Home Is Where I'm Alone With You

Recently my mind has been in a fury and fit over all these beginnings and endings. Maybe I'll figure it all out on the road. I mean, I totally plan on "finding myself" out there, knowhattamean? It's going to be great when I finally "find myself" because a big siren will go off and there will be fireworks and my hands will catch on fire and I'll cry and I'll cry and I'll cry with hope and exhaltation and my parents will be there, it'll be in Wyoming I'm sure of it, they'll be there on the side of the road clapping and their hands will be on fire too and every body will be so happy; it'll be wonderful you know?

The road. The ultimate explanation. The terrible home for boys with no ambition. The excuse. The reason. I'm out there to find a whole lot more than my way home, especially when this trip is so very much about finding a home. We'll see where I end up at the end of all of this. Probably Provo.

I just watched the last year of my life on film. Well, to be honest, it was Louis' life. But we're all in there, all of us, wrapped up in the hours of film. It was pretty incredible to see the whole thing, finally, and I will say that it did not disappoint. It was strange to see the other side of things. The way things looked not from these two eyes. Barry, you've got talent. It was a visceral symphony.

In Which No Significant Points Are Made

I think I'm most suited for a life of quiet contemplation. Lately, I've just been reading and watching movies. I went out today for some food and saw a couple of people I knew. We talked for short intervals. We "caught up" or whatever. And I took an interest in their lives. I thought about them on the drive home. I wondered about them. I ate dinner and thought about my books and my movies. About how life swirls around them. About the talented folks I know and love. I thought about all of this and then realized that my mind is racing, raving, monologuing, dialoguing, it's turned on and off all day long. I'm getting these furrows in my brow because my face is constantly stuck in a concentrated stare.

I'm no good around social situations. I like to get together with a few people who won't mind if I yell "A MILLI A MILLI, AMEN" out of the top of a convertible in response to "WHEReS THE BIRTH CERTIFICATE". And then won't mind, too, if I just kind of stare off into space for awhile thinking about things, or no-things, or every-things. People who I can just kind of wander about in the daze that I'm usually in. It's true: I'm almost always in a daze. Because, generally, I'm just lost in contemplation about things that ordinarily don't matter. Like Cory Haim's death, or a class I want to teach, or a story I want to write.

Hmmm... I just kind of got lost in what I was going to say in this blawg post.

Thoughts 4daze.

Charles Reznikoff

This guy is my jam:

Of Course We Must Die

Of course we must die
How else will the World be rid of
The old telephone numbers
We cannot forget
The numbers it would be foolish
Utterly useless
To call


16

The fingers of your thoughts
are moulding your face ceaselessly.
The wavelets of your thoughts
are washing your face
beautiful.

In Which I Understand Trail Mix

I’ve been having a pretty existential week and a half, and needless to say I’ve been thinking about myself a lot. This is normal in my life. I've been thinking about what my life is doing.

I’m at work today, and because I forgot my chips and salsa, I had to buy from the break room vending machine. Naturally, I am seriously pissed off at forgetting my lunch/only meal for the day at home. I figured I would buy a hot pocket and that’d be that. However, the vending machine was ALSO out of hot pockets. What an exasperating week of ups and downs! I probably thought. Actually, I probably thought, “Well, good, now I don’t have to eat a hot pocket.” But you catch my drift. So I decided on a healthy alternative: trail mix. Tropical trail mix. I’ve always loved nuts. I’ve always loved dried fruit. However, one thing that has plagued my eating of all things assorted and mixed is my preferential treatment. Everything in my life has this sort of strange value system. If I eat a package of Skittles, I eat all of the oranges first, then the grapes, then the yellows, then the greens, then the reds. If I eat chex mix, my hand naturally searches for those delicious little rye chips. A box of chocolates will soon be a box of chocolates sans all caramel and pecan clusters. I just don’t do well, normally, with closing my eyes, closing my fist, and sticking a big handful of god knows what into my mouth. I like the taste of the orange skittle; not the taste of the orange skittle plus grape. Grape-orange? Incomprehensible.

Needless to say, I don’t mix too much. Sometimes, time tested traditions work: Cherry-Coke, Diet-Coke and rootbeer, bread and A1, smashed up starbursts. You know, the staples. The things that I know work.

But there’s something wrong with this world view, food and life included. It’s safe. It’s comfortable. It’s bad. It’s picky. It’s limited. I opened that package of tropical trail mix, knowing that I liked the banana chips and the cashews. I had no clue what those red cubes were, or those fragmented nuts. It all looked pretty gross, you know? Then I did something bold. I just dumped a handful in my mouth. Straight up and in. What ensued was a gooey, peanut-buttery orgy, directly in my tastebuds. Did it taste better than I could imagine? No. But it was new and good and now I know that if I ever want trail mix, I can just dump it into my mouth. Because it’s not about what you like in the mix; it’s about what’s in the mix.

You know where I’m going with this. It’s like life. I can’t be picky, or choosy. I can’t be selective. I’ve got to say yes yes yes yes to anything and everything. Do I want to go on a roadtrip for 100 dollars this summer? Yes. Do I want to continue to work at my job? Yes. Do I want to go home and visit and enjoy and love my family? Yes. Do I want to karaoke on the fourth of july? Yes. Do I want to make a movie? Yes. Do I want to pay rent, pay taxes, deal with my family not understanding my choices, finish my paper, and worry about my car breaking down? Yes.

Life is tropical trail mix y’all. Because it’s not just about picking out the pleasing banana chips or cashews. It’s about shoving the whole thing in your mouth and seeing how it tastes (that’s definitely what she said). It’s about understanding that if there’s something that doesn’t taste right in the mix, it’s ok. It only makes the sweet thangs taste sweeter.

Deep thoughts about trail mix man.

das Unzerstörbare.

The only thing that can make me feel ANY consolation about failing two out of the three classes that I'm taking in my major this semester: Larry Peer telling me that "Sometimes men of genius make mistakes." And while he's telling me it doesn't matter that I've failed, he's got his mirrored sunglasses on. He's in his office, sitting at his desk. With mirrored sunglasses on.

If that guy ever needed a kidney transplant or a lung or something, I'd be first in line to cough it up.

German is a tough language. It is tough for a lot of reasons, including the reason that it's German. This is why I hate only knowing like 20 words of vocabulary in a few languages because I can kind of sketch my way through a passage and I'm like, "I understand!" and then I'm like, "WHAT IS THIS DEMONIC LANGUAGE AND HOW DO PEOPLE SPEAK IT?"

That being said, Kafka in German is waaaay better than Kafka in translation. The end.