snowfall between the bars

breath through ruffled skirts escapes me
like contentment the earth whispers bedded in snowfall.

people, this cavalcade, a parade of kids with flags, calendars marked with names
of friends, blankets, winter coats, cashmere, wooing me to sleep.

all is right now.

a life intermittently examined and enjoyed is worth living.

and life as it is once we find our diseases are permanent and benign

For those who find their concern overwhelming: i'm not dead.

Even better, the drugs I'm taking have far more side effects than the disease. so i'm going to figure out how to wean myself off of them. I'll take temporary facial paralysis over constant insomnia, obesity, moodiness, high blood pressure, possible diabetes, weakened bones (read: yes men can get osteoporosis), decrease in my body's ability to produce steriods and hormones, and a weakened immune system. A major warning on the MayoClinic was, "Don't take this if you have a virus or infection." Yes I have a virus. Which is why I'm on anti-viral drugs. So while the drugs go on fighting each other, I still can't smile or close my eye.

I'm not bitter. It's the steroids. They make me moody.

Your love and concern have made me feel the richest of all men. If I really were dying, it'd be an honor to have each of you present at my cremation and sprinkling. For the record, said sprinkling should be on a certain secret beach, where last days are suns setting.

In other news: to end the contest for best pet, which has been between dogs and cats, I nominate the new best pet in the world: electrons. Tricky little buggers they are, and so poetic.

Speaking of which, poetry's grandeur astonishes me by the lack of detail it conveys with such succinctness. I mean that in a good way. I appreciate the way it doesn't propose to have any data for the unexplainable, instead leaves it out in lieu of foolishness. I started 6 poems today. That was a release. Not yet. You can see them later. They're still half-dressed.

Rilo Kiley, Johanna Kunin, Bonnie Prince Billy, George Winston.

It's 3am and less than 0.

hypochondria

i think something's wrong.

i have a constant headache. my skin is ultra sensitive. my upper lip won't close, on one side. i can't close my right eye without my left closing as well, and the right eye doesn't close when i blink. the tip of my left ring finger has been numb for over 24 hours. my eyes hurt.

i don't trust doctors though. the last one tapped my lungs, prescribed me drugs and sent me home. two weeks later, i'm still coughing doc.

bad timing really. but aren't all illnesses inconvenient?

I fell in love tonight

with these:

• George Winston's version of Pachelbel's Kanon in D
• Ordinary People, a 1980 film by Robert Redford
• Pablo Neruda, especially his poem, "I'm explaining a few things"
• My family's house, finally a home.
• Friends who smile, haunt, hug, humble, reflect, champion, commission, cheer and snuggle me with their lives
• The aural properties of the Charlotte's Web soundtrack
• The steps I take which, tracks across a page, appear, in hindsight, poetry.

You, probably.

I'm excited for the next two days of drinking fine beer and discussing and reconnecting.
For the Jan-term I've anticipated for two years
For the lofty visions and folly of our own optimism
For a year without resolutions, yet a year of resolution

My future is vague and unsafe, like emotion and poetry. That makes sense. Poems confuse me at first, until my heart beats quicker and my mouth opens, and my body language tells me that I understand something my mind cannot. The vagueness is like that. I have one confidence: I am getting closer. The hair on my arms is standing on tiptoe, to see what impends.

Here's to 2007 and a bit of aesthetics mixed with our practicality. Cheers!

This is post 200

Is it fair to elude reality, to wonder, when the billions are fighting to survive? Is it just? Can Joy co-exist with genocide?

Can I conscienciously lose myself in poetry and stars and neverlands when my little brother is off to prison?

This is my dilemma. Does the law of moderation apply here? Or should we escape to our hundred-acre woods? Or leave them forever for the dust of sub-Saharan Africa?

I'd really like your considerations.

A sigh of an oppressed creature

Dear scientists, skeptics, rationalists, atheists, civil-libertarians, philandering priests, and Nietzsche,

Give us back our opiate. These [porn, parties, doubles, dimes, stress, success, sex and cigs] other drugs are killing us.

Your friends,
The masses

in the nicholas of time

just caught the Christmas spirit. finally. almost too late.

Dave Matthews - Christmas Song

At least one Christmas song is about Jesus. As in Jesus of Nazareth, not Jesus of Pop and Politics.

Gamblers and Robbers
Drinkers and Jokers, all soul searchers
Like you and me
...
Drinkers and Jokers all soul searchers
Searching for love love love
Love love love
Love love was all around

Other good songs re: Jesus of Nazareth?

Friends wrapped up in boxes

I've lately been reading Native Son by Richard Wright. One of the themes in the story is how everyone sees what they want to see and is blinded by their stereotypes/prejudices. For example, in the story, after Bigger, a black boy, kills a white girl, no one suspects him because it is assumed a black boy wouldn't dare kill a white girl.

Applied to my friends, this makes a lot of sense to me. Often times the only way I know what's going on in Matt's life is through his blog. I take him for granted and assume I know what's going on with him. Updates feel like talking to relatives: all facts, and basic facts at that. When I think about him I see him how he's always been, and I assume he's not changed. So when he posts on his blog, it often blindsides me. If I saw him one on one with a girl I'd assume he was a friend doing something nice for her, not a guy on a date. Chances are, since he's surprised me so much lately, that he'd be on a date.

I'm a little tired of not knowing my friends anymore. Being surprised by the changes in them. I feel like I see each of them so rarely. My daily interactions are with other friends; I miss my dear friends from Cheney.

Clarity in a time of illness

According to acetaminophen bottles I've owned, one should not take the drug with alcohol. Liver damage and all that. According to my NyQuil bottle one should not take it with alcohol, because it has acetaminophen in it. So, then, why is NyQuil 10% alcohol?

If I die, sue Vick's for me.

granted friends

the time we presume to know our friends,
is the moment to investigate them again.

i'm sorry, to all of you i've taken for granted and to my best friends whom i assume to know.

As an American you don't need much

But one thing you do need is to listen to Johanna Kunin.

http://myspace.com/JohannaKunin

Seriously.

Music for stormy weather

Sigur Ros
Damien Rice
Andrew Bird
Joni Mitchell
Bob Dylan
Third Eye Blind (The old stuff)
George Winston

Feel free to add to the list

Speaking up

A list of things I feel like I can do nothing about:

Darfur
Unfaithful people
Speeding tickets
All the sick, hurting, and dying humans
etc.

I just watched Good Night and Good Luck, and it was nice. It gave me hope. I'm glad people are speaking up. At least some one is.

Announcing:

A Complete List of Books I've Read More than Once

In no particular order:

• 'Til We Have Faces -- C.S. Lewis
• A Long Fatal Love Chase -- Louisa May Alcott
• A Seperate Peace -- John Knowles
• Deep River -- Endo
• Long Patrol -- Brian Jacques
• The Chronicles of Narnia (well, most of them)

Short list, eh?

There's so many books to read for a first time. Curiosity keeps me moving on.
These books are good enough, each in their place, to return to. And thus I recommend them to you.

New and ... well... new.

www.sixminutestory.com

It's new. It's in beta. I need you to play with it so I can see what's wrong with it and fix it.

It's a creation of epic proportions (ie. 1 sporadic year in the making from conception to beta).

Let me know what you think. Use it for fun or out of duty to me. Send me ideas for new stories.


www.sixminutestory.com

These seperate sundressed paths

My ideal life stands outside the baggage claim at Sea Tac airport. Two bags, make that four, a smile -- reality gets checked into a coat closet and waits to be picked up again on the day we part. Eight dollar cigars, Johnny Cash and dissecting rastafarianism (and feeling rather ras tafar as we do), driving fast, past three hundred miles of street signs, an empty apartment and no plans awaiting us.

It's not that we're oblivious or in denial. We're quite aware we're both broke. But we're always broke. It just doesn't affect us like it affects other people. Our italian bread and cheese, our six dollar wine, sleeping on white sand beaches -- we've learned to live like kings. We may not have much money, but we have imagination, and where you'd bring your expensive wine, we bring exuberance and optimism and incorrigibility. You can't buy us off, because money never made us happy. We make us happy.

galen, continued

I've upped my doses of chamomile tea, and I think it's helping. I open my mouth to scream, but I can't ever. All I hear is a growl, like a wolf choked by a leash. I talk to myself at Starbucks, and other partners listen in and they interrupt my personal conversations. I've resorted to covering Julie Andrews songs, from the Sound of Music and Mary Poppins. Also the Beatles and a little Bob Marley. When I'm especially high on caffeine, I'll make up my own rhymes -- out loud and on the fly. I try to engage customers. I don't even look at them. I wake up from Africa and realize their double tall latte, however much they desire it, is insignificant. My job as a barista is not to make coffee; my job is to validate people. When you order a drink and I say "yes," I've given you control of my life. You are a higher human being because I've sold my time to you for three fifty four.

It's eighty degrees in my room. There's a court date tomorrow. I'll be back in court for Jury duty soon. Whitworth withdrew some of their financial aid. I don't know where I'm going to live in Spokane.

I'm twenty one and I want to smoke my pipe. I'm twenty one and fearless (I have nearly nothing to lose). I'm twenty one and I never answer my cell phone. I'm twenty one and I'm just that much closer. I need to go. My days are running together.

ascetism vs usefulness

Do not be too moral. You may cheat yourself out of much life so. Aim above morality. Be not simply good; be good for something. - Henry David Thoreau

fly you seabird, but remember, everywhere is a place to land

My moods change like the sea, and maybe this storm will rain. There's a place in summer, I can never find. It's the edge of the rain. Leprechauns search for the end of rainbows; I search for the edge of the rain. I want to sail on the knifes edge, with lightning on one side of the mast, and sunshine on the other. I want to see the first drops of rain, to find the edge of the storm. I want to lay my nets along that edge. I want to catch the storm in a net, and tame it. Give it treats when it's good. Pat it on the head. And only let it out when I'm not busy, and have time to throw sticks for it. I want to drag it along behind my boat. I'll unleash it on ports that wont let me anchor. I'll unleash it on bigger boats that laugh at me. I'll turn it loose right above me, and I'll challenge it, and ask it questions and taunt it; I'll tell it I've tamed it. It can do its worst -- I'm impervious. I have my poncho on. My boat was made for the sea, and I was too. My moods are worse than the storm, and I'll scream and that storm will cower in its net. It will be afraid of me. But I'll be nice to it. I'm not bitter about the storm. It's a storm, so it has to rain and thunder all the time, or it wouldn't be a storm anymore. I'm just tired of how long it's lasted, tired of not seeing land, tired of there being no one else out here, on this open sea, no one else chasing the edge of the rain with me.

maybe this storm will rain

Mom's going back to the hospital. Random. I'm thinking about the dolphins I saw on Flipper. They headbutted sharks. I always liked their silver bodies wooshing in clear water, their pointy noses blamming into shark bellies, and those gray hammerheads bleeding next to blue and yellow fish.

I like the way dolphins are always laughing. Smartest animals on earth.

I'm wishing I had an $800 sailboat and enough confidence to sail to warmer waters, to see the dolphins killing sharks.

Who do I tell this to?

PS. It's not that I hate sharks for being sharks. If they didn't do sharkish things, they wouldn't be sharks at all and no one wants to lose their identity. I don't blame them. What I hate is that you can't tackle a shark. You can't use kung fu. It has the advantage, every time. Sharks always surprise you and then you're fighting just to stay alive. They're like a disease that way.

I'd hate to be a lifeguard -- it'd be like being a doctor, but on a beach. Some sunny day, "Ah yes, I'm sorry sir, but there's a shark right behind you. You have six minutes to live, with a 7% chance of survival. There's nothing you can do to defend yourself. We'll wring our hands for you, and maybe say a prayer before that monster drags you down into the gray sea." And then they'll rub some tanning oil on their chest and they'll take off their white coats and they'll climb into their Mercedes and drive out of that parking garage and leave her behind; they'll leave her behind for those sharks, those hungry sharks. And all the time I'm swimming against the waves, knowing I have no hope to save her, I'll feel the sun on my back and I'll think it's ironic that the sun should shine on such a stormy day.