Today and yesterday I sat in Peace Park doing nothing but reading my book. I played guitar profusely, lounged in Lakota as if I were a regular with nothing better to do. I hung out with the trees, butterflies in my stomach over Booches burgers, and Thomas Pynchon (in book form of course, not too sure he'd cotton to me, being a baby journalist and all). People've been apt to smile and say "Hi" unencumbered by the social dogmas in place during the week. And,*Bliss* There're times when this town really means a lot to me. There're others when I am one straw away from grabbing the prepacked escape pack, hopping in the machine and flicking a cigarette at the "Welcome to Columbia" sign on my way to anywhere else. Maybe that dictotomy is love, disgust. Who knows...
For better or worse I'll still be here when I turn 25 in August. I'll be graduated (hopefully), guilty of a couple misdemeanors (certainty), forgotten by a few old flames (ritualistically), standing with a back straight and strong (need better mattress), disease free (thankfully), debt free (miracle), and with any luck I'll have a way to keep myself fed and under a roof — a real roof (a job).
If I graduate, perhaps I'll get some guidance and look for a job. I'll cut my hair, watch my tongue, and be prepared to sell a version of myself to someone, one of them, and I'll do this like it really matters. I'll conform. Or, maybe I'll just follow my heart's bliss. With any luck, as stated before, the two will parallel (being one in the same is too much to hope for) and I'll think about finally unpacking that escape pack in a safe place.

It's always the same.
Ms. Daniels once said: "People like you don't change" — an absolute over which I've no control.
And, of course, the worst things happen because I do them to myself.
So now, I won't return until I've changed for the better.
And, because it's overdue: "I'm sorry..."

Sentimental Saturday

Metaphor of the week:
All over town I've been writing checks. I've written checks to individuals, the town itself, to my family, to the school, and to my own health. In the last cycle it seems as if everyone I know decided to cash their check for me at the same time. It has been and continues to be stressful.

Not only do I lack the necessary funds to cover everything, but I also lack the time in which to manifest said funds. And nobody cares. Example: Before a public display regarding journalism and talking about it I informed a peer (the terminology of peer is mine; she'd disagree no doubt) that I was expecting an important phone call, and had been expecting it for some time. If it were to drop during the public display I'd be forced to accept it and bow out of the display for a moment. And she, and nobody cares, so it goes. If anyone knew the whole story...

The topper on everything has been Vonnegut. I learned of his death at an inopportune time — in which instead of desperately saying what was on my mind I almost cried for Mr. Vonnegut and bowed out of any kind of patch-up. Yes, I miss her. Yes, losing her is a small but tough part of this terrible dream.

While some issues've been calmed considerably, all remain. My life is a nightmare. And not only in it am I to exist but it's become an extension of all prior nightmares. I've no choice but to continue writing checks, and hope that for all my hard work I am able to manifest enough capital to get back into reality, and out of these nightmares. While I joke about serious matters, I know that this world is serious.

Logistically, I've dealt with the nightmare about as well as I believe anyone is expected. If the course of a day happens to slow then the debt begins to grow, as time is money. If there were some way I could put all my debts out of my mind altogether — and deal with them at a later time — I would, but it's impossible. My thoughts are no longer as easily controlled, which is a pretty good definition of a nightmare.

So today, when the sun rose, I shut my eyes a bit, but not to dream the reality away. It was different, today — as if today, the nightmare slipped away and a daydream reemerged. The bricks on bricks, the checks I've written, that I've been shouldering for everyone in town (including the town) floated far above my head, politely giving me a day in which the burden was a dream. While my friends, to whom I owe for the checks, shunned me before, I was greeted with sunny faces. The smile I once wore before I fell asleep returned — if only for a moment — to my face, as did the emotion to which it corresponds. While everything is and will be fucked up, I had a good day, and I won't apologize, even if you're holding one of my checks. And tonight, I know that my dreams will be as bittersweet as the—

Sentimental Sunday

Do you know how to spin a plate?
I do. I can also juggle, and do backflips.
Though, doing all of them at once is terribly difficult.
I remember once being stranded in a forest. The heat from the burning branches provided no heat and the sky was not a picturesque shade of blue but rather a backdrop of a moon that provided the bare minimum of sight.
I've since made it out alive, and that's when I learned how to juggle, spin plates and etcetera. The boss is now asking (telling) me to learn how to jump through hoops, too. And I wonder: Have I the talent to do it all?
After making my way out of the forest, the air became thicker and sweeter. The sun shone not just to light the way, but also for me. I had every intention of continuing with all these plates, and had revived my talent for juggling. However, in the talent of it all I lost my way again.
It might have been all that staring into the sun, ... yeah it was.
I find myself, now, without water. The sun has lead me into the dunes. The light that was so sweet before now stings my eyes, and the cool drink of water to comfort my tongue is now just a dream as I gather my spit. And at every collapse I see my fate come to claim me, to take whatever sustainance that might be from my body.
"Hang on," I say to the bird, snatching back my arm from its beak, "I'm not dead yet."
So here's my only upside: The reason the desert exists is so I can walk out of it alive. Right!?

As opposed to something creative, try this essay for my capstone class

As long as humans value the use of their eyes, there will be a place for newspapers. It’s basic. Just as basic is the notion that they’ll significantly change in the course of the next decade or so.
I think that the onset of the Internet, an arguably superior medium, has made producers of print journalism reevaluate — to make an understatement — the limits of the print medium. In the capstone presentation regarding the future of newspapers, this was touched on, though only as a practice of what future journalists would do to produce the content. Newspapers are scaling up their online side to compete for the growing number of online readers, and there’re plenty of good and bad examples to go around. To avoid becoming a bad example, research has been conducted to better understand the habits of myriad media consumers. And it’s likely that the best research is yet to come.
I wish I’d’ve been allowed to present on that topic because it interests me so (as opposed diametrically to my current topic). Nevertheless, I’ll confine all kinds of talk and theses to this essay. Why in the world would a consumer of media start first with his or her laptop or desktop computer, and second possibly to a newspaper? Some reasons: Internet news is free and typically has the same quality as that for which is paid (in the broad outlook); Internet news is more convenient, being closer in proximity to the individual at the time news is desired (i.e. desktop in relation to driveway). But my favorite is that Internet news is interactive.
There’s no way that a newspaper will ever be as interactive as a computer can be — this is obvious. Once producers of news wrap their heads around this idea, then emphasis of where to put the brand should be obvious as well. I subscribe to the idea of “hot” and “cool” media as set forth by Marshall McLuhan in his book Understanding Media: The extensions of man. In the text it’s explained that hot media carry a great deal more information and cool media carry a more modest amount of information. I believe that the Internet medium is hotter, meaning that it allows more senses to be activated and more information to be transmitted than a newspaper. Because of all the information, less participation is required of the consumer, which lends to a state of mild hypnotization of the consumer.
Now I know I stated before that the Internet is interactive. And McLuhan argues that a hot medium discourages participation. I’m staying that interactive isn’t necessarily participation. The medium of the Internet allows for not just a lot of information, but the ability to toggle through the information faster than conceived prior to its inception. The variety of information — breaking news, in-depth analysis, celeb gossip and sites for vanity’s sake — is worth considering as well. I believe that it’s possible to go through twice the amount of new information with the Internet in half the time it takes to read a newspaper cover to cover. I believe that anyone clinging to other media to compete directly with the Internet in at least 20 years is merely kidding himself or herself. After all, newspapers are created largely with the aid of computers these days, as are other media.
Even further, I believe the best and most frightening extensions are yet to come. On page 80 of McLuhan’s aforementioned book he states: “Electric technology does not need words any more than a digital computer needs numbers. Electricity points the way to an extension of the process of consciousness itself, on a world scale, and without any verbalization whatever.” And page 177: “Once a new technology comes into a social milieu it cannot cease to permeate that milieu until every institution is saturated.”
The next logical step would be to extensionalize the process of digesting information — just as humans’ve extensionalized their feet with wheels. The only barrier now to the speed of the news is how fast consumers can consume. One need only to look at a simple economic supply/demand graph to see that the supply of news is being imposed with an artificial ceiling, and that the demand is great. Print producers have reached the limit of their velocity to deliver news, and the Internet medium will reach it as well. After this, I believe a scarier world awaits all who’re still alive, especially for those who still care to point his or her eyes toward a newspaper.

"He was sitting in the Fugue.
The band was playing.
After a while, he began to wonder exactly what was going through his mind: mere projections of a reality never to be realized. Yeah, probably.
'Projections of what reality?'
A life only considered in passing.
He types it later."
Bollocks!

[EDIT 18:30 EST 09/04/2008]
A year has passed since the post above was written. So much is different now.
I was hammered out of my mind when I wrote the original post. My mother was going through some terrible things, I thought I had AIDS, a couple exboyfriends of girls that I fooled around with were following me, and through a haze including my three jobs, full-time schooling, and frequent alcohol binges, I was losing Ms. 2012. I was also charged with a misdemeanor at around this time last year. As I've said before, and as I'll say now, the worst part of it all, including the embarrassment at the hands of Mr. Kravitz, at the indulgence of past lovers, at the luxury of my peers in school; the worst part was losing Ms. 2012. She's in Cambodia now. That's the end of the story.

Sentimental Sunday

Now. It's rounding up to 1:30 in the a.m. I am able to manipulate my fingers into shapes, which block the light from my lamp casting a shadow on the wall. While a lightbulb and its message — 100 percent pure communication — is the alpha-medium, I realize now, now, more than moments before and after, that I only live around it.
If I can bundle my senses together and point them toward the tasks that lie ahead, it would communicate info as important as what I'm observing with my shadowpuppets. At the end of the Lakota day Friday I began to drink a few at Billiards, hit some balls, have a little chow. Sift through these confusing sentences and *bingo* the metaphor of the week:
Whether it is possible in my mind to divide all that is into two halves, a keystone, and a point of desire, the cueball would be me: I'm just some dude with time on his hands. The 8-ball my goal: locked behind a mirage of life and such and blah ...
Of course, the rest of the balls would be all of you: everything that is put in my way to distract, fuck with, kill time with, or just to amuse oneself. The cueball just goes and goes and goes. And even when there is one point desire, one single soul out there just for himself, it goes wry. Basically, even in a game against myself, I lose.
I've taken a vow of celibacy. The last few years have really gotten out of hand. In our memorable, brief and sexy tryst ages ago, Ms. Razor, who's addicted to sex herself, identified the same within me. Comfort among substance abusers doesn't last, and neither does any relationship in which I've been. So, if only for a friend like Ms. Razor, I've decided to detox. Really though, I've got plenty of good reasons. And one heart-rending reason — I can't tell if I miss her, Ms. 2012. I can't tell if I really want to drive across the midwest and sell our barbaque sauce, or freelance for a year while we both write our novels, or hop a train to San Fran and live like the hippies do, or just hold her and kiss her and have her whisper to me "everything's gonna be alright." It feels like I want any of those, her, but I don't know. I can't waste her time while I waste mine. And yeah, you don't need a calculator to tell that I'm not the kind of guy worthy of any future. Ms. 2012's smart enough to realize that, even with the lightbulbs off. Hell, I shouldn't even be wasting My time now, with all these shadowpuppets. Even in a game against myself, I still lose — why bring her down with me?
So here's how the story ends. I bring the cue to stance, the billiard table's overhead light cutting a teardrop of light through the darkened baren draft, and the clack of the balls is muted. I move to the other side to hit again, take a drink, reach for the billiard table's light, and shut it off, wishing that I communicate 0 percent to the world, and concentrate on winning in the dark.

Somewhere there is a picture of me. Ages ago, it was sliced into three pieces, which now float around this town. Today, those pieces floated very close to one another, so close they nearly aligned. I could almost see it, the picture.
Strange how easily they can all float away.

" His eyes open. He's once again conscious of the world seemingly around him.
'Just when I thought I'd a handle of things,' he says, rubbing eyes to the lightning lightshow outside. He feels the wind, but it makes no difference. It's all become the same again.
He types it later. "

Here's to desire! *Clink a glass to your nearest lover*
Today I spoke of the center of language; I'm growing ... NO! —Spreading. The more that becomes explicit about me the more there is outside of center. I can only look inside and dream of what it's like in there.
—Bollocks!

If anyone knew the extent of how spread out I've been for the past few months then they'd understand why I desire a quick and natural death. Crash, heartattack, jealous-ex punchup, whatever — It'd be an easy way out. But no. As someone once said: "The only way out is through."

I have no desire. This confuses me, mostly because I'm always doing something. I've no aspirations great or small. Nothing matters. I do hope, though, for something to end my life. I cannot do it myself, and without another force to do so, I'm bereft direction, and forced to move.