there's one thing i know, it goes like this

when i'm down and out, it's you i miss

this life is so static. i'm doing that magical thing again where i listen to piano soul and watch a muted pixies concert in hd. sometimes it's hard to get it to work. it's one of those nights. nights after days spent with my family where i'm lonely as hell but i can't stand waiting for everyone else to go to bed so i can be alone again. the voice in my head gives suggestions that i never feel like following. i didn't want to write earlier because i felt like i knew everything i was going to say... and anyway, it was before midnight. the voice is telling me to stop drinking this mountain dew and to do some pushups and find those freeweights and make something up. maybe later. this morning i'll wake up and hopefully make it to fuquay in time for lunch. come home again and visit some with family. drive back to winston and do more work. maybe not even see anyone (likely) before monday lunch. same thing over and over. i just want to get drunk and walk around campus in the dark talking.

what kind of goals are there to have? i'm too lazy to actually do anything important. i stay at school and do my work, have fun every now and then, get stressed and break down every once in a while, but do nothing. there's no progress there. all my life's goals are for the future. a couple months ago i wrote a short list of things to do before i die. an assumption was built in that i would live long enough but it still doesn't help that i haven't crossed any of them off. my mother told me about this actor/musician who was doing an interview and was asked if this was the life he wanted, what he'd dreamed of doing. the guy said no, this wasn't what he wanted to do, he wanted to do everything. that's me. maybe someday i will be a doctor but it won't be to help people and it won't be any sort of noble or kind but for the money. because the things i want to do before i die aren't free. i don't even really feel bad about that anymore.

a hole is free. the same time i was thinking about the cars and houses and sailboats and travels (and family), i was thinking about the hole. maybe this summer, i'll do it. find a corner of my backyard my dad won't find and start digging. at least it's for now. i'm not going to say... one day when i'm a radiologist making $300k a year, i'm going to dig a hole. that's not how it works. i can dig my hole now. i can see it developing and growing. i have this crazy vision of myself in old shoes and socks, shorts, white tshirt (optional), goofy bandana, and shovel. covered in dirt and standing in a waist-deep hole. sun beating down. skin cancer. exercise. must get ready for bermuda.

no, i can't do anything. i thought of this while thinking of the other stuff but i forgot to write it down. what is progressive? what is change? what is growing? i want to run away. i sat in my dorm room looking out at the sunny afternoon. the glowing remaining leaves, the icicles on the trees. i knew it was frigid but it didn't look it. it looked sixty-five and lovely. what's progressive? what kind of goal can you possibly look to accomplish? i could read the rest of this chapter about the minoans... or i could leave. i could drive. i've been east and south. that leaves north and west. you can go pretty far in either direction. i have three hundred dollars and six gallons of gas. that would be something. something. this is nothing. every breath i waste in this room is one not spent on the road to... {i hate that i can sit here and not think of anywhere i want to go}

if i stop thinking of her when i'm lonely and angry and go back to thinking of you... is that progress?

you better be happy now

i was supposed to start writing an hour ago, before i got started talking about everything i just spoke of. and i was sitting in front of the fire and it was wonderful but it got too hot so i moved to this cool chair. and then i was watching an interview and talking but i turned the tv down and put on the music. i forgot that it did this. landon pigg was singing but he was singing what i was listening to, which is, he was an accordion. i couldn't look there and i couldn't look at the screen and i couldn't look at the chair so i closed my eyes. and i knew that what i saw was important and heartbreaking and more meaningful than anything i have seen in years but since i knew it, i corrupted it. and so i had to open my eyes again and talk some and close them again. it's hard to explain. i remember in the mountains i lay in my sleeping bag on the floor and listened. i never fall completely asleep when i do that, just forget and fall into the music. there's a certain way it looks to me, like nothing else does. i'm pretty sure i skipped this song back then, because there's no way to prepare. i wrote a journal for sociology this past week about my life in twenty years. it was full of money and cars and houses and holes and i hated it. i know what i want. i know why it wouldn't work. i know.

and there's a couple songs
that absolutely aren't songs at all
i don't know what they are
i can't even think straight
it's like each note moves a paintbrush an inch further
and it's a picture of her



i'm proud of you.

{is that transparent? it felt transparent.}

ambulancechaser

i was leaving the house today, mostly just to drive, nowhere terribly important to go, the beginning of radiohead's set at bonnarroo this past summer just coming on the speakers. i got to the end of my street, not hearing anything over the music, and looked right in time to see a firetruck and an ambulance scream past, sirens blaring, lights flashing. it was sensational. a little streak of color and light blowing through a slow day. the gas tank light flashed on my dashboard and the trip computer automatically changed to the 'miles remaining' code. 25 more on this dying tank. the needle had been buried in the red for two days anyway. i look both ways and saw nobody else, watched the ambulance round the next corner, and took off after him.

we flashed through the countryside, the truck at one street graciously noting my speed and letting me pass before pulling out, i was catching up at each curve while the boxy trucks had to slow a little. i never knew just how fast they drove, but we were doing near 70 on roads even i never did more than 60 or 65 on. they must train the drivers well.

the deuce lit up the countryside. it was strange seeing all the cars pulling off so the three of us could get by. they ended up taking the turn onto jordan road, same as i was going to do, so following them some more was no big deal. i know there are stormchasers but i've never heard of ambulancechasers before. i felt dirty. morbid. sensationalist. i just knew they were watching me following them. what kind of person does that?

we flew past farms and fields, light curves and valleys. i looked back in time to see what looked like one of my old friend's former houses demolished. i couldn't tell, really. no time, though, the ambulance was gaining. i went through a mental inventory of the people i knew who lived out here. they turned onto brack penny. i couldn't remember whether chad lived out here or if it was another road. there was nobody else around so i slowed down a lot before i turned, waited. i wondered if the ambulance drivers were watching me following them. i wondered what this would be like if i lived here, if i was watching them take every turn i was about to make. how terrible? how horrible? 20 miles to go.

i'd never been down brack penny but i turned anyway. couldn't be that far. i might have driven the whole road just to look around if i had any gas left. i sped up to catch them. it wasn't too hard, the road being a bunch of soft curves. still, the turbo volvo can take them faster than the huge box trucks. radiohead wailed on. i think we had a chance to have them come this spring for springfest. that is... if there weren't a lot of college girls in charge of it. i guess i'll have to make do with the fray... shame shame.

the firetruck pulled into a subdivision; the ambulance followed; i followed. it was laid out like a bad golf course, all flat with no trees. we sped on through out in the open down to the last street. the main road dead-ended with a basketball goal while the last little side street went a few houses down to the left and into a cul-de-sac. i slowed again and watched them stop, then pulled a three point turn to go back out the main road. i watched them, wondering if they saw me idling along. wondering if they even cared. i stopped in the middle of the road when i was partially obscured by the first house, where i could still look out my right rear window and watch them all. nobody else was around.

they didn't look to be in too much of a hurry. the men opened the back of the ambulance and pulled out the stretcher, wheeled it around to the front door. some went inside. radiohead wailed. 15 miles to go. i looked around the place. it was a typical cheap-ish country subdivision. there wasn't much grass anywhere. most of the ground was crumbling dirt and sand. all this sand. it's either sand or red clay out here. the openness of the area with the bright sunshine made it feel hot even though it wasn't. the lack of landscaping and grass helped. it looked like a desert. everything cheap. just nobody around.

the emergency workers milled around. eventually they walked the stretcher around to the front door and lifted it up inside. i was nervous sitting there. never let my foot off the brake. not long after, they wheeled an old lady out the front door, carried her down the steps, and sat her down again. she was all wrapped up and couldn't move, looked like a straight jacket. you could just see her old face and white hair above it all. they pushed her on to the back of the truck, opened the doors, and slid her in. a schoolbus was coming down the road. it stopped a couple houses away and some children got out, one with the biggest 12-year old afro i've ever seen. they stuffed some stuff in the back and shut the doors. i didn't want them to see me. the schoolbus closed its doors and crept forward. the ambulance backed up a little ways and stopped again. one of the ems guys was standing behind it looking around. a guy behind me backed out of his driveway. i couldn't take it anymore and sped off, passing the school bus and the kids and leaving the car, the ambulance, and the firetruck behind.

when i got to the station, i was looking at 10 miles to empty. i think the needle's been buried for three days now.

...

in other news, there are no boxing gyms anywhere on my side of the city. damn. i'll have to figure something out. i daydream in the car that i'm a special breed. a lightweight with the reach of someone over six feet tall. i dream that it's a rare combination. i dream of next summer in bermuda and me with the body of a boxer. i dream of getting into fights and knowing what to do. that's confidence. someday.

i want you

my uncle and cousin drove seven hours down I-95 today and are a couple miles down the road eating at a lovely little country barbeque joint with my mother, sister, father, grandmother, and other uncle. i declined to show because i feel like shit. i thought it was funny, though, how my mother seemed less angry at me for not wanting to come than she did when i told her i really didn't have an appetite. oh well. we drove around today and i played radiohead for her and she actually listened to it with me. it was nice.

i've kind of expanded my list of motorcycles to buy to include another newer one. ever since i got that magazine at borders a couple weeks back, the newer ones are sounding better and better... all of a sudden it doesn't sound like much fun to learn to ride on an old, archaeic one, almost dangerous. i'd love to have a black 1994 triumph speed triple or even a ducati monster from the past couple years, long as it looked good. these two appeal to me: exposed engine and frame, new and european in style, not japanese. the triumph is scary, the ducati sexy. yeah, someday.

i just sat down to watch 'a scanner darkly' and pretty much fell asleep. i don't think it was the movie's fault. my family's not going to be back for another two hours and change. i love having the house to myself.

miami was good. i'd post pics here if i wasn't so lazy. i'm sure if you wanted you could figure out how to find my webshots. everything went well until the last day, flying home. i've never flown alone before so the prospect of multiple delays, annoying seat-stealing foreigners, and broken airplanes (not to mention the prospect of staying the night in newark) was a little off-putting. but i survived so whatever. now i just have a sick nasty cold. damn. (you do not getta de toast).

meanwhile, a window has been open for weeks on my computer that i just found. a "friend" of mine on myspace whom i've never met (like most of them) just posted lots of pics of herself, photo-shoot style, semi-nude. i swear they're some of the most beautiful things i've ever seen. i just don't know where to meet girls like that, or who would have seen it coming from me. i don't really find it surprising that i'm so attracted to her, although the short pink hair, tattoos, and piercings probably wouldn't work for everyone. she looks so interesting, so much fun, so much more of a worthwhile place to expend thought and energy than anyone else i "know". heh, it's funny though... while i was flipping through the pics a song crept up into my head; the beatles' "i want you". remember it? it's a pretty cool song.

it makes me wonder... who would i be if i knew someone like that? if i was close to someone like that? if i was closer to someone like that? i've decided i'd probably like myself more.

oh yeah, and i need to learn boxing. i mean i'd love to know how to fight. mmm and to be in shape like that. don't fuck with me. i box.