Xanga Journal (Online Diary from April 2001-Sept. 2002)

Apr. 23 2001

Okay okay. This nice girl named Bianca turned me on to this and I have seen Lucas doing it before at my apartment in Olympia. I am going to give it a whirl, what do I got ta lose? This is going to be fun, it is going to be an online story of my life...Yay. You will learn who Lucas is and all about Olympia and New York and Chicago. Don't worry, this is gonna be great!

Apr. 24 2001

Friends are very important to me. My best friend is a million miles away in Santa Barbara CA while I am here in Indiana courting his ex-girlfriend. Scary situation for most people. Me too. But Steve takes it well. I just talked to him on the phone for a few hours and we talked through some things. The biggest thing is that Rachel is no longer vegan and she coached Steve and he coached me. That is like our burning log going out. It just ignites the debate in your own mind about why, and how long am I going to stick with it now that my alma mater is gone. Sad? Not really. We will get through it. Just so you all can have a better opinion of the best friend ex-girlfriend thing, I HAVE CONSENT. From all parties involved and Steve and I have been best friends for the last five years. This isn't going to tear us apart. It may actually bring us closer. Last time I saw Steve we were living together underneath a tree in Santa Barbara CA. Friends forever. We were homeless together and lived together in Olympia. When I was living in NY he was the only person to come see me. That is true friendship. My family didn't even come see me. Anyway, this weirdness will die away and some sort of beautiful realization will take its place. And the world will be a better place. Peace. Love. --

I was at the coffee shop tonight with Pat Eddy and Matt York. There was a cute girl named Trisha but without the a (so Trish)...I don't really know what this means, but that is how it is. She had a "friend" named Jeremy and he gave me odd looks because I said that she was cute. Whatever. Anyway we talked about Hepatitis C and how milk thistle helps. Just so you all know. We talked about Lucas too and websites. I own the domain of paaep.org and .com, but I don't know how to work them, Lucas has been working .org for me but the .com one we cant get to work. I would just like to get it pointed at .org or something, but I am not savvy. I also talked to Pat about doing a recording studio up here in the region...but I am not sure even how long I will be here. My friend Frank owns some land in Canada and said that I could use it for whatever I like. I am thinking about that. Then Steve throws the notion of going back out to Olympia (OLY) and then I think about going back to NY to hang out with Tiffany. I met Tiff on the internet in June or July of 99. I went out to NY to see her in August of 99 (I had lost my apartment in Chicago and was just going to live n my car but ending up in NY...). I ended up living with her for about 9 months and it was amazing. She is in New Orleans right now with some guy and she is telling him that I am her soul mate and her beau doesn't really like it. So I am told. There will be more of what happened in the NY drama as the story unfolds...my life changed for the better out there. Anyway, what I am getting at is that my options are open and I meet people off of the internet and Tiff is a great girl. That is all. Oh, and, I am thinking about the Canada thing for a vegan commune where we grow our own food and be solar and stuff, kinda like the Zendiks when they were based in Texas. I also hear that if you become a Canadian citizen you get free health care and if you are an artist (poet, writer, painter, etc) you get a monthly allowance of 300$. Yay. I have a story about Steve and I being kicked out of Canada. It is a funny story, but that is not for now...Peace. Love. --

I just read in Time magazine today that people with tattoos have a higher chance of getting Hepatitis C. It just seems weird to me that it was a topic of last night and I have tattoos...Hopefully not HepC or I will have to start downing the milk thistle. Peace. Love. --

When I was in Santa Barbara I got a job in two days. It wasn't the best job, but that isn't what is important, the important thing is that I got it and we started eating again. I have been out here in the region for about a month now. I still haven't got a job. I have had one interview and one call back so far. It is very disheartening. It really makes me want to just go hop on that train to nowhere and see if I can make it there. Kind of like that one John Waters' film where they go into the town for the rejects...I don't remember the name, but it was funny. Anyway, the Smith Brothers Corp. just called me for an assistant manager position at a Mobil gas station that is opening out here in Griffith. Yay. The other interview was from Meijer. Gee. I wanted to get the job at Borders, but those bastards passed me up and I have coffee experience. The good thing about this Mobil is that is close to my parents house (where I am staying for now) and I can ride my bike easily. This whole society and job thing, you know do your piece for the society and get what democracy sells. That is all bullshit. I don't buy into it. I just work because I get bored sitting at home all day. And because I cant trade for food out here. Especially not vegan food. Not that I have done that anywhere else, but for most everything but food I use trade as a means instead of green paper issued by the Federal Reserve. Did you know that the US doesn't have its own currency? Yeah, because the Federal Reserve isn't technically part of the government. Weird, huh? All along we thought that these green bills were government issue. No, the American way is to divide up the corporations (government, Microsoft, etc) so that if one fails there will still be enough of the other to keep American life for the upper-class as it were. I back the seeming monopoly of the Microsoft Corporation. Not just because it is a direct contradiction to what this government sees as right, but also because to the common eye it is wrong. Bill Gates may be a multi billionaire and everyone may be buying his stuff, it isn't because he is hoarding the market, but because they are innovating the best new things. And they have been for quite awhile, they earned it. That is American, but to glorify it would be the antithesis of America. Why? Because if one man in America can be worth as much as Bill Gates, that means that the poverty level will go up. That will paint a bad picture for America. Blah Blah. Didn't think I had it in me. Peace. Love.

Apr. 25 2001

Well, at least the whole Rachel thing is over for the most part. There is no more weight on my shoulders to be anything but friends with her. Which is a good thing. She took me out to Wicker Park (and a Silo in Highland) last night and tortured me in the cold for 3 and a half hours. Finally after I suggested that my feet were numb and we go inside someplace she did what she took me out there to do. She told me that she has a history of allowing men to think other things. And that is exactly how it was... But we got through it and that was no big deal. Not for me at least, she had a hard time talking about it--why, I don't know? It should be easy to shatter worlds. But she didn't shatter mine, she sort of relieved it and allowed it to flow more freely. Which is good. She says that she has to do it again this week (funny, she has people lined up to be shattered). I told her that it would be harder the next time. It is sort of like how I picture a "voice line"--a "voice line" is the audibility of a persons voice and the way the line will go up for a climax and then go back down to signal that the person is done talking. Anyway, she just started letting people know that she is like Britney Spears (Oops, I did it again--I am sorry your heart got lost in the game type of thing haha). I say that it is going to get harder before it gets easier, especially with the next guy, because she didn't date his best friend before. See, that is why it was not only easy for me but it was good. I just hope that eventually she figures out what is going on with her and how she can control it. That is the purpose. Another weird thing is that she is no longer Vegan...ooh. More on that later. Peace. Love.

Apr. 26 2001

The Moment
Lets talk about how life constantly moves. There is no stopping life or the contents of life, it is the definition of constant motion. Rachel thinks that there is a pause in that motion giving way to the "moment." Her basis of this "moment" is purely spiritual. This is not to say that I don't believe in spirituality, but it is easier to understand when it can be defined. And the scientific outlook is constant motion. My justification stems from thought patterns. This is a speculation, but I don't think that it is possible to think of the present. Because time is always moving your mind must constantly think of either the past or the future, because time does not allow the lag time needed to reflect on the present. This separates people, those that spend most of their thought in the future and those in the past. If you spend your thought in the future, it is safe to say that you have a grasp of reality. If you spend your thought in the past, you are timid and rarely leave your corner because your mind doest have the capacity to anticipate the act of movement. These thought patterns also affect the physical or outer world of ones life. The people that spend their thought in the past generally have a weak outlook on life, because they cannot be innovative they only rehash what just happened. I think that most of the world leaders spend their thought in the past, especially GW. If he didn't, then he would seize the failing economy by the catonias and invest government money in the development of solar energy instead of drilling for more fossil fuels. How would this change the economy? Well, it would open up new jobs by the thousands as more and more citizens could afford to retrofit their homes solarlly. It would also spell a solution to the heavy pollution that this nation participates in. It is a fact that many smaller countries mirror the American pathway: what we do, they do. If we start doing smart things so will they (and the world will be a better place...). So what is the problem with GW? Does he enjoy playing the role of antichrist, because he is nothing less. The door is open to a better world and he is telling Karl Rove to nail it shut (or is it Dick Cheney doing the yelling?). Oh, and that moment thing that this is supposed to be based around. I see life in the future, I anticipate my actions and yours. When I am typing this I don't think about the letter that I just typed, but I think of the next letter I am going to type. And people that are getting lost in the moment are really just getting lost in the past, and using "the moment" as a way of making it sound better. Peace. Love.

Apr. 27 2001

Travoft(@aol.com): I have never tried it with a guy, but would like to once give-would you be interested?
Arisanokist(@aol.com--me): no thanks. I am holding out for Matt Damon.
Travoft: I have never done this, and felt weird asking-sorry
Arisanokist: why do you think I would be the one?
Travoft: I was just asking. Just have thought about it, and wanted to try it
Arisanokist: okee. well, good luck in your search. -----

Well, what a weird thing. This guy just IMs me out of the blue, with that. Weird. I guess I should explain myself with the whole Matt Damon thing. When I lived in NY I met a guy named Matt Damon (not the actor). He is bi-sexual and Christian. He spent some time in a mental ward to try to exorcise his hate for himself because Christians cant be gay (God supposedly forbids it). He used to come up to my apartment all the time to smoke pot (I rarely smoked with him, he just wanted to be inside while he was smoking). One time when I was high with him, I had the thought that if he made a move on me, I wouldn't resist. What guy doesn't think about being gay, especially now. And those macho guys that are homophobic and gay bash and stuff, they are just insecure with their sexuality. Anyway, he never did make a move, but whenever someone poses the question (that they still think is off the wall and hitting people in the dark) "would you ever sleep with another man?" I just tell them this story and I guess it sort of smoothes everything out. Matt York and I talked about making the solar powered van tonight. I really think that we can go through with this, as soon as we figure out how to hook up the transmission to the engine and convert solar power into DC. And get the van and stuff, but he is enthusiastic about it. That helps. We both have to learn a little more about Solar Power to really get it, but we are trying. I was thinking about moving up to the city (of Chicago) and getting a job and stuff, because it isn't working out here. I don't know why, it is probably me. But, I circled some places in the Reader tonight and will call on them tomorrow. It would be neat to live up there again, especially if it is on different circumstances and I have cool roommates and a job in the city and yada dada. More on that later. I am going to do some other web things now. I here that the link yesterday didn't work...try this: www.angelfire.com/rant/arishedon Peace. Love. --

Unless you have heard the Mountain Goats before, you don't know what kind of effect they can have on you. It is amazing, sometimes. At other times it is impossible. But I guess that is just how john is. I speak of this John as if we are buddy buddy--we are not. But I would really like to get out to Olympia this summer for the Yo-yo-a-go-go festival at which he will be playing (and a ton of girl bands and local bands, it will be fun). If you have Napster or something like it, download a Mountain goats song. Try "Twin Human Highway Flares", or anything else. Also, I have been playing Chess a lot lately. I learned that at the coffee shop in Olympia. I would play with the N/A people and lose. I still lose now, but I lose with a little more dignity. Yay, huh. I am sort of discouraged lately. I don't know why, maybe because I have just been sitting around the house doing nothing and I don't really have too many friends. I mean, BeeJay is off with Manda and that is fine, let them do their thing you know "lovers in love". And that is the only friend I knew I had when I came out here, everyone else I sort of have to win back and that is hard. I will either lose the game and have no friends or I can fight hard win them back and be immersed with friends. I am not sure which I want...

Apr. 28 2001

So far tonight, it is a little cold. But I hear that the stars are beautiful and I would be the fool not to go and touch them. The stars that is. it is going to be a great ride tonight, I can just feel it in my body, I am stoked. I watched the movie Chasing Amy tonight and I simply love the way they use their words. It makes me want to be Kevin Smith. And, for some weird reason I spent 3 bux on a pack of cigarettes. I used to smoke and I guess I still do, but I only wanted one and I am giving away the rest of the pack. I wonder if this is considered some sort of relapse?? --

It is all coming apart again. I am not seeing straight. I don't know why, I just know that to continue on in this haze is torture. This is illegal. Sometimes I wish my brain could be easily controlled and someone would say "Like this, but not that". That person (probably a male because of their dominance disorder) would tell me exactly what to do, he would look out for me and tell me what I do wrong and point me in the "right" direction (or at least the most traveled road). Think how easy that kind of life would be, where I didn't have to strain my brain--especially when it is mostly in vain. It seems that the more I think, the more I work my brain the less relevant it is in society. Maybe I could write something like the Communist Manifesto, by the time someone else recognizes it as workable I will be dead and the aesthetic of the world will have changed to make it nearly impossible. Then my name would be tainted much as Karl Marx's. If I think that my posthumousity is destined to be like Marx's, I would rather give up now. What good is it to have Mothers rip your manifesto from their children’s hands because the parents don't want to have to take out their own children. It is sad, this tightening grip of what colors are allowed on the palette of life. I could head off to Canada tomorrow and be okay, but who really wants to live totally outside of society? To me, the purpose of life is interaction, bouncing ideas, banging heads, getting dirty and arguing to a resolution. You know, really examining all facets of an idea and then going ahead with it. It seems that no one really cares anymore though. The disparity between those that "can do" and those that "can dream" is growing faster than the economy is slipping. And the worst part is that it is merely a mind trick played on us by the all important master. Master, my ass. I am my master and I don't fall prey to those tricks, but am I to surround myself with people that do and constantly look down upon me because I am unique? Eventually we will all break down because that force of society is so strong, it plays off of emotions. I don't think that people can really deny their emotions and because so many people are brainwashed (speculation) into a standard the ones that defer will be emotionally bashed. The person that understands how to destroy people with words and images instead of muscles is truly the strongest...you know, the pen is stronger than the sword. This world can really get a boy down sometimes, and eventually I too will either go off in hiding or give in. I just hope that I give in with dignity. --

You know, while I was re-reading my last entry, I found it amazingly similar to George Orwell's 1984. Some would think that I was just copying that book. Glad I noticed it before anyone else. Hah. --

I always feel really well when I remove myself from my body. This isn't like some sort of out-of-body experience, everything physical and mental is still intact; but when I can extract a piece of me that is so clearly me from this glob of flesh that is outwardly influenced by all the demons of society. It is like when I sit down to write and everything just flows, and flows so fast that my mind gets ahead of my body and the two really have a chance to look each other in the eye. Those deeply personal moments in life are really why I live. I cant help but think that there is a pinnacle, and what is there is perfect understanding. Sometimes I actually sit and wonder why I did something or said something (thinking in the past) and this is when my body acts faster than my mind, these times suck. Why? Because this is when I make an ass of myself. I have tuned in lately to the mind channel. I still flip back and forth from mind channel to body channel but whenever I am around people my mind channel is on, this is confusing. Ready? Okay, it goes like this, my mind and my body are separate. They are two different entities serving the same thing: my soul. these things have different agendas. The agenda of my body is too stay in the physical world, to mate, to be part of society, to "conform to the norm", etc. the agenda of my mind is to figure out the purpose of my soul, to deduce the actions of society and aptly explain why things are. Luckily, I have placed my mind ahead of my body and frequently risk social ranking for pleasures of the mind. And in all this I am searching for balance, where my mind and body and soul are equal. My mind understands the will of my soul and my body carries it out. from that statement it sounds like this balance would make me a sentinel. Hah. It wouldn't, because it would flow it wouldn't be mechanic at all. I just need to find that groove of life. You know about that three circle thing that they teach in science or math or something? That is exactly how it is. Usually I explain my thoughts with cryptic drawings and a few well placed words and when I do people say "Ahhh, I get it!". I don't have that option here so I am trying to paint this picture with words, it is harder but possible. Anyway, when my body and mind look each other in the eye, my mind usually has a deep understanding with my soul and for an instant my three parts are acting in unison perfecting the art of being human. It is really amazing.

Apr. 29 2001

Phil Ochs really boils my pot. He is so amazing. I got into him when I was in Olympia. I would go to the library and borrow compact discs and I was really getting into folk music. I was digging Woody and Arlo Guthrie, Joan Baez, Pete Seeger, and then I cam across Phil Ochs. I had heard the name before and I looked at the song titles and it seemed to appeal to me. I got back to my apartment and was lost for days on end only listening to his lyrical and musical masterpieces. It is so sad that he went the way he did. Another victim to the overbearing system. Like I was talking about previously, he never gave in, he gave up. I wish that he could have survived his emotional battles with worthlessness. I have had similar ones, sometimes I don't feel so hot in life and I think about dying. I ruled out suicide a long time ago--I am too weak to kill myself. But I am imaginative. When I feel helpless and hopeless I will say things like "maybe I will get hit by a car and this whole game will be over". I don't think I really want to die, but I think that it would be easier than what I have to put up with sometimes. These moments don't have a noticeable lasting effect. By no means am I searching for death, but once I was and I am glad I didn't find it. I feel very good about the person that I have grown into and I am very happy about the things that I am doing (even though on the outside it seems like I am doing nothing). Just think, you could be reading a masterpiece here. I have always had visions of greatness (an American defect), I think about how it would be when people knew my name. I even tried to change it so people would know a "cool" name. In the process, I have gained at least one person that believes in me and because of that I am lucky and grateful. I still have these visions of greatness, but they have taken a different plot. It is no longer my book on the bestsellers list and my name in lights...now it is just me and my words and one or two people that enjoy them and a separate one or two people that enjoy me. And then I just do my think and survive and as long as I am happy then I am successful. And I am successful. --

I was thinking tonight, amazing, huh? My brother came over today and asked me to move in with him in Chicago. Being out here in the region isn't getting it done for me, I am not sure why, but I have this weird sensation that where I am will take care of me. Like, it isn't so much what I do, but where I do it. Kind of like being in the right place at the right time. Out here does feel right, will up there? I guess it is one of those things you have to try to find out for sure. I lived up there before, on 18th and Halsted in Pilsen...just before it became the new young art center of Chicago. I had a studio for $500 a month. That same studio is probably going for 8/900 now. And it was only two years ago that I lived there. It seems that I left there at the wrong time. I am not really sure why, but it sort of feels like I am on a downward spiral...but we will wipe that away and smile in the face of the future. Greet it with a grin so grand that greatness replaces any grief. Anyway, I am probably going to bounce up there grab a quick job make some cash and then bolt again in July. Head back out to Olympia, because I was really happy there. Or back to NY because I was really happy there. Or maybe I will go down to Texas and see if I cant generate some happiness. At any rate, I am not going to be around here all that long, which is sort of sad because I had hopes that I could wade in Chicago for at least eight months. Who knows, I still can--but with each passing day that thought of "maybe" slips deeper and deeper into "glad it was only a wish". Maybe if I just follow my feelings things will start to happen. And maybe not.

Apr. 30 2001

Amazing. I had one of the best bike rides ever. it was beautiful. I was riding down the street playing games on my bicycle. The last game was "Secret detective". It was great, because I rode past three parked cops while I was flailing my arms and making noises as if the enemy had saw me and I was speeding away. It was exhilarating. I promise. If anyone that reads this hasn't rode your bike lately, now is the best time. I swear by it. It isn't just healthy, it is also invigorating, eco-friendly and fun. Right after I rode past the police officers (I secretly hoped that they would pull me over so I could be a smart-ass with them--no go) I found myself in the headlights of a car. Not like I was getting hit or anything it was going the opposite direction, but I think it was my ex-girlfriend, whom I haven't seen or spoken too for about 1.5 years. As far as I know, she hasn't a clue that I am even back around this area. So I rode by her house (it was on the path I was following) and I found my eyes drawn toward her house and my mind was wandering--wondering if I should call her and see how she is doing, at least say hi. It wasn't a long debate, she made it clear the last time we spoke that she really didn't want to have anything to do with me. So I decided to leave it at that, if it was her and she saw me then she knows I am in town (and we have mutual friends, I am sure that word has gotten to her). So I view the situation as "if she wants to talk to me, she will". No more initiative on my part--the ball is in her court. But, soon afterward I really got back into my riding game and I was racing down my parents street (where I am residing right now) dodging bullets and flailing my arms again, still making weird noises. One of our direct neighbours was in his window and looked oddly at me, fortunately he shut off his light before I pulled up to the house (this tells my mind that he doesn't know that the crazy cyclist is actually his neighbour). And then I came in and hopped on the computer and wrote it all down. While I was at the coffee shop, I drank coffee. DUH! And I read more of the Basquiat book, but was bored after awhile. I picked up my ancient (1994) copy of Thora-zine and proceeded to read and laugh. I am sitting by myself here, in a booth and there are a bunch of young hip people that offer odd glances at each chuckling outburst I give in too. I am not surprised that the only person to acknowledge me was the waitress (and she only came around once)--oh and the coffee guy, he likes my tattoo. The one time I went to the bathroom, however, a cute girl was eyeing me probably because she could see my tattoo and my septum retainer was out (and she had piercings too, a sort of eye of a similar person). I, however, didn't think we were at all similar. I have heard don't judge a book by its cover, but what about by its sounds? Is that enough info to make a judgment. I didn't hear her talk at all, but the company she surrounded herself with was awful. I am glad that she didn't come talk to me because then I would be suckered into her entourage and I would lovingly despise every minute of it. (The lovingly-despise is an oxymoron that represents how I like people, but despise them for stupid things. Usually I point out those stupid things and that is why people tend to not like me, I have a reputation...) Anyway after I finished the magazine I left. And you already know about the ride home... Peace. Love. --

I feel lethargic. Yay for me, I just watched the end of the MTV Video Music Awards of 2000, and a video diary of Blink 182 after that. I have a little more respect for the band and understand them a bit more--I still don't really like their music though. Aside from all the hullabaloo, I really like Eminem too. When his first album came out I bought it before I even heard the single, I had merely heard about it. I liked it but eventually gave it away. Before I heard his new album I sort of bashed it because I had heard lots of negative press. But I got out here and heard it and it is amazing. Lines like "what about the make-up you allow your 12 year old daughter to wear" and "apparently you aint parents", I don't know, it just hits home with the way this country is headed. He doesn't sell just because he is good, but also because he is honest. That is something I hold very high. I have been listening to his album a lot and I really like it especially number 7 (I don't go by names, because I don't care about them, I go by the song and those numbers are the only thing that the CD player shows...oh well). Anyway, lambaste all you like, I give Eminem two "e-props" because he is real.

May 1 2001

I was driving last night (ughh), I really don't like driving and it was 72 degrees last night so I had no excuse. The excuse I used, however, was the CD player in the truck. Yeah, I had just made a CD and I wanted to listen to it, so I took off with the truck and jammed all the way to the coffee shop. Then I got there and gave away the CD. HAH. That is the very first thing I did, I gave the CD to Nick. I don't think he has heard anything on it, but I know he will enjoy it (the CD was seven tracks, made up of Michael Parenti (spoken word), I-Spy, and Phil Ochs). I really like to give things away, I don't count possessions as much, but I do count spreading the wealth as something. Lets see if I cant explain it better. Things don't interest me. There we go. Ideas interest me, if your thing is your idea I will be open arms and save it for awhile (example: Nick is a musician and he made me a tape for his band, I haven't given that away yet). I like to think of myself as a modern day Johnny Appleseed. I take things that people make and disperse them the country over. I don't do a terribly good job, but that is what I do in a nutshell. Anyway, so I don't keep many possessions and about every nine months I take toll of everything I have and get rid of everything that isn't bare necessity (by bare necessity I mean I will keep two changes of clothes and whatever else I may need wherever I am headed). It was great when I left Olympia because I had a full apartment, couches and computer, dishes and a blender, hangers and spices, phone and answering machine, some chairs a plant and planter, vacuum and boombox, and various other things. I got rid of all of it--gave it away for free. When I finally left there I had two four gallon buckets (my saddlebags) and my bicycle. I was ready to ride. Getting rid of your stuff is like cleansing your soul, because you can become so attached to materials in this world that when you lose them you feel a part of yourself being lost too. I used to be a pac rat and save everything, now I cant rid myself of things fast enough. It is an awesome feeling when you own nothing except what is on you (or you are on) and you are so light, a mere speck in the universe. I think that some people will gather more and more things, in an attempt to be noticed in the universe...these people don't understand that it isn't the amount of things you have, but how you wield them. (Or: it isn't the size that matters, it is how you use it--I have used this before...) Anyway, my whole point here is that if people got back to simplicity they would be happier. And here is my reasoning: in my travels I have encountered numerous persons that throw this line at me "I wish I could do what you are doing". My response is usually "You can if you want too, and if you don't then you didn't really want too, so there is no loss." And the inevitable--ready?--"But I have my (school, job, family, house, friends) and I cant just pick up a go, what about all my stuff?" And if I were a bit meaner I would turn my back on them right there and ride into the sunset while they are on the corner wondering I and watching as my form glimmers into nothing, glimmers into the universe.

May 2 2001

I am sure some of you wondered. So I got the whole webcam thing to work sort of and took a few snap shots with it. Sure, they are dark and you cant really tell what that thing is sticking out of my head, but you might be able to guess. As soon as I figure it out more I will get a better picture that shows me in all my radiance! Yay. -- Have you ever played the ten fingers game? Well, me neither--until tonight. See, this is how it works: you hold up ten fingers and go around saying something that you haven't done before (ours revolved around sexual experiences) and if someone else had done it they have to put down a finger. The last person with fingers is the winner. I was out first. I always thought that my sexual history was inadequate, but I guess not. At least, compared to these other people (Christine, Mary, and Pat Eddy). But, after the girls left Pat Eddy and I had a good talk, we talked about music and he invited me to be his roadie for this weekend! Yay! And tomorrow I am going to band practice and then to a rich people party. Pat is a good guy, I went to High School with him, but once he told on me for ditching and I thought bad of him--everything is okay between us now! So, this weekend I am going to Bloomington (actually Franklin College *I have no idea where it is*) to be roadie for Quarterturn. If you are out there and want to go, email me. If you aren't and want to go, email me. Ummm, I didn't have any really great theories or realizations tonight, but I did play bongos to a Pat Eddy song and felt good about it. Also, Pat read some of my poetry and said it was good (I think he was just being nice) and he said that I played the bongos well (I know he was just being nice). Anyway, I am going to post the poem that I think Pat read: I have no idea how he got the impression that I write well, because in the book he was looking at there was not a damn good thing...
Sometimes Life Just Turns On You

Sometimes life just turns, before the river flows. And mountains never know the disparity of their needs.
Sometimes life just turns, before the sun can rise. And flowers that were growing face a quick demise.
Sometimes life just turns, before the words come out. And certain books are printed in total doubt.
Sometimes life just turns, before we say the words. And anyone who cares will wonder what they live for.
Sometimes life just turns, before we live our dreams. And the life that follows is never what it seems.
And sometimes, sometimes life just turns after we are burned. Then we sit and ponder the lessons that were learned.
--

At the periods, there should be breaks, but I cannot stand the way Xanga automatically doubles the space. It irks me. Anyway, I wrote that poem when I was homeless in Santa Barbara. I was listening to TuPac and reading his poetry a lot then, so I dedicated this to him because he never got to realize his dynamics. When he was alive, he made awesome rap music and some decent movies, he was all about being real and that is amazing. I think that every decade black culture has an icon that brings together people and in the eighties it was Basquiat, in the nineties it was TuPac, in this decade, it may be Eminem...but we aren't going to start that debate now. I find myself deeply immersed in racist America, wanting to know the "why". It scares me to think that I was brought up semi-racist (just because there were no black people around), and now I find myself yearning to have African friends because that is something I missed. I see myself treating them different because I don't want them to be offended...I don't treat them like I treat white people and that is my racism. I don't like it, but it is going to take an awful lot of immersion to clear it away. And it isn't a bad racism, it is a good racism (meaning that I treat them better than other people) but it is still racism and I just need to stop seeing things and start feeling things. Peace. Love.

May 3 2001

I travel quite a bit. I cant be at a computer all the time. I just recently became roadie of the band Quarterturn (I know it isn't that big of a feat because you have never heard of them), and we are going south this weekend...so, while you are wondering why I am not posting I will be partying down in southern Indiana with a bunch of College people that are just about to get out and really want to remember college over the summer. Whatever that means. Anyway, the point is that I am not going to be here. And I may not be here in the future, but when I am I will try to make it interesting. I learned how to use a sound board today and it was fun. I got to tweak the sound at practice and meet the rest of the band. they all liked me, as far as I could tell. And we went mini dumpster diving and picked up a cool chair that Pat swears is from the 1920's (he isn't all there sometimes, it is a 70's era chair). Anyway, that is the deal.

May 4 2001

Lets have a talk. I really dig writing poetry. It is fun for me, I am not good at it, but it is still fun. If you want to see some attempts that I think are good, www.poetry.com, just go to the search bar and type in "bailitz" for last name. Like I was typing, I dig writing poetry, but I don't see it going anywhere but to my mind as having some kind of helpfulness of getting through things in life. It is sort of like my special method to deal with things and while it may not be glamorous or good to others, it works for me. So the point is that my poetry isn't that great, but I think some of it is good enough to show to others (most of it actually, I just deal with negativity well!). There are some people that look at my compilation and tell me it is great, but it is only because they don't want to hurt my feelings. Maybe, they think that the idea is great, you know, putting out a little chapbook type deal for people to have a look see, but not the poetry itself. And that is fine, like I said I write for myself, but others are welcome to it. I wish that I could focus my writing more to the point where I could sit down and write long essays that deal with one issue and make sense. That would just tickle me pink. I am thinking of this, because I watched my illustrious sound guy career go down the drain tonight. Not that I am not the sound guy anymore, they like me and will keep me, but we aren't going further than the garage right now. The show at Franklin was iffy at best and turned out for the worst, we were so pumped too! But that is okay, we are going to try and put something together for this weekend up here, so if anyone knows a place looking for a good original rock band we are ready. The most compensation we need is transportation costs covered. And this is a good band (true, it is better now that I am involved, but isn't everything) very original and it is just good rock n roll music. So, keep Quarterturn in mind. What else, I really wish I had a girlfriend. Hah. My friends say that I would be a better person if I could find that person to complement me...but that is easier said than done. It isn't like I haven't tried (but I haven't tried hard), I looked around and saw a few girls that are good looking, but personalities are harder to grasp from looking at a person and I have this shyness where I cant easily just talk to someone I don't know. I know the reason too: I am blunt. I don't hide my feelings or opinions on subjects, I talk rather freely with people I know and those like me like me because I do this--those that don't like me don't like me for the same reason. New people probably wouldn't grasp it right away and just try to bash me (knock things down if you don't understand) and I would rather not put up with it. I don't look at it as a loss, it is an even situation. But, besides buying a house and a theatre (for shows) this summer, my plan is to find a girlfriend. Yep. That is what I wanted to talk about. --

I have my septum pierced, and I don't know if I was dreaming last night, but this is what happened. I take out my retainer (the jewelry in my nose) quite a bit, I know that I took it out last night, however I am not sure that I put it back in. I woke up sometime in the night (or I dreamt this part) and had my retainer in my hand, I tried to reinsert it in my nose, but the hole had already begun to close up and I couldn't get the jewelry in. I forced it in their and breathed a sigh of relief (it wasn't at all easy to get in there, for those with sensitive piercings, you know that the hole can close quite quickly). When I got up this morning (afternoon) I remembered that incident, but my nose was fine. So I am not sure if I dreamt that or if it really happened. That sort of stuff happens to me quite a bit, and I don't know what it means. Does it mean that I have no worth in life because I cannot even remember if I took out my jewelry or not or does it mean that my brain thinks on a plane higher than then one to worry about such trivial things. Obviously not the latter because I am still worrying about it. Maybe it has to do with the subconscious min--it is telling me that I am an idiot for putting holes in my body and if I continue bad things are going to happen, the first of which is a simple dream of forcing a piece of metal through my nose in the middle of the night...yeah. Well, whatever it means I am the better to realize that it means something.

May 5 2001

So the show for this weekend is back on...I know, I know, it is all messed up the way these things are working. That is okay, the important thing is that we are going to go down there and rock the house. We have a minimum two hour set set-up with an opening act of me reading poetry (not set in stone yet, but it could be fun). The most important thing happening lately is my eating habits. I am currently questioning my veganism. It is sad, I know. I am a grown boy, it shouldn't be a big deal, but I am not sure yet. I have been vegetarian for about a year and a half--that isn't changing. I went vegan about a year ago because I was spending all my time with Steve and he was vegan, so I thought "why not" and "what better time". When we lived out in Olympia, it was amazing, I was the best vegan boy and there was even a vegan restaurant. I was in heaven. Out here, they don't even know what vegan is (or how to say it) and it makes it hard for me to adhere to what I was. It isn't just out here, when I was in Santa Barbara I wasn't watching everything I ate, but I was enough to be an unsuspecting vegan. Now I am eating things that I know I shouldn't and I am not able to call myself vegan anymore. Watch closely as the blog of "vegan proud" and the title of my news ring change. I don't feel horrible about it, because it is a conscious happening. I am just not sure what I am doing. I mean I can be a semi-normal person (eating wise, at least) now, vegetarians are easy to cook for. The way I look at it is: I didn't get into it for the right reasons, so I am getting out of it. Maybe later when I really feel that being vegan is what I need I will do it again, it isn't hard if you're in the right place. The Midwest isn't the right place though. And tonight I was calling all over the country. It was great, my friend Diane has a cell phone. That means free long distance. I called a few people in Washington including: Lillian (wasn't home), Nick Bryant (he dropped me off in SF), Java Flow (looking for Franks number), Frank (asleep), Joel Pete Rasmussen (at work), and Rachel (she is doing well); in New York: Tiffany (totally hyped to hear from me, moved to Mamaroneck); that is it, I thought there were more. I wanted to call Declan in Australia, but she said that would be expensive. It was great, everyone at the table thought I was really cool because I was calling a bunch of people out of state and talking about old times. At one point in the conversation I was talking about a friend of mine that went off to Ethiopia and they all looked at me as if I really was someone. They were wrong. Because we were just joking about Virginia and Jaime going there. So that was my night. Peace.

May 6 2001

Man oh man, if you could've been at Franklin this weekend you would have been the better. It was amazing. The show was awesome. I didn't do much to make it that way, but that is how it was. At first it was just like a jam, because it was just the band, me, the manager, and a few loyal fans hanging out in a huge basement. Eventually, however, more people trickled downstairs. By the third song on the set it was nice. And it was just so fun, I actually got a chance to pump the volume to the max and really hear what kinds of sounds they can make. We got the crowd involved, ohhh I wish that could happen every weekend for me. It just may, too. The manager is this girl named Diane, I am trying to hook her up with the bass player, Matt. I never liked Matt. But now we are good friends...last night we sort of got drunk together and we had fun. After the show we went out for breakfast (we played from 10 pm till 2 in the morn--with breaks and stuff), and Matt and I really had a good time. Then we went to Andy's house (?) for the after party and right before we left Matt Diane and I ended up in a pile on the floor. It was fun. Man it was so amazingly fun. Girl it was so amazingly fun. PEOPLE IT WAS SO AMAZINGLY FUN!!! I ended up getting home around 7 in the morning (which isn't that far off from a regular night) and going to bed. It is just so hard to put the previous evening into words because it was simply so real and fun. You would have had to be there, be a part of it, to truly understand. Back to Diane, however. I made a bet with her. More like a pact. We pacted that when she got together with Matt I would get together with her friend Jolene. there is no downside to this situation. I like Jolene, I always have. Everyone knows that including Jolene and she likes me. Everyone knows that. People wonder why we never hooked up...so do I. There were a few moments where she and I could've gotten together and who knows then. But we didn't. Now she is with a boyfriend named Tony (whom I don't like, and there is more behind my dislike that the simple facts), and she has been with him for a year and a half. During this time, Jolene has totally transformed into someone she never expressed a desire to be, she has actually turned into the opposite of those things that she had expressed a desire to be. She owns a house in Hammond, she has a long term beau, she has the good job, the dog and the cat. She has a typical normal life that so many people desire. She never wanted it before I left (I am not at all implying that she turned to this unwanted lifestyle because I left), and all of her friends (friends that we share) notice the change in her and realize that is not what she wanted. She has done a 180 in life and Diane, at least, thinks that I have the best chance of helping her find her light. Weird? Yeah, I know. Why am I in this situation? Because this is the thing that I have always been afraid of, I am facing those fears that I have always repressed. (I just typed "I am afraid of..." twice and deleted it because I don't know that word to express my fear.) So right now I am creating a CD for her with songs that she probably wont like but I do and sort of explain what I cant say to her directly. Don't take it the wrong way, this CD is merely back-up. I have every intention of going over to her home and talking this through with her and giving the CD as a consolation just in case I fucked up somewhere along the way, she would have the CD as a reference. It makes sense to me. Any input?

May 8 2001

I guess it is odd how one can totally miss a day. Hmmm. We went ghost hunting tonight. Weird? No. We saw a ghost. It is a common ghost anyone can go see it, yet no one can explain it. We went to Rennsalear (sp?) to see the lantern man. Legend has it that a guy offended the mob so he went into hiding in Rennsalear IN the only person that knew where he was was his daughter. She would go see him from time to time and bring him stuff (what stuff? I don't know). She would drive to a point and flash her lights three times and he would come from his hideout with a lantern. Eventually the mob got wise that she was a profitable link. The mob found her and she sold out her father. They killed her anyway. So the mobsters went to the position and flashed their lights three times and when the man came down they captured him and hung him from a tree. He never knew that his daughter was also murdered. So now, if you go to the tree where he was hung and flash your lights three times this man will come with his lantern to see his daughter. Except we weren't his daughter and this was no more than a light slowly making its way down the road. At first I was skeptical, but it was undeniable. We sat there and watched it come on down, eventually we decided to chase the light. We turned on the car and drove after it, it swiftly moved in the other direction to lose us over a hill. We drove back to the tree and flashed the lights three times, again the lantern light started meandering its way down. this time we didn't wait for it to get close, we just floored after it and kept up with it for awhile. We got to the end of the road and saw the light in the field. We jumped out of the car and ran in the field. It seems to be fixed at a point in the field that we cannot get to. We drove around the field to the other side of the road and couldn't see the light from there. We have a tentative plan to go back there tomorrow with the Blazer, a few more people, and some two way radios. We will station one group at the far end of the road and one group at the tree. The tree group will flash and the lantern will come, the end of the road group will explain over the two way what they see, eventually we will chase the light into the field with the Blazer and see if we cant make peace with the ghost. It was so amazing though! --

Are we certain of what we see? I realize that every culture in history has thought that they had it right, until they were proved wrong. They swore that the Earth was flat until they sailed around the Earth. They swore that the sun revolved around the Earth until they learned otherwise. People swear to me that time constantly marches forward and only one reality exists--the one that is experienced. What if there were infinite real realms that our perception chooses and so it happens? Look at it like a cartoon strip; cartoons don't move, the papers they are on move to create the appearance of movement. Well, think that we don't really move, but our minds choose our perceptions (papers) and those move to create the ILLUSION that we are moving. An example: If someone were to walk up behind you and poke you with a needle you would jump and then rationalize why you jumped. Time would move backwards, because you would react and then realize; no longer cause then effect, but now effect then cause. Imagine that time could be jumbled like this all the time and our perceptions put it in the order that creates the illusion that everything moves forward in one direction. Look at the world as infinite sheets of paper and each sheet has a different scenario (not 100% different, but slightly) each sheet is as large as the universe and every momentary action of every thing in the universe affected one the next "sheet" would look like. It is chaos theory in effect, you do not know what is going to happen until it happens and you have a direct role in what happens. You choose the perception that you realize. I choose mine, they interact, sure, because we are all part of life. It is sort of the anti-thesis of the known life, this is the idea that you can make whatever you want to happen to you happen. It is a mind game, life. This outlook will allow you to play the game with an edge. Yeah, I don't really know what I am typing about, so ask questions! --

Lets refer to the comments left on May 6th. See, Diane hops in there and contests what I am saying about the whole pact thing, that sort of jeopardizes my angle. Not really, but sorta. That is what I was afraid of, I sent the link to her so she could read the thing on alternate realities, but she sticks around and reads the Jolene entry? What’s up with that. I was even trying to get her off the internet while I knew she was reading it. It isn't a big deal, it just isn't what I was hoping for, or by the law of chaos maybe I was. (there really is no law of chaos that I know, that was a joke) Anyway, I am thinking now.

May 10 2001

My older brother and younger sister just took me to see "Freddy Got Fingered" by Tom Green. I laughed, and I had a constant look of perplextion. Not highly recommended. Anyway, I have had a few weird run ins with this alternate reality thing and with the evolution petition. It seems clear to me that the two go hand in hand, evolution will prove the alternate reality theory and time will merely be a figment of our imagination, something that we can play with. It seems to me that the universe rests completely within my mind, within my perception. And it rests within yours, within your perception. That is a tall order, in my eyes at least, having the entire universe rest inside your head. Sometimes I have a hard time managing my own life, and when I realize something like that I get sort of scared. My friend Rob in NY is an artist, he is a great person, in more ways than one. He is sort of a vegetarian. When I lived in NY I wasn't a vegetarian, I wanted to be and my roommate was and he could be, but he never categorized himself. Sometimes we would go out and he would get a vegan meal, sometimes vegetarian, sometimes he would just want meat. He understood his body and used what was in front of him as a gauge to the world. He understood that the world doesn't live by one creed, he understands that people are people and they do odd things. He knew that the destruction of other life forms could be bad if done in excess. And he sort of knew that balance of his own life, his own reality, his own universe, and--to him--the entire universe. I want that sort of balance. I am in a totally odd flux of my life right now. I am obviously not vegan anymore, I had been for almost a year. But yesterday I had macaroni and Cheese and my throat feels horrible (cheese causes phlegm). I sound like I smoke a good pack a day. So my universe (and, to me, the entire universe) looks upside down, because I am at a realization. A realization is a point in your life when you can figure something out, some people have them every forty minutes, some every forty years. I am going through one right now. It is rough for me, because I don't think I am one of those enlightened people that has realizations like this often. I am sure that I am the kid that just follows others coattails and hopes that the world turns out right. Right now, there is only me in this odd universe. This reality that is similar to my life, but not my life because this is different. People notice it too, I am changing. They just cant see in my eyes the incredible pain I am feeling at not knowing what the hell I am doing here in this realm right now, it is not for me. So they just sort of brush off my weirdness and wait out the storm. I wish it were that simple for me, the eye of the storm. I am weathering some of the hardest days of my life, and my family is bogging me because I just sort of sit around all day. That is right, I am dealing with my mind, the universe in my head and to go out and do something "productive" is like taking my mind off of it, meaning that it will get back to it sometime. I would rather just sit through it all now. I hate masking myself. HERE I AM, WHAT DO YOU WANT? Look at me, I am naked, my soul is basking in the sun and it has fair skin. It cannot take this sort of exposure. Perhaps this layover in some alternate reality is my soul growing, and my body can feel it because my mind wont mask it. I love bliss. --

I have a friend named BeeJay. He has a girlfriend named Amanda. He says that he wants his friends to be friends with his girlfriend. I take that literally. I befriend her. We hang out together now, without him. I call her. I have no ulterior motives, I am merely friends. He is peeved. Tonight I called her cell phone looking for him and she was at work so we talked. She told me to call him at home, so while she was dealing with work (we were still on the line) I called him from another phone. He was not angry to hear from me, until I told him that I was talking to his girlfriend on the other line. He immediately went cold on me. After he and I hung up I talked with her more, not much more, but she is coming to pick me up after work. As far as I know he doesn't know about it. I am going to talk with him about it AGAIN. That is right, this happened before. She and I went out together one day while he was at work, later that night he gave me the cold shoulder. I asked about it and he said he wasn't feeling well. When I talk to him about this incident, he better have a different excuse. All I look for in a friendship is trust, this leads me to believe that he doesn't trust me, that sucks, we have known each other four years. Anyway, I am not going to stop being friends with her, he will just have to start trusting me. The way I see it is that he is going to have to accept what he says or choke on his own words ("I want my friends to be friends with my girlfriend")...and if he chooses the latter I will gladly be the one to feed them to him. Peace. Love. P.S. Who is in the wrong?

May 11 2001

I just wish I had clue one as to how these HTML Internet things work. I got some mood indicator things up on my Title bar, but you can only know what they mean if you run your mouse over them. I don't know if they will change or I have to change them it may just be too much work than it is worth. Besides, you can tell my mood from my writing, right? That is how I try to write, so you can see how and what I am feeling. If I am failing, I wont be the first failure and it wont be the first time I failed, but I will have learned that I don't know how to write. Hah. So, hit me back with that honesty. Because I am twenty years old, I have been writing seriously for four years now. I have one poetry book floating around that is actually published (not by anyone major, so I guess this is a lie.) Last time I was in NY I left my unfinished chapbook on the train. I had my epic poem in there, it was like 12 pages long--not that length matters, and it wasn't good. But the point is that only a few poems in that book were anywhere else so I lost a bunch of writing there for some train conductor to laugh at and throw away. Woo Hoo. I am not more protective of my things, I think that when I lose or gain things or whatever, there is a purpose...obviously none of that material was good. The things I have been producing recently are good. I really want to get into writing essays and stuff, long detailed documents one definable subject. I just don't have the focus for it. My essay jump all over the place, I am sure if I had someone that knew what they were doing show me the *correct* way to write, I would have two theory/philosophy books out and three poetry books. If I knew what I was doing I could be the youngest successful writer. Too bad I suck. People say I should go to school to learn that focusing technique, but I think it is a lie. I mean, c'mon, I don't want to be focusing my writing like the rest of my graduating class. I want to just learn on my own even if that means I never learn. I will sacrifice greatness for uniqueness. So that is the answer to that, no no no I will not be going to school any time soon (unless someone wants to pay for me to go to Evergreen or Sarah Lawrence). Yeah yeah, maybe I will actually do something later. Right now I am just not feeling it.

May 12 2001

So, hah. I didn't think that BeeJay read this. That is funny. I never wanted him to read here that I was going to talk to him about me hanging out with his girlfriend, but he did. I sort of felt awkward explaining myself to him. I didn't even get to it personally yet, I sent him an email. We are scheduled to play softball tomorrow...I bet I wont be on his team. He came here and then IM'ed me telling me to read my new comments for that one entry in about twenty minutes. I wasn't at the computer, so I couldn't talk to him real-time. I got to the computer just as he was signing off. Sux to be me. I am not going to lose sleep over it, it isn't like I wasn't going to talk to him about it, I just wanted to do it when he and I could sit down and really talk. I guess something good comes out of this, I know that at least one of my real-world friends reads my blog! Peace. Love.

May 13 2001

So, BeeJay is okay with it. Everything sort of unfolded a lot nicer that I would've thought. I pictured BeeJay being enraged and throwing things at me, or at least being really pissed off, but it was a misunderstanding on my part. And a "close of what’s going on" on his part. So I got a mixed message and this is what happened. Worked through (well, probably not totally, but for now). The interesting thing, I think, is that BeeJay doesn't even read this thing!!! Amanda does! Hah. That is something I find absolutely hilarious. I don't even remember telling her about it (nor BeeJay for that matter, and he is the one that told me that she told him--whatever). And, if you read this on a regular basis Amanda, I don't find it hilarious for any bad reasons. I just never imagined you reading this. (I had typed something longer, but it would have made me look like an ass, so that delete button came in handy.) Anyway, outside of that shenanigan (haha) the world is crumbling around us and I cannot believe those that claim blindness to it. It just seems so unwittingly obvious that we are walking--running, fucking leaping, into an unending tunnel that has a slight downward slope. Meaning that we are going fast, but the effects are going slow. WE ARE GOING TO BE DEAD BEFORE WE REALIZE OUR IMPACT. Isn't that scary? I think it is. I live my life so I know what my actions reverberate on the world around me instantly. I don't dig wanting twenty years or twenty lifetimes to see the exact outcome of what I undertake. I guess that is why I am afraid of commitments. It just makes more sense to me right now to see everything in front of me instead of disregarding things that could be judged as "bad" and focusing on the good. Take it all in now and eradicate that which causes you harm. Philosophy? I'd say no, but take it as you will. I am also notorious for downplaying my own role. And I do it on purpose. I do it because the glory is not what I am seeking, let whoever wants it have it, I just want the outcome. If I want to save the world, I am not looking to be famous and make lots of money, I am looking to save the fucking world. (And tonight, for some reason, I am looking to swear?) I portray my intentions well, I don't hold back my true prerogative. Sometimes, people take it the wrong way and assume that because I am so lax when it comes to accepting credit that they think I am just trying to play the role of not wanting to be known but have a deep desire to be and I am just conniving on the sideline until the BIG move can be made. I get confused. I don't even know, I think people read into things too much. I see a sort of want for a twist, that drama craving instinct that daytime television has bred into many of us. I would much rather do without it and see the core of the apple. I am not trying to say that I don't play the game, I do. I don't like to, but I don't even notice it until afterwards. It is deeply rooted in youth culture, that it is hard to escape it. C'mon George Orwell, lets rename the book 2004 and let Matt Damon play the lead next to Angelina Jolie...the kids will eat it up and Big Brother will succeed again. Yay. Soon enough we can all have a Tele in every room of our homes keeping a watchful eye and children can turn in their parents for thought crimes. The US seems to have slacked off, they could've started putting chips in at birth years ago WHAT THE FUCK ARE THEY WAITING FOR?!? Cut to the chase right now so that I can have something solid to protest. This electing an idiot only goes a long way before you start insulting supporters, because c'mon, GW is no more an idiot than you or I. We just make him out to be because we can see all of his faults. (Oh, and don't take this the wrong way, I still dislike his policy.) So as soon as they (the ominous they that I so easily throw around and expect y'all to understand) start visibly impeding human rights we can really get down and win, because no one thinks that taking away human "rights" is right, we just all define those rights differently. I am not calling for anything, I am just alerting that something is gonna happen or something’s gonna give. I am just anxious to see what happens. I guess I committing to caring and that is too much. Peace. Love.

May 15 2001

https://www.angelfire.com/punk2/MurphyTheSy/Isearch.html That is amazing. It is the best report I have ever read on the systems of anarchy...I always get lost when I start reading about anarcho syndicalism and anarcho this or that, it just confuses me--but this I kept up with. There is a girl that saves the email I send her in a folder on her computer titled "Curious Brian" she says she sometimes sings the curious George song while reading my mail. I don't get it. She wants me to go to Orcas Island this summer and hang out. I just may, wait and see. It all depends on what the hell I am going to do with my life and how I am going to accomplish that. I guess sometimes I say I will do this but do a 100% 360 and end up at the opposite end of the globe, example: When I left NY with Steve my plan was to just go down to Florida and chill out there for awhile, I have still never been there. Instead I ended up in Olympia WA and because of that I met this girl that calls me Curious Brian. It is all connected, it all flows, I just don't know how to track it yet. I know that we were in WDC and the communists decided to desecrate May Day by not even celebrating a little bit on the Workers of the World Holiday, so we packed up. I said lets just go to Seattle. He said lets just go to L.A., I said okay. We never made it to L.A. We made it to Palm Springs about 11 days after leaving WDC. Then we went to Chicago. I left Chicago after about three weeks for Olympia. I was in L.A. this spring, just passing thru on a bus. I find that I just pass thru a lot of places and I decided to start stopping more, travel in a way so that I can just go and stop and go and stop--some see CAR, I see BICYCLE. HAH. Yeah, I don't know if I mentioned it before, but at the beginning of spring in CA (February) my friend and I rode our bikes down the coast of CA. I went from San Francisco to Santa Barbara, he came all the way down from Olympia on his bike. Yay for him. BeeJay just called me and they are on their way to the park to eat Long John Silvers sea food (I guess?). I am not going. I am diligent, I am typing. Yeah, so we rode bikes and that is what I want to do, just ride my bike from place to place, a modern day old westerner going to save the damsel in distress. OH OH but the knight is depressed and the damsel has yet to be dressed. Tangent, don't worry about it. So that is the deal. It looks like I am on a pattern and I don't even know why. Umm, Peace.

May 16 2001

That is what it is all about. FREE MUSEUMS. Hopefully, if this girl gets her stuff together we will go. Last night she invites me to go to the free museum today in Chicago, I said sure. The hitch was that she was going super early (super early for people that keep the same zombie schedule I do--I go to bed around 5 am), she wanted to leave at 10 am. So, I beat myself and got up at nine and called her. She had just gotten up and, because it is shitty out, she may not want to go anymore!?! What is this about, I threw off the schedule for this girl, lets call her Mary from now on--because that is her name. Woo Hoo, go go coffee buddy status! I guess someone would have to read my comments as fervently as I do--the few that I get. Okay, so as I ponder the universe from this little shell of existence, this speck in the universe, I am beginning to feel out a pattern. At the coffee shop last night this boy, lets call him Derrick (that is not his name, I don't remember it) showed me a little bit of his drawling talent. It was good stuff, things that make you go hmmmm. They were small intricate drawings using a few perfect circles or super straight lines as a building for a universe on a page of freehand detail. They were all different so I cant sit here and describe them, but he was telling me that most of them have a hidden pattern, or hidden words that he couldn't even see. This got me to thinking about connections. My friend Rob, the artist in NY, told me once that all of his paintings have a face hidden in them, some on purpose, some by proxy--an unknown force. Ooooh. Yeah, so I never found any, but he showed some that he had found. It was neat to see how DEEP things can really get. So I thought of this looking at these new drawings and I started to feel (not actually see) the patterns, to know of there existence without being able to describe their physical attributes. It was amazing, and I saw the connection between artists and a web started in my mind full of connections, circles. Because Rob the Artist and Derrick the Artist both hide things in their art, and the both tell me about it. There is a circle with infinite new protrusions the grasp other circles and connect everything to everything else, an intricate web system of idea that everyone connects to. I cannot draw to save my soul, I SUCKKKK at drawing pictures, but my personality (spirit, soul, whatever) draws artistic people to my web. Lets make people spiders that make little webs and hook other spiders in. And all the webs are connected, the ones with the most connections (I was going to say are the most interesting, but I look at my web as having a lot of connections, and I know that I am terribly boring so we will use this) have more connections than the ones with the least. That makes everything so confusing and hard to weed out, How are you going to know what connections to make? YOU AREN’T!!!! You have to go with the flow, feel your way through spiritually. See and know. It is a leap of faith, 100%; that's life. HAH (if only things were so simple, or I knew anything....) Peace. Love. --

I was in the shower (yes, I even shower) and my little sister Tuesday bangs on the door. I got out, I thought it was important. She wanted her phone back. I was expecting a call from Mary and I had the phone in the shower, after a discussion I opened the door and gave it back to her. She said to me "you know, Brian, you only think about yourself and that is sad." I thought about that the rest of my shower and I ending up resorting to Rachel rhetoric--semi-proving her statement in my mind. She (Rachel) said to me that people project their own shortcomings on others. Meaning that because Tuesday only thinks of herself she accuses me of that in an effort to remove that from herself. It makes sense too, because I really don't only think of myself, I actually think of myself last that is the problem with people that have low self-esteem. Not that I am at a low where I am contemplating suicide, I am just at the border of low and high and I dip to low. That is all. So I really don't think of myself enough. All I do for Tuesday is try to help her, I offer so many things that she could grab and learn from and make her so much happier. But she retorts with "you only think of yourself." I really wish there was a way for me to get through to her. People tell me, in every place that I have been for an extended period of time that I am there for a reason and when that is accomplished I will leave. In NY, Rob said that my reason was to help him out of his funk (or fear???) of love from the opposite sex. He was a virgin and he thought that I could really help him get over the hump and, well, notice how I used the word was. They are still together. When I was in Olympia my friend Bobb was having trouble with his girlfriend and that ended up in them breaking apart (after four years) but he regained his life, which he was desperately seeking. Then I quit that job and went to the coffee shop where Frank was and that was my turn to learn from him, then I left to help Steve on his bike trip. Now I am here. (Also in NY there was Tiffany, but I don't know if that is a finished subject...) There are a few prospective problems that I could solve for some people that have become my friends since my arrival and then there is Tuesday. I know not to force things on anyone, but what do I do? She seems a mess and I really think that I could help her, but I cannot even break her down into accepting my conversation let alone my advice. Anyway, a work in progress. Peace. Love.

May 17 2001

So I went rollerblading with Matt down the bike trail today. I am disappointed, disillusioned. The Mary girl is consistent in a way that does not please me. She is consistently not following through on the plans that she makes. It is sort of sad. But Matt and I had a good talk, he and Diane aren't going to get together and I decided that I should just let that log stay dry from now on. As we were blading I was talking contemplating and slowly wearing out my body. The rollerblades are more athletic than the bicycle, and my legs felt it. But it was so nice out and I was just thinking about water, I often think of water as a way to explain what I am saying. The previous entry about helping people (namely Tuesday), was on my mind because of the comment that Christine left. I look at it as a stagnant pond and a raging river with lots of waterfalls. On one hand we have this stagnant pond, you know what you have and it isn't going anywhere, some new things may come onto you and that lonely fisherman that comes once a month still comes once a month, but nothing changes, there is no daringness, no action at the pond. It is sort of sad. Then we have this river (it doesn't even have to be raging, I was merely trying to alliterate) it flows steadily along, twists and turns without knowing what is around the next corner. Many fisherwomyn (and men) come in and out of the river life some return some don't, there are new things ahead and old things are never seen again. There are waterfalls that represent dramatic changes in life and new beginnings or old ends. It seems much more interesting daring, and even scary. Scary to the point that you don't know if you can take it, that if you become the river you can never get back to the pond. Scary that if you fail you still have to go forward, towards your goal, towards the ocean. I like to think of myself as a river, I could be insanely mistaken by any other account, but by my analogy I am the river and Tuesday is a pond that wants to be a river and I am trying to help her dig that trench so her stagnancy can flow free. I guess I should back off, but I am told that I do this with more people than just Tuesday, that I sort of try to dig their trenches when they are happy being a pond. To that, on my reverie I came up with the game of life analogy. That my river is playing the game of life against other rivers and the point is to create as many more rivers as you can by ploughing through ponds and digging trenches and the catch is that with each one you plough you create another opponent. There is no fighting, it is a friendly game, but that is what I am playing I guess, trying to see how many people I can get to open up there lives and flow free. Some people don't want that. I will admit to being stubborn. Peace. Love.

May 18 2001

Matt is becoming an impact on my life, he is enticing me to explain things better. Tonight, it was great, I explained him the theory of visualizing and realizing. I guess theories are only for big people with big money that can write long detailed reports on one subject, so it isn't really a theory, just another aspect of Brianism (as Rachel supercally22@hotmail.com likes to call it). So, we were riding home from Mary’s house. We went to Mary’s to watch a movie, the movie "Anti-Trust" it isn't highly recommended, but I like the drive that open source should fuel the information boom. NO HOARDING! Anyway, Mary is a tense tense girl, I don't know why. I try to be funny, do things to ease the tension--it doesn't work. Tense people scare me because you don't know what will set them off. Some people are tense because they are racist and if someone from an opposite ethnic background were to approach them they would simply lose their hood. Others are tense for other reason and there are different things that set them off, it doesn't matter to me, I cant stand being tense I enjoy much more the free flowing atmosphere where "take it as it comes" is the rhetoric that the population lives by. Not "In God we trust" because that is false we trust in money and material. Back to the point, ummm, yeah. I was explaining that if you visualize in your mind something that you want or would make you happier (not super specific, but shot in a general direction) then that memory would be imprinted in your mind and if it is something you really want and aren't just lusting (we aren't talking of merely people here, I know people that lust for material...scary, they are usually tense too!) you will eventually realize it. I use eventually because it isn't instantaneous, and sometimes it isn't instantly noticed. Say that you visualized being more open around different people. So you have that visualization in your memory bank and then the next time you are at a party you remember that visualization and act upon it because that is what you want. Or maybe you remember the visualization and refuse to act upon it. "Isn't that a negative outcome disproving that everything works out perfectly, professor Brian?" No, Timmy, it isn't. Everything works out the way it should. It may work in ways that you cant trace too. Because perhaps that person would have caused you more suffering than relief and your brainwaves (the brainwaves as primitive internet is something we also briefly talked about, this is still developing) caught on this and told you to let this go. And because of that, you have it stuck in your head that for some reason that person you originally wanted to talk to is stuck in your head so you ask someone else about that person to see if your instant thoughts were correct. And then we backtrack, because we just won. Because you had a negative impulse on the first person in led you to talk to the second person and therefore you are talking to more people and being more open because this second person can tell (just like most people) that the reason you are asking about the first person is because you had some sort of emotional impulse and there is a bond that starts to grow and 6 years later you and that second person are married, expecting your first child. While I was writing that example, I was reminded of chaos theory and it seems that I am trying to prove chaos wrong. Because I am attempting to associate a cause and effect that are not visibly attached. Here we go again. Cause and effect, ready? Because you visualized being more open around different people, you married this person. Now there are any number of different causes that could produce that same effect, that is chaos theory. I am saying the effect was caused by visualization, therefore making chaos obsolete because your mind controls what happens to your body. Another? Lets say you are a tense person and you buy a new car. You wont let anyone else touch it because you are afraid that they will wreck it and your life will be ruined because your life is ruled by your material. After a week of driving so cautiously and allowing very few people to even touch the steering wheel while the key was in your pocket, you get into a minor car accident. Why? Because you visualized time and time again someone else wrecking your car. Eventually your visualization will play true. And if you get a new car and aren't tense and you let people drive your car and they get into an accident? SO WHAT, the non-tense person can understand that the car is merely material a fucking possession and they are more worried about that person driving then the car. I presume to know too much and as always when that happens I have to close with this: REMEMBER, I DON’T KNOW ANYTHING! I AM A DUMB YOUNG KID. Peace. Love. --

I was in the shower (again? this kid is crazy) and I had yet another realization. I am feeling very well lately, I am flowing, my ideas are continuous I am writing more and more away from the computer, poetry. But, the realization was that for me to realize my ultimate potential I just need someone to believe in me. I knew that for awhile, but I am feeling it now. I have been plotting to leave this region for NY again, because I am failing to get people excited about my ideas, they seem to be totally enthusiastic, but they don't want to be a part of it, they sort of want to latch on once the ball is rolling. I want someone to be there from the beginning and share it with me. I tried Nick, but he is more preoccupied with Heidi that he seems to be okay with selling out what he wants, BeeJay is with Amanda, but he never really felt inclined towards the goals I am. Steve has already sprouted his own things and is most likely searching for the same thing I am. So I plotted with myself to leave and I dropped the bomb last night that I was going to try to be gone in a week, but all of a sudden, Matt starts to inspire me. I used to hate Matt, and because we are good friends now I feel that part of my past is happier. Sort of like altering the past in the future, without backtracking, hard to fathom? Sure, but it is possible. If I can get something else to roll for me then I may just stay, but we will just have to wait and see. I am a little bit foggy right now, a conflict of interest leave and help myself or stay and help others. I am tearing myself so we will see, just see. Peace. Love.

May 19 2001

"Say you saw another act on his or misunderstanding and it makes you so angry, it makes you so MAD. What kind of example are you gonna set now? Cuz violence breed's violence and forgiveness breeds forget. We were told violence was wrong and then handed a list of situations in which it would be justified to compromise our disposition of offering forgiveness. To those who do not understand, there ain't no reason why. So wait just a minute now, what happens to your righteousness the moment you justify your ill intentions against another person, well its gone. You say you have a problem and you want a solution, where you gonna find it now, where you gonna get resolution? Will you find it angry words? NO! Will you find it in an angry mind? NO! Will you find it at the end of a gun? I think not. So take just a word of advice from Mahatma Gandhi Martin Luther King and Jesus Christ, you will find resolution in a loving heart and in a loving mind. You will find resolution in love."--JEFF OTT What a good guy, that Jeff Ott is. He seriously changed my life, in a time when I was questioning my beliefs this dark shadow rises and breathes new life into my convictions. This didn't happen recently, about 8 months ago. But I still turn to his voice when I want to hear encouragement. Regarding the last passage, yeah I do think of doing things on my own, but my biggest fear/problem is dealing with my peers. I tend to freeze up around people that are my own age, older, younger no problem. I know why too! Older people think that I am smart and they encourage me. Younger people think that I am amazing and subscribe to me. People my age seem to sort of turn me away because I am not doing what they are and they think I should because we are the same age??? I saw some girls last night that I went to high school with, and I saw their babies. One of my best friends from high school is already married with a child, he asked me to be the best man in his wedding and I basically told him to fuck off because I wasn't about to sell out my dreams, our dreams. So he asked me and I just took off a week before the wedding and called him when I got to Olympia. When I call his apartment and his wife answers, he tells me that she says sorry to him every time she hands the phone over because he tells her that if he wasn't with her he would be with me. That is a lie in the first place, but imagine what kind of life that is. So I don't do the popular thing, I don't subscribe to anything I don't believe in, I am real. I cannot be fake. It is nearly impossible (unless you get me real drunk, but I wont even allow myself to get drunk because I don't even WANT to be fake, to contradict what I believe). But anyway, that is my dilemma with life, it isn't a big one. I have a decent amount of friends that are my age, because we connect with each other, and in some cases I don't even know why some people put up with me. I can be a real burden. I have these thoughts of people going off on me and just telling me to fuck off and that be that, sometimes I want them to do that, because if I were in their situation I would. I would hate to think that they are trying play sympathy for me. Because sympathy is a form of falseness that creates non-primary intentions. I want people to be honest with me, because I am with them. Sometimes people tell me that "just because I am everyone doesn't have to be". They don't say that about honesty per se, but in general. Because I guess I try to get people to be like me. I guess that I want everyone to be honest to others and themselves. What a cruel agenda I have. But, I don't know where I am going with this and I am sort of bringing myself down thinking of instances. So, I will cheer up (maybe I will listen to some Jeff Ott). Peace. Love. --

So I went to my Moms house today to celebrate my grandpa's birthday. My Aunt Carol and Uncle Dave were going to drive me down there since they live close to me. They have seven kids. That isn't the point, there were only three in the van with me. The point is that Uncle Dave (some call him Snake) is crazy. I sort of forgot about it. But we are in the van doing seventy-five miles per hour while he is trying to light a bowl (of pot) and his kids are like 6 8 and 11. Then there is one that is 21 and one that is 17(?) and I don't even know about the other one. But, he seems abusive, and that sucks. On the way home he was doing seventy-five again and hit a bump in the road, the six year old girl hit her head quite hard on the roof of the VAN and he laughed. I got scared then, and I am glad that I got out of the car when I did. Angela, the 21 year old and I were always good friends growing up, but I haven't seen her for quite awhile and I want to talk to her now that I am more mature and I am sure she is. I don't know anymore, I am sad right now because of the situation that just occurred, I just got out of the van...

May 20 2001

For some unknown reason, I like Mary (wenceslaus928@aol.com). It is probably because I have no chance. I slept with her last night whispering sweet nothings...wait, that is sort of a lie, we slept in the same bed together and I kept on asking her why she wouldn't have sex with me. Yeah, I was a bit forward about it, but that is how I am. I don't see why she wouldn't want to have sex with me, because I am a decent looking guy and I am nice. I am annoying for those of you that know me personally that read this, but I think that I am nice to her. Definitely, the good outweighs the bad. It may just be spring. But the funniest thing, it caught me off guard, was: when we woke up I started in with my rap and she said "..I am not looking to be with anyone right now" and I said "oh, Diane". Then I stopped. I had a nervous laugh and I realized later that I said Diane because Diane always says that she isn't looking for anyone right now, but it was an awkward moment, I felt like a bad guy. But we got up and eventually left and I was just flirting with her, like I do with most people (yeah, people, I flirt with guys too, but I am not hoping for anyone outcome in those situations). I feel closer to her, but then I also feel like I am slowly molding into my old form with a new set of confidence. I am not afraid to be honest anymore, at all. You ask me a question you get an honest response, you better be prepared. I think that is a good characteristic, even if I never hold back (I do when it is merely my presumption, I would wait until I know more, but not much more) because people really know how I feel about them and they can base how they feel about me on how I feel about them because that is what so many do. Or they can accept how I feel and feel however they would naturally and things would be great. So anyway, my epiphany for today is that I am amazing. I am kidding, that isn't new, I have always known that. hah. Okay, I will stop. Umm, really, I think that if people were more honest with their feelings then we could grow much quicker than we currently are. And I am all about growth. But, the Mary thing, don't anyone worry, I doubt that we are going to be more than just friends and probably not even good ones at that--if she means what she says. I might have pissed her off on the way home. So be it. I had fun! Peace. Love.

May 22 2001

Alright, Alright, my Monday Sabbatical is over. On Sunday night I slept with Mary's sister. She and my friend Matt came over to my house just to talk for a minute, but it was a drinking night, so my parents quickly enveloped them with alcohol and before long my Dad busted out the foot long potato. But, he went to bed, and so did Bobbie (my stepmom). That left Annette, Matt, my brother Joe (joe7603@aol.com) and I. WE busted out the board game, Pass-Out. We only had six beers left so we started mixing drinks. The six beers is something, because they bought two cases earlier and before Matt and Annette showed up there were only four of us drinking and I only had one beer. So, anyway, Annette past out first and then Matt and then my brother and I got into one of those drunk brotherly love fights where we just try to knock each other down as much as possible. It was true, and it was sad, but (the ongoing excuse) I WAS DRUNK. I don't regret anything I said, he left for awhile because I win verbal fights then he came back with a new set of things to talk about and we just sat there and drank and laughed and then we cleaned and I went to bed with Matt and Annette on the couch. It was cool, because I can say that I slept with Annette and Mary, the Harris sisters, on consecutive days. I am trying to get Mary to come with me for Memorial Day weekend at my parent's camper in Winamac. That would be fun, I think. And last night, nothing entirely special happened. I hung out with BeeJay and Amanda for the first time in awhile, I saw the "Going to Poland" girl and I went up to the Pick-Me-Up in Chicago. Yeah, that was about it last night. I had something great to write in here last night, but I forget it since then. Sad for me. Hopefully I will actually have something to say later on.

May 23 2001

I am listening to John Lennon right now, Imagine. I am totally in agreement. Those that know me, may find consistencies in imagining that there are no possessions and you may say I am a dreamer and I am not the only one and all that. This song really does it to me. I can imagine no religion and no possessions a familyhood of humyns. I can even listen to it again. Because John Lennon had it right, and the Beatles were a great band and I am very glad that they continue to inspire minds. I was watching the Jimi Hendrix story the other day and he says to me "it would be great to live then, huh?" and I agree not wanting to get into it with him. But it is great to live right now, I saw him projecting his desire by transcending time, by FAKING IT. His wishes live in the past while his mind is following the future. See, it is a sort of oxymoron, because his entire being is in the present, but his wishes are rooted in the past, he seems to lack the capacity to manifest those dreams into reality, into his life. I would agree if someone proposed that scenario is common for a bulk of the population. I refuse to be the one to suggest it. Why? Because that is me looking at a losing battle and fighting anyway, IT IS IDIOTIC. I would agree with someone else’s proposition because I wont lie to them, but I would quickly use our agreement as an investment in changing the future. My biggest problem is getting someone else to say it first so I can just agree with them. I should go around spouting this philosophy and taking credit for its outcome and some say I don't because I am scared some because I cant, I say I wont because I would get corrupted. That is right, I know myself a little too well and I could see that if I were to break my beliefs (as opposed to following someone else’s beliefs that are in conjunction with my own) and be the ultimate benefactor of the outcome that I would go corrupt. I cannot handle myself well in a situation were everyone likes me and everyone wants to use me, I would be like Basquiat and his paintings, except I don't use colors, I use letters. I may sound pretentious here, and that is okay because I am a little and that is the root of the entire thing. I can see pretension as a precursor to corruption. I don't want it. I would rather sell myself short and keep what I think in a small group of friends than share on a mass media level and sell my soul. That is where I am selfish, but it is also me thinking about what I am saying, because I would be going against what I am saying if I were to go corrupt and that would put black tape on the wisdom because the so-called idea man cant even keep his lid. No no. I ain't going out like that. I will be like Marx, die first; then Engels can take over all the revisions. I don't know where I am going with this, I feel bad. I feel worthless right now, because I am talking up what I say so much and it isn't like it is even that great, or that I am. I am an ass. I am mean to people, and I don't take others feelings into consideration. But, that isn't going top change, because that is part of the new philosophy, I don't hold much of the old dear, the whole possession philosophy, the lines on the map, none of that matters to me. The time on the clock is not my concern. And when I care little to none about others possessions and others lines and others time then I am inconsiderate. I just think that they are blind. HAH. Because I am sure that there are problems with my beliefs, because I know I am not perfect, but I cannot see how a new way of life, the one that I am evolving into, is worse than what I am leaving. And some can say that it isn't worse, it is par. I like to disrupt things, I like change, it lets me know that I am still alive and those that cant take a little spontaneity look dead to me. They died, they all died the moment they sold themselves short because they were afraid of change. Like in the movie Clerks when Randall explains to Dante how he must shit or get off the pot. That is how I look at the world. I am not making sense, I probably need to sleep. --

C'mon. People. So I have been dry lately. Probably because it has been so wet outside. That is a joke. I honestly think that it denotes from me putting so much energy into Mary and girls in general. I really feel that it is time for me to get on with my life. I would love to be able to be with someone. I push people away a little too much and when I try to bring them in I have too much passion. I am looking for a happy medium. Sometimes I am not happy with what I do, with what I write, but I write it anyway. Hemingway is not an idol of mine, but my friend recounted to me that he would get up every day and write 2000 words whether he felt like it or not, he would force it out and the most truthful stuff would come when he wasn't feeling it because he was focused on something else so his fingers played a game that his mind wasn't watching. I cant do that. I tend to put all my energy into a pool and direct it what is most driving at the time. Maybe that is what experience will teach me, how to apportion energy equally and satisfy all elements of my being. For now I am some young kid doing his best and not really doing enough. Hopefully that will all change. But I am too full up of hope and we all know what Nietzsche said, about Hope being the last thing in Pandora’s Box. Sometimes I believe it, but most of the time I fight it and push myself to hope for things and try to create things through hope. Ughh.

May 24 2001

I am feeling. Like a ball of pure emotion, and when it flames I am hot and when it ices I am cold. Right now I feel very well. I so wanted to buy some stretchers and canvas and create an amazing piece of art tonight, but no one had anything. Hopefully this feeling sticks until I can get some stuff. It doesn't seem likely, but *hope*. I really want to be that person who lives in a loft in the city with the bed upstairs and the art downstairs where I could just go down a flight of stairs and go to town, no worries about paint splatter, or billy batter, just pure feeling. I am planning to make a 6' x 6' painting of this thing that I saw tonight I attempted to portray it with a sharpie pen on a napkin, but it doesn't suffice the vision. I am listening to VU's Sister Ray and must sit here and describe how amazing it is. It is very amazing. That about sums it up. I am finishing my dreadlocks over the next two weeks, hopefully they come out okay. So far they aren't doing so well, but I just started tonight. I see so much positive action around me it isn't funny. I can sit staring blankly at a wall for hours on end and only see beautiful things, I would laugh and cry, move myself into real emotions (and scare anyone who saw me); it has gotten to the point where I don't even need outside influence to experience beauty, everything now just adds to this bliss that I feel. I know that I am still plagued by problems and shortcomings, but I cannot help but acknowledge this aura of goodness that is radiating. Constantly. It is so hard to transcend too, to other people that is. People can look at my life and see a list of disappointment and negativity that they are blinded by it. I can do it too. But why? I mean what is the purpose of focusing on shortcomings when we can direct 100% energy towards something positive and benefit from the results. It seems so simple to me that if people simply permitted their personal positivity to shine then their entire being would benefit for the better. I have. I don't know if anyone else can see it, it may be hard to focus on, but I am not sorry to say that if you cant be on this level that it is sad. It is sad because all of the good things that I experience on the inside are impossible to explain. People will ask me why I sometimes laugh for no notable reason, or constantly smile, it is because I have so much going on inside. I cant help but wonder why they aren't. Tonight I was sort of quiet, pondering certain aspects of one thing and not talking at all, not really even smiling or laughing; I was lost in a maze of positivity in my head. So lost that it was hard for me to find the road back to reality, the road that others were on and for the rest of the evening I attempted to portray the level I was on. It is like this unbelievable high that I get, so unfathomable that it is hard to believe. I don't lie when I explain how lost I get in my own reverie. If I could just find that one person who understands this and even experiences it too, I don't think I would ever be sad again. Lillian (trillette@hotmail.com) in Olympia says that I am an enabler, that I enable others positive self to come to the limelight and feel the ecstasy, experience the air. She is like that too, she is amazing. I wish that I could spend hours on end talking to her, just sort of sitting on the edge of the bed with my with my elbow on the bed (laying sideways) and my hand holding my head, listening to her and feeling that vibe, ahh, I would be lost. Steve (fluxofsteve@aol.com) too. He was like that. He has been my best friend for the last five years or so. But, we don't really talk anymore. He is the one person that has always either believed in me or pushed me to believe in myself. He was always there for me when I was having a test of being. I love that kid with all my heart, but we sort of grew apart. We are opposites with the same agenda. He has taken to the total spiritual route of finding salvation and I am attempting to prove salvation with theory. I think that any person that knows him is better off. I just wish that we could still be like we used too. When we were in Santa Barbara, it was like heaven. He was the only real contact I had, yet I felt the most contact ever. We talked for hours about the way life works and he would pull out some spiritual path and I would try to prove it with science and together we made this philosophy that is hard to turn away from. It is amazing, but now we are apart and since we cannot bounce our ideas off of each other we are spinning wildly out of control away from each other, he isn't keeping me in check spiritually and I am not keeping him in check scientifically. But he is probably better off. He can only go up, because he has the faith that he will succeed. I can still go wither way, but someone merely has to convincingly disprove my science and that is it. It isn't hard, because I haven't a clue what I am talking about, but no one has been able too yet, so I feel strongly about it. Yeah...

May 25 2001

Away. I was reading today the book "A Quick Killing in Art" it is about Jean-Michel Basquiat. I really didn't even feel like typing up a long passage right now, because I feel sort of spent and I have a long weekend ahead of me. Hopefully Mary will join me and my family for the weekend and get ripe with us and help me release my tension. I doubt it, but we already talked about hope. So, in the same vein as Segovia (www.xanga.com/segovia) I am just going to jump out of here with a question: What was the last book you read?

May 29 2001

It is simply so amazing how life can just turn right around in your face and you can barely notice. I got back yesterday from the camping shebang and it wasn't the greatest weekend ever. Mary never showed up and I don't even think that she really cares to talk to me anymore, but I left her some amazing messages on her voicemail. The last night we were there my stepmom called me a "buttfucker" and I told her that if miry had come down I could prove her wrong. Lets get one thing straight here, I am not against gay people, refer to previous posts about my gay interactions and close encounters. So I immediately called Mary and she didn't answer, so I left her the message recounting the buttfucker story on her phone, but the way I leave them is great. I just sort of say a few words, not introducing myself and then I hang up without closing and (this is how I think it is) I am just so straight and honest, I cannot see how a girl could resist. But, whatever. Life turning around. The weekend wasn't so hot, my sister got caught smoking pot and I had to be the one that told on her. So there was some misery and the Mary not coming around was sad, but I got over it. The sad part was earlier this evening (or yesterday evening). I was talking with Tuesday, my sister the pothead. And I was telling her about how I don't even feel like I ever left this place because everything drops so easily into the holes that are their, I leave for a 8 months come back and it isn't like time even elapsed. She said to me "If you don't feel like you have been anywhere than you really haven't and you haven't done anything either". She is fourteen. My first reaction was "what the hell" I mean, how can a 14 year old tell me about living life. I am not amazingly old or wise or experienced, but more so than her. My second reaction was "Maybe she is right". And I fell directly into a stupor and said that I suck. Because I felt that she was right. The next thing, Steve, my best buddy in the whole wide world wrote me an email and I have the task of responding. Great, I feel like shit and I know that my email will show it and if it doesn't show overbearingly, he will still pick up on it. I start writing it and yada-dada I sound miserable. Then Lauren IM's and I get a rejuvenation a burst of goodness, because this girl wants to hang out with me when I get up tot he city and she is cute I found her HYPERLINK "http://www.makeoutclub.com" \t "_new" here and you can just type in her AIM name (fangrrl2313) in the search criteria and look at her. From the picture I think that she is cute. That is the kind of girl that I like. So, anyway, I am feeling the vibe and Rachel IM's me. I know Rachel, so I can actually tell her that I am miserable. Not that I didn't tell Lauren, but I think Rachel can understand more because she knows me. So I am talking to Rachel and Lauren and typing an email to Steve and the phone rings. It was like 11:08 and Bobbie (my stepmom) doesn't like calls after ten. So I am like "shit, who is this". And who was it? It was STEVE!!! Yay. WE talked for a good two hours and he is coming up here soon, but I am not going to say when, because those of you that read this that want to see him are just going to have to arrange that for yourself, you know his email. So I just got off of the phone with him and I feel so much better, I realized that Tuesday has a few good things to say, but she really doesn't have a clue what she means. She got inside of me and that hurt, because that was her intention, but through Steve I worked it out. It wasn't even that he consoled me in any special way, he just has a certain exuberance that lights me up and takes away my sadness. It is great. I cannot wait to see him again. So much more happened in these days that I haven't written about(like locking the keys in the car, cigarettes, drinking, bag game, Mary and matt and pat ditching Diane and I tonight, me moving up to the city, Michelle levy, my dads bike ride, etc.) that I am not even GOING to write about, because if you really care you can ask me. I am sort of excited and I am going to go call Michelle Levy and then write Katie Miller from Boulder Creek. She is the girl that let Steve and I stay in her backyard that doubles as a Redwood Forest while we were riding our bikes. She gave us food too. She is great. Life has all of a sudden become wonderful. Michelle Levy better just watch out, she may be a pirate, but Peter Pan (was an asshole) won with youthfulness. Peace. Love.

June 7 2001

Hi. I haven't been around for the last while because I have been in Chicago. And there is no computer there. So, as a result I have no way of posting anything here. I wish I could, I like having this kind of outlet. It is fun for me. But, Chicago isn't. It isn't treating me well. To be pretentious, it isn't giving me the respect I deserve. To be humble, I cant find a damn job. I have tried, it isn't like I haven't, I have put in applications and did call backs and I have had two interviews that seemed promising, but you never can tell. The best way I thought to judge an interview was at the end if the interviewee tells you when you start. Neither of them did that for me. One is a two part process and they are passing my first interview to department heads--this is at the Whole Foods Market, a vegan vegetarian haven. The other was at Borders and I have always wanted a job at Borders, and the interview seemed well, but at the end she said that there were two more interviews that days and she would call me back. That day I went out and did five more applications to different places. Hopefully something comes of it, because the home situation up there well, it sucks. I am living with my brother and his roommate, my brother is fine, but Jeb is a dick. Principally, it is Jeb's apartment, his name is on the lease. He said that he was doing me a favor by letting me stay there with them, but brother asked me to come up there to help them out with rent, a classic mix-up of stories, but it is to my demise, because Jeb is angry with me. He doesn't think that I am trying hard enough to get a job and that I am taking advantage of him. Why? I don't know, he cant see my effort, I understand, but it is there. And I am nice to him, I do things around the house and stuff, I don't eat his food, I have my own etc. It just sucks for me. Last night my friend Steve was coming in from Santa Barbara and I was picking him up at the airport. I told Jeb and my brother and my brother understood that he was also going to stay that night at the apartment, Steve and my brother are friends, he was okay with it. Jeb was really angry because I didn't talk with him about it. REASON--because the first time I tried to talk to him he got angry because I wasn't a conformist and I am honest. The second I talked to him he made fun of me and didn't even really pay attention, it turned me off from talking to him, his encouragement for me getting a job is saying "hey, I got a job". He says it in a condescending way that makes me feel like shit and ultimately brings my exuberance down and makes me less inclined to actually do anything. He is causing a negative effect, I would like to talk with him about it, but I cant be forward with him anymore, he has to ask from now on. Why? Well, the way I deal with people is the first time I meet them I am totally myself I will talk to you and tell you things and be loud and funny and have a great time, I will judge from your response whether or not that is beneficial, if you are someone that doesn't have a great impact on my life, I wont think twice about it. If you are someone I am sharing an apartment with, if you want to know more from me, you are going to have to ask, I need to know that you want to know before I tell you. Tall order, not really because if you wanted to know you would ask. Right? I mean do what you want. That could be contradictory to how I deal with people, but it is how I want to be, because I don't want people to hate me anymore, I want them to at least feel comfortable around me. Whatever. That situation up there is getting on me and the more I think about it, the more I wish I wasn't here the more I wish that I stayed in Santa Barbara or went somewhere else, because it is really taking a toll on me. So what do I do now? I don't really know. I came down to Indiana today because my best friend was in town and I wanted spend some time with him and I cant do that in the city because Jeb didn't like him before he met him because he was staying at Jebs apartment without Jebs beforehand knowledge, so I came down here to hang. When we left this morning I told Jeb that I was going to be in Indiana for two days and if any jobs call me to call me down here so I know and if they set up an interview for tomorrow, well I will go back up there tomorrow. He said to me as I was leaving "its gonna be hard to get a job in Chicago from Indiana". No shit dumbass. I couldn't believe that he had that audacity, after I told him it was for two days, TWO DAYS, he says that. I mean how hard is it to pass a message on? Sure, it may be a slight burden to him, so I told him to just have my brother do it if he didn't want too. Come on. Ahhh. That is just something I don't want to talk about anymore. I was watching a Cubs game on TV the other day (I don't really care for baseball, but you will see why I was watching it) because I live less than two blocks from Wrigley Field and in the seventh inning someone hit a grand slam and I watched it on TV and then stuck my head out the window and heard the roar of the fans, it was so mindbending to know that things on TV are sometimes real. I mean, I was a part of it but not really so I never had to leave myself to be there and it felt like being in two places in one time, it was awesome. I was very happy when that happened. I am pretty happy now. Peace. Love.

June 10 2001

I think that everything that is wrong revolves around a power imbalance. That is a general thing to say, but identifying that is a good thing. It is kind of like the relationship of some dumb kid (we'll call him Brian) to police officers. To Brian, the world is his, he doesn't see the things he does as wrong and if he did then he would discontinue his relationship with whatever said thing. When it comes to police officers, they know the are in control and they use that power to upper-hand an unsuspecting Brian. How? Well, Brian, to the law, is not old enough to drink alcohol. Brian can understand and respect that law, because it takes a certain amount of control over yourself and knowledge of who one is to handle intoxication--of any kind. We mentioned before that Brian thinks that he can fit that bill, because Brian does not abuse alcohol, he goes far gone maybe twice a year and any other times that he finds himself drinking, it is with a close circle of friends and family where he doesn't see any need to alter his senses. That isn't the point, the point is the relationship, the power imbalance. Last night (going into today) was one of those days that Brian decided to go all out, not only was it his fathers birthday, but he also got to see many many people that he hadn't for years. People that he went to high school with, old friends, and he got to remember how it was back then. Not that back then is such a long time ago, but since then Brian feels that he has grown up in a way that makes him able to be twenty and drink liquor. So being with all these friends and rehashing all these old memories and playing bocce ball and drinking with his father, Brian felt that everything in the world was perfect for just a little while, he didn't even feel too much pain when the officers threw him to the ground and put the handcuffs on. But, I am getting ahead of myself, because around six o'clock in the morning Brian and four of his friends (comprising of Pete Wojcik, Steve Rousseau, Mike Tsirtsis, and Joe Wayo) from where they were, it was maybe two miles to Brian’s house, but they only made it to within three blocks. At the corner of Pine and Lafayette St in Griffith IN, a man yelled from his home that we were being too loud, he decided to call the cops. He came down with a baseball bat trying to pick a fight with Mike Tsirtsis and Pete Wojcik, it never escalated. But, by the time the cops got there Brian had totally opted to not be a part of anything, he was actually on the other side of the yard, just watching. Eventually, he walked up just to see closer and a cop stopped him and asked for ID, first his said he didn't have any, because he didn't want to fall prey to that power imbalance where everything they say is right and Brian can just fuck off. So he asked Brian for his name and Brian said "John Doe". He called another officer over to where we were and asked Brian again, in solidarity he stuck to the story. "John Doe". All of a sudden, there was a bum rush with three cops on top of Brian, not reading him his rights, merely roughing him up on the concrete and cuffing him and then throwing him in the backseat of the police car. At the station, Brian understood that he wasn't going to get out of this easy, and instead of continuing to be difficult, he became ultra friendly, and at one point he asked the police officer if he would mind if he tried to get out of his handcuffs by going under his legs. As the story goes, the officer said "I really wish you wouldn't." After taking all of my stuff and spreading it on a table they began to fingerprint me, they did all of my fingers twice. Brian didn't understand why. When the processing was done and Steve had paid Brian’s bail, he was tossed into a cell to detox for a few hours. Around 1 30 in the afternoon, Brian was released from jail and Steve was waiting for him. Brian had gotten maybe two hours of broken sleep on the cell cot. As he and Steve walked back to his house they saw the shell of a 1968 VW bug in the driveway. It was pretty burnt and they found out later that the fire trucks got there around three am to put it out and no one was injured. So, in conclusion power imbalances suck and with all of their force sucking humanity, I can foresee the power imbalance being the downfall of..., you can figure it out. Peace. Love.

June 12 2001

I think maybe I was a little loose in my description of the power imbalance. First off, I don't have any power and neither do you...unless you are one of the few that preys on attaining power, in that sense you will get what you want. POWER. Power is not something that I am searching, I am searching truth and knowledge, not greed and power. I think that the situation that I was in the other night provided me with exactly what I wanted, I attained the knowledge that I have no power and realized the truth that I never will, because I don't want it. Furthermore, I realized that this society that I am reluctantly a part of is far gone. And not just a little far gone, society is fucking out there. On cloud nine and not coming back. I don't know why, I don't see the reason, the need involved. It is just Americanism. Sure, it is lame and I am not a subscriber, but that is how it is. I think from now on, nevermind, I don't know anything from now on, I am going to continue on the path of not knowing. Tiffany wants me to go to NY and stay with her and I would love too, but my father is coaxing me into staying here and facing the judge and reaping the reward for my gained truth. Depending on things, I will. I am not sure I want to just yet, I would much rather just skip everything have a warrant out for my arrest and go live in the mountains of Colorado or in Canada. My big plan was to just go to NY and lose myself in the culture there, figure a few things out and see what happens. For the past few days I have been totally lacksadaiseccial (lax, I don't know how to spell it). Not wanting to do anything, so I didn't go to the city and face the wrath that is awaiting. Fucking life, all these different planes and all these options, all of them are right, but which is best? Which is? Franko would say that whatever you choose is right and the is of the is is what is. I would probably roll my eyes, but he may just be right now. I don't know, I really don't and answers aren't even what I am searching, we talking about it before. I may just stay here for three months and work with my Dad and see what happens, or I may hobo on the next train that rolls through town. I don't know.

June 15 2001

I have said it before and I will say it again, I like Eminem. (I said all this too) I bought his first album and loved then gave it away and when his second album came out I bashed him, because that is what everyone else was doing. One day at work (when I worked at Target) that song where he says "I am whatever you say I am" came on and I stood there listening to it and I loved it. I didn't know it was Em at the time, I asked someone and they told me who it was so I reevaluated. When I got back to Indiana both of my sisters and my stepmom and my brother had the album so I listened to it. I seem to be slightly obsessed with it. Once I got past all the things people talked about I got into the things they didn't, like when he raps about poverty in America and no one there to prevent it or help it. Or when he raps about school shootings only coming to life when it started happening in middle America, when it was the rich white peoples kids shooting the other rich white kids. Because school shootings happen and guns are brought to school every day, but that was in the inner city. Middle America doesn't care about it and doesn't want to see it, because the truth is that it can happen to them and he lets it loose, he even says that he is talking about all the things that we talk about in our living rooms, but he doesn't have to be sugar coated at all. I try to get other people that cant see past the media hype to really listen to what he says. Whatever. That isn't even what I wanted to write about, it just happened. What I wanted to talk about was me, duh. That was a joke. Seriously though, I was thinking the other day when I was in the 100 degree sun working on a scaffold that things are great. Not on the surface, like how on the surface Em sucks, but deep down things are great now and they always will because it is all about personal mindset. Sure, sometimes I get a little crazy and talk about extraordinary things that people can barely imagine--and this is one of those times. Personal mindset, if you keep your head on and know, always, who you are and what you believe and do what you want, you will always be great. Even the little while ago when I was in a rut on the surface, deep down everything works out and eventually you will see it. My friend Alexandria wrote on a book she gave me (for my 20th birthday, the only present I got) "when you are at your lowest, don't give up, because the only way left to go is up..." I look at that as inspiration, because she is right, indirectly I think what she is saying is that everything works out perfectly. Which is something Steve once said to me and Rachel said to him, so the way everything goes full circle is also amazing. So, what I am saying is that if you are having trouble in your life, just know that things will get better, they always do. And if you let yourself believe that constantly, then maybe things wont even go wrong anymore; or, things that go wrong may only go wrong because the outcome of the wrong turns out better that the outcome of the right. At least in your eyes, what you can see as the best thing actually turns out to be the worst, because face value is weird. Some people can look at things for face value and see wonderful or horrible things, but in the end when you get to the real value I think that most of the time the roles are reversed and that things that looks bad is actually amazing and vice versa. Just something to think about. Peace. Love.

June 16 2001

And, while we are on the subject... Nevermind. Last night was reminiscent of the last time I was here for a long period of time, I guess old habits come out when you are presented with old situations. Hah. If only I knew what I was actually talking about. Here is a question that I once discussed at length, and am reminded of as I look at the dog. Are dogs aware that they have souls? Now, last time I debated this it went on for hours. This time, I have some inside information, souls are not proven, humans don't even know whether they have souls, it is a belief thing, like a faith. So the real question is (drumroll) are animals that we look at as less advanced actually more advanced than humans? I have an argument that says yes. Being that humans and parrots are the only creatures I know that can use verbal communication (in the sense of words, understandable by the human population) couldn't it be that seemingly lesser animals use a sort of telepathy to speak? Look at it like this, dolphins, we know they use sounds and they are one of the smartest creatures on earth, what if they also use a telepathy to speak with other dolphins? We just don't know and based on the inconclusive evidence of the case, I am saying that it is very possible and even likely that dogs are aware of their soulular being. Perhaps more so than humans. Just something to ponder. Peace. Love.

June 17 2001

So, last night was a sort of weird night. People love me or hate me for my honesty, I am honest all of the time, except for when I am joking, but I think it is obvious when I am joking. So, early in the night Justine (Bean) wants to talk about me. I don't know what she thought, but I think I shot down her expectations, she talked about her sister and I and why we never hooked up and stuff, she wanted to know how many girls I slept with and I told and I know she wasn't expecting that. I detailed a few other instances in that area of my life and I hope she has a better outlook on me. She wanted to know if I really liked Mary. I told her, at first I did, I thought she would be fun. Because the first time I talked to her she said that she was interested in getting together with a bunch of guys and having a huge orgy where she is the only girl. And the entire night she was just talking about sex. I thought, great!, you know? Here is a girl that doesn't know me well and she digs sex so I thought I would try to hook up with her and see what happens. It turns out she was joking and after I figured it out I decided to make her uncomfortable, because I don't like it when people create an image of themselves that is far from reality. If she had joked about sex once or twice I wouldn't have thought anything of it. But now whenever I am with her I make very obvious passes at her and in an indirect way I think I am trying to teach her a lesson, but directly, I am showing her a scenario (that isn't worst case) that can arise when she talks about herself the way she did. Am I right? Probably not, but I am. But, anyway, Bean got a dose of what I really do for/to people. I try to put them in their own shoes, and I have no right to do this, if someone did it to me I probably wouldn't like it. But I don't think I put myself in a position where people can poke fun at what I do or say. I am not saying that I am perfect, I just haven't found anyone to keep me in check yet, except Steve, because with his help I am who I am. Oh, but the point is that by the end of my night Bean was past out on my shoulder. I don't look at Bean in a sexual way, I don't look at really any girls that are my friends in a sexual way. Diane asked why I was uncomfortable in the situation and at the time I didn't know, I didn't have all these words to say. But, now I do. Because later in the night some other girls asked me for an outside opinion about something that happened with one of their friends. And from my answer I gained insight to what is going on with me. I hate to keep going back to old things, but the only girl I ever had a sexual relationship with was my best friend before we started dating. Everyone knew that I liked her in that way and I still don't know if she ever liked me in that way, but we had a relationship. And now she hates me. And because of that I suck. I was listening to the Propaghandi album I borrowed from Bean: "How to Clean Everything" and song number four is definitely my song. They sing "Girls with the greenest eyes/first time you have kissed/a quiet softer side/a song for ALL OF THOSE WHO SHOT AND MISSED". That's me, a guy who shot and missed, and I think because of that I am turned away from real relationships, but I am not angry about it. A little sad, but I am happy. But the reason that is my song because they continue to sing "those who see through the lies/are quickly gagged and bound/ambition realized/tear the whole fucking thing down". And the rest of the song is really good too, check it out sometime. Anyway, I was sitting outside this morning and I realized that is why I am so turned off of relationships and furthermore, I realized why I try to hook all of my friends up with other friends. It is one of two things: 1. I want all of my friends to understand the same pain I do after hooking up with a friend or 2. I see my pain and don't want anyone else to experience it so I dedicate a large portion of my time to trying to make others happy and I just get what I get. Hopefully, it turns out to be the number two option, but at this point I don't know. So, Diane, sorry. If my purpose is the number one option, I am sorry. But I really don't think so, unless I have some untapped cavern of revenge that is just now wanting to seep out of me...we never know. Peace. Love. --

I guess that last entry sort of made me sound sex crazy. In a way, I guess I am. I haven't had sex for quite some time and I liked it when I did. I guess I don't have a lot of sexual experience and in the past I lied about it. I cleared it up since then with the parties that matter most. Anyone else can ask if they have a question. I am honest. But, I am not traditional sex crazy. I am really more into finding the type of girl that I can like for a long period and she can make me happy and I her. Not in a sexual way. Just in the way that I am happy, that I have someone close to me and I feel happy. Not that I don't feel happy now, but one area of my life is that I haven't had a real relationship for quite some time and I think I am ready. I am not sure of course, if I were the ball would roll much quicker. So I am still unsure and uneasy in that department and that is my biggest fear, that I will be for awhile. I run away from that thing. I was telling Beanie about certain instances where I could have capitalized and sexed up some girl for a night or a weekend, but I am not like that. Steve knows the stories, at least one of them firsthand. BeeJay knows one of them from a firsthand account, where he sort of hooked me up with the girl and he was the first person I told about what I didn't do. I want to feel right and that doesn't. The Mary situation presented itself as a meaningless sex opportunity where I thought that was what she was into. I was wrong, false impressions get me every time. So, in a situation where I can experience a little bit more and maybe even give the girl what she wants I would be "on top of it". Sorry, that is a crude joke. I am sure this insight into my pathetic sex life isn't anything anyone particularly wanted to hear about, but I feel better laying it down and clearing the last post up. Just for myself.

June 18 2001

I don't know why, but things seem to be decreasing in excitement. I started writing a book today, one of those diary type books, for various reasons: because I like books with lots of breaks, and because I write in journals. Anyway, I don't know what exactly is happening, but it is the premonitions of a guy that feels odd things about himself (and sometimes he veers off on political tangents) and eventually he cant take life anymore and he kills himself. It should span about three months of journal entries. More on that later though. Peace. Love.

June 19 2001

And again, another day another thought. I called BeeJay today and he wanted to let me know that he does read this. Great. It doesn't seem like anyone reads this, because no one comments on anything, that is all well and good, I don't really mind, but constructive criticism is what creates change, for better or worse. And then the thought. I was thinking about how and why, where? How did I become here, why did I come here, and where the hell am I? I don't really know, but I wonder. Anyway, that isn't really the thought, the thought was about Michael Parenti. And I was reading his book and I was listening to the Propaghandi album and I figured that I better come write that I did that and eventually I would realize that I didn't really have anything relevant to say...now is that time.

June 20 2001

It is amazing how the loudest little girls can easily annoy me. I don't know, sometimes I think it is me getting old, but if you have met me more than once, you know I am just 17. Me, the guy that used to go to loud punk rock shows three times a week and stand in front of the speakers headbanging and throwing my body into other kids bigger and stronger than me now gets a headache from two little girls joking loudly with themselves. It might be because at their age, they don't want to listen to anyone, so if I ask them or tell them to quiet down they begin to defy and yell louder just to say they don't have to listen to me. Even if I ask it as politely as I can, they still have that twinkle to reciprocate whatever I utter. I cant say I wasn't that way, I can only say that it is very annoying now. And I am not in the mood to fight everything, to ask them again, because I will lose. The best thing I can do, I think, is fold. Let them win and wait for them to grow out of it as I seemingly did. it might have just been me having a long hard day at work and my entire body being spent. I don't know. Not only doe sit seem that I am losing my edge now, it seems that I have no desire to keep my edge. I feel that the best response to everything is "slip it under the rug." You know, not even care just let people bash me or praise me and act as if nothing is happening, circle myself in a tiny sphere that can only be permeated by me. It sounds selfish, but I think I am becoming more selfish, so be it. I feel no worry towards my future, and I don't even feel like making an absurd plan for my future either right now. I just feel like sitting in front of the TV and relaxing while I am silently mindfucked. Only a few months ago I was not only strongly opposed to television culture, but to the point where it didn't even affect my life. It had been that way for awhile too, until I got here. Now I want to see what is going on tonight, you know, what HBO is showing. It seems that when I was in California I wrote in my hand journal there that I wanted those things. I recall writing something like: all I want right now is to sit in front of a TV and play Nintendo and see old friends and lose myself. Then I was too entrenched in counter-culture for my own good, I wanted to fight everything, oppose everything that wasn't progressive. Now I just want to slip away from everything. I still feel that tingle of oppression and that desire to break free, but it is becoming more and more subdued. As the doctor told the parents "in the first few years the child will resist the computer chip in its hand, but eventually the child will accept it, it has nothing else to do." I feel like that child. I feel that no matter what I do it would all be a waste because I am only one of the overwhelmingly few that even care. And as of now it looks like I am a page that no longer needs to be updated because they got it all on record for me. It doesn't matter how I feel, to them at least, it matters how I perform. Maybe I am just feeling sorry for myself and lonely. That isn't important (see that, that was an automated reminder that I do to further push my beliefs away from me, I don't matter, I am telling you; it matters what I do. That is what the "system" is attempting to create in everyone...of course their guidelines for what you do are quite different from mine now, but I am slowly coming along. Just another chapter closed in 1984.) I think, though, that I am feeling very sorry for myself and lonely. And, I think that does matter. Hah, there is something you weren't expecting. It matters that I am not happy with my life, it matters that I feel alone, it matters that I am unhappy. I was in the shower today and I was thinking of BeeJay. Then I stopped thinking of BeeJay and thought of Crazy Holly. After that I thought of kissing girls, and of course (everything is entwined) I thought of Melissa. The other night I talked to her very good friend Andrea and asked her if it would be wise of me to phone Mel. She said she would get back to me if it were positive. It obviously wasn't. Mel is the last girlfriend I had. We broke up in Jan. or Feb. of 99. Last lime I talked to saw her was Nov. 99. Last time I had any sort of correspondence with her at all (email) was maybe March 2000. She lives about five blocks away from me now. I have this urge to call her and say hi, let her know that I am back around, but I don't think that is what she wants, so I look out for her interests and subdue mine. I don't want to create more hate. But, thinking of her makes me more lonely and I think of her a lot. Here we go, dudes, should I call her? That is the question. (Note, I wont base my decision on your input, but it would still be nice to have.) Anyway, I am one lonely and sorry cat and I am now sorry to have dragged you through the quagmire of my unhappiness. I guess I will just have to cheer myself up...

June 23 2001

Ahh, the joy. I don't usually comment on others comments, but I am glad that everyone else could feel a little of my disappointment I guess. Another Quarter Turn show tonight, the band is getting along...even though they played horrible tonight. I was sort of sad tonight, after the show Rachel showed up and I didn't want to talk to her, because one I didn't know what to say and two she is messing with Steve's emotions, and she knows exactly what she is doing. I find that sad. Anyway, I didn't want to talk to her so I went to stand by the road and watch the cars go by and I got really sad. I was thinking about how in Santa Barbara I would go by the ocean and listen to the ocean for long periods of time and that would alleviate all my troubles. Or in Olympia I would go by the sound or ride my bike to the co-op, or in NY I would sit on the bridge over the Bronx River and write endless poetry. It just seemed out of place that instead of having a water outlet I have cars to look at, I got really depressed and started wondering what I am doing and am going to do and I just wanted to be alone. So when Matt was driving back to his house to drop off his car I asked him to just drop me at home and I wouldn't go out. He wanted to know why and I told him and he persuaded me to go out to Jim's (the drummer) house and drink with the band and a few other people. We stopped at my house anyway and I got two pints of Guinness. We went to Jim's house and Matt was right, I ended up having fun. Surprise. Just the band and about ten people I didn't know where there, but we made friends and this girl Jill and I sort of teased Victor all night. I got her number. Not like it was that hard, but Diane says that she likes Pat. So be it. Anyway, after the part y dwindled we went to the RTC and hung out for awhile. And that is what has been going on. There are more intricate things I can break down, about the ideas discussed and the actual detailed events, but I don't feel like it. Peace. Love. PS I didn't call Melissa, thanks to Moni who gave input. If anyone else wants too I am still all ears (eyes).

June 25 2001

So today when my Dad and I were traveling to the job site, we talked. We drove down 41 and gazed at the new strip mall being built. Then we drove past another construction yard. My Dad said they were building a Loews Home Improvement Center there. Just down the way is a Home Depot and right next to that is a Menards and right next to that is a Sears Hardware. Seems like overkill to me, most things do. He told me that Cedar Lake Lumber went out of business because of all the new corporate shops being built, so I had to delve into the rap about the third worldization of America. I debated with him about how large corporations moving in and destroying the small businesses created a wealth gap. Because the people at the Menards and the Loews don't make the money, the corporate shareholders do. Those people are the top of the ring in America, the richest people. I explained to him the separation and disparity of wealth in this country, that the top 5% owned more wealth than the bottom 95%. He says that is the American way. I asked him what he would do when the Corporate chimney cleaners came in and started doing cleanings for 50$ and put him out of business. He said that if you cant beat them join them. He explained how to him the American dream was becoming part of that top 5%. But I don't think it is, because that dream was created when the wealth was better distributed, before corporations ruled everything, including the government. Because when you got a lot of money, you can throw at the president and ease up environmental restrictions so you can turn more of a profit and dump more in his pocket and the only people that are hurt are those in the factory slaving away to barely put food on the table. Those people that don't know what it is to live "easy", that having something in their savings account was rich to them. Let alone a billion dollars. Hah. So I told him that I believed the corporations and the government were working jointly in an effort to create America a third world status. Where everything would be luxurious for the ruling few while the starving majority would be below the poverty level, barely able to put food on the table working 60 hours a week at Ford. And it is hard to see, because minimum wages keep going up and we hear about more and more people getting rich, and we see all this development. But it is actually anti-development, like Einstein theorized anti-gravity. This anti-development looks like it is useful on the surface but slowly pulls apart the people--it creates a large gap between the ruling minority and the working majority. Through Einstein's theory of anti-gravity, it pulled the universe apart until it expanded into nothing, until it got so large that nothing could survive in the vast emptiness. In anti-development, as the gap widens the poor will begin to revolt, because they have no other option than die starving. The minority will attempt to disable their working force will guns, bombs, tear gas and fire; all they will really do is destroy the thing that keeps them on top--us. With the majority out of the picture, the remaining few will be left to themselves to try to create and live in a world where money didn't matter, because the majority wasn't there to keep it up, and all those that had so much now have less than nothing and they remain suffering until they too die. Only they will have killed themselves, indirectly. I told my Dad that one could tell the disparity now because of the growing number of protests against wealth and the heightened sense of "lets get it done", he said that there have always been protesters, he said "its like anything else". Don't get me wrong, my Dad has a good outlook and I totally respect where he comes from, but if the mass continues through his eyes, I see nothing more than the outcome previously laid out. Now, if we do a little stopping and a little thinking, maybe we can get somewhere. Think socialism, think Sweden. I have never heard of any Swedish problems (except of course when the protesters were shot the other week, because they hated GW, apparently he affects everyone in the world). But think further than socialism, think autonomy. Socialism gives power to the state and not to corporation, that's great, but c'mon, power breed's corruption breeds hate breed's war. Lets think without the fighting, the violence, lets maybe try to make the world a safe place by simply saying no. No, I wont listen to your rules; no, I will not bow to your command; no, I will not be your slave, because I am my own person, because I am autonomous, because I deserve to be free. Just say no, resist that which you don't want. Don't be force fed. I know I know, easier said than done, but once it is said at least we know that the motion is on the table. It takes more than one to pick it up....who wants to help?

July 3 2001

Well, I am still recovering from the van incident. I am doing very well, considering. But that isn't the point. I was dreaming so many different dreams last night it was insane and it drifted into today's stream on consciousness. I think it was spacekittie that asked on my last real blog what I wanted her to do, how she could help. I guess it was a sort of call to thinking when I asked who would help. And I dreamed about it. Extremely local with boundaries undefined. I wanted to start a campaign to gather all the progressive thinkers in this particular area. The dream had me doing up flyers and putting them up for people to meet in Central Park and discuss ideas, like a teach-in. Where everyone stands and what can be gained. There were police advancing in the dream and we all stood together, and I said loudly "our actions are not against the law" and then they backed away. It continued though, it was a very straight dream, after the teach-in local groups were established for the PAAEP movement involving community members in demonstrations against injustice and eventually it all picked up flight and expanded into the tri-state area. Then Steve called me from Santa Barbara (in the dream) and asked if it was okay for him to create his own chapter out there and continue the expansion. It was beautiful. Then today, after I had woke, I continued to think these things and I definitely wanted to do them. Then I thought of all the negative energy directed toward me in this particular area. I mean, I have been here for a short time and in this past month I have been arrested and run over. Not exactly the best luck a boy can have. That sort of stuff works to encourage me against my dreams. It makes me not want to be here at all, sensing this grossness. So my dream may just remain a dream, who knows. But I also had another dream that was also very straight about going back to Olympia and working with Frank and just staking claim there and residing there for a long period of time, there was some intense situational images with me and people I had known there. Not entirely sexual, but hinting. I don't know. I was then doing laundry (real-life, after I had woke) and I sort of had a realization that I was totally unhappy with my life, for specific reasons. In general I am happy and don't seem depressed at all, but what drove me to drink the night that I was run over? After the show, the girl that I had invited there was talking to me and I was totally frozen, I didn't do what I wanted and my realization at laundry time was that I was totally depressed about the romantic side of my life, that I am afraid of relationships and that needs to stop. That is why I drank, because I couldn't face that girl without having a few beers in me, I was so deathly scared. And things go to far when you are scared. I figured that the more I drank the less scared I would be, I was wrong, the equation actually worked out to: the more I drank the more pain I would be in. The van incident is funny too, because I didn't even know I had been run over until after I was at the hospital. I thought that I was run over, because how else could it have happened (I fell asleep under the van for goodness sake)? I got the story from the people that were around at the time it happened. I had no recollection. I remembered getting under the van and the next thing I was wailing inside the van for them to just take me home. They kept asking if I didn't want to go to the hospital. Not knowing the extent of my wounds, I kept saying no. The next day I woke up in a pool of blood and puss. Somehow I had been burned and there was a portion of my skin missing and my cellulite was sticking out. It was thoroughly disgusting. I still didn't want to go to the hospital. It was about five hours after I woke that I decided to go to the hospital. And the doctor had to reiterate to me how lucky I was that the van only ran over my arm and hand instead of my torso. He is right. So, I think that the best way for me to get over this wound is to sacrifice a bit of my pride and start developing the function that allows me to interact with people I am attracted too. I will have to be humiliated a few times and the like, but at least I will get through this, because the pain isn't just in my arm, it is in my heart.

July 4 2001

I remember last year my mom called me this morning and she started wishing me a happy 4th and I started telling her in my half asleep state exactly what she was celebrating, asking her exactly what makes her proud to be white American. She hung up. Today we watched a parade together. No love lost, but not too much enjoyment gained either. Peace. Love.

July 5 2001

Just a quick note about today. I was at the local festival with my mother (ughh) all day and at some point a man walked by with a Tasmanian Devil (you know, Warner Bros.) tee shirt on. It was the shirt that had the Devil eating and destroying the Peace sign. How fitting, I thought, as we celebrate war and destruction we can also promote it. American war machine well in line. Then an Eminem lyric came to my mind--imagine this as the beginning: Tasmanian devil eating a peace sign "and this is the message that we deliver to little kids and expect them not to know what a woman's clitoris is, of course they are going to know what an abortion is by the time they hit fourth grade, they got the discovery channel, don't they?" It seemed even more fitting, because I look at Eminem as a positive icon in the downfall of Amerikkka, not because I believe in what he raps, but because he is honest. Honesty is a high hose on my ticket. So that was that, I still don't agree with the political minority that force feeds fake life into the citizens of this nation. I still don't agree with the mass destruction and carnage that some feel is necessary to totally engulf the left or liberate it. And, I still don't eat meat.

July 6 2001

The following is a question from upper_room's recent blog, and my response. I would love to hear your responses! What role, if any, should the federal government play in the education of it's citizenry, and why? As the federal government of a self-prescribed free nation, every diverse view should be covered non-partisanly. Currently, public schools choose one route, that which the government condones is correct. Very Orwellian, I think. When I went to school I remember my government class vividly; in any form, Communism was bad, actually, any government that wasn't synonymous with American standards was bad. Today, I realize that the federal stance isn't just the government, but more like the economies. If a government doesn't condone free market trade, WTO blah blah blah, it obviously isn't right. And as I bite the hand that feeds me I will say one more thing--free market capitalism (as the US claims) isn't all that great, because of the immense poverty levels and the great disparity between the rich and the poor. I know my views are considered radical, but how radical is someone that envisions equality for all people? Back to the point, I don't agree with the current public school system and I think that if the government continues to control schools they should back up the freedom of choice that they give us and give children more options and more opinions. (sorry this is so long) Furthermore, I believe that textbooks telling people how things are is a farce. Since the world is in a constant state of change and very few things (relatively) can be proven it is sad to see that certain truths are force fed to the youth. As with me, I grew older and divulged myself in leftist propaganda only to find that the majority of propaganda came from the conservative right, the conservative right that has immense leverage in public schools. MY answer is that the most practical reform would be to make a few certain books (immensely radical books) standard curriculum for children from 7th grade on up. Books like Michael Parenti "America Besieged" for government, and some Kurt Vonnegut for English, ahh I cant think of more right now, but the drift should have been gotten. Peace.

July 9 2001

and thus there that is life. death not ends it, and remember.

July 13 2001

I guess I don't really have any clue what I was thinking when I wrote this; and this, I am saying before I even write it. I have been having an odd odd week, not because of any particular event, but because I feel like I have grown. Not like I grew an inch, but I am twenty years old and in this family, by twenty you should have a direction to point yourself in. When my Dad was twenty I was being born and I am the second child, he had just borne the idea of having his own Chimney Sweeping Company and he had even been doing it in his spare time away from the mills. By twenty, his entire life was more or less paved, except for the messy divorce and his wonderful new marriage. In this last week, being with my brother and my Dad just talking and working, I feel like I am reaching my age. I always thought that because I had a little world experience and I knew a few things that I was actually considered older than I am, now I am actually feeling that knowledge and this wise-ness, I am understanding what it means to grow up. It is still very new. I don't know how I am reacting to it, but, if anything, I am happy. Anyway, I am really learning about my Dad and he is just an amazing person. I don't know if this was spawned at all by my good friend Alex whose Dad suddenly died the other day at the ripe old age of 45 (two years older than my Dad) and when I arrived at the funeral the first thing Alex said to me was "Man, if you have anything unresolved with your Dad, or anyone, clear it up now, it just isn't worth it not too" and that was not a fun funeral. What funerals are? So my future is weighing heavily right now on my family. I am finally accepting that they are going to be a large part of my life and they are wonderful people and that I love every one of them (including Steve, he is always my brother). I'm not really sure what this future holds for me, but it looks promising. I really had so much more to talk about and I will continue with it. I LOVE LIFE. I bought some pens yesterday so I am going to start writing more and more poetry that will be 100% better, because my poems will be a firsthand account of a modern transition from child to adult, and I really feel that without even putting much energy into it that the words and ideas will flow beautifully as one. I will do regular posts of the poetry when it is written. I have some stuff up on HYPERLINK "http://www.poetry.com" \t "_new" poetry.com just type in my name and you will get a few things from different periods. And, well, we will see what else comes of this. Peace. Much Love.

July 19 2001

So I have been working a lot and most of my queries have been met with suitable answers from my family, which is how it should be, I haven't had to leap out into the world looking for the answer to anything, because everything is wrapped into a tight ball of here and now. One major dilemma has been girls, as it always is. Because I really never know and I always want to. It is again a Jolene situation. I have been listening to Joni Mitchell a lot lately, because she showed me that one of my favorite bands (The Mountain Goats) cover a Joni song (A Case of You) and her version is better and her voice is really great. So, I was at Jolene's house the other night and I thought it would be fine, I didn't think at all that I would have any sort of impulse to do something stupid (like make a move on her) and I think, in some weird way, she made a move on me. When I speak of moves, I don't mean rubbing inner thighs or anything physical, that stuff is superficial--it isn't bad, it just isn't always true, most of the time I think it is motivated but lust not love. Anyway... So she wanted to show me that the song was actually a cover song so she put on the CD and we were listening to it, just the two of us in the living room, and she was just staring at me and I was staring at her and she was singing all the words that had to do with love and being with someone and all that and I had to smile and if someone hadn't walked in the room, I might have done something rash, something physical. I don't know if it is lucky or not, but I didn't do anything. I just sort of left after that and it was the end of it. She has had a boyfriend for the last two years, and I was gone that entire time. So I look at it like I missed my window of opportunity and by any string of luck I will be around if that relationship defects. Hopefully she keeps me in mind. Before I left so many years ago we had some moments together but nothing ever materialized because of other people. I don't know if it is just bad luck, or what, but I really click with this girl and I would love to attempt a more serious relationship with her. I definitely see a future. I guess I can wait...

July 21 2001

So, I got the house in Hammond, on Olcott. It is a few blocks east of Jolene's house and that makes me happy. I cannot move in right away, but that doesn't matter--I am utterly ecstatic. And there are so many things I want to do with this house, I have every idea planned in my head and I just have to solidify a few things with my brother (who is going to live with me) and blam it is awesome. I am about to get a vehicle of sorts and I paid of Steve/Steve's Mom. I owed him $240 and I just gave it to his Mom. And that's that for now, I am happy.

July 24 2001

Awww, life is on, you bet it home dog. I am the happiest boy in the world, I kissed a girl. I know it doesn't sound like much, but it has been over a year since the last time I even kissed a girl and I continuously have to be reminded of that last time because I don't remember it. So, I met this girl off of the internet named Andrea. She is 19 or twenty, she has piercings and tattoos, she is very cute. She is totally hot, but that doesn't matter, because I have fun being with her. And she thinks I am hot, it has been awhile since that has been told to me. Anyway, she came from Valpo to get me and we drove around for awhile eventually she wanted to take me to the Hammond Marina to hang out there. We walked all the way down the pier and then we climbed around on the pilings and tried to get to the lighthouse. We didn't make it. WE went back to the beach and hung out there for awhile playing in the sand, and there were moments then when I could've kissed her and been the total guy and "gone all the way" but what does that tell me about her? That is what I thought, so I felt out the situation and I knew that she wouldn't kiss me, why? Because she is sort of mean and she tries to scare people a lot so that leads me to think that she is unsure of herself and she wont make a move because of that unsurity. So I felt it out and she wanted me to kiss her all the time, I waited. Until 4:10 in the morning. That is when she dropped me off at home and the whole ride back I was all about just how I was going to initiate and when we got to the drive I got cold feet and decided to wait, but I couldn't find the door handle so I took that as a sign and she said something about me not being able to use the door, so I made that my point. I said that I would just climb through her window and started to until we were face to face and I just looked at her for a second and went in for the kill, I felt drunk, it was so totally exhilarating. I pulled away and she wanted more, so I went back in and I thought that I was doing horrible, you know, kissing isn't like riding a bike. So We sort of kissed/made out for a few minutes until I ended it. I pulled away and I said that Brian had to go home now (I hade to get up for work at 6:30 in the morning). And she went back to trying to be the hardass she desires, but I saw the weakness in her eyes and I want to see more of it--of her. I just have this feeling that things will be good. But, anyway, I left and I was the most giddy and happy boy all day today. And I still am...

July 27 2001

I really don't know what I just got myself into, but I bought a 1974 VW Bus today. It is nice, needs a lot of work, but I am happy...hahahahahh

Aug. 3 2001

Lately I have been disconnected. I am in a nine year--in a nine year cycle. You know what that means? You should. It means that this is a time in my life where many things end, where I tie all loose ends and get a commanding grip on who and what I was in the previous nine years and take that into my next nine year cycle which begins next year as a one year. The one year is for new beginnings, like shaping a paragraph--the first sentence is usually your subject. I don't know how well I subscribe to this, but I do know that most everything is falling right into place (in my life) to prove this true. I assume that the years (cycles) begin and end on a person's birthday and mine is coming up in a few days. Which means that most of my loose are closed off and the new beginning is awaiting. I remember that when I left California to come back here my plan was to get my life in order over the next few months and really see what I wanted and who I wanted to be. I haven't seen that yet, but a few slides have been shown to me and I guess I am getting what I asked for. Imagine for a moment that Brian stayed in California living under a tree on a shoestring, Imagine what would have transpired for me out there and for the people out here whose life's I have touched. It is almost too much for me to fathom. Almost. I think that I made the right decision and in reality, I did. Because, any decision you make is the right one because a single person chooses what is best for them and therefore everything you choose is right, because everything works out beautifully and perfectly. Now, I am not claiming to be a scholar on life, nor I am claiming to truly understand all the weird changes that I have undergone in these past few months, but I do believe that right now is very good and everything will be right.

Aug. 4 2001

1. The Sahara desert in Africa was the largest natural rain forest in the world two thousand years ago. The Phoenicians and Carthaginians (rapists and murderers) came there to use the timber for ships. They started raping the forest from the coast inland, destroying beauty and life. Because they started from the coast, the rains started to dwindle, they took no notice. When they finished demolishing the forest, the coast had already become desert land. As the years passed the desert became known as the great Sahara. The desert now grows at a rate of ten miles per year, if it is remembered correctly. Today, the rain forest in South America are being subjected to the same abuse. We have different reasons now. Our reasoning for decimating these forests is to make grazing land for cattle that will eventually be raped, murdered, and sold at your local supermarket or McDonalds. This alone is an unforgivable and unfixable (rain forests cannot be "replanted"), but there are a few more reasons not to remove the rain forests from this planet. One major thing is that they create our oxygen to survive (and we all know that the oceans create the bulk of oxygen, but without the rain forest we will all eventually suffocate and die especially if we continue to produce pollution at the rate we are now). Throughout the history of the Earth, various species have become extinct through natural process. In the past 20,000 years, more species have become extinct than the previous 6 billion. Most of those species that are now extinct lived in the rain forests of South America and Africa. 1 (and a half). North American birds migrate to the tropical regions of South America during the winters, upon their arrival they find that there is no forest left; they die. Back home in North America pesticides use is at an all time high because the insect population is out of control. No one seems to correlate the damages. The bird's feed off of the insects, with them dead in South America, they cannot indulge in the North American insects. This allows chemical companies (that are affiliated with companies that destroy the rain forests) to profit from the rise in sales of pesticides--and I thought no one noticed, maybe it was planned.

Aug. 5 2001

I feel so young and jovial suddenly. I think it has set in that I am living with my parents again and I am attempting to recreate the situation I previously had living here. It isn't working, because I don't have nearly as many friends as before and I don't do drugs anymore and well, I let my parents know what I am doing. I guess I am just not that person anymore, but I feel that I should be, living here. I cannot wait to get the hell out of this house. I want to be and feel like a decently responsible adult. It is hard to do either living here. Those people that live with their parents until they are thirty kind of scare me. You know, those ones that never wanted to leave and only leave because they got married or something. Hah. Whatever. The point is that I don't want to feel young and jovial right now, I realize that feelings don't come on an "I want" schedule--they just happen and whatever you feel is right and whatever you portray is a filtering of that rightness through the wrongness of outward appearance, or physicality. That may be hard to grasp, that the mind is right and the body is wrong, but I have a little pyramid for living that I tend to follow and it has been doing me well, it goes like this: The top rung of the pyramid is the soul, this embodies all rightness, supremeness, because a persons souls is a part of the ultimate being, of the singularity; The middle is a persons mind because it acts directly on behalf of the soul, it thinks and knows and learns as the soul wishes; the bottom rung is the body, the body is primitive and attempts to express soulularity through gross action and stunted thought, the reason it is like this is because the minds thoughts were never meant to be spoken, they are meant to be thought, therefore whenever a person tries to truly express what they are feeling it comes out jumbly and awkward (or it is a lie). That is a crude breakdown of awareness. Any questions kids?

Aug. 6 2001

I really don't know what it is with me. I really don't. Diane and I sat at the coffee shop (blah) for a few hours tonight and we were just talking. And, I am really going to miss Diane when she goes away to school. She and Matt are the only two people I really hang out with out here and she is easier than Matt. By easier I mean that it is easier to talk to her because she will always respond whereas Matt is more closed off and moody. I like Matt just the same (I have to defend this--just in case) but sometimes I would like people to be more responsive. So we were talking and I really delved into you Diane is as a person because last night we were at her house and the lead guitarist of the band she manages never knew that she was really into figure skating and that she used to be a figure skater and all that jazz. Like what shaped her. And I thought they were really good friends but I know more than him. And even though I have become really good friends with Diane I had assumed that all her friends knew about who she was. So the conversation totally revolved about her in situations and how she reacts who she is and I like most of what was there. So I don't know. But I do know that I am totally refining my skills in dealing with people, in analyzation. I think that I am becoming very good at it. I may be rudimentary to those that learned it from a book, but it really works for me. And I really don't know what I am going to do when she leaves. Hmm....

Aug. 8 2001

I really like Personal's sites. I have accounts on most of them under the name "arisanokist". If you know of one that I should be a part of, send it my way. Oh, and in the next couple of days I am going to have a special piece on here just for Moni, all about music. Peace. Love.

Aug. 11 2001

Okay, okay. So every now and again I come across my old (actually still current) journal from Olympia to here and everything in between. And I was reading it the other day and I came across an entry titled "Regards to Music" and I re-read it and I remembered where it came from and from when I wrote it (I was in Santa Barbara) and I wanted to put it here for everyone to read, but especially for Moni because she seems to like music a lot... Regards to Music. Musical inotations create a complete life all its own, and putting on those headphones allow me to mentally bask in that complete world while visually and physically I am affixed to the "real" world all around me. Mind being more powerful that body, I feebly attempt to make the visual world correlate with this new musical world--a new dimension. Adapting conversations into music-based fodder makes and imagination go out of control, aided merely by muddled words and amazing pure music. Great ideas come to life in this new surreal world slapped on top of the old dying world, and hopefully when we remove the headphones we can retain a bit of that "fake" world, that other dimension, and bring it into life and use it to bring joy to us and all those around us. To me, the meaning of music is to create a sense of protection around the listener and offer a permeating radiation that can affect other people the listener comes in contact with...and maybe make things a little brighter. And then I think I got kicked out of the Borders books and Music that I was in because I had no purpose. Peace. Love.

Sept. 21 2001

I feel it. I feel it, the goodness, this intense aura of wondrosity. Amazingness. At the time of nothing a mind can fathom everything, anything all at once. Because of this, anything can happen and because anything that happens is a direct result of something else that I feel boils down to nothing. What does that mean? That means that everything is a result--the only thing that is true that is itself, that is not derived from anything else is the singularity...and if you can follow this, we all make up the singularity. That's right, the singularity is the condensed mass of all matter, it is THE meaning. Everything else is a result that can be tracked. Tracked to an unending series of actions. Those actions spawn everything that we see and believe and feel we know. Because we don't really know these things (they are merely reactions to the supreme action of the singularity) it is a fact that no one person can know everything. That is because everything is not known. This may seem a little out there and odd, but that is because things are good right now. Things are good and I am out there. Where are you? Have you ever sat and thought about your place in life and all the reactions that you personally have caused and then deeply thought about the reactions that were caused from reactions to your action that was, simply put, a reaction to some other action. That can go on forever and I don't feel like typing that long. The point is grasped, but is it accepted? Where you are and your actions derived from reactions causing reactions determine your mood. Are you happy? If not then think of what your action cause. Think of how you can make your reactions cause better reactions instead of worse. Think that if the US didn't react to the happenings of last week. What would that show? That would show me that we are far above the lowness of physical hurt and even annihilation. It doesn't seem that we are though. Where are you? Tell me. Inspire me to write, make your reaction to this action, that is actually a reaction, cause me to react in a positive way. I am hoping that because I write these positive peaceful words that the direct reactions will be positive and peaceful. The reactions to your reactions may not be and that is when you have to sit down and think. I guess we always have to think. Peace. Love.

Sept. 22 2001

Is it just me, or is everyone else ready for something new and different, something a little more real. Don't get me wrong, I love life. I love the falseness of it, I love how people can get by not knowing anything or subscribing to anything or having any kind of ideals, I love that people can scoff at each other and be hypocritical, I love it when someone tells me something and then either doesn't come through or does the opposite, I love it all. I love it so much that I think that it may be the time, right now, for us to change the way we look at things. Change them to the extent that we don't really even know what we are saying or looking at anymore. I would love it if someone anyone would be happy right now. And if you are, that is amazing. If you aren't well, I don't know why. I think that with the knowledge of the singularity that everything happens for a reason and everything always works out perfectly. Because of that I am rarely feeling down or out of the picture, feeling like everything is wrong or no one likes me. I usually am thinking positively and definitely of the future. I am thinking of good times and later days and I cannot let any of the pain or destruction going on around me or within me affect my resolve, I cannot let fear overcome my being. Can you?

Oct. 20 2001

I guess every now and again I get to thinking and I am always happy on the outside and sinking deeper and deeper into depression on the inside. I think it is my brother, he has this idea of how people are supposed to be, they are supposed to be beautiful meat eating fake people and he attempts to make me that person and when I am not he attaches weights to my clouds and brings them down. So I met this girl at a party and she was totally cool and I really thought that we could have something together. Turned out wrong. See we talked and worked out our intentions for a relationship of any kind and I haven't had a significant girlfriend for three years, I was all about lets be boyfriend girlfriend, kiss and eventually have sex and it would be great. After the first night I brought her to my house my brother kept asking me why I didn't feel the honeydew or get the pooter (his words) and I told him that it isn't what I am about, I like to work with people and how they feel, if a girl came up to me and asked to have sex with her and I was attracted I would. If a girl I am attracted too asks to chill out and take it slow, I will. I respect people. But my brother sees it as a sign of weakness if you don't sleep with a girl within the first 48 hours of knowing her, so immediately he take sit upon himself to try to either get himself laid or me laid...I haven't figured out which. And everything has just gone to shit. That is just one instance, he tries to fight me all the time and I wont. And well, it just cant stand him and I hope at least a few other people can sympathize sibling rivalry.

Oct. 23 2001

So, I put up that link to my online journal because I wanted to post the month of August 2000 and up until I started the Xanga journal. I have been writing more and more in my notebooks than online because I like the hardcopy, it makes me feel like I actually have something, rather than the knowledge that it is there. I am trying, though. And thanks to all of you that come here and make me feel better, it is a real boost. It is just good to know that there are people out there that agree with me. I believe that the people that leave positive comments are totally honest, because why would you lie to someone on the internet? I mean why wouldn't you just not comment. You know? So I am getting happier and happier as time progresses and eventually I may even be a right person...but that is a long way off. Peace. Love.

Dec. 24 2001

I finally realized what it is that I don't like about the holidays, and I now know the reason that I have stayed away from this area for so long. And, I know why I am leaving and not coming back for some time. I have definitive proof now and I just got it tonight. The reason is my brother. So, he tells me he hates his life because he is an alcoholic so I stick my neck out for him and introduce him to some of my AA friends and what does he do?? He ends up dicking them over and drinking within a week of telling me how he is going to die if he keeps up the way he is. So, that slides also, he wanted to quick smoking but he couldn't do it unless I quit too. So we both quit, again for about a week...for him at least. I feel much healthier about myself but am growing more and more dismayed about my brother each day. The other week he said that if he drinks at night he gets up better in the morning, guess who didn't go to work the next day, but said to me (again) that he cannot handle life with the bottle. But the same time he cant handle life without the bottle. And it is an ongoing struggle, a constant downward trajectory that I have to watch helplessly. I do my best to help him, I really do. I mean, I don't believe in chemical dependency so naturally it doesn't affect me. I also don't believe in phobias or schizophrenia either, and because of that I am not affected. I know people that are and I believe that they are troubled but I think most people want drugs to try to subdue life and help them get through. Those people are fucking pussies. Sorry, I don't like talking that way...they are weak, face life, it is yours and it will be here everyday until you die. Speaking of death, and why I cant be here anymore, is because I cannot watch someone so close to me destroy their life. For awhile he sucked me in and I was drinking every night but then I said, look at myself I am a mess forget about it. I have about one beer a week with my friends now. Tonight my brother neglected to come with me to my mom's house for Christmas eve because he wanted to attempt sexual relations with one of our cousins. Good thing Jerry is based out of Chicago, huh? So I cant stand it. We were talking today about the significance and similarity between Sublime and Nirvana musically. He likes Sublime but not Nirvana and I explained why they are both similar and amazing for music. They were both seminal bands that busted barriers and brought a new style to the forefront to define a generation. And, both of their lead singers committed suicide. He said that and OD isn't suicide, and I think it is just as well, because Bradley knew very well the risk he was taking every time he rolled up his sleeve. Just as Kurt understood what a shotgun in your mouth will do. And I sort of said bluntly to him that he is leading to the same fate. I think that is why he is getting particularly shitfaced tonight he cannot deal with the truth I lay on him. So I gotta get away. And at Nanas house tonight everyone had heard that I was planning to go away again and they wondered where and when and they were all glad that I was back. And I realized that they wouldn't miss my brother through death as much as they miss me across the country. I just wish he would wake up and deal with his problems. Good talking to those that still read. Peace. Love. and happy holidays!

Jan. 18 2002

Hi. So I was thinking again. Crazy. (That is the only way to start, I think...) I kind of wan to go to a doctor an be diagnosed with some sort of sickness, just so when every gets angry with me for being the way I am I can blame the illness. I think that may be the only way to get through this life. I have been reading this book abut the strange habits of past geniuses, I am not saying I am a genius, far from it. But, one of the main points is "to be great is to be misunderstood" there are only a few people that can really understand me and it is frustrating to say the least. It would be so much easier to say I have a sickness instead of trying to explain myself. I have/had a friend named Tiffany, she had a very good upbringing in a wealthy family, she got to be diagnosed. The doctor gave her all sorts of reasons to give up and to back down. During the time I lived with her I tried to get her off medication in an attempt to unlock her true genius. It didn't work, she ended up throwing me out. Once she got back on her meds I was allowed back in. The point is that because she got diagnosed and drugged she didn't have to be great (even though her background showed great potential). I feel that I should be doing something more productive and more conducive to my ultimate goals. But I have hit a brick wall and after trying to climb over it I have decided to wait for the rain to deteriorate it. It is intensely maddening, however, to sit on a problem that one should be able to solve. That is why I want to be diagnosed (also, I really like head doctors, I long for the day I get to go to one...). Eventually, I will get up and walk around the wall. Hopefully I am not worn out by the time I get to other side. Peace. Love.

Jan. 26 2002

I have seen the Royal Tenenbaums twice. Each time it makes me wonder so much. It is such a great movie. I think that what brings it together best is the soundtrack, when Margot gets off the bus and Nico's These Days starts playing, my heart melts. And when Stephanie Says comes when Richie and Royal are on the rooftop, oh my god. It brought a tear to my eye last night. A song about a girl who feels outside of life and wants to die, it is so beautiful. It makes me not want to be where I am. I don't say here, because I think it would make me want to not be wherever I was. It adds an unnecessary sense of urgency to impending plans. I don't even know what I am talking about anymore. Peace. Love.

Feb. 17 2002

Musical Memories Segment There was a single released in either 99 or 2000 by a band called Fifteen. The song was "Survivor" and the b-sides were "Another Year" and "MRR". These are my memories of that single. I remember when I first heard this, I lived in Olympia and worked at Target, it was just after Steve got there. He had actually brought the single and turned me on to it. I would take it to work and blast it because I felt that it brought up great issues that need to be discussed and brought out. Survivor is about child abuse, domestic violence, incest, rape, alcoholism, all kinds of things that are kind of kept under raps by good Christian families. Jeff Ott sings mostly in first person as if these things actually happened to him (and they very well might have because there are other things in the song that portray him). One girl at Target confronted me about playing this challenging album in the workplace. I explained to her that I am an abrasive person and I will scratch whatever surface I am currently on...that surface was Target. So be it. Anyway, I never stopped playing it and she never won. I think I might have opened one or two eyes there. (Oh, and the chorus is borrowed from an 80's song whose title escapes me.) The next song is Another Year, which explains how great it is to just survive. And it goes over the harshness of California, it may seem like the most beautiful place, but from this song and personal experiences, I know just how hard it can be. The line "mother earth father sky I am the intersection of you both, I am union" it is nearly tearjerking when he sings it. And this is considered punk rock. The final song is MRR. An abbreviation for Maximum RocknRoll. This songs severs all ties that Jeff Ott and Fifteen ever had with MRR. MRR sold them out because Fifteen was trying to change the world and MRR was just trying to be punk rock. In the early days of Fifteen MRR was one of their best allies, but through real life, this song shows how bonds break down as corporations and power take over all aspects of life. Check this stuff out. Peace. Love.

Feb. 21 2002

I guess I don't even really know what life is about anymore. I always thought I would be happy. And I most usually am. But I had a trip scheduled for early July that would send me back to Paris and I would live there for awhile being happy. But it is so hard to leave people that you meet and grow with and love. And I also thought about how l am not very pleased right now being so immersed in popular life, l think that instead of submersing myself into the same (except in a foreign language) l should try to get back to the reality that I so love, wilderness. I am thinking that that would be best for me is a big forest that l can go to and walk inside and not leave for a few months. That is what l think would be the most beneficial in my continuing happiness. l just don't feel 100% compatible with mainstream life and it seems so much easier to just be in a forest where my primary concern is survival. Out here in these plastic world l don't even need to have a main concern, all I need to do is not ask questions and distort my mind. l think, l have to think that there is a little more to life than that. If I don't then all is pretty much lost, I mean it is so easy to just waste away in front of the TV that a person doesn't really need anything else. I think that I do. And I think that I should get what I feel I need, as others should do. I don't think anyone should settle, because your life is all you have get what you deserve for it. Blah blah blah, I guess I am just incoherently rambling right now and because of that I make no sense. Which is something I have to deal with because these ideas that were once so prevalent inside me are now like hot flashes, if I don't jump on them when I have them I may never have the opportunity. I don't know...

Feb. 25 2002

I am in Indianapolis for the week on convention. We got in last night my brother my father his wife and me. We went to the hotel bar had a few drinks then we left to get dinner and went to the Old Spaghetti Factory downtown. 45 minute wait, s we went to the bar and had four or five drinks, made friends with the bartender and I invited her out with us for when she got off of work. So we went across the street to Jillian's to bowl. It was a nice place we had about three more drinks and left for the Slippery Noodle. The oldest bar in Indiana. Very cool blues bar live band every night. Amberlee (Indiana, I know) was going to meet us there. We had another three drinks before she showed up, with friends. Before we left there (when they closed) we probably had another six drinks. I was pretty drunk before we left. Seeing double and everything. So we invited everyone back to our hotel and had a hotel party. I had another three drinks before I passed out. It was a rough and crazy night with my family in which my Dad expressed that he was gay and some gay guy tried to sleep with me. Crazy. That was my first night in Indy. I don't think I can handle an entire week of this. It is just not my scene.

Mar. 7 2002

Crazy past few days. This girl I sort of knew in Olympia wrote me an email and I wrote her back, if I could title it it would be "an inquiry into future". And then my ex-girlfriend Kelly from over four years ago emails me totally out of the blue, I hadn't even thought of her for over a year, and I wrote her back I would title that "gone but not forgotten". And I emailed my ex-roommate tiffany kind of out of the blue and that would be titled "past pertaining to future". I only titled one the way I would have liked to, but hey. And now I have to go... --

Suicide is Illegal

In 1976 a brilliant songwriter/singer committed suicide—his name was Phil Ochs. He spoke out about the atrocities of Vietnam and the American government always searching for a way to renew faith in this system, this atrocity. He wrote against mind control government, racism, police brutality, censorship, etc. He was anti-law. He did not agree with the way American government could just walk into another country and attempt to show them the light with guns in their hands and murder on their mind. He did not agree with the white supremacy of the American government, or countries in general. He was a true believer in truth—I think. He wrote about all of the bad things that the government thought it could do precisely because it was the government, disregarding the people it ruled. Suicide could be more beautiful than the way the government treated him because of his views, because of his personal freedom. Suicide is illegal. We have all read "1984" and we all know who Big Brother is—and none of us would like to see that reality, correct? Well, aside from the dreary image the book created we may already be there, except our house has new vinyl siding. A main theme in the book was thought control; any thought to end Big Brothers reign meant the end of your life. History was altered and the truth was non-existent, free will was taken away and privacy was illegal. If someone in that reality were to think of suicide, they would be altered so they could function correctly in whatever ministry they were employed. Gin flowed rather freely, in an attempt to shut down the factions of the mind that housed thought of change, in an attempt to evolve life into Big Brothers view of perfection, where he would be endlessly enamored as the saviour of the WORLD. This life is far from perfect, but while we still hold on to some rational thought, let us review some law. Suicide, the act of ending ones own life, is illegal. Phil Ochs, finally, at the end of his life became a criminal in the eyes all who agreed with the American government. In his life he spoke out about governmental atrocity in an attempt to return power to the individual and preached unity in an attempt to create beauty in life. This obviously opposes the governmental view of rule and law. If the people ruled themselves and everyone were happy and beautiful, autonomous, no longer would the government and its henchmen be needed, but suicide is illegal. Rule and law directly oppose peace and freedom. If the government can take away the freedom of ones will, then the government is parallel with the outlook proposed in "1984". One that opposes the oppression proposed by a government is obviously going to live a tormented life as they are battling for their freedom throughout all of it—once they are overpowered they would sooner be dead than complacent. Laws are enacted in an attempt to remove freedom from the sphere of being and when that happens we will be lost as well and we will be mindless machines mooing for the man. I do not agree with suicide on the whole as justification of freedom. I do not walk around with a picket sign that reads "Commit Suicide, Fuck the Law", I use the example to illustrate the point that law will one day overtake all of our freedoms. If we wish to become free, we must organize and peacefully protest our views in an attempt to sway popular majority away from the blindness that governments use and command our lives as we wish. The longer we wait to voice our true opinions to the majority the sooner our freedom is foiled. Peace Love Autonomy

Mar. 8 2002

Well, Daniel, it breaks down like this: My name is Brian and I am the founder of the PAAEP. I cooked up this crazy scheme when I lived in NY that if people could associate autonomy (anarchy) with equality and peace it could pave the way for a new politico mindframe. The mindframe being that the politicos aren't needed and the constituents of a nation would fare better without a ruling class. So I woke up in the middle of the night after I had decided that it could never work and rethought it. I wrote it on my wall so I could write it all down in the morning. I never officially wrote it all down, but I did talk to a few people and gather insight and decided that the feasibility of this project was low, but worth a shot. I thought that it had to be done and if no one else would do it, I would step to the plate. So I called on along time comrade of mine who was living in Chicago at the time and he came out to NY with me and he immediately backed it up and became the second member, the second messenger. And we decided that we should tour the country and tout these ideas. We went from NY to WDC back to NY and then southward through Ashville, NC Texas and all the way to LA then back to Chicago. We talked about it with people and promoted it, but much less than the original intent. But, I still get people that we talked to wondering what has been happening. After we stayed in Chicago for awhile I moved to Olympia WA to see what I could do up there. It is a hot bed of activity, highly political, very green and I decided to become vegan. I thought, "hell, if I am fighting against the oppression of humans that are animals I shouldn't oppress other animals in the process". After awhile my friend came out to see me in WA and ended up staying. We lived there for about another nine months and everything was flowing, at one point we even had our own coffee shop (PAAEP Coffee Shop) where we hosted NA meetings and chess tournaments and held political and ideological discussions through the entire night. Then Steve, my friend, left for CA on his bicycle. Another stunt to try and fire up the PAAEP. I was in Oly and decided that I should be on the road so I left the coffee and hitched a ride to San Francisco to meet Steve. From there we rode our bicycles into Santa Barbara (about 500 miles) and slept under trees on the coast for a few months before I came back here to the Chicago land area. You may be wondering why that history lesson is important to the PAAEP. Well, because the PAAEP is still officially Steve and I. He is sticking to word of month in CA and I am writing essays and emails out here. So the PAAEP is really just two guys hoping; although other people I have talked to have joined, the only two people I know of that are currently involved in it are the two of us. I am planning another tour this spring/summer. Possibly with a band that I got involved with out here, or maybe just trucking back to California. Who knows. The idea behind this association is that we don't have to plan out our future or know where we will be tomorrow because life is an open road and any attempt to restrict it is an attempt to destroy it. I am not about violence so I am not about destruction. I just think that if we as a world could step back and see the harm we are causing to ourselves and to our planet for petty purposes, then maybe things could get brighter. I don't know though. I mean, I am just a kid with an idea... Peace. Love.

Apr. 4 2002

Here we go. I lost my internet for awhile. Moni, you are pretty much the only person that reads this. I have been reading a very good book, I have read it once and started over right after I finished it. It is amazing. I want you to read it, I think that you would enjoy it. It is called "Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance" most people are turned away by the title. Don't worry. I have been buying copies for friends and giving them away, if you want me to send you a copy, well, you know the info I would need. It isn't a problem. And, if anyone else that I know (or at least feel that I know and would want to meet) reads this and would like a copy, talk to me. Peace. Love. --

Hmm. Amazing. For the last few years my good friends that I have met kept recommending this book to me. I kept saying no because of the title. After the first few chapters I had already set a frame for myself that I would have to read this book three times in succession, the first for an overview, the second for highlight all of the beautiful observations, and the third for highlighting all of the character development. I am on chapter seven for the second time right now. I couldn't tire of this book either. As I read it I see so many things that I read too fast the previous time because I didn't understand, and sometimes I even have the feeling of reading it before but not remembering it at all, kind of like the way he was in the book. I know the reason that people recommended this book to me, because I was searching for this clarity too, but I had nothing to base it on and now I have some sort of platform, some goal I can reach and hang out at for awhile before I ascend further. But I don't really know, because the things I say now aren't exactly the things I will do tomorrow. I make big plans to do things, and over time they mutate into other things, sort of subdirectories of the thing I wanted to do and I become overwhelmed. And usually I either end up getting little done and racking my brain or getting a little something done and then coming up short on the next step. I am learning so much from this book though. I really am.

Apr. 5 2002

I wonder what a person has to do to be considered an artist. I just got back from a show, just the regular band that I run sound for and I consider them artists. They make music that I cannot make and it sounds good. That is artistry, but towards the end of the show we had to turn it down and the bass player who was running mostly through his amp instead of the board didn't think he had to turn his amp down. The music was overpowered and after the next break we explained that he had to turn it down because it was sounding bad in comparison to the rest of the music. So he turned his amp off and I had to try to run him through the board, but nothing came out. And I wondered if that was true artistry, because art should be free flowing and not forced. Sometimes I consider myself an artist, but all I do is send packages to people with art like things on them and usually the person that gets them takes it the wrong way and never talks to me again. Maybe I am an artist, just a bad one. When I lived in NY I had paint and canvas and stretchers and I painted, I considered that art. Too bad it didn't survive, I liked it. So, now that a few other people have gotten into reading this, I wonder what it takes to be an artist?

Apr. 14 2002

So, the question of artistry is parallel to the question of quality in the book. I wanted to know if it was in the eye of the beholder and could be changed at any moment or if there was a pattern to be considered art or artist. By pattern I basically mean if there is some unspoken set of guidelines and so many have to be met to be considered art. I think back to Basquiat and his art and while I love what I see and what it stands for (the unseen), I don't think that his art would be widely considered great if he wasn't a young black artist in the 80's with the momentum he had behind him. I guess it is circumstantial. So to be considered an artist is circumstantial to a persons surroundings. I guess that is the quick conclusion that we have come too. And Christine thinks that I am art, which is part of the "crazy". I wonder what circumstances point her to me as art? And the rest, the majority, of the "crazy" was for Amanda. I didn't think she would ever talk to me again. But, she comes on here and says I have a soft floor and she likes the art in my basement. If you read this, Amanda, next time you come over I can show you the art in my room. I didn't have time to clean in there so it was sort of a mess. Now it is nice. And we'll see what goes from there. And a out me being considered art, people used to say Andy Warhol was art. When I lived in NY (I talk about it often...it was a great formation period for me) my neighbour, Mike Prendergast, was considered art. He was a verifiable artist...studio and everything. But he himself was a part of the art because it wouldn't be understood unless you had talked too or met Mike. He is art to me and his art is also great. But it is different circumstances. I guess that is that, any comments?

Apr. 15 2002

I was asked to write more. Tough to do. Usually what happens is I get in front of the computer and everything original and meaningful is immediately sucked out of me. Then I start to write things on the computer and after writing and deleted about four times I realize that I have nothing important to say. Contrarily, when I sit down with a pen and some paper, things flow right out of me. It isn't always good, actually it usually isn't good at all, but I like to see my thoughts on paper whatever they may be. And the people that I show that kind of stuff too never get it and they just say, "neat" or something else that turns me away from showing that meaningful writing to other people. But it doesn't really get to me. Whenever someone's seems remotely interested I bust out with old journals and books of poetry. I start to explain and get all worked up and in the end the same result. "neat". But one day someone will understand why I get so worked up and why it means something to me and that will be a truly special person. I guess this is somewhat meaningful, sort of an insight to who Brian is, but this just scratches the surface. peace. love.

Apr. 16 2002

So I guess I will use this space for explaining. I am pretty tired right now and dirty...I just got home from work. That is just a little bit of foreshadowing if this seems to ramble about nothing. Or maybe it is just explanation and I just don't know what foreshadowing is. Anyway, I call this nowhere to lose. That is about disappointment. I try to run my life without expectations. It is a tough thing to do, and that is why I don't mention it. It is kind of like quitting smoking, if you tell everyone then they start to ask you and soon enough you are back on the stick. If I run around and tell people I don't have any expectations they could say "so you don't expect anything about blah blah blah" and then in a persons mind expectations start to form because you think about it more and more. With nowhere to lose, it is kind of like a way to love life, perhaps it is some oriental form of thought where there is nothing bad, there is no loss. Because from any situation a person will gain something. Amanda, when I say as an afterthought that I take rejection well, that is more of a "put your mind at ease" thing, so you don't have to feel as chopped up when you talk to me. You are an amazing person and I don't want to mess up a friendship that could has amazing possibilities. My brother who is totally about going out and finding girls that he can fuck thinks that my world view is horrible. I really don't want to go out and "fuck" people. I want to get to know people and see what happens. Today he wanted to know all the details about my date. I told him and he thought that was the most horrible thing in the world. He thinks it is crazy that I am nervous about kissing a girl when he can go out tonight and be having sex with someone other than his girlfriend. Forget about that. I don't let his world view permeate and taint mine. Whatever, enough about my brother. So all in all, what I am saying is that the way I word things isn't the best. I leave out things that I think should be obvious let the explanation about taking rejection well, but in reality someone might take it the wrong way and think that I am some sort of...I don't even have an adjective to describe what I am thinking. I guess a hand movement would be best here, but tat doesn't transfer mediums very well. Okay, look at that, I am typing my hands off, contradicting what I previously wrote. Crazy. Well. I am going to take a shower now and go read my book at the starbucks coffee shop and lose myself for awhile because that seems like a good thing right now...peace. love. --

It is hard for me to write this without addressing the few people that read this. It is easier for me to just use this space to talk to people, sort of like an open conversation. But I will try to write this as if I didn't know who would read it. It will be a sad reflection. So I tried to call Amanda tonight and she wasn't there. I left a message with who was probably her dad. He asked if he could take a message. I like it when people ask that. Makes me think that they care. I left the message "tell her that Brian called". About an hour later I wanted to call back and modify the message. I wanted it to also address the issue that I wanted her to call me back. I don't know if that is understood or not? But after I called I sat reading a few things. Mostly my old journal (I say old when it is actually my current one too but since I started to write on the internet (technology, woo hoo) I sort have stopped writing in it). I love reading it I can read it and in my mind go back to the actual situation and truly feel like I am there. I wish I still had my old old one. I am not exactly sure what happened to it, I think I gave it to rob in NY. But, honestly I don't know. I have it all typed on the internet somewhere. So it doesn't really matter, but the original is better. And I am still sort of in the dark about the Amanda situation. I don't really know how things are going, I need to keep a line of communication open and that isn't always the best thing for me. I usually get caught up reading a book and only stir when someone calls me then I look at the time and say I will stop after this chapter, but I don't and the next thing I know the sun is setting behind the trees and I feel bad. I feel like I should've done something more chivalrous than read my book. Maybe one day I will get my head out of the clouds and realize what I am supposed to know, that the real world is the greatest thing and I should just put down my books and be a normal 21 year old boy. I should party all night, go out to bars and meet girls that are not at all interesting and then try to get in their pants. Get slapped a couple times and score a couple times. But that life just isn't...I could never really picture myself that way. I have tried, honestly, I have inebriated myself enough and know that I would just laugh myself into a stupor and be sent away if I ever tried to do anything like that. I guess it goes back to the only thing in my life that I consider a real relationship with a girl. She was my best friend and then we started dating and now she will never talk to me again. It is a failure of mine that I have set out never to recreate because I don't ever want to go through the pain of losing someone I loved so much again. So I play it safe and let things go as they will, I don't pressure anything too much and do my best to stay happy. and I am doing well. I have had a few flings since then and it has been enough to keep me going, keep the hope alive that I will find that one girl one day. But nothing that I would really want to get into, no girl that I truly want to get to know and maybe now, with Amanda, things will change. *hopefully* Okay, so that is my thing there. the little blog where I try to write without knowing who is actually reading this. I think it went well. peace. love.

Apr. 17 2002

So I am going to write like I did yesterday, it was fun and I was wrong about it. I had said it would be a sad reflection, but it reads very well... I talked to Amanda last night on the computer. crazy. so she has a boyfriend. and it reminded me of what happened with Rachel, although I cant see through this computer, I felt that she was having a hard time talking to me at first. just like Rachel, but a quick reversal of subject and then talk in underlying forms for a while and the situation is alleviated. I don't know what I am talking about. Anyway towards the end of her conversation, I had asked her how she felt. she said like a biographer. because I had given her a link to my old NY journal. which I also found this morning in my room and there is at least a month that isn't entered and if it were it would be better. anyway, so I asked her you know, what’s going on, when do you want to go out again. and it was horrible because when I left her car the other day she had told me the days she works and I swear she said Wednesday Saturday and Sunday. I was wrong, it was Thursday. but she couldn't go out with me tonight anyway...she is going to spend that time with her boyfriend. yeah, it caught me off guard too. because I had been talking to her for awhile and it had never been mentioned. whatever. I felt bad. no, actually I felt like a bad old man sent it to break up a high school relationship. and things like that need to run their course so both parties can gain the experience and knowledge to move on. What am I doing sticking my head in? But pf course I was biased, I said something about her needing to talk to her boyfriend and yada dada and got off the situation, because what do I have to say about it? honestly. I cant go in there with both guns drawn saying "hoo-ha drop everything for I am here". This isn't the wild west. (and again I don't know where I am going with these tangents). Anyway, I just hope that she can work things out with her boyfriend and then be friends with me. I guess I will have to talk to that girl at starbucks that has a crush on me. actually, sometimes I think they all do, but that is probably just my overdeveloped sense of imagination and the starbucks coffee organization ordering them to be nice to people. I don't know. I think beejay will be disappointed, because he liked the name scheme with the three Amanda’s as much as I did, but Mary will be okay. and honestly, who am I kidding. I probably wont talk to Mary from starbucks. I would feel like such an ass. I mean if you work at a place and a guy comes in there a lot does that give him the right to start hitting on girls there. and in addition, I don't even think I know properly how to hit on girls. everything is just being mismatched and my life is full of disarray. perhaps I should've just let this bubble float away...peace. love. --

okay, so that style of writing didn't go quite as planned. I had hoped it would be like if I were writing about someone and they were secretly reading it to know what I thought and then in conversation they would drop hints that they were reading it and it would take me by surprise because I thought no one read that, or maybe they are just so in tune with my soul that they don't even need to read, they just know... So that is what I wanted it to be like, but because I knew it was being read, and even stated that, it was taken the wrong way. So I need to go back to writing like I know it is going to be read...and maybe start another one that would have to be stumbled upon... I wont do that, I don't know why I am even saying that. Whatever, time to start over. So. Hi everyone that may read this, my name is Brian. I have lead my life the way I wanted and caught a lot of flak for it, but I keep going. I live in Griffith IN, Moni and Amanda are the only people that read this. (Stating the facts). I am 21 years old and I have wished since the day I turned 18 that I was still 17. Because that was a great year for me. I like to meet people and be honest with them right off the bat. Like this, ready? I cant think of anything honest to say that is interesting (and doesn't make me sound pompous or is girl-related). Anyway, I made some mistakes with this site, I tried things I shouldn't have and wrote things I shouldn't have, all because of convenience. Okay okay, since I started writing this I have been interrupted by two phone calls and the dishes I don't know really now where I am at, but I know where I want to go so I will just get there and get away. Okay, Amanda, I don't want you to feel odd about anything written the past few days when I was writing like I didn't know you were reading. That wasn't a smart move and from now on if I have anything important to say I guess I should keep it between you and I. Moni, I don't want you to feel left out. So here is a good question I had been thinking about. What five records define who you are as a person and why?
1. Energy-Operation Ivy. When I first had this cd, was when I started coming into my own being and I can associate so much of my past and current way of thinking with this record that it is like a part of me.
2. Rancid-..and out come the wolves. This is a great record that (ironically) details all kinds of things that I was going through when I first got and doesn't seem to stop, from girl problems (then, not now...that I know of) to what I would do with my future.
3. The Doors- self titled. I think I got this cd when I was like 13 or 14. It opened my eyes to so many new things that my white trash upbringing couldn't fathom. I brought me to all kinds of other bands, movements, concerts, Abbie Hoffman, Chicago 68, Woodstock, Arlo Guthrie, Pete Seeger, and it also gave me a new set of thoughts, peace love freedom. Something that has stuck.
4. Velvet Underground- Box set, basically everything. Because their musical stylings and their music started me into art and one of the biggest comparisons of my art is to the music of VU. A standard I guess.
5. Half Japanese- greatest Hits. I got this double disc (my first double) from my uncle when I was fourteen. Hated the music at first. Could stand only one song, but like VU they are a creative force that keeps me striving because they never gave up when they weren't accepted. They searched. and so am I.
There we go. Peace. Love.

Apr. 18 2002

So, I guess when I am asked to write more, I really can do it. Amanda asked for more and now I think it may be too much. So I am going to chill. With what I gave her to read it should be plenty to keep her going until we see each other again. peace. love. --

So I for the past couple of days I have been researching my old journals. Very precisely and I am seeing a transformation. It is honest and scary. I recall the book and about Phaedrus and how he was going back to relive his past and instead of just piecing things together he slowly emulated that old person and before he knew it became that person again. I think I used to be crazy. Bona-fide insane. And I am not anymore. Because the transgression of thoughts in those books point to it and I just see and think much clearer now. If I were how I was when I originally wrote that stuff, in the thick of the craziness were I was talking about some very odd things that I don't even like to talk about, I think I would be committed. But now it just feels like that is a different person. I don't know. I think that when you are reading something that you truly enjoy you pick out similarities in your life and compare them and in effect sort of assume the situation in the book. I think I may still be a little crazy and I just need to get on with what I was doing in the books to become full blown again. And I am writing this because I wanted to copy something from Santa Barbara and show that craziness but it doesn't work out of context and even in context it is hard to work because right now I don't want to be construed with that old person. So I am going to hit some garage sales right now and then come home and read a little more and see if I cant find something that makes sense...Peace.Love. --

I am hitting all kinds of bricks. For sure. I was working on the art in the basement today, it is coming along. I don't know how well, because I feel that true artists can look at their canvas and know the progression, see it in their mind and then do it. Well, I can see it but I cant really do it. It is getting sloppy down there. Mainly because I see one thing, do it, and then not like it, cover it up and continue. So it is half done, it is sort of like a shrine to the singularity. But I cannot make a connection. I am up in the air about connecting the borders to the center, spirically, and thus creating the spiral to the singularity that is drawn elsewhere. I have to make a cd now. Peace.Love.

Apr. 21 2002

Lets take a moment to think. I did a lot of thinking this weekend. People are supposed to go to colleges and inebriate themselves, meet girls and score. Well, I did inebriate myself, I did meet girls, but I did not score. No, because I see no point in it, although I don't know from experience I can look at the borders and just know that a lasting relationship is so much better than lust. I really didn't like one girl, because she told me that she make any guy do whatever she wanted. I proved her wrong. And I didn't like it because I was just there to have fun, and she wanted to take advantage me. Hah. I never thought I would write something like that. But seriously, a lot of people think I am gay. It doesn't bother me, I have taken a long introspective look at myself to see if I was gay. It didn't happen this weekend, it started a couple of years ago and it hasn't really ended, but it is pretty much wrapped up (in that category at least). When I lived in Olympia and Santa Barbara I slept with my best friend every night and I would look at that at gauge my feelings. I love that guy, he is one of the most impressive and amazing people I have ever had the pleasure to spend quality time with. And sometimes I would have feelings, I would think to myself, you know, what if I kissed him, does that show love? I think most every real person has those thoughts. I may be wrong. But if I didn't, I wouldn't be exploring every option, every fathomable relation that two people could have. Of course I thought about it. But eventually I realized that wasn't what I wanted, and now what he wanted either. I guess I knew it all along, but I had to explore that facet of my mind. I probably shouldn't be writing this it makes me sound weird. But, whatever. So yeah, people think I am gay because I am considerate and passionate and true to myself and what I really want and I laugh at those people. Not only do I do it to myself, but to them too. Because I know in my head that those people are only saying that because they don't understand true emotion and when people are confronted with things they don't know they criticize it and bash it and make it dead or dying, so they don't have to think about it. Culture seems to have a way and destroying real thought and replacing it with a screen in a living room telling people what is right and wrong, what emotions should be felt and what things should be talked about. I think I have broken every rule that had been laid down. And maybe a few that haven't been. I think it is sad. It makes me want to cry sometimes, just because it is so hard to find people to connect with in a true way because people are always so scared about what others think about them. It is like a virus, like AIDS, because these negative cells take over everything positive and true, destroying the path to being real. I had a talk about this with the guy I drove back with, because he went through a similar transgression. And it was great, because he can tell that I am honest enough with myself and others to say embarrassing things and things I am not proud of and do it in a way that promotes growth and learning. (As my thoughts are not straight on this it becomes a jumbled entry and where you thought it would end it keeps on going...) And there is nothing bad about being gay either. When people ask me if I am gay, instead of a straight answer I ask if they would have a problem if I were. Of course they say know, but that question, no matter what my true answer is, always puts doubt in their head and hopefully makes them think about it themselves. Think about it hard, whether or not they would have a problem with someone because of sexual orientation. That is a stepping stone. Oh, and the way I tell people that they can get the impression that I am gay and me not really be gay is this "I am totally okay with my sexuality and who I am to be able to do the things I do...are you". That is true too, because a couple of years ago I wasn't sure about it, I thought about it, hell, when I was in NY I had a gay friend named Matt Damon (not the actor) he was a very good looking guy and he would come up to my apartment to smoke weed in my room. I rarely smoked with him, but the times that I did, I said to myself that if he made a move on me I would go with it. Now I wouldn't, now I know. I know without a doubt that my sexual preference is girls. And because of my experiences I can say that without a doubt. And I usually have a hard time recounting the Matt Damon story to people because they all look at me with disbelief and a little horror shock fright all these bad looks. When I am just a free-flowing entity that is unsure about the anomalies of life and that I want to know who I am. I don't want to conform to who I am wanted to be, but truly find who I am. And I think I am doing well. And the other thinking that was going on in Bloomington (finally I can step away...because it is rough even typing it. people think about you differently), I was watching a DIGA band for hours. They were in a park downtown and I was mesmerized. If I could keep rhythm I would've joined. They played for at least five hours. I got there in the middle of it, there were already a good 7 jimbaes going. I stayed for two hours walked back to the apartment (about an hour and a half) and then came back an hour later and they were still going at it. But while I was watching these thoughts about how the sub-cultures society sweeps under the rug kept creeping on me. And I could see it everywhere, this mass movement in a new direction. People from all walks of life joining together to feel the beat and the rhythm, to groove on each other and the world around them and it was truly beautiful. One of the most beautiful things I have ever seen. And I went into a record store and spent 100 dollars on vinyl I bought all different styles, VU, John Cale, Jad Fair, Yo La Tengo, Live, Beck, Propaghandi, Fifteen, and others. I was and am very happy. And now I am exhausted with typing. I hope I didn't rub anyone the wrong way, just what was on my mind. Peace.Love.

Apr. 22 2002

I have only seen a few plays in my life. I really like them, and I am going to talk about one in particular. It is called The Transfused. It was an independent play that took place a year and a half ago in Olympia WA. It was the brainchild of Nomi Lamm. That may not mean anything, but she is huge in Olympia. A typical Olympian, a feminist, a realist, a true person. I never had the chance to meet her, but I met other people in the play. Anyway, the play is about a group of people called the transfused they are treated like slaves and they work at the Corporation. They work all day for "the fix" which is a drug that keeps them in line and complacent. One of them decides to stop taking her fix and show that they can live without it. She tries to get the transfused to join her but they are scared and the corporation ends up killing the rebel. And other underlying things take place that I cant even put to words. I don't have the words to sum up that play, it aroused so many emotions in me that just thinking about it puts me right back in my seat on the balcony of the Capitol Theatre on the edge of my seat watching and taking in everything. It was a rock opera of sorts, the music was by Radio Sloan and Rachael Carns of the Need and Donna Dresch of Team Dresch. It was great music they made a cd out of it and it can be gotten. If you come across it, get it. There might be a video too, I don't know. I just want to let everyone know culture comes in more ways than one and plays are a good way to grasp some. www.olywa.net/transfused/

Apr. 23 2002

Sometimes I don't know what to think anymore. When I first left for NY things were great, I could leave all of my past mistakes behind and all of the folly of growing up and start in a new place with one new friend and hope. I got out there and it was awkward, I had just gotten out of a long relationship that ended in a very wrong way and then Tiffany wanted me to just jump in and be her boyfriend. I just wanted to be friends, I wanted to chill out, cool off, whatever. Luckily she was very understanding and liked me for me and we were able to pull out a great friendship. After a few months I had made more friends and lived a pseudo-normal life. I still wasn't right inside, I still didn't know what I was doing, what I wanted, and most of all, I didn't know where to look for these answers. And the past started to creep up, I learned that you cant leave the past behind because it is a part of you and unless you severe off two limbs, you are always going to have that past. And I got scared, I felt all wrapped up inside. I felt that people could see my uncertainty and I started be nervous. I started drinking in NY. I had drank before that, but in NY I was 19 and able to go into bars. When reputable people say you are of age, you are. and that is that. I would go to the pub every night and have a pint of Guinness and write then walk up to the college and write some more. I did a lot of writing and should searching there because I didn't know what else to do. I started to get inside myself because previously I was mostly outside myself. Then I left NY, I did some cross country traveling and saw some great things. But I was still inside myself. It was hard for me to get outside of myself and make room for others. I was probably afraid of them finding what I had been looking for and then bribing me for it thus making it worthless. No one else can find you, you have to do it. After that trip was done and I was back in Chicago, I knew that if I stuck around too long I would give up and be stuck, so I bought a plane ticket packed two bags and was off for Olympia. Oly is a weird place because everyone is inside themselves searching. And it is very cliquey, hard to make friends because people only want to be friends with people that know themselves. In Oly I had a studio apartment with no furniture most of the time I lived there. I slept in the walk in closet and only had a radio and pots and pans. Very introspective period of time. I found myself there. But I had been looking for so long, I didn't realize and kept on going. That turned into San Francisco and the bike trip to Santa Barbara, where I became verifiably insane with a huge beard riding around talking to myself and writing insane entries in my journal because I had reached the inner me that I didn't want, a violent side of me that was full of hate towards the past. I had to get out of there. I did and came back to Chicago. It was a slap in the face trying to make amends with the past, trying to subdue that deep inner hate. And I am doing well with it. The only person that I really want to reconcile and I cant is that girlfriend I had that ended in a wrong way. That is a big reason why I have such a hard time with girls. I want total honesty, I don't want to do anything wrong or quickly for fear of destroying something new that could be beautiful. I am very timid. It isn't a side that many people see, my friends know me as a "life of the party" type thing, I get attention because that is what I want. I want that so that I don't have to sit and think about the things I used too. So I could have some sort of grip on reality. It shows in my old journals, when I was leaving SB I was writing about how I wanted to get away from where I was and just get back to sitting in front of a TV letting my thoughts go by unnoticed and sort of be in a drug induced state. I did that. I came back and embraced what I thought would help me. It didn't. Now I think that what I need is some sort of extra sensory affection. Someone that understands and I can sit and talk to all night in my room with just the red light on without fear of rejection. But there is that catch 22 hitting me in the face. I know what I need now, but because of that demon of the past I have to go through all sorts of field work to just be okay talking to a girl that I might like. And after that the light is so unbearably dim that it is almost hopeless. I don't want to disrupt anything or make anything bad, I don't want to meet a girl and break up her relationship for my own desires. That is not good, that is not going to sit well in my mind. I want everything to be right and stay that way. And I know that it wont, I know there are things known as the bumps in life that have to be dealt with, and that is okay. It is just the beginning, the take off that I have trouble with. And I will eventually work through it. How? I don't know yet, but I am thinking about it. And one day I will be truly happy in an all around way and I will be able to sit down and write the story that I told myself I came out here to write. Once I become right with myself, the inner me, then I can project it as a case study to work off of so other people will be able to gauge themselves, so they have a frame of reference. Because I know I am not the only one. And now is the time for that take-off too, it is spring and joviatrics are across the board. Everyone everything is starting new for the summer, and I will have to jump in the river and go with the flow until I get myself worked out. But I think I do well with keeping m self inside in public. Most people that know me don't really know this side of me, and it is because I cant tell them what the puzzle is going to look like until I finish it. Some have caught on and I tell them what I think it will look like and what I want it to look like and that kind of jazz, but for the most part it is just me in here putting pieces together slowly, and hoping. I hope that was truth enough for you. Have fun in Florida. Peace.Love. --

If you have ever read my "website", which is just my old NY/OLY journal, it might be noticed that a few months are missing. August and September 2000 are missing, but that isn't it, there are also just entries that I didn't type. Technically, I say they are missing because I lost the password and typing it all out was a brooding boring task that I would rather have off of my back. Honestly, I don't know why I never got to it. Probably because I don't understand what they say. What I meant when I wrote them. I am going to transcribe something from November 7 2000 that isn't part of the journal. We will see what this means... 11/7

The smell of bleach and pesticide in and airport bathroom at 4:30 in the morning is enough to make anyone sick. To make them want to leave and the stewards + esses only say "please come back" it is a fucked up contradiction, mirroring society. Just a contradiction. Being here was supposed to make my light turn from yield to go--and I was supposed to notice. I will be here, the uncertainty, for some time to come. And outwardly I embrace it, inwardly I see societal truth and popular vote. Just another contradiction. The contradiction is the root of American society this nation became America in a revolt against taxation without representation. It was only a short while after that the taxes started again, and on the level of decency, there is no such thing as a decent politician. (this is an update, anything parenthesized is an update...I think I am trying to say here that although the taxpayers were represented, their ideals and true meanings were not being played out...because of there being no one decent to represent the mass and sacrifice his own will for the will of others.) Contradiction. That doesn't even matter though, it is not the point; the point is uncertainty and prevalence (of the uncertainty). Or, at least, perception of the aforementioned. It relates to that old question: What is freedom, and are you alive? The answer is in the question and no one is asking. (meaning that the answer to that question lies in a persons actions after the question is asked. For example a person that is searching for freedom and to feel alive will ask the question and answer it themselves get what they feel they need and be happy). And in this lack of care uncertainty flourishes while the light of the singularity grows dimmer. (the singularity, that age old thing...that is another post another time. I will just say for now that it is bigger than god and smaller that a quant.) This early in the morning the businessmen live outside of Starbucks (I put the registered trademark symbol and I don't know exactly how to do it on the comp) like junkies outside the methadone clinic. They start thirty minutes or more before the place even opens, joking about their addictions--these are the people that vote for GWB today, because big business (is held above) personal welfare. When the wing of the plane hides the entire city of Manhattan, I know I am in the air. I know what is behind, always uncertain of the future. I lost my poetry book yesterday, my black book of new poems. It fell out of my pocket while I was passed-out on the train. It doesn't even bother me. I had an entire field of emotions mixing in my body after I noticed, but that faded. That is gone, the book is gone, I am gone. Don't look back, you'll see too much and blind yourself with memory and regret; look forward, through the dense fog I can barely see the seat back in front of me (referring to the fog in my mind), but I am certain there s something better ahead. That tattoo on my arm reveals my entire being and no one believes, sometimes I don't. I thought a lot about us invasion today, concocting fake blasts in my mind that used to be the UN, hearing code on the radio instead of weather, I thought it so much I wanted it (this is why it is all so weird). I guess I am not one with the singularity anymore, if I ever was, can a falling out like that occur? Is that de-evolution in progress or just my mind testing my strength. I simply must be destined for some sort of fame, a martyr or something--the stewardess just asked if I was in a band, and all through this trip I was congratulated and questioned: artist? singer? writer? activist? homeless person in the street is a better description than those and, relatively, they are all lies. (I had left to see an art show and all throughout it people were asking me which paintings were mine and a couple other people asked how my band was doing and I have never been in a band, and others asked me about the books and yadda dada). Welcome shoppers, it is now 11:am, we are on the road to Lake Wood. The fresh Washington air stings my lungs, because my receptacles have grown accustomed to NYC smog-air in only four days. And that is that. I guess it isn't anything much. But there is more of it and I don't know. I guess that is something for me to take care of at another time. Maybe I just need to read more. Peace.Love.

Apr. 24 2002

"and the wild dogs are hungry, and the wild dogs howl" that lyric keeps running in my head...I don't know why. The song that it is on is amazing. Maybe I just don't know what that is supposed to mean being tacked on at the end. Whatever. So a couple of months ago I started writing poems about all the people that have affected my life. I only got around to writing two, and then about three weeks ago I started writing one that is sort of like an epic, documenting all the accounts that have changed my life and detailing all the people that helped that process dedicating one five line prose to each. I probably got about twenty proses into it and then I haven't been back since. It is the damn rhyming scheme that I chose. I don't remember it now, but it is tough. Anyway, I wanted to transcribe one of those poems I wrote awhile back, it is about a girl named Alexandria...

Thinking of you
Memories fading past
Like an ice cube
Melting in the sun
Until in vaporizes
Postcards from a life that couldn't last
Always stamped w/ your name
A lock of hair and a picture of an angel
And we all know it was you
Times floated by
We never find the time
We never write
We never say hi
But I wrote this because I still think of you
Wishing I could've stopped the tears
Wondering what’s become of you

Yeah, Alexandria is a girl unlike any other. Because I never actually met her. She changed my life over the internet. It is very odd. See when I was seventeen she sent me an email with a picture and said that she had had a dream about me and asked if this was what I looked like. At the time the picture was rather accurate. I think she saw me at a show or something, but I don't know. She lived in Chicago and I lived thirty minutes away. We have still never met. When I lived in Olympia, three years later I caught up with her again on the internet and we became really good friends, calling once a week and writing twice a week. Talking on the internet constantly. We clicked. Before Steve came out to Olympia, he met her. Or rather she met him, he was at a show that her boyfriends band was playing and he was playing Frisbee with one of the band members. He had no idea (at the time I didn't even have any idea that her boyfriend was in a band) and this girl comes up and asks if he was Steve. I had never shown her his picture, just told her about him and from my description out of all the people she could come in contact with she picks him out. Amazing. We talked more and more we would talk on the phone for five hours whenever we talked. And we would send three page letters to each other. It was great. We both learned a lot. Ironically she met up with another acquaintance of mine, Pete. When I lived at my parents house Pete lived with me. We didn't get along very well because of house problems and then he joined the army and we just never talked. We didn't have anything in common, our paths shot in opposite directions. But she started talking to him and he used my good name to establish a working relationship with him and after that I was out of the picture. I don't know whatever happened, and I probably never will. But I still think about her. She is the inspiration for a number of my poems and if only because of that she will always hold a special place inside of me. Peace.Love. --

Before I left for NY I had been sort of bouncing around. Actually I had been bouncing around for about 8 months. I left the day of my birthday, 1999. In January of 1999 my girlfriend and I went to NY. That makes it sound too easy, I will try to paint the picture. So It was sometime in January and I had been up all night with Melissa, my girlfriend. We were planning on going to Cleveland the next day but hadn't told anyone or asked permission. We both lived with our parents then so permission wasn't always granted. It was about three in the morning, and I said why don't we just leave now and not tell anyone. She said okay, so we went to her house to get a few things then to mine. Coming home at three o'clock wasn't a big deal for me then, nothing was, I had pretty be without rules my entire life so whenever rules were attempted to me, they didn't stick well. Kind of like taping dirt. So I accidentally woke up my stepmother when I was coming downstairs and I was called in their room she asked what was up. I said I was going to Cleveland. She said no. She woke my dad and he said no (because she had said no) and then I said okay. Within ten minutes we were on the expressway. By around nine in the morning we were in Cleveland. No one really knew yet. My parents probably wondered but they didn't know for sure. We were going to go to the Rock n Roll Hall of Fame (not the original plan, but it was there and we really didn't have a plan). We parked in a parking building and I had to pee. I went behind a wall and peed. I don't know if you have seen the Seinfeld episode where that happens but it was something like that. I wrote a poem about it. Dallas and Detroit
Cleveland ROX
Piss on a stone and they call the cops
And that was that. Anyway, we went to the Hall of Fame and it was closed. Wasn't going to be open for a few more hours. And, it was expensive, like 15 bucks each. We had very little money. She asked if I wanted to stay and I said no, lets go to Niagara Falls. Niagara was only about four or five hours away (I think) and we took off. We got to Niagara and we couldn't find the falls. We could hear them everywhere but had no idea how to find them. I looked over one cliff and there was a little fall, but it wasn't the Niagara you see in Superman. It is the basis for my story whenever someone talks about Niagara. I say "Oh, Niagara, huh? Yeah, I have been there. Never seen the falls though, too hard to find." And then whoever hears it laughs and I am a funny guy. Anyway, we called people from Niagara, I think I called my Dad and no one was there and she called her parents and they didn't really care. Then we started away from Niagara and I said, Listen, we have a little money, lets go to NYC because we are in NY okay? We were on our way. We made it to just outside the city by around 11 or 12 (I am not for sure, but it was late) we parked at a McDonalds and made love in the car. I had never had sex in a car, and neither had she. It wasn't all that it was cracked up to be but it was fun. In the morning we went into the city, I had to do the driving. We had to pay all kinds of tolls, all tourists do (I found that out when I eventually lived there) and we went over a bunch of bridges and it was the only time I ever saw the Statue of Liberty. We never stopped in the city, just kind of fighting traffic to get through. Crazy, I know, I saw the Statue when we were driving into NJ (in the nine months I lived there I never even caught a glimpse of it), just an over the shoulder there it is look, after we had talked about our situation and such and realized we had eaten all the money on my credit card and there wasn't much money left on her gas card. We had barely enough money to eat for the way back. I wanted to go down to WDC again while we were out there, but it wasn't feasible. We decided to take 80 back and go through Gettysburg and Pennsylvania. Yeah and when we got to Gettysburg, it was nice. We walked through the graves and read the memorials in is such a nice place, very serene. And then we started driving again, made it to somewhere in Ohio and stopped for the night, I called my Dad and got a hold of my brother, he said that when I got back I was going to be kicked out, a lot of talk about what I was doing. Didn't let it phase me, I was having a great time. So we stayed in Ohio and the next day drove back into Indiana, I think we went to Chicago first and then back but I don't really recall. My Dad wasn't mad, no one seemed to care. It was a great three days. One of the best spontaneous trips I have ever taken. I was scared for about a month when no one mentioned about me being kicked out and after I brought it up it was over. I moved in with my Mom, broke up with my girlfriend and got a job in a plastics factory ( I had actually forgotten about this job until now). After two or three months of that, I quit and got a job selling magazines cross country door to door. That lasted about two weeks and I got kicked off the crew in Ohio. I came back and lived with my Dad again, although they had already given my room to my sister and I lived in her old room. it was gutted, just a mattress and that was pretty much all I had. I got a job selling things door to door again and after a few weeks of that I went to Dallas. Not as spontaneously, but still pretty spontaneous. I didn't have my own car then so I took one of my step moms. Stayed in Dallas for two weeks or so and came back to my job and moved into an apartment in Chicago. 18th and Halsted, two blocks south of downtown. It was a great place and cheap, the problem was that I still worked in Indiana and drove 80 minutes each day to get out and back. This lasted until August when my sub-lease was up and I had no job, very little money (about one hundred dollars) and no car ( I was still driving the one I took to Dallas). I packed everything that was mine in that car, told two or three people my plans. Went to my moms on my birthday (Aug 16) she gave me like 150 dollars to get me started and then went to my Dads for a scheduled birthday party. I was nervous because anyone could've walked out and saw the car packed with stuff and asked what was up. No one did. After the party I left to some girls house that I had met earlier in the day and she said I could stay the night with her. We fooled around, but nothing serious. I was kicked out around five in the morning by her dad and then I went to sleep in my friends van (without his knowledge, and ironically that same person is the one that ran me over about a year ago...albeit in a different van). When I woke up, I hit the road for NY. Three people knew I was going and I had some hope. Here is the sticky part, I had my stepmoms car and she nor my dad knew I was going to NY. I was basically stealing it. I got to NY after only one accident on the way and met Tiffany. A couple days later I called my Dad, said sorry I stole your car but I am in NY and I am not coming back. That was how I made it to NY. In November of 99 I bussed back to Indiana (only my brothers girlfriend knew I was coming, so it was a surprise) and had thanksgiving with them. It was nice. My mom cried. A couple days later I went back to NY and the rest is history. That is the sequence of events that hinged that eventual moving stage. That first trip to NY sparked a light in me and since then I have been places, Corpus Christi, Dallas, Fort Worth, Bryan, College Station, Houston, El Paso (all in Texas), WDC twice, Cleveland about six times, LA, Olympia, NY a few times, Santa Barbara, San Francisco, Asheville NC, Seattle, Portland, Las Vegas, Palm Springs, New Haven, Baltimore, Denver, every coastal city between San Fran and Santa Barbara, Sacramento, the Olympic Rain Forest, Omaha, Phoenix, and a bunch of other places I cant even think of. I don't mean to be pompous, I am just remembering for myself and seeing this varied experience that I own. I guess I am just trying to say what Arlo Guthrie said about what he had learned and experienced "I wish everyone could learn as much". Anyway, now I am back here and that isn't good or bad, it just is. I am sure that I will keep going. Maybe one day I will get up to Canada...Peace.Love.

Apr. 25 2002

And I don't know if I am done bouncing around, but it is going on a year (or maybe just a little past) that I have been here and Steve has been in SB. This is the longest time I have been dormant since I started bouncing around in January of 99. I think that is a long time, but I also think that I have a gross perception of time. And there is no reason for me to be pointing that out or anything, I just don't really know what is up with me. Because I had originally planned to leave in February to go out to SB see Steve and then go to Texas and live somewhere around there, probably Corpus. That fell through and then I was going to wait and go to London with Steve again and that fell through. Then I was planning on going to see the Zendiks. I don't know if the Zendiks need explanation or not, but I will give a little. The Zendik tribe is basically like a commune, free thinkers and outcasts of conventional thinking migrate to Asheville NC to be with the Zendiks. Right now they have a huge farm and about fifty regulars that maintain it and live there. I wanted to be one of them. Anyone can, it is a society out side of society that is embracing the ideals that popular society long since denounced. What they have there is some sort of DEMOCRACY, not like the mass democracy (which is more a plutocracy, where a few big companies run the show, than a democracy where the wills of people are represented by and large), more of a communal democracy. These fifty people work out their issues and problems in group settings where there is not really anyone to answer too, rather a belief that all people are good and that there are no problems, only solutions. I don't know for sure, but I first found out about them when I was fourteen or fifteen. I am not quite sure. But I got a few magazines from them and I am pretty sure I still have them. I have been carting them around with me wherever I go and I am just not so sure if I still have them, but I should. Anyway, I can still go there whenever I want, I just need to give them a heads up a few days in advance. And unless I go with that I have no plans. No plans for the future. I was supposed to go on tour with a band this summer, but that fell through. Everything that pointed in the direction of my old life seems to have fallen through and I believe that may been a sign of the end of my lateral drift. But I haven't yet noticed what I have decided. I think I have, but not for sure and we will let the jury decide when the evidence is brought upon them. Peace.Love. --

Everything about NY changed my outlook on life. I don't know how to describe me in high school. I guess I am not much different than I was, just more focused and refined. I had pretty crude ideals then, I wasn't a big partier, I really just read a lot. I guess I took drugs a lot. I don't really think so, relatively, but others around that time explain to me that I did. I started smoking cigarettes when I was thirteen and smoking pot when I was fourteen. Growing up in the middle of nowhere, I assume that is what happens. You pick up on habit forming substances to make up for the lack of substance in your surroundings. I like to think that is what sparked me, but it was probably just because I was so scared and shy of everything and I thought that alleviating my senses would somehow help. It didn't. I remember one night my brother and I scraped up a bunch of quarters (I was probably fourteen at the time) and went over to our friend Bob's house because he was going to sell us some hash. We took the quarters bought hash and smoked up with them. It was the middle of the night and we were in a yard or something with a light that was like a streetlight and only lit a small patch beneath it. There was this girl there whom I had never met before and everyone knew I was shy and we were all high and they told her to go and kiss me. I ran away for dear life. I was so scared. I didn't know why after the fact and I would like to look back on it and say that I was scared of everyone watching me, of getting some kind of kissing disease, I don't know. It was a long time ago and the few memories I have of anything before I was seventeen seem like they could just be dreams. That is kind of odd too, I don't really remember too much that happened in my life before I was seventeen. Between fourteen and seventeen I can remember large chunks but before that I have maybe six strong memories and none of them good. People say it is easier to remember bad things than good, and that may be a cause but it is still weird to not know anything about your past for sure. Yeah, so back on track. At fifteen I started popping pills and I remember the first time I blacked out. My brother and I threw a party at our house and it was on a lake and it was nice we had a bonfire and such. In the beginning of the party someone had this little bag of pills and I bought them, maybe six pills and I had no idea what they were so I took them all and I had some alcohol. I remember walking down the stairs to the lake, a few vague memories of jumping through the fire that may not be true and then it was the next morning and three people were tending to me on the couch. I have no idea what happened. Pretty scary. At sixteen I started doing acid. My brother became a semi-dealer of pot and acid and I would get kickbacks. For someone that takes drugs it is nice. I didn't do it often, but it was always fun. I got arrested for stealing when I was sixteen or maybe fifteen I don't know. That sucked. I got no punishment but I felt bad. I don't think I have stolen since then. Except for pens. I have stolen some pens from various sources and whenever I do I write it down and apologize to myself and create something in writing, a poem or something to justify the wrongdoing. Oh and when I was fifteen at some point in time we moved from Cedar lake to Griffith. My dad had gotten remarried and we moved. I went to my old high school for a few months because I was so scared of making new friends. Not like I had any friends at my old high school but people knew me and talked to me and I didn't think I would have that if I had to start over from the beginning. When I did eventually switch high schools it sucked. It was like two months before school ended and I could either make friends or spend the summer by myself. I didn't make any friends. On my sixteenth birthday my parents bought me a car. I didn't actually get insurance and drive it until I was seventeen though. At the start of the new year things started to look up. I had began to make semi-school friends to talk to people and get away from my shyness. By November or December I had a few friends and this is when I started to get pseudo-political. I had long hair and dug sixties rock, by all labeling accounts I was a hippie. I met a good friend named Alex and we shared some ideas and I started writing. I tried to get on the school newspaper but they said my writing wasn't good enough or precise enough or calm enough. Too eccentric and outlandish too new-wave. Alex was a photographer for the school newspaper and we started an underground newspaper of our own. I did most of the writing and it was mostly anti-establishment fuck you because you don't accept me writing. For the kick-off the first issue I had a party in my parent's basement. Alex was very well-known in the school he is a big guy and it is hard to miss him, he was friendly and most people liked him. Everyone knew him and most people already knew of me but didn't talk to me. I wasn't exactly normal then and I sort of stuck out. So we had a party, called it "Trends" sold tickets for a dollar and maybe twenty people showed up. this is where I met Steve, he rocked my world from the get-go. He had a red mohawk done up in liberty spikes and I had only seen him and was sort of frightened by him because mohawks stand for mean. SO he was there and my brother was there. I was talking to my brother and we went up to him and my brother put a cigarette on his first liberty spike to see how stiff it was. My brother sort of laughed and I did too and then my brother left and I talked to Steve. He turned out to be a really cool guy into a lot of the things I was and we hit it off. (I know I am sounding gay again but this guy is awesome.) We started hanging out in school and he would give me a ride home after school. It was December then and we both liked Frisbee so we started playing in the snow, that was the end of it. Since that day we have pretty much been best friends. And my astrology book says that we are soulmates which is really cool. I think that is why I can talk gayly about him, he is my frickin soulmate, c'mon. After that I started having parties in my room and we were all doing acid and smoking pot, but I had stopped smoking pot and just did acid regularly. Maybe twice a week. We did all kinds of things then and blah blah blah. I was starting to form. Steve introduced me to a great hinge on my writing. I had been writing from a sixties hippie point of view and he introduced me to the more up to date late eighties punk rock point of view. I got my first op ivy cd. I loved it. I started adapting to the lifestyle, going to a few concerts and such, just having a ball. That summer I got a job, got my car, cut my hair and dyed it. That summer was one of the best ever for me. I cant even put it into words, I tell people I am seventeen because I always want to be seventeen again. Just illegal enough to where I have to sneak around for everything and just adult enough to where I am treated with a little respect and trust. It was great. And then on and on, I mean I have pretty much put everything else together already, how I got to NY and all the other places. I don't know what else there is except expanding laterally on these incidents. Which I will do, but this is long enough already, don't you think? Anyway, so I got my engine when I was seventeen and got it tuned when I was nineteen in New York. And that is my story. Of course, I am still leaving out why I got kicked out of high school and when I *stopped* doing drugs and why and things that happened to me and all kinds of other things. But we will get to it. And things are shaping up. Peace.Love.

Apr. 26 2002

I am going to have a party on Saturday. I have one about every other Saturday. It is fun for me, I go out and buy some beer for my friends and we sit around and talk. It sounds boring, but it is usually fun. I wanted to invite the girls from Starbucks, namely Mary. I know this girl likes me at least on the surface, but I still cannot bring myself to even talk to her. It is sort of out of selfishness. I go to Starbucks to read my books. It is a nice environment where I can sit back and just enjoy if I start inviting them out and becoming friends with them then it wont be that anymore, it will be more like I am hanging out with my friends. One girl that works there I was sort of friends with before, a friend of a friend. She had been over to my house and stuff. That is why they know so much about me and that is why they all talk to me because of that link. Had that link not been there I would just be another mysterious guy that the girl's there thought was cute. How I wish. I planned it all out too, going in there and saying hey blah blah blah. Sort of like the first time I wanted to kiss a girl. I was probably 11 or 12 and I was riding my bike (she was the neighbour) and I had plotted everything out. I was going to ride my bike past her and stop kiss her and ride away. I wanted to be like James Dean. I didn't do it. I thought about it too much to where I couldn't do it because everything was worked out and there were more bads than goods. A series of estimations and calculations and eventually you will find enough to point to no. That is what I did, that is what I am doing. So tomorrow sometime I plan to go into to Starbucks and order my drink and casually invite her to my party. If she isn't there then hopefully Suzie will be so I can invite her and tell her to bring Mary with. I kind of want to do it myself, instead of taking the easy way out, but we will see. It is funny how I think I have outgrown things, but in reality I have just masked them to the point that the look different on the surface and I can call them different things but it is exactly the same. It is kind of a downer when you realize that happenings in life are really just the past masked as the present. That is too pessimistic. I don't want to be pessimistic. Regardless of what I do with the Starbucks situation, I will have fun with my friends and celebrate life and all the things involved. Good and bad. And it will be a great time. Peace.Love.

Apr. 27 2002

I really dig philosophy. I used to study Plato and Rousseau and Socrates (what I could) and others. When I was delving into Socrates and Plato (in one of Platos conversations with Socrates) I learned of a philosopher names Aristippus. He was the anarchist of the Socratic circle of truth. He spoke of the injustices of the senate and tried to disband the Senate and from autonomous circles of truth much like the Socratic circle, only there would be no rulers. Only equals. Sometime while I was in NY my friend Rob decided that we should make up names for ourselves so that when we went to the bars and art shows in the city we could pick up girls. I was quick, I had already been thinking about it. I made my alternate name, my alternate self Aristippus Anokist Hedon. Hence all the arisanokist, arishedon names. Rob became Canyon Toomb. We were very hip people, it was going to be great. We decided that in order to become those people we needed to give them style. Rob is a successful artist and he started to do paintings that were totally outside his current genre and signed them with Canyon. I started writing as Aris. I don't know whatever happened, but Steve all the way in Chicago got in on it too and he was Jigme Gamin. And that was that, we had alternate identities to create a new realities with. Mine started to overtake some things, Aris Hedon became the founder of the PAAEP (Peoples Association for Autonomy Equality and Peace) in NY; Aris Hedon wrote a book of poetry about NY in Olympia; when I was in Santa Barbara, I started to write a book of Philosophy by Aris Hedon. and I had it all worked out to where He would write the book of philosophy and then I would come in and write a biography for Aris Hedon. Thus making us two completely different people. I was so pent up with these ideas I had to get out of SB. That is the official reason why I left, so I could come back here and write books. Not much has come of it, because I realized that Aris Hedon has to be moving, has to keep experiencing, he doesn't have a lateral drift, he just moves up. So I couldn't write the Aris Hedon Philosophy book (which was tentatively titled Philosophy Freedom and Diet: Experiments). I don't know what this has to do with anything, I guess I just wanted to lead up to something I wrote in the poetry book, I wanted to transcribe it (I use that word a lot, I like it) and I wanted some frame of reference before I did. There that is and here this is: And so the child was named. Aristippus Anokist Hedon. A bringer of truth, direction and knowledge. The town forsake him and all that he was for the blessings bestowed upon him. Fate. This was where his calling began. His mission was to find what knowledge and truth he could in the world, only to return to where he was banished to direct them to their greater destinies. And, as the story unfolds, we will be the ones to help shape young Aris in his beginnings... Young Aris reads: "once, a man became death. He created a device that could destroy our earth." Young Aris realizes: I HAVE BECOME LIFE. Everyday I live, and everyday life gets better. Everyone should feel this way, at least everyone who lives. Everyone is a creation that has become life, and everyone should love that and themselves. Everyone is learning, everyone is life. Young Aris dictates: Knowing isn't really knowledge unless you ask questions and know without doubt. Diversify yourself. Never get caught up. DO not be afraid of commitment though. Be open to new things. Find love. Never leave love, try not to let love leave you. Lead others and have your own ideas. Encourage others to do the same. Be philosophical. Ask questions. Find truth. Find yourself. Be. Young Aris travels: Cleveland seems to get worse everytime I come here. Not afraid of going home, not anymore. Maybe Cleveland isn't so bad. It is not, when Aris is here. He is happy to be in Cleveland...even happier to be on a bus + tired + high + happy + happy + happy still. Aris does not run from strangers. Aris has a high opinion of himself. I still write like him a lot, but rarely do I talk like him. He used to make people cry with totally brutal honesty and I just kind of listen to people and talk a little bit. It is sort of funny, because people that knew me before I made this cut still want me to dissect people the moment I meet them and tell them everything I think and I wont do it. Because I realize (at least a little bit) that surfacity is nothing. People are scared beings, always undercutting themselves and worried about fitting in and I want to take that role for awhile. I want to worry about whether or not someone likes me, when before I would brush it off as their loss. I really have changed a lot and I am still realizing it and coming into my own about how these changes affect my life and updating certain parts of my psyche that haven't yet realized the changes. I know I am sounding weird again, but this (I think) is the root of my weirdness. It is the beginning of my knowledge of it. I started to become two people in NY and it made things easier. I want to be one whole person again taking the good qualities from both sides of my psyche and mold them. Just a side note, I have never been to any kind of therapy at all so this is all just personal speculation. Just a person trying to figure himself out. I would like to highlight and delete all of this now, but what of it. Leave it and I will be fine. Because, you know what, this is all true, this is all how I think about myself and my problems. Take it as you will Peace.Love.

Apr. 28 2002

Yep. So I kissed the Starbucks girl tonight, from now on I will refer to her as Mary (which is her name). It was rough. I went to Starbucks before I went to the liquor store. I talked with her with the intentions of inviting her, but I couldn't bring myself to do it. it is hard to talk to someone at their work over the counter. So I didn't invite her then. Then I went home and BeeJay came over. I told him and he said I should call her at work and invite her. I had already had this planned out where I would say that I didn't know why I hadn't thought about it before, but I am having people over and you should come. But I didn't even call her then. Then Alex came over and BeeJay left to go pick someone up. Alex told me to invite them all over. I still felt awkward. But, eventually, I called and invited her and she had to ask her friend if she wanted to go too. She called me back and asked if all the Starbucks people could come and I said yes. They came around 1230. They left around 330. they didn't talk to many people. After everyone but them left I was standing on my porch talking to her and her two friends were standing by her car. We were talking, eventually came the supreme awkward moment where she was going to leave and I could do or die. I said : I am going to kiss you" and she said okay. We kissed, she left. We are going out tomorrow. We will see what happens. I am still a little tipsy, so goodnight. Peace.Love. --

Yeah, so I woke up this morning with strawberry on my lips. It was really nice. I really like kissing girls, I am no good at it. Mary will probably never talk to me again, say that I am a bad kisser and then call it. And right there I have compromised my reading spot and a nice girl but life is about chances and those that take them are those that succeed. I wish I could live by that a little more. I am not good at it, I can be spontaneous to an extreme degree but when it comes to romantics, when it comes down to "I like this girl and she likes me" I am horrible. I wish I could jump over that block to the dry humping stage. That was a joke. Hah. Anyway. Mary was supposed to call me and we were going to do something today at IUN and she never called. So I am going to go up there and take the role of stalker. I am a weird dude, I know. And about being horrible, how horrible is it when a guy says he is going to kiss a girl before he does it. I think that is bad. Come on, just do it. I know I know (that is self encouragement and brushing off). I mean we were standing on the porch and talking and there were a few moments where we just stopped talking and boom I was supposed to move in. It was strike 1 strike 2 and then I went for the ball, not knowing what would happen. It flew on the foul line and miraculously it landed on the fair side. Not a home run, barely a base hit. I am going to stop using baseball reference. I don't even really like baseball. So now I feel weird and I went to the few stores today where I know cute girls work and if I only had the courage I would talk to them. Yep. I am horrible. Peace.Love. --

15. That is the number. As I waited for a phone call that didn't come all day obviously thoughts of inadequacy ran through my head. Maybe she lost my cell phone number, maybe I just don't know how to kiss a girl. I have kissed fifteen girls. In my life, that is less than one a year. I will do a quick list, but I don't remember all of their names and I feel bad about that...1.Hannah 2.Melissa 3.Abby 4.Holly 5.Kelly 6.another Abby 7.Tiffany 8.Mary (last night) 9.Shannon 10.Andrea and to the other girls that I don't remember I feel really bad. One I met at a reel Big Fish concert when I was sixteen or seventeen and that was the last time I did speed. I was dancing and I met this girl and we sort of sat back together and listened and before the concert was over we were making out. I was happy. Then we went to McDonalds and I puked. Damn drugs. When I was in Tempe Arizona my brother's neighbour and I hit it off and we got drunk and we ended up being all over the place (on the table in the grass in the bedroom on the fence, and I don't remember any of it, again damn drugs). One of them I had met right before I moved to NY like the night before and I talked about her already. Another one I met off the internet and it was like three in the morning I went to her house and we talked, I kissed her and that was it. And when I started I remembered another one, but I cant now. What I am trying to get at is that very few of these people will ever have anything to do with me again. And I don't really know why. I will break it down. Hannah was the first girl I kissed, the one that I wanted to be James Dean with the bike, but couldn't. I eventually kissed her at a roller rink and I was on speed then too. I know, it is pretty fucked up, before I kissed a girl was doing level two drugs. Anyway, this was when I was 12 or something and I tried to talk to her again when I was 19 but she didn't respond. Melissa is the only real girlfriend that I have ever had. Other girls could be considered girlfriend, but I loved Melissa, I may still but I don't know and she will never ever talk to me again. Why, I don't know, but the last time I talked to her was three years ago and she sent me a piece of mail, typed, that said that she never wanted to talk to me again. the end. It said the end. Abby was great, she was a feminist and liked me for my ideals. She had hairy armpits and legs and I was scared at first, but it didn't and doesn't bother me. I don't know if I was on drugs or not when I was with her, but she was going down on me in my car and she asked me how I felt and I said I don't feel anything. She stopped. I was being honest, I didn't feel anything. I don't know what my problem was but I don't have it anymore. I think she got the impression that I didn't "feel" her and didn't dig her (but I did) and we didn't talk much after that. We have an amicable relationship but I haven't seen her for four years. Holly was great. She was bald and married. Her husband was in the army and she was just so screwed up and felt so used she would give herself to anyone. That sounds like I took advantage of her, but I didn't, I thought she was great because she was so honest and I was coming into my honesty then and she helped a lot. Kelly. hah. After we broke up she wanted to cut my head of with an axe. She was crazy. I fell for her at a concert at the Fireside Bowl. She had seen me around and liked the way I looked and acted, basically she had a crush on me. And we hooked up, she once asked if I would cut my penis off for her. I said no. She broke up with me because I wore the same clothes everyday and I smelled. I don't anymore. Just a couple of months ago we reconciled because she is Buddhist now or something like that. Its all good. The other Abby was just some girl I met at a party and I dug her she dug me but in the end she had no sense of humour and wanted to get freaky with other people. I just deleted her phone number from my cell phone two days ago. Tiffany, is NY Tiffany, like I said when I first went out there she wanted to have a relationship with me and I didn't. For the first few nights she would try to mess around with me and I had a headache. So be it. We are still really good friends. Mary is a work in progress. Ahh Shannon Jones. When I first moved out here she had a crush on me and I was just so shy and timid and scared of people it was unreal. One night at my parents house we were having an acid party...and I wont go into everything that happened...and by the end of the night she and I and one other girl were all naked walking around my room I was making out with her. We were trying to show the other girl that the body is beautiful and that people can be naked and kiss and it is all right. That was a fun night. And Andrea was another girl I met from the internet and we went on a few dates. Then she stopped talking to me altogether for no reason that I could see. That is the history of Brian kissing girls. And now I am faced with this situation of Mary. She didn't call me and I feel awkward going into Starbucks to talk to her. I feel weird talking to someone over a counter, kind of like kissing over a car armrest. Little things that I cant do well. I guess I will go in there in the next couple of days and do my best. This girl seems really nice and I think she is cute. And BeeJay is putting pressure on me for a camping trip (he knows I love camping but it would be three couples and me if I don't find a girl to go with). That isn't the reason at all that I am doing this, hell I don't mind being without girlfriend. I have been most of my life, I am used to it. I just really like kissing girls, but I need a reason. And I was kind of lying about me being a bad kisser, I am actually really good at it. For some odd reason it just puts the story into better perspective if I were a bad kisser. And I am open to suggestion. Peace.Love.

Apr. 29 2002

So I talked to Steve last night. He puts things into perspective for me and last night was no different. He said that I should listen to Swains 1st Bike Ride by Fifteen and he is right. I had forgotten about it. And that will help. I am going to buy it today and sit and listen and think and feel my way through. He is going through changes too, I don't think that are personal changes are on the same level, but he is doing things and I want to do things but cant seem to do them. I really cant go into what he is doing, that is up to him to tell other people, not me. It just makes me feel good that he trusts me to know his plans. I want to get out of here. I always want to get out of here, wherever here is, and I don't know if that is such a good thing. That is why I am putting what I want on hold and trying to do something I should. Trying to better myself in a societal way, instead of pushing left field more and more. I guess I am trying to find a good balance of normal and not so normal. And then run with that. After I buy that album though things will be much brighter and I might be able to see again. Peace.Love. --

So I haven't actually bought Swains yet, but I did download a few songs from Fifteen. One is called Child and I have heard it before it is amazing. I recommend downloading it. Fifteen is a great band. And it sort of freaks me out when people get the wrong impression. I like to think I am pretty down to earth and say what I mean and also mean what I say. I try not to lie, I don't do it in situations where it could force further lies down the road. That is a bad situation to be in. I used to do that and I am still correcting that. I am still finding lies that I told people and now when they bring them I have to say that was a lie and it hurts because them bringing it up means it stands out in their minds and I lose points for being an honest person. But I look at it as me gaining points for at least trying to correct the mistakes that I have made. Things have a weird way of working themselves out and my intention is to work out every knot that I have created in my life and do my best to create no more. Amanda, I hope you didn't get the wrong impression, when I said that I just wanted to be friends I meant that and there should be no weirdness between you and I because I kissed Mary. That doesn't make sense to me. It would only make sense to me if while in Florida you broke up with your boyfriend and had intentions of running to me and saying I am yours, take me. I didn't foresee that. I didn't foresee anything, I work on the moment. As the world and life turn, I turn with it and looking back, as I have said before, just makes the road ahead harder because you don't have your eyes fixed on it. So I am doing my best, I make mistakes in my life and I register them and dismiss them, dwelling does no good for me. It may be a bad way of living life and working through but I am happy and it seems to be good for me. It sounds selfish that I should make myself happy before others, but I read a book awhile ago called "Conversations With God" the writer had a conversation with god and god told him that it is okay to be selfish and it is okay to do things for yourself. I look at that book as god telling me it is okay too. Whatever, it is a really good book and it taught me a lot of things. Whatever, I am going to Starbucks now to have some tea read a book and talk to Mary if she is there. Peace.Love. --

No Swains nowhere, not no how. Sucked. Spring fever, lets talk about that. It is supposedly when the snow melts and the sexual drive beefs up. That sounds grotesque, but for lack of better words. It seems that I start liking girls and girls start liking me, not as if I stop liking girls when summer or fall or winter begin, but it is most prominent in spring. I will break it down for this season. First it was Amanda and you have a boyfriend. That just means friends. Then there was Mary, actually I found out Mary had a crush on me the first date that I went on with Amanda and it was weird, because I started to think that if one fell through then there was the other, but I am not like that even though it is how things worked out so I don't really know now. Anyway, now there is a girl at Circuit City and one at Miami Subs that are both named Katie and they are both into me. I don't really know why girls are into me, I mean I am not much of a looker, honestly. If I don't know someone I am really shy so I don't know. I guess tattoos and piercings are considered a turn on in most cases (at least with the girls I would like too) and I have that base covered. Usually facial hair is a turn-off and I am growing out my beard again. I miss it. So that is a strike. Two hits one strike. I have long hair and I that is totally up to the eye of the beholder, you know? That isn't a turn on or off, but I am going to get dreadlocks soon and I think that is a turn on, so we will mark that down for three hits, one strike. ( I am using baseball reference again, sorry.) I am chubby, bordering on fat. I got the gut and I hide it well. Even though I don't really try. I am not very strong, and not very aggressive, so that would be three hits and at least two strikes now. With being shy that means that I don't have much to say and that is a turn off. Even now. But I guess if you get me going on anything I will run with it and that forms a conversation and you know what, this post is meaningless because I am not what I look like or how I act, I am who I am and that is why people like me or don't like me and it really isn't of any concern to me. Yeah, so this is meaningless, I like girls and for the moment girls like me, we will see how I play the cards. Peace.Love. oh and one more thing, I cant read at starbucks anymore because now I am on the free drink list so that isn't good. for whatever reason.

Apr. 30 2002

Today is the last day of the month. Seems like it doesn't even need to be noted, but I do that sometimes just to make sure that I am still here. "Every year at this time, I look over at some friend of mine, realize and say hey, have you seen the skies, they have been clear for days, I think we have survived another year. I think we have survived another year" Jeff Ott. I have doing that a lot, realizing that I have survived another year. Because It is just over a year that I have been back here, and because I have been writing about the past lately. That can get strenuous, especially when people from the past read it because I don't have a great memory and then the things I say aren't always accurate and then again I am just lying and I guess that is how life is. I am doing better at remembering things, without any of the memory drugs. Anyway, tomorrow my brother is supposed to move out and a great weight will be lifted from my chest, I feel this immense pressure when he is around, because he can burst at any time. He is a lifelong drug addict. Not to say that he is doing any drugs regularly, but he will always be doing them. Fortunately I learned how to not get to far into them and to stop the ones that were no good for me and now space out the ones that are good for me in a way that they are better. Drugs, good? No, you say. When I was seventeen I had a book called "Diary of a Drug Fiend" by Aleister Crowley. Great book. It detailed how a drug fiend reacts how a drug fiend lives, how to kick drugs and then ultimately use them for your benefit. Do you think nature would put something into the mix that was all bad? I don't. Everything does something good. I am not refined about it though, I just understand it and go from there. It is a really hard book to read and I would buy it again and read it if I weren't already swamped with a ton of books I need to read. Sometimes I feel like I should be in college because I seem to sit here and read a lot and most of my friends say that I should go to college. I write it off as a monetary problem, but I as well as they know of loans and grants and scholarships. I am just really scared, scared to commit myself to an institution, when now I can learn freely, when and what I want. And I am scared to be around a bunch of people my own age that know nothing of me and automatically critique me and then hate me for who I really am. I have always had problems with that, I usually associate with people older than me and if I don't I am highly critical of people younger. I have very few friends my own age. At least outside of here. Because these people I went to school with and identified with, but whenever I travel I always have that older guy or gal that I look up to for wisdom and they look squarely at me because I am on their level. Then there is always the younger person that looks up to me and I do my best to not be mean to them because I am kind of bitter. But I am working through that too. I have developed this self therapy thing that is really hard to put into words and would probably only work for me, I am a self-help book dedicated to one. Part of it is saying stupid things to make people laugh. That boosts me because laughter is a great thing. I could probably make it through an entire conversation with someone talking only mystically and about philosophy and the future and wow people with some of the things I think. But that does nothing to alleviate tensions between people, nothing I have found at least. I see most people just wanting to be accepted on the TV plane. And I can do that too. I can talk about a lot of things with some hint of actually knowing what I am saying and all the while throw in little tidbits of what I am actually thinking just to see reactions. It is really hard to explain and before work isn't the time, maybe the time will never come and I will keep in all wrapped up inside myself like a vegetarian corndog. Bad analogy. Peace.Love. --

It is funny, because my brother is moving out tomorrow and miraculously he got very pissed off at me today. He says that all his problems derive from me, that I am the root of all his problems...even though he had the same problems in Arizona and I wasn't there, and he had the same problems all the time I wasn't around. So he tried to hit me again today. It doesn't bother me. The last time he tried it I let him and he connected a few times, I took the blows and laughed at him, because violence is never the answer and he always feels bad when I laugh at his futile attempts at resolution. Fighting people is no solution to a problem. Anyway, I think this latest outburst is because he is moving out tomorrow and knows that he will no longer have me to hinge his problems on. And I said that to him, I said "Since I am the root of your problems and you are moving out you wont have any problems or be pissed off anymore." And he said no. He said no, because although we wont live together, I will still be around. So I can see him at some time down the road, since he has already declared me the root of all his problems, trying to kill me. And people think I am crazy. I think that with what I have been through I have a good grip on the reality of life. And I think that he is too wrapped up in the falsities of life and I have said before that people who are confronted with things they cant comprehend respond with violence. I spring things on him all the time, usually just things that I have heard that amaze me. I quoted Nick Drake today "if songs were lines in a conversation then the situation would be fine." That is what set it off, he didn't understand it and I offered to explain. He didn't want it, and then he just started to go nuts. Ballistic. Just me registering it and talking about shows that I care whether it be a negative or a positive care isn't the point, the point is that I care about my brother, I care about everyone and I can be an asshole to anyone, for sure, but that doesn't diminish the fact that I care. He thinks that it does and just recently he started asking me to help him with all kinds of things and I obliged, albeit on my time frame. I brought up to him all the things that I help him with and how he is always asking for help and I wanted him to notice that I rarely ask him for help, very rarely. And regardless of the imbalance I am still there helping him. He just doesn't appreciate what other people do for him, because it isn't just me. I am beginning to care too much, by talking about it too much. Lets just put the devil at rest and say that a lot of stress will be lifted from my shoulders after he is out of here. then I can move in some people that I actually like and things will be brighter. Poof. Peace.Love.

May 1 2002

I don't know anything anymore, as if I ever did. Sometimes I think that I have made some kind of difference. Sometimes I think that I have been wasting my time. Most of the time I don't even know what I am doing/saying/feeling. Most of the time I am just weaving through life and avoiding things. That probably isn't true, but looking retrospectively a person will see all the things that were almost, all the things that could have been, and I am trying to wash away those thoughts, I am trying to replace them with facts, like the fact the past is neither the present nor the future and the past will not be relived, and if it is then all I have to do is try a different method and everything will have changed. I think that a lot of people have these thoughts of inadequacy towards life, because life is all encompassing and huge that it is nearly impossible to fathom anything when you think of it in that spectrum, the spectrum of life. If you take a flashlight and aim it at the sky it doesn't make the stars any brighter. If you take it and aim it at the path then you will see. And if you reverse that thought to think that if something aimed a flashlight from the stars down to the earth, it wouldn't make anyone any brighter. It is kind of like thinking that life would be easier if I looked ahead instead of up, if I just took the path instead of trying to follow the north star on a cloudy night. I wrote a poem about the path before, and I don't want to take the path. I would much rather hack my own way through the forest of life. But then you get lost often and sit and demean yourself for turning left at that big oak tree. And in choosing your own path you can never turn back. The light, the drive that keeps me here is the hope that I can do it and that one day I will run into someone else on their own path and we would join forces to make the forest more pleasant. It would make life so easy, but usually when you are on your own path and you run into someone on theirs it is tough to create a mutual friendship because they DID turn left at that big Oak tree and they did all of this stuff that you wanted to do but you just did it wrong and then you feel inadequate. Sigh. This is all analogical and I have sort of lost the edge. It is hard to think like this in the morning. Peace.Love

May 2 2002

TIDAL WAVE
A new series of emotion washing before you
a tidal wave
sweeping the coasts of the psyche
back and forth destroying pretensions
a tidal wave
towering over mountains of swimming souls
grabbing at the water
searching for one another in the dark shadow
a tidal wave
searching for the final resting place
the solution to all the problems
a tidal wave
finding peace in the ocean it came from
--

I am really scared. Not about anything in particular. I was told that fear is a natural quality of being human, I don't like it. My journey is to get around that fear. It isn't really a fear of doing anything or lack of doing anything, I have those bases covered. It is a deeper recessed fear of people. So I guess it is about something particular now that I think about it and write my thoughts, they flow fre(e)er--I don't know if there are three e's here? it looks weird with three--in writing than swarming in my head. Anyway, I thought about that three e thing for a long time...I don't know why. Back to the topic at hand. I am not good in people situations. I have an imbalance, and I am surprised whenever people want to be around me. I am almost terrified to talk to someone I don't know in a situation where I feel not in power. That's something I thought about a lot too, situations of power. A situation of power is when I am in a place where I feel comfortable being who I am, a safe place. Some of those places are my home, the homes of my good friends where I have a good relationship with anyone that may live there, and that is about it that I can think of right now. Places that I don't feel in power are Starbucks, foreign homes, etc. Neutral places are parks and stuff like that. I am okay in neutral places, In powerless places I cant talk. I remember when Steve and I first got to Santa Barbara. We didn't have any money at all, and we got in late at night. The only place we could find was this all night coffee place whose name escapes me right now. We couldn't just sit in there without buying anything, yet we didn't have any money. The obvious thing would be to ask for a credit extension until the morning when we could get money and pay. I could not, in no way force myself to go in there and ask, I would rather sleep in the cold street again than go in there and ask the girl (who as far as I can remember was cute) to let us stay there and have coffee basically for free. Steve had to do it, and he is good at it. I don't know if he is scared about it, but he is good at it. He went in there and we got coffee on credit and in the morning when we paid she said that the coffee was free, he has such an enthusiastic nature that he can get anyone to like him in an instant. It is truly beautiful. I, on the other hand, could not do that. That was a powerless situation. That is what I want to help myself with. One of the times that I did force myself to be powerful in a powerless situation was first moving to NY. I had nothing and could nothing but stay with Tiffany, so I went in there and was myself and got the part. As I remember I didn't need to beat myself up either, I had a good set of things to say, I had a supreme adrenaline high with stealing my parents car and driving to NY with no intention of coming back and all other kinds of stuff. I did it there and I can do it elsewhere, I just need to learn how. I don't know if other people feel this way or if I am just a lunatic. I am just really really shy. And no one would guess it if they came to my house or if they met me at one of my good friends homes. I was brought up to be that way, I am the middle child and I have all that to deal with I don't know if I am making a big deal out of nothing, but if I ever want to be successful in dealing with people I am going to have to get over that fear. I don't know how I ever even had a girlfriend before. I am totally lost with where to go in this new situation. When I went to her work I sat there while she and my friend talked. I said next to nothing. But I talk to her on the phone or on the computer or at my house and I am who I am and she seems to like that. I just wish I could give her who I am all the time. But I need to know her first because I don't want to do anything wrong. Blah. Anyway, I am sure I will get through this sometime in my life, and if I don't, at least I know my problem. Peace.Love. --

being only one: individual
unique
being beyond what is usual: remarkable
deviating from the expected: odd
of or being a single person or thing or several entities considered as a unit
That is the definition of the root word singular. This is something I have been putting off because I don't think I can do it justice. But I will try for a little while to explain the singularity. I think it was in the coffee shop in Olympia and Frank brought up some theories about the universe and Steve and I were there and we kept on trying to tell him that it all deduced to one. Or maybe he was trying to tell us. Anyway Steve and Frank and I came up with the singularity that day from general discussions at the time and that night Steve and I went back to the apartment and wrote down a crude drawing of the singularity using whatever we could think of to help describe. I still have that drawing and that is all there is on paper about it as far as I know. The rest exists in our heads. The I Ching is meant to be read backwards, each lay of the coins dictates a set of bars and solids that show a path and when you read that path it makes sense reading the last line first and the first line last. I will explain the singularity in relation to the definition of the root word singular in that way. 5. of or being a single person or thing or several entities considered as a unit--The world, the universe, our entire understanding of existence and being is a unit, one unit. Everything we know and do not yet know is wrapped up in this unit, this unit is known as the singularity. It works to show that no matter how much the realm of man wants to divide things up and create lines we are all still one unit. 4. deviating from the expected: odd--This part may show that the idea of everything being one thing is unexpected and odd. Because using one of our five senses we can logically deduce that all things are not one thing. My deductive logic can tell me that this computer has little or no relation to the mailbox outside. So to say that everything is one thing, one unit, singular, is unexpected because it goes against our senses. 3. being beyond what is usual: remarkable--This thought process is quite unusual, as far as I know only two people believe in it wholeheartedly. That is one in three billion. It is remarkable because it is so simple to say that everything is one thing, that everything is directly related by being. By being part of life, by being part of the singularity. 2. unique--Its uniqueness is that it is bigger than anything, any rational tangible thing, and any thought. It encompasses all godheads, all material things, all thought processes everything is contained in the singularity, everything is one. 1. being only one: individual--There is only one singularity and everything is a part of it. Every individual thing is a part of the larger individual, the single individual. The singularity. And this is not some sort of religion to abide by, this is not something to replace any godhead, it is already here and has always been here, always, it created everything. This singularity is the root of all existence. I cannot describe it better. Now I don't think this is revolutionary or going to change anything, it is just a thought pattern that states everything is one, there are no lines that need to be created there are no division that need to be made, there are no races that need to be excluded because everything is related to the singularity, and the singularity is everything. I know I have repeated myself a lot in this, but it is so simple that if I used larger words it wouldn't make a difference. The best way to describe it is that the singularity is everything. I only repeated it so many times because things that simple are written off as unimportant. This is important. At least it is to me. I can sit and think about my relationship to the singularity, to everything, and be in awe amazement euphoria, all kinds of bliss. And I can sit and think about my relationship to the singularity and be frightened, angry, and pessimistic, all kinds of bad. Or I could sit and think about that mailboxes relationship to the singularity, or anything and no matter how good or bad my thoughts are they are all wonderful. And yours are too. I really don't think I did it justice. I guess this is something that really needs to be talked about when two people can sit and have universal discussions for hours. I did my best. Peace.Love.

May 3 2002

so I posted and it was lost again. I liked the post a lot too. Actually, I really didn't...it was about death. Anyway, I spent the last hour copying and pasting everything from my xanga journal to my microsoft word journal and from now on I am going to type in there and just copy and paste to here. Seems easier than typing up for a long time and losing it. Peace.Love.