
Some in their hawks and hounds, some in their horse;
And every humour hath his adjunct pleasure,
Wherein it finds a joy above the rest:
But these particulars are not my measure;
All these I better in one general best.
Thy love is better than high birth to me,
Richer than wealth, prouder than garments' cost,
Of more delight than hawks or horses be;
And having thee, of all men's pride I boast:
Wretched in this alone, that thou mayst take
All this away and me most wretched make.
Shakespeare
What adds up
I think that change is a necessary part of the future. It involves two obstacles for me.
1. Resistance to alter the ways of the past. The past (present) works. If it didn't work you wouldn't be here right now. The possibility exists that it could always be better though; we're early in the game and there are still plenty of cards to be dealt.
2. Resistance to find the new ground of the future. To react spontaneously and measure my effect on the world. The possibility exists that I could impact this world fundamentally. People who say it can't be done--it can be done (refer to past historical figures).
Now I'm not saying I want to be a historical figure, that was just a making a point. What I'm saying is I'm scared to move--this has been my position from the beginning of my life. I'm scared to take hold and find footing. I'm scared but at the same time I almost see no other choice now. I feel as though I've been living a sort of medicated life. That I feel so cold and unemotional. I know that I've done so much in the past 3 years to change my life; I've finished half a degree, I've traveled the world, I've learned guitar, I've begun to educate myself about the battles I want to fight in this world, and I have loved. But right now, this instant, none of that counts. I mean I don't keep score anyways, but I know that my potential is so much greater. I know that I have so much more to give this world and so much more to learn from it. I know this. I feel like right now I'm stuck at this locked door, and behind this door is my potential, I just need to find the right key.
And maybe I'm waiting for some small push, one little idea to help me reach a critical mass in my mind and break the door down. But more and more it feels like I'm waiting for someone. Someone to share this whole experience with. Am I afraid that it will have been all a shame if done alone? Am I scared to make the next step by myself? I don't even know what the next step is.
This is about doubt. I doubt myself. I doubt whether the path so clearly laid out in front of me is the right one for me. I doubt if I'm strong enough. And these little doubts add up, and I want someone with me in case I'm not strong, but I think I have to realize I need to be strong enough to make it by myself from the beginning. I think I just needed to write some of this out.
LXIV.
When I have seen by Time's fell hand defaced
The rich proud cost of outworn buried age;
When sometime lofty towers I see down-razed
And brass eternal slave to mortal rage;
When I have seen the hungry ocean gain
Advantage on the kingdom of the shore,
And the firm soil win of the watery main,
Increasing store with loss and loss with store;
When I have seen such interchange of state,
Or state itself confounded to decay;
Ruin hath taught me thus to ruminate,
That Time will come and take my love away.
This thought is as a death, which cannot choose
But weep to have that which it fears to lose.
Shakespeare
Gumshoe
Quiet late nights grab me like a detective without work,
Open office with empty chairs,
Bottle of bourbon to hear all rectitude of prayer.
And I try to speak
and try to think,
I wish to find a skirt to drink.
But lost now to daze,
my eyes do slip
farther into disenchantment.
This is what I have to say.
This isn't really living.
I've been listening to a lot Dave Matthews tonight. I go on Dave binges sometimes. He has music to soothe all matter of ache. Tonight's medicine has been 'Grace is gone', 'Stay or leave', 'Crash into me', and 'Say Goodbye', with a side of 'Diamonds on the inside' by Ben Harper. I listen to these songs to play them on guitar myself, to hoarsely sing them in my own voice, to wish the words were mine to give away. I hope that they'll inspire my own words.
List time:
- Sometimes you have to re-invent your dreams.
- Slow quiet things are better than loud fast things.
- I wish I could solo like Tim Reynolds.
- Don't restrain desire because of cultural pressure.
- Actually live instead of posting twice on your blog the same night.
- I was thinking, Bob Marley wrote a song called "No women, no cry". I was at a reggae bar in Thailand and they would play this as the last song of every night for those men unlucky enough to be alone (self pity). This is true: no women no cry, but not much smile either.
- These blogs would make a lot more sense if you knew me, I think.
My alarm sounds this morning and the first thing that pops into my head is a question of whether or not my existence is contributing to the wholesale destruction of the universe. Wait. Universe is too big. I guess in the physical sense my life is ineffectual and meaningless, (there are hundreds of billions of stars in our galaxy alone, many of which probably have planets like our own with similar species who idly contemplate) (I'm a geek) (always remember we're average). But when I think universe I think everything that could possibly effect my life, all of the inputs. I think of how this feedback system of shitty input and absent output is a horrible design of our culture. It is bulk, homogeneous, mass distributed culture. It is a direction for a large unthinking flock. And I am a sheep.
I am trapped in formalist thought, fire escapes blocked with routine, habit, and social pressure to stay inline and obedient to a system that leaves me helplessly cold. Artificially warm emotions only generated by television sitcoms and greeting cards. And I want to change. I want the rage in me to split me open and spill all over this neat stack of shit that is in fact so heartlessly messy. I just wish there were more people to share actual emotions with and not simply gossip. I am bitter that I am advertised a smiling beautiful girl, a nice car and a happy life...But in fact none of that exists. I am angry that such images have been paired with commercial advertising campaigns and I am now forced to painstakingly separate my hatred of commercial materialism propaganda from heartwarming loving family.
Most of all I seriously hate how the thought of all this is seriously affecting my sex life. I hate how this isn't a topic you laugh over coffee about, and then casually send invitation. I passionately hate the formalism that is actually in place to govern relationships and sexuality in a pop-culture environment. Coffee. Dating. Sex. Fighting. Make-up sex. Fighting. Cheating. Sex. Breaking up. Getting back together. Sex. Cheating. Marriage. Children. Divorce. I'm bored of writing about this.
Voids
I'm listening to a cover of Personal Jesus by Johnny Cash (original by Depeche Mode). I watched the presidential debate tonight. Reality TV. I flipped though channels for hours until my finger slipped and hit the off button, probably for the best. I don't watchTV.
I have this headache that kind of feels like two bars pressed against the back of my head and neck. I don't sleepwell, even with my new bed and my new blinds. I have strange dreams. I heard once about this guy who couldn't fall asleep. It wasn't insomnia or anything, I think he had a tumor in his brain or something that stopped him from slipping into unconsciousness. Anyways he actually died from not sleeping...after being awake for 29 days. I sometimes feel on the same path, what is it I ly down with at night that tears at me. Fuck the world for this pharmacological nightmare of a chemical imbalance probably caused by the wax they use to shine my apples...Should I stop eating apples?...Should I stop eating period?
I think I'm worried my virginity is growing back, and that each night is a verification that I am one more day closer to dying loveless and shagless, at least seriously undershagged, and not in the groovy way. I should delete this but I'm gunna publish it out of shear spontaneity and the hope that some gorgeous cyber vixen (but totally normal) will read this as a plea for help and break through my window as I lay awake in my bed (new queen size sertapedic) and selflessly bounce me to sleep. Again I should delete this but nobody reads this blog anyway or even knows me.
