thank you lindsay njoten-taite for making me aware of this

http://onthebrod.tumblr.com/tagged/otb/chrono

what is this, if only correct functions

The mind. We think tragedy and we think death. But what of the death of the mind? The slow deterioration that crumbles memories and the deepest of passions, and then what of reality? To the mind that is suffocating, the only reality is that in which your mind creates and trusts. What your mind constructs, even the cruelest of hallucinations, is the reality in which you exist. Living friends, murdered within moments. Your home suddenly becomes strange and alien. Your lover, after decades spent together, transforms into your ex-wife, long divorced, as only a fraction of a second passes.

And it all becomes crushingly real under the weight of a dying mind.

“Life is partly what we make it, and partly what it is made by the friends we choose.”-tennessee williams

class act

"You're lucky if you get time to sneeze in this goddam phenomenal world."-j.d. salinger

ive been listening to sufjan's new album today, "the age of adz", and there is a song called "i walked". here are the lyrics:

Lover, will you look at me now?
I'm already dead to you
but I'm inclined to explain
to you what I could not before
Whatever you didn't do, what you couldn't say
I am sorry that the worst has arrived
For I deserve more.
for at least I deserve the respect of a kiss goodbye

Tell me, do you think of me now
as I think of you?
For I could not have shaken the touch of your breath on my arm
For it has stayed in me as an epithet
I am sorry the worst has arrived
For I'm on the floor
In the room where we made it our last touch of the night


I walked, cause you walked
but I won't probably get very far
sensation to what you said
but I'm not about to expect something more
I would not have run off
but I couldn't bear that it's me
It's my fault
I should not be so lost
but I've got nothing left to love


Lover, will you look from me now
I'm already dead
but I've come to explain
why I left such a mess on the floor
For when you went away
I went crazy. I was wild with the breast of a dog
I ran through the night
with the knife in my chest
with the lust of your loveless bite


I walked, cause you walked
but I won't probably get very far
sensation to what you said
but I'm not about to expect something more
I would not have run off
But I couldn't bear that it's me
It's my fault
I should not be so lost
But I've got nothing left to love

I walk, 'cause you walk,
I walk, 'cause you walk,
I walk, 'cause you walk,
I walked, 'cause you walked,
Yes, I walked, 'cause you walked.
Yes, I walked, 'cause you walked.
Yes, I walked, 'cause you were mine.



beautiful, aint it? grab the new album and take a listen.

happy october

was it the drugs
the green ones when i was
turning twenty
and i dripped all over
mixing in with the stains
in the carpet
opaque grey punching out of me
when i didnt think this was all fucked?

He awoke to the sound of hammering next door. It was late in the morning and the sun had warmed his apartment causing him to soak his sheets in waking sweat. He rubbed his eyes and they made a squishing noise. He could smell the stale air sitting silent and intrusive. That’s right, he had forgotten to open the window last night. The hammering continued and light chuckling began a conversation with it. He sat up, his foggy eyes and stiff elbows a few steps behind him. Pressing play on the stereo, “Overseas” by The Tommy Flanagan Trio is halfway finished, it was a charming song and also ironic, he thought. There was a note on the coffee table when he reached the living room, “Rest Easy” is all that it said. The wood of the small oval table had multiple ven diagram stains from beer bottles left out too long. Franny wasn’t meowing and that was unusual. “Overslept like me,” he thought, shuffling to the pantry and grabbing the Meowmix. He at first had reservations about buying it. It was shit food, McNuggets for cats. He caved of course because Franny was very picky and also very overweight and almost always hungry. She was probably sleeping behind a couch or under a bed.

He shook the bag. That almost always worked. No response. “She will come out when she needs to,” he guessed. The living room was dark and that made him uncomfortable. Opening the blinds cleared the room like the shaking of an etch a sketch or the wiping of a scrawl-filled white board. The phone rang.

“Hello?”

“Clayton, its Martin.” Martin was his best friend and his business partner. Martin never slept a minute past five a.m.

“Oh hey Marty, what’s up?” His words catching on gravel in his throat then shooting into the phone’s receiver.

“Did I wake you? You sound like shit.”

“I overslept.”

“Well are you going to make it in today? Should be a busy one.” It was going to be a busy one. The new collection of busts were coming in today. He fucking forgot.

“Yeah of course. Did you already put out the new shipment?”

“I just put out a few limited editions for display but I’m going to need someone’s help to get the rest out on the shelves. Is Sam coming in today? I couldn’t remember.”

He stared at the note, the ring stains on the table, the closed windows. He leaned back up against the south wall.

“No she isn’t.” His voice was sedated like a dial tone.

“Alright well then I am really going to need you to haul ass down here, the traders will be here soon.” Marty hung up. Franny wasn’t sleeping. She was gone. Sam had taken her last night when she left. Sam had left him and taken Franny. Sam had left him. He stared across the room at the front door as if it were going to suddenly evolve into a mouth of a vacuum and suck everything that was left out of the apartment. The phone rang.

“Hello.” His voice was hollow.

“Sam just called the store,” it was Marty. “She said she’s quitting. Did you know about this?” Marty wasn’t angry, he was flustered. Lots of things flustered Marty.

“Yeah, she told me last night when she left.”

“Left? Where? Did she go out of town?”

“She left me. She took Franny.”

“Jesus Christ. She took Franny? But Franny is your cat!”

“I will be down at the store soon.” He hung up. His chest was inflating. His right hand gripped the phone tight; his left gently rubbed the back of his neck. He was staring at a skeleton. The apartment appeared now as only early blueprints before the construction began, just lines and numbers on thin sheets of paper, an outline of what was and now wasn’t. Then, as if the universe had suddenly gave him a gentle squeeze in his side, Clayton laughed.

waking on a friday morning

my hair is wet. again. the crotch and ass of my pants clinging to, well, my crotch and my ass. brief panic for the whereabouts of my glasses and suddenly...suddenly i realize they are shoved to the toe of one of my shoes. why? did i think someone was going to swipe them? a theif with the same prescription as me wandering into the living room at four in the morning, "Oh shit! just what i was looking for!" good hiding place, asshole. theres the smell of stale whiskey and i cough loud enough to startle nick on the adjacent sofa, in nothing but his guitar pick boxer shorts. he is sprawled out like a golden retriever, lanky arms hanging off the sofa cushion, fingertips scraping the carpet's surface. wiping the high out of my eyes i sit hunched over, smiling.

what a place this is. what a goddamn loony bin. a wacky sanitarium for crissed-crossed paths and bumbling patients sputtering out life stories and recollections of acid trips. lawn chairs that should be roped off and condemned are scattered about like mines or trap doors. the kitchen is the central nervous system, the dispensary of drunkenness.

shuffling to the bathroom i wonder if i am the first person up, or the last. or if those terms mean shit in this parallel circus. the mirror tells me that last night was good to me.

i like it here.

tron to the future

june the fourteenth, two-thousand and ten

i saw the most beautiful woman today. i shared the table she was already seated at. i read "the pearl" but secretly and deeply wondered, while i read, what she was reading. her short red hair caught the corner of my eye many times while i scanned through pages of steinbeck. her simple black dress made her seem calm and elegant, plain and breathtaking. the words we shared were only my asking for her permission to sit at her table, and then as she left, i looked up at her and said, "thank you for sharing your table with me." she responded, "no problem. any time." and then she smiled. i am pondering that statement now, minutes after she walked away. "any time". and i wasnt able to offer my name, or humbly ask for hers.

film recommendations

i have been viewing a lot of films lately since my job still has given me no hours and i am living at home.

therefore, i will recommend the best i watch to you, my 13 followers. maybe two of you will read this. thats fine.

first up "rosencrantz and guildenstern are dead" starring gary oldman and tim
roth and

written and directed by playwright tom stoppard. what a film. if you
have an affection for

shakespeare, science, dry humor, and philosophy, this is right up your
alley.

the second film is "barton fink". its a coen brothers film starring john tuturro as a writer with

writers block and goodman as his only "friend" in LA. dont miss
this one.

thats it for now.

someday, just not now.

5-31-10

I chatted with my father today.

He said I needed to get a wooden rod to put in the ledge of my window so that if I opened it at night it would prevent someone from opening it all the way and coming in and killing me. I told him that if someone wanted to kill me that bad then I probably deserved it.

I’m writing this in a word document knowing I will post it to my blog tomorrow morning. The trouble is I don’t get wireless internet in my new room so I cant post this immediately. That’s ok, i don’t really mind. Im ready to slow down the immediacy of information in my life.

In suburban Claremont I write with my bedroom window open, ready for the killer, or just the violins of crickets. I text Taylor telling her I am writing, she says she is proud of me, and I suppose I am too.

The last two nights I have replaced my usual bottle of wine with tall plastic tumblers filled with chocolate milk and I thought, “I am growing up”. I then chuckled at that idea.

Tomorrow I will wake up and have a glass of water, and it wont be an attempted cure for a hangover. I will watch episodes of Seinfeld tonight and think about how Josh has lived this life much longer than I have, and for that I respect him more than I do already.

My father comes in and talks to me about being an RA. I realize again how different we are, but my dad speaks with a genuine tone and there is no mistaking how grateful he is for that time in his life. I am not ready to look at the last four years of my life as “a time”. Not yet.

I sit, cross-legged, on my new bed, a bed that barely has room for one. I at first was disappointed with the lack of space for a companion. I quickly realized I have no companion to fill it, and wont for quite some time. I smiled at this.

There are stacks of my books under an old church pew on the north wall of my room. The pew is from the church my mother grew up in. Somehow it slipped itself into this room a few years back. My books and records sit sheltered beneath this simple wood bench that was once sat upon by faithful parishioners. I have decided to keep it here. Although an agnostic myself, the pew has a charm that I cannot place.

The bright yellow walls of this room say, “Welcome!” a bit too loud. I will paint them a warm light brown soon. I will take the hour and a half bus ride to work everyday and clumsily make my way through “Infinite Jest”, it is time that David Foster Wallace and I become acquainted with one another.

Every night at about 1030 PM this house drifts into quiet. It would be offensive to not take advantage of this gift. So here I sit, cross-legged, wearing gym shorts and t-shirt, hoping that I am taking that advantage.

be on watch

"that guy" is the title of the novella i am working on and hopefully finishing this summer. i will be posting excerpts and such somewhat consistently.

in other news, "archer" is quite a good show.

that is all.

"'Cuz we're gonna die, yeah were gonna die, and we're gonna die either way."

thinking about this line in one of robbie's songs made me stretch my arms out. it means this life gives freedom, or something. it makes me feel less stressed out, knowing im going to die, knowing we are all going to die. and it doesnt matter what you believe, or if you half ass a paper, or if you lose friends; because we are all going to die either way.

thanks, rob. i needed that.

this guy gets it.

the aviator

i cannot express how much i love this film.

a few things

The Newport Beach Film Festival was outrageous. Shawn, Jamie, Myles, and I showed up, and Josh met us out front. I could smell the booze on his breath already and I inquired, "How do I get on that train?" He laughed. Josh took us past the lines, groups of paparazzi, and television cameras and led us to the back. He asked for tickets to some film called "airdoll" and without hesitation he got them. I got it. He's a programmer. He gets respect. He is in his element. And it was incredible to watch.

Josh handed us the tickets, walked us past security and pushed us into the theatre. He handed me a piece of paper right before he left us to our movie and said, "Directions to the VIP afterparty at RED. Call me when you get there." I wasn't about to ask questions. Josh knew exactly what he was doing.

The film was incredible. It was a small little japanese film about a sex doll that develops a heart and starts evolving into a human being. The ideas presented in this film were staggering. Feminism, sex trafficking, what it means to be alone, love, what is the soul, it was heavy. It was shocking. It was adult. It was fantastic.

After the film I called Josh. No answer. We debated and decided to just head over to RED and see what was going on. None of us knew what we were doing, and we had no idea what we were in for.

Driving up to RED in my Champagne-colored 1994 Mercury Topaz felt like the setup to a bad SNL sketch. When I realized I was driving up to the valet, I quickly turned the car around and parked in an adjacent parking lot. There was no way I was going to embarrass my quaint little sedan by letting a guy in a suit park it next to the twenty Lexus and Mercedes sports cars out front. I didn't think my car or I could handle that.

Walking up to RED was our first introduction to the "what the hell are we doing here" mentality. Josh walked up, gave us VIP wristbands, walked us by the bouncers, and into the club.

To describe it would be futile, except to say it was the ritziest place I had ever been allowed into. As we made our way through the haze of dry ice smoke, the pounding of the house music shook my chest. I was ready for a drink, in fact, we all were.

"Drink 'em fast and make each of those fuckers a double." Those were Josh's words of wisdom. He told us they were going to run out of Absolut and Stella since they were free, so we needed to get as many as possible early on in the night. Free Absolut and Stella? That was that.

After our third or fourth drink, we were all feeling pretty loose and we were ready to take on the VIP world we had been inducted into. Sitting in the RED Room, you could smoke as you please, and that's where we set up shop. We watched Josh shmooze with fellow co-workers, directors, producers, and studio representatives. He was on his game. Us, we just smoked cigarettes and enjoyed the high life of the film festival circuit. At one point, some classy individual left their bottle of Grey Goose out in the open. We said why not, and Shawn grabbed the bottle and we went back to the dance floor, just because we could.

Josh danced with a midget, Jamie was hit on by sleezy OC gentlemen, Myles danced, and I, well I just soaked it all in. Never in my life had I been so proud of Josh, and we let him know it. He was doing something he absolutely loved, and it just happened to come with some fantastic bonuses.

We left when the free alcohol ran out, and gave Josh big, joyful hugs. For a night, we were VIPs. For a night, we were ritzed out.

GENIUS

thats all i have to say.

INSIDE Part ONE

INSIDE Part ONE

It’s 3:42 am. Shit. Waking up from that recurring dream about getting shot twice in the stomach, I still hate cops. I need to grab a glass of water; my throat is collapsing on itself. I need to clean this room; it’s near impossible to get to the fucking bathroom without stepping on a lone shoe and almost breaking an ankle. I shouldn’t drink so much. This water is magic.. I can feel it washing out the layer of alcohol coating the inside of my throat. I shouldn’t have passed out with that bottle in my hand. What would my mother think if she saw this? “Honey, you need to wear underwear when you sleep, who knows when a fire might wake you up in the middle of the night.” That’s disgusting. Fuck gin. I need a better bed frame. My back feels like those moldable Gumby toys with the wire frame, twisted around and stuck-- head and upper torso facing backwards. I hope I don’t have that stupid fucking dream again.

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“But what if you’re wrong? What if Jesus is the only way to heaven?”

“What?” I haven’t been listening to her. If I get involved in this I will hate myself, I won’t be friends with me anymore. I will cut ties with myself if I get involved in one more goddamn--

“Are you listening to me?”

“Sorry, yeah…wait. Jesus?”

“I said what if you are wrong? What if Jesus is the only salvation?”

“I dunno. I will go to hell I guess.”

“You guess?”

I don’t even believe in hell. I should just tell her that. I should be honest. I should--

“Forget it. It’s boring right? I am boring you.”

“No. No. I’m sorry.” Why am I apologizing? “You aren’t boring, it’s just that I have this discussion a lot.”

“Oh. I’m sorry.”

“It isn’t your fault. So, what are you ordering?”

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How did I get drunk? Am I drunk? I’m drunk. What did I drink…one…three... fuck. You aren’t supposed to keep count, what did Roger say, something about if you keep count you shouldn’t be drinking, or you should be drinking. Where is Roger? I need to know. That’s going to bother me. Is that that girl from Blockbuster? I think she saw me renting Couples Retreat. Dammit. Vince Vaughn is funny, god that’s embarrassing. Where the fuck is Roger?

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“So what you are saying is that Tarantino, the master of modern cinema, would just let something like that slip through the cracks?”

“Did you just say the master of modern cinema?”

“Who else even comes close?”

“You are fucking idiotic my friend, completely delusional in your Tarantino fetish love. Paul Thomas Anderson, you fucking ass-clown.”

What is this conversation? This is my life? It boils down to arguments about completely subjective topics? How did this happen?

“Duuude. Don’t get me started on the Coen Brothers.”

Give me a car crash, water boarding, eaten by a shark. But if I die in the middle of this conversation, that will be my fucking nightmare.

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What did Andrea say last night? Something about Sartre? No. Descartes? It was interesting. Andrea always has something stimulating to contribute. I should date a smart girl. What time is it? Jeopardy is almost on. I should check and see if Clayton wants to get high. Andrea held my hand last night. She said it was a joke. She said it was her idea of dark humor. I laughed and said “good one”. Fucking “good one”. I love dark humor. So was that ironic? I am always hesitant when dealing with irony. It probably wasn’t irony. I need to remember not to wear that blue collared shirt when I see her again. I’ve been wearing it both times that I ran into her.

I do like myself. I do. I just seem to be underachieving lately. I should write something.

i want to write for the rest of my life.

today

as i was listening to the clash, i ran into this picture:

the caption was only this: "not a hipster"

the mixture of the picture, caption, and soundtrack i had playing all made sense.

the coathangers

i am obsessed with these girls and their music. check 'em out.

http://www.myspace.com/fuckthecoathangers

metabiscuits and eggsistentialism

the rabbit said once,
"take up and feed!"
but i, i chose the boat less traveled by,
and that cyber, cyber burning bright
upon that midnight smeary, while i fondled cheeks
so cheery
exclaiming!
a chorus, a chorus, my kingdom for a chorus
knowing that i had promises to sheep,
and piles of snow before my feet.

it really makes you think

i haven't updated my blog in a while (no excuses, i just haven't), but this is something worth writing about. as i am waiting for my 4:20 class to begin, i decide to stumble around on the internet. sometimes i find shit, sometimes i find pretty amazing stuff.

this is the latter.

this radio show (or tv show, im not sure) has a segment on their program where they grab a member of the homeless community and bring them into the studio and give them clothes (and maybe interview them too). anyway, at first it seemed pretty exploitative. any time i hear about a media program doing something with the homeless community i tend to get visions of "bumfights" and such travesties.

well, on one of the episodes the show picked a man named mustard. after fitting him with clothes, he mentioned to the hosts that he played the guitar. either hoping to exploit him or not, they gave him a guitar and told him to play and sing. what the hosts got was this:

Mustard sings Creep from Rex Kramer on Vimeo.

you can tell that after mustard is finished the hosts are shocked.

however. when one really sits down to think about it, is it really that shocking? the homeless community consists of a huge range of ethnicities, styles, cultures, and talents. the way this man sings this song like it was written for him to sing is the truly amazing part.

it makes me think.

it is never clear
not once
the universe frowns
and i am tired
of everything
contentment?
never
i am a ghost of
lonesome jim