smiles

i walked through the fire
to the tune of a beloved hound
compassion and indifference
harmonizing well today
ignore the aches and pains
and get me more ingredients
the recipe is not complete
nor will it ever be -
an infinite number of cooks
and an infinite pot of soup
i think i can still make it good.

yeah, i can hear you talking,
the snide comments
you lack the bravery to breathe
in front of their intended targets
that's okay, i do the same,
to you, and others; myself, mostly
too in love with your passive aggression,
you built a hill of stones to stand on
but just keep throwing them at us
when our backs are turned -
your stack is growing short, friend.

i thought things would be different
when the flames grew high in the west
but apparently we'll all just
work through the apocalypse,
and the end will find us
hunched over computer desks
stoves cash registers and dashboards,
as we all die tired, lonely, far from home.

but, smiles.
here is a new day,
and the morning looks bright.

or not

sometimes sleep is neither oblivious nor peaceful.

real talk

seriously, dude? i don't even fuckin' know anymore.

sleep is oblivion, blissful, goodbye for now.

xodarap

i'm a hunter who prefers the city.
i'm a liar who prefers an honest life.
i'm an addict who prefers sobriety.
i'm a rager with a head full of peace.

i can't win.

night has fallen, so the storms have returned...

adjusting

watched the adjustment bureau this afternoon. damn good movie. believe too much of it. doesn't hurt the love interest is named elyse.

im turning into my dad more and more. sometimes i hear his voice coming out of my mouth. it's creepy.

addendum: the movie's using a framework i like to tell a different version an old story of mine could have turned out. could still turn out. though i'm not going to be the president.

wow

mind officially blown:

watching a thing about the balkans. they're talking about birds, showing how different birds nest in the same areas. then, there we have the black crowned night heron.

i took this picture of a black crowned night heron in golden gate park a few years ago:


apparently these birds are all over the damn world. here i thought i had a stalker from the balkans. thing was freakin' huge, though; when i was approaching it carefully, keeping it calm seemed important for the shot and for my life. it could've taken an eye then come back for the other one, then come back some more for my companion's eyes.

sigh

no, girl, you kinda failed tonight by not showing up. i said, "it'd be nice to have a friendly face in the crowd," especially since you were gonna be in the neighborhood all day anyway. i wasn't looking for just a piece of ass tonight, i wanted a companion. you can't call me after it's over just because you need a place to crash.

i need to go to sleep. i'm kinda irritated about this.

ps: spectacular! it appears this is the first post entitled 'sigh' i've put in here. coming up with original one-word titles for each entry is bound to push the limits of my vocabulary... in a year or two, ha!

storytime

i did my reading tonight. it wasn't really a reading.

a while back i started writing a new story, specifically for this run. i got 2/3 through and was called away by life. when i came back to it, i wasn't particularly impressed with what i saw. so i sat on it, being mostly tied up by work all week. at some point i decided to read a finished story ('maybe rising tides', or possibly 'rising tides', i don't remember what form it reached here in), and spent most of the afternoon looking it over and tweaking it.

it was at around 6:00pm that i realized my thumb hurt too much to write it out longhand for the reading, as had been my plan, and i had no time to go anywhere to print it out. i considered using a laptop on stage, but then i would just be reading from a computer. (the others were reading from paper, or in one case a cell phone, so a laptop wouldn't have been particularly out of place - i might use this in a while.) so i decided to wing it. after another minute of looking through 'maybe rising tides', i realized i'd likely get too hung up on trying to remember the exact wording of it. so i said, fuck it, go with a half-written story and wing the whole things. so i told the spectrum story.

i stumbled a bit at the end. i felt good about it, though, as a 'closing act' or 'headliner', which i didn't particularly expect.

i also pulled a piece of dried noodle out of my finger today. i'm a good surgeon.

i should've bought food on the way home. no matter.

quote

our new manager came in at about 3 today. i was due in at noon, but overslept, waking up at about 11:45. wake up roommate get ready etc, i walked in at 12:30. which isn't bad. general manager ambushed me in the cooler with a tirade about my temper, which is wildly hypocritical, a fact she brought up the last time she yelled at me about this - amy's 29, and fucking gorgeous, little 5'6" bundle of italian spitfire authority. it's come to my attention that my store is essentially run by kids, as the gm is 29, the next down is 28, new girl is 26... bringing us back around to the new girl, who came in during the one lull of an insanely busy day. as she's prepping paperwork and checking the line, she comes across me, cutting chicken, looking (i imagine) rather downtrodden, and possibly beaten.

i say, "i'm gonna tell you this now, before we get into the rest of the night. i'm not in a bad mood," as she was probably afraid of, "and i'm not gonna be; i have a hurt thumb, my hip is locking up, my other knee is going from supporting the extra weight, my stomach's bothering me, and i'm really trying not to talk about it because to me it all sounds like 'bitch bitch bitch, i don't wanna work today.' and that's not the case; i just want to work, keep to myself, and go enjoy my day off tomorrow." she sorta smiled, and with the words, "okay... thanks," i could feel a lot of unspoken relief. "but really," i added at the end, as i walked past her to go back to what id been doing, "it sounded like, 'bitch bitch bitch, i don't wanna work today,' right? because that's still how it sounds to me."

she laughed, and we moved on with our day, and i worked my ass off for nearly ten solid hours. my legs hurt, and i keep forgetting not to use my thumb to hit the space bar (which hurts every time), and i should probably eat something, but for now, the computer and this weed are enough. sometimes i wish there were a lover beside me, but for those times i have cigarettes, which is why i am always smoking. like right now.

oh, they're over there. i'm not moving.

i hear amy winehouse died today. imagine that.

dang

my thumb hurts. im not typing with it, which is weird. i might have to get it looked at tomorrow, though i work 12-10. im off sunday; if i wake up and it aint bad, i might try to wait. i want it to clear up, though. dammit.

storming. s'nice.

godspeed

this hurts.

i can see the storm rolling past to the north of us. i can even hear it, on occasion, roaring in over gy!be. here's what we've been doing this morning:



godspeed has definitely accompanied me through some low points, but f#a#oo specifically drags my memory back to late november/early december 2006, racine, laying in a room and feeling the cold outside seep in through the ill-insulated window in my bedroom, really a closet, a closet they emptied and we painted (shoddily) in an effort to make me a place to call mine. it was a deep blue, walls and ceiling. i used it exclusively to sleep, or to lie there. i think my clothes were there. for some reason i recall there being wine, cheap red wine, though i had no job and little money and this seems unlikely.

elyse had just called off the wedding. my first acid experience, and the wild charge into chicago that followed it, wouldn't happen for weeks. soon i would buy my first pack of non-clove cigarettes - a pack of winstons i would ultimately give half of away - on a solitary drive back to my parents' house in the country for christmas, a trip that ultimately felt like running home with my tail between my legs, spurned by the woman i would have (and had) thrown away everything for. school, job (two jobs, really), friends, girlfriend, family - one night, before she called it quits, i mentioned how much i was looking forward to christmases, to the two of us alternating which family we spent the holiday with, or the day when we'd be able to bring both families to us. she said she's always want to spend the holidays with her parents, and i said, okay. that's fine.

ready to give up my family. damn. that's one of those things i consider when i look back and realize that, really, we weren't ready for marriage. but i am eternally impatient; if i hadn't asked for her hand that summer, it would've been the next, or the next, or some despondent winter inbetween.

it's raining. pouring, really. the temp dropped to like 70. left the windows open, wind isn't too bad, cool air feels good.

i used to have a livejournal. it fills in some of the gaps in the earlier years, and there's some interesting photography and bits of writing mixed in there. you can see it by clicking here. much like this blog, it went mostly unread. much like this blog, that didn't stop me. granted, much of it was directed at elyse, since she was one of the only other people i knew with a livejournal, and while i've moved on from a lot of that pain i guess it's still interesting from a historical standpoint.

she messaged me a few months ago, when i should've been breaking up with the 19 year old i wasn't really dating, wasn't really in love with, certainly wasn't fucking. we traded one or two e-mails, then she said her computer was shot and i got a lot of radio silence after that. since then, there hasn't been so much a breaking-up as a general-stopping. radio silence still. perhaps i will say something this morning.

people seem to like waking up and immediately talking to/at me for long stretches. they do the same thing right after i wake up. is my purpose in life to be spoken to? sometimes it feels that way. i've played shrink to all manner of friends and coworkers throughout the years, heard too many secrets, diffused plenty of tempers, chilled all kinds of disputes and spats. i am the duct which allows you to vent.

and so on.

emo

i have become quite lonely of late.

i mean, i've always felt somewhat lonely, but it's been more intense recently. it grabbed hold of me near the end of my work shift tonight and would not be shaken. still won't be. aimless searching through craigslist, frustration at the new facebook chat setup, solitary smoking on the back porch watching a somewhat past-it's-prime lightning storm fade to the east and north-east. chicago misses the rain; it pours to the north and south. i have seen this before, recently and not-so-recently.

tomorrow, the heat wave breaks a bit, and a bit more the next day. there is a fascinating trail of storms stretching from baja california to chicago, a straight southwest->northeast line across the country. there are large pulses moving up the line; they do not flow, rather grow and fade in one place before reappearing further along, growing and fading, growing and fading. the string remains unbroken until chicago, where the line breaks, sending one small cell northeast and another due east.

there is quite a pattern being drawn here.

subterfuge

i ran into today with a host of mental tricks up my sleeve for staying chill and just dealing with the day. i had to use some of them. not all.

it's... too damn hot.

is this what we have to look forward to, from now on?

we slept through our trials and made fun of the aftermaths

we fail our final exams but walk into the next grade anyway come fall

we will remember that in 2011 the sun sterilized the streets

we cannot regret our worst decisions once karma has taken its full toll





we will never forget the things that made us forget

vision

i can see again. it's fantastic. apparently my eyes have barely changed in three years, and i hit 100% accuracy on their little glaucoma/cataracts/stroke/diabetes/etc peripheral vision exam. i thought i had some false positives, which i said to the eye doctor (the real one, not the one who gave me the exam), and he just said, nope, 100% accuracy. to me, that means that there are problem spots starting to develop, just not so far along to make them completely invisible.

/pessimism

i can see again. it's fantastic.

another

i'm clearly feeling restless, and dualistic. maybe it's the one good eye. bring me the disco king...

in the back of my head i hear the screamed word "stop", often, loudly, sometimes repeatedly. it could refer to the actions of others, the actions of me, the summer, the winter, my general lifestyle, or the direction of the entire world. it is insistent.

it is also often ignored.

names

i've heard that people with similar names will share certain characteristics, or tendancies. similarities. for instance, i've never met a quinn i could stand. they irritate the shit out of me. it's nothing against anyone named quinn; they've just all got that little something extra that makes my blood boil. people named chris seem to be a little off the wall. you know how you look at someone and you hear their name and you're like, "yeah, you look like a _____"? now we're on the same page.

suppose you were born with a given name, but from an early age you went by a different one, the same different one, from then on out. suppose you developed in ways that made you look and act like the qualities of the name you went by.

what happens to the real person? the name unused, the name that should have been? it goes on developing in the background, i think, coming to the surface in fits and starts, in moments of extreme emotion, feeding ideas and notions unhindered into that back of your mind. it's not so much a split personality, where one takes over entirely while the other "goes to sleep", more of a dual personality, with a main force as well as a 'path less traveled'. everything you push away and try to forget gets fed to it, creating a sort of stunted mutant siamese twin attached to a much hungrier, healthier, and popular counterpart.

that might be going on in my head, if any of it's true. it'd explain some things. i'm trying to find ways to reconcile the two, to allow the background one to come forward in settings where he won't immediately get furious - because that's where he seems to get the most time, high-stress situations where the "face" either doesn't want to deal, or can't deal, or is just too tired and exhausted to resist.

or maybe i'm just trying to over-dramatize my own life. we all want to believe we're special, unique, like we have something totally new to offer the world, like the stupid shit going on in our lives hasn't been experienced in some way shape or form by uncountable people throughout history. there's nothing new, everything's been done, and you can put that on my tombstone, when my pair of personalities are finished running my poor weak physical body into the fucking ground. if there's an afterlife, god help it; my first words in heaven, hell, or wherever, will be: "The party just got weird, folks." i will try to deliver, because while there is nothing new, there are always new ways to put together old things.

but at least i have perhaps put a name to my muse.

<3

broken people

we're all a little broken.

my left contact got torn, and i can't replace it until monday, because i get paid on monday. i might actually have to wait until tuesday, because i start work at 4 monday afternoon. tuesday i'm off. i'm also trying to get the cool people i work with together to get drunk with the irish on tuesday, but that's a different story.

one of our dishwashers missed work today because his new medication (for his two new ulcers) is making him shit constantly. one of my prep cooks didn't miss work today, despite his five ulcers, bad ankles, and occasional heart murmur. one of my waiters is blind in one eye, and has barely missed a day of work in the four months he's been there. one of my pantry cooks is a princess bitch and won't quit no matter how hard we all pray for it. one of my pasta cooks is 30, and has two kids.

and my roommate, who has no job, can't be bothered to do the dishes unless it's his turn, and won't keep the house clean (thus our current fruit fly / ant situation), and won't cook dinner when the other two of us work all night, and won't take the dog out in the morning or at night until his barking has woken me up.

there is also one more roommate, who has recently fallen off the wagon, who works long days doing very little, who shows up late at night or not at all but pays his rent and buys food for the dog. thus we are four people, in a three bedroom apartment, which is why i sleep in the "living room" (indistinguishable from the actual living room just next door, separated by nothing at all) now. i wake up angry almost every day due to this fact, this fact which has me awake right now, actually, despite the fact that it is 3am and i have to be back at work at noon. instead here i sit, as they watch and loudly comment on some shitty saturday morning cartoon they've been watching off netflix for four or five days straight. at least it's not all those other shitty saturday morning cartoons they've watched the full runs of on netflix.

i might need privacy more than sleep at this point. sometimes i would like to say fuck off and leave me alone to everyone at once, with an exemption for a woman who could love me at least as much as i love her.

c'est la vie.

just over a week until my reading, and while i'm almost finished with the story about the two who fall in love then have a kid after their foresight reveals that the world is about to end, i'm losing interest in it. rapidly. it feels trite, i don't know why. it's too simple? i don't know. i'm probably going to read it anyway, though i've had a daydream or two of getting halfway through, just telling the rest of the story to the audience freestyle, then spending some time discussing the 'none of my fantasies come true' bit and leave them thinking i'm some sort of delusional madman convinced he's saving the world by constantly envisioning the worst.

it'd make em come back for more, i think.

one more time

"i wish you hadn't disappeared from my life."
thats pretty accurate for a couple of people.
but only pretty accurate,
because they all haunt my dreams.
my subconscious only thinks about
the people who aren't there,
who can't be there,
who wouldn't.
it thinks about,
what if they could be there,
or if they would,
how nothing would change,
i'd be just as distant
and absent
nonetheless.
i think i want someone
who can accept my physical presence
knowing that "you're not always
going to get me mentally,
but i need you here
when i get back."
i'll never sleep again,
i cried,
upon waking,
every day.

forty

POST FORTY. i think i have more posts than pageviews. i am the new internet underground, and if anyone joins me it'd be ruined. i don't think i'd mind.

i said, i kinda wish you hadn't disappeared from my life. there hasn't been a response. it's true, and worded as accurately as i could muster. 'kinda wish', because as much as i miss her, she was never really here, and i'm smart enough to recognize an initial problem like that as a definite long-term red flag. i want to give her the freedom she needs, i'm trying to, but occasionally i can't help it. i'll always reach out from time to time, and if you happen to be reading this, "natalie", i'd like to apologize in advance. you'll never be truly rid of me, if that was even your intention. it probably wasn't.

so how to drive this lingering flame from my head? i lightly reached out to one long-time crush, considering being a little less subtle. accidentally saw the bus ticket confirmation for the trip i was supposed to take to toronto in feb, spent a while kicking myself over that. (it didn't happen because my house got robbed, including our whole month's rent, so all at once i couldn't afford to miss a week of work. fucking fate.) spent an hour this morning fantasizing about elyse coming to chicago, how she'd call me and ask if we could meet up, how i'd say only if you're alone, how she'd say that she wouldn't be, how i'd say, well, maybe you guys could just come see me at work. and then they'd come, and see me through the window which lets customers see us cooking on the line, and she'd knock on the glass and wave, and i'd look up, and my heart would stop, and then when her boyfriend walked into the frame it'd break, but i'd have to go out there and small talk anyway, and i'd put on the mask for a while until she left then go out back for a cigarette and either keep myself from crying or just sit there and cry.

sometimes i hate my personal fantasies. they're too realistic. for a long time, it seemed like any fantasy i fleshed out too specifically became guaranteed to never happen, no matter how sure a thing it might seem. i still think that, sometimes. it hurts. my dreams literally never come true. i was okay with this back when i first noticed it, when i was a child, and couldn't imagine wanting anything to happen other than whatever it is that happens. all my make-believe was wild and fantastic anyway, and it didn't matter if none of it came true, because it was all pretty impossible anyway. a lot of it, i didn't want to come true. i still hold on to a little piece of that, which might be why i write so many stories about the end of the world. if i imagine it, if i write about it, if i sketch it out all detailed and perfect... it won't happen. it won't come true.

it's like i can tell you the future, but only if you listen to all the things i say will happen, and figure out what i didn't say. because that will be what actually happens.

i should've stayed in the realm of fiction. no, i mean, literally, i should've remained a fictional character in a fictional land full of fictional beasts and fictional conflicts. i should never have become non-fiction. your 'real world' fucking sucks. (i think this was a message from my muse.)

whitewashed

i let slip a wisp of dream today,
pulled free and observed but a moment
when the wind whisked it from my fingers,
fluttered straight into the canyon,
crashing down, a million tons in the water.
a thousand feet below the river leapt up
to wash pure my face, never to fall back,
so it was my tears that refilled the river.

the silt was still damp
when my grief restored the river rushing,
no singular agony or specifiable torment
but a lifetime of repressed catastrophe
no longer doped clean by poppy sounds
and all the whitewashed propaganda
conjured up by a threatened ego.

this summer snowfall
was not the blanket i requested.

decisions

overall, really, i'd just like to say, i would've chosen life.

you just made it so damn boring here.

so it goes.

traditionology

as in, the study of traditions.

its important to keep track of the things we create rituals out of. they're the things that define us, not just as individuals but as a species. we all share rituals, whether it's church or driving or sex or sports events or sunday blunts, and it's the consequences of the rituals - the traditions - that reflect in our overall impact on the world. it's not what you're doing on your own; it's what you're doing that everyone else out there is doing too. the driving ritual is helping to destroy the environment. the sex ritual is leading to overpopulation, though it so happens the destroyed environment (and thus the driving ritual) is helping cure that. in a sense.

traditions are hard to change, or break. just watch fiddler on the roof.

if you google traditionology, you only get things related to me until page three, at which point you get into some other stuff. i hadn't seen it until just now. end result, i'm not as creative as i thought i was. dammit.

a true story

when i was five i had a dream. i say five, but i don't know how old i was; just that i was young. it was the last real nightmare i ever had; i'm fairly certain i've never woken up screaming like that ever since. few dreams since have compared in terms of sheer realism.

i was at a concert. i remember saying it was a led zeppelin concert; i didn't have much else to go on, though. music was still kinda new to me. anyway. the music was loud, until it ended. everything was dark, and all the people were gone, but i heard a noise behind me. i turned, and it was a demon (looking, i've since realized, much like this, a picture i didn't see until at least four or five years later). it said something, and breathed fire, and for a moment, i was the fire.

that wasn't the part that woke me up. as the fire faded, i found myself in a field. there were trees, and birds, and the sun was as warm as the wind was cool. it was pleasant, but soon i noticed the color draining from everything. as it all went black and white, black cracks slowly began to spread across the image - imposed over land and sky alike - until the whole scene shattered. when there was nothing left, that's when i woke up screaming.

i've come to find it paints a pretty good picture of the world since i was born. rock concert, hellfire, and then nature goes grey and the world dies. dang.

those last three links are from chile this week. they're not color altered. that's ash.

today

today i wanted to punch a girl in the face. today i wanted to ask my best friend to move the fuck out. today i found out that more people think i have a temper problem than i'd previously been aware of. somewhere in the back of my head, i'm starting to take notice.

dammit.

livin' the dream

i only use that term in the most ironic of ways. for instance, while carting immense trash cans down the street along navy pier, in the rain, with cars honking at you to move faster. that didn't happen today. today was its own monster. fuck it though. i just have to survive a minute longer, then see a girl on thursday. im gonna be broke for two weeks, because we got paid so close to rent, and barely had enough to cover it. food stamps are awol too, until the reapplication moves through the city sewer far enough to spark some action. mid-july we'll be golden, but until then... yech. i want to fast-forward.

thursday. thursday the next day off, when i should be sleeping and relaxing when instead i'll probably be slumming with a girl who i... probably won't sleep with. upside i won't have money to drink, so it's still on the table. i'm sure the world will get in the way somehow.

so be it.

oof.

exhausted. got out a page of the spectrum story. i might go both ways; the spectrum becomes a religion, and also slowly fogs the world so everyone ends up blind. so there you go; i ruined the end for you, and i haven't even written it yet. that's what you get for... whatever. i don't know. how dare you.

kids

i had another idea.

two people have the ability to make out the future, in their own unique ways. they meet, fall in love, and are soon wed. after their marriage, they each begin receiving bits, facets, moments that tell them that the apocalypse is nigh. they give it 25, maybe 30 years. soon, they begin hearing similar things from the few other honest prognosticators they know.

they have a kid anyway. the kid is raised with the knowledge that the world will end, abruptly and with great fanfare, around his 28th birthday. he is home schooled early in life, taught not only of the imminent apocalypse but of how important it is not to let on that you know, or really even to bring it up at all. sort of the last remaining conversational taboo.

eventually he goes off into the wild. he grows up, moves out, lives like he's homeless. why bother? only a few years left now. he finds a lot of other people who, oblivious (or expectant without really knowing), act the same anyway.

and then the world ends.

it's important that the story begin with 'once upon a time'.