Reading Palms

Finally, I've been able to get sleep after weeks of trying and failing, trying and failing, trying and failing. I know why I can almost never sleep at night but I don't have to like it do I.

I woke up really early though, at like 3:52 A.M. if I remember correctly.

The moment I was fully awake, I slipped into some khakis, an old Anti-Flag shirt that I try not to wear but the material always smells of incense from that store that I purchased it from, and my favorite sweater that Courtney bought me a long while back, then I planted my wallet and cigarettes in my pocket and went for a long walk.

I explored many parts of town, places I had been with my friends before, places I have fond memories of. Like the church with the nice hidden hill that Robby, Jenna, and I used to sit on at night, smoking and looking down at the traffic, all the while listening to country music and talking about the future... and where I had that nub fight with Joseph and Robby in which we all got slammed into the concrete of the parking lot a little to hard.

There was also the old wall in the shopping district that we'd all sprayed our codenames on. There were also all the outlets that Robbz had placed on many of the surfaces around the town.
The road that Holly and I drove up and down till two in the morning on a day that I had to be at school early, yelling at passing people, and trying to figure out if her neighbors were going to tell her parents that they'd seen us acting like trapped animals.

Then there was probably my favorite place, the stoop in front of a small clothing store where Molly, Jared, and I used to sit at till we got tired, which usually took until about 5 in the morning. The place where we used to talk about all the things that had happened to us at school, the place where we'd tell each other wild sex stories, our hidden secrets... the things that we only tell the people closest to us.

Reliving moments of the past... Hopefully, I'll be somewhere different soon, to start this whole thing over again.

Names and Faces

It feels really weird when you know you know someone, and that you've known them forever, but besides that you can't remember who they are. You remember there name, your remember that you were connected in some way, but you don't know if you were friends or foes, if you hated them or absolutely loved them. You only know that they existed somewhere in your life and that they were there for long enough for there name to be remembered.

I've been having this happen all night, people will ask me about someone and I'll remember that I had a connection to them, but I pop up my memory file and it just says "You knew them for a couple years. You may have had 8th grade math with them." It's all very stressful.

Hmmm... Maybe I'll hunt these names down and find out exactly how I know them, and if I knew them well I'll find out if they have a husband or wife, if they have any kids, how they like there sandwiches, things that need to be known.

I don't really have a clever nonsequiter, so in other news... My little sister has a job now, I'm waiting for a call from my prospective employer which could be at anytime in the next two days, and I think I may becoming a stranger in this city. I think it might be time to actually leave, and stop just talking about it.

Passage from Time Quake by Kurt Vonnegut

At ten o'clock the old, long out-of-print science fiction writer announced it was his bedtime. There was one last thing he wanted to say to us, to his family. Like a magician seeking a volunteer from the audience, he asked someone to stand beside him and do what he said. I held up my hand. "Me, please, me," i said.

The crowd fell quiet as i took my place to his right.

"The universe has expanded so enormously," he said, "with the exception of the minor glitch it put us through, that light is no longer fast enough to make any trips worth taking in even the most unreasonable lengths of time. Once the fastest thing possible, they say, light now belongs in the graveyard of history like the Pony Express.

"I now ask this human being brave enough to stand next to me to pick two twinkling points of obsolete light in the sky above us. It doesnt matter what they are, except that they must twinkle. If they dont twinkle they are either planets or satellites. Tonight we are not interested in planets or satellites."

I picked two points of light maybe ten feet apart. One was Polaris. I have no idea what the other one was. For all i knew, it was Puke, Trout's star the size of a BB.

"Do they twinkle?" he said.
"Yes they do," i said.
"Promise?" he said.
"Cross my heart," i said.

"Excellent!" he said. "Now then: Whatever heavenly bodies those two glints represent, it is certain that the Universe has become so rarified that for light to go from one to the other would take thousand or millions of years. But i now ask you to look precisely at one, then precisely at the other."

"OK," i said. "I did it."
"It took a second, do you think?" he said.
"No more," i said.

"Even if you had taken an hour," he said, "something would have passed between where those two heavenly bodies used to be, at, conservatively speaking, a million times the speed of light."

"What was it?" i said.

"Your awareness," he said. "That is a new quality in the Universe, which exists only because there are human beings. Physicists must from now on, when pondering the secrets of the cosmos, factor in not only energy and matter and time, but something very new and beautiful, which is human awareness."

Trout paused, ensuring with the ball of his left thumb that his upper dental plate would not slip as he sad his last words to us that enchanted evening.

All was well with his teeth. This was his finale: "I have thought of a better word than awareness," he said. "Let us call it soul."

(Nothing to say really, job interview in an hour.)

By request of the old man that his body never lay out of ear shot of the town's bells.

It's been a rather exciting past two days. I've got a lot of things done, filled out some paper work. I'm waiting for a call from a prospective employer, which hopefully comes soon. Then I need to go sign some papers for this beautifully house that I found that hasn't been occupied for a very long time, I hope it's a murder house.

I watched the Fountain today, such a great movie. I like the interweaving of different philosophies and religious beliefs.

I think I might watch the Seventh Seal later.

Also, I need to get out of this house and go somewhere, spend some time with someone else, besides just Billy.

José Saramago...

At first I was really not excited about the film adaptation of Nobel Prize winning novel Blindness by José Saramago. Almost everytime a book is picked up by a movie studio it is inevitably ruined in some way, but after reading a little more about it I'm losing some of my gaurd towards it.

The first thing that made me drop some of my gaurd is the fact that the movie was directed by Fernando Meirelles, director of the amazing film adaptation of City of God by Paulo Lins and also the adaptation of John le Carré's (David John Moore Cornwell) The Constant Gardener. So that's got me letting up abit on my fear towards letting this film be directed.

Also, the film will not have the characters named, just like the book. I love that they kept that in because it forces you to actually watch the movie, and learn about each of these characters so that you can have a way to describe them. It might be hard for some people to watch, but oh well.

The producer and screenwriter also went to Saramago and spoke to him personally to get that rights to making the film and let him have his demands about what had to be in the film, which should help the movie stay faithful.

There have been some critics who don't care for the film, but most of their articles make it seem like the haven't even read the novel.

(Oh yeah, I read all the books that this author has directed film adaptations for last year in my reading for personal pleasure class... I wonder if he'll think about doing an adaptation of The God of Small Things by Arundhati Roy.)

Classifieds.

I'm beginning to scare myself, not in the good ways like thoughts about maiming your enemies with a hockey stick covered in bent nails but in the awkward what-the-hell-am-I-becoming sort of way.

Firstly, I've become unnaturally obsessed with the V-neck shirts from American Apparel, which may not sound weird, but anyone who knows me knows why that's a scary thing.

Secondly, I've begun to actually be able to go to sleep normally at night, which shouldn't be a bad thing, but I actually do have literal insomnia, so it's really awkward to wake up at 8:00 in the morning like some people.

Lastly, and the major one, is that I'm beginning to develop an interest in a really good friend of mine. Until recently I've viewed this person as nothing more than a really good friend and someone who's fun to hang out with when I get the chance. But now, I've begun to notice that there is a really subtle sexiness and confidence to him that really isn't common to most people, like he's really comfortable in his own skin, it's a really attractive quality.

The bad thing is I'm don't think he's gay, even though we do flirt and play around there's never been anything sexual or romantic about it, it's just two friends teasing each other, but everyone else I talk to are pretty sure that he is a queer. I don't know what to do, I hope to be able to talk to him about it one day like I've done with other friends that I've had an attraction to.

Oh well, I'm being melodramatic.

I'm going to go buy a canteen, because I want one.

ALSO, I have to remember to tell Shawnte that she is marrying a douche bag.

What's On The Auction Block?

I can never seem to go to sleep while it's dark outside, ever, I think I'm just going to try to stay awake for the day and try to go to sleep tonight.

I've just been sitting around since Billy and my sister went to sleep at around three. I read a few pages from Wind-Up Bird Chronicle, which I'm slowly making my way through, also read the first five issues of Gilbert Hernandez's new work Speak of the Devil, it's quite good, but had a quick switch in the middle of the story that was really unexpected. I'm about to start reading some of the beginning issues of he and his brother Jaime's most famous work Love and Rockets.

When Billy wakes up we're going to watch Stranger's with Candy and look for houses on the West Side because they're fucking cheap and ghetto as hell. Hopefully we'll be able to find one that we can agree on so we can get our own place soon. I need to fill out some more job applications today as well... It's going to be a mostly work day which should keep me awake.

I think I'm going to go take a shower in a minute and maybe eat something, since I didn't eat anything yesterday on account of waking up at six at night.

Conjuring Up Concrete.

I'm finally back, after three weeks I'm back in the Ville. It's nice to be back.

A couple of things have changed since I was last here; we got a new kitten named Norma, she's tiny and a feisty bitch, got a new computer chair, wi-fi internet, a new Batman action figure from some friends of mine. Little things.

I need to get a job now. I'm going to put in applications to Sitel, Hastings, and a few other places over the next few days. I'm also talking to Billy about getting our own place, which would be awesome, so I'm going to start searching the papers after I get a job.

I also think I'm going to go to RSU for my basics next year instead of moving to a new place my first year of college.

The lost children are comrades to the little birds that have infiltrated these lands.

Yesterday was pretty good, it's been one of the first good days in a while.

It was Kirsten's birthday, she's now officially 2.1 decades old. We didn't really have much of a party, just kind of a hang out thing with friends. Gifts, little food, the like. I got her Harriet the Spy because she loves that movie. We also went and did our daily book reading at the local Hastings because we're both broke. At dinner I was told that most of the kids I spend my days with haven't seen me eat since I've been here... What the hell? I have eaten, I just have a weird thing about having people see me eat, the idea of it just weirds me out.

We also got a retarded stoner prank pulled on us tonight. Who the fuck leaves twenty pairs of sunglasses and little marshmallows on the ground outside the house and thinks that's a prank, seriously. But we got the kid who did it to clean up his own mess... so prank didn't work out as well as he'd planned.

Now I'm the only one awake, and I've been in between surfing the internet and being scared by the original Fatal Frame... just because it doesn't have the best graphics doesn't mean it's not scary as fuck... immersion!

Well, I'm done with this... I can't write anything anymore... Hopefully I'll be home soon... I hate the Comanche County Police Department.

Superflat!

Tonight I really just needed something that I could watch that would make me feel good. Something weird and fantastic, possibly even insane... and I found it in the works of Tatsuyuki Tanaka.

First, I watched this really awesome little short film collection called Digital Juice, it was really weird and hard to describe... half the time I didn't know what was going on. I give it a 7.5 out of 10 for being good but not super great or anything.

Then, I watched Eternal Family, it sounds kind of normal but read this synopsis I stole from Anime News Network and you'll see that it is not: It started as a sociological experiment. 6 different people were brainwashed to think that they were a family and then put in arbitrary situations to see how they would react. However, when a taping of the families conducts is sold in a desperate attempt to make a little capital it instantly becomes a success. Now the family is a first rated show and their every move is broadcasted around the world without them knowing it. But when a clogged toilet sets off a chain of events that ultimately frees the family from the room they are confined in the broadcasters, not willing to lose their source of income, set out to hunt down and recapture every member of the Eternal family.
Gets an 8.5 for being pretty fucking awesome.

Oh yeah, I've also started re-watching Paranoia Agent. I feel better now.

God Damn Those Drawings.

I'm haven't written anything in a while, atleast for me. But I haven't had anything I really care to tell anyone about happen in my life recently.

I really just want to go home. I think I might need to cry... It was good for two weeks but it's kind of gone down the toilet, we all have our problems and they aren't meshing as well as they usually do.

I wish the Lawton police would hurry up so I can go home.

(This is really disjointed but a lot of things are happening that I don't want to talk about.)

The Old Familiar Stain

This day is just plain annoying. There's no other way to describe it.

I'm tired of trying to mediate things that I can't really help because both of the people who need mediating have such opposing views. I'm sick of couples who are in the constant cycle of fight, love, fight, love, fight. I really just want to sleep right now.

Tomorrow will be better.

Hermann Hesse the Dog has become like my best animal friend, I need to find a way to convince the family to let me keep him in the house until I move, then I'll take him with me. He's in the backyard of the house I'm staying at for four more days, with it's broken gate, and the wind... hiding under a turned over couch because he's afraid of the inside of this house, mainly because of the cat. It's kind of a sad thing to do with the most loyal dog ever, only two days and he already follows me everywhere.

Ummm... I really don't have anything to say. I been feeling kind of sick all night... I think I need bed rest... on the couch.

Hermann Hesse the Dog

Today, we found the most beautiful little puppy I have ever seen, just adventuring around the neighborhood. We invited him over, served him some water, ham, and pet food and now he is in the back yard, being the most adorable thing I have ever seen. He appears to be a Dachshund/Beagle mix.

We're trying to find a home for him now. I can't take him because of my cats. We need a home so we don't have to take him to the pound.

He's a good dog. Well taken care of coat, good teeth, doesn't bark, loves people, everything a dog owner would want. I hope to find someone before we have to send him to the SPCA.

Oh, and his name is Hermann Hesse, hence the title.

The Childishness of Classic Games.

Last night seems like a bad dream to me. I don't know what actually happened but there was a lot of hostility between my best friend and her boyfriend. There was a rain slicked walk with deep conversations about how terrible people are. There was also some bad old Batman movie. Then I fell asleep.

Today's been pretty good though. Woke up really late considering how early I went to bed.

I had this idea while I was outside earlier. Remember the old days when videogames were all had a childlike nature to them, games like: The Twisted Tales of Spike McFang, Kid Dracula, and the Legend of Zelda back when it was still considered the greatest game series ever. Well, I had an idea on how to possibly bring those days back, what if there was a game where you played as a small boy living staying in a small town surrounded by forest over the Summer and you played around as him as well as seeing things through his imagination. I don't really have much more ideas but I will say more when I have it finished.

I feel really sick right now.

Wax Paper and Meredith Monk

I'm insanely bored right now. I have absolutely nothing that I want to do.
I may end up going to the carnival later, but then again I'll probably just stay home and read Nietzsche in a bid to get me prepared for the class on him that's not for another year.

Since I don't really have much to say I'm just going to throw out a list of magazines that I would like everyone to read:
Vice Magazine
Up
Corduroy
Juxtapoz
Butt
Skyscraper
and Bust Down the Door and Eat All the Chickens

Those are the magazines that I usually spend the months with, except Bust Down the Door and Eat All the Chickens which has a hectic, strange printing schedule.

Also, read the Dream People, it's an excellent online publication... if you like Bizarro fiction.

I need to thank Cat for showing me Meredith Monk, she is amazing.

El Cielo Es Azul

Yesterday I went out with Cat to hang out for a while since we haven't seen each other in a long time. We actually went to Starbucks, a place I try to vow to never go into at least once a week but I always end up there. Cat ordered me a cappuccino and herself an americano, we had a few nice conversations, Cat learned and I remembered how to play chess, and had a debate about breastfeeding in public (which I for the record am against, and it's not a matter of breast and baby coverage level.)

We also headed over to Hastings and looked at book titles, I also picked up a bunch of magazines that I didn't get to look through because she insisted on showing me a Brazilian graffiti book before we had to leave which we couldn't find, which mad me kind of sad. After we leave we headed to the Unitarian Universalist church where she plays piano so that she could help some of the members practice there singing and this old Anglo Australian man who has a voice that I wish would read me bedtime stories made me sing with them. It was quite enjoyable, and I love that place, everytime I go there it's exciting. So I'm going there on Saturday.

After we were finished Cat dropped me off at Alex and Sharon's house so that I could have spaghetti dinner with them and the people I'm staying with, my best friend Kirsten and her boyfriend Kenne. We watched a movie called The Sickhouse which was sooo terrible it's awesome. This chick had leeches shoot out of her vagina and a guy got violently face raped by a Plague Doctors mask... sweet!

That was the end of yesterday, because after we arrived back at the house I ended up falling asleep. It was an all in all great day. Today was even better (even though it's technically yesterday because it's past twelve, but who cares.)

I woke up at around ten and went to Wal-mart (which is officially evil) so I could pick up some money my mom sent me for spending while I'm down here. Had a disgusting McDonald's burger of which I only ate half because I can't eat as much as I usually do lately. Headed to Hastings and bought two books; Beyond Good and Evil by Friedrich Nietzsche and Tropic of Cancer by Henry Miller and read the magazines which I wasn't able to read yesterday.

I came back to the house and played Castle Crashers for a few hours... It's actually a pretty awesome game for being made by Newgrounds.

Cat came and picked me up at around six to go have dinner at Hong Kong Buffet with Alex, Sharon, Natalie, and Allison. Cat's been paying for every meal I have out lately and I appreciate it sooo much, thank you Cat. We went to Starbucks again after dinner and I drank an Americano, which Cat also bought with much protest from me. There were also a ton of pictures taken of everyone and some old memories shared (like when I carried Sharon to her room when I lived with her, tucked her into bed, and read her Where the Wild Things Are.)

After Sharon and Alex left, the rest of us headed to a foam party at the college, which I thought was lame at first but turned out to be really awesome with us all drenched in foam and getting super skanky on the dance floor, which was actually the Arts Center fountain. I saw a ton of people there that I haven't seen in years, even some I've known since I was like five.

Now I'm back at the house and my pants are soaked and soapy. It's been some good days.

I Dance Quarters On The Window Sill.

This morning is awkward. The night was awkward. I just really live an awkward, semi-sad, nicotine stained life... I like it.

This kid named Dustin came over to my house to hang out with Billy and we all ended up talking about random lame shit like alcohol, cigarettes, presidents, how John McCain is actually the dehydrated clone of George Bush, and other such nonsensities. We watched Ong-Bak while I drank MD 20/20 and yelled at the screen, calling bullshit incessently throughout the movie for Tony Jaa's Matrix-esque moves.

I'll tell you something kids, it's not a great idea to try to sample all the different wines, beers, vodkas, and whiskeys in your house... Just don't do it... unless supervised by the toilet, a bucket, or a towel on the floor. I'm just going to say that.

I'm still up now, waiting for my mom to get up to go to the doctor, so I can find out if she's going to take me or if I'm going to have to take the bus. See, I would drive there myself, but I'm technically not allowed to drive ever because I have panic attacks behind the wheel and end up slamming into a ditch... luckily, no one was even remotely hurt in that accident because my grandmother's car is made out of Croatian tank parts. I'm sort of hoping I get to take the bus so I can people watch and play the "Try to not get your head cut off by an insane Asian man" game.

If I look for pictures of Lawton all I find is pictures of clean buildings, gorgeous hillsides, and general wholesomness... Whatever, we all know Lawton is full of ghetto ass wanna-be gangbangers, hood rats, gutter skanks, tricks, bitches, sluts, and teenage girls waiting to get impregnated by a GI so they can have there whole life set on military pay... Ah, makes me long for it soo much.

I really need to shower, I smell like rancid beef stew from sitting on the porch in this humidity for most of the morning.

Play Me In Time To The Poet's Pencil Rhymn.

Tomorrow I leave. This week has gone by soo slowly, way too slowly if you ask me. It's been such a hard week for me, the thing I haven't stated in this blog is that I've been crying about things this whole week. It's been hard having one of my best friends in this town leave, I miss him, he's an amazing kid who was the only one I ever felt like I could talk about philosophy and religion, novels and poems with and he'd actually understand what I was saying. I hope I get to see him again soon, it already seems like so long since he's been gone. I hope to have another parking lot boxing match with him when I see him next.

Besides that though it's been pretty okay as far as weeks go. I've been getting to sleep earlier than usual, except for tonight because I can't sleep while anticipating this trip.

I've been watching wrestling a lot, if it was just the normal Monday, Tuesday, Thursday, and Friday it wouldn't be that weird, but I've been watching a lot of old matches on youtube and such, including the sweetly badass Cactus Jack vs. Wing Kanemura Deathmatch. Besides that it's been a lot of beat poetry, an obscure videogame for the SNES called The Twisted Tales of Spike McFang, zombie novels, shitty awesome gore films, and Persepolis. Yep, my week has pretty much been spent inside except for the random walks and jogs that I force myself into in order to lose all the fat that I have on this body. I really need a gym membership.

I think I might go jog right now, considering the sun will be up in about an hour and it annoys me to jog in the daytime.

Day Dreamer, You're Pondering And Planning.

I need to leave this place as fast as possible.

I don't know why but I woke up from a short nap this afternoon and just felt that I had to leave. It's one of those things that I feel is going to need to be done soon, like within the next few days, I'm going to have to leave here and be gone forever. I'll most likely actually do it too, because when my mind feels like this I normally go with what it's feeling, and this feels like impending doom if I don't get out of here.

In other news, I'm a strange person who was caught this morning reading Dumas under the covers with a flashlight like a seven year old. Oh, Count of Monte Cristo, you are a delightful tale.

You're all I want, building a building.

Leave The Parkour To The French.

For once in the past month I actually went to sleep at what many people would call a normal time. It didn't feel right waking up at sunrise though, I prefer darkness.

I ended up going with my mom to take my sister to school, but ended up being forced to sit in the Family Care Center parking lot for almost half an hour waiting for my sister to get her pills. I mostly just people watched the whole time, which is always exciting, creating life stories for all the people who pass by, such as the military transexual who was going to get checked for VD.

We ended up having breakfast from McDonald's because we were both too lazy to cook. Also, my mother fell through a hole in the floor that my sister made when she was doing something I can't remember, luckily the new floors should be finished this weekend.

Only a few more days until I leave for a little while...

I wish my dreams were weirder than they've been lately, because Parkour dreams aren't doing it for me.