Goodnight Sweet Prince

6/21/2009-4/24/2010

Fear and Loathing in St. Louis

Chicago, Columbus, Cincinnati, Lexington.

St. Louis is next. T-minus 10 hours and counting.

a.l.m.o.s.t.

So, three papers, one test, and the majority of a project down --- one paper, one test, and the remainder of that project and it's presentation to go. I may just go buy me some Splinter Cell tomorrow.

This calls for some celebration.

Needly needly needly neeeeeeeeee.



you didnt even know there was a video, did you?

A lot of things are happening. A lot of things aren't happening. A lot of people are thinking things that they don't want to say. A lot of people are saying things they don't want to think.

We're all just watching stars disappear in the spotlights. We hang around hillsides, holding on to exposed roots and juniper branches for security. We watch the valleys, and wait for the smoke to clear. The city may seem so far away, and the buses don't run during times of upheaval, but I know we're going to make it home alright.

So let's start walking. This shit is getting heavy.

tomorrow.

thunder.thunder.THUNDER! over Louisville. 800,000 people converging on a two mile stretch of river front with the sole intent of getting drunk, sunburned, and watching multi-million dollar war machines demonstrating the American Military in all of its glory.

We got fireworks. And a bridge.

Should be pretty b.a.

One of these days I'll anchor my feet in sand, and let the waves spray salt on my legs like the faces of sheer cliffs. The wind will trace the features of my face with fingers fair, and for a moment I will feel solid. I will be bound to the ocean by the water in my blood, and the salts of my pores, returned to its roots like some prodigal son of the sea.

Until then, let these mornings serve as a reminder. I am consistently stumbling; rolling backwards on bruised heels. Balance will be the end of me, and my stability is still an illusion. Security is static, and everything else is progress.

This isn't flying. It's falling with style.

Rounding Up.

Some You's and I's and We's for all of us.

I'll watch you paint your pictures. The canvas reflects such dull and sullen colors. Your skin tones, the color of mucus; your smile like jagged, dusty glass. "A Self-portrait..." you say; "This is how I look. Tell me I'm wrong." You paint with the hands of William Burroughs. Steady your hands. Take a breath. Things aren't that bad. Just turn on the light. Things will seem brighter.

But Captain, the ship is sinking!

At least the water is warm. Let it take you. We can find the shore. All the waves roll back to land, and and through the overcast, the sun will warm the beaches. All you have to do is stand up and walk on to the shore. Scape the brine from your eye-lids, son. The urchins on your feet seem to have made your knees grow weak. Our peripheries mark the boundaries of our line of sight. Imagine the blurred objects to be the sill of your window of opportunity. Everything bounded by the corners of the world as you see it is an opportunity. Take it for what its worth, or die with empty pockets.

If you reach old age without callouses, you clearly haven't tried. Let your hands harden. They were given to you to use, I promise. When your fingers are made of stone, and they still refuse to hold water, you can finally tell me I was wrong.

So you still don't know.
So you didn't really try.
So she didn't see it coming.
So. So. So. If there was no uncertainty, we could all be born 75 and satisfied. Go ahead. Fuck it up a little. Life looks better when it's a little worse for wear.

And the sun will follow the rain.

Things I like

-People working in the SAC who are excited you were courteous and are courteous back.
-The air finally being on in the buildings on campus.
-Riding with my windows down and the radio up way too loud for my hearing's benefit.
-Looking out of windows at people; pretending you're watching some sort of strange television.
-People (girls, especially, I'll admit) who smile at you when you walk past.
-The smell of Ramen
-Convincing myself that Wednesday is practically the weekend.
-Seeing people I know, but don't remember me.
-Last-minute pre-class blogging.
-Knowing pretty much exactly what all of my friends are doing right now.
-Living for Saturdays.



if this weather keeps up, I'll just have to be happy all the time.

On nights when you can drive down the express way, and see the sun setting on the city;
When each building reflects the watercolors in the glass, and becomes a potential pillar of fire;
When the concrete is the same temperature as the bottoms of my feet;
When the trees reach up and crack the twilight sky with their branches like lead-based paint;
When I can see the stars --- I am happy.

Eudaimonia

Saturday. Saturday? Saturday.
Sitting in my bed at midnight on a Saturday is strange. I guess I sort of like it. We'll decide in twenty minutes when I try to fall asleep. Usually, at this point of my Saturday, I'd be drinking something, somewhere, with someone. This should work just as well. I'll end up in fundamentally the same place.

Tomorrow is Easter. This means I'll get up to go to church. My grandparent's will appreciate this. I'll get dressed up and be the most formal person there under the age of forty-five. Ambercombie seems to pass on holy days of obligation. It will be standing room early, which means I probably won't sit down. The upside; no need to genuflect. There is a new priest, who I will probably only listen to for the Homily. The rest of the time I will spend having an internal dialogue with god. We'll probably talk about how I haven't been there in a while, and God will ask me how many people found his house. He'll wonder why he didn't charge at the door, and worry he stocked enough wine for the party. We'll probably talk about how funny "the birthday incident" was. We try to keep it cas'.

Easter means I'm going to hang out with my family. The whole thing. Essentially this entails going to two different houses. Which houses is determined by size rather than cooking ability of the residents, which I don't understand fully, considering our entire meeting is built around food. The meals will be sub-par, but there will be a ton of food. Some of it will be eaten, more of it will be thrown away, all of it will be complemented ad nauseum. After the meal, I will retreat to a room unoccupied with my homework for the week and do as much of it as humanly possible. With any luck, I'll finish enough of it that I'll be able to go to Ryan's after I finish with my obligations. Or maybe I'll hang out with Brian. Or Patrick. Maureen will undoubtedly be doing homework, but I saw her tonight. This is fine.

Next weekend I think I'm going to try to be drunk by 11. This is primarily because I can do this within walking distance of a cheese double cheese. Assuming I can get most of my homework out of the way, I'll be able to fit in ample frisbee and trail running this week. These are the things I like to do. Also, tomorrow I should be getting a violin. Hopefully I can play it proficiently some day.

Today I had a breakfast cup. And Dairy Castle. Twice. Things are doin' alright.

"Upon further review, yesterday was perfect."

That is correct, sir.

I woke up, well rested, at noon thirty Saturday afternoon. Shower, shave, banana. Brian drove again today. I was looking forward to driving a little --- I like driving distances at night, and there was a chance that was going to happen. Still, Brian explained that it was all part of his master plan. Sparky needs to die a beautiful death. We picked Ryan up and headed towards Columbus. 71 runs straight through Cincinnati, so we decided to stop in to see Ben for a bit. The weather was fantastic. We got taco bell, and my order was four dollars exactly on accident. The midget behind the counter was amused at how excited I was about the price and he gave me a free soft drink.

We discussed summer plans, which sound like they might entail lots of driving to Cincinnati, and even more apartment parties. We also played with a ball in Ben's apartment, which should not have been nearly as much fun as it was.

We continued back on our way to Columbus. The venue we went to was very cool. It was a basement bar, and very intimate. Animals as Leaders was so insane. The lead guitarist was a black guy with an 8-string guitar. He was nuts. I loved watching him play because he would do these absurd runs on the guitar, and look so intense and suddenly he would look at the ground and smile as if he had just realized how amazing what he was playing was and he couldn't help but smile. Darkest hour played next, and they played an awesome set. They played The Sadist Nation, A Thousand Words to Say But One, Convalescence, Demons, two songs off their new album, and closed with Doom Sayer.

We walked out of the pit to the bar, and what do I see on television? UK loosing. Oh. My. God. John Wall and Liggens had fouled out, they were down by six and there was less than 30 seconds left. Oh, Bobby Huggins.

We drove back through Cincinnati and met up with Ben again. He used his ID and bought a case and talked our way into a party, which was fun.

It was a pretty great day, all in all. We hung out with Ben's future roommates and and stayed over at his apartment until this morning. Ben is coming back on Wednesday for Easter.

Deliver Us.

This is what I'm doing today. How about you?
God help you if you think you're ready.

Repost.

This is a recycled version of something at least one person already read. I'll add in new material to keep it fresh, but I liked a lot of it before. Most of it will be the same.

I've been talking a lot about dreams with people recently. Sleep is oddly satisfying, though it seems to me that I only get it in bursts anymore. 5 hours of sleep is considered a full night's worth --- for me anyway. My sleep schedule for the past two days? In bed by four thirty, just before the sun starts to peek out at the houses. Awake by eight. Stay up long enough to wreck the place. Back to sleep until eleven. Wake up, get dressed, drive to school, sleep walk for four hours. Drive home. Dinner at five, nap until six. Work at eleven, home by six, sleep until ten. Here I am.

I love sleeping because it comes so naturally now. There was a time I would go days without sleeping; as many as three or four at a time. It would always seem like longer. All the days and colors would start to blend together and my eyes would sag. Everything felt like it was second hand; like I was experiencing an echo of life, somehow. Now, sleep comes when I ask it to. I can sleep on command. Lay on my left side, count to fifty. Roll to my right, count to forty. Lose focus, regain focus, roll back to the left, flip my pillow, close my eyes, and sleep. Like the combination to a lock.

I wonder if where I am in the world has any effect on my dreams. South, at noon on a beach, when my pillow is damp with sweat, and my skin is crisp in the sun. North, at midnight in a snow storm, when my blanket cocoons me against prying cold, reaching to separate my bones.

Sometimes, just before I fall asleep, I imagine the world as a giant glass eye, that reflects us into space. I imagine that we are really something greater than layers of skin draped over feeble skeleton. That we are reflected so minusculely that something ital becomes lost in the translation. That maybe we are stars, or something greater than stars, compressed to an infinitesimally smaller size. The concept of being transferred into dust and sound; slowly resonating vibrations. And maybe dreaming is the appeal to our potential --- a state where we no longer have to negotiate the delays of time and distance.

Our minds are made up of principally the same things. We are all built from the same moving parts, and if I were to lay out on a table all the brains of all of your loved ones, you would not be able to separate one from the next. They are all just masses of cells; concentrations of atoms to make tissues and fluids. The firing of electrical signals. Atoms. Electricity. These things have tendencies, and maybe that is why we all have such common experience. We're all thinking the same things at some point or another, so what is the dividing line between where we are and collective consciousness? If space is nothing, and all that is between stars is space, then there is nothing between the stars. So do they touch? If space is all that separates my thought from yours, are they touching?

I had a dream about a girl who I never met. We were sitting on a bed that was mine, but wasn't, in a room that was mine, which I had never been in. I could see out into the neighborhood that was somehow familiar and completely foreign to me, and everything was comfortable. We sat indian style on the mattress and the covers pooled around our hips and touched my waist like ocean waves. She had a face I can't remember, but would recognize. A white cardigan, and a shirt which matched her dark-rimmed glasses. Green eyes behind corrective lenses. Shafts of light came through the window and landed on my lap. She said she could teach me to play the violin, and I told her I could bring her summer time. This all felt oddly heavy. I was in love with her.

When I woke up it occurred to me for the first time in my life that was I dreaming about someone I had never seen, or met, or heard of. I realized that this person was or will be real, almost certainly. Somewhere, sometime this girl is real. All of the people I have ever dreamed about are potentially real people with experiences and thoughts, and ideas, and lives entirely their own. But how do I know them well enough to visualize them? How can these people be real to me in dream, but not in consciousness?

Do they dream about me?

For the majority of my life I recognized dreams as arbitrary. Every dream was like an episode of Will and Grace; controversial, but mundane. Forgettable. Unimportant. My friends say they don't dream anymore, but I think that they just don't remember. One of them said that this blogging thing sometimes feels like talking to god. I sort of feel like maybe dreaming is like god casually talking back.

I watched waking life, once. I feel asleep, which I find some irony in. It was the most self-indulgent movie I have ever watched, and I hated every second of it.

if i made a video game, you would have to fight this in a boss battle.

Third blog in 24 hours.

Just some thoughts to close the day.
When I try to sleep, I wrestle with thoughts. I recognize how little I know about the people I claim to love; those I hold close to me. In true solipsist tradition, I don't know anything about anyone except how they effect me. But assuming they are real, they know no more about me. This both complicates and simplifies our relationships.

When I sleep, I revel in the moment just before sleep consumes me. I am, for a moment free from the gravity of reality, and the serendipity of my dreams. That level of freedom seems irreplaceable, but when I run at night, I get something close around mile three.

Life so far has been about progression. Graduate from first grade to second. From elementary school to middle school. From High school to College. What is next? Grad School? Law School? Something, surely. What yet, I'm not certain.

Basically, I hope what is dead stays gone, though. We can't go back to the past, no matter how much fun coloring may have been. Memories need to stay memories.

Something is building a house in my sinus cavity.

Windows work both ways

Allegiances are a complex animal, but somehow we all understand how they work.

People important to you seem to fall under the cloak of your charity and sympathy.
Those close to them are invited to join. Its a wonderful system we use to determine who we love and who we trust and who we praise. It simplifies things that are of such a complicated nature.

So what happens when people no longer fall under this veil of amicable thought? Well, a shepherd tends to his flock. The most permanent fixtures take precedents, and you hold up the weakest heads. I suppose you take it on faith that those closest to you were either left or leaving for a reason. It never gets any easier, knowing a shadow, and permanency almost never paints itself in shades of gray.

That having been said, current social standings have no effect on things I may have said in the past. I'm not much of a liar. I spent my childhood being lied to, and I would do well to stay as far away from that childhood as possible. What I say now relative to what I have said in the past is a function of where my allegiances lie. If this implies guilt, we are all guilty.

Even so, I have never spoken without evidence to frame my words around. And If you find yourself with a swiss army knife and a bottle of something, I can round up some spray paint and a new deck of cards.

Summer is so close I can Fucking Taste It.