When you want a friend.

Everyone has been there. A dear friend who could be just a little more intimate, hopefully. Suddenly every hug and random brushing become a possible sign, but it's not really clear. To make a move or not to make a move? Oh bother. If only the weren't such a wonderful friend.

Somewhere between the hookah and me.

I don't remember how I got to the couch last night. All I do remember is that I had to take my shoes off to get there. Then, apparently, I proceeded to crawl across the floor from chair I'd started on to the couch that would be my bed. Bless that red, velvety couch.

I wish I could say that there was a novelty factor to not remembering what I did last night but, sadly, I spend a lot of time not remembering so it was really just another episode, another memory lost to the unorganized archives.

So what can I do? What else can someone do. Try their damnedest to recreate the frickin' thing :).

When it stops being fun.

Stand close friend, I will need your strength before the day is through. My mind was flushed down a metaphysical sink and I can't remember where the drain comes out. Drip drop, but we can't stop now. The day is not over yet and already I feel to weak in the knees to believe that I can get up one more time. No more breaks for me. No rest stops before the destination. If you've got to pee, you'd better hold tight.

What is it about those final steps, the highest crest. What is it about that last push of energy that is so hard sometimes. It's done! The deed is done. It's all been put together and constructed, envisioned and brought to life, and when assembly is all that remains it all runs down. Ikea would be ashamed.

You don't have to be good.

I've started another project I can't bring myself to complete. I've made it 80% of the way and I can't go any farther. I can't block it out of my mind and I can't dive into it. I'm blocked, frozen solid.

There is a magic to doing things, to bringing creations into this world. They don't have to be perfect. They don't even need to be good. But that we create something, there in lies the importance.

Double shot

There are shreds of paper in my hair, paint upon my jeans. I've seen colors that aren't to be believed. Black light is the best light because is shows things for what they really aren't and what they really could be. Yes, my eyes are glowing.

I'm a chalk board. Seen only for what can be put upon me, not for the creative force that I am. I don't fear the chalk, it's just a way of life. But doesn't anyone wonder what I use to create my masterpieces?

There is a fire in the trash can outside. Someone is burning their bills but they still have to pay. Everyone does something like this, destroying the evidence while believing that something will be better because of it. I see my faults, they are marks of beautiful honesty and of the wonder of imperfection. Knowing about them doesn't make me stronger or wiser but it does give me the opportunity to become both.

One time I walked to Rome
With nothing but a t-shirt on
I took each step with extra caution
Because my feet were soft as cotton
But now I stroll with upright stature
I don't look down, my feet don't matter
The city streets give me their pardon
And so my feet have long since hardened

Transparent Design

She comes on like a phoenix

another ancient beautiful beneath the fermenting flame

advertising life with every breath

her first dance is a wildfire;

her last kiss, a storm

she continues trusting like the day she was born

no matter whose eyes laid her bare

they saw their grail in her smile

she was their obedient prostitute of paradise

but beneath their story lies the girl

betraying secrets of the world

haunted by the ecstasy of friendship

he watched her conducting symphonies

composed of pain and desire

imagining the lust of her final fire

she teaches ghosts the music

so her tragedy lives on

inside every song about forgiveness

always naked before the orchestra

she confesses only to the moon

her drunken dreams divulge her soulmate search

bound by brilliance, fueled by love

guided by the zodiac above

and every well-intentioned lie remembered perfectly

he saw her mangled heart

author of a thousand apologies

sleeping beside the skeleton of romance

he tried to replace the bones

with the semblance of a home

but by morning that bitter boy was gone like fiction

she wrote him into a fairytale

remembering the truth

every empty promise illuminated

the monster of the moment, she’d be the heroine of dreams

her love, more than what it seems

the fire, waiting for her

Rabble rouser.

My favorite time of day is the morning, although I'm never awake to enjoy it, so I settle for my second favorite time of day, which is night. I probably like the night for the same reasons that many people do, the magical power of shadows, illusion, and misdirection. It doesn't matter who you are during they day, you can be anyone when the sun goes down. A person can climb as far down the gutter as they want to go and not worry about the blinding judgement of light. They can even pretend that down is really up if they want to. Night also seems able to break time's ever present charge forward, a minute can be a long time and an hour can pass in the chorus of a song. And I don't have to compare myself to the other people, the real people I call them, who can step out into the sunshine without fear of being exposed as something less than the claim to be. So I stay up all night wallowing in self-pleasure, and I sleep through my favorite part of the day.

In the foreseeable future.

Good morning Santa Barbara!

What another gloriously overcast day we have to day, long live June gloom! I'm just shaking the smoke from my coat and putting on my boots over here at 435 and I would be so damn happy to spend the entire day between this couch and that TV. Wish me luck.

Thoughts thoughts thoughts. I think you thought. There are only two different forms of the word thought? Boring. I think the thoughts you thunk were quite delectable. There's one for Webster's.

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Bradley Rumpleton didn't enjoy spending time outdoors. In fact he rarely left his apartment, if ever. His groceries were delivered, his laundry was sent out, and all his bills were paid online. This was exactly the way Bradley wanted it; he loved being in his apartment. He was safe there, content with his little desk and antique reading lamp, single spring mattress bed, and counter top stove. He was alone, which was exactly the way he wanted it.

On Thursday, May 26th, Bradley happened to be looking out his window, which he had just noticed needed to be washed again, when he fell in love with a woman on the corner below his apartment building. He knew it must be love because he had read about it so many times, and he knew that he would never again be happy with his single mattress and antique lamp.

Ever since I can remember I been poppin' my collar.

I had my balls chopped off last night. Hacked right at the base and tossed to the ground, and then they spit in my face. There was insult, on top of injury, on top of insult. This is what we do for love. I took the high road, which isn't as glamorous as it sounds. The ground is made of muck and horse shit, there is trash strewn along the sides, it rises and falls mindlessly, and it's hard to find an inn with vacancy to rest weary feet. But hopefully, if there is justice to the world, I'll crawl out the other end of this miniature parkway of Satan to find a friend I'd thought I'd lost. This is what we do for love.

I believe in pureness, this may be my first mistake, the original sin as it were. I want passion and love to power every action and impulse and when they don't I can feel the cool colors that cross my face, the subtle dark highlights. As if I were to wear my sunglasses at night, there is enough darkness already, so adding to it only makes the world more bleak. There isn't any color in darkness, we first need to find the light.

On The Paralyzing Effects of Prospective Retrospection.

The fear of looking back on ones failure is only surmounted by the fear of looking back on ones failure to attempt: a minuscule consolation at best. But a consolation nonetheless.

Two examples:

1) Young love. You're young--twenty-one, say--and you're in love. The once sad waves now frolic upon the shore; the melancholia-recovered moon illumines each night with happy radiance; the trees dance; the sun shines; all is joy, etcetera. But wait. You may be young, but you've read enough to know that others have been young before you, and you realize that love--not all love, certainly can't say all love--seeded in youth meets either a premature end or ends (or should end) once mature. If you haven't heard this story, here is a brier play by play. Boy meets girl or girl meets boy. These two lovely individuals then discover that, marvel of marvels, their souls are connected (imagine a baby's umbilical cord attached to another baby's umbilical cord). They talk; they kiss; they mate. These acts make up the core of their relationship. There are, of course, other vague gestures of affection, but it is these acts, some of them occurring simultaneously or, if not simultaneously, at least in quick succession, that define their quote unquote romantic life. Anyone who has been in love will argue and say, no no no--it's not that simple. And whoever makes this objection is in the right. Because, and we must not lose sight of this, these people are walking around with fused souls. Now, because their souls are in fact not souls but one shared soul, these two individuals will find that their little loving gestures and their little loving conversations are all of the utmost profundity. In fact, these two individuals are in the throws of passion. They are blind to the future; they are infatuated; they are in love. Then, trouble. Something goes wrong. Maybe it's been building for some time--why does she watch TV? why does he not like to read?--or maybe one day someone realizes that no, their soul is not actually attached to this other persons soul, it simply seemed so. Then follows wariness, possibly disillusion, and one continues on in the world a wiser, more fortified individual. BUT--what if one is aware of this while one is in quote unquote love? What if the entire time one is asking oneself if one is in fact going through ones young-love-phase? When the quote unquote love is terminated, is one then a amorously edified individual? Or does one truly need to experience the throws of passion, the self-blindness, the complete separation from time? And then, to compound all of this, what if one is able to imagine the disillusioned/fortified individual that one will be once the relationship that one is currently engaged in comes to an end, and is fully engaged in and passionate about the relationship because one wants to be a more seasoned/experienced/disillusioned individual when the relationship comes to a close? Does one glean the benefits of failed love if one predicted the failure?

2) Writing:

The hour is now late. I'll make this brief and personal. Whatever I write now will someday be my juvenalia. I will look back from the crags of experience and cringe fondly upon my bushy-tailed attempts. Or will I? In order to write, one must believe in what one writes; there must be some conviction. But it is hard to believe in mediocrity, and what I write now will, inevitably, be mediocre. How does one write ones juvenalia while fully cognizant of the fact that one is writing ones juvenalia? How does one get passionate about what one will look back upon with disdain?

My consolation is minuscule.

Put it back where you found it.

Got lots to do today, just don't want to get started.

Can you distill indifference? And if you could, is that what would be the base for procrastination? I stand and the world is at my feet, but damn am I comfy sitting down right now. Somewhere along the way I became unplugged. I'd like to go out into the garden and collect enthusiasm like Easter eggs and whip up the most colorful omelet every seen. I'd like to, but I'll probably just stay right here until dinner.

I've said this too many times, but the people who do are the people that set out to do. It is the setting out that, I think, makes all the difference. The rest of us dream, make plans, prepare for something big that's just around the corner. And yet, I can't be sure what's around the corner of the average street corner, who am I to think I can predict my own future. But we don't think of it that way.

I'm horrible at intuiting how I will feel in the future. I work primarily off of my feelings at the time. And why not? Because it isn't enough anymore to follow a bliss or play to the heart. Even the sunniest, happiest, most natural path can lead to dark places, and now I can't help but question the purest of intentions.

Oh Bother

Garble garble. When words fail to do what we hope they will always be there to do. I can't write this feeling down. I can only approach it the way one might a blinding light, or an ex-lover, peripherally. AH! How I wish I could mangle it between my fingers, squeeze out its power over me and wash it away with righteous remorse. If God is watching, I hope that they are entertained; are you not entertained?! Like tossing pebbles into a pond. They all make a splash but they are also going to end up at the bottom sooner or later. I have a healthy fear of lethargy. I also have a healthy fear of succeeding. No single direction can satisfy me now. I have to go in all of them at once. I MUST go in all of them at once and hope that the sheer exertion of force will splinter my soul into 100,000 pieces, and I will spend the rest of my eternity putting them back together. The cruelest joke. Here are all of your pieces, you have them all, you need only figure out how to put them back together. Don't worry, you can't go wrong, it's your soul. Then why do I feel so helpless?

Home is where the heart is.

If I had a bed I wouldn't get out with a lazy roll; I'd jump straight out with a summersault. My house wouldn't have steps, it would have a rope ladder that you climb to get to the attic and a slide that takes you back down. There wouldn't be chairs either, we'd all just sit on the floor. I wouldn't sleep in a bed even if I had one because I'd rather sleep in someone's arms. The floorboards would creak and the doors squeak and the windowpanes would rattle on windy days. The only electricity would be in the air and candle wax would line the windowsill. We'd burn furniture in the fireplace and wear a hole sitting on the rug. And we'd paint the walls with the worlds of our imaginations. There would be no locks on the doors and a garden that surrounded the entire thing. And no love would ever be without a place to stay.