so it goes

this is the 489th post.

another late night in a (mostly) dark room listening to music through headphones. this is a recipe for love. i'm almost happy to be writing all this.

tonight i went out for a walk with a wonderful friend. we crossed the quad and sat up against reynolda's second floor on a bench and talked for a long time. under the dovetail homecoming flags the chapel thrust up into the sky. for the first time, it looked to me like a church with a funny green hat on. symbolic mourners crowded the front steps, gathered in a circle with candles.

it was beautiful.






so this might be it. i've been writing on this thing since august, 2002. a little over five years. bet you didn't see that coming. it started as an idea but grew into a way for me to write about learning and learn from what i found myself saying. it's therapy and has been for a long time. it's how i'd find out i wasn't myself. it was and is, more than anything, the cobwebs that get cleared out of my head. without it, i think i'd go crazy. it's my sanity.

it's become clear over time that this thing can't be all that to me anymore. it doesn't work like it used to. it's hard to say what i want to when i know who is reading. it's far too easy to end up censored without even knowing it. a great friend once told me to quit talking around the issue. to just come out and say it, whatever it is. to be open and honest and forthright. i should have known better... not to ignore the advice but to implement it in a more intelligent manner.

i realize it has to end. it hurt to find that i have to protect those i love from myself and all that wanders around inside me. this thing will stay, an archive of a real person. five years of myself.

i guess, with time, it will end up as it was all along...

cobwebs.

gnite

call an ambulance

i had this song in my head all night while we were bowling and i just now figured out what it was. i'll keep it to myself... on to another lovely album i have a good feeling about.

bowling was wonderful as always. it just brings out the best in my, don't know why. there were only four of us this week so we only got one lane, in between a couple black college guys and a cute mid-20's white couple to our left. the guy had buzzed blond hair, a beard, a wifebeater, and these light tan plaid shorts that managed to look both comfortable and unpretentious... a feat for plaid shorts. hell, they even look like something i might wear. the girl had short blond hair and looked fairly reserved. she was cute, though. neither of them knew what they were doing but bowled fairly well anyway. she had a little butterfly tattoo right at the back of her skull. cute.

the first couple games were spent trying to win, you know. finally, around the end of the third game, we all just started fucking up and trying fun shit - only half an hour left in the night. the fourth game was entirely, well, shenanigans.

anytime someone would try to get ready to bowl backwards between their legs, you could always sneak up behind them and throw another ball first. i tried the backwards thing a couple times, the first throw being the best. once, after the white couple left, i stood in their lane with a little pink 8lb ball. i tossed it into our lane with a spin, catching it right on the left edge so that it slid out to the middle of the lane and curved right down to the center of the pins. i was proud of that one. i tried bowling with the cute girl's ball a couple times - it a flat pink 8lber with tiny finger holes. it acted aloof, always missed everything the first time i'd throw...

the best throw of the night, hands down, was the last. my friend went up and basically dropped her brown ball so that it ambled down the lane slowly. there were about five pins at the end, scattered at the left side. another girl made some comment about how it would never get there. i picked up one of the pink balls and waited. seeing what i was doing, everyone told me to go ahead and throw it but i didn't want to be late or early, as the machine arm would come down and block the last ball. i waited till i had it timed right and threw a quick, hard left-curve. her ball hit the left side of center, knocking right - towards center, pushing a pin ahead of it. about the time it hit center, my ball came in at a right proper clip from the right, exploding the center and sending all types of balls and pins to the left side, taking out everything else. i spun around, hands in the air. all the black kids were giving us props - whoaaa - and all the old black guys to our left were looking at them - did you see what they just did?? i just strutted back, received due high-fives and sat down, muttering about how that there was the last shot. that was it. it's over now. i wish i had a video of that now...

sorry, that was a really long bowling story.

frotteurism (n) - the paraphiliac practice of achieving sexual stimulation or orgasm by touching and rubbing against a person without the person's consent and usually in a public place. (m-w)

ok, not exactly. i'll discreetly stare at certain people from across the room. make awkward conversation with a petite cheerleader who roomed with a friend two years ago. i'll follow a pretty girl walking, especially if she's smoking and i can take it in. secondhand smoke doesn't count, after all. i was running in the woods today - actually, around this time, catching up with two friends who didn't feel like waiting while i stretched - and passed by a mother and daughter walking in the other direction. for a couple seconds afterwards, i could smell their combined scent on the breeze. makes running a lot easier.

all i want is for you to come crawling back. crawling back to me.

with my eyes closed in the near dark, this song reminds me of heroin. trainspotting was on last night... makes it almost seem like an acceptable idea. in my mind, i'm standing on the side of a small hill between a forest and a soccer field. there are mole tunnels in the ground and i'm sticking a small pipe in them, searching for a good spot, explaining to my friends present that the junk... it's like water when you've run two miles. it's like being hungry even as you're so full you feel sick. being thirsty when your mouth is full of drink. it's such a feeling of loss, even after the first time, of emptiness, of need so overwhelming you lose yourself in it. that's what this song feels like. i don't want it to end.

C.I.A.

only you know what you've done.

i've been back for a couple days now. desperately pretending i can be forthright. my roommate just signed away his next ten years to the army. i just hope the war is over soon.

i think about writing so much all day but now i don't have anything to say. i wish i was drunk.

bare walls.

not being shy.

gin.

pretty girls.

bowling.

i think tomorrow night i'm gonna take a couple shots and walk around the campus in the dark with a good friend of mine. it's so easy to talk like that. i'm looking forward to it.

i wonder how it is i can be completely different depending on who i'm talking to. i don't realize it. i can't stop it. i don't really know who i am. that's scary.

i haven't really talked to you since you started going out with him. i guess it's because it just fucking gets to me somewhere. it's frustrating to be forced to accept that the guys you go for are not one bit like me. i never really liked him, not in high school, ever. he's arrogant. sort of an ass. i mean, i hope he treats you well... we were in a goddamn band together. i wasn't his friend... but the way he treated the guy who thought he was his friend? i hated it. and all these little catchwords? i see them. i hate them too. some days, i guess, i just hate.

there's something strangely endearing about first spending time with someone over the body of a sick girl in a friend's apartment bathroom.

judy and the dream of horses. no fucking kidding.

why are all girls so enthralled with horses? i mean... it's fun-ish. but not that great. not as great as they make it out to be. horsey girls. shit, and they seem to be the interesting ones.

i have shin splints like a motherfucker. it's real nice out in reynolda, though. i might head out there again tomorrow. if i can make myself. it's all about hating your body.

am i the only one with nobody to miss? sometimes i feel like the only lonely boy in the world.

explosions (in my mind)

i have that same old sickness. the one i had earlier in the summer. the one where i get this deja-vu feeling but it's so strong and so potent that it's overwhelming. takes me back to a dream some early morning, some frustration of still being in bed and stuck in limbo. the song in my head changes just a little bit, to a more mocking, taunting part. everything in the room gains a personality and sneers at me. laughs at me. i swear to god it's true. the things i've done a thousand times before, the places i've seen more times than i can remember. i have to lay down for a while or it will get to me. my head shrinks, pressure like someone lit a fire at the back of my skull. sweating. headache. nausea. my mother thinks it's premonitions, migraines. feels like death to me.

it's only going to feel like 93 tomorrow. how cool is that? (rimshot) after all the 100-degree days we've been having... seems like an excellent day to get some mulching done. i'll go out in the morning and get a truckfull up the road, spend all day shoveling it from the bed out onto our lawns at various places. oh, it's a dream come true. i guess i never dug that hole, though, so i need some sort of shovelwork.

fuck. not much to say tonight. today was all wrong anyway. an off-day i guess. maybe it's cause i was so sick last night. i don't know. i was driving out to fuquay this morning and i could tell that it was all wrong. the music i was so fond of, it felt empty, same this afternoon. maybe it's cause i hadn't been to fuquay for that reason in years, i don't know. it felt different to be inside my head, in control of my body. like something had changed way down in the key, in the core, in the root of myself. way down as far as you can go. the taproot i came from. not the same person. like i'd just come off major surgery, hospital maintenance, yesterday, and there were still some fucked up chemicals floating around in my body. not everything right. lights on in the daytime will do that to me. it's not a good idea. driving out to garner to drop books off at the library, same thing. one of my favorite albums and i just couldn't get into it. dinner didn't taste good even though it was one of my favorites. i can't have enough to drink tonight. still thirsty even though i feel fat and bloated.

tomorrow is another day.

hopefully i'll be myself again.

fuck it

i guess i lost