mangled moments in lost time

that which doesn't kill you turns you into a giant cockroach

Sun, 05 Jul 2009 05:19:20 GMT

i hurt my back and have had comical sad moments of premature old age this week. the ant sometimes imagines that he is job, but he is just an ant doing ant-things. job is just an ant story anyway, so what does it matter. crazy people deserve their incoherent place in the sun too, so i shall continue, brokeback ant that i am. i live out my nights killing the roaches that overrun our kitchen to feel that i am alive and they are no longer. it is my way of trying to explain to the universe that it could be doing a better job. something better than roaches should ultimately win out i say. of course humans are often more loathsome than roaches, so perhaps i am mistaken.

we spend our days or they are spent. either way they meet their daily end. i sometimes try to fight against my limitations and only end up worsening them. that is where the mind is wonderful, dreams are an endless playhouse. one can sit and think on a couch for hours going nowhere. this is both a kindness and a curse. the world wants something to come from your labors and measures success in realities. we want to produce that success, but don't need it as badly as the world demands it. therefore we are generally satisfied, but discontent. or at least i am.

my head is gibberish on a stick. i could mumble out the words indefinitely and that is what we do with our cellphones and communication outlets. i need to get out more. out into the dissatisfied world where we can bounce our dissatisfaction kindly off each other.

pest control, another mundane topic

Thu, 02 Jul 2009 18:49:48 GMT

ok, we have silverfish which get into our paper and cardboard, maybe other stuff too. we have roaches that get into anything and everything. oh, and sometimes we get fleas, and carpenter ants. i want to get rid of these specific creatures, but don't mind spiders, lizards, and don't want any poisons to hurt our cats, us, or our tropical fish. we've tried boric acid, but it doesn't seem to do the job. plus i worry about our cats licking it or sniffing it out of curiosity so i don't put it absolutely everywhere. i worry that pest control services are a poisonous rip-off. i don't want to make our whole house carcinogenic or spend a fortune. would love any advice or your experiences in this area if anyone is out there.

a boring, down to earth entry

Thu, 02 Jul 2009 18:35:17 GMT

i have trouble cleaning up our house because i have so much junk and i hate to get rid of things. i think it's a great depression-type survival attitude, that everything has some value or could be used for something in an emergency. for example, i bought a metal salad spoon or whatever it is at a garage sale and surprised the woman i bought it from by saying that i was going to use it to clean our cat's litterbox. our plastic one broke and the metal ones designed for that purpose are needlessly expensive. this one works fine. lots of apparent junk can be repurposed. i could donate more stuff to thrift stores, but a lot of times they have a very narrow view of what has value. a long time ago i went dumpster diving at thrift stores and could find lots of great stuff. so a lot of the stuff i'm talking about is stuff that you can't even donate. some of it can be recycled, but a lot of it can't.

and speaking of recycling, that's a needlessly confusing area as well. a lot of plastic stuff has recycling numbers on it which is great, but a lot of stuff doesn't have recycling numbers on it because the manufacturer just doesn't care. sometimes the packaging seems identical to another piece of plastic that has a recycling number. so do you throw it away or put it with the recycling? our city recycles plastics 1-7 now, but not plastic bags which i have that are numbered with recycling numbers 2 and 4. the grocery accepts bags for recycling so i have been assuming that they take these as well because they are labeled as recyclable. austin says they don't accept cardboard pizza boxes because they have food residues on them which seems a shame, but then i've seen some paper coffee cups that are labeled as recyclable. are food residues an issue with them?

i want to clean up and get rid of some stuff but i see so much potential in so much junk. and the economy could get much worse.... oh well, i need to work at it some more. it's too hot to have a garage sale now, even early in the morning here so i'm setting stuff aside for the fall. so we're still surrounded with junk.

Mon, 01 Jun 2009 00:14:19 GMT

i don't believe in a grand scheme of things, but mankind is probably meant to dissipate and collapse. space and eternity are just to big for us to have any significance. i use this as an excuse for my own drift in space. i'm trying to read tender is the night but just can't get that into it. so many books have been disappointing for me that it's a wonder that i read at all. i must admit that part of the reason i read is because i have the idea that it is an educating thing to do, even if the book is not especially classic in nature or essential in information.

i'm sick and it coincidentally coincides with the break between the spring and summer sessions at school. but i really am sick. of course there is the ennui too, malaise even, but i can assure you that there are simple germs and bacterium as well.

at some point i'll not be at my job and i'll be selling junk on ebay. that is a plan. not necessarily a good or wise plan at all. it might afford me a different kind of freedom in exchange for lack of another. that's the way it is in life, a balancing of slaveries and freedoms. we are all indentured to various things, starting with our bodies themselves.

i go on with the same complaints. life is absurd, but one has no choice. it is cruel, random, vicious even, callous. but we all have to do the same basic things, with many variations: shower, brush our teeth, pay bills, mow the lawn, go to work, deal with other people, have disappointments and joys, crushes and longings, find simple pleasures. it helps to pet something or someone and be pet in return. we can't be assured that things will go well, that we'll maintain any particular level of comfort or success. so we live in the now and do the petty things of the moment with whatever belief in them we can maintain and whatever acceptance or disappointment of the time spent.

when it's best it doesn't need examining. you can plan and arrange for some degree, expectations of entertaining or satisfying activity. but there is always misspent time, failure, or banal rut. we can call it something else, find the beauty in it or in the simplicity of all things, but it's still there, nagging at us. there are other things to do, that could be done, or that we can imagine. and often it's best to just look out the window and imagine and tell everything else to go to hell.

Sat, 09 May 2009 08:28:13 GMT

i don't know what i hope to get out of human interaction. frustration? inadequate emotional relief. nervous surface tension? communicating with other human beings is like being forced to communicate across a great chasm using only fortune cookie messages. i want to take in more people in an almost sexual, meal-like way, talk about everything, and when it comes down to it my favorite communication is the most basic, like hugging or napping. i guess that's why i almost worship animals because everything is on that level with them. i used to hug more people when i was younger and now everything just feels more awkward and i'm sure that will just get worse as i get older. it's easier to blow your brains out than hug someone or fart in public. the human machine is doomed to failure.

god is experiencing post traumatic stress disorder

Fri, 01 May 2009 15:22:34 GMT

i had a dream that put me in an endless loop again. being constantly violently attacked and dying and starting over or somehow just endlessly continuing with different permutations until i finally found myself literally boxed in as the loop wound tighter and tighter. it reminds me of my idea that we are all the insane consciousness of the universe. maybe the big bang was the moment that this consciousness went mad and split itself like a psychic breakdown leading ultimately to the entirety of the universe and the evolution of life and ultimately the human consciousness that can conceive of a god consciousness. we are all merely the mental cilia of a fractured and fractioned god-consciousness. god is an insane and alone split personality experiencing ptsd in the nothingness and vastness of space and eternity. all-knowing, omnipotent (also omni-impotent), how are we anything else than imaginations of god by any religious conception of god. how free is "free will" if we are mere creations conceived of by an all-knowing god, all conclusions forgone. maybe god created a inescapably closed system that it tries to lose consciousness of so that it can lose itself in it.

the big bang is a rubber band that is merely twanged every few trillion years, expanding and snapping back over infinity.

Wed, 22 Apr 2009 05:05:08 GMT

i'm bored and i'm having a heart attack. i can't remember which. strangely it's the heart attack that brings me back to life. i was drifting in space. out with a bang it's called. waking up to meet one's maker. only i don't believe in a maker which makes it tragic. i just didn't take good enough care of my heart and didn't live my life to its full potential. not regrets especially, i just know that some people do much more, more with less even. perhaps some early insecurities made me seek an easier path. or some early securities made me never want to let go of them? can't remember which. we're all juggling ideas back in time in our little minds. out of our little minds. we're glorious farm animals working all day chewing our cud, evolving at a snail's pace while lighting the fuse of our various destructions. freefalling in eternity, or at least this little stretch of space and time, and the narrow box of imagination we carve within it. i guess it'll be another billion years before these complex amino acids become single-celled organisms....

Mon, 20 Apr 2009 02:59:11 GMT

maybe a person just shouldn't stay at the same job too long. i've been at this job for over 8 years now. it's manageable and that's why i've stayed there this long, but it might be nice to try something different. but sometimes different can be a mistake. maybe you should only take chances if you're good at handling failure. i know that's a negative way to look at things, but one should be realistic. if things don't work out, try, try again as they say.

Wed, 15 Apr 2009 15:28:07 GMT

i take a dip back beneath the water. i submerge myself into another world.
i have been on facebook a bit as it is an easy, shallow experience. i need to remember to live life more randomly, not by societal/cultural expectations. we watch too many movies as a kind of evening entertainment nap really. tv shows we're watching (including ones that aren't on at the moment): mad men, finishing up the wire at friend's, house, lost, 30 rock, breaking bad at friend's for now. pbs stuff like frontline, independent lens, american experience, nova, antiques roadshow. was watching dexter, damages, er (glad it's over). have put netflix on hold, may cancel completely if they don't let me keep it on hold indefinitely. need to do other stuff with our evenings. have been taking naps after work for some time most days. that makes me more functional at night, but is time lost? used to just be tired all night and not get much done but watching stuff. we collect images from the internet, books, photographs. when i sit back and watch lots and lots of random pictures we've saved it's quite an experience. something i should probably remember to do more often. saw a picture of two very young gorillas hugging and it contains as much emotion as two humans hugging could. the world is a miasma. goal: be good and live well.

i'm off to find youtube videos of amazing things like record players from around 1900 and other marvels.

my sxsw 2009 film rankings from fave to least fave

Sun, 22 Mar 2009 22:46:56 GMT

Pulling John-surprisingly great armwrestling doc. w/3 distinct characters

Adventureland-a sensitive guy's fantasy of a summer job & relationship

Trimpin: The Sound of Invention-wonderfully inventive musical sculpture artist

I Love You, Man-fun "bro-mance" as they're calling this genre

We Live in Public-fastinating/disturbing doc., especially the experiment called quiet

Winnebago Man-fun look into the life of everyone's favorite angry salesman

Yes Men Fix the World-corporate mischief makers do what the corporations won't

Still Bill-wonderful look at a grounded and insightful singer song-writer

Beetle Queen Conquers Tokyo-thought-provoking look at japanese insect collecting

RiP: A Remix Manifesto-a look at musical culture as a paradigm shifts & is remixed

500 Days of Summer-interesting look at a relationship that wasn't meant to be

For All Mankind-man lands on fucking moon! with soundtrack by brian eno

Know Your Mushrooms-doc. makes me want to head into the woods picking mushrooms

Garbage Dreams-boys living off money from recycling Cairo's trash

Goodbye Solo-an unlikely relationship between a foreign cabbie trying to make it & an old man who is done

Metropolis with Original, Live Score-a live music look at an old classic

Monsters from the ID-not a festival favorite, but i liked the music & clips

Objectified-not as good as helvetica doc. on object design

Time of Their Lives-nice look at lively british women at a home for the elderly

Immaculate Conception of Little Dizzle-interesting, hallucinatory crossroads

Saint Misbehavin: The Life and Time of Wavy Gravy-a life well-lived

Favela on Blast (Brazil)-the life and hormone-fueled music of rio's slums

Way We Get By-troop greeters share their lives & give what they can

Dungeon Masters-3 D&D gamers and the lives they lead

Berlin Calling-techno dj deals with a drug problem while trying to get out a new record

De Ofrivilliga (Involuntary)-vignettes in the lives of some Swedes going thru stuff

Observe and Report-an ugly comedy w/some fun dark humor

just a little entry

Sun, 15 Feb 2009 07:04:16 GMT

i sort of apologize for writing things publicly, because that means you might like someone to read them. and there are times when i really do, hoping that the words will carry and transfer some meaning. but sometimes it is just logging the drivel that runs out of one and you have to ask the world's pardon. we are thinking beings winding our way through lives often on automatic or gone wrong (or both). i come here like i used to come to my old spiral notebooks, although these i fear are less permanent for future reference to see where i was. lord only knows. i'm doing my late night little chores and getting ready for bed, or to read a bit before turning in as the nice phrase goes. feeding the fish, the cats, doing the cat litter, brushing my teeth, taking my pills, and shutting off the computer. i miss many chances, tasks to take on and follow through. i seem to have little ambition. the history books shed many "great men" with every generation. it's fascinating to look at old newspapers or even old history books or encyclopedias and see the names and faces of people who were big wheels in their time and now all but forgotten. i apply myself fairly selfishly and lazily to this life. i guess i'm trying for happiness and trying to leave myself a large margin for error.

i motivate myself to read books some but feel i should read more. and read more history books and classics. but i like just as well or more to sleep in or nap and dream. to sit with a cat asleep on my lap and only care not to disturb him by getting up. to look out the window and think in only the most basic sense, meandering thoughts. this is luxury in the real sense.

passions are good, but they also divide us so harshly. sometimes we would all be better to be and to be governed by people far more detached from passions and drives. the world would be a safer place. i just finished watching a docudrama on amundsen and scott's taking of the south pole. scott died in antarctica after reaching the pole after amundsen. his journal records his party's last days. really that's what our lives are, brief records of the hungers and breaths of us as human beings. that's all the human race could be said to be, given just a little more time, but still nothing in the scope of eternity. we are doing our best and recording our activities, making some attempt at the expedition and exploration that is our life. i am just a ghost in a tent writing some words in the snow. i try to remember to pass no judgments and do the best that i can make out. as it's been said so many times, in a lot of ways we are lone explorers in this life. life itself could be looked at as a suicide mission. that's a bit of a laugh. anyway, for while i have it, tomorrow's another day.

Wed, 11 Feb 2009 06:18:48 GMT

put the bullet in the chamber
it's called another day
go to sleep little man
your imagination is better
than your follow through

YOU CAN'T MAKE LIFE NOT FUCKED

Wed, 11 Feb 2009 05:53:04 GMT

the world we live in doesn't matter
or it does
the life we lead is everything and nothing
everything we have
and just a trickle of what we can imagine

more of the boys in iraq are killing themselves
cause this world is fucked up
there is killing in our name
there are people losing their jobs
we continue to work and live if we can

the world is a puzzle you want to piece together and fix
but the pieces are breaking and shattering and falling off the board
and the picture is changing
and you want to believe it all matters
because it either matters or it doesn't

we could almost be up to this
there is so much we could do
if we could work together
it doesn't look like were up to that
you can't evolve beyond the world you're in

i'm starting a bullshit ebay seller insurance fund

Tue, 10 Feb 2009 19:57:21 GMT

today i'm spewing forth bile in a different vein

i love ebay. i buy amazing, unusual things on ebay all the time. i can't help myself. but if you use ebay a lot you will eventually deal with asshole ebay sellers who don't list major faults with the stuff they sell and then bitch at you for not asking questions. questions like "is this item obviously broken?", or "do you plan to take a shit on this item before you put it in a box and ship it to me?" these kinds of seller often say "ask questions" in their listings. you should read between the lines and think of this as them really saying "i'm not going to tell you much about this item. maybe it's ok, maybe i dredged it out of my momma's ass. maybe part of it is missing, maybe it stinks of cat urine. if you don't ask, i'm not obligated to tell you." these people are assholes and their lives are probably pretty miserable. they like to poop on people, especially if they can make a buck doing it.

what you have to do is read all the shit carefully. read between the lines and if something sounds fishy, stay far away. it's just not worth dealing with these people. but even then you still might run into them. this seller had a 100% feedback rating and over 1000 transactions. but ebay in their wisdom is now only counting the past 12 months, thinking that even assholes can change. well, this asshole didn't change.

so i'm going to start putting money in a separate savings account and labeling it asshole defense fund. when these crackers send me garbage, rather than trying to work it out with someone who has already proved themselves to be an asshole. i'm just going to leave them honest negative feedback and repay myself from that ebay asshole savings account so it won't bother me so much. you buy insurance on your house in case of a fire. you have insurance on your car in case of a wreck. hell, you may even insure a package in the rare instance it's lost or damaged. well, i'm going to start insuring that i don't waste my time groveling with and sending waste-of-time emails back and forth with people who are categorically inbred motherfuckers.

maybe someone will eventually offer this insurance to the public. ask your agent.

it's a barage mirage

Fri, 06 Feb 2009 05:40:48 GMT

it's a great ice flow
the glaciers are sliding loose and coming to town
it's not really cold
it's just the wind against your cheeks
it's not really hot
it's just the sun on your neck

life is making pancakes with the eggs of you
you are being whisked my son
get fluffy and feed life
like the carbohydrate that you are

i am the love handles on black holes and eternity
maybe crazy is all we can hope to be
i aspire to it
it fulfills me

i wake up in the night and the movies in my mind
say they will keep playing whether i go back to sleep or not
the waves are rolling so i jump right in
surfing the jolly frightening nonsense

NO SMORKING!

Fri, 06 Feb 2009 05:33:33 GMT

i am forced to give up the sweet life morsels that are just within my reach
raging against the dying light is only good enough in the movies
in real life nothing is enough
tedious "days", "weeks", "etc" that i am forced to make mine
and live within
i am supposed to clothe my loose mind
in a tight fist?

once i fell, i fell a tree
and that tree, that tree
it fell on me
it tore a gash in my chest
that made me shine
with blood and torn
loose flesh
and then going up and down the steps
reminds you that your flesh is loose
and under construction

we are in disrepair
and sometimes we have to be torn asunder
(torn like thunder)
to briskly live
again

speculating in degenerative fiction con queso y deus ex machina

Fri, 06 Feb 2009 04:07:35 GMT

let's pretend that i am writing a book about an old, bitter man who believes he is staying alive by drinking the urine of teenage boys and girls. these are pages from his diary...

"i can't believe i've gotten the creative juices flowing before midnite. how unusual. maybe it's from all that research i've been doing on people that i felt i was close to who are no longer in my life. sanguine, no that is not the word, it is the opposite of the right word, and yet it would seem to be the right word. words fail me so i fail them right back. i barely pogo, so no, i don't dance the tango. the tango sounds very old movie cool and intimate though. i feel like i am feeling around in the dark for a lightswitch, but there is no lightswitch, but i don't know that. are you sure you don't dance the tango? two tango charlie dance the tango? if henry darger can write a mad story alone in the night so can i. at least i can afford a dog and have two cats, one of which sits in my lap (if only for warmth (but in life we are not that choosy)). i dance my rotting anus on the cauldron of your love. i detach my retinas, i am fiber optic.

should we fight these urges? they are surely born of mental illness, bad chemicals, and childhood juju. i fire nerf darts into the darkness. i am a denial of service attack on nothingness. oh, the radio is going for the sentimental jugular, and i become a fountain spewing 80's new wave blood. i was meant to live in a jungle. some blame agriculture, but for me it's all the jobs everywhere. they are not to be had by human beings. there is a better world for the mentally ill, opt in. we've all become drones. drones, drones, dancing bees. and our honey is stolen. stolen! our hearts, souls?, repurposed, restructured. i attach cords in the dark and find them linking important organs to sources of great power. i aim my arrows at the sun. i am lost in the struggle. send breadcrumbs.

all cylinders firing cinders

Thu, 15 Jan 2009 06:57:47 GMT

life catches me at the wrong moments
right now i'm in hendrix-chop-a-mountain-down
-with-the-edge-of-my-hand-mania
and i have to be at the job thing
tomorrow at 9 in the am
fuck, fuck, fuckitty, fuck
and so i have to choose:
a rare moment of life and
blood flowing in my veins,
or not feeling like hell
waking up and going through the day
i guess we take what we can get
what we can figure out
of this random experiment
we are all engaging in
whether we realize that's what it is
or not

{from the journal of patient 482942389p}

we are all guilty, but let us all go free

Fri, 09 Jan 2009 07:07:22 GMT

we have all committed heinous crimes against humanity
just by being here and staying alive
we hurt each other knowingly and unknowingly
instead of lions taking down water buffalo
we are bureaucrats being lazy or lovers with petty infidelities
friends who are untrue in our flaky love
but i say forgive us for all our crimes,
both horrible and minor, painfully real and imaginary
strike us down with love
knock us absolutely down
and pull us back up
we need it,
shouldn't ever turn it down
no matter how undeserving
the world has so much damage to recover from
and not the least of which
are all of our broken little hearts
and the minor infractions of every day

flit flit flit

Mon, 05 Jan 2009 04:08:13 GMT

back and forth between unsure tasks
oh no, this is going to be a poem
which thing to do in the running out of time?
half-do a lot of things?
running back and forth
i accumulate music but begin to crave silence
am i often trading the real for the imaginary?

facebook

Sat, 03 Jan 2009 21:19:39 GMT

s is talking with our good friend on the phone and i'm looking at facebook and wondering about my apparent dearth of friends for my 41 years on this planet. i'm a whiny, needy bastard. if life is a journey from childhood to death, and you meet a lot of people along the way, who are those who leave their traces on you and vice versa? along with all the damage along the way. some connections are so tenuous. some people i think of adding as friends and realize they were just acquaintances who might not have the same fondness for me that i have for them, especially if they were better friends with my other friends and i was just someone who was there. and of course people you meet on livejournal etc. are sort of ghosts in the machine, people whose last names i don't even know and have never met, wouldn't recognize on the street. we try to make the bonds we need at various times in our lives and then years later there is so little left. they say all our cells are replaced like every seven years, so old friends are like two or three me's ago. it's sad that we can be separated by time, name changes, and lack of technology. when we saw the movie let the right one in it gave me an emotional reaction that feels so rare. sometimes i feel i'm running on emotional fumes. have much love with s, but strangely need much more, and not just any will do, it has to connect with the right receptors.

friends, enemies, conspiracy theorists

Fri, 07 Nov 2008 17:41:10 GMT

so happy about obama's win. sad about the anti-gay state bills though. i don't think there is likely to be an answer in the israel/palestine situation any time soon. i wish they could just share the space and both live in the whole area and share the religious spaces. if it weren't for religion a lot of the issues wouldn't exist. i've been following some paranoid stuff about fractional reserve banking and the likelihood of an economic collapse. i don't know why we give private banks so much power. an acquaintance on my facebook friend list, somebody who works where i work who added me who i felt obligated to add back posted his support of a wall street journal article complaining that americans have been mean to poor bush. i started to post that i disagreed and that in a better world he and cheney would be tried for war crimes and treason, then noticed that all his friends were right right wingers posting negative stuff about obama etc. and didn't want to get into a big argument with a lot of these people so i just removed my comment and de-friended him. but i clicked on a couple of links on his webpage to anti-obama videos on youtube etc. and was just depressed by the right-wing harangue, and saw it as the mirror-image of the anti-bush etc. sentiment. i feel our arguments are better-reasoned and provide the greater good for more people than right-wing policies, but the lack of being able to come together for solutions really depresses me.

Mon, 13 Oct 2008 05:29:23 GMT

my roving comes to an end almost immediately. i imagine a life, but run out of ideas right away. i have the leisure not to worry too much if anyone ever reads this, but not the leisure to write this any time i want or late into the night without throwing my life out of balance. i worm, i work a job. but we can imagine or dream, i mean dream, anything we want, no limitations. last night i dreamt i was visiting a tv museum. it was more absurd than that would already be in that this museum was just a collection of lots of different bigscreen tvs. i don't know the point of that, but that's part of the joy of it. it needs no place in reality. part of us needs to escape reality. falling asleep is like falling toward the pillow and splashing into a moonlit alien lake. there are places on this very earth surrounding by snow, with pools of water steaming with heat. or places where it it terribly hot and yet the water is ice cold. what makes these things wonderful is not the things themselves, but our access or at least imaginings of them. everywhere people suffer because they or others take the wrong thing too seriously. if only we could change our ways. of course the individual can, but alas, society, good luck. i shove off from the human race and try to dream a dream. sometimes you need to detach yourself from your reality. its hooks are deep. and we cut each other too deeply without knowing. we are clumsy bumper cars. if one had intelligence, what could one refine it into? or does intelligence not necesarily go that far? imagination gives us better things than we can find. there are different levels we can engage from the basic to the intellectual or spiritual or abstract or absurd. life is a combination of them all, but some are easier to dwell in than others. we're generally raised in a rather simple realm, and then our bodies, and the world changes for us. it is a lot to take, and the only real limitation is insanity and every kind of human endurance. we all first of all live in a physical world: food, sleep, shit, survive. generally we need some kind of job, unless we are lucky enough to be born outside of that responsibility. i have the freedom to find what kind of work i can, and yet, i have settled for something pretty plain and limiting. i am largely lazy, and having some experience with the world of imagination have settled for the real world with one basic partner, two cats, a fishtank, a job, and various entertainments. as this itself proves, sometimes something needs more. needs more and doesn't know what to do with it. needs more and has not the skill to achieve it. that is where imagination, dreams, and the diversity of our many-splendoured and troubled world leaves us a place to roam and run. if you need to you can go on a bender and wake up in your own puke in a garbage can. and that can even make for the most beautiful morning of your life, not experienced like anything you've lived before. sometimes we just need to remember that there are infinitely other ways to do this. we need to remember that because the easiest thing is to do the same day over and over again. your dreams should nag at you to live beyond one day. monks can focus on emptiness until death, but i see no difference. nirvana is a nice place to wash your hair, but no place i want to live. we can always be the cosmos later, right now we are beasts with feelings trying to get along with each other. we should be making the most out of that and rewarding those who can remind us and show us how. wake up. i slip into the real. i fall asleep both literally and figuratively. i don't have the energy to keep my brain awake. i get bored and forget that you have to swim not to drown. i try to remember the days i've lived differently and whether or not it was worth it. some things can be escaped and some thing can be found, but sometimes you can neither escape nor find anything. it hurts to move between the layers, like the strands of a web. we are both trapped and free. i can't write this like a novel, because a novel requires real world examples and my life in the real world is too minimal. the life of my mind is narrower than i'd like as well. that just leaves my dreams and i have found that i am spending increasingly longer times asleep these days. my dreams are a better host than the real world. although there are endless possibilities i can't cut through the jello that separates me from everyone else. my right arm just fell off. it does that sometimes, or my left. pain for no reason to remind us that we are falling apart and on the clock and the clock is ticking. even in nirvana the clock is ticking, don't kid yourself.

the big bang is all bang
talk about size not mattering
when you can bang like big
it hits you like you never knew what was coming
where it's going or what happens next
you don't even know where you are
so we live our lives like fleas on infinity
the big bang is a drunk in the bar
that won't shut up
and we don't realize that if he does
we're all in trouble

take me away and make me a duke. let me forget what work ever was. i probably couldn't handle leaving the basic demands of a job, but i'd like to try. i want to wake up or sleep when and wherever. i want to make a nest in a comfortable lawn or flower garden. wake up by a brook with breath like a drunken nectar. if i see you in the real world remind me to forget reality as much as humanly possible. like the song says, "it's nice work if you can get it, and you can get it if you try." in the background of my life i can always hear the sound of the worms eating me. in reality it doesn't take long, but it seems to last all my life, just the same.

what do you have to do to prove to anyone that you're insane?

it is by will alone i set my mind in motion

Tue, 30 Sep 2008 05:45:51 GMT

sorry for the absence. i drift in and out. i spoke informally with a dr. over the weekend who said that my meds were keeping me half-alive. he suggested i go back to the previous dosages of my heart meds (lower) and i should be more awake in general. that sounds good to me, but my cardiologist tried to basically scare me into my current dosages by saying "this will keep you alive." but at this level i don't have the energy to exercise at all. he also said i should take the brand synthroid rather than my generic thyroid pill.

i missed the sxsw cheapest price deadline by not paying close enough attention so now film badges will cost us $50 more, which is a big penalty to pay for being asleep. i need to write shit down for myself almost memento-like.

time whips by
spinning like a merry-go-round
you see things changing as they whirl
they are quickly out of reach
some people have been gone from my life for quite a while
some are still here so far
sometimes i reach into the past
and grab phantoms
i need to take time to
take time
or at least spend some time
in its illusion

humans are unequal to their task

Mon, 28 Jul 2008 16:32:07 GMT

s just came to me sobbing. last night we watched the episode of morgan spurlock's 30 days where a hunter has to live with animal rights activists for 30 days. he was given situations that put him face to face with things that were simply wrong and sad and he was affected. s and i have been vegetarians for over 20 years, but it's hard to proselytize to people, especially because i hate it when people proselytize to me about religion. s says it's not the same, but so many people have their religious beliefs locked in their psyche. s empathizes with animals very deeply. i do too, but i give up because the problem is so big and i feel so powerless. there is a huge list of how the world is fucked up, darfur, iraq, hunger, aids, just to start off. i round all of the world's problems down to too many human beings on this planet. less human beings, less destruction, less suffering.

i'll list some of the issues the hunter had to deal with in the show. they go to the pound where he learns of all the animals that are euthanized due to lack of space. you see a beautiful, friendly black pit bull that thinks he is being taken for a walk, when he is being led to his death. it is a beautiful, sweet animal, but there are simply too many of them because people prefer certain breeds and don't spay and neuter their pets and get animals from breeders when they could save a life by getting one from the pound.

he is taken to a factory dairy farm where he finds out that the cows are kept pregnant to constantly produce milk. the male calves are raised in tiny pens for veal and the females are prepared for dairy production. a good number of calves die in their horrible conditions at this facility and he is shown their bodies left out to be picked up. they get a call about a sick animal that could be rescued and pick it up. it has trouble breathing and is not doing well. he hates to see the animal suffering and helps nurse it back to health. you see the calf getting better and hopping around like a dog with life that you can feel viscerally.

people who lived on farms are able to separate themselves from animals they raise for meat. perhaps they can do this because they treat them humanely prior to slaughter, i don't know. i wouldn't be able to do it. my sister once lived on a dairy farm and it was great to visit the cows and pet them and feed them grass in their fields and see the calves. i saw them as wonderful animals, like dogs, without the malice or destructive emotions of human beings.

the hunter is shown video footage of animals being skinned alive for their fur.

s is disappointed in me that i haven't pushed this issue with my family. the truth is i am just not that close to my family. luckily one branch of my family are vegetarians and i think i had something to do with that, but many of them aren't. i wish the world could cut off the implicit support for violence that we allow. we feel powerless. we don't want anyone or anything really to suffer, but what do we have to do with it? one area we have power is with how we spend our money. people can eat less meat, get their pets from the pound, not wear fur. these things are easy to do if you make any attempt at all.

i wish i had some big ideas for reducing the violence and harm in the world, that i could make a difference. reduce the population. eat less meat. switch to renewable energy. live on less resources and share what we have with the world in a functional, sustainable way without greed. the ability to look on other nations, religions, cultures, even species without condescension. someone who is suffering will do just about anything. we don't see all our options or all the consequences of our actions. we just see the nice things at the store. we work hard and feel that we deserve them, need them. we don't want to see the sweat shops or the factory farms.

i worried that s might be suicidal about this. she really doesn't want to be part of this world. i've seen people's comments on digg.com when there are stories about people who commit suicide and some people say things like "one less weak person." sadly, the right people usually don't consider suicide. i don't really mean that, i don't want anyone to suffer, but the world needs help and we should do what we can. i just doubt we're up to the task. like that sting song where he asks if the russians love their children too, i wonder what future other people want for their children. a world of endless war and terror, based on never working out our conflicts with empathy and compromise. a world of hellish factory farms and a climate out of control because we can't change and put as much development into sustainable living as we put into bombs and ipods. the world has always had war and suffering. we say that we're better than animals, but can we not lessen the suffering of both man and animals?