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
August 19, 2008
August 13, 2008
number one-hundred
is this a milestone? matches thinks so. it is the onehundredaneleventh post, and he is honored to know such fine and admirable hobbits. proudfoots. but in all seriousness, aside from a half-assed novel project for a writing class in college, this never-ending electronic page is just about the longest writing project he has ever embarked upon (and he shall see to it that he is only just getting wound up). there are cigarettes burning to the right of him; the kind of smokysweet brand that insight used to puff upon when he wasn't spitting hot fire.
if you hadn't noticed, that last posting was a branching out of sorts....a foray, as stylistically it was separate from everything else he has done here. obviously it still had a little bit of the other flavor, but that's hardly avoidable when one has been focusing on one such perspective for, a yearish. a year ago almost exactly it was that he moved to portland; one year taffying into a thousand facets and experiences and people. taffying lengthwise, and then again widthwise as he reflects upon it later. and it had that same sticky tendency; one could not shake it off of their hands even if they wanted to, not to mention the blue-raspberry tinge tattooed onto the tongue. which is an interesting analogy, he realizes as he types it, because really memories are like diluted sensations....colors, but not tastes; sights, but not sounds. feelings, but not saturated, overwhelming awareness of them.
back on track...that last one was a bit more fiction-based, a bit more storylike. which is certainly a direction in which m has always intended to head -- he has just been jogging sideways for some time now to avoid it, to strengthen other muscles which may lend him a little more stability in the harsh gravity of creation. forging other tools in the fire, hammers and pliers and blades, brushes, which might give him a superior foundation or fabric on which to beginagain. suicide drills before the big game, to tighten up those reflexes. and don't be fooled, the mental faculty is most certainly a reflex. albeit a rorschach sort, with free-associations flying furiously in every corridor of a paragraph. he still has yet to learn how to draft the blueprints~ so far his are only fingerprints, which it is true leave faint traces of structure, but nothing on a scheme so grand as he would have it be. and he would, if it would make itself apparent to him.
come on, feet.
a brief interlude: mattress loves it when a girl walks by smelling like fruit snacks. you know the type. what is that scent; does he even want to know? it seems like buying it and spraying it all over the place would ruin the effect that it has in its never-naturally-occurring isolation. there are a number of fragrances that do it for him, but that is certainly in the top three.
it is interesting to ponder all the things that people may appreciate about us, even though we would never know and they might never say anything. we are all beacons of light in some way or another. do we need other people to validate that in us? is it arrogant to appreciate oneself?
is that the definition of cool?
if there is one merit that matches will concede to smokers, it is that it occasions a moment for them to just chill, enjoying or sharing a reflective moment. to break from the bustle, even though ultimately they are contributing to it in some odder (otter!) way by feeding the craving. people rarely take the time for genuine conversation these days, but in smokers sometimes you will find people who have refined it to a science....three-minute bursts of brilliance, that they always have a somewhat-valid excuse to step outside of a situation for.
either that or they are just very socially inept, and need a socially-accepted out for when they begin drowning in conversation.
he is sure that both polarities are to be found in any setting.
writing is one of the most simultaneously relaxing and energizing things in the world. it is almost always, if not honestly always, a good thing. and you would be hard-pressed to say that about most things you come across in life, no?
if you hadn't noticed, that last posting was a branching out of sorts....a foray, as stylistically it was separate from everything else he has done here. obviously it still had a little bit of the other flavor, but that's hardly avoidable when one has been focusing on one such perspective for, a yearish. a year ago almost exactly it was that he moved to portland; one year taffying into a thousand facets and experiences and people. taffying lengthwise, and then again widthwise as he reflects upon it later. and it had that same sticky tendency; one could not shake it off of their hands even if they wanted to, not to mention the blue-raspberry tinge tattooed onto the tongue. which is an interesting analogy, he realizes as he types it, because really memories are like diluted sensations....colors, but not tastes; sights, but not sounds. feelings, but not saturated, overwhelming awareness of them.
back on track...that last one was a bit more fiction-based, a bit more storylike. which is certainly a direction in which m has always intended to head -- he has just been jogging sideways for some time now to avoid it, to strengthen other muscles which may lend him a little more stability in the harsh gravity of creation. forging other tools in the fire, hammers and pliers and blades, brushes, which might give him a superior foundation or fabric on which to beginagain. suicide drills before the big game, to tighten up those reflexes. and don't be fooled, the mental faculty is most certainly a reflex. albeit a rorschach sort, with free-associations flying furiously in every corridor of a paragraph. he still has yet to learn how to draft the blueprints~ so far his are only fingerprints, which it is true leave faint traces of structure, but nothing on a scheme so grand as he would have it be. and he would, if it would make itself apparent to him.
come on, feet.
a brief interlude: mattress loves it when a girl walks by smelling like fruit snacks. you know the type. what is that scent; does he even want to know? it seems like buying it and spraying it all over the place would ruin the effect that it has in its never-naturally-occurring isolation. there are a number of fragrances that do it for him, but that is certainly in the top three.
it is interesting to ponder all the things that people may appreciate about us, even though we would never know and they might never say anything. we are all beacons of light in some way or another. do we need other people to validate that in us? is it arrogant to appreciate oneself?
is that the definition of cool?
if there is one merit that matches will concede to smokers, it is that it occasions a moment for them to just chill, enjoying or sharing a reflective moment. to break from the bustle, even though ultimately they are contributing to it in some odder (otter!) way by feeding the craving. people rarely take the time for genuine conversation these days, but in smokers sometimes you will find people who have refined it to a science....three-minute bursts of brilliance, that they always have a somewhat-valid excuse to step outside of a situation for.
either that or they are just very socially inept, and need a socially-accepted out for when they begin drowning in conversation.
he is sure that both polarities are to be found in any setting.
writing is one of the most simultaneously relaxing and energizing things in the world. it is almost always, if not honestly always, a good thing. and you would be hard-pressed to say that about most things you come across in life, no?
August 10, 2008
a time for transition
eyes sliding unfocused, loosely over the room, alighting now upon the mirrored exterior of a phone. still need to buy a real alarm clock, but what's the point? it shuttles back and forth, rattling, piping out now with rapid, heavy notes. the wind-up happened while i was still asleep, so then at some point on a sliding scale the more shrill tones waged a spatial-war, flexing in and out of real dimensions, with the caverns of my dream....eventually popping it, bubble-like; a needle shredding any point will rupture the structure of the whole, and reality cracks its way in on all sides like a cross-firing squad. the rememberance of the dream is lost almost as quickly as an equalizing pressure between those two, encrypted in invisible labyrinths like the air speeding out spherically, practically imperceptible after just a sliver of a moment, but it still has the to impact to make the child shoved down within us cry a little. this is the raw power of the world, calling for voluntary submission. again. after seven 'fuck you' hits of the snooze trigger, i swivel my body towards the edge of the bed so as to expend the minimal amount of energy possible for this first of the rote motions.
since stability is the foundation of comfort and possibly productivity, the next thirty minutes are precisely the same as they were the day before, and the day before that, back until the last time that the horizon of the day showed signs of different terrains to navigate. not counting weekends and christian-administered holidays, that seems like a long time ago. shower shave (maybe) food teeth hair door hallway elevator small talk garage street light highway parking lot, thank providence for unnasigned parking spots. even when broken down, these activities remain generally the same; it is usually best to wash the body starting from the top, down. it makes more sense. sometimes my shampoo smells different...green apple puts me in a slightly better mood unless a random sud finds its way into my eye. but they all could do that, technically, so it is no reason to discriminate against the apple. still it seems like it happens more often with that one.
it doesn't all hit me, the nausea, until that corridor at work. you know the one; it has bad lighting, or maybe too much lighting. its the longest single distance you walk during that first hour, and such it occasions a moment of reflection about how today is practically indistinguishable from the previous eighty. so far. i see a few of the same people, but not necessarily always the same ones...our patterns of existence are convergent. maybe there is something to astrology after all; orbits roping close enough exchange a smile or a g'morning how are you, but then they are past before they get a chance to reciprocate the question, and nobody cares. maybe there is nothing to astrology.
it isn't a sickness sort of nausea, no, it is perhaps more sartrean. it is a sleepiness; my sleepiness, as i would be loathe to impose it on anybody unchecked even though it probably exists even more prominently in them. scapegoat it if you like, it's all the same. it's the antithesis of the hiking trail derailment, the adventure. it's the low-pile monochromatic carpet, it's the controlled thermostat. it's the absence of elasticity; it's, stasisticity. it's when you trick yourself into thinking that something is different because you drink a smoky tea instead of a green tea, or when you take a hallway that is an obviously less-direct route but hey, you're feeling saucy. and it's all fine...but who has ever been content with just being fine?
and i stop in the corridor, the reflective one. i smell the air, recycled, metallic. it pumps through this building day and night, and it really is entire a mystery to me whether or not it ever escapes. i am inside the balloon, i am in a dream, and there is a natural existence outside of it. this life sits still, confined by walls of concrete painted for appeal, busy and bustling inside but with a series of the strangest concerns and intentions. the atrium is actually quite nice, but it suffers the same detraction as it is technically aiding this intricate system of distractions, of false focii. and i turn on my heel, 180, and i break from that box, that plane, that pressure system. the air outside is clean, fresh, crisp; the breeze swirls around me; i can see it, there are leaves caught up inside of it. i can *see*, the breeze; i can feel it smell it taste it hear it, and it is entirely real in this moment. this is an intoxicating notion to me. it is all part of this pressure, this monstrous enigma of life. i presume that the air inside the box makes it outside eventually, and i see in my head a cartoon rendition of the trees artfully cleansing it; stripping it of its crooked impurities and breathing it back onto the planet; it drifts like dandelion seeds and curls its way around everything. i am swept by these ideas; i dissipate inside of the breeze and my consciousness is eclipsed in a sequencing or perhaps madness of molecules, and the smaller bits which molecules would consider to be molecular. i am lost and found, and where i go from there, i cannot say.
since stability is the foundation of comfort and possibly productivity, the next thirty minutes are precisely the same as they were the day before, and the day before that, back until the last time that the horizon of the day showed signs of different terrains to navigate. not counting weekends and christian-administered holidays, that seems like a long time ago. shower shave (maybe) food teeth hair door hallway elevator small talk garage street light highway parking lot, thank providence for unnasigned parking spots. even when broken down, these activities remain generally the same; it is usually best to wash the body starting from the top, down. it makes more sense. sometimes my shampoo smells different...green apple puts me in a slightly better mood unless a random sud finds its way into my eye. but they all could do that, technically, so it is no reason to discriminate against the apple. still it seems like it happens more often with that one.
it doesn't all hit me, the nausea, until that corridor at work. you know the one; it has bad lighting, or maybe too much lighting. its the longest single distance you walk during that first hour, and such it occasions a moment of reflection about how today is practically indistinguishable from the previous eighty. so far. i see a few of the same people, but not necessarily always the same ones...our patterns of existence are convergent. maybe there is something to astrology after all; orbits roping close enough exchange a smile or a g'morning how are you, but then they are past before they get a chance to reciprocate the question, and nobody cares. maybe there is nothing to astrology.
it isn't a sickness sort of nausea, no, it is perhaps more sartrean. it is a sleepiness; my sleepiness, as i would be loathe to impose it on anybody unchecked even though it probably exists even more prominently in them. scapegoat it if you like, it's all the same. it's the antithesis of the hiking trail derailment, the adventure. it's the low-pile monochromatic carpet, it's the controlled thermostat. it's the absence of elasticity; it's, stasisticity. it's when you trick yourself into thinking that something is different because you drink a smoky tea instead of a green tea, or when you take a hallway that is an obviously less-direct route but hey, you're feeling saucy. and it's all fine...but who has ever been content with just being fine?
and i stop in the corridor, the reflective one. i smell the air, recycled, metallic. it pumps through this building day and night, and it really is entire a mystery to me whether or not it ever escapes. i am inside the balloon, i am in a dream, and there is a natural existence outside of it. this life sits still, confined by walls of concrete painted for appeal, busy and bustling inside but with a series of the strangest concerns and intentions. the atrium is actually quite nice, but it suffers the same detraction as it is technically aiding this intricate system of distractions, of false focii. and i turn on my heel, 180, and i break from that box, that plane, that pressure system. the air outside is clean, fresh, crisp; the breeze swirls around me; i can see it, there are leaves caught up inside of it. i can *see*, the breeze; i can feel it smell it taste it hear it, and it is entirely real in this moment. this is an intoxicating notion to me. it is all part of this pressure, this monstrous enigma of life. i presume that the air inside the box makes it outside eventually, and i see in my head a cartoon rendition of the trees artfully cleansing it; stripping it of its crooked impurities and breathing it back onto the planet; it drifts like dandelion seeds and curls its way around everything. i am swept by these ideas; i dissipate inside of the breeze and my consciousness is eclipsed in a sequencing or perhaps madness of molecules, and the smaller bits which molecules would consider to be molecular. i am lost and found, and where i go from there, i cannot say.
August 7, 2008
August 6, 2008
a higher place
whatever it takes to stop the squeaking noise, that's what antimatter is prepared to do. across the campus from his apartment, there is a library with a prominent tree sticking out of it. you would think the sharp trilling would be coming from a family of cicadas, but no, you would be incorrect. it is, in fact, coming from the silver air-conditioning tower atop the library roof, which clearly has a belt loose or a rust issue or perhaps just an ill temper. this wouldn't be such a big deal if it weren't constantly whirling away all hours of the day (and night), but, it is so. a bladed sound which penetrates the walls of the apartment complex (not to mention the non-double-paned windows. honestly, m's apartment is in the middle of downtown...use some foresight in your building plans, management). and so the sound pries its way into his dreams and always, of course, his waking apartment hours.
rockles and matches are up in arms; today they complained with all the fury they could muster. unfortunately (for the purposes of this one occasion) they are not furious people by nature, and didn't have much more effect than being routed from one desk to another across campus in true asterix and obelix twelve-tasks manner. bureaucratic madness. the end result was 'borrowing' sarie's PSU login so that they might barrage the campus with an epilectic sequence of computer-generated work-orders to better get their point across. fingers crossed, verbs at the ready. let's be honest with ourselves....it was either this or water-balloons filled with WD-40.
now mattress is feeling lethargic after being delayed from his coffee-shoppery for so long, and instead hoisted a beer or three at the italian joint downstairs with neighbor meghaan. three-dollar guinness, you're my only friend. so now it is rambling guitar-chords and summer-night deck sitting, with the smell of brownies fresh-baking, home-making, and generally drifting out the door in cartoon perfume-cloud fashion, tickling the nose and lifting one off of their feet in delicious anticipation.
the bar conversation was the only notable part of the day, so it might as well be recounted. it was a battle of the wits over whether two people need to be attracted to one another to have a successful relationship. she thought that they certainly did, no getting around it, then got quiet and completely retracted the point, saying the opposite. oh fickleties. matches produced pocket-like the point that beauty doesn't necessarily have to be traditional hollywood-glamour....he related the story of colin in germany and celia (or is it silje?) with the heart-surgery scar which he cherished. he related that he thought that beauty did not necessarily have to be of the face or body; that it could also be in the personality or, his favorite, the personable and playful gestures which one unknowingly and charmingly produces to compliment their existence and what they consider it to be. playfulness is essential. then meghaan countered that personality was never in question, that it was important but was being voided for the purposes of the conversation. refuted. but matches went on to argue that the gesture thing was not entirely a product of personality, and that they played into the physical beauty of a person...which seemed to go over well. we agreed upon silence as the difference, for the purposes of the conversation, between personality and physical attributes. charisma if you will. and, since it is matches' page...you will.
they settled that attraction was an important factor, but that it was not confined to the traditional static appearance. it went far and beyond that paradigm, into a higher place.
plz to listen:
royksopp - a higher place
rockles and matches are up in arms; today they complained with all the fury they could muster. unfortunately (for the purposes of this one occasion) they are not furious people by nature, and didn't have much more effect than being routed from one desk to another across campus in true asterix and obelix twelve-tasks manner. bureaucratic madness. the end result was 'borrowing' sarie's PSU login so that they might barrage the campus with an epilectic sequence of computer-generated work-orders to better get their point across. fingers crossed, verbs at the ready. let's be honest with ourselves....it was either this or water-balloons filled with WD-40.
now mattress is feeling lethargic after being delayed from his coffee-shoppery for so long, and instead hoisted a beer or three at the italian joint downstairs with neighbor meghaan. three-dollar guinness, you're my only friend. so now it is rambling guitar-chords and summer-night deck sitting, with the smell of brownies fresh-baking, home-making, and generally drifting out the door in cartoon perfume-cloud fashion, tickling the nose and lifting one off of their feet in delicious anticipation.
the bar conversation was the only notable part of the day, so it might as well be recounted. it was a battle of the wits over whether two people need to be attracted to one another to have a successful relationship. she thought that they certainly did, no getting around it, then got quiet and completely retracted the point, saying the opposite. oh fickleties. matches produced pocket-like the point that beauty doesn't necessarily have to be traditional hollywood-glamour....he related the story of colin in germany and celia (or is it silje?) with the heart-surgery scar which he cherished. he related that he thought that beauty did not necessarily have to be of the face or body; that it could also be in the personality or, his favorite, the personable and playful gestures which one unknowingly and charmingly produces to compliment their existence and what they consider it to be. playfulness is essential. then meghaan countered that personality was never in question, that it was important but was being voided for the purposes of the conversation. refuted. but matches went on to argue that the gesture thing was not entirely a product of personality, and that they played into the physical beauty of a person...which seemed to go over well. we agreed upon silence as the difference, for the purposes of the conversation, between personality and physical attributes. charisma if you will. and, since it is matches' page...you will.
they settled that attraction was an important factor, but that it was not confined to the traditional static appearance. it went far and beyond that paradigm, into a higher place.
plz to listen:
royksopp - a higher place
August 1, 2008
card houses
nothing quite like the smell of hyacinths mingled with a summer breeze.
mattress wrote from this seat not long ago. something about a black dog. there is a man to the left indulging in a cigarette; next to him there is another indulging in a pint of ice cream. enraptured. on the right, there is a couple indulging in pictures of small nephews, or perhaps children of theirs, dressed lacily to the 9's. by all appearances, post-wedding photos. other than that, ahh, not too much going on in this particular spot. much foot traffic as per 21st street standards, especially on the most riotous of the weekend nights.
it strikes m that since he has a large open-air storefront directly behind himself, there are in all probability scores of youthful scenesters making their nightly rounds, seeing the backside of matches and silently scorning him. they see the trademark "b" for blogger website, cresting atop the left side of his illuminated screen, and this screen is as much his face for them as his actual might be were the directions in this scenario toggled and turned aroundways. he is at the moment a 'blogger'; much the worst sort by their standards since it is a friday night and surely only a person of irreparable social-ineptitude would be sipping caffeinateds by his lonesome and plugging away at these little black pieces of plastic laid out according to logic of some lost sort. to be fair, this is probably only half the people straying hither and thither....there are probably troops of linux-coders and chess-players and magic-dealers and all manner of cordial nerdiness to be found in the deep nooks of this particular cafe. the company is not so bad.
even so, it strikes him in a minor sort of pitch, this thought. he doesn't really consider himself a 'blogger', though by definition he supposes he is pinced into this category by the thorny walls of distinction; one thought must follow another. he tries not to cast into shallow pools, and certainly he hopes that anonymous reader is gleaning more of his thoughts, his mind, rather than his day-to-day excitements and uneventfuls. they are probably, in practice, difficult to extract completely from one another. like a duality of hot and cold, what would a mind be without everydays to complement it. what would a mind be without days and hours to contain it, to teach it, to age it into its peak season of consumption, of expression? if you know the answer to that, or even think that you may have a hint of it, then you should probably start writing yourself. there is a world full of eager ears aching for soothsaying.
he is a writer, not a *blogger*. but to blog is to write, is it not? k, perhaps one can post pictures, and video. that aside, blogging is not so much different from conversation with a friend. wouldn't we be remiss not to record it in some way (doesn't our memory serve that fine and excruciating function)? so this is the rub; people think that conversation is different than writing. it isn't. perhaps admittedly in minor ways but, really they are pre-defined by the same rules and boundaries (for the most part). they are both a constant hashing-out, a formless fluxuation which wavers back and forth on anchors we would refer to as topics. they are both clouded by common knowledge and occasionally, alternately, electrified with personality...the trick is to get into something which bypasses the conventional and wanders wayward into the personal, the mysterious, the intriguing. then you put it out there, and maybe it becomes the convention. a vicious cycle to be sure.
it's different in one way. a conversation with yourself; you would think it would be predictable. it isn't. but the difference is that it is very rare to stump yourself. one can think their way into corners, certainly, but in general the way out is only a slight turn from the last known good thought. kind of like computer back-up in that sense (or so you would think....curse you miscrosoft). writing feels more like a gradual stretching of the mind's boundaries, or an electrical obstacle-course attempting to link different areas. sometimes when talking to a different person, especially one not well known, there will be complicating factors. missing reference points, drastic jumps in theory, biological hurdles (attraction and flirtation to be dealt with), misfirings in communication, etc etc. the list, is quite a list. but the point is that there are certainly merits to both. thinking your own way through something is a great, helpful, memorable accomplishment. trading ideas with someone else has the potential to expand a mind more quickly, but it will be a sharp spike as opposed to a gradual painting, radiating strokes outward towards the accomplishment. there will be a lot of unfilled territory trailing behind the epiphany; a lot of hollow ground that it will likely sink back into. a transition, a mental change effected by a single person in communication with himself, is more likely to find a stable architecture....if it can attain those same heights. sometimes one must look outside of themselves for that inspiration which lifts highest.
no way. a yellow lab has just been chained in precisely the place that the black lab was on the night whenever ago. that has to be a stopping point to revel in~
here is a pic to commemorate matches' long hair, which ended today.
happy weekend.
mattress wrote from this seat not long ago. something about a black dog. there is a man to the left indulging in a cigarette; next to him there is another indulging in a pint of ice cream. enraptured. on the right, there is a couple indulging in pictures of small nephews, or perhaps children of theirs, dressed lacily to the 9's. by all appearances, post-wedding photos. other than that, ahh, not too much going on in this particular spot. much foot traffic as per 21st street standards, especially on the most riotous of the weekend nights.
it strikes m that since he has a large open-air storefront directly behind himself, there are in all probability scores of youthful scenesters making their nightly rounds, seeing the backside of matches and silently scorning him. they see the trademark "b" for blogger website, cresting atop the left side of his illuminated screen, and this screen is as much his face for them as his actual might be were the directions in this scenario toggled and turned aroundways. he is at the moment a 'blogger'; much the worst sort by their standards since it is a friday night and surely only a person of irreparable social-ineptitude would be sipping caffeinateds by his lonesome and plugging away at these little black pieces of plastic laid out according to logic of some lost sort. to be fair, this is probably only half the people straying hither and thither....there are probably troops of linux-coders and chess-players and magic-dealers and all manner of cordial nerdiness to be found in the deep nooks of this particular cafe. the company is not so bad.
even so, it strikes him in a minor sort of pitch, this thought. he doesn't really consider himself a 'blogger', though by definition he supposes he is pinced into this category by the thorny walls of distinction; one thought must follow another. he tries not to cast into shallow pools, and certainly he hopes that anonymous reader is gleaning more of his thoughts, his mind, rather than his day-to-day excitements and uneventfuls. they are probably, in practice, difficult to extract completely from one another. like a duality of hot and cold, what would a mind be without everydays to complement it. what would a mind be without days and hours to contain it, to teach it, to age it into its peak season of consumption, of expression? if you know the answer to that, or even think that you may have a hint of it, then you should probably start writing yourself. there is a world full of eager ears aching for soothsaying.
he is a writer, not a *blogger*. but to blog is to write, is it not? k, perhaps one can post pictures, and video. that aside, blogging is not so much different from conversation with a friend. wouldn't we be remiss not to record it in some way (doesn't our memory serve that fine and excruciating function)? so this is the rub; people think that conversation is different than writing. it isn't. perhaps admittedly in minor ways but, really they are pre-defined by the same rules and boundaries (for the most part). they are both a constant hashing-out, a formless fluxuation which wavers back and forth on anchors we would refer to as topics. they are both clouded by common knowledge and occasionally, alternately, electrified with personality...the trick is to get into something which bypasses the conventional and wanders wayward into the personal, the mysterious, the intriguing. then you put it out there, and maybe it becomes the convention. a vicious cycle to be sure.
it's different in one way. a conversation with yourself; you would think it would be predictable. it isn't. but the difference is that it is very rare to stump yourself. one can think their way into corners, certainly, but in general the way out is only a slight turn from the last known good thought. kind of like computer back-up in that sense (or so you would think....curse you miscrosoft). writing feels more like a gradual stretching of the mind's boundaries, or an electrical obstacle-course attempting to link different areas. sometimes when talking to a different person, especially one not well known, there will be complicating factors. missing reference points, drastic jumps in theory, biological hurdles (attraction and flirtation to be dealt with), misfirings in communication, etc etc. the list, is quite a list. but the point is that there are certainly merits to both. thinking your own way through something is a great, helpful, memorable accomplishment. trading ideas with someone else has the potential to expand a mind more quickly, but it will be a sharp spike as opposed to a gradual painting, radiating strokes outward towards the accomplishment. there will be a lot of unfilled territory trailing behind the epiphany; a lot of hollow ground that it will likely sink back into. a transition, a mental change effected by a single person in communication with himself, is more likely to find a stable architecture....if it can attain those same heights. sometimes one must look outside of themselves for that inspiration which lifts highest.
no way. a yellow lab has just been chained in precisely the place that the black lab was on the night whenever ago. that has to be a stopping point to revel in~
here is a pic to commemorate matches' long hair, which ended today.
happy weekend.
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