free association

when i see this,
all i can think about are these

skull & bones

Today I have been researching (not-so) secret societies out of boredom and wikipedia roulette. I learned that the members of Yale's Skull and Bones society are assigned nicknames that have some sort of tangential connection to their skills or prowess. George H.W. Bush was graced with the nickname Magog, traditionally awarded to the member who had the most sexual experience.

tonight i will finally be able to see josh ritter live! he rarely comes to LA and when he does I'm never around, so this is good.

Feeling pleasantly detached and productively restless.

no need for lies or false pretense

here are some words from my fingers


i can't get to sleep until 3 or 4 lately and i sleep til afternoon, my dreams are punctuated with unsettling pseudo-nightmares featuring people i think i know and places i have never been but that feel like old vacation homes. they're sinister and strange and slip through my fingers in the morning like dissolving salt, i'm not sure if i want to keep them or not, but if i did at least i could get over my writer's block.

so i turn to other people who don't have this affliction and whose torrent of words both humbles and inspires me but never to the point of actual productivity. recently i read a man in full by tom wolfe and continued my tradition of being mainly absorbed by fringe characters and only slightly involved in the lives of the main players. it's an enthralling behemoth of a book. i also just finished prague by arthur phillips, whom i recently discovered through the egyptologist and who has quickly become a favorite author. prague is a novel about disillusionment and the reckless, restless, lazy ways youth prevents itself from happiness by focusing only on the minor details of what might otherwise be a full, rich and maybe even meaningful life. as this has been my somewhat hazy philosophy since entering adolescence, despite the fact that i can never actually untrammel myself from these superficial binds, it was either a book i had to read - the spark to ignite blah blah blah - or another book that will destroy my willingness to put pen to paper.

not meaning for this to become a book review post, but words have been my respite this vacation, trapped as i am in a small house with many members of my extended family. i love it here, i love the inhabitation of the house and the thousands of objects crammed within its walls, the italian grandmother forcing me to eat and unaware of my peculiar dietary habits... i've taken in new york and philadelphia and a darling little jersey shore town. adding that to my seattle trip makes a nomadic may-june. a settling will occur tomorrow as i return to LA for the next months of summer and my sophomore year at USC.

wandering thoughts make for bored readers. signing off.

to be trite - remember, THE UNEXAMINED LIFE IS NOT WORTH LIVING

championship vinyl

cryptomnesia - n.

the term "cryptomnesia" literally means "hidden memory" - it is the ability of a person

to remember things they have seen, heard, read, or experienced without consciously realizing it.

For me this usually translates to inadvertent plagiarism.

My inner monologue can usually be transcribed like this:

"Hey, what a great idea for a poem!"

One poem later:

"Oh, fuck, Richard Brautigan."

I'm not particularly concerned with originality of ideas anymore - it seems that we have become so saturated as a society with the detritus of everyone else's thought that "original" ideas are inevitably borrowed from somewhere, which is all well and good -

but it would be nice to come up with a beautiful phrase that someone else hadn't already written.

shopping list

eh

just another sunday paddleboat ride
on a man made lake with another lady stranger
if i remain lost and die on a cross
at least i wasn't born in a manger
i can sense somewhere right now i'm being prayed for
seems like i always arrive on the same shore
from where my sails set maybe with one less lady
than my vessel left with, is that a threat
oh i've stayed scarce this last year yes
but be assured in unrest
i'm unavoidable like death this christmas
is this twisted why be upset
i never said i didn't have syphillis miss listless
hard like the bricks i pound my fists with
i mean she's hard like the bricks that i pound with my fists

this is the fall of mr fifths
forged for the hordes
and the ladies and lords
cept the fat cords in modern english
i know, i know
there's nothing more revealing
than the sound of high heels
down the marble tile hallways
of your distict's one allotted
city funded steiner school bilingual
or montessori followed by
a single high pitched scream
followed by breaking glass
but could your anger be mapped
into an interpretive dance
to a trip hop track
could it be bowed out on strings
or strung into a pattern
for a god's eye to bring to
your alma mater's holiday fundraiser boutique thing?

god i'm sorry, i'm just being crazy.

i'm sorry. i'm just being crazy, i know.

i'm gonna take you now, k? you're fine.

everything's totally fine.

feel a lot better now.

why? - the fall of mr. fifths

reconsider

let's become diamonds;
let's become gold.
let's learn to keep on goin';
and never grow old.
let's never die, oh, oh.
let's just shine, shine, shine;
all day, and all of the time.

let's become stories;

let's become ghosts

let's learn to hold on close;

to those we love most.

let's never die, oh.

let's just shine, shine, shine;

all day, and all of the time.

let's become water;

let's become stone.

let's learn to tear ourselves away from our skin and bones.

let's never die, oh.

let's just shine, shine, shine;

all day, and all of the time.

let's become diamonds.
let's become gold, gold.
let's learn to keep on goin';
and never grow old.
let's never die, oh!
let's just shine! shine! shine! shine!

-Diamonds by A Sides

blatant clothing lust

I want you, I need you, oh baby, oh baby

time for a european vacation this summer

"Clothes and manners do not make the man, but when he is made, they greatly improve his appearance." - henry ward beecher

just

how we can believe that we are the co-star or at least

the mysterious antihero in someone's life story,

when in fact we are simply an extra

and always have been and always will be,

it's beautiful the way our egos can deflate.

Arcade Fire gets it:

(Cars and Telephones)

I read the pages about me

In her autobiography

They were brief and to the point

A flash, while you are getting dressed

A memory that needs to be repressed

I'll just wait until it's over

Since you've gone away

I never know just what to say

Since you've gone away

I never know just what to say

Cause I like cars more than telephones

Your voice in my ear makes me feel so alone

Tonight I'm gonna drive

The silver moon is shining bright

Over the interstate

God saying hurry don't be late

Soon the sun will rise

That's when the romance dies

And I'm just tired of running around

I walked

To get the mail today

I guess

Your letter never came

I'll just

Check again tomorrow

A flash while you are getting dressed

A Memory that needs to be repressed

I'll just wait without saying a word

Since you've gone away

I never know just what to say

Since you've gone away

I never know just what to say

Cause I like cars more than telephones

Your voice in my head makes me feel so alone

Tonight I'm gonna drive

The silver moon is shining bright

Over the interstate

God saying hurry don't be late

Soon the sun will rise

That's when the romance dies

And I'm just tired of running around

But fuck it I love you even if

I'm gonna feel like shit

By the time I get to you

Now the sky is turning blue

The stars they disappear

One by one as the daylights nears

And yes you're in my head

But that doesn't make you here

And I've lost all my friends

But you're the one I miss the most

And now I'm almost there

Yeah I'm almost to the coast

And if I had any notion

Of how I'm gonna drive my car across

the Atlantic Ocean,

I'd be fucking set.

I can never sleep anymore and I've watched all the stupid comedies I can think of and reread every book on my shelf too often to even contemplate another try, so there's not much else to do but lie in bed, adjust the covers and try to race my thoughts to sleep. I usually fail.

apart from wishing i could dream of these always,

here is something new and not very exciting

(truth be told, it's quite derivative, but i'm trying not

to fall too much in love with postmodernism)

profound and Latinate the words are coming

life:

the word is empty, trite, passé.

a portrait of a portrait,

the details lost in the faded paints.

a biological construct:

heartwaves, brainbeat -

reduced to the most basic functions,

it soldiers on in trenches and on sidewalks.

maybe old dictionaries

that smell like rusty water

hold the meaning to the words that fill our heads

and library books

with magnetized spines and scoliosis

open to the pages hasty fingers plucked at,

the passages adolescent dreamers underlined

eight- nine- ten-word sentences

of sympathy and regret

as defined in language, life is simply

another four-letter word (two consonants, two vowels)

as defined in living, life is all

but some nights driving blind down the denim freeway,

overpasses humming,

clinging to the sky,

shading the cement bandages

that stripe earth,

burned and blurry with the vestiges

of wisdom,

well,

the moonlight on the water:

maybe that's it.