me...

I tell you what is; big city, hmm? Live. Work, huh? But, only peoples. Peoples is peoples. No is buildings. Is tomatoes, huh? Is peoples, is dancing, is music, is potatoes. So peoples is peoples. Okay? posted by Arthur @ 10/04/2002 07:40:00 PM	Friday, October 04, 2002
i think i'm done with people for a while. They're too dumb. Especially the smart ones. Current Mood: diffident Current Music: "Yeah, and that seems fair" - Banditos, The Refreshments posted by Arthur @ 9/26/2002 06:43:00 PM	Thursday, September 26, 2002
When the man interviewing me asks if i am honest, i no longer assume he means cosmic honesty, or even human honesty, but American honesty. The plastic, appeasing honesty of an uneducated democracy. i suppose L.A. has helped me see the dark. Off i go to my second day of work. Current Mood: drudge Current Music: "What the hell am I doing here? I don't belong here" - Creep, Radiohead posted by Arthur @ 9/25/2002 10:22:00 AM	Wednesday, September 25, 2002
Dear Rebekah, The older i get, the more impossible it seems to communicate my soul. But i want to try to tell you about Greek Fest. We got to the gate and i called it a scam, because they were charging $2 for what was clearly only the opportunity to buy overpriced food, but Dave still wanted to go. The sun was awful, and i was fairly depressed, still wearing the clothes you saw me in. We walked into the church, where they were giving a cooking demonstration, and paid absolutely no attention. The demonstration ended, people faded in and out. Then a band took the stage. After a song or two, a handful of old people got up, linked arms, and started dancing. The moment found me slowly. Dave commented that they looked like poorly programmed robots, and i laughed long and hard, because it was absolutely true, but i was also already glowing. You know, when you're smiling so big that tears form? Oh Rebekah, it was so beautiful. And that's it, you know? The end of culture. The remnants of a world before a McDonald's in every town, Baywatch on every screen. Don't get me wrong; though no fan of Baywatch, i revel in a connected world. But look at the price. Look at what's been lost. i wish you'd been there to see, to understand. me Current Mood: lost and alone Current Music: "It's hard at the end of the day; I need some distraction, oh beautiful release" - Angel, Sarah McLachlan posted by Arthur @ 9/22/2002 03:19:00 AM	Sunday, September 22, 2002
There are only and exactly two times when we automatically reply "Oh, no, of course not." The first is when we mean it. The second is when we really mean "You just broke my heart." Current Mood: heart-broken Current Music: "I catch myself smile more than you'd ever expect" - Days Go By, Duncan Sheik posted by Arthur @ 9/21/2002 05:31:00 AM	Saturday, September 21, 2002
Pop Monday: People wonder if movies reflect real life. Hell yes, they do. I'll tell you how. Both make it difficult for two people to find each other and fall in love. Think about it - all the barriers that get put in the way of romance, which in movies is exactly the point. That's what holds our interest for two hours. But in real life, love would hold our interest. Movies end when two people finally embrace, but that is exactly when life begins. Everyone is aching for magic. Everyone wants that moment in the third act when their eyes meet and the music swells, and they fall into their lover's arms. But no one talks! No one connects anymore. Life is a very long movie, and everyone is stuck in the second act. This is what i wanna know: Why can't we cut to the climax?! Why can't we move right pass all the barriers and go straight to the part that everyone's waiting for - the part where the guy gets the girl. posted by Arthur @ 9/16/2002 06:04:00 PM	Monday, September 16, 2002
i ask childishly demanding questions of a lot of people, but i have a suspicion that few walk away as confounded as physicists. According to contemporary physics (and consequently, popular theory), a fundamental attribute of our universe over time is that it tends toward higher levels of entropy or disorder. A broken egg is irreparable, a released gas irretrievable. However, i find this perspective one-sided, and incapable. Because the Big Bang dispersed it, the universe has been cooling, which ironically brought about forces (gravity, electromagnetism, and the nuclear) that tend toward order. So instead of a stubbornly separatist universe, it seems to me that this fragile phenomenon life exists because there is conflict or balance. Current Mood: less than anticipatory, more than wondering Current Music: "I've never been so lost, I've never felt so much at home" - I Woke Up In A Car, Something Corporate posted by Arthur @ 9/16/2002 12:36:00 AM
The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy has this to say about space: Space is big. Really big. You just won't believe how vastly, hugely, mindboggingly big it is. I mean, you may think it's a long way down the road to the chemist, but that's just peanuts to space. posted by Arthur @ 9/13/2002 05:26:00 AM	Friday, September 13, 2002
Here we are again. i wish i could say something reassuring, but you know the world as well as i do. i would only suggest one thing. i see all kinds of money and energy going into tributes, but i think if we could ask those who died what they would want, they would tell us to put our efforts into Peace - to make sure this never happens again. Support worldwide education and demilitarization. Lobby to regain infringed civil rights and to create an international court. It is exceedingly tragic that in a world in which we are more connected to one another than ever before, there should still be such hatred. At some point, the U.S. has to wield that strength we're always talking about, and step down. Begin to see that massive civilian death is a reality everyday in many places, be it starvation, disease, government, terrorism. And that even if it's only a distant speck on our awareness, a person's a person, no matter how small. Current Mood: sorrowful Current Music: "And thus your freedom when it loses its fetters becomes itself the fetter of a greater freedom." - Kahlil Gibran posted by Arthur @ 9/11/2002 02:50:00 AM	Wednesday, September 11, 2002
Pop Monday: If you haven't recently, get your hands on a copy of the Woodstock documentary and watch it again. It always amazes me what our parents achieved, and gave up. i think, in our disillusioned 90's mindset, we find it hard to believe that such a world could exist. But listen to the shopkeepers - it did. (Though i'm usually more of a Beat, the last couple days my inner-Hippie has been visiting due to the miserable job-search and this groovy girl i found.) Current Mood: world-weary Current Music: "And the sign said, 'Long-haired freaky people need not apply.'" - Signs, Tesla posted by Arthur @ 9/10/2002 12:22:00 AM	Tuesday, September 10, 2002
Magic is a sticky wicket. People who do believe don't like dissecting it, and people who don't believe aren't fair at all. i resent both positions equally. i think it's a kind of insult to the universe to suggest that magic exists outside of our minds, but the phenomenon itself is wonderful - literally. Magic is an emotion we experience when our mind reaches its limits of comprehension. And that's why religion is so often backwards, trying to explain with the inexplicable. "What, then," the astute reader asks, "is the difference between magic and confusion?" And i would suggest that confusion is caused by something we don't understand to an extent that we do, and magic is caused by something we do understand to an extent that we don't. For example, what you are experiencing right now is confusion. Current Mood: meditative Current Music: "Isn't it enough to see that a garden is beautiful without having to believe that there are fairies at the bottom of it too?" - Douglas Adams posted by Arthur @ 9/07/2002 08:25:00 PM	Saturday, September 07, 2002
i have cried many times over the loss of Douglas Adams. It's a connection i have never succeeded in explaining to anyone; i never met him. Last night, i did. Though kind and honest, he was sort of vacant - maybe because that's how i imagine he was, maybe because i didn't know him, or maybe because Sartre's Death is as infectious as Dante's. We were sitting on the living room floor of my grandmother's house. i may have been much younger. i spent a lot of time convincing him how much he'd changed my life; it was hard for him to believe. When my father came in and sat on the sofa, oblivious, we discussed that empty relationship. Shortly after waking, i had tears in my eyes before i knew why. Neither of my parents is a bad person, but from my earliest perceptions there were never any real connections. It was as if we had the same vocabulary, but all the meanings and syntax were different. For a brief dream moment, i knew what it was to have a dad. It occurs to me that some readers may come to this weblog for philosophy, and end up with my dreams. i've therefore decided to start a dream journal at achildawake.blogspot.com. See you there! Current Mood: alien Current Music: "Mind your manners. Watch your weight. Be a good boy. Just behave. What's wrong with you? Settle down. Keep your two feet on the ground. Sit up straight. Stand up tall. Never falter. Never fall. Stay in school. Make the grade. Never fail. And never fade. Be a hero. Be a star. Anything but what you are. Find a girl to possess. Always pay, pursue, protect. Be a master. Be a slave. Work your ass into an early grave." - To Be Loved, Curtis Stigers (Dawson's Creek Soundtrack) posted by Arthur @ 9/04/2002 11:42:00 PM	Wednesday, September 04, 2002
Creativity and imagination are not synonymous. Creativity is the ability to pull ideas together, to make connections. i have this like Seattle has rain. Imagination is the ability to conjure spontaneous ideas, to create arbitrarily. This only comes in waking dreams before i sleep: Sound of slight motion, a breeze. Confused by the feeling of you. In smooth light black, you're soft heavy white. Your knees - you're sitting up. i have both pillows? You flip back to a page you had finger-kept. There may be more. Hard, dirty-gray poetry. But your voice is sweet air, elan, dulcinea. i understand nothing but your love. Current Mood: dreamy Current Music: "Ana Ng and I are getting old, and we still haven't walked in the glow of each other's majestic presence. Listen Ana, hear my words; they're the ones you would think I would say if there was a me for you" - Ana Ng, They Might Be Giants posted by Arthur @ 9/04/2002 05:45:00 AM
she said, "Did you think that you were dreaming?" i said, "Sometimes i don't know." i have trouble acting normal can't you see me, can't you see me, can't you see me? posted by Arthur @ 9/03/2002 03:27:00 PM	Tuesday, September 03, 2002
if she remembers, she hides it whenever we meet posted by Arthur @ 9/03/2002 03:06:00 PM
round here we stay up very very very very late i can't see nothin', nothin' round here posted by Arthur @ 9/03/2002 04:36:00 AM
The one thing that everyone learns as life goes on, is that life goes on. Sometimes i think that is the saddest thing i could wish for anyone. Sometimes the universe needs to end - it HAS to. It keeps us alive, keeps us creating. i don't fear death, but i fear being ready for it. Current Mood: the opposite of alee Current Music: "Would you catch me if i was fallin'? Would you kiss me if i was leavin'?" - Round Here, Counting Crows (Across a Live Wire) posted by Arthur @ 9/03/2002 04:02:00 AM
Pop Monday: i want to talk about Rebekah. And artistic movements. And emotions. And duality. As you may've noticed, i believe in a dichotic understanding of existence. i believe that we are both objective and subjective beings, and that we can not possibly be wholly honest until we recognize our inherent duality. Our emotions are an excellent example. Dostoevsky identified that one kind of anger, once triggered, would cease in the face of an obstacle, but another kind would continue to afflict the mind. What we commonly refer to as one emotion, is actually two experiences. And this is true of every emotion. There is the initial subjective chemical rush of anger, joy, sorrow, fear, and then there is our objective recognition that we experienced an emotion a second ago, and that there is every reason to still experience it. Rebekah is an artist. She takes empty photographs of trailer parks, and creates documentary montages of naked butts. Some very loud part of me insisted that this was all silliness, but i sensed a much more compelling truth being whispered, and turned my head to listen. When you talk to Rebekah about art, you get an idiosyncratically genuine sense of disillusionment. And that's when i realized that i had before me the reenacted genesis of Postmodernism. That artistic movements are very much like emotions, with a profoundly honest and reactionary spark, and a quite longer, intentional, diluted continuation. That the progenitors of a movement are not so much innovating as they are desperately grasping for a last resort, and that the rest of a movement is merely regurgitation for starving artists. All at once, i had found a new respect for the idea of art. So thank you, Rebekah. i don't do regrets, but it will always sadden me that i didn't get to explore you more. Current Mood: imaginative Current Music: "i'm surprised that you've never been told before that you're priceless and you're precious, even when you are not new" - Fascinating New Thing, Semisonic posted by Arthur @ 9/02/2002 06:55:00 PM	Monday, September 02, 2002
In this country alone, five people die every minute. i lose track of the presence of death. And of the presence of birth. My heart can't handle how many first kisses and last touches... i forget rain. But here's a goodbye to those five, and i'm very sorry i missed you. And here's a welcome to the children i'll never get to meet. Your heart will grow, do its best, and fail - but try not to forget. And i'll hear the sprinklers at night, dream of rain. Current Mood: mostly harmless Current Music: "i'm looking for someone to change my life, i'm looking for a miracle in my life. And if you could see what it's done to me..." - Question, The Moody Blues posted by Arthur @ 9/02/2002 02:03:00 AM
i am someone's blog of the day! That's a strange chunk of pineapple in my Jell-o. If people are actually reading and enjoying my blog, maybe i ought to stop pining and be more consistently reflective. Hopefully my spin-off blog will serve as an outlet for my girl troubles. Oops! Did i let the news out early? Stay tuned, bat-fans... Current Mood: secretive Current Music: "Why are all American girls so rough? Damn, that girl can't ever hurt you enough" - American Girls, Weezer posted by Arthur @ 9/01/2002 05:20:00 PM	Sunday, September 01, 2002
And the song that's finally lulling me (temporarily) out of my insanity and into sleep... if i had a million dollars, i'd buy your love * posted by Arthur @ 9/01/2002 07:00:00 AM
we could be sleeping in the flowers posted by Arthur @ 9/01/2002 06:58:00 AM
Do you even read me anymore? posted by Arthur @ 9/01/2002 05:09:00 AM
there's a light a certain kind of light that never shines on me i want my life to be here with you i wanna be with you "there's a way," i hear everybody sayin' to do everything that i can but what good will it do if i can't have you, if i can't have you? i'm a man can't you see that's what i am? and every breath that i take, i take from you but what good would breathing do if i can't have you, if i can't have you? baby, you don't know what it's like no, you don't know what it's like you don't know what it's like no, you don't know what it's like to love somebody to love somebody the way i love you posted by Arthur @ 9/01/2002 04:18:00 AM
There's something funereal about a library. Claustrophobic aisles through steel catacombs, crowded with tattered, deteriorating remains, arranged by cold decimal assignment. Millions of lives spelled out in arbitrary, archaic symbols of black and white. Millions more engaged in the ritual hibernation of reading, curled up between the covers in their silent, paper tombs. Fanatically they chant their souls away in the controlled, imagined world of others, lest they should find themselves in fresh air, creating a real world of their own. And, as is the tragedy of any organized religion, they grasp everything but the point - every volume, every chapter, every page, every stanza, every line, every word, every dangling leg of every lower-case 'y' is screaming just one thing: Live! Current Mood: volleying Current Music: "She was one of a kind, she's just mine all mine" - You Shook Me All Night Long, AC/DC posted by Arthur @ 9/01/2002 02:01:00 AM
"The greatest thing you'll ever learn is just to love and be loved in return." It occurred to me just now that maybe that's impossible. Maybe you can only have one. Or maybe you discover one of them, and then have to be taught the other. posted by Arthur @ 8/31/2002 02:33:00 PM	Saturday, August 31, 2002
It's very hard to give a guy failure, but it's just as hard to give a girl success. Both sexes have exactly the same instinctive shirk. And i think they deserve each other. But i appreciate when someone shows me i've failed, because it's an opportunity to grow. And i want a girl who can appreciate success. It'd be comforting to think every girl who has not succumbed to my eccentric charm has been shirking the success of having caught my attention. Of course, this is not the case. However, i know that it has been the case, and that the necessary vagueness of every other case is just another in a series of stupid, life-denying games. The way girls behave suggests that we, as guys, simply shouldn't care. If we do care that the girl we're attracted to ignores us, clearly we've got a problem and weren't worth it anyway. The truth that always seems to get the cone of silence in gender politics is that we're all human. Girls are supposed to be subhuman and not worth a guy's time, and guys are supposed to be superhuman and not care about girls. i am simply human seeking connections - across this garden of already forking paths - with another human. Girls, you're not subhuman. You do affect us. Take some responsibility. Current Mood: blue, rebekah Current Music: "People always take a step away from what is true, that's why I like you around" - I Want You, Third Eye Blind posted by Arthur @ 8/31/2002 02:29:00 AM
i feel quite anti-social, against this social whole as it exists. i wish one could be a pirate or a highwayman in these days. But my way of shooting them with noiseless bullets that explode in their souls, these social people of today, perhaps is more satisfying. But i feel like an outlaw. All my work is a shot at their very innermost strength, these banded people of today. Let them cease to be. Let them make way for another, fewer, stronger, less cowardly people. posted by Arthur @ 8/30/2002 11:02:00 PM	Friday, August 30, 2002
You'll all enjoy this... i took a personality test at eHarmony.com in order to find my soulmate, and my profile was REJECTED. Well, here are some interesting things it said, anyway... - You have a natural enthusiasm for the activities you prefer. Because of your enthusiasm, you may forget that others have different wants and needs. - You don't actively seek out conflict; however, you will confront those who stand between you and what you want to happen. - In social situations, you prefer variety, adventure, and the unusual. You may lose interest if you feel a situation is becoming routine. As a result, you must be kept busy and involved with making things happen. - You respect those who win out against the odds and show persistence. You set high goals for yourself and others. - Your primary social strategy is making things happen and happen now. - You can get so involved with an activity that you take charge, and this can frustrate others. You don't mean to take charge, it's just your drive. - You will take issue and not shy away from confrontation when others disagree with how you feel or think. - Your high ego traits coupled with impatience may have others read you as arrogant at times. This is only appreciated by others when they understand that you need quick results, challenges, and competition. - You can be quite cautious and not trust people you don't know. Once you get to know them you can be warm and disarming. And here are "communication styles that will mesh well with your own"... - Take issue with the facts, not the person, if you disagree. - Provide options, rather than opinions. - Verify that the message is understood. - Be brief, clear, and to the point. - Provide questions and choices for making decisions. - Motivate and persuade by referring to objectives and results. - Ask specific questions--preferably "What..." questions. - Prepare for demanding questions, and perhaps objections. Current Mood: amused Current Music: "These things i do, you see i've forgotten if they're green or they're blue" - Your Song, Elton John posted by Arthur @ 8/30/2002 08:55:00 PM
These old photographs are good, because i have a bad memory. They uncover the emotions beneath the rust and creaks we've become. i love you. That's very hard to conjure these days. i try to hide the notion away because i am so afraid, so afraid, so afraid of never finding it again. And you've grown up. Everyone is growing up. Even Sarah has told me to grow up. And i won't. It's not a rebellion, it's not a smug literary allusion, it's not even a decision. i grew up long before i met you, and that was all for me. A child awake, alone, among stars. And here i am. And there you are. Ever farther, ever farther. And i have been reaching for so long, so long. You don't know alone. Like driving through another state: i love you; so long. Current Mood: camilla Current Music: "Awake on my airplane, my skin is bare" - Take A Picture, Filter posted by Arthur @ 8/29/2002 04:34:00 AM	Thursday, August 29, 2002
scared of a world outside you should go explore you pull all the shades and wander the great indoors though lately i can't blame you i have seen the world and sometimes wish your room had room for two posted by Arthur @ 8/27/2002 01:33:00 AM	Tuesday, August 27, 2002
Whoa! Mayer! Anagram! posted by Arthur @ 8/27/2002 01:27:00 AM
Pop Monday: There's no use denying it anymore. John Mayer has replaced the Counting Crows as my favorite band. Between gouging black sand from my nails, i've been asking myself, "Am i living it right?" My dissatisfaction replies. i wanna be reckless. i want adventure. i want more bears and chickens and things. But i just keep circling myself, like a hungry paradoxical vulture. And the space between the stars grows as shallow as a grown-up. i don't deserve this. Though of course i do, and in that realization i may find freedom. i just hope it's soon. The huddled masses of Realworld are hurling stones, and i still haven't found my out. i always thought it would be you. Current Mood: missing a piece Current Music: "You'll be with me next time i go outside" - 3 x 5, John Mayer posted by Arthur @ 8/27/2002 12:09:00 AM
Can't talk. Must do. Current Mood: nauseous Current Music: "Can you hear me that when it rains and shines it's just a state of mind?" - Rain, The Beatles posted by Arthur @ 8/26/2002 01:12:00 AM	Monday, August 26, 2002
i'm not brave; i'm just fleeing in the opposite direction. You are afraid of action, i dread inaction. You fear possibility, i am terrified of opportunities lost. i mean, look in my eyes. Feel my hands on your shoulders. This is it. It's not a rehearsal, it's not an exercise. This is everything. Right now. And you would not take every chance? Choose not to explore? You are the brave ones; you run toward Death. i can't understand you. Current Mood: confused Current Music: "We die only once, and for such a long time." - Le Dépit Amoureux, Molière posted by Arthur @ 8/20/2002 07:21:00 AM	Tuesday, August 20, 2002
Pop Monday: Lear's dying words were "Look there, look there!" Not once, but twice - across time. In this way, the fabled king of poor sight, on his deathbed, became the first filmmaker. Nowhere has there been a more eloquent and complete demonstration of both the power and limitations of the medium. Film has the capacity to show and reshow existence to us, but it is limited by both the director's ability to point, and our ability to see. It seems i can never say this enough: Thanks, Will. Current Mood: awake Current Music: "There's a price to pay for a place safe to hide, inside. It seems that things they could've been different - for both of us, both of us." - Alright Caroline, Third Eye Blind posted by Arthur @ 8/19/2002 06:22:00 PM	Monday, August 19, 2002
Why is it so much easier to get to sleep by dawn light? Current Mood: damn near serene Current Music: "Staring at the ceiling gives me another feeling about who you are" - When It Goes Down, Something Corporate posted by Arthur @ 8/19/2002 07:54:00 AM
"Just for you, I'll tell you a story. Once a king gave a feast for the loveliest princesses in the realm. Now, a soldier who was standing guard saw the king's daughter go by. She was the most beautiful of all, and he fell instantly in love. But what is a simple soldier next to the daughter of a king? At last he succeeded in meeting her, and he told her he could no longer live without her. The princess was so taken by the depth of his feeling that she said to the soldier, 'If you can wait for 100 days and 100 nights under my balcony, at the end of it, I shall be yours.' And with that the soldier went, and waited one day, two days, then ten, then twenty. Each evening the princess looked out, and he never moved! In the rain, in wind, in snow, he was always there! Birds shat on his head, bees stung him, but he didn't budge. At the end of it - ninety days - he had become all dry, all white. Tears streamed from his eyes; he couldn't hold them back. He didn't even have the strength to sleep. And all that time, the princess watched him. At long last, it was the 99th night, and the soldier stood up, took his chair, and left." "What happened at the end?" "That is the end." posted by Arthur @ 8/18/2002 10:39:00 PM	Sunday, August 18, 2002
i believe that everyone gets a handful of lifelong paradoxes. Now that i've actually made it to LA, and everyone expects me to make something of myself, i suppose i should explain my fame conundrum. i've always had aspirations to greatness, but with a very particular intent; to become a writer or director seems the surest way of finding a soulmate. On the other hand, i have an intense fear that becoming famous will blur me. Will she fall in love with me, or my work, or my fame? And i would lose the luxury of being a freak, which weeded out the 95% of girls unwilling to excommunicate society. Loving me has always been a very hard thing to do, and i like it that way. So here i am, desperately stuck. Of course, i'm sure none of this means anything to Life. i just wish she could be here with me now, and then we could love the world together. My current project is a child's science fiction novel, and after i wrote a few paragraphs, i dreamed up the following sequence for Letterman: "Me, you there?" "i'm here." "Glad to have you on the show. From what magical, literary corner of the Universe are you coming to us tonight?" "It's my backyard, Dave." [laughter] "All right, so what've you got planned for us?" "Well, when i was a kid i used to watch your show all the time, and you had this segment where you'd drop watermelons from the top of buildings... But, the thing is, i never really understood the dropping part. i mean, we only ever really wanted to see one thing..." [steps aside to reveal plunger, wired to pile of watermelons] [applause] "i'm taking out the middle man, Dave." [laughter] "Oh man. All right, go ahead..." "My brother Chuck is gonna handle this one." ... "Let's go back out and see how Me is doing. What have you got for us now?" "Well, Dave, now we've got a huge pile of cheap electronic equipment." "Now, Me, that looks pretty dangerous. Have you got the necesssary permits for all that?" "Dave." [laughter] "While you sit there tossing pencils and chatting up celebrities, i could go get 'permits' for my 'explosions'... or me and my brothers could just blow up more stuff." [applause] "All right, here we go. More stuff exploding." "My brother Matt will take this one." ... "Dave, hey Dave." "That sounds like Me. I thought we were done with that. What is it, Me? I thought we exploded everything." "Not quite, Dave. i've got these books..." "Oh, all right, well - Hold on a minute, what books are those?" [while talking, pulls glasses out of breast pocket, begins polishing, sets them on the books] "Dave, whether or not i know what these books are isn't what's important." [laughter] "It's not?" [while talking, pulls magic wand out of hip pocket, tests it, sets it on the books] "No, Dave. What's important is whether or not they explode." [laughter] "All right, take it away." "I'm gonna take care of this one myself, Dave." [laughter] There you have it. i'm an insecure dreamer too. Happy? Current Mood: frustrated Current Music: "But I can't sigh now" - Circles, Soul Coughing posted by Arthur @ 8/18/2002 05:34:00 AM
This goes out to you... understand the things i say don't turn away from me 'cause i've spent all my life out here you wouldn't disagree do you see me? do you see - do you like me - do you like me standing here? posted by Arthur @ 8/17/2002 04:29:00 AM	Saturday, August 17, 2002
Funny thing about being woozy from lack of eats... things don't occur to you (such as, that you might be woozy from lack of eats). Also, cheese and orange juice are EXPENSIVE. posted by Arthur @ 8/16/2002 11:54:00 PM	Friday, August 16, 2002
i was so confident having not hit my head on the top of the shower door, i stubbed my toe on the bottom. i know it may not seem like it, but there are definite disadvantages to being tall. i cite hide-and-seek as exhibit A, and the ball-pit at Chuck E. Cheese's a close B. Current Mood: unwieldy Current Music: "People they come together" - We Are All Made Of Stars, Moby posted by Arthur @ 8/16/2002 04:43:00 AM
i feel metaphysically fidgety. i'm being tossed around by ...my finally-fixed laptop, which i've been using for hours of Lemmings Revolution. ...all the food i don't know how to make, and ingredients too expensive for playing. ...a job i can't find, for a career i don't want. ...all the people who know the secrets i'm confessing, but leave me howling in darkening silence. Current Mood: abandoned Current Music: "If I am only here to watch you as you suffer..." - If I Am, Nine Days posted by Arthur @ 8/15/2002 05:38:00 PM	Thursday, August 15, 2002
So i was killing ants for about a week there with Windex, and when i went to refill the bottle today, the very smell produced the mental impulse "Ants!" Cause-effect is a tempting, but elusive mistress. posted by Arthur @ 8/13/2002 04:51:00 PM	Tuesday, August 13, 2002
Top Four Hypotheses As To Why Girls Do Not Transcend Reason: 1. Fear of falling into "emotional girl" stereotype. 2. Fear of loss of identity constructed around Reason. 3. Are not compensating for lack of purpose, therefore are not compelled beyond "good enough". 4. Are motivated solely by competition and/or equality. Few discussions touch me as personally as this one. i highly encourage other thoughts. Current Mood: tired Current Music: "De do do do, de da da da - That's all I want to say to you" - De Do Do Do, De Da Da Da, The Police posted by Arthur @ 8/13/2002 02:33:00 AM
Pop Monday: First of all, i want to extend my humble thanks to Volkswagon for improving my quality of life. From the four kids on the country road with Nick Drake's Pink Moon, to the newlywed who drags his bride into the yard to show her the windows roll down. Currently, it's the child who glances askance at his hurrying dad, and then disappears to race him on his bike. These commercials express the height of humanity, exhibit the height of art. Thank you. Secondly, and more importantly - in fact, paramount to any entry hitherto - i just finished watching Merlin, a fairly great film. It re-occurred to me, as i adopted Lady Nimue, that my greatest romantic failure is that none of my girls has been strong enough. But this time, a period solution arose. There needs must be a contest, decided by an appropriate question. Henceforth, my romantic affections shall turn toward none but she who answers the question honestly and correctly. The answer must arise solely from her heart and the heart of her True Love, not from expectations of me, therefore former love interests are automatically disqualified. The question at hand: Which is the greatest of all strengths? Current Mood: the boy in The Five Chinese Brothers, still searching Current Music: "And, hey babe, the sky's on fire. I'm dying, ain't I?" - Carolina In My Mind, James Taylor posted by Arthur @ 8/12/2002 03:48:00 AM	Monday, August 12, 2002
Does it bother anyone else that Italo Calvino probly never got to hear Particle Man? Not to mention Edwin Abbott... posted by Arthur @ 8/11/2002 05:34:00 PM	Sunday, August 11, 2002
Girls don't talk; they sign. These signals, of course, do not indicate anything wholly consistent, as that would require too much responsibility. However, as a guy, it is my job to find those signals i like, and act on them. That way, girls can feel attractive, and still say, "You don't know who I am!" This causes all sorts of problems for both sexes. For example, throughout college i found myself on date-like outings or in bed with many girls who already had boyfriends. And they would talk about these boyfriends as if in mid-flirt confessionals, all the while blatantly signalling me to action. And universally, if i brought any of this up, they would shut down and deny everything. Once i understood all this, it was actually kind of fun to watch. Maybe i'm missing something, but here's what i see. If i did act - the boyfriend's well-being aside - it would indicate that i had no respect for her emotional decisions (after all, she is choosing to be this guy's girlfriend). i guess she could have no respect for her decisions, but that's an even bigger problem. Look, i like being chivalrous. i like carrying things, and holding doors, and general protection-type stuff. But if you can't make your own consistent emotional decisions, how can i expect you to choose me? Current Mood: isolated Current Music: "I can't say where it is, but I know I'm going" - Walk On, U2 posted by Arthur @ 8/11/2002 04:08:00 PM
Quoth Adams, "Reality is frequently inaccurate." For the bachelor (i'm beginning to realize), nowhere is that more true than in the kitchen. For just a taste of my misadventures: Hershey's cocoa in milk DOES NOT make chocolate milk; Wonder bread in the microwave DOES NOT make toast. It must be Civilization's aversion to biology (the bathroom and kitchen are divine rooms in compensation for our biological sins) that keeps food at the bottom of the food chain, and so we just don't care if it doesn't make sense. Has anyone else noticed that the pink M&M's are the same color as the Trivial Pursuit piece? Why is a box of maple and brown sugar Quaker Oats oatmeal an entire dollar more expensive at Ralph's than at Walmart? Why can i get a New York pizza in New York, and a Philly cheesesteak in Philly, but when i tried to get an eclair in Eau Claire they were called long johns? And why is it called a cheesesteak; isn't it really a cheese and steak sandwich? And who is Ralph? And isn't M and M's redundant? What are your eternal edibles? Current Mood: blah Current Music: "I crawl up in the corner to watch the minutes pass" - The Distance, evan and jaron (Serendipity Soundtrack) posted by Arthur @ 8/10/2002 02:57:00 PM	Saturday, August 10, 2002
This is a weak metaphor, but please let it be a shell. Put it to your ear, and know that it is not the ocean, but that it does speak to the ocean. It has been roaring distantly in my mind since i first uncovered the image some months ago. We are each a key on a piano. The universe pushes us, and we react. In order to gain any understanding on our situation, we imagine ourselves outside of the piano. We imagine ourselves players or, at least, tinkerers. We imagine great diagrams on the nature of the piano. And after enough debate, after enough relentless pursuit of the truth - or even the possibility of truth - we allow ourselves to forget that we are keys. We must forget if we intend to gain any (rational) control, because we intend to gain control of that which we are part. But it is not a question of significance; there is no question at all. We are each a key. The only existential tragedy is the denial of this disparity of perspective. To be human, it seems to me, is to have two gifts, each of incomprehensible proportion: the universe, and a place in it. To deny either (the objective or subjective) is to half-exist. Current Mood: intimate Current Music: "It's easy; let it go..." - Adia, Sarah MacLachlan posted by Arthur @ 8/09/2002 02:15:00 AM	Friday, August 09, 2002
Ciao. That is the exotic, international cantilever of greetings used by everyone in LA... in the media. That's right, i'm writing to you from the surreal capital of the world. Or maybe i'm only in a larger LA's movie. Step back, Socrates (pronounced so-crates). Yes, we now have comments! You empty-headed animal-food-trough wipers! Your mother was a hamster and your father smelt of elderberries! Speaking of which, Carey commented yesterday that the words falling out of my mouth - or onto the 'net - are but a tiny window, a Truman-Show elevator, onto the swirling miasma that is my mind. One of these days i will find a nice irrational girl, and we'll have nice irrational kids, but for now my intelligent honeys have yet to transcend their logical roots, so i will continue to confound, and asphyxiate, you all. To Do: 1. Get a job (Sha-la-la la, Sha-la-la la-la) 2. Arrange stars on my ceiling based on 8/1/97 (10 pts for why) Current Mood: smug Current Music: "It's the least I can do - just to make you my baby" - I'm Gonna Make You Love Me, The Jayhawks (Dawson's Creek Soundtrack 2) posted by Arthur @ 8/08/2002 02:41:00 PM	Thursday, August 08, 2002
In this world, cleverness and artifice are synonymous. So when people wax the wild prophetic, i don't mind if you assume that we express in vanity, as long as, first, you assume that we don't. i leave you, for now, with the Beat: Where are Whitman's wild children, where the great voices speaking out with a sense of sweetness and sublimity, where the great new vision, the great world-view, the high prophetic song of the immense earth and all that sings in it And our relation to it --- - Lawrence Ferlinghetti i am able able Because i want to know the meaning of everything - Gregory Corso a poem: www.angelfire.com/az3/laxy0/poemUO.html posted by Arthur @ 7/15/2002 09:16:00 AM	Monday, July 15, 2002
Ah me! The weary eschatologist! posted by Arthur @ 7/14/2002 10:10:00 PM	Sunday, July 14, 2002
Hug. It seems to me that we should do something about this word. i appreciate its familiar tone, but it also sounds rather trivial. What about those close encounters of body that linger for hours afterward? The word embrace attempts to supplement, but it's so far removed from the colloquial that it's better suited to paperback romance or Mel Brooks on Mad About You. Let's usurp hug from the Locutus of Perk, and allow it real meaning. ...Or, if we find the trite sound inevitably desultory, let's enact a new word, like mearn. Upon consultation, my six-year-old brother suggests simply redefining pack. Either way, it's time to remedy this! Everyone talks language, but nobody ever does anything about it. posted by Arthur @ 7/12/2002 07:18:00 PM	Friday, July 12, 2002
You've got to put down the duckie if you want to play the saxophone. posted by Arthur @ 7/11/2002 12:12:00 PM	Thursday, July 11, 2002
To emily on her 19th birthday, Hey, you. It's been four years now. i miss you wicked bad. i try to make heads and tails of us, but it's like testimony after a car crash. Maybe you had the right idea - surrender to an arbitrary imagined representation and move on. If i am evil, for instance, i guess you could be crazy. Though you know i've never been the actor you were. And yes, losing us was traumatic, but isn't that part of living? You introduced me to The Prophet: "If in your fear you would seek only love's peace and love's pleasure, / Then it is better for you that you cover your nakedness and pass out of love's threshing-floor, / Into the seasonless world where you will laugh, but not all of your laughter, and weep, but not all of your tears." And if i gave up the memory of you, then i would give up the memory of me, for as it is, i imagine our childhoods walking clumsily down that yellow-tiled hall, away from us, together. But i don't mean to lecture the new you; she no longer listens to our hearts, nor the love we discovered. i do not know her and do not wish to. i only mean to speak to my emily. The pensive, caring, radiant, brave-hearted girl who wanted to keep me for ever and ever. Even if she only remains in my mind, even if this is the most selfish thing i've ever said, i'm sorry. i'm sorry for everything i ever did that hurt you. i'm sorry that i didn't believe you. Love is a hard thing. How could i know that the girl i'd been searching for, out of all the guys she could choose, would really love me? The hardest to learn is the least complicated. We both had our young-love bunglings, and her posthumous behavior trumped any of the most inhuman hurtfulness i could possibly imagine, but back when it really counted, back when we were we, i treated you horribly. i am so, so sorry, love. i imagine, if you were still here, you'd want to know what's been happening. You predicted i'd be dating some beautiful actress. Well, instead, i went for a smart dancer, a sexy artist, and, despite my better judgement, a wide-eyed sorority girl. i could postulate all kinds of theorems, but the point is, they never work out. i wrote some short stories, then failed the class. i wrote some poetry, then vowed nevermore. i wrote a play called The Promised End, about the courting rituals of humankind to concept, but it's probly not very good. i hear you telling me, theatrically, "I bet they're all wonderful". And now, finally, the last boxes are closing, the last friendships are palling, and i am off to California. There was a time i knew why - maybe you'd know - but all i've got now are why-nots. You told me once that when i moved to California, i shouldn't be surprised if i opened my door to find a familiar, rain-drenched girl. i know that's no longer possible, since you are no longer possible, but please please don't worry. Your love holds me always, like the morning after you scared me so and i held you until we were late for class. Rain, Love, and Music, Peace, Love, and Harmony, me P.S. - Due to my unfortunate understanding of this emotionally inept world, it occurs to me that if Emily ever found this letter, it could be a huge pain in my ass. So, let me recommend Robyn Hitchcock's masterpiece "She Doesn't Exist Anymore" and assure you that these days i couldn't care less. posted by Arthur @ 7/10/2002 09:00:00 PM	Wednesday, July 10, 2002
Pop Monday: They say we hurt the ones we love. A lot of people must love me a lot. Cam, Sarah, and Alison, all, in their own ways, bailed. A lifetime of this and when i get over readjusting, i don't care. A lifetime of this and i forget what it was i hoped people could be to one another. July 16th, no concert. July 17th, due west. No more ridiculous Puritanical hypocrisy. And no more Love. Catch-22. posted by Arthur @ 7/08/2002 06:05:00 PM	Monday, July 08, 2002
So i slept 15 hours last night, tore the sheet off all four corners, and dropped The Emperor on the floor. i think i should probly deal with this. In going to California, i am giving up Chuck's birthday. i'm giving up a lot of birthdays. It's fine; i already got his gift, and birthdays aren't really different from other days... which i also won't be there for. But Matthew will. And Matthew's old enough to take good care of him. Matthew. i won't be here to teach him to drive. He won't be around to talk my ear off about girls, or school, or computer games. But i can talk to him online. And it'll only be a few years before he comes out. A few years. i may not see my grandma or grandpa again. No more perfect mashed potatoes on Sundays, pumpkin pie, or awkward Reader's Digest jokes. He was the only one who liked me with emily. Why do i feel like i'm leaving her? No. Not her. The girl. The New England Christmas. The big papa chair by the snowy, frosted picture window. Children. Whereever she is, California is too far. But all i'm good at is dreaming. So maybe i'll dream on the screen for a while, and she'll dream with me. i'm sorry, Emperor, but i miss her already. posted by Arthur @ 7/07/2002 10:14:00 PM	Sunday, July 07, 2002
i don't understand. In Paris, i met a shy boy named Kevin. He said people told him he looked like Paul McCartney (and people tell me i look like John Lennon), so we considered starting the Beatles all over again. He took a couple days to go to Switzerland, because he promised someone back home a clock. When he returned he found he was out of French currency, and offered me a Swiss coin for some few francs. i would have certainly given him the money without the coin, but he insisted, and i looked forward to confusing people with money from a place i didn't go. But when he handed me the coin, which i have in my hand right now because it was the only currency from two continents that was too big to fit through the neck of my lemonade bottle, i saw that it said "5 FR." i was confused. Kevin assured me that Swiss dollars are also called francs, which i deemed mildly interesting. i just got through watching a French film called Red. It is subtly brilliant. i liked Amélie; i love Red. In it, a frenchman was flipping the very coin Kevin handed me in Paris. After the paralyzing bewilderment faded, i offered my mind the most rational explanation available (clearly Kevin had handed me a rare French coin, of minimal value, convinced me it was Swiss, and made off with some of my money), and immediately rejected it. i just can't see people that way, and especially not someone like Kevin. Well, at the very end, it turned out that the coin was indeed Swiss, and that if i had caught the first fifteen minutes, it would have been the most important clue in the film. i laughed for a while, and now i am a bit sick from crying. posted by Arthur @ 7/05/2002 02:21:00 AM	Friday, July 05, 2002
Forgive me, father, for i have lived... Sometimes, i lie awake and wonder if i should have done something. So many women have passed through my life, and through my bed, and i did little to nothing. How can i pursue a relationship i know will fail? None of these women believed in love, few in me, and fewer in themselves. But the chill of packing away a solitary life is hard to combat. The ghost of Christmas-future vows that i will be that lonely old man, hiding in tomes, befriending only children, dying bitterly. Though my conflict is, of course, in vain. The next one to lie beside me will make it all too easy, all too empty, and again i will say no. And, an inevitable alien to love, she will leave me alone, in bed, wondering. Once asleep, i do not have the average heterogeneous nonsensical expressions of subconscious like others. The great majority of my dreams are simple love stories. The truth is, father, i don't want to go to California. i don't want to be a director or a writer or a candlestickmaker. My only life aspiration is to find my other half. It was good enough for women through the 1960s, and for John Cusack in Say Anything; why is it wrong for me? i suspect you think my high IQ holds me to some sort of social responsibility. If that's the case, you would also recognize that the intelligent ought to be the most free from specific responsibilities, since we are the most likely to find better ones. Well i don't believe in career or identity. What you call nothing, i call everything, and enough. The only thing my life lacks is love. i've been a long time that i'm waiting Been a long time that i'm blown i've been a long time that i've wandered Through the people i have known Oh, if you would and you could Brighten my northern sky. posted by Arthur @ 7/04/2002 11:19:00 PM	Thursday, July 04, 2002
Happy Boundary Dispute! No, no. Happy Reason to Hate and Be Hated! Definitely not. Happy Diluted Rebirth of Ancient Greece? Maybe, instead of congratulations, a toast is in order. Here's to the divine notion that an extensively educated humankind will be able to govern themselves. And here's to the long journey we've yet to go. posted by Arthur @ 7/04/2002 04:12:00 AM
Things learned from sorting and packing 11 years of a life... 1) The Hitchhiker's Trilogy really has been my Bible. 2) If you put mix ideas on hundreds of index cards, then lose track of those index cards every which way, and then find them again, you won't know whether the mixes got made or not, and either way you desperately want to keep the cards. 3) "The funny thing about making your head vibrate is that if you look in a mirror, you can't tell your head is vibrating, because your eyes are vibrating too." - me, 14 posted by Arthur @ 7/02/2002 01:19:00 PM	Tuesday, July 02, 2002
Pop Monday: Tonight it occurred to me that the Ben Folds Five line "and sell some gifts that i got" is referring to gifts he received, not gifts he had bought for others. It makes so much more sense this way, i have to think it means something that i went out of my way to hear it the other way. i love flipping over rocks, but especially gigantic ones that have been staring me in the face. Like when i realized Beatles is spelled incorrectly and for a reason, or when the Rascals' line "you and me endlessly" finally corrected itself and i could stop wondering who Leslie was. If you haven't yet caught Ben performing Rockin' the Suburbs, BOOK IT NOW! i won't douse it by explaining, but it is one of the funniest things i have ever seen. High Fidelity was a fairly good film because of two things. First, John Cusack's character gives a lecture on the undocumented art of the mix, and actually gets it right. And second, the suggestion of a Top Five approach to life. The Top Five songs that best describe my life, which is to say, they are the greatest insights into what it is to be me, are as follows: No Rain, The Fool on the Hill, Imagine, Someone Like Me, and yes, the Ben Folds Five song that inspired my mix label, Evaporated Records. posted by Arthur @ 7/01/2002 10:42:00 PM	Monday, July 01, 2002
Ahh, the infamous July... The month of Emily's birthday and the French revolution. This month last year i left the country for the first time on the fourth. This year, i'll be leaving the D.C. area for the first time. In two weeks, i begin a cross-country journey to my new home, California. i apologize now to all my avid blogger fans; the journey will be long, and i don't know how quickly i will regain 'net access. My roadtrip exists in three parts. First, i will head north to Sarah, and a Dartmouth showing of Peter Pan on July 21st. On the way, i will visit Cam, Rebekah, and Karen for a John Mayer concert in Baltimore, and i'll stop by CT and MA for Dawn and Aaron. If, when i finally get up to NH, a certain someone has decided she's got the courage to know me, i can think of a girl both Sarah and i would like to meet very much. The second leg of the journey has been a dream of mine ever since i visited the headwaters of the Mississippi. i'm going to take Route 2 from Mackinaw City to Seattle. i'll probly visit Scott while i'm there. Finally, it's down to LA (i knew i saved crossing the Golden Gate for a reason). Completing this journey will knock off five more states, leaving only the motley crew of Hawaii, Alaska, Wyoming, and South Dakota unexplored. Hmm... Life is big. posted by Arthur @ 6/30/2002 10:03:00 PM	Sunday, June 30, 2002
Here's what i think. i think that when you hear a noise late at night, and you go to the window to search the darkness, i think you don't expect to find anyone. i think that if anyone really were there, you'd be frightened. It could be a tired woman with a broken heel and a gas can, or a lost, crying boy. i think that even though you went to that window looking for someone, if anyone were actually out there looking back, actually staring right back at you, you'd be scared. And i think this is how you live your life. You go through the motions. You talk, you kiss, you weblog. You pretend you want to connect with other human beings. And you assume everyone else knows the drill, is as weak as you, and will avoid your gaze as you avoid theirs. Ha! Here i am, and i am tired of you. Girlfriends treat me like their fathers, friends treat me like their ex-boyfriends, and strangers treat me like criminals. You're not even looking at me anymore; you can't see past your own damned reflections. Well, fine. Lock yourselves in the bathroom and gaze all you like. Just get the hell out of the way. Some of us actually want to touch other souls. Some of us want to look another in the heart and be challenged and overjoyed and, yes, frightened. All around your island, there's a barricade. It keeps out the danger, holds in the pain. Sometimes you're happy, and sometimes you cry; half of me is ocean, half of me is sky. - Tom Petty, Walls posted by Arthur @ 6/29/2002 09:52:00 PM	Saturday, June 29, 2002
So what, so I've got a smile on But it's hiding the quiet superstitions in my head Don't believe me When I say I've got it down Everybody is just a stranger but That's the danger in going my own way I guess it's the price I have to pay Still "everything happens for a reason" Is no reason not to ask myself If I am living it right Am I living it right? - John Mayer, Why Georgia How could I forget? Mama said "think before speaking" No filter in my head Oh, what's a boy to do I guess he better find one soon - John Mayer, My Stupid Mouth Discover me Discovering you I'll never let your head hit the bed Without my hand behind it - John Mayer, Your Body Is A Wonderland it's a bitter sweet feeling hearing "Wrapped Around Your Finger" on the radio and these days I wish I was 6 again Oh make me a red cape I wanna be Superman whatever happened to my lunchbox? - John Mayer, 83 Staying home alone on a Friday Flat on the floor looking back On old love Or lack thereof After all the crushes are faded And all my wishful thinking was wrong I'm jaded I hate it I'm tired of being alone So hurry up and get here So tired of being alone So hurry up and get here Searching all my days just to find you I'm not sure who I'm looking for I'll know it When I see you Until then, I'll hide in my bedroom Staying up all night just to write A love song for no one I'm tired of being alone So hurry up and get here So tired of being alone So hurry up and get here I could have met you in a sandbox I could have passed you on the sidewalk Could I have missed my chance And watched you walk away? I'm tired of being alone So hurry up and get here So tired of being alone So hurry up and get here You'll be so good You'll be so good for me - John Mayer, Love Song for No One Suppose I said Colors change for no good reason And words will go From poetry to prose Would you want me when I'm not myself? Wait it out while I am someone else? - John Mayer, Not Myself something in the way that blue lights on a black night can make you feel more everybody, it seems to me, just wants to be just like you and me - John Mayer, St. Patrick's Day Thanks muchly to Matt's gf Elizabeth for this CD. And thanks to her sister Shannon for being so groovy. You know, if i were fortunate enough to live in Montreal, i wouldn't miss the John Mayer show tonight for the world. Grin posted by Arthur @ 6/28/2002 10:39:00 AM	Friday, June 28, 2002
Lately, on TV and on the 'net, i've been assailed by a seeming virus of relationship quizzes. Here's my own relationship quiz for you: If you need to take a quiz to know how your relationship is going, you're in trouble. i can't pass this up; here's that lecture i avoided giving you earlier: Males and females are different. How? Biologically. How, biologically? Females give birth, males do not. This is where the feminist in you starts to object: Surely there's more to being female than giving birth. Well, surely there's more to being male than not giving birth, but fundamentally, our technical role in reproduction is our biological gender. Phew. Anyway, us guys kinda got gipped. Creation is, after all, a divine power. So, first species to recognize it, human males create other things: cities, war, religion, identity. And we do our very best to make females feel inferior for not doing the same - one of the top five human ironies. Now, consider the lioness. As with human females, the lioness seeks the best mate. However, the lioness does not talk to her girlfriends about who that might be; she knows. Have you noticed in TV and movies how the woman always seeks reassurance from her best friend before she can decide to fall in love? This might not be so bad, if society wasn't necessarily dominated by men. The tragedy of Sex and the City, for example, is not that there aren't any good guys, but that Charlotte listens to Carrie, and Carrie listens to Samantha, and they all listen to society. Would someone please explain to me why these successful, powerful, financially-solvent women are still primarily seeking these things in a mate? So here's my wake-up call to the world: there is no such thing as identity. There is only your heart, which is not an organ, but a series of quiet passionate cries, in joy and sorrow. i know it is frightening to listen, and easier to let outer voices take responsibility, but how can they possibly hear you better than you? Molt the inevitable contradictions of Self and bare your beautiful wings. Fly. Believe me, you can. posted by Arthur @ 6/27/2002 01:09:00 PM	Thursday, June 27, 2002
It's official! The first firefly of the year! i feel negligent for not recognizing it sooner, as it is an extremely familiar pattern, but the creative exodus from Hollywood we've witnessed over the past decade has actually been the death of independent films. It used to be that film form was propagated by the mainstream, and independent films were determined by their unique deviations. This held independent films to a higher standard, because directors had to justify their most fundamental choices. However, as art-house cinemas have developed their own culture, independent films have developed their own form. Instead of withering, Hollywood has simply decentralized, and indirectly spread itself across the industry, like so many Celtic tribes across Europe. O Holy Roman Empire, where art thou? Fun fact: Scotland is actually derived from the Roman word for Irish. posted by Arthur @ 6/26/2002 06:21:00 PM	Wednesday, June 26, 2002
i spend too much time raiding windmills we go side by side laughing until it's right there's something that you won't show waiting where the light goes take the darkest hour - break it open posted by Arthur @ 6/25/2002 02:25:00 PM	Tuesday, June 25, 2002
Pop Monday: i know i can only love so many things before i lose credibility with you people, but i happened to catch Inherit the Wind again last week... Yes, it is one of the first videos i ever bought, and yes, i watched it on TV anyway - it's just that good. It would be impossible for me to get your hopes high enough to match this film's strength. Pick any aspect of screenwriting, any aspect of filmmaking. It stars Spencer Tracy and Gene Kelly, as well as Col. Potter from MASH, the first Darrin on Bewitched, and see if you can spot Mr. Roper, the first landlord on Three's Company. i could say that this film is for those who are interested in Science or Religion or Education or Philosophy or History or Free Speech, but those are beside the point; Inherit the Wind* is primarily about what it is to be human. i hear you saying "Isn't the act of filmmaking necessarily a comment on human existence, in any film?" And i completely agree with you, but the comment is even more true here - that is how much this film loves its subject. And you will too. posted by Arthur @ 6/24/2002 10:54:00 PM	Monday, June 24, 2002
For almost a year now, when i sing Daydream Believer, i'm no longer imagining a wife, but a daughter. posted by Arthur @ 6/23/2002 02:23:00 AM	Sunday, June 23, 2002
A lot of brilliant people are Ricky Fitts-ing their way through life. They have taken that essential first step from Western to Eastern thought, from Beauty as an end to Beauty as a whole, but will only defy the system, not abandon it. Beauty as a whole embraces humanity, and therefore Beauty as an end. As with all enduring "conflicts", the glass is both half-full and half-empty. Still, the sirens cry in solitude and remain alone. Do not halt before Beauty, transcend it. Though i do not mean to underrate the difficulty of that second step, nor the isolation. The only communicable understanding i can offer is an analogue. When you exit a movie theater, especially by the "emergency" exits directly into sunlight, your pupils contract. Simultaneously, if it was a compelling film, your mind undergoes dilation. The reality that encapsulated the film becomes a minor fiction in the enormity of familiar reality. This experience may also occur as an emergency exit from familiar reality. posted by Arthur @ 6/21/2002 10:08:00 PM	Friday, June 21, 2002
In true Thursday form, i find myself in that existential purgatory between "There's nothing i want to do." and "i want to do everything." Though, of course, they're probly the same thing. And then i think "At least i'm not content!" posted by Arthur @ 6/20/2002 02:03:00 AM	Thursday, June 20, 2002
i've got a band-aid on my foot and a band-aid on my neck. These days bleeding feels productive. i wish Rebecca were here; i imagine she'd give me fun band-aids. i've been cleaning out my college accounts before the bureaucracy gets around to it. Check out these long "discussion" emails i wrote to a generic honors class my freshman year: hey there crazy people (and i mean crazy in the most affectionate way), i have not really been inspired to write to this thing before now, nor have i really been inspired to read most of the messages. in fact, i'm not sure i'm all that inspired now, but it's better than attempting to tackle the backlog of 3 papers i have to write in this class ;). (just kidding fh --- sort of) so enough with preface, let's get dirty. i want to defend the greaseman... listening now? WE LIVE IN A SOCIETY OF HYPOCRITES! we defend freedom of speech sooooo vehemently, but when someone says something we don't like, we sweep them under the rug as quickly as possible. racist thoughts and speech are not crimes nor should they be crimes. it is a weak society that supports censorship. and while we're on the subject, it's a weak society that employs jails or islands to isolate prisoners who then come up with great beer ads and a rugged image for the consumers of the most powerful nation in the world to try to mimic instead of being proud that they DON'T have to chop wood anymore and the power will only go out in occasional storms when the wood chops back and knocks over the sticks we have holding up the wires in this highly technological age. i feel myself drifting... somebody slap me. OW! thanks Vivian. see how i did that? i made a joke by slapsticking myself, added depth to it by choosing someone least likely to actually hit me, (damn it, 22!) and maybe creating humor by suggesting the image of quiet, pretty Vivian as a closet homicidal maniac. and we all know homicidal maniacs are HILARIOUS! take postal workers... please... OW! okay, i think i'm going to go now... Rain, Music, and Stuffed Animals, me P.S. i know... you never knew these 131 things could be so much fun... well, you just weren't talking to the right disappointed idealist... You bring up an excellent point of course, that though the greaseman has the right to say whatever he wants to, 94.7 has the right to fire him. And of course, since people might stop listening to him, it might have been a wise move. However, that doesn't talk me off of my idealistic high horse from which we are a society of hypocrites. i would also like to point out that the value of discussing the situation has very little to do with the greaseman himself (whom i am no fan of) and very much to do with the ideals this country prides itself on. i think this is a great example of how the wave of the future is Marxism. People are not perfect, and over the course of humanity we have given our authority away to religion and government. However, a new contender is rearing it's ugly head, and it is the head of corporations. Companies will never have the authority government once had, just as government can never have the authority religion once had. Nor am i saying that it is a bad thing; we took power from God and gave it to people appointed by God, then we gave it to people appointed by us via vote, and now we're giving it to people more directly chosen by us - people who own major companies that provide things we want/need. In this class we study the authority of the movie industry, though increasingly it is harder to discuss Hollywood as an independent, since movies are more often wrought with commercial spots. Now i am bored with this topic, but i don't wish to stop writing, because then i'd have to study for my Spanish test. i am a chronic procrastinator and i'm not sure why. i just can't focus i guess. i am a big fan of donuts with rainbow sprinkles though. does anyone else receive energy from a gray, cloudy day? i know i'm odd, but the sun feels oppressive to me, i have to squint in even the mildest of sunshiny days. however, clouds rejuvenate me. and i know people laugh at me when i play in the rain, and sometimes i do feel spiteful of them, but i never do it to spite them. i'm not that weak. course, i'm not that strong either. nor would i want to be. i don't want to sound like Barbra Streisand here, but i think it would suck to not need people. right now there aren't many people that i like, and reaching out has been disappointing more often than not, but if i can't leave myself open to needing someone, i'm not sure there'd be any purpose to life. and though i'm not looking for my mother, i do have a bit of a peter pan complex, and i think we all want to be cared for. why it is so easy to write this to a faceless mass, i may never know. but my personality indicator indicates i need an outlet to express to, so maybe what you've just received was my own cheap form of therapy. Rain, Music, and Stuffed Animals, me My first reaction to these emails was, and i quote, "Yipes!" i mean, i knew the transition from TJ and emily was hard on me, but i had no idea i had said things like this. And then i started thinking about it. And i don't think i'm all that happy that i've changed. i mean, what we're talking about here is image, and i've clearly become more image-conscious. When we were lounging around the Red Sea, i was feeling adventurous, so i tried picking up a girl Dave-style. i walked right up to her and asked if she'd been watching me. She said no. Returning empty-handed, i admitted to Dave that i'd blown it. To my great surprise, Dave was surprised. He instructed me that now she and i had a strange encounter in common, and that it was, in fact, a great start. And that's the precise moment i realized that i could never be that guy - because i'd have to stay that guy. But maybe i've been headed there all along. So what do we find so frightening about the guy i was? i could also see calling it embarrassing or funny or sad, but these are all, in their own way, fear. In any case, it is completely irrational, since my emotional bursts weren't about to harm anyone. And so, i turn to a theory of Douglas Adams' on phobias. He suggests, and i'm rather inclined to believe him, that a fear of heights is not a fear of falling, but a fear of jumping. All of our primate instincts are screaming "Jump! Jump!" and we're afraid we'll listen. Well, much more recently than we were monkeys, we were children. Maybe David E. Kelley is right and we all still are. Maybe image is the game of pretend we've played so long we're afraid to stop. And if it's all right for me to be childishly lonely and honest, then maybe it'd be all right for you. And maybe you'd jump. posted by Arthur @ 6/18/2002 10:34:00 PM	Tuesday, June 18, 2002
New Feature Pop Monday: The new film Scooby-Doo was written with a lot of love for the show. The number of things done right makes it of solid matinée quality, though the highly under-seen Josie and the Pussycats retains my unexpected vote as the best cartoon-turned-verisimilar. The song "No Such Thing" by John Mayer has improved my quality of life, much as the return of an old friend. John Mayer sounds a bit like Edwin McCain and a bit like Dave Matthews. The song itself is of "Least Complicated" intent, with heavy nostalgia. But where the Indigo Girls were happily vague, John is daringly specific. He asks "Why do we acquiesce to the world's insistence that aging means submitting?" And i don't know. He makes me feel a bit like the children of the future in the 1960 version of The Time Machine, and that's a pretty hard sell. Though for the record, i both ran through the halls of my high school and screamed at the top of my lungs. And i have a five-year reunion next year. posted by Arthur @ 6/17/2002 10:57:00 PM	Monday, June 17, 2002
This morning was bright. As i laid extended across Dave's unfolded futon, i watched as small particles twirled in and out of my perception. Their essentially indeterminate, transitory motions reminded me much of people, and this entry i've been meaning to write since the Counting Crows post: "We live as we dream -- alone," wrote Joseph Conrad, and that's enough individuality, identity, and self for me. No matter how we struggle and pretend to understand each other, and thereby each other's worlds, our perspective is ultimately as impenetrable to another person as our R.E.M. consciousness. Given this inescapable isolation, it seems a strange combination of morbid and futile to seek more delineation from other people. i hear you citing Self in defense of introspection, but your "identity" is a paradox of distinction by comparison. The study of others is illuminating insofar as we are the same. Besides, i'm not saying people shouldn't be different; i'm saying we already are. i didn't win the poetry contest. i'm less devastated than i am broke. posted by Arthur @ 6/16/2002 06:42:00 PM	Sunday, June 16, 2002
Lately i've been thinking about Kelly. She was pale with chestnut hair and had a subtle curve in her cheeks. In some sense, i suppose, she was my first girlfriend. Of course, Miriam officially held that title at the time, but i was in kindergarten; what did i know? Kelly took me away from Miriam, into the "woods" on the playground, and kissed me. For the impossible exhilaration, i can't remember if it was directly on the lips, but it was close enough that i was lost forever. The next day Kelly had adopted a younger girl to be our daughter, and i developed a frustration i'd never known. All i wanted was for her to kiss me again. Strangely, it never occurred to me to kiss her. Toward the end of elementary school, i met a girl at summer camp named Charlotte. She was in Performing Arts with me, and was beautiful. She resembled 99 in that way that people resemble other people and no one ever sees but me. i had barely spoken with her, but when a counselor sent me to take the attendance to the office, Charlotte raised her hand and asked if she could go with me. My pulse jumps a little just thinking about that moment. i was so scared and thrilled, i walked much too fast for her to catch me. It is an incredible thing to be chosen, especially because girls aren't supposed to overtly choose. And so i wonder about the seven-year cycle of selves, because Kelly belonged to that first one psychologists hold so dear. Since then, most of the friendships i've sought have been girls, but i've not been the catalyst of any romantic relationship. This is not to say that i haven't chosen, but their choices were always the first to act. Upon meeting me, Cam invited me up to the CIT room to play poker, and sat against me. Emily escaped her date at Homecoming to ask me (rather, yell at me) if i'd save her a dance. And Anne, well, Anne just laid down on the floor. Similarly, they determined all first-time intimacies. This behavior has stimulated an odd wealth of debate. You girls seem to delight in arguing with me that you'd never do anything you didn't want to do. i've known you much too long to believe that. And i'm fairly scared that this pelting night-storm called "love" is yet another exhilaration i'll lose to empty adulthood - you can bet i'm defending it vigilantly. If i ask a girl out, it's customary and holds no meaning, but if she asks me, if she takes responsibility for her life through me, instead of just complaining that there aren't any good guys, that's something special indeed. This could become a much longer lecture on sociobioliogy and human female submission, and maybe it will, but for now, the point is this: Yes, i'm a guy, and i want to choose, but i also want to be chosen. posted by Arthur @ 6/14/2002 10:09:00 PM	Friday, June 14, 2002
"The future is now," claims The Hudsucker Proxy, and if you caught the recent PBS miniseries Evolution or have seen my favorite film Waking Life, you have at least a vague notion of the assertion's potential meaning. Biological evolution has given over to memes, and the most striking difference is the time-frame; mimetic evolution can be almost instantaneous. Let's be clear: memes have been around as long as humans have, but as biological evolution has been tapering off, mimetic evolution has been building strength. Human history is less and less about who died and how, and more and more about the ideas that drive a culture, especially the technology. This is why the impending launch of The Sims Online is such a monumentous event. i know, i know. i've been preaching about this moment since before The Sims was conceived, but it is just that important. If you haven't yet, go to the official site and watch the new trailer for The Sims Online. If i wasn't in the process of moving, i'd be starting my own fan site. i am familiar with such MMORPGs as EverQuest and Anarchy Online, but they do not escape the bounds of video games. The Sims Online is the first baby-step toward developing our mimetic selves. posted by Arthur @ 6/12/2002 08:04:00 PM	Wednesday, June 12, 2002
You're all so damned complicated. i forget that sometimes. After watching AFI's 100 Years...100 Passions, i realize that one of the simple, fundamental truths of humanity is that some people get love and others don't. It is impossible (as my relationships have been) to expect a depth of love from someone who has no grasp of it. Of course, the great myth of pop culture is that everyone can experience love, even if it takes 90 minutes. But this is the same sort of one-sidedness that permeates every aspect of Western thought. Shall we speak of Joy? In direct conflict with all notions of Paradise, Joy is meaningless without Sorrow. Kahlil Gibran says it much better than i: "The deeper that sorrow carves into your being, the more joy you can contain." Shall we speak of Pacifism? Because it's not the sign-waving and speech-making against a government at war. It's the active recognition beforehand that things are not right in the world. We are rational and therefore cannot abide contradictions. But human existence is always contradiction, across what is and what could be. And so, in denying contradiction, we create our own contradictory world. In this world, love needs must be a quest, not for another person, but for honesty. From now on, the first thing i'm going to ask about a girl is "Does she get love?" Is she willing and able to leave behind the impossible weight of what everyone else wants for her, and bring only her own compass? 'Cause i'm tired of being hurt and blamed by indecisive tagalongs. Love is NOT spontaneous. It is a treacherous journey without a fixed destination. Surely there are hearts who understand that. posted by Arthur @ 6/11/2002 10:39:00 PM	Tuesday, June 11, 2002
you are a flower and i am a flower and we are all alone gotta get out on my own gotta get up from this waiting, waiting at home gotta get out of this sunlight it's melting my bones i've gotta get up from this slumber and just get myself home all these wasted dreams just waiting for the sun to open, to open up my heart to anyone bring me some rain 'cause i'm dying, i'm dying i can't get this damn thing closed again posted by Arthur @ 6/09/2002 02:00:00 AM	Sunday, June 09, 2002
Yesterday's Fair was the first last scheduled event of my life. Interestingly, i received three pieces of mail: 1) my diploma, indicating a degree in Poetry. 2) loan info, indicating a ridiculous sum of money i owe. 3) a letter from Poetry.com, indicating that i am a semi-finalist for $1000. What does it all add up to? No really, i'm asking. posted by Arthur @ 6/08/2002 10:11:00 PM	Saturday, June 08, 2002
Have you noticed your history becoming incomprehensible? i don't know when it eroded, but i find myself completely unable to fathom the length of my life. i wonder if being grown-up is less about gaining experience, and more about losing the terminus a quo of birth. posted by Arthur @ 6/06/2002 10:56:00 PM	Thursday, June 06, 2002
i'm a bit odd. This often frightens people because i'm not different in manifest attributes or mannerisms, but in buried fundamentals - my last girlfriend liked to call me an alien. Not surprisingly, i am saddened and frustrated by people who avoid the strange. However, today i was watching an artsy IFC short about a man in a dog costume. As i waited and waited for some kind of meaning, it occurred to me that if i'd been watching the latest Hollywood action flick, i wouldn't have given it a tenth of the chance i gave dog-man. Somehow, this doesn't seem much more honest than those who avoid. So maybe the problem is not in our reaction, but in our perception. Perhaps it's natural to fear new things, but perhaps, also, everything is new. posted by Arthur @ 6/04/2002 06:38:00 PM	Tuesday, June 04, 2002
Not so long ago i had a bit of a debate with Monica over humankind. Monica has one of the warmest hearts around, and is currently attending Harvard in pursuit of some sort of altruistic political career. That's why it shocked me to discover that she believes some people are inherently Evil. i should admit that few notions offend me as much as this one, but it also strikes me as impossible to be a humanitarian who doesn't believe in humans. Throughout the conversation she argued that the two of us could differ in our opinions, and frankly, i'm tired of hearing that from you people. Yes. People may disagree. However, that doesn't mean we shouldn't fight about it. And it certainly doesn't defend your case to say that you're entitled to your opinion. Everyone's so damned afraid of being ignorant that we're mired in unexamined hypotheses. Wake up, people! Ignorance is an opportunity! When we check over our instruments and find missing or neglected lenses, we could feel embarrassed and incapable, or we could replace the lenses and encounter a new, clearer world. To recognize one's own ignorance is to awaken the awe of Possibility and the thrill of discovery. i know of few experiences more exciting. Speaking of younger siblings from the cheesemobile, for a short time i rode the bus with a jocose young fellow named Eric, who had an astoundingly good idea: an imaginary girlfriend. Your first inclination is to laugh, as was mine, but consider it seriously. Laura was always there to sit next to him, to listen to him, and they even fooled around. Unfortunately, i've never been quite so imaginative, but yesterday i began constructing a mix to be my girlfriend. Here's what i've got so far: keystones All You Wanted, Michelle Branch Lose Your Way, Sophie B. Hawkins voussoirs Ice Cream, Sarah MacLachlan Power of Two, Indigo Girls Kind and Generous, Natalie Merchant I'll Stand By You, Pretenders Morning Song, Jewel Head Over Feet, Alanis Morrissette London Rain, Heather Nova imposts Always Be My Baby, Mariah Carey Because You Loved Me, Celine Dion i'm looking to fill a 90-minute tape, so if you've got any suggestions... posted by Arthur @ 6/03/2002 09:35:00 PM	Monday, June 03, 2002
i spent three-fourths of yesterwake in a Farscape marathon on the Sci-fi channel. i'd like to take a moment now to defend television. High art would like to establish an autonomy from banalities. However, every work of art presents a perspective on ordinary human existence, and the fact that television is closer to everyday life allows its perspective to be less abstract. In this way, television serves as a foil to "higher" art: HARRY: You know, Cookie, I gotta tell you, a great writer named Sophocles said that it was probably best not to be born at all. COOKIE: Well, honey, it's a little too late for that. The extent to which art attempts to be autonomous is the extent to which i dislike it. The simple truth is that there is joy and connection and benefit in every medium. And the only measure of art is life. posted by Arthur @ 6/01/2002 09:02:00 PM	Saturday, June 01, 2002
Last night i was shot almost twenty times in the chest and arms, in one of the most realistic dreams i've ever had. i have been dead before, but never dying. Until i got back to sleep, my chest held a phantom pain. Yet the experience of dying was only of secondary importance. The paramount, tragic irony of the dream was that even as i lay dying, i could not convince anyone of mortality. The extreme frustration of that metaphysical alienation felt conspicuously familiar, and i believe it explains why most of the girls i've dated have turned out to have some sort of life-threatening illness: they are better able to grasp what i have spent my life trying to impart. Death is a gift. Death is a gift. Death is a gift. Got it yet? This is not to say that i will be happy to die. But without death, life is meaningless. You may think i'm silly for being so impassioned and impatient. It is exactly that kind of proselytizing apathy i mean to unmask. Active apathy is simply the fear of loss. And if we were immortal, i'd be right with you; why risk suffering? But we have not the time to be cautious. We can't afford to not be passionate. You may die today. Or you may live. But don't hide in between. posted by Arthur @ 5/29/2002 10:58:00 AM	Wednesday, May 29, 2002
There i was: lying across my bed, wrist under my chin, pensively strumming my fingers. In the periphery of my thoughts i noticed my skin was in motion near my elbow. i experimented by slowing my fingers, and the waves slackened. My full attention was now on anatomy: strum fingers, muscles roll. In the moment, it all seemed fascinatingly inhuman, like looking inside a piano for the first time - the perfect two-step of key=note reveals itself as an intricate, beautiful waltz. And that's when i realized i had it backward; those rippling motions under my skin were actually the cause of my fingers tapping. It is exceedingly strange to be alive. posted by Arthur @ 5/28/2002 12:48:00 PM	Tuesday, May 28, 2002
i like women, and music, and films. And let's face it, these things aren't really so very different. Our rare species is incomplete; we are tadpoles who know of the mountain. Nevermind that our objectivity is more subjective than our subjectivity, we each seek a personal understanding of existence. Existence, however, doesn't lend itself to a personal understanding, or rather, it lends itself to every personal understanding. We therefore create our lives in defense of our assumed world. My assumed world, i am quite sure, is a romantic one. If we skip over the value-judgement adjectives of imaginary, impractical, and idealized, we come to Webster's sixth definition: "Of, relating to, or constituting the part of a hero..." In my assumed world, i am a hero. But - and this is the part that no one seems to comprehend - so is everyone else. Every person has their own journey, with their own suffering, and their own victories. And i believe, given the chance and the awareness, people will act heroically. When i sit down in a movie theater, or put on my headphones, i am temporarily surrendering to someone else's journey. In a sort-of undramatic way, i am saying, "Here is my heart, where would you take it?" And in film and music, i have often been very well cared for. As for women, on the other hand... posted by Arthur @ 5/26/2002 07:32:00 AM	Sunday, May 26, 2002
Life can not possibly be Hell, because it's too damned unpredictable. Here i am, locked away in these windowless weeks of illness and anxiety, and what do i find but my old Lemonheads album, 'Car Button Cloth'! Ready for a bit of the ultra-nostalgia? This album isn't particularly spectacular in any way; it was no more than the apex of Evan Dando's mediocre pop music career. But i thought i'd lost it years ago. His light folk-grunge, in concert with so many memories of high school, has me smiling in spite of myself. The Lemonheads also hold a special place in my heart because, aside from being a groovy candy, they have performed at the Fairfax Fair. i have attended this spectacular open-air venue every year since 1996, and there has always been a perfect band. This year, which may well be my last, Gin Blossoms are performing! i have asked along the same girl i took back in '96, so i suppose it's fitting that this seventh time should be my last, but i can't help feeling a little sad. If ever i do fall in love again, the Fair will just be one more important part of my life that i won't be able to share with her. posted by Arthur @ 5/24/2002 05:53:00 AM	Friday, May 24, 2002
Sometimes, if i lightly adjust the kitchen faucet, the water will not flow immediately, but in the yawning gap between transmission and reception, i can hear it. From down in the intestinal pipes of human creation, are exhaled rumblings of distant water tumbling blindly through lubricious darkness. In equal depths of my mind i am screaming in primordial terror at the sadistic complexity we have wrought upon the world. But then the water flows. And i am merely disgusted by the unclean distance of which i drink, a slave to the paradox of Civilization. posted by Arthur @ 5/23/2002 10:48:00 PM	Thursday, May 23, 2002
i just got through watching yet another scene in which someone living was reunited with their dead love. As i was shaking with tears, it occurred to me that these scenes have almost nothing to do with Death. They instead employ Death as a metaphor for loss. In fact, i suspect that Death is more often a metaphor than not. And how clever of us. It's easier to deal with loss as Death because... 1) neither person is responsible for not being together. 2) the lost person does not change and grow apart. 3) the lost person is unable to find a new love. 4) at least our loss wasn't Death. 5) Death itself becomes diluted. We can get out all of our abandonment issues, all of our conflicts with change and loss, in childlike simplicity, and never consciously deal with them. Instead we say, "i was crying because of Death. Death is sad." i wonder how these scenes go over in Mexico. posted by Arthur @ 5/22/2002 11:41:00 AM	Wednesday, May 22, 2002
The Spanish verb hacer means both 'to do' and 'to make'. What an egregious gap in English! Who can deny having felt the Urge Hacer? Not to mention the astounding philosophic suggestion that to do is to make, to act is to create! Many writers would have us believe that language is sacred. My thoughts refer immediately to Ursula K Le Guin, since she is the only one of these writers for whom i have respect. However, language is much too arbitrary for me to agree with her. Conventions such as languages are developed in the interest of communication. To then exalt language above communication is to design a living room so beautifully that there is no room for living. This has a lot to do with my frustrations in poetry. Contemporary poems drift single-file, in white hooded robes, to be baptized by the Holy Order of Language. Everyone wants poetry to flow quietly, heads bowed in abject reverence to words and their sounds. i want poetry to drip from stalactites into claustrophobic crevices, and even as the air and water ripple outward, so too are they rebuffed by walls of rock, in haunting echoes and introspective interference. i want Rachmaninoff, not Vivaldi! i want impassioned ideas, not languages! Throw down false prophets like Ashbery! Do not worship the medium, but the message! The message is Life! posted by Arthur @ 5/21/2002 09:40:00 PM	Tuesday, May 21, 2002
Time may be perceived at different speeds (?). As a person grows older, their perception of time decelerates (?). From person to person, this deceleration varies. i don't know why it happens, nor how many of us there are, but for some people that deceleration is close to nothing. We become much older than our age, but remain time's children. i would point to Adams, Gilliam, van Gogh, Whitman, and half the Beats as examples. i have dreams of a home for such perspectives - a place to bare Atlas hearts, and finally be understood. posted by Arthur @ 5/20/2002 09:58:00 PM	Monday, May 20, 2002
Yesterday was severed between gray and white, the drift sky bleeding blue. Exposed by the hewn grass, attempting to capture time in my little metal box, i was discovered by moments of my favorite color. "That's it, there," i pointed to a small patch, "i call it Electric Gray." My brother laughed, and said "You know, you could have your own box of crayons." Sounds like a challenge to me! What would your color be? posted by Arthur @ 5/19/2002 10:48:00 PM	Sunday, May 19, 2002
So i graduated! ...though it's not quite as glamorous as cylinders make it seem. Sorry. No more chemistry jokes. i'm out of school! ...as if it were ice cream or toilet paper. i'm distracted - can you tell? It's not the Possibility that frightens me, so much as my complete inability to comprehend such things as leases, taxes, and job applications. To be fair, i have held something like four jobs and an internship, but they were all ripe, logical next steps. i feel as though i've been carefully building a bridge my whole life, and i just ran out of materials. Where do i go from here? posted by Arthur @ 5/17/2002 10:27:00 PM	Friday, May 17, 2002
The opposite of 2 is -2, but the opposite of two apples is supposedly no apples. Zero is NOT my hero - it is an abstract construction which does not apply to reality. The true opposite of two apples is the absence of two apples. Shakespeare's "To be or not to be" is much more accurately expressed by Beckett's "Essy-in-Possy". Even Hamlet was not pondering Zero, but the potential of Death. What troubled me is that if i found two apples on a table, i could count a positive number of apples, but upon finding a bare table, i could not count a negative number of apples. It occurred to me then that instead of a specific number of apples, there is in actuality only the presence or absence of apple. Now suppose that there is not a specific number of fruit in the world, but merely the presence or absence of fruit. Next apply food, and so on (notice that as the category of existence broadens, the easier it is to conceive that there is no specific number). i had surprised myself with a proof of Monism! posted by Arthur @ 4/18/2002 10:49:00 PM	Thursday, April 18, 2002
Once upon a time, the most powerful nations of the world were engaged in enormous military buildup. On June 28, 1914, in Sarajevo, a Slavic nationalist fired a small pistol at Austrian Archduke Franz Ferdinand. This event began World War I, which left Germany war-ravaged, whilst ridiculous reparations kept the country impoverished. Sorely in need of any hope, many Germans put their faith in Adolf Hitler, who attempted genocide. Worldwide sympathy for Jewish peoples led to the establishment of Israel in Palestine, and subsequent U.S. support. This continuing support angered the Arab world for decades, culminating in thousands of civilian deaths on September 11, 2001. How is President Bush responding to the situation? See beginning. posted by Arthur @ 2/13/2002 11:32:00 PM	Wednesday, February 13, 2002
Up close, she said i was even more attractive than usual, just when i felt my appearance in wane. Beauty is an angle, a lighting - a moment. And if appreciation requires loss, when did we all have beauty? posted by Arthur @ 2/12/2002 11:56:00 PM	Tuesday, February 12, 2002
Today is the 42nd day of 2002. For you unhoopy froods, The Hitchhiker's Trilogy cites 42 as The Answer to Life, the Universe, and Everything. i've been pondering my affinity for this notion, and i think i've finally found a personal emotional model of truth. Knowledge takes two forms: the rational and the emotional. i can recognize something as a rational truth and still not believe it. Conversely, i can feel something to be true without a rational foundation. Extending this beyond the realm of absolutism, there are certainly rational models of truth (i.e. light as particles or waves), so i conjectured there must also be emotional models of truth - hypotheses we engage not for a rational benefit, but for an emotional one. Unfortunately, i had no experience in what seemed the most obvious candidate, God. However, i realize now that 42 provides me a purely emotional reward; i am rationally aware of its absurdity, but the presence of a final answer is undeniably comforting. Additionally, the paper i should be writing for my Science Fiction class will be based on my presumption of the genre's lost function, of which i think 42 a clever reworking. It is my belief that early "Scientifiction" eased anxieties over the ever-looming branches of Science and their possible encroachments on everday life. In presenting fictional extremes, these stories defined realistic limits for Science. i feel that Douglas Adams has used this same tactic to tackle Philosophy. 42, for example, embodies the rational pursuit of knowledge (think Einstein's mythic Universal Field Theory) at an impossible extreme, thus foretelling the inevitable failure of The Answer as a method of understanding. posted by Arthur @ 2/11/2002 11:40:00 PM	Monday, February 11, 2002