backpack dreams

Beck's album Sea Change is one album I can come back to consistently. I once read this interview with Wayne Coyne, who toured with Beck, and he tells a story in which Beck was disgusted by Wayne's description of Sea Change as "genius," dismissing the entire thing solely as his "breakup" album.
And that is pretty apparent throughout the entire album, but I guess its purpose to me is different than Beck's intended purpose for most of his music, which is some pretty weird shit, but I like that stuff a lot, too. But anyway, I like this album a lot, it almost makes me want to get my heart broken in the most melodramatic, hurtful, theatrical, mind-warping way possible, just because. Plus, it seems anything would be better than this muddled, teenagerific idiocy that blows around in my head all day.

I'm having more and more problems with myself lately (refer back to "manly wool" for an even vaguer abstraction!).

Another album I'm glad I can always come back to listen to is The Best of Chet Baker Sings. His airy voice perfectly matches his subject matter, which is, of course, love and the like.
I think I envy those who can be so purposefully depressed, because every once in a while I find myself feeling like crap for no good reason.

I think the word "benchmarking" is pretty odd. Also, there are shards of a ceramic jar to the right of my desk. I don't remember breaking it, but it's pretty damn broken. Pretty fucking broken.

Labels: Falling, I wish I was always falling.

I look forward to it, I don't really like the whole Imagix photos thing though. I've never really been too crazy about that. The dancing part is eh, too. But I like how we're going to be on a boat, whoo! Whoo!
We'll probably just go up and down the coast, but I kind of wish the boat would take us deep into the middle of the ocean so it'd just be blackness all around us.

Pretty sure I saw bluebird today, I don't think I've ever seen one so up close before.
I like birds. But I don't think I'd be the kind of person to buy birds as pets, I don't think they'd be much fun, then.

Just had a dream that ants were crawling all over me and no one would help me get them off.

There was also some sort of tour bus waiting for me, and I really needed to get on the bus, but my dad ordered food for me and it was taking a really long time. After the food finally arrived he ended up eating almost all of it, which took even more time. I was very late for the bus.

Both of my grandparents seem so two-dimensional to me, I can't see any depth to their lives. They belong in a home, where their organs can silently wear themselves out and where my aunts and uncles can come to terms with how long their parents have actually been dead.

In a stable of boats I lie still,
From all sleeping children hidden.
The leap of a fish from its shadow
Makes the whole lake instantly tremble.
With my foot on the water, I feel
The moon outside

Take on the utmost of its power.
I rise and go our through the boats.
I set my broad sole upon silver,
On the skin of the sky, on the moonlight,
Stepping outward from earth onto water
In quest of the miracle

This village of children believed
That I could perform as I dived
For one who had sunk from my sight.
I saw his cropped haircut go under.
I leapt, and my steep body flashed
Once, in the sun.

Dark drew all the light from my eyes.
Like a man who explores his death
By the pull of his slow-moving shoulders,
I hung head down in the cold,
Wide-eyed, contained, and alone
Among the weeds,

And my fingertips turned into stone
From clutching immovable blackness.
Time after time I leapt upward
Exploding in breath, and fell back
From the change in the children's faces
At my defeat.

Beneath them I swam to the boathouse
With only my life in my arms
To wait for the lake to shine back
At the risen moon with such power
That my steps on the light of the ripples
Might be sustained.

Beneath me is nothing but brightness
Like the ghost of a snowfield in summer.
As I move toward the center of the lake,
Which is also the center of the moon,
I am thinking of how I may be
The savior of one

Who has already died in my care.
The dark trees fade from around me.
The moon's dust hovers together.
I call softly out, and the child's
Voice answers through blinding water.
Patiently, slowly,

He rises, dilating to break
The surface of stone with his forehead.
He is one I do not remember
Having ever seen in his life.
The ground I stand on is trembling
Upon his smile.

I wash the black mud from my hands.
On a light given off by the grave
I kneel in the quick of the moon
At the heart of a distant forest
And hold in my arms a child
Of water, water, water.

_________________________________________

I bought this somewhat obscure poetry anthology from the swap meet about a year ago. I only really bought it because its now ironic subtitle of "An Anthology of Contemporary American Poetry," since it's like 45 years old, and also because of the cover art.

Lame, right? But now I love it and I can't imagine what it'd be like if I never decided to pick it up.

Labels: "a controversy of poets"

Sometimes I think about all the stupid things I've done and said and thought and felt and it all feels like a million pounds pushing down right onto the top of my head.
The weather is perfect today. So I was biking today and someone yelled the term "shit cloud" at me as they drove past, I'm pretty sure I heard them right.
Shit cloud. I couldn't figure out what it meant.
But now I guess I kind of feel like I have a shit cloud hanging over my head right now.

I finally identified the source of the stench in my room as my trash can, as to what was actually in the trash can, I was a little too scared to check.

I had a really weird dream last night. It involved lots of smiling whales and disappearing dirt from my sunflowers.
I woke up really anxious, I didn't feel the best this morning. I kept rolling around for some reason but then I ended up just laying in bed, watching my room get brighter and brighter. I like having the sun rise in front of my window, it's nice.

There are so many I-don't-knows in my life right now, but maybe I think I should just be more brash and less doubtful of myself. I feel like that'd simplify things, if I'd just pull the manly wool over my eyes and just take bigger more dramatic, alpha male-esque leaps into the world. To puff out my chest, release my pheromones, and take command of the room, that'd be a hoooooooooooooooooooooot.

Labels: wasting time

Labels: middle parts, no more buffalo

Why do we have heads? I think it'd make much more sense if our faces were embedded into our chests and our mouth led directly to our stomach. Or is the brain too cool to hang out with the rest of our organs?

I'm feeling restless and waiting for my grandpa to leave for church.
Apparently my grandma is in the E.R. but no one in my family decided it was important to tell me. I was leaving the house as my uncle was coming in, and I asked him where grandma was. At the hospital!
I don't understand how that happened, I feel very ambivalent about the whole shebang. My grandpa seems pretty unaffected, anyway, I spoke to him yesterday morning after she got admitted the night before and he didn't even mention that she was gone.

My sprouts are getting bigger, I'm starting to feel the need to move them outside.

How long has it been since my dad left for Korea? I have no idea, I can't remember if it's only been one year, or two, or three. I honestly can't remember.

I left my sunflowers on the windowsill this morning so they could get more light, and I come home and they're all leaning away from my room, towards the window.
It's like they want to get out! I feel kind of cruel, cramming 5 plants into one tiny, little pot. I feel like they need to be in some wild pasture somewhere, so their roots can spread deep into the ground and they can be watered by the rain and they don't have to strain for the sun and they don't have to be dependent on silly ole' me.

My sunflowers excite me; while everything else may come tumbling down, these will continue to grow!
I was slightly late to school this morning because I'd already left the house and had to jog/walk back home because I realized I forgot to water the sprouts.
It was worth it; it's nice to have something to care about.

I haven't gone biking in forever, and I think that's what I really need right now. I just need to go biking! I don't know how far I can trust my bike to take me, though, but I have to go biking or I think I'll go crazy. I don't think anything empties my mind any more completely than biking, in a good way, though. Even though sometimes I can think a lot while biking; it's a less concerned, more fleeting, mode of thought, though, which I enjoy. Being able to go biking and being sweaty and physical puts things in a certain perspective, which is definitely what I want right now. I'm so absorbed in the tiniest of details lately, I need to realize how stupid I am.

Many days I wish I could just sink into the ground like quicksand. Everything on the surface feels so cluttered and cramped.

My dreams lately have been getting progressively weirder. I don't understand most of them, but some of them seem so purposefully absurd, I feel obligated to glean some sort of meaning somehow. Does that make sense? Not really.


Sunflowers!

My mom took me and my sister walking through this wealthy, residential area in Long Beach. Naples Island, I think.
They were all on the coastline, and each house had its own little garden in front. Each one was so different from the last, I liked it a lot. I've never been exposed to so many flowers, I don't think. It was fun, I missed my mom. I hadn't seen her ages, it felt.
As we walked, she talked about all the flowers she liked as we passed them, she told us which houses she could see herself living in, and how she'd rearrange each garden a little differently. I remember the sidewalk being really smooth.
Joggers would come and go from both directions. I thought it funny they ran for maintenance while we strolled for leisure.
She likes cacti a lot. I've known this for a while, but only today did I make this selfish connection:
We were talking about how low maintenance cacti are. I can't really describe her inflection very well, but she motioned wildly with her arms how well cacti grow with almost no care at all. She said you could plant a few cacti and go on vacation without a worry; they'd grow with only the tiniest bit of water.
I felt like a cactus, today, as we piled back into the car to be yanked home. I haven't seen much of either of my parents this last year, and I'm bitterly independent. But wait, my grandparents!
Well, my grandparents' well of parenthood is all dried up. The occasional trickle of maternity oozes from my grandma's wrinkles; my grandpa is pretty withdrawn. Only tiny droplets of guidance as I begin my growth into a strong, healthy cactus.
Meanwhile, mammy and pappy rainclouds are both drifting away, in opposite directions. The farther away they get, the more thinned out they become. Soon they'll be gone, from me and from themselves.

The cactus: strong, stupid, and self-righteous is he!


Happy Mother's Day, motherfuckers!

I so badly want to visit here.

My sunflowers have started to sprout, I accidentally pulled one out of the dirt in my excitement. I nudged it back in as carefully as I could. I felt kind of stupid, but I think it'll be fine.
I can't wait for them to get nice and bright and big and yellow. I don't know what kind of sunflowers they are, though, so they might only grow up to a few inches, but that'll be enough for me. I'm excited.

I called mom today and I told her we should meet up for Mother's Day. I think I woke her up, so she sounded really tired, and she said she didn't deserve it and that she was a bad mother. What am I supposed to say to that? Her time is going to expire in a few months anyway, so it doesn't matter, I suppose. I've read about parents getting "Empty Nest Syndrome" once their children go off to college, but that doesn't seem likely for either of my parents. It wouldn't be something so dramatic like that for them since I don't see either of them that much anyway. I think for them, it's probably already been a much longer, more dragged-out experience.

I don't know how I feel about parenthood and childhood and inbetweenhood lately. I saw a really cute child today, sitting alone playing her Nintendo DS. I think seeing her so calmly and confidently alone made me feel very attached to her. That's what childhood should be like. Kids need to be alone sometimes, it's not nice to have parents constantly fawning over you and checking up on you and punishing you and teaching you. I think kids should form clubhouses and explore the woods like the Little Rascals or something. I don't know. I don't think parents are as necessary as people think.
By the way, I think she was only there alone because a relative of her's works there, but still.

I have so much mucus gushing out of my nostrils I don't know how there's any moisture left in my body as of now.
Tissues strewn all about my desk and room, I feel so diseased and wasteful.
At this point, it seems legitimate to think that I might choke on my own mucus during sleep and not wake up.

Oh well, life was good.

Just came out of the shower and remembered that I dreamt about attending a seminar by Joe Biden in a New Orleans airport. I also noticed that if I look into the reflection of a mirror within the reflection of another mirror, I have a perfect view of myself as I shower. Kind of creeped me out considering I've been showering with me in the back corner over there all this time.

A plant growing for no reason but its own. An incomprehensible, mind-blowing combination of chemical reactions and biological doohickeys that ultimately give us a super awesome product.
Funny how humans have evolved to appreciate beauty in things like flowers and animals and mountains and skylines, where's the evolutionary advantage in that?
Really it'd be much more practical if the only things I were attracted to were labia and steak, probably not as fun though.

I biked through the neighborhoods around Oxford and I had this very sudden flashback of when my mom, my sister, and I visited a whole bunch of different houses looking for somewhere to live. We got the realtors' tours and everything for most of them. But, the thing is, we ended up moving into a small 2-bedroom apartment of which we eventually got evicted from anyway because my mom couldn't afford it, so why did we go through the trouble of looking at all those houses if my mom could barely afford an apartment?
It's a connection I never made until today, and I can't stop wondering why my mom took us on all those silly house tours.
Now I'm living with my grandparents in their deceptively cozy-looking house and I only want out! I love this house when no one's in it though, when it's just me and the kitchen and the TV and the cool garage and my quiet, quiet bedroom. That's when I feel most at home here, when I'm alone.

While biking I ran into the same mom, daughter, and doggy trio on three separate occasions between my couple of stops. Seeing them that many times in such a short period and with such awkward eye contact made me wonder how closely tied people's lives are, if there is any sort of cohesion between the billions of people existing on earth, or if we're all just blindly running about flailing our arms wildly, or if we just create our own ties ourselves, just in our minds.

Mrs. Taylor got me a Velvet Underground & Nico CD; I'm very happy.

I was forced to go to church today, balls.
I felt so righteous in the morning taking my sweet time getting ready, packing my Zune with me so I could listen to music during the sermon. You know, just be a BaDaSS d00d and all, because I really didn't want to go to church, I haven't gone in a while. Of course, when I get there, most people are incredibly warm and fuzzy and genuinely happy to see me again which makes me feel like a douchebastard for not wanting to go for so long and kind of just slipping out of that whole church thing.
And then the sermon kind of puts me back on the same track I was when I walked in, thankfully. He wasn't all bad, it wasn't unbearable, it's just that it would have taken nothing short of the big J.C. himself to make me walk out of there satisfied.
Most of the members of my old church are nice enough, which I think bothers me the most out of anything. That I can feel so strongly about something that many who I respect and love feel the completely different about.
I don't know!
But still, even with that in mind, people are stupid. People are dumb and mean and fartheaded and how can something as wonderful and beautiful and perfect as God ever want to even associate with things like us? There has to be some sort of bottleneck effect that occurs if someone like God exists. Right?