one of my writer just wrote me the most fucking offensive email ever.

lines:
“Redefine is a marketing project. Publicists send us shit and we kiss there asses to get on their good side? Am I right? It’s what we’re trying to accomplish, to move up in the world. The only reason I’m writing an interview with ***** is because she’s a “name” and it raises both your and my profile to have that on our resumes. Yours for the site, mine for my writing. It’s basic ass kissing 101. I’m fine with it, you’ve got to play the game and all.”

fucking hell fuck.

“It was watching interviews of [Bill Hicks] talking about how he tried to fit into normal comedy for his entire career but wasn’t really successful until he stopped giving a shit about industry restraints and just did what he wanted. That’s when he really took off in Europe. I’d recommend you do the same thing with Redefine. There are a million marketing sites. You’re trying to do something different. Do it. Only play within the lines so much. Sometimes I look at the site and I think we’re basically a slightly more sophisticated Pitchfork clone. You need to give people something they can’t get anywhere else.”

my response was somewhat manic, along the lines of:
“Doing an article about ***** is not to kiss ass. I like her record; you like her record. It makes sense to me that we cover her because she is liked. I don’t think it’s about kissing anyone’s ass at all; in fact, I don’t post a single thing that I don’t believe in. This is a personal rule. I don’t do it for the resume; are you joking me? You have no idea how much time I spend on this shit… it is because I believe in it wholeheartedly not for any kind of marketing shit and definitely not for any fucking money. I kind of find it offensive that you do think I am playing some sort of bullshit game because I work very hard to make that not be the case and I could be doing a lot of things and posting about a lot of motherfuckers that I don’t believe in at all just to get more traffic. Man. I AM A FAN OF EVERY FUCKING BAND I POST ABOUT. I DON’T MAKE SHIT FOR MONEY. Redefine DOESN’T EVEN PAY FOR ITS OWN WEB HOSTING. I pay for it. I have fucking $8 in the bank right now. That’s all there is to it. What fucking game? !!OI!!OI!II If I wanted to play a game I would do simple Q&A’s with every band I interview rather than pouring my heart and soul into shit that takes me fucking hours and hours and hours. I WISH I knew how to paly the fucking game more…

Anyway, again, I’m pretty fucking offended you think it is some kind of marketing project. WHAT THE FUCK. Who the fuck is making money or marketing any kind of fucking shit. I am doing this purely because I believe in every fucking second of it and if you think it is a marketing ploy then FUCK we are clearly not on the same page at all. Are you joking me? Like… the whole point of it is to offer journalism that other people can’t find elsewhere. DO you know how many bands have come and talked to me personally about the articles I do to say that it is their favorite interview they’ve ever done? Or told me that their mothers had called them about articles I had done? That’s not bullshit journalism and that’s not marketing I work very hard to keep this thing honest and pure.”

FUCK MY FACE I AM SO FUCKING PISSED
(fucking my face is probably not a good thing)

ugh.

i am like some forlorn creature, tethered to myself but half floating from afar, frustrated by my own complexities, familiar only with my own inability to clarify the reasons for the distance.

above, a sense of failure in navigating, as though an excited collection of fingers touching down upon grace, and things made of dream fodder, are not enough, will never be enough.

within, a sense of failure in understanding, as though a lack for attention spans and simple underlying sympathies point towards root tendencies towards selfishness.

so inconsolable, so treacherous, though without intention. thus wearing emotions upon one’s sleeve marks one as honest but presents a constant worry and manifests exhaustion in the he, muted or not.

are we acting out scripts? filling in roles? inadvertently dodging faces? purposely giving in automated excess?

—

Edit > 10:48pm
It is most interesting that I have just been reading Virginia Woolf’s To The Lighthouse all evening, and similar words and emotions have been expressed, as I have been feeling, acknowledge ridiculously to be feeling, but want desperately not to feel… My sentiments are not callous to such a degree, not so overwhelmingly filled with distaste or so unloving — but there is a degree of this, which outwardly, manifests similarly. (Hopefully I don’t go sticking my head into the oven in the future, or go burning beautiful things to the ground by sheer idiocy.)

Looking at his hand he thought that if he had been alone dinner would have been almost over now; he would have been free to work. Yes, he thought, it is a terrible waste of time… how trifling it all is, how boring it all is, he thought, compared with the other thing — work. Here he sat drumming his fingers on the table-cloth when he might have been–he took a flashing bird’s-eye view of his work. What a waste of time it all was to be sure! Yet, he thought, she is one of my oldest friends. I am by way of being devoted to her. Yet now, at this moment her presence meant absolutely nothing to him: her beauty meant nothing to him; her sitting with her little boy at the window–nothing, nothing. He wished only to be alone and to take up that book. He felt uncomfortable; he felt treacherous, that he could sit by her side and feel nothing for her… He reproached himself again. He was sitting beside Mrs. Ramsay and he had nothing in the world to say to her…

He felt rigid and barren, like a pair of boots that have been soaked and gone dry so that you can hardly force your feet into them. Yet he must force his feet into them. He must make himself talk. Unless he were very careful, she would find out this treachery of his; that he did not care a straw for her, and that would not be at all pleasant, he thought. So he bent his head courteously in her direction.

{003} vow of silence – but first and foremost, life is fuuuuuuuucked.

i most certainly have some dreams these days that make me wake up and decide i HAVE to write them down, regardless of how much i don’t want to or how particularly annoying they are.

this is the second time this has happened in the past two months (the last being in december, when i discovered the shamanic mysteries of egypt book). this time, instead of two dreams — one about alchemy and one about egypt — it is one dream, very vivid, about magnetism and magic. i would like to make it clear that i have NEVER dreamed about magic, and i don’t think i’ve ever dreamed about magnetism, either. here is the dream below, and none of the dream interpretations of any of the symbols made a single lick of sense:

In a giant room. There are magical performances going on and the last girl is “up.” I am with Troy. The room is cluttered full of items. Her performance INSANELY, with some announcement (or maybe even psychic message or maybe literal message over loudspeaker) that says that this lady’s dance is to combat male-ness – or something along those lines, anyway. It begins with her at the center, pop-and-locking, while a bunch of dudes try and fight her. She is wearing a crop top and baggy pants, like Aaliyah with bad early ‘90s fashion. There is a slow-motion dance move she is doing, and it looks like there is an invisible sphere around her that the enemies cannot penetrate, though I think that’s just an illusion initially. Soon, though, the magic seems to become real and all these crazy objects and happenings begin to happen, and Troy and I are sitting facing it “head-on,” as though she were on a stage in front of us and we are exactly centered in the back of the room watching her… and we begin to wonder aloud how these things are happening and I begin wondering internally if it is only because of our perspective that this magic looks like magic or if it is actually magic. We also wonder if she is making the performance happen. it looks like a three-dimensional animation or rendering or something, not real life; all of the components look rather polished. At this point, many items are magnetized on the ground, and they all begin moving around in a path that she determines – a really complicated path, where every item has their own individual arc and story, like God commanding the lives of each person. At one point, I am on the far side of the room (well actually, I’ve moved diagonally, towards the “front right corner”) and I am near these balloons that she is guiding around on her “magnetic track.” The fascinating thing is that though these objects have a controlled route that they are set on – which magical lady determines – they are also free to be controlled by the other people in the room (again, like God). I find myself drawn to the white balloons, though there are many objects in the room. I hit over and over again one balloon in particular, but find that it always goes back to where it wanted to be and I find this so amusing I giggle. I also hit around a really small white pebble as I’m moving from the front right of the stage to the center middle, where the performer is. But soon, she crumples, and Taraka from Prince Rama emerges from I don’t know where, with really tender energy, and goes to see if she is alright. She is not responsive, and Taraka (or someone) is told to call the performer’s mother. And slowly, everything in the room becomes less magnetized, and it dawns on me that she WAS really controlling everything…

the book it led me to is this book (the book was seriously calling to me). published in 1801, it is a work by francis barrett, called the magus: a complete system of occult philosophy. (the left-most book cover, though i like the other ones much better. but i guess this one did its deed just fine…)

“The Magus is one of the primary sources for the study of ceremonial magic, and for a long time was one of the rarest and most sought after of the 19th century grimoires. Barretts’ magnum opus embodies deep knowledge of Alchemy, Astrology, and the Kabbalah, and has been cited by the Golden Dawn and other occult and esoteric movements as source material. Written in 1801 in the middle of the ‘Age of Reason’, sandwiched between Newton and Darwin, this was possibly the last epoch that a work like this could be composed.” (Quote from sacred-texts.com)

what is most fucked up about finding this book, though, is that i flipped seriously right up to a chapter on magnetism, and was flipped so fast that i closed the book and had to open it again and again flipped right to that page. but not only a chapter, but fuck, man, a sub-section — the eighth one, in magnetism — that started off in its introductory paragraph about dreams and magic. dude. like what???!! and it was very, very adamant that the magicianess was a magicianess — a female…

here are some sample excerpts… the text is hard to read as fuck, both in font and just in content…

CHAP. VIII.
OF THE MAGICAL POWER, &c.

“Therefore the knowledge and power magical, and that faculty in man which acteth only per nutum (and also) sleeps since the knowledge of the apple was eaten and as long as this knowledge (which is of the flesh and blood, gross and material, belonging to the external man and darkness) flourishes, the more noble magical power is lying dormant.

But because to sleep this outward or sensual knowledge is sometimes dormant, hence it is that our dreams are sometimes prophetical, and God himself is therefore nearer unto man in dreams, through that effect, viz. when the more inward magic of the soul being uninterrupted by the flesh, diffuses itself on every side into the understanding; even as when it sinks itself into the inferior powers thereof it safely leads those who walk in their sleep by moving or conducting them, whither those that were awake could not surmount or climb.

Therefore we establish this point, viz. that there is inherent in the soul a certain magical virtue given to her by God, naturally proper and belonging to her, in asmuch as we are his image and engravement; and in this respect she acts also in a peculiar manner, i.e. spiritually on an object at a distance, and that more powerfully than by any corporeal assistance; for seeing the soul is the principal part of the body, therefore all action belonging to her is spiritual, magical, and of the greatest validity…

High and sacred is the force of the microcosmical spirit, which, as is evident in pregnant women, stamps upon the young the image and properties of a thing desired, as we have before instanced in a cherry, which, without the trunk of a tree, brings forth a true cherry, that is flesh and blood, enobled with the properties and power of the more inward or real cherry, by the conception of the imagination alone; from whence are two necessary consequences.

First, that all the spirits, and as it were the essences of all things, lie hid in us, and are born and brought forth only by the working, power, and phantasy of the microcosm.

The second is, that the soul, in conceiving, generates a certain idea of the thing conceived; the which, as it before lay hid unknown, like fire in a flint, so by the stirring up of the phantasy there is produced a certain real idea, which is not a naked quality, but something like a substance, hanging in suspence between a body and a spirit, that is the soul.

That middle being is so spiritual, that it is not plainly exempted from a corporeal condition, since the actions of the soul are limited on the body, and the inferior orders of faculties depending upon it, yet so corporeal that it may be inclosed by dimensions, the which we have also related to be only proper to a feminal being. This ideal entity, therefore, when it falls out of the invisible and intellectual world of the microcosm, it puts on a body, and then it is first enclosed by the limitation of place and numbers.

The object of the understanding is in itself a naked and pure essence, not an accident, by the consent of practical, that is, mystical divines; therefore this Proteus or transferable essence, the understanding doth, as it were, put on and clothe itself, with this conceived essence.

But because every body, whether external or internal, hath its making in its own proper image, the understanding knows and discerns not, the will loves and wills not, the memory recollects not, but by images or likenesses: the understanding therefore puts on this same image of its object; and because the soul is the pure simple form of the body, which turns itself about to ever member, therefore the acting understanding cannot have two images at once, but first one and then the other. He, who is wholly the life, created all things and hath said, nothing is to be expected as dead out of his hand. Likewise nothing can come to our view wherein himself is not clearly apparent or present; for it is said, “the spirit of the Lord hath filled the whole globe of the earth:” and, again, “that he containeth or comprehendeth all things,” therefore there is nothing in being, no creature but what possesses a certain degree of divine fire and life, yet lying dormant or unexcited, til stirred up by the art, power, and operation of man.

—

CHAP. IX
OF THE EXCITING OR STIRRING UP THE MAGICAL VIRTUE.

Every magical virtue therefore stands in need of an excitement, by which a certain spiritual vapour is stirred up, by reason whereof the phantasy which profoundly sleeps is awakened, and there begins an action of the corporeal spirit, as a medium, which is that of Magnetism, and is excited by a foregoing touch.

There is a magical virtue, being as it were abstracted from the body, which is wrought by the stirring up of the power of the soul, from whence there are made most potent procreations, and most famous impressions, and strong effects, so that nature is on every side a magicianness, and acts by her own phantasy; and by how much the more spiritual her phantasy is, so much the more powerful it is, therefore the denomination of magic is truly proportional or concordant…

But the magical virtue of the exhales spiritual vapour, or subtil spirits sent from the body, which before lay in potentia, or by way of possibility only, is either excited by a more strong imagination, the magician making use of the blood as a medium, and establishing his kindled entity thereon, or by the ascending phantasy of the weapon salve, the exciteress of the property lying in the blood; else by a foregoing appointment or disposition of the blood unto corruption, viz. whereby the elements are disposed unto a separation, and the effences (which cannot putrify) and the effential phantasies, which lay hid in the properties come forth into action.

There is therefore a certain formal property separated from sympathetical and abtruse qualities; because the motive phantasy of these qualities do not directly fly unto a local motion, but only to an alterative motion of the object. Now it is sufficient that (if a man happens to receive many wounds on his body) blood be had only from one of these wounds, and from this one the rest are cured also, because that blood keeps a concordant harmony with the spirit of the whole, and draws forth from the fame the offensive quality communicated, not only to the lips of the wound, but to the whole man, for from one wound only the whole man is liable to grow feverish.

Therefore the outchased blood being received on the weapon is introduced into the magnetic unguent.

For the phantasy of the blood, being otherwise as yet drowsy and slow to action, being stirred up by the virtue of the magnetic unguent, and there finding the balfamic virtue of it, desires the quality induced into it, to be bestowed on itself throughout, and from thence by a spiritual magnetism to draw out all the strange tincture of the wound, which, seeing it cannot fitly enough effect by itself, it implores the aid of the moss, blood, fat and mummy, which are conjoined together into such a balsam, which not but by its own phantasy becomes also medicinal, magnetical, and is also a tractor of all the strange qualities out of the body, whole fresh blood, abounding with spirit, is carried unto it, whether it shall be that of a man or any other living creature. The phantasy therefore is a returner, or reducible andecstatical, from part of the blood that is fresh and newly brought unto the unguent; but the magnetic attraction began in the blood is perfected by the medicinal virtue of the unguent; not that the unguent draws the infirmity of the wound unto itself, but it alters the blood newly brought unto it, in its spirit, and makes it medicinal, and stirs up the power thereof: from thence it contracts a certain medicinal virtue, which returns upon its whole body to correct the spirit of the blood throughout the whole man. Now, to manifest a great mystery, viz. to shew that in man there is placed a great efficacy whereby he may be able only by his beck, (as we before mentioned) nod or phantasy, to act out of himself, or to imprint a virtue, a certain influence which afterwards perseveres, or constantly subsists by itself, and acts upon objects at a very great distance; by which only mystery, those things which we have spoken (relative to ideal entity conveyed in a spiritual jewel, and departing far from home to execute its offices, concerning the magnetism of all things begotten in the imagination of man, as in that which is proper to every thing, and also concerning the magical superiority of men over all other bodies,) will plainly and conspicuously appear.

—

CHAP. X.
OF THE MAGICAL VIRTUE OF THE SOUL, AND THE MEDIUM BY WHICH IT ACTS.

… man hath a power of acting, per nutum, or by his nod, or of moving any object remotely placed; it has also been sufficiently confirmed by the fame natural example, that this efficacy was also given unto men by God.

As every magical faculty lies dormant, and has need of excitement, or stirring up; which is always true, if the object whereon it is to act is not nearly disposed, if its internal phantasy doth not wholly confirm to the impression of the agent, or also if the patient be equal in stregth, or superior to the agent therein.

But on the contrary, where the object is plainly and nearly disposed, as steel is, for the receiving of magnetism, then the patient without much stirring up, the alone phantasy of the more outward man being drawn out to the work and bound up to any suitable mean, yields to the magnetism.

Therefore we repeat, the magician must always make use of a medium; for then the words or forms of sacraments do always operate, because from the work performed. But the reason why exorcisms, conjurations, charms, incantations, &c. do sometimes fail of their desired effect, is because the unexcited mind, or spirit of the exorcist, renders the words dull or ineffectual.

Therefore no man can be a happy or successful magician, but him who knows how to stir up the magical virtue of his soul, or can do it practically without science.

And there can be no nearer medium of magnetism, than human blood with human blood.

And no sympathetic remedies, magnetical or attractive, but from the idea or phantasy of the operator impressing upon it a virtue and efficacy from the excited power of his own soul.

And now to bring our Magnetic Treatise to a total conclusion, we have to say, that whoever, through ignorance or obstinacy, will say there is no validity or reason, or reality in the science of magnetism, proves himself unworthy the sacred name of philosopher, because he condemns what he knows nothing at all about.

For those who will give themselves the leisure to examine the truth of those things which we have taught, will not find their expectation deceived, therefore, will not condemn…

We therefore, who have the like humanity, contain blood and spirit of a co-like unity; and the action of the blood is merely spiritual. Therefore, in Genesis, it is not called by the etymology of blood, but is made remarkable by the name of a red spirit.

Therefore, let those who would attain knowledge in these things, and be perfect in what we have set before them, constantly meditate and desire that the First Cause and Archetype of all thing would graciously and mercifully illuminate their minds; without which, they grope in darkness and uncertainty, and are subject to the delusions of impure spirits and devils, who are only to be put to flight by putting on the whole armour of God, in whom we all live, move, breathe, and have our being.

END OF MAGNETISM.

anyway, now sitting in powell’s. what else happened today! i planned out my fucked up schedule for the upcoming months. going to be in seattle for the 5th through the 7th (going to break my vow of silence on the 5th, unfortunately), have a business meeting on the 6th (wherein a really amazing opportunity, potentially, presented itself, and we’ll see where that goes), give a speech about redefine on the 26th for research club, spend the rest of the following week in seattle, then leave for sxsw tour on the evening of march 5th. it is all going to be a whirlwind! and i plan to spend the last week and a half of march in california, so i can attend to business, and things, and such.

we will see what happens with the rest. what else happened today…………………… flaked on watching a movie — a really awesome 3d dance movie — that i had wanted to watch and ended up in powell’s instead. this madness turned out to be positive…

ran into darcy on the way. she is from the building i used to volunteer at. she was super excited to see me and was lining up at a church nearby to get a free dinner meal. she called me down and said hi, but i felt bad because i was vow of silencing and unable to talk to her. i typed her a message on my phone to tell her i was doing a vow of silence, and she was like, oh, okay, and said bye, and was smiley, but i don’t know that she understood it wholly. hopefully she was not bummed. it was nice to see her, though… i don’t usually come downtown too often, but pretty much almost every time i come downtown i see her. it’s actually quite incredible. and in different places, too.

not sure what else there is to say. nothing comes to mind. until tomorrow.

oh real quick…
number of times i’ve fucked up today: 3?
number of times i fucked up yesterday: 3?

certainly better than the previous 12.

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).

subconscious idiot/genius.

i’m listening to… emil & friends’ new album, lo & behold. first time listening. haven’t decided what i think yet. interesting, yes, but i really loved the ep and this i am this far not that amazingly stoked on. dude is obviously talented as all hell, though, and doing something interesting, and i’m sure his live show hella kills…

i just woke up with some ideas that compelled me to actually physically wake up and do shit. ughhhhh i am ridiculous. see below for email i just drafted to gina because… my subconscious is so ridiculous!!!!!

so
as usual my subconscious is simultaneously being a major idiot and genius. for some reason, in one of my four wake-up-with-ideas states-of-mind this morning, i woke up with some idea for you to rearrange your room. clearly you don’t need to do this but i thought i’d pass it on…

i was thinking that if you turned your bed 90′ from the way it is right now, your bed could be used as some kind of couch for movie-watching, and where all your records are right now could go at where the foot of your bed is right now. the projector could go next to one end of your bed (the far end). would make your room bigger and your bed more a couch.

why the fuck am i thinking about this shit?

also kinda had to just wake up because i just had an idea for an art piece i would do. ugh. what the fuckkkkkkkkkkkkk! in any case, think i’ll pitch that piece to place sometime… woo sugars and candies and caffeines! makes the brain crazy but very productive! it’s sunrise outside right now! the sky is nice and pink and purple. looks pretty dope…

arf. arf. arf.

how was the rest of your night?

also, were t_____’ friends annoying yesterday? he apologized for their presences and that they were obnoxious, though i personally didn’t especially notice at the time…??

vivian

last night, we had a mini-party at our place that went til pretty late — like 2am or something — because rose and maddy are leaving. and cause i’m leaving for a month, a week from now. which is crazy!!! here’s the description originally posted for that party, although we didn’t end up bedazzling anything! i did manage to bust out the crazy shirt from camboria that lenny’s mom bought me, though, cause it is a hella bedazzled shirt with “burberry” written onto it in glittery rhinestones. pretty amazing…

hello fine ladies and gentleman residing in the greater portland area!!! if it would behoove you to join us for this eve of festive gathering and camaraderie, you would be very much a delightful and welcome addition.

vivian and rose shall be departing on a month-long cross-country road trip, beginning the 13th of september — which will culminate in rose “peacin out dis bitch whut whut”.

similarly, maddy shall also be “peacin out dis beeeeeyotcccccch!!!!!!!!!!!!” on the 11th of september, though her route will take her throughout the southwest and back to minnesota.

to celebrate their life growths, we iz sayin bai with potluck n dranx and steez. come by and hang oos.

OH YEAH AND BRING A PIECE OF CLOTHING N LEZ BEDAZZLE SUM SHIT. (YES, THERE IS A BEDAZZLER.)

BLING BLINGIN ENCOURAGED. THERE WILL BE STREAMERS, EVEN!

holla dolla. herndy verndy.

i also finally got robby and matt to meet, which i am particularly stoked about, since they both really like math and shapes, and are two human beings who i respect artistically to the utmost degree. both of their websites, respectively: robbykraft.com and mattleavitt.com (see also: interview with matt on redefine)

as i am currently sitting outside on our patio — it is 6:28am — i am being harassed by our local neighbor cat, aka (by shawn) scruffy cat. scruffy cat always wants the love and is totally cute as fuck, and i would be way more open to her hanging out and climbing all over me if someone would just cut her claws. she’s constantly scratching the shit out of me without meaning to, i’m sure, because she’s totally cuddly and all love. c’est la vie. man, troy has all the animals!! he has like three animals that are constantly running into his room because his door doesn’t latch. but that’s neither here nor there… just needed to say… it’s been quite a while since i’ve regularly associated with animals. it’s kind of nice.

might sublet prince rama’s apartment with rose, if they’re into it, and then i’d have a place in bedstuy in brooklyn, next to pratt, and that’d be hella rule. i think i’m going to have my apartment subletted too, so i would actually be saving money on rent and would have a dope part of brooklyn to live in (one i actually wanna explore, and really wanted to explore last time). this trip is coming together rad… all of a sudden a bunch of people popped out of the woodwork — acquaintances and such — who are contacts in detroit. also, a street photographer gave me a list of abandonments in detroit to check out, and was super glad to share. i’m excited as all hell. i haven’t taken photography for quite a minute because frankly, i just haven’t been giving a shit (seriously, that trip to vietnam turned me off on photography so hard even though i had some good images from that set)… but hopefully this time will bring me back to liking photography in the same way that i liked it when all-you-can-jet was going on a few years prior.

(side note: as of just now i’ve just added a new category to my sidebar: subconscious)

it was in a recent conversation that i discussed with rose that intuitive me knew “better” than reality me. she was skeptical about that and said it was dangerous, but i said it hasn’t proved me wrong yet. and it hasn’t, man. subconscious me has the BEST fucking ideas. meditative states and the spaces between sleep and wake are where i get the best ideas, easily, because waking me is way not that profound all the time. haha.

aaron and i had a conversation last week about that concept, as well, where aaron was talking about how maybe the fourth dimension was a connected interwoven “sense of everything being one”, which is interesting because i’m reading the tao of physics and i happened to pick it up again that day that aaron and i hung out, and in it it was simultaneously talking about how the fourth dimension for physicists was space-time, where time is on one continuum that is constantly flowing and constantly happening at once, and how for mystics, it is a “place” devoid of space and time, but is nonetheless moving forward. that same concept came up in conversation with troy and andrew last night, where troy was talking about how creation is what is constantly moving us forward in time — creation both in terms of human creation and universe creation — and it is something i intuitively feel. i lately had a conversation with andrew, after watching a documentary about the mayan interpretation of 2012, about what might potentially happen in 2012, should something actually happen. what i was talking about was a “balance” of sorts, because that’s what the mayans feel will happen, essentially, where an intuitive female power will start taking influence again, and the “western” mode of rational thought will stop being as dominating and important. i mean, if you look at the state of the world right now, it seems perhaps possible that the current trend of western hyper-logical thinking isn’t necessarily working on a global scale. and in terms of musical creations and artistic tendencies, there is definitely a return to less structured, intuition-based spontaneous creation without forethought. there is also a return to primalism of sorts. will all of this culminate at the end of 2012 into this insanely crazy shift of mental proportions? i dunno. it sounds crazy to believe that something might actually happen, but i feel it. but then again, this is what andrew said that his parents in the ’60s felt… that things seemed ever so crystal-clear to them and they thought, “if only everyone could get it and see things as we do…” but no one ever got it. but i dunno. that’s why i think 2011 is so bloody important and why there are many an idea in my head of things i need to accomplish by the end of the year (first and foremost being my book) because i feel they are important, particularly in this time, right here, right now. god, it feels crazy to feel that way. well anyway, back to what i was talking about. i was talking to andrew about 2012 being a potential shift in balance, and that that would perhaps lead to a small group of people who are intuitive and logically-minded to pave the way for positive change (like our group of friends right now… this is another thing that was recently touched upon… when we were at helsing junction, gina was reading a joseph campbell book, talking about cultural monads, and essentially, how, through the artist and music, we can make great cultural change because they are the ones who touch culture at large… and essentially, gina and i are doing this to some degree right now, along with many other people…) … … in response to this, andrew’s thought was… “if everyone becomes good, doesn’t that destroy the balance of all things?” and while i agree with that theoretically, i tried to give the example that although there is always the presence of good and evil in everyone’s lives, it is, after the existence of those things, a choice for one to figure out which route they would take in their own lives. the same set of circumstances thrust upon different people would yield different results. one might spiral downwards while another floats to the top. that kind of forward momentum is something that undeniably exists — the third aspect of what would otherwise be a duality. the third aspect is what makes the change, whatever that third aspect is. whether it be choice, or creation, or some kind of otherwise undefined forward-propelling momentum. (WHAT THE FUCK AM I TALKING ABOUT GHHAHFHHHHHHGAHHHHH!)

other than that, jeff was talking to me last night about how a lot of writers who are nobodies, such as i, and him, get friends to act as publisher, and that these friends will support one another. publisher would basically be… your friend prints your book and backs your product because they feel it is important, and it’s less vain than publishing your own shit and trying to push it on other people. but the problem is my thing is fairly lengthy and i don’t exactly want a chapbook… i want a nicely bound actual book. we’ll see. perfect-bound shit is pricey shit, after all. and i know that some people publish through lulu.com but i haven’t properly researched that just yet.

anyway. lastly. i wanna share a small selection of photographs from helsing junction that rose recently sent me from our trip that past weekend, cause they are nice. if anything, traveling with rose for the next month is going to result in one million thousand photographs! holy hell!

oh, and, generally speaking, i’ve been loving on this song so hard (see my review)

OH YEAH and. last edit for the morning as it just hit 7:00am… and i should go back to taking a nap since i went to bed at 2:30am and shit…

THEY RECENTLY DISCOVERED A DIAMOND PLANET THE SIZE OF JUPITER!!!

i found out about it from troy through this time magazine article but funnily enough i just realized this one person is following me on wordpress (thx mang) and he wrote a pretty in-depth post about it, if you wanna check it out here.

in other news, my “tags” for each individual post are getting more and more “out there” with every entry… haha.

carebear strikes again.

mom’s original email:

Hi! Phil and Vivian,

How’s everything? We are doing fine. If you need to contact me, just send email to me. I can find Roxanne’s email address, say hello for us.

Mom

my response, part one:

things are good! really busy!
where are you guys now and what is the latest thing you’ve seen?

my response, part two:

you know what would be fun.
i think from now on our emails should all include 2 thing that have recently happened which have made you happy, and 1 thing you’re looking forward to!!! OKAY??!
[ [ [ [ [ PS - PHIL DID YOU EVER GIVE THEM MY PRESENT?????????????????????? ] ] ] ] ]

i’ll go first.

- COMING UP: i’m looking forward to seeing everyone at jeremy’s wedding this weekend! not looking forward to giving wedding $$$ ;p
- PASSED: my friend just gave me a bunch of images of his artwork. you can see it here… it’s the trees! he started with a single brush stroke (japanese sumi ink) and then added the trees after the basic shape was formed. they’re all differerent and all really incredible. see here.
- PASSED: we had an alice in wonderland-themed picnic in the park last sunday…!! i made a dress, kinda. here are some pictures:

heck yeah! i will make you bitches think positively!!!

>>>

in other news.
it’s funny to have recently met the swahili people because they are so much on the same page… i mean, they even say “so good,” which is pretty much just really super ridiculous. cosmic.

today i went to a lecture that troy (yeah, troy, but not the los angeles one) invited me to about science versus belief. it was interesting… interesting in that… i am also trying to bridge science with spirituality, but the route the dude (a chemist who basically reworked entire theoretical physics models to fit his worldview…) took was soooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo far removed from everything i’ve been thinking though the basic topics are still there. as is the basic notion of duality… so… i can say he’s astute, but i disagree completely with EVERYTHING he said, and it was maddening because there were people in the audience (“audience”) who were really quick to accept his theoretical model though his graphs and charts meant NOTHING at all and had NO value… and one guy behind me was saying, “you just have to realize that people are idiots and the majority of people don’t know what’s right!” and that was his argument against the current theoretical physics models. it was kind of sickening and really, really disturbing. anyway, the fact that he is a chemist — an extremely rigid form of science because as blake said, “it’s generally figured out and is a complete science,” only adds to the fact that i think what he’s saying is crap. furthermore, he would say stuff like, “that just doesn’t look right to me,” and that was essentially his justification for that stuff being ‘wrong’ and his model being ‘right’. man, i swear, you can manipulate data in any way to construct the reality you want…

anyway, i’m going to los angeles this weekend for jeremy’s wedding. i am going to call up troy. i rather doubt he will meet up with me… or even responsd to me… but i’ll try anyway. other than that… oh right, xinlei got engaged. aaaah! everyone!

and lastly, one more thing. after last friday’s chemical ingestion session with blake, the next day, I BECAME A PRO BIKER! seriously, though. i went to research club the following day and was biking circles in ladd’s addition with no hands. weirdest fucking shit. it just magically clicked and now i can bike huge huge huge huge huge huge huge huge huge stretches and blocks and blocks with no hands. and i don’t even have to think about it. it’s super easy. second nature. makes ZERO sense. i dunno what clicked or why, but something clicked. SO WEIRD.

blake also leaves in a couple weeks for montana and then the east coast, which is kind of a little strange. i don’t think i’ll realize just how strange til it happens, though…!

i also opened a new bank account with wells fargo because they don’t charge you the same amount in ridiculous fees that chase does. the banker who opened my account was really quite fun. he also told me a banking joke — of “which there are not many” — but i guess people at wells fargo say that “chase chases all their customers to [us]“. har har har.

anyway. exciting things coming up. i’m finally lighting a fire under my ass again, at least a little bit…

I AM STEADFAST IN COSMICBABBLE.

i feel really good about my writing. really good. everything in my life is converging… i don’t know where it is converging to, or why i am so lucky to have been picked, or where it will stop, but i’m along for the ride, chasing the chaos in the order, noting the order guiding the chaos. my god. it is the pattern which flows with the universe everywhere, and i’m not the only one who sees it. my intuition tells me about the science; the science confirms my intuition. it is all so brilliantly, wonderfully divine… all of the dualities i see in life are making themselves apparent. i can only articulate them through documentation… but i am onto something. there is no way i am not. there is absolutely no way.

—

“One wintry afternoon in 1975, aware of the parallel currents emerging in physics, preparing his first major work for publication in book form, [Benoit] Mandelbrot decided he needed a name for his shapes, his dimensions, and his geometry. His son was home from school, and Mandelbrot found himself thumbing through the boy’s Latin dictionary. He came across the adjective fractus, from the verb frangere, to break. The resonance of the main English cognates—fracture and fraction—seemed appropraite. Mandelbrot created the word (noun and adjective, English and French) fractal.” - James Gleick, Chaos: Making A New Science.

“Science would be ruined if (like sports) it were to put competition above everything else, and if it were to clarify the rules of competition by withdrawing entirely into narrowly defined specialties. The rare scholars who are nomads-by-choice are essential to the intellectual welfare of the settled disciplines.” - Benoit Mandelbrot, French American mathematician

(Mandelbrot is my new mini hero.)

gotta get give!

My Turkey trip is supposed to leave tomorrow. I was supposed to fly to Oakland this morning, but I was so convinced the trip wouldn’t be happening (read: Icelandic volcano) that I re-booked my flight to Oakland for tomorrow. It cost me $130 extra, but like I said, I was convinced. Well, the thing is, my friends, that it looks like the flight to Turkey is on. In many, many ways, it’s kind of terrifying, because we don’t actually know what the volcano will look like a week from now. Or hell, even tomorrow. Or hell, if Katla, the more “violent” volcano, is going to blow in addition to the current one.

Moving onwards. But first, I just have to say, I was on that freaking glacier where the volcano is now! The secret powers! Zomg! I could be angry about the Turkey stuff being all weird and unclear, but I’m not. Being in the power of nature, which can throw all of man’s plans for a loop however the fuck it wants to and decides to, is kind of amazing. What’s more — the volcano is affecting globalized Western nations. No longer is it an offshore earthquake in some third-world country. It’s so much more real. And granted, the people afflicted aren’t suffering in as real ways as, say, earthquake victims, but that’s to be expected, really…

Anyway.

I haven’t deposited checks in a while to my personal account because I’ve been, on all accounts, quite fuckig broke! I have had enough money to pay for my credit card bills, but for the past month {?}, I’ve been living off of credit cards — aka, one month in advance. Which is really nice. I know a lot of people are against credit cards, but I don’t think there’s any reason to be against them if you’re a responsible person who can pay bills on time. Don’t spend what you don’t have… it’s not that complicated. But in emergency cases like cases of emergency poorness, credit cards are certainly quite a fucking help.

So I got some checks which came in recently, so I’m now out of the red, I think. Well, thank god! To celebrate, today I went to go deposit my checks. It’s about a half mile walk each way to the bank. Ladida. The bank is across the street from Fred Meyer. I decided to go into Fred Meyer to pick myself up some light dinner. The idea was salad. There was a homeless guy selling the local homeless newspaper, Street Roots, outside of Fred Meyer, and I kinda didn’t pay too much attention to him when I was walking in, which I realized as I was walking in. I decided to buy him some food… I thought about an apple or a banana, but I remembered being rejected — on that same street — of an offer for an apple because the person I was giving it to was allergic to them. I opted for soup instead, because it’s kind of a cold and rainy day. Of course, keeping myself in mind, I got two variations of soup — choice, my friends! — so that I could keep one for myself and eat it myself. Settled on broccoli cheddar (the one I actually wanted) and a crab chowder. Also bought this lovely little 99 cent bundle of foccacia bread, which I’m sure was just delicious! I approached the guy outside, and he bared a toothless smile. I told him I’d bought him soup, if he was interested. I had one soup in each hand, and he said he was interested, and opened up both palms to take in both the soups. “One of them’s mine,” I told him, “but you can pick!” He picked the broccoli cheddar. Of course. I swear, every time I give a choice, they always pick the choice I want. Hahahahaha. It’s kinda funny.

Anyway. So I gave him the soup and went on, crab chowder in hand and crackers in pocket. Of course, two blocks down, was another homeless man. An older black man with dreadlocks, holding a sign that says, “Anything helps,” or something along those lines. Well, how can I deny him? Shit. I just gave the other guy some soup. Now I have to give this guy some soup… so I asked him if he wanted some, and he asked what kind it was. I told him crab chowder, and he said, yes. I told him I didn’t have a spoon. He said he’d get one. And said thanks, and called me dear, which I liked. Haha. Old people calling you dear is just cute. Actually, anyone, I guess. I like that term as a term of endearment. So I gave him the soup and I went on my way, pleased with myself. A lot of people bring up the argument that being happy about giving is selfish, but I don’t feel like that’s fair. Just because it makes you happy doesn’t mean that is the motivation, know what I mean? I’m not sure what the motivation is. It’s just something to do.

In any case, I went away pretty quickly, bidding both people goodbye and have a nice night and yadda yadda. As I was walking away, I was wondering to myself…………………………….. and this is the main purpose of this post, really, not to brag about the soup-giving, because that’s pretty unextraordinary…………………………. is it rude to just give and run away? It’s not even running away… it’s just me in awkward “I’ll-leave-you-alone-now” style. Is it better to try and make conversation? Are they lonely? Do they want to be left in peace? What is the correct thing to do in such a situation? Does it even make sense to think about this so much? Should I even worry about my reactions and actions in such a circumstance?

I don’t really have answers to these questions. And I kind of hate that they come up to begin with… but it’s unavoidable. I mean, talk about overthinking things you do. But I can’t help it. That’s all, really. Vomit.

Wait, one more thing. This post reminds me of this book I just finished reading, called Jenny And The Jaws Of Life, by Jincy Willett. I bought this book a long time ago and had forgotten all about it, but I now highly re-recommend it. It’s not a comedy, as the Amazon reviews will correctly tell you. It’s tragicomic. Tragicomic short stories that wallow in the hilarious miseries of human existence. It embraces what I lately find to be the should-be ruling motto of life (in fact, one story deals with that issue directly, head on):
MISERY IS HILARIOUS. FIND AMUSEMENT IN HORRIBLE TRAGEDY. IT’S THE BEST WAY TO SURVIVE.

I mean to lend this book to Sherry on our trip to Turkey. But I don’t think she’ll get it. Nonetheless.

PS – I’m REALLY fat right now. Gross.

—

ADDENDUM: Xinlei read this post and e-mailed me a really funny story about her mom. I just have to share.

so your post totally reminds me of what my mom told me the other day. she saw a homeless guy at the pleasanton bart during the winter, and he looked cold. so she went home and found an old blanket/sleeping bag thing, and decided to go drop it off to him. it was late at night, so bart was closed. anyway, she went to drop it off and the guy was sleeping and hiding under some clothes or something… and as she walked up to him, he looked up at her and she freaked out because she didn’t realize he’d wake up and she THREW the blanket at him and ran away… hahahaha. -____- her heart was in the right place. but pretty funny because she dashed back to the car. then she was like, crap, i dont even know if it was a man or a woman.

the way it should be.

I’m listening to… Bright Eyes’ Cassadaga album.

I don’t know if this is kosher to re-post, but I’m doing it anyway, considering I’m going to link to the original. I woke up at 10am this morning after going to bed at 4am last night again. My sleep schedule is so whacked, I tell you. But whatever. Or maybe it’s not whacked. I wake up refreshed… so maybe it’s good. It’s strange, though… I wake up with a halt, and immediately a buncha thoughts start pouring in… it’s like my body has been wanting to wake up all night (and in the event of last night, I did wake up like three times) to harass me with thoughts, but I force it to sleep so that my mind will STFU.

I woke up and was a bit of a zombie, staring off, not doing much other than listening to Bright Eyes… I told Jeanette that I didn’t know what to do with myself for the moment. She told me to go to gdgt and I told her I hate technology, so she directed me to a blog entitled, Matt, Liz, & Madeline. I hate the way this guy writes and I essentially find reading his blog to be a really painful experience (due to the spacing, mostly), but there was an interesting two days in his life where his baby was born and then his wife died within 48 hours afterwards. I’m going to copy and paste a clip from this post below. I found it particularly sweet…

the memorial service for liz

is in less than

7 hours.

i was thinking about

the rather

unconventional memorial service

we had for

liz

in pasadena…

first,

we turned off

the standard funeral music

(on eagle’s wings)

and replaced it with some

of our own

(arcade fire, smog, sun kil moon, steve reid ensemble, etc).

funeral director came running in

and turned it off

thinking it was a mistake.

i gave him hell for it.

it was turned back on.

then the service started.

and i don’t remember anything

after that.

i apparently said, “fuck”

as in,

“this fucking sucks”

and i was told

(after the service)

by the same funeral director

who shut down the

indie-rock funeral soundtrack

that i was the first

person to ever utter the

word, “fuck”

in his chapel.

i don’t know

if he thought it was

awesome

or

if he was pissed off.

not too sure

how things will

go

in a few hours

but,

the soundtrack will remain the same

and i’ll likely be the first person to

say “fuck” in the chapel

at lakewood cemetery

in the mpls.

That being said, Jeanette was saying that the internet basically banded together to help him cope and get by as a single parent, giving his sympathies and advice. And a year and a half later, I wonder… with so many people wrapped up in his blog (obviously) and why it got famous in the first place… I feel like moving on for him will be difficult, or even maybe taboo in the eyes of some of these social observers. Just saying.

apparently…

lenny: did you know the f word appears 48 times on the front page of your blog

Nope, I did not! Apparently, I fucking say fuck a lot ~__~ But not just fuck. Motherfucker and its deriviations as well!

lenny: lol omg
lenny: http://www.wordle.net/gallery/wrdl/340208/Lolors
lenny: according to that word cloud
lenny: you are a valley girl

Image from Wordle.net!