schmupdates

Well I've changed a few things since last time you've seen the photos. For the main text around the head, I only use quotes from the text given to me. However, behind it are words/sentences/poems that I've made out of the text provided, that either reinforces their statements or sort of says things that might be more implicit.

Let me know your thoughts. I also have a few single photos that aren't complete yet without their counterparts. I'll post those later.

Electric Afterlife

Do computers go to heaven?


...because mine is officially dead. It froze up Friday and now every time I turn it on it tells me I'm missing a vital operating file. (Windows\System32\config\system). Apparently I need to reinstall the operating software via my XP CD... which I don't have. >_<

Seeing as all my work for all my classes is holed away inside, I'm in a bit of a panic.
I'm not sure if it's my turn to post or not (I'm seeing that there's some confusion on the issue)
but I'll throw up some material anyway.

Also - I'm noticing my posts tend to be long, semi-sane rants.
Apologies; this one will be short, just three quick pics:

Dreams

This begins when Rinnah is remembering her camp instructor. There are some parts where I skipped because it needs work such as the only thing that connects Acario, Rinnah, Ada, and Cynna is a little boy name Joshua whom they all went to camp with.


“Welcome to summer camp” she would say

"Here is a place in which you must learn to leave the outside world behind. Stay in line Tommy Lee….now let’s see."

She counted the heads in a systematic rush searching and smiling.

“Ah… this woods is my kingdom, my domain you will follow my rules whether you like it or not, but rest assure you will because here is where you will learn to be modest citizen within the outside world and the trick is having control of your life, you must learn how to control yourself, your habits your eccentric habits.”

This speech made the children point fingers to little Joshy in the corner who was always talking and laughing to himself.

Welcome We have much work for you so we must hurry along” Joshua said grabbing her wrist and pulled her away from the cliff.

“Wait I must wait for my friend,” she protested

“Friends?”

“Yes”

“What are friends?”

She was perplexed by his perplexity, how ignorant can he bee not to knowing what friends were or a sense of fashion.

“My friends, the one I came with,” she explained.

“Where”

“Here”

“Friends?”

“Yes, they are my companion they were helping me catch frogs”

“Frogs?”

“Yes! Don’t you understand?”

“No…what frogs?”

She grabbed his wrist and pulled him to the edge of the cliff

“Look” she exclaimed.

“I see no frogs”

To her amazement it didn’t looked liked they were chasing frogs anymore but disgusting insect like creature spreading throughout the whole field. And Acario, Ada and Cynna continued to move through the mud hopping, leaping, and croaking at their failure.

“They are your friends?” he asked.

“Yes!”

“Why?”

“Because”

“But I thought friends are people how knows the song in your heart and can sing it back to you when you have forgotten the words”

“They are”

“Them….and you want to help them”?

“Yes “

“Ok,” he sat down on a nearby stone and watch her intensely. “Help them”

“What”

“The mental inebriates looks quite comfortable where they are but if you choose to help them than go right ahead. Everyone is entitled to the work that the master is ready to give but only when they are ready.”

Quickly, she stood on the edge of the cliff and started to call their names. Acario was the first one to hear her calls. He notices the firm golden rope that wooed him to the familiar voice on the other side. Cynna was second, it was a challenger for her to climb the rope because every time she fell, she seemed to be distracted by the strange marsh creatures. However, Ada couldn’t manage to break free, every time she notice the rope a frog would jump in her face and giggle out of amusement which made her amuse. They were much more interesting than that single rope that led to one direction. What was it anyways, and its purpose the golden rules? Wow, just like grade school. But these creatures giggle, danced, hopped and glide in every direction into those fun soft places. They formed and the deformed their environment making it appeared the way they wanted it to seem rather than what it was. The rope just stood with its steep structure, hard and simple, too plain for taste and fun. There’s no way of changing that. Ada had time to contemplate once you reach the top there’s nowhere to go but down so why bother. But these creatures had slippery eyes moving and dancing and different direction as they laugh audibly in their slippery fun. She was too comfortable. She wouldn’t budge.

“We don’t have much time left we must be going,” Joshua warned. But the three refused to go on without their friend they demand.

He walked over to the edge and called her name out in such an alarming manner that the whole cliff began to tremble.

Ada looked up and was dazed in his jade eyes, they were different, and something she has never seen before in any of her dreams. The color was so rich. She was captivated and decided to see what this message he was giving through his eyes alone was about. She began to climb the rope. How can Jade like grass like peas were trapped in such a solid like structure?

As the three watched their comrade ascend the rope the marshland began to collapse, and the forest began to tremble. It curved within its self and splitting at the edge in four different places towards the east.

“Oh dear” Joshua said as he looked in amazement.

“What’s happening? Stop this!” Rinnah ran towards him tugging on his arm.

Acario and Cynna beg Ada not to look down but to climb the robe. She couldn’t understand what they were saying and why they were so frantic.

“Keep going!” they yelled.

Rickety, Ada ascended the cliff to the top where Acario and Cynna helped her up on the edge.

“What were you saying I couldn’t here you over the….”

“Doesn’t matter now we were telling you not to…”

“What was that noise?” Ada asked as she looked down.

“ …look back” Joshua finished their sentence

The eroding blare distracted her from the warnings on those pretty green eyes the moment she look down the rope broke along with the edge of the cliff she was sitting on and the quagmire engulfed her, crushing her body, snatching Ada away from the watchful eyes.

“This is not happening it feels….”

“Oh Dear” Joshua mouth off again

“Oh dear what? Is that all you can say” Acario yelled

“She wasn’t ready….”

The song is done!

Well, for now, until my ears stop bleeding and my brain stops boiling out my ears. I started work on it at noon Saturday and just finished recording and mastering at 2:30 AM. I wound up using penny whistles, cello, flute, four different guitars, three different keyboard patches, hand drums, real drums, electric drums, three part harmony with myself (I hope I don't go blind), and bass guitar. I am WAY rusty, and my fingers hurt tremendously from the steel strings digging into my sadly non-calloused finger tips.

Anyway, I've charted the flow of the project to end with "The End" fittingly enough, and beginning with a poem called "The Beginning" oddly, fittingly, and unfortunately unimaginatively enough. I thought that since this was my final class for my final year (not true) and the end of a long road to BA-ville, that I would create something called the end.

I have "The Beginning" which describes the birth of life and the ultimate climb of the evolutionary ladder to the point at which we attain the mental capacity for superstition, for mindless ceremony and meaningless rituals are what separate us from the animals (just kidding, somewhat).

In the middle, I've written several poems asking questions and intentionally delivering no answers or speculations ending with "The End" which is a question to provoke.

We all want power. If we didn't, we'd have been content to stay in Eden, if there was one, and remain naked and ignorant, but we didn't and we continue to seek power by asking questions. Knowledge is power and the only way to get it is to question.

The chap book will be four inches square with a fold out sheet that the reader will read on the way the to cd, which will be at the heart of the package.

I should have it done by tomorrow.

Confused

Ok, fellow classmates, I'm pretty confused when it comes to when I have to post. On the schedule, it says that Group B posts this week. Unfortunately, I also thought that last week was Group B, and the week before that.

So I've decided to write you guys this brief, whiney note instead of posting poems for three weeks in a row. I just don't have anything new yet. So, let me refer you guys to my last post, which would have been this week: More WABI SABI.

Yowza.

Just before they reached the end of Main Street, her mother disrupted the consistency by turning right onto a narrower street.
“Mom, why are we going down Remsen?” Emma asked, confused why her mother would take her towards Hempstead.
“You’ll see.”
Both Emma and her mother walked slower, paying careful attention to the un-leveled sidewalk, her mother’s kitten heels clicking with each step. It was cracked and protruded, unlike the even sidewalks throughout Garden City. It was strange to think that her mother would willingly take Emma in this direction. Emma was always scolded as a child if she wandered too far away from the center of town. Hempstead was no place for a young girl to be walking by herself, at least, that’s what the women of Garden City believed. Although their town was considered one of the most prestigious of New York, it was piggybacked to Hempstead, which contained some of the poorest people in the area. One street was lined with newly built city lamps and flowerpots, and literally the next consisted of metal link fences and littered garbage.
As they walked further down the street, they approach a park playground.
“Remember this place Emma?” Her mother said with clear hope and excitement.
Emma didn’t recall the location. It looked like any other generic playground with a set of swings, monkey bars, and a yellow slide. Her mother slumped her shoulders, realizing that Emma had not made a connection.
"I used to take you here all the time when you were little. Remember? We would go before your soccer games.”
There was nothing of a playground in Emma’s memory. But, she did remember always walking with her grandfather to the Saturday morning games, kicking at the dandelions to ease her childish nerves. And the morning when he made her feel special. Her grandfather was helping her tie her shoelaces before her game. She was seven. It was morning, and the air still had a damp chill to it, the sun was not at its peak. The dewdrops on the grass tickled her feet as she walked onto the field, holding her grandfather’s hand. She jumped to the ground and stuck her legs out in front of her, wiggling her untied cleats. They were cherry red. Her mother wanted her to get the black, like the rest of the girls. Her grandfather knelt down before her and began his ritual. He would slap the soles of her feet, to make sure they were on nice and tight, he would say. She giggled when he would do that. But this day, as he meticulously tied her laces into bows, he stopped himself. Gripping her ankles with a tightness she had never experienced him to have before, he looked up into her eyes.
“No one will ever understand you like I do.” He said, only for her to hear. “Do you know that?”
She nodded, slow and deliberate.

Her mother took her hand and led her towards the swings. They rocked in silence. Emma grasped her left hand, the coolness of the watch soothing her. A mixture from the boys dribbling a basketball further down the street, and the rustle of leaves against the mulch in the playground was the only sounds to be heard from where she and her mother sat. But then Emma saw him. Actually, she felt his gaze before she saw him. A man was across the street, walking by the playground. He glanced at Emma, and she sensed a connection immediately. Something familiar jarred her senses. It was the way he carried himself. He walked with importance. He wore navy corduroys and a black down vest, with a dark turtleneck underneath. His hair was longer but it had the same thickness, the same ashy gray color.
“It’s him,” Emma whispered.
“Mother,” Emma tugged on her mother’s shirtsleeve, pointing in the man’s direction. “Don’t you see? He recognizes me?”
“What are you talking about?” Her mother said.
“Just look. He’s watching me.”
“Emma, he’s homeless,” her mother hissed.
“But—“
“Emma, stop. Don’t draw attention to yourself. He’s looking only because you keep looking at him.”
“No mother, I swear…” Emma trailed off, knowing her mother would never understand.

Early Post for Group B, Other Thangs

Hey all,

Hope your weekend is/was fabulous...I decided to post a little early and try to help people out who may be confused about the blog. I believe that I am the first person in Group B to post for this week. Group B should be comprised of those in the latter half of the alphabet...I know I've been having trouble going back and seeing where the groups' posts begin/end...so maybe this will be a trend?

Anyhoo, I have some pictures for you all. I was playing around with the idea earlier of putting ALL (texts and pics) of this junk into a movie format and then make a chapbook-esque container for the DVD this would all eventually go on. Tell me what you think about that idea in your comments...

more pages

I decided to put a few more in. Again, the ones you've seen are actually couples (hey thanks mike!) but in the actual book, the pages will be mixed up.

Relationship pages

I hope you guys can view this image big enough.

Basically I'm making a "book" with pages that are going to be on a stand, and all the pages will be separate. You'll be able to flip the pages over and sort of mix and match the couples I've interviewed. I've used their answers and picked out interesting statements, hardly changing any words. I also wanted to show the good and bad parts of their relationship, or negative and positive really, so the reader could sort of make up their mind who had more power in the relationship. It could also be fun to try and match up the couples because I'll be hanging up the pictures out of order. I feel like I'm rambling and hope this is all making sense. I decided not to hang the couples up next to eachother because I thought it would be more interesting to have two dominant or two passive people next to eachother/ sort of see what happens when they're by different people and if/how you view them differently. Let me know any suggestions/better ways you would go about this!

Thanks,

Olivia

Expanding on my original thoughts

I'm of the mind to expand a little bit on my original thought of questioning and thereby challenging authority to include some basic spiritually charged power, or powerless, observations. I can't really post anything to the extant of the music that I've done yet, but I'm thinking of including a song that I've already nearly finished along with my original piece, "The End". This song is called "Changes" and is a song about someone resistant to change and the only thing that is unchanging is the fact that everything changes. Here are the lyrics...

CHANGES

INSTILL THE SOUL INTO SILVER
FALL IN LOVE WITH THE MOON
SEE THE PATH LAID OUT BEFORE YOU
AND EVERYTHING CHANGES

STANDING TO FACE THE SUNRISE
DOES IT ALL HAPPEN TOO SOON
WISH IT COULD BE LIKE IT USED TO
AND EVERYTHING CHANGES

THROUGH THE FOG THERE IS A DISTANT SCREAMING
TOO FAMILIAR IS THE VOICE
WALK ON THROUGH AND HOPE THAT YOU'RE DREAMING
AND THERE IS NO OTHER CHOICE

SOAK IT IN AND DISBELIEVE THE VISION
REAL IS SO MUCH WORSE THAN LIES
WHAT YOU DO IS ALWAYS YOUR ON DECISION
NO ONE WANTS TO HEAR YOUR CRIES

SEARCH FOR MORE THAN A PURPOSE
SOMETHING MORE THAN "TO BE"
PATIENCE IS YOUR UNDOING
WAIT AND WE SHALL SEE

GOD CHUCKLES AT YOUR INERTIA
BEGIN THE ULTIMATE CLIMB
THROW YOUR HEART TO THE FOUR WINDS
EVERYTHING CHANGES IN TIME.

I know that this strays somewhat from my original theme of questioning authority, but I've decided to add some stuff that is along the lines of spiritual, not necessarily religious, issues of power. Self empowerment, feeling helpless, powerless, trying to give power to others, and so forth, are all things that effect me, and probably a good number of others, on a daily basis.

Allison and I were talking on our trip to InkTank together and I had a number of epiphonies while we were going to and fro, one of which is along the lines of my constant belief that religion drives people apart and spirituality brings them together. There are always exceptions of course, and this is a very generalized statement as many would be quick to admonish I'm sure, but in my experience there have been far more judgmental, biased, sexist, racist people who are self-proclaimed Christians than those of socially disparaged religion, like Wiccans and pagans. I do not ascribe to any of those religions and I am in fact an ordained Christian minister in the state of Ohio, but I know what I know and I only go by what others say and what they do. In my point of view color, creed, gender, sexual orientation, and so forth count for nothing. Either you're an asshole or you're not.

SO!

I've decided to gear this project more along the lines of spiritual observations and beliefs that I've developed, which include a great number of power related statements, and let the chips fall where they may, ending with "The End".

Dreams

Here's another piece of my story in it's rawest form

Deep Cimmerian laughters compressed their ambiance. Although it played as a proverbial tone within the background they didn’t stop charging and groping, pulling and shoving mud trying to get the frogs. The more they search the more they felt them between their inner layers, croaking, giggling laughing.
“We must search for frogs, you know the one in the mud” Cynna said as she dived in the fog dipping her hands and feeling through all the soft places.
“Yes frogs I believe they go nice with tea,” Ada interject barely missing a limp.
“Nice with Tea?” Acario asked
“Yes if you think of the colors,” Ada responded.
Through all of the unofficial talks they steadily searched for frogs, not missing a beat.
However, through the corner of Rinnah’s eyes she saw a golden rope on the side of a mountain cliff. She looked at it in amazement. She never knew it was there, as she walked closer to it she began to believe it was always there. She looked straight up to see where it began but it was too high to be in view.
“But how?” she asked herself “How is this rope holding up and who put it here.” She began to tug on the rope checking to see if there were support on the other side but the rope stood firm, it didn’t waver nor bend.
“Upsy Daisy”
She began to climb the steep cliff. As she climb she realized the more she told herself that she can do it the easier it got. It was all mental power. In a pleasant yet strange kind of way it felt as if someone was helping her. A Strange force in which she couldn’t physically describe, A strange acquaintance in which she felt it’s presences before but disregard it as a bystander. She wanted to rest her trust on it yet she was afraid it would drop her. So she decided she will go fifty fifty, just in case it decide to let go. The farther she got from the marshland the deeper the laughter became. It made her sick, but she knew if she quit now she will end up in the marsh again with the leapers who didn’t seem to pleasant anymore. How could she search for such disgusting creatures? At the top of the cliff which was a side of a mountain a colorless man with blue hair and jade eyes appeared in front of her. She had never seen this man before no wait she have, he was so strange yet familiar in his poised look, looking down at her in interest. Yes now she remember him, the strangle tingles in his eyes, searching through trying to find a simple connection understanding, companionship. This man countenance froze right in front of her, looking down, pitying seeing her struggling trying to abase the cliff. Yes, now she remembers the pine scent, the fresh earthworms, the sound of the jamboree between the birds and the crickets, the shadows of vanilla scented heads getting in a single line behind Mrs. Picknicsay the camp instructor.

Ok so now I wanted to get a modern point of view looking back on the events. This excerpt is told through the eyes of the nephew of a volunteer.

My dad's side of the family comes from an area just outside Philadelphia. Although relatively conservative at least on social issues, my Uncle Joe was always the black sheep, so to speak, of the family. He is five years older than my dad who was only out of his junior year in high school at the time Freedom Summer rolled around. Uncle Joe, at 22, was a student at Lehigh University where he rowed for crew and with any spare time, stirred up issues on campus. Uncle Joe never liked political talk at dinner when he was in high school, according to my dad. Apparently as soon as my grandpa would start in on how the "coloreds" were raising amuck down at the Village Green again, Uncle JOe would clear his throat, push his plate back, and set in on a monologued rebuttal to grandpa's "ignorant, racist, and misinformed ways."

Of course my dad said this always ended with Uncle Joe getting a lecture about respect and how that "is no way to speak to your father," or him storming away from the dinner table.

After Uncle Joe graduated he told my dad he had to get out and get in on all the history with the civil rights.

"I can't stay here, Danny," he would say.

"You know Dad doesn't mean harm with his comments...just his generation, Joe," my dad would reply.

"It doesn't matter. No one listens here. This is big Dan, bigger than we could ever imagine here. There's more out there and I'm going to take my part to stand up for more. I don't care how cliche or holier-than-now it sounds. I know this is a big time in America, so many people can see that. Dad will never understand."

My dad says it was no more than a month after Uncle Joe got to Lehigh that he was involved with crew and a prominent student group on campus- NAACP. It was with this group, during his senior year, as we well know now, that he caught wind of the goings on in Oxford, OH.

Uncle Joe never really talked about his experience in much detail, but my dad has told me that he was never really the same. Uncle Joe would call my dad during his training, telling him this was so much more than he could imagine. Staged attacks to prepare for the beatings that may happen, stories of the dangers that other volunteers experienced, even a chance of death. My dad would try to talk him out of it, but all Uncle Joe would say was, "This is big Danny. Bigger than we could have ever imagined."

Here is some character information

I was thinking that you all would probably like to read a little bit about who this guy is, so you'd be able to pick him out of a line-up or recognize him on the street corner.

Now I understand that time and distance and everything tends to suspend itself and become all convoluted when I’m tripping but I trusted Kevin’s judgment that a huge deer was four feet from us.
“Does it have antlers?” I ask. See I can’t see anything at this point and I am under the impression that I have gone blind and that I will not be able to see ever again. This realization does not startle me but rather I feel relieved that I won’t have to ever set sights on Fern shaking her utterly perfect ass at the bar we both like to go to. It is hard to see that, and sometimes while at the bar I’ve caught myself reaching for the straws in a feeble attempt to grab an instrument with which I can pry my eyeballs from their sockets. Sometimes I think that the shot glasses they use at the cheepster college bar we like to go to would do a better job. If I used one of those I’d simply insert it into my eye socket, apply pressure and turn and pronto – my eyeball would pop out.
I wasn’t permanently blind from that trip with Kevin. I was however significantly altered and I kept wondering what Fern was doing and who she was doing it with. I know that those sorts of thoughts are pointless especially when I’m the one who ended it with her, and the reasons I cited happen to be the drugs and the friends which I want to dedicate more of my time and energy towards than her. Most of the time I don’t care about her anymore but when I start really thinking I realize that she was, for the longest time, all I wanted to do and be and to not have her was to lose that portion of me. Whenever I’m not alright with that all I have to do is take a huge bong rip and hope that my lungs catch up with me before my brain does. Then and only then, while I’m heaving in the fetal position, do I realize that this is now and I exist in this time and space and all that I can do is be. That’s pretty deep shit for a 20 year-old to think about. I have always been precocious, I’ve been told, and more often than not I simply have the curiosity that is required for a person to truly observe the world. There was once this man named Henry James and he said that we all should strive to be “the person upon whom nothing is lost.” I’d say that even being as observant as I am; I still lose about 60 percent of what I should be getting out of all of my daily interactions with my surroundings. That means that for the typical person that number has to be much much higher and the percent of the world they do perceive is likely insignificant and mainly pertaining to carnal concerns i.e. food, shelter, handbags and such.
I really don’t mean to be cynical; it is just how I am. My parents said that I should try to be less serious. I never quite understood what they meant in saying that. It seemed that all throughout my life matters were serious. My father’s parents were dying most of my childhood and arrangements had to be made while they were alive. Arrangements for the loads of money and stock shares my grandfather had in both his and my grandmother’s name. The other matter that had to be settled before they died was who was to take care of Louisa, my father’s kid-sister who has Down’s syndrome. My parents ended up getting custody of her transferred to them and she was placed in a great group home where she’s learned how to perform simple household tasks and I’m told she feels now as though she has a purpose. I wish sometimes that my purpose was as straightforward and recognizable as Louisa’s ability to sort through table settings is.
Other matters in my life cropped up then and they crop up now and they all seem to be of a serious nature. Breaking my arm in a random state that didn’t understand the brand of health coverage I carried, being fired the following week from a long standing job for having had a broken arm, my father being a complete dick to me, because so one stupid mistake. All of these things seem serious, and many other things like being pulled over for a busted exhaust valve in the parking lot of my own apartment complex, finding out that my girl friend cheated on me with some dude I hate, getting indigestion from the Taco Bell I decided I was hungry for, seem utterly world altering at the time of their occurrences. This is why acid is such a powerful drug. See acid takes all of that mumble-jumble and makes it into a straightforward table chart, complete with bar graph and annotated table of contents. It lays out all of the shit that’s perpetually spinning in my brain and makes it stand at attention. It threatens that if the shit in my life isn’t going to act serious than the drug will and does.

I don't know if you're all patient enough to keep reading

Well those excerpts I just posted are not in chronological order. Now I give to you the beginning of my story, let me know if it reels you all in.

Getting a drink thrown in my face has been my biggest wakeup call to date. I was just standing at this bar when some girl walks up to me and I just tell her that she’s got some love handles. I was just trying to give her a wordup. Better me telling her, than some gy pulling on them later that night and making her feel like complete shit. So this girl reacts as follows:

She raises her cranberry vodka drink, splashes it in my eyes and yells “fuck you, you skinny mother fucker.”
At that point I just retreat to my frineds. They always stand near the corner of the bar when they aren’t playing pool or ordering Miller High Life bottles from the one waitress Kristen, the one whose’s got the asymetrical red haircut, the one I tried to make out with once in a drunken rampage, the one who won’t stop texting me once a day.
So after the crazy bitch tries to blind me with pure berry ethenol, I retreat to the smoke balcony. Now the thing with smoking is—I love to hate it. I mean deep down I wish I’d never started up again. I treated a lot of people differently (including my mom, Sherrie) when I started up again but didn’t feel like telling them. It’s hard for me to admit that I do things that I don’t necessarily wish I did.
So I head out to the smoking area, which so happens to be the fire escape for the bar, and there I see this waif of a girl. I mean it seems to me that most girls have problems, most girls I know have either thrown up a meal or snorted a line, but this girl was a tad bit more pathetic, this girl just so happened to also be a smoker. So I’m out on there and this girl, she says her name’s Kellie—“ie at the end.” She seems alright, she seems different. At this point I just want to shake one pointless year of dating and have a one-night-stand or whatever. I mean I figured that this nypmpfy- fairy girl would offer me at least one entertaining nightso I went up and asked for a light.
She fumbled around for a bit in her purse. She had long curly blonde hair and a nose that that more character than beauty. The sort of nose that distroys an otherwise beautiful face, but is refered to as being “interesing” and “ethnic.” I couldn’t tell at the time but upon closer inspection I could tell that her nose had a tiny stud peirced into it.
“It’s alright if you don’t have it,” I said as I leaned down, my Marboro still pursed between my lips. Just then my buddy Reagan came out onto the escape. He said that he wanted to move to some other bar, he suggested a place down the way that served two dollar pitchers.
“Yeah that sounds alright,” I said, my face still close to the nape of Kellie’s neck.
“How about we meet you over there in ten minutes once we’re done here?” Kellie said.
“That’s fine,” Reagan nodded in my direction. He headed out leaving Kellie and I alone.
“What kind of cigs do you smoke?” I ask. I can tell that I’m younger than her. I’m not sure how exaclty I sensed it at the time, but some how I knew that she was at least a year my senior.
“They’re Newport Lights, I know, It’s sort of girly, but I’m a girl.”
“And a very pretty one at that.”
“What?” she asks.
“I said you’re a pretty girl.”
“That’s sweet.”
“Where are you headed to after this bar?” I asked her.
“I don’t really know, my friends tend to leave while I’m out smoking, they figure that I’ve already left.”
“that’s not very kind of your friends.”
“Girls just aren’t too kind.” That was the statement that made me think that Kellie was like Fern. I thought she was enlightened and atune with masculine ideologies and ideols, hell Fern had pinups plastered all over her apartment wall. She used to say that she appreciated beauty, I have to say though that the girl never really let on to be bi-sexual, besides the time I caught her makingout with her girlfriend at the bar, but that was because they were wasted and Sarah doesn’t know when to layoff. Well Kellie and I never made it over to meet up with Reagan, but he underrstood once I told him the next day about what’d happened.
“I played it like you taught me man. I said, ‘hey have you eatten yet’ and she said ‘yeah I ate but it’s pretty late and I can eat again.

I am having trouble inserting text

Every time I attempt to cut and paste from my original word document I have to go into the HTML coding because the normal composition page doesn't let me cut and paste normally. So please excuse the lack of indentation, I don't know why I am having so much trouble, I am not particularly savvy with technology.

So what I was trying to do in the last excerpt was set up for you all the basic idea behind my story, so in review there is a main character who works uptown theoretically, or in some somewhat nice restaurant as a line cook essentially. He has begun to delve into the worlds of the fellow line chefs who work with him.

in this next excerpt the main character explains a bit about himself and the way he sees his world:

In order to fully understand me a year ago though, I really have backtrack and talk about two years ago, or the year I started college and entered my first true bout with depression. I understand that people overuse the word depression but I think that even if I can’t call what I went through depression, it was by far the lowest point I’ve ever felt in my life. I believe only an individual can assess his or her own mental state because only the individual can assess what it was like inside their mind at any given time. See my parents were mad at me because I had driven home drunk and been caught, not to make light of the situation (and believe me it is not something I’d ever want to repeat) but as most research indicates, I am not alone in admitting that the time I was arrested for Driving Under the Influence was only one of may times I’d been out driving on the road while drunk.
It wasn’t that I didn’t figure I’d get caught, it was that my under developed frontal lobe (the part of the brain responsible for controlling decision making abilities) was not fully developed, and it is probably severely traumatized after all of the chemicals I’ve bombarded it with this past year any way. There is no real excuse that is what, I guess, I’m trying to say. And I do realize now to some degree that I am the soul person responsible for my decisions and therefore my shortcomings. It took me a great deal of time to realize that though, and sometimes even now I don’t like to think that I play as big a role in my own life as I really do. At least some times I try to pretend like I don’t have as much stake in my own life as I really do.
See most of my family has gotten to where they are by having kids early in life. My mom had my sister when she was 19 years-old, and my sister had her daughter when she was 24 and unmarried. My step-brother had his kid when he was 20 and ever since then he’s been working his same dead-end jobs around the town we both grew up in and he’ll likely never leave. So by me moving four hours away I was the one destined for success out of anyone in my family. My mom told me that it’s always the kids that are doing the best that the parents worry about the least. I guess that explains why my mom doesn’t do much for me anymore and why she’s constantly offering my sister aide and housing and food.


HAHA-- now it is letting me paste normally, excuse my prior frustration and enjoy the somewhat traditional indentation.

Catching Up

I am probably the worst offender, I have not blogged hardly at all. The piece I am working on deals with the power struggle within a small town, much like quaint Oxford:

There wasn’t really much separating us from them. The only real thing I could think of that differentiated our group from theirs was economics. It wasn’t as if all of the students had money and all of the townies didn’t. It was that all of the students maintained the ideology that their stake in life was yet to be made and the townies believed that their lives were already somewhat predestined, that their destinies are already predetermined.
Each of them had a story. Each had an abusive parent, or a parent who was too much of a friend and too little of a parent. Stories of parents and Grandparents hooked on Meth, sexually abusive uncles, I’d heard it all. None of them kept their pasts too shrouded. Usually after they’d had a couple dozen beers the stories of their tragic pasts came trickling past their lips. I’m sure they assumed that I didn’t care enough to remember them in the morning, but I wasn’t like a lot of the students. Or at least I wasn’t like what their perception of a student was, I wasn’t like a lot of students they’d met. I was working hard as a line cook right beside many of them. After a couple weeks being at work around them they started to realize that I was reliable, that I did do what I said I would, and that I really just wanted to be friends.

hungrier

“How do you know he’s even got his wallet on him. He probably left it in his car before he came in. Just let it be.”
“Well I’m checking. You know you’ll want me to share the money with you when I get it.” Tony’s eyes glassed over, contemplating unknown riches. “Hurry up and eat, we’ll follow him out onto the street.”
A heavy voice from down the table rose out of a what looked like a pile of dirty rags, deep and sonorous: “You boys wouldn’t know what to do with any money you found there anyways.”
“You hear old boy down there just now?” Muck asked Tony.
“What’d you say, sir?” Tony shifted his attention from his beans to the man.
The man lifted his head then and eyed the boys with dark eyes sunk deep in their sockets. He spoke as if he had a secret hiding in each fold his clothing and each shadow on his face. “I said stealing that money won’t bring you any good, unless he has about a thousand dollars on him and you both know he doesn’t. Shit you might well donate what you find to this here church. Save you a whole bunch of trouble.” He extended his hand—knuckles like knots on a gnarled root—“I got a real name, but nobody knows it. They call me Echo.”
Muck grabbed his hand quick—“Muck”, then Tony—“Tony”.
“You boys should listen to me. I had and lost more money than you can think about. Anything you find in that man’s pockets won’t give you nothing but a bunch of hard decisions to make. Men like us are broken on the dollar. Money’d just leave us scattered, like pennies in a fountain.”
“Well we sure as shit aren’t donating it or throwing it any fucking fountain. And we’re not like you,” Tony said. “Isn’t that right, Muck?”
Muck looked at Tony, then at Echo. “Doesn’t matter because we’re not taking anything from him. Let us be, Echo.”
“You’re a wise young man,” said Echo and he sank back down into his clothes without looking at them again.
Muck picked up his empty tray and walked it over to the trashcan with Tony following. Muck leaned into Tony, “Fuck it, what’s that old man know? I know what I’d do with that money. I’ll talk to Sweatpants. You just make sure he doesn’t feel a thing.”
“My man. You trying to do a little magic trick? Turn that money into some pussy?” Tony ducked under Muck’s fist. “I’m just kidding. Sweatpants is walking out though, let’s talk to him.”
The two boys elbows their way through the indolent men, milling around the door, until they were on the street behind the skinny kitchen volunteer in sweatpants. Tony walked ahead of Muck and passed the man with his head down.
“Hey Sweats!” Muck called to him. “Grey Sweatpants!” The man turned. “You the one serving the beans today?” Muck asked. He saw Tony turn with the man and size him up from behind.
“Yes, that was me.” The man said. He shifted his weight uneasily and stuffed his hands in his pockets. Muck saw Tony slink closer to him.
“I just wanted to ask,” Muck said. “Why do you do it? Volunteer here. I’ve seen you here before.”
The man eased a bit with the question, dropped some tension from his shoulders but his hands remained in his pockets. “Well the way I see it is, the bible says, ‘Charity shall cover the multitude of sins’. And I’m not a perfect man, so I figure I better account for my multitude somehow.”
“Bible says a lot of things,” Muck said, careful not to look at Tony, who slunk into a doorway shadow, quiet walking on the balls of his feet.
“You read the bible?”
“Some.”
The man smiled and withdrew hands from his pockets. “Which ‘some’?”
“Just some. The way I see it, no words I know of got power enough to change much around here.” Muck watched Tony inch closer to the man. “You listen to those men in there? Been talking and talking for years. And they still in the same place they were yesterday and they goin’ to be in the same place tomorrow.”
“You’ve thought about this before.” The man stated and crossed his arms. Muck saw Tony’s wrist—whittled thin to bone and vein—knife into the man’s pocket and out again, holding nothing.
“Some. Can’t eat a thought though. Can’t eat the bible either.” Muck had the man thinking. Tony’s crablike hand dipped into the other pocket and he withdrew a brown tri-fold wallet.
“That may be so. But if you’re stuck in a place, you might as well start looking at it a little differently. So you can feel good.”
“I look at it how I want, and I feel alright. My momma’s religious but she’s still banging old men in the apartment so they’ll keep buying her cigarettes and the magazines she likes.” Muck saw the hand slide the wallet back into the man’s pocket and watched Tony retreat diagonally backwards across the street away from the man.
“Well I don’t know anything you don’t already know then. It’s just a choice, just like everything else.”
“Just a choice,” Muck echoed. “Well maybe I’ll see you next time you’re here.” He turned to leave.
“My names Stuart by the way. For next time.” Muck turned and saw him holding his hand out.
“Stu serving the stew. Got it.” Muck grasped his soft hand for an instant before walking away.
Muck walked across the street without looking back at the man, waiting to be sure he’d quit watching him before he leaned against the corner of the building and waited for Tony to emerge from whatever shadow concealed him.

More WABI SABI

Ok, here are three more. These are still dealing with self-esteem and self-image. The first one deals with eating disorders. I spread it out, and tried to give it a blissful feeling until the last two numbered lines, impling restriction and guilt.

The second tries to deal with the implications of make up again, about how it's kind of like armor, and allows those who wear it are able to present a strong front, no matter how they really feel inside.

The third tries to talk about expectations for "beautiful" people, and how we are pushed to arrive at these unrealisitc expectations. The lines are arranged in a way that is more strict and claustraphobic than the other two, and attempts to clump words and phrases together in the same way that bodies are rearranged in photoshop before they appear in billboards. Again, none of them are longer than 40 syllables, and hopefully seem kind of rough and scratchy. Let me know what you guys think!

Skip

I don't think it's worth reading honestly. At this point I just needed to get something down on paper so it's just words and not making sense as I've gone the past few days. Week's been brutal. Head may asplode.


The park. The climb down the tree was casual enough, but the moment the first paws hit the ground we were in a hot zone. I followed close behind Rai, bringing up the rear. Snot took point, the first paws to set foot on the lush field of grass. Home looked like an anomaly, sticking up alone amidst a triangle of pavement in this thing the humans called park. But on the ground it was different. As soon as those first paws hit the ground the red alert went off. It was deceptively dangerous, so fresh and green and natural. The sky shone overhead, clear and empty. Already the early humans were beginning to flood the walks. Most stayed like ants to these strange hard lines that gashed across the earth. Me, I prefer the good, solid soil. I could kiss it. The killing fields. A man pounds by, his colored hooves going clomp-clomp on the walk. Humans themselves aren’t particularly apt at being dangerous. So slow-moving. Most had to spend years pretending to be harmless just to get one of us to pretend to be docile enough to let one of them pass by close enough. It was a tense relationship, those beady balls eyeing us from those sockets way up there. Even standing on two legs they towered over us, their smug arrogance looking like they didn’t give a fuck. But aside from the one-in-a-million lucky shot of flying debris that knocked Jerry-squirrel on the head, they couldn’t catch us. Far greater risk was the occasional hellhound loosened out of nowhere or the two-wheeled death machines, yet one had to always be on guard because humans are all the same. Nonetheless nothing about the outside world is safe.
Our quest - to cross the bereft plains of the Parking Lot, to scale the walls of Mount Trashcan, and to retrieve the blessed Ring of Freedom from the refuse. That big squirrel in the sky is watching over us. We set out like the legends before us, George Buckington who overthrew the Chip-munk overlords in 1776 AD, Burt the Lionhearted who gave his life in the Great Crusade into the human lands in 1179, and Lanceanut who pulled the sword from the stone in 000 and established the golden age of squirreldom. (civil war?) All went before us with swords outstretched, mere legends, and now we may join them.
The humans didn’t seem to notice as we crept down the side of the tree and hit the ground, sneaking through the grass. Bees buzzed by our heads, stingers like the bullets of divebombing dogfighters. Two ants locked in a death struggle, red and black. Snot’s scuttling foot drops down like a bomb, guts exploding. We’re hiking towards the cover of the thick vegetation of the woods, looking behind one last time at the tree erect out of the ground the singular outpost marking safety amidst the human refuse of bike paths and tin cans. Rapidly-shrinking world. In the time of Lanceanut there must have been a jungle of such outposts providing constant cover. Squirreldom running rampant. Where did our brethren go? The red bastards to the north, the gray to the south. Did we lose the war after all?
Kenney nearly gets blindsided by a two-wheeled death machine, the cuff of his fatigues ripping apart like the bullets pumping into digitized Nazis inside his mind. Snot’s metal slanted off to the side like a gangster’s hat, and I think he’ll make a great reality tv star. All fun and games, the biker doesn’t look back. But we’ve crossed the path safely and now we’re crossing the boundary line. The foliage untouched by man blots out the sun like a jungle canopy, yet we’re safe under cover. I stand on two legs, ready to bolt up the nearest tree at the first sign of danger. I am the demi-god. Devil god. We lay our guns on the earth and set up camp.
This is so fun, Kenney says, everything I’ve ever dreamed of. Pow pow! He shoots me with his finger machine gun. I’ll kill more than all of you.
We set out the next day the same way that we began, the sun bright up in the blue sky like any other day. We left the wooded area behind and entered a nondescript plain of grass. No one saw the danger ahead on those plains when the sparrows dropped out of the sky like artillery shells, heavy weights dragged down by gravity like Kenney’s body when a pair of crows raked his eyes out. The birds flapping above us

your story

i took some advice from Cathy & created an e-mail account: mystory.the.connection@gmail.com password: mystory1


i then composed a "note" on facebook expressing my ideas & hope for the e-mail account. i created this account so people could send in anonymous e-mails with "their story." it worked. that night i started receiving e-mails. 
here are some parts of the stories i have received.

Part of Story #1:

This was the lowest point I had hit in life since high school. I felt completely worthless. I was absolutely terrified of being alone in life and felt that I had caused my entire life to turn upside down. I began to turn inward with my emotions, as they had turned against me so many times before. I zoned out into my music, mainly Angels and Airwaves.
Their music was about hope. About dealing with the past and putting it behind you, while at the same time dealing with loss. It seems contradictory but it was exactly what I was going through: contradictory emotions. I wanted to be cared about, to be loved. At the same time I was not willing to open myself up to return the same emotions. I dove head-first into any dating relationship I could find, desperate that it would make me feel the way Meghan or Heather did. I was searching for a way out. I was searching for an escape, in all the wrong places. I was searching for an external escape, not knowing that the only way out was to turn my focus around and work from the inside-out...

Part of Story # 2:

I was in love with you as a person and friend, and  simultaneously I fell in love with the boy you were in love with......that's why we fell apart. I know it.

Part of Story # 6:

...our father is homeless.
he got kicked out of an old retirement home, and now lives in his car.
but he would never tell me this, mom was the one who told me.
i almost started crying when i found out about this.
why can't he just help himself sissy?
all i want is for our father to give mom HER money.
just because she has a friend that is a man doesn't mean that he can treat her like the dirt on the bottom soles of his holey shoes.
please don't let this ruin your day sissy.
i just wanted to let you know how i feel about life.
i love you.

Part of Story #7:

...next morning- headache. body ache. black hole. no memory. no recollection.
what happened?
once again i will hear the story from a different mouth, but they are my actions. my decisions.
i'm sorry. again. again. i'm sorry.
i won't do it again. i promise.
promises are meant to be broken.
like i am every time i look back.
i can't stop.
maybe someday, when it's too late. maybe then i will realize,
looking down.
some days it is better.
sometimes i don't black out.
sometimes there is hope.
sometimes there isn't.
good. there were no hurtful words.
bad. i'm afraid something will happen tonight.
forget.
i will.

Part of Story #8:

  Thrown into a world of confusion, embarrassment, shame and terror I needed my escape more than ever. I understood the severity of my incident but told no one.  It began to eat me alive, the notion of what had happened tore me to pieces. There was no escape that could do justice to what I needed. So I searched, for reason, I was lost and alone, looking for an escape. Sleep walking to the edge of the bridge, to the end of my life. Waking up at the edge, looking down...

Part of Story #9:

... It was a Sunday afternoon and the normal routine was in order. My father woke us up early for 8 o'clock mass. My parents began fighting on the way home from church and continued when we arrived home. My mother used to threaten to leave him on a regular basis. She would often times pack up all of her clothing into brown paper bags from Big Bear and put everything into the back of her Izuzu Rodeo, but always came back. On this particular Sunday, the fight began to get louder and louder. I remember covering my ears and crying. After hearing a loud noise my brother, who was about 17 at the time, left the room and we all followed. I heard my brother swearing and my siblings yelling at my mother "what did you do?" My father was covering his face and trying to calm everyone down at the same time. He kept saying the he fell. He was bleeding and his eye was swollen. I know now, years later, that my mother had hit him, and that it was not the first time. This became routine with my siblings and even with me in the years following. I remember seeing my oldest sister being dragged down a flight of stairs by her hair, I remember seeing another sister pushed against a wall with her arms up trying to cover her face as my mother tried to beat her with whatever object she had in her hand. My first time came in the 6th grade. We were on our way to school in the morning. A fight had broke out between my mother and older sister. I was in the front seat. My mother liked to speed when a fight broke out in the car, it scared us to be driven so recklessly, so, I spoke up to try and stop them. The next thing I knew there was blood running down my white school sweatshirt. I had been hit aross the face and my nose began to bleed. 

These are the stories from real people, from real life, some of them go to school here, some across the country, and some out of the country. I encourage you to share your story. Go to mystory.the.connection@gmail.com. password: mystory1.


If you go to this web address you can read the stories that people have bravely shared with the world. 


m

Suttra Homo ...

I am only posting one "image/piece" for today. Perhaps more will come later this week. I would like to know what you think when you read and observe this piece. In my own opinion I see the difficulty of religion displayed in religious language. For example, the concept of an Omniscient God alongside free will. The two concepts require a lot of maneuvering to present them as mutually compatible.

It is also interesting to see the terms "Omniscient God" and " Free Will" contextualized with "Civil War" and "Junk Bond". The dynamic/tension that is created within the individual phrases, and then within the entire piece becomes the central focus of the piece. What is this tension? How does it operate in your reading of it? Does it work for you?

The image of the flower presents an additional dynamic to the piece. It appears that the flower is absorbing free will through the roots and perhaps using the Omniscient God as the sun to engage in photosynthesis. Can a person be 'fed' through both food sources? Does this appear as a contradictory feature-or does the flower image tell you something else?


As a side note: Those of you who have seen my earlier postings may note that there is no religious quote in the above piece. Do you like it better/less/indifferent this way? I am considering putting all sorts of pieces in the final book with the sole uniting theme of religiosity.

Cassie

Cassie. Like the dog, but with a C. Her apartment was a shithole, and it smelled like cats or parrots or something.
“Ugh, I hate cats, you know that.” She moved through the place sharply, displacing clothes onto chairs and shoving piles of paper from one shelf to another in her bedroom. Ray plunked the grocery bags onto the counter top.
“They’re too stuck up,” she yelled from the bedroom, “they think they’re better than everyone.” She swooped back into the kitchen and dropped a kiss on his cheek and started unpacking the bags. Her refrigerator was full of all sorts of Tupperware and bowls half covered in saran wrap.
They are better.
“Yeah,” Ray said, “dogs run and catch Frisbees and do the park. Much better.” He tucked his hands in his pockets and leaned back.
“I stand by the fact that those are the worst pants on earth, Ray. Where did you get them, again? I know you told me.”
“Mom,” he said. They were olive green cargo pants, nice and comfortable.
“They’ll burn nicely,” she said. “My neighbor, the one who lives over there,” point, “wants us to come over for a barbeque before it really gets too cold.”
You can’t have a grill on the second floor.
“Sounds great,” Ray said. He poked a few times at a blob of clothing on the counter, but its identity remained a mystery.
“I told her we’d be there around six, could you have your mother make that potato stuff?” The groceries disappeared into parts of her place, and she scuttled around, tidying up.
“Are we still going on that trip?” Ray said. She threw an armful of clothes on the floor by the washing machine. He kicked aside some magazines and plopped down on the couch, legs on the table. He wanted a cigarette. No more smoking, Ray! It makes your kisses taste bad. When he got to the car. She wouldn’t know.
“I feel bad always asking her to cook for us. Do you think we should invite her? I still don’t think she likes me.” She doesn’t like you.
“The trip, babe, the trip. You. Me. Are we going? Or…?”
“Yes! Ray, dear. Dearest,” (kiss on the back of his head), “we already talked about that. I got off from the clinic. I just need to get a bathing suit.” She walked in front of him, in front of the TV that was turned off. “I’ve never seen you in a suit!” You haven't seen you in a suit, either. Not since you were fourteen.