|
|
|
November 22nd, 2004
08:15 pm
|
November 15th, 2004
06:08 am
the only ignorant man is the man who knows enough.
|
November 14th, 2004
12:07 pm
i am tired... tired of listening to people talking about how few freedoms we have left.
when is the last time you were not allowed to go to the store and buy all the cereal you wanted? cause i bought a whole lot of lucky charms this morning, and no one gave me crap about it.
have many of your friends just disappeared one day because of their political beliefs and never come back (other than those who fled to canada... or perhaps i should say those who are now sitting on the border, waiting for their paperwork to go through)?
if you think you have so few freedoms, go to zambia. check them out. i promise the government there won't take all your freedoms from you.
|
10:07 am
so i dreamt last night of killing my brother ryan... because he asked me to, long story, hemmoraging which wouldn't stop, but i didn't want to, and i went to church the next morning and told a couple of people he was dead. emmitt told me he was sorry, andrew just had a dove shaved into his head, but my parents were being mean. i had been crying the night before, just after i shot ryan three times in the head (he just didn't die from the first two), and they said i could sleep with them, if i had to.
anyway, after all that i suddenly realized that i had shot ryan three times in the head with no record of him asking me to do it, so i had to think of a way to get away with it. suddenly it was a crime and i had to figure out a way to not get in trouble for it.
it was during this process, which wasn't going so well, that i finally woke up.
very unhappily.
and now i'm shaken.
|
November 10th, 2004
02:28 pm
i have never felt quite so ready to fall off the face of the earth.
in a way...
it's so liberating.
|
November 3rd, 2004
11:55 am
so i'd say something political... but i really have nothing to say that is political at the moment.
what i do have to say is this:
there is a small sub-group on my im buddy list, people i've never spoken to but came across somehow, people i could always talk to if i got bored one day. i have spoken to a few people who started on that list. they are interesting people; i liked my little system.
until this morning.
i was sitting here, reading people's political posts, being bewildered by the amount of hatred in this country, and i saw a name pop up in the lower right hand corner of my screen. someone on that little list. someone i didn't know, but someone i was able to watch sign on and off.
and suddenly i felt so... peasant. insignificant. here i was, completely invisible to them, absolutely without consequence in their world, but for some reason interested in why they just signed off. this particular person signs on and off three or four times a day, and i have wrapped the entries in their tiny event log around a story, woven together without a thread of evidence save that this person seems to get online in the morning, at lunch, after work and then often late at night for a long period of time.
this is not strange. this is not even very interesting. why have i made them a character in a drama which is not even going on? why am i so interested? or, perhaps, why am i in such desperate need to have stories that fill in every gap in my life and the lives around me?
i look at my past and all i see are stories. sure, they're mostly true (and i don't really know which ones aren't... which is to say which ones have had the names and places changed to protect the very very guilty), but they don't seem like memories. they are stories, prepackaged for consumption, amusement, self-agrandizement.
i once read an installation manual for a rather complicated piece of software and, when i came across a strange bit of wording, i started to craft a story of odd up-bringing that would explain the diction and sentence structure being just slightly off. i couldn't just accept that the guy didn't know how to write very well. perhaps, just perhaps he was a software engineer that had never taken english. but no, i moved him to three or four countries as a child, had him reading books far beyond his level of comprehension just a few years after he learned to walk, i seem to remember giving him a kindly nun who schooled him in the poetry of the beatniks. why would i do that?
(from the movie waking life)
Well, do you know that thing Benedict Anderson says about identity?
No.
Well, he's talking about like, say, a baby picture. So, you pick up this picture of this two-dimensional image and you say, "That's me." Well, to connect this baby in this weird little image with yourself living and breathing in the present, you have to make up a story like, "This was me when I was a year old, and then later I had long hair, and then we moved to Riverdale, and now here I am." So, it takes a story that's actually a fiction to make you and the baby in the picture identical....to create your identity.
i believe that to be quite true, in some ways, of most people's manner of seeing themselves. my problem is that i have to do it for the entire world as i perceive it around me. i can't accept that a cat walks past me, save that it was once some child's cat, but the child's father was an alcoholic and slightly allergic to cats, and now the child has moved to new york city to escape the father whom the child thinks killed the cat, but who secretly didn't have the guts to do so in the end and just turned the cat out into the night.
that was a cat i saw this morning walking up to an apartment building. it was cute. and i gave it a lifestory without even asking if it cared to be male or female in the story. it could really have gone either way.
i have a theory (i just made it up right now, but i like it a lot) that every movie that woody allen has written is actually him creating a story behind some woman's rejection of him. explaining it away to himself so that he doesn't have to come to terms with it.
i just wish i had that kind of budget to explain away the world. and a hot asian girl.
i'm taking volunteers for the hot asian girl.
Current Mood: neurotic
Current Music: dj tiesto :: clockwork orange
|
October 27th, 2004
06:32 pm
variable shifter: one thing about me at the moment, which i didn't really understand until last night, is that i feel only half real right now.
variable shifter: i came home, but i have no life to step into
variable shifter: i haven't gone back to work, i haven't gotten a different job, i sold the apartment to the girl who has been living in it while i've been away, but i haven't found another one
variable shifter: i sold my vehicle to my mom, but i haven't found another one
variable shifter: i have a satchel that carries everything i actually give a shit about
variable shifter: and that satchel just isn't that big
variable shifter: i have no life, i am rooted in nothing here, i could up and leave and i wouldn't notice missing anything except a couple of people
variable shifter: and i've never felt like that
variable shifter: while i was in iraq i had a life, much as i didn't like it sometimes
variable shifter: now, nothing
v o i d e i t y: its not liberating?
variable shifter: in a way it would be
variable shifter: but i have nothing to do with it
variable shifter: i don't have goals which i always wanted to fulfill, but never had time
variable shifter: what should i do with all this freedom?
variable shifter: i'm so goddamned pro-active
Current Mood: frantic
Current Music: pinback :: fortress
|
October 26th, 2004
09:24 am
i've been kidnapped.
but by people i trust.
still, kidnapped.
i don't know when they'll let me go, but there is a laptop in this room that picks up a wifi network if i hold it against the wall, about four feet off the ground.
sadly, gmail doesn't seem to work on it.
to those of you who know him, seth says hi.
|
October 14th, 2004
02:22 am
would you like to dance?
would you share a moment,
clumsy at its best,
and possibly fall down?
would you dance with me
and hold me tight to you,
so that you might be mine?
would you follow me;
would you let me lead you
in the steps that we've been tiptoeing around?
and could i keep you in my arms,
in motion as we'd be?
i have the grace to catch you
by the waist if you should slip,
but do i have
stability
to hold you when we slow to stop
and stand there, face to face,
suspended in the air,
about the shatter in a thousand pieces?
Current Mood: idon trea llyk now.
Current Music: myow nhea vybr eath ing.
|
October 4th, 2004
12:26 pm
( this is long... and unpleasant )
Current Mood: none
Current Music: none
|
September 21st, 2004
06:18 pm
so im watching a movie called the dreamers. it is... amazing. its so...god. i have never seen anything so genuinely... its not erotic that im looking for, though it is. its not arousing, though i am so very. it is the strangest thing... i cant imagine anything so... possible. i honestly cannot think of a thing to say.
i mean, the movie has not yet become impossible, which i have a distinct feeling it is about to... but for right now, i... i cant imagine watching this with someone and not having sex, which has only happened with maybe two other movies.
:::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::
i spent a few years pretending that it was the 60s. they were interesting times. i thought that what i did could possibly matter to the world, but i did not feel that i was a part of it. i thought i was somehow above it all. but i wasnt. not in the least.
i think that if i could convince the women who have been in my life to write a book about me, that it would be far more interestign than anything i could ever write. i can write, surely, but my life, the way i see it, is not that interesting. my life has no meaning when viewed from inside, and i have no idea how i look from the outside. i write myself from the inside. that is my writing now. my writing is what i do with myself, what i say, how i love, how i choose what i withhold and what i give. the way i hold a hand, what i do with my lips and my tongue and my thoughts and feelings. even the moments in which i have hurt them, all so well-written, scripted though ive never thought it through.
and im tired. it takes so much to write yourself so well, moment to moment, always staying two words ahead of yourself, so that you have to be sure that every word is perfect... if it isnt, it might clash with the best that you can figure out five words later. one deep insight might contradict a previous statement of blatant and yet
hidden truth. its not a matter of matching lies to each other, thats easy. that just requires a bit of memory. its suddenly having to control not only overt meanings, but the subtle undercurrents of a story or saying. lies are easy, but telling the truth from a particular angle is impossibly hard, sometimes.
im tired. i want to be nothing but me, flawed, but in a real way, flawed in the way i am when i lie alone by myself. i trip over things, i cut myself accidentally, i sit there and cry for no reason from time to time. i dont understand it, but i know its me, and i know no one could be so well-written, so rehearsed, but i dont know how to be anyone else. i cant remember myself as a child.
years ago, when i was very young, i came to understand that my parents could not survive who i would be. it was not that i would be so horrible, but that there was only one kind of child they would be able to have, so i set about becoming that person. it was in those days that i learned to never be myself with anyone, and im entirely unsure of having ever been myself since. i mean, there are moments when i am myself, but they are moments that no one else sees, or moments when being myself reveals nothing. when i play frisbee i am myself, but no one sees it. when i sing in my car, speeding down the roads i am myself, but no one hears me.
but im tired. i want to stop. i want to be myself and i have no idea how. i have forgotten what i am like when i am with people.
the movie just ended... i dont know if i liked it, but it was good. the ending hurts, but i know it is right. i dont really want to process it, though. i want to think of it in undigested bits. sometimes i like to swallow whole chunks of meat, just because i like the way it feels sliding down my throat, filling it.
:::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::
maybe i just want something to change, its been the same for so long. it feels like years, though its only been months since i left the states to come to iraq. those two weeks i spent at home feel like they were months and months ago.
i think i might just want to go home.
|
September 17th, 2004
06:08 pm
so... what do you do when you have left behind some of the greatest women youve ever known? what do you do with that?
its not a matter of wanting to be back with them, its a matter of loving them and wanting to do something for them, to apologize maybe, to make amends, but what do you do?
i have a book almost completely written, but there is too much of me in it, and i taint it. horribly. every bad thing you can see in them in those pages is there because of me. i wish i could somehow hold them all up to the world, in the light i saw them in when i first knew them, before they had to deal with me.
i wish i could do something to freeze them before the world catches up to them and wears on them over the years the way i did through all the days that they were with me.
sometimes i just feel so awful for all the things that i have done, all the women whom ive involved in ugly things because of what was inside me. they didnt need that, and in the end i didnt need them to be a part of it, but i wanted them, i wanted them badly enough to ignore what would happen to them. what was happening to them. all that happened to them.
and i spend so many sleepless nights searching for something i could do to make it right.
but, selfishly, i want them to be near me as i do. not with me, but near me, because i want them to know i was trying for them. even in my understanding of my own actions in the past, i still cant get beyond my desperate need to be forgiven. but not the kind of forgiveness where they say "i love you, i forgive you for whatever happened." they dont know what went on inside me, and its that which i need forgiveness for. i have to make them understand the abhorrent things that were inside of me, so that i can be forgiven for them.
but that would only touch them to the wounds, get blood on their fingers, and ive done enough of that.
and so i wander through my mind, exploring all of my options, wondering when i will be given this change. wondering if ill ever figure out how to create the chance.
i only hope that someday ill be able to love them half as well as they loved me.
i cling so tightly right now to the hope that i might now be capable of loving someone like that. i need to be able to.
Current Music: spoon::the way we get by
|
05:38 pm
god, the beatniks were horrible people.
|
September 8th, 2004
07:10 am
breaking story:
the army is trying to extend me for an extra month.
and in other news:
the army is trying to extend me for another year.
the first is likely, the second is very possible.
neither is what i need.
so pray, if you do that sort of thing, and call your congressman if you dont feel comfortable with talking to god.
or just wish me luck.
Current Mood: ![[mood icon]](http://l-stat.livejournal.com/img/mood/bitospud/courier/black/anxious.gif) frustrated
Current Music: nothing... nothing at all
|
August 28th, 2004
04:18 pm
thirty-something days until im out of this country. my replacements come in the middle of next month, then i leave baghdad before the beginning of october.
im excited.
so many plans for when i get home, so many plans... and i have no idea how im going to fit them all in, but ill find a way.
im watching the episode of futurama in which fry thinks hes a robot.
its great.
i have so very much to say... and i dont know how to say any of it. in some ways im insanely happy, in others im scared, worried, tired, bored and absolutely through.
i miss a couple of people on my friends list a lot, but im not going to tell them, because i probably shouldnt. oh well.
my computer should be coming with chief when he returns on the second... which will be the first time since about march that ive had it working... im so exciting, because its my baby, and ive had to use a few other laptops in the meantime which have all had things i didnt like... and mine is so perfect for me.
i want to take a few people on a long trip on my boat... but i want to take them one at a time... sadly, i cant take any of them. i had a dream about that this morning, though. it was nice.
anyway, a few jumbled thoughts, nothing the least bit profound or well-written, but then thats me right now.
|
August 27th, 2004
07:41 am
so ![[info]](http://l-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif) perforation just made me a new icon...
AND ITS THE BEST EVER!!!!!
but mostly because im in it.
/winks at everyone who knows the truth of the matter
im bored, its three thirty in the morning, and im coming home in 35 days!!!!!!!!
woohoo!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
that is all.
|
August 20th, 2004
02:22 pm
i was going to type the words to "destiny" by zero7, which ive been listening to incessently today, but i wont.
but thats what im hearing, and i like what i hear.
|
August 17th, 2004
03:39 pm
i just realized that my screenname is an anagram for:
"hi," a beaver flirts.
you know, without the punctuation.
also, this might be the most beautiful thing i've read in a while (outside of the book eight plus one by robert cormier).
|
02:59 pm
so i found out early this morning that our satellite phone is broken... and has been for a few days. shows you how much i use it. still, it means that i have to fix it, since i'm the only person around who knows how, so i'm going to be trying to fix it, then i'll call you, rylands, as soon as i get it up and running, then i'll phonepost for perforation.
we'll see how i can do this.
|
|
|
