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I tried to improve my mood by listening Something Happened To Me Yesterday by The Rolling Stones, but it just made me want drugs.

Beh.

What a “white-collar” career is good for:

– Alienation
– Isolation
– Cynicism
– Dollars

What dollars are good for:

– Guns
– Gasoline
– Porn
– Televisions
– Vending machines

What vending machines are good for:

– Three bottles of Aquafina
– One Pepsi
– One Mountain Dew
– One bag of chips
– The American Way of Life

What the American Way of Life is good for:

– Nothing

We live in a culture of killing. Unless it is human, white, and Christian, it is both edible and available for use in tasteless jokes or nude-hood-jackoff-prison-photography. I try really hard not to hate the Male White Corporate Oppression because so many people I am related to are a part of it, but I’ll be damned if I don’t just want to puke glass shards when I see Dick Cheney or Billy Gates in a photograph.

This world has already gone to hell. Dick and Billy have read their Milton. The rest of us are stuck somewhere in Dr. Seuss.

Three months from now I will be sitting in a dark room somewhere feverishly working over a photo of something I just took. Three months from now I will still not be making a decent living with my photos. Three months from now I will still be doing something I don’t like to make a decent living. Three centuries from now none of this will fucking matter at all because I will be DEAD and LONG FORGOTTEN and rotting in a box somewhere ALONE.

“Someone says there’s something more to pay
For sins that you committed yesterday
It’s really rather drippy
But something oh so trippy
Something happened to me yesterday

He don’t know just where it’s gone
He don’t really care at all
No one’s sure just what it was
Or the meaning and the cause
Something

Someone’s singing loud across the bay
Sitting on a mat about to pray
Isn’t half as looney
As something oh so groovy
Something happened to me yesterday

He don’t know if it’s right or wrong
Maybe he should tell someone
He’s not sure just what it was
Or if it’s against the law
Something

Well thank you very much and now I think it’s time for us
All to go. so from all of us to all of you not forgetting
The boys in the band and our producer, Reg Thorpe,
We’d like to say ‘God Bless.’ So, if you’re out tonight,
Don’t forget, if you’re on your bike, wear white….amen.”

Email from the professor who teaches the only class I have enjoyed since I’ve been here: “Final class cancelled: Conflict.”

You spend your whole life just wanting to be understood, because to be understood is not to be alone.

I am empty. Like hallways after graduation day, like a blind-deaf dog in the projects, like a tin cup in a rusted houseboat, like the gaze of a fallen comrade, like the promise an old man makes, like the sound of your car’s engine when you’re leaving it all for the last time.

I’m not bitter about it. I don’t know why I even write it, except that I have maybe forty or fifty years to kill, so I may as well.

“When from the darkness of delusion
I saved your fallen soul
With ardent words of conviction,
And, full of profound torment,
Wringing your hands, you cursed
The vice that had ensnared you;
When, punishing by recollection
Your forgetful conscience,
You told me the tale
Of all that happened before,
And, suddenly, covering your face,
Full of shame and horror,
You tearfully resolved,
Indignant, shaken . . .
Etc., etc., etc.”

“Every decent man of our time is and must be a coward and a slave. This is a law of nature for all decent men on earth. If one of them should happen to be brave about something or other, we shouldn’t be comforted or distracted: he’ll still lose his nerve about something else. That’s the single and eternal way out. Only asses and their mongrels are brave, and even then, only until they come up against a wall. It’s not worthwhile paying them any attention because they really don’t mean anything at all.
“There was one more circumstance tormenting me at that time: no one was like me, and I wasn’t like anyone else. ‘I’m alone,’ I mused, ‘and they are everyone‘; and I sank deep into thought…
“Why, we don’t even know where this ‘real life’ lives nowadays, what it really is, and what it’s called. Leave us alone without books and we’ll get confused and lose our way at once — we won’t know what to join, what to hold on to, what to love or what to hate, what to respect or what to despise. We’re even oppressed by being men — men with real bodies and blood of our very own. We’re ashamed of it; we consider it a disgrace and we strive to become some kind of impossible ‘general-human-beings.’ We’re stillborn; for some time now we haven’t been conceived by living fathers; we like it more and more. We’re developing a taste for it. Soon we’ll conceive of a way to be born from ideas. But enough; I don’t want to write any more ‘from Underground…'”

What’s wrong with me?

Or what’s wrong with everybody else?

I don’t know what I’m living for, why I wake up in the morning. Or maybe I do, but it’s the wrong answer. I will never have what I want. I will never know what I want. I can’t honestly tell anyone else what I think or feel. It doesn’t matter, it’s a lie anyway. Life sucks.

I love the world more than the world loves me. It will never change. I am the only person left on the planet who hates my own individual freedom. I belong in another land and another time. I belong in another species.

Is it too late to start again?

More on Lovelock + Nuclear
Zinni Is Critical
The 100 Year War
Orders to Torture
Bush’s Budget Follies
Warhawks Are In Crisis

it’s 4.47 in the morning and I don’t know what’s real or what’s fake, whether I’m even in chicago or salt lake city or new york or what I look like or sound like or who is real or who is imagined in my mind

everything has been a dream

i wake up from a more detailed reality and find the resulting transition to be disorienting and my actual life and memory, for a few minutes, to be unclearly bounded

i didn’t want to wake up just now

terror lethargy regret bewilderment

loss

Life is fucking strange, and it repeats itself.

Tonight at some point, I realized that I’d made a promise to myself once, a long, long time ago, never to allow myself to fall into a certain position ever again… yet I was in danger of doing just that — through no fault of anyone elses. But I had a think and I decided to keep my promise to myself and I did. And I feel good about it.

The older I get, the more heavily I value a couple things: 1) making promises to yourself when you decide that you’ve learned a lesson of some kind, and 2) being willing to risk what it takes to keep those promises, even years later when you’re cocky and maybe don’t think you need that fucking lesson anymore.

I feel generally happy. Yes, a little odd and a little wistful, mainly becuase my girlfriend is leaving in only a few days and I won’t get to spend much time with her before then… but there’s nothing to be done about that. A very nice day, though, all in all.

And my girlfriend’s dad is a very, very nice guy. He and I could hang out, I think. But when she reads that she’s going to get anxious or something. Heh… Sorry, you… 🙂 I like ‘im.

Usually, the strange evenings are the ones that are the most surreal, when I can’t tell what color things are or which direction is up, and I feel as though I’m floating. Tonight is strange for the opposite reason: the world is about four inches high and I can see all of it. I know exactly where I am in my life; I have no illusions and all of the colors are clear and pure.

So this is where the road begins. There is little to do but take the first step!

“You thought the leaden winter would bring you down forever,
But you rode upon a steamer to the violence of the sun.

And the colors of the sea blind your eyes with trembling mermaids,
And you touch the distant beaches with tales of brave Ulysses:
How his naked ears were tortured by the sirens sweetly singing,
For the sparkling waves are calling you to kiss their white laced lips.

And you see a girl’s brown body dancing through the turquoise,
And her footprints make you follow where the sky loves the sea.
And when your fingers find her, she drowns you in her body,
Carving deep blue ripples in the tissues of your mind.

The tiny purple fishes run laughing through your fingers,
And you want to take her with you to the hard land of the winter.

Her name is Aphrodite and she rides a crimson shell,
And you know you cannot leave her for you touched the distant sands
With tales of brave Ulysses; how his naked ears were tortured
By the sirens sweetly singing.

The tiny purple fishes run lauging through your fingers,
And you want to take her with you to the hard land of the winter.”

Summer hopes, plans, and aspirations:

– Finish my masters’ degree
– See and love the Pacific again
– Switch from Canon back to Olympus
– Cross an ocean on a whim
– Identify what I want
– Capture it in waning light

Between the dancing violin notes
are small, round paper lanterns,
wandering white skies,
and the smiling faces of old friends.

this is it

i feel lonely already

i don’t know what to do with myself

so i’m just gonna cover myself in piles of clothes and go to sleep

Reality is for people with no balls and no imagination.

I dislike reality immensely. In fact, I plan to ignore it altogether while my girlfriend is on the road this summer.

This summer I’m going to steep myself in unreality. I’ll breathe unreality and drink unreality and rub unreality on my armpits every morning. I’m going to skip rocks across unreality and if unreality is really lucky, unreality and I will drink together, on my dime. It’s gonna be unreal.

God, I’m gonna miss her. The world is very bland all by itself.

My thesis proposal has ballooned to ten pages. My social space paper came to 25 pages. My book will be about 750 pages. Pages, pages, pages. I am tired of pages.

But what else is there?

I don’t know what to do or say. I’m like a bug turned on its back, kicking hopelessly in the air with more limbs than I actually have.

“The beauty tender glow extinguished
The sky dull from breeze
Ghostly, the dawn has held its rays
Uncanny, a strange dual nature
The light like lead
Writ in the dark, a tiny sickle
A small ‘s’ cut by a surgical knife
The sun’s last spark fades away
And not unlike deine mitte
Now stands disc on disc, and crushes my heart

All I really really really really
Really really really want to see
Is a Total Eclipse Of The Sun
All I really really really really
Really really really want to see
Is a Total Eclipse Of The Sun

“Aah!” says everyone
Just the birds are silent with surprise

All I really really really really
Really really really want to see
Is a Total Eclipse Of The Sun
All I really really really really
Really really really want to see
Is a Total Eclipse Of The Sun
All I really really really really
Really really really want to see
Is a Total Eclipse Of The Sun
All I really really really really
Really really really want to see
Is a Total Eclipse Of The
… Sun

Apocalyptic Revelations
The Lies of our Times
Four-star war ciminals blame enlistees
In Line for the Rapture
Opposition Growing to U.S. Exemption on Global Court
What Russians Think
Free Bumper Sticker

I’m lonely already.
nazi (9k image)
I hate the world and want it to die.

Today I saw a whole bunch of suburban white kids trying to be hip-hop icons by screaming “motherfucker” into a microphone a lot.

The exhaustion I feel reaches beyond the physical and into reflexive embodiment itself. My “Id” needs a Rip Van Winkle.

I am not as good a writer as I sometimes think I am.

I am reasonably excited that my sister is coming to visit.

“rot grün gelb schwarz
rostbraun totrot
kohlrabenschwarz ist farbenfroh
funkelnagelneu ist nichts mehr
ich habe mein vokabelheft verloren
wo ist der schlüssel?
wo ist mein hut?
ich gehe jetzt”

The future, just at the moment, terrifies me. I want to sneak up quietly and suddenly, with a soundless motion, slip a knife into it, then twisting, twisting, grimacing, jerking about, closing my eyes…

But I won’t.

I’ll just step into it, like I step into anything, and hope for the best.

Time is almost up. I’m a big pile of resignation and distant smiles. I feel very much as though something needs to be said here, but I have no idea just what. I don’t feel at all interested in Roman Jakobsen and linguistic analysis right now, but that’s what I’m trying to write a paper on.

Key West. That’s where the other guy in my department from the University of Utah — the buddhist monk — is going. He said he’s going to take a page out of my book and spend the summer writing. He’s going to go down there and see if he can put together a volume of stories — stories of running away from something, stories of running toward something, stories of being there for a while, stories of leaving but not wanting to go.

My book? I need to take a page out of his book.

Speaking of, I just got a message from Harmir about things that are gone forever… about the little sensations that made you who you are and that then at some point, almost without your realizing it, left you… left you to wander around on your own without them, for however long you still draw breath.

Everyone’s always gushing about “building memories,” but memories are just the things you want that you can’t have anymore. Memories taste like whisky and cigarettes. Memories taste like the regret bound up in your tears.

Without meaning to pull an all-nighter, I seem to have done so anyway. It’s 4.01 or something like that, and I have just officially finished the paper I’ve been working on (first of four that have been on the “to be done” list). It’s taken me three hours to sort the bibliography into order and dig up a couple of theorizing sentences here and there. Shit.

Summary of the night: Paper, pub, paper, library hijinks, friends’ dead friends, food, paper, blog.

Reasons why this campus is not like other campuses, but in a bad way:

1. On-campus Pub, but no place on campus or anywhere nearby where you can buy an actual six-pack.

2. No 24-hour delivery anywhere in the neighborhood.
2a. No 24-hour anything anywhere in the neighborhood.

3. No pinball machines.

4. No high-speed Internet in one of the biggest dorms (I-House, full of graduate students).

5. Undergrads actually know what they’re talking about most of the time, so there’s no real fun in finally being a graduate student.

Jesus, it’s 4.10 almost and I’m exhausted. The chances of my getting up early and being awake enough to shower, get to the library, find and then read an entire book before 1.10 in the afternoon are very small indeed. The chances of my managing to stay for that entire class, then run off to an awards ceremony immediately afterward are similarly strained.

The chances that somewhere in all of that I will visit Concorde House, finish writing the paper on the co-ops, read Jakobsen and Kennedy, begin and finish the Jakobsen and Kennedy paper, submit the paper I just finished to Sewell, and get my IRB taken care of, also before close-of-business tomorrow…

…are nil.

The most important determinant of whether or not I will feel comfortable in a given space is not whether I own it or manage its appearance or phenomenally declarative aspects, but rather whether the bulk of the general public (i.e. those people to whom I am not “close”) are forcefully absent from it.

untrust + hammer vs. anvil awareness = bleak outlook

I just realized that Imemento (13k image) don’t have one of the articles that I’m supposed to be writing about; I was not present the day it was distributed and was supposed to copy it from a classmate. I’m not sure I even have the title. Shit.

I found out that I might not need the IRB shit after all, it could just be my crazy preceptor and his own prejudices. That’s what people are insisting to me.

I am not happy. And the thing in the world that I want fucking least is “a life.”

But everyone’s gonna make me get one nonetheless. Fuck everyone.

I have finally laid down a rough draft for the paper for my class on social space theory. It actually reads better than I thought it would, but that may be because I’ve been at it too long. It’s fucking dense, there are references to something like 32 separate sources in only 21 pages (biblio not included).

Now I’m going to The Pub to get a beer and work on the Jakobsen paper that I have to write for the poetics and politics class. I’m way, way behind. Before week’s end, I still have to:

– finish this space paper and submit it (another 2-3 hours)
– submit expedited institutional review board shit
– write the Jakobsen paper
– read the material for my classes (I’m leading discussion)
– visit Concorde house and write it into my article
– revise what already exists of the article and submit that
– deposit a check (i.e. Citi before the fuckers close at 4.00)
– start/progress on my passions of ethnic conflict paper
– start talking to potential faculty advisors

Things are getting kind of out of hand, I don’t know how I can get all this shit done on time. So maybe I just won’t try?!

World, we are America. We are strong and white. We want your labor, your resources, your individuality, your ethnicity, your secrets, your sacred objects, your children, your wealth, your lives, your ancestral lands, and your agency. Because we’re strong and white, we’re going to take them, and we’re not going to reimburse you for them, nor are we going to give them back.

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