zen and the art of hammocks

i was just about to start writing when i got caught up researching hammocks. see, i want one to somehow stuff into my dorm room to sleep in. i've read on hammock sites - hammock propaganda sites? - of how wonderful they are to sleep in. much better than beds. no pressure points. so they say. i was out this afternoon for a little over an hour and a half laying and reading and thinking and enjoying everything. obligatory writing regret: i wish i could have been writing this then because i was so much more in the moment than now. the only similarities being my clothing and the song in my head, which isn't nothing. anyway, i was out there before dinnertime, our old rope hammock, a watery cup of pepsi (replaced the coke i got from hardees earlier), a copy of zen and the art of motorcycle maintenance... and eventually the cat. i've already said how that cat loves to hang around people when we're outside. she's actually lounging in her favorite inside spot right now: at the bottom of my ottoman rubbing up against the front pocket of my bookbag (gum). 'take your momma out' on an eternal loop between my ears. an odd song to meditate on, but it works. it was pretty similar out as to two days ago, clouds in the sky but not obscuring the sun. maybe a little breeze but not much. that kind of country subdivisionish silence which is actually distant airplanes and cars drowning out the birds and footsteps. actually, today, the house clothes dryer exhaust fan was predominant for a while. it, like most other things, faded away sometime while i wasn't paying attention, replaced by a lawnmower i didn't notice start.

the cat lay down almost under the hammock so i scooched over to the edge to scratch her whenever i paused the book. spoke to her a little. it startled me when i actually made a sound so i had to whisper. no reason i should have to whisper in my own backyard but i enjoyed the feeling of not disturbing the scene so i did. stared up at the sky a little bit. same big black aviators under a dark blue bandanna. i have no idea what exactly i looked like. the contrast from the aviators again brought out the life in the leaves. that green against the blue, shadowed and lit by the sun, made them all that much more vibrant. more thick, more real, more invincible. i'm reading zen and trying to imagine the narrator as a real person. i mean i know he's a real person, the author, but i'm getting to know him better through the first five chapters. trying to take time to appreciate being there, like vonnegut said. thinking about how hammocks are supposedly good to sleep in. after a while, i put the book carefully down on top of my old sandals and lay down corner to corner so my back was straighter and the spreader bars flipped up opposite, leaving me in a valley. draped a leg over the side and my other arm behind my head, closed my eyes.

turned into one of those afternoon nap-ish times when i can't remember ever losing conscious thought, just waking up to a new one every time i'd open my eyes. this is when i would have been writing. it was the perfect time. a jet contrail spread out across the sky behind me. i remember thinking how it looked like a mark a toddler would make with a crayon on a white wall just for a second before abe lincoln takes it away. i'm not sure why abe was there. i was still a little medit-a-sleepy. our neighbor had started mowing his grass. a big brown dust cloud followed him wherever he went and i could track his progress even as the lawnmower was lost behind a hill or a tree. i closed my eyes again and pictured the modulation of the engine noise. i could see every turn, every hill even then because the sound is so different depending on how the tractor was spatially oriented. don't often think like that, in sounds... i guess a blind man would know what i'm talking about. listening to a mower a quarter mile away driving in circles.

a door on our deck opened and my mother started bringing things out and setting them on the table out under the veranda. i went ahead and got up, quietly, slipping my sandals on and folding the hammock up before anyone said a word to me. i wasn't in the mood to take instruction at all. better that i just go on and do it beforehand. hung it up in the basement and went back out to gather the rest. i wore the bandanna and aviators to dinner. it felt good.



so now i will go look at some more hammocks. do some exercises while watching the end of the braves game and go sleep. big stuffs in a couple days.


**real quick i want to say god bless blogger's new auto-save doohickey. i just tried to delete something after fooling around a bit and, having clicked outside the text box, navigated back two pages. nothing i've written tonight is world-shifting but it means a lot to me, everything does. thanks blogger.

right in the head

i think i might just be a humanist. and a reluctant socialist at that. i think if i was planning on being poor, it would be a lot easier to believe what i want to. fact is, there's a lot of things i want to do and have and i'm smart enough and am going to work hard enough to get them. around that time, i'm not going to be looking forward to a socialist equality-for-all philosophy. we'll see. i'm pro-people. i think that's the christian thing to do. i'll be a decent human being. there are so few of those out there. i'll be alright someday.

i wish it was easier to write tonight. i had all these wonderful words earlier today. really wanted to sit here and pound something out. i think it's better for my mental health the more i write anyway. what i really want to do is take a motorcycle and ride a long ways, writing at night. instead, my eyes are drawn to the tv - where the braves are playing cantaloupe-head bonds in san francisco - or the music, which isn't great and is stealing my attention.

this afternoon, though, was beautiful. around one, i snuck out to do some work on the backyard: pushmowing down a hill, mowing the dog yard and weedeating the same. mixed some gatorade for the job - my new way of tricking myself into drinking a lot of water. got a shower afterwards and drove out to the library and back, picking up a copy of zen and the art of motorcycle maintenance for bermuda. looking forward to another life-changing book. i was in a good mood already and it was nice to get out and drive my car; i hadn't in a while. windows down cause the a/c wasn't working real well, acoustic music going all nicely. i don't think i broke the speed limit by more than five the entire time. after i got back, took my leftover gatorade, a copy of man without a country, and the hammock and retired to the old cherry tree outside our driveway.



it's not easy to describe it out there but i can guarantee i felt a lot more fluid out there than i do now. man without a country is an extremely human book and i love it for that. after player piano last summer and slaughterhouse-five this summer, i feel like a full-fledged convert to the religion of vonnegut. i'd recommend man without a country to absolutely anyone. it's just the kind of book that makes you want to be a better human being.

our old cat wandered out my direction about the time i was getting set up. she's getting pretty mean in her ancientness but she still hangs around the family when she can, especially outside. so she comes trotting up about the time i get the hammock tied up between the tree and a post. i picked her up and tossed her in - she used to spend a lot of time swinging in there alone, but she didn't feel like it and hopped out. i got in and, after scratching a bit at the tree, she came back and walked around under me, rubbing her tail around against me. i'd reach through the ropes and scratch her head or rub her under the chin. it was pretty quiet out, which is amazing considering the density of people around these parts these days. used to be not so unusual but what with all the subdivisions built recently and the last section of 540 going almost in our back yard... not to mention our old neighbor moving out a couple years ago and the asshole russians renting the place next door. always speeding up their driveway in old piece of shit cars and all the ricer friends. i mean it's a fairly stereotyped group this kid belongs to but they are what they are. i can't really say much for the thumping japanese ricers anyway...

point is, it was pretty quiet out. even when i figure on it being nice and quiet there's still the rumble of a car on the street or the rattle of a lawnmower in some yard behind me. lots of birds at least. helicopters. planes. someday i'll have a house far enough away from everyone that they can't bother me and i can't bother them. someday. i happened to look up from my book as a butterfly landed on the edge of the hammock in the sunlight. i stared at him for a second. even through my sunglasses, i could see the black iridescence of his wings. calm little thing. i looked a ways to my right where my dog was laid out just on the other side of the fence in the shade watching me. when i looked back, the butterfly was gone, fluttering drunkedly around the truck out by the grass's edge. i went back to reading.

every now and then, when i'd hit a particularly heartfelt quote, i'd turn the book over and lean back, looking up through the tree limbs to the sky. it was cool for july. the view from behind my sunglasses was exactly how i've gotten used to taking pictures - a touch underexposed. i figured if i ever became a noted photographer, i'd need some signature style and maybe that could be it. that touch of underexposure makes everything sharper, more understated. more contrast, more true color. i can see it now: shooting for bike magazine in england. some triumph taking a corner, sunset behind us. haunting photo, that.

after a while, i heard something moving out in front of me. down past my feet, a rabbit ran up. he paused a couple feet away from my toes under the hammock, looking at me with nervous rabbit eyes. i saw bear grylls break a rabbit's neck and then karate chop the poor thing on tv tonight. this one wasn't in danger but i'm sure he felt like it. hell, i'm sure he had no idea i was there until our eyes met. he got moving again and scurried off behind me, all the way down to the woods. don't often get one running up to you, not even out here.

it was a beautiful time, though. i finished the book and remembered to think hard about that precise time and environment because it was so nice. it was in there... that people don't often enough realize and appreciate it when they're happy. i'll remember that.



i've been waking up with a song in my head. not a real song, though probably closely related to one. i'll entrench it in my brain laying there under the sheets and hold it till i can go downstairs and fiddle it out on my guitar. two days in a row now. usually a bass riff first and then some chords when i get that down. rarely a breakdown. i can never figure those out. never lyrics. for some reason, as much as i read and as much as i write, i cannot for the life of me write musical lyrics. it's just something else entirely. i think it's the disconnect. the ability to write about something without necessarily using linked prose or complete sentences. without actually connecting thoughts. just one line at a time. one idea at a time. maybe i'll figure it out eventually. i'm sure the music is mediocre even for a twenty-year old who can't sing, isn't in a band, and has never recorded anything. oh well. at least i'm doing something.



i need to be a decent human being. there's so much to be said for someone who is simply that, these days. and maybe i'll end up a doctor. maybe i'll end up a writer. maybe a photographer. maybe a bum. but dear god, let me not kill the planet. let me not waste breath. let me be worth more than the sum of my parts.

fat children took my life

i'm hoping for good things to come.

i'm hoping i stop being a dyslexic typer. 'goot' isn't a word. 'this' doesn't mean 'shit' and vice versa. what happened to me? i can't write words with a pen and paper either. handwriting suffering. words run together. misspelling dumb things because i write the wrong letters, not because i can't spell it. i think i'm degenerating.

two weeks till bermuda. three weeks after and i'll be back in the tre-fo. (yeah, i said tre-fo, got a problem with that?) four classes, no labs. maybe a job working with our field hockey team. hooray. football season. double hooray. drinking alcohol. maybe other drugs. whatever presents itself. sex on the roof? what? where did that come from?

i keep flopping on big decisions like... what should i do with my life? figure on now playing a waiting game. in other words - i give up for now. probably take the mcats, see how that goes. keep the ole gpa up up up. then choose between the pharm, pa, physical therapy, med school later on. who knows. shoot for the stars, that's what i tell myself. leads to being dr. so and so. is that really worth it? are the sacrifices worth it?

today was sunday school lake day. all the families in my parents sunday school class trek from rural-ish north carolina to the lake to show off boats and jet skis and cook food. i was in a bad news bears mood this morning but went anyway. i usually feel better when i get on the water. especially towing ski-bob, that's just funny. had another 'dagone, looka that!' moment at the docks. always a fan of those. received news that the father my father is perpetually jealous of bought a brand-new boat and had it at the lake. caught up with them round the cookout area. food and whatnot ensued. i didn't speak to anyone except adults because i'm antisocial like that. came back from the bathroom once to find some of the adults gathered around a drainage pipe running underneath the walkway with a little yellow and black garter snake poking his head out. the women were scared the hell onto tables of the poor little thing and one of the more pious and churchly guys was dead set on killing it to save the cookout. a bunch of us really didn't understand it. he seemed to be the only guy wanting to kill it, backed up by a bunch of womeny women. i guess it was his man moment.

it was odd, though. for the sake of easier dealings with everyone, nobody ever argued about the snake's future, just let him stand there alone guarding the pipe, a slingblade in one hand and a small hatched in the other. this is the kind of man who listens to rascal flatts. i could have gone and stood him down saying that the snake would not die today and the snake would have been fine. what could he have done? i chose the route of... well if you hear anything, just don't turn around to look. the snake, outwitting him, never left the hole farther than a couple inches. oh, it's a six or eight footer he'd say. he's gonna eat my fourteen-year old daughter, he thought. we assured him it was not poisonous, it was really scared, and that it just wanted to leave if he'd let it. another guy blocked one hole with a large rock and offered to block the other side and just let it loose when we left but one side was left open and guarded viciously. i wanted to go catch it bare-handed and walk it to the woods but never did.

eventually a couple park officers drove past and he yelled them down, complaining about the deadly garter snake in our drainage pipe. the woman officer, scared of it, conferred with the knucklehead country boy, who probably drooled in response. i'm not really joking; you should have seen this guy. so they leave and come back with a big huge long telescoping metal rod, which she uses to scare the poor thing out of the pipe and into the woods. and lord, when it left the pipe! monster must have been 12 feet long! (it was three feet long...) people started walking down the woods path to the boats and he warned us to watch out in case it assaulted our women and children on the trail...

the strangest part of it all was the image of him standing there, this pious... well, this soft, round man... standing over this little scared snake wielding a slingblade, wanting to save the picnic by exposing the children to the slaughter of an innocent animal.

anyway, my dad got his vindication when we were taken out for a joyride on the other guy's new boat. first of all, he couldn't get it started while we were sitting there on it. i didn't think we were going to leave the shore. well, he finally got it going and we got to talking about it. 135hp mercruiser engine. really? i thought. we've got that in our damn sea-doo. my parents commented on how roomy it was inside. it felt pretty cramped to me. how comfortable the ride was. are you kidding me? he said yeah, he'd gotten it up to 45 or so at wot. later on, i got our family fun 13ft sea-doo up to 50 with no problem and it was more comfortable than the boat. my dad drove it for a while and gave it back. later on, while we were riding on the sea-doo, i asked him about our last boat, a 22ft bayliner. it would have put this 16ft crownline to shame. 220hp v-8 trumps that 135hp v-6 any day. it was nice, really. felt good to badmouth his new stuff. perfect husband. perfect wife. perfect child. out boat was better. and he's a state fan. i don't feel sorry for him.




yeah, so hi. i'm pretty close to putting you back on my buddy list. i hate how technological that sounds but it's true. might not be a big deal for a lot of people but it's been a long time, you know? you know.

got nothing to show

terrific news today but i'm not gonna talk about it.

what makes sense? i was riding in the backseat of my sister's car this evening on the way to cold stone for celebratory icecream with my family. she was driving with my dad in front of me and my mother beside me. as usual when i'm not driving, i had my headphones plugged into my head, drowning out the shit radio my sister inevitably flips on. i have issues with the radio. anyway, we were out in the country a ways, passing big lots with grass and lots of trees, large new houses tucked away back in corners with manicured driveways and frilly mailboxes dotting the road. the rest of them started arguing about one thing or another. i couldn't really hear it over the steady drum beat and guitars of 'everywhere you turn'... but i could tell it was there. the timbre of my mother or father's voices rising, my sister's upturned palms and dumb "it's never my fault" attitude. it's the same fight i've heard a hundred thousand times before. doesn't even matter what the words are. i don't even know why it happens so often... it's just that she hasn't figured out how not to fight. i don't think it's too hard. i just say things like, "whatever is easier" or "yeah, that's fine with me" a lot. they love me for it. i hardly ever have any confrontations. it's not that i don't care about anything or that i'm a pushover at all, just that i know most things aren't worth fighting over and i don't make it so that's the solution to a dumb problem. my mother complains to me that she's been such a bitch this summer (she didn't say that, persay). i wish it didn't have to be that way.

regardless, i'm still a uke whiz, somehow. i guess it just hits me sometime. i was in the kitchen earlier strumming away while watching Man v. Wild. radiohead's "how to disappear completely". couple bright eyes tunes, "at the bottom of everything", "first day of my life", and my personal favorite, "make war". flipping them out like it's nothing. all of a sudden it's fun again. i'll start performing someday.

given half a chance, i will kill again.

i'd like to meet some new people. people like me. maybe i'll start a weekly poker game and invite kids from the boards to play. drink beer, play cards, talk sports. sounds good to me. if only i weren't so awkward and shy. meh, oh well.


oh, and yeah, i know this page hurts your eyes to read, dear. i made it that way. see, the white letters on dark background will make you see lines for hours. i don't know why i did it that way, discouraging people... oh, and the background is tinted to make you barely see the slightest red. enjoy that. confusing, i know.

wolves at night

just five minutes ago i was trotting around the room playing my ukulele and dancing. oh you should have seen it. if there's anything hotter than line-dancing in the flickering light of a friends rerun while flicking out bright eyes from a little uke, i'd like to know. you really should wish you were there, i might have serenaded you. it's that good of a night.

and no, i didn't go see the harry potter movie last night.

in fact, i didn't even know it was coming out. i swear to god. i thought it must have been the book or something.

letterman is on tv in all his glory singing along to the TMO lyrics in my headphones. i swear to god he is. no kidding.

i'm hopeful. hopeful for the future of wake forest basketball. i don't want to jynx anything, but a couple months ago, the tenth-ranked kid in the country committed. this was spectacular news. well, tomorrow, the third-ranked kid in the country is announcing his decision. word is, he might come to wake. not only that, but his good friend, the eighteenth-ranked kid in the country, who has stated already that he wants to play ball with kid 2, is expected to commit with him. the only school on both their lists? wake. which leaves us (definitely maybe) with three top-20 basketball recruits for 2009. raise your hands in the air and wave them like you just don't care. this must be what it feels like to be a carolina fan. the fact that we might take kid 2 from them just makes it sweeter.

to skip. to the deacs. to fires everywhere. cheers.

at the same time, i'm depressed. depressed because i'm not convinced i'm really important to anyone. and i know inside that it's wrong but i feel like saying it anyway. in the spirit of ranking things tonight, i feel like if most people i know well from wake were to list their top-25 friends, i'd make it. maybe a couple, i'd be top-10. from high school, maybe 1 would list me top 5. that's it. i can't think of anyone i'd be top 3 or 2 or even #1. i really just want to be somebody's #1. i have a fine number of acquaintances, just not a best friend. which is to say, i'm nobody's best friend. that's a little bit of a sad place to be. i'd love to be that important to someone but i can't really say i am. i guess i'll feel a little better if i can accept the idea that people think of me in any context when i'm not intruding on their lives.

what i'm really concerned with, maybe, is what if someone five years from now finds a picture with me in it? what would they think of me? what if it's one of the ten thousand pictures i've taken? will they remember who was behind the camera? i already want to be remembered in a better light and i've not even gone anywhere yet.

the worst of it all is that i know in my head and in my heart the one thing that would make this all better. the one thing endowing me with endless self-esteem. the one thing that would make the rest of the world stop or keep spinning or explode. whatever. but it's just me. and having to face the world alone doesn't make it easier.



i think if i get a couple hundred dollars together i should buy an exercise machine. i don't know if it would fit in my dorm room, but i'd enjoy it. maybe not enjoy, persay, but i'd try and get good use out of it. i think we'd both benefit from the experience. what i really need most is free. i need to be running. sometime, anytime. riding my bike... something. i have no motivation these days. some aerobic exercise. i wish i had a pool. that would be easier during the summer. i don't even know what i'm talking about anymore.

and i need to get rid of this baby fat on my belly. make fun of me, whatever. i don't like it.

and i want all these high school people to quit inviting me to big drunk parties. never was much for those unless i know the people involved. and by that i mean, have spoken to any of them in the past two years. give me an intimate setting, please. anytime.

joy, my god, where have you been?

i'd also like some old rayban wayfarers.

in fact, it's amazing, my capacity to talk about wants. i could do it all night. i really need to find some haves to get excited about. i'm gonna go to goodwill sometime soon, maybe tomorrow. hopefully that will be a fruitful trip. here's hoping the one in garner is better than the one in the dash. the tre-fo.



shit, well i've run out of things to say. hey boston, feel free to talk to me anytime. hey charleston, i wish i could help you.

hey poor, you don't have to be poor anymore. jesus is here.

looking over my shoulder

you know damn well i can't say anything or i'd hate myself forever. your move. i never realized i was so insecure.

ok, i probably did. i figure if i ever record music, i'll be the next elliott smith. you know, but without the talent. maybe i'll just record it alone and be self-deprecating and introspective. maybe that's enough?

i'm not even going to respond to that. the music's my shield tonight. can't hurt me.

i'm full of wishes but even more full of fear.