blarbargh blarghath neglecting myself.

in honor of having a real relationship, i have been neglecting myself. i feel good about it, mostly, but for the past couple days i have felt less good about it! i have goals! and it’s easy to get distracted. luckily, my schedule has been more free than usual as of late — primarily due to no longer feeling the burden of heavy social responsibility with regards to many interactions — so it has generally worked out. but i’m getting back to me, at least for this evening, because i’ve realized that i only have two weeks before rose and i embark on this:

this, this, this! what is this? a road trip plan! a plan for a road trip! and it is coming, sooooooooooooooooo ridiculously soon. currently in the process of attempting to find someone to sublet my apartment and/or trade me for two weeks. ideally someone in new york so i would have a place to stay in new york. man, would that be amazing…

the temporary plan is this… (copy and pasted from an email from rose…)

Oregon >
13th – 7.5 Boise, ID *
14th – 5.5 Idaho, SLC
15th/16 – 8.3 Denver, CO *
17- 7.5 Lincoln
18 – 1 – Omaha, NE
19 – 4.5 – Cedar Rapids
20- 4 Chicago, IL – **
21st – 4.5 Ann Arbor, MI
22nd – 1 detriot + 4 Hamilton, Canada
23rd – 4 Niagra / Border Patrol / Syracuse, NY
24th – 5 NY NY NY NY NY NY!!!

honestly, it is all a bit short for my liking and i’d rather just get to new york by the 28th… buuut whatever. it’s kinda crazy that sometime during the past week there was a hurricane warning that turned new york into a potential “state of emergency” and i had heard nothing about it whatsoever! luckily troy actually gives a shit about the news and can tell me things, but as this girl who works at palace — nicole — and i were discussing, it’s very simple to stay in a bubble in portland. neither of us had any clue… it’s so easy to get lost in the micro here, in the everyday routine…

anyway, back to the road trip.

will be staying with brian baker in boise, will be staying with ed and kathy in denver. met a few people this past sunday from ann arbor who might be able to take us around, so that’s potentially exciting — though i think we might be getting in after the guy leaves, which is too bad. but we’ll see! but there seem to be a lot of randoid connections since nim is actually originally from ann arbor.

tonight troy and i watched this movie at grindhouse in hollywood theatre… it was pretty amazing, i must tell you. it’s like a bunch of extremely proper british hippies turned into bike zombies. not even joking. minor touchings-upons on the occult and other ridiculousness. at some point, main character dude was wearing really tight leather pants (of the type i used to have) and a white turtleneck tucked into his tight leather pants. like… really? this is what you’re wearing?

speaking of such… 1) i hope to actually be able to make all freakin’ night in olympia this year after skipping it for the past two years (though i can’t seem to find any information about this year’s online); 2) forget… haha.

other than that… i had my show last thursday.

after all was said and done, it was like ~150 people plus performers, but it felt very full and the vibe was appropriately amazing. i’m so stoked to be in this weird position where i can throw psychedelic shows like this.

the write-up from portland mercury’s up & coming:

INTUITIVE NAVIGATION: GOLDEN RETRIEVER, SWAHILI, MIDDAY VEIL, BILLIONS AND BILLIONS, BLACK SCIENCE
(Holocene, 1001 SE Morrison) Holocene gets dressed up as an empyrean dream world tonight for Redefine magazine’s Intuitive Navigation, a cross-disciplinary indulgence of film, music, dance, wearable sculpture, and art installation. Intended to facilitate a self-reflective state of meditation for the attendee, expect ritualistic performance art and hypnotic stimuli galore. The event will be soundtracked by some of the Northwest’s most prismatic artists, who will perform in costume along with visual artists and dancers to enhance the immersive experience. Take special note of the evening’s headliner, Portland’s best bet for trance-induction: the soporifically zonked Golden Retriever. CHRIS CANTINO

the write-up from willamette week:

[INDISCIPLINARY ART EXPERIENCE] A spinoff of a similar event that happened at Holocene in December 2010, Intuitive Navigation gathers a handful of psych, drone and experimental bands and pairs each one up with a dancer, filmmaker or artist to play with and off one another. Considering the tone of many of the acts—the spacious dreamscapes of Midday Veil, Golden Retriever’s glorious tonal smears and the sharp metallic edges wielded by Black Science—this isn’t a night to be taken lightly or without a little chemical boost to help let the music and visuals take you to a higher plane.

i’m super stoked to be able to throw trippy-ass events. more. to. come. i. hope. i like the schedule right now… every three or so months a new event? sounds good to me, anyway… that’s actually quite a bit! and sure, some are more successful than others, but it’s all in the wrists, kids!

i’m presently watching a documentary of people’s confessions in church… it’s alright. it’s just strange because the people are confessing but looking at the camera, eyes open, while they’re doing it. doesn’t feel like they are talking to a priest, and therefore feels less real. but maybe it is real. it is visually quite appealing, though, in the way that i like to take photography. it’s sad, though, at this point. i don’t really care about photography like, at all. it seems like a dumb thing that anyone can do. its appeal is lost to me, for the mooooooooooost part.

i wanna share some pics from intuitive navigation… but sometime soon. later.

am i thinking critically these days? i am. but every day is no longer a huge revelation.

a couple weekends ago we went to helsing junction, on the farm. it was pretty amazing, but it was also an amount of shroomery of which i have not experienced before. was crippling at some junctures, actually. i think i said to troy a few times, “it’s hard to be much more than a lump,” because that is essentially how i felt. also, bagged pita bread tasted like the grossest thing ever; i could taste the plastic. fresh fruit was not as bad, but i had no appetite, pretty much. was interesting.

at some point, troy and i had been rolling around on gina’s air mattress (hilarious thing to bring) and finally decided to get up and go towards where the people were in the main area. and like five minutes after we got out there, everyone had decided to take a group photograph at the top of this haystack period. it was such good timing, especially since the timing felt arbitrary as fuck. like… there was no reason for that picture to have been happening at that time, really.

we also spent a fair amount of time wading around in the river, which was fun. floating down that river was pretty wonderful, indeeeeeeeeeeeed. what we barely ended up doing — despite the fact that it was a concert — was seeing music. we saw some, for sure. shoulda saw more. or not. but yeah. oh yeah. rose’s sister kathy was in town… and she was really, really awesome. instantly likable. and very mom like. and at some point we were in apple orchards, starting at one and then retreating inwards from the field to escape the sun… just taking over aisle after aisle, like locusts! and luckily kathy was around to clean up our mess a few times, as we blocked off the locations to other people’s tents and stuff. honestly, it was a bit rude, but i was out of it, so.

it dawned on me while i was there that i needed to write back to my prison penpals really soon. it’s been really quite a long time. i need to do that.

i am wanting to go up to seattle this weekend so i can give lenny some money i owe him and also take him to sushi because i had bought him this meal to red fin (expensive and good, supposedly) and it expires next month. sherry just got to singapore. lenny is going later in september. it’s crazy that two of my best friends are going to be in singapore at that time and i can’t even be there. aghhhh! because i need to go on this road trip!!! arggghhhh! this is fine and good, of course, but at the same time, SUCKKKKKKKKKKKKS. but this is what happens. we can’t get everything we want all the time, although i come close! so fine. i can’t complain…

also, today… i won a $50 gift certificate to a restaurant that’s really close by! YEAHHHH! also, tomorrow, we’re going to eat ethiopian food… yeaaaaaaaah! also, tomorrow, we’re going to aquarian, this weird psychic church thing. more on that later.

also, really romped through a whole bunch of korean music videos the other night. some memories, man. here are the songs i dug up this particular time, many of which were like, HOLY SHITTTT…

young turks – ta een (sigh, one of my favorites back then)

lee junghyun – bakwuh

j – like yesterday

sechskies – pomsaeng pomsah

solid – eebameh keuteul japgo (completely forgot about this one)

s#arp – tell me

s#arp – lying

shinhwa – chun il yoo hon

yoo seungjun – gawee

turbo – december (definitely an og favorite, too)

dj doc – l.i.e. (from an album i rocked so hard later on in my kpop phase)

dj doc – bi ae (same as above… gahhh, so good!)

oh yeah, yesterday maddy cut my hair! yay! it’s now really short on one side and i still have what they call “the tusk” on the other side. it’s really long. and then paul read maddy’s tarot at a bar (dig a pony… it’s new and super nice). maddy is leaving soon to move back to minnesota, which is really sad, but it really seems like a good move for her. it seems very positive, and it seems like she knows what she is doing.

sigggggggggggggggggggggggghhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh.i wanna travel really bad. and i guess i am, but i mean… internationally.

this movie has really nice symmetries, many of which are images from churches. it’s called “jesus, you know”.

also, the zombie biker movie, “psychomania,” puts this song in my head. (i’ve embedded this video before; this person sucks at spelling and lyrics.)

this is the end of this post. i will stop editing it ad nauseum!

dude i lied, this lady on this film just got real and was like, “he distracts me from my life. he ruins my prayers. help me to forget him. it’s all so difficult. so tremendously difficult. i must make an effort not to kill him. because i have poison. i have poison. i have access. but i don’t want to kill myself either. i am not allowed to. but in the night when i cannot sleep, i imagine how it would be if i were dead. if it would grieve him, if he would be sorry. but thank god the night comes to an end. and when the sun comes up and i leave the house, then thank god, these thoughts fade away.”

cray-crayyyyyyyyyyzy. but interesting. this is the advise she is beseeching jesus for. help her out, brah. guess what’s going on is that her husband is doing the hanky-panky with another lady. a married one! tsk-tsk!

prison penpal letters, part one.

Dude, I had 115 hits on my blog yesterday and I usually have 15-ish a day. What the fuck?

Anyway. Just got a letter from one of my prison penpals, Chris, today. He’s my favorite of my two (and formerly, like, four-ish) prison penpals.

Here’s a part that I felt was really, really interesting… but, to preface… he crochets and builds me awesome origami animals (see photo — he said it’s a giraffe, I think, but it looks like llama to me. Maybe he didn’t say. Maybe I’m projecting.). He also murdered his aunt and will be in prison… for life. He got off death row, but he won’t ever get out of jail.

Writing to him, because I connect with him on such an interesting intellectual level and because I actually rather trust him to be a good human being, makes me think twice about people who are murderers and those who are driven by circumstance versus evil or whatever. It’s weird.

“I was thinking a couple of days ago about what it is that makes me want to keep living. I know I’ll never be released from prison, so I know somewhat what my future is. I’ve been locked up for almost 14 years now, so I know what spending the rest of my life in here means. I wonder why I don’t just end it and want to move on, if that’s possible.

So the question is, what is it about living that is so appealing? What if we knew for certain that when we die, we will be reincarnated as a human? Do you think that would make dying any easier? I don’t think so. People who believe there is a heaven still cling to life as if they are going to hell. Knowing that death is a new beginning does not make dying any less scary. It’s weird, unless you believe it is the breath of life from God that makes us want to live no matter what the circumstances. It’s something, I know that. Whatever it is, it makes me want to live in prison for the rest of my life!”

These are the types of discussions we have… the letter goes on to talk about aliens, ancient Mayan cultures, crop circles, growing up, etc.

One more part to share, which is described after he tells a story of going to parties with some friends:

“That was almost 14 years ago and the memories are still very vivid. Sometimes it’s as if that period of my life was a dream. I have no connection to that part of my life, except a great aunt who will occasionally send me a little money. Friends have faded and family separated themselves from me. I guess they weren’t really my family. What hurts me, or used to, about that entire situation is the fact that they never once attempted to talk to me and ask me what happened. They seen me as a murderer and nothing more.”