Eugenics Begins With You!

Paris, Texas is the Greatest Movie I've Ever Seen...

Okay, maybe not... but it's way fucking up there.

Dear God I really fell apart at the end of it.

Go watch it, all of you.

Here's the thing...

When I say it's me - and it is partly me... that doesn't mean that it isn't you, too.

Nothing doubles denial quite like denial doubled!

Who needs a drink?

Sundaes

The air is clear.

Weights are lifted.

I can see clearly now...

Clear enough to kill a motherfucker.

I'm in a good mood because she feels better. 

Things are okay.  And they gonna get better.

But I'm still gonna kill a motherfucker.

And, no.  You're not really supposed to know what I'm talking about.

Warm

I'm deliciously drunk, and in love with love...

even though I don't know what that means.

I'm that great kind of drunk - the kind where you let slip your inhibitions and are, perhaps, your truest self.  When you speak in poetry - despite the fact that the woman to which your speaking clings to prose.  Where your various fibers and bits glow bright and electric... and you lean back and think, "I'm going to be okay."

That's how I feel.

Aah, the myriad glories of whiskey and good conversation.  Of connection and sparks amid all the confusion.

To whomever is reading this - at this moment in time, 12:43 AM on Tuesday, November 25th, 2008 - I love you.  Totally.  Completely.  And without hesitation.

Wouldn't it be lovely if everyone spoke this way?  If we were all in this place in which I currently reside?  Where people speak properly - from an emberous place - silent and warm?

I hope you have a good day today.  I hope some stranger smiles at you - or you bump into an old friend.  I hope you get to see a really awesome dog doing something totally doggy and awesome.  And I hope that that cynicism which will eventually choke and strangle the spin I'm in doesn't cause you to snort at this post.

Because, at least at this moment in time, I mean every word.

Goodnight.

a.

Mr. Nuts is back!

My squirrel friend is back!  After a long few months of wondering... I heard him scrabbling around on his little squirrelly feet this morning.

That charming little gentleman...

He actually woke me up when he fell from the ceiling, clattering down inside the wall beside my bed, and landing with a fuzzy thud on the floor.  I'm sure he's okay though - because he's indestructible.  He is fundamentally incapable of dying... A. because if he dies, I'll be sad, because I've anthropomorphized the shit out of him and B. because then I'll have a bloated, dead squirrel in my wall... and I don't think I can handle that.

For those who don't know, I first met Mr. Nuts when I spied his little arm peeking out from under the molding in my hallway.  I fed him bread and stuff for a few days.  My father encouraged to blind him with ammonia. 

I'll keep you all updated... as I'm sure you're all desperate for knowledge on this subject.

On an unrelated note: the secretary of the English Department at the school I teach at really gets on my nerves, and I (to the tune of the crescent fresh song) thinkity-think she shouldily-should improvity-prove her atti-ti-tude cause... I will break her neck... -out her eyes I'll peck.

That's it.

Welcome new motorcycle friends... this is what you've chosen to read.  Weirdos.

Dear Gentleman with a Boss Hog:

A few months ago, I noticed a spike in my readership - and that this spike coincided with a lot of hits from some biker webforum.  Being a snoop, I followed the e-breadcrumbs to this site, and read as a series of gentlemen who (and this isn't a personal thing, just an inference based on 27 years of being alive), if they knew me, would probably throw acid in my face.

I have that effect on burly, manly men.  Maybe it's because they think I'm gay - which I'm not.  Maybe they think I'm a femme - which I am in certain ways, but I'm certainly not effeminate... just... fancy.  Maybe I'm a dick - which is totally possible. 

Or maybe it's because I'm just very self-conscious around guys like that.  I never know what to say.  I don't like sports, and don't know enough about it to feign enthusiasm when a conversation starts about which guy set which record in 1986 and blah blah blah. 

I went to a karaoke contest last night (again, not gay ladies and gentlemen) to support a friend of mine who had entered.  It was as most karaoke bars I've discovered are - horrifying.  Loud, crowded, swamped with cheap dance-club-lights... and swarming with terrifying older people.  Berugged men in vinyl shirts who give themselves names like, "Broadway Joe" and "Hollywood."  Peckers, essentially.

So I have my quick full of the peckers, and step outside to smoke a cigarette, where I'm met by two rather serious gentlemen.  One is flinty and good-looking... kindof a brawny guy... bouncerish - which was appropriate as, when I stepped outside, I interrupted his conversation about a time when he was a bouncer in Atlantic City.  He seemed like a nice guy - just... a bouncer.  Serious.  Tough.  No bullshit.

Beside him was another gentleman - scrappy and patchwork, with a ruddy complexion like he'd been drinking since July.  He was dressed entirely in black and wore a hoodie which, on its front, was emblazoned with skeletal letters spelling, "Fuck Rock," with a skull where the O goes.  Even now, I have no idea what it's supposed to mean.  Aren't skulls and bones and stuff totally metal?  And isn't metal a rock thing?  I don't see country stars with goth icons like this.  They usually go for tablecloth patterns and pants so tight you can tell their religion.

I lit my cigarette and smoked in silence while these two guys talked about the best way to incapacitate a guy.  The shorter guy, I learned, had been a Marine... and that he would be happy to, "...stab any of these faggot mother fuckers who gets in [his] motherfucking shit."

What do you say to a guy like that?  Not like that's necessarily bad - I'm just not really a part of knife-culture.  I don't want to judge the guy... I'm sure that whatever faggot he had met in the past had certainly earned his stabbing for having gotten into his motherfucking shit.  I don't want to make this a class or a cultural thing.  Different strokes for different faggots and motherfukers.

But when they turned to me - perhaps to hear my opinions on where best to insert a blade with the intention of murdering another human being - I just crumbled.  I babbled nervously, saying what I'm sure were inappropriate things (though, given the context, I have no idea what would have been appropriate other than, "So!  Howabout that Barack Obama!? Hell of a candidate, ey?")... only I don't remember them because my brain blacked out.  Big, tough guys scare me.  I've just got nothing in common with them... and so my id kicks in, I guess, and starts narrating its experience at 300 words/second.

So it's with a certain degree of relish (yum) that I bid a friendly and entirely non-stalkery howdy to the Gentleman with the Boss Hog (I don't really know what that means, other than the fact that it's vaguely motorcycley) who listed my blog as one of his favorite non-motor websites.  Assuming that he isn't your garden-variety, sensitive, poetry-writing biker guy (which, I'll admit is a large assumption on my part... the guy could be really sweet for all I know) - I seem to have connected with a man's man.  A guy.

He likes what I think, and he likes how I say it... and I think that's really cool. 

So if you're out there - howyadoin?  I like you, too.

Keep reading.  And nice bike, by the way.

That's all.  Back to work.

Memory

I learned that the act of recollection is, on a chemical level, an act of forgetting.  That the recollection of a specific memory changes it - it imprints a new structure upon it...

This means that the only way for me to preserve a moment as it was is to never recall it.  To forget it entirely.

That has made me very sad tonight.

Joy

I am unable to listen to Beethoven's "Ode to Joy" without, perhaps ironically, arriving at a moment of profound sorrow. 

I used to hold this against Beethoven.  I'd accuse him of getting it all wrong, "What's wrong with you Ludwig?" I'd ask dramatically, "what's up with that damn song?"  But as I've grown older I've come to realize that it wasn't Beethoven who had it wrong - it was me.

I listen to the "Ode to Joy" often - usually when I'm driving alone, at night.  I lower my windows and blast the volume and let the sound obliterate me.  I speed and slow with the surging of the orchestra, I drift in and out of consciousness, barely aware of the world around me... until finally, in that moment when the piece reaches its climax - the moment when the orchestra screams its cataclysm of tone and theme and sound and note, I weep.

I absolutely crumble, and I weep.

"Tears of joy," most would argue. 

And perhaps they're right.  Maybe in that moment I cry because a human being is only capable of containing so much... so much joy.  Perhaps the quintessential beauty of a piece of art like Beethoven's 9th simply overloads the senses - scrambles the brain - triggers the chemical alarms.  Eyes well with tears.  Lips curl.  The chin trembles.  The heart smolders... all with the throbs and stabs of the orchestra, the choir, the conductor as he waves his arms frantically like a sorcerer, desperate to hold his spell together, lest it combust... lest it tear the world in two.

But still - amid all of that passion and the joy... I end with sorrow.  My tears which run so hot on my face at the beginning, turn frigid and regretful... and in the end I am not crying because of Beethoven.  I am crying because of my mother.  Because my father has gone gray.  Because I've lost friends to time and space.  Because I'm growing older.  Because I was unable to contain those moments of profound beauty in my life as they occurred - and can only know them fully once they've gone.

Because joy is transient - it's slippery like a fish.  I can't hold onto it - it's too big for my hands, too loud for my ears... it is simply too much.  Too much for any one person to comprehend.  To much for any moment to hold.  It fills and empties me like a bellows, leaving as suddenly as came. 

I can only truly know joy when it leaves me.  Relativity, I guess.

So was Beethoven wrong?  Is the "Ode to Joy" an ode to sorrow?

No.  Not even remotely.

Because the 9th Symphony, through its swell and din, is the personification of that experience.  It introduces itself the way one falls in love - with a crash.  A sudden glance... a hand on your cheek, brushing stray hairs from your open mouth.  A meaningless yet resonant phrase. 

It's perplexing - it comes out of nowhere.  It grabs you by the face and hurls you into the wall and screams, "I have remade the very world in which you live..."  And then it leaves.  It falls silent.  It's just a song.  It's just girl. 

And then it starts to grow.

Themes evolve - the orchestra's voices whisper lines to one another like little children.  It broadens and unfurls... engulfing the whole of the moment in which it is played with a powerful, terrifying simplicity.  And moments later - be they minutes or months - it is everywhere.  It is inside you - beyond you.  You are Beethoven's 9th - just as you are that love.

It engulfs more and more of you.  It devours your sanity.  You can barely control yourself.  Your head rocks to the notes and the sway... your skin glimmers with the explosions of neurons into little arcs of imperceptible light.  It grows louder - it drowns out the world - smothers your judgment.  Your foot falls heavy on the gas - your car lurches from lane to lane, you are totally out of control.  And then it happens.

The climax.

You cannot comprehend your experience... you can barely experience your comprehension.  The whole of your control falls to bits... and you weep.  Because your body doesn't know what else to do.  The piece - the love - it just is.

And then it isn't.  It's gone.  Time is up.  And it leaves you ruined and shaken, pawing tears from your eyes with salty hands. 

That love - any love - is too big to know in its moment.  It can only be understood fully when it leaves you. 

I could have never loved my mother as I do while she was alive.  I could not contain it.  It is only in its absence - in the sorrow that I feel that I could ever know that Joy.

I could never cherish the chestnut of my father's hair while it was.  Only now that it slips to silver do I see how boldly it burned.

I could have never loved my loves while I loved them.  I can only love them when they're lost.

It is only through my sorrow that I can know my Joy.

Beethoven had it right all along.

Pauses

I'm whiskey drunk and spinning... and thinking about those things that live in pauses.  In those jagged gasps of breath.  Those sudden intakes of air, so sudden that it seems - even for just a moment - that the moment itself is too much... like it burns so hot it empties you.  And that the only way to soothe it is to stop... to gather yourself.  To breathe.

The Quiet

I've been in a relationship for the last seven years of my life - throughout the entirety of my 20's actually.  I'm 27 now - and I've realized that I have no idea how to be alone, mainly because I've never been faced with the situation to be so.  This blog isn't about that, per se... I'm not going to whine like I have been in my last few posts - though it does bear mentioning that I'm still confused, still scared that I've wounded someone very dear to me... and still really sad that things have turned out the way they have.  But, like I said, this isn't a blog about that.  It's about the quiet.

I have this friend, Sean.  Sean lives with his girlfriend, Carly... and the two of them are musicians.  Real musicians, in that their entire apartment is made of wires, sound boards and various guitar accouterments.  They are the weaver birds of Guitar Center - forgive me for being lame and not knowing a less main-stream music store.  The two of them have jobs which require them to travel around a lot - Sean teaches music lessons all around North Jersey and New York City, and Carly does family portraits.  They play gigs on the weekends, and are somehow always "recording."

Me: Hey Sean, how was your week?
Sean: Oh great! We did some great recording.

I don't know how long it takes to record an album... but these two have been recording for a year.  Their CD will be opera-length at this rate.

Being fancypants musicians, and generally friendly and outgoing people (in their own introverted ways), the two of them have generated a huge swath of friends.  They know people.  They know people who know people.  They know a Zoroastrian guy, and a bunch of "good" skinheads, they know rudeboys, and straight-edges and punks and goths and a few assholes, a skinny Christian fellow who sings his own early still-black Michael Jackson-esque R&B songs, and this one guy, Joe, whom I've really grown to like - despite the fact that every song he hears is, "The finest example of 'X' sound recording I've ever heard.  You've got to listen to this... [beat]... isn't that incredible?  It's so sharp!"

I'd like to make fun of Joe for this... but I cant.  I do the same thing with books and movies.  Watching movies with me is an insanely trying experience, as I'm always insisting that the person beside me, "pay attention and watch this part, this is great, this is incredible, this will change your life."  The person beside me enjoys the part... but never enough to satisfy me... and so I usually follow that sentence with, "you don't know good movies... you don't know what the hell you're talking about... here, watch it again."

Honestly, how my girlfriends ever put up with me, I'll never know.

Anyway... Sean and Carly.  Between the two of them, their lives seem pretty loud.  Not a din.  Not cacophany.  Just loud.  Their lives are a symphony of phone calls, clattering flatware, conversations with odd acquaintences, charming arguments and bickering (they're like a pair of fat old cats, the two of them), and of course... "recording."  This is just when they're in their apartments.  Alone - at work, the two of them are constantly moving - Carly in her car, driving from house to house, cajoling families and children to smile and pose.  Sean wanders the streets of Manhattan in a corduroy waistcoat, carrying a guitar... most likely eliciting a chorus of, "daaaamn"s from every black guy alive in the 1970s.  Their lives seem so loud... they always have... even when my life wasn't as quiet as it has become.

Ever since the end of my relationship, I've found my life succumbing to a gathering quiet.  I live alone.  I don't have a pet.  I teach - so, yes, I speak whenever I'm working... but that's 50 minutes out of a day - and then it's back to my office hours... where I respond to emails.  I return home to read and plan classes and grade essays.  I write at night and in the morning (when I can drag myself out of bed, of course).  The sound of my life has been reduced to the scurrying of my fingers upon a keyboard... or the scratching of a pen.

Is this what life is like for people who live alone?  Those sad, lonely people who have no families - no loved ones... no children?  How can anyone stand such a quiet life? 

I think I'm starting to learn about alone now.  I'm beginning to understand the difference between alone when you're with someone... and alone when you're not.  The former is a positive thing - its an escape.  It's the psychological release of a closed door.  A study.  A quiet hour to nap or pick your nose.  But the latter - that alone is more than alone.  That alone is... lonely.

Who do those people share their funny stories with?  Funny thinks pop into my head all the time.  Well, that's kindof a relative statement.  the things I find funny tend to horrify more decent people... but I think you get my meaning.

I'm lonely.  I'm lonely in all this quiet.  It forces me to look at myself - to ask myself questions I prefer to avoid.  It forces me to acknowledge the things I've been hiding away in... well... in noise.  In my blather and my bullshit about this or that.  The quiet draws these things out of hiding - and the result is deafening.

What I've discovered recently:

I'm a serial monogamist who is utterly terrified of commitment.

How's that for being fucked up?

That's me, though.  The gemini.  Two minds on everything - all perspective, no position.

That's all.  That's all I have to say.  I just wanted to write this down - share it with whomever is out there that reads this.  That and to hear something - hear the keystrokes.

Maybe I need a cat or something.

There's a pug available for adoption in a local shelter.  His name is Archie.

If I adopted him, I'd probably end up keeping the name.  I'd claim that I named him after Archibald MacLeish.  Either that, or I'll give him a really awesome pug name:

Bannon or Heidegger or General Zod.  Oh man... General Zod.

---

Thinking about that dog just reminded me of something  - how much I miss Erin's dog.  I know that it seems foolish to bitch about an animal like that - especially since I've lost a human relationship that was, to be honest, pretty goddamn perfect by all accounts (though still ultimately unsatisfying, which I think suggests the problem is me rather then her, hence my alone-ness, newly-acquired lonliness and overabundance of Quiet - Erin never shut up... it was one of her more endearing qualities), but goddammit it's hard to think that I'll never see the dog again.

Why is it that I have no trouble loving the dog, but I was nebulous about loving a person who adored me, whose personality delights me, whose sense of humor tickles me, whose... prowess (shall we say) satisfies me, ad infinitum?  Is it because the dog loves me unconditionally?  Because there's no threat?  Erin pretty much loved me entirely - and she's seen me at my worst.  I'm no fucking picnic, I can tell you that.  So what's my problem?

Mother fucker... now I'm all full of questions and just rambling.  It's loud in my head now.  Now I want the fucking quiet!

Aah!  Dear God... thanks Mom and Dad for having sex nine months prior to May 29th.  You couldn't have let me come out a Leo or an Aries?  Fuck... why not a Scorpio?  They're fucking awful.  They fuck the world, figuratively and literally, and seem not to have any guilt about it.

Screw this... I'm going to bed.

(I actually made myself mad... isn't that funny?)

Someone convince me to either get the dog or not.  I'm of both minds on it - of course.