Monday started productively. I finished the necesary 501(c)(3) application materials and sent them to Barry at ACC's Non-Profit Center to have him review them. Hopefully there won't be too many corrections to make.

I almost immediately turned that game I had found, but at 1:00 in the afternoon it had lost a great deal of its charm. I finished it and fiddled with some of its other features, but soon left to work on my bike at YBP and never returned to it. Unfortunately, YBP was closed, and I wasn't able to work on my bike. On my way over, though, I had repeated thoughts of the couple hundred dollars in my wallet and fear that somebody would rob me. It's never happened, and I've only heard of one friend being mugged in that neighborhood. Still, it's the only place in Austin where that sort of thing happens, as far as I know. So I stashed my money elsewhere when I got back.

I was feeling crappy that evening, probably because I'd wasted a good hour or two playing a game and I felt guilty about it. I went for a walk, but that diddn't help things too much. So I rode over to Bikes Across Borders and started working on a bike. Ignosio spent a half hour showing me the shop and then recommending a bike to me. It was already mostly built, and all I had to do was true the wheels, align the gears, and touch up a few other issues. I stayed there for probably three hours working on the bike, and it was almost done when I left.

As I was going, a man who stays at the Rhizome tried to tell me something in Spanish, and I was completely incapable to understanding him. It led to a lot of miming, and ultimately I realized that he wanted me to leave a gap in the door while I was locking up. That was the second convesation somebody tried to have with me in Spanish that day.

That night I looked for another game. I found a good one which I played until about three in the morning. The next I was groggy from it, and I was in a foul mood for most the day.

It started with a lunch out with Adam, Wyatt, Sarah, and Matt. I was quiet for most of the meal, but I wasn't unhappy at the time and nobody seemed bothered by my silence. We each bought something to share with everyone, and the feast was ultimately exsessive. Almost everyone was slow and happy from the amount of food we ate. There was a great deal left over, too. Thinking back on it now, I wonder if any of us cleaned up after ourselves. I hope so. I know the people who work there, at least in so far as I recognize them and they recognize me. It would be embarassing if they now associated me with a big mess.

When I got back, I caught the tell end of Lauren giving a tour to a weaver named Margo. She wanted a studio to set up her loom in. She seemed nice, like my mother. As she was leaving, she and her friend talked about how much she had changed in the last forty years. She had started out as a bank teller in Wisconsian, but he led her to become a free spirit in Austin.

I spent the next couple of hours in a groggy, full stupor. I played my banjo some, pulling a chair out into the courtyard so I could sit under the sun. I felt good, and I remember feeling a bit of pride that I could now play in front of people. Aim was here, as was Lauren. My playing wasn't great, and I knew it. But still, I was overcoming a sort of stage fright. The wierd thing is, for the next hour--every time I walked by Aim, I half expected her to comment positively on my playing.

I gave another tour a painter named Court just before sunset. She seemed like a calm, solid person, and she dressed with a pleasent amount of class. She was kind of like Ilana, and she was also from Chicago. She wasn't interested in our space, though, and as I kept trying to sell one to her, she eventually made the comment that her paintings are her living. She takes them very seriuosly. And it's funny how that hurt, even though she didn't intend it to. Because ultimately she was distinguishing herself from the people here, who couldn't dress with the same sort of class. We couldn't sell our work. We were just acting at being artists.

I was really upset after that, and in an effort to feel better I played football with Enrique. It helped me blow off some steam, though even that ended with a frustrating session. I threw the ball onto the roof of one of the warehouses, it got stuck, and I needed to attach several poles to eachother to scrape it back down. At least I got it down again, though.

I was exhuasted after all of that, and even when Christian showed up for a surprise visit and had to lay down and take a nap. I didn't get up again until everyone left for Bikes Across Borders. I finished working on my bike, and basically came to accept the fact that I wouldn't be able to join them on the trip because I wouldn't be able to find somebody to replace me in the warehouse. Still, I was proud to have polished the bike to the point where it could do everything in perfect operating condition. It certainly didn't start that way. And when I handed it off to Roy and told him I probably wouldn't be able to join them and would like to see somebody else ride it down to Mexico, he seemed really grateful.

When I got back, I wanted to immediately start playing the game I had found. However, I knew I would have to work all day on New Years and needed good energy, so I made some lentil barley stew. Aim, Tuesday, Matt, and I ended up staying up until midnight talking, which was good. At one point Matt asked us to each talk about our year. Afterwards, I decided to play the game anyway. It kept me up until three in the morning again. And once again, I was groggy when I woke up.

Met with an older artist, a woman who used to be a blacksmith before she shattered her wrist. She wanted to see our studio and consider a position here. Unfortunately, the space wasn't quiet what she was looking for, so she declined our invitation. Still, we had a long conversation which culminated in her expressing interest in teaching classes in our free school.

I met with my cousin Pat after that. I rarely see him, and this was the first time I saw him since I was still basically a child. He always struck me as intellegent, probably because he's worked for both NASA and The Pentagon. I was pleased at how easily I could make him and his guests laugh. They seem thoroughly impressed by our warehouse.

I then went to Bikes Across Borders for a meeting, but left after waiting for it to start for 30 minutes. I don't really feel like I have the right to go on the trip, anyway, on account of my not building a bike like everyone else. Maybe I still can in time, but first I need to find people to replace me at the warehouse.

I then took the long bike ride to Wheatsville and bought a lot of good food: polenta, barley, lentils, split-peas, dried apricots, raisens, and bananas. I also "sampled" each of the chunks of energy. The one with chocolate and greens is by far the best treat I've eaten in months. The others are so-so. Before I left, I also grabbed a Slingshot planner for the coming year. Hopefully, I'll actually stay organized this time.

As I was checking out, my bag of lentils burst over the conveyer belt. I ran to grab another bag to put it in, and the cashier was very encouraging of my desire to put all the beans in a new bag. I think she thought I was embarassed, although I wasn't, because she kept saying that it happened all the time to other customers. That was probably a smart thing to say, just encase I was embarassed.

When I came back I immediately started making split-pea soup. Matt asked if he could have some, too, and I told him he could if he bought me some carrots, potatoes, and collard greens from HEB. He did so, and then Aim brought over some collards from her own garden as well as a bag of broccoli. As I mixed all the ingredients together, I realized that Matt hadn't gotten collards but turnip greens. So much the better. The soup was delicious and everyone had several bowls. Ryan joined us as well, bringing a bottle of red wine.

The conversation was good. Matt talked about older women hitting on him at work, and I told the story of the Amazonians accosting me in the allyway. We laughed for hours, and I felt good for hours after our conversation ended. I proceeded to seek a new game, and found one I enjoyed. I then spent nearly four hours toying with it.

bleh

I am so hollow today. But it's not really that. There's a power inside, but it's unfocused. I have trouble figuring out what it wants. I cannot put it into words. But I want to, so that's what this is for. This entry, I warn you, will be a RAMBLE. It will be as unfocused as the desire or pain or whatever is inside of me.

Maybe all this is is a song. Maybe it's the echo of The Dresden Doll's Sex Changes. Because I was empty today, because my heart was hollow and cavernous, it was easy for a song to fill it with noise. It's now bouncing around in there, making me fill like I'm full.

But I fear that I'm losing parts of my soul. I fear that my drive and creativity are slipping. Time goes by too quickly. I seem to be crippled inside, incapable of finishng anything.

It's this damn essay. The Breathing Mountain keeps me fettered to this chair. I sit here, futily attempting to make progress on this piece, while what I really want is to go outside. I want to be outside while the sun is out. I want to see light. But as long as I have to finish this essay, I stay inside. I look at this screen. I try, try, try to pump something out. But I also get distracted, because I need release. And it wastes my time. I waste my time in front of a computer all day. Nightmares about it.

Oh, none of this sounds right. Maybe it's all true. But it only shows and reinforces the literal structure of my thoughts. Where's the poetry? I can get poetic in my emails, but not in my journal? Of course, it's at simple as bringing lyrisism to your lines. It's a matter of . . . ah, fuck. Fuck, fuck, fuck. If I was painting, what would those lines look like? Splatters of black, the edge serrated. For every thought in words, there is an echo in image. There is a dialouge that happens in my own mind. Noticing this dialouge is the key to becoming a good writer.

But will I publish this blog? Sure, nobody else is going to read it. But for my own sake, don't I want to read back over entries of a certain calliber? Because this isn't. But maybe I'll appreciate the rawness later. Ah, cliche is a word that should be illistrative, that hints at the dialouge between thought and image, but is really just thought. I say raw, but I don't think of rawness. What image really comes to mind here? Exposed pipes. This is a type of architecture. It is a design choice. It leaves the underbelly, the functioning of the space visable to its occupents and visitors. This entry has no drywall or ceiling. It hides nothing beneath a smooth marble finish. It is what it is.

the last night of seu jacinto

Tonight was possibly the last night of Seu Jacinto. Lula will be returning to Brazil shortly, and he may never come back to The States. Without him, Seu Jacinto is . . . well, not dead exactly, but less lively. I've heard that he is their heart. Without him, things may simply stop pumping.

My face is little numb from all the beer I drank tonight. (Which wasn't much, really. I'm a light drinker.) The only reason I mention that is because I just stroked my face, and--well, there's not a lot of feeling. It's kind of neat, having a numb face. Maybe I should get drunk more often.

Anyway, off top.

The story here revolves around Seu Jacinto. (I hope I'm spelling that correctly.) Lauren kept emphasizing that "This could be our last show!" And so I had to go, because I like their music and needed to say goodbye. And, I had to be there as a friend. Well, maybe "had to" is too strong in both cases. What I'm really trying to say is that it would have been nice if I showed up, so I did.

Josh was on the fence, and at the last minute he decided not, too. In response, I did something interesting. (Or, maybe not "interesting"--but uncharacteristic.) The two of them have been on the rocks recently. Not horribly so, but noticably. And as soon as they move their seperate ways, I suspect they'll go their seperate ways, too. Lauren is aware of this, at least unconsciously, and I think a lot of her anger towards Josh is derived from a fear of losing his friendship. Even though she gets mad about him for "taking advantage of the warehouse," she wouldn't get mad at me for the same things. And it's because she's not really, entirely mad about what he's doing to this space. She's frustrated to see a close friend drift away, and these instances are where they come out.

I suspect this has been happening, in some ways, throughout her life. That's she's dealt with unfair rejection again and again, starting in middle school on account of something as arbitrary as her being Jewish. Her response has been agression. She fights back, because that's what she learned at that point in her life. Unfortunately, it's one of those defense mechanisms that estranges people even further, pushing loved ones away even as she wants to cling to them.

Josh, for his part, seems to drift from friend to friend. Why is that? I suspect she's still somebody important to him, but that it's become too much of a hassle and he's not sure what to do, so he's just going to abandon the friendship. Or something like that. I think he still cares. They both still care. But he responds to stress by backing away and she responds by pushing, and it's just leading to the two of them getting more and more distant.

So, anyway, today I did something uncharacteristic. I made an intervention. A little intervention. But one that I believed was the right choice. When Josh said he wouldn't go, I told him that, "Lauren would really like it if you were there." And then I even offered to pay the cover. And in the next moment he was getting his shoes. And we were riding our bikes, and we were there.

After the show, she gave him such a hug. I was even a little bit jealous. But it clearly did matter to her, and she definitely did really like it that he was there. So maybe I helped things out between them. Maybe I helped Josh show that he still really cared about her. I don't know. I was told never to touch a butterfly coming out of its cocoon. I was told not to interfer with things, because I'll only make matters worse. But maybe this was the right choice.

saving what is sacred

There are beautiful things in this world, things that I often overlook. When I realize that they're there, I get the inspiration to write poetry about them. I want to capture this beauty in words. And, even if it is vane, to wear those words like a badge of my awareness. But I worry that the act of writing is a sort of defilement. It's me barging into an ancient ceremony and taking pictures with a cheap digital camera. It's sending these photos to National Geographic. It's transforming experience into a commodity. "No sooner are words pinned down then they fold their wings and die."

Maybe there will be a point when inspiration fills me with such abundance that I can write about it. It will spill over at all hours of the day, and to put it into words would only be to catch the droplets falling over the side. But for now, I need to keep these things in me. I need to nurture them, water them, keep them warm with my breath. To twist them into words would kill them. And I can't do that.

But maybe the problem isn't with the act of writing, but with the way you write. It is your perfectionism, your need to twist an idea to fit it into words. If you could write about these things without hurting them, without coercing them, then maybe it would only make them stronger.

As you walked home from the grocery store, you watched the trees. You became aware of them. And the bag of pretzels in your hand. It was sunshine and golden wheat. These were little sacred things. If I were to write about them, I would put them under the microscope. I would tear at them with a scalpel and examine what was inside. That is what writing has become for me. But no longer.

12 Hour Meeting

I don't know how much I'm going to say, or how much I can even expect to say in the state of mind I'm in. It's almost like being drunk. I have been in meetings for the past 12 hours. At noon I joined Treasure City for it's twice yearly pajamaroma, which was a meeting that continued through 7:30--when I left to go to Whalefall. At Whalefall, we met for another four hours. At midnight, it was finally over.

Midnight is now. I am tired. Tired in a way I haven't been in a long, long time. My thoughts are lurching. I'm struggling to hold my head up straight, and involuntarily I find myself lurching forward and then pulling back. I'm like that guy in the back of the bus who's nodding off, but jerking back to wakefulness at every bump. Only I'm entirely awake. My head is just going through the same motions.

In the room beside me Blake is playing Sigur Ros, loud. I hear it, and it makes these moments dramatic.

Heh. . . .

I am the old farmer standing leaning against his hoe, gazing at the great clods of earth he has turned. Damn hard day. But something will come of all this talk. We are changing. We. . . .

I can't seem to communicate anything. Maybe I really do have ADD. (I never realized that spelt "add.") Whenever I start writing about a new subject, it excites me and I get my focus back. But after I write about it for a while, I'll begin to drift off and say things that don't entirely make sense. There's some point that's been left behind, buried beneath the ellipses. It's an avalanche of periods, and the tiny village under the mountain now lies in ruins under the weight of collapsed thought.

Yikes. It's happening again.

Maybe we get meta because it's the only interesting thing left to talk about.

I would like to write about my day and the meeting, but it's dead. It's over. I have no heartstrings tied to the past. But, I'm still curious. What will happen if I try. I must try. I will try.

Scott and Ann live in a cottage, for lack of a better word. It's built out of brick, with gleaming windows and all the luxuries of modern design. But there's something quaint and cozy about the space which makes me think of a cottage huddled warmly within a snowy landscape. The front yard is alive with greenery, though, and cultivated with the careful touch of a gardener's hand. As I pulled my bike up their driveway, I found over a dozen bikes sheltered beneath the carport. I recognized Rachel's green fixxie beside the others, all the bikes of my colleagues.

Inside, I heard Cory talking with James. I could see Paul through the window. When I tried to open the door, it was locked. For a brief moment I was worried there'd be a scene. I was fifteen minutes late. We're they going to open the door for me, and I'd find them all sitting the living room, quietly staring at me with disapproval?

A moment later I heard Scott call out, "Sorry! Let me open the door real quick!" As he opened the door, he gave me one of his toothy grins and explained that they had to lock it. I nodded, not really understanding, then scurried inside. There were a few people sitting in the living room, and Simon and Chrissi looked up to flash me a smile before returning to their conversations. Others were in the kitchen preparing breakfast, I walked over to them to deliver the polenta I'd prepared before coming. Nobody seemed to care that I was late, and as soon as they saw the polenta, there was no question. As I removed the aluminan foil lids, I found the polenta was still gooey, though. I grimaced disapprovingly, but still had hope that it would firm up before people started eating it.

. . . .

Well, the quality of the writing is starting to slip. Maybe it's time for me to wrap things up and call it a night. Before I do, though, I want to mention that there's something growing in my writing. It's not there entirely, but it's starting (in places) to gain a sheen of sincerity. I want that to continue growing. I'm convinced that the best way to develop this trait is to read expository essays, get a sense of what sincerity sounds like, and then recognize it in your own work. And push, gently, towards incorporating more of it into your writing.

Yikes.

Goodnight.

thoughts

The Breathing Mountain has become a point of obsession for me. I work on it every day, and I'm finding a great deal of pleasure with both the sentences and the flow of the arguments. Something I don't typically do but am doing for this piece is hinting at my final argument through numerous vignettes. By the time the reader gets to my conclusion, they should be familiar enough with the idea of the breathing mountain that it won't be too much of a shock. This is uncharacteristically smooth, for me at least.

The scope of what I'm writing seem arrogantly large, though, and I regularly have to contend with doubts to that effect. I'm not sure that I have the authority to write about this. But, well, authority is a weird issue. Because this isn't a matter of qualifications. Or, if it is, the qualifications are not based on one's degree or career. It has a great deal more to do with the way I see the world and the practice of applying theory to perception.

My ideas are largely shaped by the people I surround myself with. Most of them are architects, and their conception of urban space and human interaction has made its way into my theories. Like them, I am also obsessed with the way people organize themselves and the types of hierarchies that develop amongst eachother. I just have an oddly spiritual take on all of it, and I wonder if that organization is itself a sort of organism. Anyway, I'm slightly drunk right now and unsure what else to write. The goal was simply to put a few words on paper.

Another important comment about these last days is my obsession with beauty. When I was in high school creative writing, I remember constantly struggling to write beautiful scenes. I wrote a great deal about autumn leaves tumbling across the ground, and about things falling, like sheets of paper drifting out of somebody's hand and floating down a cliff into the sea spray. I was obsessed with that sort of stuff. It was cinematic beauty. But I also thought a lot about sentences. I always wanted to polish the individual sentences to perfection. This often blocked me and kept from getting very far with my writing. I liked to say that I'd written thousands of opening sentences to my novel. Which, when I think about it, probably isn't that far from the truth.

I'm still obsessed with beauty, though now its more about the beauty of words than the beauty of images. I pride myself on prose that alliterate and lift the tongue. I love a line that leaves one light-headed. It has next to nothing to do with the content of the idea. It's about the way my tongue feels inside my mouth. Beauty is the way one speaks. Unfortunately, this too keeps me from progressing through paragraphs. I often spend inordinate amounts of time perfecting, pushing the "puu" sound into every word. And although many of these sentences still make sense, they don't always. And there are crisper ways I could write a sentence. So when I reread, I'm torn between keeping the beauty and revising for clarity. The beauty, anyway, just seems like a pretension. Few people will notice it anyway, unless they happen to read the piece aloud.

Still, it's something that helps me have faith in my sentence. If it sounds beautiful, I feel alright with it and can move on. I'm not sure if I'd be comfortable submitting a work that lacks this hint of poetry.

Stories

I feel fine when I'm writing an essay. It's the stories that give me trouble. How much detail should I add? Where should I start the narrative? I want to set a clear scene, but how clear does it need to be before I can move on? I spend hours staring at the computer screen trying to make these basic choices. It's frustrating beyond anything else I experience. I'm losing my will to write. But, of course, I'm not about to give up.

The Breathing Mountain, Take Two

The city is more than buildings, roads, and infrastructure. The city is also a society. It is a group of people networked into the physical structure of a space. It has an intelligence and character of its own. It is the body and mind of something greater than people.

Human beings are composed of cells. Each cell is an individual lifeform, with its own DNA, its own energy producing mitochondria, its own status as alive or dead. Yet we think of the collective of these cells as the living entity. Why, then, do we not extend this reasoning to the city itself? Cities are the collective of human interaction, just as humans are the collective of cellular interaction.

Yes, that's the trick. In order to understand the big picture, we must first zoom in. All the way down to the cell, then we understand how life networks with life to create a sort of uber-life. This lesson can be reapplied when we zoom out. Humans network with humans to create something more, an unfathomable collective entity. The Ancient Greeks didn't see themselves as individuals, but as part of a city-state. The cities themselves were the gods, embodied. Athens was Athena. New York City is a god today.

This is the spirituality of concrete and asphalt. And yet we ignore the big picture, just as we ignore the little one, too. We fail to see our part in the collective; we refuse to admit that there's something greater than us. We want to believe that we're the most important thing on this planet, and it wracks us to think that we may be just a part of something else.

And worse yet, we aren't part of a god. Our cities are not benevolent. They do not make the world a better place. Inside, they are riddled with the lines of segregation, class inequalities, and waste. Around them they consume the world. They devour forests, core the hearts of mountains, turn the skies grey with pollution.

We have created devils, and we are the devils' body.

The Breathing Mountain

I live in a city with approximately 650,000 people. I am networked into a grid of roads and can use my bike to get from almost any point A to almost any point B. Green spaces are strategically scattered throughout the grid, while most of it is predominated by buildings, ranging from a single story to over fifty. Most of the tall buildings are clustered in the heart of the city.

The skyscrapers are a latticework of iron, many encased in glass. By themselves, they are dead as stone. It's only when they merge with mankind that they come to life. It's only when people enter them, network within them, create ideas and organize information within them that breath and function. They become the electric fire of neurons, the blood engorged strain of muscle, the life sustaining digestion of the intestine, the waste release of sweat, urine, and feces. They are the iron skeletons of organisms whose flesh dissolves every evening and reintegrates each morning.

But this perspective focuses solely on the individual building. Step back, and a broader organism can be seen. It's circulation runs red with brake lights. Oxygen rich, idea rich, work ready humans are transported in cars from one important sector to another. Vital materials are also transported, allowing the urban organism to mine resources from from away and then circulate them within its own system. Steel, lumber, and cement are brought in from outside to develop the physical infrastructure, the skeleton of the city. Foodstuffs are distributed to feed the biological element. The city grows, a rising mountain made of steel. A mountain alive with movement, with circulation and breath. It is a breathing mountain. We are a breathing mountain.

let's think this through

This is one of those mornings when I have nothing in particular to write about, but I feel an obligation to try, anyway. Maybe something will be uncovered in the process. It's like an archaeological excavation. One moment, I'm just shoveling dirt and clay. My hands are grimy, sore, and blistered. Then the next I hear the chink of metal hitting something hard. I curse under my breath, thinking it's just another rock. But as I clear the dirt around it, I discover it's no rock at all, but the wall of an ancient building, or maybe even the petrified skull of one of my ancestors.

But the reality is, I'm not digging very deeply in any one spot. I'm more like a man with a rake than a man with a shovel. I'm scrapping at the surface, moving leaves from one side of the yard to the next. Every now and then I spot a coin shining under the debris and I take it, smiling. But for the most part, I'm just tidying the place up. This isn't a process of discovery; it's a process of ordering chaos. Now the leaves are all in one corner of the yard, and I can see the grass and the soil again. Maybe I'll mulch the leaves. They'll become a potent fertilizer for some future project. Really, that's what these journals are about.

But that metaphor has put me in a difficult position. Now that I've tidily finished it, I have nothing in particular to say. Where I do go from here? Or, a little more accurately, how do I go about finding the next subject to write about? I've just finished raking a section of the yard, and now I lift my head and lean on my rake. I survey the grass, looking for leaves I haven't yet touched. And then, ah! There they are! I head over and start raking.

But that's not how it really works. Actually, as I look around the yard I see that leaves are everywhere. My spirit sinks. My mind tries to grapple with the logistics of this. How long will it take? Where should I rake next to most efficiently handle the process? I seriously consider just throwing the rake to the ground and walking off, or short of that, taking the rake to the shed and locking it away. When I realize I'll regret that later—regret that deeply, in fact—I groan and approach a random section. It may not be the most efficient approach, but I just need to start somewhere. I need to work and not to think. My thoughts will just dishearten me.

This reminds me of something my roommate Matt once told me. He was listening to an episode of This American Life, and in it they had a telling statistic: the average toddler from a family with professional parents (lawyers, architects, doctors, and other high achievers) hears some 500,000 encouragements by their second birthday. Meanwhile, the average toddler from a family in poverty hears next to no encouragement, but rather 500,000 discouragements and criticisms by their second birthday. Supposedly, this simple and pervasive act is responsible for perpetuating class.

Even if this sounds like something out of a pop psychology magazine, it says something interesting about me. While a child who hears extensive encouragement may grow up to stare at a mess of leaves and think, “I can do this, let's figure out how to handle it best,” I think, “This is going to take forever. I shouldn't even bother.” So while the first child has the strength of heart to think things through before acting, I have to force myself to act immediately, or else I'll do nothing at all. Curiously, this is not a question of intelligence, willpower, or raw ability, it's a question of faith. The first child has the faith in themselves to explore the possibilities, while I have to shut down my intelligence to act at all.

long time. . . .

It's been a long time since I touched this journal, or--for that matter--a poem or short story. I've done extensive writing for The Yellow Bike Project, but nothing creative or even personal. This wasn't an act of laziness or neglect. It was a choice. I had chosen to leave words for the writers and to pursue a purer form of life, one without the vanities of art and the abstract thoughts that accompany it.

Looking back over this month, though, I intensely regret not writing. My memories are still there, but they're difficult to access. There's no simple cue to summon them. In a way, that's exactly what these journal entries are. They're a Rolodex of memories. I can flip through them and remind myself of the stories I've lived. Ah, that's the night I got stoned watching a guerrilla concert with Lauren. Oh, and there's the time I talked about anarchism with Hamer. I remember scenes from these nights with surprising crispness. But I'm forgetting that I can remember them.

So I'm going to rededicate myself to this task. I'm feeling like a writer again.

from an email to an old flame:

I could imagine you leading a spartan mental life, especially in your years of seeking transcendence. There's a subtle impulse that is only felt in moments of internal quiet (or extreme upheaval). It's a strange experience, at least for me, because it's like finding another personality within myself. It urges me to do things that surprise me, and it also gives me the strength to follow these impulses through. But these impulses are also irregular, and even when I'm quiet, I don't always detect them. I suspect it's the same for you, and that's why you have shaped your mind "with a spartan ethic." Because it been a means to transcendent inspiration.

The odd thing is that when I was younger, much younger. . . . When I was a teenager, inspiration came from consumption. I'd read a book or hear a song, and it elevated something inside me. Sometimes my thoughts would be swept away in the excitement, and it was almost orgasmic in its ability to obliterate me. But other times it filled me with an urge to resonate, to create something of equal beauty and send it back into the world.

I don't get those feelings as often anymore. I sometimes fear that I've consumed too much and all that excitement has fried the wires of inspiration. But other times, after working really hard on a story, I'll listen to a song and it will take me to that place again. It makes me wonder if my soul is like a beaker, and I've filled it past brimming. Only through the act of creating can I pour some of that inspiration back into the world, after which I can experience the euphoria of filling myself up again. Heh. Makes me wonder. For all the noble language, maybe creation and consumption are just an addiction. A hard won needle and a fleeting euphoria.

painting the key

Our front door is actually a gate, and at night we bar ourselves in with a 2x4.

Last night, Lauren crouched on the warehouse floor and painted the wooden bar. I sat on a sofa nearby, polishing a poem about theater lights and misguided sisters. I looked up, groping for the word to replace "reticence," and I saw Lauren coating the 2x4 in black, then adding a dot of red. She was posed over her work like a child drawing lazy curlicues in the sand.

I decided to scratch the whole sentence and write instead about a mouth hidden behind pale fingers. When I looked up again, she was smearing the red dots and transforming the wood into a black widow. I returned to my writing and for a long time struggled with where to end the poem. It wasn't until Lauren stood and took several paces away from the board, to then turn and regard her handiwork that my own eyes lifted again. She stared at the 2x4, and I stared at her staring at it until she looked up and we both laughed.

It's all the same. Poem, painting, craft. Creation, polish, regard.

But that spell was broken when Hamer found a new place. In these nine days, she has stretched the social fabric of the warehouse to accommodate herself. And now that she's leaving, I fear it will never fit us properly again.

scapegoated

Last night I broke one of Josh's cups. It was hidden beneath a pot on the drying rack, and when I picked up the pot, the glass tumbled out and shattered against the floor. Immediately, Josh rushed over and said with more emotion than I typically hear in his voice, "Oh, Tim. . . . That was my *mumble, mumble* glass."

This irritated me. It was like he was accusing me of breaking his glass, when it was clearly an accident. In fact, it was less than an accident. An accident occurs when something is broken out of incompetence or clumsiness. If I had dropped the glass while drinking from it, that would have been an accident. Or if I had tripped and fallen with it, that also would have been an accident. But when I took the pot from the drying rack and dislodged the glass from its secret resting place, that wasn't an accident. That was bad luck, mingled a carelessly stacked pile of dishes. And if it hadn't been me who lifted the pot and broke the glass, it would have been somebody else. That glass was going to break. And I did not deserve to be talked to this way.

Josh began gathering the broken pieces, and I noticed the letters ATLA spelled out on the side. "Oh, it must have been from Atlanta." This came out more coolly than I intended. I did feel a little sympathy at that point. But when I get offended, my voice becomes like ice. Exasperated, Josh continued to mutter about his broken glass. I wasn't paying much attention at that point. He was over reacting.

What made this even worse was that I had been doing housework. I was putting up dry dishes. And before that I was peeling bananas I'd just salvaged from the dumpster, so we could freeze them and use them for smoothies later on. Meanwhile, Josh did nothing. He sat around on the hammock. And now that my industry wrought a little misfortune for him, he was getting all self-rightiously upset. He was implying I was a bad person. And I'm not.

Still, this situation had to be diffused. I wasn't about to apologize for something that wasn't my fault. But I couldn't think of any other solution. I just kept staring at the shattered ATLA. Hamer made a stab at resolution, though. "You're getting a demerit," she proclaimed. At first I thought she was talking to Josh, as a slap on his wrist for overreacting. But then I pretty quickly realized she was talking to me.

I put up a little fight, out of pride, then let the whole thing slide. She wrote everyone's name on the board, then put a tick next to mine. That tick was the first demerit in the warehouse. I didn't deserve it, I was certain of that, but I didn't fight it anymore either. It would gave Josh some resolution.

. . . . . . . .

I was still seething about this as I went to bed. It wasn't until I began to nod off that I saw things a little more clearly from Josh's perspective. I still don't understand it, not really. But he has a very different relationship with objects. He holds onto them for years. All I can figure is that they are his landmarks to the past. They are the waypoints to his own history. That glass probably had a sentimental value I can't even begin to fathom. While he was muttering, I remember him using a particular word. Only. It was his only. It was his only tie to something important and far away. It was the cue that reminded him of who he was at a certain time. It was a part of him he cherished. And when that glass tumbled off the counter and shattered against the cement floor, it was like a little lobotomy. A part of his history, his mind, his life was irrecoverably lost.

I'm sorry that he lost that.

But still, and I know this sounds petty, it wasn't my fault. And I hate being the fucking scapegoat.

fire

I have gone nearly a year without an audience. The only one to praise my accomplishments has been me, and I have learned to make that enough. I prefer for that to be enough. Because when I get another person involved, they invariably hurt me with their opinion. It makes me hate who I am. It makes me want to burn down everything and rise anew. I become like a phoenix. But a phoenix that emerges smaller and smaller each time.

Now there's a new woman whose eyes rove my face when we talk. It makes me smile when she does that. I can't help it. It's a smile that wells from within. And that lack of control frightens me. Because I know what it means. I know what's coming next. She's grappling the match from my fingers. She's going to start a fire she will not tend. And soon the theater of my personality will burn down. It will burn down, again.

the return

Last night I went to The Secret Show. They had it on the greenbelt, in the grotto where Blake, Josh, Lauren, and I hosted a screening of Microcosmos. Lindsey was so impressed by the space that she decide to have her next show there. They put it to good use, too. It was a beautiful night.

The first band I had never heard before. They were a gypsy band that wore potato sacks over their heads and sang songs about pestilence and violence. It's a popular genre these days. That, and Satan. One song stood out, in which they described slaughtering villagers with their witch's brews that induced insanity. Their lyrics didn't rhyme. That would have been fine, I suppose, but something about the waltzing rhythm made the rhymelessness jar at the end of ever line.

Wino Vino played next. They're also a gypsy band, and they also enjoy singing about pestilence, alcohol, debauchery, and ghosts. But they couldn't harmonize well, and often one instrument outclassed another. I was consistently impressed by the tambourine's performance, though. And both the wash boarder and flautist were flawless.

Green Mountain Grass followed, and although they're a bluegrass band, they started with their own gypsy song about drinking Stolichnaya. Their music immediately engaged the audience, both because of the performance of the artists as well as because the music itself demanded that we clap/sing along. One thing I especially appreciated about their performance was the way they would soften the instrumentals while somebody sang, essentially framing the lyrics with music. It was beautiful, and also helpful. I often have trouble listening to voices when they're blurred together with fiddles and drums.

In the middle of this set somebody passed me a pipe, and that completely changed the night. I took an enormous hit without realizing it, and no sooner had I blown the smoke out of my mouth than the world began to emerge from the darkness. Sober, the shadows hid the musicians from me. They also hid the tree and boulders and most of the audience. But almost immediately that viel was lifted.

During the next song, I began to notice people whispering. Before the pot set in, I was filtering that noise before I could even notice it. Now, it was pervasive. It came from every direction, even up and down. I was surrounded by people in all three dimensions. And pockets of them were whispering everywhere.

For a moment I thought I was going insane. I thought all these voices were the onset of schizophrenia. Maybe that first band had truly been a coven of witches, and they were spreading disease amongst the villagers through some heavily tainted pot. Maybe the voices would never leave me.

But then I looked around, and I saw that people's mouths were moving. Several were looking at eachother, rather than the band. I wasn't insane.

Lauren and I left after Green Mountain Grass, and those first several steps were treacherous. I had lost some vital sense of space, and several times I feared I was about to fall down the rock face. Luckily, I navigated it safely and returned to my bike. Somebody had left a few beer bottles and a can in the crate. For a few minutes, I was really confused about how this should make me feel. On the one hand, I was offended, like they were somehow ridiculing my bike for having a crate on it. It deserved no better than to become a trashcan. But on the other hand, I was impressed by their practicality. I had to take my bike and its crate away from the greenbelt regardless of whether or not there were bottles in it. It was better to put the bottles back there than to throw them on the ground.

When we got back to the warehouse, Lauren and I prepared some polenta with tempeh and spinach. It never set right, but it was delicious anyway--probably because we were stoned and hungry. I mentioned to Lauren that I haven't shat since eating seven bananas three days ago. She insisted that I have some dried fruit.

I slept well that night.

the day after the first

Exhausted. But the move is done.

I now live in the warehouse. I have a couch of cracked black leather and a desk of hard wood. Both were inherited. I found them in the space, abandoned by their former owners. I sleep on the couch. I type on the desk. Though I still don't have a chair.

My roommates are friends. We have swept and mopped and rearranged. We have scrubbed and foraged and relaxed. Daylight filters in through the skylights. We lounge on three half-sofas and a hammock. Music plays from Josh's iPod. It's fast when we decide to work. It's mellow when we rest.

Last night we went to a bar. Eight of us. Hamer, her grad-student friend, and I spent two hours arguing about noumenon, Hegelian dialectics, anarchy, psychoanalysis, self-understanding, and individuality. I normally don't talk about these things. I normally don't argue. But I did last night, and it felt great.

I think she's part of the petty bourgeoisie. (Her own term.) She's slumming. But that's fine. I enjoy the company. Nobody else disagrees with me these days. And some deep instinct revels in the confrontation. It's friendly. But it's also fierce.

Afterwards we went to the dumpster and secured several bottles of organic apple cider vinegar, a case fruit juice, a case of canned peaches, and six gallons of spring water. When we got home, I suspected everyone wanted to continue hanging out. Josh started playing music. I sat down in the community nook. Hamer danced. I was making an appeal to the others to join me for a conversation. I now suspect they were making their own appeals to dance or play music. This all passed unnoticed at the time, and feeling that nobody wanted to join us for a social nightcap, we each went to our separate bedrooms and closed the door. Good night.

in search of wonderland

I did not idolize my parents. I did not want to be them, to wield their power, to wear their masks or to tell their stories. I followed my older sisters, instead. Because I had seen a wondrous world in the dim flickering light of the movie theater, and they seemed to know its secret. They seemed to know how to get there. So I followed them. I followed them, and that choice has lead me deep into the woods. And I may never find my way out.

Each of my sisters has become lost herself, and she settles now on toadstools and stones. This is not the kingdom of the flickering light, so I keep wandering. I wander past waterfalls, past groves of ancient elm, past deer, past wolves. And eventually I find myself in the darkest neck. The shadows hide most things here, and the life is starved and twisted. Yet I do not fear their desperation, for I have nothing for them to take. My greatest fear is that I will join them, that my hair will grow thick and matted and my teeth become like fangs and my back contort until it can no longer hold me upright. My only hope is the kingdom, and even here I can sense it over the horizon. So I walk on.

I have found footsteps in the mud. There are places where the leaves are parted, and I suspect others have tread here. These forerunners, these trailblazers. Yes, I have come to know their mark. I see their words and their actions scrawled across the tree trunks and embedded in the rocks. These are my new older brothers and my new older sisters. I follow them carefully and wholeheartedly. I recite the words of their poetry in the dark. And I am learning to scratch the wood with my fingers, and now I leave their mark.