.never.never.land.

incomplete monsters.

Tue, 01 Dec 2009 07:18:33 GMT

1.

2.

3.

Foe.

what is it?

Mon, 30 Nov 2009 09:00:45 GMT

it must be love.

Mon, 23 Nov 2009 21:32:40 GMT

I broke up with Brandon.

And got back together an hour later.

I'm a fucking idiot.

But basically...I'm okay with that.

Mon, 28 Sep 2009 19:48:51 GMT

A page from my never ending scrap book.
A work doodle.
A stationary page I made for letters to friends.
...
Hoo.
...
Tree.
...
This one was too big for my scanner so it's in two parts.
This one was too big for my scanner so it's in two parts.

So thats some of the stuff I've been up to this year. Just thought I'd share for all the folks at home.

Sat, 05 Sep 2009 21:03:06 GMT

on this day things were bad.

Fri, 14 Aug 2009 02:42:04 GMT

the earth is on fire in bonnie doon.
three thousand acres over night. while the stars collided with the atmosphere, in boistrous display, the rocky crags and wirey brush burnt to cinders, evaporated from the surface of the planet.
the hot stiff air of the afternoon has given way to the unusually warm, sixty three degrees of thick dark at ten p.m. no need for a sweater and the breeze caresses my shoulder and neck, trailing down my back like a lovers palm.
on the way to scotts valley seven fire trucks whizzed and buzzed and sirened passed us in front of the high school where we pulled over to let them through.
lying on the lounge chairs in emma's back yard balls of light dance across the sky, dimmed and dulled ever so slightly by the reflection of the half moon. we sat in silence and stared, gasping and sighing at the explosions that streaked across the pale grey night, far behind trees, and beyond houses, seeming to land far and away. i imagined a firey collision, the enormous flash and sizzle of something galactic impacting the earth, folding vast craters into the ground. the shake of the platelets, vibrating and bouncing like a human spine in a car crash, reverberating through the core like a global game of telephone.
every one seems tense. all emotions heading toward some inescapable vaccum somewhere near but just out of sight. sucked tight to the folding chairs all we can do is look up.

back at home in the backyard i see more shooting stars. one so close it seems i might have been able to climb my neighbors roof and catch it. keep it in a cupboard, or under the bed. in the top right desk drawer amongst the unanswered letters, fortunes and scraps of paper. meaningless artifacts comemorating my days in delicate rubbish.

at five this afternoon the sky turns an eerie shade of sunset orange many hours before it should even be thinking of doing so. it's the sun mirroring through the billows of smoke coming down from the hills to the west. i am drawn outside into its hugh and start moving, farther and deeper into it's grasp, straight to the ocean.
looking back towards the warf nothing seems out of the ordinary, blue skies with no clouds. surfers and sea birds and boats glide along the surface. but towards natural bridges the brackish, dark brown clouds stretch all the way across the bay to monterey, permeating snowy ash. the ocean itself is the color of undeveloped film, brown and grey, flashing in reflective waves with it's normal blueish green. near the the coastline though is an unnerving golden pink, undulating and shimmering fiercly on the calm, virtually waveless sea.
it is this lack of motion that causes the equally unnerving quiet that lays itself over everything. ten miles out to sea you can hear the engine of a speed boat hum and whir, every spoke on every bicyle clicks and ticks sharply. conversations and footsteps twelve feet away on the moving legs of sunburned tourists echo with surreal clarity. there is no wind to speak of.
once at the natural bridges beach you can trace the line where the smoke comes out of the hills and trails it's way over the bay. the sun burning a bright red and orange hole through the levating wall of smoke. it hurt my eyes to look at it but was all at once so mesmorizing.

bonnie doon is on fire.
and so am i.

adorable.

Tue, 28 Jul 2009 06:46:45 GMT

If i... from Tim Brown on Vimeo.

late for everything

Thu, 16 Jul 2009 21:10:02 GMT

He's in L.A. and I miss him. She's in Georgia and I miss her even more. That hand comforts me everyday they are gone and occasionally grabs my ass.

Ecstasy.
"They feel so cool and soft on my skin." He said as his nerves siezed up to meet the flowers showering onto his warm, smooth back. "And they smell amazing". We were coming down then, but Bri had wanted to pick roses, to find the perfect one with the best scent and softest, most vibrant petals. So at eleven o'clock at night we bundled up, yet with bare feet, we stumbled through the front door laughing into the night. This particualr rose bush has been thriving at the end of Stockton Ave, my first home, for as along as I can remember. The nostalgia amplified with the euphoria of the drugs was overwhelming. I and this lovely young women, so often with the most delicate looks adolescent of sadness on her face, giggled and plucked small, pink blossoms from this avalanche of flora hanging from the chain link fence that seperates my culdesac from Derby Park. When my neighobor parked his car and got out we ducked deeper inside the bush, against the gate, frightened, probably of the moment ending, or of the impeding reality that life outside my musky room, hot and humid as a Georgia summer from all the breath and sweat, would collapse. The roses felt amazing, they were cold and soft and weightless. Bri's pale skin reflected the glow of the growing moon and contrasted starkly the black shadows of the weaving leaves and branches of the plants. We filled the red knit bag to the brim and returned to the house. There on the floor Sarah, Brandon and Parker lay on the papazan coushion, running their fingers through eachothers hair and up and down their sides, smiling and moaning softly, contentedly.
We reached into the bag and let the petals fall deftly onto their bodies, flinging them this way and that, like we were heading a wedding procession. The smiles and laughter were contagious and we soon collapsed on them, picking up petals and holding them to our nostrils, drinking up the heavenly aroma.
Everything was warm then, even the flowers had absorbed our heat and had begun to wilt into the mass of blankets and pillows strewn about my room. Our brains uncoiled themselves from around the bright, electrifying feelings of love and openess, and relaxed into a sleepy, haunting, dream.

thousand dollar kitty.

Fri, 10 Jul 2009 06:04:39 GMT

oh, yoshi. yoshi, or as he is most often called due to his amazing size, "piggy", ran away and got lost in the canyon on arroyo seco. piggy is parker's adored feline companion of many a lazy afternoon gossiping and playing video games and a staple at all functions in the mozee house. while dazed and confused on this rather uncharacteristic vacation piggy managed to him self into some trouble. some coyote shaped trouble. his poor little tail suffered the worst of it, having two discs seperated, he would have to loose it...or maybe not. maybe for the small fourtune of two thousand odd dollars he could keep his beloved little tail.
not to mention that it helps to have friends in high places.
parker simply couldn't bare the idea of piggy sans one little tabby tail and his mother agreed to pay for the surgery.
lucky duck (or whatever), i say.

however i will put in that i truly adored the style. i think yoshi is due for a shave.

a million pictures worth of words...

Thu, 09 Jul 2009 06:10:21 GMT

well not really.
but from now on i will post one picture a day and my memories associated with it.

full name: albina marie marimacova illeana katrina corbacha likala. mostly we warmly refer to her as her "ali".
on a pretty typical non-work day of lazy indecsion i called ali and she said "come to the tide pools, we're all here". despite the all around normality of this particular march-ish (i'm not much with linear time) afternoon, it was atypically hot. sweltering by early spring standards in santa cruz and without a doubt a lovely, strangely windless day.
two minutes after i got off the phone with ali, myjah called to tell me to go to the tide pools. at this moment i can't recall if she picked me up, or if we parked the car at my house or if i walked alone.
i descended the withering, weathering stone steps that i'd climbed a thousand times since childhood, and walked over to all the usual suspects, all in their bathing suits, already pleasantly sun stoned and beer drunk, laying like lizards in the sun. ali and cassidy were fully clothed up to their nipples in ocean water sitting down in the tide laughing hysterically. hugs all around and they attack me, soggy and smelling of seaweed and cheap whiskey..
we played in the always icy water of the pacific like children for much of the afternoon.
ali threw out her knee trying to kick cassidy and at the same moment the tide swept her feet right out from under her, to brilliant comic effect. she laughed through the pain.

i don't really remember much else of that day and what i do is foggy with pot and thirty two ounces of miller high life. we probably got coffee and walked around downtown as the sunset, or back to someone house and vedged.

two zero

Mon, 08 Jun 2009 21:33:12 GMT

it looks to me like livejournal and i share a birthday.

today i am twenty one.

it's a sunny, blustery day in santa cruz california. gardens all around the city dance. tree tops swivel and sway. it's cold in the shade, but isn't that just always the way around here?
i will go to work for a few hours tonight, then come home, get dressed and go out to have my first legal drink in a bar. then i will come home to my friends and eat sushi and watch a movie.

all i hope for in this new year of my existence is that i will verge even closer to finding out what sort of art i will make for the rest of my life.

I LOVE YOU KRYSTAL! HAPPY BIRTHDAY TO US!

infinite relationships

Wed, 13 May 2009 22:36:51 GMT

this is a zine article i snagged from a lovely girls journal that sums up every defense i've wanted to articulate in my support of the "open" relationship.

A couple years ago I had a wonderful experience on tour, in which I finally experienced what it felt like for men’s gender roles to be dissolved: over the course of the tour everyone in the band and the people touring with us were all able to open up and become emotionally supportive and loving, and suddenly the experience of being with a lot of other boys was totally fucking different from anything I’d encountered before. In this safe, encouraging environment, all of us really felt fearless, free, ready to try anything, with no more doubt or need for walls to protect us. On the surface, it was just that we weren’t afraid to touch and hold each other, and that we stopped complaining and being selfish; but the implications beneath this were immense: I realized that there was no need for intimacy and emotional support to be confined to my romantic relationships—I could create and benefit from these things in every relationship.

This got me thinking about my romantic relationships… if there was no reason my friendships couldn’t be more like my love affairs, why couldn’t my love affairs be more like my friendships? When I thought about it, my friendships had a lot going for them that my love affairs never did: my friends were never jealous or possessive, my friendships didn’t tend to adhere to some strict socialized image of what they “should” be, and while my friendships generally continued on in one form or another through my life, once it turned out that a romantic relationship wasn’t storybook-perfect it would end and I wouldn’t see the lover any more.

All my love relationships had proceeded something like this: In the beginning I would meet a beautiful new person, we would broaden each others’ horizons and have wonderful experiences together, and thus fall in love. At first we would feel more free together than either of us ever had, and the world would seem full to overflowing with possibility and wild joy. But slowly, not trusting the rest of the world, or the future in which we might not feel such wonderful things, we would build our relationship into a castle, to keep out the cold and dangerous outside world, and protect our passion by turning it into an institution. Sex, which at the beginning had been something that came more naturally and freely than anything else, became jealously guarded as the seal sanctifying our love relationship, as proof that it was different than all our other relationships. [This seems, in retrospect, like a really strange role for sex to play.] Inevitably, I would wake up one day and realize that the free, feral passion that we’d been united by was gone, replaced by habit, routine, fear of change; the castle we’d built had become a tomb, sealing us inside and away from the outside world, which we’d actually needed all along to bring us each new things to offer the other and sustain ourselves. Inside the coffin, we fought more and more, each demanding that the other prove her love by sacrificing more and more—when love is supposed to enable you to live more, not disable you in return for an assurance of basic companionship, a companionship that often replaces your participation in larger communities anyway. Falling in love had been like finding a secret entrance to the garden of Eden, a gift economy in which we shared everything without keeping score or worrying about “fair trade”; but now we were back in the exchange economy, competing to see who could need more, who could control more. After all my attempts to transcend the stereotyped roles of people in romantic relationships, I suddenly found that I was a “boyfriend” again, with a “girlfriend” (which is not a healthy role for anyone to have to play in this sexist society!), with no idea how it had all happened.

I started thinking about how it is that we all keep falling into these patterns, and how we could avoid them. The issue of limitation kept coming up: the idea that some things had to be off limits for the relationship to work. With my friends, nothing is off limits, and nothing is demanded either: we offer each other whatever we can, whenever we have it to give, and we don’t demand anything that doesn’t come naturally for the other (that’s how my friendships go when they’re healthy, at least, and most of them are at this point). I decided to look into what other models for love relationships there were, and discovered that there is a long tradition of relationships without these limits and expectations: non-monogamous, or “open,” relationships.

I’m not trying to say that monogamous relationships are bad, exactly, but there are a thousand kinds of relationships, and we generally only permit ourselves to try one format, which seems ridiculous. Let’s explore a bit. Every time I hear about another wife/husband/boyfriend/girlfriend cheating and sneaking around, every time I hear someone speaking proudly about how (in the name of monogamy) he has managed to resist doing something he really wants to, every time I must listen to someone pathetically lamenting the feeling of being “trapped” in a relationship or unable to pursue her desires out of some kind of fear, every fucking time I have to witness someone leering voyeuristically (“it’s ok to look if you don’t touch”), it makes me so furious about how we’ve trapped ourselves in this one-option relationship system, accepting these symptoms of suffocation as inevitable instead of experimenting with the other possibilities. More than anything else, our commitment to supporting monogamy as the only option (other than “casual sex,” I guess, which is boring as fuck and bad in other ways too) keeps us from being honest with each other. We’ve got to dare to address all these complexities of life and desire openly, even if it is painful.

We punk rockers always act like we’re such radical people, but when it comes down to acting, in practice, to try out radically different ways of living that might be more in line with our ideas (or just plain challenging, for once, not safe—nothing is more dangerous than playing it safe!), it doesn’t occur to us to question our programmed habits. All too often our revolutionary ideas are just badges, a different ideology for us to vote for, not catalysts for transforming life. This is an issue that affects everyone, where anarchist values can be tried out in the real world, but thus far I’ve seen very little discussion of this subject in our community; if we’re going to question the way the world works, we should take that home to our own personal relationships, and perhaps try out alternatives there first before proposing solutions to the ills of the world. That is—if we really have solutions to the ills of our society, let’s put those into practice to solve the ills of our own relations. Healer, heal thyself.

What an open relationship is:

The most important thing here is to get over the idea that a person’s value is measured by whether she alone can be “enough” for another person. The world is infinite, and so are we—no amount of living, no number or depth of interactions with others should be “enough” for any of us, just as no amount of interactions with a person you love will ever be “enough.” To set borders on what another person can do or feel, as a condition for them to be able to receive my love and affection, goes against everything I believe as an anarchist and a human being; I want to trust others to know what they need, and never limit them—and I certainly don’t think my life will be any richer from the limitations I place on others. We have to free each other to be and become ourselves. This isn’t just about other lovers or sex partners or friends, it’s also about other undertakings, needs, even the desire for space and solitude—it’s heartbreaking how much of our selves our lovers often ask us to sacrifice to be with them.

I want to be valued for what I am, for what I do naturally, not how well I conform to some pre-set list of needs that someone has. If someone else can fill some of those needs, I wouldn’t deny that to anyone, and I don’t want to be jealous when others have something different to offer; I just want the chance to offer what I have to give to those I love, and to remember that those things are priceless and not comparable to whatever unique gifts others may have. None of us should ever be saddled with the role of sole provider for someone’s needs (romantic or otherwise), anyway; our purpose on this earth is not to serve others, but to find ways to be ourselves in ways that also benefit others. By saying the rest of the world isn’t off limits to your partner, you free yourself of the job of being the whole world to your partner.

The monogamy system means that people hesitate to share themselves with others in certain ways, lest they become romantically involved—for since you can only have one romantic partner at a time, you have to make sure that your one partner is a good investment (and here we are back in the capitalist market even in our love relationships). Women check men out for financial means, men ponder whether a woman’s beauty is socially recognized enough to offer the prestige he hopes to get by having her at his side, and no one is able to experiment with partners who don’t meet enough of these criteria to be potential spouses. For that matter—just as in your friendships, there may be people in the world with whom you can spend some wonderfully romantic time once or twice a month, but with whom you don’t have enough in common to date steadily and then marry, etc. (although you often see such mismatched couples, who would have been happy as more sporadic partners, making each other miserable in fifty-year marriages). Non-monogamous relationships make such things possible without paying any price of mutual unhappiness.

I’ve decided that I no longer want to have a hierarchy of value between my friendships and my love relationships: they’re both crucial, irreplaceable in my life, and fuck anyone who wants me to choose between any of them. Not only that, but I’ve stopped classifying things as “love” or “friendship” according to arbitrary superficial details—the feelings I share with certain friends are so intimate, so beautiful, that it’s ridiculous that I don’t call them lovers just because we don’t sleep together. It’s fucking absurd that sex should be the dividing line between our relationships, between which ones take precedence, between who we play with, live with, sleep with, who we take care of first, who we die with at last.

By the same token, in open relationships, sex isn’t weighed down with so many implications and restrictions. Love and desire outside the lines of the monogamy model are demonized and attacked on every front in this society—in the lives of women, at least, and those men who don’t want to be monogamous but also despise the superficiality and sexist bullshit of the “player” scene are unlikely to find support in feminist circles, either. Sex should not be contained, and it should not be made symbolic of anything—it should simply be another way for people to be physically affectionate with each other, to give each other pleasure, to be intimate and emotionally expressive, taking equal responsibility for their involvement but without having to answer to some hypercritical mass, social expectation, or moral taboo.

An open relationship is just that: it is a relationship in which people can be open with each other, and with themselves—in which nothing need be hidden or suppressed or off limits, in which the whole world can be ours to explore without fear of transgressing imaginary boundaries. When we demand total openness and honesty from each other in relationships that include limits and taboos, we’re setting ourselves up for betrayals and dishonesty: to say “be open!” without being receptive to all of the possible truths is fascist and preposterous. We have to be supportive of each other, in every aspect of our individual characters, if we want real honesty to be possible. Otherwise, we’re like Christians at confession with each other, demanding that we reveal all out of some moral imperative, with the whip of shame ready for any straying impulse. We have to learn to embrace and celebrate anything that feels good for each other. If it’s good for our lovers, it’s good for us—are we really so selfish that we can’t see this?

For one example of how this could work, let’s go back to the story of our tour. On the tour, different individuals formed close bonds, and shared private worlds together like lovers do; but they also remembered that for the community to function, they couldn’t withdraw from their relationships with everyone else. And whenever two people needed a break from each other or wanted to expand their horizons a bit, they would spend more time with others, because there were always others around them who also had things to offer. Everyone was safe and cared for, and no one was left out, because we weren’t paired off in exclusive twos.

Conversely, the scarcity economy of lovers which we have right now makes each person hurry to pick another and chain her to him, before he is left alone forever. The alternative, which this fear of solitude prevents us from seeing, seems more preferable: a world without borders, in which each of us would be part of a broader family of lovers and friends, with no distinction made between the two—and no set format for any relationship, so experimentation would be a constant feature of every one, and no relationship could ever get dull or overwhelming. To get to such a world, we just have to get used to not limiting each other, to not thinking of love as a limited commodity.

Jealousy, and what I’ve learned from it:

Yes, I still feel jealous sometimes. I’ve had experiences before of being insanely jealous—not just of another man, but of other things my partners loved or experienced or were excited about. Being able to come to terms with these things has been very important in the development of my confidence and sense of self. It took me years to feel (not just understand) that if my lover loves other things or other people as well, it doesn’t mean I am less valuable. Besides, if (he or) she truly loves me, it’s not because I match up to some list of desired qualities that someone else can outmatch me at—she loves me for reasons that are unique to me, that no one else can compete with, so I have nothing to fear. Love isn’t a scarcity commodity—it increases, just like joy, the more it is permitted and shared and given away. I don’t feel like I have to hoard anyone all to myself now. I know that doesn’t work, or help to protect love (or me, for that matter).

I consider my jealousy a worthy adversary, one that can teach me a lot about myself if I confront it rather than trying to protect myself from it by controlling others. I’ve had experiences in relationships before where lovers of mine have limited themselves in order to protect me from my jealousy, and it has been catastrophic for both of us, you can imagine. It’s just as important to me now that I help others to not be “afraid for me” as it is that I learn not to be afraid for myself.

One of the things jealousy has taught me about is my attitude toward other men. It’s interesting for me to note that I’ve never felt threatened by women whom my partners were attracted to or involved with, but other men have always made me see red. In our society, men are conditioned not to trust each other, to hate each other, to try to “protect” women from other men (which often looks more like hoarding and protecting personal “property”), and this inclination makes sense when you look at how fucked up many men are when it comes to interacting with women. But for me to not trust any men to be something good for my partners (past the point of limited friendship) is outright paranoia and territorial bullshit. If I trust the judgment of my partner, I should trust her to know what and who is good for her, and to not let my each-against-all male conditioning interfere.

Some objections I’ve heard raised to open relationships:

“It sounds good in theory, but the way people feel is more important than these abstractions…”

Some people think that we come up with ideas and theories not as solutions to the real problems of our lives, but to show off what good ideas we can come up with. If it’s not clear by now that I’ve been thinking about this as an attempt to solve rather than exacerbate the problems in my love relationships, then I apologize for doing such a poor job writing this article. And hey—if you think open relationships can be tough on your emotions, just try long-term monogamy. They’re both hard sometimes.

“But human nature—”
Fuck you. Enough said. Human nature is what we make it, and you know that too, whether or not you want to own up to it—you cowardly excuse-mongering bastards.

“I guess that’s fine if it’s what you want to try, but luckily I only want monogamy for myself! I’m all set!”

That’s great for you, if it really is true—for the time being, at least. We’re always so thrilled when our desires happen to coincide with social rules: then it’s easy for us to feel proud of our desires, to think they’re beautiful, since they are universally accepted (indeed, everything around you is reinforcing the idea that what you are lucky enough to feel for the moment is perfection itself)… but you might not always be that “lucky,” you know. Should you (or someone else) ever feel a need that isn’t satisfied by the monogamy system, if you haven’t already made the effort to get others to understand and accept the idea that there are many different acceptable kinds of relationships and desire, you’ll be back at ground zero, finding yourself misunderstood, hated, called slut and whore. Nobody should have to go through that, ever, so whatever you personally need, you have a stake in promoting non-monogamy as a viable option too. Otherwise, we’ll all live in fear of waking up one day feeling a desire that is unacceptable—and that fascist power of moralism over our lives is exactly what I thought we were trying to fight in punk rock.

That’s why I consider myself non-monogamous right now, even though I’ve only had sexual relations with one person over the past five months: I do what I do not out of a commitment to monogamy, but rather a commitment to meeting my own needs and those of others, with no fucking regard for social norms—and to supporting others who do the same thing, whether or not they do it in the same way. Non-monogamy isn’t about sex, anyway—it’s a general approach to relationships with people, as I discussed above.

“Open relationships are bad for women—it’s just another way for men to be selfish, and absent when women need them…”

This is the kind of sexist remark I’d rather not have to deal with, but I’ve heard it before. It reminds me of the old myth that all [“good”] women want “responsible” monogamous relationships, and the ones who don’t must be confused [so it’s OK for us to look down on them, just as misogynist pigs call them sluts]. First of all, women have been the ones who introduced me to most of these ideas. Besides the women I know personally, the very best book I’ve been able to find on this subject (The Ethical Slut, by Dossie Easton and Catherine A. Liszt, on Greenery Press), which I would strongly recommend to anyone interested in the issue, is written by women [if you can’t find it, write me and I’ll lend you my copy]. Second of all, a lot of the men and women involved in pioneering different models for relationships over the past few decades have not been involved in heterosexual relationships, so in those cases this is a totally unfounded criticism. Third—people who say this make it sound like they think men are only emotionally nurturing to women who are paying them off for it with sex and denying them access to any other sex as a way to be sure the payoff will always work. God, I hope that’s not the best we can hope for in heterosexual relations…

Finally—yes, it’s true that men have been conditioned to be selfish and somewhat less than nurturing in their relationships, and just shifting relationship models is not going to cure that. But that’s going to be a problem in whatever kinds of relationships they have, not just open ones, and it has to be dealt with separately. A loving, caring boy is not going to go running off for sex with some stranger when his lover (or one of his lovers) really needs him. There are so many dangers in our sexuality, since so much of it has been programmed by our enemies; we men need to unlearn the pressures that make us seek out superficial sex as a way to avoid real intimacy and support. That brings me to the third objection:

“So does this mean you’re giving up on your romantic dreams, your hopes for living happily ever after, just trading them for a series of sexual episodes with acquaintances?”

No, not at all. I’m not interested in evading personal commitments and long term relationships—rather, I want to protect them from being unnecessarily at risk. I want to secure my romantic relationships, so they won’t be at risk from trivial things like temporary boredom or attraction to others, by creating relationships that are sustainable through changes in my life and needs. That way I can hope to have my lovers as long as I have my friends, ‘til death do us part for real, and no old taboos (or jealousy, insecurity, etc.) will interfere. Sure, this will be hard sometimes, just like everything is hard sometimes—but the rewards of making this work will be greater in every way, I think.

What I’m hoping to do here is free us from the unnecessary tragedies of our love affairs, the insecurities and possessiveness that deny us the commitment and pleasure we could have together. In order to be ready to remove those obstacles, we have to be ready to face the real tragedies head on, with great courage: we can’t demand that others protect us from our insecurities by limiting themselves, and we have to face the fact that there will be moments when we are alone. The price of not doing this is absurd—today, we suffer both the necessary and unnecessary tragedies in our relationships, because of the courage we lack. Is it too much to ask that we try something new?

foutaises

Mon, 11 May 2009 00:29:39 GMT

Mon, 04 May 2009 05:10:46 GMT

i feel very strange.

the show i saw

Mon, 20 Apr 2009 04:18:51 GMT

here are four videos that make up the kimya dawson show i went to on friday. it was amazing, you should watch. i dare you not to get choked up.

right after work

Sat, 18 Apr 2009 02:49:16 GMT

when the clock struck four it was time to go and i couldn't have been more ready to get out of work. people had been rude, people had been obstanant, people had been down right insane. and it had turned my insides from cotton candy to lead. i had started with morning out with spinach, eggs, sunshine and laughter with my grandmother in the garden. talking serious and silly about everything under the sun. then i got to longs drugs on mission and my resolve to be a good, caring, understanding person just collapsed. i couldn't tell myself "i will not harbor any negative thoughts" enough to dam up the river of them that spilled forth. i let their annoyance become my annoyance. their cruel impatience became my self righteous anger.
it was miserable.
i scowled and sighed and huffed and puffed and none of that made me feel better at all. because it never will. smiling makes me feel better, but somehow i let my brain trick itself into thinking that cursing and spitting is what the situation calls for. that thats what i'm entitled to feel, so why not? but that only makes me feel tired and depressed. it takes so much energy to be outraged. wasted effort.
but still i huffed and puffed and blew my soul down all the way to four o'clock.

thats when something magical happened.

when i looked at the end of my line ali and cassidy were there. i smiled oblvious and said "what are you guys doing here?" and they said "picking you up! the kimya dawson show is tonight, we'd said we'd be here at four on friday, so here we are!"
i was instantly excited to know what i'd been trying to remember all day: who did i make plans with again?
so i ran out the door into the sunshine, ripped on my shirt for all the world to see my bra and belly, replaced my smelly green polo shirt with my big, black, smelly sweater, apologized to my grandma for making her take an unecessary trip and climbed into PJ's jazz filled shotgun seat. after a few errands and urinary detours we walked the few blocks from the parking garage by atlantis fantasy world up laurel to the zomie co-op where already some passionate strings were being plucked and anti-establishment poetry was being cooed into the crowd, making jokes and forming smiles.
this beautiful, flamboyantly painted victorian housed us all in the back yard perfectly. the guests too were flamboyantly attired with hair every color of the rainbow, stripes, piercings, polkadots, dread locks, feathers, beads, and smiles. lots of smiles.
there were kids on the roof. kids in the trees. kids in the grass. kids every where. there were even really little kids that were having a blast. especially since kimya played all of her new album "alpha-butt", a childrens record.
but kimya, she destroyed me. she was so kind and quiet and compassionate. she reminded me of all the reasons my behavior at work was totally unexceptable. all of her songs are so powerful, so full of love and perspective and rightous anger. i wept for a full half of the show. i just couldn't help it. it was to much for my senses to handle, all of this beauty. all of these people appreciating the same ideal of harmony and kinship and ultimate kindness.

afterwards we bolted because ali had to prepare for the barbeque today. my grandmother picked me up in front of the police station and we went home and ate left over chinese food. i told her excitedly all about the show and why i loved it and wished so bad that she could have been there. i would have invited her out right but i never know what those kind of scenes are going to be like. she would have loved it.

then something strange happened. all the demons i'd aquired throughout the day seized my heart all at once and i coudln't move. myjah came over and made it worse. so in a last paniced effort to loosen the vice grip on my heart i went to sleep. confused and angry and hopeless.

i thought it was over but this morning i feel just as bad. just as confused and i have no idea if i'm going to be able to keep it together today. already i've come to the verge of tears over my every little mistake. i can't do anything right. i feel like i'm drowning.

and as always, i don't know whats wrong with me. i don't know whats so heavy inside that makes it hard for me to breathe, i guess it's just everything.

well, what do you think of us now?

Sun, 05 Apr 2009 08:50:39 GMT

this post means nothing to most any of you, and thats fine becaues this isn't for you. it's for myjah.
we've come along way, haven't we babe?

Paula
Makes me smile so much my cheeks hurt. It's an awesome feeling, how that works. How some people can make you feel sane just by BEING.

I was talking to Phil about how we function, how the distance between us makes the time we spend together better, how we never lose touch plays a factor in all our love. We were speculating on what it would be like when she got here, and I had this dreadful little thought...

...will it be the same kind of friendship?

Because we function on this level where our worlds are seperate, but we run on parallels. And we compare, and laugh, and share, and our concerns aren't for each other except how happy the other is. Our drama is something we can save the other from. Our bad moods are conveyed through text, and it softens whatever harsh reality we hear about.

And this thought crossed my mind, and I felt so worried...

...and then I realized how fucking dumb I'm being. Of course we'll always be there for each other. And of course we both understand. And no fucking shit we have the understanding and capability to pull through any kind of thing, I betcha, because we're so damn used to listening, and loving, and working through what's hard for us. Because we always try to help, right?

Because we're that freaking loony that we can truly function.

And that made me smile, and feel so much better, and I wondered why I worried in the first place.

God knows if we ever had such a problem, we wouldn't be afraid to voice it.

"You're taking my man!"
"Well, you're acting like a bitch!"
"...oh. Ok."
"Yeah."

Not really the same, but I don't have much of a way with words right now.

No pedestals. Just time, and understanding.

I wanna grow. And she definitely helps me do that.

I love you, Paula.

I'm being silly. I should shut the fuck up.

~Sunrise Junkie~

i love you more than i love chai tea at three in the morning when i have cramps.
and you have no idea just how much i love that.
it's intense.
like a near death expience kind of intense.
none of that pansy river rafting shit.
like a mother fucking heart attack.

i love you like no other.
-paulathena

i think we're doing alright. i think, just fine in fact. all of our worry for nothing, which is how i like my worry. i just feel like i can't celebrate it enough! the fact that you've been my rock here in santa cruz. we're just as dysfunctional as any other neuortic young women, but just like my all of my favorite neuortic young women it works in mysterious, happy, accidents of "best friendship". soon enough i'll unite all of my "bests" and we'll all live happily ever after.
i hope.

things i will know when this is all over.

Fri, 03 Apr 2009 02:03:50 GMT

i will know commitment.
i will know determination.
i will know disipline.
i will know love.
i will know god.
i will know myself.
i will know stillness.

Thu, 05 Mar 2009 22:47:43 GMT

man, oh, man. so i've been reading deadjournal entries of mine circa 2002, and i've never been more embarassed in my life.
however, even amongst my over flowing ignorance and utter stupidity, there were bits of genius that for some reason decided to hang in there and be my friend. betsy, "alexandra", was one them.

here is a hiliarious script she wrote one afternoon and tried to get me and katie on board to help her record it on her sweet ass mac.

alexandra: welcome to wpms, radio station of the free-reigning basement. today i have with me scalena and ocifera, members of the national society of air conservationists. scalena, tell me about your organization.

(whisperingyto conserve air)scalena: it's a complex organization, mainly focusing on teaching people how to conserve not just oxygen, but air as a whole, through minimal breathing.

(whisperingyto conserve air)ocifera: yes, to speak isn't to conserve air, but to preserve and spread our message we must do so. in the words of theodore roosevelt: speak softly and carry a big stick.

alexandra: well, what do sticks have to do with anything?

scalena: i'm sure they're important, but that was the only quote we could find about not speaking at the time.

ocifera: we're not very old as an organization, and we're still doing research.

alexandra: i see. well thanks for joining us. you can visit the NSAC web-site at over-came.net/alexandra. breathe through your nose or just hold your breath. see you next week.

Tue, 03 Mar 2009 06:51:36 GMT

my mood has done anything but improve.

is depression contagious?

my hero.

Tue, 24 Feb 2009 01:14:19 GMT

ahhh. so good.

i accidentally posted this is myjahs journal but..

Sun, 25 Jan 2009 03:29:49 GMT

we went to a sit down, ritzy, all cake, all the time restaurant at ten o'clock at night.
myjah and mys silverware was magnetized. our forks danced handle to handle with our knives midair. i felt like a magician. i felt as though if i didn't enjoy this simple mystery to it's full extent, to dazzle myself with it's every shining rotation, would be a crime against whimsy.

let us eat cake,
amen

i am now in olympia enjoying the grey and green.

let me entertain you.

Sun, 18 Jan 2009 21:34:27 GMT

so in an attempt to run away and join the circus i got to feel hot embarassment and no real sense of empowerment as i'd hoped for.

to clear that last sentence up with some details, on friday night i:

performed a dance number with a group of friends at a circus themed rave.
we all practiced together about...oh, i don't know, four times total, three of those on stage before the gig. we had two months. that bitch only lends itself to the idea that if we'd practiced more i wouldn't have felt retarded. but chances are, i would have felt retarded anyway.
but underneath the retardation, underneath the self inflicted embarassment, underneath the stress of not knowing if our other dancers were going to show, i got to dance on stage to tom waits "big in japan" in a burlesque piece choreographed by one of my favortive people of all time, parker mousee-baum, with myjah and a cute lesbian couple who tears it up when they groove.
i got to get into a sweet ass party for free. i got see contorting ribbon dances suspend themselves from the ceiling. i got to see fire dancers in ring leader garb. i saw clowns, and white peole dancing like terrets patients with their eyes closed.
we ran into the cute girls from the mountain goats show. i thought that perhaps my sheer animal magnetism had drawn the devastatingly cute dready girl to hug me, seemingly unprompted by any previous action, but she had merely recognized me and being a super hippy felt compelled to embrace me. which i'm fine with. i then noticed the cute apron girl. i call her this because the last time i saw here she had a feather in her hair, an adorable pink floral apron and moccisons. she was again resplendant in some varation of the cookery clothing with a touch of native american flare. so i hugged the spacey cadet, and she looked at me like i was crazy until i mentioned the show and then her eyes sparked with memory and she held me tight. it was reassuring.

i was so nervous. i've never really been on stage before and it was strange. so many day dreams and fantasies about being a performer and when the occasion arrose i was scared shitless. alls well that ends well, i suppose.

tonight we leave for oregon/washington. ten days. i look forward to seeing jenny and maya. i may go see my mother. i may not. the whole idea makes my skull buzz with possibilities for failure.
and how is going to be spending fourteen hours in a car with kenan and jack? i know myjah and i can handle eachothers company for long periods of time, but what will the others be like?
oh well. i'm trying hard to go into this with absolutely not expectations of how it should go. there is no should. there is only what will happen.

Fri, 09 Jan 2009 04:29:46 GMT

so it's eight fifteen pm on thursday january eigth. if i weren't sick with a chest cold i'd be working right now. just like i did yesterday evening, until midnight. i could be ringing someone out, quite possibly straightening shelves and turning product labels into the forward position. it's also possbile i could be clutching my fingers together, hands at my chest clumsily pondering over wracks and wracks of beer, icy air pouring on top of me from a crusty vent, broken glass ever shining, finely ground by work boots, up at me menacingly as i curse the least favorable part of my job.
perhaps i could have been lucky. they might have had some boring decoration to glorify st. valentine, even now in the chilly, early days of january pink and red candies, stuff animals and other gaudy plastic trinkets pine for your attention.

but instead of performing any myriad of mindless tasks, i am here in my bath robe, chest burning with every exhale, thought foggy with dextromethorphyne and acetemenophin dipped in surgar water, head teetoring around the constant source of dull ache that is my swollen neck and a soreness that traces my spine in waves of nausea.
and honestly, i prefer it.
i prefer it's prescriptions of hot tea and bed rest. i'll even wave merrily to the passing worry of catching death in my breast.
it gives me time.

something about being sick sits us down hard and makes us hold still. look out at life with a sleepy clarity. no panicing, no hurrying about to get here or there to make sure your life's still moving. no, the only thing facillitating your existence is to rest. to lay in your bed and sleep in hot, sweaty sheets; to dream fevered visions.

i get to write. i get to sit here and tell stories instead of telling lies while i smile and pretend to give a shit if you found anything you were looking for.

last night i worked while i was in the begining stages of my illness. that morning i woke up to fairly mild symptoms, identifyable because they were one in the same with parker's (we'd listened to the new amanda palmer album in bed on monday morning shortly after i made my last post here, while he was violently ill and i made him soup), but i figured with all day to rest until eight i could work a four hour shift without to much grief.
and so i did.
i saw the usual characters which i haven't had the time to discuss much with you here, so perhaps now i will.

the lottery guy.
he spends more time in longs drugs than imagine i do. hours spent walking, no, really more of an apathetic, if not knowing, mosey around the store eating snickers bars, or ice cream sandwhiches. looking upon the endless product with some interest. then returning to the front to shell quarters and dollar bills into the scratch off vending machine. piles of pennies line the kiosk next to it, he picks one up and rubbs it against the grey, silvery gum, revealing his fortunes and losses. he routinely comes through a check stand, betraying no sign that he's done this a thousand times, expression as blank and slightly uncomfortable as any consumer, exchanging a five dollar bill for an equal value of ones. turning paper into coins.
sometimes he'll ask someone where something is. but he knows. he knows every inch of every aisle. every dusty shelf and all four dirty corners. he would be employee of the month.

jeff, the emperor.
when i first arrived in santa cruz a man on the crowded streets i spied often and seemed to always be carrying a stack of notebooks spanning from his hip to his shoudler. he carried them under his right arm and was frequently holding a piece of fruit in the other, munching mindlessly as he walked. i would muse in my daydreams he was a writer, about his portable masterpiece warpped in a clear garbage bag to keep its ideals safe and dry. i saw him everywhere. from the car. on foot. on the west side, the east side, and finally at longs.
the few feet of salt and pepper balding ponytail tucked into his bulky, beige windbreaker. uncouth, wiley beard protruding scholarly from all around his face, elongating in a point from his chin. as always a black baseball cap adorning his head, note books settled on the conveyor belt, he buys a set of ballpoint pens and a candy bar from rebecca at register two.
i smile as i help my next customer and think about all the possibilites of prose that could be contained in those plain black, college rule cardboard diaries.
time passes and i'm working an eight to midnight on some particularly stressful and disorienting day. i'm on the register for the first time during this particular shift and i'm the only one in the front half of the store. it's a slow night with few bodies bobbling about the floor. it had taken all my engery to get dressed and get out the door. even now i can't recall exactly the trigger for all my worries, just that i had felt a general failure in living. if i wished to i suppose i could go sniff out the record i had taken down on the back of the daily schedule that night, but in my fatigue i can't be bothered.
a few unmemorable transactions lead up to a full blow out of my circuts when an obviously meth adled, possibley homeless, blatantly insane woman comes through my check lane and just fucks my world up. the unbelieveable rude and hostile manner which she conducted herself during the brief moments of scanning and bagging her items was nothing compared to the hysterical freakout when i gave her the wrong change. cursing my name, accusing me of trying to swindle her out of money and the slander against my intelligence was just to much for my fragile little ego to handle. after rectifying her change troubles she storms out, her silent, almost unnoticeable boyfriend still standing in front me, holding their purchase in one hand asks, "can you double bag this?" i do so and when he's gone i break into a storm of hot tears, hand shaking and clawing at the building moisture on my face. i take a deep breath and call my co-worker jimmy to register one and ask him if he will cover me for a few minutes because some crazy women just made me cry. he gives me and sypathetic "of course" with a look of confusion and i go stand in the wretched beer cooler, allowing a few more gasping sobbs before taming my heart rate and pulling myself together.
when i get back to the front it's still empty save for jimmy leaning against the chash drawer. i thank him apologetically and resume my post.
this is when i see him come in. this is when i see "note book guy" as i called him then, his more regal designations would come later, walk through the sliding doors.
five minutes pass. ten minutes pass. i can't wait for him to check out.
when he finally rounds the corner he sets a half gallon of milk and a hersheys chocolate bar on the conveyor belt, his tower of note books father on down the counter. i smile warmly and ask him, "so when do we get to read your opus?", he replies, eyes wide, dark brown brakish pools, "it's not so much an opus as much as a recording of all the mean and cruel things people in santa cruz have done to me." i'm more than a little taken aback as all my made up fantasies of his exploits as a great novelist crumble, but also a bit mute in confusion with a small tingle of uncomfortable, inexplainable fear. i say i'm sorry that anything bad should befall him and remind that people can be so cruel. we talked more and some how we got onto my life, the woman who had made me cry and my childhood in georgia. we sighed our goodbyes in lament for humanity. the night finishes without further conflict or memorable encounter.

the next day he returns. i learn more. he tells me about the young prostitutes that torment him because they somehow know he is lonely, how wicked they are as they tempt and hector him. that all the cooks at the fast food resteraunts laugh as they put rocks in his food. he pries his cheek back in an attempt to show me a chipped tooth. says that the cops just tell him he's schizophrenic. showing me his tooth again, he asks if that sounds schizophrenic to me. i am not so much frightened as i am hurt by the thought of his plight. his pain, real or imagined. all of it did sound schizophrenic to me though i'd never tell him so. that sweet old man who shakes lightly at the seams with brilliant thought, and disolves into paranoid delusions. who seems genuinely kind but is addled by bitterness to a world that has turned it's back on him. it was text book stuff.
since then i hadn't seen much of him. just short glimpses of him on the street. i talked to a few customers about him. one man only sticks out, he was attractive and middle aged, engergetic and playful, chattering on with me on a busy afternoon, said that he had met jeff several times and we talked about our expierences with him, but as he was running out the doors he called back to me "i call him the emperor".
and kingly he is. sort of rogue and royal he looks. wise and fierce at times.
king of the paranoid schizophrenics.
king of the real santa cruz.

many other strange and utterly obnoxious characters come and go through the marry go round of check lanes at longs on mission street. one afternoon a few weeks before christmas an old man hobbled through the doors and out of the sunshine only to come right up to me and explain how it deplorable it was we were open on the day of our saviors birth. that it was the fault of the "goddamn jews" that they had "a union" and that it was the cause for this travesty. he told me this all without blushing in a grave tone while looking me dead in the eyes. locked in such an appauling embrace i felt dazed when he departed telling me to remember what he had said.
i think i always will, but in what context i doubt i'll mention to him should he return.

last night i had my first encounter with audrey. a senile old ding bat who took a half an hour to check out. she's dirty and had a foul scent about her. her hair comes out from under a pink ball cap in wirey, greasy tendrils. her mouth sporting three remaining pebbles of teeth. enormous glasses over glassy blue eyes. she constantly ask my name, refered to me as "dear heart" and "sweet thing" as she pulled item after item from her full shopping cart. asking that i bag some things in plastic, others in paper and still more strange and unreasonable combinations of the two. she talked about her son, which evolved into sons. that i was a nice girl i should meet him. a good christian man, six foot tall who loved sports. he and his brothers lived in a condo by the beach, and what was my name again?
after scrambling around in her two purses, explaining to me that she interchanged between two or more to be more efficient when she was on foot and devulging still more yarns about her past and present. she babbles herself right out the door and lauren and i lock eyes in duel expressions of "WHAT THE FUCK?" as i duck behind the magazine wrack until i'm certain she's gone.
the night manager adrew, a some what handsome mid-twenties man with hair down to his waist always pulled back in a neat ponytail at the base of his neck ask me if i'm alright and if that was my first encounter with audrey. tells me that there was i manager at this store before named david, whom she had in fact mentioned to me in her blather, that she had latched onto for whatever reason and that we didn't see her as much since he was gone but that it was always the same song and dance. there were two more shopping carts at the back of the store full to the brim that she had put together during this particular visit.
i'm sure i'll be attending to at least one of them come saturday morning.

it's getting later now and i think i'll retire to television and cough syrup.
i spoke with sarah for a few hours via telephone today and i feel it has added my mending.
i thought i'd mention it to remind me again how much i love and miss her.

good night, and sweet dreams.

Mantra of the week. Or: Wise words from Cat Stevens.

Wed, 17 Dec 2008 20:40:49 GMT

I was once like you are now, and I know that it's not easy,
To be calm when you've found something going on.
But take your time, think a lot,
Why, think of everything you've got.
For you will still be here tomorrow, but your dreams may not.