It's confirmed. I'm a total creep.

At work we are beginning the process of eliminating all emails over 3 months old and all of our external media devices we use are being password-protected.

That said, I decided to clean up my hard drive - which I tend to use for some personal stuff. While doing this, I found a folder called "Old Papers" and the files for a portfolio I created for my final project in my "Literature of the Avant-Garde" course in college.

Strange, people. Very strange.

Apparently part of the project was to write four Avant-Garde plays of my own. I opened the file for this play called, "The End/Denouement".

Stage: The scene is set in a living room. There is one chair and the room is lit by one singular lamp. A man is seated in the chair. He’s staring off to his left, face in a relaxed hang, as though in thought.

Light flickers a bit. Almost unnoticeable.

Man: Singing. This is the end, beautiful friend, the end.

Man looks at his watch, sings again.

Man: This is the ennnnnd.

Man stops singing. Sits forward and speaks.

Man: Tell me what you see when the darkness finally ceases and tell me, do you like it?

The light goes out completely and for a moment the entire stage is dark.
A faint voice is heard, a radio broadcaster reporting traffic.

The stage is suddenly filled with white light, the chair is gone and in its place is a small boy. In one hand he holds a string, at the end of it is a green balloon, soaring above his head. In the other, a gun, pointed at the audience.

Boy: In a whisper. Bang.

Lights dim, curtains close, the radio program turns to static, then fades out.

Pretty dark for a girl who has been known to wear tutu's and dance to Def Leppard songs on the top of tables.

I mean, what a fucking freak show I am. Shit.

Warm Weather = Warm Feelings

Looking back at the evolution of things, of me and where and who I am now, I don't think I've ever been the type of person who has all the answers. As with a lot of things, sureness has always teased my fingertips with its allure, but I've never been able to get a good grasp.

It seemed that I was destined to wear this heavy necklace of uncertainty, always dangling near my heart, whispering a world possibilities I could never seem to turn a deaf ear to.

I'm not someone who deals well with impossibilities.

The "I love you" that was buried so deeply it took years of digging to unearth him.
The blinding turn of his attention. The tide of him.

Us.

I've never been patient yet this stubborn will is learning to bend instead of always finding itself hurled against a wall. I am now at ease not having to constantly sweep up a mess - I never thought I would be.

I used to long for days when easy words yielded easy answers and I knew I would have to fight for them.

Those days have arrived.

Days like this.

S.A.D.

Wow, has it really been that long since I've written a legitimate blog post on this thing? I guess I need to update you.

I don't know, the past few months have been 'blah'. Nothing exceptional and on the flipside nothing terrible. I usually fall into this apathetic rut during the winter months - I blame it on my dibilitating S.A.D.

On the brighter side of my gloom - I'm continuing to fall in love a bit more each day - which I still can't believe is happening.... TO ME!!! I never pictured myself in a honest, sincere, mutually respectful relationship ... and now I couldn't imagine myself with anyone else. I'm a total faggot - this I know.

Scaling into gray - Work. BLAH. It's unending. It's corporate. It's unfair. It's abusive. I'm constantly searching for more. I am seeking out new opportunities, but not completely actively. I just want to be passionate about something again. Marrying my passion with a paying job would be ideal, but then again I don't know any real life person who actually *does* what they are passionate about and enjoy it.

The world has a crushing way of sort of sucking the life out of ones' passions, even when you are lucky enough to get paid for doing them.

The writing hasn't been coming as naturally for me as it used to. My fingers used to yearn and twitch for the keyboard, anticipating the next moment I let them loose to relay my thoughts to the screen. I haven't felt that compelled in such a long, long time. It worries me that I may never find that convincingly restorative quality in it ever again. That easy release.

The world today is a depressing place. I thought with the election of someone I actually believed in, hope would abound, overflow. I don't feel hopeful though. I feel stagnant, awash with inertia. Everyone around me is changing, and I still feel the same.

I don't thrive in these periods of averageness. I need adversity to feel actualized and I don't know why. Do other people feel this way?

I am uninspired. I feel like my identity has betrayed me, entered itself into a witness protection program on some frozen tundra in Siberia and didn't leave a note.

I used to have a strong idea of who I am. Today, those cracks in the foundation are more apparent to me than ever.

I have begun to self-create obstacles, boulders to throw into the road, wrenches to chuck into the machine. Something. Anything.

I thought what I needed was for someone to show me who I am ... but now that I have that someone, I realize it's up to me to find myself. Scrape my own blanched face off the side of the milk carton.

In the meantime I'll be here, whoever I am. Even though I haven't been completely present in the past few months, I'm not going anywhere. See me through this. There is an exceptional day right around the corner, I have to believe.

In Loving Memory of Beth

You weren't just another fish to me. You were special. Mostly because you lived longer than a day but also because you were my final purchase before I left San Diego. I'll miss your sassy ways. I hope Lisa is planning a very elaborate memorial for you.

You are totally in fish heaven, Little Lady. Along with your predessor, Dwayne Lee.

Miss you, girl.

Shedding my skin

These past two years I think I've become who I'm going to be for the long haul.

Everybody does their evolving at some point, it just took me a while to go from monkey to man.

I've shed layers of the person I used to be and in return have emerged as something completely different. Each layer molting off over time, exposing a new, softer layer than the one before it. I guess I've become more forgiving of myself during this whole process.

It's made me more forgiving of other people, too.

I've shed my angel wings for more undelicate things, embracing the less refined parts of myself, giving away the poetry over prose parts to alley dumpsters and dirty street gutters.

Like stripping off rain soaked clothes in the middle of a storm, I've become lighter, freer, shivering in my new, thinner skin.

But it's better this way, I think.

I'm more exposed than I've ever been and for once in my life, I don't think that makes me more vulnerable.

This is a happy feeling.

There have been moments of crisis, doubt, phases of indifference. I've sat on the edge of candid conversations that didn't turn out the way I thought. Relationships have bloomed and withered in moments that seem as long as lifetimes.

And with them, each layer came off. Wet rags flung to the ground.

So here I am. Baptized by the seven hundred and thirtieth turn of the calendar page.

I can't wait for tomorrow, and not just because I get better looking every day ...

And the most I'll do is throw shadows at you ...

Another year, another chance to take a good hard look at yourself.

I guess I look back at this year with a kind of bittersweet fondness, like a mother watching from the family van, as her child goes off to college. All that time, effort and care that went into shaping them for the future, just to watch them walk off into the distance and make the same mistakes that you did.

For all its ups and downs, this has been an amazing year for me. I know I've changed a lot--gained back some things that somehow I lost along the way. I still worry about getting hurt although I have found myself to be surprisingly unguarded. That was something I didn't expect.

I've grown closer to some people and further from others. I don't try to hold so tightly to the past anymore, instead I've traded it in for more room for my future, like an empty parking spot in a garage full of new experiences.

This year I have loved and lost so continuously that it doesn't scare me anymore. Each major heartbreak always offset by a minor victory, showing me what's important in the scheme of things. I've given up on believing in absolutes and finality's.

I still dive head first into things, falling in love with everyone I meet. But instead of looking at that as a bad thing, as something to strive to change, I've embraced it as one of my best qualities.

I look at relationships differently. It's like I've taken a baseball bat and swung blindly, shattering the perfect snow globe into millions of little pieces, exposing what's really inside; two dimensional people forced to stand in front of a fake background for eternity. Meanwhile trying to weather the storm each time life decides to flip you upside down and shake.

It turns out, you better really like who's in there with you. And I really do.

I've realized that I know I'm alone if I am with or without you and have accepted that as an impossibility that will always haunt our pasts, presents and futures. It's changed what I see when I fast forward my life.

But not who.

I've decided not to settle down or for anything less. That without a little drama, life would be just a bunch of Tuesdays. That I'm not perfect, and that's what I'm looking for anymore. To always be kind and questioning. And most importantly, that no matter how old I get, I can always come home and feel like a kid again.

And I like that.

So here's to a year of lasts, of firsts, of in betweens and maybes. A year of warmth and discovery and forgiveness.

Here's to a present of cheap tabs and excitement, of late nights, vulnerability and impulsiveness.

And here's to a future of infinite possibilities, to the certainty of trips and stumbles along the way and the hope that when and where I do fall, the ground will always be soft and forgiving.

Lacking

I realize I haven't really written anything worth reading in a long time. My inspiration comes in flashes and I guess I haven't been struck by lightning in a while.

Lately my life fits into a tidy little box that is filled with love ... to the fucking brim. There are no messy edges. No carelessness. No angst.

Basically there's nothing to write about.

And yet here I am still struggling to put words to my humdrum. Passion to my plaintive. I don't know what moves me to do this. I don't know why my fingers always search for the keys.

I am inspired by a lot of things.

Today it was a little girl in red mittens. A sign in a living room window. The old man pushing a heaving cart of bulging bags full of cans past my house to the beer store.

I know its dysfunctional to envy his messy edges, but I do anyway.

The thing is, my inspiration is fleeting. It never sticks. I subsist in it for as long as I can, backstroking happily through waves of insight and revelation and then nothing. Poof. Like a dream, it's gone.

I wake to find myself staring at that homeless man's face, feeling nothing as the woman in the car behind me begins honking her horn.

And all the sudden, I'm just a girl in a car at a stop sign.

if apathy is the poison, hope is its antidote

When I think of the events that occurred on Tuesday, my first reaction is to attempt to cage the disbelief running circles in my head. How do I wrap my head around this thing? Did it really happen?

Let me tell you what I have learned from all of this. While my heart aches over the last eight years, I am grateful for the clarity it has brought in its wake. Clarity so strong, it compelled a country to change.

The way the nation has come together and the speed of their unity amazes me. It gives me faith in humanity and restores my trust in democracy. The faceless masses across America and around the world have united. They need no faces, they have one, and in it is the proud reflection of the United States -- disabled, but determined.

The capacity I see for hope overwhelms me. It transcends race and ethnicity, wealth and poverty, cultural diversities and border lines. If apathy is the new poison, then hope is its antidote. Barack Obama knew before anyone that hope could change the world.

And as I stare into the open face of possibility, the United States of America gives me reason to believe we've only just begun to fight.

So continue to let freedom reign and trust in the fact that the rest of the world is listening.

I love you, Magic Bullet!

Current mood: Compelled to make salsa.

I watch infomercials like some people watch the playoffs. I mean, I am invested. Even when the footage begins to repeat itself in that ourobouros-type way, I keep watching. It's the rhetoric I love, the promises made. An infomercial is like a first date with a guy who seems perfect. (Four dates later, you discover that he "just doesn't like" doing certain key things in the sack. But still! Rhetoric!)

In the past, I've bought and/or been gifted with such products as the Rotato (only useful if you're militant about peels and/or my mother) Yoga Booty Ballet and the Total Tiger (I literally threw that thing into the alley behind my San Diego apartment circa 2002.)

But the Magic Bullet ...for lack of a finer metaphor ... eats pussy.

I grind coffee beans in this thing. I make smoothies. I make guacamole that doubles as a soothing face mask. You can pour bourbon and ice directly into the Magic Bullet, pulse that bitch a few times, throw in mint and pretend it's a Julep and that you're not an alcoholic.

I haven't tried making the BLOOBERRY MOOFINS! that the British guy in the commercial keeps crowing about, but I may have to try it. Maybe pulverized batter will cure my methface.

Sorry, You're out.

I met this girl the other day.

I hate her.

I would like to just stop there. But my mother always says that hate is a strong word, so I think I should provide sound, reasonable reasons for my hatred.

Strike Numero Uno: She’s a girl.

I can hear you all in an uproar already. “That’s unreasonable, YOU are a girl!”

Details.

Hypocrisy doesn’t make something an unsound reason. Although I am a female, I can’t really say the gender does much for me. It’s something about the combination of the inability to make a joke that evokes laughter, the propensity towards over excitement due to ballet flats and the need to divulge private information to strangers when drunk that makes me nauseous.

Strike Numero Dos: She apparently wanted to be my psychologist. And although I probably have multiple issues (most of which revolve around extreme hatred for fat kids), I wasn’t in the mood to be taken seriously.

She was overly attentive.

She nodded excessively.

She made uncomfortable amounts of eye contact as if her eyes were laser beaming small, but oh so many, holes into my soul.

She threw out the exact same overly thoughtful “hmm…” every time I made an observation (mostly about fat kids). She would have provided the same response no matter if I told her I liked eggs, had an ingrown toenail or liked to get pissed on.

She said “I see” while pressing her lips together so many times that I began fantasizing about first gouging her eyes out, then cutting her lips off and stuffing them into her empty eye sockets. At least that way it would be funny when she commented that she could see (and therefore unstriking Strike Numer Uno).

Just by being in her presence I began to yearn for a sticky leather couch, a box of tissues and childhood issues.

Or just the relief of the cold metal of a rifle at the back of my throat.

Most likely the latter. But really. What’s the difference?

Strike Numero Tres: She spells definitely incorrectly.

I refuse to even replicate the spelling for fear that my fingers might fall off and my IQ would drop to the single digits. Let’s just say there was an “a” forced helplessly (probably kicking and screaming) into the middle.

I have standards here, folks. I believe that people that spell definitely incorrectly are not worth my friendship, but are, in fact, worth my loathing. Call it cruel, call it judgmental, call it whatever you want but I have a feeling Jesus would back me up on this one.

Update

Okay. So, hi. I've totally slacked the past week or so but I was in NY and I also moved. So, yeah. I moved. A big part of me is sad. And I feel like a loser. Millions of people have mortgages. Millions of people own homes. I'm just not going to be one of them. At least right now.

However, a whole other big part of me is relieved. Living in between a liquor store and the beer store has its obvious advantages. But really. One of these days, I'm going to want to get knocked up and you can't have a baby near a liquor store... can you? It's just weird and wrong. Is it? Also there's some sort of nursing home for alcoholic amputees in the nieghborhood so about once a week, there's about 5 or 6 people with only about 8 limbs between them, sitting in my alley swigging beer.

Otherise, the new place has its plusses. It's bigger. It has rooms and closets and exposed brick walls. I have an amazing terrace with a fire pit. My neighbors are cool. It's on a really quiet street. My old place was a cement box loft with train tracks a few blocks away. It was really fucking loud. And bright. Even with all of the lights turned off in my place, it was almost bright enough to read. The new place is dark. And quiet. I've been sleeping like a lamb.

One thing about my new place - I did have an uninvited houseguest. Possibly the largest spider I have ever seen. He lived in the doorway of my terrace - and he wouldn't let me out ...I tried to coax the cable guy into exterminating the spider but he literally almost cried when he saw it. So I sprayed it with hairspray, Windex, and Pledge. Nothing worked. I was finally able to succeed... took an entire can of hairspray, half a can of carpet stain remover and a boot. But it's dead. There was some question as to the size of the spider. The body was not quite as big as my forefinger and thumb making an 'ok' sign. But if I used my pinkie finger and my thumb, it was approximately that big. And its web was easily 5' by 3'. I know this because I discoverd the spider by walking my face into the web. But we can all rest assured, the dinosaur spider is no more. Rest in peace, little fucker.

Music is my boyfriend

I've been thinking lately about how I grew to be enamored with music; how that relationship evolved. It's become such a big part of my life, such an important part and I often need to recount the journey.

When I was growing up music was much more than background noise to me. I would constantly hear the voices of Robert Plant, Roger Waters and Neil Young, poetic and raw, filling the rooms of our house, telling stories about Chelsea mornings and the earth moving under their feet. Later, in my teenage years I'd hear those familiar songs on the radio and my friends would laugh that I'd know every word, every guitar string strummed ... it felt like home to hear this chord or that hook. I'd remember the watermarked album covers in my dad's collection, strewn across the shag carpeting like lily pads on water.

This music stayed with me. Like the lines of poetry, songs have always stuck with me, the meaningful ones adhering somewhere inside, the less meaningful ones falling away through the years. And to date, I've built this abounding library of songs that correspond with particular moments in my life.

"A Long December" instantly pulls me back to high school, sitting cross-legged on the floor of my room, reading over that handwritten note asking me to Prom. "Whole Lotta Love" sends me to my basement, five years old, frenetically dancing with my sister. And Snow Patrol's "How To Be Dead" puts me right back in the middle of winter. Into the middle of bad memories. Of frozen feelings. And those moments have been stored for me, as if etched into the records themselves, released with a touch of the needle to the vinyl. I can keep them as close as a bookshelf away.

When I listen to the music of the 60's and 70's ...it breaks my soul that I'll never truly be able to capture that experience and it's something I think I chase. It's a romantic idea, changing history through music, through a movement. I don't see that happening with my generation. I guess I'm somewhat envious. I don't know if I will ever be a part of a galvanizing movement like that in my time. And I sure as hell don't have enough talent to start one of my own.

The history of music...how the trite, safe, homogenized music of the 50's evolved into the politically charged, inconsistently mellow music of the 60's into the truly innovative and, in my opinion, the most exciting time for music, the art-rock turned punk, kick you in the pants music of the 70's and early 80's. How the turmoil of whatever era we entered into shaped and paralleled the music that emerged from the underbelly of this war, or that recession. The urge to say SOMETHING ...and that made a serious impression on me.

I can recall specific moments that changed the way I looked at music, felt about music, what I believed music could do, be, change. I guess that's what captivated me about the whole thing--how different it was from everything else. I am attracted to that quality, that darker, mysterious side of things. The side left unexplored. The side people are afraid to explore.

It's because a group of people, a culture of people, had the desire to break the mold, even if it proved unpopular. That to me, is real courage, real risk. And I'd be lying if I said I didn't admire that with every ounce of my being ... and if everyday I didn't wish I could be a part of something like that.

I guess I just grew up in the wrong generation.

What It Means

I need to write this.

I haven't spoken out loud very much these days, but I've been thinking to myself in what feels like surround sound. I can see so many things clearly, and feel so connected to myself and the world around me that I need to share my perspective with you.

I'm already aware that when I write anything, 50 percent of the response will be in support of it and the other 50 will want to discount it. This blog, though, exists 100 percent as an outlet for me. If my blog truly does have any affect, then it should be used for more than just pictures and funny youtube videos. No?

This is about us all.

This is about a level of self consciousness so high in my generation, that it's actually toxic.

This is about the girl in her bedroom who poses in front of the camera she's awkwardly holding in her outstretched hand. She'll take a hundred photos of herself until she comes up with one she's happy with, which inevitably looks nothing like her, and after she's done poring over images of herself, will post one on her Facebook page and then write something like " I don't give a fuck what you think about me."

This is about the person trying out for Canadian Idol, who while going off about how confident they are that they were born ready to sing in front of the world, are trembling so badly they can hardly breathe.

This is about me, the girl who will throw on a tutu in the middle of a crowded afterhours bar yet doesn't want anyone to look at her ...

This is about us all. Every one of us. Who all seem to know deep down that it's incredibly hard to be alive and interact with the world around us but will try and cover it up at any cost. For as badass and unaffected as we try to come off, we're all just one sentence away from being brought to tears ... if only such sentence was worded the right way. And I don't want to act immune to that anymore. I took the biggest detour from myself over the years and I committed myself to stop caring about what others thought. I got to the point where I had so much padding on that I couldn't feel the negativity ... but that's because I couldn't feel much of anything.

And I think I'm done with that.

I'm not the first person to admit we're all self conscious (I think Kanye was). But what I want to do is to shed a little of my light on why we're all in the same boat, no matter the shape of the life we lead: because every one of us were told since birth that we were special. We were spoken to by name through a television. We were promised we could be anything that we wanted to be, if only we believed it and then, faster than we saw coming, we were set loose into the world to rub shoulders with the millions of other people who were told the exact same thing.

And really? REALLY? It turns out we're just not all that fucking special, when you break it down. Beautifully unspectacular, actually. And that truth is going to catch up with us whether we want to run from it or not. It's just a matter of how old you are once you embrace that fact.

What now, then? I can only really say for myself: Enjoy who I am, the talents and the many liabilities. Stop acting careless. In fact, care more. Be vulnerable but stay away from where it hurts. Read. See more shows. Of any kind. Rock shows, art shows, boat shows. Create more art. Wear hoodies to dinner. Carry a notebook and hand it to people when they passionately recommend something and ask them to write it down for me.

Root for others.

Give more and expect the same in return.

Act nervous when I'm nervous, confused when I don't know what the hell to do, and smile when it all goes my way. And never in any other order than that.

And when it's all over, whether at the end of my career or of this beautiful life, I should look back and say that I had it good and I made the most of it while I was able.

And so should you.

Midgies

Yesterday on my way to Starbucks, I happened upon a large black man standing next to a small woman. A very small woman. She was a midget - with black hair. She was wearing a lacy black bra and belly shirt, which barely covered her little midget breasts and her tummy ran in muscular bumps to the crotch of her jeans. She was also wearing rainbow colored leg warmers... which I cannot say enough lovely things about. She was smoking a cigarette. Her lashes were the longest I've ever seen. I had never seen an attractive midge, but found myself in just such a sitch.

She looked vaguely familiar. That sometimes happens in Toronto. People look familiar. But it was more than her facial features that matched up, it was her whole body ... then I realized I had recently seen her fuck a fat man and his big fat black girlfriend on Cathouse: The Series.

I must say, Bridget the Midget is smoking hot ... and not because she smokes.

Fifty things I miss about California

1. Breakfast Burritos (did you guys think this would be any lower than #1 on my list?)
2. Cheap beer
3. Ghetto beach housing
4. Hearing my mailman, DZ, start up his roaring Harley outside my bedroom window at 6:00am.
5. My girls.
6. My boys.
7. Being able to drive on a road that actually moves
8. The smell of the ocean.
9. The Chargers
10. Happy hour at Cabo Cantina on Friday nights.
11. Sidewalk skateboarders.
12. RUBIO'S. Best fish taco's .. like EVER!
13. The fact that men don't wear skinnier jeans than I do.
14. Not paying $5 plus tip for a Bud Light.
15. Fashion Valley.
16. The leaves not falling from the trees in September.
17. The fact every 2nd store on Garnet is a tattoo shop ... or a bar.
18. Taco Tuesday's at World Famous.
19. Pacific Beach Pub
20. Not living amongst creatures.
21. Two-fer Sunday's at Moondoggies.
22. Not dealing with people who talk about how "important they are"
23. Wearing flip flops outside and not having my feet look like I walked on coals.
24. NOT HAVING TO WALK IN THE RAIN.
25. Being able to run outside and not worry about inhaling exhaust.
26. Being able to bike freely and worry about impending death.
27. Fat Tire Beer.
28. Women who spend a reasonable amount of money on purses.
29. Mexican food.
30. SoCal Punk Rock.
31. TAILGATING.
32. Having after work drinks on the beach
33. The Mexican Walk-In clinic.
34. My Dentist (sorry, he had the touch) I love you, Dr. Ferrario
35. Pacific Beach Block Party. Holla!
36. Being within driving distance of Mexico.
37. Not having people smoke crack in my courtyard.
38. Outlet malls in Carlsbad.
39. MOTHERFUCKING TARGET.
40. Trader Joe's.
41. The sound of crickets
42. No mosquitos.
43. Going to Padre games.
44. No fucking snow.
45. The tweaker who split wood in my alley all night long. Loved that guy.
46. No central air ... just open windows and ocean breezes.
47. Paying less than $100 for a decent haircut.
48. Being able to go about my day without having to drive, take the subway or taxi.
49. My boogie board.
50. A place to call my own.

I've found my Nirvana

Justin, who by the way is the greatest friend like...evah, bought me a bottle of 16 year old Woodford Reserve Four Grain Bourbon the other day while he was at the liquor store. Now I've had a ton of bourbon, covering the gamut from cheap-ass rotgut to stuff that generally tops out at around $100 a bottle. This stuff however, is on another planet. I love 1792, and this is similar ... but on roids.

Immediately after opening the bottle and just sniffing the cork you get a heavy sense of the smoke and the wood that you're about to be treated to. Pouring it into the rocks glass and getting your nose in there only increases that sensation. And sipping it, good gravy. It is the best liquid I've ever consumed. It's like...drinking a BBQ done over oak and moss. But rather than being harsh, it's as smooth as fresh pressed silk.

And if you ever saw someone put ice on it, you should immediately scold them. Then punch them in the mouth.

Love it!

Trapped

This boredom is good for my writing. All I have are my thoughts and this sorry keyboard to free them with.

I don't have that teathered to a rock feeling inside me anymore. There is no tension, immediacy. I miss it.

I miss longing and being unsure. All the aching questions tumbling about inside my head for hours. It’s easy to write then. Inking out the way I would get through this or that or it or him. And it was always him. I could have misplaced an arm on the way to work and it would still be about him. That was where the rawest emotions in me came from. The freshest cuts left to be gingerly dressed. The buzz in my head and the catch in my throat. I was the walking wounded, but I felt alive.

Complacency is like L.A. fog. During the day you don’t notice it because you are consumed with daily tasks. Only when you’ve escaped the work day can you see it rising above the skyline, massive, yellow-luminous and steeping the air with indifference.

I'm plagued by a different beast now. And even though it's not one that cuts as deep, the damage is slower and more lasting.

There is a difference between stumbling into some restlessness and actually mass producing it. I don't know if my luck is just really bad, or if I am just this strange magnet of small tragedies.

But on the other hand, would I be satisfied with a life of effortlessness?

That's a tough question. I think I thrive on the difficult, expect it.

It just seems I am always on the verge of this massive heartbreak and I don't just walk towards it ... I run full speed ahead.

Why I Write

I write to keep the world in perspective. To knock it back from its skewed axis enough to try and understand it. I write to avoid the ever-feared cliché, to get inside the ring with a paragraph and work it over until it pleads for the bell. I write because I am hopelessly in love with the sound of words. All of my books have scribbles in the margins and dog-eared pages. A star here, an underlined passage there. I can't think of any other way to read a book than to constantly remind myself of why I need to write.

Mostly, I think I write to discover foreign lands within myself. I wonder oftentimes about those who take no pleasure in it, why? Perhaps it would be wise to consider leaving the shore more than just once in a while.

In a world where what we see is what we get, it is important for writers to brighten that image; to make it accessible to as many people as possible. Making blades of grass into tiny green swords that swipe at our shins. Skyscrapers become stilts for God. Tree branches resembling twisted, arthritic hands. They hold the power of metamorphosis in their hands and all they have to do is get black on white. But writers are not magicians. They can’t turn numbness into passion. They can’t use their pencils to erase wrong, and for me, the sting of heartache still smolders even when cloaked in eloquent language.

Sometimes I wonder if the seeds of my existence were watered with the ink of tormented writers and this is what pushes my pen to the paper at night and on sad days. Or maybe it is simply the need to write. What is true in the world? What is our purpose in the universe? How do I live my life? On countless pages, I deliberate. I spread the wrinkles of my mind flat in order to take more in and then I write.

Sometimes I wonder at the eerie fleetingness of the written word. When a writer settles into his bed at night and picks up his journal to record the slips and falls of his day, it seems odd to me the urgency to get it all down. It’s sad really, the art of writing things down in a journal or diary because when you think about it, we write things down to remember them later. Do I write because I want to remember my own life? I think I write in order to understand … not remember.

Stepping onto foreign soil is not always the easiest task. There are many obstacles to tackle on the road to self-discovery. Writers are pretentious and arrogant. They are vain, they are serious. They hate each other, are viciously jealous, but can recognize a good thing when they read it, even if it is not their own. They steal from Joyce, Hemingway, Baldwin and Whitman with no intentions of returning what they take. They scan the dictionary for the perfect word, and then devour it like wolves. They are ruthless, proud, demure, and calculating, but at least they are all these things together.

A writer’s biggest fear and ally is the world itself. I am sometimes afraid that I will not be able to adequately and justly recount the world around me. It is almost like a blind man seeing for the first time. There are so many aspects to sight: colour, space, shade, size, movement, that to realize all these things at once would send any mind reeling.

To become a writer, I fear this disillusion, yet desperately seek to capture it. No matter how difficult, if a writer succeeds, then he or she has contained the world---lassoed its rearing, ugly head and corked it in, like a tiny ship in a bottle. From this triumph, we can poke and prod to learn more about ourselves and our lives within this world. We begin to understand from rolling the bottle between our hands how small the world is, and what connects us to its every aspect. Language transcends barriers of race and gender. Words act as bridges between cultures. And ultimately, writer or not, we begin to see worth in the art of writing.

And I do think that only the observant eye of a writer could capture all the elements of sight at once. However, unlike a photographer, our negatives develop on paper. Instead of using shadow and light to know something is round, we use adjectives and similes. We can sway a reader by changing the round object into a ripe, fuzzy peach, or a different kind of round, the ethereal sphere of a bubble freshly blown. A photograph cannot intensify the experience, it only documents the reality.

Some say the written world is not real. They claim it is an embellished representation of what one person thinks is real. I disagree. Allowing ourselves into other people’s perceptions is what makes our lives real. By stepping onto their shores, we are given permission to question, to run about barefoot and wonder like a child. We see for the first time all over again.

The written world is the only medium that lets us travel to these foreign lands consistently and without resistance. Writers offer a kind of displacement that one can only get lost in through words. A good book can take you anywhere you want to go. Where else are we permitted to wander and explore the capacities of our own minds and free ourselves of the world we know for a moment or two?

But perhaps writing is for the bold. It is for people who seek to find and don’t stop until they have reached somewhere they have never been. It is for those few who have an irreconcilable need to express. And again, for those who simply wish to create something they are proud of. Sylvia Plath said that she decided to write, not in order to save the world, or to serve her fellow men, but for the simple, personal, selfish, and egotistical happiness of creating the kind of men and events she could like, respect and admire. There is a certain poignancy in wanting to assemble something as honest as that. I understand this. I care about the words I write; I seed and water them until they perfectly bloom into my thoughts.


I sometimes laugh when I hear myself say I’m a writer at heart. Images of me in twenty years in a dimly lit room with bad wallpaper, hunched over a typewriter, a cigarette dangling from my lips and a short glass of warm bourbon on the desk next to me. Then I see my face, and I am shocked at the immutable frown I wear. Then, I look more closely and see the corners of my mouth quiver and upturn ever so slightly and I know this is the beginning of a smile.

I am revealed. I have found another sandy shore.

The Politics of Music

In an age where our world's political climate is sweltering and virtually every move our leaders make becomes satirical fodder, shouldn't we at least have some good music? Isn't it warranted?

Is there any inspiration I can glean from a song titled, "Freek-A-Leek" or lyrics like,

"To the window, to dat wall/ To the sweat drips down my balls/ To all you bitches crawl".

It's puzzling really. I mean, sure, give me a good hook and a loud bass line and I'll shake my ass with the best of them. But this is an opportunity for the creative people of the world to actually SAY SOMETHING.

What happened to bands like Neil Young, the MC5, The Yardbirds, Bob Dylan and The Who? And then those that followed, Bad Religion, Public Enemy, Pearl Jam, Rage Against the Machine, Ani DiFranco? Even the Sex Pistols. Damn, and the Clash. The Clash did it right. And they did it in the time of hair bands and fake metal followers.

"Kick over the wall/Cause governments to fall/How can you refuse it?/Let fury have the hour/Anger can be power/Didja know that you can use it?"

I'm sick to death of turning on the radio and hearing the same insouciant, alternative crap and phony, made-up gangster lingo.

Where are the Clashes and the Rages? Are there none left? Where is the dissent? The rebel yell?