Breathing the air. Breathing the air.
A central theme of a journal that is written to capture the feelings that I have at night will forever be the air. Perhaps you are not as lucky as I and live in a place where the air is foul and hangs damp and miserable in the air like a man that can't find his dog, his woman, or his truck.
But if you live where the air is fresh and clean then you get an epic sense of gravitas from each inhale. There is something alive about the air at night. Something that reaches into your mind and soul and unlocks all the locks that have been battened down against the bullshit of the world. And you feel open.
Open to ideas and thoughts and memories and people. And you want to just be, and you want to absorb, and you want the world to blur into pastel swatches. Nothing distinct, nothing stand alone. Everything must jumble and seep and bleed.
There is something primal about peace. Something that brings me to thoughts of death. When living is a daily prize and death is promise given to you at your birth. You want to avoid it, but you know that you can't escape it. Nor should you.
And I'm not going to spend a lot of time working on some kind of existential argument about the wonderment of death. I have other locations for that and honestly the French did it best and there is no reason to heap dirt on such a well constructed monolith.
I'm too full of gin, and Ben Folds, and pan fried peanut noodles.
And I have what I have and I work each day to protect it and keep it safe. It may sound materialistic, and I'm not going to rationalize that it isn't, but a lot of what I am doing right now is more about putting myself together in the eyes of others. People invest in you every day that you live and they deserve a return of their investment. A return of their kindness and sympathy, money and time, love and vicious over-reaction to everything you do.
Loving people is always about doing something stupid and detrimental. Logic is the enemy of love because love doesn't think forward to step two and logic can't stop thinking of step three, minimum.
I'mma going to take a bath and stare at the stars. I suggest you do the same.
Thursday, July 23, 2009
Sunday, July 19, 2009
Entry 4 July 20, 2009
So many things have been written about the smell of rain and that particular moment when night sets in. The feelings that it produces, the overwhelming sense of nostalgia. It is enough to make one think that we remember the womb, that perhaps we have a genetic memory of times when water was home or we were small creatures that climbed under the brush.
Or something very close to that, given your artistic, scientific, or religious bent.
The important part is that we all have something in common with the coming of rain and the presence of the dark.
I think that I will need to run a particular set of talks in the future. I have a need to sit a small to medium group of people down and pitch some ideas that they will only start to listen to, but I will feel better talking out loud about them. There are certain things that only sound important or completely stupid when said out loud.
Spent the evening, well late night just before midnight, hanging out in a cafe and starting at the wall. Took my glasses off and unfocused, spent almost two hours just sipping coffee and staring into space. I wanted to understand something about the ways that you can come up with ideas in silence at home or int he bustle of a noisy location. There are so many different ways to live and to think, and we only cling to what we know because thinking about situations that you are not in is horrible.
Which is a bad way of saying that we crave that which is familiar, not so much because it is safe or easy or even good, but because you it is hard to think of situations outside of the situation you are in. Even if you have had better times before you will find it difficult to think of those times when they are no long relevant to your life.
Just like now, I can't think of the mood I was in when I first wanted to write this, I can only think how I am now, and it is much less useful then the space I was in earlier.
And such is the way of muses, life, and writing.
Or something very close to that, given your artistic, scientific, or religious bent.
The important part is that we all have something in common with the coming of rain and the presence of the dark.
I think that I will need to run a particular set of talks in the future. I have a need to sit a small to medium group of people down and pitch some ideas that they will only start to listen to, but I will feel better talking out loud about them. There are certain things that only sound important or completely stupid when said out loud.
Spent the evening, well late night just before midnight, hanging out in a cafe and starting at the wall. Took my glasses off and unfocused, spent almost two hours just sipping coffee and staring into space. I wanted to understand something about the ways that you can come up with ideas in silence at home or int he bustle of a noisy location. There are so many different ways to live and to think, and we only cling to what we know because thinking about situations that you are not in is horrible.
Which is a bad way of saying that we crave that which is familiar, not so much because it is safe or easy or even good, but because you it is hard to think of situations outside of the situation you are in. Even if you have had better times before you will find it difficult to think of those times when they are no long relevant to your life.
Just like now, I can't think of the mood I was in when I first wanted to write this, I can only think how I am now, and it is much less useful then the space I was in earlier.
And such is the way of muses, life, and writing.
Sunday, July 12, 2009
Entry 3 July 12, 2009
Another day down. Another set of worries conjured and returned to the aether from which they spawned.
I wonder if there is an all encompassing trait of humanity that leads us to begin each day with an eye to the future and a head full of hope only to slowly whittle away and sabotage ourselves until we are left with nothing in the tank and desperate need for the day to end and the morning to come again.
From a rational standpoint it seems horrible depressing and self defeating but I have a theory that if you think about it long enough it turns around and goes the other direction. If we didn't get between down over the day we should never sleep and eventually go rather nuts by the end of it.
And there can also be something said about closing a day on a down note so that you are anxious to let the new dawn break. Obviously there are a lot of longer standing and deeper poets who have something to say about the dawn and its various impacts on the human psyche, but I like to get in an occasional non-specific observation when the mood strikes me.
That aside, it was quite the week for me. Between bills cropping up out of the firm mossy soil like weeds and a weekend spent with oodles of friends that pop out of the wood like weevils I haven't had a moment of relaxing peace in five days. I like the metaphors that involve comparing people to things that start with 'w'.
Not to say that I haven't liked the company or been happy to have distractions from the moneys I owe for years of not really living in the general fashion that is commonly recommended. But. But, there is a level of wanting to just sit in a quiet space and think about how you feel and what you think.
Danger lies down the obsessive portions of that path. There is a level in which you can be okay with yourself and a level in which you suddenly turn it all inward and begin exploding with dementia.
I'm not there yet, but I have been before and I'm hoping not to accidentally stumble down that area again.
On purpose is one thing. The accidental plunging into crazed despair is its own thing.
That is all I have for now. And a lot of hit was half formed. I'll spend less time thinking and more time crafting my words next time. For greater satisfaction.
I wonder if there is an all encompassing trait of humanity that leads us to begin each day with an eye to the future and a head full of hope only to slowly whittle away and sabotage ourselves until we are left with nothing in the tank and desperate need for the day to end and the morning to come again.
From a rational standpoint it seems horrible depressing and self defeating but I have a theory that if you think about it long enough it turns around and goes the other direction. If we didn't get between down over the day we should never sleep and eventually go rather nuts by the end of it.
And there can also be something said about closing a day on a down note so that you are anxious to let the new dawn break. Obviously there are a lot of longer standing and deeper poets who have something to say about the dawn and its various impacts on the human psyche, but I like to get in an occasional non-specific observation when the mood strikes me.
That aside, it was quite the week for me. Between bills cropping up out of the firm mossy soil like weeds and a weekend spent with oodles of friends that pop out of the wood like weevils I haven't had a moment of relaxing peace in five days. I like the metaphors that involve comparing people to things that start with 'w'.
Not to say that I haven't liked the company or been happy to have distractions from the moneys I owe for years of not really living in the general fashion that is commonly recommended. But. But, there is a level of wanting to just sit in a quiet space and think about how you feel and what you think.
Danger lies down the obsessive portions of that path. There is a level in which you can be okay with yourself and a level in which you suddenly turn it all inward and begin exploding with dementia.
I'm not there yet, but I have been before and I'm hoping not to accidentally stumble down that area again.
On purpose is one thing. The accidental plunging into crazed despair is its own thing.
That is all I have for now. And a lot of hit was half formed. I'll spend less time thinking and more time crafting my words next time. For greater satisfaction.
Sunday, July 5, 2009
Entry 2: July 5, 2009
There is something wrong and cliche about starting a journal with "What a day!" but there is also something simple and honest about cliches. Something binding and true that should not be pushed aside just because you moonlight as a literary elitist.
The world has a well earned respect for people who live life fully without any prejudice or pejorative nonsense attached to the way that they live. David Carradine was good for that. He struck me as a person that just lived his life, other peoples assumptions about him were unimportant.
He knew the truth, and he smiled at all the rest.
There was a tabloid article about the man recently after his death that claimed two Chinese hookers had strangled him. ON many occasions I would rather leave the dead dead and not spend a lot of time poking the corpse with a stick, but in this case I found myself laughing in the aisle at Walmart. There was something profoundly funny about the articles boast. A rag that so often fabricated reality and sold it to the world weary and conspiracy nuts making a claim that if the man was still alive he would probably talk about favorably.
Everybody dies, so few get to have a sense of dignity attached to their passing and I think that Carradine pulled it off at the last moment by going out the way he lived, without any regard for the way that people would take it.
And so tonight I think about the way that people live and the deaths that come after them. When proper people die there is so little to be said. A lot of gathering with red eyed folk that stare and nod. They understand succinctly that there is a shared loss, but they also understand that this is the way of things, and the departed would have been honored to have such a turnout of people to share stories about them.
But I'm Irish that way.
Until tomorrow, let your life carry its own meaning and your death simply stand as a period that gives anyone viewing the chance to tell the story again to thunderous applause and upturned heads.
The world has a well earned respect for people who live life fully without any prejudice or pejorative nonsense attached to the way that they live. David Carradine was good for that. He struck me as a person that just lived his life, other peoples assumptions about him were unimportant.
He knew the truth, and he smiled at all the rest.
There was a tabloid article about the man recently after his death that claimed two Chinese hookers had strangled him. ON many occasions I would rather leave the dead dead and not spend a lot of time poking the corpse with a stick, but in this case I found myself laughing in the aisle at Walmart. There was something profoundly funny about the articles boast. A rag that so often fabricated reality and sold it to the world weary and conspiracy nuts making a claim that if the man was still alive he would probably talk about favorably.
Everybody dies, so few get to have a sense of dignity attached to their passing and I think that Carradine pulled it off at the last moment by going out the way he lived, without any regard for the way that people would take it.
And so tonight I think about the way that people live and the deaths that come after them. When proper people die there is so little to be said. A lot of gathering with red eyed folk that stare and nod. They understand succinctly that there is a shared loss, but they also understand that this is the way of things, and the departed would have been honored to have such a turnout of people to share stories about them.
But I'm Irish that way.
Until tomorrow, let your life carry its own meaning and your death simply stand as a period that gives anyone viewing the chance to tell the story again to thunderous applause and upturned heads.
Saturday, July 4, 2009
Another New Beginning: Like a Plague or Somesuch
It is late night on July 4th. There are the distant sounds of colorful explosions that shake portions of the city. I am sitting inside my spacious and loverly new home. I do not step outside to catch a glimpse of the splendor. I do not tilt my head skyward to see the lasting tradition of my country's founding lavishly blasted into the heavens.
I go outside for a moment of darkness and a quality in the air that I could find if I was blind and deaf and had no conception of time.
Night has its own mood. And I tap into that mood now.
I already have several blogs and online writing sites. I have projects and I have sites that are supposed to force me to work on projects. I have a serious site for essays about my life that are poignant and every word is carefully thought out. Which is a way of saying that I never update it, yes. And I have a site for angrily yelling at the cosmos, which turns a blind eye and refuses to acknowledge that there was anyone in the yard at all, dear, and though that effigy may look a lot like me it is all just a coincidence.
But, what I do not have at this point is a site for just everyday thoughts and summations. A journal that borrows from the special quality of the night and gives me a pattern to compare my life to in times to come. (I'm rather obsessed with patterns at the moment, been watching Numb3rs all day. And, yes, I hate that little 3, but I like the show.) My writing about myself has been stuck in a large rut for years now, looking back it has been easily 6 years since I was able to say anything particularly non-malicious about myself in the context of myself. I like me, but I'm not always certain I should get away with the things that I do.
So I present a journal site that is not here to be literary or to assist or show a story, a journal that does not yell at the cosmos, a journal that simply lets itself be without the large and ineffable prejudices that I sometimes use to judge myself so much more harshly then others.
And if you had any idea how harshly I judge others... oy!
I go outside for a moment of darkness and a quality in the air that I could find if I was blind and deaf and had no conception of time.
Night has its own mood. And I tap into that mood now.
I already have several blogs and online writing sites. I have projects and I have sites that are supposed to force me to work on projects. I have a serious site for essays about my life that are poignant and every word is carefully thought out. Which is a way of saying that I never update it, yes. And I have a site for angrily yelling at the cosmos, which turns a blind eye and refuses to acknowledge that there was anyone in the yard at all, dear, and though that effigy may look a lot like me it is all just a coincidence.
But, what I do not have at this point is a site for just everyday thoughts and summations. A journal that borrows from the special quality of the night and gives me a pattern to compare my life to in times to come. (I'm rather obsessed with patterns at the moment, been watching Numb3rs all day. And, yes, I hate that little 3, but I like the show.) My writing about myself has been stuck in a large rut for years now, looking back it has been easily 6 years since I was able to say anything particularly non-malicious about myself in the context of myself. I like me, but I'm not always certain I should get away with the things that I do.
So I present a journal site that is not here to be literary or to assist or show a story, a journal that does not yell at the cosmos, a journal that simply lets itself be without the large and ineffable prejudices that I sometimes use to judge myself so much more harshly then others.
And if you had any idea how harshly I judge others... oy!
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