i was sitting inside

at work, at the restaurant, in the back booth. the rain was spitting everywhere and i was eating a pizza and drinking pomegranate juice. my dad was sitting with me talking but he got up and left. i was in the big booth solo.
i looked out the window at the rain rolling down and moving down the posts and leaves and trunks and glass and people. my mind went off into some state where the chains are removed. then i started thinking about how i want to be indoors, relaxing and just watching the rain and thinking and dreaming. how nice that would be.

then i realized: i am indoors, relaxing, just watching the rain and dreaming. and i realized how nice it was.


desire is a strange devil which teases you as it teases you as it satisfies you. sometimes you get tricked and think you don't have what you want or you aren't where you should be or you aren't what you should be...maybe sometimes it isn't a trick.
...it's getting hard to be someone
but i think it all works out but i think it still matters to me,
kind of.

random from a while ago

"Some mon just deal wit information. An some mon, him deal wit the concept of truth. An den some mon deal wit magic. Information flow around ya, an truth flow right at ya. But magic, it flow t'rough ya" - bob marley


There is a space to be safe
a space to be vulnerable
and a space to cause pain
there are many other spaces
but there is also one space where you can enter all the other spaces

There are lyrics to be written,
stories to be written,
and there are your words and your actions
scratches on your skin and wax in your ear

many things exist to watch out for
a full moment - one of complete focus or one of complete surrender
a seeker - when stopping and resting is always temporary

some friends ask, some tell, some laugh, some listen, some look, some flirt, some want, some wonder, some yell, some whine, some push, some pull...some won't, some will

i admire bold people
-------------------
and now it's two months later, i've just read this over, i have nothing to add because it will take away from whatever it was. i can't access it. is what it is.
now i go have my morning tea

something about a swirling moment

There's a bastard in my whatever and a human in my skull. Sometimes i'm poisoning a mixed drink and sometimes i'm gulping water. In various minutes luck twists the knot and i wiggle into a when who wants a why. luck is like a dice tango with whispers and big drums.
can't stand on the hill when the hill is your nose
however rough we may be i see humans with pillows on their palms, boxing their brothers and sisters,
laughing wildly in windy cul-de-sacs and trying to hang on the moon.

in my childhood, once, i felt a sadness with existence and it became a seasonal allergy.
i try to sniff daffodils and get tripped up on daisy chains
keeping kleenex in my pockets
till one day i find a happiness that makes the sadness good
then i'm
(again) a moon, biting into my curiosity with cheshire cat razors
chewing up the tick of a clock
drooling into morning

seriously corny like popcorn and butter.

Leaves and stems and roots and the dirt.

You begin to peer at life through a different scope when you pay heed to roots and dirt. When fall comes and leaves scatter from trees and crunch on sidewalks; i start to think of memories and the strenuous briefness which spins my life prismatic. I get nostalgia like a cat purrs and i always know the taste of existence was on my tongue before birth and before i ate an artichoke. My soul carries a past like a dream when the words don't come. This is a piece of my love.

More love.

For the things and people around me.

The movements in love: akin to a symphony, which carries you through tears into laughter, from a tear into a fullness, from a wash of wonder to a furious, tempest-like stillness, into a thrashing, a drowning and a gasp of breath at the top with the whole world to look at.
Love - the Yes. over and over.

Wickedness and trickery have shot at me and found my flesh. I've taken wounds to be signs of glory and sought greater things in pain than in love. I ran for pain before love, i ran for pain without love.
I attack myself out of fear. I doubt myself out of fear. I throw stones at others and give myself good reasons. I feed myself with all sorts of smoke and crap and i forget about fathomless love.

Unbounded.

I go on about politics and power. But enough. Now I turn an ear and perk up like a jackrabbit, making myself vulnerable and wearing an armor of confidence and humility. I listen now. No games of petty deceit, no time to try on new masks, no time to practice. The territory must be traversed in naked love. I want to go help people. I have love to give, ferociously dwelling in my guts.

It isn't only the celestial explosion and the bursting sunshine; it's also the cryptic caverns and the ink filled abyss. It's everything and everywhere, spreading in all directions, spilling over the edges and soaking up anything. It swallows power, it makes it stronger. Love is like water. Give water to the people. Drink water. Bath in it. Don't waste it. Take it with you everywhere.

I forgot about love. A human is powerful enough to stop love from growing, transforming, from being and becoming. A plant can wither and die. Worms can chew it up. Death waits at my fingertips and this isn't the never-ending story.

Right now it is early morning, 3am and i will sleep soon.
But i'm swimming in this pool of love and i know something.
About this world and the demons and savages, the mountain springs and fresh winds, the systems and the No's, the corporations and greed, the gluttons, the truths that can be spoken, have been spoken, will be spoken, the people that can be forgiven, the wonder that can be coveted, that quickness that can build a fortress, the slowness that can fill an emptiness, and the silences that have something to say...

I AM FREE

the only freedom is in struggle.
i think.
but i don't know.
...something like, if nothing exists, then everything is possible?
but i think education is good. if you educate yourself too.
and grapefruits are among my favorite fruits. i eat them with a knife.
my greatest weaknesses involve over-analyzing things, getting caught up in spirals of doubt and... being impatient.
but i am also strong. this i know.

"what matters most is
how well you
walk through the
fire."

they're everywhere.

don't forget the names of colors.
words are important.
must do more here.

'each to his own tastes, said the maid as she kissed the cow'

sometimes people have to adapt to you.
sometimes your brain isn't the van gogh someone's looking for.

a few things i've forgotten about:
-to think big. certain events bring me down and i act like i'm sprawled out on the floor. get up you piece of shit.
-sacrifice. you're not gonna get anywhere without shedding skin and getting cut up. (and this is where i get frustrated being stagnant. and what causes me stress and paranoia. because now i'm not moving...because i haven't been in such positions of sacrifice. not enough. and i don't know what it means to really put myself out so my aorta's in danger of being severed. and yea, this is a lot of talk...just words...)


and that brings me to my current conception of time. until now my understanding of time has been largely constructed by the education system. now that i am free of it (despite my desire to return (perhaps out of some reaching out for comfort)) and now that i've stretched beyond the time where i would be back in school i feel restless and strange.. I keep thinking that there's something i should be doing, somewhere i should be. Or for the future - somewhere i will be. But the slate is clean. things are clay. i'm a sculptor. but i haven't started my work.
so i sit here at home on the couch after being served dinner. and i think about tomorrow and the day after...and the next 5 months. and the next year. and it's all nothing. but i need to take the advice of the warning sign generator.

...start my sculpting career.

privileged child

The president of Uganda in the 1970s was Idi Amin. ruthless he was. a dictatorial regime he ran.

Like a child he played games and laughed when things were good. when victory was in the air he felt strong and confident. His behavior infected everyone. even a corpse of a human could get sucked up in his jovial demeanor. And then things would get bad and he would turn into a storm, destroying things around him without deliberation. he couldn't trust anyone and so he'd lie or kill or grab at reserves of power which he didn't really have, but used as defenses anyways.
See he could get into your soul because he made you like him, because he made you like yourself. But this was only temporary. For some anyways. Soon you realize that this demon is sucking you dry because he's a child in a world of rules and he doesn't have a parent. a parent like Love or whatever it might be. this is his power and his freedom. it is also his downfall. the courage to have convictions and more importantly, the courage to attack one's convictions. the strength to hesitate, the strength to jump. the strength for discipline and control. of oneself.

Amin was overthrown in 1979 and people paraded the streets in joy. he died in Saudi Arabia fairly recently. He killed about 300,000 Ugandans while in power. he didn't want to be a puppet of the British. He became a puppet of his own impulses.


I'm currently sitting at my home in westlake with mono. i don't know how long i've actually had it, but i have a great deal of time on my hands. luckily i do not have a job. absolutely no obligations. it's strange. the privileged child lying in bed while his mommy brings him hot soup and vitamins. With all this time i'd love to be doing interesting things, reading many books, writing a lot. instead i have only small bursts of energy which i use up quickly either to walk up the stairs after getting a cup of tea or to satisfy my animal side. i don't know how long i will be like this. and i have a great deal of time to analyze boring things like my future. where i will go after san diego, what brazil is saying to me, what notes are playing, who will be around.

i will attempt to write things down. i have many thoughts. getting them out is a problem. perhaps i will start talking more although my tonsils are like two golf balls. something will have to happen. i don't know how long this lasts.

wizard style

this was written a few weeks ago:

with people
you can't trust many things,
so you must have rocks to fall back on.
boulders which don't budge.
so when you question comfort, as if it's some foreign woodpecker digging into your skin, you know there is a point
where
you
know (something).

like flirting with that line where things are a wee bit insane
and you can't tell whether the strangeness is beyond you or within your grasp.
so you lay around or move about, doubting these people around you, and yourself...and sooner or later you can or do decide that whatever you are doing, whatever they think, you are a rock and they can't really push you around and make you feel like a lizard in the winter. some change, some don't. but they can, you later think. and you know you can roll down if they hit you right. or if you get yourself from the right angle.
but this is the thing - you know the things you do. that you adapt when you want, but there are some things you can't wiggle out of. so either the worms around you adapt and stay around or they don't. either way you don't budge.
but you can.
there's that semi-boring but important saying - "if you have a problem and there's something you can do about it, why worry?...if you have a problem and there's nothing you can do about it, why worry?"...
when it gets down to it, at least for the personal arena, what the fuck is there to do?...

jelly roll morton

when he sings it rolls something like a boulder
and even a raindrop slipping down the window in your car when you're riding shotgun and the sky is bubbling with gloom and your head is sideways against the glass, your eyes tilted up and to the right watching the drops wiggle and wash away like tiny worms on speed with reckless determination to get somewhere and keep going.

the piano bounces and pushes, lays back and dances. a lounge, a jumble, a chord, a blues tune.

i think this music is some of the best.
kerouac discovered later in his writing career that he could continue to discover new forms because his heart grew.
jelly plays like jelly and laughs while he sings.
james murphy does this.
mr yorke smiles when he sings bodysnatchers.
the saddest songs are like jelly donuts.
even
some kind of filling.
i don't even really know if i believe this but you can hear the smile on his face when he sings levee man blues, even while the pain creaks from his voice.

you could be in a charlie chaplin video dancing in circles around your boss while he screams at you to get back to work. but you can't do it cus the music's nice and good music doesn't allow you to walk away. good music is honey. it's sticky.

but i guess other music is designed to blow a hole in your brain. like squarepusher.
i still sticks i think.

a song in the works, about freedom and other things.
how none of us be free, all walking around hitting walls, mice in the maze, cheese chasers, dream wasters...living good lives without boundaries in the dream world.
the president brushing his teeth, the president getting a cavity or taking a shit.
freedom, the ruse.

the chase of mystery and miracle. getting sucked up by time in the mad rush and spit out into a puddle of waste.
not sure where to go anymore in this.
machine gun plays and there's a war.

on the walls in berlin it says often "hendrix is god"

response to ray's email

no notes on zarathustra. I sat in class like a mouse and sniffed around. but i can write on him from what i remember. this will be something else, later.

Basically this is how I feel: figure out the books you want to have with you; the books that pull at you now or one’s you see winking at you from a distance. Bring them with you. Bring some clothes and food and the essentials.

You are planning for a few years from now? You need to just go. I know there are issues with career and whatever but nothing will matter when you’re in the woods. i'm not sure plans are a good way to go

Thinking about recording – I would definitely be attached to the idea of recording things (with synths and everything else) – but I think it’s more important to attach yourself to the notion of solitude. Are you embracing solitude when you’re recording things onto an electronic device (things you can use to communicate with people in the future?) time. hmm. Fuck time. Your recordings are going to be used in the future? To communicate with yourself?...in the future? Then you aren’t alone. I don’t even understand solitude. it can't be possible. You need to figure out a new way to remember. Recording is a weird sort of group activity. even if it's just you.
On the other hand there are many aspects of it which seem extremely beneficial and powerful. And probably it would be best to record. But under the banner of solitude I would be more hesitant. I just think it would be better for the world. But I don’t know.
You’re making the calls. Just don’t actually make any calls.

Solitude, I think, is a sort of cleansing, a shedding of skin, a forgetting; but it’s also a taking a bath in remembrance. You can strip yourself of erroneous shit and bask in glorious memories of childhood, where you laughed and cried and screamed and played without inhibition. You get back to those things and you strip yourself of some accumulated layers of dead skin but not all of it. and you should forget a lot of things you learned because your mind begins to fill up with wood and leaves and water and bugs. and probably you get deep inside your head also with the words of others. You can’t escape it all and you’re not alone unless you take only food and things to help you survive. But I don’t know what type of loneliness is desirable. I would just want a guitar. But not really. I’d want a lot of stuff so I could create a lot – recording equipment, etc.

I have to penetrate this more in the next few days. Reading foucault in the park in 20 minutes, been ‘alone’ all day. But with museums and buildings and artists (and thinking about my fascination with cities and their construction (urban planning as a possible course)) and my books and this laptop which I write on from the lobby of a chic hotel called Buddha. When I get deeper I will write more on this.
The most important thing is to be alone.
The most important thing is to be with one other person naked.
The most important thing is a boundary.
And what happens, where you go, when it’s destroyed.

WaSH

Every dog trudging through a puddle in the cold.
every whimper.
every soul.
every finger.
every crunchy auburn leaf in autumn.

...the abyss into which we look, sometimes, if we really try. Or maybe when we're really afraid and we don't want anything but a smoke and a light film to wash ourselves away.

and sometimes we really wash away. and five years ago we thought we would just shut our eyes for a moment while the scary parts stomped by. And sometimes we even think we were awake for the whole thing, cus we want so badly to believe that we can handle this battle and that love and this burden and that lie. Thinking you have courage, strength so you can deal with your small and big fears. And diving in. everybody has their duel for this day and the rest of them.

there are babies in adult suits crying about respect and trust.

and maybe there you/we are-
splashing in puddles of illusion to feel alive and good about the mess of the mind, the darkness of the devil dipping into your depths for ink to draw the pictures you don't want to see.

wash yourself away.
etch-a-sketch the wretchedness.
don't lie about the fact that you live a life.
end up on an island, a farm, a city roof.

i feel happy in this moment.
but if i stayed here i wouldn't make it.

and then they move into your head. and you bounce off the walls

thinking:

becoming a violent wave of passions, slamming against the ocean floor, and spitting up whitewater so it squirms up and drools down like sleepers with their pillows and dreams.

The events of days and the yells of new things, whispering into monday. Ice, in cold water and melting days. torch dreams and the transition of elements as representations of mental states.

At the moment - Thom Yorke's "iluvya" bursting and blabbering in my skull (I'm using good headphones).
sHani asleep in the corner of the room, ben reading about the tijuana border. (and currently my blog underlines names which start with lowercase letters, telling me it's the wrong way to write.
uncalled for backbone from blogger.)


i sit in san diego - a classy place with numb brains skipping around in the sun; a vapid architectural scene with the occasional gem; a flawed entitlement in communities with cardboard cutout avenues and anti-corporate stands which stem from both a sort of nobility and a confusion over what else there is to do (being trapped, being ignorant); and many other things, but really, in the end, The Border.

here, something which explodes from old dirt - a wall - for the first time in history, here, now. A panoptic structure, solid and strong, built from desert storm military materials, dividing one of the richest communities in the world from some of the poorest. A granola skater with dreadlocks and hemp shirts and the farmer's market. and the other side of it. a side which i don't feel i can speak about - distance holding me back.

Once there was just land and open space with natural barriers. then the construction of something. a wall.

militarization projects are under way. the specificity, the new targets, the element of control at the tip of the finger which tips the scale, hits the red button, and smokes cigars over cognac before bed, and then the morning newspaper with silk or velvet pajamas.
Robots with rifles, slaves in the crosshairs. Less thinking leads to more efficiency (surveillance, punishment as well); the simplification of ideas and methods of communication; feeding seeds of desires to human beings; playing their xylophone souls to the tune of fear and patriotism.. So, the necessity of introducing Complexity as a bomb. to blow a hole in the brain of A Consumer.

The image of bricks in a wall and the process. one. brick. at a. time.
no bricks though.

but the explosion and the scattering of pieces. Pieces of brains. From complexity. and then they will want to put it back together. they will or somebody else will. and then you need to keep exposing it to things which defend against the rebuilding of a play-dough brain and encourage or challenge one to mold a mind of their own. you need to expose power.
because power is efficient when silent and hidden. like a black widow. a web.

no tug-of-war actually ever ends. Power travels odd roads and twists like a mobius strip. it doesn't stop. it feeds itself, eats itself. the Ouroboros. it also grows like an oak up into the future, sinking its roots deeper into the past.
acorns are your moments of liberation.
but they become oak trees again. and you struggle again.

today i'm an acorn, tomorrow i'm a bat under the sun.
it's good to be in a body and to trudge through the swamps of san diego and the thoughts which sink in.

and also to float through those other thoughts - a bamboo canoe, a pirogue, lightly piercing the surface.


-----=======++++++++++++++++================1
the realization that you shouldn't ask a friend to build your home.


sound, like other things, is an environment to be traversed in different bodies, mental states, clothes. the contours must be caressed or punched through. and the openings must be torn open and ripped to shreds sometimes.
then there is new territory. a topography for some journeyers and a good trip.
and when you walk around you leave a trail of acorns. and other beautiful, venusflytrapesquethings. like all beauty, it can eat you up on the right day, with a rain drop or a sandstorm.

for somebody who wants to explore there are chemicals and strange forms to watch for. a lifestyle you build which involves consumption of products, entertainment, ideas, loves, et ceteras and et ceteras. a consuming mind which can eat itself in the madness of solitude.
There are sony commercials with colorful, dazzling bouncy balls and rainbow songs which spill out and disperse down hills like children trying to find imaginary playmates.

and then they move into your head. and you bounce off the walls.

Drag on and keep eating

The word Sundae:
"Perhaps an alteration of Sunday, either because the dish was made with ice cream left over from Sunday and sold cheaply on Monday, or because it was sold only on Sundays, a practice devised (according to some accounts) to circumvent Sunday legislation."

I'm sitting at Peet's Coffee and Tea in La Jolla, which is a part of San Diego, which is a place with a breeze and sunny people and surfers and lots of money being spit around, dangling from people's mouths, more like drool after a deep slumber or the last drops of syrup crawling along the edge of the glass trying to get somewhere. To my left sits an old woman with a broken arm and 5 or 6 teeth. She begins talking with the gentleman behind me, after his wife goes into the store, and asks where he's from.
Iceland.
She gasps - "I don't think I've ever met anybody from Iceland."
She continues speaking but her words drown in her loneliness and everybody turns their heads towards other more and less, more or less, important things.

the attempt to confront and justify the Ouroboros:
In all its sad, infinite dribble there's the monster in time, in memory, in your days, swallowing itself, knowing the insignificance of its own ferocious march away from itself and into itself, for itself and against itself. The pursuit of anything, swallowing up eventually by the pursuit itself. The chase and the kill. The contradiction, the resistance - namely, the power struggle, omnipresent and persistent to the point of destruction. We all go around with interests, desires, whatevers - selfish in some way, a tree bending sideways towards the sun. The friends we keep or don't, the people we spit on - we do things for ourselves, for our happiness or sadness. And we slowly eat away at that ability we possess to live fully - to overflow. Instead we dam up our souls and die of thirst. Either we ignore things when we should act on them or we act on them when they should be ignored. Rather than let things flow, not getting caught on a stone resting at the bottom...
Running the gauntlet and trudging through. i fucking hate getting caught up on small things. The dramatic. And i know i can easily make things insane. Have you heard of the man who had great thoughts and couldn't move?
Some patience and your heart begins to beat slow and then blood flows to your fingertips and you swallow the pit in your throat and take two steps towards the river.
Everybody's different though. I just speak from a little chair in the corner, sometimes lounging behind the gates of hell.

A call to action. That everything one does now will happen ad infinitum; that your laugh and smile right now will never stop; that your cigarette yesterday will be smoked in the same way for all of time (time being that trick that makes us see in straight lines). Now, the call to action, choosing those things which you want to be imprinted on boundlessness.
A brushing aside of the past and the future, understanding that both fall into place when you plunge in to the immediate. They're just jewelery. Carve something into my skin and i slice into time, peeling away the layers. The past and future come together and form a moment. Forces of resistance, pushing against each other, your Self blooming at the meeting point. Explosions from the collision. Now - brings you into the world - with desire, passion, hunger, curiosity, pain, tragedy, love hate, whatever whatever whatevvvver. Enjoying touch, a glass of wine and a good meal, a statue in a garden in Budapest or a quartet playing Vivaldi in the hills of Prague. Not going beyond this. Sucking the marrow outta these things. On bone at a time.
Maybe you should take some buttons of Peyote. the necessity of spiritual experiences in order to get beyond the petty...something which takes you out of your self in order to swim back inside. A transcending which is always a movement into something.

people getting caught up everywhere, trying to help other people in the wrong ways, as they fail to put one hand on their own lives. Most muddling in the affairs of another leads to disaster. None of us understand what we're doing. People just trying to lose their self in some activity which seems Good. An escape, a distraction. ..
Throwing a million dollars at a charity to escape the burden of being an asshole.
the issue, the power and powerlessness of committing to something..
I don't care about being a flake. My privilege is stamped on my hand, but i also play guitar and make my fingers bleed.
Everything will be done under Toad Murphy. I can go into the forest.
my friend just told me he fucked a stripper last night.
I met a guy named Nicholas who told me about his life, taught me how to play guitar and gave me enough bong rips to blow a hole in my brain.
I also spent the night in a new place last night. On a futon.
My roommate has a large dildo in the bathroom which i expect her to move today.

Dragon
Blood.

this damned food

from some "fast food" place.
Someone brought it over here.
A kind gesture...Like people do sometimes. thinking they're helping you. And they're killing you. The fucking blame. From someone lovely and deadly. I'd almost punch her in the face right now, if i saw her. Because it was me who ate one of these sandwiches. Fast Food.
Nearly not......

I hate fast food. I hate the people who eat it and i hate the people who make it.
I hate a lot of things.
A lot of people.
and sometimes i hear bullshit from some savage freedom/love lover about loving people and whatever else they want to shove in my face...And i want to vomit their remains back onto their own souls.


I'm sick of the Disgusting.
and i need to get away, even tho things hold me back.
And i know virtually nothing when i get down to it (again).....
Hendrix doesn't exist.
Thom Yorke doesn't exist.
But i'll see him today.
Fuck you and it all. I can't wait.

A cigar in purgatory

Roll with the punches, occasionally throwing one back

Morning,
Hello. I missed you.
And I dreamt last night of sky voyagers.
Who tear upwards in flashes and spirals, carving holes in the black
and peeling the darkness back for light to burst through.
An explosion in the sky.

Morning,
I think, you are good. For the citrus dance in dew drops, dripping into the earth and shooting upwards
over days, months, years.
You are patient. I can learn from you.

I find myself cooped up inside, with this little machine in my lap, playing me dark songs and lovely melodies to accompany the slow pour of my thoughts out onto the screen. Portishead - Deep Water.

"I'm drifting in deep waters
Alone with my self doubting again
I try not to struggle this time
For I will weather the storm
I gotta remember
Don't fight it
Even if I
don't like it
Somehow turn me around
No matter how far I drift
Deep waters won't scare me tonight"


This was a week of intensity. With people. Again, people. All sorts of people I met, caught up with, or hung around with, in silences and laughs, drugs and smiles, boredom and many cigarettes. The car ride up and down California with Robbie in the front seat, reggae blasting, sporadic conversations with depth and some with relative unimportance. The joints rolled up and down, the cigarettes sparked afterwards, sometimes with no music, just the sound of a drag every once and a while. Me, looking straight ahead, but seeing the smoke spiral and dance upwards to different tunes and different moods.
Pool in the city with Nick - his words - "yea, just do that man." With a real look, having been there, struggled through it.
Silence at nights, deep thought often.
E at Thievery Corporation. The drug hit powerfully and came off slow. Too much to say here. This is for my head only. Basically - I remember beautiful smiles, a "foot massage," and standing up at a certain point right as the music dropped in. And inordinate amounts of water, cigarettes, sprawled on the staircase.

Seeing Spencer. Laughing - the smiling life. Where everything becomes a lovely joke. And it is beautiful. And things were natural and good. People people people.
Riding back fast through dry, dying Salinas. THoughts of "East of Eden."

Beach at night in Santa Barbara after arrival. Finding satellites in the sky, building things, stealing a cart. Hesitant. Robbie and termites. Spliff. Jumping in the water. Very fucking cold.

Too much to say after this. Strange how exhausting it can be to access memories and steal them from your mind to put down in WoRds.

I didn't speak much this past week. I played guitar often. I lost myself and grabbed myself over and over again. Whatever this self is anyways - there is some core to it. I know how "i" "think"...And I can recognize the same patterns - ah yes, I remember that thoughtJourney. I've been there before.
I went up and down in violence and tore open new depths within me.
And felt a fool the whole time. For thinking too much. And for whatever else.
And the Portishead lyrics from thread play: "i'm tired of my head. i'm worn out. I'm always soooooooo unsure."
I need to find this Portishead singer and marry her.

Now I move to San Diego. I don't know how long I will be there. I will work, sweating to make money. I will probably smoke copious amounts of marijuana and write pathetic and fantastic songs daily. I will be at the ocean all the time - the Deep Waters. These waters where, this past week, I found refuge on, under and with the waves. Whatever energy the ocean carries, it would crash into me and through me and wake me up from whatever distant place I had been traversing in my strange mind.

When I was in the airport in Sweden a girl came up to me from the study abroad program , we talked for a bit and she asked if I'd ever read "House of Leaves." I said no. She told me I would like it because "You're pretty weird."

It is strange to think that this is me. And that the opposite is true. And really I just do things and analyze them. Some weird kind of animal.
I think I am happy about this. But sometimes I don't know.
Things can change so quickly. And sometimes they never change.
Same old, same old.
We're always returning to things we love and things we hate. For the comfort, for the pain, for the passion, whatever. I'm always stuck in these same spirals - not circles, I am moving somewhere. I don't know where.
But it's okay.
Two steps in the wrong direction takes me right where I need to be.


Life, I love you, but you're bringing me down.

People

When I spoke this afternoon, in the morning first, with new people, tired and sweating, smoking a cigarette and drinking a cup of coffee. Being jolly and laughing. Making people laugh. And then later in the day, more talking more people more more more.

Things were very good. Many good things came from these new people. New dialogues, new topics, new laughs and looks. New books and films. Older people, different jobs. The stories. New stories.

And I also feel like I might always be on the verge of a mental breakdown. Like the walls can just crumble at any point. And I don't know what would happen. If some white cloud would just melt over my brain and soak me in some mist, some confusion, some trip, beyond 'me'.
Or would it be a great lightness, a splendid feathery touch.
What would become of me.
Where would I go, see, try?

I'm thinking of my brain as this sort of complex structure, with walls and pathways and whatever. And then all the barriers break down. And you're left with the infinite.
To maneuver within this space of emptiness, but in complete chaos. Of desire, loneliness, temptation, passion, total and burning fear. Most of life is a barrage of emotions, symptoms, thoughts, whatever - but they work within these walls. The chaos when there are no barriers...How we create them, reinforce them. It's a process. And being on the Verge - this is where you begin to understand. When you stand at the edge and look over. And then you know. Where you are. And what you can destroy, where you can walk. This is where thinking happens. Where you actually get somewhere. On the edge.

witches

That witch. And her dirty hands. Stole my bread and scurried away like a mouse. But that is the last time. Mark my words. There is no tomorrow, no tonight, no now.
And if for some reason she spills her face into my world, again, then I will give up.

Perhaps it's time to be done with trying.

in the head today

First of all there is pleasure. What gives me pleasure? I do not think of myself as the type that gets joy out of simple things - I like those intense and great pleasures which come and pass. I prefer the extremes, even when they are painful and terrible. This gives me more difficulty, more depression, more love. This I must come to terms with - and perhaps this is the first time I've written this down...
And why I love drugs even when they make me feel like crap. Intensity. And playing songs because I can really sing into them, they're temporary, they leave me but I play them again, differently, with different emotion, passion, pain, whatever. Why I love to scream.

Then there is the curious life - the life which searches for new things, gets bored with comfort and monotony (but perhaps fails to find a way out...); which thus seeks extremes and finds good and bad, ugly and beautiful, without much satisfaction for in-betweens. There is also the aspect of the curious life being one of dreams and imagination. A taste of some sweetness leads one into a spiral of delicious exploration and creation - of that woman, and what she might feel like, taste like, say, do, love...

But then this quickly becomes boring. More of the same. And so I move to something else.

There is certainly an element of loneliness. I think that will never leave. That Devendra Banhart lyric - "i'm gonna die of loneliness...for sure.."
Where I'm never going to connect completely, even with myself. It's all very strange though. When I walk around and realize that all these things that have been built up in my head, all these structures and desires, likes and dislikes...Mostly just conditioned things, many things I haven't questioned. But if I think of Nietzsche, and think of my life and my body as art, then I know that the real task is to construct a self that I think is beautiful, unique, mysterious...whatever I want. There are certain base desires I have (probably) that cant be escaped, but for the most part it is my decision...To find new things, to follow this curiousness. And to keep adding, subtracting, etc.
I can go down to the way that I stand, sit and walk. The way I smoke a cigarette. The way I speak and smile. What I wear or don't wear. Say or don't say. The type of person that I'm attracted to. To find turn myself on to new and strange things. To be strange. To develop my legitimate strangeness.

URGENCY

Absolutely crucial to keep this in mind. What temporal mode I'm operating under in relation to others.

reformatting

I heard myself laugh loud and hard this evening so that the woman/women downstairs might hear me. Or so somebody might hear me. And immediately a line from the film American Gangster hit me - "the loudest man in the room is the weakest man in the room." This is odd because the movie was not so powerful or good or important for me, but obviously the line went into me, waiting...It had an effect on me.
I'm happy about this and the way film/art/whatever can pop into your brain to reformat your drive.

I miss having sex and I want it. Soon. I will start grabbing women off the street and taking them to my place. Not really, but maybe in a dream or something, this would be good.

Evan moves to Costa Rica tomorrow. He's going somewhere. I finish school soon and I must delve crazily into my paper writing. I have many books and too many articles to go through. Mostly on Foucault, but also this Frenchman Pierre Bourdieu who I am excited to get into. He was unhappy in school, as a child, and he tore shit up intellectually in France. I will write about the function of criticism, the role of the intellectual, and the relationship between theory and practice. This will have implications for scientific policy, but it will not be explicit in my paper. I will also write a paper on black masculinity (and perhaps homoeroticism) in African American Art. This will allow me to research hip-hop (in all its forms and aspects) more deeply. I'm getting a book called Total Chaos by Jeff Chang (I think). There are great political implications here. And I also wonder if I might insert the BLack Panthers and Malcolm X into this research. Mostly I'm interested in identity, gender, and image. Lastly, I will write a paper on the way discourse effects political organization. I might write it about language strategies or about Latin America. This is a paper I am not excited about, but I know it will be powerful and important for me in the end. So, I must enter into a form of madness, as Ben described in the email i just read...It will be a new sort. Perhaps I will also start using ritalin and caffeine more liberally, but more intensely, to spice things up. But it is important that I dig in and actually Think. To reach the borders.
I want to know many things. make sure the questions are specific. And get some kind of answers. Or understanding. Or something godamnit. this is the end of this fuckin university career...
for now.

rooftop final smoke

From Sweden - Travel

not sure of the exact date, but it doesn't really matter:
"We must travel extensively in order to appreciate the experience of new social situations and expand the self beyond the inevitable constrictions of being part of one or a few culture(s).

We must move and get away. Everybody that is here for you now will be there forever. But they will become boring if you do not move.


We must uproot our 'self' from our 'self-image' to grow higher and deeper then our shallowly buried and suffocating 'selves.'

Watch your daily ritual. Notice your attachment to ritual, the comfort it brings you is more important to you than your actual happiness. And that despite the happiness you derive from routine, greater freedom and exploding joy will come forth as you break into fresh and cool territory. Do not allow personal ritual to constrict your days.

We do not understand the most important things that happen. There is a moment when you walk that both feet are off the ground. Sometimes, not always. In that moment you are suspended forever and you fly. Life has that in its grasp forever.

Capitalism creates the most disgusting, vicious, savage, selfish and dishonest society possible to this point. Because we think we are free from it or better than it, because we want within it and feel within it, we are under its power. In order to move beyond this problem, which decays and spreads like a virus every time you take a breath, we absolutely must tear down this system and begin to construct a new political thought, a new political imagination. We all have visions of the future. Let us not build them upon the monstrous cesspool burning below us. Let us clean this mess. There is absolutely nothing a government or system can do against an army which demands, without compromise, its complete destruction. It is not a question of whether we can be victorious. It is a question of whether we can organize and mobilize and construct a new vision of the future. And take action in the immediate so that this vision does not drag us along or keep us chasing something we will never get. It must be action that produces that vision, gives birth to it, changes it according to what must be done. Rigid conceptions of the future, of goals that we must achieve are limiting and will be wrong. You don't know shit."

Minor Account

The days past: drinks with Evan, hit on by 35 year old women. Hot but stupid - lots of anticipation for nothing. Realizing that talking to women or really anybody is always the same in different ways. Got my hat back - I can feel the energy in it. When i put it on and walk around.
Kelly came up to me at a bench today when I was on my computer and I just felt really slow and patient, which was good, and made things funny because of the spacial orientation - me sitting, her standing, etc.
The main thing lately has been the idea of struggle - at least the main intellectual thing. Liberation is defined by oppression. This is the key point in nihilistic thought. And the statement that tells us that struggle will never end. Because perspectives are always changing, always different, and because we can never get a true grasp on the present state of things (the sexual)....We are in no position to make universal claims or to take action on issues which aren't local to us, or specific to our the (expert) knowledge we possess. And even here things are shaky. We must be careful. It's more about open up spaces for dialogue to occur; for people to make statements - those who do not currently have that space.

In other news, school is ending, I'm learning to ask questions, I bought a voice recorder and I will soon by a Super 8.
My friends are bothering me in some ways, but they are great.
Ben is distant, we have short conversations usually. To the point, but perhaps too much. It is at once necessary and totally unimportant to speak. Because we both know some things and don't know others and it doesn't seem to matter much. Perhaps nothing needs to be said.
Taymoor told me about black holes and physics and it completely applies to this nihilistic thought - think more about this...
Evan and I will go to San Diego tomorrow. For Sun God. I have never been.
This is some truth.

Must go to the East.
(soon)

the dramatic

...is one who apes a tragedy in simple or complex matters of life. Minor situations or feelings are turned into great situations and powerful feelings with elephantine consequences. Often the Dramatic is calling for attention or help. On the other hand, it may be that those who act in such ways do so because of their social position - that they need to be recognized in a different way, etc. "look at me, for I am this and this!"
Nevertheless, it drives me mad like a cow and I prefer to surround myself with those who are calm and cool, so that the drama souls, however exciting and interesting, need not weigh me down constantly and always.

As you go through life you begin to weed out the people who are a burden to your life. You recognize the qualities that are good for you and the qualities which are taxing.
But this is just a phase, so perhaps I will think differently tomorrow.

Mike's Dream

Mike just called me and told me his dream - very strange.
Travis on stage singing a song with great emotion and tears in his eyes. My on turntables in the background. The lyrics coming from his mouth are: "I love it when you call me Big Papa."

classic.

The Lava Dream

My dream last night:
With someone else, no face perhaps, I do not remember. We are trying to escape. In every direction there is lava, slowly creeping towards us, ready to swallow us up, without care and without a rush. I was terrified thinking that there was no escape. My legs got caught up in the lava, finally, and I was surprised that it didn't hurt. But I knew I was going to die. I thought that it was too soon. I couldn't believe it was actually happening - death. I don't know what I thought about other than that. I just curled up in a ball and let it take me. I guess I gave up. There was nothing I could do.

What is the meaning of this? Impending doom? Am I giving up, is lava moving towards me, am i surrounded by Death, is death coming for me, will I wake up like or let go and fall into the big sleep.....?

One thing is certain: I must allow this dream to shape a new perspective on existing - what it means to be alive and what I should care about, appreciate, spend time with, etc.

This day

is strange. I have an iPod shuffle which I am putting music on. So now, once again, I will be one of those people walking around absorbed in my own music as I watch the rest of the world. And I'm excited. My work for school, my paper, I cannot concentrate on. But I'm also doing very little besides. This has been the problem for days now: to fill the hour. For some reason the time stretches and folds over me, giving me a weighty sort of feeling and I find myself washing away and getting lost in the blur. Other than this I can say that I feel pretty good. In terms of communication I've been getting things across with a fair amount of success. Or at least I feel good about my communication lately. Occasionally I will feel bouts of emptiness or sadness. And sometimes I will attempt to run from them. This, I think, is no good. All moods should be embraced in some fashion. Whether through music (playing, singing, writing) or through some other activity. Now it is time for me to get to my work. Though this impending graduation or the desire for summer and music and work makes me lazy and uninterested in all of my educational endeavors. I guess I'm in a music phase now. Where I can only think of music, feel it, play it, draw it, write it.
I think I will be getting a piano soon. I want to move away. And then travel extensively after a year or so. I also want a woman to love.
So much to do and so much fuckin time to do it.

hat me/not me cig beer

death

and one die i will die.
but before that, perhaps, my parents will die.
and i will do something casual and normal, a memory coming to me, or just a thought of either of them. how they were alive. a life. I used to know them and love them, and still do.
and the memory. and the life. and all of it. everywhere.
so fucking sad.
and so fucking beautiful.
im not sure i'll be able to handle it. i'm not sure i can handle it.
like smoke, drifting up into the sky. you can't grab it and hold it. your hand breaks through it. but you love it. and it disappears. and doesn't care about you. at all.

Atmosphere "Scapegoat" lyrics

"It's the caffeine, the nicotine, the miligrams of tar
It's my habitat, it needs to be clean, it's my car
It's the fast talk they use to abuse and feed my brain
It's the cat box it needs to be changed, it's the pain
It's women, it's the plight for power it's government
The way your giving knowledge slow and throwing in subtle hints
It's rubbing it, It's itching it, It's applying cream
It's the foreigners sight seeing with high beams, It's in my
dreams
It's the monsters that I conjure, It's the marijuana
It's emberassment, displacement, It's where I wander
It's my genre, It's Madonna's videos
It's game shows,cheap liquor,blunts, and bumper stickers with
rainbows
It's angels, demons, gods, it's the white devils
It's the monitors, the soundman, it's the f**king mic levels
It's gas fumes, fast food, Tommy Hil, the date rap pill (?)
Columbia House music club, designer drugs and rhyming thugs
It's bloods and crips, five and six,
It's stick up kids, It's christian conservative terrorists, it's
porno
flicks
It's the east coast, no it's the west coast
It's public schools, it's asbestos
It's mentholated, It's techno
It's sleep, life, and death
It's speed, coke, and meth
It's hay fever, pain relievers, oral sex, and smokers breath
It stretches for as far as the eye can see
It's reality, f**k it , it's everything but me
On and on and on and on
The list goes on and on and on and on
It's in the air, in the water, it's in the meat

It's indirect, indiscrete, inconsistent, and incomplete
It's on the street, every city and everywhere you go
In every man it's the insanity, the fantasy, the casualties
It's the health care system, it's welfare victims
It's assault weapons, it's television religion, and it's false
lessons
It's cops, pigs with badges guns and sticks
It's harassment and a complex you carry when you're running shit
It's wondering if you get to eat
It's the winter , the weather
It's herpes, and it's forever
It's the virus that takes the lives of the weak and the strong
It's the drama that keeps on between me and my seed's mom
It's that need to speek long, It's my hunger for attention
It's the wack , who attack songs of redemption
It's prevention, It's the first solution
It's loosing the retribution(?), it's mental pollution, and
public
execution
It's the nails that keep my hands and feet to these boards
It's the part time job that governs what you can afford
It's the fear, It's the fake
It's clear it can make time stop and leave you stranded in the
year of
the
snake
It's the dollar, yen, pound, it's all denomination
It's hourly wages for your professional observations
It's on your face and it's in your eyes
It's everything you be
But it ain't me mother f**ker, it ain't me
On and on and on and on
the list goes on and on and on and on"

-Slug

Adjustments need to be constructed

gym, punching bag, changing outlets.

30 minutes a day using Logic/lyrics, instrumental focus on songs

stencil/carbon--the Norm.

finishing books, researching ---getting started on papers to save time for later. creating space for doing work.

look into bartender license.

CRITICAL RESISTANCE. CONTACT.

the Law stuff.

This the thing: The disconnect between the external and internal. The ways in which we're formed - from TV shows, sports, mathematics (that scientific education). Everything boils down to answers - Right and Wrong. These numbers add up, this makes sense. The story is logical, Dicken's gives us a nice ending. Everything is tied up.
But when we deal with people, relationships, careers; and when we try to balance all these things and we try to be "ourselves" in all these situations, we get Torn Apart.
There is one self - and we try to find that and we never can.
We want to apply our mathematically molded selves to the situations we're in. And it doesn't work. There is no math for being human.
There is no science for being human. The way you react in this situation does not mean you will react a different way in a different situation.
And you can never figure it out because things aren't clear, they are muddled and muddy. And every time we try to break away and Think, we get pulled back in by that damned line, the damned group, and we're trudging through that jungle with weights tied to our torsos ready to snap us back as soon as we let a drop of weakness seep from our heads.
It's all a bloody mess. There is no order save the order we create. Which is routine, simplicity, etc. This is beyond the world, but it is good for ourselves. No. It is In the World and that is good. But we're always beyond it.

Winning and Losing doesn't happen in life like it does in sports. It isn't clear cut like that.
But you quit sports. Now you watch them.
And you watch films and read books. And there are no answers. But you are always looking for them. Like answers the questions in school. Like math.
You don't find them, but you think you do. And you ask questions of people hoping for them to spoon feed you some shit that makes everything fall into place.
The balance is between simplicity and chaos. The more simple, the more chaotic, the more balanced, the more insane.
The madness is a state reached and kept when these two are reconciled in some strange way.

stop:start

Creating Routine is madness. It is the break, the moment when consistency drowns in some past and never returns. A redefinition of certain action.
A climb toward another.
The breath at the top of the hill.
the Cold air.
A morning in the sun.

A walk around this house reveals treasure - foreign elements introduced into a life.
This is what exploration provides. Curiosity has a new nose a day. We're drones until we break with ourselves. Always tearing away to come back to...one's self. The conditioning is constant. Escape allows return, distance allows good vision, good vision leads to madness - all the world is madness, most purely.

Tomorrow a sunny hot day awaits, the streets of LA will burn. I'm going to dig LA and bury it.
The New as the Old New. The same as it ever was.
that is it: Stop Making Sense

Basically it's a question of getting down to some very simple things.
what makes me feel good about life. where i get pleasure.
throwing those in to my day. mixed up, jumbled up.
Not getting caught in vicious and terribly draining, boring, unproductive routines.
making sure things are going good.
and keeping a fire-like core.
but existing like water, fluid, flowing, shapeless, shaping.

The very simple fact that you will not every agree completely with anybody on everything.
That you will hurt people and be hurt.
That you're perspective is in many ways within your grasp.

And the relationship between your body and your mind. Making your body feel good.

The ChiLL.
the melting life.
Towards a new phase, a new turn.
Being conscious of this daily. When i wake up in the morning.

BOLDNESS
“Then indecision brings its own delays,

And days are lost lamenting o'er lost days.

Are you in earnest? Seize this very minute;

What you can do, or dream you can, begin it;

Boldness has genius, power and magic in it.” -Goethe




i was watching myself speak today. in a video. That different perspective on the self. Cus I feel that I constantly watching myself, constantly aware. But the imagine I have of myself in my mind (and this, i must constantly remember) is not always the same as how others see me, or even how i might see myself (in camera, photo, etc).
Ray noticed that I've been anxious. And I need to stop. There is no hurry. But there are things I must do now.
Bold.

Being aware of what is productive and what isn't productive in terms of the way I deal with myself, in terms of being hard on myself, angry at myself, etc.
I can see how my attitude, anger from adolescent years turned inwards, to a reconstruction of myself. This is interesting and perhaps worthy of more writings.

Working on those little things, not trying to express this beautifully, just doing it, the little changes, like productive thinking, productive criticism.
But there's also the element of not giving a fuck. But maybe that's not good.

You, Xandre, you laying there, from that white rich place, with those friends and those thoughts and that body, with that tattoo and the songs you write and the writing you write and the wine you drink and the place you live. You, with that weird worldview and the realizing all the time - that you don't need to care about this and that, that slowing down is necessary to move quickly and effectively. You, hurrying always but needing to learn to chill. Being confident about certain things. You, developing that core where confidence develops. That there are things you can stand and things you can't. Knowing where to draw lines, where they're drawn already and how you fit within and outside of them, etc...
and waking up feeling GooD

My house has cobwebs and some distance from city things. The spiders actually lay their eggs in the corners of the ceiling. There's the feeling of loneliness with the darkness. It's more real, but I've made it my decision to stop it from being completely comfortable. I was never consciously aware of this decision but it was certainly made. I think it's okay. I want to know that I'm leaving soon. Don't get comfortable, we'll be out soon. Making too big a deal of things, comfort comes easy, with ease. ! I get afraid sometimes. Why so far? This quarter I will redefine solitude, friendship and joy. And discipline. For the self. A remolding. In a word: madness.

Meditation: Struggle for momentary escape from chaos. Diving into the trenches. To rest. To come out again fighting. Or prepared.

Media: A study must be done on the development of the media. Of the way in which we communicate information. One can follow a root of political scandals (often enough) in the media enterprise. Towards an understanding of the value of information, how it is transmitted, why, for whom...

The rational reactions of most people within insane systems. In a word: Kafka. Then I must decide how I deal with them.

It's so you see that the struggle is taking place - around you, within you, over you and under you. Not to work within but to work with the struggle. To understand that being free is acting and struggling. But to recognize that a side can reinforce its opponent and keep itself Alive without moving towards something 'better'.

Rousseau said that "Man was born free but he is everywhere in chains". With this he bases an entire social contract which revolutionaries in France carried in their pockets shouting for equality, liberty and brotherhood (forgetting sisterhood). Human was not born free and human was not born in chains. Human was and is born within an environment within which s/he must struggle. Within that struggle lies freedom. Perhaps it can never be attained. Like a moment, which one can never really grasp but believes in nonetheless. Because these moments possibly occur. Can they be held on to? In memory perhaps. But this is by no means a permanent state. I think we should abandon the notion that we are all free and equal. In my view, freedom is in the fight for freedom. (Arendt, Foucault? - I don't know.)

mastur

joint rolling is a subtle form of masturbation.
most things are

psychological landscape and gardening

One can treat the mind as a psychological landscape in which trimming, traversing, replanting, pulling out, killing and planting seeds are necessities. Explore this landscape.

language and action

Learning another language and being aware of its change on your mentality. How it affects your action and your mood. If language defines us then changing the way we use language will change our selves.

i

there is an "i"
inside,
beside, and
alive
in me.

or wait-
in remembering, in memory, in immemorial
there is a me.

in some there is also an i.

sometimes i am everywhere.

on musical taste

There are those who have a taste for music that suddenly develops a taste for what was previously sour and unpleasant. Reasons for this change can be found in the experiences that this individual has when various songs by this new artists (these new artists - can we even call them artists?) play. These experiences, if they are exceedingly pleasant, can carry over into the music, giving one the feeling of that experience upon each listen. And so musical tastes transform.
Whether this is a good thing is hardly the point.
It happens to all of us. One's musical taste changes largely due to experiences occurring at the same time as the music enjoys its moment.