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January 7th, 2007
10:20 pm - I won't be the subject of your filthy experiments
I should be giving some TLC to my baby nieces. They are both beautiful and wonderful and tiny little girls who are very tiny, little, and tiny. But instead of showering the beautiful, wonderful new members of my family with a little bit of attention and a tiny smidgen of affection, I am sitting impassively on the couch as the family plays bounce-off-of-Jarad’s knee, a game I hadn’t been aware of until today; and I have my laptop settled in its designated lap-place, and I am typing these words, for the amusing sounds that I can make by hitting the keys with various speeds, and rhythms, and force. My favorite is when I pound all the keys at once and the laptop makes the most fascinating series of ear-wrenching screeches. Click-clack-rat-tat-tat-a-bip-beeeeeep-jbaskajdh! Hooray for screeches! Hooray for onomatopoeia!
The problem is this: eventually, by which I mean soon, this activity will lose its novelty value for me. Hopefully at some point I will discover that making funny sounds with my keyboard is not all that clever. Then, I’ll have to do something else. I’ll have to find something else to do. Something else like, perhaps I’ll go to my room to find a pencil. Then, play with it, twirling it in the air like a baton for example. Maybe I’ll eat a banana.
My problem is that I have ADD. It’s all my dad’s fault, and his damn lousy Y chromosome. If only he hadn’t given birth to me…alas. This painful tragedy really did occur, and although we might wish to change the past, it is better to face reality in the present. And in the present, I have ADD. Most of all, I’m unfocused. But my nieces still love me (or at least they love my kneecaps). Also, I can take heart in knowing that I’m not the only one suffering from my condition. Far from it. From what I’ve heard, millions of Americans are unfocused just like me. For example, the two little angels who will doubtless volunteer to pay for my arthroscopic surgery and wheelchair, when I need them, which might be very soon…my darling nieces—are unclefocused. In fact, I know many men and women who are afflicted with the malady that I am describing. All of the high school chemistry teachers who were named ‘Colt’ by their parents, and who, sitting alone in the motel rooms that they live in, play drinking games while grading exams, taking a shot of Barton’s at each opportunity to take points from a student for improper usage of blue pen instead of black and similar pettiness, all the while cackling with ever increasing shrillness until at last passing out and vomiting into their own prodigious beards, when they are not happily strangling kittens, are unitfocused. Jimmy Hoffa was unionfocused. I have a friend from Colombia. She is addicted to Spanish-language soap operas; she is univisionfocused. Every so often, while am I walking between class and the Cramm, up or down University Ave, I see a certain guy with a mustache on the road, sitting up straight, peddling very hard, balancing ever so carefully on his wheel. He is unicyclefocused. And the list goes on and on. Ahhh, so many unfocused people.
....
Well, I’m bored with this writing thing. Even beatboxing with my laptop keyboard’s error notifications seems like a little tiny little bit of a tiny waste of too little time. I guess I’ll just find a pencil to twirl, and a cold compress for my bruised and battered knees. And a banana.
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December 28th, 2006
03:44 am - Legal disclaimer
I reserve the right at all times to be completely dishonest and utterly insincere in any part or portion of my livejournal entries.
Thanks, the management.
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December 27th, 2006
01:00 am - Christmas and Me
I’m so happy to be home again. My family is so wonderful. And I haven’t seen my mom and my dad and my sister in such a long time. My heart believes that I’ve passed a lifetime in four Ithaca months since driving and arriving at Cornell at the dead end of the summer. It’s really, really good to be back now. And I brought a gift for everyone with me. I came home with Christmas stowed in the back seat. And we’ve all had a really good time. Christmas is so much fun to be around. We decorated the house with all kinds of bells and ribbons and angels and some glowing plastic chili peppers. And we all got presents! Well, my dad got the sneakers that my mom bought for me a few years ago, but I only wore them a couple of times. And he also got a Crock Pot. I got two packs of underwear and a bunch of cash, and my sister got a new cell phone, a Razr, and even though my mom didn’t expect to get anything because she bought or at least wrapped all of the other gifts, she did buy a big package of M & M’s and wrapped that. And then we surprised her and gave her a nice jacket and two shirts, and she was very happy. She also made a delicious pork roast for Christmas. We’re Jewish, but we always do our best to throw a good party. We leave our multi-colored Christmas tree lights turned on day and night. It makes such a festive scene. But my mom is sure that it will dry out the tree. The tree is all crooked, too. And it is too warm for all of us to be in the house at the same time, thanks to global warming. Global warming is having a serious effect on our holiday this year. With me at home again, not to even mention my guest, there are a ton of additional molecules around the house and the heat they produce by colliding at nearly the speed of light everywhere is terrible, it is much too warm, and that’s even before we count climate change. Suddenly, all of the plants are wilting. That’s why the Christmas tree looks so unhappy and crooked. So my dad volunteered to be his company’s representative at some conference in Tennessee, he flew out yesterday, and by the time he gets back, Christmas will be gone. But at least now the environment in the house is more hospitable, and now, I am brimming with warmth and dreams and god. I’ve cried at least once a day almost every day for the past week. But, as I lose control and weep, my eyes and my tongue and my mind open as wide as windows to the sun shining all over bed sheets, when the printed flowers that gleam in the light are all turned as if to stretch out to the light. First I turn my iPod on and sink into the bed of flowers. Now I listen to the music, lying still, ears full of joyful and sorrowful sounds, and now crying, tears of joy, tears of sorrow, at once and separately, but all of them salty. Sight and sound and touch and taste blend together into a stream of indistinguishable feeling and everything melts and every tear leaves the same trace of salt on the skin, every tear tastes the same on the tongue; every tear gives way with childlike softness and twists around and changes itself as fingers collapse on it. Every tear cuts like diamond through cotton candy, the monotonous, indistinguishable hours, months, lifetimes. Every tear is as sweet as cotton candy, as shiny as a diamond. Then everything grows dark; I fall asleep. Sometimes, when I wake up, I wish I was at Cornell.
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December 26th, 2006
12:51 pm - For Anne Frank
I can't imagine any greater happiness than listening to my new favorite album on repeat over and over again with my body stretched out like canvas over a wooden frame as the music puts my brain, captive and unresisting, into involuntary processions of wonderful emotion, cycles of rapid emotional movement, each lasting exactly forty minutes and 11 songs: feeling every feeling that I can remember ever having felt before, ranging between extreme sadness and pure joy and sometimes appearing in the same song, or at the same time, in the most exhilarating and exhausting and exhaustive experience that you or I can ever imagine having reclining with eyes closed perfectly still and alone with the sound and alone on the couch and alone in the house, all alone, in the basement of my parents’ house, in suburban Maryland, just a traffic jam away from our Nation’s Capitol: five miles from the epicenter of the World, above which Air Force One flies, here and there, to and from official business with the President securely fastened into his seat with several secret briefing reports and available in-flight beverages on the plane, which can sometimes be seen in the sky over our heads I think around seven in the morning, which is when my mother and father and sister leave for work, while I sleep the day away. And I hope that I don’t somehow have mono again. When I wake up every day there is civil war everywhere and half the world is burning while the other half is sleeping and in my dreams you’re alive, and you’re crying, as your mouth moves in mine, soft and sweet; rings of flowers round your eyes and I love you, for the rest of your life.
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December 25th, 2006
07:09 pm - A really good orgasm
"You know that place in Loveless, after 'Come in Alone' is over, but the last note, still fading out, bleeds into the beginning of 'Sometimes' for just a moment, before it abruptly ends and now there is just a millisecond of silence, just a tiny pause in the sound, lasting just long enough to notice it, just before its gone, and then it is gone, broken by the first wave of distortion from the electric guitar and the acoustic guitar follows right above it keeping the rhythm which is when the song actually begins and then you know a bit later he sings or whispers the first line 'close my eyes'. I'm talking about the place which lasts just an instant. The place in between. .... Yea, do you know the spot? ..................... Yea thats. .... MM hmm right there, no, up a bit, yea perfect. Yea. .... Keep it there. .... Oh god."
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December 15th, 2006
06:29 pm - How to be inspired not perspired
I found out yesterday that the visual kind of art and the written kind are actually identical and equivalent and the same. At least thats what I read in a book. Well, armed with my new book-learnin', I've decided to start writing more, and, at the same time, to return to my pastels and paper and painting people and places in pretty pictures. I used to be an aspiring artist, but at some point I lost my inspiration and now all I do is perspire. So I haven't opened my containers of pastels since freshman year. But I used to be pretty good. Or at least I thought I was pretty good and a few people agreed with me. And I like being good at things. So that alone is a good reason to start again. But the motivation that is really driving this nascent artistic renaissance is a simple wish to make things. Everyone needs to feel connected to the world; to offer evidence of having passed by this way; to leave a footprint behind after taking a step. A month ago I felt like a happy hot air balloon, escaped from every rope that had held me to the earth, drifting aimlessly. I didn't have a sense of belonging to any place. My philosophy classes were infinitely removed from the real world, I felt distant from friends, I went home to DC for Thanksgiving and no one was there; my room was total anarchy, I'm sure as a tribute to the rest of my life; I turned on the radio to reporters repeating mind-numbing phrases about the "victory in Iraq" and "staying the course" never mind the total, incomprehensible, absolute insanity of speaking of a victory and a course to stay with when a civil war which we cannot win kills 500 Iraqis every day, not to mention 1000 Sudanese die each day in Darfur, and so many families can't afford a first 'course' for dinner and there is no logic or rhyme or reason at all in the world, either inside of Ithaca or outside of it. So this was a month ago. It was a pretty bad time. I think the same kind of thing makes people want to break furniture or shoot up post offices. They start to feel disconnected, misunderstood, displaced, misused. As if not really there. Me? When I feel that way, I paint. And the 'written art' part mentioned ealier: its just what you are reading right now, more or less. Maybe its not quite accurate to refer to this paragraph as 'art'. But it is at least a kind of double construction project: making something as a way of reinforcing myself.
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01:57 pm - To no one in particular
Some first reactions to this distraction/contraption called Livejournal.
Friendship is already impossible to understand. Livejournal is great for friendship though. Not because livejournal allows me to share secret thoughts, and reveal my innermost emotions, and generally possess a more honest attitude and greater capacity for love and understanding. That would be so boring. Livejournal is great because it adds another layer of mystification and obscurity to personal relationships.
First, imagine the havok that you can play with your significant other. Try this: don't talk about anything thats really on your mind for two weeks. Pretend that nothing is bothering you. And then write all of your fears and secret feelings in your Livejournal. It will drive 'em crazy! Another good idea is to write something really mean about the person who you love in a post and tag it "private". Then, when he/she is reading your livejournal on your computer just like always, you can pretend that it was an accident and "you were never supposed to see that" and "its your fault!"
These techniques can be easily adopted to use with normal friendships, too. Saying something to a friend face to face and then contradicting it online is a great way to totally confuse them. But nothing is better for perplexing and hurting and one's friends than an online confession. First, make them wonder why you were willing to share a personal moment with a million wierdos, but not with them. Then they'll have to ask themselves: What does my friend think our friendship is worth? Where do I stand? Have I said or revealed too much? Am I a bad friend? Who am I, anyways? Why are relationships so difficult to understand? Why can't we all just love each other? And soon your friend will be wracked with self-doubt and insecurity, feeling alone and unloved, having consumed a handle of Jack and 4 bags of mushrooms and lying curled up on the floor in the fetal position.
Lets avoid this outcome at all costs. So please, friends, be open with the people who are close to you. When you feel like complaining or confessing online, pick up the phone and call someone you care about. Absolutely, positively, never write an angry post on Livejournal, directed at no one in particular, about friendship or love or communication problems. That will only lead to more confusion.
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December 13th, 2006
09:08 pm - story today told only nouns verbs adjectives
woke up morning 8 three swedes came door sang song today first day festival haven't gotten work done today rearranged room will miss Danny Julie leave
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