and all that it implies' Journal

4:48pm: unearthing dust bunnies
Mother is cleaning house in the way of purging clutter. Mostly clutter that can be traced back to me, because I attract kitsch like pink flamingos on a suburban lawn. It is odd to see old toys among other things that have been stored away and long forgotten. Somewhere in a closet there is a barely worn pair of white vinyl roller skates with hot pink wheels. I managed to purchase the nearly extinct item in the then overwhelming frenzy for rollerblades. I imagine they still fit, I should go find them.

4:37pm: polar bear swim
I am currently knee deep in a plethora of pending personal projects that probably will never see the light of day. I have the tendency feel inclined to immediately complete every idea that should ever manifest. Unfortunately my multitasking abilities are most developed in the realm of thinking. So I will think of at least five different things at once, and start developing preliminary plans for each one. And this is how most of my lofty projects remain, as a series of actions that were never executed.

I abandoned the idea of holiday votive candle making, and might resign it to a very small scale experimental test for future reference. At least I will know that it can be done, and how much resources and effort it might require. I have moved on to 'holiday-friendly-generic-winter-seasonal' cards, which are not quite cards in the papercraft sense. Tonight will involve supply acquisition. And if I can make a single prototype model not only will it be a miracle, I will post a scan of it and see if anyone would like one. I have some of your addresses, but not filed in a single place. I would rather start a lj address list in this way.

7:55pm: a call for help
If you happen to have Windows 98 as an operating system, please leave a comment and/or email me (with an 'obvious' subject heading).

Your cooperation may prevent another nervous breakdown. Only a month after my pc died, my laptop may be resigned to the same fate.

7:33pm: demarcation
Newly twenty one, and entirely sober.

Tell me, what is wrong with this picture ?

5:36pm: a cold winter
I want to wish all of the December babies a happy birthday. Amidst the holiday frenzy I have a difficult time in celebrating my own, let alone remembering the birthdays of all the other lovely Sagittarians. My sympathies are with you in being cheated out of presents because of the fasting approaching Christmas.

10:41pm: false lines
"I thought you didn't smoke."
"I don't. Not really. Sometimes."
"You're always smoking around me."
"I usually do when I'm nervous. And you just happen to make me nervous."

7:11am: concordance
There is something about the sound of a cello, the emotion it resonates. Resembling the masculine hum of an improvised lullaby. Other instruments have immediate sonic effects, but not quite the same personal response. The banjo evokes the visual of weighted air brushing against plant stalks in an open field. Amber waves of grain.

4:25pm: upon a pyre
There was once a dream for revolution. The bohemian guru shouted a rebel cry, and the flame was extinguished soon after. A firecracker dampened by circumstance, only the insatiable need to blaze a trail. When primary purpose has been defeated, how does one diverge from this learned way and reestablish ? Questioning context, as if time and place were capable of peaceful coexistence.

A personality defined by the qualities of fire and air evokes the image of a conflagration becoming its own wild entity. Stoking the fire, provoking the live wire. Inviting combustion for the sake of spontaneity.

11:02pm: scratching vinyl
A surreal moment in the backseat of the car, applying cosmetics in near darkness with shifting hues from roadside lights. A round Indian mirror nestled in the palm of my hand reflecting light already reflected, holiday winter ethereal. Father's experimental new age afro-cuban-electronic-french jazz forming bass imprints on beta brain waves. Some sonic influence from the streets of Calcutta, rickshaw. Sensory deprivation and invasion.

And I baked a chocolate cake from scratch that crumbled upon cutting impact. At least it was edible according to family members who dared to consume it. Shocking evidence, I can indeed follow a recipe accurately.

3:18am: less is more
I am slowly making progress in the previously failed experiment of self control.

[In Manhattan an individual can easily feel alone in the suffocating crowds. Walk the pavement, carrying your burdens as baggage.]

2:27am: blustery
There are persistent gusts that shake the exterior of the house and every substantial piece of furniture within. If it were not for the extreme cold, I would venture up a hill and proceed to fly a kite. The string would probably snap within minutes, but it is a novel notion nonetheless.
Most the trees are steadfast and holding their now battered leaves. There was one tree that was not so fortunate, and was split nearly in half at the base of the trunk. I hope that there is some foliage to be salvaged come tomorrow morning. I would like to continue last year's hindered effort to collect autumn leaves.

1:48pm: triple a
In truth, I do not know why I feel this way. It is not a sadness, but a void that aches to be filled. It is a vehicle which has embarked on a grand adventure, but stalls in the middle of the desert at sunset before the taunting bright lights of Las Vegas. Life has been set in neutral after various attempts in starting a wheezing engine. The grind of pistons and turbines, then a peculiar silence that mutes every conceivable sound within miles.

8:00pm: payback
I have an emotional investment in technology, assuming that a desktop pc will last an approximated decade of use. Well, that was the granddaddy of all misconceptions. I was wrong, very.

The first pc I owned was an IBM that never saw the light of day that became known as the internet. That cubic contraption did nearly last a decade. It worked perfectly fine before retirement, but it was not as practical in functionality because the windows operating system was beyond outdated. The second pc that recently resurfaced from a temporary coma has been approaching a similar fate. Minuscule hard drive space along with an ancient windows platform pegs my pc of almost five years as archaic.

I am still slightly bitter regarding the entire pc failure fiasco, although I should consider myself fortunate for not having anything happen of this magnitude until now. If I am essentially starting over, I might as well have a clean slate with a new computer. The tentative purchase will hopefully occur tomorrow, or at least within the next week. I am trying to determine a way of buying an advertised bundle package without the monitor for a lower price. Is that sort of request even feasible ?

12:25am: pinstripe
I am in a New York state of mind so to speak. But in my interpretation of experience, the city exists as an idealized bohemian mirage. The inaccessible, the brass ring just out of reach, in a land of vulgar desire issuing contemporary standards for the mundane.

I am delving into aesthetics because most creatures function on this superficial level of sight. It is a matter of adjusting perception to the fetish savvy public realm. The worship of a name and an image, and the entire lifestyle promoted with barren assurance of potential.

8:41pm: reciprocal
Well, the computer did not make it through. All the drives had to be reformatted, so essentially it is returning home with amnesia.

I am going to have a nervous breakdown approximately five seconds from now.

1:50am: medic
My computer is currently in a coma. Please commence informal vigils for a full recovery.

8:32pm: a journey of a thousand steps

6:49pm: blue lines
I am a sucker for notebooks and writing implements. A high kitsch factor is also appreciated. Oh boy, have I hit the motherload.

I have an entire storage box filled with empty notebooks. I never had the heart to write in any of them because my penmanship is horrible. Scraps of paper litter my desk in abundant piles, and my computer desktop has notebook files with random notes that are eventually stashed into a proprietary folder. A new system of scribing has been long overdue.

8:09pm: house of cards
I am in complete desperation for clarity. I imagined that I would know by now. 'Doing as you are told' is no longer a valid option.

I still do not know what I desire, or even what I deserve. Or deserve to desire.

To look at the self with layers stripped and bare boned to realize that there is no core. The body is hollow. To those that require something defined in order to understand or accept will argue that even the void can be considered as something. God, the soul, the spirit, the universe expanded. But we are all of these things already.

I begin to construct some reason about what she had said. 'We are a pile of leaves.' And at the time I wanted to be the sparkling facets of a diamond.

9:03pm: borough
Leaving lipstick kisses on the rim of a coffee cup, and receiving a tongue lashing from scalding hot liquid. This routine of what remains to be seen. We expect something more than a name and number scrawled on the back of a makeshift business card. Buy some bait, while selling the soul. A cosmopolitan way of life with a drink to match.

8:35pm: nothing to see here
My computer went through a phase of exhausting the last of its nine lives, so I made a desperate quick fix in the form of windows upgrading. The tail end of the installation froze, but everything appears to have finalized properly. Then again I am technology impaired, and my computer could spontaneously combust by the end of the week. At the moment everything feels off, the aggravating subtleties will take some getting used to. And internet page loading is slow as molasses. Maybe I made things worse. Probably.

The only remotely productive thing I have done is make homemade salsa. And then quesadillas with the salsa. A black bean soup involving salsa is also planned for the near future.

12:02am: fortune cookie logic: continuity is overrated
I have been taken apart and stitched back up again. A girl who was a weathered storm, but wished more than anything to be light.

I do not know what I like, but I am sure of what I do not like. It is impossible to seek out a niche when you are open to most things. And have irresolute prudent reactions to others. Yes, yes, yes, no !

We have the tendency to repeat ourselves. These unique assembled catch phrases, a language acquired and accumulated through experience. Labels in which we inadvertently describe ourselves to others. A caricature of language. Lather, rinse, repeat.

7:11am: portrait: (in progress)
A street with an ordinary name ends (or begins) with a rather steep hill. For years, this hill has been a marker for going to work and then coming home at the end of the day. The descent foreshadows that the rest of the day will be all downhill, and the stalled ascent is a reminder that things weren't really that bad. At the bottom of the hill is a house with overgrown shrubbery and a meticulously neat lawn spotted with young fruit trees. When returning home you notice that the attic lights are always on, casting a faint glow behind drawn shades. This has also become a marker, a lighthouse beacon. A light you imagined to be kept by a welcomed resident ghost. And so days, and weeks, and months go by. A cautious descent down the hill in the morning and passing by the specter house at night.

There is a fortunate Friday in which you escape work early and look forward to the commute home before dark. It is winter and the sun is setting around the time for lunch. You make your way through the familiar highways and streets, but notice something is off. Something is different, and you can not gauge what it is exactly. Straining visual clarity a few blocks ahead to see a large something occupying the length of the front yard of the house at the bottom of the hill. You pass by the house to see that it is a tarp of some sort with a person crouched down beside a corner of it. A sudden impulse of curiosity has you turning the corner, rounding the block, and parking on the opposite side of the street.

You approach the fence of the house at the bottom of the hill to see the person stand up and walk around the perimeter of the tarp. She appears to be to be young and in deep concentration. There is a blue gingham apron tied around her neck and waist, the pockets are filled with brushes and spray bottles. She is wearing a brown t-shirt with the word 'sinner' in a pale blue emblazoned across the back, and faded jeans with splatters of paint around the bottom. A mound of unruly hair is piled on her head, a pair of thick rimmed glasses perched on a pronounced nose. Her feet are bare.

11:30pm: (a)wake
A name that resonates like a summer downpour. It comes from the back of the throat and rolls right off the tongue, like dissolving pearls in wine. There is food and drink soon after death because of the need to fill the space which had been emptied. Those hollow sounds, and echoes that ricochet. A sonic grounding. Phobia of the dark exists because the silence is foreign, and one is left to occupy his own mind without distraction. Questions without answers. But I ventured down that darkened stretch of corridor regardless, and placed a pair of silver coins over her eyes.

9:28pm: weekend recap
Friday:
There were several large groups of pigeons clustered around the tops of commercial buildings. I imagine they were congregating for some reason, although I am not sure what that reason may have been. I have yet to see a pigeon in a tree though.
Coming home, there was a bonafide pimp in a lime green ensemble (complete with hat) getting his shoes shined at the train station. I tried very hard not to stare and even harder to refrain myself from pausing to take a picture, there was a partial double take. I never knew that stereotype of character actually existed in real life..

Saturday:
A last minute haircut led to what can be termed as a fem mullet. Business in the front, party in the back. Booyah ! It is darling though, and my hair should curl nicely with all the length gone.
There was a family banquet dinner that evening. Having the adult cousins together is like the children's table at family reunions. They have a peculiar sense of humor. It runs in the family.
I finally experienced the alcohol buzz peers have mentioned after four drinks in the last hour of the evening. Mildly energizing. One aunt wants me to drive, one uncle wants me to drink and enjoy myself, and their son wants me to find a boyfriend. One out of three is perfectly acceptable.
[Name withheld] fell flat on his bum while dancing. It was captured on video tape for posterity. I am sure it will appear frequently during the holidays. Easily succumbing to gravity runs in the family too.