{005} vow of silence – the most profound day yet.

7:43pm

How curious that today, the day after I first propose the idea to myself of giving up this experiment early, would be the most profound day yet. (It happens to be my most social day yet, as well.) Whether it was the being surrounded by strangers and being unable to speak, or the mass amounts of walking, or the circumstances beyond my control which affected my emotional state, or the small amount of coffee I drank to the detriment of my New Year’s Resolution for the month – what is clear is that today I have regained my inner monologue, the one I seem to have misplaced for more than six months, the one I perhaps misplaced along with my “self” when I finally latched upon a lover. Hello, there, inner monologue, it is so nice to see you for an extended period of time, gushing, as you used to, when stirred up by whatever ridiculousness life doth throweth your/my way. When stirred up, this inner monologue repeats sentences it declares divine over and over in my mind, until finally I have the chance to set them to paper. What I am left with is a close approximation to those words formed at the moment of creation –but who am I kidding; the repeat messenger loses efficacy over time, forgets what he set out to do, becomes lost in the flurry of other words which snowstorm upon him furiously. But so it goes.

Today I became frustrated upon discovery that I, in my folly, somehow destroyed a large section of the REDEFINE website. And with my confessed nubbery at properly updating, backing up, and restoring data, I have little concept as to why the things that are broken are in fact broken, and as every fucking developer knows, backtracking without revision control may be the world’s greatest bitch, a true slog through a terrain called “fucking waste of time.” So, though I am now vastly improved upon my older self in terms of archiving my projects, the truth is that I am still a piece of shit in this regard (and I say this without especially intense degrees of self-loathing, though it may sound like such; it is simply true) which will make my task tomorrow absolute hell. Made all the worse, really, by the fact that the fucking internet in my house is displaced; the router we paid $100 dollars for merely two days ago decided to give up its ghost the day after it was purchased from its former master. Some kind of allegiance, you router, you guy.

But anyway, back to destroying my own website. Ah, yes. I fumed and fumed and got kicked out of the coffee shop I initially went to, Backspace, and cursed myself for going there although I knew instinctually that I would get kicked out before the desired time – as I do every time I go there these days, since I only seem to do so during concert days. Internet-homeless, I decided to head to the downtown Stumptown, which is usually also a gamble, with too few seats and limited plugs. I lucked out, but this time, I desired not to talk to anyone, so bothered I was, and I instead bought coffee – since the system allows for the purchase of coffee without one’s speaking to anyone, without one’s need to write notes explaining an incapacity to speak. And anyway, coffee is cheaper most of the time, a primary annoyance that has made me want to resume drinking it rather than tea, even though it makes me feel like shit, or at least buying it and sitting with it just to save a few nickels and dimes… but that solution is just too ridiculous.

Where was I. Without being able to talk, I internalized my frustration, which is something I have learned to be good at ever since I was a kid. But I learned today to internalize in a Buddhist way, I suppose. I subscribe to many Buddhist beliefs already; I am pretty good at letting go and living in the now now now present moment, I believe – but today, I swallowed and internalized to another level. Freaking out, breakdown-impending, and then realizing… who gives a shit. Who gives a fucking shit. One more day of broken images will not kill anyone if it hasn’t killed anyone yet. And besides, there isn’t much I can do about the situation in the immediate, lacking internet and brain and all, and worrying fixes nothing at all. With such calmness in my possession, I soon moved onto the work I needed to do for University of Washington while simultaneously downloading the files I needed to restore the REDEFINE website properly, at some later point, and worked on articles that I hope to publish tomorrow. I ignored looming shadow overlord crisis A and moved on to solutions B and C, and it felt great. Not that there isn’t perhaps a cyst growing somewhere inside my body because of ignoring overlord A, but at least this kind of separation and categorization lets the living, active mind move on and become productive when circumstances are simply not adjustable at the present time. It sounds pretty good to me. (The cyst is unsure.)

Now to recap on some of today’s social interactions. Today was Research Club Brunch, and as such, I saw many new faces and many old faces. Old faces mostly instantly understood my project and were receptive. Some were better at charades than others, with Ezra reigning as fucking king over all others and with Nim coming in at second – but there were some skeptical strangers, to be sure. I count two supportive strangers, who asked questions, but let’s talk about the skeptical ones, because they’re slightly more interesting.

Today was yet another time that I heard someone be shocked that I was doing a “vow of silence” but could still communicate via writing. These humans are absolutely incredulous that writing would be allowed when… wait… isn’t it fucking called a “vow of silence”? Come on, people! I don’t know how the Buddhists or Catholics practice it or whether they write or not, but you know, I don’t care! I think if I didn’t at least write, I might literally explode. I think I would undoubtedly learn more without writing as an outlet – that or I would go absolutely mad – but it is simply not in my interests. And I am not ascetic, and I have shit to do and businesses to run, I’m not about to give everything up in my life to take a bloody vow of silence. It seems to people who wouldn’t dare attempt the same project themselves judge plain ol’ silence as much too easy. Oh no, they say, you must give up all other forms of communication as well… but humph, I dare them to attempt that for themselves! Or to even just give up speech! Skeptical friends! Reign in your skepticism!

One lady was sure to ask if I found myself attracting more attention because of my silence. She said it almost bitingly. On the contrary, woman. I believe this sort of self-alienation leads to isolation by inconvenience; no one likes to play charades when they are put on the spot. No one cares enough, really, to play 20 questions with a mute. Trust me. Very few people take the time to give you more of the time of day when the conversation is one-sided. Seated at a table today, surrounded by strangers who knew of the situation, I was a source of interest for only about ten minutes. Text-based communication and minor charade-based communication lasted for about two lines per person. Beyond that initial curiosity, no one really attempted to speak to me again. They had nothing more to say, and didn’t really feel that curious about asking me more. And I don’t blame them, but it’s proof that speechlessness does not attract more attention. At least, not in the long run. Perhaps in the short run, in the shiny, “Ooh look, piece of candy!” kind of way, it does – but certainly not in the, “Oh really? Tell me more!” kind of way. And really, we all know the latter is the only one worth any kind of a damn. The candy-discovery route is temporary, a small talk piece of bullshit, a fleeting verbal glance. Suck it, me! And suck it, skeptics! No one cares!

I wonder as I’m writing this – more appropriately, I wondered as I was chopping garlic and am still currently wondering as I am writing this – if Henry Miller was constantly caffeinated, or if he was eternally doped up on something or other. I am currently reading Tropic of Capricorn, as I have been off and on, and the parts that are brilliant in that book are absolutely mind-blowingly genius genius genius. But the parts that suck really suck. But I just don’t know how the dude can write whole pages without a paragraph break and often without even any kind of continuity between sentence to sentence. I’m sure there’s continuity in his brain, somewhere, but I guess what I’m supposing is that dude must have been on some drugs. (This will need a little bit of research to ascertain, to be ascertained perhaps tomorrow, when I have internet again, when I can post this again.)

I’ve been obsessed with fish sauce and those Cambodian noodles I’d previously mentioned. Suck it, vegetarianism! Upon rediscovery of fish sauce I just need to have it! That being said, there is vegetarian fish sauce, and I actually imagine I should just do that – but the nearby supermarket didn’t have it, so next time – as I think it might actually be better. Real fish sauce is just ever slightly too fishy, go figure. But fuck man, toast some garlic and it is just sooooooooo good. I hardly believe it’s truly truly fish anyway; it’s probably the dregs that no one would eat anyway. It’s like the mechanically-separated chicken of fish. I’m merely guessing. Isn’t that stuff brewed underground? Anyway.

I suppose I will spend the remainder of my evening – as I am feeling adequately literarily awesome – editing my stupid book to try and level out the voice of it, which fluctuates from really awesome emo to really loving emo to really scientifically recollective. The variations of emo are by far the best, as they are much more composed immediately and in the moment. The variations of recollective are way less interesting, read a bit more like an essay, and need updating, stat, before the book can ever go one to greater and greener New Age pastures…

But before that, one last point. As I was walking downtown to Research Club, a random man stopped me. (Hey, that reminds me that another man, I swear, a giant huge black crack head dude – or at least he was on something – said to me last night, “Hey baby, want a cigarette?” followed by, “Want a coffee? I got money.” Yeah, baby.) I had talked to this particular dude before, perhaps on the same stretch of road, too – I can’t be sure. He stopped and asked me where I was going. I pointed downtown and started walking away. Then he asked me what my name was and I stopped and turned around and put my hands up in true “I don’t know” fashion. And he looked super confused and was like, “Are you deaf?” and I made the same motion, to which he responded, “Why don’t you try talking normal?” and I just kind of shrugged again and walked away. Fun interactions! I remember his teeth, though. That’s why I know I’ve met him.

Oh yes and the worst thing. I woke up this morning to the WORST dream. Because I had earlier woken up to the worst things: a story of sickness about Troy’s roommate puking and feeling horrible; a graphically loud sex session with Troy’s ex that I really, really, really, really fucking did not need to hear. I am the worst at sex and visualizations. This was pretty horrible. Nightmare fodder. Big time. Fuck. The end.

My noodles are totally delicious.

i am on a fence.

i’m listening to… radiohead.

went up to seattle this past weekend and had a really good time. it felt so good to be up there, though i can’t remember the last time i was up there. this entire year has felt like an eternity, and while i think i definitely have been back there sometime within the past six months, it feels like a foreign entity now… and i suppose it rather makes me sad.

when i first went up, i checked my long overdue po box and it was majorly filled. beginning to feel bad about even having one and doing so minimally with it, but whatever…

i’m in a weird mental state today, as it goes. having some relationship weirdness that is partially me, partially him, partially difficult surrounding circumstances. no fun………………..

i rideshared up to seattle on thursday with some random lady offa craigslist. she was really into astrology, which i found surprising because it seemed that she was [possibly] easily weirded out / bummed out on people. she had said that she picked me because i seemed the least creepy and said that some people who wrote back seemed creepy just because they would give one line emails or something. maybe i just have a high creepster tolerance. i dunno. found it was interesting that she worked in non-profit mental health-related stuff and was weirded out, though, cause i seem to feel like that kinda employment is kinda built for a “anything goes” mentality, but perhaps not. oh yeah, she was a sagittarius, too, and was basically using me as relationship counselor… which is totally fine… she is just basically in the midst of a break-up with her boyfriend of eight months or something, and, well, yeahhhhhhh. we kept starting to talk about other subjects and then she would bring it back to relationship stuff, so i just kinda figured that she really -neeeeeeeeeeeeded- to talk about the crap. so it goeth.

met up that night with rachel and ryan for dinner at purple dot, and it’s just funny because they hang out a lot now. went to ryan’s afterwards and did i can’t remember what whatsoever cause it wasn’t particularly interesting… neighbor boys came over to shoot the shit and then eventually the nurses boys showed up after driving two straight days from minnesota or something. was nice to hang, and james, john, and i slept in the living room. sleepovers are the best thing… .. . oh but yeah they got their shit confirmed on some stupid t.v. show and were bummed because aaron’s family had told him that it wasn’t in the show. we watched the show the next day, and it turned out it actually was… it was just during some party scene and so quiet that it was barely even audible, and we knew what the song sounded like, too! ridiculous. and they made tonsa money offa it. ridiculous how much budget those people have. and the tv show was super dumb, about vampires and ghosts and dead ghosts kissing girls’ boyfriends. seriously. puuuuuuuke.

went to lunch with lenny in the afternoon and it was pretty great catching up. he has just recently come back from singapore and had $100-a-day budgets to spend on food. so jeally. went to an ethiopian restaurant called zobel and i actually thought i had already used my restaurant.com voucher but evidently not. it’s funny, i had purchased tons of their vouchers previously… one of the participating restaurants that had decided to no longer participate and i got a voucher in exchange. to redeem the voucher you needed to click on some link that said, “redeem voucher,” and i did that, but opened it in a new window. i exchange it without a problem. then i realized i didn’t close the o.g. voucher and clicked on it and opened it in a new window again… and it worked…! i could have done that probably an infinite amount (but i didn’t). funny, though. i still have tons of them. i’ll use them all sometime… maybe… still got like 14 more… went crazy one day…

the nurses show at the sunset was really fucking amazing. second to last show of their tour and they totally killed it so hard. best i’ve ever seen them. and seattlites were dancing and singing like mad!!!!!!! the show was really good. a lot of fun. and these two dudes on either side of me were giving each other really intense stares and i happened to be in the middle and was amused by them, and eventually, late on in the night, when the show was over, they were playing oldies music and the dudes made me do like ballroom dancing crap with them and were spinning me around and stuff and i have no idea how to do any of that stuff, so that was fun/weird… and they were like fighting and trading me off, jokingly, and it was pretty amusing for sure… what a fun time… i was in the most social mood ever that night and freaking was talking to tons of strangers and asking questions in the way i do when i’m feeling social. it’s weird how when i’m extroverted i am SUPER extroverted and don’t give a shit, and when i’m introverted i’m SUPER introverted and can’t talk to anyone (which was how i was last night at matt’s party at the church in portland… so did not want to be there and so did not want to talk to ANYONE… blargh… though there were compounding factors, in this situation…).

oh right, and i talked to the wife of the dude who mixed the nurses record and just randomly decided to ask her is she knew of anyone who did past life regressions (because she had slipped in a small comment about how there were faeries everywhere around us)… and she told me that she didn’t, but that she really wanted to do one, because she has had really vivid memories of past lives ever since she was younger… she said that in one of her lives she remembers it was 1290 or something, and that she was inside a stone house and she could look outside the front and the back, and some guy came and brought her furs in exchange for sex. in another one of her lives, she was like an 18-year-old in world war ii or something, and she said, “i wasn’t a hero or anything” — he had just gone to the front lines and gotten shot immediately and was dying. she said that the last thought in his mind was that he had a betrothed waiting for him at home, and that he felt horrible because she thought he was coming home but he would never be. fascinating.

troy and his band had gotten one a while ago from one of their friends, and i guess what the lady had told them was that the four of his band members had been together through many lives and always traveled together, but that he was not really a human? and that he was an akasic record keeper? but that he decided to be human because he found it more interesting, or something. fascinating. here is a summary of what an akashic record is, from wikipedia…

The akashic records (akasha is a Sanskrit word meaning “sky”, “space” or “aether”) is a term used in theosophy (and Anthroposophy) to describe a compendium of mystical knowledge encoded in a non-physical plane of existence. These records are described as containing all knowledge of human experience and the history of the cosmos. They are metaphorically described as a library; other analogies commonly found in discourse on the subject include a “universal supercomputer” and the “Mind of God”. People who describe the records assert that they are constantly updated automatically and that they can be accessed through astral projection[1] or when someone is placed under deep hypnosis. The concept was popularized in the theosophical movements of the 19th century and is derived from Hindu philosophy of Samkhya. It is promulgated in the Samkhya philosophy that the Akashic records are automatically recorded in the elements of akasha one of the five types of elements visualized as existing in the elemental theory of Ancient India, called Mahabhuta. In Buddhism it is taught one reason that people knew Gautama Buddha had attained enlightenment as a Buddha was because he was able to remember all of the details of all of his past lives by accessing them on the akashic records. The term akashic records is frequently used in New Age discourse.

i suspect that i definitely had some middle eastern associations personally. or egyptian or something. i wonder if/when i finally get one, they will tell me that. i just posted this question on facebook: “‎… suppose you were to hypothetically remember one (or more, if you please) of your past lives. What would you think you were?” — i wonder seriously if anyone will respond, haha.

anyway, after the nurses show… the lead singer of stupid really horrible band they were touring with (d_m_n_nt l___) came over to our place with some groupie and there was some canoodling in the freaking nasty ass bathroom — and ryan seriously has the most nasty bathroom. ughhhhhhh so gross. and it was like 4:30am and they were still there and we were all like wtfffffffff go awayyyyyyyyyy. and that groupie friend had another friend with her who was biting the bullet so her friend could be nasty and was definitely totally bummed, for good reason, of course…

anywayyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyy. had a really long walk and talk with aaron and that was fun. we talked a lot about the subconscious being outside of time… he basically had a dream that turned lucid… and generally, when you’re lucid in dreams, everyone else is still kinda a dream person. in this particular dream, he passed a dream character and started a conversation with that dream character. he asked the dream character if they were bothered by his manipulating the dream environment, and i guess the dream character said something like, “honestly, yeah.” and aaron asked him what he was and how many of him there were and the dude said five billion or something. interesting. aaron’s conclusion is that dream life to him is almost just as important as waking life… cause the amount that you can bring conscious life into dream life (lucid dreaming) and dream life into waking life (just remembering it, in general) is almost about the same, and not one is more real than the other, really… it’s fascinating…………………….

anyway, i don’t know what it all means, but i feel great about my good friends and how everyone i am associating with is rather mystical these days. i don’t know, i don’t know, i don’t know, but i think that it’s a generally good thing.

take this aldous huxley intro quote i just lifted from the perennial philosophy which i just picked up again:

“What we know depends also on what, as moral beings, we choose to make ourselves. ‘Practice,’ in the words of William James, ‘may change our theoretical horizon, and this in a twofold way: it may lead into new worlds and secure new powers. Knowledge we could never attain, remaining what we are, may be attainable in consequences of higher powers and a higher life, which we may morally achieve.’ To put the matter more succinctly, ‘Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God.’ And the same idea has been expressed by the Sufi poet, Jalal-uddin Rumi, in terms of a scientific metaphor: ‘The astrolabe of the mysteries of God is love.’…

The self-validating certainty of direct awareness cannot in the very nature of things be achieved except by those equipped with the moral ‘astrolabe of God’s mysteries.’ If one is not oneself a sage or saint, the best thing one can do, in the field of metaphysics, is to study the works of those who were, and who, because they had modified their merely human mode of being were capable of a more than merely human kind and amount of knowledge.”

— Aldous Huxley, The Perennial Philosophy

is it strange or egotistical to believe that spirituality only shows itself if one is a “good” person? perhaps… but from the people i know who seem to be privy to that knowledge, it certainly seems to be a true thing…? or maybe it’s just because those are qualities that come with a general openness. unclear. unclear.

oh also, last note. totally had the best fucking cupcake ever at cupcake royale. i always love cupcake royale but this was next level, even for them. a super light angel food cake-type cupcake with a whipped tiramisu cupcake (called the
“stumptown tiramisu cupcake” — this one is soaked in coffee, too…). i mean, seriously, like, the best cupcake i’ve ever had in my life. it’s so ridiculous. i mean, it’s so good i’m going to post pictures of it. i don’t do that shit, man. i don’t do that shit. SO GOOD. I AM GOING TO EAT IT FOREVER (the seasonal pumpkin cardamom one was OKAYYYYYYYYY).

recap central: cross-country kamut road trip, day five: lincoln.

ACTUAL DATE OF TRAVEL: SATURDAY, SEPTEMBER 17TH, 2011.
SMALL PICTURES WERE TAKEN BY ROSE ON HER IPHONE; LARGE (AND NOT BLURRY) PICTURES ARE MINE.

—

BETWEEN DENVER, COLORADO AND LINCOLN, NEBRASKA

I didn’t really care to take too many photos in Lincoln because the place was pretty much a wash… so these are mostly Rose’s. Say hello to Nebraska! I’ll start off by saying that Rose was HORRIBLY excited for Nebraska, as it is the land of Saddle Creek and Conor Oberst. I could really care less about these things, but for her, it was quite exciting, and she did most of the driving through Nebraska, blasting a shit ton of SC bands – and waayyyyyyyyyyy too much Bright Eyes – along the way… I should also state that Nebraskans are super prideful of being Nebraskan, and Rose made fun of this sign a lot (it is an extremely plain state-welcoming sign compared to some of the other ones) but that making fun of fell among deaf ears, or at least, ears that did not agree… I think the response Michael, our CS host in Lincoln, gave was, “But it is the good life…”

Along the way, there wasn’t much interesting stuff to eat, and I wanted some real food, so rather than getting like, a salad or whatever for the same-ish price, I just went to town on this buffet in this random gas station. I think the restaurant was called Grandma’s or some shit, and definitely the buffet was the best vegetarian option around. Buffets are, for me – master binger – just the monetarily-sound way to go. I can eat a huge buffet meal and pack it away and then I don’t have to eat dinner, and frankly, I feel better that way most of the time…

[ROSE'S TUMBLR CAPTION: "Salad bar featuring pepperonis"]

Rose’s food – less spectacular if I do say so myself…
[ROSE'S TUMBLR CAPTION: "Grandma may not have veggie burgers but she's got smart balance" – apparently (I didn't hear it) lady was not stoked when Rose asked if they had veggie burgers...]

This is fucking grandma, dude, if you ever doubted her existence…

Funny picture for a burger challenge, which reads, “”Think climbing Mount Everest is a challenge Well, try this one on for size. Two pounds of ground beef on a large homemade bun topped with choice toppers. Four pounds total!!! Are you tough enough to try? If you can polish this baby off in less than an hour, we’ll give you a free shirt and hang your picture on the wall. Ya know what Andy Warhol said, “Everyone is famous for 15 minutes.” Well, here’s your chance.” YUMMMMMM! That reminds me of all the cow farms we passed on the way… I must say, though, there is a lot of grass-fed cow meat in Nebraska, or at least there is close to the highway, and it was actually getting slightly terrifying that I would be like, “MMMM! It smells good!” because the smell of grass would come wafting into the car, and then two seconds later we would pass a herd of cows, and I was just like, “Fuck!” It’s a little bit scary when cow shit apparently starts smelling really awesome…

Check out what’s considered “ethnic” food: Spaghetti & Meatballs and Nacho Supreme. Hahahahhahahahahahahah.

You can betchur buns these locals had the buffet! As I was finishing up my pretty healthy meal and getting a shit ton of brownies and ice cream for dessert, the guy behind us was like, “Ah, and here I was thinking she would be eating healthy!” He was a truck driver who was on his way back to Indiana after taking a trip to San Francisco. Guess dude does that every other week or something. He highly recommended the potato chowder, but I didn’t eat it because mmmmmehhhh. It probably had bacon in it. And I just wasn’t feeling it, in general. But nice to talk to you, dude!

Anyway… first round of foods and then the aftermath (see the brownie and ice cream action?!!!)…

Above: Love a good truck stop, dude; below: Rose taking a self-portrait because she was tired of my suck-at-posing-for-pictures ways.

Like I was saying…

I’m sure that is soooo what they want. Really, though, I don’t even think this offer is valid anymore. I think that shit be advertising for false.

Grandma’s parking lot capture which I really enjoy…

Being sad about balloons.

Oh, before we left, though… WE TOTALLY FOUND ANOTHER SINCLAIR DINOSAUR! Rose was hunting around for a person to take a photograph for us, and I wanted her to ask this dude who looked friendly and gave me a friendly smile; instead she found this dude simply because he had a nice car and he was the creepiest mofo. She was assuming her position on the dinosaur’s back, and he seriously said, “Yeah, tart it up, honey, tart it up.” UH-HUH. GOOD JOB.

I was trying to keep that broccoli stalk for a while because I’m gross. That’s about as dried out and interesting as it got. I actually really wanted to turn it into a sculptural work but it flew around the car and I forgot about it until way later on, when it changed shapes and stopped being uhhh something I really wanted to touch so much.

Anyway, there was a sign for this one place from far, far away, and like Little America, we just kept being excited to go to it. Finally, we made it… but it had closed the previous hour. FUCK. And unlike Little America, this place actually looked really fucking awesome… it was a museum of old shit that was “showing man’s progress” through the years. I mean, come on. How sick.

Anyway, along the way, we pulled down this random road to stop by a lake because the sun was coming down and Rose wanted to take some photos of some cows… On the way there, she pulled over and a truck with two dudes was coming from the opposite direction. She put on her hazards. They of course stopped to see if she needed any help. Of course she made it seem even more like we didn’t know what we were doing or where we were going by asking where the lake was though it was clearly the way we were headed. They eventually left after making small talk with her. We went to this lake that was in the middle of tons and tons of corn fields, but I got the grossest vibe from the place. Usually I don’t really get weirded out by being places, but the interaction, the isolation, the fact that we were two “ethnic” girls in the middle of nowhere in Nebraska (not even off a major freeway, but a farm thoroughfare freeway) just made me really paranoid and we only walked a little distance before I mentioned that we should just go. Snapped a couple shots (below) but mostly just ducked out of there. It just reminded me too much of when Lenny and I were in Montana and Native Americans almost ran us over with their truck.

Rose is kinda eternally hungry or at least needs to snack a lot more than I do, and we stopped by this AMAZING Mexican restaurant in po-dunk nowhere (Hastings, Nebraska). The restaurant chain is called El Puerto, and it was fucking delicious, and the service was top-notch… maybe even above-and-beyond x 10,000 with younger, fairly good-looking Mexican waiters… yeeeaaah, it was interesting. Guess they have restaurants in Kansas, too.

—

LINCOLN, NEBRASKA

Finally arrived at our host’s house in Lincoln that evening, where they had been drinking ALL DAY. It was three dudes who lived together who had a really hilarious mega-gay dynamic (a big no-no in Lincoln), and they were nice, but I was sure that they were going to drink/party, and I was going to be whatevers about it all. And that turned out to be true, of course. This particular Saturday the Huskers football team had had a game, and especially in Lincoln, everyone is SUPER into football. I asked Michael about the people in town who didn’t like football, and he said that in Lincoln, “Even the people who don’t like football like football.” Which is funny. Apparently the Huskers’ season tickets have a waitlist of FORTY YEARS – longest season ticket sell-out ever — because people don’t give up their tickets if they already have them; you just keep having them through as many seasons as you want them. Fucking bizarre.

But we went to a dubstep show at The Bourbon Theatre, and I was really excited for the prospect, though less than excited that it was $15.00 – but I thought hey, why not? How bad could it really be! Turns out it can be really bad, and I should have known this from past experiences that going to random dubstep shows is not necessarily a good thing. What’s worse… asides from the CS host Michael himself, who very obviously liked dubstep and was into dancing, his girlfriend and his two roommates coughed up the dolla bills but were seriously not into it or dancing at all. So it was just kinda bad music and then all the more weird-vibed. The other two dudes left early and we hung out with gf and Michael for a little bit but eventually left soon thereafter. So… whatever.

Went to a bunch of bars. Had minimal conversation. There was one fun interaction in a pizza place where some guy from Austin saw me standing near the gumball machine, where I had just purchased a gumball, and asked me if I had change for $1.00; I said I did not, and he said I wasn’t allowed to stand by gumball machine if I didn’t have change! I suppose he maybe had a point, but I was just waiting for the bathroom, man!

Also went to this hella dance club crap with a buncha frat kids and got bought two drinks. Got a little drunk. It was whatevers, man. This picture would show an example of what the streets looked like, though. It was an early game so there were a lot of people out, but not nearly as many as there would have been had it been a late game; I guess the Huskers campus is a dry campus so people can’t actually drink on-campus so they hella wile out after the games are over.

Group pic later that evening. Blah, blah, who cares, blah, blah.

recap central: cross-country kamut road trip, day two: boise, salt lake city.

ACTUAL DATE OF TRAVEL: WEDNESDAY, SEPTEMBER 14TH, 2011.
SMALL PICTURES WERE TAKEN BY ROSE ON HER IPHONE; LARGE PICTURES ARE MINE.

—

BOISE, IDAHO

Woke up and spent the morning with Brian Baker! He drove us around in his “ghetto” car (he has two) and took us to Boise’s downtown, where I had only been in passing before. He had a 5-panel mirror in his car… could see everything and all angles! Yay! I think every Asian mother should have one of those, maybe

We went to Goldie’s for breakfast. I didn’t eat much; just a side of red potatoes with an in-house seasoning mixture that was not particularly interesting. Thank lawd for hawt sawce.

Walked around afterwards, which included heading to Freak Alley, where a bunch of graffiti (and other) artists had paid money, generally, to draw up on a section of wall. There were a good pieces, but they were few and far between. This would be one of them. I guess it is a portrait of an older shop owner who had died.

This is of Jimi Hendrix, which was put together by smashed-up mirrors. Pretty neat.

We then went to this parking lot full of graffiti. There were some fun things.

[ROSE'S TUMBLR CAPTION: "Wasn't the yellow man also in a painting at de nada?"]

[ABOVE] Brian inspecting da fatz; [BELOW] Brian gettin’ low/homoerotic.

[ROSE'S TUMBLR CAPTION: "Gideon & mosaic"]

There were plenty of finger-painted handprints. We decided to add our own with nice thin-tipped Micro pen (of which I was freaking out and telling everyone to “be gentle” with )

Fucking hellzaz rad Ninja Turtles mural thing. SOOOO RADDD. Definitely the best thing in the parking lot. The models are doing a great job, too.

Went to the train station afterwards. Apparently bitchez be gettin’ married out tharr. It was a pretty neat place.
After getting out of downtown Boise and getting Brian’s car tour, we just hung around his place a bit and he gave rose a brief introduction to dubstep and the history of dubstep. Got to listen to some of his new tracks, a lot of which are really good! I really hope that he gets something out of his music because dude is so much better than a lot of bullshit that’s out there right now. That and he’s been doing it for-fucking-ever and deserves it, because he is goooood.

Anyway, heading out of Boise, there was this lovely building. We most certainly had a hey-day.

—

BETWEEN BOISE, IDAHO AND SALT LAKE CITY, UTAH

[ROSE'S TUMBLR CAPTION: "Not the most glamourous of rest stops"]

—

SALT LAKE CITY, UTAH

[ROSE'S TUMBLR CAPTION: "Didn't expect to see rain in Utah"]

[ROSE'S TUMBLR CAPTION: "Giddy punch!"]

[ROSE'S TUMBLR CAPTION: "Another day, another state"]

We stopped by a park that was a teeny tiny nook off of the Salt Lake. As Rose said on her Tumblr, “Millions of mosquitos not pictured.” Yup. Although I had purposely carried around deet for the duration of the trip, I of course forgot that it might be a good idea to actually bring it when we were exploring a swampy park right at sundown. Dammit!! We ended up running from place to place in order to avoid being eaten alive so thoroughly… and while that helped — minorly — we still got eaten alive. Indeed. Bug bites on top of bug bites! Surprisingly, I didn’t get it too bad this time even though I usually am quite loved by those miniature havoc-wreakers. This time, Rose got the brunt of it, and like me, she swells up to infectious states, and I think in some places she had three mosquito bites in one section that made for a reaaaaaaaaaal fun time (sarcasm). She was quite pOofy. Reminds me of the time when I went to Europe as a kid, got a huge big bite on my arm, and then my arm swelled up huge; for the rest of the trip, my parents and brother called me “potato arm.” That’s love, I guess. But yeah, despite the mosquito-y death — definitely worth in on the picture-taking and general beauty arena!

Rose was endlessly fascinated by how beautiful Utah was, cause — I guess — coming from Los Angeles she kept thinking that Utah and anywhere outside of the West Coast was basically really hideous and boring, but I mean, Utah’s one of the raddest geographical states, for sure! She also considered it the Midwest which was really just kind of amusing.

We drove a bunch and got to Salt Lake City that evening, where we were staying with a Couchsurfer. What I knew of the lady was that she was a mom who had a stripper pole in her living room. You know… whatever… that sounds fine. Not judging as some people just enjoy the exercise of it or whatever. But it got real weird kind of fast, and right before getting there I was just major cranky pants (snatched the iPhone out of Rose’s hand when she was reading her own directions to the house and getting a little bit lost and I was certain I knew the directions and thought it would be better if I just told her as opposed to having her look… but it was totally cranky!) from being really, really hungry… and then being stuck behind a train for godamn forever! We also went to Whole Foods after getting lost a whole bunch and bought a bunch of dinner fixin’s, but by that time, I really didn’t care to be shopping and really just wandered around aimlessly cause my brain wasn’t really working. Rose picked out everything and I helped pay for it, barely really knowing what was going on.

[ROSE'S TUMBLR CAPTION: "Half mile from our destination, stuck behind the longest train ever. So hungry!"]

[ROSE'S TUMBLR CAPTION: "Welcome to tonights friend for a day!"]

There were three other CouchSurfers in the apartment, and I just kind of like fuuuuuck, cause I didn’t necessarily want to deal with that many people at the time. There was a 19-year-old girl from Montana who had run away from Montana because she had “gotten into trouble,” which on the last straw involved crashing her grandfather’s car into a ditch and then ditching it. She was on a trip with a guy she had just met — another CouchSurfer — who was from Virginia or something and had just graduated from Business school. He was an interesting dude — the type of dude who is probably really sad (as evinced by some details he later let on) and displays it all through this kind of cock-assuredness “I am so smart and witty” attitude that, as he got drunker and drunker throughout the course of the evening, became very obviously just a front he used to make living with himself a lot easier. When I first arrived, he pretty much just played 20 questions with me, which I didn’t mind because the attitude was so direct and interesting. He guessed right off the bat that I had been a Sociology major, and also guessed something else which I have since forgotten, and I was pretty impressed immediately. And then he wanted me to guess what he had graduated studying, after telling me that he had graduated from Jon Hopkins, which I had THOUGHT was a medical school and not just a general school. He got offended when I thought he was a nurse, and then also offended when I thought he had studied some kind of translation thing. (I later found out that he was an English major, which… I don’t know why he would have been so offended by the translation thing. Newb.)

After those fairly OK exchanges, the conversation somehow got steered towards politics (he was a Ron Paul supporter), and he said something really dumb about how Barack Obama wasn’t really African-American because he was born in Hawaii and was only half-black, but how does that discount him from being African-American? Dude wasn’t even talking to me during this conversation because I had removed myself from speaking, but that’s when he really started bothering me a HUGE amount, and I kind of started making faces and being even more anti-social because I just couldn’t stand really being in that room. I was ready to be like, “Hey guys — I’m going to go take a walk and I’ll be back,” but then Rose had finished putting stuff in the oven and needed to go to the car, so I went with her and vented. By the time I came back, I felt a lot better, and just getting slight perspective by removing yourself from the situation helps sooooooooooooo much. But anyway. We went back upstairs, ate food, and I started warming up to the dude a LITTLE bit. It took a very long while, though. I will get back to that later.

The last guy was a very, very large man who said he was in the midst of divorcing his wife and fighting for custody over his child. He said he had another lover and that he was homeless for the time being, but that he wanted to get in on a work trade for shelter thing that was going on in the city — only there was a waiting list for it. His options, I guess, were CouchSurfing or staying in a shelter with 400 other people, and he said that he was scared of staying in a shelter. Freshly homeless, I guess. He said, “You wouldn’t think so, but large guys get scared, too. We beat up other people and then we go home and cry about it.” Although he was very large of the not particularly muscular type, so I’m not entirely sure how many people he beat up. Interesting? Dark past? Wonder who he was beating up, or when it was, and why. (Presently Rose and I are talking about “doing violent things and wanting to cry about it” and she said she gave a kid a black eye once when she was 15. She says, “I’ve definitely now decided never to punch anybody in the face.” I’ve never done anything violent, but these stories remind me of dad, and how my parents used to talk about how my dad beat people up for no reason… such as picking fights with people the bus stop…!!)

Back to the dude who had previously been bothering me. Throughout the course of the evening, dude continued to make a lot of comments about blacks… such as… when he and I were having a deep conversation and a hip-hop song came on, he immediately went to change it and said, “I can’t listen to black music right now. It’s too intense.” (Actually, the word wasn’t intense, but something a little more ignorant than that.) He also got to questioning, “Can you be racist and truthful at the same time?” and it was a good question, I think… just because it showed that he was thinking a little bit about his own actions. Apparently, upon graduation, he had a six-figure job lined up, I guess, but then decided he didn’t want to work long hours every day and be unhappy. He wanted to get out and explore the world and just see things while he was young, and he said that part of his reason for deciding that was that his father had died early, after always saying he wanted to do this and do that, but had never gotten the opportunity to because he was always working. It was kind of heart-warming, but dude was definitely conflicted; he felt bad for hating his father and not getting along with him prior to his death, but also said that he had hated the man ever since he (he in this case being the CouchSurfer) had punched his sister when he was young and his dad immediately punched him out. He said, “Well, at least I learned never to hit a girl,” but he was still mad at his dad — evidently a huge dude — punching him — evidently, at that point, a tiny kid. Which makes sense. But to have that kind of regret can really eat away at someone, particularly when you don’t know if it’s right or wrong… but I hope that he talks to someone on this trip who can help him with that. He said to me, “I guess I’m being really honest with you right now, but I know I’ll never see you again.” I guess it’s good that people are willing to always talk to me about these things, even when I don’t particularly vibe with them well. It has always been the case. And I have felt, especially lately, that I really need to do something with those abilities / tendencies… hrmph.

But yeah. Dude was super interesting, and very confused. You could tell that his rich background and surroundings tainted him from who he really wanted to be; he had been a baseball player in college and touched upon the fact that he had gay friends… and while he was definitely not so familiar with gays he felt it necessary to leave that detail out, he did mention that he was the only one on the baseball team WITH gay friends, and that he got a lot of shit for that because it was such a taboo for everyone else around. So I guess his heart is in the right place, and I have to give him that for being able to tolerate and accept other people when surrounded by such closed-mindedness. And it’s easy to judge him for even being closed-minded to begin with, but the dude is definitely trying to make strides, and if his goal right now is to just follow where life takes him without a worry, and his way of accomplishing it is through CouchSurfing, I can imagine only that he will, even a year from now — if not less time — be a much more mature and actualized dude who will be useful in making positive change. I’m sure all of the remnants of past ignorance will not go away, but I’m positive that he will make huge strides towards more and more openmindedness. We actually also had a conversation after he made the “black music” comment about how that was a bad thing to say, and he acknowledged it, and said that he had had conversations with people before where he was in my position, telling other people that racial constructs didn’t matter — but then said that being mugged and jumped in Baltimore had unfortunately tainted his experience in a way that actually influenced his thinking actively. And I can understand that, surely, as Baltimore is a particularly gnarly place, especially with regards to race relations… but I just hope that he will see soon that being black is not necessarily equated always with bad things. I guess I can say that I went from being his biggest skeptic to his biggest supporter, and I’m really glad I got the chance to hear him and understand where he was coming from. Rose and the CS host were definitely more tolerant of him at first, but also later on seemed more annoyed by him after I had arrived to a place where I thought he was fine and/or going to be fine.

Onwards to details about the CSer herself. I really don’t know how she afforded such a nice apartment, and without working. She had a young child. She was formerly Mormon and married, and it seemed that after finding herself anew (post church-shunning) she had turned from what was probably a typical Mormon lady with typical Mormon gender roles to an extreme opposite, with stripper poles and always making comments about how strong women were. It was almost as though she was trying to convince herself constantly. Which I don’t necessarily blame her for — it was just very interesting. I suppose when you’re in that kind of situation and have been judged for being an ex-Mormon with a baby who is now divorced, it is only natural that you need to rely on yourself an extraordinary amount and prop yourself up, even if that involves hyper-correction. But yeah, I didn’t necessarily feel all that comfortable around her because I didn’t feel like she really understood my kinds of comments or brand of humor, but it’s all whatevers.

Dinner seemed to take forever, with a bunch of hovering piggies pigging out (myself included — there were some of the best fucking local flavored tortilla chips EVER). Although what Rose made for food was very much standard everyone-in-Portland-would-eat-this-and-know-what-it-was-and-probably-cook-it-or-something-similar-fairly-frequently, the people here were absolutely mind-blown. Like, seriously!!! Other than the large homeless man, the other people were just like whuuut about most of the stuff. And granted, I personally had never eaten endives before, they weren’t mind-blowing. The CS host chick actually wrote down directions the next morning on how to cook all of these things, which was amusing just because it was mostly like… sprinkle with olive oil, salt, pepper, and roast. Haha. But I guess everyone needs to learn sometime. Rose’s beets were particularly super ace, though.
[ROSE'S TUMBLR CAPTION: "Feast for our four new friends; baked beets w vinaigrette glaze, red wine endives, portabello mushrooms & quinoa w bruschetta"]

There were some neighborly dudes who kept wanting CS host to hang out. They live the floor below her, I guess. As for me, I was not particularly interested in talking to anyone this evening, and was probably being a bit of a quiet butt, but WHUTEVA.
[ROSE'S TUMBLR CAPTION: "Courtyard riders"]

Anyway, after eating and after CSer lady took the 19-year-old (haha) — during which Rose took a nap / eavesdropping break and I had that deep conversation with the kid from the East Coast — we went to take a night walk around SLC. Baby had passed out long beforehand, and mom wrapped her up in a blanket, took the stroller, and departed the hOoOoOoose, baby in tow. The new baby carts are fucking intense pieces of machinery, man. Some have thick wheels as though they’re for off-roading or something. The one she had was maybe not THAT intense but it was fairly intense.
The walk mostly took us downtown to the main Mormon cathedral (?) complex, where Rose smoked a pots cause she thought it’d be funny, haha. It was interesting-ish but not hella, but it was nice to be able to just walk around there for a little. Took a few pics, but they are mostly who cares.

Partway through, baby woke up and started crying and got creeped out by this fleece blanket she had that had a dog’s head on it. Honestly, baby seems a little schizo or something haha. Apparently she sometimes walks by certain alleys and says there are fairies or something. But maybe that’s just how babies are. It was interesting to see her freaking about the dog having a head and being wrapped up in that heady-dog-blanket, but it was pretty much between that and being naked (she seriously had no clothes on), so eventually, after mom telling her she needed to use her “real words” — which, she of course didn’t, since it was like 2am and baby was cranky — baby started behaving and we headed on our way back (but not after walking a few more extraneous blocks).

Interesting rainbow metal thingy installation which CS host had never seen before. I did see later on in the local SLC weekly that it was a new installation and it had won some kind of award. WHUTEVA!

Thus concludes day two!

[ROSE'S TUMBLR SUMMARY OF DAY TWO: "street art tour & crash course in dubstep in Boise. Back on the open road, salt lake sunset, & a feast for our new friends to be followed by a downtown wanderings. & I think I may love Utah."]

was walking down the street.

was reading my book while walking down the street.

a lady snidely said, “pay attention because other people aren’t,” while rolling a dumb stroller because her dumb daughter who was also rolling a dumb stroller couldn’t make her stroller properly up the sidewalk.

to which i responded, “i am paying attention.”

to which she got even angrier and muttered something about my reading a book.

personally, i think she was just bummed cause i was obviously paying attention and she got pZwn3d.

it bites the butt, but…

between writing my book, working, dating, roommates, enjoying life, etc. there is just no time for me to be writing in here, which is a shame. luckily, many things are echoed in the book and now, in my notes about the book… buuuuuuuuuuuuuuut… this is just going to generally have to take a backseat, i’m sorry to say. i suppose it ultimately doesn’t matter as the records are mostly for myself, but it’s just kind of sad, i guess. kind of sad that because of my shitty memory trips i never have the time to write about (both chemical and in-real-life-eal) are forever to be lost to the flights of my mind, to whirl away and become lost like dandelions. it happens, and not only that, but is inevitable. but in the long run, who really cares, anyway. i suppose that i am searching for bigger-picture meaning these days… and perhaps that is something i’ve learned from blake (along with a few other things, no doubt… few emotional… but mostly big-picture, appropriately, considering those were all the thing he ever thought about, all of the time)… .. .
there’s lots of meaning-making that has been made — so much so that the timeline for things is incredibly skewed. i will say that one of the most recent pieces of advice given to me by blake has stuck in my mind loud and clear, and for that line alone, meaning-making is of extreme significance (though, really, as much as i was a changed person from troy1, i may be as much a changed person from blake). when we were discussing the mentalities behind what route to choose in life, with regards to my going a social service route or a more ‘selfish’ route of pursuing further things related to the magazine, blake imparted with me a piece of advice one of his philosophy professors had given him when a similar discussion was being had. the professor said that, if after weighing all things in relative importance, all choices seemed to be of equal value, to go with the one that made the most money.
…
i suppose in some sense i am following that advice. certainly not in terms of the magazine exclusively because there is hardly money to be made by that… but in the route of social services and non-profit work versus digital media and website work… the money is to be found in the website work, definitively. and with yet another level of recently reemerged purpose and meaning, in terms of magazine-related things, i… can only feel that that is the right path. the 2011 magical timeline has given me a bit of a kick in the ass to get things done before the end of the year. though that may be an arbitrary distinction, it remains a distinction, nonetheless.
…
i am ever looking forward to the future, with equal trepidation and joy. if time continues slipping foward the way it has, it may be at once completely intolerable and all the more glorious. as has bee quite discussed recently — it feels as though time is passing by so very slowly yet so fast when we think that, holy shit, july is almost already over!!! where does the time go? and yet… the things i have done this year… .. . whereas i have maybe lived five lives in my life so far, i may have lived at least a couple in just this year alone. time…

this reminds me of a conversation i had with an old man who i see sometimes when i volunteer at the building downtown… he told me that he felt as though time itself had changed, rather than his perception of it… that he used to be able to hitchhike from the city out to the beach and arrive there before the sun went down… but that now he would get ready to go, drive out there and get there directly, do next to nothing while there, and find it was time to return home already. logic would dictate to me that perception was the main difference here rather than time, but who knows. what do we really know about time, anyway?

“‎… discussion w/ Tessa Hulls stirs up a latent observation. Many friends who are PASSIONATELY engaged in creative pursuits are seeing, in 2011, fast “success” in the form of $$/opportunity. (1) Do you agree?; (2) Are creative humans engaging in more projects = more opportunities?; (3) Are non-creators becoming more interested in creative efforts = support for opportunities?; (4) Are these trends universal?”

there is something everyday.

i’m listening to… sister crayon.

everyday has soooooooo much to do, and sometimes i think it’s a wonder i can relax at all!!!!!!!!!!!1

just watched i <3 huckabees at gina's. good times, good people, appropriate movie. i'd watched it a few years back, a couple times, and just never understood it, really. but it's just swell. still doesn't make it on my list of favorite movies or anything, but it's pretty incredible.

last night, troy and i went to a show tara jane o'neil was playing along with sir arthur bishop (crazy talented guitarist dude). it was pretty rad. afterwards we were going to hunt for chinese food on 82nd street and ended up at ambassador on sandy. pretty crazy karaoke place with lots of loud screaming. it was actually pretty incredible — troy would say "a slice of reno" — and the chinese food was honestly pretty good. i got a fortune cookie statement that says, "someone blonde has something for you," so i told troy to pick someone out of the room and he did… he pointed to some lady. as we were leaving, i went up to her and asked her if she had something for me and showed her the fortune, and she was like, "no… but i really wish i did!" so i just asked her to give me a high five, which she did, and she repeated, "i really wish i did!" again. haha. but really was too dumbfounded to come up with anything then and there, which was interesting.

mrawr. two days ago, i had this idea. i want to have all my friends make little influence circles — like pick the handful of people who influence them most, and then write short essays about those people, how those people pertain to their lives, and how those people would get along with one another or something. cause i feel that my life heroes, essentially — mc escher, vladimir nabokov, aldous huxley, charles baudelaire — would all really, really get along even though they are spanning of so many disciplines. and i think our influences expand outwards from us, like fractals, and that they are idealized, fulfilled versions of each of our specific interests… anyway, these mini essays seem like a fun thing to do, and to share, and if enough were connected, the essays of different friends could be connected to form overlapping circles of influence.

man, i dunno what my mind thinks about most of the time these days. i am fertile with ideas.

quick excerpt from my book, from july 3rd…

yes, i am still working on my book, and it's coming along really well, because the synchronicities are outta control…
____

we have just left the wedding early. jeanette, sherry, and i are riding in jeanette's rental car, cruising along the streets of anaheim. it's late enough that the families that have gone to disneyland are probably in their hotel beds dozing away from a day of sunstroke; it's early enough that attendees of the nearby anime expo are probably strolling the strip, frequenting one of its many 24-hour dining establishments. all afternoon and all evening, sherry has been asking me when i am going to call the unmentionable other. before the wedding, i said i'd call him later. during the wedding, i said i'd call him later. the timing just never felt right, and the words i had prepared seemed superfluous.

we are pulling into a 7-11 to gather drinks before heading back to our hotel – a seemingly innocuous event – but it is now, more than a day from when i proclaimed with complete confidence that i intended to call him, that i am suddenly certain.

"i'm not going to call him," i declare. "i don't need to call him. i feel that i understand why he was in my life, and if he wants to contact me, he can. but if not, it's fine."

perhaps the “relationship” shared by myself and the unmentionable other was a mere flapping of a butterfly’s wings on a conceptual level — but in the grand scheme, it has altered the course of my life and subsequently that of countless others. without even trying, he has defined my future, and reactions to benevolent circumstance have formulated my new existence.

our brief interaction opened me up to the idea of really loving someone the way love should be experienced: courageously and honestly. and by approaching the concept of love as a poetic ideal, self-conscious logic was abandoned in the swells of a great, sweeping romantic flow. and while those feelings are ever-shrinking, their memory persists in philosophy and literature. since his disappearance, it has become clear that the unmentionable other has visibly left his imprint upon my life. in every conversation i now have, every book i now discover, every wish or expectation i conjur, there are glimmers of his handiwork.

so though i certainly desire to see him – to try and understand his change in mentality – the messages i’ve already dispatched to him have been abundantly clear. i will be willing to listen when he is willing to speak, and contacting him further seems cruel — as though i would be picking at scabs he is incapable of bandaging or wishes only to eradicate.

it has been a mere three months since his disappearance, but an eternity has passed. three months is enough time for the course of one’s life to shift drastically. i am now a new i — ever subtly, though still significantly. and though the unmentionable other’s departure drew heavy blood, his memory is a teasing reminder of beautiful mysteries and boggling mechanics.

i am probably the least paranoid person ever…

… but i just slightly spooked. i was walking home from northside festival in brooklyn, to the lower east side of manhattan, around 12:30am. it wasn’t even that late, and there was plenty of thru-traffic. buuuut.

the williamsburg bridge splits into two parts about halfway through: one side for pedestrians and one side for bikers. towards the williamsburg end, the two lanes merge right now because of construction. i am walking in this section, ever slowly… and people are biking by in great number, generally ignoring me. some pay attention, though, in the form of one kissy face, complete with smacking sounds, and a couple who look me up and down. generally no big deal. then comes this dude. black dyed hair. gothic. scraggly. older. boombox attached to the front of his bicycle (??).

dude bikes by from the opposite direction, eyeballing me all the while. i see him slowing down as he is passing me, so i half-turn to see what he does. he flips around then gets off his bike. i see him look up and down the bike lane to see if anyone else is coming. there is another biker coming, but pretty far off in the distance. it just so happens we are in the section of the bridge where the pedestrian and biker lanes split once again. he gets off his bike and sits at the entrance of the pedestrian area, looking as though he is waiting for me. i mean. it’s kind of really obvious. i mean, EVERY move he’s made ever since he initially passed by me was really obvious, even though he probably thinks quite the opposite. he smells like alcohol; i smelled it as soon as he started heading towards the pedestrian area.

he lets two people pass; they don’t know each other but are walking extremely closely together. there are no other pedestrians for as far as the eye can see, and the eye can see pretty far at this point. i realize that if i am to now go down the pedestrian path, it could easily be just me and him for another mile. there is a great gap separating the bike and pedestrian paths, and most likely, no one in the bike lane would notice if anything were to happen anyway.

after the pedestrians pass, he puts on GLOVES. i don’t know what the hell that even means, but that may be the most chilling detail of all. all the while, i’m waiting in the bike lane to see what he does. i say aloud, “what are you doing??” to no one in particular, as i watch him from behind a grating.

finally, he comes to me while half-riding his bike, eyeballing me up and down again. he says, “no bike? no skates?” in an almost mocking, sneering manner. i say no. i then ask him why he is waiting for me, and he said that his friend was following him and he is merely waiting for his friend. i don’t believe him for a bloody second.

and i think this next action probably blew his mind, but i decided to defy all the “rules” and walk down the bike lane. he did not follow. i studied the face of every future biker to pass; i am quite certain none of them were his friends.

narrowly avoided catastrophe.

like i said…
i’m probably the least paranoid person ever…
but something was absolutely definitely 100% amiss there.
dee-sss-gusss-teeng.

ah life, it’s a fucking trip!!

man, i suppose i can get on with anyone who is looking for the bigger meaning and attempting to chase the greater truths? ah, man, this recent past has been quite a trip… a showcase of how adaptable the human mind can be, how accepting of whatever circumstances providing there is clear communication. it is ever-fascinating.

i am learning a lot, secondhand, about theories and philosophical concepts. it is completely fascinating. i have never studied — any — philosophy and have pretty much no idea about it whatsoever, but, in chasing this totally fantastical reality of late nights and impulse, ah, man. it’s remarkable. there are so many parallels in the human experience — so many ways that human beings venn diagram with one another.. and it’s ever-so-interesting how people can appreciate one another with open minds even if one another do not equal each other. huh.

i just got back from the coffee shop. it’s 4:42am. blake and i went to the 24-hour coffee shop on powell, called se grind. it wasn’t that crowded tonight, though there was a funny group of people who had just come from jai ho, a bhangra night that usually takes place in seattle (mihae has been before, i think) and was happening in portland this particular evening. coincidentally, i had noticed a jai ho poster earlier today and made a note of it because the graphic design was quite interesting. hadn’t realized it was this evening, though, and even funnier that a group of djs and dancers and random fanhumans showed up at the coffee shop at two in the morning and sat in the same centralized section of couchery blake and i were posted up in. fun times. i want to go all the time! i imagine my being there distracted blake from his readings a little bit so maybe he didn’t find it as amusing as i, but i did a bit of drawing as well as some computer work… and it was just a really entertaining sociological observation thing… i enjoyed it immensely… ah, the overlaps in human experience… some quotes:

girl: seattle’s like microsofties.
guy: little softies.

guy: i’m eating like i’m stoned. what do you call it? munchies?

anyway. blake told me a buncha philosophical concepts which are meta as fuck but there was one particularly poetic {?} sentence which was like, a logical statement, as follows:

“There is an event e such that e is a turning on of a light by John and e was at sunset and e was on the twentieth of August 2010 and e was done while John read in bed.” – Donald Davidson

he also talked to me a bit about nietzsche, who is, in gina’s words, “her main man,” but someone that blake doesn’t really relate to whatsoever. he mentioned that his mentor in college was more in his line of thinking — bigger-picture, how-does-the-universe-function-type philosophy as opposed to pop-culture and sociopolitical philosophy, like neitzsche — and that his whole job was reading neitzsche over and over again and then rewording it in a way that people like blake would understand. errrf. i don’t really know the terminologies relating to these different philosophical schools of thought so it’s kind of difficult for me to really articulate it in any concrete manner, but basically, neitzsche writes in fragments — with individual points which are novel ideas but don’t form a cohesive narrative whole… and he also writes in such a way that is super open to interpretation and perception… so it takes studying his works numerous times to kind of understand his personality, sense of humor, and intentions to truly decode his message.

>>> which led me to ask… do you think neitzsche intentionally wrote about these things in such a vague, open-to-interpretation manner to get more people to read and assimilate their works into their lives? or do you think it was just the way he wrote? and blake’s interpretation was gleaned from the intro to one of neitzsche’s books — i guess — in which he basically said something along the lines of… you are reading this book but probably won’t get anything out of this book not because the answers aren’t there but that you probably won’t understand it. or something. i dunno. i need to read thus spoke zarathustra, as gina has been trying to get me to do. i’m kind of excited. i’ve been reading so heavily in the pseudo-spiritual arena that it seems so fucking interesting — and appropriate for my life {?} purposes?? — to be introduced to the philosophical side now. i can’t really articulate things ever. this is the case with me… but that’s what writing is for…

oh man. so many interesting things we talked of. aaah. my brain is exploding. we also had a really amazing brunch today where a bunch of good pallies came over because shawn is going to the east coast tomorrow for a month-ish, and it was kinda a goodbye. hellzaz ace food — quiches and scrambles and pancakes and mimosas and migas… whoa! so delicioso!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! we killed it!!!!!!!!

also am taking it as a personal goal {?} to {!?} count {!!?} how many times we say “so good” in average conversation amongst our group of friends. haha. cause the number is high. so very, very high.

oh yeah, yesterday was pete’s going-away dinner… and he gave us a bunch of yellow swans records which is suuuuper nice and i’m suuuuper excited to get the chance to sit down and listen to them. ee! but yeah we all went to apizza scholls in portland, and uhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh AMAZING AMAZING AMAZINNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNG.

probably have a million other things to say, but i’ll stop here. i will say, though, that i am definitely beginning to believe — for certain — that love is not a matter of one person for everyone, to the ends of the earth, to soulmate proportions. i think it comes in oh-so-many forms, and it’s maybe {?} a matter of chance if timing works up for you to find something nice that works in that time period. shrug.

with my current sitution, i’ve definitely logically (appropriately) weighed the plusses and minuses, and the other day, it kind of bummed me out because i talked to shawn about it and he seemingly disapproved a lot. but then following a really lovely dinner at rachel’s and even going so far as telling the dude about the conversation, it was rather solidified… things being as they are, they are fleeting, but leaping… leaping is necessary. i went to aaron’s yesterday to listen to the new nurses record (amazing… like, 8 out of 11 songs are fucking hits that could be singles) and we had a really long conversation about life… one of the conclusions being that we just both need to — and are — doing things out of genuine spirit, and that that was the most important thing, as well as just learning to find courage and take leaps. and later that day, gina — without my prompting — said the same thing, about spiritual growth relating to courage and taking leaps. what a functional truth.

functional truths, functional truths, functional truths.
whatever the reasoning for it all… i’m generally very stoked about going with the flow with all this.
i just can’t imagine it all being that much more.

i’m totally exhausted!

i’m listening to... crustation with bronagh slevin.

i have a million events to plan and such and i want nunnnnnaaaaaeeet. hard to pay attention. maybe it’s the weather… maybe it’s more general… dude, i have no idea… .. . i just know that i lit a fire under my own ass two nights ago and now it’s gone already… it’s just the whole… “i feel like i have it in the bag!” thing, only to discover that the bag disappeared. (the bag disappearing being fucked up shit with the event i’m throwing in new york… ughhhhh. cryptacize.)

—

[about last night...] >>> a draft which will be changed out later…

It was one A.M., and I was returning to my bicycle after a midnight lunch date with my friend Blake, who works night shifts. We had just had a deep conversation about ethics and the social responsibilities of individuals who wish to do right in the world, and I was feeling pensive. It took me a second to realize a man had abruptly emerged to my right, walking with me along my route. He apologized for his stealth and for startling me; I responded with, “It’s cool, man.” He in fact had not startled me, so lost in thought I was.

Dressed in multi-colored layers of sweatshirts and vests, the man was quite obviously homeless. He dove right in, the first words out of his mouth being rants. But he stated them in a way that was more like a camp counselor animatedly telling tales than of complete nutcases screaming obscenities, and I felt no fear. Gesturing slightly behind us, he shared, “That woman is insane!” but I saw no woman behind us; in fact, I saw no one behind us. The question, then, was whether he had pulled a woman from his mind’s fiction, or whether he had encountered her quite long ago and bitterly sustained the memory until he was finally able to release it upon another unsuspecting soul. Unbeknownst to me at the time, that question would reemerge throughout the conversation, as I debated whether the events he described were truly myth or reality.

As we passed Powell’s bookstore, he discovered a clove on the ground and picked it up, all the while verbally announcing that he didn’t particularly care for cloves but wanted a smoke. He was kind enough to ask me if I was a smoker, though these were only slight tangents from his life story, which he simply couldn’t share quickly enough. Through his rapid-fire reveals, I gathered that he had formerly been a Merchant Marine who found it abominable that a ship was docked in the city’s port without the proper permits, the boat’s mere existence supposedly a threat to the health of the water in the surrounding area. He also mentioned had recently been picked up by the police for trespassing, and had subsequently been driven thirty miles out of town to a jail, where he had to pay more than two hundred dollars to leave. Everything he spoke of was tangential, like fragments radiating outwards to smaller and smaller ends. Continuity was minimal, each varying exploration into a different subject matter criss-crossing with any number of the others, weaving a stringy mess of webbed information that my brain could barely comprehend, much less provide proper documentation of.

I soon discovered his name was Shermann — with two N’s, as he was quick to point out. Shermann seemed a proper man. His mind was without a doubt deteriorating, but his spirit seemed intact. At no point was he rude — generally quite the opposite, in fact. He questioned me about myself as though he actually cared, and surprisingly, he remembered when I told him that I was Chinese and that I had an older brother. Humorously, he questioned how my brother would like me talking to a white guy, and I could only say, “It’s cool, man; we grew up in a white neighborhood,” and he replied, “Oh okay,” but later made the same ludicrous point, insinuating that my brother would probably beat him up for being a white man who was wasting my time. He incorrectly assumed — firstly, that I lived with my brother; secondly, that my brother would give a shit; thirdly, that my brother would at all think Shermann was trying to date me if he were to see the two of us together.

Shermann also apologized on numerous occasions for wasting my time. But though he would apologize, he would again resume speaking, perhaps because he needed to; at one point, he noted that he simply needed someone to talk to about his problems — though not in so many words. Instead, he chose to spend his word usage in ways my mind cannot even begin to comprehend or recall. Shermann spouted off so much advanced terminology that I was unsure of whether he was crafting new words on the fly or rehashing bits of knowledge he had explored in the distant past. By mixing in scientific — or pseudo-scientific — terminology with sociolinguistic garble and themes as widely varied as conspiracy theories, government figureheads, and space shuttle landings, everything was confused diction evading all dictation.

I was left baffled. What did I know concretely? Shermann had mentioned that he was a former Merchant Marine, that the government had left his veteran self without financial aid, and that he was trying to make his way back to Idaho Falls by way of a job he had just attained for moving concrete at a rate of $15 an hour. All of these things seemed unequivocally true, but the things he mentioned outside of himself begged one to dissect Shermann’s life.

After discovering I was Chinese and could read some Chinese characters, Shermann pulled a Chinese newspaper from his bag. Cigarette burns had burned off faces of realtors and other advertisers, but to Shermann, these faces he had burned did not belong to realtors; they belonged to political figureheads of Korean descent whom he had known personally — though they were clearly in a Chinese newspaper, their names Chinese, to boot.

He wished for me to decode the newspaper for him, but my skills were lacking. He proceeded to dissect the content for me. He had fashioned many a tale despite not being able to read the text; from the photographs, he had crafted fully-encapsulated back stories. A photo of a man swathed in military garb inspired a list of names — John F. Kennedy, Dwight D. Eisenhower, and so on — with hints towards conspiracies. He questioned me about the names by posing questions without roots; I had no idea what his goals were, but knew only that he was asking questions from the intonations in his voice. Being as ignorant of presidential knowledge as I am, I had little stock with which to answer to his gubernatorial inquiries, but I did vaguely catch one point, where he was, I believe, asking me whether it was a grand idea for one to sue the government for leaving veterans behind. But even this line of questioning was difficult to ascertain, for there was no clear end and no beginning, thematic continuity dissolving in his head just as soon as he spoke of it.

The culmination of narrative bliss, though, lied on the back cover of the newspaper. There, a full-color spread with plenty of photographs highlighted a space shuttle take-off. Again, Shermann barraged me with scientific and pseudo-scientific mumbo-jumbo, but there are a few points I sifted from the debris — about space shuttles flying upside-down and being powered by coals, about secret miniature robots emerging from asteroids during the FDR-era, about certain equipment in space shuttles being formed from liquid titanium despite resembling plastic to the layman.

All of Shermann’s impassioned ramblings led me to wonder what his past was truly like. Had he truly seen some insanity as a veteran? Had he once been a brilliant man whose mind had simply deteriorated? How much was fiction, how much fact? There were no answers here, though. No ends and no beginnings, for even if one wished to question Shermann about the roots of his stories, they would most likely be long gone, banished to a world where even the storyteller himself could no longer distinguish fact from fiction.