1. "Small Stakes Give You the Blues
But You Don't Feel Taken, Don't Think You've Been Used
Cause It's Alright Friday Night To Sunday
It Feels Alright, Keeps Your Mind On The Page
Oh Yeah Small Stakes Ensure You The Minimum Blues
But You Don't Feel Taken And You Don't Feel Abused
Small Stakes Tell You That There's Nothing Can Do
Can't Think Big, Can't Think Past One Or Two "
spoon - small stakes
2. I've been in a rut. I probably will remain there for a while yet, because i think i have something more to learn. In the last three years, I have been struggling with something; for the years before that, I learned that we all are always changing. I am not the person I was yesterday nor the jerk i was in gradeschool, or the loverboy i was in kindergarten (i kissed a girl named kristina four, but it was no big deal, we just wanted to see why our parents thought it was so cool---we thought it was pretty lame). I am something new everyday. Everyday is a chance to fuck it up all over again.
Or to make it new; a bed with clean sheets. But i forgot about the mattress. We change, but we stay the same. In the last few years, I've been remembering things and trying to piece that past and present together. Like a puzzle though, the picture remains unclear, and since it's a puzzle that doesn't end, i doubt i'll ever understand it fully. But i've begun to realize that we are the people we were 20 years ago, no matter how much we fight it. In our culture, change is the emphasis, but continuity is there too, and the reality is a blurred, mishmash of both, like when you play with your mashed potatoes.
The point? Small stakes will kill you by making life seem small; every day is a new beginning. And every day is a continuance of the whole life that came before it. If life's a bed, i have to lie in every part of it. What keeps me from confusing the edge with the curtains? Friends.
3.
Our heroine remembers the blade she used to kill her friend.
"This is Friendship"
She remembers what it was like to see her there, ready to fight.
"Step One: You finally meet someone you dig, somebody you can groove with, somebody who doesn't seem like all the other phony losers out there."
Our heroine remembers that she was the one who died that night.
"Step Two: They share a little of themselves with you, you share everything with them."
The fight...
"Step Three: It all goes to crap.."
a punch...
"They hurt you."
a kick...
"You hurt 'em back."
a headbutt.
"Or maybe it's the other way around. Whatever"
Her friend stabs her in the gut with our heroine's own knife.
"Someday you might find a way to forgive each other. But it won't ever be like it used to, 'cause that pain never really goes away."
She remembers saying 'you did it'.
"And in the end, no matter how many wicked good times you had together, you woulda been better off flying solo all along."
excerpted from Brian Vaughn's Issue 3 of Buffy the Vampire Slayer: No Future For You
4.
I read an astrological chart of my life. I read that I would become a leader of something, do something big when I was much older, and that now is the time for me to learn the lessons to make me into that bigger person, into someone worth being. Someone worth loving.
In the mean time, my current life challenge, up until I turn 29 is to learn to 'speak my heart.' And i realize that i rarely do, especially recently.
Now, there was a time I spoke my mind, but never an era where i spoke my heart. I don't know that I value it overtly much, seeing as how it seems to only bring trouble with it. But i'm going to try, simply because i want to, and because the few times that i have, i think it was a good thing to do. the most ethical, which is what i strive for.
we do not value friends. we walk through everyday as though work, school, traffic, television, research, readings, or a million other things were any more important than any other. Than each other. Than the planet and all its inhabitants. Which it isn't, outside of our being here, outside of us, but that's moot. we walk through everyday and pretend that we don't want to gush our hearts out on the floor and have someone clean up the mess, smile and say, 'that's beautiful, do it again'. so that we can gracefully admit it was all intended, which it wasn't, and that aren't we special? or not
maybe we just want to stop each other on the street and say 'hello, please, i'm all alone here and i don't know how to say i am' or maybe we don't care. maybe other things keep us occupied. maybe it's the small stakes of papers, rules, jobs, clothing, music, money. not that they're not valuable. but we act as though they replace family, friends, conversaiton, the objectivity only achievable through each other's eyes and hands to hold (not in a sexual way, generally).
we walk through everyday and maybe we dont' think about it, but we're all alone. and that's all right. but it's not sometimes. so stop acting as though you are so cool that you don't feel. stop looking at me like i'm strange for feeling this:
i am alone in this town most of the time and i don't want to be.
i know that you feel the same.
i see it in your eyes.
stop bullshitting me and look me in the eye with your mouth open wide and your heart spilling out, so that i can do the same.
so that, over time, over mutual good times, we can become good friends, strong friends, lifelong friends maybe, and when things get bad, broken, blue, good, great, greatest, we have soemone to turn to, someone to say 'hey, here's the truth, yo'
and when it falls apart, it falls apart
but in the meantime, we make life worth meaning, worth being made meaningful
what are we without friends?
i'll tell you, since i asked: we are hollowed out, living by small enough stakes that we don't notice we're turning our own lives into moot points
5.
"You won't find it by your self
You're gonna need some help
And you won't fail with me around
Come on let's go
I will tell you if you change
And who's been saying things
It's hard to tell who is real in here
Come on let's go
You know who to turn to
Now everything's changed
Come on lets go
Stop looking for answers
In everyone's face
Come on let's go
What's the point in wasting time
On people that you'll never know
Come on let's go
When you're looking for a friend
But it's empty at the end
When everybody's disappeared
You won't be alone
If you want I'll compensate
If you overestimate
So there's nothing left to fear
You won't be alone
You know who to turn to
Now everything's changed
Come on let's go
Stop looking for answers
In everyone's face
Come on let's go
What's the point in wasting time
On people that you'll never know
Come on let's go"
lyrics from "comeon let's go" by Broadcast
Wednesday, November 14, 2007
Tuesday, November 13, 2007
among other things...
1. that post about being compromised, and being haunted by the DETECTIVE----just so we're clear, that was fiction(!)
in case you were thinking i was going nuts---not that i'm not, but not in such a paranoid delusional falling away from reality way
2. i just had another anxiety attack----leading me to conclude
a. i'm not doing anything ATALL extra tonight and i'm taking wednesday night off most likely
and
b. i am going to call sanshinryu to see if i can find a karate class around here, and if i can't, i'm just signing up for the next taichi class i find
CUZ
i will NOT die in....hmmm, just to avoid irony and the irritatingly real way i tend to jinx myself...i'll just say i won't die now
or yet
whatever, the poitn is
KARATE
plus
FIBERS!! i have another indy study with a fibers prof here, but he's a HE and he does japanese religion and textiles in particular, which is pretty cool since that's what my interests fibrously are and have been
tho i do have to write up a plan
in case you were thinking i was going nuts---not that i'm not, but not in such a paranoid delusional falling away from reality way
2. i just had another anxiety attack----leading me to conclude
a. i'm not doing anything ATALL extra tonight and i'm taking wednesday night off most likely
and
b. i am going to call sanshinryu to see if i can find a karate class around here, and if i can't, i'm just signing up for the next taichi class i find
CUZ
i will NOT die in....hmmm, just to avoid irony and the irritatingly real way i tend to jinx myself...i'll just say i won't die now
or yet
whatever, the poitn is
KARATE
plus
FIBERS!! i have another indy study with a fibers prof here, but he's a HE and he does japanese religion and textiles in particular, which is pretty cool since that's what my interests fibrously are and have been
tho i do have to write up a plan
Monday, November 12, 2007
c'est ceci
"woe is me
i am so homesick
but it ain't that bad
cuz i'm homesick for the home i never had" - soul asylum
i feel like my friends are changing so much that i don't recognize them
like they're becoming entirely different people
from the ones that i knew
which is most likely true,
and not true too, as humans do remain the same
throughout the changes of our lives
but i also feel like i am small
because i don't feel as though i have changed very much
from who i was 3 years ago
but i know it's very difficult for the person looking out
to see how the landscape has changed, whereas the peeping-tom-outsider
who looks in can see every detail much clearer
mostly, this is the result of someone treating me like a child
at the same time that someone else was being condescending on a different front
(simultaneous student and friend emo assaults blow)
add the inevitable distance that distance engenders
and my only friend here being INSANELY busy right now, and that equals
OVERSENSITIVITY to all things
but what's good is:
person one made a fool of themselves and put us on equal footing,
fina-fricking-lly
and
person two is not someone that me, at my hightest realization of myself,
would regularly hang out with and want more than
mere fun----which is just what they want
so
i say
c'est la vie
and i'm going to run through leaves
then fall down, read, maybe take a nap, and read some more
of Southland Tales
WHAT ARE YOU DOING FOR THANKSGIVING!!??
i'm going to a2--family and food! i have to get the tofu-turkey here though,
cuz unturkey stopped producing---TRAGEDY! NO!! anything but THAT!! but we deal, we vegetarians....anyway, the point is FUN, real, genuine like, with cool movies and maybe some thrifting, but at least some crepes from cafe zola and some real coffee that's not from soma, and my sisters, who i'm feeling strangely affectionate towards at the moment, despite their being my sisters
tell me what exciting things you have to look forward to....
i am so homesick
but it ain't that bad
cuz i'm homesick for the home i never had" - soul asylum
i feel like my friends are changing so much that i don't recognize them
like they're becoming entirely different people
from the ones that i knew
which is most likely true,
and not true too, as humans do remain the same
throughout the changes of our lives
but i also feel like i am small
because i don't feel as though i have changed very much
from who i was 3 years ago
but i know it's very difficult for the person looking out
to see how the landscape has changed, whereas the peeping-tom-outsider
who looks in can see every detail much clearer
mostly, this is the result of someone treating me like a child
at the same time that someone else was being condescending on a different front
(simultaneous student and friend emo assaults blow)
add the inevitable distance that distance engenders
and my only friend here being INSANELY busy right now, and that equals
OVERSENSITIVITY to all things
but what's good is:
person one made a fool of themselves and put us on equal footing,
fina-fricking-lly
and
person two is not someone that me, at my hightest realization of myself,
would regularly hang out with and want more than
mere fun----which is just what they want
so
i say
c'est la vie
and i'm going to run through leaves
then fall down, read, maybe take a nap, and read some more
of Southland Tales
WHAT ARE YOU DOING FOR THANKSGIVING!!??
i'm going to a2--family and food! i have to get the tofu-turkey here though,
cuz unturkey stopped producing---TRAGEDY! NO!! anything but THAT!! but we deal, we vegetarians....anyway, the point is FUN, real, genuine like, with cool movies and maybe some thrifting, but at least some crepes from cafe zola and some real coffee that's not from soma, and my sisters, who i'm feeling strangely affectionate towards at the moment, despite their being my sisters
tell me what exciting things you have to look forward to....
Friday, November 09, 2007
news
i just found out i don't have a teaching job for the spring, and i don't know how i feel about that
on the one hand, i hate teaching sometimes, like right now when my students are flaking out, and on the other, i like it. on the one hand, i need the money and experience, and on the other, i am excited to just have classes and ONE job again.
on the other, am i loser now? do i need to stop spending any money on stuff that doesn't count as necessary in an absolute way? am i unemployed?
that last question is silly, but i am wigging right now, even though i hoped i wouldn't have a position anyway
on the one hand, i hate teaching sometimes, like right now when my students are flaking out, and on the other, i like it. on the one hand, i need the money and experience, and on the other, i am excited to just have classes and ONE job again.
on the other, am i loser now? do i need to stop spending any money on stuff that doesn't count as necessary in an absolute way? am i unemployed?
that last question is silly, but i am wigging right now, even though i hoped i wouldn't have a position anyway
Thursday, November 08, 2007
stranger than fiction
i have been COMPROMISED
i have lost the ability to separate my own consciousness from that of others. when i watch television, i have a difficult time understnading whether i am the one watching or being watched, whether i am the man on the couch whose hands hurt though he continues to knit, or the man fighting demons while detecting a mystery.
The Detective.
HE haunts my dreams, you know. for i have become him, i have always been him, and i hope that one day i will meet him somewhere besides the bathroom or the bedroom. when i stare in the mirror. because he mocks me there, with his twilight eyes, somewhere beetween reason and emotion, capable of connecting past with present. we are living a social drama, the disruption existed before we were born.
our leaders have spoken. they have stood. they have been compromised. we have taken our last stand. we have been compromised. but The Detective, HE has not been so compromised.
while we have to live in this world, he lives in another, a different place, in the space between our ideals and the people we have become. between the person wondering what this means and the one who will rise out of sleep tomorrow to give into the tragic routine of this american life. HE haunts me there. speaks in my ear when i am about to give up, prods me to continue.
i am watson to his Sherlock. HE is the ideal that i attempt to live up to. why? why would i want to be like such a Man? poised between being real and living in our imagination. i can't tell myself from Him, but the REASON that i must follow Him is because He can bring us together. HE can collapse the facts into reality, fold time and space so that present and past connect, become woven into the experience of having been there and having never existed there at all. HE can make us feel even after all the darkness in our world has seeped into our bones.
who is HE? i have been questing after this knowledge.
the SEARCH FOR REASON is rough going. in a world with so many voices, where the only certainty is that nothing is certain, knowing anything at all is a dangerous business. and yet it cannot be. we know we are here because we are. we know the world needs to be saved because it falls farther and farther into the spiral that is our own teenage-like angst ridden struggle to destroy ourselves. for the sins of our fathers. for the sins of reason.
is HE our father? was his hand the one that dealt the blow, that attempted cruelty for kindness? or was it the right hand of God, the Invisible Hand that directs us all. Adam Smith, DETECTIVE extraordinaire.
No. NOT THAT> ANything but that. If reason was god we would melt in our graves and transform reality into currency and currency into our souls and our souls in the the malarchy that is corporate consciousness. corporations cannot make meaning; they can only take it away from us.
And I hold my head in my hands and weep. Because nothing is certain; nothing can be real without certainty. I cannot feel the hand on my shoulder, the voice in my head, I cannot bring the sense that I am alone to gether with the fact that I am SURROUNDED by so many voices, so many people, so many selves. I MUST make reason from this, make order, find the connection between where we've come from and where we must go, from destruction to rebirth, from death to the person that I am. I must MAKE MEANING. We must become the Meaning-makers, not the Destruction-bringers.
He is in the mirror again, mocking me. No, I have become him? In searching for meaning, I see myself truly. I have become the DETECTIVE, I have become HIM. I address the issue, I organize action, I find the woman with the short skirt and the long jacket and help her to become not-the-damsel-not-the-femme-fatale. I answer every question with due recourse and rational emotionality. I temper the voices with the uncertainty and recognize the best possible people we could be. I make meaning and see the past and present in the movement of our feet walking in the streets.
My heart quickens. My hands disappear. I have gone too far, I have become the symbol, the savior, the DETECTIVE of what must be done to find order in chaos. Like Ra, Maat, Yahweh, and all the prophets by whatever name, I feel myself disappear into the dark, deep night.
In seeing the inside, I have lost my place within. As I fall away, I glance into a mirror, see myself shaking his fist, and whisper through the fade-out-frame
'go no farther'..
i have lost the ability to separate my own consciousness from that of others. when i watch television, i have a difficult time understnading whether i am the one watching or being watched, whether i am the man on the couch whose hands hurt though he continues to knit, or the man fighting demons while detecting a mystery.
The Detective.
HE haunts my dreams, you know. for i have become him, i have always been him, and i hope that one day i will meet him somewhere besides the bathroom or the bedroom. when i stare in the mirror. because he mocks me there, with his twilight eyes, somewhere beetween reason and emotion, capable of connecting past with present. we are living a social drama, the disruption existed before we were born.
our leaders have spoken. they have stood. they have been compromised. we have taken our last stand. we have been compromised. but The Detective, HE has not been so compromised.
while we have to live in this world, he lives in another, a different place, in the space between our ideals and the people we have become. between the person wondering what this means and the one who will rise out of sleep tomorrow to give into the tragic routine of this american life. HE haunts me there. speaks in my ear when i am about to give up, prods me to continue.
i am watson to his Sherlock. HE is the ideal that i attempt to live up to. why? why would i want to be like such a Man? poised between being real and living in our imagination. i can't tell myself from Him, but the REASON that i must follow Him is because He can bring us together. HE can collapse the facts into reality, fold time and space so that present and past connect, become woven into the experience of having been there and having never existed there at all. HE can make us feel even after all the darkness in our world has seeped into our bones.
who is HE? i have been questing after this knowledge.
the SEARCH FOR REASON is rough going. in a world with so many voices, where the only certainty is that nothing is certain, knowing anything at all is a dangerous business. and yet it cannot be. we know we are here because we are. we know the world needs to be saved because it falls farther and farther into the spiral that is our own teenage-like angst ridden struggle to destroy ourselves. for the sins of our fathers. for the sins of reason.
is HE our father? was his hand the one that dealt the blow, that attempted cruelty for kindness? or was it the right hand of God, the Invisible Hand that directs us all. Adam Smith, DETECTIVE extraordinaire.
No. NOT THAT> ANything but that. If reason was god we would melt in our graves and transform reality into currency and currency into our souls and our souls in the the malarchy that is corporate consciousness. corporations cannot make meaning; they can only take it away from us.
And I hold my head in my hands and weep. Because nothing is certain; nothing can be real without certainty. I cannot feel the hand on my shoulder, the voice in my head, I cannot bring the sense that I am alone to gether with the fact that I am SURROUNDED by so many voices, so many people, so many selves. I MUST make reason from this, make order, find the connection between where we've come from and where we must go, from destruction to rebirth, from death to the person that I am. I must MAKE MEANING. We must become the Meaning-makers, not the Destruction-bringers.
He is in the mirror again, mocking me. No, I have become him? In searching for meaning, I see myself truly. I have become the DETECTIVE, I have become HIM. I address the issue, I organize action, I find the woman with the short skirt and the long jacket and help her to become not-the-damsel-not-the-femme-fatale. I answer every question with due recourse and rational emotionality. I temper the voices with the uncertainty and recognize the best possible people we could be. I make meaning and see the past and present in the movement of our feet walking in the streets.
My heart quickens. My hands disappear. I have gone too far, I have become the symbol, the savior, the DETECTIVE of what must be done to find order in chaos. Like Ra, Maat, Yahweh, and all the prophets by whatever name, I feel myself disappear into the dark, deep night.
In seeing the inside, I have lost my place within. As I fall away, I glance into a mirror, see myself shaking his fist, and whisper through the fade-out-frame
'go no farther'..
Saturday, November 03, 2007
Two Comments
1. a quote from the Indiana Daily Student, Weekend edition
in a review of Wes Anderson's Darjeeling Express
"Anderson uses the same devices over and over (artistically, narratively, visually) and it begs the question; If you're telling the story in the same way you told the one before it, aren't you just telling the same story with different people in different situations in different places, saying different things? If you're being something just to be, then there is no point in being at all."
which begs a few questions
a. Gee, I thought changing people, plot, setting, and words meant you were TELLING A DIFFERENT STORY ENTIRELY. I'm such a dunce...
b. According to this logic, aren't we all guilty of being obsolete? In other words, the author should go kill him/herself if they choose to follow this arguemtn through, which, thankfully, they don't have to.
It's just another example of stupid, insipid people who think they sound smart when they're just using big words to say something dumb, because in reality
they have nothing to say at all.
But it's pretty funny, eh?
2.
A quote from TWILIGHT WATCH by S. Lukyanenko
"WHere was the truth and where was the lie?...How many layers of falsehood had to be peeled away in order to expose the truth? Anton took a coin out of his pocket. He tossed it in the air and caught it, then laughed and put it back in his pocket, without even lookign to see if it had come up heads or tails.
THAT wasn't the right way. If one of two choices was a trap, then he had to look for a THIRD." (275)
If one of two lifestyles is empty, vapid, and makes me wanna die, then I just have to figure out a wholly different one that i haven't even yet considered. That's how to find, if not truth, then at least a little bit more of the realities from which to choose to make my truth.
in a review of Wes Anderson's Darjeeling Express
"Anderson uses the same devices over and over (artistically, narratively, visually) and it begs the question; If you're telling the story in the same way you told the one before it, aren't you just telling the same story with different people in different situations in different places, saying different things? If you're being something just to be, then there is no point in being at all."
which begs a few questions
a. Gee, I thought changing people, plot, setting, and words meant you were TELLING A DIFFERENT STORY ENTIRELY. I'm such a dunce...
b. According to this logic, aren't we all guilty of being obsolete? In other words, the author should go kill him/herself if they choose to follow this arguemtn through, which, thankfully, they don't have to.
It's just another example of stupid, insipid people who think they sound smart when they're just using big words to say something dumb, because in reality
they have nothing to say at all.
But it's pretty funny, eh?
2.
A quote from TWILIGHT WATCH by S. Lukyanenko
"WHere was the truth and where was the lie?...How many layers of falsehood had to be peeled away in order to expose the truth? Anton took a coin out of his pocket. He tossed it in the air and caught it, then laughed and put it back in his pocket, without even lookign to see if it had come up heads or tails.
THAT wasn't the right way. If one of two choices was a trap, then he had to look for a THIRD." (275)
If one of two lifestyles is empty, vapid, and makes me wanna die, then I just have to figure out a wholly different one that i haven't even yet considered. That's how to find, if not truth, then at least a little bit more of the realities from which to choose to make my truth.