he said "it's all in your head"...

i'm so fucking conflicted

the huckabees movie is going to save me. just because my emotional self runs wild and free and fucks me over so much. it's going to be ok, really it is. i'm heartbroke but for no legitimate reason. we were never dating, we never fucked. i have no claim on you. so its ridiculous and i know it and that doesnt change anything. not one fucking thing. i can take on a 'fuck me' attitude. if you feel like the world is out to get you, you can survive. it's called the blues. and i have huckabees, which makes sense. if we're all matter and energy and it's all changing all the time, we are the same magical blanket. two people? a triangle and a square make a pentagon. doesn't even matter. it doesn't matter. anybody else you see? it's me. and you. so fuck it! no, i can claim nihilism too, it works both ways. love was always cruel, ok? i am nobody. and neither are you? know how i know? because you're a lie. you present a different face to everyone and it's all a goddamn lie! huckabees fact: goodbye lenin song was also in amelie. you lay on your bed next to me and told me you didn't want to speak to me all summer. because you didn't want to miss me. i told you i didn't believe you, didn't trust you. said you wouldn't do anything, hang out with your friend, do organic chemistry. i thought ahead, to the summer {we're apart, she doesn't want to talk to me, guilty? we come back in the fall, start all over?}. and what happens? you find a guy? no fucking way. just one? am i supposed to believe that? i don't even care, fuck it. i don't need this, i don't want this. noooo we can't be friends. i don't trust you now, baby. oh jesus, and you write me and act like you miss me. goddamn, almost forgot that one. and maybe i'm being ridiculous and maybe i blow things up... jesus, i am known for pulling that kind of shit. i care too fucking much. consider this a goddamn learning experience. proof that guarding works. because i care, i don't even want to see your face. because i'm guarded, i don't let anything in. i don't care. and when i don't care enough... we can be friends. i love how that works. oh fuck, i thought earlier of how this entire thing has made me want to cut again. i know how much you loved that. cheers.

dold objekt

this is not a rescission.

i just... feel the need to clarify.

i don't mean that i don't need you in my life. i know i said that, but i'm really not so much of a bastard. there are people i don't need anymore. you're just not one of them. see, i'm cursed with an inability to let go. it may not be a problem with most people. there are friends i haven't spoken to all summer, who never said goodbye, and i never have second thoughts about them. i told myself when this started to be careful. i was guarded, to some extent. it got me through some of the rough times. but as much as i can try and be guarded, when i get close to someone, i care. and that's what sticks with me.

i meant it when i realized that we weren't right for each other, and i should still agree. what i work to avoid is getting screwed by that realization. you told me one night in your room that you didn't want to speak to me this summer. you didn't want to miss me, to feel alone. i had enough of that before you. so, it's not that i don't need you in my life. it's that i don't get lonely when we don't talk, that i don't miss you so much that it hurts, that i don't need you in my life. but i want you there. i said it before, i care, no matter what {well probably not no matter what but let's not push it}. we can be friends. i can miss you without hurting inside. there's always more complications to work out but those will come and go. and i wouldn't change anything.

the unfortunate side-effect of all this is that, in order to deal with myself, i change things. i villanize you and subsequently take up a someday. no, it's not fair, and i don't pretend that it is. i wouldn't want to be you right now. for dealing with me. so much as i get by without you, it still makes me nervous to read your letter. i still don't talk to you like i do other people. sorry for that. and as for someday? well someday you will want a real relationship. but, someday i will be living in new york city with saffron. someday bear's gonna realize that what really matters is how good a friend i can be. someday muffin {haha} and i are going to meet face-to-face. i'm not too worried. sooo... i don't know. i've lost track of myself.

so we will be fine. things are ok. we can be friends. and when we figure out how to do that...



i'll meet you in copenhagen

the obscure object

one thing i never told you. hey remember that time i thought i was dying at that concert and i went and sat in the last bathroom stall on the closed toilet seat with my face buried in my hands? you kept calling me until i came out. there's a picture of you. it's not even in focus. in it you're standing near the stage, one hand covering an ear, the other holding a cell phone. you don't know where i am and there is a look in your blurry blue eyes. a puffiness, a tilt to your head. it's the evidence i have, the goddamned photographic proof, that you cared. i don't know how long it lasted or how much you disguised to look like a lie. remember how i finally got your message and you found me outside the bathroom? you took my hand and led me outside into the throng of smokers on the concrete back porch. led me to the steps and we sat down in the cool, fragrant night air. looking out over that back-alley, your body pressed up against mine. you took care of me, kid. i never loved you more.


and maybe love is too strong a word, considering the way things turned out. i don't know, i can only speak for the moment. i realized later that, taking into assumption all the things i still tell myself today, that i didn't really need you in my life. that you weren't the kind of girl i needed anyway. it was shocking to me then, as it is today. looking back, it's something for me to be able to take control of myself like that, to convince myself that what's best may not be what i really want. i mean, i'm still the same person. i still believe in the elusive, unlikely someday. it's how i get by. but thanks, i guess, for that.

saffron, i've figured a couple things out. i have believed for years that i was in love with you. it's true, i care a lot more about you than most other people. i have this reflex to wish us into a relationship, to see us in the future together somehow. it's been like that for a long time. but the more we talk, if i look at it... the messages you leave on my voicemail, the pictures she sends me... hearing how you function with your guys. i don't really think it would work for us. i can't say that for certain because i don't really know you in person, of course. we may just be perfect for each other. it just doesn't seem that way. and i can't stand thinking about it, almost, because it so contrasts what i want to believe, what i'm used to. but hey, maybe it's part of figuring myself out. and don't worry, we are more than friends, no matter what. and i will always love you. hakuna matata.


the girl from my dream. i don't know her. and that's taken a fair amount of reckoning too. that girl, the one i assumed was perfect. she's made up of images of people i've never met and characters in books i've read. i dont know her, have never met her, and may never. she's none of the girls i have loved. i'm not one to let go easily and i still care for more than a couple girls more than i really should. but she isn't any of them. then what am i doing? it was a big deal for me to suddenly find that i could know what was best for me and turn down someone because they weren't what i really wanted. but if who i really want lives only in my dream, why do i care so much for all of those who don't fit the mold? i guess it's how i operate. maybe it will just come down to my storied someday when we will meet, face-to-face. and if i'm luckier than i deserve, maybe i will be the boy she has dreamed about but never found, too.


Don't get me wrong, dear
In general I'm doing quite fine

It's just when it's summer in the city
and you are so long gone from the city I start to miss you, baby, sometimes...

seventh swan

its early and late. i'm in that odd state, a mix of shock and disillusion. like i've just knealt down on a battlefield and watched friends get cut down in a forest and not done anything to help them. i'm sitting in my den, quiet except for the old folk sounds of sufjan, but i'm not here at all. mouth frozen shut, eyes lidded, staring at one thing or another. blank, infused with the world, with people, with the contrast of reality with my comfortable dreams.

i dreamed a girl. we rode in a car at night and walked through backalley doors. once i was lying on a warehouse couch with her, my head in her lap. she looked down at me, her dark hair falling around her face. and we smiled. with a grin, she bent down and we kissed, softly. she thought something was strange, but i didn't. we kissed again. everything was beautiful.

i couldn't if i tried describe her for certain, just that she was perfect. middle length dark hair, cute face, small frame. possibly the opposite of a miss usa contestant... heh. not in the least bit mainstream but not scene or goth or any of that. unidentifiable as anything but herself. not the girl who would, at first glance, spring forth from a lineup of friends - maybe to me - but irresistable when she smiles...

best defined in my memory as a mix of the girl i saw at church last week and miss parks... odd as i've never really known either of them. more imagination than anything i suppose. there's one thing about life, though... there's almost always a someday.




{in case you were wondering, chicago sprung from the transfiguration ;)}

the goddamned lovliest melody

i'm at the beach... and yet, i'm sitting alone in the dark watching the late show and writing. what a night. nothing unusual. i changed the time of this post from 11:50 to 11:49 because i didn't like the fifty. and there's bright eyes stuck in my head and i really just want to be anywhere with people. actually, i really want to take a flask, fill it with jose, and go walk on the beach with emily. {the key to that statement is that i know about fifteen emilys... so take your pick. if its you, you probably already know it...}

i am teaching myself to play piano. the lesson i showed up for was bullshit. an expensive waste of my life. i thought he hated me when i interrupted his lesson to tell him mine was supposed to start eight minutes ago. the middle aged woman at the piano yelled, 'just a minute, i got two more measures' at me without turning around. great. this guy is old, fat, looked weak. i really got the feeling he had diabetes, although i have no idea how to back that up. he had short, thick, sausage fingers, dry looking and deeply scarred with wrinkles. i have no idea how he ever played piano. i'm not really going to go into this, other than to say that i tried to explain that i had six years of musical experience and he ignored me and brought in books for third graders and we learned notes. i dropped the books off at the counter on the way out, made a sarcastic comment, and raced home to watch hockey. soooo i'm getting a refund. bullshit.

why is it that when i mute the tv i can still hear what they are saying?

being the musical genius that i am - yeah - and trying to remember high school music theory, i pieced thirds and fifths and whatnot and learned all the major chords. after that, all the minor chords. i'm afraid that's as far as i'm going to get, though. i never was good at theory. {thought i just saw a hat walk across the counter} my left hand works a lot better than my right. it's from playing the guitar for years. my right fingers are much better at going up and down while my left fingers... well, they do shit. so i sit and play songs i wrote. i play bright eyes tunes, whatever comes to mind. whatever i know the chords for. and i'm really not bad. it would have taken years of those lessons for me to learn the Bm chord. i ordered the sheet music for 'songs for silverman'. i can't wait to be disappointed that i can't already play it. i can feel it now...

i lay in bed last night, like i used to. headphones in, curled up to sleep. same old music, same old love. if you really know me, you know who i'm talking about. and believe me, i would still marry her without thinking twice.... :)

if only it were that easy.

i sat outside eating a hamburger with my mother and sister tonight. watched an ant or two skittering around in the grout and tiles of the condo patio. i bet those ants are pretty damn fast, in terms of their body size. "i wonder if ants can walk backwards" i said to my mother. "you know, in my forty-eight years of living, i don't think that has ever crossed my mind" she responded. i like it when people think that. also, the windchime to my left, it's all in the same major key. that's why it sounds so nice. bet you didn't know that. i think someday i will market a jazz chime, all in minor pentatonic. it will be a hit.

in another year i will be getting ready to go abroad. i can't wait, really. gonna buy a little tiny camera to carry in my pocket and walk the streets of copenhagen. could anything sound as lovely? weekend bike rides in sweden... better in theory, i'm certain. everything hinges on something or other. well, in reality, everything hinges...

i get high with a little help from my friends

;)

cute when you smile

i can't feel my fingers. i just sat down, to pass the time till midnight, pulled up some music and my guitar and didn't play a line of it. something else came to me, a new set of chords and ideas that i feel might actually turn into a real song. the chorus is stuck in my head... and it's one syllable. like a nightclub jam, i can hear the crowd now...

and thats just the nightcap. i have a good life, but it's not often i have days that can force a smile to my lips for writing about it. rewind a little bit.

the hurricanes win a phenomenal hockey game to take a one game lead in the stanley cup finals. a game like that will make or break a day by itself, let alone stacked on top of the previous hours. so tense, such a release. every time i turned the surround sound on my dad would jump out of his skin and make me turn it down again. i love hockey.

this afternoon, before reading my new piano book, i had a chance to talk for a long while to a wonderful friend who has been out of touch for the past six months or so. turns out she is in london. and i hate her for it but the conversation reminded me how well we go together, how easy it is to talk to her, how much fun she is. and that she turned to me to talk to means a lot too. and it's not just her. last night was wonderful. i try to be a good friend and when people appreciate that, it's a great feeling. you know who you are. when you tell me you love me, even as a friend, it brings a warmth to my heart nothing else can. i've found that love doesn't have to screw up a friendship, it can make me a better friend. i love that too.

on the way back from the library, driving in the rain, listening to a new album, a squirrel ran out in front of the volvo. i was on cruise control so i jumped on the brakes and swerved a bit to the right {there was nobody coming} and missed the poor guy but it made me physically sick. there was an immediate squirrel-sized knot deep in my stomach that only revisited me late in the hockey game. that was bad... but he is alive, so good.

i realized when i got in my car the mistake i'd just made {in the happiness beforehand} but went to the library anyway. libraries are generally full of politesse. maybe it's just that people aren't supposed to talk. whatever it was, nobody commented on my bedroom slippers and i felt cool wearing them. picked up a book on how to play popular piano in ten lessons {i even skipped lesson three!} so hopefully i won't have to pay another hundred and this month will be enough of official lessons before i can go on by myself. we will see how that goes.

the first part of my day was spent sleeping, playing with my amazingly loving dog, and laying in the hammock reading while the rain clouds gathered. most of the time, our old cat sat directly below me, craning her neck and rubbing her face on my fingers when i would stick them through the rope at her. it's amazing how love from an animal can mean so much. it's so much less complicated than what i deal with from people. so much more pure, easy. after reading i took a shower and came downstairs to the original reason my day was made: one piece of mail.

it was on the arm of my favorite chair, a hand-addressed mailing envelope from Austin, Texas. i knew what it was. i had seen a band on austin city limits a while back that i liked alright and since the amazon was so expensive, i had ordered the album off the band's website. along with the album was a sticker, free of charge. on the back of the sticker was written, "hey brooks, thanks for buying the cd. hope to see you soon, michael." turns out michael is the lead singer/guitarist. new music is one thing. that made my day.

...

i forgot to mention last night. church, as it turns out, was amazing sunday. it was youth sunday so kids did the whole service. whoever was reading the celebrations thought it would be appropriate for the congregation to sing happy birthday to a family friend of ours. that never happens, out in our old white country church. pretty funny. but there was one girl in the production that i couldn't stop watching. i don't know how old she was, high school. i will tell you that i have never seen more gorgeous coeds than out at my church. those country girls, nothing else like them. too bad i never lived or went to school out there, got to know them. but this girl was different. she was a short, thin, small-framed girl with short dyed-red hair brushed out of her face. a small piece of it was bound off in a little stubby ponytail in the back. there was something about her though. the fact that she was pretty but not mainstream usually helps, with me, but it's hard to know what to say about her. you should have seen her smile...

goodnight ;)

yeah they went wild

i can bare my soul on any given night to a girl i trust. it's just the way i am. and watching vince vaughn make jennifer aniston cry all is proven illusionary when someone i really care about is really hurting. and sitting in a quiet but rain pattered room trying to find something right to say proves that words are nothing more than an illusion themselves. it hurts to find there is honestly nothing i can say to make her feel any better. then what are words good for anyway?

driving home after midnight. sunday night, no cars on the road. i always love a good parkway, where the lights line the street as far as you can see. but the lights burn orange and the hot pavement breathes steam and the rain never gets worse or better. just so that every other light my windshield is caught before the wiper blade and glows back in my face instead of allowing a look at the road ahead. once, at the climax of poison oak, a dark streetlight came on ahead of me. used to be, especially with my mother, streetlights would burn out just ahead of us. used to be.

the road winds on. the car behind me never gets any closer. the steam is more a hologram than anything else. life in three dimensions. something solid to crash into over and over again. just to reappear behind me and wait for someone else. once, out in the country, i grazed a puddle and the nose of the car was tugged to the right but released just as quickly. i keep both eyes open for eyes in the night.

a quarter mile from my street, just in time to brake and slow, i unbuckle my seatbelt. just in case any cops drove past to see it. just in case anything happened and they could finish perusing the crime scene and deduct that i hadn't been wearing it. halfway down the lane i cut the radio and coasted. i reached down and cut the driving lights, the interior lights. just so i could see the orange lightpost at the end of the road. the car kept going, no road underneath, reminded me more than anything of a dying fighter plane gliding home to the dark sea. in the dark, the sides of the road are closer. everything jumps out at you. but as long as you glide toward the light, it's ok. i brought back the lights to find my driveway and coast home. i think, gliding into my parking spot i ran over a frog on the rocks. i shifted back in reverse and let the idle pull me back a couple feet. the frogs love it when it's raining out. although i couldn't see any evidence of murder, there was one sitting off to the side on the rocks that looked exactly like my grandmother's pug.

you know i would die for you but you won't let me help

cold roses

ryan adams is on tv. for a split second, as he stuck out his neck to hold a chord, face grey under the lights, he looked like my old soccer coach. i miss that guy. but adams is a music man, and i love that. i got myself on a list of students today. gonna learn the piano. i don't know how this is going to happen. i play guitar all the time, i can handle that. piano's something different entirely. not so easy to keep to yourself. no practicing at night. fuck, i find it hard enough to play for other people anyway and that's only when i know what i'm doing. praciticing music i like while family can hear? i might only touch the damned thing when nobody's around.

my parents try and convince me to go to church. have to drive my sister in so she can go. i could just turn them down but i don't want to be difficult. i just don't see what good they think it will do. do they feel as if they can force me into an hour of service and it will change my mind about everything? i possess the same psychological difficulty of nearly every other teenager. you make me go to church and i will dislike it even more. you tell me there's no way i will ever buy a motorcycle while living under this roof, i will want it even more. i can't tell you how happy or unhappy, how different i would be if i were allowed to simply make my own decisions. i certainly enjoyed it at school. do you know when church would really do me good? when i want to go. i will make that choice, and sometimes i do want to. that's when it would do good. when i fulfill myself with it, by my own volition. and if i make up my mind, free of outside influences, and figure for myself that a motorcycle is too damn dangerous and stupid then i won't ever ride one. and i will be ok with that. but if all you can do is read me articles out of the newspaper of drunk teens crashing their crotch rockets at 150 into a grove of trees, you have to believe me when i tell you that it's not me. and that i will never get over it like this. because I DO BELIEVE IN GOD and it has nothing to do with whether i agree with church or not. and i do agree that motorcycles are stupid. but i can also imagine it as something almost spiritual in its freedom. and until i make up my mind for myself, don't bother.

{same goes for drugs and some other less couth things...}

heh, and i could stay up all night talking about my spiritual reawakening for some night with a motorcycle. someday... ohhh someday.

odd... {i don't really drink beer}

Bourbon Congratulations! You're 116 proof, with specific scores in beer (120) , wine (50), and liquor (69).

Screw all that namby-pamby chick stuff, you're going straight for the bottle and a shot glass! It'll take more than a few shots of Wild Turkey or 99 Bananas before you start seeing pink elephants. You know how to handle your alcohol, and yourself at parties.

My test tracked 4 variables How you compared to other people your age and gender: You scored higher than 49% on proof You scored higher than 94% on beer index You scored higher than 62% on wine index You scored higher than 68% on liquor index

Link: The Alcohol Knowledge Test written by hoppersplit on Ok Cupid, home of the 32-Type Dating Test