the glitzy life

i don’t know how long it will last.  i don’t know how it works.  what i do know is that i’m in the midst of one of those extended happy streaks that i can never quite seem to recall in detail during ordinary time.  i’m thinking this one is due to the delicate mixture of music, weather, and time in just the right ratios.  vega intl. night school is on repeat on the stereo (beyond solid album front to back) and i’ve almost mastered alan’s dance in pleat-front slacks from the neon indian show saturday.  the weather is mid-60 fahrenheit open-window days and soft-biting nights.  and i have time.  a bit of it at least. 

aluminum and diamonds and ten, oh my

this log is approaching its tenth anniversary but i know better than to expect diamonds.  or tin.  i expect only a neck cramp from repeated lengthy stares in the direction behind me.  why are brake lights more alluring than the unknown, unspoiled white of high beams?  it seems counterintutitive until you realize one basic tennet of human nature: familiarity trumps the unknown.  a memory in the hand is worth two in the bush.  i only hope i can continue to look backwards in five years at the bloody shadowed light cast on today with fondness.

blue pill

hanging on to things beyond their natural expiriation is an ultimately destructive though very comforting skill. it’s much like struggling against a tide… futile, but in the short term strangely satisfying. even if the transition is assured to make things worse the best course is always to look forward instead of behind. but “best” is rarely the same as “most comforting”.

i fucking hate the end of things.

humming dirigible

i found two new friends this summer.  one was actually old but hadn't been my friend in a while.  and the other was brand cellophane new.  they made the late summer months much more fun.  i had forgotten how nice it was to have infecund friends, my other such friends having faded some time ago like dave and linda mcfly.  the very first thing we three did together was weekend in a country mansion on a cattle farm.  if you haven't done this recently i would highly recommend it.  it has a way of reaffirming what is most important in life:  absinthe, the world's  cheapest chicken, sunshine, and a mansion-wide integrated audio system to wake you up to whjb's classic hits in the morning. when you really consider it i am a cowboy at heart.

tango

things change so fast. 

not me of course.  i never change.  but my luck, my seasonal affect, my sheets… they all flip from state to state with breakneck pace, many times rendering the interim conditions essentially like they never happened for lack of external observation. 

so much has happened since the last time i wrote here.  more than the whole of this log up to this point.  but things are never the same when you write about them from a distance.  and with the constant whirring of change the words written about some semi-solid event could be totally different even hour to hour. 

i am not sure i will write about everything that happened in the gap.  but i will write about some.  and that is really all you can ask for without a voice.

mrs. cold

kings of convenience’s “mrs. cold” was the soundtrack to a sunny sunday.  conditions were perfect for both running and daydreaming.  cool outside the sun’s rays and warm in their path, the air itself seemed to massage my skin with alternating strokes.  palm muted lead riffs in headphones gave the distinct sense of unreality and i spent the rest of the day trying to recreate that feeling.  pretending my voice was on perma-echo, i alternated between the garage and the shower to sing any words that couldn’t be held in.  i didn’t speak a word in normal cadence all day.

rebuild

the darker the place the tinier the speck of light needed to completely change perception. a few of the holes i carry in my swiss cheese soul were made opaque recently, filled with the malleable clay of a good friend.  working that familiar but still fresh loam through my fingers helps me forget about the other pieces of me that remain absent.  i hope they will also be filled one day.  those jagged-edged frames of emptiness are a real eyesore.

lost

last night was spend wandering through space, feeling like words or even a touch have to be twice as forceful to register.  in no particular order:

talk to some girl and boy at a bar as fireworks crack in the distance.  the girl knows several people i know through strange coincidences.  the boy plays soul coughing’s “circles” on the electronic jukebox.  debate with myself whether it would be better if it were actually the year two thousand four.  if it were i certainly wouldn’t feel like a boy scout without a compass.

pass two men in a parking lot and they tell my friend and me that we look like cops.  i get irrationally angry at this.  eventually i let it go without arresting them.

find myself in what is obviously a dive bar that for some reason has obscenely loud current pop music being played by a d.j. so out of place that he may as well have been spinning at a funeral.  even for this city it is a new low for the attractiveness of the patrons.  women either too heavy or too old dance poorly and eye my friend and me.  we leave quickly.

early morning on a deck.  sol beer and carnival popcorn from a blue plastic bag.  girls come and go between this house and another.  eventually i follow one to the other place and find it full of high school boys who are friends of one of the girls’ younger brother.  they are playing unlistenable music and microwaving food.  i stay for as long as i can stand it then leave, thinking to myself that happiness is elusive.  and relative.

one time a week

it is strange which muscle motions become habits.  in the course of driving my car i find myself reaching from the gear shift knob over to touch an invisible thigh.  it happens at random times and has no bias with regard to whether my mind is active with thought or turned off.  when i realize what i’m doing i immediately pull back, like the passenger seat is glowing red electric stove coil.  the only thing that gives me a sliver of relief from these constant burns is the video for gauntlet hair’s “human nature”.  i’ve watched it on a loop for several days.  i like when andy and craig smile at the end.   

splinter

my soul hurts.  it aches with the dull throbbing of a contusion under two fingers of pressure.  the fact that time is slipping away from me did not matter so much when that time was sucked dry of pleasure.  now it rushes past, taunting my parched throat with its oozy wetness.  i want to purr again at the end of the day.  and wake up without wanting to vomit.