On The Road

I am writing to you from a hotel in Sandy, Utah, just outside of Salt Lake City. It is cold here, but not as cold as I thought it would be. I am hoping it snows and does not rain tomorrow, since there is a snowboard trip planned for Snowbird, Utah, and yes, there is a storm-a-brewin high above.

I have been writing alot while on the trip, in a small leather-bound notebook made of cellulose taken from Venice algae (so it says). Maybe I will transfer some of the writings to this blog when it is all over, when I have something coherent to say about what I experienced. Right now it is all intangible feelings and nostalgia; I've been on this trip before.

I can say one thing: the sprawling landscape of Utah is much more beautiful in the winter when it lays under a white blanket of snow, with the red rocks glaring through the speckles of snow that couldn't cover all of the jagged faces of the canyons and the mountains.

Today's sunset was more ominous than pretty, which wasn't really a bad thing. It had a character of its own. It looked like a huge, frozen explosion in the sky, with the thick, black stretched clouds trying to smother it into submission. Some of the light would catch the melted snow on the ground, and at the right angles, the road would blaze yellow just for a second. It looked great against the whites and the greys and the blacks, and the dark blues of the mountains in the distance. And then those clouds finally smothered that great frozen flame, and the land was cast in a sort of luminous darkness, with the small scattered towns giving off the twinkling yellow lights that spotted the hillsides, as they slept so silently under that blanket of glowing blue snow.

I wrote feverishly in that failing light, which broke some vessels in my right eye, flooding it with bright red twisting worms.

I should probably sleep now. Tomorrow I snowboard, and hopefully not tumble and die, and then we head further North.

Oh, The Festivities

Happy Holidays.

It is that time of year.

And me? Well, I'll just be disappearing into the North for a little while.

Sure

We are surviving, that's right, surviving these fluctuations.

BFWTF

From last night.




The strangest thing has happened. I have been woken up by Rodney the Dog in a strange fit of shaking or stretching. What possessed him to awake at 11:40 PM? Still stranger, I went to bed at 10 PM, maybe later, which means less than 2 hours of sleep, but I feel fully rested. The eeriness of this occurrence has given rise to mild paranoia and creeping suspense. Have I been hijacked by an ancient race of Brain Miner Slugs? There could be one operating right now, using my body as his vehicle to gleeful Earth-bound operations. I am half expecting Mr. Grey to walk through the door at any moment, or a great pulse of light to pour through the window, accompanied by a dull hum. Rodney the Dog sensed something perhaps. I never felt clearer in body and mind than at this moment, which inversely has caused nothing but confusion and disbelief. I had to glance at my cell phone several times. The time was not registering in my head. I considered having a drink of water and going out to the computer to start a blog entry in this frigid night, but that would leave me too exposed; the perfect place to be nabbed. Ethel the Cat has stirred as well, and she gazes through the blinds of the only window in the room at this moment. What does she see in the darkness? I let her out of my room to go explore what she wishes. But Rodney stays. What now? How will I get back to bed in this state of mind? It seems impossible, but when I do lay down I feel exceedingly relaxed, like I should be going to sleep anyway. The battery is low on this laptop, a feeble, termperamental battery that grows incredibly hot when charged, like it is ready to melt into some sort of combustible acid soup. The glow of this screen is the only light in the room, a ghostly light that may inadvertently atrract Them. I imagine I should let the room back into darkness and get back to sleep. Or maybe they are waiting for me to hit the pillow so they can launch their cosmic kidnapping. Who is They goddammit! It is growing colder in this room and I must get back under the covers. I must try to go back to sleep. I considered staying awake all night, but what would I do? If boredom seizes me so easily during the day, how in the world would I survive this unpopulated night? There is nothing out there. I could play videogames or watch TV or read. None of these options sound too appealing at the moment. Neither does ingesting some sort of strange substance to dillate time and maybe force out the Brain Miner Slug from its comfortable cockpit. The TV just shifted its weight. I hate that. It made my stomach drop. She snores very loudly. My arms are cold. So are my fingers. Everything else is fine. This is Brain Miner Slug 2,345 signing out.

Vaguely Hellish

I'm not even entirely sure here. I can't quite remember what happened last night. I know I was drifting in and out of sleep. I was delirious. I had ideas. I was trying to work something out that had nothing to do with anything. There was large dogs lurking in and out of the dark, or lurking outside, or there was something else outside, I just can't remember. What kinds of dreams were they? What happened? Who was in them? What was I doing? Why does the recollection trigger a dull twisting in the stomach? Why do I feel like I am being hunted?

The sky has a low grey ceiling today. The crows circle in swarms, searching for perches on the power lines. Random raindrops are hitting the windows, thickening the water wall that obscures.

And I just can't figure out if last night was strange, troubling, a living hell, or all of the above.

Incohesiveness in One Realm, Perfection in The Other

Some more experimental writing from...yesterday.


Stoned. What first? Outside Jacuzzi, oh god I felt like I was flying. I could make my inanimate body dance like I was controlling a puppet. Dunked into a shark cage, a little intense, came up, back to the outside. The cool air had sensations of its own. Back down under, this time the cage is gone. This is to fight sharks. I gouge eyes, but behind me! Great blasts of jet, a shark trying to eat the back of my head. Fuck you shark, I'm out. Back to the surface.

Atoms vibrate in an infinitesimal sphere. Mind is like electricity that pulses it has a physics of its own. Music is the same, because it is sound, the clashing of atoms at the molecular level sending some other sort of particle or packet of energy in our direction. It recycles throughout, a sphere gradients...horizantal and vertical combined together with all things converging in and all things diverging out simultaneously, this is life, infinite. Time is circular. Time only exists conceptually. It is the moving of things outward maybe. And inward. Maybe I have fallen outward where thoughts can be grabbed out of the air. Perfect lucidity. Moments of clarity. Best high in a while.

The spider saga. Saw it fall off of a cliff. Senses sharp as hell, can hear the pulsing jets in the water, the water pushing against more water, parting, dispersing. Birds are jumping from twig to twig, making crashes that reach me across space. Finish the saga. It was meant to be. The sun coming through the fence. Essay writing. My arch foe, or one of them, the spider, falling into the ocean. Oh spider, you look black widow-y, like you might multiply and destroy. But no! I let him free, despite my fears. He crashed into the leaves. He is fine. I saved him. With a net.

It was a heavy train of thought, and I dropped it. That is ok, I am getting hungry. A white plane soaring overheard. Paper airplane pilots. Flying the same direction every time I look up. The triple elevens. This is a major convergence point. Now back to the experience. Gravity. Same idea. Ah, groovy.

Wii. Wii on weed. Wiid.

BIS: Boob Scene Investigation. Sleazy. Sleeze.

Ahhhhhhh. Introspection. Guilt. Crash down.

Everything is ok.

Not So Subtle Satire

Hey GUYS! Should I download Kryll or Van Der Graaf first?! I don't fuckin' know! Because I don't have a fuckin' mind!

Help me guys! Help me get a fuckin' mind! Decide for me! I want to be a tool!

I am a jackass!

Shortie

I'm writing this while I have to go to the bathroom, so in effect, this post will not be very long.


END.

Fire Leaves Superimposed On A Homogenous Suburban Backdrop

There is a place in the kitchen where the angle is just right, and standing inside you can see through the window and over the back wall, and right between a light-post and a steep hill of ivy stands a tree with the brightest, reddest, orange leaves you have seen in this city or the next. When the orange glow of the setting sun hits those leaves, they glow like hundreds of young embers, and the tree looks like its on fire. You might be standing in the kitchen, trying to figure out what to do with yourself, when out of the corner of your eye you see this brilliant dash of red-orange, and you wonder what in the world that could be, with a color like that. You walk out into the backyard, and there it is, beyond the wall, standing in the middle of dull browns and greys, and maybe some greens here and there, with some muddy blue overhead, unless the sky is especially clear that day, or a darkening purple-orange, if you are lucky.

And then maybe you start hearing the voices of children, or the brief, dull roar of passing cars, or the buzzing of a passing plane, high above, a bright dot of white floating across the sky. You might even smell something that reminds you of this exact moment, in the exact circumstances at some obscure time you cannot recall. This smell might be a fire in the chimney, or a steak on a grill, or even just the air itself. You'll probably feel a very soft breeze, barely detectable but just the right temperature to accentuate the moment. You might start feeling that old feeling, that old feeling that you could not begin to describe with just one of the senses, or all five of them combined, or any kind of semantic memory you can think of. It is just there, and you can feel it, like feeling that groove in your shoe that has been there for ages.

And in this trip to god-knows-where that is taking place right in your backyard, you might forget yourself, and forget that you have been chased into a cave of the roughest walls, of the darkest shadows, a cave that you could have never foreseen 5, 6 years ago, a cave with seemingly no escape, except right out the top, for just a second, with unexplainable moments like this.

Not quite humane, yet not quite primal.

Update---Old Remedies: Not Nice!

Well I guess I spoke too soon. The night before was nice sure, but when I went to sleep with that whiskey still in my system I had bizarre unnerving dreams that made me wake with anxiety.

Swimming in oceans at night, looking for glowing fish? Watching out for sharks? Cities made of sharp angled glass? Feeling unwelcome in places I'll never see?

And what about the hallucinations? The man on my chair? The shadows moving past the window, the anxiety of it all?

And I had to wake up in a feverish delusion again. Aha, always something to go wrong with me. Yaaaap.

Old Remedies: Nice

I think I know why people believe that drinking whiskey, and then sweating the cold out works.

Because having enough whiskey makes you feel great anyway! And you don't feel anything, not to mention some stupid cold!

But it comes back eventually, that's the problem. The cold that is. Not the feelings of niceness.

I'm kidding anyways. I'm not actually sure if sweating helps get rid of a cold. Maybe. Sometimes when a cold is coming on and I work with weights or something, the cold seems to magically go away. Maybe that's the immune system flaring up. Gawd I don't know. Now I'm just starting to throw stuff out there, hope it sticks...and such.

I hope I don't wake up to a train wreck tomorrow. I've got mahtherfahkin finals goin' on here.

Like Cell Growth

It is sort of hard work editing this rough draft that I have of my short story here. I have to weigh out all of these critiques and see which ones carry the most...weight, which isn't easy, because then there is that blurry line between writing for yourself and then writing for others. Maybe you want people to be able to understand what you are trying to say, so that you can communicate the right message, and plot, and emotion. Then, at the same time, you have this sort of artistic vision, which is how this entire story goes down in your head. This is the creative outlet. If this is lost, all is lost, and then you are just writing trash. The line is blurry, yes, because it is so hard to decide how to achieve this perfect balance between universality and creative peak. Maybe it is impossible to achieve the perfect balance. Maybe you have to sacrifice some vision, or overlook a certain group of people that you don't care about (which is my favorite part to shave off, haha). And then maybe sometimes you are making terrible mistakes that you cannot see at first, but then people point them out, and at first you are hurt and mad, but then you want to thank them, or something. Whatever the case, it sucks, and it takes some thinking. There are 17 different opinions on my story, and most of them contradict each other to some extent. So what to agree with?

I guess it is your decision in the end. It is your story.

The whole process sort of mirrors societal adaptation, and then to zoom even farther, or closer, depending on your outlook, cell growth. You know, you put a cell somewhere, saaay, on a larger body of cells, like skin, and what does that cell turn into and form? A skin cell. Life! Mirrors and adaptations. You could say society is an organism of sorts. And then zoom out some more, and say everything is an organism. Then you ask, what is an organism anyway? What about individualism? Is it an illusion? Is it exclusive to humans? How deep does this go? And then I say, this discussion has gotten out of hand and I am becoming too abstract. We were talking about a friggin' rough draft. Shit.

Buuuuuullsheeeyit. But no! Stick to the plan, man! What to do? What to say? What to write? A short story! Ahhhhh, I lost it. I was onto something.

Cell growth man, cell growth.