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Below are the 20 most recent journal entries recorded in
daniel's LiveJournal:
| Sunday, March 30th, 2003 | |
| 4:39 pm | war rot the days have gotten shorter and despite the short burst of springtime my body says we're still mired in the long ugly winter. waking up in the early morning i don't find many reasons to get up, but i don't find any reasons to go back to sleep either. so i wipe the sleeplessness out of my eyes and stay sitting on the edge of my grey mattress watching it rain through the crack between wall and curtain. i look at the blank tv screen wondering if anyone is being killed live via sattellite at that moment. i'm not doing anything to protest this absurdity anymore, save one hand-painted sign i propped up in the back window of my car, even before it started i felt like all efforts were useless. but i still have that constant worry in my belly, a sick tremble like too much burnt coffee in my stomach, a growing hatred towards the journalism profession losing all traces of a calling and becoming one more greasy industry and so it goes, one more truncated paragraph but i'll just post this one instead of letting it dissipate... but i gotta go now, the tracking device installed under my skin is emitting some sort of high frequency |
| Monday, March 24th, 2003 | |
| 1:04 pm | there was this bit i meant to put down for you- another flood of disconnected imagery washing away the markings on the milestones. assorted recollections of dalliances with the kingsport downtimers- introduced at the golden rail over a pint of loudmouth malted, "i never had nothing all my days," he said, knocking ashes into his lap unaware i was cataloguing his ejaculations partly for my own amusement and partly for this shared heritage, this tied up recursive pit of inbreeding that causes you to see cousin's eyes in the most unlikely of places. strange things collected in the cracks between the hills, nothing's shocking after a few generations, the hemispheres of the brain unfusing, slowly loosing their tight grip on each other, and like their primitive ancestors the people return to the existence of the internal dialogues with unseen deities, this static-filled chatter from the right brain coming in the form of late-night transmissions, the guilty conscience drilling holes in the arrogant heart of the beast, and as i smeared my ink across the page and looked out across the room i heard their voices echoed by my voice, plaintively whispered like the same old songs, and i sang along, the slurs between lines symbolic of one thing or another- but none of this is open to interpretation, you know- i'm immune. this might have been the point, but it was drowned out by so much pointless howling at the moon, our gross legacy of lost intent, and as i finished my glass i answered his story with another one, both tales of our brothers, the ones that made it out. i spoke my words and we sat in silence staring out at the traffic rushing by outside, and as the silence stretched out it became more and more apparent we had finished it, shown ourselves for all it really was, howling at the moon. last night my body craved real nourishment, something to stick together the creaking bones for awhile, and not wanting to expend my skills on just myself i brought the friendly couple over, spreading my meager bounty around, too much garlic in the sauce but it was still quite alright, and we sat listening to jangly music and glancing at the corners together. but after being left at midnight i again felt the ill ease returning, no void to be filled by heavy food and fellowship, i took out to the streets staring blankly out at my breathing-out vapor as i took one step and then another, found myself two miles from home with a bleeding finger and words in my throat. kept the pace steady and made a loop through the dark neighborhood i was born in, small plain homes, windows boarded up, somewhere a dog panicking at the end of it's leash. a rickety blue house my grandparents lived in in 1964 leaked out country music into the night air and i stood wondering what year it was, remembered faded movie film of my mother and uncle as babies running back and forth down the same sidewalk i stumbled down stopping only to pick up a shiny bit of garbage. i put it in my pocket and brought it to you as this. |
| Monday, March 10th, 2003 | |
| 4:57 pm | found in the forest despite all efforts a stark sunday of cold shivers and broken promises, running away from everyone, hiding in the closest patch of quiet trees i knew of, perched on a fallen tree arching over a rushing creek, pretending to still be an animal, curling against the wet bark when a car drove by on the road that ran alongside the creek only a few yards away. a girl comes up on foot and i can hear her coming from a quarter of a mile away, clumsy footing and ragged breathing, one time softly cursing when she misstepped in the wet undergrowth. when she finally saw me she yelped, took a step backward, and i thought she must be thinking: what kind of person is lurking out in these woods in the waning sunlight? "you blend right in," she said, eyeing me carefully. i looked down at my dirty camouflage jacket, black pants, brown boots, and i did, blended right into the dark wood and dead leaves. she looked at my face and i hoped i didn't look like i'd been crying, screwed my face into a half-smile and silently willed her to go away. instead of moving on or continuing to edge away she came closer, and only then did i feel like an animal, trapped on this log by a nosy human interloper. she came over and sat on the same fallen tree i sat on, near to me, but not too near, and looked at me. my throat spasmed and my eyes kept darting from the white foam of the water to her feet, her hands resting on the fallen tree. "do you know which one of these is still alive?" she asked, and nodded down at the tree we were sitting on and the smaller one resting behind it. "touch them and you can see." i put my hand on the first one and thought i felt nothing... cold damp wood still covered with a thin sheaf of bark, lichened and starting to give a little because it was- dead. i reached down and touched the second one, and immediately knew the difference- the bark was still firmly attached, just as damp and just as lichened, but the wood was not nearly so cold, so empty feeling. i kept my palm on it for a moment and thought i could feel the energies and fluids of the tree coursing through. i looked up at her and she smiled. "this one," i said, "do you feel it?" she smiled and nodded. "this is a nice place," she said, and gave me a strange smile as she slid off the tree onto the ground, and with a slight wave of her right hand she turned and walked off in the direction she had came. i watched her go wishing i had something to call out, wishing i had said something, anything else. i strained to listen to her footsteps until i couldn't hear anything over the rushing of the water under me. |
| Sunday, March 9th, 2003 | |
| 2:16 pm | aroused to no end the fear-me speaker crackles down the street saying "all rise and select your medicines" it's a case of civil disobedience yes m'am, i'll support your life system but you've got to do me your part so help me open the door because what i've got is gold but i just can't sell it no more |
| Tuesday, March 4th, 2003 | |
| 12:05 pm | head in the beehive/honey bees are suicide bombers (1) head's in the beehive, scoping out all stinging situations again, but no takers, here we go on that inevitable rant about the scamphouse in the conduit... spizzy interface, right? right? that's what i kept saying, but no one tends to agree. just laughs in the back and references later to the declining quality of stage show, undue silliness fronting unplanned despair. (2) vibrations in the woods, certain couples hung up on non-materialism, just vices, just scarcely-contained vitriol at each other's selfish desires, it all filters out into the void, slumping shoulders and darting eyes the only signs of disappointment. (3) i'm wearing pajamas today out into the real world, out into open mike night, childlike appearances parodying my twinges of shivery fear, stage fright, trying to mask it all with with costuming. other items on the agenda: a stop by the guidance department to hand in paperwork to sign my soul away for a third-rate education, pumping out my vitamins so i can buy more vitamins in a slow spiral-down cycle, but no sadness, it's not so bad fueling your artistic ambitions with poverty, inspiration in adversity, four pages of semi-literate mush poured out yesterday to the throbbing bass sounds of sam's twitchy fingers, we might be ready for the small time now, rocking the casbah as is our birthright- mine, anyway. i read in a lilting monotone, sneering with emphasis, dramatic pauses making me an arthouse travesty nothing like what i want to be. (4)no answers from the courted courtesans or the press-gangs of teenage ambition, just bulletins on the fading sideshow, the ascended masters of principal diversion, twitching on their instruments needle-sharp singing the same old nonsense stories. keep blanketing kind hearts with vague allusions to sharp emotions and one might hatch an egg, or maybe just crack the shell and let out the emptiness inside. what's the difference? you might ask, but not me, there's a difference in between a cool breeze and stagnant cold, and i know because i've lived in the dank and the rotten. floorboards peeling apart and withering into fleshy strips like writhing maggots, fungus growing inside the walls showing itself in a translucent patina in the evening sun. i've seen it, smelled it, tried to sleep it away, drink it away, fuck it away. now i try writing it away, sheath after sheath of punished electrons holding my innermost thoughts captive. and here because i've got to derail these images and get back to the noise, any noise better than that signal, right? so again, here, the aborted opening remarks, a short service and then on with the show: (5) this is the place of the archbishop, no blessing, just forgiving all the sinning priests, spiritual administration, ecclesiastical masturbation- and so what? it's all an end, all unfocused and out of tune. so here's a prayer: bless the tired old rock and roll truths, fuck the oppression of the establishment, whoever's got the law has got the power, so tear it all down, old men too afraid to die but not afraid to rally the children to go off and fight, before they grow up and find out that there is no freedom in dying for your freedom, there is no master plan, and this spitting in the dark is as close to revolution as you're going to get. we can sneak out at night to revel in our mutant mutiny with a war cry of lethargy, so nothing should keep us from marching in the streets screaming our powerless voices at the world, crawling on our bellies to make a stand. we've got to make our own religions and worship new trinities, keep producing these new broken records, it's the same old song but i just have to sing along. you just have to sing along. |
| Sunday, March 2nd, 2003 | |
| 2:05 pm | my life as a small town overgrown rock kid woke up late yesterday afternoon, went by my mom's work and took her some lunch, then barreled over to kingsport, windows down, laughing manically because i was genuinely happy, warm sun and loud music propelling me down the road. got to o'charley's but james was not yet cut from work, so he set me up at the bar on his tab where i proceeded to drink pleasant amounts of amber bock... a guy named willis told me his life story in scotch-fueled outbursts, and i wrote a bad poem about him while he was in the bathroom. 'I ain't never had nothing,' was what he said, a girl i went to school with almost 10 years ago was staring at me across the bar and i ordered more beer. eventually james was free, we sat for a moment while he unwound, and then we were off to the renaissance center, where i was amazed a little rock show could happen. said hi to all the kids, sat and watched the first apparently unnamed band, then it was time for the jesus on vinyl. i aquiesced to hauling in sam's bass amp, then stood and rambled out at the crowd while they pretended to tune.. the guys were not in top form last night, entertaining but sloppy, full of stops and starts, bj and sam too far apart and careening around. i got up and did my part on 'oh the plastic earth' for the first time, couldn't remember half the words, stole lines from something else and no one noticed. it felt good, i could do more of that for sure. ran off with sam and holly for snacks and a trip to the country, then running back in time to catch brazilia. after everything i felt ready for quiet, so i backed out of the party i wasn't invited to and went instead to the old waffle hoose with miss ariel, where we told each other truths and ate greasy food in tandem. a very good day. got home, put my blankie on my bed, crawled in and went straight to sleep. |
| Thursday, February 27th, 2003 | |
| 9:33 pm | draugr rockin' time (ragnarokkin') (stupid song laden with stupid-ass references) out in the woods, you can feel the lacunar's lament- don't try to deny it, when even the animals turn against you and you find out your home is just a bunch of squares aligned in interlocking grids, it gets old, and there's nowhere to go but underground. down deep to nidavellir, where the drums start to pound you'll jump into your new body kill and eat your old body that's what draugrs do (when it's draugr rockin' time) now there's no match for you borgon viles will make their piles of diamond needles and rock, you'll pay no mind edgeworts will try to edge you off the edge of bifrost but you'll slay them all! (when it's draugr rockin' time) you are hit by a blinding ray! you hear a click! your mind is re-arranged! |
| Tuesday, February 25th, 2003 | |
| 4:15 pm | scrawled words with a speck of blood giving accidental emphasis there's no point in these casual casualties of emotions, the infrequent trampings of the soul under the heavy weight of happiness? there isn't much good in indexing every critical hit to the protective shell? every ancient poet has died a blasphemous death clinging to the stale memories of the passions he burned bright in his youth, refuting his boldly-clutched truths by later years of contentment and malaise. if art is for the young, it will always die quickly and be forgotten, just another fashion plate to be smashed on the scrapheap of history by the deconstructionists. while the art of the old will always be the folly of men trying to escape the natural destruction of all, trying in vain to manifest some part of themselves that will never crumble or decay. the decay of classical thought: so much of what i do myself is deconstruction, i'm just one more part of the problem, everyone trying to murder music and art and all the old gods, only to try to build them back again out of the scattered fragments. always seeking the unspoken words, the unimagined images, the unproduced sounds. broken pieces are not the answer. why is it then i keep finding every crass attempt at totality staggering, hopelessly incomplete, dripping with impetuosity: speed beyond one's capacity. no surprise on a anthropological level, i know, we're all just babies who've learned the handling of tools but not the responsibilities our terrible tools thrust upon us. every time i take a deep breath, my ribcage pops, hurts. every time i think i sigh. how many times have i fallen in love? countless times, thousands of times, ever too many and never enough. how often have i learned how to express, to retain, to nurture? none, none, always spiraling out of control, manic and unadulterated, my mind always jumping from one precious terrible thought to another, always fixating, constantly amazed at the amount of beauty left unanswered, unheralded, alone in the minds of true believers. i ache for them every night, for the best parts of everyone, the parts i long to be, to focus on and be inspired by. but never does it work out, always working away the regret, hiding it away deep inside, trying to forget all the things i lay awake at night professing to be true. what is the fragmented music coursing through me? what gives me the constant feeling of ill ease, the constant searching for pieces of the puzzle? i've never put any sort of words into my spirituality, just emotional conviction, knowing that i felt things separate from physicality and taking those emotions as the only evidence i had to build a personal religion on. if i had to name anything i have ever experienced as holy, it would be the middle of a deep forest perfectly attuned with itself, no sound but whispering of trees and the hum of insect life. so long has the notion of the ideal peaceful grove been a vivid daydream that i can only think this must be the primordial garden that all people have found nurturing and healing throughout the record of man's dreams. how much can i depend on the failing, corrupting resources of man and still be connected to my grove in memory? how far can i break away from other people and still be one of them? i feel forever caught, slowly being torn asunder while streams of metaphysical aesthetic indecisive prattle leak out of me. how long before i'm bled dry by longing and regret? apathy doesn't look good on me, i have to be doing something. is there any art on the path of least resistance? does it all sound like this? i think perhaps i need to stop writing so much and go back to making brightly colored eye candy. it tasted so much better. |
| Monday, February 24th, 2003 | |
| 2:04 pm | so i could sit here and keep posting pages out of my notebook but that's not getting anything done. i'm getting sick and i have to go sell plasma for food money because i just spent my food money on gas so i could go apply at an inventory company that my uncle works for. i wish i had some orange juice. i probably wouldn't feel so blah if i had slept any in the last week... but i had things to do much more enticing than sleep, including visiting the twilight zone with kara and amanda, and hacking away at my huge mountain of dirty laundry in my closet. my new car rocks, though, i thought i'd mention. an '88 oldsmobile 88, which came complete with tinted windows and a modest mouse sticker. i'm such a hypocrite, i hate cars and pollution but it's so fun to cruise down the interstate on a nice day with the windows down and sun ra blaring on NPR. |
| 1:52 pm | weird dogs i'll never forget the day- you were washing trees down by the courthouse, and i came by for moral support, bringing you a brown paper bag full of all your favorite treats to take the sting away when i said, "the supports are failing, it's hopeless at best" because you couldn't stop singing all the answers to the test. but before i got a word out, i saw the reflection in your eyes all these weird dogs came running by around the corner claws scraping on the asphalt, they didn't seem to have eyes just matted hair and teeth and you screamed- fell off your ladder onto a mail truck, only a few feet (so nothing was broken, just knocked out your breath) there was this old man rickshaw driver, clearly out of place smoking newspaper with ink stains on his face and he spasmed right into the path of all those weird dogs... "damndest thing i ever saw" the policeman said right before the dogs overran him and chewed on his head yeah, it got ugly fast, when they turned on us so i pulled you off the truck and we jumped on a bus headed home. later that night, you were all like "turn on the news, see what they say about those weird dogs!" so we watched the whole show, until the station went off the air but they never said a goddamn thing. |
| 1:50 pm | two new songs you can sing to yourself at home janitorial logic stuck in a banjo rut- something's stuck in the secret elevator pieces make the parts make the plan got to feel clean, survive as can survive making the grade in fabrication elimination, instant downgrade in perpetuation it's a commitment, it's time to commit commit commit to janitor logic time! stuck in a banjo rut! we've got to feel clean! got to find the power source! got to! stab out! the molten eye! janitor logic time! janitorial logic, this wisdom replete janitorial logic take it's spaced out charms before it's time time time to retreat to the easy chair krossthreaded (pavement rip off number 47) childhood string theory september third i remember the singing totally fucking off tune we blew past the scenery (one continuous line) because we were the show (but i'm not talking about the line itself) showing off our useless pedigrees proving ourselves through endless purjury concealing the prior mess the summer's jest which had endless scope we took our chances and pissed up a rope with no end pissed up a rope with no end cross-threaded between the words and the sheets cross-threaded you don't know what that means i cross-threaded |
| Wednesday, February 19th, 2003 | |
| 2:42 pm | to get a better hold you've got to loosen your grip i've been meaning to chuck something this way, but nothing quite sticks... i don't like the everydays of my life and i don't want to tell anyone about them, not you or anyone. i now have a mental therapist named sandra who doesn't tell me anything, i'm spending money i don't have to buy a car on friday, my uncle gave me an ancient computer i have spent hours at already typing away on, i marched in a peace rally last week to vent personal anger at the world... but all this is boring, i might as well be talking about the big tv shows i didn't watch or complaining about the people i live with who steal my socks and never wash a goddamn dish. hey, i found another cavity in my mouth last night brushing my teeth, don't you care? augh, i don't mean to sound so bitter, but what's all this about? i'm reading books by herman hesse and thomas pynchon at the same time and they're eroding all sense of what i should write down, what's real and what's ethereal, i want to start making up stories about 14th century coopers who dreamed about making ships but they never had the money and they lived in the mountains in eastern europe anyway, so what was the point? did they really think they were going to make a boat someday? jesus christ, get a grip! so they just kept eating lots of boiled meat and making barrels in their squalid little shop until one day they had a heart attack, ventricle goes pop and it's all over, grandmother stuffed herbs up his nose and they put him in a field and that's that, that's the story. what am i supposed to tell you about that? or should i just keep posting some of those heartfelt rip off pomes i can't stop writing, lyrics to songs i can't play? though in a brief interjection i'll earnestly say my guitar playing is getting much better, the new songs are so much better than the old songs, the new album's gonna kick the old album's ass, i just have to record it, i just need a drum set, i just need. what am i supposed to tell you about needing? i wrote for 2 hours today about a dream i had months ago about a beautiful girl in an empty house far away in the hills.. i got to the end of the dream and i didn't have an ending. i still don't have an ending. i woke up, that's the ending. have you ever read a short story that ends with the sentence "and then i woke up" and then a blank page? no, you haven't, because any good writer knows not to pull shit like that. even bad writers like me know that much. but i keep on with the half-ideas, a thousand half-ideas still don't make one good idea, and samuel beckett is still good for nothing except contradicting every fucking thing he says. augh again! what meaning are you supposed to break out of this? scatter this whole journal on the ground and maybe you'll find some great pattern out of it, they say the fool's card in the tarot is the card of the journey of discovery. how the hell did we get here? i think the inordinate amount of coffee consumed by me today has contributed to the inordinate amount of profanity in this short outburst. i don't apologize. i never get to cuss. meanwhile the guy with tourette's is now always in the library seated over in the far bank of computers going "bitch bitch fuck titty bitch". exactly, sir. |
| Wednesday, February 5th, 2003 | |
| 1:23 pm | dream songs and the loss of fluids mistake being the purchase of small medicinal bottle of cheap vodka, half-consumed in a night as i hammered away at my typewriter long after the ribbon had ceased to make black marks upon paper- i resisted the impulse to repair while impaired (ha! i love me!) took instead to calligraphy pen and found notebook writing long letters to ridgely about other people because they're the most exciting thing i have to talk about... slunk into my room for the last time at 9:53 pm, bearing the last cup of cold cola beverage, my one true vice, accidentally crushed a piece of candy necklace under my boot, apparently escaped from my backpack where the rest of the necklace was found intact, i had eaten all but the green pieces without remembering doing so, and i kept them safe inside until they were grimy with pencil dust, so i hang them on my bedside next to the naked woman nutcracker and plaster skull, both presents from my mother's ugly curio collection... sleep refused to come, i refused medication, afraid of strange reactions with the remains of vodka seeping through my system, took instead to the assaulting soothing sounds of the tropic of nipples... i smear green watercolor on notebook paper while my lips mouth the words with no effort: throat mirror magic show lost in the brain of all grown up the fiery synapses of dome and globe made her bound in metal a wounded pregnancy tested for blessing to soothe the wooden collector of soft toys and other lost joys kings of lower hells mourn now a shortage of qualified virgins and the loss of yet another ice cream season down we will drop with the drop of the rain today: woke up in a stupor, found the bathroom barricaded shut, fell asleep waiting for it to empty... at 10:08 arose again, ate an english muffin, the most detestable of baked goods, and steamed myself alive. called my uncle to find that no one wishes to employ me, informed him of the latest maternal shenanigans, made arrangements to come over and work on the computer he is very generously giving me, if it can be coerced to boot.. left home under pretense of doing laundry, came here, wrote this. |
| Friday, January 31st, 2003 | |
| 10:13 pm | wow! hey, just to ease my own worrisome mind, i wasn't trying to say by statement #10 in my last post that no one likes me and i'm gonna go eat worms- i was just referring to the intentionally rediculous statement #9. i didn't think y'all had gone away. i know i have awesome friends! even though i know i don't always show it. between the swampwaters and postal blowfish, local people and internet people, i have made more amazing friends than i could ever possibly deserve. the number of gifted, intelligent, passionate people i meet in the world is one of the main things that give me any hope. |
| Wednesday, January 29th, 2003 | |
| 7:31 pm | factual statements 1. My mother got out of jail Monday, for those worried/vaguely interested. 2. Everything should be ok. 3. That is a pretty vague "factual statement". 4. There was something else to say initially, but I forgot. 5. I don't want to walk home in the rain. 6. I am going to anyway. 7. And then eat leftover Chinese food. 8. Sentence fragments are nevertheless factual statements. 9. Numbered statements are annoying, imposing a rigid linear hierarchy on language somewhat representative of how rigid hierarchies in scientific thought nullify the possibility of abstract reasoning in understanding operating principles of the universe. 10. No one is reading this any more. |
| 7:17 pm | beating on the hill (green notebook page 15) child i know the dreams that leave your shell shaking come morning the songs that leave the bitter tears thick on your cheek it always goes under when you're trying your hardest just to stay afloat your last chance stopover the last bed to crash in the last loving smash of familiar souls housed together in desperation the game is fixed i know but the only one in town has kicked you out for cheating on the score keep trying even cheaters get forgiven even forgers get their own names back and if you keep beating on the hill you just might get your ghost back ghost is buried on top the hill invisible to shills but just justify she won't deny this emptiness she knows stir the remnants to raise the signal shake the shell and convince the past to raise shake the shell beat the hill make the sell illuminate (don't forget to breathe) |
| Saturday, January 25th, 2003 | |
| 6:46 pm | disregard injury and race madly slept two hours in the motel room floor, woke up still drunk, headed back to johnson city and got there just in time to see my mother being led out of the apartment in handcuffs. i kicked a dent in her boyfriend's car, wrote angry things on his window in permanent marker, and left. slept in ariel's car for a couple more hours, woke up when kara brought me tea and took me out for pizza and then back to johnson city to find out what could be done about bailing mom out. scraped off most of the marker with a razor blade. mom's in jail until monday at least. i'm asleep on the inside. |
| Thursday, January 9th, 2003 | |
| 4:53 pm | i have become a frothing storm of metaphysical poetic garbage. in ten hours writing three different two-page letters in three different tenses, time liquid and formless, my customary intertwined symbols poured out in fragments of memory, vision, fever dream. i choke on snot and my fist hammers the typewriter, once in this manner i accidentally hold down the 'code' key, and discovered how to layer characters; semi-legibly. i began building concentric rings of textual thought, each independently traveling to a final terminus, with it's own character, timeframe, mood, spiraling and zig-zagging around the page to a conclusion that more often than not shocks me with it's cut-to-the-bone analysis of my sickness, my fantasy world of hurts and obsessions i have built up. i worry that my obsessions with duality in works of literature and my own latent brain chemistry unbalances are manifesting, being coaxed by my unwitting artistic exploration. i whisper the name "phaedrus" to myself and gulp room temperature water out of a dirty glass, wipe my chin, continue. romantic and classical, wondering what kind of scanner will be used to acertain the split of my hemispheric thought, will i be aware of the mr. hyde arctor perpetrating great self-culture crimes from within my right brain? or is him speaking right now? and i hammer out another page on the propensity of afternoon sunlight, something in the electromagnetic spectrum that our sixth senses detect, the visitation of spirits, electrical ghost energy? i run out of paper and begin tearing out of graph paper pads, the added horizontal rigidry pleasing my eye, more lines to converge upon and veer out of wildly, more form to disrupt and create new patterns. last night i slumped over on my table, smearing my hand with a left-over daub of cobalt blue in the process, letting out a jagged sigh that threatens to turn into a sob, but my own dead weight stops me and i lay there motionless for a few moments, the only sound the upstairs neighbors stomping around, as if they have tied several small lead weights to their small child to slow it down as it continues it's endless race back and forth the room directly above mine. my wallowing respite over i remove the palette and water from the table and pull out the next project on the assembly line- i pull on a shiny tendon to test the movement of the grasping apparatus and a glued-on wingnut falls to the carpet. muttering an incomplete obscenity i redouble my use of glue, affixing several useless parts to the chassis out of spite, and filling my small cell with toxic fumes. as i set it down in bitter victory i turn and heave open the window to minimize brain damage... the cat detects the rush of cold air and in an instant appears, leaping up onto the table and rubbing his cold wet lips on my chin. i have denied myself medication, and the comforts of being a injured, sickly waste. i move on, forward, alone, stinking, and... well, very afraid. i live on a beggar's budget, allowing myself the sparsest of amenities, saving pennies for a jar of plastic cement to continue building useless oddities. there is salvation here, if not the kind most want or expect. i will still write longing poems of sleeping in beloved nests and the cold sweep of taillights, and i'll still love the frightful, noisy sounds of unchecked emotion, the lifeblood of creation. i still sing songs to the passing traffic and i will still cry tears at night because all of it was real. i will make due with what i find, what is given, what is earned. tonight, i am fixing chicken livers for dinner, with leftover mashed potaters and peas. if'n anyone wants to come, i'm in the first apartment on the left, #47. |
| 4:17 pm | i have become a frothing storm of metaphysical poetic garbage. in ten hours writing three different two-page letters in three different tenses, time liquid and formless, my customary intertwined symbols poured out in fragments of memory, vision, fever dream. i choke on snot and my fist hammers the typewriter, once in this manner i accidentally hold down the 'code' key, and discovered how to layer characters; semi-legibly. i began building concentric rings of textual thought, each independently traveling to a final terminus, with it's own character, timeframe, mood, spiraling and zig-zagging around the page to a conclusion that more often than not shocks me with it's cut-to-the-bone analysis of my sickness, my fantasy world of hurts and obsessions i have built up. i worry that my obsessions with duality in works of literature and my own latent brain chemistry unbalances are manifesting, being coaxed by my unwitting artistic exploration. i whisper the name "phaedrus" to myself and gulp room temperature water out of a dirty glass, wipe my chin, continue. romantic and classical, wondering what kind of scanner will be used to acertain the split of my hemispheric thought, will i be aware of the mr. hyde arctor perpetrating great self-culture crimes from within my right brain? or is him speaking right now? and i hammer out another page on the propensity of afternoon sunlight, something in the electromagnetic spectrum that our sixth senses detect, the visitation of spirits, electrical ghost energy? i run out of paper and begin tearing out of graph paper pads, the added horizontal rigidry pleasing my eye, more lines to converge upon and veer out of wildly, more form to disrupt and create new patterns. last night i slumped over on my table, smearing my hand with a left-over daub of cobalt blue in the process, letting out a jagged sigh that threatens to turn into a sob, but my own dead weight stops me and i lay there motionless for a few moments, the only sound the upstairs neighbors stomping around, as if they have tied several small lead weights to their small child to slow it down as it continues it's endless race back and forth the room directly above mine. my wallowing respite over i remove the palette and water from the table and pull out the next project on the assembly line- i pull on a shiny tendon to test the movement of the grasping apparatus and a glued-on wingnut falls to the carpet. muttering an incomplete obscenity i redouble my use of glue, affixing several useless parts to the chassis out of spite, and filling my small cell with toxic fumes. as i set it down in bitter victory i turn and heave open the window to minimize brain damage... the cat detects the rush of cold air and in an instant appears, leaping up onto the table and rubbing his cold wet lips on my chin. i have denied myself medication, and the comforts of being a injured, sickly waste. i move on, forward, alone, stinking, and... well, very afraid. i live on a beggar's budget, allowing myself the sparsest of amenities, saving pennies for a jar of plastic cement to continue building useless oddities. there is salvation here, if not the kind most want or expect. i will still write longing poems of sleeping in beloved nests and the cold sweep of taillights, and i'll still love the frightful, noisy sounds of unchecked emotion, the lifeblood of creation. i still sing songs to the passing traffic and i will still cry tears at night because all of it was real. i will make due with what i find, what is given, what is earned. tonight, i am fixing chicken livers for dinner, with leftover mashed potaters and peas. if'n anyone wants to come, i'm in the first apartment on the left, #47. |
| Monday, December 30th, 2002 | |
| 11:15 am | a girl a plan a canal firmly blended, nasty and nice when your clothes shot off that night i gave in without a fight i'd already had too many that week unprepared to do battle on so little sleep i don't care about your other little boys and girls snail trail across this town that's your choice and you will can't believe you want this to end so many things seem perfect by your side like exploring haunted houses and laying out at night staring at the branches and the backlit sky such a cold dismissal like letting out the cat and blowing on a thistle you did me a favor by cutting me off i did myself the embarrassment by showing how soft i can be a total cave in a total cave in hopeless romantic meets naked ambition and sparks fly heavy as naked sits within purr means let's purr it was an awful lot of fun and you seemed to concur your curiosity has finally stared me down - calvin johnson |