Severed Rambles

Masochism

2012-01-22T00:51:00.003-05:00

Let's be honest, now that it's just you and me baby, I fucking hate chlorine. And I'm just not masochistic enough to do food service. Maybe I'm still looking real hard for some thing to sell my soul too, but it's just not a competitive wage.

Though maybe, and I know I've been fighting this one for a while, it's not "just not," but rather "not just". I grew up with a 20 in my pocket, and yeah maybe I know how to live like I don't have a dime, but I don't want to live like that. And I don't know if I can without getting even more bitter, greedy, and crotchety. But hey, maybe that's the whole problem right there.

A Sound Foundation

2012-01-01T22:55:00.001-05:00

These furtive moments that seem so important have no longevity outside of nostalgia. Our way back whens eventually catch up to us, but back then they were nows, and they were momentarily everything. I think that's strange. I think that's deceptive. Every day I wake up and fear what actions will haunt me, what inaction I'll rue. As it happens, each moment is one tiny block in a built multitude, vast and concealing. Sometimes it's best to remember this momentary attribute of life, but then again, I think that only makes the less enjoyable bits that much harder to bear. And I know there's another way to look at it, but I just can't seem to get the hang of it.

I tell myself to take each day like a lighting storm and vibrate like each second is more than just that: but a drop of lifetime, an eternity in itself. Faded pictures evoke, belly laughs echo, and all in all the past enables.

And when the sun is shining it's good.

Mud

2011-12-29T00:30:00.001-05:00

She scrapes at night, whenever it's soft enough to listen. Miniature squeaks to harbinger a miniature menace. They leave our food alone at least (so far), and luckily I'm a pretty sound sleeper. And the nightmarish thought of a flood of mice descending from the ceiling, does not seem to phase me.

And the jobs are okay. They are alright, no really. I am just sort of struggling. What did I expect, deciding to pay rent all the sudden like that? But, what could I have done.

I want to flee, again just like I always have. But these survival commitments become the very mud that sucks at my heels like glue. It's not the money, it's not the things, not even the people so much. What roots still cling in these winter soils? What is it, other than fear and loneliness that could possibly hold me here?

An Oldest Memory: Behemoth Fucking Trucks

2011-11-14T23:50:00.002-05:00

Jobs and residences mill about my indecision listlessly. Each night I count futures. And somehow that's nothing new.

But I have more to say than just that. That is the news; that is the frequency that I'm (still) vibrating at.

I have one those oldest memories: fucking behemoth trucks were at one length of age the absolute shit, and I mean that in the most endearingly sweetest way possible. Who would have thought that some lifetimes later my green blood might despise the superfluous rumbling axels? Well, wait, that's once again besides the point.

The thing is, my engine enamored era did not slide or fizzle to something new. If there was one childhood trait I embodied like some adolescent demon, it was certainly my finickiness. None the less, I remember why. I remember a lot of silly things, like why I wanted the sand back in my bathing suit, why a singular pea in a bowl of soup was a fucked up appetizer, and I remember why chasing after the peers who ostracized me was important. I don't mention these reasons though, because like trucks, I fear they may be stupendously revealing. Like deeper than marrow even. In these rationale my existence is summarized, annotated, and compiled. And letting that out, giving that primitive darkness air, well I believe that would compromise my character, ideals, and person. I believe I might be full of shit then.

Anyway, let's stick to the truck thing, let's get into that. I don't like that little bit, so let's compromise that one. Let's turn an oldest memory outside in. I want to douse this one in light and stop pretending. I am not better than anyone, I am not special.

He liked trucks too.

He fucking loved them. So, I couldn't. I don't remember the order really. He wanted to like them too, but I couldn't do that. We shared books. One of us had a firetruck for a pretend car. That was a real big deal for me. That was huge.

Do you get it? Do you see where this is going? This is a problem.

Fuck trucks. There were dinosaurs, astronauts, superheroes, dragons. But there couldn't be trucks anymore. I didn't really get dinosaurs, which I think now is pretty funny considering how cool dragons were then (and now). Enough tangents though, at what point did my heart tumble? To this day I wonder if I ceded my ground, whether I conflict was ever pondered. I was never much of a strategist, but I really did like trucks, didn't I?

Eventually I found their flaws. Their slow limitations. Their stupidly bright painted sides. Their utter lack of imagination. Constipated, I grew, I forced new perspective into my timid and tiny consciousness. And maybe I withdrew, but I was stronger. I was smarter.

From the picky presumptuous elitism I corrugated and conceal, I grew and grow. I grew and grow, but I need to find another way. I need to find another way, because I am not special, I am not better than everyone else. There is nothing waiting for me to comprehend, compose, create. There is nothing that separates me from the dust I sneeze at in allergic fits. I am and were forever and always an individual and not much more.

It is time I let this go. It is time I learn to grow without the help of others.

2011-10-09T23:32:00.006-04:00

What? Is it apathy or is it just indecision? Ah fuck, who really knows. Probably ain't worth stressing out about. Life chugs along at a pretty good clip, won't be too long before I start to freak out about my lack of experience, money, or love. Might as well be tomorrow my twenties start to dwindle and I suddenly find my drive. Time solves everything.

Days Off

2011-10-03T13:09:00.004-04:00

It's my day off again, so says the snooze button, tapped once, twice, till noon. And it will roll by, again. I will eat Indian buffet, I will lounge in various positions, I might even exercise, and I am sure by evening I will feel that twinge of "oh fuck". But that's just the way it goes, this life. That's just the life I squander.

So I quit my job. I am going to move, and if I feel guilty enough, I'll come back for Thanksgiving. But I am going to move, it's decided, I am going to live.

Moving Forward

2011-09-14T23:33:00.004-04:00

Fighting for a semblance of collection, re-collection—bearing maybe. Maybe not. Well, whew, lately I think the only sane way to live is by not thinking about your future constantly.

But I do it anyway. The cities and occupations, sometimes even careers, they haunt me all. I wake up in the middle of the night unfulfilled. I feel my un-accomplishment burn heavy on each inhale. What's this breath worth? Which direction will it fuel me? Which sail will I fill when I finally let it go?

Well honestly, I breathe a lot, I was probably just planning on exhaling or whatever. It's an awful lot to plan each breath, suddenly there is another one right around the corner! Breaths are kind of similar to loan payments in that way.

At least it beats failure. Standing still is better than drowning and it always will be. Plus, I bought running shoes today, that's gotta count for something, right?

Change

2011-08-02T18:02:00.003-04:00

The cool water swam around my sweaty ankles, instantly mollifying a dozen bug bites. I remember catching my breath there, standing in the sand and lake. I had climbed a fence to get to the tiny beach and ripped my shorts in the process. They were pleated khaki and ill-suited for a 36-mile bike ride, but then again so was I. The sun was beginning to set and my muscles ached as my head swirled. In that moment, I was not too sure that I would make it back to Burlington. My bed, food, and comfort were still a dozen miles of bike path away, but I was buoyant regardless: I had done it! I had biked 18 miles and more, all the way to the causeway, all the way down the causeway! I had seen the entirety of Burlington Bike Path, I had gone until the path ended abruptly at a ferry stop, and now I was headed back.

A year before that, I was working out on an elliptical machine as I often did. The seconds ticked down closer and closer to zero and my feet pushed harder. My legs felt number and number until, finally, the words "begin cool down" flashed across the LED screen. And there it was: 300 strides more than a week ago. I did not always weigh myself when I went to the gym, I had spent most of my life avoiding the things, and even though their numbers scared me less and less, I told myself my workouts were not for the sake of numbers.

And then, I was on an island in Denmark. My bike's tires were slimmer and taller than the bike I had ridden down the causeway a year past, and I was too. 60 kilometers had already ticked past and the wind had burned my face and lips a bright red. When we finally reached our destination, the world's largest corn maze turned out to be closed on Sundays. So we sipped our beers from Samsø's microbrewery and no one was dismayed as we stared out at the Baltic Sea. "We should swim," someone said, and then we were all in there; the bitter, brutal cold a glaze of simultaneous numb and sting. And then there were the 60 kilometers back, and they came easy.

I suppose it is not an easy thing to change, I should know that rather well. Though however well I know it, each day I live I try and pretend the lesson a little less true. I have seen unfathomable distances, and woken up a different person. I have seen my face bulge and melt until the only thing familiar in the mirror were the brown eyes looking back. And perhaps, despite everything, that is why I think I can change the world too.

Adventurous

2011-07-30T16:10:00.004-04:00

A snow globe of people and places stirred today to settle under the awning of a starlit night; at the end of the day, once the world has shimmied itself around it's axis once more, I hope tomorrow morning that I have fallen somewhere new. I want to scratch the sand out and open my eyes to the unfamiliar.

Uh, well, I guess you can keep your jobs, both of you. Thank you, thank you for this opportunity (that is what it is, you know) for money, for resume, for reference and profit, for life, stability, responsibility, and really everything you could possibly offer me, but I need more. I want less, but I need more. I need life, I need love, I need culture, I need adventure. Not this. From having nothing just a short while ago it seems pretty presumptuous, I know, but god help me I can't settle for less. Because no matter how comfortable and sane it all seems and is (which it's not either of, anyway) I won't ever be able to answer honestly, "why not?"

So fuck it, let's go.

That's All We've Got

2011-07-27T23:59:00.007-04:00

Five years or so I've been writing here, if you'll even believe it. I remember when I started; I was perusing the posts of the last blog I had, and I just decided it was a little too, I don't know, unpolished maybe. Maybe too naive, too teenaged. It was renegade in a way that made me feel pretty dumb for authoring it.

Well, I feel the same fucking way about this one now too! Only problem is I ain't much better at this writing thing. My writing is shit, it's highfalutin, puttin' on airs I don't even understand. What is that shit anyway, like I can pretend that some line is real deep just because I'm the only dick who gets what it really means.

And shit, I still don't really "get" semicolons at all. I use 'em often enough, but what is the deal with those things? Seems like a comma or a period does the same thing. I like the way they give me more punctuation, like a line break in poetry maybe, but then again I never got the hang of those either.

I think I might just be a hopeless writer. I'm not really feeling down or anything, but I'm trying to be honest here. I got a lot to learn here and I don't really think I'm learning too fast. And, well, that's it really. I mean I hope I'm still gonna write and all, writing's important, and so is pretending like you got airs. Everyone's gotta have some sorta air I think; maybe you're real good at collecting rare bureaus. Someone probably feels pretty airy about that, and I guess that's cool, why can't a guy feel good about having some rare drawers? Who cares if a million people would make better bureau collectors, their loss plus it ain't like they are wasting their time collecting some pointless bureaus.

That's pretty much how I feel. I've written a lot of stupid stuff, I'm kind of embarrassed about it. And that's probably not going to change. LIfe goes on, stuff gets written, and then you feel kinda stupid for not knowing any better. Oh well, good thing no one knows to read this place.

Momentum

2011-07-23T16:49:00.004-04:00

The word "stagnant" comes to mind, but I like to think that it's more of a fermentation. These lives we lead are pretty full, I think it must be hard to resist any sort of substance; the brain just goes.

Well that's fine, but still, fuck it all. Fuck these walls, this house and it's cracked foundation. Fuck these memories and stories, and all these heartwarming things that muddle us, constipate us, and worse.

There are things I need to see! Places I won't believe! There are women I need to meet, music I need to hear, expanses I need to explore, and quick! I'm dying. I'm falling asleep earlier each night, getting drunker quicker, and worse to boot. I am dying, I am going to work every morning and smiling, harder and harder, because that is what it takes to excel in this life: smiling harder and harder. It's a slow poison, mediocrity, and it's one I drank out of desperation but I'm not desperate anymore. I'm not desperate anymore so get me the fuck out of this town, get me out of this house and let me into world. I am bright, brighter than the sun and the stars, shining, shining, shining until who cares.

Champions

2011-05-12T00:02:00.001-04:00

The Celtics game 5 loss sheathes like a sword reminding us of our own mortality.

Eighty-two games and more, ninety one lounges on couches, bar chants, and heart drops; the season skids and, suddenly, vaporizes. We are all dying.

Each day makes us stronger, but sometimes all it takes is a dislocated elbow to remind us, we are also getting older. Through the long evolution of a team hoping, fighting, believing, playing for a death so full of pride and glory that we might for an instant believe ourselves immortal, and one, we must finally admit, we're not. No one is, and this one surely hurts.

Goodbye Celtics, see you next year.

Stomached

2011-04-27T12:39:00.005-04:00

The sick rollicks, rolls around my gut like tumble-dry-low, somehow, spinning my love strings dry. So I eat; so I pretend I am still full from yesterday's smorgasbord. The flavors of life and love slip down my throat, away from where I can still taste them. Yesterday digests into a figment of some heretical past. And I want to remember, I try to remember.

Lovesick

2011-04-18T14:43:00.005-04:00

There is just one diagnostic for my mellow heartache, I think I must be lovesick. The word sounds like some cold mistake, like "alcohol poisoning" or "Lyme disease." You're love sick? You poor sucker.

Is it naïve to follow the heart (blindly)? Probably. I don't know if there is more to say, I know this one already: sometimes when your heart pulls you one way, you need to reign it in like a misbehaving puppy-eyed pet. Then teach it proper etiquette, because it should know better. It doesn't need to get so attached; it's a free thing, and it needs to be humble. In this post-graduate world where cash moves everything around hope and love and freedom, It needs to move on.

Ohhh, but I still don't want to. And why? There's that tug again. It doesn't have to make sense. No, and it doesn't need that probably painful closure either. It's over.

Colliding

2011-04-10T23:38:00.008-04:00

Where are my peers? Somewhere, I must have taken a wrong turn or something. I'm still not so sure about this one, but maybe, just everyone else did? It doesn't truly matter; I seem to be a bit lost without them.

Well, welcome to the real world! Where dozens of generations suddenly collide into one jumble of individual ideals and desires. How do you even begin to see through that mess? Maybe I'm blind.

I wanna wander around in some desolation until I start hallucinating; find myself inherently part of a world. And maybe it would even be the type of world where the only desolations around me, weren't rather dangerous to hallucinate in.

Inconsequential

2011-03-25T22:18:00.003-04:00

I probably don't need to feel too convoluted to write here, do I? I guess we'll find out, cause I'm feelin' pretty plain.

I'm not trying to fool anyone. I mean, the life I lead is but mostly isn't. In a distracted life, these things happen, but the music still sounds so good. And plus, the sun shines brighter and longer these days.

I can't complain too much, all things considered. I wasted half a year and everyone and everything still loves me inconsequentially. And you know, that's a pretty good feeling right there. Why tarnish it with guilt?

Love Letters

2011-03-21T00:39:00.008-04:00

There's something pitiful, yet also a little magical, about a journal full of unsent love letters. And you know, for some reason, I can't help feeling like there is also sanity in their unstamped, unread nature too. Even if it tears me apart inside.

Why, oh why, am I always falling in love with the unattainable? These ethereal relationships are my absolute favorite for god knows whatever reason. And I'm not even very good at them either. Ultimately I'm too realistic to seal my heart up in an envelope and send it to an idea.

Sometimes it's timing, sometimes it's distance, others it's just sanity that keeps me from taking any chances. But, I also distinctly remember believing that love overcomes all of these things, especially sanity. That is what I believe, right? In the unstoppable, indomitable nature of love?

Well, maybe that's just it; I believe in it too damn much to ever let it corporate. I'd just be too damn good at it, and then where would my favorite ethereal relationships be, my journal full of unsent love letters?

Sigh, why do I even write here, I always end up back at square one. One of these days, I swear, I will make a decision.

Intimacy

2011-03-15T00:03:00.005-04:00

I think I might be going crazy. Since when in my mundane life riddled with obesity, lethargy, and general lack of confidence, could I be a desirable thing? A moment where I might be considered worthwhile of a person's affection? Persons' even?? Jesus, what is this world coming to.

It's falling apart really, the curtains are crashing down all around (I really am this corrupt). I've had a few fears here and there; fear of bugs, fear of heights and fights and blood and well anything, everything. Fear of loneliness, and apparently even intimacy too. Maybe not the holding, but the singularity, and certainly the idea of finality, of stasis, maybe? I don't even know, but there's gotta be something behind this self destructive tendency. I'm capable of love, shit, I must be full of it! So why am I so scared to let any of it out?

I think, I am just regretful that I didn't give it a chance. Because, I just can't get her out for some reason, and hell, I didn't even know she was in until she wasn't there anymore.

So, am I hopeful or heartbroken? Am I heartbroken, or hopeful? It's awful difficult trying to compensate for a self destructive tendency, when you don't have much in the ways of a sense of self to begin with.

Repetition

2011-03-03T11:21:00.003-05:00

I am as I was and ever will be. I'm just too used to my own insecurities to live any other way. You grow and learn, are shaped and formed, and maybe at your core you're not too much, but that drastic change, it's not too easy for folks such as myself. For anyone, maybe. Some are, some change, but me? I was a scared little kid, I was a terrified little man. And it happens. Over, and over again, it happens.

Some Spins

2011-02-07T02:35:00.005-05:00

And the world, it spins. Slowly, turning slowly, slowly. Like a calendar leaf, sweeping down, down, down to the cold spinning earth. Moving slug-like to the rhythm tides, the world keeps changing, too slowly spinning, clinging. Clinging to the turf, rhythmically clinging, hoping, the clouds are holding everything together.

Dodge

2011-02-01T16:56:00.003-05:00

The highs are a little lower, but so are the lows. It all works out to something like nothing, which is all I am really doing.

I need to move on, all at once. This slow build up of nothing is ridiculous.

Strange Days

2011-01-27T02:49:00.006-05:00

It's possible I don't trust myself enough to post here nowadays. I always saw these thoughts here as paramount. Maybe not permanent, but like pages in a book. So many doubts can make that sort of thing harder to believe in though.

I'm so scared I'm going to write down these pages wrong. Right now I am the only one awake. How could I let myself do that? Now that I'm no longer being taught, now that I no longer can pretend I'm figuring things out, what can I say inspires these hours?

In reality, I've always visited these hours, it's just so overwhelming right now though, it's hard to know where I begin and end. Am I too large? Too noncommittal? God damnit, why do I have to be anything?

Complicated Things

2011-01-06T00:46:00.005-05:00

What can I say, I guess I'm not too good at living in Wellesley. The days and nights roll translucently; memories like slides in a projector.

I could talk about direction, I could. I could talk about desire, too, but I wouldn't know where to begin.

I want to see the coral reefs, the northern lights, and sleep under the stars (all of them). That doesn't seem to mean much right now though. What would life be like if I filled my obligations by 30? Maybe by then I'll have some salaried job, salary all allocated about already anyway.

I can't help but get all existential when the conveyor belt stops. When it comes down to it, I only want the simple things: music curling through the speakers as I saute some delicious disaster, the sun blasting through and onto the page of something powerful, provokingly unfamiliar horizons after some disoriented course, and feet not being able to help themselves but groove with it all.

Yeah, I'd take that over coral reefs any day.

Laying Here in Limbo

2010-12-02T11:13:00.007-05:00

I am dreaming every night, which is something. They're good dreams, the kind where I am mountain climbing, or going back to Allegheny and running into people. I wake up every morning with confidence, at least before I remember the way the world is these days.

It's kind of a daze until then. Laying in bed as my eyes adjust and my muscles stretch, my mind slowly grapples with the day. It doesn't matter that the mountains I climb are too tall or that the people I run into are fictional; in my dreams I am indomitable.

Wordlessness

2010-11-22T18:28:00.004-05:00

Somedays, words have meaning. On other days, not so much. I feel like I should be more tethered to words than I am, but I can't seem to help it any. Sometimes they come, sometimes they don't, sometimes they leave anyway. That's a lot of probability for something that requires dedication, right?

Despite all of my directionless endeavors though, writing is one endeavor I have spent plenty of half-assed years with. Words don't always make sense, but they're always there. Regardless if I take them seriously, find myself with any talent stringing them together, or simply get used to them, they are, and always have been, defining.

Catapults

2010-09-06T23:53:00.005-04:00

Undergraduated, unemployed; you understand. Twenty-something! Hallelujah! Who would have possibly wondered that these might be the most boring years of my life?

Each day is the same sweet mildness, but I've got an idea: I am going to torch all of my stuff. Really get in there and embody that great vague ideal that my directionless lifestyle encapsulates. Maybe if I sever the tethers and flap in the wind for a little while I'll land somewhere. Or a long while. Or a medium while. I could do a medium while, but all in all I don't think it very seriously matters; I will land somewhen.

In honesty though, I never really quite understood the diference between being pragmatic and being idealistic.

Eternality

2010-06-06T01:53:00.002-04:00

Hey, I'm sorry...I know it's been a long while. These times are weird, these times are frivolous. It's hard to keep it all in perspective, it's all rather overwhelming. I'm obligated to make something of this all but I can't seem to keep my wits about me. I'm just not as young as I used to be.

I don't want to be defined by a place or by a person. I want it to be intrinsic, I want it to be internal, eternal, and ever so righteous. I don't understand why this isn't easier.

Well, here I am out of place in Vermont again. Here I am in a similar place, and I'm gonna try and make the best of it, god I am going to try and make the best of it, but I'm volatile in all the wrong ways and I can't help but feel stagnant and stupid.

Explanation

2010-04-16T12:51:00.002-04:00

It's hard to find a way to say that lately you have been feeling self-absorbed without it sounding self-absorbed.

Moving Blocks

2010-04-15T00:07:00.007-04:00

I remember when I was just a kid I thought that the worst part of prison would be the boredom. When games of tag got out of hand, the cold compartmentalizing bars just seemed so cruel. Then, I was used to people watching me shit; no privacy for idle hands when motivation is a sugar high. Those awful lunches while avoiding recess punches, and I didn't know the half of it. But what I didn't really understand most of all, was that after they cut you into individual cells, sometimes they gave you books to read before lights out.

Relax

2010-02-25T17:03:00.002-05:00

Sometimes I think things don't have to be so complicated. If my impulse to solve gets me any deeper though, I think I might really lose myself.

So right now, starting now, things don't have to be so complicated.

Always Aging

2010-02-22T22:04:00.004-05:00

I think I'm lost again. But honestly, how am I supposed to tell anymore?

Someone called me old the other day, is this one of those life-crises? I want to jump from the tallest tree and fly. I want to fly somewhere that will finally fill me up, or at least somewhere new.

I am going to throw away all of my things.

Tricky Tracks

2010-02-17T13:09:00.008-05:00

I wish to be reborn myself! I have lost track of losing track, I am secluded in something like nothing now, and that just doesn't feel quite right.

These days just tick by. I guess because I still have to graduate, but when is waiting ever okay? Applying for jobs and internships, crossing fingers on all the different avenues that someone might maybe let me walk, is this liberty? Is this life? Too fearful of the future to fly.

Maybe that is why I keep coming back to this shadow. Here, this uncompromising inability to fulfill or focus, it defies all of that shit.

The Times

2009-12-31T03:29:00.002-05:00

Sixty-seven students dead in Chicago.

Samantha is too young to keep her shoes tied.
She drags them up the concrete bricks,
climbs using the bottom rung of the handrail.
Her sign hangs and slopes like her open mouth
at the tedious protest her mother brought her to.

Violence in Guinea!: 157
“More troops!” says McCain.
In New York there is an election runoff.

Susan sits behind a desk labeled
"info" with a piece of scotch tape.
She’s been working the polls.
Her nametag is clipped like a lapel pin
to her star spangled sweater.

A bomb in Iraq!: 9
“More troops?” says America.
Sixty-seven children dead in Chicago.

But it's not revelation, just statistics,
and Chicago is analyzing them, wondering:
can they save Samantha from her city?

Gangs in Chicago!: 67
“More troops.” says Obama.
In New York John Lin is celebrating.

On September 29th, eight in a hundred
eligible liabilities came to vote again.
2% of 8,000,000 claimed a stake in their city.

Only 56 were killed by Guinean soldiers,
at least according to the Guinean government.

Just 9 people died when a bomb exploded
in the middle of an Iraqi marketplace.

A mere 67 dead in Chicago
during a school year when over 500 were shot.

“Slow day, huh?” says the only voter to Susan.
“Don't shoot. I want to grow up,” says Samantha’s sign.

Not much different here. Turns out it didn't need to be coherent to have an unexpected power.

Tag

2009-12-31T03:15:00.004-05:00

There is no time. The sun hangs.
Double-knotted sneakers etch
rivers and tributaries
into the boys' zigzag trail.

They escape behind the school
as parking lots empty, and
flee to the meadow to play.
Here, the poppies are taller.

Even the towering elms
and sycamore horizon,
is hidden. Their boughs are dark
this time of day, suggesting.

But they would rather play, run
by superfluous bridges
of neat cut pine, stripped, treated,
and closely latched together.

Soon the meadow, the poppies,
the wild daisies, the long necked
bells, and bright chrysanthemums
will trim back, and everything

will be overtaken by
the whiteness of winter storms,
and then winter’s muddy melt
So each day they keep running.

Each day a little faster
underneath the afternoon
sun as morning lessons cling
like a muddy step, linger,

permeate double-knotted
sneakers, before they catch up.

'Tag' is now a poem that embodies the spirit of the place I originally wrote about. It moves away from indifference, and simply appreciates a simple landscape. The world is spinning, even as the there are protests in Chicago, even as beautiful pigs are slaughtered and people wake up to the sound of trains to smoke an existential cigarette, but boys run through a meadow valuing something greater than complacency. It is my most hopeful poem, my least cynical poem, and coincidentally maybe my best.

If I could go back in time, I'd have a portfolio filled with better poems.

Optimism

2009-12-31T02:45:00.006-05:00

I leaned over and whispered to her,
sweetheart, we're gonna fall down now.

And sure enough we did.
Now I’m haunted by a coconut monkey with bifocals.
We couldn't even remember the moment we found it.

It just sits on a dresser like a race number
slipping off the trail, or a mancala stone;
a soul; something molten and unburied.
Steam-punk heirlooms and ornate woodchips
with a hint of periwinkle blue sneaking over torn edges;
a rock not even heavy enough for a paper weight.

We weren't superstitious or anything;
we just held onto it, put it in a bag,
now it's the only thing left we didn't throw away.

So we are going over numbers again
with optimism
and chagrin.

It took five dives to get down there
all to find it was 8,000 pounds.
A number pinned to a page,
a blocked thirteen, black and ominous.
Yo-yos with knots and fragments of pottery,
interesting pieces of ancient garbage,

but, they have no sentimental value at all.
They say violins are anthropomorphic,
but ours never worked.

It had a bad bridge,
but how could we throw out the heart?

So, I'm reading over my poetry portfolio, you know, the one I handed in? Well, it's not exactly good or anything. I can't be too surprised, I wasn't exactly buoyed in reality at the time. The drifting tone, complete lack of flow, bad syntax, and even spelling errors are quite egregious for the class' expectations. So it goes, but I'll post the best ones here as I clean them up a little.

While it was always a poem about relationships, now it has some direction to it. It’s a sad poem, but yet it fights the apathetic tone most of my poems seem to have, ultimately finding some sort of value in something. Well, go figure love would be the topic to fight such a habit.

The Existential Crisis and Solution

2009-11-11T05:25:00.009-05:00

I'm trying real hard to resist the urge to trail off again about overwhelming workloads and how only the 5am pickax ever seems to sweep the assignments out and away.

I suppose if I ever needed proof that I was inconsistent and vexing I could just come here, but I guess there is something relieving about saying it over and over again.

Obviously, this isn't new. But from the desk of someone who has changed in every conceivable way, it surely isn't strange to desire a lucid approach to my responsibilities.

I keep telling myself that most of it will get done. I'll graduate before the summer. Though, is that really all that this is about?

Just sigh again, whatever, just put the question off, just like everything else.

Haunting Autumn Grays

2009-11-01T22:42:00.002-05:00

Diarrheic thoughts are callously spinning the worn brown table in front of me away from perpendicular vision. I'm afraid that if I try and set my drink down everything is going to spill out.

It's probably just this whole college thing though. It'll pass. Take up a cause, go on an adventure. I could pretend like my work is substantial, if only until it ends up on someone's desk.

I want everything faster and harder; I want things saner. I want to flow; weave exuberant life in and out of viscous self. I just want to flow.

Don't you?

Fuck Magnets

2009-10-19T14:23:00.013-04:00

I am losing my mind.

I am constantly losing more mental real estate to the trivial day to day. This is what it is like to be a person with concerns and desires, I'm sure. The discerned fact that listlessness is malaise is troubling to me, though that's is perhaps another topic I don't know how to explore.

Right now I'm losing my mind on this poem, because it is unexpectedly alright. Usually I wait to revise my poems until I have to. Usually I don't revise them.

But more than any task or poem, I have been losing my mind to something else. This something has moved in, every day seeping ever quicker into every cerebral niche. Fueled by something mysterious and hopeful, it dominates my wandering mind. Popping into my head in daily moments, I can't help but obsess over the brief and minor details. She bubbles up in a stomach drop detailing something like excitement, something like comfort, something like fear.

Because I don't know what to do.

I live an honestly stagnant life where papers don't motivate, days tick by in unexciting ways, and tomorrows beg for resolution. And I can't remember the last time I was this happy.

Sometimes that happens I think. Sometimes you're happy followed by sometimes you're sad, but this is not a sinusoidal event. This is not a bite-sized fix or an outlined mantra. This is not the calming realization in which I had reflected that things are well and how great and happy it is and certainly must feel. No, that's not even true! This is large. This is a different sort of living.

As I've aged I've learned. I've learned I don't like destinations. This life I have been living lately is living outside of commitments too long to fathom. I won't refute that I have always controlled my destiny, but these days it's just a lot easier to say.

This, is holding the compass and picking north.

The Digital One

2009-09-28T17:51:00.018-04:00

Remember way back when, back when if you had a secret (or not so secret) crush on someone and you couldn't help but notice them that, maybe you'd give them a gift or do something special based on their perceived interests? And then they'd swoon (or, just accept it, with few words).

In this gesture was thoughtfulness. It was indicative that you were interested in, and cared about this person. And best of all it allowed for all of the heart-melting stories I've heard from parents. Stories of romance and indomitable tenacity.

Now there is just the internet, and all the details ascertained from this wasteland are creepy. We exist digitally and in turn our non-digital realities ultimately submerge into private.

Nobody hands out buttons, and flags have lost meaning unless they are photo-shopped into jpegs.

No one yells anymore! No one needs to yell anymore.

I am a little lost in this world. I don't know how to function or compete.

And people scratch their heads and wonder why so many of today's marriages meet through online dating. How else do we clash in a meaningful way? Everything meaningful has been metabolized into five or six formulaic text-boxes and the occasional status update.

Ultimately, I'm troubled that whenever I have an urge to be novel or to remind myself I exist, I open my internet browser.

Deadline Dives

2009-09-24T01:32:00.006-04:00

I think I love the night. I think I love the deadline. The feeling of purpose breathing down my tense neck as I rove the haze-lit navy avenues with a glowing cigarette. Maybe this is why I struggle. I'm focused: focused on the momentary bliss of perfection. Nothing is late, and certain things need to be done.

To not do them is hallelujah terrific. Everything you do takes on a flavor so deep you can taste the atmospheric pressures. It's my daredevil cliff-dive, the moment I know I am alive. Small single digits clicking slowly on some red-glaring clock and I am eternal!

And although sometimes at the end of the night I am astonished to find the work done, I'll be the first to confess it's rarely the case. Maybe I'm just addicted to the struggle.

No one has ever told me I couldn't do anything. Never once have I felt unprepared. Is that all this is? This unholy, habitual, parasitic struggle to drink life?

Draft One: Poster Child

2009-09-24T01:16:00.009-04:00

And then there were posters on the wall
exhorting twelve dollars prismatically
--but, only with a personal sort of palette.

Like a chin-line or father's nose,
the unfurled rectangled lines
adding up aesthetically, almost,

just almost as if to say
I know, I know you,
it's okay on these walls enclosing:

plywood furniture, a person, and an estate of ideals.
Each one constructed from the pulp
of some mashed up distant forest branching

like a family of guidelines and pretenses
to buy posters for some walls.
Every confining wall, at least,

the walls that'd otherwise be blank
and empty or worse than empty:
the walls with one unchanging color.

Like a leaf that never figured it was autumn,
like a branch that forgot to shed
or a forest unwilling to explode.

And then what? Frozen roots
destined to shrivel without
the persistent sky-born flames;

thick walk-around trunks to climb
collapsing into gray until no one remembered.
Did anyone even know before?

And the room expanded under the weight
of expression and knowledge and colors,
colors a person could inhabit

and grow. Colored in like a coloring book
numbered in by the walls that sprouted posters.
Filled in by twelve dollars at the mall.

Right now I feel like this is my opus. At this moment I am wholly proud. These moments have a way of deserting me though.

Draft One: Penumbral Pretend

2009-09-24T01:13:00.004-04:00

Sometimes, when the full moon
is just right I pretend
I am a werewolf who
is waiting for the sun.

Sometimes, when the sun is
just right, I pretend I
am a werewolf who is
waiting for the full moon.

Oooh, if I ever wrote a personal poem this is it.

Sublimation

2009-08-31T00:11:00.004-04:00

I want so much to say but I can't think of anything real good. I could pour more of my revealing insecurities into this cybernook, but there has been too much of that lately.

Maybe it's because my daily actions seem to embody all the originality I used to sequester in these rambles. Now these posts turn sour and presumptuous, bitter because they resort to reflecting the imperfection of reality. There is little left to sublimate.

Again, I can't help but feel there is nothing wrong. It is likely just the strangeness of that overwhelming oddity that has me off guard.

Repetition

2009-08-26T20:22:00.009-04:00

What am I supposed to talk about? Another her? (not that she isn't incredibly attractive, uniquely desirable, and overwhelmingly more)

I am the epitome of doing fine, but I can't seem to self actualize in the ways that are most important for my heart.

My days are filled with strumming, cleaning, pedaling, and exploring; there is nothing new, nothing new, and that is old. Too old.

2009-08-22T00:22:00.001-04:00

I need to write better.

Lengthy Conundrums

2009-08-18T02:14:00.010-04:00

I am too saturated and open to be writing here, but I have important things to say pertaining hearts.

Mine is surly and insecure, up for grabs, and tempered for longing. It leans ways but has not ever stood. I want to tell her I care: about her and us and more and everything and always. But, that's a little ridiculous.

And moreover, relationships aren't so one sided. I may not be so confident, but that doesn't make things less strange. Let's just pretend it's just a result of miles and miles and miles.

Sigh. Time and distance will always be a dastardly mechanic. But mostly, I think I just want to slip away, away, away, into sleep or onto tundras or wherever, whatever as long as it's with her interlocking legs and arms and smile. We could discuss the weaves of understood life and liberty, delve deep for rewarding melancholy reverie and that sort of thing. That's not so ridiculous.

A Goal

2009-08-16T15:12:00.004-04:00

My ultimate goal in life is to consistently listen to music in the most heart melting of ways.

Shady Streets

2009-08-12T13:43:00.010-04:00

Ride bikes and hold grudges in search of meandering truths. Wear flannel and corduroy and pretend like it's unimportant. But it is.

I am steeping in memories and aiming for every forsaken curb and avenue. I am wading in protoplasmic goop and all I know is that it really is over and, actually, it really wasn't that terrific.

To my horror, my life is prescribed by my own penumbral choices and everyone else's. Frankly that is too much for the listless and uncharismatic.

Gasp

2009-08-11T11:22:00.012-04:00

All of my words have been so bitter and broken. And then I compensate: I exude when I'm not exuberant; I spin hopeful positives to assuage. But just because I believe them does not mean I feel them.

It is a battle. A battle to fight, and nothing I say or do or imagine is going to change or hide that. I refuse to pretend I'm not uneasy. I am depressed. I am lonely. I am unhappy. I am between empty worlds, pondering lives and places unlikely and extreme. I want to run. I want to jump and dive and walk and prance and fly. I want to soar!

I want to escape numbness and nausea. I want to stop finding empty nooks to corporate, which is all I ever do, which is all I've ever done.

I want my life! Whatever, wherever, however, whoever, (whenever?), that might be. I want my life!

I can be happy. I knew that already though, right? I can be happy. But I already knew that.

Webs

2009-08-05T20:44:00.006-04:00

I am between the lines where words do not exist; are just not evoked or provoked. I don't know how to feel, and often wish I didn't have to.

These days everything has a confusing edge if they even have substance at all. These days I live in a world of extremes and defiance. In empty days of summer, and I don't know who to turn to to do something about that.

But tomorrow is a curious day, always a curious day. It is always going to be a curious day, and I am always going to meander towards curious tomorrows.

Tranquility

2009-07-30T01:40:00.014-04:00

I think the truth that all is fair in love and war is often misinterpreted. Because intrinsic inequity doesn't exactly excuse your lack of conscience.

Peace is dull but love is volatile. We strive for the wrong things in life but damned, we have little choice. I am not angry. I don't want to goad and tell or dismantle some life or love but war.

Only, I have never really had any battles to fight. And I've never felt so sure of these things.

2009-07-29T00:23:00.004-04:00

I'd rather be forgot than forgiven. But it doesn't work like that.

Keep Moving

2009-07-28T15:48:00.006-04:00

Let's see here: failing, flailing, and without bearing. A summer torn between numbness and nausea. Now I know these days are limited and ultimately few, but I'd be lying if I said it didn't cast a shadow on all the others, especially hers.

Perhaps it's just the painful reality of finality. Or, maybe it's really the fact that the opinions of a person who could do such painful callous things are probably just as callous. Regardless, it's time to stop talking about such things, as painful and shaking as they are.

Planning a Revolution

2009-07-26T21:33:00.004-04:00

LISTEN! I'm drunk! I'm full of booze!

What? Are my words less poignant? Is my insight circumstantial? Fuck that! Circumstance I didn't anticipate, and even worse, the world is spinning in a sad velocity. Life is inane and who can't help but feel motivated and sane? Fuck the borders! Fuck the confiners! Let's live!

Inhale

2009-07-23T20:55:00.003-04:00

That last week, the one that isn't over, is trying trying trying. Too much for my stomach right now, but I thought you should know.

This is when I start to pick up the pieces; so many have fallen this time. I know there is something important in records, but my creeping mind wonders whether it's an ominous trend.

2009-07-18T18:46:00.004-04:00

I keep thinking like my struggles are poignant. But there is nothing important in a man who can't climb walls and doesn't want to walk around them anymore. Who wants to read about a man who can't fight? Who even wants to write about a person like that.

Requiting Stomachs

2009-07-16T02:02:00.005-04:00

I wonder why the stomach churns at the thought of unrequited love. As if stagnant longing is so repulsive it makes you sick.

Maybe it's the feeling of heart strings being severed. Or maybe it's just a thought so incomprehensible that surely it must be a hallucination brought on by something you ate.

Whatever it is, it's terrible.

A Summer Sigh

2009-07-16T00:03:00.004-04:00

Clicking on stale links, I'm always hoping my connection will help me overcome this loneliness. And it only makes sense these days, when I've never felt lonelier in this town, in this season.

This college has never made for a good home, all while my choices simultaneously sundered whatever feeling of place I had somewhere else. Sometimes I think I should be a nomad. Most of the time I'm too scared to be adventurous though.

I wish there was more to say, maybe a hopeful flip, but these are purely dark and simple matters. One day I won't be alone in a wasteland.

Spiders and Dictionarys

2009-07-12T13:59:00.006-04:00

Maturity strikes; I'm another person now. One who can take things in stride, and bottle up the injustice of the world. Who would have thought an emotional recluse would be able to do something like that?

Everyone has their demons, it's how one decides to face them that defines 'em. I don't know if there's any meaning in a definition though.

Moving on Unprogressed

2009-07-05T23:41:00.005-04:00

I'm not sure what new vague notions of insight are about to transcend my fingers. Things, things are happening, things have happened! And I know there's something to say about everything else.

So I clicked for this blank page.

I clicked because I'm okay. I'm okay with doubt and fear and silence and mess and future and past and, hallelujah!, present.

Maybe it's the food in my stomach, the sweat on the court, or just the words in my head, but everything is alright. At least not wrong. Not yet? Okay!

And let me take a moment out of life to understand the tidal waves and roller coasters that are the demons I see but can't conceive; fuck 'em! Fuck 'em all! I'll move on unprogressed. Frustrated and lonely, but okay for now.

I get these moments, and just like on other days, I wouldn't give it all away, no not for a moment. And it couldn't matter why.

These Days

2009-07-03T18:44:00.004-04:00

I am not happy these days. These hot days when my past melts and my future bubbles up to magnify its empty air.

College used to be my future. Now it's something else. No matter what day it is, it's always the next when I'll start.

Well, I've been here before, and learning from mistakes isn't so easy.

So what now? Researching waste water reuse methods doesn't sound like the answer.

Unnecessary Necessities

2009-06-30T19:57:00.003-04:00

If I said that my life was lacking bourbon and pitchers someone would say there is something wrong. Well, sometimes a little bit of booze is all you need to regain some perspective.

Around and Around

2009-06-30T15:12:00.002-04:00

Well, the birds are going to sing. The speakers are going to play the song I pick. The world is going to spin without me.

It's the patches of solace that keep me going some days. The moment of relief in my padded life that has always been lacking, always been lacking nothing and everything important that doesn't exist. On other days, well, sometimes I don't feel so good.

A Different Thing

2009-06-25T19:28:00.002-04:00

The song "Yesterday" by the Beatles has always hit some nerve or heart string, but the lyrics have always meant something different. Today when it came on shuffle I heard a similar song to the favorite that has marked so many moments of my life and time. It has made me cry before, and it has made me feel full or empty. I don't think I've ever seen it as foreboding or serious. In fact, it has always given me a perspective of calm acceptance.

Everyone lives in trying times. I'm not sure when it will happen, but one day I will take a serious look at my life and decide something important. Until then love will never be an easy game to play.

On Greener European Travels

2009-06-25T16:35:00.003-04:00

(originally written May 30th, 2009)

Weeks days and hours spent in European country sides and I find my thoughts refined and my being transformed. My studies, though ever directionless, have once again been derailed and search for more bearing than ever. I still have much to think about yet.

I'll start with cheap wine, it was a constant presence throughout Freiberg to Frankfurt and all of the convoluted paths in between.

In Switzerland I sat next to a monastery with a hunk of bread, a slab of cheese, and a bottle of 4 euro rose wine. As I sipped politely and awkwardly, I reveled in my European present. It was then that I realized my American heritage, my obsession with the future and my inability to focus on the present. Europe persuaded me to forget all in that usurping moment. I never felt more present. In that park I might have existed.

Afterward, I resolved to live a fuller life, one filled with similar blissful moments concocted in the eternal present instead of the always distant future.

In Copenhagen I drank another bottle, this time a Bordeaux. I cycled alone through a city that simultaneously thrilled me while vying for my empty wallet. I soared into Christiana and knew I was on the right path. The freedom of thought and existence resided on those spray-painted streets. They were living! They were fighting! I was jealous, and in my vibrating essence I was lost in the things I vowed to return to the United States with. So I missed the raves when I chose sleep over spending more money. The next morning I knew I had failed.

So when we arrived on Samsø, I knew I had something to prove. As I sipped too heavily on a 25 kröner bottle, I discovered glass-eyed that the bottle was empty. I gulped one last gulp as I sat surrounded by sober-minded peers whom prepared for tomorrow's free-day. I assured myself and the others that no lingering state of sickness could prevent my soul from biking 50 km on sore legs the next morning. And the next morning I wearily got on my bike in calm ecstasy; I was prepared to live and then return as exhausted and sore as possible.

And as we biked through chameleon-like, never waiting weather, there were suddenly only four of us crazy cyclers who desired all the island had to offer and more. The rest had turned back and we four admired roadside cows and proposed the next adventure.

At the locked gate of the world's largest garden maze we debated the risks and glory of climbing the easy fence. With the mysterious raves of Copenhagen still leaving some empty part in my being, I fought through a churning stomach to swing my legs over to fall into the unexpected barbed wire. We decided to flee to the ocean.

I think it was there that I became mad, mad to fight a burdening complacency. I wanted some demonstration of carelessness, something to hallmark my bitterness towards my uneventful vacation and life that was always thinking towards the next place, next year, next town.

And we pulled our shirts off and we ran blindly into the frigid water that we decided was pleasant and habitable even though it was unpleasant and uninhabitable. I suppose it was fulfilling, especially when we shivered and reflected forty seconds later.

When I collapsed that night, profoundly spent and absolutely sure my day was one I could have done no better in living through, I felt relieved. I felt embodied in my actions. I was alive.

In Frankfurt, I found myself full of Bordeaux and blunts. As I stood outside the club messed up I stared at the mechanics of bouncers, stamps, and flashlights, the procession of youth, hipsters, and friends of the scene. I searched for all the reasons not to enter the club that did not pertain to my tiredness, empty wallet, or my stupor's penchant for embarrassment.

Whether or not I found any, I stumbled back to my hotel as life passed me by again. I was more concerned with tomorrow's chores and joys to remember my extravagant circumstances.

I want to devour life but I don't know how. Or at least I simply did not care that night.

No matter the definition I found in Europe, I felt my studies unravel. Ultimately I saw culture that was similar if not identical to the slightly more west America. The culture I thought responsible for America's inaction was only guilty for the problem, not the lack of solution. Europe's perceived problems were the same, their proposed solutions no different. The only difference was their visible action.

What is most strange is that in Europe's concern I felt an essence that was capable of appreciating the present. Their perseverance to preserve their future is what separates the two continents. Perhaps America is too mired in its past of individual ideals and concepts to be able to find a communal future, the type of future sustainability begs.

As for me, I'm to mired in the future. I'm paralyzed, in my studies and in my life. Europe and its cheap wine represented that too, too well.

Swirling

2009-06-23T14:57:00.003-04:00

I guess I feel like I need to put something here.

When I decided I didn't understand time, distance, or family I was on a beach somewhere far away. Since then I haven't had many moments to dwell on the things that eluded my thoughts' tendrils last week.

Well, I guess that leaves family. I don't know how to tell someone I love that something is going to kill them. And what's worse is if they decided not to listen.

I am no longer scared of most things, but my fear is impermeable and now compartmentalized. Just like the rest of my thoughts, ideals, life, love, and etcetera. Everything I am is separated and organized into maintainable blobs of understandability.

Is that okay? Or should I doubt that bit of normalcy too?

Leftovers

2009-04-30T11:47:00.002-04:00

My work is separate from me just like my past moves and bowels.

I'm embodied in the melody that invigorates. Invisible extensions of my being in a three-four-step or a one-two-punch. It's the rhythmic choices that immediately define me, not the leftovers I find places to store after the needle spins off track.

I am the constipated struggle.

Them and They

2009-04-27T01:00:00.004-04:00

It's harder to find words when you're sober. Blurry moments persuade inhibition. Well, if I regret would it excuse?

The questionably evil, multi-purposed, and anonymous "they" always tell me that I'm not just here to learn about wetland ecology and sustainable development. They tell me that more importantly than anything I might come across in my studies of American political thought, that I'm here to prepare for a stupidly real world. The same one that they've been threatening to toss me into unprepared for like 21 years.

I dunno, they always turn out to be pretty insightful somehow.

I'm learning a lot about relationships. About pitfalls and venom. All the things that had looked pretty hard to trigger from the third person, but I guess it ultimately comes down to experience rather than knowledge.

Absent Creations

2009-04-22T05:29:00.004-04:00

Hesitant laughs are all I can muster as my future (my carnal futuristic idolatry??) is ripped to shreds. There's gotta be something missing, maybe. THERE'S JUST GOT TO BE A REASON.

Heh-heh. It'll be all-right. I'll pull through this just like the last 5 semesters. Just like the last 5 semesters. Just like the last lifetime of feeling biased and uncomfortable. Just like the paper-mache world propped up with cheap acrylic painted cardboard crashing down like stars from some obligatory self-imposed heavens.

I don't wanna create. But I wanna show you I could. I wanna show you these hands that won't ever work an entire day are precious and perfect and unfathomably potent. That underneath all of the still unfilled fill-in-the-blanks and all of the the falling stars of heavens under the sun, there's something here! There's something underneath this pale veined skin and you can tell me that it will be better than all-right. Tell me it will be better than all-right; it will be better than all-right because the world submits to me and my subtle genius and my ambushed psyche. And the world bends to the gravity of all that these hands refuse to produce and I will move forward unsucceeding, heroic, and vague. Just like the last 5 semesters. Just like the last lifetime of feeling transparent and apologetic.

Dear Daniel, judgment day is approaching. And I'm scared to say you aren't prepared.

Because it never was about a shoddy future or a tendency to laugh instead of moan. It has forever been about you. You. What are you?

Tired

2009-04-07T06:59:00.001-04:00

I'd rather be poignant than purposeful, potent, or pointed.

The Horizon is a Red Line

2009-04-01T00:17:00.004-04:00

Callous conundrums are like drops of rain shying my overwhelmed or decisive umbrella.

Latitudes and Longing

2009-03-16T16:55:00.008-04:00

Sometimes it makes sense to reflect, but I don't think this is the moment. Right now I'd rather be looking forward, working forward, mostly I'd just like to be reveling in the present. But the future is difficult to ascertain here in Wellesley, Massachusetts. And the present is in Meadville, Pennsylvania.

I can recount three excursions to college, briefly punctuated by smoky returns to the house I'm sitting in, the home I'd lived in for 20 years. What is ultimately disturbing is that this untimely reflection forces me to admit that these years (divided by school days, night fun, dorm stays, and burn runs) have done nothing to solidify a past I no longer care about.

You see, here in Wellesley, there is a box of stories on top of a hill that overlooks the town. From this bluff you can see church towers scraping skies and sometimes even sunrises or sets between obligatory green inhales. And, well, it only makes sense now; now that I have to drive four hours just to visit a hometown friend in a hometown so far from home, that my story got washed away while I wasn't on this side of somewhere.

It only makes sense now; now that Cottonwood and Sagamore, Meadowbrook and Louis vomit a mysteriously familiar unfairness; now that streets that I once walked down in apathy seep with their own indifference. It only makes sense now that I should ponder a regret that I'm older now and don't recognize my own stomping grounds.

This time I don't feel anything. Wellesley is a hollow town where I did not grow up. I grew up in my memories, I grew up with my friends who I continue to hug outside of Wellesley's timeless borders.

Even if my heart swells every time I think of the fire-engine jungle-gym, the overgrowth behind Bates Elementary, the tennis courts, and the Brook Path. Even if my heart swells every time I think on Peter's Pizza dressed in baseball fatigues, or leaving backpacks outside Linden Deli. Even if my heart swells every time I remember lunch specials at Tian Fu, mornings at Magus, frisbee at Dana Hall, stealing CDs from Sam Goody, and clambering up on top of a roof with a bong because it's Wellesley, and despite the worldliness of our teen-aged lives in which we hardly struggled, we could not think of anything better to do.

I feel nothing for this town. This time I'm ready to leave.

Back

2009-03-15T03:18:00.001-04:00

Lost in a maze of one-way streets; I drove into a haze of sepia.

No Need for Time Travel

2009-03-12T16:09:00.002-04:00

Sometimes even overburdened and hopeless perfectionists with sinusitis can be content and happy. Especially when they close their eyes to see a lingering heart-melting smile imprinted on the back of their eyelids.

Consolations (Draft Two)

2009-03-09T00:06:00.005-04:00

Merv sat in his bed effortlessly. From his lips permanently parted, thick marshmallow wisps drifted out like notes to a consoling song: silent and forgiving, dancing on the soft breeze of the under-used heat vent.

The light persisted through half drawn blinds, the white scored by parallel slats of grays and black. Only, with his back leaning against the cold window, just the top most bars allowed the staccato flits to filter through. There was a charred blunt in the ash-tray and the sunny glow of another as he drew in heavily.

At first the rays lit haze, like a prism that had almost run out of color. But the smoke filled the room, swirling in and out, slowly and persistently folding over the dim corners.

In the darkness, he didn't want to see himself anyway. He didn't want to see baggy hanging eyelids, the melancholy absence of latitude in his stupor. It was too late to cry now. Too late to feel emotion, he decided. His love was falling out of parted lips, like on so many other occasions, but now it left in a requiem fog. It left him feeling emptier, as empty as he felt. As empty as his smokey room.

Collegiate Studies

2009-03-03T00:41:00.005-05:00

Well, earlier I was talking to a dude I know; he described his interest as a hunger. It isn't about the knowledge for him, but like an empty, longing for cerebral reaction. It's not an objective--like for me--it is the action of engrossing, of pitting one's mind against the abstract jungle-gym-labyrinths of theory and application. That's meaningful for some, I guess.

Fear of Judgment

2009-03-02T06:23:00.005-05:00

I've decided to stop feeling bad about being disinterested and ambivalent towards my studies, at least as long as I'm passing. It's such a waste of opportunity, I know, and there is so many interesting things to learn, I know, but I can't argue with the immovable any longer. I am here for a degree.

Finding an impossible way into graduate school is as far off as I want it to be, and in honesty I wish it did not stand in the way of my goals. I still do plan to go, someday, and yes, perhaps the most ludicrous aspect of attaining the plainly stated will be overcoming my stagnating GPA.

But I've decided to stop feeling bad about being disinterested and ambivalent towards my studies, at least as long as I'm passing. And I know, I know, it's a waste of time and money, but you work with what you have. Right now, I have 3 years of college credit and a desire to be happy.

And fuck you if you think I need more than that. And fuck you if you think I should have more than that.

This damn world and its judgment, I've decided to stop feeling bad about being disinterested and ambivalent towards my studies, at least as long as I'm passing.

Consolations (draft)

2009-03-02T02:05:00.007-05:00

Merv sat in his bed effortlessly, his lips permanently parted. The thick marshmallow wisps drifted out a consoling forgiveness.

With his back leaning against the drawn blinds, only the top most bars allowed staccato flits of light to filter through. There was a charred blunt in the ash-tray and the sunny glow of another as he drew in from its long crispy barrel.

At first the light illuminated rays of haze, like a prism that had run out of color. But as the smoke filled the room, it swirled in and out until it folded over the dim ambiance. He didn't want to see himself right now anyway.

He didn't want to see. Baggy hanging eyelids and a melancholy absence of latitude in every other part of his complexion. It was too late to cry now. Too late to feel emotion, he decided. His love fell out of parted lips, like on so many other occasions, and it left him feeling emptier, as empty as his smokey room.

Planning

2009-02-24T17:58:00.001-05:00

I want to write my generation's book, and I think I know just how to do it.

Self Image

2009-02-15T16:13:00.001-05:00

I think I might be a monster, or at least look like one.

Perspective on the Rocks

2009-02-10T02:16:00.007-05:00

I've been overwhelmed with reflection. The kind that blinds you so bad you have to remind yourself to breathe regular.

Is it existentialism or realism? Or just escapism at its most neurological. I know it's easy to rationalize avoiding the meaningless. But it's hard to hold on to any present perspective when it's always being rocked by all those persistent perspectives past. Oh well, I think I can at least forgive myself this one.

All I'm saying is, whoever said hindsight is 20/20 must have been a lot older than 21.

Lows

2009-02-08T19:51:00.004-05:00

Sometimes the world sings to me, other times it sighs. Sometimes the world sings with me, other times it shits on my chest.

And maybe, sometimes I even let it.

Solidary Solace

2009-02-01T23:42:00.006-05:00

This fortunate one--and coincidentally this party--is impossibly dedicated to all of my friends. For all of them who couldn't make it, or didn't make it. And for all of my friends over the last 21 years who've faded or forgotten, persisted or manifested.

For all of my friends, wherever they may be tonight, I love you all, this is for all of you.

Inexplicable

2009-01-25T04:09:00.002-05:00

Ridiculousness cannot be painted or sung, it can only be lived. Expression is limited, but experience is not.

I used to think quite contrary, but the external world simply has more to offer than imagination ever could.

Weight

2009-01-22T21:29:00.001-05:00

There is something lonely in discovering a person's sadness. I think it has to do with my desire to share. Burdens, memories, sorrow; I enjoy knowing I'm not alone. Can I assume the same for everyone else?

IsReal

2009-01-12T22:22:00.005-05:00

There is nothing definitive about Israel.

This is apparent in her amorphous "winter" horizons; filled with alternating cacti and firs, sharing only creed with their neighboring bamboo. And all because the land of milk and honey isn't dry yet; snaking hoses make sure that a country that salutes white and blue blooms unyielding green.

The jungles were surreal, and the desert was solace. I imagine summer must be rough.

On the plane ride home, I spent hours arguing the irrationality of the deafening black and white border that defines rightousness with a surprisingly open, orthodox jew. All the while a few kilometers below death was forgiven.

Many days I witnessed fanatacism.

But everyday I gorged on insufferable beauty.

Failing A Class

2008-12-20T03:53:00.011-05:00

I suppose there might be solace in circumstance. At the end it does not matter my ambivalence, or just how justly I was served. In truth these ambiguous morals and ideals elude a society too large, but won't I always have them in my heart? So, so what?

This is what: Maybe one day I'll be lying in bed and I'll tell her about the time I failed a class.
And she'll never look at me the same.

How can I live with that?

Ripples

2008-12-10T00:34:00.006-05:00

Ceiling fans ripple when they spin. Milk is a soft violet color. And the sky is solid. There are secret things that only those forsaken of dreams know.

Expanses are walls painted vivid, and you really shouldn't be driving. You know you shouldn't be driving. Basketball players cheat and bricks move laterally ever-so-slow. Waves rock the land subtle. Grass is drawn. Air wisps.

When something isn't important it resonates, just to let you know. If you're not lost somewhere familiar, then you are truly lost. Rooms shrink when you are not paying attention. And secrets have a way of not being told.

But the moment your head caresses cotton, down; secrets slip down back into your bowels where you already knew, you always knew. Unless you told.

Awry

2008-12-08T19:05:00.008-05:00

They told me I wouldn't be ready for the real world and I scoffed. Let me tell you something about the real world.

I saw adults living like dreams, whispers of squandered something-like-maybes. And as I overcame fears and stupid insecurities I gnawwed for the freedom in the "ohhh! so scaaaaaary" real world.

Dark cityscapes fell in front of me and I toppled their streets. I explored a couple forest depths and the realms of despair and faith. How many worlds I put in perspective, I thought I'd lost count.
I was naive.

Sometimes it's the absence that's scarier. A leap without a parachute into deceitful depths, blacker, while the hallmark cautions snicker hauntingly.
They said they'd give me the world.
So large and exciting, in this confectionary heirloom, though, is not sweet marrow but hollow abyss. A chocolaty Easter gone awry.

I didn't heed their warning. The suits who wanted to be young and chastised. The fucked-ups in their ambilvalent stupors. The delusional maternal martyrs. The saged and leaning.

I was listening, but I hear you now.

Rally CAPS

2008-11-24T13:02:00.003-05:00

Ungh! Like licking the polychromatic saliva off some heady nug, let's be exuberant! Listing the listless entries due to professors is like condemning life and love to too-long confines. Fuck it!
Let's read about permaculture? Study values? Masturbate infinity while horror-scoping yesterday's pundits; alright then. Let's.

Esteemed Colleagues

2008-11-15T19:40:00.006-05:00

Faithless or failure, I am unhappy endlessly chasing. In essence, it's just a perpetual waiting anyhow, just a little more anxious and a little more stressful. If after 20 years I don't have a voice, I'll take my chances on a quieter ambivalence.

Opportunity

2008-11-13T02:09:00.003-05:00

What is going on?

I have direction now, but in finding such, I seem to have lost my drive.

And I can't seem to care about:
-college
-health
-love
-education
-career
-the environment
-art
-family

I am not a slave to my future, and my past is nothing but a memory. Presently, I am ambivalent. Frankly, I'd rather not be...

More Amore (Please)

2008-11-01T20:11:00.010-04:00

Longing like always, again I seem to find my way back into the confines of fate's heavy limbo.

I've been smitten by a letter. The why is easy, she is beautiful with surely deceitful depths dying to be taken for granted. I couldn't say how, though. How is succumbed in blind memory, fragments of want seeping into god-forsaken absence, desire into necessity begging for amore.

But nothing's new, forever is as forever was.

Maybe it's because I'm directionless and just don't want to submit. Or, likely, if I could say so myself, these masterminded masterpieces are nothing more than an ill-seeded facade to shade me from exposure. Inexperience is haunting, always haunting me. Whichever it is, my heart has gone mute.

But nothing's new, forever is as forever was.

Her, her, her. I'm just a kid in a candy store without any money. Without any experience. Without any courage. It's all so...complicated. Unnecessarily complicated.

Maybe it's just against my nature to impose myself. To wax my embarrassing self on someone I really like. Or to pursue someone I don't care about, just to know.

I'm sickeningly traumatized by this sort of stuff, but I'm too hollow to forget about this business. Optimistic on a quarter cup and filling my empty heart with everything else; no matter what I do, I'm still subdued.

Visions and longings, don't amount to much. Not much in the end, so I've found.

But, hopefully, I won't let this one stop there, so let's not talk about the past anymore.

Dark Horizons

2008-10-25T06:37:00.003-04:00

Sometimes life spins out of control, other times you let it.

I couldn't tell anyone what's wrong with me, though I couldn't tell you what's right either. Sometimes I have trouble being present.

It's hard to be confident right now. It's hard to see things plainly or any more elegantly than they really are. Ultimately, reality eludes and confines me.

This is my curse, come back to perplex me.
This is my escapist nature, ready to explore illusion and fantasy once more.

And I wonder, is it because I dislike the taste of reality, or is it just because I love the flavor of imagination so much more?

Direction

2008-10-07T01:15:00.000-04:00

I know what I'm looking for, I just don't know what it looks like.

Truth

2008-10-04T13:51:00.003-04:00

You know I've lost over one hundred pounds. I buy clothes now; not only do I care about my appearance but I appear. I'm not a closeting escaped artist.

But I've never felt more unattractive.

Bits of Me

2008-10-02T00:56:00.002-04:00

Sometimes those over-simplified, pointedly pointless, self-help blurbs come to fruition. My work really is separate from me.

No, that is a lie, I don't believe that. I believe the opposite. I believe every nuanced mark and every absent scrawl is a culmination of my existence.

But I should pretend I do believe it, at least for tonight. At least to everyone else, at least for my sake.

Place

2008-09-29T18:12:00.005-04:00

I'm torn between the city and the streets.

I'm torn between the urban and the lost and never found. The back alley forests that no one would ever peer. The little coffee bakery in a small town with a large heart.

I find myself in the city sometimes. Somehow fulfilling all my desires to be inconsequential in the most consequential of places. I can feel one of a million millions. I can feel the singularity, the solidarity. I am tempered to live in that abyss that makes me feel like nothing while feeling everything. Fear and fate and simple out-of-my-hands complicity.

But I'm torn between the city and the streets.

Shit's Hilarious

2008-09-23T02:16:00.003-04:00

Shit is one of my favorite double entendres. There is nothing funnier than when someone uses modern vernacular to refer to their bowels.

Chocolate Regard

2008-09-17T22:41:00.003-04:00

"My concept of me does not exist." Scrawled out on a dried out envelope from a bank statement, my epiphany got the worst of me. This may be the first poignant thing I've thought or said in a long time. At least, reflectively.

It's hard to exist when you don't want to. It's hard to believe in yourself, when yourself is nothing. Things don't have to be so hard, obviously