nobody move

i think i need a hammock for my dorm room. so it's a single... no room for it. i did some research. something comfortable like a nicaraguan weave. hammocks :)

i was laying outside in our old pawley's island rope hammock this afternoon. the sun was still angled up in the sky, flitting through the shifty leaves, i had forgotten my sunglasses. i rolled my legs out and rolled my body the other direction, lessening the sun-to-eye contact by a degree or two. angled toward it, little camping pillow and a book. an almost cold sunkist hugged in a sovereign seas koozie balanced precariously on a clump of grass below. one-handed reading, one-armed head-propping... one eye closed, one lazy. every now and then a courageous flying winged oblong would get flicked off my shirt or shorts. occasionally a light but weighty humid breeze would shower book, body, and hammock with hard, green little tree things. one caught in a fold of my shirt and i picked it up thumb-to-forefinger and prepared to toss it back towards the heights it fell from but, staring up into the shifting green and blue, my fingers moved to my mouth instead. so i bit it, the tiny hard thing. hard to keep between the front teeth, the slippery little treeball. but i got a thought of a taste, less planty than sour, and got curious. dropped the green ball in my mouth and ventured a couple soft exploratory bites. tasted like sour cherries, not altogether bad but surprisingly potent.

forgot these were cherry trees... just not the fat, voluptuous cherry kind. these are tall, with rough chunky bark, looking quite hard but also brittle. who knows? they've lasted many storms. when i was done i went and rubbed the face of the brownest eyes of the sweetest dog i know. noticed the swing hanging idly from another branch of the tree. i was too scared to sit on it, lest it splinter and disentegrate. my father made it a long time ago for me out of a mispainted sign forbidding big dumb animals like horses from walking through our backyard searching for trails. the sign itself is still white on the bottom, with some black lettering - simply an old plank of wood with a rope threaded through the middle and tied below. probably still hung on the original rope, green on brown now from mildew, the top of which long grown into the branch it hangs from. brings back memories.

see what i just did? right up there. i didn't need to say that. jesus, i need to stop, don't i? ;)

whoa

feel sick. real shallow, right down where the neck connects to the body, the soft spot between the first two bones in front. there's a knot, feels like a tumor i should be able to swallow but can't. i'm listening to what's turning out to be precisely the wrong music, more to turn myself a different direction than anything. i think the end of the hockey game killed a piece of me. eh, its a rollercoaster, life is.

it's so goddamned hottttt in this room. fans on, makes no difference. change of music, not much better. i'll let the heap try for a while though. i've said it a hundred times before... it feels good to be writing, it's just that nothing i've thought of saying over the past couple days seems ready to come out right now.

oh, i was out wringing out the sea-doo for the summer monday while my dad waited in line with the trailer at the lake. while he was out, i took it on a few high-speed runs myself, trying not to be a pwc-asshole but also generally showing off. took her round past the power lines on the backside of the lake and nailed the thumb-throttle the entire way around a looping but not loose turn. reminded me of indy the day before, tragic indy. depending on the boost you had dialed in, you can drive the entire oval time and again with the throttle on the floorpan. back out past the power lines toward the docks and the sun on every peak of water shone at me. and i smiled, because at that moment, a thousand people were taking my picture.

that's when i realized how little everything matters. how much college is just a new high school. we aren't really any more mature, most of us anyhow. you can't expect anything more than fucking around. a friend once told me that the key is to hope, but not expect. and that... isn't easy. there are times and places i could point a finger but it would do no good. friendship means so much more to me than whatever the fuck happened last semester. it's my fault for feeling when you didn't. i guess that's still the problem now. i don't feel much, but enough to care when you fuck with your life. i guess this could all just fade away but i don't think it matters to you one fucking bit. and, because there's that little distinction, it still will bother me. it's always me caught caring. i've got to stop doing that.

granted, i also need to stop being such a bastard about it. i only have leverage if you have anything to move. if i don't move you - and i can't really blame anyone for not giving a damn about me unless they act like they do - then i can't hold anything against you. just won't matter, see? so if you couldn't give a shit as to whether i was alive or dead, i will convince myself to do the same. and if you care enough to be friends, well, somehow i guess that will work... eventually. and maybe, someday you mature some, who knows? but i can't be angry, that does nobody good. it was cool while it was, now i have a czech girl to meet...

useless, to think about strange machines. a '72 triumph tiger 650 parallel twin... sounds lovely doesn't it? room for two! and for $4000? yes well... no money really... oh, but it's in-state? jesus...

i started this year with a view of self-improvement. it's worked... i haven't lost any weight {although to do so might be suicide} and haven't gained any. more muscular... i ate better at school. meals. my mother gets agitated when i don't eat... which is often. i don't get hungry. i explain that and it doesn't go over well. i believe i should be old enough to decide when to feed myself and when i just don't feel like it. so working outside, i get dizzy every minute point five... so long as it goes away pretty quick, i'm fine. for four years i have done situps every single night before i settle down to sleep. usually twenty three. i mean yeah, it's not many at all but its a nice number and it's at least something. something's better than nothing... i guess it's the thought that counts. lately i've picked up on pushups too. i never liked them, bad elbows. never could do hardly any. but now i drop down when nobody is looking, usually thirteen, another good number, lower than twenty three. and i stop myself from eating when i don't really need to be, say, late at night. when you don't have time to be awake long enough to metabolize the stuff. then it turns to fat. and you can't just get rid of fat, you know. usually i will spend twenty minutes or so on the exercise bike around noon... a little bit of cardio. not really much to do anything, but again, it's the thought... and i'm sure it burns a good five calories too. not that i really need to worry about these things. i'm 6'1", 145lbs. a lot of the girls would shoot me for talking like this. but to me, it's not how i am from an outsider's view, it's how things change. as far as i'm concerned, i've put on a little flab around the belly button while i was at school. never did do ab stuff much, probably why. so i'd rather turn that to muscle. and i've been stuck around 140 for a couple years now so i'd rather stay closer to that than 150. that's all. although weighing less does make me feel better. i enjoy the feeling of being hungry every now and then, especially when i'm depressed. i don't think that's much terribly out of the normal. but whatever... that's just me.

there. you're free. happy?

i take it back. i'm not so cruel.

closer

its funny... how a movie can fuck with your head. just some odd time when it compounds all the feeling blowing around through my body. all the desires, hopes... love. makes me quiet.

i hate to say it. i hate to think it, to feel it, to care. but i do. and i also hate not to care. just the way i am. i hope you are doing alright. now fuck yourself and die.

i also hate to say it but now would be a terrible time to own a motorcycle. oh boy. because tonight, i would get dressed and leave. just go and ride somewhere in the dark. not even fast, really, just out in the wind and black. going nowhere. and i can't picture any better escape than on that goddamn motorcycle. that fucking bike, out in the open. the thrumbing of the motor, below and between me, the headlight right ahead. no seatbelts, no radio, no other people, no wasted space. roll it up the hill and out to the street to kickstart it, not be disturbing. cut the motor halfway down my street, maybe the headlight too, coast home. just around out in the country. the dark and me and some willing soulful machine.

motorcycle diaries

i was driving home from fuquay today along some country backroads. it was a beautiful day and bikes were out everywhere. seems like all of them are big harleys... none of the slimmed down old british cycles like i have an affinity for. i had passed a couple of these and was following another, not close, trying to give respect to these guys - basically up to the rest of the people on the road not to kill them. this guy i was following, we crest a hill, another bike comes up in the other direction. both of them, before they pass, calmly extend left hands down toward the yellow centerlines, palms to the other. a slow-motion seeming high five, were they a couple feet closer. just a hello, the way drivers of wranglers are supposed to wave with a couple fingers off the steering wheel. what got to me was the two people connected by this common ground. the guy i was following, some white dude, late thirties maybe, collared polo shirt the yellow-pinkish color of the opaque bottled fruit smoothie in my refrigerator, tucket and belted into khaki shorts and tennis shoes, riding a big harley davidson. the guy passing in the other direction? black guy, mid twenties, inside a long-sleeve blue and white bmx style shirt, long black pants, riding some garish japanese sport bike.

but it doesn't matter. they were just two guys out riding bikes on a sunny day.

slow night, so long

oh boy

dark in the den, hum of the fans, cat's asleep under the table resting her head on the wooden frame. i mute and unmute the tv, talk and get distracted, alone downstairs dressed up in basketball shorts, fuzzy blue printed long socks, an ancient rebel yell beer tshirt, new hat and silver ring.

i think i have a social phobia. i'm generally happier alone than seeing people. i mean, it was different at school, when you live with people it's just terribly convenient to hang out. but here... i don't know. i think it's just new people, in planned situations, or old friends i don't have anything to say to. you know those people. i went to a small high school, i'd recognize most anyone from my class. and when you both know the other one is there, and you've both spoken before, you have to speak. plenty of these kids i'm friends with, but not really on a personal basis. i don't really have anything to say to them, but since we spent four years together, we really have to talk. sunday, my entire family went to a neighborhood picnic down at the pond. i stayed at home. i could say that i wasn't hungry or didn't really feel like going but the real reason - and i know it - was that i was hoping there wouldn't be any other kids there. i mean, if there were, i wouldn't have known them. i would have, of course, been expected to hang out with them, talk to them, in a controlled environment. if it had been just adults i would have loved it, i can charm adults like nobody's buisness - and i know it.

i stayed at home, watched a discovery hd program on the bermuda triangle for a couple hours, played guitar a little bit, stood outside, read some... and enjoyed it.

oh boy

i am such a bastard. you know it {and you know who you are}. i would apologize but i don't think it would make a difference. probably better not to concede ground anyway. i do it to protect myself, hoping that thoughts will follow actions. i could break down and yell and curse and say that i really feel but i would lose everything. so i won't concede a damn thing. in fact, in a bastardly sort of move, i'm going to try and ignore the problem... whether that makes me forget or not.

what kind of summer is this? i have no official job quite yet. no plans to get drunk. no alcohol to get drunk on. no drugs {not sure if that was in the plan or not}. {why the hell not, by now?} try and help my dad find rental cars for a trip out west but he goes and does it behind my back anyways. parties i don't know whether to attend. i sit around, run errands, exercise a little bit, read a lot. watch tv a lot... but not as much as i could. do a few crosswords/cryptoquotes... write, but not as much as i should. i'm downloading four more movies as i type, just counting the days till the RIA shows up and sues me for, say, $3,000 - a number i pulled out of my ass but probably adds up to the stuff i've stolen recently. i've got friends working twelve hours a day, traveling in europe, interning in d.c., and i have time to sit and reskin and retool the html for my goddamn blog. jesus.

not to mention being as fou dans la tete as ever. oh boy.

i'm concerned. does anything i say here mean anything to anybody? shit, all i do is describe my mostly boring life and supposed mental illnesses. i could probably fit all these posts to a template as set as any given yellowcard song. i'm registered for a short story workshop this coming fall. never really tried fiction before. in fact, if you're supposed to write about what you know, i have a feeling that i will be trying some things. probably not a good idea. suggestions are accepted, if i'm just full of bullshit... yeah.

we must document our love

i just got down on my hands and knees and thanked my cat. as bitchy and superior as cats are, she is always there when i need her. maybe she can smell the thought of tears.

i walked in from trying on hats in the bathroom and found her in the middle of the floor, rolled onto her back with her paws stuck up limp in the air. head lolled to the side, eyes closed. so i knelt down and buried my face into her soft under-fur. surprisingly she didn't seem to mind. i took my thumb and finger and stroked her face and chin, thanked her for being here now, and kissed her on the cheek. sometimes just being here is enough.

i have decided that i am definitely going to buy a motorcycle. if not soon, then sooner than later. if not for myself, to spite everyone who has told me not to. especially those with threats. {if i mute the television, the only sounds in the room are the soft thrumming of the fans, the mechanical heartbeat of their motors, coming and going. the fan of the computer, a digital swallow if it thinks for a second. and with the tv muted, i can watch the pussycat dolls dance without having to listen to them sing.} i have a feeling that my fear of riding one will be my saviour. country roads... a 500 twin sounds nice. not too big or small. or maybe a 350 single. enough room for a frightened girl to ride behind me, digging her fingers into my stomach when we take curves too fast. enough for a backpack and sleeping bag. sleep tangled by a river.

i've been reading... it's too late to come up with motorcycle visions by myself. no, i want a hilke, as well as a clare, and a helen... you get the picture. that's the upside of literature, the characters are as perfect as you like. no dealing with real people. as it is...

someone has found it, somebody is losing it, and i have never it.

oh what a world this is

last weekend, at the beach, there was a girl. i saw her walk out by the pool and sit down on a long chair. took off her top and lay down in her bikini and book. i was standing out on our porch forty yards away, both watching her and pretending i wasn't. i don't even know how old she was, never could tell. for a day or two i would see her sitting with apparent family, guys too old to be involved with her. having a bite to eat in ginger's cafe with my dad, i would spin around on my stool and catch a peek across the pool to their group, lounging out. eventually, she was gone.

i have been listening to too much bright eyes. after dropping my grandmother off at her house wednesday, i took her landboat and slid in lifted, back to 'lets not shit ourselves' and took to the backroads at inappropriate speed. ducking into the left lane to miss potholes and singing to the goddamn fidelity of the speakers... after my mother left i went and plugged myself up into the amp and sat on top, slowly toggling. i always love how much of that wood is butter with your eyes closed. up with the gain, up with the level, up with the master volume. up so the windows shook and i couldn't hear my voice getting muddled in the vibrations. just shitting ourselves over and over again. like a concert when the guitars are so loud you can feel it in front of, behind, and thumping your solid chest, beating the air out of your lungs. when i can feel the floor grumbling below my feet and the beast moaning and shaking with every new sound right below me.

also, i waste a little time online looking to buy a liter of jose but not feeling like figuring out a way to do it without my parents knowing. not really worth it, is it? store it somewhere, get it in something for a party, for my own enjoyment. aren't even allowed to buy a flask, am i? that's no fun. i think it's all in the pursuit finding a mutually drunk friend and seeing what happens. so unlike me...

i was driving kristina home today, my arm out her window. dead ended to the old country highway, a large truck coming in from the right, a random eighties olds or buick slowing from the left, left turn signal on. the van in front of me turns out right with plenty of room. i don't want to wait for the truck and feel the stupid guy-ish need to test the turbo again, so i glance out and, almost without even thinking about it until after i was moving, jabbed the throttle and pulled out left. granted, it was fast, but while fully engulfed by the right lane, i looked up and saw that olds no more than thirty feet away, heading straight towards me. he went and turned back where i came from and i zoomed on into my own lane with the sudden thought: what if he wasn't turning? happens all the time, really, people leave their flashers on... considering the speeds and the fact that he was slowing, if i had wrongly assumed the situation, he would have hit me square in the driver's door. well there's an accident and i blame him for leaving his signals on but... i would be arguing? say i lived, what with the side curtain airbags and steel impact protection in the door... my arm was hanging out the window. i easily lose my left arm, right there. maybe the collision forces my left shoulder out of joint and a dirty broken collarbone. my left knee is crushed against the steering column. i argue over the blinkers, an amputee in a wheelchair. and where does my life go from there? forget ever playing music again. i have difficulty imagining it. my life's still just begun. funny how i could voluntarily end it so quickly.

i have to survive to face my motorcycle...

the most wonderful girl i ever met

just quoted the beatles to me.

i was timing my sopranos to see if i could start this post before midnight, just so i could continue on with one post per day, in case i wanted to write later tonight. well i lost, by a minute on here, by four in real life. cheaters, all of them.

turns out i really don't have much to say. still looking at motorcycles, plotting my future death on one of those grand black machines.

yeah that's all

{golden slumbers dear}

hot sssssausages...

i lay in bed at night thinking for the sole purpose of distracting my head enough to make it forget to remain conscious. lately its been this one girl... a fucking friend. and in my dreams we get drunk and hook up. i don't know, its a phase right now, but comforting. a daydream to help me fall asleep.

oh, shit, and to someone else {and you know who you are, sotling}... ok so i can't really say that. sorry.

so i'm sitting in a corner of our beach condo, almost under a table, wrapped in a sheet, on top of two blankets, with a pillow shielding my crotch from the laptop. i'm wearing a t-shirt and i think i might sleep in it, which is weird. across the room, beyond and partially obscured by a smallish couch is a television playing conan in chicago. in the other corner on that side of the room sits a small, fat dog in a big red leather chair {formerly inhabited} who breathes loudly. and costello sneaks out my speakers.

i have daydreams about waking up at night to find someone breaking in. since im behind a table by a wall, the murdlebuglerer wouldn't see me. nor would he hear me as i snuck under the table, behind him in the kitchen, grabbed a steak knife out of a block i would find without sight, and stabbed him violently in the back before he knew what happened. at which point i would wonder if i made a terrible mistake, seeing as i just stabbed a guy without knowing anything much about the situation. however, he is stabbed.

fifteen hours ago i was standing on my grandmother's front lawn out in the country, by the highway watching cars. standing alone, singing fiona out loud, waiting for my rocket. texting the chemistry lion, you know. a week-minus-twelve hours ago i was standing in a church room with my family shaking elderly hands and being told - in equal frequency - "i'm sorry" and "you've grown so much". shortly afterward we would file into the chapel for the funeral. for the first time, i would stand and follow the casket out of a church. when i saw how hard it was on my grandmother, i choked up. the gravesite was modest but beautifully crowded.

forty-five hours before, i was in greenville for the phone call.



out on the front lawn this morning i saw a squirrel. over in the next yard, walking slowly towards the street. he stopped at the shoulder and watched the cars zooping past. from my experiences with squirrels, i know that they will do anything in their power to get run over. i turned my head but not far enough that i couldn't see the squirrel come off his back legs and scurry back into the yard. a couple minutes later i watched the same squirrel waltz calmly across the road while there was a lull in traffic. i guess there's hope for us all.

i'm reading a book about a guy who, with a buddy, buy a frightening old beast of a motorcycle and road trip across europe. he doesn't have glasses so the other kid gives him a pair of world war one pilot's goggles to wear. naturally, i have been obsessively - even compulsively - dusting ebay for pilot's goggles and old motorcycles. i've decided on a new pair of russian MiG goggles and some 1940-1970's triumph or bsa bike. something with smith's gauges... cause thats just fucking inacurrate.

meanwhile, i neurotically check my email and scan my buddy list both being angry certain people aren't sending me messages when i don't really want to talk to them anyway. sadly ironic, huh?

after dealing with an incident involving hollow tubular lawnmower handles and thousands of ants - dum dum dummm - with water, i did much work for grandmere and made enough money to buy my mother a gift. i'm such a good son. wonder if she likes the hartford whalers?

i think i might get up and eat another slice of hot zausage before bed, certain to help me sleep. i need a haircut and a tan and to embrace summer somehow... i think i'm an alcoholic at heart but it's probably only because i haven't drank in so long that i have such a strong urge to do so. at least it won't kill me. {there are a number of you that understand the irony of that statement. well it's not for you. there's one of you whom it is a crack at. to you, hah. {{again i won't say what i was going to say because for some reason i think i might regret it later}} to the rest of you... just forget about it}

i really need to sleep. my neck hurts which just may be meningitis but probably isn't. i want a tequila sunrise from the bar here but i don't want to drink alone. i wonder what i would do with my own alcohol... i wouldn't know what to do with it. or pot. or cocaine. or acid. ohhh man i'm going to get in so much trouble some day {legally and physically}. {and emotionally, although that seems to be my happy norm} sneeze x3.