backspace

the plant, this plant right here, looks like lightly-grilled green peppers skewered on winding shish-ka-bob sticks. thick, ruffled, vibrant. there doesn't seem to be any ordering principle to the juxtaposition of the tendrils....unlike some sharp and angular plants one might find on wooded walks. this thought from the other day floats back into my mindspace....chaos is still math. there is still logic here, there; it grips at your eyes and rakes them left, right...gently curls your ankles, like a summer breath, coaxing them down a sideways street. a coppered scent lances through you, permeates the inside of the compass, dizzying. there is a dialectic for everything here. there is an equation compounding...both complex and getting simpler, by less-than-seconds, to understand. it is ourselves who are dismantling our own progress, disordering the rubix while we aren't looking (really looking). we feel some need to make this math STOP, some imperative to frost it, slow it, and script it so that it might be applied to ourselves. whom we cannot, for the life of us, figure out.

so instead, we focus on everything external to us. we burrow, curiously enough, into the outside world. when things go pear-shaped, we sometimes hang on to it for dear life, for sweet surrender to definition from an informing source, from something which seems to have more solidity than the nebulous fluctuations of our minds and thereby personalities (no, do not claim no inconsistencies in this arena. they are there; we are just better-trained to pass over our own faults and paint crimson flags upon others'). but we need to learn to retract our claws; to fall from the world and simultaneously be cushioned by it. we have compounded depths within us that most have not even bothered to scan with whatever radar techniques they can muster. our potential ranges of sensation, of experience, are exponential, or diminishing to near zero...one of the two. we have lost much of the sense, the liberty, of innovative living, of casting out and burning with the newness of the stars. there are many territories to be explored, not all of them tangible. but the more darkness one burns away inside of oneself, the more focused and torch-bearing one can exist on the outside.

dreams, in particular, and an exemplary manifestation of this idea. dreams sublimate the vast and murky, sensations (or whatever you want to call them, those indications of distance within one's own mind, emotions, spirit) that we are capable of, with actual plots of what seems to be more manageable mediums. dreams are crayons, scraping waxen upon the intricate sculptures of the soul. how fascinating that we can conjure whole oceans, whole continents, out of the raw materials which our thoughts, and what goes perhaps deeper than them, provide. it seems little wonder that god is imagined as human-like, and humanity as the sharded form of a god.

we exist in multiple dimensions, in multiple forms, and they can teach us great and wonderful things about the other. i think that only something which was laced, somehow, could exhibit these properties, these bridges of understanding. to quote a friend..."livelovelaughlook". Do not sell yourself short on the boundless possibilities of existing with apparent chaos. Embrace.

family business

do you know what is interesting? despite the fact that i somewhat take issue with christmas for the necessity of buying people things (and it's not that i am cheap...i dislike the economy propagating itself based upon an expectation or imaginary premise), for whatever reason i am completely comfortable with it when i consider the situation that my life is in. these are my family peoples; these are the people whom i truly care about and who will take me in regardless of circumstance. the dejected part about the holiday (which isn't the holiday's fault, so much, as it is a naturally-arising situation) is that it reminds me of how infrequently i actually get to see, get to spend face time with these people. family is an oddity in that there is a natural rifting of it at a certain point in a person's life....and it is likely a recursive theme as well, for i'm sure it will happen to me with my children, leaving me in a similarly set-apart stance of forlorn expectation. no, the thing is that despite loving these people so much, we don't get to see each other at all.

what i am finding, though, came as a surprise to me; an offhanded realization, a peripheral that it took me some time to see glinting. gift-giving may be cliche, but i absolutely want to do it....i want to thrust my purchases upon these good people with hope that they will express sentiments which i cannot, or at least, cannot from a distance, cannot over a telephone line or zooming electronic parcels. i hope that they do some damage to any walls that have built up between all of us. not walls that anyone would expect to be there....nobody in my circle, that i know of, has any grudges or misgivings which might set them distinctly at odds with me, or with each other, at all. we are a smooshily-happy family. but i consider, i hope these gifts to be the sweeping hands which might brush a coarse ivy off of a cottage-side, one which was beginning to be overgrown, overpopulated with seeds of tangled indifference.

i wish 'la noyee' was more than two minutes and three seconds long.

its not that i am not close with these people; they will always be my closest, i feel. but it is hard, hard to be instantly made as 'at ease' at our history should have us be. even with friends, non-relatives, sometimes it takes some time for gears to mesh melodiously again....a smoothness of being is a thing to be cherished, when it can be found in the company of others. i know that i can be completely at ease with my family; that they know me best of all, in many ways perhaps better than i know myself, though probably in ways which i could never grasp in the first place by faculty of some ego-bias intrinsic to being an encapsulated mind. relaxation, however, mindfulness and being completely at ease, is something that people spend their entire lives trying to swim upstream of.

one thing i know now about relationships now, is how pivotal it is to establish comfort in a solitary setting. and of course by relationship-solitary, which seem contradictory, of course i mean tete-a-tete; the one-on-one equilibrium which two people can find with each other when they are alone together. in general, the social bullshit stops, and people start being real and engaging with one another about meaningful things. i suppose my concern about family nowadays is that this balance is shifting into a group dynamic...which, hear me out, is no bad thing...after all, a group is what a family is, at it's utmost core. no, i rather mean that, considering that family time is so scarce, we are likely to spend the bulk of it in an amorphous blob of good feeling, complete saturation of senses with the bliss of being around my favorite people, all together again, and trying to relish it (knowing that it will not last). i fear that i won't get my solitary, singular one-on-one time with my family members...that time which i have come to feel is crucial to maintaining a real, crisp, honest relationship with someone. those walls that might be cracked or shattered by such contact will not have the time to be worn down....this is my fear...i will not be able to express to the fullest of my being, because i will be entirely in a social setting where emotions and phrases and looks and jokes are addressed to the crowd (albeit a *very* good and close crowd), not to an intimacy which my heart speaks more to now than ever, considering how little time i have to make it count.

i fear that the more and more i accept the distance which circumstance forces upon my relationships with these people, the more and more i will regret it, because life transitions and who can know where or what or when? i could move to a different country for two years, just like my brother, and not be able to see any of them for a serious brick of time. it would be a voluminous experience, to be sure....not to be missed, i am certain of that. but i cannot help but wonder at the trade-offs one makes with any decision. perhaps the philosopher in me. i feel distant enough even just living where i live, on the west coast, unable to connect with my family but a few scarce times per year, at best.

take a step back from this: how thankful that holidays exist; that they have the magnetism, the force of family to be able to draw these kindred souls back to one another again! bliss, pure. and this is the reason that i could not possibly mind spending exorbitant amounts of money on my family; they are rocks in my life more precious to me than any that i could buy in a store, regardless of any gemstone claims of infinites and forevers. i feel ridiculous, at the same time, buying them gifts, because they do not need them; they feel the same way, but the cycle goes on. i wish to express my caring, and it expresses itself thusly, in the traditional ways that we all grew up with.

presents have come to mean so much more to me, to us, i imagine. i could pull a j.j. abrams, and give my family ambiguous boxes wrapped to the nines, telling them never to open them but to leave them as symbols of what could be, and what is....never knowing, always knowing; forever finding out more about what the concept means. they are foremost mementos and remembrances. take a piece of me with you to your varied lives, and express it how you will. perhaps i will do just that. but these symbols aren't necessary; in fact they have never been less necessary. we observe the tradition, we curtsy, a-courteously, to the court which we owe allegiances to. this is our kingdom, and we may be as foolish as we choose; everything is rainbow-edged and glows with something not to be found anywhere else. our currencies are superior to the federal reserve's; socialism at it's best, most flawless ideal. depression cannot come around here no more.

if its broke; fix dat

i've been being a little whiny bitch to myself lately, ever since my ipod broke. i need tunes at my side, in my step, quickening and modulating my rhythm. i haven't gotten a new one yet...i wanted an ipod nano, but then i realized i could get a 'touch' and have internet and apps as well (and built in speeks), but then they were too expensive. but then i decided i should just get an iphone and hack it for T-Mobile, but then iphones were waay too expensive, but then i found a decent deal on an older model, but then i thought, i know matt and he wants the newer model, but then i found a used ipod touch for a good deal, but it was an older model, and didn't have the speeks or the much-improved battery life, but then i almost bought an iphone but the bastard on craigslist committed verbally to me but then sold it to a coworker instead, but then i found decent deals on older touches and am wondering how much battery life and speakers really matter to me, if i can get a 16GB model instead of an 8GB.

fuck.

i am overwhelmed, and in the time i have spent trolling craigslist for this shit, probably could have made enough to pay off whatever it is that i end up buying (still no verdict). but its made me consider a few things. stress-level is a very important factor in purchasing. deals are only worth finding if you have time to waste (which i'd like to think i don't) and if you need to absolutely scrap for the money (which i don't necessarily). and i could have been listening to my sweet, sweet strawberry jams by now, if i had just gone ahead and bought something during an online black friday sale from apple~

second. kierkegaard makes mention about a distinction between 'choice' and 'absolute choice'. these things are supposed to be resigned to the realm of philosophy, and i am completely tainting bold ideas in my application of them to consumerism...fuck it. i always tend to think that choices i make are absolute choices, because i hate being wrong and going back to cover tracks for shit that i did incorrectly. but a purchase, esp from craigslist, is not an absolute choice, in any sense of the word. if i buy a goddamn touch from someone and get even a halfway decent deal, chances are it wouldn't take me two seconds of effort, if i didn't end up liking what i got, to re-list and dispatch it to someone else who perhaps did want it. i might even make a little cash on the side doing that. so. stress, begone. you ain't worth mah time.

fuck.

rep

i was reading / thinking about art just now. artistic nature and qualities.

and i still need to buy christmas presents.

art and temporality. what constitutes a solid, chromatic piece of art? like i was reading, pride is the perfect artistic fodder. it comes in stuttering bursts of indignance; it erupts to the surface like lava, searing and scalding the air. humility is no good. it takes too long. an instance of humility means nothing, because it is a quality which loses all semblance of meaning if it is not practiced in continuance. if all heroes could be hypocrites, then not much would set them apart from the crowd, would it?

i have started to use my pinkie finger to type, or hit return, in certain situations. it is something i saw my boss doing, and it pleased me greatly with its efficiency. must be the german in me. now i have begun doing it for myself, and this paragraph was preceded by the first instance of me noticing it. it's kind of like stretching to that new fret for the first time, bending into a whole new note instead of just a half-step. pleasant. accomplished.

art is something that most people consider as existing within space. the frame of a painting. the green depths of an iris. the purple-fudge-ripple of a mountain range in twilight; rambling rocky roads with marshmallow-softened edges. but art is something that absolutely, positively, must exist moreso in time than in space. definitively. art is not stand-alone...it requires observers, audiences, critics, bearers and bringers with intentions, or sometimes assumptions and arrogances. even a painting or a landscape is nothing if the blossoming mind which is ripe to sweep the dust out of its intricacies has its back turned. it is a required, a fundamental prerequisite. a canvas by salvador dali is nonsense without a rational mind with just enough quirkiness to be awestruck by the disruption of convention.

other art is just as involved with time. some even go so far as to invoke it...music for example. but a song is only...playable. after the fact, after the striking resonance of its first instance, it is then a reproduction, which doesn't seem to say much for its innovative and intrinsic artistic value, even if we still find it charmant. certainly that sentence will rub some folk the wrong way, and i don't know with any certainty why i wrote it. seat of pants. what sense does poetry make, if not when it is being recited or thought about? none. just words, just thoughts, and at that just thoughts that were scripted by someone else who probably felt a host of different feelings about their words than you do.

trying to weave my way back into this writing thing~

update

well, here i am.

it's been a long minute since i last trod upon these white spaces. currently i am sitting and enjoy a fine mint tea, instead of the yerba mate latte that i would prefer from this particular place. the reasoning behind this masochism is that i am currently on day six of what is typically called the 'master cleanse'. and if you don't know what that is, well:

http://letmegooglethatforyou.com/?q=master+cleanse

basically this means that any food and drink aside from this tangy lemonade concoction (fresh lemon juice, water, pure organic maple syrup, and a dash or four of cayenne pepper), basically anything that exists outside the confines of my old nalgene bottle, is off the table for me. i am sort of at peace with this, sometimes. other times i can't help but fantasize about digging my teeth into the explosive tastiness of enchiladas, apple fritters, etc etc etc. my list is lengthy, but it's actually kind of fun. i felt for a little while like i was sort of in a rut with food....always eating the same things and not getting much variety in. that may or may not have actually been accurate, but once you've had a peanut-butter-and-jelly sandwich every day for a week, you start to tire of all aspects of it....the combination of flavors, the texture, the size; the redundant steps of preparation, especially if ingredients are particularly hazardous to handle. now i feel like i am really beginning to smell food. maybe it has something to do with sensory deprivation of sorts, for an extended period of time, but my receptors truly latch onto scents now. i didn't know the capacity that they had before this...outrageousness.

it is interesting to see, when removed from the fray, how much people actually concern themselves with food. whenever mention is made of it now, my ears prick up as if conditioned...and it is alarming, the rate at which this happens. people talk about food, or eating, or planning to eat, or having just eaten, or having eaten years ago, ALL the time. it is coming to the point where i might start believing that 30% of human conversation (and that might even be conservative) is composed by the humming strings and harpings of food appreciation and critique. watching TV nowadays is almost more torturous....one realizes what a consistent and necessary commodity food actually is, as observed in the droning drummings of food-based or oriented commercials. sometimes even shows. the airwaves are saturated with promises of flavor.

and the mention of flavor brings up one of the most poignant distinctions that this fast has helped me to realize, which is the distinction between actual, necessary hunger and psychological, sometimes even social (which one supposes is psychological as well), craving. despite the fact that i haven't eaten any solid food for, damn if it isn't 6 days now (7 if we don't count just fruit), i haven't really experienced any pangs of severe hunger. i'm not entirely sure that i ever have. i have felt probably the same depth of hunger as i have experienced at other times in my life, but they lack something now, some imperative. they lack validation. it's as if the only reason that they seemed so strong in other scenarios was because they were fueled with the strength of my expectations, with my then-concepts about what 'full' and 'hungry' were. after doing this, i don't think that such naive concepts should be able to get the better of me again. i remember as a child, whining on hiking trails that i 'simply could not go on' without stopping for food. i'm sure that if i were promised a feast sitting at a table two miles from where i stood, my legs would miraculously find the strength to carry me to it~ after this experience, i feel that my definitions of what 'full' and 'hungry' are will shift noticeably. they rest on a spectrum, as do all dualities it seems, and generally our minds operate within a very thin band of what we have experienced. only by pushing the boundaries of our experiences can we learn to see things differently. now i know that when i feel the same hunger that i used to feel...well, i still have half a tank left, in case i need it to get anywhere. even if you are blind to it, your body has ways of course-correcting.

"how remarkable it is that those who do not bore themselves generally bore others; those, however, who bore themselves entertain others."
~ kierkegaard

"idleness is not the evil; indeed, it may be said that everyone who lacks a sense for it thereby shows that he has not raised himself to the human level."

since i've been lazy

here is a sliver of fiction that may or may not be any good. been keeping busy and unable to dish out a cornucopia of posts as per usual~

He is cloaking down these ruddy streets now, body slicing through the frosted breeze or tropical heats. Very difficult to tell which on any given day. Footsteps fall and billows of air spiral out from beneath them, curling fingers striping his paths but always outwards, never collapsing back in upon him to cradle his direction with any sense of resistance (if straying), or purpose (if keeping), which could perhaps be considered the same thing after all.

Exhaustion is setting in. He lifts his eyes from the grained and gray slabs of concrete below his feet; it is now 10 AM and he has been gradually receding into the day, much like the shadows in seams of this sidewalk....sinking downwards into passivity, thoughts draining down his body and mingling with the brute imperatives of the terra firma below. The head bone may be closer to the sky bone, but the earth has a seductive way with words and a gravitational ace up its you-know-what.

Eyes lamping slowly, hazily, like chinese paper lanterns strung over a small collection of indifferent powerlines. He sees souls scattered here and there. Now they are there and here; they careen like pinballs unlocked by the raw, compressed energy of a quarter. Every other one has a briefcase filled with ambiguous and rattling contents. These people very much enjoy rattling in one way or another. Mostly they move in straight and orderly lines, so he doesn't have too much problem keeping some semblance of distance at any given time. This is not to say that he hasn't had his shins tapped by the occasional car bumper when trying to cheat the hedge-maze, as it were, horns blaring angry social-ruptures as he lopes across a one-way. But he begins to get the hang of all this again.

After all, it was only yesterday that he felt the comforting drumming of the city sounds, the wavering crescendo of every moment, the invigorating pipings of the littlest things....a tea kettle searing steam behind distant doors, the creak of an armchair as it accompanies a reclining mind. Today, this morning, the clouds have rolled in. Some slinking, feline despair has curled up deep within him and must, must make itself known; scraping, raking his insides like the hollow of a pumpkin, invalidating the slightly-tipped triumph or ennui of an average city-dwelling day and replacing it with a bitter smokiness that seeps through any sense he might employ.

He knows for a fact that part of the 'problem' is that he refuses, on some level, to fight this feeling. On some level, he may even encourage it. But it bristles him; the part of him that seeks to do what it sees, that yearns for approval.

to be continued maybe.

the city paranoiac

in thomas pynchon's writing, specifically gravity's rainbow (because obviously, i am currently attempting to power my way through this book), he comes up with a concept that i find innovative in its application, even though we have proven examples of it in some different areas of life. this is not to say that nobody else has come up with this concept before....i think there is a solid chance that this is, while obscure, still a running theme in many notable works of fiction. pynchon describes what he calls the 'city paranoiac'....it isn't a city-dweller who constantly checks his six either. granted this is only my first exposure to what is probably a running dialogue in this book, but i found the following interesting and would enjoy sharing what i think it meant to my mind. initial exposure:

"if the city paranoiac dreams, it's not accessible to us. perhaps the city dreamed of another, enemy city, floating across the sea to invade the estuary . . . or the waves of darkness . . . waves of fire . . . perhaps of being swallowed again, by the immense, the silent Mother Continent? it's none of my business, city dreams . . . but what if the city were a growing neoplasm, across the centuries, always changing, to meet exactly the changing state of its very worst, secret fears? the raggedy pawns, the disgraced bishop and cowardly knight, all we condemned, we irreversibly lost, are left out here, exposed and waiting."
~ gravity's rainbow

what this means, at least to me, is a conglomeration of consciousnesses. a sliver, gleamed off of each inhabitant....these spirit-structures drifting apart; committed to the person, the original owner, and yet coalescing into a collective organism which feeds off of the life bustling within it. in this way you could imagine it somewhat akin to a human body, or human mind itself. atoms, cells, distinct and yet working cooperatively and with some uncanny and not-necessarily acknowledged sense of unification. the greater consciousness, the thriving organism, the paranoiac city, scrapes biopsies from each and every one of us, building database upon mathematical database, wavelengths cluttering our airspace like radio signals, endlessly clashing with one another but, if tuned just correctly, surprisingly clear in their intricacies. these are checks and balances of a more natural order; a return to the nature of the social organism for those who still have ears to hear it. this is why cities find distinction from one another, why they are unique and their particular styles bleed into and out of the personages who populate them. our governments, governors supposedly control these equations, and allegedly speak for us. but who is to say that the city does not have a voice all of its own?

now, we know that humans do work on these levels, psychologically. we bond covalently, both giving and taking in like kind, gaining something which probably used to be shrouded in mystique but which now, thanks to psychoanalysis and such mental tools (don't get me started on using the mind to dissect the mind), has been elucidated for, ironically, our understanding of ourselves and our placement within these structures. the city gives back to us what we understand life to be; it is similar to a monastic experience. one gives their work, their money, their attention, their time and energy, their emotions.....and in return, they are initiated, accepted; they learn and experience what they find to be most relevant to their existence. but this relationship, which it could not be called anything but, assumes an 'other', a significant. this other is the relationship, it is the shire, the farm, the town, the city, the metropolis. it is the marketplace and the stranger's gum which sticks to your shoe on the subway steps. it's....

"It's the caffeine, the nicotine, the milligrams of tar
It's my habitat, it needs to be cleaned, it's my car
It's the fast talk they use to abuse and feed my brain
It's the cat box it needs to be changed, it's the pain
It's women, it's the plight for power it's government
It's the way you're giving knowledge
slow with thought control and subtle hints
It's rubbing it, itching it, It's applying cream
It's the foreigners sight seeing with high beams, It's in my dreams
It's the monsters that I conjure, It's the marijuana
It's the embarrassment, displacement, it's where I wander
It's my genre, It's Madonna's videos
It's game shows, It's cheap liquor, blunts,
It's bumper stickers with rainbows
It's angels, demons, gods, it's the white devils
It's the monitor, the soundman, it's the motherfucking mic levels
It's gas fumes, fast food, Tommy Hil' mommy's pill
Columbia House music club, designer drugs and rhyming thugs
It's bloods, crips, fives, six
It's stick up kids,
It's christian conservative terrorists, it's porno flicks
It's the east coast, no it's the west coast
It's public schools, it's asbestos
It's mentholated, It's techno
It's sleep, life, and death
It's speed, coke, and meth
It's hay fever, pain relievers, oral sex, and smokers breath
It stretches for as far as the eye can see
It's reality, fuck it , it's everything but me"
~atmosphere - 'scapegoat'

but in this spatial oddity, is there something residual left over, after all the energy has been tussled about and exchanged between us? i submit that i think, it being just on the edge of my mind, that there is. the 'city'...as pynchon describes it perhaps the 'city paranoiac', is a nebulous consciousness which is dictated in small part by each individual component, adding up to a ridiculous equation swayed at least (if in some infinitesimally small way) by each nuance that we grind into it. if something is understood even by the few, then the city could be said to understand it....the memory is in the molecules, and they are infectiously similar throughout the whole. the 'city' can be more than a mental projection....it can be considered with the instincts and attributes of a person. just as a corporation is, for all legal purposes, a concretized citizen of the united states, with rights and liberties all its own (look into it if you are skeptical), i think it is entirely possible to view a city....or for that matter a nation or world, or campfire-ringed friends, as a real, legitimate, and entirely existent collective consciousness which, in some very esoteric and self-generative way, begins to act, and desire, and fear, and think, and...well, overall the shock of the matter is that it feels, and generates its own volition.
remember that ish~

matches out.

full moon

"he had, had, this was of removing all excitement from things with a few words. not even well-chosen words: he's that way by instinct. when they would go to the movies he would fall asleep. he fell asleep during nibelungen. he missed atilla the hun roaring in from the east to wipe out the burgundians. franz loved films but this was how he watched them, nodding in and out of sleep. 'you're the cause-and-effect man,' she cried. how did he connect together the fragments he saw while his eyes were open?"
~ gravity's rainbow

granted, this is just a passage from a book of epic proportions. granted, there is a lot of context, a lot of precursing, weaved into these words. but one of the things that i enjoy most about literature is that, in general, sentences and paragraphs are sometimes almost works of art all their own, and have a tangible value set apart from the rest of the work. maybe even these things wouldn't have been possible, perhaps they never would have been imagined, created, unless the author had all the previous stepping-stones to skip around on. but in turn, sometimes i write entire pages of crap that turn out to be worthwhile (in my mind) just for a scrap....a sentence, a word in new light; maybe even just a feeling.

doesn't it see impossible, to piece together the fragments that we see only while our eyes are open? let's take this at its most literal, in its hardest granite form. you are asleep, and something significant is altered. a pet dies. a significant other cheats on you. anything. waking, your world has changed....but it is completely lost to you in a temporal gap, a sliver of thought between cognizance last and cognizance next, and it has affected so much that direct impacts you. now your time, your actualization of the event, becomes borrowed time - you attempt to catch up with the world, but can one ever really break stride with something that marches persistently on, never stopping for a breath? we are perpetually out of sync with the sequences of photographs flying in front of our faces. our lives, as we know them, cover some 70, some 80, some 90 years. how much of that can we call our own? can we own a war, in our lifetime, if we do nothing to influence it, nothing to disarm it? if it exists outside of our spheres?

let's tumble worldviews off of the table, however; what i would really enjoy digging into is how this structures a personality....or, more accurately, how a personality filters the utter bombardment of experience that the world is constantly pitching (now a fastball, now a change-up) directly in our faces. step outside your door; take a brisk autumn stroll in this full moonlight. grab a notepad to take along with you. come back and, what did you see? what did you think? were those things correlated to one another? if you mapped it out, somehow, would it be intelligible; could you dive headfirst into it and explain, logically and soundly, how you progressed from square one to whatever ecstasy or depression you were mired in when you returned? a mind, isolated, reveals its fundamentals.
but i doubt you could explain all those hops. rarely, it seems to me, do we check our thoughts.

but here i stand, supposedly, offering you a vibrant storyboard of all your brainwaves, all your free-flowing associations and tangential interruptions and fortitudes and anxieties. can you tweak them; can you turn a dial, slightly, in photoshop-blur fashion, and alter something - can you turn this dial in my storyboard as easily as you can turn your head during your moonlight stroll? does that accomplish the same thing? do you ever choose the low road, simply because you know the high road so well? and the point is: what has that changed?

"did you see the woman in the red dress, neo? look again."

it dawns upon me that this world is infinitely rich; far too much exists to keep track of. when i do something as simple as turning my head, i have abandoned a solid 240 or so degrees of sight, of sense, of potential influence upon my mind and its understanding of things. i know this example is absurdity because we have no other choice; i welcome this absurdity. push it forward. when i narrow my focus; when i hinge my mind upon the world such that i can apply myself fully, such as writing this or that word, here, now.....my perspective has dimmed almost to absolute darkness...i find myself looking at a 1" x 1" square, if that. i have a full sphere of rotation for my sight...standing on the surface of the earth, i choose to look at a single star. in photography, however, the smaller the amount of light you let in, the sharper your overall picture becomes. food for thought. but that is contradictory to the point so i will abandon it~

we all pretend to be these fully-aware, fully-composed beings. we absorb the world around us, but when it comes down to it, our selectiveness is absolutely, postitively absurd. the world eclipses our composition to such an extreme that it seems an impossibility to advance any further than childhood wonder~ the more i learn, the more naive it seems to me that any concept of "knowledge" is considered to be valid. i must reign my thoughts in; they flare wayward. how did he connect together the fragments he saw while his eyes were open? we develop habits, erratic pieces (peaces) upon which we choose to align our individual focus-sets and mental toolboxes. it is staggering to me, at this moment, that our concept of fludity, of a smoothly-flowing stream of constancy, can be applied to the world as we experience it today. the world is an unknown; a massive labyrinth with minotaurs roaming the grounds, and we hold tight our creature-comforts, steady the wheel towards them and try not to look back.

i'm exhausted and my mind has become somewhat muddled on the topic. i'm certain that this comes through to some degree already (le sigh). perhaps i can pick this up tomorrow...but by then a world of differences and two million possible muses will have crossed my path. one more sun.

bookmark

don't know where to begin; it has been a minute since i've written. the again-tour of colorado was phenomenal. wandering around my old home, the house, my old garden; driving those ancient streets. finding everything still in working order, clockwork whirring away, drilling into peoples' lives and experiences. even just skimming around, lightly tracing a finger over all the solidified memories; picking it up again to find a ring of dust circling one's index....this is a profound experience. i felt like an architect, unearthing fragments of a civilization now passed by and trodden underfoot, unseen. what is even more, is that i certainly would be an architect of the highest degree - a specialist in the field, as it were. i have seen pictures of all these relics in the textbooks of my memory; they communicate intimately with me as signs of something alive, a heart once beating, once merging, semiotic and symbiotic relationships calling, threshing, billowing flat-fictioned fossils into saturated realities which i can only hope to edge at with my mind, crowbar into with all the caution of someone trying to to break the antiqued wood-linings of containment. and on some level i am alien, come down to a place which i understand in some respects but which i now have so much more context to offer. i cave through intricate mines, brushing debris carefully off of time-capsules sealed with childrens' hopes. these are things, breadcrumbs, which i have subconsciously left for myself, to be discovered at a time when i had better ideas of what they could mean. they are old perfume bottles once servient as crystal balls in merlin games, spells of the mind arcing through them along lines of refracted and long-gone light.

they simultaneously mean both less and more; it is a dark struggle which i find in abundance these days. they are powerful, combinatorial, world-philosophies and ethical systems. they speak like poetry, spilling thousands of pictures and lifetimes of emotion from mere handfuls of words - and small hands, at that, perhaps covered in too-big and leathern-rough baseball gloves which may, may have a better chance at netting these monolith concepts than all our webs, all our adult intelligences, anxieties, and trivialities. the words of my childhood speak to me like thunder, booming and distant. once i was rod for them, they ripping and shredding me daily, building from the rich resources of naievete my personality, back stronger, faster, muscular....now i am mostly grown carbon, charged metal particles now diffuse and in severe scarcity, stinging every so often like licks of static electricity, occasioning an "oh, what was that?" and mere momentary disorientation. but i try, try to pan this sun-glinting metal from the stream of my consciousness....what else is all this, this here, but an exercise in precious metals? i don't know if the world agrees with my economic schemas, but this, this is my currency, this my contribution. communist if it seems so; what would one like me care for labels~ when i find my true vein, my niche; when that rush of gold erupts to the surface like stored energy, a surge of ball-lightning cracking from my fingertips to these keys, or this pen, or that soft skin, or any application potential to the sphere of influence which daily i spin in ever-wider spirals...

well, watch out - and don't hold me back.

subject, meet predicate

isn't it interesting how the first sentence shapes the rest of the thoughts streaming forth from it? this could also be said about any sentence, but the first one is the leap between your thoughts and matches'; that rough sandpapery scrape of the chin. a lot rides on the first sentence. as they say in art, the first brushstroke could have been anything, anywhere. the last brushstroke....that had to be exactly as it was, exactly where it was, to have made the painting into the completed picture that now exists after the fact. the freedom, apparently, gets chiseled away gradually somewhere in between.

this all depends on how cohesive one needs their work to be, though. if m were drafting a novel, instead of writing arbitrarily here, there would be a significant amount more weight placed on that skeletal system than this brief one. this could be made of balsa wood, for all anyone cared. patch it with a little glue and surely it will support an ornamental thought or three (tree). this architecture will not be subject to natural forces quite as strong as a larger piece of work - the keystone can be crude and misshapen here. but he is at least learning much from this, so as to hopefully strive toward a masterwork of masonry someday.

because when it comes down to it, this here is an exercise in fleshing things out. in letting thoughts play; in allowing them the room to bounce around and see what else they hit, and what else might strike them in return. it is a billowing, a bellows under his hands that should breathe these things into cognizance, into relation with the world physically....and also tease out essences spiritually, with a coaxing finger (somewhat like a cotton candy machine; an awareness dipped into the cyclone of the unseen, and emerging wound in something quite fantastical and savory. on that note, all things may be cocooned in their own spirits, waiting to curl around ethereal thought-objects). this is a firm handshake directed towards all existence, not just the parts which may reciprocate in like manner.

as such, there are an endless set of possibilities for first sentences, for jump-off points. it's dizzying, really....but this is also the charm of it. without reservation, something can be launched into, and simultaneously it is acknowledged that it must be worthwhile and that it has no more definite value than any other idea which might be pursued. it is a frozen moment, a roll of the dice in the same way that thoughts might be considered a gamble. there are periods, are how much time elapses between each one? always it is different - always this lends a unique characteristic to the rhythm of the explication, the exploration. there are paragraphs, and do they relate with one another? should they exist in the sequencing in which they are found by casual readers? can one say, with any certainty?

whereas a book is a pragmatic calculation, a constant and intentional blurring of 'x' and other factors, polynomially, this instead can be complete chaos and freedom. antimatter has no characters to conceal; no deus ex machina. or rather, all deus ex machina, depending upon how you look at it~ the first sentence....this thing is not a constriction. it does not squeeze his mind, ever-flaring, into an ever-funnelling-smallward corridor. instead it is a flowering, a chance color, stumbled upon, which tints everything after and before and makes them at least somewhat noteworthy. entertaining, enchanting? boring, ludicrous? completely up to you.

platonics

the something that is in the air today: it is autumn. perhaps not verfiably, but there is that old-timey chill in the air....the scratch of sweaters and the pop-crackling musk of cedar smoke from porous brick chimneys. you can smell their red, like you can hear the bleat of a fire-engine. and since i was supposed to be writing my thoughts, and instead had a conversational, here it is.

he: i'm both inside the box and outside of it

most people are in some way or another, i think

she: how are you outside then

he: i like to use my mind in unconventional ways

i like to devote its energies to things that aren't typically attractive to people

or, are attractive, but people never do because they perceive incorrectly that it will be too 'hard'

things are never that 'hard' once you're in them, once you commit to them

then they just 'are', and you can get over it and work your way into or through them

she: like what

he: like books, like writing, like, exercise. like, talking about something that is 'hard' to talk about

people like to follow the path of least resistance

resistance is what makes people interesting though...being bombarded by outside things and influences, and morphing along with them, and emerging something else

she: to what extent should one resist

he: resist what

she: i dunno. you just said resistance

he: oh

i meant, doing something unknown, doing something difficult or big

doing the same things one always does; that is 'easy'

she: so aspiring to do something great or impressive with one's life

he: not necessarily

great and impressive are subjective

just, living, and acknowledging change, and not being sedentary

i think that people who follow their hearts and do these things will probably be pleased with life overall

but, its difficult to be judgmental of people; we are all so different

i'm at a tea shop right now. i go to tea or coffee shops all the time. people see me there. they think probably that i am just running in my same little circles, being a small person with not much ambition to change myself.

but i am *always*, or mostly, doing something different; reading something new and explosive, hashing out a new thought in writing, trying to work my thought around something; creating something in my imagination

but nobody would ever know this

so, when other people who are similar to me talk about 'america' and how lazy and distracted it is, they are grouping me into that category too

they just don't know

and i don't know everyone; there is no way to

so i feel bad making generalized statements about people's interests and personalities....i think probably everyone has the capacity to surprise or impress me if i let them

we just have to exist on a personal level, and follow our hearts i guess

i've been typing a lot just now.

she: heh

he: yr thoughts?

she: i would agree with everything you said

he: would you add to it?

she: do you think there's a truth?

he: a truth?

i dont know

about some things probably

not about everything

i would be surprised if there were a truth about everything

she: what do u mean

he: i dont know...sure, i think there are physical truths

i am here, you are there, jupiter is alla

but i dont know that i think there are definite truths about a lot of things humans spend their time fretting about

either way, i don't think it makes it any less noble that we are fretting about it nonetheless

but if nobility is not a truth, then im really in trouble :)
i kind of live my life on the assumption that trying hard counts for something

she: counts for what

he: i don't know....that it is, important, that we try to be the best that we can be?

if it isn't important then i am probably living my life wrong.

she: says who

he: i'm not sure

i guess most of my philosophies make the assumption of some sort of judgmental force outside of our own selves~

she: does that force also determine what the best version of yourself is or is that up to you

he: good question

i guess i think there is an ideal for myself, which exists outside of myself

but it is entirely possible that i am mistaken about that

she: i feel like that too. how did you arrive at that conclusion

he: maybe not, myself...so much

i feel like there is an ideal for humanity

i feel like correct living is probably to lead by example

in the ideal direction, of course

she: even tho we don't know what ideal necessarily is

he: i feel like i know some things. i work with what i feel like i know

no point in stressing myself out over other things when i can't conclude anything about them

i don't know

maybe my life is worthwhile even if i just advance the species in only one individual aspect of life

she: advance the species?

he: like say, for example, if i knew in my heart a better perspective upon government, or war, or something of that sort

maybe my life would be worthwhile, even if i wasn't the fully, evolved, for lack of a better word, person; but instead i just helped steer humanity in the right direction in one particular aspect

she: sorry if i'm being obnoxious, but what's a right direction

(feel free to change the subject if im boring you)

he: like i said, i feel like i know certain things to be right

like, say, the triumph over laziness....getting out into the world and experiencing, and expanding yourself and your mind and horizons

i feel like that is 'right'

she: how come?

he: you can critique me on that if you want; i don't expect everyone to agree

she: i do agree

he: but if i help people to see that as a valuable thing, that they can cultivate in their own bodies and minds and souls, then maybe that is a worthwhile use of my life even if i don't get everything else right

she: as tho there is a wrong option

he: i think that not capitalizing on the time we have is a 'wrong option'

i'm not entirely positive i am right about that, because who knows, it takes an outside truth to really concretize it

but i do feel it

i feel like what we are experiencing is a gift, and to not use it is to not respect it or the granter of it, if indeed there is one

life is amazing

but, by definition, it is also an everyday thing

it is very easy to let it slip into some sort of jaded perspective

she: so you think it important to respect the granter of life, tho you don't know if there is such a granter

he: i think it is important to respect life. if we do that then the 'granter', if he is around, will be happy for us and for it and for him(it)self

imagine

she: so we can presume to know supposed granter's thoughts and feelings

he: imagine that there is a couple who breaks up, but the woman is pregnant, and she has the child

it is a little girl

she never meets her father or, for the sake of the allegory, is even cognizant that she has one

it just never comes up in conversation, k~

and on the girl's 5th birthday, she comes out into the backyard, and there is a baby horse with a big bow tied around it, for her

the father bought it for her,and the mother takes a picture of the girl with the biggest smile on her face that she will ever, ever, have again in her life

the mother sends it to the father.

and that happiness is the happiness occasioned by respect, by joy in life

she doesn't need to know that he is responsible, that he worked his ass off in a paper mill to pay for it

he just needs to know that she is bursting with happiness

that's all there is to it

you think about things like that, and you just know somewhere deep down that something like that is real love, that it is above and beyond most manifestations of it

the type where there is no need for recognition

she: if he cared that much about her happiness, wouldn't he want to be an actual part of her life too?

he: he can't be; he is detained in a venezuelan prison.

she: if he can send her a horse he can send her a picture and letter :)

he: it is physically impossible for him to be a part of his daughter's life

his name is on the terrorist watch list and all mail he sends out gets burned as soon as it leaves his hands~

except the horse...they waved it over with some metal-detectors and it seemed okay, so they let that through.

she: uh huh~

well if he could be a part of her life then he would

he: it would be better if he were there, but he just can't be

didn't you see the end of raiders of the lost ark? his voice would essplode her head if she heard it

at least, old-testament-style.

she: must have missed that one

anyway, this still says there is a specific sender

gift-wrapped horses dont just show up~

he: its an allegory~

and it was on the fly, so i think i did pretty well

the horse is life.

he already gave her life, but who appreciates just that?

she: true~

he: so, it has a physical manifestation, a happiness

she: precisely

he: did you dislike my story

she: hehe. i did like it. i also liked that it seemed to prove what you were disproving in a way~

he: in what way was that

she: we have a specific sender, and if said sender isn't a physical part of our lives at the moment, said sender sends something that can be to represent

and add to our happiness

he: i'm not savvy to the incongruity here

she: incongruity?

i need to look that word up~

he: non-conforming

she: well that is essentially what your story was communicating, right?

he: well, the physical manifestation, the horse, is just the very fact that we are alive

for me, at least

life is a gift

she: yes

he: and life is hard sometimes; i left out the part of the story where the horse kicks her and breaks her arm, but then feels really bad about it

and of course he craps all over her yard

she: heh yeah

he: but, she loves the horse for what it is

she loves that she can see it, feel it, smell it (ew), taste it (ew), and hear it

in short it is all the potentiality of sensory information

just like the physical world.

she: but who is to say we know what the gift-giver meant by the gift

he: the gift-giver doesn't even need to have a consciousness

i imagine it to, but i wouldn't constrain it in that way

she: then it doesn't care about little girls' birthdays~

he: ay thats the rub

who knows~

she: the rub?

he: shakespeare

the core issue

she: my english degree is not serving me tonite

so the core issue is, who knows

he: heh

well, it's not like we are losing out on life by appreciating it, even if it doesn't mean anything

i am just a proponent of appreciation.

she: as am i.

soundhole

live jazz. m likes how the guitar player's hands, in this particular duo at least, only move as fast as they need to. so many musicians are more frantic than they need to be....more misplaced energy which bleeds out peripherally and lessens the committed sound of the music. and this isn't laziness we are talking about here; it is somewhat the path of least resistance, and somewhat not. it would be a mistake to think that a musician wants to create their peculiar blend of styles with as little effort as possible...no, musicians are of that class which fully appropriates and enjoys infusing melody lines with as much mental velocity as possible. music is, by definition, not inert; it must have motion, and great musicians are the ones who can focus that motion into all the intricate channels that they are conscious of, and perhaps even some channels which they cannot yet definitively cognize but which, when they hear, causes an 'oooo' to issue from their lips along with a look of rapt bewilderment, or depending on the player, of flow and groove.

this path of least resistance is a little bit different than mere laziness. this path is carefully-whittled economization; it is realizing that, in relation to music, the hands may be the agent of creation, but the brain and the soul are the agents of inspiration, of catharsis. this economization bows to them - respects the instrument as more than a tool, rather a channel for these things to cord into existence through. matches will end a sentence with a preposition when he damn well feels like it, thanks. no, the hands are the cause of the reverberations streaming through the air, but they are dumb...they cannot unify with feeling and direct a chorus of subtle mathematics and chromatics; this is the territory of other faculties, more intangible and interpretive things. a masterful player can silence the static of the body, of his hands; the fumbling, the courseness and slip and explorative, driving sensation....this player can silence these sentences spoken by the body and command them to deal with a different authority. this player can redefine rules. then, once the mind of the hands has been emptied, they can accept instruction from the higher source, the music~ they are vessels, poured into and emptied accordingly, all liquids passing through them being energy, being light, being warmth, and perhaps this is why the melodic minor can stir a shiver, curling cat-like up your spine. it is cascading from sources known deep, deep within another body; even ones potentially inspired by something completely transcendental but which your body cannot help but wordlessly comprehend. zen art, instrumental bushido; there can only be one mind which calls forth the spirit of music; only one indelible focus deep within, one door to be opened and all others to be shut.

laptops run out of juice at just the worst times.

matches would insert a quote from saul williams here to end on, but he hasn't one handy. use your imagination; burn his poetics into the sensibilites of rhythm, of melody, of humanity, or spirituality. there you are.

a slip of parched parchment or more

blah. so hard to find time to write when bouncing around from place to place. it is exceptionally difficult to be resigned to these things, to have no creative outlet for a portion of time (additionally, a who-knows-how-long portion of time). this personality is not designed 100% for the tribe; m would give it 70%, at best, on a social day. and so back to silence, to solitude, to the wordless and smiling friendship of nature.

there is a guy sitting next to me, who would make the best of friends with colin onstot. he has been reciting true lies and commando in true schwarzenneger form, not a missed or clipped accent to be critiqued. they have similar styles of banter, similar topics of conversation and rhythms of humor. it is extraordinarily interesting how, the longer m spends on the surface with the birds (obscure), the more he sees people who are similar to people whom he already knows. really, how many combinations or packagings of personality can there be; there are bound to be similarities across the board. even so, it makes one wonder. did these people come from similar backgrounds? are their parents, is their genealogy, convergent or alike in some crucial patternings? did they have similar shadings of emotion and expression as they grew up to become the people they are today? or is it perhaps completely random; god throwing dice and creating intricate dungeons and dragons character-spreads? 11 to intelligence....17 to charisma. a rounded 14 to constitution, unless your favorite hoodie denotes some enchantment, some past life, to keep you up at night.

aside, m had a conversation with rockles not too long ago about similarties between completely separate people. occasionally you will catch flashes, pieces of another person spot-welded onto the frame of another, usually when you least expect it. take, for instance, the way that someone whom you know closely holds their body when idle. maybe they have a slight slouch, or a tilt to the head. they impatiently tap a particular part of their body on another, or one part into whatever stable objects happen to be present. rhoda - "i push my foot against the bed, and thereby affirm that i exist, that i am real". think about the sleights of a hand, of a face. think about the way that your father holds his face, when it isn't occupied in some task or another. people have these maps....matches for instance prefers smiles that are one-sided, but for some reason he cannot smile quite as cheerily with the right side of his face as he can with the left. practiced muscle-memory...an immediate and unconscious responsiveness. and there, that is the trigger....who people are when they are unconscious of being anything in particular; when they are distracted and have no front steeling the world from themselves. these are the things in which mattress notices convergent patterns....a laugh, a sideways glance, a rolling of the shoulder. even if he cannot concretize anything in words about a person (for what an injustice to solidify a person, to seize their mobility and hold them to their previous selves....yet also how essential a reminder in this windswept world), he can press into your palm a picture, a parody of their tocks and ticks. and if not that, at least he can smile about them for himself (those good-natured smiles, occasioned when the veil of society slips up and betrays its inner innocence, its naievete).

this he can tell you, even if he has trouble phrasing it.

i've been thinkin about my doorbell

when you gonna ring it, when you gonna ring it?

mattress has been doing a little bit more reading than usual lately, and it is a good thing. slid somewhat out of the habit....so much to do in new areas. just started a new book yesterday, a biggun. very excited about it. anyway, for the most part he has been reading books that generalize in introspection...those about self and ego, body and spirit, those sorts of things. one sentence in particular struck him whilst flipping through a page of joseph campbell's. obviously there was a lot of built-up context beforehand, and a lengthy explication afterwards, but we shall see if when removed from those bookends the thought is still perhaps just as intriguing.

to paraphase, there is something noticeable which happens when someone dies. the body is still there, but it has been completely voided of its animating force, of its will to live and to perpetuate its own healthy existence. in short, something was there which no longer is...something is missing, removed. it is doubtful that many would argue with this statement, but feel free to unleash in comments if you find yourself rubbed sideways.

now m sat and strummed his mind for some time over this notion. it makes much intuitive sense at first, but like any other statement, it opens up fields and fields to frolick in depending upon what personal and mental associations you may have which resonate with it. and one thing, being somewhat of a man of science, was brought foremost in his sight. he has been contemplating all sorts of different notions for the past while, but a recurrence in his thought is the idea of an afterlife, or of defining what different scenarios could be conceived of as a, continuaton, for lack of a better, of this consciousness which we currently experience our worlds through. for whatever reason his mind grabbed these two thoughts, and smashed them together, possibly to see what remainders fell to the mathematical wayside (things can perhaps best be defined by what the are not). and he happened upon a curious thought.

in all of the world, of physical existence explained by current and/or past paradigms (at least insofar as he is knowledgeable of them), he can think of nothing which truly disappears when it seems to. there are many things which change, yes, but change cannot really be considered a disappearance, can it? when a puddle of water disapparates from the floor overnight, our caveman instincts babble and coo and perhaps rifle through a bucket of sidewalk chalk to search for a color with which to best express our confusions on callous cave walls. but with our cultured brains, shackled and chained, we know what happens here....the water evaporates into the atmosphere and perpetuates one of the most fundamental and natural cycles known in life. the water disappears, but really it is explained and we know it to be nothing more than a shifting of states. name any natural thing which defies this law, and surely matches will devise some clever prize with which to reward your wily fox-consciousness. he is rather confident in asserting this, because he is rather certain that you won't have any aces up your sleeve.

now, one of the clever minds which m enlisted on this problem proposed the idea of quantum physics, in which particles are known to disapparate and apparate all over again, apparently with no logic or methodical structure to the events. and m will perhaps accept subatomic theories tomorrow (perhaps this is why he is writing it tonight....the LHC may append these thoughts with quite a volume of information as soon as tomorrow), but for now he is throwing them out the door. partially on account of his general ignorance of the subject, and partially because perhaps nobody can claim enough knowledge of the subject to necessarily prove it, inasmuch as something can be empirically proved anyway.

so here we are. one dies, and something has disappeared from them. with our corollary information about the world, can we really be so stubborn as to believe that consciousness, or the soul, or whatever you would deem this existence....can we be so stubborn as to believe that it actually just disappears completely when it appears to? should we believe that it vaporizes in some unfathomable, intangible manner? that it returns to a grand cycle; a dying and a rebirthing, again and again? is it possible to explain it in terms which we are predisposed towards; does its nature extend beyond the confines of our ability to express it? he thinks that considering the controversy of the thing, that much at least is clear....we cannot definitively say what it is that happens, or even what the 'soul' encompasses...what its boundaries are. but can we at least cultivate an idea that there is something which happens to it; that it does not simply end in darkness and ennui? the evidence seems to back it up.

energy cannot be created, nor can it be destroyed. it can be shuffled and redealt; swirled and recycled....but nowhere can we find a case of energy ceasing to be. where, then, does the light in your eyes vacation; on what shore does it summer? and before the tides shift, before the seasons are published and frozen in their fleeting moments of majesty....can we winterize ourselves, our truest cores, for the long cold ahead?

"what, if some day or night a demon were to steal after you into your loneliest loneliness and say to you: 'this life as you now live it and have lived it, you will have to live once more and innumerable times more'...would you not throw yourself down and gnash your teeth and curse the demon who spoke thus? or have you once experienced a tremendous moment when you would have answered him: 'you are a god and never have i heard anything more divine."
~ nietzsche

the raindrops, the raindrops, the raindrops

ah, back from seattle, from a lengthy period of festivities and explorations. apparently matches truly does occasion good-natured weather in that city....it is a phenomenon which he cannot fully explain, but also one which he finds no reason to. like so many things in life.

scintillation is spending a day on your own terms, especially when bookended with social ties on both ends (it helps to make the sensations that much more distinct). it is seeing sights genuinely as you view them, naturally, without distraction. it is hearing the sounds that your mind naturally brings the the forefront of the general static and buzz, and not being alerted to anything other than your own experience. it is spending as much or as minute a moment as you want, with whatever it is that captures your precious attention; it is having enough attention of your own to be able to spend it recklessly and with complete abandon to what might normally be expected of you. it is hopping between slick stones on the river of your own consciousness, no recommendations or outside disillusionments required, and falling in with a splash exactly where you were meant to, precisely where your last thoughts had left off. one must become wet all over again to really appreciate the warmth of dryness.

perhaps europe is a trip that would be best left to one's lonesome. is what mattress is perhaps on the cusp of thinking, of admitting to himself.

matches made somewhat of a resolution today, and you may scoff at it if you please but don't rain of his parade recklessly. his resolve was a temporal one, with a certain future point in sight. by the time that last thursdays roll around in the alberta district again (mid-spring), m would verymuch like to have some salable pieces of art of an as-of-yet undetermined nature or medium which he could contribute with all the other streetfarers. if nothing else, it would be enjoyable to give people a piece of yourself in non-conversational form, and hey it wouldn't hurt if it spawned some conversations. unless those conversations turned violent....then it would hurt. but how likely is that to happen? mattress knows that he has what could be considered a disarming personality, when he feels like exercising it. the art does not have to be particularly 'good' in an artistic sense of the word, but he would like it to have some strokes of timeless nature and uniqueness to it...he would like to infuse some care and comtemnplation into it, and see if other personalities can recognize it as such.

additionally, he aims to have not one but two songs of an acoustic nature, which he can reproduce skillfully on guitar, by this same imaginary time-mark. these songs will be written by himself, and if he is not proud of them then certainly they do not count for the purposes of the ambition, or the gamble, or whatever you would find preference to call it. the silliest thing of all is, that while he considers himself a writer above these other artistic pursuits, he does not currently feel like defining a landmark for himself in that capacity....the writing will come when and as it pleases, and that 'when' may be tomorrow; who can say. perhaps his mind will become favorably shaded by stirring it with other mediums, and words will flow like mountain streams after a long thaw. for whatever reason he feels like writing will always be there for him, but if he does not get a jump on these other aspects of his ability to express then they will surely fall woefully to the wayside. how can one willingly limit their spectrum or scope without giving other landscapes an honest effort? there is a certain charm in the convictions of a bold naievete, but he has wandered on both sides of that fence and found one to hold more interesting flora and fauna to his eye. change is a kaeidoscope from which there can be no escape.

expect great things, and chide him, spur him if he is not at first able to produce them. the most magical of spells take decades of devoted studying, long hours put into careful patience, the sort that is required to deal with the delicate forces at play underneath an ordinary understanding. you will see it for what you will...how deep will you look? will you see the surface, and be ignorant of complexity beneath it? will you find mysterious bliss on those waves, or misunderstood malice? or will you engage just as fully as he, and see how he intended for it to be seen? or will your brain complixify deeper than he intended, burrowing into personal theories, forging fathoms into connections that he could not, in his limited saltwater sight, have foreseen? if that...will he have gotten it right still? will he in the first place, on the surface?

my strings, let me show you them

he likes to wear a guitar with a strap swirling around the shoulder and neckline, because it draws a direct and hard line between the proximity of his mind and the focus at which it aims. mental target practice, music; at least the rudiments. the faculties of the head are close to us, our consciousness....sight and smell are precise, discerning. the brush of the cheek and lips are practically buzzing with nerves; a loaded weapon waiting, itching to feel itself be fired. the further away, the more clumsy the senses get...hands can be trained, but cannot candle to, say, the intricacies of the tongue. the hands are ripe with utility, but they falter in that they absorb the finer points, mashing them into a singularity. further down are the feet, so removed from our mindstate that we would not normally consider to feel with them. they remain clumsy and relatively useless for anything other than their narrow purpose. no offense feet.

the strap tethers the mind and the hands, though; webs them and brings a focal directness and understanding between them. the mind tops the pyramid, which untapers down into two triangular shared sides, the body and the instrument. it brings a geometrical understanding, a simple assimilation that cradles the instrument as if it were a new archaeological discovery, fitting into the pieces of human history, filling a gap that has been void for far too long in our both sweetly short and exhaustibly dense genealogy. most people don't consider the strap, but it mobilizes. it makes accessory into effortless, alli into aqui, with an urgent note of immediacy.

myriad strings of varying substances likely creating a unique sound as they brush along fingerprints, but one would be hard-pressed to capture that differential within our unrefined hearings. more tangible are the inflections, the rhythms, the negative-spaces which are employed in the distances between notes. the beat, the swing, the slides and hammers and controlled spasms of the hand tensing on the frets. the nearly-chalkboard scrape of transposition. frets. an oddly-named partition of the instrument; it makes it seem as though anxiety were the only thing spurring a musician on from one chord to another. perhaps not so far from the truth~ anyone can play a scale, give them five minutes to learn. done and done. it takes a special kind of, abandon, however, to exist within one.

resumed. guitar is another one of those things; there is a natural propensity for it but it also spirals deeper in terms of effort (much work must be undertaken in order to really justify calling oneself a 'musician'....do not toss such words lightly). there is always another tier just beyond grasp, so ask any of us and you will watch us discredit our own achievements, eyes forever forward as they must be in order to achieve, to mystify, to transcend the current impression of what something is and of what we are capable of. good music is patient, humble, flabbergasted at its own existence and completely content with exploring its reaches. there will always be someone better if you think in terms of betters. so don't; chances are it won't get you where you want to be. and if it does, it's going to be a very lonely place when you finally arrive.
does that make any sense?

"now life's only pleasures is digging, i do it often; so when i die, don't cry, put my records in a coffin and bury me next to a very big tree, with my MPC."
~ Double K