I swear I had something to look forward to as I woke up. I swear I went to bed thinking, There’s something exciting for me when I wake up.

But I wake up, and there’s nothing. And I don’t think I forget anything.

It sometimes pays off to have absent-minded friends. When you don’t feel like hanging out, you don’t have to make excuses, they just forget.

ha!

I saw a friend
the other day we hugged and laughed and slapped hands.

He said hey
I probably said that too, and then

You still doin your thing?
Yeah, I'm still doin my thing,
you still doin your thing?
Yeah, I'm still doin my thing.

He had to go though
so soon

and saying, see you, and
turning around.
I should have said

what happened to you, and
what happened to me

It was the other day though, when we
hugged and laughed and slapped hands
not today.

I had a shake at a restaurant yesterday. It was 5.95. It wasn’t any good. The waitress came by and said, “aren’t our shakes just amazing??” and I lied and said, “Oh, just amazing.”

And then I was taking a shower the next morning and I was longing for the water to just stay and caress me, I needed it. But every drop just nicked me and then proceeded to fall to the ground.

And I touched my scar on my ankle—and it still hurt. After all these years, the wound is still hurting me.

Sometimes I listen to music only to realize how lonely I am. It should have the opposite effect, shouldn’t it? I’ll listen to the yelps and wails and cries of the singer of the band, and I’ll feel something, and I’ll just want another person to feel that same feeling with me.

But all they ever hear is just a bunch of shitty yelps and wails and cries.

have you ever told anyone you missed them, even though you don’t even know the person???

That’s like quasi-physics or something.

I haven't smiled once today! Good God, I need to find something to smile about, right now. This is ridiculous! It's like a cigarette smoker craving a cigarette...I'm craving a smile, and I need one now.


I over exaggerate. I smiled three times today, that I can recall.

While away at college, I completely forgot about the concept of people decorating their houses with christmas lights.

I’m glad I forgot about that cultural phenomenon for a bit…. but now it’s re-learned. So big deal.

I feel like a jerk. I just got back home. My family keeps wanting to come out and join them. But I just feel like a jerk because I just want to stay in my room on my bed, and be by myself, and try and sort things out and read and write.

So, um. I may not be bothering other people....but I'm bother myself. This incessant complaining. It's bothering me.

It's funny how that works. How one can be bothered by oneself.....it's like I'm not even controlling my actions. But then who is the "I" that is admitting to being bothered? Are there two "I"s?

I'm rambling.

“He’s been whimpering in his sleep, John.”

“Whimmering? What do you mean whimmering?”

“Whimpering, John. Whimpering. ”

John Brink plopped down on his favorite blue chair while his wife, Cheryl, stood across the room in the kitchen, her one arm wrapped around herself and the hand of her other stroking her temple. He had just got home, his suitcases still placed on the couch adjacent to him.

“Oh come on,” John responded. “Our son is not whimpering. You’re mixing up babbling in dreams, with—”

Cheryl straightened up, moving her arms from their previous position and now using them to illustrate what she was saying.

“John, for the past three nights, as I went to bed, I opened his door and heard him. Whimpering. For ten minutes I listened to him, and every couple minutes, distinctly a whimper.”

She let her words resonate for a moment, and then she put her one arm around her and put the hand of the other against her temple, like before. She looked down, her eyes distant. Her husband stared at her for a time, then looked out the window and began to speak.

“Well, I still think you’ve been mistaken. Ollie? Our little Ollie, whimpering in his sleep? I really think you’ve been mistaken. Don’t you go thinking, now, that our Ollie is like those dreadful Rosely boys. He may be different, but there’s no reason to jump to the conclusion that he’s been whimpering.”

John looked back Cheryl, gazing at her for what must have been twenty seconds. She continued to look down. Finally John rustled, and got up from his chair, walking to Cheryl and placing a light kiss on her forehead while putting his hand on her shoulder.

“You’re just mistaken, honey. That’s all. I’m sure—I’m sure you just missed me so much, that’s it. I haven’t had a business trip in such a long time, you just missed me, that’s all!” He smirked. She remained unflinching. John rubbed her shoulder, then finally yawned and walked towards cupboard in the kitchen behind Cheryl, got out a glass, and went to the sink.

“Well, I’m gotta hit the sack. That seven-hour plane ride really wipes one out.”

He turned on the water and filled his cup up.

“You said to pick Ollie up from the McConey’s at ten tomorrow?”

Cheryl finally moved, and moved to the front door and locked it.

“Yes, yes, Barb said she’d drop him off, but she’s got errands to run before Church. Ten.”

John finished drinking his water, placed the cup inside the sink, and walked out of the kitchen down the hallway towards his room.

“Ten it is. Night, honey.”

“Night.”

Bus stop. Two people, standing (outside), looking at an advertisement of a frigid tundra (in front of them). #1 wears wool socks, boots, a hat, shorts. #2 wears shorts, white socks.

#1: Burrrr. Burr, it’s so cold out, ain’t it?
#2: Oh, oh, ain’t it?
#1: Oh it’s chilly, chilly, chilly.
#2: Yes, yes. I can even see my breath.
#1: Worst thing about being cold is that feeling you get in the fingers. I can’t even move them when I’m this cold!
#2: (nodding)Oh I agree, I agree. No, no, I really can’t stand my ears.
#1: That’s what hats are for!
#2: My hair gets messed up. My hair is all I’ve got left in this world, it’s all I’ve got left.
#1: Hey, how ‘bout this. You wear a hat, then go to a mirror every time right after you take it off and re-adjust your hair. And if no mirror, just keep the hat on.
#2: I don’t look good in hats. I look good with my hair showing.
#1: Oh geez.
#2: Oh geez, yes, it is absolutely freezing out right now. I just don’t understand how it can be this cold. Can you?
#1: Nope, never.
#2: It’s been too, too long since I’ve been this cold. Makes you think, don’t it? When’s the last time you’ve been so cold… when’s the last time you’ve been so warm, as a matter of fact . You just can’t think about being hot when it’s as cold as it is now.
#1: No question.
#2: All I can think about is my retched hands. I can’t move them! I can’t feel my ears, either.
#1: You really know it’s bad when your feet get cold.
#2: Oh, no kidding. My toes are just as rigid as my fingers right now. Can’t move ‘em, can’t move ‘em. Can’t move my fingers either.
#1: Tell you what, you need a good pair of boots. No, good pair of socks. Nice wool ones.
#2: I’ve been wearing the same white socks ever since I was ten, I’m not about to wear anything else!
#1: I’m buying you some nice wool socks. Tell you what, that’s what I’m going to do. Soon’s I get my car fixed, I’m going straight to the store, buying you some wool socks.
#2: Good, maybe my son could use them.
#1: You’re so goddam cynical, you know that?
#2: Well how can’t you be, when it’s this goddam cold out? Eh, eh?
#1: I couldn’t agree more. My fingers, I just can’t move my fingers. Goddam toes too. You ever realize your sense of smell stops working when it’s this fuckin’ cold out?
#2: Yeah, yeah, no kiddin’, can’t smell a thing! Can’t taste a thing either, can’t taste a thing!
#1: Goddam fingers.
#2: Goddam toes!
#1: Bus.

(#1, #2 exit. Finished.)

Day one
and I feel like there will be a lot more
day ones
in my future.

Day one
and even though tomorrow will be a
day two
it's really going to be another
day one
to me, I know.

As I have relatively long eyelashes, sometimes snowflakes get caught on them.

That is one of my favorite images: the intricacy of a snowflake combined with the delicacy of an eyelash.

Two things I loathe, and things like these are really turning into a bitter son of a bitch.

For one, when some tells you “okay DAD” or “okay MOM.” I suggest for people to, I don’t know, go to sleep, or go to class, and they retort with this. I try to let them know that those are the right things to do. But instead I’m just some bitch of a DAD or MOM.

Oh, and then when you see someone who you haven’t seen in a while, and he or she says: “What rock have YOU been living under?” Okay. So just because I don’t see you…just because our paths haven’t crossed, just because I’ve had loads to do, means I’ve been living a hermit-lifestyle. Reasonable, I understand totally the logic.

I wonder if one could, if in an extremely dire instant, muster up all of his dread, depression, anger, confusion…into some concentration or something, and just make it feel good,and pleasant.

“God, I have to go to the bathroom.”

“The bathroom’s right there.”

“Yeah, I know, but I just..I just don’t want to go to the bathroom.”

“Oh come on. It’ll take a minute.”

“No, I don’t want to go to the bathroom.”

“What do you mean?”

“I just don’t want to go to the bathroom! Not the going into the stall, the washing of the hands. Not the physical walking, the time. I just don’t want to go to the bathroom.”

“Well...say that in a day.”

“What can I do for you?”

“Well doctor. My friend refuses to go to the bathroom.”

walking at night during the first snowfall of the year is the perfect time for faraway thoughts...or something like that.

Never lie about getting your haircut.

Where were you, I was getting my haircut, Why is your hair the same length, Uhhh

Had a dream last night where some Zen master asked me to read something and tell him my interpretation and so I got through reading it and the first thing I said was "At the end it says but it was only a writing in a magazine--and that's essentially the same as the actual reading." And then he asked how we knew the guy in the story was enlightened, and I replied "We don't know...he wears shells around his neck, but anyone can do that" and then everyone counted to 10, which was supposed to mean someone just said something stupid.

I was just looking at old blog posts of mine. At the time I thought they were hilarious. But now, I just don't know... they don't seem like anything special.

Actually, some of the later ones are good. Blah.

I had a dream the other day where I kept seeing this chimpanzee. And every time I saw him, I would give him a high five. And these high fives, mind you, were the best high fives I've ever participated in.

I can't wake people up. It's impossible. I just can't.

Not that I physically can't. Just that...I can't shatter a person's tranquility.

Today, I took the shortest of naps. And the thing I liked most about it was not having any conscious. Which is weird. I didn't know if I was a sleep or not, I didn't know if I was alive or dead.

I was in a state of nothing...

and I liked it.

I just listened to the Pogues's Red Roses for Me album. And it reminded me...of one night when Eric and I drove around listening to it. I had just gotten my license and I was driving my mom's minivan and I would gun it every chance I got. And we went on all the back roads, and I would ask him whether he thought a certain song was a traditional song or an original one, and he always seemed to get it wrong. And I just I thought that I was going to be doing that a lot...driving around and listening to whole albums with a friend.

It's funny how such a memory gets attached to music, and how vividly the memory returns..

But then again, that's why I believe constantly getting new music is a necessity. It captures the times and feelings of your life..

A girl passed me today. We were going opposite directions. She passed me, and I got a huge whiff of something.

She smelled like celery...

All I feel is a dry sense of dread.

Today is a cloudy, drab day. Relatively normal. But to my eyes there looks to be a thin layer of fog floating throughout the air. A thin layer of fog soaking and muddying up the air. But I don't think anyone else notices it, it's just me and my present state of mind.

Who is making my decisions for me? I don't even know. It's surely not me, because what I decided would be different. But who is controlling me, who is making these decisions??

Did I ever tell you I once made two brothers realize they wipe their asses the same way?

They did some weird foldy thing.

But yeah, that's me. I can make brothers realize the wipe their butts in the same manner.

It kind of bothers me when people walk with their head up but with their eyes fixed on the ground.

Why can't you just walk with your head down, instead of making people distant from you think that you are looking at them??

I feel sometimes that when I'm just going to grow up to be an alcoholic...

and I don't want that.

I like dangling my feet over the edge of the my bed at night. I can lie on my stomach and sporadically bob my feet up and down, and it is quite pleasurable, it is.

There are some shirts of mine that whenever I wear them, I feel all icky and my day goes bad.

I wish there was a place I could go to simultaneously experience really really hot, and really really cold. Because whenever it’s really really hot, I dream of really really cold with fondness.

But I always seem to forget the numb hands of winter.

You know when people say "oh, that scared the SHIT out of me?"

Is the word "shit" just to intensify the phrase? Or are people personifying "shit" by saying it got scared and went out, i.e. they pooped their pants?

I was wondering if, say, you had to go to the bathroom a bunch. And you went into the bathroom, and only peed half the amount.

Would you still have to go to the bathroom after that?


My intellect says no, but my emotions say yes.

A girl asked me yesterday why I was sitting by myself at lunch.

I don't know, do you want a whole evaluation of my psyche while you are at it?

Do you ever say things or do things…that after the fact, you find out you did, and you have no memory or recollection of doing it, and your logic tells you that you wouldn’t do that, that isn’t something you would do?

It makes you wonder just what is controlling you…

Do you ever look at yourself from outside yourself, and see that you’re changing? There’s nothing you can even do about it; it’s inevitable. But you’re changing.

This kid the other day in my class...he was called on to read a little passage. And he started reading, and you know when you have those things in the back of your throat? That make your throat all raspy? Well this kid, right at that time, was experiencing this phenomenon. But instead of clearing out his throat--which would have taken all of 5 seconds--well, instead he just continued on reading, marred by this vocal flaw. And he read the passage, the whole time his voice just a shade below normal level, just a titch off-key. And oh, it was noticeable.

Then, after he was finished, he tried to silently cough, he tried to covertly clear his throat..


I think this kid should approach the whole situation a little differently next time.

I think losing something is one of my premium sources of odium. And by something I mean objects.

I absolutely loathe losing things, because it drives me crazy. It leaves me with so much doubt, so much uncertainty. And then I'm supposed to just accept...that I'll never ever know the truth of where the object really went.

And how the hell am I supposed to do that?

I like the room I'm in right now.

It's down the hall from the main room, where the pool table and other games are. And it's far enough away where the more high-pitched sounds don't travel to. Thus, I can't hear the voices, all I can hear is the occasion cracking of the pool balls crashing into each other.

And it's like.... there's people playing pool, but words, senseless prattle; there's no use for any of that. There just playing pool, nothing more.

Sometimes I don’t care for dreams, because the emotions, the hurt, is just so real.

I want to start writing about some lone, isolated memories I have. Lately, one in particular has stood out to me:

My family and I visiting Mexico, staying in a resort. I was little, but not little enough to sleep in my parents' bed, and seeing as how there weren't enough rooms for all of us in the family, I was forced to sleep on this bed/couch/sofa thing (I really have no clue what it was) in the main living area.

And it was off to the side, all tucked away, this little bed/couch thing. But it was my little sanctuary. And I remember reading specifically, a C.S. Lewis book, and a particular scene in the book--a fleet of people crossing a desert.

And there I was with a little tiny lamp near my bed, and myself snuggled in my little sanctuary and reading and being transported into whole new worlds of the desert and camels.

For some reason the memory has been stuck in my mind lately.

I am strangely suspicious of apples that are overly shiny.

I always like to hear the contrast.

Me walking down the side walk, the only noise the gentle pad-pad-pads of my shoes.

And then the other guy, walking towards me, slamming down his shoes down with a "Ka-BANG, Ka-BANG, Ka-BANG."

It's neat.

I remember when I was a kid and I'd hear the creaking and clanking of some far off construction machine and I'd think it was the screech of a velocirapture.

I miss driving back at night with Noah and listening to In the Aeroplane Over the Sea. It was the perfect music for then.

I woke up from a short nap today—about a fifteen minuter--completely disoriented. For in my dream I had a completely new identity and new life and new people I had known for a long while.

And it was kind of disturbing. You know, waking up and then changing lives in a matter of seconds.

I'm sitting in my room with my blinds closed, listening to a cd I just got. It reminds me of autumn--not the transient time that we are in now, but the full-blown autumn type, with the leaves all different colors and the weather cool.

And so I'm just sitting in my room, listening to my new cd with my blinds closed, pretending it's full-blown autumn outside.

Today's my birthday. Tomorrow it will not be.

Am I looking at this wrong?

You know those days where you wake up thinking that this is going to be the worst day ever, and then because of this thinking, it's the worst day ever?

Nice!
Now, I profusely
sweat
in my sleep,
either because
the heat the sheets the stress.
Whatever it is, I love it!

Really, the only thing I literally want for my birthday is one of those huge, wacky straws.

that and more concentration, less sleepiness, more motivation, more creativity, more happiness.

that and being able to climb the small apple tree in my friend’s backyard with the same pleasure as when I was ten.

I need to be reminded...why in the hell I should continue this blog.

I think there's a part of me that refuses to be happy. A part that every time I am feeling jaunty, says, "What are you doing? This isn't you. Go back to being negative." Maybe it's just me betraying my negative self. The negative self that thinks, "It's always going to be this way, it won't get better."

But this can't be good.

I just wrote something, but saved it as a draft because it was too personal.

So none of you will ever see it.

How bout that, bitches?

Sometimes, my face will be so molded into a frown, it hurts to smile. It hurts to laugh. It hurts me.

just to write something...

This one kid told me he hadn't written a word this summer, so now his handwriting sucks. I remember when I was like that...

But I'm not going to talk to that kid, nor that me, again.

You know, today my eyes were wandering, and they passed this one girl. And I just looked at this girl for a few seconds, and all of a sudden—it must have been her head tilted a certain way, or something—all of a sudden I got this perfect image of how she would look when she is older. And it freaked me out. Her she is, a eighteen year old girl, and I’m getting this perfect view of her as a forty year old. I even shuddered.

It could have been a burst of humanity in me. A burst of the circle of human life. A burst of understanding.

Or it could have been me being weird.

I’m weird.

Hi, my name is Harris, and I'm a morning person.

Hi, my name is Susie, and I'm a night person.

Hi, my name is Trevor, and I'm not a fucking morning person or a fucking night person. Fuck this shit.

Do you ever get it where you see someone, but it's at a sort of funky angle for you, so normally you wouldn't have seen the someone, and so you just go on like you don't see the someone? But for the someone it's not at all a funky angle and you are fairly certain they see you. And then you wait for the someone to say hi, but they never say hi, so you finally give in and act like you are looking off to the side, and suddenly see them, and give a "hi!"

And then the someone looks all surprised and excited and exclaims "hi!"

But really, you secretly know the someone is lying...and wouldn't have said hi.

Pish posh.

Today I was in a theatre type setting and I was watching people performing skits and each skit lasted for about 2 minutes and then it would go dark and then the people would get ready for the next skit.

That meant there was about 10 seconds of total blackness.

And I liked it.

One could do anything without the watchful eyes of society horning in on him. And no, I don't mean completely vile, disgusting things. Personal things, like maybe a nose pick, a crotch scratch, a re-adjustment. I don't know. Smelling one's armpit to see if one needs deodorant.

The point is, there was this brief period of time where one could escape from the goading eyes of society.

And it was nice.

.........Shut up.

You know what's sad to me?

If one hasn't seen someone for a long time; someone's been away at some marvelous destination. One asks someone, "How was it" or "What was it like" or "What did you do". And then someone just responds generically, "you know, good" or "pretty good" or "not too much."

And that's when one realizes that someone doesn't exist.

No wait... he exists; just miles and miles and miles away.

I made progress today. Because usually I am an indecisive human; I find it hard to believe when someone has a feverish view on something...because things are just so hard to know for certain.

But today I found out something. I made progress.

I figured out body wash isn't for me.

Bar soap will do, thanks.

Whenever whomever made me made me, he or she cast his or her finger down upon me and said, “This here person shall go through life with a curse! Every time he forgets to tip someone (and by “forgets to tip someone” I mean he is too stupid to realize he needs to tip someone), every time he realizes he didn’t tip someone, he shall WITHER away and suffer complete agony, because he feels so ashamed of not tipping the someone. And he won’t be able to get it out of his head as well.” And then whomever made me probably walked away.

.................I was cursed, it’s true.

I used to hate red lights.

Now they're my favorite.

I saw a car swerve to miss a moth the other day.

I had a normal night tonight. I sat around in my underwear and watched TV. Like a normal person. A normie.

But I don’t think I’ll be doing that again, I’m not normal!

Weeeeeeeee.

I use kid forks. The little ones. Always have. Don’t care for using adult forks, they feel too big in my hands.

And so I think I’ve decided......I always want to use kid forks. My hands probably won’t grow anymore, so, I mean.. I just want to be a grown-up who uses kid forks. I never want to graduate to the next level of forks.

That’s all.

“It frightens me, the awful truth of how sweet life can be...”

--Bob Dylan

If it's you and you alone in a room, and you're minding your own business, and all of a sudden you detect the odor of flatulence and you're sure it wasn't you, dead positive..........is that a sign that you have ghosts in your house?

Do ghosts fart??

At my host family’s in Washington...I liked the mirror in their bathroom.

It was the door to the shower, it was body-sized. I could see my whole body naked. I realize I like seeing my whole body naked. Yeah...

But then, the door folded in, so you could half fold it and see yourself from different angles. And since I always see myself head-on in mirrors, it was nice to see a different view for once. One where you don’t even recognize yourself. I liked it.

My new 5 billion dollar sunglasses.

























(I'm trying to tell you my pupils were dilated today, and they gave me these to drive home in.............)

I don't know how I'm going to survive this next week. I'm going to have nothing to do, none of my friends are going to be here, I'm not going to be able to talk to her, nothing. I'll have headaches, probably. I could read, I guess, but I always just end up distracted.

And it's not the kind of being alone that I used to like. The solitude. Nope. This kind is just...loneliness.

Back and forth.

I love packing. Everything about it.

I just love shoving all my shit in a bag. Minimizing my life, and living dangerously, by maybe forgetting something.

What if I forgot my tooth brush? My blankie?

That's called living on the edge.

But above all else,
I love that each day if I want to wear something,
I have to take it out of the bag,
and before coming back,
I have to put everything back into the bag,
just so I can unpack once I get back to point A......................

It’s a pain, driving sometimes.

You’re in a doleful mood, and you’re driving really slowly, ten miles under the limit, because that’s how you want it to be; you’re in a doleful mood, remember. And then all of a sudden, someone comes up from behind you. And then you are forced to speed up, to adhere to the standards. You don’t want to be an ass, nuh uh.

And it’s just a pain, because all you want to do, really... is be sad, and drive slowly.

rendezvous

I think it's the greatest, when you're feeling bummed and you don't know why, and then all of a sudden......something happens.....and them boom!, you're better.

I'm walking out of a supermarket store, and I'm telling myself, "Mill around, mind. Stop fixating on one thing, and jes' mill around."

I think tonight, as I'm lying on my bed, I'll shut my eyes really, really tight.

And maybe when I open them, I'll be pointing at a picture, and I'll be saying to my kids, "See? That was me. Back when I was a kid."

Uh oh. I was just trying on boxers from the store, and I must not have realized it, because I farted in 'em.

And that pair was one of the ones I didn't want.

Hope there's no stains.




.................Oh wait, no that was my friend, Bob, who did that. Not me.

I love coming on to the computer after not having used it for a long, long time, and having the mouse feel weird in your hands, and having the icon not even come close to where you want it to go, because you are just so rusty with using a mouse.

You know?

Oh, that’s the stupidest thing you’ve ever heard?

Oh, okay.

I rode the day in a roller coaster, two steps above nothingness.

I went here, I went there, I ate, I breathed, I blinked.

And that's pretty much it.

I resisted in scratching an itch today, until the area of skin became numb.

I am proud of myself.

I am outside right now,
and the sky is complaining.

Myself, along with
the grass—my toe's companions—
are fearful

for we both know the cues,
the omens

and the first—

when the sky is complaining.

Last night, a dreamer dreamt
a dream.
He was out, at a restaurant, waiting for
food—a rowdy bunch

at the table across from him.
And just think:
a dream was dreamt
while a dreamer was waiting

and if only he had whispered it, had
spilt it out to the
whishes of air around him;

if only he had whispered;
maybe someone would have heard.

My favorite things are memory whiffs. You know what I'm saying? You should.

Like how you get whiffs of a fragrance with your nose sometimes, you get whiffs of memories with your mind, sometimes. Following me?

Because the whiff, it'll take you back, in a split second, to another time, and for a split second you won't exist, you'll just exist in that other time. Right?

Oh, but nevermind, I'm talking drivel here; just don't pay any attention to me, I'm only driveling.

Sometimes, when I'm sitting in a chair—just sitting in a chair, nothing more—well, something happens.

I'll be sitting in a chair—nothing more—and then all of a sudden like, maybe a violent gust of wind—yes, I can imagine a violent gust of wind—, all of a sudden something happens with my ears.

I'll be sitting in a chair and a violent gust of wind will catch me off guard, will flabbergast me, and here, I'll show you what happens:

Like a teeter-totter, remember those, in your childhood? I once told somebody that you never see any teeter-totters around any more. But like a teeter-totter, suddenly a portly fellow with a fat ass will get on and the teeter-totter will whip to one side, and like a teeter-totter whipping to one side, all of a sudden the sound from one of my ears will completely disappear. I'll feel it, hear it, I suppose, hear the sound slowly slip into my head and into my other ear. From my left ear to my right ear. And I won't be able to hear out of my left ear for maybe ten seconds, and then all of a sudden everything's normal.

So does this ever happen to you? Does a portly fellow with a fat ass ever sit on the teeter-totter of your ears, completely ravaging your hearing sense for about ten seconds?

Or is it only me?

Really, the thought of a chocolate chip cookie gives me no urge to eat one, not whatsoever, not right now, nor at any time, really.

And it makes me feel subhuman, because who in the hell doesn’t like chocolate chip cookies?

Um.

Oh my god, like this guy at the gas station, when I went up to him to buy my bag of Jim Beam sunflower seeds, he says, "oh, they have those in barbecue?," and i was like, oh, you're so stupid, that's the only flavor they come in. You're just some phony who tries to sound like you know something."

Makes me want to shut down this stupid, contrived, piece of stinky poop I call a "blog."

I feel so phony saying I "blog."

Right?

I was taking sips from a water bottle, and every time my nose came close to the plastic of the bottle, I got a big whiff of watermelon.

It made me happy, and I finished the water very quickly.

I usually savor my water...........

It is this:

The thought of going home and listening to that one particular song, that song, that in your mind just sounds perfect, that song that captures your mood just so well and vibrates your veins to some stage of vibration reverie, that song that touches you, right then right there.

Well.

It's just that in the end, the thought of listening to that song... feels better that actually listening to the song.



Is it only me? Is it only me???

I love watching movies. I always check them out from the library, because I’m a cheap bastard.

But when I do this, I’ll toss the movie in my room, and it will stay in my room. And then—in a matter of minutes—it will always become a couple days late, and I’ll have to return it, as to not pay a sumptuous fine, and I’ll end up not even watching it.

I’ll procrastinate, because although I love watching movies, well…

it doesn’t feel too great watching them alone.

I mean I’ll do it and all, but I just like having a person there, watching it with me. And the movies I watch, I like to become absorbed in them. I don’t like missing things, I don’t like them being backdrops in the environment; I’d rather not watch a movie than watch a movie with people having a conversation nearby.

But I’m going to try and change that all today, for I’m forcing myself to watch this cool movie I have checked out. It’s already one day late.

such a sorry case I am…….

Going to sleep always used to eradicate me of my bad moods.

When did that change?

Sometimes I'll be driving down the interstate, or watching a show.

I'll be driving down the interstate, and it's night, and I'll look at a building off to the side and see in its entrance a huge limestone column, with a fountain at its base full of smooth, creamy rocks, and the bubbling of water. I'll be watching a Twilight Zone episode, and it'll be about a totally desolate earth, save for one man, and that one man goes into a movie theatre, and a movie is playing.

I'll be driving, and I'll see a limestone column in a building, and I'll wonder, Would that column ever get boring, would that column bring some serenity to the dullness of a workday? And I'll be watching a Twilight Zone episode, where there's only one man left on the planet, and he goes into a movie theatre, and a movie is playing, and I'll wonder, Would I sit in the middle of the theatre or on an aisle chair, if it was just me and me alone on the planet, and I only wanted to glimpse the movie.


But the sad part about all this, is, I drove down the interstate twice, saw that limestone column twice. I watched that Twilight Zone episode twice.

And I just couldn't help it, I just couldn't shake it. Because for both times, I thought the exact same thought, twice, verbatim.

So between the first and second times, I didn't change, not a single bit. And that's sad.

Kurt Vonnegut sent me a text-in his signature style-that was, oh, about twenty little pages long...in it praising me on a short story that I wrote.

It was in a dream, though.

I should have known it was too good to be true.

I think it’s refreshing, when....

people always call someone by a nickname, but then every once in a while, a person bypasses that nickname, skips that tag everyone that else uses, and says the person’s real name.

I like that.

Oh, and I’ve found.....

certain people saying my name, just, excites me. I don’t know why. It is my name, and all, and people call me it all the time. But when certain people call me it. It’s just special.

(Noah—the "cool breeze" comment of yours applies here.)

Today, a chilly breeze swept all around me as I walked out to the car. And then about my fifth step outside....

entry, recognition, retrieval, fire, fire, fire. Shudder.

All of a sudden old times burst at the seams and flood my brain. Wearing wind colorful windbreakers. And not specifics, just a time.

And Noah—I have betrayed myself. Remember that one story we talked about at McDonald's that one time, the ironic one, the phone one, the one with the guy smelling rain and remembering old times and deciding to save himself, and then the phone rings, and then he's gone?

Well, I haven't written it yet.

But....it's just I can't help but think that concept is so true.

You go through the monotony of daily life, and you get dulled by everything. But then at one instant, one thing—an incredibly little thing, usually—just floods your brain with remembrance. One thing, and... entry, recognition, retrieval, fire, fire, fire. Shudder.

Like cool breeze.

Like et ah!, like someone's eyes.

Like the smell of rain.




Know what I mean?

This morning, it's as though my memory valve has spilt open. Driving around, listening to music—the perfect music for right then—stark and beautiful—and it's just one of those moods.

All of a sudden I'm remembering things. All sorts of things. Recent memories, old memories. Things that make me shiver. Shiver.

I drove past my old friend's house. I spent summers at daycare there when I was little; I was best friends with him. I have fallen apart from him though. I haven't seen him in a couple years.

He lives on this little hill cul-de-sac street off some major road. People don't go down that road unless they live there. In fact, as I was pulling in, someone waved to me. Expecting that I was a resident, maybe. New car.

And what surprised me most as I turned in is how short the street is. I remembered it being bigger. The hill, though, is dinky, and only eight houses live on it. My cul-de-sac holds eighteen houses. Maybe that's why I pictured it differently.

Anyways, driving down the hill, turning around, going up the hill—thirty second's worth of time—and my heart all of a sudden started beating very, very quickly. Just remembering. Looking at sights from my childhood. Sights I took for granted.

And then I left.

Recent memories, old memories. I don't know. Maybe it's bad to get in these moods?

Hmph.

At work, here is how my mind works:

Four little rubber things go into a small plastic bag.
The small plastic bags go into big bags.
The big bags were held in even bigger bags.

Logic reasoning suggests that the bags that held the big bags were held by even bigger bags, and on and on to infinity.

I thought about this for a good ten minutes, and about the irony of it all.

My dog never makes eye contact with me.

It's quite sad.

I attempt to look into his eyes, and he just looks away.

Today is a day I just want to end.
I just don't want to register anything, and not realize anything, until I realize it ends.
Because I just can't feel anything.

In other words, the person who I want to be, well, he's skipping a day today.

Maybe a nap later will bring him to life, though.

My favorite words, today, for no reason, or at least no reason that I can bloody well find, were:

gentle, and mellow.

I found this scribbled on a math assignment from long ago. I have no memory of writing it. But I like it. Way to go, Trevor of the past.

So doubtful
is he that
just looks out the window.

One of the best feelings

is

having something specific to say to a person, but as you are talking to this person, the conversation is so damn engaging and it never dies away and you never have time to think of that specific thing you meant to say.

So then afterward, you just remind yourself to bring it up for the next conversation.

Just who is E?

I once passed a sign that read, "SAVE HERE."

I have no clue what the sign meant. SAVE HERE, at this... car dealership, this gas station, this... Murky Turkey joint. Who knows.

But the thing is, that sign; it was imperfect.

Instead of the desired "SAVE HERE," with all of the letters formed in a perfectly prideful manner that spelt out two four letter words, instead it went like this:

"SAVE HER E."

There was a space between the R and the E.

I passed that sign a couple times, and the message really got to me.

I think whoever put that sign up, he did it all on purpose. He knows an "E", his buddy's name is "E", and he is telling him to "Save her."

Save her, E.

And this person, E, maybe he's not clever enough to pick up on it. Sure, his buddy works at the car dealership/gas station/Murky Turkey joint and everything, and he's glanced at the sign numerous times before. But the message just doesn't come through. It just doesn't click.

To save her. Save her.

So...will "E" save her?

NOAH-
thanks for complimenting me on my red Hawaiian shirt, again. I was wearing it in a dream.

Don’t talk to him, or call him.
See, is that a hole?
Yes, a hole on his chest right below his heart,
and each step he takes puffs out air,
robs him of his precious oxygen.
So don’t talk to him, or call him.
He’s fine where he's at.

My mind takes snapshots of its surroundings. No kidding. I can see them once and once alone though, and only for a split second, and then, poof!, they disappear. And I really just wish I could save them, just record them and file them away for later viewing.

Like the old man coming out of the drugstore last week—snap!—and I get one of the sunlight surprising a man’s scrunched face.

Or yesterday, as I was driving, catching eyes with a girl—snap!—I get a wide-eyed face hinting of interest maybe, attraction. I’ll never know.

Or turning a corner, seeing a couple bicker, and—snap!—an angry man, leaning forward in a berating fashion, eyes nearly closed.

But the snapshots of my eyes, my life; no matter how good they are, I can never hold on to them, they always fade away.

The window at the booth of the Taco Bell we sat at was covered with tiny flies. Flies so tiny that my friend confused them for gnats. But, no doubt, they were flies. Tiny flies. And I had never seen tiny flies before.

Their nest must have been close by. Because I killed three in one swipe of my napkin, and the general window-covering population wasn’t affected a bit.

I’m just trying to say, that I’m happy I saw some tiny flies.

My nap today—naps are the joy of my life—was strange. Well a part of it was, at least. Here:

I dreamt this. At least I think I did, I cannot say for certain. Anyways, I was driving a car, absent-mindedly of sorts, and all of a sudden, right in front of me: a big hunk of roadkill. Only right as I’m about to smash into it, it flinches. Its stomach is shredded open, its guts are scattered all over the place, but it still flinches; it’s still alive; its head moves towards me.

And right then, I woke up with my mouth spread in horror and my eyes filled with dread.

But even this last part, I can’t say for certain if I was actually awake or not; I could have been dreaming this part, too.

It boggles my brain.

A tiny, green bug once landed on my shoulder. It idled there for quite a while. It didn't leave. And then I thought... Oh boy! I'm like those one of those tough guys who walk around with falcons on their shoulders! Only instead of a falcon, I have a tiny, green bug. But no matter, it's my tiny, green bug.

And I played with it in my hands, and it scurried from finger to finger, oh, ever so quickly. A hyper tiny, green bug, that tiny green bug of mine was.

But then I put it back on my shoulder, and (to my despair) it flew away, into the hair of the guy in front of me, and apparently its tiny green legs itched this guy, and without any investigation, he swatted it, and then it dropped to the ground.

Dead.

Lady just called me by the name of my brother. In a flash of neurons firing, I opted to let it slide, to not say that that isn't my name, that my name is Trevor. But thank God, she corrected herself, and I didn't have to perpetrate a lie.

Mother was boiling spaghetti in the toilet, and I asked her why in the world she was doing that, that’s gross; she looked at me like I was the village idiot.

.

This is probably an unoriginal idea… but I was just thinking, you know how death is this great unknown, this thing, that nobody can get a handle on?

Well, what if, really, we catch a glimpse—just a glimpse—of death, each and every night?

You know, we fall asleep, and feel nothing, and then wake up, and in that time, we didn’t exist—we died.

And so death is really, just that familiar.

Well, what do you think?

.

I think that it’s funny.

My relatives, they always point out my fairly long eyelashes and gush, “Oh my oh my, the girls must be just fighting for you with those eyelashes of yours!”

I have never heard anyone else ever say anything about my eyelashes.

.

I’m one of those assholes who jumps when they spot a mistake in a book.

I’m one of those assholes who feels noble because they noticed something an editor overlooked.

I’m one of those assholes who circle these misspelled words, so every other person that reads the book notices them too.

I’m sorry.

.

On the outside, he's...
stone cold, a statue.

But on the inside, he's...
alive
alive
alive!

.

(you should say this aloud. It sounds cool, methinks.)

My thoughts are bumblebees:
lazily loafing by in the breeze
mumbling and bumbling lethargically.

.

I’m not one for tradition, but Pops, when you put a new faucet in...when you replace the faucet, the faucet we’ve had for centuries, the faucet that I grew up with...

well, it just makes me sad.

.

I am so lucky, because, well, I stumbled across this colony of ants the other day. I don’t even know what range to put them in, hundreds, thousands, millions--no, millions is too much. But what I did, I got down and put my ear, right over the little ant commotion. And what I heard, I don’t know, it was just lovely: this petite clamor from these ants all brushing up against each other; this wee bustle; and this miniature racket—you couldn’t hear that just walking normally.

Nope, you have to get on your hands and knees, and be still, and notice—a deafening noise exists down there. You just have to notice.

No clue why I wrote this, but, well, it was just…..neat.

.

shoot. I mean shit.

This morning, at the doctors, I passed a big bowl of candy at the reception desk, and there were some reeses cups that I had my eye on. I made a mental note to fill my pockets up with them on the way out, because I didn’t want that chocolaty taste in my mouth for the whole appointment. You know?

Well I just remembered about them now. Twelve hours too late. FML.

.

Bagged groceries a few weekends ago for a fund-raiser type dealio.

Of course, weird situations ensued.

Here:

I would approach patrons that were digging in their wallet/purse at the check-out line and say to them, with all the right amount of flattery, “Would you like help bagging your groceries, ma’am/sir?”

And a couple times, this happened:

I get a response of a terse sentence, and a polite smile.

This could go either way, I feel, so I am forced to ask, “What was that?”

The second response is nothing but the same, and just as cryptic. I hear the word “Thanks” muttered, but I do not have enough contextual evidence to determine if it came from a “Oh, I can do it on my own, thanks” or a “Oh, sure, why not, thanks.”

And I am left, not wanting to be an asshole by asking for a third time if they would like assistance with their groceries, to instead just say, “Okay!” and smile, and then leave.

I then slowly get out a paper bag, get it all fixed up, all the while trying to pick up on any clues on to whether I am doing the opposite of what they asked for, or for some sign, like a smile, that will give me the go-ahead. Nothing. Eventually their groceries come down to where I am, and I am forced to make a decision to go through with the grocery-bagging process.

But while I do this, I swear, I just swear, that they are giving me nasty looks, and cursing me under their breaths for my debauchery and outright outlandish refusal to accept their simple “no.” Because, of course, they said “no” twice, quite clearly.

But nobody ever said anything to me.

And so I will never truly know if what these people said, was a “yes” or a “no.”

End story.

well, I shrug my shoulders at this one, meh....

An Ode to a Loner

His arm will delicately
drape over the bedside,
a pencil in hand,
an afterthought.

And when he falls asleep, the pencil
will stagger for a moment
and wobble
and finally drop.

And he’ll use his phone as an alarm
and he’ll fall asleep.

And he won't know this, but
he’ll sleep forever
because nobody not a soul
will call.

.

Right now? Well, right now, I'm an optimist. I'm seeing the happy, you know? I'm not see that sad, or that dreaded angry. Nope, right now, I'm seeing, I'm seeing that good.

In baseball on, let's see, Sunday—that would two days ago—well, on that day, I tore up my knee. And now there's a hobble to my step and a good one inch diameter of pulpy, red flesh on my knee.

But here's where the happy, the good comes in.

You see, on these types of abrasions, pouring on hydrogen peroxide is a good idea. And though it stings like hell, yes, I did it, and I hardly noticed it. Because the instant that hydrogen peroxide touched my wound, it began fizzling this minuscule white foam. This fizzle, fizzle of sorts.

And it's sometimes those slightest of things—those fizzle, fizzles—that distract you from everything, that just, well, make you see the happy and the good..... and make you an optimist even when you're a fully pledged pessimist.

.

Background: a shitty fucking poem that I fucking hate. No fucking clue why I'm putting it up, other than it's the only thing I've written in a while.

Rekindled

I leave the table
having him nor me said
anything
except maybe pass
the rice, please,
thanks.

and the rest of the night:
the dull droning of
the clock, the television, my sighs
and watching his eyes
tirelessly:
a sparkle, a glint, anything, goddammit—
but nothing.

Later I fall asleep on the couch
all sprawled out,
a wreck.

But the next morning, I wake up
sunlight on my face
pillow under my head
blanket over my body
my book closed, on the ground, page marked—

things not there the night before.

.

This comic in the newspaper today, these parents find cigarettes in this kid's room--the kid is like 20 now, he must have used the room when he was like 14...

Anyways, they get pissed off at the now 20-year old kid. For something the 14 year-old did.

I really don't get this, this makes no sense to me. The 20 year old is not, by any means, the same person as the 14 year old was. Yet the parents are still getting mad.

Just like how this comic makes me mad.

I don't lose track of time enough.

.

On the neighbor’s lawn that I mow, huge mounds of anthills sometimes sprout up. And I like them, because my imagination then has a chance to have fun. Here:

I picture everytime that I mow, for the ants in these colonies, it is hurricane season. Or else the apocalypse. Or else the storm of the century, because ants’ lives are pretty short. Yeah, the last one seems the most plausible.

Anyways, I say this, because often I just mow right over the mounds, and all of the sand just jets out of the department that the grass jets out of. I don’t like completely ravaging their homes, but I am kinda forced to. But I picture the ants’ looking up at the huge approaching lawn mower, faces melting into horror, screaming their little heads off. Ahhh!!

And then I look back a few paces after the mound and say, “ouch, quite the storm this century.”

It’s kinda cool, though, looking up in the sky and imagining a huge mower, belonging to some more advanced species than us, trimming all of the trees down. Mowing their lawns.

.

I just ate this sandwich. It was pretty good. Afterward, though, it felt like, way in the back of my mouth, there was some piece of bread that was stuck. I kept trying to tongue it out, but finally I felt my finger back there, and it was some canker-sore thing.

And I'm just wondering.... did this canker-sore magically sprout up right after I ate this sandwich? Was this sandwich a "canker-sore-wielding-formula"? Because I most certainly did not feel it before...and I'm just wondering how in the hell it got there.

"Writing is a lonely job. Having someone who believes in you makes a lot of difference. They don’t have to make speeches. Just believing is usually enough."

—Stephen King, On Writing

A grim fact of life: You become what you hate. It's unavoidable.

The only advice that can be given is this: Don't hate anything. That way, you beat it all, and there's nothing you can't become.

I have a story to tell. So gather closely. It happened to me yesterday. An extraordinary thing. Ready? No, you're not ready. I'll just—okay, okay, fine, I'll tell you...

yesterday morning, I woke up.

Fascinating, huh? It blew my mind, it really did. I didn't know what the hell to do.

So, I got up.

Sometimes, I'll listen to people and all I'll hear is a muffled "psst-pss-psst."

And sometimes, I'll see myself write and all I'll see is a muffled "psst-pss-psst."

It's foreign to me.

About a mile down the road, a firetruck, sirens yelping, barreled by.

So, just got back from arm therapy. Drive home, I noticed car way ahead stopped on side of the road, near a church. Thought, oh, just some people from the church, putting up signs, maybe.

I approached, and the car ahead of me slowed way the hell down. Forced to slow down myself, and then warily drive by. Turns out it wasn't people putting up signs; actually, it was a bunch of kids--I didn't see them crying; they were all huddled up, an adult talking to them. They were calm--and a lady on the ground next to the car, howling in agony, with people huddled over her. I could hear through my closed doors. Howling.

I saw another car, airbags out; but I didn't see any wreckage, no sign of an accident, other than the lady howling on the ground with people huddled over her. (The people too, were calm. They were too calm. It didn't make sense.) The car in front of me, it pulled off to the side of the road, and a lady sprinted out, running towards the scene. I pulled over right after this, wondering what the hell I should do. There were plenty of people at the scene. And then I saw a car or two continue on, so I finally did the same.

I felt cold. Shivery.

I drove the rest of the way home very, very slowly. I kept looking at all the cars and thinking how the people in them didn't know but an accident, with someone seriously hurt, someone howling on the ground, immobile, was just a block away from them. Right over there! That street! Right there, there's an accident, but you'll never know, because you aren't even going that way.

About a mile down the road, a firetruck, sirens yelping, barreled by me.

I still feel pressure in my head from witnessing this.

I just don't quite get why people get so giddy about meeting famous people. Maybe it's a dysfunction within me; but I see famous people as people. I mean, were I to meet my heroes-- I seriously wouldn't get to worked up about it. It'd be no different than meeting an average Joe. (At least I think.)

The same goes for autographs. How can autographs hold any meaning behind them? I don't get it. They are horseshit to me... they are ink on paper, nothing more.


Although maybe it's just that I'm unfeeling, and can't see the significance in things.

.

I just woke up. From a dream.
I feel rested now, but nevertheless, I feel restless.

Because in my dream, in it I was writing; I was composing a piece, and in it, I had a smile on my face: this is a piece is great, I said to myself, this is great because you are implying things; you are showing and not telling. You are involving the reader; you are offering a couple incidences and you are beautifully tying them together, all implicitly. You did it!

But I woke up soon after this "You did it!" part, and promptly aggravated; it was all just a dream. And now, from this dream, I had no paper, no pencil, and absolutely nothing written down. So I got up, not willing to get some paper, a pencil, and try to repeat the writing process, and then went about my way.

But a real writer, he would have gotten that paper, that pencil, and he would have tried to repeat that writing process. He would have strained to get that dream down, even if it resulted in something from the ol’ noggin bursting. He would have strained, because that’s his job.

Which gave me a sad realization: I ain’t no real writer.

Even though, a few seconds after I woke up, I realized the dream was complete twaddle—that doesn’t matter. No, a real writer would have gotten something out of this dream.

embarrass

I realized a while ago that the word "embarrass" has "bare ass" in it.

It self-describes its meaning, in other words.

Like an onomatopoeia, kind of.

And holy hell, onomatopoeia has four vowels in a row.

Scary.

Noah, I'm putting this up because I thought it was quite funny and wanted a record of it.
young person #1: Old people are funny!
young person #2: Old people are dead.
#1: Uhhh, not yet....
#2: PHREEEEEEWWWWW. OKAY!!!!!!! (looks at clock for 10 seconds) Now they're dead!!! Happy??
#1: Ohh.

Actually, I feel like this is rather mean and prejudice.

So I had a dream last night that the place I was at got ravaged by a tornado.

And I am just wondering....

WHEN THE HELL ARE YOU GONNA STORM AROUND THESE PARTS, EARTH?????????

.

hey:
phone the poems
inside of me

I feel them
pounding
wanting to leap out and write a riot
for you.

rocks

Younger Trevor:

You used to pick up rocks, draw faces on them, and then play with 'em.

I'm jealous of you.

Ok, so lately...... the "hawt"—I spell this with a very sardonic twang—the "hawt" girls of my school, the girls that every guy "in one second would do unspeakable things to," the femme fatales (and then we'll go ahead and toss the celebrities in there even: the jessica alba's, the angelina jolies, the-i-don't-know-enough-celebrities-for-this-list-to-go-on).......

well, I used to get caught up by all these people, but lately, they have had no effect on me. They do not attract me more than the average girl. And it's odd, because for seemingly everyone else, it's the total opposite... and I used to be like everyone else.

But now, well, it just feels very, liberating.

It really bothers me when people audibly chomp on mashed potatoes.

Like you don't know how pissed off I get. I clench my fists and grind my teeth, and I have to literally hold myself down so that I don't wildly jump up and throw my fists onto the table and scream, "GODDAMMIT!!" along with numerous other obscenities.

The forks, too; I have to sit on my hands, usually, so that I don't inflict any radical violence on the potato-muncher with the forks. Because those forks are sharp, and surely can pierce skin.

okay, okay, okay, I think this situation is hilarious. It's only like 30 seconds long, but oh well, you know?

Okay, let's say we are at a bank. Yes, a bank, I think, and some guy goes up to the teller. The bank teller--she's a lady--she says, "Hi, how are you doing," and the man, he looks a bit stern, with a black mustache, yeah, a tiny black mustache, the man responds, "Morning."

The bank teller's eyes crumple--not much, but just a bit--and she politely says, "Uhm, excuse me?"

---------------No, no, no, wait, actually I'm going to change this to a pharmacy. Yes, a pharmacy would be much, much better. So the bank teller is the pharmacist, and the man, well, he's still the man whose a bit stern and who has a tiny, black mustache---------------

So where are we at, yes, a man comes in to a pharmacy, the pharmacist says "Hi, how are you doing," the man replies, "Morning," and the pharmacist says, "Uhm, excuse me?"

Yes, so then the stern man just reiterates: "Morning."

Suddenly, the camera pans away--obviously it is from the pharmacist's viewpoint we are looking at--and the camera pans away and first looks out the window: the sun is on its way down, and cars are all rumbling to get home; then the camera looks at the clock: it's a few ticks away from 5 o'clock; then it looks back at the stern man with the tiny, black mustache, and the pharmacist says, "huh??"

"Morning. Jason, Morning."

.....an uncomfortable silence, then the pharmacist smiles:

"Oh."

She goes and gets his prescription, smiles again, and hands it to him. "There you go," and the stern man with the tiny black mustache nods his head and leaves with the bag.

camaraderie

My neighbors and my family's mailboxes are connected. And for as long as I can remember, the mailboxes have been the same. But now my neighbors just upgraded their mailboxes, and so theirs is different from ours.

They broke the camaraderie between us.

Why did you do this, neighbors?

I sometimes get on the internet, hoping that it will point me in a direction.

(it used to do this quite well, but not anymore.)

bread

If I were rich, I'd waste a lot of money. For instance, right now, I'd go pay someone to make me a huge fake piece of bread so that I could lay it on the side of the road, and make people double take and ask, "was that just a big piece of bread on the side of the road?"

You'll recognize this one.

When I'm older, I'll probably fail at everything and end up becoming a vending machine re-filler, or something.

But, here, it's not all in vein; listen to my plan:

When I fill up these vending machines, I'm going to do something. I'm going to.. I'm going to put two pieces of candy in one little slot.....so that when you come galloping up to get your sugar fix, so that when you flatten out your crumpled up dollar bill and put it into the machine, so that when you eye your kit-kat bar, when you press A-7, when you are expecting to only get one piece of candy....

whoops, two will fall out.



And then happiness will seize you for an instant; and I want you to think that the universe is conspiring in your favor.

It is.

bright

And I replied,

"It's like the morning, when I wake up. My blinds closed, my lights on, me reading a book. And I read, and I get used to where I am. I get used to the lighting, I get used to the artifice. But then I peek out my blinds, just to see outside, just for a second, and I see...

brightness.

And it always surprises me; I never can imagine that it can get, just that bright."

.

just drank a can of soda with a straw

while listening to someone outside yelling, every half a minute, "Lola, come!"

You'd think they could vary up their commands to their dog, every once in a while.


(It was a great night, though, thanks)

eyesight

I like having poor eyesight, and having the option of either having my contacts/glasses on and seeing clearly, or not being able to see squat.

I like waking up and seeing fleeting, blurry colors that make no sense to me.

I like my world, sometimes, completely senseless. I like feeling lost. I just like nothing being clear, every once in a while.

And if my vision was infallible.... none of this would happen, and it just wouldn't be right.

laugh

Something that makes me giggle like a child demands being written down.

Here:

Today I was driving down the street. I had my window down. I like having my window down.

Suddenly I had to sneeze, and it came very quick. I craned my neck and sneezed sideways out the window without thinking at all.

I looked up, and my neighbor (right in the line of my sneeze, but a ways away) was staring at me in perplexity. I didn't have any time to wave, or anything.


Is sneezing in someone's direction offensive?

.

I prefer the sound of "Treally??" to "Really??" It just flings out more exuberance in its utterance.

Yeah.

("Treally" as in the first part of trillion. Trilli.)


Actually, come to think of it, that would be a brilliant first name.

Trilly!....Trilli!

Genius.

ritz

I thought that I had cracked the code. I thought that I had gotten somewhere.

Here:
I was eating from a package of Ritz crackers. I pulled out three; and to my astonishment, this is what I saw: one cracker face up, followed by another face down, then one face up.

I grabbed some more to see if what I thought was correct. An alternating sequence. An alternating sequence of Ritz crackers! How could I never have noticed??

But I was proved wrong.

Face up and face down was completely random.

Did
not
crack
any
code.

pooling memory

There are just so many ways to describe how life can be sometimes—rubbish, balderdash—that I feel as though it is unfair—malarkey, drivel—that when the time presents itself to express the thought, only one of these words—twaddle, hogwash—can be said, and all of the other words—dross, blather—are completely wasted (tripe, guff, tomfoolery, bunkum).


But, I'll think you'll be happy to know, that I do believe........

that just as many words exist, to describe the other side of life.

I just don't know them yet.

Gem

I just ate a toaster strudel, and I forgot to register that I was eating it while I was eating it, because I was focusing elsewhere. Therefore, I never even tasted it.

Fuck you, selective attention.

imagine

Imagine a parent, a child. The child grows up; it's a teen now. And it goes on thinking and it tells its friends all about this: around age two or three, it had some horrible disease that just about carried it away to death. But it won; it beat death. The chances of living were incredibly slim, but it retained vivacity. It's a miracle that it's alive.

The child believes this because the parent always tells about it. And the child takes nothing for granted, because it is so lucky to be alive.



But really, the child never had any disease whatsoever. It was never close to the prongs of death; the parent made the whole thing up. The parent took advantage of the child's childhood amnesia. And simply made up a story.

.

Want to get a t-shirt that says, "I can't wait until it's 2004!"

For the measure, it's 2009 now.

Tioga Air Heaters!

A child once came up to me
asked
How can you stand being so lonely?
You get used to it
I said.

asked
How can you stand being so unhappy?
You get used to it
I said.

asked
How can you stand being so empty?
You get used to it
I said.

Then the child responded
on his own accord:
"I hope I never get used to it."

you have some 'splainin' to do!

I think when I'm older I am going to go out and buy cakes every once in a while, for no apparent reason. Fuck cakes being synonymous with celebrations; let's integrate it into the normal food supply!

car seat is two words??

I wish that there were one person in the Western world--just one!--that's torso and head looked exactly like a car seat.

This way, he could take his front car seat out, and then while he was driving, everyone would freak out because it would look as though there wasn't anybody driving at all! The car would look empty!!

mirror

Driving home today, the sun was perfectly aligned so that when I looked in my rear-view mirror, my mouth looked as though it was between my eyes.

I smiled and frolicked my lips and tongue around, and I had a great time. It was fun.

Drowsiness:

It is always me and you.
It is as if we exist jointly,
destined to be a pair of two.

Tuesdays

I blacked out yesterday, and God talked to me. He told me that I would die on a Tuesday.

I was right on the verge of asking Him, why Tuesday, why not Monday, how does it happen, what's the meaning of life?

But then I woke up.

So from now on, on Tuesdays, I will lock myself in a room with a phone, absolutely nothing resembling a weapon (not even a pencil), and a trained watchperson observing me via live camera. And I will be in this room all day long.

So on Tuesdays I won't exist-- but at least I won't die.

actually

I am fond of playing with the word "actually" in my head. I don't pronounce it the conventional way. \`ACT·too·awlee\, I say. Might I say, it rolls off of the tongue real nicely.

Here's an example of a use in a natural environment:

Someone asks me "how am I looking today," I respond "great," then in my head play with the word: "ACT too awlee......."

Sometimes I like to give suspense to the first syllable. You know, give it some stress and drag it out.

"ACT..........................."

(but then, always gracefully, I'll wrap it up)

"too awlee."

I like to condense these last two syllables into one a lot, too.

"tooallee"


So here, I'll recap:

Other Person: I am the greatest person to have walked the planet!
Me: You bet you are!

In my head: Act..............................tooallee...

I smiled at a stranger the other day.

We didn't interact
we just met eyes
and smiled
genuine smiles.

I just get the feeling this doesn't happen enough.

a sister, a brother and the reign of bee

Ka-jaw, ka-jaw, right there! I said
Right where? said he
Your shoulder! said I

Don't move, don't move, I'll get it! I said
With what? said he
This paper! said I

On three, on three, okay? I said
Two, three! said he
Here goes! said I

I got it, I got it, it's dead! I said
Thank God! said he
Oh, wait! said I.

It's there, it's there, it's coming! I said
I'm running! said he
Me too! said I

Infiltration, oh no!!

I sometimes cry for you.
but I doubt you notice
because the tears rolling down my cheek--
they are impossible to hear.

I sometimes smile for you.
but I doubt you notice
because my eyes are the exact same
whether I'm smiling or frowning.

I sometimes hurt myself for you.
but I know you don't notice,
because my normal skin and my cuts
feel the same to the touch.

I sometimes dance for you.
but I know you don't notice
because nobody can ever smell
a dance called "a dance for you."

And sometimes I sigh for you.

And sometimes I pray for you.

And sometimes I dream of you.

but I know you never notice
because just like how the grass grows...
I'm just there,
and that's all.

spam

I swear to God this is telling me something:

every time I email myself, the message ends up in the spam folder.

Thus, I, as a human being, must be spam.

I flat out stole this!

A person once told me that she couldn't write poetry.

I said no, it's easy:

you

see.
hear.
touch.

laugh.
cry.
love.

and be human, that's all.

Hi, hello, have you ever noticed how similar sounding the phrases "Are you joking me?!?" and "Are you choking me?!?" are?

Someone could say, sequentially,

"What the fuck? Are you choking me? Are you joking me?"

and a person could hear the same thing twice.

Haw, haw!

a beautiful rendition

Once, as I loafed on a
street corner
a man came up to me and
offered to switch lives.

He said that
he would be me and that
I would be him,
and it's really quite easy,
he said,
so I had no choice but to comply.

So we swapped,
and in his body
I really had nothing to do,
so all I did was watch,
as he waltzed around in mine.

And soon, my face became long
as I marveled at the way he
played my life
and the way he
sculpted it to a masterpiece
and whittled it to perfection.

And my face became long
as I marveled at the way he
gave my life,
a beautiful rendition.

And finally
we switched back
and I wondered
what in the world I would do.

this quote makes me giggle:

“The earth laughs in flowers.”
-ee cummings

I sit and wonder, sometimes, whether or not these eyes will ever be truly happy.

And just what happiness exactly is.

And sometimes I wonder, and sometimes I worry.

And, looking at this picture, I think of how I cannot see myself-- I only see my brother.

allergies

I don't know why I resist taking allergy pills. One pill a day--that's it!--and all the itchy throats, sneezes, runny noses and watery eyes, they'd all go away. But yet, with all of this knowledge, I still don't take the pills.

Is it because I like feeling miserable??


(I do like the feeling of sneezes, though)

Psstt!! I have a secret to tell you! I was driving down the road the other day, and it was very late, and do you want to know what I saw? Well here, let me tell you! I saw the library, with all its lights on, and one person walking around. Crazy, huh?? I think this person comes there at night for some serenity; their little moment of peace, you know?? But shhh!! don't tell a soul! I don't think this person would normally be allowed to do this, I think their boss would get very angry! So don't say anything to anyone! I want this person to keep coming to the library way late at night to bask in their special, secret moments of bliss!!


P.S. Don't you dare tell a soul!!

music

Once again, thanks for the words, Kurt V.:

"If I should ever die, God forbid, let this be my epitaph:

The only proof he needed
For the existence of God
Was music."

flopper

"Did I ever tell you you are a real fucking flopper? Huh?"

I want to say this to someone, just to see how they'd take it. I have no clue what flopper means. It sounds offensive though.


Oh, and I still have yet to do this:

Put up a sign that says: G0LIATH or BEHEMOTH or COLOSSAL garage sale!!!! (in two blocks)

and then in two blocks say something like... Almost there!

and then almost there, say.... Ha! Gotcha!

coin toss

I like how pathetic I am sometimes.

So there was this very important decision I had to make, and what better way than to leave it up to the flip of a coin?

But, as soon as I flipped the coin, I already knew:
a.) I already had the decision made.
b.) The only reason I was doing the coin toss, was so that maybe, fate could back me up on my decision, and I will say, "hey, I made the right choice!"
c.) But even if it was tails instead of heads, I'd redo it. Say it's a warm-up. Go until it landed on heads, and act as if fate backed me up from the first square.

public bathroom

For some reason, I do not like looking at myself in public bathrooms.

I don't know whether I'm embarrassed, self-conscious, odd... I just don't like to do it. Usually it's when people are around, but I think I don't like doing it when I'm by my lonesome, either.

(I don't know if this is good or bad)

a towering grave

A girl of mid-twenties, perhaps, sitting in a graveyard on a stone bench, looking up at a towering grave. She is remembering being with him here, years ago, pointing together at the towering grave and mocking death. Now a small headstone with his name on it lies next to the towering grave, and it is small and meek in comparison; it is defeated; it is whimpering. The girl of mid-twenties, she attempts to get up and walk away, to cover up her ears to the whimpers, but she is stuck, watching the towering grave and the headstone with his name on it, through tears that burn.

Hi, hello, I guess

Do you ever get so fucking mentally sick that you just sneer at anything you look at and you hate everything and you want to destroy things but you hold back, but holding back is just so goddam difficult, and when you try to close your eyes and take deep breaths, that sneer is back the second you open them again, and you have to lock yourself in your room because you are just so fucking sick and tired of everything?

Yeah...

But oh, and did you think this was about me? Oh, haw haw, nonono, far from the truth, this is about my friend, uh, Steve.

That kid's a fucking psycho.

between the clerk and I

When people at stores say "have a nice day," or something of that sort, it always makes me feel bad.

I tend to look at it as a genuine remark, and I usually say "you too" all merrily. And I envision a connection of general well-being between the clerk and I.

But then I realize that it is their job. It is their job to be polite, and that is the reason they are doing it; I am no more than a customer to say a dubious "have a nice day" to.

And then I see that there is absolutely no connection of general well-being

between the clerk and I.

shrinkage

Do you think old people, when someone buys them a t-shirt that is way too small for them, say, "maybe I'll shrink into it"?

(As opposed to young people saying "maybe I'll grow into it," of course..)


Well do you?











Uhhh, what was I saying?

peanuts and grapes

I firmly stand by this notion:

eating one very, very, very bad grape
or peanut
will taint your love
for grapes
or peanuts
forever.

When you eat these things you go in it with a certain knowledge that if you come across a very, very, very bad one, the potential harm is devastating and irrevocable.

But it's a risk you have to take.

Today in baseball, after we shook hands, I briefly talked to a person I know on the other team. I don't know him too well; he's one of those people I will talk to maybe once more in my life.

Anyways, we talked for like a minute.

And right after I said bye to this kid and parted ways, I realized the whole time we were talking, I had my hand down my pants, adjusting my "nut cup".

And I'm sure he noticed this.

And I just felt weird, in retrospect, for doing it.

I felt kind of icky, too.

Bittersweet

I think that this word perfectly sums up my view on life.

I was alive

I can get very paranoid sometimes; it's just in my nature.

Here:
I hit my head really hard the other day. And just a few days prior to this, I was discussing with someone the effects of concussions, and he said that if you go to bed with a concussion, you could slip into a coma.

So I kept thinking how I could have gotten a concussion (my head hurt a little bit). I knew this wasn't true though, but I just kept thinking it.

And soon enough this idea tangled itself in my head, and I couldn't untie it; I was thinking how when I went to bed and fell asleep-- I'd never wake up again. I'd slip into a coma. And that'd be it.

So I kept thinking, how it was possible, that this night, it could be the last night of my life.

And I went to bed.


And the next morning, I woke up, and it took me about 10 hours to realize that, no, I didn't die-- I was alive.

picnic

I realize that I want to go on a picnic very badly.

I want to drive out to some place where I have no fucking idea where it is, and I want to find a hill and lay down a blanket, and I want to take my food out of the basket, and eat the food, and I want to lie down, and I want to look up at the clouds.

And I want to keep looking at the clouds. For a very long time.




I really wanna fucking do all this.

It's odd playing with perspective.

I wasn't at school today. School didn't exist to me. And since I, the all-important person in my universe, didn't experience the school day--surely others noticed I wasn't there, right?

Right?

I guaranteed that if I were to ask one random person from each of my classes if he or she noticed my absence, he or she would say "nope."

It's just the way things are--with everybody.

Dance and Laugh

I do wish, I really do, that I followed this doctrine.

“We should consider every day lost on which we have not danced at least once. And we should call every truth false which was not accompanied by at least one laugh."

-Friedrich Nietzsche

.

Give someone your picture.
It may sound crazy,
but it just may happen--
they may fall into a trance.

Befuddled

Hank Green.

Hank Green.

It's funny how easily reality changes for me.

So I played baseball with a Hank Green in little league. He goes to a separate school than I. I haven't talked with him for a long while.

We played his school today, and my mom mentioned his name.

Hank Green.

And I remember vividly a time in the near past when I was talking about this kid, and then all of a sudden he walked by out of nowhere and I said "Hank!"--even though I hadn't talked with him in a long while.

But this jig, this little interaction between us, it never happen. It couldn't have--there is just no time in which this event could have transpired.

And this could have just happened in a dream.

But I swear to God that it was real.

sleuth

I had a dream last night that I got mauled by a dog.

It was scary as shit.

The dog was a professional sleuth, it seems. It could find me no matter where I was, it was smart as hell, and it could jump like 15 feet.

We tried to psychoanalyze it to get its attacking-urges obliterated, but then I gave it some object that reminded him of his old ways... and it attacked me.

Woah!

But I'm glad I had the dream, to say the least.

Although right after I got up, I passed my dog and looked at him suspiciously...

Nonchalant

My day has already been mapped out, just by the way I woke up.

I think it's funny how this happens.

Will this mood last?

Or will I be able to beat fate this time?

Quote

Thanks for the words, Kurt:

I want to stand as close to the edge as I can without going over. Out on the edge you can see all the kinds of things you can’t see from the center.

Sometimes I lose myself.

I don't know where I go.

I sit around and grope blindly, on my hands and knees,
but it is always futile and
my hands come up empty.

I shout down endless, impersonal hallways;
my voice echoes and disperses;
it dies:

"Where are you?"

And then
coming from that hallway way, way, way down there,
a response from a meek and pitiful voice:

"I don't know."

And I never know what to say.

Target

You know the world is a fucked up place when, as you are dropping your friend off at his house, the neighbor kids--about 6 or 7 years old--point toy guns at you and pretend that they are shooting and killing you.

Two things

Two things that happened, that make me wonder. Just wonder.

1.) Our lifting coach for baseball got pissed off at our team for not working the other day. He gathered us all up and made us sit down. He then gave us a spiel about working hard. About its importance. About how he was embarrassed by us. And then, in the middle of this, out of nowhere, he started yelling.

I must say, this guy is not the yelling type. He just isn't. But I could tell that he had those feelings buried inside him at that moment; or if he didn't, he at least knew he should.

But when he started to yell, it was just so fucking incredibly fake. He looked like an idiot. It looked exactly like he was forcing it, soooo much.

And it made me sorry.


2.) The other day, I was playing catch with some kid at baseball. This kid threw it over my head, and right as it sailed over me another kid was walking out of the dugout, completely oblivious to the ball that was drawing near him at a very lethal speed.

The ball didn't hit him though, luckily. It narrowly missed him.

But the sad part is, right after he jerked to get out of the way, a huge string of drool instantaneously began dripping out of his mouth. I mean, the kid could've died. Right there. His life could have flashed before his eyes right then, but all there was to show of it was a Goliath string of spit. And he looked foolish as hell. He tried to wipe it up quickly so nobody would see it, but I saw it.

And it made me sorry.

Big Head

I have loads of cynical and pessimistic things that I had thought of to write about, but I don't feel like it right now. My mood is "chipper" (ha!) at the moment, and I really don't want to dwell on all those things. I'll do that some other time.

Here:

(This is to a friend I had a long time ago)

You told some others and I once about an embarrassing story in your life. You demanded that none of us ever repeat it, because it was embarrassing and all. Apparently, when your mother was giving birth, it took about five nurses to get you out because your head was so fucking big.

I just want to tell you that I have never told anyone about this. But it doesn't even matter; even if I did now, you could probably care less. You are a completely different person. But I am keeping my promise to that person whom you used to be, whom I used to know.

(Even though it was probably a lie in the first place just to get some laughs)

the morning's shoes

Thank you, Bob Dylan, for these lines from "Idiot Wind" that make me sad and thoughtful and pensive and give me shivers all at the same time:

'I can't remember your face anymore,
your mouth has changed,
your eyes don't look into mine...'




And thank you, nighttime—really late nighttime—for making the music sound extra beautiful and touching and for making me realize that working late at night ain't half that bad.

Albeit the morning....

proudness

I have to say, I fucking love it when people are proud of me. I mean genuinely proud, where I deserve it, and they genuinely mean it...

But I know that no way in hell will there be people constantly saying they're proud of me... it just doesn't work that way. And that's stupid.

So, to fill the void, perhaps I need to start being proud of myself.

And I am horrible at that.

But the other day, I WAS proud of myself, if not for only briefly. Maybe I'm working towards it? Maybe eventually I can be genuinely proud of myself?

baby, baby

Perhaps my favorite quote EVER comes from Kurt Vonnegut's Cat's Cradle:

"Be like a baby,
The Bible say,
So I stay like a baby,
To this very day."

Gem

You:

are
a
real
gem.

Monkey's escape from zoo

I think it would be funny if, on some x-rated site, some guy had this as his user ID:

I_HAVE_A_BIGGGGGGGGGGGGGGG_indexfinger




find the irony.

Story

I just came up with a story idea, and I am proud. This one's message means a lot to me, and it's very personal. I hope for it to be emotional. But I will really need to articulate myself well, though. I don't know if I will be able to do that. We'll see how it goes.

Only hope

I am incredible. I am godly. I mean, look at me! I just had one of my worst days in a very long time, but I'm not going to let it affect me! I am just going to forget about... to start over tomorrow!

Geez, I am incredible.








I can only hope so.

Not funny

Sometimes when it's late at night, and I am about to go to sleep, an idea hits me, and I sift around to get a pen and the piece of paper nearest to me, and I scrawl down my idea. This idea always, at that moment, strikes me as really funny, but then I see it in the morning and go, "Man, I have a really dull sense of humor."

I was just cleaning my room today, and I found a piece of paper with this note scrawled down on it:

--look at tag inside girl's crack on thong
--says, "if you can read this, you're short"

And somehow I thought this was funny.

Quote

This quote, by Robert Brault, makes me laugh:

"The average pencil is seven inches long, with just a half-inch eraser - in case you thought optimism was dead."


This quote, by Mark Twain, makes me sad:

"There is no sadder sight than a young pessimist, except an old optimist."

Fear is a Man's Best Friend

One of my worst fears:

A person I know. Very close I am to this person. This person takes a trip, or I don't see for a while, or just isn't there for a bit.

This person has a revelation. Or a realization. Or forgets. Or time takes over.

This person changes.

The next time I see this person, the special connection-- it is not there. It is gone. For me, of course, it isn't, but it is all one-sided. I look at them, they are cold and distant, they have moved on.

And I haven't.

Maybe it is change that I fear, or fail to accept. Maybe I cling to the past a bit too much.

But I am equally afraid that one day, I will be that other person.

Is it?

(http://comics.com/ballard_street/)


Perhaps it's coming...
I felt good most of the day.

Wisdom

I heard someone say the word "wisdom" today, and I realized that I hadn't heard that word in a long, long time.

WOMBAT

I tried to relay
just how important it was to me;
I guess you never noticed.

All I ever wanted was for you to say that single word;
you could have meant to say it, I suppose,
but I never heard it.

Emotional discharge, it's
flowing, flowing, flowing,
whereabouts, I do not know.







Mannnnnnnnnnn, that sucked.