mangled moments in lost time
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Below are the 20 most recent journal entries recorded in the "anti-matter of hope" journal:[<< Previous 20 entries]
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02:31 pm
[Link] | i sometimes wonder how many side effects i have from the 5 prescriptions i'm on. after you get used to them, they're just you and part of your normal spacesuit for wandering in the universe. some of the side effects of these drugs are lethargy, muscle pain, weight gain, hair loss, depression, low sex drive, headaches, needing to take naps, etc. the drugs might explain the silent migraines i get sometimes where i go partially blind with white light.
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12:14 am
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what if the voices don't wake us?
is there a difference between days being spent pleasantly and living a good life? or is it just a matter of degree? and isn't quiet desperation just the human condition? isn't loud desperation just obnoxious?
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12:43 am
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signs point to it all being meaningless
references:
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0477348/
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/U._G._Krishnamurti
there are the usual desires for greatness, money, meaningfulness.
making the world safe to fuck in
but really i barely walk upright. sleep, live dazed, incoherent, as distracted as my stupid sweet cat. cuddling with one's loved one is about as good as it gets. the heart rests in that moment while all else is somewhat of a strain on a thin wire. but we can't be still. can't go on, must go on, where, on, why, on, nowhere on.
i slept for 3 and a half beautiful hours in the middle of this day. i carve my initials in nothingness.
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07:59 pm
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i experience the illusion of a life
a book is a virtual reality experience that remains frozen until it is picked up and the reality goes at the pace of the reading. the past 10 days of my life have gone by and while i was experiencing them they seemed to happen in "real time", but looking back on it how can i be sure that it wasn't just a sped up memory that was fed into my brain, like a book or a movie, that my brain experienced outside of a real reality? the moments seem real while we are in them, but when they pass we can no longer be sure because we are not in them any more and have fading and virtual records of them.
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04:21 pm
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sxsw my faves from best to worst
wesley willis's joy rides-neat doc. on outsider musician and artist
forgetting sarah marshall-very funny comedy
mister foe-really liked this unusual drama
don't get me wrong-beautiful, artful picture of a mental institution
american teen-interesting teen documentary
second skin-really nice doc. on online gaming communities
flying on one engine-nice doc on heroic, disabled doctor
joy division-nice doc on my onetime favorite band
young@heart-really nice doc on 70-90 year old singing troup
body of war-good doc on iraq war fallout
dear zachary-very good doc, unbelievably unusual situation
dreams with sharp teeth-nice doc on harlan ellison
visitor, the-nice drama on unusual trajectories life takes, injustice
throw down your heart-nice doc. on african musical intersection w/banjo
promotion, the-nice dramedy about a real-world situation
ostrich testimonies-interesting character study, unusual rancher
steve reich & friends-performance of some of reich's work
conversation w/billy bob thornton-nice question & answer session
obscene-nice doc. on father of the grove press
secrecy-doc on secrecy of the u.s. gov't
blip festival-doc on musicians who use gameboys and nintendos as their instruments
sweet lady with the nasty voice-doc. on wanda jackson, 1st woman of rock'n'roll
run fatboy run-ok comedy w/simon pegg
night james brown saved boston-doc on jb's performance after MLK's assassination
agile, mobile, hostile-andre williams doc.
conversation w/harlan ellison-mostly just ellison doing a schtick of going off on things
wild blue yonder-disappointing doc. by david maysles daughter trying to find her father
lou reed's berlin-just can't say i liked this at all
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11:18 am
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11:56 am
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mental screen burn
when i have bad experiences with people they leave deep impressions that just don't go away. perhaps this is meant to learn something from them so they happen with less frequency. nietzsche says that which doesn't kill you makes you stronger. i would always say that which doesn't kill you just maims you. i guess it is somewhere in between and you can determine where it affects you to some extent. we can be broken and irrevocably damaged by these experiences or we can use them to try to channel our actions and reactions to the world. i am definitely capable of over-reacting to a bad situation, or rather, reacting more than is wise. it can be a fine line between being walked over and pushing a bad situation with someone who can create an unpleasant scene that you will have to relive over and over again in your mind. you can't always teach someone else a lesson, nor should you feel you have the right to, but sometimes you just want the other person to know that you feel like you are being stepped on and it doesn't feel good. often there is too little consideration in the world. and we are all so fucked up that tempers can get out of hand.
two situations to illustrate this that hopefully won't make me look like an asshole. first one involves driving through a crowded parking lot. what i do isn't what everyone else does, but i try to get out of people's way and try not to waste too much of their time. i was trying to get through this parking lot of a grocery and having to wait for people walking through the parking lot. i would move slowly trying to get around people, obviously at like 1 mile per hour, but not just sitting at a complete stop. this man felt that i wasn't yielding enough to him or others i'm not sure and as i tried to drive sort of around him he yelled at me and went up and hit the passenger window. i wasn't going to hit anyone or even come close. i wasn't going to make any little old ladies wait for me to go by before i would let them walk to their cars, but i did want to navigate out of there in a minimum amount of time. what i would do differently is just try to gauge his reaction better and make sure that i am yielding adequately, not just not to hit someone, but being aware of people's concept of personal space. but still his inappropriate anger echoes in my psyche.
another situation which also involves impatience on my part resulted from always running late to catch our bus. we would drive to the bus stop, just in time to catch the bus or just missing it and sometimes i would run across this field and hop the fence to catch the bus at the next stop. anyway, one time we were running late as usual and headed to where we park the car for our bus stop. there was a car on the street quite literally going like 2 miles per hour. i waited behind them for a couple of seconds and then passed them (although this is not something that is generally done on neighborhood streets very often unless a car is letting off passengers or basically parked, waiting for someone. the person i passed felt threatened by what he felt was a car moving fast past him, possibly threatening his wife and child. he caught up with us where we parked and pounded on our car and yelled at us. later that day there was a note with candy apologizing for the over-reaction, but coincidentally we had flat tires twice in two months after this occurred and since we started taking a different bus our flat tires average back to once every couple of years again. what i would do differently? i don't know, i was running late for work. i could make myself wake up earlier to avoid this kind of stress in general, but i need every minute i can sleep in as i am a night person. maybe a tiny honk to remind the person that there are other people who are living on timetables that are affected by their blocking the road. generally the answer seems to always be: be better prepared and live like you have all the time in the world because there are people out there who will react badly to any perceived infiltration of their personal space.
one more example. i managed a goodwill computer recycling store. we never made as much money as the main office wanted us to, partially because the previous manager had hired more techs than viable and some of the techs didn't know very much and were overpaid. sometimes we would have people come in who tried to fool some of our not-too-techie or not-too-bright employees by telling them a $20 thing was a $5 thing etc. anyway, i must have been stressed out and bitched at for not making enough money and this guy tried to fool our cashier into thinking a $5 cable was a $2 cable. the guy did this on purpose because he knew what kind of cable it was and how much they cost. anyway, i sort of lost my temper with him and told him it was a $5 cable and that he shouldn't have done that. anyway that caused an ugly scene and he asked for my supervisor's name and number and i had a lousy supervisor who wouldn't have my back ever so it just sucked. lesson? the lesson always seems to be, "it's not worth it."
another example, because this after all is my therapist's couch where i let the shit hang out and the number of people who read this could fit on the head of a pin. i worked at this burger restaurant. yes a vegetarian (who's vegetarian because he loves animals no less) working at a burger restaurant. there was this guy who baked the buns and ran the bar upstairs who really disliked me for some reason. maybe i just affect people that way or maybe i am an asshole and haven't come to realize it yet. anyway, years later he came to this video store where i worked and i mentioned the bar he used to run and he was all nice. he went into the porn room and got his porn and came to check out and his demeanor had changed. he remembered who i was and that he didn't like me and the experience went from being ok to being, oh yeah, he hates me.
so occasionally you see these people who you've had the bad interactions with and you see their face and you feel a burning sensation, you sort of wince when you see them. and it all comes back. and any interaction you have with them is tarnished and it seems like the situation could immediately escalate to "the bad place" with them because that ground is so fresh in your mind.
life lesson: go live in a hole till you die.
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11:10 am
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the difference between mild depression and being at peace?
i find myself restful inside in some ways. i get home from work and take a nap. nothing calls to me to be done. the world is an outside thing that is hurtling on its own. we have a small time and then we die. how to spend that time? i'm 40 now and don't really have goals anymore. i don't care to do anything anymore. is that bad? i have my wife, my cats, my simple life. i get through work as a way of funding my existence. when i can't tolerate this anymore i suppose i'll do something else. food and sleep. after all i am an animal and these are my most pressing needs.
some things i'm doing at the moment and why:
started reading kaufmann's book on nietzsche because i love nietzsche and wanted to learn more about his life.
checked out holy terror, bio on warhol, because i continue to be fascinated by him although his artwork doesn't do much for me.
my wife and i collect postcards and old advertising trade cards. the imagery of the past always fascinates me.
we watch some movies and a little tv, but i feel like i'm running out of decent things to watch because i've seen a hell of a lot (worked at videostores for years with free rentals and overdid it). and i try to exercise quality control and limit the crap that my mind consumes. i see myself more as a squirrel than a cow. that is, something still slightly wild and less often factory farmed for its meat.
i still feel compelled to see the world although the expense and getting time off from work and arranging for our mentally ill cat make that troublesome. i've been to rio de janeiro (for but a week), london (just 3 days) and kenya (a couple of weeks)(and also a couple of mexican border towns (i live in texas) and vancouver if that counts). my impressions are that big cities are big cities with similar things to offer and bigger cities offer more and have more diversity. and third world countries or countries at least a few rungs down have even more fucked up shit going on. we have never escaped the law of the jungle but we like to believe we have, i doubt we ever really will.
might all this be labeled bourgeois? probably. i'm a squirrel on a college campus, not a squirrel in the country. i'm sure my heart condition has been partly responsible for my philosophical attitude. i haven't eliminated feelings of guilt or insecurity about the future, but then again i think that's fairly hard-wired.
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08:09 pm
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the world is teh suck
i am merely a microcosm of the suck
s had lunch with a leaving co-worker who discussed life's failures. i got hassled by someone i don't know for wearing a beret. i think i was called an asshole and i don't know why. perhaps it was just the boisterousness of bastard boyishness. i waste time. i don't believe in the business of others though either.
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09:23 pm
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andy warhol hasn't got long to live
i'm still reading andy warhol's diary as i go to bed at night. there isn't much left now and i find myself wishing that i could warn him somehow. apparently he died because of some hospital mistake and he had a heart attack due to water intoxication. such a random way to go. and he was deathly afraid of hospitals. so there you go. i like his diary much more than i like any of his art and now i want to read a biography or two on him.
from wikipedia:
Asteroid 6701 Warhol is named for Andy Warhol.
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01:49 am
[Link] | 3 mints
2 peppermint, 1 spearmint
time for bed
cats to pet
day is done
mistakes await
the microbes are frothing for us
we roly poly into the future
it's all how you struggle
in the throes
we're soaking in it
random
we're all going thru yellow lights with tickets in the mail
we could have been a little bit more help
but then the world
is a fucktastrophe
we're out of our depth
it's no wonder we want god so much
for a moment we feel less than blips
we radiate in the sun
trying to flicker
not one of us not damaged and desperate
feeling in the dark
at least there's that
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01:46 pm
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wasting away the hours that make up a dull day, and other popular pink floyd references
resigning myself to shower and shave feels so prosaic, like suicide. like so much of life it is something you have to do because you're nasty and it must be done occasionally. hair is sort of a nasty thing too. i'd shave my head now, but it's winter (theoretically. it's going to be in the mid-80s today). i wish there was a bathing machine that i could take a nap in and wake up clean and refreshed. is that a million dollar idea or what?
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11:39 am
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shafts of wheat thrown in the wind
as if i lie upon a plate
could i dissect my mind and take
the errors and twisted thoughts
that writhe with uncontrolled energy
and cut and splice them to a better will?
we live our lives with helpless energy
trying to believe meaning in the way we make
we are heads on the pedestals of our lives
standing before our blink of time
looking on the playground before eternity
driven to pursue life, words, even these
it will sometimes be difficult
for some there will be no other way
much of our hand is dealt at birth
added with so much at random
that nothing is ever sure
the old giants pass like old rafts
their wood broken by time and popular reshaping
we are alone and troubled, too much of the time
errors and antagonists against each other
and ourselves
life a ruthless, inescapable game
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12:00 am
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fuck the passing bleakness
sometimes i want to masturbate and die
life feels so meaningless sometimes
sometimes sometimes
walk away from the struggle
so much of life is caring for shit you don't want to care about
and yet, what would i do if i could do anything
i have no idea... travel?
i can reject almost anything as being not enough
it must be nice to feel ok with the bullshit and succeed
i don't believe in this shit, but i was once told that i am an old soul
i'm an exhausted soul
depression has me by the balls
life has you by the balls
squeezing
i wish i could put life on hold and go to sleep for years sometimes
but the way things are going with the world
it might be too scary to wake up
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11:03 pm
[Link] | so basically i want fantastical success and fame handed to me on a platter for no apparent reason and without any work on my part. and i will just bitch and whine until that happens.
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09:55 pm
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minimum maximum, bjorn and forlorn, fart machines in long pants
bloated tired, weekend over. during a film festival it gets to be a lot of work seeing movies and it becomes worth it to take breaks from the movies, especially if you think something might be weak.
why can't i be quirky and bemused instead of serious and sad (or pretentious and sad). i feel horribly inadequate because i don't have a great screenplay that has been made into a fun movie. or a cd that other people would actually listen to in an actual music-listening situation on a semi-regular basis. why am i not the star in the movie of my life?
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09:04 am
[Link] | in the absence of everything there is nothing and vice versa. my mind is in constant drift, unable to retain a focus, and distracted by the body, the world.
at some point we get sucked into a life. whether it is ours or not is somewhat up to us. when you're young you have the sympathy of family to fall back on, so this would seem to be the time to set off on adventures (when you have no roots, attachments, responsibilities). i'm in a committed relationship with a house (and the biggest responsibility in many ways is our temperamental cat. this sounds silly to some, but she is sort of like a child to us. we have friends who are watching someone's dog while she is out of the country and the dog died. that's hard, and one can't help but wonder if she might have noticed something sooner or if the situation were slightly different if the outcome could have changed, or at least she could have been with her dog when it died. anyway, that's the definition of responsibility and attachment.)
i remember a story about a man going up to a fisherman and telling him that if he expands his business that he could eventually retire. he said that if he retired he would just fish, insinuating that he was already doing what he wanted and the extra work wouldn't result in any advantage for him.
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10:16 am
[Link] | i probably mentioned that i am reading andy warhol's diary. i also started reading the minds of billy milligan by daniel keyes. last week or the week before i read flowers for algernon also by keyes. he seems to be very interested in the workings of the mind which is an interest of mine as well. anyway, i find myself very influenced by what i take in, whether it's something that actually happens to me or a movie or a book. after stressful tv shows or movies i feel very distressed. reading a book i feel my mind slipping into the mode of the main character or narrator, not completely, just traces. i have an empathetic nature.
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10:08 pm
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the bottle of pills rolls off the counter and the arm falls off the bed
like an old film noir
lately i am at a loss. i got a ticket for not wearing my seatbelt the other day. the cop may as well have pointed a gun at me and robbed me for what it's going to cost. not that i ever have that much cash on me. so i am punishing myself by not spending any money on anything, or at least trying. i shouldn't deprive s though, it's not her fault. but we've been eating out and getting too many desserts lately, we've both gained weight. i have bills i haven't paid and papers piled up around me. there is so much not to care about. shallow surface. surface depression or deep sea depression? monsters or guppies?
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10:49 pm
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ashes to ashes, suck to suck
i looked at a mediocre photo on flickr and it had been viewed almost a 1000 times and commented and favorited by a lot of people and i just don't get it. i must pretend that i am trying to be obscure and don't want anyone to find this blog or my flickr page or my myspace page or my facebook page or my youtube page or my personal webpage or my entry on archive.org. there are a few other little random traces, but it's amazing how confirmed one's mediocrity is when you can be so out there and so utterly hidden at the same time. i'm reading andy warhol's diary right now and that has me thinking about fame and seeing famous people, wanting to associate with them and live a life of permissiveness. i think i'm too lazy to really live my life. i mostly try to avoid doing anything but passing the time pleasantly without effort. maybe it's my imagination but i feel my heart beating in my chest with slight difficulty, as if to say, "you woke me up for this?" i don't mean to be a useless person, but at least i try not to use too many resources and am not having any children. have i said this before? everyone, upon examination, seems insane. the insanity of some people is just how boring they are. some people i just want to ask them, "surely, those aren't really your values? that's just so empty." but then they would most likely say the same thing about me and here i am bored so it must be true. but i feel like one of those observing angels in wings of desire, not meant to participate. i remember one lousy self-representing artist on ebay once said something about people not buying his art like, "you'll regret it when i'm dead", seriously, like his art would be worth something later. it's so easy to let oneself believe that. that's the romantic posthumous artist story, but most posthumous artists are completely forgotten, not even footnotes.
maybe i've just watched too much dramatic tv, movies, and read too many books and there's no way real life could have any appeal for me. i blame andy warhol's diary. i think if my wife dies before me i'll move to africa and have a cheetah for a lover.
Current Music: "andy warhol"-david bowie
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