wow

it has been a seriously long passage of time since i have pasted up any words on this thing. a lot has happened; details are unimportant and unwarranted; more of a telephone thing anyway. so, what has been on my mind of late?

how long has it been since you have taken a lengthy, analytical and prognostic look at your life? are we settling for the concerns that we have now, which become so overwhelming and eclipse the backgrounds behind them? i feel relatively complacent of late, which always pings as a red-flag status for me once i realize that it has been going on. it's summertime, and the living is easy...money that was made is now spent. weekends, so longed for and anticipated, are shrunken in a haze of relaxation and sloth instead of being charted with intriguing mental cartography. all is fine, i am young...but i am beginning to feel the pangs of frivolity, the lament for lack of accomplishment and distinction.

i am at a loss for how to describe my job; it is good and i feel fortified, insulated by it. at the same time, i feel like it thieves forty hours a week from me - more counting transit - that could be the blankets and backpacks of a genuine pioneering. it isn't that it takes all my time...a large chunk to be sure, but not all of it. but i feel drawn toward vivacity, towards the city, being young and ever-awake. i feel like maintaining friendships is absolutely essential, and rewarding, and that such a thing should not be abandoned for lofty artistic dreams...yet in the mathematical set i am working with, job + friends + sleep = matt at 26. wedging more in has proven difficult.

i have also come to acknowledge that relaxation is essential. this plays into the idea of friendships, because a good friendship is stress-relieving instead of stress-inducing. my job creates stresses; hell, just being inside my mind creates stresses of its own. decompression is a must, if i don't want to end up a crazy person, aimlessly wandering the alleys of Portland. if the equation is as simple as it seems (probably not the case), then what i need readjustment in is my work. do i try to find something else; something incorruptibly-fulfilling and which broadens my horizons as an artist? do i just need something as simple as to pare down my hours, such that i have more time to commit to personal projects and still stay afloat financially? finances are an argh. i see now how adults become progressively more preoccupied with such concerns, and how it has the ability to rob you of so much potential. i have some degree of scorn for our current incarnation of the capitalist system based upon this, but here is probably not the time or place to complain about how you can't stay afloat by scribbling away your days in coffee shops and mountaintops, even if it were for the advancement of the human spirit and all that riff-raff.

so, for the summertime being, i am currently stunned into inaction against this front. it marches over my mind with its full strength, and i plan to observe and characterize it before moving my own armada against its dark and foreboding will. i just need to find a way to set reminders for myself, little mementos that disarm my fear of its structuring ways since i know another, more ideal life, rooted somewhere in the deeper portions of my thought. i have faith at least in myself, as long as i am successful in keeping myself the same self. the people we naturally evolve into have different sets of strengths and weaknesses, different centers of gravity based on their abacus-arrangements and allotments.

a passing of time

well.
it has been quite some time, hasn't it? lots of happenings, changes of seasons, musics ebbing and flowing through my list of recent listens and new discoveries. things are always similar, however; let us see if i can pick up the pace of this writing as quickly and as intently as i remember myself having done in the past.

a quick update on myself. i have been reading quite a bit, all manner of short books which satiate the mind for a time. i've been noticing lately, in light of these books, that books with a heavy density of ideas seem to leave less lasting impressions with me on the whole. of course, reading philosophy is an entirely different gear of mental motion than a casual story, but still i have to note the finding that, for a reason which i may dive into, readings which overwhelm me with the rapidity of their ground-shattering ideas tend to slip into grey area of my mind. i find that with shorter, more spaced and storylike books, there is less of a chance of being overwhelmed by the waves which crash into you; you have more down or recovery time and as such your mind has more of an opportunity to turn over the ideas which are given to you and do something memorable with them....even make them, in some incarnation, your own. with a lot of the writing that i would typically read, the writers are incredibly profound and prolific, so much so that it takes an equal mind to keep up with them unless one wants to get all 'literary analysis' and pore over every page for a matter of hours. to do this disrupts the pace, and so i cannot resign myself to it. and yet, being less intelligent than these giants of writing, the crashings of surf, their own minds against mine in turbulent and one-sided conversation, tend to rip my footing out from underneath me, erode my balance, and leave me dizzied and disoriented. many times i cannot tell whether or not i pay more attention at any given time to the story itself, or the ideas which it carries in its pockets.

this is a lesson learned for me in writing: do not over-pace, do not saturate with intensity. a gifted writer is one who, without condescending, can thresh out his ideas and their forms almost surgically, taking one piece and pinning it to a page...keeping the entirety shrouded until it is ready to be revealed as the sum of its parts. good writing is archaeological, it is constancy in your ability to dust and connect, connect and dust. i think personally that i used to have an idea about how my writing would be this immensely good thing that could not be ignored for all its potency, and yet what i come to realize more and more is that a tasteful balance is the essence of one's ability to write coherently, impressively. there are artistic aesthetics which must be adhered to, for threat of entirely butchering the very concepts that you are attempting to reveal to your audience by their misapplication or neglect.

in short: the human mind, at least insomuch as i can speak about it from my own experience, is something which cannot be rushed. it is a delicate recipe, a plant which grows in its own distinct conditions and which only flowers at the correct temperature specifications. i would call these temperatures "focus", for lack of a better...focus can be achieved by a set of conditions that must be conducive, conductive of real thought. many of the books i have read are harsher environments, attainable only to the most adaptable and giving minds, and often i find myself stumbling through them for a lack of interest which really is anything but. it is an incompatibility, an incompatibility. learning, challenge, must be paced appropriately or it will founder before making it off of the shore. part of this responsibility lies on the person who would seek knowledge...you have to prime yourself in order to work with what you can. but in addition, part of the responsibility lies in the hands of the teacher, in order that they might create a lesson with proper pacing and enough tangible ties to allow for navigation through it.

i hope that i have a gift for storytelling.

halt....hammerzeit

so it seems clear that i am stepping away from writing smaller entries, and launching into a larger piece of work. but it's daunting, at best, so i think that from time to time i will still be finding spare change to spend on some abstract and unaffiliated subjects here. this site was always a good cathartic release for me, and i'm glad to have the vent here where i can always find it.

memorial day weekend! i should by all rights be excited about this single-day-more-than-usual break for working purposes, but it seems i have been signed up to go to Bend for a good portion of my time off. hopefully that will be fun; if nothing else it will be good to get into a truly fresh area where my mind can recharge, and perhaps recapture a piece of originality. even though i have of broad spectrum of things that i do these days, i feel that for the most part they are things which i have constantly done before. and there is a definite charm to reliving experiences, especially since they always hold some new context even if in small degree...it has been on my mind that repeatability, replay-value, is among one of the foremost tenets of the american economy. sometimes you just want to know what you're getting, or know what kind of atmosphere you are going to immerse yourself in. i do it all the time; holing up in coffee shops because i welcome their kaleidoscopic atmosphere, while still having a comfortable and calming familiarity. at times, though, i get burnt with doing the same things and going to the same places. these ideas start to coagulate, to clump together into a ball like a putty, and they become less and less distinct from one another. it is a phenomenon which i regard thoughtfully, and often, because it seems like the larger themes of my thought and life are reflected in these massed-stars; they are certainly useful if only to illustrate and make more tangible the waves of time passing over me, and how what i think about changes in both manner and mood. but they also, at times, begin to acquire a stale taste which makes me eager for something new.

i am at odds with time lately. my weekends seem to flit away, which would not be so concerning if they weren't in contrast to my weekdays, upon which i typically do not get anything meaningful done. and let me separate senses there, because i do have a full-time job, and a good one at that....i just don't think that i accomplish anything monumental or inspiring while a chip away at it every monday through friday~ my time balances are all mixed-about, because one must save some time for relaxation or risk excess stress. it would be nice to have more time to write, more time to paint, more time for music. always people think it would be 'nice to have more time'. i realize that it must be made, and i am making it, but i worry that my life-formula is currently incorrect because i feel like i am always struggling with time-management. it does not seem, as it sometimes does, as though time is in my corner.

on the other hand, i am much happier, overall, than i have ever been. i can't remember being so satisfied with everything since i was a child. i have complaints, of course...nobody wants an office for 40 hours. but what is irregular, what seems different than ever before, is that all the time i find myself with a genuine smile on my face, and more goodwill towards everyone on the planet than i can usually muster. i have come to a lot of realizations, which ones supposes could be considered maturities, about people in general, and i've subsequently found myself to be in possession of a lot less inward negativity than i used to exhibit. perhaps it comes from having more personal confidence, and being less worried about what others think. i can't pin down the roots precisely (natch; they are underground), but i know that things are better, in so many ways, than they had been for me during say, high school and college. i am actually happier in a lot of ways than i was in college, the so-called 'golden' years, and i take that to be a positive thing. perhaps i am nourishing myself in all the right ways, and have nothing at all to complain about~ least of all time.

perhaps i can find a way, today, to make peace with time. that sounds infinitely pleasurable. here go.

oh.....GO NUGGETS!!~

aw

you know what's twisted, in retrospect? elementary and middle-school magazine drives. seriously, it seems like there should have been some child-labor laws violated there.

but man do those mag companies know how to market their shit - leeching onto cute little kids who need money for field-trip funding~ then rewarding them with toys that probably cost twenty cents to batch up in china. just awful.

some shadowed places

let me theorize for a moment here. i had a dream the other night that was oddly coraline-esque, in the sense that i was struggling with some dominant monster in the house that i grew up in. i don't remember a lot of the details; i wish i had written closer to the actual event but i haven't been finding the time lately, and it just struck me upside the head with its oddity. i do remember that i was in my parents' bedroom, though as characteristic in dreams it was not so much the same in furnishings, or size, just in relative location and perhaps general shape. this is an energy-center of a house for children, so i can understand why my mind would choose it as a setting of some sort. i'm sure that i also branched, at some point, into my own childhood room, which was just across the hallway...an easy jaunt even if progress was hindered by battle, or whatever~

i'm not really sure where i intend to go with this prelude...it strikes me as, not necessarily unusual, but quite curious that so many of my dreams happen in or around my old house. you would think that my mind would be engaging nightly with newer problems, newer ideas, and setting them appropriately in my new surroundings...but perhaps these are too volatile, in my lack of knowledge of them, to paint adequate pictures for a backdrop. i'm fairly certain that my themes, the ideas that my dreams are really digging their fingers into, hashing out, are more intelligent than they used to be...that they deal with different issues as they develop, as i come across them in my actual experience. but they come as ghosts in my old haunts, which, for my part, was unexpected.

so, the parents' bedroom was unique, usually not a typical setting. there are other places which recur with more frequency...namely the backyard. we had a good-sized backyard at my house in the springs, and i suppose that i spent a good deal of time in it. in the dreams, however, it is permeated with a sense of mystery, of vagueness and enormous, almost incomprehensible, size. i wonder about myself as a child, and in the wonderment i find this charmed recurrence of earlier self. it makes me wonder about the most basic sensations in life....that of the security of the home; the focus of life for everyone that you know. the comfort found inside those walls, and how that is imbued upon a childish mind....what the outside would have meant to me, then. i imagine myself, done up in blue one-piece winnie-the-pooh pajamas, gazing in rapt bewilderment out the glass doors in our main entryway, trying to decipher the strange wilderness, the unexplored depths of our backyard. what does a two-year old think of a tree? of grass and flowers? do they have the same positive valence that we would attribute to them now? part of me thinks that they would be frightening totems (head on pole) of the outside world, of complete loss of control.

of course, to a child, unknowns behave in different ways than they do to us now. our adult selves build up apprehensions based upon our past experiences; they fortify us from the outside world with snowglobe-like bricks, each teeming with motion and memory, each distorting the outside world more and more as we look through them, sometimes not even being able to see past the memories themselves. children become apprehensive, fearful, but only after their base comforts have already been stripped from them. a child misses his mother only once she is gone, not before; a child does not fear being lost until it actually arises. we tangle with these scenarios before they exist, and in that we lose something valuable in our interface with the world - we begin to focus more and more, and ultimately we see less and less.

so here i am, standing with my hands and nose pressed against the glass separating my child self from his house's backyard. squirrels scamper by, and i do not understand them. i wonder what sensations they call to my heart.

if i had to guess (since the time i am describing is before memory), and i am going to infer from my dreams now, i would venture to say that i felt fear. not a gripping terror, but an ambiguous shadow floating just beyond my perception, darkening. i say this, because in my dreams i find this same darkness to it. it has apparently been chosen as the place where i work out most of my unconscious struggles. i wish i had a running count of the number of dreams and/or nightmares which at some point trample through that backyard, which in reality has not a trace of ominousness to it but, who can say what a mind will twist anything into at the end of the day~ different sections of that backyard are honeycombed off in my mind; each attributed with memories and characteristics, properties which are real to me but which never belonged.

additionally, as if that weren't enough, i have an amplification of this wilderness....i have my family's cabin, secluded deep in the woods of kenosha pass. this was the spot for family vacations, an inexpensive spot to get away from it all, and i'm certain that it is tethered to numerous memories for everyone who goes there so it is a logical place to return to. i have spent time at this cabin as far back as i can remember, and always it has been a holy temple to me, an observation of the depths of nature and a retreat from the world as i knew it. this cabin is a fantastic place; perhaps you, reader, will be taken there one day~ but it has also developed, for me, as an extremely psychologically-powerful token. i go to this cabin, in my dreams, in my unconscious mind, when apparently there are mountains of rubble in my head that need to be worked through. almost always this cabin appears to me as a fractured house of the most haunted and haunting capacity possible. always there are deep-seated ghosts, literally; always it is overrun with the raw power of nature, crowned with black, spindly insects, the wardens of what deeper unsettled spirits lie slumbering there. the woods around this cabin host my deepest dreams, my deepest indications of what being 'lost', or pursued by the night, feels like. always it is an incredible adventure just to get to this place, rarely by car as would be expected; typically i must forge my way through snowfields and packs of savage animals, cross extreme conditions and distances in pursuit of something i do not know, at least not consciously. i am never sure what the motivation for returning to this place is, but always there is something drawing me towards it.

i do not know why these nature spots have become the seats for my subconscious psyche. all i can say is that they are bottled with unspeakable things; they reflect a different side of the world, as if i had stood in the middle of them and used the mirror from A Link to the Past. things do not make sense there, and everything is darkened. i thought it notable, towards the goal of figuring myself out a little better...and it always helps me to sort out my thoughts more clearly, this 'writing'.


shhh! listen:
royksopp - "royksopp forever"

today

"friendship is unnecessary, like philosophy, like art... it has no survival value; rather is one of those things that give value to survival."
~ C. S. Lewis

how good to have friends, people that we can merge ourselves with; the refraction of perspectives gives telescopic sight. what we can bounce off of a friend is a concept, a notion of ourselves that we have gathered, and we present it freely...a concept which is taken, and puttied, and molded in another mind, mirrored, until we really begin to get a better idea of what we meant in the first place. they can show us things, they can take us farther...obliterating our boundaries and creating impressions of some unexplored territory to the east. they will notice different things, they will append our own selves until we begin to merge the lines and become confused. and then they position us, they help us to see where we fit within this larger picture. they bring our artisan selves, our works and spirit, to places that we have not physically or emotionally been to. places that we shall not know for some time, but which could alter our way of looking at life.

my friends are powerful forces. for them i would burn my books, my money, my car, my apartment. i would sacrifice these things to do real good for them. time is never 'spent' with them; it is savored thoroughly. it is crafted and shared. to spend time is the function of a job, lathing away wafer-thin slices of us so as to preserve the rest (for what else is the remainder intended?) and in the space with our friends, in nurturing environments, we grow back to our former selves. we relearn skills, we reconstruct our memories which had been partially-stripped. we are the children of our freely-chosen experiences.

so damn, it's great to be here. my people build me up, when i am down; they recall the shapes that i am missing at any given time (which takes a fair bit of analysis and knowledge of myself on their part), conjure them from our shared spaces, energies, and present them to me swathed in new packaging. or forgotten packaging, which is the best sort. i could only hope to do them this same service when it is needed. there is responsibility inherent in knowing someone (if they can be said to be 'known'), that we must keep vigil over them for when they are in a time of need. we all need, at some point. being close, that is really something to be proud of....not independence, which callously walls the heart against hope.

i hope some of that made sense.

"treat people as if they were what they ought to be and you help them to become what they are capable of being."
~ Goethe

happy patties

it might seem, by all outward appearances, that i am slacking largely. i haven't posted anything on here for something like a fortnight. but even so, it doesn't mean i haven't been writing.....instead i am trying to work on *gasp* projects, bigger things, which is nice because usually i can't screw up the courage to embark on something larger than what i typically write on here. explosions of thought. perhaps you will find them here as they are developing, or as they emerge from whatever sort of chrysalis they might happen to be in. that i cannot say for sure. but,

isn't that exciting?

i think it is.