Checking In

I just watched Cyrus, and though I am ashamed to admit how much of my emotional reactions are based on films I watch, I feel colder than this blizzard outside right now.

Often, I feel as though I am doing important things. Not important as in the sense that these are great things, or that I am holding them above anyone. No. However, these things (whether it is writing intently, working hard at school, trying to make it to every event for every friend, trying to just be a decent person) get sleighted by my overwhelming desire to have a significant other. To say that, just to push that out there, to admit this is what I want is vastly important, it is paramount.

For the first time in a long time, I have been consecutively been producing work.
As a result, I am entertaining the idea of calling my manuscript, "To Feel The Vacation." Maybe that was stupid to announce just now, but it's not like I have any royalties ahead or much to lose.

Need to find a job starting in the spring. My long-term goal is to teach English as a foreign language abroad. My long-term goals seldom work out. Who can really plan a bowel movement anyway?

I have been oddly happy for too long. I would say I have not even been clinically depressed in about three years. Fuck that! Depression is healthy, sometimes.

I notice that I have been trying so hard to be an archetype. Always have been really. But moreso than ever. It's fucking exhausting. I try to be that guy who has something terribly special to say at any momemnt. I am not nearly that clever.

John Keats said that the poet is the most unpoetic of all living creatures. Cheers to you Johnny boy and your negative capability.

Maybe it wouldn't kill me to let myself feel something every now and then. Maybe it wouldn't kill me to try that outside of a television, a screen, a false unreciprocity.

Rolling a snow man to the door step. Please, melt. Melt all over the fucking kitchen floor!

The Hooray Day!

Right now I am listening to the wonderful Muzak provided by Comcast while I am waiting to discuss a billing statement. This is the first billing statement I have ever had to deal with believe it or not.

There was a man in the park today who is probably still there listening to his walkman with one leg up on a bench. He might not move all day. That is commitment.

I have been in my apartment too much. Or at my roommate's girlfriend's apartment too much. I feel like I don't know anyone but them anymore.

The muzak is killing me.

I am back in responsibility mode.

Just finished "No One Belongs Here More Than You" by Miranda July. I could read her and Dave Eggers for the rest of my life until they die or I die, whichever comes first. This book was moving in strangest of ways because Miranda July knows how complex it is to be simple. I find her really sexy because she writes like she knows she is really sexy and she is, even though her characters are not necessarily her.

I'm on the phone with customer service. I want to make this fun. Now I am off the phone. It was that quick. I paid a bill, successfully, I paid rent today successfully and while you may be laughing at how naive or immature or how unbold this is, think of how bold it is to do what we do every day; to remember our responsibilities; to eat fruits and vegetables, and to ask questions.

College ends next week as it begins.

Miranda July, so sexy.

Typing Under A Wave

Home, again. Read every blog post, again. Learned something, again. Alright, enough of that (I hate commas anyway)!

I have been thinking that I should not catalog my summer so far as if to prove to myself and you that I have been doing things and having fun. I cannot attest to either.

Summer is an illusion. I can look at my hands and pretend that they are my hands from the fifth grade when I used to sit on the stairs in front of Steele's with my skateboard that I would purposely scrape up because I could not boardslide of 50/50. The thing is, I am pretending, still.

My hands did pull up a 6 foot shrub today! My legs found a pond. My eyes discovered that a pond is defined as a body of water where sun light can penetrate to the bottom causing plants and vegetation to stretch from shore to shore and can inhabit a variety of species.

No poems. Have been reading poems of friends. Friends are great for poems.

"Something cedar in my heart." I wrote that in a poem once. I quoted myself just now but only because it occurred to me what exactly is becoming cedar in my heart.

Picked so many blueberries and discovered the blues at the same time. I need a pulley system to keep your chin up. Don't let me swim in your face anymore.

Perpetual sweat, perpetual home, perpetual escape, per pet the usual.

Whoops.

So I Am A Piece of Shit...

Over the course of the young summer so far I have met so many new and fascinating people and in light of this I am coming to realize, by information from my friends, that I am leaving them high and dry, forgetting my priorities to the ones who have listened to my darkest maddest doldrums and who have experienced my peak topped blisses. The issue is not that I do not care, but that I belong to no one, that I am selfish, yes, and do play by my own agenda, but that I am realizing how important my role as the drifter is. I am neither partial nor absolved to any one party. I see everyone's side, not just the side I want to see and I try to be there but I also am an explorer, not satisfied with the pedestrian stagnation of complacency that can sometimes be brought on by consistent friend circles. And while this existence can become lonely, and at times shallow, it is just the routine that I am in.

So in some way, this is a missive of apology and clarification, for anyone who reads, or cares to meet my future or present self.

America's Birthday.

The festival;the funeral. William Blake's holy poetic genius, Los.

I move to Pilsen officially in a month. Goodbye white yuppie decadence.

Fireworks are pre-emptive.

My beard is a graveyard.

No more shirts or table cloths.

I'm coming home, coming home, coming home and I am throwing the mountain off of its hillside.

"Just a little joy juice in my cup."

Come and Blow My Door Down

My friend Devin and I have been planning to WWOOF (Willing Workers on Organic Farms) for months now and have just over the past month started our real planning. The dream was to go to Oregon, pick fruit, grapes, make cheese, wine, design infrastructure-- it didn't matter but now every which way we look the dream gets narrower and narrower as though we are entering closets and not rooms.

We have talked with several farmers, all of which are kind, easy going, west-coasters but none of them seem to be in any rush to have workers though they all have made it clear that they need help. At this point I am not sure what to do but I know if I don't buy my plane ticket this will never happen, I will never know if farming is the kind of lifestyle I want, if even only for a temporary while.

I guess planning means planning, and it is not quick and it is not easy and being responsible and mature about the whole thing becomes even more trying. The more responsibilities I take on, the less I feel like a child, though I know that physically and cognitively I am no longer and am aware that this is not an overnight exchange--this transition has been a long process and probably an endless process.

This week I have exhausted so much effort into finding a new apartment, someone to sublease my apartment and figuring out how I am going to get home with some life in me by the middle of July but unique things have been happening, worlds are getting closer, and I am re-uniting with old friends. The other night I went to this amazing ballroom that had been converted into a venue where my friend now lives with several other wonderful people. I have also been talking with my ex-girlfriend who I have always held dearly and highly esteemed. I will get to see her and her band this week! Also, some former friends from the camp I worked at last summer (Israelis) are coming to visit on Tuesday!

What am I getting at other than despite the clouds of clutter that come thundering in, the breeze is just right when you need it. If this is too metaphorical for you...the right people come into your life at the right time and there is an energy that surrounds us and helps out when needed and one may call it god, or spirituality, or chance but I am sticking with good energy and good breezes for now.

Knuckles of glue

Cold pita bread reminds me of funerals and wakes.

I read today that "Loneliness is solitude with a problem." I am somewhere between these states.

Today, the Thai women behind the counter at Thai Spoon (which I generally admonish for lackluster food, in my head that is) giggled when I said, "Table for one please, for here," shocked to not hear me say, "To go."

Everything smells aquarium today.

A lonely New York that I am not apart of.

Yesterday I was violent and hurt nothing.

I should really not engage in arguments with children.

There is a farm that I plan to live on in Oregon.

I am reading poetry on Saturday for the the first time in a long time. I fear it could be a walk-off the stage kind of moment.

The pita bread that that has been reminding me of funerals and wakes I accidentally picked up from a concert last night thinking it was trash. Given that I am living off of change, this was a great find. Maybe that person left it there for me. Maybe they are wasteful.

Prestigious pre-school. That is the best thing I have heard all day.