i look at pictures of a girl i was in love with while simultaneously resisting the affections of another. the former i loved, the latter i do not. why? 

there are times when i hold the scepter. with the angle of my hand i discern the sheep from the goats. you will cry or you will laugh. i have probably made a few cry. 

then i beg on my knees at the mercy of another for the same affection i refuse to extend. 

i cant make you love me. you cant make me love you. 

i need to do some things. 

lunch today with susan. realized that i dont have an answer to give, starting spewing verbal diarrhea. put forth an attempt for her to acknowledge the dysfunctional nature in which i talk in relation to matters of faith, but i did not witness any understanding in her face. thus i was in this way denied, not in the conscious sense of her denying me an attempt to be understood, but denied in the sense of confidence  in my ability to accurately articulate the validity of my beliefs. felt completely disarmed. but the redemptive notion that one ususally feels during such experiences was absent, as the disarmament was only occurring in my half of the conversation, and i perpetuated the whole thing, gave away my entire identity to a stranger who i had almost no context for, all couched within my emotionally involved tendency to beat myself up over this inability to communicate that stems from an insecurity to provide an adequate answer to support the legitimacy of my socially awkward self-acknowledgement of Christian. 

i was stressed out about nothing. what was i stressed out about?

were you hipster too?

It's her lips that carry the weight; the exhausting burden of forcing all her actions to fit within the social parameters of a superfluous cultural fad while tragically never becoming aware of the fact. They want to be the best, and that's understandable. Someone has to try to. And it is, after all, me that reaps the benefits of their attempts at creating this empire of dirt. I like to find the best coffee, and i like to know how to make it too, but i'd prefer not to contribute to the cultural stigma of pretentiousness that always seems to come from the attempt to "be the best" within a capitalistic system fueled by the almost undeniable tendency of humans to compete with each other. 

They don't realize the advantages of being shitty. They have no notion of praying for affliction, or at least embracing its humility when it comes to them circumstantially. They still get disappointed when they lose. It's not an opportunity for them, it's the loss of one. And they don't yet recognize that this particular fad to which they subscribe is like a drop in the bucket, an effect of a previous cause. Soon, within several years, it will become the cause for an equally rebellious effect. Someone will say, "how tiresome it is to make sure everything you eat is organic and free trade." Yea. Damn. We're tired of this. 

But don't mention this subscription stuff to them- for they will arduously deny subscription to any set of limiters. "The first rule of Fight Club is: you do not talk about Fight Club." You'd think if it was really that great of a movement, more people would be willing to go down with the ship. 

I heard this atheist say once that he had a lot of respect for fundamentalist evangelicals. If you were really convinced that the world was ending soon, wouldn't you try to save people from eternal damnation too? The problem is the anti-savior complex inevitably becomes the anti- love complex. "So stare at the ocean while your friends all drown, we all need to learn to swim anyway." The hipster doesn't seem to wanna save anybody from anything. I think they might just stand there and watch while it happened. They might even have a rope. 

I'd prefer to be saved. 

equal parts wishful optimism and foggy remembrance

i remember quite intricately the feeling that i get upon coming home after the end of the fall semester. the first thing that happens is that you get used to staying out till 5am every night because you're over in your friend's basement playing video games all night. then eventually you go home and sleep till 3, at which point you wake up and realize that it will only be daylight for approximately 2 more hours before the december darkness, with its constant reminder of its inherent unnaturalness, creeps back over you again, at which point you start the cycle all over again. its a wonderful time; a responsibility-free rebellion against the past three months of being locked into the ever-greuling cycle of the intellectual life, and a desperate attempt to soak up each and every moment before the cycle begins once again. i remember losing track of the days, each one bled into the next, nothing to differentiate the weekend from the weekdays.

and now i think about it here, at thanksgiving, as the semester is almost over, but not quite, as if its leaving me one last oppotunity to make a significant mark upon what will be most remembered from fall 2009, and i come again to the realization of how much i want to share the carefree and completely childish experience of running around this town that is my home with someone else. it would just be you and me, and we might not get the phone call till 11 oclock at night, but when we did, we'd head on over to greg's house, and the three or four or five of us would watch a movie, and maybe id fall asleep, or maybe you would, but we'd have a hell of a time. the next night we'd do it all over again, except we'd call him or her too cause they're back and we haven't seen them since september and hey they're good people and we want them around us. i'd want you to experience how exhiliarating this life is; the magic that comes from having so many anxious youths back in their proper context. and you would jump right in and say "YEA!," and then we'd drive off into the timeless night and suddenly remember how to forget who we are.

the mechanicals are coming

a year and a half in the making. but somehow, in the back of my mind, i knew it would take this long. ive watched friends spend 6, 7, 8 years playing music before something actually happened. we're doing alright.

new stuff's sounding great, and im excited, and i think all four of us are seeing the rewards of sticking it out. for sure, it hasnt been easy, nor will it continue to be, but several things excite me, and they involve not simply just having enough material to play a 20 minute set, but having material that, to the best of my ability at objectivity, i believe is something lyrically significant and musically well done. at the risk of sounding cliche, this stuff fuggin rocks, something that i was previously hesitant about, but have become increasingly unabashedly ok with. and i think we've done a damn good job of coming together musically. i feel more and more confident as drummer, more smooth, more on, more expressive. there was times when i wasnt, but im cool with this now. soon it will be time to let it all out. and i will not be ashamed.


p.s. im through with high school coffeehouses. so awkward. so difficult to afford these people any legitmacy. i am, in some sense, waiting for people to grow up. i witness the stagnation of aimless lives; the product of irresponsibility, poor stewardship, and a lack of understanding of the liberal (freeing) arts. in a word: school. this is what happens when people stop learning. what the hell am i gonna do with myself when i graduate?

through an intimate understanding of the human condition i will fabricate a murderer. his nature will be nothing like mine.


*unfinished mental note to myself to not forget this concept. more must be said on this

two things

1st- there's a girl in every town.

2nd-most things are just fads. 

i didnt, say, choose the solitary path. maybe it was my father told me i am a thinking person, so i became. also told me i am an attractive person. have i chosen to become self aware of it? well geeeeeeezzzzzeeeeee i dunno. should i? 

i mean, for a little while, i thought i could pull it off, living in relationship, you know, that kind....you know. i can. yet according to some and one half self, it goes against my nature. and we all know how damn stressful reinventing yourself is. you can only do it so many times before people stop taking you seriously. 

or maybe they never started taking you seriously, and thats how we got in this God-awful shitty mess to begin with. 

i hear you saying, "you are also the culprit." yes, i turn people down, and i dont know how to reconcile it. beggar wants to choose. im not a beggar. but i do feel. 

when it all comes down to it, im not gonna dumb it down. we'll either speak the same language or we'll become horrendously awkward. some people cant handle that. 

where are all the dangerous people?