Below are the 20 most recent journal entries recorded in dylanoconor's LiveJournal:

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Wednesday, November 9th, 2005
7:53 pm	So The World Keeps Turning, Right? So, as I light this cigarette, I wonder if it wasn't like that when the world started. Click, fizzle; click, fizzle; click, whoosh, let there be light, spread throughout the darkness, to chase all shadows away. And I suppose that's why fire's always been so impressive, humankind's first attempt to change the natural order of things, to turn night into dawn, to turn a bundle of sticks into morning, no matter how feeble or small a day. We chased away the shadows, and chased away our fears, until we, again, were the only thing in the night, that sphere of light keeping the world out. What was illuminated was real, everything else was still under the glamour of night. And still we chase back the night, have made most darkness futile; if we wish, we could live in constant twilight, draw curtains over the windows, make it ever the same. But the world keeps turning anyway. Though we've made night pointless, the world keeps turning. Waiting for the next click. I wonder what it might be? Time? Will we eventually have as much control over the flow of time as we now do over illumination? Will fixing a mistake - a lapse of tongue, an error of judgement, an unhappy moment - be as simple as pulling some device out of our pockets and going click, click, click? Or will it be psychology, personality? Will we be able to override who a person is with a simple injection, change supposed madness to normalcy, until to be anything but .50 is as odd as living with no illumination, forever slave to the whims of the horizons? Or motion, perhaps; overrule all laws of physics, until where you are is everywhere you might be? Just a question, just a thought, in a moment in time. As I chase away the darkness. Click. Smokes - Camels Whiskey - JD Music - Funeral Current Mood: curious (4 Comments |Comment on this)
Saturday, September 17th, 2005
12:47 am	Real time It's the balconies that creates it. In real time, I thinking of it. Just seeing that raindrops fall, throughout the city, ease off into gutters then down, overflow, to the hard concrete below, and we dance from the space beneath balcony to balcony, laughing as the rain touches, then we seek escape from its touch, for all that it brings us, liminal and real, into the world. All the balconies. How many cities in the world have that many second story balconies? Because, yeah, New Orleans New ORleans Neworlleans Neworleans New Orleans New Orleanes And the word stretches out, as you say it, like the evenings did, sit with the girl you thought was pretty, watch the evenings go by, sit and watch the city go by, that pulse, like blood all rushing to the heart, and then she's drawn away from you, but... I don't want to lose her I don't want to lose her Please god, I can't lose her What am I, if I lose her Remember new Orleans, when the first crescent was broken, when you stole your first cigarette, just for yourself, walking those streets and buying that book of ghost stories, first thing you ever did on your own, as a man, before Ireland and that museum, and the hint of London at night, New Orleans was the place where you learned that just walking down a city's streets - at least, any city with soul - could define a man's thoughts, even as he thought them, where a cigarette's smoke could spiral into the trash of the early morning, and the street sweepers do their best, only their best is now under water, and there's only those brave souls at the pumps, and there's only those holding on, saying goddamnit ,like a doctor on TV, saying GODDAMIT, I will not lose her, as they work those rigs, as they work at that steel, the city is drowning, her lungs filled with water and I tried to save her I tried to save her with only will, with only will, I sat here in the dark, and thought of all the others I swear, I swear, I sweat and I swear as I sit beneath the window as the hurricane lashes against walls and glass, I wonder who she's after we lost, we lost, the south as a place we lost, we lost, our golden-haired daughter she danced, just once an after-image reflected and now she's gone, see sorrow in the faces of all those lost, isolated, quarantined in places they'd never dreamed that they'd ever see and now they ask why aren't I home, because home, because home, is vanishing in memory, I go, I go, imagine I go south but what is more gone than that... I can't imagine that lack. Can't imagine that loss. And that's what gets me. My home, gone? That I can see? My neighborhood, gone? I can sense the edges of that. But my city? Gone? That.... that... That... (Comment on this)
Saturday, September 10th, 2005
12:41 am	If I believed in something Hallelujah, I'd say. Even in the ruins; even drowned in the flood. But instead, all I have is an old, old song, and that feeling like screaming I have, like I'm lost, lost in that forest I feel so at home in, where gold light and faint mist and the deep sense of life is enough to overwhelm who a person is. Thankfully. Sins are forgotten in the summerglow; sins are forgotten when you're nothing more than part of the world, part of that old soul, part of the struggle, part of the majestic, mystical, magical experience of being. I long for a world in which I am the one that sees its true face, and all others only wish to see what I see. Selfish, I know. But deep down inside, aren't we all? Aren't we all? Vodka; luckies; memories. (Comment on this)
Thursday, September 1st, 2005
4:44 pm	An Elegy For New Orleans Because if the South is America's black sheep family, made up of drunks and roughnecks and lazy sons-of-bitches, then she was still our golden daughter, youngest child of a broken son, dancing alone to the songs in her head, watched over by her loving family. She smiled through moss and ivy, smiled on the banks of the river, spoke in a language we didn't understand, sometimes, and sometimes, maybe, yeah, we thought she was a little touched in the head, but that was only because she was such a gift; because she loved so deeply, and so equally. Because there was a depth, a wisdom in her eyes, belying her age, an old spirit and a forlorn soul hidden within the guileless grace of a child as she whispered timeless music with a guileless whimsy, drew designs in the banks of the river with no beginning or end. We watched her, then, and knew she was special, and so we loved her, even as we watched over her. Until we had to watch her drown. Until we watched her slip away. And it seems that no one else is screaming. That only here, in the south, are we on our knees; do we realize what we've lost. One of the few true 'cities' in this country, a city that could hold its own alongside Paris or Tokyo or Dublin as a personality, more than a place. But just a child. So young, in civilization's terms. We might as well have lost a daughter to a flood, except we're all children too, and the only ones that care that she is gone are those still huddled together in the aftermath, still soaking wet, with our own wounds to tend to. I can't help it. It breaks me, a little, inside. And I'm not even talking about the people yet. I'm just talking about the city; about the fact that New Orleans, as we knew it, as it was for two hundred years, is gone. There's a place that only exists now in a few great books and a few so-so movies, that only exists in a cultural consciousness. Atlantis on the banks of the Muddy; Alexandria just up the delta. Gone. Gone, gone, gone. But she left her own children behind. The waters rose, and the people drowned, and it's like something out of an old faery tale, only there's nothing to punish, no sin was committed, except that an American city dared to have a character all its own. And now the refugees will be refugees, and the poor will be poorer, and the innocent are damned alongside the guilty, because there's no fucking Noah in this story, and no God decreed that everyone was a sinner. The waters rose, and the people drowned, and those that survived have lost everything. I can't... grasp it. September 11th; two towers fell. August 30th; a city fell beneath the lake. And what's the fucking difference, besides fear? An act of man is somehow different than an act of God? I'm not suggesting we declare war on God, of course, but it might feel good. I'll march to the white city, if someone will show me the road. I'll demand from the Man that he show me the scale he used, the measure, innocent against guilty, punishment against crime. And when he does, I'll break it the fuck apart, a faulty thing with no reason to exist save to damn. What kind of reason is that? What kind of God is that? And I know, I know, parents are torn from their children every day, by the hands of man, by the whims of the world. But these are our people, goddamnit. This is America. And not just America, the south. And I may not claim to be a 'southerner', and I may not have had any ancestors that fought in their stupid war, but it's still m home. It's my home. So it's not that it had no right to happen here; I'm just explaining why it means more. This was our fucking city, it was ours, so give me something to break and I'll break it; give me someone to help, and I'll do what I can. But this is a loss that can know no healing, because it is a death. It is a death, and we've been left all alone. 'What do we have now', we should scream into the sky. 'Why? Why take our city? Our only real fucking city? take Minneapolis, for christ's sakes!' Because, really, who needs 'em? So break us in a storm. Age us in a day. Here is our loss, you say. Here is the price for being what you are, for being American, for thinking that you could control everything. And we scream back, we're the American south, you dumbass! We're not that much better off than the rest of the world! Make it an earthquake in California, a tornado's nest in Kansas City, a fucking tidal wave in Boston! Make it anywhere but here! Please! Please. We need her. We need our daughter back. We need our daughter back. Please. We just... we just want our daughter back. Smokes - Luckies Whiskey - JD Music - Dearly Departed Current Mood: grieving (Comment on this)
Sunday, August 21st, 2005
10:14 pm	Soto Rules! Damn. Why is it I feel the need to write so badly after watching a fight? As if the neural pathways that boxing activates in my brain are the same ones that burn like they're filled with gasoline when I write. Something about the simplicity of the problem and the intricasy of the execution. Goal: knock the other guy on his ass. Don't get knocked on your ass. Execution: rising uppercut. One-two like red-colored lightning. Carpet-bombing body blows that raise mushroom clouds of bruising. Move your head while keeping your eyes locked on your target, so your shoulder can become the launch pad for a propulsion that starts in your hips, carries the weight of your upper body, and hits escape velocity a microsecond before it impacts on the chin. Feeling bone shatter beneath flesh on either side of the equation (and I've felt both) is the most horrible and most elemental thing in the world, and therefore, something not just primal, but instinctual: if you're hunting, and a bone breaks, it means you're either dead, or feeding. One way or another, the hunt is done. That's what makes the third Gatti fight so amazing; he fought on after the hunt should have been finished, and won. So, yeah: I committed a cardinal sin. I Tivo'd a fight. Watched it tonight. But it was that same old amazement at the fuckery of high-ticked prizefighting; an undercard with two sunuvabitches giving it their all, the challenger a last-second replacement seizing his chance for glory, the champion trying to rise and looking down to find a chain on his ankle, and trying so goddamn hard he might have been drowning to pry it off. And so they tore at each other like two men who gave over their flesh to the spirits of tigers, and it might as well have been jungle/forest/desert/seaside around them; the bright lights, the roaring crowds, when it comes down to it, that don't matter. You're given thirty-six minutes (fifty-four, if you want to get technical) to change the course of your destiny; to alter your fate; to swim to shore, towards the lighthouse. To get past the mission, and fall to your knees, weeping, at the breadth of the future you now have been offered. That's when boxing is real. Two men trying to change the stars that have shaped their worlds before then. So fuck the high-paid pugilists; fuck Fernando fucking Vargas, who won't ever be a real champion again, beating some Spaniard old man who just wanted a paycheck. That fight wasn't worth anything. Once they've made it, they're hardly worth watching anymore. I want the bastards that're willing to fight as hard as I would be, for one chance to scream: 'I exist!', before they realize that scream don't mean a damn thing, that it echoes just as quietly as the whispered, muted tones of abandonment do, in the well of our world. It's like Bobby Chyz said: special people rise. Of course, his fighter lost. Smokes - Camels Drink - Budweiser Music - the remembered roaring of the crowds, and leather-on-flesh Current Mood: alive (Comment on this)
Friday, August 19th, 2005
9:50 pm	This feels like a conversation *sigh* You ever have one of those days where you just feel like you want to be clean? Like there's some stain on you that won't wipe off, like there's some thin sheen of ugliness that's just scraping at the inside of your mouth, at the back of your eyes, like you've been swimming through a river of chemical waste. And it's not just a measure of actual cleanliness - hell, take today. I did jack shit today. I watched TV, I drove around, I re-read the first half of Motherless Brooklyn, I cooked dinner, I drove around again. And that's - that's all I did today. I did nothing to get myself dirty. (Of course, it might be Motherless Brooklyn that's doing this to me at this particular time - Lionel and his Tourette's.) But it's just... sometimes, you get that feeling, you know? To me, usually, I blame the city. There's just something about the concrete, the electricity, the radio signals and cell-phone signals and microwaves and all that shit bouncing around the air, the people, the fucking people, right now, as I speak, I'm probably only a dozen feet away from someone else, you know? So, what do you do, when you don't feel clean? You take a shower. Not shit, Sherlock. Dig a little deeper, Holmes. But still, it has its place; react to the psychological with the physical. For me, though, it's less the washing-away-dirt-and-grime-and-sweat-and-grease than it is the water. Just something about the water. I drink water, too, when I feel this way. I only ever drink water when I feel this way, when I'm hung-over or going-to-be-hungover, and with meals. The rest of the time, it's beer and Coke. Not together, of course. Anyway, not the point. The point: My list, in no particular order, of things that make me feel clean: The shower. The bath, not so much. The bath is about darkness and meditation. There's something wonderfully economical about the shower: I get an image in my head of the first guy who figured out how to dump the water on top of him, instead of having to climb down into it. Brilliant! My point: it's only purpose is in cleanliness. The whiskey. Only the whiskey. Maybe it's the soothing nature of ritual, but the tequila, the vodka, they serve other purposes. In fact, the tequila rather makes me feel dirty (but in a good way). But the whiskey makes me feel cleaner; re-centering, focusing. There's always the whiskey. The bag. One of the other reasons I hate being around so many fucking people; can't use the bag at night, might wake somebody up. Boo-fucking-hoo! And this one's sort of amusing, too; I do something that gets me dirty - works up a fine sheen of sweat - to make myself feel clean. Push the body, cleanse the soul. The window. The only time I ever open the window is when I feel this way, or when I'm drunk, and writing. It's open now. Being naked. But maybe that's just because my home-jeans are fucking filthy. Cigarettes, strangely, don't make the list. They're more like time: shaving it off the end to buy some now. A cigarette refines a moment, slows it down; it doesn't necessarily make it any better, clean it up any. It lets you pause, reflect, makes a circuit between fingers-eyes-mouth-lungs-blood. The guitar. The acoustic. Come to think of it, I only ever play these days when I'm feeling this way. Writing. But then again, that's an iffy proposition. If I try to write and fail, I feel even dirtier. And, I guess that's it. Maybe not; there could be more. I wonder what makes the list for other people? If there's any connection; if it's really just about space, separation? Ah, who nows. Fuck it. I'm just gonna take a shower, pour me another drink, and finish the book. Music - The cat stretching Smokes - Winstons Drink - Whiskey (2 Comments |Comment on this)
Tuesday, August 16th, 2005
5:24 pm	Rain I love the rain when it's warm. I love the rain when the rain can't take anything from you. What heat it steals is immediately instilled to you again, from the warmth of the pavement beneath your feet, from the air that trembles just like smooth skin, anticipating the water, the cleanness of it, like the world's taking a deep breath of what is meant to be. I have never felt myself a being - a thing, a mind, a man - of purity, but I do feel that, when it rains in the summer. Not, perhaps, that I am pure, but that I am part of something that is. In that moment, when the rain first falls, and there's still a part of me that doesn't want to step out into it - that knows, in its bones, that getting rained on is bad - and I do anyway, and the rain doesn't hurt, it simply washes over me, a carress of the natural world, a whisper from mother-lover-goddess that says 'you are still my child, steel or not'. If human existence was a play, and humanity the main character, would we have killed our own mother? Is that the tragedy of the thing? Our father is a great king of steel and steam, invention and vision, a twin to his brother War; our mother, the gentle creature who nurtured us, entrusted us to go our own way, which, in that tragic twist of fate, killed her. The metaphor, then, is obvious, as it always is when it rains: though we have rendered her nothing but a bi-polar spirit, still, she weeps for us, and washes clean our wounds. If only for a moment. It's all in the moments. Rain in the summer is a blessing; relief from the heavy heat, from the stifling of the air. And to think; it's that very same element - humidity, the thickness of the atmosphere - that makes the world swelter in the sunlight. But then the levy breaks, and the sky throws wide its arms, and the world is suddenly once again made of rich earth and wood, our flesh just another creature pulled from the womb of those two, and, as our tired flesh jerks and spasms from the exertions and the heat of the day, the rain slips down our faces, tears we would never have never shed. I even like being inside when it rains. When its still hot. I feel safe; protected, from the elements outside. Of course, I know that they won't hurt me. But something about that - I can still hear the rain, in here where it can't touch me - something about that just feels right. I can still hear the rain. Smokes - Camels Drink - Cuervo Music - Cold Water UPDATE: 09-17-05 (morning) - Yet this is what it felt like, in the beginning. When New Orleans drowned. Current Mood: enthralled (Comment on this)
Monday, August 15th, 2005
10:48 pm	Heritage So I'm thinking back, I'm thinking back to what the old man told me. And it wasn't blame, or hate, or fear in his voice - and so it's not blame, or hate, or fear, in mine - when he said that, 'listen, son. You're gonna want to solve things by force. That's a part of who you are.' I remember that clearly. Just like I remember him exhorting me to make razor blades out of my fists, to turn that goddamn wrist, turn it just like you turn your hip, watching him drink in front of the telivision, his chair underneath the green and white and orange on the wall. My point, my point is this: What is heritage? Science has proven that there are no genetic traits. Wait; that sounds wrong. What I mean is, there are no racial, no ethnic traits. It's not like a certain ethnicity carries a particular gene for violence, or religion, or drink, or self-loathing. So there are no ethnic traits. Just cultural ones. Just what's taught to us as wrong, or right. Part of life is seeing the illusions of childhood shattered. I suppose one of the things I lost was the notion that just being who I was was good enough. He never told me that being who we were made us special; he just told me that being who we were made us, us. I also wonder if, when I see myself as different from the people around me, if it's simply a mark of my having taken a 'different' path, as a mark of the history I have on me that's not exactly what you'd call a normal existence, or if it's simply that notion of his. America today; America today. He loved America. Loved the way it accepted all cultures. But he never said anything - at least, not that I can remember - about the homogeneous soup it made out of that cultures. Part of the melting pot asthetic - everything becomes boiled down, comes out all the same stock. And I wonder if everyone sees themselves that way; says that their life is somehow both stranger and greater than that of those around them. It's the old 'there is no normal' argument, except in my case, it's actually both true, and not. I never went anywhere I was surprised to find myself going. I never made any choices that flew in the face of who I thought I was. It just turned out that who I thought I was, and who everybody else thought I was, were completely different people. It's a curious question. Smokes - Camels Drink - Budweiser Music - Cathian (4 Comments |Comment on this)
Friday, August 12th, 2005
7:40 pm	Idyll So, here's the question: what is the idyllic existence? Your idyllic existence, I mean? Caveat: you can't change the past. *pause*.... that's a hell of a caveat. I know. So what's the point, then? The question's the point. But the idyll can't be formed without- -I know that. I'm still asking. Assuming wounds heal. What is your idyllic existence? It changes. Day by day. Got that. But what is it? Step one: you're not working. I get that. You're a lazy son of a bitch, and you always will be. You're writing. Isn't that true? You're writing, but you're not rich. Oh, like it's so easy to read my mind. You're in here too, you sunuvabitch! Still a bit tough. Swimming through molasses, and all that. So, you're not working, and you're somewhere green. And... kids? You're kidding, right? Shut the hell up. Oh, of course. Kids. It all makes sense. A perfect way to preserve the idyll; they exist in awe of your stillness, because it was what they were raised with, so know better or not than to inturrupt it. So you get to pull off the whole meditation-as-physical-existence thing, while still imparting your mountain-shaking wisdom to a new generation. Man, you are a bastard. Preaching to the choir, here, buddy. That's why they call me 'id'. Tell me - do you still smoke? Up on this mountaintop, on this green ridgeline, overlooking the ocean? (See - I'm starting to make it out now) Of course I do. Even idylls die. Even ideals die? *stop* Wow, this turned out way more cynical than I expected. I wanted to form the question - what would your ideal existence be, ten or twenty years from now, and suddenly that little bastard was up on my shoulder, pulling it all apart, even as it formed. Still, I think it holds up, as a question. What would you ideal life be? Current Mood: curious (5 Comments |Comment on this)
Tuesday, August 9th, 2005
9:16 pm	Make yourself an archtype, and who would you be? What would you be? When would you be? I know it's easy to boil things down, but I really think the question is interesting: irregardless of race, creed, religion, nationality, physicality, gender, temporal reality, or even psychology, what does who you are boil down to? If you release 'who' you are - birthrights and heritages, breadlines and addictions, perhaps even temperment and passions - then all that remains is 'what' you are, and if that can be expressed in a spiritual sense - a soul - then can it be expressed in some sort of narrative sense? Example: I am the man in black, beneath the cathedral, awakening without memory in the pumpkin patch. I'm not, of course. That's Halloween; I forgot what a good book this is. Shame it got such a bad rap on release. But I'm still curious as to the answer to the question. What is the archtype of you? Current Mood: creative (2 Comments |Comment on this)
12:13 am	Halloween A halloween cat. Black fur, orange eyes. Amber, actually, but in the firelight, that's how they'd seem. Black and orange; night and fire. The old ritual, the oldest one; as night falls, fire rises. Keep the darkness at bay. The darkness means wilderness and wildness and things that hunt and hurt and kill; get lost in the woods and the woods will take you away, my child, to someplace you don't want to go. Imagine it; imagine that. Imagine running through the woods, the firmament your only source of illumination, a halloween cat running before you, towards something you can't see, and then, there's orange, there's fire, and whatever was on your tail - and it was something, by god, you knew something was back there - it's gone there. The fire means hope; it means humanity. We used to use the fire as a way to keep the darkness back, to signal our presence. Everywhere but here, there be monsters. Now, our fear has become us. There are no more animals to threaten us in our concrete streets, and no more monsters of our concrete reality except those that are of us. Humanity has become humanity's fear. Both the corporeal, the phsyical - muggers and drunk drivers and serial killers and all the things that go bump in the night - and the spiritual. We seek purpose beyond our flesh because our flesh has no purpose. At this point, surival of the species is a moot point. If the world's going to end, it's certainly not going to end because most of us gotten eaten, because we, as a species, were too weak to live. Except, maybe, in a moral sense. If we die, it's because we kill each other. Disease is the exception to the rule, I suppose. But, then again, the devil in the the modern disease is only passed from person to person: you can't get AIDS from a bug. And only in intimacy; share blood, share a needle, share a good, long, sweaty go, and death can find you there. But then again, death can find you anywhere. I think back to my man at the end of the world; to the wasteland of snow, at his last breath. His world ended for one reason or another, but it was due to man. That much, I'm sure. Even if it was not humanity's actions, it was humanity's failure. And besides, if we die when the sun explodes, well, then, we've run our course, haven't we? Or perhaps we will have run beyond, at that point. Learned to fly. Perhaps. Current Mood: shocked (Comment on this)
Monday, August 8th, 2005
8:30 pm	The world, and what it makes us Okay. So I know - I've proven. That this world; that it isn't a generous place. Beyond a shadow of a doubt, and all that. So does that make us stronger, or weaker? Better, or worse? Does being things that sometimes seem more forged than born, made more of steel than muscle, is that what we have to be, to live, here? Or is that just the easiest path? I guess what I'm really asking is this: are we hard because we have to be, to survive in this world, or is this world hard, because we made it that way? Is there some kind of, of universal dream we all had, and the world was better, once, but somehow, we fucked it all up? Is it our fault that there's pain, suffering, that living is finding - actively seeking - the few good things in life, rather than simply trying to avoid the few bad? Is our world making us something, or have we made the world into something it should not have been? One of these days, I'm going to ask myself a question I actually know the answer to, and I'm going to fall over and die. Current Mood: discontent (Comment on this)
Saturday, August 6th, 2005
9:37 pm	Tchaikovsky For some reason, I just find it rather amusing that I'm just inherently comfortable pouring myself a glass of Jack Daniels and sucking down a Lucky while listening to Swan Lake. I like dichotomy. Okay, that's it. (4 Comments |Comment on this)
Sunday, July 17th, 2005
9:38 pm	Well, I'm back. It's odd. I haven't been drinking, so I haven't been writing. Here, at least. But still, the point comes across: I have been searching. After all, that's what I do. Funny, to think - funny, if I could have - funny, to finally see, after all this time, to finally see, what an utter idealist I am. Because I believe, I truly believe, that they're out there, somewhere. Those moments that make life worth living. It's partly art and it's partially joy and it's sometimes just the look on a stranger's face, as if seen through the reflection in a window, but it's that connection, that ineffable, indescribable sensation that is the unexpected beauty of human existence. The reason I am alive. The reason I'm alive; I see blue sky. That's all I can say, because that's all there is. Driving down the highway. Closing the door. Talking to a friend. Lighting a cigarette; that first taste of burnt tobacco and charred ozone, something in the manner of being, something in the heart of existence, something inside that's telling me the point of being, is- -moments like that. That sense of beauty that comes on without any warning, that illuminating, weightless sense of joy that fills my life on ocassion - just every now and then, once and a while, here and there. The things that make it - being, living, existing - mean anything at all. And it's partially a question of vastness, of the simple scope of our lives. We live in an era where the cultures of the world can't help but make us feel like this earth is something small, overflowing with too many people, where we don't mean anything, where something that happens thousands of miles away is the center of existence. I felt that wound, when London, so far away, was stabbed in the breast. And I am tied to London, with one of those golden threads that bind me, sustain me. But the fact remains that I am not so large as that; my eyes cannot see across oceans. I am but a child in this world. It's so big around me, the sky so vast above me, a tapestry with so many layers, so many dimensions, and that's before we even speak on the stars. The stars. The stars. Those shards of light in the great curtain of satin above, not so much competing with the streetlights as making peace with them, and you can say they're nothing but fire, and I'll reply: you can't explain everything in the world. It's partially the constant discussion with Marc, I guess, faith vs. fate, belief vs. proof, but the fact remains: I feel something grander in this world than molecules and atomic energy. I find something beautiful in this existence, and beauty - frankly, my dear - simply can't be quantified, can't be explained. Sort of the point of the thing, you see. Sort of the point of the thing. So what am I saying? That I live for those moments that are, as Cohen would say, whispered Hallelujahs, for those moments where the blood burns in my being with the very sense of heedless, grief-less excitement that says: god. GOD. You SAW this. You were awake, and you were aware, and you were thinking on just the right thing, and you saw beauty in... in... in an abandoned apartment building. On gray pavement beneath green trees beneath blue sky, all bisected by a telephone pole. In the shape of your hand around the neck of a bottle, in a woman chasing her dog across the park, on the smile of that young man buying a book you know goddamn well he's going to love, on everything that could be art if you had but the gift to capture it, if you could but scream hallelujah and make the world know that this, this, this, is why you exist. As I say, I am seeking, not some unnatainable goal like so many I know, but those moments. Merely... those moments. I store them up, return to them, when the bad parts, the parts where you disappoint someone you care about or something means less than it should, rise up. My body functions as it should, and my brain, who knows, but my soul? It's nourishment comes simply from experiencing this world. I posed the question a while back: what would angels feel, if they descended from heaven - a place without pain- and onto this orb. And my answer then was not kind, to myself, or this world. But perhaps - perhaps - it was not entirely true, either. So, yes, physical sensation might overwhelm them, and the wanton cruelty - the purposeless necessity that is violence - might make them gag and die, but perhaps, they would be crying. And not from fear. Perhaps they would see that something of beauty created out of a world that can do so much wrong - perhaps they can see just how much it's worth, how much more it means, in this world. Ohirishka, that one's for you. And so I'm filled with sorrow for what I've let pass, and so I'm filled with grief for what I've lost, and sometimes this world seems a crushing weight, a weight that might bend my bones and suffocate me with the very wrongness it does to my body, and so there might be nothing, nothing, I can do to make it mean anything. I still have those moments of beauty. And so I finally see. I am not on any road to Damascus, and there is no light. But still - perhaps the point is merely finding beauty, amongst the chaos. And realizing that beauty is not only what makes the chaos worthwhile, but what makes the chaos itself beautiful. Life is chaos. So what does that mean? What does that mean? Does being young mean I must eternally ask questions? Music - Track 01, Damien Rice Smokes - Luckies, of course Drink - Take a bloody guess Current Mood: exultant (3 Comments |Comment on this)
8:55 pm	Whiskey Sometimes, the only way to solve the difficulties that routinely come up during the drinking of whiskey is to drink more whiskey. What, not deep enough for you?? (Comment on this)
Friday, July 8th, 2005
8:47 pm	Because there's a sad song on the radio, on a wind that don't exist. Because there's a lighter flare in the taste of the cigarette, and a light outside the window, even in all that darkness. Because there's a train rumbling over the tracks, all hard steel coursing along old, aching boards. Because everything slow and thoughtful, even if it's fast and strong, is happening somewhere. Because there's a road you have yet to walk, and it's got green grass on the sides, and there's a bottle left untouched, because there's a love song you haven't heard yet, one that'll say something to you. One that'll say something. Because. I guess the reason I do what I do is so that I know what'll be the death of me, exactly. If I die of cancer while wrestling with my people's demon, well then, that'll be just about what people expect. Just like the wake'll be small and louder than it should, just like the funeral'll be in the rain. When I die, and die I shall, perhaps there'll go a teacher, and there'll go a friend. There'll go a lover, and there'll go a man who saw his own end, saw it in water and cancer and the devil who owned his soul, but when he came to claim the contract, well, I was out. 'Sold it years ago,' I said. 'Long before you got to me. Never had much use for it anyhow.' Never did. I imagine, as I walk across this world while staying still in my chair (it's a comfortable chair, after all), that the places I go in my head have little actual relation to the places they are. Hell, I'm from the south, and I know cypress don't grow like that, just like I know the Urals ain't that tall, just like I know Venice don't really glow like that. Like there ain't no temples to the gods I'm meant to worship, and there ain't no incense smells like it should, that hint halfway between cigarettes and sex and sensation. Sensation. In the end, it all comes down to sensation. Emotion's just the sensations of the soul. Somebody told me that once. I guess that's all I really ask for. When I'm gone, for somebody to say, 'somebody told me that once,' and it'll be me. Long in my grave, maybe, and it won't be my name that they speak of - may have forgotten it, by then. But it'll be me. So fuck it. Grass ain't grown over me yet. Here I am, breathing in smoke and staring out the window. Here I am, breathing. The trick is to keep breathing. The trick is to make it mean something. Make it mean something, you sunuvabitch. Smokes - Luckies Drink - still JD Music - Grayson Capps, Love Song (3 Comments |Comment on this)
7:54 pm	Nature's first green is gold, Her hardest hue to hold. Her early leaf's a flower - But only so an hour. Then leaf subsides to leaf. So Eden sank to grief, So dawn goes down to day. Nothing gold can stay. -Robert Frost The light swims on to night, now, as though a man breaking out of the bay towards the grasp of the greater sea. Towards that endless, that infinite. That can describe human existence, can it not? All of us, to our last dying breath, we are always walking, walking towards that endless, that infinite. And whatever pain, whatever crime, what injustice has been done, it doesn't matter, we keep walking, walking down that road beneath a sky blue and white, just hoping, just knowing, that before us is the endlessness of the unknown, the free will. But, as I once said: no man walks so far that he does not encounter walls, on the horizon. There are always walls, on the horizon. Walls of necessity, walls of respectibility, walls of purpose and desire and honor, damnable honor. Those we must stop, and scale; those that we must stop and watch weather away, first the mortar 'round the stone, as it slowly falls in, brick by brick. Then we can walk on. On to that endless gold; on to that horizon. On to the horizon. On to the horizon. And I must walk these roads to freedom For I can hear them call my name Turn your passion into patience There is bound to be great pain -Songs: Ohia (3 Comments |Comment on this)
6:37 pm	I wanted to write before the sun went down. And yes, that means I've had a drink or two. Or four. Sharpen your barbs now; go ahead and take your shots. If I've proven anything over the course of my short life, it's that I can take it. Chin of steel, skin of iron, heart of glass. Same reason I never would have made it in the ring. When it comes time to fold, I fold. Just the way I am. And so the ashtrays sprout cigarettes like mushrooms in meadows after a ain, and the glass is never empty; it is, as the philosopher said, a thing whose existence is that it is simply waiting for the next burst of liquor. The sun's still up, and it makes its way through the dirt over the windows and the stained tapestries, those last memories of what's in my blood that I hardly notice any more. I've never questioned the amount I drank, or why I do it; I've known those who done less who've drank more, and still functioned. This thing in London. This thing in London. I know it seems strange for an American to say, and stranger still for an American of Irish descent, but this thing in London, it really fucks with me. Maybe because I know London. I've been to London; I've walked from St. James to the West End, I've spent the day in Hyde park, eating cherries and spitting out the pits and writing in my little blue notebook. It's my mother's favorite city in the world. She has a home there, a home with a view of the sky over the skyline. I've never seen her so happy as when she's in London, except when she's in the water. For some reason, London seems to be my mother - as I define her is as she is in London, I guess. The library, feeding the squirrels in the park, visiting my museums while my father's in dark rooms with men who drink too much warm beer. When I was there with Daniel, writing down on a scrap pieces of paper the pieces that meant something to me, and she, in turn, writing back what she saw in those paintings. So London's a part of me; my mother's piece of me. And Ireland, certainly, is a part of me. My grandfather's piece of me. And Alabama's a part of me too, my mother's family, shindigs and the lake house and cigarettes and Natty-Lite and glowing when you get chosen to play the twelve-string. I guess that's what I see, at the end of the day. All the things that make up me. My mother the infinite ocean, the city of age and wisdom, my father the glistening skyscrapers, the beat-up cars on well-trafficked streets. The library: my father the wooden bookshelves, my mother the books. And now there's a scar in London, an act done to hurt the city itself, to make London a wound on the papers and in the minds of people, and it seems an act not directed at me, but at what I hold dear. London's mine, you motherfuckers. I may be Irish, but it's still my part of the world, and nobody fucks with the British but us. Michael's in-horrible-taste IRA jokes notwithstanding. Family. Why am I stuck on family? Maybe because of all the phone calls to Mom, making sure that they weren't in London when the bombs went off. Just drives it home, a bit. I wanted to write before the sun went down to prove that I am the same man underneath the light of the natural sun as I am under the false glow through the window that barely penetrates the dust, the tapestries. Because Alabama may be family, Ireland may be grandfather, and London may be mom, but Birmingham's me. Me. The family I've created around a little bookshop in the prosaicly named city, whether they know it or not. What I've tried to create out of the ashes of the things I set on fire. Whatever I lost that summer that always seems to be the smell of thunderstorms, I have built what I can from the winters that followed, and the autumns, and all the springs. But summer - summer is my time of memory. I remember what I was, and I remember what I was, and I struggle to justify, to redeem, to say that where I am now is certainly not the worst place I could have ended up. Certainly not the worst. Smokes - Luckies Drink - Jd Music - NS Blonde on Blonde (Comment on this)
Wednesday, July 6th, 2005
10:53 pm	Right, then. It's time for another round of 'let's apply logic to spirituality!' Always fun. Assume reincarnation, past lives, all of that, is more or less true. Also assume that most of your lives are lived out as humans - not because of merely the prevalance of the speices, but the relatively short life spans of most other creatures. Hitler might still be a dung-beetle, but most of us could probably clear out our sins with a few rounds of cockroach existence. I don't know how long cockroaches exist, but it can't be too long. In fact, I sort of assume sea-turtles and the like - you know, the things that live really, really long - are reincarnations of more monastic, p.... p..... p.... what's the goddamn word? Anyway, p-something- people. Anyhoo, we're assuming that most of us have lived a great deal of human lives before hand. Does that mean that, whatever crimes I've committed in this lifetime, they might pale in comparision to other acts my soul is accountable for? I mean, in a previous lifetime, I might have been a serial killer, or a pederast, or some sort of whacked-out, PTSS soldier collecting ears on a necklace. And it seems even more likely, the farther back you go. After all, civilization is a relatively new concept, and bitch about the last century all you like, with its many, many wars, it really wasn't that much different than every century before it - just on a bigger scale. The chances of being a wife-beater or a corrupt official or a general all-round sunuvabitch seem to grow larger, the farther back you go. So it would seem we still have millenia to go, before most of us shed the great weight of sin we all seem to be toting around with us. Anyway, that's the logical part of it. And now... we go off the deep end. Take a breath. I wonder if there is some sort of current, that has bound all my lives together. Some steady march of occurance or personality, some purpose or discontent, some nebulous thing that travels behind my eyes with each and every life. If I was a bricklayer in Cairo at one point, did I still smile when the sun got so damn hot that everyone else around me hated it? It I was a medicine man in the jungles in South America, did I still seek solace in solitude? If I was a warrior of some unnamed land, my face painted in woad and my teeth filed down to points, did the violence that would have been such a necessity of my life come in harsh, hot pulses, marking me as a madman even to my fellow foaming, heathen, bronze-spear-clutching buddies? I guess what I'm wondering at is: if reincarnation exists, is the foundation of your life set before you even awake to your circumstances? Do whatever powers that be have that much control? If you wake into a world that needs killers, needs dreamers, needs television salesmen, is it because you - your soul - needed to be that, or is that the only true coincidence in our lives? We're given the raw material, the circumstances into which we are born, maybe even the chemical interactions in our brains that mark us as one thing or another. But that still doesn't define who we are. You could hand my whacked-out brain chemistry and my slightly-less whacked out family to another person, and you'd wind up with a completely different individual, I'd grant. Though I'll admit my circumstances forged a certain part of my personality - certain hard edges, certain prejudices, certain assumptions, the tendancy to hold things at a certain angle, in a certain light - there are other parts of me that seem completely at odds with the rest of who I am, and so I wonder if those are the immutable parts, the parts that have stayed the same, reincarnation after reincarnation - or if those are the parts that exist merely to let me bear witness to the flaws of all else that I am? It is a question. It is at that. Smokes - Camels Drink - Guiness Music - Don't Fade on Me (Comment on this)
Monday, July 4th, 2005
9:19 pm	The Sound of Fireworks The Fourth is definately a beer holiday. I like beer holidays. Christmas, birthdays, Halloween - definately liquor holidays. But the fourth, and St. Paddy's Day - definately beer holidays. Come to think of it, those're probably two of my favorite holidays. Christmas has all the family baggage, birthdays I do my damndest to ignore, Halloween's had all its cool paganism tainted by images of little kids trick or treating, and I certainly don't 'celebrate' my own personal Decoration Day, do I? For one thing, St. Paddy's and the 4th are about the only holidays I feel good about saying 'happy blank day' to people about. Christmas you never want to - after all, religious - and saying happy halloween; well, nobody really celebrates Halloween, do they? I mean, it's not like we're saying 'hooray for Halloween!' But the 4th, St. Paddy's? Everybody I run into's American, and everybody's Irish on St. Patrick's Day. Shit. I forgot Thanksgiving. Well, shows what I think about that. Harvest holidays are too much about thankfulness, a sort of forced graciousness. I mean, even if the harvest was for shit, you're still supposed to celebrate harvest-day, just in case next year's harvest is even worse. Anyway, back to the fourth. Beer-drinking holiday. Driving down 280, I saw all the people parked on the median, ready to watch the fireworks. And you have to respect that, I think. I mean, okay, so it's not really a 'community' activity - chances are they won't talk to anybody but those they drove with - but it still puts them all together, in one place. And not to watch a sport, or some ceremony; just explosions in the sky. Meant to represent the violent revolution that kicked the British out of this country. Maybe THAT'S why I like the 4th. Of course, it is an odd thought - that we're celebrating a war, I mean. It's not like Dec. 7th gets fireworks, after all. Jesus, stop and think about that for a moment - imagine what bad taste that'd be in, fireworks over Pearl Harbor? New Years. New Years is a beer holiday. But that's also my cigar holiday, time to reflect on whether I've come farther from who I don't want to be, so it's not really a 'happy' experience. 'On the fourth of July See the sparks in the sky When you're sick of the trying And tired of the crying Then the fourth of July Is a good day to die They'll celebrate each year Your independence from here' You know, I really prefer it being called 'Independence Day', I think. I have good memories of those words, this day. One of the few. Me and Ras drinking beers in the window, listening to the damn song on a loop; not so much watching the fireworks as watching the people watch the fireworks. It just seems like this day is a reminder, but not a heavy, guilt-laden one, like Easter. A day that says, 'we're here for a reason', that says things happened to make you live in the country you live in, people made sacrifices for that, but it was worth it, it was worth it, because you're free, and you have the right to be happy'. Of course, it should also be a day to remember that with that freedom comes the responsibility to use the power its granted wisely, but I doubt that's the sentiment in the White House tonight. Okay, down, rover. Not getting into politics. Today is supposed to transcend politics. This was what flag-waving was about, before the towers came down. When 'dem' or 'pub' both just meant 'American', instead of 'blue' or 'red'. And I'm just as bad as anybody else; I might piss on George Bush if he was on fire, but then again, I might not. Depends on the mood I was in. But today, we're all bound together; today, we're all the same. Today, we all take a moment - every single one of us, I guarantee - will take at least one moment, to look up, and watch the fireworks explode in the sky. It's part of who we are. Smokes - Camels Drink - Budweiser Music - Fourth of July Current Mood: grateful (4 Comments |Comment on this)