Living Blindly

Kibblesen Bits.

2008-06-16T10:38:00.000-05:00

Final lap

2008-06-04T00:28:00.003-05:00

What I thought was going to be the shittier of two final papers is now probably going to be the better of the two.

What I thought was going to be a mediocre paper may turn out to be one of my best.

Virginia Woolf's The Waves as a Guide to Surviving Modernity.

Also, soon to come: Wicked and The Wonderful Wizard of Oz - Deciding on the Merits of Fantasy

in the thick of it / longest post ever

2008-05-28T00:12:00.008-05:00

I'm flying through The Waves by Virginia Woolf in the library. I don't usually study here, but it's going well.

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Now I'm finished. This book, like many, benefits from a single extended reading. On the other hand, taking a long time to read it--that is, in a stop-start fashion--can contribute to the sense that you have read through an entire life. The impressions we have of our own lives begin to mix with those of Woolf's characters, and our capacity to identify with them grows. For once I think that the technique of this novel, rather than my personal tendency to project myself wholeheartedly into the emotions and characters of movies and works of literature, is what makes such identification so viable. I can't explain what that technique is here, because the product of that endeavor would look like a final paper for this class...

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I am looking forward to living in a mode where I can express myself directly, face fears head on, and live in the present. I may be making progress.

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In the new corner of the internet I've built I will turn myself into a subject of observation. With time I may learn to defamiliarize my writing, my music, my interactions with people and the environment. That is, to see it as new and strange. More specifically I will see through an imagined set of foreign eyes unburdened by my own habits of perception and thought. The idea is to see those very habits as an outsider. This is a war on Narcissism.

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Please please please check out a musical act called "The Books." They specialize in aleatoric music: "Aleatoric, indeterminate, or chance art is that which exploits the principle of randomness" (wikipedia). If I had read this before hearing The Books I would have approached their music with expectations and skepticism. Fortunately I only read about it afterward, and thanks to this I am free to express my feeling that The Books, using found audio, cello, acoustic bass and acoustic guitar, inhabit a very important niche in what we consider music today without gratuitously offending the conventions of western music. What I mean is that while there are still time signatures, rhythmic patterns, melodies and harmonies, the use of found audio samples for percussion, melody, and thematic inspiration makes for a revolutionary musical experience.

Music is everywhere. Step outside and listen: animals, people, machines, plants, weather. The Books are keenly aware of the vast soundscape that confronts us every day, so listening to their music is like walking through an alternate universe of sound peppered uncannily with the aura of nostalgia and mystery. As you might suspect, walking outside while listening to this music on some good headphones is exhilarating--most of the time there persists a jarring but fascinating contrast between what you should be hearing and what you are hearing, and for preciously short segments the two worlds actually correspond.

The Books remind me how much our perception depends on the detection and interpretation of sound. I had an idea recently for an art project. Here are the steps:

1. Prepare to spend about twenty minutes recording the sounds of an environment that maintains a relatively consistent level of ambient noise, such as Times Square.
2. Within those twenty minutes arrange for actors to approach the recording device and deliver a casual monologue as if they knew the listener.
3. Find someone who is willing to spend a while in the same crowded place (at approxiately the same time of day) with headphones on and instruct them to go to the spot where the ambient audio was recorded.
4. Once at the location they will put on the headphones and listen to the recording with the actors' monologues.

The result: As the listener accustoms himself to the incongruities and correspondences between what he hears and what he sees, the appearance of voices close to the designated spot will produce an eerie sense of a person's physical presence. It amounts to a kind of "ghost audio tour."

Why I think it will work: In short, sound data is also spatial data about the environment. For example, when someone stands a foot from you and begins to speak, your brain will detect a physical presence that corresponds to the way that the sound data is being perceived; even if your eyes are closed you will probably be able to tell how far away the person is, their stature, and a sense of how they are moving.

I'm not that interested in the paranormal, but I am interested in how our senses interact and confuse each other.

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I don't know what you were referring to exactly, but I want to fast forward, too. I have movies in my head of different parts of this planned vacation. Don't take this for obsession--I play all kinds of movies in my head when I'm in between busythings. But some of the details I've thought about verge on silly. For example, I thought about what we will buy to feed ourselves (besides booze) when we stop at a supermarket on the way there. I have a strange desire to mix hedonism with spiritual balance. We will sip wine from the bottle (to each his or her own bottle), lose articles of clothing because it's already hot in the summer and hotter when you drink (though I'm not excluding the possibility of other motivations), and all the while we will eat luscious vegetarian food. Can you cook that up? I can wash, chop, stir, and lay things out on a plate in a way that pleases refined aesthetic sensibilities.

And I'll climb the hill in my own way. Just wait a while for the right day. And as I rise above the tree lines and the clouds, I look down, hear the sound of the things you said today.

"A Real Update"

2008-05-23T09:43:00.003-05:00

Some people have been lovingly pestering me to post a "real update." As if any update I post could be, or should be, regarded as real.

Seriously, though: for one post I will write as if this were one of those "Welcome to my life!" blogs.

It's the end of 8th week and I'm graduating at the end of 11th week. Count the days, people. I've got senior-itis pretty bad...I waked and baked today--I've never done that before!--and then went to work, which is where I am now.

I have some things to look forward to: 1) Graduation 2) New Apartment 3) Internship (which may turn into a job) 4) Independence 5) A three day sojourn with none other than Miss Madeleine at my family's summer house in Cape Cod. All of those things will happen in the three day span of June 14-June 16 (Bloomsday!). They are all good things, except that some of them seem a little scary when I think about them.

This weekend is the last show of the school year at which my band is playing. On Saturday we get paid $400 to play; on Sunday I'm running and playing at an all-day performance that I organized with nine separate acts. I've had to work with a very prudish person as my co-organizer. I'm not even talking about his sexual behavior. For example, I was brainstorming with my bandmate for a title for the event and we decided it had to be something that could form the acronym "S.H.I.T." In about ten seconds I came up with "Spring Hits In Time." Genius, no? When I told the co-organizer (he was doing the poster) and pointed out the acronym, he got squeamish and nervous about it real fast. As I tried to explain why this kind of obscenity was appropriate to the edginess of rock musicians, I felt the gap between him and the band community staring me in the face. Oh well, he'll learn eventually.

Today I am going to return a book and a movie that I borrowed from the Czech. I will also be telling her that I don't want to be seeing her anymore. I think she understands; if she didn't, she would have called me more in the last three weeks.

I'm in a barrel heading for a waterfall. There's the feeling that nothing that happens now will have any bearing on my life as it exists three weeks from now. This is not as oppressive and dreadful as it feels. It's actually liberating. I'm looking forward to starting afresh in a way. New music projects, new efforts to align myself ethically, new lovers, whatever...it all amounts to waking up from a long dream.

P.S. Sometime soon I will be disappearing into a different corner of the intarnets. Some of you will know where I'm going. Some of you won't.

Advice From a Notable Blogger

2008-05-06T11:32:00.003-05:00

raymi: so whats your story then
me: i'm in my third year at the university of chicago, and I spend more time on my band than I do doing schoolwork
and it's not a stupid band, if my word can be taken for that
we have some payed gigs, but they're not gigs that get us any real recognition
and that doesn't bother me too much
raymi: ahh
what are u called
me: i'm kind of fascinated by the idea of playing small shows for a really long time because it's so much less stressful
Saturday Realism
raymi: hmm
what kinda music
you might need a name change
no offense
me: haha
raymi: thats a bit gay
me: you have no idea how spot-on you are with that comment
raymi: saturday is good realism is a no no
liek totally new agey pass
it's dated
me: can I explain where the name came from
it's retarded
we were high
somebody said "Sunny Day Real Estate"
and I said "what? Saturday Realism"
and someone else said "Band name!"
and I wrote it down
fuck that's lame
you're right
raymi: well its funny that way
but its an inside joke
which is only funny to like 4 people
to the rest of the world it is GAY
me: I don't even like inside jokes
hahaha
you know what though
do you know what reputation my school has?
raymi: even if you were called saturday morning
no what does it have
me: we are notoriously self-referential, obscurity-loving, and dorky
I try to fight this image
obviously with limited sucess
raymi: well you need an image overhaul
me: yeah
the dumbest thing
I'm about to go into marketing
raymi: because that me mentality only works in small cricles
think global
also think less gay
me: you're right
hahaha
you have no idea how right, even
raymi: well im pretty smart i think i have an idea
what do you guys dress like
me: I guess appearing gay in spite of not being gay is not such a good idea in the end
everyone in our band comes from a completely distinct music direction, so we don't look like we play together
the other frontman usually looks pretty grungy
the drummer wears aviators and stylized sweatshirts
raymi: you need to look put together
me: the trumpet player wears a sweater
that's probably true
raymi: you basically have no right to use the word realism in your band name if you arent even functioning on reality
coolwise
me: is it really as important to look cohesive as it is to sound cohesive?
haha
raymi: well thats whats worknig right now
me: you mean in music in general these days
raymi: like when i was in a band with my dad it was obvs that i stood out, young cool girl with old dudes
me: aha
raymi: it would have worked if they had a quirky look
but they didnt they wer stubborn
me: isn't there some charm to that?
oh
raymi: well then the band would be called raymi
u know when an artist stands a lone but they have all these back up musicians
anyway is there a picture of you guys i can see
me: yes, let me look
me: this is a candid photo
of, left to right, frontman who is not me, trumpet player, and drummer
Picture
raymi: oh so u have a chick
thats good
use that
get her to wear whimsical arty dresses
then yer solid
change name
ok i have to talk shit about the movie juno now
me: you have to go you mean
thanks for the advice then
I'll see how it works out
raymi: well im on here still i just ahve to focu on a blog post right now
me: oh, well I look forward to reading it
I should probably listen to the prof anyway

Going Away

2008-04-11T11:39:00.005-05:00

CH and I agreed that it would be a good idea to take the Metra to someplace far up north and spend the day there. The catch: we're not allowed to talk. The only reason we're going together is because she felt that it would be a useful exercise for her as well.

Earlier we had planned to attend a 10-day meditation retreat at the end of the school year, but it turned out that the retreat started two days before I graduate. Perhaps at the end of the summer. [I harbor a hope that through meditation I can learn to feel more.]

It's finally bright and warm outside and so I cook up ideas like this. Spring bubbles the brain and the body.

I was in contact with the Czech just before and at the end of my amphetamine and sleep-deprivation binge last week, and then not again for six days. She seemed annoyed with me last Friday, because I was so gentle a week earlier and where had that gone off to? I called last night to explain that I needed to avoid her when I was being business-like, and that I wasn't trying to break relations. She told me I didn't need to feel any obligation, that we were replaceable parts for each other. It stung me a bit to hear that, but I suppose it has to be admitted.

Caring and Not-Caring

2008-04-09T15:23:00.008-05:00

What would happen if, one day, I started caring? That is to say, what if I were able to tell the difference? I cannot tell the difference because I gain an advantage from flattening the difference.

Not-caring compels one to cruelty at worst and to coldness at best. Cruelty and coldness evoke a typical set of reactions. That reaction is visible in most people and it reflects pain.

I learned early and intuitively that the sight of pain in others caused me pain as well. Wanting to avoid the sensation of pain, I altered my behavior such that it caused others pain as seldom as possible. This alteration included the cultivation of a revulsion to the sight of a person crying (once I caught myself inching my chair back during an emotional moment in a performance of Arthur Miller's The Crucible).

Thus it hurts to care. Not only does it hurt, it makes things complicated. I interact with dozens of people a day. I probably do not care about most of them, and if this were visible to them (for my face is an emotional ticker tape*) they might feel hurt and subsequently refuse to interact with me.

*[Ed.: It turns out that this is probably not the case. It occurred to me recently that though I may wear masks in order that others can see through them, other may not even be looking deeply enough at me to realize there might be a mask, and that in general not everyone has the same relationship to masks of personality as I do.]

It matters to me, on some level, that they feel I care about them and that I know I am on good terms with them. Why must I be on good terms with everyone? "Only out of a compulsion," one person said, and I would have been hurt if she had not been incisively correct. To be on good terms is to be stable. Stability is needed to do all of the many things with which I fill my day (schoolwork, basic bodily needs, drug abuse, band affairs, general social exchanges).

Why do I fill my day so? Not out of ambition (for I couldn't name one if you payed me), but again, out of compulsion or habit. In boarding school and in other places it mattered more to act as if one were driven than to actually be driven.

I'm also told that it can feel good to care, but I don't know much about that.

Into the Memory Box

2008-04-02T02:14:00.002-05:00

During my first year of college I realized that there were always going to be a number of things I would keep with me when moving from place to place. I threw a lot of them away when I moved out of the dorms, but I found a box for the letters and other paper artifacts.

Every few months I would try to find a way to organize those paper artifacts in a way that made sense (cf. the pleasure of arbitrary categorization, 1 post previous). Eventually I gave up, so the last system of classification is still in effect: one category for each girlfriend or close female friend, and one for home and miscellaneous friends, each category held together by a rubber band.

The category for home and friends contains mostly birthday letters from my sister and something an old friend sent to remind me of the absurdity of boarding school life.

The categories devoted to GIRLS WHO HAVE PLAYED AN IMPORTANT PART IN MY LIFE show a wider variety of materials: a thick paper rectangle painted in water color, inscribed with a poem in Spanish; photo collages; an origami paper crane made from a candy wrapper; laminated flowers for bookmarks; notes passed during a political philosophy class; letters I wrote but never sent; used mailing labels; a poorly drawn map of the region of South America called "el cono sur"; snippets of eavesdropped dining-hall conversations...

The paper trail ends around November 2005. I like to look at it because it proves that I existed in relation to other people, that I was beholden to another and in general, to an other. What would I call on to do the same thing now? My facebook page? My blog? My email inbox? In the absence of any other tangible record, the document they present is essentially a really boring porno with occasional editing glitches that reveal brief of scenes of sincerity and happiness from another film. Then the porno resumes.

I am eating my world. At times I am also fucking it with abandon but mostly I am eating it, stuffing chunks down my gullet without looking at them and certainly without tasting them, even taking from the plates of those nearby. I eat and I eat and I never grow fat, but I begin to emit a putrid smell, detectable from miles away. For every chunk I swallow another member of the dining party leaves the table, unable to tolerate the stench any longer. Soon the only diners left are those who can acknowledge the foulness of their own odor, but I'm too busy inhaling cheesecake to notice.

Even when the food is depleted and all the guests are all gone I will stay at the table because I will have forgotten that at one point I had not yet sat down at the table. I will have forgotten the world outside the table and will continue to sit with a smile on my face, breathing in my own noxious fumes.

Really, though--what'll it take?

Analyzing Pleasure

2008-03-09T23:01:00.004-05:00

The four basic pleasures, organized in an efficient and all-encompassing list, stolen from the brain of University of Chicago student Paul Brown.

1) Arbitrary categorization. - This very exercise of categorizing the pleasures is a perfect example. However, it's something we do a lot of the time anyway.

2) Solid-liquid interaction - A broad category that includes food, sex, sports, or drugs, or anything related to physical objects or materials.

3) Correcting somebody when they are wrong - Self-explanatory.

4) "Who's driving the boat?" - A hypothetical situation goes along with this one: so you're on a boat with a bunch of people, enjoying the sun, the pleasant splash of sea foam on your face, and it occurs to you to wonder who is driving the boat. You know you're not driving the boat, and you also don't know of anyone else who could be driving the boat, and this thought process occurs to everyone on the boat (except the person driving the boat) at the same time, causing everyone to exclaim at the same time, "Who's driving the boat?!"

This pleasure breaks down into two parts. The first, the pleasure of paradox, is contained in the fact that everyone has figured that somebody else is driving the boat, thus abdicating personal responsibility. The second pleasure is the pleasure of collectivity, which expresses itself at the moment when everyone exclaims, "Who's driving the boat?!"

Appendix:

5) Creation/Destruction - My friend Christine suggested this one to the creator of the list. This is the pleasure that derives from building a deck of cards and knocking it down, burning something, building sand castles, and the production of art. Mr. Brown argued that this pleasure falls under the category of "Who's driving the boat?!" because it exemplifies a paradox, but her appeal to this decision is still pending further consideration.

Looking Messed Up

2008-03-05T11:32:00.004-06:00

Occasionally I'll run into someone who is more perceptive. Their evaluation of my condition is accordingly more accurate. The last time it happened I was trying to explain why I'm still looking for internships if I'm graduating at the end of the year. I could barely finish the sentence. I told him he hadn't seen me in months. He answered, "Yeah, but you look really messed up." The accuracy of his appraisal gave me a distinct feeling of comfort.

Sometimes it's a bother to be read like a book, and so many people can do it with me. Other times it's a relief to know that some people know what species of monster I'm battling, even if I don't tell them anything about it. It makes my confusion more common, less bizarre, less inviting as an object of obsession.

On Sunday I wrote a very long and wordy email to my father. I had to do it because he had sent several emails my way and their coldness frightened me. I did not want my immaturity to be the cause of family tension. I wrote another long email like this at another crisis point in the past and it garnered the same criticism as the most recent one: as Chekhov wrote, "Conciseness is the sister of talent." My mother quoted that line to me over the phone. I hadn't intended for her to read it.

Later on my grandmother called to say she was glad I had written it. My effort felt cheapened when she called. She means well but the way she makes suggestions sometimes makes me laugh. For example, she frequently offers advice regarding my band. Obviously she doesn't like the music, but her way of expressing this is to recommend that we try playing some old songs that everyone recognizes, or to change our style. She projects her own distaste for our music onto everyone who might ever listen to it.

I have been nostalgic lately for the green herb. It has not always been that way: I have sworn it off several times. Of course, it usually gets replaced by something, like a certain white powder or little yellow pills or capsules filled with bitter orange pellets. After a while with these more colorful friends, I start to miss the simplicity of that original high, the one that spares me the intrusions of disastrously low moods and embarrassing social encounters.

Everything I am studying right now is set to become irrelevant in about 3 months: a ticking time-bomb. Then I say goodbye to academia forever. Some of my class experiences make me suspect that I'll still have questions after I leave here, so I've started considering which professors might be willing to entertain the occasional theoretically-oriented question from that boy who made clear his choice of matter over mind.

A Long, Hard Weekend

2008-02-19T14:26:00.006-06:00

Thursday: Drinking with roommate and his girlfriend and then a trip up north to the Czech Republic for the night.

Friday: Psilocybin mushrooms at 7:18 pm. One of the worst six-hour segments of my life. I'm OK now, but for about 24 hours I was reconstructing my brain and slowly recovering from a pervasive emotional vulnerability. I had already had one good experience exploring the psycholandscapes, but I think I know what went wrong this time. It wasn't the visuals that bothered me or any of the strange physical sensations in particular. It was the fact that I and the people I was with were spending time--in as much as I could remember what that meant--in an utterly meaningless way, and all of the objects around me suffered from the same lack of purpose. What is this lighter in my pocket for? For lighting cigarettes, of course, but what is it really for? If at any time I was not moving my body I became aware of a sensation that my limbs belonged to somebody else. Rather, I could still move them if wanted to, but when I did, it seemed like someone or something else had been the agent. When I closed my eyes and put my hands on my face, I felt like I was seeing the vivid closed-eye visuals through my skull, like an X-ray. Whose hands are these? They're yours, my trip-buddies kept saying. They wouldn't acknowledge the problem. I couldn't understand how they were still able to use language in complicated ways, i.e. puns, plays on words, joking in general. There was plenty of laughing, but it terrified me because it was always about the same damn thing: "...the Huxtables, Bill Cosby, how they have a show because they are funny, because it is a joke, or because it is funny...people in New York...Simon and Garfunkel who sing 'couched in your indifference' while we are always falling off the couch...questions questions everywhere, but not a drop to drink...why would we drink it anyway?!" They played loud music and talked all the time and could have done without me.

Saturday: Lunch with my roommate Anna, still feeling very vulnerable. Met up with my other roommate Marcel and got on the bus for downtown with the aim of buying a suit at H&M. On the bus we met Carmel (an anagram of Marcel) with whom I had the loveliest conversation considering my mental and emotional state. He seemed completely straightforward to me, and that was a great source of comfort. Bought the suit - $250 for jacket and pants, more than I've ever spent on an item of clothing, but damn I looked good. Back at the apartment neighbor Dan offers to smoke while Bird Party practices in my living room. By the time Dan and I are done they sound to me like they've got a real tight groove. JR calls me back and in my excited state I decide it's a good night to go skiing. I meet him at 9 and on the way back from the ATM I mention how the snow wasn't so good last time. This leads to an explanation of Mexican drug-war politics to me, which segues into a story about how his car got dented: some guys ran off with the stuff and the money at a big trade-off and he had to ram their car to stop them. "Did you manage to stop them?" "Oh yeah, we got them for sure!" "So what happened to them?" "Well...you know...our guys took care of them." "Oh." I have never been so sorry I asked.

Around 10pm guests started arriving for Julia's going away party/concert. All the instruments were set up by 10:15. The drummer came. DN called at 10:30 to say that the Super Furry Animals were only going on at 11:00, but they ended up going on at 11:15, so he got to the party at 1:30am. By that time I had skied through an entire half-bag with some help from my friends, so it was a pretty high energy set, me clenching my teeth all along and licking my lips constantly. In bed at 4:30am, just after sending an eager text message to the Czech Republic.

Sunday: Sleepless, cock-eyed with hangover, I stumbled to Valois cafeteria and ate with two former Argonauts. The band got together and left my apartment for the recording studio at 1:30, an hour and a half later than I had hoped. Oh well. We put down a good take of the Instrumental song, with DN summoning the bass gods for a sick-nasty solo towards the end that took a few takes. In the last minutes DN started laying down trumpet harmonies and we could barely stop if not for the 6pm limit set by the guy who owns the studio. While packing up it finally hit me that I had a ton of work to do, and Dad had been calling all afternoon telling me to call this person and that person and to post my resume here and my cover letter there and that I have to do it quick or else I'll regret it. I'm graduating this year now, you see?

I'm falling apart when the Czech picks us all up and drives my band mates to the Damen stop on the Blue line. As we're pulling away she says, "I should put a sticker on my car that says 'Soccer Mom.'" I want to laugh but it's not actually funny for her. We get to her place and I'm already in her arms when Mom calls to say she told Dad to lay off me. I try to tell her why the hell I'm falling apart like this. I tell her about the mushrooms but not about the snow. I tell her about graduation and jobs and an overdose of Nietzsche and misogyny on the home front. We make love and I manage to forget about most of it. She makes me some food but seems really uncomfortable doing it, not because . We lie down in bed to do some work and I realize I'm coming down with a cold. She makes me tea, juice, and dayquil. "Thanks for taking care of me," I say. "Just like your mother would," she says, or something like it, and looks at me with a look I can't quite read.

She does some grading, I do some writing on her laptop, and then I open a porn website I usually visit because she said she wanted to know what it was all about. They didn't have free , easily accessible porn when she was growing up, after all. The videos take forever to load on her laptop but we watch a few and she checks to see which ones are the most effective. After a while she closes the laptop and leans over to kiss me. I jump on her and pull her clothes off and then we do it a way I've done it with others without feeling strange, but this feels strange. It's over in about five minutes and she's lying on her side with her back to me. "There was something strange about that. Was that strange?" "It was ugly." "Yes, it was. I felt like somebody else." "You were somebody else; I think that's why I turned around." I don't ever want to do that or be that again, and I don't think I'll ever visit that website again.

She was timid, maybe a bit sullen in the morning when she made me breakfast. She still asked for kisses every few minutes. We drove to campus almost in silence. I was reading Double Indemnity by James M. Cain and I hit the ending as we approached the familiar gothic spires: a weird, morbid double suicide. I left a Spanish essay on her bed. I hope she doesn't mind bringing it with her tomorrow.

Reversal

2008-02-12T13:30:00.001-06:00

Not too long ago I was complaining of being lonely. I still am, emotionally, I think.

Not too long ago I also mentioned a certain Spanish teacher from last quarter. I sent her an email early Friday afternoon asking her if she had weekend plans. It was worth a shot, I felt, and I had enjoyed hanging out with her in the past even if nothing physical had come of it.

She picked me up on her way out of Hyde Park and we drove through the city engrossed in what was basically small-talk. I felt nervous and I think she probably was, too. We stopped at Dominick's to get wine and then set about making dinner when we arrived at her place.

It's a one-bedroom, second-floor apartment northwest of downtown. The interior is cozy--lots of wooden trim and worn leather furniture. The walls are decked out in various bits and pieces she's picked up in ten years of habitation there: the huge, psychedelically inspired woodcut that her ex made when he was just starting out as an artist--it takes up a whole wall; the square clock on the windowsill illuminated by a magenta faux-neon border; newspaper clippings by the kitchen area; at least one candle on every flat surface; a bull mask, most likely from Spain; a shelf full of books she used for her B.A. and Master's degrees; a stuffed raccoon on her bed, pink sheets and blanket, down pillows with the feathers poking out in a few places.

Chicken, oil, garlic, and peppers on the pan, wine down our gullets. Cooking was a good diversion for both of us, though I wanted to be doing something with my hands. Instead I sat across the marble divider from her with a glass of red trying to be casual. Neither of us had eaten much during the day so the effects of the wine were strong and quick. I can't remember what we were discussing--she mentioned having slept with her students before. Things were moving a little more quickly than I had expected, and I didn't know how to direct the action.

Her friend Veronika came by to eat with us, a Czech blonde also in her late thirties with enough spunk to flip a car. Sensing the atmosphere she had walked into (she offered to leave soon after entering), she was reluctant to say anything about herself, claiming it wasn't important. But I needed her to ease things up and was glad when she engaged the host more directly.

Within an hour everyone got a little more drunk and a little more comfortable. I had checked the hour a few times; it felt good to know it was possible to start one's night at 8 rather than 11. Veronika left at some point. By 11:30 I think we had our clothes off. She was really nervous, more nervous than anyone I had ever seen. She wouldn't let me look at her at first. She said it was a look, and I knew exactly what kind. I told her since I didn't have a mirror I couldn't know what kind of look it was.

She couldn't get over the age difference. I kept trying to explain that I wouldn't have sent her an email that day if it had mattered to me. I guess it was just a matter of time until she got comfortable; all I did was stick to my story.

When that time came, she underwent a transformation. I became a treatment for her, a remedy, an analogous vitamin, trip to the gym, or daily glass of wine (as recommended by Oprah, whose show was just incidentally playing on the TV one day while she was doing work). You can't really take a vitamin five times in a night, though. She said it many times: I was what she needed so badly but didn't quite realize it, and she wanted it to be a regular thing. I couldn't touch her anywhere without her losing her mind completely. On the drive back to Hyde Park almost 24 hours later, she couldn't focus on the road and kept gripping my hand when she wasn't changing gears.

She wants me to come this weekend. Am I going? Probably.

New Diet

2008-02-07T10:59:00.002-06:00

Caffeine, Nicotine, Food, Water, Air, Hallucinogens.

This actually turned into Caffeine, Nicotine, Cocaine, Water, Air, and Fatigue.

Power

2008-02-04T00:57:00.000-06:00

Often I find myself pursuing relationships with people in which there is a implied power dynamic. I'm talking specifically about people who can effect my transcript. Last quarter it was a Spanish teacher with whom I flirted ceaselessly. This quarter it's a Bulgarian TA with whom I've made plans to go clubbing as soon as I turn 21 (it's different, he's male). I don't know if I do it because I happen to get along with those people or because I'm preparing for a situation in which I might have to take advantage of that relationship. On the bright side, I'm encouraged to act in such a way that would prevent me from having to do that, but it's always a possibility.

Out of the Funk

2008-01-16T00:00:00.000-06:00

I'm glad to say I'm out of whatever strange mood had held me captive for almost six days. My faith in my ability to rapidly recuperate from emotional oscillations has been restored. I saw a very strange side of me, of my interactions with people, of the course of my life, of my surroundings...but I don't really regret having to feel so down for the duration of that peep-show.

Today was the first meeting of Work in Progress, a writer's workshop started by a friend in my class in college. It spawned, as I see it, in part out of previous negative experiences with workshops and in part out of a desire to be able to write and talk about writing in a more comfortable, less formal setting than the classroom. It felt really good to be at the meeting, despite being the only male (this doesn't surprise me anymore), because the people present had had similar experiences with writing that I had had, and none of them seemed to embody the traits I often despise in people who are disciplined enough to write on their own. That self-assuredness, that coyness, that smug self-deprecation, I mean. These people seemed eager, like me, to make a sort of fresh start. I'm really glad I joined.

We even got our first prompt! Here it is: "She was on her third cigarette, but it wasn't helping." It seemed pretty straightforward at first, and I anticipated the challenge of writing from the feminine perspective. My roommate, however, brought to my attention two ways in which this prompt gets complicated: 1) Though the character in question is female, by no means does this have to be from her perspective or that of any other woman. 2) The given sentence does not have to be the first sentence of whatever we write. I actually convinced my roommate, sort of a paragon of the strong, silent type most of the time, to join this workshop, and the last thing I saw him do before going to bed tonight was to copy down the prompt on a piece of paper...I'm so excited!

Tomorrow I attend a job fair, a source of considerable stress for me because I will be approaching a number of consulting firms despite the fact that I lack active interest or qualification for consulting. The quest to secure myself financially has really put my "ideals" into perspective. It seems to matter less and less what I do to make money. Besides, I like money, and I like it a lot. It makes me feel good to have it and to spend it, either on myself or for other people. Finally, I've been able to adapt to unusual or unpleasant situations before, so why is this any different? If any of you can come up with a convincing argument as to why this is all bullshit, let's hear it. Keep in mind that one of the main reasons I'm going down this path is because I haven't figured out what I want, and I mean that in the deepest, most far-reaching sense possible.

-------------- -------------- -------------- --------------

Six hours at a time, he could manage. Larger morsels required an extended period of chewing, during which the full scope and complexity of a given taste would come to bear. Within six hours, though, he knew, he would not lose control.

The Cops Are Crashing Us Now

2008-01-13T15:30:00.000-06:00

Dave, Seamus, Julia and I were ready to rock the house last night, but we only got through five songs or so. The cops showed up twice and threatened to come a third time with a "wagon."

Not finishing a gig is worse than not finishing sex. You can just fall asleep after the latter, usually.

After I wasn't allowed to play anymore, I found myself walking up and down the length of the apartment looking for something to do. There were people everywhere, but I didn't know what to say to them, couldn't stay with any one person or group for more than two minutes.

AE was present (she's back from Vienna) and I'd like just to stand close next to her and feel her fingers with mine, but that's not appropriate anymore.

A close friend and colleague notified me a few days ago that a number of the people he knows have a low opinion of me. Normally I'm impervious to this kind of news, since I've usually come to terms with my worst deeds by then. However, I didn't expect that people would still be judging me for adventures that I undertook last academic year, and that they have assumed that I haven't changed at all.

All in all I've been trying too hard and it shows. I remember feeling like this (but more intensely) when AM told me I was a liar and consequently a spineless philanderer. That situation was resolved within a few days. This one--who knows? It has nothing to do with anyone but me, and so I really can't expect help from anyone.

Though I've stopped some of the behaviors that turned people against me (not always by my own initiative), I seem to still carry the vestiges of those behaviors in my everyday interactions with people. It takes mindfulness to fix that. I also wish that being well-liked mattered less.

THAT'S what I meant to say

2008-01-10T22:07:00.000-06:00

Yesterday the busblog announced the return of Lindsay, a blogger who had been in the dark for almost five months because, I induce, the blog got her into some kind of trouble. The kind of trouble I am very familiar with. I think she handled it better. Anyway, she's doing what I always wanted to do but I find I usually fell short by a distance of several galaxies. The writing is highly personal but spares readers the dangerous details. As tony described it, Lindsay can "tell a complex story in a super compelling way." There is not much more I should say. Investigate for yourselves.

No Use Pretending

2008-01-08T16:41:00.001-06:00

I have no discipline. I meant to stop this, but then I had some very strange dreams, and today I found out that some people were disappointed that I had stopped.

That's really all it takes to keep me going.

I haven't disappeared, either. I was in Berkeley for 12 days, staying at a student cooperative / hippie commune, enjoying an unprecedented relaxation and various lifestyle experiments that I can't describe in detail here because I do not have a large anonymous audience, but rather a small and intimate one that might ask uncomfortable questions.

Yes: I fear judgment.

After leaving the Bay Area I stopped in the New York City area to visit my bandmate as well as an old buddy from high school. Spending time with the latter I realized the extent to which self-absorption (his, not mine) can create tension even between people who have little to hide from one another. The Chinatown bus carried me back to Boston on the 27th, where I stayed until the 5th.

My stay in Boston constituted the worst stretch of vacation I think I've ever had. I spent most evenings smoking, playing video games, watching TV, etc. with a population of locals most people would label as "washouts."

For example, New Year's Eve was severely disappointing: midnight struck and I glanced around to find myself surrounded by a bunch of Uno's Pizzeria employees to whom I had not been introduced. Later that night one of them passed out and woke up to find himself the target for some aspiring body-artists. Preferred medium? Permanent marker.

He began screaming and knocking furniture around, finally busting out the door threatening to "call his boys" to tell them to shoot some people up. Around the same time a girlfriend-boyfriend pair of extremely pushy coke dealers was making money in the kitchen on what they claimed was "uncut shit." A friend and I decided it was time to take a little drive, let the situation diffuse. We listened to the Beatles and then I asked him to drive me home.

The following night had its redeeming features: I dragged myself to Needham to spend the night with the Russians I met on Cape Cod as part of their New Year's Without Parents slumber party. There I had a chance to change modes and listen (something I don't do often), because a number of people in that group are very argumentative. It's amazing what you can discover about a person just by paying attention to how they argue. Not being part of the argument makes it easier to listen as well.

I boarded the plane to Chicago in a seriously fatigued state. While sleeping at the terminal I dreamed that a Russian man sitting next to me was putting a sleeper hold on me and stealing things from my back. When I tried to scream for help, he stuffed my scarf into my mouth.

I haven't been complaining to anyone about how I've felt lately, so I might as well get it all out here: I feel tired because I don't go to bed on time because I do drugs because they facilitate hanging out with people because I would rather do that than take care of what I need to do in a general sense. I feel lonely because invariably I find myself doing these drugs with happy couples--"Pass me another clove, baby"--who don't make me sick, just a little jealous of their togetherness. I am alone (and surrounded by friends at the same time) because...I don't really know actually, only that I don't prefer it. Usually I don't know what I want. Because less and less often am I given directions. When I do get directions, I usually reject them. I want to know what I want--other than that one thing that is rare these days and I don't remember what it's like when it fulfills--so I can make plans accordingly. As it is, I live for two weeks at a time.

My band starts recording next week. It's an important, exciting, and moderately overwhelming prospect.

Chapters

2008-01-08T15:54:00.000-06:00

Part the First, in which the protagonist dreams a long dream of reconciliation with a woman who hasn't uttered a word to him in more than a year of his waking life.

Part the Second, in which the protagonist dreams a long dream of sleeping with his roommate--the act keeps getting interrupted, but the best part is her illogical explanation of why she's allowed to do it even though she has a boyfriend: now that they've agreed to move in together, it's perfectly OK.

What?

Well, that was a no-brainer.

2007-11-24T13:38:00.000-06:00

I lasted five days short of a year. Here is a final quotation from Milan Kundera's essay, "Sixty Three Words":

GRAPHOMANIA. "Not a mania to write letters, personal diaries, or family chronicles (to write for oneself or one's close relations) but a mania to write books (to hvae a public of unknown readers)" (The Book of Laughter and Forgetting). The mania not to create a form but to impose one's self on others. The most grotesque version of the will to power.

When Does the Carousel Stop?

2007-11-13T14:11:00.000-06:00

It's really not fair how much I'm enjoying myself these days. Will somebody please come up to me and tell me that I'm missing out on something? Otherwise I will continue to wallow in the notion that I and the people I'm with are having the most fun we could possibly be having, ceteris paribus.*

*All things being constant, an economics term.+
+The term is not really appropriate in this context.

Two Fridays ago I headed to the Music Box on the North Side with Dylan, an economics grad student from one of my classes, and the teacher of that very class, to see the final cut of Blade Runner.

We missed the 7:00 show and ducked into Julius Meinl, a classy Austrian coffee and pastry shop, to wait for the 9:40 show. Dylan ordered finger sandwiches and caused the rest of us to drool. There was a jazz duo playing (bass and guitar), and I felt a little bad that we couldn't really give them the attention they deserved.

Just before the movie the professor and the grad student bought two bottles of wine to consume during the movie. What a spectacle, by the way! All I had seen of it was the scene in which Pris, the prostitute replicant (Daryl Hannah) tries to strangle detective Deckard (Ford) with her thighs, then gets shot while doing backflips in his direction. I saw that scene when I was about ten years old--the highly sexualized and violent image planted in my brain generated a longstanding desire to see the movie.

Since I had never seen previous cuts, I could not possibly have been disappointed. What first struck me was that it did not seem like a movie from the 80s. It had the crispness (perhaps thanks to the remastering process) of a contemporary production shot on film. My feeling of intoxication peaked in the scene when Roy, the leader of the replicants (Rutger Hauer), is hunting down Deckard in the abandoned mansion. I'm pretty sure we were all ready to cry during their confrontation on the roof. If any of my readers are in Chicago and Blade Runner is still running (no pun intended), I would recommend giving this experience a try, wine and all.

The same night, I finagled my way (simply by sticking around until late) into Juanita's bed again. We talked for a while, she marveling at the fact that I seemed to be able to read her mind. We are indeed similar; she calls me her alter-ego. It's interesting to have a friendship based on the phenomenon of one party representing the unexpressed personality of the other. I am aware of the power relation emerging from it, and I am not afraid of it (perhaps I am drawn to the weak position, having almost always been in the strong one before).

A week later my band had a great show, immediately after which I donned día de los muertos make-up with a partner for a costume party at the aforementioned professor's apartment. We arrived at about 12:40--the host was quite sloshed by that point. Later in the night she would grab me to dance, singing into my ear with a drunken husky croon, or she would announce to those present at the party that the only reason she did not make me move to a higher level was because she liked me, and that she was looking forward to the end of the academic quarter, wink-wink.

Tomorrow I have an economics test, but later in the evening I'll be joining Juanita and a new found friend who brings the "good shit" from Portland, OR for a cooking party in the kitchen of Juanita's luxurious flat. The following evening I'm doing a duet at an open mic with an old friend, then performing with my band at the after-party hosted by the organizer of the open mic. Who knows what's in store for this weekend!

Also, I'm spending almost two weeks in San Francisco with Juanita this December. How did that happen?! I suppose the alter-ego follows the ego, even when it flies across the country.

Support Raymi!

2007-11-06T19:12:00.000-06:00

Guys, Raymi is currently in the running for an award for best Canadian blogger. At the moment, she's being beaten by a really lame conservative political blog. Help her out by voting here - you can do it once every twenty four hours (though you can fool the site by switching computers obviously). The poll only lasts until Thursday, so hurry up and vote! If you want to know why you should vote, you can check out the message I sent to Raymi, which she subsequently published.

http://raymitheminx.blogspot.com/2007/11/dermatology-party-theyre-like-ok-take.html

Experimenters-In-Arms / 100th Post!

2007-11-05T01:08:00.000-06:00

The last post I wrote was actually the 100th. Congratulations me!

********** ************* ***********

Juanita is from Sofia, Bulgaria and she likes everything I liked in high school, but without the pretenses. Martín is an Argentine economics grad student with a lion's mane of dreads who only says profound things and cannot be found wanting one thing more than another at any given time.

I keep running into this pair, and now I've become the third part of a trio.

Juanita is engaging in an experiment that her apartment mates and some of her friends fail to understand. Juanita is giving free love a try. Is it working? She claims to be happier now than she ever has been. I think she has picked two excellent candidates for the experiment: one who couldn't be convinced to be jealous and another who trains himself with the discipline of a paratrooper not to be jealous.

I spent the last three nights in her bed, sleeping soundly like a baby brother. I hope Martín doesn't mind.

Dreamlog 2.3

2007-11-03T11:07:00.000-05:00

...I am skiing on some massive mountain range, but there is no cold because the sun is shining, and the snow is deep. I am following a woman down the slopes, but she is faster than I am. I decide to call my friend Max, and at that very moment I fall off a cliff whose height must be at least 200 feet. I plop down into deep snow, completely unharmed. Next to me I find a broken remote control and a cell phone, though my cell phone has actually made it into my pocket. The woman continues to get away, her brown hair bouncing with the ridges in the snow.

This is what I dream when I sleep next to people.

The Party Formerly Known As The Shtetl

2007-10-20T16:02:00.000-05:00

I just returned from: Two floors of recently renovated apartment, abundant quantities of wine (the bottles kept appearing out of nowhere!), lesbians, herbs, a man with the state of Florida tattooed on his belly, an entire living room dancing really hard to a killer funk track, naked, half naked, and three-quarter naked bodies swarming in a too-crowded jacuzzi tub with the lights off, where the only way to say hello or goodbye is to kiss passionately for at least thirty seconds.

I sincerely believed that I could have left the place if I had felt like it. As I found out later, nobody ever leaves the party formerly known as the Shtetl. The girl I brought with me to the party locked her bike to mine, and mine to hers, so when she said she was leaving, I gave her my wallet and told her to bring it back into the apartment after she had taken care of the lock. She still has my wallet, though I've gotten in touch with her and arranged its return.

With no way to get into my own apartment, I accepted the fact that I would participate in whatever activities the rest of the night offered. I headed to the jacuzzi feeling liberated. There I found an unshaven hippy girl completely naked, three guys in their boxers, a Bulgarian in bra and panties, and a girl named Freddy wearing only the bottom half of her undergarments. I rolled up my pants, dropped my feet in to dangle, and said with heartfelt earnestness that this was the craziest party I had ever seen. The hippy girl responded, "Well, at the moment you're just watching it. Why not make it the craziest thing you've ever done?" I don't think you can ever disagree with somebody who is naked, so I took my pants off and squeezed in. It was crowded, but we managed to fit and pass around a bottle of white wine, glowing in the warmth of the water and the good company.

A bit later the hippy girl and some others got out, leaving me with a short swarthy guy named Chris, the Bulgarian girl, the girl named Freddy, and a dreadlocked porteño economics grad student who told me to turn off the lights and play Ravi Shankar on the stereo.

I obliged, and there's not a good reason for me to describe much of what happened in the next twenty minutes, and in any case, I don't even know who was touching whom half the time. What difference is one wrinkly hand or another?

The Bulgarian girl ended the fun, claiming she needed to clean the apartment. I helped her mop the kitchen floor, and this earned me the privilege of sleeping (just sleeping) in her bed rather than on the couch.

I woke up in the morning and waddled over to the kitchen, which was full of mostly unfamiliar people. Was ist das? Brunch is served: eggs, bacon, toasted bread with brie, applesauce, fruit salad, potato hash.

Best 15 hours in a long time--that's all I can say. Also, a valuable lesson: if the wine and kindness abounds, all it takes is to stick around for a long enough and good things come.

P.S.

A few hours ofter writing the last sentence of the first draft of this post, I realized what I had actually put into words: the formula for a successful orgy. I just remembered a conversation I had with my downstairs neighbors about how one would go about having an orgy. Now that I have the ingredients, let's write up a recipe:

-A small, even-numbered group (no more than 8) of reasonably attractive people who are very comfortable with their bodies and generally exude positive energy
-Copious amounts of intoxicants
-An extremely comfortable setting
-Darkness in any amount
-A minimal amount of clothing / a maximum amount of bare skin
-A tacit agreement that there will be no effect on future interactions between involved parties

Mix and serve piping hot.

Jackass in the Classroom

2007-10-18T14:30:00.001-05:00

So, I'm "that guy" in both my Spanish classroom and the out-of-class discussion section. "That guy (or girl)," for those of you who are not acquainted with college colloquialisms, is a student who incessantly strives to prove his or her knowledge in a class, at the expense of the other students, who not only struggle to get a word in edgewise, but also have to put up with the weird dynamic that invariably develops between the professor and "that guy/girl."

My interactions with the first professor, a Slavic-looking but peachy and attractive Czech woman with an accent that falls somewhere between Mexican and Argentinian, border on flirtation. But consider: we're both in love with Argentina, and we sigh deeply any time it comes up. Also, I become the class laughingstock in the process, so the others can't complain too much. The second professor is from Peru, and we often wander off on tangents about subjects only native Latin Americans or wannabe Latin Americans are interested in discussing: Soda Stereo, Mario Vargas Llosa, Peruvian traditional clothing, etc. I'm bragging at this point.

I have yet to meet someone who can match my enthusiasm for Latin American culture. Does it only happen with the help of a girl who writes haikus and folds paper cranes?

Does This Look Familiar To You?

2007-10-16T00:24:00.000-05:00

"Great novels are above all great fairy tales....Literature does not tell the truth but makes it up. It is said that literature was born with the fable of the boy crying, 'Wolf! Wolf! as he was being chased by the animal. This was not the birth of literature; it happened instead the day the lad cried 'Wolf!' and the tricked hunters saw no wolf...the magic of art is manifested in the dream about the wolf, in the shadow of the invented wolf."

Ya he visto eso en otra parte, y lo discutí también, pero no puedo recordarme con quien. Si alguien reconoce esta cotización, favor de mandarme un correo o dejar un comentario--te busco.

This quotation reminds me that I will never be as intelligent as the women with whom I am dealing.

Memory for Melody

2007-10-13T01:28:00.000-05:00

What first comes to mind is not usually the fact of her being there, nor that of her smiling at me with shining blue nebula eyes, but rather what she blew on the trumpet when we first started playing together. In my head I hear old jazz standards and I hear her presence in the melodies.

A week and a half left of waiting.

Since she's taken, is this what it feels like to have a good friend?

A Quickie From the Maclab

2007-09-28T11:46:00.000-05:00

Classes started on Monday, here's what's new (or what I have time to write about from the basement of the library before my first Spanish quiz):

A Roo's sub letter is a charming 24-year-old from Dresden, Germany named Julia, spending six months in the US to work in a cancer research lab on campus. She has 12 years of experience on Jazz trumpet and we have been jamming a fair amount this week. Also, she is terribly cute and both of us are huge flirts and she has a boyfriend so it's all right.

Despite A Roo's sudden departure (and with him our drums, keyboard, and bass guitar) Saturday Realism will be pulling itself together again this year. We recruited the drummer from the now defunct Leopold and Loeb, a hardy musketeer by the name of Seamus and a very dedicated and talented worker. Also, he is prone not to mood swings, but to games of ultimate Frisbee.

It turns out that the group of fourth-years living in the northern part of my building all contribute to the running of a snazzy literary magazine called Gordian knot. I promised them an article about my experience (or lack thereof) with fan fiction. If any of you read this and also happen to be avid readers or writers of fan fiction, please send me an email or leave a comment, because I would love to interview you.

I've managed to stay mostly clean since I got back (excepting a bit of revelry the night I returned to Chicago), cutting down even on my cigarette intake. Two nights ago the neighbors downstairs (AE is in Vienna, of course) were trying to convince me to get back into the trade I had plied during the summer. I had just given them all the contact numbers I knew, and these neighbors had been my biggest customers, so I didn't even have a way to make money anymore. Then again, I bet most people would prefer to buy at a higher price rather than sell, make a profit, and deal with the risk involved in this business.

On Wednesday morning I woke up feeling very strange--the kind of morning that makes me want to stay in the shower for a very long time, thinking, not moving, reluctant to let my dreams go in favor of the day. But it was an unprecedented night of dreaming. Both AM (first serious relationship) and AE (this summer's fling) appeared in dreams that bookended a central episode with a nightmare-ish quality to it, though it was more absurd than frightening.

In the first, AM was telling me about how she had recently become the editor of some publication and showing me the books she had to read and explaining the kind of work she was doing. There was nothing aggressive in her tone, but I felt positively goaded by the conversation. That was supposed to be MY line of work.

The second is not really worth re-telling, nor do I remember it well. There were ghosts in a dark field, figured much like they would be in a children's Halloween program on TV.

In the third I was in bed with AE at home in Boston. It was late afternoon and the weather was gray. Here comes the strange part: as I sat next to her, I was telling her about the previous two dreams. As soon as I realized this I heard my mother walking down the hallway, then knocking on my door, and finally the doorknob turning. I yelled at her not to open it, but she still opened it, and kept it open long enough to tell me that guests were coming over soon and that I should get out of bed. My reaction was to scream "how dare you" at the top of my lungs in Russian. My roommates must have heard something awful in the night, for all that ever comes out at moments like that are agonized moans. Sorry, guys.

More on Auster

2007-09-18T10:50:00.000-05:00

I finished The New York Trilogy last night. Not surprisingly, the holes did not close up to give me a warm fuzzy feeling at the end. In fact, they may have expanded to consume everything in that universe. The three stories do gain coherence in relation to each other and to the work as a whole, and one might stop there, for what more can we ask?

We can ask for coherence in relation to our fixed ideas about the way people behave and think and the course we expect certain literary themes to run. However, like in many works of the American Gothic tradition (according to Bill Veeder), there is a formal beauty in The New York Trilogy juxtaposed with a thematic uncertainty--the best kind, actually, for it forces the reader to contribute a great deal to make sense of the work thematically.

I felt at times that I was having a conversation with the book about writing, for in all the stories the main character is either a writer or chiefly concerned with writing (in the case of the detective tasked with writing weekly reports on the activities of a man who never does anything report-worthy).

Still, I know I have left at least the first story incomplete, even though I read from the first to the last page. There is a two-page segment that maps the protagonist's walk through Manhattan. You can't pretend that two pages of unnecessary material constitute a lapse in the author's ability to keep the reader engaged. Auster was drawing a message on the streets of Manhattan to correspond to the messages the protagonist had been tracking in the paths of another character. As soon as I can, I am going to get some tracing paper and a map of Manhattan to figure out what that was all about. I think that's a pretty clever way to enact some reader engagement.

Is This Really Happening? No Effing Way.

2007-09-17T20:55:00.001-05:00

Allow me a nerdy moment:

http://www.apple.com/trailers/fox/hitman/trailer_medium.html

HITMAN is being made into a MOVIE. HITMAN => MOVIE.

What?

Bad Taste / Paul Auster

2007-09-17T17:15:00.000-05:00

I apologize to anyone who had to read the former portion of the last post pertaining to girls. It wasn't in good taste. It should have read the following:

"I attended a relatively high-energy party over the weekend. At this party I met a nice girl who studies at BU and was enthusiastic about making out with me, if not more. I obliged, and we had a good time."

The rest should remain as it stands.

-------------------- ****************** &&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&

During my weekend at the Russian festival an ambitious and self-assured young man whose nickname was the Russian for "Ass" (like the animal; his name, Iosef or Joseph, sounds like it in the original) exuberantly recommended that I read Paul Auster's collection of short novels, The New York Trilogy.

Earlier this summer I told Alex D to read House of Leaves. He gave it back to me a few days later, refusing, in a half-joking tone, to go down that road. I knew exactly what he was talking about; reading that book can actually be a terrifying experience.

However, it always feels like it's going to land somewhere. The New York Trilogy opens holes all over the place and fails to close them. At least at the end of House of Leaves the house destroys itself and vanishes. Here, writers turned private detectives lose their minds and disappear while other men fake their own deaths and hand their lives over to old friends. The writing is good, of course. I am impressed, yes. Do I want to go down this road? I don't know.

Do You Ever Get Lost?

2007-09-16T20:14:00.000-05:00

I attended Harry's party last night. It was much more crowded than I expected, which is a compliment to Harry's hosting skills, and though it reminded me in many ways of the kinds of parties I occasionally enjoy in Chicago, overall it was one of the more bizarre party experiences I've ever had. This was not one that Dylan and I, walking down the sidewalk smoking a cigarette, could easily judge to be "positive" or "negative."

[The part that used to be here was a distasteful account of the party and my lascivious habits. No need for anyone to see that. Please excuse the break in continuity.]

I spent the rest of the morning at the Trident bookstore cafe lazing over an egg dish and reading some Paul Auster. Afterwards I wandered over to Guitar Center and wasted some time, then I finally called Elina to arrange our earlier scheduled meeting. She said she would call me in an hour, so I decided to walk back to where I thought Elise's (a girl I had met at the party and walked back that morning) apartment was, just to prove to myself that I remembered the place.

A more confusing 30 minutes has never transpired in my life. As I walked in the direction whence I came from the party, I realized that nothing looked familiar. Harry's party had been off of Cambridge St., but now I was on Commonwealth Ave., which intersects Cambridge, and I had no idea how or when I had made the switch. Apparently I was so busy talking to Elise on the way back that I didn't have a chance to remember anything around me.

I stopped at the intersection of Harvard and Commonwealth, knowing I had passed through it but nonetheless having no recollection of it whatsoever. Coupled with the particularly disorienting Auster story I had just finished, the realization that my hangover had interfered with my ability to navigate this otherwise familiar city intensified my confusion: I was lost, no doubt about that.

Fortunately I was able to hop on the green line train and return along Commonwealth, but the sense of imbalance and disorientation did not leave me immediately. For fifteen minutes everyone around me looked very strange and suspicious, and I was bugged by a vague sense of paranoia until the train stopped at Pleasant street and I saw Elina's dorm looming behind the street-level storefronts.

This is unexpected.

2007-09-14T23:17:00.001-05:00

I got back at around 10:30 from a dinner party I was attending with my parents. I was bored, so I drank more wine than necessary. Then I spent about an hour and a half futzing around with my computer, reading about Joey Skaggs, prankster extraordinaire. Then I walked around the block to smoke a cigarette. There I discovered that I am extremely lonely. I've been calling everyone I know who is still around, but nobody is picking up. Chicago would not let me down like this. I guess I'll go to bed now, with nothing in my head and nobody in my arms.

Shaving / FacebookAddicts Anonymous

2007-09-14T13:27:00.002-05:00

When he shaved off four or five days of stubble (any more would look unruly) he found the face that remained to be thuggish and menacing, its angles brutally exposed to the light. The face he saw reflected in the mirror was clearly his, but it evoked a cruelty he did not immediately recognize.

---------- ------------ -------- --------------------------

The most recent issue of the New Yorker magazine has an article about a workshop held for NYU freshman about learning to make friends off of facebook. One incoming freshman reported that his account had been suspended because, according to Facebook INC, he was acquiring too many friends ("Stop making friends," the email said, or something to that effect).

Sure, certain things have become easier thanks to the social networking site, but I didn't know it would get this bad.

Happy [Jewish] New Year! / What It Takes to convince me.

2007-09-13T23:42:00.001-05:00

[Notes about Chabad service: sermon on iphone and alan holtz and ba'al shem tov, beautiful harmonies from cantor]

[Conversation with Harry: come to my party, no-I have other plans, come on there'll be chicks, I refuse to go to your party unless you can promise me I'll get laid,...pause...you've changed man, what can I say I've had a rough summer, well you better get there before I warn the girls about you...]

Parroting

2007-09-12T11:59:00.000-05:00

A number of passages in Julian Barnes' Flaubert's Parrot have tickled my sensibilities. Here are a few of them.

The protagonist's reasons for visiting northern France:

"I don't just go for the light. I go for those things you forget about until you see them again. The way they butcher meat. The seriousness of their pharmacies. The behaviour of their children in restaurants. The road signs (france is the only country I know where drivers are warned about beetroot on the road: BETTERAVES, I once saw in a red warning triangle, with a picture of a car slipping out of control). Beaux-arts town halls. Wine-tasting in smelly chalk-caves by the side of the road. I could go on, but that's enough, or I'll soon be babbling about lime trees and and eating bread dipped in rough red wine - what they call petanquela soupe a perroquet, parrot soup. Everyone has a private list and those other people quickly appear vain and sentimental. I read a list the other day headed 'What I Like.' It went: 'Salad, cinnamon, cheese, pimento, marzipan, the smell of new-cut hay [would you read on?]...roses, peonies,, lavender, champagne, loosely held political convictions, Glenn Gould...' The list, which is by Roland Barthes, continues, as lists do. One item you approve, the next stirs irritation. After 'Medoc wine' and 'having change,' Barthes approves of 'Bouvard et Pecuchet' [Flaubert's unfinished novel--my brackets]. Good; fine; we'll read on. What's next? 'Walking in sandals on the lanes of south-west France.' It's enough to make you drive all the way to south-west France and strew some beetroot on all the lanes" (92).

And a bit about literary critics:

"My reading might be pointless in terms of the history of literary criticism; but it's not pointless in terms of pleasure. I can't prove that lay readers enjoy books more than professional critics; but I can tell you one advantage we have over them. We can forget. Dr Starkie and her kind are cursed with memory: the books they teach and write about can never fade from their brains. They become family. Perhaps this is why some critics develop a faintly patronising tone towards their subjects. They act as if Flaubert, or Milton, or Wordsworth were some tedious old aunt in a rocking chair, who smelt of stale powder, was only interested in the past, and hadn't said anything new for years. Of course, it's her house, and everybody's living in it rent free; but even so, surely it is, well, you know...time?" (82).

Splendid.

Speechless

2007-09-11T23:27:00.000-05:00

According to Dylan, the date (9/11) was not much noticed in Bologna. Neither was it here, which is to say, downstairs in my parents' house, since I have not gone outside all day except to buy cigarettes. I forgot to say anything about it, and now the dateline has gone by.

Tony Pierce feels a bit more strongly about it, however (he's in LA, and it's still the right day there). Read up, kids. And don't forget.

Downhome

2007-09-11T17:43:00.000-05:00

A gift from my old friend Max, purchased in a supermarket in California:

I've been back in the Boston area since August 29th. I have not accomplished very much, which makes my time here not very different from my time in Chicago. I managed to stay mostly clean; I told myself it was OK to make an exception with an old friend.

I spent last night looking at job listings on Monster.com with my Dad to figure out how to present myself to recruiters. That is, I would take snippets from job descriptions I might find myself in and pick out the bits that relate most to my best qualities. I've stopped resisting regarding career choice. I can't reasonably do so since I have only wasted time from the moment it began apparent that I have to worry about this. It has just gotten more apparent, and the slight shock has brought me back to reality a bit. If I have to sell houses, I'll do that.

Sunday night I watched Pan's Labyrinth with Max. I had been hearing great things about this movie since it came out, but it really blew our socks off. Tears were streaming down my face by the end. I couldn't talk until the entire credits had rolled past. The last time a movie touched me so deeply was the first time I watched Requiem For a Dream. However, that movie gave no catharsis; it just made you want to crawl up and disappear. I felt like I had been cleansed about a half hour after the end of Pan's Labyrinth. I hadn't cried for a movie in years, and even if it does not evoke the same reaction in you, I highly recommend it.

I mentioned this blog to a girl in the Russian set and I promised to send her some excerpts. I spent a while last night choosing four posts to send her as characteristic of the content on my blog. I'm not sure I did that very well, but I definitely showed her some sides of me she hasn't seen before. I expect her to be repulsed a little bit by the sexual content. On the other hand, I am very proud of it. When I express that aspect of my personality I derive a pleasure from doing what most people I know would prefer I not do in front of them.

Kind of like take taking a long piss in public with only my back to block the view.

KZM and the Premium on Lyricism

2007-09-10T13:41:00.000-05:00

Consider this a photo-essay. I am not very happy with how the writing turned out--a bit stiff, kind of like a tourist guidebook excerpt merging into a poorly structured scholarly essay--but I hope it's interesting on the informational level at least.

For three days every year in early September, Kittatinny Campground in Baryville, NY trades in its stars and stripes for the Russian tricolor of white, blue, and red. Is this a re-enactment of a cold-war era drill simulating a Russian invasion? No, it's just a yearly Russian festival acronymically designated KZM, or "Concert of Driven-In Musicians" - it makes more sense in Russian. This is the fourth event of this kind that I've had a chance to attend, and the second event in this location.

About 400 people attend this particular event yearly, though there are similar festivals all throughout the year. When it's warm enough, the tents go up in locations including California, New Jersey, and Israel. Otherwise, the organizers book a hotel for a weekend, in which case the location is fairly arbitrary. The demographic of KZM is comprised of Russian emigrants, many of them Jews or members of the Russian intelligentsia, roughly between the ages of 20 and 40. Many attendees drive down from the New York or Boston areas, but some visit even from the old country. The last time I attended the frontman from a Ukrainian rock group showed up (tattoos on his knuckles and no hair on his head) and sang for the entire three days, migrating from campfire to campfire; his voice was gravel by Sunday of that weekend. This year there was a set of young people from Moldova, as well as a visitor from Vladivostok, a major city on Russia's eastern coast.

The festival offers immigrants from Russia or the former Soviet Union a chance to get together with old friends, speak Russian amongst one another, and spend a good many hours singing familiar songs while the bottles of vodka drain down and skewers of marinated meat and onions sizzle on the fire. These familiar songs come from one of two major categories or movements - "bards'" songs--a form of poetry with romantic, subtly anti-establishment, or just plain goofy themes set to music--and songs with a rock or pop feel dating mostly from the 70s, 80s, and 90s.

I need to say a little more about this music. At least for the duration of this weekend, the people with whom I enjoyed this festival do not listen to music the same way I or most readers of this blog would listen to music. An American listener may pay close attention to song lyrics, but that listener would be unhappy if the complexity or creativity of the music were compromised in favor of more meaningful lyrics. I would say the average KZM attendee holds the opposite attitude, though perhaps unconsciously. There is a real premium on the poetic or lyrical quality of the words in any given song. Since I had trouble following the words sometimes, I started listening to the chord progressions instead. It turns out that there is a very limited degree of variation from song to song. My father, with whom I discussed this after I came back, joked that all songs are played in the key of A minor.

His comment is not far from the truth. I couldn't even explain to my friends at the festival what was limited about their favorite songs. I've been listening to a lot of Blur recently, a group that plays with different time signatures, styles of singing, and types of instruments, and that thinks a lot about atmosphere and presentation. None of these things matter as much, as far as I understand, to most of the Russian groups or artists whose songs are being sung at KZM festivals. You probably wouldn't use the terms "riff-based" or "groove" around most of the songs. This is not a criticism; what I'm trying to explain is why I'll never be in touch with the musical side of these festivals. For me, popular music is an art form that benefits from a focus on both the lyrical and instrumental aspects of composition. However, I cannot approve of the sacrifice of presentation (production value, atmosphere, etc.; the feel of a song) and musical creativity in a piece in favor of its lyrical qualities. For the enthusiasts of KZM-style music, the appeal of a given song comes down to how well it will sound when played on a nylon-string guitar around a campfire.*

*If I were to try to explain in more detail why this difference exists, I would have to dig into the topics of freedom of expression and interaction with the West (and lack thereof) in the Soviet Union, as well as the tendency of Russians to regard literature as a more important art form and tradition than music. Ask me about it if you're curious.

The group I spent the weekend with was the same I met in Nickerson State Park during the July 4 holiday. I learned a good deal more about that bunch, especially about how their various cliques function and the particular dynamics between individuals. The reason I was able to pick up on any of this was because I spent most of the weekend in silence. I'm not mute when in the company of Russians, but my vocabulary is limited such that I cannot be my usual garrulous self. Instead I enjoyed the environment and kept my eyes open, an exercise from which I could benefit even in more familiar situations.

I wonder if I'll ever find a group as bright and promising as this in my American adventure. So far, not in such large numbers. Here and there, here and there.

Weekend Photos

2007-08-27T02:49:00.000-05:00

Here are a few from an adventure taken to the point. I think they turned out well. Also, please let me know if the new blog layout causes problems for your browser.

Breakup Letter To An Ugly Period In One's Life

2007-08-27T01:54:00.000-05:00

It's all over, I swear. Even before it's really done.

I am leaving on Wednesday, but I have three half-gram bags to get rid of, but I'm already gone. I have two and a half more days of work--that's 18 hours--but I'm already gone.

I read all of Philip K. Dick's A Scanner Darkly today. I did a few bumps off the key to my guitar case as I started reading late this afternoon. Soon I realized how bad of an idea that was. At 1:23 A.M. when I finished the book, I realized how bad of an idea it all was.

On Saturday night Bob R was sitting in my kitchen waiting for a dealer to arrive. He was looking to make a seven-hour long recording session less stressful. I was looking to make about $15 in profit plus about a night-and-a-half of a good time. Seven times point-five equals three-point-five, which equals one eighth of an ounce. It's all about fractions. Fourth-grade math has never come in so useful.

Bob couldn't wait any longer so he left before the dealer came about an hour later and we made the planned exchange. I noticed myself beginning to look down on the guy; why would I do that? A few nights ago Bob mentioned a "source" in Aurora whereby I would be able to double my money. So, instead of a profit of about $6.50 per half-gram, I would be looking at a profit of $30 for the same amount, making my current guy's draw look childish. Besides, he said he was a weed man, anyway.

I was high when Bob told me about it on the phone and so I was enthusiastic and ambitious, my heart racing but my mind keyed onto all the important details, like who we would sell to and how we would get to Aurora and everything. In all a very business-like phone call, though tastelessly conducted in front of the very people who would most likely end up as my customers. At the end I asked for some time to think about it, to wait at least until I got back to town in a few weeks. Of course, the phrase "double your money" rendered any deliberation a foregone conclusion.

Tonight though, I want to get those little bags out of my sight as soon as possible, and I don't ever want to see them again. I'm not sure I ever want see a little bag of anything ever again, in fact. I'm beginning to wonder why anyone ever does, like I can't remember how much fun I had (or maybe it wasn't me?). It looks like the only thing left now is caffeine, alcohol, and nicotine, and the last one has fucked me up enough.

And that's exactly how I feel now--fucked up. It's not an emotional state or even a physical state, though I have attached physical signs to it: skin discoloration, probable weight loss, weakened fingernails, bruised ball of left foot, etc. It's something you could arrive at as an objective observer: "this is fucked up." I have an appointment for a physical in a few weeks; we'll see what Dr. Lipman has to say about it all.

Really it's like an air-raid klaxon, of the sort you hear in Israel on Holocaust Remembrance Day, sounding in the distance, warning of terror lurking. I start to get scared when in one night I dream both about getting busted and about the promises AM and I make to each other while we fuck, an image vivid enough to be confused with a real memory.

In the dream about getting busted the thing that bothers me most is what I'm wearing; more specifically, how ridiculous I will look in the mugshot wearing corduroy pants and a corduroy jacket over a t-shirt that says "I MAKE MOVIES." In the dream about AM, we are against a wall and I am deep inside her and she has her arms around me in a way that nobody else has ever had their arms around me.

Nervous is one thing, regretful is another, defeated yet another. Scared is a place I never want to be, even though I find myself there sometimes. Scared impedes breathing, alters heartbeat and body temperature, generates strange flavors in the mouth. It touches my body; I don't want anything to do with it.

Goodbye baggies, goodbye wads of $20's, goodbye powder and plant, goodbye fractions and profit, goodbye moon. Goodbye and goodbye until the word doesn't look right. It's over, even before it's done.

Photoblogging Test

2007-08-23T12:45:00.000-05:00

I'm experimenting at the moment with various ways of streamlining the process of blogging photos. Picasa, by Google, has been the best option so far, but it only allows me to blog four photos at a time. I picked the four most "representative" from last night. From top to bottom: Bianca looks up and becomes...a young, female Harrison Ford; Daniel in low light, barely smiling; Jackie and Connor prepare for the last shot of the night; Jim and Morgan practice Morgan's trademarked air-guitar move.

Despite the energy level at these gatherings remaining high, I am beginning to a notice a subtle shift in people's moods and rhythms now that the summer is coming to a close. It reminds me of the last day of every vacation trip I've ever taken, when we do everything we can to hide the fact that we couldn't bear to leave while preparing ourselves, at the same time, to re-enter our usual rhythms.

Titles Are For Pussies; So Is Catnip / [Relatively] Lots of Pictures

2007-08-22T00:30:00.000-05:00

For the duration of time in which I continue to delude myself about maturity magically arriving at an age I have not yet reached, I should not expect things to proceed predictably.

That said, I am very hungry. Two hours sleep, then fours sleep seem to have left me with a fever and no appetite. It's coming back now, but I don't feel like doing anything about it. For maximum effect, I plan to come home in five days with circles around my eyes and saliva dripping from an emaciated smile that won't go away no matter how I will it.

To remember: The Girl Talk song that samples "Hold Me Closer Tiny Dancer" is called "Smash Your Head."

I would like to add to the long list of immoral/unethical/stupid things I have done. I just finished a six week online literature course at a Community College FOR SOMEONE ELSE. It was a Highly Instructive, albeit frustrating, experience. I scored a 96 on the final exam but pulled only a B- in the course. After venting my frustration to my Dad on the phone, I was consoled by his comment that, had she known it was me she was dealing with and not a 48-year-old Russian immigrant, the professor would have been embarrassed at her lack of qualification, if it were something she could even admit to herself.

Ashleigh smokes Kool Filter Kings, which are mentholated cigarettes. I just realized that I like the smell that they leave on my fingers. Too bad I won't be smoking too many more menthols in the future.

Far an idea of what my summer was like, please refer to the Queens of the Stone Age song, "Feel Good Hit of the Summer." Some of it was done vicariously, some it was done [insert opposite adverb].

This photograph makes me happy. In it, Erin and her boyfriend Alex (also my roommate) dance to an imagined tune.

Here Alex pulls on a "midnight special" brand cigarette that he rolled himself.

Ah, the most crass of them all. I took a shot of this hilarious scene in Toxic Avenger IV. The woman on the right is blind!

Camera Arrived! / Sweet Raymi Appearance

2007-08-20T13:51:00.000-05:00

Hooray! This is the first picture taken by my brand new Pentax Optio M30 digital camera to appear on the blog. I was testing out the super-macro and manual focus settings. So, pop open your Dom Perignon, friends.

***** ***** ***** ***** ***** ***** *****

Raymi wrote a brief article that appeared in LAist (courtesy of the magnanimous Tony Pierce) about her experience with Jack Kerouac's writing to commemorate the 50th anniversary of the publication of On the Road.

Raymi's article struck an odd chord in me because I recognized some of my own experiences in her account, so I was compelled to write her an email about it. I wrote some kind words about Raymi's blog and her writing experiment and it seems she took it well because she posted my letter in its entirety on her blog. It made me smile, so I thought I would share it. For those of you who don't know, Raymi is one of the most famous bloggers in Canada, if not in North America.

For those who are too lazy to follow the link, here is my letter, with a supplementary photograph.

Hi Raymi,

This is the Daniel who asked you about your camera. It is arriving today, by the way. I am really excited about it.

The reason I'm writing to you is because I just read the Kerouac article that ended up in LAist. I wanted to say that I had a startlingly similar experience with Kerouac, and I had never heard of anyone having a similar encounter.

Your "in" with Kerouac was the fact of being a relative; my "in" was the fact that he and I share a birthday. That's right--March 12, 1922 / March 12, 1987 (that's me).

I read On the Road when I was fifteen, basically gobbling it all up during one of the few summers at home when I actually went to the beach. I had sunburns I could associate with the reading of that book.

Anyway, it ate my mind. I was at the age when--and it took me a while to acknowledge that this is not a unique phenomenon--I really badly needed to be someone and being myself wasn't good enough. So I became Jack Kerouac. Unlike you, I did in fact "argue with a beret on my head over Burroughs and all that shit." The scary thing is that so many people bought it. I spent almost two years that way, spouting faux-poetical manufactured phrases at every turn etc., until a girl I didn't deserve to be with smacked me out of it.

Most of all, I want to commend you for being able to pick up on the Kerouac stylistic experiment without sacrificing any of your personal integrity. I'm surprised that I didn't pick up on the similarities between what you and he worked on. I should also say that it actually took me a while to figure out what you were doing with your blog. After I started exploring the blogosphere a bit, I realized that your blog wasn't just another instance of a particular type; no--in fact, everyone else was imitating you.

So, enough of the ass-kissing. Keep on doing what you're doing, because you do it well.

Cheers,
Daniel

Camera On the Way / Simpsons Movie

2007-08-16T10:35:00.000-05:00

I lost my patience yesterday afternoon and ordered a digital camera. Why did I buy a digital camera? To better decorate the blog, my dear. I'm actually getting the same model used by superblogger Raymi, the Pentax Optio M30. I really hope it wasn't a mistake; I suffer from terrible consumer's anxiety, brought on mostly by a childhood during which my mother always said I could have bought it for cheaper and my father said I shouldn't have bought it at all. I'm excited whatever they say; this is one of a growing list of purchases I've successfully made without their supervision. HIGH-FIVE!

Oooh I can't wait to be able to show my world visually! But I mustn't let that detract from the writing. It's not a photoblog, mind you, it just has photos on it...

------------------------------------------------- --------------------------------------------------

Alex and I drove downtown yesterday to see the Simpsons movie at AMC River East. I had not heard or read anything about it other than what Alex had told me after he saw it. I used to be a big Simpsons fan in middle school--only with kicking and screaming could I be dragged off to bed if I had not seen that night's episode (I was never a TV junkie, though, since we never had cable). Since high school started, I have only seen episodes occasionally, so if I hadn't had a free afternoon, and Alex hadn't had a car, I probably would not have seen this movie in theaters.

That doesn't mean you shouldn't see the movie either. The writers packed in lots of familiar characters, plus some new ones who are altogether charming, hilarious, or just plain weird. To recall a few: Cletus, who always appears holding an opossum by the tail, the shaman / boob lady who leads Homer to a spiritual awakening, Colin, the fair-haired Irish boy who captures Lisa's heart, Arnold Schwarzenegger as the president of the US, and Tom Hanks as himself, offering the US government some of his credibility when it has none of its own left.

The character animation remains the same as I remember it in later episodes of the series, but as a whole the movie's visual style leans towards that of "Futurama"; that show always had a glossier look and the rendering of objects in motion was generally more fluid.

Enough about details, though. The movie runs like a typical Hollywood blockbuster--family troubles, government conspiracy, childhood love, environmental crisis--with one major difference: it knows that it's a typical Hollywood blockbuster. I'm not sure any other team of writers could get away with this project as smoothly as Matt Groening and company have. The fourth wall--that is, the barrier that maintains the illusion of reality on screen or stage--gets broken over and over again. At one point in the opening scenes Homer is literally talking to the viewer.

We nod knowingly when this happens in live-action films, but we don't see it very often in animated films, which we hope will provide us with a quick escape from our own reality. Even if the Simpsons movie does not reach out to the viewer in a particularly profound way, it's still proving its worth as a mature cartoon, aware of being subjected to the judgment of viewers.

May our escapes be always cognizant of escaping; may they be always running with us, arms clasped tight around our shoulders.

"Gift Notes Upon Parting"

2007-08-13T03:24:00.000-05:00

This one actually has comedic value. I don't know when it was written since I just corrected a few mistakes (there could be more), so I'll make an educated guess.

"Gift Notes Upon Parting" [Originally untitled, this was meant to accompany the gift I was giving on the occasion of our last meeting before she left for Peru. I don't remember what the gift was, and it wasn't the last time we saw each other. On her last day in the country, we fucked in the back shed of one of the Historic Deerfield properties undergoing restoration at the time. I was late to water-polo practice, but later that night I met AM for the first time.]
August 9, 2005

If you ever stand on the beach in Callao (or in any other place), know that there is an unobstructed path over infinite oceans that leads to my ever-outstretched arms. This photograph immortalizes me in this pose, forever places me at the water’s edge, waiting for the bottle that floated away from me into the waves of time and destiny; I will receive it warmly, as a lover or a friend, healthy or sick, content or depressed.

I started playing guitar to please one woman, but I found that my music brought joy to another. The best music is a product of the strongest feelings: love, anger, pain, joy, nostalgia, sorrow. We were harmonious, as music should be. We hit the right notes at the right time. We kept in time and in tune. Our aberrations only added to magnificence of a concerto that played for seven months. Now we, the musicians, the performers, at the end of our last song, must come to the edge of the stage amidst great applause, hold hands, take a bow, and retreat to opposite ends of the stage. For a while, our instruments will sound odd by themselves, out of tune, bent out of shape, whatever it is. But time will heal them and we will play our own songs for other people and be happy doing it.

“Porque Te Vas” [a cheesy song by Jeanette] remains in my songbook as a reminder of everything.

----------- -----------

The house will be the material of our dreams, memories, and stories for years to come.

Each time we climbed to that haunted attic, we unfurled the blankets, laid out the pillows, and embarked on a journey through memory and magic. It became our safe haven, removed physically and symbolically from Deerfield. We tread upon unfamiliar ground within the house. Spirits greeted us every time we lifted the rusted latch; they hovered over us and mingled between our sweaty bodies each time we kissed and made love.
Someday the house will be “restored,” and the spirits chased away, but we will still have the sensations of sound, taste, smell, and touch to accompany our mutable visual memories.

You brought me to the house for the first time in the afternoon. I tried to force myself to feel something, walking through an old house in the middle of the day, but in vain. When we came at night, the cold, the fear, and the excitement of having to break a lock combined to create an enhanced awareness that I remember well. It was as if the adrenaline was making noise in my head, and the noise only stopped when we reached the attic. We unfurled the blankets, laid out the pillows, and embarked on a journey through memory and magic.

---------- -----------

Brewster [her art teacher] was not being corny when he said that you painting a portrait of me would be a strengthening moment in our relationship. Just as Basil Hallward in The Portrait of Dorian Gray cannot not display his masterpiece because he worries that he has exposed too much of himself in his art and made himself vulnerable, your choice of color and intensity of my gaze in the portrait reflects your inner turmoil and affection. Some people say it doesn’t look like me – I want to tell them that it is really a portrait of a young woman with an unspeakable bond with her subject, but I say nothing instead because those who question the painting would not understand my explanation.

---------- -----------

“Writing makes me feel good about the whole world,” said Jeremy Goodwin [a writer friend from home, ten years my senior] on a Sunday night while driving me around in his mother’s Oldsmobile. I agree with him. When he said that, when you remember that you were a writer before anything else, when I feel that I’ve got a grip on the world as soon as my pen hits the paper…we all know we are of a different sort.

You helped me justify every word I had ever written as part of a larger struggle to attain a more distant goal. I cannot pay you back for giving me Newfound confidence. Please forgive me. You must see something in me to spend so much effort and time pulling me out of pits of self-doubt. Maybe you just love me. I don’t really know.

----------- -----------

Our intimacy really began when you grabbed my hand once and held it open; I wasn’t sure why. You read the lines, told me what I always needed to hear, and told me what I already knew. I am mystified by your contact with the spiritual world. My early disbelief quickly changed into a growing interest in the world that lies dormant in all of us.

Parallel universes, reincarnation, little cherubs watching their own conception – it’s a wonderful, endless world that a small few of us get to peek into briefly. You are on your way to attaining greater spiritual power. It’s written in your amorous, amorphous destiny. Use it well.

That’s it. The end of our Chapter One, I suppose. There are more pages left, and you can write in them if you feel that the booklet is incomplete without some contribution from you. So long, darling. We will meet again.

"Inconsistency"

2007-08-13T03:17:00.000-05:00

So much for the poll...

February 1, 2006
"Inconsistency"

I live a life of inconsistency. I am in love with a girl in Argentina, but every Monday and Wednesday I spend 80 minutes thinking about how I’d like to touch the soft, fragrant neck of the lovely economics major sitting in front of me during Art History. I consider myself fit, but I tell this to people with a cigarette dangling from my lip. I am bored by lunchtime conversations, but I find myself engrossed in the smallest trifles. I feel older and wiser than those caught up in preconceptions and personality complexes, but often I feel the need to be excused: “forgive the child, for he knows not what he does.” I call myself an artist but have nothing to show for it. I oscillate between blind passion and utter apathy. I want to say yes to life but all I ever do is complain.

Do I want to live consistently? What of Emerson’s hobgoblins? What of the people with minds conscious of their own littleness? Where does that put me? Sometimes the idea of constructing an ideal image of my life in the future appeals to me. It becomes a game of hopscotch, putting my feet in the right boxes at the right time. I could do that.

It’s so confusing, after all. Can you imagine? There are other people here, too. Dying, working, being born with a great clamor, lazing, loving, lying, screwing, and killing—everything as they please, almost all of them with no regard for you and me.

Have you been in the subway or on a bus recently? Do you ever look into the faces and try to guess what sort of life is drawn on them? I see Big Plans, some more realistic than others (though it’s all fantasy to me). I see someone thinking about a lover or spouse at home, and she beams with warmth. I see someone staring at the floor, overcome with the stagnancy of everything, the dull grayness of everything, the quiet terror of everything. I see someone very large feeling very small in some way. And the young people, kings on a throne, all-knowing, and all-feeling, brandishing an affected sense of tragedy in the world.

The Future of Living Blindly

2007-08-12T18:08:00.000-05:00

YES OR NO - Should I post sensitive material pertaining to past relationships without naming names? NOTE: I have done this before. - Please answer in comments.

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I have been moving files from my PC (it hasn't been turned on in 6 months) to my Mac using A Ru's thumb drive. I had a chance to look at the various documents I kept as mementos. I used to be in the habit of saving instant messaging conversations and love letters I had drafted on the computer before writing them out (I never ended up sending any of those, thank god).

The reason I put up this silly poll is to get an idea of what you all think is risky and not risky material for online publishing. The poll's answers are binary, but you can elaborate in a comment based on what I added below the poll.

Candidates for appearance on the blog:
[-] A letter I wrote after recovering from a fever, intending to send it to Argentina.
[-] A series of short paragraphs I wrote to accompany a parting gift for my first girlfriend. Very poetical.
[-] An msn conversation in which I urge my ex to tell me I'm making her jealous and angry by telling her about other girls I'm meeting, even though she realizes that her reaction is not productive.
[-] A brief "journal" entry in which I wax angsty about being inconsistent. Also very poetical.

I even kept a document labeled "thoughts.doc" which contains my musings on various grave topics during my first two years in high school. Basically it testifies to the lack of confidence that plagued me then. I was also pretty short; that had a lot to do with it. Anyway, a lot of it is really trite, which is not to say that I have any problem posting it, I just think it might make for a tedious read, even in excerpts.

Let me know.

The Sixties Revival Club

2007-08-12T14:31:00.000-05:00

At the end of junior year of high school I met with my friend Graham to develop plans for a club for free-spirited intellectuals. Over the summer I read Tom Wolfe's The Electric Kool Aid Acid Test and it ate my personality. The previous summer I had read Jack Kerouac's On The Road. This book also ate my personality.

We met again when the following school year started, to resume the conversations we were having at the end of junior year and during the summer when I visited him at his family's summer house on Cape Cod--his parents had overheard me talking about hallucinogenic drugs as if they were the messiah. I don't know about Graham, but I know I was little more than an empty shell of delusions and petty fantasies when I arrived on campus that September. Seeing video footage of myself from that period makes me want to squirm.

To bring other people into our vaguely understood project, we founded the sixties revival club. What better era to exhume than one full of free love, good music, drugs, and activism? We wanted to create a haven for people who took life seriously sometimes and wanted to talk about it with someone else.

There were even a few meetings of it. Each of them ended in part because I stormed out and made a scene with my frustration. I discovered that all I had ever wanted to do was to go hiking and tell stories in the mountains surrounding our school. Graham wanted to attack the biggest questions in life, questions that I intuitively knew would always lead to mental paralysis.

The club fell apart because I started spending all my time with the Latin American girls. This change in my behavior probably stung Graham. I would never expect him to forgive me.

Anxiety With Obvious Cause

2007-08-09T14:17:00.000-05:00

I dreamed that I visited my family in Boston and somehow managed to bring with me a dozen bags of pot measured out for resale. I hid them very poorly--on the windowsill of the bay window by the living room--and sure enough, the cops arrived with a narcotics specialist. He brought out a scale, and in my presence proceeded to weigh the amount I had to determine the punishment I would receive.

Somehow my stash rang up 130.146 grams on the scale, which is kind of a ridiculous amount. I heard from someone recently that Illinois laws allowed you to possess less than an ounce without having to serve jailtime. I wasn't in Illinois, though, and 130 grams is way more than an ounce. The last thing I thought before the dream ended was, "If I'm going to jail, I better start working out."

After Disappointment, Inspiration

2007-08-09T10:08:00.000-05:00

There were a few slow hours at work yesterday during which I tried to find some engaging blogs to read. I was miserably disappointed by what I found. Dozens of blogs beginning with, "So it's been a long time since I've written anything"; blogs with really long entries on things of esoteric interest; blogs written by crazy girls who think that their manic-depression makes for great entertainment (there's only one Raymi, after all); blogs that are just plain boring and infused with what A Ru would call "neutral narcissism" (this blog probably has that problem too).

Lo and behold, this morning there was a breakthrough.

[-] A few days ago Alex D. told me about Failed Intersections, a blog that took shape after the participants in a cross-metropolis experiment of art, knowledge, and philosophy called "Intersections" realized that the experiment would never take place. Hence, Failed Intersections. I almost participated in the experiment, back in late 2005, early 2006--there was going to be a project incorporating video and musical accompaniment composed concurrently with the shooting of the footage. Alex went as far as to invite me as a contributor to the blog, but, and I haven't said this to him yet, it's intellectually over my head. I can actually tell, at least in Alex's entries, that it isn't a bullshit fest. The syntax and diction is complex; the topics demand a precision of language that calls for complicated structures. Some of the entries are more accessible, but I would still be embarrassed to see the exhaust of my solipsism engine in the company of some of the writing I see there.

[-] In the comments to Tony Pierce's latest post I found the blogger behind the site "Boys Wear Pants, Men Wear Trousers", Joshua Minton. This guy used to take things way too seriously, going as far as to take potshots at Tony for not writing enough about "what matters to the world." Fortunately, he has chilled out after two years (I know about this only because he wrote about the whole fiasco in a recent post) and I was especially impressed with his post about cultural malaise. He uses a metaphor near the end that I like for reasons that you will see are obvious if you read the post.

[-] From there I happened upon a blog called "Music at Knifepoint." The author calls himself Azreal Darkskies, and each post is structured the same way: a link to an audio music file, the lyrics to the song (if they exist), and a subsequent entry that has much or little to do with the song. There are lots of fascinating stories and musings up there, and he's been at it for a while.

I am going to add these blogs to my blogroll for sure. I also want to apologize for the blog bashing that went on at the start of this post. I feel badly about it after reading the post that started the feud between Joshua Minton and the entire blogging community / Tony Pierce admirers club.

Everyone's doing their own thing, just like in life, and the benefit of the Internet is that there will never be a shortage of space in which to do it.

Gimpin' / SexTV / Seeing Human

2007-08-06T16:34:00.000-05:00

My friend "Wu" Kang has a hobby of making artfully hip photoshopped facebook profile pictures. I am making an attempt to one-up him using GIMP 2.0, the open source graphics editor:

You like? Is nice, yes.

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You may call me creepy, but boingboing linked to it: www.sextelevision.net/videoplayer has some interesting clips, some shorter, some longer, exploring various topics in sexuality. I recommend it.

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AE and I had gone out to her front porch to smoke cigarettes. She had taken a certain euphoric stimulant a little more than an hour before, but it wasn't working the way we had expected it would: none of the touchy-feely giddiness or inordinate levels of affection, just a noticeable strangeness that would come and go. She figured her medication was interfering with the drug, and we got to talking about depression and its various treatments.

I don't have much experience with depression or medication--any of my roommates would have had more to say about it. I told her how much it frightened me to be around people who were depressed, wanting to do something to help but not knowing where to start. Sometimes you don't even want your friends around, she said.

This led to the topic of narcissism (I should not be surprised that it always comes up), and I found myself explaining to her my own brand of narcissism, or whatever it is, that makes sympathy a difficult project for me. There have been a few moments, I told her, when I have been able to see someone as a human being--as a subject, to use the terms of Frantz Fanon, Simone De Beauvoir and GWF Hegel [Words like "subjectivity" do not usually come to me while smoking cigarettes on the front porch]--especially after staring at them for a while. In these moments I become aware of a unique personality, of desires, anxieties, misunderstandings, and virtues and vices. As this happens, the barriers I have erected to render interactions with people more fluid* must all come down.

*Presumptuous to ever expect them to be that way, eh?

I always find these moments emotionally exhausting and profoundly terrifying.

So far it has only happened with my immediate family members. I am grateful enough to be able to see my sister's personality emerge as a distinct entity, or to sense the fear that sometimes drives the "advice" I hear so often from my father, or to understand the ironic, 24-year-old sigh my mother heaves when we agree on the phone that there's nothing in particular to celebrate about 25 years of marriage.

AE tilted her head back against a pillar. She has a way of appearing defiant even when she isn't--I think it's because of her high cheekbones. She pulled on a menthol and exhaled with a contortion of the mouth, pushing the smoke out slowly in a thick plume.

"So right now, as you're looking at me, you aren't seeing me completely as a human being?"
"No. I'm not. But I will try. Give me a minute."

I straddled the concrete ledge she was sitting on, positioned myself about three feet away, and set about absorbing her with my eyes; she continued to smoke her cigarette without shifting position, her legs drawn up with arms wrapped around. It was easy with her hands, knees, arms, and legs--I was already in the habit of reading body language in the movement of her limbs--but I had to stop at her face.

It is a very striking face, and I like very much to look at it. Still, I feel a bit of guilt when doing that, as if someone might scold me for it. It was not guilt stopping me, though. The process of stripping down everything I had projected or romanticized about her was elevating my heart rate and making my eyes water. Something physical in me resisted it. I turned away and apologized, telling myself that I would accomplish this one thing with her, if nothing else.

She shrugged as if it were nothing, but it bothered me that she knew what scared me most about social interaction, which dark corners I avoid for survival's sake. To see someone you have to be willing to let yourself be seen. I can't always handle that.

Violence As Mastery

2007-08-05T14:10:00.000-05:00

Last night DN spent a while telling me about how important he thought it was to be able stand up to someone who is giving you shit. He told me that he fears disfigurement but does not mind the pain. We have an ideal of peaceful life together as a society, but he said we cannot know that unity without tasting violence. He mentioned the long heritage of violence, specifically between men, he brought up Nietszche, he brought up Hemingway (where the fighter is the least manly, I reminded him).

He's gotten into a number of almost-fights in the past six months or so, and I was trying to get him to explain why this keeps happening, seeing as how he would have needed to get really lucky to beat the opponents he had chosen. He's short tempered, he admits, and this is not something I can sympathize with (inasmuch as I can sympathize with anything - note to self: try to avoid telling people whose trust you want that you have difficulty wearing other people's shoes).

I do have rage filled-moments occasionally--they last five seconds at most. Now that I think of it, DN has been the object of a good number of them.

I'm not sure how good I look to a Nietzschean anymore: am I a weakling constantly "turning the other cheek," or am I above my enemies with the ability to laugh off their insults?

Who am I kidding? I don't have any enemies.

Where We Go To Fix Things / Corporal Punishment

2007-08-04T17:41:00.000-05:00

I had a remarkably jovial conversation with AM in a dream, where I had a chance to amiably defend myself against her claim that I am a creep, or more specifically, that the things I write on my blog are creepy. We parted on good terms. I use dreams to find things I have lost because I don't keep my belongings in order and to fix relationships broken past the point of repair.

The weather has turned in Chicago: high 80s-mid 90s the last few days, and now it's 77 and cloudy.

I woke up with serious brain fog this morning. Damn those Metalheads and their high grade product. I didn't believe them when they said it was much stronger than what I got from Johnny R, who seems to have the extra-sensory ability to call you just about the minute you want some more, so I let them give me a sample. 15 minutes later, the only word I can think of to describe myself as I sip warm milk with cinnamon and sugar and stare at the millipede they keep for a pet crawling around, is debilitated. Three hours later, I'm chilling with the neighbors on the third floor in my building, some visitors from Michigan come down for Lollapalooza, but I can't remember how I got home. I hope my bike is locked up beneath the stairs; I'm afraid to check.

I've gotten myself relatively deep in some stuff I can't really discuss openly here. People who live with me know what I'm talking about, and hopefully I'll be able to dispense with all of it soon, and at a handsome profit too, if I'm careful. I'm not in any danger, just finding myself doing some things I would not have imagined myself doing two years ago.

Some strange marks have appeared on my chest and back. I've done some research online and they don't seem to fit the description of any of the commonly documented skin disorders. No scaliness, no irritation, and no easily noticeable difference in texture. I'm beginning to believe that this is some kind of punishment for how I've been living recently. I sometimes believe that the body is capable of conveying its dissatisfaction to the decision-making sectors of the brain. The morning after a heavy bout of drinking, for example, your body will clearly be telling you, "What the fuck was that? Are you out of your mind? You think this is some kind of toy? Get your act together, asshole, or I'll show you nausea like you never thought possible!"

I woke up distinctly missing AE today, and with a strong feeling that I am a huge fuck-up. These things pass though: AE lives downstairs, so I will probably see her soon, and Marcel helped me figure out the money that everyone in the apartment owes each other. God bless the sociology major.

Another Quickie / Invitation

2007-07-31T14:17:00.000-05:00

Security Blogger Bruce Schneier interviews Transportation Safety Administration (TSA) Administrator Kip Hawley about TSA tactics.

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As of July 20, my family owns a two-story split level house in Mashpee, Cape Cod, Massachusetts. First of all, congratulations Mom and Dad on the closing--I know this means a lot to you. Second of all, everyone I know is invited to a weekend (To Be Announced) in September for massive carousing and debauchery before I go back to college. Don't forget to bring handcuffs, leather, silk ties, blindfolds, lubricant, and the like. I know I can count on all of your perversions to make for an exciting party.

No, in seriousness, this house is kind of a big deal. Maybe for a family with several generations of Americans walking the earth I would make less noise, but you have to appreciate how proud it makes an immigrant couple to be able to own a summer house. My mother's family owned a tiny shack (it's called a dacha) a few hours outside Moscow when they were living in Russia, and she has fond memories of summers spent there. I regret that I didn't have a place like that when I was growing up, though Nickerson State Park, where my family goes camping about 40 times a summer, just about did the job.

I don't even know how much the house cost--what an ingrate! However, I don't think money was the most important agent in this situation. There are social consequences and implications. The same way my father used to mention badminton and kayaking in the first hour of meeting somebody new, now he'll be able to mention where we summer. That's right: we have bought the syntactical privilege of using the word both as a noun and as a verb.

I wish I could talk frankly with my parents about what the purchase means to them. Most likely they would say, "What are you asking about? It means that we have a place to go to on the weekends." That is certainly true, but I wish sometimes that they shared my curiosity about our place in a group larger than just our family. I wish they could see outside their immediate desires and would try to give themselves some context, to acknowledge their participation in the ideological game we might call The American Dream. I wish they had time, the kind of time that unmotivated students of English literature enjoy, to let go of the reigns--if only for a few moments--to appreciate the sound of the emigrant beast breathing hard, its hooves a sturdy drummer on the sand.

Quickies

2007-07-31T10:47:00.000-05:00

Sweet links from the Directory of Wonderful Things known as boingboing.net. Something for everyone.

Books shaped like packs of cigarettes.

Concept cars from the past.

Rube Goldberg Machines from Japanese TV show "Pythagora Switch."

50 best movie robots of all time!

Enjoy!

Visitations and Side Effects

2007-07-31T09:17:00.000-05:00

AM appeared in my dreams last night after an absence of several months. She accosted me on the sidewalk, somewhere on campus. She opened with an answer to a question I had not asked: "What are you doing here?" Her answer, I realized, was what I would have wanted to hear: "I don't know." Admission of fallibility, not that she ever insisted too much on being right--she just was.

She put her hands on my shoulders and appraised me, the way old friends do after a long separation, and she put her hands to my chest and gasped at how much it has deflated since she last knew it. She saw what a sty I live in, how far from the target I've landed. She saw who and what I tend to keep between my arms at night, and what I did to make it that way.

She seemed to be there to help.*

*I remember, when I wake up, that she doesn't know anything and she doesn't care.

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When I smoke too much, I tend to forget your face; it remains a comfort to me, even when I do not recognize it.

Episodes

2007-07-23T13:18:00.000-05:00

In the last ten days I noticed that it had become harder to see the events of each day episodically, conveniently organized into thematic boxes: sex, technology, friendship, family, art, nonsense.

Thus, this space was empty for a little while.

All my thoughts facing in one direction. I can't remember the last time I lost my head over someone. It makes me feel stupid and childish. It forces an uneasy self-consciousness on me, the one ghost I thought I had learned to avoid. No, here it is again, dressed in motley, jingling its bells and leering as I try to step on the right stones, the combination to her heart.

It makes me write like a thirteen year-old girl. Where did the old bite and sting go? When I spend my time thinking about how to be nice, I forget how to use the whip.

Yesterday I thought about making brownies for her and her roommates.

We spent a while lounging around in my bed, reading our respective books (the last Harry Potter book and Underworld; you can guess which belongs to whom) and I started to worry that I was beginning to bore her. DO NOT THINK UNHEALTHY THOUGHTS.

I'm not even thinking them. They just poke their heads through the door like a secretary giving minute-by-minute updates on a meeting of the janitorial staff, a topic of little interest to the executive.
"Oh, look, she noticed you were looking at her.""
"Oh, dear, I don't think she feels like being touched right now, though she probably won't say it."
"Come now, just because she left without a hug does not mean she's tired of you. Well, maybe she is tired of you."

I imagine this secretary with a soft British accent, glasses, nylon stockings that make scratching noises, and some peculiar physical trait that renders her completely unattractive to me. Betsy, or something.

I Feel Fussy

2007-07-23T13:11:00.000-05:00

First of all, this is just really cool: http://www.little-people.blogspot.com/

Second of all, I just surfed through a sizable chunk of blogs that all began with something like, "So, it's been a while since I've posted/written anything..." followed by an explanation for the lapse. Not very often did I feel engaged enough to read on to figure out why the person hadn't written in a while. And yet, before I saw all this, I was about to start an entry the same way. I already know I have something in common with those bloggers: an unflagging interest in my own affairs. But I promise to be more conscientious of how boring it can be to read someone's excuses for something that does not really warrant much comment anyway.

Why? Because.

2007-07-18T09:08:00.000-05:00

Because we're neighbors.
Because we chain-smoked cigarettes on the stairs until 8 am.
[Because] we just happened to be high.
Because her roommate told me she was waiting for me to do something; otherwise I would probably have left the place alone, feeling defeated.
Because she has little direction but much faith.
Because making out on the front balcony encouraged by "The Final Countdown" pumping from the living room makes for a funny setting.

Because she thought I would think she was crazy, and because I didn't.
Because I saw her in a dream while taking a nap several hours earlier. In it was represented the decline of the Latin-American type female as a primary object of desire, succeeded by the amazonian Midwestern blond with a silent beckoning of the finger from around a corner.
Because she said I was pretty, and I feared that any response would reek of insincerity and exaggeration.
Because she is quiet in the act--I pay more attention to her breathing.
Because I said that she smelled like whiskey.
Because she said I smell nice, and my promise to tell her about my experience in a certain Wilson's department store in Greenfield, Massachusetts.

Because she towers over me by three inches, but her hands and feet are smaller than mine. I asked her if she ever had trouble walking around.
Because she dyes her hair impulsively. Because she stalks around like a gaunt scarecrow sometimes, almost an affected zombie walk, if you had to be specific. Because she burns the candle at both ends, and has circles under her eyes to prove it.

Because she doesn't listen to Radiohead or The Beatles. Because my neighbor from Tennessee said "good luck."

Because even at 20, I can get too excited, drunk on that "too good to be true" dizziness that sends blood to all the wrong places.

Retrospective Foreshadowing

2007-07-17T11:04:00.000-05:00

[This is a post I wrote earlier in the summer. I like that it's unfinished and kind of hokey in tone. -August 7, 2007]

Over the weekend I contracted a fever straight out of Thomas Mann's "Death in Venice," brought on by exhaustion and decadent behavior.

The apartment downstairs was hosting a ton of people from Pittsburgh, Oklahoma, and somewhere in New York who needed a place to stay during the Pitchfork festival. They were an odd bunch, especially when drunk, and they collectively earned the endearing title of "The Pitchfork Assholes." At some point one of my guests was yelling from the balcony of my window to some people below who had had nothing to do with the party, "hey douchebags! Get out of my alley!" Not long after, I saw that my other guest was taking someone up on their offer to spit in their mouths from the balcony above. I ran down to apologize, tailed closely by my guest yelling in a loud voice, "if you hear Daniel apologizing, ignore him completely." What a mess.

On the bright side, I got to spend some one-on-one bonding time with two of my neighbors: a guy from upstairs who acts in one of the University's improv comedy groups, with whom I discussed how annoying girls in improv comedy troupes can be, and later in the night, a girl from downstairs, who isn't really a member of anything, and that's what I came to like about her. We both got pretty trashed and ended up talking and smoking cigarettes in the open stairwell until 7:30 in the morning...

The Russians Are...Already Here

2007-07-10T13:00:00.002-05:00

I'm back in Chicago after an absence of 12 days. I entered my apartment last night to find nobody home, which actually means that people are actually sleeping and/or have disappeared themselves to a certain city on the West Coast without telling anybody. Upstairs, the neighbors were drinking and dancing to celebrate the end of an 8-month relationship and I joined them in flagrant disregard for an alarm clock set for 8 am.

But I'm not thinking about any of this right now because the preceding 12 days felt like they lasted several months.

The last five days I spent camping with my family on Cape Cod. Normally, this involves lots of lounging around the campsite, collecting wood for fires that aren't used for anything, drinking wine with my parents and their friends, entertaining my younger sister and other children her age, &c.

I lucked out this time. A 20-minute bike ride away, in a different part of the campground, a group of about 20 Russian kids from the Boston area had reserved a group site for themselves and were spending a week in the campground. The best part? They were all my age. I happened to find them when I ran into a girl I met in the same campground two years ago, a terrible flirt with a deep tan and pouty lips. She led me to site, where, after a few shaky introductions, I was taken in as one of their own [and why wouldn't they? I spoke the same language, shared the same birthplace, struggled with the same anxieties, and sang the same songs. It was no more complicated than that].

They came in various shapes and sizes: the arrogant loudmouth with an appropriately Jewish nose and a goofy accent in both English and Russian, the silent acne-fraught guitarist, the bespectacled smiling swaggering leader of the gang and his twin sister [I don't know which one came out first, but it matters after all], the proud owner of a 90s-era BMW whose engine he had replaced by himself, the redheaded history major interested in hearing about what it's like to be high, the flirt I mentioned before, the Russian Russian (as opposed to Jewish Russian) who always seemed to be cooking and taking care of household matters, the mousy girl recently victorious in the constant battle against low self esteem, and a few others that made less of an impression on me.

The twin sister, though. I fell in love with her, maybe. Her boyfriend works for Google [(I'm {Feeling Lucky), punk?}]. She had a double role in the group, slipping easily between the part of village idiot, where her brother scolded her constantly, and that of a coy but sincere charmer, only subliminally sexual, with a deep desire to know herself and others. She called herself a narcissist too, but it amounted to a funny kind of narcissism where everything she wanted for herself she also wanted for everybody else.

We stayed up to watch the sunrise two days in a row, both of us deaf to the others' entreaties for sleep.

What a thing it would be, to get accustomed to seeing the sun peek over the treeline.

Sitemeter Creepiness

2007-07-10T10:17:00.002-05:00

Sometime in June I installed a nifty link called Sitemeter, which monitors the traffic on this blog. I soon realized that it wasn't going to be reliable since most of the page views were my own and the site couldn't tell the difference between me and any other viewer, regardless of whether or not I was logged in. However, today I saw that there are numerous categories by which page visits are organized, and they are actually a lot more informative than the numbers themselves.

Sorting the visits by location, I saw that I had people logging in from places like Palo Alto, California; Taiwan; Uruguay; Palos Park, Illinois; Toronto; Milwaukee; Tbilisi, Georgia; Westport, Connecticut; and Florence, Massachusetts. Pretty interesting, but not altogether shocking.

However, sorting by things like service provider, referral page, entry and exit page, and date, revealed some connections that proved to be a bit unsettling. For example, there is a regular reader who is connecting through Florence, MA, but I don't know anybody in Florence. Or Palo Alto for that matter, where the service provider is listed as nasa.gov (yikes!). It is possible that people I know from home are being listed in strange places because of their service provider, but that would be a best-case scenario. Worst-case scenario, there are people at home, possibly family members or family friends, who are reading my blog unbeknownst to me. Sometimes it's not even possible to know that your blog is compromised; it blows up in your face before you have a chance to slap your forehead in self-reproach.

On the other hand,the next time my blog gets me in trouble, there is a good chance I will be able to figure out what happened thanks to Sitemeter, even though it may be a post-fiasco discovery.
I wonder if their mission statement contains anything about being of assistance to unscrupulous bloggers.

Success Stories

2007-07-03T00:05:00.000-05:00

I'm beginning to realize how poorly I actually know my friends, so I'm having a hard time finding people to help me with this...

If you admire one or both of your parents and their current profession does not fall under any of of the following categories--

Law
Medicine
Engineering /Science
Academia
Art (creating it, I mean)
Finance / Business / Really Estate
Military

--please get in touch with me. My mother has sent me on an assignment to figure out how, when, and under what circumstances people who have accomplished something by now began to make something of their lives and what they did to get there. If you know someone who fits this description (young person or parent / adult) feel free to send them my way.

Thanks a lot, everyone out there.

Good Habits

2007-07-01T22:42:00.000-05:00

I had a long talk with a friend from high school about good writing habits. This summer she's working on a short story that's pushing past 25 pages, and she writes just about every morning, provided I'm not pouring screwdrivers for her the night before. Anyway, I admire her discipline and she inspired me to try to make some changes in my life.

[-] When there are people around and things to do, I am not likely to sit down in my room by myself and tap on a keyboard or scribble in a notebook. Solution? Shift my day back a few hours so I can get some writing done in the morning, when nothing else is happening. If I miss some parties because of it, so be it.

[-] Posting to a blog means that I can publish anything instantaneously. According to my friend, it's not a good frame of mind for a writer to be in because the gratification of being published is also instantaneous and easily accessible. I'm going to try to keep any "serious" writing off of here; if I compose in the right environment, hopefully I'll be inclined to treat my writing better, to take care of it, to see its flaws and perhaps love it in the end.

[-] One of the resolutions I made involved the following phrase: "Find a resonance frequency for narcissism." It's kind of a silly phrase, but it means that I need to make myself interesting to others, or otherwise stop writing about myself.

[-] Senior year of high school I read Virginia Woolf's The Waves, in which the "protagonist" Bernard keeps alphebatized notebooks of his experiences for use in later writing. I identified with this because I had basically been doing the same thing, sans alphabetization. I'm going to return to that time in spirit, because it kept my eyes open.

I made these resolutions while riding in the car with her. She reminded me of the time when I used to call myself a writer, and I realize that none of these resolutions will mean anything if I don't start writing regularly. It's going to take a while; I've become self-conscious now that it's not part of a role-play anymore.

Back Home

2007-06-29T03:57:00.000-05:00

This is not a story [for those of my occasional readers who have trouble telling the difference between fiction and not].

I'm back home for about a week and a half. Tonight I spent mostly with Zeke, but ran into BS and DS on the beach. I talked to B for a while about Fanon and race theory, with D for a while about the good old days of nintendo NES and joke bands, and then spent until 4 or so driving around with Zeke. He was having some tough times with his girlfriend and was telling me about it. I was able to listen to him for the first time without thinking boring boring boring the whole time. We stopped at a park in Nahant and he picked a bunch of wildflowers for her. We drove to her house at 2:30 to lay them on her porch so she would find them in the morning.

He pointed out to me, with a disclaimer of "no offense," that I always seemed to be living a bit detached from reality. He reminded me of how Tom Wolfe's The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test used to be my bible. I could barely find a way to say to him how much had changed since then, but I seem to have gotten across to him that things have gotten much more "real" for me in the past year, and that I am much more hesitant to hang on to a romantic view of my own adventures. And besides, there are no adventures anymore. I had forgotten for a long time that passage in Sartre's Nausea in which the narrator declares that we script our lives as adventures and shape them into stories - a betrayal of a deeper awareness that our lives never unfold like that. Recently my "adventures" have turned drastically stale, so I'm in tune with that passage now more than ever. Tomorrow morning I'll look it up and post it here. It's on page 10, I think.

[...]

Page 36, actually:

Even if it were true--that I never had any adventures--what difference would that make to me? First, it seems to be a a pure question of words. This business at Meknes, for example, I was thinking about a little a while ago: a Moroccan jumped on me and wanted to stab me with an enormous knife.But I hit him just below the temple...then he began shouting in Arabic and a swarm of lousy beggars came up and chased us all the way to Souk Attarin. Well, you can call that by any name you like, in any case, it was an event which happened to ME.

I have never had adventures. Things have happened to me, events, incidents, anything you like. But no adventures. It isn't a question of words; I am beginning to understand. There is something to which I clung more than all the rest--without completely realizing it. It wasn't love. Heaven forbid, not glory, not money. It was...I had imagined that at certain times my life could take on a rare and precious quality. There was no need for extraordinary circumstances: all I asked for was a little precision. There is nothing brilliant about my life now: but from time to time, for example, when they play music in the cafes, I look back and tell myself: in old days, in London, Meknes, Tokyo, I have known great moments, I have had adventures. Now I am deprived of this. I have suddenly learned, without any apparent reason, that I have been lying to myself for ten years. And naturally, everything they tell about in books can happen in real life, but not in the same way. It is to this way of happening that I clung so tightly.

Sartre was not a very concise writer, and Nausea did not turn out to be as "thrilling" as Sartre had expected it might. Imagine reading that passage as an 18 year-old with his sense of self loudly crashing down around him, and you might begin to feel its effect.

Survey / Janglybones

2007-06-27T12:51:00.000-05:00

I just realized, looking over the past few posts, how terribly irrelevant this blog is (pero disculpame*, I'm not the only one with this problem). It has no relation to any universally recognized reality, nor to that of any of my readers. It originates in, and revolves around, my reality. Does this bother anyone? Comments appreciated.

*"but excuse me"
------------------------------------------

The mirror in my room makes me look like a skeleton dressed as a living soul for Halloween.

Where Contentment Is / Unrelated

2007-06-27T09:02:00.000-05:00

"'Just cool it, man,' he said, and so I'm cooling it now, just like he said. Just flowing in the moment, you know? That's where contentment is. I read that in some hokey Buddhist handbook full of crazy diagrams, but I think it was starting to grow on me.

'Why you gotta be so goal-oriented all the time?' he asked me, pushing his glasses up on his nose. I didn't really know what he meant, but I knew he was as tired of my bullshit as I was. 'You're right. Time for a change,' I said.

You couldn't have offered me Donald Trump's credit card to believe my own words.

So it's like this: I see it but I don't see it. I'm reading the writing but it all looks Japanese. Right under my nose, you know? Everyone else seems to realize it already, like a big gag they're playing on me and I'm waiting for that moment when everybody jumps out from behind the couches with party hats on and screams, 'Surprise!' and we all get on with it. But that's for the TV shows."

-----------------------------------------

Unrelated: The girl who lives across from my upstairs neighbors is really hot. She doesn't play guitar and she isn't into art history and she doesn't read poems but she does wear sweatpants around the house. I want her to put me between herself and a wall, or the floor. Some hard surface, hard like her edges.*

Dear prudent reader: I won't hold back anymore on this kind of thing. You do me an injustice if you refuse to accept this hedo-narcissistic strain in me.

*[Look, Daniel, but don't touch.]✝

✝{Good luck with that.}

Blog Rating / A Simple List of Wants

2007-06-26T09:31:00.002-05:00

Really? PG-13? I was hoping for at least R, for adult themes or something like that. I think a 13 year old would find a film version of my blog to be an insufferable form of entertainment. Maybe if I start swearing more often...but that wouldn't make the writing any better. I guess this rating system doesn't pick up on implication or symbolism very well.

---------------------------------

I am tired of these fawns who fumble with their small hands at my zipper, whose breasts are bound in a smothering cotton shield and who cannot fit anything into their mouths. I squeeze for dear life, but her hands lie limp on my shoulders.

I feel like an indecisive rapist.

For four hours a glorious stream of garbage poured out from my mouth, stemmed only by my own impatience. I finally kissed her on account of the frames she intended to hang on the walls of her bedroom, a delicate chamber furnished with lace, lily, and throw pillows. ["I approve of your frames, (smooch)."] I will kiss her goodbye in the morning, but I will not call again. This is not what I want.

I want to be put in line, to be told to shut up. I want to be pulled and scratched. I want to have nothing to say. I want to be treated crudely and to be crude. I want to bruise and be bruised. I want to be taken not only in spite of my faults, but mostly because of them. I don't want to talk about my family, my job, or my self until afterwards, when our chests are heaving and everything in the room has fallen down.

Saturday Realism recordings are up

2007-06-25T16:56:00.001-05:00

Stop by my band's blog at http://saturdayrealism.blogspot.com to listen to recordings from the last show we played during spring quarter.

Enjoy!

The People [Blogs] I Love [Copy]

2007-06-21T13:01:00.001-05:00

As with a lot of hobbies/activities in my life, I started blogging because I saw other people doing it. I read their posts and looked at their layouts and pictures and thought, "wow, these are really cool." Here's a bit of a profile for each of the few blogs that have inspired me most.

Zulieka Unstrung - "Zulieka Unstrung" began as a sex blog in 2004. I started reading it at the most recent entries, then skipped around a bit, then decided to read the whole thing, front to back. It was like swallowing a life in the course of a few days; something akin to that foray I made into a friend's livejournal archives. Zulieka writes on a variety of topics, from her own sexuality, her dreams, music and art, memories of childhood, to an occasional political rant or excerpts from her short stories. The writing on her blog has given me a needed lesson in tone and pacing. I like to read this blog because it feels like it inhabits its own space, somewhat isolated from the rest of the internet save for the links in the blog-roll.

Raymi the Minx - Unlike Zulieka, Raymi is sort of a real celebrity--in the blog world at least. She has gotten a number of awards, but I'm not really sure why. Raymi is a pseudonym for a real life woman in her 20s named Lauren White, who lives in Toronto and just blogs life, as it comes. Her writing is less deeply personal, maybe I only say that because she manages to avoid saying directly hurtful things about people who might care, unlike me or Zulieka. Her posts are full of amusing pictures of the food she eats zoomed in really far, or of strange things she notices around the city, or herself in various states of undress. Somehow she manages to attend a fair number of cultural events and always takes pictures, so that can be fun. Occasionally she throws in an "interview" conducted via instant messaging, where skinheads, teenagers aspiring to be alcoholics, and other internet riffraff make pathetic fools of themselves; Raymi almost always tries to help them out, but usually they end up saying things like, "r u female? ur prolly hott." Reading Raymi's blog is like a taking a regular "reality check" cold shower: startling, refreshing, invigorating.

Tony Pierce and the Bus Blog - Tony Pierce is the closest thing to a physical-world celebrity of the bloggers I've listed here. He is sometimes known as the granddaddy of blogging--google "how to blog" and the second result should explain that title. Tony works as a correspondent at LAist.com, a Los Angeles focused culture site. Tony has basically trademarked (as I see it) the style of never using capital letters. According to Z, the following characteristics make his blog popular: "constant stream of postings, photos of women, and pop culture gossip." These are not what make his blog good in my estimation (though I have always been an advocate of using photos of attractive women to get a reader's visual and imaginative neurons firing!). In his posts he comes off as a really straightforward, sensitive, charming man who has a way with women. The last bit, along with the anecdotes he writes on topics such as, for example, the politically aware punk rock girl he was in love with, or the 20-year-old date who "hadn't taken a walk in ages," really endear this blog to me, though I think anyone can dig it. Tony also gets to attend a lot of cool shows on a press pass and often writes short informal reviews and does the occasional photo-essay as well. Something for everyone.

So these are the people I adore on the internet. I am super excited to be part of this phenomenon. In the physical world, your role in your high school musical will not get you a chance to talk with Nathan Lane. However, send an email about the right topic in the right tone of voice, and you might find yourself exchanging friendly emails with the authors of high-traffic blogs.

At first I thought that these personal connections with complete strangers constituted evidence for an internet-facilitated functional proximity. Then I realized that this community I've peeked into forms an infinitesimally small pocket of the universe. Or an infinitely large pocket of my universe.

Anniversaries, Missed; Caller ID Nuerosis

2007-06-18T10:58:00.000-05:00

Girls, do not kill me if I can't remember the day we met.

If I can't even remember the six-month anniversary of my blog, how do you expect me to remember that sunny August afternoon at Front Street with your hair just a bit frizzy from the humidity and that silver bracelet I bought you in Mexico?

It's been more than six and a half months since I started this thing, and I never thought it would get me into so much trouble in such a short span of time.

The last incident forced me to remove a substantial amount of material, and I imagine as readers you feel like there's some 'splainin' to be done. The way I've chosen to interpret it (I can't know because the person who requested the takedown wasn't specific) was that I revealed personal information about someone without permission, AND I used his full name, which is a problem because he is a semi-public figure.

If you asked somebody else, you might get the opinion that I'm a jealous creep.

It's all possible.

Since then I've been terrified to answer calls on my phone that appear to be coming from outside of the US, thinking I'm about to get a very stern talking-to about my transgressions.

So: if you are calling me from outside the US, please state your name when I pick up. This is especially true if you are female and speak a slightly accented English. If you do not do this, I am liable to have a panic attack.

Home?

2007-06-14T21:38:00.001-05:00

When I was 16 I had my first formal guitar lesson with Mr. Applegate. He asked me what kind of music I was interested in playing, and though he was probably in his mid 30s, he didn't recognize any of the groups I named for him. I remember being both embarrassed and proud of the obscurity of my tastes. "Why don't you tell me a bit about yourself instead--maybe something will come to mind."

Out came the life story, with a special focus on not really knowing what it was like to be attached to a place--to call it home--as a result of the circumstances of my upbringing.

"Ah," he said, smiling and turning red a little bit, "so you're a Nowhere Man." And that was the first song I learned with him.

The nickname was apt at the time, but before long I found out what that experience of "home" was about--in part that it had nothing to do with how long you spent somewhere. In 2003, I spent a mere 14 hours in Rome with a group, but sitting by the fountain outside the Pantheon licking gelato I could not help asking, "why am I leaving this?" Or what about that Australian Jew posing as Abraham in the desert east of Jerusalem threatening to keep our passports until we were satisfied with the delicious Bedouin meal he had offered us? We were ready to burn them ourselves if it meant we could stay longer.

I'm not really prone to this kind of romanticizing anymore. Now I say, with a dismissive gesture of the hand, that those places appealed to us because they were unfamiliar and because we saw ourselves as characters populating a work of literature or cinema.

So much for the exotic locales. I used to think you could always choose whether or not to get attached to a person, a place, or a thing. I have a friend with a bit of a problem with attachment: he believes that they constitute a necessary part of living a rich emotional and ethical life but finds, at the end of every day, and despite his sincerest efforts, that he has failed to develop any:

"I've been around, here and there, known people--whatever. I haven't learned much more than that every place is just like another--somewhere to survive; every person, just like another--you get what you can from them and they from you and hopefully part on good terms; every thing--well, that's not even worth a homemade aphorism."

Only a few people realize how dangerous he is--too few, if you ask me. Sometimes he tries to warn them, but it rings like false modesty and so they ignore it. I sympathize with him, even if he exaggerates. "Home is where the heart is." Is it? I don't know. I've never dropped it anywhere, so I must be at home right now.

Abusing the Margins

2007-06-12T20:44:00.000-05:00

When he asked me to recommend a book for the summer, I knew that I wasn't going to be able to come up with anything, so instead I went over my own plans:

Danielewski, House of Leaves
DeLillo, Underworld
Roth, Portnoy's Complaint
Bowles, A Distant Episode
Nin, Delta of Venus

I can barely remember even those, despite being back in my room. The problem? The books have been moved from the bookshelf to boxes as I prepare to move. The device has been improperly removed, and the data may be corrupted [nerd joke].

DeLillo, though: the first copy of Underworld I had a chance to look at belonged to my friend's older brother Pat, a reticent moody, supposedly brilliant figure, recently graduated from Harvard.

The summer before he had picked me up from the train station on my way to visit his younger sister. He had majored in English at Harvard, and I had just finished my first year at Chicago. We talked about Freud and Milton, two authors I knew he had studied, but I found myself doing most of the talking, which is bad as it is and worse when I don't know jack to start with.

On a visit the following winter, I was spending the night in the attic, where Pat stayed when he still lived at home. Not quite ready to go to sleep, I indulged in a favorite pastime: going through other peoples' things. In this case it was limited to his bookshelf, where the second most interesting thing I found was a nicely bound journal his mother had given him as a birthday gift. It was empty.

The most interesting thing was a hardcover copy of Underworld. It had come out a few years before and I had wanted to dive into it for a while. I flipped through the first few pages out of habit, to see if anything interesting turned up. I discovered that this particular copy was covered in Pat's notes--to himself, to other readers, to DeLillo himself. Instead of flipping through casually, I went ahead and checked every single page for notes. "Brilliant, Donald, fucking brilliant," was one that I remember laughing at. Another I thought especially astute: DeLillo had written, "All waste aspires to the condition of shit"--Pat had crossed it out and written, "All art aspires to the condition of music," the famous Kandinsky line.

My fingers were aching from the cold air in the uninsulated room, but I finally went to sleep burning with envy. I wanted to be the kind of person who wrote those kinds of notes. In fact, I'm the kind of person who doesn't write any kind of notes, out of an irrational aversion to marring the pages, and so resigned myself to mediocrity.

Meanwhile, I still haven't read Underworld.

Summer: What?; Hang-Up Heights

2007-06-12T11:21:00.000-05:00

Last weekend everyone who had a ticket out of here--be it for reasons of completed study or simply a return to home base--packed up their stuff and skipped town. Only the most intrepid pioneers remain. Just kidding: actually, I bet it's mostly people who wouldn't have as much fun at home as they would here, which is definitely the case for me, and I'm not afraid of anyone from home reading that.

When I compare home to Chicago I am inevitably reminded of certain people with whom life has always been richer. One of them is the girl who [is always getting] away. I remembered her because on Saturday night I spent a while talking to a girl I didn't think I would be able to talk to: Heather, a third year linguistics major [if you read this, Heather, please find me, because I don't know your last name and you don't seem to have a facebook account and I think your trombone skills could give my band some hot flava/or].

I used to see her often in one of the campus coffee shops and always took her for a reclusive graduate student: thoroughly unapproachable. Here she was, though, fairly drunk, chatting with me about G.G. Marquez and how bad-ass of a language Russian is. She has smooth, fair (but I would not say pale) skin and sharp facial features. She wears bifocals and did not hesitate to mention that she has been wearing them since she was 5. Her hair is done in a bookish bob, dyed a rich rusty reddish-brown that I wish I could see the way it was meant to be seen.

To get to the point of this description, she's tall: about my height, which is 5'9" or so (175.25 cm for my readers abroad)*. We ended up discussing height with a very short guy. I pointed out that at her height she had a sort of advantage, and she countered with the fact that she was only taller than most women, and so her advantage was limited. I suddenly regretted bringing up the topic, or at least regretted having taken it any farther than the short guy had, for here were three people trying to avoid revealing their respective height-related hangups as if they were hideous but impossible-to-conceal birthmarks. Only I hadn't been aware of the symptoms of my particular hangup until just then: tall girls and short girls are both attractive, but tall girls make me nervous and skittish and can we please get the hell out of here ASAP I think I need a cigarette---

---a DRASTIC departure from my normal demeanor.*

*[don't kid yourself, buddy]

The girl who [is always getting] away is about half an inch taller than me, but it makes a huge difference. We've known each other for four years now, and I've always been into her--into her in the way that you can be into someone while dating the best thing that ever happened to you--even though I've had to assure her on multiple occasions that all passions have, like the less intrepid residents of Hyde Park, skipped town.

I always feel younger, in a bad way, around her, and I often find myself leaning towards pointless coquetry during conversation. I've never been able to assume a paternal, or even a fraternal, tone with her. I wrote a prose poem about her in high school that ended with the line, "a cheap toy glittering on a heat wave city sidewalk." [Of the few things I've written, I'm actually very proud of it, and would gladly show it to anyone who asked]. We smoked together once and I decided to tell her about it because I knew she liked to hear what others thought of her (we are similar in that, at least) and because I was ready with the explanation that that was then and this is now and I resolved to hide the fact that I live as if such a distinction did not exist.

I wonder if she is like this with taller men with longer limbs and longer feet and longer etc., etc. Of course none of this is really my fault--it's all biological after all--but how can either of us forget that I would have to raise my lips to kiss her?

I Don't "Get" This Ambrose Bierce Story

2007-06-07T14:00:00.001-05:00

PDF Link:
http://www.horrormasters.com/Text/a0953.pdf
Webpage Link:
http://www.eastoftheweb.com/short-stories/UBooks/BoaWin.shtml

Assignment: 13-15 pages of close textual analysis on any short story considered to be "in the Gothic tradition." The paper was officially due on Monday. I got an extension in the form of "take as much time as you need," i.e., the worst thing for an undergrad to get second only to a bad case of Mononucleosis (I know a girl who had to withdraw from 3 of her classes this quarter; the guy she was kissing assumed it wasn't contagious after the onset of symptoms...jackass).

Any insights?

Untitled

2007-06-05T01:25:00.001-05:00

Man, let me tell you, I have seen some weird stuff in the past few days. First, I have a dream about my best friend in college exchanging pleasantries with an old ex with whom I haven't had the slightest contact since September 2006. The following night, I step onto my porch to find a bunch of black guys in the alleyway, shadowboxing and practicing breakdance moves. And today, I discover, after hearing it in a track by "Girl Talk," that "Tiny Dancer" by Elton John is a really moving song.

It's all pushing the limits of my comprehension.

Bogged down working furiously to churn out mediocre final papers, I've lost touch a little bit with reality. Not socializing for three days straight does quite a number on me.

I am going to be visited in a month by some recently graduated high school girls from a performance school in NYC.

I'm wondering what the hell I'm doing on this busted third rock from the sun.

End transmission.

Spin the Bottle in the Clubhouse

2007-05-23T23:34:00.000-05:00

[stolen from flickr.com]

In my third grade class of eight students, there were two Lizas. One of them should get in touch with me. The other can fall off the face of the earth for all I care. You do the guesswork.

Liza F. danced in the Wang Center production of the Nutcracker every year, had a mother who made $80 an hour [she must have told us this, because there's no way I could know that] and drove a BMW. She would tie her shoulder-length light brown hair in a ponytail and wear polka-dotted dresses. She had a perfect smile and rosy cheeks on a pale complexion.

Liza S. was essentially Lauren F.'s evil counterpart. I won't insist on any causation, but I was also in love with her. It did not occur to me until yesterday that the feeling I had is called love. Unfortunately it was so long ago that I can't remember what it actually felt like, and so, for all intents and purposes, I still don't know if I've ever been in love.

Her skin was darker, her eyes were darker, her hair was darker, her eyelashes were darker, her hands were sweatier [In Shakespeare's time, sweaty hands were thought to be an indicator of sensuality]. Her parents were divorced, and this made her more intriguing. It pains me that I end up defining her in these negative terms, for they all appeared to me as positive virtues at the time. We played spin the bottle in the plywood clubhouse near the end of third grade, and while everyone else dreaded having to kiss Ronny the fat kid [God, Where the hell IS that kid these days? I came over his house a few times to play Power Rangers. Even then I noticed that his parents were obese and somewhat unsophisticated], I prayed that my spin would point to her.

She did kiss me on the lips once, against the north wall of the schoolhouse. Everything I ever needed to know may have been in that kiss, but I don't remember it well enough to know.

Gosh, I feel lightheaded thinking about her now. When we played "house," she was always the mother and I was always glad to be some kind of robotic dog who took orders from her.

Of the other girl in that class, I know that she transformed from an awkward, rhythm-less duckling into a stunning blonde swan with heavy eye makeup and a figure Kate Moss might appreciate. I didn't care for her then, but now I could probably stand for a cocktail and some barefooted dancing with her on the beach at Rye Playland [The fortune-telling scene from "Big" was filmed there, not at Coney Island] or somewhere appropriate like that.

I saw Liza S. riding by on a bicycle once or twice at home, but I'm not really sure if it was her. My neighbor back home, whose opinion I don't really respect, said he had heard that she was a slut. I don't care if that's true; I still want to have a cup of coffee with her and to touch her hands to see if they are still sweaty.

[Update: I found Liza S. on facebook and she remembers me, even though my last name has changed. She has turned out as I expected her to, her photo albums full of group shots of her and her friends wearing skimpy bunny outfits and gripping red plastic cups on equatorial resort beaches.

I'm going to ask her if she'll have a cup of coffee with me when I come home.]

Omissions, Breaks in Continuity

2007-05-23T20:30:00.000-05:00

I've had to make some changes to the blog in compliance with a request that was made to me this morning.

As a result, some posts have been deleted and some have been slightly altered. These changes mostly effect the experience of reading the blog as a whole: the relationships between certain posts have been broken, such that certain posts make less sense than they did before now that an earlier or later post is no longer available as a point of reference.

I was quite upset this morning about not having been more scrupulous or considerate regarding the material I posted, but I'm feeling better now.

I'm starting over. My "about me" is more true now than it has ever been. See you all in the future.

A Thing About Some Stuff

2007-05-21T19:06:00.000-05:00

Even if it's not your mother tongue, even if you're not an English major, you are not excused from vigilance when it comes to written expression (I allow that everybody makes mistakes while speaking).

When you are not vigilant, it sends those of us who are into mangled backflips trying to keep abreast of all the possible meanings.

[Update: Alex had a good point--I don't fault writers of literature who send me into mangled backflips because of the uncertainty of their meaning. I'm talking about communication between two people, where clarity is all that really matters.]

Lucky Strike

2007-05-20T01:41:00.001-05:00

After a long day of trekking from neighborhood to neighborhood across the city, I come back to my apartment to find a party raging upstairs. Banking on the possibility of scoring a beer or a cigarette, I check it out.

The beer is gone, and so are the cigarettes, but her legs are propped up on a busted leather swivel chair poking out from a floral print dress that moves in the breeze such that I wonder if anybody else is watching.

"Hi, F___."
"Hi, Daniel."

We know each other from a literature and philosophy class.

["You were in one of my dreams last night, did you know that?"
"No, I didn't. Tell me about it."
"We were in bed together, at home, where my parents live, which is maybe the only reason I call it home, and it was about time for you to take your panties off, if you know what I mean, and so you got up, walked across the room, turned around, slid them down your legs, threw them in the closet, and only then came back to me. Are you always so ritualistic?"]

I walked her home and read some poetry with her and maybe led her on but I didn't mean to and now she's not coming back. As per her directions, I'll give her a call if I'm ever in New York City.

Early Signs of Racism

2007-05-14T21:39:00.000-05:00

I used to attend a summer camp in New Hampshire called "Camp Mi-Te-Na." It was a YMCA camp, which meant that it was cheap, and inevitably it became a kind of summer haven for troubled kids from broken families. I only realized the last fact later.

There was the obese Jewish kid who would overeat at meals and then throw up on the soccer field.
There was the scrawny brat with a Napoleon complex.
There was the gay-bashing punk who got caught taking an intimate boat ride at night with a counselor.
There was the guy who tended to get violent at the tether-ball pole.

These I never had any trouble remembering. But this afternoon, while reading Black Skin, White Masks, a work by French psychologist and race theorist Frantz Fanon, I recalled a scene that had reason to be forgotten.

We had just completed a running competition. A black boy had finished first. I can't remember how I phrased it, but after congratulating him sincerely, I said something about having heard that black people have stronger ankles and are faster runners because of it. Within seconds I was smothered in shouts and angry glares. I remember trying to defend myself, to justify my comments, without really understanding what I was saying. Of course, the black boy countered, "Are you saying I won just because I'm black?" The shouts and glares doubled in fury. I could tell that something wasn't right with the situation, but I didn't know what it was. I felt like I was being unjustly censured, since I had meant no harm. Some counselors broke up the tension and scattered us all without investigating the cause. It was forgotten within a few days.

I wish there had been someone there to explain to me what was wrong with what I had said--at least on the biological level, but more importantly on the social level. I wonder then, if this explains the fact that I sometimes get nervous and tongue tied around black people.

To Live, or To Write

2007-05-14T20:33:00.000-05:00

I watched one of Andrei Tarkovsky's last films, Stalker (1979) with Dylan and Alex at the Gene Siskel film center yesterday afternoon.

Neither of us had seen it before, and so it reminded me of a conversation I had had with Dylan two nights before, about the discovery of beautiful places: it is better for two people to do it together rather than for one person to be showing the other, for how well, after all, can the first communicate to the second the reasons it is beautiful to him?

I have never seen a film so rich in textures. Every line in the fabric of the characters' coats, every inch of stubble, every drop of murky polluted stagnant water was virtually palatable. I'm not sure I perceive my own real surroundings with such richness, and so I imagine Tarkovsky had a strong hand in crafting that aspect of the film.

I'm only going to say a bit more about the film because this post is about me, not about the film. In one of the quieter moments, a character who goes only by the name of "Writer" ruminates out loud on the relationship between his thinking, his insecurity, and his writing. When he thinks, he realizes how strange and unsettling are his surroundings, and thus he sees that all his internal assurances of security have been unfounded. It is from this sense of insecurity, of vulnerability, that his writing comes.

Sitting there in the theater, I stopped paying attention to the film for a few minutes, trying to internalize the Writer's words. I caught myself projecting my own life onto the character. Had I stopped writing for the same reasons that the Writer was questioning his craft?

In a sense, yes. I have resigned myself to intellectual laziness, by which I avoid the kind of thinking that has an important relationship with reality. Mostly I remember scenes from the past or imagine possibilities for the future.

I've been lucky that living this way has resulted in a high rate of happiness.

I suspect that if I start thinking--thinking about the way things are rather than the way I prefer them to appear--I will certainly feel like writing about them, or at least speaking about them. But my ability to function in the way that I like to function--with confidence, with ease, with success--will probably be impaired, and I'm not sure the exchange is worthwhile.

Another post on vulnerability is forthcoming.

L[ife].I[s].G[ood].

2007-05-07T05:20:00.000-05:00

Despite smoking a cigarette to the pale pink of pre-sunrise and handing in a paper a day late and realizing that the best plans, like prison escapes and social experiments, really must be kept secret, life is good.

[Ed: Since Daniel is blue/purple-red/green-green/brown-green/black-pink/white-pink/gray color blind, he is in no position to say what color the sky actually was at the time. "Pale pink" is what he imagines it would have looked like to a normal observer.]

Soon, I will embark on a Steve McQueen movie-watching marathon that will include Cool Hand Luke even though McQueen isn't in it.

Daniel's Musical Comeback

2007-05-04T01:43:00.000-05:00

I spent half an hour this afternoon (not enough!) playing piano on one of the grands in Goodspeed Hall. On recommendation from Zulieka: Prelude in C major, from Bach's "Well-Tempered Clavier", and Satie's Gymnopedie No. 1. [I am deeply grateful to her for provding me both with suggested pieces and links where I can find them. Also the Germanic font on the cover pages of the Bach pieces are beautiful. Ask me and I'll show you sometime.]

Last week, watching Ana T. play a Grieg piece which deserves the adjectives "monstrously impressive," I resolved to pick up playing piano where I left off nine years ago. I asked my mother to mail me some of my old piano books; they arrived on Monday and I was playing by Tuesday. Unfortunately, the only books left at home were exercises, simplified versions of famous classics, and a book of sonatas that was too difficult when I quit and is still too difficult.

The first hour and a half I spent playing on Tuesday was more of an exercise in nostalgia that it was a productive practice session. I had the chance to re-read the marginalia my fussy Russian teachers had written down for me: "with the wrist," "find the next note," "slow down," "louder," "with expression," etc. The fact that these notes had to be written is proof that I could hear and see, but not feel, the music I was playing. Now, the feeling comes automatically. I know how I want it to sound before I play the first note. I approach a piece ambitiously--as something to be wrought and produced, not merely an obstacle to overcome.

I can't wait to master, or at least manage, the prelude; the progression of arpeggios evokes a very soothing rolling motion that I never noticed when attempting the piece on guitar. A duet would be interesting to try. The Satie baffled me at first: the left hand jump from the bass note and the corresponding chord seems impossibly huge, and the recordings I have heard do not allow an audible pause. Alex's response: "You know, Satie had really big hands." Great. Anyway, the directions on the sheet music say to play "lent et douleureux," slow and painful, so maybe I'll manage to make the jump fluid. Leaving that problem alone, I played just through the melody, hearing the chords in my head from repeated listenings. The simplicity of the piece is deceiving: it opens a field of possibilities for stylistic interpretation, none of which are specified in music. Oh no--I'll have to make a decision!

Meanwhile, I'm feeling decidedly uncreative in the realm of songwriting lately. I don't know anymore whence came the songs I was writing in the fall. I have fallen back onto the expectation that somebody will just tell me what to play, despite learning that that's not what happens in a band. Dave jokes by implying that I'm good at coming up with catchy blues riffs and not much else. It stings a bit to be reminded that I'm not as talented as the other bandmates, but I'm not offended because I have nothing to show for as a rebuttal. In order to surpass this speedbump of musical development, I'm going to have to play much more than I have been recently.

Also, I'm seeing AIR tomorrow. The Symphony's in my Pocket. I'll write about it later.

iPod on the Operating Table

2007-05-02T11:31:00.000-05:00

Apparently it used to be a fad to publish a "cross-section" of one's iPod by listing whatever came up on shuffle mode. Well lame as it is, I want to prove something to myself, and to everyone else.

1. Wilco - Nothing's Ever Gonna Stand in My Way
2. Blonde Redhead - Magic Mountain
3. Django Reinhardt - It Had To Be You
4. Serge Gainsbourg - Wake Me At Five
5. Johnny Cash - Starkville City Jail
6. Neil Young - Running Dry (Requiem For The Rockets)
7. The Rolling Stones - Tumbling Dice
8. Lou Reed - Walk On The Wild Side
9. The Beastie Boys - Remote Control
10. Fabrizio de Andre - La Canzone dell'Amore Perduto
11. Radiohead - Bulletproof...I Wish I Was
12. Weezer - December
13. Rage Against the Machine - I'm Housin'
14. Spoon - Everything Hits At Once
15. Blonde Redhead - Water

Ok, I'm stopping because one of the artists has come up twice.

Let's notice a few things about this list:
[-] Every group / artist is either male or predominantly male
[-] Every decade since the 60s (except maybe the 80s, which don't count) is represented
[-] The groups whose CDs were the first I ever owned (Radiohead, Rage Against the Machine) and the groups I discovered six months ago or less (Spoon, Blonde Redhead) are both present
[-] There is no classical music or canonical jazz music
[-] I wholeheartedly enjoyed each of the songs as they came up

In short, I'm proud of myself. I've stopped listening to music I don't like, increased my tolerance for dissonant music, increased my tolerance for The Rolling Stones, come to terms with my enjoyment of Weezer, and sampled a variety of genres.

I've been mentioning this to friends, but in light of getting to know music much better, I can rest assured that if I do have children, they will not grow up musically malnourished as I did. I will not let them play any instrument until they are begging for it (thanks, Ana). I will take them to shows that I would enjoy at their age and still enjoy. I will play music from the family library during breakfast on Sunday mornings, not some lame Israeli music radio program on Emerson College's radio station. I will sing all the time, provided I can remember the lyrics. I will acquire a piano for my home because no home is complete without at least a guitar and a piano.

Hm, can anybody else smell the bitterness in the air?

Beatles On the Rooftop

2007-04-26T23:05:00.000-05:00

Though I started listening and appreciating the Beatles late last Autumn, only recently has it occurred to me to look up live Beatles footage on Youtube. It was thrilling and unsettling to be able to finally puts faces to voices and riffs.

Today I watched the last 22 minutes of the "Let It Be" movie, all on Youtube, which contains footage of the Beatles Rooftop concert. Besides the super funky clothing and candid music performance, the whole act reflects a touching political drama unfolding through the lenses of cameras in the streets.

Short interviews are taken with various onlookers: some of them young people amazed or carefree or jubilant, some of them grouchy businessmen who seem to recognize that a rooftop concert is a good thing but cannot forgive the "disturbance" it causes. The only other characters, and there are many of them, are the police, who move to investigate, and then shut down the concert. It takes them a while to even figure out what's going on, but eventually they make it to the roof, only to find the maestros of pop music belting out, as if to them, one more recital of "Get Back." A producer/manager figure stops them at the door and eventually convinces them to go back downstairs before the song even finishes.

A kind of victory has been achieved: sometimes, the forces of happiness rain down and no amount of insulation can protect you.

Words Words Words

2007-04-26T13:39:00.000-05:00

In an earlier post, I reproduced a love letter that I had received, at the end of which I apologized, saying that in posting it "I walk[ed] the line here between material of general interest and private self-indulgence."

Nobody said anything about it because it was a reference to the past; it was harmless. On two occasions in which I've written about the present (both on paper and online), I've gotten myself, or someone else, in trouble.

What's the lesson then? Write only about the past? I don't have enough years behind me, changes of scenery, jettisons of loose cargo. Write privately? The words need to breathe (kill me if that's bullshit to you)--I feel like a deranged graphomaniac if nobody sees it, and I can't really go around showing my cube-lined speckled notebook to everyone. Write not at all? It makes me feel good to know that my creations are appreciated by people I respect. Why should I forfeit that? I make naught but a ripple as it is. I tried it once before, when I needed to clear my mind, and I almost didn't come back.

On an unrelated note, I could never be in a romantic relationship with a writer. I'm too suspicious of them.

Laughing to Myself, Only to Myself

2007-04-26T12:58:00.000-05:00

Ah, the impossibility of explaining to her why anyone would touch themselves if their partner were around...

Saturday Realism on Youtube

2007-04-23T00:17:00.000-05:00

I've posted videos on Youtube from some of the first shows that Saturday Realism (my band!) played. Search for "Saturday Realism", or click these links for direct access if you can't find them:

The Stranger Song
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fhrLmIwZ5HA
American Something
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3YC6hDo0yXw
She's Got Everyone On Her Side
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l3PZNcXyZX4
Which Side Are You On
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bjPS8j0SIeU
Losing My Religion
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eo2virSgdyI

Enjoy, and thanks for listening.

Ruby Red Shoes Left At Home: Update

2007-04-22T12:49:00.000-05:00

It only took the intake interview, Douglas, 20 minutes to refer me to other specialists, that is, turn me away from University Counseling. The reason might be captured in a phrase that came out of his mouth about 10 minutes in: "So, your life is pretty good."

Too good, in fact. Apparently they can only take in people whose lives are actually disrupted. "What does that mean?" a friend asked. That means, I suppose, you find it difficult to function. "Function?!" he replied, "Are you kidding me? Seriously, I think we can all agree that all this shit we have to do every day can be pretty difficult, all right." The friend who said this is usually quite a bright and energetic person, but he definitely has a point. Somebody else also told me later that the Student Counseling center is understaffed. Whatever.

Leaving the place after the interview I actually felt worse than when I came in. "Your life is too good for us to help you reflect upon it without charging you money." Throughout the week preceding the interview, I suspected this would happen. But 20 minutes? Come on. I was just beginning to remember some things that were troubling me.

A kind of positive re-affirmation, I might conclude.

Old Girflriends; Spanish Movie Stars in the Shower

2007-04-18T12:49:00.000-05:00

I had this dream while sharing an uncomfortably small bed with a reddish brown-haired partner:

I found myself in the bedroom of a luxurious tropical bungalow. I knew the bedroom was in the lower part of the house because light was coming in from a gap near the ceiling. At first, Katarzyna was next to me in the bed. She didn't say anything and kept hiding coyly under the covers. Suddenly I saw a tall, handsome man with long dark hair tied behind his head walking across the room towards the bathroom. I looked across the bed to see Constanza, who mouthed (because dream characters never speak) "Are you surprised?" The man was Antonio Banderas, and I had to speak to him because I was close friends with the nephew of the director of a number of movies he had starred in (this is true in reality: look up George Gallo on imdb). He sat down cross legged in the shower stall and told me in Spanish about how exciting it had been for him to work with George, even if Bad Boyz II had been a terrible movie. I crouched listening behind the door, hiding my nakedness, an invasion of the waking world--there wasn't enough blanket to cover me.

My eyes feel as if they have been open all night long.

Tragedy in Virginia

2007-04-18T11:22:00.000-05:00

I offer my condolences to the friends and families of all the victims at Virginia Tech.

My mother called last night to ask if my University had organized some kind of meeting to address the incident. No, it hadn't. She said she was vaguely worried about a number of things, and I shared her concerns. Where were this guys friends? Where were his parents? How did he manage to fall through the cracks such that nobody saw this coming? Also: gun laws, anybody? Come on.

I haven't heard anything from my University regarding the incident, and I haven't seen anything different on campus except for the flag at half mast. A co-worker said he believed that a similar thing could never happen here, where the neighborhood is already crawling with police on high alert at all times. However, a frustrated grad student shot himself in the bathroom on the fourth floor of the central library in 2000. What if he had shot somebody else instead?

I don't think asking these frantic what-ifs about campus security really gets us anywhere. This is a symptom. Absurd, but still, perhaps, indicative.

Ruby Red Shoes Left at Home

2007-04-12T01:39:00.000-05:00

I'm off to see the wizard, the wonderful wizard of...counseling.

That's right.

I recently estimated that the amount of time during which I am happy is at least 90% of any given day. That makes me, in my own estimation, an unlikely candidate for such a pursuit. However, several things contributed to my scheduling of an appointment:

1. I get a number of free sessions provided by the University.
2. I have some friends who have spent a lot of time in therapy. Some, to outward appearances, have needed it more than others.
3. I have had two weeks of virtually constant classroom exposure to Freud's writings and theories.

One person in particular who has had a few sessions of therapy happened to be the most well-adjusted individual that I have ever met. I want to know what therapy can do for those who can already manage.

My intake interview (during which they assign me to a counselor) is on Friday, and I fear that 45 minutes will be enough for the interviewer to decide that I am wasting someone else's perfectly good counseling time just to satisfy a bit of curiosity. That's a worst case scenario. Well, more like a quickest-case scenario.

Worst case scenario would reveal that I have layers and layers and years upon years of emotional blockage to unravel. Or something. It doesn't feel that way, though.

A creative evening

2007-04-10T01:26:00.000-05:00

While reading Freud this evening at Hallowed Grounds, I was hit by an urge to do at least five different creative activities as soon as I got home. On the downside, I only got to one of them. One the upside, the result, a solid foundation for a new Saturday Realism track, was definitely worthwhile.

Listen to it here.

Lifeguards

2007-04-02T11:30:00.000-05:00

We're conspiring to save a life.

Thirty years old, middle management, head shaved to the pate because baldness is terrifying, coming home to MMORPGs and a bar stocked far too well for a virgin bachelor.

Unfortunately, I have misgivings about this---the kind that don't go away even after four pitchers of beer at the Falcon Inn.

The last time I felt like saving somebody's life, my mother showed me how much of a hypocrite I was. I had taken $5 from her wallet without permission, and while confronting me about it she pointed out how ludicrous it was for me to talk of fixing others when I hadn't yet fixed myself. I remember maniacally collecting all the coins in my room as she spoke to me, as if returning the money was at the heart of the matter.

Mattalogía

2007-03-30T13:52:00.000-05:00

Julian Matta, native of Resistencia, Argentina and currently studying film in Buenos Aires, has a blog of his drawings and various other art projects including one super-rad guitar made for Pichi (Andrés Maldonado, also from Resistencia).

Though Julian's blog is in Spanish, art is multilingual. Check it out here.

Abbey Road circa 1:52 am

2007-03-27T12:34:00.000-05:00

High as a kite and I'm struggling to zip up my jacket as Lennon croons "got to be good lookin' 'cause he's so hard to see..." I've overestimated the temperature; by now the pretty pretty snowflakes have turned into cold, lugubrious globules, smacking against my coat and gloves. I can't tell if my face is sweating or numb...it doesn't matter: you're asking me will my love grow, and all I can do is realize that the entire album tells the story of my loveless love affair.

Somewhere on Beach Street the love gets physical; my eyes register some peripheral set of images which set the blood to flowing; my pants can barely contain the reaction. I make it to the edge of the beach itself, coated in snow, pockmarked by the hard wind blowing east. "The Beatles invented every genre of music we see today."

On the way back, I cry and laugh to Golden Slumbers, glad that music can still move me like this, as if I were 15 again and misdirected, earnestly so.

"Her Majesty's a pretty nice girl,
but she doesn't have a lot to say
Her Majesty's a pretty nice girl
but she changes from day to day

I want to tell her that I love her a lot
But I gotta get a bellyful of wine
Her Majesty's a pretty nice girl
Someday I'm going to make her mine, oh yeh,
someday I'm going to make her mine."

The end.

Das Leben der Anderen / The Lives of Others

2007-03-23T23:23:00.000-05:00

I just saw Florian Henckel von Donnersmarck's 2007 film with my parents. As a disclaimer, let's keep in mind that this film not only won an Oscar this year, but also swept numerous festivals on the circuit. Also, keep in mind that this is not a review; I am not a critic, just a human being with impressions.

See it!

That's an imperative statement, in case, since English verbs don't change from mood to mood, you didn't notice.

A plot sketch, so that we're all on the same page: 1984, East Berlin - A devoted Stasi agent (East German secret police) named Weisler is assigned to oversee surveillance of Georg Dreyman, a playwright who seems to be in favor of socialism. However, Georg has some subversive friends who convince him to take action against the harsh regime of the [Socialist] German Democratic Republic. Weisler, for reasons I can't tell you, complicates the investigation, and hence we have "The Lives of Others."

My parents grew up in a society whose secret police was harsher, but not by much, than that of East Germany. On the car ride home, all discussion regarding the movie centered around whether or not the Stasi was portrayed accurately in the movie. That is, would the plot of the film be possible if the agency were as omniscient as my mother believed they were in real life? Probably not, but I couldn't help but notice that my parents could only find faults of narrative plausibility, rather than anything concerning the artistic qualities of the film.

I found most of the acting performances compelling and the camera work graceful, if not actually impressive. I mean to say that it was good by virtue of not being noticeable until the appropriate moments. The end is handled with restraint, which I always appreciate. When subtitles indicating the passage of time started to appear onscreen with increasing frequency, I never got the feeling that the film was being rushed. Rather, it felt indicative of the dramatic changes shaking the world at that time [I always get excited when I see form and content playing together].

This particular era in this particular corner of the world (namely, the Eastern bloc) has only recently begun to attract the attention of filmmakers, as far as I am aware [check out "Good Bye Lenin!" as well for a more humorous take on the same period]. So far the pertinent films have been top notch. I'm still waiting for an authentic contemporary film about Soviet life, now that filmmakers have at their disposal (though not for long) so many first-hand accounts from Russian emigrants. I'm also waiting for a good novel to come out [in English] shedding some light on what it was like to live, as my grandmother puts it, "in the past life." Hearing so many incredible stories from various family members, it's hard to believe that nobody (like me) has made such an effort.

Let me know if you hear anything.