open heart surgery
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Below are the 20 most recent journal entries recorded in the "Rren" journal:[<< Previous 20 entries]
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04:21 am
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Akh-akh
You know that you're in love when you can casually discuss cutting one another in half to weigh tops versus bottoms, when you can read each other bedtime stories about severed heads and impromptu appendectomies, and when kidnapping starts to sound like a valid path to reunion. We tread lightly enough to put holes in the sidewalk. I kiss the back of your skull. Weighed against a single--I almost wrote singed--feather, your irregular heart promises the Beast and the Ba. I will be your ton of feathers. I will be your balancing act--only, I won't be acting.
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09:36 pm
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Old Wor(l)ds
As I gaze into a dying sun,
I see the place where you used to run
and I would chase you
'cross the galaxy
while throwing stars like kisses
so that you might see
see through my sincerity
and find me
sitting down on earth
behind my feeble telescope
Through broken lenses
I try to cope with distant sentences
And I'm praying for a meteor shower
to show you've relinquished all that power
Raise your hands in true surrender
tossing constellations down to me
and letting the moon fall back into the sea
Well, I'll be your Endymion
and sleep 'til you no longer guide the tides
dreaming of halcyon days to come
when I've awoken
and the broken one who left me here
runs her fingers through my hair.
*Originally written 07/29/2005, free-write, unedited
Current Location: The Raven's Nest
mood:  contemplative
music: "Black Mirror"--The Arcade Fire
Tags: free-write, old
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01:45 am
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Visitations, and Adventures in L.A. Part 2
I am weak. I am embarrassed. I am self-centered. I am utterly wrong. I am entranced. I still want it to be about me.
The convention itself was interesting, much more laid back than the east coast, not that I'm terribly surprised. It was like watching the aftermath of a cartoon apocalypse; the only people wandering around downtown L.A. were costumed or homeless. We ate at dive diners and I drank diet soda, because I was feeling masochistic. I snapped a bunch of pictures, but I am still hopelessly searching for my USB cable. I spent too much time wandering around the dealer's room, and not nearly enough time actually going to convention events...but honestly, I just wanted to bask in LaLa's company for a while. It had been a year since I'd last seen her, and I was taking advantage of the time I had.
The most enjoyable moments were spent reconnecting over dramatic events and non-events that couldn't find their voices in text. It was completely natural, which is odd, considering the location. I met a few colorful individuals, too. My favorite was the guy next to me on the plane to L.A. I questioned him about the book he was reading--a biography of Einstein--and learned that he was a physicist. We talked through the rest of the flight, musing about string theory, Heisenberg, the new CERN project, music and mathematics...it was a bit superficial, but it was still fun. The moment I stepped off of the plane, LaLa informed me that we were going to see Wall-E. It was tremendously cute, and I was taken aback when Vanessa burst into tears at the ending. The ride back was decidedly less fun; I got terribly ill from something I ate and I was tempted to reschedule my flight. I could barely sleep.
The whole thing is a bit of a blur. I have yet to reclaim a normal sleep schedule, and the aftereffects of the weekend are a bit disconcerting: I am positively ravenous, in more ways than I can count...all but actual hunger, that is. I don't know where to begin....
Current Location: The Raven's Nest
mood:  predatory
Tags: adventure, los angeles, travel
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03:31 am
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Adventures in L.A. Part 1 (In Reverse)
"That hair is sexy."
"I want to cut a lock of it off and take it home with me."
"No! You cut it?! You can color it, but you can't cut it off!"
"We won't ever let you get bored again."
"You look like that girl off of the Addams Family...what's her name...Wednesday."
"You look gothic with that hair."
"What does that say about you?"
The responses to my new locks range from the expected and mildly amusing to the downright creepy. I'll post pictures as soon as I get them uploaded.
I can't decide what to do first. I still need to unpack. I want to read the loads of books that were heaped upon me during the trip. I got another PlayStation 1 memory card, so I can finally replay Silent Hill. I want to play with my new cute L figure.
I now have free access for 2 months to an online language program, so I can start studying again. I miss Lauren already, and getting back to normal life will be difficult. For the time being, I am looking forward to my next three days off, and using them to learn how to sleep again.
Current Location: The Raven's Nest
mood: indecisive
Tags: adventure, los angeles, travel
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03:32 am
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Reap/Sow
As the last piece of the puzzle falls violently into place, what was once a flat and poorly painted canvas becomes a brilliant landscape. I know these hills; I've climbed them a thousand times before. I've broken my bones on them. I've birthed children in their caves. In a strange twist of fate, I arch my spine to find that the hills have been climbing me, planting trees between vertebrae and making branches of my veins. From here, I have a better view...also, a sudden urge to creep a little closer toward the edge.
I love you, so I kill you. Forgive me. (One can never climb the same hill twice.)
Current Location: The Raven's Nest
mood:  morose
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11:35 pm
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"...and the carrot and desire and desire."
Only one last week remains to embrace and divorce the pathethic dying breaths of the last days of the academic year. I'll breathe now, thank you. Tomorrow marks something momentous--and it's not another stifling graduation rehearsal--I'm announcing my intention to leave my current position by the end of next year. Quite honestly, I'm hoping to use my announcement to gain a bit of leverage for the choir program. Anticipation abounds.
I have tremendous urges to lop off my locks again, discard all of the useless clutter, and violate any false sense of security that has likely built itself into a monument over the last three years. These days demand a violent uprising, and I intend to lead the liberation. (Haha, now that I'll only have one job, I may have more energy and the time to do something with it.)
Beyond that, I just wanted to say that I've missed everyone. My absence was necessary to gain a whole lot of perspective in a relatively short period of time. I'm really looking forward to turning the lights back on again.
Current Location: The Raven's Nest
mood:  determined
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11:04 pm
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Dissolution/disillusion
In time, there is no earth, but only sea, and you float beneath it, and I gather grains of sand despite the lack of a shoreline. This is not memory or nostalg(h)ia, but sheer fantasy, as it always has been. Buried deep, bloated, and clinging to the kelp, you are a treasure/corpse I've not yet found. There is no "hunter" or "hunted," because we don't exist, and even if we did, no explorer has yet drawn the map on which X (ex) marks the spot and we simply pace to find one another. Instead, I'm still waiting outside warehouses for you, and pretending that this shaking is just the cold. ("This shaking keeps me steady. I should know.")
In the absence of touch, the warehouse melts into a mountain gondola, an attic in July, the back seat of a rented car.... A kiss on my front porch is impossible to distinguish from the hair that I never brushed out of your eyes. We bend and blend down here, and right now, all I can see in this watery vision is the wanting and regret.
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01:58 pm
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I rarely do these things:
( 2007 Survey/Reflection (ganked from Kate): )
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02:47 am
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Nouveau pauvre
I dreamt you as a poor and articulate museum curator. You were barely scraping by, sleeping on a mattress in the storeroom, scrawling poetry on empty bits of wall. Somehow, your words managed to penetrate the aether and through some strange wormhole, they found their way onto my chalkboard. That space fast became an Etch-a-Sketch collage. In my button-down suit and school-teacher hairstyle, I long(ed) for your dusty telescopes and cramped rooms.
Something is missing.
Current Location: The Raven's Nest
mood:  sick
Tags: sleep to dream
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02:54 am
[link] | Okay, either the world is coming to an end, or insomnia is getting the better of me. Right now, as I type, I'm watching soccer moms on QVC playing a $20, generic version of Dance Dance Revolution. It even has 8-bit graphics. Yep, world...ending.
mood:  highly amused
Tags: video games
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04:38 pm
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rip it apart
We've all thrown our share of golden apples into Olympus, but what happens when we choose to eat them, instead? When dissassembling life or self becomes habitual, are we only capable of rearranging the pieces? If we apply deconstructionist philosophy to life as text, are we traveling in a straight line or in a series of convolutions?
It seems to me that self-reflection and particle physics follow similar paths. We model our thinking after the newest CERN project, ATLAS. The curves of our thoughts grow larger, spin faster, demand more energy...but until we find the Higgs particle, our gravity is unjustified. In essence, we just keep going 'round in circles, smashing up the place to keep ourselves from sinking into ennui.
Art and music share this trend, too. The problem with postmodernism is that everything starts to sound the same--in a very general sense. Everything has been done before, and the "anything goes," individualistic mentality has resulted in profound impotence. Those ideas that once shocked are now so commonplace that they fail to elicit a single gasp. Most people react in one of two ways: we create more/create more chaos or we simply ignore the patterns playing under our feet. Then, in our rarer moments, we realize that it doesn't have to be about burning bridges or building monuments, but about doing both at once, not through concerted effort, but through existence alone. It doesn't matter that we analyze everything to pieces or play games to make something out of nothing. It matters that we think and play.
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06:23 am
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Odd dream
I noticed a crack in the floorboards and heard a throaty rumbling that sent the years-old layer of dust into the air. As the floorboards continued to bend and creak, I definitely saw hair poke up from the small hole that was fast becoming a much larger one. I hid without hiding, and suddenly a book popped up through the hole. I scrambled to see who was there, and caught a glimpse of a giant, who said, "He told me I had to make a diaper." I was puzzled, but he just kept repeating the same thing, and then promptly fell through the floor. When I peeked again, I found several extra storeys under my feet that shouldn't have been there. I picked up the book--the giant's voice still rumbling in my ears--and opened it. It was a story, a journal, and a map. I could tell that it had been published, but it was not part of some mass-manufacturing scheme. Someone's hand had to paste stickers of tree frogs and smiley faces inside. Someone had to safety pin cut-outs from cereal boxes and use a glue-stick to paste rumpled magazine pictures on the pages. As the book progressed, it became less like a sixth-grader's sketchbook and more like a fairy tale. I flipped though it quickly, and found a love story, a river, and pictures of the floors below me...so I hopped down into the hole, of course.
The second floor through the hole was soft, as if from years of neglect and possibly from water damage. The thin linoleum had been there since the beginning of time. I wandered from room to room; they were all decorated so strangely. Blobs of chandeliers hung from moldy ceilings, a fireplace mantle was covered in robin's egg blue bathroom tile, and one room looked more like a forest than a garden. In the book...er...diaper, one page referred to the previous owner, long since deceased, named--get this--"Asmodeus." There was even a disclaimer about his origins that stated he had no connection to anything even vaguely demonic. There was a photocopy of a woodcut from the Malleus Maleficarum pasted onto the same page. The book continued to say that the rooms changed so often, not because the owner liked to decorate, but because he "had to change."
Finally, in one room (the forest), I felt like I was playing a classic RPG--and that's how I knew that I was likely to wake up in the near future. I had to move a wooden peg from between two tree stumps, but a young man was lying in my path...so I shot him. I moved the peg, and then felt guilty enough to drag him with me. I pulled him into the river to wash off the blood and eventually, we found a campsite where he could be treated. As expected, I woke up, then.
[I didn't get the diaper-book correlation until after I woke up, and it is a terrible, terrible joke. Apparently, I do that in my sleep, too. Ugh. "He told me I had to make a diaper..." so you'd know where to go. *smacks forehead*]
Current Location: The Raven's Nest
mood:  running late!
music: "Mistaken for Strangers" -- The National
Tags: sleep to dream
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02:26 am
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First Feathers
All we ever want to be is something more.
Realization of accomplishment lies in tangibles: pictures, words, and ghosts of kisses.
Clearly, "stuff" gives false comfort, but creates fossils of memories for others to discover, to remember for us when we are gone, fuel for a postulation on the value of a single life. Why write if not for remembrance? Ah yes, write for expression, for passion, for provocation. The rest is just "stuff."
Here, still alive, we go to bed at night in miniature museums.
All of our belongings become placeholders for the past--remember that song?
Each one is a weight, a scale, not a feather.
Or perhaps, our belongings aren't what weighs us down, but our memories, instead.
Pretend that you are a carrier pigeon; what message do you bear?
Try to imagine that it makes you lighter.
Evolve.
Rest well and take comfort from what you can, but discard and disregard that which does not encourage feathers out of flesh.
Your memories can fade too; act, run, fly.
Xanadu is more than an opiate-induced dream.
(Third grade taught me that I will never forget how to spell that word.)
mood:  awake
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02:15 am
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Constellations, or Makeshift Mythology
Last year, I taught some of my students one of the first games I invented for myself, as a child. Pen and paper are a must. Close your eyes and dot the page at random. Open your eyes. Connect the dots. (I'm betting that Pee Wee's Playhouse had something to do with this.) Once you have a basic shape, decide what it is and fill in the details. My first result was a picture of a smiling witch on her broomstick. (That was certainly The Wizard of Oz, because I dressed up as the wicked witch for several, consecutive Halloweens.)
I'm branded with Cassiopeia, on my left arm. I suppose that it is just a random assortment of sunspots, but I've always viewed them as stars. Now, I assume that it is a reminder to avoid being arrogant. I think that I talk about myself far too often. I am selfish; I am vain; I am human; I am learning and growing past fear.
You and I are star-stuff, forged in the forever ago. We are dying. We are living. We are only separated by distance and time. The years that your messages take to reach me are small in comparison to the weight of our walls. We suffer our false entropy, our staged apathy, until we supernova and learn to die as we should, with passion that radiates beyond our boundaries. One day, I will reach you, and it won't be through a lens.
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08:38 am
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Oh Captain! My Captain!
Once majestic, clippers and schooners lie moored on sandbars too far from shore to consider swimming. There are no gulls. There is no hiss and crash of surf. I could drop a pebble in and the ripples would hit Africa, Indonesia, Antarctica...if only this land weren't in the way. I'm like a museum curator here, plucking barnacles from the hull and whistling as I wash the blood off the deck.
The sea is silent, and I've dropped my compass. It's useless without a destination. Where shall I go?
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11:27 pm
[link] | I've been reading again.
The intimacy of language is enough to confer tears on the stoic face of a golem. Struck by a relationship between semi-fictitious characters, I easily feel foreign, distant, and yearning for acts of violent heroism. Tracers of kisses, like electron trails, glow as vain premonitions of fires we haven't yet lit. There is only one solution, of course: arson. Light a stick of temple incense for me, love.
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05:43 pm
[link] | Two weeks ago, I was getting the grand tour of my Grammaw's new garden, and she half-joked--as usual--about getting old and dying. Last night, I called home to see how my mom was doing, and found out that Grammaw is in the hospital. Apparently, she passed out on Saturday night after spending about an hour in the sun. I just got off the phone with her; she sounds tired, and more than a little shaken, now. She feels guilty (WHAT!?) because everyone is worried about her, and because my mom has been going out of her way to talk with the doctors and relay information back to her. Luckily, my mom works at the hospital where Grammaw is staying, so that provides a certain, small comfort. So far, her doctors think that it may be vaguely heart-related, but that's all that anyone knows--or is willing to tell. At the very least, she's trying to maintain her sense of humor.
mood:  sad
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12:17 pm
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Concert MADNESS!!! (and then some)
Sooooo....I have a crazy afternoon of job applications and apartment cleaning ahead, but I wanted to drop in for a brief and completely non-metaphorical update. I've been absent for a long while because I was hunting for a new car, which is finally in my possession. My poor little bat-mobile was totaled by a drunk driver in the wee hours of the morning, while I was in bed. I will post pictures as soon as they are uploaded; they are on two different digital cameras, neither of which belong to me.
Then, I was lucky enough to catch the presale for the The Cure show in Fairfax. It was a bit distressing that internet presales seem to cater to scalpers more readily than they cater to fans, so it was next to impossible to get two tickets on the floor. Honestly, I was only going to buy a second ticket on the off-chance that one of my Baltimore cohorts would be interested enough to attend with me. In the end, I opted to fly solo, because I nabbed a floor ticket (Section 3, Row P, Seat 5). I missed them the last time around, because I was training for a new job. I'll likely attend the Philly show too, because a bunch of friends are purchasing club box tickets. I'd much rather be closer to the stage, but those tickets are long gone, and much too expensive through the usual online routes. Here's the catch, though. The tickets are $125 a pop, and I want two so that Michael can join me. I also--desperately--want to go to the Virgin Festival. Last year was amazing, and there are too many bands that I want to see this year (Interpol, for starters). That ticket is $175. *sigh*
Of course, having to pay for the remaining balance on my rental car, car insurance, and the down payment on the as-yet-unnamed vehicle put a massive dent in my finances. Yeah, I'm not broke now, but unless I kick some serious job-hunting butt, I will be in serious trouble from August through September. Wish me good luck!
Current Location: The Raven's Nest
music: duh
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10:47 pm
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In Adequacy
One wing is ineffective for a butterfly, but it may be just enough for a human.
We are all a bunch of discontented fools, who obliterate our discontent in myriad venues: rational thought, irrational thought, other people, sunsets and sicknesses; pretty, shiny things.... When we can't reproduce a masterpiece, we flinch against our inspiration, and when we can, we flinch against our failure. To keep a house-bound Venus flytrap alive, we resort to feeding it bits of hamburger. (Despite my appetites, I would KILL to see a flytrap that could devour an intact cow.) Aren't flies good enough? Are we so dulled by our own senses that we can't even find flies in the decay, anymore? No, that's not it. We just don't want to look at them: the flies, the dirty dishes in the sink, the unrequited love, the odd plasticity of Body and of Self. We're not so much afraid of change in the world, but we are terrified of change in ourselves. The moment when who we "are" departs from who we want to be--or at least our flimsy ideals of what we want--is the moment we learn despair. ...and the moment we recognize that weakness in others is the moment we learn to despise ourselves through them. All of the neediness, the aching, the melancholy, the self-loathing, the confusion, the aggression that we reject in others amounts to little more than dissatisfaction with ourselves.
After all of this, my answer is, well...no shit.
I'll lick my wounds and like it. When the taste of iron is gone, I'll still love you. (Actually, I bruise/scar rather easily. My favorite explanation is usually, "knife fight." *grins*) If you try to break open a chrysalis and force metamorphosis, the Imago usually dies. Still, though we appear to be damaged, we share our wings. For this kind of beauty, one is enough.
Current Location: The Raven's Nest
mood: contemplative
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09:03 pm
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It's electric!
On Sunday night, I waited on the front porch for a storm that wouldn't break. Away from the din and polluted air of city life, I sat in a 360-degree idyll. (Only days ago, I could hear birds chirping from my brother's cellphone.) I was rewarded with one bright camera-flash of lightning, and I spent the next thirty-or-so minutes musing over how the lightning bugs are early this year. When I was little, they would wait until the last week of June to rise out of the tall grass and into my grubby, chubby hands. I would catch as many as I could and let them all go at once, like releasing doves.
Amusingly, but not surprisingly, the firefly is Pennsylvania's state insect. In some areas of the world, they flash in unison, but I've certainly never seen that happen. In PA, they simply amble about, drunk on humid air. I was always horrified when kids would eat them or smash them onto their noses to make themselves glow. (We all keep trying to become the stars, and barring that, a brief crack in the sky that yields to a slow rumbling before we forget again.) The enzyme luciferase gives fireflies their characteristic bioluminescence, which sets me off on a train of thought that spawns a trail of giggles. Cast down from heaven, Lucifer is scattered into a million insects, and little kids smash pure evil onto their faces. Beelzebub, Lord of the Flies, is this your doing? Have you been masquerading as a harmless bug to spread evil throughout the world again? Tsk, tsk.
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chuchotement's journal