"It's on random..."

Some of these are random quotes I remember from dreams, others are words that pop into my head in that moment before I fall asleep. Enjoy.

"Miriam, we're a thousand miles from home and the roads lead every direction but where we need to be. I can't think of a single reason for you to trust a word I say."

"It's a word or two that really sound the alarms, Benjamin."

"Drive it like you stole it, put a foot through the passenger side window and thell that poor bastard to never look back."

"You swim?"
Uh, no. I've been thinking of starting.
"You look like a tuesday."

Confessions of St. Amboy

Something is bothering me tonight. I think I'm going to blame these tempestual feelings on the problems at hand. The problem with my car. The money problem. I can't come to a reasonable conclusion about my art. I can't tell if I'm unoriginal or just plain bad at it. Maybe I shouldn't put so much stress on it. I found a picture on someone's tumblr,

Vandalchicks.tumblr.com

It said "Don't try to be original, try to be good."

A similar sentiment was relayed to me a couple of years back from a friend regarding my art. He was an artist as well and showed me a lot about painting I would've taken years to learn on my own. We still talk. With a country between us, he says, Trial amd Error. I say I can't afford trial and error. I realize that the only thing I stand to lose in this process is time. Something I have an abundance of tonight.
Its a numb feeling. I have no sensation at all.
A fly has been buzzing around my room the last few hours. I wonder what the hell his point is. He just flies around in sporadic circles and criss-crosses. But maybe that's all we're doing. Who am I to say what I do all day isn't just mindless meandering through this room or that? Life has too many twists and turns. Too many rooms. Its all too complex. Please simplify the feeling.

There isn't too much to say anymore. I feel like I've driven my life into a wall and now I'm bleeding out into the street. My blood finds it's way to manhole where it joins the city's blood. But the city's blood is too rich. It is loud and intoxicating and smells of jazz and cigarettes. So they separate. Like oil and water.
Frame me up in some gallery somewhere where the little boat captains flood the rivers with posies and heartache.

I feel like I've been separated from some paternal grapevine. I feel as though my father never existed. I know he did. That isn't at all what I'm saying. What I'm saying is he feels like a television show i watched an awful lot as a child and then one day it went off the air but i didn't noticed because i was outside playing down the street.

There is a lot of great art on that website. That... Tumblr... I clicked through every picture on it in about two days on my phone. It's created by some people out in Spain or London or both and has a lot of great shots of street art, graf and beautiful girls. Peep it.

I realize there is a hard break in the atmosphere of this post. I was heavily depressed in the first part of it (this post has been written in the span of about three hours now.) One could say much of my feelings tonight are a result of not seeing the sun in about two days. I have been off of work the last two days and I felt it would be a good time to enjoy a staycation. But perhaps I'm just not that person.

Damnit the Orange!

Damnit. I thought I'd bought Orange paint. I crafted this idea for my project Layers but I must have imagined picking up that can. Well, I have to shop for supplies Friday when I get paid so I suppose I can wait.

I destroyed my car. Apparently it had no oil in during the last few hour - hour and fifteen minute drives to work. Well I'm currently selling my guitars and amps. No big squig. They've sat in my room the last four years collecting dust. Relics from a rebellious age. I'm keeping one acoustic to keep an outlet (as well as the sentimentality of that particular instrument). The engine I have to replace will cost upwards of 1,300 dollars but i need to be mobile. These last few days I've been relying on other people to get me to work and I just can't do it. Soon I'll have to start paying them for gas. And I don't carry cash. And how do I get to an ATM to get it? It's a vicious circle.

My mom is currently asking me for a painting. She says impressionist. I don't know that word. I took a survey of art history class a few semesters back. Earth tones. Impressionist. Monet. Pretty colors. Check. These are the things she wants from me. Lets add:
Grandchildren
Decent Living
Christianity
to that list.

pOST.0 (Don't Leave Me)

Giants walking, fiends talking hyphenated spells on wretched little ears. I borrowed these flowers for you. We all want to be discovered by the right people. I want to be discovered. This vanishing act is getting old. Sunday I wrote a poem for our dead fathers. We have these ghosts around us. They shriek and moan and they tell us they didn't have to tell us it doesn't happen this way. Without these verses the forest is just wood and chlorophyll. Undying rest, spare my love this awful burden. She knows not of the whispering you and I do and with a binding kiss such as this we will never grow old. We will never believe in another single thing. It will be this and only this that makes us and the world and nothing in between.

But I cannot refer you to a clown who shares his shoes with a politician. I cannot lie to you anymore. It will be a hard, hard rain that falls on our heads. Yours and mine. Black is white and color is a mystery onto us again. We won't worry ourselves with such finite tangibles. Instead, we've only this tangerine. Will it last us all night? Will the candle last us dear? Don't tell me you love me again. Our breathes must be still. I have only the one match and you still have your corduroy dress to mend.

So did you see it? Did you see that great white beast rolling down the highway in the dead of night? His knuckles were as white as the headlights that lead him to that terrible place. Where the shrieking ivory ghosts leap up from their chairs and shouted,

What the fuck are you doing here!?

You and I aren't welcome here. Their faces twist and contort like some awful circus side show. We run out to the desert where the wind cuts our face and the sky is a cracked painting. Your great-grandmother hands me a peach and asks me to recite your name in Arabic. Again and again she says until my mouth is filled with dirt and Indians build fires on it. They dance around, drums are played loudly and children laugh uncontrollably. Coyotes smoke peyote and witches brew tea.

And there, in the center of their madness is my father. He is wearing purple stones around his neck and asks you to recite my name in the old language. You open your mouth but the guttural sounds of the old language cannot be said by such a beautiful tongue. He says,

Speak!

And you begin to cry. There is nothing to cry about. I hold you all night and the Moon fades into the universe as the Sun rises in the East and stretches it's loud firey bones. We drink coffee with the captain in his cabin and the waves that splash against the boat tell us they're rooting for us. It will all be okay. It was all a dream.

An E.mail

In an email to Milkdevotchka,

I'm not feeling well tonight. I miss you. I'm depressed I think and I don't believe the Prozac is working anymore. I tried going to sleep earlier when you went to bed. But I just laid awake with these thoughts in my head. They weren't the usual thoughts. I usually can't sleep because I'm excited about an idea or something. But tonight it's just This awful feeling of failure. Maybe not failure but definitely an awful feeling. I forgot to sign up for that class today. I'm afraid I won't get back on track. I'm afraid I'm not on the track I'm supposed to be on. I'm afraid there might not be a track for me. I don't want to work at Best Buy for the rest of my life. I want to be happy. I want to be happy with my life and I don't know if that's possible. Maybe I'll hit the road with a puppet show and a troupe of freaks and performers. That might be a long walk off a short pier. I just don't want to be stuck doing something I don't want to do and when I get into these moods I think I can't see a way out. It's like hell when it's late like this and I can't sleep and I can't write a goddamned thing or get inspired. I wish you were here. I have a hard time sleeping since I moved out. I'm very happy you have a bed now. I felt terrible with you sleeping on that couch. I suppose I should've left you one when I left seeing as I don't do nearly as much sleeping as you do. I woke up today at Three. I can't talk to you at night and you can't talk to me in the morning. We're almost star-crossed that way. A quick-fix-culture Romeo and Juliet. Anything for a dime I'd think. Please don't have those nightmares tonight. You're worth so much more than that. Perhaps I'll watch Science of sleep for the eighteenth time and practice Parallel Synchronized Randomness in my dreams. Then we can achieve what this world holds back from us. I love you.

Perth

Swept Under the Rug

It is currently 11:39pm and I couldn't sleep. So i suppose it isn't time for me to sleep yet. As it unfolded, I brushed my teeth, washed my face and hands and laid down in my bed. I play an album that always puts me to sleep, In Rainbows by Radiohead. The first two tracks are amazing but not exactly sleeping material. After these tracks of course it's smooth sailing. So there I am, my eyes stare blankly at the ceiling. The lights outside cast a light through my window shredded by the blinds. I always remember "The Wind Cries Mary", where Jimi says,

The traffic lights they turn blue tomorrow and shine the emptiness down on my bed.

I'm still looking for a traffic light to change into three blue lights.
So I get out of bed and decide to write another installment of this blog. Today was no great feat in my life. This is perhaps why I'm have such great difficulty sleeping. I woke up today at 3:15pm. I think I could've slept longer. I always feel terrible waking up late. I have several projects I've been working on the past weeks. Art projects. Of course I've mentioned the Yarn Painting here before. The Yarn Painting is almost finished but I've started another project I've dubbed Layers. I've been very good with keeping up on these pieces, but today I hadn't made any progress. In fact, I set myself back a bit with an adjustment that didn't have the effect I was going for. So now I've got my work cut out for me.

What the hell am I doing? It's midnight and I have a problem with every little bit of drool that spills out onto this page. But I need to post it. I don't know why. I don't even know why I still post to this blog. I would like to think it's a nice outlet. Well what do you need an outlet for when there's nothing inside? Not a single imaginative or original bone in my body. I'm watching Twilight Zone episodes. I'm still listening to Radiohead. I watch the characters speak. I don't need words. He's a mechanic or engineer of sorts. He's found himself in a desolate town with an abundance of male and female mannequins. He's making a phone call? But who the hell is he talking to? My imagination fails me.

I think part of what makes this night so terrible is that it doesn't end. I feel like lately my nights only end with waking up and driving to work where I encounter idiots and slave over their tedious problems.

I recently performed a 180 degree turn in my life. I was set on a path toward being a writer. Now I've been working with these Art projects. I don't know what I want to do with my life, I want to create beautiful works of art; i.e art, literature, music and I want people to find the kind of solace in it that I do. That's all I want to do it. But that life doesn't exist for my generation. We don't do anything special here. We fade into the background. I'm brick. I'm wood. I'm a blade of grass and I grow and grow and you cut me down so I look good along side the rest of the blades just like me.

The art I've included in tonight's installment is by Barry Mcgee. I highly recommend those of you with a fancy in this sort of thing to check out his work. It might also be in your best interests to watch Beautiful Losers, a great documentary featureing Mr. Mcgee.

I'm going to stare at this screen a little more.

elastic ARTiculation.

First, an apology to anyone following this blog for my recent absence of material. You see, I am currently living with my parents again and the internet here is not the most reliable. I haven't stopped writing the blog, I have plenty of material to post soon. So as of now I will present you with a hodgepodge of the last week's work.

For some reason I haven't changed the clock in my car forward an hour since daylight savings time. I might just wait it out.

Lately, and this has happened an unusual degree of times now, birds have flown up to my bedroom window and grappled their tiny claws on the screen. They make noises like forks running on porcelains and when I get up to investigate they fly off.

Writing can be difficult. At times it can become difficult to stop. It feels as if I purge the words out onto paper or the screen (more appropriately.) Like in Kindergarten when the teacher pours out the box of crayons, yarn, fuzzy pipe cleaners, markers, paints and everything else imaginable. I pick out this or that, line it up, straighten it out and create something I didn't know I had in me. Its a wonderful feeling when you finish and you look at what you've done, whether it's art or writing or whatever. Some nights i never get to sleep because i keep sitting up to see what I've created from across the room.

It may seem like this post is coming from a completely random place and you would be right to assume that. The truth is I've been having breakthroughs and regressions in my productivity lately. One minute something daring and prolific might leak through the tips of my fingers but the next minute I find myself doubting everything I do. I'm impressed/I'm unimpressed. It takes a few hours after midnight for the juices to really begin flowing.

Lately a lot of my status updates on websites like Facebook are written without spaces. I don't know why I started doing this. It feels like it adds more to what is typed.

ifyouarepayingverycloseattentionyoullseeionlywritewhatiwantyoutoread.