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8.22.01
 Life is tea and biscuits.
I was fired from my job. My hot water was turned off. My power soon will be. My school money has been delayed another month at least, and I'm rolling change for gas money, eating at friends' houses. I won't be graduating in May like I thought; I may have to stay in town another two goddamned years, making it 6 years to get a simple English B.A. And I was evicted. A partridge in a pear tree.
I bitch about money because it has an unavoidable consequence when there's not enough of it. My self-image, what little was left of it, is nosediving like an F-18 with its wings cut off. I don't feel independent anymore, and the more convincing that feeling is, the more defeated I am. I always said that I imagined my death as a voluntary act, something that I and not society decided when I was incapable of taking care of myself. This isn't going to happen any time soon, but it makes the prescience of my increasing dependency all the more urgent. I've been notorious for saying that "there's always a way out". To me, life ends (however you choose to define that) when there are no more ways out. Compromise seems out of the question; if you can't live how you choose, then who is doing the choosing? And why should you let them? Why live according to someone else's rules when chances are they're as trapped as you?
It's all vague rambling here--institutions, for all their imagined forces of coercion, are too abstract for me to grant the personhood needed for this kind of scapegoat-ism. The difficulty truly comes when the need comes to punch something; a feral response to real danger, in the sense of a threat to stability. To give in to this very natural response is unacceptable to everyone else who isn't feeling it. Yet there is a lack of acceptable outlets for this, which almost makes me want to argue that we in fact live in a matriarchal society. All anger is redirected, goals are acheived through subterfuge, through "talking out the problem", i.e., lying in an emotional plea when directness is called for. Maybe matriarchy's the wrong idea here--but we live in a society where confrontation is unacceptable, where anger is suppressed and repressed and fools like me who can't play the game are left outside the arena to the wolves.
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6.24.01
 I don't know what the fuck I'm doing.
I just updated the Manifesto. Go read it. Or don't.
Every day reminds me just what solipsists we are. How impossible it is to truly know someone. Every day makes me wonder why I bother. Even if the problem is with me, as I believe it is.
So what, am I an "artist" now? Because I think I'll never be happy, never satisfied? I don't even have the energy for humour. I don't know why anyone has anything to do with me. An unwarranted bout of self-pity, I know, so you can keep it to your fucking self.
I think it's why drinking's such a popular pastime with early twenty-somethings. Your twenties are all about trying to get your head around the fact that nobody fucking cares about you or your problems. Depression's a goddamned funny thing--those who don't have it think it doesn't exist, and those who do have it don't want to hear about your problems, they've got enough to deal with. It's become such a stigma to allude to "depression"...for me it conjures up images of bored housewives with a vague sense of existential dissatisfaction, cured with the swift application of "okay" drugs; not drinking yourself to sleep each night because you're tired of watching images of yourself on the ceiling screaming at how you're not good enough, that all it's going to take is the next pretty long-haired poet-boy or the next moment of weakness when your smile cracks for her to wander off, for you to lose that shitty job, for your friends to avoid you, wishing you would "lighten up".
*sigh* I need to stop talking now.
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6.22.01
Listening to Slowdive. Just coffee in the cup--I refuse to try drinking myself to sleep again. At least for a while.
...the world is full of noise here, it happens all the time
and me, I am her dagger; me, I am her wound...
-Slowdive, "Dagger"
They say only wretches and guilty consciences can't sleep. I have no opinion on the theory. I just know I'm tired of waiting to fall asleep, into the arms of another nightmare. I never know whether to be happy when I'm awake.
Perhaps I'm a wretch after all--look at this site. It started out as a joke, a cartoonish parody of the asshole I can be when I get on my highhorse and ride. Cathartic, yes, but mostly in its garishness. But the site redesign came when I realized that too much of what I was writing was true--it wasn't funny anymore, it was just Tuesday.
Not that I think it doesn't have any value. I just don't know what that value is. I suppose it's morphing to replace the journal I stopped keeping a while ago. I felt journals were too sophmoric, and every entry of mine felt contrived, like I was too conscious of the fact that I was keeping a journal...I can't stand to go over entries from even a year ago. I write like some idiot who's trying to be aware that "this is for posterity".
Posterity. A wealth of fucking good there. My fate line--scattered, forked, fragmented as it is--declares I'll never be known for anything. My horoscope says that my kind thrives in low-profile (read: obscure, unknown) careers. My physiognomy says I'll spend my life deceiving and scraping by, hating myself for it. I'm sure numerology, if you'll forgive a very poor pun, has my number, but I haven't bothered to look. Point being, though I don't have much faith in these faiths, that's a pretty stacked deck. I wish it were an adequate excuse for the fact that I'm 23 and haven't conquered the world yet.
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5.24.01
My body's trying to fight off something. Not sure what. It's like influenza, but it's summer and that shouldn't be happening. Bah. What do you care?
Just came back from an open mic at a local dig. Some place where the trendy kids hang out and try to look like they belong there. The sad thing is, I'm glad it's there--this is a small enough town that I'm thankful for anything that could possibly be called a "hotspot", even in jest, and this place is the closest thing we have to what a dear old girlfriend of mine would have called "the swank".
It wasn't great, but it wasn't bad. (What is this, a diary? Why am I writing this down?) I'm not big on social gatherings, being someone who much prefers the confines of my familiar plaster walls and a bottle of peasant red. But every once in a while I have to go out to remind myself why I don't go out. I'm caught between not wanting to feel like I wasted my youth and knowing that there's no way not to waste it.
So I try. I go out, meet and greet, sometimes I even have a pretty good time. But I always come home feeling like something's missing. Something wasn't done, or like I've been searching for an answer to a question I don't remember asking. Without exception, I come home feeling like I've somehow inexplicably failed. At what, I don't know. But whatever I was looking for in the superficial attentions of petty people, I didn't find it.
And it makes me wonder what people want from me. I am occasionally accosted in these scenes tristes by people I barely know, striking up conversation with me like they lost a bet. They always seem to expect me to hold up the conversation, to do all the talking. I don't. They seem to want someone to entertain them for five minutes, until they can find someone they're more interested in. I don't.
I spend my nights out alone. Surprising, I know. There's a certain freedom in not feeling like you have to be responsible for someone else's good time. For me, I consider it a good night if I just get left alone, to finish my drink in peace.
Sometimes I do feel like I'd like some company, though. Someone I could talk to for five minutes without expecting them to get up and leave any second for the next big thing. I know I'm not very entertaining. It's why I don't bother trying. But every once in a while I wonder who is, why they are, and why I'm not.
Scratch that, I think I'm better off at home.
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5.12.01
Just want to take a moment to give the coveted "shout-out" to an amazing photographer named Simon Larbalestier. He's done CD cover work for the Pixies and Red House Painters, and I nicked an image for the last post and forgot to give him credit. I've put the copyrights for his images in the 'alt' text, and for future reference: if Simon wants these photos taken down I will be happy to do so--just email me.
Also, I've added another poem to the poetry section. Does the fun ever start?
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5.10.01
 So I'm going to go see the Red House Painters on June 25th in Atlanta. This is a given. Here's what I'm arguing with myself about: I made a passing comment in jest to my girlfriend about how I don't like meeting famous people. My comment was, however, that I would like to meet Mark Kozelek for a change. Sit down and rap for just five minutes. You know, do the fan thing for once.
Later I started asking myself, "why?". Yeah, I guess not many people ask themselves that as they're standing in the freezing rain outside of a dirty stagedoor waiting for one "chance encounter" that'll change their lives. But then again, people are fucking worthless sheep. The only time I ever tried to meet someone famous was when I stood outside the back door of the 328 club in Nashville with some other hopeless fucksticks so I could shake Henry Rollins' hand. I gave up after fifteen minutes.
But I get to thinking, maybe this once I should give it a try. I mean, next to
J. Mascis the Red House Painters are easily my favorite group of git fiddlers. Their music's really had an impact on me, which I'd like to think is saying something. I didn't try to meet J. Mascis when I had the chance and sort of regretted it--why not go ahead and do the gushing-fanboy routine this one time, just to say that you got to shake the hand of a musician you really respect, a hand he voluntarily offered?
So maybe I'll try. Maybe I'll walk up and say "Hi, my name's Jym." Maybe I'll shake his hand, and tell him how I've dug his music since I was in high school. Maybe then I'll stand around with a blank expression on my face, trying to think of anything remotely relevant to say. And maybe then he'll walk away with a puzzled look on his face and forget my name five minutes later.
I'm no schmoozer. I wish I was, I really do. I have a friend who could walk into any venue in the world and in five minutes have gotten in free, traded Polack jokes with the doorman, know the bartender's name and be shooed backstage. But I have a hard enough time pretending to be interested enough to meet "normal" people, much less try to find some sort of a game face for celebrities. Do I think Kozelek's stuff is amazing? Of course. Do I think there's anything I could possibly contribute to a conversation the both of us are participating in? Not bloody likely.
Don't get me wrong, I'm not saying I'm an
uninteresting retard whose life consists of eating oatmeal and shaking. I don't eat oatmeal. But what are we supposed to do, chat like old friends? I just don't know how my friend does it.
Well, we'll see when the concert gets here.
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4.17.01
Joey Ramone's dead. Fuck.
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3.26.01
I was going to write a spiffy update today, but I'm out of time already. I just spent too much time working on the poetry section, removing a bunch of useless crap and adding a few new pieces, as well as fixing the formatting with the spacer graphic I just made. So the poems look a little more like they're supposed to look.
And I also wanted to give my condolences to the creators of 8-bit Theater, one of the best damn comics on the web, which went under yesterday. [NOTE: After an embittered battle with 50megs.com, they're back up now, and doing great. Go say 'hi'.--Ed.] |
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3.14.01
Haven't updated in a bit. Oh well. Who reads this?
I don't have much to say tonight, I'm not sure why I'm writing at all. Feels almost
obligatory at this point; I've gotten into a routine where on Wednesday nights I drink
a bottle of wine and write an update. Only now I can't afford it. Rent's due, my car
needs work, blah blah blah. Can't play the happy drunk for a while. Heh.
I always said this wouldn't turn into a blog. Wrong again. Again, oh well.
Sometimes it's nice to have a place to throw these thoughts, knowing as soon as they
leave my fingertips they disappear, no one to read them or pass judgement on things I
don't have much emotional investment in anyway. Once, I thought this page would be my
microphone of vitriol, and I could scream everything polite society was preventing me
from saying. Once, I really needed that. The company I kept and the petty politics
of my pathetic social circle demanded that I keep my mouth shut lest I do more damage
than good (to myself) by opening it. Thank God, I never have to worry about that particular
fallacy again, and I never have to see anyone even remotely associated with it if I so
choose. This page was something I needed at the time because no one was listening anyway,
so why not throw the bad parts of my psyche to a cadre of complete strangers? Oddly,
through no promotion on my part, people kept finding the site and sending me their comments,
mostly positive, but after the first six months it tapered off for whatever reason, and the
hit counter's stayed frozen at below a thousand for two years.
But I'm straying from the point. Which is, how far do politics go? I often feel like writing a kiss-off letter, telling all the people who need to be told so to go fuck
themselves; then posting it so that I know that it's been put out into the
world and not bottled up inside of me, yet ignored and harmless since no one reads this page. Incredibly, and this is the most pathetic part, I'm damn near afraid of being heard. I still retain enough of my fucked-up college years to want to tell someone to fuck off
politely, without hurting their feelings. Lame? You bet.
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2.19.01
Jesus Fucking Crispety Christ. I just spent the past hour writing an update and NetZero decided it couldn't stop sucking ass long enough not to lose it.
Long and short of it: I updated the poetry section with one new poem and editing out some old ones. The new poem was the first to get a positive response from the aforementioned Poetry Workshop of the Damned.
I followed with a rant about poetry and my workshop especially, but I suppose it's for the best (gritting his teeth) because it gives me time to clean up my commentary and turn it into a formal rant for the rant section.
That is, if I don't take a fucking shotgun to my monitor first.
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2.8.01
Sometimes I think I just do updates to justify my drinking.
Listening to some Mojave3, and tonight's wine selection is a dry Woodbridge merlot, rich in berry flavors and spicy notes blah blah blah.
Sometimes I just conceive of the world as a swirling mass of wills, people constantly trying to edge each other out for the sake of some spotlight they couldn't qualify if asked. It doesn't make a difference to me. I'm in the background. Just the way I like it. Life is quieter now, and I can't really complain, but I still get these inscrutable bouts of melancholy. How pathetic is that...
More pathetic: I still dream, in my private moments, about being a superhero. Or an antihero, depending how you look at it. Who out there read Frank Miller's Batman: Return of the Dark Knight without some almost corny sense of awe, wishing your life was that complex, wishing you could kick that much ass, wishing you could beat Superman to a pulp and still come off a martyr and an enigma?
"...but a bottle of wine is all I have to hold."
-Mojave3
It's not something that is easily articulated. Phrases like 'superhero' and 'antihero', 'martyr' and 'enigma', have lost their meaning, have become outdated. We need a new language for heroism, a new word for 'hero'. The 'human interest story' has destroyed our concept of the hero. Humans just aren't interesting. I don't know why I'm thinking about this.
Things keep pushing in from the sides. Any new direction is just another way to get frustrated. I'd be lying to say I had no hope, because I've kept my life just open enough for hope; but the more I learn about the ceilings of my abilities, the more I just want to walk away from it all, forget it all. Not like I'm not used to that. I always walk away. No one I've left behind is all that important.
So what, am I on my way to some Big Deal, a tangible end that will make sense of all my sleepless nights, my inexplicable souring moods, my inability to relate to the anyone, my nightmares in which all I do is wander blasted landscapes? Bah. It's all just one more sad little idiot, spouting off ways to change the world from behind his little wall, waiting to die in some natural disaster or a school shooting. So it goes.
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