Sleep?

I can't sleep.

This is horrible. I've been tossing and turning all night, and reading and then turning off the light, and then trying to listen to music, and now I'm here, floating in 'net space. I didn't even drink coffee today.

Maybe it was the night air. Maybe it's the full moon.
(add your own rhyme here.. something about a loon :)

I worried and excited. Human contact and a job that I actually want.

So many people that I miss... If I get this job, I want to go home, but who will be there? Who knows?

I'm going bonkers here in my skull, like it's all empty and I'm just knocking around inside of myself

Mmm... Coffee

Ah, my adoring public.

It’s just turned into “one of those days.”

I’m going for a bike ride! Down to the lake for a bit of fast riding, and a good sweat, gotta a goal in my head. After packing up everything, remembering to charge the cell phone, make a new MD for listening, packed up the laptop in case I want to do some typing someplace beside the living room, got my shoes all cleaned so my feet don’t stink, and then it hits me: I’d had a flat a few days ago, and filled it up again hoping it was just a prank, someone letting the air out of my tires. Of course, it was the real thing, and had since deflated.

O well.. determined to keep my spirits up, I quickly change plans, pick up the packed laptop and decide to see about redesigning the website, or creating a new one quickly. I press play and beginning grooving to the new alt-country sounds of the as of yet unreleased Neko Case (coming out on Tuesday and oh so graciously loaned to me by C___ because she’s the coolest and managed to get it early), and walk into the humidity.

First stop is the bike shop. I’m wondering if it’s necessary for me to get a new tire and tube, but opt on the five dollar repair kit. It’s the only option to fit my budget, and besides, something inside of me wants to take the tire off, blow up the tube and sink it in the tub while watching for the tell tale bubbles to escape from the hole. Mmm… wet splashy fun.

I remember watching my dad do the same during the summer with his ralliegh tires…. Out next to the swimming pool, dipping the tube under the water… that poor tube was a technicolor of patches, but I think it was the actual patching that made it fun. Back then it wasn’t just glue and a sticky patch. You had to stick the patch on, screw it down with a clamp, but then came the kicker… you’d strike a match and light the back of the patch, and it would flare up like a flat roman candle, melting itself into the tube. I wondered if my dad was just poking holes into the tube so he’d have an excuse for these afternoon fireworks….

I buy the tire kit and stuff it in the laptop case and go to get some food. I haven’t really eaten much since yesterday and it’s already 4. time for an early dinner. After scarfing (and nearly barfing) a burrito, I’m off for bubble tea. Mmm…bubble tea. Another one of my OCD’s. Gotta have it.

SO… there’s no A/C and no reliable freezer, so they don’t have fruit for the tea… but they have coffee! So I get a cup and put it on the table next to the laptop. And dummie me… I attempt to bring to tables closer together (they were only about a 1cm apart, but for some reason the gap is bothering me…) and whoops.. there goes the full cup of coffee all over the table and pouring over the edge.. a creamy brown shower….

Bleh…

So I’m back home… ahhh, safety.

Pennies in a pond

Alright folks….

Once upon a time there was a guy who was addicted to gambling (not me, of course.) He’d go out to the casino as much as he could, sometimes borrowing on credit and just pouring his money into this empty habit.

When he was walkng out one day, he stopped to complain about his losses to an old woman standing on the bridge. After no response from the woman, he noticed that she was throwing pennies into the pond next to them.

“Why are you doing that?” he asked.

“When I throw my money away out here, I can at least hear the sound…”

Do me a favor and toss me a penny so I know that someone out there is reading…!!

Dream of W

I had a dream last night about W__. We’d gone off to Great America to ride the roller coasters and even though I know he’s a bit leery about going on them, I make him ride each one.

And then he says he’s going to the bathroom to puke, but never returns. I wander out into the parking lot and his car is gone, and I’m stuck up there, still dizzy and spinning from the rides on the hot blacktop. Somehow it seems fair, though.

*SPOILER ALERT* If you have not seen “Signs” STOP READING NOW! Just scroll past this little section in stars.


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How many more movies/stories am I going to have to watch where the main characters are put into danger because they have to get someones medication? “Signs” was beyond sucking. I can buy into the whole alien angle but give me a break… An alien civilization bent on conquering Earth that has had YEARS to study us and our habitat, has obviously advanced technology to fly around space and make themselves invisible, and STILL they couldn’t come with a stitch of clothing to protect themselves from WATER, the one thing that could kill them?

Dumb.
















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Today is the kind of day when I feel like I should be alone. I have plans to go out tonight, and it’s almost a guarunteed good time. We're going out to see Juliana Hatfield, FINALLY some live music worth heading out for, but today has already started off badly. I was sort of blown off for lunch plans, which is OK except for the fact that I feel lonely. And being blown off means that I guess this is a lonely streak that I shouldn’t really end. There’s something for me to get out of this, something I need to find in myself or see and process before I encounter others… or at least before I actually interact with them. Some might say that such a view or premonition is lazy. I’m waiting for something to happen, or looking for some random act to take on more meaning or importance than is actually there. I think it’s true that a lot of things go on around us that we just aren’t seeing.

I need to look sometimes to see what is there, and what better time to do it than when I’m alone or feeling lonely. And like it’s been said before. It isn’t so much that a person needs to be alone as he needs to be lonely to get to the core of his art. It’s a welling of emotion combined with a focus on the instrument of expression. But it doesn’t always come out in something lonely… well, at least in my case. A lot of times the feeling is vanquished by the roar of a distorted guitar, or a simple happy phrase of notes repeated ad nauseum. It would never amount to a hit song, but that was never its purpose I guess.


I’m sick of my phone and sick of my cell phone. I hate being interrupted by them, and I wish I could chuck them off the back porch. But of course, I need them to keep in touch with the folks I need to keep in touch with.

I’m still trying to mentally plan out how to tackle the Korea book. It’s in here, it’s ready. I just don’t know how to organize. I think the worst part is that I keep editing it in my head before I can get it off the ground. Each story is somehow tinted by something that triggers a “Oh no, you can’t put that in there. Not so much because it’s bad or might be offending to someone (like THAT has ever been an issue…), but because I’m not sure if I’m really ready for the whole fucking world to know about it yet.

And then that’s the point eh? I think a happy medium will be the ‘fictionalized biography’ style a la Henry Miller.

Yes, that’s the floaty I’m looking at.

I’m all jittery and I haven’t had any coffee yet!

Aug. 9th

Scanning the wanted ads and the storming through the streets looking for a job has left me in a rather dark frame of mind. Can it really be this hard to get a job? Am I so completely unmarketable? Of course not!

So what am I doing wrong? One of my friends is convinced that I’m sabotaging myself with my thought process, but I don’t know how that can be since I can’t even get to the interview stage! I turn in aps, I fill out forms, donate blood and sperm and urine and still no one will call me back.

This sucks.

If you’re reading this, and you have some work in web design, writing, music recording or guitar picking, GET OFF YOUR ‘DUFF AND SEND ME AN E-MAIL!

I’M YOUR MAN!

Aug. 8th

It’s hard enough for me to get into that mental mode.. the switch that is flicked by some outside stimulai… the one moment when I know that what I’m thinking rumbling is of some import and Ishould be recording it. Writing it down.

Today I was having the mental munch, reading “On Whale Island” by…… I’ll jot that down later. A late lunch, a bike ride to the burger stand. It would all be a sepia toned memory if only corporate America hadn’t changed each step into a franchise. Instead of a local business/burger stand, I’m at the burger king, instead of cycling along rows of houses, there’s a train rumbling overhead, my beverage is one of the soda giants and there’s a movie tie in product/advertisment blocking the window I was attempting to look through. I guess it saved me from just watching the cars pile up along I_____ Road.

(If bush were any kind of man, he’d place limits on major corporations. They are unable to place more than one of their stores in a 20 mile radius of another. Well, at least it should be implemented with Starbucks, as a sort of testing ground.)

So I started reading my book. The author took his family to live on an island for a year up off the coast of Nova Scotia and he described the isolation, the family bonding, his need to purge himself of society.

I can understand the need to purge.

And then I started to slip.. Outside the window, between the window banner advertisements was a boy in the front seat of the car… father in the back reading the paper. The boy would look left out the windshield, cheeks puckered in a smile and his finger pointing to something in the sky… then look left and this finger would stop dead against the passenger window. He kept smiling and I realized that the synapses were firing, just not like mine.

It was time to leave. They were parked in the handicap spot, and my bike was locked up to their sign.

He watched me intently, I felt him smiling the whole time while I unlocked my bike. I didn’t look up the whole time. I was intent upon my task, watching the key fit into the keyhole, turning it clockwise and working the U shaped loop from the base of the sign. I stood up suddenly, jumped back and bravely holding the two pieces of the lock in separate hands and hoisting them above my head triumphantly, as if I’d just pulled the sword from the stone. Ta-dah! There was a screech of laughter and applause from the front seat of the car. The father kept flipping sheets of newspaper in the back of the car as I hung the lock from the seat of my bike and pedaled away.

There are so many people I’ve encountered who are not whole by themselves, others who exist only for themselves. I wonder if I’m too much of a loner, is it selfish? I know how misanthropic I can be, but it’s not so much that I don’t crave companionship. I just find it difficult to find another dreamer who isn’t obsessed with numbers, bank accounts, baseball scores and… well, you get the idea. My brain is leaking too fast right now.
It’s hard to be wholly present for each moment of our lives once we learn how to “multi-task”. How am I supposed to enjoy the sound of pen on paper as I write out my thoughts, or even the click of this keyboard now when I have to constantly think about whether or not I paid the electric bill, do I look the part to get the job, did I answer the questions correctly, are they building a nuclear bomb right now and who will try to use it, what is that weird spot on my nose, ad nauseum.

I’m just thankful to know some people who can do the same, knock of the world for a period of time and live focused on our moment together. It’s true. Times are bad for dreams, and tough for dreamers.

I often wonder when someone will talk to me the way I often talk to others. Who will tell me about their secret collection of pine needles, the story of each cluster marked out in their memory. Who will look up at the sunset and give it a name, and recite the history of the day, making up fake historical events… “On this day in 1849, on this exact spot, at this exact time, a brave pioneer set forth on a journey…”

Thank God for books and storytellers. :) And thank god for my family and friends who tell their own stories.

I want to write the story of what happened to me in Korea. Of what I did. But how do I make it me, and not just a listing of events? Of course, there are some things I can do, and I do take a bit of pride in the way I talk, but it doesn’t seem to translate so well to my writing. What lesson am I missing?

I’m blathering now so I guess it’s time to stop.

Aug. 2nd

I’ve been documenting my weight gain with a series of photos. It seems to be a pastime of many people in the world. We document our aging, our weight gain and loss; our changing faces. We rack up the years with photos of those come and gone, or in my case the pounds that have come and gone.

I’ve collected pocket polaroids, mini prints, snapshots and clips from prints I have managed to work my way into.

Sometimes I only show my face. Other photos have my mid section framed by the square images.

It’s been almost 5 years now on a steady progression of weight gain, although I’m not sure how much I count the first year. I was still rather rakish back then during the year of suicides.

The year of suicides.

I was back in the US after more than a year of living in Korea. I’d lost a lot of weight living there, getting down to my slimmest since my first few years of college. It was nice to be thin, and not worry about my eating. And during that time I had 3 suicides, evenly spaced out but seemingly one right after another.

A letter from Korea, stating that a friend I’d know had been forced into the army, and on his night watch along the border between North and South, had put the gun below his chin and blown the top of his head off.

He’d been the silent friend; the one friend that everyone has that you need around, even though they don’t say much. Their presence was somehow necessary at any group function, and when they spoke, it was always funny, or prescient.

Then there was the bass player, a postcard.
“Have you heard? _____ jumped out of his 14 story apartment window last month and died. Just thought you hadn’t heard and might want to know.”

That was all I knew, and all I would ever know. There weren’t many mutual friends, at least none that I’d kept in touch with since leaving the US after college for Korea. He’s just been relegated to a postcard, posthumously.

And then there was S___, my cousin. I remember spending time during the summer in D___ Heights with my family. We’d stay with my grandmother, and two of my cousins lived down the street. G___, his brother, was always tied up in skating practice. He’d been amazing at it, and had a real shot at becoming famous at it, until an unfortunate accident prevented him from continuing.

S____ was the trouble maker, I suppose, although all of that comes second hand to me.
I never really noticed how he was so bad… just typical kid stuff… playboys stuffed between the mattresses, some trouble with girls, hickies, a bit of drinking and money.
Later on, he seemed to have some things really straightened out, married a woman who already had 2 kids and was the best damn father to them, or so it seemed. They were devastated by everything.

But the call came when I was at work. Mom called, and I went into the stockroom of the bookstore to take the call. H____ was there with me because we were talking and she just followed me in back.

Mom was really calm, and said that they’d found S___ under the back of the car in his garage, the motor running. It appeared to be a suicide, and that I should come home because we had to pack up and take a drive.

I guess my face screwed up pretty tightly and then I broke. I’m sorry, H___ for scaring you that day.

A letter, a postcard, a phone call, a web page. Three lives, and years of memories summarized.

I can’t continue with this right now.

e-mail doesn't count

you can watch the ink soak into the white... and a meaning of whatever you write springs out.

It is something physical, real.. easy to pick up and read at a later date...

the opening of the envelope.. tearing across the seal, or even slicing the end... the contents pulled out and unfolded along with whatever sentiments and secrets lie inside.

I mourn the gradual loss of letter writing.

(and NO, e-mail doesn't count.)