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[09 Sep 2009|04:48pm] |
On doing things you said you'd do
It smells like raw sewage sometimes in our kitchen and bathroom. The pipes are exposed, the floors are dusty, there aren't enough outlets, we can't run the air conditioner and the microwave at the same time, my lungs ache from the air. Things aren't perfect. It's a strange feeling when you realize you actually do serve a purpose somewhere, but that somewhere happens to be halfway around the world. I'm even pretty good at what I do. I have a responsibility here, and it feels so good to finally feel like I'm doing something. No, being a student doesn't count. In the end, it turns out I'm really not that great at being a student, so I'm glad to be finished with it for the time being. Really glad. China is, as suspected, an extremely difficult place to understand and get used to, but shit. I'm sliding down the sides of 4,000 year old temples, no hands. For the first time, I'm not envious of anyone. Really.
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[27 May 2009|02:00am] |
Now most of the time I try, and fail, not to think about you. The two of you. Together. In the most disgustingly graphic and undoubtedly one-sided configuration with one up, one down, neither one caring that I'm there too, standing frozen next to you screaming my eyes stapled open. It's sickening not in the physical sense, but in the sense that I know at least one of you should be moving up from here. You're plummeting into someone else's open ditch and for absolutely no identifiable reason. I can't say a damn thing, but that's not the worst part. The worst part is, this is how I'll remember you.
When people stop being part of each other's lives, things sort of start to dissolve into the unknown again. I used to know him. We used to live together. She hugged me when I would cry. We used to know things about each other, but I think now that privilege has somehow expired. When we stop seeing each other on a daily basis it's no longer clear how much we're allowed to know - but even then, we didn't know everything. There were secrets, or things we didn't trust each other with. We still talked, though. We talked about the things we were considering believing in. But now, because looking back makes us dizzy, we'll probably never speak again. Not like real people, anyway.
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[10 May 2009|07:43pm] |
I mean, I don't know. I graduated over 48 hours ago. Graduated as in walked across a stage and was handed a bound diploma with my name on it in curly script. Took a bunch of pictures. Saw my family. Consumed large quantities of expensive food and alcohol. Shit's done. I mean, this is really done and I'm leaving soon. Probably leaving the country and continent. Disappointments seem to abound.
Just tryin to make lemonade now.
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[12 Apr 2009|08:44am] |
I guess betrayal is something I've never really given a lot of thought to. I don't know why. Maybe I thought it'd never happen to me, or that I'd somehow not think of it as betrayal, whatever it was, or that I'd be so fucking magnanimous as to turn the other cheek and take it. I mean, I guess I could.
It's kind of unbelievable to me, but more than I feel the need to be vindictive and bitter and angry, I just feel like a humongous fool. One big fat hilarious joke.
Is this a joke?
You make it easier for me to leave here, at least. Leave this life running. Running and yelling and flapping my arms.
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[01 Apr 2009|10:09pm] |
I think I'm moving to China. And my parents are going back to Texas. Finally.
Expecting to grow me some rosemary and sage somewhere about 50 miles out of Austin.
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[12 Mar 2009|06:44pm] |
I'm going really fast. Too fast, I think. Lamenting the lack of opportunity to stop and look around. Talk. Think. This is it. The time. The end of my academic career for the foreseeable future. Where're all the ribbons? the confetti? the noisemakers?
I'm going to nationals for KCACTF next month. DC awaits, and my life. But for now, it's spring break, and Canada is on the horizon. I've never been to Canada.
My writing is suffering recently. I think it's because I hate John Pursley. Or, his taste, rather. And his work. And almost everything he says. And thinks.
By September, I'll end up in one of these places: Memphis, Seattle, New Haven, Waterford, Berkeley, Providence, New York, Beijing. Votes?
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[08 Jan 2009|12:29am] |
Honestly, this is for me. I want to put it behind a cut, but since I almost never use livejournal, I've forgotten how. These days are full of realization, self-actualization, change. I've become a different, but better, person in the last three months. I'm more certain. Calmer. Happier. I feel right. I know what I want. Who I want. It's so clear to me what lies ahead, though not specifically. There will be love in uncertainty, love in adventure, love in poverty, love in fear, love in silence. This sounds ridiculous, perhaps juvenile, not at all what I have ever expected for myself, or even what I thought I wanted. It's different, but this is my life. My wonderful life.
"My Dear Anna,
Bill Murray is haunting Brooklyn, NY.
Seriously.
Bill Murray, of Ghostbusters and Rushmore and Groundhog's Day fame, has been wandering around Brooklyn for a few weeks now. He wanders into parties, and nabs a few drinks, talks to some people, and exits, without saying goodbye, like a moderately pleasant draft. Accounts are popping up. He's Williamsberg's answer to Scotland's Loch Ness, or Mexico's Chupacabra, or North Carolina's Billy Graham. Stories vary from person to person, with the subject either sinking a boat, or drinking the blood of livestock, or spreading anti-semitic remarks.
I am digressing.
One story moved me. It was a young man who was walking around Manhattan very late in the evening. He was mildly intoxicated, but clearly recalled seeing a man of great stature walking beside him. He soon figured out that he was walking in the same direction as Bill Murray. He said hello to the actor, and asked for his autograph. Suddenly, Bill Murray put the man in a headlock, and started giving him a noogie. After five seconds of grinding his knuckle into the young man's scalp, mussing his hair, Bill Murray skipped away, yelling, "NO ONE WILL EVER BELIEVE YOU!"
That's just about how I feel about you. There are a lot of people in my life that know me very well, but know only of you through my stories and anecdotes and crude drawings of what you look like napping in the hinge. But sometimes the stories don't do you justice, and I get some looks that seem like they don't fully believe me. Not that they don't think you exist. But that we're so happy together; that two people are so dedicated to making something like this work; that you can fulfill so much of what I've been missing. In my stories, you seem more of the realm of fantasy. Not in that "pointy ears and ancient sword and backflipping into the ocean" fantasy, but just of someone who has qualities others feel they need in someone they're with.
Passively, you help me become a better man just by being you. The closer we get, the more I feel it is pressing for me to become closer to the man you've always wanted. I feel I've waited twenty eight years to find you, and the least I could do is make sure I become the one you've been looking for as well. I have such high hopes and dreams for you and I.
You are loved.
-David Jacobi"
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[10 Nov 2008|09:00pm] |
I write, now, as if reincarnated. My fourteen cups of green tea in the past 36 hours really solidified that.
Not to know how good we can have it, I think, is a prerequisite to life. We've got to have something to leave behind. That notion. That's what I'll leave.
We ate hot dogs on that big rock next to the pond.
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[13 Aug 2008|03:51pm] |
I have something called superior mesenteric artery syndrome. Wikipedia makes it sound scary. I don't think it really is. Basically, I'm not lactose intolerant or allergic to gluten or too acidic or any of that funny business we've thought in the past. I have to eat slowly in really small portions for the rest of my life or I'll vomit alot. Ha!
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SMA_syndrome
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| reply to a letter not received |
[12 Aug 2008|06:32pm] |
Often, too often, I can't catch my own coattails before running away with the thoughts that are always - right? - always silently incubating below the surface of congenial conversations, half-hearted sentiments from friends far away who, in one way or another, will never come back. The cycle continues thusly, and I recognize it coming, louder and stronger each time I turn around. Maybe I don't try hard enough, and in some way perhaps I really do want to torture myself this way. I'm not ready for you to leave me yet, what feels like leaving forever, but maybe I already did that. Did I?
You talked last night about love and unselfishness, tracing it like a ziggurat in front of you with both hands. Possession. The nonexistence of betrayal. The masked evil that will show us, in the same way, we're killing ourselves with technology. Building bigger monuments in smaller packages for things we've never really needed. Its like that, you tell me. You're very convincing. So convincing I want to punch your face in. How could I have been so wrong?
Coming back here felt right, I thought, expected. You needed me to, I thought. But that was never the case, was it? Maybe this has nothing to do with you. I'm so ashamed. I wonder what, if any, impact I've had on your life. I guess I wonder that too much. A perfect example of the corruption that carefully eats away at every monument we've ever built.
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[25 Jun 2008|04:29pm] |
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i'm driving north tomorrow, and i might do something rash.
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[18 May 2008|01:42am] |
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Maybe there's a really obvious visual cue I keep missing. Like a big red octagonal facemask. Skull and crossbones? Whatever it is, I hope I see it next time. For once. I would love to be the one who walks away.
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[08 May 2008|11:34am] |
Moon reflected
off the white plastic grocery sack on the doorstep
as a quiet pair of Bartlett pears rested inside it,
curved about each other
like two sides of a yin-yang.
You must have put them there
for me to find
which I did, and
opening the front door
without looking
– why would I? –
following a hurried step
of my right canvas shoe, I must have
torn one,
its tender yellow skin
opening to the flesh below.
I nearly fell.
On days like today –
a full three years later, and
still wishing you a happy
belated birthday –
I remember those pears:
how you remembered
they were my favorite.
Yellow and small.
I’m sorry now
I never considered (eating) them.
Its no lie that sometimes, sometimes very silently I wish we weren't so different. I wish we could talk without translating. I wish I could hear your thoughts without it taking a megaphone and two percoset. I wish that we
were still friends.
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[12 Apr 2008|07:50pm] |
eight days ago, I was bitten. by a human. girl. the story goes like this: she was drunk and i was standing there. my arm sustained a medium sized hematoma, some minor arterial damage and, obviously, a fair amount of subdermal bleeding. it looks kind of like hell. this is one of the most ridiculous things that has ever happened to me.
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[12 Mar 2008|12:10am] |
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Its just as I would have remembered it, if I had thought to remember it at all. Confronting vastness is something I learned to do as a child, something I lost. I lived where the echoes never faded, where children giggling five blocks away were clearly audible. I was small in an endless landscape of bleached grasses, naked windblown bushes wishing they were trees, tiny creeks with horny toads, hungry white-tailed deer full of my mother’s homegrown tomato vines. I do remember that.
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[28 Jan 2008|09:25am] |
last week i discovered
i like honey
(i still love you. shh)
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[14 Jan 2008|12:39am] |
And so I guess the moral of the story was something like catch and release. Or there's plenty of fish in the sea.
The baker is happy
to roll out his dough,
slap it and shape it
at his will, uncut gem or
white skin pulled tight at the temples.
Ten rise to the early light, lace up and slip down
a powdered fresh dance floor leaving the stage
pounding back down.
Soft mushroom clouds explode, retreat
to find indifferent folds.
The baker is happy to lean
cocked and silent.
Today of all days the baker kneads his doe.
domesticity
downcast
forecast?
overcast
new cast.
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[31 Dec 2007|12:19am] |
Its so strange to think how each year goes by without a sound until the last ten seconds. People are as loud as possible for the last ten seconds, spending those moments concentrating only on nothing at all - and then I guess spending the first ten of the next one hootin and hollerin and carryin on. Other than that, it just stays so quiet you can't feel it move.
I think its safe to say that this past has been the least boring year of my life.
1 Jan, 2007:
" three things i will not do this year
-mourn
-believe anything i'm told
-wait"
which came out pretty well for the most part. In fact, I think I'll repeat the entire set this time 'round, and maybe add that I'll not start more books than I finish.
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deepestbreath's journal