on the next arrested development

I'm Jan. 2 and it still doesn't feel like its happening. I don't know. I get awesome Christmas bonuses from my clients though. I love working around this time of year for that alone. Tom showed this music called, The Sinking of the Titanic, by Gavin Bryars. We listened to it going back from Ichiza in his truck and its super pretty. And I was lying in the backseat visualizing all the people running around the deck frantically. With water coming up to their ankles and the band just playing with this sad smiles on their faces. Doing exactly the kind of thing that makes life completely worth living. That one action that exists only for a brief moment but encompasses all the beautiful points of life. I thought they were maybe still alive at the bottom of the ocean floor playing like ghosts and it just seemed so remarkable that this man was able to compose music like that.

I forgot how awesome music is because my deck has been broken in my car and its the only place I ever really listen to anything.

We rode all night into the dark. Listening to what was a gentle hum. And when the time came to get off the train. I looked at her and we both agreed that we'd rather not. So we hid in closets amongst all those large and heavy wool coats. The coats you see men traipsing about on a winter day in the white background of a city.

Then the whistle blew and kept hidden until a gentle man by the name of John came around with a cart of coco and sugar cookies. The rest of the time traveling was spent looking out at the frozen countryside, until finally, John left for up near the main cabin and towards the conductors place, and she fell asleep with her head next to mine while i drifted in and out letting the dreams play with reality.

---
strings make the night

New Brand of Perry Makeup

Perry put petroleum jelly all over his face for five dollars.

---
take me out

Snake on Nintendo

new super smash brothers brawl for the wii. comes out in march i think? fuckin' check out snake. higher res video here.

the clock strikes 1. we sigh and wait, until it strikes 2.

Tomorrow already feels strange. Can’t sleep. There are no sounds. I like to hear cars driving by in the dead of night. But my street is quiet and so is my house. I get nervous thinking about Norway. I don’t know a lot about that. But it is far away. And I am someone here. So will I leave and be something there. Then bring it back and replace an old shell that I left in a dusty house with motes and sunlight all yellow on the wooden floors.

I feel nervous. I think maybe because I know I won’t be going to some classes. When did ditching become a thing so different. We used to do it all the time in high school. Now it almost feels horrible. Like I am swallowing the wrong pill. None of my body feels tired. I wish sound filled me up but everything around me just makes things buzz. I want to be on a creaking old row boat with a mist of rain pouring from the sky. Like a shrouded covering they cannot see us as we sit in timid water that barely ripples. There is a warmth surrounding me and the air is thick with moisture. I want to close my eyes but I can’t. Half of me feels charged and the other half feels exhausted. They cannot reconcile with anything.

I haven’t read enough this week. I haven’t been doing much except getting paperwork in order. It is almost done and then I can submerge in figuring out how best to keep warm with the clothes I must purchase. There is no light either.

I don’t count the dim orange glow of the concrete street lamp outside. I’m too energized for street lights. I’m too exhausted but lacking to be peaceful.

But at least we all met again and it was wonderful. I love my family. They are a lot of fun.

---

We rise in shallow water,
With plenty of breath left.
We face the sun and the yellow light,
With smiling faces and plenty of life.
When we submerge again,
The seagulls circle,
The waves rise,
And the oceans swirls.
We rise far away,
From anything.

---
hush little darling, don’t you cry
mama’s gonna sing you a lullaby.

the way sound fills

In the middle of the night we smiled and looked down the long parking lot. With our eyes I scanned for the both of us and felt that the cars were moving too fast. So I moved us along quickly and the horns were loud when there was no one else walking. It must have meant they were honking at us. I smiled again and felt the touch of her hand; it was cold and she didn’t wear gloves. I liked how she didn’t care and would rather feel the world around her than cover her tiny fingers in the warmth of wool or cotton. As if masking her skin would somehow diminish the experience of living.

When the moon was at its tiniest, we were far away from the parking lot, over the concrete mountains. In the back there was the distant sound of the street. Lights hummed and I could hear almost nothing except her shallow breathing. Then in an instant we fell…

Tumbling down and down. There was a lot of swishing past my ears. The sound of air moving so fast that I couldn’t even see or think. All I did was rub my nose as we fell. Because it was so cold that it became numb. Her hand was still in mine, and when we stopped we had stopped on a cold patch of wet lawn. The streets were so far away now. The lights were gone and it was almost nothing. Just the tiny moon overhead casting faint shadows on the green grass. She shined so bright. The stars were gone and it was black in the sky. A dull mist was high up and she told me all sorts of things. But I wasn’t really listening, just taking in the noise itself. She knew it, that’s why I guessed none of it was important. What was important was that we talked to kill the silence. It was like filling a city with people.

Empty towns can be one of the most depressing things ever she told me one night before. And that’s what I remembered now as I filled in the lack of streetlights and cars. The lack of any other people. When she let go of my hand and went home it was terrifying. Because here I was alone so far away from everyone. Her voice was gone and the world was emptying itself out again.

It made me truly understand how important she was to me. She was probably the most important thing in my life. And I meant it. I didn’t tell her but I knew. Mostly it was this great thing inside of me. Like when you try and size something up for someone and they do it with both hands. Stretching them out longer and longer until it reaches that perfect width and height. She meant this much to me and I stretched out as far as I could.

Then I walked home with the pale moonlight glowing, like those streetlights that now lined the sidewalk to my room. And from the window I fell asleep in silence thinking about her, bathed in the white light, making my dreams these surreal landscapes with no people, and only the sounds of before to fill it all up and make it worth dreaming. I think in that moment of lucidity, after having spent the whole night with her, all of this clicked. And it stained itself on the inside of my head. Like paint running along concrete and filling in all the cracks. It became this vivid message, and I clung to it like gold. It was the most valuable thing ever.

---
the bear.

Camping for a Wii

We camped out from 11:30 pm to 9:00 am to get our hands on our Wii's. It was quite a struggle and very cold, but we did it. And oh was it worth it.

Covered in an obnoxious amount of layers while the sun finally came up.

Monsieur Pennington in all his grandeur



Jake slept through the entire night. He realized that sleeping on hard concrete, in the cold, is the worst thing ever. Oh, he also fell asleep next to a swastika. The sleep nazi.



Paolo with his towel scarf and awesome beanie. Our spiritual guide and documenter, photographer.



The Line going down Charleston



The valuable ticket that got you your Wii



Faithful comrades who visited throughout the night with food and blankets.



The Final Countdown (cue Gob's stage music)


Success after like 10 hours of camping.


The Final Product

Its seriously the coolest fucking thing ever. And thanks to Paolo for documenting the whole adventure. Totally worth it.

---
pswii. let's get wiitarded. play with my wii. don't you want to play with my wii? i like my wii. don't touch that wii. wiination. wii are the people. wiiating.

credit

I've managed to remove myself from the national credit and consumer reports list. It was the most arduous process I've ever embarked on. I'm still not home free. I have to sign some letter in the mail and then mail it back. Otherwise in five years they put me back on the list. I think, Julian, these people can't stop offering you credit cards.

But I already have a credit card.

Exactly.

When will it stop Julian.

Never.

---
2.

magazine

I'm starting to feel that my mail-person is slipping my egms beneath the seat and enjoying them at home in the comfort of an easy chair. I can't be certain, but I do know that shifty things happen, and that this sort of thievery cannot, not, exist.

---
1.

birthday celebration time

Oh, bonfire, birthday, 21'st bash is on for December 3 (Saturday). Unless something happens or needs to be changed. that's the date of the extravaganza.

a social night

Washing my clothes now. The gentle hum of the washing machine makes today feel even more like a Sunday. It whirs around and round. The time is noon. I think I have things to do. But none of it is pressing for tomorrow. So its hard to get it done. My list:

-Rewrite Hemingway paper. (Focus on thematic response, not plot summary)
-Work on World Lit. Research Paper
-English 101 Reading
-Japanese History Reading
-Watch Seppuku for Jap. History
-Read Tobias Wolfe for Amer. Short Stories
-Work on Jap. History Research Paper

Those are my pressing matters, which will need to be dealt with all at some point in November.

---

Last night I saw the Rolling Stones thanks to Brian. They were pretty fucking rad. I enjoyed myself. I guess I wouldn’t have bothered to see them on my own, so its cool that the opportunity came up where I didn’t have to shell out that ticket price to go watch them.

It was really weird seeing who attended. Mostly all these baby boomers and old people. All rocking out. Now they have the time and the money to see this band of their era and they were thoroughly enjoying it.

---

We went afterwards and ate at The Social House down at the TI. That place is insane. Its this super chic, new sushi joint. It’s really awesome, and the food is great. Brian and I just kept at it with the sake and let my mom drive home. Which, hanging out with those two is strange, but really funny. Because at night I never realized they become these characters straight out of a Fitzgerald novel. Brian with like 3 different drinks in his hands wandering around telling his life story to all these people. And my mom bouncing around with him laughing and telling jokes. And they get really dirty which is awkward but again funny. Brian likes to point out all the hot women and he calls them Bone Smokers.

I ended up finding Raj down at the pit too and he walked around with us. Devo, your dad rules. We have to go to The Social House at some point man. Its really dope.

I managed to get the keys from Brian who got plastered. And then I let my mom drive that truck of his. Which they parked on the first floor because security said we didn’t meet the clearance for anything higher in the garage. My mom ended up continuing her character by driving on the wrong side of the road at fucking 3 in the morning. Some men in trucks had to point her in the right direction.

It was an interesting night. The sushi and sake was bomb, so was the place, and the music was good too. Can’t wait to go back to that place again.

---
we find some time, in-between the shouts and screams of the people’s rush.
they make the sounds, of the crashing plane.

athf

Trailer for the new movie. I think its less of a trailer and just like the first minute or so of the actual movie.

its tuesday evening.

Gary falls at about the 6:20 mark. Get romance advice from Busey.



Here, are more links to this forgotten gem of a show--and man.

---
never gonna give you up, never gonna let you down, never gonna run around, and
desert you.

macintoshhh.

Another computer has joined my collection. Finally got my hands on a Mac. This is a G4 Powerbook. The Macbook Pro replaced these models but it's still pretty fast, has a gig of ram and everything on it. Darlene Ensign said I could have it since I got her a new one. It had some cracks on the casing and the older OS. But I super glued the exterior back together, formatted, and installed OS X Tiger. Then slapped office, photoshop, and some other stuff on.

The nicest thing is the screen. Really pretty.

---
I cannot hide when you're outside
and hope soo out hide to the streets

first post from my mac

Listening to some Sun Ra and letting the night slip away. I don’t think I’ve watched television in weeks now. I don’t know what happened, but now there is all this time. I don’t know what to do with all that free time. Perry plays Wow and I sort of putter around in the solitude of the night until things wrap up and we part our separate ways to sleep. But it’s clear that it’s not horrifying. It just seems strange. Like we are in Purgatory. Waiting for a train that will come soon. On that train it will take people to all these places. Some far and other just around the corner. As we wait we smoke and chat. We sip wine and beer and let the sun fade out as a dying cancer on an old man’s thumb. When the break is done, the time in-between will be the most cherished, and all around we will mutter where did it go? What happened to that train station? I knew that waiting was…and we’d find no more words but just that same sun now steadily climbing in a noon-time sky.

---

We rode along,
On shores of gold sand
With your beautiful face,
Those long black strands of hair.
That dipped and covered your face.

When we were tired we shook ourselves,
And let the sun tell us when to rest.
When we smiled it was the end of time,
When the day stopped we smiled and felt the waves and breeze of the salty air.

On that golden sand,
We made images of trees and flowers,
That shone in the afternoon sky,
And when we had to leave,
I didn’t care.
I didn’t mind because you were still there,
And all those moments that made it…
They made us part.
With that sparkling shore.

---

Sometimes when I’m watching people look at each other I see their faces and recognize that same face in someone else. Because the interaction was the same. The intent was similar or almost identical, so what I’m doing is recognizing the meaning behind the lips, or smile, or eyes—downcast and dark brown. It produces huge bouts of nostalgia. It sits funny inside of me. Like it wont happen again but I’m viewing as a stranger. When he sits alone and faces the end of the day. He recognizes in himself how small a man he was. He is a small man and he drinks champagne and chews on ice until they throw him his clothes in the tiny cell.

This is not the life he had planned out. When he was a boy he imagined riding on trains until he died. With a beautiful woman that made ham sandwiches and she smiled as she sipped clear mountain water. Cold. It was refreshing. But he was not there. Instead the stars were overhead and in the interminable moments. He could be caught holding his breath as if the guns would somehow stop.

But when the men took their positions at the firing line and they remarked that he was a pitiful man. In a sorry state. That he should convict himself and take the revolver. This was a waste of time one soldier commented and the other man agreed. They took hits from a snifter, then blew smokes rings from clove cigarettes as the Marshall read out loud the sentence.

He closed his eyes and told himself he did not want to see the ends of their guns. That the champagne had been delicious, but he remembered it had been bitter, and ended up not lying to himself this time. In the end he only wished for the quiet breaths of the train. Passing along the smooth rail as a silent bullet. And those same fragments of metal. They had been removed from a Russian railroad years later and been formed into long shells, caught him in the gut and he bled to death on the cold night ground. His body bathed in white moonlight, and the end of his life was nothing but a series of exclamations that another traitor was dead. That the people could sleep soundly in the night. When the mortician came in the morning he found half a body. Most of it was stripped bare by ants and scavenger owls. He prayed and threw some holy water before striking a match and burning the rest.

It had occurred to him right before he died that Tolstoy had been right. That man continued to survive as an ever-present idea of the human condition. That love, and courage, anger, and remorse were merely dead souls clinging on. Feeding those who were alive. And in that way the Great Russian author claimed immortality for a race that needed it so badly.

But when he died he only felt cold and remarked once again how bitter the champagne had been.

---

The time is now 7:40. It feels static. There is nothing. When Hemingway wrote he removed and stripped the character to a set of actions. Invoking a white space where the reader intended to fill that space in, inferring what was never said. He is rejecting the old world view. One in which, only led to a war that showed the terrible cruelty in mankind. Hemingway asks himself, what is there now but the end. With nothing but the capacity for evil, what have the old ways taught us but how to wage war with the world. He communicated this, in his work, and went about trying to discover how man can face these sad truths with a form of dignity. So it is immanent, that when we read this author’s work, we strive to move past his woman hating and simple use of description to the ideas he leaves off the page. When he talks of suicide, his characters almost always fail. Why would this be the case? Is he not hoping to end the pain of these miserable creatures?

These men, are not merely sad and wretched, they are fighting against nature. They are trying to assume a higher plane, where they mean something. When he writes he talks of this nothing as an enemy. Like a bullfighter facing the bull. It is unknown whether he speaks in complete metaphor, but unlike the Structuralists, we may assume the ideas we wish to form, create a moral compass for ourselves. They fail in killing themselves. To become examples of a losing fight, but not giving up until the very moment that we must.

It brings us back to the white space. Hemingway, in all his power, is creating a question for the reader to answer. He wants this reader to assume a role of responsibility, and think for themselves, what is my purpose? When faced with a character that finds himself struggling with his place in a burnt out world, we look at our world and question the foundations with which we stand on. In his attempts, he strips past the romantic and pretty to a very core foundation. It is like looking at the skeleton of a sabertooth, or the blueprints of a home. He does not want to write any more than that. If he does, he falls within the parameters of the old. And it is most certainly not his goal to teach ways that have failed mankind.

So Hemingway poses us the question of meaning. The same question that Camus and Sartre, that all the French Existentialists asked. Where does human meaning lie? What does that make the human condition? Are we tragic, are we courageous in this end, where we will never win? And the answer is never given. It is decided by the reader to fill in the blank trees and rivers, the answers and conclusion to conflicts, to fashion an answer, or at least a weapon to fight the problem.

Hemingway’s solution is to write. In fact, Camus himself states that there are 4 different solutions.

1. There is the hedonist. Who exists to blank out the problem with pleasure.
2. There is the actor. Who does not exist as a solid human, and lives as changing characters. He has no form to face the problem.
3. There is the leader. The one who assumes control. To take those under him and create his own meaning through leadership. The God complex.
4. There is the artist. Who fights this nothing by his own creation. A slap in the face towards that nothing.

So we see, here, that there are structures that perhaps bind man. That we are all one of those things. Regardless of whether this is true, they offer a choice for those not knowing that such a choice existed. Whether each one is ‘good’ or not is hard to judge. It is then the task of man to create a structure he himself holds strongly too while at the same time regarding humanity through a moralist stance. Perhaps it is too much to ask though, and it may be that this nothing has, over time, broken down man’s will. It merely predicts our end simply by existing. And defeats the thing that continues to survive us. Our morality.

Which is the point of what Hemingway is doing at his core. Through everything, these people do not fail morally, and thus Hemingway, in his white space, creates a feeling that even in great sadness, we cannot fail to become less than who we are. Even in the face of death, we are good people.


---
welcome to neptune, welcome to space, welcome to the world of jazz

pause--do not exceed medication past 6 doses in 24 hours--resume

I dragged myself off from the couch because I thought I should put something down. I saw these pictures and I don’t really know how to articulate the feelings. But it’s very dark in my house, especially if I take the time to look around. When the sounds, typing click away, there is a sound of typing. That typing sound is clicking. There is clicking in the dark house. There is the sound. And its dark if we look around…

That repetition. That’s how I feel right now. Over and over in a loop that changes but not a lot. If it were enough I wouldn’t be sick, and I wouldn’t be drugged out. When I close my eyes I see flashes of knives and people humped over reading while looking down at the gutter. Then the music is a scene itself. It paints trees that dip along as we watch the stars and the night is cold. So I have to throw a blanket and let the warmth circle up, past the knees, up to my hands and I crouch. I try and move but if I do I feel the sting of the cold.

The curiosity builds. When there is a field of shrouded faces, and you wonder what all those faces are doing.

We climb over wired fences

Playing with each other’s hair,

While smiling at the deep crevasses,

Of those places shrouded in sleep.

When the guitars are droning onward,

And the sound is quiet and above.

The dial turned up just a little,

Enough to make me hide.

…we look through the darkness. In the house there is typing. We don’t know who is typing, but know that they are there.

---

someone else, the sound of the sea and spray of salt along the coast, we sailed searching for someone else

killing time.

i'm sitting here in the ensign house waiting for photos to transfer from one mac to the other. its got to be the slickest fucking file transfer system i have ever seen. all i have to do is hook both macs up with a firewire cable and then boot the host mac up in firewire mode (hold down T while it starts up). then on the mac i want the pics on i can just browse the other computer like an external hard drive. and every program auto detects the files you can import. so i point iphoto towards the correct directory and i'm done. now i just wait for 8,000 pics to upload. which, mind you, takes a long fucking time.

---

today, i'm not sure, where my day has gone. at some point i checked my world lit. grade and then recieved an email that eased my fears about my american literature class. perry and i were driving back from carlo's and we wished there was a party to go to. the nice thing about parties is the convergence of people on a single location. and you are there too, and we all can be silent but its fine. its just nice to be among the flux, the pulsating beat and the eyes and hearts of all those people.

i think we are going to cracker barrel tomorrow. has to be sometime in the afternoon. most likely around 2ish. if anyone wants to take a 200 mile roundtrip to eat at a place that makes you say, "I just don't want to be in a cracker barrel," then you are more than welcome. I think the country fried steak has my name on it. Just the legions of people making way on a Saturday afternoon in Bullhead City will be payment enough. I just imagine when we were in Bakersfield, and there was that line for the buffet near the Shakey's Pizza. It'll be like that, except, you know, these country folk are serious about their food.

---

The Wii is going to be very interesting indeed. The mere fact that it will play games of yore is satisfying. Yet, now, you can think that it will also be like a DS, but better, and with more juice. You think that the games coming out for that thing are fun, well then, be ready for an injection of extreme.

---

They still won't tell me if I'm going to Norway. I want to know. Will I be up in the frozen North, with the Northern Lights playing across my happy eyes? I swear I'm taking a train even further in the cold to witness the event. Its like a sea of light, and those lights are so alien they remind me how tiny this rock is.

---

Anthony Bourdain's book is really entertaining. Talking about it just makes me want to go try out different places to eat even more. And we were discussing the merits of the book; you just want to explore the backs of kitchens and the incredible sub-culture that exists, but that I don't ever think about. Not ever, in the past. Now, yes. And that's really neat.

---

i want to start a bead and breakfast called fools rush in

ichiza

Fish is delicious. This is terrifying. The ocean is huge yet we can manage to fuck that up too. All I remember now is this play I saw as kid. And these actors had a bare stage almost the whole time. It was about these men who traveled back into time to study the oceans and the way people treated them. In the future they had become flat deserts where you wore a mask over your face or you'd die from salt inhalation. The land was just a swirling mess of dust and salt. They had over-used the oceans and needed to go back in time to figure out how to stop it.

---

we must make faces when we smile. because they smile back.

the sound was silence. and it hurt my heart, to where i couldn't listen anymore

I feel alienated. Almost alone, not quite, because there are still some people who feel natural. They aren’t away like a distant sun. I can relate and that is good. I am poorly depressed. I don’t know about the things I do; they have been shaken and it scares me. Almost to a point of defeat. But I told myself that it’s important to have things that last a lifetime. Those things are your meaning, and I want that. So that is the case. It is just terrible when those things spit at you, or die, or they frown. They are nothing at some points and it is terrifying all in the whole.

---

I watched this video. And it was strange because I had no motivation. It was there and I pressed play and it was a girl and the only words that were on the screen were, “I Remember.” Which was odd, remember what? What exactly did the girl think? I had the sound turned off so it made the video feel more alien. This great solitude. Maybe it’s that damn book, engraving what it is onto my own form. Like cavemen chiseling on stone tablets. If that’s the case then a millstone is in order. To wrack a hole in the center and cease it from being the case. Turning the piece into dust and the wind will blow it away. What troubles me is the aspects around me.

---

There is an intuitive grasp I hold onto. It is what guides me because there is nothing else that I trust more. Not because it’s easy but because it’s right. Now I know what is around me because it tells me so. There is a feeling. The air reeks of it. I don’t want to smell it. I can taste it when I breathe in. The people are covered and they drip of the stuff. The horrible thing is I don’t know what it is. Just am aware of its existence. That’s the problem. As long as it’s like that it keeps me on the outside. And it’s not like I’m being lazy or think it’s easier this way. I don’t belong in that place. Maybe because I don’t want to. I know that it isn’t right, I know this and can’t step in. The water is too cold mother. We are flapping our wings but there is no point going higher. We don’t belong in the cold. And the cold took us. So when the spillover occurs, the rush of water will be very strange. Because I knew about the water, but when I drink and see what it truly is, it will all have happened or been cemented as either this or that.

---

It is selfish to think that people do not do all they are capable of. What that means is it is selfish if you discredit people for trying; thinking they aren’t. Especially because maybe you think they would rather have it easy. Or have it not be their problem. Or it’s shaking off responsibility. That isn’t fair because it’s incredibly complex and we are not you and I am a person and humans are separate at their cores and can only strive to build a bridge. They can build it but faith holds its string. It’s not religious, it is just trust.

---

We rode along in the red train. Passing by farms and old windmills. There was no wind so they simply stood there, like statues in the sun and still air that was cold with winter chill. We were quiet and smiled pleasantly. Our faces were red from the cold, our hands in wool gloves and the cabin-man would pass out hot chocolate which I had to always decline, the two times he came to our room. As the day passed there was an incredible silence that built up all around us. Until I had to leave my skin as a soul and glance along to make sure we were the only ones. I had to know, because if we were, there surely was a problem with us. These problems were the tip of something greater. And in the end we would both be lying on separate steamships, staring straight up at the sky in the bottom of the ocean, with our mouths open thinking about other lovers and why the world is such a terrible place for young people. There were blue fish with red spots I thought, and then the accident flashed and I was crying in her imaginary arms.

We lost our child,

And on the ocean.

We faced a wave,

A terrible wave with teeth,

that were sharp and white.

Like the hills of fuji.

Covered in a sea of fury.

The sound was loud,

Its crashing broke my ears.

And the cabin shattered,

With the sunlight dying,

The faces of all the people,

Throwing overboard with their fear.

---

we were a house, but it ended quickly.
there is a house, that slowly burns all its light to dust.

comfort

I just never thought beanbags could be attractive (cause thats what my dog sleeps on). But I go here and the whole ploy with the hot woman chillaxing, asking ME, what my favorite position is, actually sells it to me. It says, hey Julian, why aren't you enjoying the comfort of a Sumo bag.

---

brought to you by the good folks at urban lounge furniture, penny arcade, and grizzlebees.

seurat

This last moment on a Monday I was in a movie theater at some point. And it was strange how empty it was. But that’s what Monday is; a transition. Poor Monday, where did your fun go.

---

This is a break I’m taking while working on my novella. I still don’t know whether I’m going to Norway. I wish they would tell me something. Would be good to know where I’ll be. How to approach the future and everything. But then, I can sit on a stone for the end and with the sky all burning. Like those crabs being really pissed that I didn’t take that trip through the black hole because Marcel didn’t think it would be prudent of me. Someone should stay behind he said before he leaped into the nothing and was gone forever. I never saw him again. Never while sitting on those stones with the waves lapping and the salty air. It was thick on my tongue and pores were porous, sitting in sweat and a damp film all over my face. The flies the last things left that fly and the shuffling sounds in the sand while my toes are half curled in the stuff and I cuff my sleeves to my elbows. The last story was about the discovery of ice. I paid homage to it and wondered what it would be if the oceans all froze. I large skating rink. There weren’t any pretty girls there to skate with. The sun was red and I just kept staring at the waves.

---

I was lying on my couch earlier just stretching and looking at my Woodworks piece of art. Wondering if I’d ever have a place to properly hang it. I received two phone calls. Both pleasant. I wanted to suck on a lime and drink a beer but I had neither. And food didn’t really appetize me. I had a hunger but it lapsed and now I lapse here. This is diversion.

I thought about removing all the shelves and leaving a couch, a television, and a series of screens and computer with them all on the ground, wires strung up holding dust and marionettes would cling for life from a ceiling with paints scattered. With the gardens of Babylon from the top and top tiered structures in my loft that felt the different changes of light throughout the day. And a beautiful reflecting pool in the entrance.

One thing I miss dearly was the beautiful symmetry of my old house’s front entrance. I realized a thing that always catches me to depress my mood is the entrance of the homes that are here, that I live in. That don’t hold the same beautiful stain glass hummingbirds and the wonderful sandstone. Where when I was a child I would curl up on the couch and watch in the summertime with all the large windows open and the warm air lazily following the movements of my father’s broom as he sealed the stone floor and let the whole masterpiece dry before it was a remarkable thing to the desert. Where we had brought nature to live with us and she was a wonderful guest. Full of secret and warmth and the place was always happy and never boring.

The great sky full of stars. Where did you go stars? I’m asking because I dearly want to know. And how I would line the floor with books and paper and the scratching of my pens while sawdust came in from the back porch and the great knowing arches that graced our ceiling with hanging lanterns and a kitchen the size of my entire downstairs now.

---

There is a great capacity to miss so much, so dearly.

ahahahaha!

Watch the first one. Then the second one right after.

1.



2.

it all slips so fast

"Whats wrong," she asked and pointed into the room. The door was half open and music was piping through and into both of our ears.

"I dont know," I said and shrugged my shoulders. "He's been lying there listening to Chelsea Girl for two days straight. Hasn't moved."

"Look at how thin he his."

"Yeah. I don't know how much more of this I can take."

"Why Nico?"

I shrugged again and looked back through the door. "Sure is sad though."

She pointed. "Is he going to be alright?"

"You want some dinner? I just can't listen anymore."

They both stepped out and the music played and piped through and out. And the sun gently crouched and organs could be heard across from the neighbor's lawn. While the needle scratched on the old plastic and the two kissed. He laid in the night. And all the time the music was almost quiet and was so soft that he cried for hours when they were gone.

---

I've been out walking,
I don't do much talking

A Normal Wednesday

I woke up at 3 and felt rested. Then went back to sleep until 6 came along and wanted to cut all ties with the world. Just forget about what existed beyond that door and drift away into nothing. The prospect was so enticing that if a shadow had appeared offering me a deal, it would have been interesting to see what I would say.

“How they pull us back in. How they pull us towards the same.”

And I told Sara this and she smiled and gave me a lopsided look. Her hair brushing her shoulders down her back. She planted her hands on the ground.

“You live the most leisurely life I have ever seen. You’re spoiled. That’s the problem.”

She kissed me on the cheek and then looked hard into my eyes. “But I rather like you. All like that.”

I sighed. Then I lied down on the bed and in the changing sky. The day was coming slowly over this part of the world. And the sun was patches of warmth drifting along the lanes that were open and free. The yellow was stretching and we were stretching.

“I thought about that. And I don’t know. I think I’m tired.”

“Maybe you don’t do enough.”

She tickled me and then got up. Swinging her slender legs over the bed and touching her toes on the wood floor. Her unpainted nails were clear and they scratched her scalp. She flashed me a smile and in her underwear and a white t-shirt bounded out of the room.

All I did was lay there thinking about her. She was watching an old movie on the tv and I could hear the sounds. Almost like a record playing. The old dim glow coming through the bottom of my door and the light coming through the blinds of the window. I managed to harangue myself. My mind recoiled as if a parent were in the room lecturing me. But I was a wholly different matter. One that presented the problem of am I right? Am I lying to myself? I didn’t really know and wished dearly to look at those reports teachers made of students long ago.

John is a tiresome boy. He rarely speaks and when involved with another student often finds himself cuffing the boy on the neck or ear. Then the class erupts and the child slinks back into the corner watching his work with the side of his eye. And Shelly makes the boys cringe as she spits and curses. But she would be so beautiful if only proper and realized a woman’s place.

Those old notes scribbled on yellow sheets of paper and thrown together in a manila folder. I wondered now what they said about me. When they did say things about me? Now locked away in a file cabinet sitting in a storage room, marked the year when the student was there and the year that the student left. It made me wonder slightly how I was as a child. But that part of my life. Those years eluded me and I grew content lying there and taking out a cigarette.

I found a stray matchbook and lit the paper. Observing from the corners of my eyes the light slowly playing with the shadow. And the dark of the day with the morning. I puffed clouds of smoke and wrinkled my noise. Then rubbed my toes on the cold wood floor and managed to scratch the back of my ears and head. I could hear Sara laughing out in the other room and then a click. She strode back in and looked at me suspiciously.

“You’ve been cheating on me haven’t you?”

My eyes widened and I inhaled the smoke and let it sit while I took on my thoughtful face. This was a game Sara played with me. To make sure that her trust in me was never at fault. Which, wasn’t, because I could say I loved Sara and found her the most attractive and enticing woman I ever knew. Her features, edging on simple and exotic. Like a town in Paris that you cannot leave. She smiled and her breasts rose as she straddled me while I continued to smoke. She wrapped her hands around my neck and begin to scratch my back.

“Because I could break your neck right now. And then who would pay for the burial. Not me.”

I grinned.

“There was a woman here just now. But she heard your light footsteps and left. She left and managed to sneak out of that window.”

I pointed to my window and the opening where the breeze squeezed on through.

“Didn’t you hear her over that ruckus from out there?”

Sara took the cigarette. She loved to smoke. She finished it off and blew the smoke away from my face and kissed me. She moved her hand through my boxers and I could feel an erection starting to form.

“Hmm. Was she pretty?”

I kept my eyes on hers and managed to grin while she moved her hand. She pushed me back on the bed.

“I’ve got to get up at some point.”

“But didn’t you say that it was all their fault? They want you to get up. I want you to stay just like you are. Right there. I'm not one of them.”

She smiled and laughed and I watched her green eyes dance in front of me. She stubbed the cigarette out on the ashtray near my guitar case and we had sex in the early morning with the light entering the panes. The slow fire dimming the dark and the day not dying. There was no sound. And silence drifted along the eaves of my house. With the ivy clinging tightly and the motions of our bodies caught the rhythm of everything outside.

The breeze drifted through. The cold of the morning wracked our bodies and fought with our personal warmth. I fell asleep after and Sara nudged her head and read a book from my bookshelf—Camus’s The Plague—while I fell far away and was dying already, with the breaking of morning and the forming of the day.

---

in a small ghost town, there's a little arcade
where the poltergeists play their video games

warm up

Looked out at the mountains to the East when I went to pick up the mail. They were cardboard cutouts. Purple and flat, extending across the horizon with jagged tops and a crooked spine. If the sun were on top of them they would burn and dissolve. If the sun were below them they would be shining and total. In fury the mountains died and in fury my feet slapped against the ground and the cold watery street around. I smiled.

What about the world we thought? What about it? What about the times that we spent drinking on patios. I thought about those things and it all came up un-answered. “I don’t really know how to sing anymore,” said Barnard. Barnard was a horrible singer and a terrible lover. Barnard didn’t know his voice from a pack of hens. He quaked when he should have crowed. And he was a menace to all the women around him. We all hated Barnard and that’s why I didn’t say anything when he asked me.

That’s really all there is to say about Barnard. He is pretty trivial otherwise. And not so much of a gallant figure in any respect. He is ever disappearing that Barnard.

---

At this specific period I find it rather hard to finish something. Though I am not sure if it is because, 1. I am not applying myself hard enough. Or 2. because there seems to be some sort of presence adopted during the course of the semester that has become irritant and won’t go away. It isn’t annoying. It just forces time away from completing a product. If it’s a travesty then by all means, outrage should shake you. And you should spit that outrage out like a giant gelatinous goo from your mouth. Spilling forth a disgusting green. Didn’t you say you were outraged? Isn’t that outrage? You’d have to be a pussy to think no.

---

warming up is always an incoherent mess of shite.

Wednesday Window Fall

I remarked rather coldly to myself as I stepped down the stairs. There must be some way to medicate my being. But as I wrote on paper earlier—with pen in hand—that’s pretty terrible. And I sighed and thought about my insides.

There is something inside of me. I know that its what actually got me to get up and come down to school and all that jazz. I want to reach in and squeeze it to death. That’ll be the end of that annoying tidbit.

I’ve taken to walking up to windows and looking out at them for about half hour marks. Half hour marks because usually my classes all let out a half hour early and the only avenue for me to kill with is to use it staring at the things around me; best out of windows. I don’t think I fancy windows much. I mean, I like them fine and all, but I’d rather have it with no glass or thing in front of me. Just the hole in the wall and the outside.

I wrote about the process of a painter. Then I wrote about writing it. And I have a nagging suspicion, like Alvin Lucier and his experiment in the room—where Tom made an analogy about drinking—it has become that with writing. And I am writing what I wrote and it’s a layer over each other to create a drone. I wipe out the past but its still building on it.

Is my writing becoming a drone? Is that even bad. I wonder what all my selves have to say about that. Which, are slowly diminishing and dying with the coming light. That’s fine. It just use to be…it used to be easier to escape.

The failings of not having text messaging. Yet the joy in that lock and chain not existing. The retarded contradictions. And then I read the TV on the Radio interview and they asked the guy about repetition. Which was fascinating how he attributed it to a heartbeat. I am in love with that example. I fall more and more in love with repetition. Oh Gertrude Stein, how I wish to have known. Her repetition exercises are pretty neat, hell she pioneered that modern shite. That modern shite that is so delicious to read.

Do I feel liberated in my actions of an hour and 45 minutes ago? I’ve been tossing that one in my head while I have—instead—been here with that 1 and 45 time. No, honestly I don’t. But I don’t feel too sour or sore about it either. It feels more like it never existed in the first place.

I need a long look into the world I live in, coupled with the world we live in. And then try and consolidate it with approach. How am I approaching this and how are ‘you’ approaching this. Maybe that’s the key, for the gold key-ring and silver key. And its really just a piece of the key.

Then it becomes that I want to drastically drastic myself. And what the hell does that mean? Well I want that drastic thing to push me. I gave a good analogy last night. And its rather fine. All rather fine. Like sunny skies. Like laughing over a good joke. But I should become a terrible misanthrope. Ha. And then I’m a little shit. And a shit throughout most of the day.

I want to sleep well. Not this horrible excuse for sleep that I seem to be living now.

And that’s where Sara comes in.

Where we sat on the edge near her house. And on her porch we smoked while drinking cold beers in the dying autumn light. The cold was coming. The clouds in the sky puckered the sun; checkering it like a tablecloth; a tablecloth covering a wooden table and we are picknicking. Neither of us trembled and she smiled while she flicked ashes my way. When we kissed it was slow like lame tides. It was lame tides and all around us was sand. But really the trees didn’t move and it was quiet; there wasn't sand but grass. I wondered whether I could hold onto everything. Whether I wanted to hold onto everything. There was this idea of self, holding onto self in an uncertain future.

---

"i'm sorry for not going to your class."

"oh. its okay."

san fran. trip

word.

---

gramaphone.

A Barren Peak pt. 2

The trail was a lot easier. I could move and look out with my shemagh wrapped around my face. Now the sun was out and we weren’t in the shadows. We tried to head away. But at some point you are just going up. And then we are running right towards the great yellow globe. And it will burn you. Icarus was a fool, I mutter to myself. I shouldn’t let the story make me think any better. Because I could burn, and I squint up towards the light and then back down. Brian has taken a lead way ahead so I strap back into my feet and legs and get moving.

As we move along the trail it is pretty flat. Sparse junipers mark the surrounding area with a vertical tumble on the left and the range’s face to the right. I keep my face down most of the time just wanting to rest every 10 minutes. But we press on and Brian likes to remark how some of these trees are about 2,000 years old. I look at them and can’t even think what 2,000 years of living. If I’m lucky I’ll get to 70. If I’m out of my mind to 100. The amount of lifetimes that tree lives is ridiculous. And it just sits there with the day and night, as it pleases, passing by like a goddamn whim. That tree is something I think. And we end up going through a switchback and back up instead of straight.

As we start the climb up I look around and notice how sparse things are getting. As we get higher and higher it becomes a theme. In fact, at one point past the devil’s thumb, there is nothing but shale and sunlight. There is no hiding from the yellow and the rock makes you think of barren deserts. It gets cold and windy.

Devil’s Thumb comes quickly. After a rest we look at it. It pokes out of the trail and range just like a thumb. The story goes that two friends went up to devil’s thumb one day. One friend snuck a shotgun into his pack. When they got to the point and rested he shot his friend and killed him. The murder of Devil’s Thumb. I sort of look around. I want to know what a place where someone has died looks like. But it is just wind, rocks, and trees. There is some vertical cliff face and a lot of gray with clouds in the sky. Its so quiet I can’t even hear life. We are slowly moving away from anything living. And maybe that’s the thing about this spot. The great silence that sits on it. On its haunches just looking out towards the sky and desert. All the purple beneath it. Death sort of shakes it head back and forth and inhabits the spot. Maybe that’s what this place is. But for now that image only lasts a minute and I go into this rendition of a rainy night on the mountain. One of the friends is shouting at the other and then he pulls out the shotgun. He begins to cry and then shoots his friend in the chest. The body tumbles down the mountain where, it won’t be found until 1 month later. Bones picked so they shine white in the daylight. And the teeth are in a frown. The man is gone and he wanders the range eating nuts and drinking from streams. The tale of Devil’s Thumb I suppose.

We move past and take refugee among rocks where the final ascent towards the top begins. From here we will be in open climbing almost vertical. Lifting our feet towards the sky. Even dragging them to get through the thin air. Its like sharp ice and it cuts in your lungs. I couldn’t even imagine doing it in the winter. My lungs would become cut and bleed. The blood would spit from my mouth and I’d die at the top. It makes me shudder. While we rest I drink water and eats nuts. Slowly looking below. Starting from the top near the horizon and moving my eyes down until I’m looking at strange fields of colors. It doesn’t register at first but it is nearing autumn and the leaves on the aspens and birches are starting to change. The yellow and orange dips playfully through a series of wild movements. It makes a strange snake below. Like it is looking for food. A mouse or a fox. It moves quickly and trails out and down. And out and down the colors fade and are replaced again by the desert. Brian finishes the preparations and we move back out and towards the top.

We start the ascent and it’s barren. There are no people here with us. Just the wind and our footsteps. Each one becomes harder than the next and it feels like the entire ascent takes just as long as everything else we did before. Each switchback cuts into me. The great mess of shale lies neatly along the face of the mountain. When I saw it all from far away it seemed razor thin. Now the path is wider and is secure. I keep myself wrapped and concentrate and moving to each resting point. Brian sticks his poles in the ground and I follow. Every so often he points to a rock. The rock has a hole where it looks like someone took a drill and bore down into it. “It’s a lighting strike he says.” The path up is littered with rocks like this. I think about how long lighting has been hitting this mountain. And then how long these rocks have just sat here. It’s so long. I have to shake it off of me. We make it to the peak.

From here at the top a flag waves and there is a weather station. The wind blows. As we walk further there is a giant hole in the ground. Here we station ourselves to rest for a bout an hour. Eating lunch and talking to the few people that have made it up. At the top it is beautiful. We are in the sky. We are touching the sky and clouds are here. The elevation is 12,000 feet and things are so clear that it hurts my eyes. Standing at the top gives a view of the entire world below. It almost feels like seeing the entire state all at once. We are in the middle and it stretches out alongside all sides. The land is so small and quiet. Pahrump and Las Vegas are both there. Far along stretches the border to California and there are no mountains higher here. We stand and in the light there is nothing but everything. And the simple beauty of the mountain touches everyone’s eyes. We sign our names in a box and then prepare our things for the way down.

---

i'm not the kind of lover that's easy to forget.

i had plans today. what the hell happened to em'

It’s been hot today and very unproductive. My mom decided that saving the world—or her power bill—means turning the dial down on the water heater. Something I didn’t even know was possible. So now, showers are cold. And if there is hot water it lasts about a minute before all of it has dripped out of the faucet head and swirled so sadly away. Not that it’s important. Whatever, the cold water can be nice. In a hot house especially. They left for Brianhead and now what. Now I guess I am just here as usual. I slept for a while, until about 11. Then I did my usual stroll down the stairs towards a microwave, maybe a banana, orange juice, television. TV has got to be the worst thing ever. And I don’t even care. I just sit for a while and have no idea what the hell I am doing. Like when you wait for your body to react to something really hot or really cold. But when something is so intense that it takes a lifetime because the signals get all mixed. That’s what my television experiences are turning into.

I eventually make my way back up, back to the computer. Back to the same internet and back to the same what the hell is with the content I exist in. Or no, the content is really my society as a whole. But jesus christ it is some of the most mundane or stupid shit. And I can’t really complain about it. I’m not. Just amazed I guess. So I listen to music and give up on that. It’s the heat I tell myself. I swear it’s the haze this house can become when all the windows are open. When the sun graces the hallways and rooms and begins to throb gently. The wood is throbbing I say. The windows are burning they say. And I say that I must lay down. So I do. And I did. And I was in front of a fan the whole time but a fan only goes so far when its not mounted on a ceiling. Now a ceiling fan, that’s a wonderful contraption. I’m going to put it up there with my top ten favorite things. The stationary one that was limping in my bed, it blew in front of my face and that was it. The rest of me heated up and I swished around uncomfortably for a long time. I read some Collette but gave up on her because she is French and I was in no mood for the French and their ‘thoughts’. I’m lucky to interact with the female species in a day, dis-regarding family. So sometimes regarding the idea of the pure and impure, being either I say. Well shit, not really a problem in this camp so I said fuck it and bookmarked that bitch. Then I passed out and woke up. In and out of my own dull throbbing. The sun made me shift and then I curled up in at least three different positions.

None of them exciting ladies. I swear. None of them the least remote of enticing. If you’ve seen a man who cuts his long legged pajamas when he is high and drunk because ‘he is too hot,’ well, you’ve seen something incredibly ridiculous and unattractive. Ask those who have witnessed the look. Where the pants were cut unevenly with a pair of scissors, that go above the knees and look like something Pauly Shore would rock. I kid you not, my boxers are longer and they stick out giving this fucked up layered look for shorts. Like I wore a white t-shirt under to give an ‘effect’. What the fuck Julian? That’s all I ever tell myself when I look in the mirror in the mornings now.

I remember at some point two conversations. One long and one short. By long I mean long for me in terms of a phone conversation. Usually a phone pickup is signaled by huh, oh, okay. Then I register something rather vague with the person on the other line and hope we meet so all confusion is put aside. Jake called to talk about the show. We talked about other things and I heard the most epic burp I have heard in ages. For real Jake, that burp made me think of Volcanoes. And then, in an instant it was done and I was back in the throb and my cut-offs. The second one was Edris. He wanted to know when to meet. Which, I have slowly become less and less apt and congregating with anything or anyone. Its just a matter of developing taste. I like watching structure collapse. Not that I mean it in a malicious way. I mean if you separate yourself and watch something emerge and then submerge. Or be free but then existing in a space that it didn’t anticipate. Its like a flower that tried to bloom but didn’t and the wind blew it away. Its rather pretty in its light of day. The light of the day, and sometimes even funny. So I didn’t really have an answer for Edris but I told him I’d figure it out. So I will and we will congregate and go to the show. And then the girls. Oh, the Venture Brothers comes to mind when the man writes, “The bitches were in fine form.” And oh yes, the bitches will be in fine form gentleman. If they aren’t then were screwed and Perry can just suck himself into a monastery and in about 5 years when my own delusion is wiped away I suppose I’ll join him. But its funny really. Who you would fuck? Cause it really is funny like that. Page through your magazines and do it. Stewie did it at a funeral with all the babies. You can do it too.

After my shower I walked around and dripped. And then I clothed and managed to listen to the new Killers album twice. Though I cant say almost complete. I mean I can and what I meant was not complete but almost. Real cheeky Kid, real cheeky. Then I made a stab at writing more for the Funeral Procession, but really, I couldn’t. I just sort of stared at the harmonica scene and lost my mind in a slow roll. Like Sisyphus, I feel it all the time. Not to take him with me. I’m sure all of ‘you’, feel like him at points too.

And that’s the silly point, really. Keep on pushing that retarded boulder up the hill.

---

i see London, i see Sam’s Town.

we take our thirst and drink it all down. and we take our homes and tear them all down

It is hard. It is hard. It is hard. I don’t know how to settle that. Sometimes I feel my whole body starting to shake and tremble. And it gets louder and more pronounced inside of me. It becomes part of something on the take of catatonic. But I am not. Around me everything else; everyone around me is still. Deep in I can’t follow. All I do is sit on the surface of it like staring out at a lake. The lake is in a desert and it is hot. The sun is beating down but for some reason I can’t stop chattering. I can’t stop moving on the inside and fluctuating on the outside. I jerk and string about. I don’t know why.

The desert is there because it is hot. Not cold. But once I looked at a desert frozen over and with ice and snow all around it. It was the prettiest thing I had ever seen. I wanted to live there in a giant house. With a huge fireplace and orange flames. I wanted to move around in the morning eating fresh fruit and picking the logs out of a great chest to throw onto the sandstone hearth. But this isn’t the desert I see.

I am not sweating. There are no clouds in the sky. All around me is silence except the loud body. My body. And it won’t quiet itself. I try and breathe and it won’t. And I even try to pass out. But my stomach forms a strange pit. Like it is separate from the rest of my body. If you picture a house that is multilevel. With that one higher plane and then the lower. It is like my body is all the lower plane and then at a point in the middle it is raised for the higher level. So my stomach separates in two and I don’t know what it all becomes. But I can’t sleep. So I can’t drink or dream. I can’t pause or tell myself stories with my eyes closed. Instead when they are shut I think of the same room with the same person and we are talking. Normally it would be fine but there is that riot going on inside my body. So it’s a mess to talk to anyone.

The desert lake is peaceful if I am not there. But when I stand on the edges the water ripples. Slowly at first. As time passes and the sun seems stuck; in its one spot the lake grows more and more furious. It takes all the calm and tries to infuse itself but it fails. Because I am standing there and I won’t stop. And then finally in the most horrible part of it all.

Everything stops and I retreat back and further into something. And I think to myself that there was some action. Or something I was completely capable of to conquer the shaking of my body. To control it. But it retreated and I am left with a strange aftertaste in my tongue. Like when you sleep for a real long time. And you wake up, its dry, and the air is bitter.

I know that somehow I could have swept my hand or said a word and then it would shoot out like a rocket. Like its own ray of light and tumble along the desert blowing wind and sand in every direction. But I never get it; and I stand there thinking that it might happen again. What am I going to do when it happens again?

---

oh why, baby
why do we run.
why don't we take our lives and run.
tell me
the world is gone
then i can cry in shame.

we tore down our house
and gave it to that man.
with the beard,
who had scars and rings
all over his hands.

baby, we lost it all now.
i lost it all now
and found the deep night that existed down below.
my place is shame,
your husband is shame.

we tore down his life
and gave it to you.
with the long black hair,
who had rings and gold
all over her hands.

time is here
to blow me away
with the wind,
the wind.

and the people will say
that the husband
left in shame
your shame.

we tore it all down
i was thirsty and dead
and you were dead.
and all the time passed us by
until the shame melted away.

and we were gone, until
were gone.

A Barren Peak pt. 1

We woke at 4:30. Downstairs there was a slew of food waiting. All placed out at the table. My mom was messing around and Brian was trying to put everything together in his mind; like trying to stuff a tent in a bag. Not literally, just with what was floating around in the air. We left and I snapped on the lights of my car in the dark and we rode to tacos and then the freeway.

I munched on chicken tacos while we drove towards the mountain. The night was cold but pleasant. There wasn’t a soul on the road at that time. I listened to my music; the droning guitars and placed myself outside of who I really was for a while. Just enjoying the air and alone. The silence. The ending of something. The mountain would be the most difficult thing I thought to myself. For a moment I was back in. I adjusted the knob on the CD player and then back. In. And the great black that surrounded us. It wasn’t murky but crisp and clean. It echoed like a day that knew it was its own. And in this day you may humbly walk through. But if you cross the night it will leave you forever and there will be nothing of substance in it anymore. The night shook at the time when the sun would creep beyond the mountains. And ever through the hike it would slowly chase us. Like we were honored guests of the dark. It was protecting us from the burning of the new day. It was a companion, and I knew it and cherished it. At the base where the mountain was sagged and in its end we parked one car.

Here Brian stopped. We had gone through a series of small canyons and were now at the end of the climb. Brian parked his car, retreated to the back, placed all his gear in the backseats and with a smile he entered the front. We drove about 30 minutes away from this spot to the beginning and disembarked. Brian drank some strong liquor to challenge the mountain. He smiled again but I turned him down. Waiting for the fear to slowly creep in my bones. My bones is rattling I would tell myself. It’s a scary fucking thing. To be at the mercy of the mountain. When you are up there, there isn’t anyone or anything and all but down is the escape. You can either sign an agreement and make the way to the end or put on the loudest thing you brought with you over your ears and dive hoping to god that he picks you up and places you in heaven before you come crashing down a mess of pine trees and then hell.

The start of the climb is an avalanche chute. It has to be like 2 miles, 3 tops and it shoots straight up the side of the range towards the face of the highest peak. It continues, as you move further and further up to get steep. I remember watching Brian’s feet to make sure I knew how to place my footing. It is a long way down through jagged cliffs and then a running stream. I didn’t want to fall.

The chute starts with a climb through gravel along the ski run in Lee Canyon. Then at the top where the chute starts is a mountain stream. At this time some of it was frozen over; the water had splashed on rocks and broken bits of shale. I wore my shemagh to cover my face and a warm cotton shirt. My legs were stiff and we had to watch our footing so we wouldn’t slip. Icicles lined some smaller cliffs and outcroppings and they were beautiful to see. Frozen and stiff like my legs. They were tough as nails. I couldn’t break them with my hands and the cold made me shiver. They were clear like diamonds. The water was so clean that the ice was solid and made me think of ice up in the artic. The running water was the only thing that cracked the silence. But it’s a stretch. Because at some point it just becomes part of it. The wind can be a loud man. And so can water. But when you are alone there is nothing and it becomes part of the stuff that makes you know there isn’t a man around.

I loved to look at the green ferns and the creeping plants that lined the sides of the stream. All along the edges was more shale and sharp stone. I asked Brian why the rock was so sharp and jagged here. Everything I touched scratched my hands and made me wince. He told me that these mountains were young. Still children out of formation and the wind hadn’t been given enough time to smooth and shape them. Instead they were hot like our blood and shoved their fingers and fists straight up in the air towards the sky. The jagged outline that ran across the sky and the bright sun that tried to tame them. In a million years maybe they will quiet. But now I cut my hands and steadily followed Brian up the chute. Climbing up the cliff faces and pounding my boots sideways in the ground to hold me from falling back and tumbling on the vertical slope.

At the top we took our long rest. We threw our packs down and there was a view of the mummy. His great head. Then bulging stomach and later as it extended perpendicular to our range, his legs that shot out and cut across. The road below twisted like a snake and there was no one. The only living soul was next to me and we were both quiet. We unpacked, ate sandwiches and drank water. The sun started to catch up with us. Gracing the top with its yellow rays and beckoning my body to sleep and wake up in the afternoon. But it was already ticking to fast and we had to pack. Listening to the beat of our hearts. We looked out and stared at the peak that was 5 miles away. I sighed but Brian pressed on and his spirit woke me up and I gathered all my stuff and stumbled down another face until we made our way to the thin mountain trail and started the second part of the climb.

---

leave your perch.

butter face

This is from a while back. We started the night--Carlo, Edris, Perry, and Myself--drinking 40's and then Kurt showed up and we walked down to his house and hung out with everyone there. We played some poker and made bets. Perry lost and it came down to eating a stick of butter from Kurt's fridge.



Perry said he smelled like a lobster the next morning.

time well spent

This comes from my latest issue of egm. A custom sequencer program to a guitar hero controller. This kid is awesome.

---

pretty mary k, went to the store and died that day.

long day / short night

Woke up today after not sleeping much and realized the great pain that it was to get up and go down to there. That place that isn’t so bad but is when you’re up and in the clouds. I again showered, slumped about, then dashed out feeling every part of my body in revolt. It was like this until through the daze of Antics did I manage to become close to the whole and exit my vehicle and into the weather of the day. I was soup in the sun and in the cold of the class rooms I solidified into a substance I can’t begin to talk about. Its uncomfortable and I wish I was in my bed. But I listened to my teacher tell me that I can’t use contractions. That I can’t because it ain’t proper and its not what a man in the this here damn world of academia would [should] use.

I didn’t think experiences like that actually happened. They obviously do. Maybe in the past I was so consumed in not existing that I don’t have much recollection of the subject.

So I decided then to write about a couple of things. Though I ran out of paper because I didn’t want to write on the back. Ascetically I like it; I suppose if I was desperate I would change my tune. And I wish I had some tunes right now and was basking in the warm sun. But alas the world is not always a bendable thing and sometimes I am forced to its rigidity.

I purposed myself in history. But history was rather a stream of consciousness examination which I decided would be the centerpiece for some great writers. Which I actually never decided. It’s just a mark of talent when it becomes fluid, precise, and simple. Joyce is a master and so is Sei Shonagon. Though they differ, both offer a fluid beauty; it is wonderful literature.

The fact that exists as follows. There is stream of consciousness that is a lazy but not in a bad way for form of writing. Its simply writing with no clear aim or goal. Where as if it is practiced and studied it becomes something more. Where a subtle sort of direction exists yet still maintains its form of play and style. It concerns with the direction existing right below a surface; faintly realized by the writer but still oblivious enough for the effect. Like standing on a bridge and it is solid but you feel yourself falling. Or looking up at the sky and not being on the ground anymore. A form of control. I wonder if any of that actually holds any bearing.

Then you can get into the writing that is a form of shaped something; far more a ‘thing’ than a simple existence. And from there it breaks down further and further.

With history taken care of and my pinky finger slowly numbing I succumbed deeper into the wish of falling slowly asleep on a bench in the warm sun. With sunglasses on to block the bright light and to take a form of gradual dis-existence. Dis-existence, the form of being but not because I don’t know it and am caught in something else. Sleep is the best form, though I wouldn’t know for sure; what is coma?

Maybe a better version of sleeping.

---

What approaches in the coming days? Well a long ordeal of a climb in the mountains and a show on verges of criminal and the old. Where the wild things are is what comes to mind. Hopefully I don’t get kicked’ eh? And then perhaps I can jam in a place where the jams are good.

Read all of Babylon Revisited yesterday. Fitzgerald is so different from Hemingway; its weird and I mean it in the sense of energy behind things. F. Scott has a more academic feel. Hemingway is more charged and it feels like it’s a gut reaction and form. But I haven’t actually put enough together yet. I’m really tired. Maybe later.

---

In the grass we met. I showed her a flower. It was yellow and had some dust from the walk. She smiled and put it in her hair. Then I grabbed her hand and we ran towards the mountains away from the house. In the light we ran and it grew dark. It grew light away and dark in front of us. In front of us was a great shadow. And we retreated towards the shadow. Retreated away from the day.

---

we are bright. we are light. we are immortal in this time of day.

town excerpt 3

We smoked for a while on the edge near the wall. The stones were cold and I could see the town below and the tiny yellow lights. Sara kept her head nudged in-between my neck and shoulder and she had most of the fleece blanket. She would purse her lips together when she smoked and her long hair would sit back and I would run my hands through while we just looked out for a while.

There was a tiny bit of silence and we were still. It was so nice and I kissed her interrupting a drag and she kissed me back then on the cheek and I smiled while I stubbed my cigarette out and she curled her toes up on the stone wall. The stones were cold but she told me liked the feeling.

“It’s so nice. I feel alive.”
I nodded and just kept looking out.
“Sometimes I don’t want to be here.”
“What do you mean?”

“I just get overwhelmed and this great feeling,” and she made a scoop out of her hands and then scooped everything. “And I want to stop but nothing else stops moving. So then I just don’t want to be alive.”

“”You want to kill yourself?”

“I just want everyone to stop once in a while,” she said. She sighed and got up and then we were sitting lined up and her back was straight. Right now there were only the clean clouds in the sky like Monet. It was like it had rained and everything was washed away and if a train breezed by great white puffs of smoke would have clear outlines on the outside instead of just fuzzy white ones that no one could figure out.

“I guess it would be nice.”
“Don’t you just want to breathe sometimes?”
“Yeah,” and I shrugged. “But when the hell is that going to happen.”

She poked me in the stomach and flashed me a smile before she lit up again and I was seeing the girl that made me want to run away to Europe. We would shamble along like gypsies and find the wealthiest barons and kings and live with them. The idea was wonderful in my head but so far away and not to be touched that it just tried to crawl but kept dying. I frowned and she put her fingers on her lips asking me to be quiet.

“Ssh. You’re being so loud.”
I screwed my eyes and looked at her hard.
“What are you talking about?”
Then she tapped her head.

“All your blasted thinking. Just sit with me and let’s be still. I held her again and we watched the town below and smoked a while on the edge near the wall with the cold stones and the washed away sky above.

---

When morning hit my face was sweating and the sun was coming through the window at a blasted angle that heated the whole room. I had forgotten to close the blinds when I got in last night; electing instead to just fall face first on my bed and sleep. Then the dreams hit but they weren’t very important because I couldn’t remember them. Sara was at home probably in her black underwear and a white t shirt and she was sound asleep in a dark room. I ran my hands through my head and wiped the sweat and continued to lie there. The air conditioner didn’t give a hum. There was no cold air. Things were too still. I just lied there. Then I thought about her again and fought an erection until the sun was all over the bed and I wanted to just melt and disappear. I hated having to deal with this kind of nonsense. Eh sun? Why don’t you just let me be? Why don’t you just let everyone sleep a little longer?

Then Sara’s wish about everything; everyone just stopping pounced and I was laughing because I was disrupting it. I got up and went to the shower and let cold water run down my back and I spit from my mouth and drenched my black hair in the cold.

Then I ate some toast and ran my toes on the cold floor and looked outside to a bunch of birds. There was so much green and over I could see the hill and in front of me was the ivy and giant oaks. My backyard stretched for miles and my house was huge and alone. There was no one and I missed everyone so much. I felt tired and laid down and fell asleep under the fan. I had the best sleep of the day so far.

Sara woke me up with her knocking on the back window. She had hopped over and ran through the grass and I could see her hands were brown. Her face was beaming and she had two bags with her and she started to kiss the window. So I fumbled with my own body until it regained consciousness and then opened the French doors and then plopped back down to silence while she rested and stood all at the same time.

“What are you doing?”
“I got woken up early this morning.”

She patted her stomach and she was wearing a tank top and a skirt.

“Well I’m hungry and my parents are out doing shopping so I snagged all of this.” Then she brought out an entire lunch; a mess of stuff and she managed to even bring a bottle of wine which I decided against because I was still tired and my eyes weren’t adjusted.

“You aren’t going to drink any?” She raised me a glass and I shrugged.
“I just don’t feel like it right now.”

She pointed over to a sandwich. “It’s vegetarian. Right? You don’t care. I didn’t want to hurt any animals today.”
“Sounds good.”

We ate. I picked more than devoured and she sat on her butt and rested on my cool floor with the fan overhead spinning and making little noise. We looked at each other and my god she was beautiful. She was simple and had no makeup and she reminded me of the world and everything that was great and grand. I thought about Hemingway and I had read a while ago about why he didn’t kill himself for the longest time. Because when stuff is bad you know how good it will go back to getting. Something like that I thought while I ate a peach and slurped the juice. Stuff was good and it had been bad and good. And there was a mountain of life behind and in front but I was fine and still here with Sara eating lunch.

We smoked and sat on chairs outside looking at the grass field and the town was near and her bike was far away near the dirt path. She smiled and we spent the rest of the afternoon just watching and being still without the world to bother us about moving on.

---

my eyes are closed and I can see what could exist if I was you.