from the dark

We've moved

2008-04-15T03:42:00.000-07:00

Hey, for anyone still following this blog, i've moved to:

kevinthomas.wordpress.com

please feel free to move there too.

summer's past

2008-03-27T03:58:00.001-07:00

severed dreams
deferred beliefs

i want to run into the ocean
paddle back to sea
watch the sun drop behind the blue
hug the point i lost what i know

dive down
through the green room
beyond the black
breast stroke with the fish that glow

land looks good from here
watery and magical
a different world a different time
come up for air

the moss grows on the east here
it comes from the north
it swells from my feet
and reaches the mouth

back then i could see
almost three days ahead
and smile and laugh with the rain
on my head

run back to the sea
back to the start
back to the dreams that reflected in mirrors
always so much closer than they appear

yellow lines and blue cars
green mountains and canopied trees
back to the water
come back to me

so close to living
dying to try
if only i could go back
watch the moon rise above summer eyes

was there ever a time i didnt run
i didnt feel like i wanted to hide
was there ever a time
like now?

rocky beaches and hideaway forts
patches of grass around dark wooded fences
nothing prepares for the thoughts that come
when you stop living in dreams and what’s already been done.

empy streets

2008-03-21T03:27:00.000-07:00

water fills the cracks in the street
it would be impossible, the movement
upward and out, if it hadn't been done before
time and time again
every time the sprinkler turns on
after the people are gone, after the lights turn on
after the moon reaches the top and starts back down
it should be impossible, this crack should be fixed
tired streets filled with senseless babble all day
cars and feet, dog shit and running shoes
this should all be fixed

walking down this worn out street at the far end of beverly hills
it's not much different than anywhere else
except the palm trees
except the peace
except the clean
but i'm still wearing all black
i'm still wearing my hoody
i'm still wondering why i won't be able to sleep when i lay down

not much changes
cars still drive by at all hours of the night
the logos change, the rims nicer, more expensive
but people are still awake
eyes will still burn in the morning
just like they do now
and in the mirror i'll wonder what's happening
when will it happen
just like i did back then

only now, hopefully, just like the water
what will seem impossible
might become real
moving upward and out
towards...
towards, towards
something.

ended to begin

2008-03-04T01:09:00.001-08:00

there are no bells and whistles
no sirens or flashing lights

not even a stuffed animal

it's finished without a way to begin
all you can say is, it's done

maybe someday someone will see

an empty theater with a few paying guests
i'd be there, smiling, crying, waiting

what would they say

would you think about it after you watched it
wonder why it ended that way

where
is
the
redemption

they always ask
it's hard to find, i would say

hard to see if you don't look
hands over eyes, slits between fingers

where's the hope. the truth.
it's in progress, i would say

on it's way from you to me
if only you could show me the way.

lost in it

2008-02-28T23:40:00.000-08:00

i can see you there
lying on that couch
black fabric, closed eyes, feet dangling
over hopeless edges

and i know it
the sense of loss

i sometimes sleep with it at night
awake to it and smile in the mirror at it
at times it can be warm, a blanket against the future
but other, longer moments, more pained breaths

all you want is to be found
to be heard by ears greater than yours

open your eyes and see if it's there
staring back at you with it's sleepless nights
holding your hand with it's calloused fingers
tapping against your mind with brittled dreams

i know it
i just don't know how to help you past it

deep breaths and nervous laughter
close your eyes and count to seven
your knees to your chest, fetal as can be
and one day your lost will be someone else's found

if i told you i can feel it
can you push it back to me?

big words

2008-02-28T01:26:00.000-08:00

sometimes we put so many big words in front of small ideas. as i sit day in and day out, for what seems like for eternity, at countless training sessions at countless new jobs, i wonder what this is all about. how many ways can i "sizzle" the word salad? mixed greens, tossed, dressed, drizzled, topped, fresh, a bed of, crisp. quite a few. just eat it. you'll like it. that's the idea. those are the big words.

if something moves you. if something hurts you. if something is beautiful, ugly, or somewhere in between, why can't we just say it.

that's moving. or, with a bigger word, that shook me. the english student: that unearthed me.

try and be smart. try and be fluent in all the words no one says, but only writes, unless you're reading from what you wrote. try to put big words to small ideas in order to make small mounds of mountainous meanings. right?

sometimes when the sun is high in the sky, and the car window is down, and the air is fresh, blowing in from the ocean, i drive in silence, and listen to the world, and think that it's the most beautiful thing i've ever heard.

sometimes, when the solar god of wondrous beginnings and eventual ends, hangs high in the noon day summery sky...

talk sexy to the customer, they say, sizzle the menu, make it jump out at them, they say. i will tell you what it is, what it tastes like, and if i like it, and maybe i am sexy when i say it, but my words will not be. but maybe if i unbutton one button in my shirt i will sizzle the whole restaurant, the whole menu, and everything on their plate, to the point where all they can think are sexy thoughts about their food. maybe i will be able to put so many big words in front of so many small ideas that by the time i am done with that table, with that sizzle session, all they will see when they remember their food is the sizzle that brought it to them.

pound away at the computer. make it say what you want it to say. and if you can't, right click and find the thesaurus and sizzle away, until there's nothing left but big words and and the smallest of ideas. or hypothesis' for that matter.

the worth of your beauty

2008-02-16T01:23:00.000-08:00

who decides beauty
whose job is that
what committee gets to make that vote

i have a definition that runs in my head, that chases me
wherever i go
whose to say it's wrong?

i have a thought as to what i think is beautiful, as to what i think is good
of value, of worth,
suitable for me and maybe not for you

do we have to agree
shake hands, sign a paper,
pen our names next to the x

or can i have mine
and you have yours
and let me love that smile that you refuse to see

because your beauty scares me
what you want to give me, what you think will work
makes me want to stay in my room, close my doors, and write these words

when i see beauty,
whatever it is to me
the darkness of someone's soul against the light of your world

i want to look in it's eyes
see how deep and far back they go
and find a place for me in there, for whatever you think that's worth

unrest

2008-02-10T00:47:00.000-08:00

attraction, if it were innocent, if it were pure,
what would it look like
what would she look like

what would the thoughts in my head say
how would they read
if there was no one dictating without reason from the back office

if life meets life
a spark starts a fire
consumes the dry leaves stored up, what then

what how
who then
soft voices can only say so much. but what's to be said

whisper to me, why you, why me
tell me how, tell me now, tell me never
morning sun can only shine, if only it could reason

sleepless eyes
over yelling lies to hands held
in a silent chorus, in a eternal melody

this is how we made me
full of gravity for the unrest
happiness in chaos, homeless in peace

if it were clean, if it were young
what would that look like
who would she be

decisions

2008-01-29T18:09:00.000-08:00

everything feels bleak. trapped.
i knew it was coming.
i knew it would happen, at first i did.
then i got greedy. i was blinded by initial happiness.
forgot what to expect. forgot what i would feel.
but here it is. oh so prevalent and relevant. way to real.

the thought of failure is awesome.
overpowering, suffocating, and black.
you can't see through it
no energy to lift your eyes, to wave your hands
to see if your fingers still move when you tell them to.
but it's all expected. it's all reruns.

i wish it didn't have to be this way.
how good it use to be, before i left, at least that's how i see it
now. everyone is smiling, everything is sunny, when i look
back. a survivalist once said that when you are
lost and confused and don't even know where the sun set or
rose, to just make decisions. i decided to write this.

i knew it was coming. i feared the moment it would arrive.
so here it is. hip hip hooray.

ugly beauty

2008-01-15T01:35:00.000-08:00

the sun does shine here. at some point i forgot that the west coast is so beautiful. the way the ocean rolls off the end of the earth. the shade of purple the mountains reflect when the sun sets in santa barbara.

i just read a blog about what it takes to "make it" in screen-writing, one writer said it was like winning the lottery. another said it was as competitive as trying to make it in professional sports. i don't know if i have it inside me, but that's the beautiful part of this whole thing. pushing yourself to the edge of your limits. how much can you take before you quit?

i want to walk that line. i want to see how far i can go, if i can push myself past my limit and make it...

i'm watching a show on VH1 called "Celebrity Rehab with Dr. Drew," that's the other end of it all. so much ugly mixed with so much beauty all in one place, maybe that's what makes it exciting. that's what makes it so nerve shattering.

Los Angeles

2008-01-10T00:54:00.000-08:00

'you can still turn back. you can still drive somewhere else. you can still go back to d.c.,' I thought as the grapevine came into view just one-hundred and some odd miles outside of LA.

I am finally here, but yet still so far away from being anywhere. Without a job and without a permanent place to stay, I still feel like a traveling salesman, selling my idea of who I am and who I hope to be to all who ask what it is I'm doing.

I tell them, they listen, and they invariably tell me they are proud of me, they think I am doing a good thing, a great thing, that no matter what I will come out a better person for having tried, for having moved all the way back across the country for a dream. A dream. Maybe more an idea than a dream, a thought of what I would like to be someday, five or ten years down the road.

This transition from DC to wherever I am now has not been easy. To be honest, most of it has not been fun. The whole time feeling like a constant battle between being in the moment and thinking about the past and the future, the latter usually winning convincingly. My nieces and nephews clamoring around me, tugging and pulling and smiling and jumping, the oldest at the age where she is beginning to notice things outside herself. A girl at school doesn't like her, and therefore doesn't want to play with her, a huge deal in a little girl's brain. I want to be there. See them all grow up and become real humans. But I can't sacrifice my deisres for them, can I? No. There is something else I have to do, I should do, or more simply that I want to do.

In Sacramento I felt the world pulling at me. Things from the past not able to be kept as the past anymore. It seemed God, or the world, or my inner-concious, or maybe a combination of all three, thought it was time for some closure on things that may be left in my way. They all bubbled to the surface brilliantly, horrificly, but definitely not coincidentally. Just another part of transitions. You can't really move on to the next thing until everything from before has been dealt with. What a shame. It's so much easier to ignore the past.

Los Angeles. The next five years. Holy shit.

Sometimes you have to make some changes to see if you really are the person you think are. This is my attempt.

between unknowns

2007-12-30T23:35:00.000-08:00

because there's so much to say
because i don't want to talk about it anymore
because there are so many words at fingertips filled with anxiety that wait for the surreal period of transition to stop...

because everything seems to lead to this, to nowhere but somewhere very specific at the same moment.

because everything and nothing makes sense.

because i hate thinking about. i have nothing to say.

except that i am so tired of all of this, i am so tired of being in the middle, being between here and there and having left there with tears and tremors in search of an unknown that awaits on the other ocean, the left side, so far from where it seemed things were good and bad and ugly and beautiful and will surely be the same in time whenever that time is that i feel at home again in los angeles...los angeles, the city i vowed i would never live, the city i promised my sister and my friends that i would never call it my home...except that i know this is what i want. except i know this is going to be hard. except i know i can do it because i did it there and i must be stronger because of it, right? right? i'll soon find out. but i hate waiting to find out. i hate this time because no matter how good it should be seeing family and friends and having time to wind down and relax and think about what was and what might be, i can't. too many words and worries and what if's.

i hate thinking about it.

2007-12-11T00:22:00.001-08:00

i don't want to sleep. i don't want to waste a second.
i want to be wide awake for every minute.
i want to run through the streets, the intermittent pools of streetlights
endless

i want to remember everything
everyone, every look, every word, every brick in every building
i want to breathe in the smell of the city
breathe out the exhaust

change must come
cosmetic or real
this is real, this is for real, this is my life
choosing to change life in pursuit of life

you only write when you are...down, they say
you were to be married by 25, i said
how many times can life begin again
how many nights can i stay awake, refusing to awake to the future, to tomorrow, to one step closer to the next day, or the next change, or the next decision that needs to be made, how many nights can i string together to make up eternity, my eternity, my life, my consistent constant change, moment to moment, second to second

2007-12-10T21:44:00.000-08:00

have you ever poured water in the dark?
watched the water fill the cup by the moonlight
spilling through the kitchen window
have you ever watched your hand hold the cup
that holds the water
that bubbles in the dark light?

i did. and i don't know what it means
but i watched it
and i noticed it
and i wondered what it meant
if it meant
if it would ever mean anything
if, in the grand scheme of life, it would ever mean
anything

there

2007-12-10T00:51:00.000-08:00

only 9 days left in dc. it could be 8 or 10 i guess, but 9 seems like a better number. an odd number, four before the middle, four after.

my head is full. no more thoughts please. no more sayings. no more hopes. no more what if's. no more looks. no more hugs. no more kisses. no more anything. i have had my fill of waiting to leave. of not wanting to leave. of wishing i never had to make a decision. never had to look forward to the sun resting on the ocean line of the horizon. never had to regret not taking steps in the same direction to go the same places everyday.

no more. i want to be where i am. no matter where that is. i want to be there and only there. in my head. i want to feel every moment that passes. that lives. i am tired of looking past them, having to, being forced to, preparing, packing, looking at my cluttered room and wondering what, besides my clothes and my books, i should keep. what pictures should have been trashed a long time ago, what walls should have been decorated with art, but now never will.

i want to be there and only there. not in LA or DC or Portland, but there. exactly where contentment is. exactly where nothing else exists except, life. life in every heartbeat, every breath, every blink.

life in context.

in need of a moment

2007-11-26T00:55:00.000-08:00

have you ever wished someone would be able to say something to you, something simple and eternally profound, that would make you feel okay about everything for the rest of your life? maybe even for the rest of the day?

a song, a movie, a tv show, the way the clouds look at dusk on a cold day, a bare tree in front of a tree that still has it's leaves...if only those feelings produced by things like that could last...

have you ever hurt someone unintentionally? but you knew it was coming, in the back of your thoughts you knew, you felt it, but you couldn't stop it, because it was just that time. it was just the time for something like that to happen, that hurt that you knew was going to be there, it felt almost as if it had to happen?

is there anything anyone can say to make things feel okay for more than a moment? moments on top of moments...

living inside those moments when they are there...when the crack in the pavement looks artistic, when the passing row-houses look beautifully thought out, when the lights of the bus coming towards you at night, the bright yellow against the black sky, when even that looks good, it's those moments i wish i had a little book to keep them in, pressed and dried and preserved like fallen leaves in a journal.

that's what i would give someone who needed a moment.

black cat

2007-11-18T22:57:00.000-08:00

a black cat crossed in front of me as i walked down the middle of the street on my way home from work.

how cliche, i thought.

the leaves have begun to fall, most are bare, a few still hang on to their spring and summer friends. some hang on hoping it will turn warm again. some hang on, hoping they will feel alive again.

that stupid cat taunts me. everything will be bad luck, it seems to say with the sway of its tail as it saunters across the black pavement. it's one in the morning, what are you doing out here stupid cat?

crossing your path, i thought it would say.

sometimes everything seems dead. looks dead. feels dead. sometimes the road seems too dark. the trees letting their leaves go could be seen as beautiful, but now it looks ugly. they look naked and opposed to being naked. they looked stripped.

how are you doing, he asked. i said i will be okay. what i should of said, what i thought about after he left, was:

i have been okay and i will be okay again. i should have said that.

i thought that was profound.

i crossed over to the sidewalk, towards the steps to my front door, and that black cat crossed my path again. maybe that would undo it. maybe when i wake up tomorrow morning, or afternoon, everything will look alive. the trees will look like they are sending their leaves away lovingly, awaiting their return with fond memories of what had been, but not harboring any ill feelings because of their separation.

maybe the trees will look content.

i don't play games, cat, i don't play games, i thought.

i walked up my stairs, wanting to feel alive, wanting to feel content like those naked trees.

when i know

2007-11-11T01:04:00.000-08:00

when every possibility, every smile, every number, every improbable situation makes you want to stay, makes you re-think the last two years of buildup, that's when you know it's time to leave.

when everyone says you are right for leaving, but you fear believing it yourself, that's when...

when the hem of her dress, the touch of her hand, makes you want to give it all up...

when the cold and the dark and the tiny clouds escaping from your lips seem to form words...

when everything in you wants to stay because the fear of the unknown is so great, so powerful, so all encompassing, that you feel like the only sensation you have to look forwards to is that of a huge, empty, black void...

that's when you know you're making the right choice.

impression by the sink

2007-11-06T21:30:00.000-08:00

turn the distractions off. the tv. the music. the book. the thoughts. the heart beat. the fingers on the keyboards...

turn it off.

live in it, the silence inside. what do you think of? who do you think of?

fear. do you know me? do i know you? do you want to know me? abstractly. literally. can i see your impression of me? do you want to see mine?

turn it off and sit. wait. hear it. the hum of energy in the house. the hum of electricity. blinding.

how can you be better than me? how can you learn from me? from this version of me, this instant, nothing is constant, nothing is eternal, nothing i can touch will last forever. how can you be better than me?

so much bad and good at one time. what is the hope here? what is it? that more good will show itself than the bad? that we will choose the good more often than the bad? is that the hope?

fear to try. fear of eternal failure.

do i know you? do you want to be known? known for all the bad you don't show anyone but the mirror? do you want to know me? the mirror even says no, scared of the truth. scared of facing fear itself. this is me abstractly. this is the mirror's impression of me.

glass is always moving. the water in the sink will always try to go down.

how can you be better than me?

on loneliness

2007-11-05T20:58:00.000-08:00

a little girl sits at her mother's feet, playing with the hem of her red sun-dress. the little girl squirms and giggles at the thoughts that dance through her head.

"what are you thinking about, honey?" she runs her fingers lovingly through the little girls' dirty blonde hair. the girl pauses, comically inquisitive for her age, and then looks into her mother's eyes.

"will i be happy for ever, mommy?"

for a year? for a month? for a day? for an instant or two that chain together to make a moment? how can we measure the amount of happiness that exists in our life?

it seems a constant void, something missing, something that needs to be found, that will take away the loneliness. some say it's a God-sized hole, so you search and search and put God in that hole, you put him there and let out a deep sigh of relief, and moments later, loneliness comes back. maybe you aren't loving God correctly, perfectly, some would say, maybe your love for God is misdirected love.

imperfect in every way. imperfect in beauty. how can imperfect beauty correctly love beauty itself. a statement.

do you lay awake at night with God in your heart and your other at your side, asleep, beautiful, and still feel it? still feel alone? or does that go away? does that go away forever? or just for longer moments of time?

eyes burn with sleep. it has to be filled with something. that void, that hole, that imperfect place inside. it has to be filled with something. what would you say to the little girl if she sat at your feet, at my feet, and looked at me with those eyes.

i would lie. i would lie until she had to find out for herself. imperfect beauty is still beautiful. maybe that's what i would tell her. maybe she can find hope in that.

the wind would blow, the chimes hanging from the roof of the porch would clang together, reminding her of this moment for the rest of her life. for the rest of her life she would remember when her mommy lied to her so that she would have a few more happy moments to live in. loneliness can be beautiful sometimes.

after you hide

2007-11-01T11:25:00.000-07:00

will you know what love is when you feel it?
I'll know it when I want to run from it. I'll know it when I fear her touch, her kiss, her body. I'll know it when every word and look lives in my stomach.

where do you hide? where do you run? where do you hide? how will you know love?
When I know how much she can hurt me, and I still want to be there.

how will you know?
When I want to run.

what will you do? where will you go? where will you hide?
Inside myself. Where else do people hide? Where else can people hide?

how will you know?
When she looks at me, when she knows me, and she stays. When I let her know me.

timing

2007-10-30T22:26:00.000-07:00

don't think about it. try not to. don't. no don't. ok, go

the thing about timing, the thing that makes me want to not ever wake up in the mornings, the thing about timing that makes me want to live in those dreams that last for days it seem, the ones that run deep in rem, is that when the timing is right, whenever that instant is, it's just that, one instant, one singular instant that you have to pounce on and make it yours. if you don't, that instant will pass.

sometimes i feel like i am on different planes of existence. that everyone is. and the timing is only right when those floating planes happen to cross, and if you don't realize it you just go on floating by, wondering what could of and should of and might of been.

in the end though. all you can do is look forward. all you can do is hope.

the only words

2007-10-16T09:51:00.001-07:00

depression. depression. depression. depression.

when the hot water in the shower fails to feel hot on my skin.

when the hunger in my stomach is a welcome sensation.

when my eyes burn with the need for sleep.

when nothing gets done. over and over. and over and over.

when thoughts compound on thoughts and weigh my body down.

when the only time i feel like smiling is at work, when it's fake, when i say hello and what would you like to drink?

when thoughts of the future, the uncertainty, the imminent change required, needed, is the ONE thought taking up space, all space, in my mind.

when applications lay unfinished, books unpublished, scripts half-dead.

when these are the only words i can write.

that's when i realize i am depressed.

it comes and goes. october seems to bring it more often than not. the good and the bad and the everything become one singular thing, indiscernible objects heaped on one another like the dead leaves laying at the roots of forgotten trees. brown, yellow, red, slightly green on the edges.

have i ever been so certainly uncertain about what i am doing? yes. that's why hope is present, in the smallest form, somewhere down the long hallway hope peaks out from underneath the door, hope dimly lives in that crack between the floor and the bottom of the door. breathes, but only softly. quietly. waiting. one foot in front of the other until i reach that door. the door knob cool, refreshing, alive. behind it, dreams. bright and eternal. almost blinding.

depression, precursor to creative expression. a biannual event in an empty conference room. one chair and a thousand mirrors. no microphone.

when these are the only words i can write.

on leaving

2007-10-08T23:41:00.000-07:00

On leaving, on gathering your things, be them as little as they are, and leaving. leaving everything behind for everything in front. or everything that you hope is in front of you. of me.

i could leave everything here, everything physical, everything i can see and touch and sit on and sleep on and watch Real World on, and i would be fine. i can find all that wherever it is i am going. but it's the uncertainty of how i will replace all the rest, all the rest of the things in life that make it worth living for, be them as little as they are.

wherever it is i'm going.

wherever it is i think i'm going.

when leaving becomes too much to think about and consumes every thought you don't want to think, every thought that needs to be thought in order to make the actual act of leaving doable. that's when leaving becomes a thing, not an act, not a decision, but a thing that feels and acts unlike any other time you leave, anywhere. that last time you walk out the door, of work, of home, of your favorite bar, your favorite restaurant, that is a thing. that is not just leaving.

wherever it is i'm going.

notes before sleep

2007-09-19T12:10:00.000-07:00

the day i realized i only had three months left to live, in dc, in seclusion, in self-contained captivity, was today. tonight. in the mirror, shirt off. i saw who i had become. am i ready to show the world? to accept and move forward? today i realized i must. who will accept me? who will smile and wave, from afar, from a distance too far to be traveled? a bridge unable to cross. who will accept me, who will they love? can i be your lover, can i be your friend, can i be your child, your brother, your cousin? two years. has it been long enough, too much time or not enough? irreparable damage or beautiful growth? journey to death, too black to see, trapped by my own nightmares, no air to scream? or life giving light, transformation, and obstacles conquered? movement forward or recession, receding to places they will not want to reach me? choices made, friendships lost? choices made, family forgotten? am i ready to move back? would it be forward? scribble this upon my heart, in the morning show me where to start.

Scars

2007-09-06T14:31:00.000-07:00

I had stitches, the stitches dissolved and gave way to a scab, the scab gave way to a scar. The scar is still there, slightly sensitive to the touch. Our outsides heal much like our insides. I have been watching my body heal itself, watching and waiting for it to complete the process, and although it's the first time I have ever had stitches, the whole thing, from start to finish, from wound to all better, seems familiar.

When you get hurt, when someone wounds you, emotionally, spiritually, deeply, you at first dare not to touch it, you have to have someone else take a look at it, examine it, give you their advice on how you should handle it. But be honest with yourself, you probably tried to take care of it yourself at first. You failed miserably. You failed because you needed help.

That's when you make take that first step towards the real healing process. You talk about it, you seek opinions, you put down the glass and start to truly look at what happened, and how from here you will proceed. A plan is put into place, "I won't do" this or that for a while, give myself time to recollect, to find myself, you say. And it works. Think of it as the stitches. They work, they help your skin to pull itself back together.

It's beginning to heal but it's still hurts. It hurts to touch, it hurts to talk about, it hurts when someone accidentally brings up the subject, you think of that person, him or her, whoever wounded you, and you can feel it all over again, this time only briefly because you are beginning the healing process, but you still feel it, you still favor that area of your life, limp to that side when conversations turn that way.

After time the stitches began to disintegrate, you are pleased with this, and scabs start to form. The scabs are less sensitive, but still it hurts. Still you don't want to look at it, you don't want to see that person who wounded you because you are still reminded, painfully, of what was done. Your body hardens a little, masks the wound, you walk around with a little more confidence at this stage because you see results, real results that you are producing on your own now. But still it hurts. You still think about it when you go to bed at night, sleep comes delayed because you still are finding ways to block it out in these quiet times. Finding ways to keep the scab away from anything that could tear it, exposing it again.

Slowly the scab falls off. You actually don't even realize you are getting this far along at this stage because the scab just seems to lessen and lessen with every day, without you noticing or picking at it or even thinking about it more then once or twice before the sun sets. And this is good. This feels good. You see the new skin start to appear, you feel the old you coming back, you feel yourself beginning to act without regret, without pain, without remorse, without feeling sorry for yourself or hating the wounder. You begin to move on. The budding scar is proof.

The scab soon is completely gone and all you are left with is the scar, slightly raised and slightly different colored, but new skin nonetheless. Enough time has passed that you have truly moved on. You have found your strength again. Every now and again you notice your scar, or someone asks you about your scar, about what happened and all that, and you are able to talk about it without losing anything of yourself, without slipping, without feeling weak. It happened. But look, I am healed you say.

The scar may be sensitive every now and then, but imagine if you didn't have that scar, imagine how painful that open wound would be for the rest of your life.

Soon you visit the doctor for a checkup.

the thought of regret

2007-08-26T11:17:00.001-07:00

i watched him as he spoke, his leathery skin full of spots and varicose veins, his neck straining with each word that escaped his dry, chapped lips, and i thought that he was brilliant. i thought that with each word he spoke he spoke wisdom and time, time incarnate through his syllables.

"i reached 28 and i had an experience, i didn't know it was spiritual until much later, but it was an experience, i saw myself die, and in that instant before i died, i saw my whole life, and i regretted every minute of it."

he went on to say that from then on he dedicated his life to making something of it. he wrote books, and one that was made into a movie, Requiem For A Dream. they are haunting, dark, beautiful.

i watched him speak and i knew he was right. i could go my whole life without ever trying to accomplish what i really want in this life, and i could make believe i was happy, make believe i was content, make believe that my existence was meaningful even without that which i wanted. and then in that moment, in that split second before i died, before my soul was taken from me, before my chest rose and fell for the final time, i would see my whole life before me, like a slow-motion flip book in the hands of a child with dirty fingernails, and i would regret every moment of it. every moment i never tried.

the interview

2007-08-17T16:54:00.000-07:00

The interviewer, her hair perfectly trimmed and primped and prepped, takes her seat in front of me. The camera is behind her perfect head. I am sitting on the chair. It's pretty comfortable. I lean slightly to the right, unshaved, blue jeans, white T-shirt, converse. I am nervous. This is my first interview and I drank a little too much the night before.

I wonder who's going to see this? My grandma? My mom? My dad? Connie? I laugh to myself.

The interviewer looks up from her notes, "something funny?" She smiles, a self-conscious smile.
"Oh, nothing. I was just wondering who might see this, that's all."
"Something you are ashamed of?" She smiles again, this time slyly.
"It depends on what you are gonna ask!" I laugh, self-consciously. The ice has been broken. She laughs a little too, a fake laugh. The producer says they are ready whenever we are.
"Well, here we go."

What will they think? Did they even read the book? I bet they didn't want to. They probably had someone sum it for them. The censored version. Are they going to see the movie? I doubt that.

She begins. The red light on the camera goes on. I am still leaning slightly to the right. She tells the people who she is, who I am, the book, the movie, I thank her for having me.

"So, what was it like writing this book?"
"Torture."
"Torture?" She laughs, "why's that?"
"Imagine spending the good part of two years writing about the worst time of your life. I mean...I enjoyed it, writing the book that is," again the fake laugh, she leans in, "it was a necessary step for me, in..." I am at a loss for words.
"Finding yourself? Moving on?"
"Yeah. Finding myself."
"And what did you find?" What a horrible question.
"Uh. What did I find?"
"Yeah."
"That I am...a writer. That I fear what people think. That I crave to know what people think. That they aren't bullshitting you when they say that your childhood shapes the rest of your life. Who you are, what you will have to deal with, that kind of thing."
"Yeah, that really came out in your book. There are some very deep, introspective, at times dark and disturbing passages in there."
"Yeah."
"Talk about those. What does your family think, your friends?"
"I guess I found those dark places too, huh?!" Again, the fake laugh from both of us. "They are proud of me. It's funny, writing about your life and family and whatnot, and then having to go to Christmas and Thanksgiving and seeing everyone, wondering what they think."
"It's very honest."
"Yes. Very. And that's what scares people I think. Some of it is stuff you don't hear all the time. You don't talk about in polite conversation. And to have it out in a book, I think that makes some in my family uncomfortable."
"You had a hard time finding a publisher."
"I did."
"And why do you think that is?"
"Well, Christian publishers didn't want to publish it because it was Christian enough, you know, it didn't end with an alter call and all that, you know, it didn't exactly have an uplifting ending. It's more of a Sideways type ending. Incomplete, real. And, other publishers were scared of the religious-ness of it. Didn't think there a big audience for it. I think everyone deals with the something, mine just happened to be religion and family."
"Speaking of Sideways, you have your first movie coming out this weekend, excited?"
"Very. But again, worried it won't do well. Like the book, it started slow, I didn't eat for a week when it first got published, ha, so hopefully the movie will do better at the beginning."
"Yeah, we can't have you starving yourself now!"
"No, that would be in poor taste I guess." Punny.
"And this movie, again, some dark overtones, funny, but serious. Why the darkness?"
"Not sure. Maybe I need to go back to the therapist, huh?" She chuckles. "I guess that's how I see the world, funny with a side of depressing."
"That's a unique way to put it."
"I hope so."
"What do you hope with your writing? When you moved to LA, what did you hope would come of it? Why this, why writing?"
"One time someone told me that she read a book that made her cry, made her think about the world, made her look for answers. I could feel how deeply it touched her by the words she was using. I was amazed. I want to be able to do that. I want to be able to touch people through what I write, I want to be able help them search for answers, help them live this life, and I believe that reading, watching movies, music, can truly help people to live a better life. Not as in I think they can be BETTER people by reading my work, or seeing a movie I wrote, but that they might be able to enjoy life more. Maybe they will be able to find answers to questions that they didn't even know they had. I don't know."
"I think you do know. Why did it take you so long to get your book published? What was it, five years?"
"Yeah. Five. Wow. I was scared. Scared to try and scared to fail. I was doing things that I enjoyed that kept me buoyed, and I just, well, kept doing them. Working at a restaurant. Going out, drinking, meeting different kinds of girls, having fun, you know. I was enjoying life, but it was mostly because I was scared. Fear."
"And you overcame it?"
"No, but I did it anyway."
"And hows the nightlife here in LA been for you?"
"Entertaining." I laugh. She laughs.
"Met anyone special?"
"Man, you sound like my grandma. Lots of special ladies. Just waiting till I am ready."
"When do you think that'll be?"
"Should I call you when I'm ready?" She laughs, blushes, I laugh. "No, I don't know. I fear never."
"Never? Why is that?"
"Trust is a funny thing. Love is even funnier, put the two together, and you got a recipe for a tragedy. No. I do have hope, and there is probably someone who can deal with me and I with them."
"Well, any last words?"
"Are you gonna shoot me?"
"Stop it."
"Just kidding. No, this has been great."

She looks into the camera, does her sign-off and thanks me and says goodbye. The red light on the camera goes off, lights go down, and she stands, I stand.

"That was great. Thank you."
"No, thank you, I am a horrible interview. I am a little hungover as well."
"Well, you handled it very well."
"Practice makes perfect." She laughs. We shake hands and part.

I put my sunglasses on as I exit the building, the bright sun bouncing off the windshields of cars in the parking lot.

thoughts

2007-08-14T21:02:00.000-07:00

Doubt is like a huge mess of boulders blocking the road. Excitement builds as you round the last corner to your anticipated destination. The city lights fill the darkness like a setting sun in the distance. You slow for the curve, then press the accelerator slightly as you near the end of the turn, trembling with...ROCKS. Nothing but rocks. No way around it with the car. You can only walk. And that will take a long time. You just wanna give up. Maybe this trip wasn't worth it. Maybe this is a sign.

I look at the last line I wrote on a script and all see is huge, mossy, boulders. So much doubt.

Every rational thought I can muster to appease my doubt seems silly in the luminous cloud that blinds me. So much doubt. So many reasons to stop.

Doubt is fear in it's most passive form. Everything is affected. Everything seems gray.

Coon Rapids

2007-08-11T09:48:00.000-07:00

I wish I was from Coon Rapids. If I get reborn I think I would like to try being from a small town with a name like Coon Rapids. Or Deer Droppings, or Moose Track River, or Black Bear Hollow. Can you imagine how cool it would be to grow up in a town like that, you know, play sports with all the same kids from elementary to high school? You would have your rival towns , like Stone Bridge, and the coach would gather all of your little nine-year old heads in a huddle before the game and say something like this:

"Well boys, here it is. The most important game of your young lives so far. No pressure though, huh?" He would laugh off his deep seeded frustration that still burns from when he lost to the Stone Bridge Maulers back when he was a wee little boy. He bends down to look them in the eyes, "We just gotta play our game today boys, you know, play like there is no tomorrow, like the whole town of Deer Droppings is counting on you, and they are boys, they are. Deer Droppings hasn't been this excited about a...well, about anything, since Miss Johnson sold one of her tea-cakes to a buyer in New York, but that's besides the point here boys...The point is...the point is," he pulls them in close, "I need this win boys. I NEED THIS WIN! More than you know, but no pressure, no pressure. Hey, I am rambling here, lets just go out and play huh. Hands in, hands in, one two three, GOOOO DEER DROPPINGS!"

The little boys look around at each other, a moment they will remember forever; that weird speech their weird coach gave them before they got drubbed by Stone Bridge back in fourth grade. The year he started his drinking. It's the kind of moment they will all share together again at their grad-night party, sitting around the table eating Ms. Johnson's famous tea-cakes. Only in Deer Droppings.

Coon Rapids is in Minnesota. Their team is in the Super Regionals of the little league world series. They got me thinking about how I would like to live in a small town at some point in my life. Maybe just for a week or two. But small towns like that seem different then suburbs, they seem natural, like Granola. Whereas the suburbs is processed and sugar coated like Trix. I guess living in DC for the last two years has made me think about what I want, or more appropriately, where I want to spend my time.

When we were young you didn't really have a choice. You just lived wherever you were told to live. Sleep here, eat there, play there, and all that. It was simple. Now there is all this freedom that the soul craves for, all these choices you can make about how you are going to obtain happiness. What is that going to look like? At times I wish I could live in multiple places at one time. Part of me in the city, part of me in the country, part of me on the west coast, part on the east coast.

Coon Rapids is falling apart. They just gave up four runs, their shoulders are slumped, their body language says they have already given up. The way kids do. Their coach needs to call a timeout, look'em square in the eye balls, hand on the best players shoulder, and say those words they will remember for the rest of their lives. Those words that, oh, they just let another run score...those words that they will laugh about as they share a beer at the local Coon Rapids watering hole in their mid-thirties. Only in Coon Rapids.

a moment

2007-08-07T00:44:00.001-07:00

I had one of those moments earlier this week. I thought it might pass, just be a moment, but it lingered, and became a moment that demanded to be remembered. I was talking on the phone, sitting on my bed, and I realized I live in Washington, DC. I grew up in Oregon, went to school in California, and left all my family and friends and moved to DC two years ago.

It's like when you're a kid and you realize your parents are actual people outside of your little world. Or when you are with your mom in the grocery store and you see your school teacher for the first time outside of your classroom. Or when you graduate highschool and you take pictures with your best friend on the lawn outside and you wake up the next morning and look at the silly cap and gown draped over your chair never to be worn again. Or when you pick up a basketball for the first time in almost a year and remember how much you enjoy it, from the fingertips to the feet, your muscles remember too.

It doesn't feel as if I have moved all the way across the country. More like I found a place where none of my friends or family would ever go and hid there and wondered the whole time why I was doing it. Maybe to find myself, maybe to lose myself, maybe both are inextricably tied to one another, like the ocean and the waves, first you hear the waves, then you reach the crest of the hill they are hiding behind and you see the ocean. Magnificent.

I hung up and got ready for work. I walked down the street to the bus stop and got on the bus, in Washington, DC. It was humid and hot and beautiful.

Fill me

2007-07-21T00:13:00.001-07:00

Maybe it's because of all the free drinks I got tonight. Maybe it's because I just watched a highlight, number 8 on the top ten of ESPN's plays of the day, of a WNBA player making a layup. Maybe it's because this girl I was dancing with at Chief Ikes was obviously with another guy, made clear by her holding his hand and sitting on his lap post Kevin-dancing.

Maybe it's all these things. Maybe it's none of these things. Maybe I just really am empty. Possibly none of these things have anything to do with me feeling empty.

We had our first performance of our play today. I was hoping to feel fulfilled afterwards. Accomplished. Exonnerated in the highest of high courts. But I just felt the same. The same as I did before we took the stage. Not to say I didn't love it, that I didn't have a lot of fun doing it, that it wasn't fulfilling in a way. But not in that eternal way. Not in that way that makes you feel fulfilled even after you have just watched a highlight, number 8, of a fucking layup that you did in second grade.

Maybe that's impossible.

Maybe there will always be this nagging emptiness that makes you, or me, miss those things you know you shouldn't. Those people you know you should forget. Maybe there will always be this.

How do you contain it? How do you control it? How do you click your heels together and make it go away? Maybe you need bright red shoes...Maybe if I wear bright red shoes tomorrow during the performance I will feel fulfilled afterwards.

Somehow I doubt it.

Tiredness is creeping in. The alcohol overtaking my bloodcells that go to my brain that keep me awake. Maybe someday I will find something that does fulfill. Maybe tomorrow. Maybe never.

Dreamless days

2007-06-08T12:00:00.000-07:00

The problem with waking up at 2 in the afternoon, the sun already at it's peak, is that there is so much inherent regret, almost guilt, associated with this hour. It's as if every hour after 11 is weighed down with increasingly more guilt. The longer you sleep into the day, the harder it is for your sluggish body to revive itself from the bear-like slumber you just experienced. I hate regret. Especially when I had some incredible dreams. Dreams that lasted hours and days it seemed. Dreams that redefined my dream self. Truly, it was impressive how long and detailed and structured these dreams were.

But if my mother called me today, checking in from Oregon, would she be impressed at my ability to dream myself all the way to 2 in the afternoon? It's hard to imagine that. That's the hard part, knowing that you should feel guilt, that you should FEEL a little morose even, at the fact that you almost slept the day away because you know that others outside of your body expect you to feel those feelings.

I refuse. This is my day off damnit, and if my dreams want to be dreamed until 2 in the afternoon, then so be it. Because they were damn good, and they were funny too. More precisely, I was funny in them. The ladies loved me. I was at a wedding, an interracial wedding, where they actually had to have separate wedding ceremonies - one for each side of the family - and the first one, the white side, was behind close curtains. At first you think, as I did in my nicely suited dream self, that this is due to the color of their skin (although I was white my allegiance in this wedding was to the bride, whom was black). But you would be wrong, as I was, because you would find out (if you slept till 2 to see the end of this dream, as I did) that NAY it wasn't the color of their skin, and yes MLK's dream was coming true at this exact moment, but in fact it was because they had to wear secret family headcoverings to the wedding. The headcoverings were like the family shield, and both families had one, and after the marriage the two headcoverings were joined to make one beautiful headcovering. And why behind closed curtains? Because society was ready for the headcoverings.

I toasted to that in my dream, cheers.

And now, off to make the most of my dreamless day...

?

2007-06-03T23:42:00.000-07:00

how do you decide what to do...how do you choose what not to do...is there ever a clear sign, pink like neon, that brightens on and tells you "yes! this is it!" when you finally do it, something that will help you succeed in the future? too many choices. abundance creates laziness.

if there was one thing to choose, only one, you would do it. the problem is there is always at least two. to do it, or not to. always two. never just the one, simple, clean, choice. can you force yourself to live with only one choice? to always do whatever it is you truly want to do? i believe whatever you truly want to do is the hardest thing to do because of the fear of failure. or the reality of how much effort it will take. too many choices to distract.

live dream live/dream, or is it dream live dream/live?

tell the story so that it connects, whatever it is, to whomever, that's what I want. dream live. dream/live.

a man sat in an empty planter outside our restaurant. he asked me for money as i left for the night, pockets full of cash. his legs kicked to get my attention, his hand out, palm up, dirty fingers...no, i don't. i don't have any, i told you already.

two choices to make for every choice that could be made. make one and see if the neon light goes on.

Awaiting sleep.

2007-05-14T22:57:00.000-07:00

Waiting for sleep. Waiting for the pill to take effect, to kick in, for whatever part of my body to do whatever it needs to do to break down the little green pill, bulbous, and send the pills innards throughout my innards...all for sleep. And a little cough.

Two nights ago I lay in bed and waited for the same thing. I waited and waited and waited, and nothing was coming except anxiousness. Then I realized that I was dreaming about waiting for my last few tables at the restaurant to pay before I could let myself fall asleep...what a horrible dream. So I woke up, in real time now, and took another pill...it seemed like a good idea in my not-asleep-dream self. Again, I waited.

About 3 pm, two hours after I awoke the next day, the second pill kicked in, I rode the bus to work trying to stay awake. I dressed at work, took to the floor, and again found myself waiting for my last tables to pay until I could go home and fall asleep. What a cruel pill.

Waiting for action is a weird sensation. Waiting for that nebulous time in the near future when you may or may not move to lala land. Waiting to hear if a project you are working on may or may not take off. Waiting for life to catch up to your mind.

A few of my friends are waiting to go to school. Seminary, Law, Film. Waiting to learn. Waiting for life to catch up to their motivations.

And as I sit here writing this, my body feeling slightly separated from my head, the hands at the ends of my wrists feeling even more detached from my arms, I think I am beginning to feel the first effects of that little green pill. The one that when I swallow I can feel it slide down my throat...

Slowly the waiting becomes now, the life in your head the same life you are living in body, and I assume in time you wish you could turn back to that time just before the waiting ceased, because maybe in that time, in this time of waiting, some of the best living should be done.

Thoughts on the green pill...

The Visit.

2007-05-04T16:29:00.000-07:00

My mom told me she wants to come visit me, see how I am living my life out here in the nations capitol. With my time running down out here it has occurred to me that nobody from my family has come to visit me. This is not a sob story or anything like that, just a fact. But really, how can you blame them?

Since I have been out here both my sisters have had kids, a fourth and a second respectively, and so most of my parent's trips have been to visit one of these new squishy members of the family. I'm sure these times are full of oohhhs and ahhs and talks of the future and success' and cute family pictures holding said baby and all that...

This is what I envision a conversation being if one of my parents were to come visit me:

mom: So, show me your life! (she is excited as we drive towards Busboys and Poets, my job)

kevin: cool, well on your left here at Solly's is where I got so black out drunk that I got text messages the next day from complete strangers telling me I could count on them, and that they were there for me if need be. People here are so nice.

mom: oh, that is nice.

kevin: Oh oh oh, and the best part was Mom, was that I had been drinking for two weeks straight, crazy right!

mom: wow Kevin, that's impressive!

kevin: yeah, that's how I handled the whole disaster thing...you know?

mom: oh, the break up?

kevin: yeah

mom: well that's a great way to handle it! I am proud of you!

kevin: yeah. And here on the right, that place called Alero's

mom: oh, thats a pretty building

kevin: isn't it? that's where we go every tuesday after work for happy hour, but happy hour usually turns into happy hours, and sometimes ends in bars with fishtanks where we sing karaoke till the wee hours of the morning, or at least until we can't stand anymore.

mom: that sounds great!

kevin: doesn't it?

mom: it does.

kevin: oh and on the right, yeah that shitty looking place right there, well that's where...well, no, never mind.

mom: what?

kevin: well, let's just say I got an interesting nickname after that night.

mom: fun!

Maybe I could show her pictures, maybe I could take her out to eat, but I feel like her time might be much more well spent visiting one of my other siblings who are doing things, and producing things (literally), with their lives. Both their husbands are doing cool things, ones a doctor, the other just graduated from Seminary. I wrote a book. But it's still trapped in my computer. And as for girlfriends, well, lets just say that hasn't been in the plans for a while now.

My stepmom asked me if I had met the ONE? The one! She wanted to know if I had anything on the radar, I told her I didn't even have the radar turned on. Maybe I should, maybe I have met or would meet or could meet someone like that, but the thought of getting into another relationship that might end up turning into another long distance thing makes me want to vomit blood. Gross right? But she was happy, because she doesn't want me to meet someone out here that might keep me here. It could happen. It scares me too.

So I gave in and bought a ticket to go home. I resigned to the fact that they won't come visit me because I don't know if I would come visit me either. OR! I could get someone pregnant...then they would flock to me like little girls to a Timberlake concert, screaming their heads off all the way to DC.

Spring Eternal.

2007-04-19T15:38:00.000-07:00

The trees are finally blooming. I'm not sure if it made me happier, or if it made the all of DC happier. My trip to the grocery store seemed to be the greatest trip to the grocery store man has ever seen. Highlights:

- This snippet of a phone conversation I overheard in the parking lot on the way back to the car: "Yeah, the sorcerer, right, did you beat him?" From a mid-thirties man, hopefully to his mid-thirties friend holed up somewhere with xbox controller in hand and a mic headset. Maybe he was just stepping out to get more Mt. Dew.

- A mother bent down to kiss her smiling baby in the stroller. The baby laughed that little baby laugh that makes your skin tingle.

- The spring sun crept slid through the new leaves on the overhanging trees, the trees giving a long awaited sigh of relief that the winter had seemed to pass...we all joined them...

- And finally, and this may or may not be the best thing, depending on who you are and which you go, but the pants have come off, the shorts and tank tops and skirts have returned. Which obviously means that the earth will be able to breathe a sigh of relief that for at least 5 months or so the denim crop can be restored...it was close to being placed on the endangered species list.

I welcome the spring.

this kind

2007-04-06T15:47:00.000-07:00

The type of sickness that makes your fingers feel detached from your hand, tingling in the thumb, weakness in the legs. The kind of sickness that makes you loathe standing, but weirdly, loathe sitting and laying as well. The kind of sickness that makes you want to tear your eyes out of your head and place them gently in someone else's head, or at least in the warm cloth pockets...who is wearing cloth pockets in this cold weather? The kind of sickness that makes you a little delirious. Touched. That is the kind that I have.

Maybe it's because the weather dropped forty degrees in the last two days. Maybe because I slept too much today, had to fight to get out of my dreams, to escape from the REM reality, my innards clinging to sleep until well into the afternoon, only being awakened by the UPS man banging on my door, the wrong door, "sorry" he says...

I wish...I wish I could fold my laundry that awaits me without getting up. I wish I could feel comfortable in my own body right now. Immediately. Is there a drug for that? It most likely is terribly addictive. I will wait it out. Hopefully without sweating it out.

What it takes.

2007-04-04T18:15:00.000-07:00

The restaurant didn't smell too good, kind of stale, a little off-setting when you first walk into a place that you are hoping will fill your stomach with great tasting, good smelling things. This place is a wing place. They claim to have the best wings in the world, and of late I have become somewhat of a wing...glutton.

The funk ended up being not from the food, or the establishment itself in any way shape or form, but from the presumably homeless man who had stopped inside to take a breather. Eventually he was shown the door. He grumbled and complied.

Next to the counter where I ordered my fifteen "atomic" wings, "will I cry?" I asked, "no" she said, was a sign, a smallish billboard really, that explained this wing palace's mission statement and organizational goals. Whenever I see something like this, a restaurant with goals and aspirations, I always think they should really be pretty simple:

1. Make good food.
2. Don't put hair in it.
3. Make lots of money.

But this one, this sign, this point of emphasis read: Be courageous.

I wonder what part of the whole wing making process takes courage? Maybe the part where they fight off the evil boiling grease, or fat or whatever makes the wings crispy and yummy, or maybe when they punch the dangerous numbers and letters on the cash register...

Don't get me wrong, I have all the respect in the world for people in the service industry. I myself am a card-carrying member, but really, I wouldn't say my job, or their job more specifically, which calls for standing behind a counter for the majority of their shift, save when you are showing the door to a homeless person, takes much courage.

Firemen have courage. The whole burning building thing, running in to bring living things out, that whole thing, I think that takes courage. I, we, us in the service industry, we serve food and get tipped for it, make great money in fact, if like me you are lucky enough to be able to handle incredibly idiotic customers. And what is the reward? What is our courageous reward?!

More beer and wings and margaritas then you could imagine! My reward?! My reward is my emerging beer belly, the proliferation of late nights and later mornings...my reward, for stumbling upon a job that doesn't take much courage?...is the time and ability to try and do something that does require much courage of myself. To write. Something which I have cowered in the corner from lately, like the horrendous burning liquid that claims lives everyday in the wing-industry. And as I suck down my fifteenth wing in another moment, I will pause mid bite, mid swallow perhaps, and give a moment of silence to all those who paid more than I know for this courageous wing.

Sleep.

2007-03-25T23:20:00.000-07:00

The problem with giving into your bodies' cry for sleep is that you have to agree that the day is done. Or that the day was lived. Yes body, today I lived, and I will not lie in my bed and wait for the next day, so that like today, I can live that day, the day that will start with the rising of the sun, as if it is the only day that I shall live.

That's the problem. When has that day ever been lived?

When have we ever made it through the day without a regret? I guess it has happened, it's just that after a day has been lived with regret, it seems like eternity since the last time a day has passed, twenty four hours ticked by, that we have been able to close our eyes, one or both at a time, at the end of that day, after the sun has long gone down, the black of night taken over the sky, usurping the temporary, eternal power of the sun and thought to ourself as our body gives in, relaxes...sleeps.

When was the last time you didn't lie in bed and replay today, yesterday, and foresee tomorrow, wondering, planning, hoping, that you will ever be able to string together a few days sans regret.

cold water

2007-03-08T21:14:00.000-08:00

The water in the back of the toilet, the section that holds all the parts, such as the ballcock, not the part that holds all your sections that have just broken free of your body, is freezing. I wonder if it will be warmer back there, in the water, when the weather is warmer, or if, like life, even when you seem to be changing, or try to change, or desire to change, it stays the same.

Two emails of sorts from two different people tied to me from one person whom I would prefer, no, definitely not want to think about right now, both accomplishing just that. I am happily inebriated at this point. 8 beers down. Water in my near future. Coming and going out I hope, assuming that my liver is still in working condition. Inebriated but still able to think, still able to remember how much I committed to that...that...whatever the fuck THAT was. Whatever they think, those two who emailed me, think it was, those two who seem not to know what happened, who seem not to know why I truly truly do not want to talk to them.

But alas, the water in the back of the toilet is clean, that's what Shane just told me, clean enough to drink he says, which makes me wonder if he has in fact drank it, or if he would drink it, cupped in his hands, water straining through the cracks between his fingers, trying to hold the water, the life giver, if ever there was a shortage of water in the greater Santa Barbara area. Why would they email me? Why tonight? Why? Life has too many questions and not enough answers. Like there was a sale at the question store, a going out of business sale, a blowout sale, a half-priced, marked down, red-ticket sale. Like questions were sold at mattress stores, which always seem to have sales. But the answer store, the answer store never has a sale, in fact, they only sell answers once a year, and only to those who know the secret, secluded location of the answer store, the store where all the answers to the unfathomable questions sit atop the shelfs gathering dust and grandeur at the same time. The longer they sit the more valuable. Why evil? Why free-will? Why happiness? If there wasn't happiness we wouldn't ever need to search for it.
Maybe like the water in the back of the toilet we need to search for answers in places we would never think, or maybe not that we should search for them so much as we should be open to finding them in strange places. Maybe all the emails and the beers and the random phone calls with friends and the cold water in the back of the toilet that would give life if ever you found yourself in a drought, maybe that's what this is all about. The search for happiness simply because we know it's out there, somewhere, because at sometime, and in some moments, you can truly, honestly, tell yourself that you have had it. You had it, but you know that it will eventually slip through your clasped hands until your skin is dry, until you find it again in the most unlikely place.

from the balcony...

2007-02-22T23:05:00.000-08:00

It's funny how life can ebb and flow. How sounds and scents, tastes and textures can come and go with a memory, a passing car with a song from your past sifting through the busy air. Conversations with old friends remind you of who you were, back then, back when...

Is it possible to harness inspiration, to cup it in my hand as I feel it leaving my body just as soon as it entered? Is it possible to live in a state of constant productivity? Continual awareness of the elusive moments of pure devotion to that which you do, want to do, dream of doing...like the foamy edge of the oceans' wave touching your feet before it's dragged back across the wet sand to join its whole. Is it possible to walk in a straight line? To never come upon that which you've already crossed...

Everything seems circular.

Walk long enough and you will see your back, your eyes lost in the future, if only you could speak, the two of you, the present and the future you, converse together about what is to come, maybe then the circle would straighten out, and the inspiration, the fleeting moments of insanity pulsing through your body will become ever-present...the ocean a lake.

Abstract thoughts on what it feels like to come upon a moment of inspired thought, momentary in time and shape. As if the muse left after the first letter was typed, and all that can be written from there on out is a guess at what the first letter was the beginning of.

Maybe that's why some babies cry when they are born. The muse touched them, gifted them, and left them in the same moment, leaving them to wander, hands outstretched, feeling their way back to that point when they knew who they were. A baby in a womb. Safe, simple.

The taste of her lips still with me today -- a reminder of what was and may be to come. Living in the in between, the period before and after, that is where you must find the inspiration, remember where you hid it when it came and you put your hands around it, stole it away for times like this.

That is where this all comes from. That is where life ebbs and flows. Watching from the balcony, sun setting to the right. You can see the waves, hear them stretching out to you. Tomorrow you will feel them you say, tomorrow when it is light, tomorrow when it is warm, you say. That is when you will find your inspiration. That is when you will allow life to resume. Played out through your body.

Everything seems circular. All thoughts and feelings recycled, same material, different result. Maybe that is what makes life so beautiful. So worth living. The anticipation of when and where it will meet you, maybe that's why we breathe in and out, giving ourselves time for the next encounter, this time hoping to grab it. This time hoping to steal it away.

The Phone Call

2007-02-05T00:15:00.000-08:00

She lies in her bed, dressed in the gold satin dress, black beads along the edges, and wonders, waits, trembles, hoping he will call. The rain outside, the black, the thunder, penetrates.

He sits and waits. His heart beating through his chest keeping time with the cold round clock on the wall, everything is black and white, everything is right and wrong. But her, but this, this is different. This is mist on the green grass in the first light of day, the drops of dew gleaming with the rays from the sun. The keys of the piano in the corner mock him. We are life, they say, we are truth. We are black and white—she is the leftover pink haze after the sun has retired behind the black velvet curtain of night.

And she waits. Hands shaking with fear. She waits for his words over the phone, his abated breath as he reaches out, says hello, and waits. She waits to say hi. Simple. Complex. The rain smears the window. Colors run down the lucid glass, the world melting from within.

Hand on the phone, fingers quaking with love, with fear, this fear that overwhelms, that overtakes, that controls his every move—his every breath sped up, his lungs in and out, giving and receiving, hoping to be loved in return.

The phone rings. Rings. She inhales, deeply. Giving life to words if—

A third ring. His mind flooded with doubts, the beads of sweat their screaming, their cries for help, their final gulp of pure air, of…

She picks up. The phone guides itself to her ear, her perfect hair, lips and eyes, all ready, all waiting—she sits up, her blankets sheets and pillows all clinging, trying, wanting to keep her from…her eyes dart to the rain soaked world, her fuzzy self in the reflection.

Piano keys scream, throw themselves on the floor in protest, first the white, then the black, the pedals fight to be let free, to unscrew themselves, to flee this room, this impending disaster, this fear-filled chance about to be taken.

She waits.

Hello—

Hi—

Colors melt into light. Fear into hope. Dark rooms lift and separate from the world. Their voices the only thing visible in the night sky. Words become energy. Lightning outside their windows. Streaks of immeasurable improbability.

Blankets

2007-01-30T20:54:00.000-08:00

So there I was, walking home from work, snowflakes falling sporadically from the black sky like dandruff being lightly brushed from God's shoulder, and I thought to myself, "I hate the cold."

It's the truth. There is nothing I like about the cold. I guess I like wearing hoodies, those are always fun, sweaters with a hood, a rip roaring good time, but other than that there is not much else that really gets me going when it is cold. Walking to the bus stop with the jack frost's farts freezing my nose at the tip first, then slowly making it's way, the freezes' way, through my nose, to my brain, where all of a sudden all I can think about is how the temperature is not even close to breaking the 32 degree mark.

And it makes me want to watch a movie with someone, hold someone warm next to me, as we watch Employee of the Month, a comedy that is trying to be a romantic-comedy, and even though it was poorly played, and even though I fell asleep for a good portion of the movie and still knew exactly what was going to happen, I still got that feeling, that lonely feeling, when he got the girl, and I squeezed my blanket tight, but it wasn't warm, not human warm, it was blanket warm. Blankets are whores. They sleep with anyone.

So, LA is where I will end this coldness. In three or four months, however far may is away from now, I will move to LA, sun, smog, and warm. Hoodies will still be worn, but just to be cool, not for actual usefulness, and that will be the only thing that will change. Because when I watch a bad comedy that is supposed to have a romantic twist at night in whatever room I am in, in whatever apartment, I will still think my blanket is a whore, willing and wanting to sleep with whoever climbs into my bed.

1,2,3 Go

2007-01-25T23:36:00.000-08:00

this will be a free-verse, free-thought, blog, whatever comes to my mind I will write -- you may ask, "what thou is the difference then?" And I wilst answer that while most of my other blogs do seem random, no, not thought out till the last sentence when everything hopefully comes together like a 600 piece jigsaw puzzle at three in the morning, which I don't know why I would reference because I hate puzzles, I actually do think out my blogs as I am writing them. Admittedly the conclusion, if there is one, and the great thing about writing unacademically is that there needn't always be a conclusion. Nor an intro, nor supporting paragraphs. The page is your canvas, your megaphone from which to scream to the world, here I am, Hear am I, man, words to speak and words to hear, that which separates us from animals. It was once said in a movie that I just saw that love, your feelings of it, mean nothing to anyone else besides you, that in fact it is the actions that you do that only matter to the person whom you may have these feelings towards. How true that is. Words can drive you crazy, words can make you lose your mind, want to vomit all that is within you and make it without you. But, words, words may also bring peace and love to, no, that sounds dumb...words! may also bring beauty and pleasure, immeasurable amounts of peace and joy to your life, if only for a second, an instant in the span of eternity. For one second, one tiny second, to bring joy to someone's life through words, what if that were possible, and that all the rest, all the rest of the things that spew from the mouths of sinner and liars, us, humans, we all being sinners and liars, what if they can be forgotten for a split second, and in some way, some transcendental type of way, we can stay in that second, like a bubble, like a bubble boy or bubble girl. But I just watched a seriously mediocre movie and it did not grant me that experience, so Here I Am, Hear am I, trying to create that moment for myself, with the tapping of the black keys, the incessant sound that drives you crazy if you can not type as fast as you can think -- faster faster faster it says, your mind, to your fingers, but with things, all things that matter, you must be patient, you must wait, you cannot force this or that, especially things of importance, or else you will end up with nothing, with words that create hate and anger...sadness and regret. Like this movie. What a piece of shit. It was the wrong "Employee of the Month," it was supposed to be the funny one, the new one, but instead it was a ripoff of so many other movies, where everyone dies in the end, only this time, this time the ones who got it over on everyone else, the ones who ended up with the money and left everyone else with a bullet in the head, they were lesbians. Boo. That's what I say. That's what I screamed in my mind at the top of my minds lungs as the final credits rolled, boo to you, and boo to all of you who made this booable movie. Mediocrity is so boo-able. It appears that should be my conclusion. As if you didn't think I would have one, how post-modern of me to acknowledge my audience, my art as art, as if you didn't think there would be viable ending, an ending worth getting to, an ending worth all the non-breathable sentences that were the precursor to this, to this final and resolute conclusion: Mediocrity is so boo-able. Don't be a boo-able person in your life. Wallah (like a magician would say.).

Hooch-way to Heaven

2007-01-22T21:52:00.000-08:00

In real life Hooch wouldn't have a baby. That's the truth, and we all know it. I sat there and watched the whole movie again, Turner and Hooch -- I watched as Tom Hanks danced around an inordinate amount of awkward times in his underwear, when apparently he must have been the new up and coming heart throb. And I knew what was going to happen, I knew Hooch was going to get shot while saving Turner, not once, oh no, not once, but twice. I wondered if I could just turn it off before the bullet would cause me to remember the tears I shed when Hooch fell to the cinematic floor, bloody, heroic, dying.

It snowed for the first time yesterday, a few inches or so, mostly ice was left by the time the sun presumably went down behind the gray clouds. I prayed for a snow-day, for school to be canceled, as I opened my eyes for the first time on the day that was. Then I remembered that I was no longer in school, no longer wearing glasses, writing love letters to Toni with hearts around the border, words from Boyz II Men songs pirated in my sentences to her. I took the bus to work, waited tables till half past midnight, then came home and debated whether or not to deal with my hate for the producers of Hooch, whether or not to watch the whole movie, the real ending, or make up one in my head, maybe write it out and send it to them, the producers, maybe suggest that they could make a Turner and Hooch Redux, where Hooch not only saves Turner in the end, but he barrel rolls out the path of the bullet and howls at the moon after saving the day. Something like that. But in the end, I dealt with it.

I watched the ending. He died. He supposedly had a baby, which is lame, but the point is I dealt with it. I watched as Turner's sorry excuse for a veterinarian girlfriend gave gauze to Turner to apply pressure to the wound while she did surgery? no. removed the bullet? no. gave Hooch mouth to mouth or rubbed the paddles together and told Turner to give her fifty cc's or something like that before she shocked the shit of out Hooch, jumpstarting his huge heart and bringing tears of Joy to my eyes? No! She put a stethoscope around his neck and listened as his heart stopped. WTF, as the kids say.

After dealing with Hooches loss, I thought that I could deal with anything. Lessons learned from life lived in the past has to be seen for what it is, roadmaps for the future. Tears shed over Hooches death in the past taught me how to deal with, or rather, that I need to deal with it. Face Hooches Death Like a Man. I guess the same could, or should, be said about even much more trivial things, such as relationships.

After ten nights or so...

2007-01-16T00:05:00.000-08:00

After ten days of heavy to moderate drinking I can finally write...this. I am scared of the solid girl. What? you may ask, you think, you spout in excited disbelief. Let me expound: there are two girls on my radar right now, well four, but we will stick with two who seem to be more or less at the forefront of the screen, more blipping than not. There is the one that I was scared, no, hesitant to call months ago before I was with my ex, before she lied to me, before she tore me open and poured acid on my heart. Then there is the one that I have wanted to...call, get her number, take her to a drive-in, take her to make-out point, and finally got the point where she wants to call me.

After ten days, moderate to heavy inebriation, I sit here finally liberated, inebriated, enough to share with you what I think is the real issue here -- besides the lying, besides the deceit, the unimaginable heartache experienced in the last week or so -- has it already been a week? -- it is clearly my fear of/disbelief of the possibility of success.

For the past ten nights, give or take, I have been at your local bar, your local good-looking-blue-eyed-"drinks on me"-drunk, trying to forget what has happened, trying to commiserate with the bottom of the glass, the one that says "made in China" backwards, the one that can't sleep at night because he thinks of all that has happened, all that might happen if the one that I should call, maybe no one, should happen to work out...should I happen to be OK with myself, with me, which will inevitably lead to what I am looking for, not in the bottom of a glass, a shot, a martini, but in...in...whoever I am that I am scared to be, or scared to find.

What if in all that drinking, all that worry about my liver and my brain cells, and my future, I realized that I am scared to succeed? Scared of what may or may not come? And I realize that I may or may not, as in may or may not have been in the bar nine of the last nine nights, since it happened, since the unspeakable was spoken, be scared of the future, of the success which may or may not come with the liberation of my self, of my dreams, have realized that I am the only one that stands in my own way, the past and the hurt all little ways of keeping me in this comfortable state of sick-contempt, and that I may or may not seek out that which continues to keep me there, in that little place, fearfully contempt.

The hurt will last a lifetime. The future should not suffer that long.

Late night ramblings.

2006-12-30T01:02:00.000-08:00

Laying in bed wondering if I am laying in bed backwards, eyes on the ceiling, the white top to my yellow walled box. It forced me to open my computer, to write words, words, words are all we have. Words are what separate me from the dead raccoon on H Street. That and the undeniable fact that it is dead, never given a proper time of death, but still dead, un-moving, bloody, broken.

She asked me how me and Jesus were doing. How I was doing with him, I thought to myself, would be the more appropriate way of saying that question -- I assume Jesus doesn't change how he is doing with us, because he is He, and we are nothing but lower case we's. I told her we were doing fine. That I was okay with him, in fact, I was doing quite well with him. She didn't seem to believe me, she said she did, but her eyes betrayed her words, her words, her words. Everything that we put up to surround Him, and He, I am not doing okay with, I told her, but I am serenely comfortable with that uneasiness that I feel at the sight of the Building in which we like to Box Him. Gray concrete concealing Love Incarnate. The only truthful love, eternally true--
We hugged and I said goodbye to Joy, see ya when I see ya, she told me to use the stairs, don't be old, don't be a wuss, I said I would use the elevator. The elevator doors closed, it started to move downward, lurching, stalling for a second or two, my insane fear of elevators rose to the surface, palpable fear that grips my heart and holds my lungs hostage, and I remembered why I should take the stairs. I wondered if the button, the call for help button, would work. There was a "turn call off" button, but no turn call on button. That scared me. Alas the doors did open, and I was back in the cool air of my hometown, my Portland, looking at the white Freemont Bridge towering over the Willamette River, cold black blue, the only bridge that doesn't need to rise when the Ships come in. My city--with new buildings and new streets and new streetcars to ride, a city I no longer care for, no longer wish to stand within it's invisible city lines and call my home.

Can you lay in bed backwards? Just move the pillow, your intellect would tell you, to the other side of the bed, to make it right.

Almost 2007. Almost 15 months in DC. "I live in DC" I would tell people that I just met in Portland. "Like Washington DC?"

(beat)

"Yeah. Washington DC..."

I don't, frankly, no of another place that starts with, or is nicknamingly called DC, but I guess the absurdity of their question only was caught by the DC-er. DC-tonian. DC-ite. I have lived in this squalid city for 15 months, for the first six I laid underneath a piece of wood, light colored wood, a bunk bed, while I slept. Not able to see past the next minute I drove my mind crazy, wondering whether or not this was worth it. People asked me how I was doing with Jesus back then, I told them I was great. Truthfully I probably wasn't, no where near great. Squalid. Not how I should describe DC. Just in terms of street quality maybe. Squalid with an upside of terrible. So I sold my car.

Words words words, can words bring you closer to He. To Jesus? What if I said, if I told Joy, that I was as close as I ever wanted to be, ever imagined possible? Would it become truth? If it were true I would fear this...these words...these doubts that run rampant through my body, slamming rickshaw off my intestines before crawling out of my throat...fear...if I were as close to God as Paul, as Peter-- not ready. Not ready. Not ready for those words. I don't know what they are. I do. Yes. I do, but how do I say that I am scared of failing even God himself. That in fact, knowing just how much Grace God has for us, just how abundant and ever loving He is to me-- which is what I have learned in these 15 months -- has led to even more questions, even more doubt, as to whether or not I can handle his grace and his Love because, because...it gives me hope that there is reason to all this, all this squalidness, and that maybe if we all just love Him as He loves us it would all be okay...and at the same time makes me feel licensed to sin, the ultimate get out of Jail Free card. And that scares Me the Most.

Without Fear -- there would be no possibility of greatness. No reason for failure, and no need for success.

caged

2006-12-05T20:50:00.000-08:00

The years seem to roll on to infinity-- the last losing face, sound, texture- a shapeless form traveling from one end of your soul to the other. When the past seems as pointless as the future, the present becomes heavy. Every second wasted, eternal.
Red, black, blue, green. Everything seems colored, noisy. Breathe, focus, find that point in yourself, that point in yourself that makes you feel alive; that burn that opens your eyes, makes, allows your chest to rise and fall in rhythm with your heart.

red red red pumps through your blue veins, leading to green, the grass under your feet, the black sky above, your point, your center, the star above that you run towards. Arms at ninety degrees, hands clenched. The past, present, and the next second blend, meld into one thought--the weight now at your back-- run with the colors, the life you feel wanting, needing to break out of the cage you keep it in. Barred with doubt, locked by fear.

Your goal is life. Your time eternal. Weightless.
Black, green, red, blue...flash brilliance.

Christmas Trees

2006-11-30T21:28:00.000-08:00

The smell of pine needles on the floor--left behind on the rug, the wood floor, when the tree was pulled through the door, turned, twisted, trying to find the best looking side, and screwed into the Christmas Tree Stand.

On the Eve of December my roommate and his fiance found a tree of smaller stature, perfectly cone-shaped, and weaved white lights through the green limbs. With all the lights off in the house except for those hugging the tree, Christmas has officially begun, the Advent Calendar hung. This is the time of year that I wonder what I am doing on the East Coast. When I miss the familial faces I no longer see.

If we are to believe what the Bible says, there was a baby born of God, who grew into a man and said lots of inspiring things and in the end died for the world. Many of his followers wrote down what he said, what they saw, what God told them too...some of which when read now, in present context, doesn't make much sense coming from a God that would say all people are equal in the eyes of God. Such as 1 Timothy 2, which more or less seems to classify women as second class citizens in the eyes of the Church and Christianity. It makes me wonder how much poetic license was taken taken by the author who gripped the reed as he wrote the words. It makes me wonder what God really thought about women back then, and if God's mind could have been changed as it was in the Old Testament when a prophet pleaded to save a people.

We are told that every word in the Bible is ordained by God. Interpreted by men throughout the ages. I guess I am not sure that I can believe that every word in the Bible was written without bias or contextual influence.

The hardest thing for me, at times like this, at Christmas times, is being surrounded by people at work, loving, good, people, who are Gay and Christian, who lead choirs, who are getting doctorates in Worship, and being told that they won't be in heaven because of something that they believe is not a choice--their sexuality.

They have Christmas Trees, they have needles on their floors, memories of Christmas that flood their minds when they hear those songs that sing of holly and jolly and ho ho ho's. I don't think it's right, but I don't think drugs or porn or stealing or fighting is right either...it just seems more complicated, more convoluted, than I wish it would be. I guess, no matter what you believe, or know not what to believe, there is only one thing to do, one thing that the little baby that was born with the wisemen around and the cows and the angels and the star would want us to do, which is love. And the rest will take care of itself.

Because there are trees to be decorated and nog to be egged.

Acceptance

2006-11-21T23:26:00.000-08:00

I was turned down again, a second time, by a literary agent. I imagine it will happen at least ten more times, and I don't say that to throw a pity-party for myself -- I just know that it will take that many times, that many tries, that many re-writes, edits, sleepless nights, until I get it right.

God sits at his throne and waits. He doesn't tap his feet, he doesn't check his watch, he doesn't fall asleep, he sits at his throne and watches, waits, and sends grace in the meantime. God waits for us to fulfill our potential. He waits unlike any one has ever waited for us, or on us. He waits in love. I assume he could force it. He could spread our lives out on the floor, a different note card for each action, thought, prayer, and so on, and force the issue. Force us to do this or that. Whatever that or this is that is on your mind, your heart. He waits in grace. Sealed in love. Somewhere outside of the walls of the church, not sitting at a pew, not sitting in a big chair behind the pulpit condemning all those who face him, he sits and waits.

I do not understand it. Most of the time I don't believe it. Grace, God, His love, is one of the more difficult things for me to comprehend. I have realized that. I have owned that. I feel so wholly unworthy of God and all that he offers, that I find it almost impossible that it can be real, that God can exist, that a love, a mercy, a higher power that acts and reacts to prayer and obedience and the actions of the people He created exists; that when I sit in church and look at the stained glass windows to my right, hear the crying and singing and praying of those seated around me, standing around me, that I want to tear my heart out of my skin, out from behind my ribs, throw it on the altar, look towards the ceiling, and wait for the hand of God to smash through the steeple, through the rafters, the plaster, and gently place my heart back where it belongs. Clean. Pure from the divine touch. I don't know why I need that.

But I will re-write, I will edit, I will stay up as late as I need to, I will do this again and again until I figure it out. Until I reach my potential. Until I can look up towards the sky and know that He isn't waiting for me anymore, at least not as fully as He is now, because He is using me.

We all will sit around the table, the turkey slain before us, the therapeutic smell of stuffing filling the room, and we will Thank God for all That He Has Given Us. Grace should be amongst that list, towards the top, underlined and italicized, set apart from the rest. Even if you are like me and you are still learning how to accept it.

Delusions of Grandeur

2006-11-10T01:26:00.000-08:00

I had a dream last night, or the night before, or last week, all my dreams run into one from night to night, continuing off the last and on and on -- the same places, the same trails, the same beach, the same roads -- they all seem to run as one, a thousand marathoners stepping in time, breaking the finish line at the same time, but never.

I told Charles Barkley in my dream that "I am somewhat of a streaky shooter, but the difference is I used to only shoot if I was streaking, now I shoot till I start streaking." It was brilliant.

Good things happen, bad things happen. Sometimes I wish it were a dream, all these things that are happening, so I don't have to respond to them, the good or the bad, because just like in my dreams the next step will inevitably fall before me, the next thing that should be done will be done without my doing, outside of my will, outside of God's will -- they will happen, as dreams always do, without my doing.

I can choose to thank God, to praise God, to pray to God, in real life. While awake. While making decisions every day whether to be good or bad. In dreams it seems predetermined, meaningless, inevitable. In awake life we choose.

It lies just over the horizon, the last sand dune, the heat rising from the blowing sand, golden orange -- the color of sand in the sunset. It's grandeur. It's there. It awaits you, He awaits you, calls to you through the breeze, the leaves that fall, resurrected with the sun. In dreams you run to it. In dreams you glide across the sand on clouds of storms. In dreams you reach it and tell it you will take it to the other side of the moon, the light side, the side that shines in the clear nights, the stars bowing prostrate to the craters. In dreams you aren't scared of Him.

The difference is I used to only know I was streaky. Now I keep trying till I start streaking again.

I look towards the horizon, wipe the sand from the corners of my eyes, my eyelashes a soft shield, and dream of grandeur, filled with the sun.

holloween

2006-11-01T10:20:00.000-08:00

I heard the little kids say trick or treat, muffled through their masks, across the street. I jumped up from the couch, arose such a clatter, and closed the door and their hopes of getting candy from me. All I had was ice cream, maybe some soup, some old toothpaste or toilet paper, and I didn't think any of that would be worth their trip up my stairs, their knuckles on my door.

When I was a kid I couldn't run fast enough, or long enough, they caught up to me and stole my candy. The older kids laughed as I stood there in the middle of the street a block from my school, four blocks from my house. Brandon told them to give it back to me, that I was just a little guy, I don't know if I cried. I don't remember what I was wearing, it doesn't really matter does it. My candy was gone and now brandonandjosh had to split their candy with me. They didn't have to, but they did.

I looked across the street at the little kid and his mom, she smiling behind him, as he said the famous three words to the next lighted door, and wondered if she would tell him to spread his candy out on the floor when they get home, looking for needles, razorblades, or anything home made. We found all three on the floor of our living room, little candies for little kids to give them little stomach aches.

I guess I don't like Halloween. The little boy inside of me still wants his candy back, wants to ask those people with the razorblades and needles why they put them in my candy, why they would want to do that to me? When I have a kid God forbid someone should try that with my little person's candy, I will rise from the couch, look at the needle in the snickers, arise such a clatter, back to the house where the needle was from, and they will need water, they will need water, because the mother fucker's roof will burn.

Happy Holidays!

Loose Change

2006-10-24T14:32:00.000-07:00

I was flipping through the channels last night, this morning, at three, hoping that I would find something to make me laugh, or at least keep me interested for a little while later. On a puplic channel called, Real HipHop Network, they were showing a movie, a documentary, that I have heard of before. It's called "Loose Change," and is about what happened on 9-11.

A lot of people, conservatives and liberals alike, are weary of conspiracy theory movies, or anything that contradicts what the government or mainstream media is telling us, because of people like Michael Moore. But this has to be seen. This is the most shocking documentary I have ever seen. There is no flashy camera work, or tricky phrases, just facts. And it scared the shit out of me.

A few facts:

Only three buildings in the history of the world have fallen because of fire like what supposedly happened at the WTC. All three were on that day. A month later molten steel was found at the bottom of all three buildings, at the bottom of the elevator shafts. A month later, still over a thousand degrees.

No bodies were found in pennsylvania where flight 93 "crashed" with those brave heros that took it down. Who called from the plane. The coroner never saw a drop of blood, there was no plane. Period.

The planes landed in cleveland.

9/14 suspected hijackers from 9/11 are alive today. Not in America. One of them was called by his son the day after.

The filmmaker does an incredible job of weaving together what was said by the government, and what was said by those who were actually there.

All my conservative friends will hesistate to watch this movie, not wanting to believe what they will see, while all my liberal friends will take it in ravenously, hoping for just another reason to hate Bush. But forget all that. Get a hold of this movie and just watch it. If you can really believe all that was said about 9/11 by our government after watching this...you will be denying reality.

A final example, fact, from movie:

It was said that the plane which hit the pentagon and only left a 16 ft hole in the building, incinerated because of the planes fuel, kerosene. Same for the plane that crashed in Pennsylvania. It is scientifically impossible for that to happen. Literally, there is no possible way for that to happen. No bodies, no wings, no engines, nothing. No planes, no dead people. Lies.

Rum

2006-10-21T23:04:00.000-07:00

The to-go cup is white, it has a brown little piece of carboard wrapped around it to keep your hands from burning from what is supposed to be hot inside. Wes handed it to me, my second of the night, my second to-go cup. The cup was cold.

I subconciously decided to stop taking the blue and white pills the doctors had told me to take once a day. It's been about a month, or so, I haven't kept track really. Things have been good, my chemicals balanced. My mind hoped I was healed, that it wouldn't come back, the imbalance, the tightness in the stomach, the heavy eyes, the shaking hands, my mind told me I was fine.

Then she called me sweetie. Then she told me "I haven't heard your voice all day" in a sad voice, a sultry voice. Then she told me she would call me in twenty minutes. We're going on 14 hours now. It had only been one date, one dinner, our hands had only brushed against each other one time, but for some reason my body tells me this is horrible, my mind becomes a one lane road, one way, do not enter, do not leave, follow this road to the to-go cup. The white to-go cup.

They felt bad for me at work. I told them I didn't know what was wrong. That, that, that "you know how I am with girls."

"Any girl would be lucky to be with you" they would tell me later. They would all tell me something like that if I gave them the chance. All the people who happened to call me today, tonight, the day I almost called in sick to lie in bed instead. If I called them back, if I answered, they would tell me it's not my fault. It's not anything I did.

I know. I would tell them. I know. But it doesn't matter how much I know, or how much you tell me, it doesn't change that my eyes are heavy, my hands are shaking, my stomach knotted, because a lady I took out once didn't call back.

The to-go cup is cold, Rum and Coke, a little ice. He shook my hand as he gave it to me, he didn't tell me she would be lucky to have me, he asked me if I wanted cream or sugar. I told him no. The only thing to make the time go by.

constant dreams

2006-10-12T01:11:00.000-07:00

When it gets to four a m you have to start wondering why you are still awake. Is it fear? Is it ignorance? Insomnia? I don't think I am an insmoniac because once I do allow myself to go to bed, to lie down in my cold room, pull the covers up close around my head, tucked under my chin, the pillow just above my shoulder, I sleep. And I sleep for a long time. Hours go by, filled with dreams that seem so real I think about them for the rest of the day, then often continue them where they left off the night before.

I dreamt that Sam had to get his jeep pimped out with rockets and machine guns and leather seats, black leather, so that we could escape the aliens who were pretending to be humans, who wanted you to be their friends, to trust in them, so that they could make you breahe this air they had in a compressed can, and turn you into one of them -- the smile, the glazed look. So many people got in Sam's Jeep that I was claustrophobic, I wanted out, but I shot down alien planes anyway.

Then Kadeer wouldn't listen to me and when we got to the airport to fly someplace that was obviously safe he ran through all the sliding glass doors, waiting at each to open, up the hallway, where they were killing people in huge showers like Aushwitz. Creepy right.

Maybe it's fear. Maybe that's why I don't go to sleep till the sun almost creeps through the branches and thinning leaves and lights my room. I like my dreams, but they are constant, non-stop, from the minute I close my eyes until I open them again in the morning. Or afternoon most likely.

Or maybe I am scared to sleep, or reluctant to sleep, because sometimes it feels like I haven't done anything worthy of committing this day to history yet. So I stay awake. I watch TV, I write, I read, until I do something, write something, read something, that redeems the day, the night, and lets me put this day to rest -- another chapter in the never ending story.

chimes outside my window.

2006-10-06T21:08:00.000-07:00

It started to rain again, the temperature dropped, the leaves rustling when the wind blows, chimes clanging together -- fall. I turned the corner coming home from the movies and my water bottle sloshed to the other side of the back seat, rolling to another spot, the water cold now, presumably, along with the inside of my car, the heater not yet hot --

When I was in high school fall meant basketball practice. Cold weather, visible breath, meant running for missed layups, meant kicking benches and cussing at missed shots. The leaves turning colors, falling to the ground, the cement, stacking up in the curbs, meant coming home to a cold house, the thermostat at sixty, waiting for me to turn in to 70, so that we could save money, so that mom could pay the bills, her paintings didn't need the heat.

When it starts to rain I open the window at night. I listen to the rain drops hit the ground, the deck, the window sill. I lay in bed and feel the wet air coming through the screen, the birds that haven't flown away yet, following the sun like I wish I could, chirp and sing, denying what the clouds have to bring. And even if Gore is right and it might not get as cold as it used to, the mountains might be more bare, the penguins more tan, when I hear it rain outside, when I hear it well up in the gutters, fighting with the leaves that packed themselves into the canals on the roof, refusing to be raked into a garbage bag, I still think about fall. I still think about Oregon.

The last two years the fall has brought me tears. My own rain. The kind that comes from within -- the kind that reminds me of chimes in the wind. The chimes are playing outside of my window, fighting to be heard over the fan blowing white noise around in my room, I want to hear them again, hear them in Nature's Fall. Our five sense can bring fear from the past --

I want this fall to be different. I want it to be good. And I do think it's a choice.

Let it rain, let it leaf, let the streams swell and the winds play with the chimes -- red, green, see through and blue --

-- my fear is telling me it's fall.

Miracle

2006-09-29T14:51:00.000-07:00

I told Brent that it was a miracle. He was marrying Erica, and I wanted him to know that it was a miracle. A miracle. I don't think marriage is anything less. I have looked inside myself, I have talked to other people, I have seen what it takes for a couple to grow to the point where they are ready to spend the rest of their lives together, and I have to say that it is nothing but a miracle.

He cried when she walked down the aisle. I almost cried too. It was a beautiful thing, she was beautiful, and what was happening was even more beautiful than her or the lake that we stood in front of. Who do you think about when you see someone else's fiance walk down the aisle? Who do you see in that white dress? Your latest crush, your last girlfriend, the one that disappeared, the one that got away, the one that you never talked to, the girl you just met? Who?

Who does God see?

A friend told me that he predicts I will get married when I no longer think I need to. He is right. And I am getting there. There is a line, a small line deep as the ocean, that runs between wanting to get married and needing to. Maybe it's not even needing to, but thinking that you need to...

I just got off the phone with someone and she said that she learned a lot of life lessons through basketball, I always thought that was very cliche when people said that, but maybe if I was able to take more from what I learned in basketball and use it in my life -- in situations like this -- it would work out better...

1. Don't force things. Whenever you, I, try to force things in basketball it doesn't work, it doesn't give you the result you were hoping for -- never. Never. Seeing all of my friends get married is wierd. It makes me want to force things, it makes me want take the game into my own hands and make something happen when there is nothing there to make.

2. Pace yourself. The game is long. Sometimes very long if no one can make any shots. There is no point in using all of my energy in the beginning of the game because then I will have nothing left to give in the end.

There are probably more, like bend your knees and keep your head up while you dribble and follow through on your shot that I could stretch into metaphors but I don't want to. There is one more actually, I just thought about it: You can't win a game all by yourself. You need help.

Marriage is a miracle. As I sat with Brent in the room, alone, and told him this, I wasn't sure if I was saying it for him or for me. God wanted one of us to hear it, probably both of us, because I didn't want to say it. I wanted to believe that I, I, can make it work. But I haven't been able to make miracles since I passed stats in college.

Time is a whore

2006-09-26T01:37:00.001-07:00

I came back to Santa Barbara today. I haven't been here in a bit over a year, a tad maybe, a smidgen. Things are changing, which is fine -- but what isn't fine is that they aren't consulting me on the changes prior to the changing. They cut down the bushes along side the path that runs near the chapel at Westmont. How dare you bush-cutter man, I loved those bushes, the privacy, the fear they induced at night, at dark, at full moon shining off the white chapel, heaven from hell.

How dare you let smarter students into my school. How dare you send all the dumb kids, the cool kids, the jocks, the class clowns, to the state schools in Arizona, how dare you change my school.

How dare you build new condos on Chapalla. I didn't say they could move in, I didn't screen the residents, I didn't run the background, do the interview, give you the okay, and yet here they are, all these new people in new condos...

The beach is still the same, the ocean is still there, the waves still come in sets of seven, crashing, whispering, waving to me and my crooked neck giraffe across the gate, in the zoo -- I wave at you too Crooked Neck Giraffe from the street that is still black, the lines still yellow, I wave and salute you for still being deformed, because that's how I remember you, that's how I like you, that's how you will always be in my world.

Only a year has gone by and I feel like a stranger. You are gone my exotic waitress who I had a crush on -- did they send you away to your exotic island, your exotic people, your exotic lips on someone elses but not mine, where did they send you without talking to me, didn't they know what was supposed to happen, what was supposed to be, this girl, that girl, the one that sat next to me instead, that you gave to me to keep me company, she will not do, she did not do, I will not do.

Time stands still when I am not there. There is everywhere I used to be. Time is trapped in my head, the images and smells and smiles and cries and buildings and bushes and clouds are exactly as I left them. Time is forever trapped in my head. I will not let her go because she will change everything, she will tell me I can now walk on this new path, this more convenient path to the gym from the library -- but I don't want to time, I want you in my head, I want you in my heart, you will not change anymore without my consent. I lost my pen, I cannot sign, so no more shall be done.

I stand in one place and watch the world change around me. My time for you -- the way you used to be when I was we -- has come and gone. The new condos have brought new heads to fill you with. Time will never stand still for me to change it all back.

LOST

2006-09-20T21:23:00.000-07:00

A DESCRIPTION OF MY BIRTHDAY GIFT -- FROM A TEN YEAR OLD'S PERSPECTIVE

I love LOST, the tv show, my dad got me season two for my birthday, have you ever seen that show?! You have to see it, this plane crashes on this island, well, first it breaks apart in two pieces, and there is polar bears on the island, but that comes later, but the island is in a warm place, so why is there polar bears! And that fat guy is rich, real rich, he won the lottery and now everything is bad luck for him and there are these numbers he used, and they all add up to 108, and they are bad too, but they have to use them to press this button so that something bad doesn't happen to the island! So anyway, there is a doctor who fixed a lady, made her walk again, and he is like, "i have to fix things!" and she is like "i'm leaving you!" and he is like crying, but on this island he is the man, but everyone doesn't really like him, only because he is the doctor and he can make the baby not have a rash and he tries to give this one kid his own blood but the kid dies -- oh wait, no then he cuts the kids head off with a steel door!

Then there is a crazy lady, and she is talking about the Others, and the others are all these weird people that come at night and take people, and there is this black cloud of smoke that kills people too, but not the big african guy, because he stared it down, he wasn't scared, and they guy who did drugs was like "dude! why didn't you run!" and he was like "dude, i wasn't scared" and the guy who did drugs is all crazy over this little baby that this lady has and tries to throw it in the ocean to baptize it, but the old man, Lock, or Loc, punches him in the face, and he gets all green and bruisy, and then everyone hates the druggie because he was going to baptize the baby in the ocean in the middle of the night.

And the crazy lady, Russo, she she shot a guy in the shoulder with an arrow, and he didn't die because she didn't want to kill him and the Iraqi guy was like, "who is he" and she is like "he is one of them" so the Iraqi guy locks him in the cellar and then he asks where he is from and he tells him he flew in on a balloon and the Iraqi guy punches him in the face!

Oh yeah! And there is a black horse! Like the stallion, and the girl who burned her house with her dad in it doesn't like seeing it because she almost hit it with a car after she kicked a cop out of the car! But it's here on the island and the con man, Sawyer, who never cuts his hair but always looks great, he asks her if she knew the horse, and she says yes, and then he steals all the guns! And he says he is the new sheriff in town!

Oh yeah! And there is this old dude with a beard, and he runs the place, and Sawyer tried to shoot him but the bullet hit some kind of shield, but it was invisible, like star trek, and it almost killed Sawyer instead! And that guy said that he was the boss, and the doctor was like, but I want to fix this! And then the doctor wanted to start an army!

It's awesome.

Port City

2006-09-14T16:03:00.000-07:00

My problem is that I have never liked rules. I have never liked authority. And I have never liked restrictions.

Writer's Rules:

#1. you have to go to a coffee shop to write.

#2. you have to be depressed.

#3. you have to ignore the barista behind me changing the large plastic bag lining of the trash can.

#4. you have to do all these things while articulating deep, undiscovered feelings, so that others might discover them.

I can only do one out of four of those while sitting in a coffee shop. There is too much going on, the barista just asked if the customer wanted it heated up or cold, its a damn coffee drink of course she wants it heated up. It's her first day, she told me, because she didn't know what sandwhiches they had, it's okay I told her, we all have first days, God probably didn't know what he was doing on the first day either, maybe he tried to create land first, fauna and stuff, but couldn't see what he was doing, so he said let there be light kind of questioningly, timidly, hesitantly, and then the sun popped up and said hello and he saw all the land and fauna that he made and shook his head at the mess he had made, Wyoming.

My point is, I am trying to be a writer, so I am trying to follow rule numero uno in the writer's book and I can't do it. There is terrible accoustic music playing through the speakers, and I just don't see how anyone can sit in a place like this with so much to write about and try and write about something else. The stainless steel chairs stacked outside the window to my left are wet with rain, the fading sun giving one last effort to dry them for tomorrow's customers. Your pink glow will not work sun, you will come up tomorrow to see the same wet steel chairs stacked eight high, four rows, like Cirque De Chaire'.

A sign in front of me reads: A little getaway to the East in a box -- Oregon Chai. To the East? I can spit on the Atlantic ocean if the right wind catches and carries it over the Washington Monument to the cold waters just East of here. Oregon is just west of here. Just a tad. What a dumb sign Port City Java.

I wonder if Angelina Jolie and Brad Pitt ruined it for all the little third world kids. What if they all start getting adopted by rich white people with nothing else to do and they are made to feel like they are lucky for the rest of their lives for being alive, away from their families, from their homes, in a safe neighborhood with yellow busses and red brick schools and green grass. They are special, they are 'that kid from that country that those rich people adopted.' They will get beat up by kids at school. I don't even know if Brad and Angelina adopted a kid for that matter, damn those pictures on the wall, the blue wall, with the kids with the hollow eyes and vacant stares wondering when we are going to save them. Coffee shops...

I can't do this. Unless I can find a place, like a library, no then there are books with spines and titles to be read, a place like my room, quiet, solitary, without pictures or posters on the walls, without any distractions for me, so that I can slip back into that place where I can write from the place in my body, the mind, that I can't find any other place. All this fabricated aura, this fabricated homey feel that closes at nine. Go home. The lights will be turned off and you will still be here.

New Writer's Rules:

#1. You must be alone.

#2. You must have no music.

#3. There must be no new baristas.

And the chicken ceasar wrap must come out of my body, immediately, apparently.

trying to understand You

2006-09-06T22:28:00.000-07:00

The thing about doing what you know you should do is that the rewards are so far away. Or at least it seems that way. About a million years ago Paul wrote that he always does what he doesn't want to do, and that he doesn't do what he wants to do. Things haven't changed much it seems. You always hear people talk about how good things were back in the fifties, how innocent and pure everyone was, how no one talked about sex or had sex or wanted to have sex and no one did drugs or had drugs or even wanted to do drugs because everyone had new homes paid for by the government, if you were a veteran, and white, and everything was peachy and everybody did exactly what they wanted to do when they wanted to do it. We all know that was a lie. But how much of a lie? People were getting hanged in church yards around that time. That's how much of a lie.

Paul said he does things he doesn't want to do, but I am not sure, I think it's he did things, we do things, I do things, I know I shouldn't do, but almost every fiber in my body wants to do them. There is one fiber in there that rebels, that raises it's hand from the back of the room, clears his throat, and says, "hey guys, guys, I don't know if we should be doing this." All the other fibers turn around and throw pencils at him, then he goes along.

And yet we are still called children of God. Children of a perfect God. Made in the image of God. It is so hard for me to understand the grace involved in keeping me alive that most of the time, truthfully, I find myself not being able to believe it.

Some people in church have to wipe tears from their eyes as they sing the songs on the projection screen, their free hand in the air, the fingers closing and opening, straining towards the ceiling -- they must believe it. They must love it. And at that time, in that moment, they must be thinking that they are doing exactly what they want to be doing...am I?

The New Groom

2006-08-31T15:29:00.001-07:00

The new groom thumbed his new ring. He stood with his new wife in front of the communion table. We stood behind him, in a line, all eight of us, watching, praying, hoping. We all stood with him in our black tux's, all sweated with him, all felt the beads of salty water run down our back. We all watched as he turned and smiled. Like actors in a play.

Minutes Earlier:

We stood amongst the bees, the beautiful flowers, the bird bath with the green slime; they all sat on the other side of the plants, the other side of the stage, they were all there to see him take her hand and slip that ring on her finger, that ring he sweated for summer after summer, and hear her say I do. We joked, we laughed, he turned and said he couldn't believe this was happening, like this, with the jokes, the laughs, the sun, the friends from college who were trying to get in the front of the line, to be closer to the groom, to be more important -- all to find out that the line was in reverse order, the last first, like the kingdom of heaven. Maybe that's why God says that, maybe we go into Heaven in a line that's reversed...

Phoenix

2006-08-22T15:07:00.000-07:00

Phoenix

I didn’t know there was anything green in Arizona, they say it’s a desert –and those people that say it are leathery, brown, so I believe them. But flying from Indianapolis to Phoenix I found out those leather bound voices are liars. Small mountains dusted with green, low-lying trees rolled out from the desert, the hills down to the desert floor like old veins. Then as soon as it came it went, the green faded to a warm brown, you know the color, the color they use for all the new houses in every new neighborhood in America. My dad lived in one of those houses at one time.

As we flew into Phoenix we passed right over the miniature downtown, I thought I could see people wave at me from the Wells Fargo building, I waved back. The bright orange dome of the capitol, at least I think it was the capitol, reflected the hot sun from above. I could see the mayor who built that capitol standing outside with a cigar hanging from his leathery lips, slapping his pals on their backs, as the final bit of shiny metal was glued to the top. I wonder if he knew his city would grow sideways, not up, I wonder if he knew they would have homes sprawling endlessly towards the green hills in the distance like roots from a tree searching for water. There are homes on the unfinished developments that back up against nothing but desert floor. Shrubs and coyotes their only neighbors behind them. Not even a road. One day that land will be bought, one day the coyotes killed, and then they will have neighbors, and they will barbeque and fight about property lines and dog poop, and the mayor will smile, and the coyotes will sing at night honoring their fallen comrades.

I could see inside the baseball park as we descended towards the landing strip. I felt like I was sleeping with someone else’s wife, looking at her beauty that only her lover should see; but I looked at it, I ran my eyes down the third base line and up the foul pole before it went under the plane and out of sight. Such a small downtown from up above. Only cars, no people. The city looked like an ant farm turned on it’s side. Little streets running in and out and around to all the new little brown houses with their blue water behind them. I wish I could have seen the people, what do people from Phoenix look like? I imagine them all either having skin cancer all over their bodies, one big brown hairy spot with a smile, or as pale as the sheets the cancer patients lay in at the hospital.

We landed, I stayed on, I couldn’t risk exposure to the leather-making sun, and I was going to Sacramento. I never knew Phoenix was such a fertile town. More babies and families with small children boarded the plane than I have ever witnessed before. I contemplated moving back to the rear of the plane from where I had come, my father’s hate for small children on airplanes bubbling up inside me. Forget Snakes on an Airplane, Crying Babies on an Airplane.

Maybe I was wrong about Phoenicians. Maybe they don’t all have cancer, maybe they all just lay in the pool all day and make babies at night. What a life. If people ever run out of love in their relationships they should move to Phoenix, love pours down from the sun above, heating the soul to uncontrollable temperatures, to where even the whitest of white sheets and the sweatiest of sweaties looks appealing and fit for baby making.

My sister told me that she thought people in Santa Barbara had a lot of sex because they are alway wearing bathing suits. They must wear swimsuits more in Phoenix – the city bordered by ridges that look like the ridges on Warf’s forehead.

At the cross.

2006-08-20T00:54:00.000-07:00

I wrote a poem during college that I still think about today. I guess I don't really think about the poem as much as I do about the subject of the poem. The poem wasn't good, it was long, repetitive, tacky, but the thought, the question, the idea that I was struggling with is still there -- still wants to be thought.

If I were standing in the crowd when Jesus got nailed to the cross, would it be easier to have faith in God than it is now? Would I be a stronger Christian, a better person? Would I share my faith at every opportunity, in every conversation? Would I sin the way I do now -- without remorse, sometimes intentionally, over and over again?

If I was there when Jesus took his last breath and was there when the Earth shook, the Heavens opened and thundered down, the ground broke, the curtain ripped, the soldiers fell to their feet and acknowledged God in their presence...would I be any different...

I guess I wonder what it will take, or what it would take, to -- I don't know. Bring me back? Open my eyes? I don't know what expression, what words to use here...What would it take to bring me back to the cross, to make all this madness and seemingly devoid of meaning happenings make sense?

A friend told me, after many beers, that we are born and then we die. He said there is nothing to do, you can't take life serious...if he was there at the cross would he have been able to say that? If I was there would that urge to agree with him be there?

I think heaven is a lot bigger, a lot more open than we tend to give it credit. There are too many questions, too many theories, too many if's and's and what about's for me to believe that I will be in heaven and Kadeer, my muslim friend, won't be. I don't know what this has to do with where I started, but this is where I have gone, so I apologize.

I guess what scares me the most is that I imagine myself standing in front of the cross, in front of our savior's dying body, sinning. Sinning. He looks at me, closes his eyes, and questions why his Father is sacrificing him to save me. And I don't know if I would be different. Would you be?

My friends always ask me, in relation to who I am dating at the time, "does she challenge you, spiritually? Does she encourage you?" Fuck man. As long as she believes in God there are enough challenges that come with that to challenge me for the rest of my life. I can't count on too many more miracles, so let's not hold our breath that I will meet another one besides the previous three that have challenged me. And those all worked out fantastically. If I were at the cross would I even think about this shit? About women? Jobs? Meaning?

If I were at the cross I might be the same person that I am today. I probably would have hit on the single women as we walked back to our stucco apartments, dusty roads and dusty clothes, and low and behold I would choose the one that I would have to battle whole countries for -- while she slept with the enemy.

a few pieces are missing.

2006-08-16T22:41:00.000-07:00

What to write...what to write...what to say...

Should I write a crypted message like usual? Or just be honest about it? Honesty...

I saw her again, Corinn, I saw you, if you are reading this, and it was good. We had fun, we laughed, she pretended to get mad at me, the usual, everything like it always is...both lost. Both confused.
We aren't just friends, we are more than just friends, we are somewhere in the hazy world that lies between friends and...boyfriends and girlfriends, lovers -- a world that once you enter it's nearly impossible to get out. A world with no blue sky, only clouds with occasional sun breaks...

What does it feel like to see your heart in someone else's eyes? And to know that they aren't the only one who has a piece of it? Empty -

- only when you, they, are away.

One of you who has it, a part of me in you - a part that I gave without you asking, without you asking...but when you are around, when one of you is around, in my head, in my eyes, I feel almost whole...almost real, almost alive. Then I forget about it. After enough time has passed I forget what I see when I look in your eyes, I forget that I don't feel whole... -- And I am okay, until I see you again, hear your voice again, or hear the rain fall, see your smile in a strangers mouth, the way --

-- ...then I remember my mistakes. I remember why I am here, wondering where I put God when I filled that hole with you for a time. God what have I done with you...

What do you do when you see your heart in someone else's eyes? How do you get it back...

The Textbook

2006-08-13T22:38:00.000-07:00

In one month she got lodged in my heart. I still feel her perfect hands wrapped around the valves that lead to and from my heart, squeezing, making it hard to breathe, forcing me to rest my head against the back of the seat after I turn off my car and sit in silence. Without a goodbye, without a message, without a way to contact her, she fled to New York, an impossibly big city. How long would it take to find someone in a city like New York? Days, weeks, one month?

I still feel her. After this long...how do I still feel her? Why the fuck do I still feel her! I want her out of my head, out of my thoughts, out of the smile I saw in the lady that sat at table 42 tonight, the one that ordered the tomato and cheese pizza with a chocolate layer cake...how is she still there?

I thought about taking a train to New York, sitting on a corner somewhere, on a piece of cement in the middle of traffic; maybe I could blow darts at the tires of passing cars to get on the news, maybe then she would see me on whatever TV in whatever home or apartment or job she is at, and she would cry, because she would know I was there...but she wouldn't come, because that's crazy as hell to blow darts into passing cars tires.

I almost had a nervous breakdown today. A lady ordered water without waiting for me to finish saying hi, another person gave me a horrible look because I was stupid enough to bring out a box that was a smidgen to big for their leftovers - the Heavens rained down lighting and acid on my ignorant being, the ground opened and swallowed me - in front of the tempter I was laughed at for being so dumb, for bringing a whole pizza box instead of a large plastic container. I brought the plastic container, I wanted to put her head in it.

That's when I knew I needed to go home. And that whole time, the whole day, she was there, squeezing my heart, making herself known, mocking me for not knowing where she is, if she's okay, what ever happened, if I will ever see her again, or if I should ever see her again.

I am in a wedding in a couple weeks from today. I wanted her to be there with me, way back when we were dating, she wanted to go to, neither of us ever told each other that, but we both knew...it was so imperfectly good. Unrighteously right. She smiled when she was with me.

One part cranberry juice, one part quantro, one part grand mariner, one part absolut citron, one part sour mix. One minute she lets go.

Oil

2006-08-10T23:24:00.000-07:00

Oil. People are losing their lives for oil. Mothers are starving themselves in DC because of oil. Their sons spending sleepless nights in a dry, hot, desert in a far away place that we only see through television screens, that we only see when things blow up, or people get burned, or an American loses his life. Places that we only hear about when the alert goes to red, and we get checked twice before we get on a plane. Places that have a different religion, a different set of beliefs, and a few extremists who want to blow up things.

Remember seeing the oil fields burn during the first desert storm? When Shwarzkopf was played by Chris Farley? Remember watching the bombs drill the enemy on our televisions? The warm bodies lit up by green in the dark night, with headwraps, a different religion, and families, walking around their cars just before the missile hit?

This black liquid that spews from the Earth covers all of us in ways we can't imagine. Everything we touch? Everything we see? Has oil touched it? Left it's grimy fingerprint, bloody to the core, all over the surface...of the earth?

Why are we in Iraq? Why are mothers starving themselves in DC while meeting at my restaurant? They only order hot tea, or cranberry juice, which only cost two dollars, which means I might get a dollar in tip...there's oil on that dollar. There's pain in that exchange.

Why is it that we never realize how horrible this war, this black liquid, this world we have created is until we see animals covered in oil struggling for air - for life? Why is it that we have to see a seagull covered in oil, in our filth, in our wars, to realize how bad this all is?

Camden Yard

2006-08-06T10:32:00.000-07:00

Bernie Williams stepped to the plate, the bases were loaded, his teammates waited on the white bags, down by one, seventh inning...Williams had been brought off the bench, one of the most famous centerfielders came to home plate to try and save the day. The scoreboard above the screaming fans in centerfield told everyone that in his illustrious career he batted .300 with the bases loaded, the Oriole fans screamed for the pitcher, the Yankee fans for Bernie.

First pitch, the ball leaves the pitchers hands, if it was possible the crowd got even louder in those one and a half seconds it takes for the ball to travel to the batter. He watches it go by, ball one. The Yankee fans raise their beers, the young man next to us, the son of a local coaching legend, swears and curses the pitcher, her can't believe they pay him to throw balls. His eyes, stained yellow from all the years of alcohol and cigarettes, perhaps to hide the pain of failing his dad, a hall of fame high school coach; he wasn't in the majors, he was just a coach, just like his dad, son of the man, everyone knows him, everyone knows that his son is not him, that maybe he just got the job because of who his dad is. The son has to prove himself, but he can't, maybe they are right, maybe this beer and this game will help him forget about it for a...

...second pitch. Bernie swings, the crowd goes crazy, anticipation of a homerun, anticipation of a ground ball, the ball glances off his bat and flies high in the air, landing safely in the first baseman's brown leather glove. His father would be happy. He taught him how to catch fly balls.

Camden Yards is beautiful. The moon rested just over the roof above home plate, half showing, half sleeping, they showed it on the big screen, it's so much more awe-inspiring if you look at it with your own eyes. We sat just above the left field line, box level, on the railing. It was a perfect night, the man two sections over, the oversized Yankees fan, took off his jersey and pumped his arms in the air trying to get the other Yankee fans to shout in unison with him. His belly bounced up in down in rhythm with his arms, girls above us shrieked in disgust, everyone called him nasty and a fucking idiot and that's why Yankee fans have no class, but they all were jealous, they all wish they were as free as that guy. The coaches son next to us took a sip off his sixth beer, looked at him with his tainted eyes, and told my friend that the guy was an idiot. They had played golf all day, they had farmer's tans, they were living the life, watching baseball, coaching baseball, wearing sandals, hats with their teams logo on them. He was going to drive home with his friend and talk about baseball, all the way till he got out of the car and closed his door.

The Yankees won. It was exciting how it ended, but that wasn't the best part for me. For a couple hours everyone had a break from their lives. I want to be able to do that, to allow people to lose themselves in a story, in a picture, in the beauty of a game, in the words of a book, in the words of a character on a screen lost in the confusion of life but finding joy and fulfillment in the smile of a stranger who smiled at him as passed her on the street.

All in all though, baseball is still way too long, with way too many drunk people.

life between lives

2006-08-04T01:53:00.000-07:00

She sat with her back against my window, the early morning light, crisp, new, illuminated her left eye, the pupil contracting, as her lips parted. She did not look at me, she just smiled. As I laid on my bed, my head on the pillow covered with the sheets she gave me, I wanted to cry. It could never work. Too much life fills the space between us. She turns her head, looks down at me, the sunlight falling on her dark hair...our eyes meet. We both know. This can not last, this denial, this bliss, this feeling, cannot and should not last. Her fingers run across my chest, the touch, just the touch, just the feeling is enough to keep me there forever. Is it possible to forget all that impossibility between us, is it possible to ignore it for...long enough to change it, to wipe away the life that blocks us from each other, so that there can be just one more...night...

...we sat there, laid there, slept there, listening to the theme music played through the simple radio in my neighbors yard...piano, blues, beautiful.

meanderings

2006-08-02T13:27:00.000-07:00

Finally, the world seems right again, the balance restored, the stars aligned, the zen...zenned. I have a new computer, another one that sits on my lap, but this one works, this one lets me type the letters b and n, and use the space bar so that I don't have to type like this:

hi.how.are.you.today.

So anyway. I can write again. I can breathe, maybe it will help me sleep at night again. Although I guess I could have been writing long-hand, but then I can't read it, and then it is lost forever with all the other scribble words I have penned over the years, all to be forgotten, most of them letters to girls that sit crumpled in my desk drawer. Poor penmanship may be a curse in that case.

I have learned to cope with my decision to not go to Law School, to not have the next three years of my life planned out, and then my future laid before me with smiling faces, fences for kids in yards to play, and a paycheck that comes every other week, always the same, always direct deposit, always seeing the dentist every six months.

I still try and hide my fear and anxiety over the uncertainty that writing may or may not bring with different things. Girls, alcohol, basketball, work...it's easy to lose yourself for a short time, to let yourself go, rid your mind of the thoughts and desires that have pushed you to do what you want to do, and to float along, merely existing, like an amoeba, changing shape and size with the situation, never truly being though. Just a single cell, your heart, pumping to keep the blood flowing and the oxygen coming.

Someone got fired at work for drinking on the job. I guess I will stop now. The cranberry cosmopolitan is a great drink. Not to strong, not to light, but easily disguised as regular juice when kept in a white to-go cup. I keep it in the back of the restaurant, on top of the ice-tea machine, and take a sip every now and then, until my head gets heavy, my eyes a little wider, and the hunger pains in my stomach due to serving people delicious food all day or night while trying to maintain on a single peanut butter and jelly sandwich that I had when I woke up at one.

It feels good to write again.

To sit here with my fingers lightly set on top of the black keys. I don't have to think about that girl that I should call, the one I shouldn't, and the one who wants me too. I don't have to think about, or remember, or feel the frustration from the seemingly endless runaround people have to go through in order to meet that person that one day you might end up with, on a beach, in Fiji, suspended over the blue water in a hut made of bamboo, looking out at the ocean, the waves, the sun setting on top of the horizon, thinking only about now, about her smell, her skin, her smile. It must take a miracle, that's what I have decided. Relationships that work are miracles. I don't know how many miracles one can expect to be a part of in one's life. I have already been a recipient of two or three off hand. The electric shocks forced my heart to begin pumping again when I was seven. Maybe that was the big one, all the others will be small and unnoticable from here on out perhaps. I didn't burn the house down today when I tried to "cook" pancakes and eggs. I forgot to grease both pans. It was all lost, all in the garbage. Maybe I can trade in all the small miracles for a big one. Let the house burn, the car crash the next time I drive home under the influence of funny tasting liquids...all for what?

It feels good to write. It helps me to forget how it feels when the man asks me to marry him, when he tells me that he makes a lot of money, that he can take care of whatever I need, that he is great in bed, it helps me to forget how I want to take the wine-key from my pocket and jab in his neck, blood spurting from his severed artery, his friends, who are decent, who don't touch me, who don't hit on me every time I walk near them, who don't stop their conversations when I approach the table so that they dream of all the things they would do to me like he does, gasp in horror. But in the end they would understand. They would cry during the eulogy, but on the way home, in the secret, in the enclosed confessional of their cars, hands intertwined with their life partner across the seat, they would know he went to far, they would know he had it coming. My blue eyes can only handle so much before they see red.

It feels good to finally get it all out.

She moved to New York without saying goodbye. The one who dissapeared. She left. Packed up, I assume, and moved in with her friend in the big busy city. Her debt and her problems are still here I am sure. But if she can't see them, if she can't hear the knocks at her door, the cold water from her shower head, she doesn't know they exist. Everything is so wrong, everything is so no right, everything within me and without me pleads to forget about her, to realize that it is a good thing that she is gone...because she is too much like me.

It is so hot outside I wonder if I am justified sitting in my house all day. I wonder if my body will forgo the terrible feeling it usually has when it does nothing all day, if it will allow me this one day? The humidity is suffocating. It feels like nature is winning. Like the Earth finally is ridding itself of the cancerous creatures that inhabit, destroy, and take for granted her beautiful...

Like the jolly bartender said last night as he gave me and my friend another round of funny liquid, cheers. Cheers to you ol' earth, you are winning, and I salute you. I am happy for you and Al Gore, it has taken a miracle or two, but you are finally holding hands, enjoying the now, wondering when the rest of the world will realize how right you two are. The world is getting hotter.

And I will submit to you today. I will take my round basketball and dare to challenge your blazing smile, all for the sake of a tan line.

Hide and Seek

2006-07-12T00:09:00.000-07:00

The ATM ate my check card tonight. I deposited my money, took the reciept, crumpled it, and tossed it in the waste receptacle that they had neatly placed next to the ATM so that people like me and you don't end up with wads of ATM reciepts in our pockets, reciepts that we think hackers and theifs and masterminds can steal our identities from and loot all of our money while we sleep. I wish they would. At least I could blame it on a mastermind or a mob or something cool like that. I forgot to remove my check card. The machine stuck it out, beeped at me as I walked out the door, heard it lock behind me, and then as I turned to look through the glass at the greedy ATM machine I saw it suck it back in. Shhoooop.

Bastard machine with your blinking lights and friendly, pithy, sayings. "Would you like to make another transaction?"

Just say next, you dumb machine.

Anyway, my head was somewhere else. I have been trying to bring myself back from vacation. Actually, I don't know if my SELF has been on vacation so much as it has been hiding behind myself. Crazy right? I bet you can relate if you let yourself. Have you ever felt like you were hiding from yourself? Like days and nights go by where you don't actually live those hours that just ticked by, but you kind of just existed? For the past two weeks I have been tucked away someplace far, far away from where I want to be. Denying my needs, my desires, writing them off like I used to write off extra-credit, knowing that I can get a "B" with minimal effort.

I think I am scared. I realized that today as I was working out for the first time in two weeks. I am scared of the uncertainty that I have chosen for myself. People in the first pew will pipe in and tell me that nothing is uncertain becuase God is in control of everything. Well, he might be, but the fact that the future is still uncertain to us because we can't exactly see or know what God has for us or why he has it for us or what he wants us to do with it once we get to that magical place where everything will be taken care of, all the bills will be paid and all the fights and worries and depressions will be gone...

...what I am trying to say is that I decided, again, and this time more seriously than the last due to unforseen circumstances, that I will pursue writing, my dreams, MY goals, MY desires, MY talents, and not what seemed right or easy or safe. Which is to say, I am constantly on the verge of wetting myself everytime I realize what I have done.

People are so much more beautiful when they are being who they should be. You can spot a fake from a mile away. You can see the boredom, the insestious lies, the comforts they believe in as they enter the room. And if you look closely you will see the envy in my eyes, the cries for help behind my dreaming words, as I tell them that I decided to write.

"Oh that's nice, I hope it works out for you. Can I have another ice tea, please?"

"No problem."

those eyes.

2006-07-09T00:38:00.002-07:00

Have you ever seen your past in someone's smile? The images and sounds, the crying eyes and yells from the backroom? Have you ever looked at someone, held their hand, and felt all your fears from back then, back then when things were bad, back then when things were out of control, back then when nothing made sense, when your twelve year old mind had to make a decision no mind that small, that feeble, that innocent, should be forced to think about - should I stay, or should I go, with him or her, food or no food, fights or no fights - and through that hand you were holding all you could feel was your own fear?

Irony has plagued me lately. I have found new and unbelievable ways to add to my "testimony" or "resume" as some would call it. Lately I met someone who is legally bound to another, with two others smaller than they are whom are legally bound to both. I held her hand, kissed her lips, and knew it may be good. That was the first night - then she broke the news, and the irony flood-gates broke free and all the past and the present melded into one sickening cyclone of time, rushing from one 2-liter bottle down to the other, through the fantastic thing that makes it possible, and I laughed.

Do you believe in fate? She asked me.

No.

Do you believe there is one person out there for you?

No.

No no no no no no...her questions seem to echo back to me from the back of my mind, from months before, and my response robotic, like a reflex - it's easier that way, you don't have to think, just react - came out before her mouth had finished forming the last word.

I knew how it was going to end, I knew that it would end just like all the rest of them. She would learn something about herself, something life-changing perhaps, or something that would give her joy or peace, and it would be because I said something, because God used me to tell them something, to be that somebody in their life that told them what they needed to hear, treated them how they needed to be treated, and then they would be gone. They would say they would pray for me and hope I know how much I meant to them. And we wouldn't sleep together.

And I would be here. Selfishly angry.

Still fighting the temptation to be myself, wondering if I do believe in fate.

Wouldn't that be easier? Would that make me less vain?

Warm Machines

2006-07-07T12:11:00.000-07:00

At long last, the time has come, I have entered the highspeed world of Lap Top Computers. Machines that sit atop your clothed lap, hopefully, heating themselves to temperatures sure to be thought unsafe to hold in your lap, be you a guy, in times past, but now acceptable, preferred, favored. The warm lap is a trademark of knowledge, an indicator of hipness, a sign that you are on the go and that you need your computer with you wherever you go, be it to a cafe, a restaurant, the bus stop, church, school, you must have your machine with you because all previous attempts companies and technological industries have made at meeting your impressive needs, your must haves of preparation and preparedness failed. Pencils broke. Calculators dimmed in certain light. Walkie-talkies only got you as far as your neighbors house. And protractors never made sense. But now, now we have found it, now we have conquered space and geographical and logical limitations and we have put a warm machine in our laps that allows us to contact your best friends you never had in China, those long lost lovers in Bangladesh, those wayward siblings in the South of France, now we can talk, chat, lol, and cry together from any geographical place in the universe as long as we are within reach of a satellite and a wireless router. It's so simple.

All that to say I bought a laptop from a friend. I don't know where he got it or how he can sell it to me for so cheap, but these are the kinds of questions we don't ask, class. These are the kinds of questions that we keep to ourselves so we can honestly plead ignorance to the judge, the jury, saint peter, and your mom.

I have lots to write, and hopefully I won't use the word "lots" a lot when I do write all that I do have to write, which is why I have splurged on the black market.

The silence is over, consider this time of few and far between blogs like the time between the old and new testaments, but of less importance. There has been stuff written, volumes indeed, but like the first and second books of Maccabees they are considered uncanonical and won't be revealed until later, when those who care to know will sit in their old testament class and feign interest in those lost years before our savior poked his head through the womb of death and into the world of three wise men and hay and angels on roof tops of barns.

If Jesus and the apostles had warm machines to put atop their laps I wonder if we would have those cool maps, the ones that colorfully outline their journeys, in the back of kid's Bible's?

2006-06-27T17:51:00.000-07:00

The night has nas become the day. The day the night. My world, like a vampires, starts as the sun sets. Sleeping till three in the afternoon has become a norm. Writing till five in the morning a habit. A habit I don't want to kick.

People have been dissapearing, like in a movie, vanishing off the face of the earth without a trace, a word, a letter, a kiss, a handshake, a middle finger. Nothing. Sometimes late at night, as I am picking up the chewed buffalo wing bone that "crazy computer lady" threw on the ground minutes after I cleared her plate at Bus Boys and Poets, I wonder if she was real. Like rewinding a movie to hear what the actors said, to see what the director wanted you to see, I have replayed every conversation in my head, dissected every look, every touch, and I have nothing. No idea. Maybe aliens took her, maybe they are harvesting her organs as we speak. The tiny space ship, able to shrink and expand as it pleases, may be flying around my room right now, she may be yelling from the operating table as a weird alf like creature prepares to extract her large intestine to give to his or her kid as a jump rope.

I wait tables into the night, the rain gathers in the rivers and creaks and rises over their respective banks flooding the streets and canals and sewers. Fesces runs wild as I bring people their meatloaf and pineapple mojitos. Is it okay to live most of your life at night? Is that alright? Is that acceptable? I used to think it wasn't, I used to think that it was a waste of time, that I should be working during the day, making money to spend on the weekend or on life insurance or health insurance, which I admit I do need, and I enjoy writing. It's funny how sometimes we feel like anything we like to do must just be play. That things we like to do can't be what we do. It nags at me every day. I read a book that says God is the biggest artist of them all, and that he likes other artists, and that the universe will help you out with your dreams. A lot of really new-agey type stuff you might think, I might have thought, but I think she is right. Who knows.

If you see a tiny space ship flying around tell her to leave me a note sometime. In the meantime, live life in a way that you enjoy and don't throw buffalo wing bones on the floor.

Lame.

2006-06-20T21:47:00.000-07:00

So not enough of you "faithful" readers believed in miracles after my last post. Although Germany still marches on to victory, I have been scoreless since before I asked you to believe in miracles.

So. I have decided that I have no idea what a girl wants. Many guys out there in the blog world might be able to agree with me on this. I haven't heard from the girl I was dating, some would even go as far as saying my "girlfriend" in well over a week. What the hell.

She has literally dropped off the face of the earth. She might not have paid her phone bill, so her phone doesn't work, that's a possibility, but other than that I have no explanation for her dissapearing faster than the Blazers hopes this year.

I was starting to believe again that girls actually like guys who treat them good, or well, if you want to speak or write correctly, that when two people lay in bed together and listen to the rain and thunder and watch the lightning light up the room at four in the morning while smiling at each other and holding hands that meant something. But maybe it doesn't. Maybe I should go back to being an asshole, that seemed to work, this is where the crowd chimes in and says, "no!!!" and I sheepishly blush and say to you that I know I shouldn't and I hope I won't...but...

Forget it.

Truth is, I am tired of this bullshi*t, I just want to meet someone who is honest with their feelings and doesn't dissapear out of thin air.

Go mets.

Do you believe in Tunisia?

2006-06-14T13:02:00.000-07:00

I have been watching the world cup lately. It's this silly thing where a lot of guys in brightly colored jerseys run around on a green field and attempt to kick a ball in a net that has a man in a different colored jersey in front of it. The anticipation is great. We sit and wait as pass after pass is kicked around, working for better position on the field, closer to the goal, it builds to the point of screams as a shot is placed on goal, but when it misses or is blocked the anticipation dies down, bubbles, builds, and erupts finally when the goal is placed in the back of the net by your team.

It seems to me that it is a lot like my relationship I find myself in. When I see her, it is awesome, truly awesome, we laugh we talk we touch we kiss we share we enjoy each other...but when we aren't together it's like we are trying to communicate with smoke signals during a wildfire.

I think to myself that she must be seeing someone else, that she must have left the country, the state, the city, that maybe she has died, maybe a long lost friend, a man friend, has come back into the picture and they sailed off into the sunset, or that she just plain hates me and that when she looked at me with those eyes, that smile, and said those things as we kissed, that she was lieing, that she might just be the best liar I have ever seen, but then I see her. We chance to meet up again, and there it is, bliss, all over again. It's great, all my worries and thoughts seem ridiculous.

But I still wonder, I still wonder if she hates me, if in fact we haven't talked in the last three days not because her phone is broke, but because she is the best con artist I have ever met. So, do I see her tonight? Do I go out of my way to see her? Risk getting shot down, risk finding the truth, am I brave enough to find out, good or bad? Will I be able to handle it?

If Tunisia can score a goal in the last minute of stoppage time to tie the game with Saudi Arabia, all the time before the goal me chanting "do you believe in mircales?!", then I can go see her. And maybe a miracle can happen twice in one day.

Unsaid

2006-06-11T22:33:00.000-07:00

I wondered what the girl next to me was thinking. I wondered if she knew that there was more after the credits were done rolling. I wanted to tell her, but I felt bad, I felt bad for not telling her, and I felt bad for not wanting to tell her. I didn't want her to think I was hitting on her, so I said nothing. She was sitting in the theater by herself on a Saturday night watching X-Men 3. She was a good looking young lady, maybe about 16, maybe 23, I can't really tell nowadays. I am dating a girl/lady/youngwoman/woman who is 28 and I thought she might be 23 when I first met her. So I didn't say anything to the girl that was next to me. Then I saw her afterwards, in the lobby, waiting for somebody that she came with, maybe her mom or brother or sister or grandpa, and I still didn't say anything. There was too much to say, too much between us already, too much history to catch up on before we could talk about the present, the future, what she should do now that I won't ever sit by her again, or her by me, in a movie theater. So I said nothing. We made eye contact, I looked down, I knew so much more than she did now. She knew everything up to the credits, everything that she thought mattered, but there was so much more to talk about, so much she needed to know, and I didn't tell her.

It would have burdened me.

It rained last week, Noahs-ark-type rain. Both times I was with , both times it was beautiful, it was peaceful, it was awesome. The rain pounded the shingles of her roof, water spilled over the gutters, past the window below which we lay, and fell to the ground rhythmically like someone was taking a shower and the water was spilling off their head, shoulders, and onto the basin below.

Lightning lit the room. Thunder followed. One, two, three, four, five, six seconds, clap. Six miles away.

There was so much I could have said. So much of our pasts to talk about. I was scared. I didn't want to know hers, and I didn't want her to know mine. Not yet. Not now. Lets just lay here and listen to the rain and thunder, turn the tv off, let the sounds invade the space between the walls you talked about painting, blue, maroon, brown, always changing, always smiling, not now. Not yet.

Maybe after the credits roll.

The Vanity Of Cysts

2006-06-04T14:24:00.000-07:00

I have some great news, and I have some bad news. Great news first? Sure.

Turns out, after further review, that the lump in my lip is not cancerous. Just as I diagnosed it as cancer over the internet, I was cured over email. The world wide web is more than merely access to information, it is access to healing powers.

My doctor, Dr. Wright, informed me it is most likely just a cyst. And by applying hotness to it three times a day it should shrink. Although, I don't know if I want it to totally dissapear. Why? I don't know, it keeps you humble, you know? Knowing that you might die any day, or thinking that you might die any day, is a humbling thing, and maybe something that we should all be aware of, just to keep in mind, because it should probably change the way we live. Like Velcro. What would life be like without velcro? Terrible.

In other news, I am training to become a waiter next week. Which means I will be making money hand over fist, my bedroom might be full to the ceiling of dollar bills in all different denominations by the time I am done working here. Or I might break so many glasses and drop so many drinks before I give them to the customer that I might be fired within a week. Either way it would be a great story.

Oh, the bad news. I won't be getting a lot of sympathy cards and money and girls and looks and cars and houses and dreams come true because you are dieing things because I just have a cyst. Instead I will just be called a drama king and a hypchondriac.

I laid in bed last night, rolling the ball in my lip around, wondering if it was cancer, and started thinking about the guy I saw last night on the corner. He was outside my restaraunt counting how many floors high each building he could see was. And he was astonished at the height every time as he held his to-go plate from some other, lesser, restaraunt. What was he thinking? He looked like he might be homeless, but you never know, and he was alone on a Saturday night with his doggy bag. My manager called him a freak. He also called the lady that stood at the parking meter and drooled all over it and a the sidewalk a freak. "Fucking freaks."

I thought about Mike again. Mike, as it turns out, is Schyzophrenic, homeless, jobless, and his family hates him. The drool lady must have ran away from wherever she was supposed to be, and the floor counting man probably has counted his way out of every meaningful relationship he has ever had or could want.

I was worried that I might have cancer. That I might be a bad waiter. That I might not be a lawyer. And that I might fail as a writer because people want me to do something else, be someobody, have benefits for times like this when I have a hard bee bee in my lip. And I worried about this as I laid in my bed that was given to me for free, in my room that I rent every month in a nice house, with a computer on a desk that were both given to me for free, and a car outside that runs. My Bible laid on the floor next to me, cover down so I can pretend like I don't see the words "Bible" on it and pretend like I don't think about reading it every night. And I wished I was the one out on the corner counting how many floors up the buildings went, how far I could fall, if it would kill me on impact or if I would hit the ground and regret not jumping from a higher building because I only broke my neck, but could still see and hear and watch the people around me cry and cry and ask why, and me know that I had failed them. Failed them all. I wished I could take their place, all three of the "freaks" and give them a chance, a chance like God has given me, and I wondered what they would do with it. Maybe they would be worried about the doom in their lip as well, maybe they would truly only care about the ball in their mouth because the girl I am dating can feel it sometimes when we kiss. Maybe they would be that vain too.

100

2006-05-30T22:09:00.000-07:00

To start where I began, to begin where I started, would only be fitting - this being the 100th episode of my life - but life isn't linear, lines only cross, they don't connect. A century worths of blogs. A hundred years of lines and bad grammar, grammar being bad just to be bad, to defy those who taught me good grammar, those who gave me C's on my poetry portfolio:

To you red bearded teacher
to you i tip my hat
I wink my eye
left than right, then left again
you almost won, ran victorious
vanquished my honor
drown my fire
stole my desire
but alas, oh red bearded teacher
those they call Paul
Paul Willis
though you might have a Dr.
set before your name
have you ever wrote 100 blogs
red bearded teacher who reads from the bleachers and beckons to all to become like him
writing poems as bad as sin.

On the 100th anniversary of my blog, a day most should overlook and forget, I have chosen to not talk about my fear of cancer coupled with zero health insurance, fear that might give me ulcers along with the chemo, I will not talk about that or about the sheer insanity of those who read this blog, but I will talk about how beautiful DC is at night.

***

Walk up the steps that Abe Lincoln built - white, marble, maybe not marble but close enough, granite perhaps - and look at him. I dare you to try not to be proud. Proud of what? It doesn't matter. I am proud to be alive, standing in front of Abe, glowing in white, sitting in defiance, looking out towards the pool that Forest ran in, Jenny his love on the other side, Jenny his love within his grasp. Sit on the steps like the Wedding Crashers did, drink till you are merry just as they would. All the little kids from Tennessee and ALaBAaaaMA giggle and laugh at their funny teachers, all of them - the kids and teachers alike - wearing the same shirt, all of them missing the moment. The moment is happening, the beauty of DC, but they are missing it, they are looking at Abe while Abe watches it happen. He watches it every night from his glowing chair, his throne of stone, he watches as I do. We watch the water become still, the pool falls silent, the birds stop diving, the ducks stop swimming, the earth stops revolving, and for a moment, just one moment, the Washington Monument, tall, white, glowing like Abe, reflects perfeclty in the black water below. A mirror. A watery, black, beautiful mirror. Someone might take a picture, someone might say how amazing it is, look mom! it is so cool! but they will miss it, because they are talking, because they are moving, they are blinking, they are breathing. Be still I tell them from within my head, be still and watch, as the moment becomes minutes, then hours, then days, then bliss. Watch. Pay attention. The air is so warm, the clouds so gray against the black night, just watch, just listen, cars people kids planes can you hear it die down, can you hear it become still, just as the water now lays, holding Washington in it's lazy arms, wrapping it's glowing white sides with warm darkness, a perfect frame for a perfect picture. Then a rock is thrown and the mirror is gone, it ripples into oblivion. Then you get up and walk through the dark green trees, the path that looks over the Vietnam Wall, thousands upon thousands of names that just shared that moment with us. The wind blows and you are in your car. The moment is gone. Pay attention or you will miss the best part of DC.

Thanks to those who have read with me.

Breaking the Silence.

2006-05-28T19:22:00.000-07:00

Rumors had it that I had died. A slow death, a painful death, a death no man should ever endure or hear about for fear that his soul might not enter the netherworld. But I didn't. The rumors were false, I was not struck by lightning two weeks ago two days ago on a cloudless night, full of stars and smiles and pages wet with words so heavy in meaning the author had praised the heavens saying, "God I am a fearlessly and wonderfully made writer who has conquered all!" which proceeded the lightning crashing through the roof of the blasphemous writers' roof, striking him in the forehead and exiting his fingers, all ten of them simultaneously, causing first the keyboard, then the monitor, then the computer, then the walls, then house, then the neighborhood, then the whole city of DC to be swallowed in flames and rubble and armageddon. No, the rumors are false. I just haven't had access to the internet of late.

But do not fear, I have been keeping a mental notebook, taking notes when people tell me to take note, and here I will inform you of the utmost important things that have happened in the last two weeks and change since my last blog entry.

1. The silent protest at Galludet University came to a thundering end. The deaf school was in uproar...in a frenzy of fingers and hands and arms, about the recent injustice committed on the hallowed campus. It took me a long time to work up the courage to write about the protest, the tent city that outlast the rain and the wind and the cold nights, the music that was blaring from the parking lot one afternoon as I drove by...music? And the signs, the endless signs...they were all there, gloriously calling for an end to the injustice. What was it? What was this atrocity? I couldn't tell you, and from what I heard, neither could the protesters. Literally, some had no idea why they were protesting, I am sure there was a point to it all at the beginning, but by the end, when it looked like Duke's campus the week before the Duke/North Carolina game, it just became a protest for the show. A silent protest screaming loudly with their hands. It was a thing of beauty.

2. My dream, aspiration, desire, and drive to be a writer has not wavered. I still dream of the day that I, like any crazed artist, be it a drummer who drums so hard and so long that he breaks his sticks, or a guitar player who strums so hard that his fingers bleed, or a pianist that pianists so hard he falls off the bench, I still dream of the day that I will write so long and so hard and so fantastically that first my fingers will bleed, the blood running through and around the symbolic keys, through the wires and onto the page so that the world can see my -- and then they will break, each finger at a different time, but I will not stop until they are all broken, finally, at the end, I will be pecking the keys like a starved bird so fast and so ferociously that my left middle finger, the last, the strongest, will snap, bone and blood squirting onto the screen, and it will happen as I type the last period of the last sentence of the last page of my then completed manuscript, and they will cart me off to the ER, my hands raised victoriously to the sky, and I will smile wildly the whole way there. Because it will be done.

3. The Blazers still aren't in the NBA playoffs. I petitioned, made calls, but no one wanted to hear my theory about ratings, making history, and how boring the Spurs are.

4. I still save the world one table at a time. And have perfected the art of garnishing tips from gay men who would like to be seated ahead of the rest of the peons on the wait list, without compromising myself or my morals. Morals being few and far between as they are these days. But nonetheless! I am on my way to becoming a waiter, leaving the poor hosts behind at the door, and cutting up my credit cards because I won't need them to pay rent any longer!

5. I still don't truly know why 200000 men and women on motorcycles will descend upon the national mall tomorrow in honor of memorial day. Are we celebrating the bravery and courage of our fallen soldiers willingness to fight for the right to wear black leather atop a red hot machine when the sun scorches down through the hole burnt in the ozone by our gas guzzling contraptions? Shouldn't we all just descend upon the national mall by foot, paying homage and respect to those who have fought for our freedom in a respectable and honorable way, not in a way that shows the world just how young and immature we Americans are as a nation?

6. The gray haired man, the man I chose to win from the beginning, won American Idol, sending him to fame, fortune, drugs, sex, and rock and roll heaven, things unlike he has ever seen before, and might only see however long it takes for the world to find out he really is just the coolest, most outrageous, karaoke singer to ever be born.

7. I might have lip/oral cancer. A lump, a ball, a hard mass the size of a raisin, or a beebee, depending on how many prayers and hail marys I have sent up that day, has formed and made its home on the inside of my lower lip. Fear and anxiety has set in. Web MD proclaimed me dead weeks ago. If it is cancer, it might be payback for laughing at the kid who fell on his face today. Payback in advance. God knows.

8. I am still a sinner, God is still the redeemer, and I still don't know how the two, well, mostly how the one who is not the sinner, is willing to redeem the former in lieu of the formers' unwillingness, or inability, to stop the sinning.

9. I can swallow the pills without water these days...come to think of it, I don't know if I did today, which may or may not be a bad thing considering I didn't arise from slumber until 3.30 in the afternoon.

And that is all. Kind of.

Tiny Voices

2006-05-12T16:52:00.000-07:00

There is a tiny voice inside of me, perhaps inside of you as well, that doesn't believe in me. Trust me, it's tiny. So tiny, that I don't even know it's there until someone points it out to me, someone in a book that has never met me shines a light on it and says see, there it is, now listen...

You can't do it. What do you have to write about? Nothing. You are twenty-four. See, you even had to think about putting a dash between the twenty and the four because you suck so much at grammar, let alone life.

It's there, the voice, saying these things to me, persuading me to stop, to give up, to aspire to be a desk jockey with benefits.

You will never make money writing. You couldn't even get an A in english in high school, see, there you are again, you don't even know if high school is one word or two. god...you are pathetic.

I am writing a book. It's about searching for love and finding God instead. I think I can do it, I believe that it could be great, that it could help someone...what if my writing did help one person turn their life around, not even turn their life around, but just be happy for the time they are reading the book. I personally think that is worth it.

What are you good at? What do you think about when you are working? What does your little voice tell you that you can't do, that you will fail, that it is impossible...

I think there is a voice like that when it comes to relationships as well.

She will never like you. He will never love you, he will leave you, he will hurt you, he can't be trusted. She is too good for you. She will leave you. You can't please her. You are too good for her. It's not worth it, it's too risky, take the safe relationship, take nothing.

Why is there a voice inside of us that doesn't want us to be happy! Whose voice is it!?

People close to me doubt me. People very close to me doubt me. They say I should take that desk job, the one with all the benefits, and I admit, it would be nice to have health insurance right now, but. but. but. I can't. Because that voice, that negative voice is tiny. And I am learning to yell over the top of it, to think beyond it, to act out of it's control. I am learning to be me. God doesn't want us to be sad. He doesn't want us to be alone. Well, maybe he does. I am not sure of that one. Paul was alone. And he was...well, Paul. But that tiny voice is not God. That is someone else's voice trying to extinguish your dreams. Don't let God be muffled in your life by that tiny voice that lurks around your head and lashes out at you during your weak and vulnerable times.

Jon and Lesley Miller went to China six months after they got married. How awesome is that-- Awesome in the true sense of the word. The tiny voice was screaming all the way to the airport I bet, but they chose to follow something else instead. And once that plane took off, the tiny voice was drowned out by the roar of the engines, at least for a little while.

The Host with the Most

2006-05-09T11:11:00.000-07:00

My car might get booted tomorrow. Two weeks ago they finally caught on that I have been here for eight months and still have my Oregon plates. If I don't go into the DMV tomorrow and wait in the endless lines to get a temporary resident permit, which will give me six months of stress free parking, they will boot and tow and burn my car. Laughing the whole way to the car dump. What if I am in line so long that it goes past midnight and they boot my car in the parking lot of the DMV, I will have to tip my hat to them and say 'you got me' to the funny shaped blue men with badges.

But it's a good thing I am taking steroids again. Because if the line gets too long and the clock ticks and tocks closer to midnight, I will be able to pick people up by the hair on the back of their necks, like cats, and toss them to the side. Women and children will scream at the sight, camera phones will flash, homeless men and women will applaud, and the security guard will shy away as I look at him with red in my eyes, my head bulging from the effects of the steroids I just took that morning.

There is 640 calories in one glass of Muscle Milk that I take. Take it twice a day and that nears 1300 calories. Truth is I have no idea how many calories I am supposed to have per day, or how many calories is in anything that I eat, but I do know that I feel like I have just eaten a steak dinner after I swallow down 640 calories in thirty seconds.

I hope they reinforced the doors at Bus Boys and Poets, I might just pull the damn thing right off the hinges when I swing it open for our unsuspecting guests. Instead of leading them to their seats I might just carry them, one on each hand like a platter, you go here, and you go there, enjoy your meal. The girl will look at me and swoon as the back of my shirt strains to hold the fibers together under the ever growing mass of muscles hiding underneath. They might have to push the ceiling up too. It's only about thirty feet high right now, if I keep drinking these things and working out I might grow an extra forty-feet tall. Then I will just throw people to their seats like darts. Head first.

Oops, I have to iron my shirt before I go to work, if I don't it looks way to big on me. It's a large.

Animal Instincts

2006-05-06T11:20:00.000-07:00

On my way to work yesterday I saw a bird walking in the road, pecking at the oil stained grub on the cement with it's beak. I sped up. I tried to hit the bird, but at the last second it looked up, spread its' wings, and flew out of the way of my bumper.

Then I saw a squirrel. It was deciding whether or not to cross the street. Huddled by the tire of a parked car its' small, furry, head twitched back and forth, weighing the good and the bad of where it had come from and where it was going. I sped up. This time I didn't want to hit the animal, squirrels are squishy, I just wanted to get by it before it made the fatal decision to cross the road. As I came closer it looked at me, ran towards the middle of the road, looked at the giant piece of metal hurtling its' way, its' death closing in on it with every millisecond it wasted, and then scampered off back to where it came.

I wish I were as smart as the bird or the squirrel. Instead, when I see danger coming, when I see those headlights shining brightly and beautifully from a distance, hurtling towards me at dangerous, deadly, painful speeds, I don't run back to where I came, I don't fly away just out of reach of the impending doom, the certain destruction, I stand there like a deer.

A deer stands in the headlights in the middle of the road, amazed, stunned, fearful and excited about the majestic light coming the deer's' way. It is frozen by the beauty, its' eyes twinkle in the bright, blinding ecstasy of fate coming towards the loving creature. And although the car honks, the lights flash, the people yell to get out of the way, trying to explain to the poor deer that nothing good will come of this, the deer still stands there. Waiting. When the car gets close enough, the lights bright enough, the deer realizes what is happening, that danger is approaching, and the deer, still frozen, suddenly hopes that the car will swerve, or stop, or disappear. Or maybe that the car will stop inches away from the deer, headlights shining directly into the deer's' beautiful eyes, and the driver will get out, walk around the front of the car, and extend her hand, full of oats and berries, to the deer who will gladly partake.

I am the deer. I stand hoping that the beautiful headlights will swerve, stop, or disappear. But I don't have the courage to run, I don't have the strength to fly away, I only have my heart which wants to see what happens. And although destruction seems imminent, the taste of metal on my teeth, than asphalt on my skin as the beautiful headlights crash into me sending me flying through the air, my hopes and dreams smeared on the grill of her car, I still stand there and hope that the headlights might stop. Inches from my face. I stand there and hope the driver will get out, extend her hand as we climb on top of the hood and lay underneath the bright shining stars, hoping that the universe will last just one more night, for our sake.

Tides

2006-05-03T22:43:00.000-07:00

The tide of life is ever changing
high tide
low tide
somewhere in between
unlike the ocean, predictable,
life spins out of control
high tide seems like it will never fade
low tide lasts for a lifetime

I wish I could predict the tide
I wish I could know when I would
drown
in the waves

whatever tide I am in,
be it high or low
or somewhere in between
at this time in my life
I am gasping for air,
flailing, screaming, hoping
that this won't last a life time
and soon my feet will find their
home

Old Man in Oz

2006-05-02T22:06:00.000-07:00

I found a park to play basketball at today. It felt like a summer day in Oregon, shooting around outside my house, counting how many I could make in a row, how blue the sky could get, how wispy the clouds would be able to get, how far away my mind could get from things that didn't matter and settle onto things that did as my muscles took over, their memory not yet lost, and I picked up the ball, my fingers on my right hand found the grooves, settled in, brought the ball up towards my head, almost directly in front of my eyes, my elbow in a ninety-degree angle, my wrist bent all the way back with the leather ball resting, waiting, seeking the bottom of the net...my arm extends, my wrists flicks, my fingers gently let the ball out of their grasp, my index finger the last to let go, the last to tell the ball where to go...I don't watch the ball, I concentrate on one small spot on the back of the rim, I don't know exactly where it is, but it is there in my minds eye, it's always there, no matter how long it has been since the last time I shot a ball, the spot is always there, and muscles always remember how it is done...don't think, just shoot.

The wall on the other side of the fence was painted brightly with a mural of the Wizard of Oz on it. Graffiti splashed here and there to remind us we are in the city, ineligible scribble that gives someone pride, gives someone meaning. I throw the ball off the fence, it bounces back to me, I turn, find the grooves, stop thinking, and shoot. It's beautiful. The church peaks over the elementary school to my left, the stone steeple reaching towards the wispy clouds, listening to the balls bounce, the cars honk, the players shouting commands and demands on the adjacent court, watching us all, perhaps recording it to tell God .

Thomas, the alcoholic fourty-eight year old man who has been watching me from the sideline while he sips his brown alcoholic beverage from a 7-up bottle tells me he used to play football for the University of New Hampshire. He had a try-out with the Seattle Seahawks shortly after. He was only 175 pounds, now he only has 7 teeth, most in the front, a few in the back where he has to chew, he probably hasn't seen a toothbrush in months, but his smile is still there. Between swigs of his drink and pulls of his cigarette he tells me about his basketball days in high school, sounds like he was pretty good. I gather the ball, find the grooves, stop thinking, tune Thomas out, and shoot. He averaged sixteen points and eight assists a game. Grooves, stop thinking, shoot.

I didn't average too many points, I told him. Grooves. We made it to the playoffs twice - I lied. Stop thinking. We were alright. Shoot. Swish.

My hands were getting dirty from the dust on the court that found their home on the ball. I smelled my hands, my sweat, and remembered teaching little kids how to play basketball outside my church one summer for a week. All the little humans ran around, some awkwardly, some wildly, others in a skilled, practiced motion, those were the ones that wanted to be there. They would all try and steal the ball from my dirty hands. Through their legs, around their backs, over their heads I would dribble the ball and then find the grooves, stop thinking. Shoot. Swish. The kids would erupt in defeat, I would half-smile, pat them on the back, and go get a cup of water.

Repetition opens your mind to much more than what you are doing. Repetition that you enjoy. It was like meeting with an old friend after many months away. Everything was familiar, everything was easy, everything was good. I hadn't played since Christmas. In a way I haven't played because I don't want people to know that I am good. I don't want the pressure, the expectations, the burden of representing all white people in the world in a game to eleven. Like being Black in an White classroom. Thomas realized I had a decent shot and told all the other players on the court that this white boy could shoot. I half-smiled and got something to drink. C-Webb wanted to challenge me, he played fake defense on me, the kind where the other player thinks he is better than you but isn't sure so he pretends to play, pretends to care. Grooves. Stop thinking. Shoot. Again he said. Grooves. Stop thinking. Shoot. Thomas roared in laughter, the kids behind the fence laughed at C-Webb. The white boy did it again. I half-smiled. The sun was in my eyes, I had to pull my shorts up. The pressure was off, he didn't want to guard me again.

All my troubles faded away. All my drama, all my worries, all the decisions I do and don't have to make, the bills I do have to pay, the conversations I do and don't have to have, the words I do and don't have to write...they all left. Grooves. Shoot. Grooves. Shoot. Thomas said something, so did C-Webb, I couldn't hear him, I could only hear the ball spinning in my dirty hands, and the solutions to all my problems. Grooves. Stop thinking. Shoot.

Thomas' friend, Old Man, stood at the freethrow line and made more than thirty shots in a row. Bounce, bounce, bounce, bounce, pat pat pat, grooves, shoot, swish. Over and over, his expression never changed, I don't know if his mind was working before he started playing, but he shut it off for now, didn't think about anything except how many he made, then he wrote it down, 10/10, on an old newspaper. Over and over and over. He does this everyday for hours. His brown shirt hangs slightly off his left shoulder, his white skin tanned where the shirt reveals, everyday. I watched as he meticulously wrote down the numbers on the old paper. I wanted to buy him a notebook, a new ball, new shoes...but he was happy. The Wizard of Ozz looked past all the other players in front of it - past the players too cool to try, the others trying to bring back their glory days, others trying to get glory days, others wearing jeans in eighty degree weather, the other white guy that felt like he had to play extra-hard to make up for his whiteness, his liability, his shortcomings...the Wizard looked past it all and watched, as I did, as Old Man, homeless, balding, forgotten by the world, found the grooves, stopped thinking, and shot. He waited for the ball to roll back to him, picked it up, the church steeple watched him out of the corner of its' eye, as I did, and he wrote down how many he made. Again. And again. And again. The steeple told God how many he made. God smiled. As I did.

Sometimes you have to stop thinking to find yourself. The Old Man lost himself sometime ago, but he found it again, here on this court, being watched by the steeple, Thomas, the Wizard of Oz, and God, all smiling as the faded leather ball is shot from his steady right hand to that spot on the back of the rim, that spot he will never forget, no matter what happens. His serenity is in that spot, his proof is on his newspaper. 10/10, 10/10, 10/10.

Shop Talk

2006-05-02T10:11:00.000-07:00

If you ever feel like you want to write something, the worst feelings is not knowing what to write and instead staring at this blank canvas, all white, no black, waiting for your words, wondering why you created this page if nothing is going to be written on it.

CANVAS: I was doing fine not existing! I had a good game of pinochle going, conasta was next, and now here I am waiting for your trite words to make someone laugh...what a life I lead, woe is me, woe is the canvas that sits alone in the dark waiting for light, only to be given light by a dimwit.

ME: Hey, I am trying, there are too many things I could say, but none that matter...

CANVAS: See, that's your problem, you think too much, you always think about who is reading this, who might read this, who you want to read this, and not enough about the words that are on your tongue, coming from your artist side of your brain, jamming up on your fingers, just write the damn words so I can get back to my game, my partner is yelling at me, that damn pencil is so pushy, always yelling at me to make my move, I want it to be the right move! Not just some move to make him happy!

ME: See! You hypocritical fool! You just contradicted yourself!

CANVAS: What?

ME: You just told me not to think too much when I write, and here you are thinking too much about what move to make! That's why I have a problem writing or living sometime, I want to make the right move so I think about it, analyze it, then give up and do whatever I feel like...

CANVAS: Let's not forget that I am a canvas - not real - and you are real, therefore I can't really contradict myself, only yourself...

ME: That's besides the point. Who asked you anyway?

CANVAS: You're the one that started talking to me, crazy -

ME: I am the one that freaking created you, so don't talk back to me, I can say whatever the hell I want to say to you, hell, I can make you say whatever I want you to say!

CANVAS: Can not!

ME: Watch.

CANVAS: I like red pineapples that are given to me by an eagles beak connected to a giraffes body on a warm winter day when the snow is just right it smells like coconut lotion.

ME: Ha

CANVAS: What the hell!

ME: Back to the point here, Mr Canvas. Should I take some kind of drug to release the real me, like X, or PCP, when I write?

CANVAS: Obviously you are already doing pretty well at thinking up ridiculous things, so I don't see why you would want to take X. All that would do is make you fell orgasmic every time you press the letter "O" on the keyboard, and god knows I don't want to have to be the place for you to put all the words that will come to your mind after that.

ME: Good point.

CANVAS: And besides, aren't you already taking that white and blue pill that sends you to your happy place?

ME: Touche.

CANVAS: Just let whatever comes to your mind find it's place on my surface, then at least you will know that it's there, that you wrote it, and then if you want you can delete it, or, more likely, if I think it is terrible, or "Amazing" in the way you sarcastically use the word, I will delete it.

ME: Sounds good.

CANVAS: And one more question.

ME: Shoot.

CANVAS: Why are you still in the clothes you slept in without a shirt on at 1:24 PM writing this right now? It's a beautiful day outside, what the hell man?

ME: I parked like five blocks away, it's a long walk.

CANVAS: Good god. Are we done here?

ME: Almost. Do you think I have what it takes to write something worth reading, something that people might buy? Something that might make me able to do this kind of thing for a living?

CANVAS: Seriously?

ME: Yeah

CANVAS: Doubt it. You think too much about the people who will be reading it, you write for them, not for yourself. You want to say what they want you to say, not what you want to say. So it comes out all contrived and dry, your voice is not present, it's just a pale version of what you can actually do if you let your imagination run wild and say what's truly on your heart.

ME: That's not gotten me very far in some areas of life...

CANVAS: Forget that, who cares about that. Write about that then, write about your fear of being open and honest and real, write about where that fear came from, why you think others shouldn't be afraid...

PENCIL: CANVAS! Hurry up!

CANVAS:...SHUT UP!!!...anyway, write about why you think others shouldn't be afraid of exploring their past, their real thoughts and fears about issues in their life. See there you go again...

ME: What?

CANVAS: I can feel you thinking about your audience again. You are picturing that one person you are preaching to, it's ridiculous, that's not what you want, you want to speak your mind, you want to be free to say and do whatever it is that you are supposed to, without worrying about what may or may not happen, or when it will happen, or if your parents will approve of it, or if your Grandma will think you are going off the deep-end again and worrying and praying that you aren't doing drugs again...

ME: But what if they are prescribed?

CANVAS: Well, if she asks you then you answer her, there is nothing to be ashamed of, is there?

ME: I am pretty hairy.

CANVAS: wow...but other than that, which obviously isn't an issue with those who you worry it will be an issue, you know, the opposite sex, the people you spend so much of your time thinking about, so much of your time in fact that I have to start playing pinochle with Mr Pencil over here...

ME: Yeah, sorry about that. I am trying to change that, I am trying to spend more time and energy on art, on this, on you, on putting down words and ideas, turning this blank white canvas into a graveyard for words that will be brought back to life every time someone reads them, raising triumphantly and joyfully from their solitude every time a readers' eye scrolls over them, breathing life into their soul-less lungs, helping them to walk, teaching them how to talk...

CANVAS: See, that's the shit I am talking about, there you go! All that mumbo-jumbo you just said, all that over emotional crap you just wrote about putting words on paper for others to read, that's it man, that's your voice.

ME: You're right. Hey, this has been great. Can we do it again sometime.

CANVAS: I hope not. But I guess it's not up to me...

ME: Is it ever up to us?

CANVAS: What?

ME: Nothing, that will be a later conversation...

a slow march

2006-04-30T23:01:00.000-07:00

My roomate bought a package of ant traps today. Not the kind that kill the ants right away, but the kind that they can go into and then take the poison back to their queen ant, thus killing everything the ants have ever built and hoped for. It's a fairly ruthless way to go about getting rid of ants. I thought we should just get the house sprayed so we can keep them out, but not only are we going to keep them out, we are going to kill them all, one by one.

I was driving to work today and decided to put a CD in that I haven't listened to in a very long time. It's Lola Ray, my ex-girlfriend's brothers' band. If you have never heard them, you should. Not only should you hear them, you should buy their CD if you can find it and listen to it so much that you wear a rut in your favorite song, and you have to buy another CD so you can listen to that song again. Anyway, track four of the CD I have starts out by saying,

"I am more selfish now than I was before."

He is talking about a girl, and a relationship, and a heartbreak. I realized these words could be sung by me. Well, they were being sung by me, but I was just singing them to the cars next to me, whereas John was singing them on a CD...I digress again.

I am more selfish now when it comes to girls than I ever was before. I used to be so mindful of hurting girl's feelings that I wouldn't even talk to a girl if I thought her feelings could get hurt in the end. But since the girl that "felt like a movie star in my arms" (more lyrics from track 4), a queen in my eyes, these other girls, the next girls, the girls that come in and out of my restaurant, in and out of my life, don't have feelings anymore.

That's what I want to believe.

I want them to come to me, enter my trap, take my poison, and take it back to the queen girl so that I don't just stop the pain from happening again to me, but that I can exact revenge on all of them. One by one...sometimes two in the same day...all taking my poison, reading my words, seeing my smile, dying slowly from my pain.

Sometimes I hate myself. I see the way she looks at me from across the table, hoping that it would work out, and from the beginning I knew it never would, that I would never let it, that I would never want it to, andthat the only reason I am here answering her questions about what made me, me, telling her about my life as a kid, my hopes and dreams as an adult, is to lure her in for...for...anything imaginable. But nothing real.

I don't ever want to treat anyone the way I treated my movie star. Those words were for her, those looks, those letters, those flowers, they were for her and her alone. How long will it take for all my poison to be carried off by these beautiful girls that come and go...how long will it take before I can get back to the man who wanted to make every girl feel special? Maybe I am not a man. I am still a boy. Playing silly games with people's hearts, feelings, emotions...maybe the person I am hurting the most is myself.

Was the poison given to me in some long chain of hurt and abandonment and lies passed down from girl to guy to girl to guy to girl to me? Or is the poison my defense, and not my curse. Not my cross but my shield?

Either way, I am not the one baring it, they are. Those poor ants carrying my poison.

redemption

2006-04-27T22:48:00.000-07:00

The gates to heaven swing open, you walk through, it looks like what you expected, your dreams of heaven, the pictures you imagined, the hills you thought you would see, the clouds, the sun, the son, the gate was massive, but it didn't have a lock, you could just push it lightly and it would open...but there was no one there. Heaven was empty. God sat on his throne, his head resting on the palm of his hand, the rocks had stopped crying out, the mountains had stopped moving, even the seraphim had stopped praising, they were lying down, long asleep from boredom. God raised his eyebrow, looked over at you without moving his face, and then moved his eyes back to where they were, staring off into the empty expanse he had created for his believers. Heaven was empty.

If it were up to us, heaven would be empty. If it were left up to me to decide if I wanted to live eternally in heaven, if it meant that I would have to give up all my sin, all my pleasures, heaven would not be my home. I couldn't do it. I wouldn't be able to be strong, I wouldn't be able to live the life God wants me to live, the life Jesus lived for us, I wouldn't make it, I would choose not to, I would fail by choice.

The truth is that no one would make it. No one would pass the test. No one would choose to push open those massive gates and take their place in God's eternal kingdom of glory. We would all fall short. We would all choose to fall short. If God had to wait for us to believe, God would be bored. He would let the creature with eyes all over its' body watch the throne for a few centuries while He took a walk.

I had lunch with a Christian today. It was like talking to someone who is living in a city where I used to live. Reminiscing about my favorite restaruant, my favorite park, my favorite scripture, theology...but feeling so distant. Choosing to feel distant. It was like the person had a room available, room and board free, and they were unknowingly inviting me to come stay at no cost of my own, and I was choosing not to. I felt like I had outgrown...my old city. I was of no use to the residents there anymore, and there was nothing more for me there that I wanted a part of. It was like standing in a ravine looking up at this beautiful city on a hill, a shiny elevator inches away that could wisk me up to the entrance, and I was too tired to take the step, I was exhausted, so I chose not too. I steered the conversation away from my shame, from my guilt, from the redemption I knew could be mine, and I sat down inches away from the door to the elevator.

If it were up to us heaven would be empty.

Grace.

Redemption.

Gifts only God can give to the unwillling. God have mercy on your wicked servant...

Time to kill.

2006-04-25T12:33:00.000-07:00

I am discovering so many new things about myself lately. To start, I was lactose intolerant for a spell, I don't think I am anymore. Turns out your body reacts to stress and change in weird ways, more specifically, as the doctor told me, "your sphincter." Pretty gross. So I went through this whole phase where I was taking pills every time I had any kind of dairy, and no matter how many pills I took, I still had to visit the restroom very soon after I ate the dairy, be it cheese, milk, chocolate, what have you... But now that's over. I think. For now at least.

Yesterday I stepped out of my car and breathed in, not because I intended to but rather because that is just what happens, you breath...in and out. And it just so happened that I was breathing in at this point. I immediately sneezed, and my unstuffed nose and head all of a sudden became stuffed. Huh...allergies. Check.

I have never had allergies, I have always been one of those people who unsympathetically says, "oh, that sucks." when someone says their allergies are acting up. Secretly I always want to tell them to stop being such babies and get over it. But it really does suck. At least that's my initial thought about allergies so far, I have yet to find anything good about them...unless you consider the raw feeling you get on the tip of your nose and around the nostrils when you blow your nose with toilet paper because you can't afford to buy tissue paper that has the moisturizer somehow mysteriously inside the paper, but yet still feels dry!

It really is an adventure though. This whole thing called life. Things change, people change, your body changes...like right now my body is getting stronger because a random karate dude showed me these cool workouts on those gymnastic ball things, you know, the big bouncy ones that everyone looks so funny on. I wouldn't have listened to him if he was some overweight, out of shape guy, but he was ripped, and he did Karate. And I am not allergic to the ball, so I should be good there.

Well, this blog is rather uninteresting it seems. Truthfully the only reason I am writing it is because I wanted to kill time while I run the SCANDISK program on a computer I got for free recently. It has windows 95 and sounds like there is a fan fit for a Hummer inside the damn thing keeping it cool. All I need it for is to write on, so hopefully the Corel WordPerfect 8 program will do.

I hope you feel smarter and are a better person for reading this.

Bamboozled

2006-04-23T20:47:00.000-07:00

"Do you like pain?"

I ignored it the first time. I ignored it the second time someone asked me, and then I tried to ignore it the third time a different person asked me if I like pain. I don't know. I hope not. But do I?

Have you ever found yourself repeatedly doing something that causes you pain? Physical pain, emotional pain, or a combination of the two?

Last summer I was at the beach with some good friends playing volleyball. After it ended I picked up a bamboo stick and playfully hit a couple of my friends on the back. No matter how lightly you swing the stick, it immediately causes a welt. Your skin puffs up in the shape of the bamboo stick, turns white, and then red outlines the raised skin. Well, someone got me back. And I liked it. I liked the rush, the actual pain wasn't a load of fun, it was bearable, but it wasn't great. The anticipation of the sting, the thrill of the bamboo crashing against your bare back -- that's what got me, that's what I liked. Over and over I arched my back, tensed my muscles, clenched my fists, and then let someone whip me with the bamboo. I would scream, run around in pain, laugh, and then do it again. It was weird. I admit.

When I was asked if liked pain the third time, like the first and second time, it was not in relation to the bamboo, or anything similar to the bamboo...I wish it was, it's a lot easier to recover from. It was emotional pain. So much emotional pain that it causes physical pain. Sometimes I find myself lying face down on the floor because the weight of the emotional pain becomes too much for me to physically handle. Of course, since I have gone through some counseling, and since I take a magic pill every morning, the frequency of my rendezvous with the floor have lessened dramatically over the last few months.

In church today the sermon was about Peter and the apostles in the boat. You know, the one where Jesus walks on water. I will write more about that specifically at a later time, after I have time to think about it more, but I find myself in a similar situation. They had no good options. Nothing they could do looked good to them. They were in a boat in the middle of the sea, they probably couldn't swim in the stormy waves without drowning, and they didn't want to stay in the boat because it might capsize, thus they would have to swim, and inevitably drown...so there they were. Stuck.

Have you ever been in a situation where every choice you have looks terrible? Sometimes I wish I could just sleep, never wake up, and never have to make a decision. When you know it's going to hurt no matter what you do, it makes you not want to do anything. But you have to. What does this have to do with me liking pain?

Because what if I put myself in this situation? I don't know if I did. But the more and more people keep asking me this question in regards to girls, life, money, what have you, it scares me to think that I do like pain. That I do like this suffering in some weird way. And that maybe all of this really isn't worth it. I believe that it is, that's why I keep trying, that's why I keep failing, because I believe that it's worth it. No one else does. Not even the one who I believe is worth it.

But just like with the bamboo, I keep showing my bare skin, clenching my fist, and tightening my muscles, waiting for the next blow. It's already broken me, I am already on the floor, my back full of scars, but yet I still ask for more. The rush is gone, the anticipation no more, now all that's left is the pain...but I am still breathing, and the oxygen allows my brain to dream and my heart to believe...and here I am on the floor with no good options in the near future, only pain, and I am the one holding the bamboo stick ready to whip it against my flesh one more time.

the agreement.

2006-04-20T20:49:00.000-07:00

I have decided that I am going to move to LA. I always knew I would end up there, ever since I told my sister after she picked me up at the LAX when I was in eighth grade that, "I would never live in LA." I am not moving now. Not tomorrow, or the day after, maybe not even next year, but I will end up there. And I will become a writer. I have decided that this is what I want to do. I took a step of faith a while back and came out to DC. Blind faith, misguided faith, true faith, young faith? I don't know. But I know that I want to write. And I wouldn't have been able to figure it out if I wasn't here.

I met with an interesting person a couple days ago, it was one of those things that you just know was supposed to happen, not because anything will come of the meeting, but because of the encouragement and the insight that was shared and gained. We talked about writing, about art, about what it means to be an artist -- the struggle, the freedom, the joy -- and the courage that it takes.

He said that someone had told him that what it takes to be a good artist is the ability to truly bare your soul to the world. Without reservation. The ability to reach deep within yourself and pull out the darkest, deepest pain, brightest joy, and show it to the world so that others may feel it and know it...maybe be effected by it. At least that's my interpretation of what the man told him.

Kurt Vonegut said that writing is like, "shaking hands with God." Vonegut didn't even believe in God, persay. He said it's like making an agreement with God to say what comes, what he feels, what he knows should be said, no matter what the response might be. As if God, or god, is using your hand, giving you the words, and you are just an instrument. An agreement...to be exposed. And when you do that, that's when the best stuff comes. The stuff that others will want to read, will want to see, the stuff that others can feel, can be...

I know I came out here for law school, and maybe for some other things as well, but this is what I am going to be doing until I leave. Learning how to bare my soul, how to write, how to say what I want to say, and feel whatever it is I am feeling, so that other's may be free to feel as well.

Why are we afraid to show our true selves? To expose what hurts us, what gives us joy, what makes us need to see a counselor, or take funny colored pills? This is who I am. Hurt, broken, hairy, creative, romantic, honest, disgusting, and beautiful all at the same time. I decided to join the ranks of the starving artists a couple weeks ago, I am learning how to starve, how to want, how to need, now I must learn how to bare my soul to the world, and give them nothing more than me. Because that's all I can give you, that's all you can ask for, and that's all this agreement with God asks for: me.

games we play

2006-04-20T11:20:00.000-07:00

Sometimes people like to play games with your heart, with your feelings, with your life. Maybe it makes them happy to see you squirm, to see you shift uneasily, scream, break things -- maybe in some way it brings a perverse kind of joy to their lives. A joy that they take from you, that comes directly from your inner-being, as if they put their hand down your throat and ripped it right out of your lungs. They stand there holding it in their hands, raise it towards the sky, your joy drips through their fingers onto the pavement below, then they swallow it whole...it's as if they don't even chew, they just swallow. It must give them some kind of satisfaction...hold them over for a little while, for a few days maybe, a month? But then it goes away, and they feel nothing in the bottom of their stomach, they are empty, lonely, hungry, and come looking for you again. The smiles and words and touches come back to you, cultivating the joy, watering it, feeding it, then once it grows big enough, they seduce you into opening your mouth and they jam their fist down your throat again, their hand frantically searching for it as you try and hide it behind your spleen, behind your heart...but they find it. They squeeze it with their hand and feel how big it is, unsatisfied they want more, they need more...so they put their slimy fingers around your heart and rip it from it's valves and veins and pull it out of your mouth. You can only watch, you can only feel, but you can't say anything. They swallow it. Smile. And walk away. You know they will be back. As you are lying on the floor, hollow chest against the hollow wood, you wonder what they will take next, and why you will let them...

Patience

2006-04-18T11:23:00.000-07:00

I want to write about patience, about how I read a devotional this morning that talked about God shaping us like Ore, and how we have to be patient while we are being shaped, formed, worked, because in the end, we will become exactly what God intended us to be.

But I can't. I don't know how to write about being patient. Moreover, I don't know how to pray for patience -- it seems...it doesn't make sense to me I guess. Pray for patience, wait for patience, be patient about having patience?

Oswald Chambers said that when God gives people visions, not in some mystical way, but just a vision of what you could be doing in the future, he then puts you through a process of getting you ready for that vision. "Whirls you about on his potter's wheel" until we are molded and formed to the exact shape we need to be in order to live out that vision. Vision can be substituted here with a lot of words I suppose: calling, passion, blah...

I guess I can't write about being patient because I don't want to be patient. Because when I read that pithy little devotional this morning, it spoke directly to my soul. I had a vision, heck I have many visions, I just had a dream last night that a friend in high school was riding in my car and jumped out the sun roof (which I don't have) on the free way and almost died -- but I had a vision when I came out here, and I had a vision when I sat in Brent's house almost two years ago after coming back from New Orleans and we talked till five in the morning about our visions; and I had more visions when me and Sam sat on the park bench in Santa Barbara and watched the fog roll in off the water and I told him I had to leave, and that I was leaving in three days, and I did. And in thirty days I went back.

Patience.

Last night I told Brent to pray for patience. Sometimes I think I know exactly where God is going to have me in the future, and what I will be doing, what we will be doing, and I hate being stuck here in this valley with the glorious mountains behind and in front of me, the mountains in front seem so far away, painfully distant, but if Oswald is right and those visions are not just fanciful dreams, but things that can actually become truth, I know what sits on the other side of the rocky peaks, and I can't wait to feel the sun on my face on the other side...

So I can't write about patience.

I can only pray for it.

Daydreaming at the ER

2006-04-15T12:41:00.000-07:00

My roommate Mark closed the door behind him, he was on his way to a Good Friday service. I told him he didn't need to stick around because I should be ok. Two minutes later I am standing over my bowl of oats and honey that I just warmed up and I get that feeling again. That feeling that I am going to lose every bit of water in my body, it starts pouring out my skin, running down my face, dripping off my nose like Patrick Ewing. My shirt was soaked in seconds, I staggered towards the chair, guided myself to the seat, my eyes started to go fuzzy, the world a little dark, I laid my soaked head down on my clammy arm, the skin of my arm stuck to the table, I drank the water in the cup that was in front of me, life, energy, restoration, it didn't help...

I called my roommate, he didn't go to the Good Friday Service, instead he turned around to come get me. I called 911, asked the lady, between labored breaths, "where...is...the near...est...hospital..." She asked me if I wanted an ambulance, God yes, I told her I couldn't afford it. She transferred me to the nearest ER, they didn't pick up. It rang and rang and rang and rang and rang. I was laying in my bed by this time, I had crawled up the stairs, leaving a trail of sweat like a slug on the dark wood.

Mark found Providence. We went there. I leaned against the wall as the man at Check In told me that "you didn't lose ALL your fluids" when I told him I had. I wanted to punch him, I wanted to tell him that I was dieing, that I have some weird kind of bacteria that has been growing in my belly for the last eight months, and that I didn't need a desk jockey to tell me what didn't happen to me. I showed him my boxers, they were completely soaked. He called me Mr. Thomason and told me to wait in Triage. I hate when people say my last name wrong. Delirium had set in. Everything moved in fantastic ways, peoples voices were muffled. Barbara called me in to her room.

She took my blood pressure, I passed with flying colors, I always do, this is why I don't go to hospitals, because I always pass. She had me stand up, still passed. We joked, she laughed, the blood pressure machine chuckled. I looked at it in disbelief, Barbara didn't notice it. The Desk Jockey came back in the room and asked me where I lived, he asked me how much the house cost, he guessed 975,000 dollars. What a lame guess. The Stethoscope on the wall guessed 450,000 dollars. I agreed with the Stethoscope, then they told me to walk down the dreary white halls to side B. That is where they will give me the throat culture. Goody.

I called my mom, I told her the good news, "Guess what, I am in the ER and I don't have insurance."

"What a relief" she said.

The man next to me laughed at the soap opera that was on the television above us. Then I heard my voice over the PA. They told me to go to the Door. I went to the Door. Nothing happened. I waited, thought about leaving, I will pass this too, I know I will, I always do, they will tell me to go home, rest, take advil, and do nothing.

The door opened and I was led to another room where I waited for the doctor. Mrs. Nishimura came in, she was white, must have married into the ninjas, and she asked me all kinds of questions. I asked her questions too, she went to Georgetown. I told her that was cool. She then left the room and told me she was going to get a throat culture. That is when things started getting weird. The minute she left the Swivel Light swiveled around and shined it's light down my throat. "Nah, you are fine kid."

The Tongue Supressor on the counter stood on it's end and begged to differ. The Knee Hammer wouldn't let him. It was pretty impressive, I started to say something but then the doctor came back in. She swabbed my throat. She stuck her whole fist down my throat to get that little cotton swab back there, so I grabbed her wrist and shoved her hand down her throat, the Knee Hammer leapt in joy, the Paper On The Bed ruffled in delight, I choked her till she died, and all the inanimate objects sprang to life, the BioHazard Waste Bucket, the Stethoscope, the suppressor, the Chair, the Cupboards, they all joined in glorious sing-song:

"Ding dong the witch is dead, the wicked witch is dead!"

The doctor said sorry, that she had to get it all the way back there, and then she stuck it in this little vile. The Rapid Strep Detector.

Everyone in the room went silent, the leaned in towards the vile, waiting, watching, hoping that the color wouldn't turn red. That it would stay it's puky blue color. She came back in the room, looked at it, and proclaimed me clean. Besides a virus. Which I can't do anything about except take advil and rest and do nothing. Awesome.

Everyone erupted in joy, they picked me up on their backs and led me out the door, down the hallway, triumphantly shouting. I was a mere four inches off the ground, the Knee Hammer held my head, the Paper On The Bed my legs, the Stethoscope one of my arms, we gilded down the drab halls, letting everyone know that I was clean, that I only had a Virus, and that they can't do anything for me!

Glass Doors

2006-04-12T19:40:00.000-07:00

What did they do in the olden days, you know before they had all the fancy things we have today, like a toaster, a microwave, penicillin, medicine? Did a sore throat kill a person? I wonder if they tried blood letting for a sore throat? I bet they only tried it once if they did:

Patient: yeah doc, my throat kinda hurts, what do you recommend?

Doc: Hmm...well, we could try blood-letting, that seems to work.

Patient: Sounds good.

Doc: Where exactly does it hurt?

The Patient points to the spot on his throat that hurts.

Patient: Right about there.

Doc: Ok, lean your head back, wow, that's quite an Adams apple, ok...I am going to put the knife here...and....wallah!

The Doc cuts the Patient across the throat. Patient doesn't look too good.

Doc: Oh shit.

Anyway, I am sick. And I am hoping that I can just tough it out, you know, the whole boot straps thing, they used to be able to do it, and I have done it for the last two years, so lets give it the ol' college try one more time. Really I just don't have insurance still. Or else I would already be at the doctor's office with my pants down, which would be kind of awkward when the doctor walks in and I have my pants down standing in the middle of the room.

Today at work a customer walked into the glass door. It was hilarious. Of course, I didn't laugh until he was gone, but I wish I could have had a camera. He was looking to the right, thinking there wasn't a door there, and then BAM! he walked straight into it. He didn't even look around to acknowledge his folly. I told Sheldon about it, he is a waiter that grew up in South Carolina on a historical slave plantation. He is one of the many interesting people that I work with, he is the first gay black man that I have met from South Carolina. When I asked him today if he ever thought about moving back he said, "When I want to die."

Man, that last paragraph had nothing to do with the first couple. So much so that I can't even think of a way to tie them together. So I will let them stand, alone, unfettered, free. I am supposed to write an article for Westmont about my "multicultural experience" at school. I have had tens time more of a multi-cultural experience in the last ten days at Bus Boys and Poets than the whole four years at Westmont. Maybe I will make an analogy about the man who was walking out of my restaurant into the real world and ran into a glass door, and how when we graduate from Westmont a lot of us will be running into many multi-cultural glass doors as we enter the "real world." Maybe I will also throw in something about how I didn't get picked to be on the Real World, but during the interview thing at Sharkeez in Santa Barbara the two Westmont Girls who happened to be sitting at my interview table threw out the Virgin Card in the first three words of their introduction, "I'm a virgin."

I think I am slightly delirious, I have a little fever, my forehead is hot, my cheeks are hot, and for some reason I am wearing a sweatshirt...but let me leave you with this:

Blind Man's Bluff

2006-04-10T21:56:00.000-07:00

Have you ever been afraid to read the Bible? Have you ever looked at it and sighed because it seems so impenetrable, like no matter how much of it you read, how much of it you study, you will never be able to get a grasp on...how to live your life better? How to "be more like Christ?"

It has been a long time since I read the Bible regularly. To be honest, I have only read a few chapters here and there since I broke down earlier this year. This past week I tried to start again, I opened up to 1st Corinthians and began to read. I don't have the faintest idea what Paul was saying in the first couple chapters, it was like trying to read something in the middle of a moshpit at a Metallica concert. My mind was everywhere, I could barely focus on the words that my eyes were moving over. I read the first two chapters because I didn't think the first one had anything for me, then the second, then the third, and on and on...

The Bible is a huge book. Sixty-six books within the book. My dad says that God's will is in that book. Other's say that part of his will is in there, the other part is out there somewhere in the cosmos, waiting for you to wait on God to hear him tell you something, like how he spoke to Paul, or Joshua, or Moses. Sometimes I think it is pretty vain for people to think that God would actually speak to us, all of us, give all of us some special mission to do like Paul and Joshua. Out of all the great leaders in the Bible how many people in the Bible were just following, not being spoken too? And now all of God's hard work is in the Bible, his words are written down for us to see, for us to hear, for us to understand his will. And yet, I still want him to speak to me like he did to Paul. To blind me on the way to Bus Boys and Poets and tell me what my mission is, or what it was, maybe I have missed the boat, and he can tell me how to catch it.

Pages and pages and pages of words, passed down from a gazillion years ago, sitting by my bed, holding the key. Right? The key to what? Some say it's like a user's guide to life. Other's like a map to the treasure, yet other's like a blueprint to the universe, but to me, when I look at the Bible, sometimes it just looks like a book. A book with two beginnings, and an ending that makes Alfred Hitchcock look sane.

And then there is this guy who walks onto the scene after years of being talked about and lives the perfect life, and then he dies, and then other talk about how to live like him, and why, and what will happen if we do or don't, and there isn't anything like Mad Libs where I can write in my own verbs or adjectives, or anything like Choose Your Own Adventure where I get to decide what happens next, no, it just says this is what happened, and this is what's going to happen, and gives us two main principles to live by, and says Good Luck, see you on the other side. At least, that's how it feels sometimes.

But then I hear my pastor preach about one measly little chapter in Joshua, the first one, and he somehow makes me believe that even though God isn't going to come down and blind me and everyone else who is wondering about God, he still has a plan for us, in some form, some way, he still has a plan for us; and in fact, his plan might not be as confusing as we seem to want it to be, or try and make it to be, or loathe it to be, but instead, his plan is for us to place one foot after another and trust him that when we do there will be something holding us up, even though it might feel shaky, it might feel like it is crumbling, it might feel like nothing is even there, he wants and hopes and prays that we will keep taking steps towards him, with him, and for him.

At night when I get ready for bed I think about reading my Bible, the Bible, and it usually seems pointless. So I turn the light out and try to ignore the feeling that I really should be reading the Bible, that I really am in no place where I, of all people, should be turning my cheek to the Bible, to God's revealed will, assuming there is an unrevealing will, a will that could I pray for, wait for, and not take a step for. Regardless of all the confusion, the ambiguity, the irony, the trap doors and false walls, I have decided that the only way to figure any of it out is to begin to take steps, knowing that God will provide something for my foot to land on...because the Bible tells me so.

Fear and Blindness in Romona Falls

2006-04-09T14:59:00.000-07:00

black black black black black.......

black?

I pulled my hand out from underneath my sleeping bag and held it up in front of my face. Two inches from my eyes. Black. I could feel my fingers moving, my wrist rotating left and right, but there was nothing. Black. Pitch Black Night.

I remember lying in the two-man tent with my dad that night, surprised that my eyes were open. I thought they were closed, but then I blinked. At Romona Falls there are no street lights, no porta-pottys, nothing but trees, dirt, and waterfalls. We set our tent up on our little plot of land that dad had rented for the weekend. The Chevy wagon was parked on the thin cement strip that intruded on the wilderness. Our little fire had long died out, but I couldn't sleep because dad snored. And this was a two-man tent. A-man-and-a-boy tent I guess. I was all of twenty-five pounds or so, or whatever it was that I weighed in middle school, and we could barely fit in the dome we had formed using our own four hands and the rods they gave us that were so hard to slide through the little sleeves on the outside of the tent.

I remember lying there afraid that I had actually gone blind. I blinked and blinked and blinked, I looked frantically over at my snoring dad but I couldn't see him, I looked towards the sky, but there nothing, there was no light in the world, everything had gone black. Black. A deep, dark, penetrating black. I hit my face with my hand just to make sure my hand was still there, and it was, it thudded against my forehead. Dad kept snoring. I kept worrying that I had lost my sight. Maybe I was dreaming, I thought. I snapped my fingers next to where I last knew my ears to be, I heard it, an explosion of skin and sound rattled my ear drums. I definitely wasn't dreaming. If I were I was awake now, and I could still only see black. Complete Black.

I remember another time feeling like that. Sophomore year of college I was sleeping in my bunk and shot up because of a bad dream. I hit my head so hard on the ceiling above me that I actually gave myself a mild concussion. I looked to my right at a stranger who was sleeping in a bed on the other side of the room, a room? a cowskin rug? I rubbed the top of my head, I could feel my heart beating on the crown of my skull. I looked around again, and realized that I had no idea where I was, or who I was. I couldn't remember my name. I was terrified. I climbed down, went to the door, opened it slowly, light blinded me from the hallway, a door to my left had two names on it: Damon and Ty. I didn't know who they were. The hallway was too scary to walk down, and the stranger in my room sat up and said, "Kevin? Are you alright?"

I jumped. I didn't look at him, but I told him I was ok and walked back to my bed and climbed up. I almost cried I was so scared. I thought that if I went to sleep I might not ever wake up again. I thought that if I couldn't remember who I was I might never again be able to. I thought...I thought...I thought about God. And I prayed. Lord, help me. My head was pounding. I closed my eyes, fought back tears, and fell asleep. Black. Pure Black.

When I woke up the next morning my dad had already made breakfast. After we ate he led me on a hike up to Romona Falls and back. We took pictures, we ate lunch, and we walked back. It was beautiful. I hadn't lost my sight, and after hitting my head I actually did wake up the next morning, but I will never forget the feeling...

Sometimes when I am sitting at my new house, or lying in my new bed, or working at my new job, or walking around my new city with my new friends from my new church, I feel like I should put my hand in front of my face and move it around to see if I am awake. This all must be a dream, I must have never woken up, I must have never regained my sight, but I did wake up, I can see, and I am not dreaming. People still call me Kevin, and I still wake up every morning. Only now, instead of my dad leading me on a hike to a waterfall, it's as if God is leading me blind and sometimes semi-conscious, through a dark forest with all new kinds of trees and flowers and smiles and tears, to a waterfall, a beautiful waterfall, where we sit down, have lunch, take pictures, and walk back to our tent.

Though there are times that are completely dark, seemingly devoid of anything good or meaningful, times when I can forget who or why I am, God is still there, waiting outside the tent for me to wakeup, with a bowl of Kix and some brown bread, ready to lead me to Romona Falls one more time.

Art

2006-04-07T15:36:00.000-07:00

Food Stamps. Ross. Hunger. Food Bank. Broken...heart car shoes soul will mirror relationships...Overdraft charges. Late fee charges. Late rent. Late bills. Credit Card Debt. School Debt. More School Debt? No thanks...Living Wage. Starving artist? Art? What is art? Is this art? Is this struggle, art? This life, these words, these sentences that form the picture into the world of...my days and nights lying awake hoping the phone will vibrate. Is that art? Maybe postmodern art? Can it be watched, can it be seen, can it be observed from afar, read about, thought about? My bed lies on the ground, on a box spring, a broken window above me, the shades not fully drawn down because the chord snapped and that's where they will stay. Blotches of black on the wall above, something used to be there, now it is erased forever, the owner of the words gone, his ring lost, I threw it away, is that art? Is that a story? Self-deprecation for art. Self-denial, or self-absorbed? I have a monitor for a computer that sits on my desk. The chord falls from the back of the monitor down to the floor, lifeless, hopeless. Free. It doesn't have to do anything all day, not on or off, it just sits there because it's mate is yet to show up. I have prayed but it hasn't materialized yet, is that art? My monitor alone on my desk with my pills? Every morning I take one, a gulp of water, a swallow, pretty soon I won't even need water, it will be natural, it will go down like a...a...an icecube. Smooth, without thought, without reservation, without memory. Every morning I stand by my monitor and swallow a pill. Every morning I remember where I have come, where I have been, who and what brought me here, why, the damage, the growth, the future, the past, all wrapped up in this little blue and white pill, coated in what seems like cellophane. How long does that take to digest? Gum takes seven years they say. Cellophane could last a life time. When I graduated, when I left Santa Barbara, when I left Portland, I could not have imagined this is where I would be. Standing by my monitor, swallowing my pills, praying for furniture, praying for grace, praying for mercy, understanding, wisdom, praying for the government...so that they will electronically send my tax refund to my bank, must not have had to go far, because it got here today, this art will go on, this life I hope will turn out something like something that someone would want to buy. That's weird. Who can I sell myself too? The highest bidder? The lowest perhaps? Maybe I will sit outside at a garage sale, paint a poster that says, "Kevin...art for sale. OBO." On my stool in front of someone's dilapidated garage people will ask me what I am selling, I will smile and shrug my shoulders, hold out my hands so that they can see how long my life-line is on my palm, tell them I am a virgo but that I don't believe in any of that, and then ask them if this is art? The poster will be red and white. I will wear blue. The garage will be green. Is that art? Food stamps, food banks, broken dreams and broken cars, my tire still has three nails in it, I fixed the one that had only one. When I turn my car I slide, is that art? Self-Indulgence or Self-massacation? My hands don't twitch anymore, only after I play basketball, then my pill reminds my body that my pill is in my body and my body doesn't respond to well to all that extra adrenaline running through it from the pill that keeps me Up, because when I am hungry after basketball my body shakes, and then I remember the monitor on the desk next to the pills next to my bed under the erase marks next to the window with the cracks and the broken shades, and my phone that will never vibrate the way I want it to when I want it to with the words I want it to say that is lying next to the bible on the ground that I have read twice since the fall and now I am scared to do it so I pray for Grace and Mercy when my body shakes. And I smile. I smile because I am happy, amongst all of this God has smiled on me, amongst everything I have just spewed all over this page, God has smiled on me -- I saw it for a split second last Sunday, it was sunny, everything didn't go right, but I saw him smile, I felt him smile, and that was good enough for me. Art is what you make of it. Starving artists, I have always frowned upon, starving artists, I accidentally have become. I joined the army, I joined the ranks, against my will, or maybe exactly with my will, I have stepped in line, and I brought my monitor with me. Sometimes during the morning sun I can see God's smile light up the black world of the monitor, and I swallow my pill and smile back. This time with water, next time without.

E. All of the Above

2006-04-02T17:22:00.000-07:00

The test taker sits down, opens the test, grabs the pencil, and reads the first question...there are five choices, five decisions, five opportunities, all have something good to say, all intrigue the test taker, make the test taker pause and think contemplatively on each possibility, each choice possibly even brings a little joy into the test takers life, after reading the first four the test taker gets to the last choice:

E. All of the above.

The eyes of the test taker read over the four choices above the E. All great choices, the test taker would like to have them all, so the test taker places the tip of the #2 pencil on the circle that corresponds with the E and fills it in completely, perfectly, delicately, then moves on to the next question.

The E watches as the test taker moves on to the next question, satisfied, fulfilled, and tries to be happy for the test taker, tries to be happy for itself. Why is the E so sad you say? The E knows that it has been chosen, it knows that the in some way the test taker chose the E, but in reality, the E is only useful in the test taker's eyes for all that the E is not.

For a split second the E is overjoyed that it is being picked, that is being filled in, but once the pencil is gone, once it cannot feel the touch of the led on its surface, the E realizes that although E is a perfectly good answer, in some ways the best, it was not chosen for being an E, but for what E represents. The others above, A, B, C, and D, all look down at E and snicker, they thank E sarcastically for helping them out, for allowing them to actually be chosen, for paving the way, for providing the assist, C says. Because of E, A B C and D have a chance to be chosen by the test taker. Without E, A B C and D wouldn't ever see the smile on the test takers face as the test taker reads over their offerings. Shouldn't E be happy about that? Is E selfish?

Look at it from the E's perspective: E has everything A B C and D have. E knows that by itself it could be enough, could fulfill the test taker, but E is only one. As good as E might be, as attractive as the letter E is, E is not four. The more the better. Why choose E, when you can have E in essence in all of the above. E is great in theory, but E is only one. The test taker will always choose all of the above if it is an option. And in this test, all of the above is always an option.