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